It all makes for a healthier Mac
September 26th, 2007 4
Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed that my Mac has been slowly grinding to a halt, overheating and basically not bringing me as much maccy joy as she used to.
After a little investigation, I discovered that (for some unknown reason) Dashboard was chewing up memory and processor power by the fistful. In fact, it was claiming a mighty 80% chunk of my 2.3 Ghz core 2 duo.
80% !?! Something had to be done.
After a little investigation I discovered that there was a way to completely disable my little used Dashboard. The Dashboard app is run as a process of the Dock, so it’s a two stage task to disable the pesky thing.
First, start terminal and type the following
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
This will tell your mac that you no longer require Dashboard, then restart your Dock…
killall Dock
There. All better. If you (for some strange reason) decide that the Dashboard is a good idea, you can reverse the process with this command.
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO
The run the ‘killall’ again, and you’re back in business - Although why you’d want this piece of useless gadgetry is beyond me. Have fun!
4 Comments (+0 in the moderation queue).
#1 On September 26th, 2007 at 4:07 pm adam ben said...
I would say it is useless.
Dashboard is is kinda useful and has some pretty awesome stuff on it. But 80% is a bit much, does that depend on how many widgets you have?
#2 On September 27th, 2007 at 9:17 pm Jon said...
I’m not sure on that one. I had 4 widgets running, but the only one I ever used was the calculator.
I guess it should have been able to cope with running 4 widgets without chewing up 80% of my power. They’re only javascript / xhtml after all.
#3 On September 27th, 2007 at 10:17 pm Jorge Quinteros said...
That’s kinda odd. Hasn’t happen to me personally but I’ve come across blogs where people have stated similar situation.
#4 On October 1st, 2007 at 11:00 am Jon said...
Thanks Jorge. After a week of no dashboard, I can honestly say I’ve not missed it one bit!