Something’s been low-key nagging at me for a little while as I flip-flop between machines running Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard, versus running stuff newer like Sierra (or Mountain Lion, via VMware):
What’s the process behind the “Open With…” fly-out in Finder and why does it behave differently on, from what I can suss, pre-Lion vs. post-Lion?
Specifically, if I right-click-select a file in Finder to “Open With…”, the delay for “Fetching…” on Tiger/Leopard/Snow Leopard is fairly minimal as the OS scans its system’s own applications for suitable candidates. The delay, even on my iBook G3 clamshell running Tiger Server, isn’t very long (perhaps a couple of seconds).
Meanwhile, the same task on, say, my fastest MacBook Pro running Sierra, takes maybe ten, sometimes up to 20 seconds to search all machines within a local network for applications on not just its own system, but also on other networked systems. The delay can get vexing.
I have tried to find a definitive answer for this change in behaviour, or maybe a plist flag which toggles this behaviour, but I keep coming up empty (possibly because I’m searching on incorrect terminology).
Has anyone here ever pinpointed this Finder behaviour and determined how to alter it, both on pre-Lion and post-Lion systems?
*****
EDIT:
On a lark, I decided to rebuild the launchservices database on the two offending systems, and this seems to have reduced the amount of time as well as, for now, not displaying applications on different machines as “Open with…” options.
Still, this doesn’t get to the heart of why these systems were even looking for network-situated applications in the first place.
I’m going to tentatively flag this as “Resolved” for now.
What’s the process behind the “Open With…” fly-out in Finder and why does it behave differently on, from what I can suss, pre-Lion vs. post-Lion?
Specifically, if I right-click-select a file in Finder to “Open With…”, the delay for “Fetching…” on Tiger/Leopard/Snow Leopard is fairly minimal as the OS scans its system’s own applications for suitable candidates. The delay, even on my iBook G3 clamshell running Tiger Server, isn’t very long (perhaps a couple of seconds).
Meanwhile, the same task on, say, my fastest MacBook Pro running Sierra, takes maybe ten, sometimes up to 20 seconds to search all machines within a local network for applications on not just its own system, but also on other networked systems. The delay can get vexing.
I have tried to find a definitive answer for this change in behaviour, or maybe a plist flag which toggles this behaviour, but I keep coming up empty (possibly because I’m searching on incorrect terminology).
Has anyone here ever pinpointed this Finder behaviour and determined how to alter it, both on pre-Lion and post-Lion systems?
*****
EDIT:
On a lark, I decided to rebuild the launchservices database on the two offending systems, and this seems to have reduced the amount of time as well as, for now, not displaying applications on different machines as “Open with…” options.
Still, this doesn’t get to the heart of why these systems were even looking for network-situated applications in the first place.
I’m going to tentatively flag this as “Resolved” for now.
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