MIME Applications Associations

This specification allows users, system administrators, application vendors, and distributions, to control which application should open a file by default, and which applications should be shown as supporting a given MIME type (possibly overriding what the .desktop file for the application lists).

Mailinglist

Discussion of this specification should occur on xdg.

git

This specification is hosted in git, see mime-apps-spec.

Spec

• Latest version
• Version 1.0.1 - html (one page) - html (multiple pages) - xml
• Version 1.0 - html (one page) - html (multiple pages) - xml

Adoption

• Gnome: In use
• Enlightenment: In use

Please update this page if you know about the status of this specification in a specific desktop environment.

References (predating the spec)

• Shared mimetypes + activation thread
• Associating programs with file types thread
• MIME activation discussion thread
• Default Program / File Association thread (part II)
• More recent Default Program / File Association thread, where mimeapps.list was introduced
• Have a way to dynamically change software associations at distribution level