Why has .localdomain been introduced in Postfix When sending email on my local machine (echo foo | sendmail $USER), the email contains From: (my-user-name)@(my-machine-name).localdomain.

According to my command line tools my host doesn't seem to have a local domain extension added to any of the various host names macOS allows.

$ grep localdomain /etc/hosts
$ grep localdomain /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist
$ scutil --get ComputerName
(my-machine-name)
$ scutil --get HostName
(my-machine-name)
$ scutil --get LocalHostName
(my-machine-name)
$ hostname -f
(my-machine-name)
$ alias hostname
-bash: alias: hostname: not found

My research shows .localdomain stems from a Postfix update. However the Git log contains only generic messages, and I couldn't glean from the HISTORY file why it was added.

Who has introduced .localdomain, and why?
For which specific uses is it applicable, if any? (eg. should it be used email Message-ID?)

There is no email client in your example (besides possibly the echo); sendmail is part of the Mail Transport Agent which on current versions of macOS is by default Postfix. Postfix will set the domain either from the configuration file or failing that some internal value or system call lookup:

$ postconf | grep localdomain
mydomain = localdomain
$ postconf -n | grep "^mydomain"
$

This shows that (at least on my system) the mydomain value is localdomain and that that value is not set in /etc/postfix/main.cf. It thus must instead come from an internal value or via some system call. (You could set it to something appropriate in main.cf; many Mail Transport Agents will reject mail from such local domains because spammers, or otherwise score the message as more likely to be spam. This may not be a problem if the email will never reach the Internet.)

$ strings /usr/sbin/postfix | grep localdomain
localdomain
$ cfu 'char buf[254]; gethostname(buf,254); printf("%s\n",buf)'
glide.local
$

Shows that postfix could be using localdomain as an internal value, as that string appears in the binary. This is likely given that gethostbyname(3) returns something that is not localdomain on my system (you probably don't have cfu but there are many ways to execute arbitrary system calls). If one downloads the source code for Postfix, there are indeed various references to localdomain:

$ find . -name "*.c" -exec fgrep localdomain {} +
./src/global/mail_addr_find.c:    UPDATE(var_mydomain, "localdomain");
./src/global/mail_addr_find.c:    UPDATE(var_myorigin, "localdomain");
./src/global/mail_addr_find.c:    UPDATE(var_mydest, "localhost.localdomain");
./src/smtp/smtp_map11.c:    UPDATE(var_myhostname, "localhost.localdomain");
./src/smtp/smtp_map11.c:    UPDATE(var_mydomain, "localdomain");
...

So this value is very likely to be set internally by Postfix, and if necessary should be adjusted by editing the configuration.


old printer refused to work under Big Sur I have an old Samsung ML 1670 laser printer which is often used when a bulk has to be printed.
It worked well on Catalina but after upgrading to Big Sur it is out of business.
Does anyone know if there is a workaround for this issue?

Try to install https://support.apple.com/kb/dl905?locale=en_US drivers from Apple, then add new printer in Printers & Scanners panel. In the list of available drivers choose ML-1860 instead of ML-1670 and apply.


AirPrint printer sharing using Apple TV I have a WiFi printer that does not support AirPrint.  Currently, I use a linux system with CUPS to share that printer to my iOS devices.  I'm thinking about replacing this linux box with an Apple TV for media playback, and it would be great to keep the print support too.  I understand tvOS allows third-party apps to be written and installed using Xcode, so are there any existing apps that can do this?

You can't directly print from an Apple TV to a wireless printer.  I'm not aware of any apps that do this, either.


Clean partition map before installing High Sierra I'm about to do a clean install of High Sierra on my iMac and I have a Bootcamp partition with Windows 10.

I've checked the partition map, there are a lot of partitions I don't know about and I would like to delete all the unnecesaty ones.

Here is my diskutil list result.

disk0 is your physical internal disk.

disk1s1 is required by macOS. Windows also stores boot software in this partition.
disk1s2 is used by macOS. The partition is not used by Windows.
disk1s3 is used by macOS. The partition is not used by Windows.
disk1s4 is used by Windows. The partition is not used by macOS.
disk1s5 is used by Windows. The partition is not used by macOS.

disk1 is virtual and exists because you are using core storage.

disk2 is the USB macOS installer.

The rest of the disks and partitions only exist because you are booted to the macOS installer. You should not try to delete these partitions.

Basically, the installer creates virtual disks in your computer's volitile RAM memory. These disks are used for temporary file storage. For example, compressed files stored on the USB drive are decompressed and stored on these disks.

You should be able to delete disk0s2 and disk0s3 without affecting Windows. If for some reason Windows will not boot, then you will need to create a bootable USB Windows Installer to fix the problem. If necessary, you can do this from macOS. I would avoid deleting the macOS volume. Instead I would do the following.

Boot to the USB macOS installer.
Open the Disk Utility application.
Erase the macOS volume using the format "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". This  should:

Remove Core Storage  on partition disk0s2.
Remove the "Recovery HD" volume on partition disk0s3.
Create a  "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" volume on a new partition.

Exit the Disk Utility application.
Restart and boot back to the USB macOS installer.
Install High Sierra on to the new volume. This should also create a new "Recovery HD" volume.


How to get data from apps when upgrading to iOS 5 on an iPad 2 I updated my iPad 2 to iOS 5 using my Windows PC.

I backed up my apps, calendar, mail, photos, etc. using iTunes before the iOS 5 update. However, although I got my apps, I am missing all the data in them! For instance: for iAnnotate PDF I am missing all my annotated files, in Note Taker HD I am missing all my notes, and most importantly in bizXpensTrkr I am missing all my business receipts and data!

Can someone please advise in layman's terms? I am new to Apple and used a PC to update.

Do you still have your backup?

Connect your iPad, right click it in iTunes' sidebar and select restore from backup (Sometimes it helps to restore from backup twice).


How to stop Microsoft Skype For Business for starting after reboot How do I stop Microsoft Skype For Business from automatically starting every time I rebook macOS?

Did you check the Login Items?

System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items

To remove an item, choose it and hit the --button at the bottom. Just checking or unchecking the hide radio button won't disable the login item!


Quick way to enable only the web searches I want in Quicksilver Quicksilver has hundreds of different web searches available, but I only want to use a few of them.

I can manually deselect the ones I don't want by navigating to

Modules -> Web Searches -> Contents

and unchecking the boxes one at a time, but this is extremely tedious. I don't seem to be able to select multiple entries.

Is there a faster way to choose just the web searches I want?

The latest Web Search plug-in from http://qsapp.com/plugins/ has newer lists that don’t rely on Blacktree. You should install it.

And if you don’t want to use the defaults (I don’t), just go into Preferences → Catalog → Plugins and uncheck them. No need to go digging into bundles and hacking at their property lists.

From there, you can add your own using the method if your choice. (Manually, bookmarks, OmniWeb search shortcuts, etc.)

Changes you make inside the plug-in’s bundle will be destroyed on every upgrade. Use the catalog preferences to ensure your search list stays around.


Loop multiple videos What is the best way to loop a number of videos, that are already on an iPad?

Either an app or a built in solution. The slideshow feature of the built in Photos app does not really work - it crops the video, and adds a gray border.

I have tried a number of apps for this purpose, none of which actually seem to do the job very well or at all.

Turns out the VLC app was the only decent solution I could find.


Is there a way to download or save voice recordings from messenger? Is it possible to download or save a voice recording sent via facebook messenger?  I can't find ANY reference on Google or elsewhere as to how to do this. Seems if you record it from iPhone (Messenger app), it must be stored somewhere - I was hoping it would auto-save to Voice Memos app, but no such luck.

You can't do this on your iPhone itself, but you can on messenger.com on a Mac.

Open messenger.com in Safari and navigate to the voice recording.
Open the Web Inspector from the Develop menu (enable from Preferences → Advanced) and choose the Network tab.
Play the voice recording.
A new row will be added to the Network tab. Double-click the file and it will download.


Correcting GPS data using Photos Really simple question: Is there a way to fix incorrect GPS data? A recent trip lead to a bunch of pictures taken in the same place getting sometimes wildly wrong coordinates appended to them (probably because the photos were taken indoors).

I'm looking for official Apple products or solutions that run on iOS or OS X if they exist.

There is a app (there is always a app :) to do that, and it is free.

Photo Investigator: View, Edit, Remove Metadata; GPS, EXIF...
By Daniel Anderson

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photo-investigator-view-edit/id571574618?mt=8


Can I create a backup of a specific partition and restore it later? I have my beta partition on my SSD and I want to create a backup of it so I can identically restore it on a different partition, later.

My simple question is: Can I?

I've got multiple partitions and I thought I'd create a time machine backup of that partition solely, excluding all different partitions, and then on a later moment have a fresh partition and restore that time machine backup.

But, it's the first time I would use TimeMachine to actually restore a backup, so.. I want to ask you guys, beforehand.. :)

You can use every HDD for time machine except the system HDD, but if you partition ate your system HDD you can use the new time machine for Time Machine.
Remember: don0t format all your HDD when formatting, you will format even your backup!


After restore, WhatsApp does't show photo anymore After the restore from backup of my iPhone 4S I realised that photos in my Whatsapp chats are not present. Moreover, instead of each photos preview there are a question mark as in the photo reported here below:

I tried to solve the problem with:

a reset of the phone;
a battery pull;

But nothing change.
Someone know how can I solve this problem? Thanks.

I solve this problem with an iTunes restore.

In particular, using an older backup that was previous the one used having found this problem. In this manner, all the WhatsApp photo were present.


