Comments on: Selectively Disabling Downloaded-File Warnings in Leopard

By: Francois

Francois — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 14:26:51 +0000

Hi Eric, hi everyone,
Late, but catching up.
Great stuff, except that I cannot unravel my problem when tying to deal with .docx or .pptx, etc.
Even if these files are “reliable”, I can’t open them automatically.
You know how to deal with?? :-)
Many thanks by advance!
Francois

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:16:10 +0000

I’m trying to whitelist .flv movies.. and can’t find any reference to them! I’ve added:
public.movie
public.mpeg4
to your list (thanks!), but flv is not mentioned at the apple dev site (now found at: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Miscellaneous/Reference/UTIRef/Articles/System-DeclaredUniformTypeIdentifiers.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009259-SW1 )

Thanks again! Tim

By: larryy

larryy — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:14:19 +0000

I figured it out, I think. Lots more explanation and a couple of additional steps I took that I *think* are unnecessary can be found here, but bottom line, I think you just need to open this .plist file in TextWrangler or BBEdit, do a Save As, use the Options button to set the encoding to UTF-8 instead of UTF-8, no BOM, and save right over the original version of the file. And reboot (or log out and in, not sure which is necessary; both are sufficient). This is probably mostly an issue for people who have used Amazon downloads, which creates this .plist file, but makes it a UTF-8, no BOM file for whatever reason. I'll bet that even people who have their browser set to process safe files aren't getting auto-launch of Amazon's download app in later versions of Leopard and in Snow Leopard, and this "no BOM" file encoding is why.

By: andsens

andsens — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:21:10 +0000

Craig:
> Anybody have any luck with this for NZB files and snow leopard?

Nope, torrent files work just fine, but SL keeps bugging me with warnings about opening nzb files, even though I added both text/xml as Mime safe type and nzb as safe extension.

By: Craig

Craig — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:26:00 +0000

Anybody have any luck with this for NZB files and snow leopard?

By: ton

ton — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:55:41 +0000

I tried it but does not work. I am using 10.5.8.

I would like very much to have a solution like this. Do you have any idea what the problem might be?

By: How to disable that annoying downloaded file warning in Leopard « SBP’s Random Walk

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:47:12 +0000

[...] How to disable that annoying downloaded file warning in Leopard From Eric Meyer: [...]

By: Disable downloaded-file warnings in Leopard - machine quotidien

Disable downloaded-file warnings in Leopard - machine quotidien — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:06:07 +0000

[...] Selectively Disabling Downloaded-File Warnings in Leopard [...]

By: Daniel Bely

Daniel Bely — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:02:30 +0000

Thanks for the tip.
However, after several warning-free days I’ve downloaded a .wmv file with Firefox and received this annoying warning message again. I went to ADC site and checked this document:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/understanding_utis/utilist/UTIlist.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001319-CH205-CHDIJFGJ

This page tells us that WMV conforms to public.movie -> public.audiovisual-content -> public.content & public data -> public item. This means your tip should work but it doesn’t for some unknown reason.

Any ideas?

Have you tried downloading .wmv files?

By: Eric Naujock

Eric Naujock — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:28:23 +0000

Not that it matters now but the issue your bothered by was created to address a very specific vulnerability. The Issue related to what one would call a drive by download. In the past you could create a malicious file and provide a link to it that would be downloaded and executed automatically bypassing the user controls.

As a result prior to this you could lose control of your computer. That annoying box gives you the user the last bit of control to prevent bad things from happening prior to bad things happening.

I am not saying that the box is the best solution for you but remember that since most users tend to run as admin and click without thinking that was the best defense that could be done easily. After all I expect you do like it that Apple tries very hard to keep your system secure from not so nice people.

As for the solution I am glad you found an answer. I just hope your doing defensive browsing and not running as admin.

By: Nick Rinylo

Nick Rinylo — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:30:19 +0000

Same here Ben M. 10.5.6 and works 100% for me.

By: Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:07:40 +0000

I'm confused too, Philippe. All I know is the copy I had wasn't working. When I dropped in Ben's, it did work, and the only difference I can see is the encoding. (The version I had on my hard drive had the XML prolog.) I'll try opening both in property List Editor (if I have it installed) and see if there's any indicated difference, then save both and compare them to the originals and see what happens there.

By: Philippe

Philippe — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:47:02 +0000

Ref, you update dd 18 Mar 09.
Puzzled. The default for a plist file (any XML) is utf-8 last I checked, and your sample doesn’t specify any xml prolog (meaning: assuming default).
I tested here, 10.5.6, with a plist file created with Property List Editor.app (part of the developers tools) and it worked just fine.

By: Ben M

Ben M — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:35:21 +0000

I’m using 10.5.6 and it’s working for me. PHP files that I downloaded are opening, as are html & amz (I added that to the list). I don’t recall getting the message box for images or movies so I can’t verify that.

By: Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 21:30:44 +0000

If you’re following the comment via RSS, please see the update on the post: this isn’t working in 10.5.6. Not any of it, actually; at least not for me. Anyone seeing different results?