I’m experimenting with storing Sequel Pro’s favorites and preferences in Dropbox on Mavericks. I say experimenting, because Mavericks (unlike earlier OS X incarnations) actually caches all app preferences at login. So it’s unclear how often the OS re-reads preference files, and what impact having them stored in Dropbox (where they can be changed on another computer) will have on this system.

First, in Dropbox I created a folder structure to hold the plist files:

mkdir -p ~/Dropbox/Apps/SequelPro/

In that folder, I created a folder called ‘Data’.

I then copied the plist files I need:

cp ~/Library/Application\ Support/Sequel\ Pro/Data/Favorites.plist ~/Dropbox/Apps/SequelPro/Data/Favorites.plist

cp ~/Library/Preferences/com.sequelpro.SequelPro.plist ~/Dropbox/Apps/SequelPro/Preferences/com.sequelpro.SequelPro.plist

And now I’ll remove the plist files from their locations:

rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Sequel\ Pro/Data/Favorites.plist

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.sequelpro.SequelPro.plist

And, now I’ll create symbolic links (symlinks) to the files in Dropbox:

ln -s ~/Dropbox/Apps/SequelPro/Data/Favorites.plist ~/Library/Application\ Support/Sequel\ Pro/Data/Favorites.plist

ln -s ~/Dropbox/Apps/SequelPro/Preferences/com.sequelpro.SequelPro.plist ~/Library/Preferences/com.sequelpro.SequelPro.plist

VERY IMPORTANT. If you launch Sequel Pro without first running this command, it will overwrite all your copied plist files, reverting them back to the previous state. You must first delete the cached preference files for Sequel Pro:

rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches/com.sequelpro.SequelPro

where <username> is the username reported by the “whoami” command in terminal.