I recently came across this article by Wei Yen about useful built-in macOS command-line utilities. This made me think about which utilities, both built-in and installed, that I like to use. Here are a few powerful tools I find useful:
Manage Packages with Homebrew
First and foremorest, you need a way to install these tools!
Homebrew (brew) is an optional but essential package manager for macOS that simplifies the installation of software and libraries. Think of it as an App Store for command-line tools. After installing, you can quickly install, update, or remove software via commands like:
brew install jq
brew update
brew uninstall afconvert
Homebrew keeps your system clean and organized by managing installations in a centralized location.
Link: Homebrew
Spotlight Search from the Terminal
With mdfind, you can leverage Spotlight’s indexing from the command line. This is handy for finding files without manually going through Finder or launching Spotlight. For example:
mdfind "index.vue"
This will output a list of all instances of the index.vue file. It’s also scriptable, making it great for automating file retrieval based on keywords or metadata by piping the output in another tool such as grep.
Convert Audio Files with afconvert
Need to convert audio files between different formats? afconvert is a built-in macOS tool that lets you convert audio files from the terminal. Useful for quick conversions or integrating into a script that processes audio files if you don't want or need to dive into ffmpeg.
afconvert -f m4af -d aac input.wav output.m4a
API Testing Made Simple with HTTPie
HTTPie is a user-friendly HTTP client, perfect for testing and interacting with APIs. It presents JSON in a readable format and has intuitive syntax, which makes it an ideal tool for developers:
http <https://api.example.com/endpoint>
http POST <https://api.example.com/endpoint> key=value
It’s perfect for anyone who regularly works with APIs and wants a more human-friendly interface than curl.
Link: HTTPie
Process JSON Data with jq
Now that you have an easy way to make API calls from the command-line, you need to be able to work with JSON data and for this jq is a must-have. This command-line utility parses, filters, and formats JSON output, making it easier to handle API responses or complex data. For example, to filter a specific field:
http "<https://api.example.com/data>" | jq '.key'
Even if you don't need to do any data wrangling, it's a great tool to pretty print any json you get back from an API call or reading a file.
Link: jq on GitHub
Strip Directory and Suffix with basename
basename is a simple utility to extract the filename from a path, often used in scripts to isolate file names or remove extensions:
basename /path/to/file.txt
This will output just file.txt. It’s especially useful when processing files in a directory and managing output names dynamically.
See the directory structure using tree
tree displays the directory structure of the current directory. This can be useful if you need to know where a file lives exactly.
tree -I node_modules
This will output your directory tree but ignore the node_modules folder.
Get Simplified Man Pages with tldr
After reading about all these tools, you might wonder how to use them efficiently. You can look at the man pages but they can be a bit dense, so if you’re looking for concise explanations, the tldr pages offer simplified examples for commonly used commands. Install it via brew:
brew install tldr
tldr ls
It’s a great resource for quick syntax examples without scrolling through verbose man entries.
These tools enhance what’s already available in macOS, turning your terminal into a more powerful and flexible work environment.