Widget Manager

July 13, 2005
5 comments

Today Apple released the second update to Mac OS Tiger. Beside several reliability and compatibility improvements Mac OS 10.4.2 now provides the functionality to temporarily hide or delete widgets directly from within the Dashboard.

Widget Manager

This new functionality is called “Widget Manager”, which is basically nothing else but another widget listing all currently installed widgets. As any other widget it is located in the widget bar at the bottom of the screen. Just click the the plus sign to unveil the bar and drag the first icon onto the Dashboard. By the way have you already noticed its neat icon? You can look inside the dashboard seeing several gear wheels. Great.

the widget manager is located in the widget bar at the bottom of the screen

Anyway, after you have dragged the widget manager onto the dashboard you can either hide or delete widgets. Just uncheck the checkbox in front of a widget to temporarily hide it from the dashboard as well as from the widget bar. In order to delete a widget just click the red icon on the right. Note that it is only possible to remove third party widgets — but that’s okay, at least from my point of view.

the widget manager is located in the widget bar at the bottom of the screen

What’s on your Dashboard?

Well now that it is quite easy to remove widgets, I think I will probably try and install more widgets than before. Actually I currently use just a few widgets such as Apple’s weather widget, the world clock, the calendar widget, pearLyrics as well as the PHPQuickReference Widget. Are there any other widgets or download locations you can recommend? These are my favorites:

 

5 comments

Hi! The new widget is not that good, but the hide option is very cool. I can recommend “AlbumArt” and “Countdowncounter”. My Countdowncounter just tells me, that there are only 32 days until i’m 16, hehe ;)

letthereberock

Ever try to install a widget by double clicking the widget from the desktop? It’ll ask you if you want to install it, if you click yes, it will launch in in a black trey and you can demo it without it hurting your system (the trey has a Accept Widget and Delete Widget buttons)! You should add that to your article. PS: I love Google Maps and Wimic and DashDock. All on DashboardWidgets.com

ZicklePop

This feature is the reason I’ve been looking forward to 10.4.2 so much. I had used the 3rd party Widget Manager prefpane, but this is a more elegant solution in my opinion (and that icon is really very, very cool). The widgets I use most are the weather widgets, the BBCs new prototype Listen Live radio player, Systat, Capture, Air Traffic Control, BatteryInfo and Hitchiker (for nostalgia reasons). I’m also a sucker for the Tossen widgets, just for the beautiful design.

Ian

I just found another widget that I will probably use quite often: the “my Amazon” widget provides the functionality to search, well, amazon :) Link

Wolfgang

Does anyone here know where does the Widget Manager store its resources, like graphics and such files? -----

Gman

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