⌘Q is too damn close to ⌘W

⌘Q is too damn close to ⌘W(squishtech.posterous.com)

226 points by sprsquish 15 years ago | 106 comments

The reason it's not normally a problem is that if you're working on a document and you hit ⌘Q (or ⌘W for that matter) you will be prompted to save your changes.

However, this does become a problem in web browsers and file browsers where there are no changes to save.

Apparently in the early days of OS X the NEXTSTEP guys wanted to add a ⌘Q shortcut to Finder, which would log you out of OS X. As the story goes, some people at Apple really hated that idea, so after some lively debate they settled on ⌘⇧Q instead. (As a bonus, it's now a global shortcut, so you don't have to be in Finder to use it.)

Similar problem with web browsers. You can give it a different shortcut, or you can enable a prompt to warn when closing multiple tabs. Most people opt for the latter.

metageek 15 years ago | |

In System 7, I think it was, it was possible to use ResEdit on the Finder to add a ⌘Q. Useful if you were low on memory. IIRC, if the last application exited, the Finder would restart.

parenthesis 15 years ago | |

In earlier versions of OS X (<= 10.3 (?)), ⌘Q when in the Finder quits it, just like any other application, which was a little disconcerting the first time you did it (by mistake).

philwelch 15 years ago | | |

This wasn't the case at all, at least not on stock OS X (who knows what you could enable with haxies). You could certainly force quit the Finder, but it just relaunched immediately.

bconway 15 years ago | |

I had this issue for a while, and got around it by requiring Firefox to prompt me if I'm closing more than one tab at a time. It's ugly, but it works.

dedward 15 years ago |

Most browsers warn you if you are about to close multiple tabs.... I guess chrome doesn't? Weird.

That would be an implementation problem for chrome - every other OSX application tends to properly warn you if you are about to close multiple context windows with cmd-q.

EDIT: Just researching a bit- this seems to be a conflict between the Chromium design goals and the OSX UI guidelines... the Chrome team absolutely refuses to add a warning dialog if you try to close multiple tabs, but it would be the expected behaviour on OSX.

I tend to fall on the side of OSX - part of what makes it great is UI consistency - and this is one case where Chromium is making things worse, not better.

abraham 15 years ago | |

The latest developer version of Chrome (9.x) has an experimental warning dialog in "about:flags".

_delirium 15 years ago | | |

Interesting that they gave in and added it, since they've been WONTFIXing requests to make it even a non-default option for over two years: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=147

shrikant 15 years ago | | |

Where? I have 9.0.570.1 on Windows 7 (32-bit) and I don't see such an option in the about:flags.

The only flag relating to tabs I can see is the first one to put the tabs down the side.

erikano 15 years ago | |

I think that the best approach would be do have a warning as default, except from in "Incognito" mode - that way, people who feel a need to quickly close the browser can use Incognito mode or disable the warning and the rest of us avoid troublesome accidental closing of the browser.

jemfinch 15 years ago |

Do people really not know that Chrome has an option to reopen itself with the tabs you had open last? Preferences > Basics > On Startup > Reopen the pages that were open last.

slig 15 years ago |

Latest chrome (9.x dev) has an option in "about:flags" to show you a kind of confirmation box before quitting.

sp4rki 15 years ago | |

This has been the best tip I've ever gotten. Thank you kind sir for having changed my life so drastically in just a second!

martingordon 15 years ago |

I've had this happen to me in Chrome a few times recently (I switched to Chrome full time a few weeks ago), but I've never had it happen in Safari since Safari prompts you if you have multiple tabs/windows open.

glhaynes 15 years ago | |

Safari didn't prompt for the first major version or two — and didn't have 'reopen all windows from last session', either. Suuuuck.

megrimlock 15 years ago |

What's really needed here is not more distance between hotkeys, but instead universal lightweight undo for user interactions.

