Mac OS X – How to Change File Associations

file associationmacmacos

By default PNG images open in Preview. At some point, this has changed on my system so that clicking on a PNG file launches Paintbrush. While that's a really nice app, I'd still like the default to be Preview. How to change it back? (I formulated the question title to be little more generic — how to do this for any file types?)

I'm looking for the easiest, most readily-available way, with no 3rd party tools or going to the command-line. Somewhat surprisingly, System Preferences seems to contain nothing related to file associations.

This beginner question should probably be an easy one… I hope!

Best Answer

  1. Get Info on the file in Finder (⌘I)
  2. Find the "Open with:" section
  3. Change the application to the one you want
  4. Click "Change All…" to apply the change for all files of the same type.

Info window

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