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This question comes as an offshoot from this question Can MacOS Dictionary be invoked by a URI?

I remembered that there are a number of URI schemes that can utilized in macOS, but I couldn't remember how to list them. For example, there is x-man-page:// that allows you to create a link to any particular man page and open it up in a Terminal Window with it's own profile: How to open the Apple URL protocol x-man-page:// in iTerm and not Terminal (default)

This existing question: How can I see what custom URI schemes are registered? relied on a now defunct tool called RCDefault App that would allow you to not only list all available URIs but associate them with any particular app (i.e. telnet:// with iTerm2)

So, in attempting to answer the question, I couldn't remeber the URI scheme and needed a way to find them. Is there a way to list all of the registerd URI schemes?

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Use lsregister

The command can be found in /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister. I suggest creating a symlink to one of the directories in your PATH for easy access. You can copy and past the following command for simplicity

% sudo ln -s /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister /usr/local/bin/lsregister

Now, you can run lsregister from anywhere.

Dump the URL Binding Table

lsregister has a number of database tables that contain various application registration details. The table that we're interested in is URLSchemeBinding

% lsregister -dump URLSchemeBinding

This will give you the full list from afp:// to x-man-page://.

To find the URL scheme used for the dictionary we can grep for it:

% lsregister -dump URLSchemeBinding | grep "dict*"
dict:               35608 (0x8b18) (0x8b1a)
x-dictionary:       35604 (0x8b14) (0x8b16)
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    This should be obvious to everyone, but just in case—if you only intend to run this once and would rather not pollute /usr/local/bin, you can just run the command from its original location directly. One fell swoop: /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -dump URLSchemeBinding Commented Jul 29, 2020 at 1:49
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    Alternative approach: alias lsregister='/System/Library/Frame…/lsregister in session profile e.g.,.zshrc. Commented Oct 1, 2023 at 23:42
  • I tried to find this on MacOS 15.4.1, but unfortunately I cannot use/find lsregister Commented May 2 at 6:07

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