25 Essential Mac Terminal Commands

You don't need to live in the Terminal to benefit from it. These 25 commands cover the everyday jobs — finding your way around, moving files, checking what your Mac is doing — plus the Mac-only extras that make macOS's Terminal genuinely fun. Each one works identically on macOS 13 Ventura through 15 Sequoia.

Moving around

• pwd — print the folder you're currently in.
• ls — list the files here; ls -la adds hidden files, sizes, and permissions.
• cd — change folder: cd ~/Downloads, cd .. to go up one level, plain cd to jump home.
• clear — wipe the screen (or press Cmd-K).
• man — the built-in manual: man ls explains every flag ls takes. Press q to exit.
• open . — the escape hatch: opens the folder you're standing in as a Finder window.

Managing files

• mkdir — create a folder: mkdir Invoices; add -p to create nested paths in one go.
• touch — create an empty file: touch notes.txt.
• cp — copy: cp report.pdf ~/Desktop/; use -R for folders.
• mv — move or rename: mv draft.txt final.txt.
• cat — print a file's contents to the screen.
• nano — a friendly in-Terminal text editor; Ctrl-O saves, Ctrl-X quits.
• rm — delete a file. Handle with care: rm does not use the Trash. There is no undo. Double-check the path, and be triple-careful with rm -r on folders.

Checking your system

When your Mac feels slow or full, these answer why — the same numbers Activity Monitor shows, seconds faster:

• grep — search inside files: grep -ri "invoice" ~/Documents.
• find — locate files by name or attribute: find . -name "*.pdf".
• df -h — free space on each volume.
• du -sh * — how much each item in the current folder weighs.
• top -o cpu — a live view of what's eating your CPU; press q to quit.
• ping -c 5 1.1.1.1 — five quick packets to test whether your internet connection is alive.
• killall — restart a process by name: killall Dock or killall Finder relaunch instantly and are the standard way to apply settings tweaks.

The Mac-only gems

These five don't exist on generic Unix — they're macOS specials, and they're the reason Mac users end up loving the Terminal:

• open — launch anything: open report.pdf, open -a Preview photo.png, open https://trymainspring.com.
• pbcopy / pbpaste — pipe text to and from the clipboard: ls | pbcopy puts a file listing straight on your clipboard.
• caffeinate — keep your Mac awake while a command runs: caffeinate -i ./backup.sh, or plain caffeinate until you press Ctrl-C.
• say — your Mac speaks: say "build finished". Chain it after a slow command — make build && say done — and go get coffee.
• defaults — read and write the hidden preferences behind macOS apps. This one unlocks a whole world of tweaks; start with our guide to defaults write.

One habit ties all 25 together: when in doubt, check man before you run something unfamiliar, and never paste a command from the internet — especially one starting with sudo — without knowing what it does.

Habits that make every command faster

Two built-in behaviors multiply everything above. Tab completion: type the first few letters of a file or folder name and press Tab — the shell fills in the rest, killing most typos before they happen. History: the up arrow recalls previous commands, and Ctrl-R searches everything you've typed for a fragment you remember.

Add two rescue moves and you're set. Ctrl-C cancels whatever is running, so a wrong command rarely gets far. And dragging a file from a Finder window into Terminal pastes its full path at the cursor — the easiest way to point a command at something buried six folders deep. All of it works out of the box in the default zsh shell on macOS 13 through 15.