Reading DDM-managed Apple Software Update settings from the command line on macOS Tahoe 26.2.0

One of the challenges with reporting on DDM settings is that as of macOS Tahoe 26.2.0 there aren’t currently command line tools available which can report back on settings which are managed via DDM declarations. You can see the settings which have been applied on the managed Mac via System Settings, but so far that’s about it. However, in some cases, Apple is writing information for some DDM declarations to files which are readable by command line tools. I recently discovered that one of those declarations was the com.apple.configuration.softwareupdate.settings Software Update Settings declaration. For more details, please see below the jump.