MacTricksAndTips.com

Every time you change the extension of a file, whether it be an image, movie or a system file you Mac will throw up a warning telling you about the change. Although this is useful most of the time, sometimes you may just want to get rid of it and ignore the warning. Thankfully I was given a solution to this problem allowing you to change this setting with Terminal. From my understanding this tip works in Lion and Snow Leopard, it probably works with older version too.

Here is a rather cool trick that allows you to change the modification time of a file. There may be a variety of reasons for changing the modification time of a file, usually get an app to work with the file. Making the change is simple and involves a simple in built command within Terminal.

This little trick I came across while I wondered why my hard disk was being used when no apps were actively running. Its a basic Terminal command that shows you which files are being accessed and by which program. Its very useful and customisable, and interesting to watch to see how you Mac uses the files stored on your hard disk. You can use it when a file is in use or an app is accessing your disk. The resulting output is great for determining if you have a rogue app accessing files it shouldn’t or if an app is heavy on file access, something which can slow your Mac down.

This is a quick command I stumbled upon while looking around the folder that contains all of the binary files Terminal runs on. One of these commands is cancel, and is design to cancel print jobs from your Mac while in Terminal. This would be very useful for anyone who is building a script or wants a different way of canceling print jobs. This command can also run over a network and can remove print jobs only from certain users.

A while back I mentioned an app that can compare files, this worked by comparing the hash of a file, essentially its make up at the byte level. This means, even though two files that are the same size in terms of bits, will be different because of the order of those bits generate a different hash number. This is very useful in comparing different files and ensuring you are working with the right file. All you have to do is compare the hashes of the two files and if they match you are good to go. Today’s post will show you how you generate MD5 and SHA-1 hashes in Terminal.

This is a quick simple trick that people using Wordpress or any program which uses subversion or SVN may find useful. Subversion is a version control system which lets people publish versions of software, such as Wordpress, to a simple repository. When they update the repository other people, such as Wordpress bloggers, can view the source files and then download and install them yourself. This tip shows you the difference in files between versions, and allows you just to change or download the files you need. This is useful in saving both time and effort as you don’t have to download the entire package just the files that have changed between the version you have installed and the new version.

I want to extend your Terminal knowledge today by introducing a simple loop command. This is useful if you want to repeat or loop a Terminal command indefinitely. This is a simple bash script that has a variety of uses. The script is a simple one line command that needs very little adjusting on your part.

When you have a new or old Mac, every so often you will want to stress test your Mac to see if it has any problems or it can handle the heat. There are a variety of different ways in which you can do this, however one of the simplest ways is to use Terminal. This guide will show you how to set your CPU running at max speed, which you can tailor to the number of CPU’s cores you have. Then its just a matter of watching the results in Activity Monitor, watch for stability issues and see the temperature of your Mac rise.