Camscanner-like app for Mac OSX I have some photos of notes that have been sent to me, and I would like to "fix" them in order to have a scanned-like pdf like the one that I get when scanning with Camscanner app (on Android or iOS).
I've done some research but I've found only a discontinued app, doxcan.
 Is there a maintained app to do so?
 EDIT: from the comments, here's a more detailed explanation of what I need:
I need something that allows me to "flatten" the photo and make it in white and black. Just like when in Camscanner you fix the corners of the document and it warps the image in order to make it as it was acquired from scanner. Then it performs a conversion from color to b/w (probably applying some filters too, but nevermind of that) doxcan does it but I cannot find anywhere to download, since it's discontinued...
here is all I found about doxcan

I use PDF Pen Pro to fix up scans and OCR them (optionally) and see as PDF. Depending on what "fix" them up is, the preview app might be fully capable for your needs.

PDF Expert also gets great reviews, but I've not needed anything as Preview and PDF Pen Pro have my needs covered.

https://smilesoftware.com/PDFpen
https://smilesoftware.com/PDFpenPro


Testdisk show unusual media descriptor (0xf8!=0xf0) on hard drive Running TestDisk 7.1, I'm getting a "Unusual media descriptor (0xf8=0xf0)" error on what was a perfectly functional hard drive.

Please see the attached photo.

How do I diagnose and recover from this?

The best would be to simply stop running TestDisk and start using the drive for whatever purpose it was intended, and to the ask here for instructions, if that isn't working for you.

The TestDisk software is not reporting CRC errors, as your describe in your question. Instead it is simply telling you that it thinks the formatting is "odd":

I gather that you're dealing with a secondary, external drive and that it is probably a USB pen drive or similar of 8 GB size. The pen drive has been formatted as a hard drive, while the TestDisk software marks this is as "odd" as it believes it should have been formatted as a floppy drive instead.

In reality there's no real difference between the two for most, if not all, purposes that concern macOS.

If you really want to get rid of this TestDisk error, all you have to do is simply repartition and reformat the drive.


How do I enable a standard account to SSH in? I have SSH working fine on my Mac.  I created a new "standard" account but I can't ssh in with it?  Why is this and how do I remedy it?

Most likely you have not enabled ssh for all users in the sharing preference pane.

Either go add the user you created or tick "Allow access for: All Users"


Can I devote more room to my voicemails? I have an iPhone 4S with plenty of space on it but I keep lots of voicemails...to the point where sometimes people can't leave me a message because my voicemail is full.  Is this an iPhone thing that I can adjust or is it strictly a Verizon thing?  Most of the voicemails I keep are of my kids...and I know I can save those off as audio files...but I'd rather just use the space on my phone.

Thanks!
Drew

Voicemail is handled by the carrier. The size of your mailbox depends on the plan & features you have with Verizon, not on the free space available on your phone.

I doubt Verizon will keep old messages indefinitely, so if there are messages that are important to you, you should save backup audio files of them. Then clear out old messages to make space to receive new ones.


Any performance gains when disabling secure virtual memory? To disable secure virtual memory in 10.7, one does the following:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.virtualMemory DisableEncryptedSwap -boolean yes

However, are there any benefits to disabling secure system memory?  I'm not concerned with security as much as I 'm concerned about system speed.

According to MacWorld, the advantage of disabling encrypted swaps should be “just a slightly less overhead on the page in & out process”.

So yes, there is a minor performance gain, but it won’t be a huge performance boost. To me, it’s not worth the security risk (of potentially having unencrypted passwords and other sensitive data in swap memory).

You’d get a much bigger performance boost if you’d disable virtual memory completely:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

To re-enable it:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist


Where are the images for a .pkg / .dmg file located? I was wondering where the default .pkg image file is that looks like:

This is not located at

system/library/coreservices/CoreTypes.bundle/resources

Same goes for .dmg files. Unless I have to go and download a .pkg/.dmg file and then "Get Info" and copy the icon in the upper right; which is the method I used to get the image earlier. Is it locally exclusive to .pkg files only? (meaning that apple makes an application where every pkg is set to default to have that)

Images for most document types are provided by the application associated with that document type. For example, if you have TextEdit set as the default application for opening .txt files, the Finder will use an icon from TextEdit.app/Contents/Resources for those files (the exact icon file is controlled by TextEdit.app/Contents/Info.plist). But if you switch the default application to, say, BBEdit, then it'll switch to using the icon from BBEdit.app/Contents/Resources.

Installer packages and disk images work this way, so their icons are /System/Library/CoreServices/Installer.app/Contents/Resources/package.icns and /System/Library/CoreServices/DiskImageMounter.app/Contents/Resources/diskcopy-doc.icns respectively.


Can a jailbroken iPhone 3GS be safely upgraded to the latest iOS via iTunes? If someone has an unlocked, jailbroken phone, what will happen if the update button is clicked in iTunes? Will the phone be updated and work? My friend wants to do that.

I did the same a month ago when my friend gave me the iPhone and everything worked well. His phone was also unlocked and jailbroken, but, after the update, I wasn't required to do any of the stuff. My phone is working well and I am able to download and purchase apps from the App Store.

Should I proceed with updating my friend's phone too?

Go for it! You'll lose the jail break (duh!) but it'll restore to a normal state like any other iPhone.


External HDD problem with iMac OSX I purchased a 3TB HDD, which I put into an USB enclosure for my iMac.  The drive is recognized at boot, but it only shows 801.23GB.

I formatted the drive with into two 1.5TB FAT32 partitions via Win7. My Windows machine shows the correct partitions, but when I attach the enclosure to my iMac it shows one 801.23GB partition.

Do you have any idea?

I have no idea why the Mac can't see the 2 partitions.

Try using Disk Utility on the Mac to format the drive with FAT 32, then give it 2 partitions, and see if the Windows likes it.

That's the best I can come up with.  It works with thumb drives.


Win10 / Sierra / Bootcamp - cannot see OS X partition, no CoreStorage, no FileVault After installing one of the major Windows 10 updates a while ago, I lost the functionality of seeing the HFS+ partition under Windows 10. After reading up on this issue and finding a number of threads where users experience the same issue, I am still unable to find a solution that allows me to regain this function natively without the use of third-party apps such as MacDrive or Paragon.

Funny thing is that I am not running on CoreStorage and have FileVault disabled, hence cannot tell why this is not working as it supposedly is provided as part of the latest Bootcamp drivers.

Any ideas?

Terminal Disk Info:

MacBook-Air:~ User$ sudo diskutil list
Password:
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:         Microsoft Reserved                         16.8 MB    disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            116.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS                         8.0 GB     disk0s4
   5:                        EFI NO NAME                 237.0 MB   disk0s5
   6:       Microsoft Basic Data Windows 10              124.0 GB   disk0s6
   7:       Microsoft Basic Data Webserver               1.1 GB     disk0s7

MacBook-Air:~ User$ sudo diskutil cs list
No CoreStorage logical volume groups found
MacBook-Air:~ User$ sudo gpt -r -vvv show -l /dev/disk0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=251000193024; sectorsize=512; blocks=490234752
gpt show: /dev/disk0: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk0: GPT partition: type=E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE, start=2048, size=32768
gpt show: /dev/disk0: GPT partition: type=48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=409640, size=227248312
gpt show: /dev/disk0: GPT partition: type=426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=227657952, size=1269536
gpt show: /dev/disk0: GPT partition: type=48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=228927488, size=15624192
gpt show: /dev/disk0: GPT partition: type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, start=244553728, size=462848
gpt show: /dev/disk0: GPT partition: type=EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7, start=245938176, size=242198528
gpt show: /dev/disk0: GPT partition: type=EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7, start=488136704, size=2095104
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 490234751
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34       2014
       2048      32768      1  GPT part - "Microsoft reserved partition"
      34816     374824
     409640  227248312      2  GPT part - ""
  227657952    1269536      3  GPT part - ""
  228927488   15624192      4  GPT part - "OSXRESERVED"
  244551680       2048
  244553728     462848      5  GPT part - "EFI system partition"
  245016576     921600
  245938176  242198528      6  GPT part - "Basic data partition"
  488136704    2095104      7  GPT part - "Basic data partition"
  490231808       2911
  490234719         32         Sec GPT table
  490234751          1         Sec GPT header
MacBook-Air:~ User$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 30515/255/63 [490234752 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  490234751] <Unknown ID>
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

As I do not want to wipe the whole HDD and backup two system partitions, I instead installed Paragon HFS+ for Win10 which ultimately fixed the issue. Give that Paragon merely installs drivers for HFS+ interaction, I tend to believe that the bootcamp drivers must have been affected during one of the Windows Updates, hence suggest others with the same problem to first re-install the bootcamp drivers before turning to Paragon.

The most up to date bootcamp drivers for your apple notebook can be found on the Windows Recovery Drive in the WinPEDriver Folder, you maybe have to assign a drive letter to the partition first (right-click "This PC" > Manage > Disk Management > right-click WINRECOVERY and click "assign Drive Letter").

Hope that helps


How do I prevent iWork apps from restoring windows from the previous session? Whenever I reopen Pages or Numbers, all documents that I had open when I last exited are reopened. I have the "restore windows" checkbox unchecked in System Preferences > General, but all windows from my previous session are always reopened every time I re-launch Pages or Numbers. Is there a way to force iWork apps to behave as expected?

Judging from Apple Discussion threads (a quick search turned up these three threads on the first page of results alone), the global Resume switch does not seem to consistently stop applications from saving and restoring Saved State information.

If you only want to disable Resume selectively for iWork, you may be best served by something like RestoreMeNot or TinkerTool, which has a dedicated tab for granularly managing Resume besides its other tweaking features.

If you want to completely disable the Resume feature, Mac OS X Hints outlines a procedure to do so. I can’t judge on it, nor recommend it, as it is altogether too hackish for my taste – the editor’s label “proceed at your own risk” applies.


