Question

I am currently trying to create a Terminal shell that adds a boolean key called “disabled” with a true value to an existing plist.

So far I have defaults write "/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.AppStoreUpdateAgent" disabled -bool true

I am I setting the boolean value correctly, or should I not have the -bool?
Should “disabled” be in quotes?

Answer 1

defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.AppStoreUpdateAgent disabled -bool true should be correct. disabled doesn’t need to be in quotes and -bool true should work, but as @MichaelDautermann mentioned, you would need to run it as root.

You could also unload the job with launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.AppStoreUpdateAgent.plist.

-w       Overrides the Disabled key and sets it to false. In previous ver-
         sions, this option would modify the configuration file. Now the
         state of the Disabled key is stored elsewhere on-disk.