Localized app name does appear in English only via App Store app on iPhone I have a weird issues. There is my app which I localized for multiple languages following Apple guidelines. All works well, app reacts to the language on the phone, I can see localized app name by using App Store via VPN to some country, etc.

However, when I switch phone to German, for example, switch App Store app to Germany, and then search my app via its German name, app store finds it, but displays its name in German.

I am not sure why this is happening only via App Store app on the iphone itself.

Did anyone have such problems and how did you solve them?

This is intentional behaviour.
From this Apple page:

Localize your app name and update your App Store metadata, such as your app description, keywords, and screenshots, for each of the countries in which you offer your app.

It has probably been updated automatically.


How can I move an email without deleting it from iCloud server? I have local rules on my Mac to move emails from certain people into their own local folders, and sound a unique alert.  The problem is that it appears that moving it causes it to be deleted from iCloud's IMAP server, and therefore not delivered to my iOS devices.

When I changed the rule to copy rather than move, I'm left with duplicate emails in the local Inbox folder (not surprisingly).

I tried creating iCloud Mail folders and using iCloud Mail rules to move certain emails into those folders.  That's fine, except that I can't sound the alert: it appears that Mac Mail rules only apply to mail coming directly into the Inbox.  (Also, only iCloud Inbox items get 'pushed' -- the mail in my JohnDoe folder can only be retrieved when Mac Mail polls every N minutes.)

I'm new to IMAP, so I may have missed the solution.  Can anyone suggest how, using iCloud Mail, I can:

See the same email in my Mac and all my iOS devices
Automatically route certain email to special folders and sound an alert, at least on the Mac

Thanks-
Chap

From what I read, you actually are almost there. It looks like your problem may be how the folders are done (as in, locally or on the server).

As you said in your answer, you copy the emails to local folders, so therefore they would never be on your phone. And with iCloud's limited rules (in the cloud), as you note, you cant really make a sound or do much with them either.

As long as your Mac is always running (to run the rules), you really would only need to update your local mail rules to put the emails in the servers folders. This way if you are at your computer, you would hear the audio cues, as well as have the mail filtered. If you step away, as long as your Mac could still process the mail, it will copy the emails to the correct server folders, and be available.

On your Mac now, you should see two inboxes, iCloud and 'On My Mac'. Make sure folders exist under the iCloud account for where these messages should go. Then update your rules to point to the iCloud account folders, versus those on your mac.

The only thing you may see from this is some messages will be in your inbox for a very short period of time (before your Mac runs its rules), versus iClouds server side rules that process mail before its delivered.


Clipboard paste hangs application for 30s I'm on MacOS Catalina 10.15.3 (Darwin 19.3.0). My Mac frequently gets into a state where every attempt to paste from the system clipboard freezes the application I'm pasting in to for about 30s, meaning I see a "beachball" when hovering over that application, but can still use other applications.

It also happens with pbcopy/pbpaste:

echo foo | pbcopy
time pbpaste

real 0m30.031s
user 0m0.226s
sys  0m0.202s

It takes almost exactly 30s every time. Note that there is also no output from pbpaste.

I can temporarily resolve it by running rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist && killall Finder, but the issue returns within minutes. Rebooting does not help.

How can I resolve this?

Open the Terminal application, found in /Applications/Utilities/
Type the following command exactly:

killall pboard

Hit Return

This will terminate and relaunch the pboard process, which is the clipboard daemon for Mac OS. This should resolve your issue.


Reformat iPod on windows I plugged in my 5th gen iPod to update during the latest iTunes update, but my computer crashed while in the middle of it.

Now I can no longer turn on my iPod.

Rebooting shows me the sad iPod face with a link to Apple support, iTunes does not recognize the iPod so I cannot do this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1339?viewlocale=en%5FUS

Is there some other way to reformat the disk so that it works again?

Thanks!

PS: I can charge the iPod by plugging in the USB to my computer, however it periodically tries to restart and makes horrible and annoying drive noises. I don't see an iPod disk in windows explorer either.

Whoa an update. After putting it into disk mode, not sure whether or not it is in disk mode, I followed the steps but did not get a confirmation. In any case windows explorer has it listed as a drive now. It says I need to reformat the drive before I can use it. This is windows explorer reformat, not iTunes reformat. Should I?

iTunes still doesn't give me any indication that it sees the drive.

If the iPod is makes horrible drive noises, then you have most likely lost the hard drive in the iPod. It might have crashed in the middle of the format and caused a crash.

You can try the disk mode to see if you can do anything with it, but sounds like it might be a dead drive.


macOS Catalina not allowing me to access full storage on my disc My hard drive has around 90 GB on it, however Mac is only letting me access/detecting around 40, yet still somehow seeing that there are almost 90 available. I have tried googling around, however most issues seem to be related to the Mac incorrectly calculating the available space but still reading the correct total capacity. Has anyone encountered this issue before?
Edit: After running df -h it appears my disk is partitioned into multiple partitions. Adding up their sizes equals the correct 87 GB, however, each of them have only 40-50% capacity.

I fixed this by doing the following:

I ran  diskutil list. Then from that list, I checked which part of my disk was the one apple was using in the GUI in my original question by checking which one's size was also 42.74 GB (Its identifier was disk0s2 in my case).

I ran sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer [the identifier we retrieved above] [the size we want it to be, so 87G]

2.5 In case this does not work the first time, run diskutil repairDisk and try again.


Space lost after bootcamp fail This is my first apple computer (MacBook air 2015). I had to install windows on this because my school wanted it.

I tried installing through bootcamp and it failed the message was "windows support software could not be installed on targeted device" then it said it was removing the partition and for hours nothing happened.

Then again opening bootcamp assistant the message was "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition"

My original storage was 128GB now it's 84GB, how can I get the rest back?

 $ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         84.0 GB    disk0s2
/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +84.0 GB    disk1
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            43.5 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 44.8 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                517.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4
$ diskutil cs list
No CoreStorage logical volume groups found

Also when I open disk utility

The problem was solved after running a command

diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk1 0g


How do I change the color in Terminal indicating the use of a dead key? A dead key (a key that does not generate a complete character by itself but modifies the character generated by the key struck immediately after) is indicated with a yellow background to previous the final character.

It's perfect when you write black on white, but not when you write white on black, like in some Terminal configurations.

My question is: Where can I change that color?

This isn't a clean fix, but here's a work around:

Keep the Terminal as Black on White but then go to:

System Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Invert Colors

Doing this will change your Terminal (and everything else) to White on Black, but also change the yellow dead key to blue.

You can also turn Invert Colors on and off using a keyboard shortcut if you turn it on in the keyboard preferences:


Time Machine cannot write to network drive under Mountain Lion I installed Mountain Lion yesterday and have only one problem. Time Machine, which worked under Lion on a WD Sharespace network drive, not gives a message that it cannot find the drive. Despite that, it can "enter" Time Machine with no problem and read all the saved backups. Time Machine itself shows the drive as available to be selected for backup. Finder also sees the drive. Lastly, the Time Machine backup volume which never had been visible on my desktop under Lion is now always there under Mountain Lion.

My take from this Apple Discussion thread is that the solution causes Time Machine to create a full new backup rather than adding to the other backups, but previous backups will be kept (not sure of actual behavior). Anyway, here is the posted solution (edited formatting and grammar for readability):

  By default, the WD Sharespace creates a hidden share called WD_Backup
  and a user called wd_backup with a default password of backup.

  Using the example in the blog:

    sudo tmutil setdestination afp://user:pass@host/share

  and assuming the following: (all default settings with the exception of the WD Sharespace Server Name)

    Server Name: TimeMachine

    Volume Name: DataVolume

    User: wd_backup

    Password: backup

  You should execute the following in Terminal:

    sudo tmutil setdestination afp://wd_backup:backup@TimeMachine/WD_Backup

  In addition, you can validate that you are using the correct User and Password details by:

  Launching the Finder and clicking on 'Go' from the menu
  Clicking on 'Connect to Server...'
  Entering: "afp://TimeMachine/WD_Backup" in the Server Address field and clicking 'Connect'

  You'll be prompted to enter the Username and Password to the share; the default username and password are stated above.

  If your machine cannot resolve the Time Machine Server Name, then replace "TimeMachine" with the IP address of your WD Sharespace server; this will mount a drive to the WD_Backup folder, underwhich you will find the .sparsefile that Time Machine uses to store your backup.  All this is covered in the WD Sharespace User Guide on page 46 under the Time Machine configuration section.

Note that the original poster also wrote:

  However, if entering afp://wd_backup:backup@192.168.1.150/WD_Backup
  instead of afp://192.168.1.150/WD_Backup it gets to mount it from
  the Finder window (Command+K). I have tried this while writing this post,
  because as you were so sure that it worked (even though for me the
  "straightforward" solution does not work) I decided to try this last
  thing!   Right now it is backing up everyting, so thank you very much
  for all your help!

Good luck!


How can I reset the sorting of my Events in iPhoto back to by date? I see by default iphoto orders events by the earliest date inside the event.   That being said, i see you can drag and drop events to come up with your own ordering.   Is there a way to reset the ordering back to "by date" if you have done a lot of drag and drop of events to different places

From the menu select View > Sort Events > By Date.


Can I publish a "coming soon" version of my application? (e.g. information regarding the upcoming service, ability to reserve a spot) I read the Apple submission guidelines and it states that trials, demos, or betas will be rejected. However, if I'm offering a service and it isn't ready yet, but I want to get people familiar with the name, can I release a "soft" version of the application which tells users about the upcoming service and the ability to reserve a spot?

To reiterate, I am building a service which will release sometime later this year, hopefully. However, I would like to gather interested users and give them information about it and the ability to join a mailing list, create an account, connect on social media through a simplistic app (under the same name). Is this allowed?

I would like some clarification, if possible.

Thank you

As long as you're releasing a functioning app that works, I can't see a reason why it wouldn't be approved.

However, this assumes that the app actually serves a purpose in its current state and that all you're doing is including additional info such as Coming soon etc.

