Magic Launch

It’s well worth its cost if you spend a lot of time working with the “generic” file types — text files and images, especially…

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Magic Launch 1.4 (791 Kb): Latest version of Magic Launch, July 12, 2010. See changes.
Requires Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

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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 Your Own Launch Rules

Creator codes are nice, but there are plenty of better ways to decide which application should open a file. 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…

Run your shell commands

With Magic Launch, double-clicking a file can execute a command in a terminal window, or faceless with no terminal window. This is quite useful if you want to open some files in a command line editor or an X11 application.

You can combine shell commands with rules to perform special actions when opening files when they are in a particular folder or have a particular attribute such as a color label.

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.

Known Issues

Magic Launch cannot change the icon of a file depending on the creator code or the rules you set. This means that all files of a certain type will share the same icon, even when they open in different applications.
Similarly, the Finder’s Open With menu and the file information panel will display “Magic Launch Agent” as the default application for file of a type Magic Launch needs to check the creator code or evaluate rules.

Version History

Magic Launch 1.4 (12 Jul 2010)

Can now use multiple versions of the same application in rules and as the default application.
AppleScript applications can now be used.
Fixed an issue with the ASCII and hex content criterion editor.

Magic Launch 1.3.1 (11 Jun 2010)

Fixed a crash for 32-bit version of the color label picker caused by a bug in Mac OS X.

Magic Launch 1.3 (22 Apr 2010)

Added the capability to open files by executing a shell command instead of launching an application. The shell command can be run in a Terminal window or faceless (ideal for X11 apps).
Implemented a workaround for a System Preference bug that could make the preference pane unstable the first time it opens after it was upgraded.

Magic Launch 1.2 (23 Mar 2010)

Added a criterion checking if the application is already launched, which allows files to open in an application only when the application is already open.
Added a criterion to match the access path of a file.

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).
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.