Opera has magically installed itself yet I can't find its' location

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Level 1

4 points

Opera has magically installed itself yet I can't find its' location

Hi all,

About half an hour ago I tried opening a .torrent file only to have Opera pop up. Now this is curious as I never installed Opera and yet somehow the browser became the default application for torrent files. Not only that, but apparently I have both Opera 9.27 and 9.00 installed. This didn't happen last night when I last opened a torrent file which leads me to believe its a new installation.

I tried using spotlight to find opera and no luck. So I used Find to locate the app. Again, no luck. So I set Find's search parameters to show all applications on my mac. Still Opera is no where to be found, neither 9.27 nor 9.00. It is definitely installed as Opera opened and loaded webpages just fine but the only way to open opera is to right click a torrent file and select it. ***?

Earlier today I downloaded Temperature Monitor ( http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19994) and installed it. Nowhere do I see Opera is even mentioned and I haven't downloaded anything else. However, I cannot think of any other way Opera would have ended up on my system.

So... since neither spotlight nor Find can locate Opera, how to I find it? I've located all the Lib files associated with Opera but not the actual application. This really bothers me as it indicates to there possibly being other applications installed that I am not aware of. Has anyone else run into something similar, whether with opera or another piece of software?

Thanks in advance.

Late 2008 MPB 2.53 GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Mar 27, 2009 10:56 AM

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Answer 1

tmgrome Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 27, 2009 11:39 AM in response to Niel

Thanks a lot, that managed to do the trick!

The location of the file is really weird though.. I found 9.27 and 9.00 in Apps > Adobe > etc etc, stored in two seperate folders.

Does anyone know why Opera didn't show up when I tried searching for it and why did it randomly change to the default app for my torrent files?

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Answer 2

Mar 27, 2009 12:16 PM in response to tmgrome

Many Adobe applications, such as Photoshop Elements, have a copy of Opera built in as a help viewer. You won't find it in an ordinary search because it is inside the application bundle (e.g., inside Photoshop).

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Answer 3

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

Mar 27, 2009 3:54 PM in response to tmgrome

tmgrome wrote:
Hi all,

About half an hour ago I tried opening a .torrent file only to have Opera pop up. Now this is curious as I never installed Opera and yet somehow the browser became the default application for torrent files. Not only that, but apparently I have both Opera 9.27 and 9.00 installed. This didn't happen last night when I last opened a torrent file which leads me to believe its a new installation.

When using torrents and letting other people have access to your computer, many strange things can happen, especially if you are running the computer as an administrator.
If you let someone/something install an app without your permission, it's not possible to say what happened or how to fix it or even what other software may have been installed.
My fist thought would be to perform a malware scan of your computer.

Message was edited by: nerowolfe

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Answer 4

Mar 27, 2009 4:53 PM in response to nerowolfe

As jeffery jones2 said, Adobe products use a highly customized version of the opera browser as the Adobe help center, so it's totally normal for opera to be there. As for it becoming the default program for anything, well, yeah, you have a definite point there.

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Answer 5

tmgrome Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 28, 2009 8:59 AM in response to tmgrome

Thanks for the info, guys! Just got a little worried over finding something I hadn't personally installed. Still wonder why it doesn't show up when searched for but I doubt Adobe has any ill intentions behind that hehe. As for it changing to the default torrent app.. I guess OS X had a hiccup.

About the torrent, it was a legal linux distro not from a torrent site like the pirate bay. I'm far too paranoid to use pirated software so I'm very sure that wasn't the issue.

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Answer 6

Luds

Level 1

6 points

Apr 6, 2009 5:43 PM in response to tmgrome

Adobe Products use Opera for their help files. So if you have photoshop installed, it installs Opera.

I just had the same problem when I was torrent downloading. Glad we all know why Opera is there, and for what purpose.

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Answer 7

May 10, 2009 5:06 PM in response to Jeffrey Jones2

Jeffrey Jones2 wrote:
Many Adobe applications, such as Photoshop Elements, have a copy of Opera built in as a help viewer. You won't find it in an ordinary search because it is inside the application bundle (e.g., inside Photoshop).

This explanation solved a head-scratching mystery for me as well, since when I right-clicked an image file and looked at the "Open with..." possibilities, I was seeing multiple versions of Opera, but a Finder search would only reveal the location of one of them.

But it also raises a puzzling question:

If the "Open With..." contextual menu can see files which are contained inside Package bundles, and the Dock's "Show In Finder" function can do the same, WHY can't those same files be seen by a either a Spotlight search or a conventional top-right-corner-of-any-Finder-window search?

Seems strangely inconsistent, since these different functions are all part of the same OS -- or is there some obvious reason for this that I'm missing?

John Bertram
Toronto

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Answer 8

May 10, 2009 7:31 PM in response to John Bertram

If the "Open With..." contextual menu can see files which are contained inside Package bundles, and the Dock's "Show In Finder" function can do the same, WHY can't those same files be seen by a either a Spotlight search or a conventional top-right-corner-of-any-Finder-window search?

A Package is supposed to hide all its internal files, and behave as a single file. The internal files are for use only by other files inside the package, so will not show up in a normal search. An application may create files that open using files that are in the package, so "Open with", in contextual menus or Get Info, is able to show the correct files, even if they are in a package.
The Dock's "Show In Finder" will also work with files within packages, since it has the file info for a running application.

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Answer 9

May 10, 2009 7:45 PM in response to Malcolm Rayfield

Maybe Apple should just give us an "Advanced" Sys Prefs option when doing a Spotlight/Finder search, a checkbox to "Show files within Packages?". The default would be to have that option unchecked -- but it would be a nice bit of extra user empowerment to at least give us the choice.

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Answer 10

Niel

Community+ 2026

Level 10

743,909 points

Mar 27, 2009 11:02 AM in response to tmgrome

Open it, control-click on its Dock icon, and choose Show in Finder.

(42038)

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Answer 11

Mar 27, 2009 3:41 PM in response to Jeffrey Jones2

Yes, and if you remove it, you're very likely to find that the programs don't work properly without their help viewer.

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