The command line is an advanced and powerful way to interact with macOS without the use of the GUI. Although most fundamental administrative tasks can be done using the macOS GUI, sometimes it can be more practical to execute them through the command line. Some advanced administration tasks can only be executed through this tool.

The macOS command-line tool is based on the Unix operating system. Take into account that there are hundreds of Unix commands; there's a lot you could do! However, in this chapter, we will explore how this tool works in macOS. We will see some examples of some of the most used commands, when and why you should use the command line in macOS, when you should use the sudo command, and other common commands you can use to manage files and monitor the system.