plist-diff

pldiff

This is for when you want to figure out what plists are being changed when you set preferences on your mac.

For example, this is from when I turned on three-finger-drag:

$ plist-diff ~/Library/Preferences
ByHost/.GlobalPreferences.B32EBF71-9C71-528A-A64E-8E54224F733A.plist:
	-root["com.apple.mouse.tapBehavior"]: 2 (uint64)
	+root["com.apple.mouse.tapBehavior"]: 1 (uint64)

	-root["com.apple.trackpad.threeFingerDragGesture"]: false (bool)
	+root["com.apple.trackpad.threeFingerDragGesture"]: true (bool)

com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad.plist:
	-root["Dragging"]: true (bool)
	+root["Dragging"]: false (bool)

	-root["TrackpadThreeFingerDrag"]: false (bool)
	+root["TrackpadThreeFingerDrag"]: true (bool)

com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad.plist:
	-root["Dragging"]: true (bool)
	+root["Dragging"]: false (bool)

	-root["TrackpadThreeFingerDrag"]: false (bool)
	+root["TrackpadThreeFingerDrag"]: true (bool)

Usage: plist-diff <watchtree> [<othertree>]

plist-diff watches a directory tree and reports changes to stdout every 2 seconds.

It will also compare two directory trees with each other if you give it a second directory tree.

On a mac, you can watch for changes to preferences with:

plist-diff ~/Library/Preferences

Arguments:
  <watchtree>      directory tree (or file) to watch for changes
  [<othertree>]    directory tree (or file) to compare instead of watching the first tree for
                   changes

Flags:
  -h, --help                  Show context-sensitive help.
      --timestamps            include timestamp data in diffs. timestamps are ignored by default
      --permissions-errors    return an error when a file cannot be opened due to insufficient
                              permissions. these errors are ignored by default
      --version               output the plist-diff version and exit