hoherd · 3 years ago

I don't even use Time Machine for my off-machine backups, but I use tmutil to create local snapshots so I can easily back out of changes by using the Time Machine GUI to restore files from the snapshot.

gargs · 3 years ago

It seems to grossly underestimate my upload bandwidth!

zgluck · 3 years ago

I can't find any (official) documentation on how it measures the speed. Against which target?

Edit: Found https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-macs... which says:

"The networkquality tool uses Apple’s CDN (https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/config) as a target"

The contents of this file (for me):

  { "version": 1,
    "test_endpoint": "sesto4-edge-bx-021.aaplimg.com",
    "urls": {
        "small_https_download_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/small",
        "large_https_download_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/large",
        "https_upload_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/slurp",
        "small_download_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/small",
        "large_download_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/large",
        "upload_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/slurp"
     }
  }

wlonkly · 3 years ago

There is also a CLI client for speedtest.net[1] and fast.com[2]! Not included with MacOS, of course, but nice to have around.

[1] https://www.speedtest.net/apps/cli

[2] https://github.com/sindresorhus/fast-cli

oneeyedpigeon · 3 years ago

Yeah, sips has a lot of potential. The article doesn't mention it, but it can crop as well which could be a real game-changer!

jfb · 3 years ago

We heavily used `sips` when I was at Apple, because it was quicker than writing code against QuickTime or the other rendering subsystems.

photonerd · 3 years ago

Useful, but definitely more niche & less generally applicable than the others.

eddieroger · 3 years ago

I don't remember when I learned about these, but they've been game changers, and everyone I've shared them with feels the same way. I use your use case often as well, though through `jq` because I'm more familiar with it, and sometimes wish to do transforms.

kps · 3 years ago

On Linux I have these wrap xsel or xclip, and likewise open to xdg-open.

Now, for your Mac example — if that's a specific pipeline you often use, you can write a Service menu entry to do it in place, without switching to a terminal.

pmarreck · 3 years ago

I have linux/macos-agnostic bash functions in my dotfiles that unify this to “clip” and “paste” (since “copy” is too close semantically to “cp”)

inanutshellus · 3 years ago

I love this flow! Such a powerful and clean way to solve text issues.

    # This will remove Windows double-spaced empty lines from your copy/paste buffer
    alias winlines="sed '/^$/{$!{N;s/\n//;};}'"
    
    # pbw = [P]aste [B]uffer to fix [W]indows line endings
    alias pbw="pbpaste | winlines | pbcopy"

    # imitate MacOS's paste buffer copy/paste:
    alias pbcopy='xsel --clipboard --input'
    alias pbpaste='xsel --clipboard --output'

iuafhiuah · 3 years ago

I find it so annoying that these only work with plain text and RTF. On X11 there is `xclip`[0] and on Wayland there is `wl-clipboard`[1] both of which support binary file formats either through parsing the header or explicitly setting the MIME type.

This means you can do things like copy an image from the terminal and paste it into a graphical program like a browser or chat client and vice-versa. Also can be very useful in shell scripts for desktop automation.

The workaround on MacOS is to use AppleScript via `osascript` to `set the clipboard to...`.

  [0] https://github.com/astrand/xclip
  [1] https://github.com/bugaevc/wl-clipboard

ksala_ · 3 years ago

Since you mention both pbcopy and iTerm - I love https://github.com/skaji/remote-pbcopy-iterm2. I do most of the work on a remove Linux server, treating my MacBook as mostly a dumb terminal, and being able to transparently copy from the remove to my local clipboard is so nice.

omginternets · 3 years ago

If I had a nickel for each `cat foo.json | jq | pbcopy`, I'd be a rich man :)

zimpenfish · 3 years ago

Extra handy when combined with `piknik`[1] for distributed/cross-Apple account clipboard shenanigans.

[1] https://github.com/jedisct1/piknik

agmm · 3 years ago

I like to use `pbcopy` when exporting public keys to external services like GitHub.

