list of super cool mac terminal tricks

trick_list.md

u-never-knew-this-mac-trick

1. say then whatever u want ur mac to say, Siri will say whatever u want her/him to say, but don't know why it's always a male voice i tried to change it but was unable to, If someone knows how to make a female voice say in terminal
2. security find-generic-password -wa "whatever is ur wifi name" this will show the password of the wifi stored in ur mac
3. some command | pbcopy whatever is the output of the command will be copied to the clipboard
4. shift command option v to copy without formatting, It's really a godsend if try to copy something from notes to Google Docs or majorly anything to Google Docs
5. caffeinate type thing in the terminal and your Mac won't sleep till u end this command, perfect for a coffee break
6. command control shift 4 like normally u take screenshots by pressing shift command 3 or for a specific area shift comand 4 but by doing so the screenshot will get saved on the desktop and then u have to go to the desktop and from there u need to copy and then paste it somewhere but with this command, u can take a screenshot of a particular place and copy it to clipboard.. really amazing one A couple of terminal commands to make changes around your screenshot
7. defaults write com.apple.screencapture name -> Set a default name to your screenshots
8. defaults write com.apple.screencapture type -> u can set your screenshot file format to jpg, png, etc
9. default write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop/screenshots Currently the default saving location for your screenshots is your desktop, u can change it with this command
10. passwd to change your password
11. whoami will tell u ur user name
12. ditto there r two commands on Mac to copy and paste via your terminal, cp and ditto, don't know sure, but a Mac expert said to me that ditto is better than cp
13. df -h will tell u how much space u have in your Mac, its full form displays free disk space
14. man to open the manual or if u want a manual of something, like say cp command u can type, man cp
15. open to just open things like open . will open finder, or open myprofilepic.png
16. ping to check whether a website is up or not, like ping google.com
17. ifconfig configures network interface parameters, u can use it with different variations and combinations as such, ifconfig en0, ifconfig en0 | grep inet, ifconfig en0 | grep inet | awk 'carry regular expressions'
18. traceroute website.com to see the path u r taking to get to a certain website, great for troubleshooting
19. dig websitename.com If u want to dig into DNS of a website, u can get all the DNS goodness
20. ps to see all the processes on your computer
21. ps -ax to see more, like a lot more
22. top u can see which processes are using the most CPU in real-time
23. top -o rsize can see processes by memory
24. kill -9 processid will kill a running process, cooler combination for this is, ps -ax | grep processname
25. which $SHELL to see which shell we r using
26. bash to switch to bash shell
27. zsh to switch back to zsh shell
28. uptime to find how long have your mac been up
29. qlmanage -p thefileNameThatUWantToPreview to preview any file
30. diff file1 file2 to compare two files
31. curl theLink < where u want to store to download
32. leave 1245 will set an alarm in the terminal, and will tell u to leave at that time
33. history to see the history of all the commands u have been typing in your terminal
34. python3 -m http.server This will create a web server of your hard disk and anyone can go to the ip address and see your files
35. shutdown -h now to shutdown immediately
36. shutdown -r now to restart immediately

I am happy u liked it

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On Sat, 12 Jul, 2025, 10:33 pm Hugo, ***@***.***> wrote: ***@***.**** commented on this gist. ------------------------------ this is great! so many things i didn't know were possible. this impressed me tbh that python3 http.server command is kinda dangerous tho, i tried and it lists *EVERY SINGLE ONE* of your files, even *hidden ones*. kinda scary the wifi password one was kinda cool tho, i made an alias to make it easier to type. add on your .zshrc: function wifipass { command security find-generic-password -wa $1 } anyways, i appreciate this info! really cool things. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <https://gist.github.com/tusharxoxoxo/2f5cc5673d2b8187fff017da9085a2bb#gistcomment-5673728> or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AS3DYSVCG2DWEVNC4K7UB733IFIF7BFKMF2HI4TJMJ2XIZLTSKBKK5TBNR2WLJDUOJ2WLJDOMFWWLO3UNBZGKYLEL5YGC4TUNFRWS4DBNZ2F6YLDORUXM2LUPGBKK5TBNR2WLJDHNFZXJJDOMFWWLK3UNBZGKYLEL52HS4DFVRZXKYTKMVRXIX3UPFYGLK2HNFZXIQ3PNVWWK3TUUZ2G64DJMNZZDAVEOR4XAZNEM5UXG5FFOZQWY5LFVEYTENJSHE4TENBVU52HE2LHM5SXFJTDOJSWC5DF> . You are receiving this email because you authored the thread. Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub> .