How to change file associations on Mac OS X?

By default PNG images open in Preview. At some point, this has changed on my system so that clicking on a PNG file launches Paintbrush. While that's a really nice app, I'd still like the default to be Preview. How to change it back? (I formulated the question title to be little more generic — how to do this for any file types?)

I'm looking for the easiest, most readily-available way, with no 3rd party tools or going to the command-line. Somewhat surprisingly, System Preferences seems to contain nothing related to file associations.

This beginner question should probably be an easy one... I hope!

Jonik

Posted 2009-08-24T20:41:54.717

Reputation: 5 352

Additional question from Rajesh Vaghela (in an answer; reposting here as comment): "Any programmatic solution for this problem?" – Jonik – 2010-10-13T15:01:00.077

Answers

Get Info on the file in Finder (⌘I)
Find the "Open with:" section
Change the application to the one you want
Click "Change All…" to apply the change for all files of the same type.

Info window

jtbandes

Posted 2009-08-24T20:41:54.717

Reputation: 8 350

Just wondering: during the 3 min 8 secs between me posting the question and you the answer, did you take the screenshot and upload it to imageshack yourself, or did you re-use someone else's pic? ツ – Jonik – 2009-08-24T20:59:01.717

I took it myself, cleverly hiding my short username by collapsing the General section. ;) I used the ImageShack uploader that I made myself (based on a widget): http://www.box.net/shared/06nnvqa5y5

– jtbandes – 2009-08-24T21:13:10.643