In some situations, you may need to repair a Macs disk permissions but be unable to access the Disk Utility app, perhaps due to remote management or because of a problem with something in OS X. Fortunately there’s another method you can use to repair disk permissions in Mac OS X, accessible through the command … Read More
Anytime you are connected to a local area network (LAN) you’ll be assigned an IP address for that network, and often it’s important to know what this IP address is. There are two quick ways to get your LAN IP address in Mac OS X, one is more user friendly using the GUI, and the … Read More
I came across an excellent alternative to the command line ‘ping’ and ‘traceroute’ tools recently. It’s a utility called mtr, which combines the statistics and prints their functionality into a single network diagnostic tool, reporting details on the network connection between your host machine and whatever the destination host is, determining the address of each … Read More
The Mac firewall has long been based on IPFW, a robust and strong software firewall that comes form the unix world. But managing IPFW usually requires digging around in the command line, so as I was recently looking around for a Mac OS X GUI to IPFW, I came across WaterRoof. If you’re looking for … Read More
If you’re troubleshooting a Mac machine with some particularly odd issues that routine measures don’t seem to be resolving, it can be helpful to list what kernel extensions are activated, particularly third party kexts loaded in OS X. Determining what kernel extensions are loaded and running in Mac OS X is rather easy, and using … Read More
You can find out what the manufacturer, model number, and type of LCD panel you have in any of your Macs, including the iMac, MacBook Air, MacBook, or any model MacBook Pro by using a fairly complex looking terminal command. If you’re unfamiliar with the command line, just copy and paste the line below into … Read More
Have you ever tried to run a command line tool to discover that you don’t have the necessary privileges to use it? Or perhaps the command itself actually requires root access to run at all? You’ll typically experience this with a ‘permission denied’ type of error message in terminal. Rather then type out the entire … Read More
Have you ever put your Mac to sleep, only to find it awake seemingly on it’s own when you return to the machine? I’ve run into this mystery of a randomly waking Mac a few times, and with a few terminal commands you can help track down what caused your Mac to wake from sleep. … Read More
Need to access the current Finder directory immediately within the Terminal? While newer Mac OS X versions have an option to enable “New Terminal at Folder” in Services, prior releases do not, so instead you can get cdto, it’s one of those must-have apps for anyone who’s constantly switching between the command line and the … Read More
You can resize, rotate, or flip any image file via the Mac’s Terminal using the powerful command line sips tool. Manipulating images with sips is practically instantaneous, and if you need to quickly resize, rotate, or flip an image file and want to stay within the command line, it can definitely beat firing up a … Read More
If you want to see the difference between two folders on a Mac, or compare two directories contents, you can easily do so with the help of the powerful diff command. This tutorial will show you how to compare two directories, and the contents of those directories, by using the Terminal. This command line approach … Read More
Taking screenshots from the command line is made easy, thanks to a utility included in Mac OS X called screencapture. Here’s how to use it: screencapture test.jpg The screen capture will then appear in the directory that the command was executed. There are more advanced features to the screencapture utility though, here’s a few examples. … Read More
If you’re trying to tweak a wireless router to get the best signal, being able to continuously measure the wi-fi signal strength while you toy with the antennas, placement, and whatever else on the network is really valuable. While most users are best served by using the Mac Wi-Fi Diagnostics app to monitor signal strength … Read More
With any installation of Mac OS X comes Emacs (Extensible, customizable, self-documenting real-time display editor – yes that’s what EMACS stands for, now you know!) and with Emacs, some easter eggs that let you play some good old 70’s games directly at the command line. Yes really, there are retro video games embedded in your … Read More
One of the more interesting little known Dock modifications on the Mac is the ability to make hidden app icons appear as translucent and muted in the Dock to indicate their hidden status. If you look carefully at the screenshots of the Mac Dock in this article you’ll see the effect, as some of the … Read More
When you launch a new Terminal window or tab in Mac OS X (and most linux distributions) you’ll be greeted with a little message, either some “last login” details, or maybe even a message from the admin from /etc/motd. The last login details are default in a new Mac OS X terminal session, whereas the … Read More
I use screenshots constantly to share bits of information with people, and they can be really helpful when troubleshooting as well. Here’s all you’ll need to know about taking screenshots in Mac OS X, from capturing the screen in Mac OS X Finder and within applications, to changing the default screenshot file type, to taking … Read More
Single Application Mode is an interesting feature of MacOS and Mac OS X that is often misunderstood, we’ll discuss what the feature is, how it works, and how to enable it on your Mac running nearly any version of Mac OS still in use, whether that’s macOS 12, 11, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, or newer.
