How to disable keyboard shortcuts in Mac OS X?

Question

I would like to disable keyboard shortcuts Command-W and Command-Q in Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

This is because they interfere with emacs commands which I run from inside a terminal running from xQuartz. How can I disable the keyboard shortcuts?

Answer 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)