Spotlight, the universal launcher
Launch apps, find files, do math, convert units — all from one box. Never dig through the Applications folder again.
⌘Space
No tips match that search. Try a broader term — or press Esc to clear.
Keyboard Essentials
The fastest Mac users barely touch the mouse. These are the shortcuts that pay for themselves within a day — system-wide, in every app.
App switcher — with secrets
Hold ⌘ and keep tapping Tab to cycle. While it's open: press Q to quit the highlighted app, H to hide it, or ↓ to see its windows.
⌘Tab
Cycle windows of the same app
The forgotten sibling of ⌘Tab. Flips between windows of the frontmost app — two Safari windows, two Finder windows, two terminals.
⌘`
Force Quit dialog
When an app beachballs, this brings up the Force Quit picker. Bonus: hold ⌥ while right-clicking a Dock icon and “Quit” becomes “Force Quit” for that app directly.
⌘⌥Esc
Lock the screen instantly
Walk away with confidence. The screen locks immediately without sleeping the Mac.
⌃⌘Q
Hide apps, not minimize them
⌘H hides the current app instantly; ⌘⌥H hides everything else. Hiding is faster than minimizing and restores instantly via ⌘Tab.
⌘H / ⌘⌥H
Reopen a closed tab
Works in Safari, Chrome, and most editors. Press it repeatedly to walk back through recently closed tabs.
⌘⇧T
Settings, anywhere
Opens the preferences window of whatever app you're in. One of the oldest and most consistent shortcuts on the Mac.
⌘,
Emoji & symbol picker
Insert emoji, accented characters, arrows, and math symbols into any text field. On newer keyboards, tapping 🌐 (the Fn key) alone can open it too.
⌃⌘Space
Word- and line-level text jumps
⌥←/→ jumps by word; ⌘←/→ jumps to line start/end. Add ⇧ to any of them to select as you go.
Delete a whole word
⌥⌫ deletes the previous word; ⌘⌫ deletes to the start of the line. Far faster than holding the delete key.
Emacs bindings work everywhere
Every native macOS text field speaks Emacs: ⌃A line start, ⌃E line end, ⌃K kill to end of line, ⌃T transpose characters, ⌃D forward delete.
Paste without formatting
Strips fonts and colors so pasted text matches the destination. Works in most apps (Mail, Pages, Notes); some apps map it slightly differently.
⌘⌥⇧V
Cancel = ⌘ Period
⌘. is the same as pressing Esc or the Cancel button in dialogs — a holdover from classic Mac OS that still works everywhere.
Mission Control & Spaces
⌃↑ shows all windows; ⌃↓ shows the current app's windows; ⌃←/→ slides between desktops and full-screen apps.
Full screen toggle
Enter or leave full screen in almost any app — no reaching for the green button.
⌃⌘F
Press-and-hold for accents
Hold a letter key (like e or n) to pop up its accent variants — é è ê ë — then press the number under the one you want.
Fine-grained volume & brightness
Hold ⌥⇧ while tapping the volume or brightness keys for quarter-step adjustments. Hold ⌥ alone and tap volume to open Sound settings.
Help menu as a menu-item search
⌘⇧/ opens the Help menu with a search field that finds and points at any menu item in the current app. The fastest way to find a buried command.
Dictation on demand
Press 🌐 (Fn) twice — or the shortcut you set in Keyboard settings — to dictate into any text field, processed on-device on Apple Silicon.
Shortcut Trainer
Quiz yourself — can you name the shortcut before revealing it?
Loading…
Answer hidden
Finder Mastery
Finder hides decades of power behind a friendly face. These tips turn it into a genuinely fast file manager.
Go to Folder — type any path
Opens a path field that accepts ~/Library, /usr/local, tab-completion, and even pasted paths from Terminal. The single most useful Finder shortcut.
⌘⇧G
Show hidden files
Toggles dotfiles and hidden folders on and off — and it works inside Open/Save dialogs too, which is where you usually need it.
⌘⇧.
Cut and paste files (really)
Copy a file with ⌘C, then paste with ⌘⌥V to move it instead of copying. macOS has always had cut/paste — it just renames it.
Quick Look everything
Select any file and tap Space for an instant preview — PDFs, video, code, folders. Use ⌥Space for a full-screen slideshow of the selection.