Why Safari is consuming so much battery? From last 2-3 weeks I started noticing that my iPhone is consuming more battery than usual, around two to three times more.  When I looked at battery consumption details I found out that Safari is consuming too much battery. And this is happening consistently from last 2-3 weeks when I don't even use safari very much. As an example take a look at image attached, for 12 minutes of screen time it consumed 73% of battery. Why?

iOS version: 9.2.1

Phone: iPhone 6

Safari: latest available version

I had this same problem for the first after updating my iPhone 6s to iOS 11. I wasn't using Safari as I use Chrome but it would consume up to 50% of my battery and I was having to charge more frequently then before.

The solution was to disable iCloud syncing for Safari:
Settings → Apple ID → iCloud and turn off Safari.

My phone is now behaving 'normally'.


Disabling AirPlay on Mac (Sierra) I used to have AirPlay disabled using the terminal (sudo chmod 000 /System/Library/CoreServices/AirPlayUIAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/AirPlayUIAgent). I just upgraded to Sierra and now it has come back and the old way won't work anymore.

Any one know why? Or what else I can do?

@scottishwildcat is correct. Most of /System is off-limits to changes so long as System Integrity Protection (SIP) is enabled.

You can temporarily disable SIP by rebooting into Recovery Mode (press and hold Command-R from the time the computer starts until you see the Apple logo), then opening Terminal from the Utilities menu and entering this command:

csrutil disable

Reboot back into Recovery Mode and access the Terminal again. Enter your desired command, then enter this command to re-enable SIP:

csrutil enable

Reboot one more time into macOS as normal and AirPlayUIAgent should have the specified permissions. Note you'll likely need to redo this each time you upgrade macOS.


Higher RAM vs Higher Storage I am planning to buy the new MacbookAir with M1 chip.
My usage

Basic Word, PowerPoint editing. Plan to use native Pages and Keynotes.
Frequent video editing using iMovie and Kdenlive. I do not require 4K. 720p at 30fps is fine.
Latex editor
VPN and ssh to remotely login to a ubuntu server.
Google docs and google spreadsheets (online)

The base model comes with 8GB RAM with 256GB storage. If I wish to spend extra money which of the following should I go for:

16 GB RAM with 256 GB storage
8GB RAM with 512 GB storage
Go for MACbook pro with 8GB RAM and 256 GB storage.
or the basic MACbook Air should be fine?

I personally think to go either for second or last option.
I do not intend to do any gaming or storing lots of images, movies, audios, etc. Mostly all my docs and PPTS will also be saved on drive and not locally. Immediately after rendering videos in .mp4 format they will be uploaded to Youtube and do not require save them MacBook Air storage.

Opinion-based this may be… however, there's a slightly new paradigm with the M1 "Hard disk" storage configuration.
It is so fast that it makes additional RAM less useful than it was in the past. This is because it is now part of the same chip, rather than having to be accessed over a bus system to another component.
Received wisdom if you have to choose between the two is to go for more "SSD" storage rather than more RAM, as paging is now almost instantaneous.
Another consideration is that once chosen, it can never be changed, so don't come up short on storage, unless you want to be carrying round an external drive for the next few years.
Having said that, no-one can choose for you, you have to finally make your own call ;)
I shall be using this same received wisdom in a week's time, when the Apple Store opens orders for me to buy a new iMac. Right now, I'm going to be going for 512GB or 1TB "SSD" & possibly only 8GB RAM, depending on pricing [which I cannot see just yet].


Mail sent from Apple Mail is not show in Gmail's Sent folder Apple Mail is not showing Sent Items in Gmail. The mails sent from Apple Mail are not in Gmail.

Ensure that in your mail settings you have:

IMAP Path Prefix: [Gmail]

Under the Mailbox Behaviors tab in Accounts settings you have checked:

√ Store sent messages on the server
Delete sent messages when: Never

In the Sidebar of Mail, there should be grey subheadings for your accounts. Under the Grey subheading for your gmail account, you will find folders with titles of your gmail tags (e.g. Important, Starred, etc.) If you see one there called Sent Mail, select it, and select this menu item: Mailbox > Use This Mailbox For > Sent.


Airport Extreme died, looking for replacement with Time Capsule compatibility My home network is served by a Time Capsule 802.11ac, connected to an Airport Extreme 802.11ac via wired Ethernet to extend the range of the Time Capsule.

The Airport Extreme just died. I opened it up, checked that the power supply is OK (it's outputting 12 V just fine, and not just on its own, but with all connectors plugged in), cleaned everything with compressed air, but it's still dead.

I'm looking for a replacement WiFi repeater/router, and obviously with the discontinuation of the AirPort line, it's not an option. Looks like mesh WiFi is all the rage these days. My question is, are they going to be compatible with the existing Time Capsule in the network? Can anyone recommend a specific model which they've had success with? And while beggars can't be choosers, I'd really like to keep using the Ethernet connection to avoid wasting wireless bandwidth if possible.

There are Airport Extremes available on Amazon and Ebay.


Does running both (XCode & Android Studio) at the same time overload my MacBook Air with only 8 GB of Ram This IDE is for the Automation Testing Purpose.

Along with Appium Server, I need to run the Emulator of Xcode's iOS Emulator and the Android Studio's Emulator.

Does this Run smoothly in the 8GB RAM of Macbook Air.

Yes you can and should load up your machine and see how it behaves. I don't think you'll get an overload at all.
The activity monitor will tell you when you run into memory pressure and you can see if swap helps or if you have a workload that would save you time on different hardware.
I’ve still not replaced my 2015 MacBook with 256 NVMe SSD (blazingly fast storage when it was introduced and still in the ballpark on 2019 models for what I need)

I run mongodb, make single page web apps, design and test API and deployment scripts, package Mac software for enterprise distribution, sign apps, notarize apps and generally work / debug / program and develop on this machine. Yes, some newer hardware is faster on benchmarks but in real life, I'm the thing the computer is waiting on always in terms of getting meaningful work done and I know how to measure when I'm waiting for the computer and can then buy a different kit when (and only when) I know I'll save money or time with more horsepower or more RAM.
In fact, developing on this means my solutions run even faster since I know when I make a bad decision and memory isn't free and to make a better database query, better data structure, more elegant code rather than assuming everyone that runs my apps spent $4000 on their portable.


Where to find the Mac OS X Lion security configuration guide? Most Mac OS X releases have very nice security configuration guides, but Lion is not in the list. Is this document available somewhere else on Apple's site, or is there a roughly-equivalent document available somewhere on their site under another name?

I have it on good authority that the Apple Security Guides take a long time to compile and produce, and publication trails the release of the operating system by some time. The same people working on that guide are also producing documentation for various security certifications and other purposes. Once the guide is released, it will be available at Mac OS X Security Configuration Guides

With Apple's recent decision to move to annual OS updates, I wonder if we'll ever see a current security guide again.

Though overkill for most computer users, the US National Security Agency also publishes hardening guides for Mac OS X and other operating systems. (They haven't published for Lion either, and their own guidelines are very likely an expansion  of the procedures Apple recommends.)

When considering the NSA advice remember that security is always a balance between safety and usability and that most of us aren't protecting secrets of State. If you don't know why you're doing it, and have a good reason to believe you need to do it, don't!  There are relatively few users who need to lock down this tightly, and the negative effect on usability, and in some cases functionality, can outweigh the benefits.


macbook pro mid 2012 won't start I bought a secondhand macbook pro mid 2012 without retina and it has faulty battery. So I have to use 3 pin adapter.

Yesterday, it was okay (able to turn on, browse internet) yesterday and when I got home, I got statics (when I touched it, I feels like getting electric shock) when I plugged it in to power extension cord at my living room. After I tried on a few sockets, it still gave me statics but able to be turned on. I just unplugged it without properly shut down.

Today I tried on power on same living room and it still gives statics with a plus that it cannot turn on again.

I tried upstairs, no statics, but it won't turn on.

Before I bring it to a mac store which would cost a bomb (please not that one USD is at least 4.4 times MYR here in Malaysia), what should I try first?

I'm not sure of it's exact model since I only got macbook and magsage with it when I bought it.

I've added a comment to your question seeking some clarification on your issue.

However, in the meantime, I'd reset both the NVRAM and SMC again (and in that order) using the steps below.

Before doing so, ensure you have no external hardware connected and that you're using the built-in keyboard.

Reset the NVRAM

Reset the NVRAM on your particular MBP following these steps:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Reset the SMC

To reset the SMC on your particular MBP, follow these steps:

Shut down your computer
Keep the power cable plugged in.
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the built-in keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

After resetting both the NVRAM and SMC, what happens? Does the issue still persist? If so, see if you can test your hardware as follows.

Run Apple Hardware Test

Your model MBP uses Apple Hardware Test. To use this, follow these steps:

Shut down your MacBook Pro
Restart your MacBook Pro
Press and hold the D key before the gray startup screen appears.
After a while, Apple Hardware Test (AHT) will start.
When prompted, select your language and click the right arrow.
When the AHT console appears, you can choose to run Basic tests by clicking the Test button. However, I suggest you select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox before you click the Test button.
Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.

Note 1: that the extended test will take some time. Take a note of the results and report back.

Note 2: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Let me know if you can actually reset the NVRAM and SMC and test the hardware.


How can I test with Internet Explorer while on my Mac? I work on a Mac, but most of my users are on Windows. What's an easy way to test my websites in IE 7, 8, & 9?  Wine seems kinda buggy and unfriendly.

I have the perfect solution! In 2013, Microsoft released a free officially-supported solution to help Mac developers test with Internet Explorer versions 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 on Macs:

Go to https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/
Select your desired testing OS ("Mac")
Pick a virtualization platform from among VMWare, Parallels, and VirtualBox. If in doubt, choose VirtualBox (which you can download from the VirtualBox site)
Follow the directions to download VMs for the version of IE + Windows you want

Hope this helps.


Can gamecenter friends see what apps I've installed on my iPhone? I'm pretty new to iPhone. I was using Android for years and there was the problem that everbody could see if I've installed a app or not. How is this with the iPhone?
Can anyone (for example friends on gamecenter) see what apps/games I've installed?

