I don&#x27;t even use Time Machine for my off-machine backups, but I use tmutil to create local snapshots so I can easily back out of changes by using the Time Machine GUI to restore files from the snapshot.

`tmutil` could be added to this list, it&#x27;s a management cli for Time Machine

What are you, a station wagon full of thumb drives?

It tests your bandwidth while fully saturating your upload AND your download. If maxing out your upload has a huge impact on your download (like, a 70% drop), then that’s probably a sign you could tweak your network for better flow control.That’s sort of the idea of `networkQuality`. It’s a new idea for how to measure that’s different from the standard speed test.Through if you run it with the `-s` flag it’ll test them sequentially.

It seems to grossly underestimate my upload bandwidth!

I find solace in the fact that even at large companies, there&#x27;s still enough whimsy to name your upload endpoint slurp.

It’s a new proposed standard that’s gaining support. People are building alternative party implementations for it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;network-quality&#x2F;goresponsiveness">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;network-quality&#x2F;goresponsiveness</a>Try running it with `-s` to see if you get speed tests that resemble what you expect. The idea is that maxing out both links at once is a better measure of network quality than sequence speed tests. Also it’s new RTT metric is key.

I can&#x27;t find any (official) documentation on how it measures the speed. Against which target?Edit: Found <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macinstruct.com&#x2F;tutorials&#x2F;how-to-check-your-macs-network-quality&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macinstruct.com&#x2F;tutorials&#x2F;how-to-check-your-macs...</a> which says:&quot;The networkquality tool uses Apple’s CDN (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mensura.cdn-apple.com&#x2F;api&#x2F;v1&#x2F;gm&#x2F;config" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mensura.cdn-apple.com&#x2F;api&#x2F;v1&#x2F;gm&#x2F;config</a>) as a target&quot;The contents of this file (for me):<pre><code> { &quot;version&quot;: 1,
 &quot;test_endpoint&quot;: &quot;sesto4-edge-bx-021.aaplimg.com&quot;,
 &quot;urls&quot;: {
 &quot;small_https_download_url&quot;: &quot;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mensura.cdn-apple.com&#x2F;api&#x2F;v1&#x2F;gm&#x2F;small&quot;,
 &quot;large_https_download_url&quot;: &quot;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mensura.cdn-apple.com&#x2F;api&#x2F;v1&#x2F;gm&#x2F;large&quot;,
 &quot;https_upload_url&quot;: &quot;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mensura.cdn-apple.com&#x2F;api&#x2F;v1&#x2F;gm&#x2F;slurp&quot;,
 &quot;small_download_url&quot;: &quot;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mensura.cdn-apple.com&#x2F;api&#x2F;v1&#x2F;gm&#x2F;small&quot;,
 &quot;large_download_url&quot;: &quot;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mensura.cdn-apple.com&#x2F;api&#x2F;v1&#x2F;gm&#x2F;large&quot;,
 &quot;upload_url&quot;: &quot;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mensura.cdn-apple.com&#x2F;api&#x2F;v1&#x2F;gm&#x2F;slurp&quot;
 }
 }</code></pre>

There is also a CLI client for speedtest.net[1] and fast.com[2]! Not included with MacOS, of course, but nice to have around.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.speedtest.net&#x2F;apps&#x2F;cli" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.speedtest.net&#x2F;apps&#x2F;cli</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sindresorhus&#x2F;fast-cli">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sindresorhus&#x2F;fast-cli</a>

Neat, I was not aware of `networkQuality`. A good replacement for opening up Speedtest or whatnot when you just want to figure out if the network is slow or something else is up.

`mdfind` and `networkQuality` seem very useful!

Yeah, sips has a lot of potential. The article doesn&#x27;t mention it, but it can crop as well which could be a real game-changer!

We heavily used `sips` when I was at Apple, because it was quicker than writing code against QuickTime or the other rendering subsystems.

I was aware of about half of these but textutil, networkUtility, and sips I didn’t not and look really interesting

Useful, but definitely more niche &amp; less generally applicable than the others.

Wut? No fs_usage? Easily one of the most useful of them all ..<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.manpagez.com&#x2F;man&#x2F;1&#x2F;fs_usage&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.manpagez.com&#x2F;man&#x2F;1&#x2F;fs_usage&#x2F;</a>I can&#x27;t count the number of times a bit of fs_usage foo has helped me dig out of a seriously messy pile of network, file and page fault issues ..

Xcode uses `mdfind` to provide symbols in crash reports and for Instruments, and is the reason why it seems to have a life of its own and work only when it wants to. Spotlight indexing is extremely flaky for reasons I&#x27;m not aware of.

You can use `python -m json.tool` for just JSON formatting, which is convenient now that Python is available by default in most Linux distros. Jq is really excellent though.

I don&#x27;t remember when I learned about these, but they&#x27;ve been game changers, and everyone I&#x27;ve shared them with feels the same way. I use your use case often as well, though through `jq` because I&#x27;m more familiar with it, and sometimes wish to do transforms.

+1 to the service menu actions. They are so handy, but often forgotten&#x2F;overlooked. I think maybe a discoverability issue.

