Thanks @cimarronm - I agree that any user on OSX should expect cmd+w to quit the plot window.

Is this on the macosx backend? For me, (tkagg on mountain lion) cmd+w quits anyway, I'd be interested to know how many of the other backends are the same. Maybe we should have a specific (non-configurable) keymapping in the macosx backend which adds this directly.

Yeah, this is on the macosx backend. It is the only one which generates a cmd modifier so I think the default keymap modification from ctrl+w to ctrl+w, cmd+w should be safe.

This works on the macosx backend, and does not change the others. tkagg apparently internally translates Ctrl-W into Cmd-W. Wx does the same, based on my version 2.9, for which mpl is mostly broken. qt4agg backend did nothing with Cmd-W before, and still does nothing. That's because it is calling the command prefix "super" instead of "cmd", after having un-done the swap that qt does: http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qkeysequence.html.

That's because it is calling the command prefix "super" instead of "cmd", after having un-done the swap that qt does: http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qkeysequence.html.

I'd be amenable to opening an issue for that. Any objections?

No objections.