Your friends can see the games that have access to your Game Center account (this works accross multiple devices since you can have a single Game Center account for multiple devices).

The access to the game center needs an explicit autorisation. Most of the time on the first start of the game it will prompt you if you want grant access to the game center (or not).


ios10 calendar event times when changing time zones I am flying soon from New York to Hawaii. I've already set up events that will be happening in Hawaii using ios10 calendar, using Hawaii times. When I actually fly there, I want the calendar times to remain unchanged, as I entered them originally. How do I accomplish this on iphone 6plus?

If you set up the events using Hawaii times (ie you set your Hawaii noon meeting as an 8pm meeting while editing the calendar in New York), then there is no problem since when you set your device to Hawaii time all those events will be correctly displayed.
If you set up the events using NY times (you set your Hawaii noon meeting as a noon meeting while editing the calendar in New York), then you need to either edit all the Hawaii meetings or tell the calendar to ignore the time zone info and just display the events as entered by using "Time Zone Override" on the iPhone and setting the iPhone calendar to display events using the New York time zone.
To turn on Time Zone Override:
Go to Settings > Calendar
Move the switch to show green in order to turn on Time Zone Override.

The Time Zone Override always shows event dates and times in the selected time zone.
When off, events will display according to the time zone of your current location.

After turning on the Time Zone Override, you need to select the New York time zone.


macOS Server calendar delegation not finding users We're running a Mac Mini in a small business network, which hosts (among other things) a calendar server using Server.app. We have set up accounts for each user, so that they can sync calendars with the server.

In Calendar (on a user's Mac), one can supposedly share calendars with other users on the same calendar server. This is done by right-clicking a calendar, choosing 'Share calendar' and typing a user's account name. Alternatively, the calendar can be delegated via the 'Accounts' preferences (Caldav > Delegate > Edit..). However, neither of these actually find any of my server users! The dropdown only shows names from e.g. Mail.

I've tested with both 'local directory' and 'network directory' users (i.e. with and without Open Directory), but neither show up. Preferably this would work without using Open Directory (as I have no other use for it, and simple is better than complex), but I'd set it up if required.

What does this delegation depend on? How does it do user discovery?

EDIT: When attempting to do user discovery, I do see the following log entry:

"REPORT({http://calendarserver.org/ns/}calendarserver-principal-search) /principals/ HTTP/1.1" 207 1229 "-" "Mac+OS+X/10.11.6 (15G1217) CalendarAgent/361.2" i=3 or=1 t=80.2 fwd=<client IP here> unix=true

And browsing to /principals (i.e. HTTPS on 443) shows a bunch of stuff, but gives me a permission error when clicking /principals/users.

EDIT2:

When browsing to https://mydomain/webcal, I can actually add delegates using the web interface! However, it appears that these delegates are 'per user' rather than 'per calendar', and the delegated agendas show up differently in Calendar.app. They do not appear to sync to iOS Calendar at all, either. Not ideal, but closer.

This problem started at a client of mine after they upgraded clients from 10.6 to 10.7 and up. Calendar was stable before this. Webcal finds all ldap users, calendar app on clients does not find everyone, and I have yet to find a pattern when who doesn't find someone else. Some cannot find very old ldap users, others cannot find an newly created ldap user. This when creating calendar events and inviting other users. By the looks of it, a bug in the calendar.app in macOS.


Notification to ring like the phone I have been trying to get one of my apps to notify me the same way the IMessage or phone does but I have not had much success in figuring out how to do this. I want it to persistently vibrate or ring the same way the phone would. This normally wouldn't be a problem but for a job I had just gotten they use an app for scheduling and its notifications are of particular importance. The iphone's standard notifications for anything other then the main services only seem to vibrate or beep for like a second  before going silent and I want this to last at least 5-10 seconds longer. Sadly, as far as I can tell, its not possible with the default settings and I need 3rd party software to do this, but I have not had much luck in finding anything that would do this.
Any help is appreciated.

Assuming you have an iPhone(*), you can create custom vibrations, and name each that identifies the unique customized levels, patterns, or other features that make it as unique as any custom vibrations you create.  The iPads my husband and I have do not have this useful functionality, but newer versions may have custom vibration functionality.
To create a custom vibration, go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics and select any assigned ring tone, opening a new page, with additional info and options, the first option defines the current assigned and labeled vibration. If you tap on the name currently set, a new window opens, revealing all pre-set vibrations you can choose from if replacing the current one set for a different pre-designed vibration.  And next on this settings page is the functionality to “Create Custom Vibration.” Press the “>” on this option to access additional vibration settings.
A new window opens, the design somewhat like a workspace with enough room to create lengthy and complex patterns via the speed, tapping variations, generating an audible preview of this custom vibration. Save your custom vibration, giving it a name that most aptly represents the nature of it’s intended design.
This is how you create custom vibrations on iPhones manufactured after the 6S+.  What I don’t know is whether your custom vibrations are included in the app for which a custom vibration would be very useful.  If my reply here ends up working beautifully for you, OR if get stuck at the part where it should be updating the selected custom vibration, it is very likely due to my lack of knowledge of the settings, and become an expert on the use, functionalities and configuration settings, and come back to share and educate your followers on this topic.
Good luck!


How to disable iCloud storage of photos? I would like to use iCloud only for pictures synchronization, but not for storage (Privacy concerns + too large pictures library - I don't know if Apple's security for pictures storage is that good, plus no desire to pay for additional iCloud storage.).

Currently, most pictures appear to be stored locally on the MBP (not in iCloud), though new pictures snapped on iOS do appear in this list (not reliably, though).

The requirements:

All the iOS devices should show the complete library, and only
download a larger resolution picture on-demand, so as to always keep the maximum amount of storage available.
A picture snapped using any iOS device must be synced to all
other devices, without waiting for a manual synchronization through iTunes.
Only MacBook Pro should be storing the full, high-resolution
pictures and videos locally, but I wouldn't mind if the MacBook also had one. Just wanted to avoid having this older computer having to periodically download such a large amount of data.

The setup:
iOS devices:

iPhone 3GS, iOS 6.1.3
iPhone 5c, iOS 10.3.3
iPad 2, iOS 9.3.5
iPhone 6, iOS 12

Macs:

MacBook, Mac OS OX 10.11.6
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X 10.11.6

NASes:

Synology NAS for backups. HDD-based, it's noisy, so not usually
powered on. I would prefer not to leave it open to the Internet for security reasons.
LaCie Cloudbox, fvdw-sl firmware. Usually powered on. Can take
OwnCloud / NextCloud, but seems too low-powered for this purpose.

Others:

LibreELEC media player based on Raspberry Pi 3. Currently stores a
local copy of iTunes songs on an external SSD. Issue: since it's only
100Mbps connectivity, it is painfully slow to list all files.
Shared web hosting with NextCloud installed.

How do I achieve this goal, considering my setup?
For some reason Apple's terminology in regards to iCloud settings for photos isn't crystal clear to me.

Edited for clarity

IMHO, you can't accomplish this.

You're describing iCloud Photo Library, except you don't want to use iCloud Photo Library or iCloud storage.

Consider requirement #1: in order for all iOS devices to have access to the complete library, it has to be somewhere that's permanently available. The MacBook Pro can't be the answer to that requirement, because if you're away, the MBP will either be on a different network and/or be asleep. Or rebooting. Or updating. The only resource that's always available is online. This is why iCloud Photo Library stores the complete library in iCloud storage.

Consider requirement #2: in order to sync, each picture must be uploaded to a readily available resource and then each device needs to be alerted to that fact and download it. Again, this is exactly what iCloud Photo Library and/or PhotoStream do.

Here's what I do, which might help. I also have multiple Macs and iOS devices. All of them use my Apple ID and I have turned off iCloud Photo Library, but turned on PhotoStream. I have personally designated one of my Macs as the Master Photo Library (MPL). Any pictures I take with any device automatically show up in my MPL. Those pictures are also available on other iOS devices within the limits of PhotoStream (PhotoStream only keeps the last 30 days and a max of 1000 photos). Once a picture is no longer in the PhotoStream (31 days later, or 1001 photos later), the picture is still available on the device that took the picture, but, it's also permanently saved in my MPL.

Videos are of course another thing. It's called PhotoStream, after all. So, every time I take videos I care about, I connect the iOS device with a cable to the MPL and offload them.

This does not accomplish exactly what you want, but it gets very close. It's the best answer I can come up with. The only thing "better" is using iCloud Photo Library, which I don't use only because of the monthly cost, not because of security.


Can I use an iPad on the beach safely? I want to bring my iPad to a beach to do some reading while on vacation. I am concerned about sand getting into its ports and causing damage. Obviously water would also be a concern, but I am not planning on taking it in any water. Does sand propose a significant threat and what can be done to limit the chances of a problem occurring?

Yes you can, but there are some aspects of the environment of the beach life that need to be controlled.

Salt water corrodes electronics fiercely. Waves crashing means that the atmosphere at a beach is saturated with water droplets with a high concentration of salt in many cases.
Direct sun on the front black face of any iOS device can over heat it rapidly. You will probably feel it uncomfortably hot before the point where the device shuts itself off to prevent battery damage. Even if the device is powered down, you can permanently damage any Lithium Polymer battery in a few hours if the temperature is hot enough.
Sand can get in the home button mechanism and may never come out. The 30 pin connector, the headphone jack, a SIM slot are easier to clean and less likely to be functionally impaired than the close tolerances of the glass on glass home button gap.
Bright light makes it harder to see the backlit screen and if you are wearing polarized sunglasses, you will see that the display is highly polarized. It's fun from a science experiment aspect, but bad for reading or color accuracy of the display.

I would probably have a Chef Sleeve or two with me and bring an umbrella or shade to control the light and direct heat. A ziplock bag also works if you don't think the closer fitting sleeve is worth spending money on. Depending on your beach some or all of these concerns may be disregarded, but I tried to cover the common beach scenarios.

