Sometimes you may want to display widgets on your regular desktop, rather than accessing them through Dashboard. Thankfully, achieving this is pretty easy. Type the followin in a Terminal window:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
Log out of your session, and then login again to restart the Dashboard process. That’s it! You now have the capability of displaying widgets on your regular desktop. How do you get them there?
- Hit F12 to bring up your Dashboard
- Find the widget you want on your desktop
- While dragging the widget across the Dashboard, hit F12 to return to your regular desktop and drop the widget
- To remove the widget from your desktop, just reverse the process. Hit F12 as you’re dragging the widget, and then drop it back on your Dashboard screen
Alternatively, you can just use the Yahoo Widget Engine (works on Windows as well!).