`cat ~/.ssh/mykey.pub | pbcopy`

itslennysfault · 3 years ago

Where are you pasting the pretty json to view it?

I do this a lot as well, but just paste the minified json directly into VS Code and then OPT+SHIFT+F to format it.

nine_k · 3 years ago

Those are so useful that I wrote trivial shell functions that do the same under Linux.

jonnycomputer · 3 years ago

Yes. I use it a great deal, but I haven't gotten used to using the linux equivalents. I guess that would be either xsel or xclip. Maybe I should create a "pbcopy" that runs one of those. I like to minimize the cognitive load when I switch between mac and linux command line environments.

lloeki · 3 years ago

Another frequent use I have, applying random diffs with git:

    git diff | pbcopy
    pbpaste | git apply

cancerhacker · 3 years ago

alias pbg='pbpaste | fgrep --color -i "`pbpaste -pboard find`"'

select all in a terminal window with pages of log data and cmd-c copy; find the one phrase you want to find in that data and cmd-e to put it in the find pasteboard; cmd-n new window, type pbg to isolate the log lines.

lkbm · 3 years ago

Oh man. I recently threw together a "j2p" script to make converting between json and python dicts simpler, and combining it with pbcopy/pbpaste will make it so much better:

  #!/usr/bin/env python3
  import sys
  import json
  
  print(json.load(sys.stdin))

mig39 · 3 years ago

It's cool to use pbcopy and pbpaste with your phone! Copy some text on the phone, and you can pbpaste it onto the Mac command line. So cool.

renewiltord · 3 years ago

Use the Apple shortcuts app and you can just copy some text and hit a keyboard shortcut. The Shortcuts app lets you run arbitrary shell command.

burnished · 3 years ago

Json pretty printing in the terminal? Bless, didn't know about that and it is perfect

adolph · 3 years ago

pb[paste|copy] are a life improver. Here is a one-liner to edit the pasteboard contents in vim.

  pbpaste > tmp; vim tmp; cat tmp | pbcopy; rm tmp;

  echo "$(pbpaste)" >> notes.txt

flaminHotSpeedo · 3 years ago

Also a fun one to combine with `open` if you have a bunch of web URLs to open

m463 · 3 years ago

I have a script always running that polls for youtube URLs using pbpaste and runs yt-dl

then just highlight any youtube link and COPY

later when I have time, I can use quicklook to browse directory of youtube videos.

n8henrie · 3 years ago

So much of my Linux use is over ssh from a MacOS client that I've made a `pbcopy` executable that just pipes stdin over ssh to my MacBook to its pbcopy (with a dedicated ssh key that runs this as a forced command). Makes it super nice to be on an SSH session and `pbcopy` some content to my MacOS clipboard!

escot · 3 years ago

I use the following to edit contents of my clipboard:

    pbpaste | vipe | pbcopy

gdavisson · 3 years ago

I find that the `pbpaste | something | pbcopy` idiom is common enough that it's worth having a shell function for it:

  pbfilter() {
      if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then
          pbpaste | "$@" | pbcopy
      else
          pbpaste | pbcopy
      fi
  }       

This version also can also act as a plain-text-only filter. If you just use `pbfilter` with no argument, it'll remove any formatting from the text in the pasteboard, leaving just straight plain text.

It does have a some limitations, though: you can't use it with an alias, or pipeline, or anything complex like that. The filter command must be a single regular command (or function) and its arguments.

dredmorbius · 3 years ago

I've aliased that (and its equivalents on Linux and Android/Termux) to 'xc' and 'xp' (for X11 Copy and X11 Paste, as I'd originated this on Linux).

