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Database of hidden settings for Mac OS X
- loincloth 17y agohttp://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html
- rbanffy 17y agoWouldn't it be nice if OSX kept its settings in text files under /etc like any civilized OS should?
- ankhmoop 17y agoNo, because then there wouldn't be such a nice API for managing live settings from within the programs themselves: http://developer.apple.com/DOCUMENTATION/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSUserDefaults_Class/Reference/Reference.html http://developer.apple.com/DOCUMENTATION/Cocoa/Reference/Fou...
- rbanffy 17y agoAnd why exactly would keeping the settings human readable prevent someone from developing a nice API for managing them? Oh... It wouldn't
- ankhmoop 17y agoMac OS X preferences -were- human-readable (and editable), but that's not what makes the NSUserDefaults API so handy. What makes NSUserDefaults handy is the support for varying default domains (network, system, user) and dead-simple serialization of Objective-C basic types (strings, ints, dictionaries, arrays). Additionally, Apple switched to a binary file format to improve performance in 10.5, which may be converted to/from the text format, or edited directly using the property list editor. There's also nothing stopping a software author from documenting their settings file keys, and some do. However, most of the settings options you do see listed on that site are undocumented because they are unsupported.
- progLiker 17y agoI one really wants to get into the settings of Mac OsX, and have a marvellous scheme based tool, which securely performs requests, and are free as well :-) Then Clix is the ultimate choice in my humble opinion. It is published under the assumption that it is better to teach a man to fish. The software can be found here: [http://www.versiontracker.com/users/rixstep http://www.versiontracker.com/users/rixstep] And their site here : [http://rixstep.com/ http://rixstep.com/]
- benkant 17y agoBoy- I didn't understand a word you just said.
- rjurney 17y agoJust what OS X was missing - RegEdit ;)
- rbanffy 17y agoIt looked like a nice idea, back in 92 or so.
- ujeezy 17y agoIs that running on Google App Engine? The response headers say, "Google Frontend".
- GHFigs 17y agoYes. For curiosity's sake, source to both the server and prefpane are here: http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-secrets/ http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-secrets/
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- bradgessler 17y agoI'd like to see this website implement a simple up/down vote feature per setting.
- ttam 17y agoseriously.. is this kind of thing hn worthy? it's definitely not NEWS and it was already referenced on some other "ASK HN for Mac stuff" thread.. go on, vote me down