How to pack MagSafe cable to prevent its breaking? I am looking for a (most) powercord-safe way to pack my MagSafe adapter for a daily backpack commute.

Official Apple recommendations (as illustrated by third-party videos like this) don't prevent the breaks at all, as my experience with 2 MagSafes showed.

Third-party supplements promising a solution don't sound very convincing:

MagSavior is clearly a hard-plastic solution which just moves the cord breaking point farther from the adapter
The Fray Fix seems nearly impossible to install despite looking promising after that

One method I use on all my power adaptors is to loop the cable and secure it with a piece of Velcro. I will generally either keep folding the cable in half until it is a bit longer than fist size, or just loop it back and forth in a “S” pattern that is about fist size. I do NOT loop it in a circle.

I find these methods keep the cord safe and tangle free, allow quick deployment, and don’t put pressure where the cable comes out of the adaptor. I have never suffered from frayed cables using this method.  If you don’t have a Velcro strap, a rubber band will work.

Here's a photo of 2010 adapter that has been deployed around the world. Dirty, but fully functional, and no frays!


What is the best way to save iPhone battery? Since I've moved to iPhone 4 from a 3Gs, my battery drops down extremely fast. If i use it for 20 minutes at the beginning of the day it goes from 100% to 60% and by 3PM with normal use it's at 20%.
What are the best settings to have as little battery drain while the screen is sleeping while keeping the internet and cellular connections active?

To keep it simple:

Limit the time spent connected to the Internet
Kill open apps when you don't need them
Disable push notifications for apps that don't need immediate response.


Updating OS on protected machine I work offsite and for a large company and need my OS updated. The tech support has been outsourced and it's impossible to get anything done if you work offsite. Whenever I try and update OS through the app store it is blocked.

Is there a way to update to Yosemite without going through the app store?
I have admin access but there is something protecting the computer from accessing the OS update. My problem is, ADOBE CC 15 requires a new OS which I can't install... so I'm stuck in CC14 while all my vendors have upgraded.

Any help would be much appreciated.

You can download the installer on any other Mac.
You may or may not be able to run the installer from your modified OS
You can always run a second OS on your Mac unless there is a firmware password too

Most management tools that can block the OTA install have also blocked he installer from running. The installer is trivial to block, the download much harder.

Worst case, boot to Internet recovery and just install Yosemite on to a SD card or USB drive and migrate the data you need.

That way, you still have the OS that is officially supported, but also an OS to run the tools you've decided you need. Don't write off IT - they may have a group for people that insist on the newest OS and use them for testing.


Apple Mail won't login after Migration Assistant transfer I recently used Migration Assistant to bring data to a new Mac Mini from a Time Machine backup on my old Mac. After finishing, I am unable to connect to my mail account as it gives the error "unable to verify account name or password". I know for a fact that my password and account are correct, because I can still log into that mail account on my old machine using those credentials.

I have tried:

restarting
deleting the existing mail account and trying to add the account back
Removing keychains related to mail from my keychain access under 'login'

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

I found a solution after searching around and trying things.

The answer here led me to the solution. What worked for me from that post was deleting the folders in ~/Library/Keychains that had super long names of numbers and letters. Then I restarted the computer and tried to log in to mail and everything worked.


How do I pinpoint where the error is in Applescript? Whenever I got an error from osascript, it looks like this:
698:699: syntax error: Expected end of line, etc. but found identifier. (-2741)
How can I figure out where this error is (a general approach)? I don't have 698 lines in my code, and commenting every line out isn't very practical.

Run it in the Script Editor, the error will highlight.
Example using image of a random script from an earlier answer


Mass remove character from file names and folder names We have created a lot folders and files that contains the "<" character.

Is it possible to mass-remove these characters?

You can do this quite simply and quickly in Terminal:

cd /path/to/start/renaming

find . -name '*\<*' | while read f; do echo mv "$f" "${f//\</}"; done

The command above is a "dry-run" of the command below:

find . -name '*\<*' | while read f; do mv "$f" "${f//\</}"; done

This will remove any < characters recursively on files and folders starting from the path you cd into initially.

Result:

mv ./<folder<test<   ./foldertest
mv ./<test3.txt      ./test3.txt
mv ./test2<.txt      ./test2.txt
mv ./test<test.txt   ./testtest.txt


iPad exchange warranty transfer I bought a 4th-gen iPad in May. Recently the home button has started sticking. I'm going to take it to the Apple Store for an exchange.

My question is, will the warranty transfer to the new iPad (i.e. expiring in May 2014) or will it only have a 30 day warranty or something similar?

Any time Apple services a part under warranty, you get 90 days of warranty and the balance of whatever warranty was pre-existing. Both of these periods run independently (i.e. you have 5+ months left, so your original warranty end date governs and you don't add + 90 days to your term.)

In the case where hardware serial numbers change or a whole unit is swapped, the warranty transfers day for day and does not get shortened or extended.

Some locations have warranty tolling where you get credit for days where the unit is out of the consumer's hands for repair, but in the case of swap exchanged - that usually is zero days unless they don't have the part and need to order it.

You can look up your exact warranty based on where you bought your iPad from:

http://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/


How to upgrade SVN on OSX 10.11 El Capitan With SIP enabled I am trying to upgrade my SVN version on OSX 10.11 El Capitan. I installed the latest SVN version by brew install svn. When I am typing svn --version I am still getting the old version. From a lot of reading, I understand that I need to change the symbolic link form the old SVN to the new SVN that was installed with brew. This is made by deleting the old symbolic link with sudo rm /usr/bin/svn and then creating the new one by sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/svn /usr/lib/svn. the problem is that the new "System Integrity Protection" of the OS X El Capitan is blocking the accesses to /usr/bin directory. I found a simple way to disable the SIP but I am searching for a way to do this without disabling SIP. Is there a way to do this? What will be the best practice?

Instead of changing a protected file, why not change your path so that the newer SVN is called by your scripts and users?

That's best practice since you don't control the OS but you control the environment. Second best would be disable SIP and overwrite the file you intend to, then re-enable SIP. The reason it's second best is it takes longer, needs you to learn SIP disable, and the next time Apple patches the tool, your work is undone.

Changing path doesn't get undone when Apple updates the OS. This is the same even before SIP:

How do I upgrade git on Mac OS X?
Use downloaded Git instead of preinstalled Git

Just replace git for svn in the examples above.


"Service Battery" warning briefly appeared on brand new rMBP. Should I take it back? I bought a retina macbook pro yesterday and noticed a "Service battery" warning. It was there for a few hours and now has gone. Should I take it back to the store or do you think it's safe to ignore?

Update: The following day, the laptop battery was completely drained after being 100% the night before (and fully powered down). The "Service battery" warning also re-appeared. I took it back and it was just swapped it for a new one.

I have a 4 year old Macbook and it occasionally shows the "Service Battery" warning. It doesn't appear all the time. It certainly isn't normal to have that show up so soon. I would take it back especially since you are very much within the 14 day return period. Even if they don't want to fix it, you could exchange it.

It sounds like you simply have a defective battery. Retina Macbook Pro's do not have user-serviceable batteries, which makes it even more imperative to get it fixed while you can.

Course, if you have AppleCare+, and were willing to wait and see if the battery life is less-then-desirable, you could wait. I'm not sure what benefit that would have, though.


Is there an iOS equivalent of Fluid for Mac? I'd like to run a Freeboard.io dashboard (HTML+JavaScript) on an older iPad to visualize a bunch of things persistently. This would be fine as a Safari home-screen-ified app, except there's no way to prevent display sleep without globally changing the iPad's lock settings.

It's easy enough to programmatically disable sleep in an iOS app, but I don't want to pay $99/year for an Apple developer account just so I can make a UIWebView in an app that disables the sleep timer.

And yes, Panic's Status Board exists—but apparently it's buggy and not being actively developed anymore. It's more sensible than a $99/year subscription, but still not ideal.

What I'd love is the equivalent of Fluid.app for Mac, just for iOS and obviously with the option to disable the sleep timer.

Does a suitable iOS app exist, or would Apple reject any candidate because it'd be nothing more than a UIWebView wrapper?

See here. Google basically reloads the page, and then stops it reloading.

iosSleepPreventInterval = setInterval(function () {
window.location.href = "/new/page";
window.setTimeout(function () {
    window.stop()
}, 0);
}, 30000);


2 connections on personal hotspot Odd problem here. I just turned on my hotspot and after a few minutes the blue ribbon is claiming that there are 2 connections. I am not at home, and my phone isn't hooked up to my computer.

When I saw that there were two connections, I fired up kali and monitored my network. Sure enough, there were two stations... with the same MAC address.

How is this possible?

Apple devices using iOS8 (and presumably later) allocates random MAC when browsing hotspots to prevent phones being tracked. It is possible that some other device has already used that MAC.


How do I disable Chrome's two-finger back/forward navigation? In dev builds of Chrome, they've implemented, refined, and released two-finger swipes left/right in order to browse back/forward in the browser history. Unfortunately, you can accidentally trigger it while you're in the middle of a long down/up scroll, which needless to say occurs often.

I generally like the gesture, and things like Preview, Safari, and other application have implemented it much better, where you cannot blindly navigate back/forward so long as you have begun to scroll up/down.

How do I selectively disable two-finger back/forward navigation in Chrome?

I know its over a year later, but I had the same question, and then figured out the answer myself.

Open terminal and type:

defaults write com.google.Chrome AppleEnableSwipeNavigateWithScrolls -bool FALSE

Then restart Chrome.

Now you can have it enabled system wide, and just disabled for chrome. By the way, this works for any app, just replace com.google.Chrome with the bundle identifier of the target app.

If your interested in how it works, the AppleEnableSwipeNavigateWithScrolls is the global setting, that can be overwritten for any specified app.

Hope this helps someone in the future.


Does Facetime work over a cellular connection as well as Wifi Does facetime work over Wifi only, or also over a cellular connection such as 3G?

No, you need to jailbreak your device to enable Facetime over 3G as of iOS 5.

Here's an extract from the official documentation:

  With FaceTime, you can participate in video calls with another iPhone 4 or later, iPad 2, iPod touch (4th generation), or a FaceTime for Mac user over a Wi-Fi network connection.


