iPhone turning off on low battery My iPhone SE on iOS 12 has been acting strange recently.

Yesterday, it turned off at around 10% and when I tried to turn it on it said that it has no power. Two minutes later, it turned on and said it had 14% capacity remaining.

Today, when it was at around 10%, it turned off. Then I turned it on  and it said 12%. Two minutes later, it turned off. It says "connect to power."

After a few minutes I tried again and it turned on. Then it gives an error saying  that it "can’t connect to my mobile data network" and then the  phone crashes.

I turned it on again, and it worked normally.

What is causing this?

EDIT: After digging around my batter settings I found this:

Your battery is failing/has failed.

The symptoms that your iPhone is exhibiting is the same as what discussed in the following posts:

Mid 2012 MBP shuts down claiming no power with charge at 30% or 40% or more
Why is my MacBook Pro showing the low battery screen while at 100%?
Fully charged MacBook Air turns off when power cord removed

Basically, when you see a percentage of battery remaining, it's a calculation based on what it's measuring (volts, amps, draw, etc.) at that moment in time.  You cannot measure remaining capacity - this  especially noticeable if one of the in-line cells is faulty.

The only solution to this problem is to replace the battery.


Caffeine taking up 2.88GB virtual memory Caffeine is a small program. Why is it taking up so much virtual memory or am I reading this wrong?

Edit: persists across application and os restarts

So apparently I was reading it wrong. According to Thomas Franzén ( lightheadsw )

  Virtual memory size is a meaningless
  number for most uses. An application
  having a big virtual memory size
  doesn't affect you, because it's just
  a virtual memory space. The column you
  should be looking at is RSIZE. That's
  the actual amount of physical RAM an
  application is using.

I verified with ObjectAlloc and it seems like it is using only 8MB or so.


How do I get Automator to move a folder to Appname.app/Contents/etc I'm trying to create an Automator Quick Action to move a selected folder into the Resources folder of an app, accessed by clicking Show package contents in the Applications folder.

There doesn't seem to be a way to move the folder there. I've tried Move Finder Items, but it doesn't allow me to select an app's package contents.

The closest I've gotten is to just drag the folder into Automator, and then store it in a variable, but for some reason, storing a value in one variable stores it in the other as well, which is really weird and prevents me from using this method.

Is there a way to do this, and if so, how would it be done?

Here is some AppleScript that should help.

To select the move folder you would use

set moveFolder to POSIX path of (choose folder with prompt "Choose the folder you would like to move")

and for setting the destination folder you would write

set aFolder to POSIX path of (choose folder with prompt "Choose the Application you would like to copy items to")
set destFolder to (aFolder & "Contents/Resources/") as string

And to move the folder you would use:

do shell script (("mv " & moveFolder & space & destFolder)as string)

Hope that helps.


App Store doesn't fetch updates anymore I'm on a MacBook Pro, mid 2009, OS X 10.10.

An update to Yosemite (10.10.2) came out five days ago, but going to the Updates tab in App Store only returns a dialog box with the following message:

An error has occurred
Can't connect to the Apple Software Update server.

I have turned off Firewall, logged out/in from App Store, removed App Store cookies - but despite this and after googling over an hour I'm still clueless.

Any ideas what could be the problem?

If I wanted to troubleshoot this - I would do the following:

Make a new admin account on the Mac and restart.
Log in to the new account (you might have to disable auto login for the old account)
Open Console.app and look over two log files

/var/log/install.log
/var/log/commerce.log

Open System Preferences (while watching the logs above) and unselect all of the App Store options. Turn off "Automatically check for updates"
Run the App Store App - click Purchases - sign in to the App Store.

At this point you should have dozens of log fie entries that may point to a network error, a certificate error, an account error or perhaps a permissions problem.

The App Store app is basically a web browser that runs some code, interacts with several servers and needs date/time/encryption certificates to be correct to function properly.

You also might consider installing a clean OS onto a USB drive to boot to it and do the tests if you have any security/firewall software you don't want to uninstall / disable on the main Mac OS.


iTunes does not copy some photos iTunes refuses to copy some photos to my iPod with the following message:

  Some of your photos, including the photo “somefile.jpg”, were not copied to the iPod “iPod” because they cannot be displayed on your iPod

Note that loads of photos are not copied. How can I know which photos were not copied and why? They can be displayed perfectly on my mac.

Apple Knowledgebase article Issues when syncing photos to iPhone or iPod touch recommends deleting the iPod Photo Cache if syncing photos of a known compatible file format results in this message.


"Open Link Behind Mail" in Mail.app not working When on my Mac I right click on a link in mail and select "Open Link Behind Mail" nothing happens.

I tried opening Console and seeing if there was an error message when I did it again, but I didn't notice anything new. (I looked in "SYSTEM LOG QUERIES > All Messages")

This was working a few months ago. I am using Mail 8.2 (2070.6) and OS X 10.10.2 (14C109)

Google tells me it's a known bug.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/27198644#27198644

Workaround is to  Cmd ⌘   Opt ⌥  Click.


Apple Care email + payment request Just got this email.

Did not open the link (since the price looked ridiculous).

The link would lead to a look a like the Apple Log In window.

What is up with that? someone trying to collect Apple ID information for next stage of criminal activity.

It looks like (bad) SCAM to me!?

Wouldn't trust it as far as I could spit it.
But don't ignore it - that just lets them keep doing it to other people for longer.

Forward the email to reportphishing@apple.com
as per this Apple KB article - Phishing & Other Suspicious Emails

I recently learned that many of the spelling & grammatical mistakes in such phishing attempts as this are specifically designed to keep 'smart people' away & prey only on the less savvy.
A cruel way to think.


Why does shift+clicking the icon of a minimized program cause it to open epic slowly? If you minimize a program, then shift+click the icon to bring it up again, the sliding animation is slowed down immensely, making it open at an almost comical pace. I don't understand why this is a feature. Can anyone explain the reasoning behind this functionality?

Just like Cover Flow, it seems to be a “Steve Jobs wanted to use it in a Keynote”-Feature.


Custom mail check interval in Mail App on OS X? I've already disabled "IDLE Command" so it won't push emails as soon as they arrive in my IMAP (Google Apps). I have set my mail check interval 1 hour (the longest available).

I can close my Mail App after finishing with my email routine but I sometimes forget that.

Is there a plugin or a command line script to extend the 1 hour mail check interval to, say, 3 hour or 4 hours.

You could use the following command in Terminal (or add it to a shell script).

defaults write com.apple.mail PollTime 240

Where 240 is the time in minutes (i.e. 4 hours).


Catalina: HTTP downloads in Terminal stall without sudo I am experiencing a weird behavior only affecting running apps in the Terminal (BASH).

When running wget someurl, it will timeout. If I run the same with sudo, it works.

Other apps have no connectivity issues to the same URLs (Chrome, Edge etc.).

The issue remains with and without firewall activated.

Example:

$ wget http://www.google.com
--2019-10-26 22:33:24--  http://www.google.com/
Resolving www.google.com (www.google.com)... 172.217.14.196
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|172.217.14.196|:80...
connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...

Nothing happens here, it'll time out. Google opens just fine in the browser. If I run wget with sudo, I get the HTTP response.

I ran the first aid option in disk util to repair file permissions on all volumes, no change.

Any idea?

Thanks!

After some more digging (using lsof), I found the culprit to be Sophos AntiVirus.

If you run into a similar issue, open Sophos preferences, disable Live Protection and anything enabled in Web Protection.

Then try running wget (or whatever was blocked) again.

Once that works, you can reset Sophos preferences to their defaults again and check if everything still works.

Looks like a bug in Sophos AntiVirus to me.


What is the shortcut for confirming dialogs on Mac? I have a MacBook Pro 2015 with macOS Sierra 10.12.4 installed. I have a question about confirming dialogs.

I use WebStorm from JetBrains to write code. After some actions I can open Commit dialog. By the way the commit dialog opens with Command + K shortcut. Here is this dialog:

I write some text and after that I need to press the Commit button (submit form).

The problem: I can't do this with a shortcut. I tried Command + enter. I assumed this would work, because submitting this dialog (and any other dialog like this, not only in this programm) is done by control + enter, so I assumed on Mac it must be Command + enter.

It is not only with this dialog, it also doesn't work in other applications either.

What is the hotkey to confirm dialogs on Mac?

In general in macOS, you can select the default dialog button (highlighted blue) with Enter.

Enter selects the button on the right.

If you have All Controls enabled in System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts, then a blue outline can be moved around controls using ⇥ and ⇧⇥, with Space used to confirm. In the screenshot, Space selects the button on the left.

However, specifically for this question you are referring to IntelliJ. They have a history of not following Apple HIG and there does not appear to be a keyboard shortcut to press the Commit button on that window.

  Click this button to commit the selected files, or hover your mouse over this button to […]

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/2017.1/commit-changes-dialog.html


Can't pair apple wireless keyboard Keyboard: Apple Wireless Keyboard (model number MC184LL/B)

System: Macbook Pro Early 2011 running OS X 10.8

The keyboard gets detected and when I try to pair it, the system asks to enter some numbers through the keyboard.

However when I press the key (on the wireless keyboard) nothing happens, the only key that seems to work (i.e. to move to the next key in the code) is 0. I can also press enter to confirm but it always fails (since the only code I can enter is 0000...0).

I've also tried pairing from the bluetooth preference and changing the passcode option. However this won't work either.

Any ideas? The keyboard was paired with another MacBook Pro (I don't have access to it anymore). Is there any method to 'reset' the keyboard to factory settings?

If only one number key is working, it sounds like a hardware issue. My brother had a wireless keyboard that flaked out and only certain keys functioned (although in his case it was from a liquid spill).

Do you have any other Bluetooth-capable device to test with? Any iOS device can pair with the keyboard to test it.


Uninstalled macOS Sierra installer but corresponding disk space(~4.88GB) not freed I had downloaded macOS Sierra(~4.88GB) from App Store to create a bootable for a friend on my Macbook Air. After doing that successfully, I deleted the macOS Sierra Installer app from Applications directory. But my Drive size was not freed by 4.88GBs instead deleting it freed only 1GB. Are there any residual files I need to remove manually?