Batch rename built in
Select multiple files → right-click → Rename… Replace text, add sequential numbers, or append dates — no third-party renamer required.
The path bar & instant jumps
Turn on the path bar with ⌘⌥P, then double-click any segment to jump there. ⌘↑ goes up a folder; ⌘↓ opens the selection.
Copy a file's path
Right-click a file, then hold ⌥ — “Copy” becomes “Copy … as Pathname.” Or just drag any file into a Terminal window to paste its full path.
Go-menu shortcuts
⌘⇧A Applications · ⌘⇧U Utilities · ⌘⇧D Desktop · ⌘⇧H Home · ⌘⌥L Downloads · ⌘⇧R AirDrop.
Reveal ~/Library
Your user Library is hidden by default. In Finder, open the Go menu and hold ⌥ — “Library” appears. Or drop it into the sidebar from there so it's always one click away.
The proxy icon is draggable
Hover the tiny icon in a window's title bar (it appears on hover), then drag it — into Terminal for a path, into Mail as an attachment, or into an Open/Save dialog to jump straight to that folder.
Get Info vs. the Inspector
⌘I opens Get Info per file. ⌘⌥I opens a single floating Inspector that live-updates with your selection — select 40 files and see their combined size instantly.
Smart Folders = saved searches
File → New Smart Folder builds live-updating folders like “PDFs modified this week” or “files over 1 GB.” They cost nothing — they're just saved Spotlight queries.
Spring-loaded folders
Drag a file onto a folder and hover — the folder springs open so you can keep drilling down, all in one drag. Tap Space mid-drag to spring instantly.
Quick Actions on right-click
Right-click an image → Quick Actions → convert its format, rotate it, or create a PDF from several. On recent macOS you can even remove the background from an image right there.
Default folder for new windows
Finder Settings → General → “New Finder windows show” — point it at Downloads or your projects folder instead of Recents and save a click every single time.
Resize columns to fit — all at once
In column view, ⌥-double-click a column divider to fit every column to its widest filename.
Tags that actually help
Tag files across different folders and drives, then click the tag in the sidebar to see them all together. Great for “Active,” “Waiting,” or per-project colors. Searchable via tag:name in Spotlight.
Open Terminal at any folder
Right-click a folder → Services → “New Terminal at Folder” (enable it in Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Services if it's off).
Terminal Power
macOS ships with a full Unix underneath, plus Apple-only commands you won't find on Linux. A few lines here replace entire utility apps.
Clipboard from the shell
pbcopy and pbpaste pipe anything through the system clipboard: cat notes.md | pbcopy, or pbpaste > dump.txt.
open — Finder's front door
open . opens the current folder in Finder; open -a "Preview" img.png opens in a specific app; open -R file reveals it; open https://… launches your browser.
caffeinate — no sleep tonight
caffeinate -d keeps the display awake until you Ctrl-C; caffeinate -t 3600 for an hour; caffeinate -i make keeps the Mac awake just while a build runs.
Built-in network speed test
networkquality runs Apple's own responsiveness and throughput test — upload, download, and latency under load. No speed-test website needed.
Spotlight from the CLI
mdfind "totient" searches file contents Spotlight-fast; mdfind -name report.pdf by name; mdls file dumps every metadata attribute Spotlight knows.
sips — image conversion built in
sips -s format png in.heic --out out.png converts formats; sips -Z 1200 *.jpg resizes in place. It has shipped with macOS for two decades.
textutil — document conversion
textutil -convert html notes.docx converts between docx, rtf, html, and txt without opening a single app.
Who's on that port?
lsof -i :8080 shows which process is holding a port — the first question every local Apache or Node debugging session asks.
say it out loud
say "build finished" speaks any text. Append it to long commands as a completion alarm: make && say done.
Hardware & system report
system_profiler SPHardwareDataType prints chip, memory, and serial number. sw_vers gives the macOS version; uname -m confirms arm64.
What's eating my disk?
du -sh * | sort -h in any folder ranks its contents by size. For an interactive view, brew install ncdu and cruise the filesystem like a file manager.
Power & sleep diagnostics
pmset -g shows current power settings; pmset -g assertions reveals which process is preventing sleep right now.
Un-quarantine a download
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine App.app clears the “downloaded from the internet” flag. Only for software you genuinely trust — Gatekeeper is on your side.
