- 10 Terminal Commands That Every Mac User Should Know 1. Disable Lion/Mountain Lion's Pop-up Accent Window. Change the Default Backup Periods in Time Machine. Drag Dashboard Widgets onto the Desktop. I always forget that the Dashboard exists on my Mac. Disable Lion/Mountain Lion's.
- If you’re working in Terminal on your Mac, you need to know the most important UNIX commands: those that work with directories, those that work with files, and miscellaneous but commonly used commands. Folders are called directories in UNIX. Commands that refer to filenames, as most do, assume that you’re talking about files in the.
Connect the Windows PC keyboard to the Mac as usual, either by USB or Bluetooth. Pull down the Apple menu and choose “System Preferences”. Click on “Keyboard”. Choose the “Keyboard” tab and then click on the “Modifier Keys” button in the lower right corner of the preference panel.
macOS Catalina introduces Voice Control, a new way to fully control your Mac entirely with your voice. Voice Control uses the Siri speech-recognition engine to improve on the Enhanced Dictation feature available in earlier versions of macOS.1
How to turn on Voice Control
After upgrading to macOS Catalina, follow these steps to turn on Voice Control:
- Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Accessibility.
- Click Voice Control in the sidebar.
- Select Enable Voice Control. When you turn on Voice Control for the first time, your Mac completes a one-time download from Apple.2
Voice Control preferences
When Voice Control is enabled, you see an onscreen microphone representing the mic selected in Voice Control preferences.
To pause Voice Control and stop it from from listening, say ”Go to sleep” or click Sleep. To resume Voice Control, say or click ”Wake up.”
How to use Voice Control
Get to know Voice Control by reviewing the list of voice commands available to you: Say “Show commands” or ”Show me what I can say.” The list varies based on context, and you may discover variations not listed. To make it easier to know whether Voice Control heard your phrase as a command, you can select ”Play sound when command is recognized” in Voice Control preferences.
Basic navigation
Voice Control recognizes the names of many apps, labels, controls, and other onscreen items, so you can navigate by combining those names with certain commands. Here are some examples:
- Open Pages: ”Open Pages.” Then create a new document: ”Click New Document.” Then choose one of the letter templates: 'Click Letter. Click Classic Letter.” Then save your document: ”Save document.”
- Start a new message in Mail: ”Click New Message.” Then address it: ”John Appleseed.”
- Turn on Dark Mode: ”Open System Preferences. Click General. Click Dark.” Then quit System Preferences: ”Quit System Preferences” or ”Close window.”
- Restart your Mac: ”Click Apple menu. Click Restart” (or use the number overlay and say ”Click 8”).
You can also create your own voice commands.
Number overlays
Use number overlays to quickly interact with parts of the screen that Voice Control recognizes as clickable, such as menus, checkboxes, and buttons. To turn on number overlays, say ”Show numbers.” Then just say a number to click it.
Number overlays make it easy to interact with complex interfaces, such as web pages. For example, in your web browser you could say ”Search for Apple stores near me.” Then use the number overlay to choose one of the results: ”Show numbers. Click 64.” (If the name of the link is unique, you might also be able to click it without overlays by saying ”Click” and the name of the link.)
Voice Control automatically shows numbers in menus and wherever you need to distinguish between items that have the same name.
Grid overlays
Use grid overlays to interact with parts of the screen that don't have a control, or that Voice Control doesn't recognize as clickable.
Say “Show grid” to show a numbered grid on your screen, or ”Show window grid” to limit the grid to the active window. Say a grid number to subdivide that area of the grid, and repeat as needed to continue refining your selection.
To click the item behind a grid number, say ”Click” and the number. Or say ”Zoom” and the number to zoom in on that area of the grid, then automatically hide the grid. You can also use grid numbers to drag a selected item from one area of the grid to another: ”Drag 3 to 14.”
To hide grid numbers, say ”Hide numbers.” To hide both numbers and grid, say ”Hide grid.”
Dictation
When the cursor is in a document, email message, text message, or other text field, you can dictate continuously. Dictation converts your spoken words into text.
- To enter a punctuation mark, symbol, or emoji, just speak its name, such as ”question mark” or ”percent sign” or ”happy emoji.” These may vary by language or dialect.
- To move around and select text, you can use commands like ”Move up two sentences” or ”Move forward one paragraph” or ”Select previous word” or ”Select next paragraph.”
- To format text, try ”Bold that” or ”Capitalize that,” for example. Say ”numeral” to format your next phrase as a number.
- To delete text, you can choose from many delete commands. For example, say “delete that” and Voice Control knows to delete what you just typed. Or say ”Delete all” to delete everything and start over.
Voice Control understands contextual cues, so you can seamlessly transition between text dictation and commands. For example, to dictate and then send a birthday greeting in Messages, you could say ”Happy Birthday. Click Send.” Or to replace a phrase, say ”Replace I’m almost there with I just arrived.”
You can also create your own vocabulary for use with dictation.
Create your own voice commands and vocabulary
Create your own voice commands
- Open Voice Control preferences, such as by saying ”Open Voice Control preferences.”