The problem is with a disk image with the name Apple RID... created by the macOS Sierra installer which did not get ejected when macOS installer was deleted and was occupying around 5.5GBs and wasn't visible anywhere except in Disk Utility.

After ejecting that disk using Disk Utility and restarting the laptop, the memory which was held up got freed.


How can I stop losing my screens when I close the lid? When I close the lid of my MacBook Air, it's almost always plugged in.  When I open the lid, I have to sign in and my screen is clear of all the things I wanted to see or was looking at, but did not finish.  This happens several times a day.  I have to close the lid because of a possible dust situation where I need to keep the computer during the day.  This just started happening a couple of weeks ago.  I am running OS X El Capitan.  I do not log out, but it thinks I did.  Grrrrrrr!

Sounds to me like the cause of it is this setting, which you'll want to disable:

System Preferences > Security & Privacy >
Require a password X minutes after sleep or screen saver begins


change sudoers to stop asking for password when running a systemsetup comman To what exactly do I need to change sudoers file to prevent asking for password when I change system time zone?

This is the command I am going to run:

sudo systemsetup -settimezone timezone

I know I need to change it, but I feel uncomfortable changing sudoers on my own due to not knowing exactly what I am doing.

Was brave enough to do it myself. For future readers, add:

yourusername ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/systemsetup

after

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


How to configure iOS 12 sharesheet to add WhatsApp Messaging? Links, Photos, and other data can be shared through options: Messages, Mail, etc.

For example, if I am browsing images in the Photos app, I would like to the ability to click the share button and select WhatsApp from a list of apps, so that the photo can be forwarded to a contact. WhatsApp is not on the list and needs to be added said list and configured to accept photos.

How does one add WhatsApp as an option to the sharing list in all apps?

If the developer didn’t program the hooks to receive a forward, you cannot accomplish this. Contact the developer or choose another app that has that feature.

If the developer enabled this, the mechanics are easy to curate your list of share destinations:

Tap share, swipe to the right end and tap “more” for shifting the order of apps, and also enabling/disabling them.
Scroll towards the bottom and you'll see all apps that are allowed to use sharesheet.

It’s possible a third things could happen, which would be corruption of the data store that holds your customizations. I would back up the device and then erase the device and install only WhatsApp to validate. Use the "three bar" icon to shift it in the list. If it doesn't appear, then seek assistance from Apple or hope restoring your full backup allows the addition.


White backgrounds on iPhone showing inset, very light, yet visible pink rectangular area Working on an iPhone app I noticed a very light, yet quite noticeable pink-ish rectangular area that's inset from the screen's edges uniformly by about 4 millimeters (0.16 inches) in all views with a white (light?) background. After spending a lot of time trying to figure out which of my app's view layers might cause this, I discovered that other apps such as WhatsApp, Messenger etc. show the same phenomenon on any white background. Not surprising then, a screenshot captured just shows a plain white background.

I wonder what this is? A normal effect of the background lighting? A weird setting I have overlooked? A defect?

I'm fine with the effect, as I don't seem to be causing it in my app, but still curious what it is that has caused me to waste quite a bit of time.

This seems to be an issue on a lot of iPhone 5/5s models. Supposedly, Apple has replaced the screens for free in the past, but the phone is old enough now they probably don't offer replacements any more.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5324198?start=0&tstart=0


How can I view/inspect my Mac’s Parameter RAM (NVRAM)? Inspired by this question I started looking for apps that allow to read the data saved in my Mac’s Parameter RAM. Aside from a very antique (pre OS X) application for Classic, I could not find any. Is there any way to access the info stored in the PRAM on current Macs?

To clarify, for PowerPC based Macs, this memory was called PRAM, but for Intel based Macs, the proper name is NVRAM.

To show the contents of the NVRAM or even manipulate them, you can use the nvram shell commando in Terminal. For info on usage, execute man nvram.

If you just want to display the entire contents of the NVRAM, you can execute it with th -p parameter:

nvram -p


Lion refuses to download from App store stating " unable to install on this machine" I am unable to get Lion to download and uprgrade my Mac Mini as it gives an error message - "We could not complete your purchase. This version of Mac OS X 10.7 cannot be installed on this computer." My Mac Mini originally had a Core Duo in it but was upgraded with a new Core 2 Duo 2Gz processor and it has 2 Gb of memory. About this Mac confirms this setup. I am using an external drive to boot from. There are two users on the Mini, and seperate drives to boot from. Neither the internal drive when booted from will allow to upgrade to Lion or my external one. I have contacted Apple Support and they had me capture and upload my complete system configuration to them using a little program they emailed to me. I sent this over a month ago now and have not had a response.

Has anyone else had this issue and found some way to resolve?

Apple determines Lion compatibility based upon the original shipping configuration of your machine. Since there was never an "official" upgrade offered from Core Duo to Core 2 Duo, according to Apple your machine is not supported.

But...

There are workarounds out there, if you are willing to get a little creative.

The simplest method is to install Lion onto a drive using a supported machine.  Once Lion is installed, it will boot and run just fine on your upgraded Mac Mini.


Are There Any Text Browsers for iOS? I want a text-only browser on my iPod. It is not jailbroken (nor do I wish to do so), and it is running iOS 4.2.1. Does anyone know of a way to install any text browser on iOS without jailbreaking? Any of these text browsers would be awesome;

Lynx, Edbrowse, w3m, Elinks, Links, Emacs/W3, Net-Tamer, WebbIE, etc

You could go on your iPod to a website like http://pizzaseo.com/tool-lynx.php to emulate the behavior.


download Mavericks at app store, can i install? I have downloaded Mavericks from the App Store. Now I have the installation image, but I am afraid to install it because it might delete my files and programs under Mac OS X Lion 10.8.4. If I install Mavericks, will it all be deleted?

No it won't delete your personal files or programs you have installed on Lion. The installer will upgrade your Lion installation to Mavericks and will keep your existing programs by default.

However, it is always a good idea to create a backup before upgrading your system. Just in case somethings happens during the installation or in case some of your software is not compatible with Mavericks. The backup will allow you to revert backup to Lion. I suggest you use TimeMachine with an external hard-drive to create a backup of your entire system before upgrading it.

Macworld has also written a great guide about what you need to know before upgrading to Mavericks.


Prevent Mac WIFI from being deleted when I delete from iPhone When I add a WIFI network to my MacBook Pro, it is automatically synced with my iPhone. This is OK on some networks, but if I am using my laptop at a company that blocks certain ports, such as those for external email (e.g. Gmail), I don't want this to be blocked on my phone too.

So, I removed the WIFI network from my iPhone so I can get my email, but now my MacBook has also removed the network, which I need to do my job.

Is there a way to prevent this from occurring? That is, can I have a WIFI network on my MacBook Pro and not have it on my iPhone?

This exact issue has also been a thorn in my side, as I frequently do not want my iPhone on the office Wi-Fi network for one reason or another.

A loophole that has been working for me lately (your milage may vary) is to forget the network in question from the iPhone, and then rejoin on the Mac. Its probably a bug, but I've found that I get several hours with the iPhone on cellular and my computer still on Wi-Fi this way. The phone does, unfortunately, rejoin the network once iCloud Keychain figures out what is going on and syncs up.

The only permanent solution I have found so far is to disable iCloud Keychain completely on the iPhone. That way, since the iPhone will not share passwords with your other devices, when you forget the Wi-Fi network on the iPhone the Mac will be unaffected.

Since I quite like iCloud Keychain and use it frequently, I find this a less than satisfactory answer. However, it will result in the desired outcome here.


Replacing HDD with SSD; what about non-APFS/APFS? iMac 27-inch, Late 2013, macOS up-to-date

I would like to back up my internal HDD (non-APFS) with Time Machine. Then erase the HDD. Then have the HDD replaced with a new internal SSD. Then restore from Time Machine.

Should I take precautions for the simultaneous switch from non-APFS to APFS? For example, must I convert the HDD to APFS before the steps mentioned above?

No, you don't need to convert the HDD. I recently did exactly what you're doing (though I installed the new SSD myself, which meant not having to worry about erasing the HDD) and didn't have to do any conversion.

But, just to be on the safe side, it would be smart to not only make sure you have a Time Machine backup but also clone your HDD to a different drive than the one that has your Time Machine backup. That way if, for whatever reason, you have a problem with restoring from the Time Machine backup, you have a fall-back plan. Better safe than sorry. You can clone the internal HDD to a second drive using Apple's Disk Utility or something like Carbon Copy Cloner. Instructions are readily available.

The other thing I'd suggest is that instead of simply restoring everything from your Time Machine backup to the new SSD you do a clean installation of macOS onto the new drive and then just restore your files and data using Migration Assistant. That way you get the benefits of a fresh OS installation along with the benefits of your new SSD.


Multiple Docks on the same screen Is it possible to have multiple Docks on the same screen?

Like, one on the bottom, one on the left, and another on the right?

You cannot have multiple native macOS Docks. There are Dock alternatives however, some which support multiple Docks and others that support just more organization. Compatibility is very much dependent on your version of macOS.
One alternative that seems to work with macOS High Sierra is uBar.


Sort files by spreadsheet I have a folder than contains over 1000 text files. The text files are supposed to be organised in folders.

I have a spreadsheet which states which text file goes in which folder:

Is there any way I can make the "Finder" respond to this spreadsheet, so it puts the correct file in the correct folder.  Maybe something involving Applescript or the terminal? It's just a simple "Apple Numbers" spreadsheet, so I can copy and paste the data out into something else.

The following assumes that neither file nor folder names contain comas (,) and that the exported CSV file uses , as the separator.

As small errors can lead to unexpected results and data loss it's recommended to make a backup first.

