OS X Tip #80
Rid The Contextual Menu Of Unwanted Stuff
If you have installed Photoshop on your Mac you may have noticed that when you use the contextual menu on an image there are many added menu items in the “Open With” option. Control + click or right mouse click for multi-button mouse users on the image to use the contextual menu. Take a look at Open With. Does your contextual menu look like this?

These sometimes handy options can slow down you contextual menu. Adobe has added all these .exe options to the Open With menu (even though you are on a Mac and the seem to have an .exe extension, they do work) called droplets. To get rid of these droplets is tricky if you do not know where to look.

If you want to remove them here’s how:

Go to Applications -> Adobe Photoshop -> Samples and trash droplets folder. If you want you can just remove the droplets folder and back it up somewhere in case you want to re-install them. I trash them here.

Now let’s take a look. That’s a lot better. Take a look.

But what if you want to remove some other stuff from the contextual menus? In my case I have menu items for Quickimage and JPT (Jon’s Phone Tool), applications I no longer really use anymore. Let’s get rid of them.

Removing Other Stuff
When you install some applications it will add some convenient menus. But what if you no longer want them there and want to further speed up your Mac’s contextual menu.

Here’s how:
Go to your Home Folder -> Library -> Contextual Menu Items and delete the contextual menu “plugins” you do not want anymore. Also check Macintosh HD -> Library -> Contextual Menu Items for these plugins.

I “trashed” both the contextual menu plugins for Quickimage and JPT. Now they are no longer in my contextual menu making it faster and less cluttered.

Note: You will probably have to log out and in again or restart your Mac to empty your trash as these items may still be in use by the Finder.

Here is the “lean and clean contextual machine” on my PowerBook.

Since spring is here, why not do some spring cleaning yourself. Rid yourself of no longer used and annoying menus.

    | Tags: contextual menu, mac tips, troubleshooting