In previous releases you could enable the Dashboard developer mode and move widgets off the dashboard onto your desktop. In Lion you still can, but with one difference: The widget only appears on *one* of you desktops, not all of them like it did before. Is there any way to restore the old behavior? I find some widgets are most useful when they're constantly visible.
I can't even get ONE widget to detach from the dock. I followed the same instructions that worked in 10.6. Has this changed?
I don't think the procedure has changed; AFAIK you still just need to do "defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES" from the Terminal. You probably need to restart the Dashboard process too, which you can do with "killall Dock" (or logging out and back in).
It may also be necessary to go into System Prefs -> Mission Control and uncheck "Show Dashboard as a space". It looks like that's necessary in order to drag widgets to/from the desktop. Widgets on the desktop will stay there if you re-check that box, you just can't move them back and forth.
Oh great that helped me. I didn't know about the "Show dashboard as a space" setting. That actually makes this whole OS so much better. Thanks.
as to spaces, I am having the same issue as you
In case anyone else is interested, I *think* I figured out how to do this. The Dashboard runs as part of the Dock app, so you need to assign the Dock to all desktops. Enter the following two commands in a Terminal session:
defaults write com.apple.spaces app-bindings -dict-add com.apple.dock AllSpaces
killall Dock
That should do it. It's working for me right now, with no bad side-effects so far. Hopefully the setting will be retained for the next time I login, but even if it's not it's easy enough to put in a startup script.
Hi! Thanks for your help. But due to the fact that these widgets float onto all applications, even if they are in full screen mode, I would like to reverse this command. Could you tell me how to do that?
Thanks in advance
Widget On All Desktops?
