macOS Shell (zsh/bash)

Reference for the defaults command, which reads, writes and deletes macOS app preferences stored as property lists. It explains domains, why defaults is safer than hand-editing plists because of preference caching, and that Dock or Finder changes usually need killall to take effect.

Command reference for pmset, used to view and change sleep, display and wake settings per power source and to schedule wake or shutdown events. Changes need root privileges. Examples show reading settings with pmset -g and cancelling a schedule with sudo pmset repeat cancel.

Reference for the tmutil command-line tool for Time Machine. It documents verbs such as restore (copies an item out of a snapshot, cp-style, may need root), listbackups and latestbackup (need root and Full Disk Access), plus addexclusion, startbackup and compare.