[How To] get the Dashboard to update faster.

Lt Major Burns

Lt Major Burns

"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
noticed that the dock takes ages (up to 15 seconds) to update all the web widgets like weather and world time etc?

do you also notice that you've removed the dashboard icon from the dock?

put it back. dashboard updates so much faster, or at least for me. i havent opened dashboard in days and it just updated in about a second an a half (4 world clocks, 4 weathers)
 
Wow! You're RIGHT! Although I really hate the icon that is just a waste of space for me...
 
Burns,

Sorry for my stupid. I don´t understand. Are you saying I must remove the icon from DOCK and after that put it back to Dock?

It´s make tha dashboard open faster??

Hugs
 
When the Dashboard icon is placed in the dock, widgets are updated regularly, even if they're not in the foreground. Whereas when the Dashboard icon is not "docked", widgets NEVER get updated unless you bring them to the foreground (F12). [test it with activity monitor]
 
Bizarre. Very bizarre. I guess since you can't QUIT Dashboard outright, Apple made removing it from the Dock the next best (or worst, if you want to use it) thing. Which is a shame, because I DO want to use it, and I DON'T want it taking up space in my dock.

Well, I guess it's not so bad if I move it to the bottom of my dock instead of the top.
 
Simply press F12 (or program any other shortcut) and undock the icon. Your widgets will take a couple of seconds to refresh the FIRST time you bring them up, but then it's farely quick. Dashboard is afterall a gadget, not very usefull for working [personal opinion I guess]. Widgets give you quick information that you can "probably" wait for a couple seconds to refresh... no?
 
TeeboAccrete said:
Simply press F12 (or program any other shortcut) and undock the icon. Your widgets will take a couple of seconds to refresh the FIRST time you bring them up, but then it's farely quick. Dashboard is afterall a gadget, not very usefull for working [personal opinion I guess]. Widgets give you quick information that you can "probably" wait for a couple seconds to refresh... no?
Click to expand...
Not me. For me, it IS useful for working. I want quick access to a simple calculator, translation services and dictionary & thesaurus. I only use a few non-interactive widgets, like the weather widget. Those I can deal with a delay for (although it IS a pain), but those are also the ones I only want to use every now and then.

For me, it takes about 10-50 seconds every time I open Dashboard after it's been inactive for a significant amount of time. This is absolutely unacceptable, and had made me simply never use Dashboard up to this point. Really, why would I use Dashboard's caculator when I can load the standalone, full-featured calculator and have all my work done by the time Dashboard even loads? It's insane. I can even load up web-based translation services in less time than it takes to access Dashboard's translation widget. The delay in Dashboard (when it's undocked) makes it utterly worthless to me. With it docked, it's usable. Still not as good as I'd hoped, but easier than loading dedicated apps, anyway.
 
Also - when you restart your Mac a bit more often than I do (now uptime 65 days on 10.4) the dashboard is faster too.. it starts to have a few more seconds delay once your system's uptime goes beyond one month or so...
 
You're still on 10.4.0? ... I personally couldn't resist updating and also installing the QT update.

To clarify things: If you already _have_ the Dashboard icon in the Dock, this tip won't do you any good. This is for those who made it vanish when it first appeared. :)
 
Dashboard does not just get slower, it uses more RAM as time goes on. That is why it gets slower after a few days. Take a look at the Activity Monitor. You don't have to reboot, just log out.
This is a bug that I hope is fixed soon. These tiny apps use major RAM, hundreds of megs.
It is one of those high visibility features to sell the OS. There are many more useful features in Tiger, for example, Preview can add annotations to PDF files. That can save the cost of Acrobat, and that would pay for Tiger. It would not be flashy enough to make a good show. There have to be new features that are cool and flashy to make people pay for the upgrade.
 
i love dashboard...im actually surprised how much I use it..i was expecting to not use it at all when i first heard about it..... it has replaced going to some sites for me.... i love the php library refernce widget.... altho my only complaint is that the widget is a little small and cant be stretched....

now if i could only start using spotlight.
 
For those of you that want the speediness of dashboard, but not the icon in the dock, was there not a HOWTO in this forum for removing dock icons of running apps.?

Found it here. Would that work?
 
Giaguara said:
Also - when you restart your Mac a bit more often than I do (now uptime 65 days on 10.4) the dashboard is faster too.. it starts to have a few more seconds delay once your system's uptime goes beyond one month or so...
Click to expand...

You should really update to 10.4.2. It fixes a lot of issues with 10.4 (except samba is not as good as it could be)!
 
Open your Applications folder, and find the Dashboard app. Drag it from your apps folder and place it where you want to in the dock.
 
question then, i have 10.4.2 and never took the dashboard icon out of the dock. when i start my mac, and it gets to the desktop, it shows that dashboard is running, as always, but it doesn't matter if it is the first thing i click on, or i wait an hour, but when i do finally get to it, i have to wait over a minute for my wigets to update, all of them. it is a royal pain, i'm now in the habit of starting my mac, then clicking on dashboard and then getting a drink, and there are times that i'm still back before its updated. is it because i've only got a 466? let me know, thanks.
 
I have the same problem, also the ones I have downloaded seem to automatically decide that they are always open on startup.. so I have to wait for these I dont regularly use to load too, when all I want is to use the dictionary quickly.. I'm sure there must be some way to turn off less used ones so it doesn't take an age to load..
 
You can remove widgets, if that's what you mean. Select the widget and hold down Option. A cross will appear, select it.

I don't know if this will do much. It might be a better idea to go to Hard drive>Library>Widgets and remove the ones you don't want. This way they won't be on the DB as an option, either, which may help.
 
Convert said:
You can remove widgets, if that's what you mean. Select the widget and hold down Option. A cross will appear, select it.

I don't know if this will do much. It might be a better idea to go to Hard drive>Library>Widgets and remove the ones you don't want. This way they won't be on the DB as an option, either, which may help.
Click to expand...

I think an even better idea is to use the new Widget Manager in the latest update. It's best to leave the System widgets where they are, and enable or disable them with this widget, with the new Widgets preferences pane or similar utilities. One trick is to copy all the System Widgets into your User Library widget folder--and trash from there what you don't want. Although, hm, the new widget manager widget allows for trashing, too.

As for slow Dashboards, you might try the new Dashboard Starter, a free third-party download. If things are still slow--something's not right. Need to go through a whole maintenance cycle.

Good luck!
 
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