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OS X - Turn Bonjour off or on via the command line

Published: 04-06-2013 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article


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This little snippet switches off Bonjour on OS X via the command line or Apple Remote Desktop. This is useful when you want to disable iChat or Messages chatting on the local network.

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Bonjour is Apple's implementation of Zero configuration networking (Zeroconf), a group of technologies that includes service discovery, address assignment, and hostname resolution. Bonjour locates devices such as printers, other computers, and the services that those devices offer on a local network using multicast Domain Name System (mDNS) service records.

To turn it off execute this command:

defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder ProgramArguments -array-add "-NoMulticastAdvertisements"

To turn it on again:

defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder ProgramArguments -array "/usr/sbin/mDNSResponder" "-launchd"
Tags: apple , apple-remote-desktop , ard , bonjour , dns , mac , mdns , os-x , rendezvous , snippets