afconvert(1) - an audio file format converter, which includes Apple's superior AAC codec from the Core Audio framework
diskutil(8) - tons of tools for fixed and removable storage
afconvert in.wav -o out.m4a -q 127 -s 2 -b 160000 -f m4af -d 'aac '
mb=300; diskutil eraseVolume APFS myramdisk `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://$((mb*2048))`Oh wow! A while back I ripped some concert audio from Youtube, but it was too large for me to sync using my `iTunes Match`. I've been too lazy to figure out how to downsample it juuuuust enough. But it looks like this works right out of the box
So if your needs are just "one audio file in, one audio file out, and let me tell you exactly what it should look like", then afconvert is probably what you want.
Love those type of OG Mac indie software.
I prefer to encode with afconvert on the command line because it gives me a few more options for tweaking things, that I don't have access to in iTunes (or "Music" as it's called these days). Additionally, I use a simple shell script that handles all of it when for example ripping a whole CD.
Way back then (iPod era), I made an exposé for a science exam (small paper), proving that AAC was indeed better than MP3 both subjectively and objectively at most bitrates. This is how I got introduced to Fourier transforms and the likes; it was very interesting to see that you can literally "see" the difference in quality on the encoded waveform output.
But I just used the default encoders on the Mac and I didn't think about going in deep into encoder comparisons at the time. Does it matter that much? From what I know, it just about properly programming a math spec, with some tricks but I wonder if that makes that much of a difference.
In any case, above 256kbps it takes a very skilled listener to correctly identify encoded music. Apple has some useful tools for that, particularly AU Lab that allows you A/B testing of tracks with on-the-fly encoding. https://www.apple.com/apple-music/apple-digital-masters/
> Does it matter that much? From what I know, it just about properly programming a math spec, with some tricks but I wonder if that makes that much of a difference.
It does matter a lot and the difference can be staggering. Producing the audio bitstream is a case of both effectively analyzing the original input and programmatically expressing the waveform as correctly and as efficiently possible. Two excellent examples: the old MP3 encoder Xing, which compared to LAME produces very poor material even at higher bitrates, and one of the earliest open-source AAC encoders, FAAC, which also renders a very poor product. A lot of "early adopters" got bitten by FAAC and many of them still stubbornly cling to the misunderstanding that AAC is a worse format than MP3.
Incorrect. The specification only concerns the bitstream and the decoding. Encoders are free to do whatever they want, as long as they produce a valid bitstream.
If you're wondering how one implementation of an audio codec could be superior to others — mostly, it's because any lossy audio codec has an encoding phase called "psychoacoustic compression", where each implementation of the codec is free to do whatever it likes to "simplify" the waveform in some way (most easily pictured: by taking a Discrete Cosine Transform of the waveform, and then quantizing / convoluting some parts of the frequency space. Like what JPEG does to discard information from the chroma channels.)
IIRC, rather than blunt-force quantization, Apple's AAC encoding does clever things (akin to the instrument separation done to audio in Melodyne) to split the waveform into "features", and then discards information in such a way that the features' separability is maintained (i.e. it doesn't become harder to "pick out" any given "sound" from the audio.)
afconvert -- Audio File Convert
diskutil -- Modify, verify and repair local disks. hear (macOS speech recognition and dictation via the command line)
(Uses built-in macOS capabilities for transcription from audio to text.)
Man page at https://sveinbjorn.org/files/manpages/hear.1.html
> (Uses built-in macOS capabilities for transcription from audio to text.)
Question (to self, currently researching)... Which capabilities? Released when? I ask because Apple Intelligence has expanded the use of audio transcription features.
Answer: `hear` uses SFSpeechRecognizer [1] which has been available since macOS 10.15. I'm not yet sure how it relates to Apple Intelligence transcription services.
Note: "speech recognition is a network-based service" which perhaps suggests Apple Intelligence (the marketing term, not an Apple Developer term, I don't think) uses it as well
[1][ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/speech/sfspeechrec...
> hear not found
macOS 15.1
> hear is a command line interface for the built-in speech recognition capabilities in macOS
Have you gone through the installation process? https://github.com/sveinbjornt/hear?tab=readme-ov-file#insta...
open -n file.pdf : opens new instance of Preview application which is useful if you want to open the same file twice (for example to look at different pages at once).
caffeinate -d : prevents display turning off, useful if you want to look at display without moving mouse.
You can use it to pass a pid to keep the computer awake until that process completes. I use it for longer-running scripts that I don't want interrupted
open -a <GUI Application> <File>
Handy for distinguishing between editing and consuming media.
alias qt='open -a "quicktime player"'
alias vlc='open -a "vlc"'Standard apps usually just need the name, like Finder and Safari but you can also specify the path "/Applications/DifferentFinder.app"
I guess you could do that centrally with some sort of database but that would open another can of worms; and most importantly you wouldn't be able to transfer a folder and keep its Finder presentation intact.
