Quick tip for developers who use OS X | Hacker News Reader

Quick tip for developers who use OS X

1,145 pointsgargarplex395 comments

OSX Terminal: hold option and click a position in the current line to move your cursor to that position. #yearslost

Bash, running in your terminal, understands both the Emacs and the Vi commands. By default is Emacs, so you can C-a (control-a) for beginning of line, C-p to go back in command line history, or C-r to search it.

I prefer the Vi mode, though. Add to your .bashrc

set -o vi

Then you can press escape to go from input mode to normal mode; there k will take you to the previous line in command line history, j to the next line, ^ and $ to the beginning and end of the line, /something will search something back.

Editing is really fast; move by words with w (forward) and b (backward), do cw to replace a word, r to replace a letter, i to go back to input. It will remember the last editing command, just as Vi, and repeat it when you press . in normal mode.

I use these settings in my .inputrc. The get me a few more commands and even the ability to escape using jj.

    set completion-ignore-case On
    set bell-style none
    set editing-mode vi

    $if mode=vi
      set keymap vi-command
      "gg": beginning-of-history
      "G": end-of-history
      set keymap vi-insert
      "jj": vi-movement-mode
      "\C-p": history-search-backward

>set completion-ignore-case On

Thanks. Keeping track of whether certain directories were capitalized or not has been unnecessarily occupying my mental bandwidth for years.

Is there a functional difference between putting...

    set editing-mode vi

... in one's inputrc and...

    set -o vi

... in one's .bashrc?

I realize that .inputrc is the config file for Readline, and .bashrc is essentially a start-up file for Bash. But is it ever necessary to use both snippets?

Thanks for this. I switched my input mode to VI and was greatly missing using Ctrl-L to clear the screen when in input mode. I hadn't known about the inputrc before. Adding this line below your "\C-p" line fixed that for me:

    "\C-l": clear-screen

I've been wanting to use 'jj' to enter normal mode on the command line for some time. This solution actually didn't work for me, but adding the following to my .zshrc did:

  bindkey -M viins 'jj' vi-cmd-mode

Very cool, does anyone know a way to set a visual indicator (diff cursor?) when in edit mode?

> set completion-ignore-case

works well with "\t": menu-complete

But I had to delete this entry. I need the case to differentiate between which path I really wanted :(

C-a : beginning line, C-e end line, alt+f forward word (unless system shortcut for file menu), alt+b back word, C-k kill line, C-b back char, C-f forward char.

At least in my current setup, C-w yank and C-y paste works as well.

Immensely helpful. Sometimes at+left/right does forward/ back word depending on the terminal emu.

Note most of these keystrokes are valid in nano as well.

- C-u to kill (cut) from current location to beginning of the line

- C-k to kill (cut) from current location to end of line

- C-w to kill (cut) from current location to beginning of word

- C-y to paste (copied / cut) lines

- C-l to clear screen (I use the shit out of this)

- Ctrl + shift + '-' (holding ctrl, shift, minus at the same time), for undo.

That is it.

EDIT: Damn it, I didn't realize I was saying a bunch of the same things as you did.

EDIT2 Thanks oinksoft for clearing up C-u and C-w.

It's worth noting that that the C-w/C-k/C-y yank ring is a distinct buffer from the system Cmd+X/C/V pasteboard.

That way, you can have two different things on your clipboard without having to use a fancy clipboard manager. (Or, alternatively, you can be confused why the thing you're pasting isn't the thing you thought you copied last.)

http://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/readline/readline.html

These work in most GUI inputs as well.

you can also go into visual mode (at least in vi mode).. pressing esc then v will launch your default editor with the current command in the buffer; saving an exiting runs the command; very useful for long commands and/or iterating

bash/emacs has C-x C-e to open up the command in a editor.

Agreed, this was the reason for me to learn my first emacs shortcuts. Also, the option+click thing doesn't work in iTerm, so unfortunately it doesn't help me but -side note- it's amazing that after years of using OS X I can still discover small productivity features like this, and I think it stands for the thoughtfulness of the people behind it.

you sure? it works for me in iterm2

To get

  [NORMAL]

on the right side of the terminal like in Vim, I put this in my .zshrc file:

  function zle-line-init zle-keymap-select {
      VIM_PROMPT="%{$fg_bold[yellow]%} [% %{$reset_color%}NORMAL%{$fg_bold[yellow]%}]%  %{$reset_color%}"
      RPS1="${${KEYMAP/vicmd/$VIM_PROMPT}/(main|viins)/} $EPS1"
      zle reset-prompt
  }

Is there a bash version of that? I don't care about where it is too much.

I started using vi mode recently. The only thing that I really miss are ci and di commands.

ci and di aren't commands. c and d are operators and the i is part of the motion--specifically, text objects.

> Then you can press escape [..]

Don't forget Ctrl-[ instead of Esc. I find that more quick, especially with Ctrl in place of CapsLk. :)

I just realized you can use some of these Emacs commands in the Chrome browser address bar (not sure about others).

Most text inputs in Mac OS support at least C-a and C-e too.

great tip. on my system i added it to .bash_profile.

zsh also has these modes.

I you tried Evil-mode, i actually using Emacs with this, now i got the power of emacs with the efficiency of Vi in one place.

Depends on how much of Vi/Vim you use. IIRC, Evil-mode doesn't implement everything.

Another really useful command is the open

    $ open filename.png
    $ open .
    $ open -e filename.txt
    $ open -a Pixen filename.png

The first command will open the file with the default application.

