MacTricksAndTips.com

This will be the first post back in what seems like a year. Due to the amount of work Uni piles on you I had to cut back the amount I could write on this site. Anyway I have a cool post to kick off the holidays and I should be able to write every day till at least February. As the title implies this post is all about pausing an application using Terminal. If you have an app that is running that you want to give up its CPU time but not quit the app, this trick may come in handy. It takes a little bit of work to figure out what is happening, but it is really useful.

I tend to download a lot of zip files. I could use a Quicklook plugin such as zip viewer, but that is too easy. I want a bit of a challenge. Today’s post is about viewing the contents of a zip file in Terminal. This is quite handy if you are working in Terminal on a local or remote machine and want to view a zip files contents before you unzip the file. This trick will allow you to view the contents and write the contents to a text file.

This tip was passed onto me, so I decided to share it here. This very small Unix script is designed to solve crossword puzzles. For a person like myself who can’t think of words any longer than four letters (scrabble is a no hope) this little script is very useful if you want to show off or actually complete a crossword. This script will check the Unix database of words and give you possible solutions.

This is quite a fun or useful trick which you can use to change the date of any file or folder. Its useful if you need to previously date a file for what ever reason, you can also date something in the future if needs be. This trick, like most on this site, using Terminal. You need to be a little bit proficient using Terminal with this trick otherwise you could screw things up.

While browsing the webs in the small moments of free time I actually have I came across a really interesting post about using Terminal tips for improving spotlight. You can find the post over at Mac Tips, I recommend you give it a good read. I wish I had thought of some of the tips on the site. While I am here I would like to point out one Terminal tip that you should find useful.

Here is a cool little trick that any coders and or Terminal users may find useful. If you want any script to wait for a period of time before it closes an application, this is the command you should use. Its really simple, there is probably better solutions to this problem, although this is quick and dirty.

If you are a subscriber of this blog (you should be!), I mentioned about throttling bandwidth using Terminal. This trick was designed so certain ports would be throttled at different speeds. As a result you could manage how much each type of service could get. That trick used Terminal, since many people are not comfortable using Terminal I found a simple app that does exactly the same thing.

Here is another quick tip that may be useful to anyone who doesn’t like the current design of the Dock. The ability to only show applications that are running. Personally I think this reduces the point of the Dock, but people have different opinions. If you want to show only running applications type into Terminal.