Eliminating app crashes, freezes by checking plist files

Monday, June 30th

Many application-based problems users experience seem to be stem from faulty .plist files. The standard solution in these cases has been to remove the plist files and have the application recreate them. While this is a quick solution, it also resets the settings stored in the .plist files, and requires the user to recreate custom settings.

Apple includes a command line utility with Mac OS X dubbed "plutil" which can be used to check plist files for damage and manage their properties. This program should be used prior to resorting to the default delete of plist files. With the utility, you can check for syntax errors and convert them between XML and binary format.

To use this utility, launch the Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities, then enter the following command, replacing "filepath" with the path the target .plist file. Most pertinent plist files are located in ~/Library/Preferences.

Checking for errors:

• plutil -lint filepath

If a program is not properly storing settings, or seems to be acting oddly and you suspect it is a property list file error, run this utility to first check for errors and then try switching between the two formats before resorting to deleting the file and starting over.

Converting to different formats

• plutil -convert fmt filepath

("fmt" in the command is either "xml1" or "binary1", depending on whether XML or binary format is desired).

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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