For the last 10 years, macOS has relied on Uniform Type Identifiers to recognise different types of files, for opening in apps, QuickLook, Spotlight and in other features.
Desktop
Four eras: rebuilding the Desktop, repairing permissions, resetting Home permissions, and most recently cursing privacy protection. A cynical history?
From the original Desktop databases linking files to distinctive icons, to the sophistication of QuickLook, how display of thumbnails for files has changed in Mac OS.
Full screen single window, freestyle overlapping, tiled, full screen split view, Stage Manager, Spaces and Mission Control – each pictured and explained.
In Classic Mac OS, icons were determined by hidden databases. Here’s what we had to do periodically to keep them from breaking.
When he put files or folders on his Desktop, although they were shown in the Finder’s listing of its contents, they simply vanished.
How to prevent folders from being synced with iCloud Drive, and what happens when you turn Desktop & Documents off could surprise.
All about Mojave’s Dynamic Desktop, whether you can get rid of those files, and how to make your own personal Dynamic Desktop.
Consistency is an overriding design principle for the human interface. However you use iCloud storage, it adopts different behaviours from those of the Finder. Apple needs to evolve the iCloud interface to improve it, and to empower the user.
The Desktop and Finder illusions rely on files having a type and creator, and an icon association. These were kept in the Desktop Database, and are now the responsibility of Launch Services.
The Eclectic Light Company 