By default, most search tools look at file names, not file contents. However, the most famous GNU search program grep will look inside files with the correct flags. Here we will show you how you can find specific word(s) in a file on Linux. Using grep to Find a Word In a File By default, […]
All The Ways To Force Quit Apps in macOS
When Mac apps misbehave, sometimes you need to force quit apps to shut down. This can happen when the app enters an infinite loop, crashes, hangs or otherwise ceases responding to user input. While it’s never an ideal way to close an application, it doesn’t generally hurt the app. You won’t have a chance to […]
Getting Started with Terminal: Install and Use wget
wget is a non-interactive command-line utility for download resources from a specified URL. Because it is non-interactive, wget can work in the background or before the user even logs in. The program was designed especially for poor connections, making it especially robust in otherwise flaky conditions. While wget isn’t shipped with macOS, it can be […]
Getting Started with Terminal: Hide Files on macOS
Your Mac has a few built-in ways to hide files on macOS from Finder windows. This will make the file invisible until you choose to reveal it or turn the invisibility off. Keep in mind that this doesn’t remove the file from your system or encrypt it. What does it mean when you hide files […]
Getting Started with Terminal: What is sed and how does it work?
If you’re just getting started with Terminal, it can take a while to become familiar with the basic ins and outs of the command line interface. Once you have settled into a groove, you can start exploring some of the extremely powerful utilities available through the interface. One of the most useful is sed. It’s […]
Getting Started with Terminal: Adding New Commands with Homebrew
As you get more experience with Terminal (or if you’re joining the macOS world from Linux), you might soon find that some important Terminal commands that users reference in online forums are missing. Where’s wget, for example, or nmap? If you need those commands, you can easily add them to the macOS Terminal with a package manager. A package […]
Getting Started with Terminal: Using Grep to Search Files
We’ve covered getting up and running with Terminal, and addressed some basic Terminal commands. Now, we can start digging into more useful Terminal techniques. What is grep? grep is a command line utility that searches plain text. It takes whatever input you provide and searches for a specific search term, or “string.” And because it […]
Getting Started with Terminal: Must-Know macOS Terminal Commands
Terminal, sometimes called the command line interface or CLI, is a text-based program for interacting with your computer’s deepest levels. But while it gives users more power, it also ditches the graphical interface we all know and love. This can make learning Terminal tricky, and not a little bit daunting. Fortunately there’s nothing to be anxious about: great […]
Getting Started with Terminal: An Introduction
If you ever wanted to hack the mainframe, using macOS’s built-in command line might be appealing. The command line interface, or CLI, is a powerful, text-only method for interacting with your computer. On macOS, it’s accessed through an application called Terminal. If you want to get started working with Terminal, here’s a quick Terminal introduction to get you […]