Open a file in your editor of choice

[Update]
Chris Stone has a nice follow-up on the BBEdit user forum.

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You know how it is. You double-click on a file thinking it will open in the application that you're working with at the moment and you forget that the file type was associated with a different application...

Back to Finder, right-click on the file, select "Open with..." and you're good. But mousing around macOS can be tedious at times so here is a simple script that I was pretty much given by an ASUL co-lister and that I barely had to adapt to my workflow to make it more general.

property targetApplication : "BBEdit"

tell application "Finder" to set mySelectionList to selection as alias list

if length of mySelectionList = 0 then error "No files were selected in the Finder!"

tell application targetApplication

repeat with myFile in mySelectionList

open myFile

end repeat

activate

end tell

You notice right away that the only reference to the opening application is in the first line. You can change the application name to anything you want and have multiple copies of the script, one for each application, with an appropriate name so that you can open any file with any supporting application you want.


Here is the exact same code for TextEdit:

property targetApplication : "TextEdit"

tell application "Finder" to set mySelectionList to selection as alias list

if length of mySelectionList = 0 then error "No files were selected in the Finder!"

tell application targetApplication

repeat with myFile in mySelectionList

open myFile

end repeat

activate

end tell

The same for Script Editor:

property targetApplication : "Script Editor"

tell application "Finder" to set mySelectionList to selection as alias list

if length of mySelectionList = 0 then error "No files were selected in the Finder!"

tell application targetApplication

repeat with myFile in mySelectionList

open myFile

end repeat

activate

end tell

The same for Script Debugger:

property targetApplication : "Script Debugger"

tell application "Finder" to set mySelectionList to selection as alias list

if length of mySelectionList = 0 then error "No files were selected in the Finder!"

tell application targetApplication

repeat with myFile in mySelectionList

open myFile

end repeat

activate

end tell

The same for Word:

property targetApplication : "Microsoft Word"

tell application "Finder" to set mySelectionList to selection as alias list

if length of mySelectionList = 0 then error "No files were selected in the Finder!"

tell application targetApplication

repeat with myFile in mySelectionList

open myFile

end repeat

activate

end tell

You get the drift.

Some applications don't work that way, so here is the code for Emacs.app:

use AppleScript version "2.4" -- Yosemite (10.10) or later

use scripting additions

tell application "Finder" to set fileSelection to selection as alias list

try

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Emacs" to set frontmost to true

on error

tell application "/Users/suzume/Documents/Code/emacs/nextstep/Emacs.app"

activate

delay 1

end tell

end try

# return

repeat with selectedFile in fileSelection

set the clipboard to (POSIX path of selectedFile)

tell application "/Users/suzume/Documents/Code/emacs/nextstep/Emacs.app"

tell application "System Events"

delay 0.5

keystroke "x" using {control down}

keystroke "f" using {control down}

keystroke "a" using {control down}

keystroke "v" using {command down}

keystroke "k" using {control down}

key code 36 # Escape

delay 0.1

end tell

end tell

end repeat

The code makes use of UI scripting because Emacs does not support Applescript, but it works just as well.

What you do now, is create one script for each application you want to open your files with, save the script with a name that Spotlight will easily call first (something like ">BB" for opening in BBedit) and you're done!

Thank you Chris Stone on ASUL (and all the others) for your help !