How can I know that iMessage is active? If I see such keyboard (please, take a look on the image below), am I right with that: iMessage is active?

The upward pointing arrow in green circle indicates that the message will be send as SMS and not as an iMessage. The name/contact of recipient must be green too.

For iMessage the name/contact would be blue.

Contact shown in blue, registered in iMessage:

Contact shown in green, not-registered in iMessage, will be sent an SMS:


MacBook white support 64-bit Need to ask a question about my MacBook White

It's Early 2009 model (http://support.apple.com/kb/SP504)

My question is, will it support:
1. Snow Leopard with 64-bit
2. Windows 7 with 64-bit

Thanks

With Snow Leopard, you never really say if you want 64bit or not.

With Windows, yes, according to this Apple KB, your laptop supports 64bit Windows


Books not purchased in iBooks Store are not syncing between Mavericks and iPhone After upgrading to OS X Mavericks, I added some ebooks bought directly from publishers, such as O'Reilly, by dragging them into the iBooks app. However, when I use iBooks on my iPhone, the ebooks aren't showing up. Is iBooks able to sync books not purchased via the iBooks Store? If so, what am I missing?

MacBook Configuration

13" MacBook Pro Retina with OS X 10.9 Mavericks
iBooks ver 1.0 (build 169)
Settings > General Preferences > Sync is checked
I have performed File > "Move Books from iTunes..."
I have authorized this computer from within the iBooks app

iPhone Configuration

iPhone 4S with iOS 7.0.3 (11B511)
iBooks has both Sync Bookmarks and Sync Collections enabled
I have confirmed that I'm using the same Apple ID on the MacBook and iPhone

You have to use iTunes.

Open iTunes, click on your device and then choose the Books tab. There you can select which books you want to sync to your iOS device.

It appears to sync your pages placement too.


So my Yosemite install is slow - what to do? I installed Yosemite today on a 2010 MBP, 8GB RAM, 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo.

Its awful, its so slow, everything seems to hang, even simple things like Finder. Chrome is going as a snails pace and Mail is struggling too. Its nearly, very nearly unusable.

My attempts to optimize the Mac for speed are as follows:

I have disabled all extensions in Chrome, turned off a whole host of stuff from 3rd parties in OSX that I thought might be giving me issues.

I can see CPU usage is high for a variety of tasks every now and again, including;

md_worker
Setup
WindowServer

Any ideas anyone to speed up my Mac or diagnose what is causing the slowness?

Troubleshooting a slow mac is fairly easy, but sometimes tedious.

You will want to and quit all apps.

You might even go to the Users & Groups preference and remove all applications that start when you log in to your Mac.

Turn off WiFi and then shut down the Mac so you can start isolating it. Remove all peripherals except the keyboard, display and power cord. Power on and then log in and let it run for 5 minutes and then take a snapshot of the Activity Monitor. Look and see what CPU usage is and if the background tasks are taking any CPU time.

If so, dig deeper - open terminal and run "sudo sysdiagnose"

If not, go ahead and connect your peripherals one at a time.

Check the CPU/Activity Monitor and watch both the Memory Pressure graph and the CPU. If you want, you can also look at energy, but that's better for half hour snapshots for me.

At this point, you should know the OS is fine and all of your peripherals and hard drives are not causing the slowness.

Now go ahead and start the apps you choose to run when it's slow. Again, you are still disconnected from any network - just checking the OS and the CPU.

When that's fine, you can conclude that the data coming in from the network was causing a load the OS wasn't handling.

If you can narrow things down, get a sysdiagnose from a clean start and again when it is "slow" and post a second question with details of what your initial troubleshooting has shown.


'Show Package Contents' in new iWork (Yosemite) File Formats After installing both Yosemite and the new iWork suite updates (Pages 5.5 and Keynote 6.5), I've noticed I can't 'Show Package Contents' in order to access/modify the media associated with these files.

Does anybody know how to get in to these seemingly new formats?

Doesn't seem like a simple unarchive, either...

I've managed to expand the file by using the system (or any other) archive utility.

Here's how I got into the file:

Make a copy of the .key, .pages, or .numbers document
Change the file extension to .zip
Unarchive as you would any other .zip file to produce a folder
This folder is similar to previous show package contents bundle representations of older file versions
Make the changes you need to the document's data — in my case, this was modifying a few picture files that were used as icons throughout the multi-slide presentation
Re-compress the folder
Change the resultant zip file's extension to .key or .pages or .numbers


iPad Air bedtime alarm sample loops indefinitely when stopped after upgrade to iOS 11 After upgrade to iOS 11 my iPad Air 32GB (MD786FD/A) I've got the following defect: the wake-up signal in the integrated bedtime application keeps playing after I touch 'stop' button on the screen or press mechanical 'Home' button to stop it. The short sample of the melody (~0,5 sec) is repeated in the loop continuously. The only way to stop the sound is to switch off the device or start the playback in another application.

In all iOS versions before 11 the problem was not present. I tried 4 updates of iOS 11 (11.0.1, 11.0.2, 11.0.3, 11.1), but the problem is not yet fixed. I tried rebooting the device, enabling-disabling the wake-up alarm, changing the melody - nothing has helped.

Any ideas how to fix that? Any workarounds possible?

The workaround is to unplug the IPad over the night. For some strange reason sound looping is not happening, if the power is not supplied during the alarm sound. Software fix is not available so far.

Suggested here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/32517010#message32517010


macOS Terminal autocompletion suggestion I'm looking at a video and the Terminal in WebStorm looks like this

As you can see there is an autocompletion suggestion while he's writing the command. Any clue on how to get this feature?

Here's the video: Creating Demo APIs with json-server

To clarify: You see the red part is what the user typed and the gray is the suggestion. I would like to have the suggestion.

You can use the zsh shell with the zsh-autosuggestions plugin.

https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions


SSD install and user info transfer I have a iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011) 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5-12 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 I have installed a Samsung SSD 850 Pro 128GB drive . I put a new install of Yosemite 10.10.2 on the SSD and have it booting to my new drive. I would like to know how to remove the OS from the old 1TB drive and move over my user information? I would also want to remove the OS from the old drive? Is this a possibility  or have a going  about it the wrong way. *****I may have not stated this correctly in the first post of my question.***** I have left the original 1TB mac drive installed in the system and added the second drive with the new installed OS.. So right now I can start up in what ever one I want to.

The easiest way would have been to create a time machine backup before replacing the drive, then use Migration Assistant to import your account, apps, etc.

However since you replaced the drive already, you will need to get an USB to sata connector, or external enclosure, to connect the old drive in order to access the data.

At this point you have 2 options

1 - Run migration assistant and point it to the external drive.  It should see your old account and allow you to import everything.  (Sometimes this fails, see http://www.hardturm.ch/luz/2014/02/fixing-os-x-10-9-mavericks-migration-from-external-volume/)

2 - Manually copy the data, or the entire account folder.  The original account will be under the /Users folder on the old drive.   You can copy the full account if you wish, then use system preferences to create a new account with the same shortname; it will prompt if wish to use this existing folder for the new user account.  However, if you decide to try to copy manually you may run into permissions issues.  You most likely will have to reset permissions on the folders/files but you can use BatCHMOD to do this (free).  Be warned that I would not mess with permissions on the original drive in case of a problem, only work on the copies you make.


Mount a disk image as physical USB drive? I have an certificate manager ("BankID") that allows me to export certificates from its certificate store. However, for some stupid reason it only allows me to export these certificates to USB drives, not to a local file system, or, as I want to, a cloud storage unit with file system integration (I use Wuala which use MacFuse for its file system integration).

Is there a way to make my Wuala volume behave and look like a USB drive?

I am not familiar with this particular certificate manager, but generally I would suggest to create an empty disk image; I hope this will work for you.

Open "Disk Utility" and simply click on "New Image" and save it to your hard drive. Now, if you mount the disk image (double click on it) you can save data to it.


Less intrusive alternative to Appsfire Deals? I like the basic idea of Appsfire Deals: tag applications you're interested in, get a push notification when they're offered with a discount. But I don't like that the app frequently notifies me of promotions for apps I did not tag. (I already turned off the “Daily Recommendations” in the app's push notification settings, the only other option offered there is to turn off push notifications completely.) Is there an alternative to Appsfire Deals which limits its push notifications to apps you're actually interested in?

There is for example AppShopper. To use the notification feature (called "wishlist") you have to create a free AppShopper account.

I'm using it for a while and don't get any spam.


Config Profile ~/.bash and ~/.bash_profile Default & Preferred Permissions? On MacOS, what are the default and preferred permissions for ~/.bash and ~/.bash_profile config profiles?
This guide shows 700 as preferred.
To view permission for a file: private stat -f "%Lp %N" ~/.bashrc
Permissions guide.

bashrc and bash_profile are read by bash and do not require the execute bit to be set. Nor do either require the execute bit set when sourcing the file in your current bash session. That said, an octal representation of 600 would be my choice.
The default permissions set on a file is governed by umask.


Non-Breaking Hyphen Sequence Interpreted as Cmd-hyphen (Zoom out) I'm trying to insert a non-breaking hyphen into a web app in Google Chrome. The key sequence is ⌘⇧-. Whenever I type this key sequence into a program (tested Notes, Textedit, and Chrome itself), it is interpreted as ⌘-, which is mapped to either reduce text size or zoom out. How can I enter non-breaking hyphens without using the character viewer and why does this peculiar behaviour occur?

To enter a non-breaking hyphen in Google Chrome just enter &#8209;: ‑ (<- check the source by opening my answer in the edit mode).
The underlaying web app has to support this though.

A universal method to enter a non-breaking hyphen for all apps is to enable "Unicode Hex Input" from System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Input Source, choose it in the menubar and enter alt2011.

For Apple and probably some other apps you may set up an auto correct entry like nbhy -> ‑. You have to type nbhyspacedelete to add a non-breaking hyphen then.

With apps like Karabiner or Ukelele you may reduce the effort by remapping key strokes.

