MacOS – How to restore Dashboard widget list? (Launchpad-style adding)

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When using a tutorial to clear Launchpad of its mess I had in /Applications, I accidentally cleared Dashboard's list of widgets when I click the (+) button to add downloaded widgets at the same time, kind of like Launchpad's viewing of apps.

Here is my Dashboard:

Dashboard, normal state

And here it is when I click the (+) button to add downloaded widgets in the bottom left corner of Dashboard:

No widgets to be found

I believe it will only show new widgets I download. How can I get it to show all of my widgets again—including the default, built-in widgets?

(This is my Launchpad: it looks similar to the "add widgets" of Dashboard.app in Mountain Lion, but I am looking how to restore my list of widgets in Dashboard, not Launchpad.)

Launchpad, 10.8.2

Also, it probably doesn't make a large difference, but my Dashboard is set as a Space and not an overlay right now.

Best Answer

I encountered the same problem, but now have a partial solution:

If you want to refresh the list entirely, delete the .db file located in "~/Library/Application Support/Dock/", followed by running killall Dock. This forces the Dock to refresh its list of widgets. Unfortunately, the list of apps in Launchpad will also be reset.

You can remove these individually via 

sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db "DELETE from apps WHERE title='APP_NAME';" && killall Dock

(from http://www.wikihow.com/Delete-Apps-from-Launchpad-in-Mac-Os-X-Lion, which adds:

 Replace APP_NAME with the name of the unwanted app as it’s displayed in LaunchPad.

)

I wish I knew how to add widgets manually, but I really don't know much unix... If it's any help to those trying to find a better solution, the widgets are located in /Library/Widgets.

Update

In the end I just decided to use Launchpad Manager to delete apps. It also functions as a widget manager.

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