Manage Your Dashboard Widgets with Widget Manager 1.0.1

Downtown Software House has released version 1.0.1 of Widget Manager, a Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" preference pane for managing and deleting Dashboard Widgets. The software allows you to inspect, remove, and disable Dashboard Widgets, and the 1.0.1 update adds new features.

Dashboard is a new technology Apple included in Tiger. The technology allows you to run small applets called Widgets within the Dashboard environment in a similar fashion as Konfabulator.

Out of the box, however, Apple offers no direct way of removing Widgets, and Tigeris help files say simply "You cannot remove widgets from the Widget Bar or change their order." This has been brought under the spotlight by Stephan.com, a developer who found a malicious way for bad guys to exploit Dashboard.

Widget Manager changes this, allowing you manage your widgets from Tigeris System Preferences. The software displays all of the widgets in your Library/Widget folder, displays version numbers for those widgets, and allows you to disable any widgets you want to turn off.

The new version of the preference pane adds the following features:

  • Widget Manager will now show Widgets in the system Widget library folder.
  • Widgets are now sent to the Trash, rather than deleted immediately.
  • Widgets which cannot be deleted will be shown as read-only.
  • Minor bugfixes and improvements.

You can find more information and download links for Widget Manager, which is freeware, at Downtown Software Houseis Web site.

A note of thanks to TMO forum member sbstaskiewicz, who pointed us to VersionTrackeris listing for WidgetManager in the comments of TMOis coverage of Stephan.comis findings.