I still have to investigate the behavior to add an explanation why this happens.


Mac Pro: Any way to recognize a bootable USB on startup? I have a Mac Pro 2,1 2x6-Core Xeon@2.66 GHz and am trying to boot from several ISO images written to USB sticks. I have tried the dd-based methods as recommended by Ubuntu, with no luck. In every case the stick fails to be recognized at boot time. I have also tried booting from a rEFIt CD (which I can do) but the loader there doesn't identify the USB stick in the front of the machine.

Is it possible the MacBooks are so different from the Mac Pros that these instructions wouldn't apply? Does anyone have a reproducible method for creation bootable USB sticks on a Mac Pro and then booting from them?

I don't know much about booting Linux on a Mac, but you should be able to start up with the option key. It may take awhile to start up, but you should get a screen that allows you to choose what disk to boot from. Hope that helps!
EDIT: Check out this Apple Support Doc here.


iTunes Match - This item is not eligible for iCloud I signed up for iTunes Match and have uploaded nearly all of my collection to iCloud.  Unfortunately, I have several tracks that have given me the following error:

This thread indicates that I can convert them all to mp3 (even though most are already mp3) and I should be able to upload them to iCloud.  However, as pointed out in that thread, this is undesirable because of a) potential loss of quality due to the conversion process, and b) having to make sure that I properly replace the tracks in all associated playlists.

Does anyone know what the underlying cause is?  Is there another way to fix the problem?

UPDATE
Here's a screenshot of the file info summary, as requested:

I've got that same CD and iTunes was able to download that track via Match.

It looks like your problem is due to the file's bit rate. Match requires bit rates greater than 96kbps, yours shows 84kbps:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4124

I found this tip for reencoding from within iTunes:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/ipod-hardware-accessories/58137-change-encoding-itunes-possible.html#post361408

  You can change the encoding quality by changing the quality settings in iTunes ->
  Preferences -> Advanced -> Importing. Reselecting the songs that are
  at 320, right clicking and hitting Convert to MP3 (Or AAC whatever you
  use) will reencode them to the lower rates

I believe when you do this, it preserves the original file, but make a backup, anyway - better safe than sorry.


Will iWork '08 support autosave and versions? Will iWork '08 work support autosave and versions? I really only use iWork like twice a year, and don't feel like buying a new one.

EDIT: Wait! It supports app resume though! Yay! Does all app support app resume by default?

I don't believe iWork '08 will support those features.


Safari's "Quick Website Seach" Address Bar Feature Redirects Google to Ask Different My default search engine in Safari is Bing (Amazon Gift cards FTW!).

I usually search Google by starting to type "goo" and hitting tab to to autocomplete, which enters search engine mode.

However, Google searches always come here. I removed apple.stackexchange.com from Manage Websites in Safari Search preferences:

But every time I visit the site it is automatically readded.

I don't mind it being there, but why are Google searches directing here?

https://shouldiblamecaching.com

I won't recommend removing the site from history, however, you can try removing it from "Manage Website data" under Safari privacy preferences and then use command + option +E or Empty Cache under Develop menu.


How to drag the last Safari tab to another window? When I have five windows open and want to consolidate two windows into one I usually manually drag & drop all tabs from one window to the second one. The issue is that you can’t drop the last tab onto another window.

My current workaround is to create a new (empty) tab, to drag & drop as usual, and then to close the window with that empty tab.

Is there a way to drag the last tab in Safari to another window like in Chrome or do I have to continue using my workaround?

In Safari, one can move even the last tab of a window into another window simply by clicking on the tab's title area and then dragging and dropping onto the tab space of your target window. Dragging the last tab to a new window causes that window to close.

This is what it looks like to move the last tab, which I had opened at Top Sites.

That is actual size. The window 'collapses' during the drag operation and becomes semi-transparent.

The requirement is that View | Show Tab Bar is selected when the window is open with a single tab. This setting is sticky; it will 'stick' between Safari sessions.


Mac OS X Applications Windows Stack Order When you right click an application in the dock, a list including the opened windows for that application is open, like this: http://cl.ly/image/350Q2J0q0e25

The problem is this: I would like to specify the ordering of these windows some way. Or at least understand what is the criteria for ordering these windows. I see no apparently logic for this window order.

Look the following: http://cl.ly/image/2I0E1A0y2A1q

The first window is in the desktop 3, in the second monitor. The second window in the desktop 4, in the second monitor. The third window is in the desktop 1, in the first monitor. There is no aparent logic, and they are not ordered by the most recent use, I'm sure.

Going by what I see on my Mac, and looking at your examples, it seems pretty certain that the order is alphabetical.

I would expect that if there were a way to specify a different ordering, it would be under the Options submenu, but alas, there is nothing of the sort there.


Ability to view WIFI connection details? I've recently entered the mac world by getting my very first macbook pro and now am living with the differences of "thinking differently".  One thing I can't seem to find is any details on my connection.

Is there a way to see if the wifi I am connected to is B/G/N etc; Or does this require some custom app?

It is hard not having 'advanced options' ;)

Hold Alt when clicking at the AirPort icon on the menu bar. It should say PHY Mode: 802.11.x, where x is the type of connection.

You can also launch Wireless Diagnostics from that menu to capture packets and graph signal and noise measurements.


Cannot get onto Apple Developer Forums Every time I attempt to log on to the apple developer forums it tells me I need to create a new user account (even though I already have one), and when I try to sign up it gives me an error:

Anyone else have this issue and/or know how to fix it? Thanks!

From time to time I have had this "create account" page appear for what seems like no reason.  In my case, there was a reason.

You may have already been logged in to Apple's single sign-on with an Apple ID that hasn't yet been set up for use with the developer forums.  When this occurs, the forums site picks up the login, notices that the logged-in Apple ID is not "forums ready", and forwards you to the "create account" page.

To get past this, you can go to developer.apple.com's "Member Center" to sort out your login, then return to the forums web site.


How do I send ASCII text to printer (over USB)? I have a (cheap Chinese) thermal printer with USB connection with Windows and Linux drivers. I tested installing the Linux driver PPD with Gutenprint and usbtb at first without any luck.

So I would like to be able to send text-only direct to the printer. I can't see any virtual device under /dev/ that seems to correspond to the printer.

The output from System Information looks like this:

Generic Bulk Device:

  Product ID:   0x5011
  Vendor ID:    0x0416  (Winbond Electronics Corp.)
  Version:   3.00
  Serial Number:    1234567890
  Speed:    Up to 12 Mb/sec
  Manufacturer: Generic
  Location ID:  0x14100000 / 1
  Current Available (mA):   500
  Current Required (mA):    100
  1284 Device ID:   print00

Is there a way to send text (ASCII) to the printer?

When Mac OS X tries to identify the printer it manages to send PostScript code that the printer outputs verbatim so at least some parts of the communication with printer works. If I just could avoid sending PostScript code and instead just send ordinary text.

I managed to install a raw printer driver and print to it from the command line.

Using CUPS/Gutenprint's web interface at http://localhost:631/ I added a printer with device URI

  usbtb://Generic%00%00%06/Generic%20Bulk%20Device?serial=1234567890

and selected "Raw" as the make for the printer. (Please note that the serial URI parameter corresponds to the serial number for the USB device as listed in the question!)

I can now see the printer listed when issuing the command lpstat -p -d

  printer Generic_usbtb is idle.  enabled since Tue Jul 16 23:04:11 2013

To print the text file text.txt I write lp -d Generic_usbtb test.txt


Paste image from the clipboard into a PDF in Preview The question title describes what should be a common/simple operation?  But I can not find the options to do it : After having copied an image to the clipboard -even from Preview itself - when right-clicking _nothing happens- ie. no context menu. And in Edit  we only see these options:

Is it the case that one can not  paste images atop an existing Preview window? What are simple alternatives?

You CAN do it. At least this is what worked for me on MacOS Catalina and Preview Version 11.

Copy onto the Clipboard, the image that you want to paste on your PDF page.
Go to Preview -> File -> New from Clipboard.
This will basically create a new Preview document with your image in it. Now click anywhere on the image, press Cmd+A to select the entire image, press Cmd+C to copy and then (this is the crucial part!!) press Delete to delete the image.
You will see a blank screen in Preview since you have deleted the image. Press Cmd+V and your image will reappear, but now, in a different format that can be copy-pasted across Preview documents.
Finally, select this 'new format' image using Cmd+A, copy it using Cmd+C and navigate to your PDF document and paste using Cmd+V.

Voila! You can paste the image anywhere in your PDF document and on any page and you can resize and edit it just like you can with shapes. I think Apple didn't intend this to happen and I hope they don't read this and change this feature :P


Is a 3-5 second delay normal for a Retina MacBook Pro to wake up from sleep? For 3 days, I now got a new rMBP. I am a first time Mac user.

I had a friend with a MBP and it usually wakes up in a mere second, as soon as he opens the laptop's lid up. However in my Retina MBP, it takes a few seconds (3-5s) to wake up.

Is this normal?

After the rMBP or the MacBook Air are left sleeping for one hour, they enter a deep sleep mode in order to conserve battery.  Traditional Macs without SSDs do not enter this mode, so they might awake from sleep a bit faster.

To answer your question, that is normal behavior.


Cant share iCloud storage with family I am a family admin
I purchased a 200GB plan which allows for sharing
I sent the share notification to family members
I received the invitation as a push notification on the family member device
When I click it, it will take me to the Apple ID setting in the Settings app
When I click on iCloud and look at storage it is still maxed out (5GB of 5GB used) and my only options available under “Manage Storage” is to “Upgrade,” which then wants me to purchase a plan.

Note: I also cannot get purchased app sharing (not in-app purchases) to work

You need to contact Apple Support so they can "refresh your family members iCloud account". Dont tell them that specifically, but what can happen is that iCloud may not be acknowledging the change, and its something they can do on their end.