What's a good long-exposure app for the iPhone? I'm looking for an app that lets me take long exposures of 10 seconds or more. This can either be one long exposure, or multiple shorter exposures, like 0.5 seconds, combined together by the app.

This is on the iPhone 5s running iOS 8. Not jailbroken, and don't intend to.

The app needs to have a timer to avoid camera shake caused by pressing the shutter button.

If you're on iOS 8, the new camera API made possible by Apple allows true manual exposure control over the pictures taken. I would suggest Manual - Custom exposure camera. It's a really good replacement for the native camera app as well.


Import text from webpage directly into Numbers cells In a numbers file I am using, whenever I open it I need to manually import a  specific value from a webpage.
Specifically, from this webpage I want to import the USD to EUR ratio. Any other similar webpages are welcome of course. :)
Any ideas on how to do it automatically?

After @nohillside's reply, apparently there is the built-in CURRENCY function in Numbers that can do exactly what I was describing in my question.


I can't login with a Google account The problem started after I restored from timemachine, but in a couple of days I saw that my gmail didn't work in Mail.app (my iCloud mail works fine) then I tried log out and log in again (with my google account in system pref.) but after I have selected the services I want to use and press "OK" it will just hang at this screen:

I hope some of you can help me to solve this problem.

Found a solution, used this command in terminal chmod -RN ~/Library/


Assign command up (⌘↑) to go to parent folder in iTerm The ⌘+↑ key takes you to the parent folder in Finder.

How can I assign this key to do the same in iTerm - basically an alias for cd ..?

Applescript syntax for iterm:
https://www.iterm2.com/documentation-one-page.html#documentation-scripting.html
How to call your applescript with a keyboard shortcut:
How do I assign a keyboard shortcut to an AppleScript I wrote?


Good PostScript viewer for MacOS? On OS X, is there a good application to open PS files without converting them to PDF?

In addition, I want to associate PS.GZ files to this application, but retain the TAR.GZ association to my uncompressor. Is this feasible?

There are several possibilities:

Preview.app (comes with OS X) will open any PS (PostScript) file. In the background, I assume, a conversion to PDF takes place, but this should not be an issue.
Adobe Illustrator can open and edit PostScript files. Shelling out a rather big amount of money for just viewing a PS file seems overkill, though. However, there is a free 30-day-trial (link from January 2013 for CS6).
PostView by Metaobject is said to support PostScript as well, but I personally am not convinced / could not get it to work.

My personal recommendation: Use Preview.app!


Is there a way to know App Reviews from users in real time? I don't know why Apple can't provide a real-time system and tools to manage these processes better but is there a way to know about app reviews from users in real-time? I wish there is a way for Downloads and In-App Purchases as well.

No, this is currently not possible. You can view reviews of your app on the App Store once the submission has been confirmed, but this is not real time. Download/IAP statistics are only updated when Apple updates the reports.


OSX 10.7.5 renaming attached Firewire drive My Mini was running out of disk space, so I attached an external Firewire drive and moved all the Home directories (a bunch of users on a home machine) to it.  I'm pretty sure that was done correctly, as it worked fine for all accounts for about 9 months.  Then, the OS started renaming the volume on its own, usually adding " 1" to the volume name; thus, the OS couldn't find any of the home directories on that Firewire drive upon login, even though I could open the drive manually, and one would get a generic startup desktop, because the volume names didn't match.  I found that, using an admin account with a home directory on the startup disk, I could assign a fresh, new name to the Firewire drive, then get into each user's advanced settings, and re-point the OS at the user's home directory on the newly renamed attached drive.  That would work for a couple of days, until the OS again renamed the Firewire drive, and I'd have to repeat those steps.  Very annoying, and not something the other users, my family, are about to do.
So: why is the OS renaming that Firewire drive?
Somewhat contemporaneously, I've had about 3 hard crashes (grey text screen) requiring a shutdown and startup.
I've completely reinstalled the OS, BTW, which did not stop the disk-renaming.  Otherwise, I've seen no problems with said Firewire drive; I have another external USB drive for backups, and that doesn't have any problems of which I am aware.

The problem comes from how OS X handles additional (non-startup) volumes. Say you have a volume named "FWDisk"; when OS X sees that, it mounts it at the unix path "/Volumes/FWDisk". If you put a user's home folder on it, the user's home path will be set to, say, "/Volumes/FWDisk/Users/fred". Fine so far.

But suppose fred logs in when the disk isn't connected (/mounted): the home path is still "/Volumes/FWDisk/Users/fred", which doesn't exist, so the OS creates it on the startup volume. You're working in a mostly-empty home folder without access to any of your files. So, you log out, and connect the external drive. What happens now is the mounter tries to mount it as "/Volumes/FWDisk", but discovers that that name is already in use, so it mounts it as "/Volumes/FWDisk 1" instead. This means that none of your users with home folders on that disk can find them -- they're looking for their homes at "/Volumes/FWDisk/Users/whatever", but they're actually at "/Volumes/FWDisk 1/Users/whatever". And it's going to stay that way forever unless you do something.

The solution is in 2 parts. First, to fix the immediate problem, you need to delete/rename/move that "/Volumes/FWDisk" folder that's preventing your external disk from mounting normally. You can do this logging out of all accounts with homes on that disk, logging into one with a home on your startup disk, unmounting the external disk. Then, use the Finder's Go To Folder feature (under the Go menu, or Command-Shift-G) to go to the hidden folder "/Volumes". Then rename or move the problem folder with the same name as your external disk. Remount the disk, and you should be back to normal.

The second part is figuring out what's causing the problem, or else it's just going to keep happening. This is going to be just a matter of paying attention to when the problem starts, and what leads up to it. Are you logging in when the external disk isn't attached? Is there something else triggering it? There's probably no reliable way to prevent it except for avoiding whatever event triggers it, so you need to find and avoid that trigger (/triggers).


how can I create a new mail folder? How do I create a new folder in my mail.

I've have gone through every menu option I can see and don't see it.

Mail uses the word "mailbox" instead of folder.

In the left sidebar, right-click (or Control-click if on a laptop) and select "New Mailbox" from the contextual menu. You will be prompted with a message similar to: "Enter name for new mailbox to be created inside “[parent folder name]” in account “[account name]”.


Magsafe light occasionally turns off while plugged in Every once in a while, the green light on my Magsafe adapter will turn off, but the computer will indicate that it's still running off of AC power. If I unplug the adapter from the computer and then plug it back in, it'll immediately light up again. Is this normal?

Here is Apple's troubleshooting documentation: Apple Portables: Troubleshooting MagSafe adapters

I have a late-2011 MacBook Air, and I have never experienced this issue.


macOS Mojave, Dictionary.app: How to install dictionaries to offline computer? Until recently (although I'm not sure how recent), macOS shipped Dictionary.app with dictionary definitions built in.

As of macOS Mojave, this is no longer the case. The first time you open Dictionary.app, you are prompted to download definitions from the internet.

How can I transfer a copy of these definitions to a fully offline computer? I can't seem to figure out where they are stored.

A way to capture the original .pkg file from Apple's servers (assuming this is how the downloads are distributed) would also be an acceptable answer.

Update 10/11/18:

Per answers below, I now know that dictionaries are stored as .dictionary files in /System/Library/Assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_DictionaryServices. However, moving them to this folder on a new machine does not cause them to be recognized in Dictionary.app.

Interestingly, if you open one of these .dictionary files in Dictionary.app, you get a message saying the dictionary could not be imported, because the "folder" format is not supported. Which begs the question, what format would be supported...

They are located in (HighSierra)

Aside from this, you will find packaged dictionaries here:

~/Library/Dictionaries/

there is also the words file here /usr/share/dict/words

User specific Dictionaries are stored here /System/Library/Assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_DictionaryServices (based on your Language and Keyboard selection), here is mine, so if you have chosen Polish it will be there.

copy and paste in to Finder GoTo

Do not copy the Folder, just the dictionary it self.


I can't re-download a song with iTunes on my PC or iPhone I bought an album yesterday from iTunes on my PC, downloaded it, and synced it with my iPhone.  When I later tried to play the songs on the phone, I noticed that they wouldn't play at all.  I also noticed that they wouldn't play on the PC.  So, I tried to follow the suggestion in this other question and deleted the songs, thinking I could just re-download them.  I can't seem to actually re-download these.

I locate the album in the iTunes store from iTunes on my PC.
I click "buy" for the album.
I see a pop-up box from iTunes telling me I have already purchased this item and can redownload it from my Purchases.
I click the "Purchased" button on the pop-up dialog.
iTunes takes me to "Purchased" screen, but I do not see the artist or any of the songs from that artist in my purchased music list.

Also, when I try to download it from iTunes directly from my iPhone, the album shows up with a "purchased" box next to it already and is unclickable.

I am using iTunes 11 on my PC and have iOS 6.0.1 on the iPhone.

How can I get this music?

I had this exact same problem and I tried the same solution you did: deleted the file and could not redownload. It just said "Purchased" and there was no option to redownload. It turns out that I must have selected to "hide" the purchase. I fixed this by going to my account settings in itunes and clicking "view hidden purchases". Low and behold, my missing file was there. I clicked the "unhide" button and was able to download it again from the itunes store.


Are there more capable music DJ programs for OS X than Tangerine? I'm looking for an application which can take a playlist of all of the track I'm listening to at the moment and re-arrange them so that they are in a logical sequence (based on BPM etc) then mix them all together as a mix.

I've tried Tangerine  but I wasnt very impressed as it didnt have a way to automatically sort the tracks and the analysis of the music wasn't very good. (In fact, it often got things pretty wrong).

Can anyone suggest DJ software with better sorting and analysis features?

Megaseg

Shareware
The 'Pro' and 'DJ' versions of this program integrate very tightly with iTunes and an iTunes managed library if you have one. It can play DRM-protected purchased songs and can synchronize playlists, playlist folders, metadata, sound check adjustments and album art with iTunes. It can also match songs with similiar BPM for smooth transitions and can easily handle thousand-song playlists.

The program is definitely designed for a production environment, rather than a live one. It cannot do automatic BPM calculation, but has a little feature where you can 'tap' out the BPM to a song with your mouse/keyboard. And of course you can sort your library or playlist by BPM, or a number of other metrics.

