If
you're like me, you'll notice that things start to get messy on your
Mac after a while if you aren't super organised. The desktop gets full
of files, and your folders can easily get into a bad state; but what
really tells me I need to sort things out is when my right click option
for Open With gets crammed with all sorts of useless junk.
In this tutorial I'll show you a very easy way to stop your Open With list showing duplicates and apps you no longer have.
The Problem
If you tend to install and uninstall apps fairly often, like I do, you can get left with an option to Open With
apps you haven't even got on your Mac anymore, or even more
frustrating, multiple entries of the same app. This problem can also
arise if you use virtual machines like Parallels or WMWare that can
leave behind data from uninstalled apps. Does this look familiar? Things getting out of hand
The problem here is that the Launch Services database is full of
unwanted apps, and I want to rebuild it. So to do this involves using
the Terminal quickly.
Note that you can use apps like Cocktail or Onyx for this, but when it can be done so simply by yourself I recommend following this method.
Step 1. Open Up Terminal
Your Terminal should look similar to this
First thing you need to do is open up Terminal, which is where your
Mac processes commands that you can give it. It is located in
/Applications/Utilities or just do a spotlight search for it. Don't get
scared if you've never done this, it may look like a bunch of gibberish
to you, but that's fine. Terminal is a very powerful tool, but if you
follow what I instruct you to do, step by step, you should have no
trouble.
Step 2. Enter the Code
Enter the code and press return
Now that you've got your Terminal open it's time to enter the code.
Now it's simply a case of copying and pasting the code below into
Terminal, and hitting the enter key.
1
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister-kill-r -domain local-domain system -domain user
Hopefully you have something that looks like the screenshot above. We're done with Terminal now, so you can close the app.
Step 3. Relaunch Finder
Relaunching Finder
To allow the changes made to take effect I need to relaunch Finder.
Unlike normal apps you can't simply cmd-Q Finder to quit it, but
fortunately the solution isn't much more challenging. While holding the
alt key, right click on the Finder icon and select Relaunch.
Result
No duplicates!
What I have done in this Quick Tip is to reset the Launch Services
database using just Terminal, and now when you right click on a file to
open it, there should only be one version of the apps that open this
kind of file. Doesn't that look better!? There's no longer the confusing
multiple entries and you should be able to get on with doing what you
wanted to do in the first place - opening files, without distraction.
Hopefully now you can enjoy using a slightly cleaner Mac. Feel free to
let me know in the comments if you have any similar tricks.
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