Mac: Playing around with settings in Terminal is a time honoured tradition amongst tinkerers, but that doesn't make any of those commands any less obtuse. M-cli is a tool that provides you with several plain language commands for common actions.

Mac: Debug menus are great little secrets that often hide useful extra settings. Apple's hidden these menus in its default software for a while, and it's often easy to unlock with a Terminal command.

Apple decided to kill off the startup chime from the new model of MacBook Pro, which aside from being a mainstay on Macs for years, has also always helped troubleshoot boot issues. Thankfully, you can get the sound back with a Terminal command.

Mac: Have you somehow managed to customise your Mac's Dock to an unusable state? Or perhaps you're just longing for instant access to all that Apple software? If so, Defaults-Write points out you can get your default Dock back easily.

Time Machine is a great service for backing up your computer, and by default it doesn't use much CPU power to do it. That's great most of the time, but sometimes you need to get stuff backed up as soon as possible. Defaults-Write points out the Terminal command for doing so.

Mac: For some silly reason, OS X's TextEdit app's default format is rich text. If you prefer plain text, Defaults Write points out that you can easily set that as your default with a Terminal command.