OS X Tip | Speed up Dashboard by Clearing the Cache
If your a big fan of Dashboard and run a ton of widgets, then you’ve most likely noticed a big lag in how snappy dashboard is at coming up if you havent restarted your computer in a while. I try to keep the widgets limited to ones that I really use rather than just having things there to have them, but I still notice a lag if I haven’t restarted in a week or 2.
Each widget will create a folder on your system that is essentially a cache of data made to make dasboard quicker, but this is actually what can cause it to slow down over time. Ironic.. dont ya think? This can be for several different reasons such as the folder becoming bloated with too much data, or a corruption of some type.
Speeding up your Dashboard can be done in 2 pretty quick and easy steps:
1. Go to YourUserFolder/Library/Caches/DashboardClient, once there you’ll find a bunch of random folders. Delete everything in the “DashboardClient†folder.
2. Open up Terminal (located in the Applications folder) and type "killall Dock" without the quotes. This will close your dock and restart it. Since Dashboard is tied to the dock, this will also cause dashboard to restart and should give you much quicker results when pulling up the dashboard.
Once you do pull up dashboard for the first time, it may seem a bit slow. This is due to the widgets having to rebuild the folders that you just deleted so they can begin creating their cache again. This is normal so dont worry if it takes a few seconds to look like it normally does.
If you are nervous about deleting files and folders that you dont know what they do, then just doing step 2 can also help speed up the dashboard dramatically if you are running a significant number of widgets. Whether you do one or both of these steps you will certainly see an increase in your dashboard’s speed.
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seems to work very well, thanks!
My Dashboard IS faster, thank you!
Brilliant!
Absolutely Brilliant.
I had Widgets that would take forever to load… nothing.
This solved it instantly!