reset-user-defaults-for-an-application.md

Reset User Defaults For An Application

Category: Mac

Note: You must know the name of the bundle identifier for the application before performing this task. Proceed with caution.

The UserDefaults class provides a programmatic interface for interacting with the defaults system. Defaults are stored on a per-user basis for each application on macOS.

There may be situations where you need to delete these settings if developing applications on macOS.

Navigate to ~/Library/Preferences/

To remove the plist file in the above directory:

rm com.yourcompany.yourapp.plist

Since User Defaults are cached, you will need to kill the preferences service (which will restart automatically):

killall cfprefsd

When the application is restarted, it will create a new UserDefaults plist file with default configuration settings.