5

By default PNG images open in Preview. At some point, this has changed on my system so that clicking on a PNG file launches Paintbrush. While that's a really nice app, I'd still like the default to be Preview. How to change it back? (I formulated the question title to be little more generic — how to do this for any file types?)

I'm looking for the easiest, most readily-available way, with no 3rd party tools or going to the command-line. Somewhat surprisingly, System Preferences seems to contain nothing related to file associations.

This beginner question should probably be an easy one... I hope!

Improve this question
1
  • Additional question from Rajesh Vaghela (in an answer; reposting here as comment): "Any programmatic solution for this problem?"
    – Jonik
    Oct 13, 2010 at 15:01

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
12
  1. Get Info on the file in Finder (⌘I)
  2. Find the "Open with:" section
  3. Change the application to the one you want
  4. Click "Change All…" to apply the change for all files of the same type.

Info window

Improve this answer
2
  • Just wondering: during the 3 min 8 secs between me posting the question and you the answer, did you take the screenshot and upload it to imageshack yourself, or did you re-use someone else's pic? ツ
    – Jonik
    Aug 24, 2009 at 20:59
  • 1
    I took it myself, cleverly hiding my short username by collapsing the General section. ;) I used the ImageShack uploader that I made myself (based on a widget): box.net/shared/06nnvqa5y5
    – jtbandes
    Aug 24, 2009 at 21:13

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.