On Linux I have these wrap xsel or xclip, and likewise open to xdg-open.Now, for your Mac example — if that&#x27;s a specific pipeline you often use, you can write a Service menu entry to do it in place, without switching to a terminal.

paste(1) is a POSIX standard utility, though (going back to System III), pairing with cut(1).<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubs.opengroup.org&#x2F;onlinepubs&#x2F;9699919799&#x2F;utilities&#x2F;paste.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubs.opengroup.org&#x2F;onlinepubs&#x2F;9699919799&#x2F;utilities&#x2F;p...</a>

And I have one that unifies _both_ to `clip` so you can put the same command in both sides of the pipe, e. g. to turn a line-delimited blob on your clipboard to a space-separated one:<pre><code> clip | tr &#x27;\n&#x27; &#x27; &#x27; | clip
</code></pre>
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;svieira&#x2F;dotfiles&#x2F;blob&#x2F;a3654d6a194e36899787aa7850f4a9a23617c64f&#x2F;functions#L136-L141">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;svieira&#x2F;dotfiles&#x2F;blob&#x2F;a3654d6a194e3689978...</a><pre><code> # Use clipboard in shell pipelines
 # clip | xargs echo # uses pbpaste
 # ps -A | grep search | clip # uses pbcopy
 clip() {
 [ -t 0 ] &amp;&amp; pbpaste || pbcopy
 }</code></pre>

I have linux&#x2F;macos-agnostic bash functions in my dotfiles that unify this to “clip” and “paste” (since “copy” is too close semantically to “cp”)

Here&#x27;s the xclip way (almost the same actually).<pre><code> alias pbcopy=&quot;xclip -selection clipboard&quot;
 alias pbpaste=&quot;xclip -selection clipboard -o&quot;</code></pre>

There&#x27;s `wl-copy` and `wl-paste` for Wayland users too, 
via <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;bugaevc&#x2F;wl-clipboard">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;bugaevc&#x2F;wl-clipboard</a>

I love this flow! Such a powerful and clean way to solve text issues.<pre><code> # This will remove Windows double-spaced empty lines from your copy&#x2F;paste buffer
 alias winlines=&quot;sed &#x27;&#x2F;^$&#x2F;{$!{N;s&#x2F;\n&#x2F;&#x2F;;};}&#x27;&quot;
 
 # pbw = [P]aste [B]uffer to fix [W]indows line endings
 alias pbw=&quot;pbpaste | winlines | pbcopy&quot;
</code></pre>
Also - if you want `pbpaste` and `pbcopy` on Linux...<pre><code> # imitate MacOS&#x27;s paste buffer copy&#x2F;paste:
 alias pbcopy=&#x27;xsel --clipboard --input&#x27;
 alias pbpaste=&#x27;xsel --clipboard --output&#x27;</code></pre>

I find it so annoying that these only work with plain text and RTF. On X11 there is `xclip`[0] and on Wayland there is `wl-clipboard`[1] both of which support binary file formats either through parsing the header or explicitly setting the MIME type.This means you can do things like copy an image from the terminal and paste it into a graphical program like a browser or chat client and vice-versa. Also can be very useful in shell scripts for desktop automation.The workaround on MacOS is to use AppleScript via `osascript` to `set the clipboard to...`.<pre><code> [0] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;astrand&#x2F;xclip
 [1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;bugaevc&#x2F;wl-clipboard</code></pre>

I’ll have to try that. More than once I’ve been logged in to a remote host and got “pbcopy not found” “What!?… oh, right.“

The tmux integration in iterm is also very nice for remote work if you haven’t tried it out.

Since you mention both pbcopy and iTerm - I love <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;skaji&#x2F;remote-pbcopy-iterm2">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;skaji&#x2F;remote-pbcopy-iterm2</a>. I do most of the work on a remove Linux server, treating my MacBook as mostly a dumb terminal, and being able to transparently copy from the remove to my local clipboard is so nice.

That&#x27;s a useless use of cat. You can use `jq . foo.json | pbcopy` or `jq &lt; foo.json | pbcopy`.

If I had a nickel for each `cat foo.json | jq | pbcopy`, I&#x27;d be a rich man :)

Extra handy when combined with `piknik`[1] for distributed&#x2F;cross-Apple account clipboard shenanigans.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jedisct1&#x2F;piknik">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jedisct1&#x2F;piknik</a>

You can even simplify this further by feeding `pbcopy` the key directly using file redirection instead of a pipe:`pbcopy &lt; ~&#x2F;.ssh&#x2F;mykey.pub`(I use this all the time myself!)

I love this tool too!except one time I quickly typed`cat ~&#x2F;.ssh&#x2F;mykey | pbcopy`And sent it straight away to my coworker on Slack.I then spent the rest of the day making a new private key and adding my new pubkey to all of the 1000+ servers I had root access to. I mean we had tools to help but it still wasn’t fun.With great power&#x2F;convenience comes the potential to do dumb things at lightning speeds!

I like to use `pbcopy` when exporting public keys to external services like GitHub.`cat ~&#x2F;.ssh&#x2F;mykey.pub | pbcopy`

`jq` acts as a pretty json viewer (among other things)

Where are you pasting the pretty json to view it?I do this a lot as well, but just paste the minified json directly into VS Code and then OPT+SHIFT+F to format it.

Since I&#x27;m bouncing between OSX and Linux a lot, I have a shell script with the same name on each that boils down to:<pre><code> if [ `uname` == &quot;Darwin&quot; ]; then
 pbcopy
 else
 xsel --clipboard
 fi</code></pre>

Those are so useful that I wrote trivial shell functions that do the same under Linux.

Yes. I use it a great deal, but I haven&#x27;t gotten used to using the linux equivalents. I guess that would be either xsel or xclip. Maybe I should create a &quot;pbcopy&quot; that runs one of those. I like to minimize the cognitive load when I switch between mac and linux command line environments.

You can also use `git format-patch` and `git am` if you want to apply the same commit to multiple repos, a use-case I sometimes I have.

