Yatch User Guide

What Is Yatch?

Yatch (or Yet Another Type Changer to give it its full name) is a plug-in which adds some new contextual menu commands to the Finder. These commands allow you to easily change the type and/or owner of a file, and also lock, unlock, hide or show it.

This is mostly of use for programmers or advanced users (and can cause problems if you make a mistake, so should be used with care), but can occasionally be a real time saver for users of all levels, for example:

when changing over from one package to another, you can use Yatch to change the creator of your documents so that double-clicking on them will launch the new package
when you have received a file from the internet or from a PC, which doesn't have any ownership information with it, you can use Yatch to tell the computer what kind of file it really is, and which application should launch when you double-click on it

Using Yatch

To use Yatch to change the type or creator of a file, follow these simple steps:

In the Finder, select the file (or files) that you wish to change
Hold down the control key and click on the files - this will pop up a menu
Go to the Yatch item, and select Set Type or Set Creator as appropriate.

What If I Don't See The Type or Creator I Want?

Yatch already knows about quite a few applications and file types, but there are thousands out there so it is quite possible that you will want one that it doesn't have built in.

The good news is that it is very simple to teach it new file types. Simply find an example of the kind of file you want Yatch to know about, command-click on it, and choose Copy Type & Creator from the Yatch menu.

This will add the type and creator of the selected file to Yatch's menus for future use. It also puts the information onto the clipboard, which may be handy if you need to paste the type or creator into a text file.

Changing Type & Creator At The Same Time

When you have copied a file's type & creator onto the clipboard with the Copy Type & Creator command, a new menu item is enabled: Paste Type & Creator.

This allows you to do the same thing in reverse - namely "paste" both the type and the creator from the clipboard onto a group of files.

Other Commands

The Lock and Unlock commands will lock or unlock all the selected items.

The Make Invisible command hides any selected items.

The Make Visible command shows any items that were hidden. You can't use this command on hidden files directly, because they are hidden, so you can't select them! Instead, execute the command on the folder containing the invisible items.

Managing The Menus

Whenever you use the Copy Type & Creator command, Yatch will learn about new file types and creators, and add them to it's Set Type and Set Creator menus.

Where possible, Yatch will try to give the new menu items sensible names, but often it can't work out what the name should be, so it has to resort to using the actual 4-character code, which is often fairly obscure and seems to bear little or no relation to the file type or application name that it represents.

To allow you to manage these menus and give them more memorable names, Yatch includes a feature which lets you edit and delete the menu items. If you choose a menu item as usual, but hold down the option key before releasing the mouse button, you will open up an editing dialog.

You can use this dialog to rename the menu item, or to delete it altogether*.

*there is a known problem with the delete button at the moment, which means that it doesn't always work - this bug will be fixed in a future release.

Working With Whole Folders

New with version 1.1 is the ability to execute a command on a folder rather than an individual file. This can be a real time saver, but you have to be careful with it.

When you select a folder, the command that you choose will be repeated on every file inside the folder, and every file inside any subfolders, and inside subfolders of the subfolders, etc, etc. This is great if, for example, you have a whole folder full of text files owned by CodeWarrior, and you want to change them all to be owned by BBEdit. The danger, however, is that you might also have some non-text files in the folder - which will also get changed to be owned by BBEdit - probably not what you intended at all.

Yatch will warn you when you have folders selected, so as long as you take care you should be ok!

Registering Yatch

Yatch is shareware, and it will time out after 28 days. If you wish to keep using it after this period, you need to pay for it.

You can pay online using a secure form and a credit card, or by post, phone or fax using a registration program, which you can download here.

Once you have paid, you will be sent a registration code, which you can enter by choosing the Register... command in the Yatch menu.