How Can I Make an app Always Appear in the "Open With > Other" List for Images on macOS?

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How Can I Make an app Always Appear in the "Open With > Other" List for Images on macOS?

I’m trying to find a way to have Photoshop consistently appear in the "Open With > Other" context menu for image files on macOS, but I don’t want to set Photoshop as the default application. I want to be able to open images with Photoshop without changing the default app setting.

I’ve tried:

Right-clicking an image file and choosing “Open With > Other…”, navigating to Applications folder, opening Photoshop from there, but it still doesn't add Photoshop to the "Open With > Other" list for future use

Clicking the 'always open with' checkbox in the 'get info' dialogue box, but that just makes Photoshop the default application which is not what I want

Opening with photoshop via "other..." very often, but this still doesn't make it appear in the open with-> other context menu- instead there are apps I never use in the context menu.

Does anyone know of a way to either:

Add Photoshop permanently to the "Open With > Other" list for all image files without setting it as the default application?
Utilize a third-party tool or script that can achieve this goal?

Help appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Posted on Jul 12, 2024 10:11 AM

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Answer 1

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etresoft

Level 9

57,554 points

Jul 12, 2024 3:35 PM in response to uyergbfv

There is nothing you can do to force an app to appear in that list. That is decided by the file types that a given app advertises its ability to open. Although Photoshop was originally a Mac app, its current support for the macOS operating system is quite poor. It is very common to see people complaining in these forums about Adobe's total or partial lack of support for some macOS operating system feature. In most cases, people don't realize or refuse to accept that the problem is with Adobe. They demand that Apple fix Adobe's software, which is impossible.

The suggestion to drop those files onto the running Photoshop icon is very good. That's what I would do.

Other options would be to write some Apple scripts or Automator scripts to open a document in Photoshop. Then you could add those scripts in various places in the operating system that would cause your custom script to appear in places like the "Services" menu in that Finder context menu.

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