External mic not working anymore on Macbook Air I have a Macbook Air "Early 2014" with OS 10.11.6.

A few months ago, I used a lavalier mic plugged into the headphone/mic jack of this Macbook Air.  I recorded lots of audio narrations of presentations that way. My lavalier mic uses the 3-striped TRRS type of male plug.

(In case it's relevant: over the past few months, I've updated the OS whenever prompted to, and I've also played with audio extensions such as Soundflower to allow recording of Skype calls.)

Now, my Macbook seems unable to use my lavalier mic. And it also fails to record audio from my iPhone headphones (which also use a 3-striped TRRS type of male plug and have a built-in mic).

I've tried to completely uninstall Soundflower and any other audio related programs / extensions.

I know that my lavalier and iPhones headphones mic still work because I've tested them with other devices today.

So there seems to be a problem either with the Macbook Air port (extremely unlikely) or with some sort of software or setting (very likely).

Without completely reformatting my drive and reinstalling OS X, how can I figure out why my mic no longer works and fix it?

P.S. When I do try to record, the tiny embedded microphone built into the left of the keyboard is what is recording (instead of my plugged-in mic). I know this based on my tapping on the external mic and tapping on the keyboard to determine the loudness of which sounds get picked up. Thanks.

P.P.S. I've already read these posts, and they are not helpful for my situation because I already know about TRRS and what kind of external mic to use and have one that has already worked:

External Microphone input for MacBook Air 2012
MacBook Pro (mid-2012) Microphone Input
https://superuser.com/questions/361980/recording-with-audio-input-macbook-air

I had the exact same problem on my MBP late 2015 (running Catalina 10.15.7) with a Rode Mic and a TRRS adapter. Everything was perfectly fine and during a live transmission the mic went dead. I had to quickly switch to my AirPods (awful sound compared to a external mic) to complete the transmission.
I tried ALL possible solutions documented on the web and Apple Support pages. MBP would just not recognize it anymore on the Sound properties.
I tried SMC reset, NVRAM reset, upgrade to last patch (I was one patch behind), upgrade to Big Ser (new OS).. nothing.
I decided to reinstall and restore from Time Machine, since I didn't have interest in running Bigsur yet. Voilà!!! Worked!
It seems the reinstall + Time Machine restore fixed something that was corrupted in the OS.


What is "TALagent" and why is it "Exiting out of boredom"? I'm trying to help a colleague whose MacBook periodically switches off without warning (I've had similar problems on a Mac Mini, so it's not power related).

While investigating the logs in Library/Logs, I found a file talagent.log with something very odd, last updated very close to the time the computer last switched off without warning:

  Time  Bundle ID   Status  Comment
 0.000          -        -  TALagent Started (system uptime: 238.18 sec)
 0.007          -        -  Liveness: 0 -> 1 (run_as_server)
 0.038          -        -  Successfully read encryption key from keychain in 0.030809 seconds
15.007          -        -  Liveness: 1 -> 0 (__run_as_server_block_invoke)
15.007          -        -  Exiting out of boredom

What the heck is talagent and what does it mean that it is "Exiting out of boredom"?

I've read this thread but it doesn't help me understand what's going on here.

My first thought was that it must be a virus, because that's such a non-professional thing for a log entry to say, but that linked thread seems to imply it's not such a concern; but it doesn't help me understand what it is or what that means.

We use Symantec as a virus scanner, and the Mac in question is on Mavericks (can't currently update for unrelated compatibility reasons).

It's not a virus and it's not a customer facing tool since it uses the terminal. Sometimes command line tools don't even get a manual page - so this is one of the much better documented tools.

The Transparent Application Lifestyle is fancy words for versions and auto-save. If you open TextEdit and make a document, you never have to save your work or choose where the untitled document is stored. TAL saves it and then assists with versioning once you explicitly save the document to the filesystem or cloud.

If you're not convinced it ships from Apple, use mdfind talagent to examine where the tool is installed.

Apple runs it at 3 am on Mondays and Thursdays on your Mac by default, so there's not much mystery that it runs and then exits as opposed to something that runs forever waiting for work to do.

It's nice to double check since governments are now clearly equipped to suppress knowledge of their state sponsored malware by using legal threats and gag orders. I'd say some healthy skepticism is in order when you see something not right on your computer.


Download reading list as csv I'm looking to download the reading list I've been populating from iOS (I think this is stored in iCloud), preferably in CSV format. Is this possible? I don't mind getting it in another format, but I'd prefer to get it from the web (I couldn't find iCloud's online interface, is that still a thing?) and not from iTunes.

Print the URLs of bookmarks and pages on the reading list:

defaults read ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist|sed -n 's/^ *URLString = "\(.*\)";/\1/p'

Print the URL, title, date added, and preview text for reading list items as CSV:

sudo gem install plist csv;plutil -convert xml1 -o - ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist|ruby -rplist -rcsv -e 'Plist.parse_xml(STDIN.read)["Children"].select{|e|e["Title"]=="com.apple.ReadingList"}[0]["Children"].each{|e|puts [e["URLString"],e["URIDictionary"]["title"],e["ReadingList"]["DateAdded"].strftime("%F %T"),e["ReadingList"]["PreviewText"]].to_csv}'


Writing a Mail.app rule to say "do not download from server" I have a POP based mail account from my ISP.

What I need is a way to say "If the Subject contains XXX then do not download it from the server".
This was simple in Windows Mail, but there doesn't appear to be this rule action in mail.app

Any ideas?

(I guess something to say, leave it on the server, and delete it from my inbox" might also be appropriate).

EDIT: Is there really no alternative solution to this? Even with a mail plugin?

Perhaps I should rephrase:

I need a way to not leave certain messages on the POP server.

Mail.app rules cannot run on mail they do not have.  That is to say- a rule cannot be applied to a message that doesn't exist.  Mail.app must download the email in order to parse it in order to run the rule against it.

Now, that said.  If you're dealing with a POP server situation where Mail.app is configured to not delete anything from the server - it should still delete messages you explicitly delete.

Get into your Mail.app prefs, accounts.  Select the account in question, and go to the Mailbox Behaviours tab.  Check the 'Move deleted messages to the Trash mailbox' checkbox.  Now when you delete something, it'll go to the trash.  Yipee.  I prefer never to have Mail.app delete something itself so mine is set to "never", but you could set it to automatically empty the trash at whatever interval you like.

Now - if you set up your rule, whatever emails are downloaded onto your computer and match the rule will be deleted right away.  Or at least moved to the trash and deleted at your next interval.

I think when you talk about your PC experience you're talking about Outlook + Exchange, which has a unique feature where you can have the rules actually live on the exchange server and are executed there, rather than on your local computer.  Is this supported by Mail.app on a Mac?  No, not that I know of.


Why do editors such as BBEdit and Textmate have the option of ending your file in a newline (line break)? Why is that important? Sorry about the n00b question but why is this an option? Is there any caveats to not ending a file with a line break?

This is probably because some other users of files require  complete lines

e.g. C code will complain if there is no newline at the end of file - see this SO question

and one main use of Bbedit etc is programming

So the reason is not really specific to the Apple editors mentioned but more for what use the files is made of.

Also see the comment to that question

  Not really the reason, but it's very annoying if you cat a file and it does not have a trailing newline as the new shell prompt will appear after the last line of the file (i.e. not in column 0)


Cannot Connect to Windows Server Shares For years now, I have managed a mixed-device shop, with Windows 2008/2012 servers. Typically, connections are made using smb://share_name, users authenticate, and file shares are then selected. For whatever reason, as of today, this is no longer working for a subset of Macs.

I have tried the alternative cifs:// protocol, using IP instead of device name, connecting via Ethernet instead of wireless, using FQDNs instead of machine names, changing DNS addresses, etc. and I still cannot see my Windows shares.

All Macs are running El Cap 10.11.5. The servers in question are Windows 2008 R2 and 2011 Home Server. All Macs and servers have been rebooted and are at their current SP/patch levels.

Does anyone have a fix for this issue?

EDIT: I am seeing the same problem in other networks connecting via afp://. I have no issues connecting to the same machines via RDP, or VNC. It's just a file sharing issue, and it's not relegated just to Windows servers.

EDIT 2: I have noticed also that there are no devices displaying under the Network sidebar tab, even though there are dozens of known devices on our network, and these devices are displaying fine on other Macs.

Try running this command in Terminal:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.smb.server.plist SigningRequired -bool false


What app is this screenshot from? Is it only a mockup? This screenshot was posted by somebody in my Twitter feed on the day Steve Jobs died. It was the author's tribute to him. He received many @replies asking what app this was, but nobody received a reply.

What app is this screenshot of?

That's a screenshot from Reminders, part of iOS 5


MySQL Preference Pane is specifying a port number when it runs mysqld As it says above. When I run mysqld using the preference pane for MySql, one of the arguments it is providing is --port=3307.

Does anyone know how I might go about changing this?

Operating System is OSX 10.10.4
MySQL version is 5.6.26

You may change the port in the file com.oracle.oss.mysql.mysqld.plist file in /Library/LaunchDaemons by editing it with

sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.oracle.oss.mysql.mysqld.plist

Change the port at

  <string>--port=3307</string>

near the end of the file to whatever you need it to be and reboot your Mac or restart the service.


Linking manuals from Homebrew Whenever I install a software with Homebrew and I try to view the manual I get an error stating:

  No manual entry for <name of program>.

As an example, wget: when I type

$ man wget
No manual entry for wget

So, I'm wondering how to link the man pages so I can view them with the command.

If you installed Homebrew with standard install directories, i.e. relatives to /usr/local,
there are 2 commands to register the binaries and man files to be used:

/usr/bin/sudo -s
echo /usr/local/bin >/etc/paths.d/homebrew
echo /usr/local/share/man >/etc/manpaths.d/homebrew
exit

If you are using bash or zsh as your actual shell, you will have to enter one simple command to take into account these 2 environment modifications:

. /etc/profile

If you want to learn more how these 2 directories are used under
MacOS X, read:

man path_helper


PHP not running after upgrading to Catalina I've followed all the tutorials, updated httpd.conf and other files. Apache works fine but PHP does not seem enabled. Pointing to php_info.php =>

<?php phpinfo() ?>

I formerly ran High Sierra with no problems with apache and php. Upgrading to Catalina evidently broke that. PHP is not enabled though the module line is uncommented in httpd.conf. Nothing in the setup indicates PHP is not running but when I point a browser to a PHP file, it does not process the page but just displays the code - as mentioned php_info.php does not show the info page, just the php code.

