How to Change Open Files Limit on OS X and macOS Catalina (10.8 - 10.15)

ChangeOpenFilesLimitMacOS.md

How to Change Open Files Limit on OS X and macOS

_This is a shorter version without changing the limit.maxproc values derived from the original gist.

Please take a look at https://gist.github.com/tombigel/d503800a282fcadbee14b537735d202c before doing anything from this gist

I removed any explenation from this and I also removed the changes to limit.maxproc

For more information about the existence of this gist please look here: https://github.com/dredhorse/SnowWhite/blob/master/this-and-that/unable-to-update-cities-skylines-in-macos-catalina.md

Warning: This might leave your computer in an unusable state if anything goes wrong. In that case boot into recovery mode and remove /Library/LaunchDaemons/limit.maxfiles.plist from you bootdisk. That is not the / you have available in recovery mode!

How to change the values later on without rebooting

Unload Daemon

sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/limit.maxfiles.plist

Change value in /Library/LaunchDaemons/limit.maxfiles.plist

Load Daemon again, to make sure reboot.

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/limit.maxfiles.plist

limit.maxfiles.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key>
      <string>limit.maxfiles</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
      <array>
        <string>launchctl</string>
        <string>limit</string>
        <string>maxfiles</string>
        <string>524288</string>
        <string>2147483647</string>
      </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
      <true/>
    <key>ServiceIPC</key>
      <false/>
  </dict>
</plist>

load.sh

#!/bin/sh

curl -O https://gist.githubusercontent.com/dredhorse/786e326aa7253fa31166e6f56855718a/raw/f620970b6a1c60c1ed813330ecb1baa3fb1f04b7/limit.maxfiles.plist

sudo mv limit.maxfiles.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons

sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/limit.maxfiles.plist

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/limit.maxfiles.plist