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I've got a MBP (not so long so I don't really know any tricks), and some of my friends has. I know that there are some cool stuff you can do with Terminal, and Automator, which can help you do things faster/smarter, or just Fun & Geeky. Let's share them if you know some.

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I would love to hear the anwers as I just bought a mac, but this belongs on SuperUser. – Ed S. Nov 24 '09 at 7:31
IMHO, This is programming related. Since it's only for programmers and real geeks :) – Lukas Šalkauskas Nov 24 '09 at 7:34
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It looks like the question is referring to programming/scripting of OSX tasks - terminal, automator, launchd etc. Question is vague but could be good. – vanja. Nov 24 '09 at 7:43
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9 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

In the terminal:

mdfind WORD

uses spotlight to find things that contain that word. It's really fast, and really useful.

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This is extremely useful. Thank you. – Midwire Oct 6 '11 at 2:53
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up vote 4 down vote

The most important things to install for a programmer are:

  • XCode (on your install disks)
  • MacPorts
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up vote 2 down vote

If you want to use languages other than Objective-C, you have your pick of various Cocoa bridges. If Applescript's dear to you, appscript bridges Apple events and Ruby, Python and Objective-C. Apple has come out with it's own scripting bridge, though appscript works on older versions of OS X. F-Script can be fun for tinkering, or if you want your Obj-C experience to be even more Smalltalk-like.

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up vote 2 down vote

If you want to run a bash script just by double-clicking it in Finder, give it a .command suffix.

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  • You can open a file from the Terminal in the Finder via the open command (which is surprisingly convenient in many situations). One example I've often used is to open the current working directory from the Terminal in Finder:

    open .

    There are a bunch of other cool and useful things you can do with open—see its man page for more details (run man open in Terminal).

  • You can set preferences for applications from Terminal with the defaults command. This also allows certain hidden settings to be enabled. For example: a fun little trick with scroll-bars that places arrows at the top and bottom of the scroll-bar (which takes effect for applications whenever they are relaunched):

    defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBoth

    Probably the most famous hidden setting is the Exposé "Blob" (which takes effect when you relaunch the Dock):

    defaults write com.apple.dock wvous-floater -bool true

  • Another cool, but ultimately pointless thing you can do in the Terminal: turn your screen saver into a desktop background:

    /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background
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up vote 1 down vote

Try out programs like MacPilot, Cocktail, Secrets or Onyx (last 2 are open source and free)

MacPilot and Secrets are GUI frontends for many of these defaults write Terminal codes.

Also, Tinker Tool.

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Don't forget Tinker Tool! – htw Nov 24 '09 at 8:19
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up vote 0 down vote

The Terminal can talk to you. Type say hello to give it a try

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A big resource about Mac OS tips and tricks is Mac OS X hints site.

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