Other than that - keep it cool, heat yourself up and enjoy your iPad on the beach.


OSX 10.9 Sending files to a windows network drive I have a mapped network drive on a windows tower. I can connect to it, I can read from it. I can't send files to it, though.

When I try and drag them from the finder window into the network drive window, nothing happens. Why is that?

Notes:

All users who access the drive have full read write permissions
I even logged in as the tower's administrator
I have SMB enabled in sharing

Do I need to list the folder im trying to drag to the network drive?

It is likely the flawed SMB2 implementation in Mavericks. Try connecting to the share using cifs://server/share instead of smb:// and this will force the connection to use SMB1 which should be more compatible.


Wi-Fi really slow on Mac until I reboot I have a Mac running Mojave 10.14.5.

I have an issue with the home Wi-Fi. I have a 400Mbps internet connection. When I start the laptop, the Wi-Fi is fine and I'm getting expected internet speeds (as per fast.com), but at some point it drops to less than 100Mbps (again, as per fast.com), and somehow this affects all other devices (phone, tv) connected to the same Wi-Fi.

But then just after I restart the Mac, the speed goes to 400Mbps again, on both the Mac and the other devices.

How can I troubleshoot this situation?

Edit: I added and Image of how things look when connection drops.

I found the culprit. I had a software called Pulse Secure (to connect to my workplace). I uninstalled it and BOOM! Problem fixed. If you have the same problem, it is most likely some VPN software (even if not connected to it)


How to upgrade brew ssh after recent client exploit? I'm running OS X El Capitan 10.11.1

Since the recently discovered SSH client exploit mentioned here I wanted to take action to secure myself. In the process I noticed I'm using Apple's ssh and not the brew version I have installed. So I wanted to change that. One of the things I need to do is edit the file below to point to /usr/local/bin/ssh-agent instead of the system default /usr/bin/ssh-agent. However, even as sudo, I cannot edit this file. It only opens as readonly.

sudo vi /System/Library/LaunchAgents/org.openbsd.ssh-agent.plist

How can I open this file in read/write mode?

To be able to modify certain directories/files in OS X El Capitan you have to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) AKA “rootless”:

Reboot your Mac into Recovery Mode by restarting your computer and holding down cmd+R until the Apple logo appears on your screen.
In the menubar click Utilities > Terminal.
In the Terminal window, type in csrutil disable.
Restart your Mac.
After finishing your mods re-enable it in Recovery Mode with csrutil enable.

The file /System/Library/LaunchAgents/org.openbsd.ssh-agent.plist may be replaced in the next system update.


Remote Desktop for Mac OS X Is there any remote desktop solution for Mac? I don't mean a VNC where one can only manage the computer using the logged user on the computer. I want to be able to use my Mac at home using GUI with my account while my wife accesses the computer locally using her account.

Is it possible?

Mac OS X does not support multiple GUI sessions by itself. There are a couple options however - you can try Vine Server which requires some setup ahead of time (fast user switching on, you have to be logged on with a copy of Vine Server running).

The more robust alternative is a product called AquaConnect Terminal Server which provides services like Terminal Server but requires Mac OS  X Server to run.


Does Apple Music let you hear the whole song on iPhone and iPad? (instead of just 30 seconds or 1:30 of sampling) After I started with the Apple Music 3-month trial, sometimes I search for a song on my iPhone, and I could actually hear the whole song.

So I thought Apple Music probably lets me hear the whole song for most or all of its songs, but there are other cases when I search for a song on my Macbook using iTunes, I could only hear the 30 second clip or 1.5 minute clip like before.

So what is the rule?  I could hear most (or all) the songs on iPhone and iPad for any song on iTunes Store, but not on  any Mac -- is this basically the rule for subscribers to Apple Music?

I've never had a song not play through on iOS or OS X via Apple Music. My guess is network congestion is the culprit when you don't get a full play.

Another possibility is your iTunes account is in a geographical region where Apple Music doesnt have broad coverage of the songs in Apple's total catalog. In at case, those songs that are for sale somewhere in the world, but not in your region, might have previews instead of full plays.

For me in the us, Apple Music gives me all the music I care to consume for the subscription period across all decides that are signed your Apple ID. The notorious artists like Prince simply don't show up so I haven't found a song that' soft sale but not for streaming.


10.7.4 changed my dock background—how do I change it back? I upgraded to 10.7.4 and my dock on the bottom (with no enhancements) received this light/shadow box effect on startup. (It used to have no background.) I don't seen an option to remove it—is this a bug or a permanent change, and how can I easily revert it?

Try this:

Launch Terminal.app from /Applications/Utilities/
Type defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO and press return.
Type killall Dock and press return.


Program for simple editing of MOV files I need a program for editing moves, specifically, only MOV files.
Only simple editing required - cropping, splitting, trimming, etc.
One requirement is that the program does not re-render the video file,
since such changes generally do not need this.

A good example would be QuickTime X trimming facility - you can trim
a huge MOV file and it will save it in seconds, because it will not
render it again.

QuickTime Pro 7 is still around, and can do quite a bit to .mov container files natively. You can select, copy and paste video, extract streams, etc. They removed a TON of features from QuickTime X in the interest of making it prettier and more "user-friendly."


Is it safe to stick an Apple Watch charger to a piece of metal when not in use? Maybe this is a general question for magnetic / wireless charging. I'd like to let my apple watch charger stick to a metal lamp on my nightstand when not in use. Is this safe or will the charger be activated in some capacity? Could be a dumb question, but I searched for this and couldn't find anything.

The short answer is you are safe as long as the ambient temperature and charge hardware don't overheat.

The empirical evidence is you can measure the temperature of the wall adapter and the charging puck to approximate the amount of current that's flowing through the inductive charger at any point in time.

I like to use a fancy infrared thermometer for things like this, but you can use your fingers to know that the charger is within specifications by comparing the temperature change when you take a charging watch off the charger and then let the charger sit against your chosen piece of metal.

Apple's official safety information are at:

https://help.apple.com/watch/ or http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/apple_watch_user_guide.pdf
https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1712/en_US/Apple_Watch_Info.pdf


Read data from Quicken Essentials for Mac I have a relative who has thirty years of personal finance records stored in Quicken Essentials for Mac, which runs on operating systems no later than Mac OS El Capitan. The Mac running this software has gone the way of all silicon and is now defunct. The data is all backed up; the issue is reading it: the problem is that current versions of Quicken cannot import data from Quicken Essentials for Mac. The data seems to be stored in five binary files in the Quicken folder, and just poking around at the bytes of the file doesn't give me any particular hope of decyphering them manually. Is there any current personal finance software that can import the data from Quicken Essentials for Mac?

Broadly speaking, I would create a virtual machine running Mac OS El Capitan and then install Quicken Essentials for Mac onto that. Once that works fine, I'd copy across the five binary files and test to see that they can be opened and viewed just fine from within Quicken Essentials for Mac.
Assuming this works as expected, what you need to do from here depends on what the end goal is, and the actual version of Quicken Essentials for Mac.
For example, if all they want to do is be able to view the data if/when needed, then exporting to CSV files may be all they need to do. These can then be imported/viewed in a plethora of software (including Apple's Numbers and MS Excel).
On the other hand, if they want to make full use of the data in a newer version of Quicken, then importing CSV files may not even be supported (depending on the version and platform, etc). In this case they may need to export the data into a different format (once again, depending on the version they have) and then using a newer version of Quicken (but not a recent version) or another third party app to import the data and export it into a suitable format for use/importing by the current version of Quicken.
The whole process is going to be somewhat messy as the absence of a common cross-platform file format was one of the biggest issues of Quicken software (not just between Mac/Windows, but between OS 9 and OS X versions and between PowerPC and Intel and so on). Intuit just never really handled things very well and lots of users got burned because of it.
I'd be happy to update/expand this answer when it's clearer what the exact situation is and what your relative wants to achieve.
UPDATE
Quicken stores data in a proprietary QDF file format, but has always offered options for exporting data into other formats. Unfortunately, the options offered have differed over time and with different versions.
This means you need to find alternative software that can either import data from Quicken's native QDF format, or software that can import data from one of the other exported formats Quicken has supported from time to time.
In most cases, the best workflow for migrating from Quicken to another product is to export the data from Quicken into either the QIF or OFX format. QIF is a format supported by many financial packages, while the Open Financial Exchange (OFX) format is used by banks and supported by most (if not all) financial packages.
Quicken's support for OFX has been hit and miss, but most versions have supported exporting into the QIF format. So if your relative can get their version of Quicken Essentials for Mac to export data into one of these formats then that's a good start. Otherwise it's a case of determining what format they can export into and then working out the best way forward from there.
As for an alternative to Quicken, there's a lot out there. Free versus paid and cloud based versus desktop based.
Banktivity
Assuming they're still using a Mac and want to run Mac native software, then one option is to use Banktivity1. Banktivity also offers native iPad and iPhone apps.
Two potential cons for this (depending on your relative's situation) is that the current version requires macOS Catalina or higher, and that they've now moved to a subscription model. However, if you don't renew you can still access and use the app - I think it's only the online services you lose access to.
If that's a no go, then the previous version did run on macOS Sierra and wasn't based on a subscription, but I'm not sure if/where that's still available.
On a positive note, your relative can try it free for a month and see if it'll meet their needs. This should give them enough time to test it's ability to import data (as it fully supports importing data from QIF files). This may be enough for them to file their 2020 taxes.
MoneyWiz
Another option is MoneyWiz, a very popular version for Mac and iOS users. This also supports importing data from CSV, QIF, and OFX files. I have personally used this app (on both Mac and iOS), and am very happy with it - although I have to admit it did take me quite a while to get used to how it works.
Also, I've never used it to migrate from Quicken so can't advise as to how easy this is or isn't to do. I do note, though, that they do have a support page entitled Importing from Quicken Essentials for Mac to MoneyWiz which actually suggests importing data from CSV files rather than QIF files.
From memory, they only offer a one week trial period, so your relative won't get as much time to test it out. They've also moved to a subscription based service, but do (or at least did) offer a one-time license option too (but I have no idea of the cost and what you miss out on if you opt for that).
GnuCash
GnuCash is not a product I have actually used, but it is free and has versions for macOS, Windows and Linux. Maybe even more.
It also supports importing data from QIF and OFX files, so it may be an option for your relative.
NOTE: Since your relative has 30 years of financial records, and assuming they get their current version of Quicken to work in a virtual machine, they will probably find it easier to leave their historical data in Quicken and start with a fresh set of records in whatever package they decide to migrate to. At least, that's what I've found many users have had to do when changing financial packages after a long period of time.

