Adding Command+Q shortcut to Finder in OS X
I am a hotkey fanatic, especially on a laptop! That is one of the big reasons I love my Macbook; almost everything can be done with the press of a couple of magic keys.
I'd have to say that the most used hotkey combo on my Macbook is, by far, Command+Q (which is for quitting an application for all you n00bs out there). If that is my most used shortcut, then I'd have to say that my most used application is Finder (or Firefox... it is a tossup). But... wouldn't you know it... Finder is one app that the Command+Q shortcut doesn't work with! I forget that ALL the time and find myself hitting Command+Q to quit Finder then saying to myself, "Ugh... oh yeah... no quit shortcut on Finder".
Before you say Alt+Command+Esc is the Finder quit hotkey shortcut... slap yourself because it is not! All is not lost though; there is a very simple way to add the Command+Q functionality to Finder!
Note that if you are a desktop icon fiend, this is not the hack for you. quitting Finder also hides all of the desktop icons until you start Finder again.
Just open up Terminal and enter the following command:
defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem YES
That's it. If Finder is open, relaunch it (which is where the aforementioned Alt+Command+Esc shortcut comes in), otherwise, just open it. You should now have a Quit option in the Finder menu which, as we all know, can be triggered with Command+Q!!
If you are so uncool that you decide you want to turn this ability off, simply repeat the process but use, you guessed it, "NO" in place of "YES".
defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem NO
Don't forget to relaunch Finder if it is open.
Enjoy.
