Terminal provides access to some hidden settings of various Mac OS X applications. This is not always something special, sometimes you need to resort to the help of the terminal to make quite elementary changes.

1. Changing the encoding in the Mail client Mail

If you prefer to work with an English-language interface, then Mail.app will force utf-8 encoding by default. You can't change it through the GUI. The encoding is wonderful, it avoids a number of problems. However, in many Russian discussion sheets «with experience » it is still mandatory to use koi8-r. Here is the corresponding Terminal command «:

defaults write com.apple.mail NSPreferredMailCharset koi8-r

2. Changing the format of emails

Spam emails are bad in addition to their undesirability also in the HTML format. The author of the message determines how the message will look, chooses the font, font, size, etc. for you. The reading mode is «plain text» in this sense, it is more convenient — you set your preferences yourself. In Mail.app via the GUI, you can choose the format of the letter to send, but not to read. Let's turn to «Terminal»:

defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE

3. Search in iTunes

Usually the arrows near the artist's name or the album name in the iTunes library lead to a search in the iTunes store. In Russia, this store does not work and, in fact, the feature is useless. You can make it so that the search will be performed on the local library. Here is the command «Terminal»:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES

4. History in Safari

You can set your own restrictions on storing history in Safari again via the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryItemLimit 2000

and/or

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryAgeInDaysLimit 30

5. Showing hidden files in Finder

Well, it's just a classic of the genre. Using «Terminal» it is possible to display hidden files in the Finder:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

In order for some of these commands to work, you need to log in again or restart Finder (type in the Terminal «: killall Finder).

To cancel the entered command, take a close look at its end. If it was YES before, re-enter the command, replacing it with NO. If it was TRUE, change it to FALSE.

Important update: the article was written before the release of Leopard and the teams only work in Tiger