What is GSettings and what does Unity use it for?

Question

I've seen solutions for Unity issues involving GSettings, such as

How do I reset my Unity configuration?

and How do I access and enable more icons to be in the system tray?

I haven't found out how to use it with Unity. Is it documented somewhere?

Answer 1

GSettings is an API that allows you to access key/value pairs (e.g., persistent application settings) without directly talking to the actual backend that stores that data (config files, gconf, dconf).