Tutorial: Clear the Finder’s “Open With” Menu

TutorialA problem I have had recently is one just small enough to get under the skin. Have you ever right-clicked and selected “Open With” on an image to open it with your favorite editor only to be bombarded with a list of applications you thought you removed ages ago? Maybe even some you never knew existed? There is also the problem of duplicates.

Mac OS X seems to think that some of my applications are more useful than others by listing them twice. There has to be an easy way to fix this right?

Open With

The first thing you need to know is that the list is automatically generated by OS X. It depends on what applications you have installed, and if those applications can handle particular files. The problem is that it doesn’t update itself very often, and the list can get very bloated if not cleared out every so often. Everything is stored in a single file located in your preferences folder. Take the following steps to delete this file so the list can get a fresh rebuild.

  1. Go to your Home/Library/Preferences folder
  2. Find “com.apple.LaunchServices” file and trash it (you can back it up if you want)
  3. Test it out!

There you have it. The next time you right-click on an item and select “Open With” in the Finder, only current applications will be listed. Some items may return if the application that controls them adds itself back to the list. You can delete the file again if you are having problems.

If you want to, you can create a script to automatically trash this file for you at any interval you desire. Check out this page for help doing that.

Comments

60 Responses to “Tutorial: Clear the Finder’s “Open With” Menu”

  1. Pete on October 8th, 2007 10:33 am

    Great! Now how do I stop it from spinning up my external hard-drives (and pausing for the 4-6 seconds that that takes) whenever my mouse hovers over ‘Open With’ for too long?

  2. Arjun Muralidharan on October 8th, 2007 11:44 am

    Photoshop clutters my list like hell! Anyone know how to control which items are displayed int he first place?

  3. Bob on October 8th, 2007 1:19 pm

    Are you using leopard or pre-Tiger OS X? The highlighter bar is a different shape than in Tiger.

  4. Greg H on October 8th, 2007 2:21 pm

    @Bob – I think he is running a ShapeShifter Theme.

  5. Jim on October 8th, 2007 10:54 pm

    Don’t you have to at least re-start the Finder (if not completely log out)? This tip doesn’t work for me… though I haven’t tried logging out yet.

  6. Justine on October 9th, 2007 4:27 am

    Didn’t work for me either and I restared my Mac :/

  7. Andreas on October 9th, 2007 5:05 am

    Did nothing for me either, and I also did a restart. A side effect though was/is that all my apps forgot who was boss. Ie. Firefox asked if I wanted to set it as my default browser, NNW asked if I wanted to set it as default newsreader and Adium asked if I wanted to… you know the drill.

  8. Miles Evans on October 9th, 2007 7:35 am

    Apple’s word on this procedure seems exactly the same as above: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305627

  9. Dr. Girlfriend on October 9th, 2007 6:19 pm

    Didn’t work for me either, but here’s a solution that will (you’ll probably have to do it again every so often):

    1. Open Terminal

    2. Copy and paste the following command:
    /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

  10. Mac Tip: Clean Up Finder’s “Open With” Menu · TechBlogger on October 9th, 2007 6:32 pm

    [...] want to get even more granular with your Open With Menu, check out the Mac OS X Hints post below. Tutorial: Clear the Finder’s “Open With” Menu [MacApper]Remove excess ‘Open with…’ contextual menu entries [Mac OS X [...]

  11. Greg H on October 9th, 2007 7:06 pm

    When this became a problem for me, I used Cocktail to clean it out. If this tip does not work for you, there are a few other Mac maintenance applications that will do it for you.

  12. MacTips » Clear and Repopulate Finder’s “Open With” Menu on October 9th, 2007 7:09 pm

    [...] [Via MacApper] [...]

  13. Simon on October 9th, 2007 7:10 pm

    Did nothing for me either. I’ve had duplicates of all my apps in there for 2 years. Very frustrating. At least I now know other people have the same issue. I am too scared to do Terminal thingies.

