Dashboard widgets disappeared; can no longer download them. Why and help?

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Level 1

12 points

Dashboard widgets disappeared; can no longer download them. Why and help?

Hello,

I had a good number of widgets on my dashboard, from Stickies to Dictionary to a calendar. They all disappeared one day, either when or at some point after I switched to El Capitan (Version 10.11.5). Now, when I click on the "+" on Dashboard, there is nothing but "Web Clip" (which directs to nothing). Then if I click on "More widgets" and I download something from the directed page http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/ I cannot open my download that comes as .wdgt but leads to this message:

And technically my old widgets are actually still on my laptop. When I search for Stickies or Dictionary in Spotlight, they appear listed and do open. Just nowhere to be found on Dashboard.

Can someone help me out please? I loved my Dashboard. Thank you.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5), null

Posted on Sep 17, 2016 2:43 PM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

685,329 points

Sep 17, 2016 4:25 PM in response to manmm

Might be a corrupt .plist.

Do a backup, preferably 2 backups on 2 separate drives.

Quit the application.

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library. Then go to Preferences/com.apple.dashboard.plist. Move the .plist to your desktop.

Restart the computer, open the application, and test. If it works okay, delete the plist from the desktop.

If the application is the same, return the .plist to where you got it from, overwriting the newer one.

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