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Property lists are Apple's universal serialisation format. Every macOS and iOS application stores its preferences in a .plist file. System settings, app configurations, launch agents, entitlements, Info.plist (every app's metadata), and countless internal Apple frameworks use plist for structured data storage.
The format comes in three flavours: XML plist (human-readable, editable in text editors), binary plist (compact, fast, unreadable), and JSON plist (rare). Most plists on disk are binary — Apple's tools convert between formats transparently. The `plutil` command (pre-installed on Mac) converts between formats: `plutil -convert xml1 file.plist` makes any plist readable.
On Mac, Xcode opens plists with a visual editor. Any text editor handles XML plists. For binary plists, `plutil` or PlistEdit Pro (paid) are the standard tools. On Windows and Linux, plist files are less common, but libraries exist in every language (Python's `plistlib`, Node's `plist` package) for reading them.