---
title: IOKitPersonalities
framework: bundleresources
role: symbol
role_heading: Property List Key
path: bundleresources/information-property-list/iokitpersonalities
---

# IOKitPersonalities

One or more groups of attributes that tell the system about the devices your driver supports.

## Discussion

Discussion This key contains a dictionary of driver personalities, each of which specifies how to pair the driver to a device. Each key in the dictionary is a string you designate as the name of a specific personality, and the system doesn’t use your key names internally. The value of each key is a dictionary of attributes that describe the specific device to match with the driver. Thus, each key and dictionary combination represents a single personality of the driver. The system uses these personalities to match the driver to an attached device. During the matching process, the system compares the attributes in each personality dictionary to data it obtained from the attached device. For example, if the personality dictionary includes the VendorID key, the system compares that key to the vendor information from the device. The system picks the driver that is compatible with the device and provides the best overall match. It then uses additional information from the personality dictionary to load and run the driver. All personality dictionaries must include the following keys: CFBundleIdentifier IOProviderClass IOClass Include any of the following keys in your personality dictionary to customize the match criteria: IOPropertyMatch IONameMatch IOResourceMatch IOParentMatch IOPathMatch IOMatchCategory Device-specific keys, such as DeviceUsagePairs, VendorID, or ProductID. See a specific IOService subclass for information about the keys it supports. Include one of more of the following keys to specify how to load your driver’s code: IOUserClass IOUserServerName IOUserClientClass Use the following keys to further customize your driver’s behavior: IOMatchDefer. Set the value of this key to true to defer the matching process until after kextd starts. IOUserServerOneProcess. Set the value of this key to true to run your DriverKit services in one process. If the key is missing or its value is false, the system creates a separate process for each service.

## Topics

### Driver Classes

- [IOUserClass](bundleresources/information-property-list/iouserclass.md)
- [IOProviderClass](bundleresources/information-property-list/ioproviderclass.md)
- [IOClass](bundleresources/information-property-list/ioclass.md)
- [IOUserClientClass](bundleresources/information-property-list/iouserclientclass.md)
- [IOUserServerName](bundleresources/information-property-list/iouserservername.md)

### Advanced Match Criteria

- [IOPropertyMatch](bundleresources/information-property-list/iopropertymatch.md)
- [IONameMatch](bundleresources/information-property-list/ionamematch.md)
- [IOResourceMatch](bundleresources/information-property-list/ioresourcematch.md)
- [IOParentMatch](bundleresources/information-property-list/ioparentmatch.md)
- [IOPathMatch](bundleresources/information-property-list/iopathmatch.md)
- [IOMatchCategory](bundleresources/information-property-list/iomatchcategory.md)