The Tiger OS for Mac is full of bells and whistles that can be very handy. But the extra processes running – like Dashboard, for instance – can occupy valuable system resources that you may need elsewhere, especially if your Mac is your main audio computer. Here’s a tip on how to disable Dashboard if it’s robbing system resources during recording sessions:
Open Terminal (which is found under Go, Utilities in the Finder window or the shortcut Shift + Command + U in Finder to open Utilities), and then type this command, followed by the Return key:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
This tells the system that you no longer wish to have Dashboard available. However, the Dashboard task is actually “owned” by the Dock, so to make your changes take effect, you need to restart the Dock. The easiest way to do that is to type this command into the Terminal (and press Return when done):
killall Dock
Dashboard has been eliminated from your system, and won’t return until you tell it to do so. You can do that by opening Terminal again, and typing this command:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO
Once again, you’ll have to use the killall Dock command to make the changes take effect. Once you do, though, you’ll find that Dashboard is back as usual.