My MacOS X

The default shell for Leopard users is Bash. Although many GNU/Linux users are familiar with it, not all Mac users take full advantage of its power. Here are some very useful terminal commands and tips for hidden Mac OS X settings.

You’ll find the Terminal in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder. To carry out any of the following commands you will need to copy/paste or type in the line of text then hit enter. For the most part, applications will need restarting before changes take place.

• Finder
• Dock
• Spaces
• Desktop
• Screensaver
• Time Machine
• Spotlight
• ISO CD/DVD
• Remote Desktop
• Network
• System commands
• Applications and processes
• Files management

Finder

• Removes the stripes in list view. Repeat the command with TRUE to reverse.
  defaults write com.apple.finder FXListViewStripes -bool FALSE
• Enable the hidden menu item within the Finder menu itself.
  defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool YES
  You’ll have a “Quit Finder” menu item within the Finder menu itself.
  
• Resets the “Open With” menu, clearing duplicates.
  /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
• Changes the title of a window to its full path. Repeat with NO to reverse.
  defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES
• Sets expanded save dialogs as default (showing column/list view of folders rather than a drop down menu). Replace TRUE with FALSE to reverse.
  defaults write -g NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool TRUE
  
• Shows hidden files in the Finder. Replace TRUE with FALSE to hide hidden files again
  defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
  
• Relaunch Finder in 4 different ways
  Simple way relaunch via terminal killall Finder
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Dock

• Change to 2D Dock. To change back to 3D, repeat with NO at the end.
  defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES


• Allows you to increase the size of the Dock past the maximum allowed by the slider in System Preferences. Don’t go larger than 256. Use the slider in System Preferences to shrink the Dock down again.
  defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -int 256
• Allows you to increase the Dock magnification past the maximum allowed by the slider in System Preferences. Don’t go larger than 512. Use the slider in System Preferences to shrink the Dock down again.
  defaults write com.apple.dock largesize -int 512
• Makes all items in the Dock spring loaded. For example, hold a file over an application and it will open or come to the front so you can drop the file onto a specific window. Repeat with NO to reverse.
  defaults write com.apple.dock enable-spring-load-actions-on-all-items -boolean YES
• Quckly switch to next wallpaper picture in shuffle mode.
  killall Dock
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Spaces

• Changes the delay when dragging windows off the edge of the screen to other spaces. Default value is 0.75.
  defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-edge-delay -float 0.5
• Disables the wrap-around when using Control-Arrow keys to changes Spaces. To enable again, repeat with YES at the end.
  defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-wrap-arrows -boolean NO

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Desktop

• Increase Desktop Icon Size.
  If you want massive icons on you desktop this little hack lets you increase the icons to 512 pixels x 512 pixels. This is massive, may slow down on older machines. I don’t think it goes larger than 512.

  defaults write com.apple.finder DesktopViewOptions -dict IconSize -integer 512
  killall Finde

• Changing the Format Of Screen Shots.
  If you use the screen shot function, you may want to change the format of the images, this is not easily done normally. Where jpg is in the code you can change this to the format your want:
  png | bmp | gif etc… You need to log out and back in again, or restart for the changes to take effect.
  defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
• Drag A Widget Onto The Desktop.
  This command enables widgets to be placed onto the desktop. Drag a widget around and press F12 to drag it onto the desktop. Repeat the process again to drag a widget back onto the dashboard.
  This may need you to log off or restart for it to take effect.
  defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
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Screensaver

• Require a password on waking from sleep, but not when screensaver is active.
  defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver askForPassword -int 0

Time Machine

• Changes Time Machine’s backup interval. Requires an administrator password. Default value is 3600 (seconds).
  sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 7200
• Enable Time Machine On Unsupported Drives ( includeed NAS)
  defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
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Spotlight

• Disables the Spotlight icon. Type “killall Spotlight” for changes to take effect.
  To re-enable it, type 755 instead of 0.
  sudo chmod 0 /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app
killall Spotlight
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ISO CD/DVD

• Create and burn a “universal” CD/DVD

  mkisofs -allow-multidot -allow-leading-dots -d -hide-rr-moved \
  -l -joliet-long -R -T -v \
  -V VOLUME_NAME -o output.iso root-cd-dir/
  hdiutil burn -noverifyburn output.iso

• Create an ISO image from a CD/DVD

  diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2s0
  dd if=/dev/disk2s0 of=cdname.iso bs=32m

• Mount a disk image from the command line
  hdid diskimage.dmg (or .iso)
• Eject a CD/DVD
  drutil eject
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Remote Desktop

• Starts the Remote Desktop service (useful if you only have SSH access but want to do something using the GUI on your client Mac). For more options, see: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2370
  sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -restart -agent
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Network

• Displays network configuration for the primary Ethernet interface (en0).
  ipconfig getpacket en0
• Getting current IP address on interface
  ipconfig getifaddr en1
• This command can be used after acquiring mac’s, ip’s and hostname’s or any of the above from a freshly scanned LAN. User must be root, and remember to change your settings on your network managing software manually instead of ‘auto DHCP’. You can also substitute eth0 for wlan0 etc
  ifconfig eth0 down hw ether (newmacaddresshere) && ifconfig eth0 up && ifconfig eth0 (newipaddresshere) netmask 255.255.255.0 up && /bin/hostname (newhostnamehere)
• Changes (spoofs) MAC address until next reboot
  ifconfig en0 ether 00:00:00:00:00:00
• Find MAC address
  ifconfig en0 | grep ether | sed s/://g | sed s/ether//
• Lists internet ports that are open. Use sudo if you want the ports open by all users, and the flags -n and -P will disable name resolution and port names and give you numbers instead.
  lsof -i -n -P
• Displaying a Active Network Connections on the Mac OS X
  lsof -i | grep -E "(LISTEN|ESTABLISHED)" | awk '{print $1, $8, $9}'
• Display the order for DNS resolution. Useful for when you’re creating or debugging your Network settings.
  scutil --dns
• A wget replacement in MacOS X
  echo 'alias wget="curl -O"' >> ~/.bash_profile
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System commands

• Reboots the computer
  sudo reboot
• Disables the unexpectedly quit dialog that normally appears when an application crashes. Replace “none” with “prompt” to enable again.
  defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none
• Enable Rosetta support
  sudo sysctl -w kern.exec.archhandler.powerpc=/usr/libexec/oah/RosettaNonGrata
  To Re-Enable Rosetta
  sudo sysctl -w kern.exec.archhandler.powerpc=/usr/libexec/oah/translate
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Applications and processes

• Open an application
  open /Applications/iTunes.app/
• List file size in human-readable units
  ls -lh /dir/or/file
• Force quits an application or kill a process or processes by name (e.g: the Dock). Pretty useful if you can’t get into Activity Monitor.
  sudo killall -9 appname
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Files management

• Change to the last directory you were in

  cd /var
  cd /etc
  cd - # will take you to /var
  

• To go to your home folder
  just type "cd ~" or even better "cd"
• Create an empty file
  touch /some/thing
• Get the first 20 lines of a file
  head -n 20 /some/thing
• Get 20 lines from the end of a file
  tail -n 20 /some/thing
• Output the contents of a file
  cat /some/thing
• How to list and sort directories by size
  du -kh | sort -nr | more
• Find large files. If you want to quickly find out what the largest files(more than 100M) are in a directory, try following command.
  find . -type f -size +100000k |xargs -I% du -sh %

  or list the 40 heaviest files in your home directory
  du -xak ~/ 2> /dev/null | sort -nr | head -n 40
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