OS X configuration files are usually plists, stored in places like Library/Preferences, in XML format. But recently OS X has started turning plists into binary, making them difficult to open and view as text.

OS X provides a tool that makes it easy to switch plist files between XML and binary.

Bash
$ plutil -convert xml1 some_binary_version.plist

This way it becomes XML.

Bash
$ plutil -convert binary1 some_xml_version.plist

Note that the parameters after convert are binary1 and xml1. Why they made it like this? I don’t get it, and it feels quite strange.