Change Mac GUI app environment variable

Amadeus Guo -

Application launched from finder on mac does not respect environment variables set by bash. Here are some methods to set environment variables for GUI applications.

Simplest method: modify via bash

NODEENV=development ./trader.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron

Global method:

launchctl setenv NODE_ENV development

More customizable: modify plist file

  1. Open the app by right clicking Show Package Content
  2. Edit Info.plist file. Add following section
  3. Restart Finder by killall Finder in terminal.app
  <key>LSEnvironment</key>
  <dict>
    <key>NODE_ENV</key>
    <string>development</string>
  </dict>

A caveat here is: Editing this file only have effect before the app is launched the first time. Then launch service is going to cache this. Use this command for update to take effect.

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -v -f myapp.app

or this?

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user 
killall Finder