text:
Click and drag won't give focus to Finder window
Lately I've been noticing that my machine seems a bit slow or unresponsive to click events. For example, when using Chrome or whatever and then clicking a Finder window in the background, it took me 2-3 tries before that window gains focus.
Just today I realized that it's "my" fault. Very often when I click an unfocused Finder window, I do it swiftly and it does not gain focus. I can reproduce that behaviour now by click+dragging. Even the slightest drag when clicking makes this happen. I don't think this is how it behaved in previous versions and I think it's wrong.
In short, Finder windows won't gain focus when click+dragging. I just tested on 10.14 and I can't reproduce it. I'm running 10.14.3
Is there a setting I can tweak to go back?

Hey @IconDaemon, isn't macOS version relevant?

You have the Mojave tag set at the bottom of the post.

Cool. In this particular case tho, a couple minor versions back the issue is gone. Just edited the question adding that.


text:
iPad Falsely Reports Out of Storage
I have a teacher in my school who is trying to use an iPad (new - purchased this year) to record classroom activity using the built-in camera.  The iPad has 32 gigs total, with just about 20 gigs available, according to Settings --> General --> iPad Storage.  However, during the middle of recording a class yesterday the recording stopped and complained that there was no more room available on the iPad.  He looked and saw that there were 20 gigs available, and when we transferred the aborted recording to an iMac to see its size, we found that the recording, such as it was, was only 2.7 Gigs in size.
What gives?

See this

And if that doesn't work, back it up locally, wipe it, and restore from the backup. That solves a multitude of issues

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
turn off mouse LEDs
I have a Logitech 910-004845 G203 Gaming Mouse
I want to turn off its LEDs all the time
I tried  installing logitech gaming software, couldn't see a way to do it
So how can I do it?
I know it's possible, the LEDs turn off when the laptop sleeps

Do you even have your mouse shown in the device list? When I plug mine in, it shows a G102 (which is not even the device I plugued in), which disappear when I disconnect it. However, it shows it as "Disconnected" and I do not have access to any option for the device

Only way to do it is through the software. Choose your mouse in the bottom left corner of the Logitech Gaming Software, and click on the colored lightbulb-- that is the light settings. Then there is an option to toggle off the LEDs.

probably this is not the only way to do it,

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Different Google Drive icon in sidebar?
I do not understand why in the sidebar there is not the Google Drive icon, while the folder in /Users/name/Google Drive has the right icon. How can I solve? Any idea?

For me, the sidebar logo would intermittently switch between a google drive logo and no logo at all. Same with the folder too for me.

Sadly, this is simply not possible in macOS. The Google Drive app, and now its successor Backup and Sync from Google, give the actual folder named "Google Drive" its custom icon in the conventional way, much the same way you could paste a custom icon on any other folder.
Unfortunately, all custom folder icons are ignored when displayed as Favorites in the Finder sidebar. You can confirm this by adding any folder with a custom icon to the sidebar. You can also show your home in List view to see that "Google Drive" does indeed have a custom icon optimized for that tiny display size. Finder is simply designed to ignore it, presumably to keep the Finder user interface as uniform as possible.

I recommend using 'XtraFinder' or 'TotalFinder', which enable custom sidebar icons in Finder (and have many other useful features as well).
The 'Backup and Sync from Google' app that manages your Google Drive folder will reset the folder icon - but you CAN make it retain a custom icon easily;
Within your primary 'Google Drive' folder, create a sub-folder and name it 'Google Drive'.
Apply your custom icon to this folder, and drag it into the sidebar.
Now, your folder icon will not be reset when 'Backup and Sync' runs or updates.
Unfortunately the standard version of Finder does not display custom icons.
HOWEVER, you can work around this a few different ways.
TotalFinder and XtraFinder are two great apps that I've used with great success, and both allow custom (and colorful!) folder icons.
You can use a custom icon for your Google Drive folder by right-clicking on your folder, clicking 'Get Info', then dragging and dropping your icon file onto the folder icon in the upper-left corner of the folder info panel.
There is a minor problem with this, however - the 'Backup and Sync' app replaces any custom folder icon with the generic Google Drive folder icon. This happens irregularly, every few days or so, and it's a pain in the butt to repeat the process.
Fortunately, you can fix this issue (permanently) by replacing the .icns files in the Backup and Sync app itself with your custom .icns file, which should prevent the folder from reverting to the standard icon.

You could try locking your custom icons. (You have to view invisible files to do this.) Lock it like you would any file: get info, click the lock checkbox.
At first it didn't work, then the next morning I had custom icons in my Google Drive folder.
MacForge also has a cheap plugin for colorful sidebars.  But none seem to make colorful dialogue boxes (the finder option when you export or save as.)
You still have to hunt among the grey files.

This reads more like a rant than an actual answer. Can you elobarate on how to lock custom icons to make the post more useful to others?


text:
How to partition free space in a Mac SSD
I have a Mac with a 250Go SSD. I used to have a Windows partition, but as I had no longer any use for it I wanted to free up its space.
My error was here : instead of using BootCamp helper to delete my Windows partition, I deleted the space in the Disk Utility app.
Now, I am in this situation when I open my Disk Utility:

So there are clearly 2 free spaces of 30Go each on the drive (which is weird since it says there are 251Go total, and if we sum up the 3 spaces here it gives something like 280 Go). Then I tried to partition the space like this :

Which gives me the following error:

Sorry for the French, basically it says that the starting util of the volumes I wanted to free up are mounted. So I went and tried with my terminal to find those spaces, but they are nowhere to be found :
diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            219.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           +219.0 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 BB809D5E-5AC1-490E-8037-651B300154BD
                                 Unencrypted

/dev/disk3 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        +7.5 GB     disk3
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS InstallESD              7.2 GB     disk3s2

Since I can't find the volumes in my diskutil list, I can't force the unmount on them. How to retrieve this space ?

Thanks for asking. No worries on translation or some foreign words. The English is very adequate for starting an answer. To paraphrase, you want to grow disk0s2 from 219 to 250 GB, correct? Pretty sure you can live resize this, but wanted to measure twice before executing a command...

Do you have something like in the screenshot in your Disk Utility app?


text:
No in browser video playback and/or sound W10 1809 Bootcamp MBA2018
Upon release I installed W10 1809 on a 2018 MacBook Air (i.e. the most recent one).
Bootcamp audio drivers are v 6.1.7200 (most recent) and macOS Mojave was and is fully up to date.
Even so, video playback is broken and there is no sound, nor does the mic pick up any sound.
In macOS everything works perfectly.
Initially I thought it was something specific to the new device/new W10 version but so many months after release of both, I'm starting to wonder...
Did anyone here encounter this?
There are scattered reports online but no solutions:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250209569

Does video playback work otherwise?  In other words, can you play a video file outside your browser?

what browser ??

Any browser on the platform. Chrome, Safari, FF... No video playback elsewhere either. Again, on macOS, everything works so the speakers/mic ar not physically broken. Truly bizarre...


text:
AirPlay works great with iOS but quite bad on macOS
AirPlay freezes if streamed from Mac (I have 2 Macs with latest macOS and they have the same issue).
It works great from my iPhone instead.
I have Apple TV 3rd generation with latest TVOS installed.
I've also tried a different modem and I still get issue using the macOS only.
Any clue?

How are the Macs connected to the network? (cable, wifi, etc) - How is the iPhone connected to the network? - How is the AppleTV connected to the network?

@jksoegaard All devices use the same wifi


text:
macOS 10.6.5 upgrade assistance
I have a macOS 10.6.5 and am trying to upgrade it but don't know how to, what can I do?

What kind of Mac (model and year) do you have?

It's a mac osx 10.6.5 snow leopard 2009

That‘s the OS, I was more wondering about the specific hardware model. everymac.com might help in identifying it.

@nohillside I'm not convinced that the other question entirely answers this one. 10.6.5 is pre-MAS. The first thing to do is to apply Software updates (under the Apple Menu?) to get the Mac to 10.6.6 (at least) to access the MAS, and then it should be easy to download a suitable later OS. (I'm curious why Jerome suddenly felt the need to start updating after 10 years, though!) ;-)

@benwiggy The accepted answer on the linked question explains how to upgrade if your current version doesn‘t support MAS yet.

@nohillside I can't see "update your 10.6 version beyond 10.6.6 to enable the MAS."

@benwiggy Look in the „For older macs“ section

Anyway, without the OP coming back, adding details about the hardware they use, and whether the proposed solution works for them, we won‘t get any more clarity on all this anyway.


text:
iPhone see apps downloaded from different Apple ID
On iOS 12 iPhone is there a way to see a list of apps downloaded from a different Apple ID (the one I’m not currently signed-in to). I would like to get all apps on one account so I don’t have to input passwords for several different Apple ID’s.

No, in general, that would abuse the privacy of the other account.
The only exception is if all Apple ID were in family sharing and opted in to share app information. Then you can browse the other purchases from your account.
There also isn't a way on device to see which account purchased which apps if you happen to sequence several accounts to purchase on one device.


text:
how i use all space in macbook

hello i leave this macbook over a years ago and i back to use it now
but i realize i have 750GB and i can use only 502GB
how i use it all this 750 gb??
i try many way but i cant
i try run bootcamp but i cant do anything with it
diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage ArabFox                 501.6 GB   disk0s4
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s5

/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS ArabFox                +501.3 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s4
                                 9FDF63DB-3DB0-4319-AF3F-CD3334E94151
                                 Unencrypted

Try diskutil cs resizestack 9FDF63DB-3DB0-4319-AF3F-CD3334E94151 0

Error: -69742: The requested size change for the target disk or a related disk is too small; please try a different disk or partition, or make a larger change

What version of macOS are you using? What is the model year of the Mac? To proceed, you will need to add to your question the output from sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0. Depending the version of macOS, you may need to disable System Integrity Protection before entering this command.  However, ever if you post this output, the next step would probably be to erase everything and reload macOS.


text:
While using Screen Sharing, a double click to the remote Mac acts like a single click
I'm using Apple's Screen Sharing to control a headless Mac mini from an iMac. Things mostly work, except when I try to double click anything on the Mac mini, it acts like a single click.
I've tried adjusting double click speed using System Preferences on both the Mac mini and the iMac with no success. I've tried setting the sender double click to very fast while the receiver is set to very slow, and then clicking at various speeds. No combination seems to work.
As a test, I plugged a mouse into the Mac mini and I can double click items normally.
Any suggestions on how to make double clicking work?

