Plurl Syntax

Conventions of This Document

Bold text is used to indicate portions of the URL that must be entered literally.

Italic text is used to indicate variable components of the URL. Percent escapes (the % character followed by two hexadecimal digits) may be used to subtitute for spaces or special characters in these components. The variable components have the following meanings:

application: The unique identifier of the application, in the reverse-Internet form used by Java packages. May contain percent escapes. Examples include com.apple.finder and org.mozilla.navigator. The corresponding preference file is generally called ~/Library/Preferences/application.plist. Plurl treats the single asterisk (*) as a special case which specifies that the preference will be applied globally to all current and future applications.
key: The name of the particular preference to change. May contain percent escapes. At present, only top-level preferences are supported. Wildcards, arrays, and dictionaries will not be available until Plurl 2.0.
value: The actual ASCII text assigned to a string preference. May contain percent escapes.

Spaces are included in the syntax below for clarity. Do not include these spaces in your actual URLs.

Changing a preference overwrites any previous value of the preference, even if the type (boolean, string, etc.) of the new value differs from the old value.

Querying the Value of a Preference

x-plist: application / key ?: Displays the current value of the corresponding preference. The ? is optional.
Equivalent to the Terminal command defaults read application key

Creating or Modifying a Boolean Preference

x-plist: application / key ~: Sets the corresponding preference to boolean false. Note that this is different than deleting the preference (see below).
Equivalent to the Terminal command defaults write application key -bool false
x-plist: application / key +: Sets the corresponding preference to boolean true.
Equivalent to the Terminal command defaults write application key -bool true

Creating or Modifying a String Preference

x-plist: application / key = value: Sets the corresponding preference to the given string value.
Equivalent to the Terminal command defaults write application key value

Deleting a Preference

x-plist: application / key !: Deletes any previous value of the corresponding preference. Note that this is different than setting the preference to boolean false (see above).
Equivalent to the Terminal command defaults delete application key

Examples

x-plist:com.apple.finder/AppleShowAllFiles+: Sets the "show all files" preference (AppleShowAllFiles) of the Finder (com.apple.finder) to true.
x-plist:com.apple.finder/AnimateWindowZoom~: Sets the "show zoom rectangles" preference (AnimateWindowZoom) of the Finder (com.apple.finder) to false.
x-plist:com.apple.Dock/mineffect?: Displays the current value of the "minimization effect" preference (mineffect) of the Dock (com.apple.Dock).
x-plist:com.apple.Dock/mineffect=scale: Sets the "minimization effect" preference (mineffect) of the Dock (com.apple.Dock) to "scale".
x-plist:com.apple.Dock/mineffect!: Deletes the "minimization effect" preference (mineffect) of the Dock (com.apple.Dock).
x-plist:*/%41ppleScrollBarVariant=Single: Sets the "scrollbar variant" preference (AppleScrollBarVariant) of all applications (*) to one at each end (Single). Note the use of a percent escape and the "*" wildcard.