When it comes to increasing productivity within Mac OS X you can never know too many keyboard shortcuts. Found on the Mac developer blog, Theocacao, we’ve covered over half of these shortcuts before, but those that we haven’t are worth knowing, and those that we have are worth a reminder. Shortcut #6 is probably my favorite on the list, Option-Command-H, which hides all applications other than the frontmost one, immediately reducing distractions and clearing clutter. Repeated below are the rest from Theocacao.com:

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If you have ever looked at your Mac root directory and wondered what some of those other directories are for, you’re probably not alone. Mac OS got a whole lot more complex with the advent of Mac OS X, adapting a unix file structure that is largely unfamiliar to Mac OS 9 and Windows users. So just what is /System, /Library, /usr, and all the others for anyway?

Here you will find a brief overview of these directories, as well as an explanation of each system level directory as found in Mac OS X and macOS system software.

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Most of us use iTunes to transfer files to and from our iPod, but apparently you can also use the command line. Sasha Ingbram writes in with this tip: “I realize this is a controversial position to take, but I’m not always thrilled with iTunes and how long it takes to get things done. For me, going through the command this is much faster and more efficient rather than launching iTunes and waiting for the store to load and everything else. I found that you can transfer data to your iPod through the terminal though by using the following command:
cp -R /Volumes/YourIpod/iPod_Control/Music /Users/YourUserName/Music
of course you have to fill in your iPod name rather than YourIpod and your username rather than YourUserName.”

Thanks Sasha! We haven’t been able to test this one right now because we don’t have an iPod laying around at the moment, perhaps someone else can try it out.

Ever wished you could send the output of a command to a file or append that output to an existing file? That’s what redirects do. To put it simply, command line redirects allow you to take the output of certain commands and create new files or add to existing ones with this data, this is incredibly useful indeed, and the knowledge expands to OS X, Linux, and any other variant of Unix.

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Apple has just released an update to their Boot Camp software, although it still is technically in beta. If you don’t want to shell out the bucks for Parallels or VMWare but you want your Mac to run Microsoft Windows, Apple’s free Boot Camp is what you need. For those that don’t know, Boot Camp allows you to partition your Mac’s hard drive to be able to dual boot between Mac OS X and Windows XP or Vista, choosing which OS to boot on system start.

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If you have ever wanted to turn a DMG file into an ISO file, look no further than the handy command line utility called hdiutil, which is bundled in all versions of OS X. This can be helpful for many reasons, but one of the primary reasons to convert a DMG to ISO is for compatibility. Perhaps your Mac doesn’t have a writable media drive, or it’s not up to speed, or the multitude of other reasons you’d want to have or burn an ISO from a PC rather than a DMG on your Mac.

Forget downloading the shareware apps that promise to convert DMG files to ISO, you can do it right from Mac OS X’s command line, for free, using the hdiutil command as outlined below.

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Love it or hate it, but we live in a multi-platform world with multiple operating systems. Sure we prefer Mac’s, but the chances are high that at some point you’ll have to interface your Mac with a PC to share files between the two machines, particularly if you are in an office environment or school. Heck, even at home, many of us have old PC’s around still with tons of files on them, even if they’re mostly collecting dust. This begs the question; “can you easily mount a Windows PC shared folder to your Mac?” – the answer is; you bet, and it’s quicker than you might think!
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Ever needed to eject a disc, cd, DVD, or media from the command line on a Mac? You can do that from the Terminal, as we’ll show here.

To eject a disc or media from the command line on Mac, open up your Terminal and type the following:
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Most new consumer Macs come with a built-in iSight / FaceTime camera which can be used for all sorts of fun, ranging from live video chatting in FaceTime, Skype, and iChat, to horsing around in Photo Booth, to using third party apps like Gawker to capture time lapse photography of whatever is going on. That hardware camera is located at the top of the screen as the little black dot on the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and iMac.

Despite the many fun and harmless uses of the hardware Camera, there are some security concerns with having a built-in camera particularly in academic and institutional settings, and because of this some System Administrators have taped covers over the iSight and even removed them from the machines entirely. Thankfully, there’s a much easier way to disable the built-in iSight camera, all you have to do is move a file.

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Booting Mac OS X as usual shows the Apple logo and eventually you’ll wind up at a login screen or desktop, that’s attractive and all, but some users would prefer to see what’s going on behind the scenes. That’s what Verbose Boot Mode does, it shows you what is really happening during system startup on a Mac, and is great for troubleshooting purposes, but it can also just be interesting to see what exactly is going on during the MacOS and Mac OS X booting process.

Typically, if you wanted to boot in verbose mode on a per boot basis you would hit Command-V during startup, which brings up the familiar white on black console looking screen with a lot of scrolling text. On the other hand, some users may prefer to always see the complete verbose booting process on every boot including all kernel extension loading, details, and system messages on boot, and to do that you can adjust the firmware from the Terminal with the nvram command, as we’ll cover here.

