A while back, I published an article titled Retaining OmniWeb as the default browser. This hack has changed a bit with the release of 10.1, and I thought I'd add information on how to make other browsers appear in the "Web" pop-up portion of the Internet preferences panel, and to set any one of them as the default.
The article might also be of interest if your "Web" setting seems to have amnesia - you change it, but then it randomly changes back to IE. I'll explain how to eliminate all choices except for your favorite, which (at least for me so far!) seems to prevent the "IE amnesia" from recurring.
So if you'd like to see more browser choices in your Web pop-up, or just prevent the Web pane from forgetting your preferred choice, read the rest of this article.
NOTE:This modification requires editing of a system file. This can be dangerous if you mess something up. Please make sure you follow the directions as written, and you are responsible for what may or may not happen to your system as a result of this modification.
The following steps will edit the file that builds the content of the "Web" panel of the Internet system preferences pane. Before we edit, we'll make a backup of the file, in case anything goes wrong. Some terminal use is required, but not too much!
cd /System/Library/PreferencePanesNOTE: This is shown as two separate commands to narrow the article's width; you could enter it on one long line (add a slash between PreferencePanes and Internet.prefPane). This changes us to the directory containing the file we wish to modify.
cd Internet.prefPane/Contents/Resources/English.lproj
sudo cp DefaultHelperApps.plist DefaultHelperApps.bakYou'll be prompted for your normal user password; we need to use 'sudo' to execute the backup command as the root user, since root owns the file.
sudo pico DefaultHelperApps.plistThis should open pico as root (you'll need to supply your admin password) with the DefaultHelperApps file open. Pico is relatively self-explanatory; just look at the menus at the bottom of the screen for help.
web = (with this section of code:
{
DisplayName = "Internet Explorer";
Info = { BundleIdentifier = "com.microsoft.explorer"; };
IsDefaultHandler = YES;
}
);
web = (Notice that only one browser can be tagged with the "IsDefaultHandler" tag; simply put that entire line with the section related to the browser of your choice.
{
DisplayName = "Internet Explorer";
Info = { BundleIdentifier = "com.microsoft.explorer"; };
},
{
DisplayName = "OmniWeb";
Info = { BundleIdentifier = "com.omnigroup.OmniWeb"; };
IsDefaultHandler = YES;
},
{
DisplayName = "Mozilla";
Info = { BundleIdentifier = "com.mozilla.mozilla"; };
},
{
DisplayName = "iCab";
Info = { CreatorCode = "iCab"; };
}
);
sudo rm DefaultHelperApps.plistThis will replace the bad file with the good backup, and you can try again -- remember to create another backup on your second try!
sudo mv DefaultHelperApps.bak DefaultHelperApps.plist
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=200110120742326