Treat folders with an extension like .service as regular folders instead of bundles in Finder

Question

Is there a way to force Finder to treat a folder named whatever.service as a folder and not a service?

To make it very clear it's easy to recreate my issue. I just created a new folder, rename it to name.service and I can no longer open the folder. Also, the file info does not let me change the kind or choose a different program to open with.

Answer 1

"Directories with file extensions" (bundles) are a common way on OS X to bundle stuff consisting of multiple files into a single package, such as kernel extensions, iWork files (before iWork 09), iMovie projects, applications, etc.

You usually can edit an application's Info.plist file to remove the definition of the offending bundle it defined — e.g. .theme for iMovie.

As .service is defined for system Services (see e.g. /System/Library/Services — access them from the application menu bar item, then select Services), you'd probably break stuff by removing this definition.

If you're feeling lucky:

Open /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Info.plist for example using Xcode (after changing the file and directory permissions using chmod in Terminal) and remove the offending entry in the CFBundleDocumentTypes array.

You need admin permissions to do this. I recommend having current backups. It's possible something breaks if this association isn't purely cosmetic.