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Mac OS Terminal Cheat Sheet

Terminal HotKeys

Option+↑

Option+Arrow Key will go through command items.

↑

Arrow up will select the previous command (and then down will take you back)

Option+←

Will go to the next word in your current command (and arrow forward will go...forward!)

Control+U

Erases everything from cursor back to the beginning of the line

Control+K

Erases everything from the cursor forward







Randos

Select directory

cd

Check reboot / restart history

last reboot

Check uptime

uptime

Changing the File Date

This is a sneaky way to manually change the file creation date of a file to make something appear that it comes from the past or the future. Good for faking render dates / times. I do not advise this but it is a thing you can do.

“I’ve never done this because that would be unethical” - Cam Vokey, attorney at law

touch -mt 202109160951

replace date with desired date time YYYYMMDDHHMM and then drag in your files to the terminal window.

Setting Up A System Scheduler

It used to be you could do this in System Settings, but now it has to be done in terminal

You can only have ONE event. You can't schedule multiple events.

Get current schedule

pmset -g sched

Reset active schedule

sudo pmset repeat cancel

Set Restart every day at 4am

sudo pmset repeat restart MTWRFSU 04:00:00

Multiple Calculators

Up until 2018ish, Mac OS had something called a “dashboard” which was a system-wide hotkey that would overlay above all the apps. Within that dashboard were “widgets” - this was a good place to have things like timecode calculators, multiple regular calculators, unit conversion. Alas, it was removed from Apple’s development and for those who got used to having “as many damn calculators as I want”, it was a major loss.

To fix this major gap in lifestyle, I consulted the internet, and the solve was to create a .command file (this is a terminal executable file), that launches a second calculator (or third, or fourth). I call this “morecalc” - and I use the hotkey for spotlight-search to launch it. I press command+spacebar, type “morecalc”, and it will launch another calculator.

How to do this yourself:

  1. Open up text edit
  2. Make it plain text (command-shift-T is a good to know hotkey)
  3. Copy and paste this text: open -na Calculator
  4. Save it as “morecalc” or whatever unique file name that will easily come up in spotlight.
  5. Quit text edit
  6. In finder rename this saved file to “yourname.command”
  7. Now you have however many calculators you want, any damn time you want them.


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