Open . will open the current directory in finder, which I find very helpful.

The -e flag will open the file in textedit.

The -a will open the file in the given application name.

Under Linux there is a similar command: xdg-open

or gnome-open.

On Windows the equivalent is start (e.g. start C:\ )

I use start all the time, but also frequently curse at its stupid argument grammar and its interaction with auto-quoting on auto-completion. For example, type

  start C:\Doc

Next, hit tab to get

  start "C:\Documents and Settings"

Now, hit return, and watch a new command window open with title "C:\Documents and Settings".

Reason? If the first argument is a quoted string, it is used as the title of the window being opened (http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/..., http://stackoverflow.com/questions/154075/using-the-dos-star...)

If you ever use start in batch scripts, pass a dummy first argument of ""

For the lazy:

  $ echo "alias o='xdg-open'" >> ~/.bashrc

open -n is also useful: Allows you to run two instances of the same app at a time.

Thank you for this! It always frustrated me that I couldn't open multiple videos at once in VLC.

Try "open -h NSString.h"...

Also very useful for similar use cases is qlmanage.

    $ qlmanage -p <file>

This seems to run whatever code usually runs when you hit [space] on a filename in a Finder window. (Except that it outputs a bunch of debugging information.) Under what circumstances is that any better or more useful than "open"?

Correct (man 1 qlmanage). Depending on the type of file, it is usually faster to open quicklook than opening the file in its default application, especially if you just want to take a look and you don’t actually need to edit the file.

You can hide the debugging info by redirecting the output streams.

    $ qlmanage -p <file> &>/dev/null

Because it essentially acts like quick look for the terminal.

After making the switch to OS X in the last couple years after living in Linux and Windows before that, I think it's objective to say that keyboard shortcuts in OS X are much worse in both ease of use and consistency across applications.

Sorry, but this is laughable. Keyboard shortcuts are far more useful and consistent across applications in OS X. I'm failing to understand how you could form this opinion...which shortcuts / programs don't meet your expectations?

I guess I can sum this up by saying OS X has an additional modifier key than Windows, so you basically have 33% more power right out of the gate. The "Windows Key" is nearly useless.

And OS X doesn't steal Control for menu shortcuts. Control-V (literal) is not the same as Command-V (paste), Control-Z (suspend) is not the same as Command-Z (undo), and so on.

X Window software used to get this right, too; Unix workstations generally had another modifier (e.g. Meta, diamond on Suns) since they knew better than to hijack keys people would type in a terminal. It's only the this-is-finally-the-year-of-Linux-on-the-desktop crowd slavishly imitating Microsoft's mistakes that screwed it up.

> Sorry, but this is laughable. Keyboard shortcuts are far more useful and consistent across applications in OS X.

I don't agree with this at all.

I find it baffling that a company of great designers made such bad decisions about keyboard shortcuts.

Perhaps they are consistent, but they are consistently bad.

Paste and match style (incredibly useful) is "alt-shift-command-v" i.e. four keys. There are plenty of other shortcuts that also require four keys. Four is too many. Three is too many for such an important function. This is absurd.

Using shortcuts in IDEs is a nightmare on most apple keyboard. e.g. Intellij, to run your program: alt-shift-f10. This is daft in itself, but it actually translates to function-alt-shift-f10 on many keyboards. Yes, you can change your settings, but then you could remap all your keys in any O/S. Miss the function key and you've just muted your volume.

I have no interest in slagging Apple off; I use their products almost exclusively, but this is obviously an area where they messed up. I'd love to see this fixed, although I understand why they probably won't.

I couldn't agree with you more! I used to be (a long time ago) a avid Windows user, and scoffed at Mac's. I then got into the publishing world where everything is Mac. The keyboard shortcuts are by far much more consistent and easier on OS X. I am scratching my head wondering how anyone could ever come up with a different conclusion, the difference is night and day.

Not to mention that the Mac community also pioneered keyboard driven launchers and Linguistic user interfaces like launchbar -> quicksilver -> Alfred. Even though I put a lot of effort into learning windows keyboard shortcuts it always frustrated me how difficult it was to use windows in situations where I didn't have a mouse, while I'd barely notice the same situation with a Mac.

However, the way to access the menu is dumb. Ctrl-F2? Why not Alt-<letter> like Windows?

And such dumb commands within the menus! eg. Xcode show debug area: cmd-shift-y, continue: ctrl-cmd-y; these seem stupid to me, but probably because they have repurposed the Fn keys (F1-F19) to show expose etc. instead of having real function key behaviour, and probably because some function keys are missing from the tiny wireless keyboards...

To be fair, I am perfectly used to both of them but moving from OS to OS was a horrible learning curve to begin with!

I would say that keyboard shortcuts are consistently bad across OSX but I am perfectly used to them :-)

I mostly agree with you, with the exception of Final Cut Pro... Its keyboard layout to OSX's is like Finnish to Samoan.

After switching to OS X after spending years using Windows and then Linux, I found it patently the case that the keyboard shortcuts in OS X are much better in both ease of use and consistency across applications.

The use of the Command key and a bunch of standard shortcuts using it are particularly notable.

#notsoobjective

After switching to OS X after spending years using Windows and then Linux, I found it patently the case that the keyboard shortcuts in OS X are much better than Windows and much worse than Linux in both ease of use and consistency across applications.

After using OS X for a few months, I weep every time I use the commandline on Windows.