Remove any additional columns, header lines and empty lines at the end from your table (so it only contains two columns with file name and folder name respectively)
Export the data as a CSV file named files.csv into the folder containing the text files
Open Terminal
cd into/the/folder
Run perl -pi -e 's/\r\n/\n/;' files.csv to convert the CSV from DOS-like line ending to the standard Unix style
Copy/paste the following (test code, will not create/move anything)

while IFS=, read file folder; do
    # if the folder doesn't exist yet -> create it
    [[ -d "$folder" ]] || echo mkdir "$folder"
    # if file exists -> move it
    if [[ -r "$file" ]]; then
        echo mv "$file" "$folder"/
    else
        echo "Uups, $file not found"
    fi
done < files.csv

If the output looks ok (especially if no "Uups, xxx not found" output is shown, nor any other error messages), run

while IFS=, read file folder; do
    [[ -d "$folder" ]] || mkdir "$folder"
    if [[ -r "$file" ]]; then
        mv "$file" "$folder"/
    else
        echo "Uups, $file not found"
    fi
done < files.csv


Is it fine to update my phone to 9.3.2 iOS if I'm using iPhone 4s Is it fine if i go and update my phone to iOS 9.3.2? I am using iPhone 4s. I don't know if it's fine to update it or not. Cause I see lots of people not updating there's

You didn't indicate if your iPhone is jailbroken or not so I'm going on the assumption that it's not.

My recommendation to all questions like this is to say 'yes, you should always upgrade to the most recent iOS version'.  However, only you can decide if it's worth the upgrade or not.  If you do decide to upgrade, be sure to do a backup first.  If you don't like it, you can go back to what you have.

There are not many general user enhancements in this version (here is the list of changes), but there are many security and bug fixes that you should have (as documented here).  Most of the issues being reported in this version reference the iPad Pro.  If you have an iPad Pro, I recommend not upgrading right now.


How to remove aux jack from Macbook Pro? Recently I've got an aux jack stuck in the headphone port of my Macbook Pro 2015. (see photo below)

The entire jack broke off, as opposed to just the tip which is usually what happens for most. The jack is really wedged in as far as it will go and it's also at an angle.
I've tried using a bit of super glue and sticking the end of the jack back on to the old cable and then pulling it, but that didn't work and I think there might even be some super glue in the port now.
Ive tried using pliars to get it out, but that doesn't work because there is hardly anything for it to grip on to.
Would anyone know how to deal with this please? Any advice would be really appreciated!
Thanks,
Sam

If the port has super glue in it, there isn’t anything you can do to remove the broken piece other than take it in for service and have the port replaced.
The audio jack is somewhat hollow, but it does have a conductor in the center.  It may have been possible to push a “tinned” piece of wire into the jack and then heat The wire so the solder will weld the wire to the jack allowing you to pull it out.  You’ll need a soldering iron and some soldering skills to do this.
Alternately, you may be able to open the Mac, and from the back of the socket, use a stiff piece of wire to push it out of the jack.
However, most likely, the only solution would be unsolder the jack from the logic board and solder on a new one. You’ll have to take in in unless you have surface mount PCB rework skills and tools.    Now, that’s going to be expensive, so if you opt to not do this and go for a workaround, you”ll either need to use Bluetooth speakers or a USB DAC (Digital Audio Converter) to give you back physical input and output connections.


What are the "Overlapping Squares" icon in status menu on login screen? On El Capitan's login screen the status menu (top right near time) shows an icon of two overlapping squares, one square is to the top left and looks behind the other.
It doesn't show once I login.
What does this icon represe

Does the icon look like what is in this image?

http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/screen-sharing-messages-app-mac-os-x.jpg

If so it sounds like it would be related to Screen Sharing.


How to store password for Logical Volume in keychain? I have a Logical Volume with UUID 73D724AB-9999-9999-9999-8F1E1F5DF83F and it is password protected. The volume name is Workspace.

The password is very long. Thus, I would like to create an password entry in Keychain Access to mount the password-protected volume automatically.

Question: What should I put in:

Keychain Item Name
Kind
Account  (UUID? or the mount directory)
Where  (UUID? or the mount directory)

Here are the correct settings:

Kind: Encrypted Volume Password
Account: <UUID>
Where:  <DISK NAME> (as in *Disk Utility*)


Is FaceTime Audio and Video encrypted? Is FaceTime audio and video really encrypted? So that we don’t have to worry about anyone listening to our calls when we call using FaceTime?

Absolutely it is!
On Apple's Approach to Privacy page, you will find the following statement under the iMessage and FaceTime section:

  We use end-to-end encryption to protect your iMessage and FaceTime conversations across all your devices. With watchOS and iOS, your messages are encrypted on your device so that they can’t be accessed without your passcode. We designed iMessage and FaceTime so that there’s no way for us to decrypt your data when it’s in transit between devices. You can choose to automatically delete your messages from your device after 30 days or a year or to keep them on your device forever...
  ...and we never store the content of FaceTime calls on any servers.

Let me know if that was helpful or if you have any further questions regarding that statement.


HTTP doesn't work, HTTPS does MacBook Pro with Mavericks after resume, HTTP doesn't work but HTTPS does. No firewall, no proxy. HTTP does work in virtualized machines (everyone, one Ubuntu, one Windows 7 and a Windows Server 2008)

You just try in terminal telnet whateverdomain.whatevertopleveldomain 80 ...just nothing.

I'm lost

Try typing "curl -v http://domain.com" and see if you can fetch the page that way. Try a few different sites, to rule out one specific site being down.

Also, try confirming there's no proxy set by using:
networksetup -getwebproxy Wi-Fi  (if you're connected via wifi)


What is the relation between water damage and a cracked iPhone screen? This morning I took my iphone 5c to the genius bar and they refused to repair my cracked screen of the iphone initially agreeing to repair and then backing off citing water damage.

My iPhone is in standard 1-year warranty yet, so I don't understand what the connection between water damage and a cracked screen is.

Can someone explain Apple's reasoning or decision?

Just like an automotive repair service, some damage costs more to repair than it would cost to make a new vehicle. In car terms, your phone is "totaled" and the physical damage to the screen alone lies outside the warranty.

You could buy a new phone from the vendor and then submit that cost to your insurance company if it covers the accidental (or not) damage to your property for reimbursement.
You could ask Apple why they aren't offering you a "partial repair" - where you acknowledge that some damage is present and want a limited repair and then forgo the warranty on the repaired phone. My guess is they decided that all Apple repaired phones need to pass all tests and they literally can't even know how much liquid damage has spread without entirely reworking the phone.
You could seek repair from a company or person other than Apple.

Liquid damage is expensive to even diagnose since the small cracks in an iPhone ensure that water can and will go everywhere. If corrosive salts are coating the electronics you now have a safety and reliability concern. The cost to inspect and test every single part is akin to painstakingly refurbishing a 1971 Hemi 'Cuda convertible that you found rusting in a field. In that case, there were external factors that made the cost to refurbish the product economically or socially pleasing.


Prevent iOS Users from updating iOS Version Using Apple Configurator I have a scenario, where my employees are give iPads and iPhones to help with their daily tasks. There are numerous custom business applications installed on this device.

The problem occurs when these users apply updates to the iOS devices, which leaves created compatibility issues for my custom business applications.

My question is,

Is it possible via the iPhone Configuration Utility or the Apple Configurator, to put these devices in "Supervised Mode", which prevents users from installing these updates, be it OTA or via iTunes ?


How can I listen to a whole album on iTunes? I can not listen to a whole album on iTunes, I have tried "ticking or checking all the songs in my library" and preferences/unchecking the list view check boxes. nothing works. Can anyone help me please?

Assuming you are using a Mac with a newer system and the latest iTunes do the following:

Go to Album view

Now move the cursor to an album which will "enable" a play button in the lower right corner. Hit the play button to play all songs of this album:

If you click once more on the album you will see the content of the album:

To see the content of another album click on it - this won't interrupt the playback of the first album:

To play the second album either

move the cursor over the second album and click on the then enabled play button
move the cursor over the cover of the "expanded" album and click on the then visible bigger blue-on-white play button

move the cursor over one of the titles of the "expanded" album and click on the then visible small blue play button


Unable to post video preview for iOS app I am unable to submit the video preview of my app.  Length is ok and the upload is accepted followed by the message "Your file could not be loaded.  Try again"

Video upload is broken in iTunes Connect right now, due to mixed content issues, enforced in Safari 9. Either use Safari 8, or try a different browser and choose to allow mixed content.


How do you switch between built-in audio and headphone audio without unplugging? Once I plug headphones into my iMac I no longer have the option in the sound preferences panel to output audio to the built-in speakers. I have to unplug the headphones to get audio output through the built-in speakers. Since the plug is on the back of the display this is inconvenient. Does anyone know of an audio app that allows me to easily switch between built-in speakers and headphones for audio output?

I think the condition has always been there.  I believe plugging into the headphone jack physically disconnects the sound output from the speakers.  I believe you will have to use bmike's suggestion to get the desired outcome.


Extract Camera Roll from iTunes backup I had to restore a friend's iPod because they forget their passcode and they lost their camera roll. I can't restore FROM a backup, as the backup has the forgotten passcode on it.

Anyways, on my Mac I looked under ~/library/application support/MobileSync/Backup to find some hashed folder with a  boatload of hashed files and a couple .plist's saying it was indeed a backup.

My question is- I am sure these photos are in this folder hashed somewhere.. how can I get them out?

Thanks :)

There are third-party applications such as iBackupViewer and iPhone Backup Extractor that will read those backup files.

Also, if by any chance Photostream was turned on, those photos are on somebody's Mac, hiding in

~/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub


mDNSResponder - incoming connection from "[name of my Macbook]'s-macbook-pro.local" As I logged into my admin account to set some things up on my Macbook (I surf using a standard account), I noticed via my third-party firewall application, Little Snitch, that mDNSResponder had accepted an incoming connection from the name given to the very same Macbook on the LAN - [name]'s-Macbook-Pro.local.

I was wondering:

(1) What does this actually mean?

(2) As long as I don't have any sharing options enabled, would my Macbook be at risk of any malware related/intrusion issues if I were to accept this connection even once? E.g. someone attempting to brute force my admin password to remote login etc

Running OS X 10.11.1, built-in firewall set to block all incoming connections, Little Snitch 3.6.1. I'm on a home wifi network. There are 2 other Macbooks, 3 iPhones and 1 laptop running Windows on the same network.

