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macosterminaloperating-systemmacos-high-sierra

Terminal.app On macOS Doesn't Preserve Preferences

I used to work with mac os a while ago an now I am coming back. What I noticed is regular preferences update doesn't work for at least Terminal.app. This happens on any High Sierra.

  1. Start Terminal.app
  2. Go to your Preferences either through a menu or Cmd-,.
  3. Change something, e.g. use different profile as a default.
  4. Quit application
  5. Start Terminal.app again. Your preferences changes are reset.

What's going on ? Looks like a bug to me, perhaps I have missed something since Lion release.

Solution

  • It could be that your preferences are "stuck." Preferences in macOS has been broken for awhile now and can sometimes get into a state where the app can't read changes made, or changes never get applied.

    Try deleting your ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist file along with any com.apple.Terminal.plist.lockfile and com.apple.Terminal.plist.<RANDOM> companion files you find. Restart your system and try it again.

    Another way is to look at the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist permissions. You may see something like this

    listing of the Library/Preferences

    Now if you run something like 

    sudo chown evgeniy.sharapov:staff ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist

    And restart the Terminal.app, it seems to go back to normal and able to save changes in Preferences.