Another frequent use I have, applying random diffs with git:<pre><code> git diff | pbcopy
 pbpaste | git apply</code></pre>

TIL about named pasteboards <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;appkit&#x2F;nspasteboard&#x2F;name&#x2F;2870215-find" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;appkit&#x2F;nspasteboar...</a>I recognize that your pbg alias works for pretty much any text you could copy, but I wanted to mention, in case you&#x27;re looking at log files with plain old less, there&#x27;s the &amp; limiter, which limits the current view to only lines matching a regular expression (or, if you type ^R during a &amp; prompt, for a text match).If you type ^N or ! during a &amp; prompt it will limit the view to those lines that do not match the expression.These view limits stack, so you can &quot;&amp;WARN&lt;enter&gt;&quot; to see all lines that have WARN in them, and then maybe you want to see just a certain PID so &quot;&amp;12345&lt;enter&gt;&quot; and you&#x27;ll only see lines with both WARN and 12345, but then that one module is printing out a bunch of messages you think are safe to ignore so you do &quot;&amp;!modulename&lt;enter&gt;&quot; and it filters out log lines that match modulename. Very handy and less is everywhere.

alias pbg=&#x27;pbpaste | fgrep --color -i &quot;`pbpaste -pboard find`&quot;&#x27;select all in a terminal window with pages of log data and cmd-c copy; find the one phrase you want to find in that data and cmd-e to put it in the find pasteboard; cmd-n new window, type pbg to isolate the log lines.

Or directly from the commandline:<pre><code> pbcopy | python -c &#x27;import sys; import json; print(json.load(sys.stdin))&#x27; | pbpaste</code></pre>

Oh man. I recently threw together a &quot;j2p&quot; script to make converting between json and python dicts simpler, and combining it with pbcopy&#x2F;pbpaste will make it so much better:<pre><code> #!&#x2F;usr&#x2F;bin&#x2F;env python3
 import sys
 import json
 
 print(json.load(sys.stdin))</code></pre>

It creeps me out when the clipboard is unexpectedly shared between my phone and computer. And since the feature seems to turn on randomly but not reliably when I want it to, I’d rather it just didn’t exist.

It&#x27;s cool to use pbcopy and pbpaste with your phone!  Copy some text on the phone, and you can pbpaste it onto the Mac command line.  So cool.

This is interesting, thank you. I&#x27;ve been automating various things with Hammerspoon but (I think) it&#x27;s limited to what you can reach with either a11y or osascript &#x2F; the NS dictionary for the app you want to manipulate, but Shortcuts seems to have some actions that aren&#x27;t in the NS dictionary.For instance, in Shortcuts, I see that there&#x27;s a &quot;Pin Notes&quot; action for Notes.app, but I don&#x27;t see anything for pinning notes when I open Notes.app with &quot;File -&gt; Open Dictionary...&quot; in Script Editor.(In this case it&#x27;s likely that Notes.app has the a11y bits necessary to run that action from Hammerspoon, but it would probably be easier to go through Shortcuts.)

Use the Apple shortcuts app and you can just copy some text and hit a keyboard shortcut. The Shortcuts app lets you run arbitrary shell command.

Json pretty printing in the terminal? Bless, didn&#x27;t know about that and it is perfect

You can do this specific task with just vim: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vi.stackexchange.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;21448" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vi.stackexchange.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;21448</a>

pb[paste|copy] are a life improver. Here is a one-liner to edit the pasteboard contents in vim.<pre><code> pbpaste &gt; tmp; vim tmp; cat tmp | pbcopy; rm tmp;
</code></pre>
I also use pbpaste to append various notes to files, but since pbpaste doesnt have a newline at the end I wind up using:<pre><code> echo &quot;$(pbpaste)&quot; &gt;&gt; notes.txt</code></pre>

Also a fun one to combine with `open` if you have a bunch of web URLs to open

That’s a great hack thanks for the tip.

FYI: yt-dlp is more up to date and faster, AFIK: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;yt-dlp&#x2F;yt-dlp">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;yt-dlp&#x2F;yt-dlp</a>I download and save it as &#x27;ytdl&#x27; for convenience, but I use it all the time on twitter too.

I have a script always running that polls for youtube URLs using pbpaste and runs yt-dlthen just highlight any youtube link and COPYlater when I have time, I can use quicklook to browse directory of youtube videos.

That sounds amazing, I always wanted to do that! Do you have a guide or some script to help with it? Otherwise, I will try to do it on my own.

So much of my Linux use is over ssh from a MacOS client that I&#x27;ve made a `pbcopy` executable that just pipes stdin over ssh to my MacBook to its pbcopy (with a dedicated ssh key that runs this as a forced command). Makes it super nice to be on an SSH session and `pbcopy` some content to my MacOS clipboard!

This is great utility I didn&#x27;t know about! Thanks!But do you know why it doesn&#x27;t seem to work with the `pbfilter` function?If I do directly `pbpaste | vipe | pbcopy`, then it opens vim and the clipboard text is pasted there.
But if I run `pbfilter | vipe`, then vim opens with a blank buffer.<pre><code> function pbfilter() {
 if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then
 pbpaste | &quot;$@&quot; | pbcopy
 else
 pbpaste | pbcopy
 fi
 } 

</code></pre>
It seems that the number of args is 0 for some reason

I use the following to edit contents of my clipboard:<pre><code> pbpaste | vipe | pbcopy

</code></pre>
Where vipe is a util for inserting your editor (vim) in the middle of a pipe. From: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;joeyh.name&#x2F;code&#x2F;moreutils&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;joeyh.name&#x2F;code&#x2F;moreutils&#x2F;</a>

I find that the `pbpaste | something | pbcopy` idiom is common enough that it&#x27;s worth having a shell function for it:<pre><code> pbfilter() {
 if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then
 pbpaste | &quot;$@&quot; | pbcopy
 else
 pbpaste | pbcopy
 fi
 } 

</code></pre>
Then you can use something like `pbfilter json_pp` or `pbfilter base64 -d` or `pbfilter sed &#x27;s&#x2F;this&#x2F;that&#x2F;&#x27;` or whatever.This version also can also act as a plain-text-only filter. If you just use `pbfilter` with no argument, it&#x27;ll remove any formatting from the text in the pasteboard, leaving just straight plain text.It does have a some limitations, though: you can&#x27;t use it with an alias, or pipeline, or anything complex like that. The filter command must be a single regular command (or function) and its arguments.

