afconvert(1) - an audio file format converter, which includes Apple's superior AAC codec from the Core Audio framework

    diskutil(8) - tons of tools for fixed and removable storage

    afconvert in.wav -o out.m4a -q 127 -s 2 -b 160000 -f m4af -d 'aac '

    mb=300; diskutil eraseVolume APFS myramdisk `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://$((mb*2048))`

open -n file.pdf : opens new instance of Preview application which is useful if you want to open the same file twice (for example to look at different pages at once).

caffeinate -d : prevents display turning off, useful if you want to look at display without moving mouse.

   hear (macOS speech recognition and dictation via the command line)

(Uses built-in macOS capabilities for transcription from audio to text.)

Docs are at https://ss64.com/mac/diskutil.html

     "...a menu driven program which partitions disks using the standard
     Apple disk partitioning scheme described in "Inside Macintosh: Devices".
     It does not support the Intel/DOS partitioning scheme[.]"

https://terminaltrove.com/categories/macos/

You might find one you've never heard of that is useful! :)

For me, increasing the number of icons in the launcher grid was very useful.

After running these three commands, the size of the Launcher will be set to 13x8 apps:

    defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-columns -int 13
    defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-rows -int 8
    defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool TRUE; killall Dock

https://macos-defaults.com/

To get a complete list of parameters, you can execute

    defaults read

To scare your teammates when you are logged in remotely optionally with

$ osascript -e "set volume output volume 100"

(shift+command+K) or Menu 'Shell' -> 'New Remote Connection...'

opens a SSH, S(FTP), TELNET connection manager window!

For example I'm having a problem that comes and goes now and then where Bluetooth audio is 300 ms delayed compared to the video playback everywhere except in Youtube on Safari, very strange. It's good for a few months then suddenly it becomes unusable, then back to zero sync delay after a few months.

I was thinking this might be related to CODEC selections etc or some hidden setting that might get changed which we normally aren't allowed to determine :)

(btw I know there is a difference between latency and synchronization - latency might be unavoidable but video sync should always be able to compensate - I got curious on how exactly that works, where in the app / SDK / OS pipeline does the a/v sync happen on a Mac?)

  nc(1) - netcat, arbitrary TCP and UDP connections and listens

  networkQuality - Speed test + network stress tool.

  system_profiler(8) - Useful way to grab extensive system information in shell scripts.

  wdutil(8) - wdutil provides functionality of the Wireless Diagnostics application in
     command line form.

https://www.bresink.com/osx/0TinkerTool/download.php

    qlmanage -p $argv >/dev/null 2>&1

    sudo powermetrics

/usr/bin/plutil -extract your.key.path raw -o - - <<< "$jsoninput"

(obviously, less useful now that `jq`is built in)

https://archive.is/kGmn6

Say you've got a directory that has scripts or data files related to some thing you do. For example I've got several scripts that I use when I scan books with my book scanner. I only need these when doing book scanning stuff so don't want to put them somewhere in $PATH. I want to be able to easily run them from scripts that aren't in that directory, but I don't want to hard code the path to that directory.

Solution: in the directory with the book scanning scripts I make a file named ID that contains a unique string. I currently use 16 byte random hex strings [1].

I have this script, named find-dir-by-ID, somewhere in $PATH:

  #!/bin/zsh
  ID=${1:?Must specific ID}
  IDSHA=`echo $ID | shasum | cut -d ' ' -f 1`
  mdfind $ID 2>/dev/null | grep /ID | while read F; do
      FSHA=`shasum $F | cut -d ' ' -f 1`
      if [ $IDSHA = $FSHA ]; then
          dirname $F
          exit 0
      fi
  done
  exit 1

  SCRIPT_DIR=`find-dir-by-ID 54f757919a5ede5961291bec27b15827`
  if [ ! -d $SCRIPT_DIR ]; then
    >&2 echo Cannot find book scanning scripts
    exit 1
  fi

The IDs do not have to be hex strings. If I'd thought about it more I probably would have made IDs look like this "book-scanning:54f757919a5ede59" or "arduino-tools:3b6b4f47bf803663".

[1] here's a script for that:

  #!/bin/sh
  N=${1:-8} # number of bytes
  xxd -g $N -c $N -p -l $N < /dev/urandom

* atuin - TUI for shell history, backed by SQLite - https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin

* LSD (LSDeluxe) - rewrite of `ls` - https://github.com/lsd-rs/lsd

* ripgrep - https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

* fzf - command-line fuzzy finder that enhances file search, command history search, and more - https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

Notes:

- To get pretty extra file/folder symbols with LSD, you'll probably need to install some special fonts.

- You can use `fzf` and `ripgrep` together.

   sw_vers (to display the version/build of macOS),

   dsenableroot (to enable the root user), and

   say "phrase" (useful for freaking out users over a remote SSH connection)

$> long_running_command && say "Witness me, for I am done"

You can also change voices with -v. My favorite is "cellos" since it sings to you.

https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

These are all guaranteed to work:

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/

(I may not have linked to the precisely correct version.)

https://keith.github.io/xcode-man-pages/plutil.1.html

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport -s

I set a shell alias so I can just do `airport -s`. I've no idea why this is hidden away inside some framework and not in a directory which is in the normal path, but there you go.

I use it most often for pulling lat lon data from photos.

https://ss64.com/mac/tmutil.html

But I don’t have uuidgen!

As part of the OS, Keychain suffers from the same sorts of sharp edges as using a built-in interpreter. An alternative is to use a password manager. Below is an example of the tools available in one.

https://developer.1password.com/docs/cli/get-started/#step-1...

networksetup was one of my favourites as well as du and caffeinate.

The 'security' command is new to me so thanks!

    locate 

locate searches a database for all pathnames which match the specified pattern. The database is recomputed periodically, (about once a week) and contains the path-names of all files which are publicly accessible.

    # pbpaste
    #!/bin/bash
    # Adapted from https://www.techtronic.us/pbcopy-pbpaste-for-wsl/
    powershell.exe Get-Clipboard | sed 's/\r$//' | sed -z '$ s/\n$//'
    exit 0

    # pbcopy
    #!/bin/bash
    #Adapted from https://www.techtronic.us/pbcopy-pbpaste-for-wsl/
    <&0 clip.exe
    exit 0

Very useful.

  upgrade_macos() {
    softwareupdate --list
    softwareupdate --download
    softwareupdate --install --all --restart
  }

[1] https://github.com/BlueM/cliclick

might

Sigh. These are shell commands, not "Bash commands".