I'm a huge fan of Megaseg, but it suffers from small little usability quirks (the program's insistence on sorting songs with each artist in alphabetical order for instance).

Mixxx

FOSS
This program is gaining a lot of popularity lately. It features some iTunes integration but is quite usable without iTunes and has several integrated organizational devices to make custom playlists or bundles of related songs.

This program is more oriented for a live environment. It has the ability to connect to several USB MIDI controllers and turntables, has automatic BPM analysis, a more robust loop control, and the ability to handle multiple simultaneous sample playback.

Mixxx has the ability to sort songs by BPM or other metrics of your choosing, though I have found it easier to use other programs to manage music libraries. Where AutoDJ and automatic crossfading are integral components of Megaseg, feel like more of an extra feature for Mixxx.


How can I boot in single-user mode for terminal with grey screen? It all started when I wanted to sell my old Macbook 2011 and remove it from iCloud. I clicked delete my Macbook in iCloud. AND Whoup!! My Macbook shuts down and deletes itself....
I reinstalled High Sierra, unfortunately my AMD graphics card hasn't worked for years. But at that time the card was bypassed.
BUT NOW
I can't disable the graphics card via CMD+S.  It stops loading "HID: Legency slim 2".
I got the problem after the PRAM reset.
when I followed the instructions...
https://gist.github.com/cdleon/d1eff7246a25193304284ecec40445b0
NOW I also can't get into Recovery Mode with CMD+R.  Also not via internal or USB stick. I ALWAYS get a gray screen.
How can I disable the graphics card to set up the Mac?
I get prohibition symbol... i need a terminal! :(
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

It might be easier to boot in target disk mode to erase a machine that’s not healthy enough to boot to recovery. As you know, you’ll need to assemble an external OS and modify it to prevent graphics drivers to get around your failed GPU / logic board. Target disk mode often works in this case since only the firmware is running - no OS.
Both of these require you have another Mac running in my experience.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/transfer-files-mac-computers-target-disk-mode-mchlp1443/mac
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255

Option is the startup manager you need if Internet Recovery or built in recovery fail.


How to see photos taken from iPhone 6+ in photo stream on my mac w/10.10.2 I have photo stream turned on, on my iPhone 6+, iPad 2 and my Mac with 10.10.2

I just took some photos with my iPhone, to share via an email.  I sat down at my Mac to type the email and attach the pictures within mac mail.  But they are not showing up in the photo stream when I click on 'Photos' under media.  I see things from yesterday, but none I've taken so far today show up.  Is there a way to 'refresh' photostram for iPhoto on my mac?

Michelle

Photostream refreshes automatically. Given the camera quality of your phone the files are expected to have a certain size and need time to be uploaded. Also afaik the iPhone only uploads them when it's connected to a WiFi.
The easiest way to check if they have arrived in the cloud is checking on iCloud.com


Assigning shortcuts to particular keyboard layouts Is there any way to assign hotkeys to switching to particular keyboard layouts directly, without having to cycle through them one by one?

I am quite new to OS X.  On Windows (which I used before) it is possible to set keyboard shortcuts for witching directly to particular keyboard layouts.  For example, I set it up so that Shift-Alt-1 switches directly to English, Shift-Alt-2 switches directly to Hungarian, etc.  This is very convenient when one has several layouts installed (I regularly used 4 different ones on Windows), and much faster than having to cycle through layouts one by one, especially when writing multilingual documents and needing to switch often.

Is there similar functionality in OS X?  If there's isn't by default, is there a hack or third party program to set it up?

There is a solution that has been vetted on 10.5 through 10.7 and has both a source code example as well as a link to a direct download of a program to do this sort of switching.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4032238

You'll need Xcode or to use the compiled program to test if this works for you. And always, use caution when downloading software from the internet. Most people are nice and good, but sometimes it's hard to know what you're running.


List of all homebrew package names (not a count) Is it possible to get a complete list of all homebrew package names that are able to install using brew install PACKAGE_NAME? (not just a count of all packages)

There is a complete list of available Homebrew packages here, but I would like a script if available

You can use brew search to get a complete list of all available packages.
This website provides a great search functionality to search in all the packages


Finding photos on OS X 10.10.4 Ever since I updated my MacBook to OS X 10.10.4 a lot of my current uploaded photos from 2015 (iPhoto) can not be found?
Am I able to get these back?

Your photos have always been there and look at the picture the old iPhone app folder'll be there.

Try clicking the right mouse button and choose open with iPhoto and find your entire library.


How can I view the root directory along with all its subdirectories in Finder? I want to view the all (sub-)directories on my Mac partition in Finder. Both hidden and unhidden directories.

How can I do this?

Navigate to / (e.g. use ⌘+⇧+G.)
Then, in list view hold ⌥ while clicking the triangle. This will show all subdirectories of a certain folder.

By default, you'll don't see hidden files/directories. To show hidden files type the following commands in the Terminal.app:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

You can use the value FALSE in the defaults write command to unto this action.


Can I safely charge&use my macbook with the adaptor below? I need to use an Ethernet cable, VGA monitor, usb connection and power cable in same time with my macbook. That's why i need an adapter because my macbook has only one usb-c port.
Let me share a technical specifications for the Adapter:

Compatible with devices using the port-Type C.
Data Transfer high-speed 5Gbps: provides you with a fast transfer, you can save time.
Multifunctional design: Type-C to HDMI, USB 3.0 and VGA, USB-C,
1000Mbps Gigabit Ethernet.
Type: Adapter
Interface: VGA,Type-C USB3.0,USB 3.0 ,network port
Output Voltage: 5 - 20V
Output Current: 0 - 3.5A  DC Port: 3.5 x 1.1
Brand : Xiaomi
Model : ZJQ04TM

So I have two questions:

Can this adapter charge macbook?

Safe to charge the macbook with this adapter?

Technical Specifications for my macbook (macbook retina, 12 inch, 2017)

In general it is safe to attach standards compliant USB Type-C products to the MacBook.

If the multi-adapter offers power delivery (i.e. charging) and is standards compliant, it should be perfectly safe to use. According to the documentation it should offer charging at up to 65W which is plenty for the MacBook.

I have however not tested this specific adapter with the MacBook.


Why my iPhone vibrates for several seconds everyday at 12 O'Clock? I am not sure if I am the only one who is facing this problem, but interesting thing is that my Iphone 5S(IOS 10.x.x) vibrates everyday 12 O'clock for several seconds and there is no way I can stop it. It is really annoying at work place. I checked if I have any alarm for 12 O'Clock, but I did not find one.

Any clue does it happen and how to stop it? Thank you in advance!

It could be anything from an alarm, to push notification from an app you have installed.  The best way to find out what it is, is check your Notification Center.  Pull the bar at the top down to see all your recent notifications. You should be able to see which one happened at 12 noon and take it from there.


Websites stuck in infinite redirect loop after upgrading to iOS 5 (5.0.1) Ever since upgrading my iPhone to iOS 5 (currently at 5.0.1), I've noticed that a few websites that I regularly visit get stuck in a constant redirect loop and never show up.  It's only sites that require logging in as a first step. The two sites that I can think of off the top of my head where this happens are:

Oreilly Books Online (Safari)
FT.com

Though I have seen this on more than just these two sites.

Has anyone else encountered this problem?  Is there anything I can do to try and resolve this on my phone (settings, cache clearing, etc.)?  Or do I have to wait for an OS update or the sites to make a fix?

Also, I'm on the O2 network in the UK, but I can reproduce the behaviour through a VPN and on WiFi.

To clear Safari's cache:

Go to Settings App > Safari then tap Clear History and Clear Cookies and Data.

Hopefully this will help you.


Plugging iPad into computer turns on Personal Hotspot with one connection I have an iPad 3 with personal hotspot turned on. I also have a Macbook Air connected to my local wireless network (the Air is not connected to the iPad personal hotspot). However, when I plug the iPad into my Macbook via USB, the iPad personal hotspot turns on and I see the blue bar at the top with one connection.  Can you explain why this is happening?

Did the Macbook stop using my local network wifi internet connection and start using the iPad's personal hotspot connection? Is this using up my cellular data allowance while I use the Macbook when the iPad is connected to the USB port?

If you plug any cellular enabled iOS device with Personal Hotspot turned on to a Mac via USB, the Mac will automatically open a network connection using the Personal Hotspot.

So yes, your Macbook Air will be the 1 connection you see.

The second part of your question is a little trickier and the answer is both complex and confusing but I will try to explain as best I can.

.

Based on older knowledge with other multiple interface *nix systems is that it will be a complete toss up as to which connection your Mac will use since both active connections could possible provide the same route to the destination for any network query.

I have even seen, on both Windows and Unix networks, traffic coming in on one network connection and going out on another, which rarely works well.

To get round this, in the Network panel you could disable the "iPad USB" in your default location, but then set up a new location where your "iPad USB" is not disabled.

Finally, the order of your devices should mean that if your wifi is above the iPad USB device in your list when both are enabled, it will get priority over the hotspot, but there are still caveats and this could still use cellular data, but of a lesser amount.


How can I transfer Clash of Clans data into Game Center? I was transferring stuff from a 4s to a 5s and accidentally deleted Clash of Clans off of Game Center. It is still stored on my old phone, but not in Game Center. Is there any way that I can transfer it? I have put a lot of time and some money into that game.

it's easy to do if you have the old phone handy.
download clash on the 5s and play through the tutorial but don't make any town hall upgrades or buy anything with real money, then on the 5s navigate settings>link device and select new device. you'll be able to get a code from your old phone to transfer villages.


Why can't I copy and paste web content into a Pages document? For some time I have been able to copy content from a web page and paste it into a Pages document and it would accept both text and images. But since the last update to Pages it will only display the text and if I want to include images I have to copy them and paste them individually.

Is there another way to do this that I am not aware of?

I am running Pages 5.2 (1860) on OS X 10.9.2

Thanks

It is often useful to sleep on a problem, or rather get some sleep after you ask the question. It came to me this morning that the problem might not be pages at all, but the browser. I have been using Chrome recently, so I decided to revert back to Safari to try the same process. I did the copy from Safari and pasted into Pages and the pictures came right in. It wasn't Pages after all.


