Secrets Preference Pane Alternatives on Modern macOS

For years the Secrets preference pane was the shortcut answer to "where do I find hidden settings for this app?" It sat in System Preferences and listed undocumented preference keys for macOS and dozens of third-party apps. If you have gone looking for it recently and come away confused, that is not you. The way macOS handles this kind of add-on has changed, and the alternatives look different now.

Why preference panes stopped being the answer

Third-party preference panes were built for System Preferences, the app macOS replaced with System Settings in Ventura. Panes that still load at all are shown in a compatibility section, and many older ones no longer run on Apple silicon or under current security rules. On top of that, a directory of undocumented keys ages badly: each macOS release retires some keys and adds others, so an unmaintained list quietly becomes a list of things that no longer work.

That is the real problem to solve. You do not want a directory of keys. You want to know which settings still work on the Mac in front of you.

Option 1: read the keys yourself

Everything Secrets listed was a preference value, and you can inspect those directly. This is the free route and it always works:

# every preference domain on this Mac
defaults domains | tr ',' '\n' | sort

# everything one app currently stores
defaults read com.apple.dock

# one specific value
defaults read com.apple.dock autohide-delay

A useful trick for discovering keys nobody documented: read a domain, change the setting in the app's own preferences, read it again, and compare. The line that changed is the key you want.

# snapshot, change the setting in the app, then compare
defaults read com.apple.finder > /tmp/before.txt
# ...make the change in Finder settings...
defaults read com.apple.finder > /tmp/after.txt
diff /tmp/before.txt /tmp/after.txt

Option 2: a maintained settings app

The value Secrets provided was curation, not mechanism. These carry that forward:

• TinkerTool (free) — a fixed, well-tested set of system preferences with checkboxes. Focused on macOS itself rather than third-party apps.
• Deeper (free) — similar coverage, with a separate build for each macOS version.
• Mainspring ($29 once) — 90+ macOS settings, each with a description of what it changes, grouped so related ones apply together, and every one reversible.

None of these cover hidden settings inside third-party apps the way Secrets tried to. For those, the defaults read and diff approach above is still the most reliable method, and it will keep working long after any list goes stale.

What to do about panes you already installed

Old preference panes leave files behind and can slow down System Settings or fail to load at all. They live in one of two folders:

# panes installed for you only
ls ~/Library/PreferencePanes

# panes installed for every user
ls /Library/PreferencePanes

To remove one, quit System Settings and drag the .prefPane file to the Trash, or right-click the pane inside System Settings and choose to remove it. Removing a pane does not undo the settings it applied, so change anything you care about back first while the pane still works.

Option 3: check whether the setting is now official

A fair number of the keys that made Secrets useful have since become normal, supported settings. Before hunting for a hidden value, look in System Settings — features like Stage Manager controls, screenshot options, keyboard repeat rates and scroll behaviour all have proper UI now. A supported setting survives macOS upgrades. A hidden key may not.

If you only need one setting

Skip the tooling entirely. Our guide to defaults write on Mac covers the syntax, the domains and, most importantly, how to undo a change cleanly.