There's just no reason for Windows to be that bad.

Did you try Powershell?

I tend to find the opposite to be true.

C-a is always "beginning of line" and Command-C is always Copy.

and never the twain shall meet.

(I've had issues in linux going from terminal to windows, in fact very recently I kept ^W'ing while in GUI mode)

Not sure if I'm falling for sarcasm, or just an outlier for feeling the exact opposite...

Same (and to be clear, this is from someone who only "switched" to OS X a few years ago because of the demands of my user community: and for the first year I hated it, as I liked neither the hardware nor OS X 10.5). So, to add some concrete-ness: what fundamentally makes OS X better at this is the way the command key is used; almost everything that has to do with the UI or the system is bound to the command key, which means that control and option are free for usage by my terminal. I thereby never run into any confusion using ctrl-c to copy something or alt-tab to switch between windows: command means nothing to my terminal, and control and option get bound to control and alt (not the default in Terminal, but its one checkbox to fix), passed to whatever actual application I'm running. On both Windows and Linux the control and alt keys tend to overlap in usage between graphical and console applications, meaning the graphical terminal I'm using invariably has some confusing overlap with the keyboard commands I might want to send to my console app. (Now, there are some unfortunate defaults in Terminal with relation to page up/down and home/end, but those are both easily fixed--a few minutes of setup before sitting down--and somewhat irrelevant as any one who even remotely cares about using a terminal should have installed iTerm2 forever ago.) (Ironically and relevantly, the reason Terminal has irritating defaults is specifically because Apple has actually been really good about having keyboard shortcuts be consistent across every application: they want option, page up, and home to do the exact same things in Terminal that it would do in any other app, even to the extent to which those behaviors are useless and counter-productive when you are actually just trying to use vim/emacs and bash/zsh like a normal person ;P.)

Why would you even put the word "objective" in there, especially without providing any arguments? What's the point? To rile people up?

Besides totally disagreeing with you; are you aware that you can always bind you own shortcuts to any menu item via System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts ?

It's especially painful if a Mac is not your primary development environment but you need to hack on one occasionally. I can have a familiar terminal or a familiar desktop but cannot have both simultaneously and there's no way to train myself to use the command key due to frequency.

Not just keyboard shortcuts, but straight out keys (e.g. Page up / Page down)

Cmd + Arrow keys. Simple.

Fn+up/down and Fn+left/right are easier to use and just make much more conceptual space to me than the PgUp/PgDown/Home/End key blob.

I wouldn't call it objective, but I've been using osx exclusively for 3 years now and shortcuts still come slower than windows, primarily because on windows I can press control and any key using just one hand by using my pinky for the control key.

I've found that lots of Windows converts haven't learned to use a thumb to hold the command key instead of a finger. Much easier to chord that way and you don't need to leave home position. It's easier for me than pinky-control since I have more dexterity in my thumbs.

Remap capslock to control.

I have to agree. I fought with it a while, looking for third party utilities to fill the void, but eventually I realized it was more trouble than it was worth and gave up. I guess I got used to it, because I don't even miss them any more.

If you want to change command key-centric menu shortcuts for a program, you can do that in the keyboard pane of system prefs.

Generally speaking, OS X is amazingly bad at all things UI given how good it is.

Examples? If you don't get on with the OS X UI then there is little help left for you.

Useful when copy/pasting things to share with other people in email and such:

    $ pbpaste | pbcopy

takes the current contents of the copy/paste buffer and removes color/font/background color rich formatting and puts just plain text back into the paste buffer.

And of course pbcopy and pbpaste are also very useful on their own.

You can also use shift-option-cmd-v to directly paste without markup :)

I can never remember which combination that is, but thanks.

You can override any key combination using the Keyboard preferences.

Just make a new shortcut under the All Applications group named exactly the same as the one you want to replace. http://i.imgur.com/JqBncTy.png

I've also had to add an entry for "Paste as Quotation" because that's Mail's default use of Command-V.

Quite a lot of OS X applications support pasting with matching style (Cmd+Shift+V), which does exactly the same thing.

Actually, natch's trick does just the opposite. It strips out any formatting information that may accompany the text on the clipboard.

I've used the same trick on occasion when copying text from web pages into Gmail. When you paste such text into a Gmail draft, Gmail tries to duplicate the format of the original, which is often not what you want. pbpaste | pbcopy solves the problem nicely.

Edit: But Shift-Option-Cmd-V is easier. Thanks, Janteh!

Be warned, though, that these do not work inside of a tmux session without special steps being taken. I believe that they work in screen, but tmux requires some additional work.

You have to install "reattach-to-user-namespace" which you can do with homebrew.

Then you need to add the following to .tmux.conf

  set-option -g default-command "reattach-to-user-namespace -l zsh"

There's a good writeup on what and why here, https://github.com/ChrisJohnsen/tmux-MacOSX-pasteboard/blob/...

Sweet! To take it to the next level:

pbpaste |sed 's/FIND/REPLACE/g' | pbcopy

Maybe make this into a script you can run from alfred. ;)

Also if you want to have access to pbcopy remotely, try this:

http://evolvingweb.ca/blog/exposing-your-clipboard-over-ssh

I use Plain Clip (http://www.bluem.net/en/mac/plain-clip/) for this. It also gives you optional text processing steps (e.g., remove all trailing whitespace) which are super useful.

This command has immediately become an alias in my .profile.

