Where do I find the default FTP client?

Question

Level 1

9 points

Where do I find the default FTP client?

I'd like to set the Finder back to being my default FTP client, however when I hit Go -> Connect to Server and type anything with ftp:// in front, it opens my Firefox. How do I set it to open the Finder instead?
I know I can set the default browser in Safari but I can't see anywhere to set the default FTP.

Thanks

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Jan 15, 2010 9:57 AM

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Answer 1

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Jan 15, 2010 10:02 AM in response to laotuz2

I've never seen this.
try rebuilding your launch services database.
run the following terminal command


/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

if that doesn't help, delete the file home directory/library/preferences/com.apple.launchservices.plist and rerun the above command again.

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Answer 2

laotuz2 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jan 18, 2010 3:05 AM in response to V.K.

If I rebuild my launch services database won't I need to manually set all the file associations again? After all, this isn't accidental, I must have set Firefox to handle my FTP for some bizarre reason. I haven't tested whether thats true or not because I did check out the home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.launchservices.plist like you suggested.

In there, having opened it up in PropertyList editor (knew I downloaded that for something! 🙂 I found an entry LSHandlerURLScheme with the value ftp and above that LSHandlerRoleAll with the value org.mozilla.firefox.

I checked on another machine where the Finder did open and saw the value it had in the same place was com.apple.finder so I put that in, hit save and off it goes. Perfect!

There were other entries for sftp and others so I edited that as well.

So thank you very much, that's exactly what I was looking for. Not exactly simple though!

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Answer 3

Jan 27, 2010 9:02 AM in response to laotuz2

Thank you so much for this answer! That was driving me batty. FYI: before I rebuilt the Launch Services database as described above, I edited my com.apple.LaunchServices.plist to reassign responsibility for handling the "ftp" resource type back to "com.apple.finder". That was really nice of Firefox to "offer" to help, but not so nice that it was this tricky to restore the original settings!

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Answer 4

laotuz2 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jan 21, 2010 9:28 AM in response to laotuz2

FYI the change is only temporary if you're not logged in as an Admin user. Make sure you have access to an admin account to make the change in.

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