How does my iMac know my location in the maps app, given that I use a VPN that has my IP about 200 miles from where my address is? I have an iMac (Mid 2011, if it matters) and I just installed Mavericks.

When I launch the Maps app, it knows PRECISELY where I am, which I could certainly understand if it was using IP geolocation.  The catch is, I'm on a VPN connection, with the exit about 200 miles from my actual location.

If I use any of the IP geolocation websites, it shows my location at that VPN exit node, not where I actually am.

So, how DOES my computer know where it is?

Technically - the process is called trilateration and operates by cross checking all BSSID - the unique identifier / MAC address for each wireless base station that your Mac can detect while it listens periodically or is actively searching to join a WiFi channel.

How does Maps on Mac OS determine the computer's location

You can run this scan manually by running the Wireless Diagnostic app which is located in /system/Library/CoreServices/Applications on Mavericks.

As long as your hardware is within range of one hot spot that has been geolocated in Apple's database of hotspots, the location should be within one football field of the location of the hotspot.

With three or more measurements - and relative signal strength of the various hot spot radio signals - the program might be able to make a more accurate estimate of your location.

You can also run this scan from the command line using the airport binary that is squirreled away in

mac:bin mike$ airport --scan
                            SSID BSSID             RSSI CHANNEL HT CC SECURITY (auth/unicast/group)
                     na ala hele 00:26:36:9c:32:23 -59  2       Y  US WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP) WPA2(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP)
                     na ala hele 00:26:bb:79:23:1f -59  2       Y  US WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP) WPA2(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP)
                fast na ala hele 00:26:bb:79:23:20 -74  149,+1  Y  US WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP) WPA2(PSK/AES,TKIP/TKIP)
mac:bin mike$ airport --getinfo
     agrCtlRSSI: -75
     agrExtRSSI: 0
    agrCtlNoise: -86
    agrExtNoise: 0
          state: running
        op mode: station
     lastTxRate: 81
        maxRate: 300
lastAssocStatus: 0
    802.11 auth: open
      link auth: wpa2-psk
          BSSID: 00:26:bb:79:23:20
           SSID: fast na ala hele
            MCS: 4
        channel: 149,1
mac:bin mike$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/airport
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  89 Sep 13 11:40 /usr/local/bin/airport -> /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport


Allow apps writing to iOS Health - duplicate records? If I allow an application to write data to iOS Health, e.g. a number of steps; would it corrupt the existing tracking made by the phone itself? In other words:

iphone is tracking the number of steps and writes data to iOS Health
app is tracking the number of steps and writes data to iOS Health

Would that double the value of the steps counter? What's the purpose of allowing apps to write the same data as iPhone is already tracking?

Apps can write data to Health because this allows you to add data from other sources.

For example, you might go on a run without your iPhone but with another health tracker which could track the activity (such as steps). The linked app for this tracker could import the data into the Health app.

iOS Health will figure out duplicate data by itself and won't count activities twice.


How can I force Mac OS X to treat my Mackie Onyx Blackjack as a mono input device? I have a Mackie Onyx Blackjack audio interface, and my microphone is plugged into the first of two inputs ("left"). The other input doesn't have anything plugged into it. What this means is that whenever I record audio in QuickTime, it produces a stereo file with my voice on the left track and silence on the right track. However, Mac OS X sees the device as a 2-channel stereo device, and I can't seem to convince it otherwise.

Here is a screenshot from Audio MIDI Setup to show what I mean:

The only thing I can change is the "Format" from "44100.0 Hz" to "48000.0 Hz". Everything else is greyed out.

I investigated creating an aggregate device, but I see no way to eliminate audio channels from that either. How can I get Mac OS X to see this device as a mono input?

whenever I record audio in QuickTime

This is the problem. QuickTime doesn't offer the ability to change the recording type or to pan inputs to a particular track in the recording when you're making it. It records stereo. And it captures one input left, the other input right. I just tried it out with my Duet and, no matter where I set the pan on the mic input in the Maestro mix console, QuickTime captured that signal input on the left channel only.

The solution, I'm afraid, is to stop using QuickTime.

Garageband, which is likely already on your Mac, will let you capture a mono source and then pan and bounce a master mix with the mono source placed in any location you like in the stereo field. It definitely is a more suitable interface for capturing and manipulating audio than QuickTime.


PDF reader for iPad with both bookmarks and continuous scrolling, without long save and load times I'm having trouble finding a good PDF reader for my iPad. Apple's own iBooks app allows adding bookmarks, but doesn't allow continuous scrolling for PDFs, only for EPUBs. This is annoying because most pages are zoomed out past the white margin, so every time I flip a page I need to zoom in past the white margin so the text is bigger.

Adobe reader for iPad doesn't have this problem, since you can easily choose to scroll continuously. However this reader strangely has the fatal flaw of not being able to add bookmarks. This issue has been brought up for years on the official Adobe forums, but it doesn't appear the developers care about adding this feature.

Foxit Reader has both bases covered: it has bookmarks, and it allows continuous scrolling. However, it has annoying save and load times every time I switch to another PDF file.

This is an interesting situation, since for each reader's problem, the other two readers don't have the problem at all; for example, both Adobe and Foxit have continuous scrolling that works wonderfully; both iBooks and Adobe allow instant switching between files, and both ibooks and Foxit allow flawless bookmarks.

Is there a PDF reader for iOS that has all three bases covered?

I have been a happy GoodReader user for many years. Lately, I have switched to PDF Expert, though, since I like its interface better (especially for adding and editing annotations). It is not quite as featureful as GoodReader, though.

Both use tabs to let you switch quickly between documents. I can't comment on the time to open a document compared to the apps you mention, though. Documents generally open quick enough for me.

Edit: Oh, wait: GoodReader doesn't do continuous scrolling, it seems. My bad. It's been too long since I used it, I guess.


What is Application Loader and why does it want to open EPUB? I just clicked on an EPUB file and instead of Stanza it opened with "Application Loader", which asked me to accept some terms of service.

What is "Application Loader" and can it really be used to display EPUB documents?

Application Loader is the app used to publish content you've created on the App Store. In addition to actual Apps, this also includes ebooks in EPUB format. It's part of Xcode and no, it can't display EPUB documents, so you may want to tell OS X to always open your EPUB documents with Stanza again (this association likely got overwritten when Xcode was last updated).


How to sort contacts by creation date or modification date in iOS Contacts or OS X Contacts 7.x? Is there a way to view or export the date a contact was created or modified in iOS 7 and/or the Contacts app (version 7.1) when viewed from a Mac?

This one datapoint would enormously aid deduping and syncing, even in a more manual way.

After digging a little bit in Contacts' DB here is what I found.

As already said by @grgarside, the DB is in

~/Library/Application\ Support/Address\ Book/Sources/<source-ID>/AddressBook-v22.abcddb

Where <source-ID> is most likely the most recent modified directory.

AddressBook-v22.abcddb is a SQLite DB file with 24 tables (in my case). The most important one is ZABCDRECORD which holds (among others) the firstname, lastname and the creation date of the contact (but also modification etc).

The 2 interesting columns in your case are :

ZCREATIONDATE
ZMODIFICATIONDATE

As I found out recently, the base date for these 2 columns is 01-01-2001.
The columns ZMODIFICATIONDATEYEARLESS and ZCREATIONDATEYEARLESS  use the 1st January of creation year as the base date.

Using sqlite you can sort it like that :

sqlite3 AddressBook-v22.abcddb "select ZFirstName, ZLastName from ZABCDRECORD order by ZMODIFICATIONDATE"

It will output FirstName/LastName sorted by modification date.


Connecting to IP takes longer than name I'm seeing behavior from my mac mini that is confusing me, I'm hoping someone else has seen this before;

When connecting to my mac mini from my macbook pro, connecting to the computer name is instant but connecting to the IP takes several seconds (10-15). This seems counter-intuitive to me, because connecting to a name involves the extra step of looking up the name I would think that connecting to the IP would be instant.

Does anyone know why this is, or how to eliminate the delay?

This is just a guess, but when you use the IP address it may try to do a reverse DNS lookup to get the associated name, and take a while to time out.


How do I swap Ctrl and Alt in just the Terminal? I have a USB keyboard where I swapped my Cmd and Ctrl keys, because I come from the world of Linux and that's just what I'm used to.

However, this causes a problem in the Terminal because all of a sudden the Ctrl key (used for escapes and whatnot [^C, ^D, and so on]) is in the wrong place. As a result, I keep accidentally pressing the wrong key.

Is there a way to swap my Cmd and Ctrl keys again only in Terminal (so that the keys are all in the right place)?

iTerm2 will let you remap your modifier keys. This has the effect of just remapping them for terminals. Bonus: it's also a better terminal program for OS X than the built-in Terminal.app that ships with OS X.

You can alter the modifier keys on a per-profile basis as well. That lets you switch profiles for terminals depending on what you're doing with the terminal so you get the correct behaviour for local and remote sessions.


How to wake a MacBook Air (2019) display after it suddenly goes dark (not sleep) for no reason in macOS Catalina (10.15.1)? This has happened to me a few times since upgrading to macOS Catalina (10.15.1) and the root cause is unclear.

I am downloading something using Firefox, in push Firefox away to do something else, I go to use Safari — or a text editor — and then… Like magic… The screen goes dark… Not sleep… Just dark… And I can’t see the desktop or anything.

I know the underlying system is still up and running because if I SSH into it from another device/system I can see the OS is still alive and not hung. And in the case of the download, I can still see data being downloaded using the command line tool nload (which I installed via Homebrew). And past that the brightness controls on the keyboard still work… But obviously the screen is dark — and not turned off because of sleep mode — and I can’t see anything.

Now, under most circumstances, I would just say a few “choice” words, hold down the power button and wait for the machine to come back up via reboot. But this download is in progress so I don’t want to do that.

So what can I do to get the screen on my MacBook Air active and viewable again?

The solution is to login from another device via the command line, put the display to sleep and then wake up the machine.

This solution hinges on whether or not you have SSH remote login capability to the machine. But if you do, you are in luck!

