How do I prevent auto loading of blank notebook at startup?

Question

I'm using Mathematica 8 with operating system Mac OS X Lion. When I open Mathematica it always loads a blank notebook. I don't want it to load anything by default.

In the Preferences pane there is a tab for Appearance. Near the bottom of the tabview there is an option

"Show at startup"

with a drop down menu. There is no option for not showing anything at startup. Is there a way around this?

Answer 1

In Windows, you set InitialUntitledNotebook to False in the Global Options > PrivateFrontEndOptions section of the Option Inspector to prevent a Untitled-1 notebook opening at start-up. You can also supress/show the welcome splash screen.The combination "ShowAtStartup"->"New Document" and "InitialUntitledNotebook"->False" gives just the MMA toolbar at startup.

Answer 2

It appears that there is a better option in version 8; use that if you have it. For older versions:

I was bothered by having Mathematica start with a blank notebook open. I could close this notebook with a script, but it would still flash open briefly. My hack is to create a file Invisible.nb containing:

Notebook[{},Visible->False]

And add this to my Kernel\init.m :

If[Length[Notebooks["Invisible*"]] > 0, 
  NotebookClose[Notebooks["Invisible*"][[1]]]
]

SetOptions[$FrontEnd,
  Options[$FrontEnd, NotebooksMenu] /. 
    HoldPattern["Invisible.nb" -> {__}] :> Sequence[]
]

This closes the invisible Notebook after Mathematica starts. Normally it would not be a problem, but this is "good housekeeping" and there are some packages or tools that I have seen that rely on Notebooks[]. Furthermore, if Invisible.nb somehow got focus and something was pasted into it that would be confusing.

I now start Mathematica by opening Invisible.nb