If Apple does have an issue with the current version, you'll receive an email from iTunes Connect advising you that the App Store Review team have sent you a message and you can view and respond to it via the Resolution Centre. Typically this gives you the chance to address their concerns and, if necessary, to make changes.

Even if they didn't give you this opportunity, you can always resubmit the app once you've updated it.


How do I disable/enable an external monitor from terminal I run two external monitors + my MBP display in OSX Yosemite. My middle external monitor is also connected to my PC.

The monitor will automatically switch to an active input, so for example if my mac is running all three monitors and my PC is on, I Can sleep my mac and the monitor will switch to my PC. Same thing fro switching from PC back to mac.

However, the mac will still consider the middle monitor as active, so items and the mouse disappear when on the middle monitor.

I'd like to have a terminal command or shell script I can quickly fire with finder to enable/disable either the external monitor or the HDMI port.

Plugging/unplugging the monitor every time (several times a day) is not an option. I know about SwitchResX but have no need for 95% of it and don't think it should be necessary to pay to disable a piece of hardware.

This sounds like an issue that was addressed by one of our clever members who wrote a free tool to easily disable or enable a monitor on your Mac


Recovering lost photos on iPhone 5s after restoring from iTunes backup I used to have an iPhone 4s and all the data from there is synced in my iTunes in my Mac. I just got an iPhone 5s yesterday and decided then to plug it to my iTunes. There was a welcome message and 2 options: whether to set up as new iPhone or set up as old iPhone (4s contents).

So to be able to make everything fast, I chose the latter, but then all the new photos in my iPhone 5s were deleted and were replaced with all the contents from my 4s. Is there any way I could retrieve it?

In my opinion, it is something that's really hard to do (or that might even be impossible), that's why, sadly, I think that you are not likely to get your data back.

Most of the time, when you erase some data on a storing device, actually, you don't really erase it but just hide it and give to the devices using it the authorization of writing on it, that's why, in some cases, you can get your data back.

Unfortunately, in your case, that's something much more complex for several reasons.
The first one is that getting back the data in the way I mentioned above needs to have an access to the storage at a pretty low level. Apple putted some restrictions on the iOS devices and for this reason I don't see any way to gain such a low level access without doing something dangerous and not allowed by Apple such as jaillbreaking your device (and even with this I'm not even sure you could gain this access).
The second one is that since you transferred some content from your iPhone 4s to your iPhone 5s, it might be possible that the photos have been replaced by some new content (so some or even all of your photos might be missing/corrupted).
The last one — which might be the biggest one — is that the storage is managed in a pretty special way in iOS for some security reasons and although I don't know what happens exactly when you restore you device, it might be possible that iOS protects the previous content by removing some keys that were encrypting your data, making it nearly (not to say completely) impossible to get it back.


How do I control which monitor an application will appear on? I just switched to Mac from Windows.

In Windows, if you have multiple monitors, application windows tend to appear wherever you most commonly put them. If you have different setups (for example a laptop with one external monitor at home but three monitors at work) Windows will even tend to remember where you like to put each app on each setup.

How do you do that on Mac?

On Mac you can configure each app to open on a certain monitor.  They don't adapt to different monitor setups, they go where you configure them.    But there are a bunch of non-obvious steps to do it.

1) In System Preferences -> Mission Control you have to set "Displays have Separate Spaces" to True.  Otherwise, all your monitors are one "space" and application assignments are impossible.

2) You have to have your monitor(s) plugged in.

3) At least one of your monitors has to have two or more Desktops of its own.  If you have one Desktop on each Monitor, that's two or more altogether but it's not enough.  You have to create another Desktop on either monitor, even if you don't intend to use it.  That's the key to unlocking the elusive menus that allow you to configure this.

4) That was easy, wasn't it?   With all that out of the way, start any app, right click on its Dock icon, choose Options and there you will see "Assign To".  As far as I can ascertain the options are:

All - The app will open on the monitor where you started it from, and appear in all desktops on that monitor.
Desktop on Display 1 : The app will always open on Display 1, in whichever Desktop is active.
Desktop on Display 2, 3, etc: you get this.
None: The app will open in the active desktop on the monitor where you started it.   If you unplug monitors, Apps configured for specific monitors will also behave this way.

Now go do that for each app you want to configure.


iPhone 6 backlight issue, burn-in I bought an iPhone 6 64GB in Space Gray from 5th avenue NY 14 days ago. I can see a grayish area at the top right corner, near to the charge display. It's hard notice in full brightness, but noticeable in low brightness which annoys me a lot. I know it will be tough to make apple genius understand but still can't live with it. I want to replace my phone. Will this one be covered by warranty policy? I have a slight hairlike scratch on the display.

The iPhone warranty in the US doesn't cover physical damage or cosmetic issues. The scratch will likely be judged that way unless it interferes with a function like multi touch.

Similarly, the return policy / window might be your best bet - especially if the LCD quality is clearly different than the rest of the display phones. Just because a light scratch happened - if there's a problem with the overall display, I would assume you'd be able to request an exchange / repair / warranty service to address the backlight and not the scratch.

If Apple's repair option fixes the scratch too, so be it - that's their issue and not yours IMO.

Lastly, get in sooner rather than later. Also, if you didn't buy the phone outright - be sure your carrier is OK issuing a second subsidy before returning the phone.

Sorry this isn't simple - but you've got multiple aspects to a repair/return to consider.


Connecting Asus ZenScreen MBC16 to Mid-2015 MacBook Pro I bought this nifty Asus ZenScreen to have a second monitor on the go. What could go wrong, right? Well, everything it seems. I am running High Sierra (10.13.6). The ZenScreen takes USB-C input with only one port. The first attempt was to connect via the USB side by downloading the DisplayLink UserAgent 4.3.1 driver. It seems that Apple doesn't want us to do that for some reason? I can connect and it will display a picture- but only a static one. As in, if I have a video playing, only a still image appears, and clicking in that extended desktop will only update to that next snapshot. (A video of this can be provided if need be.)
Next, I tried HDMI to USB-C. And learned that HDMI does not provide power.
Third, I purchased the seemingly overpriced Thunderbolt Cable and USB-C adapter, as the internet informed me that Thunderbolt does in fact provide power. Still no avail.
Now I have a lovely paperweight and several cords that I don't need to boot. Any thoughts?

Using an Asus ZenScreen should be fine. The only issues I've ever seen people have is that the auto sensing orientation feature (to switch between landscape and portrait modes) seems to be somewhat glitchy.
Considering you're on macOS High Sierra, you should be using the ASUS MB series driver v4.3.
Even if you have already installed this, I would suggest downloading/installing it again. Once you do, go to Apple > System Preferences... > Security & Privacy.
If you're prompted to enter your credentials to unlock the Preference Pane, then enter them in.
Next, check to see if you have a message at the bottom of the window asking you to allow use of the software (If so, you'll see an Allow button near the bottom right. Click on this.)
You will most likely be prompted to restart your Mac. Do this and test to see if you can get your ZenScreen to work.


How can I backup/restore an app (not just it's data) in iOS 10? One of my apps got a big update with some mixed reviews, I'm interested in trying the new version, but won't do it if I can't roll back. For pre-iOS 9 systems, I heard you can backup ipa file from iTunes on PC, update the app on iPhone, and then if needed, overvrite back from iTunes and sync. But it doesn't work now - there's no ipa file for that app after iTunes sync.

What are my options? I've heard about programs like iMazing, but have a feeling that for iOS 10 it will just restore the app data and not the whole app version.

Do an iCloud backup. iCloud backups are snapshots of the phone as it is. So you'll keep the old update and its data with an iCloud backup.

Do 1 right now and the other after the update.

After your testing, then you can over write that latest backup if need be based on your choice.


How to make a custom keyboard layout be recognized as Latin so I can remove the US default layout? I have a custom keyboard layout which MacOSX doesn't recognize as Latin, so it doesn't allow me to remove the US default layout.
I'd like to know what would make my layout be recognized as Latin.
Is the US default layout stored in a file somewhere? so I can compare it to mine and figure out what to change.
My layout is a modified US-international so it should be recognized as Latin with no problems.

Update: I solved it by setting the keyboard id to 1.

I solved this by setting the keyboard id to 1.


Notification center documentation for applescript Where can I find documentation for notification center method and properties to use it in applescript? I can't find anything in script editor's dictionary neither on web.

This is example code to work with notification center:

on run
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "Notification Center"
           set theseWindows to every window
           display notification (count of theseWindows)
        end tell
   end tell
end run

Script Editor app has a searchable library. Open that under the window menu and then select the Standard Additions bundle. If you search for the term notification, you'll see it's defined under User Interaction:

display notification [text] : the body text of the notification
  [with title text] : the title of the notification (default is the name of the calling application).
  [subtitle text] : the subtitle of the notification
  [sound name text] : the name of the sound to play

But Notifications Center doesn't have any windows. Are you trying to count all windows for all applications?

To be clear - here's the notification part setting aside what a window count might be:

on run
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "Notification Center"
            set theseWindows to "a b c"
            display notification (count of theseWindows)
        end tell
    end tell
end run


Migrate from Aperture to Photos: use Catalina or Mojave? I have an old Aperture photo library and I am now planning to finally upgrade from Mojave to Catalina on that system. I know I need to migrate my photo library but I'd like to know in what order I should do that. Upgrade to Catalina and then use the version of Photos to migrate my Aperture library or migrate first and then upgrade to Cataline. The former would use a newer version of Photos with possibly(?) a few migration bugs ironed out, the latter clearly has the advantage to still be able to open my library with Aperture until I'm sure I'm happy with the migration. So, any other thoughts, things I am missing?