Nobody seems to have posted this yet:

    python -m SimpleHTTPServer

I'd recommend an alias like "serve". It basically puts the current directory online (binds to 0.0.0.0:8000).

  python -m smtpd -n -c DebuggingServer localhost:25

A makeshift SMTP server that logs all messages to the console.

It does not support large files, so sometimes I have to fall back to https://npmjs.org/package/http-server (npm -g install http-server .. then just run http-server /path)

similarly, you can get a janky json pretty printer by doing:

   curl -s http://some/json/url | python -m json.tool

When your needs stretch beyond that, try 'jq'. http://stedolan.github.io/jq/

For pretty-printing without modification,

    cat myjson | jq '.'

Am I wrong to have long dismissed this as little more than an easter egg, or, at best, a toy server to test basic webpage functionality?

Yes. It's like a ghetto SCP for giving files to people on windows who don't have SCP. You can use it for basic web functionality, you can use it (carefully) as a mechanism for testing or serving test results. I wouldn't keep it running for days, but it's an amazingly useful tool.

I use it quite a lot to move files between my computers, stream content to my phone, test out web designs. I suppose it's like net cat, it's useful for some. I think "toy server" is fairly accurate, I can't see anyone using this in production but I can't see people installing nginx on their laptops either.

The only problem it really solves is if you've got non-relative paths in your HTML/CSS. I've used this a couple of times in those situations.

Our build process automatically generates a directory tree of HTML-formatted unit test coverage reports. Sometimes it's nice to be able to share links to those reports in a code review. I use python SimpleHTTPServer for that.

Depends on what you're developing. If you're doing single page apps that get their data from an external service then this is incredibly useful.

Or for Python3: python -m http.server .

Or Ruby: ruby -run -e httpd .

Mind blown. Thanks!

A new one for me I accidentally found the other day..

If you use Spotlight to find something and then want to see the file in Finder, Cmd+click the item in the Spotlight dropdown.

Edited from Cmd+shift+click due to note in child comment :-)

isn't it just Cmd+click ?

In Mavricks (only one I can be sure of) when you hover over spotlight results and hold Cmd, you get a (quite nice) file preview/info.

Oh hey, so it is, even better! :)

yes.

Cmd + R is universally "Reveal in Finder".

First thing I install on a Mac is Alfred. Check it out. `space` followed by name searches directories and files.

You can also use Cmd + Return.

Under Konsole/Yakuake (KDE) its: Contextmenu -> Open Link

oo! As long as we're sharing our favourite terminal tips, here's mine: In your .bash_profile, add this line:

alias imgsz='sips -g pixelWidth -g pixelHeight'

sips stands for "scriptable image processing system"[1], and provides terminal users with a toolset for inspecting and manipulating images. The alias above is really useful for web developers who need a quick look at how big a given image is:

    $ imgsz logo.png
    /path/to/logo.png
    pixelWidth: 500
    pixelHeight: 120

[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin...

thank you!

happy to help!

Lovely, thanks. Also, is it common knowledge that CMD+click on a URL opens that URL in your default browser? Useful for the "Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/" messages.

Nice tip, thanks. However, it only works with double-click for me.

That's in iTerm, I think. In Terminal.app, it's CMD+double-click.

The first thing I do when setting up a new Mac is make the Caps Lock key into another Control key.

System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys

Saves lots of awkward pinky-bending.

I go one step further and bind it to Hyper (ctrl+alt+cmd), and use hyper for tiling window management, like "snap window top left of screen grid", etc.

https://github.com/lunixbochs/reslate

Just the fact that you can disable Caps Lock is a sanity-saver: thank you!

Is it me or do Mac Caps Lock keys require you to hold them down for close to a second for them to activate? There appears to be some kind of hardware timer in them to work...?

I noticed this coming from Windows and Linux on other keyboards where tapping Caps Lock works but on Mac OSX with an Apple keyboard or on a Macbook you have to make a real deliberate effort to keep the key down longer than a nanosecond for it to register.

Is it just me who has noticed this?

I noticed this on the lock screen. Often you'd have to tap multiple times on caps lock before it even turns on. I assume it's to prevent accidental caps locking, but it can be rather irritating

It's not just you. I think it is to prevent accidentally toggling it when going for tab.

I did this on my Mac a few years back and do it on Windows machine at work. I also use Hotkeys to swap alt and ctl to match my Mac.

I have tried to use Terminal, but I just can't. The ability to highlight and automatically have the text in clipboard is such a crucial feature in my workflow that not having it even as an option is a deal breaker.

Once I started with iTerm and built a config/flow around it, I can't go back.

Thanks for the tip though! I didn't realize this worked in Terminal too. I'll keep it in mind the next time I'm forced to use it.

Check out TotalTerminal. It's a plugin for Terminal that has that feature among others. http://totalterminal.binaryage.com

Same here. Switched to iTerm for proper mouse support in Vim, and you need only click (no option key) to move your cursor in Vim if you have `mouse=a` in your vimrc.

I used to be a die-hard Terminal.app user but with Mavericks it felt incredibly sluggish doing everything from opening to listing files to editing things and this is another reason I moved to iTerm.

Be warned, though, that if you're using Vim with Solarized you and you're trapped in low color mode you want to be sure you're declared as a 256 color term and update your `vimrc` to remove the following for the colorscheme to work properly:

Remove:

* let g:solarized_termcolors = 256

* let g:solarized_termtrans = 1

* let g:solarized_contrast = "normal"

* let g:solarized_visibility = "normal"

I added mouse support to Terminal via MouseTerm: https://bitheap.org/mouseterm/. Works like a charm with Vim.