1. I am not affiliated in any way with this product, nor have I personally used it. However, I do know of people who have used it and are very happy with it.


iMac OS X 10.6.8, didn't come with any disks...how do I create an install disk I want to do a dual boot with Windows 7 (the eventual goal being Windows 8 but to upgrade I think I need to have a version of Windows on my Mac already).  I meet all of the system requirements and I have the Windows 7 disk.  But it says I also need to have a Mac OS X 10.6 installation disc - which I do not have - it didn't come with the iMac.  How can I precede with installing Windows?

You can use software like Parallels or VMWare Fusion to run Windows alongisde/inside OSX. Those options won't require you to have an OSX install disk. They do require you buy that software and have a liscence for Windows 7.

Not dual boot, but I find it more useful.

If you need an OSX 10.6 install disk, Craig's List and EBay have them. It might be easier to just update to 10.7 or 10.8 (if you computer supports it) and use a USB drive to create a Lion/Mountain Lion installer using Lion Disk Maker: http://blog.gete.net/lion-diskmaker-us/


OS X using lots of memory for no apparent reason I have about 2 GB or more memory that I don't know what its used for. When I restart my computer with no applications running, the used memory is 4 GB, and when I open browsers its over 7 GB used from 8 GB total.

I checked the Activity Monitor, nothing is using more memory than it should be. I am also using Memory Clean app but I don't get more free RAM.

How to solve this? …or even debug my memory usage?

MacBook Pro, late-2011, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, 8 GB RAM

There's nothing to solve here. You should learn about memory management. The OS will keep as much in memory as much it can even seemingly outdated data that might be needed again (think of undo actions, reopened browser tabs, etc.)

However, if really needed to free up some memory, you can use the purge command in a terminal window.


Issues with the SSD storage system on Mac OS I need of some help with a Mac book pro’s SSD storage.
Currently running Mac OS Catalina Version 10.15.4 with a flash storage drive with 121 GB of space.
For some reason, the system keeps running out of virtual memory, and when I check the storage manager it displays a lot of odd behavior.

I get this error message all the time, and it’s not possible to turn off automatically. I think though for this one, it has to do with the browser taking up a lot of space, so if I check the browser’s task manager I can see which tabs are taking up a lot of space, and I close them to free up some virtual memory space.
But the problem has more to do with the overall storage on the flash storage drive. When I open the storage manager it shows that about 50% of my disk space is going to other. That’s a lot of space.

In the screenshot above, I wish I could show the time, because I think something tricky is going on, after a half second, 15GB disappear from the other category (from the first image to the second, they were only taken a second apart). So I think my memory problems are coming from the way the OS is coded.
And often the only way to get through these memory issues is to restart the computer -- which for some reason removes a lot of virtual space. I think the new SSD drives treat virtual memory almost like RAM or a cache system now days, way different than the physical disk drivers from before.
What I was wondering, is there anyone out there that can point me in the right direction or link me to some articles or tutorials on how to go about debugging this?
I currently reading up on Kernel Programming, but I bet Apple isn’t going to allow me to fix this myself.
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/vm/vm.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000905-CH210-BEHJDFCA
Could anybody point me in the right direction on how to fix this?

Several points to make  here:
First and foremost - the difference between the two screenshots is not just that the "Other" category shrunk. If this was the case, I can understand why you argue that this must a bug of some sort. However, if you look closely you'll see that a new row appeared named "Other Users" - and this accounts for the changed numbers as it takes up 12,49 GB of its own.
Essentially when you open that window, the system displays the information currently available to it - while at the same time scheduling a new calculation in the background. This means traversing part of a disk index in order to group the storage used into meaningful categories.  In your case that means that another user on your Mac has 12,49 GB of files in their account.
This is by no means a consequence of "how the OS is coded", nor are your memory problems caused by "OS coding". The window you're looking at, and the calculations that continually update, are not in any way part of the operating system kernel.
I would strongly recommend using a program such as Disk Inventory X or DaisyDisk to locate large files, and see if there's something you can do without, or perhaps move to secondary storage, in order to clear up space.
The reason you're seeing the "Force Quit Applications" window a lot is that you have programs running that are filling up your physical RAM. As you have a relatively small capacity of 8 GB of RAM, programs like Google Chrome will quickly fill it up. Some times you can save lots of memory by using alternative browsers such as Safari or Firefox. You could also consider upgrading the RAM capacity, if that is possible with your model of laptop.
Normally though, applications filling up the RAM won't result in the "Force Quit Applications" window. Instead the operating system would automatically use part of the disk drive to offload RAM in order to keep all applications running - a process known as "swapping". If this happens a lot, you will end up with a slower system - however you won't have to quit applications. When your disk is completely full, as yours seem to be, swapping becomes impossible, and you'll have to quit applications instead.
Contrary to your statements, it is not so that this process is different with SSD than with traditional hard drives. It is exactly the same process. Swapping is done in exactly the same way with SSDs as with traditional hard drives. However, as SSDs are usually much faster, the performance hit taken by swapping is not as severe here.
The reason rebooting your Mac helps is because this stops all the running programs - and thus reclaims all RAM they have been using. This also means that any disk space used for swapping is reclaimed as the programs using that space are no longer running. This is why you see the amount of free disk space go up a bit after rebooting. If you continue to run the memory hogging programs, the amount of free disk space will go down again eventually when the system swaps data out from RAM.
However, none of the above is because the operating system uses "SSDs as system cache", or because SSDs are treated differently than "disk drives from before".
I wouldn't recommend that you spend time on researching kernel programming for solving this problem. Judging from your questions, you'll have an extremely long learning curve, as you would first need to understand how operating systems work, and the basic concepts. However, it is not so that Apple "won't let you" fix this problem - nor that they "won't let you" do kernel programming. You can do all the kernel programming you want.
However, it is completely the wrong direction to take in order to solve this problem, as it is not caused by an operating system bug, or a deficiency in operating system functionality compared to other common desktop operating systems.


Why is my ipad being charged at low speed and sometimes discharged even when plugged in? When I plug in my tablet and use it normally at normal brightness or even not using at all, its battery is often discharging (at 20-2000mA)

and when it charges the speed is very low (only 300-500mA)

The tablet also runs undervoltaged and shuts down at 30% battery discharged and at 15% plugged in. Can you tell me how to fix?

If you charge from a standard USB port (on a PC) or an ordinary USB charger, it is quite normal to charge with up to 500 mA. This is the maximum you can get.

If you want to go beyond that, you'll need a USB 3.0 port or high speed chargers. For example Apple supplies special 10W, 12W, 18W etc. chargers for various iPads.

It is also normal that an iPad is capable of consuming more power than a 500 mA charger supplies. Therefore you can experience that the iPad is discharging the battery even when it is connected to a charger.

To avoid that, close power hungry apps (i.e. don't be playing an intensive 3D game while looking at your battery stats for example), and/or use a higher capacity charger.


How to read and manipulate ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.finder.savedState/data.data Due to a bug in MacOS i've identified that this is the file that is being edited when I make a certain change in MacOS finder.

"~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.finder.savedState/data.data"

Right now it is kind of garbeled when opened with TextEditor.

I would like to be able to read this file, and possibly later write back to it.

This file is modified for instance when CMD + I in a finder window and make changes to sort by kind.

That info is not stored in .DS_Store but Finder is saving it in this data.data file.

I would like to write my own stuff into that file.

Is that possible? What tool? plutil could not read it. It is not a plist file.

Other applications are writing similar files so I think it is possible:

Please try to stick to the question so we don't get into various discussions on why I think I need to edit it.

These savedState resources are used by macOS to support "resuming" applications:

  One of the new features in OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion is the “Resume” ability for all applications to save their last state, meaning when you relaunch the app or reboot your Mac, the application will “resume” and reopen again showing all of the windows and data that was last in use.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/17/delete-specific-application-saved-states-from-mac-os-x-10-7-lion-resume/

I've used these savedState resources to recover command line activity of hackers while responding to computer security incidents.

Within a savedState directory, there are at least two files:

windows.plist, and
data.data

windows.plist contains window layout information and other metadata. data.data is a file containing encrypted records whose plaintext includes a serialized NSKeyedArchiver blob with application-specific state. You can use the fields NSDataKey from windows.plist as AES keys to decrypt records in data.data using CBC mode with IV | 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |.

The layout of an (encrypted) record within data.data is:

typedef struct SavedStateRecord {
    char     magic[4];          // "NSCR"
    char     version[4];        // "1000"
    uint32_t window_id;         // little endian
    uint32_t cipher_text_size;  // little endian
    uint8_t  cipher_text[cipher_text_size];
} SavedStateRecord;

Once the record is decrypted, the layout looks something like:

// little endian
typedef struct SavedStateRecordPlaintext {
    uint32_t unk1;             // often 0x0
    uint32_t class_name_size;
    char     class_name[class_name_size];
    char     magic[4];         // "rchv"
    uint32_t size;

    // This is an NSKeyedArchiver serialized data structure.
    // In practice, a bplist with specific interpretation.
    uint8_t  buf[size];
} SavedStateRecordPlaintext;

From there, you can extract the bplist from the NSKeyedArchiver structure and manipulate it. The interpretation of the bplist state is application-specific.