Being able to populate or read from the system clipboard (or secondary clipboard!), or to feed it, including by reading from or writing to pipes is wonderful.

duffyjp · 3 years ago

I have an alias that while trivally simple is quicker to type and remember. It copies whatever file you give it to the clipboard which is super handy. I use it with the "Compare with Clipboard" to diff a file in Rubymine for example.

alias clip='pbcopy <'

systems_glitch · 3 years ago

Best way to get ssh keys into the paste buffer too.

user00012-ab · 3 years ago

my favorite vim command:

:w !pbcopy

or visual selection, and then :w !pbcopy

kainjow · 3 years ago

IIRC it’s using the Cocoa class NSAttributedStrimg. These conversions have been in the OS for a long time.

secretsatan · 3 years ago

I thought pandoc used to be installed on MacOS, I def remember using it for something useful a couple of years ago but I check now and it's not there.

tmearnest · 3 years ago

I used to work at a 24 hr end user tech support call center. They didn’t use Macs, but we had a machine for the techs to use to understand what the customer is looking at. I wrote a script to sleep until late at night then start saying weird/creepy stuff to mess with the overnight crew.

bendecoste · 3 years ago

Combined with the `yes` command is very good fun ;)

ubermonkey · 3 years ago

YEARS ago, when my nephew was young, he was playing with my mother's Macbook Air at Thanksgiving.

I administer that machine for her (to the extent that such a thing is needed), and so I knew (a) her login and (b) that SSH was open.

Me combining remote access with "say" made for a very memorable morning for that kid.

gen_greyface · 3 years ago

try it out with different voices, for starters try

  say "process failure" -v trinoids

  say -v '?' 

mattl · 3 years ago

What does that do?

hereonout2 · 3 years ago

Also for things like sharing public ssh keys. Instead of "can you send me your public key" and getting something with random line breaks depending on the users text editor I just have to ask them to "cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | pbcopy".

I also alias pbcopy / pbpaste on Linux too, so useful!

spookthesunset · 3 years ago

It’s weird how macs don’t come with a GUI for managing system services. Windows does.. that being said the number of times I’ve had to mess with system services on mac can probably be counted with a few fingers…

cyberge99 · 3 years ago

You can also prepend #!/usr/bin/osascript to a script and then make it executable with chmod oag+x. You can then invoke it normally in bash: ./filename.sh (or whatever)

no-dr-onboard · 3 years ago

That's hilarious! Similar vein: there is a Metasploit module to induce the say command on post-exploited mac machines. I haven't seen it used in practice, but I eagerly watch for the eventual twitter thread that reads:

"So, I used the msf module that invokes `say` on a client's laptop"

joshstrange · 3 years ago

I use Pushover for a few alerts so years ago I wrote a little bash script called `push` that you pass a title and optionally a body. Was very nice to to `./longRunningCommand && push "Task Done" "Here is a body"`. I'd sometimes combine this with my `beep` script that just makes a noise for when I know I'll still be at my computer but want to know when something finishes.

jeremy_wiebe · 3 years ago

I often have multiple terminal tabs open. Sometimes I’ll run a command that ends up taking a while and switch away and forget about it.

So I added a fish command completion script that plays a beep with afplay if the task took longer than 5 seconds. It helps me get back on task for those “just long enough” tasks that I run.

alanbernstein · 3 years ago

I like to use the "research complete" sample from StarCraft for this.

datavirtue · 3 years ago

I would pay a lot of money to switch the voice to Arnold.

computerfriend · 3 years ago

Especially

    open .

    firefox file.html

lloeki · 3 years ago

More than that, it sends a message to launchd/the app instead of forking on the spot.

Sadly the app does get the shell's environment and it can't be disabled:

     Opened applications inherit environment variables just as if you had
     launched the application directly through its full path.  This behavior
     was also present in Tiger.

