How to Rename Multiple Files at Once on a Mac
The Finder has had a batch rename tool built in for years, and a lot of people still rename files one at a time because it is hidden behind a menu item that only appears…
Articles
Spotlight Not Working on a Mac: Check This Before Rebuilding the Index
When Spotlight stops finding things, the usual advice is to rebuild the index. That works often enough to keep getting repeated, and it is also the most expensive thing you can do — a full…
AirDrop Not Working on a Mac: Check the Interface It Runs On
AirDrop fails in a way that gives you nothing to work with: the other device simply is not there. No error, no explanation, just an empty sharing sheet. The reason it is so opaque is…
How to Check an App’s Code Signature on a Mac with codesign
When you download an app outside the App Store, codesign is the built-in way to check who actually signed it and whether the copy on disk has been tampered with. It reads the signature that…
How to Use osascript: Run AppleScript from the Mac Terminal
The osascript command runs AppleScript — and JavaScript — straight from the Terminal, which makes it the bridge between a shell script and the Mac’s GUI layer. It is how a shell script pops a…
How to Zip Files on a Mac Without the __MACOSX Junk
There are two easy ways to make a zip on a Mac: right-click a folder in the Finder and choose Compress, or run zip in the Terminal. Both work. The problem shows up on the…
How to Prevent Your Mac from Sleeping (caffeinate)
macOS has a built-in command for keeping your Mac awake — caffeinate — so there’s no app to install. Its most useful trick is wrapping a command so the Mac stays up for exactly as…
How to Install the Xcode Command Line Tools on macOS
Most command-line development on a Mac needs only the Xcode Command Line Tools — the compilers, git, and make, a few hundred megabytes — not the full multi-gigabyte Xcode IDE. Here’s how to install just…
Why Your Linux Commands Fail on macOS (BSD vs GNU)
macOS’s command-line tools come from BSD, not the GNU coreutils that ship with most Linux distributions. They cover the same ground, but their flags don’t always match — so a command copied straight from a…