Can I globally change the cmd-Q shortcut to require holding for two seconds, like the option in Chrome?

Question

Many, many times, I accidentally press ⌘+Q when I meant to close a tab or window, or switch applications. When I saw the option in Google Chrome to require the shortcut to be held, I was overjoyed. Problem is, I use Safari.

So, in short: How can I make the "hold command-Q" shortcut universal across all of my applications (or at least Safari)?

@Senseful It's counterintuitively under the Chrome menu, rather than Chrome preferences. — Tuesday, Mar 22 '12 at 20:04
Can these two questions, and the answers, be merged? SlowQuitApps is not mentioned as an answer in the earlier question. — Saaru Lindestøkke, Oct 24 '15 at 23:15

score 19 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 22 '12 at 20:49

19

Here's a partial solution for starters:

Preventing accidental quitting in Safari (or any specific application)

Simply set up an unusual keyboard shortcut for the "Quit Safari" menu item in Keyboard preferences.

This will disable the standard ⌘Q shortcut, so accidentally hitting it doesn't make a difference — and you have to think before you quit!

(Unfortunately, I haven't found an easy way to do this for every application, without entering each one manually.)

answered Mar 22 '12 at 20:49

jtbandes

11,074

Very nice, I have implemented, and upvoted! As an aside, by default ⌥⌘Q is "Quit and discard Windows". – Paul Wagland Mar 29 '12 at 21:37
Oh drat, you're right. Well, ⌃⌘Q or something else should work too — however I find ⌥⌘Q a little harder to hit by accident. – jtbandes Mar 29 '12 at 21:58

score 14 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:45

14

Continuing on jtbandes' solution, once you have remapped the standard Quit command to a different keystroke (yes, sadly, you need to remap it manually for every application you are worried about accidentally quitting), you can create a service in Automator that takes no input. It should have a single action: Run AppleScript. The script is:

tell application "System Events"
    set theName to name of the first process whose frontmost is true
end tell
tell application theName
    display dialog "Are you sure you want to quit?"
    quit
end tell

You then save that service (I called mine "SafeSave"), and assign the service the keystroke ⌘Q. You have thus reclaimed the standard keystroke.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:45

Community

1

answered Mar 23 '12 at 00:40

Daniel

34,803

1

Clever. Hm, I suppose one could write a script to activate on cmd-Q which would then require another cmd-Q to complete the quit... – Tuesday Mar 23 '12 at 00:42
Clever, indeed! Have an up vote! :-) – Asmus Mar 23 '12 at 08:37
Very nice, I have implemented, and upvoted! – Paul Wagland Mar 29 '12 at 21:34
This works well. Both Automator Workflows and Quick Actions show up as services (this bit had me confused as normally I don't use Automator). The only issue is that every application which you don't want to quit on Command-Q requires its own entry. But there's lots of single window applications which can be quit with straight Command-Q so in a way it's the best of both worlds. Previously I had Keyboard Maestro set up with a double tap Command-Q to quit which worked well but is non-native. – Foliovision Sep 24 '21 at 09:23
Unfortunately this doesn't work with Fluid Browser apps. I believe it's because they are unsigned. While I have the setup working for my other applications with Fluid Browser apps, this error message is returned: "The action "Run AppleScript" encountered an error: "Not authorised to send Apple events to System Events." If anyone has any idea how to fix this, I'd be delighted to try. I've dug deep in the research here but without success: https://www.felix-schwarz.org/blog/2018/06/apple-event-sandboxing-in-macos-mojave https://mjtsai.com/blog/2018/08/23/apple-events-usage-description/ – Foliovision Sep 24 '21 at 12:26

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 21 '15 at 17:12

12

Douglas Teoh has made an app called SlowQuitApps, that does exactly this.

An OS X app that adds a global delay of 1 second to the Cmd-Q shortcut. In other words, you have to hold down Cmd-Q for 1 second before an application will quit.

When the delay is active, an overlay is drawn at the center of the screen.

answered Aug 21 '15 at 17:12

yckart

236

3

I can't believe people are actually writing apps to achieve this.
Way to go “intuitive Apple!”
– Stewart Apr 01 '16 at 12:05

score 8 · Answer 4 · edited Oct 24 '15 at 20:32

8

Another option is to use Karabiner with the following XML:

__HoldingKeyToKey__ KeyCode::Q, VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE, KeyCode::Q, VK_COMMAND, Option::NOREPEAT

edited Oct 24 '15 at 20:32

Tuesday

15,204

answered Jul 04 '13 at 23:06

Lri

105,117

While the application has been renamed to Karabiner, this answer worked great for me on 10.10 and was completely free. – Alex Pretzlav Apr 22 '15 at 20:28
Can you describe how to use this? I have Karabiner installed but I don't know how to use your command. – Manuel Mauky Apr 17 '18 at 11:07
1

@ManuelMauky Go to complex modifications page of Karabiner and click "Import" button near "Prevent unintended command-q (rev 2)". – Utku Jul 04 '19 at 20:07

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 10 '13 at 00:40

3

CommandQ ($4.00) does exactly this. It's very customizable and has a nice GUI, though I haven't used it personally. It seems to fulfil the requirements of this question.

answered Dec 10 '13 at 00:40

Tuesday

15,204

score -2 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 20 '13 at 00:07

-2

I don't believe that's possible.

answered Aug 20 '13 at 00:07

Digitalchild

3,625

Can I globally change the cmd-Q shortcut to require holding for two seconds, like the option in Chrome?

6 Answers6

Preventing accidental quitting in Safari (or any specific application)

Linked

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