Kickstart Configure Apple Remote Desktop kill Kill a process by specifying its PID killall Kill processes by name l l List files in long format (ls -l) last Indicate last logins of users and ttys launchctl Load or unload daemons/agents ll List files in long format, showing invisible files (ls -la) less Display output one screen at a time let. Established in 1996, EveryMac.com is the complete guide to every Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Mac clone in the world, with technical specs, configuration details, system identifiers, performance benchmarks, and global pricing info.
Typing skills are essential for everyone from kids to adults. Whether you have a child who is just learning or want to brush up on your own typing skills, we have the tools for you.
Before you invest in a paid app, take a look at these seven free typing apps for Mac first. While some contain in-app purchases, you can use the try-before-you-buy option to make sure they suit you before shelling out your cash.
1. Keyboard Virtuoso
For beginners who want a good way to progress in their skills.
Keyboard Virtuoso starts you off with the very basics using 20 warm-ups you must complete to move on. Then go through each of the lessons and finish successfully to keep unlocking more. Before you begin each lesson, you’ll see a helpful prompt and the number of errors allowed.
You can enjoy the warm-ups and first 10 lessons for free. This gives you a lot of usage before you decide if you want to buy the full version.
For those who want detailed stats on speed and accuracy over time.
With Master of Typing, you start honing your skills using simple letter combinations. Then you’ll work your way to typing difficult words.
Detailed statistics let you check out your speed and accuracy from when you started using the app to today’s date. You can also view your averages and bests.
The app gives you several practice lessons for free. You can then take a look at the pro version, which provides different packages per your skill level and removes the ads. And if you’re a programmer looking for more ways to enhance your keyboarding skills, look at these tools to help boost your typing speed.
Download:Master of Typing (Free, premium version available)
3. Typist
For beginners through advanced typists to learn and practice.
The Typist app is ideal for every level of proficiency. You can begin learning letter locations with the Standard Courses, check out the Typing Review, and then move onto a variety of drills. Each lesson contains several exercises.
The app displays your stats right on the bottom for viewing when you finish an exercise. Review your strokes per minute, typing speed, error ratio, and total time for the exercise. You can also take a look at the lessons offered for the calculator and Dvorak keyboards.
Download: Typist (Free) [No Longer Available]
4. ZenTypist
For those who need to practice accuracy more than speed.
As great as it is to type quickly, accuracy is really more important. And the ZenTypist app concentrates on your accuracy. You score only for how well you do. So if you make a mistake, hit your Delete key and fix it.
As you type the paragraphs you see, the letters turn from gray to black. Your errors are marked in red. Once you complete the paragraph with no mistakes remaining, you can move onto the next paragraph. What’s nice about ZenTypist is that you type words in sentences, sort of like a mini-story. This is helpful for mirroring a real-world typing scenario.
Download: ZenTypist (Free) [No Longer Available]
5. Animal Typing Lite
For children learning to type who like cute animal-themed apps.
Animal Typing Lite is a super cute way for kids to learn how to type10 Sites and Games to Teach Kids Typing the Fun Way10 Sites and Games to Teach Kids Typing the Fun WayWhy not let your kids have fun and also practice their keyboard skills with these free typing games for all ages!Read More. The screen is colorful, with animated fingers on a keyboard for your child to follow. The app rewards your little one for accuracy and speed as correct keystrokes help the animals along their way.
With each lesson, you start as a slower animal, like a snail. But if you do well with accuracy and speed, you’ll finish with a faster creature, like a gazelle. The app has four free lessons so your child can try it out. You can then buy more with an in-app purchase.
Download:Animal Typing Lite (Free, premium version available)
6. Typing Fingers LT
For children learning to type who like fun sounds and colorful themes.
Typing Fingers LT is another great typing teacher for kids, but works for adults just the same. You start the first four lessons learning the letter positions on the keyboard. The app also includes a neat section for the proper way to sit while typing, with ergonomic measurements and all.
Your little one will enjoy the colorful imagery, fun sounds, nifty themes, a cartoon guide, and helpful animations. You can try before you buy with the first few lessons for free, then obtain more with an in-app purchase.
Download:Typing Fingers LT (Free, premium version available)
7. The Vehicles Typing
For children learning to type who like cool car-themed apps.
The Vehicles Typing is one more typing app for Mac that your child might like. As the vehicle travels down the road, type the letters you see in the balloons to keep the car moving and achieve the goal. The balloons holding the letters are colored with corresponding hints at the top for which keys to press.
The app includes three separate save slots. So if you have more than one beginning typist, this feature keeps the progress for each separate. Like with the other children’s typing apps here, you can try the first couple of lessons for free and get the rest with an in-app purchase.
And if your youngster is interested in coding, take a look at these cool programming apps for kids.
Download:The Vehicles Typing (Free, premium version available)
Get Typing!
Your Mac can be a helpful learning tool, especially when it comes to handy apps like these. Start a new typing adventure with your child or practice and hone your own typing skills7 Ultimate Typing Games If You Want to Type Really Fast7 Ultimate Typing Games If You Want to Type Really FastIs your slow typing dragging your productivity down? Challenge yourself with these excellent typing games and improve your typing.Read More for a new job. Whatever the case, these typing apps for Mac should get you off to a great start.
And make sure you’re using the right keyboard for you and your typing comfort. Find out if Apple’s keyboard is the best choice for your Mac, or check out our list of ergonomic keyboardsThe 6 Best Ergonomic Keyboards to Improve Computer ComfortThe 6 Best Ergonomic Keyboards to Improve Computer ComfortLooking for the best ergonomic keyboard to take the strain off your wrists? Here are some comfortable options.Read More.
