"Open With/ Other" -- show "All Applications" by default, not "Recommended Applications" with others greyed out

Thank you, I do have a good understanding of the information you shared as well as the details in the article.

I'll just have one last run at this...

When I right click on an item and select "Open With", a short list of apps appears for me to choose from. If what I want isn't there, I select "Other" at the bottom of that list and this page opens:

Immediately I'm greeted by a list of applications, almost all of which are greyed out so I cannot access them. If I scroll down I'll find a handful that aren't greyed out (most likely those from the first short list I encountered). And if none of the apps showing are what I want to use, I'll have to select "Show Options" there at the bottom left and this will appear:

and I see the reason most of the list is greyed out because "Recommended Applications" is enabled by default, so the only applications NOT greyed out are those that are "Recommended". To correct that, I have to click on the little menu arrows and change "Recommended Applications" to "All Applications" and WHAM BAM, THANK YOU, MA'AM!!!! The shackles are off and suddenly none of them are greyed out any longer, they're all available to me to investigate as I see fit.

This is called freedom. Freedom to make my own choices, freedom to make bad choices, even... to experiment with options that aren't necessarily "recommended". And this is the setting I would like to make default so that I don't have to repeat this tedious process every time the app I want to open a file with is greyed out, which is constantly. If I could enable "All Applications" by default instead of "Recommended Applications" it may only save me a few seconds on any one occasion. But multiply that by a dozen or more times an hour when I'm doing certain kinds of work and those few seconds add up to being very annoying and tedious indeed.

I've now asked this question as many different ways I can think of. It's been explained that this default to "Recommended Applications" is how MacOS has always worked, which is what I suspected was the case. The question that still remains is can this default setting be changed? Yes, I already know it can be changed in each instance that arises, but only the current instance will be affected, the default setting is not affected. I also know I can select "Always Open With" and permanently assign a particular app to a particular file type, but that is not the desired objective either.

The desired objective is to change the system default from "Recommended Applications" to "All Applications". I suspect the answer is no, I can't do that. But I'd like to hear that answer from someone who can say it with some authority and perhaps even tell me why with some kind of reasonable rationale other than "that's the way MacOS has always worked". To date, it's not even clear to me that my question has been correctly understood. Thank you.

Ah well, at this stage I don't imagine the answer I'm looking for will be making an appearance.  Thank you for the suggestions, much appreciated. Unfortunately, it looks like I'm just gonna have to learn to live with and work around this problem. The task at hand may call for a particular app that has unique strengths best suited to the task. But the same file a half hour later may be better served by a completely different app with a completely different interface, but best suited to what I need at the time.

Other times I may simply want to explore various apps, maybe new ones or apps I haven't spent alot of time with. Sometimes I may be looking for the best app for a particular task, but not necessarily the app I want to always open a particular file type with.

In any case, I guess this thread has run its course. I didn’t get what I wanted but I kind of anticipated I wouldn’t. I had already been searching diligently for it on my own for a few days without success. Coming to the forum was always a long shot. I was hopeful… but my transition from hope to resignation is now complete. Cheers

PS. that feedback idea... it may be time to give that a shot

I'm new to Mac OS since March and this has always been the case during that time... does that make it an old issue or a new one? I suspect it's been like that since long before March and what's changed? I finally got fed up having to change the setting every %$#* time I use open with/ other and started looking for a way to get rid of that "recommended applications" default once and for all. When I click on "open with" and select "other" I just want to see all available apps listed for me to choose from. The default setting causes more than 90% of them to be greyed out, including apps that would work fine or that I may wish to experiment with. It is exceptionally annoying as I use "open with" constantly.

I'm on a 2023 Macbook Pro, M2 Max, Sonoma 14.0

Can this default setting be changed or is it going to be another one of those brick wall/ road block type scenarios I've come to know so well? Advice appreciated!

When you say you've never heard of this issue before, does that mean you've never seen Mac OS behave in the manner I've described, or does it mean the behavior I'm describing isn't something you've seen raised as an issue by anyone before? Are you able to see the behavior for yourself on any of your own devices? If this is a default setting and what I have described is normal Mac behavior and to be expected... perhaps people just accept that's how things work and that's why you haven't seen it raised as an "issue" before?

I feel pretty confident the behavior I've described is the default setting for how apps are presented in the "open with/ other" context and not my device acting up. But I'll take a look at your suggestions.

In the meantime, can anyone offer confirmation one way or another, is what I've described the default and therefore normal? And if it's normal, can it be changed? Or is it an anomaly, behavior unique to my device and therefore a problem in need of a solution?

Cheers!