Tags » macos

The Mac operating system, previously known as “Mac OS X”. All of my computers are Macs, and these posts are about Mac-specific stuff.

• Create space-saving clones on macOS with Python

  You can shell out to cp -c using subprocess, or you can make a clonefile() syscall using the ctypes library.

• TIL: How to run a task on a schedule on macOS

  Create a LaunchAgent with a StartCalendarInterval or StartInterval that defines how often you want the task to run.

• 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 and height 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 of CoreTypes.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 questions

  If 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.