Command-shift-v pastes the current selection into Terminal (and anywhere else in OSX).

This works if whatever is currently running in your terminal has support for the XTerm mouse escape sequences.

Option-click is the shortcut to tell the terminal to forward the click to the application running in the terminal. That's usually your shell or some editor.

I seem to faintly remember that at some point this was actually configurable and you could configure the terminal to forward non-option-clicks and only enable selection mode on option clicks. I didn't find this option in current iTerm or Terminal.app versions though - I might just be imagining this.

I can confirm that this works with VIM and nano

Nother related tip: command + click on a file in iTerm opens it up. Test it out by doing ls -al then cmd+click on file name.

Osx terminal uses almost all of the emacs movement keys by default. Ctrl-a and ctrl-e are useful but I find the meta movement keys to be the most helpful. (usually alt or ESC)

Meta-f jump forward a word

Meta-b jump backwards a word

It's not emacs, it's GNU Readline (or likely some BSD readline given apple and the GPL) http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html.

The shortcuts also work in every text field in the OS.

Terminal may be using some kind of Readline, I dunno. But text objects in other OS X applications use emacs keybindings because NeXTSTEP has had them since time immemorial. Like 1990 or so. Doesn't have anything to do with GNU Readline so far as I know.

> Terminal may be using some kind of Readline

Terminal.app passes the key sequences to the application running inside of the terminal. The default shell (bash) uses GNU readline, which has an emacs-mode and a vi-mode (emacs is the default).

Terminal.app does not use any Cocoa text fields, so has nothing to do with the Emacs keybindings inherited from NeXTSTEP.

It's not Terminal that uses it; it's bash, and most shells that imitate bash.

IIRC, someone mentioned to me once that bash doesn't link against libreadline, but uses libreadline (the source is directly in the Bash repo), so it's possible that it's using GNU readline, while Apple's libreadline is a BSD flavour.

It at least used to be the case that GNU Readline was GPL-licensed, instead of LGPL, as to make readline a "carrot" to encourage GPL adoption. That shouldn't be an issue for bash, which is also GPL licensed.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting here.

It's up to the process running in Terminal.app to support the key sequences sent to it. I doubt that M-f would work if your shell (bash, zsh, etc) were in Vi-mode rather than the default of Emacs-mode.

That's bash. Works on all platforms, all terminals, as long as bash has been compiled with readline.

Two more (for Bash) -

Ctrl-x, Ctrl-e will pop open your EDITOR so you can edit the command. Saving and closing the editor brings the command back in your terminal and automatically executes it.

fc will bring up your EDITOR with the last typed command. (You can use fc -l to see a list of commands)

damn.. thats the real #yearslost for me. I should have focused on learning that instead of the wordback/forward commands.

Whoa! I actually like this better than setting vi mode on terminal.

Genius! That's going to save me so much time. :-) #yearslost

Also useful is Apple's support doc listing of keyboard shortcuts. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343

Two more tips:

* Ctrl-a to go to beginning of line

* Ctrl-e to go to end of line

I love how osx supports emacs key-bindings by default for any text field.

I miss this feature a lot when I switch back to windows. I find myself pressing ctrl-n in my browser's address bar, expecting to view my URL history, and instead I get a new windows.

If anyone knows of a way to get similar functionality in windows, I would love to hear about it!

Cltr + D to focus on address bar. Alt + down arrow to view history.

A couple more:

* ⌘ + ` (tilde key) to switch between different windows of your current application

* ⌘ + l (lowercase L) in most web browsers to highlight the address bar

I'm always telling people about ⌘ + `, it makes navigating windows on OSX so easy.

The former is the one thing I missed the most from my OSX days...until I got a tiling WW setup (i3).

Woohoo, love me some Linux, let choice reign ;-)

to piggyback off of this... (not sure if this is in the thread already)

⌘ + ` to switch between different windows of current application

⌘ + SHIFT + ` to switch between different windows of current application (reverse order)

same for the general application switcher:

⌘ + TAB to switch between different windows of current application

⌘ + SHIFT + TAB to switch between different windows of current application (reverse order)

A lot of the Emacs shortcuts work in OS X (most of the system) as well as on Linux (bash and other users of readline).

The basic Emacs key-bindings should work in all Cocoa apps. For instance, the URL bar of your web browser, while text editing in just about any editor (maybe even in Office, but I have not tired in a while), etc. Basically, anywhere you have a cursor, the basic line-editing key bindings should work.

So, in practical terms, this means you have 1 + n clipboards[1]. The main global GUI clipboard (using the command key), and then an app-specific clipboard (using the control key with Emacs bindings). As a developer, it is extremely helpful to have two clipboards in TextMate, for instance.

[1] Technically, the clipboard in OS X maintains a history (not sure what the limit is), but the OS X GUI only exposes the last cut/copied item.

I use Vim and was unaware that this shortcut existed. Are there any other Emacs shortcuts which are useful in OSX?

Because crappy Macs have no Home/End keys (or they don't work as such).

ctrl-arrow (which breaks with Lion's Spaces default keys), or shift Home/End in Terminal.

It's not that Macs are crappy, they just have different key bindings. I regularly work with Macs, Windows, and Linux for development and I've just learned to use the different key mappings.

