Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

Windows That Auto-Reopen

For decades, opening a program on the Mac presented exactly the same thing every time: a blank screen, or maybe a welcome screen. It was up to you to specify what document you then wanted to work on.

Now, though, whatever documents were open when you last quit that program magically reopen, ready for you to get back to work. Everything is exactly as it was, including your window and palette positions. Incredibly, any text that was highlighted when you last quit the program is still highlighted, and the insertion point is just where you left it.

This is all handy if you tend to work on the same documents day after day; the auto-reopened document serves as a refresher on what you were in the middle of doing. You can skip fussing with the Open command, remembering what you were doing, rearranging the windows the way you like them, and so on.

Then again, maybe you can’t stand this feature. Fortunately, it’s easy to turn it off, either globally, on a per-program basis, or on a per-Quit basis.

• Turn off auto-reopen for good. Open System Preferences→General, and turn off “Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps.”

• Prevent your current setup from being memorized. You can also prevent just one particular program from reopening its documents the next time—at the time you’re quitting it. To do that, press Option while you quit the program (for example, when you choose Safari→Quit or press ⌘-Q). The Quit command magically changes to say “Quit and Discard Windows.” The next time you open the program, it will have forgotten all about your window setup.

  (On the other hand, if you’ve turned off the “Restore windows” feature in System Preferences, then pressing the Option key makes the Quit command say “Quit and Keep Windows.”)

• Make a program forget its window setup as you reopen it. If it’s too late for the tip in the previous paragraph, you can force a program to start up in its empty, virginal state by pressing the Shift key as it opens. That forces the program to forget the previous window setup.

• Turn off auto-open for one program. Suppose you like the auto-window-reopening feature in most programs. But there’s one particular program that you never want to memorize your window setup—maybe for security reasons, or maybe because you use that app for something different every day.

  Before long, some shareware program will crop up to make that easy. For now, though, you can do the job manually. It’s a quick, one-time step, but it does involve mucking around with one of the Mac’s invisible folders. See the box below.

POWER USERS’ CLINIC: Shutting Down One Program’S Window Memorizing

Os X stashes information about your window setup in a “saved state” folder for each program. This data is in your Home→Library→Saved Application State folder.

The thing is, your Library folder is ordinarily invisible, which makes it a little tough to see the Saved Application State folder inside. Fortunately, you can jump directly to its contents by pressing Option as you choose Go→Library. Then open the Saved Application State folder within.

You get something like the window shown here: a folder for each program you use. You can delete one of these folders manually, but of course the Mac will recreate it the next time you run that program.

So if you want the Mac to stop memorizing a program’s setup for good, find its Saved State folder. For Safari, for example, it’s called com.apple.Safari.savedState.

Open the Saved State folder and empty it out; you’ve just made it forget the most recent settings. Now close the folder.

With the folder still highlighted, choose File→Get Info and, in the Get Info box, turn on the Locked checkbox. From now on, the Mac won’t be able to record that program’s window setup. (To undo your surgery later, you can just turn the Locked checkbox off again.)