This is the apache/php installation that came with Catalina.

Apache error log:

AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using Tobys-iMac.local. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message

[Wed Jan 08 22:05:26.428368 2020] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 159] AH00163: Apache/2.4.41 (Unix) PHP/7.3.9 configured -- resuming normal operations

[Wed Jan 08 22:05:26.428420 2020] [core:notice] [pid 159] AH00094: Command line: '/usr/sbin/httpd -D FOREGROUND'

[Wed Jan 08 22:09:52.550744 2020] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 159] AH00169: caught SIGTERM, shutting down

AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using Tobys-iMac.local. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message

[Wed Jan 08 22:10:48.678248 2020] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 159] AH00163: Apache/2.4.41 (Unix) PHP/7.3.9 configured -- resuming normal operations

[Wed Jan 08 22:10:48.678307 2020] [core:notice] [pid 159] AH00094: Command line: '/usr/sbin/httpd -D FOREGROUND'

Access log:

::1 - - [09/Jan/2020:11:06:05 -0800] "GET /php_info.php HTTP/1.1" 200 18

::1 - - [09/Jan/2020:11:07:47 -0800] "GET /php_info.php HTTP/1.1" 200 18

::1 - - [09/Jan/2020:11:08:37 -0800] "GET /index.php HTTP/1.1" 304 -

::1 - - [09/Jan/2020:11:08:39 -0800] "GET /index.php HTTP/1.1" 200 16

::1 - - [09/Jan/2020:11:09:51 -0800] "GET /ePub%20Processing/process_toc-content.php HTTP/1.1" 200 7653

Found an answer that worked:

# added this to made php render
<IfModule php7_module>
    AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
    AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

    <IfModule dir_module>
        DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
    </IfModule>
</IfModule>


Time Machine can't find Time Capsule - but can mount it I have a 5th Gen (A1470) Time Capsule on our network. The WAN ethernet port is wired to a router. The TC has a static IP, Wifi is disabled (on the TC) and router mode is off (bridged).

I have a Macbook Pro (El Capitan) currently backing up to the TC using our router's Wifi (only 1.31GB after 20mins though, looks like it's stalled). I have a Mac Pro (El Capitan) that's found the TC and still preparing backups.

However, I have an iMac (Yosemite) on the WiFi network that cannot find the TC in Time Machine preferences. However it can connect to it and mount it using the Finder (the TC shows up under the Shared sidebar).

I hard reset the Time Capsule and reconfigured as above before attempting backups on all 3 devices.

How come the iMac can't find the TC in Time Machine - yet finds it fine in the Finder?
Why is the first backup so slow?

UPDATE: It appears Time Machine wants to own the network, so I have reenabled Wifi (as a new Wifi network since Time Capsule can't extend non-Apple Wifi, yes really) and the Macbook Pro is using that Wifi. Now it is backing up quickly. The Mac Pro has now also been wired (ethernet) into the LAN ports on the TC, instead of trying to access it via the router. It appears TC wants to be the hub/router instead of playing nicely as a network device. The other iMac is now on the TC Wifi network - but can't find the Time Capsule in Airport or Time Machine - go figure.

UPDATE 2: I have upgraded the iMac in question to El Capitan and applied the available updates. Problem persists and I cannot see the Time Capsule in Airport Utility or Time Machine preferences. All other machines on the network are backing up to the TC now either through ethernet or Wifi.

Turns out for some reason "Use dynamic global hostname" was checked under System Preferences > Sharing > Edit (computer name). Disabling this made everything a-ok.


What are my (hardware) options from migrating an account from an MBA? I just got a shiny new rMBP 15" and want to migrate the account from an older Mac - I've been using a late 2010 MBA. The Migration Assistant estimated 50 hours over the WiFi, after an hour it got up to 60 hrs. It's an MBA, so no ethernet for me, also no Thunderbolt (late 2010s didn't have it yet).

Are there any other options available? Can I force the Assistant to 'migrate' to an external drive somehow, and then import that to MBP?

Maybe there is a step-by-step guide to migrate 'by hand' using a USB stick or something?

The best way to migrate is to make sure you have a current Time Machine backup and just restore from that volume to the new machine. I have restored from a Time Machine backup to an empty formatted hard drive and it worked perfectly, including my custom FTP, HTTP, and git configurations. It took about 10 hours for a 1TB backup.


Adobe Reader unable to locate PDFs sent to iPhone I can open my PDFs from iBooks, but Adobe Reader cannot find them on the iPhone.

How can I open them in Adobe Reader, which I prefer?

If you're transferring your pdf files through itunes, you need to open your device in iTunes, then select Adobe reader from the apps file sharing section and drag/drop the files you want to open with adobe.


Animation for charts in Keynote Does anyone know how to do the shrinking of chart animation in WWDC for the speed of swift?

Keynote '09 supports chart builds, where individual segments/series of a chart can be separated in a build and animated individually. You can select the chart builds along with the other builds in the Build selector.

You can find more information about creating a chart build in Keynote '09 in the Apple KB article:

Keynote '09: Creating a Chart Build


mtrecorder and spirecorder, what are they? I've run a EtreCheck on my OS X 10.10.3 just now and I got some error messages.

Problem System Launch Daemons:
    [failed]    com.apple.mtrecorder.plist

Launch Daemons:
    [failed]    com.apple.spirecorder.plist

I did some research from Google but seems I cannot find some useful information. I am a little bit worry about the system since these two components come from Apple.

The content of com.apple.spirecorder.plist is:

<?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">
<dict>
    <key>EnableTransactions</key>
    <true/>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <dict>
        <key>PathState</key>
        <dict>
            <key>/var/db/.spirecorder.forcedenable</key>
            <true/>
            <key>/var/root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spirecorder.enable</key>
            <true/>
        </dict>
        <key>SuccessfulExit</key>
        <false/>
    </dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.apple.spirecorder</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/local/libexec/spirecorder</string>
        <string>-count</string>
        <string>50000</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Umask</key>
    <integer>18</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

The content of com.apple.mtrecorder.plist is:

Yang$ plutil -convert xml1 -o - /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mtrecorder.plist
<?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">
<dict>
    <key>EnableTransactions</key>
    <true/>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <dict>
        <key>PathState</key>
        <dict>
            <key>/var/db/.mtrecorder.forcedenable</key>
            <true/>
            <key>/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mtrecorder.enable</key>
            <true/>
        </dict>
        <key>SuccessfulExit</key>
        <false/>
    </dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.apple.mtrecorder</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/local/libexec/mtrecorder</string>
    </array>
    <key>Umask</key>
    <integer>18</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

And both /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/ and /usr/local/libexec folders are not exists on my Mac.

By the way I found com.apple.spirecorder.plist in another LaunchDaemons folder which includes only one file, I removed it, rebooted and no problem with it. Now EtreCheck shows only one error with mtrecorder, I am not sure whether I am going to remove it since it comes with lots of Apple daemons in the same folder.

Both of these plist files appear to be part of the iOS operating system, that have been left in OS X by accident due to the shared nature of their development.

The reason you are seeing errors in EtreCheck for these files is that the plist files are telling the launchd process to run executables that don't actually exist on Macs, but only on iOS devices. And even then perhaps only on devices that are used for development.

I think you are safe to remove both files (although I would keep a copy of them somewhere), firstly because they are failing to launch anyway, and secondly because only seem to relate to components of the iOS operating system.


Applescript/Javascript to click submenu item of Jupiter Notebook in Safari When I run a.ipynb jupyter notebook file in Safari, it opens at local host http://localhost:8888/notebooks/a.ipynb#.

NOTE: The script should work for any *.ipynb file, a.ipynb is just an example. Also, the website is at the frontmost app while running the code.

How can I write an Applescript (may be using JavaScript) so that I can click the menu Run All Below button in that tab of safari submenu ?

Here is my attemt:

tell application "Safari"

activate

end tell

tell application "System Events"

tell process "Safari"

click menu item "Run All Below" of menu "Cell" of menu bar 1

end tell

end tell

But, this did not work.  I am very new to applescript and generally only use Python.

How can I click the required menu "Run All Below" ?

Related Links:
Using Javascript | Applescript to click button in Safari
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24917282/click-on-safari-web-page-button-using-applescript

An easy way to do this is to use the Automator "Watch Me Do" feature, then convert it to Applescript.

Open the Automator app and create a new document.
Select "Workflow" as the document type.
Now make sure you have Safari open to the page you want it to.
Go back to Automator and click on "Record." There should be a small black window that pops up showing Automator is recording.
Go to Safari and do whatever action(s) you want to automate.
Stop the recording.
Go back to Automator and there should be a new action that looks somewhat like this:

You may need to adjust the playback speed using the slider to make it work properly
Now you can just leave it like this and convert it to an application so you can double-click it to run, or:
See here to convert it to AppleScript so you can use it in Script Editor


app to manage symbolic links and move files automatically? I have about a terabyte of media files on an external hard drive. At any given moment I need a subset of these files locally on the SSD for faster access. Some times the hard drive isn't even available, but when it is I should still be able to use the files on it from a symlink path on the SSD. Is there an app that will automatically move groups of files back and forth, creating symlinks for the ones on the hard drive in the process?

I was able to find something like this for Windows: http://ozuke.comoj.com/ but have had no luck for OSX.  Would really like to find an existing solution before I start hacking away at python to make it myself.

IF you have a Mac that runs 10.8.3 AND has room for an extra internal drive. (Sacrifice the DVD on older MacBooks & MacMinis)  A DIY "Fusion Drive" will accomplish your "goal".

http://blog.macsales.com/17624-os-x-10-8-3-provides-fusion-drive-setup-option-for-non-fusion-drive-equipped-macs

It is not a simple or strait-forward process however,
Made DIY fusion drive.... now recovery partition won't boot


2017 Macbook Pro volume is too low My cat walked on my keyboard/mouse/touchbar and now my volume is too low. It happens with both headphones and using the internal speakers. I've looked at Audio/Midi settings and everything seems okay there, but testing still plays the audio too quiet.

What kind of secret "low volume" setting did my cat engage and how do I reverse it?

I just solved my own problem with an NVRAM/SMC/PRAM reset. The world may never come to understand what secret Mac fu cats possess.


App icon switches to low resolution upon launching an app Recently I started getting this really weird but annoying bug. While the app is in the Dock but not working, its icon is in good resolution. But once I open it, the icon switches to low resolution. Same thing with its icon in the app switcher (Command + Tab) view.