I don't think I'm quite as proficient in any one system because of that, though. For example, I have avoided learning the Emacs key bindings for use in Mac/Terminal. (I don't want to try to remember TWO bindings for Mac, plus I learned vim first so usually avoid Emacs.)

On most macs, Fn + left/right arrow are home/end. Fn + up/down are pageup/pagedown.

Yup: http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rluserman.html#...

This was life changing when a co-worker showed me this last year.

mdfind to get Spotlight results in shell.

Also, iTerm is a great Terminal replacement, if you haven't tried it.

I wanted to like iTerm, but lack of restoring sessions (pwd, history) was a deal breaker.

Use mdfind in emacs as your locate command:

(when (eq system-type 'darwin) (setq locate-command "mdfind"))

mdfind is awesome!

iTerm does not support OP's tip though.

Does for me.

iTerm 2.0 Build 1.0.0.20140112 (latest version)

I noticed the same thing, but after updating to most recent version it worked.

Just tried it, yes it does.

Increase or decrease volume by small increments: alt + shift + volume up / volume down or brightness up / brightness down. Also Alfred and Shortcat app.

I would lose years if I used the mouse in the terminal..

To cut & paste files in Finder - use Cmd + C, then Cmd + Option + V.

Thank you very much. Have been looking for this shortcut for eons. Made my Day :)

OSX also features a lot of neat trackpad multitouch commands that some might not be aware of (my Windows trackpad doesn't understand multitouch.)

Two fingers: up/down: scroll up/down, left/right: forward/back in some browsers (such as Chrome)

Three fingers: up/down: show/hide a list of applications/desktops; left/right: switch desktops one at a time.

Five fingers together/apart: show/hide desktop

Before I discovered these, I was confused why I would occasionally see the forward/back arrow in the browser for a short period of time, not realizing that it showed because I happened to use a couple of fingers to move the mouse cursor.

http://www.boastr.net/

you can add tons of additional trackpad shortcuts too, as well as keyboard shortcuts.

The OP tip is nice to have built-in now. If I recall correctly, this was an option that had to be turned on in Terminal Preferences in earlier releases.

Another fave of mine: Ctrl-w for deleting whole "words" at a time. Better than holding that delete key down.

The default shell for OS X appears to be bash (my favorite shell as a Linux user as well).

Just google for Bash shortcuts. Here's a place to start: http://teohm.github.io/blog/2012/01/04/shortcuts-to-move-fas...

via http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/5435/got-any-tips-o...

Great link, I spent a good while digging through there when I first found it. My favorite is using mdfind to leverage Spotlight for file search. Results come up instantly.

thanks for posting the source, a lot of these tweets and posts about #yearslost don't reference it.

You can also CMD+click and drag (or double click as long as it's not a URL, which will open) to add to the text selection (like multiple cursors in Sublime Text 2).

Also, Option+click and drag gives you column selection mode.

If you'd rather not use the mouse, the fc command will open the last-executed command on vim (this is configurable, I suppose), saving and exiting the file executes the command!

Works even when you are ssh-ed into a remote machine! Nice.

yep. I tried it myself thinking it wouldn't. wow.

Source: https://twitter.com/blackjack75/status/422036078540103681

More tips linked in above tweet: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/5435/got-any-tips-...

So I see a lot of comments in this thread about OSX has a much cleaner interpretation of Command-C vs Ctrl-C in Linux. Actually, the problem is that you should NOT be using ctrl-c to copy in linux. the global copy command in Linux obeys the CUA [1] standard. Copy is defined to be "Ctrl-Insert" and paste is defined as "Shift-Insert". This will work on all kinds of user interfaces on Linux - including the cmdline, the browser, etc.

However this is an issue which I dont know is a bug or something (I'm on Ubuntu 12.04) - if you open "System Settings" in Ubuntu and copy text from there, I'm not able to paste it on the browser, but am able to paste it everywhere else using the command sequence described above.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access

Type "set -o vi" on your bash, and you can edit your commands with the vi shortcuts.

Works in iTerm too.

Not for me. Option-clicking produces no result for me on iTerm 1.0.0.20130319.

I tested it in iTerm 2 Build 1.0.0.20131228, where it works. It must be a recent addition.

Works fine in iTerm2 1.0.0.20140112

Nope, this doesn't work in iTerm.

Which version of iTerm are you using?

Most useful thing I've seen all day - thanks!

I wish there was a way to make the mouse cursor stand out more when (and only when) it's over the terminal. Maybe it's because I use a dark terminal background, I can hardly ever see the thing.

There's a system wide setting to make the cursor huge, but I don't want a huge cursor everywhere. And there's a terminal preference to make the insertion cursor different, but that's a different cursor, not the mouse cursor.

When do I want to see the mouse cursor? It's useful for things like highlighting a git hash or a few lines of text for copy/paste.

in windows theres something where you can press controll and it will shoot circles out from your mouse which is pretty useful, not sure if there is anything like that in osx

There are a few options for cursor highlighting here: http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/12/3-ways-to-make-the-mac-os-x-c...

drag + drop files to terminal to get its location.

I often do "cd " + dragon drop folder to get to that folder in terminal

There's a free app called Go2Shell that adds a button to finder to open the current directory in Terminal/iTerm. Also works great in conjunction with "open ."

You can drag/drop many things onto an application icon in the dock to open them in a new window.

This includes dragging a folder's proxy icon to the terminal app to open the current Finder window in a new terminal.

The proxy icon is the little icon in the top middle of the window, to the left of the name.

