Change File Associations and Icons

O

One Sick Puppy

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I've changed the association .swf files using control+click/get info, but while these .swf (Macromedia Flash) files were previously associated with Quictime (what is up with that? QT can't even open them!) I have now associated them, by default, with Firefox. Yet, the .swf files still remain associated with the Quictime Icon.

*update: Now that I've rebooted, the files are no longer associated with the Quicktime Icon. They are now associated with a blank icon. I would still like them to use the Firefox icon, tho.

How do I change the associated icon for a particular file type?

Thanks for the help! Working hard to love my Mac! :D
 
well, from the get info menu select open with *your favourite app*, then click the button just below to apply this to all the files of that kind... in my case it's working...
 
that should work, but what if the file type you want to use doesn't have an application that will open it. for example, i write computer programs that get executed in the command line, so is there a program that can give a certain file type one icon?
 
you could put the icon you want, there are a lot of freeware icons on line, either at apple.com... crtl+click on your file and the icon file, then get info on both, select on the small icon in the top of the window, then copy it and paste it on your file icon, which should be a blank page...
 
.swf is a Flash file which means you need Macromedia Flash installed in your computer to make it readable by flash (via the get info procedure). Since you don't have Flash (only assuming) your computer won't know what to do with the .swf files even if you tell it to use Firefox.

I had this problem too when I started using my old Flash 4 again (don't have the MX version yet) and OS X correctly saw my exported Flash movies as Quicktime movies.
 
One Sick Puppy said:
*update: Now that I've rebooted, the files are no longer associated with the Quicktime Icon. They are now associated with a blank icon. I would still like them to use the Firefox icon, tho.

How do I change the associated icon for a particular file type?
Click to expand...

You don't need to reboot, you just gotta relaunch the finder. It's annoying but it seems when you 'change all' the only icon that changes is the one you're editing, the others change after a Finder relaunch.

Also, you cannot associate an icon for a particular file type and have all future files of that type have the icon. It's application dependant. If you have .doc files all set to open with textedit, if textedit doesn't have an icon for that file type(which it doesnt) the icons on your system for .doc files will therefore be blank unless you individually customize the icon for each file. There's no way to associate system wide icons for .doc files.

I think this is one of the major problems with OS X file and icon associations system.
 
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