The most precious resource is the user's time. There should be no interaction that irreversibly discards the user's work. We have fairly universal undo for editing operations; there should be just as much undo support for closing windows, tabs, or apps -- carefully constructed artifacts of the user's workflow.

andreyf 15 years ago | |

Tabs: ⇧⌘T

Apps: double tap

Windows: Good idea! If only there was an OS that treated those as vital UI components...

katovatzschyn 15 years ago |

"The Opposite of Fitts' Law - The Ejector Seat Analogy"

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/03/the-opposite-of-fit...

kamechan 15 years ago |

no keymap is without its annoyances. in DVORAK, ⌘w is right next to ⌘v (paste). i close windows all the time :(

nanotone 15 years ago | |

On the other hand, in Dvorak, Q is directly above the left ⌘ key (where X usually is), and W is directly above the right ⌘ key (where , usually is). I'm always reminded of this serendipitous symmetry whenever people complain about ⌘Q and ⌘W being adjacent on QWERTY.

kamechan 15 years ago | | |

absolutely. this is a wonderful thing...i may close a lot of windows, but i don't usually quit the entire program unless i mean to.

scott_s 15 years ago |

In vi, I use control+w to shift between the sections of a split window. You can imagine the hilarity that used to ensue. But, it's not an issue anymore. I haven't made that mistake in well over a year.

BCM43 15 years ago | |

Similarly, in emacs I use ctrl+n to go down. On FF, this will open 5-20 windows, depending on how long I wait. (I have a very fast repeat.) Pentadacty with emacs bindings has helped with, but occasionally I will hit the key to pass all keys to FF, and once again end up with ~20 windows to close.

leif 15 years ago | | |

Me too, ugh. I also can't tell you how many times I've hit M-d thinking I'd delete a word and then keep typing, and end up writing all over the address bar instead.

sohooo 15 years ago | |

Switchers to OS X with a german keyboard layout also experience quite a lot of fun. That's because on Windows, you have to type ALT+Q to get the @ in an email adress.

You have to fight your muscle memory not to type CMD+Q in OS X.

mhd 15 years ago |

German hackers represent: On a German keyboard on Windows or Linux, you have to enter a few characters with the right Alt key (the "AltGr" key). This includes the "@" sign, which is located on the "Q" key. A lot of first-time switchers thus cause their browser to close every time they try to enter an email address.

Incidentally, the "@" sign, as many other characters, is on a different key on the German Mac layout. Never understood why e.g. the US layout stays the same on every system, but the German one doesn't. Good time that I switched to the US one long ago. Now I only have to fight with different ways to access umlauts…

tedge 15 years ago |

With a bit of practice, you can train your hand to do ⌘-W as a 3-finger "chord" by touching your middle finger to the 'Q' key before allowing your index finger to depress the 'W'.

erikano 15 years ago |

I'm using Firefox and Vimperator [1] with a TypeMatrix EZ-Reach 2030 [2] mapped to US-Dvorak under FreeBSD 8.1 with xmonad [3] + xmobar [4].

This means that:

- When my fingers are resting on the home row, they are on keys a, o, e, u and h, t, n, s.

- When I want to close a tab in Firefox, I press d, which is left of h.

- When I want to quit Firefox completely, I press :q.

I can't remember the last time I closed a tab I didn't want to close or exited Firefox without meaning to do so. The only problem I had for a while, was that I started "record macro" with q when I meant to scroll with j - that hasn't happened for quite some time now.

I mostly only use Chromium if I am logged in on various sites in Firefox and I need to use my server as proxy to access a web service bound to 127.0.0.1 on the server (meaning that it is not publicly accessible), while also using the sites I am logged in on in Firefox. I always quit Chromium by closing all tabs, and as mentioned by others, Ctrl+w is far away from Ctrl+q.

[1]: http://vimperator.org/vimperator

[2]: http://typematrix.com/ezr2030/

[3]: http://xmonad.org/

[4]: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/xmobar

zaius 15 years ago |

I use this to map it to ⌘⇧Q

defaults write com.google.Chrome NSUserKeyEquivalents '{"Quit Google Chrome"="@$Q";}'

limmeau 15 years ago |

On German Windows keyboards, @ is on right-Alt-Q. Recently, I had a (Windows-trained) guest who wanted to write an email on my Mac, but Firefox kept "crashing".

ewjordan 15 years ago |

Huh. I guess that's true, for some reason I've never noticed it before.

I usually keep my left hand on my "home keys" when browsing (Firefox user here), in order from pinky to thumb, q-w-e-f-⌘, of which I use w, f, and ⌘ on a regular basis, and I guess that usually keeps me from mis-hitting q when I mean w, I'd actually have to push the wrong finger, which is pretty rare.