Early 2009 iMac upgrading to Bluetooth 4.0 I have been searching on Amazon and most of the USB dongle type Bluetooth 4.0 adapters specifically say not compatible with OSX. My question is; has anyone seen a Bluetooth 4.0 option to upgrade my early 2009 iMac without actually upgrading to the newest iMac?

Register as an Apple Developer for free with your Apple ID, search for Bluetooth Explorer on this page.
After you installed the app you can plug in your Bluetooth dongle and open the app. Press CMD + L and pick your Bluetooth dongle from the list. Reboot your Mac and you're good to go..

This worked for me, I'm using a 2010 iMac with a Trust Bluetooth 4.0 dongle (both Mavericks and Yosemite).


Terminal problem: dhcp mode Everytime I start terminal, it says dhcp instead of my account name. Why is this and how do I exit out of it?

dhcp-205122:~ NAME$

In some more sophisticated networks, the prompt may be overwritten by the network providing you with the name given by the DHCP server there. This may be particularly obvious, if instead of your account the computer's hostname is displayed.

How to change it:

Open Terminal
Type in sudo nano /etc/profile (you need to be part of the administrators group to submit this command)
Look for a line starting with PS1=; if there is no such line, you can add it at the end (see example below)
To include the user, add \u to the line

To give you an example of a working line, my personal favorite is: PS1="\u@\h:\w \$ "

Here is what it does:
\u adds the user name
\h adds the hostname
\w adds the full current working directory
\$ adds a $ sign for all regular users and a # while logged in as root.

All other characters in the mix are representing themselves. So, such a prompt would convert to something like the following:
blackmouse@bm-computer:/Library/Application Support $
User and computer name are fictive as I, for obvious reasons, do not know your real computer user or computer name and the path will change to whatever directory you are in.


Installing drivers before installing Mac app - rejected by apple review team I have developed a Mac desktop application and need to have our users install few drivers to run our application on OS X.

Due to sandbox constraint, I am not able to get the user access permission to install the drivers within /Users/System Name/Library/ folder.
(i.e.,) It will ask user permission to install the drivers from a single Mac package installer to install the drivers before accessing the Mac App.

Also, I am not able to bundle drivers in a single package to install the drivers and the Mac app due to the Sandbox constraints.
So that I will have to separate driver installation and Mac app installation as two step process.

I have submitted the app to Apple review team with the instructions of installing the drivers, then installing the mac app to perform the desired functionality.
I have detailed the video to perform the steps as well. But review team has rejected with the following reason:

Reasons:

  2.3: Apps that do not perform as advertised by the developer will be rejected

  We are writing to let you know that the App Review Board has
  completed their review of your appeal and determined that this version
  of your app is in violation of Guideline 2.3.  We have determined that
  your application requires the user to download and install additional
  software in order for the application to perform as advertised.
  Applications should not require the user to install additional
  software in order for the app to work. We will continue review of your
  app with this in mind.

I understood that users should not install additional software for the app to work, but need to know the possible ways to submit the app in Mac store to avail the Mac store benefits instead of releasing outside the Mac App Store. Your valuable suggestion would be helpful to make any design changes for this solution.

Update:

Here is what my Mac app design and technical flow :

Product is actually used to store the documents on the Server and would use the documents for storage and cloud printing. I do have two options to send the documents to cloud :

a) Users can right click any document, pass it to Mac app to send the document to cloud server.

b) I do have another option which is to send the documents from print option (ctrl+P), I would convert the documents as generic format to understand by cloud servers. This feature would bring more value to the users and I want to stick into this approach as well.
User can pass any document via document print function and mac driver files and few other supporting files will communicate to Mac app for further processing.

Mac App will show the list of uploaded files / status of each documents.

Why do you need the drivers in the first place?

ANS : Driver files have a lot of functionality on handling the document formats which would help on cloud, so I must have driver files in my architecture and based on my business requirement.

Can't you integrate that functionality directly into your application? and what kind of research you have already done on the topic of bundling device drivers with App Store downloads (besides this post of course).

ANS : Yes, I have tried to integrate the driver files in the app itself, pushed to install in the /Users/System Name/Library/Printers/ folder as well and design works fine with no sanboxing.  After I enable Sanboxing, It does not do any user permission checks and system level updates because it will get user permissions to install drivers to list out on the documents print options.

I have also tried splitting the driver installation as separate application and the actual Mac app as another application, for which the application has been rejected by the review team with the above mentioned reasons.

Without recoding the app the meet Apple's guidelines, you will have to rely on selling your software outside the MAS. Plain and simple I'm afraid.

There is no way around Apple's guidelines. They are written for a reason; to protect users from having apps install malicious components or components that may damage their systems, to promoting an exceptional users experience. Having your app pull down drivers is not an ideal solution and I would not install such an app. Either make do with the existing driver set, or find a workaround that won't break your program.

You are the developer. You know the codebase and the requirements as an Mac Developer. There is no loophole. Either you are asking us to provide you with a way to circumvent Apple policy or tell you how to code your app. In both cases, it falls outside the scope of what we do around here.


Permanently Disable/Ignore Secondary Disk? I have a 256G SSD and a 1T HDD in my 27" iMac.

The 1T HDD is dying due to hardware failure.

Is there a file in OS X similar to /etc/fstab in Linux where I can prevent this 1T HDD from mounting?

I'd like to effectively disable/ignore this disk without needing to take it into an Apple store to be removed.

Yes!

First get the UUID of the partition you want to prevent from mounting...  You can get this in Disk Utility "Get Info".

Now open your /etc/fstab file for editing:

sudo pico /etc/fstab

In this file add the following line (use your own UUID naturally):

UUID=[your UUID] none hfs rw,noauto 0 0

And save the file.

Restart for the change to take affect.

You can always mount it manually in Disk Utility.


How can I set 4 x 6 as the default printer setting? I'm working on a photo booth web app that's going to run at a kiosk, and I'm trying to figure out how users can make a 4 x 6 printout of their photo.

When the user requests a printout, PHP resizes the photo and moves it into a folder being watched by Automator. When Automator sees a new photo is runs a "Print Images" action, but the action doesn't have an option to change the paper size, so it prints at the default US Letter. It seems this could easily be accomplished by setting the default paper size to 4 x 6 in the Print & Scan options, but that doesn't seem to be a choice:

Is there any way to add custom options to this list? Of course another way to accomplish this would be fine, too.

If you print from the command line with lp you can do something like:

lp -o media=Custom.4x6in filename

That will print at 6x4 on the default printer the file called filename.

On my HP inkjet that made it pick the photo tray over the main tray.

So, put the above in a script and have automator run it pointing at the directory with the files in.


Xcode 7 Simulator - "SpringBoard cannot be opened because of a problm." I was successfully using the Xcode Simulator yesterday evening. This morning when I came into work, I didn't change anything, but suddenly, every time I open the Simulator, this error pops up "SpringBoard cannot be opened because of a problem." The same exact thing is also happening to my coworker on his Mac. I've clicked Report and sent a report to Apple.

Since I didn't touch anything, I can only assume that the problem was caused by some update that happened in the background between last night and this morning. I've tried deleting the simulator devices and adding them back. I've tried clicking "Reset Contents and Settings..." in the Simulator menu. And I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Xcode.

I have:

OS X El Capitan 10.11.5
Xcode 7.3.1 (7D1014)
Simulator 9.3 (SimulatorApp-645.9)

I have no idea why this would suddenly be an issue. Has anyone else run into this?

I have had this problem and I have just managed to fix it. I am new to Xcode and only 15 years old however this fix has worked for me.

Basically, I went to the the general page of my app and then I changed the deployment target to ios 9.2 instead of 9.3. After this, I then went to the main.storyboard page, selected the view controller and then from the standard editor, selected the option for the app to build for the deployment target (9.2).

I hope this is clear enough for you to understand and hope this helps.


Create bootable EFI system partition from macOS Installer's firmware files (.scap, .fd) Any macOS installer contains a folder (e.g. called EFIPayloads) with EFI firmware files named MP61_0116_B17_LOCKED.scap, MBP114_0172_B09_LOCKED.fd or similarly.

How does one create a working EFI partition from those?

What I do know already:

The EFI partition requires particular values in the GPT.
An EFI partition is a FAT32 volume with a folder structure like this:

EFI
    APPLE
        EXTENSIONS
            Firmware.scap                  (always there)
        FIRMWARE                           (optional)
            EfiUpdaterApp2.efi
            MP51_0087_00B_LOCKED.fd

What I do not understand:

Which files do I take from the macOS Installer, and where do I place them in the EFI volume? E.g, do I use the .scap file matching the Mac model and rename that to Firmware.scap, whereas a model-matching .fd file (which may be optional) then goes into the FIRMWARE folder?
Is EfiUpdaterApp2.efi needed to run the firmware, or is that only a leftover from an older firmware update process and can be removed?
Can I create a universal EFI boot partition, containing the firmware for any Mac model, so that I can put that onto an external disk and boot practically any Mac from it for which I've included its .fd or .scap file?

Update

This answer suggests that the files in the FIRMWARE folder are not loaded when booting the system but are rather just used to flash the ROM. So, if the particular Mac had already installed the particular file into its Flash ROM once, it won't be needed any more and can be removed from the EFI partition.

I also did a test where I renamed the top "EFI" folder to "EFI-OFF" and rebooted a MacBook Air 2015. This resulted in a new EFI folder being created in the EFI partition with the same Firmware.scap file. This suggests that neiter files need to be present at boot time at all, at least on recent Macs. Meaning there's no need to create a bootoable EFI partition at all. I wonder if it still may contain additional support for Macs whose boot ROMs can't be updated, such as adding support to boot from APFS volumes, perhaps.

Background:

Recently, a friend got his EFI boot partition overwritten, whereas his main Mac boot partition had remained intact. Without this EFI partition, the Mac would not boot any more.

I then tried to repair the damage by copying my Mac's EFI partition to his Mac, using iBored (which I wrote myself, so I know what I was doing, trust me on that).

But that did not help - the Mac would still not boot.

