After trying different Music/Media Players in Ubuntu Linux, I decided that my favorite one is Amarok. It has a lot of good functional features for music fanatics like me (over 7000 MP3s) that need good collection management. Its Collection/Library works similar to Winamp’s Media Library, although some improvements can be made to it (that’s another post).
My problem was that if I was browsing my MP3 files and decided to start playing a song from a Nautilus window by double-clicking the file, it would open in Xine. No thanks, that’s not what I want! The file association wasn’t what I wanted. Thinking that I could simply access File Association settings like in Windows, I set out to find these settings. Of course, there wasn’t anything similar to this.
This plagued me for a couple of weeks and in the back of my mind, I knew it would be the simplest stupid setting somewhere that I just couldn’t find. So I set out to find the answer…
Although, in this post, I’m specifically talking about MP3/OGG files, these steps should work with any file-type and any application that can open those file-types.
I knew that I could simply right-click on a file, point to Open With and select an application from the list.
Amarok wouldn’t show in that list! Once I selected “Open with Other Application…” and selected Amarok, it then showed in the list of Open with applications.
So every time I wanted to open an MP3/OGG file, I would have to right-click, point to Open with and select Amarok.
That’s still not good enough. I need to double-click only!
After reading a certain post on the Ubuntu Forums, the answer was so obvious, I literally slapped my forehead!
- Right-click on a file of the type you wish to set a default application to open it with
- Select Properties
- Select the Open With tab (all makes sense, now, doesn’t it??)
- Select the application you want associated with that file-type
- Click OK
Wow… that was easy! Double-click the file to see if it opens in your application. Funny thing is, I saw that tab before and used it for another file-type and for some reason, I thought that it would set the default for that file only! Doh! I didn’t notice the message at the top of that tab:
Who knew it was that easy??? Stupid @#$*$%&@#!!!
If you want to edit file associations manually: /etc/gnome/defaults.list
This is how I switched from totem to vlc:
sudo sed -i “s/totem/vlc/g” /etc/gnome/defaults.list
Have fun!
OE
Nice, thanks. I was also wondering how to do this.
Hola.
Unfortunately this method doesn’t work for url links.
For those of you looking for the answer in the web instead of the gnome help center (which has almost useless search feature) as I always do:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=594220#post3663016
Well I wouldn’t call it easy because the text description is just wrong. Maybe it’s only in the german version of Ubuntu 9.10 but if you rightclick on the file and go directly to “open with”->”other program”, there is exactly the same description (“open file x and other files with the type y with the following application”, translated from german)!
It just didn’t occur to me that there is a second option with exactly the same name and exactly the same text that does a different thing…
So thank you very much for your help, without it I would never have found it i think…
So very simple; but still, I had to Google the solution. Thank you!
I always thought Windoze’s way of doing it a bit cumbersome … even if you knew about holding in Ctrl (or is it Alt or Shift…?) then right-clicking then tick the “Always use …” checkbox then …
Or you could find and modify the registry entries…. Note the [s].
Phew.