Other questions for you to answer:
Do you see that family member in family sharing?
Is it only that family member? If not call Apple Support with the other parties present (physically or 3-way).
Do they belong to another family?


Mail can't connect to... non-existing account I get alerts from mail that a password to one of the mail accounts is not valid. This may well be - however, I'm not using that account any longer. In the account list - this account is NOT present - so I couldn't remove it.

I think mail is either confused somehow because this old account has been replaced by a similar account (anne@mydomain.com is now anne.stahl@mydomain.com). Or, perhaps the old account is still on one of my other devices (iPhone or iPad) and somehow saved in the cloud (I checked the devices).

After trying all sorts of things with Keychain and other devices I finally figured out what is causing this. The offending 'account' was in the SMTP list. You can find this by going to 'Preferences' in the Mail app, select the 'Accounts' tab, click on the dropdown for 'Outgoing Mail Server' and there you can 'Edit SMTP Server list'.


What C++ IDEs are available for iPhone? I really love my iPhone, and much as possible, I want to do everything from there.

I'm a software engineering student and, when I'm away from my PC, I'm planning to use my iPhone as my programming machine (meaning that I want to program directly on my iPhone).

Are there any available IDEs for iPhone that will let me program in C++?

There are no native IDE available for iOS. Apple restricts unsigned code from being run on all iOS devices, thus making an IDE on iOS impossible. (this is possible on android to run code directly on the device that is written on device)

Your best bet is to get a regular text editor such as nimbus or anything that can checkout documents and edit them from git, svn or dropbox. You will never be able to run this code on iOS, so you will need to push it to your repository and compile and run it via a remote desktop client or via a SSH terminal.

To really fully automate this process you would have to edit your code, push it to the repository, compile it on another machine and then have that compiled binary shipped to your device using a distribution mechanism like testflightapp via a series of scripts (test flight has an API for this). It's not impossible, just hard.

Another option is to use a remote desktop client and remote to an IDE on a PC to edit and run your code there.


Disable message / call notifications for one specific contact One of my contacts is annoying me with text messages. I could block them, but then I'd never be able to see the messages they send and I want to have the ability to do that.

So instead the idea I had was to turn off text message notification sounds / badges / etc for just this one specific contact.

Is this possible? It seems like I can turn off notifications for people not in my contacts, but really I just want to turn them off for this one specific person.

Leave them under your contacts and then click the "do not disturb" when you click on the info of their text message.


How can I make files invisible from to the shell? I have various folders with custom icons (some added by Resilio Sync, and some by other things) which drive me crazy in the terminal.  Is there any way to hide them from the shell?

I know how to hide them from the Finder, and that's not what I'm asking about.  Deleting them is also not what I'm asking about.

Is there any way to make them invisible to the shell?

Not really. What you seek isn't something shells try to support. Shells are really about open access to a system, not hidden access.

Some shell commands and functions will ignore directories and files that are prefixed with a . by default. For example, ls does this:

IanCsiMac:~/code/tmp
> ls

IanCsiMac:~/code/tmp
> ls -lah
total 16
drwxr-xr-x   3 ian  staff   102B Oct 15 15:06 .
drwxr-xr-x  44 ian  staff   1.5K Oct 10 11:03 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 ian  staff   6.0K Oct 15 15:06 .DS_Store

But the .-prefixed file in the above example isn't considered "hidden". Just "not displayed in the default view". Any sort of hiding like this would necessitate you rename your files and folders so they're prefixed with a . and then they'd also disappear by default from Finder.

As you can see from answers on other SE sub-sites (1, 2, 3), the prefix-with-a-dot is really the only consistent way to keep a file or folder out of the normal view of most shell functions and commands.


System Preferences locked After Username Change i have a problem with my MacBook Air.
I recently changed the username and now if I want to unlock 'users and groups' or If I want to make changes that require the administrator information (username and password) the system doesn't recognize me.
What should I do? is it possible to create a new administrator account to replace the old one without losing all my files?

EDIT: I can't even create a new user account.

Have a backup, then:

Create a new administrator account by re-running the setup assistant. You can do this by deleting /var/db/.AppleSetupDone from single-user mode.
See I don't have administrator account on my mac
Delete your existing user account from System Preferences, keeping the home folder.
Rename the home folder with the new username you want to use if you haven’t already done so.
Create a new user account with the correct username. You should be prompted to use the existing home folder you renamed:

  The Users folder already contains a folder with the same name as the home folder for this account.


Adding "popup menu" to an input method that doesn't support it I've recently seen several mentions of "the popup menu of accented characters produced by press/hold" that seem to say it exists in macOS.

It doesn't work with some input methods, unfortunately.  My favorite is "Unicode Hex Input" and it doesn't work there.

I have in the past successfully changed input methods, but that was before this feature existed.  Is there a way to dump an input method to a human-editable format and copy/imitate how this pop-up trick is done?

With Ukelele I was able to make a copy of the Unicode Hex input source and add the "en" language to the bundle format.  This seems to have created a version of Unicode Hex with a working popup, as shown below.  Modifying the popup would be a separate operation with the pressandhold.app.

The image shows the input source used both for Option 1234 (= U+1234, Ethiopic SEE) and the press/hold letter a.  I have not tested it in more detail.  A copy can be obtained here .


OS X Lion: App-Specific Resume I know there's a system wide preference to disable 'Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps', but is there any way to have it restore only specific apps?. I would like to have Safari open in full screen every time I launch it.

defaults write com.apple.Safari NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool YES will enable it just for Safari.

Note that you can also temporarily toggle the behavior by holding ⌥ and choosing Safari → Quit And Keep Windows (or ⌘-⌥-Q).


iOS 7 update failed - stuck on Connect to iTunes I was downloading iOS 7 to my iPhone 4 and the update was going for almost 1 day. I left it overnight and when I was about to use my phone it is stuck on the 'Connect to iTunes' screen (iTunes logo with a USB cord). My phone is still stuck on that and when I try to fix it with iTunes with my PC (Windows 7) the message always pops up saying that my phone needs to restore. Can you help me with this?

When your phone gets stuck trying to update, it usually means it has way too much data in it. For a good average update that's takes at least 20 mins, you'll need to have at least 2.5 GB. Your phone has gotten stuck because it had way too much stuff in it, and it can't continue.

My solution: restore the phone. There is way too much data inside,and it will stay that way unless something happens. This can be a good and bad thing. If you had some stuff on iCloud or some storage, you just might restore your apps and everything else. But if you don't, let's just hope you had nothing important in the phone, because it might just go down the drain. Besides you are left with no other option, right?

I hope this helps. If you find a better way, please use that way instead of this way. I hope you are able to fix your phone.


4 hd in my MacBook Pro I have 4 hd in my MacBook Pro. Macintosh HD - system disk. But where did the 3 other disks come from and what to do with them?

You have only one SSD in your MacBook Pro. The main former CoreStorage/HFS+ volume and the Recovery HD were transformed/merged to an APFS container while upgrading to macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) though.

Here is the old partition scheme:

diskutil list
/dev/disk0:
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                       *120.5 GB    disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                    209.7 MB    disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           119.4 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD            650.0 MB    disk0s3

After converting it to APFS disk0s2 and disk0s3 are merged to disk0s2 as one physical volume (container). The container is split into various volume disks.
A boot disk APFS container usually provides four volumes with different roles:

Preboot (which has no predecessor)
a non specific one/multi-purpose (the former system volume)
Recovery (the former Recovery HD)
VM (which has no predecessor)

Only one (the former system volume) is visible in the Finder!

The sizes of the volumes can be adjusted dynamically by the system without user interaction.

diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                       *120.5 GB    disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1        120.3 GB    disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                     +120.3 GB    disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            13.7 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 19.9 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                519.9 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      20.5 KB    disk1s4

The app you are using probably shows the possible max size of each APFS volume disk and not the real allocated size. It's either not properly adapted to the new file system or it's on purpose.

To get the real sizes enter diskutil list or diskutil ap list in Terminal.app. To get more APFS sub-commands enter man diskutil.


When will Apple delete Apple ID? My Apple ID has been locked because of security problems. Now I can't access or recover it. When will Apple delete this account? I want to re-create it after it is deleted.

They may delete it someday, but they will never deactivate it — meaning, nobody will ever be able to use that Apple ID again. Use the "Contact us for help" link at https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht204106 to get help re-claiming it.


Disable the Command-Tab shortcut from Dock I have the following problem:
I'm an extensive Quark User since the 90's and recently updated
two of my Macs at work to OSX 10.7.5. I would like to use my favorite Shortcut "Command-Tab" in Quark Xpress as usual, without changing the Apps via
the Dock.

My question: Where can I change or delete this shortcut?

I previous used "Ape" and "PullTab 1.4" to solve my problem, but these hacks are no longer supported.

You might use a private.xml like this with KeyRemap4MacBook:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>test</name>
    <identifier>test</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::TAB, VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::F19</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::TAB, VK_COMMAND | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::F19, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Then remap F19 or shift-F19 in Quark if it is possible.

This would actually disable command-tab and shift-command tab:

<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::TAB, VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::TAB, VK_COMMAND | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>


MacBook lost wireless connection My MacBook Pro lost wireless connection.

Everything was working fine when the connection suddenly stopped.
My mac can still connect via ethernet cable, so I know the modem and router and everything are working. Other wireless devices (phones and computers) can connect to the router, so I know the router is working. I've tried restarting my mac, and that didn't help.

Any suggestions?

I'm on OS 10.6.8

I had the same problem (strangely, on the same day). My MacBook Pro would see and connect to the router but not be allowed past it, to the internet. Other devices had no such trouble, and resets of both the laptop and the router had no effect.

In my case, I had set a certain maximum number of DHCP clients on my router, and all the entries had been taken up. Raising this number by one allowed my MacBook to connect.


What is the difference between Intel and PPC? What is the hardware and software differences between Intel and PPC Macs?

