MacOSX - File extension associate with application - Programmatically

Question

I\'m trying to get my program to automatically associate certain file extensions to be opened by it but I\'m not sure how to do that in MacOSX. I\'m not asking how to assoc

Answer 1

If you right click on your .app file and choose "Show package contents", there will be a folder called Contents, and in that folder, there will be a file called info.plist and a folder called Resources (if any of these don't exist, create them). If you want to associate the file extension .myfileextension with your program and you want files with that extension to have the icon contained in a file called icon.icns, copy the file icon.icns into the Resources folder and add the following code to the info.plist file right before the tag:

    
        CFBundleTypeRole
        Editor
        CFBundleTypeIconFile
        icon.icns                    
        CFBundleTypeExtensions
        
            myfileextension          
        
        CFBundleTypeName
        File extension description   
        LSHandlerRank
        Owner
    

The lines marked in the above code should be changed according to what properties you want the extension to have. icon.icns should be changed to whatever name the icon you put in the Resources folder and you want the file extension to have is called, myfileextension should be changed to the file extension that you want to associate with your program (without the dot), and File extension description should be changed to the description you want the file extension to have (for example for .doc files it would be "Microsoft Word document").

Also, you can check here to see what the other values mean and if you need to change them. There are also other values listed there that you can add if you need them.