1. Set Your Default Programs
2. Opening Program Prayer
3. Opening Program Speech
4. How To Change The Default Opening Program

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. However, double clicking on the file will open it in that application and that one alone.

If you need to open that file with another app though, you can right-click on the file, choose Open With and then choose another app from the available ones in the list.

But what if you want to have not just that one, but all other files of the same format to be opened with an application other than the default one?

To change the default program a file type is opened with, search for the file you wish to change and right-click on it to bring up the file menu as shown below. At the above menu, please select. Being a default photo viewer, Preview will launch automatically if you open any image or PDF document on your Mac. As useful as it is, some users with specific needs will find this behavior more of an annoyance than a helpful feature, and would like to default to other apps for opening images. From the pop-up menu, choose an application that Mac OS X believes will open this document type. (Optional) If you click the Change All button at the bottom of the Open With pane, you make Pixelmator the new default application for all.tif files that would otherwise be opened in Preview.

Here are two different methods you can use to achieve this:

Setting Default File Associations

Method 1

Step 1: Right-click on the file and select Other… from the available options. A dialog box will appear showing you all the applications that might be able to open the file.

Step 2: Select one application from among the list and make sure to check the Always Open With checkbox. Once you do, click Open. The file will open in the application you chose and from then onwards, all files of that type will have that application set as their default.

Tip: If the application you want is greyed out, select

Set Your Default Programs

All Applications from the Enable: drop down menu.

Method 2

Step 1: Right-click on the file and select Get Info to bring up the file’s information panel. Alternatively, you can just press the keyboard shortcutCommand + I.

Step 2: On that panel, look for the Open with: section and select another application from the drop down menu. Once you do, click the Change All… button below for all files of that type to open with your selected application from then onwards.

Also note that if no other application is available on the list, you can still choose Other… to bring up the same dialog box mentioned previously and follow from there.

Removing Default File Associations

There might be times when a file is associated with the wrong application or you simply want a certain kind of file not to be associated with any particular application, like when you want to manually choose the app to open them for example.

To do this in just a few clicks, you need to download a small, simple Preference Pane Extension called RCDefaultApp. Head to this website to download it. Once you do, install it.

Once you install it and open it, go to the Extensions tab and scroll across all the available file types there until you find the one that you want to make “neutral”. Once you find it, you will see the app set for it as the default one to open those types of files. Click on that same drop down menu to reveal its options and select disable.

Once you are done, all the files of the type you chose will be “neutral” and ready for you to assign them to an application or to open them with any app you choose.

That’s it for this entry. Hope you find these tips useful!

Also See#file viewer #How-to/Guides

Did You Know

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Opening Program Prayer

OS X Yosemite lets you specify the application in which you want to open a document in the future when you double-click it. More than that, you can specify that you want all documents of that type to open with the specified application. “Where is this magic bullet hidden?” you ask. Right there in the file’s Info window.

Assigning a file type to an application

Suppose that you want all .jpg files that usually open in Preview to open instead in Acorn, a more capable third-party image-editing program. Here’s what to do:

1. Click one of the files in the Finder.

2. Choose File→Get Info (Command+I).

3. In the Info window, click the gray triangle to disclose the Open With pane.

4. From the pop-up menu, choose an application that OS X believes will open this document type.

   Now Acorn opens when you open this file (instead of the default application, Preview).

5. (Optional) If you click the Change All button at the bottom of the Open With pane, as shown on the right side of the following figure, you make Acorn the new default application for all .jpg files that would otherwise be opened in Preview.

   Notice the handy alert that appears when you click the Change All button and how nicely it explains what will happen if you click Continue.

Opening Program Speech

Opening a file with an application other than the default

Here’s one more technique that works great when you want to open a document with a program other than its default. Just drag the file onto the application’s icon or alias icon or Dock icon, and presto — the file opens in the application.

If you were to double-click an MP3 file, for example, the file usually would open in iTunes (and, by default, would be copied into your iTunes Library). But if you frequently want to audition (listen to) MP3 files with QuickTime Player, dragging the MP3 file onto QuickTime Player’s icon in the Applications folder or its Dock icon (if it’s on the Dock) solves this conundrum quickly and easily.

If the icon doesn’t highlight and you release the mouse button anyway, the file ends up in the same folder as the application with the icon that didn’t highlight. If that happens, just choose Edit→Undo (or press Command+Z), and the mislaid file magically returns to where it was before you dropped it.

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Just remember — don’t do anything else after you drop the file, or Undo might not work. If Undo doesn’t work, you must move the file back to its original location manually.

Only applications that might be able to open the file should highlight when you drag the file on them. That doesn’t mean the document will be usable — just that the application can open it. Suffice it to say that OS X is usually smart enough to figure out which applications on your hard drive can open what documents — and to offer you a choice.

How To Change The Default Opening Program

One last thing: If all you want to do is open a file with an application other than its default (and not change anything for the future), the techniques just described work fine, but an even easier way is to right-click the file and choose another app from the contextual menu.

You can also change the default application to open this file by pressing Option after you right-click the file, and the Open With command will magically transform into Always Open With. Alas, you can’t change the default application for all files of this type; for that, you’ll have to visit the Info window.