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What It Does

DashLite performs one of two actions:

  • Launches Dashboard if it has not been launched yet.
  • If a process name contains "DashboardClient", DashLite kills the Dock, which restarts. All Dashboard processes will be eliminated until next activation, thereby freeing system resources.

Therefore, DashLite is a process toggle for Dashboard, without the residual overhead when Dashboard is not in use. Since Dashboard will not be running in the background, you may notice that launching it via DashLite is slightly slower. The best application of DashLite is in conjunction with a keystroke application launcher such as QuickSilver. You could easily keep using F12 (be sure to uncheck Dashboard in the Keyboard and Mouse system preference panel), or any other key combo you can configure, to launch Dashboard with Quicksilver or similar.

DashLite quits itself after execution, consuming no resources other than when activated.

The Proof

The screenshots below reflect memory saving for Mac OS X Leopard and are not indicative of what you'll save on Tiger. Leopard handles Dashboard resources much better than Tiger. Memory savings on Tiger are much more significant as every Widget is using 6+MB of RAM. However, the virtual disk space saved on Leopard may be reason enough to use DashLite if your hard drive is tight on space.

On the Overview page, one user states saving 40MB of RAM using DashLite. Sometime in the near future, I'll get access to a Tiger machine to illustrate how much RAM Widgets use.

Before Dashboard is launched the Dock is using minimal amounts of real and virtual memory.

System resources at startup
After Dashboard is launched and the user returns to other work, the new processes still take up significant virtual memory and a modest amoung of RAM. Note that it's even using a bit of your CPU.

System resources after starting Dashboard

After Launching DashLite, memory usage returns to a pre-Dashboard state.