As a certified Mac geek a member of Apple Fan Folk, I’m here to tell you there’s more built into oS High Sierra than meets the eye. The Mac is built on various Unix components, and one of them is the vast and underused library of manuals.
What? Wait. Manuals? On the Mac? What manuals? I know what you’re thinking. “I’ve never seen or used a Mac manual!” Prepare to be enlightened. Because, as always, macOS is built on Unix, there are twenty eleven Unix commands available for use, usually in the Terminal.app. That sounds like fun, right? Reading manuals in Terminal? Yes, Virginia, there is a better way.
Preview, Meet Man
Certified Mac geeks will be familiar with Man, the Unix utility which displays command-line command details. But Man page files are sometimes complicated to understand and you have to open them up using Terminal just to get a look at what may be complicated to understand anyway.
An A-Z Index of the Apple macOS command line. An A-Z Index of the Apple macOS command line (OS X bash) afconvert Audio File Convert afinfo Audio File Info afplay Audio File Play airport Manage Apple AirPort alias Create an alias. alloc List used and free memory apropos Search the whatis database for strings asr Apple Software Restore atsutil Font registration system utility awk Find. What is Mac Terminal? Unix has its own built-in manual and you can call it in Terminal to find out more information about a command. Read next: How to show hidden files in macOS. MAC TERMINAL GET TO KNOW YOUR TERMINAL A command line interface (or the command line) is a text-only way of browsing and interacting with your computer. On Macs, the command line is called the Terminal. To access your Mac Terminal: 1.Open up your Applications folder. 2.Scroll down to the ‘Utilities’ folder, then open that up. Getting Info & Explanation for Each Terminal Command. You can easily retrieve information and an explanation on any of the shown commands by using the handy open man page trick, which will launch a manual for the chosen command into a new terminal window. Here’s how it works in the context of the all inclusive commands list on Mac OS. As a certified Mac geek a member of Apple Fan Folk, I’m here to tell you there’s more built into oS High Sierra than meets the eye. The Mac is built on various Unix components, and one of them is the vast and underused library of manuals. What manuals? Manual All UNIX systems come with an extensive set of manuals. Rwx=read, write and execute Group permissions. Mac OS X’s UNIX heritage provides a huge range.
Man Reader takes the complexity out of Man page files so you can view such complicated command details with typical Mac-like ease of use. Behold.
Unix commands can be difficult to master and even more so because all the details for how a command works are most available in Man pages accessible via Terminal. Man Reader brings them to the screen, without terminal, and with plenty of useful options.
Are Man pages for Mac geeks? Certainly. You need to be comfortable with Terminal to access Unix commands, and that’s where the Man pages manuals reside. Man Reader brings them to the Mac’s screen but sans Unix and Terminal.
Read Manual Mac Terminal 4
To a certain extent, Man Reader exposes you to both the intricacies and complexities of Unix commands, but does so gently. The Mac way.
All those Man pages already exist on your Mac. Mac users who know Unix know how to use them. Unix commands can be powerful tools, but the command line structure of Terminal.app and the Man pages themselves can be a deterrent to use.
Man Reader makes Man pages and Unix commands visible in a Preview app-like interface that is easier to scroll to read and much easier to search without learning some of the Unix commands you’ll find in the Man pages in the first place.
The app is highly recommended, quite useful, affordable, and– as is the case with the Mac in general– makes using something complex much easier.
OS X's command line and I have never been what I'd call 'friendly'; rather, we have a mutual respect and understanding about not messing with each other. (Well, as much of a mutual respect as one can have between a human being and a code window.)
While the average person should never have any reason to visit Terminal, Apple's command line interface app actually does give you access to quite a few neat tricks and shortcuts.. if you're willing to take a peek.
What is Terminal?
Apple's Terminal app is a direct interface to OS X's bash shell — part of its UNIX underpinnings. When you open it, Terminal presents you with a white text screen, logged in with your OS X user account by default.
Here's the important part: With a system administrator account and password, you have direct access to tweaking almost everything about your computer's software code; that means that while this little window provides great power, it comes with great responsibility. In short, be careful before using Terminal to execute commands, and make sure you understand what you're typing.
You can also use Terminal to securely connect to other machines, web servers, and even create your own scripts, but those are how-tos for another day. For now, we're going to focus on using Terminal to explore your own computer.
Basic Terminal commands you should know
Before we get started with the fun stuff, let's learn some basic Terminal terminology and commands. These form the framework for more complex interactions (aka, the fun stuff).