What I did is SSH in from iPhone using a Terminal app and then run this command to put the display to sleep:

pmset displaysleepnow

When I entered that command, the display on the MacBook Air went truly dark. Then by simply tapping any key on the keyboard, the screen came back to life. And my download was not interrupted!

FWIW, I am unsure if this is a MacBook Air (2019) specific issue, a macOS Catalina specific issue, or some combo of the two or just something else. Posting specifics in case this helps someone in a similar situation.


iPad/iPhone AnyConnect VPN wrong MTU size I try to connect with a iPad (iOS 5.1) and the AnyConnect app to connect to a OpenVPN server on a Debian server. But this warning always appears in the OpenVPN log:

  WARNING: Bad encapsulated packet length from peer (5635), which must
  be > 0 and <= 1560 -- please ensure that --tun-mtu or --link-mtu is
  equal on both peers

On the server side the tun interface mtu size is 1500 bytes.
I can connect with other clients (pcs, macs, ...) to the server. But with a iPad or iPhone client this warning appears and no connection is established.

How can I fix this?

Br

Unfortunately, it isn't possible to set the MTU on iOS. There is no GUI for it, and without jailbreaking you can't access the ifconfig command line tool that would be used to configure this on OS X (I think ifconfig might not exist anyway even if you do jailbreak).

I have the same problem with a VPN I use occasionally. To use it with OS X I have to run sudo ifconfig ppp0 mtu 1270. From iOS there is no solution, however I've noticed VLC clients seem to work fine even with a broken MTU and am able to access the office network that way.

To fix this, you're going to have to configure your server somehow - that would be a good question for Serve Fault.


Macbook air mid-2011 visual glitch problem I face some problems with my macbook air mid 2011 (HD 3000), some weird visual glitch on the screen (see pictures).
Is there any solution or fix? Does anyone else have the same issue?
I own a Apple care(june 2014).
I have already contacted Apple, they done a Hardware test and the test revealed nothing so they do not believe me completely... And they don't know what to do (seriously) ...
Thank you in advance.
Best regards.
Sorry for my bad English: i am French =).

This appear only during the initialization of the rendering/test

Based on our discussion and some fact finding above:

I would say your hardware is fine /the Intel HD3000, but it could be on its way out!, means it could be dying the slow death.

You can double check and run a stress test for the GPU using this little program, or look for your OSX version.

GpuTest 0.6.1 is a bugfix release for Mac OS X only. The CSV file (for benchmark scores) was no longer generated at the end of a benchmark. This CSV file is stored in the root folder of the current user (_geeks3d_gputest_scores.csv).

However, I still think you have a software (programs) interference issue.
Remember the Intel GPU uses shared memory, so that could lead to a problem you are having.

Finding out which program is interfering could be tricky, but you had to just turn them completely off one at the time.

In your case I recommend:

Use an external monitor (or LCD Television) to:

1-see if it is a problem with the build in display

2a problem with the flat band cable to the build in display

3-actual problem with the GPU chip


Touch Bar Media Play/Pause button controls Safari, not iTunes I often want to pause my iTunes music when watching a video in Safari. Currently on some sites (but not all) the Pause button starts controlling the video in Safari in stead of iTunes.

How to permanently link the buttons to iTunes?

BeardedSpice, solved this for me. It was intended to allow the media keys to control services in Chrome, but it also can lock the media keys to iTunes.


User and System Appications Folder In Mavericks (OS X 10.9), the User's Application folder is a separate folder from the System Application folder. Is there a way to see these two folders as one, similar to how it works on Windows? Otherwise, having both in the Finder Sidebar looks confusing and clunky:

You can create a smart folder which shows the contents of both folders. Go to File → New Smart Folder and add both the directories as rules for the smart folder.


Is there a way to reset iCloud drive? My iCloud sync is totally broken. I have a set of files on web icloud drive app which are not downloading to my devices (iphone, macbook pro) and when I add files to iCloud folder on my devices they are not uploaded. Also my Apple Books are not syncing too. Probably other things are broken. Only thing that syncs is Photos. Can I somehow reset the iCloud drive entirely and start from scratch? Btw, I tried every possible proposed solution on the net for the sync problem to no avail.

There is not a specific feature of iCloud drive that says "Reset all settings." however paying attention to the warnings when you sign out or turn off iCloud drive will reveal the trick.

So what you need to do is (FIRST!) make sure anything on iCloud drive you have copies of somewhere. Then you will need to turn off iCloud drive on all devices you are signed into iCloud in.

On every device you turn off iCloud drive on you should get a warning about removing files (it's been a while so I don't recall the exact wording). Tell iCloud drive to delete the files.

Once you do that on all your devices iCloud drive should be empty. Personally I'd wait a day before turning it back on but, realistically, that is not likely to matter. Just turn it back on, add your files and watch them sync.

Now if it STILL fails, I would call Apple support and tell them what you have done, why and ask them to fix it for you.


High Sierra macOS Installation Error (com.apple.DiskManagement error 0) After downloading the new macOS for my MacBook pro (mid-2012) with HDD, the computer restarted but continues to fail during the installation. The error I keep getting is com.apple.DiskManagement error 0. I completed a disk repair but no errors popped up there, so I assume nothing is wrong with the drive. I tried to reinstall macOS from recovery mode, but I continue getting this same error. Does anybody know how to fix this problem?

yes, i had the same problem with a macbookpro8.2 early 2011. i finally installed it with a bootable usbstick. And i formated the ssd with the old os. here is a workaround from apple https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372


Spaces and some other fonts are changed to rectangles? I installed Microsoft Office 2011 yesterday on my MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard. I already had Microsoft Office 2008 on this device and simply added 2011. Now for some reason, many of my fonts have changed to rectangles as if I don't have the fonts installed. Also when I am in Mac Mail, the spaces are replaced with rectangles with "A" inside of them.

How can I fix this? Has anyone had a similar experience?

If you need more information from me, feel free to comment.

SOLVED:

I used the Terminal command:

sudo atsutil databases -remove; sudo atsutil server -shutdown; sudo atsutil server -ping

This cleared the cache and resolved the problem.

You could also use Lion Cache Cleaner or CleanMyMac to clear the cache and restore all the fonts.

NOTE: Make sure to open the "Font Book" application and make sure you resolve all duplicate fonts. Right-Click on the fonts with a small yellow attention sign beside it and click "Resolve Duplicate". This can also cause problems.

Gave credit to @da4 and @lri for there answer.

Try cleaning your font caches - the simplest way is to use a maintenance utility such as Lion Cache Cleaner.


How to setup MacBook Pro 13" Earlier 2011 Screen Resolution 1440 x 900 Like the title.
How can i setup macbook Pro 13" earlier screen resolution 1440 x 900?
I tried from system references, the max resolution is 1280 x 800.

I use OSX Mountain Lion.

You can't actually increase the resolution of your display, as the panel is LCD and only has 1280x800 physical pixels.

You can however install and run Apple's Xcode from the App Store to allow your Mac to display resolutions (among many other things) found on other Macs to simulate the higher resolutions.

The display will be very pixelated and blurry though, as it's going to squash the visual elements from a larger virtual display onto a smaller physical display.

It has it's uses if you're a developer as you can design screen elements for larger displays and zoom to your native resolution in to see how they look, but I wouldn't recommend it for actual day to day use.


How can I install Fritz 16 on a Mac running macOS Mojave? I'm new to Apple's ecosystem, and I have one doubt about how to install one software that I had in my old Windows computer.

The software is Fritz 16 (chess software), but it is not supported on macOS.

Is there any way to install it using Wine, or something similar?

There is a repository of the state of Wine support for a lot of applications on https://www.winehq.com. The entry for Fritz is here.

PS: Current state of support deliberately not included in the answer because it can change anytime.


Does someone know my (old) Apple ID password? Today, I suddenly got the following message on my iPod:

Question 1: Does this mean that someone has entered my Apple ID password, or are there other situations where this dialog is triggered? Update: According to an Apple Support representative, there may be other ways to activate this pop-up than entering the password. However, the representative didn't know of any such methods herself.

Question 2: Is there any way I can learn more about the iPad that was used during the login attempt? I have visited appleid.apple.com/account/manage, but can't see any information about "non authorized logon attempts" or similar. Does anyone know if Apple keeps a record, even if it's unavailable through their customer-facing services? If yes, is there a way to get this record? Update: The Apple Support representative did not have any more information available through her systems. I asked if more information would have been available if this had been a criminal investigation. She responded that she didn't know, since such requests didn't go through her department.

If anyone wonders: As far as I can tell no harm was done. Obviously, I declined the request and immediately changed my password. But only my fiancee & I should have known the old password in the first place, so I found this a bit unnerving. The old password was unique to the Apple account and quite complex (more than 12 characters, no normal words, upper- and lowercase plus numbers). I really can't understand how anyone else can know the password unless they have installed a keylogger on my Mac or similarly advanced.

Update 2: Today, my iPhone suddenly displayed a popup saying "Use this iPhone to reset your Apple ID password [Allow]/[Don't allow]". (I regrettably forgot to take a screen shot.) Is this an indication of a sustained attack?

Q1: Yes, it looks like someone entered your Apple ID and password.  I don't think there's any other situation where this type of dialog would be triggered.

Q2: You did the right thing in immediately changing your password.  There's nothing you can do to get more info on who is using your ID, you did everything I would've suggested.  My only remaining advice would be to contact Apple, chat would probably be easiest, and let them know what happened.  It's also good to see that there was no malicious activity on your account, however, you probably want to watch it for purchases every few days.

You mentioned the potential for malware or a key logger, that's quite possible.  Make sure you're checking your machines regularly for malware (I use Malwarebytes), especially if anyone is logging into your Apple account on a Windows machine.


How do I see full movie titles in iPad Video browser? On my iPad, long video titles are cut off even though there is lots of blank space everywhere. Even when I tap a video, the detail screen cuts off the title in the exact same location despite there still being lots of blank space everywhere.

Full movie titles are a lot more useful than blank space... Can I somehow see them at all when I'm away from my PC?

