Genius Tips
Howard Oakley solves Mac and iOS issues
QWhy, when I double-click a Photoshop document, does the CC 2017 version of Photoshop always open, and not the more recent CC 2018? by Simon Simpson
AThis appears to be a general problem if you have both of these apps installed, regardless of the version of macOS that is running.
In macOS, it’s the Launch Services interface which is responsible for determining which app kicks in when you open any file from Finder. If you don’t like the default, you would select a file in Finder, choose File > Get Info, expand the ‘Open with’ section of the window that appears, choose your preferred app from the pop-up menu, then click Change All to apply your choice to all files of the same type.
In this case, though, that method doesn’t work. Instead, the only way that you can get a Photoshop file to open in Photoshop CC 2018 is to keep that version of the app open, and keep CC 2017 closed.
Launch Services works using app signatures and document types. Here, Adobe appears to have a bug in its use of app signatures which prevents Launch Services from associating Photoshop’s document type with CC 2018. As signatures and types are set in property lists in the apps themselves, you can’t change them without breaking the app’s code signature, which is required by macOS’s Gatekeeper feature to protect your computer from malware. Only Adobe as the developer can fix this issue.