One nice thing about macOS is that many of the system GUI tools are graphical wrappers around a command-line tool that does the real work. Most of them live in

One nice thing about macOS is that many of the system GUI tools are graphical wrappers around a command-line tool that does the real work. Most of them live in /usr/sbin I keep a list for my students. Here are some: diskutil mdfind mdutil plutil networksetup softwareupdate screencapture pmset hdiutil pkgutil caffeinate osascript defaults launchctl For example, mdfind lets you use Spotlight search on the command line. diskutil powers "Disk Utility.app". pkgutil lets you install .pkg files and also get information about programs installed that way. screencapture lets you take screenshots from the command line (you can specify which windows, etc.) Anyhow, there's a bunch. There are also random useful executables not in $PATH. This program powers your WiFi menu: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport Try "airport -I" A silly one-liners to print out your overall WiFi strength: airport -I | grep -E 'agrCtlRSSI|agrCtlNoise' | awk '{print $2}' | sed -e 'N;s/\n/ - /' | bc Put that in a script called "wifi-strength" and walk around your house with a laptop while running the following: watch -n1 "wifi-strength | say"