- Click Commands or say ”Click Commands.” The complete list of all commands opens.
- To add a new command, click the add button (+) or say ”Click add.” Then configure these options to define the command:
- When I say: Enter the word or phrase that you want to be able to speak to perform the action.
- While using: Choose whether your Mac performs the action only when you're using a particular app.
- Perform: Choose the action to perform. You can open a Finder item, open a URL, paste text, paste data from the clipboard, press a keyboard shortcut, select a menu item, or run an Automator workflow.
- Use the checkboxes to turn commands on or off. You can also select a command to find out whether other phrases work with that command. For example, “Undo that” works with several phrases, including “Undo this” and “Scratch that.”
To quickly add a new command, you can say ”Make this speakable.” Voice Control will help you configure the new command based on the context. For example, if you speak this command while a menu item is selected, Voice Control helps you make a command for choosing that menu item.
Create your own dictation vocabulary
- Open Voice Control preferences, such as by saying ”Open Voice Control preferences.”
- Click Vocabulary, or say ”Click Vocabulary.”
- Click the add button (+) or say ”Click add.”
- Type a new word or phrase as you want it to be entered when spoken.
Learn more
- For the best performance when using Voice Control with a Mac notebook computer and an external display, keep your notebook lid open or use an external microphone.
- All audio processing for Voice Control happens on your device, so your personal data is always kept private.
- Use Voice Control on your iPhone or iPod touch.
- Learn more about accessibility features in Apple products.
1. Voice Control uses the Siri speech-recognition engine for U.S. English only. Other languages and dialects use the speech-recognition engine previously available with Enhanced Dictation.
2. If you're on a business or school network that uses a proxy server, Voice Control might not be able to download. Have your network administrator refer to the network ports used by Apple software products.
Sometimes, even the simplest tasks can be forgotten if not practiced and repeated. In this short tutorial, I am going to show you some basic command line commands in Microsoft Windows, and their equivalent commands in Apple Mac OS Terminal. This is by no means a complete reference to the available commands, just a short list of some common commands available to you on your operating system. In this post, I will about Windows Command Line (CMD) and Mac OS Terminal Navigation Commands.
Knowledge of CMD/Terminal commands may be needed for using command line interfaces (CLI) of applications where Graphical User Interface is missing, or when CLI provides a faster/easier way to perform a task. Let’s see some of the commands
The CMD/Terminal window
To open the CMD window in Microsoft Windows you may follow several ways, one of them being choosing Run option from the start menu, typing “cmd” in run window, and clicking “enter”. This will open the CMD window in Microsoft Windows
- CMD window
Here you will see the version of the Operating System, and the path to the home folder. The white sign in the picture points your current location in the disk. Home folder is the usual starting point when you open CMD window.
In Mac OS you will usually find the Terminal in Other programs folder. When you open the terminal, you will see the name of the current folder. If you want to know the full path to the current folder, you can type pwd and see the full path.
List files and folders
If you want to list files and folders in that directory use:
WINDOWS | MAC OS |
---|---|
dir | ls |
Here you see the list of directories in my home folder
- Listing files in a directory with dir command in Windows CMD
Move to directory
If you want to change your current directory to another directory, use:
WINDOWS | MAC OS |
---|---|
cd “path to the folder” | cd “path to the folder” |
When you execute the command by pressing “enter” in your keyboard, if the path is correct, you will see that you current folder will change to the new path.
Get back to parent directory
If you want to go one directory up in the directory tree, execute:
WINDOWS | MAC OS |
---|---|
cd.. | cd .. |
and you will see your current directory will change to the parent directory. Please note that in windows two dots are connected to cd, and in MacOS there is a space between cd and dots.
Get to the root
Wherever you are in the directory tree, you can move to the root directory by executing:
WINDOWS | MAC OS |
---|---|
cd | cd / |
This will get you to the disk root of the directory tree.
Create a directory
Creating a new directory is done using
WINDOWS | MAC OS |
---|---|
mkdir MyFolder | mkdir MyFolder |
This will create directory MyFolder in your current directory.
Remove a directory
Removing a directory first requires the directory to be emptied from contents, and then be removed. Removal commands are:
WINDOWS | MAC OS |
---|---|
rmdir MyFolder | rm -r MyFolder |
Rename a directory
To rename a directory execute:
WINDOWS | MAC OS |
---|---|
rmdir | mv oldName newName |
Rename a file
To rename a file execute:
WINDOWS | MAC OS |
---|---|
ren oldFileName newFileName | mv oldFileName newFileName |
Key Commands For Mac
Delete a file
To delete a file exeute:
WINDOWS | MAC OS |
---|---|
del filename | rm -Rf filename |
Delete command does not ask for confirmation, so please be careful.
Check the Path
Some programs need to be added to the PATH in order to be accessible through command line interface. If you want to check your current path, you can execute the following command:
WINDOWS | MAC OS |
---|---|
echo %path% | echo “$PATH” |
This will print current path variable and you can check if required programs are added to the path.
I hope this helps.
I hope this helps.