Are the macOS defaults sane for Ventura as well?

[Aditya Bhardwaj]

Hi, thanks for the amazing dotfiles project!

I used the project when I used a macbook many years back. Now I have got a macbook again and would like to know if the project is still maintained.

My main concern is the macos defaults, if they are compatible with Ventura.

Please tell. Thanks!

[Neil Johnson]

I just recently modified the .macos script to configure an older MacBook Pro running Catalina. Since at least Catalina, access to com.apple.universalaccess is restricted and will result in an error message:

Could not write domain com.apple.universalaccess; exiting

This issue is tracked here: "Could not write domain com.apple.universalaccess; exiting" error in macOS Monterey · Issue #1027 · mathiasbynens/dotfiles

Resolution

Comment out (or delete) lines that attempt to write to universal access, like this:

# defaults write com.apple.universalaccess reduceTransparency -bool true

Note that using sudo will not resolve this issue.

I did find this one discussion that suggests using a UI AppleScript to get around this restriction, but I don't want to do that, either.

Here's the thread: Changing Universal Access preferences - AppleScript - Late Night Software Ltd.. I haven't tried any of the suggestions, though.

[Neil Johnson]

Another possible resolution mentioned elsewhere, that I unfortunately haven't had a chance to test yet on Catalina, is to grant your terminal app (e.g. Terminal.app, iTerm2, Alacritty, Kitty) Full Disk Access: System Preferences, Privacy, Full Disk Access