Reader Matthew Fries is slightly frustrated by the behavior of the Finder’s Open With command. He writes:
Is there a way to edit what shows up in a file’s Open With menu? For example, when I Control-click on a PDF it would be handy if the three or four programs I actually use on it come up (Preview, Acrobat Reader, PDFLab, and PDFShrink)! Instead I have to click Other and browse for it over and over again.
Our Mac Gems columnist (and my Playlistmag.com compatriot), Dan Frakes, suggests Rainer Brockerhoff’s free Zingg! to carry out the job. It adds an Also Open With contextual menu command to the Finder that can be populated with your favorite applications.
If, for some reason, you prefer to do this kind of thing by hand, simply use the power of alphabetization to promote your favorite applications to the top of the list. For example, if you precede Preview with a space, it will appear at the top of the list when you select Open With.
Remember too that if you always want a particular kind of document to open with a specific application, you need only select an example document (a PDF file, for example), press Command-I, click the triangle next to the Open With entry in the resulting Info window, choose the application you’d like to use from the Open With pop-up menu, and then click Change All to associate these documents with the selected application.
Unrelated side note: On a whim, I visited Matthew’s website. It turns out he’s a remarkably talented jazz pianist. Click a couple of the Real media files to hear for yourself.