Dashboard is a feature built in to Mac OS X 10.4 and up that allows you to customize a variety of widgets within a readily accessible screen overlay. This may seem like a handy tool to have on your desktop, but the truth is, these widgets can be quite the little ram hogs, slowing down your regular processes.
In order to fix this and increase the performance on your machine, it is possible to completely disable Dashboard from your system. It does require some basic Terminal work, and can just as easily be reversed, so don’t be worried about making any permanent changes. Note also that you don’t necessarily need to disable Dashboard completely; simply closing widgets you never use will help quite a bit too.
Now, if you’ve decided that you don’t need Dashboard, and would rather have the heightened performance, the first step is to open Terminal (located in Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities). Once open, type this command:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
and hit return. Now you can restart the Dock by typing the following command:
killall Dock
This command will allow the changes to take effect. Dashboard is a process owned by the Dock, so it is necessary to restart the “parent” process to see the desired change.
So there you have it — Dashboard has been completely disabled on your system. Later on, if you begin to miss this feature, it can easily be restored in a very similar fashion. Open up Terminal, and type this command:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO
Now, run the killall Dock command once again to restart the Dock, and there you go — Dashboard has been restored.
Originally written by RJ back in 2011. You can view the original newsletter here.