How to prevent Command-I/Command-Shift-I from opening Mac Mail when in browser?

Question

When in a browser (Chrome or Safari), the following keyboard shortcuts both launch the MacOS Mail app, and there doesn't seem to be any way to change or disable them.

Command+I

Command+Shift+I

Cmd-I / ⌘-I is particularly annoying because of course that is much more often used to italicize text.

Is there any way to disable this shortcut?

Answer 1

You can change the shortcuts from System Preferences:

If you want to disable the shortcuts, edit the NSUserKeyEquivalents dictionaries directly:

defaults write com.google.Chrome NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add 'Email Page Location' '\0'
defaults write com.google.Chrome.canary NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add 'Email Page Location' '\0'
defaults write com.apple.Safari NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add 'Email Link to This Page' '\0' 'Email This Page' '\0'

Then quit and reopen Chrome and Safari to apply the changes.

Answer 2

Taking a look at Chrome's keyboard shortcuts helps.

Cmnd+Shift+I is to "Email the current page". It's a bit annoying because it's so close to the developer tools (Cmnd+Opt+I).

Answer 3

I am a Linux user when using a desktop but OS X for laptops. My need is to insure that I have the same shortcut for the Inspector using Chrome. It was very inconvenient to have the Mail.app popup each time that I would confuse the shortcuts.

I should add that in order to make Linux closer to OSX I swap the control and the alt keys on the Linux side. This allows me to use Ctrl-c, Ctrl-v and many other shortcuts in the more ergonomic position of the command key, e.g. OS X Cmd-c, Cmd-v. In the pictures you will see that I have mapped Ctrl-Shift-I which would not make sense in the Linux side otherwise.

Here is my shortcuts setup

The important part of the setting is to know that the OSX shortcut must be mapped to the exact name of the menu entry. I stated that I am using High Sierra because "Email Link" is the menu label. This could also be dependent on the Chrome version I suppose. Make sure the spelling is identical.

The steps to reproduce are

1. Apple Menu System Preferences ...
2. Keyboard Menu
3. Shortcuts Tab
4. App Shortcuts from the left Pane
5. Click the Plus sign under the right pane
6. Select YOUR APP from the applications list, in my case Chrome
7. Add the name of the menu label, in my case Email Link
8. Add some shortcut you will not use, in my case Cmd-Shift-E
9. Then, add another shortcut for the target operation, in my case Developer Tools
10. Add the desired shortcut, in my case Cmd-Shift-I

Answer 4

The command-line solution given in another answer eventually worked for me but I needed to do one more thing:

after defaults write com.google.Chrome NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add 'Email Page Location' '\0', I entered the command: killall cfprefsd (and killall Finder for good measure).

This stopped the annoying Cmd-Shift-I shortcut on Chrome from creating a new mail message, but I can't get it to stop happening in Safari, unfortunately.

killall cfprefsd clears the preferences cache
killall Finder restarts the Finder

The GUI method described at the top didn't work at all for me, but maybe because I didn't clear the prefs cache.

Answer 5

Unfortunately none of the answers given here were able to prevent Command+I from triggering Email This Page in Safari for me (running macOS Sierra). The only way I have been able to prevent that behavior is by using FastScripts to map Command+I to an empty AppleScript. The script must be stored in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Safari to prevent it from disabling use of the shortcut for italics in other applications.

Unfortunately this approach has the side effect of disabling the use of Command+I to toggle italics in Safari where that is its default behavior, such as in Google Docs or in this answer box on AskDifferent. For me that's worth avoiding being thrown into my email inbox whenever I try to italicize text in a text box in Safari that doesn't support it.

Answer 6

The accepted answer is not working on my MacBook Pro with macOS Sierra system.

I found a solution to disable Command+Shift+i in Chrome:

1. Install the Chrome extension Shortkeys.

2. Open the Shortkeys's preference panel, add a command+shift+i shortcut like below:

   

3. Restart Chrome.

Now you can say goodbye to the annoying Mac Mail!

Answer 7

You can also use Better Touch Tool to override the shortcuts (globally or for any specific application).

Given I was already using this app, it's been the solution for me since none of the other answers mentioned here worked for me (High Sierra), and I didn't want to install new software.

Answer 8

The easiest way that I could find is to assign the keyboard shortcut to activate one of your installed extensions

chrome://extensions/shortcuts

Answer 9

The answer from Glorfindel worked great for me! I'm suprised that it's not voted much better.

To stop this pesky Mail app from launching you just need to assign it's shortcut (Cmd-Shift-I) to something else:

1) assign it to making a copy of the screen to the clipboard - it stops it in Safari, Chrome, Finder (looks like everywhere)

2) assign it to launching Developer Tools in Chrome - the only disadvantage Mail will still be launched in Safari - you get Developer Tools always!

Answer 10

The only solution that I've found to work for Safari is to change the default mail handler app.

I set mine to Safari itself, which isn't quite perfect but at least it means that Cmd+I (when not trapped by a handler for italics) doesn't open Mail.

As detailed in the top answer of Set default mail client in macOS without adding an email account? you can use SwiftDefaultApps to change the default mail app, as illustrated here ↓