Change default applications used by gnome-open, exo-open, xdg-open, gvfs-open and kde-open

Question

How to change the applications associated with certain file-types for gnome-open, exo-open, xdg-open, gvfs-open and kde-open?

For both questions: How to do it per user basis, how to do it system-wide?

For kde-open and other KDE apps: http://askubuntu.com/questions/165618/how-to-change-file-association-for-files-opened-in-dolphin-from-command-line-in — Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com, Mar 30 '15 at 19:55

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-24T02:46:56.650

6

It's all done with MIME types in various databases. xdg-mime can be used to query and set user values.

edited Jun 24 '13 at 02:46

answered Mar 21 '12 at 21:37

score 5 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 10 '15 at 15:04

5

I had the same problem today, but more towards the gnome/cinnamon side of things.

You can query and change the default mime type like this:

gvfs-mime --query inode/directory

gvfs-mime --set inode/directory nemo.desktop

edited Jul 10 '15 at 15:04

blueyed

answered Jan 16 '13 at 10:38

vchuravy

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 04 '18 at 14:34

Building on @Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams answer, here are the incantations for the impatient that should cover many typical use cases:

Figure out the mime type of your file:

xdg-mime query filetype somefile.pdf

will result in application/pdf.

Set a default application to handle it:

xdg-mime default qpdfview.desktop application/pdf

where I use qdfview's desktop definition as the program to handle PDFs.

3 Answers3