Create a Reading Ruler from iTerm2 on macOS

iterm2-reading-ruler.md

Create a Reading Ruler from iTerm2 on macOS

These is the rough technique that I used to create a functional, multi-puspose reading ruler out of iTerm2. A video of the results can be found on YouTube.

1. Install Iterm2
2. Install Homberew

• /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

3. Use homebrew to install GNU sleep, becuase this supports the infinity aergument, which BSD sleep does not. We will ue this to keep the ruler open idefintely.

• brew install coreutils

4. Launch iTerm2
5. Open the menu iTerm2 - Preferences
6. Select the Profiles Tab
7. Click + to create a new profile named Reading Ruler
8. Configure the sections circled in red. You can configure other things, but those are the most important things that I could remeber.

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• Give it a name, shortcut key, and most importantly set it to run gsleep infinity which will keep the window open with no output forever.
  • One Apple Silicon (arm64) based system, homebrew uses /opt instead of /usr/local, so you may need to adjust the command path to something like /opt/bin/gsleep.

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• Set the color that you want for the window.

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• This just makes the cursor harder to notice in the window

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• These are the primary windows settings. I'd start with this, but you can tweak however you want. This impacts how transparent the window is, etc.

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• This probably isn't super important, but it can't hurt.

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• Close without promoting and no status bar or timestamps.

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• A dedicated window hotkey is super useful for the Reading Ruler, so let's create that.

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• Note: I decided to disable the double shift click hotkey that I mentioned in the video as I found that it triggered accidently too often, so I just used a standard hotkey Control-Command-r instead.

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• We should disable any triggers, just in case.

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• Under Preferences - Appearance - Windows You can check Hide scrollbars if you want, just note that it is global and impacts all iTerm2 windows.

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• If you would like to be able to easily drag the borderless reading ruler window around the screen, versus just resizing it, and you are running macOS Yosemite or later, then I recommend that you launch the terminal application and run this command:

  • Note: This is a global setting and will impact all windows. That shouldn't be a big issue, but just so that you are aware.
  • For more details see: https://www.mackungfu.org/UsabilityhackClickdraganywhereinmacOSwindowstomovethem

• defaults write -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture -bool true

Once you have done this, then you will need to logout and back in or reboot for the setting to take effect.

Once you have done this then you can press control+command and left-click inside most windows to drag them around the screen.

To stop this behavior, you can delete this defaults setting from Terminal:

• defaults delete -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture

Then log out and back in or reboot for the change to take effect.

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• Feel free to post comments, if something is confusing, and I'll try to provide some clarification.

Is it working in full screen mode?

Is it working in full screen mode?

I haven't used it a bunch recently, but I'd guess that you can have the application window maximized, but not in true full-screen mode. If it is actually in full-screen mode, then it likely won't work since the full-screen app will have complete ownership of the screen.