Choosing the default application does not stay as default after reboot When I'm opening .avi files, I want to open them with VLC Media player, when right clicking the item, I see this:



As you can see QuickTime is the default player, I want to change it to VLC, so I change it:



After changing it, every .avi I open gets opened by VLC, however, when I reboot my Mac, the default goes back to QuickTime... how do I prevent this and keep VLC as the default.
I was doing it the wrong way like you try to for a long time and also have retreated to using RCDefaultApp in the past... but there's actually a way to do that natively which works.

Do the following:

1) right click your file 
2) choose "Get Info"
3) in the popup find the "Open with" strip (this is by default closed) and open it
4) from the drop down choose the program you want to open that type of file
5) click "Change all..."


And that's the correct way to do it