I’m looking at the Hidden Preferences and want to toggle DisableFinderTags to “On”. Nothing happens when I click that link and I can’t see an obvious way to determine whether a setting has been turned On or Off.
Should I see something when clicking a link in the Hidden Preferences? And is there a way of easily seeing whether a hidden preference is turned on or off?
defaults read to see the current state
defaults write to set it
Described in the manual in the aptly name appendix “Hidden Preferences”
I haven’t been able to get that to work.
I’m entering this into Terminal, it returns “command not found”:
$ defaults write com.devon-technologies.think3 DisableFinderTags -bool TRUE
At the top of the Hidden preferences file it’s suggested that the links no longer work in macOS Monterey and later and should be copied into Safari - however the option to copy the link is not available.
Am I alone in wondering whether it really needs to be quite so difficult to alter a preference?
Don’t enter the $
That’s just the prompt, which may look different on your machine. Just use defaults read or defaukts write
At the top of the Hidden preferences file it’s suggested that the links no longer work in macOS Monterey and later and should be copied into Safari - however the option to copy the link is not available.
You should mention you’re running Sequoia, which has further broken Help, and is now the Tips.app.
Am I alone in wondering whether it really needs to be quite so difficult to alter a preference?
These are not general preferences and are hidden for a reason. And we can’t control what Apple breaks.
Also, make sure Terminal has Full Disk Access in System Settings > Privacy & Security. It’s ridiculous you’d need to do this, but again, Apple does what Apple does.
I see. Thank you. Yes, removing the $ seems to work. When I “read” that preference, it returns “1” and I’m going to assume that means “True” and the preference is turned on.
What a palaver.
OK. Thank you for your speedy reply. With chrillek’s help, I’ve found my way through the maze. Perhaps there’s a simpler way of managing these preferences which doesn’t depend on Apple never changing anything?
We are investigating something for a future release but I can’t say much more at the moment.
Mum’s the word. 
defaults is the standard macOS command to work with preferences in the absence of a GUI. It is also used to set many OS preferences, for which Apple provides no UI. You can learn all about it by using man defaults in the terminal.
Thank you.