Customizing Your macOS Experience with Command-Line Tweaks

Introduction macOS offers a beautiful and user-friendly interface out of the box, but did you know that you can further enhance your experience by customizing it with command-line tweaks? In this article, we will explore some useful command-line tweaks that can help you personalize your macOS experience.

1. Customizing Terminal The Terminal app is a powerful tool for accessing the command-line interface in macOS. Here are a few tweaks to enhance your Terminal experience:

• Changing the default shell: macOS uses the Bash shell by default, but you can switch to zsh or another shell of your choice. Open Terminal, go to Preferences, and change the "Shells open with" option.

• Customizing the prompt: You can tweak the appearance of your Terminal prompt by modifying the PS1 environment variable. Add your desired prompt customizations to your shell's configuration file (.bashrc or .zshrc).

• Adding aliases and functions: Shortcuts in the form of aliases and functions can save you time and typing. You can define them in your shell's configuration file to make them available every time you start Terminal.

2. Managing macOS Defaults macOS has numerous system defaults that can be modified using the defaults command. Here are a few examples:

• Customizing the Dock: You can change the size, position, and animation of the Dock using defaults write com.apple.dock. For example, to set the icon size to 48 pixels, use: defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -int 48.

• Enabling hidden features: macOS has many hidden features that you can enable using the defaults command. For instance, you can show hidden files in Finder by running defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true.

3. Tweaking Finder Finder is the default file manager on macOS, and you can customize its behavior with command-line tweaks as well:

• Showing file extensions: By default, Finder hides file extensions. You can force Finder to always show file extensions by running defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleShowAllExtensions -bool true.

• Setting the default folder for new Finder windows: You can change the default folder that appears when you open a new Finder window. Use defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTarget -string "PfDe" followed by the desired folder's path.

4. Enhancing Safari If you are a Safari user, there are some command-line tweaks that can enhance your browsing experience:

• Enabling the debug menu: The debug menu in Safari provides access to additional features and settings. Enable it by running defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu -bool true.

• Disabling auto-play for videos: Safari automatically plays videos on websites, but you can disable this feature with defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitMediaPlaybackAllowsInline -bool false.

Conclusion By leveraging command-line tweaks, you can customize your macOS experience to match your preferences and increase your productivity. From customizing Terminal to tweaking Finder and Safari, these tweaks allow you to personalize various aspects of your macOS workflow. So, go ahead and explore the power of command-line customization and make your macOS experience truly your own!

Note: Before making any changes, always remember to backup your system and use caution when modifying system defaults.