Useful built-in macOS command-line utilities

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2024-11-06 06:00:03

Sometimes when I'm bored, I like to look at the list of macOS Bash commands. Here's some commands that I found interesting:

Bonus tip: If you are using 1Password, there is a 1Password CLI that you can use to access your 1Password items from the command line.

pbcopy and pbpaste are command-line utilities that allow you to copy and paste text to the pasteboard (what other operating systems might call the "clipboard").

caffeinate will keep your Mac awake until you stop it, e.g. by pressing Ctrl+C. caffeinate used to be a third-party tool, but it is now built-in to macOS.

By default uuidgen outputs a UUID in uppercase. You can combine this with tr and pbcopy to copy the UUID to the clipboard in lowercase.