Magic Launch

Download

Magic Launch 1.1.1 (647 Kb): Latest version of Magic Launch, March 2, 2010. See changes.
Requires Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

Introduction

Magic Launch is a preference pane that lets you customize the experience of opening files on your Mac. It’s something you do often, so it deserves to be hassle free. Here is what some magic can do for you:

Reinstate Creator Codes

Magically reenable creator codes, now limited to the file types of your choice.

Some applications attach creator codes to files so that when you reopen the files they launch the original application. Apple took that magic away in Snow Leopard. For some files this can be an improvement, but for others opening them can become an exercise in frustration. If that is your case then Magic Launch can relieve you.

Write the Rules of Magic

Creator codes are nice, but there are plenty of better ways to decide which application should open a file. Go beyond creator codes and craft your own custom rules. The rules you add refine further the choice of the application to launch by inspecting various characteristics of the file to open. Each rule defines the criteria that determines if the file should open in a particular application.

With rules you can magically open your HTML files in a text editor when they are in your project folder, while the same files elsewhere will launch your web browser. Make your .m files open in either Matlab or Xcode depending on the actual content of the file. Or change the destiny of files with a predetermined name so they go to a different application.

Learn more about rules…

How it works

Magic Launch installs its own “agent” application on the system which redirects launch events to the right application. When you use the Magic Launch preference panel to activate creator codes, or rules, for a given file type the agent is set as the default application in the system. The tiny agent application doesn’t run until you open a file, and it quits immediately afterwards, so it never consumes memory nor the CPU while doing nothing.

Magic Launch installs the agent application in each user account. This way it can be updated when the settings change, which is necessary to preserve the icons. Otherwise files handled by the agent would get a generic document icon.

Version History

Magic Launch 1.1.1 (2 Mar 2010)

Dragging a file to the file type list will now check for a file-specific association and propose to remove it if there is one.
Fixed a bug where rule ordering was not saved correctly.

Magic Launch 1.1 (22 Feb 2010)

Added a criterion to match a file’s color label.

Magic Launch 1.0.1 (22 Jan 2010)

Corrected an issue with files having no extension. This makes it possible to create rules for files like “Makefile” or “.htaccess” (when the later is visible). See this post for details.
Corrected a few typos and an language mismatch in the English version of two dialog boxes.
Corrected an issue where Magic Launch would appear enabled while in reality it was disabled.

Magic Launch 1.0 (7 Jan 2010)

Initial release.