Question

I am wondering if there is some way that I can create an script on Mac OS X that will change the default save location of all native Cocoa apps. I don’t know where to start, so I am open to any advice about how to do this.

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

Set the default directory for all applications that did not launch before:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSNavLastRootDirectory "~/Desktop"

Overwrite all previous locations for applications that did launch before:

find ~/Library/Preferences -name "*.plist" -exec grep -l NSNavLastRootDirectory {} \; | while read domain; do domain=${domain%.plist} ; defaults write "$domain" NSNavLastRootDirectory "~/Desktop"; done

In both cases, replace “~/Desktop” with your path. If it contains spaces or the tilde, don’t forget to use quotes.