    - ensure vscode is fully closed
    - enter project directory, something sets vars in your shell (you manually or automatically via direnv)
    - code .
    - vscode process now has the env from the shell it was started
    - open another directory from the UI
    - vscode forks and inherits from its parent process, thus the other project window has the original shell's env
    - go to another directory
    - code .
    - vscode finds out it's already running, forks and opens another window. this window has the original shell env
    - fully quit vscode and reopen it, but via the app in /Applications
    - vscode opens, now has a blank environment for its main process, and forks form there to restore previous windows, which now lack the environment they had

The same issue can happen with other apps but also tmux (the tmux daemon is spawned from the first tmux command, and then subsequent sessions from tmux-server; doing it another way is possible but nontrivial)

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/15452

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/108804#issuecomme...

lattalayta · 3 years ago

I also find myself using open -n -a <application> to open a new separate instance of an application if I want to copy settings from one file to another or work on two files with separate instances of a program

ris58h · 3 years ago

There is a helper tool for hidutil https://hidutil-generator.netlify.app/

> It's handy for things like remapping CapsLock to anything

It's a built-in MacOS feature that you can find in the keyboard settings.

LanceH · 3 years ago

Anyone know of a Ubuntu on WSL equivalent?

alexdbird · 3 years ago

I believe that Caffeine was a fairly simple GUI wrapper for the existing caffeinate command

meepmorp · 3 years ago

It's been cli util on macos for 10+ years. I remember a gui util called caffeinated, though.

coldtea · 3 years ago

Caffeine was a front-end by a third party company. Used it back in the day, the command existed already though.

Since then I've moved to Amphetamine (same purpose menu-bar app, even stronger chemicals, has timed keep-awake etc).

pqb · 3 years ago

Isn't there `xsel` or `xclip` installed instead [0]? These two commands are commonly used on the Linux boxes and they support pipes too. For example, the xclip is used by the original password-store implementation [1].

On [2] you might find the aliases to pbutil for X11-based Linuxes.

[0]: If not, why not run apt-get command to install one of them, like xclip?

[1]: https://git.zx2c4.com/password-store/tree/src/password-store...

[2]: https://ostechnix.com/how-to-use-pbcopy-and-pbpaste-commands...

dredmorbius · 3 years ago

A strong second to this, it was going to be my own comment ;-)

maratc · 3 years ago

    hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping":[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000064,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000035}]}'

hoherd · 3 years ago

not to be confused with hdiutil:

    hdiutil detach /Volumes/some-usb-drive

    hdiutil makehybrid -joliet -o foo.iso ./srcfolder/

frankjr · 3 years ago

There's a nice generator for these mappings https://hidutil-generator.netlify.app/

photonerd · 3 years ago

You should Alias xsel if you’re in an x environment

hoherd · 3 years ago

Also `alias pbsort='pbpaste | sort | pbcopy'`

ngai_aku · 3 years ago

Slick! I need to figure out how to get something like this for SQL

gpspake · 3 years ago

I suspect, like me, a lot of people have learned about pbcopy/pbpaste from the Github docs for adding a new SSH key to your account https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/connecting-to-gith...

detourdog · 3 years ago

Most people would rather criticize than actually look for goodness.

pantulis · 3 years ago

Why?

computerfriend · 3 years ago

You can lock the screen while caffeinated though.

Macha · 3 years ago

I thought that was its primary use case these days

lloeki · 3 years ago

It also separates 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz bands and shows security details (which matters sometimes e.g band steering or automatic same-SSID signal-strength-based AP selection doesn't work)

latexr · 3 years ago

A tad outdated. At a glance I see it’s missing `networkQuality` (introduced in Monterey) and `realpath` (added in Ventura).

cpach · 3 years ago

Here’s a nice GUI wrapper: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amphetamine/id937984704 (the name might be off-putting to some though)

elpakal · 3 years ago

You can do similar magic with Charles Proxy fyi

obituary_latte · 3 years ago

Never had heard of this before. Some other cool tools in the "additional tools for X-Code" package which I had also never heard of. https://developer.apple.com/download/all/

Thanks for sharing.

nine_k · 3 years ago

Toxiproxy is such a tool for everywhere else, and it did help me test and improve networking code for poor conditions: timeouts, retries, packet loss, etc.

llarsson · 3 years ago

You can be an ultra nerd on Linux and go this with the networking QoS tools: https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Traffic-Control-HOWTO/components.html

pwenzel · 3 years ago

Network Link Conditioner rules. I pair it with `mitmproxy` for debugging native apps.