After a while I figured that his rather old Mac (a MacBook Pro early-2009) probably required a different EFI firmware than the other Mac from which we tried copying the EFI firmware.

After some digging I found the mentioned .fd and .scap files in a macOS installer, which appears to prove my theory. Hence I would now like to get some more information on how this all fits together.

macOS will boot fine without an EFI partition. Unlike most operating systems, macOS stores its boot files inside the OS partition. Apple computers ship with firmware that can read HFS+ partitions (2016 and later models can read APFS volumes as well by default), so they can read the boot.efi file from the partition. When you upgrade your computer to High Sierra, the firmware gets upgraded as well, getting the ability to boot from APFS partitions.

Your friend probably did more than just overwriting the EFI partition. You will probably need to backup your data and reinstall macOS.


Can I block or disable hotspot mode in iOS 5.1? I'm using iPhone 4, iOS 5.1.

Can I block or disable hotspot mode in iOS 5.1?

Source: Share your Internet connection with Personal Hotspot - Apple KB


How to "Secure Empty Trash..." (wipe free space) on OS X El Capitan? Before OS X El Capitan, when viewing the Trash folder and pressing the "Alt" key you have been able to Secure Empty Trash... however this feature has been removed from OS X El Capitan!

Does anyone know how to reactivate this option via Terminal? Is this possible?

The secure delete option was removed from El Capitan, but as explained in this article, there may be some alternatives you may wish to use (see below for notes if the Mac has an SSD).

You can use the disk utility to overwrite the free space on the drive;

diskutil secureErase freespace LEVEL /Volumes/DRIVENAME

Where;

  In this command, change LEVEL to a number of 0 through 4, where 0 is a single-pass of zeros, 1 is a single-pass of random numbers, 2 is a 7-pass erase, 3 is a 35-pass erase, and 4 is a 3-pass erase (note all non single-pass options may take a while to complete).

You can consult the man page for more detail on the command usage.
Overwrite the contents before the deletion (from the terminal);

rm -rP /path/to/file-or-folder

Where r is to recurse over the folders and P will overwrite their contents.
The srm utility provides a mechanism (from at least Yosemite) to overwrite and remove files, lifehacker has an article on its use;

srm -v ~/Path/To/file.remove

The -v indicates verbose mode.
Consider using the "Delete Immediately" option that was added to El Capitan. Whilst this may not be the "secure delete" you are looking for, it does skip the trash.

It is important to bear in mind that with modern SSD wear levelling, writing to the same location in a file isn't necessarily going to write to the same location on the disk, hence the secure deletion would not always achieve what you wanted (see CVE-2015-5901 and hence removed in El Capitan). Given an SSD, the "erase"-ing of the free space is probably the best option, once the files have been deleted and removed from the trash.

For those with mechanical disks (non-SSD), the srm option may be the easiest alternative.


How do i stop Quicktime from opening previous videos? I'm on OSX Lion and this is driving me crazy. Whenever i watch a video in quicktime and close it, then open another video, the previous video that i played also comes up.

Is there a way to not have the previous video(s) come up when opening quicktime besides closing out the windows, then quitting, everytime?

That feature is part of Lion and QuickTimeX, but you can disable it.

Open your terminal (/Application/Utilities/Terminal.app) or use Spotlight to find the Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false

That should stop QuickTime from saving the opened windows when you quit it.

If you want to revert the behavior, change the "false" to "true".


How to refresh iCloud after some changes in iTunes I use iCloud to sync music files. On my Mac, I changed some song information such as genre or artist name. How can I sync the changes on my Mac's iTunes with iCloud so that all my iPad and iPhone iTunes have the same change?

As far as I know these changes should be applied automatically. If not, try Store -> "Update iTunes Match" to apply the changes. You can also use "Add to iCloud" for songs which haven't been matched before.


OS X: find hours in use Is there a way I can parse a log in OS X to determine the total time the computer has been in use? By "in use", I mean logged in and not in sleep mode.

If there is no such pre-existing log, is there software I can install or even a script I can modify to log this data for me?

Do you mean that you want to know the length of time of the current login session, or the total use for the machine since it left the factory?

The latter is not possible because the logs that store that sort of information rotate. The former is sort of possible, but will take you checking the logs frequently. For one, the last command will show recent login sessions.

I don't think any of those options will strip out sleep time, so that would take a lot more effort where you'd have to write a log parser that looked for sleep/wake events and took that time out of the appropriate login session.

It's not something there is a simple solution for.

If you want to keep track of logins and logout you would be better off writing a loginhook and logouthook to log to your own file.


iPhone configuation utility for Windows not working I am using the iPhone Configuration Utility 3.3 and I had an iPad plugged in - while trying to deploy a profile, the application just crashed.

After this, I attempted to launch it several times but it would just crash immediately.

I looked through the ipcu.log file and saw that it had problems with a cryptographic key. I used Microsoft/Sysinternals Process Monitor and tracked down the key it tried to open and deleted it.

After doing this, I reopened the utility and it recreated a key and launched fine.

From here, I can create profiles, but when I try to install them on a device, nothing happens at all on the device, but going in to the console view, I see the device reporting this:

Mon Aug  8 11:41:52 wils-iPod mc_mobile_tunnel[341] <Warning>: MC|mc_mobile_tunnel starting.
Mon Aug  8 11:41:52 wils-iPod profiled[313] <Warning>: MC|Failed to parse profile data. Error: NSError 0x116640:
Desc   : Invalid Profile
US Desc: Invalid Profile
Domain : MCProfileErrorDomain
Code   : 1000
Type   : MCFatalError
Mon Aug  8 11:41:52 wils-iPod profiled[313] <Warning>: MC|Profile cannot be queued for installation. Error: NSError 0x112690:
Desc   : Invalid Profile
Sugg   : Invalid Profile
US Desc: Invalid Profile
US Sugg: Invalid Profile
Domain : MCInstallationErrorDomain
Code   : 4000
Type   : MCFatalError
...Underlying error:
NSError 0x116640:
Desc   : Invalid Profile
US Desc: Invalid Profile
Domain : MCProfileErrorDomain
Code   : 1000
Type   : MCFatalError
Mon Aug  8 11:41:52 wils-iPod mc_mobile_tunnel[341] <Warning>: MC|mc_mobile_tunnel shutting down.

I have Googled for ages and seen other people suggesting deleting various folders including the iPhone Configuration Tools Cache, Device and other folders, but I have had no luck whatsoever.

I have run this tool on another machine with the same device and configuration profile and it works just fine. This is just on this one machine.

I have tried reinstalling without any luck and cannot find the file that it is trying to load. Based on the invalid profile warning, I have a hunch that it is still something related to cryptography/keys and profile signing, but, I just can't find it.

I figured out that reinstalling the profile file into iOS Configuration Utility fixed it for me so probably make copies.


How to prevent iPad from using Personal Hotspot? My iPhone5 keeps advertising itself as a Personal Hotspot even though I set that to off. My WiFi only iPad keeps connecting to the iPhone HotSpot every time my WiFi router fails. This is driving up my data usage. How do I make the iPad forget the Personal Hotspot? I have already factory defaulted the Network Settings but it appears anyway. I have also changed the Personal Hotspot password on the iPhone and it connects anyway.

On the iPad, in Settings > Wifi, tap the 'i' in a circle icon next to the listing for the Personal Hotspot, then tap the Forget This Network tab.
You should make absolutely sure the Personal Hotspot is turned off. Looking at Settings > Personal Hotspot, it is pretty unambiguous.
You should also check to see if Instant Hotspot has been enabled:

Instant hotspot
You can use Personal Hotspot on your iPhone to provide Internet access to your other devices without additional setup. You'll need to sign in to iCloud using the same Apple ID as your iPhone. Also, your cellular provider needs to provision your Personal Hotspot.
To get Internet access from your iPhone:
On your iPad or iPod touch, go to Settings > Wi-Fi on your other iOS device and select your iPhone or iPad that has a cellular connection.
On your Mac, go to the Wi-Fi menu at the top of your screen and select your iPhone or iPad that has a cellular connection.

From this Apple Support Page


Mac OS X Server user can't change password I have non-admin users who need to change their password. The passwd command is apparently limited to administrators.

On the Server website, there's a change password link, but it doesn't work, and users receive an error. Internally, Mac OS X logs the following message:

Jan 21 01:56:02 domain.com collabd[247]: [CSAuthService.m:506 ab93000 +206ms] Could not change password for user 1234 with error Error Domain=com.apple.OpenDirectory Code=4001 "Operation was denied because the current credentials do not have the appropriate privileges." UserInfo=0x1234567890abc {NSLocalizedDescription=Operation was denied because the current credentials do not have the appropriate privileges., NSLocalizedFailureReason=Operation was denied because the current credentials do not have the appropriate privileges.}

I have the option in the website service checked to allow changing passwords. What would be causing this error?

EDIT: Users created with the Server app are fine, but the trouble is with users created with dscl on the command line. Here are the exact commands used to create a test user named "qwer":

sudo dscl . create /Users/qwer UniqueID 507
sudo dscl . create /Users/qwer PrimaryGroupID 20
sudo dscl . create /Users/qwer UserShell /bin/bash
sudo dscl . create /Users/qwer NFSHomeDirectory /Users/qwer
sudo mkdir /Users/qwer
sudo chown qwer:staff /Users/qwer
sudo passwd qwer

I then executed sudo dscl . read /Users/qwer and compared it with sudo dscl . read /Users/uiop for a second test user.

In the records, the following keys are unique to the user created with the Server app:

dsAttrTypeNative:_writers_hint
dsAttrTypeNative:_writers_jpegphoto
dsAttrTypeNative:_writers_passwd
dsAttrTypeNative:_writers_picture
dsAttrTypeNative:_writers_realname
dsAttrTypeNative:_writers_UserCertificate
LastName
RealName

These match:

AppleMetaNodeLocation
PasswordPolicyOptions
PrimaryGroupID
RecordType
UserShell

And these are unique to each user (or in the case of Password are obfuscated):

dsAttrTypeNative:KerberosKeys
dsAttrTypeNative:ShadowHashData
AuthenticationAuthority
GeneratedUID
GeneratedUID
NFSHomeDirectory
RecordName
UniqueID
Password

I checked AuthenticationAuthority but the only thing different is the username in the string, so that could be considered equivalent as well.

