A selection of command line tools for working with setting/defaults/preferences on macOS.
This tool is inspired by Greg Neagle's fancy_defaults_read.py and a remake of my earlier Python tool.
In the simplest use case you can just pass the app identifier:
% prefs com.apple.screensaver
moduleDict [host]: {
moduleName = "Computer Name";
path = "/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/PlugIns/Computer Name.appex";
type = 0;
}
PrefsVersion [host]: 100
idleTime [host]: 0
lastDelayTime [host]: 1200
tokenRemovalAction [host]: 0
showClock [host]: 0
CleanExit [host]: 1
The tool will print all composited preferences keys and their type and value, with the preference domain where the value was set. The output format is:
prefKey [domain]: value
A preference domain of managed means the value is set with a configuration profile.
While preference values set in .GlobalPreferences.plist in the different domains are composited into the the application defaults, they are not shown by default, since there are many of them and they will make the output fairly unreadable. If you want to see them add the --globals (or -g) option:
% prefs --globals com.apple.screensaver
You can also add one or more keys after the app identifier to get just specific values:
% prefs com.apple.screensaver idleTime AppleLocale
idleTime [host]: 0
AppleLocale [global/user]: en_US@rg=nlzzzz
You can also add the --value option to show just the value in the output (might be useful when you want to get the composited value for another script.
% prefs --value com.apple.screensaver idleTime
1200
- doesn't read preferences of sandboxes apps from their containers
This tool is a re-interpretation in Swift of Tim Sutton's mcxToProfile.
It will convert a normal flat plist file into a custom mobileconfig/configuration profile that can be used for manual installation or with an MDM server.
In the simplest form, use it like this:
% plist2profile --identifier example.settings com.example.settings.plist
This will generate a file named example.settings.mobileconfig in the current working directory which manages the preference keys in the com.example.settings.plist in the com.example.settings preference domain. You can add multiple plist files.
The preference domain for the settings is determined from the file name of each plist file given (removing the plist file extension).
You can add a display and organization name that will be used in the respective fields using the --displayname and --organization options.
By default, the profile is created with a System scope. you can change it to User with the --user flag.
There are two ways to assemble custom preference profile, the 'traditional' mcx format and a more modern format, which Bob Gendler described in this post. This tool creates the modern format by default, but can also create the traditional format when you set the --mcx key.