Default values from settings bundle are not loaded in Xamarin.iOS - ios

Question

In my project I have defined a settings.bundle containing a Root.plist with several settings, that all have default values.
However on first start on a new device these defaults are shown in the settings app, but not loaded.
What's going wrong here?

Answer 1

It turns out, that this intended. The DefaultValue specification in Settings.bundle serves only display purposes. Found on ijure.org
There you also find a solution in Objective C to get the default values and write them to the settings dictionary if a value is not present already.
I rewrote it with inspiration from this answer to a similar question:
private static void RegisterDefaultsFromSettingsBundle()
{
var defaults = NSUserDefaults.StandardUserDefaults;
defaults.Synchronize();
var settingsBundle = NSBundle.MainBundle.PathForResource(#"Settings", #"bundle");
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(settingsBundle))
{
Console.WriteLine("Could not find Settings.bundle!");
return;
}
var settings = NSDictionary.FromFile(settingsBundle + #"/Root.plist");
var preferences = settings[(NSString)"PreferenceSpecifiers"] as NSArray;
using (var defaultsToRegister = new NSMutableDictionary())
{
if (preferences != null)
{
foreach (var prefItem in NSArray.FromArray<NSDictionary>(preferences))
{
var key = prefItem[(NSString) "Key"] as NSString;
if (key != null)
{
var currentObject = defaults[key];
if (currentObject == null)
{
// Not yet set in the defaults
var defaultValue = prefItem[#"DefaultValue"];
defaultsToRegister.Add(key, defaultValue);
Console.WriteLine($"Setting value '{defaultValue}' for key '{key}'");
}
else
{
// Already set in the defaults: don't touch
Console.WriteLine($"Key '{key}' is readable (value: '{currentObject}'), nothing written to defaults.");
}
}
}
}
defaults.RegisterDefaults(defaultsToRegister);
}
defaults.Synchronize();
}
Hope this helps someone