Preferences Files

Hey guys, this is Maid1, and today is going to be a video on how to edit preferences files on your computer and how to view preferences files on your computer.

Now first of all, for people with a little background, if you know about the terminal command defaults, and you have used it to edit your doc settings or Finder settings or dashboard settings or whatever, you may notice that there's something in it that's com. something. something. That's normally the name of the application in the company, like com.doapp.do. I'm going to be showing you why exactly it is these things.

Um, so first of all, if you open a new Finder window to your home folder, then you select Library, then you select Preferences, and if you have it in icon view, that's okay too. Here are all your preferences, um, preference files, and you'll notice that there are a bunch of things like com.apple.do.pist, stuff like that, that are actually preference files.

So right here, if you see com.apple.dod.pist, if you open it up, it opens with Property List Editor, and right here you can see the doc preferences. No glass is a preference that you can check on or off, that's whether your doc is transparent or not. Um, so stuff like that is in these preferences files.

Here, um, right here are all the apps you have in your doc, just random apps. Here's one of my apps. Okay, so that's, um, how your doc works with defaults. Um, there are other preferences files here too. I mean, this folder is huge; it has the address book preferences, you know, all this important stuff. If you deleted this directory, all your settings would be gone, but if you restored this directory from, say, a Time Machine disk, then, um, your files would be remaining, um, and your preferences would be restored.

So I'll just show you, um, how to edit these files through Terminal. So first of all, you have to go into Terminal or iTerm or whatever terminal application you use, and you want to type defaults space read, or read. If I type defaults space read space com.apple.dod, this is the name of the preference, and normally the real file has a plist after it, but I'm not going to type that. Then I hit enter, and it shows me every single thing in the doc's preference file; that's actually pretty.

So I can pipe that into more, okay, and I can scroll all the way to the bottom. It actually takes a few seconds. Oh, went past the bottom. Okay, whatever. So, um, that is, um, how to write.

If you type defaults space write space com.apple.dospace, let's say no glass space dash b, and that means the data type is dash b. If you say dash string, then it'll think it's a string space and then whatever. That's how you write to, um, a defaults, or, um, yeah, a defaults file. It's called defaults, even though it's really a preference file. It's called defaults, and that's the interface on your application that reads and writes to your preferences, um, is called NSUserDefaults. So it's called defaults; that's the actual name of it.

So these in your home folder are, um, your preferences that you own. Um, there is also, if you go to your Macintosh HD right here, you can see that in /Library there is a SL Preferences. SL Preferences right here, and it has a bunch of preferences in it, like com.apple.dod.

Okay, um, so that's that. So that is how to set preferences. Um, okay, so thank you for watching M Kids 101, um, so subscribe and goodbye.