Mac Notes — Parallels Input Switching, homebrew, Archive Utility

Things that blocked me on a Mac, collected on one page. Some are from 2015 and some from 2023, so the eras are mixed.

Command+Space for input switching inside Parallels

Pressing Command+Space inside Parallels gets swallowed by Spotlight on the host, so it never reaches the Windows guest. On Korean keyboards this is the input-switching key, so it matters. This setup has worked from Parallels 8 through 11.

1. Swap the shortcuts in Keyboard settings

Swap the shortcuts for “Select the previous input source” and “Select next source in Input menu”.

2. Add a mapping in Parallels preferences

Send Command+Space through as AltGr.

That is all it took.

Installing homebrew

This was on OSX 10.10.3 Yosemite. One line in the terminal.

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ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Checking it.

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gimjonghuiui-MacBook-Pro:bin paper$ brew -v
Homebrew 0.9.5

Source http://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/installing-homebrew-os-x-yosemite-10-10-package-manager-unix-apps/

Archive Utility doing nothing

This happened on an M2 MacBook Air.

Double-clicking a zip did not extract it. No error, nothing at all. After staring at it for a while the cause turned out to be that the filename started with a digit.

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1_test.zip   does not extract
test.zip     extracts

Renaming it made double-click work again.

1_test.zip does extract if you right-click, choose the extract menu and pick the destination folder yourself. Only the double-click path is blocked.

Maybe it is being read as a split archive (like .zip.001). I still do not know the real reason.

Summary

• For Parallels input switching, swap the macOS keyboard shortcuts and map to AltGr
• homebrew installs with a single script
• If a zip will not open on double-click, suspect a leading digit in the filename