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August 24, 2007 / Filed under: Dashboard, Mac OS X, Tips, Widgets

A tough reference to find is keyboard shortcuts within Mac OS X Dashboard. I'm not talking about launching Dashboard - everyone knows you can set "hot keys" or mouse corners to trigger that. I'm referring to keyboard shortcuts once your in Dashboard view.

Some would think a "dashboard" is for viewing only, so what actions would I need keyboard shortcuts for?

Here's a couple that might be useful:

• "Refreshing" a widget.
• Quickly adding or removing widgets from the Dashboard.

Although it's not widely documented, these things can be accomplished with keyboard shortcuts, to some extent, without additional software or plug-ins involved.

Refreshing a widget

To refresh a specific widget, click on the widget once, and hit Command + R. You'll notice a very cool "swirl" effect, which almost looks like a hurricane on a radar screen:

Every widget you refresh will perform this "swirl" action, and subsequently refresh the widget content.

If you're wondering what widget this was that I refreshed, it's the basic weather widget from Apple:

Adding new widgets

If you manually click the "+" icon in the lower left corner of Dashboard view, your "widget toolbar" will appear along the bottom. Here you can add or remove widgets from display.

To open this "widget toolbar," you can also hit Command + "+". That's Command and the "+" key at the same time. Hitting it again will close the "widget toolbar."

Removing widgets

This is not so much a keyboard shortcut, but a keyboard adjustment. If you hold down the "Option" key while in Dashboard view, and hover over a widget, you can manually remove the widget by clicking the "X" in the upper left corner of the widget. The "X" only appears when you move the mouse over each widget. This is quicker than opening the "widget toolbar" first, and then removing.

Keyboard shortcuts needed

I'm making a list of additional shortcuts that would be useful:

• Much like hitting Command + R refreshes a widget, hitting Command + I should provide info on the widget. (Only applicable for widgets that have a "back side" info panel.)
• Some way of removing widgets without having to manually click the "X". (I'm thinking Command + W or something similar.)