Here are some fun things you can do on your Mac for April Fool’s day 2015.

Make Siri Endlessly Speak Nonsensical Sentences

curl -s horseebooksipsum.com/api/v1/ | say -v "Samantha"

Make The Mouse Move To (Or Click) Random Areas Throughout The Day

Run this script (as a background job) on your friend’s computer and it will randomly move or  click different areas while they are using it.  Suddenly, the mouse will jump to random locations making the user get very confused.  You will need to download MouseTools or click.

Change The Display Message On A Printer

Make the printer say whatever you want.  The setup might be difficult for novice users, but can be very fun to do!

Continually “Suck” Safari Back To The Dock

If you hold Shift while clicking the minimize button on a Window, it will very slowly go back to the dock.  Until you stop it, this script will do this for you every time you try to open Safari.  Your victim won’t know what is happening.

Note: If you are running Mavericks or Yosemite, you will need to allow Safari access to assistive devices.  If you are running a pre-Mavericks OS, just enable access to assistive devices in the Accessibility Pane. Note: This script was written for Yosemite, so it might not work on older versions of OS X.

Let Siri Control What You Listen To In Spotify (or iTunes)

Similar to the script above, it will only activate when Spotify is open.  Siri will randomly do one of three things:

• pause the music and tell you to she doesn’t like it
• skip to the next track saying she doesn’t like that one
• turn up the volume and tell you she loves this song

You can also modify the script to do whatever you want or say whatever you want.

Make The Mac Have A Thunderstorm–Complete With Lightning

This is another accessibility trick if you don’t use it for legitimate purposes.  Enable the screen flash in the Accessibility pane.

Then make an AppleScript to continually flash the screen (lightning) and play a thunder sound effect.

repeat
	set thunderSound to quoted form of POSIX path of "Macintosh HD:Users:Shared:thunder.wav"
	beep
	do shell script "afplay " & thunderSound & " >/dev/null"
end repeat

Fake A Kernel Panic

Install the Kernel Panic Screensaver (or use iPanic) and make your victim think their computer has crashed.

Create Your Own Warning Dialogs

Using AppleScript (or CocoaDialog), you can create your own message dialogs complete with picture.

display dialog "You found the last Dragonball.  Enter your name to claim a wish" with title "Dragonball Four" default answer "Kakarot" with icon file "Macintosh HD:Users:Shared:dragonball.png" buttons {"Enter", "Cancel"} default button 1
set the userName to the text returned of the result
say "Shenron will grant your wish, " & userName

Attach A Warning Dialog To A Folder Action

Using OS X’s Folder Actions, you can trigger a script to occur when items are added to a folder (this doesn’t work as well on Yosemite).  Using this, you could set it up so every time someone puts a file on their Desktop, a warning dialog could appear.

display dialog "Don't clutter your Desktop." with title "Cleaner" with icon file "Macintosh HD:Users:Shared:sadFinder.png" buttons {"OK"} default button 1

Set The Screensaver As The Wallpaper

Use LiveWallpaper.app or run this command:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background &

Whatever animated screensaver you choose will now show up as the wallpaper and you can continue to use the Mac as normal.

Trigger A Sound Effect With A Motion-sensing Webcam

I used this to make a Star Trek door swoosh, but you can play whatever sound file you want when the motion is triggered.

Open A Screenshot In Full-screen So It Looks Like The Computer Is Frozen

A very simple trick, but amusing nonetheless.  Just take screenshot of the entire screen using Command+Shift+3, and then open it in Preview in full-screen mode.  Users will click endlessly thinking their Mac is frozen.

Make Websites Go To A Different Location

This is an old trick, but you can modify the hosts file ( /etc/hosts) ) to send people to the wrong Website.

Enable Zoom To Make Everything Huge

Unless you actually use the zoom feature, it will be strange to have your computer set this way.  Just enable zoom in the Accessibility pane and then press Command+Option++ to zoom in.

Make The Dock So Small That It Is Difficult To Find

You can set it to any integer number you want, but 1 makes it very, very small.

defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -integer 1;killall Dock

You can be a bit nicer and make the magnifaction really large.

defaults write com.apple.dock largesize -float 512

Change The Icons Of Common Programs To Cause Confusion

Open the Applications folder, press Command+I after highlighting Chrome and Firefox.  Click the icon so it has a blue outline.  Press Command+C to copy it.  Click the other icon and press Command+V to set the icon.

Add Emoji To A Wireless Network Name

Make your Wi-Fi network name have emoji in it.