The mDNSResponder is responsible to handle (beyond other aspects) automatic distribution and resolution of computer hostnames without using a dedicated DNS-server. In the OS X world this is called the Bonjour service. The local names of all Bonjour (or zeroconf) enabled devices - including your host - are sent to a special multicast address: 224.0.0.251.

To detect those devices the firewalls have to open the respective port and accept incoming connection.

Since your host probably is the only receiver and sender in your local network there is no special risk to accept those incoming connections.

In larger, non-SOHO or non-home networks security issues exist:

Security issues (wikipedia):

  Because mDNS operates under a different trust model than unicast DNS—trusting the entire network rather than a designated DNS server, it is vulnerable to spoofing attacks by any system within the multicast IP range. Like SNMP and many other network management protocols, it can also be used by attackers to quickly gain detailed knowledge of the network and its machines. Because of this, applications should still authenticate and encrypt traffic to remote hosts (e.g. via RSA, SSH, etc.) after discovering and resolving them through DNS-SD/mDNS.


Why does my laptop shut down overnight? Whenever I leave my MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) unattended (plugged in, or not) overnight (or for long periods of time) it shuts down by itself. When I open the lid it boots up to the FileVault password screen. It seems that if the lid is up, the laptop does not shut down.

It is running the latest and greatest macOS Sierra build (10.12.3 (16D32)).

There is no kernel panic, and I cannot find anything in the logs or settings that would cause this behavior. I tried searching and did a SMC reset.

EDIT

log show --style syslog --predicate 'eventMessage contains "shutdown cause"'
Skipping info and debug messages, pass --info and/or --debug to include.
Filtering the log data using "eventMessage CONTAINS "shutdown cause""
Timestamp                       (process)[PID]
2017-02-08 09:54:22.064782-0800  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 3
2017-02-08 20:07:46.801647-0800  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 5
2017-02-10 07:52:07.041401-0800  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 0
2017-02-10 19:10:11.005920-0800  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 0
2017-02-11 10:17:08.462940-0800  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 5
2017-02-12 10:22:55.834601-0800  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 0

EDIT 2
It turned out that the batteries on the laptop were failing. We sent the laptop to Apple for fixing under Apple Care.

Your "Shutdown Cause" has three separate values:  0, 3, and 5.

"5" is a clean shutdown
"3" is a dirty shutdown meaning the power button was held for 3 seconds or more
"0" means power loss

(contrary to what you'd think the values "should be", I know...)

There's an answer here on Ask Different that addresses the shutdown causes:  Are OS X shutdown cause and sleep cause numbers listed/explained anywhere?

A power failure on a "desktop" Mac (iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro) is easily explained.  However, since you have a laptop (MacBook Pro), it's very concerning because if your electric current is cut, your battery will kick in and if that battery gets too low, it will save a hibernation image.

The 0 is as if you had no battery and pulled the plug - the system just cut out.  I would take it in and have a look at it.  This is definitely not normal behavior.


Install OS X replacing Windows on a Mac without losing data My brother installed Windows 7 on my Mac. Now I am trying to install OS X Lion  but when I select Reinstall OS X, I am not able to select any drive. One of my drive has 1.27 TB of data. Is it possible to install OS X without losing data?

There is no way to reinstall OS X without formatting and losing data. If you want to keep your data, recover the data to another drive or to the cloud.


Deleted over 4TB on Promise VTrak, still shows as full This is not a duplicate of Why is my hard drive still full after deleting files?

I have of course attempted all methods mentioned there. Via the terminal I can see nothing listed on the drive. I was able to list all the hidden (.named) folders using ls -a | egrep '^\.' which then showed me the expected hidden folders, all of which I sudo rm -rd I've ran a Verify/Repair with Disk Utility (not sure of the effectiveness on an external RAID) but it had no effect.

I know a solution is just reformat, but what if I had a 10TB RAID and still had multiple terabytes of data? Formatting would not be an option.

This is not a locked files issue, not a trash issue, what seams to be the problem?

How can I free up the (4TB, claimed to still be taken up) space on the empty 5TB Promise VTrak E610f media RAID?

This was a production server so I couldn't be too forceful.

Inevitably, after hours, a reboot resolved the issue. Not my favorite solution by any means.


Help with turning on iCloud I use an iMac running macos High Sierra. I was trying to do something with my Documents folder and I turned off iCloud on my "Desktop and Documents" by unchecking the box in the System Preferences/icloud/option window as shown below.

Once I finished I wanted to turn iCloud back on by clicking the above checkbox. However, it will not turn back on. When I click on the checkbox the checkmark appears as shown below and a message saying "Setting Up..." appears.

But if I close System Preferences and then reopen them, the checkmark is gone. Can someone tell me how to turn iCloud on for "Desktop and Documents"

Here's a description of what happens when you turn off Desktop & Documents folder. It might simplify things to move all the stuff that went into the Desktop and Documents folder that was created into the default Desktop folder or Documents folder (or distribute the items between those two folders), then delete the new Desktop and Documents folder to make things the way they were before the option was enabled originally. Then I would suggest logging out and back in before attempting to enable Desktop & Documents folders in iCloud prefpane again.


How can I make vim "command mode" the default mode for terminal I use vim commands in my terminal..
But by default, the mode when I open up terminal is the "insert mode".
Is it possible to enter in "command mode" when I open a terminal session?

No there in no way to start your terminal in command mode.

The set keymap setting is used to customize the keymap within terminal. A line with set keymap vi-command means that mappings below that line apply to command mode; a line with set keymap vi-insert means that mappings below that line apply to insert mode. For more details see: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Use_vi_shortcuts_in_terminal

But starting from bash version 4.3 you can change your prompt to highlight which mode you are currently in by putting set show-mode-in-prompt on in your ~/.inputrc file. This with put either (ins) or (cmd) at the start of your prompt. You can further customize it by using command:

set vi-cmd-mode-string "\1\e[1;31m\2(cmd)\1\e[0m\2" -- will give light red color

set vi-ins-mode-string "\1\e[1;35m\2(ins)\1\e[0m\2" -- will give light purple color

You can pick any of the following color by their ANSI codes:

Black            \e[0;30m
Blue             \e[0;34m
Green            \e[0;32m
Cyan             \e[0;36m
Red              \e[0;31m
Purple           \e[0;35m
Brown            \e[0;33m
Gray             \e[0;37m
Dark Gray        \e[1;30m
Light Blue       \e[1;34m
Light Green      \e[1;32m
Light Cyan       \e[1;36m
Light Red        \e[1;31m
Light Purple     \e[1;35m
Yellow           \e[1;33m
White            \e[1;37m


Finder and Devices section Till some days ago, the external USB drive FA_SAMSUNG used to appear in the Devicessection of a Finder window. See attached screenshot.

All of a sudden, both drives disappeared from that section: the internal SSD and the USB external. I was able to add the SSD back to that section by dragging its icon. But I find no way to have the external USB drive back in the Devices section: if I drag its icon into that list, the icon goes back where it was.

I am using OS X 10.11.6.

Is there anyone who can help me?

The first thing you need to check is your Finder preferences.

In the Finder, go to Finder > Preferences
Select the Sidebar tab
Now check to make sure that both the Hard Disks and External Disks option are selected
Close the Finder Preferences window


spinning circle next to wifi symbol when music folder open I get the spinning circle when my music app is open, it never turns off! Can this drain my battery? on brand new iPhone 5s on ios7

See the answer to What does the spinning circle next to the network indicators on iOS mean?

  Apps can turn on and off the indicator at will, so it's not a 100%
  reliable indicator that data is actually being transferred.

You could make an experiment: leave the phone idle for two hours and check how much energy is consumed with the app on and off, respectively.


Looking for information about the inner workings of Back to My Mac I'm looking for a source of information on the inner workings of Back to My Mac. I'd like to know things such as:

Each protocol used (Bonjour, UPnP, mDNS, etc., IPSEC, TLS, etc.)
The sequence of each transaction (i.e. sequence diagrams for connection setup)
What router information is stored on Apple's servers
Which servers are used for which purposes (members.btmm.icloud.com, p34-btmmdns.icloud.com., etc.)

Take Control of Back to My Mac had some of this information, but it's no longer available. The replacement book, Take Control of iCloud has very little information on this topic.

While most users just give up in frustration when BTMM doesn't work, if one wishes to troubleshoot connections and see exactly where the problem is occurring (akin to looking under the hood when your car won't start), the information above is critical.

The inner workings of Back to My Mac as provided with the iCloud service (the implementation has changed since MobileMe) are described in RFC 6281


How to Downgrade from MacOS Catalina to Mojave- Creating a bootable hard drive in APFS format I'm following instructions on how to downgrade from MacOS catalina back to Mojave as Catalina doesn't support ProTools. I was following the instructions fine and then I got stuck in the process of making an external bootable hard drive. The webpage I'm reading instructs to make the drive in APFS format if my laptop is in that format and in MacOS extended journaled if my Mac is in HFS+ format. Well my Mac is in APFS format so that's the format I chose for the external hard drive. However during this next step in terminal, I'm getting an error message. APFS disks may not be used as bootable install media.
An error occurred erasing the disk.
But it would work if the hard drive was in MacOS extended journal format. My question is will my laptop launch MOJAVE from a hard drive in HFS+ format when my laptop is in APFS format? Or will that screw everything up?

The Apple documentation How to create a bootable installer for macOS says to use Mac OS Extended not APFS.

Mac OS Extended is the new name for HFS+

  Use the 'createinstallmedia' command in Terminal

  Connect the USB flash drive or other volume you're using for the
  bootable installer. Make sure that it has at least 12GB of available
  storage and is formatted as Mac OS Extended.
  Open Terminal, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
  Type or paste one of the following commands in Terminal. These assume that the installer is still in your Applications folder, and
  MyVolume is the name of the USB flash drive or other volume you're
  using. If it has a different name, replace MyVolume in these
  commands with the name of your volume.

  Catalina:*

  sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

  Mojave:*

  sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

From the link in the above quote

  Are you preparing a Time Machine backup disk or bootable installer?

  Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for any disk that you plan to use with Time Machine or as a bootable installer.

