Introduction to Workspace Services

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

Organization of This Document

This programming topic contains the following articles:

• About Workspace Services contains a discussion of the services NSWorkspace provides.

• Use of .app Extension describes how 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.

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