Carrying your settings to another Mac

CaseLeaf ▸ Export Settings… writes what you have chosen to a file, and CaseLeaf ▸ Import Settings… reads one back. It is for the second machine, the new laptop, and the colleague who wants your colour code rather than inventing their own.

The file is an ordinary property list, and that is deliberate: every Mac can open one, so you can look at exactly what you are about to hand somebody before you hand it to them.

What travels

Everything you have chosen travels, unless it is tied to one machine. This is deliberate: a preference added to the application next month travels the day it is written, not the day somebody remembers to add it to a list.

That includes the parts most worth carrying:

• your colour code - which colour means what, the order they sit in on the bar, and the letter that arms each one;
• your tag taxonomy, so the tags offered as you type # are the same ones on both machines. See Tags;
• how alike two pages have to be before they count as the same picture;
• how quickly the document is read aloud.

What does not travel, and why

These do not travel, because they would be wrong on another machine:

• The folder you granted access to. That permission names a folder on the machine that granted it and grants nothing anywhere else.
• Recently opened documents, the documents open at quit, and your saved workspaces, which are paths that will not exist there.
• Tab colours, which belong to documents rather than to you.
• Any preference whose name is a path, which is how the system files its per-document bookkeeping into an application's settings.

Everything the system writes into the application's own settings under its own names - window positions, toolbar layouts, the state of every split view, and a great deal besides - is left alone for the same reason.

What importing says

Importing tells you how many settings it took. Settings are invisible by nature: an import that quietly worked looks exactly like one that quietly did nothing, and without a count the next thing you do is hunt through the window for something that looks different.

A file that is a property list but not a settings file is refused by name rather than half-read.

The window and the command line currently read different preference domains, so a settings file written from the window is about the window's settings.

Watch: a short video for this page is still to come.

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