Making iTunes appear for pdfs in the ‘Open With’ contextual menu on Mac OSX

iBooks and my iPhone/iPad can read pdfs, but iTunes’ support for pdfs on the filesystem is non-existent. Adding pdfs to iTunes is a pain. I didn’t understand why iTunes.app didn’t appear as an option for opening pdfs in the contextual menu. Note: I do not want to make iTunes the default App for handling pdfs – that would  be crazzzeeeeee.

After much web searching, and more than a little help from some Monkeyz, the answer is this.

1. Make sure iTunes is NOT running.
2. Right-click on iTunes.app and choose ‘Show Package Contents’
3. In the window that opens, open Contents, then open ‘Info.plist’ in a text editor
4. paste the following

<dict>
<key>CFBundleTypeExtensions</key>
<array>
<string>pdf</string>
<string>PDF</string>
</array>
<key>CFBundleTypeMIMETypes</key>
<array>
<string>application/pdf</string>
</array>
<key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
<string>Viewer</string>
</dict>

Finally, Rebuild the LaunchServices Database by running the following incantation on the command line.

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

iTunes in the context menu for a pdf file