MacOS – How to use Atom as the default editor for “open”

macosterminal

I would like to set Atom as my default editor for open.

In order to do this, I set in my .bashrc:

export EDITOR="atom -nw"

and reload the file with source .bashrc. Anyway, when I try to open a text file through open filename, it always opens it with TextEdit.

I also tried variations of the above, such as export EDITOR=atom, or exporting VISUAL.

I am sure that .bashrc gets loaded on login.

What am I missing/doing wrong?

Best Answer

The open command is part of OS X and uses Finder's default “Open With…” application to open the file, just like double-clicking it in Finder. $EDITOR is used for things like fc where it is used as the default command-line editor (a replacement for vim or emacs).

To use Atom with the open command, you can select a file of the type you want in Finder, press ⌘ command+I for “Get Info”, and then change “Open With:” to Atom, and click “Change All…”.

Alternatively you can define an alias like

alias e="atom -nw"

in your .bashrc and then run e file-to-edit.txt whenever you want to edit a file in Atom.

Related Solutions

Change the default action to open executable files in the editor instead of Terminal

Run plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.launchservices.plist and add an entry like this under LSHandlers:

<dict>
    <key>LSHandlerContentType</key>
    <string>public.unix-executable</string>
    <key>LSHandlerRoleAll</key>
    <string>com.macromates.textmate</string>
</dict>

You can also change the default application for normal files with no extension:

<dict>
    <key>LSHandlerContentType</key>
    <string>public.plain-text</string>
    <key>LSHandlerRoleAll</key>
    <string>com.macromates.textmate</string>
</dict>

You can apply the changes by restarting. Just logging out and back in doesn't seem to work. You could also rebuild the Launch Services database, but it has the side-effect that the warnings about opening applications for the first time are shown again.

Another option is to add something like this to a duti configuration file:

com.macromates.textmate public.unix-executable all
com.macromates.textmate public.plain-text all

To make this question more searchable, here is the error message Finder shows when you try to change the default application for executable scripts:

The operation can’t be completed.

An unexpected error occurred (error code -50).

MacOS – How to use the MacPorts version of nano as the default text editor

You can either rename or completely remove /usr/bin/nano, then:

ln -s /opt/local/bin/nano /usr/bin/nano

The above command creates a symbolic link from /usr/bin/nano to /opt/local/bin/nano

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Change the default action to open executable files in the editor instead of Terminal

MacOS – How to use the MacPorts version of nano as the default text editor

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