It only affects the Wolfram Mathematica app. I tried reinstalling the program as well as the whole Mac OS X, but it's still there, anyone know how to fix it?

I am running Mac OS X Mojave.

Before launching the app:

After launching the app:

Version of Mathematica:

This appears to be a bug in the app itself. It's also affecting the Wolfram app and affects not only the icon in the dock, but also the app switcher icon. I tried creating a new WolframDesktop.icns file, but the application still reverts back to the lower resolution icon on my 13" MacBook Pro. The icon renders fine on a 15" MacBook Pro. Both are running Mojave.


How to fix apple diagnostics error DEC500? For a related question, I was trying to run apple Hardware Test (Apple diagnostics) on my Macbook Pro Retina.

Mackbook details:

I tried restarting with the D key pressed, with the intention of running Apple Hardware Test.
I was greeted with the following screen:

On pressing R, the error continues further saying:

Pressing S shut it down.

I tried pressing option+D on startup. This starts internet recovery. I select the appropriate network and then it errors saying:

I researched online and a suggestion was that somehow the diagnostics tool is missing. And it was. There was no folder at /System/Library/CoreServices/ called .diagnostics.

I downloaded the relevant files from
https://github.com/upekkha/AppleHardwareTest

To copy these files to the correct location I turned off SIP by going into recovery mode. After I copied the files, I restarted with D pressed, but I was met with the same errors. The same errors as above occured with option+D on startup as well.

How do I get apple diagnostics running again?

UPDATE:

I created a bootable USB with the relevant AHT as per the answer below.
On holding option at startup, I'm presented with a screen with three options: Macintosh HD, Windows, and EFI Boot.
I select EFI Boot, and a very quick black screen with a bunch of text appears and then the apple logo and loading bar appears. No AHT. I did the same thing on another machine - an Air, and it loaded the AHT, but said "Machine not supported", when I tried to run it, (which makes sense since the AHT is for a different model). I was able to capture the screen by taking a video of the process and then selecting the still frame. It goes by in less than half a second.

Let's see if we can get Apple Hardware Test working from a bootable USB drive.

The steps to do this are as follows:

Create a bootable USB flash drive by using Disk Utility's Erase function. Make sure you choose OS X Extended for the format and the GUID Partition Map for the scheme. For the purposes of these steps, also give your USB the name AHT when you're erasing it.
Now download the AHT for your particular Mac (i.e. AHT 3A238) from Apple here
Mount the downloaded image (it should mount as AHTCOne)
Now you will need to copy the AHT to your USB flash drive. To start, Launch the Terminal app (usually found within the Utilities folder)
In the Terminal window, enter the following:

cp -r /Volumes/AHTCOne/System /Volumes/AHT/
Now we need to make the USB flash drive bootable, so enter the following line in Terminal:

sudo bless --folder /Volumes/AHT/ --file /Volumes/AHT/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics/diags.efi --label AHT
Enter your Admin password
Leave the USB flash drive plugged in and restart your Mac
Immediately hold down the Option key
Select the AHT option from the list and boot up

Now test to see if your Mac can run Apple Hardware Test or not.

NOTE for other readers:

Different Macs require different versions of Apple's diagnostic software. So this answer will not apply to you unless your Mac also requires AHT 3A238. Note: Macs introduced after June 2013 use Apple Diagnostics instead.
Likewise, the Terminal commands used in this answer are for this specific question.
However, assuming you have downloaded the AHT version for your Mac, then this answer can be adapted for your use by replacing the AHTCOne with whatever name your downloaded disk image mounted as at Step 3. For example, if at step 3 your downloaded disk image mounted as AHTCThree, then at Step 5 you would use AHTCThree instead of AHTCOne within the Terminal command.


OS X 10.6 : Automating new system provisioning with scripts I've been working on this for days but simply cannot find the correct references to make it work.
The idea is to have a script that will baseline newly purchased Macs that comes into the company with basic stuffs like set autologin to off, create a new admin user (for remote admins to access for support, set password to unlock screensaver and etc) .
Sample list for baseline that admins have to do on each new machine:

Click the Login Options button
Set Automatic Login: OFF
Check: Show the Restart, Sleep, and Shutdown buttons
Uncheck: Show input menu in login window
Uncheck: Show password hints
Uncheck: Use voice over in the login window
Check: Show fast user switching menu as Short Name

(note: this is only part of a long list to do on each machine)
I've managed to find some references to make some parts work. Like autologin can be unset with "defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences com.apple.userspref.DisableAutoLogin -bool TRUE" and I've kinda found ways to muscle in a new user creation (including prompts) with applescript and shell commands.
But generally its tough finding ways to do somewhat simple things like turn on password to get out of screensaver or to allow fast user switching. References are either too limited or just no where to be seen (e.g. i can unset autologin via cli but the very next setting on the system preference "show restart, sleep and shutdown buttons" is somewhere else and i can't find any command line to make it set)
Does anyone have any ideas on a list, document, reference or anything of where each setting on the system resides so that I can be pointed to make it work? or maybe sample scripts for the above example...
My thanks for reading thus far - a huge thank you for whoever that has any info on the above.

There is a better way to do this. The IT department at my company maintains a disk image with all of the settings in place they need to administer the Macs when they are received-including software in place registered with site licenses. They open the Macs and simply replace what's on the hard drive with the disk image.

Scripting is a logical path, but scripting System Preferences is a real bear because you have to go with GUI Scripting which is rife with problems, the least of which trying to decipher UIElementInspector to get what you need.


Disable Trash on a specific drive Is there a possibility of disabling the trash-bin for a drive and deleting files instantly?
I'm using DVD-RAM as a backup solution and trashing files is producing a lot of additional, unnecessary writes on the backup discs as the files are moved to a new location and then overwritten on delete from the trash bin.

Just found a solution for this on the web while waiting for the timelimit on creating questions:

You just need to open terminal, go to the drive you want the trash-bin to be disabled on and then do this:

sudo rm -rf .Trashes
touch .Trashes

Essentially what this does is deleting the trash-bin recursively and replacing it with an empty file thus blocking OSX from recreating it. When you delete files after that OSX will ask you about instant deletion instead of putting it into the trash-bin. Works perectly.


Delete Xcode shared folder Can I delete the Developer > Xcode > Shared folder? I want to clear out space and noticed that it takes up 2 gigs of data. Is it safe to delete? I use Xcode often.

If you're talking about ~/Library/Developer/Shared, then this folder contains all the documentation for the OS X and iOS frameworks (if applicable). This folder should not be deleted if you require access to the documentation.


vm_compressor_mode (vm.compressor_mode) values for enabled compressed memory in OS X Background

In Super user, with an accepted answer:

Disable compressed memory in Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks?

Also in Super User:

how to get memory compress back in Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks?

– and from the first answer there we understand that the value of boot argument vm_compressor does not correspond with the value of sysctl variable vm.compressor_mode.

In Apple open source for OS X 10.9, Mavericks; in xnu-2422.1.72:

vm_compressor.c
vm_fault.c
vm_pageout.h

In vm_compressor.c:

/*
 * vm_compressor_mode has a heirarchy of control to set its value.
 * boot-args are checked first, then device-tree, and finally
 * the default value that is defined below. See vm_fault_init() for
 * the boot-arg & device-tree code.
 */

On a MacBookPro5,2 with 8 GB memory I find:

sh-3.2$ sysctl -a vm.compressor_mode
vm.compressor_mode: 4

Near the foot of vm_pageout.h:

extern int vm_compressor_mode;
extern int vm_compressor_thread_count;

#define VM_PAGER_DEFAULT                0x1 /* Use default pager. */
#define VM_PAGER_COMPRESSOR_NO_SWAP         0x2 /* In-core compressor only. */
#define VM_PAGER_COMPRESSOR_WITH_SWAP           0x4 /* In-core compressor + swap backend. */
#define VM_PAGER_FREEZER_DEFAULT            0x8 /* Freezer backed by default pager.*/
#define VM_PAGER_FREEZER_COMPRESSOR_NO_SWAP     0x10    /* Freezer backed by in-core compressor only i.e. frozen data remain in-core compressed.*/
#define VM_PAGER_FREEZER_COMPRESSOR_WITH_SWAP       0x20    /* Freezer backed by in-core compressor with swap support too.*/

#define VM_PAGER_MAX_MODES              6   /* Total number of vm compressor modes supported */

#define DEFAULT_PAGER_IS_ACTIVE     ((vm_compressor_mode & VM_PAGER_DEFAULT) == VM_PAGER_DEFAULT)

#define COMPRESSED_PAGER_IS_ACTIVE  (vm_compressor_mode & (VM_PAGER_COMPRESSOR_NO_SWAP | VM_PAGER_COMPRESSOR_WITH_SWAP))

#define DEFAULT_FREEZER_IS_ACTIVE   ((vm_compressor_mode & VM_PAGER_FREEZER_DEFAULT) == VM_PAGER_FREEZER_DEFAULT)

#define DEFAULT_FREEZER_COMPRESSED_PAGER_IS_ACTIVE      (vm_compressor_mode & (VM_PAGER_FREEZER_COMPRESSOR_NO_SWAP | VM_PAGER_FREEZER_COMPRESSOR_WITH_SWAP))

Question

Is it possible to have an enabled mode other than 4 for compressed memory?

If so, can we find a plain english explanation of the modes?

I'm not completely certain of the FREEZER options, other than one FREEZER_COMPRESSOR option uses swap (utilizes free space on a disk) when RAM is low or expended, while the other does not.

What I think is that the FREEZER options are for managing memory for frozen processes. Maybe this is something experimental, to be used in combination with App Nap? I think this was something they were testing with iOS a few years back.

What I know is that option 1 uses no compression, and is the old fashioned OS X memory management we're all more familiar with. If you're having issues you suspect are related to memory compression, you might try this setting.

Option 2 uses compressed memory with no swap (no writing to disk when RAM is low or expended).

Option 4 uses both compression and swap.

Option 8 uses whatever the FREEZER is, backed by the option 1 implementation.


Little Snitch reports outgoing connections for AirPlayXPCHelper for wrong subnets? After upgrading to El Capitan, I've started noticing annoying connections from the AirPlayXPCHelper to 192.168.1.0/24 subnet (my home network isn't in 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, it's in 172.16.0.0/12 subnet).

Questions are:

Why AirPlayXPCHelper goes out to this network on port 5000 and 7000?
Is there a way to limit it's desire to go there?

Thank you.