I&#x27;ve aliased that (and its equivalents on Linux and Android&#x2F;Termux) to &#x27;xc&#x27; and &#x27;xp&#x27; (for X11 Copy and X11 Paste, as I&#x27;d originated this on Linux).Being able to populate or read from the system clipboard (or secondary clipboard!), or to feed it, including by reading from or writing to pipes is wonderful.

I have an alias that while trivally simple is quicker to type and remember. It copies whatever file you give it to the clipboard which is super handy. I use it with the &quot;Compare with Clipboard&quot; to diff a file in Rubymine for example.alias clip=&#x27;pbcopy &lt;&#x27;

Best way to get ssh keys into the paste buffer too.

my favorite vim command::w !pbcopyor visual selection, and then :w !pbcopy

`pbcopy` and `pbpaste` are one of my most-loved in the list.Dealing with some minified json, switching to iTerm, doing `pbpaste | json_pp | pbcopy` and having a clean output is _so_ nice.

qlmanage is super useful for converting SVG to PNG easily, too! I use it like this:qlmanage -t -s 1000x1000 -o ~&#x2F;Pictures&#x2F;foo.png ~&#x2F;Pictures&#x2F;foo.svgTo turn an square SVG into a PNG without installing anything extra or using an online image tool

IIRC it’s using the Cocoa class NSAttributedStrimg. These conversions have been in the OS for a long time.

I thought pandoc used to be installed on MacOS, I def remember using it for something useful a couple of years ago but I check now and it&#x27;s not there.

Is ```textutil -convert``` using pandoc under the hood?

I used to work at a 24 hr end user tech support call center. They didn’t use Macs, but we had a machine for the techs to use to understand what the customer is looking at. I wrote a script to sleep until late at night then start saying weird&#x2F;creepy stuff to mess with the overnight crew.

Combined with the `yes` command is very good fun ;)

YEARS ago, when my nephew was young, he was playing with my mother&#x27;s Macbook Air at Thanksgiving.I administer that machine for her (to the extent that such a thing is needed), and so I knew (a) her login and (b) that SSH was open.Me combining remote access with &quot;say&quot; made for a very memorable morning for that kid.

A nice feature I discovered recently is -a: you can give it a specific audio device, which falls back to the default if not present. I use it to report when builds finish through my monitor speakers in case I&#x27;m not wearing headphones. If I&#x27;m on the go and don&#x27;t have the monitor connected it plays through the speakers.

try it out with different voices, for starters try<pre><code> say &quot;process failure&quot; -v trinoids
</code></pre>
you can find all the available voices with<pre><code> say -v &#x27;?&#x27; 
</code></pre>
or from Accessibility&gt;Spoken-Content&gt;System-voice&gt;Manage-voices

I just freaked out my cat using `say`. I&#x27;m going to enjoy this too much.

Maccy ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maccy.app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maccy.app&#x2F;</a> ) is a clipboard manager for Mac and by Clicking ALT+M , it shows all the recent copied texts in a popup.

Not a big fan of command lines. but my most used shortkey is ALT+M with Maccy installed.

The random linebreaks are ok - SSH can handle them. (that&#x27;s how Userify does it I think, too. it replicates whatever the user provides.. no judgment :)

Fwiw, `clip` on Windows does the same as `pbcopy` (there&#x27;s no analog to pbpaste built in though)

Also for things like sharing public ssh keys. Instead of &quot;can you send me your public key&quot; and getting something with random line breaks depending on the users text editor I just have to ask them to &quot;cat ~&#x2F;.ssh&#x2F;id_rsa.pub | pbcopy&quot;.I also alias pbcopy &#x2F; pbpaste on Linux too, so useful!

pbcopy&#x2F;pbpaste are a lifesaver when doing stuff on the command line that has a lot of output and piping is not something you can do.networkQuality is something I really wish I knew about sooner.

It’s weird how macs don’t come with a GUI for managing system services. Windows does.. that being said the number of times I’ve had to mess with system services on mac can probably be counted with a few fingers…

You can also prepend #!&#x2F;usr&#x2F;bin&#x2F;osascript
to a script and then make it executable with chmod oag+x.  You can then invoke it normally in bash:
.&#x2F;filename.sh (or whatever)

Manage the Launch Services database:<pre><code> &#x2F;System&#x2F;Library&#x2F;Frameworks&#x2F;CoreServices.framework&#x2F;Versions&#x2F;A&#x2F;Frameworks&#x2F;LaunchServices.framework&#x2F;Versions&#x2F;A&#x2F;Support&#x2F;lsregister
</code></pre>
Manage file extended attributes (such as quarantine):<pre><code> xattr
</code></pre>
Execute a script (AppleScript or JavaScript):<pre><code> osascript -e &lt;statement&gt;</code></pre>

That&#x27;s hilarious! Similar vein: there is a Metasploit module to induce the say command on post-exploited mac machines. I haven&#x27;t seen it used in practice, but I eagerly watch for the eventual twitter thread that reads:&quot;So, I used the msf module that invokes `say` on a client&#x27;s laptop&quot;

What&#x27;s the beep script like? Do you use the terminal bell or does it synthesize a tone?