As you can see the documentation is somewhat inconsistent regarding journaling (it probably doesn't matter) however I used Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to install Mojave and it worked fine.


healthy-wise: which keyboard is better? there is a apple wireless keyboard and the apple keyboard with numeric keypad.

Which one is better for the overall healthy of my wrists and arms? I suffer from RSI and I want to buy a wireless keyboard but I'm afraid it will injure me.

I would highly recommend getting a natural ergonomic keyboard. Here is a link that Microsoft has explaining the difference.
Ergonomic Keyboards

There are numerous keyboards that are ergonomic. Microsoft and Logitech have a few that work with Mac's.


Installing a major Ruby implementation without XCode A user is wanting to get started with Ruby (and Ruby on Rails), and they don't have XCode installed, and the current internet connection is rather weak.

Are there any major implementations of Ruby (MRI, JRuby, Rubinius) that can be installed without installing XCode?

I know OS X comes with a system Ruby, but I've heard that "Don't touch nothing" is the best advice with regards to it.

OS X includes the ruby interpreter it is in /usr/bin so on your path

On Yosemite

ruby --version

shows

ruby 2.0.0p481 (2014-05-08 revision 45883) [universal.x86_64-darwin14]


Hooking up a MacBook Air to a traditional stereo system Premise:

This machine: 11" MacBook Air 2012
This amp: Pioneer A-209R
Cable: 3.5mm jack ↔ double male RCA connector

Goal question: How do I get this hooked up properly?

I’ve tried simply hooking the MBA to the amp’s Line In. Doesn’t sound good. I assume that since it’s a headphone port it’s pre-amplified whereas Line In expects a plain un-amplified Line Out signal, ergo distortion. Yes?

If so, does one of the amp’s other inputs expect a signal pre-amplified as per the headphone port’s output, so that clear sound will come out the other end?

Or is there no place on the amp where the signal from the headphone port is suitable, meaning I’ll need extra USB hardware? If so, what keywords am I looking for? Is a DAC what I’m after? Those seem to usually come with a headphone amp built in, though? (That is useless to me.) Or should I be looking for something else – e.g. is a “USB soundcard” the thing I’m after? Or maybe I want something entirely different?

I’m finding that my grasp of all this stuff is at a level just sufficient to give me leads – and then leave me confused about which direction to choose for what case.

So:

What’s the done thing here?
It would also be nice to get enough of a glossary intro that I understand the choices.

I would recommend getting a usb audio device ("USB soundcard"). I'm not an expert audiophile, but an amazon search for usb audio interface will reveal a lot of price points to give you different audio out options which should sound better in a stereo system than the headphone port.


Why is there a yellow bar over my Finder icon? I have a Mac running OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), and I just noticed this today:

I haven't installed anything new, and I have no reason to believe that there's a specific application responsible for this issue. I rebooted my Mac, cleared the NVRAM and ran CleanMyMac 3, but it's still there. Killing the dock or restarting SystemUIServer doesn't help.

Question: Why is there a yellow bar over my Finder icon?

It's a corrupt icon cache. It can be fixed by running the following code from fabiofl:

sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -exec rm {} \;


OS X Yosemite shares browser tabs between two different Macs, although iCloud-Safari is turned off Yesterday I got crazy with a very special behavior of two of our iMacs (running with the latest Yosemite).

If you open a browser Tab in Safari or Chrome on the first iMac, it automatically opens in the task bar of the second one (Screenshot).

I disabled the Safari Cloud-Tabs Service in the iCloud, but the sharing keeps on going (still after rebooting, activating and deactivating again).

Funnily enough, it doesn't matter which browser you are using. Opening a tab in Safari displays it with a "chrome remote" icon on the other computer.

Has one of you ever seen this feature?
Both Macs are using the same iCloud-Address.

Btw: There is no Chrome "iCloud Tabs" Extension installed, but like I said this problem happens on Safari too.

If you really mean by  automatically opens in task bar as a Browser icon displays a the little icon on top of it in the Dock (Handoff app icon in Dock ), and when you click it it opens the same page you are viewing on the other Mac.

then this is nothing to do with iCloud.

This a feature called Hand off. Have a read here

  When your Mac computers and iOS devices are within Bluetooth range of
  each other (about 33 feet or 10 meters), they can automatically “hand
  off” what you’re doing from one device to another. For example, you
  can start writing an email in Mail on your iPhone, then instantly pick
  up where you left off in Mail on your Mac.

  Handoff works with several apps that come
  with OS X Yosemite and iOS 8: Calendar, Contacts, Mail, Maps,
  Messages, Notes, Phone (iOS only), Reminders, and Safari. It also
  works with Keynote v6.5, Numbers v3.5, and Pages v5.5 for Mac, and
  Keynote, Numbers, and Pages v2.5 for iOS. Third-party apps may also
  work with Handoff.


All fingerprints erased This morning, I woke up, opened my MacBook Pro 2016 13" w/ TouchID, and all the fingerprints were erased. Nothing should have caused this, and nobody else knows the password to my account. How can I determine what caused this so I can fix it and avoid this in the future?

Running macOS Sierra 10.12.4 (16E195)

It did NOT update software or anything outside of the usual last night, it didn't even reboot.

I had a similar error with my MacBook Pro 2016 15".  You should be able to solve this issue by updating your software version to High Sierra (which fixed the issue on my computer) if possible.  Check in your console logs to see if your computer experienced a kernel panic, which may have caused the loss of your fingerprint data.


Making my own HEIF/HEIC files I've been looking around for a while for a way to start packing image bytestreams into HEIF files, since macOS High Sierra and and iOS 11 are now out. Haven't had much luck, just large numbers of people converting .heic files to .jpg, and the Nokia JS viewer on GitHub

To start, I am not looking to convert my existing Photo Library all to HEVC encoded .heic files, there's diminishing returns to be had there since they're already jpegged and have had quality loss from the original.
So this question is not a duplicate of the "Convert whole library to new .HEIC format" question

My goal:

Take both a mpeg bytestream and a PNG or JPG bytestream and pack them into a .heic file
Take multiple PNG and/or JPG bytestreams and make a .heic file of them (like a burst series of photos)

HEIF is just a container, so while it was designed for HEVC use, it does support other data types like jpg, png, pretty much anything that the viewing applications support in their natives file formats.

I just haven't been able to find any software that will let me do it. Everything I search for to do with HEIF or HEIC in the term just pumps me with tech news headlines about Apple trying to replace jpeg, and people converting their .heic files once their imported from their computer (which seems like it would take effort to do since iOS defaultly will convert them for you if you try to import them or share them anywhere it can't explicitly confirm the reaching end supports them...)

So I'm hoping someone here knows a thing or two and could point me in the right direction at least.

I'm not adverse to command line tools, or even doing some development myself if I can get pointed at a library I can import into a Swift application (I'm a late bloomer in programming, and while I could say the same for Javascript, if I was to build an app around a library to do this work, I'd much rather use Swift than use a scripting language)

So hopefully someone has thought the same thing and had better luck than me finding this! :)

Edit 1, Nov 10:

I've found a site by a bloke called Ben Gotow that talks about converting existing JPEGs into HEVC bitstreams, and then putting them into a .heic or .heif container. It's close, but he hadn't been able to find a lot of detail for doing more than that. I'm not adding this as an answer, just as an edit since it is relevant but doesn't actually achieve my goal. hope anyone else finding this question will find his site useful!
jpgtoheif.com

This use of GPAC may move closer to the goals you desire:

What is GPAC?
GPAC is an Open Source multimedia framework. GPAC is used for research and academic purposes and beyond through industrial collaborations! The project covers different aspects of multimedia, with a focus on presentation technologies (graphics, animation and interactivity) and on multimedia packaging formats such as MP4.

More details:

Compare and convert HEIF, JPEG and WebP images with rokka
GPAC support for HEIF.

A little more research and an answer here provides the way!
We need several things installed, ideally with homebrew:

x265 and GPAC
brew install x265 gpac

FFmpeg with x265 support
brew install ffmpeg --with-fdk-aac --with-ffplay --with-freetype --with-libass --with-libquvi --with-libvorbis --with-libvpx --with-opus --with-x265

Reference
Now that you have the tools, try a script like this to convert images in a folder to HEIF/HEIC:
for F in *.jpg *.png *.tif *.tiff; \
  do ffmpeg -i "$F" -crf 23 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/2)*2:trunc(ih/2)*2" -preset slower -pix_fmt yuv420p -f hevc "${F%.*}.hvc" && \
     MP4Box -add-image "${F%.*}.hvc" -ab heic -new "${F%.*}.heic" && \
     rm "${F%.*}.hvc";
  done;

I tried it with a folder of images and it works. It turns images with odd dimensions to even dimensions, for instance, but besides a few caveats it works.


How to set "date added" metadata in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion The Finder in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion shows a new piece of file metadata, "Date Added," which tracks the date an item was added to a folder.  After upgrading to 10.7, none of the items in my ~/Downloads folder have "Date Added" values.  I'd like to set all the empty "Date Added" values to match the "Date Modified" values, but I can't figure out how to set the "Date Added" attribute to a specific value.

My first guess was this:

xattr -w com.apple.metadata:kMDItemDateAdded "2012-02-19 16:34:47 +0000" myfile

But that doesn't seem to work (though it doesn't report an error either).

When I run xattr -l on items in my Downloads folder, I get a field that looks something like this:

com.apple.metadata:kMDItemDownloadedDate:
00000000  62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 A1 01 33 41 B4 83 4D BF  |bplist00..3A..M.|
00000010  4C 4F E3 08 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 00 00 00  |LO..............|
00000020  00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000030  00 00 00 00 13                                   |.....|
00000035

This is a binary plist. When I use HexFiend to create a file with those bytes (yes, I manually entered them; blast from the past like entering assembler code out of a magazine into my Apple ][GS), then save it as a .plist file, I opened the file in TextWrangler and got the following uncompiled xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<array>
    <date>2011-11-28T05:03:59Z</date>
</array>
</plist>

That said, while Apple seems to store the dates in compiled XML, plain text seems to work.

In other words, if you can get the file's modified date in string form, you can run the command xattr -w com.apple.metadata:kMDItemDownloadedDate "2012-02-19 16:34:47 +0000" file to change the "downloaded date", which appears to be the field actually sorted on, not actual Date Added.

