One of Chrome’s features that I really love is the “Warn Before Quitting” option under the Chrome menu, which prevents the program from quitting with a message saying “Hold ⌘Q to quit.” displaying for a second or two before the browser closes.

Unfortunately, that feature only exists in chrome, and I have fat fingers everywhere. So last night I asked on Twitter, “Lazyweb: Any way to make Google Chrome’s “Hold ⌘Q to quit” (Google blog post explaining the feature) the default across OSX?”

My friend @perisaccadic responded that KeyRemap4MacBook has that feature. I looked at the documentation last night, and KeyRemap4MacBook has a lot of key remapping features. Setting it to prevent quitting on accidental keypresses isn’t hard, but it isn’t obvious either. Here’s how you do it.

1. Install KeyRemap4MacBook and restart your computer.
2. Go to “System Preferences…” under the Apple menu, and select KeyRemap4MacBook.
3. Under “Custom Shortcuts” select “Hold Command+Q to Quit Application.” There are a lot of menus under the “Change Key” tab, and I recommend using search box at top and just searching for “quit.”
4. Select the Key Repeat tab and adjust the “[Holding Key to Key] Holding Threshold”, which has a default of 200ms. I set this to 2000ms, as I want to have half a breath before I close my programs, your mileage may vary. This option is the third from the bottom.

Then system-wide you’ll have to hold down ⌘Q, rather than bumping it by accident and losing whatever you were working on.