The most accessible of any metadata in the Finder and apps, Finder tags can be ideal for classifying files and folders into no more than 7 categories. Here’s how they work.
Finder
Using lsregister to clean up the Open With menu only works temporarily, and it’s populated by apps found anywhere local to your Mac. That’s not good for VMs sharing the Applications folder.
Odd problems with Sonoma: every old app now listed in the Open With popup menu in the Finder, and lsregister that reports errors, and gets System Settings into trouble.
Three years and four major versions of macOS later, are Apple silicon Macs diverging from Intel models? It might look like it.
Rather than migrating some files to a new Mac, they were copied to an external drive. But some of them couldn’t be opened because of ‘permissions’. Here’s why and how to fix it.
How does macOS track Recent items for apps? In a property list, using a Base-64 encoded Bookmark. Here’s how to decode, resolve and discover their contents.
Why can’t other Macs and devices see custom folder and file icons in iCloud Drive? Why do some suddenly vanish?
What if, when you double-click a document, the wrong app tries to open it, or maybe the right app but wrong version? Includes command tool use.
Where to look for file metadata in the Finder, and how you can customise it, in spite of its apparent confusion. And how APFS takes care of extended attributes for you.
Introduced in the Finder in Mac OS X, these hidden and invisible files have been quietly causing havoc with backups, revision control systems, and more.
The Eclectic Light Company 