I use Pushover for a few alerts so years ago I wrote a little bash script called `push` that you pass a title and optionally a body. Was very nice to to `.&#x2F;longRunningCommand &amp;&amp; push &quot;Task Done&quot; &quot;Here is a body&quot;`. I&#x27;d sometimes combine this with my `beep` script that just makes a noise for when I know I&#x27;ll still be at my computer but want to know when something finishes.

I often have multiple terminal tabs open. Sometimes I’ll run a command that ends up taking a while and switch away and forget about it.So I added a fish command completion script that plays a beep with afplay if the task took longer than 5 seconds. It helps me get back on task for those “just long enough” tasks that I run.

It&#x27;s comments like this that remind me that HN is my tribe.

I like to use the &quot;research complete&quot; sample from StarCraft for this.

I would pay a lot of money to switch the voice to Arnold.

Years ago, I wrote a script to find something in a big blob of data and to alert me when it was done, I added a “say &lt;some glib Rambo or Schwarzenegger&gt;” type phrase upon completion. I forgot about it and went to bed and was jolted awake hours later by what was clearly an “intruder” speaking to his accomplice, in my home office.  Quite the relief when I realized what happened.

If you set<pre><code> alias firefox=&quot;open -a Firefox&quot;
</code></pre>
This will work

I use `open .` to open up a Finder window of the directory I&#x27;m currently in using Terminal so frequently that I&#x27;ve set up an alias for it --<pre><code> alias op=&#x27;open .&#x27;</code></pre>

Especially<pre><code> open .
</code></pre>
if you need to drag a file somewhere. One thing that kind of breaks my muscle memory here is the opposite, something like<pre><code> firefox file.html
</code></pre>
doesn&#x27;t work and you have to fiddle with the arguments to get open to launch a non-default application.

More than that, it sends a message to launchd&#x2F;the app instead of forking on the spot.Sadly the app does get the shell&#x27;s environment and it can&#x27;t be disabled:<pre><code> Opened applications inherit environment variables just as if you had
 launched the application directly through its full path. This behavior
 was also present in Tiger.
</code></pre>
Why this matters, e.g with vscode:<pre><code> - ensure vscode is fully closed
 - enter project directory, something sets vars in your shell (you manually or automatically via direnv)
 - code .
 - vscode process now has the env from the shell it was started
 - open another directory from the UI
 - vscode forks and inherits from its parent process, thus the other project window has the original shell&#x27;s env
 - go to another directory
 - code .
 - vscode finds out it&#x27;s already running, forks and opens another window. this window has the original shell env
 - fully quit vscode and reopen it, but via the app in &#x2F;Applications
 - vscode opens, now has a blank environment for its main process, and forks form there to restore previous windows, which now lack the environment they had
</code></pre>
It&#x27;s a) completely inconsistent and b) dangerous: imagine the original shell had a setting or secret in an env var that was shared to the second project (e.g virtualenv, deploy target, deployment key...)The same issue can happen with other apps but also tmux (the tmux daemon is spawned from the first tmux command, and then subsequent sessions from tmux-server; doing it another way is possible but nontrivial)<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;microsoft&#x2F;vscode&#x2F;issues&#x2F;15452">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;microsoft&#x2F;vscode&#x2F;issues&#x2F;15452</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;microsoft&#x2F;vscode&#x2F;issues&#x2F;108804#issuecomment-730296869">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;microsoft&#x2F;vscode&#x2F;issues&#x2F;108804#issuecomme...</a>

I also find myself using open -n -a &lt;application&gt; to open a new separate instance of an application if I want to copy settings from one file to another or work on two files with separate instances of a program

When mentioning `open` they should have noted that `open &lt;file&gt;` will open the given file with its associated app.It’s indispensable.

“to anything” is the key difference. MacOS only lets you remap it to other control keys.

There is a helper tool for hidutil <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hidutil-generator.netlify.app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hidutil-generator.netlify.app&#x2F;</a>&gt; It&#x27;s handy for things like remapping CapsLock to anythingIt&#x27;s a built-in MacOS feature that you can find in the keyboard settings.

Another good one is &#x27;hidutil&#x27; which can remap any keys without additional software. It&#x27;s handy for things like remapping CapsLock to anything, etc. For actual full keyboard layouts though I&#x27;d use Ukelele[0].[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;software.sil.org&#x2F;ukelele" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;software.sil.org&#x2F;ukelele</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;learn.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;windows&#x2F;powertoys&#x2F;awake" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;learn.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;windows&#x2F;powertoys&#x2F;awake</a> to keep Windows itself awake?

Anyone know of a Ubuntu on WSL equivalent?

Yes. There is a similar product called Amphetamine now.

From what I recall, caffeine app predated the caffeinate command (which was only introduced in lion). Caffeine.app also disables sleep via a completely different method than caffeinate. The latter uses a IOPMAssertion which is the recommended way to do it because it is visible in `pmset -g assertions` whereas the former doesn&#x27;t use that approach (I forgot how exactly it did it, there&#x27;s like 4 different methods on osx to prevent sleep).

I believe that Caffeine was a fairly simple GUI wrapper for the existing caffeinate command

It&#x27;s been cli util on macos for 10+ years. I remember a gui util called caffeinated, though.

Caffeine was a front-end by a third party company. Used it back in the day, the command existed already though.Since then I&#x27;ve moved to Amphetamine (same purpose menu-bar app, even stronger chemicals, has timed keep-awake etc).

I remember Caffeine used to be a third-party program that would prevent your Mac from sleeping, same behavior as the `caffeinate` here. Were they acquired and incorporated into the OS?

