Sunday, January 3, 2010

kleptomaniacal "Open With..." OS X menu

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If you're looking for a solution to this problem, you either have a lot of applications, use various Adobe products that come with rarely used droplets, or are just tired of looking at applications you deleted long ago in the "Open With..." menu. Thankfully there are simple solutions. (If you're main problem is a massive list of adobe actions or droplets in your "Open With..." list, skip down to the "Adobe Droplet Invasion" section first, then come back up and follow these steps.)

Etch a sketch method
Start with the basics, we are going to force the Finder to forget its "Open With..." list so that it will create a new one. Find your way to the local user's Preferences folder under /YOUR_USERNAME/Library/Preferences. In here there should be a file named com.apple.LaunchServices.plist, delete or rename this file and perform a restart. Try it out by right-clicking or ctrl-clicking on a file to see if you're "Open With..." has fixed itself. If that didn't work open up a Terminal window (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and copy paste the following command into it by highlighting from "user" at the end up.

/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user


Once again restart your computer. Neither of these restarts are necessary, however for some users it is needed to take affect, why is not known, but it can't hurt to ensure that things get cleaned out and reset. Once your computer comes back up go ahead and right-click or ctrl-click on something and see if the "Open With..." problems have gone away. Keep in mind that some applications can keep adding themselves back, but these two methods should deal with any lingering applications listed that you have deleted.

Adobe Droplet Invasion
If your "Open With..." menu is slow and cluttered with Adobe actions, then its time to take action against them. Open up the Adobe folder where you have it installed, and you're going to need to look for those items listed in the "Open With..." list. For Adobe Photoshop this is will either be /Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Droplets/ or /Adobe Photoshop/Samples/Droplets/. Delete the droplets folder if it contains those items listed in your "Open With..." list. If you ever want to bring them back you can re-install photoshop, or a better solution is to simply make an archive or zip file of the droplets folder before deleting it. Now go back to the top of this post and follow the steps for cleaning the "Open With..." list itself.

Additional control, more refined solutions
Programs exist that give you more control over the "Open With..." list and other parts of OS X. Examples are
Cocktail
Onyx

Further reading and sources
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24770?viewlocale=en_US
http://macapper.com/2007/10/08/tutorial-clear-the-finders-open-with-menu/
http://macosx.com/forums/howto-faqs/50890-howto-removing-extra-photoshop-open-options.html
http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-system-mac-software/306807-cleaning-open.html
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030730161311391