OS X: Remove Duplicates From “Open With” in Right Click Menu

The “Open With” menu appears when any file in the Mac Finder is right-clicked (or control-clicked), this menu gives a list of alternate apps that the selected file can be opened with other than what is currently set as the default application.

One of the few bugbears of mine when using my MacBook Air  is that whenever I right-click on an image or file and select “Open With” I am often faced with a list of duplicates to choose from? In the worst cases it won’t even just be a duplicate here and there, it will be multiples of the same app appearing in the “Open With”  list.

So recently I decided to search for a solution to this problem………..

Funnily enough it’s a common enough problem so heres the solution I settled on –

To solve this problem we need to launch Terminal from  the /Applications/Utilities/ directory and copy/paste the following command string ;

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/\

LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/\

lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain user

This can take a while as in order to remove the pesky duplicate entries, all the Launch Services database has to be rebuilt!

When it is finished rebuilding the database, we must next quit and relaunch Finder. This can also be done easily using Terminal with the command line ;

killall Finder

Once we click “Run” we will get a new window with a “Process completed” message.

Now when Finder has relaunched, choose any file and right-click on it, hover the cursor over “Open With” and we should now see a nice clean list with no duplicates…..

Michael