The Terminal in OS X is a relatively powerful environment, where you have access to a number of scriptable tools that can help you configure, gather information, and otherwise use your Mac in ways that you cannot otherwise do with a mouse and graphical elements. Granted some of these more advanced features of the terminal require extensive experience, but if you are just getting started, then you might wonder how you simply find files in the Terminal.
In the OS X GUI, you simply have to invoke a Finder search by pressing Command-F, or invoke Spotlight with Command-Space, and then use these services to search for files not only by name, but also by content.
In the Terminal, as with all tasks, finding files requires you know how to use a few basic commands. The three that will be most useful in OS X are the “find” command, the “mdfind” command, and the “locate” command. When run, these commands will search for a specific query and then output the full path to all resulting files that fall within the scope of your search.
find
Apr 19, 2019 Open Terminal using Spotlight Search. One of the quickest and easiest ways to open Terminal on Mac is with Spotlight Search. 1) If you have the Spotlight Search button in your menu bar, click it. Otherwise, you can use the keyboard shortcut Command + Space. 2) Type in “Terminal”. 3) You should see the Terminal application under Top Hit at the top of your results. About Terminal. Probably the most useful tool to check and kill processes is called Terminal, which is an application that provides access to the lower levels of the Mac OS X operating system and files.Terminal is a text-based tool which lets you conduct all manner of routine tasks such as viewing directories, copying, moving and deleting files, as well as obtain detailed information about. Need to quickly locate certain file or application types on your Mac? Sure, you could set up a custom search with Spotlight, or you could use the quick and effective find command in Terminal. Sep 05, 2009 Hi. What command do I issue to Terminal.app, to get my Mac model; for example 'Macmini3,1'. It HAS to be Terminal, thanks. EDIT FOUND IT!!: sysctl hw.model.
This command is the straightforward option for finding files on Unix-based systems. To use it at its basics, you specify the location to start your search, and then options like file names and file types. When executed, it will walk the folder hierarchy from that specified point and output the full paths to the files that match your search criteria.
The example above will start at the desktop of my account, and find any file named “myfile.txt.” In addition to the “-name” flag, you can use others such as “-size” to specify a file size, or “-type” to specify the file type (specifically a file, or a directory, or a link). The specifics of these options can be found in the manual page of the “find” command, and there are a number of additional options you can use to filter by details such as permissions settings, extended attributes, and even execute additional scripts on only the found items.
locate
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The locate database is an effort to have an indexed search in Unix systems. While the “find” command is thorough, it will take a while to check each and every file in the system, which on some systems can take hours to complete. Therefore, if you need to search for system files you can enable the locate database with the following command (followed by supplying your password, and confirming your wish to activate the database):
This instruction will direct the system to activate the locate daemon, which will index the system and allow you to use the “locate” command to find system files (by default, user files are excluded from this search routine). The indexing will take some time to complete, but when done, you can find files by name quickly simply by typing “locate” followed by the file name.This command can be used easily to find system configuration files, or where a specific command is located. For instance, the “lsregister” command is useful for updating the database that links file types to their handlers; however, this command is hidden deep in Apple’s framework files. If you remember that “lsregister” is the file name, then you can find its location quickly by running the following command:
mdfind
This command is Apple’s find routine, which searches for files based on their contents and metadata as stored in the Spotlight index. In essence, this is the terminal interface for Spotlight searches, and may be the most practical searching option in the OS X Terminal.
To use this command, you simply run “mdfind” followed by your search query, such as the following: Where to find steam apps on mac.
This search will find any file that has the text “mysearch” associated with it. This can be in the file’s contents, in its metadata, or in its file name; however, you can specify a file name only to search, by using the “-name” flag similar to the “find” command. You can also specify in which directory to search by using the “-onlyin” flag followed by the desired directory path:
As with the “find” command, you can look up specifics on how to use “mdfind” in the mdfind manual page.
One useful flag for the mdfind command is the “-live” flag, which if included will run a full search on the specified query, and then pause without showing any more output. Then, if a file or folder that matches the query is added or removed, the command will continue to inform you by showing query updates. This can be useful for monitoring specific files to see how the system or some routine you are running is handling them.
