Make Pages Open New Blank Document by Default on Mac

Pages on Mac defaults to launching into a series of document opening panels and new document templates, but if you typically use Pages on the Mac to create new Pages files, you might appreciate launching the app directly into a new blank document instead.

To change the Pages app so that it defaults to opening into a new blank document that is ready for your word processing needs, you’ll want to head into the app settings, here’s where to look:

1. Pull down the “Pages” menu and choose “Preferences”
2. Under the “General” tab find “For New Documents” and choose “Use template: Blank” (alternatively, you can change the default new document template to something else)



3. Close out of Preferences, changes will be noticed on next app launch

With this adjusted, the next time you launch Pages app it will default to opening a new blank document rather than the template chooser.

Like all other settings, you can adjust this and change it back to the default behavior of opening into the template chooser if desired.

You can also change this via defaults write commands, if you’re so inclined or you feel like automating the setup across multiple Mac deployments.

defaults write com.apple.iWork.Pages NSShowAppCentricOpenPanelInsteadOfUntitledFile -bool false

Changing ‘false’ to ‘true’ will return the setting to the default option via the Terminal as well.

Something else worth considering is that if you drag and drop a file into Pages, or if you launch a document directly into Pages, say for example to open a docx file, the template and blank document views will be skipped and instead the Pages app will launch directly into the opened document instead.