What location do OSX/Cocoa applications generally use to store data files?

Question

Do they write/store them within the app bundle/package itself? Or some other canonical location? Or does there not seem to be any standard?

Answer 1

Files usually go in ~/Library/Application Support/Your App/. Preferences go in ~/Library/Preferences/.

Answer 2

NEVER modify a file inside your own app bundle.

Answer 3

You should decidedly not write files into your app bundle at runtime. There's no guarantee that a user running your app will have permission to modify it. As Chris said, support files go in Application Support and preferences go in ~/Library/Preferences. To find the user's Application Support folder, you can use the NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains() function. To write preference files, you can use the NSUserDefaults or CFPreferences APIs.