tools osx
2011-06-02
by Morgan Aldridge [email protected]
A small collection of Mac OS X command line tools that I’ve developed over the years. Similar to the NextStep and Mac OS X commands open, pbcopy, and pbpaste, most of these tools are bash scripts created as an exercise to hone my bash-fu. There are also a number of Perl and Ruby scripts submitted by others.
clipcat prints and concatenates Mac OS text clippings. Submitted by Daphne Preston-Kendal.
dict performs a look-up in the Mac OS X dictionary. Note: unlike the other scripts provided, this one requires that you have MacRuby installed. Submitted by Daphne Preston-Kendal.
eject ejects a volume or network volume and all other volumes on the same local device. A shorter, simpler, smarter wrapper of diskutil’s various eject/unmount options and allows specifying either a full path in /Volumes or just the volume name.
launch searches for and launches applications. It's a slightly smarter wrapper for open -a with wildcard matching via Spotlight, if available, or find.
ql opens files with the Mac OS X Quick Look feature.
swuser switches users using the Mac OS X Fast User Switching feature. You can either switch out to the login window or to another user. Note: unfortunately, this is not currently compatible with screen.
trash allows trashing of files instead of tempting fate with rm. Correctly handles trashing files on other volumes, uses the same filename renaming scheme as Finder for duplicate file names, can list trash contents w/disk usage summary, and empty trash (including securely) w/confirmation. Does not require Finder to be running.
with sets the application with which specified documents will be opened. It can even change and open in one fell swoop. Submitted by Daphne Preston-Kendal.
Installing all tools:
rake.rake install. (If you don't have write permission on /usr/local/bin, you'll need to prepend sudo.)Installing one or more specific tools:
rakerake 'install[ql,trash]', specifying individual tools in a comma separated list between the square brackets. (If you don't have write permission on /usr/local/bin, you'll need to prepend sudo.)zsh Plugin ManagerNote: You cannot install clipcat, dict, or with using this method.
macOS 10.15 Catalina and newer now use zsh as the default shell. If you're using a zsh plugin manager, you can install individual tools as follows and they'll be automatically downloaded, installed, and kept up-to-date:
~/.zshrc file for each tool you wish to install, trash, for example:zinit wait'1' lucid light-mode as"program" pick"src/trash" for morgant/tools-osxLooking for other Mac OS X-specific command line tools to complement these? Check out the following:
appswitch and launch by Nicholas Rileyasprint, icalBuddy, setWeblocThumb, and trash by Ali Rantakaricontacts by Shane Celisdark-mode by Sindre Sorhusdockutil by Kyle Crawfordduti by Andrew Mortensenget-location by David Lindesiloc by Nate Weaverimsg by Christian Sampaioithief by Israel Chauca Fuentesgeticon, icns2pict, pict2icns, seticon) & osxutils (cpath, getfcomment, geticon, google, hfsdata, lsmac, mkalias, rcmac, setfcomment, setfctypes, setfflags, seticon, setlabel, setsuffix, setvolume, trash, wiki, wsupdate) by Sveinbjorn Thordarsonpngpaste by Jerry Chenrem by Kevin Y. Kimservice by Daphne Preston-Kendalstronghold and shallow-backup by Aaron Lichtmantag by James Berrytrash by Dave Dribintrash by Sindre Sorhuswebkit2png by Paul HammondSpecial thanks to: Daphne Preston-Kendal for all her submissions and collaboration; Matt Brictson for his initial relative path bug fix in trash; huyz for the improved determination of Finder’s PID to prevent possible false-positives in trash.