Isn&#x27;t there `xsel` or `xclip` installed instead [0]? These two commands are commonly used on the Linux boxes and they support pipes too. For example, the xclip is used by the original password-store implementation [1].On [2] you might find the aliases to pbutil for X11-based Linuxes.[0]: If not, why not run apt-get command to install one of them, like xclip?[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;git.zx2c4.com&#x2F;password-store&#x2F;tree&#x2F;src&#x2F;password-store.sh#n167" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;git.zx2c4.com&#x2F;password-store&#x2F;tree&#x2F;src&#x2F;password-store...</a>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ostechnix.com&#x2F;how-to-use-pbcopy-and-pbpaste-commands-on-linux&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ostechnix.com&#x2F;how-to-use-pbcopy-and-pbpaste-commands...</a>

I love pbcopy and miss it every time I ssh into my Raspberry Pi. Should be included in every shell environment as standard.

A strong second to this, it was going to be my own comment ;-)

If you need a more featureful alternative to textutils, look for pandoc
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jgm&#x2F;pandoc">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jgm&#x2F;pandoc</a>

Yes, this is great... I was given a Macbook with a Norweigan keyboard for testing a port of FreeBSD on it, and I quickly discovered that the keyboard layout remapping stuff available via the UI won&#x27;t remap at least this one key to what I&#x27;d find on my US keyboard.

<pre><code> hidutil property --set &#x27;{&quot;UserKeyMapping&quot;:[{&quot;HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc&quot;:0x700000064,&quot;HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst&quot;:0x700000035}]}&#x27;
</code></pre>
Remaps top left key on Euro-style keyboards from useless &quot;paragraph&quot; to useful &quot;backtick&quot;.

not to be confused with hdiutil:<pre><code> hdiutil detach &#x2F;Volumes&#x2F;some-usb-drive

 hdiutil makehybrid -joliet -o foo.iso .&#x2F;srcfolder&#x2F;</code></pre>

Oh wow, this is amazing. I had been unable to _swap_ esc and caps lock on the mac until now.

There&#x27;s a nice generator for these mappings <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hidutil-generator.netlify.app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hidutil-generator.netlify.app&#x2F;</a>

Nice list.Also, hidutil (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;library&#x2F;archive&#x2F;technotes&#x2F;tn2450&#x2F;_index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;library&#x2F;archive&#x2F;technotes&#x2F;tn2450...</a>).Example:<pre><code> hidutil property --set &#x27;{&quot;UserKeyMapping&quot;:[{&quot;HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc&quot;:0x700000049,&quot;HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst&quot;:0x700000065}]}&#x27;
</code></pre>
For my PC keyboard, remaps &quot;Ins&quot; (normally useless under macOS) to something (&quot;PC Execute&quot;) I can trap and remap with Keyboard Maestro.

You should Alias xsel if you’re in an x environment

Also `alias pbsort=&#x27;pbpaste | sort | pbcopy&#x27;`

Slick! I need to figure out how to get something like this for SQL

`pbcopy | jq | pbpaste` is a very frequent command that I run to quickly format json in the clipboard.I use pbcopy and pbpaste probably all day long and always miss it in Linux environments.

I suspect, like me, a lot of people have learned about pbcopy&#x2F;pbpaste from the Github docs for adding a new SSH key to your account <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.github.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;authentication&#x2F;connecting-to-github-with-ssh&#x2F;adding-a-new-ssh-key-to-your-github-account#adding-a-new-ssh-key-to-your-account" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.github.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;authentication&#x2F;connecting-to-gith...</a>

Great list. Didn&#x27;t know about pbcopy&#x2F;pbpaste, very useful.I use open regularly. Often to open a directory in finder and preview a file. Looks like I can just use qlmanage from now on.Not sure I&#x27;d use screencapture manually, but I&#x27;m sure there are some automations that could benefit from this.

Most people would rather criticize than actually look for goodness.

with sleep comes &quot;unlock screen&quot; ;)

Automatic screensaver enable after a period of inactivity is considered a fail safe control.

You can lock the screen while caffeinated though.

I thought that was its primary use case these days

Probably want to check your policies if using a business-owned mac. Caffeinate probably violates your security policies if it’s a decent sized company.

It also separates 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz bands and shows security details (which matters sometimes e.g band steering or automatic same-SSID signal-strength-based AP selection doesn&#x27;t work)

<pre><code> &#x2F;System&#x2F;Library&#x2F;PrivateFrameworks&#x2F;Apple80211.framework&#x2F;Versions&#x2F;A&#x2F;Resources&#x2F;airport
</code></pre>
I set an alias in my shell so this is just &#x27;airport&#x27;, lets you interact with the wifi settings - I particularly like &#x27;airport -s&#x27; for doing a scan of the local wifi networks, since it shows signal strength and channel information right there, which is helpful when troubleshooting.

What it really needs is a way to prevent sleeping when the lid is closed (only) during a system update.

Agreed. Some of the flags are missing as well. Not sure it&#x27;s updated often, but still not a bad starting point. If only Apple would publish something directly. They do a pretty good job with the Apple Platform Deployment guide (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;guide&#x2F;deployment" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;guide&#x2F;deployment</a>). And the Security guide (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;guide&#x2F;security" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;guide&#x2F;security</a>).

Yes it is, but the forum is current and the creator replies very actively.  I’ll ask if he plans update.

A tad outdated. At a glance I see it’s missing `networkQuality` (introduced in Monterey) and `realpath` (added in Ventura).

Not a bad list of basic macOS specific cli tools. For a more in depth list, I usually reference <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ss64.com&#x2F;osx&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ss64.com&#x2F;osx&#x2F;</a>.

