mac os command line programs

https://saurabhs.org/advanced-macos-commands

• caffeinate - set Mac sleep behavior
• textutil - document file converter
• mdfind - search with Spotlight
• networkquality - measure Internet speed
• screencapture - take screenshots
• pbcopy, pbpaste - interact with system clipboard
• taskpolicy - control scheduling of processes
• say - text-to-speech engine
• sips - image manipulation
• open - open files and applications
• pmset - configure power management
• networksetup - configure network settings
• qlmanage - manage Quick Look
  • convert an svg to a png:
    • qlmanage -t -s 1024x1024 -o MyIcon.iconset/Icon1024.png icon.svg
  • with a caveat from a news.yc reader that sometimes the svg renderer isn't perfect
• softwareupdate - manage OS updates

most I knew, but a few I didn't! handy resource

the news.yc comments mention:

• hdiutil as well, which I've used, to mount and unmount volumes
• which is actually different from hidutil, which you can use to remap keyboard keys!
  • (I use karabiner) (also mentions for this web app to generate the appropriate input for hidutil)
• additional tools for xcode here includes
  • AU Lab (I've used this to set up an audio monitor)
  • Link Conditioner (so you can set up a system-wide network with whatever properties you want - i.e. you can limit your network speed, add latency, etc) and more
• plutil is for editing property list files
• security for interacting with the keychain (see keychain command line access)
• defaults for setting OS config (see prefsniff)
• afconvert for converting audio formats
  • afconvert music.wav -o music_160kbps_aac.m4a -b 160000 -q 127 -s 2 -f m4af -d 'aac '
• afinfo for info about an audio file
• fs_usage - report system calls and page faults related to filesystem activity in real-time
• mdls - It's ls for metadata. Scripted access to the date/time when and the latitude/longitude where a photograph was taken
  • example usage, get an application's bundle identifier:

  $ mdls -name kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier -r /Applications/IINA.app
  com.colliderli.lina
  

  • useful in concert with [[duti]]
• system_profiler - command line access to system information
  • system_profiler SPHardwareDataType will give you a listing of your basic hardware information. Super handy, I'd never heard of this before
• sw_vers - print OS and hardware version
• iperf3-darwin – perform network throughput tests
• lipo - thin universal binaries to only a particular/a set of supported architectures
  • lipo <universal exe/dylib> -thin arm64e -output <new apple silicon-only exe/dylib>
  • neat!
• dscl - Directory Service command line utility (manage users and groups)
• scutil - Manage system configuration parameters (useful for checking current DNS configuration and checking reachability to a host).
  • scutil --dns will print the DNS settings of your machine
  • Here's me checking a computer on my local network:

$ scutil -r qfwfq.local
Reachable

• sysadminctl - doesn't have a man page, but has various user and system functionalities

  • run without arguments to get a sense of them
  • deleteUser, newPassword, screenLock, and more

• using sips and iconutil to generate a full iconset from a 1024x1024 png:

mkdir MyIcon.iconset
cp Icon1024.png MyIcon.iconset/icon_512x512@2x.png
sips -z 16 16     Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_16x16.png
sips -z 32 32     Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_16x16@2x.png
sips -z 32 32     Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_32x32.png
sips -z 64 64     Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_32x32@2x.png
sips -z 128 128   Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_128x128.png
sips -z 256 256   Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_128x128@2x.png
sips -z 256 256   Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_256x256.png
sips -z 512 512   Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_256x256@2x.png
sips -z 512 512   Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_512x512.png
iconutil -c icns MyIcon.iconset

• I found eslogger via a mention on mastodon, it's fantastically useful for monitoring events on your system. See debugging os x for more details
• xattr allows you to modify extended filesystem attributes
  • you can open an app that says "app Is Damaged and Can’t Be Opened" with xattr -c /Applications/app.app
  • -c clears all attributes
• uuidgen does what it says on the tin, generates UUIDs. The man page doesn’t say what uuid version it generates
• jq since Mac OS 15, jq is included in the base OS