Remove Mac OSX Dashboard As A Display Screen On OSX Lion

Some people may find the Dashboard that resides to the left of your farthest left desktop on MAC OSX useful however I always find myself scrolling to that desktop on accident. I attempted to use the Dashboard for awhile for various plugins/buckets that made accessing things like a IPSec VPN client I used fairly easy but the truth is it is even easier to keep the IPSec VPN client in the OSX Dock. I believe the Dashboard was introduced in OSX 10.4 or OSX Tiger. The Dashboard acts as a Space and in OSX 10.7 or OSX Lion they added the ability to easily remove the Dashboard as a space. Follow the directions below to disable Dashboard as a Space or a Desktop screen whichever it is.

Disable OSX Dashboard As A Space In Mission Control:

Remove Widgets From Dashboard: The firs thing you will want to do is remove all of the widgets from the Dashboard so scroll over to the dashboard using your favorite method to do so. Personally I click the Control button and the left or right arrow to move between screens. Once on the Dashboard page click the + symbol in the lower left corner to manage the widgets on the Dashboard as shown in the below example images.Mac OSX Lion Dashboard:

As you can see in the above example image there is a single widget on my Mac Dashboard which is because I rarely use it. Now click the plus symbol in the lower left corner to open the Manage Widgets interface.

Manage OSX Dashboard Widgets:

Once the Manage Widgets interface is open each of the widgets on your OSX desktop should display an X in their top left corner which when clicked will remove the widget from the Dashboard. Below is what your Dashboard should look like before you continue to disable the Dashboard all together. You can disable it regardless of removing the widgets however its possible that unnecessary resources will be used if the widgets are still attached to the Dashboard.

Disable Widgets Located On Mac OSX Dashboard:

Now switch screens to your primary desktop so we can proceed to disable the Mac OSX Dashboard from displaying at all times as a Space.
Open Mission Control Preferences: You can launch the Mission Control Preferences by clicking the Apple logo in the top left corner of your screen, selecting System Preferences, and then by clicking Mission Control from the Personal sub category in System Preferences which will launch the below Mission Control Preferences window.
Disable Dashboard As Desktop: Simply remove the check from the Show Dashboard As A Space which is the first checkbox on the Mission Control preferences window. Once removed your Mission Control preferences will look similar to the below example image.