Colin Walker

This is a handy trick.

I had installed Jeena Paredies’ TextEd.app replacement for the default TextEdit app because there was no way in the preferences to open with a blank file by default.

The only problem with this is that the Mac would never remember setting TextEd to be the default app for .txt files often leaving me with both apps open.

I then found this thread showing how to disable the file picker when launching TextEdit using the following command:

defaults write -g NSShowAppCentricOpenPanelInsteadOfUntitledFile -bool false

And now I’m back to just one plain text editor again.

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  1. Jon M says: #
    Do you use TextEdit’s app-specific iCloud Drive folder? Cuz turning that off in the iCloud settings got rid of the file picker for me way back when iCloud Drive launched, and that was definitely the right decision for me, and I just save files from TextEdit wherever it makes sense for them to go
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    1. Colin Walker says: #
      Ah, didn’t know you could do that. Just tried turning it off but the save location was still defaulting to iCloud. Just found another thread saying you can use defaults write com.apple.TextEdit NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool false but this also didn’t seem to change anything. I’ve changed the save location to Documents and it seems to be remembering it but I’ll see what happens after a reboot.

      Thanks Jon.

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  4. smokey says: #
    @colinwalker Doing anything app-specifically (e.g. com.apple.TextEdit), if possible, is usually preferable doing something globally (-g) across the OS, unless you really want to change the behavior of every single app. At least that’s what I was taught back in the old days 🙂
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