plutil1
Property list utility
Usage
progname [-command]
[-options]
file
Overview
The plutil utility can be used to edit property lists, to verify the syntax, or to convert from one format to another. If ‘-’ is given as the file path, stdin and stdout are used.
The first part is the action to perform, one of:
-
-p -
Print the whole plist to stdout, in the human-readable GNUStep format.
-
-lint -
Verifies the plist can be parsed.
-
-convert FMT -
Converts the plist to another format. ‘FMT’ can be one of:
- xml1
-
Apple XML.
- binary1
-
Apple binary.
- openstep
-
OpenStep (untyped human-readable).
- gnustep
-
GNUStep (typed human-readable).
- json
-
JSON (lossy human-readable).
The NSPropertyListFormat names are accepted too.
- -insert PATH KEY Value
The default action is ‘-lint.’
The general options are:
The plutil "keypath" is a dot-separated chain of keys for traversing a plist object. An empty keypath refers to the object itself. The format of keys conform to that of GNUStep plist string literals.
Implementation notes
-
Quoted strings in the keypath is a GNUStep extension.
-
The Objective-C and Swift literal output formats are not yet implemented.
Exit status
Examples
Diagnostics
History
- Arch Linux 2026-11-01: the text shown here
- Debian 13 (Trixie) to Debian 12 (Bookworm)
- Debian 7 (Wheezy) to Debian 6.0 (Squeeze)
-convert since Debian 12 (Bookworm);
-lint since Debian 12 (Bookworm);
-p since Debian 12 (Bookworm).