I know that if I'm using the mac command line, I can open a file with the command

open file

Furthermore, if I know the name of the application with which I want to open the file, I should be able to open it with

open -a "Application" file

However, I can't figure out how to know what names I have available for "Applications," or how I might be able to add different applications to those that I can call in this way. Any pointers towards the right direction (or even what I could have done to figure this out on my own) would be so appreciated!

CodePudding user response：

I have often wondered myself and hope this crude method doesn't stop anyone who knows the actual answer from responding. Please don't rush to accept this work-around else folk will lose interest in sharing the proper answer.

I have two crude, clumsy methods...

Method 1: I can look for all things called xxx.app whilst discarding errors, like this:

find / -name "*.app" 2> /dev/null

Method 2: I get a list of all running processes and save it in a file, then I start the app I am looking for by double-clicking it, or from Spotlight, then I get a new list of what's running and compare to see what's new:

ps -aef > /tmp/a
# Launch app
ps -aef > /tmp/b
opendiff /tmp/{a,b}

There's also a bundleId that you can pass to open, and you can use mdls command on an app to get its bundleId - try it on Pages with:

mdls /Applications/Pages.app

So you can presumably use mdfind somehow to get bundleIds of everything that might be an app. Example of mdfind here.

The following gets a list of all things that Apple thinks might be application bundles:

mdfind "kMDItemContentType == 'com.apple.application-bundle'"

CodePudding user response：

Method 1

1. Click the  Apple icon at the top-left corner on your screen.
2. Click "About This Mac"
3. Click "System Report"
4. Navigate to "Software/Applications"

Method 2

Use this method if your prefer CLI over GUI.

system_profiler -json SPApplicationsDataType | jq -r '.SPApplicationsDataType[] | ._name'

Method 3

This is slow but it works.

find / -name *.app