Introduction to property lists, used in many places as well as the mainstay of preference files. How to change them safely without risk of conflicts.
Prefs Editor
Why changing a property list in Preferences may not change that setting, and how you may not be able to throw the file away.
Before you try editing or trashing that preference file, ask whether macOS in the form of cfprefsd isn’t going to undo your work.
They’re XML, structured into dictionaries and arrays containing key-value pairs. Preference plists are managed, and need special treatment.
Preference files are involved in many Mac problems, and are often their solution. Using them now isn’t simple: here is some guidance.
The current macOS implementation of preferences is appalling design in every respect, and is essentially undocumented even for developers. Is this the way that macOS is heading?
Have you ever tried removing or editing a preference file, to no effect? This explains why that happens, and how to get changes to work properly.
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