Screenshots from the shell
screencapture -c to the clipboard, screencapture -T 5 shot.png with a 5-second delay, screencapture -i sel.png interactive selection — scriptable screenshots.
ditto — the better cp
ditto src dst copies while preserving resource forks, extended attributes, and permissions — it's what the Finder itself uses under the hood.
Updates from the CLI
softwareupdate --list shows pending macOS updates; sudo softwareupdate -ia installs them all — handy over SSH.
# Keep screenshots out of ~/Desktop
mkdir -p ~/Screenshots
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Screenshots
killall SystemUIServer
# Screenshots as JPG (smaller) instead of PNG
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
# Dock: appear instantly and animate faster when auto-hidden
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.4
killall Dock
# Dock: show only running apps (minimalist mode)
defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool true
killall Dock
# Key repeat: faster than System Settings allows
defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 2
defaults write NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat -int 15
# Disable press-and-hold accents in favor of key repeat (great for vim)
defaults write NSGlobalDomain ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false
# Finder: show all file extensions, and hidden files permanently
defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleShowAllExtensions -bool true
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true
killall Finder
# Undo anything: replace true with false (or use `defaults delete`)
defaults delete com.apple.dock static-only && killall DockLog out or restart if a tweak doesn't seem to take after
killall. Most defaults changes are safe and reversible with defaults delete <domain> <key> — but read a command before you run it, always.Homebrew, Done Right
The missing package manager — and on Apple Silicon it lives in /opt/homebrew. A handful of habits keep it fast and tidy.
Formulae vs. casks
brew install wget installs command-line software; brew install --cask firefox installs GUI apps into /Applications. One tool for both worlds.
Search before you install
brew search octave finds packages; brew info octave shows the version, dependencies, and caveats — read the caveats, they often contain the crucial post-install step.
The weekly ritual
brew update && brew upgrade && brew cleanup — refresh the index, upgrade everything, and delete old downloaded bottles that quietly hoard gigabytes.
What did I actually install?
brew leaves lists only the packages you asked for (not dependencies). brew deps --tree ffmpeg shows why the rest are there.
Autoremove the orphans
brew autoremove uninstalls dependencies nothing needs anymore — run it after removing a big package like ffmpeg or imagemagick.
Services: brew as a launchd manager
brew services list shows daemons; brew services start httpd registers Apache with launchd so it survives reboots; run instead of start for one session only.
Your Mac, reproducible
brew bundle dump writes a Brewfile listing everything installed. On a new Mac, brew bundle restores the lot. Keep it in a Git repo — it's your machine as code.
When things get weird
brew doctor diagnoses PATH problems, stray files, and permission issues with specific fix-it advice. Run it before searching forums.
Pin what must not move
brew pin octave excludes a package from brew upgrade — useful when a working toolchain matters more than the newest version.
# Quality-of-life CLI tools
brew install tree jq wget htop ncdu ripgrep
# Media & math workhorses
brew install ffmpeg imagemagick octave
# See what you own, then snapshot it
brew leaves
brew bundle dump --file=~/BrewfileProductivity & Workflow
System features that quietly remove friction — text expansion, window habits, and the Continuity glue between your Mac and iPhone.
Spotlight is a calculator…
Type 1440/24, sqrt(2)*100, or 2^16 straight into Spotlight. Press ⌘C to copy the result without opening anything.
…and a unit & currency converter
Type 100 USD in EUR, 72F in C, or 26.2 miles in km — Spotlight converts live, with current exchange rates.
Spotlight file kung-fu
Filter with kind:pdf, kind:folder, or date:this week. Hold ⌘ on a result to see its path; ⌘↩ reveals it in Finder; ⌘C copies the file itself.
Text Replacement = free TextExpander
Settings → Keyboard → Text Replacements. Map @@ to your email, ;addr to your address, ;shrug to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Syncs to your iPhone via iCloud automatically.
Hot Corners — without accidents
Settings → Desktop & Dock → Hot Corners. The trick: hold ⌘ while assigning a corner, and it will only trigger when ⌘ is held — all the speed, none of the misfires.
Split View from the green button
Hover (don't click) the green traffic light to get tiling options — left half, right half, or full screen with another app. Hold ⌥ while hovering for classic zoom instead.
