Installomator and plists?

[fspa9686]

Hello!

We've been using Installomator for automatically installing and updating some apps. It has been working well for us so far. One thing I was curious about is if there is a way for Installomator to write to the plist file of the app that it is working on. From what I could tell thru their github, I don't think there is and currently I am planning to just use config profiles to manage the plist files. But if there's a better way or if I could do it using the same Installomator script that would be nice.

For context, the apps in question are Firefox, Chrome, and Zoom.

Any advice would be appreciated or if anyone would be willing to give me some insight on how they do it.

Thanks!

-Frank S.

[mm2270]

If you're talking about managing the preferences of those applications, then yes, this should be done with a profile. It can also be done with scripts (separate in a Jamf policy), but profiles allow you a little more flexibility for these in most cases, and also tends to make the setting immutable, so end users cannot just turn it off or set it to something other than what you specify.

[fspa9686]

Thanks @mm2270 !

So I understand correctly, there's no way to manage preferences with the installomator script? Only through config profiles and scripts via policies?

[Tangentism · Accepted solution]

Its a bit out of scope of the tool and its best practice to manage via config profiles (or set by running scripts)

If you are setting preferences for Chrome/Firefox, you can find guidance to setting those on their documentation pages

Chrome: https://www.chromium.org/administrators/configuring-other-preferences/
Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/managing-policies-macos-desktops
Zoom: https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0064957

And you can add these to a config profile under "Applications & Custom" then adding XML for a plist that looks something like this (this is a sanitised plist for setting the homepage)...

 

[fspa9686]

Gotcha. I was planning on using config profiles for this, but it was good to hear that I wasn't missing anything when I was trying to look into Installomator. It did seem out of scope when I was looking at the git page, but I guess I was thinking a bit too much outside the box.

Thank you @Tangentism !