There are many useful commands that you can enter into the command line. They can add new features and improve how your Mac works. Some however, are, let’s say… Less useful. And that’s exactly what we are going to discuss today! In this article, we are going to make it snow! At least inside your Mac’s Terminal window.
Before we begin, to get the full effect of the snow, it’s recommended that you select a different window palette. Go to the menu bar and select “Shell” > New Window. I personally recommend either the Pro or Ocean themes. Now when you have that all ready, enter the following command:
ruby -e 'C=`stty size`.scan(/\d+/)[1].to_i;S=["2743".to_i(16)].pack("U*");a={};puts "\033[2J";loop{a[rand(C)]=0;a.each{|x,o|;a[x]+=1;print "\033[#{o};#{x}H \033[#{a[x]};#{x}H#{S} \033[0;0H"};$stdout.flush;sleep 0.1}'
It’s long, so make sure you type it all out correctly! When you have that all typed out, hit the return key. Alternatively you can copy and paste it from above.
The effects should now be effective. The terminal windows should now be blank, with snowflakes falling.
If you make it fullscreen before you enter the command, you can make a nice little screensaver. If you hit Command plus the “+” button, you can increase the font. If you do this before you enter in the command, you can add more detail to the snowflakes by making them bigger. Just make sure you don’t resize the window or size when it’s running, or you will mess the effect up (although sometimes you make make it look like a blizzard, which is rather quite fun).
How did you feel about this week’s Terminal Tuesday? Let us know in the comments!