Assign apps to Desktops
Right-click an app in the Dock → Options → “This Desktop.” Mail always on Space 2, browser on Space 1 — your muscle memory will thank you.
Universal Clipboard
Copy on your iPhone, paste on your Mac (and vice versa). It just works when both are on the same Apple ID and Wi-Fi — great for two-factor codes and photos.
iPhone as a webcam
Continuity Camera turns the iPhone into a superb wireless webcam, with Center Stage and Desk View. It appears automatically as a camera choice in FaceTime, Zoom, and Photo Booth.
Live Text — copy from any image
Text inside photos, screenshots, and paused video frames is selectable. Drag across it, copy it, translate it, or click a phone number to call — even in Quick Look.
Quick Note from anywhere
Press 🌐Q (Fn-Q) or use the bottom-right hot corner default to open a floating note. Notes made while in Safari remember the page you were on.
Focus modes with schedules
Build a “Deep Work” Focus that silences everything but calls from family, auto-enables at 9 AM, and syncs across devices. Allow-lists beat willpower.
Notification Center swipe
Two-finger swipe from the right edge of the trackpad slides in widgets and notifications. Click the date/time in the menu bar does the same.
Type to Siri, quietly
Settings → Accessibility → Siri → “Type to Siri” turns Siri into a silent command box — no talking to your computer in a quiet room.
Rearrange the menu bar
Hold ⌘ and drag menu bar icons to reorder them — or drag one off the bar entirely to remove it.
Stage Manager, when it shines
Stage Manager groups app windows into sets at the left edge. Love it or hate it, try it once for a multi-project day: each project becomes a swipeable pile.
Safari, Seriously
Fast, private, and gentle on the battery — and hiding more power-user features than it gets credit for.
Tab overview & tab search
⌘⇧\ shows every tab as a thumbnail grid with a search box — the fastest way to find that one tab among forty.
Tab Groups & Profiles
Tab Groups save named sets of tabs (“Octave docs,” “Trip planning”) that sync across devices. Profiles go further: separate history, cookies, and extensions for Work vs. Personal.
Reader mode
⌘⇧R strips a page to clean, adjustable text. Long-press the Reader icon to auto-enable it for the whole site.
Any site → Dock app
File → “Add to Dock” turns any website into a standalone web app with its own icon and window — perfect for webmail, dashboards, or your own GitHub Pages guides.
Picture in Picture
Right-click a playing video twice to reach the real context menu, then choose Picture in Picture. Or click-and-hold the audio icon on the tab. The floating player stays above everything.
The Develop menu
Settings → Advanced → “Show features for web developers” unlocks the Web Inspector (⌘⌥I), Responsive Design Mode, user-agent switching, and per-site JavaScript toggles.
Background tabs, deliberate tabs
⌘-click opens a link in a background tab; ⌘⇧-click opens and switches to it; ⌥-click downloads the linked file directly.
Jump between tabs by number
⌘1 through ⌘9 jump to your first nine tabs (⌘9 is always the last). ⌃Tab cycles through them in order.
Close every other tab
⌥-click a tab's close button — or right-click → “Close Other Tabs” — to keep just the one you're on.
Per-site settings
Safari menu → “Settings for This Website”: page zoom, auto-play blocking, camera and location permissions, content blockers — remembered per site forever.
Instant cache clear
With the Develop menu on, ⌘⌥E empties caches without touching history — the first move when your local site is serving stale CSS.
Reading List for later
⌘⇧D saves the current page to the Reading List, offline-capable and synced. Lighter than bookmarks, more permanent than tabs.
Screenshots & Screen Recording
The built-in capture tools are quietly excellent — modifier keys turn them surgical.
The big three
⌘⇧3 full screen · ⌘⇧4 drag a selection · ⌘⇧5 the full capture toolbar with recording.
Window shots with clean shadows
Press ⌘⇧4 then Space — the cursor becomes a camera; click a window for a perfect shot with its shadow. Hold ⌥ while clicking to drop the shadow.
Mid-drag selection surgery
While dragging a ⌘⇧4 selection: hold Space to move the whole selection, ⇧ to lock one axis, ⌥ to resize from the center. Release the modifier to keep adjusting.
Straight to clipboard
Add ⌃ to any screenshot shortcut and it lands on the clipboard instead of a file — ⌃⌘⇧4 then paste it right into a message.