Tap and hold, you will get a popover until you let go with the full details.  Same works with music in the ipod app.


Change security login background I know how to alter the background for the login window that you see when booting, but I would like to know how to change the background of the plain black login screen that appears after waking a mac from sleep (when the 'require password when waking from sleep' security option is selected).

I would like to use one of the background images that come included with Mac osx or even change that black login screen to replicate the login screen shown when booting.

I hope I have made the difference between the two login windows I am talking about clear enough. I am just sick of that plain black login screen I have to see whenever I wake my mac.

(Using Snow Leopard)

Cheers.

I don't think there's any way to change the background in Snow Leopard. You should be able to do it in Lion...


Why does my iPhone flash when I receive a message? After the recent iOS upgrade, my iPhone flashes every time I receive a text message, and I can't find a way to turn it off. I checked the setting but there are no options where I can disable it from flashing. It is very annoying.

This is a feature introduced with the iOS 5 update.

  Accessibility improvements:

  Option to light LED flash on incoming calls and alerts for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4
  Custom vibration patterns for incoming calls on iPhone
  New interface for using iOS with mobility-impairment input devices
  Option to speak a selection of text
  Custom element labeling for VoiceOver

You can change the setting in Settings -> General -> Accessibility options:


Can Watch Series 6 be used as a BLE peripheral? Is with Series 6 finally possible to use Watch as a Bluetooth LE peripheral?
Edit: clarification: this is about being able to make the Watch available as peripheral programmatically, in apps / with Core Bluetooth.

No, that's not possible. Any change wouldn't have come with the Watch Series 6 as such, but a change in watchOS 7 - but such a change has not been made.


Why are Script Editor .scpt files not saved as plain text files? The Script Editor (formerly AppleScript Editor pre-Yosemite 10.10) saves .scpt files as binary files, not plain text files.

It makes working with them in source code control systems somewhat cumbersome.

Does anyone know why this is the case? Is there some long-standing history that necessitated this file format be something other than plain text files?

William R. Cook's paper contains an excellent history and insight from those involved with AppleScript in 1989.

What follows is fun and speculative.

Conservation of Space and Processing

AppleScript was written at a time when every byte and bit was valuable. OS X's lazy encoding as property list formats would be wasteful in the eyes' of those early developers.

The binary format provided a pre-parsed form that avoided duplicating the complex, error prone, and time consuming parsing process with each load from disk. Better to load directly into memory and run.

Adaptive

Saving in a binary format allowed AppleScripts to be tied to the underlying AppleEvent codes rather that their dictionary of long form terminology.

This would allow an AppleScript written and saved against one version of an application to automatically update to terminology changes between versions of the targeted applications.

An integer object might be called 'integer' in the script but saved as the four character code 'int ' in the binary representation. The four character code coming from the AppleScript dictionary provided by the operating system.

If a future AppleScript terminology decided to alter the user facing word for integer, the binary representation could map to the newer name.

A flip side to this is possible to see today. Write an AppleScript against an application's dictionary. Then remove the application entirely from your Mac. What do you see in Script Editor upon opening the script?

At least in recent versions, AppleScript Editor showed chevrons surrounding the four character code. The code has been remembered and highlighted. Not the user facing terminology.

This is probably not the primary benefit but a possible benefit.

Modern Bias

It is worth acknowledging our modern bias for text documents. Experience has taught many of us that storing valuable content in a binary format carries risk. Binary formats are often poorly documented, opaque to the end user, and difficult to open when the owning software is not maintained.

When AppleScript and it's binary format were created, this bias was not yet formed. Storage and computational limits were very real and every kilobyte or thousands of cycles saved were worthwhile.

History and Origins

The stories of AppleScript's origin are wonderful but difficult to track down these days. AppleScript tried to be a friendly, English language like, language and was breath taking in its vision; the actual implementation was harder to get right!

AppleScript by William R. Cook
AppleScript - a story worth telling


Time Machine turns of automatically with sleep Whenever my MacBook (with OS X 10.9.5) wakes from sleep i.e. when I open the lid I notice that "automatic backups" is turned off. I switch it on again but that setting just won't stick...

Why could that be?

By pure coincidence I found out that my OpenVPN client Viscosity has a config option

  Disable Time Machine backups while connected

which was on. Since one of my VPN connections was set to auto-connect it connected automatically when I opened the MacBook which in turned disabled Time Machine.


When moving a file to another volume, where does the original go? Today I moved (CMD-Drag) a folder from my laptop to my desktop across my LAN.  The resulting file (an Ableton Live project file) opened on the desktop but is missing things that were present when it was on my laptop.

I can't figure out how this could have happened, and it got me thinking... where does the "original" actually go when you move as opposed to copy something?  It doesn't just go in the trash so, is it just flagged for overwriting and made invisible?  Wondering if I can somehow get the original back.  I checked my Time Machine backups and somehow the folder in question is not there either (or actually, it's there but also missing things once restored).

The file is deleted on the spot. Which means technically it's still on the disk as a deleted file until the system overrides it. But with a running operating system, it's very unlikely you'd be able to get it back with a data recovery tool. Data Rescue does deleted file recovery, but the data you seek is most likely already overwritten.

It's also clear that the "missing" data was lost long before you moved it. Time Machine is your solution here. Keep going back until you can find a copy that is not missing the data.


Restoring lost icons I recently installed Yosemite on my MacBook Air. I note that my Reading List items no longer display the icon/logo from the web pages. They were very handy for quickly locating the item I was looking for without having to read through all the text. Is there a way to restore them?

Lets try following to restore your old reading list:

Quit Safari. In the Finder, hold down the option key and select

  Go > Library

from the menu bar.

The reading list is stored in the file Safari/Bookmarks.plist in the Library folder.

You have two choices:

Restore the file from a backup that predates the issue; or

Move the file to the Desktop, relaunch Safari, and import from the old bookmarks file (File > Import Bookmarks...).


How do I use MS Exchange 2003 with OS X? My company still relies on the antiquated Exchange 2003. Besides using Windows in a virtual machine, has anyone found any type of workaround to enable Exchange 2003 access with OS X apps (Calendar/Address Book/Mail)?

A little amplification of what "apps" you are specifically referring to would be helpful. Assuming your company is using Exchange 2003 SP2, you should be able to use Active Sync with Microsoft Outlook for Mac or Entourage. This should allow you to sync your contacts, email and calendar events. Beyond that an app would need to suport active sync to interact with an Exchange 2003 server natively.


Photos always listed as most recent I have a few photos from one photo “shoot” that are always listed as most recent in the iPhone Photos app even though they were taken months ago.  Why do they not sort by date as with other photos?

I use an app extension called ViewExif to look at the metadata.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/viewexif/id945320815

If you have a date problem, those photos could be dated September 2021 and will be the newest until that date passes. That seems to be the easiest explanation. If not, then you’ll need to review the database - fix options with Apple or reset your library that stores the ordering of photos.
I would start with checking that the dates aren’t just not what you expect. It’s often a lot easier to change dates - look at this on the Mac Photos app if you can sync via iCloud or perhaps enable iCloud and use the web page to check as well.


Why does loginwindow keep freezing in Mojave? This is a follow-up to my previous question: Function keys stop working after a while in Mojave

The issue I had is that loginwindow kept freezing. In this Gist, the issue is explained in detail. The explanation can be found below.

macOS Mojave build >18A326g has a nasty issue.

Basically, loginwindow likes threads. It's so passionate about threads that
it will continue to collect threads endlessly. Now, the problem with such a
process collecting so many threads is that, as the owner of all processes
running under your account, if the process crashes, say goodbye to most of
macOS.

Well, this is exactly what happens. loginwindow freezes at 4096 threads and
causes most of macOS to become unstable or unusable. For example, most of the
menu items under the apple menu become useless, such as About This Mac or the
Sleep/Restart/Shut Down options. Some of the function/media keys stop working
as well, such as the brightness, keyboard backlight, and volume keys.

I also believe the log out option gets disabled too, but I haven't tested it.
However, if this is indeed the case, this means the only way to log out
reliably is using this script with the --kill option, which finds and kills
loginwindow for you.

loginwindow does indeed collect 4096 threads and then freeze. Every time. In fact, I built a notifier using JXA to warn me when corruption (threads / 4096) reaches over 90%.

That's beside the point, however. As far as I can tell, nobody else has the issue (either that or they never figured out why).

I've reported this issue to Apple 4 betas ago, but the issue's still here.

How do I figure out what's causing this issue? How do I prevent it?

I've noticed the exact same hanging loginwindow issue since upgrading to Mojave 10.14.5. As @Dev and some of the other responses pointed out, there are some common applications which seem to contribute to this. Little Snitch is the culprit in my case and have found the following solutions work best as a workaround. My system is also configured for automatic login.

The immediate solution to fix the  hanging loginwindow is to ssh into the host which hangs and run this simple script (or one-liner) to stop loginwindow and then start it again using launchctl.

#!/bin/sh
sudo launchctl stop com.apple.loginwindow
sleep 2
sudo launchctl start com.apple.loginwindow

OR

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.loginwindow && sleep 2 && sudo launchctl start com.apple.loginwindow

The long-term workaround solution until Objective Development and/or Apple addresses this problematic behavior in their code is to instrument a launch daemon which executes a modified version of the above script at startup.

