Prevent accidental app closures with CommandQ
At a Glance
Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s GemFest 2012 series. Every weekday from mid June through mid August, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.
CommandQ steps in to protect those of us with fat fingers. Its actions are simple: it blocks the Command-Q shortcut, displaying a bezel with a progress bar on screen. You have to keep holding the Command and Q keys until the progress bar reaches the end to quit an application. In the app’s preferences, you can set this time from a half-second to two seconds. You can also set your own Quit keystroke, which turns out to be necessary if you’re not using a QWERTY keyboard layout.
You have the option to have CommandQ act on all applications, or only those that you want to protect. However, if you do the latter, you need to release the Command and Q keys quickly after an application quits, or the next one, if it is not in CommandQ’s list, will quit as well. 
I would like to see the ability to also block Command-W shortcuts. I’ve recently been going back and forth between an Apple wired keyboard and their wireless Bluetooth model. Since I use a Dvorak keyboard layout, the position of the W key is slightly different on the two. I find myself pressing Command-W on the wireless keyboard when I mean to press Command-V, and this often happens when I’m using Safari and filling in a form; and, alas, the page closes.
If you find yourself accidentally quitting apps, you might want to try out CommandQ. It can save you a lot of hassle by giving you a simple safety net.
[Senior contributor Kirk McElhearn (Twitter: @mcelhearn) writes about more than just Macs on his blog Kirkville. Kirk is the author of Take Control of Scrivener 2.]
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