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macos - Where does Mac OS X store file association information?


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?


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



Sorry, this question is old, but the answer is really wrong.


As toolbear mentioned, Doug Harris' answer is only partially correct.


The Launch Services Database file, which is where all of the information for all known applications and the types of documents they can handle is stored, is located in the following location:


Lion:


/private/var/folders/**/**/-Caches-/com.apple.LaunchServices-034501.csstore


Snow Leopard:


/private/var/folders/**/**/-Caches-/com.apple.LaunchServices-025501.csstore


Leopard:


/Library/Caches/com.apple.LaunchServices-023501.csstore


The /private/var/folders/ folder is where the "secure" Caches and Temporary folders for each user are stored. The **'s in the path shown above will be something like /dl/dlXWtS5WH9SNboPxxrDIyE+++TI/, or another obscure character sequence to prevent guessing.


Note that the name com.apple.LaunchServices-025501.csstore is composed of the user ID (mine is 501) appended to the -025 suffix, which is unique to Snow Leopard. (In each version of OS X, Apple tends to change the distinguishing suffix used to prevent compatibility problems between different versions of OS X. You'll notice that Leopard used -023). Lion is using the -034 suffix.


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