macostextedit
If I hit Spotlight type "TextEdit" and hit enter. TextEdit starts and after that I can open any txt file by double clicking on it. As you would expect. If I close TextEdit and click on any txt file it will flash very quick (as if it opens) and than nothing happens. No Console message and it does not open the file. I don't get it. I trashed the "com.apple.TextEdit.plist", but that did not change anything. Restart has no effect as well.
This seems spooky. Any ideas ?
The "foo.bar can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer" error is because of Gatekeeper. You can disable Gatekeeper from System Preferences:
Selecting "Always Open With" from the "Open With > Other..." dialog only changes the default application for the selected files. You can change the default application for all files of a type from a Show Info window:
You can add a context menu item for opening files in TextEdit by creating a service like this with Automator:
If you have the Powerpack for Alfred 2, you can also create a workflow like this:
You can use duti to make TextEdit the default application for plain text files without an extension and executable scripts. Install Homebrew, run brew install duti, save
com.apple.TextEdit public.plain-text all
com.apple.TextEdit public.unix-executable all
as ~/.duti, and then run /usr/local/bin/duti ~/.duti.
I searched in Spotlight as well, using the term “Untitled” and reopened all the Rich Text Format documents from iCloud. Yes, it was unnerving that these are all in the cloud but I am grateful that I was able to recover them all. And now I have the task of saving 120 untitled docs!
Best Answer
So I found the solution. I tried to understand the underlying process better and therefore asked this question in a more general format here:
Double Click to Open Program Mac
The answer is also the answer to this question =
Rebuilding Launch Service Database
Hope this is not too complicated :)