General Question

gailcalled's avatar

How can I unfreeze a widget on the Dashboard on my iMac?

Asked by gailcalled (54647points) August 5th, 2013

It’s a desktop with the latest operating system (10.8.4). The widget…prices of lists of common stocks…was working until two week ago. Now it has frozen. I have run the Disk Utility repair to no avail. The others (clock, conversion tables, local weather, language translation, calender and clock are all fine.)

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

11 Answers

Pachy's avatar

It has happened to me several times and here is where I always found help fixing it.

gailcalled's avatar

I will fiddle with your link later, @Pachyderm.

I just found this on one of the forums and tried it, to no avail. When I reset everything from the default, all the widgets but the stock price one, are working fine.

“Hi that’s right, you’re using Mountain Lion, which hides certain system files.

When you open your computer, you’ll see a series of pulldown menus: Apple, Finder, Edit, View, Go, etc. When you reach “Go,” pull down the menu, and watch when you depress the “Option” key. The “Library” file appears. Use this “Library” folder, then proceed to Preferences, and delete the com.apple.dashboard.plist file.”

gailcalled's avatar

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room: I registered for the forum you posted and there seems to be a lot of vague info about the recent demise of the Dashboard feature. I am finding the site itself difficult to navigate, also.

Waiting for JP, the miracle worker….

johnpowell's avatar

There is a bit of a easier way that could fix this.

Open Applications/Utilities/Terminal

Enter rm ~/Library/Preferences/widget-com.apple.widget.stocks.plist

Hit Return.

Enter killall Dock

Hit Return.

It should look like this.

That should hopefully clear up the problem.

gailcalled's avatar

Thanks, John. I will try later when I am able to focus. It is interesting how annoyance can create brain fog.

johnpowell's avatar

It should do the the trick. I tested it. Note that you will have to re-enter any ticker symbols you had entered.

gailcalled's avatar

The widget shows up; I can re-enter the ticker symbols, but there is no info being fed to them.

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/05/31/apples-dashboard-widget-download-site-for-os-x-broken/

johnpowell's avatar

It works for me. Maybe the widget itself if busted. I uploaded a copy of mine here that works for me. Once you unzip it you should be able to double click and it will ask you if you want to install it. Hopefully it will overwrite the current one. You might have to restart or killall Dock in the Terminal for it to see the new one.

gailcalled's avatar

@johnpowell: 1) When I followed your amazingly clear advice ending with Enter killall Dock
Hit Return, a new stock widget appeared with several defaults…Dow, Nasdaq, Apple, Google and the closing figures being fed in on the right

2) However, when I edited and typed in several of my stocks, the last $ costs disappeared again and theright-hand side reverted to blank green windows.

3) When I tried to upload a copy from your link in your answer above, I got an error message that said,

“Stocks-1.wdgt” can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer. Your security preferences allow installation of only apps from the Mac App Store and identified developers.”

I am not sure that this issue is worth much more of your time and mine because I can get the information from my brokerage account with only a little more effort…logging in with PW and user name and the list of stocks I am interested comes up.

I believe that Mac is planning to come out with yet another OS (Maverick?) soon. Perhaps the Dashboard widgets are a thing of the past.

Should I let this drop? In any case, thank you very much for the clarity and accuracy of your help.

gailcalled's avatar

John, I just found this http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/business/fidelitymarketmonitorwidget.html, but since I have an account at Fidelity that I can easily bring up, the widget now seems redundant. It was simply a convenient way to have a peek at a bit of the market the lazy man’s way.

gailcalled's avatar

And this just in from an Apple forum; https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5218936

“That widget doesn’t work. It’s a known issue.”

Answer this question

Login

or

Join

to answer.

This question is in the General Section. Responses must be helpful and on-topic.

Your answer will be saved while you login or join.

Have a question? Ask Fluther!

What do you know more about?
or
Knowledge Networking @ Fluther