How to disable keyboard shortcuts in Mac OS X?

Solution 1:

BetterTouchTool is no longer free.

I reached this page because I wanted to disable command-h (hide application) which is not shown in System Preferences. This is my solution.

BetterTouchTool is a utility which can disable keyboard shortcuts (and has many other uses). http://www.boastr.de/

To disable command-w globally

1. Install BetterTouchTool
2. Click on the BetterTouchTool menubar item and choose "Preferences"
3. Click "Gestures"
4. Click "Keyboard"
5. Click "Global"
6. Click "Add New Shortcut"
7. Click "Keyboard Shortcut"
8. Type the shortcut you want to disable (for example, command-w)
9. Set Trigger Predefined Action to "No Action" (which is the default)

Note that you can also set a keyboard shortcut for a specific application.

To disable command-w only for Terminal

1. Install BetterTouchTool
2. Click on the BetterTouchTool menubar item and choose "Preferences"
3. Click "Gestures"
4. Click "Keyboard"
5. Click the plus sign at the bottom of the "Select Application" pane
6. Choose Terminal (in Applications/Utilities folder)
7. Click "Add New Shortcut"
8. Click "Keyboard Shortcut"
9. Type the shortcut you want to disable (for example, command-w)
10. Set Trigger Predefined Action to "No Action" (which is the default)

Solution 2:

To view or change Keyboard shortcuts:

1. Open the System Preferences->Keyboard
2. Click on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab
3. To change a shortcut, double click on the existing shortcut, and press the keys that make up your new shortcut.
4. If you make a mistake, click '"Restore Defaults to return the keyboard shortcuts to the factory defaults

Solution 3:

BetterTouch wasn't able to change or disable the key that was causing me grief: ctrl-cmd-d.

Here is how I was able to delete it:

1. Edit open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist
2. Find the code for kCGHotKeyLookUpWordInDictionary (70), and set 'enabled' to OFF (if it's not there just create an entry '70' with 'enabled' = OFF).
3. Restart your system

From this site I learned about symbolic hot keys and found a list of them: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/24/hotkeys_framework2/

These sites have lists of the codes used in the plist file, so one can actually change the shortcuts instead of only deleting them: http://krypted.com/mac-os-x/defaults-symbolichotkeys/ and Documenting com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist.

Solution 4:

A solution that may work for factory hotkeys in individual apps which conflict with your desired assignment:

Use the built-in hotkey management:

System Preferences | Keyboard | Shortcuts | App Shortcuts

...to map the pre-existing to some hard-to-hit keyboard combination (like Cmd-Opt-Shift-backslash). This will free-up the old key combination for assignment.