Additionally, groups qwer and groups uiop give exactly the same output.

There doesn't appear to be anything preventing "qwer" from changing their password except for the fact that their user account was created on the command line; however, the dscl method should be perfectly valid.

According to this old article (10.3!), the lack of a _writers_password property in the NetInfo database would prevent users from changing their password.  That's really outdated, but it seems like a reasonable place to start.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA21256

(Edit)

From some other sources (as far back as "Running Mac OS X Tiger" page 136) it looks like _writers_passwd is a list of users who can change that particular user's password.  So, setting it to the username should be sufficient.


How do I use my Airport express to connect an AV receiver that requires ethernet? I set up the airport express(AX) in airport utility and I have it extending my network from my airport extreme. Shows connected and everything but when I plug in my AV receiver it does not get the signal. Furthermore when I connect my macbook to the AX via ethernet cable and assign the network to ethernet it does not connect to the internet? My question is how to I configure the AX so that I can receive the wireless signal from my airport extreme and convert it to ethernet connectivity?  Thanks for your help!!

From the Apple Support Airport Express FAQ:

  Question: Since AirPort Express only has one Ethernet port, does it act as a LAN port, WAN port, or both?

  Answer: Depending on how you have it set up, the Ethernet port can function as a LAN port (defined as either simple bridging or sharing
  your Internet connection via network address translation) or a WAN
  port (connecting to your broadband Internet service provider or
  upstream router). However, it never acts as both simultaneously.
  By default the AirPort Express Ethernet port acts as a WAN port.
  When it is set up as a secondary extended Wi-Fi base station, it can act as a LAN port. Assuming that your Internet service provider only
  gives you one IP address (the most common scenario for homes), this
  means that AirPort Express can only accommodate wired clients when
  acting as an extender or bridge. Therefore, if you need to support
  wired clients and only want to get one base station (or router, as
  it's the routing capacity of AirPort Express that is relevant here),
  you should get the AirPort Extreme Base Station or Time Capsule instead.

According to an answer to a question on an Apple Store page:

  Yes, certainly. Connect Ethernet cable from the Express to your
  non-wireless computer which meets the above listed "System
  Requirements" and use AirPort Utility to direct the Express to "join"
  your wireless network from the list which will show on the popup
  presented to you. The Express will then function as a wireless adapter
  (receiving signals) for your computer, but in that configuration it
  will not extend the wireless network to other devices.

You can accomplish this task via the Airport Utility. In one Apple discussion forum discussion, a user (Bob Timmons) notes that:

  new AirPort Express 802.11n can be configured to "extend a wireless
  network". That is a much simpler setup with much higher performance
  than WDS can offer.

You'll need to use Apple's Airport Utility to set up your Airport Express. Two approaches that you can take are WDS or Extended wireless network, as noted in this Apple Support KB.


Assigning applications to multiple desktops (Spaces) across multiple monitors I have a setup with two monitors.  Is there a way that I can assign an application to one space on monitor 1 and another space on monitor 2?  I currently have it set up so that each monitor has its own set of spaces and would like to keep it that way.

I use eclipse in a setup where I display the editor on one monitor and everything else (console, navigator, etc.) on the other.  Whenever I change perspectives, restart eclipse, or unplug the second monitor, the windows all move onto one screen.

I know that the 3rd party application TotalSpaces2 has the ability to assign program's to specific spaces of Mission Control. Also, I know that you can use separate spaces for separate monitors in Mission Control.

So, check out the trial of TotalSpaces2 (for Mavericks) or TotalSpaces (for Mountain Lion) at http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/multi-monitors2

(I don't have a commercial interest in TotalSpaces2, I just started trying the program myself)


Forgot iCloud Keychain password while updating iOS on iPhone 6s Plus I'm updating iOS on my iPhone 6s Plus, and forgot my iCloud Keychain passcode.

It gives me two options:

reset keychain
approve from other device

The first option will erase all my passwords stored on my devices, which isn't acceptable.

The second option is unavailable. I tried to reset my passcode, but it can only send it to my phone - which cannot receive any messages.

I tried to go to iCloud > Account details and reset from there, but it requests the passcode right after the password.

As far as I know, there is no way to regain access to your iCloud keychain if you don't have access to your passcode or any other devices associated with your keychain. You'll most likely have to reset your keychain.

In the future, consider using a password manager like LastPass or KeePass.


iPhone 6 Plus Unlocking I have been trying to unlock my iPhone 6 Plus which is locked to TMobile. The instructions which they sent me read as follows:

  Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile. 24 hours after
  receiving this email, follow the below instructions for unlocking your
  T-Mobile iPhone. If you have a non-T-Mobile SIM card, follow these
  steps:

  If you have a non-T-Mobile SIM card:
  1. Insert non T-Mobile SIM Card
  2. Complete the setup process.

  If you will be using your T-Mobile SIM card follow the steps below:

  Back up your iPhone using iTunes.
  When you have a backup, erase your iPhone.
  When you see the Welcome screen, connect your device to iTunes.

  If successfully unlocked, the message Congratulations, your iPhone has
  been unlocked will display. Additional information for unlocking Apple
  iPhone devices can be located at
  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201328

I performed all the operations, which have been a pain the neck in their own right. Now I have a fully erased and restored phone on my hands. What I am wondering about is how to actually check to make sure it worked. That is, I am planning to use it abroad and would like to avoid hiccups like arriving to a new place and discovering that for some reason this did not work.

Any help is appreciated.

Before your trip, find a friend whose cell phone connects with a carrier other than T-Mobile (and not an MVNO that connects via T-Mobile), and whose phone has a SIM card of the same size.

Put the friend's SIM card in your phone. If the phone connects, your phone has been unlocked.


Mirroring iPhone screen via browser Is there a tool that could be used to mirror an iPhone screen via browser.

What i need is to provide someone a URL and when that URL is opened in browser he could see a mirroring of my iPhone?

Couldn't find anything when searching. Is anyone aware of such a tool that could help achieve screen mirroring via browser?

I have been doing this for Android using Vysor. Unable to find a similar one for iOS (if one exists)

This is a little dated, and it might not be exactly what you wanted, but it still should work.  There's no simple way of doing this.  You'll need to get an app named Reflector and Google Hangouts, Skype, or iMessages to share your screen.  Here's the link to the site I found this but I'll also list out the steps in case the link goes down: http://mgalligan.com/post/29978268510/screen-share-iphone-live-on-internet

Download Reflector (this awesome app allows your computer to become an AirPlay compatible display)
Activate Reflector - It’s simple. Just open your newly downloaded Reflector app, double-tap your iPhone’s home button, swipe left twice to show off the volume control and a small button to the right to share the screen. You should see “iPhone” or “iPad” depending on your device, and then the name of your computer below that. After tapping on the name of your computer, make sure “Mirroring” is ON. Note: You should now see your iPhone’s screen on your computer screen. Go ahead, test it out.
Start a Google Hangout, Messages.app or Skype screen share. Note: if you’re using Google Hangouts and use multiple screens, make sure that your browser window with the chat in it is on the same screen as the Reflector app. Simply choose the Reflector app as your intended screen share and voila!


Can I disable receiving "effects" in iOS 10 Messages? For reasons past comprehension, the new iOS 10 Messages app allows applying "effects" to messages. I understand that I can disable the ability to generate these abominations by choosing

  Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion

Will this also (please!) disable their receipt?

Disabling that feature will result in a text-only message accompanying the message where the effect was sent stating, e.g.

  (sent with Slam Effect)

This replaces the effect being generated.


Xcode 10.1: Profile is not an "iOS In House" profile I am attempting to distribute via the Enteprise method on my Xcode 10.1 so I can get the .ipa to the organization.

For App Thinning I selected All compatible device variants and selected Rebuild from Bitcode.

On the PROD.app select, I select the PROD mobile provisioning profile the organization provided to me, but I get the following error below:

What does this mean and how do I resolve it?

When you create your provisioning profile and certificate in "Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles" on Apple's Developer web site - you have chosen the wrong type of provisioning profile. You'll need to choose "In House" from under the "Distribution" headline in order to get the right kind of profile.


Best macbook batteries strategies to watch a movie stored on an external USB hard drive Which is the best strategy to save the batteries of your macbook pro, to watch a movie that is stored on an usb hard drive (powered by the macbook) ?

1) Plug the usb hard drive and watch the movie from it.

2) Copy the movie on the the macbook hard drive, unplug the usb harddrive and watch the movie?

I personally think the 2) is the best, but can't say I'm sure 100%

Number 2 would definitely conserve battery as the device wouldn't need to be constantly powered


Stop my iPhone from receiving screen shots and other images sent via SMS? I like to use SMS text messages and not iMessage, and only for text as indicated in the linked questions below.

Today I got a screenshot of a LINE message in an SMS text message and I certainly do not want to receive content in LINE messages as SMS text messages, nor any images at all.

Is there anything I can do to stop my iPhone from receiving screen shots and other images to me via SMS?

How can I ensure or force a message I'm composing to go via SMS on my iPhone 6 in iOS 12?
When does Messages message via iMessage vs. SMS?

Try disabling "MMS Messaging" in your Settings app in the Messages settings.


import music from my ipad i just re-installed my mbp, and have deleted whole disk. i think my music is safe because i had sync it to my ipad.

but after installation done, i can't get my music from my ipad. in iTunes, when i try to click sync music, it showing me an alert that iTunes will remove all music from my ipad.

i know i can sync with auto download purchase items. but i got this music not from itunes stores. i got it by copied from my band studio, ( and some just copied from cd)

do you know how to get the music sync back to the mac without delete from ipad?

The fantastic thing with iExplorer is that it not only transfers and imports your media data into iTunes but also imports the playlists. And you can access all data, even the preferences files from the apps. And you can make backups on your own on app basis if you like. :) Great software, fully worth the ~ 35 dollars.


Why don't my keyboard shortcuts work in VMWare Fusion 6? I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to create and map a keyboard shortcut for the "Suspend" function, but after looking into Fusion's preferences, I'm only becoming more confused. Things aren't working the way I would expect them to, and even after configuring an application shortcut in System Preferences/Keyboard, it doesn't seem to be accessible.