Hardware-wise: PowerPC is a microprocessor developed mainly by the three developing companies Apple, IBM, and Motorola. It is built with reduced instruction-set computer (RISC) which speeds-up the operation of MIPS (million instructions per second). PowerPC is mainly based on IBM’s earlier Power architecture because it has a similar RISC instruction set for microprocessors.

Intel and AMD CPU's are based on CISC architectures. Typically CISC chips have a large amount of different and complex instructions. The philosophy behind it is that hardware is always faster than software, therefore one should make a powerful instructionset, which provides programmers with assembly instructions to do a lot with short programs.
In common CISC chips are relatively slow (compared to RISC chips) per instruction, but use little (less than RISC) instruction


Change Firefox tab-switching  keyboard  shortcut To move to the next tab in most browsers, you use ctrl+⇥.

Then, to close it, you have to reach over to ⌘+W.

I don't like switching modifier keys like that; I'd prefer to just use ctrl for both.
Is there a way to change the shortcuts so that both shortcuts use the control key? It would be great to switch this globally, but otherwise a solution for Firefox would be fine too.

This is the definitive answer. Here are two official FireFox add-ons (plugins) that let you modify or define your own keyboard commands and shortcuts.

Key config

My Keyboard Navigator


Is there any way to change the mac dock's position with a keyboard shortcut? I don't think there are default shortcuts for that. But I assume you could make one using AppleScript or other automation programs.

I found this post from 2012 asking the same question. I tried making the script provided in the comments but couldn't make it work.

I'm not sure if it isn't working because Apple Scripts are different now, or because the script per se doesn't work or because there are steps I'm skipping.

When I try to save the script it says

  “Expected “given”, “with”, “without”, other parameter name, etc. but found identifier.”

Any idea?

This AppleScript code works for me using the latest version of macOS Mojave.

tell application "System Events" to tell dock preferences
    if screen edge is bottom then
        set screen edge to left
    else if screen edge is left then
        set screen edge to bottom
    end if
end tell

In Automator, create a new Service or Quick Action and add a run AppleScript action to that workflow, adding the above AppleScript code.  Then in System Preferences you can create a keyboard shortcut for that new service.


How to keep images in Mail for offline reading? For example:I subscribe emails to Huffington Post,and they send daily mails.How can I keep images in those mails so I can read them offline?

Under Mail / Preferences / Accounts and selecting your account and then Advanced, you'll find an option to Keep copies of message for offline viewing.

Just choose All messages and their attachments.


Camera shake effect in iMovie '11 Is there a possible way to create a camera shake effect in iMovie 11?

I know that in iMovie HD (2006), the effect was under the name "Earthquake effect". Try looking for it under that name.


How can I correct dead Macbook Air camera sensor pixels BEFORE other applications use it? My Macbook Air's camera has a handful of broken sensor pixels all clumped together near the middle of the image. They're dead -- always black. When I'm on a video conference or a Facetime, this tends to end up making me look like I have a gap between my teeth or some small black thing stuck to my chin. It's irritating. Replacement will be expensive. I know it's possible to do dead pixel correction in post-production for images or videos, but I can't find a solution that allows me to feed the sensor output through the pixel correction before it gets used by other apps (e.g., Facetime or Skype or Google Hangouts or Slack call or something).

How can I find or adapt or build build a software solution for doing dead pixel correction on the sensor's output BEFORE it gets used by other applications?

I'm not sure what mechanism you would use to inject your code in to the firmware of the camera and affect the data that the system sends directly to another app. Similarly, modifying the OS would be tricky.

For the time and engineering you would put up, it would be far cheaper and quick to just add a USB camera and have a good signal in the first place. Depending on where you ran the code, you might even save power / battery by having a good camera send good data rather than process real time video corrections.

That being said, you might be able to use a VR processing type software to send a video stream to an app that's ready to receive it. I don't think you'll have luck with FaceTime or Skype / Teams unless they have a plug in / filter that already does the processing you want before sending the video out.


unable to setup powerline for vim I'm new to mac and would like to setup powerline program for terminal and vim. I was able to setup to the bash shell but cannot do it for vim.

I can setup for terminal.

This is what I've added to .bash_profile file.

This is what I've added to .vimrc file.

I'm getting this error when I launch vim

I've followed the instructions from

vim powerline mac

and powerline is displayed in my vim setup finally. :)


Memory problem after upgrade to El Capitan I have an iMac 27 inch ( Late 2013 ) system.It has 8 GB RAM. Today i upgraded to El Captain from Yosemite. El Captain installed successfully. Now it is showing 4 GB Memory. I dont know what happen to remaining 4 GB Memory.

I followed the comments and re-inserted the RAM.  I rebooted and the system showed both memory ports full with full RAM.  I even switched the RAM to see if that would reveal any new information.


Are there any iPad accessories that vibrate, for silent alarms? Are there any iPad accessories that vibrate, to permit the same kind of silent notification iPhones can?

Unfortunately not.
The OS would have to have support for said accessories, and anyway, there are no accessories for vibration.

You can submit feedback to Apple on the iPad here, but they won't respond and it might take them some time to implement the feature (if they ever do).


Will an Apple Airport router work better with my Macs? I recently upgraded from Windows to a Mac, and now I have two Macbooks. Would they work better with my wireless if I got an Apple Airport a/b/n router? (I couldn't find anything about this on Google or anywhere else.)

It's not so much that AirPort routers will work "better", but I can guarantee that setup of AirPort routers when using Mac computers is much easier than other routers.  The AirPort Utility really makes setup a breeze!

This comes from years of experience as a network admin and having personally owned/used at least one of just about every major brand of home router.  If you can afford an AirPort router, you won't regret the purchase.


Built-in dictionary usage on Adobe Acrobat DC I'm using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC 2019 on my mac. I get used to use built-in dictionary of mac via three-fingers clicking on a word. However, it works on other applications like chrome, pdfguru etc. but not on Acrobat Pro DC. Even ^+⌘+D doesn't work. How can I use the dictionary on it?

I come up with a solution by using bettertouchtool but it nearly meets my wish. It opens the dictionary application instead of popping-up.

Download and install Better Touch Tool.

Add Adobe Reader

Then select "Keyboard" tab (between "Trackpads" and "Apple remote")

Select "Adobe Reader" at the left sidebar.

Click "Add New Shortcut" and select preferable shortcut (in my case: Command + D).

Then select action: "Controlling Other Application" -> "Send Shortcut to Specific App", select "Adobe Reader" and press "Command + C".

Select newly created shortcut and click "Attach Additional Action" and attach action: "Controlling Other Application" -> "Execute Terminal Command" and paste

open dict://`pbpaste`


What is main difference in a portable external HDD and a regular external HDD? I have an external 3 TB WD drive for backup. I think it is shot so I want to replace it. I don't need a portable drive but if they are more durable I'd like to get one. The cost difference between portable and regular is negligible at Amazon. Are there any issues associated with using a portable HDD for a Time Machine backup?

There's a small difference. A portable HDD draws power directly from your computer while an external HDD draws power from a power adapter plugged into the wall. Durability will vary depending on quality. If you're using a portable device (such as a laptop) it is suggested to use a portable HDD so you don't have to plug it in elsewhere. It should also be noted that portable HDDs draw more power from your computer which may result in faster battery consumption on portable devices or worse performance on devices using a very little amount of power (such as a Raspberry Pi).


System Integrity Protection (SIP) creating problem for oci_connect(): OCIEnvNlsCreate() After I upgraded my OS to El Capitan (which comes with SIP), I am getting error in oci_connect()

  Warning: oci_connect(): OCIEnvNlsCreate() failed. There is something wrong with your system - please check that DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH includes the directory with Oracle Instant Client libraries

If I disable the SIP, everything works fine again. But I understand keeping SIP disabled is not good for security. So I was looking for a solution to keep the SIP enabled and make oci_connect() work like before.

I am using XAMPP server for PHP and have oci8 for oci_connect.

I had a post on SO for this, where couldn't find any help yet : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35356318/xampp-in-os-x-el-capitan-oci-connect-ocienvnlscreate-failed

Oracle ships instant client libs with wrong search paths. You can manually fix them by using:

https://github.com/kubo/fix_oralib_osx

AFAIK SIP influences how library search path is working. DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH might be ignored when SIP is used.


How can I see which application is using Bin, so that it cannot be emptied? How can I see which application is using the Bin, so that it cannot be emptied?

I've so many tasks and projects open, so I'd rather not restart the macOS Catalina.

I have tried looking in Activity Monitor, but couldn't figure it out.

According to answers on the Ask Different question Cannot empty trash, you can use either

ps -eal | grep $(fuser ~/.Trash)

or

lsof | grep Trash

in the Terminal to find out which process is using the Trash.


Can I add a mdimporter file to have new option search in spotlight? In System/Library/spotlight there are several files like " Application.mdimporter " which seems they appropriate searching for spotlight. Can I add any file like them? Is there any way to make files like them? Can I find files of this kind produced with developers?

Yes, you can create your own Spotlight importers.

You can find Apple's documentation here.

The importers don't need to sit in /System/Library/Spotlight that is intended solely for importers that come with the operating system. What usually happens is an application developer will create an importer to support their file formats and include the importer within the application bundle. So, for example, the importers for Pages file formats sit within the Pages app bundle. But you can also drop importers in ~/Library/Spotlight within your own user profile and OSX will find them there.


Enable VPN debug on macOS Sierra? I'm trying to debug a Cisco IPSec VPN issue (using native OSX VPN, not a separate client) but I can't find any options to turn on debugging.  Looking around the net it seems there was options in the Advanced tab at one point but I don't see them in Sierra.

Logging is enabled by default. The logs can be inspected using the Console app open /Applications/Utilities/Console.app. Select "Errors and Faults" and look for "neagent" lines.


How can I automatically mount an external HD connected via USB to Airport Time Capsule every time I connect to my LAN? I make Time Machine backups on an external 2TB HD connected via USB to my Airport Time Capsule.

