'Open With' disable

[gslrider]

Anyone know how to disable "Open With" in the contextual menu, or at least move it to the very bottom and out of the way? Hacks are acceptable.

Or is there a way from preventing OS X from inundating the Open With contextual menu with every single possible app available on your system that can open one file. Like being able to pick and choose which apps gets populated in Open With for any given file.

Thanks.

 

[benwiggy]

Can I ask what your bigger objective is? Do you need to open documents regularly in particular apps that are not the default handler?

There are many other ways of opening docs into specific apps rather than using "Open With...", and it might be better to use one of those than modify the system.

You can drag the file onto the app's Dock icon, for instance.
Or create a Service to open files of a particular type in the alternate app you want.
There are many other ways.

System hacks of this nature typically cause crashes or other aberrant behaviour; will stop working after system updates; or a mixture of the two.

The Open With list contains every app that can accept the file type. If it didn't, it would be a pretty poor feature.

 

[gslrider]

Can I ask what your bigger objective is? Do you need to open documents regularly in particular apps that are not the default handler?

There are many other ways of opening docs into specific apps rather than using "Open With...", and it might be better to use one of those than modify the system.

You can drag the file onto the app's Dock icon, for instance.
Or create a Service to open files of a particular type in the alternate app you want.
There are many other ways.

System hacks of this nature typically cause crashes or other aberrant behaviour; will stop working after system updates; or a mixture of the two.

The Open With list contains every app that can accept the file type. If it didn't, it would be a pretty poor feature.

Thanks for the reply benwiggy. I rarely use the Open With contextual menu. As most apps open with the desired app. But I do use the Move to Trash contextual menu quite a bit, and more times than not (even if I try to avoid rolling over the Open With option), I end up rolling my cursor over the Open With, and because I have a lot of apps in my system (that I do use, some more than others), my system hangs until all apps populate and show up on screen. This gets very annoying. One tip in the past suggested that I clean out the contextual menu cache to minimize the the number of apps that populate. This actually worked pretty good, as the hang time was very short. But two things happens soon afterwards, 1. the apps (all the apps) come back, 2. it messed up some extensions as I mentioned.

I do need specific files to be opened with specific apps. But with the .cbr and .rar issue I mentioned, I have no choice but to assign UnRarX to both or Comicview to both. When I change one, the other changes along with it. So if I leave UnRarX as the default app for .cbr and .rar (system won't see it any other way), I have to use the contextual menu to open .cbr. Which leads back to the long wait for apps to populate on the contextual menu. I'd rather just double click the file and it opens up in the appropriate app, like it used to. Even having to drag the file everytime to the dock containing the Comicview app is tedious. I understand the Open With feature would be pretty useless if it didn't give you all available options. But from my experience, there are certain apps that is used all the time when you double click a file, so no need to use Open With. As well, a lot of apps that do come up on the Open With menu can't really open the file. So it would be great to be able to manually input the apps that would open for any given file, and ignore the rest. Especially if you know which ones will work already. This would drastically cut down the amount of processing and searching time. Or, at least in my case, be able to move the Open With so that it doesn't fall in the way when I have to scroll below it to use Move to Trash.

 

[benwiggy]

I have a 2006 iMac, and moving past the Open With contextual menu does not slow down my journey to "Move to Trash" at all. I can keep dragging down even while the menu is still being populated.
For PDFs, I have about 16 apps in the list, and the time taken to build the list of apps is very short.

You have a MacPro!!! I suggest there's some other problem here.

I would Verify your Hard Drive in Disk Utility, and then rebuild the LaunchServices Database. (There are loads of webpages about the Terminal command to do this, or you can use a utility like Onyx.)

Alternatively, I would check for any third-party apps that add stuff to the Contextual Menu, or any software that runs in the background doing stuff.

For assigning file types to apps, there is the excellent free RC Default Apps System Preference pane.

 

[gslrider]

Thanks again ben, I'll give those a go. I have a system maintenance due anyways so I'll look into the slow down issue. Apart from the slow population, my system runs pretty quick. Mind you, when it's slow populating the available apps, it usually pops up a lot of them, if I had to guess, about 50 or more. The contextual menu fills up the height of my 24" monitor and then some. It's very quick when only populating 15 or less. Ya, I have a lot of apps that I use. Some more than others, but they do get used from time to time. lol

I believe I did rebuild the LaunchServices database. I think that's how the .cbr and .rar files are getting messed up. After the rebuild, .cbr defaulted to .rar (as seen under Get Info). So when I do and Open All With under Get Info window, it affects actual .rar files as well. Maybe rebuilding it again will fix it.

Cheers.

 

[benwiggy]

I have a system maintenance due anyways

You do not need to run any scheduled "maintenance" on OS X. You don't need to clean the caches, repair permissions or do anything else on a regular basis.

In fact, emptying caches and other so-called maintenance tasks can reduce system performance. Repairing Permissions is over-rated and does very little.

However, if you do have a problem, then it is worth trying some of these methods.

 

[gslrider]

I don't normally reset caches or repair permissions, not unless something is noticeably wrong, then I go through a gamut of troubleshooting, which is very rare for me. And I stay away from hacks. But in 'desperate times' comes 'desperate measures'. lol

Every other month I run Disk Warrior. Volume directory issues seem to be the most common of all issues. Luckily, most times it doesn't find bad blocks or volumes. But when it does, I notice a considerable difference in better performance once it fixes the problems. I've been using DW for years, and I stand by that software. Has helped me save drives that was thought to be done.

I only rebuilt the LaunchServices Database on someone else's tip a little while ago, because of the Open With contextual menu issue I was running into. It helped for a little bit, until my system put all the ones that got cleared out, back in again.