Time to answer my own question:

  Why AirPlayXPCHelper goes out to this network on port 5000 and 7000?

This is related to the Peer-to-Peer AirPlay and Airplay device discovery. macOS discovers new device and attempts to connect using these ports to finish (?) discovery process.

Couple of my neighbours got new AppleTV and macOS attempts to connect to them. As all AppleTVs are connected to the different networks, it attempts to connect to each of them and it is what Little Snitch reports.

  Is there a way to limit its desire to go there?

I'm not aware of any. I just blocked access for AirPlayXPCHelper to networks other than mine using Little Snitch.


What does Mac consider to be "photos" in storage? Like, is it the files you see when you open the Photos.app, or does it include all images (e.g., jpgs)?

Asking because my Photos shows 7GB and my photos.app is literally empty

On my machine it only counts the photos in any photos library on the drive or one opened from an external drive (which looks weird, when it shows 800GB of photos/videos on the system drive with 250GB capacity, while it's actually on the external one).

This being said you should be able to find the pictures somewhere:

You either have some pictures left in the recently deleted album (as @Ankii pointed out)
They could also be in a different library, which isn't opened
automatically. To open a different library either look for it in
Finder or launch the photos app and immediately hold down the
option key.
If you shared images in a shared album from the mac, they are saved on your mac. (I think the location is: Library/Application Support/Apple/Photos, not 100% sure though and can't verify right now)


3D movies or videogames from MacBook Pro to 3D projector I have:

a 3D projector with: HDMI, VGA, S-VIDEO
one of the first MacBook Pros, with a DVI port (with an ATI X1600)
DVI to HDMI cable (and a DVI to VGA)
Active glasses, not the red/green (anaglyph) ones

I would like to be able to watch 3D movies being played on the MacBook and watched on the projector.

Question is:

Is the hardware I have enough?
If so, what software do I need and what video format (.mp4, .mkv, etc.)?

I downloaded the bino player but seems to be for the red/green kind of glasses.

No - according to the specifications for that projector - they support set top boxes only and not computer playing DVD.

The player they provide runs on Windows and basically draws sequence of frames at double refresh rate so that each eye sees every other frame (they call it side by side) to create the illusion of a 3D scene. There is also reference to 60 Hz refresh rate for over/under (the side by side calls for 120 Hz refresh on the video source)

Your mac can certainly run windows in emulation or in Boot Camp and make use of the provided software. It's not clear if there isn't Mac equivalent software or it's just not linked from this manufacturer's web page, but your display's Dual Link DVI horsepower is certainly fast enough to drive the display in question fast enough to meet the hardware requirements listed for 3D projection.


Jailbroken iPad 4 (ios 7.0.4), how to make a backup of only photos I want to make a backup on my pc of the photos because I want to finally reset it and update it. I already tried the sc way, but there was too much quality loss on my photos. The itunes way isn't viable, because for some reason my backup gets encrypted, I already searched online, the password is the first password of your itunes account. Too bad I changed it years ago. I tried SC on an Ubuntu 16.10 pc, but I also have access to a mac (10.12.3) and a Windows 10 machine.

Use the Image Capture application on the Mac to export all of your photos. It will export the original qualities of all your photos. However, I'm not sure how it works out with "Optimize Photo Storage" on your device turned on. I'd suggest you to use this method only if you don't use iCloud's optimize storage option.


WD external drive won't mount in OSX - partition map rebuild? I have a WD Mybook Studio 500gb that will not mount. I've tried every possible option in Disk Utility and it see the drive (unlike finder), but won't mount the partition. I also tried plugging it in to a PC and again W10 didn't see the drive, but I could perform diagnostics on it via WD's tool (but no fix in sight).

I did some digging with with testdisk and the data is intact, no errors, I can see the file structure on the data partition etc but the partition map/table has tons of errors and I believe this is the cause of the problem - the data is there but the computer can't access it due to a corrupt partition map.

Here's what I get in terminal when looking at the drive info:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *256.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Internal HD             255.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB      disk0s3

      /dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk2
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS General DATA            500.0 GB   disk2s3

And the second part for the drive in question:

$ diskutil info /dev/disk2s3
Device Identifier:        disk2s3
Device Node:              /dev/disk2s3
Part of Whole:            disk2
Device / Media Name:      Apple_HFS_Untitled_1

Volume Name:              General DATA
Escaped with Unicode:     General%FF%FE%20%00DATA

Mounted:                  No

File System Personality:  HFS+
Type (Bundle):            hfs
Name (User Visible):      Mac OS Extended
Journal:                  Unknown (not mounted)
Owners:                   Disabled

Partition Type:           Apple_HFS
OS Can Be Installed:      No
Media Type:               Generic
Protocol:                 FireWire
SMART Status:             Not Supported
Volume UUID:              88071423-C35F-3BAA-BEE6-E3A3B3D9948F

Total Size:               500.0 GB (499973603328 Bytes) (exactly 976510944 512-Byte-Units)
Volume Free Space:        0 B (0 Bytes) (exactly 0 512-Byte-Units)
Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

Read-Only Media:          No
Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (not mounted)
Ejectable:                Yes

Whole:                    No
Internal:                 No

Can anyone help with advice on how to rebuild the apple partition map? I think this can be done with testdisk but I can't seem to fumble my way to the correct answer? by the way, I need to access the data on the drive, not just reformat and repurpose the hardware.

Help!

Seems like you need the following: Fixing my external hard drive's partition map

The fact that it's external shouldn't make a difference to you.

What happens when you try to mount it?

eg.

diskutil mount /dev/disk2s3

  alex@smiley:~|⇒  diskutil mount Usage:   diskutil mount [readOnly]
  [-mountPoint Path] DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode Mount will mount the
  volume in the "standard" place (/Volumes), unless an optional mount
  point is specified.

The error you get should point you to your problem.


Upgrading to 32GB RAM for Mac mini Server (MD389LL/A) I'm using a Mac mini Server (Late 2012) with 2,3 GHz Intel Core i7 processor and 16GB RAM. This type of processor (Intel® Core™ i7-3615QM) supports a max memory size of 32GB. Look at specification: Here.

Is it possible to upgrade RAM in my Mac mini to 32GB (for instance a Crucial Kit 2x16GB)?

I understand that Apple has to update Memory Reference Code in the firmware of the Mac mini but maybe exists another way to upgrade a memory.

No. That Mac mini is limited to 16 GB max ram.

You can be pretty sure that if it's not mentioned in Everymac or sold by OWC[MacSales] or ramjet.com, it can't be done. These reputable sellers will always provide good research and advice if more memory can be used past Apple official specifications.

Whether you would choose them as your vendor or not, they tend to cover all possibilities & often support things that Apple never intended.


What is this right-arrow line symbol in the iOS simulator? The iOS simulator sometimes shows me a keyboard shortcut helper when I spam Command-Shift-H in an attempt to close an app, and one of the shortcuts (the one I need) includes this symbol, but I don't know what key it refers to.

What key is this?

That looks like a tab character. See this meta answer for details:

https://apple.meta.stackexchange.com/a/690/5472

The main list of keys is at Keyboard icons & terminology


How to disable Mission Control shortcut? I often use IDE's for editing and the shortcut for mission control interferes with my shortcuts within aptana and or other editors.

Is there a way to disable the apple shortcut (control+▲) for osx 10.8.2 ?

Go to:  System Preferences-> Mission Control and choose "-" in Mission Control shortcut


Way to manually(!) sort files into folders I'm looking for an easy way to quickly go through a bunch of files, mostly videos and images and sort them in a set of standard folders.
Currently I open the videos/images in VLC see what they're about and drag/drop 'em into folders. This is incredibly tedious work, but I really should get it done already. Annoying bits are in large part due to the dragging and dropping, also because the alphabetical sort order in the Finder and VLC is different and the file names get replaced by video titles in the VLC playlist etc.

Ideally I would want an application that show me the content (ideally skipping x% into the video to skip intros etc) and lets me sort it with a single key (press 1 and it goes into folder x, press 2 etc.) or click the folder and the file is moved into it, ignoring all filename-already-exists nonsense (just rename it and be quiet). Using drag/drop is just to annoying, slow and error prone.

To be clear, I'm not looking for automated sorting, I can't use it because I want to sort on video/image content.

I was thinking about writing an applescript for this but I wanted to know if anyone knew of existing software to do this. Searching for ways to sort items all result in automated sorting based on file properties.

Thanks.

I thought I might like to have something like this too, so I threw together an app that does this. Feel free to try it out! Warning though: I have one video where the skip value doesn't work. I'm not sure why it only has an issue with this one video... Just a heads up. It works 99% of the time though!

Push 1 to place the video or image being shown in sort folder 1, and 2 to place it in sort folder 2. Also make sure to select a folder source with the content! This should be able to play anything that VLC can play, which is to say, pretty much everything. I don't have access to a code signing certificate at the moment, so you'll have to right click on the application from within the Finder and click "Open". After that you'll be good to go!


Re-Installing GarageBand from iLife '11 DVD (Guitar Tracks Issue) Due to an issue regarding the creation of Guitar Tracks in GarageBand '11, and that none of the reported fixes (here and here) have worked, I am looking to re-install.  However, I don't appear to be able to re-install just GarageBand '11 from my iLife DVD.  I have navigated to the 'Customize' part of the installer, however it greys out the tick boxes for iLife Support, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD (both skipped by default), and GarageBand.

I don't want to re-install iPhoto, nor anything else other than GarageBand and because I have bought a retail version of iLife '11 I don't think I can download from the App Store.  Given that an App Store download was one of the known causes, then this wouldn't be appropriate anyway.

Of course, if someone has a proven fix for my problem other than those mentioned then I would also find that acceptable :-)

Thanks

You might try installing Pacifist - it allows you to get inside apple's installer packages and install individual items

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/6812/pacifist


Are there downsides to quitting the Finder after enabling the menu item to quit it? In Why is the Finder app always open?, it was noted that you could add a Quit menu item to the Finder via a Terminal command, but the comments and one of the answers seemed to indicate that this was a bad idea and should be avoided unless you had a could reason. Why is this this? Does this prevent the system from working correctly?

I myself have enabled the Quit menu item in the Finder (via TinkerTool, rather than the command line) and find it useful for presentations where I don't want to show everybody my messy desktop or any open windows. I've also quit when I thought that I could use the extra RAM (like heavy Photoshop editing), although to be honest I don't know if that's effective. Are there any negative consequences that could result if I kept doing this?

