Changing Application/File type Associations in OS X?
Maybe I’m missing something incredibly obvious, but in OS X how the hell do you change what application launches when you double-click a file??
For some completely idiotic reason, it seems TextEdit has decided it owns my .txt files. Completely idiotic because every time I try to save the damn thing it tells me it can’t write the fucking format! (And these are simple text files!!!)
Update: Ah ha! Selected one of the files -> Get Info -> Expand “Open With”, Select application, click “Change All. Not obvious, but yeah, not that bad. I still think whoever did TextEdit deserves a cock-punching for their idiocy.
April 11th, 2005 at 9:01 am
Your post answered itself!
April 11th, 2005 at 9:49 am
TextEdit pisses me off. Besides the fact that it wants to claim all my txt files, which obviously rightly belong to Emacs, it only saves in RTF and something that purports to be Word format, but probably isn’t a very good approximation. In the meantime, why can’t I save as HTML? Maybe I’m missing something, but does Apple not realize that maybe people want to put content on the web?
I ended up having to hack together an RTF-to-HTML converter around X-mas so that Suzanne could actually put stuff on the website.
April 11th, 2005 at 10:29 am
Preach on, brother!
I’m actually giving an editor named Smultron a go. It seems to be play nicer w/ text files.
April 12th, 2005 at 1:24 pm
I’ll add my “here here” to all the complaints of TextEdit. Not a very good text editor, virtually pointless RTF functionality.
TextWrangler is, by far, my favorite editor on the Mac thus far. From the makers of BBEdit, Bare Bones recently started giving TextWrangler away free.
http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/index.shtml
July 6th, 2005 at 10:42 am
Actually, TextEdit will save as plain text, but only if the document you’re writing is a plain text document. By default, new documents in TextEdit are rich text documents. You have to go to the Format menu, and hit Make Plain Text (Command-Shift-T).
Then when you save it’ll save as a plain text document.
Best,
Josh
July 6th, 2005 at 10:39 pm
Awesome, I didn’t know that. Thanks, Josh!
November 18th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
So I did a search for “how to change file associations in os x” in Google today and you were the first one Billy! Oh and BBEdit is the cat’s meow!
November 20th, 2005 at 4:15 pm
Oh NO! I clicked “FORGET PERSONAL INFORMATION” on the submission form, and now I can’t remember any of my friend’s phone numbers! Can you make a new button called “remember personal stuff and secret things too” please?
December 13th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
Thank you for answering my question (first listing on Google!). I had no idea how to change file associations on the mac (stupid Apple>System Preferences panel didn’t have squat).
Thanks again!