Category: macOS tips

The Help menu in complex applications

The Help menu in complex applications

People seem to ignore the Help menu, especially more advanced users. However, I’ll often see users of complex applications spend an inordinate amount of time hunting through menus and submenus looking for a particular option. Perhaps you want to know if there’s a keyboard shortcut for a command.

Let’s take a complex application like Pixelmator Pro. You want to add a mask to your document. You look in Insert, then Tools, and then Format and you finally find it in a submenu.

A simpler approach would be to open the Help menu and enter “mask” into the text field.

Hovering over any of the results will open the menu and highlight the menu item. Hitting Return will execute the menu command.

Note that Pixelmator has excellent help, but most applications don’t, so this can be every more valuable.

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Less frustrating hot corners

Less frustrating hot corners

Hot corners are pretty neat and I notice a lot of people using them to Show Desktop (especially), but also to lock the screen or enter one of the Mission Control modes. But I also run into people that hate that they accidentally activate hot corners too often and they eventually just turn it off. So this tip is special for a few reasons:

I’ve probably given it out more than almost any tip on here.
People have hugged me after I told them about this
It’s hiding in plain sight!

If you go to Mission Control preferences, there’s this bit of explanatory text at the bottom:

Even if you do read it, it’s not super obvious what the text even means. Now click on the Hot Corners button in the lower left and you’ll see something like this:

Then each of the 4 menus looks like this.

Bring up …

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Backing up iCloud Drive

Backing up iCloud Drive

Whether it be user error or a bug, it’s definitely possible to lose data on iCloud Drive. If you keep important data there, personal or otherwise, it’s important to know a few things:

While Apple does backup iCloud Drive, the frequency may not suit you. A restore may also overwrite other files you’ve changed since the last backup in an attempt to restore one file. Some network backup solutions don’t back up iCloud Drive so you may have to manually configure them to do so

Manual backups

Backing up iCloud Drive yourself is an option.

Time Machine DOES backup iCloud Drive. However, Time Machine’s backup schedule is not predetermined. However, it’s possible to turn off Time Machine and then manually back up using the tmutil command. I’ll be honest and say that I’ve found this route to be frustrating but maybe you’ll have better luck.

The crazy option

I have …

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Create a test file of a certain size

Create a test file of a certain size

There are a number of possible reasons you may want to create a file of a specific size. For example:

  • Testing upload/download speed (you may want a very large file, for example)
  • Testing edge conditions related to file size
  • Test the behavior of a mix of large and small files

Probably one of the least complicated UNIX utilities every written is called mkfile and is designed for this purpose. It’s super simple to use:

mkfile <size> <filename>

For size, you just use a number, suffixed by b(bytes), k(kilobytes), m(megabytes), g(gigabytes). So, a specific example:

mkfile 10g TenGigabyte.txt

This creates a 10 gigabyte file called TenGigabyte.txt.

The files will all just be zeroes, but for many purposes, this is fine.

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Quick open files of a certain type

Quick open files of a certain type

I’m not spending £19 an Alfred for just this one purpose, but for its seemingly endless uses that improve productivity. In this example, I’ll create a shortcut to open Xcode projects and workspaces.

Requirements

  • A utility application called Alfred
  • Purchasing the Powerpack for £19

Setup

  • Open Alfred Preferences
  • Click on Workflows
  • Click on the button at the bottom of the sidebar
  • Choose Templates > Files and Apps > File filter from keyword and open
  • Give it a name like “Open Xcode Project” and click OK
  • Double-click on File Filter
  • Enter “x” in the keyword field and uncheck “with space” (unchecked, this means the space is optional)
  • In the File Types field, click the button and navigate to an xcodeproj file
  • Optionally, do the same with an xcworkspace file

Optionally, you can click on the Search Scope tab and restrict the search to one or more directories.

