Great Mac Dashboard Widgets

One of the great things about running OS X is having the Dashboard at your fingertips. I admit that I don’t use the Dashboard that frequently but it is great when I need to quickly check the radar for rain, convert some units, or even quickly print an envelope.

Click on any of the titles to visit the widget’s download and check back for additions to this list. Leave a comment if you know of a good widget I missed …

My Personal Favorites

Easy Envelopes:
Quickly print a one-off envelope, or utilize its tight integration with Address Book which allows you to quickly find a person’s address to print an envelope for. It handles USPS bar codes for both five and nine digit bar codes, and boasts many time-saving niceties.

Delivery Status:
Can’t wait for your packages to arrive? Don’t waste your time checking the site constantly, just open this all-in-one delivery tracker and enter your order number or tracking number. The status will update automatically for you, and even count down the days! It also works with Growl to give you pop-up message, email notifications, and more, whenever your package status changes. If you have more than one order, just open another copy of the widget so you can keep an eye on them all at once!

iStat nano:
An advanced system monitor in a tiny package. iStat nano is a stunning system monitor widget with nice animated menus and transitions. View detailed stats about CPU usage, memory usage, hard drive space, bandwidth usage, temperatures, fan speeds, battery usage, uptime and the top 5 processes. iStat nano also shows your public IP address, which be can copied to your clipboard using one of the many keyboard shortcuts.

Remember the Milk:
Display your Remember the Milk tasks in the Dashboard.

Radar in Motion:
A Dashboard widget that grabs radar images from the Weather Channel or NOAA and displays the animation. One can access the radar for a given city in the United States or get a regional map, including several international maps. The widget has options for displaying and updating the maps, including weather alerts and the ability to save maps for a specified period of time.

Unix Permission Calculator:
Translates UNIX file permissions between symbolic and octal formats.

Airport Radar:
A free and convenient tool for quickly scanning the area for AirPort and other wireless networks.

IP Widget:
Display your current internal or external IP, choose between Airport, Ethernet, Firewire and your Area Internet/WAN IP

xCuts:
A utility for looking up Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts, something that recent switchers from Linux or Windows probably need to do quite a bit! This widget lets you easily browse or search the contents of its MySQL-powered database, which it accesses over the web using Ajax. The xCuts are organized by Category, Scope, and Object, and you can even drill down to a second cross-referenced level if you need to. Or just use the fast live search form!

Zaphu RSS Reader:
A Mac OS X Dashboard Widget that provides a convenient way to view Zaphu’s RSS feed. The widget automatically pings Zaphu every 15 minutes to update the feed. Click on post titles to view the full article in your browser.