10.7: Change an application's category

Oct 21, '11 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: sd

Lion provides a new feature in the Finder: the ability to sort your applications by (App Store) category.

But category is not always accurate, or is not set for many non-Apple applications.

To add or modify a category, you have to open the application bundle ('Show Package Contents', the under the folder Contents open the file 'Info.plist').

You then can change the existing category by changing the key called 'LSApplicationCategoryType' (or create the category by adding a child named accordingly).

The list of available categories seems to be restricted to the ones provided by Apple here.

[crarko adds: As far as I can see, the category does indeed seem to only be included in programs downloaded from the Mac App Store, so you might want to add it. It's quite possible that when you update the program, the info.plist file could be overwritten and the change lost.]

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