Finally you got no error when adding the (unused) kMDItemDateAdded field because, as I learned in this article, xattr will happily set whatever metadata field you want, used or unused.

That's the core of the answer. I'll work on writing an AppleScript to get the modified date for each file, check to see if kMDItemDownloadedDate is set, and if it isn't, set kMDItemDownloadedDate to the modified date, but I wanted to get the core of the answer posted.


How to start Safari on a browser page only when Error 502 stops happening? I've got a situation where if I push an update to an instance on the web, it will take 3-5 minutes to compile, then when that compiling has successfully finished, the instance will shoot Error 502 for a couple of minutes before it will start running again.

I'm looking for a solution where, the instance (a server URL) will be queried every 5 seconds or so, and when it stops replying 502, Safari will boot up.

Any idea how I could do that? So far, on the terminal, I can run this:

curl -I http://url 2>/dev/null | head -n 1 | cut -d$' ' -f2

and this will output the HTTP Port response or whatever, but I'm not savvy enough to "do that every 5 seconds" or to define a "If (resulting response) is X, keep repeating loop, but If (resulting response) is Y, then launch Safari with an URL".

Any ideas?

A "quick and dirty" script to accomplish what you are looking to do could be written as:

#!/bin/bash

url = "http://url"
code=`curl -I $url 2>/dev/null | head -n 1 | cut -d$' ' -f2`

while [ "$code" == 502 ]
do
  sleep 5
  echo trying again
  code=`curl -I $url 2>/dev/null | head -n 1 | cut -d$' ' -f2`
done

open -a Safari $url

Basically, what it does is caputure the value that you output in a variable called code.  It then evaluates that variable in a While/Do loop every 5 seconds until the value changes.  Once that happens, it exists the loop and launches a Safari instance pointing to the URL.


How to remove a Volume using Terminal? A few weeks ago I mounted an external hard drive with a volume named "CJ 1TB"
I ejected it and thought everything was fine, but my system (11.2.1) has not forgotten about it.
When I run "ls" in Terminal, it shows my boot volume "Bamboo", and "CJ 1TB":
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   1 Feb 17 13:58 Bamboo -> /
d--x--x--x  3 root  wheel  96 Feb  9 11:59 CJ 1TB

But when I run "diskutil list" the "CJ 1TB" does not show up:
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         2.0 TB     disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +2.0 TB     disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Bamboo - Data           1.0 TB     disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 324.0 MB   disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                613.7 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume Bamboo                  15.1 GB    disk1s5
   6:              APFS Snapshot com.apple.os.update-... 15.1 GB    disk1s5s1
   7:                APFS Volume SOT-BU                  9.0 GB     disk1s7

Grateful for a solution...

What looks like a folder in /Volumes is not a real folder.  Everything inside /Volumes looks (at first glance) to be folders, but in reality are what are called mount points.  These are just places to join disks into the tree of folders starting from /Volumes.
When you mount a disk, macOS creates a mount point in /Volumes and connects the disk to that mount point.
When you cleanly dismount a disk the mount point is removed.
But sometimes the mount point gets left behind.  For example, following a physical disconnect without a preceding dismount.
The last few comments in this blog post show someone who has 3 such mount points left behind. Howard Oakley's blog
You have two choices:

Don't worry about it.  The mount point is not taking up space on your disk.

Attempt to remove the mount point.

Howard Oakley advises not to mess with it. The danger when tampering with /Volumes is that you will mess up your whole folder structure and end up with an unbootable system.


How do I get a tighter grid for MIDI editing in GarageBand 10? In the previous versions of garageband, when I double-clicked on a region and the editing window on the bottom popped up, I could use the ruler button to choose how tight the quantize grid was.

In a 2016 update I don’t find this control in the same place.

How can I change that timing  grid now?

You can!  But the feature is different than before.  To get a smaller grid you can click the arrow at the right side beat/tempo/key led area and select "time".


How do I backup OS 9 system files? I have a PowerBook G4 Titanium that I need to wipe to clear the previous user's personal data. It has a password that I don't know but I can still login automatically to OS X upon boot. Not having the administrative password is preventing me from wiping the computer through the options provided by the OS.
I have learned that these older macs come with specific roms and extensions for the older OSs and I would like to back these up. But I understand that this isn't entirely straightforward due to aliasing and resource forks. The OS 9 part of the laptop was never used so it is pristine and a good candidate for being backed up.
How do I do go about backing up all of the necessary files in a way that I can restore them?
I selected the following files on the root partition and dropped then all at once into DropStuff:

Applications (Mac OS 9)/
Desktop (Mac OS 9)/ -> Desktop Folder/
Desktop Folder/
Desktop DB
Desktop DF
System Folder/
Trash/

Is this sufficient to preserve aliases and resources or do I need to do this differently?
I know very little about vintage Mac software and filesystems but I am very experienced with both Windows and Linux. Please feel free to be as technical as you like.

Those are rebuilt automatically if they are missing:

Desktop DB
Desktop DF
Trash

To test it, just use an external disk, copy those files on a HFS partitioned volume, press option on reboot to select the start volume.


Display Unread E-Mail Count on Loginwindow Bit of an unusual case, but I'm planning to restructure how I use OS X when I next do a clean-install, such that I have a separate user account for casual use and work use, to keep things a lot tidier and to avoid distractions.

However, I'd still like to know how many unread messages I have in the other account, either visible from the loginwindow or by some other convenient means.

Is there any way to achieve this, e.g - by installing a script on the account I want to get a count for? Of course if the other account isn't signed in this won't work, in which case a last known count is fine.

I suppose maybe I'm just spoiled by smart phones that let you see message count (or even messages) from a lock-screen, but it'd be nice to have something similar without having to actually add the same e-mail account to Mail for both users.

I think @Buscar웃 is right, you need to fetch your mail before you know how much mail is in your inbox.

I think you can use your Terminal for that, and with the combination of 'GeekBench' it might even look pretty.

A common mailclient for OS X terminal is mail, it is already installed, but unfortunately I have no clue on how to configure it correctly.

Another terminal mail client is mutt. You can install mutt using brew

brew install mutt

You can then configure mutt and run it in your other account. Mutt is lightweight and will not use much resources.


History of shared web pages in Safari I shared a web page via Safari (8 on Yosemite) once. Now the last recipient shows up in the menu. How can I delete it from there? See picture for how it looks.

This was a long time ago, but I found out how to delete the recently shared items and haven't answered yet. So here is how it goes:

Delete the plist file:

Old: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sharekit.recents.plist

New: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preferences.extensions.ShareMenu.plist

I forgot when exactly macOS changed the file location, and maybe both file are present after an upgrade.

You can use plutil -convert xml1 <filename> to convert the plist into a human-readable XML format if you want to inspect it.


Changing OS X Spotlight priorities for specific applications I'd like to fiddle with Spotlight's priorities so that when I enter 'photo', my first returned result is Adobe Photoshop, and not Photo Booth.

I understand how to change priorities for or disable entire file types, but I'd rather just remove Photo Booth from Spotlight search.

Failing that, I could just delete Photo Booth. I don't use it. I think Photo Booth can't normally be deleted on Lion, so what's the command to delete it via Terminal?

You don't need to delete anything. And I strongly advise you not too, since it's a built-in app. It could be useful to other part of the system, and it will probably be added back on a system update.

About your problem, Spotlight is smart, it will learn that when you type "photo" you want to open iPhoto over the time.

Just keep on typing photo, and selecting iPhoto over PhotoBooth.

If Spotlight is not smart enough or fast enough for you, you can try an alternative launcher, such as Alfred. It may be faster to learn than Spotlight (at least, it's what I found happened for me).


How to create playlist from Up next songs in iTunes? How to create playlist based on Up next songs in iTunes?
Even better- how to save playlist you are currently playing, based on your history + Up next?

I haven't found any "one click" method, but these steps do the trick:

Create a new playlist and give it a title. This playlist should now be open in the right sidebar in iTunes 11.
Open the Up Next list via the blue icon to the right of the current song's title.
Click on the first song you want to add to select it.
Shift-click on the last song you want to add.  All songs between and including the first and last should now be highlighted in the Up Next pane.
Click and drag the list into the open playlist.

You'll need to switch to the History view in the Up Next pane and repeat the process of selecting tracks and adding them to your new playlist.  Click "Done" in the playlist sidebar once you've finished adding tracks and putting them in the desired order.


Time Machine - move backup from local disk to network volume. Wrong case sensitivity? I am trying to move a Time Machine backup from a Firewire disk (called disk1) directly connected to a computer to a network share, that is, from a folder in/on /Disk1/Backup.backupdb to a sparsebundle/disk image (called dmg1) stored in the network share.

Following some suggestions in a Time Machine FAQ I begun a new TM backup to let Time Machine create the needed disk image. As soon as the image was created I cancelled the backup.

Next step was to mount this new image (the resulting volume is called Time Machine Backup, TMB for short) and delete the /TMB/Backups.backupdb directory. Finally I was supposed to copy /disk1/Backups.backupdb to /TMB/. Unfortunately, this last step fails with an error message The volume has the wrong case sensitivity for a backup.

Apparently disk1 is not case sensitive (which was/is the default) but for some reason Time Machine sparsebundles are created case sensitive = you can't copy an old local backup (Or can you? Finder prevents it but "logically" it shouldn't be a problem to copy files from a case insensitive volume to a case sensitive volume. The other way around should, however, not work.) to the disk image that is necessary to use if you want to backup to a network volume.

This must be a pretty common usecase, especially since Apple themselves sell a simple NAS (Time Capsule) for this specific purpose, so how is such a migration supposed to be done? The only/most common advice I found when I google for solutions is to start over, but then you waste quite a bit of space as well as lose readily accessible backup history. Not good.

I ran into the same issues when following advice similar to the OP, specifically, to use Time Machine to start the backup to create a new sparse bundle on the network share, stop the back and copy Backups.backupdb to the newly created sparse bundle.