Nowadays it's not as useful because of the App Store but when software was only released as .dmg images, it became expected to open a nice layout with graphics presenting the app and a shortcut to the App folder that you would drag'n'drop the app bundle to.
This presentation relies of .DS_Store to work.
There are some other use cases like that, it all comes down to a simple fact: Apple has always cared a lot more about how things look than Microsoft ever did, this is a perfect example.
It is just the first time the .DS_Store file is needed is often when the folder is touched by Finder.
open .
I think Windows is right in that matter...
Not mine (found online years ago), but here's the opposite. `cd` into the frontmost Finder window:
cd "$(osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to POSIX path of (insertion location as alias)')";My poor workaround is to use osascript: `tell application "System Events" to set frontmost of process "Finder" to true`
Docs are at https://ss64.com/mac/diskutil.html
Apple promotes Swift heavily but the results are not really encouraging. I don't think the "so-so" results are entirely because of Swift (probably due to newer, less battle tested software and also newer/younger devs) but still the fact is, all the not-so-great new software from Apple came with Swift rewrites, hard to not make a connection...
https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/18ez5b0/why_disk_utili...
gdisk /dev/disk0https://terminaltrove.com/categories/macos/
You might find one you've never heard of that is useful! :)
nc(1) - netcat, arbitrary TCP and UDP connections and listens
networkQuality - Speed test + network stress tool.
system_profiler(8) - Useful way to grab extensive system information in shell scripts.
wdutil(8) - wdutil provides functionality of the Wireless Diagnostics application in
command line form.I still get a ton of mileage from reading the macOS How-to page https://ss64.com/mac/syntax.html
"...a menu driven program which partitions disks using the standard
Apple disk partitioning scheme described in "Inside Macintosh: Devices".
It does not support the Intel/DOS partitioning scheme[.]" qlmanage -p $argv >/dev/null 2>&1I do this with man pages but it opens up in a full Preview window, not QuickLook.
qlmanage -p <(man man) >/dev/null 2>&1
For me, increasing the number of icons in the launcher grid was very useful.
After running these three commands, the size of the Launcher will be set to 13x8 apps:
defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-columns -int 13
defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-rows -int 8
defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool TRUE; killall Dock
To get a complete list of parameters, you can execute
defaults read(shift+command+K) or Menu 'Shell' -> 'New Remote Connection...'
opens a SSH, S(FTP), TELNET connection manager window!
It's quite a good VNC client, too.
For example I'm having a problem that comes and goes now and then where Bluetooth audio is 300 ms delayed compared to the video playback everywhere except in Youtube on Safari, very strange. It's good for a few months then suddenly it becomes unusable, then back to zero sync delay after a few months.
I was thinking this might be related to CODEC selections etc or some hidden setting that might get changed which we normally aren't allowed to determine :)
(btw I know there is a difference between latency and synchronization - latency might be unavoidable but video sync should always be able to compensate - I got curious on how exactly that works, where in the app / SDK / OS pipeline does the a/v sync happen on a Mac?)
I guess filtering the streaming log entries in the Console app gives some info.
To scare your teammates when you are logged in remotely optionally with
$ osascript -e "set volume output volume 100"
sudo powermetricscoreaudiod is using very high CPU at 111.90 ms/s
I'm on a 16" M1 Macbook Pro 16 gig.
Maybe they are using it "wrong" but Apple Music isn't exactly light on ressource either...
/usr/bin/plutil -extract your.key.path raw -o - - <<< "$jsoninput"
(obviously, less useful now that `jq`is built in)
; which jq
/usr/bin/jq
; jq
jq - commandline JSON processor [version 1.6-159-apple-gcff5336-dirty]
Glad to spread the good word ;)
Hold up, what?
* atuin - TUI for shell history, backed by SQLite - https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin
* LSD (LSDeluxe) - rewrite of `ls` - https://github.com/lsd-rs/lsd
* ripgrep - https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
* fzf - command-line fuzzy finder that enhances file search, command history search, and more - https://github.com/junegunn/fzf
Notes:
- To get pretty extra file/folder symbols with LSD, you'll probably need to install some special fonts.
- You can use `fzf` and `ripgrep` together.
Downlink: 884.856 Mbps, 198 RPM - Uplink: 13.238 Mbps, 198 RPM
whereas speedtest (whether to the official speedtest server OR a friend's home server in their basement!) gives ~700 Mbps uplink.
You can also change voices with -v. My favorite is "cellos" since it sings to you.
It also knows how to say numbers up into the trillions but not more than that (although I feel like it used to).
I hacked together a little script for demo recording like:
START_FROM="$1"
STARTED=0
function transcript() {
ID="$1"
TO_SAY="$2"
if [[ ...STARTED || START_FROM && ID... ]]; then
STARTED=1
say "$TO_SAY"
fi
}
transcript "STEP001" "This is a test"
transcript "STEP001b" "of the emergency broadcast system"
transcript "STEP002" "This is only a test, if this was ..."
transcript "STEP003" "...etc..."
