The Terminal app allows you to control your Mac using a command prompt. Why would you want to do that? Well, perhaps because you’re used to working on a command line in a Unix-based system and prefer to work that way. Terminal is a Mac command line interface. There are several advantages to using Terminal to accomplish some tasks — it’s usually quicker, for example. In order to use it, however, you’ll need to get to grips with its basic commands and functions. Once you’ve done that, you can dig deeper and learn more commands and use your Mac’s command prompt for more complex, as well as some fun, tasks.
How to open and use the Terminal app on a Mac computer, with a few basic commands you can use to take control of your operating system. Terminal will open your Spotify app. Part 1: Client for Mac OS Considering iTunes as the strongest rival, company’s first motive was to facilitate users with some native application which could be served as substitute of iTunes, and thus Spotify client for Mac was launched. Free hbo spotify.
Curated Mac apps that keep your Mac’s performance under control. Avoid Terminal commands, avoid trouble.
Download FreeHow to open Terminal on Mac
The Terminal app is in the Utilities folder in Applications. To open it, either open your Applications folder, then open Utilities and double-click on Terminal, or press Command - spacebar to launch Spotlight and type 'Terminal,' then double-click the search result.
You’ll see a small window with a white background open on your desktop. In the title bar are your username, the word 'bash' and the dimensions of the window in pixels. Bash stands for 'Bourne again shell'. There are a number of different shells that can run Unix commands, and on the Mac Bash is the one used by Terminal.
If you want to make the window bigger, click on the bottom right corner and drag it outwards. If you don’t like the black text on a white background, go to the Shell menu, choose New Window and select from the options in the list.
If Terminal feels complicated or you have issues with the set-up, let us tell you right away that there are alternatives. MacPilot allows to get access to over 1,200 macOS features without memorizing any commands. Basically, a third-party Terminal for Mac that acts like Finder.
For Mac monitoring features, try iStat Menus. The app collects data like CPU load, disk activity, network usage, and more — all of which accessible from your menu bar.
Basic Mac commands in Terminal
The quickest way to get to know Terminal and understand how it works is to start using it. But before we do that, it’s worth spending a little time getting to know how commands work. To run a command, you just type it at the cursor and hit Return to execute.
Every command is made up of three elements: the command itself, an argument which tells the command what resource it should operate on, and an option that modifies the output. So, for example, to move a file from one folder to another on your Mac, you’d use the move command 'mv' and then type the location of the file you want to move, including the file name and the location where you want to move it to.
Let’s try it.
- Type cd ~/Documentsthen and press Return to navigate to your Home folder.
- Type lsthen Return (you type Return after every command).
You should now see a list of all the files in your Documents folder — ls is the command for listing files.
To see a list of all the commands available in Terminal, hold down the Escape key and then press y when you see a question asking if you want to see all the possibilities. To see more commands, press Return.
Unix has its own built-in manual. So, to learn more about a command type man [name of command], where 'command' is the name of the command you want find out more about.
Terminal rules
There are a few things you need to bear in mind when you’re typing commands in Terminal, or any other command-line tool. Firstly, every character matters, including spaces. So when you’re copying a command you see here, make sure you include the spaces and that characters are in the correct case.
You can’t use a mouse or trackpad in Terminal, but you can navigate using the arrow keys. If you want to re-run a command, tap the up arrow key until you reach it, then press Return. To interrupt a command that’s already running, type Control-C.
Commands are always executed in the current location. So, if you don’t specify a location in the command, it will run wherever you last moved to or where the last command was run. Use the cdcommand, followed by a directory path, like in Step 1 above, to specify the folder where you want a command to run.
There is another way to specify a location: go to the Finder, navigate to the file or folder you want and drag it onto the Terminal window, with the cursor at the point where you would have typed the path.
Here’s another example. This time, we’ll create a new folder inside your Documents directory and call it 'TerminalTest.'
- Open a Finder window and navigate to your Documents folder.
