The Terminal app allows you to control your Mac using a command prompt. Why would you want to do that? Well, perhaps because you’re used to working on a command line in a Unix-based system and prefer to work that way. Terminal is a Mac command line interface. There are several advantages to using Terminal to accomplish some tasks — it’s usually quicker, for example. In order to use it, however, you’ll need to get to grips with its basic commands and functions. Once you’ve done that, you can dig deeper and learn more commands and use your Mac’s command prompt for more complex, as well as some fun, tasks.
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Download FreeHow to open Terminal on Mac
This aptly named application for the macOS brings a full-featured serial terminal to your Mac or MacBook. It was developed specifically for the Mac and is not a port of a Windows program. It’s a great tool for system administrators working on a Mac. Pros: the app provides terminal emulation, break support, and the ability to conduct file. For serial ports first click Serial in the radio buttons. Then type in the Serial name in Serial line (e.g. COM5) and finally, set the Speed to be whatever speed you like Then click Open to open the port.
The Terminal app is in the Utilities folder in Applications. To open it, either open your Applications folder, then open Utilities and double-click on Terminal, or press Command - spacebar to launch Spotlight and type 'Terminal,' then double-click the search result. Hashtags for twitter.
You’ll see a small window with a white background open on your desktop. In the title bar are your username, the word 'bash' and the dimensions of the window in pixels. Bash stands for 'Bourne again shell'. There are a number of different shells that can run Unix commands, and on the Mac Bash is the one used by Terminal.
If you want to make the window bigger, click on the bottom right corner and drag it outwards. If you don’t like the black text on a white background, go to the Shell menu, choose New Window and select from the options in the list.
If Terminal feels complicated or you have issues with the set-up, let us tell you right away that there are alternatives. MacPilot allows to get access to over 1,200 macOS features without memorizing any commands. Basically, a third-party Terminal for Mac that acts like Finder.
For Mac monitoring features, try iStat Menus. The app collects data like CPU load, disk activity, network usage, and more — all of which accessible from your menu bar.
Basic Mac commands in Terminal
The quickest way to get to know Terminal and understand how it works is to start using it. But before we do that, it’s worth spending a little time getting to know how commands work. To run a command, you just type it at the cursor and hit Return to execute.
Every command is made up of three elements: the command itself, an argument which tells the command what resource it should operate on, and an option that modifies the output. So, for example, to move a file from one folder to another on your Mac, you’d use the move command 'mv' and then type the location of the file you want to move, including the file name and the location where you want to move it to.
Let’s try it.
- Type cd ~/Documentsthen and press Return to navigate to your Home folder.
- Type lsthen Return (you type Return after every command).
You should now see a list of all the files in your Documents folder — ls is the command for listing files.
To see a list of all the commands available in Terminal, hold down the Escape key and then press y when you see a question asking if you want to see all the possibilities. To see more commands, press Return.
Unix has its own built-in manual. So, to learn more about a command type man [name of command], where 'command' is the name of the command you want find out more about.
Terminal rules
There are a few things you need to bear in mind when you’re typing commands in Terminal, or any other command-line tool. Firstly, every character matters, including spaces. So when you’re copying a command you see here, make sure you include the spaces and that characters are in the correct case.
You can’t use a mouse or trackpad in Terminal, but you can navigate using the arrow keys. If you want to re-run a command, tap the up arrow key until you reach it, then press Return. To interrupt a command that’s already running, type Control-C.
Commands are always executed in the current location. So, if you don’t specify a location in the command, it will run wherever you last moved to or where the last command was run. Use the cd How to make a dmg fiel automatically run a file. command, followed by a directory path, like in Step 1 above, to specify the folder where you want a command to run.
There is another way to specify a location: go to the Finder, navigate to the file or folder you want and drag it onto the Terminal window, with the cursor at the point where you would have typed the path.
Here’s another example. This time, we’ll create a new folder inside your Documents directory and call it 'TerminalTest.'
- Open a Finder window and navigate to your Documents folder.
- Type cd and drag the Documents folder onto the Terminal window.
- Now, type mkdir 'TerminalTest'
Go back to the Finder, open Text Edit and create a new file called 'TerminalTestFile.rtf'. Now save it to the TerminalTest folder in your Documents folder.
In the Terminal window, type cd ~/Documents/TerminalTest then Return. Now type lsand you should see 'TerminalTestFile' listed.
To change the name of the file, type this, pressing Return after every step:
- cd~/Documents/Terminal Test
- mv TerminalTestFile TerminalTestFile2.rtf
That will change the name of the file to 'TerminalTestFile2'. You can, of course, use any name you like. The mv command means 'move' and you can also use it to move files from one directory to another. In that case, you’d keep the file names the same, but specify another directory before typing the the second instance of the name, like this:
Chancellor devil take the hindmost pdf download torrent. mv ~/Documents/TerminalTest TerminalTestFile.rtf ~/Documents/TerminalTest2 TerminalTestFile.rtf
More advanced Terminal commands
Terminal can be used for all sorts of different tasks. Some of them can be performed in the Finder, but are quicker in Terminal. Others access deep-rooted parts of macOS that aren’t accessible from the Finder without specialist applications. Here are a few examples.
Copy files from one folder to another
- In a Terminal window, type ditto [folder 1] [folder 1] where 'folder 1' is the folder that hosts the files and 'folder 2' is the folder you want to move them to.
- To see the files being copied in the Terminal window, type -v after the command.
Download files from the internet
You’ll need the URL of the file you want to download in order to use Terminal for this.
- curl -O [URL of file you want to download]
If you want to download the file to a directory other than your Downloads folder, replace ~/Downloads/ with the path to that folder, or drag it onto the Terminal window after you type the cd command.
Change the default location for screenshots
If you don’t want macOS to save screenshots to your Desktop when you press Command-Shift-3, you can change the default location in Terminal
- defaults write com.apple.screencapture location [path to folder where you want screenshots to be saved]
- Hit Return
- killall SystemUIServer
- Hit Return
Change the default file type for screenshots
By default, macOS saves screenshots as .png files. To change that to .jpg, do this:
- defaults write com.apple.screencapture type JPG
- Press Return
- killall SystemUIServer Download spotify playlist on to computer for free.
- Press Return
Delete all files in a folder
The command used to delete, or remove, files in Terminal is rm. So, for example, if you wanted to remove a file in your Documents folder named 'oldfile.rtf' you’d use cd ~/Documents to go to your Documents folder then to delete the file. As it stands, that will delete the file without further intervention from you. If you want to confirm the file to be deleted, use -i as in rm -i oldfile.rtf
To delete all the files and sub-folders in a directory named 'oldfolder', the command is rm -R oldfolder and to confirm each file should be deleted, rm -iR oldfolder
Just because you can use Terminal to delete files on your Mac, doesn’t mean you should. It’s a relatively blunt instrument, deleting only those files and folders you specify.
Another way to free up space
If your goal in removing files or folders is to free up space on your Mac, or to remove junk files that are causing your Mac to run slowly, it’s far better to use an app designed for the purpose. CleanMyMac X is one such app.
It will scan your Mac for files and recommend which ones you can delete safely, as well as telling you how much space you’ll save. And once you’ve decided which files to delete, you can get rid of them in a click. You can download CleanMyMac here.
As you can see, while Terminal may look scary and seem like it’s difficult to use, it really isn’t. The key is learning a few commands, such as those we’ve outlined above, and getting to know the syntax for those commands.
However, you should be careful when using Terminal, it’s a powerful tool that has deep access to your Mac’s system files. Check commands by googling them if you’re not sure what they do. And if you need to delete files to save space, use an app like CleanMyMac X to do it. It’s much safer!
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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.
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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
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.
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8 Best Terminal Commands For Mac
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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:
- Double-click your Macintosh HD icon or open a Finder window
- Make your way into the Applications folder
- 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://website.com/folder/file.
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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. Mac track app usage app. 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.
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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:
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- Open a Terminal window and type emacs then press Enter
- With GNU Emacs selected, hit Escape
- 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!
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