Now, bring up Alfred
Type “xfoo” …

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Simple repeating command-line command

Simple repeating command-line command

Rather than write a script for something you may only need once, there’s an easy way to repeat a series of command-line commands. This works in bash and may in other shells:

while [ 1 ]; do <some command>; <some other command>; sleep <some delay in seconds>; done;

So, for example:

while [ 1 ]; do date; uptime; sleep 10; done;
This will generate:
Mon Mar 19 13:20:30 PDT 2018
13:20 up 1:23, 3 users, load averages: 3.25 3.87 3.51
Mon Mar 19 13:20:40 PDT 2018
13:20 up 1:24, 3 users, load averages: 3.31 3.86 3.51
Mon Mar 19 13:20:50 PDT 2018
13:20 up 1:24, 3 users, load averages: 5.44 4.30 3.67

Just use Ctrl-C to end.

Extra credit

Add a counter so that it runs 10 times only:

for n in $(seq 1 10); do date; uptime; sleep 10; done
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Flow control in bash

Flow control in bash

It seems like whenever I want to write an if-then or case statement in bash, I spent an hour searching the web and end up finding 12 different suggested ways of doing it. I try them all and maybe one of them works if I’m lucky.

I happened to find what I think is a really great reference for this that has been a great resource for me:

Bash Scripting Tutorial – 5. If Statements

Things like string comparisons, inspecting files, boolean operations, and nested flow control are some of the topics covered. Sure, there is the official bash documentation mentions this stuff, but it’s very terse and doesn’t provide good examples, if at all.

Having said all this, I highly recommend writing command-line tools in Swift:

Creating command-line tool in Swift

Not only will you be increasing your knowledge of Swift, it’s much more powerful, more easily debuggable, …

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Moderately advanced searching in Mail

Moderately advanced searching in Mail

Mail offers some moderately powerful searching but it’s not always super obvious. Here are a few really simple things you can do:

Put a search term in quotes (“the owls are not what they seem”) to search for a phrase. Group two tokens to do a simple AND (must be capitalized) search, like this:

Some more intermediate things you can do:

Use AND/OR with parentheses to construct a more complex query:

(macOS AND watchOS) OR Tennis

Eliminate a search term but using AND NOT (or a minus sign).

(macOS AND watchOS) -tvOS

Smart mailboxes

A clever but not heavily used way to hone searches is to create smart mailboxes that match criteria that you often search for as part of a more complex search. For example, let say you often search for various terms in messages only written by yourself. If you create a smart mailbox of messages from yourself, …

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Shell aliases

Shell aliases

Shell aliases are woefully underused. Painfully, I frequently see people do the following:

  • Type a shell command with the same 4 arguments cd into the same folders
  • ssh into the same machines or devices
  • Run the same sequence of commands

Aliases are super easy. Just open your ~/.bashrc file (or equivalent) and start adding them. I’ll now give a bunch of examples I use.

“ls” command

I have many variations I use on the “ls” command. I don’t even remember what the arguments mean anymore because I’ve been using these shortcuts for so long.

# default arguments I like
alias l='ls -AG' 

# Long listing
alias ll='ls -aAlGh'

# Do a grep afterwards (My most often used)
alias lg='ls -AlGOh@ | grep -i '

# Newest files at bottom (My second most often used)
alias lt='ls -AltrGhu' 

# Largest files at bottom
alias lz='ls -AlGrhS' 

# Extended attributes
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Xcode nuclear option

Xcode nuclear option

If you’ve ever had a bizarre problem in Xcode and you’ve given up hope, this post is for you. Some frustrating things you might see:

  • Breakpoints stop working
  • A framework or library can’t be found that the compiler found moments ago
  • Symbols in linked frameworks are no longer found
  • This is not a comprehensive list.

I wrote this script a decade ago and in this frustrating moments, I run it, and go get a refreshing beverage while my computer reboots. It’s kind of unbelievable how often this has saved me. Maybe it will help you at least once in your life.

Note: Read the script first as it deletes your caches and DerivedData folder. It shouldn’t be a problem but you should be aware what it’s doing.

#!/bin/zsh

rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData 

#edit this to point to your DerivedData folder
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/*Xcode*

sudo find /var/folders -iname xcode -exec mv \{\}
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