PROBLEM

When I come back to home and I reconnect to my wi-fi LAN, Time Machine is not able to automatically reconnect to the backup volume (see image below).

QUESTION

Is there any solution to enable Time Machine to reconnect automatically to external backup volume when I come back to home? ATTENTION: I do not need a solution to auto-mount at login/reboot, but rather a solution to auto-mount when I reconnect to my LAN. Thanks.

Without writing you a full blown Mac App, the best I can recommend is the app MarcoPolo

As an addition/update to this, MarcoPolo is no longer maintained and the developer suggests using control plane if it is not working with your system.


Sharing common folder in OS Mavericks and on Windows 8? I have many PCs with Windows 8.1 and a Mac with Mavericks. I have a folder on the Mac that is shared with the PC. "Share" folder which is shared over network .
I want help regarding this :

1) I want to share this folder to Windows 8.1. with the guest user so that I don't have to create a new user for sharing, and also give the password and username to every user who is going to be connected to my network.

2) Secondly , I want this folder have Read & Write permission over network so that anyone can write and read to this folder.

I am able to view the folder in Windows with the username and password, but when I try to write some data to shared folder in Windows, I am not able to access the written data in the Mac. I get the permission issue "You don't have permission to read this data."

I am very new to Mac and help would be appreciated.

I followed this guide.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/08/share-files-from-mac-to-windows-pc/

Looks like you're having this problem. You will need to install the real Samba, not Apple's version of SMB. It might be easier to put the SMB share on one of your Windows machines, though I don't know how that will go on Windows 8.


How to delete all files in one folder that are the same as in another folder I have two folders containing videos: the first contains videos that are already referenced within Aperture, and the second contains a mix of duplicates as well as videos that are NOT already in Aperture. What I'd like to do is have the second folder contain ONLY files that are not already in Aperture (so that I can add them). How can I relatively easily delete the duplicate files in the second folder? I've been playing around with Deltopia's DeltaWalker, but it doesn't appear able to allow me to delete the duplicate files easily.

Gemini will let you do this.

Open the app, go to Preferences → Auto Select and add the path of the folder that you want to keep the files to the Never Select list.

Then, add the folders to the scan list and press Scan. Once it's complete, you can press Auto Select to automatically mark the duplicates, then delete them.


How to install and setup s3fs on OS X 10.7 (Lion) I installed s3fs, a tool that allows mounting Amazon S3 buckets as a file system. I created folder for mounting in /mnt/s3 then I created a file in /etc/passwd-s3fs with the content BucketName:AccessKeyId:SecretAccessKey
but I still can't access it, and the error is:

  s3fs: could not determine how to establish security credentials

Am I missing something?

For Amazon s3fs you have two options for credentials: root or per user.

For a root setup you would place your credentials in here:

/etc/passwd-s3fs

And then make sure the permissions to that file are 640 like this:

sudo chmod 640 /etc/passwd-s3fs

The contents of that file should simply be [AccessKey]:[SuperSecretKey] with those two values substituted for your real access key and super secret key. Note I did not prefix the “bucket” name as you have in your example. I would recommend just seeing if you can access the S3 stuff to begin with for testing.

If you want to do user level credentials, that would be placed in the home folder of the user who would need to have s3fs access. So it would if this were for you, it would be in here:

nano ~/.passwd-s3fs

The contents of the file would be the same as /etc/passwd-s3fs but the permissions would be different. So make sure those permissions are 600 like this:

chmod 600 ~/.passwd-s3fs

Then as far as mounting goes, this is how you would mount the contents if you are root:

sudo s3fs [BucketName] /mnt/s3

Be sure to change the bucket name to match the actual bucket you wish to mount. And to run that on a per user basis using the ~/.passwd-s3fs credentials, just run the same command without sudo like this:

s3fs [BucketName] /mnt/s3

To unmount the mounted bucket, just do this:

sudo umount /mnt/s3

Or do this if you are using a per-user setup:

umount /mnt/s3


.dmg files organization Today I needed to view the contents of OS X's SDKs, which are published as .dmg's.

To my surprise, I discovered that the structure is as follows :

The .dmg contains a hidden .pkg files
The .pkg files contain a Payload file, which is a .gz or a .bz2, depends
The .gz contains a single cpio-compressed file
This cpio archive contains all the files.

Can anybody provide technical and/or historical reasons why this is done this way ?

Just to be clear : I don't have any technical problem, I'm just curious.

The .dmg is the disk image which is mountable like an external file. The value it provides here is that .dmgs are checked for consistency/correctness upon mount, so if the download went wrong you will get notified
The .pkg is the standard format for installable software and usually contains not only the application itself but all the other stuff displayed during installation: ReadMe, legal/license information, optional packages etc.
The .gz is to compress the data and keep the packages smaller on disk (and for download)
.cpio is an archive format similar to tar etc.


Mapping port 80 to 8080 but maintain explicit 8080 access I followed the instructions in this answer to map port 8080 to 80 on my mac. This works a treat, except for the fact that I can no-longer access http://localhost:8080 explicitly through Chrome (it never responds).

Put differently, I can start an http server on my machine listening on port 8080, which, having remapped my ports will work when I navigate to localhost in my browser, but doesn't work if I navigate to localhost:8080.

This causes issues with certain library code that explicitly includes the server port in its http requests.

How do I configure port forwarding in such a way that both localhost:8080 and localhost will send requests to my local server?

Before answering your question, let me provide some background information for those unfamiliar with port forwarding on macOS: port forwarding involves replacing destination addresses and ports of incoming packets to redirect connections to different hosts and/or ports. macOS achieves port forwarding by applying rdr (redirection) rules to the packet filter device /dev/pf. For example, this rule:

rdr pass inet proto tcp from any to 213.32.64.5 port 80 -> 10.4.1.2 port 8080

forwards incoming IPv4 packets sent to 213.32.64.5:80 to 10.4.1.2:8080 (the pass keyword prevents redirected packets from being blocked by filter rules, see here for more information). To apply the rule, you can either use pfctl or modify /etc/pf.conf, as explained here. For more information on rdr rules, see man pf.conf.

Now to your question:

  How do I configure port forwarding in such a way that both
  localhost:8080 and localhost will send requests to my local server?

To be able to access both the original and the redirected port reliably, you must exclude the destination address and port (127.0.0.1:8080) from being redirected:

echo 'no rdr inet proto tcp from 127.0.0.1 port 8080
rdr inet proto tcp from any to 127.0.0.1 port 80 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080
' | sudo pfctl -ef -

(Tested on a clean install of macOS High Sierra 10.13.6.)

The command above will overwrite all existing rules, so I'd recommend it only for testing. You can then reload your Mac's default packet filter rules with sudo pfctl -F all -ef /etc/pf.conf and add the rules:

no rdr inet proto tcp from 127.0.0.1 port 8080
rdr inet proto tcp from any to 127.0.0.1 port 80 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080

to pf.conf as explained here.

  I followed the instructions in this answer to map port 8080 to 80 on
  my mac. This works a treat, except for the fact that I can no longer
  access http://localhost:8080 explicitly through Chrome (it never
  responds).

This comment on Sal Ferrarello's blog describes a similar behavior. I was able to reproduce it, but in my tests the connection to port 8080 worked intermittently, or more precisely: I could load  http://127.0.0.1:8080, but after that first connection, clicking any link on the website timed out. Some time later, though, I was able to connect once again, just to experience in any subsequent connections the same time-outs as before.

I had to do quite a bit of packet sniffing, I'd like to share the commands I used to log packets that match the rdr rule (that's what the log parameter below is for) using the "pflog0" pseudo-device (see man pflog and man pf.conf for details):

echo 'no rdr log inet proto tcp from 127.0.0.1 port 8080
rdr inet log proto tcp from any to 127.0.0.1 port 80 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080
' | sudo pfctl -ef -
sudo ifconfig pflog0 create
sudo tcpdump -X -n -e -i pflog0


Delete "Recently Deleted" album on iOS 8? With iOS8, there was a new album called "Recently Deleted" in the Photos app. Is there any way to delete the "Recently Deleted" album or any way to disable this feature ?

I want the photos to get deleted as soon I delete them, I don't want to delete them twice. Jailbreak solutions are welcome too.

If your device is jailbroken, you can install NoRecentlyDeleted, which does exactly what you would expect, making all photos be deleted immediately.


Find My iPhone: Cancel "Lost mode Pending" Is there a way to cancel Lost Mode Pending status of my iPhone?

If you remove the device from your account while it's offline, any pending actions for the device are canceled.

Apple Support - If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is lost or stolen - What if your device is off or offline?

Keep in mind the impact of removing the device from your account — you will no longer be able to use Find My iPhone and Activation Lock will be disabled.


Bypass Proxy Settings "captive.apple.com"? Mac: System Preferences -> Network -> Advanced -> Proxies -> Bypass proxy settings for these Hosts & Domains: "captive.apple.com"

Should this address be bypassed? My guess is that TunnelBear VPN may have put this there as they mess with proxy settings.

This relates to how Apple logs into WiFi, particularly the free or public WiFi you find in many places.  Many of these networks want you to agree to terms/conditions, sign-on, pay for service, etc.  They intercept all Web requests and divert you to the agree/login/pay page.  Apple tries very hard to automatically detect this, and turn their login page into a "pop-up" with a "Cancel" button.  When you succeed, it changes the button to "Done".

How does it do this?  By attempting to send traffic to captive.apple.com.   If the traffic makes it through, it knows the WiFi channel has granted you access, and changes the button to "Done".

If you were to proxy that, it wouldn't work.


Where to store large photo library that also can be backed up? I have an old PC that used to house my entire (several hundred gigabytes) photo library internally and backed it up nightly to an external hard drive.

I have a MBP that travels between home and work (250 GB HD), and recently bought a MacBook Air (120GB) for home.  Neither of these has enough storage to be "home" for my photo library.

