macOS command-line tools you might not know about

(saurabhs.org)

2039 points Gadiguibou | 2 comments | 27 Jun 23 12:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.431s | source

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klausa ◴[27 Jun 23 12:42 UTC] No.36491947[source]▶

`pbcopy` and `pbpaste` are one of my most-loved in the list.

Dealing with some minified json, switching to iTerm, doing `pbpaste | json_pp | pbcopy` and having a clean output is _so_ nice.

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1. renewiltord ◴[27 Jun 23 15:31 UTC] No.36494325[source]▶

>>36491947 #

Use the Apple shortcuts app and you can just copy some text and hit a keyboard shortcut. The Shortcuts app lets you run arbitrary shell command.

replies(1): >>36497520 #

2. philsnow ◴[27 Jun 23 19:27 UTC] No.36497520[source]▶

>>36494325 (TP) #

This is interesting, thank you. I've been automating various things with Hammerspoon but (I think) it's limited to what you can reach with either a11y or osascript / the NS dictionary for the app you want to manipulate, but Shortcuts seems to have some actions that aren't in the NS dictionary.

For instance, in Shortcuts, I see that there's a "Pin Notes" action for Notes.app, but I don't see anything for pinning notes when I open Notes.app with "File -> Open Dictionary..." in Script Editor.

(In this case it's likely that Notes.app has the a11y bits necessary to run that action from Hammerspoon, but it would probably be easier to go through Shortcuts.)

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