After spending too many hours wondering why my document icons weren't showing up under Mac OS X, and finally figuring out that it was caused by a typo in my 'plst' resource, I wrote this utility to help other Mac OS X programmers. Drag a packaged application, or a single-fork application containing a 'plst' resource, or an Info.plist file and drop it on PlistChecker. PlistChecker displays a report listing any problems it found.

What PListChecker does:

These checks are based on my understanding of what a plist should look like, and should not be taken as gospel. PListChecker does not examine InfoPlist.strings files.

Version 1.0.1 changes: Allow <string>Yes</string> as an alternative to <true/> for LSPrefersCarbon, LSPrefersClassic, LSRequiresCarbon, and LSRequiresClassic.

Version 1.0.2 changes: When launched under an OS version earlier than 9.0, it now shows an alert and quits instead of crashing.

Version 1.1 changes:

Version 1.2 changes: The UTF-8 check now rejects characters that use 2 bytes when 1 would have sufficed, or that use 3 bytes when 2 would have sufficed.

Version 1.2.1 change: A file starting with a UTF-16 byte order mark is now recognized as UTF-16, rather than incorrect UTF-8.

Version 1.3 changes:

Version 1.3.1 changes:

Version 1.4 changes:

Version 1.5 changes:

Version 1.5.1 changes:

PlistChecker.zip, 140K

Last modified: 3 January 2007
Copyright ©2007 James W. Walker