Finder is the application Mac uses to well... find files.

It should be perfectly fine so long as you do not run anything that specifically calls finder, i.e. AppleScript. You'll also (obviously) lose all your open Finder windows.

I completely understand quitting for presentations, but there should not be much of a performance improvement if you quit Finder.

So, no, it should not be a problem, just note that apps that call on Finder should open Finder for you, so you'll need to quit it again.

Thanks to @user3439894 for catching me on something I said wrong.


Give a new life to my 2007 MacBook Pro (help it live longer) TLDR: What can I do to my 2007 MacBook Pro (under Leopard) to make it snappier?

I have a 2007 MacBook Pro (technical characteristics below). I use it for heavy nonprofessional office-style work: browsing, email, Word & Pages, Excel, Keynote & Powerpoint, Acrobat Pro, … I tend to have many documents open simultaneously, so I can easily have 20 windows open and ~30 Safari anf Firefox tabs.

I don't know if my usage is slowly increasing, my expectations growing, or the system aging, but it's gotten to the point where everything feels so slow (notably app-swapping). What measures can I take to improve the responsiveness of the setup? I’d rather not perform invasive hardware changes, so I’m thinking of small small tweaks that could help a bit here and there. And yes, I realize that short of buying a new laptop, there is no silver bullet.

Things I've already done (and, in some cases, corrected):

make sure I have enough disk space for swaping (8 GB free).
check that I don't have FileVault or encrypted swap.
check that my usual programs are not running under Rosetta.
run a cycle of Safe Boot
I could disable Spotlight altogether, which I suppose would help, but I really use that feature a lot, so I won’t.

Technical characteristics:

bought April 2007 on French Refurb
MacBook Pro1,1
Core Duo 2GHz
MacBook Pro 15'
512 MB RAM, upgraded on the first day to 2 GB (= 2 x 1 GB)
75 GB hard drive
running up-to-date Leopard (10.5.$latest)

Well, if it's a MacBookPro3,1 model, then you can upgrade the RAM to it's maximum of 6 Gb. Ram is extremely cheap these days, would be less than a 100$ I imagine.

As for hard drives, you could install a 7200 RPM drive (like Western Digital Black series), again cheap, ~100$ for 750 Gb. If you have a bigger budget and no need for such space I strongly suggest installing an SSD drive, at least a 128Gb. This is by far the best upgrade option you can do on your computer. You won't believe the difference in speed! Check out OWC's Mercury extreme 3G's SSDs from Macsales. They are by far the best out there.

And I would install at least OS Snow Leopard, it's pretty solid and fast. Can't say for Lion yet, haven't tested it.

As for software there isn't much else you can do. Reinstalling the entire OS from scratch will bring you back to it's original speed but machines tend to slow down over time, this is normal. In my honest opinion, the main problem these days is the hard drives that can't keep up with the rest of the computer. This is why an SSD is a good solution to remedy this problem. And if you buy a bigger version or better yet a SATA3 version of the SSD you could transfer it to any new laptop you might buy in the next 2-3 years, it will be even faster.


App for editing files in my Dropbox? My current setup is Dropbox with a directory called /Docs, in which I have my emacs .org outline files.

If you don't know about Emacs and org-mode, these files are plain text, just formatted with ** and so on for headings, however the extension is .org

I have tried Elements, however it would not let me view notes with the extension of .org

So essentially, I want to sync up notes between org-mode and an app on my iPhone 4, without using MobileOrg (which doesn't really sync as such).

You can use PlainText 2, it syncs with Dropbox (you can choose which folder to sync) and it let you choose which file extensions you want to sync.


Installing Lion on another MacBook Pro through a bootable DVD but won't show up I tried creating a bootable DVD of Lion, which was successful and would load in my MacBook Pro (already running Lion). I inserted the same DVD to another MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard, but it comes up as a blank CD... Anyone have any idea why this is happening?

Thanks!

Same as you : my brand new MBP cannot read a DVD (it says it is blank), but that same DVD can be read OK from older Macs. I went to an Apple store with that DVD, and they found the same problem, i.e. the DVD can be read OK on some machines, but not OK on others. I left them the DVD, they are going to enquire about it and about why some of their own machines can read and some others cannot.

So maybe your problem is just about that : a DVD which unluckily cannot be read on your machine.

Hope this helps !


Is 65 celsius temperature on a MacBook Pro 2017 okay? My 2017 MacBook Pro 15" gets really hot when it's connected to an external monitor. The temperature reaches 65 Celcius, and I am wondering if this is considered an okay temperature? If it is not what is the solution for such a problem?

If you're talking about the CPU temperature, then yes 65°C is okay.

The 2017 MacBook Pro 15" model was available with three different CPU's with processor speeds of 2.8, 2.9, or 3.1 GHz.

All three are rated to 100°C for the maximum temperature allowed at the processor die.

See TJUNCTION in the Package Specifications section of the documentation for the Intel Core i7 7700HQ, 7820HQ, and 7920HQ Processors.


OSX 10.9.5 upgrade causes apache/php downgrade Today I installed the OSX 10.9.5 upgrade and it appears to have downgraded my Apache and PHP version.

Is there an easy way to reverse this unwanted downgrade?
Or do I have to reinstall apache via homebrew again?

I replaced the following line in httpd.conf:

LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

With:

LoadModule php5_module /usr/local/Cellar/php55/5.5.12/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

This seems to have restored a lot of my old setup and I can work again.


Database.db file in Macintosh HD I see a Database.db file with size zero bytes on my Macintosh HD

Is this a system file? i am not sure if this is something i can remove or the purpose of this file

Regards

You're probably fine, but it depends and since it's taking up no space, no good reason to delete it yet. It's simply a database file put there by something (again, probably not OS X.) You should attempt to narrow down what application is using the file (see this post) and then either keep it or delete it as appropriate.


verizon iphone4: if it has access to wifi and 3G which will it use and what's best for battery life At home, my iphone has a strong signal to Verizon's 3G network and my home WiFi network.  In the interest of battery life, which connection will iphone use if it has access to both networks?  Also, given strong connections to both networks, what's the best way to optimize for battery life?

iPhones will always use a wireless connection if one is available (and it is authorised to use it).  It will then use 3G (EV-DO).  And then 1xRTT as a last resort.  So it always prioritises wireless if available.

Wireless is generally better on battery life too.


How to use Time Machine backup when hard drive is broken? I have a MacBook Pro which I use Time Machine to back up usually weekly. Its hard drive broke recently.  I got an exactly same hard drive and installed it into the laptop.  How do I restore the computer into the most recent state using the Time Machine backup which was made when the old hard drive was installed?

Is there a better way to achieve the recovery than what I'm planning to do here?

The basic TimeMachine recovery procedure boils down to:

1) boot from Recovery/Installation media
2) make use of the Disk Utility (I recall under the tools menu option of the installation USB/DVDs) to format/partition the new disk
3) Then select/choose the Restore/transfer option where you can then select the TimeMachine (Or Migration Assistant) to restore from.

The problems I don't have an answer to as I've never done that in my setups:

a) recovery of the Recovery partition... I usually were doing "upgrades", thus I did fresh installs, and then I restored the TimeMachine specific files, or I used the "Migration Assistant" to restore the applications/users as need be

b) You didn't specify the version, which might mean different issues w.r.t. the medium, ie. USB/DVD/etc. Creating a USB boot image is outside the scope of this question and answer ;)


Sierra stuck at login screen - password doesn't work This has happened to me twice in the past week.  I put my MacBook Pro to sleep while my user account is logged in.  When I return, I enter the correct password and it shakes, as if the password were wrong.  I try several times, and get nowhere.  So I force reboot, and then I am able to login again.  Here are some relevant lines from the log right after the reboot.  The opendirectory lines are repeated hundreds of times.

loginwindow: -[LWBuiltInScreenLockAuthLion verifyPassword] | ERROR | Verify password called with PAM auth set to YES, but pam handle == nil
opendirectoryd: Client: <private>, UID: 0, EUID: 501, GID: 20, EGID: 20
opendirectoryd: queuing request to connection - '<private>'
loginwindow: (libpam.2.dylib) in od_record_create(): failed: 13
loginwindow: (libpam.2.dylib) in od_record_create_cstring(): failed: 13
loginwindow: (libpam.2.dylib) in pam_sm_authenticate(): OpenDirectory - Unable to get user record.

This is running Sierra 10.12.6.  Filevault is disabled.  I also notice after the reboot, Spotlight is hogging CPU for several minutes, like it's rebuilding an index, but that might be a red herring, just caused by the reboot.

Try to reset your login password at first:

macOS Sierra: Reset a login password.

If the above didn't help, try to reset Nonvolatile Random-Access Memory and System Management Controller:

How to reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac.

How to reset the SMC on your Mac.

P.S. I experienced the same issue on Mac Mini with El Capital. Resetting PRAM and SMC helped me to fix it.


Drivers for Logitech QuickCam Orbit AF: Any third-party options? I have a lovely USB webcam, namely the QuickCam® Orbit AF. It's the type of webcam one often sees at Customs checkpoints at airports around the world. It also looks a bit like HAL.

The problem is that it's only fully supported under Windows. I'm after a third-party solution because:

  Your Logitech camera must be UVC
  (Universal Video Class) compliant in
  order to be used on your Mac OS 10.4.9
  and above computer. These standard UVC
  drivers are provided by the Operating
  System and will only provide minimal
  camera support.

  [...]

  NOTE: With the exception of the
  QuickCam Vision Pro for Mac and the HD
  Pro Webcam C910, all other UVC cameras
  are not officially supported on the
  Mac and some features or application
  support may not work.

I wonder if someone can point towards a third-party driver that'll make this thing run like it does on Windows?

First thing I'd try would be Macam. Your camera is listed as 'it depends (UVC)' on the supported list, which suggests it's getting most of its functionality from the built-in UVC driver anyway. But it's free, so you've nothing to lose by trying it...

EDIT: Scratch that. The details page for your camera says it doesn't yet work with Macam at all, only with the built-in UVC driver.


Why is there an active progress wheel ("turning worm") in the right hand corner of the Finder status bar? In Lion, everything is working but i am puzzled by the presence of a "busy" wheel in the far right hand side of the finder window status bar.  What is it indicating is happening? I have no search in process, no file size calculation, or any other process that I am aware of that would account of the "turning worm".

The "searching" or "busy" wheel (the one with radial bars, not the spinning color "pizza wheel") is not always present, but does appear in every finder window eventually. Activity Monitor shows nothing obvious, and CPU usage is not high... so what is it showing?

