A property list, commonly referred to as a plist, is a structured data format used to store, organize, and access various types of data on an iOS device as well as a macOS device. plist files are binary-formatted, and they can be viewed using a property List Editor, which is capable of reading or converting the binary format to an American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) format.

Plist files may or may not have a .plist file extension. To access the data stored in these files, you need a tool that can read them. Some of the good free tools include the following:

• plist Editor Pro, which can be downloaded from http://www.icopybot.com/plist-editor.htm.
• The plutil command-line utility on macOS.

You can view plist files using Xcode. macOS includes the plutil command-line utility by default. This command-line utility can easily convert the binary-formatted files into human-readable files. In addition to this, most commercial forensic tools include great support for parsing plist files.

The following screenshot displays the com.apple.mobile.ldbackup.plist file:

As you can see, this plist uncovers the last local and cloud backup dates (in Mac absolute time, of course), the time zone it was created in, as well as the fact that the backup is encrypted.