Every once in a while, you’ll find that an update is available for either your macOS system or the apps installed on your machine. It’s important that you keep your system software and apps up to date. This ensures your system is stable and your apps are bug-free.
On a Mac machine, you have several ways to update the operating system and applications. The traditional way to get and install new updates is to use the official Mac App Store on your machine.
However, you’re not tied to it to install your updates. You can also use the Terminal app to find, download, and install various updates on your machine. There are even configurable options letting you decide how these updates should be installed.
Update The macOS Version From Terminal
Terminal has a command that checks for all the available updates for macOS and allows you to download and install them on your machine. The command also lets you update Apple apps such as iTunes on your Mac.
What it doesn’t do though is to install updates for the third-party apps installed on your machine. For those apps, you’re going to need to install a package that is described in the later part of this guide.
Mac Os Terminal Commands
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Find Available macOS System Updates
The first thing you’ll want to do is check what updates are available for your macOS and Apple apps. Checking doesn’t necessarily mean downloading or installing updates. It’s just to give you an idea what needs to be updated on your Mac.
Launch the Terminal app using your preferred method on your Mac.
When the app launches, type in the following command and press Enter.
softwareupdate -l
softwareupdate -l
It’ll look for all the available updates and display them in your Terminal window. The information you’ll see include the app names, size of the update, whether the update is recommended or not, and whether the update requires rebooting your machine.
You can also check the updates with Terminal and then install them from the App Store, if you want to do it that way.
Download macOS System Updates
After finding out what updates are available, you might want to download those updates to your Mac. Keep in mind that downloading also doesn’t require you to install the updates. You can just keep the updates downloaded and not install them right away.
- Launch the Terminal app and type in the following command and hit Enter.
softwareupdate -d -a
- It’ll download all the available updates but won’t install them. You’ll find these update files in the /Library/Updates/ folder on your Mac.
Install Downloaded macOS Updates
The updates you download using the Terminal command can’t be manually installed. These updates can only be installed using a command in the Terminal app.
To install them, you need to first find out the name of the update and then use that name below to get the update installed on your Mac.
- Launch the Terminal app, type in the following command, and hit Enter. Make sure to replace update-name with the name of the update you wish to install.
softwareupdate -i update-name
It’ll let you know when the update is installed on your machine. This shouldn’t take too long as the update is already downloaded on your Mac and it just needs to be installed.
Download & Install All macOS Updates
What you did in the above sections was update things bit by bit. What if you want to find, download, and install all the macOS updates in one go? Well, Terminal has you covered.
There’s a command that lets you install all the available updates on your Mac in a single execution.
- Open the Terminal app and run the following command in it.
softwareupdate -i -a
The command will get all updates installed and let you know when it’s done. This’ll take longer than the above methods as it first downloads all the updates and then installs them one by one on your machine.
Update Mac Apps From Terminal
Third-party apps that aren’t developed by Apple require different commands to be updated from the Terminal on your Mac. These app updates won’t show up when you run the commands mentioned above.
In order to be able to update all of your Mac Store Apps, you’re going to need to install Homebrew followed by ‘mas’ on your machine. It’ll then let you update your other apps.
Open the Terminal app and run the following command in it to install Homebrew.
/usr/bin/ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)”
/usr/bin/ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)”
Where To Find Terminal App On Mac Ipad
When Homebrew is installed, type in the following command and press Enter to install the mas utility.
brew install mas
brew install mas
When mas is installed, you can run the following command to see a list of all the apps that can be updated using this utility.
mas list
mas list
Type in the following command and press Enter to see all the apps that require an update.
mas outdated
mas outdated
Run the following command to update all the outdated apps. It’ll first download updates for all the outdated apps and then install them so expect a good amount of time before it finishes.
mas upgrade
mas upgrade
Wait while the utility updates your apps. When it’s done, you can close the Terminal window.
You don’t necessarily need to keep mas and Homebrew installed on your Mac if you don’t plan to update your apps using this way in the future. Uninstalling them won’t affect the updated apps on your Mac so it’s safe to remove them if you want.