When you right-click (or control-click) on a file in the Mac OS X Finder, you get a contextual menu with a nice "Open With" option, which lets you open the selected file with any Application that you desire to.

That is pretty nice until that menu gets all clogged up with all sorts of old/broken apps that you don't use any more.

Due to some caching mechanism, it seems that this menu never cleans itself up :/

So here is how to reset it:

  1. Open a Terminal window (by running the "Terminal" Application)
  2. Copy/paste the following command: (all on one line) 
    /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
  3. Click on the Finder icon and relaunch the Finder (or log out and log in again)

Your 'Open width" menu will now be all clean... and will start to fill up again as you run/install apps that register themselves there...

Comments from long ago:

Comment from: JM Cheng

I’ve looking for solution to exactly this problem and the solution presented here works!

2012-09-06 16-21

Comment from: Dan Walker

Spot on, thanks very much!

2012-10-15 02-47

Comment from: larrycz

Works perfectly on Mountain Lion. Thanks for the tip!

2012-11-04 09-40

Comment from: Shamim Rahman

Awesome! Worked like a charm! Many thanks
[Mountain Lion]

2012-12-22 22-14

Comment from: dinho -spm-

works like a charm, thanks bro

2013-01-07 12-41

Comment from: thefourthpope

Thanks! Easy and it works

2013-01-23 15-05

Comment from: Neil

Worked a treat thanks!

2013-01-29 16-08

Comment from: Jeff Chen

Nice !!!

2013-04-27 20-20

Comment from: Steve

For those who are interested I have an article on how to clean up the Open With menu here [http://idoitonamac.blogspot.com/2014/03/keeping-open-with-menu-clean-on-os-x.html] and I also have made an application to perform all the tasks discussed in the article.

The application (CoW) is available for download here [https://github.com/spaquet/CleanOpenWith/releases]

You can fork the app on GitHub too and make it even better.

2014-04-30 08-35