I would be sure you delay losing Aperture until you’re sure you have a good import. I haven’t needed to load Aperture myself, so it might be a moot point, but better safe than sorry would be my advice. Go to Mojave and get an excellent backup you know you could restore in bootable format if you have professional photos, pro level metadata and edits / albums or can’t reimport them later.
You surely can reimport the raw images, so if that’s an option, going straight to Catalina might be faster for you with not much extra risk.
When I moved all in on Photos, I purchased Power Photos to help split libraries since I knew all my photos were 250 GB and I didn't want to pay for more than 200 GB of iCloud storage and I'm all-in on cloud library with a local backup. I've got about three Photos libraries and one has my main personal work that's in iCloud.

https://home.camerabits.com
https://www.captureone.com
https://fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/

It has served me very well and I'm still barely making it in 200 GB. I'll probably splurge for Photo Mechanic when I next rework things. Capture One also gets super high marks. I use both of these professionally but for personal use Apple and Fat Cat Software have served me well enough.


How to get a full backup of a hard disk from a dead MacBook? My MacBook is not booting up due to some short circuit problem.

Apple Store has promised that they can repair but there would be data loss.

I want to take out the hard disk from the MacBook and take a backup of it. Then re-attach the hard disk and give my MacBook for repairing!

So far I am unable to find any way to do a full backup of a hard drive.

I would like to get some helpful pointers.

Depending on your MacBook model, removing the hard drive may void your warranty, so it might be better to prediscuss this with the store or ask them for other options. They may also offer you a way that they can do the backup for you (at extra cost maybe) or give you the old hard disk back after getting your MacBook working again.


Late 2013 Macbook Pro Versus a Later Build I have a used Macbook Pro i7 late 2013 that I bought when I started my contracting work.

I was thinking of buying a new one (except 15"), but I don't know if it's truly worth making the purchase. I figure I do some homework first.

My question is: what is the difference between a i7 late 2013 and a new model? Are there any benefits?

Without knowing which i7, how much RAM, and what type of internal storage your 2013 system and the 2015 system you're looking at has, I can't really compare the performance of the machines. If you replace your old machine with a 2015 i7 and with at least the same amount of RAM and the same type of storage, the new one will be noticeably faster, particularly in GPU-intensive applications like Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, AutoCAD, video games, etc.

The new MacBook also has a Force Touch trackpad, which definitely feels different than the old style trackpad.

You'll also get improved battery life (from an improved battery, improved efficiency, and the fact that batteries lose capacity over time, so any new battery of equal or greater capacity will last longer than any old one.)


How do I turn off iOS from registering my finger while annotating? I have the iPad pro 2020 and the apple pencil. When marking up a document (say, in Notes or Files) I want to be able to disable annotation inputs from my finger - When I'm in annotation mode I only want the iPad to detect inputs from the pencil for annotation. Ie, I don't want stray finger movements to result in marks. How do I set this? Notability has this functionality. Surely iOS must as well?

There's a few ways to address this.
In Notes or any similar app you can make app-specific adjustments.  Select the Markup icon at the top of the screen (looks like a pencil tip). That will open the Markup toolbar, usually at the bottom of the screen.

Yes, I know this is not an iPad Pro from 2020 but it's a good picture so I used it anyway.

Tap the 3 dots and turn off 'Draw with finger'.
The other way is to make the change at a global level.  Go to Settings -> Apple Pencil and turn off "Only Draw with Apple Pencil".


How can I overwrite a file or prevent 'copy' from being appended? When I copy/paste a file into a folder where a  file with the same name exists, instead of replacing, it changes the filename to 'file Copy'.
Is there a way to copy/replace similar to windows or ubuntu?

I am using OSX 10.8.5.

By default in OS X Mavericks, dragging a file into a folder that contains a file with the same name will prompt you for what you would like to do.

Take, for example, these two folders: Folder1 and Folder2. Both contain a text file called Test.txt.

Dragging Test.txt from Folder1 into Folder2 will result in this dialog:

"Keep Both" will result in the file being named Test copy.txt. "Replace" does exactly what you want - replaces Folder2/Test.txt with Folder1's Test.txt.

As user dval has discovered, earlier versions of OS X may require that you hold down ⌘ while you drag a file into another folder in order to see the "Replace" option.


Moving from original iPad to new iPad (2012): Is a cover like Apple's black one available for the new iPad? I'm upgrading from the original iPad (2010) to the new iPad (2012).  I skipped the iPad 2 and the Smart Cover, so I don't have any compatible cover accessory for the new iPad.

I did try someone else's iPad 2 and Smart Cover before, and while I think the Smart Cover design is clever, it does little to protect the iPad from a fall, or the back from scratches.  And, while the magnets are strong, the Smart Cover can still separate; i.e. don't have a 4-year-old yank an iPad 2 by the Smart Cover and expect it to stay stuck!

What I would really like to shield my new iPad is something almost (but not quite) exactly like the cover I had for my original.  Of course I'm referring to this:

What I liked about the original black iPad case/cover is:

it protected both front and back from scratches,
it could be folded to stand in two orientations,
the rubber-like material sticking out a bit at the edges made the case absorb some of the shock of a side-impact drop (helpful if you have a four-year-old .. though she's five now and is more careful!),
it is tight fitting, and
it could be cleaned easily.

I already tried putting my new iPad into the old iPad case/cover, and some things don't line up (power button, notably), and it's lacking the camera hole at the back, and it's no longer a tight fit since the new iPad is slimmer.

Is there a third-party / aftermarket case almost exactly like the Apple one pictured above, but designed for the new iPad (2012)? I'm hoping some company might have closely matched Apple's original design.

Targus is advertising iPad 3 cases and one of their portfolio style cases may suit you.

Many iPad 2 cases will work with the new model. Although I haven't tested any of these on a new model iPad, you might consider:

iLuv Portfolio Case with Stand

Filemate Imagine series smart cover

Beyond that, a search for iPad portfolio will produce a multitude of choices.


How to force coloured display of visited links in Safari 5+? Relatively recently most browsers, including Safari disabled the colouring of visited hyperlinks for privacy concerns.

I do not give a damn about this type of privacy and I consider that this is a huge downgrade of accessibility.

Is there a way to re-enable this via a hidden setting or extension?

You could create a text file, name it visited.css, and put this text in there:

a:visited { color: #6611cc !important; }

Then go to Preferences > Advanced, click Style sheet and select the .css file you just created. All links you've visited should be in a nice purple now.
(Note that this colors every link you've ever clicked purple, and will override the actual web design.)


How to disable auto charge when my iPad plugged into my Mac? Whenever I plugged my iPad into my Mac, it will auto charge. For some reasons, I wanna turn this feature off. Is there anyway to do it? I searched but only got not revalent answers.

Plug it in to a USB hub.  When my ipad is connected directly it charges, but when its plugged in to a hub thats connected the ipad reads "Not Charging" next to the battery icon.


Can I still cast to Chromecast on my MacBook? In the past I was able to cast to Chromecast from my MacBook. But there's a lot of indications that this service may have been discontinued. For example, the Cast extension on Chrome has been discontinued. Is there still a way to cast to Chromecast from your MacBook? I find it perplexing that they discontinued this service since it was such a useful feature.

Fortunately, I am now able to cast on my computer. The trick is to set up Chromecast on your phone/tablet, as currently it cannot be setup from a computer. These days, Google Chrome has a cast option built-in, which can be accessed if you click the button with three vertical dots on the top right of Chrome. So there is no longer any need to download the Cast extension, as Chrome ships with it.


How to change just the Dock hide duration? Most people have seen the Terminal hack to change the Dock Hide/show duration in How can I make auto-hide/show for the dock faster?, but I was wondering if anyone has found how to set each of these to different speeds. For example, 0 second delay for the Dock to show upon mouse hover, but 1 second for it to autohide again.

You can change two values for the Dock when it comes to the animation speed:

autohide-delay

# Dock autohide delay set to 0 seconds, the default should be around 1.0
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0

autohide-time-modifier

# Dock animation duration to show/hide the Dock
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0

Set the first value to 0 and the second to 1.0 in order to achieve your result. It's not possible, however, to set separate durations for the hide delay and the show delay.


What to do with broken iPhone 3G? A friend order an iPhone 4 to replace his iPhone 3G which has a cracked screen. He offered it to me.

I have AT&T on a family plan with no text or data. What should I do with the phone?

I'm open to suggestions, but I'm considering...

fixing the screen and then selling it. I'd put that money towards purchasing the iPhone 4 with a data plan.
fixing the screen and keeping it.
selling without fixing the screen.

I guess I could keep it without fixing the screen too, but...

You can buy very cheap screen replacements on ebay (about AU$30). I have fitted one of these myself, it is not too hard.


Can I directly record a video in iCloud Drive (/Google Drive)? By record, I mean record a video using the option available in the Control Center. If I am running out of the local storage space, can I record (upload?) directly to the Drive? If not, is there a solution?

No, the built-in Camera app does not support recording directly to iCloud Drive or Google Drive.
A third party app could record directly to the cloud - similar to how apps like Facebook does live streaming that is not recorded in local storage, but only transmitted to a server (that you could then store it in cloud storage).


How can I configure iCloud mail in Mozilla Thunderbird? i just downloaded Thunderbird from Mozilla because it's the only program I can use to access my hosting email addresses in a easy way, but when I try to add my iCloud account, I get an error.

Here's how I'm trying to configure it (sorry for the Spanish).

These settings work for me, see also https://support.apple.com/HT202304.
Incoming

Protocol: IMAP
Server: imap.mail.me.com
Port: 993
SSL: SSL/TLS
Authentication: Normal password

Outgoing

Protocol: SMTP
Server: smtp.mail.me.com
Port: 587
SSL: STARTTLS
Authentication: Normal password

Username for both should just be your actual username "karlo_lopez", not your whole email address.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:
If your Apple ID is protected with two-factor authentication, then you need to setup an app-specific password within your Apple ID account. Enter that password instead of your normal iCloud password when setting up the email address into Thunderbird.