Wow, so simple but so useful. Thanks!

I'm a bit late, but it's useful to know that while dragging, keystrokes are handled normally. Using the parent comment's operation as an example, you can start dragging a folder in the Finder, then Command-Tab to the terminal (or hover over the Dock icon and then hover over the proxy window), Command-` to a particular terminal window, or Command-N to open a new one, and then type "cd " before finally dropping the file. ("cd " is nicely left-handed for those using the right hand for the pointing device.)

Off-topic, but related: does anyone know a way to bind a key, and F-key for example, to a particular application in OSX? The behavior I'm looking for is almost achievable with Spaces - but it's basically when you hit the combo from anywhere, the target application comes to the foreground, or if it's not running, it launches.

Command-Tab is fine and dandy, but I want more stability in my application switching. And if it doesn't exist, I may have to dust off XCode like I've been threatening to do for a while now.

As it wasn't mentioned yet: pushd / popd

These two commands replace 'cd' and work with a directory stack of different paths.

   $ pushd tmp   # cd to tmp and remember current path /
   /tmp /
   $ pwd
   /tmp
   $ cd /usr   # normal cd to wherever you want...
   $ pwd
   /usr
   $ popd   # pop the stck and get back to the previous path
   /
   $ pwd
   /

Subsequent pushd will stack multiple paths.

It's a built-in of bash and other shells. It works even with Windows' cmd.exe

You can also use "cd -" to go back to the previous path:

  $ cd /
  $ pwd
  /
  $ cd /tmp
  $ pwd
  /tmp
  $ cd -
  $ pwd
  /

Not the same, of course, but still useful, I think.

Great Tip!

Regarding OSX Terminal, I'm an heavy user since Leopard but it's a shame that after upgrading to Mountain Lion (an now Mavericks) I discovered that they broke VIM vertical selection since control-shift does not generate a keycode anymore [1].

Anyone with the same problem? I tried iTerm recently and I don't like it! :-(

[1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4694342?start=0&tstart=...

Wait, people use the mouse when they're in the terminal?

They do now.

I've always preferred, option + left/right for fast moving with left/right for fine adjustment so I don't have to leave the keyboard.

Well, if you do not want to use the mouse, you can always:

Ctrl-e: go to the end of the line Ctrl-r: search backwards (input the text)

and you go to the point where the search begins.

Great tip, thanks.

Another useful fyi that I haven't seen anybody else mention is the Bash framework bash-it [https://github.com/revans/bash-it/]. It has tons of fantastic plugins, aliases and themes out of the box.

I've only tried it on iTerm2, but as it only replaces your .bash_profile file it should work fine on Terminal.

The problem here is the "click" part of it.

Every once in a while it's much faster to just reach for the mouse than to use keyboard shortcuts.

OK, so for vim users with zsh:

bindkey -v

Now be happy, hit <ESC> and, use ^ and $ but also f<letter> t<letter> and also ,;.

You can copy/paste with dd, Y, etc...

set -o vi does the trick for vim. Most vi commands work, but when you type <ESC>v this will open vi to edit your command line, in case you feel any command is missing.

I've b een using vi-mode in the shell for a while,but haven't been able to get the <ESC>v behavior you described. Did you have to do anything to make that behave?

Fyi, bash also has vi-mode (set -o vi).

bash uses GNU readline, while ZSH has it's own readline. IIRC the Emacs-/Vi-modes in bash are support from readline. (this is also why you configure some of these things via .inputrc for Bash rather than .bashrc).

Doesn't work on iTerm2, which y'all should be using anyways. Besides being infinitely more configurable, and getting tabs right, it's also much faster when you are printing a bunch of text. No idea why OS X Terminal is so slow when it comes to this, but it's actually painful to `cat` a file of more than a thousand lines.

I don't cat files too often in my workflow so I guess I don't have that pain point, but I find find iTerm2 has this minor annoying latency (kind of like typing on a wireless keyboard on low battery) that ultimately drove me away from it.

Odd. I have never experienced that problem. I don't cat files, but I list git diff output, view log files, etc. Even a large-ish git blame introduces a noticeable lag.

Works for me on iTerm2.

In MacTerm, command+option+click will move the terminal cursor in the same way by simulating keys. It also moves “up” or “down”, for applications such as text editors that understand vertical arrows. There is even a preference setting that attempts to move the cursor automatically to wherever you drag and drop text with the mouse.

(Note: I wrote MacTerm.)

I compiled my list of mac keyboard shortcuts and keyboard tricks: http://kozikow.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/going-mouseless-on-m... . Mac is the only non text based OS that you can control with 100% keyboard.

Another useful tip is, in iTerm, map option+left and option+right to send escape sequence ^[b and ^[f respectively. :)

That was the least obvious thing ever, and you've just measurably improved my development experience. Thank you.

And if you use vim in the terminal, you can even use the mouse to select text... https://github.com/apinstein/dotfiles/blob/master/vimrc#L150...

If you want to invoke a command in the menubar quickly - such as applying filters in Photoshop - hit Cmd + Shift + ?. Thill will bring up the Help Search menu and you can type the name of the menu item you want to invoke. Then just hit Enter and it’s done!

Whoa, it would seem that you can option click above the line and go back in history!

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/5435/got-any-tips-o...

another tip. Using mdfind you can do what find does but using Spotlight index

I like checking the box in preferences to use Option as Meta, and then option + left/right will jump a word at a time, and option + backspace will delete the previous word, just like in most Cocoa apps.

