[Review] Dashboard X - A New Way to Use iOS Widgets

[Anthony Bouchard]

Right before iOS 5 was launched, the echo of, “Oh my gosh! Notification Center looks amazing” could be heard from all around the world. Now that iOS 5 is out, people seem to dislike the fact that Notification Center houses not only notifications, but also widgets. It gets very crowded when you throw all the third party jailbreak widgets into the mix.

To help bring the name, “Notification Center” to a more true level, iOS developer Ori Kadosh is introducing Dashboard X, a new jailbreak tweak that allows you to use your Notification Center widgets either on a separate dashboard, or on the home screen among your application icons to brighten up the boring home screen.

The most interesting part about Dashboard X is the ability to add Notification Center widgets directly to the home screen among your application icons. The widgets do not interfere with the placement of the application icons, nor vice versa. Even though they don't interfere with each other, they will layer over each other, meaning that it's a good idea to rearrange the icons so they are away from the widgets. You can rearrange and delete widgets from the home screen exactly the way you do with application icons, holding down on them to enter jiggle mode, dragging them around, or even tapping on the black X button to remove them:



If using Notification Center widgets on your home screen isn’t your cup of tea, then you could opt to use them in a dashboard-like interface, which will be separate from your Notification Center. Ori included this feature so he could dedicate Notification Center to notifications only and then have his widgets in a place away from the notifications to reduce the crowdedness. The dashboard is invoked using an Activator action, and looks like this:



Another awesome feature of Dashboard X is the ability to disable widgets from Notification Center, however they will still remain visible in the dashboard or on the home screen. This is how you can avoid having widgets in Notification Center (dedicating it to notifications only) and keep notifications as the standalone content of Notification Center.

After installing Dashboard X, you will find a preferences pane in the Settings application. From within these options, you can enable and disable widgets from Dashboard X and also choose editing modes, dismissal methods, and Activator actions. The first few settings are involved with the home screen widgets and the bottom section is associated with the dashboard section of the tweak. The preferences pane is dead simple; shown below:



The only people that will find Dashboard X useful are those that like to take advantage of iOS’ widget abilities. Since Dashboard X relies on the beauty of iOS’ widgets to use its functionality, if you don’t use the widgets that often then you probably won’t want Dashboard X. Dashboard X does not slow down the home screen and the animations resemble that of Mac OS X’s dashboard. The animations are very smooth and look native to iOS. Since the dashboard has a transparent background, you will always be able to see what you were doing right behind the widgets. The best part is that Dashboard X works with several third party widgets from Cydia (almost all of them). Apart from those, there will also be some Dashboard X-exclusive widgets.

Name: Dashboard X
Price: $1.99
Version: 1.0
Requirements: iOS 5
Repo: ModMyi.
Developer: Ori Kadosh
Editor's Rating: / 4.5/5

Sources: Ori Kadosh

[143voltron]

How this work for IntelliscreenX?

[iAdamir]

Does it work well on iPad ?

[LUFT5_THOR]

Widgets are horrible on ios. They look bad and are buggy at best.

[gruhu13]

Works great with IntelliScreen X - great tweak

[wildgene789]

i dont think it works with infinity board. cant add widgets to home screen. anyone else?

[2k1]

Ah don't like it that much.

[Mc-Lovin_341]

Does it work well on iPad ?

Just downloaded it now and works just as good on iPad as iPhone. Highly recommend.

[2k1]

Gonna mess with it some more I guess.

[Mc-Lovin_341]

The only thing about this tweak is that the widgets don't work with Barrel.

[2k1]

That's not good I love barrel

[gdd2010]

i dont think it works with infinity board. cant add widgets to home screen. anyone else?

Yup! That's the problem I had, disable Infiniboard and try.

[Bwfcrus]

Crashes springboard! I have a newly jailbroken iPhone 4 5.0.1. Only tweak I have is sbrotator. It would be awesome if I could use the two together. How is it working for everyone and how do I ask for help from the dev?

[gotzaiPhone]

I've been waiting for this tweak as I've been hearing about it for weeks via the dev's twitter feed and this tweak DELIVERS! I can't get enough of it. It's like perpagehtml on crack!

It is much nicer to have some widgets on springboard pages to leave notifications in the notification center.

There is an update just submitted to the repo that should fix compatibility issues and crashes according to the dev.

[baRRy boRRis]

This is EXACTLY what should be introduced in iOS 6. Looking at you iPad...

[Ryaninfg]

Lockinfo also allows you to do this. This tweak just seems a little more customizable. May have to give it a shot.

[Mrteacup]

I really think haters should appreciate this tweak more

[gdd2010]

Just tried it while in a Dreamboard theme. Homescreen activation doesn't work (as suspected b/c DB doesn't use the same icon method as the native springboard). Buuutttt, the Dashboard method works great; in lockscreen or home. I'm happy with it so far.
Would be nice to get a custom version for the "Else" theme I am running so it can be added to the home screen and integrate nicer.

[CMartins]

This is EXACTLY what should be introduced in iOS 6. Looking at you iPad...

I applaud the developer for pulling this off, it does indeed work really well but design-wise it doesn't feel right to me. Although I'm not hoping for widgets in iOS 6, if they happen to be included, I hope they look better than this. Good work.

[done1234]

I turned off some of these widgets in Lockinfo just because I thought the battery was burning down real quick, is that not the case for some of you?