macOS – Understanding Hidden .padl File in Home Directory

macosmojave

I saw that someone else asked the same question at superuser: https://superuser.com/questions/1008170/whats-the-498731-padl-file-for but there was no helpful answer so I'm trying here hoping to have more luck.

Like my tag implies, I am not on Windows. I don't share directories over LDAP either.

Edit: Inspecting the file with plutil -p gives the following output:

{
  "$archiver" => "NSKeyedArchiver"
  "$objects" => [
    0 => "$null"
    1 => {
      "$class" => <CFKeyedArchiverUID 0x7febc05086e0 [0x7fff9011eb60]>{value = 4}
      "NS.keys" => [
        0 => <CFKeyedArchiverUID 0x7febc05085e0 [0x7fff9011eb60]>{value = 2}
      ]
      "NS.objects" => [
        0 => <CFKeyedArchiverUID 0x7febc0508680 [0x7fff9011eb60]>{value = 3}
      ]
    }
    2 => "PaddleT"
    3 => 1563322503.507701
    4 => {
      "$classes" => [
        0 => "NSDictionary"
        1 => "NSObject"
      ]
      "$classname" => "NSDictionary"
    }
  ]
  "$top" => {
    "root" => <CFKeyedArchiverUID 0x7febc05089c0 [0x7fff9011eb60]>{value = 1}
  }
  "$version" => 100000
}

Best Answer

Like any hidden files, it’s quite safe to do the following since if you don’t know what it does, the chance even a well intentioned person on the internet knows your setup or needs better than you are low. Better to be safe and free to experiment is my motto.

  1. Make a second admin account (assuming you only have this one account). Log out of the current account and be sure you can log in as the new account and restart.
  2. Back up the file (if you want)
  3. Delete the file

Now you have a line in the sand, escape plan and will know if the file is recreated again the exact date/time it came into existence. What you’re seeing here is a data dump of ObjectiveC data from a program or script.

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