Changing "Open With" List

Hey all,
I am a newbie to the Macworld and I would like to know how I could remove some of the items appearing from the "open with" menu.
For instance, when I intend to open an .avi file, and I right click, I see a few options including VLC, Quicktime, DivX player and so on. I wish to remove some of these choices without actually deleting the software altogether. So for instance, I would rather it show the options as VLC and Quicktime only.
Hope this makes sense and I look forward to your help!
Cheers,
Mustan

I'm afraid there is nothing much you can do. When you start your computer the system takes a look at the info.plist inside an application and makes a note of what files the application claims to be able to open. When you right click on a file the list of all the applications claiming to be able to open that sort of file is displayed. You can either live with the list or archive applications you don't use into zip files and restart, then the system won't see them and they won't appear in the list of applications. If you are really brave you can try editing the info.plist file for the application to remove its declaration that it will open that kind of file. I wouldn't, but I've heard of it being done.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

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How to change "Open With" list?

Hi,
I have a file extension for my source files which is PRG. So I have main.prg, test.prg, etc..
Now, how can I change the default application that opens all files with that extension? I already tried "Open With" -> "Other.." -> Selct a application, click the "Always open with" checkbox, but finder still keeps opening my PRG files with the standard application..
Is there any other way to do it?
Tx!
Sincerely,
Patrick Mast,
xHarbour.com Inc.
http://www.xHarbour.com
http://www.WinFakt.be

Thank you all. I got it working now.
Tx!
Sincerely,
Patrick Mast,
xHarbour.com Inc.
http://www.xHarbour.com
http://www.WinFakt.be

Can you change "Open With" List TITLES?

When I right-click on a photo or something, then go down to "Open With" to choose which app to open it with, CS4 has made an obscenely long title somehow taking up the whole desktop. It looks like nonsense after it says CS4. All I need it to say at the most is Adobe CS4, or just be like CS2.
Anyone know how to change this mess?
Thanks!

Yay! I fixed it!
This is what I did: I went into Finder>Apps> Adobe CS4 (folder)> Right-Click on CS4.app> Show Package Contents> Contents> Open info.plist
Then 6-lines down it stated what was in the "open with" string, so I removed it, restarted, and Voilá!
Nice and clean.

How change the File Open With list of apps?

In Bridge CS3, how does one edit the list of applications in the File > Open With menu (also available from the contextual menu for any image).
The list contains a number of applications that I would never use to open an image, and I would like to add to it, a new image editor (pixelmator) that does not appear in it. I have looked in the Bridge Help and the Preferences dialog and don't see any option to do this.

OK, I have now learned that Mac OS keeps the list of which apps to open what, in the "launch services database."
This database can be cleaned up and reset which somewhat simplifies the list that is displayed by the Finder OR by Bridge CS3.
Here is an article on how to reset the launchdb:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031215144430486
Be sure to read all the way to the end as there are updated instructions down among the comments.
Here is a thread in the Apple Support forums discussing the same issue, and it includes links to some 3rd-party programs that can reset launch services without use of a lengthy Terminal command:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1289317
Even after rebuilding the launchdb, I find that a large number of apps are "registered" to open JPG files, including Camino, Opera, TextWrangler and others with only a tenuous connection to JPG. I don't understand why this is, and I would still like to find a way to limit the JPG Open-With list to a few graphics programs. But cleaning up the launchdb as described in the linked pages, did get rid of some programs and added some missing ones.
Hope this actually constructive info is useful to others.
Dave Cortesi

Edit "Open With"-list

How can I edit the "Open With"-list in finder?
I know that I can change default application by clicking on "Get info", but I don't want to change default application I just want to add an application to the top of the "Open With"-list.
Usually I open images in Preview, but sometimes I want to use the application imageJ without having to go to "Open With" -> "Other". Right now I have Safari in the "Open With"-list and I would like to swap Safari for imageJ (since I never use Safari for images).
Thanks!

