Hack The Box

Graphical User Interface

Like most common operating systems, macOS has a powerful Graphical User Interface (GUI). Understanding the components that make up the GUI and how we can use them is the key to efficiency while completing our tasks. Let's define a few critical components of the GUI and dive into how they can help us.

Here's a quick glance at the main components that make up macOS:

  • Apple Menu - This is our main point of reference for critical host operations such as System Settings, locking our screen, shutting down the host, etc.
  • Finder - Finder is the component of macOS that provides the Desktop experience and File management functions within the OS.
  • Spotlight - Spotlight serves as a helper of sorts on your system. It can search the filesystem and your iCloud, perform mathematical conversions, and more.
  • Dock - The Dock at the bottom of your screen, by default, acts as the holder for any apps you frequently use and where your currently open apps will appear.
  • Launchpad - This is the application menu where you can search for and launch applications.
  • Control Center - Control Center is where we can manage our network settings, sound and display options, notification, and more at a glance.

Now, let's take a look at them in detail.

Apple Menu

From this menu, we can perform quick admin functions such as shutting down/restarting the host or accessing System Settings. If we click on About this Mac and then More Info, we can view basic information about the host, such as storage capacity, system information, and more.

Finder is the macOS file manager through which we can manage and access our files. It provides:

  • The initial desktop experience.
  • File management.
  • The menu bar at the top of your desktop.
  • The sidebars within your windows.

We will go into more detail about Finder in the next section.

Spotlight

Spotlight provides an indexing and searching service on your host. It can search for documents, media, emails, applications, and anything else on your local system and in connected cloud services like iCloud. Spotlight can also perform quick mathematical conversions and calculations in the search window. When connected with Siri, Spotlight can even feed you information pertaining to news and other info. To access it, click on the magnifying glass in the top right corner (Yellow arrow), and it will open a window like the one seen below. (Orange arrow) We can see a search for .png was run, and it returned any png formatted files that could be found on the host.

Dock

The Dock provides a customizable place to store applications and folder shortcuts for us to access them when needed quickly. By default, it is located at the bottom of your desktop but can be moved to any edge that works best for you. This is where we will find quick access to Finder, Trash, and any other macOS application we pin to the Dock or even recently opened ones.

Launchpad

Launchpad provides users with a quick way to access, organize, and launch applications. Any apps installed on the host in the Applications directory will appear here. We can quickly scroll through to find the app we need or start typing, and launchpad will filter based on your text, showing you relevant applications. To access Launchpad, we can pinch with five fingers on the trackpad. We can also access it by searching for it in Spotlight or even pin it to the Dock, as shown in the screenshot.

Tip: To view all possible trackpad gestures, like the pinch we discussed above, we can go to `System Settings` and then click on `Trackpad` to view and practice all available gestures.

Control Center

Control Center allows quick access to settings we commonly tweak, such as our audio volume, screen brightness, wireless connection settings, and other settings. We can customize the control center to fit our needs as well.

Questions

Find the numeric version running on your machine and submit it as the answer.