How do I disable the little yellow text popups?

That is the context sensitive help. It is common in many applications, including Safari, Mail, TextEdit, etc. I imagine there is some secret plist setting to turn it off globally, but I do not know of a setting for it. With the Apple applications anyway, it is pretty unobtrusive, but I would guess that opinion varies. Have you noticed the feature with other OS X apps? If not, maybe the timing setting for your audio software is unusually short. If that is the case, have you asked the developer? Sometimes there is an option to turn off tool tips.

I'd love to know how to turn those yellow contextual text popups off. Every time I move the pointer, I get an "Enter Web Address Here" ALL over the srceen!

They are called tooltips, by the way.

I don't think that they can be shut off completely, but there is a time delay before they appear which can be set.

If you open the terminal app (inside the utilities folder in the applications folder) and type this:

defaults write -g NSInitialToolTipDelay -int 10000

then it sets the delay to 10000 miliseconds, which is 10 seconds. So the tooltips will only appear if you hold the mouse pointer still over the place for that long.

It will only work for Cocoa applications, but that is most of the ones that have tooltips. Also, you will have to restart an application after the terminal command for it to work.

Hi ZeDave!

defaults write -g NSInitialToolTipDelay -int 100000

In that command, "the number 10000, is the length of time (milliseconds) so you can substitute your own value. Quit and relaunch any program for the change to take effect, or else logout and back in." Credit for that goes to biovizier.

ali b

Thanks for the info. Apparently I'm doing something wrong. I open the Terminal App & it says
Last login: Wed Dec 13 17:48:37 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
ben-colmans-powerbook-g4-15:~ benc3$

I typed in what you said after ~ benc3$, hit save and named tooltips, no change. What's the proper record/save procedure. The 'Enter Web Address Here' tips are everywhere, even reconciling my checking accounts in Quicken.


PowerBook G4 1ghz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Hi Ben!

See if this post How do I turn off those annoying yellow text boxes?, authored by Biovizier, helps.

ali b