Arubis · 3 years ago

[Comcast](https://github.com/tylertreat/comcast) also does this for macOS, BSD, and Linux. And it's _brilliantly_ named.

ipozgaj · 3 years ago

You can do that with standard Linux tooling available on every distribution, see https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/tc.8.html. What you're specifically looking for is `qdisc netem`, it can inject packet loss, reordered packets, duplicate packets, delay and more.

xenadu02 · 3 years ago

Note that NLC is a GUI interface to control dummynet and PF (packet filter). It sets up rules to inject packet relay and drop a certain percentage of packets based on the profile.

You can use dnctl and pfctl on macOS to do similar things and more.

cpach · 3 years ago

Ditto can also be useful for backup and restore since, AFAICT, it preserves file meta data. (Unlike rsync for example.)

kec · 3 years ago

this is just a worse version of caffeinate which is more likely to leave you with a dead battery.

itake · 3 years ago

I typically use https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/workflow-re...

You can even do bulk cmds with cli on images:

  for x in ls *.webp; do  ffmpeg -i $x ${x%.webp}.png; done

  magick mogrify -monitor -format jpg *.png -compress 70

frankjr · 3 years ago

You can use ImageMagick's `convert`.

  convert original.jpg -define jpeg:extent=2MB output.jpg

janandonly · 3 years ago

Does this tool also allow me to change my iPad screen on Sidecar from landscape/horizontal into vertical?

greenshackle2 · 3 years ago

I was hoping this would let me set 125% scaling on my 3440x1440 display but no, I guess it's a hard OS limitation. It's my biggest gripe with MacOS.

(There's BetterDisplay - formerly BetterDummy - but it introduces noticeable input lag for me.)

joshstrange · 3 years ago

This tool is invaluable, I love it so much. I have 2 workspaces and I love just running the command (via Alfred) when I plug into my dock at either place that fixes all my monitors. I could script it so that as soon as my computer recognizes a monitor UUID it fires off the correct displayplacer command but I don't switch often enough to care (the 2 desks are 3.5+ hours apart).

When I was commuting daily displayplacer was even more indispensable but even for just unplugging my mac and using the internal screen vs my monitors I get a ton of value out of this tool.

Finnucane · 3 years ago

They're shipping zsh now.

lloeki · 3 years ago

They come from BSD (and, nitpick, are not called coreutils). These BSD tools lack features mostly only if you're used to GNU coreutils.

The expanse of GNU coreutils features is questionable too: some are nice, some you can do without easily and rarely to never miss, and some are downright annoying (yes I'm looking at you, ls with colors+quotes)

pier25 · 3 years ago

Both commands you listed take a partial screenshot. The first one saves it to the desktop and the second one (with control) to the clipboard.

agos · 3 years ago

command shift 4 already saves a file, maybe you were thinking about command + shift + control + 3?

latexr · 3 years ago

`pngpaste` doesn’t ship with macOS. All the tools in the article do.

lkuty · 3 years ago

I configured the screenshot to file to automatically save them to ~/Desktop/screenshots instead of ~/Desktop using the Screenshot app to avoid cluttering the desktop. See https://www.hellotech.com/guide/for/how-to-change-where-scre...

drooopy · 3 years ago

That's surprising to me as well. I had no idea that caffeinate existed as a native tool on my mac. I've been relying on "Jolt of Caffeine" for the past 3 years.

hoosieree · 3 years ago

Now if only I could remember how to spell caffeinate.

sandyarmstrong · 3 years ago

Yeah, I was thrilled when I discovered this for myself a few months ago! It's so useful in long-running scripts.

jkubicek · 3 years ago

For a long time I used an app for this as well, but the app was just a thin wrapper around the CLI tool

roycebranning · 3 years ago

i'm most surprised that they got this one by HN community

perfect-blue · 3 years ago

I’ve been looking for a better way to do this than just setting my PC to never sleep. Thanks for this. Now I need to find a Mac alternative as well.

