Tuesday, August 26, 2025

How PlugInKit Enables App Extensions

Howard Oakley:

App extensions or appexes perform a wide range of tasks, from providing support for file systems like ExFAT to generating thumbnails for QuickLook and enabling Spotlight to index the contents of files. Although they’re relatively old, macOS made major changes in their management in Ventura, and they’ve become popular in many third-party apps. Despite that, there’s remarkably little information about how appexes are managed. As a result, when they play up it’s not clear what you should do. This article tries to disperse that cloud of unknowing.

[…]

Although old versions are registered during discovery, PlugInKit normally only offers the most recent version and, if there are multiple copies of that, the last registered by its timestamp in the registry. It’s also more conservative about which appexes it recognises: while LaunchServices will happily add apps that aren’t stored in an Applications folder and have never been opened on that Mac, PlugInKit appears more cautious in those it registers.

[…]

Damage to or dysfunction of the LaunchServices database can therefore block or impair PlugInKit registration, in turn preventing correct function of the appex.

Resetting the LaunchServices database will inevitably delay PlugInKit’s discovery, and could lead to malfunction of appexes, such as failure to generate QuickLook thumbnails.

Howard Oakley:

Resetting the LaunchServices database will inevitably delay PlugInKit’s discovery, and could lead to malfunction of appexes, such as failure to generate QuickLook thumbnails.

Previously:

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