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I was originally looking for my Google Chrome profile because something went wrong and I need to delete it. In the process I realized that I don't know where applications in general are putting this kind of stuff.

Where is the typical place to go looking?

Louis Waweru
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2 Answers2

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This kind of data is frequently stored in ~/Library/Application Support.

User-specific settings are frequently stored in ~/Library/Preferences

Your Chrome profile is located at ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default.

I recommend going on a little exploration of the ~/Library folder; there's a lot of useful stuff in there.

Nathan Greenstein
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    Note that in Lion the ~/Library folder is hidden in the finder by default. You can still go there by using the "Go to folder" functionality. – XQYZ Oct 23 '11 at 16:58
  • @Nathan, You missed out ~/Library/<application name>/ – Pacerier Oct 06 '17 at 05:52
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    Is there an environment variable for that? – Royi Mar 19 '19 at 19:22
  • Data shouldn't be saved to these Preferences folders without using Apple's API. According to Apple's File System Programming Guide linked by @Bachsau, "Contains the user’s preferences. You should never create files in this directory yourself. To get or set preference values, you should always use the NSUserDefaults class or an equivalent system-provided interface." as I mentioned on daviesgeek's answer. – Poikilos Nov 28 '22 at 16:33
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I had this happen and I fixed the problem by relogging in to Google Sync.

The profile file is stored in:

~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default

Usually an application will install data in /Library/Preferences/ and/or ~/Library/Preferences/.

Data can also be placed after any of the following patterns:

/Library/Preferences/<application name>/

~/Library/Preferences/<application name>/

/Library/Application Support/<application name>/

~/Library/Application Support/<application name>/͏͏͏͏

/Library/<application name>/

~/Library/<application name>/ ͏͏͏͏

Pacerier
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daviesgeek
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  • Also, some random person said that ...Audio folder may be too for audio apps. – Pacerier Oct 06 '17 at 06:01
  • Btw, what happens if an app itself is called Preferences and it tries to do ~/Library/<application name>/? What's the escape mechanism used by mac? ¶ Separately, what does byhost mean in ~/library/preferences? – Pacerier Oct 06 '17 at 06:01
  • Apple has detailed information on this: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/FileManagement/Conceptual/FileSystemProgrammingGuide/MacOSXDirectories/MacOSXDirectories.html – Bachsau Feb 03 '18 at 23:35
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    Is there an environment variable for that? – Royi Mar 19 '19 at 19:22
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    If the App is from the Mac AppStore it will be in ~/Library/Containers/<application name>/ – McLawrence Aug 06 '19 at 18:14
  • Data shouldn't be saved to these Preferences folders without using Apple's API. According to Apple's File System Programming Guide linked by @Bachsau, "Contains the user’s preferences. You should never create files in this directory yourself. To get or set preference values, you should always use the NSUserDefaults class or an equivalent system-provided interface." – Poikilos Nov 28 '22 at 15:52
  • @Poikilos Only the Preferences folder. Applications are free to place arbitrary data in Application Support. But when looking for saved data, it can often be found in any of the directories mentioned above, because of bad developers who don't care for standards. But if you're a developer yourself, you should consult official documentation, which also says one should use application IDs in reverse-domain format, like com.bachsau.myapp instead of the application's name for directory names. Also ~/Library/<application name>/ is not a valid path at all. – Bachsau Nov 30 '22 at 13:19