I've written a parser to support computer forensics that is available here: https://gist.github.com/williballenthin/994db929b1448fdf73baf91207129dec

CrowdStrike also has a parser and resources that are describe here: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/reconstructing-command-line-activity-on-macos/


How to burn Windows compatible CD on Mac OS X Mountain Lion I burned a CD with pictures and PDFs on my Mac Pro but my Windows machine cannot read the CD. Should I have burned the disc differently to make it Windows-readable?

From http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10699?viewlocale=en_US (it applies to OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion"):

  You can burn files to a CD or DVD and then use that disc as a backup,
  send it to friends, or copy the files on it to another computer.
  Discs you burn on your Mac computer can also be used on Windows computers and other types of computers.

You just have to follow the instructions in there. If you prefer, you can read more detailed instructions here: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/burn-cds-and-dvds-on-the-fly-in-mountain-lion.html

Both guides come down to this:

Insert a blank CD.
When the disc appears on your desktop, double click it and drag the files you want to burn into the window.
Then press the "Burn" button in the top right corner of the window, change disc name to something that makes sense to you and press OK.

Make sure you choose a CD type that can be read on your Mac and your Windows machine. For instance, check that CD speed and capacity are supported by both optical drives.

If you wish to reuse a disc (CD-RW/DVD-RW/DVD+RW) you have to erase it first using Disk Utility. See http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5849 for more information.


ATI Radeon HD 5770 resolution issues I have a new MacPro5,1 running 10.6 with the ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card... Today I was using it and the resolution just shrunk to 1680x1050 and thats as high as it will go.  I also get "formatBus" errors when running several programs? (Shake,Etc)

Any idea whats going on?

Have you tried resetting the PRAM?
Also run the Apple Hardware Test to see if it comes up with any GPU errors.


What are the differences between these two Apple TV models? I have some Visa points which I am considering spending on an Apple TV.

According to my bank's website, Apple TV model they offer is MD199C/A. This seems to correspond to what Apple calls the Order Number (which is not the same as what Apple calls the Model Number).

Using Mactracker, I found that the latest 3rd Generation Apple TV's Order Number is MD199LL/A, which is a bit different from what the bank's website is saying, although quite similar.

Does anyone know if the Apple TV with the Order Number MD199C/A is the latest, 3rd generation model? What is the difference between MD199C/A and MD199LL/A, if any?

Many thanks in advance.

Are you in Canada by any chance? The MD199C/A code seems to be for the 3rd generation Apple TV in Canada, whereas the -LL/A code is the part number in the US. I'm not aware of any differences between the two (other than the limitations on Canadian iTunes, such as more limited iCloud TV/Movie accessibility).

You can verify these numbers by adding the Apple TV to your cart in the US or Canadian online Apple Stores.


My iPhone charge percentage jumps dramatically So sometimes my phone will be at 20%, and it'll die before going lower. Just now, it was at 4%, so I plugged it in, and it went up to 11%. After waiting 60 seconds, it's up to 34% now and has sat at 34% for the past minute or so.

What is wrong with my phone? It hasn't always been like this.

Non smooth charging or consumption indicates a hardware failure - usually battery related. If it's in warranty - that usually ends up the first attempt to remedy the symptom.


Frequent freezing and random reboots in iMac (2015) running Mojave After upgrading my 2015 iMac (Intel i5, 8GB RAM, 1TB Fusion Drive) to Mojave I been having nothing more then headache.

It all started with WiFi randomly dropping and when I navigate to the WiFi menu I'm greeted with spinner of death. With only solution is to restart or to logout, unless the whole system lags out and then you have to physically power it down.

The other issue is partially related to WiFi is that when WiFi drops it seem's to kill whatever Browser is running, at first I though it was Chrome acting up as it's a major RAM hog, but this also seems to happen to Opera but less frequently.

When the Browser crashes you can "Kill Process" but even so you will still have the Browser window overlay everything with no ability to Hide or Close it. Again at this point you can't use Navigation menu's as such you have to physically power it down.

And last issue is that I can be working on something and when I come back I'm greeted by Login screen, because for whatever reason the OS restarted itself. Same seems to happen when I try to use the computer in the morning, the iMac is once again has rebooted somewhere over night. Mind you the iMac runs 24/7 like most of PC's I owned and have.

So what troubleshooting solutions did I partake?

Reset SMC on the iMac (Performed this task, no result)
Reset NVRAM on the iMac (Performed this task, no result)
Check Disk (Performed this task, no result, no errors found)
Auto Updates is Disabled and is set to Manual

I will say for the record after random reboots I installed a copy of Windows 10 along the OSX, and guess what I at times come back to Windows 10 booted up. However Windows 10 does not seem to suffer from this Random Reboots, so I'm gonna guess the Reboots are isolated to Mojave.

Any suggestions? At this point I either have to figure how to downgrade or to backup everything and try to do a clean install.

My friend, I noticed something similar with my iMac 14,2 made in 2013.   My iMac began to do kernel panics or reboot, denying me use of my machine.

I narrowed the problem down to the wireless, there appears to be a potentially exploitable bug involved, and the solution I have used for some years now is to simply turn off the wireless interface in network systems preferences.  This has afforded my the ability to use my machine without problems.

F.


Prioritize bluetooth tether over Wifi on an iPad I have an iPad tethered to my iPhone's internet using Bluetooth.  The iPad is also connected to a WiFi network which does not have internet access.  The iPad won't connect to the internet until I turn WiFi off, so I presume it's prioritizing the WiFi.  How can I reverse this priority?

I am guessing that the problem might be related to the DHCP server on the WiFi network, telling your iPad to use a 'default router' on its network.

If the DHCP server sends a value for the 'default router', then the iPad (or any computer, for that matter) will use that router address for all traffic that is not within any of the subnets to which it is attached. This is expected behaviour.

If you have access to the DHCP server's settings, try telling it not to give clients a 'default router', and the problem should go away.

Another suggestion is to turn off DHCP in the WiFi settings on the iPad, and allocate yourself a static address. Again, it helps if you are involved with network administration here, as otherwise you might allocate yourself an address that is already in use, and badness will ensue. But you could allocate yourself an address, a subnet mask and DNS server(s) - and do NOT set a 'router' address.


iOS Updates when bandwidth is restricted I was on a cruise ship in the Caribbean a month ago and needed to keep in touch via email.

Connect@sea offered a 300mb plan which I thought would work.  I followed all of their guidelines about what to disable etc.

All was going well until...

I woke up on day 3 and IOS 8.1.1 had downloaded (182mb) and was ready to install.  After the 182 mb download, my wifi package was also empty.

I can't find any way that I could have prevented that large automatic download. Is there a way?  (It's true that it doesn't install until you approve it, but it downloads automatically.)

Suggested in the first answer is to only connect to wifi, download email and disconnect. That method won't work for me. Some of the emails are server generated alarms (I also kept push notifications from the Pingdom app enabled), therefor I was unable to disconnect from wifi except when checking email because I need the email to arrive in real-time.

What are the best practices when you take your iPhone with you on a cruise?  (it wasn't easy at all actually, there are a lot of controls to use when you don't want to use cellular data, but everything is designed to assume that WIFI is a giant unmetered pipe---not a restricted connection that you don't want to suck data from.)

Regarding the OS update, I seem to remember that filling the iPhone with (songs, books, pictures, apps) to the point where the OS update would not fit was the only way to prevent the OS update from downloading.  On a cruise, where you would likely be taking many pictures, etc, this is not a very amenable solution.

When I've had metered WiFi in the past, I would turn it off except when checking mail and then turn it back off immediately after downloading all the messages.  Depending on how fast your WiFi connection is, even this may or may not have prevented the update from downloading.

About the only thing remaining is to ask the network admin onboard the ship if they could block the software update site as if it were a torrent or porn site.


Weird issue with Apple Pay From this morning, for some reason I see this message when I go to use Apple Pay on my Mac:

I have no idea what's wrong with it, and I checked the security boot in recovery and it's set to Full.

I didn't tweak or mess with the system, I have home-brew install but that's about it.

Any ideas?

firewall on
2FA on on Apple ID
secure boot at full
Never issues before
Filevault on since day 1
MBP 16inch with Bootcamp installed

What a mess Apple software currently is, and I'm using it since Tiger professionally.

The fix was to check this box in Software Update:


Yosemite Startup Manager After Downgrading to Mavericks I downgraded from Yosemite Public Beta to Mavericks by:

Created bootable Mavericks USB
Booted Mac to the Mavericks USB
Went into Disk Utility > Selected HD and Erased HD
Restored to Mavericks Time Machine Backup which was successful

However, when I boot the Mac and hold option to go to the Startup Manager screen it is still the Yosemite startup manager. Is there any way to revert to the Mavericks Startup manager? The Yosemite Startup Manager is Black background with the disk selections, and the Mavericks is light gray background with the disk selections. Has anyone else seen this?

Does it even matter?

The question does not mention a model, let's assume that the Mac is a model that gained a firmware update in connection with Yosemite.

If so, then – for use with Mavericks (without Yosemite) – it may be desirable to reinstall lesser firmware.

  … Erased HD …

– that would have erased an operating system without affecting firmware.

A suggestion

System Information will tell what firmware is installed
compare what's installed with https://web.archive.org/web/20141010090340/http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237 (the 2014-09-23, pre-Yosemite edition of an article)
compare what's installed with the current, post-Yosemite edition of the same article: EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Macs – Apple Support.

Related

Amongst Macs that can be upgraded to support OS X Recovery, can any model not accept a firmware downgrade?

