If you're worried about you or somebody else messing around with some of your most complex or valuable actions then it's worth taking a look at the button mode. If you know you're actions, then you'll know that it's the little things that can cause the major headaches. If a step gets accidently deleted, or a minor setting gets changed, then it's easy to spend hours trying to find a fix. The button mode is capable of keeping danger at the door by switching out the live editable actions complete with all your steps for a simple button.
Open up the Action panel in Photoshop (if it isn't open already then go to the Window menu and select it) and at the very least you should see a list of the default actions that are installed to Photoshop. You'll also see little twirly arrows to open the actions up, and all the editing controls to play, record and delete the actions and/or steps at the bottom of the panel.
So at the moment everything's editable, to change that, click on the wing menu of the actions panel (circled below in red) and select the button mode option. Now you should see what I see in the illustration below: an actions panel containing a series of buttons. Now there's no way to edit, or even delete, an action - you're now safe from yourself, opr anybody else that may have a heavy hand! I've found this helpful when setting up Photoshop on somebody elses computer and you want them to play action back, but not record or edit them.
To switch the button mode off, simply click the wing menu again, the button mode option will have a tick next to it, just give it another click to switch it off - simple as that!
I hope you found this little tip helpful, to learn more about how actions work, check out our video tutorial for a basic overview of Photoshop Actions.