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Comment by cosmic_cheese | Hacker News Reader

Not really, defaults are stored in per-application plist files rather than in a singular database.

And what difference to end user it makes where exactly the key/value data is stored? No real difference whether the data is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MyAppName or com.my.app when you're trying to coerce some internals whose configuration is not exposed because you're not worthy of it

It was common in the Windows 9x days for the two Registry Hives (SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT) to get corrupted leading to an unbootable system or to get fragmented and/or full of disused values from poorly-uninstalled software leading to increased memory usage.

Here are some KB articles to check out for context:

- https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/105563

- https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/89799

- https://helparchive.huntertur.net/document/89794

Been there, know the pain, still not actually a big difference to the question of modifying "unexported" settings

I’d say that a quick defaults command is probably on the whole more friendly than trawling around in the arcane mess that is the Windows registry. It’s not as friendly as it could be, but at least it’s a somewhat human readable one liner.

It’s also reasonable to back up plists and/or sync them between machines like some users do with their dotfiles, because they’re just files.

Registry settings can be modified via CLI, too. Windows users are just far more averse to the command line.

I have never seen anyone backup defaults database between macs[1], I have seen a lot of scripts calling setting by setting instead.

Which has direct equivalent in "reg" files, to be quite honest.

[1] Other than restoring time machine backup to another system or similar cloning setups

It’s not a database, they’re individual files. Most are even plain XML that can be hand written and edited with a text editor.

This is not a gotcha, really. An XML file can be considered database just as well (similarly, part of registry on NT is portable between machines).

There is - removing a wonk preference namespace is as easy as `rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.cheapskatesoftware.wonko.plist`. Whereas the Windows Registry is a monolithic piece of gunk you need a Microsoft editor for to zap something

Considering the day I once spent hunting for all possible plist locations of a single program, I'd rate it about same for registry and plists

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