Set QuickTime Player icons for non-standard file types

Dec 02, '08 07:30:02AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

I found this great QuickTime component package callled Perian that includes codecs for pretty much everything VLC does, thus making it possible to use QuickTime Player for all my media. The problem with Perian is that files with extensions like MKV or DIVX aren't given a preview or icon, even though they open nicely from the Finder.

The solution is to add those extensions to QuikTime's plist, which will associate a nice QuickTime 'Movie' icon for such files. Here's how:

  1. In the Applications folder, Control-click on QuickTime Player and choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu.
  2. Open the Contents folder, and then open Info.plist in a pure text editor of your choosing.
  3. Press Command-F and find the string Movie-Quicktime. Now add the wanted extensions to the array of strings above the line you found. For example, I added mkv in the following example:
    <array>
        <string>mov</string>
        <string>qt</string>
        <string>qtl</string>
        <string>mkv</string>
    </array>
    <key>CFBundleTypeIconFile</key>
    <string>Movie-QuickTime.icns</string>
  4. Save the file and quit the editor.
You might need start (or restart) QuickTime, as well as logout or reboot for the changes to take effect, because the Finder caches this information. Note: this doesn't generate previews for movies, only a QuickTime icon. Also, if there's an update to QuickTime, these changes might be removed.

[robg adds: It seems to me that there should be a simpler way to do this, but if there is, I'm not aware of it off the top of my head (other than pasting a custom icon on each file, which is definitely not a good solution if you have a lot of these files.)]

Comments (6)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20081123234729871