In my case, it just means the Finder is gathering the contents of a folder in order to present them to you, that's all. It shows only when displaying a folder full of hundreds of file, or while browsing network shares.


Simulate shell environment available to GUI Apps? I'm testing some scripts which are destined for use inside various GUI Apps, either as direct shell calls or as part of an AppleScript do shell script call.  I know from experience that the shell which an App gets is nothing like what I get by default when starting Terminal, so I'd like to figure out a way to simulate the shell that an App gets so that I can debug the scripts knowing that they are behaving as I should expect them to behave in their final expected use environment.

So, how to I open an Terminal (or modify one which is already open) so that it behaves like the shell that a GUI App has access to?

First, let me solve the problem of a GUI app not providing the same environment as a terminal session to a bash script.

The differences are because of your bash profile, so you can have exactly the same in a GUI shell script by using the source command. Put the line source /Users/<username>/.bash_profile (replacing <username> with your short name) at the top of your bash script and you will have the same environment in the script when run inside a GUI app as in your shell session.

To get a shell without running your profile in iTerm2 (I couldn't get it to work in Terrminal):

Open to Terminal->Preferences
Go to the Profiles pane
Duplicate your default profile
In "General"
Change the name of the new profile to "No Profile"
Set the shortcut key to Control-Command-A
Click on "Command"
Set the command to /bin/bash -norc
Close the Preferences

Now Control-Command-A will open a session exactly the same as a GUI app would get - everything set to the bash default.


How do I emulate iOS Clash Royale on Windows? I have no experience with apple devices. How do I emulate iOS Clash Royale on windows? i mean, emulating Clash royale but the ios one.

You can't.

There is no emulation software for Windows to run iOS apps.
Even on Mac you must have the source code, you cannot run a compiled app.


MEvent. Case! on Matlab running on Mac When I try to two-finger scroll in a matlab window, I get the error

MEvent.Case!

The proposed solution (as posted on the Matlab forum) seems to work just fine for Matlab running on Linux

!synclient HorizTwoFingerScroll=0

but it does not work for Matlab running on a Mac.

How can I get matlab to stop giving this error?

The synclient program is a command line tool for accessing Synaptics driver options in Linux, so that's only relevant if you're on a Linux system with a Synaptics touchpad.

On my Mac, I had this problem when using a Magic Mouse to access a Linux desktop remotely via NoMachine/NX. The Magic Mouse has no "button", but instead has a trackpad like surface that can register clicks, taps, swipes, etc. I use a third party tool called MagicPrefs for it (the key use in this context is to enable a "middle button click" effect for Linux), and I found that if I choose "Configure Scrolling" in MagicPrefs, and then disable ALL scrolling behaviors (1/2/3 finger) I no longer can trigger those "MEvent" alerts in MATLAB.

NOTE: disabling all scrolling disables the mousewheel-like scroll, and it turns out only disabling the horizontal/diagonal scrolling seems to be required to avoid the MATLAB issue.


Mac startup key sequences What are the Mac hardwares various startup key sequences?

On the older Macs, Shift used to be start without extensions, Ctrl-Apple-O-F would boot to OpenFirmware, (but didn't the Intel Macs switch to EFI BIOS's?)

If the shortcut is hardware specific, please note it.

Google is your friend: http://www.jacsoft.co.nz/Tech_Notes/Mac_Keys.shtml

Bypass startup drive and boot from external (or CD): commandoptionshiftdelete
Boot from CD (Most late model Apples): C
Force the internal hard drive to be the boot drive: D
Boot from a specific SCSI ID #. (# is SCSI ID number): commandoptionshiftdelete#
Zap PRAM: commandoptionPR
Boot into open Firmware: commandoptionOF
Clear NV RAM. Similar to reset-all in open Firmware: commandoptionNV
Disable Extensions: shift
Rebuild Desktop: commandoption
Close finder windows (hold just before finder starts): option
Boot with Virtual Memory off: command
Trigger extension manager at boot-up: SPACE
Force Quadra av machines to use TV as a monitor: commandoptionTV
Boot from ROM (Mac Classic only): commandoptionXO
Force PowerBooks to reset the screen: R
Force an AV monitor to be recognized as one: commandoptionAV
Eject Boot Floppy: Hold Down Mouse Button
Select volume to start from: option
Start in Firewire target drive mode: T
Startup in OSX if OS9 and OXS in boot partition: X or commandX
Attempt to boot from network server: N (Hold until Mac Logo appears)
Hold down until the 2nd chime, will boot into 9?: commandoption
OSX: Watch the status of the system load: commandV
OSX: Enter single-user mode (shell-level mode): commandS


Yosemite Updates From App Store Not Working I recently bought a new iMac and installed Yosemite on it, but for some reason whenever I try to update I just get this message:

"[Name of App] was purchased using the App Store on another computer. To use [Name of App] on this computer, sign in using the Apple ID and password used to purchase it."

Nope. My Apple ID remains the same as it was on my old iMac, and I don't remember ever having another one. If anybody knows how to sort this out, I'd be very grateful as I haven't been able to update anything in about three months.

You may have an application which was left over from the previous owner.  The simple way to deal with that is to delete the old version and download the new version (with your own Apple ID) anew.

First, in the Mac App Store, go to the Purchases tab and verify that the app you want to download is listed there for your Apple ID.

Next, move (or, if you are brave, remove) the application from the /Applications/ folder to someplace like your Desktop.

Finally, quit/restart the Mac App Store, go back to the Purchases tab, and re-download the application.


How do I un-claim a Time Machine backup? I recently wiped my Time Capsule and started a new set of backups. After a couple of weeks, Time Machine reported that “to improve reliability”, it needed to start over—again. My understanding is that this is caused by a filesystem error so bad it can't be identified, let alone fixed, so one would have to start anew.

This is all very well, but there doesn't seem to be an option to start backing up again without erasing the existing backup image. I'd like to keep it around for a while.

Is there any way to un-claim a Time Machine backup?

I had this a long time ago, so I am not 100% sure that I remember the solution correctly, but I think it was rather simple:

Rename the existing backup image or tuck it away in a folder.


Apple Pages underline When I underline a word with Pages 5.5.3 on OS X.

For the fonts I use, the underline goes very close to the text, much closer than it is common with Microsoft Word.

Just as "tracking" controls how close the next line of text follows the previous, I want to adjust the "tracking" space to lower the underline.

Is there any way to control this and give more space between the text and the underline?

Pages does not expose this control and from experimentation using large font face sizing (96 and above), it appears the spacing between the underline and the characters varies on the typeface selected.

For example - see Courier and Courier New - the second font has a much larger spacing than the first.

It looks like you'd need a tool to edit the typeface or choose a typeface that matches your expectations. It is a bit surprising now that I look how close the underline hews to the characters for Pages default styles.


How to make spotlight index files shared over AFP I'm sharing a local folder on a 10.8.5 Mac Mini server via AFP. The share is set to allow a certain user group to write to it. When users in this group place files in the directory, they are owned by that user.  The problem is that spotlight will not index these files.  If I chown one of the files to the local admin user, it immediately gets indexed by spotlight.

# Observe the initial file ownerships:
$ ls -el /Shared/mds-test-doc.pdf
-rw-r--r--+ 1 otheruser  wheel  36279 May  7 15:23 /Shared/mds-test-doc.pdf
 0: group:somegroup inherited allow read,write,execute,append,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity
# Observe that mdfind doesn't see it (or any other files containing a period
# character within that directory)
$ mdfind -count -onlyin /Shared '.'
0
# Change the file's owner to adminuser:
$ sudo chown adminuser /Shared/mds-test-doc.pdf
# Sanity check the new ownerships:
$ ls -el /Shared/mds-test-doc.pdf
-rw-r--r--+ 1 adminuser  wheel  36279 May  7 15:23 /Shared/mds-test-doc.pdf
 0: group:somegroup inherited allow read,write,execute,append,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity
# Now mdfind sees it:
$ mdfind -count -onlyin /Shared '.'
1
# Remove the -count to confirm it's the expected file:
$ mdfind -onlyin /Shared '.'
/Shared/mds-test-doc.pdf

So as you see, just re-owning the files allows them to be indexed (instantly I might add). Obviously one fix would be simply recursively owning all the folder contents.  Many web solutions I've found suggest doing this or making the Repair Disk Permissions tools to do it for you.  Such a solution isn't ideal because:

the files are supposed to be owned by otheruser
a recursive chown only fixes files at that moment, so it would need to be executed periodically (launchd/cron job) to keep the files up-to-date and indexed

Is there a better way of fixing this?  Maybe I'm missing a server or spotlight setting somewhere?

I found (what seems to be) a good solution after messing around and observing another AFP share that is working correctly.  Turns out that the working folder has ACLs to allow spotlight indexing:

$ ls -led /Shared\ Items/Public/
drwxrwxr-x+ 19 root  admin  646 May  6 12:47 /Shared Items/Public/
 0: user:_spotlight inherited allow list,search,file_inherit,directory_inherit

New directories created inside a directory with this ACL will also inherit it. Files created inside the directory inherit a similar ACL: user:_spotlight inherited allow read,execute.  As it turns out, applying the allow list,search,file_inherit,directory_inherit ACL to a regular file results in the file getting the simplified ACL (allow read,execute).  So my solution was to add the inherit ACL recursively to the shared directory:

$ chmod -R +a 'user:_spotlight allow list,search,file_inherit,directory_inherit' /Shared

This solution worked perfectly. Now all my share content shows up in spotlight searches regardless of who owns them.


How can I get the music I've put onto my iPhone from CDs onto my new MacBook if theres no CD drive? It seems like only the music I purchased in the iTunes store is transferring and I'd like to get the music I've ripped from my CDs onto my new MacBook but there is no CD drive.

You are looking for iTunes Match.  It's a $24.99 a year add-on that will allow you to d/l from iTunes anything you ripped to your iTunes library.  I don't think it works tho from just music already on the phone, it has to be ripped to your library using iTunes.

https://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/


Is it possible to purchase Lion, without using the Mac App Store *on* a Mac (ie. the app) This is a followup, but not a duplicate, of my first question:

  Reinstalling a MacBook Pro w/Lion (10.7.2), when previous owner died, can it be done? What do I need?

I have a MacBook Pro, that is going to be given to a new user. The original owner died, so unfortunately I don't have access to his email account, but, the MBP auto-logs on so I'm on the Mac already.

