MacOS – How to globally disable ‘Text Replacement’

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I've been looking for an answer to this question for a while, so I'm guessing this can only be solved with a console command.

What I want to do is disable 'Text Replacement' everywhere on my Mac.
The trick is, I have a library of text replacements that I use on my iPhone (like ill > I'll), and apparently it's synced to my iCloud account. As a result, if I make changes in one place it affects all of my devices everywhere – making the easy solution of "delete all of the text substitutions from your substitution library" is unavailable.

The text replacement I'm referring to specifically is the option you can disable by right-clicking on any text input area, then selecting 'Substitutions < Text Replacement' (see image).

I know you can disable this one field at a time by right-clicking fields and unchecking 'Text Replacement', but it is enabled by default for every individual input on every field for every application (including the entire internet and my browser's search/address bar), and it periodically gets re-enabled on some inputs.

I've already disabled 'Correct Spelling Automatically' from my system text options. (see image)

And still I have to disable 'Text Replacement' on every field or it will try to correct my typing with entries in that dictionary.

I use iCloud tabs, handoff, and a number of Apple's other "Better Together" features (and I don't want to lose the ability to track my devices with 'Find my [device]'), so I don't want to disassociate my iCloud account from my computer or devices, but I'd be really happy if I never had to disable 'Text Replacement' on an input field again.

Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT:
I've found https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/217387/172938 and https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/121553/172938 , both of which have some console references:

defaults write -g WebAutomaticTextReplacementEnabled -bool true from the first link (for enabling 'Text Replacement' in Safari).

defaults delete -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems from the second link (for deleting the User Dictionary as seen in my second image).

Both pertain to my issue tangentially, but each to the opposite effect I'm looking for.

Best Answer

Very late, but

defaults write -g WebAutomaticTextReplacementEnabled -bool false

Will disable text replacement not just in Safari but in all other apps that use that input method (e.g. Evernote).

Reboot is required (at least as of macOS 10.13.6), and the menubar checkmark UI won't visually change within each app. The change also only affects applications, and not Spotlight.

Related Solutions

MacOS – How to import text substitutions from Wikipedia “Lists of common misspellings for machines”

After having read How can I export text substitutions from Lion for import into Mountain Lion made clear to me that PlistBuddy was a good way to go.

Create a folder for storing related files, for example using Terminal.app:

$ mkdir ~/Documents/OS\ X
Create a backup of the existing text replacements:

$ /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -x -c "Print NSUserReplacementItems" ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist > ~/Documents/OS\ X/UserReplacementItems-backup.plist
Create a new document in TextWrangler.
Change the encoding of the document (bottom of the window) to Western (Windows Latin 1). Otherwise Plist Converter.app replaces any accented characters with an incorrect value.
Copy the text from Wikipedia and paste it into the newly created TextWrangler document.
[Replace All] occurences of '->' with ',' using the menu command Search -> Find.
Insert the Prefix '1,' on all lines using the menu command Text -> Prefix/Suffix Lines....
Prepend the file with this line (as first line): on,replace,with
Save the file to the ~/Documents/OS\ X folder and make sure that the file name ends with '.csv'.
Drag the '.csv' file to Plist Converter.app and click the button [Convert Plist].
Open the newly created '.plist' in TextWrangler.
Replace all occurrences of '<string>1</string>' with '<integer>1</integer>'.
Save the replace .plist file and quit TextWrangler.
Now make sure you don't have System Preferences open while doing the import, or it may not work!

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Merge '$(ls ~/Documents/OS\ X/common-typos.plist)' NSUserReplacementItems" ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist

Don't forget to replace common-typos.plist with the file name you created.

MacOS – How to disable SSH KeychainIntegration in OS X Mavericks

Based on the source code for the current version of SSH that's shipping with Mavericks (located here), it appears that the functionality of the config option KeychainIntegration has not yet been implemented. I'm making this assumption based on the contents of openssh/readconf.h, which does not reference the KeychainIntegration option. It does, however, reference the askpassgui option. Checking the "keywords" struct in that file does indeed show that the keychainintegration option is not present (which in turn implies that the oBadOption (NULL) op code would be returned).

Another clue implying that the functionality you desire is not implemented in the way the man page specifies is the file: openssh/keychain.c. The source code actually shows that the defaults system (i.e., Property List files) is being used to store settings related to KeychainIntegration. Specifically, lines from the store_in_keychain function reference KeychainIntegration:

/* Bail out if KeychainIntegration preference is -bool NO */
if (get_boolean_preference("KeychainIntegration", 1, 1) == 0) {
    fprintf(stderr, "Keychain integration is disabled.\n");
    goto err;
}

Here is the corresponding get_boolean_preference function. Note that it's using CFPreferencesCopyAppValue to obtain a boolean from the "org.openbsd.openssh" application identifier:

#if defined(__APPLE_KEYCHAIN__)

static int get_boolean_preference(const char *key, int default_value,
int foreground)
{
int value = default_value;
CFStringRef keyRef = NULL;
CFPropertyListRef valueRef = NULL;

keyRef = CFStringCreateWithCString(NULL, key, kCFStringEncodingUTF8);
if (keyRef != NULL)
    valueRef = CFPreferencesCopyAppValue(keyRef,
        CFSTR("org.openbsd.openssh"));
if (valueRef != NULL)
    if (CFGetTypeID(valueRef) == CFBooleanGetTypeID())
        value = CFBooleanGetValue(valueRef);
    else if (foreground)
        fprintf(stderr, "Ignoring nonboolean %s preference.\n", key);

if (keyRef)
    CFRelease(keyRef);
if (valueRef)
    CFRelease(valueRef);

return value;
}

#endif

This might imply that you can disable the KeychainIntegration functionality for yourself by performing this defaults command:

defaults write org.openbsd.openssh KeychainIntegration -bool NO

or to set it for all users:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/org.openbsd.openssh KeychainIntegration -bool NO

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – How to import text substitutions from Wikipedia “Lists of common misspellings for machines”

MacOS – How to disable SSH KeychainIntegration in OS X Mavericks

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