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Is there an easy way to find all the extensions that are opened with a given application?
I'm asking because I have two versions of a software installed (Sublime 2 and 3), and some extensions still open with Sublime 2 because by the time I specified that Sublime 3 was not available. I then have to quit Sublime, change the program that shall be opened by default for this extension and relaunch.

I would like to end this once and for all and change it for every remaining extension. Does anyone know of an easy way to do this? Thank you!

Tim Zimmermann
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    In terminal, execute defaults read com.apple.LaunchServices.plist >> ~/Desktop/defaults.txt. Open up the text file and find the keys matching each sublime property list. Once identified, you can set those opening with 2 to open with 3. See here – njboot Aug 28 '14 at 00:39
  • @nijbot: Thanks for the tip, it brought me on the right track. When I execute your command, it returns an error "Domain com.apple.LaunchServices.plist does not exist". However, there is an additional file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist, that I opened with Xcode. You can change the default programs there. – Tim Zimmermann Aug 28 '14 at 07:10
  • you're welcome. there's not a simple way at all (AFAIK, or at least from what I looked into) to return the desired information using commands like grep sed or awk since you're matching multiple strings over multiple lines. The easiest way, as you note, is in Xcode. Also, not sure why secure is prepended to the extension, perhaps this is the behavior if you use filevault and your drive is encrypted (I don't), but that's the same file for sure. BOL. Cheers. – njboot Aug 28 '14 at 20:42
  • Also, why do you have both versions installed? Uninstalling Sublime 2 and then manually removing it's .plist would solve the immediate issue. – njboot Aug 28 '14 at 20:45

2 Answers2

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If you want all files with a certain extension (not the 1 specific file) to be opened by a certain app, do the following:

  1. Right click the file and click Get Info (or highlight file and hit cmd ⌘ + i )
  2. Change Open with: to preferred app
  3. Click Change All...
  4. Click Continue in the confirmation box

Is this what you meant to do? This is different from right clicking a file and choosing the 'Always open with' option. That seems to only apply to the specific file, not all files globally.

You will have to repeat this for each extension.

Get info screen Confirmation box

Kymer
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Open the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.‌​plist in Xcode. The file contains all the bindings for extensions to applications.

Find/replacing the values did not work for me, since the file was overwritten every time. But you can use Find to get a list of all the extensions that are opened with a particular application and then change it by hand.

Tim Zimmermann
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  • In my original comment, follow the instructions in the link. You need to change these values using the terminal. – njboot Aug 28 '14 at 21:29
  • The problem is that the domain can not be found, thus I did not get it to work via Terminal. – Tim Zimmermann Aug 28 '14 at 21:31
  • edit the domain to com.apple.launchservices.secure.‌​plist – njboot Aug 28 '14 at 21:49
  • @njboot yes, I already tried that, same result. The weird thing about all this is that default domains actually does return com.apple.LaunchServices, even though the manpage specifically states that it only considers domains in the space of the user. – Tim Zimmermann Aug 28 '14 at 21:53
  • you may need sudo to edit the plist in that case, even though it's in your user library. Are you running filevault? Also, what happens if you touch ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.launchservices.plist; mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist ~/Desktop/. Log out then in. does secure regenerate in your library? are you able to defaults write to the one you created? – njboot Aug 28 '14 at 23:28
  • See this discussion – njboot Aug 28 '14 at 23:46
  • First of all, yes, I'm running FileVault. Second, sudo is not helping for the secure domain. I moved the secure file to the Desktop (it is, however, stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist), and as you assumed, it gets regenerated. I can write with defaults write com.apple.launchservices.plist test 1 and then defaults read it afterwards, too. – Tim Zimmermann Aug 29 '14 at 07:16