My solution is to mimic what Time Machine does to create the new sparse bundle with only one difference:  format with "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", which is not case sensitive.  The major benefit to this solution, in addition to preserving old backups, is that this maintains all of Time Machine's expectations of a network share backup disk, and thus, hourly auto backups, etc. will work seamlessly without other scripts or workarounds.

I've kept details and notes for myself in the "Migration from External HDD to Samba" section at:  https://gist.github.com/martian111/e0d9885004eb56fd6abf3d1ba7671737, but the TL;DR steps relevant to solving this question are (starting at where the OP left off when he/she encountered the error):

If necessary, stop Time Machine backup and disable until migration is complete.
Create a new sparse bundle using "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" as the format and the same naming conventions as the unusable, case-sensitive sparse bundle created by Time Machine.
Use distutil to enableOwnership on the "Time Machine Backups" volume (after mounting the created sparse bundle).  (Ref: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/53243/174505)
In the Finder, move/copy the Backups.backupdb directory to the new volume after confirming ownership is enabled.  The Finder should prompt for admin privileges.
Unmount "Time Machine Backups" volume
Copy com.apple.TimeMachine.* metadata files from the sparsebundle directory created by Time Machine into the sparsebundle created above.
Delete the unusable, Time Machine created sparsebundle, and replace it with the one created here (changing the sparsebundle directory name).
Re-enable Time Machine's "Back Up Automatically".

Once the above is done, the next Time Machine backup should recognize the sparse bundle created and continue where the last backup left off.  Also, all historical backups are browsable when entering Time Machine.

Note: My Mac's root volume is also not case-sensitive, so I assume this is safe for my setup.

Note 2: My Time Machine network share is a Samba/SMB share running in Linux.  The disks hosting the SMB share are encrypted with LUKS, and thus, I do not use Time Machine's encrypted backup feature.


Wrong date format in the menu bar I set up some custom date formats, and while at first the date in the menu bar did honor them, now I've noticed it stopped and it's just using a standard one.

How do I switch it back?

Screenshot:

If I click on it, it shows it using my custom format, but that's infinitely pointless.

I'm running 10.10.3, IIRC I updated yesterday (from a 10.10.?, likely the one just before this one), but I'm not sure it's this update who broke it.

This is the new behaviour in Yosemite and it can't easily be changed. The menu bar format now doesn't read your custom format and instead displays a barely customizable format instead. The only available options for it can be found in System Preferences -> Date & Time -> Clock.

One thing you could do is use a third party utility like Day-O, which is free and does exactly what you seek -> http://shauninman.com/archive/2011/10/20/day_o_mac_menu_bar_clock https://shauninman.com/archive/2016/10/20/day_o_2_mac_menu_bar_clock.

If you want things more natively, you could try editing the corresponding plist file directly (com.apple.menuextra.clock). I haven't however had much luck with it.

Open Terminal and type the following:

Reading the current settings:

defaults read com.apple.menuextra.clock

Setting them:

defaults write com.apple.menuextra.clock "DateFormat" 'EEE hh:mm a'

Or 24 hours format with the (day of the) month and seconds:

defaults write com.apple.menuextra.clock "DateFormat" 'EEE d MMM HH:mm:ss'

Then refresh the menu bar using:

killall -KILL SystemUIServer

Using w you should be able to add week number, but I haven't had any luck with that and it keeps resetting the week number.


Would a lost phone still show as offline if someone found it and erased it? I lost my phone and it looks like it was either turned off or died at 5:41pm. When I use Find My Phone, its says offline.

Is this because it's off or is it possible someone erased my phone? If someone erased my phone, would it still show up as offline, or would it disappear?

I'm trying to figure out if someone has my phone or if it is just misplaced.

Yes, if a device has been restored, Find My iPhone will be deactivated and the device will show as offline. If you have iOS 7 or above, you will receive an email if this occurs next time the device communicates with Apple's servers.

However, with iOS 7 and above, attempting to erase an iPhone with an active Find My iPhone will enable Activation Lock. This means the device will contact Apple's servers and be available to you. Activation Lock can't be bypassed without your Apple ID.


Program is opening for a quarter of a second and then closing instantly After having this problem for over a month and not succeeding, I am asking you for help.

Sometimes (it is happening irregularly) a program is opening in the dock but closing again after a quarter of a second. I am not able to find out which program it is as it is happening so quickly.

Now my question: Is there any way to find out which apps (or processes) have been opened in the past minute (so that I can find out which program is responsible for this strange behavior).

I would be so glad if you could answer my question!

With best greetings,
Leon

Open the Console app and leave it running. With the verbosity of recent versions of macOS, I'd be very surprised if the application doesn't leave log entries. Or at the very least the operating system doesn't leave log entries about it.

You could also leave a Terminal window open with the command sudo fs_usage | grep open running. This command will give you a list of every single file that is opened on your Mac. Which will be a surprising amount, but if you stop it (hold down CTRL and hit C) and check it immediately after seeing the application appear and disappear you should see what it is and where it is being loaded from.


Encrypted forgot password NO Recovery Key I forgot my password to my Macbook Pro and I dont have the recovery key. I dont ever remember putting my computer on FileVault lock...to the point well forgot my password. I need help :'(

I have tried the new method I found with the corestorage list on terminal. But I always need to key in a passpharse. I receive " Error: -69749: Unable to unlock the Core Storage Voulume.

I really dont want to try to erase everything I have so many memories in there.

Please someone help!
Apple Store was no help at all.

When you loose both, your passphrase and the recovery key, chances are very high that your data is lost completely as FileVault is a very secure way to protect your data. This is Apple's support document describing possible steps in such a situation.

However, there are a few things you could try:

In case you have multiple users set up, try their passwords, as they may be enabled to decrypt the volume as well.
In case you have backups, they are not encrypted by default. You could recover your data from there.
Also, you could recover the Recovery Key from the FileVaultMaster.keychain file from such a backup (see method 3).
By default the iCloud recovery option is selected. In case you didn't change that during setup, you can use Apple's Reset Password assistant to get your recovery key from the iCloud.

Good luck!


Is there a way to selectively enable "Text Message Forwarding"? Yosemite's new "Text Message Forwarding" feature is a great convenience for communicating with friends and colleagues who use SMS for texting, but it has the potentially to fatally* undermine 2-factor authentication schemes that use text messages.

Is there a way to limit which contacts' text messages can be forwarded?

I was totally sharing your concerns, hence my iPhone is forwarding any messages - including those from my bank accounts - although bluetooth on both Mac and iPhone is turned off (and so is wifi on the iPhone, so I assume the forwarding works via cellular data). According to a nice and helpful guy on the Apple-Hotline, there is no such option as filtering which messages will be forwarded and which not.

But after thinking about the issue for some while, I do not see it as such a big deal anymore. The 2-factor-authentication is based on the principle of knowing one information (like your password) and possessing something (e.g your phone) to receive a second piece of information which will, put together with the first bit, act as key. The situation with the message forwarding just differs in so far, that the "thing" you possess in this case are two things (the phone and the mac). So no breach, imho, since the guy who could possibly steal your Mac still has to know your password.

It just does not feel right to have the transaction no displayed on the same device that runs the session and thereby requested the number ;-)


How do I sign out of a Twitter account on the iPhone? When I use an app such as Safari, I can choose to "Tweet" a page and it uses my Twitter account. How do I sign out of that Twitter account so that if I give my device to someone else, they can no longer tweet things on my behalf?

The only way to sign out of an account is to actually delete it, according to the UI. This is tied into the Twitter integration that was part of iOS 5.

To sign out of the account, you need to:

Go to Settings
Choose Twitter
Tap on the account you want to sign out of.
Tap Delete Account

This does not delete your actual Twitter account, it just logs you out and removes that accounts credentials from your device.


Create Message with Apple Mail from commandline I am not working on an Apple computer, but I know people who do. I want to create a shell script for them which allows them to create a larger number of messages automatically. It should look like this:

function mymail {
  Mail ....
}

mymail "recipient1@mail.com" "subject1" "message text" "attachment.txt"

Can I pass commandline arguments to Apple Mail in the mymail function which will allow me to create these messages from the shell? The mailer should not actually send the messages. It should just display message windows or save them in some folder to be reviewed by the sender.

I haven't really tested this, but you could use AppleScript for it.

mymail() {
    osascript - "$@" <<-END
on run args
tell app "Mail"
set m to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:item 2 of args, content:item 3 of args, visible:true}
tell m
make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:item 1 of args}
if number of args is 4
make new attachment with properties {file name:POSIX file (item 4 of args)} at after last paragraph
end
end
activate
end
end
END
}


What's the difference between "Initialize" and "Erase"? I was recently handed an old backup hard drive that my co-workers couldn't read because it used one of the EXT file systems. They didn't tell me what they wanted at first, so I assumed I should try to get the data off of it.

I plugged it in, and my a dialog asked me to initialize, eject, or ignore.

I ignored it, because I knew I would need to install osxfuse and ext4fuse, which I did, and I was able to read the disk just fine. Only after that, my coworker told me that he wanted the disk erased and formatted with a filesystem that he could use on his PC. But even though I had the disk mounted and readable, my attempts to format it failed. I tried:

Disk Utility > Erase > ExFAT, which gave a simple "operation failed" error,
diskutil eraseVolume ExFAT NewName disk2, which gave a "cannot unmount disk" error,
umount, which gave a "disk isn't mounted" error, and
all of the above after unplugging the drive various ways.

Finally, I rebooted, and when I plugged in the drive again, I was asked to initialize, eject, or ignore. I choose to initialize this time, and suddenly I could erase to various formats with no issues.

This behavior surprised me because I assumed "initialize*, erase, and format were all synonyms. I guess they're not. So what's the difference? How can one force the initialize dialog to appear?

Looking up the definitions, we find:

  Initialize:  On Apple Macintosh computers, initializing a disk means formatting it.

As erase is more a more generic term; from Merriam-Webster we get:

  Erase:
  to remove (recorded matter) from a magnetic medium; also :  to remove
  recorded matter from erase a videotape; to delete from a computer
  storage device erase a file

When you initialize a device, you make it usable by the operating system.   When you erase a device/file, you remove the contents.  Initializing a device previously used with an incompatible format will inherently, erase the device.