The MBP will be given to the son of the later father, and I have his Apple account details, so I thought I could log on to the Mac App Store with his account, purchase Lion, and then reinstall.

However, in the Mac App Store, the "purchase" button just says "Installed", because of course Lion is installed on the machine already.

So I have a few questions in that regard:

Can I reinstall from the recovery partition already on the machine, use the new users Apple account, and then purchase in the Mac App Store afterwards? Or will the installation stop at some point because that account doesn't own Lion and thus won't activate on this machine?
Can I purchase Lion on the new account somewhere else, through Apple's web site?
Can I trick the Mac App Store to think Lion is not installed, so that I can purchase it? I remember that when I disabled the Spotlight search engine, the app store was a bit confused about what was installed and what was not...
Any other solution?

This only answers on part of the question, you can buy a Lion USB install from the Apple Store although it is more expensive at £55.

Link to USA store (at $69)


How to synchronize contents of two external drives? I have two external hard drives (ExFAT formatted) which I need to keep in sync.  Specifically, drive B must mirror the contents of drive A and drive A must not be modified.  How can I do this without having to do a full copy of drive contents every time?  I'm on OS X 10.10.

This is simply for periodically backing up the contents of drive A.

You could use rsync like this:

rsync -av --delete /Volumes/DiskA/ /Volumes/DiskB

--delete option is for delete files in DiskB that was previously deleted on DiskA.

If you want to schedule it to execute periodically, I suggest you to read How can I run/stop/relaunch an application automatically, at boot/login/some other time?.


Missing Exchange calendar in iCal I'm getting mad here while trying to fix a issue with iCal and Exchange.

After removing and adding back the Exchange Account in 'Setting' 'Internet accounts' the Exchange Group in the calendar has disappeared

Mail and contacts are working fine and are in sync with exchange, but in iCal there is the exchange account missing :-(

I tried several stuff: removed and added the exchange account. Double and tripple checked that "Calendar' is activated in 'Internet Accounts' and that in the Calendar Settings the Exchange account is activated, too.

Then I have stopped iCal, removed everything from ~/Library/Calendars, gone into ~/Library/Preferences and removed everything containing iCal.
rebooted several times (as suggested here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7837872) .

And talked with Apple Care too but the girls were overwhelmed and couldn't help.

The same account works with calendar on my iPhone w/o any problem.

Any help is welcome, I don't want to switch to Outlook just because of this :-(

My system: MBP Retina 13'' early 2015
MacOS Sierra (10.12.2)
Calendar 9.0 (2155.15)

I had exactly the same issue and thought it might be the Accounts sqlite database file that was corrupted. So i removed the exchange account and then:

in:
~/Library/Accounts there is:

Accounts4.sqlite
Accounts4.sqlite-wal (write ahead log file)
Accounts4.sqlite-shm (temporary file)

i did the following as another admin user on the box (to be sure no files were open). This is all on your own risk by the way!

first a backup

cd useraccount/Library/Accounts
mkdir backup
mv Accounts4.* backup/

Rebuild Accounts file:

sqlite backup/Accounts4.sqlite ".dump" | sqlite Accounts4.sqlite

Then log out and log in again on the right account
Add the exchange account again
open ical and wait some time to give ical time to sync. My account took approx. 10 minutes!


Macos opens Instruments when I press "Command" + "~" The default combination to switch between windows of the current app in macOS is ⌘ Command `. Unfortunately when I have opened Chrome and I want to switch between its windows, ⌘ Command ` opens Instruments.
If I switch windows in the opposite direction with ⌘ Command ⇧ Shift `  - everything works fine.
Is there a way to disable Chrome behavior so switching windows would work in it as well?

Unfortunately when I have opened Chrome and I want to switch between its windows, ⌘` opens Instruments.

As Instruments is a part of Xcode, not Google Chrome, check the Chrome > Services menu for a service assigned: ⌘`
You can change it in: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services


How does “Optimize Mac Storage” for iCloud Drive interact with Spotlight and Time Machine? How does the option “Optimize Mac Storage” for iCloud Drive interact with Spotlight and Time Machine?

As far as I understand, the option causes macOS to remove your Mac’s copy of old iCloud Drive files. In iCloud Drive in the Finder, those files are then shown with a download icon. But I don’t understand what happens to those files in Spotlight and Time Machine.

Can you still search the contents of those files in Spotlight? What happens to those files in Time Machine backups? I assume existing backups will still have the local copy, but what about new backups?

Also, what happens if you edit those files on an iPad? Will the files be automatically downloaded again to the Mac? If not, can you search the new contents of those files in Spotlight? Will new Time Machine backups have a local copy with the new contents, the old contents or no local copy at all?

Can you still search the contents of those files in Spotlight?

Yes, for a while. Spotlight doesn't purge the files from the index (./Spotlight-V100), however it doesn't particularly ensure they remain.

Therefore, when macOS stores a file in iCloud and removes it from your home folder, the Spotlight index retains an index of the contents, but doesn't actively refresh the index. For example, resetting your Spotlight index will remove the file contents from the index. To add the files back, download them from iCloud, at which point Spotlight will index them once again.

  What happens to those files in Time Machine backups?

Time Machine does not back up files in iCloud. They are ‘presumed safe’ in the cloud. They will remain on any older backups, but new incremental backups will observe the files as having been deleted.

If you restore a Time Machine backup on to a new Mac, you will log in to iCloud as part of the Setup Assistant, at which point the files will be accessible once again as normal.

  Also, what happens if you edit those files on an iPad? Will the files be automatically downloaded again to the Mac?

Optimize Mac Storage attempts to keep your recent files available on your Mac. Therefore, when a file is edited by any device, your Mac will download the file locally, in case you want to continue editing there.

  If not, can you search the new contents of those files in Spotlight?

Since the files are downloaded on editing, the new contents will be made available in the Spotlight index when the index is updated.

  Will new Time Machine backups have a local copy with the new contents, the old contents or no local copy at all?

If a backup takes place whilst the file is downloaded, the new contents will be backed up. If the file is only in the cloud when Time Machine performs a backup, the file will not be backed up.


Why is Photo Stream content different on each of my devices? I work on a 13" MacBook Pro and also have an iPad and iPhone 4s. I edited my Photo Stream photos down to a tight collection of 220 pictures and fully expected that to reflect on my iPhone and iPad, however, it simply is not the same. The iPad has more than 400 pictures in Photo Stream. I want to set the standard collection my MacBook Pro and have that reflect across all devices. Any suggestions on how to make that happen?

Running 10.8.2 on MacBook Pro and 6.0.1 on iOS devices.

As the Apple website reports, iCloud stores your pictures in Photo Stream for 30 days.

  iCloud manages your Photo Stream efficiently so you don’t run out of
  storage space on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. If you have Photo
  Stream enabled on your iOS device, every single photo you take appears
  in a special Photo Stream album that holds your last 1000 photos. You
  can delete any photos you don’t want from the Photo Stream (Photo Stream photos downloaded to an iOS device with iOS 5.0.1 or earlier must be deleted manually after updating to iOS 5.1 or later.). To touch
  up a photo or keep a favorite shot permanently, simply save it to your
  Camera Roll. iCloud stores new photos for 30 days, so you have plenty
  of time to connect your iOS device to Wi-Fi and make sure you always
  have your most recent shots handy.

After 30 days pictures are removed from iCloud but not from the Photo Stream album on your devices.

If you remove a picture stored in the Photo Stream album from one of your devices

Before 30 days, the picture will be removed from all your devices
After 30 days, the picture will be removed only from  that device, because the picture is not anymore on iCloud.

You should also consider that pictures are removed from your Photo Stream albums on your devices when they reach the 1000th picture.

  iCloud pushes all your photos to the My Photo Stream album on your
  devices and computers, and manages them efficiently, so you don’t run
  out of storage space.

  Your iOS devices keep a rolling collection of your last 1000 photos in
  the My Photo Stream album. From there, you can browse your recent
  photos or move the ones you like to your Camera Roll or another album
  to keep them on your device forever.

  Since your Mac and PC have more storage than your iOS devices, you can
  choose to have all of your My Photo Stream photos automatically
  downloaded. In iPhoto or Aperture preferences on your Mac, be sure to
  select Photo Stream > My Photo Stream > Automatic Import. All of your
  photo stream photos will be imported into your Events, Projects,
  Photos, Faces, and Places folders in iPhoto or Aperture. On your PC
  with Photo Stream enabled in the Control Panel, all of your photos
  will be imported into C:\Users\\Pictures\Photo Stream\My
  Photo Stream.

N.B.1 You can always reset you Photo Straem from www.icloud.com.

N.B.2 You should satisfy the following requirements

  Deleting individual photos from Photo Stream is supported by iOS
  5.1 or later, iPhoto 9.2.2 or later, Aperture 3.2.3 or later, and Apple TV Software Update 5.0 or later. You will need to manually
  delete photos you downloaded to iOS devices using iOS 5.0.1 or earlier
  after updating to iOS 5.1.


Trying to copy files and preserve ownership First I tried cp -Rp to preserve ownership of copies files. That changed the ownership from root:wheel to myuser:staff. So then I tried rsync and ditto. All of these are supposed to preserve the ownership, but they do not. They change it to myuser:staff. All commands used with sudo.

For example:

sudo cp -Rp /sourcefiles/ /destfiles/

What am I missing?

Are you copying to a mounted volume that is on another system? If so, it may be confusing the uid and gid's.

Or are you copying to a NAS which might have an override setting for the ownership of the connected user. For example FreeNAS has options for NFS mounts to Mapall User and Mapall Group, and for AFP mounts to set default file and directory permissions

you can check for uid with something like
    dscl . -read /Users/ UniqueID
and check for group id with
    cat /etc/groups
or
    dscacheutil -q group

Could you try tar'ing up a few files, copying them to the new volume and then untar'ing them and then check the file permissions?


Connected Bluetooth Device Not Recognized as Audio Device Short Version:

The device in question is connected according to itself and the Bluetooth Preferences, but does not show up as an output option in Sound Preferences.

Long Version:

I recently purchased an AmazonBasics Bluetooth Audio Receiver with the intention of being able to broadcast from my phone, MacBook, etc. to a pair of non-Bluetooth speakers from across the room. Most of my computer problems are self-inflicted, so I'd imagine this has to do with some changes I made a few months back that I will detail further down.

The computer experiencing issues is a 2012 MacBook Pro 13" (MacBookPro9,2), running Yosemite 10.10.5.