  14. Dr. Girlfriend on October 9th, 2007 9:26 pm

    It works, Simon – it’s very easy. I just did it with no problems. I got the tip from here:

    http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000643.html

    While it does get rid of duplicate program entries, it doesn’t solve the other problems: there are at least a dozen droplets Adobe has crapped all over my context menu.

  15. Lou on October 10th, 2007 8:37 am

    Dr. Girlfriend is right, the tip as published above doesn’t work, but the drunkenblog command does. Deleting com.apple.LaunchServices.plist only bins your default app preferences.

    There’s another added benefit that doesn’t appear to be mentioned (unless I missed it). I’ve been having trouble with finder for some time now, when trying to get the context menu in a mounted drive. Didn’t matter if it was a mounted sparseimage file, a network samba/afp share, or even a Macfusion mount. Right clicking (or CTRL-click) in the finder window (to create a new folder, for instance) caused finder to crash.

    I thought it was something I’d have to live with until Leopard came out, but after using the command above (THANK YOU Dr. Girlfriend!), I forgot about this issue as I often do before 9:00 in the morning, and had created a folder and moved several things around in a sparseimage finder window before I wondered why it didn’t crash on me. Apparently this command cleaned out whatever was causing it.

    So, I’m starting a OSXCleanupCmd script in my ~/bin directory. This command goes at the top, and will be run every couple months – or whenever I have weird behavior. It would be neat to find a list of potential candidate commands for such a script.

    Lou

  16. dave on October 10th, 2007 11:42 am

    …an easier fix for those having problems with this tip: download the free mainmenu application, then go to cleaning and rebuild launch services…that’ll fix it up fast..

  17. Usersky Daily News Network » Mac Tip: Clean Up Finder’s “Open With” Menu on October 10th, 2007 11:01 pm

    [...] want to get even more granular with your Open With Menu, check out the Mac OS X Hints post below. Tutorial: Clear the Finder’s “Open With” Menu [MacApper] Remove excess ‘Open with…’ contextual menu entries [Mac OS X [...]

  18. links for 2007-10-11 « /tmp on October 11th, 2007 12:08 pm

    [...] Tutorial: Clear the Finder's “Open With Menu | MacApper (tags: mac finder openwith) [...]

  19. Mac Tip: Clean out “Open With…” » Wired For Gadgets on October 12th, 2007 3:05 am

    [...] Tutorial: Clear the Finder's “Open With Menu [via Lifehacker] [...]

  20. Como limpar o menu “Abrir Com” (Open With) do Mac OS X on October 12th, 2007 11:55 am

    [...] bem. Essa lista é gerada automaticamente pelo sistema, como todos sabemos. O que não sabíamos e o que nosso leitor Bruno Casarini descobriu é que ela não é atualizada tão constantemente [...]

  21. Typical Mac User Podcast » TMUP Live 55: Dave Hamilton from the Mac Observer “In the Pocket” on November 22nd, 2007 6:08 pm

    [...] Fix “Open With” Duplicates [...]

  22. john on December 2nd, 2007 11:36 am

    yea umm i need help.. lol you know when you u try to view a file and in order to do that you have to go through that open file with stuffs? well by accident i clicked use this option for everything(i dont know if i wrote that verbatim)and now it always open any file with wordpad. I really dont want this because its affecting everything such as other files for work. -.- help asap.
    thanks

  23. chimpo' on April 22nd, 2008 11:48 pm

    Cocktail works fine with this issue.

  24. Alan on October 16th, 2008 2:39 pm

    On Leopard I found that: /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

    Worked perfectly (and removed all the Parallels and VMWare Fusion associations that were still there even after I disabled smartselect etc.)

  25. Clear Nonexistant Apps from Finder’s “Open With” Menu on the Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard on October 28th, 2008 12:57 am

    [...] MacApper:Clear the Finder's Open With Menu – Check out the comments on this post for a good discussion of why the Apple method mentioned above is inadequate. [...]

