When you want to open up a document or file with another application in Finder, you can easily do so by right-clicking the file and using the Open With menu. If you use the Open With menu enough, may notice duplicate entries of the same application; sometimes that list can get ridiculously long due to multiple dupliates. Fortunately, you can easily reset the Open With menu and remove those duplicates in just 3 steps.

How to reset the Open With menu

To remove the duplicate entries in the Open With menu, you have to rebuild the Launch Services Database and then relaunch Finder.

  • Open up Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal).
  • Type the following command in Terminal and press enter.
# For OS X 10.5+
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

# For OS X 10.3 and 10.4
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/\Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister \-kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
  • Restart Finder by typing the following command in Terminal and pressing enter.
killall Finder

Your Launch Services Database should have been rebuilt and you should no longer see duplicate application entries in your Open With menu.