Many strange issues with 2009 Macbook Pro running 10.10.5 my wifes macbook pro started acting very strange this evening, and i can't seem to figure out what is wrong with it at all. here is a list of various issues that all seemingly started tonight:

ReportCrash using between 90 - 150% cpu

syslogd using over 150% cpu (although not at the same time as ReportCrash)

various programs not opening, including: mail, photos, preview, chrome, app store

very intermittent internet connection (via wi-fi)

safari stating the certificate for google.com is not trusted

system crash, followed by kernal panic error message after restart

system crash during restart

spotlight search not showing applications in results, despite the option being ticked in preferences

various processes (not responding), including: steam helper, adobe creative cloud

(when trying to upgrade to el capitan) : el capitan upgrade asking for password to install, accepting password but not progressing, asking for password again, ad infinitum

"All My Files" folder showing no files.

etc, etc, etc

if this were a windows pc i might be able to figure it out, but i am new to OS X and this seems well beyond my understanding. thank you in advance for your help!!

My first guess would be a failing HD. You could try to look into the console.app, found here:

/Application/Utilities/Console.app

If the log shows IO-Errors it's time to replace the HD.

There are of course other explanation, f.e. a corrupt Kernel extension or even a defective Font, but as i said it sounds like the HD.


Is there a way to rescue the contents of this messed up Fusion Drive? I got a Mac in to support with a weird problem with a Fusion Drive. Basically it looks like this

admins-iMac:~ admin$ diskutil corestorage list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 31FF02A7-1707-4C28-9FC8-B46D2BA07CF6
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Offline
    Size:         999345012736 B (999.3 GB)
    Free Space:   -none-
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 36937114-03B4-46C5-9D0A-D0106985C1AC
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   (No properties)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 860ADA37-CD9F-4074-8341-58085C2C6FB5
        ----------------------------------------------------
        Index:    1
        Disk:     disk0s2
        Status:   Checking
        Size:     999345012736 B (999.3 GB)

So the logical drive is the same exact size as one of the physical drives (which I assume is the internal spinning hard drive).
When I open Disk Utility it gives me the "This Fusion Drive is missing a disk" error but the list of disks that will be erased to fix it is empty.

Output from disutil list:

admins-iMac:~ admin$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         999.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *32.0 GB    disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Yosemite Boot           12.0 GB    disk1s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Utilities               19.5 GB    disk1s3

I have no idea how it came to this state. Naturally I cannot boot from it and no file rescue software that I have tried will work on it.
Looking at the info for the physical HHD, it doesn't look like it has any file system info on it at all, which doesn't look promising (?):

admins-iMac:~ admin$ diskutil info disk0s2
   Device Identifier:        disk0s2
   Device Node:              /dev/disk0s2
   Part of Whole:            disk0
   Device / Media Name:      iMac HDD

   Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)

   Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)

   File System:              None

   Partition Type:           Apple_CoreStorage
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Recovery Disk:            disk0s3
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 SATA
   SMART Status:             Verified
   Disk / Partition UUID:    EAF593A1-5313-4880-9C16-BD20876F969E

   Total Size:               999.3 GB (999345012736 Bytes) (exactly 1951845728 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)
   Ejectable:                No

   Whole:                    No
   Internal:                 Yes
   Solid State:              No

   This disk is a Core Storage Physical Volume (PV).  Core Storage Information:
   PV UUID:                  860ADA37-CD9F-4074-8341-58085C2C6FB5
   LVG UUID:                 31FF02A7-1707-4C28-9FC8-B46D2BA07CF6

First question: If I delete the logical volume with diskutil, the underlying disk(s) should become visible in Disk Utility and otherwise. Is there any chance, seeing as in practise the Fusion Drive only consist of one drive, I will be able to retrieve information from that disk? Either that it will mount normally or I will be able to extract files from it with for instance Data Rescue?

And secondly, is there a chance Disk Utility will be able to actually fix this, if I click the 'Fix' button, and restore the disk with all its contents?

Ok so I did a test before I tried it with the actual affected drive. I had an old 60 GB laptop spinning hard drive, and a 32 GB laptop-form-factor Corsair SSD, which I made into a Fusion Drive.
I first formatted each drive and did a secure erase in the process to make sure there were no retrievable files left on the drives. Then used the appropriate diskutil command to make the two into a 92 GB Fusion drive.

Then I copied my 76 GB Photos Library over to this drive, which will make sure there have to be files on both drives. Then left it to "simmer" for a while (i.e. left some time for Core Storage to move files and file blocks around), maybe 1 hour. Then I opened Photos with that library, deleted, duplicated and modified a few photos, maybe 10 or so, over about 15 minutes.

I know this is not a perfect representation of real world usage of a Fusion Drive over a long time, but I feel it would give me a reasonable true idea of the rescue potential of the files in a similar Fusion Drive setup.

Then the test: I properly unmount the Fusion Drive, then plug only the spinning hard drive back in. This replicates the problem with the iMac am I having, where the internal SSD went offline.
Now running the diskutil corestorage list command I see the exact same as I did with the iMac: the logical volume is there, but one of the physical disk is listed with no properties to show for it.

I then issue the diskutil cs delete command with the UUID of the logical volume (i.e.the Fusion Drive). It looks like diskutil is formatting the spinning hard drive as a normal HFS+ GUID partition disk, and after it's done the spinning hard drive appears on the desktop, seemingly empty, as you would expect.

Running Disk Rescue 4 on this disk with a Deep Scan shows me the the file rescue potential of this scenario is actually very good. DR4 is able to restore file names and folder structure of approximately 80% of the files and I end of with about 56 GB worth of images.

After this test I basically do the same with the actual iMac that I was tasked with, and I had pretty similar file rescue results with that internal 1 TB spinning hard drive.


What is the best compression utility for Mac? What compression utility can you recommend that supports zip, rar, tar, etc... like 7zip and FilZip on Windows?

My personal recommendation is BetterZip for a small price and the ability to create archives. A free alternative is The Unarchiver but this is limited to archive extraction only.


iOS file chooser for iCloud drive can't find tags Any iOS app can let its users pick a file on iCloud Drive with the proper chooser dialogue. This dialogue allows to search files based on tags. Here is a screenshot to make crystal clear what I am discussing here:

So some files on my iCloud drive have tags, which I added using the Finder on my mac running Yosemite. Typing the tag in the search box above results in an empty list: no file is found.

This is in direct contrast with the Finder on MacOS where search tags does work as exemplified by the following two screenshots:

and then

I would appreciate if somebody else could either confirm the problem, or on the contrary find that searching by tags works fine. I tested on an iPad Air running iOS 8.3 which is the most recent version at the time of writing.

Note that Keynote and Pages use this file chooser, to pick images e.g.

Finder tags are specific to OS X.

I'm almost certain the "tags" tab in the iCloud Drive picker does nothing right now. Tapping on it in Pages on iPhone 6 simply rearranged the folders, and I don't have any tags assigned to any files in Drive (either on OS X or elsewhere - all I have in Drive is the example iWork documents).

Even if it did do anything, I don't think it would do what you're thinking - that's a tab bar, meaning you select one of the choices. It's for sorting the presented list of files/folders, given that it contains Name and Date as well.

I also can't find anything on tags in relation to iCloud Drive, even for developers.


MacBook Pro: No feedback sound on changing volume and on mouse clicks I have a 13" mid 2012 MacBook Pro. I am not getting any sound on increasing/decreasing volume and on mouse clicks.

The MacBook has suddenly stopped making those click sounds and the volume button doesn't make that sound as well. My speakers are fine. I have recently upgraded my RAM.

What could possibly the issue be?

Go to System Preferences → Sound → Sound Effects and make sure Play user interface sound effects and Play feedback when volume is changed are checked.

The sound clip played back when increasing/decreasing volume has been changed starting with OS X Yosemite and, thus, you will find it different from earlier versions of macOS.


How to delete search suggestion on mac safari(iCloud)? By"delete"I mean remove, not disable. I still want to keep that function for other sites. Just an annoying site keep bothering me when I search google in safari.

The search suggestion still exist after I removed all the history, bookmarks, readinglist. Even reinstall safari. It seems hide in icloud, not only in local mac.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated!

You should probably try clearing the browsing data on all of your devices connected to that iCloud account. iCloud now syncs your bookmarks and history across all devices. It's possible that particular site suggestion is from a separate device.


Startup Disk full - Read-only- cannot boot Mac Mini I'm at my wits end with this issue.  Hours of searching various forums have produced glimmers of hope, but nothing works.

First - mea culpa - I have only myself to blame.  Short Version: I wiped my (time machine) external backup drive due to problems it was having.  Before I could create a new TM backup, I left for a couple of days, came back and my startup disk was full and my Mini (mid-2011, Running Sierra) wouldn't boot.  So now I have no backup to restore from.

Tried recovery mode, disk won't mount.
Tried Target mode - no way no how.
I've read where some people went into Single User mode and used the command line to delete some files they don't need.  I've gotten as far as the command line.  tried all the fsck stuff - nothing.
Tried /sbin/mount -uw / (as per this thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=554227) but I'm getting a long error message that ends in:
mount_hfs: error on mount (): error = -1
mount_hfs: Invalid argument.

I've tried various rm commands, but keep getting various slaps on the wrist that end in "Read-only file system"

For obvious reasons, I'd like to try to clear enough of the clutter on this drive in hopes of rebooting and then wiping out all the clutter I should have gotten rid of a while ago before going nuclear on it and risking losing everything.  I feel like I'm so close, but can't get past this pesky read-only issue.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Please note I'm not a power user-and had never typed anything into a terminal command line before I ran into this problem and started searching - i.e. I'm competent enough to follow directions very well, but only if they're dumbed-down a bit. (After all - I was dumb enough to let this happen in the first place!)

The error your getting when typing in the command means that the command you typed in has invalid arguments. That means that you didn't type the command correctly.

The reason it's not letting you modify the hard drive is because the drive is only mounted in read only mode.

Mount hard drive for read and write in single user mode

/sbin/fsck -fy

Then run:

/sbin/mount -uw

If it says something like invalid command try the commands without "/sbin/" at the beginning.

After your able to mount the disk erasing the files the other website recommended.

Also you mentioned you couldn't boot into recovery mode, but have you tried to boot into Internet Recovery Mode?

How to boot into Internet Recovery Mode

Hold Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R on startup until you see a spinning globe
Connect the device to Internet if prompted to do so.

