Opening Files
Drag and Drop
Drag any .riv file onto the RAV window to load it. The animation begins playing immediately using the default playback target.
File Dialog
Click the OPEN button in the toolbar to browse your filesystem and select a .riv file.
Double-Click (Desktop)
On macOS, the 2.4.3 release declares both the officialapp.rive.editor.rive-file UTI and the legacyapp.rive.animation.viewer.riv compatibility UTI as alternate Viewer types, with the dedicated RiveFileIcon.icns assigned to both. Use Open With or an existing Finder association to open any .riv file directly. If RAV is already running, the file is routed into the existing window; RAV does not claim the default handler.
After an app update, the first launch of the new version refreshes that installed bundle's Launch Services registration once for the version and schema, without restarting Finder or changing the Viewer/Alternate rank. The declarations include the dedicated document icon resource and support both the current and legacy RAV file identifiers.
On Windows, both the NSIS setup executable and MSI package install a dedicated ten-resolution RiveFileIcon.ico for .riv documents. The NSIS updater rewrites the document-icon registration and notifies Explorer on every update; uninstall restores the association that existed before RAV. MSI owns the equivalent registry value as an upgrade-aware component and removes it on uninstall. Right-click a.rivfile and choose "Open with" if you want RAV to be its active handler.
Supported Formats
RAV supports Rive runtime files (.riv). These are the compiled binary output from the Rive Editor. Source .rev project files cannot be opened directly.