Shutting off the annoying yellow text box thing.

Will the terminal command work in Tiger 10.4.11?

Of course.

how would I do this and is there a risk of a total mess-up of my Mac?

Just copy the command I provided earlier in the thread into the Terminal window, press Return or Enter, then quit Terminal; the deed is then done.

Mulder

The yellow boxes are called "tooltips." You can turn them off by using a terminal command or a program that takes care of that work for you.

The terminal command is

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitShowsURLsInToolTips 0

Programs like Onyx can do this for you as well.

Edit: This only disables showing URLs in tooltips. The HTML "title" text for links (such as the "Click to reply to this topic" tooltip that you see if you hover over the "Reply" text over this post) still appears after making the above change. And in fact, showing URLs in tooltips is disabled by default in Safari 3. I'm not sure if there's a way to disable tooltips that show link titles in Safari; looking into that ...

Message was edited by: Rachel R

Rachel R wrote:

And in fact, showing URLs in tooltips is disabled by default in Safari 3.

Actually, that's incorrect. Tooltips are enabled by default in Safari 3. I've setup and installed Mac OS X on numerous machines, including my own and tooltips are always enabled. You can't turn off tooltips, but you could delay them for up to 99 seconds before they appear.

Mulder

Mulder wrote:

And in fact, *showing URLs in tooltips* is disabled by default in Safari 3.

Actually, that's incorrect. Tooltips are enabled by default in Safari 3.

I was referring to showing *the full URL of a link* in a tooltip when you hover over the link. Is that enabled by default in Safari 3? My impression is that is not. ( It was enabled by default in a previous version of Safari, which annoyed many people and caused quite the uproar here. 😉 )

As mentioned above and in my edit, showing URLs in tooltips can be enabled/disabled. Showing title text in tooltips doesn't seem to be something you can disable, or at least not as easily.

You can check whether URL tooltips are turned on for Safari by checking its .plist file for the lines:

<key>WebKitShowsURLsInToolTips</key>
<string>N</string>

Where N=0 means URL tooltips are turned off, and N=1 means they're turned on.

Message was edited by: Rachel R

Showing title text in tooltips doesn't seem to be something you can disable, or at least not as easily.

It's easy to do, although it will only delay them, not get rid of them. The problem is trying to remember the actual command. So in Terminal, use this:

defaults write -g NSInitialToolTipDelay 99999

where 00000 is 99.999 seconds, which you can change to your liking. This command applies to all tooltips system-wide.

Mulder

Mulder wrote:

Showing title text in tooltips doesn't seem to be something you can disable, or at least not as easily.

It's easy to do, although it will only delay them, not get rid of them.

Yes, I know. Hence, not disabled. But delaying is useful, so that's probably the best suggestion for Joe. 🙂

This command applies to all tooltips system-wide.

That's why it isn't something I've been willing to do on my Mac. I do want tooltips (and not delayed significantly) in some programs. In particular, I use them often in Mail.app to quickly and easily view the full names of attachments.

Message was edited by: Rachel R

I tried the terminal commands as listed in the thread, but it is still popping up after only a second.

Which specific Terminal command(s) did you try? If you used the second one, what interval did you enter for the time of delay? Was Safari running at the time you did this? If so, you need to restart Safari for the command to take effect.

Mulder

I used the second terminal command both globally and specifically to Pages. I still get tooltips in Pages (I don't want to see the tool tip that tells me that an image is a "placeholder"). Still pops up immediately.

I used the second terminal command both globally and specifically to Pages.

If you apply a command globally and locally, you're wasting your time; only one is needed. But that command does not apply to any of the iWork programs, since that behavior is hard-coded into the programs themselves and cannot be changed.

Mulder

{quote:title=Mulder wrote:}

If you apply a command globally and locally, you're wasting your time; only one is needed.{quote}

Sorry, should have been more clear. I first did the app specific command - no worky. So I tried doing it globally, still no work. If it is hardcoded into the app, that explains why it doesn't work.

That's a bummer though because both Pages and iWeb tend to put tooltips in the way of your working space (i.e. your cursor location) which gets super annoying.

Thanks for the insight.

Hello - and a couple of questions:

1. Will the terminal command work in Tiger 10.4.11?

2. I've never tried to use Terminal - how would I do this and is there a risk of a total mess-up of my Mac? Do I just go to terminal and paste:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitShowsURLsInToolTips 0

into the terminal? Anything special to do before / after starting Terminal?

Thanks for any comments - I'd like to get rid of the yellow textboxes in Safari (ToolTips) if I could.

Regards,

Steve Schulte
Saturday 13 December 2008 at 11:34
Belgium

Rachel,

Thank you for providing the exact Terminal command I was looking for. The yellow URL tooltips were driving me crazy in Safari, always getting in the way and using your command looks to have taken care of them.

Thanks again,

Bill

I too find that little yellow pop up very annoying. I tried the terminal commands as listed in the thread, but it is still popping up after only a second. Ugh!