January 05, 2006

Curious George: mofi, I've broken my computer again. This time I've screwed up my widgets I was trying to get the WorldClock widget up and running, as I have a friend studying abroad this semester, but it wouldn't load. When I click on the icon I get a beep sound and the widget doesn't load. Dragging the icon onto my dashboard has a similar effect.

Before Apple released its widget manager, I had the 3rd party Widget Manager Prefpane installed, I think this might be the source of my trouble. At the time, I disabled many of the standard Apple-made widgets because I didn't have a need for them and they were cluttering my widget bar. Now I can't get any of the widgets I had disabled to run (flight tracker, world clock, address book, phone book, stocks, iTunes, tile game, weather). I tried moving the default widgets from Hd/Library/Widgets to User/Library/Widgets, but that didn't help. Next I moved all of my .wdgt files to folders on my desktop, figuring that I could re-install all of them like 3rd party widgets. That's when I found the problem in the screencap: the address book and calculator are 'still installed' and I've got two glitch widgets, 'Overflow text case, it should overflow' and 'one more is four'. The delete button does not work on any of these, although I can uncheck all but one of them at any given time. As you can see from the screenshot, the widget manager prefpane doesn't see these four widgets. Any ideas?

posted by tylermoody 18 years ago
  • I'll be around for feedback/experiments for the next half-hour, then I'll be at work for 5 1/2 hours.
  • missed in the screenshot: the widget bar at the bottom of the screen when I've got the dashboard up is empty.
  • Switch to a PC with Windows.
  • Well I have never had this problem, so I do not know the solution. You might get some help in here
  • Your available widgets should be stored in ~/Library/Widgets or /Library/Widgets. If your widgets are in there, then delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dashboard.plist. If your widgets are not in there, then your widget manager is managing by moving widgets to other folders. Find the widgets, move them to the proper folders, and go. You might consider leaving out your 3rd party widget managers, though.
  • Oh, and actually finishing reading your explanation, so yeah, just move stuff back to the widgets folder, trash the plist file, and see if that helps.
  • sandspider: think I should get rid of com.apple.dashboard.client.plist, com.apple.dashboard.default.plist, or com.apple.dashboard.search.plist while I'm at it?
  • World clock still doesn't work after removing those files, and when I delete it the 4 glitchy widgets come back.
  • 4 glitchy widgets all in a line when I trash the plist they all come back just fine!
  • Monkeyfilter: This Time I've Screwed Up My Widgets.