Extract text from Eclipse and Unity files (PREFS)
To convert PREFS Preference files to another format, you need Eclipse IDE or other Settings software.
To convert other file formats to the "Application Preference File" file type, you need software like Eclipse IDE or a similar tool.
A .prefs file is a configuration file that stores user preferences, project settings, or application options. Software like the Eclipse IDE, Unity game engine, Spotify, and various Java applications use this format. Instead of a single standardized format, .prefs is an arbitrary extension used by developers. The internal data might be plain text, XML, or serialized binary data depending entirely on the parent software.
The main disadvantage of the .prefs format is its lack of universal standardization. Because it is highly specific to the software that created it, your operating system will not know how to open it natively. If the file contains serialized Java objects or binary data, opening it in a standard text editor will show unreadable characters. Furthermore, manually editing these files can easily break the formatting and prevent the parent application from starting.
Users often need to convert or inspect .prefs files to migrate settings to a new computer, recover game save data, or debug an application setup. Standard online converters usually fail because they do not understand the underlying proprietary schema. If the file is text-based, the best targets are TXT or XML for easier reading and sharing.
Because the structure is often proprietary and undocumented, only the original software can reliably parse the data.
Convert.Guru analyzes your PREFS file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted LAUNCH, ADT and JSF files.
If you want to convert PREFS file to INI, CFG, CONF, CONFIG, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, ENV, PROPERTIES or RC, you can use Eclipse IDE or similar software from the "Application Settings Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert ZSHRC, CONF, RCFILE, GITCONFIG, RC, PLIST, BASHRC, CONFIG, PROFILE, INI, CFG or PROPERTIES files to PREFS, try Eclipse IDE or another comparable tool in the "Application Settings Storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our PREFS converter.