Hide macOS Finder quick action panel for common file types

disable-quick-actions.sh

#!/bin/bash
set -u

plist=~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

ensure_dict() {
    plutil -insert "$1" -dictionary "$plist" 2>/dev/null || true
}

ensure_dict PreviewPaneSettings

for key in "com\.apple\.application" "public\.font" "public\.folder" "public\.html" "com\.adobe\.pdf" "public\.audio" "public\.text" "public\.movie" "com\.apple\.alias-file" "public\.image" "public\.archive" "public\.item"; do
    ensure_dict "PreviewPaneSettings.$key"
    plutil -replace "PreviewPaneSettings.$key.showQuickActions" -bool NO "$plist"
done

# Finder caches PreviewPaneSettings in memory at launch, so it has to be
# restarted before any of this takes effect.
killall Finder

Hi, I just found this and it's quite helpful. Sadly it only updates / inserts the showQUickActions bool only if the parent already exists in the plist file.

I wonder if there would be a way to also create the public.font key for example? I tried with insert but not much luck.

👍

Hi. You might want to check $man plutil, there is also -insert which should do the trick

I tried fiddling with that as mentioned before, but apparently the -insert only works if the parent exists. So it's inserting the public.font and then also inserting the showQUickActions. Which ended up too much work and I just looked for different files and did the change manually for the few files.

I just hoped that maybe a script like this could automate it for new installations in the future. Possibly with lookup / check if key exists / if not crate / if exists replace etc…

But that's just too much optimization for like 10 minutes of manual stuff 🙈.

Great to learn about anyways.

I've updated it, it should also work for your case. Hope it's still useful after all those years :)