Move cursor left or right word-by-word: alt + left arrow, alt + right arrow

If you use mouse to move around your Terminal, you're doing it wrong.

Go to Keyboard Shortcuts in System Preferences and remap "Send reset" to cmd+ctrl+R or something, because it saves sanity when going back and forth between vi in a term and a browser.

This is amazing. You have saved me countless seconds of frustration :-)

Maybe even more than that...lol... (Andy Hertzfeld & Steve Jobs Re: boot times) http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt

This. changes. everything.

sentences. seem. really. short. recently. but. I. don't. know. why. as. it. makes. the. text. impossible. to. read. and. also. makes. you. sound. like. you're. in. the. slow. readers. group.

I've found that maxing out the key repeat rate makes life better. System Preferences > Keyboard. Select the keyboard tab then move the Key Repeat slider all the way to the right.

Or you could set up your .inputrc to make arrow keys (eg., ctrl+arrow to jump between words) work properly. It also helps to learn the other Readline shortcuts (ctrl-A for home, etc.).

another one, you can drag files and folders onto the terminal and it will paste the path in at the cursor position... very useful to cd to some path you have open in Finder

The search clipboard: cmd-e is to cmd-g as cmd-c is to cmd-v.

I never understood the rationale of this behavior (not being able to just click anywhere to set the curser position). At least in not-yet-executed input.

Is there a way to do something similar in Linux? I use gnome-terminal but would think about switching to something with a feature this useful.

Same deal, Gnome terminal, alt-b, alt-f are the closest I've found.

Or you can use vim editing mode directly in bash using:

set -o vi

this makes most vim motions available at the command line after hitting "esc"

20 years ago with Plan 9 you could have just clicked to move your cursor. Plus ça change...

No one uses Terminal. iTerm ftw ;)

I use iTerm as well but besides from splitting panes and broadcasting I don't see the benefits. Why do you use it?

Terminal.app wasn't very good back in the day; I think a lot of people ended up on it because of that and never went back. Also, CMD-click is far nicer for opening links than CMD-doubleclick :)

Conversely, everyone I know (including myself) uses Terminal. I've never found a compelling reason to switch.

in .inputrc, I enable vi mode, and borrow some handful emacs keybindings(c-a beginning-of-line, c-e end-of-line, c-k kill-line etc) under vi insert mode, so I can get benefits from both worlds, just like what I did under vim :)

Tip: Real hackers don't use a mouse.

Perhaps it's simply personal preference, but I do find that limiting my mouse usage has resulted in real, tangible gains. I don't know how feasible that is in GUI-first operating systems like OS X, though.

Check out Alfred 2, Shortcat, Slate (https://github.com/lunixbochs/reslate). You don't need the mouse as much as you might think.

... so do they prefer a track ball or TrackPoint (or some sort of Minority Report gestures-based system)?

No, they just use the keyboard. And use a mouse emulator (move pointer with the keyboard) on those instances where there's no kb shortcuts.

<Ctrl> X, <Ctrl> E to edit the current line in your default editor.

You can type say "hello" and the terminal will greet you.

hashtags on hacker news... please let me die. Nice tip!

FYI this is 'Alt' on modern Mac keyboards.

yearslostcounter++;

Works on iTerm too!

sips -Z 1280 file.jpg to resize a photo easily...

If we'll ever meet, beer is on me. Thanks!

Simple, to-the-point, and very useful. Thanks!

This appears to work in iTerm2 as well. Neat!

Nothing will ever be the same again #HolyWow

Sucks that it doesn't work in iTerm2.

Yes it does - I just tried it. Worked like a dream.

Don't know why it's not working in mine then: http://d.pr/v/mgsi

It does for me. iTerm2, build 1.0.0.20140112

Doesn't work in mine either (Build 1.0.0.20130319). So it appears that we just need to upgrade, as others report that it works in more recent versions.

For some reason when I try this in iTerm2, it jumps to a different command in my history. No idea what's going on there...

Terminal does the same (for me). It's because opt-clicking above the line sends some up arrow keystrokes, which the shell interprets as moving back in history. In iTerm2 nightly builds (which are less stable than the betas) you can disable opt-click to move the cursor in prefs>profiles>pointer.

What's more interesting is the possibility of using the new shell integration features (https://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/ShellIntegration) to turn off this feature just at the shell prompt. I'll open a feature request for that :)

I saw this too... It looks like when you opt-click above the current line, it jumps back in your history by... the same number of lines as your cursor is above the current line? Sort of an unusual feature. Nevertheless, when I'm careful to actually click on the current line, it works as described.

Try alt instead of cmd.

It does in mine.

... Why didn't I know this before?

Thanks for sharing!

Come on kid! set -o vi == life saved

What do you mean by hold option?

Confusingly, the alt key that has had the word 'opt' put on it on some Apple keyboards and not on others...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_key

Holy guacamole! #lifechanged

Wow. Talk about #yearslost!

This just made my day <3

cmd option mouse-drag: blockwise selection

thank you; you just made my year!

#thankyousir

Thank you :)

oops, not working in iTerm2...

holy guacamole! #lifechanged

Thanks !

you mean with a mouse?

No.

holy shit.... thanks!

oh my god thank you!

years lost indeed..

thanks for the tip

cool, thanks

Mind. Blown.

Nice!

You, sir, are a genius!

I did not know this. Thanks! Very helpful tip.

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