OS X

10 Cool Terminal Tricks for the Mac

For the average Mac user, the Terminal is something that’s either too complicated to use or completely unknown. If you don’t know what it is, it’s the place where you can have your Mac execute custom commands, many of which you can’t do through other means. It’s a great tool, and unlike many believe, if you know what you’re doing, it’s relatively easy to use, especially if you already know what commands to put in there.

Finding Terminal

1. Open your Applications folder.
2. Open the Utilities Folder.
3. Open Terminal.

Now for the ten cool commands you can use with it:

1. Watch Star Wars Episode IV – the full movie, right in your terminal!

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

2. Let Terminal talk to you

say [insert what you want it to say here]

3. Limit your Safari web history to a certain number of pages

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryItemLimit [insert number you want here]

4. Put a gradient behind a stack icon:

defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean YES
[New Line] killall Dock

5. Turn the menubar white (restart required)

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer ‘EnvironmentVariables’ -dict ‘CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE’ 1

6. Add spaces to your dock (you can cam separate applications)

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add ‘{“tile-type”=”spacer-tile”;}’

7. Add widgets to your desktop

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
[Next Line] killall Dock

8. Show Hidden Files In Finder

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES

9. Install Software Updates

softwareupdate -i -a

10. Screen Capture

screencapture-S ~/Desktop/screen.jpg

Before you go

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About the author

Chris

I've been a passionate evangelist for Apple and the Macintosh throughout my working life, my first love was a Quadra 605 working with a small creative agency in the south of Norfolk UK in the mid 1990's, I later progressed to other roles in other Macintosh dominated industries, first as a Senior graphic designer at a small printing company and then a production manager at Guardian Media Group. As the publishing and printing sector wained I moved into Internet Marketing and in 2006 co-founded blurtit.com which grew to become one the top 200 visited sites in the US (according to Quantcast), at its peak receiving over 15 million visits per month. For the last ten years I have worked as an Affiliate and Consultant to many different business and start ups, my key skill set being online marketing, on page monetisation, landing page optimisation and traffic generation, if you would like to hire me or discuss your current project please reach out to me here.

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