For those who have never used Terminal commands on Mac before, the app’s resemblance to hacking (as seen in movies) can be a little intimidating. But in fact, Terminal isn’t all that complicated once you know a little about how it works.

Many commands are surprisingly straightforward, such as how to open a file in Terminal and the dangerously powerful (since it bypasses the Trash) Terminal delete file capability:

open ~/Desktop/filename.extension

Dec 09, 2017  15 Terminal commands that every Mac user should know Customize your computer and master the Terminal with these tips, tricks, and Terminal phrases. Serenity Caldwell. 9 Dec 2017 6 Welcome back to Coding Corner! Today, we're going to go over some great interface and user tweaks you can execute to customize your Mac. These tricks are often simple. This is great for customizing your Mac and unveiling hidden features. It is also a good way to destroy you system because you screwed something up. What I have done is crawl the web look of the Top 50 Terminal commands. These commands are designed to make you make look cooler, act quicker.

rm filename.extension

The rm stands for remove, so use with caution!

For another example, let’s look at how to create a folder on Mac. Using Finder, this would simply be a case of right-clicking and choosing New Folder. When it comes to how to make a directory in Terminal, we’d need to use a specific command:

mkdir 'new folder'

The Terminal window itself is designed to grant users access to UNIX features hidden away behind the Mac operating system. But you don’t need to learn about all of the technical stuff if you don’t want to. All you need to know is that a bit of Mac command line rote learning can help you do all sorts of cool things with your laptop or desktop that you couldn’t achieve otherwise.

8 Best Terminal Commands For Mac

Of course, defining the best Terminal commands for Mac really depends on what you want to get out of this tool. First things first though, to start you need to know how to open command prompt on Mac because you can’t use any Terminal commands without it:

1. Double-click your Macintosh HD icon or open a Finder window

2. Make your way into the Applications folder

3. Double-click Utilities and open Terminal

You’ll be met with a window that shows the name of your Mac followed by your username and a $ sign. All of the Mac Terminal commands listed here are entered after this, followed by a press or two of the Return key.

Actually using the app may be a bit tricky if you’ve never done so before, but at least the question of how to open Terminal on Mac is easy to answer. Pay attention going forward!

1. Show or hide files and folders

One of the easier, and most useful, commands to use in conjunction with Mac command line is the one that reveals hidden files and folders in macOS:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool TRUE

killall Finder

Now you can edit and delete files that were previously inaccessible. When you want to hide these files again, just change the TRUE above to FALSE and repeat the process.

2. Duplicate files between folders

Rather than dragging and dropping or copying files between folders, you can use Ditto Terminal command on Mac to achieve the same result:

Ditto [original folder] [new folder]

If you have folders in different locations with the same name, you can type -v after Ditto to display each item’s file path using the verbose mode of Mac Terminal.

3. Change default screenshot settings

Tired of clogging up your desktop with screenshots? Terminal on Mac offers an easy fix for that with the option to set a new location for screenshots to be saved. Just enter the following:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/your/desired/location

killall SystemUIServer

You can also change the default file format (PNG) if you want to generate screenshots as JPEGs or PDFs instead:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg

4. Improve the screenshot process

If you take a lot of screenshots on your Mac, you might have noticed that it automatically adds a drop shadow to screenshotted windows. If you’d prefer to turn these shadows off, you can do so with the following Mac commands:

$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool TRUE

killall SystemUIServer

To further customize how screenshots appear on your Mac, you could look at CleanShot. This app allows you to capture your Mac’s screen without the distraction of desktop icons, set custom wallpapers on the background, and annotate or blur certain parts of the image.

After taking a screenshot with CleanShot, a small popup window allows you to tweak the appearance of your capture — such as adding shapes, text, or pixelating parts of the image — before you share it anywhere using a layout similar to the simple and intuitive actions in Preview.

5. Download files without using your browser

The art of downloading files without using a web browser is familiar to any millennials who risked malware and viruses to download their favorite tracks from Limewire or Kazaa, but may be unheard of to others.

A nifty Mac command line trick exists for downloading files without using your web browser if you already know the location of the file. The command is as follows:

cd ~/Downloads/

curl -O http://awebsite.com/folder/fil...

The first part is a crash course in how to change directory in Terminal, as that’s what the cd stands for. So by re-reading the example above, you can see that the file will appear in your Downloads folder when it’s finished downloading.

6. Keep your Mac awake

Overriding your Mac’s default sleep settings (available via System Preferences ➙ Energy Saver) is a breeze using one of Terminal’s more humorous Mac commands. Apparently, like so many people out there, Macs run on coffee:

caffeinate -u -t [number of seconds to remain active]

If you’d rather not launch Terminal every time you need to keep your Mac awake, there’s an app out there called Lungo that lives in your menu bar and builds on the coffee theme. Just select the cup icon in the top right corner of your screen and you can keep your Mac awake for 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours, or indefinitely with a single click.

7. View the contents of any folder or file

If one of your files gets corrupted, or you suspect there’s a hidden message tucked away somewhere inside its package, you can use the Terminal window to see some details about it:

cat ~/file/path/here

The command will throw out a bunch of indecipherable nonsense if you try to use it on something like an image or an audio file, but it could be a lifesaver when recovering text from a corrupted Word document, for example.

8. Hide inactive apps in Dock and dull hidden ones

Accruing more and more apps in your Dock is pretty much par for the course when you use a Mac for any significant length of time. So a good-to-know Terminal command here is the one that makes your Dock embrace a minimal approach by showing only active apps:

defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool TRUE

killall Dock

If you want to take this process even further, you can dim apps that aren’t visible on your monitor(s):

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool TRUE

killall Dock

Another easier option for those with the cluttered Dock is to check out uBar, a simple and minimal replacement. Instead of a long line of icons, you can now have a highly customizable bar that allows you to devote more space to the apps that matter most.