Right thumb goes on the trackpad for mouse interactions (much easier now that the MBP trackpad presses in rather than having a button), other four fingers on that hand go on j-k-l-; (⌘+j/k/l I use all the time for downloads/search/address bar, ; is wasted, of course). Scrolling is the only thing that sucks, but you can get pretty far with space/shift+space (hit space with left thumb, shift with right pinky).

If I had a problem with this, I'd probably go with the WoW shortcut for quitting, alt+command+Q, which is pretty hard to do accidentally (Double-thumb keypress? Expert move...) and doesn't tend to be bound to anything else. Command+1 seems like a bad idea because some of us are very used to Command+(number) to switch to tabs.

Argorak 15 years ago |

Huh? I never had that problem and do actually like it that way. Train yourself to use the middle finger for "W" and the ring finger for pressing "Q" and the problem vanishes. It will still happen to you perhaps once per month, but I can live with that.

thisisblurry 15 years ago | |

This is how I do it and exactly as you say, I rarely end up doing the unintended action.

jrockway 15 years ago |

C-x C-c is too close to C-x C-b.

CoreDumpling 15 years ago | |

C-x anything is too close to C-z, though that is more of an annoyance than harm.

pjscott 15 years ago | |

Quitting emacs should be a fairly rare task; just remap C-x C-c to something harder to hit by accident in your .emacs file.

(I would do this myself, but I keep putting it off.)

jrockway 15 years ago | | |

Oh, I do. Same with C-z as mentioned below. When I'm in a terminal-based session, I keep C-x C-c and C-z around. When I'm in my main X-based session, C-z is zap-to-char and C-x C-c is bury-buffer.

eru 15 years ago | |

Stop using qwerty.

jrockway 15 years ago | | |

But then C-q C-j is too close to C-q C-x.

cookiecaper 15 years ago |

This has bitten me several times and it really sucks. The "Restore Tab" function doesn't restore the state of Flash applications and it doesn't restore content in some input boxes (like those on Facebook, because they are hidden by JS initially).

If you're in Private Browsing mode and this happens, you lose the whole session forever, and that just happened to me the other day. It was really frustrating. :(

jolan 15 years ago |

In Chrome, I just use Ctrl+Shift+T when this happens.

sprsquish 15 years ago | |

Maybe it's a version thing, but Ctrl+Shift+T doesn't work for me. Cmd+Shift+T does. But will it restore all the tabs you had open when you accidentally quit?

jolan 15 years ago | | |

Oops, yeah it's Ctrl on non-Mac and Cmd on Mac. It does restore the tabs.

meelash 15 years ago |

I've never had this happen to me if I recall. Do the people who have a problem with this not keep their hand in "typing position"? It seems really difficult to me, with my left hand in position (which can be assured with the F dot) to hit W with my pinky or Q with my ring finger.

d0m 15 years ago |

In theory maybe but in practice I've never typed cmd+q instead of cmd+w. (A little bit like I've never typed ctrl+a (which select all) instead of ctrl+s (which save)).

However, I've pressed f1 instead of escape a couple of time so I make sure to bind f1 to escape in vim

FluidDjango 15 years ago |

That's why for applications that I do not want to quit easily I set "Application (keyboard) Shortcuts" [ OS X ] to require something less commonly used (like cntl-opt-cmd-Q) for quitting. [ OS X System Preferences -> Keyboard ]

wdr1 15 years ago |

This doesn't seem to work for me using Firefox on Snow Leopard. The menu changes to the crazy keyboard shortcut I give to Quit (and sure enough the crazy combo works as well), however Cmd-Q still quits Firefox as well.

hexley 15 years ago | |

That's because Mac Firefox is a dirty, filthy no-good hack.

ankushnarula 15 years ago |

FWIW... This is a useful resource when trying to remap shortcuts in Safari. I used it to remap Cmd-L to "Google Search..." to better mimic Chrome.

file:///Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Shortcuts.html

arohner 15 years ago |

My real problem is that M-w is too close to ⌘-w, especially when I have meta mapped to ⌘ on my external keyboard.

