We’ve covered a lot of powerful Terminal commands over the past few weeks, but this week, we’re going to show you the smaller, softer side of Terminal commands. We’ll show you 3 user tricks that can be used. From authenticating as an administrator after typing a command with sudo !! to seeing who’s logged into your system with who, there’s a terminal command that can be run in almost any situation.

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

There are a variety of rather costly tools that can mirror websites locally for you. However, there's also a command line tool called wget that does the exact same thing, and it's free! While wget isn't installed by default in Mac OS X, this free tool can easily be downloaded and installed to your Mac using MacPorts.

This week, we'll show you how to use Terminal to download and install wget, and create a complete website mirror for backup or offline viewing purposes.

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

Keeping your software up-to-date ensures that you Mac has the latest security updates and most recent features. Usually we rely on the Software Update icon to start bouncing up and down in the dock before we do anything about it, but if you have multiple Macs this kind of infrequent update process can be a pain. With a simple Terminal command, however, you can “set it and forget it” when it comes to installing new updates. And if you set up SSH on your Mac, you can even log in and install new updates remotely. Like magic!

This week, we’ll show you how to use the softwareupdate command in Terminal to keep your Mac updated.