Tom's wiki

macOS

Apple's Unix-like OS.

Launchd

https://www.launchd.info

A system and service manager for macOS (like systemd for Linux). Launchd services are called agents (user) and daemons (root). The launchctl command is used to interact with launchd.

Scripting

• Intro
• Official guide
• JXA documentation

Key remapping

With hidutil (builtin):

• https://hidutil-generator.netlify.app

With Karabiner-Elements (3rd party):

• https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/docs

Terminal

macOS-only tools:

• pbcopy: copy to system clipboard
• pbpase: paste from system clipboard
• open: open files and applications
• diskutil: manage disks and volumes
• caffeinate: prevent system from sleeping
• networkQuality: builtin speed test
• textutil: text file converter
• say: text-to-speech engine

Gatekeeper

Disable:

• Permanently: https://disable-gatekeeper.github.io
• Per app: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine <path/to/app>

⚠️ Warning
Quarantine stores information about downloads by all kinds of applications.

UTI

A Uniform Type Identifier is a unique string describing a file format, e.g. com.microsoft.word.doc for a Microsoft Word documents.

Get the UTI of a file:

mdls -name kMDItemContentType -name kMDItemKind path/to/file

💡 Hint
Use duti to set default applications for document types.

Misc

• Defaults: https://macos-defaults.com
• Hardening: https://www.bejarano.io/hardening-macos
• Safari bookmarks location: ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist

How to

Authenticate sudo with TouchID:

cd /etc/pam.d
sudo mv sudo_local.template sudo_local
## uncomment the last line

Enable Metal HUD:

launchctl setenv MTL_HUD_ENABLED 1