Disabled Shortcut Command+Q on MacOS

[Devin Asay]

On Aug 21, 2009, at 5:25 PM, Kenji Kojima wrote:

> Mark, Devin
>
> AppleEvent worked what I wanted.
> ShutdownRequest worked too, but I needed force quit.

Kenji,

Sorry, I didn't understand exactly what you needed. You can prevent an  
app from showing up on the dock and in Force Quit window by adding a  
property to the plist for the app. It is the LSUIElement property and  
it is described at http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2002/tn2062.html#NotShowUpInForceQuit

What I do is insert the property in the app's plist to create a  
faceless application (one that doesn't appear in Force Quit list or in  
Dock):

<key> LSUIElement </key>
<string>1</string>

I find it's best to use the Property List Editor application to do  
this rather than a text editor.

Once you have done this you may not see the change right away, because  
of the way OS X stores information about installed apps. Here's a  
quote from a thread a couple of years ago on this topic:

<quote>
The issue is somewhat similar to the icon issue on Mac OS X, where the  
new icon doesn't show up unless you goose the app by zipping and  
unzipping it, opening Get Info and selecting and deleting the generic  
icon. Different people have different ways of fixing this. In the case  
of LSIElement, if you have ever launched your standalone *before*  
adding the LSUIElement node to the plist, then you add it and launch  
the standalone again, the change is not respected by the OS. Something  
about the application database or cache the OS keeps. Try this: make  
your standalone, and be sure to change the plist file before you ever  
launch it. Or, take your standalone to another OS X machine and launch  
it. You will see the desired effect. There may a better method for  
forcing the OS to see your app as a brand-new, never-run-before  
program, but one of these techniques always works for me.
</quote>

Hope this helps.

devin

Devin Asay
Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
Brigham Young University