How To Remove Duplicate Applications in Mac OS X

The ''open with'' menu that normally appears when a file in the Mac Finder is right clicked, is intended to provide a list of alternative applications that can open the selected file. But sometimes it becomes annoying when you try to open a file through the right-click option on your mouse only to find a huge list of applications that look exactly the same. This happens because the computer always keeps the older versions of applications by default. To fix this here are two methods you can use. this will work in any version of Mac OS X.


Removing Repeat App Entries in "Open with"

Open the terminal application

Copy and paste the following coding into the terminal application, then press enter

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user  

Now relaunch the finder, go back to any file and right click on it with the 'open with' option and you will se all the duplicate entries gone.

Using Twins

If you are not comfortable using the above procedure, you can download a third party app called Twins. Twins is an application that will hunt and kill all duplicate files on your mac, the advantage of using this application is that it has options to scan and select specific files to keep.

Download Twins