System tips

Screenshots

Keyboard shortcuts

You can capture the entire screen, a window, or just a portion of the screen.

• ⌘ + ⇧ + 3 Capture the whole screen.
• ⌘ + ⇧ + 4 Capture a selection.
• ⌘ + ⇧ + 4 + Space Capture a window.
• ⌘ + ⇧ + 5 Capture the whole screen, a selection or a window.

See more information in Take a screenshot on your Mac.

Command line

Command line tool that capture an image of the whole, or part of the screen.

screencapture -ioW ~/Desktop/screenshot.png

• -i Capture screen interactively, by selection or window.
• -W Start interaction in window selection mode.
• -o In window capture mode, do not capture the shadow of the window.

More information in screencapture manual page.

Change default settings of screen capture

defaults write com.apple.screencapture name "Screenshot"

Disable shadow in screenshots:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true

Save screenshots to the ~/Downloads

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location -string "${HOME}/Downloads"

Save screenshots in PNG format (other options: BMP, GIF, JPG, PDF, TIFF)

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type -string "png"

Disable datetime in screenshots filename

defaults write com.apple.screencapture include-date -bool false

To apply the changes, you need to restart the SystemUIServer:

killall SystemUIServer

Toggle hidden files in Finder

Run Automator and create new Application. Add task Run Shell script and paste follow code:

STATUS=`defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles`
if [ $STATUS == YES ];
then
    defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
else
    defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
fi
killall Finder

Save application. From now you can toggle hidden files with one click.

Useful commands

Network speed quality

Since macOS Monterey is there a command to test your network quality:

networkQuality -v

Output will looks like follow:

==== SUMMARY ====
Upload capacity: 16.239 Mbps
Download capacity: 475.129 Mbps
Upload flows: 20
Download flows: 12
Responsiveness: Low (154 RPM)
Base RTT: 26
Start: 19.04.2022 13:56:47
End: 19.04.2022 13:57:04
OS Version: Version 12.3.1 (Build 21E258)

If you’re curious, networkQuality uses Apple’s CDN at https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/config as the target for its testing.

List all mounted drives on Mac

df -h

Open any source

open # [url|filename|directory...]

IP address of an AirPrint printer

You can use ippfind command that finds services registered with a DNS server or available through local devices. Its primary purpose is to find IPP printers and show their URIs, show their current status, or run commands.

ippfind

Then you get local address of printer (Internet Printing Protocol (IPP, RFC 2911)):

ipp://3036B5000000.local:XXX/ipp/print

then ping local address

ping 3036B5000000.local

and here we go

PING 3036B5000000.local (192.168.0.108): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.0.108: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=262.342 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.108: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=285.290 ms

our printer has 192.168.0.108