Possibility that it’s a lag issue - you adjusted double-click speed on the Mini, but have you tried double-clicking more slowly? To rapid clicks may possibly be misinterpreted as a single click if there’s lag in the connection.

That's very unlikely a lag issue. I have the exactly the same problem on a MacBook (Running OSX 10.8.5) connecting to a macOS 10.5.4 host. But on another MacBook running OSX 10.9.5 it worked seamlessly. I assume that could be a compatibility issue.

In karabiner eventviewer, I find it recognises every click, but click_count doesn't add up. Quite interesting, I have no clues at all...

To our worse disappointments, alternative pointer behaviour in accessibility preferences doesn’t work either, macOS handles remote inputs in a really special way. (It’s a 10.15.4 host, I had a typo )


text:
2Gb free but can’t record video
My phone says it has paused uploading images to iCloud, despite there being 25Gb space free there, and it won’t record video due to lack of storage on the device, despite it having over 2Gb free.
What’s wrong with it?

Does plugging it into power and locking the screen while connected to wifi start the upload? 2GB is pretty close to "lack of storage" imo, I'm not too sure about this but maybe iOS prevents the camera from using up all free space.

Signed out iCloud for now.

I think low power mode pauses uploads.


text:
Delay with Bluetooth headphones
With every pair of Bluetooth headphones I've owned I've had a latency of about 50 ms.
How do I get rid of or reduce this delay?
MacBook Pro with Retina, Mid 2015, macOS Mojave 10.14.3 (but I had the problem on earlier OSes).

Have you tested the Bluetooth headphones on other devices besides the MacBook Pro and experience the same latency?

@user3439894 I get the same latency. I guess it's a bluetooth problem. Why is bluetooth so slow though that doesn't make any sense


text:
Power off block devices
I would like a way to shut down the block devices to do safe removal by turning them off. On Linux there is the UDisks2's udisksctl power-off -b /dev/sdX command. Is there something similar? Or if you know a library to use to create a script that can do this.

umount will unmount a block storage device. Once the device is unmounted, it is safe to remove/unplug it. There doesn't appear to be a udiskctl for macos.


text:
Can't see newly created parition (and formatted as ExFat or NTFS) in Bootcamp (Windows 7)
I'm trying to resize my Bootcamp partition and finally shrunk my AFPS partition smaller and formatted the new partition to NTFS (and later to ExFAT) in hope to be able to see it in Windows and merge it with Bootcamp (Since I can't do it in macOS due to my Boocamp partition being NTFS) but I can't see it in Windows in any program I try to merge them. I just see Bootcamp partition and one big "Apple" one which in fact should be three.
(I'm Using Mojave)
Thanks
Here is the result of my "diskutil list" command:
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         413.9 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data newly                   259.9 GB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                76.0 GB    disk0s4

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +413.9 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            301.7 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 22.3 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                509.8 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      4.3 GB     disk1s4

Added to the post.

/Volumes/BOOTCAMP/Boot/BCD

You may have confused this question from the other one I posted (and posted an answer to myself).
I can boot into my Bootcamp now I just can't find the extra partition I have created in macOS so I can merge them there.

How should I do that?

Possible duplicate of Failed paritiong resizing partition in Mojave via Disk Utility (Planning to add it to Bootcamp). This question has the same answer as you posted for your previously posted question.


text:
How to revert this defaults write command?
defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes

It is related to this question:
How can I disable inline attachment previews (i.e. view as icon by default) in Mac Mail in macOS Mojave?

When you’ve written a boolean value, you can choose to write the opposite value, replacing yes with no. Usually, to reset a preference, you delete the preference so the default takes effect, which you can do with defaults delete:
defaults delete com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing

Thank you GRG, but now I need to know what's the difference between Revert and Delete. The mentioned command was posted as answer on the original question, but this command displays the attachment as icon only during email composing, in the sent items the attachment is fully displayed...

@1252 - there is no "revert" command.  When you "delete" whatever the setting was changed to reverts back to what it was from the factory.


text:
"Characters" window won't stay closed
Sometimes when I open the "Characters" window to get access to special characters (e.g., greek letters), it re-opens itself repeatedly.  The re-opening triggers on some actions, but I haven't found any pattern to those actions - sometimes it's typing, sometimes clicking, sometimes changing tabs in a browser.
Has anyone else experienced this? Any suggestions for how to kill that window and make it stay dead?  Since it's an always-front window, the only think I can do is keep closing it over and over again until the problem goes away eventually.

Does this happen in all the apps where you use the Character viewer, or only specific apps?

It happens in every app, but the viewer stays associated with that app.  e.g., if I open it in, say, Settings, it won't pop up when I switch to Chrome, but it will be there when I go back to settings


text:
Resetting PRAM through Terminal
For some reason, my Mac won't let me reset my PRAM in the usual way (by holding the relevant keys down when restarting), simply nothing happens when I try it and my Mac just boots up normally every time.
I'm suspecting this may be due to the fact I'm using a PC keyboard after I broke my Apple one a while back.
I read that I can reset my PRAM through Terminal with the following command:
sudo nvram boot-args=”-p -r”

But all I get is this error:

nvram: Error setting variable - 'boot-args': (iokit/common) general error

I'm running High Sierra on a late 2009 iMac if that helps

I'd be more interested in why you think the NVRAM needs resetting. It's very rarely the 'fix' for anything.

Windows is the command key, so PC work for NVRAM resets when you hold the correct keys. Is that a workaround?

Additionally, OS X Daily seems to think it should be nvram -c i cannot track down any ref to it in boot-args.

According to an Apple Support page called "Prepare your institution for iOS 10 and macOS Sierra":

...you must use the nvram command to properly set boot-args NVRAM variable. Starting with macOS Sierra, you must be booted to the recovery partition to run this command.

But now you can clear the NVRAM with
sudo nvram -c

Then restart for the reset to take effect.
I also have a PC keyboard that doesn't seem able to reset the NVRAM on startup, but I think the real problem is that it's wireless. But this command is easier and more reliable anyway.

Sounds like a SIP restriction rather than a keyboard issue. Read through the linked article to get an idea of what SIP is, and then try this:

Ensure you have an up-to-date backup, in case of emergency.
Power off your Map as normal.
Hold down Cmd-R and press the Power button. Windows keyboard should be Win-R instead. Keep holding the keys down until the Apple logo appears, then release.
Wait for macOS to boot into the recovery utilities window.
From the Utilities menu, choose Terminal. Then: csrutil disable, then exit, then reboot into High Sierra as normal.

I'm not sure where you're getting -p -r as boot args to reset NVRAM, but sudo nvram -c should do the trick on High Sierra, as Tetsujin states here.
When you're done, reboot into recovery mode once more, open Terminal and then re-enable SIP with csrutil enable, and reboot into High Sierra.


text:
Screen time statistic for longer periods
The screen time feature is awesome!
However, having only daily or weekly statistics is a bit limiting.
Is there any way to see usage for a longer time, like the last month?
Alternatively: does anyone know where the log files are stored on the file system so I can parse them myself? As iOs even keeps deleted Photos forever, I assume the log files for screen time are also kept somewhere.

You're asking 2 distinct questions.  This site works best in answering 1 question at a time.  I would recommend that you [edit] and splitting your question into two.  The question about the logs has already been asked, but not yet answered, here.


text:
can't hear FaceTime on Macbook Pro Retina Mid-2015
I can't hear people when they FaceTime me, of course at first I thought they had muted themselves but actually the call works perfectly on my iPhone 7.
I guess this is a problem with the FaceTime app on my laptop, but I don't find any sound settings in its preferences.

The audio options are available in Facetime in a perhaps confusing place:
Open Facetime. Then in the top menu choose "Video" and at the end of this menu, there's a subtitle "Output" where you can choose the audio device. Choose the speakers you want here, and you should be able to hear people on calls.
If you still cannot hear the other party, then open System Preferences > Sound > Output, and select the device you've selected in Facetime also. Now you should see an "Output volume" slider, where you can adjust the volume.

It literally had no output selected... Thanks, I would never have thought to look here.

I can only second @theonlygusti. I've been trying to figure this out since I got a new computer months ago!

Lifesaver. Thank you!


text:
Cannot partition w/ Boot Camp Assistant on macOS Mojave
Late 2016 Macbook Pro running Mojave 10.14.3, APFS-formatted (ugh).
I have run Disk Utility to verify my disk, and I've run fsck -fy from single-user mode several times. Both of these have reported absolutely no errors.
And yet, whenever I try to run Boot Camp Assistant to dual-boot with Windows 10, I get an error that says: "An error occurred while partitioning the disk."
Thinking I'd be clever, I also tried to create a partition manually through Disk Utility, but that didn't work either. I also reinstalled macOS in Recovery Mode.
I am starting to suspect that this is a problem with APFS. What other commands could I run to receive more information as to why Boot Camp Assistant won't let me create a partition to run Windows? Thanks in advance.

The secret trick was running fsck_apfs -o -y. ♂

How did you come up with this answer? It would seem the -o option is undocumented.

@DavidAnderson I just ran the command and noted that that option was in the output.