One I use a lot: mdls.It&#x27;s ls for metadata. Very helpful for getting quick and scripted access to the date&#x2F;time when and the latitude&#x2F;longitude where a photograph was taken.Also, the say command is a lot more versatile than it seems.Combined with the ability to save the speech to an audio file, my wife uses it as the disc jockey for her little hobby AM radio station. It introduces the song and does little station IDs and such.You can customize it with dozens of dozens of voices, some in very high quality.When a song from her Japanese playlists comes on, it switches to one of the Japanese voices. I don&#x27;t speak Japanese, so I don&#x27;t know if it actually translates the DJ words into Japanese, but it sounds pretty close to my untrained ears.

powermetrics gives a lot of energy usage info per CPU core and apps.

Here’s a nice GUI wrapper: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;amphetamine&#x2F;id937984704" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;amphetamine&#x2F;id937984704</a> (the name might be off-putting to some though)

Caffienate will save my ass going forward. I don&#x27;t know how many times I end up being the person that runs some batch job on my system...

You can do similar magic with Charles Proxy fyi

I&#x27;ve used AU Lab to pipe my microphone input through my headphones, which is apparently how professionals like to record audio (a &quot;monitor&quot; so you can hear how you sound), but I couldn&#x27;t get used to it

Never had heard of this before. Some other cool tools in the &quot;additional tools for X-Code&quot; package which I had also never heard of. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;download&#x2F;all&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;download&#x2F;all&#x2F;</a>Thanks for sharing.

Toxiproxy is such a tool for everywhere else, and it did help me test and improve networking code for poor conditions: timeouts, retries, packet loss, etc.

You can be an ultra nerd on Linux and go this with the networking QoS tools: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tldp.org&#x2F;HOWTO&#x2F;Traffic-Control-HOWTO&#x2F;components.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tldp.org&#x2F;HOWTO&#x2F;Traffic-Control-HOWTO&#x2F;components.html</a>

You can also use `rvictl` to connect to a development iOS device’s network device for grab a tcp dump.Also Instruments has a really nice network capture tool now.

Network Link Conditioner rules. I pair it with `mitmproxy` for debugging native apps.

Thanks! I&#x27;m on BSD so this is great to hear!

[Comcast](<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tylertreat&#x2F;comcast">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tylertreat&#x2F;comcast</a>) also does this for macOS, BSD, and Linux. And it&#x27;s _brilliantly_ named.

You can do that with standard Linux tooling available on every distribution, see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;man7.org&#x2F;linux&#x2F;man-pages&#x2F;man8&#x2F;tc.8.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;man7.org&#x2F;linux&#x2F;man-pages&#x2F;man8&#x2F;tc.8.html</a>. What you&#x27;re specifically looking for is `qdisc netem`, it can inject packet loss, reordered packets, duplicate packets, delay and more.

Note that NLC is a GUI interface to control dummynet and PF (packet filter). It sets up rules to inject packet relay and drop a certain percentage of packets based on the profile.You can use dnctl and pfctl on macOS to do similar things and more.

Not a command-line tool but the network link conditioner is also really great. Never seen such a tool on another OSYou can simulate a really bad network. Latency, bandwidth, packet loss etc. Great for testing but also if people insist on cameras being on. Just screw up the connection so bad that everyone gets annoyed with your blocky image and robot voice and suggest you turn off video and then you make it &#x27;magically&#x27; ok - lol

`ditto` will also preserve resource forks, which is occasionally necessary for not breaking apps or installer pkgs. I&#x27;ve had to use it when doing a semi-automated deployment of some zipped-up software to a hundred or so Macs via bash over ARD. `ditto -xkv`

Ditto can also be useful for backup and restore since, AFAICT, it preserves file meta data. (Unlike rsync for example.)

Use ‘ditto’ for copying directories. It is fast!<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;osxdaily.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;06&#x2F;11&#x2F;use-ditto-copy-files-directories-mac-command-line&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;osxdaily.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;06&#x2F;11&#x2F;use-ditto-copy-files-directo...</a>

this is just a worse version of caffeinate which is more likely to leave you with a dead battery.

Here are my favorites:<pre><code> alias sleepoff=&quot;sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1&quot;

 alias sleepon=&quot;sudo pmset -a disablesleep 0&quot;
</code></pre>
This fully disables sleep, period. Just make sure you don&#x27;t leave it unplugged too long, but on Apple Silicon it lasts for quite a long time.

I typically use <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.digitalocean.com&#x2F;community&#x2F;tutorials&#x2F;workflow-resizing-images-with-imagemagick" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.digitalocean.com&#x2F;community&#x2F;tutorials&#x2F;workflow-re...</a>You can even do bulk cmds with cli on images:<pre><code> for x in ls *.webp; do ffmpeg -i $x ${x%.webp}.png; done
</code></pre>
reformats images from webp to png in a directory.<pre><code> magick mogrify -monitor -format jpg *.png -compress 70
</code></pre>
reformats and compresses pngs to be jpg in a directory

You can use ImageMagick&#x27;s `convert`.<pre><code> convert original.jpg -define jpeg:extent=2MB output.jpg
</code></pre>
The result will be around 2MB in size (in both directions).

Is there any easy shortcut to resizing an image by percentage or fitting to a specific size?Many a times, a website says &quot;file needs to be no bigger than 2 MB&quot;, and I need to scramble with Preview app to resize teh app until it falls below that limit. A cli tool for that action would be very handy.

It was nice to find out that macOS has a tool similar to Valgrind called `leaks` that helps you find memory leaks!

`xed .` Is probably my most underrated macOS command. It will open Xcode using either your project or workspace file.

It&#x27;s not something that I&#x27;ve tried. There was a user report at the bottom of this GitHub issue that states sidecar rotation does not work.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jakehilborn&#x2F;displayplacer&#x2F;issues&#x2F;17">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jakehilborn&#x2F;displayplacer&#x2F;issues&#x2F;17</a>

Does this tool also allow me to change my iPad screen on Sidecar from landscape&#x2F;horizontal into vertical?