Kernel Programming Guide: The Early Boot Process


Renew DHCP from the command line on a Mac Can I run command sudo ipconfig set en0 DHCP as a standard user which shouldn't prompt for administrative username and password?

sudo ipconfig set $if DHCP && echo OK

Where $if is your network interface. For example en0.

To find which interface you want to reset, you can see the output of ifconfig.

Or if you are lazy, you can just copy/paste this line, which will set $if to the interface which is used to access the Internet:

if=$(route -n get 0.0.0.0 2>/dev/null | awk '/interface: / {print $2}') && echo $if

So in the right order:

if=$(route -n get 0.0.0.0 2>/dev/null | awk '/interface: / {print $2}') && echo $if
sudo ipconfig set $if DHCP && echo OK


iPhone not getting audio alerts from texts and other notification events I have an iPhone 6s running iOS 9.3.1. I have notifications for messages configured to alert with a sound. Other apps are set to notify with sound as well. I do have Do Not Disturb enabled, but it is on a schedule (nights only). The mute switch on the side is turned off. Phone calls and other things make noise properly.

When I receive a text and the phone is sleeping, I get no vibration, no banner popup, no sound. If I then press the power switch, I see the message notification on the screen, so I know the phone did receive the message.

Same issue with the Apple watch I have paired to the phone. I see that the text arrived, but no alert.

Any ideas?

When your Apple Watch is connected to your phone notifications do not light up or make sound on your iPhone: this is unnecessary because you are getting the notification on your watch, so a phone vibrate/sound would be superfluous given that the notification is on your wrist. Thus, the issue is not with your iPhone (as it is not supposed to vibrate when it gets a notification with Watch connected).

So, why is your Apple Watch not vibrating?

Make sure you have not turned off haptics.

Make sure you are not in Silent Mode on your watch.

Turn up the intensity of the haptic vibration alerts on your Apple Watch to ensure that you can feel it when it vibrates.

If you're still having an issue, try restarting your phone and watch  or unpair and repair your watch from your phone (this has helped many users solve this problem).

It's also possible that your Apple Watch's haptic (vibration) engine is broken or weak. Apple acknowledges that this can happen sometimes. Head to apple support at getsupport.apple.com, go to Apple Watch, and press the issue section "Repairs and Physical Damage". Then go to the issue "Taptic Engine or haptic feedback is not working as expected," where you can mail in your Watch for repair or talk to Support on the phone about misfunctioning vibrations.


Automatically zip attachments on Mail getting sent How can I have a single file or several files that I dropped into an email on Mac, automatically become a zip file before getting sent?

Attaching the folder with all the files in it would zip them. But all Mac users wouldn’t see the zip but the folder itself.


IPod touch connect to new PC: no file deletion Is there a way I can plug my Apple device to a different PC to load new content without having the old ones removed?

Unfortunately not. This is a "Feature" of how iTunes works.

I had to do something like this recently with my wife's old iPod.

The work-around was to use a 3rd-party tool to back up the contents of the iPod before connecting it to the new iTunes. The iPod was wiped and then I copied back in the content.

A pain!


OS X 10.11 Not able to change the folder permission I have root permission but still I am not able to change the folder permission

sudo chmod  -R 777 /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/
chmod: Unable to change file mode on /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/: Operation not permitted

But at the same time I am able to do

sudo chmod -R 777  /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/

System details:

ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.11.2
BuildVersion:   15C50

Could anybody help in identifying the issue?

Some of the root folders (e.g. /sbin /bin) as well as some application bundles (i.e. Apple apps) are protected by System Integrity Protection even if logged in as root or using sudo.

If you want to make changes to protected items disable SIP, apply the changes and reenable it.


Can "Multi-Touch" technology of iPhone identify 5 or 10 touches at the same time? Let say you use your 5 fingers to touch & open 5 apps in iPhone at the same time. If that is the case, then "can all 5 apps be opened at the same time?"

Yes, iOS multitouch will track 11 independent touch positions in the current SDK (iOS 7).

However, the springboard app won't launch but one app at a time, so the answer is no to having more than one app run due to precise multitouch tapping the home screen.


Mac OS 10.15 Catalina: where is the first time boot presentation of new features stored? where do I find the presentation of the new features of macOS that is automatically displayed after booting the computer for the very fist time?
Thanks

Open Finder, help menu > See what's new in macOS.

It takes one at: https://help.apple.com/macOS/mojave/whats-new/


Speakers of Macbook Air 2010 model not working I have a 13 inch macbook air 2010 model purchased 3 years ago.

In the past year my speakers are not working.

The speaker icon shows fine, but only there is no sound. More puzzling thing is, while switching on my mac after a shut down, I am getting the OS launch sound perfectly fine. But after that no sound.

Even the headphones are not working, with some muffled sound when i insert in to jack.

Since then I am using blue tooth headphones for past one year.

When I consulted a Apple service center they told that the the mother board itself should be changed, which costs around 30,000 rupees. I just got used to and stopped thinking about it.

One other thing to mention is, the output source is always headphones, even without any headphones in the jack.

Now , after seeing this website, I am just curious if someone has any solution for this.

Lets do some problem hunting, and hopefully repairing (without replacing the logic board).

Since the speakers work for System Sound, and the BT headset works.

Open Audio Midi set up app in your utility folder.

In the check for settings on the left window.

Normally it would only have this setting

If you have any other profiles showing or been active disable them.


How to include recent security patch (APFS plain password vulnerability) into already downloaded macOS High Sierra installer image? Several hours ago Apple released a fix update for macOS that solves the issue with "Vulnerability Exposes Password of Encrypted APFS Volumes in Plain Text".

My question is:

Straight when High Sierra became available I pulled the Installer (last icon in the bottom right corner).

I assume that this files does NOT have recent patch included since it was downloaded before the fix was created / released. Now pretend that I will make a bootable USB flash drive and install this version of High Sierra in another MacBook. To get the fix I will pave to go to App Store and search for updates but what if (in theory) I won't have internet connection on that Mac?

Exact question:
How to always get installer with recent fixes? Should I remove that file from /Applications and re-download it each time new minor version (10.13.X) will be released?

On my main Mac I noticed that High Sierra is versioned as 10.13 but after installing the update the version stayed unchanged. It's not 10.13.1.

You can't merge an update into an older macOS installer app easily. So you have to re-download the full installer to get the most current version. Check that you don't get the restricted (20 MB) installer only app.

After downloading the first full installer (without installing it), move it to a folder and create a dmg choosing the folder (or alternatively zip the app).

Then install the upgrade or trash the macOS installer.app.

After Apple announces and publishes a new installer (not necessarily as a point release update), download it again. Repeat the steps above. If you don't need the old installer.dmg anymore, trash it. I usually keep them.

Under certain circumstances (often after moving the macOS installer.app to an arbitrary folder) downloading the new release will replace the old macOS installer in-place.

To check the build version grep the the file /Contents/Info.plist for DTSDKBuild:

grep DTSDKBuild -A1 .../Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Info.plist

The golden master's build version was 17A362a.

The first installer's build version available to the public was 17A364.

The latest build version as of today is 17A400 (small installer) or 17A403 (large installer).


Change the font size of Safari's Web Inspector Does anyone know how to change the font size in Safari's Web Inspector? It's too small for me and my eyes can't stand staring at it during long periods of time.

I've found some links on the web concerning my question but they don't seem to work either:

https://gist.github.com/vlazar/1549785
http://miekd.com/articles/adding-some-monospace-to-the-safari-web-inspector/

I'll switch back to Chrome and use its own Web Inspector if there aren't any solutions available.

Thanks for the answers above. As an update, in Mavericks 10.9, the file is still Main.css and can now be found at the following path:
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/WebInspectorUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources

You may also find the file using following terminal command:
find /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks -name Main.css


Is there a way to reverse the order of rows in a chart? I'd like to change this chart

to the following one:

So, I'd like to reverse the order of rows. According to an answer on a similar question, you need to create a formula and put it in each cell manually to have this result. But is that really the only way to do this (rather simple) change? I have 3 charts I'd like to reverse and each of them has 3-5 columns and more than 400 rows. So, to put a formula in every single cell certainly is quite time-consuming (to say the least).

Btw., the numbers in every cell are supposed to be placeholders for words. So, selecting 2 cells in a column and dragging the window down won't work.

It seems I've finally figured it out. You need to number all your rows and then select the column which contains these numbers in the organize/sort sidebar. Finally, you choose increasing or decreasing to reverse the rows. This order remains even if you delete the column with the numbers.


Copy to external HDD fails if copy dialog is in background When I try to copy 50 GB to external HDD it succeed only when copy dialog is active. If I activate another app it fails at about 10gb with error "the operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8084)". If I switch between apps often enough it also succeed. I tried it with 2 different external usb3 drives. It looks like mavericks decides to lower priority or freeze inactive copy process which causes copy error. The error tends to appear only when copy dialog is not visible (fully obscured by another window, minimized, another fullscreen app is active). How to fix this?

I think your hunch is correct. You seem to have run into a problem with App Nap. To save energy, a background task with no visible UI gets throttled down and eventually stopped. Each time you bring the dialog to the front, it has a "visible UI" and gets a new lease on life.

Depending on which app is doing the copying, you might be able to disable App Nap for that application. Get Info on the app, and put a checkmark in front of "Disable App Nap". You can't do that with Finder, though, because Finder's Get Info window doesn't show that checkbox.

You might try disabling App Nap system-wide. To do that, go to Terminal and enter the command:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES

Well, not quite system-wide. Only within your account. Repeat while logged in as each user that you want App Nap disabled for.

Bear in mind that disabling App Nap may make your computer consume more energy. If it's a portable, that means shorter battery life. But no worse than the way things were before the App Nap feature was introduced in Mavericks.


