Is it possible to disable document revision tracking in Mojave?

Okay, I have found a work-around. It doesn't seem to break anything other than what I want to break, and that is document versioning. When performing the following procedure, it throws this warning upon exiting a document:

So, it appears that macOS and Pages (etc.) are cleanly handling my kludge.

Here is what I did to disable document revision tracking. WARNING! Do this at your own risk! Your mileage may vary!!

1. 1. Quit all apps
   2. Open Terminal and enter the commands shown below
   3. Reboot
   4. To keep TimeMachine happy, exclude <FS_ROOT>/.DocumentRevisions-V100

Terminal commands:

$ sudo su -
# rm -r <FS_ROOT>/.DocumentRevisions-V100
# mkdir <FS_ROOT>/.DocumentRevisions-V100
# chmod 0 <FS_ROOT>/.DocumentRevisions-V100
# chflags uchg,schg <FS_ROOT>/.DocumentRevisions-V100
# exit
$ 

So, what the above commands do is: delete the directory used to track revisions, create a new empty directory, deny access to that directory, then mark the directory immutable by either a user or the system.

Without that last step, document versioning would simply rename the inaccessible directory and create a new one. However, making the directory immutable blocks that mechanism.

Should you ever wish to re-enable revision tracking, you should be able to:

# chflags nouchg,noschg <FS_ROOT>/.DocumentRevisions-V100

Then delete the directory and reboot. I have not tested that, but it should work.

I mean exactly what I stated... the built-in document versioning in many of Apple's apps. That is, the "magically saved" versions (managed by revisiond) to which you can revert a document using: File --> Revert To --> (list of file versions).

In earlier versions of macOS, you could write a string to each app's plist to disable the app's use of document versioning. Now, either that string has changed (which is what I hope has occurred!) or you can no longer simply disable it (and, instead, have to regularly manually whack <FS_ROOT>/.DocumentRevisions-V100).

$ man revisiond
REVISIOND(8)              BSD System Manager's Manual             REVISIOND(8)

NAME
     revisiond -- storage manager for document revisions

SYNOPSIS
     revisiond

DESCRIPTION
     revisiond is the daemon that manages document revisions created by applica-
     tions and system services.

     There are no configurations to revisiond, and users should not run revisiond
     manually.

Mac OS                          March 11, 2011                          Mac OS

For non-sandboxed apps:

$ defaults write -app NAME ApplePersistence -bool no

For sandboxed apps:

$ defaults write -app NAME AutosavingDelay -int 0

Viking,

I have tried disabling AutoSave in Preferences. However, that only disables automatic saving of the document.

I have tested that by:

1. 1. Wipe <FS_ROOT>/.DocumentRevisions-V100
   2. Disable auto-save in System Preferences
   3. Logout and login
   4. Create a new document in Pages
   5. Save it
   6. Make changes to document, save it, and exit Pages
   7. Once again <FS_ROOT>/.DocumentRevisions-V100 exists
   8. Open document in Pages
   9. Can now revert to any of previously saved versions of document

If you observe different behavior, please let me know along with any ideas what I may be doing wrong.

THANKS!

Hi,

That is exactly what I don't want to see.

From your questions, I gather you have never had to deal with highly sensitive information and be concerned about device inspection when crossing international borders.

I only want ONE copy of any document I am working on to be resident on my computer. I do not want to be in the situation where I am forced to unlock my computer and have a custom's inspector be able to find old copies of documents buried within document revisions.

This is all a matter of maintaining document confidentiality. I need assurance that I have only one copy of any document on my computer, and no other copies -- or fragments of copies -- exist anywhere else.

I have explicitly excluded the folders containing such documents from my TimeMachine backups, and I have also excluded all the Library and system files containing any copies of documents or document metadata from my backups as well. That said, I do make manual backups of these documents, but they are strongly encrypted using a key not stored on my device and to which I do not have access when traveling.

So, the bottom line is that for reasons of document confidentiality and being able to identify every copy of a document, I do not want revision tracking enabled. Prior to Mojave, I had been able to successfully disable it. However, I no longer seem to be able to do so.