10.4: Remove Dashboard Widgets

May 03, '05 09:16:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Tiger only hintAccording to Apple's Dashboard help:

You cannot remove widgets from the Widget Bar or change their order.
There is no way to remove widgets from the GUI, but you can do it in Terminal.app. Launch Terminal and type (the $ is the prompt, and the line below is just a comment to explain the command):
$ cd /Library/Widgets/
/* to move to the widget directory */

$ ls
/* list the installed widgets */

$ rm widget_name.wdgt
/* remove the named widget */
You may have to wait a minute before the changes show up in the widget bar. Also, any open widgets that you removed will remain running until you close them with the X.

[robg adds: Widgets are typically installed in the user's own ~/Library/Widgets folder -- if you use Safari with its default settings, this will happen automatically when you download a widget (from Apple's Widget page, for instance). To prevent automatic installation, disable the Open "safe" files after downloading option in the General section of Safari's preferences.

Note that you do not need to use the Terminal to remove widgets. Assuming you're logged in as the administrator, you can remove system-wide widgets (and your own, obviously) directly from the Finder. Just navigate to /Library/Widgets (or your user's ~/Library/Widgets folder), and drag the unwanted widgets out. If you're thinking of removing any Apple-provided widgets, I'd recommend keeping them in an "Unused Widgets" folder elsewhere on your drive, just in case you ever want them back.]

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