How to disable bookmarks?

[James Marten]

I'd like to use SourceTree as a part of my (Git) workflow, which is primarily centered around the command line. ST is not OK with that and tries to enforce a workflow that's centered around the bookmarks by constantly reopening the according window. This happens everytime no repository is opened and ST ist starting up or focussed. The developers obviously tried to imitate the behaviour of the Finder and other apps but didn't realize the difference between opening a new main program window and opening a window for an optional feature that is potentially useless and annoying.

My question: Is there any (hidden) option, hack, helper, SIMBLE thingie, script or whatever that would help in disabling this "feature"? It would be totally ok if the bookmarks window would be permanently disabled and stopped working at all. I just want to get rid of it. Thanks in advance!

[stevestreeting · Accepted solution]

The bookmarks window only opens if there are no other windows open at startup (ie there were no open windows when SourceTree was last closed). This is normal behaviour for Mac OS X applications, in order for *some* window to be displayed when you start up. For example if you open XCode but didn't have any projects open last time you closed it, the welcome wizard is displayed.

If you close SourceTree when Bookmarks is closed and there's at least one other window open, next time you start, Bookmarks won't open. Even if no windows were open, if you open SourceTree via the command-line tool (stree) then only that window is opened, and so on.

You can also disable the feature that asks you to bookmark new repositories in Preferences > "Offer to create bookmarks for newly opened repositories".

[James Marten]

Hi Steve, thanks for answering my question! Yes, you're right, many applications greet first time users with some kind of wizzard. For example XCode shows the "Welcome to XCode" window until you select the checkbox next to the bottom of the window. After that it will never bother you again, even if you click the Dock icon a million times. ;)

Others open a new document (in contrast to displaying an optional feature you might never need) when starting up—e. g. TextMate. But there's an option to stop that in the preferences; you can even tell it to never open a new document automatically. In SublimeText 2 there's a similar option called "create_window_at_startup". AFAIK you can't stop ST2 from creating an empty window when you focus it using the Dock, but as soon as you open a file it will reuse this windows. This way you'll never end up with a useless window floating around.

I just ckecked Path Finder and it also contains a preference to not open a new window on startup. If you click the Dock icon it will open a file browser but not some equivalent to the ST bookmarks—say a favorites window or a dialog to connect to a server.

So, yes, there are a lot of examples for a similar but not identical behaviour. At least for apps targeting professionals/developers you can usually switch it off. It's not exactly compareable but Safari on iOS did something similar (opening the bookmarks if there weren't any open pages) but they finally changed it in iOS 5.1 (http://www.iphonehacks.com/2012/03/ios-5-1-features-mobile-safari.html).

[stevestreeting]

OK, I'll add an option to the feature requests :)

[James Marten]

Thanks a lot! =)

[James Marten]

Is there a ticket or something to follow the progress?

And I'd like to add the suggestion that cmd+b should not only show the bookmarks window but also hide it if pressed again.

[James Marten]

Is there a ticket or something to follow the progress?

I'd like to add the suggestion that cmd+b should not only show the bookmarks window but also hide it if pressed again.

[stevestreeting]

It's here: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREE-1146