Hope this helps and good luck on recovery your data


Latronix KVM stopped working after last java update I see this error when open jnlp file via javaws manually:
java.lang.AssertionError: Threading violation: not AppKit thread

Is there anything I can do with it?

Once I reverted back to the Apple provided java packages, it fixed my problems.

The article for this download is:

Java for OS X 2012-006: How to re-enable the Apple-provided Java SE 6 applet plug-in and Web Start functionality

Update: Note that for some people, the Java 7 update works with Lantronix Spiders. I can confirm that a colleague with the same model Macbook Pro has no problems using the latest Java 7 update. Another with a Macbook Air experiences the same issue, which is also resolved by rolling back.


When I enter commands in the terminal I get: "username is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported." When I try to enter commands into the terminal I get this message "myusername is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported." It started when I tried to edit my host-file. What do I do to fix this? I want to spoof my MAC address. I have the newest version of OS X. myusername is not actually my real username.

Probably you aren't logged in as admin user or the admin entry in the sudoers file was removed accidentally.

So either log in as user with admin privileges or modify the sudoers file. The sudoers file located in /etc should show the following entries beginning at line 55:

##
## User privilege specification
##
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL

The last line denotes the ability of all admin users to act with root permissions by prepending sudo ... in the command line – e.g. to edit the hosts file with sudo nano /etc/hosts. Only the root user would be able to enter just nano /etc/hosts and successfully edit the file.

The file /etc/sudoers can only be read or modified with root privileges!

If you are logged in as an arbitrary admin user you have to check the file /etc/sudoers. Since your admin vanished from the sudoers file you have to reboot to Recovery Mode and check/edit the file.

In Recovery Mode open in the menubar Utilities > Terminal. Enter mount to get all mounted volumes:

/dev/disk2s1 on / (hfs, local, read-only)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
/dev/disk3 on /private/var/log (hfs, local, union, nobrowse)
/dev/disk4 on /Volumes (hfs, local, union, nobrowse)
/dev/disk5 on /private/var/tmp (hfs, local, union, nobrowse)
/dev/disk6 on /private/var/run (hfs, local, union, nobrowse)
/dev/disk7 on /System/Installation (hfs, local, union, nobrowse)
/dev/disk8 on /private/var/db (hfs, local, union, nobrowse)
/dev/disk9 on /private/var/folders (hfs, local, union, nobrowse)
/dev/disk10 on /private/var/root/Library (hfs, local, union, nobrowse)
/dev/disk12 on /Library/Preferences (hfs, local, union, nobrowse)
/dev/disk13 on /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration (hfs, local, union, nobrowse)
/dev/disk14 on /Library/Keychains (hfs, local, union, nobrowse)
/dev/disk15 on /private/var/tmp/RecoveryTemp (hfs, local, union, nobrowse)
/dev/disk0s2 on /Volumes/Data (hfs, local, journaled)
/dev/disk1s2 on /Volumes/Macintosh HD (hfs, local, journaled)
/dev/disk1s3 on /Volumes/Image Volume (hfs, local, read-only, journaled)

Search for the name of your main volume - usually it's related to disk0s1, disk1 or disk2 (in my example it's Macintosh HD: /dev/disk1s2).

Then enter:

/Volumes/volume_name/usr/sbin/visudo /Volumes/volume_name/etc/suoders

In my example that's:

/Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/usr/sbin/visudo /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/etc/suoders

and modify the file according to your needs (i.e add the line %admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL if it's gone). You have to escape spaces in the volume's name with a \!

BTW “username is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.” might have the consequence that Santa Claus will evade your home next christmas, except you have launched some counter-measures in advance – like securing your Mac with a firewall.


Can I extract application data from an iOS device? I have a third party application on my iPad (Stanza) which has some data that I'm interested in doing some analysis of on my Mac (read statuses). Is there any way to get the data that the application has stored?

There is a tool called iPhone Backup Extractor.
It lets you extract app data from an iOS backup, which you create with iTunes.
I posted a detailed tutorial on how to use it on my blog: http://adriansieber.com/how-to-extract-data-from-ios-apps-on-mac-os/


Change default applications I have somehow managed to replace the default movie player, with my FTP client. I'm not sure how that happened, but now every time I double click a movie file in Finder, my FTP client launches.
Can someone tell me how I can go about changing the default application that launches for certain file extensions?

Select a video file, press ⌘I, change the application under Open with, and select Change All.

You can also use duti to configure default applications in a text file.


Sorting of photos, on ipad Possible Duplicate:
  iPad organizing photos

What is the criterion for sorting photos, are used by iTunes, when you are uploading them to iPad?

I'm just trying to arrange photos in right order, before uploading to iPad, but without success, they are still unordered, when i open this album on ipad :(

I've

renamed all photos as "0001.jpg", "0002.jpg", etc
removed all EXIF information from this files
set identical creation and modification time

it helps in most cases, but not always :( what i'm doing wrong?
I don't believe that it can't do such basic things as a ordering of photos in photo album.

Maybe there exists are an tool for that? ideally an app for ipad.

For photo organization, you can't go wrong with Sort Shots. It brings the power of tagging to your photo collection; once you get everything set up you'll be able to find exactly what you're looking for in just a couple of taps. I highly recommend this app to anyone trying to get their photos organized.


Do applications install for all users or only for one? If I install a application using *.dmg image using user user1, it will be available when user2 log in as well? or it will be available only for user1 ?

It depends where it installs to.

If it goes into the main Applications folder, then yes, it's available to all users - though each user will have their own distinct prefs, saved under their account.

If it's installed to /Users/[your name]/Applications, then it's only available to that user.


Can't synchronize books with my iPod touch I have an iPod touch 4th generation with iOS 6.1.6 and my MacBook has OS X 10.9.5 with iTunes 12.
I have some books (epub) in iBooks, but I can't transfer them to iTunes nor synchronize them with my iPod.

In some cases, books/pfd's fail to sync with iTunes.

A common way to solve this is with a hard-reset of the iPod Touch. You can do so by pressing the home- and power button for 10-15 second. You can release the buttons once the iPod is shut down.

Preforming this reset will have no effect on your settings and data on the iPod.

When this does not help, iTunes normally gives an error. You could search the web with the error code or place it here. Mayby other people had the same error and figured out how to solve it.


How to uninstall Microsoft Silverlight from Mountain Lion? I'm trying to uninstall Silverlight and install an older version to get Netflix working again.

I updated Silverlight to version 5 not knowing that Netflix would end up throwing a N8109 error. Netflix FixIt recommended uninstalling and reinstalling Silverlight.

Here is what I tried:

Closed all browsers and dragged Silverlight to bin from /Library/internet-plugins
Also cleaned out Silverlight files from /Library/Receipts and /Library/Application Support
Tried using AppCleaner to find and delete Silverlight - Just ended up not being able to find it in any of the categories
Restarted my computer a bunch of times after every uninstall strategy - only in vain
Tried using Spotlight and Finder to find any traces of Silverlight, again to no avail.

Every time I try to install the silverlight.pkg (downloaded using the link Netflix provides while trying to play any video) the wizard detects a newer version of Silverlight on my HardDisk-Mac HD.

The one thing I noticed was that no matter what approach I took, I always found Silverlight app on my Launchpad which again I couldn't delete straight out.

Anybody been able to break through this wall?

I just spent an hour tearing my hair out, just like you. Deleted everything I could find, and still no luck! Fortunately, I found out about pkgutil when trying to research if other apps have similar issues. Run this command:

$ sudo pkgutil --pkgs

If com.microsoft.SilverlightInstaller shows up, it still thinks it is installed. I had to "clean" (kinda) the installation by using the following:

$ sudo pkgutil --repair com.microsoft.SilverlightInstaller

After that, I was then able to cause pkgutil to forget about the installation:

$ sudo pkgutil --forget com.microsoft.SilverlightInstaller

Hope that works for you!


How do you access shared folders on a Windows machine from a MacBook Air? How do I connect to my Windows machine from my MacBook Air? I have tried using the Finder but it doesn't see the Windows machine.

Command-K in the Finder

The address should be smb://<Windows IP or Hostname>

Hope this helps!


Accidentally deleted history in Safari. Is there any way to get it back? I accidentally clicked the delete button when my mouse had clicked on 5 September 2015 under the history page.

Is it stored somewhere temporarily or something before it is deleted?

No, once you delete history, it is removed from the database.

That database is backed up, so you can use your backup method (Time Machine backup, etc) to restore the following files:

~/Library/Safari/History*


Should I replace my Macbook battery, charger, or both after 5+ years of use? I own a 13" mid-2012  MacBook Pro, and have been using it for over 7 years. I have replaced the HDD with a larger SSD, and upped the RAM to 8GB last year to improve its declining performance. However, I have done nothing to its original battery.
My battery over the years has underwent 2000+ cycles, and can only last at most 2-3 hrs from 100% to 0% currently (with no apps using significant energy). My 60W MagSafe 1 charger (L-shape) has had some parts of the outer cable torn (half of it covered in electrical tape). The cable has become more and more yellow, and the plugs are slightly bent out of shape, although it still works.
My questions are as follows:

How many years do you think the battery/charger of a MacBook Pro can last (mines is 7 years as of now)?

Should I look for replacements? If so, what should I replace in order to increase my MacBook Pro’s battery life?

If so, what should I replace in order to increase my MacBook Pro’s battery life?

Emphasis mine
The battery.  Period.
I would replace the battery only if having 2-3 hours of usable charge is no longer convenient.  The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not the battery, in it's current state is still usable to you.  If it's not, change it.  If it is, try to get every charge cycle you can out of it (I'm a big proponent prolonging the life of products to minimize e-waste.)
You might find this post quite relevant:  Quality factors relevant for getting a replacement battery (MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012))

Battery Life

My battery over the years has underwent 2000+ cycles, and can only last at most 2-3 hrs from 100% to 0% currently

You are definitely several standard deviations from the norm on the right side bell curve that represents charge cycles and battery life.  Batteries generally have a useful life of 3 to 5 years. The "1000 cycles" is just a marketing estimate of how many types you can charge cycle the battery so you can estimate (budget) for battery replacement.  It's not a hard and fast rule (unfortunately, too many people believe it is).
MagSafe Adapter

My 60W MagSafe 1 charger (L-shape) has had some parts of the outer cable torn (half of it covered in electrical tape). The cable has become more and more yellow, and the plugs are slightly bent out of shape, although it still works.

