The dashboard of OS X can be an excellent tool to save time and effort. In my first weeks with OS X I collected tons of widgets that I was sure would be useful. After some time I realized that dashboard is a tool that needs to be kept clean and minimal so, I cleaned up. Now I am running five widgets full-time; all of which are necessities.

I would encourage everyone to go through their dashboard widgets and clean up shop. This will save you indispensable resources and keep your dashboard looking clean and easy to work with. Here are the five widgets I run and would recommend to anyone…

iTunes Stats - Keeps track of everything you do in iTunes. Tracks plays, songs, hours spent listening, and a multitude of other information.

Image Shackle - Need to resize an image? Don’t waste time opening Photoshop. Dump your original image into Image Shackle, set the size, and Image Shackle spits it right out.

Weather - Need to know what to wear? Check what the outlook for the day is with this handy tool.

Google Analytics - I love being able to run dashboard and see how things have been going on the site. Very simple, just put in your user name and the widget will collect your stats.

iStatPro - If there were ever a dashboard widget that every person in the world should be using it would be iStatPro. It will tell you everything you could ever want to know about your machine; your disk space, network, battery life, processes, everything is taken care of. I strongly recommend taking a look at not only, in my opinion, the most useful widget but also one of the best looking with several customization options.