-o is only available for fsck_apfs since over provisioning is an APFS related issue to be addressed. so the correct and accepted answer should be fsck_apfs -oy.

The problem is called overallocation. The following helped me to fix it on Mojave APFS:
Please note, there is a lot of posts out there telling you to do fsck. If you are on APFS you need to do fsck_apfs instead. This is what made the difference for me.

Shut down your Mac.
Start and hold Cmd-S to boot into single user mode.
Run fsck_apfs -o
It will ask you to confirm, type in y and press Enter.
When finished (up to 3 minutes) type reboot and press Enter.

After trying everything I could find, this finally worked.
I also ran fsck_apfs -n -l before I ran fsck_apfs -o but I don't think that made any difference.
As I watched the results it produced this line:
Overallocation detected on Main device
And then it did:
Fix overallocation

I had the same problem , i did reinstall mac os (Mojave) but problem not resolved.
Finally i solved using this.

Restart your mac and Pressed Command + S to boot into single user mode.
Type fsck_apfs -y /dev/disk0s2 and hit enter
If you can see some questions type y and hit enter
After all you can see like as appear OK
Type reboot and hit enter
your problem is solved !


text:
The application is not open anymore
I am trying to open Discord.app but it doesn't open, instead I get a box that says

The application "Discord.app" is not open anymore.

I press cmd shift esc and I can see Discord.app in the list, but selecting "force quit" does nothing.
Activity Monitor does not contain an entry for Discord.app, when I search "Discord" there are actually no results.
Running ps -ax | grep Discord at the terminal returns no results. sudo pkill Discord error statuses and outputs nothing, sudo killall Discord errors No matching processes were found.
How can I open discord again?

Try re-installing it. It's quick on macOS.

@user14492 I can't delete or replace the old Discord.app because it's in use

Try either: restart the pc or open Terminal then ‘killall Discord’. If neither work ‘sudo rm -rf /Applications/Discord.app’

I fixed it by restarting the computer. Annoying bug.


text:
Is there a Keyboard shortcut to open a file and the app to be in full screen mode?
I can open an file normally using ⌘ Command↓ . But it opens as a normal unmaximized window. How can I open it in fullscreen?

Try Cmd + O then when app opens Ctrl + Cmd + F. It'll go full screen if it supports it.

Try a keyboard configurator.  This allow assigning actions to keys.  Keyboard Maestro is the one that I use.

@user14492, thanks, I don't know about the Cmd + 0, but Ctrl + Cmd + F works for me after I open


text:
my App Store is broken for Mac High Sierra 10.13.5 please help

I will click featured or something else and it automatically redirects me to updates it is making me mad someone please help me out thanks I appreciate it

Have you tried restarting?

yeah but thanks for the suggestion

Have you tried restarting into safe mode?


text:
iOS: Stop Photos app from opening automatically after receiving photos via AirDrop
When i send some pictures to my iPhone from my MacBook via AirDrop, the Photos app on my iPhone opens automatically.
How can I stop that from happening?

iOS is programmed to automatically open the default handler app after it receives file(s)/data via AirDrop.
There is no native way built into iOS to change this behaviour.

I have the same question. Is there a way to change the default handler app?


text:
Google Search is URL Encoded
When I try to use the top bar in Safari to Google something, it sometimes URL-encodes the entry.

Safari treats this as a URL and gives an error, since this is not a valid URL. If I ignore this it will stop after some time, or I can restart Safari and it fixes the issue.
I started using MacOS in High Sierra and now use Mojave, both have had this issue.
Since I am new(ish) to MacOS, maybe I am using some key-combo that changes
to URL search instead of Google?
Below, are my specs. This also happened on my late 2016 MBP, previously.

Seems to be random, & yes, irritating. I haven't figured out any pattern in how/why it sometimes does it.

Which OS are you using? Are you on the latest Mojave? I can't duplicate your problem anywhere. Please describe your hardware. There must be something peculiar in your configuration because I literally have never had that happen. I'd love to help solve your problem.

@BillSmith, I am on the latest Mojave. I've updated the question with system specs, I appreciate the help!


text:
How to disable certificate transparency check in macOS Mojave(10.14)
In macOS Mojave, certificate transparency check is enabled. Because the OS terminates all TLS connections that doesn’t use transparent certificates, macOS Mojave cannot connect to WPA2 Enterprise corporate networks. Is there any solution to turn off certificate transparency check for one special certificate or for all certificates?

Certificate Transparency only applies to publicly trusted certificates, which mean WPA2 certs aren’t affected by CT.
It’s probably because the certificate was signed with MD5, which isn’t trusted, starting from iOS 12 and macOS Mojave.
The reason why MD5-signed certs aren’t trusted is because MD5 weaknesses allow fake TLS certs to be created.
There is simply no such way to make macOS Mojave to make trust MD5 certs; request the network administrator to update & resign the cert with a different algorithm.


text:
iPad 4 webcam hacking
I received an email from my email address dedicated to Facebook blackmailing me. Saying that he had hacked my webcam and has videos for me. He wants 1000$ in the form of bit coins. What's your advice in such a situation? Thanks

Delete the mail, it‘s just a scam.

Thanks for your answer. But how come he is using one of my email addresses?

Email addresses can be easily faked.


text:
Migration assistant fills disk before finishing
I'm trying to migrate 200GB to an older MacBook pro.  Both are running High Sierra.  Migration Assistant tells me 270GB will be unallocated after the migration.  It continues to fail.  In all cases it has filled up the disk entirely.  Is there a setting I should consider before trying again???

Did you reformat the internal HD of the target MacBook Pro?

@IconDaemon no.  Why does it matter?

Misread the question. How much free space is on the target MBP? On which drive will 270GB be unallocated? What, exactly, are you using MA to transfer?

@iconDaemon there is about 500gb of free space on the on the target. I am transferring two parallels VMs. Each of which are roughly 100gb.

You may want to transfer these VM files directly using Terminal commands instead of Migration Assistant.

@IconDaemon It may come to that.  I will have to wait for the disk to decrypt before sending raw files (current duration still reads: "more than a day remaining").  I could encrypt and transfer 500GB of AES+CBC encrypted data in less than a day.  So lets hope it won't be that long lol!


text:
How can access I macOS again?
I have a Macbook Pro mid 2014 and I just want to install Linux (CentOS) as a dual boot on it.
In selecting a partition I've shrunk my macOS drive to install Linux. But after installation I can’t see macOS partition in startup manager.  I don’t know if I accidentally erased my macOS drive or did something else?
Is there any chance my macOS still exists?

There's already many questions on this site with answers for this question.  Have you searched for them and tried the answers already provided?

Probably.  To see, suggest you run:  diskutil list; from the terminal.

If you can boot to Linux, post the output from fdisk -l /dev/sda.


text:
How do I get notification first on active device?
I hear my iPhone chime upon the arrival of a notification. Minutes later it shows up on my Mac, even when I am working actively on the Mac.
Is there a way to tell the notification to arrive on the device with the active screen first?
I got similar issue with FaceTime. The request comes first to the device I'm not using currently.
Hardware:

Mac Pro 2012 running OS X Yosemite
iPhone 6 running iOS 12.1

Notifications normally come to the device last used. Is it not doing that?

No.  It's not doing that.


text:
Change "copy of ..." when copying and pasting files in macOS Mojave
I have a file called "text.txt" and when copying and pasting into the finder a copy is created "copy of text.txt" is there any way to change this? that is, when copying and pasting is like this: "text_1.txt" or something similar?

Welcome to Ask Different.  What have you already tried to make this change?

@fsb Nothing really, I have 1 hour looking for some solution in Google, but I can not find anything, that's why I come here to look for help :)


text:
Cannot ping devices from mac unless they ping the mac first
My network looks like this and I have all sorts of devices: android phones, tablets, raspberry pis, some of which my Mac can’t ping over WiFi.

Other devices on the network can ping the target just fine. In one case, I could even use ssh -L 2222:target:22 other-device -N; ssh localhost -p 2222 ping mac, and was then able to ssh to the target from the mac directly.
Targets do not respond to any connections from the mac (ping, ssh, http). Not a sleeping NIC problem on the targets because other devices can communicate with the targets just fine (on all the same protocols).
Mac is plugged in to ethernet, targets are wirelessly connected to the same network (no guest mode, vlan, etc., but there might be other options I haven't considered). However other-device in the instance above is also hardwired.
Edited to add network information:

targets are connected to a wireless AP which is connected to the main switch.
mac is connected to a switch which is connected to the main switch.
otherhost is connected to the main switch
main switch is the only LAN device connected to the router (the other device is the WAN cable modem)

Edited to add more information:
Ping from mac:
ping target
PING target.domain (192.168.1.126): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
ping: sendto: No route to host
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
ping: sendto: Host is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
ping: sendto: Host is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
ping: sendto: Host is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 5
ping: sendto: Host is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 6
^C
--- target.domain ping statistics ---
8 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss

Ping from otherhost:
ssh otherhost
ping target
PING target.domain (192.168.1.126) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from target.domain (192.168.1.126): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=46.1 ms
64 bytes from target.domain (192.168.1.126): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=70.2 ms
64 bytes from target.domain (192.168.1.126): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=95.8 ms
64 bytes from target.domain (192.168.1.126): icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=118 ms
64 bytes from target.domain (192.168.1.126): icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=38.6 ms
^C
--- target.domain ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 6ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 38.572/73.770/118.162/29.918 ms

netstat on mac: (thanks @slm)
netstat -rn -f inet
Routing tables

Internet:
Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire
default            192.168.1.1        UGSc          222        0     en0
127                127.0.0.1          UCS             0        0     lo0
127.0.0.1          127.0.0.1          UH             20     1512     lo0
169.254            link#5             UCS             0        0     en0      !
192.168.1          link#5             UCS            14        0     en0      !
192.168.1.1/32     link#5             UCS             1        0     en0      !
192.168.1.1        78:8a:20:xx:xx:xx  UHLWIir       167      954     en0   1183
192.168.1.7        0:1e:6:xx:xx:xx    UHLWIi          1       43     en0   1149
192.168.1.59/32    link#5             UCS             0        0     en0      !
...
192.168.1.126      link#5             UHLWI           0       13     en0      !
...
192.168.1.186      9c:8e:cd:xx:xx:xx  UHLWI           0        0     en0   1180
...
192.168.1.255      ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff  UHLWbI          0       15     en0      !
224.0.0/4          link#5             UmCS            1        0     en0      !
224.0.0.251        1:0:5e:0:0:fb      UHmLWI          0        0     en0
255.255.255.255/32 link#5             UCS             1        0     en0      !
255.255.255.255    ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff  UHLWbI          0        7     en0      !

