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Context: I've recently had my machine pretty much destroyed by the Dropbox upgrade. After a lot of work I managed to get everything back and working (with the older version of Dropbox).

The only thing thing now faulty is a bizarre problem: double click doesn't work on some items on the Desktop.

It works correctly with app files (and links to them), and with folders. But executable shell scripts, txt files and anything that needs to be associated with an app don't work. Yet control click 'open with' works fine.

If I go into Finder, items in the 'Desktop' folder behave the same.

Oddly, the '.app' files in the same folder appear greyed out--though clicking on them still works.

What could cause a folder to stop supporting file associations? And how might one fix it, please?

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    One thing you don't mention trying is to "Get Info" on one of these files and see what its default app is set to. If you could set it to something else and click the Change All button, then change it back. It's an old trick and doesn't often work but is so easy I find it worth a try.
    – Steve Chambers
    Commented Apr 5, 2023 at 19:55
  • @SteveChambers - good call, but yes, I'd tried that. I also tried removing all extended attributes with xattr. No change (except that the icons I'd added manually went away). But when I restored the same files from Backblaze web-based backup, the associations started working again. So the problem was the files themselves, not the location. What other attributes could there be on a file that could stop file associations working?
    – CharlesW
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 at 9:53
  • Ah - wait a moment. The replacement files all have extended attribute com.apple.ResourceFork, which apparently is where MacOs stores the per-file associations. That wasn't there when the associations weren't working. I don't know what put that attribute there (perhaps Finder). So perhaps the problem was that Finder puts that attribute on its desktop files, and if it's missing it doesn't use the default associations. Bizarre, or what?
    – CharlesW
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 at 10:05
  • But no, that's not it. When I removed com.apple.ResourceFork from a copy of one of the files, double click still worked. A mystery.
    – CharlesW
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 at 10:09

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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You can try:

right click -> get info

Then follow the images.

enter image description here

enter image description here

open with "your desired program here"

enter image description here

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    While your answer is viable, the short wording and use of images make this extremely difficult for someone with visual disabilities to follow. Please consider adding more instructions and descriptions so all can benefit from your answer.
    – agarza
    Commented Apr 6, 2023 at 13:03
  • Err - yes, that's a nice explanation of setting up file associations. But as I said, the file association was already set up correctly. MacOs is not accepting it.
    – CharlesW
    Commented Apr 6, 2023 at 15:05
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This is discussed in the comments on the original question.

We don't know the cause, but replacing all the files from earlier copies elsewhere solved the problem.

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