Is it possible to receive information from share action in a shortcut? For example, I want to have a shortcut "get meta info from image" like this:

I open Photos on my iPad.
I Select an image and click the Share button.
I Select  "get meta info from image" shortcut in the popup menu.
The shortcut runs and it can receive the image which I selected.
The shortcut popup a dialog that has meta text information (e.g. name, size, ...).

I stuck in step 4.

How to make a shortcut receive information from share action?

Or is it possible to receive information from share action in a shortcut?

Thanks.

Edit:

Add screenshot of the shortcut I have so far

Yes, it could.

I asked a question on reddit and got an good answer.

Thanks StewieOi.

This is the final solution, if anyone encounters the same problem as me, you can refer: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/eb687b48bd1444e9b3f9169a8d1f1084


How can I create a symbolic link in Terminal? What command is used to create a symbolic link/soft link?

┌── ln(1) link, ln -- make links
│   ┌── Create a symbolic link.
│   │                         ┌── the optional path to the intended symlink
│   │                         │   if omitted, symlink is in . named as destination
│   │                         │   can use . or ~ or other relative paths
│   │                   ┌─────┴────────┐
ln -s /path/to/original /path/to/symlink
      └───────┬───────┘
              └── the path to the original file/folder
                  can use . or ~ or other relative paths

$ echo content > original
$ ln -s original symlink
$ ls -la original symlink
-rw-r--r--  1 grgarside  staff    8 28 Jan 18:44 original
lrwxr-xr-x  1 grgarside  staff    8 28 Jan 18:44 symlink -> original
$ cat symlink
content

For more information about ln(1) see the man page.

The path to the symlink is optional; if omitted, ln defaults to making a link with the same name as the destination, in the current directory:

$ cd ~/Documents
$ ln -s ../Pictures
$ ls -l Pictures
lrwxr-xr-x  1 user  staff  11 Feb  1 17:05 Pictures -> ../Pictures

To create a symlink to replace a system directory (e.g. if you want to have /Users pointing to another disk drive), you need to disable System Integrity Protection. You can re-enable it after the symlink is set up.


Accessing iCloud "Mobile Documents" on latest Lion Possible Duplicate:
  How do I sync iCloud iWork documents with Lion?

It used to be (for example, as documented here: How do I sync iCloud iWork documents with Lion?) that you could access iCloud documents from the ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder. However, it appears that in the latest updates to Lion (I am using 10.7.3) that this functionality has been removed/disabled. FWIW, I'm trying to access the documents on my iPad stored in GoodReader from my Mac.

Does anyone know any workarounds or alternative approaches for this?

I posted a solution here that doesnt require any special apps/tricks:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/63026/28551


Authentication Server could not be contacted Our OS X Server machine has had no issue at all with being in the Windows AD domain right up until we updated it to OS X 10.10. Now it behaves bizarrely, refuses to connect to our Exchange mail server, and even rejects the DNS lookup for all of the other servers on the network.

I tried removing and readding the Server to the domain, but I get

"Unable to add server.

Authentication server could not be contacted (5200)"

Is there any way of finding out what the solution may be?

I had the same problem. We have MACs on El Capitan to High Sierra and Win 2012 R2 as Domain controller. After a lot of trial and error, I found out that the AD user has to belong to  "Account Operator" security group, even if the user is Domain Admin or Enterprise Admin. We found this out after a lot of struggle.

Hope this solution helps you.


Can't access local Documents folder, only iCloud one I ran out of space in my Macbook Air a few days ago and the computer gave me the option to upload the Documents folder to iCloud, to which I agreed and proceed. Now, in the Finder, I can only access the iCloud folder of Documents, which doesn't let me copy the documents to an external device. Also, I would like to delete some things from the Documents folder from my SSD.
If I go to Machintosh HD -> Users -> MyUserName there is no Documents folder. However, it still taking space in my SSD, because I can see it in Storage Management.
Could you help me to copy to an external device and delete from my computer the Documents folder? Thanks

In Big Sur the real location of an iCloud Documents folder is within ~/Library/Mobile Documents. There you will also find folders for various apps that maintain their own iCloud folders. No matter where you view them from, various icons should appear by files (to the right in list & columns views) to indicate their iCloud status. The full explanation of those icons can be found on this Apple Support page. Here's a screenshot from it...


Save web page and associated files separately (Just like on Windows) I am a previous windows user and I try to continue my work on a Mac.
My dilemma now is how to simply save a web page as html and all associated files in a separate folder.

This was easy in Windows.
When I saved a web page I got the option to Save entire web page.
It downloaded an HTML file and created a folder with the same name as the file with added "-files".
All associated files like images, stylesheet and some javascript were downloaded in that folder.

I like this way because I have then a total control of the downloaded web page to add a note or elements as I chose to.
More plus, if I save multiple web pages from the same web site, all images that are the same (like layout) will only replace the older images (as long as they have the same file name). So the size will not increase as much. The "-files" folder will only increase with new article images.

On a Mac - Safari only have two options....
Save source or webarchive.
Webarchive is not edit-friendly

Anyone got a tip or suggestion?

Try Google Chrome. It does like you suggest when you choose "Web Page, Complete" on saving a page. It saves an HTML file and then all the associated in a folder with a similar name.


View all times app was opened On macOS in the Finder, one can see when an app was last opened.

But suppose I have just opened the app and want to know the open history of the whole day, or of the past two days. Is it possible to find that out? Also, can I find the total time this app was active in the past x days?

Given two answers suggest using apps for this, is it possible "just" by using the standard pre-installed apps from apple?

There are multiple apps which allow you to track application usage.

Timing App Paid
Usage Free
Time Sink Paid

I am not affiliated with any of these products in any way.


Does software compilation continue even if I close the lid of my MacBook Pro (7,1)? My specific case is that I am installing something from MacPorts and it's taking a very long time. I just want to close the lid of my laptop.

Will the compilation still continue?

I do not want to install the NoSleep app.

As mentioned before, closing the lid of a portable Mac causes it to sleep, and not to dream of compilations as-yet unfinished.

  What happens when I close the lid on my MacBook Pro running OS X?

If (and only if, apparently) your Mac is connected to:

an external display,
an external keyboard or mouse or trackpad
a power adapter,

your laptop will operate in "clamshell mode", as outlined here:

  http://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201834

and your compilation will continue.


Can't change APFS external drive icons Edit: The problem somehow resolved itself today. I'm not sure how, but I suspect it is because I restarted the computer. I don't believe granting Finder.app full disk access was needed, since I undid that yesterday.
Original post:
I can't change icons on APFS-formatted external drive volumes. I've tried many things as detailed below, but nothing is working for me as demonstrated by the screen recording below (click for higher quality):

In the screen recording you see that I'm able to change the icon on "old Mac Pro" which is an external volume formatted as Mac OS Extended Journal (using the usual procedure: pasting an image into the upper left of the Get Info). However, the same procedure does not work on the APFS formatted volume, regardless of whether I copy/paste or drag either .png or .icns formatted images.
I've tried this on both a 2015 MacBook Pro and a 2020 M1 MacAir, both running Mac OS 11.3.
===========================
Details of what I've tried:
This site says .icns files are required sometimes (since Catalina).
This site describes making .icns files using Preview (I found this works for icons when images are 512x512). This video shows making .icns files using a automator quick action found here. User BOrax on this site suggests a need to grant Finder.app full disk access, which I tried using System>Security>Privacy>Full Disk Access>
hit + then navigating to /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app  -- again, nothing helps.

In a similar issue I had an actual ".VolumeIcon.icns" file on the system volume of a Catalina installation, instead of only on the data volume, just linked to from the system volume.  Only the generic icon showed on the Desktop, no matter what.
Removing this icon file and replacing it with a link to the data volume (as intended) solved the issue for me and I could subsequently paste an icon that did show on the Desktop again.
Also, when pasting a new icon, use the Data volume, not the icon on the Desktop.  If you cannot find it in Finder, use Disk Utility, select "APFS - Data" in the sidebar, right-click and choose "Show in Finder".
You could try this, before carrying on removing the icon file on the system volume.
Since you are running Big Sur on the external drive, which seems to have an actual icon file in the system volume's root directory, I've tried an exercise and removed the link there on a Big Sur volume and again replaced it with the same link:
.VolumeIcon.icns -> System/Volumes/Data/.VolumeIcon.icns
Setting the external drive (in your case named "APFS") as startup disk in System Preferences, I rebooted into its Recovery, holding cmdR at reboot.
There - launching Terminal from the "Utilities" menu - I disabled authenticated root with...
csrutil authenticated-root disable

(Note: csrutil disable was used earlier, but I don't think this should make a difference)
Without restart I checked the volumes and their mount path with...
mount
...which shows the system and data volumes of the drive in question (named "APFS" and "APFS - Data" respectively).  The system volume clearly shows "read-only":
/dev/disk6s5 on /Volumes/APFS (apfs, sealed, local, read-only, journaled)
So I went ahead and mounted it writeable:
mount -uw /Volumes/APFS

...and checked that "read-only" had gone with another mount command, which showed:
/dev/disk6s5 on /Volumes/APFS (apfs, sealed, local, journaled)
Going ahead, I removed the link (which would be a file in your case):
rm /Volumes/APFS/.VolumeIcon.icns

...changed to the root directory of the drive's system volume...
cd /Volumes/APFS

...and created the link again:
ln -s System/Volumes/Data/.VolumeIcon.icns .VolumeIcon.icns

Checking again with...
ls -al
...showed the correct link:
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel    36  3 May 14:10 .VolumeIcon.icns -> System/Volumes/Data/.VolumeIcon.icns

Now I deviated from the instructions on this site and did not bless a new snapshot
bless --folder /Volumes/APFS/System/Library/CoreServices --bootefi --create-snapshot

...but just rebooted twice into the APFS volume, which I was allowed to do (maybe deleting the link and just recreating it was not considered change enough).
PS.  The question is though, if this is worth doing for the sake of an icon on the Desktop.