It looks like something is weird in the routing table. For otherhost (.7), there is a MAC address and expiry time, but for target there is only link#5 and an ! in expiry. (The flags also differ a bit, but there are other entries with the same flags that do include a MAC address and expiry, so I'm not sure that's relevant.)
traceroute from mac:
traceroute target
traceroute to target.domain (192.168.1.126), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  * *traceroute: sendto: No route to host
traceroute: wrote target.domain 52 chars, ret=-1
 *
traceroute: sendto: Host is down
 2 traceroute: wrote target.domain 52 chars, ret=-1
 *traceroute: sendto: Host is down
traceroute: wrote target.domain 52 chars, ret=-1
 *traceroute: sendto: Host is down
traceroute: wrote target.domain 52 chars, ret=-1

tracepath from otherhost (wired, but linux):
tracepath target
 1?: [LOCALHOST]                      pmtu 1500
 1:  target.domain                                         5.742ms reached
 1:  target.domain                                         3.304ms reached
     Resume: pmtu 1500 hops 1 back 1

netstat after pinging mac from target:
...
192.168.1.126      64:a2:f9:xx:xx:xx  UHLWI           0        9     en0   1133
...

traceroute after pinging mac from target:
traceroute target
traceroute to target.domain (192.168.1.126), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  target.domain (192.168.1.126)  5.718 ms  3.204 ms  3.538 ms

ifconfig en0 on mac:
en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    options=10b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_HWTAGGING,AV>
    ether 38:c9:86:xx:xx:xx
    inet6 fe80::xx...xx%en0 prefixlen 64 secured scopeid 0x5
    inet6 2601:xx...xx prefixlen 64 autoconf secured
    inet6 2601:xx...xx prefixlen 64 autoconf temporary
    inet 192.168.1.59 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
    media: autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
    status: active

Edit: Looks like the problem lies in the ARP table on mac.
arp -a during the problem:
target.domain (192.168.1.126) at (incomplete) on en0 ifscope [ethernet]

arp -a after pinging mac from target:
target.domain (192.168.1.126) at 64:a2:f9:xx:xx:xx on en0 ifscope [ethernet]

sudo arp -ad immediately reverts to the broken state, and requires a fresh ping from target.
How can I make sure the ARP table is built correctly?
(Restarting doesn't seem to help, all of the output above is from a fresh boot, up 31 mins)
Is there some ARP filtering built into mac, or some form of broadcast listening that needs to be enabled in macOS?

What does the network look like? source and destination IP are needed as well if both use the same router / gateway. This sure looks like a network problem, but let’s define the network a bit more before taking a stab at an answer.

Very simple network. Wireless APs and wired devices all feeding into one switch.

Got it - everyone is on the same class C / non-routable network.

This post on the apple forums is promising: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5896974. Of course now I don't see this problem with any hosts, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
I guess I did learn from this that there is no well-known issue, so whatever is happening is probably too specific to be answered in a general form.

The problem isn't your arp or routing tables.  The issue is your dns cache; try flushing it first.  Issue this command sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder then trying pining by hostname and see if it works.

@Allan the problem is unlikely to be dns. In the ping and traceroute output from the failing case, the IP address is correctly resolved (and displayed in parentheses)

I've had the same exact issue with macOS 14 and Windows 11...
Before pinging mac:
... at (incomplete) on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
After pinging the mac:
... at <good hw address> on en0 ifscope [ethernet]

I can reproduce the case easily by having two network (ethernet and wifi) and then disable one. The system might be confused. Hence, restart the system will clarify to it that it is working.

Make sure that your client's route tables have routes that will tell them how to direct traffic for specific IP addresses and blocks of IPs to your default route (router).
You can check like this:
$ netstat -rn -f inet
Routing tables

Internet:
Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire
default            192.168.1.2        UGSc           73   320174     en0
10.3.144.1/32      link#10            UCS             0        0     en0
127                127.0.0.1          UCS             0        0     lo0
127.0.0.1          127.0.0.1          UH             47  5116272     lo0
169.254            link#10            UCS             1        0     en0
169.254.134.80     b8:27:eb:ee:bc:4c  UHLSW           0        0     en0
192.168.1          link#10            UCS             7        0     en0
192.168.1.2/32     link#10            UCS             1        0     en0
192.168.1.2        14:cc:20:d4:56:2a  UHLWIir        27      391     en0   1178
192.168.1.10       0:22:15:91:c1:2d   UHLWI           0       51     en0   1180
192.168.1.66       6c:ad:f8:75:71:6d  UHLWIi          1     1735     en0   1174
192.168.1.81       30:b5:c2:3d:6c:37  UHLWIi          1     1440     en0   1080
192.168.1.85       b8:27:eb:75:c5:c2  UHLWIi          2    21229     en0   1194
192.168.1.87       b8:27:eb:ee:bc:4c  UHLWI           0        0     en0    866
192.168.1.89       34:93:42:2d:92:c4  UHLWI           0       62     en0   1113
192.168.1.91       0:21:bd:af:61:cf   UHLWI           0        0     en0    784
192.168.1.95/32    link#10            UCS             0        0     en0
224.0.0/4          link#10            UmCS            2        0     en0
224.0.0.251        1:0:5e:0:0:fb      UHmLWI          0        0     en0
239.255.255.250    1:0:5e:7f:ff:fa    UHmLWI          0     2440     en0
255.255.255.255/32 link#10            UCS             0        0     en0

Here when I ping an IP that wasn't present:
$ ping -c 2 192.168.1.107
PING 192.168.1.107 (192.168.1.107): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.107: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=1.867 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.107: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=7.939 ms

--- 192.168.1.107 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.867/4.903/7.939/3.036 ms

And you'll get a new entry to your route table:
$ netstat -rn -f inet
...
...
192.168.1.107      0:19:d1:e8:4c:95   UHLWI           0        2     en0   1197
...
...

These entries have an expiration time associated as well (far right column).

Thanks for the suggestion. I've added the netstat output. Unfortunately after pinging otherhost I don't get an entry with a MAC and expiry, but one with link#5 and ! expiry. Any ideas?

This would be typical if the WiFi is also setting up a network. Make sure the WiFi is in bridge mode and letting the main wired router handle DHCP / DNS.
Check that firewalls / routing rules are bidirectional on all devices that aren’t the main router (the main gateway - 192.168.1.2)
You can traceroute to discover if your wireless device has a hop from one or the other.

Good thought, but the wireless APs are definitely not also setting up a network. I see the DHCP leases for all devices (wired and wireless) at the router. Other wired devices can ping the target just fine, only a problem with the mac, and I've never added any special firewall rules for the mac. Added traceroute/path output, but it's also failing from the mac, working from otherhost.

@Soumya we are certainly going to learn something here. Whether it’s a software setting or the wireless router is doing something funky to manage traffic or thinks these are broadcast packets or just not delivering them.

It's also not all wireless devices. Some of them can be pinged just fine, even when they're not already in the netstat/arp tables, while others need some ... encouragement first.

@Soumya You might need to diagram out the entire network. If you have a switch - it will be making switch domains. If you can simplify things - no switch or a dumb switch or a hub, that might get you traction.

That's a more involved step, but if nothing else works I'll give that a shot. I don't have a hub readily available. Here's a diagram: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Kpv59.png

When you "ping" a device (or anytime a device becomes known to another device on your network regardless of how it happens) this creates an entry in the arp table.  (arp = address resolution protocol)
You can use arp -a to view the contents of the table.
Capture the contents of the routing table via netstat -rn -f net both prior-to and after pinging the mac from the remote machine.  We're looking for routes that have host-specific flags (the capital "H" will appear somewhere in the "Flags" column).
I somewhat suspect that possibly you have an invalid netmask.
It would help if you could provide the contents of your ifconfig en0 output (generically it can be useful to see the configuration of all interfaces, but based on your sample output above, I can see that only en0 and lo0 (the loopback interface) appear to be in use on your mac so there's no point in looking at other interfaces.)

Added the ifconfig output. The netstat flags for target include "H" both before and after pinging mac from target. The difference is that the MAC address is not present until after the incoming ping.
arp shows 'at (incomplete)' before, and the MAC address after. I think arp is the problem, because issuing arp -ad lets me reproduce the problem immediately.


text:
make my laptop tell me when battery is low even while "show battery status in menu bar" is not checked
I unchecked "Show battery status in menu bar" in System Preferences > Energy Saver, because I use coconutBattery instead (and obviously I don't want to just re-check that).
But this means that now my MacBook doesn't alert me when the battery is getting low and just drains itself to 0% then dies on me.
I want to make an automatic AppleScript/cron job/whatever to alert me when the battery is less than 50%, and again when it's less than 20%.
How can I do that?

https://applehelpwriter.com/2014/08/25/applescript-make-your-own-battery-health-meter/

In System Preferences under Energy Saver, is the "Show battery status in menu bar" check box checked? If not, then check it. If it is checked and you do not get any low battery warning, then there is something wrong with the system process that monitors it. That said, any script type of solution is probably going to be resource heavy having to constantly check the state of the battery charge. I'd opt for fixing the real issue, otherwise see if some third party app is available to monitor it and pass a warning, as it would probably be more effective resource wise then a script.