Here's what I know:

The device connects and shows up as a connected Bluetooth device in System Preferences.
The device is not recognized as an audio device on my 2012 MacBook Pro (it doesn't show up in the preferences pane).
The device is able to receive audio from my Android phone.
The device is able to receive audio from my 2010 MacBook Pro running the same OS version (10.10.5), less a security update and various app updates.
I had to manually remove Avid ProTools components a few months ago, so likely the issue is with something I edited incorrectly.
Copying com.apple.audio.SystemSettings.plist from the 2010 model to the 2012 model does not correct the issue.
Deleting com.apple.audio.SystemSettings.plist from the 2012 model outright does not correct the issue.
Restarting, etc. does not correct the issue.

I suspect that there is some kext file or similar package that needs to be reset or replaced with a good one, but don't know where it would be.

I do not want to (nor should I have to, in theory) reinstall my system due to a million and a half other reasons.

I realize that this is an unusual issue, as various search engines with various terms yielded nothing fruitful. Any assistance you can offer is appreciated.

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Resolution:

I installed Yosemite on an external drive so that I could find all the system files related to audio (using EasyFind, a great search utility for Mac), compare them to my existing system for any file size mismatches, and then replace the offending file(s).

The offending file was found in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL and was most likely "BluetoothAudioPlugin.driver" (duh), though I replaced all the files in this folder with the system defaults, so I don't know that it was solely caused by this one alone.


my iPhone keeps losing wifi connection. Why is this? My laptop connects to my Wifi but my iPhone does not. I connect my macbook air from the basement to the wifi and i get all 3 bars, but then i connect my iPhone from same place in the basement, the iPhone keeps losing the wifi.i had an iphone 4 before so I thought it was just the Antennas of the iPhone 4 that was weak. Now I have the iPhone 6 plus and its the same issue. what do you think is the problem? is it my router? i have a netgear WNR1000v2 and it is upstairs, about 50-60 ft away from my room in the basement.

Download a wifi analyser onto your phone (plenty of good free ones) and check the signal strength your getting on it when scanning for WAP's.

This should help you rule out if its the signal strength, leaving either your netgear or iPhone as the culprit.

See this article as well

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ios-8-problems/2/


Does macOS monitor drive health? My 2017 15" MacBook Pro does not appear to support SMART on any drive. For its internal PCIe drive diskutil reports:

$ diskutil info disk0 | grep SMART
   SMART Status:              Not Supported

System Information shows the same:

S.M.A.R.T. status              Not Supported

Similarly I have two USB hard drives, a Toshiba 2.5" native USB, the other a Seagate 3.5" in a SATA to USB enclosure. MacOS is unable to read their SMART status either with diskutil

$ diskutil info disk2 | grep SMART
   SMART Status:              Not Supported

or with smartmontools (installed with brew):

$ smartctl -a disk2s2
smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [Darwin 18.7.0 x86_64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

Smartctl open device: disk2s2 failed: Operation not supported by device

HOWEVER, a FreeNAS box correctly reads SMART from both USB drives. Indeed one of them is failing with a large number of Failed SMART usage Attribute: 184 End-to-End_Error errors. Error 184 signals possible corruption on the drive with likely imminent failure. It means "get anything you care about off ASAP and discard the drive". macOS provided no warnings.

Does macOS have any sort of monitoring of drive health? If so, what is it and how does it work? If not, can it be added both for internal and external drives? Is there a technology other than SMART?

My 2017 15" MacBook Pro does not appear to support S.M.A.R.T. on any drive.

Not exactly.  It’s more like NVMe is not compatible with S.M.A.R.T.  First off, it is a subset of the ATA (AT Attachment) standard for monitoring/reporting and repairing drive failures.  There are a number of ATA commands that access the SMART attributes.
To be able to gain access to the SMART attributes on the drive, you need the following:

supported OS driver
supported hardware interface.

Drivers
macOS provides a limited and closed ATA driver.  It does not allow you to send SCSI and ATA commands directly to the device (drive).  In this case the macOS driver allows you to get some but not all of the SMART attributes.  To do so, you need a 3rd party driver that supports getting these extended attributes.  DriveDx has this driver.
Supported Hardware
As for a supported hardware interface this could be either the SATA controller (actually PCIe to SATA bridge) or the SATA controller in a USB interface (USB to SATA bridge).  If the SATA controller doesn’t support sending/reading these commands/attributes, you won’t be able to get the SMART information you’re looking for.
However, given that a different machine (FreeNAS box) the included ATA/SCSI driver as well as the USB to SATA bridge supported the SMART attributes.
Smartmontools has an excellent summary page detailing the USB/SMART attribute support:  https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/USB

The OS X SAT SMART Driver provides access to SMART data for SAT, JMicron and Sunplus capable USB and Firewire devices on Mac OS X. On OSX El Capitan (10.11+) you may need a signed driver, which can be downloaded from the DriveDx website. Note that this does not support 48-bit ATA commands (-l xerror) or non-SMART ATA commands (-s apm,N). Full USB support would require SCSI pass-through support which does not yet exist on Mac OS X.

If you notice, macOS doesn’t support the SCSI pass through nor does smartmontools support SCSI.  However, you can get USB SMART attributes through the use of a signed driver from DriveDX.
NVMe
NVMe is a whole different ball of wax.  Looking at the specification, there’s nothing about SMART attributes.  In fact, it has it’s own definition for Error Reporting and Recovery.  So, asking an NVMe drive for attributes it doesn’t even have is obviously not going to work.
smartmontools NVMe support is currently in the “experimental” stage.  Once again, support is limited due to driver limitations.  After 10.13 (High Sierra), a 3rd party driver is required

Before release 10.13 only Apple-branded NVMe devices were supported, monitoring API is implemented (NVMeSMARTClient) but not documented. Limited NVMe support added in the DriveDx app (commercial, closed source) and in the smartmontools since 6.6 (r4438).

Bottom Line
If you’re looking for drive health monitoring, you’ll need 3rd party tools as it hasn’t been implemented in macOS as of yet.


Deauthorise Apple ID from the Mac App Store I have Xcode installed using an Apple ID that I want it to be detached from. How can I login to the Mac App store using a different Apple ID and then have Xcode reattached to the new account in order to be updated? Not too sure if Mac App store and iTunes are using the same Apple ID.

You will need to delete Xcode, sign out of the Mac App Store, sign in with the new ID and "buy" Xcode again from the Mac App Store.


Encrypt home directory only I have a shared computer that is primarily for my use, but occasionally when I'm out of the office others would like to use it.

These others require Administrator access to be able to install software etc. but I'm concerned (just as much out of mistake as anything else) about the security of my personal stuff on the machine.

I'm looking for a means to encrypt my home directory that can only be unlocked by my password.

Obviously FV2 doesn't cut it, as the full drive is decrypted as soon as the other user logs in.

If you do not want to encrypt the whole home directory but only a few files/directories you could use something like Hider. It's paid though.


Linking MacBook Pro and iMac as single system As I’ve moved to working from home during quarantine I’ve found myself in a bit of a situation which I’m hoping you can help me out with. Traditionally I have one workstation (a MBP connected to an external monitor) for video editing, and an iMac for video editing. However I’m hoping to link all 3 of them to make a single workstation like the picture I just took: where I am using the iMac as the base of the system (for its performance) and the MBP and secondary monitor as additional external monitors while being able to use the keyboard and trackpad from the MBP as it’s what I’m most comfortable with.
Is there any way that I might be able to do this?

You could potentially solve this with a product called Barrier and with display sharing software
Note: this is a total bodge and not something I would personally do because you’re likely to spend more time fiddling with it than getting actual work done.
Barrier will let you use your keyboard and mouse on several computers.  Its like a software KVM that works on a client/server model.  All the computers must be on the same network and ideally, you’d use the MacBook keyboard and trackpad to control the iMac.  The external display would be connected to the iMac for simplicity.  To use the MacBook screen, you would need something like Luna Display to extend the display of the iMac to the MBP.
There’s a YouTube video on how Barrier works.  You can also see a demo of Luna Display on Youtube.


"Wake on LAN" my Mac Mini from my PC? I would like to be able to use the Wake On LAN feature to wake up my Mac Mini from my Windows PC, and I have tried two different programs (Solar Winds and NirSoft) but it is not working.

I have already enabled "Wake for Network Access" in the settings on my Mac Mini.
I have Mac Mini connected to my (Linksys) router with an Ethernet cable.
I have a Windows 10 PC connected to the same router over WiFi.
I can use VNC to screen share and control my Mac Mini from my PC. This works really well.
I can ping the Mac Mini (when it is on) from my PC and it responds.

Any ideas on how to close the loop on this?

You normally have to access a shared resource on the Mac rather than use a magic packet.
The simplest way is to set up file sharing (allowing SMB for the PC) and try to access that from the PC.  This could be any folder you like so you do not have to worry about it being visible to others on the network and can (should) be password protected.
Other things that should work are:

Shared printers / scanners
Music
Music play lists
Screen sharing (I think but that may have been via VNC on the Mac)


How can I review the most recently shown dialog box in OS X? I was just typing a long string of text into an input field in Chrome. I saw my screen flash briefly and the shape of a dialog box appear, but before I could stop typing I had already hit some key that closed the box (I'm guessing space, but possibly a letter or even enter).

How can I find out what the dialog box said and what action I took to close it?

I'm using OS X Yosemite 10.10.5.

Unfortunately, I have to inform you, that there's no such possibility in OS X Yosemite. Operating system doesn't log this type of event for dialog windows.

The information you have - is not even enough to understand who fired this window to popup: was it dialog box, was it OSX window, was it another program with informational message which raised the popup, or it was simply styled popup/popover of the web-page you've been.

All OSX can do - is to reopen regular windows, programs, restore console, etc, when you reboot Mac OS X with a checkbox next to “Reopen windows when logging back in” that restores all of your currently open applications and windows. This state is stored, but not for dialog windows.


iOS6 has loaded someone totally different's details I did an Over The Air update on my iPhone 4S this morning to IOS6. But it has showed me someone elses phone number after the update.

When I send an iMessage to my wife, it comes from this random persons phone number. When I try to facetime, it comes from this other number. But "Phone" shows the correct phone number:

^ This is the FaceTime setup. That is not my phone number. I have never seen that number in my life before.

^ This is the Phone set up. That is my phone number.

What's going on? How can I change this? Has someone else got my phone number and is getting my wifes messages?

Sign out, all areas (including Game Center) turn off iCloud an soft reboot, an sign back in