Eight Terminal Utilities Every OS X Command Line User Should Know

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Abstraction: macOS-specific CLI tools bridging UNIX and Mac environments

Key points:

open acts as a command-line double-click to launch apps, files, or directories; only way to launch .app bundles from terminal
pbcopy/pbpaste integrate the OS X clipboard with UNIX pipes and redirection for scripting workflows
mdfind exposes Spotlight search from the command line including full-text and metadata search; mdutil -E rebuilds the index
screencapture supports flexible screenshot modes including timed capture, clipboard output, window selection, and PDF export
launchctl manages launchd daemons/agents for startup services and scheduled tasks, analogous to Linux cron
say invokes the macOS TTS engine from the command line; can produce audio files with -o flag
Homebrew (brew) provides the de-facto package manager for macOS, keeping everything in /usr/local/

Connections: Macos · Homebrew · Command Line · Unix Utilities