Bulk remove iTerm2 color schemes.

gistfile1.sh

# There was a day where I have too many color schemes in iTerm2 and I want to remove them all.
# iTerm2 doesn't have "bulk remove" and it was literally painful to delete them one-by-one.

# iTerm2 save it's preference in ~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist in a binary format
# What you need to do is basically copy that somewhere, convert to xml and remove color schemes in the xml files.

$ cd /tmp/
$ cp ~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist .
$ plutil -convert xml1 com.googlecode.iterm2.plist
$ vi com.googlecode.iterm2.plist

# Now remove the color schemes in the <key> and <dict> tags, 
# to make it easier, record a macro in vi to remove the key (e.g: Desert/Solarized) using `dd`,
# and then remove its color dict with `dat` (delete around tag), and repeat the macro until 
# all color schemes you want to delete is gone.

# Save the file, and copy it back:

$ cp com.googlecode.iterm2.plist ~/Library/Preferences/

# Note that iTerm2 has 'fallback' configuration in case something is wrong,
# You might want to remove them as well:

$ rm ~/Library/Preferences/iTerm2.plist
$ rm ~/Library/Preferences/net.sourceforge.iTerm.plist

# Now reload the configuration

$ cd ~/Library/Preferences/
$ defaults read com.googlecode.iterm2

# Restart iTerm, and check the color-scheme list in the Preferences menu, you shouldn't see the old color-schemes now.

Fantastic! Thank you!

Works like charm $ open ~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist

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Save my life!! This is awesome! 🥳

Modified self-contained version that does everything for the lazy

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# There was a day where I have too many color schemes in iTerm2 and I want to remove them all.
# iTerm2 doesn't have "bulk remove" and it was literally painful to delete them one-by-one.

# iTerm2 save it's preference in ~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist in a binary format
# What you need to do is basically copy that somewhere, convert to xml and remove color schemes in the xml files.

cd /tmp/
cp ~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist .
plutil -convert xml1 com.googlecode.iterm2.plist

# Now remove the color schemes in the <key> and <dict> tags,
# to make it easier, record a macro in vi to remove the key (e.g: Desert/Solarized) using `dd`,
# and then remove its color dict with `dat` (delete around tag), and repeat the macro until
# all color schemes you want to delete is gone.

# backup the plist file just in case
cp com.googlecode.iterm2.plist com.googlecode.iterm2.plist.bkp

# remove the tags
python - << EOF
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import xml.etree.ElementTree as et
path = "com.googlecode.iterm2.plist"
tree = et.parse(path)
root = tree.getroot()
dict_element = root.find("dict")
found_custom_color_presets = False
for child in dict_element:
    if found_custom_color_presets:
        dict_element = child
        break
    elif child.tag == "key" and child.text == "Custom Color Presets":
        found_custom_color_presets = True
to_remove = list()
next_is_dict_to_remove = False
for child in dict_element:
    if next_is_dict_to_remove:
        to_remove.append(child)
        next_is_dict_to_remove = False
    elif child.tag == "key" and child.text.startswith("base16"):
        to_remove.append(child)
        next_is_dict_to_remove = True
for child in to_remove:
    dict_element.remove(child)
with open("com.googlecode.iterm2.plist", "w") as f:
    f.write(et.tostring(root).decode())

EOF

cp com.googlecode.iterm2.plist ~/Library/Preferences/

# Note that iTerm2 has 'fallback' configuration in case something is wrong,
# You might want to remove them as well:

rm -f ~/Library/Preferences/iTerm2.plist
rm -f ~/Library/Preferences/net.sourceforge.iTerm.plist

# Now reload the configuration

cd ~/Library/Preferences/
defaults read com.googlecode.iterm2

# Restart iTerm, and check the color-scheme list in the Preferences menu, you shouldn't see the old color-schemes now.

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Thanks 🤝

Thanks very much this was super useful 🙏

牛逼

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