Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

thume.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 232 posts

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#71

Post by mikewhy »

AnonHP wrote: post #40
evadne wrote: post #21

I have a few favourites ControlPlane https://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane Divvy https://mizage.com/divvy/ Stay https://cordlessdog.com/stay/

Looks like ControlPlane is not actively maintained now. Last pull request merge was a year ago, with many issues and some more pull requests open.

Someone has a fork that gets it working with later versions of macOS, but it still has some worts. Very sad cause it's a brilliant little tool.

https://github.com/PBMacDev/ControlPlane/tree/mojave https://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane/issues/501

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#73

Post by bartvk »

mekster wrote: post #19
mcraiha wrote: post #2

My tips: 1. Forget Finder, it is just bad for any power user scenario, and IMO worst part of Mac OS. Use Forklift or other similar app for all GUI file management operations. 2. Never drag and drop (this applies to any OS). Early release can cause all kinds of issues. 3. Make sure that you have fast access to Activity Monitor, since some GUI applications do not show any reasonable progress indicators when they start…

1. This. The only thing I miss from Windows is Explorer. I just can't understand how macOS dev feels Finder would work like that for 20 years without much change. It resets the config and the window size for a folder at every random occasion, creates .DS_Store garbage all over, you cannot even cut files and just feels uneasy. I even enable "Quit Finder" menu and get it out of my app cycle list but it randomly resurre…

> I just can't understand how macOS dev feels Finder would work like that for 20 years without much change

I do a lot of stuff on the commandline, I don't really need an advanced graphical file manager. If necessary, I open an additional Finder window for more complex manoeuvres.

I wonder if there are people who, like me, come from Desktop Linux to macOS and kept working like that.

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#74

Post by lunixbochs »

If you use multiple monitors, and you're frustrated with the cmd-tab app switcher only appearing on the last monitor you touched the dock, this will make it show up on all monitors.

  defaults write com.apple.Dock appswitcher-all-displays -bool true
  killall Dock

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#75

Post by catmistake »

I recommend macports package management system, similar in function to BSD ports collection. Superior to Homebrew, the johnny-come-lately PMS with all the penguinista-style hype that seems to lean towards binary installs, unlike roll your own from all source in macports. Homebrew also does not honor the default privileges of /usr/local, which is an annoying security flaw.

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#76

Post by lunixbochs »

catmistake wrote: post #75

I recommend macports package management system, similar in function to BSD ports collection. Superior to Homebrew, the johnny-come-lately PMS with all the penguinista-style hype that seems to lean towards binary installs, unlike roll your own from all source in macports. Homebrew also does not honor the default privileges of /usr/local, which is an annoying security flaw.

You can transparently run homebrew as a dedicated user, prevent it from accessing your home directory, and only give /usr/local permissions to that user.

https://github.com/lunixbochs/meta/tree/master/utils/brew_al...

I have been doing this for years. The only thing it breaks for me is casks that try to install applications, and I don't mind.

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#77

Post by luizfelberti »

Does anyone have a tip to keep macOS from phoning home when you run unsigned binaries?

I almost locked up my entire computer this week, presumably because of this... here's the story for that:

I had setup unbound listening on 127.0.0.1:53 as the only DNS resolver for all network interfaces, so that I hijack several responses that I might want to (e.g. adnet sinkholes) and forward the rest to Google/Cloudflare over TLS.

When I rebooted the Mac, the entire computer was so fucked that I panicked cause I thought my SSD was failing. Turns out unbound failed to start so all DNS was down. I suspect it to be the "phoning home" because when I opened the Terminal, running `ps aux | grep unbound` took like 5 seconds to return anything (as did everything else that tried to run), and that behavior has been reported by other users as Gatekeeper's Phone Home checks being at fault.

So that's why I was wondering if anyone has found out how to keep macOS from doing this (preferably without disabling all of SIP), cause that'd be one hell of a tip...

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#78

Post by spurgu »

dbalatero wrote: post #62
doctoboggan wrote: post #30

> cmd+shift+4 pops up a crosshair to take a screenshot of a region. If you hit space at after invoking the crosshairs then you can take full window screenshots. This mode is nice for marketing material as it also captures the drop shadow and rounded corners rendered properly as a transparent png.

Also if you hold `ctrl` down as well, the screenshot goes directly to your pasteboard for quick pasting and won't save a junk file on your desktop.

I've actually reversed these mappings since I rarely need to save a file (pretty much only if I want to annotate the screenshot). And Alfred's clipboard history is an awesome companion.

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#79

Post by luizfelberti »

evadne wrote: post #21

I have a few favourites ControlPlane https://github.com/dustinrue/ControlPlane Divvy https://mizage.com/divvy/ Stay https://cordlessdog.com/stay/

I used to use Moom and then Divvy, but switched over to a lighter weight and OSS alternative: Rectangle [0], which is a successor to (now unmaintained) Spectacle

Easier to automate setup through Homebrew, no need to store/activate the license or anything, doesn't have the "draw the window position" popup thingy, but I don't really care about that and gotten used to the (very simple) default shortcuts.

I highly recommend it, give it a try if you're interested!

[0] https://rectangleapp.com or https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle

Re: Hard to discover tips and apps for macOS

#80

Post by mercer »

trishume wrote: post #15
coldtea wrote: post #11

> iTerm2: An alternative Terminal with just so many features. I particularly like the ability to split windows into panes, which Apple’s Terminal does not have. Terminal actually has it, View -> Split Pane or Command-D - and has had it for ages (as well as tabs).

Terminal's split panes are a totally different thing than iTerm2's and IMO not very useful. Terminal can have multiple panes that all show different places in the same scrollback buffer, not different terminals. iTerm2 can have many different terminals within one tab, which I use for example to have a tab for a project with one pane ssh'd into a VM/server and another pane on my local machine for file munging and sync…

The tmux integration is amazing too! When I ssh into a server, whatever window/pane setup I last had (tab colors, names, and all), are restored.

On one server I run a few 'production' apps, but I also have a tab for 'random shit' and a tab for 'nginx config'. the production tabs are bright red, and are usuall split pane with the left showing logs, and the right giving me a terminal with app-specific commands (and in the current app home dir).

But then on another server I have two separate windows, and each window deals with one of the two 'concerns' on that server.

It's a massive help in managing all my panes/sessions.

Post reply on HN