You can use uBar to preview, group, quit, or close apps and windows, without the need to open them first, across multiple monitors. It’s an altogether less distracting option for those who find the default Dock a bit cluttered or unpredictable.

Best Terminal for Mac alternatives

If you simply can’t get to grips with how to open Terminal on Mac or get comfortable with all of its ins and outs, you may want to investigate an app like MacPilot.

MacPilot grants access to more than 1,000 hidden features in macOS using UNIX without requiring that you learn any complicated commands. Instead, it offers users a Finder-esque window that groups tweaks by both application and function.

In most cases, enabling or disabling features with MacPilot is as simple as checking or unchecking the relevant boxes. You can also explore content across your disks using a File Browser that includes hidden files and detailed information about all available items.

The range of System Tools, reference guides, and secret tricks offered by MacPilot is a powerful alternative to Terminal for those who would rather avoid struggling with commands.

Why the Terminal window still matters

Try to wax lyrical about the benefits of Mac commands with fellow Apple users and there’s a good chance you’ll be met with them asking “what is a Terminal?” The fact is, this app isn’t something that the average Mac user ever bothers much with.

As you can see from the list of useful commands above, neglecting to use Terminal on Mac or an app like MacPilot means never seeing everything that your laptop or desktop is capable of.

One of many great things about using Mac Terminal commands is that, should you make a mistake, you can usually undo whatever you’ve done just by changing TRUE to FALSE and running the command again or simply changing the location or setting back to what it was before.

It’s true that Mac Terminal has a steep learning curve if you’re not used to its “language” but, whether or not you take the easier route with MacPilot, you can still try some of the cool tricks Terminal allows. You can play games, for example, by doing the following:

1. Open a Terminal window and type emacs then press Enter

2. With GNU Emacs selected, hit Escape

3. On the next screen, type x then tetris, pong or snake and press Enter

The most interesting example of a hidden Mac Terminal trick? That has to be the option to watch an ASCII version of the entire movie Star Wars:

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

Grab some popcorn and enjoy!

Best of all, the apps mentioned throughout this article: CleanShot, Lungo, uBar, MacPilot — are all available for a free 7-day trial with Setapp, a platform for more than 150 apps to extend the possibilities of your Mac. See the best your Mac can do.

If you're sick of waiting for the progress bar to complete every time you reboot after a macOS software update, then you'll be pleased to learn there's another way to update your Mac that could potentially reduce your downtime.
The process involves a simple Terminal command, and allows you to continue using your Mac as the update downloads and the initial software installation takes place in the background. In our tests, we found that this method was capable of shaving off several minutes of idle time during installation restarts, but that the time-saving depends on the machine and the update in question.
Users with older Macs in particular will likely appreciate this tip, as it saves having to fire up the Mac App Store altogether, which can be slow-going and sometimes even downright unresponsive. Read on to find out how it's done.

How to Update macOS From the Command Line

Before following these steps, ensure you have a full backup of your system, which should be par for the course when performing any update. Note that the following procedure only lists stock Apple system updates (iTunes, Photos, printer drivers the like), but not updates for other Apple apps that aren't installed with macOS (Xcode, for instance), and not third-party updates from the Mac App Store.

1. To update macOS from the command line, first launch Terminal, which can be found in the Applications/Utilities folder. This will open a Terminal window and a command prompt for you to begin typing.
   
2. Input the following command and press Enter: softwareupdate -l
   
3. Wait as your Mac searches Apple's servers for any macOS software updates currently available for your system. If no updates are available, you'll be returned to the command prompt.

Now let's take a look at the command's output. Available updates always appear as items in a list. In our example, only one update is available at this time, but every item follows the same format, as shown:
The asterisked line denotes the individual software update package that's available for your Mac to download. This line is also known as the identifier.
The second line offers a more detailed description of the update, including the version number (usually in brackets) and the download file size in kilobytes. [Recommended] means the update is recommended for all users, and [restart] indicates that your Mac needs to reboot for installation to complete.
To download and install a specific update in the list, use the following format, but replacing NAME with the update's identifier:
softwareupdate -i NAME

Terminal Commands For Mac Os X

Or:
softwareupdate --install NAME
Note that if the package name you’re trying to install has spaces in it, you'll need to enclose the whole thing in single quotes. So for example:
softwareupdate --install 'macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 Supplemental Update-'
Also, be alert for spaces at the end of the package names. If present, they also need to be included within the quotes.
Moving on, to download a specific update for your system without also installing it then and there, you can use:
softwareupdate -d NAME
Updates downloaded in this way can be subsequently installed with the same

Terminal Commands For Mac Os Sierra

-i or --install

Terminal Commands For Macos

command above, or even through the Mac App Store. These updates are downloaded to a folder located in /Library/Updates, but they aren't designed to be installed by double-clicking the packages in that directory. You'll need to use the --install command or visit the Mac App Store to actually initiate the install.
Lastly, to download and install all available updates for your system, type the command:
softwareupdate -i -a
Using these commands, you'll be able to leave the update to download and continue to install in the background while you get on with other things. All being well, Terminal will eventually prompt you to restart your machine manually so that the full installation procedure can complete. (Note that the softwareupdate utility requires admin authentication for all commands except the -l or -list command. If you run softwareupdate as a normal admin user, you will be prompted for a password where required.)
As some users will no doubt be aware, there are several additional options that can be used in conjunction with the softwareupdate utility. For example, -schedule on/off enables/disables your Mac's scheduled background check for updates. More adventurous readers can use man softwareupdate

Network Terminal Commands For Mac

and softwareupdate -h for a summary list of commands.

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Terminal Commands For Mac Ip Address

Terminal Commands For Mac Os Sierra