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Yes we have covered UNO in the past, but todays release of version 1.5 is a complete rewrite, offering even more features and interface improvements. For those that don’t know, UNO offers interface enhancements to Mac OS X to remove the brushed metal interface, thus unifying the appearance of Mac OS X to more closely resemble the sleek iTunes GUI. The new version also finally fixes some interface troubles with iTunes and Quicktime. Useful? Not really, it’s pure eye candy. Check out the screenshot below, and unify your Mac’s GUI!

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Anytime you visit a website or do any other kind of DNS lookup, the IP address conveniently gets cached. While what’s convenient for most of us can be a real nuisance for others, particularly administrators who are moving around servers. This set of quick tips that Systems Administrators (and others) will surely appreciate covers flushing DNS caches in early release versions of Mac OS X system software, like 10.4, 10.3, 10.2, 10.1, and 10.0 (!).

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Need to create an ultra-fast RAM disk in Mac OS X? We’ve got you covered with a command line trick that will generate a RAM disk of any size of your choosing. These instructions have been updated to support all versions of OS X, from modern releases to older ones too, so no matter what you’re running on the Mac, you’ll get a fast RAM disk running in no time at all.

Do keep in mind that RAM disks are temporary, and a reboot will cause the data on the RAM disk to clear off (just like RAM). Similarly, ejecting the RAM disk will remove it, and remove all data stored on the RAM disk. This makes RAM disks appropriate for temporary situations, caches, and situations where you need very fast disk read and write speeds.

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There are some Mac users out there who love to customize and change the appearance of every single thing on their desktop, from the shape of their windows, to fancy wallpapers, to custom icons. Personally, I keep it simple, aside from a custom wallpaper I unify the desktop appearance with UNO, which provides a clean and consistent interface to all of Mac OS X. UNO doesn’t cut it for everyone though, so check out The Apple Blog with their list of 15 customization resources for Mac OS X:

The Apple Blog: 15 OS X Customization resources

We’re big fans of Spotlight here at OS X Daily, but we realize it’s not everyones cup of tea. If you’re someone who dislikes Spotlight enough to want it disabled completely then this is the guide for you. What you’ll need is some basic knowledge of the command line and a command line text editor (we’ll use nano in this example, perhaps the easiest). Note that some other Mac OS X features and programs are based on Spotlight’s search abilities, therefore some applications could behave abnormally if you disable Spotlight, particularly in search functions.

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If you’re tired of waking up every morning to your old fashioned alarm clock, Awaken may be the app for you.

Awaken turns your Mac into a multifunction alarm clock, capable of waking up your Mac (assuming its sleeping) and initiating a user selected alarm of either a sound effect or song selected from your iTunes playlist.

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Getting disk usage information on a Mac is often gathered by selecting a file, directory, or hard drive and hitting Command-I for Get Info, then appears a nice GUI interface with extended information about the selected object including disk usage. Command-I isn’t the only way to get disk info however, with the command line there are two useful utilities to gather this data that you should know; df and du. The following is a brief explanation of each command and how you can use them:

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Need to quickly see where you are in the Finder by showing the current windows path on a Mac?

There are a few ways to do this in Mac OS X, for example you can use a defaults command to show the full path in Finder window title, and we’ll show you another couple of great tricks that are super easy to display the path itself at all times.

First, you may be aware that you can show the path bar in Mac Finder windows to always see the current path to folders on the Mac. That method was discussed by Lifehacker, who posted the following Mac tip about including a specific Path button in Finder windows:

“One of my main complaints about Mac’s Finder versus Windows Explorer is the inability to move up and down a folder tree easily. However, Finder’s Path button lets you do just that. The Path button isn’t included on the Finder toolbar by default, but you can add it by Ctrl-clicking and choosing “Customize Toolbar.” Then drag and drop the Path button – which kind of looks like a staircase – onto the toolbar. From there, use it to see where you are in the folder tree, and move up to enclosing folders in a click.”

That will enable a path button and it’s a great tip, but… there is an easier way to see the path details, and even navigate within the file system through the path structure: Just Command-Click on the Finder window’s titlebar to get the same path on the Mac.

Command + Click on Finder Titlebars to see the Directory Path on Mac

You can then select any of the directories within the pulldown path menu to instantly jump to that directory. Keep in mind that you can navigate down to parent directories this way, but not to child directories, which is best handled through the traditional Mac OS X File browser (you know, just double-clicking a folder to open it like usual).

This nifty path trick also works in some other applications too, particularly the ones from Apple, but many third party developers also include the support in their own Mac apps too. Try it out!

Want to learn more? Don’t miss these 9 tricks for improving your Mac file system experience and to help master the Finder in Mac OS X, you’ll be close to power user status in no time.