One of the most loved features of OS X 10.4 (tiger) is the Dashboard and the veritable cornucopia of widgets that have been created to accessorize the Mac user experience. Of course, the popularity of the Mac widget concept has spawned an army of copy cats. Widgets now commonly appear on the desktop’s of Windows machines (both Vista and XP). In fact, my Windows using friends expound the glorious superiority of their Windows widgets because, unlike the Mac widgets that appear only on the Dashboard, their widgets can be parked (like any other application) directly on their desktops. In response to this proclamation of Windows widget superiority I say, “humbug.” Mac users can take advantage of a little known developer’s feature to park widgets on their desktops as well. Here is how.
Open a terminal and type the following:
Log out and back in to activate the changes to Dashboard. Now, open Dashboard (F12) and click and hold a widget you wish to place on your desktop. Still holding the mouse click, exit Dashboard (F12) and the widget should follow. Ta-Da!
To disable this feature simply open a terminal and type the above command replacing YES with NO.
BONUS: Did you know you can restart a widget (i.e., refresh at will those annoying widgets that don’t do so often enough) by simply making it active and typing Command-R? A swirl effect will let you know that the widget has restarted.
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