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Duplicate 'com.apple.xxx' preferences

I've only just noticed when opening my user preferences folder that it's blown out to thousands of items.


It seems that my Apple applications (i.e. iTunes, iCal, Quicktime, etc) are creating multiple preference files over time.


Some only have one duplicate, for example:


com.apple.internetconfigpriv.plist

com.apple.internetconfigpriv.plist.kDDo7qA


In the case of heavily used applications like iTunes and Quicktime, the duplicate files run into the hundreds.


I saw this previous discussion where a user had problems with regular applications doing this:


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2237574?answerId=10611481022#10611481022


My problem seems limited to Apple applications only - no third party applications seem to be affected.


I'm not sure how to stop these duplicate preferences files being created.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jun 28, 2011 5:58 AM

Reply
4 replies

Jun 28, 2011 10:43 AM in response to jsd2

This issue has been covered by MacFixit.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20032310-263.html?tag=mncol;title


An AppleScripter provided the following script which I have set up to run automatically upon shutdown or restart. You would need to change widget.weather to quicktime or whatever other preference file is appropriate.


set the_container to path topreferences folderfromuser domain

tell application "Finder" to tell folder the_container

delete (every file whose name contains "widget.weather" and name extension is not "plist")

end tell

Jun 28, 2011 6:05 PM in response to Adam Meath

My theory for the reason you see these files is because when a plist file is to be updated it is done in a copy of the plist for safety (the ones with the "garbage" at the end) and then the copy is used to replace the original. It's these intermediate copies that are not always being removed by the system (as I said, that's my theory).


For me the one I see the most is pbs.plist.xxxxxx. But I've seen others like com.apple.internetconfigpriv.plist.xxxxxx mentioned by the OP as well. My solution to this is to clean all this accumulated extra cruft out every day as part of the periodic daily maintenance. This keeps it from building up in my preferences dir. Here's my current list:


rm -f /Volumes/main/ira/Library/Preferences/pbs.plist.*

rm -f /Volumes/main/ira/Library/Preferences/com.apple.help.plist.*

rm -f /Volumes/main/ira/Library/Preferences/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX.plist.*

rm -f /Volumes/main/ira/Library/Preferences/com.apple.quicktimeplayer.plist.*

rm -f /Volumes/main/ira/Library/Preferences/com.apple.internetconfigpriv.plist.*

rm -f /Volumes/main/ira/Library/Preferences/com.cod3r.a52codec.plist.*


One of the easiest ways to extend the periodic maintenance scripts is to add your own additions to /usr/local/etc/periodic/daily (also you can create dirs for weekly and monthly if you have additions for them as well). For the daily maintenance script I placed the above rm list in a (executable bash script) text file named 999.finish so the full pathname is,


/usr/local/etc/periodic/daily/999.finish


This seems to keep those garbage plist files more-or-less under control.

Duplicate 'com.apple.xxx' preferences

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