Hosts File Manager For Os X

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You can use Gas Mask. A simple, free and open source hosts file manager for macOS. With Gas Mask, you can easily edit your hosts file, create multiple hosts files and switch between them on the fly. You can create three types of host files. The hosts file on your Mac is a small text document that allows you to map hostnames to IP addresses. The hosts file is located in a protected area of the OS X file system, but there are still ways you can edit it. You may wish to edit the hosts file for a number of reasons. Feb 29, 2020  The main editor consists of three parts: Toolbar, a list of your hosts files on the left, and file editor on the right. Initially you will have a single file called Original file under Local, which is a copy.

Finder is the default File Manager for Mac OS X , but we found some of the features inside finder a bit cumbersome such as automatic extraction of zip files while trying to open them, lack of rar files support. So here are the Top 3 Free Finder alternatives – File Browser and File Explorers for Mac OS X which will make your work easier and experience smoother .

Top 3 Free File Managers for Mac OS X –

File Manager # 1 – Commander One

  1. Hosts is a system preference pane to manage your hosts file. Hosts add a preference pane to your system preferences which lets you toggle your host file entries on and off, as well as add and remove them. Hosts.prefpane likes to keep your hosts file clean. When an entry is toggled off, it is not commented out in the hosts file, but instead stored in the app's preferences storage.
  2. Jul 04, 2017 Mac OS X. RELATED: How to Merge Folders on Mac OS X Without Losing All Your Files (Seriously) The Finder app included with Mac OS X does the basics, but it can certainly leave you wanting. As usual on Mac OS X, many of the alternative file-manager options available to you are generally paid software. You’ll have to shell out a few bucks to.

Commander One – Browsing RAR Archives

Hosts File Manager For Os Xp

Commander One is one of the most powerful file explorer for Mac OS X and is a great alternative to Finder. Besides containing the essential features such as ability to browse files inside the Mac OS X , it also contains some salient features such as –

  • Dual Pane file navigation (Very useful features as you can browse two file paths simultaneously) in a single window.
  • Ability to preview the contents of zip files, so that unlike finder you can only extract the required content of zip file to a folder, thus saving Hard disk space.
  • Ability to Extract & Preview Rar archives.
  • Besides these Commander One even supports MTP file management & transfer which isn’t supported by default by Mac OS X.
  • Thus, If you have an Android device you can easily browse and transfer files in MTP mode on Mac OS X using Commander One. This feature is even more essential for Windows Phones as well.
  • Also Commander One even supports cloud storage navigation such as Dropbox, Amazon S3 in its pro version but normal users are fine without that.
  • Works on Mac OS X El Capitan as well without any external dependencies required.

File Manager # 2 – Moroshka File Manager for Mac OS X

It also has almost everything that VLC has but it tends to brighten things up that tend to overcast the video that is playing leading to eye irritations at times. Windows media player for mac sierra.

Moroshka file manager is another great alternative to finder or commander one. Infact we found Moroshka File Manger more user friendly than Commander One, and feature rich as well. Some of the features we liked the most are –

  • Dual Pane File Manager with a Chrome like tab interface so that you can navigate to multiple locations within a single window itself.
  • Besides these Moroshka File Manager also comes in with a rar archive extractor and previewer. (Green Box in alongside Image).
  • One of the most striking and powerful feature we liked about Moroshka File Manager is its “Quick Look” option.
  • The “Quick Look” option allows you to easily view Microsoft Office documents such as .pptx or .xls even without installing the Microsoft Office app.
  • Though, its not possible to edit the Microsoft Office files its ability to view them despite being only 4 mB in size in worth noting.

File Manager # 3 – Files Lite for Mac OS X

Files Lite is yet another easy to use File Explorer for Mac OS X. The best thing about Files Lite is it makes navigating to your files a much easier task due to its dual list view, We found it the most easiest of all apps we tested to browse and navigate through the files.

Besides this, the Quick View of excel spreadsheets and presentations already make it a great alternative to finder.

Some of the features such as Batch Rename, Calculate Checksum are limited to pro and not available in the lite version. But the lite version nevertheless will get the job done for most normal Mac OS X and MacBook Air & Pro users.

So, These are the Top 3 Free Finder alternatives for Mac OS X or Alternative File explorers for Mac OS X, which are compatible even with the latest Mac OS X updates (Mountain Lion, Yosemite , Mavericks & El Capitan too). We didn’t mention Total Commander as it provides a free trial only for first 30 days. If you face any problems while using them or face any issues feel free to comment.

Like Windows-based computers, Mac has a hosts file to configure how your machine connects to the websites on the Internet. This file contains references to websites and IP addresses, and you can use it in many different ways on your Mac.

