Which problem-solving techniques are still available in macOS Tahoe? While Intel Macs still have a few, Apple silicon Macs don’t have many left.
LaunchServices
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.
Introduced in Catalina, RunningBoard now monitors the life cycle of apps, and may manage resources such as memory. Here it’s helping to launch an app through LaunchServices.
How PlugInKit gets information about all installed app extensions, nd how it informs the services that use those extensions. Why killing the LaunchServices database may not be a good idea.
From speech synthesisers and Blu-ray encoders to wallpapers and widgets, appexes have proliferated far beyond the wildest dreams of the OpenDoc designers, but so little is known about they’re managed by macOS.
The magic of Mac was how you could double-click a document and it opened in the right app. Now that works differently with LaunchServices, it offers me 70 apps to edit any text document. Can we return to magic please?
The hidden command tool lsregister can be used to control LaunchServices and its registry, but there are now snags in most of its features, as explained here.
Overview of how different subsystems work together during launching a notarized app, from LaunchServices to checking WritingTools and AI availability.
Get started browsing your Mac’s log using this lightweight and friendly utility. A walkthrough looking at what happened when I launched an app.
App launch security is built in multiple layers, and not all check are run on every launch of an app. Syspolicy plays a key role, CDHashes are now central, and XProtect scans can make checks on large apps slow.
The Eclectic Light Company 