Sometimes, if your Mac doesn’t recognize a file type as something that one of its programs can handle, or if you want a specific file type to always open in a specific program, Mac OS X Lion might need a little help from you. Mac OS X Lion lets you specify the application in which you want to open a document in the future when you double-click it. Suppose that you want all .tif graphic files that usually open in Preview to open instead in Pixelmator, a more capable third-party program
Mar 26, 2019 There’s another way you can change a file type’s associated app in macOS: Right-click (or Ctrl-click) on the file in a Finder window and select Get Info. In the information dialog that appears, you should see the Open with: section immediately below the Comments: section (click the chevron buttons to expand individual sections). May 03, 2019 That’s all you need to do. DO NOT click the ‘Change all’ button. If you do, it will change the default app for all files of this type. In the screenshot below, you can see the Get Info window for two different PNG files. For one file, the app that will open it is the default Preview app whereas, for the other, Chrome will open 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.
Change Default Apps Mac
Here’s how you do it:
Mac Os X Set Default App For File Type
Click one of the files in the Finder.
Choose File→Get Info (Command+I).
In the Info window, click the gray triangle to disclose the Open With pane.
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.
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.
Every document or file you save on your Mac is associated with a particular application, so when you try to open it, it always opens with that app, not another app, when you double-click that file’s icon in the Finder. However, you can change the default app that opens a file. For example, so that presentations made with PowerPoint are always opened with Keynote. Let’s figure out how to do it.
Change the default app you use to open a file
Sometimes, you may want an app to open certain file types by default. For example, use VLC to open all.avi files instead of QuickTime, which will not play them for you. Or as I said before, open all the presentations you receive or download in Keynote, and forget about PowerPoint.
In the Finder window, or on the desktop, right-click the file whose default startup application you want to change.
From the context menu, select Open with → Other…
How To Set Default Programs Mac
A new window will appear for you to select an app to open the selected file with. In our example, we are going to select Keynote, even though, as you can see in the image above, it already appears in the conceptual menu because I recently used it for this type of file.
- Find and select the app you want to use (Keynote, in this case).
- Check the box “Always open with this application”.
- Press “Open”.
The selected file will be opened with the app you have indicated, but the most important thing is that whenever you want to open this type of macOS file it will be opened by default with the application you have just indicated.