Change all associations from gedit to another application

Question

I started using Sublime Text 2 a week or so ago and I loved it so much I've spent $60 on it and now want to use it for everything.

Gedit currently has ownership of most of the text file associations. I'd essentially like to replace any association to gedit with sublime-text-2.

Any tips available on bulk association changing?

Answer 1

Make a sublime launcher .desktop file. I don't have one so I can't post exact instructions on that. You'll probably want to put it in /usr/share/applications/

System wide associations:

sudo sed -i 's/gedit.desktop/yournew.desktop/g' /usr/share/applications/defaults.list

Just your user's associations:

sed -i 's/gedit.desktop/yournew.desktop/g' ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list

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Edit from Oli. If you're using the PPA for Sublime Text 2, there is already a .desktop file for it sitting in /usr/share/applications/ so you can just run:

sudo sed -i 's/gedit.desktop/sublime-text-2.desktop/g' /usr/share/applications/defaults.list

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Edit from trent. Running on 13.04, the above update didn't change the file association from gedit to sublime-text-2. It was necessary to update the file: /etc/gnome/defaults.list.

sudo sed -i 's/gedit.desktop/sublime-text-2.desktop/g' /etc/gnome/defaults.list

Answer 2

There is another way to change the association. It is via using Ubuntu-tweak.

1. Install Ubuntu tweak

   • How do I install Ubuntu-Tweak?

2. Open it via Dash by typing "Ubuntu tweak"

   

3. After opening it, Click on the Admin tab.

   

4. Then click on File type manager section

   

5. Then first select the Text catagory from the left side bar, and then click on the Associated Applications column to sort it by Application name

   

6. After the application is sorted by name, Select the top entry with Gedit, then Press and hold the Shift key and click on the last entry with gedit. Then click on the Edit button.

   

7. A new window will open where you can see all installed text editor.

   

8. Then select the desired application from list and click close. You can also Click on the Add button to add an application which is not installed in pre-defined system folder.

Hope this will help. If you want to reset them, you can click the reset button also.

The good thing in this solution is, you can't accidentally mess up your system .desktop file.