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Microsoft => Microsoft Windows => Windows 10 and 11 => Topic started by: seekinghelp on January 05, 2016, 06:24:01 AM

Title: Question about files and such ?
Post by: seekinghelp on January 05, 2016, 06:24:01 AM
Hi, hope I'm posting in the right place, sorry if I am, but

I'm curious why are my music files saying, you know my songs music say .mp3 and .m4a after the title

and

 The same thing with my notepad files saying .txt after them

I'm confused, cause when I try to take to rename the music and note and take those things off it says "If you change a file name extension, the file might become unusable. Are you sure you want to change it?" and I change it and makes me open it with something else and the icon is missing and the music don't work

Please Help  :(
Title: Re: Question about files and such ?
Post by: seekinghelp on January 05, 2016, 06:28:09 AM
and plus I have a file on my desktop called ".iTunes Preferences.plist" I don't know what that is either
Title: Re: Question about files and such ?
Post by: patio on January 05, 2016, 07:46:35 AM
Those are called file extensions.....they tell the OS which application opens/uses them....

I'm gonna assume .plist stands for playlist....
Title: Re: Question about files and such ?
Post by: seekinghelp on January 05, 2016, 08:02:44 AM
is there a way to get them off and stop it from doing that then?

oh ok, that solves that one, ty
Title: Re: Question about files and such ?
Post by: strollin on January 05, 2016, 08:37:36 AM
The default for Windows File Explorer is to hide the file extensions so you don't see them.  I personally can't stand not seeing the file extensions so I always change that setting to display extensions.  If you changed that setting to hide extensions, you would no longer see the extensions in File Explorer.  Not sure if that is sufficient for you or not.

You could change the extension from .mp3 to .music (I guess, never actually tried it) and then you would need to associate the .music extension to use your preferred music player.  Some programs use the extension to know how to handle a file while others ignore the extension and look at the contents of the file to know how to handle.  For instance, you might have files with the extensions .mp3 and .aac.  If you changed those both to .music, programs that depend on the extension to determine what type of file it is and how to decode it, will not work.
Title: Re: Question about files and such ?
Post by: seekinghelp on January 06, 2016, 12:41:57 PM
thank you for the info, how do I hide file extensions, where do I go ?