Terminal Tips Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Terminal Tips: Enable "path view" in Finder

by Cory Bohon (Dec 5th, 2008)

When you open a Finder window and start browsing to a folder, do you lose track of the path to that folder? If you do, the Terminal command below will enable path view in the Finder -- this means that you will see the directory path to the current ...

Terminal Tips: Enable Address Book debug menu

by Cory Bohon (Dec 4th, 2008)

You may recall that Safari has a debug menu that enables some hidden features, but did you know Address Book also has a debug menu? In Address Book's debug menu, you can get options for logging, controls for metadata, printing selections, and ...

Terminal Tips: Install software updates from the command line

by Cory Bohon (Dec 2nd, 2008)

Sure, you could update your Apple software by opening Software Update from the Apple menu. But what if you're inclined to use a command line interface, or maybe you need to update a remote machine via SSH? There's a way to complete a software ...

Terminal Tips: Play Tetris in Terminal

by Cory Bohon (Oct 1st, 2008)

Terminal boasts some cool, but hidden features that we like to call "Easter eggs." These "eggs" are hidden features that the developers build in (mostly for fun or laughs), that don't have anything to do with the functionality of the program. One ...

Terminal Tips: 5 ways to navigate with ease

by Cory Bohon (Sep 29th, 2008)

How many times have you been in Terminal and wished you could navigate around with a little more ease? In this Terminal tip, we will show you 5 must-know tips for working with Terminal.app. 1. Change your current directory If you want to change the ...

TUAW Tip: Add file extensions to Quick Look

by Brett Terpstra (Sep 25th, 2008)

TUAW reader David wrote us to ask how he could view .erb files (Rails development) in Quick Look. The fact is, there are a lot of plain-text files with extensions that Quick Look doesn't recognize. It's relatively straightforward to tell Quick Look ...

Terminal Tips: Make the Dock spring loaded

by Cory Bohon (Sep 24th, 2008)

Spring-loaded Dock items, just like spring-loaded Finder items, are supposed to save you time by allowing you to drag a file over the folder/icon, hover for a few seconds, and have the application/folder open. Some people like these spring loaded ...

Terminal Tips: Disable Spotlight in menu bar

by Cory Bohon (Sep 23rd, 2008)

Are you tired of accidentally opening spotlight by pressing command + space? With this simple Terminal "hack," you can rid your precious menu bar of Spotlight for once and all. Just open Terminal.app (located in /Applications/Utilities/) and type the ...

Terminal Tips: Personalize Terminal.app

by Cory Bohon (Sep 22nd, 2008)

Tired of the bland, black and white look of Terminal.app (/Application/Utilities)? By tweaking the preferences in Terminal, you can easily change the theme, and look of your Terminal windows. Open Terminal and click Terminal > Preferences (or ...

Terminal Tips: Gradient highlights for Stacks

by Cory Bohon (Sep 18th, 2008)

If you use Stacks like we do, then you probably love any additional hacks you can do to them. While this Terminal Tip provides no really useful features, it does provide you with some awesome eye candy for your Stacks. This hack gives you a ...

Terminal Tip: Disabling Leopard's Dock spring windows

by Erica Sadun (Sep 17th, 2008)

I seriously hate the way that Leopard's spring-loaded download pane works. So this morning, I asked our team if there were a way to get around it. "Of course," said Brett, and he pointed me to this Mac OS X Hints page, warning me that it was a ...

Terminal Tips: Add recent applications as a Stack on Dock

by Cory Bohon (Sep 16th, 2008)

Do you find yourself constantly using the Apple menu to find your recently opened applications? This simple Terminal hack will create a custom Stack on the Dock that will show your recently opened applications. Just open Terminal.app ...

Terminal Tips: Make extended print dialog show by default

by Cory Bohon (Sep 15th, 2008)

When you print something in Mac OS X, the standard print dialog window will pop up. However, if you always use the extended options (such as landscape/portrait orientation, number of copies, etc.) then you might have to click the blue arrow ...

Terminal Tips: Change your current screenshot format

by Cory Bohon (Sep 11th, 2008)

Do you like using the built-in Mac OS X screenshot utility but dislike the format of the output file? With this simple Terminal hack, you can easily change the file format of the image. Open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities) and type the ...

Terminal Tips: Disable iTunes 8 store arrows

by Cory Bohon (Sep 10th, 2008)

Last week we talked about how to modify the iTunes track arrows to point to the library instead of the music store. With the introduction of iTunes 8 yesterday, this hack no longer works (it will still work if you stick with iTunes 7.x). However, you ...

Terminal Tips: Stop Safari "saved text" dialogs

by Cory Bohon (Sep 9th, 2008)

We're continuing with Safari hacks for today's Terminal Tip. Have you ever typed text on a web page, but then realized that you want to go to another page without saving your input? However, when you close the window or tab, Safari rudely tells you ...