Tip: Start the text with an empty document

I use text edit to quickly write down something. However, I am annoying that the app always starts with the file dialog. Other programs start directly with a document “without title”. Can Text Edit be persuaded to do this behavior?

The opening dialog can be avoided.

To do this, you have to end text edit and enter the following command line in the terminal and execute with the input key:

defaults write com.apple.TextEdit NSShowAppCentricOpenPanelInsteadOfUntitledFile -bool false

Both when you start and when you have all the windows and click on the Dock icon, the hidden setting prevents the file selection and opens text edit with an empty document.

In the program settings (Command + comma) you determine in the “New Document” tab whether the empty document is expected or pure text. You can also define the standard window size there.

If you press Command + Q, unsecured “without title” documents usually automatically end up in the “TextEdit” subfolder from iCloud Drive. You can also switch this off:

defaults write com.apple.TextEdit NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool false

In this case, Text Edit ensures the open documents in the folder when ending ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.TextEdit/Data/Library/Autosave Information. This is the general location when you have switched off iCloud Drive.

With the following terminal commands you reset the settings to the standard:

defaults delete com.apple.TextEdit NSShowAppCentricOpenPanelInsteadOfUntitledFile
defaults delete com.apple.TextEdit NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud