The command line interface is an alternate method of interacting with macOS and Mac OS X, relying on text based command entry to execute commands and perform tasks. It is accessed on the Mac by using the Terminal application. Generally, the command line is considered advanced, and thus it’s usage tends to be more complex than many standard procedures on a Mac.
Mac users may occasionally come across a situation where a process is locking a port, preventing another app or process from using that port. If you come across such a situation, for example maybe you’re trying to use React.js and find out that something is already running on port 3000, you can easily track down … Read More
Homebrew is a fantastic package manager for the command line on Mac, but something that is perhaps less fantastic for some individuals is that Homebrew defaults to enabling ‘analytics’, which means your Mac will transmit data from your Mac to Homebrew about Homebrew usage. No thanks! The Homebrew analytics include everything from user agent, Google … Read More
Some MacOS Sonoma beta users have noticed they can not install Command Line Tools specifically in the Sonoma beta from the Terminal, instead they see an error message stating “Can’t install the software because it is not currently available from the Software Update server.” If you are trying to install the Command Line Tools into … Read More
If you use git on the Mac platform, you likely have come across DS_Store files in a git repository. These can be annoying and clutter a git repo, and you may even run into unnecessary conflicts due to .DS_Store files being maintained in git repos, where you may see error messages like “The files .DS_Store … Read More
If you ever find yourself needing to know a history of a specific Macs assigned local IP addresses, you can find this potentially helpful networking information from the command line. This trick will report all local IP addresses which have been used by a Mac, and, very helpfully, it will also offer the specific date … Read More
Occasionally you may find yourself in a situation where you are seeking to find what open TCP connections are in a listening state on a Mac. This can be useful whether you’re troubleshooting particular network issues, or simply looking to identify which processes are listening on specific ports on a Mac. We’ll be using the … Read More
Command line aliases are very useful, allowing you to have command shortcuts for lengthier commands, and you can use them to replace one command with another as well. With zsh becoming the default shell in Terminal for MacOS, and a widely used shell in general thanks to Oh-My-Zsh, you may be wondering how to configure … Read More
Some Mac users may wish to install GCC onto their MacOS computers. GCC, which stands for Gnu Compiler Collection, is a commonly used compiler with support for C, C++, Objective C, Go, Fortran, Ada, and more languages, and is frequently used for compiling command line programs, writing software, and more, whether for computer science classes … Read More
If you’re a Homebrew user who is now experiencing a “zsh: command not found: brew” error message in zsh shell, you’re probably perplexed as to why the brew command line line tool is no longer working. The reason you may be experiencing the command not found error for brew is because the zsh shell is … Read More
Need to mount an SMB network share from the command line of MacOS? There are a few different approaches to mount SMB shares from the command line, and we’ll cover two different methods to mount network shares on the Mac using Terminal.
Ever wished you could instantly launch the Terminal app on Mac by keyboard shortcut? Instead of relying on Spotlight and typing Terminal and hitting return, which works great and has for many years, you can actually create your own custom keyboard shortcut to open the Terminal app on MacOS. This article will detail how you … Read More
HomeBrew, the command line package manager, has native support for MacOS Sonoma 14 and macOS Ventura 13, so if you have recently updated to macOS Ventura or bought a new Mac with Sonoma/Ventura preinstalled, you’ll probably want to install Homebrew on the Mac running Ventura. Like most command line tools, HomeBrew is intended for advanced … Read More
Ever needed to take a full webpage scrolling screenshot on the Mac through the command line? While there are various approaches to taking full webpage screenshots on a Mac easily with Firefox or another browser, and many ways to take screenshots on the Mac, including taking screenshots from the Terminal, none of the native options … Read More
Mac users may need to occasionally clear out and flush DNS cache in MacOS, perhaps because they modified their hosts file, or for troubleshooting purposes. Resetting DNS cache on the Mac is generally only needed by advanced users, but even novice Mac users should find the process to be pretty easy, though it is achieved … Read More
Command line users may encounter situations where they’d like to open the Google Chrome web browser directly from the Terminal on the Mac.
Scheduling a Mac to boot, sleep, and shutdown, have been longstanding features in the Energy preference panel on Mac OS since the beginning of the operating system, so if you updated to macOS Ventura and now you’re wondering where those settings went, you aren’t alone. You can still schedule a Mac to turn on and … Read More
If you’re new to the Mac command line you may have come across a situation where you’re trying to interact with a file that has spaces in the name, for example “This File.txt” but as you probably discovered, you can’t simply type the file name if there are spaces within the file name, or the … Read More
Some Mac users have discovered that the hosts file in MacOS does not appear to work, or changes to the /etc/hosts file on the Mac are seemingly ignored. Given that the hosts file is used to map IP addresses to host names, and is frequently modified by advanced users, this is an understandably annoying problem. … Read More
