Disable system wide Ctrl+Click in OS X

Question

I'm used to navigating through my code using Ctrl+Click. In OS X this function still works in my IDE, but it opens a context menu as well, which is very annoying!

I've done lots of Googling and didn't manage to find any answers that would let me disable Ctrl+Click system-wide in OS X 10.6.7. All the answers that I was able to find refer to Fusion and VMware.

I have a proper mouse with two buttons, I never used Ctrl+Click and cannot see the use case for it. Could someone please tell me how to disable it?

Answer 1

You can map control+click to command+click globally with KeyRemap4Macbook. Put the following in your private.xml:

<root>
    <item>
        <name>Control+LeftClick Command+LeftClick</name>
        <appendix>Control+LeftClick Command+LeftClick</appendix>
        <identifier>control_click_to_command_click</identifier>
        <autogen>--PointingButtonToPointingButton-- PointingButton::LEFT, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L, PointingButton::LEFT, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L</autogen>
    </item>
</root>

This will cause any ctrl-click you type to be seen by the system as ⌘-click. That will prevent the contextual menu (since you won't actually be producing a ctrl). You'll still need to change your IDE settings, but this way you can keep the muscle-memory for the shortcut.

Answer 2

It's not possible to disable Ctrl+Click at a system-wide level. You have two options: use Command+Click which is the de facto standard in all the Mac IDEs (which would be my suggestion, since going against such a well-established OS convention brings more headaches than it's worth), or configure your IDE to disable the shortcut: as you have noticed, remote desktop and virtualization environments offer the possibility.

Answer 3

Following @statop's idea I used Karabiner-Elements and remapped Ctrl+Left Click to ⌘+Left Click.

To do that copy the mapping JSON snippet shown below to ~/.config/karabiner/assets/complex_modifications/foo.json:

{
  "title": "Ctrl+LClick to Cmd+LClick",
  "rules": [
    {   
      "description": "Ctrl+LClick to Cmd+LClick",
      "manipulators": [
        {   
          "type": "basic",
          "from": {
            "pointing_button": "button1",
            "modifiers": {
              "mandatory": [
                "left_control"
              ],  
              "optional": [
                "caps_lock"
              ]   
            }   
          },  
          "to": [
            {   
              "pointing_button": "button1",
              "modifiers": [
                "left_command"
              ]   
            }   
          ]   
        }   
      ]   
    }   
  ]
}

then in Karabiner go to:

Preferences... > Complex modifications > Add Rule

and you should see Ctrl+LClick to Cmd+LClick in the list. Enable the rule. Now configure your IDE to use ⌘+Left Click where you would normally use Ctrl+Left Click.

Using this opportunity I also swapped round Fn with ^, as on my Mac Fn is where ^ should be. To do that in Karabiner go to:

Preferences... > Simple modifications > Add item

and create two mappings:

• from fn to left_control, and
• from left_control to fn.

Carry on remapping and soon enough your Mac will become a usable machine!