MacOS – How to find all the changes I’ve made to the system via “defaults write”

defaultsmacos

Over time, I've made many tweaks to my OS using defaults write, for example:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 0
defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleShowScrollBars -string "Always"

and so on.

How can I generate a list of all the non-factory settings I've overridden?

Best Answer

It's not possible to distinguish changes made by you with defaults versus changing the setting using the GUI equivalent preference if one exists, since both perform writes to the property list files in the same way.

Theoretically, the default value shouldn't be written to preference files. Therefore, the only values in ~/Library/Preferences property list files should be ones overridden by you. You will have to investigate these files for the preferences you're using.

Create a new user account and open the software you use without making any changes. Diff the contents of ~/Library/Preferences from this user account with your normal user account, such as with Kaleidoscope, to identify changes made to preferences.

Related Solutions

MacOS – undo changes made via “defaults write”

Yes, usually you can just use defaults delete

If for example you have run

defaults write -g NSScrollAnimationEnabled -bool false

You can undo the changes by running one of

defaults delete -g NSScrollAnimationEnabled
defaults write -g NSScrollAnimationEnabled -bool true

(In all cases you need to restart the application to apply changes)

Even if the preference key had some value before you used defaults it shouldn't matter if you delete the key.

It is generally safe to delete preference keys or even complete files, and they can usually be recreated by OS X or applications.

The property lists modified by defaults are stored in directories like

~/Library/Preferences/
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/
~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/

You can edit a plist in a text editor after converting it to XML with

plutil -convert xml1 FILENAME

MacOS – How to change mouse settings instantaneously from Terminal

AppleScript is a nice way to go !

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal pane "com.apple.preference.mouse"
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    tell checkbox 1 of window 1
        click
    end tell
end tell

It works on Mavericks. It might need some modifications on older OS X because the UI of the mouse preferences changed.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – undo changes made via “defaults write”

MacOS – How to change mouse settings instantaneously from Terminal

Related Question