Info.plist not in correct format

Question

I was working through my iOS Xcode project just fine, and then all of a sudden when I tried to run it, I started getting the error below:

error: couldn't parse contents of '/Users/pavitarsidhu/Desktop/AmigoDash/SidebarDemo/AmigoDash-Info.plist': The data couldn’t be read because it isn’t in the correct format.

I'm really confused. I've looked at the past StackOverflow questions and still have not been able to fix this. Is there anyway to just generate a new infoplist? What do you guys think?

Answer 1

A plist file is an XML document in a tightly specified format; both XML and the Property List structure have very strict rules. You can easily mess things up by accident if you attempt to edit the info.plist manually (i.e., as text) by saying Open As > Source Code:

You are unlikely to get this format right. Thus, you should always edit the info.plist with Open As > Property List:

This allows the property list editor to generate the XML for you, and it is unlikely to make a mistake in the resulting XML structure. Of course I suppose you could still mess up the value of something...

Answer 2

I encountered the same error. Took quite a while to figure it out. Here's how I did it:

• Go to your terminal
• Navigate to the location where the plist file is located e.g cd /user/desktop/app/Runner/info.plist
• Then use the plutil command like so plutil info.plist

This will show you where the error is and you can go about correcting it. I hope that helps.

Answer 3

I had this same issue and it was because plist files do not like &. You have to use & instead of an ampersand.

Answer 4

I had a merge conflict and didn't realize it so there were git annotations in the file. I couldn't open it as a property list but I opened as source code and fixed the issue that way.