Using the dashkards widget on the iPad

If you have an iPad and some sort of stand or mount for it, here’s a quick tip for using your iPad to permanently display the dashkards widget alongside your Mac without the need to open Dashboard.

The first thing you’ll need is an app to turn your iPad into an additional screen for your Mac. There are several apps available, the most popular one is probably Air Display. I use an app called iScreen which works flawlessly and costs a bit less than Air Display. In any case, buy and install one of these apps and the complementary Mac app which communicates with the respective iPad app. See the app descriptions in the App Store for details. And in case of iScreen be sure to enable High Resolution in the iPad app’s settings.

Once you have your iPad set up as an additional screen, we need to get the dashkards widget to display on the iPad. If you’re on Lion, you’re going to have to disable the option to display Dashboard as a space (you can ignore this if you’re still on Snow Leopard). Go to System Preferences->Mission Control and uncheck the checkbox next to the option “Show Dashboard as a space”, as seen in the screenshot below.

Uncheck "Display Dashboard as a space"

Next, open a Terminal window and copy and paste the following command: defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES. Press Enter to execute the command. This will set Dashboard into debug mode which will allow you to drag widgets out of Dashboard onto the Desktop. You need to restart Dashboard for this change to take effect, so type killall Dock into Terminal and press Enter. This will relaunch the Dock and Dashboard (the Dock controls Dashboard).

Now, open Dashboard and click and hold the left mouse button on the dashkards widget. While you’re still holding the mouse button, close Dashboard using the keyboard shortcut assigned to it in System Preferences->Mission Control. If you still have an older Apple Keyboard you should be able to just press the F4 key (the one with the Dashboard-like icon on it). When you do this Dashboard should disappear but the dashkard widget should remain visible. You can now drag it anywhere on your Desktop, including the additional screen provided by your iPad, and it will stay there until you restart your Mac or Dashboard.