macOS Defaults

Reads and writes macOS defaults, enabling programmatic access to system and app settings.

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6 months ago

First Indexed

3 months ago

Catalog Refreshed

Documentation & install

Readme and setup notes from the catalogue, plus a client-ready config you can copy for your MCP host.

Installation

Add the following to your MCP client configuration file.

Configuration

View docs

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-mirror-g0t4_mcp-server-macos-defaults": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "/path/to/mcp-server-macos-defaults",
        "run",
        "mcp-server-macos-defaults"
      ]
    }
  }
}

You can read and write macOS settings programmatically with this MCP server. It exposes low‑level defaults APIs so you can query and modify system and application preferences from automation clients, CI pipelines, or custom tooling.

How to use

Connect your MCP client to the macOS Defaults MCP Server to read or write settings. You can use the published or development runtime configurations shown below. Practical patterns include listing available domains, locating specific keys, reading an entire domain, or writing a new value to a key.

How to install

Prerequisites you need before starting are a runtime that can launch MCP servers (listed below) and a way to run the MCP server process. You will use either the published server configuration with uvx or the development configuration with uv.

Step 1: Prepare the command runner you will use. The published configuration uses uvx, and the development configuration uses uv.

Step 2: Start the server using the published configuration.

For a local development setup, run the command snippet below in your environment, adjusting the directory path to where you keep the MCP server files.

Step 3: If you prefer debugging, launch the MCP Inspector to attach to the running server and open the provided URL in your browser to start debugging.

Additional content

Tooling for macOS Defaults MCP Server is organized into a few helpers that mirror the underlying macOS defaults commands. The tools you can use are listed here and map directly to macOS defaults operations.

Debugging uses the MCP Inspector for a clearer view of the server’s behavior and to step through requests and responses.

Tools exposed by this MCP server

list-domains — equivalent to running defaults domains to list all domains.

find — equivalent to running defaults find <word> to search for matching keys.

defaults-read — equivalent to running defaults read <domain> <key>. If you omit the key, the entire domain is read.

defaults-write — equivalent to running defaults write <domain> <key> <value> to set a value.

Available tools

list-domains

Equivalent to defaults domains; lists all available domains for macOS defaults.

find

Equivalent to defaults find <word>; searches for keys matching the provided word.

defaults-read

Equivalent to defaults read <domain> <key>; if key is omitted, reads the entire domain.

defaults-write

Equivalent to defaults write <domain> <key> <value>; writes a new value for a domain key.