  26. Alex M on December 5th, 2008 3:58 am

    I tried all of the suggested ways to get rid of the unwanted “Open With..” files, however they never cleared the Adobe droplets. I could never figure out how to get them off until i searched for one of the droplet files locations:

    /Applications/Adobe Illustrator/Samples/Droplets

    There are two folders contained within this folder (ImageReadyDroplets and PhotoshopDroplets)

    I then compressed both of these folders and deleted the original folders off of my computer.

    It may not at first seem like it worked, but give it a few minutes and browse through the Finder and it will eventually clear them. (or restart the finder)

    All I have now is to remove Parallels items (Paint, WordPad, etc.) I have already gotten rid of anything Parallels on my computer, yet they still exist. Any help?

  27. Art Caldara on April 6th, 2009 6:50 am

    It didn’t work for me, but this did.
    in terminal type or copy the following and press return.

    /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

    I found this on the internet and it does work.

  28. Wired For Gadgets » Mac Tip: Clean out “Open With…” on June 3rd, 2009 8:47 pm

    [...] Tutorial: Clear the Finder's Open With Menu [via Lifehacker] [...]

  29. CB on April 3rd, 2010 4:28 pm

    Alan’s version of the command to paste into terminal worked well for me using 10.6.3 and cleared out the parallels and VMWare list also.

    /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

  30. Clear Nonexistant Apps from Finder’s “Open With” Menu | Dave Brown Design on May 21st, 2010 1:53 am

    [...] MacApper: Clear the Finder's Open With Menu – Check out the comments on this post for a good discussion of why the Apple method mentioned above is inadequate. [...]

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  32. Poster on March 23rd, 2011 8:45 pm

    Alex M thanks!! This worked!!! (removed the .exe files (I’m on a Mac anyways) in Samples/Droplets folder and waited 2 minutes)

  33. Ed H on May 1st, 2011 1:02 pm

    Update: The following terminal command still works on Mac OS X version 10.6.7

    Open spotlight (click on the magnifying glass upper right corner) then type terminal if the Top Hit is Terminal, press return to open terminal. A Terminal box will open, then cut and paste the following line into terminal and press return. It takes about 20 seconds to run. I ran it twice but I think it might just take a couple minutes to work. It got rid of several duplicates in my “open with” list.

    /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

    edh

  34. Ed H on May 1st, 2011 1:06 pm

    Does anyone know a utility or a way to ADD an app to the Finders “open with” list?

  35. sim unlock iphone on May 4th, 2011 6:26 pm

    Didn’t work for me either and I restared my Mac :(

  36. Google Sniper on May 5th, 2011 5:28 am

    Great tips, thanks for sharing, it is truly a worth while subject.

  37. Callie Silloway on September 6th, 2011 5:03 am

    These strategies also worked to provide a good way to recognize that other people online have the same dream really like my own to see way more pertaining to this issue.

  38. Chris on September 17th, 2011 10:07 am

    Neither deleting the *.plist file in Finder nor running the terminal command (lsregister) worked for me. I want to clear entries in my “Open with…” drop down menu in Snow Leopard.

  39. MR V on September 20th, 2011 11:13 pm

    Ed H tip worked for me. Trashing the com.Apple.Launchservises file does not work at all. This same tip is at Apple site and just won’t work. Running Snow Leopard. Thanks! Though now for some reason my rar files want to be opened in Path Finder even though I clearly set the them open in Stuffit Expander (even the icon matches Stuffit). Oh well, at least I no longer have 4 different Opera’s in the open with list on html files for example.

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  41. Mac Tip: Clean Up Finder’s “Open With” Menu | SHOCM on June 29th, 2012 6:02 am

    [...] want to get even more granular with your Open With Menu, check out the Mac OS X Hints post below.Tutorial: Clear the Finder’s “Open With” Menu [MacApper]Remove excess ‘Open with…’ contextual menu entries [Mac OS X Hints] [...]

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  43. Donald on February 11th, 2013 12:31 am

    Thanks to Alan, his command worked perfectly on Mountain Lion. Just had to restart Finder for it to take. Did this through the Force Quit option, that’s all.

    /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

    So much better!

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