May 12, '06 07:31:00AM • Contributed by: critcol
My company is preparing to install Tiger on all of our Macs, and I was told by an IT guy in the know that there's an intent to completely disable the Dashboard. Having used the Dashboard since Tiger's release and loving it, I can understand that, for security reasons and not wanting users to be able to install any system-damaging widgets they come across, disabling the Dashboard completely is not unwarranted.
But I believe the Dashboard is an inherently useful tool, and if there could be a way to prevent users from installing their own widgets, the Dashboard should be allowed to remain active. That being the case, I figured out that you take these two steps to secure the Dashboard, and prevent unauthorized widget installs:
- Use Admin/Root privileges to lock the top-level /Library -> Widgets folder, to prevent system-level widget installs. Use the Admin/Root privileges to lock the user's Library -> Widgets folder to prevent User installs (this will also block drag and drop installs).
- Widgets are installed by a small program called the Widget Installer. It resides deep inside of the OS X System folder. Modify the permissions of this app so that the end user has no access, and this will prevent any installation of a Widget, while allowing full use of the Dashboard. The program is located here: /System -> Library -> CoreServices -> Dock (control-click and Show Package Contents) -> Contents -> Resources -> Widget Installer.app.
Doing both of these things will disable the system's ability to install new widgets, but keep the Dashboard's ability to run existing widgets.
[robg adds: For this to work, the normal users must not have admin privileges, obviously, or they could just override the permissions settings.]
