How can I disable spaces / multiple desktops in El Cap 10.11?

Daniel,

I have tried this on two machines running 10.11.1 (MacBook Pro) and 10.11.2 (iMac) respectively and they both honor the disabling of Mission Control / Spaces.

I don't have a machine with plain 10.11.0 on it presently to confirm, but there could be a bug in that release that is preventing the preference from being honored. A bug that was subsequently fixed in the .1 release but not found in the public MCX Application Restrictions release notes.

@dbuskariol ,

This script is what we use at our school, it "should" work for you, they will more likely require a reboot to take full affect.

The reason the script you are sending out is not working is due to the plist is specific to the user, not system wide which is what the script it attempting to change. The script below directly changes the logged in users defaults.

#!/bin/sh
#Sets user argument for script
loggedInUser="$3"
#Sets defaults for selected user
sudo -u $loggedInUser defaults write com.apple.dock mcx-expose-disabled -boolean TRUE
sudo -u $loggedInUser defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean TRUE
killall Dock
#Reads and reports to logs in Casper
sudo -u $loggedInUser defaults read com.apple.dock mcx-expose-disabled
sudo -u $loggedInUser defaults read com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled

@jjones Thanks so much! I actually was on the right track here myself before I read your response. I was using currentUser = "$4" then in parameter 4 it was $USERNAME.

Your solution works great so thanks for taking the time to respond :)

Just curious if you this script is still working for folks on 10.11.5?

Thanks,

~ B

@bcrockett

We have been testing a 10.11 system for the past few weeks, it does look like this script above works to setting defaults per user in our setup.

@jjones ,

The scrip is working when run at login on student accounts on OS 10.11.5 in my three test devices. This is the only script that I have found to work successfully in disabling this feature.

I also found that if there are already multiple desktops on student accounts they can not be removed after the policy is run. So it is best to deploy it on macs with fresh accounts. The script also did not require reboot for the effect to complete.

Thanks for the support.

~ Buck

Has anyone found a way to remove the already created desktops (spaces) after pushing this policy? The policy works great for me on a 10.11.4 and a 10.11.6 machine, but as stated by Buck, it doesn't remove the ones already created. Any assistance in forcing the removal of the spaces/desktops would be great!

Thanks for all you guys do to help the JAMFNation

Pat

Taking a look at the Preferences folder it looks like com.apple.spaces.plist is the one we need to work with.

I've found so far that it adds multiple lines into the plist. I've edited out those lines and done everything I can think of under the sun to get it to push but does not work.

The only way I've found to get the desktops removed is to run this:

#!/bin/sh

#Set arguements for script 
loggeduser=`/bin/ls -l /dev/console | /usr/bin/awk '{ print $3 }'`

rm -rf /Users/"$loggeduser"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spaces.plist
reboot

Unless the system (10.11.6) that I am working with is just stubborn and will not just work with logout/login, it will need a immediate reboot. I would suggest having this set as a policy in Self Service for them to run, with a popup first that it will immediately reboot their machine once ran.

We haven't put this network wide, just on students that seem to get caught and get repeated computer violations. However, the scripts above work PERFECT on our 10.11.6 loadset. I went and and ran the script on 10 machines to delete already created desktops/dashboards/spaces. Then I flushed the policy for disabling mission control for good measure. It has been flawless on 11 machines so far.
Thanks a bunch guys!
Pat

@Eastman Which scripts above? One of our testing platforms requires spaces to be disabled. I have tried a number of scripts along with the config profile posted above and have had no luck. Student machines are on 10.10.5 and I'm currently in the process of testing 10.12 for the next school year.

Thanks!

Hi guys,
Glad to see this dialog because this is an issues that is vexing an end user I support.
Having trouble getting the above scripts to work. For a Terminal naive, is there a step-by-step instructions for killing Spaces in 10.11? For example, am I supposed to copy the full @jjones script and paste into Terminal? I've tried line by line to no avail.
Thanks in advance.
Steve

I have narrowed it down to Google Chrome most likely the update service is there anyway to not have this run or block it not chrome just the update service Thanks