The floating thumbnail is a file
That corner thumbnail after a screenshot? Drag it directly into Mail, Messages, Slack, or a Finder folder. Click it to mark it up before it saves. Swipe it away to save instantly.
⌘⇧5 options worth setting
The Options menu sets a save destination, a 5/10-second timer, whether the pointer is captured, and can disable the floating thumbnail if you find it slow.
Screen recording built in
⌘⇧5 records the whole screen or a selection, with optional microphone audio. Stop with the menu-bar button or ⌘⌃Esc. Trim the result right in Quick Look.
Screenshot a menu by itself
Screenshots capture open menus too: pop the menu open first, then ⌘⇧4, Space, click the menu — you get just the menu on a transparent background.
Markup without opening Preview
Select a screenshot in Finder, press Space for Quick Look, and use the markup pencil — arrows, boxes, text, and a signature, saved in place.
Maintenance & Troubleshooting
Macs need less upkeep than folklore suggests — but when something's off, these are the levers that actually matter.
Decode “System Data”
The mystery blob in Storage is usually caches (~/Library/Caches), old iOS backups, developer files, and Time Machine local snapshots. Check each before deleting anything blindly.
Time Machine's local snapshots
Even without the backup disk connected, macOS keeps hourly local snapshots. tmutil listlocalsnapshots / shows them; tmutil deletelocalsnapshots <date> reclaims the space (macOS also purges them automatically under pressure).
Login Items audit
Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions. Everything listed launches at boot or runs in the background. Prune ruthlessly — this is the #1 fix for a slow startup.
Activity Monitor, properly
Sort by CPU for heat, check the Memory Pressure graph (green = fine, regardless of “used” numbers), and the Energy tab to find battery vampires. ⌘3/4 pop up CPU/GPU history windows.
Safe Mode on Apple Silicon
Shut down → press and hold the power button until “Loading startup options” → select your disk → hold ⇧ → “Continue in Safe Mode.” It clears caches and skips third-party extensions.
Disk Utility First Aid
Run First Aid on the volume when files behave strangely. For deeper trouble, run it from Recovery (power-button startup options → Options) so the system volume isn't in use.
Console.app — the black box
Crashes and misbehavior leave trails in Console. Filter by the app's name, or check Crash Reports in the sidebar — the top of a crash log usually names the guilty party.
No more NVRAM voodoo
On Apple Silicon there's no ⌘⌥PR dance — NVRAM and SMC-style resets happen automatically at boot when needed. A plain restart genuinely fixes more than it used to.
Storage recommendations
Settings → General → Storage has honest built-in tools: Optimize Storage, Empty Trash automatically, and a per-category breakdown with the biggest files listed first.
Reinstall without fear
Recovery's “Reinstall macOS” lays fresh system files over your install without touching your data — the calm option before considering a full erase.
Battery health, honestly
Settings → Battery → Battery Health shows capacity and cycle count. “Optimized Charging” learning your schedule is why it sometimes holds at 80% — that's a feature.
When Spotlight acts haunted
If search misses obvious files: sudo mdutil -E / forces a full re-index. Expect fan noise for a while; expect working search afterwards.
Security & Privacy
macOS ships secure by default. These settings take it from good to genuinely hard to compromise — without making daily life annoying.
FileVault: on. Always.
Full-disk encryption with effectively zero performance cost on Apple Silicon (the storage is always encrypted; FileVault ties the key to your password). A stolen laptop becomes a brick, not a breach.
Touch ID for sudo
Create /etc/pam.d/sudo_local containing auth sufficient pam_tid.so and your fingerprint replaces typed sudo passwords in Terminal. This file survives macOS updates (unlike editing sudo directly).
Firewall + stealth mode
Settings → Network → Firewall: turn it on, then enable Stealth Mode in Options so the Mac ignores probing pings on untrusted networks.
The permissions audit
Settings → Privacy & Security: walk through Camera, Microphone, Screen Recording, Full Disk Access, and Accessibility once a quarter. Revoke anything you don't recognize — apps re-ask if they truly need it.
Passwords app & passkeys
The built-in Passwords app generates, stores, and autofills strong passwords and passkeys, flags reused or breached ones, and holds verification codes — a full password manager, synced end-to-end encrypted.
Hide My Email
With iCloud+, generate unique burner addresses that forward to your real inbox. One per site: when spam arrives, you know exactly who leaked, and you kill just that address.
