mimeapps

Cross-platform library for looking up registered applications for a given file path.

Features

• Linux: Full implementation of the freedesktop.org MIME associations specification. It parses mimeapps.list files and desktop entries to find associated applications.
• macOS: Uses NSWorkspace to find applications capable of opening a given file.
• Windows: (Pending implementation) Currently returns an empty list.

Usage

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
mimeapps = "0.1.0"

Example

use std::path::Path;
use mimeapps::get_apps_for_file;

fn main() {
    let path = Path::new("document.pdf");
    let apps = get_apps_for_file(path);

    for app in apps {
        println!("Application Name: {}", app.name);
        println!("Executable Path: {}", app.path);
    }
}

Platform-specific details

Linux

The library follows the XDG specification to look up applications:

1. It determines the MIME type of the file.
2. It looks up associations in mimeapps.list files in the following order:
   • $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mimeapps.list
   • $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/mimeapps.list
   • $XDG_DATA_HOME/applications/mimeapps.list
   • $XDG_DATA_DIRS/applications/mimeapps.list
3. It also searches for applications in defaults.list (deprecated but still used as fallback).
4. It verifies the existence of .desktop files and respects NoDisplay and Hidden fields.

macOS

Uses NSWorkspace's URLsForApplicationsToOpenURL: to retrieve a list of applications that can open the specified file URL.