Create script in /usr/local/bin named fixHang.sh

sudo touch /usr/local/bin/fixHang.sh

Edit the script and paste in the content below.

sudo nano /usr/local/bin/fixHang.sh

#!/bin/sh
logFile="/Users/Michael/loginwindowdaemonscript.txt"
echo "------------BOOT BEGIN $(date)----------"
ustart=$(date -j -f "%a %b %d %T %Z %Y" "date" "+%s")
timestamp=$(date)
loginPIDChar=$(ps -ef | grep -v "grep" | grep "/usr/libexec/UserEventAgent (Aqua)" | awk $'{print $2}' | wc | awk $'{print $1}')
loginPID=$(ps -ef | grep -v "grep" | grep "/usr/libexec/UserEventAgent (Aqua)" | awk $'{print $2}')
echo "$(date) - START" >> "$logFile"
echo "$(date) - loginwindow PID: $loginPIDWindow" >> "$logFile"
echo "$(date) - UserEventAgentAqua PID: $loginPID" >> "$logFile"
while [ "$loginPIDChar" == "0" ];
do
        echo "$(date) - BEGIN LOOP" >> "$logFile"
        sleep 2
        echo "BEGIN CHECK" >> "$logFile"
        loginPIDChar=$(ps -ef | grep -v "grep" | grep "/usr/libexec/UserEventAgent (Aqua)" | awk $'{print $2}' | wc | awk $'{print $1}')
        loginWindowPID=$(pgrep loginwindow)
        echo "$loginWindowPID" >> "$logFile"
        echo "loginPIDChar = $loginPIDChar" >> "$logFile"
        if [ "$loginPIDChar" != 0 ];
        then
                timestamp=$(date)
                loginWindowPID=$(pgrep loginwindow)
                echo "$timestamp - KILL PROCESS # $loginWindowPID" >> "$logFile"
                sudo kill -9 "$loginWindowPID"
                sleep 5
                echo "$timestamp - BREAK LOOP" >> "$logFile"
                break
        else
                timestamp=$(date)
                loginWindowPID=$(pgrep loginwindow)
                echo "$timestamp - PROCESS NUMBER: $loginWindowPID" >> "$logFile"
        fi
        sleep 2
        echo "$(date) - END LOOP" >> "$logFile"
done
sleep 5
newloginWindowPID=$(pgrep loginwindow)
uend=$(date -j -f "%a %b %d %T %Z %Y" "date" "+%s")
echo "$(date) - fixDuration: $((uend - ustart)) seconds" >> "$logFile"
echo "$(date) - oldLoginWindowPID #: $loginWindowPID" >> "$logFile"
echo "$(date) - newLoginWindowPID #: $newloginWindowPID" >> "$logFile"
echo "------------BOOT COMPLETE $(date)----------" >> "$logFile"

Save out the file (Ctrl+O + [ENTER]) and exit nano (Ctrl+X + [ENTER])

Make script executable and change ownership to root:wheel

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/fixHang.sh
sudo chown root:wheel /usr/local/bin/fixHang.sh

Create a launch daemon in /Library/LaunchDaemons which when loaded will execute the fixHang.sh script on startup

sudo touch /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.startup.fixhang.plist
sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.startup.fixhang.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>Label</key>
    <string>com.startup.fixhang</string>
    <key>LaunchOnlyOnce</key>
    <true/>
    <key>LimitLoadToSessionType</key>
    <array>
        <string>Aqua</string>
    </array>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>sh</string>
        <string>-c</string>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/fixHang.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Save out the file (Ctrl+O + ENTER) and exit nano (Ctrl+X + ENTER)

Change ownership of /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.startup.fixhang.plist to root:wheel

sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.startup.fixhang.plist

Load the launch daemon for execution at startup

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.startup.fixhang.plist


Notifications from Reminders Wake Screen in Catalina I have an issue in Catalina that I'm not sure how to solve. Whenever a notification from Reminders comes through on my Mac, it wakes the computer from sleep, which in turn wakes up the external display I have it connected to. Do Not Disturb is turned on while the display is sleeping and the screen is locked, and has been this way for as long as Do Not Disturb has been a feature of macOS. This issue, however, started occurring with the very first beta of Catalina, and persisted through the public release and now even the current beta. It never happened prior to Catalina. I have recurring reminders at 7:00 AM every day for when I wake up, and it lights up my external display every morning. What's worse, if I have my Apple Watch on and a reminder notification comes through on the Mac, when the screen wakes up it also unlocks. I'm at a loss, unless this is just a Catalina bug that will have to be fixed eventually.

It looks like Apple no longer thinks of Reminders as just notifications.
No matter what pmset settings I have tried, pmset -g log shows entries like this
2020-07-27 14:39:12 -0700 Sleep                 Entering Sleep state due to 'Software Sleep pid=533':TCPKeepAlive=active Using AC (Charge:100%)
2020-07-27 14:39:17 -0700 Wake Requests         [process=mDNSResponder request=Maintenance deltaSecs=7200 wakeAt=2020-07-27 16:39:17] [*process=powerd request=UserWake deltaSecs=43 wakeAt=2020-07-27 14:40:00 info="com.apple.alarm.user-visible-com.apple.remindd.time-alarm,484"]

That tells me that when the computer goes to sleep, the Reminder daemon is setting a wakeup request for the next time a reminder goes off. This is true even with "Wake for network access" and "Power Nap" turned off in Energy Saver. It also tells me that turning off "Power Nap" does not, in fact, keep the computer from waking up during sleep. (Turns out that maintenance wake is for Find My Mac, but that is another story.)
It appears there is no nice way to fix this.
Disabling Reminders does not work

Setting Do Not Disturb in notifications, or turning off Reminder Notifications entirely does not prevent the system from waking when the next reminder is scheduled.
Even if you remove all the reminders from the system by disconnecting Reminders from iCloud  (and having no local reminders), that does not remove the existing scheduled wakeup.

Even manually deleting the scheduled wakeup with sudo pmset schedule cancelall does not keep the wakeup from being scheduled when the computer goes to sleep.

The only thing I found that worked was to disconnect Reminders from iCloud and then reboot the computer. Of course, this means that reminders do not show up on the computer ever at all.
This does not work either
I thought I could fix this by editing platform default setting plist, as explained below. However, the plist is a signed part of the PlugIn, and of course editing caused the signature not to match, so it did not load. I am leaving this here in case someone wants to build on this to find a different way to override the setting.
Edit the platform setting plist

Get your system's board-id by running ioreg -l | grep board-id, which should output something like

    |   "board-id" = <"Mac-0CFF9C7C2B63DF8D">

Verify your boot drive contains the IOPlatformPluginFamily file for your board-id:

/System/Library/Extensions/IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/X86PlatformPlugin.kext/Contents/Resource/Mac-0CFF9C7C2B63DF8D.plist

(replace Mac-0CFF9C7C2B63DF8D with the board ID output by the previous command) and save a copy of it somewhere safe, so you can restore it if something goes wrong.

Make a copy of the copy so you can edit it. Make sure the copy is on your boot drive.
Edit the file. You can use PlistBuddy if you have it and can find it, or vi, or maybe you want to edit a copy of the file before you get into Recovery mode and have it handy. With a text editor:

Find the lines

      <key>NotificationWake</key>
      <true/>

Change the second line to

      <key>NotificationWake</key>
      <false/>

or with PlistBuddy

PlistBuddy <board-id>.plist
Command: print  :IOPlatformPowerProfile:NotificationWake
true
Command: set  :IOPlatformPowerProfile:NotificationWake false
Command: print  :IOPlatformPowerProfile:NotificationWake
false
Command: save

Either by booting into recovery mode and mounting your boot drive (recommended if you know how to do it and are comfortable with Terminal) or by turning off SIP (not recommended, learn to do it the other way), get to a state where you can edit system files.
Go to the /System/Library/Extensions/IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/X86PlatformPlugin.kext/Contents/Resource directory, keeping in mind that if you are in Recovery mode, that directory will be under /Volumes/<something>.
Copy your edited version of the <boot-id>.plist file to this directory, overwriting the existing version. The file name must match the original. Again, keep in mind that in Recovery mode, your copy will be under /Volumes/<something>
Reboot.

Be prepared for this to be reset the next time you update the OS.


Mail signature changes font size when sent to Gmail I have created a signature in Mac mail. However, every time I send an email to a gmail account it enlarges the font size. Has anybody else come across this? Is there a workaround?

Here are the steps to make this work, even tried them on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion GM / Mail.app 5.0

Open Mail.app
Create a signature
Close Mail.app
Open Terminal and in Leopard/Snow Leopard go to ~/Library/Mail.app/Signatures, in Lion it's in ~/Library/Mail.app/V2/MailData/Signatures/
You'll find there a file with random digits such as: 4E725456-58C1-4FD7-8490-3048F994CC33.webarchive
Open that file in Safari, use View Source or Inspect to get the HTML content
Create a new file using your preferred editor, I used nano, and paste the html
Look for 'font-size = medium' and change it to the size you want, i changed it to 12px to match my Tahoma 12px mail font
(Optional) if you want to embed an image, call it using <img> to a remote, public location and remove all <object> </object>
Save the file as .html
Open that .html file in safari and save as .webarchive
cp the .webarchive you created to the location of the original .webarchive file while keeping the correct name (replace it)
Open Mail.app and check that the signature is the way you want it...


Need a dock/cable that can charge through AC while connected to USB [I'm an iPhone newbie, I hope the question isn't too stupid]

I want to be able to put my iPhone 4 in a dock and have it connected to my computer for syncing, but I want it to charge from an AC adapter so that it will continue charging when I turn my computer off at night.

Does anyone know of a dock with an AC power input that's separate from the USB connection, or a spliced cable that inserts 5V power from an AC adapter instead of from the computer's USB port?

Looking around online it seems that most docks and cables allow you to either charge from AC, or charge and sync from the USB while the computer is on, but I want to be able to turn the computer off and still charge without switching cables.  I could probably hack two USB cables together, but I'd rather buy a product that's designed for this.

I have an old Belkin TuneSync Charging dock, which also is a 5-port powered USB hub, that does the trick. The specs don't say that it works with iPhones, but mine worked just fine with both my iPhone 3G and now with my iPhone 4. I think the spec was just written before iPhones were available, as the unit was introduced back in 2005.

Belkin doesn't seem to still be making them, but they are still readily available. I just found it via Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-TuneSync-Charging-Dock-White/dp/B000BMVIQ2


iTunes wants to download an update before it restores my iPad. Way around this? I would let iTunes download the iOS 9.3.4 update, but it's already been downloaded & installed. And when iTunes tries to download the update again, it can't. It tries for several minutes, then stops the entire process--and I don't get my Restore.

