Question

I want to set some initial values for my NSUserDefault keys so that the first run of the app has some reasonable initial settings. I thought I ran across a simple way to do this in the app bundle .plist, but now I can’t find it. Any ideas?

Answer 1

You should use the registerDefaults method of NSUserDefaults. Prepare a plist file in your bundle that contains the default preferences and then use that plist to register the defaults.

NSString *defaultPrefsFile = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"defaultPrefs" ofType:@"plist"];
NSDictionary *defaultPreferences = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:defaultPrefsFile];
[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] registerDefaults:defaultPreferences];

You have to execute this code on every launch of your app. It will add these values to a separate domain in the user defaults hierarchy. Whenever your app’s user defaults don’t provide a value for a certain key, NSUserDefaults will fall back to this domain and retrieve the value from there.