macOS `user_config_dir` goes against OS guidelines

config_dir points to ~/Library/Preferences on macOS: https://github.com/platformdirs/platformdirs/blob/2e225082877dd83329594933a69301b8c5b9246e/src/platformdirs/macos.py#L27-L34

This goes against macOS guidelines:

Preferences

Contains the user’s preferences. You should never create files in this directory yourself. To get or set preference values, you should always use the NSUserDefaults class or an equivalent system-provided interface.

[ofek]

The problem is this would be a breaking change 🤔 for a lot of apps.

New major release?

[probablykasper]

The defaults system is a database like the Windows Registry. There are pypi packages that let you interact with it, but I imagine it’s probably out of scope for this package to provide an API to the defaults database.

The docs state you “should never create files in this directory yourself” and that the Library/Application Support can include configuration files. The Where You Should Put Your App’s Files section does not mention the Preferences folder at all - it only says that Application Support can include configuration files.

The NSUserDefaults docs also has a warning about accessing it directly:

Don’t try to access the preferences subsystem directly. Modifying preference property list files may result in loss of changes, delay of reflecting changes, and app crashes. To configure preferences, use the defaults command-line utility in macOS instead.

I hope that clears it up