If your charger still works and is safe you have no reason to change it.  Yellowing of the plastic has nothing to do with performance - it has to do with UV exposure to the plastic.  If you're still making the connection with the adapter, there's no reason to change.

NOTE: If it's brown, that means it's overheating and burning the plastic - destroy that charger immediately and get a new one.

I emphasize safe because the ground wire in the MagSafe cables is also EM shielding.  If this wire is broken you should replace the adapter.   Here you have a couple of options.

If replacing the adapter, I would get the 87W adapter.  It will give you more options if you choose to add another vintage Mac to your stable.  You can always use a "larger" charger than what your device is rated for; not smaller.  And with the MagSafe 2 Converter, you can use that MagSafe 1 with newer devices!  See Apple's Support Document Find the Right Power Adapter for Your Mac for full details.

If you have the technical skills, you can "break" open the MagSafe adapter and simply solder on a new cable.  Yes, you have to break it open because it's glued together (stupid design), but once open, you can solder on a new cable and (what I did) duct tape the adapter back together. I have one still working to this day.  iFixit.com has excellent guides on how to do this.


Can I use an Apple Watch Series 2 in seawater? I recently got an Apple Watch Series 2 and I know it has water resistance up to 50 meters. I sometimes take it to the pool and it works fine there. In a few days I am going for a swim in the ocean and am going to swim there for a while. I just want to ask if the Apple Watch Series 2 is capable of being in seawater, which has salts rather than regular pool water.

It depends on what you do with it:

  Apple Watch Series 2 may be used for shallow water activities like swimming in a
     pool or ocean. However, Apple Watch Series 2 shouldn't be used for scuba diving,   water skiing, or other activities involving high velocity water.

From Apple Support.


Keyboard equivalents to up/down arrows? In Chrome, where the autofill list can be shown with two down-arrow keystrokes, or with clicking the mouse once.

I'd like to be able to open the Chrome autofill list with some other keystroke rather than having than having to shift my hand over to the arrow keys or the mouse.

Are there any keyboard equivalents to the up/down arrow keys?
Perhaps something like ctrl+j or ctrl+k?

I doubt it, but if you are sufficiently motivated, you might be able to use ukelele to create your own keyboard layout with arrow key equivalents on them. However, note the following caveat from the ukelele manual:

  There are some limitations imposed by Apple:

  Mapping the arrow keys to something else, or other keys to arrow keys, is problematic. It will work in some applications, but not others.

Suddenly, this seems like a much less attractive option.


Can I use a USB Wi-Fi adapter to extend a Wi-Fi connection on my MacBook I want to share an internet connection (Wi-Fi) through my laptop. I understand that you can't receive internet data and create a network simultaneously using the same internal adapter, but what if I bought a Wi-Fi adapter, like this one, so one can receive data and the other transmit it?

Yes

You can share/extend a network from Wi-Fi to Wi=Fi as long as you have two network adapters. In fact I am doing it right now!

I suggest you share Wi-Fi from the USB network adapter to the Internal Network Adapter, and not the other way around as it might cause issues (see pictures).

I would also suggest Panda Wireless PAU09 N600 Dual Band. I have used it with no problems. It works with Mac (Drivers needed), PC (Drivers needed), and Linux.  It's dual band, allowing you to connect to 5Ghz networks.  It support Monitor Mode, Packet Injection, and AP mode. The range is pretty good, would say about the same as the internal network adapter. It currently supports High Sierra and below. Heres the drivers download page.

Additionally, you can look at my answer over here for how to use your Mac as a router and change lease time, DHCP settings, DNS settings, Port Forwarding, etc.

Note:  Parts of the solution provided there (^^) does not constantly work.

Some pictures:

Note:  I am in no way affiliated with Panda Wireless, or the product the I suggested. I do not gain from the purchase of the product. I am not promoting the product, just suggesting it as an adapter that I have found works.


Error when "unzipping" powerpoint file using Archive Utility When using this trick to extract data from PPTX file I get an error

  Unable to expand archive "test.pptx.zip". It is in an unsupported format

How do I extract video from my PPTX then?

The way to do it is to either try different unzip utility, such as 7zip, or use terminal: navigate to the folder with your "test.pptx.zip" and run these commands:

mkdir test_dir
cd test_dir
unzip ../test.pptx.zip

First line creates folder test_dir and then moves to that folder. Final command unzips your pptx file into test_dir folder


Unicode HOT BEVERAGE (U+2615) in Google Chrome In the screenshot below, I am looking at an email with a unicode HOT BEVERAGE (U+2615) character.  The character is displayed correctly in the OSX dialog and in the developer tools, but not in the web page.  Why is Chrome ignorant of this character and how can I cause it to be displayed correctly?

Chrome Version: 25.0.1364.99
OSX: 10.8.2

This page shows what fonts support this character.

So you can use a CSS/style rule to select a font that supports the character. I notice that it's not a glyph in Arial Unicode MS, so I'm not sure you can guarantee Windows support.

On the Mac, you can specify the Apple Symbols font or Menlo.


Chrome AutoSelectCertificateForUrls OSX I have a client SSL certificate for authentication. I'm trying to map it to a URL in Chrome on OSX, however the Chromium documentation is of no use.

I have no idea what file to put the AutoSelectCertificateForUrls preference in. My guess is it will be some file in ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default, based on this.

Best I can do is find some random files with .json extensions via find. They're all extensions and have bizarre paths, e.g.

  Default/Extensions/pjkljhegncpnkpknbcohdijeoejaedia/7_1/_locales/nl/messages.json

Can someone tell me what file to put the AutoSelectCertificateForUrls setting in?

On Yosemite, that Workgroup Manager app doesn't work, neither did modifying the plist.

This worked for me, in a terminal:

defaults write com.google.Chrome AutoSelectCertificateForUrls -array

defaults write com.google.Chrome AutoSelectCertificateForUrls -array-add -string '{"pattern":"https://[*.]my.domain:8090","filter":{"ISSUER":{"CN":"example.com"}}}'


Methods to install X11 on Lion My girlfriend recently ordered a MacBook Pro with Lion installed. For an online class she needs GIMP which depends on X11. What are my options to get it? Is there any Apple-sanctioned way to do the install? Would there be any downside to using the SL DVD from my machine? Or should I just install XQuartz?

As a matter of fact Lion DOES ship with X11. There were many doubts, and many believed it wouldn't, but it does.

Source: me. Ive got xeyes running on my Lion iMac right now. :)

Another Source: Apple. http://www.apple.com/macosx/apps/all.html#x11


Did my Time Machine backup copy over properly? I have an old WD hard drive that I used for Time Machine for a while, but the drive is showing signs of age (it starts buzzing loudly if left on for a while), so I bought a new (Toshiba) drive to replace it. I had on the WD hard drive a Time Machine backup for someone else's computer also that I didn't really need anymore. The total size between the two backups was about 300 GB (100 for theirs, 200 GB for my computer). Anyway in the morning I dragged the backups folder with both backups from the WD to the Toshiba. Took like 5 hours for it to finish "preparing to copy", and by the time I wanted to go to bed it still had like 70 GB left to copy. I didn't want to leave it running so I hit cancel, figuring that the next day I could delete the other computer's backup and try again. So today I was going to do that, and I saw it actually had already copied my computer's backup to the Toshiba HDD and part of the other computer's Time Machine backup. It seemed like it did the folder for my computer first and then moved on to the backup of the other computer. But when I compared the folder for my computer's backup between the new and old hard drives, the old folder showed about 300 MB larger than the new one. It's pretty close but it makes me wonder.

So I set the new HDD as the Time Machine drive, Time Machine seems to work normally, it even did a backup to the new drive like normal. Does it sound like it copied properly? Can size variations like that between large directories of copied folders happen, maybe there are certain unnecessary things that don't copy, or size is read differently? I would very much like to avoid wiping the backup off the new hard drive and re-copying everything.

Secondarily, if it's possible that some files in the backup didn't transfer, would the fact that it did a new backup onto that drive fill in any gaps or missing files if I needed to, say, restore from a time machine backup?

Time Machine does not make a 100% perfect copy, nor does it necessarily make a BOOTABLE copy should you need to swap it in suddenly one day.  A better way to upgrade to a new SSD (don't spend all that time only to put in another slow spinning drive that only lasts 2-3 years these days!), is to also purchase a usb-to-sata transfer cable for $10-$20, use Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) on the old mac to make a bootable mirror image, including the hidden recovery partition (and possibly update it!), then swap drives and go about your life.  Optionally wipe the old drive to use for testing or backups if it's still safe to use at all.. likely not if it's several years old.  CCC is a fantastic paid backup app, but I think you can get away with making a full bootable clone without buying it first.  This may have changed.


iCloud gets stuck syncing in Sierra, how do I fix I recently upgraded from Yosemite to Sierra.  I have ~ 2.5Gb of data on my iCloud Drive.  I am NOT using the Documents and folders sync, photos sync, or any of the other special folder sync options available.  The exception is that I am syncing preferences.  As I have said I do have two folders that sit in the iCloud Drive that are not part of any of the special folders.

The problem is that after the initial sync, any change in those files/folders siting on the iCloud Drive get stuck syncing.  The icon animation (pie chart) and the text that appears under the file/folder indicating the progress cycles between 0 and ~90%.  It never gets to 100%.

On previous occasions restarting fixed the problem, but only temporarily.  Currently, I have a 53Mb file that has been syncing for 4 days now.  I have tried restarting to no avail.  While signing out of iCloud, brings up the message, "iCloud need to finish updating before continuing with signing out".  But it never finishes.

Additionally, I have tried to upload the file manually to iCloud via Safari, this process is also stuck currently.

