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Terminal tips

productivity, terminal, tips Updated

The terminal is a great tool, as long as you know how to use it effectively. Here are some tips and tricks I've found useful.

iTerm2 shortcuts #

  • Toggle display of timestamps on the right side of the terminal indicating the time each line was modified.

    ⇧ + ⌘ + E

  • Autocomplete any text in a tab or its scrollback buffer.

    ⌘ + ;

Who's running what? #

who shows who is logged in:

$ who
alan     console      2020-12-18 17:44
alan     ttys009      2021-05-08 17:12
alan     ttys072      2021-04-15 20:46
alan     ttys078      2021-05-08 13:54

w shows who is logged in and what they are doing:

$ w
23:37  up 143 days,  4:53, 4 users, load averages: 2.17 2.35 2.41
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@  IDLE WHAT
alan     console  -                18Dec20 143days -
alan     s009     -                Sat17       - w
alan     s072     -                15Apr21  1:21 /usr/local/opt/bash/bin/bash -l
alan     s078     -                Sat13       5 node index.js

NOTE: w is a useful command but not one I use very often. I have an alias w that I use daily to navigate to my code workspaces, so to access the original w command it must be run as \w, see alias command and backslash escape character for details.

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