I've deleted .plist files associated with iTunes and it hasn't helped. Is there any way to restore my iPad without launching this futile attempt at a download?

iMac mid-2010 running El Capitan 10.11.5, iTunes 12.4.3.1

Thanks

Figured this out. Logged out of iTunes store, logged back in with second account. It demanded to download the update once, I assented, it failed, and it finally abandoned the idea. iPad restored.


iCloud storage backup If I delete a backup will it delete all of the photos and videos in that backup?

I have photos and videos in iCloud that I want to keep but I don’t have enough available space to backup again.

By deleting the backup, will it delete all those photos and videos I want to keep?

I'm not exactly sure about your specific scenario yet, so here's some information about a few possibilities:

If your photos are stored in iCloud Photo Library, then they're not also stored in your iCloud backup.
If your photos are just in your camera roll and you don't use iCloud Photo Library, the photos/videos would be contained in the iCloud backup (also true for an iTunes backup). In this case I'm not sure that deleting your iCloud backup will help, since the new backup would just want to back up all of the photos again :)
If you use iCloud Photo Library, deleting the photos will delete them permanently and from all devices, so doing something like this is likely not what you want to do!
If the photos aren't on your device now, and they're only in that backup, then you definitely don't want to delete that backup. (I don't think that's the case here, but I want to make sure I say it!)

Be sure to tread carefully before deleting things and make sure you know whether you use iCloud photo library before figuring out what to do! (Also I should note that iCloud Photo Library is different than Photo Stream and photo stream is NOT a permanent backup and shouldn't be used as a backup.)


Installing Ubuntu without DVD or Flash Drive I'm trying to give new life to my old white late-2006 MacBook by installing a new OS (dual boot), but I am having problems as my DVD/CD drive is broken and I just can't get my Mac to boot from my flash drive. The Mac has 64 bit processors, but the EFI is 32 bit.

I previously tried (and succeeded) installing Windows 10 with the help of VirtualBox following this incredible guide, but finally decided to drop that solution as I couldn't get the sound to work (everything else worked like a charm though). So, I would instead like to give 64 bit Ubuntu a try.

Could a similar approach, using VirtualBox as in the guide above, be used to install Ubuntu without USB or DVD, or would access to the physical disk via VirtualBox be a limitation?

I'm currently running OSX 10.7 Lion and VirtualBox 4.3.40.

My objective is to post a procedure that would allow you to boot a Ubuntu Desktop Live. Once you have booted, you could then install the regular Ubuntu Desktop. The only way I can figure out how to boot Ubuntu Desktop Live is by using GRUB. The problem is I can not determine a way to install GRUB without first installing some version of Linux. In this case, I choose to install Ubuntu Server inside a VirtualBox machine. This machine was configured to use a subset of the Mac's physical HD partitions. Once GRUB was installing in these partitions, Ubuntu Desktop Live could boot without using VirtualBox.
Install Ubuntu Server

To start I will assume your current hard disk is configured as shown below.
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        +80.5 GB    disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            79.7 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot                         650.0 MB   disk0s3

The command below will create approximately 40 GB of free space at the end of your internal disk. This command will automatically relocate the disk0s3 partition.
diskutil resizevolume disk0s2 40g

The results can be summarized by the output from the diskutil list command, shown below.
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        +80.5 GB    disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            40.0 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery                650.0 MB   disk0s3

Before using VirtualBox, all new linux related partitions have to be created. I choose the third party tool gdisk to create the partitions. Below is a list of the partitions that need to be created.

1.9 GB partition to hold the contents of the Ubuntu Desktop Live iso. This will allow you to replace Ubuntu Server with Ubuntu Desktop.
1 MiB Bios Boot Partition to hold GRUB boot code.
4 GiB Linux Swap Partition. This was chosen to be the same size as your RAM.
The remaining space to be allocated for Ubuntu files.

The output from using the gdisk /dev/disk0 command to edit the GPT is given below.
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/disk0: 157286400 sectors, 75.0 GiB
Sector size (logical): 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): A7A204BD-463D-4EE5-9A78-8E9804D1539F
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 157286366
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 77482197 sectors (36.9 GiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
   2          409640        78534639   37.3 GiB    AF00  Macintosh HD
   3        78534640        79804175   619.9 MiB   AB00  Recovery HD

Command (? for help): n
Partition number (4-128, default 4):
First sector (34-157286366, default = 79804176) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Last sector (79804176-157286366, default = 157286366) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: +1900M
Current type is 'Apple HFS/HFS+'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = AF00): 8300
Changed type of partition to 'Linux filesystem'

Command (? for help): n
Partition number (5-128, default 5):
First sector (34-157286366, default = 83695376) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Last sector (83695376-157286366, default = 157286366) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: +1M
Current type is 'Apple HFS/HFS+'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = AF00): ef02
Changed type of partition to 'BIOS boot partition'

Command (? for help): n
Partition number (6-128, default 6):
First sector (34-157286366, default = 83697424) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Last sector (83697424-157286366, default = 157286366) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: +4G
Current type is 'Apple HFS/HFS+'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = AF00): 8200
Changed type of partition to 'Linux swap'

Command (? for help): n
Partition number (7-128, default 7):
First sector (34-157286366, default = 92086032) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Last sector (92086032-157286366, default = 157286366) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Current type is 'Apple HFS/HFS+'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = AF00): 8300
Changed type of partition to 'Linux filesystem'

Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/disk0: 157286400 sectors, 75.0 GiB
Sector size (logical): 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): A7A204BD-463D-4EE5-9A78-8E9804D1539F
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 157286366
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 6 sectors (3.0 KiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
   2          409640        78534639   37.3 GiB    AF00  Macintosh HD
   3        78534640        79804175   619.9 MiB   AB00  Recovery HD
   4        79804176        83695375   1.9 GiB     8300  Linux filesystem
   5        83695376        83697423   1024.0 KiB  EF02  BIOS boot partition
   6        83697424        92086031   4.0 GiB     8200  Linux swap
   7        92086032       157286366   31.1 GiB    8300  Linux filesystem

Command (? for help): w

Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!

Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/disk0.
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Warning: The kernel may continue to use old or deleted partitions.
You should reboot or remove the drive.
The operation has completed successfully.

Note:  It would be a good idea to restart the Mac.

The output from the command diskutil list is shown below. This includes the new partitions created by using gdisk.
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        +80.5 GB    disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            40.0 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery                650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:           Linux Filesystem                         2.0 GB     disk0s4
   5:        Bios Boot Partition                         1.0 MB     disk0s5
   6:                 Linux Swap                         4.3 GB     disk0s6
   7:           Linux Filesystem                         33.4 GB    disk0s7

Create folder named "VirtualBox" in your Documents folder.

Note: At this point, one should realize it would be easier to copy the commands from this document and paste them into the Terminal application window.

This step will create the files needed by VirtualBox to access the
physical partition where you will install Ubuntu. In a Terminal
application window, enter the following commands.
cd  ~/documents/virtualbox
sudo  chmod  go+rw  /dev/disk0s4
sudo  chmod  go+rw  /dev/disk0s5
sudo  chmod  go+rw  /dev/disk0s6
sudo  chmod  go+rw  /dev/disk0s7
sudo  vboxmanage  internalcommands  createrawvmdk  -filename  "$PWD/linux.vmdk"  -rawdisk  /dev/disk0  -partitions  4,5,6,7
sudo  chown  $USER  linux*.vmdk

Note: This access granted by the chmod command will only last
until OS X is rebooted.

The result should be the creation of the files linux.vmdk and
linux-pt.vmdk in your "VirtualBox" folder. Later, you will
select the file linux.vmdk to give a virtual machine access to
the physical partitions.

Configure the virtual machine. Open the VirtualBox application and
click on icon above the New label. Enter or select the values shown
below, then click the "Continue" button.

Use the default settings except for the hard drive. Choose the "Use an existing virtual hard drive file" button. Navigate to your "VirtualBox" folder. Highlight the linux.vmdk file. Open the linux.vmdk file. Your window should appear similar to what is shown below.

Click the "Create" button.
After returning to the VirtualBox application's "Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager" window, click on the icon above the "Settings" label. Next, click on the icon above the "Storage" label. Highlight "Controller: SATA" in "Storage Devices", then select the "Use Host I/O Cache" option. Your window should appear similar to what is shown below.

Highlight the Empty CD/DVD and select "Choose Virtual Optical Disk
File..." to attach the "ubuntu-16.04.3-server-amd64.iso" file. (Hint: Look for the
CD/DVD icons)

Click OK to close the window. Your "Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager"
window should appear similar to what is shown below.

Click on the icon above the "Start" label to boot from the "ubuntu-16.04.3-server-amd64.iso" file. You can proceed with the installation by choosing the default values until you reach the image shown below. Here, you should choose "Manual".

Select #6, as shown below.

Select "Use as:", as shown below.

Select "swap area", as shown below.

Select "Done setting up the partition", as show below.

Select #7, as shown below.

Select "Use as:", as shown below.

Select "Ext4 journaling file system", as shown below.

Select "Mount point:", as shown below.

Select "/ - the root file system", as shown below.

Select "Done setting up the partition", as show below.

Select "Finish partitioning and write changes to disk", as shown below.

Select "Yes", as shown below.

When prompted to "Install the GRUB boot loader to the master boot record?", select "Yes", as shown below.

The install should proceed to completion.

Use Ubuntu Server to Setup Ubuntu Desktop Live

Using VirtualBox, boot to Ubuntu Server.

After logging in, enter the command below. This will give you root user privileges.
sudo  bash

Copy the MBR to an unused sector in the BIOS boot partition.
dd  if=/dev/sda  count=1  seek=1800  of=/dev/sda5

Insert ubuntu-16.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso into the virtual DVD drive.

Enter the commands given below to copy the files from the iso to the hard disk.

