Question

I know there is a system preferences pane to manually modify the file associations in Mac OS X Leopard. However, I'm curious where does Leopard actually store these information?

UPDATE: as I said, I'm not interested in methods to change them. I want to know the configuration file or database (like registry in Windows) where those mappings are stored.

Answer 1

OS X uses a "defaults" system -- here's a nice article with lots of examples. The files are stored under ~/Library/Preferences, but it's best to manipulate with the "defaults" command rather than editing the plists directly.

File associations are stored under the com.apple.LaunchServices domain. From the link above, you can see the list with this command:

defaults read com.apple.LaunchServices | grep -v LSBundleLocator

Far more information about Launch Services specifically, can be found in Apple's Launch Services Programming Guide

Answer 2

Easy peasy! Its just that it isn't in the most obvious place:

• Right click on the file you want to change the association for and select "Get Info" (or just select and hit Command+I.
• Go down to "Opens With" (you may need to click the arrow next to it to expand it) and select another program from the drop down box.
• Click the "Change All..." button to change this file association for all files of the same extension on your system.

You could also go out and install RCDefaultApp prefpane to modify all file associations in one place.

Answer 3

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist