Can I undo changes made via "defaults write"?

Solution 1:

Yes, usually you can just use defaults delete

If for example you have run

defaults write -g NSScrollAnimationEnabled -bool false

You can undo the changes by running one of

defaults delete -g NSScrollAnimationEnabled
defaults write -g NSScrollAnimationEnabled -bool true

(In all cases you need to restart the application to apply changes)

Even if the preference key had some value before you used defaults it shouldn't matter if you delete the key.

It is generally safe to delete preference keys or even complete files, and they can usually be recreated by OS X or applications.

The property lists modified by defaults are stored in directories like

• ~/Library/Preferences/
• ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/
• ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/

You can edit a plist in a text editor after converting it to XML with

plutil -convert xml1 FILENAME