redacted · 3 years ago

If you're able to install PowerToys it includes a utility for this

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/awake

Alifatisk · 3 years ago

I believe you can still get it, if not, there are similar like Amphetamine

jimt1234 · 3 years ago

Amphetamine has been my go-to app for keeping my Mac alive, especially since Apple tried to remove it from the App Store because, according to [someone?], the name violated App Store rules.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amphetamine/id937984704

baal80spam · 3 years ago

There is a counterpart: https://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/

KyleBerezin · 3 years ago

The issues I have are touch-dragging with the touchpad, and no window docking. Docking I fixed by buying 'Magnet', touch dragging is still annoying. They have a setting that is supposed to enable 'double tap drag' like windows, but when you let go, it keeps dragging for some random amount of time, making it unusable.

blacksmith_tb · 3 years ago

You may have to install extra voices somehow, looking at the manpage for say, it seems like 'say -v ?' would list the voices installed, but I don't seem to have any (like Whisper), though plain old 'say "hello world"' does do a robotic voice which must be the default.

Alifatisk · 3 years ago

QUIC already? Cool

daneel_w · 3 years ago

Also, using hdiutil(1) and diskutil(8) to create a RAM-disk:

  # 500 megabytes disk image
  mb=$((500*2048))
  diskutil eraseVolume ExFAT my_ramdisk `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://$mb`

llimllib · 3 years ago

here's my notes from reading the comments: https://notes.billmill.org/computer_usage/mac_os/mac_os_comm...

Svetlitski · 3 years ago

I can’t help but ask, why “,notify” and not just “notify”?

inanutshellus · 3 years ago

an upvote wasn't enough! this is cool, thanks for sharing.

wpm · 3 years ago

`diskutil` is great but it's a travesty what they did to Disk Utility.app. It never really got any love after the APFS transition and there are things it straight up fails to do the `diskutil` command doesn't. Before they re-designed the interface, it was such a rock-solid tool that even if it failed during some task, would typically tell you why. Now it's a baby LEGO Duplo interface meant for nothing more than reformatting a flash drive.

microtherion · 3 years ago

Unfortunately, the TUNE format turned out to be a bit of an evolutionary dead end; the last generation of Speech Synthesis that supports it is the Alex voice which shipped in 2007, and it's highly unlikely in my opinion that we'll ever see it again — pinpoint control of synthesis and naturalness are inherently in tension, and the latter is a lot more valuable.

manifoldgeo · 3 years ago

Thanks for posting! I'm always glad when I discover good blogs like yours.

kaycey2022 · 3 years ago

Thank you for the article :) One small correction, the command to list the voices is `say -v '?'`

photonerd · 3 years ago

additional bonus, you can input an SVG at the start if you use qlmanage first instead of the cp command:

qlmanage -t -s 1024x1024 -o MyIcon.iconset/Icon1024.png icon.svg

nielsbot · 3 years ago

If you really want nice looking smaller icons (16x16, 32x32) you'll have to hand edit them after scaling down to get something that looks crisp.

That said I just checked some macOS system icons (get info on app, select icon, copy, create new document in Preview.app) and they don't seem to be hand adjusted any more.

gpspake · 3 years ago

Perfect timing. I need to generate an.icns today and I'm going to try this. Thanks :)

1f60c · 3 years ago

APFS isn't case-sensitive, so you can type networkquality if it makes you happy. :-)

unsupp0rted · 3 years ago

It says "oh es ex" for all variations I've tried

reaperducer · 3 years ago

My LG Blu-Ray drive ignores its eject button if it's connected to a Mac, unless the drive is empty, so I use this, too.

IggleSniggle · 3 years ago

I've used this one for over a decade now. When I was a teacher, I even assigned it to a key-combo. Consider pairing with a few other things you might want in a presentation setting

desro · 3 years ago

Turning off the desktop is one of the first things I do when setting up a new Mac. I still use ~/Desktop often enough that it's one of two folders I keep in the Dock (the other being ~/Downloads).

