Slam Mac windows shut without saving
When I was in college, a friend told me about working a summer job at one of those art stores that sold extremely average factory-produced oil paintings that were designed to fit people’s decor.1 They probably made most of their money from the markup on frames.
The FileMaker Pro database used to manage sales and inventory was finicky. Once, it crashed on my friend, and her boss was not happy about it. He decided she had done the sequence wrong: “You close a window first, then quit a program!” My friend was livid: that was not how Mac programs work then, nor is it how they work now. The app has to manage its windows so that when you choose File > Quit, it properly handles open windows. Though this was nearly 40 years ago, it remains true.
There was a time when you couldn’t trust an app, though, and in that limited sense, my friend’s boss was right: closing all your windows could be more reliable than quitting, because you got to see the file close in a saved fashion. I recall—as do many of you, I’m sure—saving a file or clicking the red close button in the window and clicking Save, and then getting the watch icon or the spinning rainbow circle of doom. You’d wait a long time, hoping that the hidden situation resolved itself and your danged file saved.
Six Colors reader Jason (not our fearless leader, Jason) wrote in with a question2 about the polar opposite:
I often have to open multiple CSV files in Numbers. When I close those documents, I have to hit Delete every time. I tried quitting the app and see [a] warning… But there’s no option to just close them all and forget about them. Back in the day, there used to be a “close all and don’t save” type option, but I can’t find it. I have my Mac set to close windows when I quit an app.
I’m in the same boat, member Jason! Managing logistics for shipping books and Kickstarter campaigns results in a lot of CSVs that I open in Numbers, and for which I don’t need to retain changes. Unfortunately, Apple has moved away from any option that involves losing data. Is that unfortunate? Only in our particular circumstances.
You can disable an option that appears to be related: System Settings > Desktop & Dock > “Ask to keep changes when closing documents.” But it only sounds like what you want. This option, rather, relates to automatically saving files when you close a document: when disabled, supported apps (including all of Apple’s) save changes without a prompt; when enabled, you’re asked if you want to save. But files that haven’t been saved at all are unaffected: you’re still prompted.
The way out of this situation, which I expect is both niche but also affects a reasonable number of Six Colors readers with particular apps, is an automation program, like Keyboard Maestro or BetterTouchTool.
In Keyboard Maestro, you can set a trigger, like “long press Command-Shift-Option-D” (long press helps avoid a single press closing a document). Then add actions: close the window and click the Delete button.
For a number of Numbers or other app windows, you can encompass the above with a While loop, setting it to remain active while there’s a Delete button in the foreground. That could be very, very dangerous, so perhaps only for the strong of heart.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]
- As opposed to oil paintings of factories (many produced in factories). ↩
- Join Six Colors, and you can shoot me messages directly from the members’ Discord! ↩
[Glenn Fleishman is a printing and comics historian, Jeopardy champion, and serial Kickstarterer. His latest books are Six Centuries of Type & Printing (Aperiodical LLC) and How Comics Are Made (Andrews McMeel Publishing).]
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