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This article only mentions in passing the best approach so far: Uniform Type Identifiers (1). When it comes to file types and associations Mac OS X hit a homeru

This article only mentions in passing the best approach so far: Uniform Type Identifiers (1). When it comes to file types and associations Mac OS X hit a homerun. This mechanism way more powerful than MIME types because: UTIs use a reverse-DNS naming structure. UTIs support multiple inheritance (which is a good thing in this context) Using UTIs allow per file exceptions. It really is a shame this was not implemented by any other OS than Mac OS X. It is one of the brilliant technical features it has. Together with bundles (2), they make for very powerful and flexible filing. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Type_Identifier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Type_Identifier (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_(macOS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_(macOS)

dkmar 6y ago
Dynamic UTIs in macOS started to cause problems for me when I upgraded to Catalina. Setting defaults for 'Open with' on these file types seems pointless as I'm forced to do it once per each dynamic UTI (as far as I can tell). It's also annoying that quicklook (extensions) started playing dumb with them — you'd think that QL would look for the lowest familiar ancestor or something. I'm not sure whether the file typing approach changed with catalina, or if the migration from qlgenerators to quicklook extensions broke things, or if it's just catalina being buggy but it's disappointing that the typing situation seemed better back in mojave.