What am I not getting about this that isn't contained in the horrible documentation?

I've found three conceptual hurdles that one needs to understand for any of this to make sense.

Keyboard and Mouse Profiles

For starters, it should be made clear that in VMWare Fusion's application preferences, you edit settings for a keyboard and mouse profile, but these settings do not necessarily apply to your current virtual machine! Your VM is assigned a profile on the VM settings panel under Keyboard & Mouse, accessible by default with command-e or in Virtual Machine -> Settings, or from the Virtual Machine Library -> Settings button. Identify which profile your VM is using to ensure your modifications made in application preferences have an effect.

Shortcuts and Windows Key Mapping

In VMWare's application preferences, when setting up the details of a specific keyboard/mouse profile, there are shortcuts to define and customize, and also some important settings on the "Mac Host Shortcuts" tab--particularly the Command key -> Windows key setting. Many of the shortcuts that are available are listed as various combinations with the command key. HOWEVER, these shortcuts are not really mapped to the command key! Rather, they are being mapped to the Windows key, with the presupposition that the command key you intend to use will be mapped to the Windows key in the aforementioned "Mac Host Shortcuts" setting.

This means that if you normally want to use command-s (on the left command key) as a save shortcut to control-s in Windows, but your Windows key mapping is set to the right command key, your command-s shortcut WILL NOT WORK!

Input Grab and Release/Ungrab

If you've configured it to do so, your host OS will catch specified operating system-level shortcuts and gestures (like mission control and the application switcher), but during normal operation all other input will be sent through to the virtual machine unless a shortcut exists in your keyboard and mouse profile. This includes keyboard shortcuts that normally exist in the application menu items of VMWare fusion, excepting those that are also listed on the "Fusion Shortcuts" tab of the keyboard/mouse profile. Unfortunately, this list of shortcuts is small and cannot be expanded, but there is one shortcut in particular that allows us to break free of the virtual machine context and send shortcuts directly to the VMWare Fusion application. This is the "Ungrab Mouse and Keyboard" shortcut (command-control), and it cannot be edited or removed.

  There is a bug related to this shortcut that arises when only one of the command keys is being mapped to the windows key in your keyboard profile. As mentioned above, the keyboard shortcuts in this list are actually looking for the windows key configured in the command key mapping -- EVEN THE UNGRAB SHORTCUT. If you hold down a command key that is not mapped to windows and then tap control, you will enter a state of sticky windows key, where the virtual machine behaves as though the windows key is being held down until it is "pressed" once again.

So, to recap: In the event that you want to assign and use a keyboard shortcut to suspend your virtual machine, you should do the following:

Use System Preferences -> Keyboard to choose an application shortcut for the Suspend menu item. Some shortcuts may not be available, so make sure your is valid by checking the desired menu item after registering your shortcut -- your desired shortcut should appear next to the item in the menu. If it doesn't, try something else.
Configure your VM keyboard profile to your liking according to the guidelines above.
When accessing the shortcut, first press command-control (where Command is a key that VMWare is treating as a Windows key) to release input from the VM. Your cursor will change to a hand if you did this correctly.
From this point, you can access any keyboard shortcut on a menu item, (like preferences: command-,) including your customized application shortcut.


Is there a program that will let me move an item from my Dock to my Menu Bar? And I don't mean like StatusDock, which will move it to the menu bar but also keeps it in the dock. I'd prefer it to just be gone from the Dock. Any way you can do this?

Removing the Dock Icon

There is a way to remove the icon from the dock; the only problem is that you also lose the menu for the application, which is a slight drawback depending on the purpose of the application itself.

I, personally have never tried StatusDuck, perhaps when combined with the removal of the dock icon, it could be exactly what you're looking for.

As far as removing the dock icon itself, here's the process.

Find the application in the Applications folder (⌘ + click Dock Icon)
Right-click application
Click Show Package Contents
Edit the Info.plist inside the Contents folder
Modify/Add the LSUIElement key so that the value says YES

Note: LSUIElement may change to Application is agent (UIElement)

If you would like the application to show the dock icon again, modify the value to NO and save the .plist file.

It is worthy to mention that using an application like StatusDuck could help you access the application as a status item. You will just have to test it out.

StatusDuck:
http://www.statusduck.com


Apple ID and Primary Email Address - providing that I change my primary email, will my purchases be kept? as from the title, providing that I change my primary email, will my purchases be kept? I'm stuck at https://appleid.apple.com and trying to figure it out.

Thanks

If you change your primary email, the purchases should be the same.  As long as you hit "edit" next to the primary email address field of your AppleID on appleid.apple.com, you should be fine.  Call AppleCare if you have any questions, they should be able to answer your AppleID questions.


How do I delete a single file from the Trash? I'm trying to free up space on an external drive, and after deleting a bunch of stuff, it's still showing very little actual free space.  I went to the trash can, but can't seem to delete the files there other than by emptying the entire trash.

Am I missing something?  What's the point of having a "staging area" for stuff you (probably) want to delete, if you can't get rid of the files in it individually?  The drive will be used on an embedded system, so just "putting files in the trash" doesn't actually make space on the drive, as far as the consuming device is concerned.

The Trash isn't intended for files you may want to delete later but rather as a safety net if you delete the wrong files. If you want to mark files for later deletion, either use a dedicated folder (as already mentioned in another comment) or mark them with a specific label/color.

To delete individual files from the Trash

Open the trash in the Finder
Open Terminal.app
Type rm -rf and then one space character at the end
Drag one or more files to be deleted into the Terminal window ('til you see the green + sign)
Press Enter in Terminal.app
Puff, files are gone!

If you need this very often, I would recommend writing a service using Automator or getting more familiar with Terminal.app/bash.


Java WebStart fails on Mac OS Mountain Lion After searching several hours for a helpful hint on support pages and FAQs that really (!) work this question:

I need Java WebStart for an application that works on MAC OS X (Mountain) Lion. So far we had no problem with the application on Snow Leopard.

On my MacBookAir the applications starts. On a second system with the same OS and the same Java installations I always receive the well known  error window (with the corresponding English message like "you have to load the Java Runtime  Environment for Web Start...)

A click on "more information" delivers the java.com web page that offers the JRE download that is already installed.

The corresponding console error message is:

"No Java Web components present, requesting install"

System: Mac OS X 10.8.2, Intel Core Duo

Installed Java:

Apple 1.6.0_37-b06-434
Oracle Java SE  Run Time environment:7u9)
Oracle Java SE jdk-7u9-macosx-x64.dmg)

Output of
   /usr/bin/java -version
is: Java SE runtime environment 1.7.0_09-b05

The java.com website signals on the installed version web page): Version7 Update 9 installed.

The Java Control Panel also says:

"Version 7 Update 9 installed"

The Java Control Panel offers no choice to "enable the Java web start".

Any suggestion is very welcome!

Best regards,
Werner

The oracle java version here (1.7.0_09-b05) is old and  is  blocked by Safari as a security risk a see this Apple note. Upgrade to the current JDK which is currently Java SE 7u21.


App store is asking me to sign in with my old AccountID I'm working on macOS 10.13.4. When I open the App Store and attempt to update my apps which need updating, I am prompted to sign in to my apple account. However, it's prompting me to sign into foo@yahoo.com without giving me the option of changing that ID.

About a year ago, I modified my account to use a different email address, foo@gmail.com. It's the same account - just with an updated ID. How can I modify the ID within the app store?

If you have originally downloaded the apps while logged in with your old Apple ID, than to update it will ask old Apple ID and password. To fix this issue, delete the installed app, login with your current Apple ID and download the app again. This would solve the problem.


Charge macbook 2015 from ipad charger I was try and my macbook can charger with ipad charger (i see output 5.2v-2.4a) with usb A to C convert.

But when i read on my macbook charger, it is have 2 output : 14.5v-2.0a and 5.2v-2.4a

my macbook can charge in 2 mode (both 14.5 and 5.2) or only with 5.2v?
if only need 5.2v , why need 14.5v output ?

maybe i use ipad charger on along time, it is what problem ?

The iPad charger will take approximately 3x longer to charge than using the standard charger, if your numbers are correct. This may not be fast enough to charge the laptop while you are using it, depending on how much energy it needs.

Try leaving the laptop plugged in while you aren't using it. You can also access the Activity Monitor and go to the Energy tab to get an estimate on how long it will take to charge from the AC.

It is also possible the USB A to C converter you have only supports data transfer and not charging.


Whatsapp Click to Chat link openning in AppStore when URL shortener used When SMS with shortened Click to Chat URL for WhatsApp is received on the iPhone, clicking it leads me to the App Store instead of opening chat in WhatsApp, despite WhatsApp being installed on the device.

When the same delivery method is used (SMS), but the URL isn't shortened, it works as expected.

I tested various URL shorteners and it doesn't work with any.

Has anyone ran into a similar problem and how did they solve it? Googling is unfortunately not giving any results that would cover issues with this use case.

iOS 12.3.1, latest WhatsApp version on iPhone X 256GB.

Using 'whatsapp://' prefix instead of Click to Chat URL will work properly on both iOS and Android devices.


Prohibited sign - Can't boot after trying to open Raspian SD Card So I was following this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo4HphBdR10 and opened the folder of the SD Card. The Screen went black and I rebooted.

Now I get a Prohibited Sign on boot up.

In the Recovery mode (cmd + options + r) I see that my Macintosh HD is unmounted and repairing sais that something is wrong with the Disk.

I can't reinstall because the installer isn't finding any Disks.

What should I do ?

Oh, drat! Sorry to say you most likely lost it all.

This is the exact reason NO one should just follow any random video on the Web. To explain what I am saying, there is a high probability you used diskutil improperly with the wrong disk identifier (your Startup Disk rather than the intended target) and as root, which most likely overwrote Mac OS X with Raspbian without mercy. What is odd about that, however, is that Recovery does work.

For future reference, let me give you a better way to write Apple supported images. Open Disk Utility and click your flash drive. Go to the Restore tab and drag the image in the source box. In Yosemite and later, go to Edit > Restore and browse for the image you intend to restore instead. Restore. But, our problem is this won't work for Raspbian, as it's a Gnu/Linux flavor, not the standard Apple dmg. So we will need Terminal.

