This is how you can avoid accidentally closing apps on Mac

Prevent apps from closing accidentally

Keyboard shortcuts let you do things faster with keys, as the name implies. This way, you can quickly open apps, switch between windows, and more. Quitting apps also has its own hotkey, viz Command + Q. If you make a mistake, you may accidentally close an app. To prevent this, you can change the hotkey.

Don’t accidentally close apps

In this tip we use Safari as an example, but in principle you can use all installed apps. For example, you can change the shortcut to close an app to Option + Command + Q. In this way you force yourself as a user to press one more key. It is not realistic that you accidentally press all keys at the same time. This is how you arrange it:

1. Open System Preferences ( > System Preferences).
2. Click the Keyboard menu and open the Keyboard Shortcuts tab.
3. Click Apps in the left column, then the plus sign in the right column.
4. Select an app (e.g. Safari) and enter exactly this text as its name: Quit Safari.
5. Now enter a keyboard shortcut (ex Option + Command + Q).

Customizing keyboard shortcuts on the Mac: Pay close attention

It is important that you copy exactly the name of the button in the menu bar. If you click on Safari in the top left corner of Safari, you will see that the menu item is really called Stop Safari. If you have set it up correctly, you will see your new key combination under that menu item.

You can set as many shortcuts as you want, but we don’t recommend choosing a different combination for each app. Then take a look again to keep the overview!

In any case, you will no longer accidentally close an app. What we do recommend is using Option + Command + Q. The Option key is located next to Command, so you can still operate it with the same hand.

You can read more about the Mac keyboard shortcuts in our separate tip.

In addition to keyboard shortcuts, you can also use shortcuts on a Mac. You can put this on your desktop, for example, so that you can quickly open a specific web page or other window. You can read how to create a shortcut on the Mac in our separate tip. To make typing on your Mac easier, you can also set it to automatically drop capital letters and periods, so that you can continue typing.