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OS X's command line and I have never been what I'd call 'friendly'; rather, we have a mutual respect and understanding about not messing with each other. (Well, as much of a mutual respect as one can have between a human being and a code window.)
While the average person should never have any reason to visit Terminal, Apple's command line interface app actually does give you access to quite a few neat tricks and shortcuts... if you're willing to take a peek.
What is Terminal?
Apple's Terminal app is a direct interface to OS X's bash shell — part of its UNIX underpinnings. When you open it, Terminal presents you with a white text screen, logged in with your OS X user account by default.
Here's the important part: With a system administrator account and password, you have direct access to tweaking almost everything about your computer's software code; that means that while this little window provides great power, it comes with great responsibility. In short, be careful before using Terminal to execute commands, and make sure you understand what you're typing.
You can also use Terminal to securely connect to other machines, web servers, and even create your own scripts, but those are how-tos for another day. For now, we're going to focus on using Terminal to explore your own computer.
Basic Terminal commands you should know
Before we get started with the fun stuff, let's learn some basic Terminal terminology and commands. These form the framework for more complex interactions (aka, the fun stuff).
How to execute a Terminal command
You can type something in the Terminal window until you're blue in the face, but it won't execute until you press the Return key on your keyboard. At that point, it will either return an error if you've typed something incorrectly, or the command will execute.
Unless you're executing a command that requires the display of text in Terminal, you won't have any indicator that what you've done has been successful; you'll just get a new line with your user name on it once the command is finished processing.
When writing commands and paths in Terminal, almost everything is case sensitive: This means that you need to remember to properly capitalize 'Dock' when referring to the Dock, or OS X won't understand your command.
What's a path?
You can use Terminal to get direct access to your files without using the Finder. To do so, you build something called a path. Paths look similar in some ways to website sub-directories, and follow the structure of your folders.
Paths take two forms: absolute paths and relative paths. An absolute path starts at the root level of your hard drive, and is displayed as '/'. So if you wanted to make a path to your Applications folder, you would write '/Applications/'.
Relative paths are defined based on where you've already navigated to, and represented by './'. For instance, if you go to the '/Applications/' folder in Terminal, that's your current working directory (cwd). You can then get to your Utilities folder by typing './Utilities/' rather than '/Applications/Utilities'.
When you first launch Terminal, you're starting in the current working directory of /Users/myusername/ (also known as your User folder).
How to display and move between files in Terminal
To actually put all this path knowledge to use, you'll need the Terminal commands for displaying and changing files.
ls: The 'ls' command, by itself, displays the contents of the cwd. So if I were just to type 'ls' in Terminal, it would display the contents of my user directory:
You can optionally add an absolute or relative or path if you want to view a different directories. So, for example, if I wanted to view the Utilities folder inside Applications, I could type 'ls /Applications/Utilities/'. This won't change your current working directory, but it'll let you view other directories on your hard drive.
You can add options to view more information about that directory. The options for 'ls' include:
-l, which lets you view the permissions of each file in the directory
-R, which will not only show each folder in the directory, but all their files, as well
-a, which will show any hidden files in the current directory
cd: Where the 'ls' command lets you view a directory, the 'cd' command will actually move to that directory (change your cwd). For instance, if after viewing the Utilities folder, you want to move to it, you'd type 'cd /Applications/Utilities/'.
pwd: Write this command by itself to help you remember the path of your current directory. When typed into terminal, it will print the full path of your cwd.
man: This command, followed by another Unix command, lets you read the Unix manual about the second command. This is super useful if you want to try a cool Terminal trick you found online, but aren't sure what those commands actually do.
For instance, typing 'man ls' will get you information on the 'ls' command, which lists directory contents.
How to modify files, folders, and preferences in Terminal
defaults: This command is often used in Terminal tips and tricks to tweak applications and system settings via their preference files. You can use it to do things like disable transparency in the menu bar, always show your scroll bars, change trackpad behavior, and much much more. You'll usually see this paired with either 'write' and a string, as with this:
The code above lets you save all your screenshots as JPGs instead of the system default PNG.
killall: If you execute a Terminal command that affects any system process or app, you're going to need to reboot the process to make it take effect. 'killall' followed by the process will do so. (This is also another way to force quit misbehaving apps or processes if your Force Quit menu isn't behaving.) Remember, this command and its target are case sensitive.
ln: OS X has long offered aliases, which let you create links to files, folders, and applications elsewhere in the system without having to duplicate them. Unfortunately, certain apps don't play well with aliases. With the link command 'ln -s', you can create a low-level, UNIX-based symbolic link which most system processes will recognize. Likely, you'll never have to make a symbolic link, but on the off-chance you want to perform a Terminal trick that requires them, this is how you do it.
The first path listed is your original file's path; the second path is where you'd like your symbolic link.
chflags: This commands lets you view and change the flags on a file or folder. For most people, the only flags you're going to care about are 'hidden' and 'nohidden', which hide and unhide documents, respectively.
sudo: If you spend any time online, you've probably heard of 'sudo' before. This is Unix's override command, and lets you execute any command as an administrator — provided, of course, that you have the requisite password and permissions. It probably goes without saying, but as a Terminal beginner, it's generally a good idea not to mess with commands like 'sudo' unless you are 100 percent sure what you're doing.
How to use Terminal for fun and whimsy
say: Feeling lonely? You can make your computer say anything you like with the 'say' command, and you can even record it in audio format to your desktop, if you so choose.
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl: This isn't technically something local to your Mac, but it's my all-time favorite Terminal trick. Some kind soul on the internet made an all-ASCII version of Star Wars: A New Hope; run the following code, and you'll be treated to a full showing. If it doesn't make you smile just a little bit, you might be dead inside.