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Preference Panes

Preference panes are used primarily to modify system preferences for the current user. Preference panes are implemented as plug-ins and installed in /Library/PreferencePanes on the user’s system. Application developers can also take advantage of these plug-ins to manage per-user application preferences; however, most applications manage preferences using the code provided by the application environment.

You might need to create preference panes if you create:

• Hardware devices that are user-configurable

• Systemwide utilities, such as virus protection programs, that require user configuration

If you are an application developer, you might want to reuse preference panes intended for the System Preferences application or use the same model to implement your application preferences.

Because the interfaces are based on Objective-C, you write preference panes primarily using Cocoa. For more information, see Preference Panes.

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