Note: The rsync command may take a while to complete.

mkfs.ext4  /dev/sda4
mkdir  live
mount  /dev/sda4  live
mkdir  dvd
mount  /dev/sr0 dvd
rsync  -a  dvd/*  live
eject
rmdir  dvd
umount  live
rmdir  live

Configure GRUB. Start by entering the following commands to edit the 40_custom file.
cd  /etc/grub.d
nano  40_custom

Add the following lines to the end of the 40_custom file. This will create Ubuntu Desktop Live and Installation entries in the GRUB menu.
menuentry "Ubuntu Desktop 16.04.3 Live" {
        set root=(hd0,4)
        linux /casper/vmlinuz.efi boot=casper ignore_uuid
        initrd /casper/initrd.lz
}
menuentry "Install Ubuntu Desktop 16.04.3" {
        set root=(hd0,4)
        linux /casper/vmlinuz.efi boot=casper only-ubiquity ignore_uuid
        initrd /casper/initrd.lz
}

After saving your changes to the 40_custom file, enter the following commands to edit the grub file.
cd  /etc/default
nano  grub

Find the following line in the grub file.
GRUB_DEFAULT=0

Change the line to appear as shown below.
GRUB_DEFAULT=3

Find the following line in the grub file.
GRUB_TIMEOUT=2

Change the line to appear as shown below.
GRUB_TIMEOUT=-1

After saving your changes to the grub file, use the following commands to update grub and return to your home directory.
update-grub
cd  ~

Exit being the root user and shutdown the virtual machine.
exit
shutdown  now

Use OS X to Setup Ubuntu Desktop Live

Copy the MBR GRUB boot code from the BIOS boot partition to the MBR.
cd  ~
sudo  dd  if=/dev/disk0s5  count=1  skip=1800  of=mbr.binary
sudo  fdisk  -u  -y  -f  mbr.binary  /dev/disk0
sudo  rm  mbr.binary

Convert to a Hybrid MBR/GPT scheme. The only reason for this step is to get around a bug in the Mac logic board BIOS firmware. Basically, the BIOS will not load the MBR into RAM unless there is an active partition in the MBR table. This conversion can be easily accomplished through the use of the interactive command shown below.
sudo  gdisk  /dev/disk0

The output from using this command is shown below.
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): r

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): h

WARNING! Hybrid MBRs are flaky and dangerous! If you decide not to use one,
just hit the Enter key at the below prompt and your MBR partition table will
be untouched.

Type from one to three GPT partition numbers, separated by spaces, to be
added to the hybrid MBR, in sequence: 2 3 4
Place EFI GPT (0xEE) partition first in MBR (good for GRUB)? (Y/N): y

Creating entry for GPT partition #2 (MBR partition #2)
Enter an MBR hex code (default AF): af
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): n

Creating entry for GPT partition #3 (MBR partition #3)
Enter an MBR hex code (default AB): ab
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): n

Creating entry for GPT partition #4 (MBR partition #4)
Enter an MBR hex code (default 83): 83
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): y

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): w

Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!

Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/disk0.
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Warning: The kernel may continue to use old or deleted partitions.
You should reboot or remove the drive.
The operation has completed successfully.

Note: As the above message states, It would be a good idea to restart your Mac.

Use the bless command to set your Mac to BIOS boot.
sudo  bless  --device  /dev/disk0  --setBoot  --legacy

Replace Ubuntu Server with Ubuntu Desktop

After properly blessing your Mac, restart to boot GRUB. You should get an image similar to what is shown below. Select "Install Ubuntu Desktop 16.04.3".

Install until the message shown below appears. Shortly, after this message is displayed, the window will be populated by partition information. This information will obscure this message.

The window, with the partition information, will appear similar to what is shown below.

This message is wrong. The message clearly says "You will not be able to create, delete or resize partition on this disk." Well, this is exactly what we will be doing.

Delete the last 3 partitions. Select a partition, then select the - character. Repeat for the two remaining partitions. The result should appear similar to what is shown below.

Add back the desired partitions, I choose the same as was deleted. You may want something different. Perhaps a LVM?
Select the free space as shown below, then select the + character.

Set the popup window as shown below, then select "OK".

Select the free space as shown below, then select the + character.

Set the popup window as shown below, then select "OK".

Select the free space as shown below, then select the + character.

Set the "Mount point" in the popup window, as shown below, then select "OK".

Note: Do not change the "Size:" value. Your value may be different from what is shown below.

The final results are shown below. To proceed with the installation, select "Install Now".

Select "Continue". Let the installation proceed to conclusion.

Where to Next?
To boot back to OS X, you need to hold down the option key at startup.
You will probably want to use rEFInd as your boot manager.
I made the swap space 4 GiB, because I read this is the amount of RAM installed. Upon review, I see only 3 GiB is usable. A little extra swap space probably is nothing to be concerned over. If you wish, you could make adjustments to my posted installation procedures.
References
There is no reason for readers to look up any of these references. They appear here for my use.
GNU GRUB Manual 2.02
Creating a BIOS/GPT and UEFI/GPT Grub-bootable Linux system
How do I set the grub timeout and the grub default boot entry?
Installation/FromLinux
Can I boot a Live USB fully to RAM, allowing me to remove the disk?
How to bypass “Try it / Install” screen when booting from USB Live Session? (without installing in the USB)


Hide files/icons on the desktop but not in finder Not sure if something like this exists in OSX. I would like to display a cheatsheet on my desktop as a wallpaper and to make it visible at all times I would like to hide all the icons/files/folders scattered on my desktop as I'm accessing them only from within the Finder anyway. So my question is if it is possible to hide everything on the desktop and show the wallpaper only but use the Desktop folder as normal and see all the files and folders when in Finder view?
Using OSX Mountain Lion.

In the terminal, do this:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false && killall Finder

After this, there'll be nothing on your Desktop (but still in ~/Desktop, i.e. your Desktop Folder). It'll look like this:

Beautiful, isn't it? If you want to change it back:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true && killall Finder


Blocking Internet access for a particular user On a MacBook that connects to the Internet via wi-fi, how can I prevent one user account from accessing the Internet (with no effect on other accounts)?

Note: i want to block ALL access, not just Safari.

Have you tried using the Parental Controls preference pane? A lot of options there, none specifically to block all internet access, but you can get to the same place by only allowing access to applications without it.

From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
From the View menu, choose Parental Controls.

More info on the Apple web site: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2900?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US


Find and Change system shortcut As I know you can find a limit of shortcut in system preference > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcut
where you can find other shortcut and how must change it? for example if I change the cmd + O to enter where can I go? is there any software that can do it for me or I must do it in terminal (How?).

P.S: I read some where that list of shortcuts for each apps save in Localized.rsrc but I have 2 problem?

I check and in snow leopard I don't have this file.
How can find general shortcut related to which apps? like capture image or copy & pase or ...

The shortcuts for each application can be easily changed in the very preference menu you mentioned.

Which shortcuts can be changed is determined by what options are in that application's menu. So for Finder, you can customize "New Finder Window" and etc. etc. whatever is in the menu.

To change the shortcut for "Open" (which happens to be Finder -> File -> Open in the menu) you go to the System Preferences Keyboard Shortcuts, go to Application shortcuts, find "Finder", press the "+" button, and add a new option with name "Open" (exactly spelled as the menu option) and enter a keyboard shortcut.

Note that you can't use the enter key or anything: you can only use the modifier keys (shift, command, control, fn) and numbers or letters.

For general shortcuts you can scroll up into "All Applications" and add a shortcut for "Copy" or "Paste" or which will toggle for whichever application has that menu option in its menu.

EDIT: Response to comments:

1) If you can't find the exact name of a menu command or if there isn't a menu command... well, you just can't set a shortcut unless you use some kind of a third party application that intercepts keystrokes (kinda like AutoHotKey but on Mac). Thus for Quick Look, it doesn't work since the menu command (there is a menu option for it in Finder File->Quick Look) adds the name of the file to be "Quick Looked", e.g. "Quick Look 133.png." I believe in Leopard it may have worked if one just set "Quick Look" to whatever shortcut under Finder, but it doesn't work in SL for me.

2) Screen Capture Cmd+Shift+3 is universal: it's a full screen screenshot. Cmd+shift+4 is similar except it lets you select a box to screen shot. I'm not sure what you mean which shortcuts are for which apps... Either it's listed under the app (in the preferences) or it's universal and applies to either every application with the menu option or the system itself.

EDIT 2: I'll add even more when I have time

a) To my knowledge CUSTOM keyboard shortcuts are stored in com.apple.universalaccess.plist and com.company.application.plist (e.g. com.apple.finder.plist) located in the ~/Library/Preferences folder.

com.apple.universalaccess.plist lists the apps with custom shortcuts:

com.apple.finder.plist lists the actual custom shortcuts for finder under NSUserKeyEquivalents:

EDIT 3:

b) I believe that the default shortcuts for Cocoa apps are stored in the nib files, for example ../Finder/Contents/Resources/English.lprog/MenuBar.nib or seomthing like that. I've successfully edited these nib files MANUALLY using interface builder to change the keyboard shortcuts for the menu bar items. (Whether there are shortcuts that are not menu bar items and not defined by the system I don't know) Thus I don't know of any command line way either...

The nib:

I don't know whether this serves your purpose well. As a side note, for completeness, to edit a compiled nib file like those of finder... is an entirely different answer on its own. This article sums it up well. Basically you work with an uncompiled nib to edit a compiled nib: If you undertake this journey and have trouble finding an uncompiled nib I've uploaded one here.

If I ever find a command line method or learn more about where applications store keyboard shortcuts I will update this answer accordingly.

EDIT: Final Note
These nibs are in xml format or something and can be opened by text editors... that might allow for... I don't know. :D


Can't enter Apple Hardware Test Mode on my macbook pro I have an Early 2011 MacBook Pro.  When I hold down D immediately after restart, it boots to the normal login screen.
When I hold down ALT+D (with a working wifi connection before the reboot) the same thing happens.

I'm running macOS 10.13.5

I don't have an original Applications Install disc 2 as mentioned here.

Any ideas why I can't enter AHT mode? I'm trying to troubleshoot an intermittent fault where the mac won't boot, gives me 3 beeps on a black screen (suspect faulty RAM, but want to run AHT first to check).

Recovery mode works correctly, but doesn't give the option to enter AHT mode.

