Top all-time · #4915
Scripting OS X
Personal blog · scriptingosx.comsystemsprogramming
Scripting OS X is a personal blog at scriptingosx.com about systems and programming. Since 2019, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 18 times, most often “Moving to zsh (2019)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Scripting OS X for macOS scripting and shell posts, such as the move from bash to zsh, notarizing command-line tools, and editing property lists. One commenter calls it a great resource.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The site for macOS and iOS automation, scripting, and administration.
Most-linked posts?
- /2019/09/notarize-a-command-line-tool/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-07-29
- /2020/06/about-bash-zsh-sh-and-dash-in-macos-catalina-and-beyond/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-09
- Moving to zsh (2019)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-01-28
What Hacker News says?
> Will they completely remove bash, rsync, eventually? Removing bash is a pretty safe bet. They’ve been making move after move in recent years preparing for it. https://scriptingosx.com/2019/06/moving-to-zsh/
Comment linking /2019/06/moving-to-zsh/
on “Apple removes Python 2.7 in macOS 12.3 beta”Submitted The unexpected return of JavaScript for automation as a story · 73 points
HN discussionscriptingosx[0] is a great resource, here's a simple Swift command line tool they wrote that might be a good reference: https://github.com/scriptingosx/desktoppr [0] https://scriptingosx.com/
Comment linking /
on “Moving a macOS window by clicking anywhere on it”Submitted Moving to zsh (2019) as a story · 57 points
HN discussionhttps://scriptingosx.com/2019/09/notarize-a-command-line-too...
Comment linking /2019/09/notarize-a-command-line-tool/
on “Distributing Mac apps outside the App Store, a quick start guide”Submitted On env Shebangs as a story · 47 points
HN discussion"bash, obviously for scripting;" It's possible to use bash for both interactive use and scripting. For example, this author claims to use bash as his scripting shell. But Debian and the popular Debian-derived distributions do not use bash for scripts beginning with "#!/bin/sh", i.e., "shell scripts". The interactive shell may be bash, but the scripting shell, /bin/sh, is not bash. https://www.man7.org/linux/man-page…
Comment linking /2020/06/about-bash-zsh-sh-and-dash-in-macos-catalina-and-beyond/
on “The curious case of shell commands, or how "this bug is required by POSIX" (2021)”Submitted On viewing man pages (Ventura update) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis error occurs on default macOS when using software precompiled on another computer, when the person who compiled and released that software has not signed up for an Apple Developer account and submitted the precompiled bundle for notarization, one of Apple's anti-malware prevention mechanisms. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/notarizing_m... You can usually work around it by right-clicking the app…
Comment linking /2019/09/notarize-a-command-line-tool/
on “Show HN: MeetingBar – A menu bar macOS app for calendar meetings”Submitted Moving to zsh as a story · 2 points
HN discussionApple added /bin/dash in Catalina, and the intention is probably to eventually to use dash as the implementation of sh: https://scriptingosx.com/2020/06/about-bash-zsh-sh-and-dash-... . As for why they haven't done it yet, I'd guess it's just to preserve backward compatibility with old scripts that rely on quirks of bash's sh compatibility mode.
Comment linking /2020/06/about-bash-zsh-sh-and-dash-in-macos-catalina-and-beyond/
on “A few facts about POSIX”Submitted Save up to 25% pkg file size with this weird Monterey trick as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIn ten years everything will be the same because Andreas Wendker told us that Macs will stay Macs the way we know and love them. He’s neither in marketing nor in sales but an engineer so obviously what he says must be the truth, to put it sarcastically. «Macs will stay Macs the way you know and love them. They will run the same powerful Pro apps. They will offer the same developer APIs Macs have today. They will let…
Comment linking /2020/06/macos-11/
on “Tweetbot Is Broken”Submitted An AirTag Adventure, Part 2–Receiving an AirTag as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI’m surprised TFA doesn’t mention `plutil` and its counterpart `PlistBuddy`. They’re like the `jq` of macOS. https://scriptingosx.com/2016/11/editing-property-lists/
Comment linking /2016/11/editing-property-lists/
on “macOS Command-Line Tools You Might Not Know About”Submitted Downgrading a Mac That Shipped with Catalina to Mojave as a story · 1 points
HN discussionA nice thing about Apple’s Terminal is the open [0] command. I miss that in Windows Powershell and would likely miss it in Linux as well. ——— [0]: https://scriptingosx.com/2017/02/the-macos-open-command/
Comment linking /2017/02/the-macos-open-command/
on “Dungeons and Directories, an exploration game in your file explorer”> bash was written a decade prior to standardization, and has interesting issues because of this. bash can do whatever it wants to do if it's called as "bash". But it should only do specific things when called as "sh". This is true of any shell: > When interpreted with dash instead of bash, the same script will fail. This is because dash is much stricter than bash in following the sh standard. Since dash is designed…
Comment linking /2020/06/about-bash-zsh-sh-and-dash-in-macos-catalina-and-beyond/
on “Pure Bash Bible”