- Type cd and drag the Documents folder onto the Terminal window.
- Now, type mkdir 'TerminalTest'
Go back to the Finder, open Text Edit and create a new file called 'TerminalTestFile.rtf'. Now save it to the TerminalTest folder in your Documents folder.
In the Terminal window, type cd ~/Documents/TerminalTest then Return. Now type lsand you should see 'TerminalTestFile' listed.
To change the name of the file, type this, pressing Return after every step:
- cd~/Documents/Terminal Test
- mv TerminalTestFile TerminalTestFile2.rtf
That will change the name of the file to 'TerminalTestFile2'. You can, of course, use any name you like. The mv command means 'move' and you can also use it to move files from one directory to another. In that case, you’d keep the file names the same, but specify another directory before typing the the second instance of the name, like this:
mv ~/Documents/TerminalTest TerminalTestFile.rtf ~/Documents/TerminalTest2 TerminalTestFile.rtf
More advanced Terminal commands
Terminal can be used for all sorts of different tasks. Some of them can be performed in the Finder, but are quicker in Terminal. Others access deep-rooted parts of macOS that aren’t accessible from the Finder without specialist applications. Here are a few examples.
Copy files from one folder to another
- In a Terminal window, type ditto [folder 1] [folder 1] where 'folder 1' is the folder that hosts the files and 'folder 2' is the folder you want to move them to.
- To see the files being copied in the Terminal window, type -v after the command.
Download files from the internet
You’ll need the URL of the file you want to download in order to use Terminal for this.
- cd ~/Downloads/
- curl -O [URL of file you want to download]
If you want to download the file to a directory other than your Downloads folder, replace ~/Downloads/ with the path to that folder, or drag it onto the Terminal window after you type the cd command.
Change the default location for screenshots
If you don’t want macOS to save screenshots to your Desktop when you press Command-Shift-3, you can change the default location in Terminal
- defaults write com.apple.screencapture location [path to folder where you want screenshots to be saved]
- Hit Return
- killall SystemUIServer
- Hit Return
Change the default file type for screenshots
By default, macOS saves screenshots as .png files. To change that to .jpg, do this:
- defaults write com.apple.screencapture type JPG
- Press Return
- killall SystemUIServer
- Press Return
Delete all files in a folder
The command used to delete, or remove, files in Terminal is rm. So, for example, if you wanted to remove a file in your Documents folder named 'oldfile.rtf' you’d use cd ~/Documents to go to your Documents folder then to delete the file. As it stands, that will delete the file without further intervention from you. If you want to confirm the file to be deleted, use -i as in rm -i oldfile.rtf
To delete all the files and sub-folders in a directory named 'oldfolder', the command is rm -R oldfolder and to confirm each file should be deleted, rm -iR oldfolder
Just because you can use Terminal to delete files on your Mac, doesn’t mean you should. It’s a relatively blunt instrument, deleting only those files and folders you specify.
Another way to free up space
If your goal in removing files or folders is to free up space on your Mac, or to remove junk files that are causing your Mac to run slowly, it’s far better to use an app designed for the purpose. CleanMyMac X is one such app.
It will scan your Mac for files and recommend which ones you can delete safely, as well as telling you how much space you’ll save. And once you’ve decided which files to delete, you can get rid of them in a click. You can download CleanMyMac here.
As you can see, while Terminal may look scary and seem like it’s difficult to use, it really isn’t. The key is learning a few commands, such as those we’ve outlined above, and getting to know the syntax for those commands.
However, you should be careful when using Terminal, it’s a powerful tool that has deep access to your Mac’s system files. Check commands by googling them if you’re not sure what they do. And if you need to delete files to save space, use an app like CleanMyMac X to do it. It’s much safer!