You can't edit the Open With list, it is created by the system by polling all your installed applications for their list of files that they can open. If a program claims it can open jpegs, it is added to the list. If it lacks a notification file for the system to read it won't be added. There is nothing you can do about either situation--you can't add, subtract nor rearrange the list.
The absolute easiest way to occasionally open a file with some program other than the default is to launch the program, then drag 'n drop the file onto the icon of the running program in the Dock.
If this is something you do semi-regularly you might want to make a new Service using Automator to open a selected file with your program. Thus I mainly want my html files to open in Safari when double clicked, but since I hand code I ofter want to open the file in both Safari and TextEdit. So I made a Service to open in TextEdit. When I right click a file there is my Service down at the bottom of the Contextual Menu to open the file in TextEdit.
Rob Griffiths has written a tutorial on creating a Service in Automator:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9137494/Howto_create_a_Service_in_Snow_Leopard?source=rssnews
There's an introduction to Automator here:
http://www.macosxautomation.com/automator/transcript.html
Personally I really like the "new" Services and revamped Automator.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Is there a way to shorten the "Open With" list?

Hi -
This may be a question for Apple because it is a uniquely Apple Finder problem.
Or maybe some clever 3rd party Apple developer will take this on - because this is an Apple Finder problem (hint).
Is there a way to shorten the "Open With" list that appears when I right-click on a file?
Heres why this is important to me.
1- I'm seeing multiple versions of the same app on the list, like Photoshop CS5, Photoshop CS5.1, Photoshop CS 5.5. I can't think of any reason why I would ever want to use an older version of Photoshop. And it's not only Photoshop or even Adobe products.
2- I see incorrect apps being suggested. If I right click on an Illustrator file I see that TextEdit is one of the choices. I get Photoshop as an option to open HTML files. I see BBEdit as an option to open JPEG files. These are bizarre associations. Why are they even on the list?
3- With so many irrelevant choices the possibility of selecting the wrong application increases and doing so is a waste of time and resources. Once I accidentally selected a text editor to open a JPEG. After about 3 minutes of RAM-sucking processing I got a huge file of jibberish text characters that was thousands of lines long. Waste of time!
I KNOW I'm not the only one with this question.
Is there anyone out there with an answer???
Thanks,
JL

baltwo - thank you for the expert advice.
I did as you instructed and the situation is better but I don't believe it's solved.
I still get 3 versions of Photoshop when I right click on a PSD. I also get Dashcode and Textwrangler - which are the oddest associations. All together I get 25 apps responding to "Open With" on a PSD. And this is an improvement.
Do you think I would get even better results if I ran the same command again?
Thanks again.
JL

Is there a way to remove items from "Open With" list?

I have an interesting dilemma that I have not yet found an answer to in all of my internet/discussion forum searches. Maybe I'm asking the wrong questions or searching in the wrong places, but I've given up and now have to post the question in hopes there's an answer out there.
My issue is that whenever I want to use the "Open With" feature for an image/jpeg file, the list of choices is massive! Looking at it now, it lists over 30 applications, but at most I would only ever want to open this type of file in one of maybe four applications.
Starting off, I used to have Parallels on my computer. Have since purchased VMWare Fusion 4 and now use that as my virtual machine to run Windows for some of my design work. As far as I know, I had removed ALL of Parallels from my computer when I uninstalled the app. I followed all of the instructions in the uninstall process, but there seems to be something left behind.
It may seem that mentioning that wouldn't have anything to do with the "Open With" function, but here is a screen shot to show what happens whenever I right-click an image file:
http://www.virtuosocreative.com/apple/openwith1.jpg
Most of the time, if I right click the image, it'd be to open in Photoshop or Set as Desktop. On occasion I have had to open a jpeg file in Illustrator, but that's it.
For some reason, there are still Parallels applications showing on the "Open With" list, even though it was uninstalled and removed from my computer. But like I said earlier, it looks like I missed something.
In addition, although I am not logged into Windows or have Fusion running in the background, the "Open With" list includes all of the suggested Windows apps as well. why???
As much as I appreciate there being such an abundance of options to choose from, this gets extremely annoying when using the feature and I wanted to see if there was any way to modify this list.
More than anything, I really want to get rid of all the Parallels extras that are left on my system. But also, I wanted to see if there was a setting to tweak so that whenever I click on "Open With" on my Mac, it'll only list applications that are my Mac applications and nothing through Fusion or Parallels or anything else. And to take it a step further, it'd be nice to shorten the list to only applications I would personally use for opening a jpeg file. (i.e. Preview (default), Photoshop, Illustrator, Safari).
My system is a 2010 iMac i5 2.8GHz/8GB RAM. Lion OS X 10.7.3
Thanks!

