On Resetting FCPX Preferences in Mavericks

RichardTaylorTV recently tweeted a hint that to reset preferences in FCPX you need to reboot your mac after trashing the preferences file. I responded that using defaults delete in a terminal window will do the job. He said it didn't work for him and pointed me to an apple support note: support.apple.com/kb/ts3893

That's the background. The culprit here isn't FCPX, but Mavericks. OS X has a background task that keeps track of defaults. Since Mavericks that task (cfprefsd) is aggressive about caching preferences. The first time an app is run cfprefsd reads the prefs and seems to keep them in memory. Changes made to the preferences file once it has been cached are not read. Apps talk to cfprefsd when changing prefs. cfprefsd will save it's cached version to disk... but you don't know when. The result is any change you make to a preference file will not be noticed by cfprefsd once it has a cached version. That includes removing the preferences file.

Removing the file then re-booting will, of course, cause cfprefsd to get the current prefs if they exist. If they don't exist the app, when run, will tell cfprefsd the default preference values. Re-booting is, IMHO, drastic over kill. My suggestion (which worked when I tested it) is to open a terminal window and use the defaults command to remove the preferences. The defaults command should interface to cfprefsd the same way any other app does. That said, Richard isn't the only person to notice that using the command to delete preferences doesn't always work. Still that is the first thing I'd try.

1. stop FCPX
2. Open a terminal window.
3. In the terminal window enter the command 4. Restart FCPX

To replace preference files with an earlier saved version I'd copy the saved file to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.FinalCut before re-launching FCPX.

If you are one of those for which the above won't work I'd try logging out after removing/replacing the preferences file and then log back in. A full system restart should not be required.

Other things that may work (that I have not tested)

* Close FCPX, replace preferences file, * Close FCPX, delete or replace preferences file,
Comments?

I've used "Preference Manger" (free from DgitialRebellion.com) very successfully in Mavericks on several Macs without rebooting.

EDIT: I take that back, you do need to reboot with Mavericks.

Thank you for working this out and explaining it to me and everyone in this forum.

I have been having all sorts of problems with FCP10.1 and Maverick's to the extent that Apple have replaced the logic board/graphics card (they come in one piece) and all four of my 8GB of RAM on my 16 month old iMac.

Yet still the problems keep coming so as you can imagine the old "reset your preferences" step comes up a lot so it is good to try another way to see if it makes a difference.

It seems to have done what you said so all I have to do is put my settings back into FCPX and fingers crossed.

Thanks again for sharing your time and knowledge.