Repair broken icon-file type associations

Jun 17, '09 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: robg

A friend buzzed me with an icon problem this morning: all of his zip icons had incorrect icons. Not just one wrong icon, but three different types of icons, none correct, and all on zip files (see an example at right).

I hadn't ever heard of this issue before, and I wasn't sure what to suggest as a fix. Almost on a lark, I asked him to rebuild the LaunchServices database, which traditionally is used to fix duplicate entries in the Open With menu. (If you're not yet running 10.5, you need this version of the hint.)

Surprisingly to me, this fixed the problem for all his zip files (and he noticed a few other files' icons had been corrected as well). So, perhaps common knowledge, but rebuilding the LaunchServices database can help with wrong icon associations as well as Open With menu issues.

I've now taken my own advice from the original hint and added an lsrebuild alias to my .profile file, just to make it simpler to rebuild when required.

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