The Open With menu is built by LaunchServices which collects the information from each app as to what it says it can open. VMWare appears to be registering every app to open jpegs.
You might try rebuilding the LaunchServices database. I believe this command still works in Lion. Or, you could use a utility like OnyX to call it:
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Open with list

Hello out there,
Lost all of my software due to a virus attack .
Today I reinstalled adobe photo shop 7, on my wds XP pc.
After opening a picture and click the open with tab, my photo shop is not on the list
I have forgotten how to add it to the open with list, please help.
Thank you
George

With the more recent versions of Photoshop, Bridge provides a way to associate the Adobe applications with various file types. In the Bridge app it's in Edit - Preferences - File Associations as I recall. It's possible the very old versions of Photoshop didn't yet have this capability - I'm not sure when the various parts (Bridge, File Associations) appeared.
-Noel

Pages does not appear in the open with list

when I open a doc from email, dropbox, etc, using my ipad I don t get the option of Pages in the OPEN WITH list
how I resolve that?
thank you

Ok, I found pages on the iCloud drive. But the behavior of Pages is still the same, problem unchanged.

Can I clear the "open with" list

I now have the Adobe suite from 4-CC showing up on my "open with" list and it's annoying to say the least...can I clear it and if so how?

Take a look at this link, https://discussions.apple.com/message/2791046#2791046

Duplicates and non-existent apps in the "Open with" list

My "Open with" list is a mess for nearly all kinds of files. I'm not sure how I could clean this up or edit it. Look at the image below for example. I have some idea about how this happened, but no idea on how to fix it.

That's LaunchServices. These are only cache files but can get corrupted. Launch /Utilities/Terminal and copy & paste this at the command line to rebuild LaunchServices: (be sure to copy the entire line it's a scroll)
Code:
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
Then press return. Wait until terminal returns to the command line. Quit Terminal. After that, log out and back in or restart. Let us know

Adobe not in open with list on ipad

Downloaded adobe reader for ipad. I do not have the adobe reader icon in my open with list. What did I not do right?

Hi Erik,
Thanks for reporting the issue.
To look for Adobe reader version you can go to Settings->(scroll down in left pane) ->Adobe Reader->(right pane has version listed).
Can you please specify the steps you are doing to open a pdf in Adobe reader. This will help me in understanding and resolving the issue.
-Charu

Reset "open-with" list

Hello
i am wondering how i can reset the "open-with" list in finders context menu
Background: i am writing a small mac-application and based on the tests with old versions i do have my open-with list spammed with about 10 entries of the same programm (for each version one entry adding the version number)
I tried following this hint in apple docs:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305627
without success.
any other idea in mind ?
Best regards
fidel

This is from MacOSXhints.com:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25012
"I cannot remember where I got this from but all credits go to the original author:
If your "Open With" menu shows applications that are no longer installed, or shows some of them as duplicates, you can use the following Terminal command to rebuild your LaunchServices database:
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/\
Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister \
-kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
just copy and paste into terminal and let it run
Or if you just want to shorten the Open With... then maybe this will help:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...ery=info.plist
Keep this stored in a stickies or something, you would want to be able to find it again next time."
/p

How to change "open with" defaults via command line?!?