But first, a few notes: Whatever you decide to do things using Terminal, be very careful (especially as root, and that goes for all UNIX (and *nix-like systems!) The sad part is that the guy in the video was close, but didn't do a god job of clarifying the inherent danger in blindly writing an image with all powers. ALWAYS back up first before running a dangerous command.

Now, as for the method. If you're new to all this, I would avoid playing in diskutil. Instead, use mount with no arguments to find your disk identifier. You'll note your hard disk also has an identifier, which for example could be /dev/disk0. If you know the name of your flash drive, that's even better as we can filter that right out and ensure we have the right one. So, if your flash drive or card's name is example, we can run mount | grep example to filter what we want. So, now, if it's disk3, you'll see /dev/disk3s1 and example all nicely listed and filtered out, being automounted for us under Volumes.

Once you are absolutely certain what the identifier (or ending number) is for your flash drive, go ahead and type if= and drag the image, so it pastes the path into the Terminal from the Finder. Now apply our previous finding and add of= (output file). Again, if mount or Disk Utility gave you /dev/disk3s1 for example as the flash drive, /dev/disk3 is what we need (we want the root of the drive, not the ending s# which stand for partitions in this scenario). But, this could be different on your system (check first!). In our example here, the completed command might look something like this: dd if=/Users/me/Downloads/2015-11-21-raspbian-jessie-lite.img of=/dev/disk3. Or, let's give an alternate example where it was disk5 and we went to the right directory (like, say, Downloads), we could then autocomplete with tab, add the if, and do this: dd if=2015-11-21-raspbian-jessie-lite.img of=/dev/disk5

But in either case, back up first. Be careful. Do great.

Now, the pressing and more challenging question is how to get your data back. You already discovered your startup disk is gone. First, try restoring from a Time Machine backup (assuming you wisely had this set up). If not, try writing a Linux Mint image (I would say Fedora, but dracut sometimes hangs on live USB in my experience since R19) using a Mac with the example above, or another UNIX (or like) system (though there will be some differences; you will probably see /dev/sd# or mmcblk# for some cards on modern Gnu/Linux flavors, for instance). Or, download win32imagewriter for Windows XP SP2 or later and use that with Administrator rights (again, watch for the drive identifier first; in this case, the letter!) Assuming you have Mint booted, run parted (if it is not available, connect to a network, sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install parted -y. What we are hoping for is that the table is still somewhat intact. Do sudo -s to elevate then run parted -s -l. You should see /dev/sda or whatever your hard drive is.

If you have a valid GPT table and you don't get any warnings about that, continue. If not, skip this paragraph. In the case of sda, I'd do parted /dev/sda. Now, from what you observed earlier, look for the end of any preceding partitions (most likely where EFI sat). Now, assuming a default El Capitan setup, or anything past Lion, this should be 209.7 MB. The start should therefore round close to that point (if the GPT isn't too awful corrupted, parted should warn you if your query does not match and try to readjust). For the end point, where does Recovery start (usually volume 3?) For instance, on my 160 GB disk, it is after 42.6 Gb. This is our end point. With an insane amount of luck, try putting a start and end for rescue, such as rescue 210M 42.6GB and see what happens. If this failed, even with an adjustment, you could try fdisk. The problem, though, is that this is generally for undoing changes before a reboot that are still fresh; this is only a long shot.

If you didn't back up anything, you're not entirely out of luck just yet. From a NetBoot, FireWire, USB 3, or Lightning external startup disk (I.e. that has OS X on it), you can still use recovery tools such as Recuva for Mac, Prosoft DataRescue, or DiskWarrior to try to salvage whatever you can. Raspbian most likely overwrote some of those files good, but if you have the extra time and cash, it'll be worth it.

If all else fails, or if the table is corrupt, your best bet would be to forget about Recovery (since its on the same disk) and reinstall entirely. Ideally, you'll need to either own or borrow another Mac for this next step. Download 10.11, close the Install OS X pop up window that appears, and use createinstallmedia from inside the OS X installer application bundle/package per the instructions from Apple (there is a guide for this). Power down your Mac, hold Option, and boot from the disk. You'll then need to go to Disk Utility and create a new Intel or GUID partition table (GPT). Create a new partition for your data and the OS; OS X should do the rest when it installs. Close Disk Utility and install as usual. Restore whatever you had backed up.

In any case, I'm hoping all this is unnecessary and that you had Time Machine, iCloud, or another backup system working for you. Good luck with it all. Careful with root commands in the future. Hope this helps!


How to remove a container disk and reclaim space with boot partision? I want to delete Apple_APFS container disk1 and reclaim the space to disk2.
I boot on disk2 (Macintosh HD).

This is a duplicate question, however I will still post this answer.
The steps are not obvious.

Use the diskutil command to convert the disk1 APFS container to an empty JHFS+ formatted partition.
sudo diskutil apfs deletecontainer disk0s3

Remove the JHFS+ formatted partition disk0s3. The free space will not belong to any partition.
sudo diskutil erasevolume free none disk0s3

Expand the disk2 container to reclaim the just created free space. The value of 0 means to reclaim as much free space as exists directly after the disk0s2 APFS container partition.
sudo diskutil apfs resizecontainer disk0s2 0


How to run Wireshark in the background without the GUI? I am trying to run Wireshark on Mac OS X in the background. I installed the command line utilities, and so I am able to start Wireshark and capture packets using the command line.

The only thing I want now is to run it in the background, without the X11 icon in the Dock or seeing Wireshark's window. I believe it is possible, but can't find anything in Wireshark's docs.

Maybe another approach would be to hide the icon?

If anybody has already did this or has an idea…

As initially seen here:

As far as I remember TShark comes with all distributions of Wireshark. This runs from the command line. The documentation for it is here: http://www.wireshark.org/docs/man-pages/tshark.html
And there's some examples on how to use it here: http://www.codealias.info/technotes/the_tshark_capture_and_filter_example_page

— David Hewitt


How can I prevent Always Allowed apps from counting towards App Limits Simple use case:  my son has an iPad where he plays some games and uses FaceTime to talk to his grand parents every day.

I want him to use the iPad no more than 1 hour every day, with the exception of FaceTime.  I want FaceTime to be available all the time, without running into any time limits.

I thought, I could set Screen Time like so:

App Limits ==> All Apps & Categories = 1hr
Always Allowed ==> FaceTime

I see that after he has talked to his grandparents on FaceTime for about 20~25 minutes, and played his game for 30~35 minutes, iOS will tell him that he has reached his daily limit.

But this seems wrong to me.  First, in Screen Time page, when I add all the categories up, it is definitely less than 1 hour.

And even if they totaled an hour, his game usage is (as I have witnessed) no more than 30~35 minutes.

I would have expected that he could use 2 hours of FaceTime during the day (just to illustrate the point, not that he actually would do that!) without that triggering any limits, and ONLY AFTER playing on his game for (close to) 1 hour, would the iPad tell him that he has reached his limit.

How can this be made to work better?
Does Apple need to revamp Screen Time a bit more?

The text for "Always Allowed" says that it lets you use certain apps during Downtime or when the "All Apps and Categories" limit has passed. Unfortunately it doesn't say anything about not counting those apps towards any limits.

You could make a new limit that affects every app except Facetime, like this:

(Here I used the Camera app as an example, but you would uncheck Facetime instead.)

This does have the disadvantage that any new downloaded app under Social Networking would also not be limited, but you could monitor for that pretty easily.


How to upgrade Xcode 4 to 4.1? After upgrading to Lion, I am getting a launch error from Xcode 4 saying it requires Snow Leopard. I see 4.1 is now a free app for Lion in the App Store, but it doesn't show up in Software Update.

If I install it from the App Store will it upgrade 4.0 or live side-by-side?

Or, do I have to uninstall Xcode first if I only want 4.1?

You need to install XCode 4.1 from the app store, which will replace XCode 4.0 with 4.1.

When updating XCode to 4.1 you will get a message to quit iTunes to continue the installation. The installation is actually waiting for iTunesHelper process to be terminated. You can terminate the iTunesHelper process using activity monitor.

On my Mac the upgrade to XCode 4.1 failed. So I needed to uninstall XCode 4.0 first.


Run USAF Digital Datcom I want to run the software Digital Datcom in my Mac, which is a Macbook Pro with macOS Mojave 10.14. For this I had to download the program Xcode form the appstore, as well as the gfortran package from the official page. I have already run the file datcom.f in the terminal with the command gfortran before, after that the instructions at the official page of datcom says that the program will start after typing "datcom" one more time but my terminal says me that the command does not exist. Can anyone tell me please what I need to do to run the program and reach the part where it asks me for the input file? It would be really helpful. Thank you.

Instead of typing:

datcom

You should instead type:

./datcom

This should run the program, if you have indeed followed the other steps of the instruction manual without error.


Uncaught exception raised in open directory client-side plugin When I attempt to change the open directory settings for 10.6 server using ServerAdmin I get the following error.

This prevents me from making any changes to any open directory settings for the system.

Does anybody have any ideas on how to solve the issue?

It seems difficult to believe that it is as you suspect, that something that a client did has locked you out of control of your own server.

Check permissions! Break out the Terminal and attempt to discover where the critical configuration files are for Open Directory, and make sure your permissions ( ls -l ) haven't been "bonked" <-- (sorry for the inscrutable admin rhetioric ;-)

Also, if you find the config file(s) in question, you will be able to examine and edit manually ( sudo cat ____ and sudo vi ____). If these files are in an xml binary form, they can be converted with plutil -convert xml1 config.plist and converted back with pluitil -convert binary1 config.plist -- as always, copy the orginals somewhere else, back them up, and work with copies to experiment, so you can always restore them necessary.

also you can attempt to use the serveradmin (<---that's hotlinked) command line tool to attempt what the GUI is preventing you from doing. here is another good reasource, as well as here

It is difficult to diagnose/troubleshoot this without having access to the machine, so I hope I give you ideas to try that may lead to new paths to a solution. Again, let me know in comments if this answer is not helpful, and I will again delete to prevent noise. Good luck!