You can use the following terminal commands to determine the model and board ID of your computer:

sysctl hw.model | awk '{ print $2 }'
ioreg -l | awk -F\" '/board-id/ { print $4 }'

Then download the proper AHT from this link

https://github.com/upekkha/AppleHardwareTest


How should I format a Micro SD card for Dropbox storage? I have been using a 128GB SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3 device with my MacBook for a while now and have really grown to love having all of my Dropbox available without using up my SSD disk space.

I've recently purchased a 128GB Micro SD card with an SD adapter in the hopes that I can free up a USB slot.

I'm looking for recommendations as to which type of filesystem formatting I should use. I started out with exFAT and felt like it was a little sluggish, so I switched it to OSX Extended (non-Journaled) and I'm not seeing much of a difference.

From what I could find, some people said that using Journaled with a Micro SD card might cause too many writes and could wear out the life of the Micro SD card.

In my case, I'm primarily using Dropbox for file storage and some app usage. I use it with 1Password, but don't do a lot of heavy operations like working directly on Photoshop files.

EDIT: Here are the specs:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-Inch, Late 2013)
2.4GHz Intel Core i5
4GB 1600 MHz DDR3
128GB SSD

MicroSD Card:
PNY 128GB High Speed MicroSDXC Memory Card (P-SDUX128U160G-GE)

MicroSD to SD Adapter:
BASEQI aluminum microSD Adapter for MacBook Pro Retina 13"

Your card seems sluggish because it is.

Your particular PNY SD card is rated at up to 60MB/s (megabytes per second) data transfer rate; which is approximately .5Gb/s (gigabits per second)

In comparison, your SanDisk has a read speed of 150MB/s or 1.2Gb/s (SanDisk does not provide a write speed).

Basically, you swapped out a storage medium for another that, out of the gate is at best, less than 1/2 the speed than what you had originally.  There is no filesystem that is going to make up that difference.

For reference USB 3.0 is rated at 5Gb/s which is equivalent to 625MB/s.

Format Types

"Using it with DropBox" doesn't have any effect on the file system type you choose to use as DropBox's functionality and performance has nothing to do with where your OS writes its files to.  So, the question becomes, which one is is right for you?

Use ExFAT if you plan to go between OSes like Windows and Linux
Use HFS+ if you plan on only working on OS X and like all the extras you get with HFS+

If you really want (need) Speed

Get an external drive that takes full advantage of USB 3 speeds (up to 5Gb/s) like the WD Passport for Mac or go for a Thunderbolt Drive that will go 10Gb/s


Disk Utility Partitions Wrong Part of Fusion Drive I have a question about my iMac 2015 Fusion Drive. I replaced my spindle with a SATA SSD 512gb drive. Here are the commands I used from an online instruction set to remake the Fusion Drive:

diskutil list

And saw that PCIE SSD was disk1, SATA SSD was disk0 so I ran:

diskutil coreStorage create Fusion /dev/disk1 /dev/disk0
diskutil coreStorage createVolume [lvgUUID] jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" 100%

Where [lvgUUID] was the unique Core Storage ID string

This worked great, I installed macOS and everything was grand except when I went into Disk Utility, I tried to make a partition, I am limited to making one the size of my tiny 24GB SSD and when I do make one under that size it uses the PCIE for the partition instead of the larger SATA drive. This is making it impossible to get Bootcamp up and running, since the Bootcamp Setup Assistant will not let me make a partition claiming I don't have enough free space.

Will it work to just switch the order of disk0 and disk1? Any thoughts greatly appreciated!

diskUtil cs list output:

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 7D87AFDD-C64A-4AC2-B8E4-6C098F67A384
    =========================================================
    Name:         FUSE
    Status:       Online
    Size:         534804156416 B (534.8 GB)
    Free Space:   176128 B (176.1 KB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 9A2B9DD4-3C79-46C2-BB4F-886B5A6B9C73
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     23037939712 B (23.0 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 3BE6757D-AE99-4C70-A0B3-CC16725BA627
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     511766216704 B (511.8 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 8AB4FCEE-8DDF-487E-A9B9-F351BE591D2E
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Type:         None
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 45E7132B-2676-450E-85D6-636EA3DFDC4F
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk2
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          526809563136 B (526.8 GB)
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS
            LVG Type:              Fusion, Sparse

diskUtil list output:

Charles-iMac:~ tinyhouse$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *512.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage FUSE                    511.8 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         24.0 GB    disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage FUSE                    23.0 GB    disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3

/dev/disk2 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            Macintosh HD           +526.8 GB   disk2
                                 Logical Volume on disk1s2, disk0s2
                                 45E7132B-2676-450E-85D6-636EA3DFDC4F
                                 Unencrypted Fusion Drive

To create a proper "Fusion Drive" in your case, you first have to create a normal CoreStorage Logical Volume Group with one physical volume and one logical volume. Then you have to install macOS. In a last step you have to add the second physical volume to the CoreStorage Logical Volume Group and expand the existing logical volume.

backup your main volume
boot to Internet Recovery Mode (or a macOS installer thumb drive)
get all necessary listings:

diskutil list
diskutil cs list

destroy the LVG:

diskutil cs delete lvgUUID #lvgUUID: UUID of the Logical Volume Group

completely erase both disks (each to one volume with the names e.g. "data1" and "data2" but not "Macintosh HD")
get the device identifiers again: diskutil list
create a new LVG and LV on the larger disk (here I assume the 500 GB SSD has the disk identifier disk0):

diskutil cs create Fusion disk0
diskutil cs list
diskutil cs createVolume lvgUUID jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" 100%

Install macOS to "Macintosh HD"
After configuring macOS open Terminal and enter

diskutil list
diskutil cs list

add the 24 GB disk (here I assume the disk identifier is disk1) to the LVG:

diskutil cs addDisk lvgUUID disk1

Expand the main system volume:

diskutil cs resizeVolume lvUUID size #with size e.g. 526800m

If you get an error "Error: -69720: There is not enough free space in the Core Storage Logical Volume Group for this operation" choose a slightly smaller size like 526400m or 526000m


How do I automatically save messages on my Mac, even after deleting the conversation I tend to delete my conversations from Messages to keep it neat, but some messages I don't actually want to be gone forever. How can I have my messages save somewhere in a folder automatically even after I delete them from the Messages app?

It's 'all or nothing' you can't be selective about which to save [unless you juggle this parameter before each time you close a conversation, which might work] but in Messages prefs, check "Save history when conversations are closed"


My iPhone says I need to do billing My iPhone is saying I need to do billing but there is not a none button by the credit cards what do I do I need to download a app for my cheerleading

There is a good chance you have an unpaid balance from a previous transaction. This can happen for a number of reasons such as insufficient funds in your bank account.

If you have an unpaid transaction, iTunes requires you to add a valid payment method before you can continue using the iTunes Store/App Store. Even for free items.

You can see if you have any unpaid purchases by going into your 'Purchase History' (see example below) or contacting iTunes Support via email or phone.

More info: https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT203005


How to install Dropbox on iPhone 3GS? How can I install the Dropbox app on an iPhone 3GS running iOS 6.1.6? THe newest version of the app is iOS7-only.

I've heard that if the app has been installed under your account, the App Store will let you use the last compatible version, but I have no devices running iOS7 to add it to my account with.

How can I get the Dropbox app onto this phone? The iPhone is jailbroken.

Indeed, it will let you download the last compatible version if you already have the app in your purchase history. You can add the app to your purchase history using iTunes on your computer, since iTunes is version-agnostic. Once you've downloaded the app on iTunes, it will be in your purchase history and attempting to download it again on your device should prompt you to accept an older version of the app.


Re-Merge El Capitan Recovery with Original Mac OS Due to recent partitioning mistakes I was unable to boot up my Mac OSX or my Bootcamp on my Mac since. As a last resort I went to recovery mode and downloaded a new El Capitan OS.

Unfortunately this OS created its own partition. Once I was able to delete the problem partitions, I found I no longer needed the El Capitan Recovery partition.

I am looking for a safe way to merge my Fusion Drives back to 1 whole partition, preferably without losing any of the data on my original Mac OS X.

There is not a "safe" way to do this.  Creating or destroying a Fusion Drive is a destructive process.

Having the recovery partition is normally a desirable thing, was there a particular reason you did not want it?

If you do no want to create a Fusion Drive again you will need to ensure you have a full backup.  You will need to boot from a USB installer, see here on how to create one.

If you open Disk Utility when booted from the USB installer and it detects an SSD and HDD installed it may offer to create the Fusion Drive for you automatically.  If not there are instructions here on creating one manually.

Once the Fusion Drive has been created you can proceed with the normal installation.

Note that if using Boot Camp Windows will only reside on the mechanical drive not the SSD so will not enjoy of the benefits of a Fusion Drive.  It is specified in Apple's support article.


Mavericks Finder Sidebar Bug? I think I noticed this in progress indicator getting misplaced from next to my Time Machine when I ejected a USB stick, but is that some sort of oddly placed AirDrop indicator? (the arrows are spinning)


Recovery Mode: FireVault psswd unrecognised and CoreStorage not found Need some urgent help with my unruly Mac (faced with the prospect of erasing my hard drive after 150 days without backup...)

Here is the problem that I have. My Mac got quite slow and I restarted it and upon the restart I got a prohibitory sign, which is like a crossed out circle. I read that the solution to this would be reinstalling the OS in recovery mode (Cmnd+R) which I tried to do. The problem is that my hard drive is encrypted using Fire Vault so I need to unlock it before the OS can be reinstalled on it. Unfortunately, there is a known bug where the Fire Vault password is not recognized in recovery mode (I know a 100% it is the correct one, but the mac just rejects it). Again, upon googling I found that the solution to this problem would be to go to the Terminal from recovery mode and unlock the disk from the Terminal.
(here is the thread where I found the solution https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3348646 )

Now I tried to follow the directions in the thread which are:

find the core storage UUID by doing diskutil coreStorage list
using the UUID of the locked HD, type in "diskutil coreStorage unlockVolume "

Now the current problem that I cannot solve arises when I type in diskutil coreStorage list. I get the error "No CoreStorage logical volume groups found" which means that my CoreStorage has been removed.
This is where I am right now, and I could really use some help of someone who knows how to work with these things. As far as I understand, I either need to make my encrypted HD a core storage unit OR to find a way to unlock it without making it a core storage unit. I am scared to do either though because browsing through help files didn't give a simple answer and I am worried I will do something irreversibly bad.