How to execute a Terminal command
You can type something in the Terminal window until you're blue in the face, but it won't execute until you press the Return key on your keyboard. At that point, it will either return an error if you've typed something incorrectly, or the command will execute.
Unless you're executing a command that requires the display of text in Terminal, you won't have any indicator that what you've done has been successful; you'll just get a new line with your user name on it once the command is finished processing.
When writing commands and paths in Terminal, almost everything is case sensitive: This means that you need to remember to properly capitalize 'Dock' when referring to the Dock, or OS X won't understand your command.
What's a path?
You can use Terminal to get direct access to your files without using the Finder. To do so, you build something called a path. Paths look similar in some ways to website sub-directories, and follow the structure of your folders.
Paths take two forms: absolute paths and relative paths. An absolute path starts at the root level of your hard drive, and is displayed as '/'. So if you wanted to make a path to your Applications folder, you would write '/Applications/'.
Relative paths are defined based on where you've already navigated to, and represented by './'. For instance, if you go to the '/Applications/' folder in Terminal, that's your current working directory (cwd). You can then get to your Utilities folder by typing './Utilities/' rather than '/Applications/Utilities'.
When you first launch Terminal, you're starting in the current working directory of /Users/myusername/ (also known as your User folder). Word for mac 2016 user manual.
Read Manual Mac Terminal 1How to display and move between files in Terminal
To actually put all this path knowledge to use, you'll need the Terminal commands for displaying and changing files.
ls: The 'ls' command, by itself, displays the contents of the cwd. So if I were just to type 'ls' in Terminal, it would display the contents of my user directory:
You can optionally add an absolute or relative or path if you want to view a different directories. So, for example, if I wanted to view the Utilities folder inside Applications, I could type 'ls /Applications/Utilities/'. This won't change your current working directory, but it'll let you view other directories on your hard drive.
You can add options to view more information about that directory. The options for 'ls' include:
cd: Where the 'ls' command lets you view a directory, the 'cd' command will actually move to that directory (change your cwd). For instance, if after viewing the Utilities folder, you want to move to it, you'd type 'cd /Applications/Utilities/'.
pwd: Write this command by itself to help you remember the path of your current directory. When typed into terminal, it will print the full path of your cwd.
man: This command, followed by another Unix command, lets you read the Unix manual about the second command. This is super useful if you want to try a cool Terminal trick you found online, but aren't sure what those commands actually do.
For instance, typing 'man ls' will get you information on the 'ls' command, which lists directory contents.
How to modify files, folders, and preferences in Terminal
defaults: This command is often used in Terminal tips and tricks to tweak applications and system settings via their preference files. You can use it to do things like disable transparency in the menu bar, always show your scroll bars, change trackpad behavior, and much much more. You'll usually see this paired with either 'write' and a string, as with this:
The code above lets you save all your screenshots as JPGs instead of the system default PNG.
killall: If you execute a Terminal command that affects any system process or app, you're going to need to reboot the process to make it take effect. 'killall' followed by the process will do so. (This is also another way to force quit misbehaving apps or processes if your Force Quit menu isn't behaving.) Remember, this command and its target are case sensitive.
Mac Terminal Commands
ln: OS X has long offered aliases, which let you create links to files, folders, and applications elsewhere in the system without having to duplicate them. Unfortunately, certain apps don't play well with aliases. With the link command 'ln -s', you can create a low-level, UNIX-based symbolic link which most system processes will recognize. Likely, you'll never have to make a symbolic link, but on the off-chance you want to perform a Terminal trick that requires them, this is how you do it.
The first path listed is your original file's path; the second path is where you'd like your symbolic link.
Mac Terminal Shortcut
chflags: This commands lets you view and change the flags on a file or folder. For most people, the only flags you're going to care about are 'hidden' and 'nohidden', which hide and unhide documents, respectively.
Read Manual Mac Terminal 3
sudo: If you spend any time online, you've probably heard of 'sudo' before. This is Unix's override command, and lets you execute any command as an administrator — provided, of course, that you have the requisite password and permissions. It probably goes without saying, but as a Terminal beginner, it's generally a good idea not to mess with commands like 'sudo' unless you are 100 percent sure what you're doing.
How to use Terminal for fun and whimsy
say: Feeling lonely? You can make your computer say anything you like with the 'say' command, and you can even record it in audio format to your desktop, if you so choose.
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl: This isn't technically something local to your Mac, but it's my all-time favorite Terminal trick. Some kind soul on the internet made an all-ASCII version of Star Wars: A New Hope; run the following code, and you'll be treated to a full showing. If it doesn't make you smile just a little bit, you might be dead inside.
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