Terminal

How to make SSH persistent on the liberTV jailbreak for Apple TV 4

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ Updated April 22, 2019

If you've been tinkering around with your Apple TV 4 jailbroken on tvOS 10 with liberTV, you may have noticed that its built-in SSH client, Dropbear, has a tendency to be purged every so often, requiring it be re-spawned and set up again. This is due to the developer's (admirable) desire to retain all jailbreak-related files in temporary folders on the filesystem, reducing the risk of bricking your device while fiddling with it to near-zero. If you are confident enough to move a few files out of their temporary folder however, you can easily get your SSH client up and running persistently, avoiding those tedious reconfigurations which otherwise occur.

How to SSH into your jailbroken Apple TV 4 or 4K and change your root password

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ Updated April 15, 2019

With several Apple TV jailbreaks in use by our readership, it's important to remember that with them comes both the power and risk of running SSH connections to your device.

Once jailbroken, you may want to tinker around with the device, grab your apticket off of it, copy files to and from it, or investigate the filesystem. To do this you'll need to connect to it from another device via SSH. In this guide we'll take you through how to do just that, as well as how to protect yourself by changing the default passwords.

How to fix: This is an application downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it?

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ Updated October 20, 2022

One of the security features in macOS is a prompt that appears when opening a program for the first time: This is an application downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it?

While this can be helpful to the average Joe, preventing him from opening programs he may have downloaded accidentally (such as malware), power users may wish to circumnavigate the prompt. If you already practice good housekeeping with what you download and open, this dialog can be a time waster. There are various ways to deal with it, and this guide will talk you through their pros and cons.

How to add custom text to a Mac login screen

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ Updated February 10, 2023

With a simple modification, you can display a custom message on your Mac's lock screen or login window. This tutorial shows you how to do that.

How to change the default search scope in Finder

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ Updated February 23, 2024

In this brief tutorial, we will show you how to adjust the search scope for Finder on your Mac. You can set it to search the entire drive (which is the default), search the current folder you are in, or use the search scope you last specified.

How to show basic system information on your Mac login screen

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ Updated February 14, 2023

If you're one of those who love to tweak every little facet of their Mac experience, then this guide is for you. It brings some system information items, such as your computer name, your current IP address, and your macOS version, right to your login screen where they can be easily referenced. For this modification, all you need is the Terminal application and a few minutes.

How to show the expanded Save dialog by default on Mac

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ March 18, 2017

By default, the behaviour of macOS upon saving a file is to open a simple dialog window, with only a single drop-down menu showing possible save locations. These locations can vary based on the program settings, your most-used save location, or your last-used save location.

Although this is fine for quickly saving documents to common folders such as Documents or Downloads, it is cumbersome to use the drop-down menu when saving regularly to multiple hard drives and previously unused nested folders. Luckily, there is a way to always show a full file browser in the save dialog for more granular control.

How to SSH into your device from a Mac and change your root password

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ Updated April 22, 2019

Sometimes it is necessary to connect to your mobile device from a computer, for troubleshooting purposes or to use a tool which runs from the computer. For example, tihmstar's Prometheus suite downgrades your device by sending commands to it from the computer on which it, and the files it uses, are stored. The connection used to do this is called SSH, and is normally provided by the OpenSSH package (or an equivalent client such as Dropbear).

In this guide we will show you how to use SSH to connect to your device from your computer. We will also go through how to change the default passwords on your device, because once you have installed OpenSSH, anyone can log in using the default passwords if you do not change them. This is a major security risk, and so everyone who has OpenSSH installed should follow this procedure.

How to fix TinyUmbrella v9.3.4 crashing on launch

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ Updated April 8, 2017

Many jailbreakers will be familiar with the program TinyUmbrella, which has traditionally been one of the best ways to save SHSH blobs for their iOS devices onto their Macs for safekeeping. What SHSH blobs are, their function, and how to save them is outside the scope of this article, (I will put something together soon on this), but suffice to say that saving these blobs is of some importance to many jailbreakers and that TinyUmbrella has been the go-to application for doing so for a long while.

Whilst the application was updated as recently as August by its creator Semaphore, many Mac users (myself included) have noted that the new version, 9.3.4, gives an error on launch and cannot be used at all. This guide will walk you through the fix to get your umbrella back up again on Mac, so you can carry on wishfully saving those blobs.

How to enable AirDrop file transfers between unsupported Macs and over Ethernet

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ December 5, 2016

The AirDrop file transfer protocol, introduced with Mac OS X Lion and iOS 7, is a fast and convenient way to transfer files between Apple devices. The current version of the service is interoperable between iOS and macOS, but requires both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to be active in order to work. It also requires Mac OS X Yosemite or newer and a hardware model from 2012 or later.

However, the version of AirDrop that shipped as standard with OS X between 10.7 (Lion) and 10.9 (Mavericks), whilst unable to send files to iOS devices, works without Bluetooth and on Mac models going back as far as 2008. Luckily, alongside the newer version, this legacy mode is still included on all Mac models to date, and as this guide will show, can be modified to have an even broader functionality.

How to hide specific mounted volumes from your Mac’s desktop

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ Updated December 8, 2022

We've already covered how to completely prevent partitions from mounting under macOS, but sometimes you want a partition mounted and ready to use but still want the benefit of it not cluttering up your desktop. For example, many people want their Time Machine partition constantly mounted and backing up throughout the day but don't need it to be visible at all.

Finder's preferences allow for hiding all volumes from the desktop but offer no control on a volume-by-volume basis. Therefore, we'll show you how to use the Terminal to hide mounted volumes on a case-by-case basis.

How to extend Quick Look preview functionality on your Mac

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ November 29, 2016

If you're not familiar with the Quick Look feature on macOS, try selecting a picture, folder, or text document on your computer and pressing the space bar. The rich preview that pops up is Quick Look working its magic. Apple introduced Quick Look in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and it has since gained support for many more file types natively, such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Suite documents.

I use it daily and it has become an automatic part of my workflow, a natural response to wanting to inspect a file without waiting for a program to launch and without leaving off what I'm doing.

However, the problem that Quick Look faces is support. It requires a plugin for each file type it can preview, and out-of-the-box only a handful are supplied. More obscure file types are neglected, and display only a blank pane with the file icon, name, size, and date modified. In this guide, I will detail how to add plugins to Quick Look for a richer and more useful preview experience.