I would really love to have a consistent set of shortcuts across emacs and everything else I use.

edge17 15 years ago |

I think the worst design decision was putting the print button next to the save button. I've definitely sent code files in excess of 50k lines to some unknown printer before by accident.

bruceboughton 15 years ago | |

That's poetic justice for having code files in excess of 50k lines.

edge17 15 years ago | | |

Haha tell me about it. I've seen functions in excess of 30k lines.

dmaz 15 years ago |

Chrome for Linux addresses this by using Ctrl+Shift+Q.

mcritz 15 years ago |

This is like complaining that he keeps getting a spoonful of Cheerios up his nose every morning because his nostrils are too close to his mouth.

blahedo 15 years ago | |

...and then posting a nice hack to relocate the nostrils to the top of the head during Cheerios-eating time and sidestep the spoon-nostril problem entirely. So it's not so bad.

sprsquish 15 years ago | |

Happens all the time! I'm getting my nose moved though.

duopixel 15 years ago |

I'm willing to bet the author is either A) not a touch typist or B) Comes from Windows/Linux. It's not the author's fault, of course, but it has been around since 1984 and it's unlikely to change. The 'native' way to type commands on a Mac is using your thumb to press Command and your pinky to press Q, or your ring finger to press W.

It feels awfully weird pressing Q with your ring finger.

Window/Linux users use the pinky to press ctrl, taking your hand out of the usual touch typing position, and thus making it more prone to mistakes.

dedward 15 years ago | |

I agree with your premise but not your conclusion. I'm a touch-typist - but many touch typists in the computer age end up not always using classical touch typing methods - after all,the traditional typewriter keyboard didn't have an alt or cmd or ctrl key, right?

I use the thumb on left-cmd and a ring finger on either q or w (never thought about it... maybe I use the pinky sometimes) - and I don't recall ever making a mistake, although I suspect that may partially be because I primarily use safari, and it warns me if I try to close multiple tabs or a single tab/window with form data filled out.

And everyone should hopefully be mapping capslock to ctrl.... that just saves all kinds of hassle down the road.

hexley 15 years ago |

I could have sworn somebody made a SIMBL plugin years ago to provide confirmation for Cmd-Q in all apps...or am I just going crazy?

linhat 15 years ago |

well, this is not really a solution to his problem, but instead intended as an informational bit. i am actually using a dvorak(-programmers) layout. then the Q and W keys are quite far apart, with the Q key right above the left ⌘ key, and W right above the right ⌘ key, a really handy addition to an (already) awesome layout.

foenix 15 years ago |

I just did this to a blog entry after reading your post. I should have written in out in vim like I normally do.

shawnwall 15 years ago |

you just changed one of the consistent features of all os x applications, how to close applications and close windows/tabs of applications.

for some reason i always use the finger motion/press of thumb on left ⌘-key + index finger on q key to quit things and i've never experienced the ⌘q ⌘w issue.

jerf 15 years ago | |

I think squishtech's first clue that they changed one of the consistent features of all OSX applications was when they went to the control panel and changed the feature.

I think it'll be OK.

kuroir 15 years ago |

It is indeed to close, but it's not worth it modify it since it's a system wide standard.

hippich 15 years ago |

Can you close tab with Ctrl-W in Mac (like in Ubuntu and Win)? If so - just use it. Ctrl-Q do not quit browser =)

jlees 15 years ago |

Good thing we're fixing this!

invertedlambda 15 years ago |

Yes, yes and yes.

gmatty 15 years ago |

A F#$#@$* men

onk 15 years ago |

o is too close to 0.

stretchwithme 15 years ago |

very true.

drivebyacct2 15 years ago |

I will give plenty of karma to anyone who can tell me an easy way of doing something even remotely similar in Linux. I'd love it.

lukeschlather 15 years ago | |

On Ubuntu the first thing I do with a new install is rebind quit to Command W. (System -> preferences -> keyboard shortcuts.)

If you're using Firefox you just make sure browser.warnOnQuit is set to True (out of the box, it's set to true.)

As far as Chromium goes, near as I can tell ctrl-Q does not work at all, which is something Firefox would do well to imitate.

ins0mniac 15 years ago | | |

Chromium uses Shift+Ctrl+Q to exit.