Edit plists the way you edit config files on a server: from the terminal, over ssh, inside tmux, on a machine with no display at all.
plist tests/sample.plist
opens a plist as a tree you can walk with the arrow keys, fold like a file explorer, edit inline, and save with ctrl+s. Styled after W0lfSword - frost blue on grey, boxed banners, nothing on screen that does not earn its place. If that look is good enough for a kernel exploit toolkit, it is good enough for an EFI folder.
ProperTreeCLI is a fork of corpnewt's ProperTree, a tkinter app. The gui still works; the point of this repo is the command line twin. It sits on Scripts/plist.py for the xml and binary io and adds what a terminal tool should have: scriptable one-shots, exit codes, and no window.
tests/sample.plist is a small config to try it on (nested dicts, arrays, data, a date). No file yet? plist new my.plist starts one from scratch.
git clone https://github.com/kaffeindecaf/ProperTreeCLI
cd ProperTreeCLI
./install.sh # symlinks `plist` into ~/.local/bin
plist tests/sample.plist # sample editor (q quits, ? shows keys)
plist --version
No pip, no venv, no tkinter. Stdlib only. Run plist from any directory afterwards.
Piped output is plain text: no terminal means no colors and no editor, just the tree, so it greps and scripts.
plist tests/sample.plist
j/k or the arrows move, home/end top/bottom, ctrl+d / ctrl+u half a page, { } jump between siblings, left/right fold containers, enter edits a value (booleans toggle), i adds an entry (pick the type, then name it - on an empty plist it fills the root), D duplicates, d deletes, r renames a key, t changes a value's type, c/x/p copy/cut/paste, u undoes (ctrl+r redoes, 200 steps), ctrl+s saves, q quits (it asks when the file is dirty). ? shows every keybind.
/ finds. n and N cycle the matches, esc clears. tab inside the find prompt picks what to search - keys, values, or both - and the choice sticks for the session. R replaces the query inside string values (when the search is scoped to keys it refuses; replacing keys is a rename, do it by hand with r).
^t (ctrl+t) opens the value converter on the selected entry: read the text as ascii, base64, decimal, hex, or binary and render it as another. pick from and to, tweak the text if you like, and enter on the result writes it back as the entry's own kind - pasting foreign base64 into a data field and entering stores the decoded bytes in one trip.
T inserts from the OpenCore/Clover preset library: pick a section, then a path (Kernel/Add, ACPI/Patch...), then a preset such as a blank entry or a ready kext pack. Missing containers are created along the way; it asks before clobbering anything.
Hold j/k or the arrows and movement accelerates smoothly: one row per repeat at first, then gradually more, no sudden jumps.
Writes are atomic and verified by re-reading; the file keeps its format and key order.
plist get config.plist Misc.Boot.Timeout
plist set config.plist Misc.Boot.Timeout 5 -i
plist set config.plist Kernel.Quirks.EnableWriteUnprotector false -b
plist del config.plist Wifi
plist diff config.plist config-clean.plist what changed between two
plist convert config.plist -t binary
plist new new-config.plist start from an empty plist
plist settings show the config values
plist settings set theme red every text color red
diff walks both trees and prints added/removed/changed keypaths; it exits 0 when the files match and 1 when they differ, so it works in a build script or a pre-push check.
set creates missing keys along the way and keeps the file's format and key order. get prints strings raw, booleans lowercase, data as hex; add --json for machine output. Keypaths are dotted, array elements are indexes: Drivers.0.Path. Values that start with a dash need -- first:
plist set config.plist Boot-args -- -v keepsyms=1
Run plist help for the whole list.
The editor reads ~/.config/propertreecli/config (created on first run, XDG_CONFIG_HOME aware):
- expand_mode = all, auto, or none: whether containers open expanded or folded
- format = xml or binary: what plist new writes
- find_scope = keys, values, or both: what / searches by default
- theme = frost or red: the palette. red turns every text color red
plist settings shows and changes these without hand-editing the file.
The terminal side does not rewrite what already works:
- Scripts/plist.py reads and writes xml and binary plists, data, uids and 0x integers, the same code path the gui uses
- the value converter, find/replace (with the gui's find scope) and the OpenCore/Clover insert-from-template presets are ports of the gui's behaviour, not new implementations
Neither propertreecli.py nor plist_tui.py imports the gui: the only shared code is Scripts/plist.py.
Everything here is additive, so the two can live in one checkout. No file that ships with ProperTree is modified:
| added | what it is |
|---|---|
| propertreecli.py | the plist command, the one-shots, the plist io |
| plist_tui.py | the curses editor |
| install.sh | symlinks plist into ~/.local/bin |
| tests/ | pty smoke tests, plus the sample plist |
Copy those in next to ProperTree.py and Scripts/, and python3 propertreecli.py --version works with no install step. ./install.sh
puts plist on PATH. python 3 only, no dependencies, no build, same
BSD 3-Clause licence as upstream.
tests/run.sh # compile check + pty smoke tests, stdlib only
drives the real editor over a pty and asserts on the saved file: filling
a brand new plist of both root types (the empty tree has no rows to
select, so i has to fall back to the root), plus sibling insert order,
fold, copy/paste, undo, rename and clean quit on a normal tree. no
framework, no deps, exit code says pass or fail.
python3 ProperTree.py [file.plist]
needs python 3 with tkinter (apt install python3-tk on debian/ubuntu). The terminal side does not: it needs neither tkinter nor the gui.
ProperTree by CorpNewt, BSD 3-Clause. Forked and repurposed by kaffeindecaf.