After browsing through the first macOS 10.15 Catalina beta version for a while, one thing is clear – the Dashboard is officially being phased out in favor of the Notification Center.
The Dashboard was first introduced in OS X 10.4 Tiger and acted as a dedicated hub for widgets such as weather, calculator, timer and third-party software. However, as user interest has waned, the Dashboard was disabled by default back in OS X 10.10 Yosemite and replaced by Notification Center. It is also still disabled in macOS 10.14 Mojave, so the user has to manually enable the feature if they actually want to use it. Now, on macOS Catalina, the Dashboard has been completely removed.
The Notification Center is the future
Developers tried to force the tool to activate via the terminal - normally such an action would return an inactive dashboard - but to no avail. This means that the code for the function is no longer included in the current version of the operating system. Users who actually still use the feature will sooner or later have to get used to the Notification Center on macOS. The "Today" view of the function has taken over most of the features of the dashboard, including the ability to install third-party widgets.
iTunes will also no longer be available under macOS Catalina – you can find everything you need to know here. (Photo by Unsplash)