How on earth do I use the terminal app on the Mac?

from what I understand, you type in your adminastrative password to get what you’re doing to work. I don’t know mucy of terminal, but what I do no of it is paint the command from the apple support article on the subject, and before you press return, enter sudo before the command. then you should get what you are looking for. Terminal is very much a unix thing, and VoiceOver does not support it very well. but TDSR is the better screen reader to use, as it was specificly written for accessing Terminal.

Know this is a revived thread but, for any looking:

When in the terminal window you have to VO shift down a couple of times to read the command line. It requires using the VO keys to move around the window and back up the terminal and it's not always reliable, but I use it all the time for ssh, home brew, managing servers etc. I did try the screen reader made for terminal but found it a bit of a pain to install, an older version of python was required, and then the functionality wasn't much better than what I described, though with a slower voice.

HTH

The one thing I've heard most often about using terminal is . . . don't. Terminal is only for those who know exactly what they're doing. You can seriously mess up your operating system if you don't know what you're doing or even if you just aren't paying close attention to what you're typing.

My advice? Find something harmless to mess with.

Haha, this is true.

Anything that requires sudo privileges are best avoided if you're not certain in what you're doing, this includes any requests to input admin passwords. generally, even in terminal, apple attempts to stop us from burning down the house.

Do not use terminal unless you know what the hell you're doing. And to the original poster, you don't need to prefix sudo on every command you're doing, only prefix sudo if you're doing administrative tasks. I mean, you can technically prefix sudo on every command you're gunna do but who the hell wants to do that. Again, do your research! Secondly, I do wish that VO had better support for terminal. It's one of the reasons why I don't do sysadmin stuff on mac these days. I use windows for that! True, I can read shit after stuff is done outputting, but if VO is gunna interrupt every text that comes in on screen? No! It's NVDA and the linux subsystem for windows for me all the way with this stuff but it's whatever floats your boat.

I use TDSR in terminal as it's much more like SpeakUp on a Linux console, which I was already comfortable with. Yes it's a bit of a pain to set up, and I have seen updates to Mac OS break it, which is frustrating, as it forces me to spend a few hours doing a fresh TDSR install. And I can't access text that has scrolled off the top. Despite all that, I find it easier to work with than VoiceOver.

I think the OP's issue has already been addressed, but to repeat, you have to interact with the Terminal shell. Not sure how this relates to installing Mac OS on the external drive, though.

I often hear people say, don't use Terminal if you don't know what you're doing. My response is, if you don't know what you're doing, learn. Here's an example of how Terminal can make your life easier. After my daughter reinstalled Mac OS, she found she was no longer the owner of her music library. She was fixing this in Finder, changing permissions on each individual album. One, album, at, a, time. I said, "I might be able to fix that for you." I opened terminal, found her music library, and piped the output from a recursive find command to chown. In short order, she had full access to her entire music library.

Console-mode terminals used to be the one and only way to use computers, and they were 100% accessible with simple screen readers. Yes, it is entirely possible to erase your hard drive with a single command. Guess what. It's also possible to erase your iPhone with a couple of taps. Don't fear the Terminal. Use the Terminal. Be the Terminal.

Hi there,

If I understand the OP correctly, they wish to have a fresh install of MacOS Mojave? And they have a 2017 MacBook Air?

The simple, though time consuming process is as follows:

1. Restart your machine.
2. Hold down (Command, Option, Shift, and R keys) all at once.
3. After the start up chime, you will be presented with a "Choose network" screen. (note: You may or may not need visual assistance for this step. Your mileage may vary)
4. Your MBA will begin the process of reformatting your HDD/SSD, downloading, and installing the version of MacOS that shipped with your model MBA. (Note: This "should" be MacOS Sierra 10.12.) (Note 2: This will take quite a bit of time, dependent on your internet speed.)
5. Once Sierra is installed, go through the steps to finish setup, like you did when you first powered on your machine.
6. Finally you can use your downloaded install of MacOS Mojave to 'update' MacOS.
7. Enjoy!

HTH

I'm on windows but people are acting like if you even open the command line, or terminal, your computer is going to explode.

I don't know how it is on the mac but on windows it will just tell you something like, command not found.