This sounds like your battery is failing and the issue is at a particular moment in time it has sufficient charge, but then "hits" a dead cell and the charge falls immediately causing it to power off.  See this answer

@user3439894 it is not checked

Also see:  https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/325339/119271

Did you do a search on here or StackOverflow?  I literally did this exact thing for someone else, and used my own script to discover my own battery needed replacing.  Search for AppleScript solutions to battery related issues, and you can also filter by user number.  I’ll try and find it later today.  It’s a solution combining AppleScript with launchd.

I had the same issue when I use a Bitbar plugin on OSX and have the default battery menubar unchecked.  Here is what I use in my shell script to include a osascript call to create a notification pop up.
# Get info
power_source=( $(pmset -g batt | awk 'FNR == 1 {print $4$NF}' ) )
battery_level=( $(pmset -g batt | awk -F"\t" 'FNR == 2 {print $2}' | grep -o '[0-9]\+' ) )

# Notification when battery level is low
if [ "$power_source" != "'ACPower'" ] && [ "$battery_level" -le 5 ]; then osascript -e 'display notification "⚠ LOW POWER! ⚡" with title "Battery"';
fi

You could use this as a cron job. =)

There areo several free apps on the app store that will display your battery info and send notifications for certain levels of you battery. You should probably check there first and search on battery. Some options are "Battery Health 2" and "Battery Monitor"
There is a paid app named "Battery Charging Alert" which will do what you want. It will send you notifications when battery level is under some preset value. It puts a small window on your desktop with battery level info.  The app is $5 from the App Store.


text:
Can I change permissons so I don't have to enter the admin password everytime I try to delete a file (or folder)?
This has been an issue for several years. I am getting annoyed having to enter my admin password every time I want to delete or move a file or folder. They all have 777 permissions. Can I fix it?
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 xxx  staff  89513 22 Jun  2015 /xxx/yyy
com.apple.metadata:_kTimeMachineNewestSnapshot     50
com.apple.metadata:_kTimeMachineOldestSnapshot     50

Yes you can, but there are some details missing.  Can you post the output of ls -@l of the folder in question?

Just added the permission of a file .. I can look for a folder if that is important.

Is this every file and folder, or specific files/folders in specific places? If the former, then that is not expected and hints at some broader problem with user accounts and permissions.
If the latter, then it might be expected, depending on what/where the file/folder is.

It is specific files and folders, I'm sure it might be expected but I asked if there was any way to stop it. Mostly they were in the sites folder and I moved them to other folders.

What version of the system are you running?

High Sierra 10.3.6


text:
How do I get Apple to accept my account passwords?
My Mac has started asking for passwords to several of my (non-Apple) accounts (listed in Settings > Accounts), which until recently have been working fine. Entering these passwords (for several different accounts with several different providers) is always rejected with

Unable to verify account name or password

I've verified that all of the passwords I'm providing are correct and work by trying them on other devices or accessing them in ways that do not involve Apple's settings. I've also confirmed that this makes a mess of the user of these (and Apple's) services: e.g., while mail syncs, content is blank (or Messages fails to sync with the previous several days activities).
How do I fix this? How can it even come about?!

What do you mean by "various accounts"?  Are you having trouble logging into your Mac?  Your iCloud/AppleID account?  As written, it's difficult to determine exactly what the problem is.

@Allan Clarified: see edit.

Have you tried removing the account and adding it back in?

@Allan No, why should that suddenly be necessary?

this is to do diagnostics.  Something got corrupted, and we're trying to figure out what.

@Allan OK, tried that and got the same error when attempting to add the account back: sow now I can't get any mail on that account at all!

Create a new user account, then add your email account there.  See if the problem persists

@Allan A new Mac user account? The account(s) in question work on other Macs and other devices, and via browsers.

If, by chance, you are referring to Google Accounts in "System Preferences">"Internet Accounts", then this might help.

@Asmus No, my Google accounts seem to be OK. The problem seems mostly with Exchange.


text:
MacBook battery versus Tesla or Chevy Battery
I am curious to know from other users who are knowledgable with LiION batteries.  I work on a MacBook and just recently got a new machine.  From all my research of LiIon batteries, the optimal life to maintain the charge from studying EV-Car technology is to maintain charge from 20%-80%.
Is the same true on the MacBook?
Since both use LiIon i figure there should be parallels, but I figure there are differences with power management which may be chip-based.
Thoughts?  Thanks in advance.
Tri

Also:  https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/212504/whats-the-best-way-to-prolong-the-lifespan-of-a-macbook-pro-battery/230227#230227

See also this:https://batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries


text:
Xcode 10.2 Simulator?
After updating Xcode 8 to Xcode 10 the apps are not running in simulator. And I am getting this error.

Try by cleaning build folder and rebuilding your project. If that doesn't work, relaunch Xcode, clean build folder and rebuild. It that too fails, try by deleting derived data folder.

Things to try - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39635861/unable-to-contact-local-dtservicehub-to-bless-simulator-connection.


text:
Automator: Picking items from a list using characters in name and performing a "find" showing only the results
I regularly make folders filled with lots of items that contain multiple versions of specific files. We often need to view them in very specific ways by version number.
i.e.:

file_v01.jpg
file_v02.jpg
file_v03.jpg
file_v04.jpg
file_v05.jpg
file_v06.jpg
file2_v01.jpg
file2_v02.jpg
file2_v03.jpg
file2_v04.jpg
file2_v05.jpg
file2_v06.jpg
file3_v01.jpg
file3_v02.jpg
file3_v03.jpg
file3_v04.jpg
file3_v05.jpg
file3_v06.jpg
file4_v01.jpg
file4_v02.jpg
file4_v03.jpg
file4_v04.jpg
file4_v05.jpg
file4_v06.jpg

I'd like to be able to make an Automator script/action/whatever that will work the same way as performing a search just in that folder and that will narrow the results per the item searched. Then that automator script would live as a button at the top of my Finder window (using the "Customize Toolbar" feature to add them one at a time).
So...
The user has a folder with 80 files in it, all named with the convention like those above. The user clicks the little button called "v01" and then they are only viewing the files that contain "v01" in the filename only in that folder.
I'd make automator items for "v02" and "v03" etc., having multiple buttons in the top bar, all the way up to v07. Then the user can click them to see all the "v02" items, or "v03" items.
I have never used Automator, so I have no idea where to start. I am NOT a coder.
Thanks in advance for your help!

Why not just use the built-in search on the folder for filenames that contain the qualifier?

I want to make it easier for our team with a simple button click. (It will also give me a chance to get my feet wet using Automator)


text:
Start a window on top of a full screened space
How can I open a window on top of a full screened space?
I full screen a video in Safari.
I want to run some app that opens a little window on top of that full-screened video.
I don't mind what technologies I use to do this (AppleScript, some bash commands, python, Swift, Xcode, whatever) just wondering how Apple makes it possible.

It's simply not possible with current versions of macOS. You literally can't get a context without returning the full-screen window to a normal window.

Well I have had it happen numerous times before, potentially a bug, but still possible. How do you know it's (at least meant to be) impossible?

I said that as a developer. I tried to get a window context while a full-screen window was present. Whenever I managed to get a context, the full-screen window would get slid to the right and my window would appear on a different desktop. Obviously you can still draw atop the full-screen window, but you would need to bypass the OS to do so. Of course, that's with the standard API. It may be possible to hook classes all over the place and insert something but that would be a research project. It's always "POSSIBLE"  even if you have to hook the graphics driver, but the effort will be great.

What's your reason for putting a window atop full-screen Safari? If you just want to draw something simple and transient, that can be done without too much pain, but if you need an actual NSWindow, you're looking for trouble. There may be a better way to accomplish what you want. For example, it's possible to open an overlay window from the menu bar, but if you try to schedule any kind of complex interaction, you get a window or control on another desktop.

How can i draw something simple and transient


text:
disable brightness and volume change overlay mojave
I followed this answer and (after disabling SIP) ran
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.OSDUIHelper\
  Disabled -bool YES

But it doesn't seem to have done anything, I still get the brightness pop up when I use the brightness keys to change screen brightness.
I am in macOS Mojave 10.14.4.

Well - the defaults should be reflected when you read, so if it does nothing, that’s the issue. If the preference is set, and you restart the mac and you can read the preference, then we have an entirely different question to answer.

Two things could prevent the writing of the preference. If SIP isn’t verified to be disabled, that’s a blocker. Also, if you don’t see the preference set after a restart, there’s an issue with the defaults write command.
Is SIP disabled?
To be able to run that command you must first disable System Integrity Protection. That answer links to it here: Configuring System Integrity Protection.
If it's enabled you won't be able successfully run the defaults write ... command.
Example
$ csrutil status
System Integrity Protection status: enabled.

You'll get a failure message like this:
$ sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.OSDUIHelper \
     Disabled -bool YES
2019-04-19 16:53:21.310 defaults[92957:2162882] Could not write domain /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.OSDUIHelper; exiting

To disable/enable SIP:

To enable or disable System Integrity Protection, you must boot to
  Recovery OS and run the csrutil(1) command from the Terminal.

