macOS (Apple)

Productivity

• Raycast
• Notion
• Microsoft To Do
• Obsidian
• OneNote
• Google Keep

Coding

• Visual Studio Code
• Cyberduck

Video and graphics

• VLC
• iMovie
• Canva

System and file repair

• diskutil verifyVolume /
• diskutil repairVolume /
• sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
• killall AppName

Repairing the boot volume typically requires starting up in macOS Recovery.

Network and connectivity

• sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder
• sudo ipconfig set en0 DHCP
• ping google.com

The interface name (en0) can vary. Check System Settings > Network or run ifconfig to confirm yours.

System information

• system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType
• system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | grep "Serial Number"

Advanced tools

• Storage Management (GUI): Apple menu > About This Mac > More Info > Storage > Manage
• sudo shutdown -r now

Application administration

Clear terminal history

• cat /dev/null > ~/.zsh_history && history -c && exit

Clear Homebrew and App Store caches

• brew cleanup
• brew autoremove
• rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/*
• brew update
• brew upgrade
• sudo softwareupdate -l
• mas upgrade

mas (Mac App Store CLI) requires separate installation via brew install mas.

Firewall

Manage the firewall through System Settings.

• Open System Settings → Network → Firewall
• Toggle the firewall on or off, and click Options for per-app rules
• Allow a specific app: Firewall → Options → add the app and set it to allow incoming connections

Copying files via terminal

• cp file.txt ~/Backup/
• rsync -av Source/ Destination/
• scp file.txt user@host:/path/

Disk usage and storage

• Apple menu → About This Mac → More Info → Storage for an overview per category
• df -h for total and free space per volume
• du -sh * to see folder sizes in the current directory

Scheduled tasks

• launchd manages scheduled jobs via plist files in ~/Library/LaunchAgents (user) or /Library/LaunchDaemons (system)
• crontab -e for traditional cron-style scheduling

Compression and archiving

• Right-click a file or folder → Compress
• zip -r archive.zip folder/ and unzip archive.zip
• tar -czvf archive.tar.gz folder/ and tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz

History