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Content Types Documentation

Understanding and working with macOS Uniform Type Identifiers (UTIs)

Overview

macOS uses Uniform Type Identifiers (UTIs) to identify file types and data formats. This guide covers:

  • Understanding UTI structure
  • Common content types
  • Working with UTIs in queries
  • Content type discovery

UTI Basics

UTIs follow a reverse-DNS naming convention:

public.image              // Base type for all images
com.adobe.photoshop.image // Specific to Photoshop
public.jpeg              // JPEG image format

Common Types

Document Types

import { QueryBuilder } from 'mdfind-node'

// Basic documents
const docs = await new QueryBuilder().contentType('public.content').execute()

// Text documents
const text = await new QueryBuilder().contentType('public.text').execute()

// PDF documents
const pdfs = await new QueryBuilder().contentType('com.adobe.pdf').execute()

Image Types

// All images
const images = await new QueryBuilder().contentType('public.image').execute()

// Specific formats
const jpegs = await new QueryBuilder().contentType('public.jpeg').execute()

const pngs = await new QueryBuilder().contentType('public.png').execute()

const raws = await new QueryBuilder().contentType('public.camera-raw-image').execute()

Audio/Video Types

// All audiovisual content
const media = await new QueryBuilder().contentType('public.audiovisual-content').execute()

// Audio only
const audio = await new QueryBuilder().contentType('public.audio').execute()

// Video only
const video = await new QueryBuilder().contentType('public.movie').execute()

Archive Types

// All archives
const archives = await new QueryBuilder().contentType('public.archive').execute()

// Specific formats
const zips = await new QueryBuilder().contentType('public.zip-archive').execute()

const disk = await new QueryBuilder().contentType('public.disk-image').execute()

Content Type Discovery

List Available Types

import { getContentTypes } from 'mdfind-node'

// Get all registered types
const types = getContentTypes()

// Check descriptions
console.log(types['public.image']) // "Image files (JPEG, PNG, etc.)"
console.log(types['public.audio']) // "Audio files (MP3, WAV, etc.)"

Common UTI Categories

Base Types

  • public.item - Base type for all files
  • public.content - Base type for all content
  • public.data - Base type for data files
  • public.composite-content - Multi-type content

Documents

  • public.text - Plain text
  • public.plain-text - Plain text without markup
  • public.rtf - Rich Text Format
  • public.html - HTML documents
  • public.xml - XML documents
  • public.source-code - Source code files

Images

  • public.image - All images
  • public.jpeg - JPEG images
  • public.png - PNG images
  • public.tiff - TIFF images
  • public.camera-raw-image - Camera RAW files

Audio/Video

  • public.movie - Video files
  • public.audio - Audio files
  • public.mp3 - MP3 audio
  • public.mpeg-4 - MPEG-4 media
  • com.apple.quicktime-movie - QuickTime movies

Archives

  • public.archive - All archives
  • public.zip-archive - ZIP archives
  • public.disk-image - Disk images
  • org.gnu.gnu-zip-archive - GZIP archives

Best Practices

  1. Use standard types over vendor-specific ones
  2. Check type existence before querying
  3. Handle unknown types gracefully
  4. Consider platform-specific types
  5. Use content type tree for inclusive searches

Examples

Media Library

import { QueryBuilder } from 'mdfind-node'

// Find high-quality images
const images = await new QueryBuilder()
  .contentType('public.image')
  .minImageDimensions(1920, 1080)
  .execute()

// Find audio files
const audio = await new QueryBuilder()
  .contentType('public.audio')
  .minAudioQuality(44100, 320000)
  .execute()

Document Search

// Find text documents
const docs = await new QueryBuilder().isText().modifiedAfter(new Date('2024-01-01')).execute()

// Find PDFs
const pdfs = await new QueryBuilder()
  .isPDF()
  .largerThan(1024 * 1024) // > 1MB
  .execute()

See Also

References