Boot to Recovery OS by restarting your machine and holding down the Command and R keys at startup.
Launch Terminal from the Utilities menu.
Enter the following command:
$ csrutil enable

But I have SIP disabled
If you've confirmed that SIP is disabled then you could use opensnoop to debug what's going on to gain additional insight as to why your write command is failing.
For example, in one terminal run this command to snoop:
$ sudo opensnoop -ve |& less

And in another window try running your defaults write ... command:
$ sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.OSDUIHelper  Disabled -bool YES
2019-04-19 17:23:53.712 defaults[94310:2174907] Could not write domain /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.OSDUIHelper; exiting

I did disable it

@theonlygusti - can you update your Q to reflect that? Also was there any associated error message or output when you ran it?

no output when I run it

@theonlygusti see update, try debugging what's happening w/ opensnoop.

Harsh downvotes on an answer that is quite good IMO. Not sure what’s up, but +1 from me.

@bmike thanks, it's been going on a fair amount today DV's w/o any comment. Understand the deal but if there's something wrong a note lmk would be appreciated. Glad to fix something that's not right or to outright delete if it's off base.

It’s very educational and will help lots of people / get upvotes over time. Even if it’s wrong or doesn’t help OP, it’s helpful in the larger picture.

I don't understand the output of opensnoop but I don't think there are any errors, there's 777 lines of output from opensnoop and I'm not too sure which are relevant, but here's a small sample


text:
Macbook Air 13 - Stuck mid-bar at login, after reinstalling system stuck on apple logo
My Macbook Air 13 has crashed today.
I've been playing some games on it and the screen suddenly got stuck. After waiting for about 15 minutes I turned it off the hard way (power button hold), unfortunately after rebooting once i entered password for account it got stuck at about 75% of bar. This happened about 5 times before i decided to enter CMD+R boot menu, erased the disk, created new partition with GUID scheme and installed MacOS Scierra.
Instalation went fine, but after Internet Recovery it got stuck forever on Apple logo with about 60% of bar loaded. Rebooting brings no diff.
Is there any way to repair it apart from warranty service?

Honestly that sounds an awful lot like a drive error. If you can get into recovery mode run disk utility and a repair, faililing that I would be tempted to take it in.

@SteveChambers thanks for response, I have actually run disk utility twice already, but will give it a go one more time and let you know in a moment

@SteveChambers just managed to repair drive again - still no progress. I just noticed when the bar with apple logo stops moving there comes a VoiceOver sound notification, then it just wont load more and i stuck + fan is really noisy

woah, it suddenly went to language choice screen but it is unclickable and black screen appears every now and then

Sounds like Disk Utility is freezing. I would bet it's a hardware issue.

@SteveChambers I have managed to repair the SMC thing and it booted - however when there are more graphic elements rendering on screen like FB wall white strips blink all over the screen - probably you are right and somehow the graphic card might have been damaged... thanks for your help anyways!


text:
OSX: Disable process startup disabling on crash
I'm on OSX 10.14.4 (18E226). I use a 3rd-party application that crashes about once a day. Every time it crashes I restart it, with little impact. But it seems like after 5 (?) crashes, OSX helpfully disables the process from starting, until I logout and login. How do I disable this OS behaviour?

How are you running the application?

What application are you referring to? Is it more like a service or an app?

It's actually an input method, installed under /Library/Input Methods/ and invoked from the title bar through the Input menu (I think that's what it's called).


text:
Two apple IDs registered on Apple Servers and one local iPad 2 [Reworded]
I bought icloud-locked iPad which was stolen from trash center in Denmark. Honestly, I did not know they were stolen and I was scammed. (The seller did not even say they are iCloud locked)
I jailbreaked it and removed Accounts the sqlite database. It did remove locally old apple ID, but not on apple servers. (i have been told, but logically it could not remove it from apple servers)
It then was this login form as if i had logged out normally, I logged in, it was like 2min waiting (seemed a bit too much, like it would not work), but surprisingly it worked and I can see the iPad on my find my ipad page. Localization services are disabled so I cant track its location though.
But since Activation Lock is gained from remote Apple servers (or local account data?) what would happen when i would reset the ipad? I do not want it as i do not want to get activation lock for the old account I do not know the password for.

Basically, you cannot Bypass Activation Lock You have stolen goods in your possession, you even know who the owner is. It doesn't belong to you, whether you were scammed or not, it belongs to its original purchaser, who is quite within their rights [in EU if nowhere else] to have it taken from you by the police. You lose, there is no win in this scenario. Caveat Emptor.

If this was someone else who had your machine, would you want them to get access?

Instead of reposting your question as new, use the edit button on the original to make changes.

My old one was holded grg

Tetsujin it's not activation lock I can access the iPad normallt

Why do my questions keep getting banned when Im asking about apple hardware (it's not like it's other hardware) and ithey literally said reword the question which I did


text:
Do I need a newer Mac if I want to continue to use Xcode with my iPhone?
Recently I updated my iPhone 6s to iOS 12.2.
When I went to compile my app, Xcode told me it needed to be upgraded to deploy to device running iOS 12.2.
When I went to upgrade Xcode, it told me my OS needed to be upgraded to macOS Mojave.
When I went to upgrade my Mid 2010 MacBook Pro to Mojave, App Store said “Nah uh, your computer is too old”.
I tried to restore my iPhone to 12.1.4 from the .ipsw, and iTunes says Apple says “Uh um, nope; I decline to authorize…”
Am I separated from my app and data until I pony up for a newer Mac?

Your computer is too old to be officially supported on macOS Mojave, I'm afraid. Also it is not possible to downgrade an iPhone to an older iOS version, unless you have saved certain information before you did the upgrade (which you didn't do).
However there are two unsupported methods of running macOS Mojave anyways, which will enable you to install Xcode 10.2 and develop for iOS 12.
The first option is to use the Mojave Patcher third party utility found here:
http://dosdude1.com/mojave/
It essentially patches a Mojave installation package to be able to run on older, otherwise unsupported hardware.
The other option is to use a virtualisation system such as VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop and run Mojave inside a virtual machine.

Not sure how capable OP's 2010 MacBook Pro is, to run macOS Mojave and Xcode 10.2 atop within a virtualizer!

It is fully capable of doing that - why wouldn't it be?

Might be a little slow, depends on usage of both the VM and the config and usage of the Mac. If he has the time possibly worth at least trying.

Yes. Turns out your only option is get a newer Mac capable of running macOS Mojave.
Your MacBook Pro can't upgrade past macOS High Sierra 10.13.6. Xcode 10.2 requires macOS Mojave 10.14.3 or later to run.
Apple has stopped signing all iOS releases prior to iOS 12.2, thus it is no longer possible to downgrade your iPhone.

Honestly probably the best bet, unless your money situation is prohibitively low. Heck even a used/newer Mac might be a good idea. Failing all of that using Mojave in a VM or using a Mojave patcher might be viable. But those latter options might end up being a bit slow.

Ofcourse a 9 year old Mac is going to be slower than a new one. But is it going to be significantly slower than running the same programs on High Sierra? - I think the answer is no.


text:
Gmail contacts syncing to and from iPhone
I have observed that when I add an email contact to my Gmail account, it also shows up in my iPhone contacts list. I don’t want email contacts under my iPhone contacts unless I have a phone number. I don’t know if iPhone is saving them or if it is something Google is doing.
I do know that no matter what I try, delete, toggle various things off or on nothing stops this. If I delete from iPhone, it also deletes the email address in my Gmail account. If I add the contact back to my Gmail account, it is also back in my iPhone contacts. I even tried hiding the Gmail stuff in iPhone contacts, and as soon as I put the email address in Gmail it was back in Contacts again.
This is beyond ridiculous. I can’t control my own contacts list. Everything I have seen in Google for help/search is old. Even the stuff from 2017 is no use.

I assume you have contacts and calendar OFF in Settings > Passwords & Accounts > Accounts > Gmail? It's good to be specific about exactly what settings you have on and off.

I do. Honestly there are so many things I have turned on and off I have a difficult time remembering what they are. What I have found is that the different fixes I have seen apply to older iOS versions because the things they wanted done in Settings just weren’t there.


text:
my hostname is not my laptop name
My laptop's hostname appears to be Georges-MacBook-Pro-Mid-2145.local,

$ hostname
Georges-MacBook-Pro-Mid-2145.local

Why is the number reported here 2145 instead of 2015? (I own a MacBook Pro Mid-2015, so I was expecting the host name to be Georges-MacBook-Pro-Mid-2015.local).
Did I do something wrong somewhere while twiddling about in the terminal or is it normal that the last numbers are... "random" (?)

It's probably getting that from your local DNS server for some reason; without knowing more it's hard to tell what that reason is. See: MacOS Strange Terminal Prompt, Tried Resetting Terminal.

The prompt uses the hostname, so the same sources of confusion should apply.

That's not the point; the point is that the Q&A answer I linked explains why you can get an unexpected hostname; whether you're seeing the weird name via the hostname command or via the shell prompt doesn't matter.

@GordonDavisson it's using my network provider's DNS server I think. So my computer's hostname can change if I went to someone else's house or something? I never knew this

@theonlygusti "So my computer's hostname can change if I went to someone else's house or something?" No! Your computer's hostname never changes until you tell it to. Your WiFi network / DNS / whatever does not control the hostname.

@theonlygusti your hostname is a name, for the host, your computer. It does not change based on which network you use. That answer they linked you to has a prompt that's doing some weird stuff that macOS doesn't do on its own.

The hostname can be determined by DNS - if the DNS service has a name associated with your IP address, that overrides what's in the Sharing Preferences. But the screenshot you added shows that the weird name is in the Sharing Preferences, which is not affected by DNS. Therefore, this is not coming from where I thought it might be. I don't know why it's different, but it should be safe to fix it in the Sharing Preferences.

@GordonDavisson is it indeed a "weird" name after all?

Have you tried clicking the edit button that's right next to the hostname that you want to edit?

I don't want to change the hostname, at least not until I know why it has this value.

