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#1455 [question] where are bibdesk's settings stored?
I just downgraded to Mountain Lion and my bibdesk's settings (most notably, the .bib file to open automatically on startup) are gone. Note that my ~/Library folder has remained unchanged, that's why I am puzzled about the settings having disappeared.
Where are they stored? Perhaps I can recover them from my TimeMachine backup.
Thanks!
Before 10.9, preference settings are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/Library/Preferences/edu.ucsd.cs.mmccrack.bibdesk.plist
What about after 10.9? I upgraded, then I was forced to downgrade back, and now all my settings are lost.
Furthemore, as I open the file you mentioned above I read:
// !!! BINARY PROPERTY LIST WARNING !!!
//
// The pretty-printed property list below has been created
// from a binary version on disk and should not be saved as
// the ASCII format is a subset of the binary representation!
//
Meaning it's worthless to edit this file, no?
Also, wouldn't be nice if the path of the settings file was clearly indicated, or even editable (so I can store it in my dropbox instead of the local system), in Settings=>Show All=>General?
Last edit: Andrea Tagliasacchi 2014-08-21
Oh, and since 10.9 Apple stores all app preferences in some central database, apparently, but I have no idea where.
The file is not supposed to be edited, and backup would be even meaningless on 10.9 and later. This is general Mac OSX policy, not our choice. You can edit the file, but you have to be careful that it remains valid plist XML, with all the proper encodings. So best to edit it with a dedicated plist editor.
Just to be clear, so you are saying that the plist file only "appears" to be a text file, but it's actually a binary that you should edit with the editor, and in that case you'd be able to have proper editing of settings.
And as per the recovery of my options, I have no other chance but to retrieve (hopefully the old backup is still around) my 10.8 plist file and restore that one in the "Preferences" folder.
Thanks
I am saying that it is an XML file. XML is not the same as plain text, it is a particular format, and requires a particular encoding.
As for recovery, on 10.9 I don't know any way to do that, Apple has made that practically impossible AFAIK.
Anyway, replacing the plist with the one backed up by TimeMachine on my 10.8 (Mountain Lion) worked just fine. This closes the issue for me ;)
I was able to restore the following plist files from a Time Machine backup, successfully restoring BibDesk preferences, after a clean install of OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan).
~/Library/Preferences/edu.ucsd.cs.mmccrack.bibdesk.LSSharedFileList.plist
~/Library/Preferences/edu.ucsd.cs.mmccrack.bibdesk.plist