macOS Command-Line Tools You Might Not Know About

1. wl-clipboard

   1 20 1,915 4.8 C

   Command-line copy/paste utilities for Wayland

   

2. InfluxDB

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3. displayplacer

   2 45 4,068 2.9 C

   macOS command line utility to configure multi-display resolutions and arrangements. Essentially XRandR for macOS.

   

   It's not something that I've tried. There was a user report at the bottom of this GitHub issue that states sidecar rotation does not work.

   https://github.com/jakehilborn/displayplacer/issues/17

4. osc52pty

   3 2 24 10.0 Go

   OSC 52 workaround for Terminal.app

   

   I don't think wrapping my entire shell session in a moderately complex third party tool (that maybe just uses pbcopy under the hood[1]) counts as "simply" when compared to my existing solution which just pipes over ssh and a couple bash scripts.

   But thank you for the share, it is interesting!

   [1]: https://github.com/roy2220/osc52pty/blob/master/oscexecutor....

5. xclip

   4 13 1,203 4.7 C

   Command line interface to the X11 clipboard

   

   I find it so annoying that these only work with plain text and RTF. On X11 there is `xclip`[0] and on Wayland there is `wl-clipboard`[1] both of which support binary file formats either through parsing the header or explicitly setting the MIME type.

   This means you can do things like copy an image from the terminal and paste it into a graphical program like a browser or chat client and vice-versa. Also can be very useful in shell scripts for desktop automation.

   The workaround on MacOS is to use AppleScript via `osascript` to `set the clipboard to...`.

   [0] https://github.com/astrand/xclip

6. remote-pbcopy-iterm2

   5 2 244 1.8 Go

   remote pbcopy for iTerm2

   

   Since you mention both pbcopy and iTerm - I love https://github.com/skaji/remote-pbcopy-iterm2. I do most of the work on a remove Linux server, treating my MacBook as mostly a dumb terminal, and being able to transparently copy from the remove to my local clipboard is so nice.

7. piknik

   6 6 2,479 3.5 Go

   Copy/paste anything over the network.

   

   Extra handy when combined with `piknik`[1] for distributed/cross-Apple account clipboard shenanigans.

   [1] https://github.com/jedisct1/piknik

8. dotfiles

   7 2 2 4.7 Shell

   My Dotfiles (by svieira)

   

   https://github.com/svieira/dotfiles/blob/a3654d6a194e3689978...

       # Use clipboard in shell pipelines

9. Stream

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10. Comcast

    8 29 10,417 0.8 Go

    Simulating shitty network connections so you can build better systems.

    

    [Comcast](https://github.com/tylertreat/comcast) also does this for macOS, BSD, and Linux. And it's _brilliantly_ named.

11. bat

    9 208 53,486 9.3 Rust

    A cat(1) clone with wings.

    

    I've been using bat as a cat replacement for a while now. It includes paging, syntax highlighting, line numbers, and is generally very performant.

    https://github.com/sharkdp/bat

12. tmux

    10 228 38,136 9.1 C

    tmux source code

    

    I have tried it, but for whatever reason I just don't like it. I prefer just running tmux in iTerm with no integration.

    On the topic, you can also integrate tmux with the native clipboard - I have set copy-pipe to the remote pbcopy, so any selection done in tmux get copied to my local clipboard. I also just found out that tmux also support it natively (https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Clipboard#the-set-clipboar...).

13. Clipboard

    11 74 5,302 7.5 C++

    😎🏖️🐬 Your new, 𝙧𝙞𝙙𝙤𝙣𝙠𝙪𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙞𝙤𝙪𝙨𝙡𝙮 smart clipboard manager

    

    And `cb` which works cross-platform, via https://github.com/Slackadays/clipboard

14. macosrec

    12 8 132 5.7 Swift

    Take screenshots/videos of macOS windows from the command line

    

    brew install duti

    > screencapture - take screenshots

    Big fan of screencapture. I wanted something similar but for capturing window videos, so I built https://github.com/xenodium/macosrec

    I often wrap command line utilites with Emacs functions (don't need to remember invocation flags/structure but also enables batch invocations):

    https://xenodium.com/recordscreenshot-windows-the-lazy-way

15. prefsniff

    13 1 255 5.9 Python

    A utility to sniff preferences changes to macOS plist files

    

    https://github.com/zcutlip/prefsniff can be handy for figuring this stuff out, you start it up, change a setting, and it reports the plist differences to you

16. cli

    14 6 119 8.7 Python

    um is a GPT-powered CLI assistant. Ask questions in plain English, get the perfect shell command. (by promptops)

    

    You should check out "um" https://github.com/promptops/cli for when you can't remember the command/parameters.

    ~ um prevent my mac from sleeping for 30m

       caffeinate -u -t 1800

17. rofi

    15 154 14,596 9.1 C

    Rofi: A window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement

    

18. fast-cli

    16 4 2,661 3.2 TypeScript

    Test your download and upload speed using fast.com

    

19. yt-dlp

    17 2,394 119,203 9.8 Python

    A feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader

    

    FYI: yt-dlp is more up to date and faster, AFIK: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

    I download and save it as 'ytdl' for convenience, but I use it all the time on twitter too.

20. tutu

    18 1 5 4.5 Shell

    Zsh bookmark navigation utility

    

    If you like `z`, you should check out my `tutu`.

    https://github.com/daotoad/tutu

21. exa

    19 131 24,049 3.0 Rust

    A modern replacement for ‘ls’.

    

    Some of us don't want all of GNU's utilities; just on an as-needed basis. They're not as needed as they once were.

    Many of these utilities have been rewritten in Rust and have more modern features.

    For example, instead of ls, I use exa [1]. Or ripgrep [2] instead of grep.

    [1]: https://github.com/ogham/exa

    [2]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

22. ripgrep

    20 368 53,789 6.7 Rust

    ripgrep recursively searches directories for a regex pattern while respecting your gitignore

    

    Some of us don't want all of GNU's utilities; just on an as-needed basis. They're not as needed as they once were.

    Many of these utilities have been rewritten in Rust and have more modern features.

    For example, instead of ls, I use exa [1]. Or ripgrep [2] instead of grep.

    [1]: https://github.com/ogham/exa

    [2]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

23. SaaSHub

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