A list of macOS defaults commands with demos

22 points by juliethefoxcoon a day ago on lobsters | 5 comments

Missing one of my favorites. After setting the dock size, I like to also set size-immutable to prevent myself from accidentally resizing it:

defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -int 32 
defaults write com.apple.dock size-immutable -bool yes
killall Dock

: artemisSystem | 16 hours ago
oh, i didn't know about this one! adding this to my setup immediately, thanks!

madsmtm | 15 hours ago

I can recommend TinkerTool for this kind of thing as well: https://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html

IIUC it's basically a GUI for defaults, but it has some nice affordances (like a backup/rollback system).

mw | 12 hours ago

I had only used defaults as some cryptic old magic to solve a one off issue at a time. I was excited to see this. My new computer init:

mkdir ~/screenshots
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/screenshots
killall SystemUIServer

# disable two finger swipe left/right in browser
defaults write com.google.Chrome AppleEnableSwipeNavigateWithScrolls -bool FALSE

frontsideair | 8 hours ago

After recently switching to nix-darwin, I can now declare them in a config instead of running them. Still nice to have an inventory with descriptions and screenshots.