Tags » macos
TIL: Where does AirDrop save files on macOS?
Look in
/private/tmp
.TIL: Get video dimensions on macOS with built-in tools
If the video file is indexed by Spotlight, you can use
mdls
to get the width andheight
of a video file.TIL: Editing a filename in Finder will convert it to NFD
Even if the filename looks the same, it may be invisibly converted to a different sequence of bytes.
TIL: How can I work out what program is keeping a disk open?
Use
sudo lsof
and grep for the name of the disk you’re trying to eject.TIL: How to find all of Apple’s system icons
You need to look for files named
*.icns
inside any subdirectory ofCoreTypes.bundle
.Going between Finder and the Terminal
A few shell scripts I use to go between the Finder and the Terminal.
TIL: How to get the selected item in Finder using AppleScript
TIL: The
open
command can ask questionsIf you pass an argument that can’t be easily identified as a file or a URL,
open
will ask you what to do next. This may be a surprise if you were trying to use it in a script.TIL: Exclude files from Time Machine with
tmutil addexclusion
TIL: Run a script on macOS on a schedule using a LaunchAgent
TIL: Manage MP3 metadata from iTunes with eyed3
Snippets to manage albums in Photos.app
AppleScript only allows us to add photos to an album; dipping into Swift and PhotoKit lets us both add and remove photos.
Changing the macOS accent colour without System Preferences
Updating the accent colour everywhere, with immediate effect, using a script written in Swift.
Closing lots of Safari tabs with JXA
To help me keep my tab count down, I wrote a JXA script to close tabs that can easily be recreated.
A tale of two path separators
macOS allows both the slash and colon as path separators, and this caused me no small amount of confusion.
Programatically finding the original filename of a photo in the macOS Photos Library
If you’re looking at a UUID’d file in the PhotosLibrary package, how do you find its original filename?
How to ignore lots of folders in Spotlight
A script that allows me to ignore folders like “target” and “node_modules”, so they don’t appear in search results.
Using AppleScript to detect if a Safari window uses Private Browsing
Finding the app/process that’s using Secure Input
A Python script that shows me the name of processes that have Secure Input enabled.
An AppleScript to toggle Voice Control
Making it slightly easier for me to enable and disable Voice Control quickly.
Using qlmanage to create thumbnails on macOS
How you can invoke Quick Look on the command-line to generate high-quality thumbnails.
Getting a Markdown link to a window in Safari
Changing the accent colour of ICNS icons
Playing with macOS ICNS image files to create colourful new icons.
Using AppleScript to open a URL in Private Browsing in Safari
Finding the latest screenshot in macOS Mojave
Clearing disk space on OS X
A few tools and utilities I’ve been using to help clear disk space on my Mac.
Pretty printing JSON and XML in the shell
Export a list of URLs from Safari Reading List
A Python script for getting a list of URLs from Safari Reading List.