Temporarily disable shortcuts when in games

Question

Temporarily disable shortcuts when in games

Hi everyone,

when playing some games which use keys like space, option, command and the cursor keys the keyboard shortcuts for Spotlight and Mission Control interfere with the game. For example a Spotlight search window appears when I press cmd + space simultaneously, or I switch to another virtual desktop when using control + an arrow key.

I know that I can assign other keyboard shortcuts and how to disable them in System Preferences. What I’d like to do is disable them while playing the game and re-enable them afterwards. Automatic would be awesome, but a menu bar item or shell script etc. would also work for me.

I do not want to open Sys Prefs every single time before and after playing a game and I also do not want to reassign the default shortcuts to something else. Any ideas?

Posted on Feb 25, 2025 3:47 AM

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Answer 1

dialabrain

Level 10

137,013 points

Feb 25, 2025 4:16 AM in response to Björn Herrmann

Björn Herrmann wrote:

Creating a 2nd user account would work, but be as inconvenient as disabling the shortcuts temporarily by hand…

Actually not. You only have to disable the shortcuts for the second account once. Plus, you could be logged into both accounts and use fast user switching to go back and forth.

Or, you can wait for someone to write what would no doubt be a complicated script for you, to turn the shortcuts on and off.

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Answer 2

dialabrain

Level 10

137,013 points

Feb 25, 2025 3:57 AM in response to Björn Herrmann

It might be easier to create a new user with the shortcuts disabled and play the game while logged into it.

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Answer 3

dialabrain

Level 10

137,013 points

Feb 25, 2025 4:34 AM in response to Björn Herrmann

You might be able to set something up with Ukulele or Karabiner Elements. There is a contributor here who is knowledgeable about the apps. He may very well stop by.

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Answer 4

Feb 25, 2025 4:26 AM in response to dialabrain

I know that, but I do not want 2 user accounts. The games I play are usually old 90s titles which use either DOSBox or have a port or modern client. The game data is in different locations for these, i.e. ~/Library/Application Support/etc. and I would need to move all over to the 2nd account while editing con files with absolute paths in them.

Compared to that a trip to Sys Prefs is still easier and faster, FUS won’t help here. Maybe I should have asked how to change keyboard shortcuts via AppleScript or from the shell. I could incorporate that in script and bind it to something.

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Answer 5

Barney-15E

Level 10

123,494 points

Feb 25, 2025 4:03 AM in response to Björn Herrmann

You may want to talk to the game developer. I always thought apps got first crack at the keyboard shortcuts and then handed off in implemented ones to the OS. However, I don’t know for sure. Maybe one of the developers here can weigh in.

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Answer 6

Feb 25, 2025 4:09 AM in response to Barney-15E

Some games work like that, others do not. DOSBox also reacts to macOS’ shortcuts. I need a solution which does not need developer input. It’s too many and not feasible.

Creating a 2nd user account would work, but be as inconvenient as disabling the shortcuts temporarily by hand…

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Answer 7

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,700 points

Feb 25, 2025 4:50 AM in response to Björn Herrmann

Björn Herrmann wrote:

It’s not that complex. It’s just the Mission Control (control + arrow left/right) and Spotlight (command + space) shortcuts that needed to be disabled (or set to something else) temporarily.

You might try asking over at

https://apple.stackexchange.com/

where there I think there is some extra expertise in scripting and usiing Karabiner Elements to modify things.

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Answer 8

Feb 25, 2025 7:44 AM in response to dialabrain

Thanks, will give them a try. I also found some good resources at

https://github.com/rynkowsg/dotfiles/blob/main/tag-macos/macos/set_system_preferences#L444

https://github.com/bvanpeski/SystemPreferences/blob/main/macos_preferencepanes-Ventura.md

Maybe I’ll script it and attach it to a hotkey.

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Answer 9

Barney-15E

Level 10

123,494 points

Feb 25, 2025 7:52 AM in response to Björn Herrmann

Björn Herrmann wrote:

Some games work like that, others do not. DOSBox also reacts to macOS’ shortcuts. I need a solution which does not need developer input. It’s too many and not feasible.

Then you should support the game developers that actually know what they are doing. It appears you have many that are stupid.

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Answer 10

Feb 25, 2025 8:17 AM in response to Barney-15E

Normally I would agree, but most of the stuff I want to play is old games mostly from other platforms which run through a compatibility layer like DOSBox, Wine, etc. They precede Mac OS X by quite a bit so voting with my wallet is not an option anymore.

Well, thanks everyone for your input. Seems there’s nothing off the shelf I can use and I have to script it myself.

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Answer 11

dialabrain

Level 10

137,013 points

Feb 25, 2025 4:23 AM in response to Björn Herrmann

Just to add, if you are saying you need to disable different shortcuts for different games, then a second account wouldn't help much. Nor can I imagine someone writing a script to do so.

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Answer 12

Feb 25, 2025 4:27 AM in response to dialabrain

It’s not that complex. It’s just the Mission Control (control + arrow left/right) and Spotlight (command + space) shortcuts that needed to be disabled (or set to something else) temporarily.

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