Gatekeeper is not the enemy
Unsigned app blocked? Don't disable Gatekeeper globally. Approve the single app in Settings → Privacy & Security → “Open Anyway” after the first attempt — friction by design, once per app.
Find My + Activation Lock
With Find My Mac on, Activation Lock makes a wiped, stolen Mac unusable without your Apple ID. Verify it's active before you travel, not after.
Lockdown Mode exists
An extreme, one-switch hardening mode for people who may be individually targeted. Most people never need it — but knowing it exists (Settings → Privacy & Security) is part of the map.
DNS & Private Relay
iCloud Private Relay (iCloud+) hides your IP and DNS from networks and trackers in Safari. On hostile Wi-Fi it's the difference between browsing and broadcasting.
Guest user: leave it on
A Guest account can't touch your data (especially with FileVault), but a “helpful” thief logging in as Guest gets the Mac online — where Find My can see it.
Check what's listening
sudo lsof -iTCP -sTCP:LISTEN -n -P lists every process with an open listening port — your occasional reality check on servers you forgot you started.
Automation & Power User
Where macOS becomes programmable: Shortcuts, AppleScript one-liners, launchd, and the plumbing underneath System Settings.
Shortcuts — run from anywhere
Shortcuts aren't just an iOS thing. Pin them to the menu bar, bind them to keyboard shortcuts, or run them from the shell with shortcuts run "Name" — instant glue between GUI and CLI.
Quick Actions in Finder
Shortcuts (or Automator) saved as Quick Actions appear in Finder's right-click menu: “Convert to WebP,” “Resize to 1200px,” “Make PDF” — batch operations one right-click away.
osascript one-liners
AppleScript from the shell: osascript -e 'display notification "Build done" with title "make"' posts a real notification when a long job finishes.
launchd, not cron
Scheduled jobs live in ~/Library/LaunchAgents as plists. Unlike cron, launchd runs missed jobs after wake and manages daemons. launchctl list shows what's loaded.
Read any app's settings
defaults read com.apple.finder dumps every preference key an app has — the way people discover new defaults write tweaks. plutil -p file.plist pretty-prints any plist.
SSH into your own Mac
Settings → General → Sharing → Remote Login enables the built-in OpenSSH server. From another machine: ssh you@your-mac.local — Bonjour names beat remembering IPs.
Symlinks vs. aliases
Finder aliases survive moves but the CLI can't follow them; symlinks (ln -s target link) work everywhere in the shell but break when targets move. Know which tool each job needs.
A .zshrc worth having
Aliases compound: alias ll='ls -lahG', alias brewup='brew update && brew upgrade && brew cleanup'. Reload with source ~/.zshrc. Small savings, thousands of repetitions.
Automate the boring reliably
Folder Actions (Automator) watch a folder and act on new files — auto-convert images dropped into ~/Inbox, or auto-file PDFs by name. Set once, benefit forever.
The open command as automation glue
open -g file opens without stealing focus; open -n -a "Safari" forces a second instance; open 'x-apple.systempreferences:' deep-links into System Settings panes.
Worthy third-party companions
If you allow yourself a few: Rectangle (keyboard window tiling), AltTab (Windows-style switcher), Maccy (clipboard history), Stats (menu-bar monitors), IINA (video). All free, most open source, all Homebrew casks.
Scripting System Events
AppleScript can drive the GUI itself: osascript -e 'tell app "System Events" to key code 107' and friends. When an app has no CLI, System Events is the escape hatch.
# Notify when a long task completes (sound + banner)
long_task; osascript -e 'display notification "Done" with title "Terminal"' ; afplay /System/Library/Sounds/Glass.aiff
# Batch-convert HEIC photos to JPEG in place
for f in *.heic; do sips -s format jpeg "$f" --out "${f%.heic}.jpg"; done
# Watch a folder's size shrink while you clean
while true; do du -sh ~/Library/Caches; sleep 5; done
# Deep-link straight to a Settings pane
open "x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security"
# Run a Shortcut from a script — GUI automation meets the shell
shortcuts run "Resize for Web" -i input.pngMake it yours. The deepest Mac productivity gains come from composition: a defaults tweak here, a Shortcut there, an alias in
.zshrc — each small, together a machine tuned precisely to how you work.