I was hoping this would let me set 125% scaling on my 3440x1440 display but no, I guess it&#x27;s a hard OS limitation. It&#x27;s my biggest gripe with MacOS.(There&#x27;s BetterDisplay - formerly BetterDummy - but it introduces noticeable input lag for me.)

This tool is invaluable, I love it so much. I have 2 workspaces and I love just running the command (via Alfred) when I plug into my dock at either place that fixes all my monitors. I could script it so that as soon as my computer recognizes a monitor UUID it fires off the correct displayplacer command but I don&#x27;t switch often enough to care (the 2 desks are 3.5+ hours apart).When I was commuting daily displayplacer was even more indispensable but even for just unplugging my mac and using the internal screen vs my monitors I get a ton of value out of this tool.

Self-plug of displayplacer[0] for changing screen resolutions&#x2F;rotations&#x2F;etc via the command line.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jakehilborn&#x2F;displayplacer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jakehilborn&#x2F;displayplacer</a>

I&#x27;ve found the transition to zsh surprisingly painless. But then, I do most of my command line scripting on linux and not my own machine. But still.

macOS has shipped Zsh for a long time. The difference is that now (since Catalina), it’s the default shell.

That&#x27;s why I said &quot;if you use bash&quot;

Obviously everything is preference, but I prefer things like expanded regex in gnu grep to the underpowered macOS utils

They come from BSD (and, nitpick, are not called coreutils). These BSD tools lack features mostly only if you&#x27;re used to GNU coreutils.The expanse of GNU coreutils features is questionable too: some are nice, some you can do without easily and rarely to never miss, and some are downright annoying (yes I&#x27;m looking at you, ls with colors+quotes)

While you&#x27;re at it, `brew install coreutils`. The coreutils that ship with macOS lack a lot of features available on Linux. If you use bash, I recommend upgrading it, too, since Apple ships a 16 year old build (iirc due to legal issues associated with GPLv3) `brew install bash`

Oops, you&#x27;re right. I meant command + shift + control + 3 (full screen to clipboard) and command + shift + control + 4 (partial screen to clipboard).

Both commands you listed take a partial screenshot. The first one saves it to the desktop and the second one (with control) to the clipboard.

IIRC Cmd+shift+4 by default stores to a file, but it is easily changeable in settings. Mine has been set to store to clipboard since a long time ago (since i mostly ever take them to send to someone in chat or to insert into my own notes, for which clipboard is exactly what i need).To change it: open Screenshot app (either cmd+shift+5 or from the app launcher), click Options in the center bar, and set &quot;Save to&quot; to &quot;clipboard&quot;. Now, all screenshots in the future will be going by default to clipboard. You can also pick many other destinations for saving, including any arbitrary directory or many other apps (e.g., mail, preview, etc.).After some googling TIL, apparently if you use Ctrl key modifier with any screenshot shortcuts (cmd+shift+3&#x2F;4), it will store to clipboard regardless of your setting. Kinda nifty for those who switch between storing to file&#x2F;clipboard all the time.

command shift 4 already saves a file, maybe you were thinking about command + shift + control + 3?

`pngpaste` doesn’t ship with macOS. All the tools in the article do.

I configured the screenshot to file to automatically save them to ~&#x2F;Desktop&#x2F;screenshots instead of ~&#x2F;Desktop using the Screenshot app to avoid cluttering the desktop. See <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hellotech.com&#x2F;guide&#x2F;for&#x2F;how-to-change-where-screenshots-are-saved-on-mac" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hellotech.com&#x2F;guide&#x2F;for&#x2F;how-to-change-where-scre...</a>

Surprised pngpaste isn&#x27;t mentioned (in the article nor the comments).If you take a screen shot (command + shift + 4) or partial screen shot (command + shift + control + 4) you can save it directly to an image file with:pngpaste filename.png

That&#x27;s surprising to me as well. I had no idea that caffeinate existed as a native tool on my mac. I&#x27;ve been relying on &quot;Jolt of Caffeine&quot; for the past 3 years.

I&#x27;ve only ever tab-completed it from caff.

Just make an alias to its other, easier to spell name `Methyltheobromine`. Simple.

Now if only I could remember how to spell caffeinate.

Yeah, I was thrilled when I discovered this for myself a few months ago! It&#x27;s so useful in long-running scripts.

after seeing the post i realized this is probably the case for most of us

For a long time I used an app for this as well, but the app was just a thin wrapper around the CLI tool

i&#x27;m most surprised that they got this one by HN community

wait caffeinate exists natively? ive been using a third party caffeine tool for the longest time..

opensnoop is also a good one that usually stays under the radar

It&#x27;s rare to see a &quot;you might not know about&quot; instead of &quot;you never thought about&quot; etc.

pandoc is the definitive document converter.

My latest discovery is being able to manage Xcode simulators from the command line [1].[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;xcode&#x2F;installing-additional-simulator-runtimes#Install-and-manage-Simulator-runtimes-from-the-command-line" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;xcode&#x2F;installing-a...</a>

caffeinate is on Mac.<pre><code> caffeinate -d -i -u -s</code></pre>

keeping you awake wraps this up in a menu bar icon that makes it easy to toggle on or off<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;keepingyouawake.app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;keepingyouawake.app&#x2F;</a>

I’ve been looking for a better way to do this than just setting my PC to never sleep. Thanks for this. Now I need to find a Mac alternative as well.

Caffeinate is definitely the one I miss most on Windows. Super handy to keep your machine awake whilst some task is ongoing.

macOS command-line tools you might not know about