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February 28, 2008

software

Kick that nasty Dashboard habit with Dashquit

Posted Feb. 28, ’08, 8:53 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

DashquitIt’s not that we don’t love Dashboard, but sometimes you just want it to go away. Maybe it’s distracting; maybe it’s just eating up too much darn memory. Now, you can always go into Activity Monitor or—if you’re the daring type—Terminal and kill the associated processes, but wouldn’t it be nice if there was a simpler solution?

Wow, was that a set up or what? Of course, we have just such a solution for you in the form of Dashboard widget Dashquit. This unobtrusive little feller sits in your Dashboard, calmly reporting to you just how much of your precious RAM Dashboard is devouring. If, at any point, you decide that Dashboard’s had 1 megabyte too many and needs to be cut off, just hit the big “stop” button and you can kill the whole kit-and-caboodle.

Dashquit’s a free download from its developers at Elaum Dev Center, and is available for both Tiger and Leopard.

[via Lifehacker]


7 Comments

Kris Jones Author Profile Page said:

I'm not sure how useful this is.

Until a user invokes the Dashboard it doesn't use any resources. Once invoked, it will show up in Activity Monitor under 'All Processes' and 'Active Processes'. When closed Dashboard will disappear from the 'Active Processes' but will continue to show under 'All Processes' because of virtual memory, not because it is actually using any system resources.

If one tries to 'force quit' Dashboard items via Activity Monitor, the system just seems to restarts them, using more real and virtual memory.


February 28, 2008 9:59 AM
Dan Moren Author Profile Page said:

@Kris: Actually, that doesn't seem to be the case (in Leopard anyway). I still have Dashboard processes in Activity Monitor even when it's not visible; certain widgets do load information in the background. And while force-quitting Dashboard will relaunch it, Dashquit won't.

February 28, 2008 10:56 AM
jayH said:

i thought dashboard was turned off in tiger until launched by the user?

the little light is NOT under it when it's not in use. i guess i'm crazy. i thought i read something about it...

February 28, 2008 12:04 PM
krye said:

Wow. 14 widgets and I'm using 79M!

February 28, 2008 3:10 PM
James "My Eyes Hurt" Carey said:

Widgets... that's what they call them. I've been using applescript to turn dashboard on and off, and it's been off for so long I genuinely forgot what those applications were called. I haven't used it in years.

February 28, 2008 3:58 PM
Kris Jones Author Profile Page said:

@Dan. Do the widgets show up in Active Processes? On my Tiger installation widgets only show in All Processes when the Dashboard is not in use (because of virtual memory).

February 29, 2008 1:05 PM
Dan Moren Author Profile Page said:

@Kris: I think Apple changed the way that Dashboard runs as a process. Now, instead of accounting for separate widgets, everything's group under DashboardClient processes. I checked, and sure enough, when I use Dashquit, these processes disappeared, then relaunched if I invoked Dashboard again.

February 29, 2008 1:32 PM

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