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I'm a big fan of the macOS method where there's an OS API to manipulate the user defaults (as its called) but they are actually just stored as files in a standardized format (usually XML). You get the pros of the standardization and the pros of user manipulation (like easily deleting the corrupted settings of some app by removing one or two files)

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Plasma/KDE has this with the kreadconfig5 and kwriteconfig5 commands, and it uses a simple INI-like format: https://userbase.kde.org/KDE_System_Administration/Configura...

GNOME has the gsettings command for this, which is the equivalent of the `defaults` command in macOS. Many guides still refer users to the `dconf` command, though, which is technically a lower-level tool but basically does the same thing for 99.999% of GNOME installations. (Users/distro-makers can actually choose the storage format on GNOME's case.)

At least that used to be the macOS method. Once Apple moved most of their apps to the cloud there are constantly open databases pushing settings updates from device to device. Things often start breaking these days if you try to fix things through direct file manipulation.

With luck you might be able to find the correct terminal commands to disable services and fingers crossed they don't automatically restart themselves before you are done editing.

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