filemacos
What is the technical name of the following file-open capabilities of macOS programs?
You have Spotlight available from every file-picker dialog.
You can search by name or extension/file type, either in the currently open directory or the entire machine.
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If you know the name rather than the filetype of the document you are looking for, then, same as in any Finder folder, you can start to type the name & the selection will jump to the first match for that string.
eg typing t,e,s will find the first match on test.txt, but you can't use this to find a file type .xml etc as it only searches from the beginning of the name.
I followed your exact same procedure and found the exact same problem on operating system Sierra as well. After trying a few things I decided (in addition to changing the main Applications icon in the get info window) to do the exact same thing in the get info window of the applet.icns file and change it's icon as well. I then opened that script editor app in scripteditor and saved the file. The new icons remained as I changed them. Tested in script debugger also and my custom icons remained untouched.
Best Answer
In all instances, it's called "opening a file." macOS (like other operating systems including Windows and Linux) support multiple methods of opening a file.
Drag and Drop is supported throughout the OS. If you drag and drop a file onto another graphical element, it will (attempt to) open that file within the context of that element. If it's a folder, Finder will open that folder to accept the file. If it's an application, it will open that application with that file (as input).
Open With is just an alternative to the default action of "Open" in Finder which uses the file's default associated application. This allows you to select from alternates registered with macOS or manually select an app.
A 3rd party app does the same thing by opening a file with it's associated default or alternate application. There's no different method of opening files as already provided for by the OS.
The applications associated with different file types are registered in LaunchServices. So a PDF might be associated with Preview or Adobe Acrobat Reader. LaunchServices will have those relationships established within it's database. This is how "Open With..." is populated with alternate apps.
From a command line perspective, this is how you can have a
.docor.docxfile automatically be opened by Word, for example when typingBut then, if you want to open it with Pages, you can issue the command
You can also launch the application and specify the file as a "command line argument" even for a file that's not even associated with an app (you wouldn't use a browser to view text files even though it is supported).