It has that value because you probably made a typo when setting it up, then changed the computer name, and changing the computer name doesn't change the hostname. It's probably simpler than you think and it has nothing to do with what network you're on.

"when setting it up" — when would I have manually set up my own hostname?

@theonlygusti when setting your computer name for the first time? the hostname is set from that... if you made any typo there but then changed it, the hostname would not have changed on its own, you would have to change the hostname manually

I'm pretty sure I never had to choose my computer's name when setting it up...

@theonlygusti Then how exactly did it end up with the name George's MacBook Pro Mid 2015?

auto-generated from me setting my username as "George" no?

@theonlygusti then where did 2145 come from lol... Besides, mine only said "[Name]'s MacBook Pro" when I did first see it so even if you didn't set it, it wouldn't say "Mid 2015"

This question is a manifestation of the same situation described in question Why is my host name wrong at the Terminal prompt when connected to a public WiFi network?, and the answer https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/127405/17600 explains the cause and the solution.  Copying from that answer:

Type in Terminal:
scutil --get HostName

If there's no HostName available, what you see is probably coming from
  the DNS or DHCP server.
Set your HostName with:
sudo scutil --set HostName 'yourHostName'

That should do it.


text:
Force MacBook to install updates when it restarts
I kept getting an annoying notification alert "Some updates could not be installed, Restart / Remind me."
I kept hitting "remind me tomorrow" until a couple nights ago. Since then I have restarted my computer twice but the alert keeps appearing.
It looks like the updates won't be installed without initiating the restart through that prompt.
How can I restart and  update my laptop at a time that is convenient to me? (Not when the prompt nags me to do so, I want that off my screen fast).

On the prompt, you can click an appropriately far-away timeframe and then open System Preferences > Software Update and press install there, which will initiate the restart

@EzekielElin there seem to be only two options, install in an hour, install tonight, and neither are appropriate for me 99% of the time.

I believe that, in some cases, you have to actually go into the App Store or Software Update (System Preferences) and manually start the update process. This has happened to me a few times.

@theonlygusti Is there not an Install Later option that doesn't specify a timeframe? You can then manually initiate when you want.

@EzekielElin I don't know how to manually initiate it (that's what this question is about). When I next have the time I'm going to check the app store.

@theonlygusti As I said (sorry if it was confusing), the Software Update page in System Preferences has an Install button that will initiate it manually.

@EzekielElin oh yeah you're right, for some reason I completely misread or didn't read (I don't know how that happened) that part of your comment, sorry. I think that solution will work for me.

@theonlygusti no worries! glad you figured out something that works


text:
iCloud setup on Mac - What password to use in last step
I have iCloud turned off on my Mac, and now I want to turn it on. In the first step, it wants my Apple ID and password, in 2nd step it wants my Mac user password but in 3rd step it wants password to unlock my Mac.
To be honest, I'm not pretty sure what password should I use in last step - is it FileVault password or maybe some other password?
Screen from last step looks like this (sorry it's in Polish language)

This is the login password for the MacBook Pro it's referencing. That should be the same as the FileVault password on that MacBoook Pro. Click the blue text at the bottom to switch to another device if you need to.

@EzekielElin Thanks for comment. But is the FileVault password not the same as user or admin password? It seems user and admin password won't work so I believe the only password I have is some password generated by Macbook to access Filevault if user password was forgotten but I don't have access to it at the moment. Should it be this password?

On current version of macOS FileVault password is the same, is that not how it is on your computer? If you can't find a password that works, do you have other devices?

@EzekielElin No, I don't have any devices added to this AppleId. I've already tried my current user password and admin password. I will try with FileVault restore password once I get access to it.


text:
Search Issues on MacOS
For the past 2-3 months, I am having a weird issue on my Macbook Air. I was hoping if someone here can help me out.
First, spotlight stopped searching on my mac. In the picture below, I am searching for Sublime app on my machine but it only shows results from the web.
Second, search in outlook stopped working. No matter what I search, it always returned with no results found. In the image below, there should be many emails which has invoice in subject or body but it just shows no results.

Finally today, search bar in Safari started behaving weirdly. Typing here used to bring in my bookmarks but they don't come up. Even the enter key doesn't work.
A lot of my productivity has been hampered by this. Does anyone have a suggestion? Thank you.
[Edit] The issue for safari was resolved after I restarted my mac.

This doesn't look like iOS, it's macOS.  Please update your title.  There's a few similar questions here about Spotlight searches and results.  Have you looked at those answers and tried them yet?  Those would be the starting point for any troubleshooting.

Looks like different issues with no common cause. For Spotlight, go to System Preferences → Spotlight and see if the appropriate categories are selected. You should also consider rebuilding Spotlight index. Search not working in Outlook and Safari are independent from Spotlight IMO.

@fsb Thank you. I have updated the title. It was my bad.

@NimeshNeema The issue for Outlook and Spotlight happened on the same date so I believe they are related in someway. I did look at rebuilding the spotlight search but it didn't work. I will give it another try today.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this is a temporary issue that cannot be reproduced and was fuxed with a reboot. Question is not useful to anyone in the future.

Concerning Outlook, have a look at my recent answer: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/354327/45492. Also there are numerous Qs & As here that deal with Spotlight not working properly, e.g. https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/62715/45492. Did you try them, in particular rebuilding the the Spotlight index?


text:
dyld monitors DYLD_ variables behind the scenes
If I invoke
DYLD_X=foo /bin/bash -c 'echo "<$DYLD_X>"'

the output is
<>

while
MY_VAR=bar /bin/bash -c 'echo "<$MY_VAR>"'

outputs
<bar>

Switching to Bash 5:
DYLD_X=foo /usr/local/bin/bash -c 'echo "<$DYLD_X>"'

the output is
dyld: warning, unknown environment variable: DYLD_X
<foo>

I would think that dyld should only monitor variables that it knows about. Is there anything that can be done to control this behavior?
MacOS Mojave 10.14.4

Macos does not like dyld variables the latest versions use sip and remove them. What are you trying to do

@Mark: I'm just trying to understand why this seemingly odd behavior occurs.

Basically Apple thinks it is insecure a way of injected unfriendly code into normal apps


text:
Cursor often disappearing
I remember this issue happening to me since at least High Sierra, maybe Sierra, maybe before.
When switching between spaces my mouse pointer is invisible until I click on the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Doesn't happen all the time, and I don't know how to reproduce or perform it consistently, but when it happens it's really annoying.
How can I stop it from happening?
This is happening a lot more at the moment, I am on macOS 10.14.4, MacBook Pro w/ Retina display Mid-2015


text:
How do I roll back my iOS version? The 12.2 update has broken my WiFi
When I updated my iPhone 8 to 12.2 (16E227), it broke the WiFi and now apps like YouTube can't connect and often times I can't even load apple.com in Safari. Podcast app also fails when streaming. When I restart the phone then it works for about a minute. When I turn airplane mode on and off, it works for about a minute. All apps are up-to-date.
However my iPad with iOS 9.3.5 works flawlessly. My Samsung laptop works flawlessly. Also when I turn WiFi off on my iPhone and use cell data, it also works.
A user said it wasn't possible because Apple "stopped signing" old versions, but  that doesn't make any sense. A signature is a static sequence of bytes. If you are familiar with cryptography, a signed file is just another file that uses the signer's private key. You don't "stop signing" something because signing a file is a one-time event, not an ongoing process. As long as you have the file, the file's signature, and the public key, you have a signed, verifiable file.

I would support reopening this if we edited the post to describe exactly how WiFi broke or to make this about how to tell WiFi is actually broken on a specific iOS version. The “can I roll back” is either a yes or no question, but an answer how to tell this would be super useful to host here.

You might try "Settings" -> "Reset" -> "Reset Network Settings" to see if that fixes the issue.  NOTE:  This will wipe out all previously used WiFi networks and will reboot your phone.

Reset Network Settings made it works for about 10 minutes, but it still has problems with anything streaming or large data blocks.


text:
make dictionary result white text in spotlight in mojave dark theme

I can't read the result. How do I make the text white?
I am on macOS Mojave 10.14.4

Verified the behavior on my Mac. Interestingly enough all other results show as white text. This may be a bug in Spotlight/dictionary. highlighting the text makes it a little more readable, but still... tsk, tsk, tsk, Apple

running 10.14.2. no issues. appears white

Also no issues on 10.14.3, confirmed on 10.14.4. Interestingly, seems to correlate with .4 releases ;-)

Still the same in 10.14.5 b2 - will check b3 later today.

This bug exists in 10.14.4 and earlier and It is fixed in 10.14.5


text:
Deleted hard drive results in Windows recovery screen
I have a late 2014 Mac Mini. I did go into recovery mode (Option + r) and did delete the hard drive.
Then I screwed up and restartet the Mac Mini instead of going back to the list from Option+r menu at the startup.
Current Issue:
Now if I start my Mac Mini, I get a Windows recovery screen which tells me add a bootable device.
I can read "Your PC needs to be repaired", a error code 0xc0000225 and enter to try again or press F8 for startup settings. I had bootcamp installed.
I tried:

That reset NVRAM with option+alt+r+p (Now startup sound is louder then before this reset)
Holding option+r to get into Mac recovery but not working
Holding t for hard drive menu but not showing

No command for startup worked. I get the windows recovery screen always. I don't need any recovery of my files. I just want to have a clean MacOS installation.
Do I need to install Windows with a bootable windows image or is there any other way to install MacOS again?
Mac Mini late 2014 -
MacOS 10.14 (no idea which sub number) was installed

Recovery is Cmd/R or Cmd/Opt/R for Internet Recovery [though it should automatically try the second if the first doesn't work].

@Tetsujin Didn't know about Cmd/Opt/R. That worked. Thank you very much. Sometimes it's just a small stupid thing. Problem solved.

