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Question

MacOS Tahoe's Default Desktop Widgets - Removing them?

  • September 16, 2025
  • 8 replies
  • 3626 views

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Tahoe now wants to put three default widgets on the desktop in the upper left corner (Calendar, Weather, Photos)  I don’t mind the weather and calendar widgets but the Photos widget will confuse people who are using this machine in a Lab setting. 

How can I control, remove or disallow them during or after setup?

I looked through all the Configuration Profile settings but there doesn’t seem to be any way in the Jamf GUI to address this. Will it require a custom Configuration profile?

Thanks!

8 replies

karthikeyan_mac
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  • Honored Contributor
  • September 16, 2025

Hi ​@dan_berlyoung , 

Setting the MDM configuration profile to deploy the key/value:
• Domain: com.apple.WindowManager
• Payload: StandardHideWidgets to true
will disable the new widget from being added automatically after the upgrade.

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "https://lnkd.in/g9qumfc8">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>StandardHideWidgets</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

 

 

Thanks.


dletkeman
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  • Jamf Heroes
  • September 16, 2025

toastmonster
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  • New Contributor
  • September 17, 2025

StandardHideWidgets will remove them from the desktop.

StageManagerHideWidgets will remove them from stage manager.

I haven’t found a way to remove them from the view you get when you click the desktop wallpaper.


JFSanchez
  • New Contributor
  • September 22, 2025

In testing, this seems to hide the widgets but doesn’t actually give you back the real estate to use. Is there a way to actually turn them off? 


KassKat
  • New Contributor
  • October 4, 2025

To get the use of the real estate back, you have to delete all widgets manually (right click, Remove Widget). Once they are all removed, then you get the real estate back. Simply turning them off in Settings doesn’t give the real estate back.

HTH!


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  • New Contributor
  • November 6, 2025

I’m seeing an issue where once you remove the configuration profile users are no longer able to go into System Settings - Desktop & Dock - and check Show Widgets On Desktop, it just immediately unchecks the box. Has anyone else run across this?


rheuer22
  • New Contributor
  • November 11, 2025

I have the same issue. This would be nice to be able to customize what widgets to have on the desktop or to remove them during provisioning. The method above just checks/unchecks the hide box in settings.


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  • New Contributor
  • November 18, 2025

Our issue ended up being an issue with the profile created within jamf. After deleting and recreating the profile the recommended solution worked properly.