Do more with Terminal
Don’t be afraid of the command line – put its power to good use!
Don’t be afraid of the command line – put its power to good use!
There was a time when all computers were controlled using a command line – you typed in strings of characters to make your machine do something. The Mac’s graphical interface superseded this way of working (for good reason), but in fact the command line lives on as a way the technically minded can often perform certain tasks more quickly than with a graphical interface; it’s also frequently a means by which to activate ‘hidden’ settings that Apple has decided not to enable general access to. In other words, it’s about control.
Terminal can be found in Utilities within the Applications folder; open it and you see a text-based prompt. At this point, it’s not obvious what to do, but you can view a huge list of commands at www.ss64.com/osx, or type man and a command (for example, man ls) and hit ® to access documentation. Type q to return to the command line.
It’s worth noting that Terminal is dragand-drop aware: you can navigate your Mac’s storage with commands, but it’s quicker to just drag an item from Finder
With Terminal you can often perform certain tasks more quickly than with a graphical interface
to the command line (make sure the cusor is in the right place). To find out what directory you’re in, type pwd (which means ‘print working directory’) and hit ® ; to change directory, type cd and then a path (or type cd, a space, and drag a folder from Finder onto Terminal), then ® . Craig Grannell