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 modern re-interpretation 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, you use it like this:

% plist2profile --plist settings.plist --identifier com.example.settings