To put it another way, you can erase without initializing, but you cannot initialize without erasing.

diskutil's eraseDisk command requires you to specify the format so in effect you are always initializing the disk.

However, there is also the reformat command that, that allows you to erase an existing volume with same name and type.


Why does Refind break when upgrading from Mac OS High Sierra (HFS) to Mojave (APFS) on NVMexpress Macs? Problem: NVMExpress Macs that have Refind do not see the APFS container and I cannot boot into my mac.

Also, apologies to those who were aware of this solution, but I faced this issue along with several other technicians on the problem and we could not solve this until now.

I will be answering my own question below but this post applies to users who are doing the following with their mac:

Have disabled SIPS on their device
Trying to use refind with Mac OS Mojave
Upgrading from High Sierra HFS to Mojave APFS
Using refind version 10.4 or 11.4

This post will not apply for macs that do not have:

A NVMExpress controller. Examples of Macs that do have it are the Mac Models 18,2, and 18,3.

If you install refind using the unix installer onto an NVMExpress machine, it does not automatically install the appropriate driver folder that will allow you to support APFS, leaving you to assume that refind is buggy. Refind ends up not being able to see the APFS container Preboot or Macintosh HD volumes on the refind menu to boot into your Mac OS Mojave System.

If you tried this on a non NVMExpress machine and had High Sierra APFS, you would only see the Macintosh HD volume, which validates that refind works. This is also true if you had Mojave on a non NVMexpress machine, as refind version 11 would easily pick up on both the Preboot and the Macintosh HD Volumes.

Solution:

EDIT: Thank you to @DavidAnderson for pointing out that the driver file "hfs_x64.efi" is what causes the Mac to be able to see the bootable container on the mac. Please see his answer for a better explanation.

The solution is very brief and involves installing the "driver_x64" folder included with the refind download in refind-bin_X/refind/drivers_x64.

Simply drag and drop this "drivers_x64" folder into the EFI/EFI/refind directory after mounting the EFI. Your EFI refind folder should look like this:

Below are some useful commands that helped me.

How to check which mac model I have

You can enter the following in terminal to see your model number:

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | grep "Model Identifier:"

How to check if my Mac has NVMExpress

Newer macs will most likely have the NVMExpress SSD Controller. But if you are curious in learning what kind of connection you are using, you can input the following commands, separately.

If your device is SATA it will return the info regarding your SATA hard drive and the connection.

If your device is NVMExpress then it will return info regarding your NVMExpress Hard drive and the connection. Of course if your device is not NVMexpress then it will return nothing.

system_profiler SPNVMeDataType
system_profiler SPSerialATADataType

Example:

Please note that the version of Refind will affect which Volumes you would be able to boot up from. I tested this on Refind version 10.4 and 11.4.

From my testing I found that with 10.4 you will only be able to see the "Macintosh HD" volume.

Any version after and including 11.1 are designed to see the Preboot Volume that comes installed with the upgrade to Mac Os Mojave. For more info regarding Refind revisions you can go here:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/revisions.html

I do find it strange that within the driver folder there is no explicit mention of an "apfs.efi" driver. I probably plan to bring this up to the developer. But it still seems to fix this issue. See below for what I mean:

I hope this helps! This was breaking my head for over a week until this simple solution occurred to me. Hopefully it helps you as well.


Hiding finder preview panel... forever I'm not sure why but quite recently Finder likes to show me the Preview panel on new Finder windows.

I've tried every method I could find:

Hiding the preview. Close the finder and open a new window. Will show the same preview again.
Go to /Users/$username$/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist and edit the ShowPreviewPane setting it to NO. This will magically revert to YES after I relaunch the Finder.

I'm out of ideas. What could I do?


Receive SMS with iMessage on multiple Macs I have 2 Macbooks, one old, one new. Both are configured to be able to receive the SMS of my iPhone and cell number through iMessage.

However, only the old Macbook is receiving SMS, while both old and new Macbook receive regular iMessages configured with my Apple iCloud ID.

When I got the new Macbook, I stopped using the old one, and could receive SMS with the new one freshly configured. At one point, when I used the old Macbook again after some time, the new Macbook stopped receiving SMS altogether.

Is there maybe a limit to how many Macs can receive the same SMS through one iPhone?

Have you checked the settings on both devices? Message settings on iOS and the settings window (CMD + ,) in messages on your new Mac?

Text message forwarding happens on the following iOS settings page for iMessage:


How can you do two-way Dropbox  local folder syncing on iOS? On my iPhone, I sync my camera photos with Dropbox, so that after I do a photo shoot all the photos are automatically uploaded to my laptop in the Dropbox 'Camera Uploads' folder - ready to sort, edit and delete as necessary.

I now need to be able to do two-way syncing with the iPhone, so that when I delete (or even modify) a photo on the computer, it's also deleted (or modified) from the iPhone's camera photos folder accordingly; this way I'm not left with dozens of 'dud' photos that I no longer want on my iPhone, despite having already deleting them on the laptop.

The official Dropbox mobile client doesn't allow two-way syncing, so until they introduce such a feature, this can only be possible via a third-party dropbox API-using client.

On Android, I could do this with Dropsync, with many features and full sync customization. Is there an equivalent Dropbox solution for this on iOS?

(I am aware of the idea that iCloud may do two-way syncing built-in, (though am not sure), but I'd like to be able to share the Camera Uploads folder with family members on Windows computers (and even linux), and so find Dropbox a much more multi-platform-friendly service to use for the syncing and collaborating, instead of the iCloud ecosystem.)

Unfortunately, I'm almost certain there's no equivalent Dropbox solution for this currently on iOS.

While I cannot give you a technical reason why two-way syncing on iOS is not possible, I can say that at a high level, the iOS platform is more guarded in terms of allowing developers to access certain capabilities of the device.

As you stated in your question, Android devices are capable of two-way synchronization through apps like Dropsync; this is because of the relatively more open-ended nature of the Android platform for both developers and users. To read more on why this is the case, read the 'Android Offers an Open Platform' section of this article.

To confirm, I contacted two customer representatives of two data-sync companies: Loom and SugarSync. I asked both reps the following question:

  Is possible for two-way synchronization of files between an iOS device and a computer? For example, if I sync pix from my iPhone to my iMac, and then edit/delete the pix on my computer, will the changes be reflected automatically on my iPhone?

Both times, the answer was:

  No, this is not possible due to the closed nature of the iOS platform.

If this capability is very important for your work, I would suggest migrating back to an Android device.

If you want/need to use your iPhone for this, and if you need a platform-independent solution (i.e., you don't want to use iCloud), I'm afraid tedium is in your future. I would suggest that you keep a list of the photos as you edit/delete them on you computer, so that you know which photos have been updated and need to be manually re-download from Dropbox (or manually deleted) on your iPhone when you use it next.


Disk has multiple partitions but Disk Utility can only mount first one View from Disk Utility:

Output of diskutil (for this disk only):

/dev/disk6 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *80.0 GB    disk6
   1:               Windows_NTFS                         34.9 GB    disk6s1
   2:                      Linux                         10.7 GB    disk6s5
   3:                 Linux_Swap                         2.1 GB     disk6s6
   4:                      Linux                         32.2 GB    disk6s7

The first NTFS partition, "--", mounts just fine as read-only. But I can't get to either of the Linux partitions.
I've tried mount, diskutil mount, and diskutil mount readOnly, but but they all result in

Volume on disk6s5 failed to mount
If the volume is damaged, try the "readOnly" option
If the volume is an APFS Volume, try the "diskutil apfs unlockVolume" verb

Also tried diskutil apfs unlockVolume, but it's not an APFS volume. Any ideas? Using macOS Sierra 10.12.6.

macOS can't (actually won't - it could), it used to be possible with simple add-ons, but SIP has made most of these unusable.

There are paid options, but not sure if these are still usable with recent macOS.

You can read ext4 with a Linux Os, either a virtual machine, or boot from a live CD or image.


How do I find the Microsoft Word normal user template? The path provided elsewhere in this forum—~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/My Templates—doesn't exist on my MacBook Pro, running Yosemite 10.10.5 and Office 2011. I can't even find anything on my machine called "Library," except for one containing fonts in the MS Office application folder.

I want to revise the normal template so that I don't have to use the organizer to activate my preferred style set every time I open a new document. (I mention this in case you know a better way to achieve this aim.)

Any help much appreciated.

~/Library is an usually invisible folder in your user folder.

You may access the folder by entering "~/Library" after choosing Go -> Got to Folder… in the menubar while Finder is the front app.

Alternatively you may open your user folder and change the view options by choosing View -> Show View Options… and enable "Show Library Folder".

Now navigate to ../Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/My Templates and change the normal.dotm as you need.


Installed GarageBand Jam Pack 2 Remix Tools but can't find it The installer installed it to my hard drive but I don't see an icon that I'm supposed to click on to access it.  Can anyone help me understand this

You access the instruments and loops from within the GarageBand application. Instruments will be added to the pane on the right, under the Software Instruments: Browse tab.

Loops will be in the Loop Browser. In GarageBand, pull down the Control menu and choose "Show Loop Browser".


Flashing folder with question mark, spinning beachball when wakes up My MacBook is acting weird recently. It starts to show flashing folder with question mark during bootup and spinning beach ball when it wakes up from a long sleep. When these happens, I will have to power it down, then it works perfectly again. They occurs quite frequent, about once in every 5 bootup/wakes up.

Running Lion 10.7.4, and I just replaced the HDD with a SSD 2-3 months ago. The problem starts to occur about a month ago.

I suspect it has something to do with the SSD, but I can't really pinpoint the exact problem. I'd already reselect the startup disc multiple times in system preferences.

Any ideas? Thanks.

Update: OWC just came back to me, telling me it's probably due to SATA incompatibility and is offering me a refund. The refund is 50 dollars less than the purchase price (current value price, he said) and I am responsible for the shipping cost. I am considering if I should just keep it, as I am not located in the states and shipping back is really an hassle, plus the cost.

The Folder with a question mark on boot indicates that it could not find a bootable partition. There is something flaking with your drive, get it diagnosed, repaired, or replaced, ASAP.