4 Ways to Open a File on the Mac

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Welcome, I’m Dan Wassink from Dan’s Tutorials, I create videos on how to use the Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch and Apple TV. In this video, we’re going to look at four different ways that we can open up documents on the Mac. Let’s go over to my Mac and see the different ways we can open up documents. So I’m looking at my desktop here, and you can see I have a number of files.

I have here a PDF, as well as a JPEG and a docx, which is a Microsoft Word document or a Pages document. And then I also have an audio file. Now by default, when we open up a document, this is the first way you can just double click on the document. When we open up that document, it’s going to open up in the default application, every document has a default application. So when I go over to beach here, if I double click on this, let’s go ahead and double click on it, it’s going to open it up like say that’s the first way pretty simple, you’re going to see that it opened up in the preview app. So that is the default application for JPEGs. Let’s go ahead and close this. When I open up this doc x, let’s go ahead and double click on it. What it does is it opens up in Pages here. So that is the default application for doc X Files.

So if you want to open it up in the default application, all you have to do is double click on it. But there may be some cases where you do not want to open it up in that default application. As an example, let’s go back over to beach here. Instead of opening this up in preview, I’d like to open this up in acorn acorn is like a Photoshop. Well, if I just double click on this, again, it opens up in preview, I don’t want to do that. Well, the second way of opening up a document in an application is by Ctrl. Clicking on it, when I hold down the control key and I click I get a little contextual menu. And then from here, what I’m able to do is open it up, and it’ll open up in the default application. But what I’d like to do is open this up in acorn. So now what I do is I go over to open wid and you’re going to see a corn. If I had Photoshop on here, I’d be able to open this up in Photoshop. So if you want to open up a document in a different application than the default application, all you have to do is just Ctrl Click on it. The third way is by opening it up through the application itself. So I’m going to open up acorn. And now what I’d like to do is open up this beach document. But this time, what I’m going to do is open up through the application itself. So now what I do is I go up to File on the menu bar, we go over to open. And from here, when I go over to my desktop, what I’m able to do is select the beach photo. Even though the default application for this document is the preview app.

If I were to double click on this, we can see it opened up in a corner. And then another way, the fourth way is to open it up through the dock. So I have a corn in the Doc, what I can do is I can take this photo here and drag it on to that application, I’m going to drag it on top of acorn here. And we can see it open it up. So we can also use drag and drop to open up a document in a different application. So if you have to open up a lot of documents in a different application, what you may want to do is place that application here in your dock, so then you have easy access to it. Even when this application is closed, I just quit out of it. If I wanted to open up this beach document in a corn, all I have to do is just drag this down here. It opens up a corn. And we can see I have my photo here. So if you have Microsoft Word, what you may want to do is place it in your doc here. So then you can just drag a document into Microsoft Word and it’ll open it up. Now here’s a bonus tip, you can set what the default application is for a document. So now let’s say I always want to have this document open up in acorn, this specific document. Well from here, what I do is I just click on it, I don’t open it up, I just click on it one time. And then when we go up under File in the menu bar, we go over to get info we have a new window that opens up. And we can see when we go over to open with we can see what the default application for this particular document is. So this is why this opens up in the preview app. So let’s go and select a corn here.

Now, any time that I double click on this document what it’s going to do is opened up in a corn and not in preview. So now I double click on it, and it opens up in a corn. Now let’s say you wanted to open up all JPEGs in a corn or let’s say Photoshop, how do you do that? Right now it only opens up this document this specific document the beach document, I want to open up all JPEGs in a different application, I want to set a default application for all of my JPEGs. Well, in order to do that, we just select it again, we don’t open it, we select it, and then we go up under file. And then we go over to get info. And from here, under Open With, what I need to do is go to change all when I click on Change all, it’s going to change all of the documents like this one, all of the JPEGs, it’s going to change them all or change the default application to all of those to be using a corner. So from here, I could select Photoshop, and all of these photos, all of my JPEGs would open up in Photoshop. But again, if I did want to open up any one of them in a different application, all I have to do is just Ctrl Click on it. So those are four different ways to open up documents on the Mac. Basically, we just double click on it and it’ll open up in its default application. But we can also control click on it, we can open it up through the menu through the applications menu. And then we can also use drag and drop as long as that application is in the dock just drag that document on to that application, even though it may not be its default application. And then you can also set which application is the default application. So those are four different ways you can open up documents on the Mac.