Change Default Program For A File Type Mac
Right-click on a file that uses the file type you'd like to change the default for. For example, one with a.jpg extension (a photo). For example, one with a.jpg extension (a. Mac OS X makes it easy to change file associations, which determine what programs are used to open various file types. You can change the setting for individual files or for all files of a specific file type. Type 'file associations' from the Windows 8 Start screen, click 'Settings' and select 'Make a File Type Always Open in a Specific Program' from the search results.
- Change Default Program For File Type Mac
- Mac Choose Default Program
- Mac Os Default Program
- Change Default Program For A File Extension
In the Mac OS it is possible to change the default program the operating system will use to open a file when you double-click on it. After you have changed this file association, though, you may want to reset this file association back to the default program that Mac OS was configured with when it was installed. This tutorial will explain how to restore your default file associations in Mac OS.
Before changing a file extension back to its defaults, you should first enable your Mac to view file extensions so that you can find a file containing the extension you want to reset. To do this, please follow the instructions found in the tutorial How to show filename extensions on a Mac.
Once file extensions are visible on files, navigate to a file that is the type that you would like to reset back to the Mac OS defaults. Once you are at that file, right click on it and select the Get Info option as shown in the image below.
- On the Default Programs page, click Associate a file type or protocol with a program. Scroll down to the Protocol or File type you want to change a default program for, then click Change program, in this case, it’s the MAILTO protocol that handles that association.
- Whenever you download or create any given file on your Mac, it is instantly assigned a default application to open it, which you can easily identify by the file’s thumbnail in most occasions.
When you select the Get Info menu option, the file's information page will be displayed as shown below.
Expand the Open with: category as shown in the image above. You will now see the current program that this file type is configured to use when you double-click on it. In our example above, this means that if you double-clicked on the About Stacks.pdf file it would be open in Safari. To change it back to the default setting, you need to select the down/up arrow menu as shown in the image below.
In the drop down menu that appears you will see an application that contains the (default) phrase. This is the original default application in Mac OS for this type of file. Select it by clicking on it once. The Open With option should now be set to use the default application you selected.
Currently, only this individual file has been reset to use the default program. If you wish to make it so that all files of this type use the default application, you should now click on the Change All.. button. Once you click on the Change All button, every file of this type will now be reset to use the default program. You can now close the Information screen.
The file extension has now been reset to the default program that was configured when Mac OS was installed. Now, if you double-click ona this type of file it will open with the default program that was configured when the Mac OS was installed.
If you have any questions about this process please feel free to post them in our Mac OS Forum.
How to set an icon for some file types thought the whole system?
For example, I have text files that ends with .scala extension and I want to associate an icon for that files through the whole system and for any newly created file of this extension.
Thanks.
3 Answers
Icons for file types are handled by Launch Services (the service determining, among other things, which application handles a file type). The file icon is always provided by the application handling opening a file by default. This way, e.g. Preview provides PDF icons by default, and PNG icons, but if you change all PNG files to open using Pixelmator instead, these files get a Pixelmator-style icon afterwards.
What you need to do is add your file type definition to the application that opens it by default, or create your own 'dummy' application for the file type.
As an example, my system does not yet know about .scala, and I want TextMate to handle it.
First, I Show Package Contents of TextMate.app, navigate to Contents/ and open Info.plist, either with a text editor, or Property List Editor, part of Apple's developer tools.
TextMate uses an unusual format for Info.plist (it's usually binary or XML), an excerpt of which looks like this:
The parent key CFBundleDocumentTypes is what we want. The first child element of it, enclosed in curly braces, contains a file type definition, complete with name (for file type column in Finder), file extensions, and the name of the icon file (ADA for TextMate.app/Contents/Resources/ADA.icns).
To support .scala, we need to add a sibling element similar to the one above, under the same parent element CFBundleDocumentTypes:
For simplicity's sake, I'm using the same icon file, but we can create one ourselves, copy it to TextMate.app/Contents/Resources/SCALA.icns and refer to it as SCALA in Info.plist.
Now, close TextMate if it's running, move the application TextMate.app to a different folder, and open it again. Close it, and move it back, then open it yet again. This is done so Launch Services picks up the changes to Info.plist we just performed.
The result looks like this (remember, we reused the TextMate Ada icon for .scala):
If you don't want to associate an application to open .scala files (can't imagine why, but there's a way to do this): Change the additions to the file to the following:
Now, the application declares the file type, but tells the system that it does not know how to handle it (Apple gives the example of Finder declaring font types, although it cannot open them itself).
*Note that any permanent application assignment to the file type overrides the icon, probably to the 'unknown document' kind.
Change Default Program For File Type Mac
If you already have an application associated with .scala, and just want to change the file icon without changing the associated application:
Open of the application's Info.plist, look for the file type entry in CFBundleDocumentTypes, and get the CFBundleTypeIconFile. Modify this file in ../Contents/Resources/ and it should be reflected in Finder shortly afterwards. Free program to combine pdf files for mac.
Bonus information:
How to change a single document's or folder's icon to an image file
Suppose you have an image ~/Desktop/test.png which you want to use an an icon (it's the screenshot used above to illustrate the .scala/TextMate/Ada icon change.
Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app and enter:
This will change the test.png file icon to its image. Since I enjoy recursion, lets try this:
Before, the plain Preview png icon (image preview is deactivated):
After, the image file itself is its preview:
Now we can open the file's Get Info dialog, click the desired, future document icon on the top left, Cmd-C to copy it, open the document file's Get Info dialog, click the undesired, current document icon on the top left, and Cmd-V to paste the icon we want.
Alternatively, you can open the image file you want to use as icon in Preview, Cmd-A to select all, Cmd-C to copy the image to clipboard. Then open the target document's Get Info dialog, select the icon to change in the top left, and Cmd-V to paste the image over it.
You need to replace the ICNS file inside the program that is assigned as the default program for the specific file type.
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1 - Create an image for the desired icon, then save as a png filetype (png supports transparency).
2 - Convert the png file to an icns filetype (FastIcns is pretty great and it's free).
3 - CMD click or right click the application that is set as the default app for the specific filetype, then select show package contents.
4 - Look for the icns file that the application is designating as the icon for the specific file type, it will probably be in a folder called Resources.
5 - Name the icns file you created, the exact same file name as the one you want to replace.
6 - Copy and paste, or drag and drop the new icns file you created into the folder where the one you want to replace is located, and choose replace when given the option.
7 - You're done! All of the icons for that file type have been replaced with the new desired icon.
Mac Choose Default Program
The way I always go about this is to find a file with that extension, right click » Get Info, or Command-i, and that will pull up the Info Panel. At the top your see the icon that is currently used for the image. You can drag an image file onto that one to change it, or if you copied the image, you can click on the image you want to change and do a paste to change it.
Arjan