Please don‘t include the answer in the question. Post it below or flag the question for deletion instead.

I was able to access Internet Recovery with CmdOptR, and reinstall macOS from there.


text:
Help understanding Keychain passwords vs Safari passwords
I don't understand by which criteria a password is saved to Keychain vs Safari. Can I select somewhere where the passwords will be saved?
Let's say that I want all my passwords to be kept in Keychain, how to?
Thank you

I am pretty positive that Safari passwords are stored on the keychain.  and with keychain syncing(iCloud keychain) . it allows all your devices to have the same password repository(credit cards too).

Why do you think that the safari passwords are not all saved to key chain?

Like Tik27 said, when Safari saves a password it is saving it to the Mac Keychain. There is no way for Safari to actually save a password, it hands it off to the keychain.
So any time Safari (or Mail.app, Finder, etc.) offers to save a password it is being saved in the keychain.
you can verify this by signing on to a new website with a username and password, letting Safari prompt you to save the password and then opening Keychain.app and seeing the new username/password saved there with a date/time stamp of only minutes ago.

Hi Steve, my question was related to the fact that i cannot find one password present in Safari Passwords but not in Mac Keychain. I did the recommended test and the password was saved both in Safari Passwords as well in Keychain. So I don't know what previously happened...  Thanks!                                              BTW: I have the iCloud switched off, but this should have no impact except on sync between devices.


text:
Find the starting row of a sequence of values inside a column of more values
The formula that I am trying to write in cell C1 will look for the first (or all, if multiple matches) starting row number of any given sequence of any number of row values written in column A amongst all values written in column B.
A will have less or equal values than B and the vaues given in A are contanined in B starting from position C1.

I write this in good faith with your success in mind. What you've described is a difficult task, even in capable spreadsheet apps—a group of apps of which, I'd say, Numbers is not a member. It has too many missing core spreadsheet features and functions. Worse still, whereas Excel offers VBA scripting, and Sheets offers Apps Script, Numbers only has Applescript, which is very poorly suited to handling spreadsheet data. If you have any other software choices, even if just as a preliminary step before Numbers, even if just a shell script operating on a .csv, this task would be more feasible.

Ignoring scripts, a common approach would be to JOIN all non-empty rows in A with some rare delimiter into a single string, then also make text joins in B, each of the same number-of-rows-length as the A join, but with one join starting in each row of B. Then we can row-wise compare the static "joined string of A values" to each of the "joined strings of subsets of B values" into some array or helper column. I know of no way to do this in Numbers.

@JoelReid that’s exactly what I’m doing :) Since A and B takes a fixed set of values, I first used some hidden columns to convert those values to numbers, and then joining those in two strings, and finally find the substring obtained from A inside the string obtained from B. Two problems are that the number of values in A is not known and B is very large, so translating those into strings is a huge task (for my limited knowledge of Numbers fuctions) - I will really need some kind of loop here.


text:
After Forced Reboot, Passwords and SSL Not Working
I was having problems with my Mac Mini, stuff like the Finder not responding, so I restarted.   I tried it the 'correct' way to begin with, i.e. apple menu, and then restart.  All of the windows seemed to close down correctly, and the Dock and menu bar were the only things visible.  This was taking a while so I went out and did some errands.  I got back two hours later and the same screen was showing.  I started the Terminal and ran sudo reboot.   Again, two hours of nothing.
I cycled the power.
The Mac is now working in that I have access to Finder etc.  But every single browser I use (Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome) has stopped storing passwords and has hosed all the passwords that were previously stored.  And I can no longer send mail from Mail.app as there is an SSL error.  Server-side, the log says:
Apr 29 12:13:12 mail sendmail[15639]: xHdsgddff9dfD: xxxx.invalid.com [192.168.1.31] did not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to MTA

Is the clock correctly synchronized ? SSL servers rely on the time of the system and it needs to be correct/within a small range

Ah, that's interesting!  There was about sixty seconds between the Mac and the MX.  Now, is that a fault on the mail server (where ntpd had in fact stopped?), or on the Mac?  I'll need to look into this.  Thanks for that.


text:
Terminal Prompt showing scary message
I run om-my-zsh and my prompt usually says

   gregg@Gumby $

where Gumby is the name of my Mac.
Today it said

   gregg@Michaels-iPhone $

I was not connected to any iPhone. All sharing features in system preferences sharing are off.
what is going on?

not a dupe. I never connected to any iPhones and was not on the net so the question is where the name came from not the fact that it can be changed but rather how was it changed to a random user's iphone if I was never connected to that user's iphone

Check if Michaels-iPhone is in the list of Preferred Networks in your Network preferences.

don't know any Michaels. Have never paired with a friend's iPhone. There is no Michaels-iPhone in my preferred networks

It will be rather difficult to figure out the source of this after it happens, especially if you rule out the usual options (iPhone (inadvertently) used as hotspot, or iPhone connected to Xcode). If you follow the recommendations in the answer to the original question, do the changes stick or does it revert back to "Michaels iPhone" after a reboot/a few days?


text:
How can I exclude some app's files from showing up on iOS Files App?
I copied some files to my iPhone via ITunes to a specific app by selecting the phone in iTunes, clicking "File Sharing", selecting the app and then dragging and dropping the files into the app. Now those files are in the app but they also show up in the iOS Files App. I don't want them to show up in the Files app. They are private files (password.txt, ssh-key.private.txt, secret-project-planning.txt).
Things I tried

turn off app in Siri and Search -> App Name -> Siri & Suggestions
this removed the files via the app from search on the home screen but not from the Files app. In other words the files all still appear even though the app is hidden.
looked in the Files app for settings
there are no per app settings in the Files app
searched in system settings for "Files"
no matches. Apparently there are no settings for the Files app..
searched in system settings for the apps whos' files I don't want exposed in the Files App
no related settings appeared. Document storage is set to "On My iPhone". "Siri & Search" shows "off"
turn off "Show app" in Siri & Search setting.
This has the ridiculous effect of making the app itself not appear as a search result but the settings for the app still appear as does the app's folder so technically the app is still showing up in search.

How can I get the files not to show up in the Files App?

If you want to repo the issue you can download Firefox
Then go to https://greggman.github.io/doodles/dl.html

Long press the link and pick "Download Link" when it appears

Pick "Download Now" when it appersa

Now go to the "Files App" and pick "Firefox"

Pick "Downloads"

Notes the file is visible here

The thumbnails make this issue particularly troublesome as you can read the beginning contents of the files you're trying to make not appear. Even without the thumbnail the filename itself is enough to give something away.
Even worse, everything the Files app sees shows up in the system wide search (drag down on homescreen) so if someone is looking over my shoulder and I use search it's possible they'll see things I was trying to hide

Ideally via some option the app, Firefox, would not even show up in Files but at a minimum I need some option to make the files for a particular app not appear.
Note that MacOS has the option to hide folders from search under Spotlight->Privacy. All I'm asking is how to achieve the same result on iOS

Can you mention the name of the apps in question?

Firefox works fine to demo the issue. Updated question with example


text:
How do I restore default perl in macOS Mojave?
Is there a way to restore default perl5 and cpan modules in Mojave without rebuilding the OS?

What happened to them?

Thanks for asking. I was concerned about trashing the OS default perl and cpan after a round of trying to use MacPorts's perl5. I could not get a Github perl project to build (make) with Macports, so I switched to the default perl and the make succeeded.  I was then afraid that the process might have mucked up default modules. Can you tell I am a perl noob? Anyway, after much perl -V and file diffs between a clean system and mine, I convinced myself it was fine.

Standard binaries are protected by SIP and can‘t easily be removed nor replaced. Booting into recovery and reinstalling macOS only is the easiest way to solve this. You may need to manually reinstall any user-installed CPAN modules again afterwards.

Thanks nohillside. I spaced out on SIP protections. I was concerned after reading many warnings about NOT using Apple's default perl for development. Anyway see my comment to @JBis also.


text:
6 months old iPhone 6s battery disabled peak power
I had my iPhone 6s battery replaced by Apple in November last year (i.e. 5,5 months ago). Today the phone crashed and peak power was disabled again. Admittedly it was relatively cold outside (about 8°C) and I used the phone for navigation. Battery health is given as 98%.
Nevertheless, I am rather annoyed that an almost new battery dies on me and I wonder if I should complain. Is the replaced battery covered by any kind of warranty and does it extent to peak power capability?

8C is 46.4F, so I'm not sure temperature is a factor. -8C is 17.6F, which is below freezing, but not low enough, IMHO, to cause such a problem so quickly.

@IconDaemon Before I had the battery replaced, I knew that my battery would reliably die if temperatures were around 0°C / 32°F and battery charge below 90%. So I basically always carryied a battery pack with me in winter.

The best way to find out is to go by the Apple store you had the work done at and explain the issue.


text:
Issues with Scheduling and Outlook Email / Outlook App / Integrated Mail on iOS?
I have the following installed on my systems:

Windows

Outlook

iOS

Integrated Calendar / Mail
Integrated Outlook Mail

A meeting was scheduled to do an  test install and rollback of a system, and the alarm went off for it, but when I asked my boss about it, he said it was rescheduled to another time.
I don't understand what happened.  Shouldn't the meeting have been moved to another time on the calendar if they rescheduled it?  The Integrated Calendar had the alarm for it go off, the Outlook app did not...and the Windows desktop application also had notification.
I can't uninstall the integrated calendar or email on iOS, and my thought is that  this is what has this paired down, how do I deal with meetings that other people (I'm assuming) put on the calendar and forget to remove when they reschedule them, if they have different names from what they rescheduled the meeting to?

You didn’t say what email systems/services you are using.  Can you lease add these details?

@Allan Exchange O365 I believe...

Confirm that everything in Accounts is configured as “Exchange”