Choose the program for file types

Construct can open its scenes and common mesh files when you double-click them, or from Open with in your file manager. The installer registers nothing: you choose in the File types window, and Construct registers itself for you alone, without administrator rights.

Open the window

Construct shows the window when it starts, until you tick Don't show at startup. You can open it at any time from Help ▸ File types… in Construct, or from File types… under the arrow beside Open in Construct Viewer. Construct Viewer never shows it by itself.

Choose a program

The window has one row for each type:

Each row has one list with a large icon: every program that your system offers for the type, then Construct and Construct Viewer. The list shows the other programs also when Construct opens the type now. A type that no program opens shows Unassigned. When a type already opens in another program, the row keeps it. When no program opens it, the row suggests the program of the table.

• All Construct sets every row to the program of the table.
• Revert sets every row back to what the window showed when you opened it first after the start of Construct. It is on while the table is different from that, also after Remove, and off when the table is the same again.
• Remove removes the registrations, as the last section says.
• Done registers what the table shows and closes the window. If something did not work, the window stays open, and the line under the buttons says why.

Ask OPAL

OPAL can read and set the same table. construct.file_types.status gives each type with the program that opens it now and, under alternatives, the name and the id of each other program that your system offers for it. Give construct.file_types.apply one of construct, viewer or keep for a type, or the id of one of its alternatives. It refuses an id that your system does not list for the type, and it registers what you give it as Done does:

{"task": "construct.file_types.apply", "args": {"types": {"construct": "construct", "stl": "viewer"}}}

construct.file_types.remove does what Remove does. OPAL asks you before each apply and each remove.

On Linux

Construct writes its desktop entries, the file types that the system does not know yet (.construct, .cpack, .ply and .vtk), and your choices into your own mimeapps.list. The other lines of that file stay as they are.

Two programs of your desktop finish the job: update-mime-database and update-desktop-database. Both come with every desktop distribution. If one is missing, the line under the buttons says what does not work without it: new file types are not known to the system, or GNOME does not list Construct.

On Windows

Windows lets no program set itself as the default. Construct registers itself for the types you chose, then opens Settings ▸ Apps ▸ Default apps at its own page, where you confirm. The window stays open. When you come back to it, it shows what you chose there. If you chose another program for a type, Settings opens at Default apps, and the line under the buttons names the types to set there.

Remove the registrations

Press Remove to delete every entry that Construct wrote, and every default that names Construct or Construct Viewer. Do this before you remove Construct from your computer: the uninstaller removes nothing of it. After it, every row shows the program it has now, so Done registers nothing again. Revert puts back the rows of the first time you opened the window, and Done then registers them again.

On Windows, a default program that you chose in Settings belongs to Windows, and no program can change it. If a file type still opens with Construct, the window names it and opens Default apps in Settings, where you choose the program you want, for example the slicer you used before.

When an update moves Construct to another folder, Construct writes its entries again at its next start, so they name the new program. It never changes a default by itself.