These might also interest you:
Electron apps are a plague. If you’ve ever wondered why:
- your computer chugs to a halt once more than two of {Slack, Discord, Skype, Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal, GitHub Desktop, Steam, VS Code} are open on the same machine
- scrolling, or playing a GIF or whatever in those apps, is incredibly laggy
- every app download is now 100MB+
- the typing shortcuts you’re used to in macOS Just Don’t Work
then it’s likely that Electron is to blame. I’m writing this blog post on a maxed-out 2016 13” MacBook Pro, and it can barely keep up with all these Electron apps I need to keep running. We can only speculate why all these large companies with enormous engineering resources cannot use the money that I pay them for their services to make software that doesn’t suck, but that’s for another blog post.
Lately I’ve gotten especially annoyed at all of the Electron-based junk running on my machine, since I have to work from home, which means needing to use Docker to run or test out various Linux things, which is another 2 gigs of my laptop’s precious memory eaten away. I decided to look for non-Electron alternative clients for all of those. Enter
spotifyd
and spotify-tui
. After switching software, I have an extra half-gig of memory that isn’t being wasted running yet another instance of Chromium.In this blog post, I’ll show you how to set up these on your macOS machine. I assume basic familiarity with managing your machine via Terminal. You’ll also need a Spotify Premium account for any of this to work. The wood chipper that is modern society can’t operate without sacrificing a few limbs!
Installing and configuring spotifyd
This is an always-on service (hence the
d
in its name, for daemon) that will wait in the background and play music requested by whatever Spotify client we choose; in this case, spotify-tui
.First, get
spotifyd
installed. Spotify download kostenlos windows 10. I’ve added it to Homebrew already, so if you need to get that set up first, go ahead.You’ll need to create a configuration file named
~/.config/spotifyd/spotifyd.conf
that specifies your login information and other details. You can read the full instructions, but I’ve annotated my own configuration here:Create and edit this file with
vim
, or whatever text editor you prefer:Next you’ll need to add your password to the system password manager. You can do this via the Keychain Access app, or just right in the Terminal:
Be sure to use your Spotify username here, not your macOS username. You can confirm that it was added correctly by opening up Keychain Access and searching for
spotifyd
.This should be all the configuring you need to do. To test if it worked, first run
spotifyd
as just a plain app. After you run the following command, grant spotifyd
access to the macOS Keychain and Firewall in the pop up that appears:If everything worked correctly, you should similar output to what I have above. Open the official Spotify client on your phone or laptop, and confirm that there’s a new device in Spotify Connect:
Press
CTRL-C
to stop spotifyd
. Now we’ll use brew services
to to run spotifyd
in the background:If you still see
spotifyd
show up in Spotify Connect, it worked!Installing and configuring spotify-tui
The Terminal app
spotify-tui
is how you’ll actually control spotifyd
by showing you playlists and giving you playback controls and so on. There’s not that much involved, as the app itself will give you instructions that you can follow quite easily.You’ll have to click through the Spotify Developer agreement and copy and paste some stuff, but it’s nothing too onerous. Just remember to say you’re making a non-commercial app, and set the “Redirect URI” in the Spotify Developer dashboard and everything should be peachy.
If you’ve set everything up correctly you should see the text interface pop up like so:
To be honest, I used it for a bit, and then decided that I didn’t really like text-mode interfaces all that much. Instead, I just control Spotify from my phone via Spotify Connect, so this hasn’t gotten that much use. Maybe one day I’ll teach myself Swift and write a native macOS Spotify Connect player…
Open Spotify From Terminal Mac Download
But I’m on Linux!
I dunno, on Linux you’re generally expected to figure things out on your own, so maybe try
apt install spotifyd spotify-tui
followed by sudo systemctl start spotifyd
and see if that works ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Is this all legal?
Open Spotify From Terminal Mac Mojave
Probably not. While it would be pretty weird for Spotify to sue or ask to imprison their own paying customers, I can’t predict how Spotify’s CEO might aim to Maximize Shareholder Value in the future.
If you found this post useful, please consider supporting my work with some cheese ?.
Spotify App For Mac
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