macOS is my favorite desktop operating system.
I do wish to expand my horizons and try out Linux more. I doubt I will ever be able to move to another operating system as I have too much invested in optimizing and using macOS but I do want to take the best of all worlds. Linux is open source, has an increasingly large community of users and developers and one thing that I love about UNIX systems is that by using these systems you effectively become a developer. Because otherwise you are simply missing out on the full experience.
You can clean install by going to Recovery mode (restart with cmd+r
pressed). Then Disk Utility > Select disk > Erase (Format it) > Close Disk Utility > Select option Reinstall MacOS (Choose macOS ver. to install).
In save dialogues I can press these keys:
Return
or ⌘ + S
= Save
ESC
= Cancel
I can also press /
or ~
to quickly go to some directory from a save dialogue. And I can press ⌘ + ↑
to go to parent directory
.
Recovery mode: Power off the machine, press the power button and immediately hold Cmd-R.
Both Windows and MacOS are at a point where clean installs are unnecessary.
I can appreciate someone wanting to do a clean install if they've installed and removed many apps and just want to clear out everything spread around all the system and hidden folders, even if it doesn't really affect performance and won't save a ton of disk space. There is something cathartic about a clean install.
/usr/local/bin
is a good place to put raw binaries available in the path, that are not installed with Nix.
To code sign binaries ad hoc, run codesign -s - <path_to_binary>
. This will give users a gatekeeper warning but they could still run the binary. To sign so users can run binary without warning, you need Apple developer account.
Control Mac Keyboard Brightness - Programmatically flash the keyboard lights and control display brightness on Macs.
maclaunchmaclaunch - Manage your macOS startup items.
Objective-See - Simple, yet effective macOS security tools.
AppUpdater - Simple app-updater for macOS, checks your GitHub releases for a binary asset once a day and silently updates your app.
Brooklyn - Screensaver inspired by Apple's Event on October 30, 2018.
PureDarwin - Community project to make Darwin more usable. (HN)
BlockBlock - Continually monitors common persistence locations and displays an alert whenever a persistent component is added to the OS.
Impact - Crash detection and recording library for Apple platforms.
gon - CLI and Go Library for macOS Notarization.
macOS Headers - Consistently maintained dump of most macOS Headers.
AppMover - Framework for moving your application bundle to Applications folder on launch.
Lilu - Arbitrary kext and process patching on macOS.
osx-hid-inspector - Command line tool for macOS for inspecting human input devices (HID).
mas-cli - Simple command line interface for the Mac App Store. Designed for scripting and automation.
apply-user-defaults - Small utility to set macOS user defaults declaratively from a YAML file.
Zero.sh - Radically simple personal bootstrapping tool for macOS.
DefaultApp - Template for starting macOS projects. (Code) (HN)
BlackHole - Modern MacOS virtual audio driver that allows applications to pass audio to other applications with zero additional latency.
skhd - Simple hotkey daemon for macOS.
Proxy Audio Driver - Virtual audio driver for macOS to sends all audio to another output.
Icons.app - App for macOS which is designed to generate consistent sized icons of an existing application in various states, jiggling (shaking) etc.
Syphon - macOS technology to allow applications to share video and still images with one another in realtime, instantly.
Mac Bare Metal - Enterprise-class IaaS for macOS.
React Native for macOS - Build native macOS apps with React. (HN)
netboot.nix - Create full netboot images in 15 seconds.
Swizzle - Extensible tweak to create simple tweaks for any app, from within any app.
AquaticPrime - Mac software licensing code using cryptographically signed license files.
macOS icon pack - Beautiful open source icons for Big Sur. (Code)
macOS Simple KVM - Tools to set up a quick macOS VM in QEMU, accelerated by KVM.
Apple Platform Versions - Recent history of platforms developed by Apple, including Apple-managed build tools for these platforms.
macOS defaults - List of macOS defaults commands with demos. (Code)
Does it ARM - Apps that are reported to support Apple Silicon. (Code)
create-dmg - Shell script to build fancy DMGs.
Mach-O learning tool - Toy program to learn more about the mach-o file format.
Popover - Custom macOS Popover.
Virtualization.framework tool (vftool) - Runs Linux virtual machines in macOS. (HN)
Project Mendacius - GUI based virtualization tool for running Linux on macOS Big Sur.
dmgdist - Automate the process of creating, uploading and notarizing the DMG of a Mac app.
jolk - macOS System Executable Analyzer. (Analyzing a new release of macOS with jolk)
MacHack - List of built-in tools in macOS that you probably didn't know about.
SplitConfigurations - Up the basics of a Big Sur app layout. Includes splitview and toolbarItems.
TinyLinux - Tiny minimum implementation of Virtualization framework to boot Linux.
DyldExtractor - Extract Binaries from Apple's Dyld Shared Cache.
strongarm - Full-featured, cross-platform ARM64 Mach-O analysis library.
macbac - Lists, controls and schedules efficient APFS snapshots for your convenience.
UTM - Virtual machines for Mac.