My requirements for the setup are:

Must be large enough
Must be backed up somehow
Must be fast enough (> 100 Mb/s so USB 2.0+, Wireless-N or wired gigabit) when accessing it from one of the laptops.

I have considered a few different options:

Keep the current setup (yuck, computer is slow and loud).
Network attached storage (few highly-rated options on sub-$500 systems)
Airport Extreme with attached external HDD (would need a backup solution, I haven't thought of one)
Time Capsule.

This seems like my best option, but here are my questions:

I don't use Time Machine, so is it a waste?
Backup: how? I could now have two large, separate drives for backup, but I don't know if this is messy.
Am I overpaying compared to other similar solutions?

That's it.  I've been at a loss for what is my best option, so I could really use some help for a Mac-friendly solution!

Notes:

I should add that I am looking to replace my current router, as well, so the Time Capsule option would save me that cost.
I am not in love with the idea of cloud backup, which is why I haven't mentioned it; unless someone can convince me otherwise.

A few thoughts come to mind.

Firstly, this is all dependent on what sort of software solution you're using to store your photos. If it's just files in folders, that makes things simpler, and is pretty platform agnostic. But if you're using (or want to use) some sort of organization software, then that obviously complicates things, both in terms of platforms and performance. That said, here's what I think are the best options.

PC as Network Storage

This is what I do (for videos and bulk archival, not photos, but the concept is the same). I have a generic PC with a bunch of hard drives running headless off in an unused room, connected to my network. It runs Linux, and while I have it set up to do various automated tasks, it's main purpose is to be a big network drive I can dump stuff on.

It sounds like this is more or less what you have already. If your current hardware isn't adequate, then look into upgrading. For file serving duty, most old hardware should do just fine (mine is a dual core Celeron circa 2008), the biggest bottleneck is network speed, make sure you have Gigabit and the file server software is behaving (I've found that file sharing between Linux and OS X is much faster over AFP than SMB).

Getting it quiet can take a bit more effort/expense, but it's definitely doable, particularly when you don't need a lot of horsepower (basically, get the biggest heatsink you can, and use a small number of very large fans spinning very slowly).

This option is definitely the best value for your money, but likely means more time invested on your part.

Mac Mini

Using a Mac Mini in basically the same role as above has some merit as well. It's a bit more expensive, and less expandable, but requires less time investment for set up and maintenance. And of course it's a much more compact form factor than your typical PC, and pretty quiet unless you're doing something very CPU/GPU intensive. You can get up to 2 TB internal storage in one (doing so from Apple requires the more expensive "server" model, but you can save a bunch of money by getting the base model and installing the drives yourself - it's fairly straightforward).

In addition to simply acting as network file storage, you can use iPhoto to organize all your photos, and share them over the network to your other Macs. If you add OS X Server ($20 from the App Store), you can have your Mini act as a Time Machine back-up server for your other Macs (I haven't tested this, but I've heard it's much more reliable and has better performance than using a Time Capsule).

Other Options

NAS Appliance

As you've seen there are a wide variety of these. The cheap ones don't have very good performance (few even come close to saturating gigabit ethernet) and lack expandability, and the quality ones ramp up the cost to the point where using a PC or Mac Mini seems to make more sense in most situations. The main selling point seems to be their relative set and forget nature.

Time Capsule

I've never heard very good things about this. As a network storage appliance, it's lacking in performance and expandability. It's major selling point is integration with Time Machine, but its reputation seems to be spotty at best as a back up device. Unless having one device as your Wi-Fi router and network storage really appeals to you, I'd recommend against it. Likewise an Airport with attached hard drive — if you already have one, then it might be worth trying out to see if it meets your needs, but I wouldn't go out and buy one just for this.

Backups

For backups, keep things as simple as possible. External drives are pretty cheap, buy one and plug it in to whatever stores your photos. Set up some sort of backup script or program to perform regular backups (rsync should suffice if you're just backing up your photo storage — some sort of cloning software might be better if you want the whole system backed up). For added protection, do backups to second drive every week or two and keep it at your office or somewhere else. Alternatively, look into online backups such as Backblaze, CrashPlan or Arq, which is less labour intensive, but can be more costly and/or problematic depending on your internet speeds and cap.


What is the difference between iCloud Photo Library and My Photo Stream In my iPhone settings I have both set ON. What is the difference if I turn one or the other off?i

iCloud Photo Library puts all your images in the cloud, allowing access from any device you are signed into. It requires enough space on iCloud to store all of your photos.

Photo Stream just shares your new photos with your other device, but they aren't actually in the cloud. This doesn't require you to have enough storage space for your photos.


iCloud Drive: Cannot download files? Not sure if this is an implementation bug or iCloud clogged up.

On one mac I have uploaded a folder. I know upload is finished because when I log into icloud.com I can see the files and download them. Yet on another mac the files show like this:

They cannot be opened, dragged or downloaded. The Get Info shows as if the file is on the hard drive with all the correct meta.

Has anyone come across this, or know of a solution?

As a side note, some older files that I uploaded a week ago show correctly now. Is it really taking this long to sync?

Yes, it's just slow.

After a few hour some of the items are now usable. If you Get Info on the iCloud Drive folder and leave it for a short while you will see the size slowly increase as the downloads progress.

I guess this is a side effect of pushing all files to all macs and having every man and his dog uploading stuff to iCloud right now.


Sounds settings changed on own and can't be reset A few weeks ago my sound settings changed on their own, and I cannot seem to reset them; I change it and it doesn't save once I go out of Settings.

I go into Settings > Sounds > I change Vibrate on Silent to OFF and change New Mail to NONE and go back out and they immediately revert to ON and DING.

Phone also still vibrates when the side button is on Orange (Silent).  Very annoying.  Phone is less than 2 years old.

I have tried rebooting phone and this does not work.  Does anyone have any idea what is going on and how I can get this fixed?

Try an hard-reset by pressing the Home and Lock buttons simultaneously in 10 seconds and then release them. Your phone will now restart and you will not lose any data.
Do an reset of all settings. To do this: Make sure you have a backup of your phone first or know the important settings for you. Then you go to the "Settings" application -> General -> Reset -> Reset All Settings. When you reset all settings, only the settings, no files will be affected.
Try reseting the whole phone and restoring it from an iCloud or iTunes back-up. To do this: Make sure you backed up everything to iCloud or your computer (don't forget the pictures). Then you make a reset from "Settings" application -> General -> Reset -> Erase All Content and Settings.

Did it work? Didn't it? If you have any further questions, please ask in the comments.


Ghost/phantom notifications and other sketchy things my girlfriend's phone started doing something strange recently – after Airdropping three photos from a slightly older iPad Air, the notification center has been acting strangely. Every time she opens it, an animation plays that looks like the back end of the animation of clearing all notifications – just a couple empty bubbles disappear upward. She did a hard reset, and noticed a white horizontal line on the screen appearing during the reset, which is also new.

The iPad is also acting up now, which is new. When I go to the Photos app and try to open the camera roll, it opens, scrolls automatically up to the top, then closes and goes back to the grid of albums. This happens both with an internet connection and without, and has never happened before. It also switched to the Find My iPad app on its own, which is a little freaky.

The iPad is not password-protected and hasn't been for a couple years, but the battery has been dead for at least a year – she only charged it back up yesterday and started using it today. We're concerned about malware somehow getting onto the iPad, and then from the iPad to the phone. Our wifi network is WPA2 password-protected, and as far as we know, neither of us has downloaded anything sketchy onto the phone or the iPad (or anything else). These issues haven't been happening on any of my Apple devices. Is there a chance something might have somehow gotten in? How do we fix it? Even if it's not dangerous, the notification thing is pretty annoying and I'd like to fix it for her.

Thanks in advance for the help. I used to be really good at spyware removal and such up until a few years ago, but my knowledge has atrophied since then and I'm pretty much useless now.

This sounds like a failure of the digitizer. All sorts of phantom scrolls and clicks can happen when the hardware thinks it's detecting fingers making tap and scroll motions at random or repetitively.

If you open the calculator app, sometimes you can map out what parts of the screen are failing, but depending on the severity it may come and go in relation to percent of charge and temperature.

Long term, this is likely to get worse and need a repair - especially if the phone has been dropped and suffered either internal damage (which can be 100% invisible - especially if you have a case protecting) or can be totally unrelated to any damage - just that the fine wires in the display have stopped working as designed.


Renaming files with a RegEx search, preferably via JXA I have a two part question here. I'm trying to make an automator service to quickly rename files. My job uses a file name syntax of 1234-01a-FileName.psd where 1234 is the job number, 01 the file number, and the a is a version letter, as in, version two will be 01b, etc. Getting the current letter with RegEx and incrementing it is easy, the issue I'm having is how to actually rename the file with JXA. Nothing I can find on google is actually answering this (I assume) simple question. I've tried a number of permutations of the following. Is there something basic I'm doing wrong here?

theFile = Path("~/Desktop/1234-12a-test.png");
theFile.name = "thisDoesntWork.png";

I could alternately have both a Run AppleScript and a Run Javascript in the automator workflow, and try to pass the name back and forth, but I'd rather keep it simple if possible.

The Path object is a very basic structure and doesn't provide any actual filesystem functionality. Instead, use System Events:

theFile = Application("System Events").aliases.byName("~/Desktop/1234-12a-test.png");
theFile.name = "thisDoesWork.png"


Switch focus in split view I know how I can have to apps open side by side in split view, but I have a slightly different case.

I have two terminal windows open side-by-side, is there anyway I can quickly switch between them. Is there a keyboard shortcut to do this?

There isn't a keyboard shortcut to switch between two splitscreen apps, but since they're both Terminal, if they're the only two Terminal windows you have open, you can use the Cycle Through Windows shortcut - ⌘`(the key that becomes ~ if you hold Shift).


