5 ms·

It's nice to have access to such UI components from the command line. One of my favorite is pbpaste/pbcopy. What's yours?

elithrar 14y ago
$ softwareupdate -i -a [install, all] as it avoids the (slow) UI and you can schedule it if you want to. Not sure if it'll carry across to ML, what with updates going through the Mac App Store there.
- activepeanut 14y ago
  One downside worth mentioning is that you can't read the full description of each available updates, like you can when you click on an item in the GUI version.
  - _pdeschen 14y ago
    Indeed. Moreover, I only want to update my jdk when Im ready and have some free time to repair my jdk 1.5 symlinks once the update completes.
  - jasomill 14y ago
    softwareupdate -d -a downloads all updates to /Library/Updates. For each update, you get a .pkg file to install and a metadata file that includes this description.
riobard 14y ago
`security` lets you manipulate your Keychains. `say` lets you do text-to-speech in command line.
- Watabou 14y ago
  say is pretty useful and fun. When I'm compiling or just telling the Terminal to do something tedious, I add a say command at the end and it will notify me when it's done. For example, if I want to install mercurial and git with homebrew: brew install git mercurial; say "The task is finished, Master."
  - jasomill 14y ago
    As an aside, in Lion at least, you can download high-quality voices for dozens of languages in Speech Preferences (including the ones Apple uses for Siri in several countries).
  - Tarlitz 14y ago
    A more silent option is to print the bell character to the terminal, ie.: sleep 5; printf '\a' This will cause the terminal to bounce and add a little badge with the number of tasks that require your attention if it's out of focus :)
  - riobard 14y ago
    I used to SSH into my wife's Mac and asked her to come over if we are in different rooms :)
bpierre 14y ago
`open` is very convenient to… open things (see `man open`). Tip: `open .` opens the current directory in the Finder.
- jasomill 14y ago
  Another tip: open vnc://[user@]host[:port] connects as user to host on port with Screen Sharing, and, more generally, "open URL" works for any URL scheme registered with Launch Services, including, but not limited to, the obvious ones.
jasomill 14y ago
osascript of course: it lets you control the UI of Cocoa applications, and even more for scriptable ones: osascript -e 'tell application "Safari" to close every document ¬ whose url contains "news.ycombinator.com"' (¬, option-(lowercase L), is the AppleScript line continuation character)

elithrar 14y ago

$ softwareupdate -i -a [install, all] as it avoids the (slow) UI and you can schedule it if you want to. Not sure if it'll carry across to ML, what with updates going through the Mac App Store there.

activepeanut 14y ago
One downside worth mentioning is that you can't read the full description of each available updates, like you can when you click on an item in the GUI version.
- _pdeschen 14y ago
  Indeed. Moreover, I only want to update my jdk when Im ready and have some free time to repair my jdk 1.5 symlinks once the update completes.
- jasomill 14y ago
  softwareupdate -d -a downloads all updates to /Library/Updates. For each update, you get a .pkg file to install and a metadata file that includes this description.

riobard 14y ago

`security` lets you manipulate your Keychains. `say` lets you do text-to-speech in command line.

Watabou 14y ago
say is pretty useful and fun. When I'm compiling or just telling the Terminal to do something tedious, I add a say command at the end and it will notify me when it's done. For example, if I want to install mercurial and git with homebrew: brew install git mercurial; say "The task is finished, Master."
- jasomill 14y ago
  As an aside, in Lion at least, you can download high-quality voices for dozens of languages in Speech Preferences (including the ones Apple uses for Siri in several countries).
- Tarlitz 14y ago
  A more silent option is to print the bell character to the terminal, ie.: sleep 5; printf '\a' This will cause the terminal to bounce and add a little badge with the number of tasks that require your attention if it's out of focus :)
- riobard 14y ago
  I used to SSH into my wife's Mac and asked her to come over if we are in different rooms :)

bpierre 14y ago

`open` is very convenient to… open things (see `man open`). Tip: `open .` opens the current directory in the Finder.

jasomill 14y ago
Another tip: open vnc://[user@]host[:port] connects as user to host on port with Screen Sharing, and, more generally, "open URL" works for any URL scheme registered with Launch Services, including, but not limited to, the obvious ones.

jasomill 14y ago

osascript of course: it lets you control the UI of Cocoa applications, and even more for scriptable ones: osascript -e 'tell application "Safari" to close every document ¬ whose url contains "news.ycombinator.com"' (¬, option-(lowercase L), is the AppleScript line continuation character)