⌘Q is too damn close to ⌘W (opens in new tab)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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…

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'.

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

I use this to map it to ⌘⇧Q

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

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".

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.

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.

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

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. :(

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

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.

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

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 ]

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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 =)

Good thing we're fixing this!

Yes, yes and yes.

A F#$#@$* men

o is too close to 0.

very true.

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.