Great tip here on how to show hidden files in Finder:
To show, enter this command in a Terminal window:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
To hide:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
Browsing (and deleting) old Time Machine Backups from another Mac
In general, most things on the Mac are pretty intuitive and easy to find/use/work out. Now and then though I come across some feature that seems to have been buried and only find it via someone else talking about it online. for example, how to browse Time Machine backups on an external drive from an older Mac.
I have an external drive that I use for my Time Machine backups, and used it from my older MacBook Pro, and also use it for my newer MBP. The drive filled up, so I was trying to work out a) how to browse my older backups, because by default they weren’t browsable via the Time Machine UI, and b) how to delete some of them.
Turns out, thanks to these tips, if you hold Option while the Time Machine dropdown menu is displayed from your toolbar, the option ‘Browse other backup disks…’ appears – from there you can select the Time Machine backup from another Mac.
While in the Time Machine UI, to delete a whole backup from a prior date, click the ‘cog’ icon and you have the option to delete backup.
Start-up key combinations for Intel Macs
I knew a few of these but what I was looking for was the C key on boot to boot from an external drive:
Committing file deletes to Git
My normal git usage pattern is:
git add . git commit -m "commit message"
and then when needed:
git push remotename master
The trouble with ‘git add .’ is that is doesn’t stage any deleted files for committing. You can see this if you do a ‘git status’ and you’ll see it list deleted files, but listed as not staged:
$git status # On branch master # Changes not staged for commit: # (use "git add/rm" to update what will be committed) # deleted: ...
You’ll notice the comment mentions to use ‘git rm’ to delete files from the repo, but if you’ve deleted files locally, you can either do a ‘git rm filename’ for each of the locally deleted files, or more simply, do this to pick up all changed files for staging, including deletes:
git add -A