That way I can iterate on voiceover scripts, eg: `./demo-script "STEP002"` => `./demo-script --output`
It's really helpful for iterating on pronunciations, eg: `transcript "STEP005" "In case of Four Hundred and Four errors..."`, I can just "skip to" and iterate against that line (and subsequent ones), or "skip back" and hear it in more of a flowing context.
...even if I don't end up using the `say`-generated audio, having a transcript (and even pacing) that I can just read through with my own voice is super helpful.
networksetup was one of my favourites as well as du and caffeinate.
The 'security' command is new to me so thanks!
function batt-info() {
echo
system_profiler SPPowerDataType | grep Wattage | cut -c 7-
echo
pmset -g batt
} if [[ "$(uname)" == "Darwin" ]]; then
clip() {
[ -t 0 ] && pbpaste || pbcopy
}
else # assume linux if not macos
clip() {
[ -t 0 ] && xclip -o -selection clipboard || xclip -selection clipboard
}
fiAlso, falling back to using oh-my-zsh functionality.
$ pbpaste | jq | pbcopy
Then I can paste it into whatever text editor I want and it's all nice & pretty-printed for me.
Bonus is that I don't have to change the command at all, just copy the minimized JSON to the clipboard (say from DBeaver, for example), then hit the 'up' arrow and enter.
afconvert -v -s 3 -f m4bf filename.mp3 sips -s format png photo.HEIC --out photo.png
sips -z 300 600 original.jpg --out new.jpgNot gonna lie, I missed this because I thought it was related to macOS SIP, System Integrity Protection. Which is something I am deeply uninterested in.
https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
These are all guaranteed to work:
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/
(I may not have linked to the precisely correct version.)
$> long_running_command && say "Witness me, for I am done"
But I don’t have uuidgen!
Install vscode on Linux and have fun with it hijacking opening directories. Which is easy enough to fix (with a bit of know how) or work around but annoying.
MacOS is far from perfect but open always doing what I expect is a good example of what Apple did well.
Say you've got a directory that has scripts or data files related to some thing you do. For example I've got several scripts that I use when I scan books with my book scanner. I only need these when doing book scanning stuff so don't want to put them somewhere in $PATH. I want to be able to easily run them from scripts that aren't in that directory, but I don't want to hard code the path to that directory.
Solution: in the directory with the book scanning scripts I make a file named ID that contains a unique string. I currently use 16 byte random hex strings [1].
I have this script, named find-dir-by-ID, somewhere in $PATH:
#!/bin/zsh
ID=${1:?Must specific ID}
IDSHA=`echo $ID | shasum | cut -d ' ' -f 1`
mdfind $ID 2>/dev/null | grep /ID | while read F; do
FSHA=`shasum $F | cut -d ' ' -f 1`
if [ $IDSHA = $FSHA ]; then
dirname $F
exit 0
fi
done
exit 1
SCRIPT_DIR=`find-dir-by-ID 54f757919a5ede5961291bec27b15827`
if [ ! -d $SCRIPT_DIR ]; then
>&2 echo Cannot find book scanning scripts
exit 1
fi
The IDs do not have to be hex strings. If I'd thought about it more I probably would have made IDs look like this "book-scanning:54f757919a5ede59" or "arduino-tools:3b6b4f47bf803663".
[1] here's a script for that:
#!/bin/sh
N=${1:-8} # number of bytes
xxd -g $N -c $N -p -l $N < /dev/urandomThat could work fine, but generally the directories I've used this on are directories that I want to have somewhere else, and with a reasonable name. Usually the directories came first and various other things in fixed relative positions were using them, and then later I wanted to use them from elsewhere and added the ID.
I suppose ~/well-known/stuff/54f757919a5ede5961291bec27b15827 could by a symbolic link to the original.
The mdfind approach does have the advantage that if I reorganize things and move the directory it keeps working.
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport -s
I set a shell alias so I can just do `airport -s`. I've no idea why this is hidden away inside some framework and not in a directory which is in the normal path, but there you go.
WARNING: The airport command line tool is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. For diagnosing Wi-Fi related issues, use the Wireless Diagnostics app or wdutil command line tool.
locate
locate searches a database for all pathnames which match the specified pattern. The database is recomputed periodically, (about once a week) and contains the path-names of all files which are publicly accessible.
Sigh. These are shell commands, not "Bash commands".
Very useful.
-u Create an assertion to declare that user is active. afconvert -v -s 3 -f m4bf ....mp3I use it most often for pulling lat lon data from photos.
As part of the OS, Keychain suffers from the same sorts of sharp edges as using a built-in interpreter. An alternative is to use a password manager. Below is an example of the tools available in one.
https://developer.1password.com/docs/cli/get-started/#step-1...
upgrade_macos() {
softwareupdate --list
softwareupdate --download
softwareupdate --install --all --restart
}