Setting Safari Defaults to show favorites toolbar on login per user

I've been trying to script a plist change to com.Safari.plist that sets the value for the favorites toolbar show to true.

Here is what i'm running, and what it returns:

#!/bin/sh

defaults write /Users/$3/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist ShowFavoritesBar-v2 -bool true

defaults read com.apple.Safari

exit 0

Script result: {
"ShowFavoritesBar-v2" = 1;
}

I think I'm missing that step that tells the OS to ignore the cashed version of this file and use the modified one.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

Page 1 / 1

killall cfprefsd
after writing to plist

Thanks, knew I didn't know that.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

So actually this is causing the file to be owned by the system and takes permission away from the user. Any ideas?

Scripts in Casper run as root, so you might need to make sure the .plist gets chowned to the current user.

Have you tried capturing this preference and adding to the User Template folder instead of scripting it?

Yes but my problem is these are machines that we are transferring user folders to as upgrades and then it wipes the template settings so I have to script it. So I'll have to run this with some chown parameters I guess.

Thanks all so it looks like this and now works:

#!/bin/sh

defaults write /Users/$3/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist ShowFavoritesBar-v2 -bool true

defaults write /Users/$3/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari NewWindowBehavior -int 0

killall cfprefsd

chown $3 /Users/$3/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist

exit 0

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

Was hoping that the above workflow would work for AllowJavaScriptFromAppleEvents but sadly this doesn't appear to be working. To simplify matters, I've removed the $3 in my local script and specified the account being used and still no dice :(

Any ideas, @gshackney? Worth noting that I'm running 10.12.2 and hope to incorporate this with other various 10.12.x builds.

#!/bin/bash



defaults write /Users/$3/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist AllowJavaScriptFromAppleEvents -bool TRUE

killall cfprefsd

chown $3 /Users/$3/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist



exit 0

@sepiemoini
Isn't that setting true by default? That and allow javascript from smart search field is also defaulted to true I believe. I also don't see the key for that feature in the plist, whether enabled or disabled.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

@gshackney Yup, the key is no longer listed in the plist by default so giving up on this as I am imaging Apple has done away with being able to modify that aspect of the file.

Something I cooked up, feel free to tweak to your org.

#!/bin/bash



plistPath="/Library/LaunchAgents/com.safari.configuration.agent.plist"

scriptPath="/Library/Scripts/safari.configuration.sh"



defaults write "$plistPath" Label -string "com.safari.configuration.agent"

defaults write "$plistPath" ProgramArguments -array -string /bin/sh -string "$scriptPath"

defaults write "$plistPath" RunAtLoad -boolean yes

chown root:wheel "$plistPath"

chmod 655 "$plistPath"





cat << 'EOF1' > "$scriptPath"

#!/bin/bash



loggedInUser=$(who | awk '/console/{print $1}')

safariDir="/Users/$loggedInUser/Library/Safari"



if [ ! -d "$safariDir" ]; then



mkdir -p /Users/$loggedInUser/Library/Safari



# Define bookmarks list

arrList=$(cat << EOF

Website1,https://www.website1.com

Website2,https://www.website2.com

Website3,https://www.website3.com

EOF

)



# Backup and set internal field separator and set variables

IFS_old=$IFS

IFS=$'\\n'

#



PLISTBUDDY=/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy



# Add multiple plists to modify to this array 

arrPlist=()

arrPlist+=("/Users/${loggedInUser}/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist")

arrPlist+=("/System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist")



# Function for creating bookmark entries

function addBookmarkItem {

	echo "Name: ${2}"

	echo "URL: ${3}"

	if [ ${1} -eq 0 ]; then

		echo 'Adding Array'

		${PLISTBUDDY} -c "Add :Children:1:Children array" "${PLIST}" 

	fi

	echo 'Adding Dictionary items'

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c "Add :Children:1:Children:${1} dict" "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c "Add :Children:1:Children:${1}:URIDictionary dict" "${PLIST}" 

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c "Add :Children:1:Children:${1}:URIDictionary:title string ${2}" "${PLIST}" 

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c "Add :Children:1:Children:${1}:URLString string ${3}" "${PLIST}" 

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c "Add :Children:1:Children:${1}:WebBookmarkType string WebBookmarkTypeLeaf" "${PLIST}" 

	echo ''

}



# Function for creating a new plist

function createPlist {

	FOLDER="${PLIST/\\/Bookmarks.plist/}"

	if [ ! -d "${FOLDER}" ]; then

		echo 'Creating Safari preferences folder.'

		/bin/mkdir -p "${FOLDER}"

		/usr/bin/xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine "${FOLDER}"

	fi

	echo "Creating plist: $PLIST"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Sync dict' "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :CloudKitMigrationState integer 1' "${PLIST}" 

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Title string' "${PLIST}" 

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :WebBookmarkFileVersion integer 1' "${PLIST}" 

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :WebBookmarkType string WebBookmarkTypeList' "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Children array' "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Children:0 dict' "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Children:0:Title string History' "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Children:0:WebBookmarkIdentifier string History' "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Children:0:WebBookmarkType string WebBookmarkTypeProxy' "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Children:1 array' "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Children:1 dict' "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Children:1:Title string BookmarksBar' "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Children:1:WebBookmarkType string WebBookmarkTypeList' "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Children:2 dict' "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Children:2:Title string BookmarksMenu' "${PLIST}"

	${PLISTBUDDY} -c 'Add :Children:2:WebBookmarkType string WebBookmarkTypeList' "${PLIST}"

}



# Main script logic

for PLIST in ${arrPlist[@]}; do	

	i=0

	echo '' && echo "Current PLIST: ${PLIST}"

	if [ ! -f "${PLIST}" ]; then

		createPlist

	fi

	for items in ${arrList}; do

		IFS=$',' read -r title url <<< "$items"

		addBookmarkItem ${i} "${title}" "${url}"

		(( i += 1 ))

	done

	/usr/bin/plutil -convert binary1 "${PLIST}"

	/bin/chmod 644 "${PLIST}"

done

IFS=${IFS_old}



defaults write /Users/$loggedInUser/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist ShowFavoritesBar-v2 -bool true

defaults write /Users/$loggedInUser/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari NewWindowBehavior -int 0

killall cfprefsd



fi

EOF1

chown root:wheel "$scriptPath"

chmod 777 "$scriptPath"

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