Anybody have any ideas of what might be going on?

Well it seems that Kaspersky Internet Security (16.0.0.245b.a.c) is the problem here.  I found that changing the "Check secure connections (HTTPS)" setting allowed syncing as usual.  This setting is found under the Protection tab in Preferences, under Web Anti-Virus.  I changed the option from "Check secure connections (HTTPS)>always", to "Check secure connections (HTTPS)>Only for Parental Control, Safe Money, and Privacy Protection".

I also added icloud.com to the Trusted zone and Web site tracking exclusions, but I do not believe these changes were necessary or had any effect."


Where are the bookmarks folders in Safari? While organizing my bookmarks, I made several folders.   Now when I click the Bookmarks menu, I don't see any sign of these folders.  I need to do "Show All Bookmarks" to see them.  Shouldn't the folder appear right in the Bookmarks menu?

I think to clarify this, when you click the Bookmarks icon, you can create lots of new folders, with bookmarks.

However, the only ones that will appear in the bookmarks menu have to be in the collection - Bookmarks Menu.

If you create them lower down in the Bookmarks section, they will only be in that section. Yes, this is odd and confusing.


What app places a lower-case 'd' icon in the menu bar? Does anyone recognize this app which has an icon "d"?

It's gfxCardStatus in discrete graphics mode.

what the menu bar icons mean:
i — you're using the integrated GPU.
d — you're using the higher-powered discrete GPU.


How can I disable the iPhone Restrictions code? I have forgotten my Restrictions passcode.

Is there a way that I can change it without resetting the iPhone? I have tried updating it and have contacted Technical Support, but they suggested that I back up my files to iCloud and restore to factory settings.

There is no way to remove the Restrictions passcode without restoring the device in iTunes or from the device. However, you can save your data by backing it up to iCloud or iTunes and restoring all content to the device after it has been restored.


Is there any way to find my iPhone I lost my iPhone. I connected this iPhone to my iCloud, but I can't get this phone. That phone not having GPS on and Data Pack. Is there any way to find this? Is there any possibility to use this phone?

From Apple Support:

  If you see "Offline," "No location available," or "Location Services Off," your device might be offline for one of these reasons:

  It's powered off, the battery has run out, or it’s been more than 24 hours since the last location was sent to Apple (if Send Last Location is turned on). When your device is connected to the Internet, you can see the remaining battery in the upper-right corner of the information pane.
  Your iPad, iPod Touch, or Mac is asleep and not connected to a known
  Wi-Fi or data network. Wait a few minutes and try again.
  You're in a country where we don't offer this feature. This feature
  might not be available in your country due to technical limitations
  or local law.

  You can still play a sound, send a message, issue a lock request, or start an erase of your iOS device with Find My iPhone. Your device will receive the command after it's turned on and has an Internet connection.


Aperture and iTunes freezing, bringing down Snow Leopard entirely I've got a 27" dual-core iMac of the generation before the current one.  HDD is 2 TB, RAM is 8 GB.  I've got Aperture 3 installed and updated, with a photo library totaling 180 GB.

With increasing frequency, Aperture fails to launch.  The icon bounces for a while in the dock (maybe about 30 seconds) and then stops.  I have iStat Menus installed, and I see no real change in system activity while the icon is bouncing.  If I open Activity Monitor, I see the Aperture process listed, and I have to force quit it.  Once this happens, whether I force quit Aperture while it's bouncing or afterwards from Activity Monitor, things just don't behave; other applications fail to launch in the same way.  If I try to restart after failing to launch Aperture, I get a blue screen with an activity indicator that never goes away.

I've also had iTunes freeze, and it will often lock up the whole operating system, so that absolutely nothing responds besides moving the mouse.  This requires a hard restart to resolve.  It's a moderately sizeable iTunes library that serves as the source for media played on an AppleTV (latest generation) elsewhere in the house.

I also recently imported a lot of new footage into iMovie '09, and Spotlight has been continuously indexing since.  That was several days ago, and I see nothing in iStat Menus to indicate that the index process is doing anything; the Hard Drive IO section is as active as it is when the computer is idle.  The last time I tried to update my Time Machine backup, it spent several hours in the "Calculating Changes" status before I stopped it.

I've tried repairing the Aperture database and repairing permissions and the Macintosh HD, to no avail.  My best guess is that something is wrong with the directory structure, and I'm going to have to back everything up and reinstall the OS from scratch.  But is there a simpler solution?  Anyone have any ideas?  Any utilities I can use that are more advanced than Disk Utility at finding HDD issues, physical or not?

UPDATE 6/3/2011: I ran DiskWarrior's file and folder utility on my drive last night, and it found that iPhoto's mosaic plist was corrupt.  I moved it out of ~/Library/Preferences to my desktop and pulled up System Preferences, hoping to get the Mosaic screensaver working.  After I selected the Desktop and Screen Saver pref pane, the whole system locked up and I had to force restart.  I also tried renaming my Aperture library and launching Aperture to see if it was a library problem, and it still bounced forever and then stopped, while still appearing as a process in Activity Monitor.  And I noticed while renaming the library that its size showed up as about 600 MB, when I know it's supposed to be over 180 GB.  I'm going to boot into DiskWarrior and run its directory repair, then reinstall Aperture and hope for the best.

Since more than one application is having issues, it's unlikely to be two bugs and more likely to be a system or hardware issue.

Before spending a lot of time, make a new user and see if that user has issues as well. You could have bad luck and lots of corruption in your user folder and this will let you know if the problem is with the apps/system/hardware or not.

Drive Genius might help to run more involved tests, but it might be cheaper to just buy a spare external drive and back things up. You can zero the drive and clear all bad blocks - give that hardware the best chance to work again. You will know soon after restoring your data on the newly erased and installed mac if the problem is resolved.

Good Luck!


How to find out if iTerm is installed on a mac from within a shell script? I am writing an automated script that will install iTerm2 if it's not already installed. What's a good way of checking if iTerm2 is already installed?

The open command will open it no matter where the person has it installed (you don’t have to put an app in /Applications on macOS).

open -a iTerm.app

You could search using spotlight as well

 mdfind "kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier == com.googlecode.iterm2"


f3 Fight Flash Fraud: "f3probe command not found" Mac OS Mojave I'm testing SD Flash Cards and my linux machine decided to be rude and stop operating the SD Card Reader (time for a USB device). So I switched over to the reliable old iMac to happily find that F3 can be installed via Homebrew. After the brief installation however, Bash cannot find f3probe, an essential testing tool that is supposed to come together with f3 for SD Card Fraud testing. F3Read and Write do appear, while no commands or manual entries exist for f3probe or f3fix.

sudo: f3probe: command not found

Thanks for your time,

Tmanok

brew install f3 installs the two commands f3read and f3write into /usr/local/bin (but no f3probe).

From the README:

    make extra

.. note::
   - The extra applications are only compiled and tested on Linux
     platform.
   - Please do not e-mail me saying that you want the extra
     applications to run on your platform; I already know that.
   - If you want the extra applications to run on your platform, help
     to port them, or find someone that can port them for you. If you
     do port any of them, please send me a patch to help others.
   - The extra applications are f3probe, f3brew, and f3fix.


How to downgrade software using terminal? New apple user here, I am trying to downgrade matplotlib to 1.3.1 after coming to this potential solution:

https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/3470/

I just have no idea how to do that.

Try this way:

pip uninstall matplotlib
pip install matplotlib==1.3.1


Abnt2 keyboard does not work on macbook pro 13 Early 2015 I'm trying to use an Abnt2 keyboard on my Macbook Pro 13, Early 2015, and I'm having some problems.

It's a Multilaser Metal War TC185: suporte.multilaser.com.br/downloads/detalhe/TC185 (I'm using this same keyboard on a linux computer without problems.)

I added the Brazilian keyboard Abnt2, as can be seen in the image below:

The keys were all identified, no problem at this point.

However, when I start typing, the letters are repeating themselves. For example: if I try to type "apple" at a normal speed it is coming out as "appppllle".

Given this problem, I tried to disable the Key repeat option and also increase the delay, but did not solve anything:

And the last problem are the shortcuts. The equivalent of Command + Tab, which should be Alt + Tab does not work, as well as other shortcuts with Control key or select files with shift for example.

What do I need to do to use an Abnt2 keyboard with my macbook?

I just got a new keyboard and it works.
So the problem was my multilaser keyboard that apparently has some issues with apple :/


Reset terminal environment to start up state, not losing print of history This might seem like a duplicate at first sight, but bear with me for a minute.

TLDR; A quick command line way to restore the whole shell environment to the same as upon terminal startup, while not losing the print (scroll up) of the previously executed commands and their outputs.

I would really like a quick way to reset the shell environment to it's starting state, like quitting the the terminal program and starting it again (or opening a new tab). The reason that I don't want to actually quit the program and start it again is that I don't want to lose the history, ie the print of the previous commands and outputs. (Compare to clear in MATLAB, that gets rid of all variables, function definitions et.c. that you've set in that session without removing the print of previous commands and outputs.)

The usual advice people get when asking this is

source ~/.bash_profile

However, for example, this doesn't restore $PATH to the value it has when the terminal program is first opened. I have a few lines like

export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/some/useful/stuff/

in my $PATH and for every time I source, more stuff is added to my $PATH variable. Hence it is not reset to terminal startup value on source.
Same thing goes for any other variable set in that session that is not overwritten by some line in the ~/.bash_profile

I've seen people recommend the reset command too. However, that doesn't restore my $PATH to it's original value either. It stays the same as before the reset.

I am just using $PATH as an example here, the question is about resetting the whole shell environment.

A quick and reliable way to reset the shell environment in the sense I describe above would be very handy when experimenting with installations and similar things. Also seeing what the $PATH variable looks like makes me wonder what other things are not reset using source ~/.bash_profile, and it feels unreliable to use as a reset method.

Thank you for reading this far!

Any solutions folks?

