Put the following in ~/.Xmodmap:
clear Mod1 clear Mod2 keycode 63 = Mode_switch keycode 66 = Meta_L add Mod1 = Meta_L add Mod2 = Mode_switch
Restart X11. Then it will be possible to use alt+x for M-X in Emacs, etc.
The defaults in the keyboard settings are as follows:
end | scroll to end of buffer |
home | scroll to start of buffer |
page down | scroll to next page in buffer |
page up | scroll to previous page in buffer |
shift end | \033[F |
shift home | \033[H |
shift page down | \033[6~ |
shift page up | \033[5~ |
This means that when you press (for instance) PageUp, it just moves up through the window’s scrollback, rather than sending a PageUp key to the application running the terminal. You have to use SHIFT+PageUp to actually tell the application to page up. This is the opposite way round to every other terminal I’ve ever used (of course, some don’t even have any scrollback to page through).
To fix this switch the shifted and unshifted pairs around as follows:
end | \033[F |
home | \033[H |
page down | \033[6~ |
page up | \033[5~ |
shift end | scroll to end of buffer |
shift home | scroll to start of buffer |
shift page down | scroll to next page in buffer |
shift page up | scroll to previous page in buffer |
Normally Terminal only shows the tab bar if there is more than one tab; a reasonable screen-space optimization for windows that never have more than one. But for a window that usually has tabs but occasionally doesn’t, the changing size when you temporarily go down to one window is annoying. So:
defaults write com.Apple.Terminal ShowTabBar 1
You will need to quit and restart Terminal. Set the default back to 0 to undo.
I always have X11 running since I use a number of X11 applications. But by default it starts an xterm, which is futile and annoying since I use Terminal instead. Fortunately you can turn this off:
defaults write org.x.X11 app_to_run /usr/bin/true
Anyone who steals your computer will probably wipe it before re-selling it, but in the event the police find it before they get around to it, this might help prove that it was stolen and/or speed its return to you.
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText "'Property of YOUR NAME <YOU@YOUR DOMAIN>'"
(Note the weird quoting!)
OS X likes to start an application when you insert a memory card with photos on. Ideally this would be the one you’re going to use to import your pictures, rather than the default. Rather bizarrely this isn’t controlled through System Preferences.
(As far as I can tell you can’t do this with defaults.)
There are a number of useful command line tools, some of them the equivalents of GUI features.
Clipboard | pbcopy, pbpaste |
Spotlight | mdfind, mdutil |
Audio file format conversion | afconvert (afconvert -h is more informative than the man page) |
Text file format conversion | textutil (HTML, word, etc) cupsfilter (convert anything to PDF) |
Image file processing | sips |
Screenshot | screencapture |
Software package installer | installer |
Power settings | pmset |