Basically, a Mac application has a
.app
extension, but it’s not really a file — it’s a package. You can view the application’s contents by navigating to it in the Finder, right-clicking it and then choosing “Show Package Contents”.The internal folder structure may vary between apps, but you can be sure that every Mac app will have a
Contents
folder with a MacOS
subfolder in it. Book management software free for mac. Inside the MacOS
directory, there’s an extension-less file with the exact same name as the app itself. This file can be anything really, but in its simplest form it’s a shell script. As it turns out, this folder/file structure is all it takes to create a functional app!Enter appify
After this discovery, Thomas Aylott came up with a clever “appify” script that allows you to easily create Mac apps from shell scripts. The code looks like this:
Jun 04, 2018 BASH Management in macOS. As in Linux, macOS stores its variables in environment files. The /etc/profile and /etc/bashrc files are used by default on the system. Each user can also create their own /.bashprofile and /.bashrc files. In addition, /.bashlogout may be used to perform tasks at shell exit. Here are more BASH management commands. Jun 25, 2018 Here we will discuss all the ways to change icons on a Mac. How to change icons on a Mac: Swapping the existing icons. The first method to change the icon on a Mac is to swap the icon of an existing folder with some other folder. It is nothing but copying the folder of an icon in.icns format and then paste it to that folder which you want to. Mar 21, 2012 /bin/bash /bin/sh. Placing any of those in the ‘Command (complete path)’ box will set the new shell as the terminal window default. Note this changes the default shell used by Terminal app, which is different from the default login shell, that is changed through the following step instead Change a User Default Login Shell in Mac OS X.
Macos Bash Script
Mar 16, 2015 One of the best ways to customize your Mac and make it your own is to change your app and folder icons. With just a few simple changes, you can have things uniquely your own. Mac apps that show up on screen. There are a lot of different icons you can change in OS X. The easiest ones to change are your applications and folders but, we warn you, it can be habit forming.
Installing and using appify is pretty straightforward if you’re used to working with UNIX. (I’m not, so I had to figure this out.) Here’s how to install it:
- Save the script to a directory in your
PATH
and name itappify
(no extension). I chose to put it in/usr/local/bin
, which requires root privileges. - Fire up Terminal.app and enter
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/appify
to make appify executable without root privileges.
After that, you can create apps based on any shell script simply by launching Terminal.app and entering something like this:
Obviously, this would create a stand-alone application named
Your App Name.app
that executes the your-shell-script.sh
script.After that, you can very easily add a custom icon to the app if you want to.
Adding a custom app icon
- Create an
.icns
file or a 512×512 PNG image with the icon you want, and copy it to the clipboard (⌘ + C). (Alternatively, copy it from an existing app as described in steps 2 and 3.) - Right-click the
.app
file of which you want to change the icon and select “Get Info” (or select the file and press ⌘ + I). - Select the app icon in the top left corner by clicking it once. It will get a subtle blue outline if you did it right.
- Now hit ⌘ + V (paste) to overwrite the default icon with the new one.
Note that this will work for any file or folder, not just
.app
files.Examples
Chrome/Chromium bootstrappers
I like to run Chrome/Chromium with some command-line switches or flags enabled. On Windows, you can create a shortcut and set the parameters you want in its properties; on a Mac, you’ll need to launch it from the command line every time. Well, not anymore :)
Macos Bash Profile
The
&
at the end is not a typo; it is there to make sure Chromium is launched in a separate thread. Without the &
, Chromium would exit as soon as you quit Terminal.app. https://factspowerful.weebly.com/mac-app-to-edit-jpeg.html.Launch a local web server from a directory
Say you’re working on a project and you want to debug it from a web server. The following shell script will use Python to launch a local web server from a specific directory and open the index page in your default browser of choice. After appifying it, you won’t even need to open the terminal for it anymore.
More?
Needless to say, the possibilities are endless. Just to give another example, you could very easily create an app that minifies all JavaScript and CSS files in a specific folder. Got any nice ideas? Let me know by leaving a comment!