SwiftDefaultApps VS nix-darwin

holy shit, that works!

Use https://github.com/Lord-Kamina/SwiftDefaultApps to changing your default mail app to Safari.

Agreed, not quite perfect but at least it doesn't open Mail.

thank you!

I installed RCDefaultApp some time ago and surprisingly it still runs well under Monterey Settings. I don't use it often but when you need to get into default apps then it is great. However it hasn't been updated since 2009 and I don't know where you can get it or even if it will install. This https://github.com/Lord-Kamina/SwiftDefaultApps/releases seems to be more active although I haven't tried it myself.

OpenIn can also set itself as the default handler for specific file types. One way to change this is, in the Finder, to locate a file of the target file type (say .txt) and press Cmd-I to get the info screen. There you will see “Open with”. Changing this will change the default handler for that one file. If you want to change the default handler for all files of that type, click “Change All…”. There are other ways to do this as well, probably not worth it if you only have a few file types to update.

I have also found https://github.com/Lord-Kamina/SwiftDefaultApps but it hasn't been updated since July 2019.

I've never used it but you can try https://github.com/Lord-Kamina/SwiftDefaultApps

Just a shout out to nix-darwin[1]. It is nix, so initial setup is a bit involved. But then it truly makes it easy to configure everything in one place including mac defaults, homebrew apps declaratively and mas apps etc.

There is a sample config in nix-darwin repo[2].

[1] https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin

[2] https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/blob/master/modules/examp...

https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/tree/master/modules

nix-darwin does similar thing for MacOS

You can use https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin

There are many threads around where you can learn more about this (and why it's complicated...), but https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/issues/1341 and https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/issues/139 seem like two of the most comprehensive.

Nix is pretty usable for both desktops and headless servers. Personally, I even use it on macOS without much trouble.

My system looks like any other install of Ventura, but all of my configuration, ranging from the terminal and VS Code to macOS-specific system preferences and Safari, is done declaratively in Nix [1]. The overwhelming majority of my installed software also comes from Nix packages, with some exceptions for stuff that is not packaged yet (e.g., I have Podman Desktop, the macOS ZFS port, Lulu, yubikey-manager-qt installed through Homebrew -- fortunately nix-darwin [2] also just lets me have an set of brews/casks in my config).

It was been a bit of a nightmare at first since the error messages are kind of horrific, and there can be a lack of good examples/docs on flakes. But I think the weekend worth of time I invested was worth it since I no longer need to rely on hacky shellscripts or remember to manually configure anything.

[1]: <https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager>

[2]: <https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin>

Take a look at nix-darwin, this is what I use. It allows you to configure your system similar to NixOS including globally installed programs.

This — I still use mas and brew —-cask through the nix-darwin module, though. It’s not exactly reproducible, but it’s at least closer to reproducible and declarative.