KnowYourMac Tutorials » Terminal

Preventing Your Help Window from Always Being on Top

jjshammas — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:36:22 +0000

This is a very useful Terminal trick that alters the way Help Windows behave. Instead of remaining on top of all other windows, you can now make it act as a regular application window.

Terminal Code: defaults write com.apple.helpviewer NormalWindow -bool true

To reverse, change True to False and run the command again.

Two Useful Dock Tricks

jjshammas — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:36:17 +0000

This video explains two very simple yet useful techniques to use with your dock – Temporarily Reversing Magnification, and Adding Dock Separators.

Terminal Codes:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add ‘{tile-data={}; tile-type=”spacer-tile”;}’
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{tile-data={}; tile-type=”spacer-tile”;}’
killall Dock

Ejecting a CD Through Terminal and iEject Disks

jjshammas — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:42:52 +0000

Shows how you can easily eject any disk in a standard mac CD drive through the built-in Terminal.

Terminal Code: drutil tray eject

Download iEject Disks, 10MB: (Original Link) (Mirror 1) (Mirror 2)

Permanently Deleting Files on a Mac

jjshammas — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 12:03:32 +0000

Shows how you can permanently remove your files and folders. For use with Mac OS X 10.3 or greater.

Widget: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/business/shredder.html

Terminal Code: sudo rm -R (dont forget the space at the end)

Games on the Terminal

jjshammas — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:45:37 +0000

Shows how to get four different games on the Terminal.

Codes from video – emacs, snake, pong, tetris, doctor

Freeze the Minimization on a Mac

jjshammas — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 01:17:14 +0000

Shows how you can easily freeze any window while it is minimizing, and still have it be an active window. For use with Mac OSX 10.2 or greater.

Codes mentioned in video:

killall Dock – Refresh Dock
killall Finder – Refresh Finder
killall Terminal – Quit Terminal (You can replace Terminal with any currently running app.)

Slow it with the Shift Key

jjshammas — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:34:59 +0000

Shows how you can use the simple Shift Key on your Mac to slow down Minimizing Windows and Activating Expose. For use with Mac OSX 10.2 and above.