I was getting very frustrated by OSX never saving my default application preference settings for vox (vs. iTunes), Google Chrome (vs Safari) and Mailplane (vs. Mail.app).

After a little researching I came across a superuser post: “OS X Default Browser Resetting to Safari” I was surprised to read this, but after a bit more digging it seems it was fixed after 10.6. Back to square one.

A different forum post referenced possibly corrupt com.apple.recentiitems.plist or com.apple.LaunchServices.plist files - I gave it a try, deleting them, rebooting, resetting my app preferences, rebooting again. Success!

My files may have somehow become corrupted by my Dropbox setup: I store my Preferences folder in Dropbox (for backup and syncing purposes), and then symlink to it from ~/Library/ – I’ve decided to change this behavior, and instead I’ve moved the folder back to its normal location, and made the symlink FROM dropbox to that folder - Dropbox follows symlinks, and I should have the same end result…