How to script Network Preferences using the CLI As the title implies for development I enable/disable Web proxies, however doing it through the UI is slow and cumbersome its also pretty inflexible.
I'm looking to control the following checked settings:

I tried using the following script to identify any changes but it did not work:
defaults read > current-defaults.txt

# Do change in UI and then run the following:
defaults read > changed-defaults.txt

diff current-defaults.txt changed-defaults.txt

This answer has information but is not as specific to solve solve my needs

Try networksetup ...  From man networksetup .. NOTE must be an admin to run it.

DESCRIPTION
The networksetup command is used to configure network settings typically configured in
the System Preferences application. The networksetup command requires at least admin
privileges to change network settings. If the "Require an administrator password to
access system-wide preferences" option is selected in System Preferences > Security &
Privacy, then root privileges are required to change network settings.

You can make changes to many OSX network settings using similar tools to linux platforms, using networksetup ensures everything running is properly informed, settings are saved, and upon reboot those saved values are still usable (exactly as if you had used System Preferences) - see this answer to another networking questions that talks about how that works.

The basic reason is that macOS has two different levels of network configuration: the live state (which ifconfig en0 down changes) and the "configuration database" which corresponds to the settings created in the Network pane of System Preferences and/or the networksetup command.

In this particular case the -setwebproxy and -setsecurewebproxy options change the proxy settings for a particular network service - e.g. HT user3439894 - these set the proxy on the Wi-Fi network service.
networksetup -setwebproxy "Wi-Fi" localhost 8080
networksetup -setsecurewebproxy "Wi-Fi" localhost 8080

Depending on the actual network configuration will need to choose the appropriate service..

-setwebproxy networkservice domain portnumber authenticated username
password

Set Web proxy for networkservice with domain and port number. Turns proxy on. Optionally, specify on or off for
authenticated to enable and disable authenticated proxy support.
Specify username and password if you turn authenticated proxy
support on.

AND to turn off then look for

-setwebproxystate networkservice on | off

You can also use locations to quickly switch between network configurations - these are much easier to setup in the GUI.  System Preferences -> Network  (Edit Locations on the Locations dropdown).  However, once setup, network setup has an easy way of switching (assuming you had a location named viaProxy or _to revert standard -
networksetup -switchtolocation viaProxy
networksetup -switchtolocation standard


iPhone cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all of the selected items I'm trying to clean up some space on my iPhone, for this I need to sync it with a new Mac.
The Mac doesn't have the files on the device, so sync will erase everything on the device.
So I want to backup first, and then sync.
But the backup complains there's not enough space (where? Mac has 55GB free).
Errrrr. Pretty stuck here!

This is the message I get from iTunes (12.3.0.44) when trying to manually backup my iPhone 4S (iOS 8.1.2)
to my Mac (Mac Book Pro Yosemite 10.10.5).

This is what happened until now:

Last sync was on another computer (old Windows laptop), this is the
first time trying to backup/sync on this Mac
iPhone is full (I want
to backup the data and then to cleanup)
Mac has 55GB free space
Backup wouldn't start, reported not enough space (a different
message!) to sync
Cleaned the lockdown folder as suggested by Apple
Backup had started but reported an error about a "session could not
be started"
Restarted the device while connected to Mac (as
suggested on some forum)
Backup had started but reported this
message ("iPhone XXX cannot be synced because there is not enough
free space to hold all of the selected items.")

Any ideas?

EDIT 2017: I no longer use this phone, eventually I didn't find a solution.

When you start syncing your iDevice in iTunes and then you get this annoying message (especially when it tells you it needs like 1.4MB and there is 300MB available?!): 'The iPhone/iPad “iPhone(insert name)” cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all the selected items'. What do you do?

Basically the problem, in many cases, seems to be that iTunes thinks it has too many updates to install on your iPhone/iPad and it isn't smart enough to load them one at a time when there's not enough space to do them all??

Fortunately it can often be side-stepped by just taking your iPhone/iPad and clicking on the App Store app,  then tapping on the Updates tab, and then tapping on 'Update All' at the top right. If that  complains that there's not enough space you can let do some updates then try again (and again) and will update the rest of the apps. Then the sync should be fine with iTunes.


How can I share a large, 60 GB file with iCloud Drive? I pay Apple for 200 GB of storage with iCloud Drive.

What are the steps to share a 60 GB file with someone?

In general, iCloud is not a person-to-person sharing platform. It is mostly restricted to sharing with your devices, so there is almost no capability to share with others. It does have the ability to share Photos and videos in a limited fashion, called 'Family Sharing".

In El Capitan, Apple introduced a feature called Mail Drop. This feature duplicates what many have done using services such as Dropbox: it automatically uploads a large file to iCloud, and embeds a link to that file in the email message.

If your recipient uses Apple Mail in Yosemite or El Capitan, Apple Mail automatically downloads the file from iCloud, so it looks like the attachment was sent via mail, when really only the link was sent via mail.

For more on how this works, here is the latest Apple support info.

This sounds perfect for your needs. However, Mail Drop has a limit to the file size of 5GB. It claims not to work on file sizes over 5GB (no direct personal experience). Therefore, it likely won't support your use case of 60GB.

Dropbox and Box.com do work in this manner and allow you to create both public and private links to whatever files you wish. Both offer free tiers, however, the free accounts are limited to 5GB, so your 60GB file will required a pay account.

Honestly, given the size of your file, it might be simpler, and far cheaper to put your file on a 64GB USB stick and use snail mail.


Send key for message when using Bluetooth keyboard I am using iOS 8 and a Apple Bluetooth Keyboard. I cannot find the key combination to send a message in Messages. For example, Mail has Command + Shift + D, Facebook has Command + Return. Anyone know the shortcut for messages?

Unfortunately, this is not possible. In previous versions of iOS you could change a setting in Keyboards, however it doesn't seem to work in iOS 8. Sorry :(


How do I change how often the Mac App Store in High Sierra checks for updates or notifies me about them? I feel like I constantly get notifications from the Mac App Store. I find this distracting and stressful and would like to change how often the Mac App Store checks for updates, or how often it notifies me of these updates.

I know I can go into System Preferences and disable the automatic checking for updates, but I don’t want to do this as I’m not likely to remember to manually check for updates myself.

Is it possible to check for updates less often or to get notified less?

Yes, you can do this quite easily.
By default the Mac App Store app will check for updates once every week, but you can change this by running a terminal command. Follow these steps:

Launch the Terminal app (by default it's located in the Utilities folder within your Applications folder)

Copy and paste the following command into your Terminal window:
defaults write com.apple.SoftwareUpdate ScheduleFrequency -int 7

The number at the end represents the number of days, so change the ‘7’ at the end to the number of days you’d prefer (i.e. if you change the ‘7’ to ’10’ then it’ll only check for updates every 10 days)

Press Enter

And that’s it! The Mac App Store should now only check for updates as often as you set in the terminal command.


Can I tell MacPorts to build against its own X11 or Xorg? In this comment there is a distinction drawn between "native macOS libraries" and X11,

  Haven‘t used MacPorts for years, but most probably Kitty is compiled with the native macOS libraries, not with X11. So you need to either use an X11 version of kitty (if MacPorts has something like that), or compile it yourself with X11 support enabled. – nohillside♦ 7 hours ago

Is it possible to target either of those within MacPorts? Or is the port package defined for just one?

No, there's no such possibility within MacPorts. This port does not come with such a choice.

kitty is based on OpenGL, and doesn't really use ordinary UI controls from a library such as GTK, QT, Aqua or similar.

kitty is a native Mac-application, as well as existing as a native Linux application. When you compile kitty on a Mac, the backend used is Cocoa (i.e. native Mac). X11 does not come into the picture at all.

You could try manually recompiling kitty and then force it to use its X11 backend. I don't think that backend has been tested on macOS though, as the author intends the user to use the native Carbon backend.


Can't restore or update IPhone - TATSU declined to authorize I'm attempting to either restore or update an iPhone 5 which won't boot. It's stuck on the apple logo boot screen. Hard reset does nothing.

I have tried normal restore mode via iTunes and DFU mode.

I'm signed into iTunes as the same apple ID as the phone.

I've authorized the mac for this apple ID in iTunes.

each time I try and either do update or restore I get the following error from iTunes:

iphone could not be restored (updated). TATSU declined to authorize this image on this device for this user.

Anything else I can try? it does not matter if I lose the data on the phone. Just needs to work again.

Also is there a way to view the boot sequence from my mac or the phone either via terminal or xcode or something so I can see where it's hanging in the boot sequence?

for anyone else who comes across this or something similar. It turned out that my hosts file had an entry to gs.apple.com which was causing apple's signing (TATSU) server request to fail with their not so helpful error message.

So you need to check your hosts file on the computer you are running iTunes on to see if there are any entries to gs.apple.com and then either remove those lines or comment them out by placing a # at the start of the line.

like so #gs.apple.com 74.454.656.343  easiest way is via terminal. look up how to edit host file if you don't know how. on my mac the host file was located at /etc/hosts  once in terminal: sudo nano /etc/hosts will open an editor, once changed control x will exit, type y then enter when prompted to save your changes to the hosts file. all done.


Setting up / Troubleshooting Continuity-Camera Symptom: Greyed-out 'continuity-camera' options:

Take Photo
Scan Documents

Context:

Catalina 10.15.7: Wired (ethernet) into network
iPhone IOS 14.1: Bluetooth indicates connected to Catalina, wifi connected to same LAN

The Mac's wifi is kaput.  Is the LAN ethernet connection a viable substitute for wifi from a camera continuity context?
If your setup has a wired ethernet connection and continuity-camera is functional, please post and indicate as such.  Thank you
Asus USB-BT400 installed on Catalina:

No, you want bluetooth and WiFi for best discovery and cross device functionality and response from continuity and handoff features. Ideally there is no interference as well once your radios are working again. External Bluetooth works great for continuity when I have a machine that’s difficult or costly to repair.
Just be sure you buy a device that you can get good support if they don’t use Apple drivers effectively or return the product if it fails to work.

Continuity and Handoff Bluetooth Setup