Macos on Technical Notes

File Hierarchy with Apple Creator Studio

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Apple Creator Studio is Apple’s new subscription that bundles its professional creative tools: Final Cut Pro, Motion, Compressor, Logic Pro and Pixelmator Pro. In this post I describe how I organize my video projects to make the most of available disks and keep everything under control.

The challenge isn’t using Final Cut Pro – which is quite intuitive – but managing the file hierarchy across disks without ending up with orphaned libraries, overflowing caches, or losing raw footage. After several family projects, I’ve consolidated a protocol that works for me.

Cross-platform CLI Tools

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I share a selection of cross-platform command-line tools that you can use interchangeably on PowerShell, CMD, WSL2, macOS and Linux. These are modern, fast and lightweight utilities that replace or greatly improve classic tools like ls, cd, find or even command history.

They not only speed up everyday tasks, but also offer a more consistent user experience across systems. They don’t depend on specific shells like Bash or Zsh, and work the same whether you use PowerShell, Terminal, Alacritty, VSCode or any modern environment. As I discover new CLI utilities that fit this cross-platform, no-heavy-dependencies approach, I’ll keep adding them.

CRLF vs LF

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When working in software development, one of the most subtle yet crucial aspects you need to be aware of is the difference between line endings in text files between Windows (CRLF \r\n) and Linux/MacOS (LF \n).

This small detail can cause big problems if not handled correctly, especially when working in mixed environments – version control conflicts, script incompatibilities, compilation or execution issues. I wrote this post to have a handy reference for dealing with this topic, including a few tricks.

Terminals with tmux

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

tmux is a terminal multiplexer that allows you to have multiple sessions (shells) in a single window. From your Mac, Linux, or even Windows (with WSL) terminal, in a single window you can have multiple active sessions, switch between them, view them simultaneously, enter one and disconnect (they keep running in the background), and reconnect to it in the future.

Goodbye Bash, Hello Zsh!

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve decided to migrate my CLI from the reliable and well-known bash to the powerful and versatile zsh. It’s an extended evolution of the Bourne Shell (sh) – it not only inherits many of Bash’s familiar features but also introduces a series of new functionalities, plugin support, and custom themes. Apple adopted Zsh as the default shell some time ago, and I still needed to make the switch on my Linux systems, including WSL2 on Windows.

Mac Users from CLI

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

To find all available users on a macOS system from the command line, you can use a Bash script. The macOS operating system, like other Unix-like systems, stores user information in various system files, primarily in /etc/passwd. macOS uses Open Directory for user management, so you can use commands like dscl to query this information.

Customizing VSCode

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I cover how to customize VSCode. I work with GitHub in a cross-platform, multi-account environment and want to sync my settings, use the same extensions, and leverage licenses. I explain the multi-account topic, synchronization of my global and per-project preferences (settings), and extensions.

I normally use Windows, Linux, and macOS, and I’ve chosen VSCode as my editor/IDE. The goal is to have a unified work experience – launch VSCode on any operating system, clone a personal or professional project, keeping the same extensions and settings, and even using the options to connect to a host, tunnel, WSL, etc.

MAC with Vagrant

Sun, 23 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Vagrant lets you create and configure virtual development environments that are lightweight and reproducible. It does so by creating virtual machines and requires a Hypervisor. It doesn’t care which hypervisor you use – it supports VirtualBox, KVM, Docker, VMWare, and 30+ others. It’s a fantastic tool for spinning up Servers for our software development projects.

This guide only works, for now, with INTEL chips. I haven’t been able to make it work on a Mac with ARM (Apple Silicon) as the host yet.

MAC for Development

Sat, 15 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I describe my configuration log for setting up a Mac (INTEL or ARM) as a development machine. I install several graphical and command-line applications that are important for using a Mac as a development workstation.

The installation order can be varied, but this is what I recommend starting from a fresh macOS installation.

Jupyter Lab with Chrome on Mac

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I describe how to change the default browser for Jupyter Lab on a Mac. If we don’t do anything and launch jupyter lab from the command line, the system’s default browser (Safari) will be invoked. If you want to change it to Chrome, follow the steps below.

JupyterLabs to PDF

Tue, 11 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I describe how I managed, from a MacOS, to correctly convert Jupyter Lab exercises to PDF in different environments. Converting Jupyter Lab notebooks to PDF is not easy due to the multiple variants (images, links) they can contain. I’ve tried intermediate exports, pandoc, apps, without much success.

Preview Notebooks on MacOS

Sat, 08 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

MacOS doesn’t include an option in Finder to preview Jupyter Lab notebooks (.ipynb). There are several options but one of the quickest and simplest is to install ipynb-quicklook

Python and JupyterLab on MacOS

Fri, 30 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Python is a multi-paradigm interpreted programming language. pip manages packages from PyPI (the Python Package Index). PipEnv lets you create a virtual environment to run your application in isolation with the necessary libraries. Jupyter Lab is a web application that serves as a bridge between code and explanatory text.

Preview Markdown on MacOS

Sat, 24 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

MacOS doesn’t include an option in Finder to preview Markdown files (.md). There are several solutions available, and one of the quickest and simplest is to install qlmarkdown

Hotkey for MacOS Apps

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I need to be able to open a program by pressing a HotKey, regardless of which application has focus. Applications typically don’t come with this option but there are cases where it could be useful.