Plist Editor

Category

Description of App

PLIST Editor is an easy to use editor for property list (.plist) data. In a clean and uncluttered interface, it allows you to quickly create, visualise, modify, and save your .plist documents.
PLIST Editor is probably the only "source control" friendly property list editor that you can find on the market (except Xcode, of course). For XML plists (the most commonly used) and OpenStep/ASCII plists, it maintains the order of dictionary elements and the editing capabilities are on parity with Xcode, so you don't see a difference between a file edited in PLIST Editor and one edited in Xcode.
PLIST Editor can be used as a lightweight Xcode alternative, having more features, using less disk space, less memory and starting up much faster.
Core features:
• Open and save property list files in XML, Binary and OpenStep/ASCII format.
• Import plist data contained in .mobileconfig or .mobileprovision files or other files which are encoded using Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS). For the files encoded using CMS there is support to see information about the signers (email address and certificate) and the additional certificates which might be included in the message.
• Multiple selection - works on sibling elements
• Cut, copy, paste, duplicate, delete and reorder the elements. You can do all these operations even when multiple elements are selected.
• "Source control" friendly - for XML and OpenStep/ASCII property lists the order of dictionary elements is preserved, showing them in the same order as they are defined in the file. Similarly, when the property list is written to disk, the order of items from a dictionary written to disk is the same as the one seen on screen. This is especially useful when you keep the files in a repository, because only the relevant changes will be shown when diff-ing the edited files.
• Find & Replace text in the property list elements. You can choose where the Find (and Replace) will take place: in "Key" column or "Value" column or both. The option which controls which columns will be searched is available by clicking the "search" image in the find bar (Command + F) and then accessing the options from "Find In" submenu.
• Find & Replace also lets you configure where in the text to look for matches: "Contains", "Equals To", "Starts With", "Ends With" and "Regular Expression"
• Sort items
• Undo and redo
• Edit the elements of a property list. This works both for a single item (be it key or value) or for multiple items (via "Edit -> Edit Value...").
• Open and edit the files created using NSKeyedArchiver without any loss of information
• Support for pasting plist data, either from raw XML or from Xcode
• Copy elements as Swift objects so you can use them in Xcode
• Copy elements as Objective-C objects, both modern and classic syntax, so you can use them in Xcode
• Copy elements as JSON data, both indented and compact JSON
• Copy elements as XML, Binary (Base 64 encoded) and OpenStep/ASCII plists
• Embed selected elements in array or dictionary
• Shift elements to left or right
• Quickly move elements up or down
• Row height which accommodates multi-line text
• "Add" and "Remove" buttons on the outline element which is tracked by mouse
• Option in Preferences to choose the default font, along with the font size
• Option in Preferences to "Alternate Row Colours" in the outline
• Ability to increase and decrease font size for better readability, per each document individually
• Versions support
• Option, in Preferences, to disable the Auto Save (and Versions)
• Detect when the document is changed by another application
• Double click one of column separators to resize the corresponding column so the largest text in that column will be visible
• Toolbar to access common operations
• Dark Mode support on macOS Mojave 10.14 and above

Version

1.31

Free or Paid

Paid

Version Of macOS App Was Tested On

12.3.1

Accessibility Comments

This app is entirely accessible with VoiceOver. All the elements of the Plist are shown in a table/tree, and you can navigate it with your arrow keys.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use.

Other Comments

Plist editing was the main thing I use Xcode for. After discovering this app and forking over a few dollars, I've removed Xcode from my system entirely.

Recommendations

2 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by Matthew Whitaker 2 years 8 months ago

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