macOS Terminal commands

Reveals dotfiles and hidden folders everywhere in Finder. Tip: ⌘⇧. toggles this temporarily in any Finder window.

Restores Finder’s default of hiding dotfiles.

Shows .pdf, .png, .app and every other extension in Finder.

Adds the folder path to the bottom of every Finder window.

Makes ~/Library visible in Finder permanently.

Hides the Dock and removes the delay before it slides back in.

Undoes the instant auto-hide tweak.

Adds an empty gap you can drag between apps to group them.

Restores the original Dock apps and settings.

Your custom Dock layout is lost.

Stops screenshots cluttering your Desktop.

Use jpg, png, heic, pdf or tiff. Smaller JPGs are handy for sharing.

Window captures (⌘⇧4 then Space) no longer include the drop shadow.

Prevents the display sleeping for the given number of seconds. Leave off -t to stay awake until you press Ctrl+C.

Fixes websites that won’t load after a DNS change.

Shows the battery’s cycle count, condition and maximum capacity.

Model, chip, memory and serial number.

Prints the product name, version and build.

The Mac’s address on your Wi-Fi network (use en1 if en0 is empty).

Re-copies the clipboard as plain text, dropping fonts and colours. (ClepBoard also removes hidden characters.)

Puts the whole file on the clipboard without opening it.

Opens a Finder window for the folder your Terminal is in.

Speaks the text aloud. Chain it after long commands: npm run build; say done.

Switches between Light and Dark appearance.

Makes held keys repeat faster than System Settings allows. Log out and back in to apply.

Holding a letter repeats it instead of showing accent options. Restart apps to apply.

Finder won’t litter shared and network folders with .DS_Store files.

Removes the download quarantine flag from an app you trust.

Bypasses a Gatekeeper safety check. Only do this for apps from sources you trust.

Fixes Spotlight not finding files. Re-indexing takes a while in the background.

Restarts the audio service; it relaunches automatically.

Flushes disk caches from memory.

Turns off the display immediately; locks if a password is required after sleep.

Installs git, make, clang and other tools developers need, without the full Xcode app.