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Introduction to Workspace Services

Contents:

Organization of This Document

The NSWorkspace class provides a variety of services to Cocoa applications, including retrieving information from the file system, launching applications, and miscellaneous other tasks.

Some of NSWorkspace’s methods are currently unimplemented:

• noteUserDefaultsChanged

• checkForRemovableMedia

• extendPowerOffBy:

Additionally, the compression and encryption file operations defined for performFileOperation:source:destination:files:tag: are currently unavailable.

Organization of This Document

This programming topic contains the following articles:

• “About Workspace Services” contains a discussion of NSWorkspace’s services.

• “Use of .app Extension” describes how Mac OS X uses the .app extension to identify applications.

• “Retrieving Information About Files” describes how to find file types, application information, and retrieve icons.

• “Manipulating Files” describes how to perform Finder-like operations on files.

• “Manipulating Applications” describes how to manipulate, locate, and hide applications.

• “Manipulating Devices” describes how to track available storage devices and their associated volumes.

• “Tracking Workspace Changes” describes how to inform the file system of changes.

• “Receiving Workspace Notifications” describes how to use the notification center provided by NSWorkspace to receive workspace notifications.

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