Although: the introduction of Stacks to the macOS desktop was a great thing — I always show that feature to anyone whose Desktop is helplessly cluttered with files.

llimllib · 3 years ago

https://github.com/zcutlip/prefsniff can be handy for figuring this stuff out, you start it up, change a setting, and it reports the plist differences to you

lkuty · 3 years ago

I use `caffeinate -dsim` permanently. In short I ask the computer to avoid any kind of sleep.

  -d Create an assertion to prevent the display from sleeping.
  -i Create an assertion to prevent the system from idle sleeping.
  -m Create an assertion to prevent the disk from idle sleeping.
  -s Create an assertion to prevent the system from sleeping. This
     assertion is valid only when system is running on AC power.

theshrike79 · 3 years ago

Amphetamine does the same thing, but with a task bar icon and better usability: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amphetamine/id937984704?mt=12

saurabhsharan · 3 years ago

Hi, author here. There isn't any official canonical documentation that I know of, outside of the individual man pages. This was a list of commands I've been maintaining for myself over the years and thought it would be useful to share.

If you want more like this, I also have another page full of lesser well-known macOS tips and tricks: https://saurabhs.org/macos-tips

andelink · 3 years ago

I'd love some official Apple documentation. In lieu of that, you can search man pages with `man -f`, `whatis`, or `apropos`. I also keep the following aliases in my ~/.zshrc:

  alias list-functions='functions -x4'
  alias list-function-names='functions +'
  alias list-aliases='alias'
  alias list-alias-names='alias +'
  alias list-commands='print -raC2 ${(kv)commands} | sort'
  alias list-command-names='print -roC1 ${(k)commands}'
  alias list-builtins='print -raC2 ${(kv)builtins} | sort'
  alias list-builtin-names='print -roC1 ${(k)builtins}'
  alias list-everything='whence -cm "[^_]*"'
  alias list-everything-names='whence -wm "[^_]*"'

baliex · 3 years ago

To open a new finder window in the current directory in a terminal:

    alias finder='open .'

Kyuuketsuki · 3 years ago

One flag also not mentioned is -n, which allows you to run the same application in more than one instance. Historically the single most used utility for me, though the number of applications that have had design problems bad enough to warrant it has gone down.

Sujeto · 3 years ago

I made a script to open files with rofi

https://github.com/davatorium/rofi

Looks like this:

https://i.imgur.com/Hm9TGeV.jpg

In a vscode terminal I just use the alias "o" and it opens that at the correct location, then I can navigate and pick a file to open in the editor.

movedx · 3 years ago

> alias tab='open . -a iterm'

But if you just open a new tab, you'll be in the same $CWD in the new tab? Am I missing some trick here?

jonpalmisc · 3 years ago

Sublime Text and Sublime Merge actually ship with these CLI utilities by default, which have some additional features:

    $ fd 's(merge|ubl)$' /Applications/Sublime*                                          
    /Applications/Sublime Merge.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/smerge
    /Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl

varenc · 3 years ago

`open -a ...` tab completion has been horribly slow for years because Apple hasn’t updated their completion definition. I replied with a work around on this SO post: https://stackoverflow.com/a/63097652

meepmorp · 3 years ago

It's dependent on the voice you pick in system settings. If you choose one of the siri voices for the system voice (not in the siri settings, iirc), it sounds much more natural.

defatigable · 3 years ago

Hey, this looks awesome. Thanks so much for the pointer.

tambourine_man · 3 years ago

>I copied all of my ~/.bash_history into GPT

I wouldn't do that. I treat ChatGPT as public.

But it's a good list nevertheless

daotoad · 3 years ago

If you like `z`, you should check out my `tutu`.

https://github.com/daotoad/tutu

remi · 3 years ago

It’s not a shell utility, it should work with any shell.

  $ which networkQuality
  /usr/bin/networkQuality