Hold ⌘Q to Quit
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.
- Install KeyRemap4MacBook and restart your computer.
- Go to “System Preferences…” under the Apple menu, and select KeyRemap4MacBook.
- 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.”
- 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.