One option for resetting the Terminal session's state except for history is to save the current history to a temp file with something like history -w ~/.history_temp, then close the Terminal window, open a new one, then read back the saved history with history -w ~/.history_temp. Optionally, you can delete the temp history file when you're done.

If you don't want to have to remember & type those commands every time, you can create aliases for them and put those in ~/.bash_profile:

alias savehistory='history -w ~/.history_temp`
alias loadhistory='history -r ~/.history_temp && rm ~/.history_temp`


iOS Shortcut to shuffle-play all songs by a specific artist in my library I would like to create a shortcut in iOS 14.4 Shortcuts which shuffle-plays all songs by a particular artist. I can figure out how to specify an album or a playlist, but not songs by a specific artist. Is there anything short of creating a Smart Playlist, to be able to do this?

Shuffle By Artist
Find All Music where Artist contains Ask Each Time (or other equivalent artist condition’. Sort by Random. Play Music.


How much GPU memory do iPhones and iPads have? I'm wondering how GPU memory works on the iPhone and iPad. After reading the Apple tech specs on the iPad 3 (http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/) it says the A5X is a system on a chip with a dual core CPU and quad core GPU. Do they share the same system RAM? How does the GPU do fast operations if it has to work in system RAM? I'm sure it's my lack of understanding of the system on a chip architecture that is confusing me, but if someone can chime in with their knowledge that would be helpful.

iPhones/iPod Touches/iPads all have a Unified Memory Architecture which mean that both the CPU and GPU share system memory.  There is no dedicated video memory on these devices.

The advantage is that you don't need to worry about running out of video memory for your textures or vertex data (your app will be terminated by iOS for using too much memory before that happens). The disadvantage is that you share the same memory bandwidth for gameplay and graphics. The more memory bandwidth you dedicate to graphics, the less you will have for gameplay and physics


Is there a way to make the Enter key work with a Logitech K811 keyboard? The key is labeled such that it looks like holding down fn and pressing Return will produce Enter (as with Apple’s keyboards). However, when I do that it only produces a regular Return.

If you don't need to use fn otherwise, you could simply remap it to behave like Enter. This is easily doable using the free tool Karabiner-Elements — download and install it, then add a "Simple Modification" from fn to keypad_enter. If you want to only remap your external keyboard, then set the checkboxes in the Devices tab appropriately.

If you want to keep fn's functionality, you need a more advanced remapping/macro utility such as BetterTouchTool or Keyboard Maestro. I'm not aware of any free options in this realm (though they may exist) besides the full version of Karabiner, which doesn't currently work on Sierra.

fn is not a typical modifier key, so it can't be captured in the same ways that the others (e.g. ⌥ and ⌘) can. Because of this, there is no way I'm aware of to assign fnreturn to anything. However, using one of the tools I mentioned, you can easily assign another hotkey to do the same thing, for example, ⌥return.


Is it possible to disable audio through speakers, only play through headphones via headphone jack Is there an option / setting that allows you to only output audio via the headphone port on your macbook / pro / air ?

So that if i had my headphones on and then pulled them out of the laptop the audio wouldnt come out of the speakers until i turned off this option.

Background : Im running a MBP with 10.9.5

When you switch audio outputs, the volume level reverts to whatever level it was at when you last used that output. That means that muting the internal speaker before plugging in headphones should be enough to stop audio from playing through the speaker if you disconnect your headphones.

If you want to keep the speaker disabled even if you hit any volume controls, you can use Soundflower. It's an extension designed to let your Mac record its own audio output, which it does by creating virtual input and output options that feed directly into each other. That means that you can hold down Option, click on the volume icon in the menu bar, and select one of the Soundflower options as your audio output before plugging in your headphones and selecting them as the output device. If your headphones get disconnected, your audio output will default to Soundflower, which doesn't send anything through the speaker. To re-enable the speaker, just Option-click on the volume icon in the menu bar and choose the built-in speaker for output.


Is this nice extension of Mac OS 9 still available on OS X? There was an extension on Mac OS 9 system that I could not live without : This extension offered the following feature :

When a "Choose a file / folder" dialog box appeared, you were able to click on a "visible" opened window to make the selection box "jump" to that particular place in the tree structure of the disk (on the network).

Is there something like this on OS X ?

Not exactly the same but if you drag any file or folder to the dialog panel then it will jump to the location of the dropped item


Windows key does not work on Amazon WorkSpaces Client with external USB keyboard I'm using Amazon WorkSpaces Client 2.5.11.120 on macOS 10.15.3 with an external USB keyboard. The Windows key ⊞ Win doesn't work. All other keys work except the Windows key; is there any solution or workaround to get Windows key working?

By default the WorkSpaces client remaps the ⌘ Cmd on the Mac to Ctrl in Windows. You can disable this behaviour with this hidden preference for the WorkSpaces client:

defaults write "com.amazon.Amazon WorkSpaces Client" remap_cmd_to_ctrl 0

After running this command, quit the WorkSpaces client then start it up again. When you log into your WorkSpace now, the ⌘ Cmd key on your Mac will map to the ⊞ Win key in your Windows VM.

One caveat: if you switch out to another Mac app using ⌘ Cmd + Tab, you'll notice that the Start menu in Windows has popped up when you return to the VM. This seems to be unavoidable.

After making this change, you'll have to use the Windows keyboard shortcuts for clipboard operations like copy Ctrl+C and paste Ctrl+V, rather than the familiar Mac shortcuts. Presumably Amazon changes the default behaviour to make it easier for Mac users to use the clipboard.

I tested with an external USB keyboard (the Apple A1243 MB110LL/B) and observed exactly the same behaviour, so it doesn't seem to be a problem with external keyboards.

Confirmed with WorkSpaces Client 3.0.5.1024.


Displaying email size in apple mail Version 13.4? Context
In previous versions of Mail one could see the size of an email in Apple Mail.
Question

Is it possible to recover this feature in Apple Mail 13.4 (MacOs Catalina)?

It seems that knowing the size of your email is useful, if only to avoid sending too large attachments?
Alternatively, how does one have access to the size of a given email?

Thanks to @jaume, the solution is in fact fairly trivial:

View>Show Message Size in Mail

will display the size of each message.
I hope this post will be useful to someone like me who did not look at the correct place for the answer.


Requesting Reliable Clipboard Application w/ History? I've searched the more-recent threads and cannot seem to find a solid option. Does anyone have a good clipboard app with history that doesn't screw up the clipboard and require a restart? Alfred and Quicksilver sometimes do a decent job. I do not have the pro pack for alfred, btw, but I have used quicksilver for 15+ years and don't want to buy alfred for one purpose if everything else is solid with quicksilver. If it becomes the only option, then I might have to.

on top of several that I've previously deleted, of those still in my apps folder, I have tried:

clipbuddy
clipmenu
clips
copyclip
copyless 2
corkboard
flycut
iclip
isnip

my main problem experienced with most of these in recent months especially, is that images don't get held in them, nor do they actually get accepted into my system's clipboard either. for example, I very often take screen captures of portions of my screen or just one window only to the clipboard so I can paste it elsewhere. now, most of the time they don't appear in my clipboard. too often, the last image I copied prior (usually a lasso portion from either preview or photoshop or affinity photo) will get "stuck" in my clipboard. it's gotten to the point where I've removed all the third-party managers and might try to work with quicksilver, but something that has a dedicated interface would be ideal. I think $30+ for the alfred powerpack just to test if it'll work properly is a bit steep. I don't mind paying for good software, but there's only one feature I need and I cannot tell if it'll work now or continue to later. any recommendations MUST work with both text and images or lasso segments of images that have been copied, or at least allow the main clipboard to still properly handle those images outside of the clipboard manager app.

I'm not sure if it'll matter with your suggestions, but it should be known that because of a few legacy apps, I won't be going past 10.14.x for the foreseeable future. I don't know if it's an issue based on 10.14 as I don't recall the apps having issues like the one I have now long ago, just that I didn't like the interface of most of them.

I can confirm, Alfred does the job.

To be sure, I double checked by testing its clipboard functionality for your requirements: partial (lasso) screenshots, fullscreen screenshots and image files. Everything works fine and shows up just as expected in Alfreds clipboard manager. Pasting inside a document works, whereas saving the screenshot from clipboard into a file using finder, doesn't work. But this is normal behavior. That said, I'm running MacOS 10.15.4 and Alfred 4.0.9 with Powerpack.

If you want to try further alternatives, you could try Copy'em Paste, Clipy and Keyboard Maestro.


Reinstalling macOS High Sierra from Recovery Tools takes many hours on 2016/2017 MacBook Pros I have recently purchased two new MacBook Pros. One is a 2016 13" MacBook Pro, the other a 2017 15" MacBook Pro. On both of them, I have had to reinstall macOS High Sierra from the Recovery Tools. On both machines, it has taken over 5 hours to install.

These aren't the low-end Mac Pros, these are the maxed-out config-to-order, with upgraded processors, drives, and RAM. So it is unfathomable that it would take so long to install macOS High Sierra.

I am currently waiting for the 15" MacBook Pro to install High Sierra going on 6 hours now. The progress bar does move, but ever so slightly. The "time remaining" is always 1 hour +/- 30 or so minutes, but obviously that isn't accurate.

Since posting this question, macOS is still sitting at 52 minutes remaining for the last hour. The progress bar has not moved a pixel.

It is normal for macOS High Sierra to install this slowly on these machines? If not, what can I do to reinstall the software more quickly?

The one thing that I would say is that Apple has changed the recovery process somewhat in 10.13 High Sierra. Newer model Mac computers now have to pull down much more from Apple's side.

What sort of internet connection are you on. 5 - 6 hours does sound pretty extreme but 2 - 3 hours I have seen in our lab at work for sure!


Under tmux, change window in Irssi with meta key Alt + Num? I think this is specific to OS X Terminal.app

Viewing many windows in irssi via tmux.

I can use alt+right arrow to move windows as the metakey.

but alt+5 only produces [KH^

Found the answer moments after posting here.

Apparently, Terminal.app does not escape the alt key. It can be turned on in preferences by selectin Use Option as Meta key