

Database of hidden settings for Mac OS X - mmc
http://secrets.blacktree.com/

======
rjurney
Just what OS X was missing - RegEdit ;)

~~~
rbanffy
It looked like a nice idea, back in 92 or so.

------
rbanffy
Wouldn't it be nice if OSX kept its settings in text files under /etc like any
civilized OS should?

~~~
ankhmoop
No, because then there wouldn't be such a nice API for managing live settings
from within the programs themselves:

[http://developer.apple.com/DOCUMENTATION/Cocoa/Reference/Fou...](http://developer.apple.com/DOCUMENTATION/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSUserDefaults_Class/Reference/Reference.html)

~~~
rbanffy
And why exactly would keeping the settings human readable prevent someone from
developing a nice API for managing them?

Oh... It wouldn't

~~~
ankhmoop
Mac OS X preferences -were- human-readable (and editable), but that's not what
makes the NSUserDefaults API so handy. What makes NSUserDefaults handy is the
support for varying default domains (network, system, user) and dead-simple
serialization of Objective-C basic types (strings, ints, dictionaries,
arrays).

Additionally, Apple switched to a binary file format to improve performance in
10.5, which may be converted to/from the text format, or edited directly using
the property list editor.

There's also nothing stopping a software author from documenting their
settings file keys, and some do. However, most of the settings options you do
see listed on that site are undocumented because they are unsupported.

------
bradgessler
I'd like to see this website implement a simple up/down vote feature per
setting.

------
ujeezy
Is that running on Google App Engine? The response headers say, "Google
Frontend".

~~~
GHFigs
Yes. For curiosity's sake, source to both the server and prefpane are here:
<http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-secrets/>

------
ttam
seriously.. is this kind of thing hn worthy? it's definitely not NEWS and it
was already referenced on some other "ASK HN for Mac stuff" thread..

go on, vote me down

------
loincloth
<http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html>

------
progLiker
I one really wants to get into the settings of Mac OsX, and have a marvellous
scheme based tool, which securely performs requests, and are free as well :-)
Then Clix is the ultimate choice in my humble opinion. It is published under
the assumption that it is better to teach a man to fish. The software can be
found here: [<http://www.versiontracker.com/users/rixstep>] And their site
here : [<http://rixstep.com/>]

~~~
benkant
Boy- I didn't understand a word you just said.