folks,
i know that if i get info on a file -- in this case, a filemaker 5.5 file -- i can choose the default "open with" settings and apply those settings to all files of that kind. see the attached image for what i mean.
but how do i do that via the command line?
thus far, here's what i've got: i know that i can open a document called "scrubbing shell.sh" on my desktop WITH either MS Word of TextEdit by calling:
open -a textedit /Users/david/Desktop/scrubbing-shell.sh
or
open -a Microsoft\ Word /Users/david/Desktop/scrubbing-shell.sh
no sweat. BUT....how do i set the defaults so that it ALWAYS opens with that app in the future when double-clicking via the GUI?
many thanks, ya'll!
david koff
associate systems admin
the j. paul getty trust
dkoff AT getty DOT edu

Hi David,
   OK, I investigated the new format and treatment. It appears that the first entry in the property list file that matches the file being opened wins. The Finder may still honor the new format; when I moved my old Panther file into Tiger it seemed to work. However, in other ways, the Finder doesn't recognize the old format, which is the format of the FileMaker entries you posted.
   The Finder puts all of the new format entries at the beginning of the property list file. If you change a preference that was controlled by an old format entry, the Finder won't edit that entry. What it will do is to create a new entry in the new format closer to the beginning of the file than any of the old-format entries. SInce the new entry comes first, the old one doesn't apply. If you then edit the preference and change it back to what it was before, the Finder will edit the new entry. Consider the following sequence of events and commands:
% cp ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices_copy.plist
I change all GIF files to be opened by GraphicConverter instead of Preview, which is an old setting in the old format.
% plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist
% diff --text ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices_copy.plist
404,409d403
<      <dict>
<         <key>LSHandlerContentType</key>
<         <string>com.compuserve.gif</string>
<         <key>LSHandlerRoleAll</key>
<         <string>com.lemkesoft.graphicconverter</string>
<      </dict>
Then I change all the GIF files to be opened by Preview again.
% plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist
% cp ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices_copy2.plist
% diff --text ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices_copy.plist
404,409d403
<       <dict>
<          <key>LSHandlerContentType</key>
<          <string>com.compuserve.gif</string>
<          <key>LSHandlerRoleAll</key>
<          <string>com.apple.preview</string>
<       </dict>
% diff --text ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices_copy2.plist
408c408
<          <string>com.apple.preview</string>
          <string>com.lemkesoft.graphicconverter</string>
   Note that I had to change the file to text after every change because the Finder converted the file to binary format every time it edited it. I didn't have to logout or reboot; the property list file change less than a second after the preference was set. I'm guessing that because you were just looking at the old-format entry, you missed the real changes to your property list file. Did it change from text to binary format? Try the command line tools that I used above.
   Note that this means that it matters where you put your entries in the property list file if you edit it.
Gary
~~~~
   There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those
   who understand binary numbers and those who don't.

Change Open With for all files with a specific extension

Hi, I've been using OS X for quite some time, but more recently cannot see how you do the following which is proving frustrating:
* Open Get Info for a file,
* Use the drop down under Open With to choose Other,
* Select an appropriate application that wasn't on the drop down list (in this case Smultron text editor for CSV files),
* Press the Change All button and the drop down turns back to Excel which was the previous default.
So basically, how do I change all files with CSV extension to Smultron when Smultron wasn't in the list of Open With items and I have to use Other from the list. This is repeatable for any file type with any application that isn't listed and is on both my iMac and my work's MacBook. Try it yourself and you'll see what I mean!!
Thanks

Stuart Mchattie wrote:
Thanks NeroWolf,
Your solution does work for that single file, but doesn't change the system wide association of that file extension with a particular application. It is because this works that I believe the problem I am having is uncircumventable and is in fact a bug in the OS. Could anyone else confirm this?
Cheers,
Stuart
It might be a bug. What I found is that the icon does not change unless I log out/in or reboot, even when the app normally puts an icon on the file.
For example if I change an audio file to always open with VLC, it does even though the icon remains as before. However, even though clicking plays the audio with VLC, if I right click the file and select "Open With" it still says iTunes (app) default which is incorrect.
Message was edited by: nerowolfe

Changing "Open With" List

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