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