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polycat33

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 1, 2007
437
1
Alexandria, VA
After installing Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10 on my MBP I had TONS of options under my "Open With" list for images. They kinda bugged me, first off because trying to find what I want in a list of 30 or 40 items is kinda annoying, and second because I knew I would never use any of them. Tonight I decided I'd try to get rid of them. I had previously noticed that they were listed in my applications in AppCleaner, which is what I use to get rid of programs. I decided tonight that I'd back all the files up, then delete them all using AppCleaner. That went fine, except that now when I right click and choose "Open With" there are two of each program. I know, of course that there is only one of each program on my computer. This also happens for non-image files, like there's two Text Edit's when I right click on Word documents. I've attached an example. Does anyone have any idea what I did and how to undo it? I tried restarting and I still get the doubles. I'm wondering if replacing all the files in their original location would be of any help, I have a feeling I'd just end up with two of each of the programs, but 30-40 duplicates instead of the five or six I have now for images.

EDIT: Slight update... I copied over the Photoshop and Image Ready application files from my backup hard drive (and saved my edited files to the backup as well) and after a reboot, I'm back to one of each, but still the long list of stuff I don't and never plan on using. Now I guess I just have to decide if I'd rather put up with two of each program or a crazy number of "Open With" options for images. Any ideas on why the doubling happened so maybe I can get the best of both worlds by doing it right the second time around?
 

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Open Terminal and type in on one line (or copy and paste from here ;)):

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

You may need to repeat this after having backup disks attached, as the "extra" copy of the Applications there will come back to the Open With... menu.

Also note that you may be asked if you want to open the application(s) for the first time after running this fix.
 
Yeah, if you've got for example, a cloned backup mounted, OS X will show the cloned applications as well.
 
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