Show HN: Infat – Declaritive application assocation manager for macOS

42•philocalyst•4h ago

Bello! Made this to help navigate the tumultuous process of navigating to a new machine on Mac when you have a number of custom utilities setup for editing particular files. This is designed to make that as easy as possible, and add some magic on top of that, like setting mailto handlers or anything else of that breed. Use XDG_CONFIG_HOME to keep it organized.

Credit to https://github.com/moretension/duti for the original inspiration for the project.

Happy to answer and help with whatever.

Comments

deeThrow94•3h ago

Oh this is very exciting! I do have a request, though—I want to list all file extensions an application can open, specifically so I can use this to ensure xcode isn't the default for anything but xcode-specific files.

philocalyst•2h ago

Have an idea of how I would do this already, give me until the end of the week. To be clear, an interface like this?

Infat list [--identifier] [--application] Where identifier and application are mutually exclusive, and application lists the openers it is capable of opening by default? Merging the application flag for simplicities sake, so either returns a list with both their possibilities *and* the assigned apps.

Thoughts?

deeThrow94•2h ago

Love it! Seems like it'd be easy to filter out extensions I wanna keep and switch them all to emacs or whatever.

mlenz•3h ago

Great to see this, thanks for sharing! Do you have plans to make it available in nixpkgs and potentially as a home-manager or nix-darwin module? Then I could add it to my config and have everything set up automatically.

philocalyst•3h ago

I don't use nixpkgs personally but would love to give it a shot, check the repo in a day or two to give me some time to learn to ropes! I'll shoot you an email if I need any help :)

gitroom•3h ago

Pretty slick honestly, swapping machines on Mac is usually a pain for me so this feels like a lifesaver.

stinger•2h ago

Running into this error - "Error: Failed to set default application: The file couldn’t be opened." This seems to be happening for extensions that I haven't opened yet (md, json, mailto, etc.) For a new laptop, this might not be available yet. Once I `touch` a file with those extensions, the config works!. FYI, I am using a config.toml file btw.

philocalyst•2h ago

Okay, confusing -- just tried to replicate on my machine and couldn't get that error. When you say touch, you mean creating a file with that extension, or any interaction period?

Could you please try to replicate with verbosity enabled (-v) and email me the output or file an issue at the repo with the results and full summary? It's helpful for tracking. Sorry this isn't a quick fix :(

dmwood•1h ago

Shell dependencies for install? Got: bash-3.2# just package && mv dist/infat* /usr/local/bin/infat # Wildcard because output name includes platform bash: just: command not found

alkh•1h ago

just is a great command runner[1], not a shell script. Looks like it is needed if you build from source or install from Github releases. Alternatively, use `brew install philocalyst/tap/infat`(haven't done it myself but I bet it has just as a dependency anyway) [1] https://github.com/casey/just

philocalyst•1h ago

No dependencies for install, just is the command runner I use to keep things organized, it's a replacement for make(1). If it hurts to download just, you can build using SPM:

swift build -c release

mv .build/PLATFORM/release/infat /usr/local/bin

alkh•1h ago

That's great, I've struggled with this problem a lot. To double-check, this essentially allows you to specify a default app that is being opened when you click on a file via Finder or via terminal's `open` program, correct? I haven't seen this exact clarification in README

philocalyst•1h ago

Yep! Just added a clarification in the README.

After running `infat set IINA mov`: https://jezq5q9mfh.ufs.sh/f/Ii8qBn67qEOu1ZUKDXSn3BIE8fDuiWay...

timenova•43m ago

This is amazing! I set a few extensions manually.

However, does anyone know a way to set all text-like documents to open with a single editor (for example Zed) on Mac? Even text files without any extensions?

philocalyst•35m ago

It wouldn't be possible with the current interface, but I have a feeling it's possible. I'm thinking it's part of a new configuration option "type" that allows you to define openers for categories of files (text,video,etc.)

I can get it out in a week ;)

Yahoo Wants to Buy Chrome

Buffett now owns 5% of all US Treasury bills, a larger holding than Fed itself

ThoughtTerminator

Resolv Labs Raises $10M as Appetite for Yield-Bearing Stablecoins Soars

Selection Bias in Poker

Footprints of tail-clubbed armored dinosaurs found

Why Software Devs Keep Burning Out [video]

Hegseth had an unsecured internet line set up in his office to connect to Signal

Fed announces withdrawal of guidance for banks on their crypto-asset activities

GenerativeIDE

Could GPT help with dating anxiety?

National Airspace System Status

Why I Blog and How I Automate it (2023)

You Can Be a Great Designer and Be Completely Unknown

Hawaiian caterpillar patrols spiderwebs camouflaged in insect prey's body parts

Everyone Says They'll Pay More for "Made in the USA" So We Ran an A/B Test

wBlock: The end of Safari ad-blocking B.S.

America's Looming Pension Crisis [video]

Show HN: Searcherries – SEO Opportunities from GSC

AvatarFX: Cutting-Edge Video Generation by Character.ai

What every developer needs to know about in-process databases

Claude Plays Pokemon – Starter Version

Agent Mesh for Enterprise Agents

Ofcom: New rules for a safer generation of children online

How to Navigate Your Career [video]

Bone collector caterpillar adorns itself in insect body parts

Musk Goons Purged Living U.S. Citizens from Social Security

The New IBM Z17 Telum II Processor Module Cut Open Down to Silicon

Hubble Telescope to Snap 6 New 'Deep Field' Views of Universe (2013)

The Case of the Stolen Smell