While the options for Mac OS X’s Spaces are set in System Preferences, you won’t find them stored in the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist file.
Spaces are part of the Dock subsystem (like the Dashboard), so that’s where you need to look: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
Unfortunately, those Apple .plist files aren’t just text any more, so you’ll need to open it the Property List Editor found in /Applications/Utilities although you can just use the Terminal like this:
open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
to bring it up automatically. You’ll find Spaces referred to as “workspaces”:
- workspaces
- workspaces-app-bindings
- workspaces-cols
- workspaces-rows
How do I reset Spaces preferences?
To reset a particular item, delete the appropriate row, then save and close the .plist file. So, for example, if you wanted to clear out all the apps you have assigned to various Spaces, delete the “workspaces-app-bindings” row.
Once you’re done deleting stuff, you could log out and back in to reset the Dock process and thus Spaces, or you can geek out on the trusty Terminal again. First, find the process number of the Dock:
ps ax | grep dock
You’ll see something like this:
134 ?? S 4:44.40 /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock
That first number, in this case “134,” is the process ID number for the Dock. Use this command to “kill” and relaunch it:
kill -HUP 134
Enjoy!
Yep! And on the flipside, you can also quit the Dock process using the Activity Monitor in /Applications/Utilities — one of the handy things about OS X (though not unique to it) is the multiple ways to accomplish stuff.
Sorry I’ve said something. Just wanted to help.
Hi,
you are of course aware that a simple “plutil -convert xml1 Name_of_Plist_file_you’d_like_converted_to_text” will convert the binary format to text just fine. Something like alias pc=’plutil -convert xml1′ in .bashrc takes out all hassles.
One nice thing about OS X is, that it will convert the plist back to binary all by itself, if neccessary, so don’t worry about it.
When OS X 10.5 (or was it 10.4) came along with precompiled / binary plists for speeds’ sake, I was annoyed. But since those can be converted, things are not as bad as I thought.
Oh, I didn’t mean that sarcastically at all, though I can see why that might have been unclear. Your comment was great! :) Sorry for the confusion.
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