If you have attempted to use nano at the command line on MacOS recently, you may have noticed that the pico text editor is launched instead, via a symlink for /usr/bin/nano to pico. This is because the latest versions of MacOS remove the nano text editor from the command line for whatever reason, and instead … Read More
The Mac includes a command line interface to run and interact with Shortcuts app. This could be potentially useful to some macOS users who rely on the Shortcuts app for scripting and automation, and who spend a lot of time in the Terminal The currently available shortcuts command line flags include ‘run’, ‘list’, ‘view’, and … Read More
Have a bunch of Terminal windows open on your Mac that’d you like to merge into a single tabbed window? No problem, you can stop juggling several different terminal windows and get them all sorted out into a nice and easy to manage single tabbed window, thanks to a handy feature built into the Terminal … Read More
Python users on the Mac are likely aware that Python is being deprecated from macOS 12.3 onward, and will no longer be preinstalled on the Mac. But Python remains an incredibly popular programming language, and if you rely on Python you’ll likely want to continue to have Python available in macOS. It’s easy to get … Read More
Want a vertically split set of Terminals on the Mac, so that you can have two concurrent terminals running side by side for executing their own commands? Of course you do, this is a staple feature of many terminal apps for linux and unix command lines, so having this feature on the Mac is a … Read More
If you’d like to find comprehensive system information about a Mac, you’ll find the Terminal is an excellent way to retrieve this data quickly. We’ll provide a handy command that reveals extensive system information about a Mac, including the current system software version and build number, kernel version, boot volume, boot mode, computer name, active … Read More
Need to run a Terminal command as fast as possible? You can do so right from the Dock with this neat trick for Mac.
If you recently installed Oh My Zsh or updated a Mac running Oh My Zsh, you may encounter a large error message screen upon launching new terminal windows. The error usually states “Insecure completion-dependent directories detected”, and showing a series of /usr/local/share/zsh/ directories whose permissions zsh considers insecure. There are two choices to deal with … Read More
If you’re new to VI or VIM, the command line text editors, you may be wondering some of the basics, like how to save files, or how to both save and quit in vim in one fell swoop.
Need to check the sha256 hash of a file? You can easily check the SHA 256 checksum of any file in macOS from the command line. We’ll cover two different command line tools to verify a sha256 checksum on the Mac, and both come preinstalled with all modern versions of MacOS.
If you had previously installed Oh My Zsh on a Mac and now have decided you no longer want it on the computer, you can remove and uninstall Oh My Zsh with a very simple command string.
Wondering where the .zshrc file is located on a Mac? If you’re a Mac command line user who is interested in using and customizing the zsh shell, or using something like Oh My Zsh, you may be curious to know what and where the .zshrc file is located, and how to access it so that … Read More
Want to try out Oh My Zsh in your Terminal? Oh My Zsh is a popular zsh configuration manager, offering tons of themes, functions, helpers, plugins, and other handy features for command line users. It’s used heavily by many who spend a lot of time in the command line, whether for development, administration, or just … Read More
If you want to change your MAC address in macOS Monterey or Big Sur, you can use the traditional method to spoof a MAC address, or you can use a slightly easier approach by using a command line tool called spoof-mac. We’ll be covering the mac-spoof method here, which relies on HomeBrew.
Some Mac Terminal users may discover git, pip, HomeBrew, and other command line tools may fail or not work as intended with an error message stating “xcrun: error: invalid active developer path (/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools)”. Sometimes these command line tools stop working after a macOS system software update, but they worked previously. Fortunately it’s easy to fix … Read More
Can’t log in to your Mac because you forgot or lost your user password? That can be stressful, but don’t freak out quite yet. Whether it’s your primary admin password or password to a standard user account on someone else’s mac, you can reset it in a couple of minutes.
If you have an Intel Mac, you can make it boot directly into the boot disk options startup manager by issuing an nvram terminal command. This could be helpful for advanced users in particular whether they’re troubleshooting, have dual boot situations with multiple versions of macOS, macOS and Windows 10 in Boot Camp, macOS and … Read More
Want to update Homebrew and your packages? Of course you do! Homebrew is a popular package manager for Mac that easily allows users to install and manage command line tools, apps, and utilities, typically familiar with the Linux and Unix world. Because it’s a package manager, you won’t need to manually build anything from source … Read More
