Mac operating system and GUI application preferences (settings) are usually managed using graphical interfaces, such as the System Preferences app and the "Preferences" menu item within applications. dotmacos is a command-line utility that allows you to store your preferences in human-readable config files and apply them with a single action. You get the simplicity and transparency of "dotfiles" across the OS and applications.

• Users who are comfortable with the terminal, and prefer simple config files to manage their OS and app preferences.
• Users who track "dotfiles" for various command-line utilities in an SCM repo and want to do the same for MacOS and GUI apps.
• Users who want access to settings not exposed in the GUI of the OS or apps.

• Users who are satisfied with using graphical interfaces to manually set and update their preferences, including on a new machine.
• Users who are satisfied with Apple's cloud-based sync-ing of preferences.

Ensure that you have Python 2.7 or 3.6+ and git. Install with:

pip install git+https://github.com/shvenkat/dotmacos#egg=dotmacos

This installs the Python package and a command line utility. You can now use it as follows:

dotmacos help
dotmacos set  --format json5 foo.json5 [bar.json5 [...]] [--no-restart-apps]
dotmacos get  --format json5 foo.json5 [bar.json5 [...]]
dotmacos diff --format json5 foo.json5 [bar.json5 [...]]

Comments, suggestions and contributions are welcome. Please open an issue or PR at https://github.com/shvenkat/dotmacos.

• Set system and GUI app preferences, which should take effect immediately and persist i.e. not be overwritten by the OS or apps.

• Set preferences from human-readable config files, with string keys, explicitly typed values, and optional comments.

• Save a relevant subset of preferences to config files, preserving comments.

• A type mismatch between old and new values for any preference key should be reported as a warning.

• Use the builtin defaults command to get and set preferences. This is the recommended interface for scripts to use the MacOS preference system and also updates the cfprefsd cache. Writing plist files directly may result in preferences being ignored or overwritten.

• Close apps before setting preferences to prevent apps from ignoring or over-writing the updated preferences. Re-start closed apps after setting preferences.

• Support config files in:

  • JSON5 (explicitly typed values, comments not preserved at present),
  • JSON (explicitly typed values, no comments), and
  • YAML (value type inferred, comments preserved).

  See the StrictYAML project for a discussion of different serialization file formats, and the merits of explicit typing. Support for other file formats can be added easily if a parsing library is available.

• Support single or multiple config files, to give users flexibility in organizing and composing their settings.

• Do not require config file(s) to be placed in any particular location, such as the user's home directory.

• Use the following UI:

  dotmacos set --format json5 foo.json5 ...
  dotmacos get --format json5 foo.json5 ...
  

• Use Python for implementation. It is included on MacOS and has a plist library.

To close apps like System Preferences, use:

# Close any open System Preferences panes to avoid concurrent updates.
! which osascript 1>/dev/null 2>&1 \
    || osascript -e 'tell application "System Preferences" to quit'

The user may need to restart their affected apps to pick up new settings.

warn "You may need to quit applications for some settings to take effect."