One of the reasons you may want to edit the hosts file on your Mac is to block websites. It’s a really great way to block certain websites from being accessed on your machine. The second possible usage is to test out your own websites locally on your machine. You can have the hosts file redirect your chosen domain name to the network path of your local storage.

Mac Hosts File Location

File Manager For Mac Os

Since editing the hosts file is a risky task, Apple has intentionally placed it in a private folder on your system. That’s to prevent users from modifying it without proper knowledge and causing damage to the entire system.

For the curious users out there, the path is /etc/hosts/ and you can access it using a Terminal window.

Edit Hosts File On Mac

It’s fairly easy to edit the hosts file on your Mac since there’s a built-in editor to do it. It’s located inside the Terminal and is called nano editor. You can use it to open and edit any text file including the hosts file on your machine.

Make sure you’re using an admin account to do the following steps.

  1. Click on Launchpad in the Dock, search for Terminal, and launch it.
  1. Type the following command into the Terminal and press Enter. It’ll open the hosts file in the nano editor.
    sudo nano /etc/hosts
  1. Since it’s a sudo command, it’ll ask you to enter your password. Enter the password and continue.
  1. The file should now be open on your screen and you can start editing it.

Understanding The Mac Hosts File

If you haven’t edited a hosts file before, you might find the file a bit complicated to work with. However, it’s not as difficult to edit it as it looks.

One of the entries you’ll find in the file is 127.0.0.1 localhost.

The first section with numbers is the local IP address for your Mac. The second section where it has the host name is what you use to access that IP address.

The above two parts, when combined together, redirect all the localhost queries to the IP address 127.0.0.1. When you enter localhost in your browser, your browser looks into the hosts file, obtains the specified IP address, and takes you to that IP address.

In a nutshell, the hosts file is nothing but a combination of IP addresses and domain names. You can modify these in any way you want to achieve desired results.

Set Up Redirects With The Hosts File

One of the things you can do with the hosts file is to set up redirects. You can have a domain name point to something completely different than what it’s supposed to point to.

For example, if you’re trying to cut down on your social media usage, you can have domains like facebook.com redirect your browser to sites like, say, Wikipedia. You can use just about any domain and IP address you want.

Let’s take a look at how you can set up the above redirection using the hosts file.

  1. While the file is open in the nano editor, use the arrow keys to bring your cursor to where localhost ends. Then press Enter to add a new line for your entry.
  1. In the new line that you just added, type the IP address where you want to redirect the source domain to. We’ll use 103.102.166.224, which is Wikipedia’s IP address.
Hosts file manager for os x windows 10
  1. Press the Tab key on your keyboard to get to the source domain field.
  2. Here, type the domain name that is to be redirected to the IP address you typed earlier. We’ll use facebook.com here.
  1. Once the changes are made, press the Ctrl + O keys on your keyboard to save the file.
  2. Press Enter to confirm the action.
  3. Press the Ctrl + X keys to close the nano editor.
  4. You now need to flush the DNS cache to bring the changes into effect. To do it, type the following command into the Terminal and press Enter.
    dscacheutil -flushcache
  1. Open a browser, type facebook.com, and hit Enter. You’ll find it opens Wikipedia rather than Facebook.

Quick Tip: How To Find a Website’s IP Address

Mac Hosts File Manager

As you can see in the above procedure, you need the IP address of the site that you want to redirect people to. If you don’t already know it, you can use a command in the Terminal to find out the IP address of any website.

Manager
  1. In the Terminal window, type the following command and hit Enter. Make sure to replace wikipedia.org with the website of your choice.
    ping wikipedia.org
  1. It’ll display an IP address on your screen. That’s what you can use in the hosts file.

Guest Os Vs Host Os

Block Websites By Editing The Hosts File On Mac

The great thing about the hosts file is it lets you block sites without requiring you to install any third-party apps on your Mac. You can add an entry to the file and all the connection requests to that entry will be denied.

  1. Launch the hosts file in the nano editor as shown above.
  2. Bring your cursor where the localhost entry ends and press Enter to add a new line.
  3. Type in the IP address 127.0.0.1 and press Tab on your keyboard.
  4. Enter the domain name of the site that you want to block. For example, if you want to block Instagram, type instagram.com.
  1. Press Ctrl + O to save the changes.
  2. Press Ctrl + X to close the file.
  3. Type the following command and press Enter to flush the DNS cache.
    dscacheutil -flushcache

Now each time you try to access the blocked site, it’ll take you to the localhost which will show an error page.

Hosts File For Mac

The Mac hosts file provides you with many ways to play around with outgoing network requests, and you can block and unblock them as you wish. Have you used the hosts file on your Mac before? If so, what was it for? Let us know in the comments below.