Replace all of your Mac's Dashboard widgets using the new Today view in Yosemite. Here's where to find Notification Centre widgets for sports scores, currency value, package tracking, and literally anything you can get by typing a Terminal command.

The Dashboard is dying. Most users ignore it, and not many developers are building things for it. Apple knows this, and added an option to Yosemite to turn the Dashboard off altogether.

dashboard-off

Of course, there might be some Dashboard widgets you actually still use – I know there were for me. Which is where the new Today view in Notification Centre comes in.

notification-center-today

Can this new feature replace Dashboard entirely? I wanted to find out, so I tried to replace every widget in my Notification Centre. Included by default are options for seeing my Calendar, Reminders, the weather, stock prices and even a calculator. That's half my uses for Dashboard right there, but I needed more. Here's what I found.

See The Scores With Yahoo Sports [No Longer Available]

One of the default widgets Apple offered for Dashboard was ESPN, which gave you the latest scores for whatever sport you liked. The Sports Fan widget did an even better job.

For some reason there isn't a default tool for this in Notification Centre, but don't worry: Yahoo's got a great offering.

yahoo-sports-scores

Yes, Yahoo. Don't be surprised: we've told you about Yahoo's surprisingly good mobile sports app, which lets you pick your favourite teams and gives you the scores for them. Their Mac app does the same thing, but in the Notification Centre.

yahoo-sports-widget-adding

Just add your favourite teams and you'll always know the score – click to see when the next games are. There's support for a wide range of leagues:

  • NFL
  • MLB
  • NBA
  • NHL
  • NCAA (Football and Basketball)
  • Barclays Premier League
  • Spanish La Liga
  • Italian Serie A
  • German Bundeslia
  • Champions League

Track Incoming Packages with Deliveries ($5)

For years, JuneCloud's Delivery Status for Mac was a great argument for keeping the Dashboard around. Not anymore: Junecloud just released Deliveries, a full desktop app for Mac. Naturally, it comes with a Today widget.

deliveries-notification

If you've been using JuneCloud's (free) widget for years, you know this tool is worth the $5 – reviews on the App Store seem to agree.

Still, if you're not willing to pay, a free app called Parcel is worth checking out. Just know that it can only track three shipments at a time without a $2 annual subscription.

If you're travelling, it's good to know what your money is worth. Coinverter, long a favourite currency app for the iPhone, is currently offering a public beta for Mac – and it supports the new Notification Widgets.

coinverter-widget

There's even support for Bitcoin prices, so even digital speculators cryptocurrency users can find a use for this. The app is currently in open beta, and will be release on the Mac App Store when it's ready (at which point the above link will probably break).

See Your Inbox With Airmail

A number of existing apps added support for these new widgets – if you have the app, the widgets should show up without the need for you to do anything. Minimalistic email app Airmail, which our own Matt Hughes said is making email beautiful again, is among them.

airmail-widget

With the new widget you can open, reply to and delete emails directly. It's great for quickly cleaning out your inbox before you dive into it later.

Manage Your To-Do List With Wunderlist

widgets-wunderlist

Not a fan of the defaults Reminders list for tracking your to-dos? Wunderlist also offers a Today widget, letting you see and complete your tasks.

See The Output Of Any Terminal Command

Just days after Yosemite was released, Reddit user 5HT-2a created an app for displaying Shell scripts. With it you can display the output of any Terminal command, similar to Geektool.

command-widget

I'm sure you guys can suggest a few commands in the comments below, but I thought I'd show you how to get the features above. Note that the long spaces followed by a semicolon is required for the clean seen above – otherwise you'll see the entire command.

Quote Of The Day

This one pulls a quote from BrainyQuote.com. Here's the command:

        curl --silent www.brainyquote.com/quotes_of_the_day.html | egrep '(span class=\"bqQuoteLink\")|(div class=\"bq-aut\")' | sed -n '1p; 2p; ' | sed -e 's/<[^>]*>//g'
    

And here's the command again, this time with a title and spacing so it will look nicer:

        Quote of the Day                                     ; curl --silent www.brainyquote.com/quotes_of_the_day.html | egrep '(span class=\"bqQuoteLink\")|(div class=\"bq-aut\")' | sed -n '1p; 2p; ' | sed -e 's/<[^>]*>//g'
    

Battery Status:

This simple command tells you how charged your battery is, and how long it will last. Here's the command:

        pmset -g batt | { read; read n status; echo "$status"; }
    

And here it is with a title and spacing:

        Battery                                        ; pmset -g batt | { read; read n status; echo "$status"; }
    

Uptime:

This couldn't be simpler: it just tells you how long your computer has been on. Here's the command:

        uptime
    

And here it is with a title and spacing:

        Current Uptime                                 ; uptime
    

What Will You Add?

I'm sure you guys can offer plenty of other commands for this widget, so let's talk about that below. Or, if you find any other cool Notification Centre widgets, feel free to point those out as well.