Excluding apps from "open with..." list?

Is there a way I can exclude apps from the "Open With…" menu?
Finder mistakenly lists all standalone Flash apps I've built as possible choices when opening a SWF.

Yep, by clearing the Launch Services DB:
Rebuild LaunchServices Database
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt paste in the following command in its entirety:
find /System/Library/Frameworks -type f -name "lsregister" -exec {} -kill -seed -r \;
Press RETURN.
Wait for the Terminal prompt to return after which you can quit the Terminal.

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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

Apps in "Open With" list appear more than once

How do I fix this?

Do the following:
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt paste in the following command line (the entire text) then press return.
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/L aunchServices.framework/Versions/Current/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain system -domain local -domain user

How do you delete apps in "open with" list?

do you do it using xcode? if so, how do you do it? thanks!

No, I have never had a reason to.
Hey, I sometimes lead people to the operating theatre, but I don't perform the transplant!

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

Remove Applications from "Open With..." List

Ever since I installed Adobe Creative Suite, there have been countless applications available in the Open With... list for image file types (JPEGs, PNGs, etc.).
How do I remove applications from that list for a given file type?
Thanks!

There are a whole bunch of mostly useless little droplets that are installed by Photoshop and ImageReady. You can either toss them all, toss all but the one or two you might use, or just zip them and then if you ever want one unzip, take what you want and rezip the others (I kept Make Sepia Tone.exe and zipped all the others, and put a text file with a list of them all in the parent folder). Here's the location:
"/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS/Samples/Droplets"
There is one folder full of ImageReady ones, and another folder of the Photoshop ones. If you trash them you can also get them back from the install disk. After you zip or trash them restart the computer and your Open with list will be back to normal.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

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

How do I remove an app from the update list that is under someone else's apple id?

How do I remove an app from the update list that is under someone else's apple id? So this way the update always fails because it asks for someone else's password. I don't have the app on my mac, it only appears in the update list. It's just annoying, because the update keeps appearing, and the reminder keeps reminding me that I should install a new update.

You installed a hacked app, originally from the Mac App Store. It contains the receipt for a different app, downloaded using an account that you don't control. You need to identify and remove the hacked app.
Important: The app you need to remove is not necessarily the one named in the App Store alert. For example, the App Store may prompt you to update "Angry Birds" or "Twitter," but the hacked app may be something else entirely. Don't make any assumptions about which app you're looking for. To find it, you must carry out a systematic search with Spotlight.
1. Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it:
kMDItemAppStoreHasReceipt=1
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
2. In the Finder, press command-F to open a search window, or select
File ▹ Find
from the menu bar. In the search window, select
Search: This Mac
from the row of tokens below the toolbar. Below that is a popup menu of search criteria, initially showing Kind. From that menu, select
Other...
A sheet will drop down. In that sheet, select
Raw Query
as the criterion, then click OK or press return.
Now there will be a text box to the right of the menu of search criteria. That's where you enter the raw search query. Click in that box and paste the text you copied earlier by pressing command-V.
4. The search window will now show all the App Store products that are installed. Compare those search results with the list of your purchases from the App Store. To see the complete list, you may need to unhide hidden purchases. If any apps were download from the App Store using other Apple ID accounts that you control, sign in to the store under each of those ID's and check the purchases.
At least one of the apps in the Spotlight search results is not among your purchases in the App Store. Move each such item to the Trash, after quitting it if it's running. You may be prompted for your administrator password. Empty the Trash.
Quit and relaunch the App Store. Test.
If you find these instructions confusing, ask for an alternative method.

How to remove application from Open With?

Hi,
I added by accident a wrong application to a file type in Finder. Now I would like to remove this entry from the files Open With list. How could this be done?
Thanks and best regards
Ralph

Is it just that specific document you want to open with another application or is it all documents of the same format?
#1 Hold down Ctrl key and choose Open with. Choose the application you want to open the document with. IF you want to always open this one document with another app then the pre-chosen one hold down both the CTRl and the Option key and choose application.
#2 When you want a certain format of documents to open with another application, let us say all .rtf should open with Pages instead of Textedit, select one rtf document and use Command (apple) key and I to get the information window for this document. Somewhere in the middle you can choose with which app. to open this document with and right beneath there is another button that gives you the opportunity to open all document of the same format with the same application.
Pardon my Swenglish, but I hope you are helped by this!

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

Removing Adobe imageready auto-process commands from Open With

Ever since installing photoshop cs2 with imageready cs2, whenever I go to open with> after right clicking on an image file, it gives me dozens of exe's such as "constrain to 64x64 pixels.exe" that I can open with file with. It makes the list so long I can't quickly find the program I actually want to use to open the file...how do I get these things off my open with menu?

Hi, P.Q.
I use Photoshop 7 and ImageReady 7. Those .exe files are Photoshop and ImageReady Droplets. Since they're executable files that can open images, they appear in the Open With list for any image. This is controlled by Launch Services, which identifies the apps that can open a specific type of file.
On my version of Photoshop they reside in the folder
/Applications/Adobe Photoshop 7/Samples/Droplets
with subfolders therein for Photoshop Droplets and ImageReady Droplets.
I suspect you'd find a similar folder in your PS CS2 folder within Applications. They're basically samples of how one can automate repetitive tasks in those applications and save the sequence of actions as a droplet so one can merely drop an image on the droplet to perform the actions specified in the droplet.
You could simply trash the Droplets folder cited above, then restart your Mac.
A more conservative approach — and the one I would use — would be to create an Archive of the Droplets folder and save that somewhere, e.g. your Documents folder, in case you need them again, before trashing the Droplets folder and then restarting your Mac.
I suspect the Samples folder was installed by default when you installed PS and IR, but could have been omitted with a Custom Install of those apps.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

Add app to "Open with" in MAIL

Hello all,
in my mail app, when I receive some attached file, I can right clic it and select the app I want to open it with. The problem is, Photoshop is not among that apps list and I want to add it. There is the option "other" (otros) and I can choose it there but, I have to do it every single time I want to open something in photoshop.
How can I add photoshop to the "open with" context menu being INSIDE the Mail app?
See attached image to clear what I need
Thanks in advance.

You're welcome, sadly there's no fix by now. I will send some feedback directly to Apple, if you want, send it here (there's no direct link to Mail app) http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
The main problem is that mail handle attachments in it's own way, making everthing simple for the reader / viewer. You can add an image an resize it within the app, add an image without extension, etc.
Note: I don't know if your know this one, but if you click on the e-mail message and press Command + Y, it will show the Quick look of your e-mail attachments, once in the popup, right click on the Open Preview button and it will show directly the PS app to Open with, among others.
Best!

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

Excluding apps from "open with..." list?

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