How do you get to an iOS app's prefs file on the simulator?

[Duncan C]

I'm pretty sure I've done this before, but I don't remember how now.

I want to run an app I'm working on, have it save some changes into use defaults, and then quit the app and go examine the plist file that user defaults saves.

If you run on the device, you can get to the file by selecting the device in the organizer, selecting applications, and looking at the sandboxed files it shows you for that app. You can copy the file(s) you want onto your Mac, and then examine their contents. It does some funky stuff with making a file that seems like it should be a plist into a package that you have to right-click, but at least it works.

Where is the ~/Library/preferences folder on the simulator, and how do you get to the prefs file of an app that you've run from the simulator?

[Duncan C]

Originally Posted by Duncan C

I'm pretty sure I've done this before, but I don't remember how now.

I want to run an app I'm working on, have it save some changes into use defaults, and then quit the app and go examine the plist file that user defaults saves.

If you run on the device, you can get to the file by selecting the device in the organizer, selecting applications, and looking at the sandboxed files it shows you for that app. You can copy the file(s) you want onto your Mac, and then examine their contents. It does some funky stuff with making a file that seems like it should be a plist into a package that you have to right-click, but at least it works.

Where is the ~/Library/preferences folder on the simulator, and how do you get to the prefs file of an app that you've run from the simulator?

Sigh.

I found it finally, after asking for help finding it.

It's in ~Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/5.0/Applications


Within the iPhone Simulator directory, there are sub-directories for the available versions of iOS for which you have simulators.

The applications folder contains folders for each app that's installed in the simulator. The name of the app is a truly awful mess of hex digits. For example, the folder name for the app I was working on is "28158D71-28A4-4D72-89A9-CAA763F8B1DB".

Worse, the modified date on the application folder does not change if you rebuild the app. I had to delete it from the simulator and rebuild it in order to get the modified date on the folder to update to today's date. Not sure why that is.

Also, neither spotlight nor the UNIX locate command are able to find files inside this folder. I didn't expect spotlight to find it, but I'm not sure why locate can't find files in the simulator's directory tree.