Thank you very much!!
Attached is the output of diskutil list
diskutil output

If you have access to another mac, a potential way to be able to back up your data is to boot in target disk mode https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201462. This will mount your internal HD on the host mac like it would a normal external HD and the OS will immediately prompt you to unlock it using your FileVault pw. I have encountered basically this same bug you are describing in the past and have had success unlocking with this method, even if it fails from recovery.

If you don't have another Mac handy, you can also reset your FileVault pw (I understand that you know it, but this method may still get you back into the machine) by opening terminal from the utilities menu in recovery (or internet recovery, whichever) typing resetpassword, hitting enter and following the prompts. However, if you don't have your recovery key or apple ID access set up this method won't be much help. Good luck!


Lost Windows after repartitioning with Disk Utility I've just re-partitioned my hard-drive using Disk Utility. I shrank my Mac OS X partition and created a new one with the available space. However, after rebooting, the option to start under Windows is now gone. I only have the option to start Mac OS X.

Basically, my partitions were like this:

Mac
Windows
Data

After shrinking the Mac partition and creating a new one I get:

Mac
Fat32
Windows
Data

Does anybody know why the Windows partition was affected by this change? And how can I make it bootable again?

If you resized Mac OS partitions creating new partition after installing Boot Camp and lost Windows in boot option, you can recover it back with following steps.

If your Boot Camp is Windows 7:

Insert installation disk for Windows 7, boot to it, and start regular Windows install process.
Keep going until you see a screen saying "Install now".
Choose the option below the Install button: Repair your computer.
On following screen select first option: Startup Repair.

When done, reboot holding Option ⌥ - the Boot Camp partition is back!

If your Boot Camp is Windows XP:

Boot to OS X.
Go to your Windows XP partition.
Locate in the root directory a file called boot.ini.
Open it with a Mac text editor.
Look for part that says partition(x)
(x) represents the number of your Boot Camp partition. Now, you should add 1 to the number. Example: partition(1) should become partition(2)
Save the file and close the editor.

When done, reboot holding Option ⌥ - the Boot Camp partition is back!


Safari does not let me save pages! Just tried Safari (got advised to save battery power over Chrome) and the "Save As" button is disabled!
Can't save a single page!

Any idea why this happens and what I can do against it?
Thanks!

EDIT. Safari version 6.1, MacOS 10.8.5

Ok, I found it - it does not let me save page until it is fully loaded!
Which is painfully slow sometimes, comparing to Chrome.
As far as I can see, Chrome still lets me save page even if it is not complete and even when I just started loading it still works with previous page!
So I can still save the previous page after mistakenly clicking on a link.


How do I resize an image in Notes? I can't resize an image by dragging and dropping in Notes.

How do I resize an image in Notes?

In macOS, you can toggle between thumbnails and actual size (max width = 100%) by right-clicking any image in the note and choosing ‘View as Small Images’. This is not possible to set on iOS.


Terminal stty shortcut In Linux I can set terminal shortcut like this:

stty intr ^i

But in OS X it doesn't work, I've tried this construction with no success:

stty brkint ^i      # why is this illegal option???

How to setup Terminal shortcut in OS X?

The command:

stty intr ^i

works exactly the same way on MacOS X as on Linux. Please note here ^i
are 2 characters and not a tab.

On the other hand, the command:

stty brkint ^i

replies:

stty: illegal option -- ^i

because brkint is a boolean option to stty and not one with any other following value, and because ^i considered alone is not a valid option to stty.


Run shell and type output I am using iTerm2. I would like to have a keyboard shortcut which runs a command and types the output at the current cursor.

Example: I have a function branchName which returns/prints the current folder's branch name. I want the branch name to be written to the shell (iTerm2) by pressing cmdB.

Open iTerm2 preferences and go to Profiles tab. Select your desired profile and go to Keys tab. Tap plus sign (+) and type the following:

Keyboard Shortcut: ⌘cmd+B
Action: Send Text
In the next line add the following command: git name-rev --name-only HEAD\n

After that, when you hit ⌘cmd+B, iTerm send that command to your terminal and will return your current branch.

$ git name-rev --name-only HEAD
master


iPhone: How to sync large library of MP3 + flac files from Win10 laptop I am a longtime android user looking to migrate to iphone (to get better privacy).
I think I have everything solved except for one thing: My music library.
I am old school, in that I have a large (120+GB, constantly growing) library of music files. This is primarily maintained on my Win10 laptop (and backed up to the cloud).
With Android, I just plug the phone into a usb port, and do a file copy from the laptop to the phone.
On the phone, I use BlackPlayerEX to manage playlists and be the playback app.
On iPhone 11/12, how do I:

Sync my music library to the phone

Have a blackplayer equivalent on iphone (VLC for iPhone?)

There are multiple ways of doing this I suggest the simplest one .
First you need to download iMazing app on your windows .
iMazing PC Download
iMazing MacOS Download

Launch iMazing and connect your device to your Mac or PC.
Select your device in the sidebar, then select "Music".
Click "Import from Folder", and select the music you want to import.
Transfer your Music.


Why has my hard drive started spinning-up each time I eject it? When I eject the hard drive, the disk starts to slow down but then the disk starts spinning at full speed about a second later. The hard drive is not mounted but it is still spinning. I’m afraid to unplug it when it’s in this state. If I wait about 10 minutes, it eventually stops spinning. I’d rather not have to wait around that long.

This only started happening about a month ago. It might have been due to a software update but I’m not sure. Why is this happening and how do I fix it?

I updated to macOS 10.14.4 and the issue has mysteriously resolved itself. A software update caused the problem and a software update fixed it.


Is there a way to change iPhone’s User Agent Info? I’ve been.getting page errors on a variety of sites when using both safari and edge browsers.  This one came from my school account when I was trying to open a different page and was dumped out:

  •   Activity ID: 00000000-0000-0000-7e3f-0180000400db
      •   Error time: Tue, 29 May 2018 14:42:18 GMT
      •   Cookie: enabled
      •   User agent string: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 11_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/11.0 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1

I also got Disallowed Provider Error when trying to connect to my Azure account for school.

  The operation is not permitted for namespace 'Microsoft.Storage'. List of permitted provider namespaces is 'Microsoft.Authorization,Microsoft.Features,microsoft.insights,Microsoft.NotificationHubs,Microsoft.Resources,Microsoft.Sql,microsoft.support,microsoft.visualstudio,Microsoft.Web,SuccessBricks.ClearDB'.

Plus,

Which leads me to believe that their somehow related. I’m normally don't use Firefox. I no longer have a Mac. And I don’t recall installing any Webkits.

Is there away to fix this without access to Mac? I have already replaced the phone and just keeps happening.

You need to use a different web browser.  The paid web browser iCab lets you change the user agent string.

Whether or not your access to the website is blocked because of the namespace issue mentioned by poster grg is beyond the scope of my answer.

It is not uncommon for education sites to have Windows dependencies built in the site.  You may try some of these browsers to get around Windows dependencies.

Puffin

"Puffin Web Browser is a wicked fast Mobile Flash Browser. Once users experience the thrilling speed of Puffin, regular mobile Internet feels like torture. Puffin Free is the free version of the Puffin family and supports Adobe Flash over cloud during "off-peak hours" from 8AM to 4PM (subject to change without prior notice)"
Free:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/puffin-web-browser-free/id472937654?mt=8
Paid:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/puffin-web-browser/id406239138?mt=8

VirtualBrowser for Firefox with Flash-browser, Java Player and Add-ons - iPhone Edition
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/virtualbrowser-for-firefox/id609289360?mt=8

Photon Flash Player for iPad - Flash Video & Games plus Private Web Browser
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photon-flash-player-for-ipad/id430200224?mt=8

"java for iPad is now a reality!
If you were ever wondering how to use java for iPad, now you can! With the Virtual-Browser for Firefox App, java for iPad is possible with one simple app download! Virtual-Browser for Firefox App opens up a wide variety of apps and games – like java for iPad – that you can use from your iPad"
http://www.virtualfirefox.com/java-for-ipad

By Splashtop Inc.
Flash Video Web Browser – Full Chrome, IE, Firefox, Safari Compatible
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flash-video-web-browser-full/id431331485?mt=8

iPad web browsers set to IE:
http://www.macsinlaw.com/make-your-iphone-ipad-surf-like-internet-explorer-or-fi refox/


Can I delete photos on the old phone after I transfered them to a new one? I just got new 6s and signed in with my iCloud from my old 6. The pictures were transferred from my old phone to the new. If I delete the pictures off my 6s will is also delete them off my original  device?

Yes.

It looks like you're using iCloud to sync your pictures across your devices.  iCloud is a sync solution, meaning that it keeps all your data in sync across every device you're signed in with your Apple ID.

If you delete them from your old iPhone, you're actually deleting them from iCloud.

All you need to do is sign out of iCloud from your old iPhone 6.  This will remove all your synced data (not just photos, in case you are syncing other content).  If you plan on selling your device, you can then erase all the content and your pictures will still be in iCloud.


MacBook Pro internal screen issue my son tripped and dropped his MacBook Pro. One corner of the screen is now black - looks like a crack on the inside. Apple told me it would most likely be about $500 to fix. Are there any other solutions?  It works fine, just the screen.

Depending on your Model:

You could do it your self to save some.

If you ONLY replace the LCD part and not the whole display the costs are in the range of $100 to $200 depending on which LCD type you choose.

There are some very good instructions how to at ifixit web site.


Lion and OpenGL support Reading this documentation
http://developer.apple.com/graphicsimaging/opengl/capabilities/ i get that Lion support only openGL2.1

This is a 6 years old version, the current one is the 4.2,
Please tell me that i'm not in right and that we are at least at the version 3.2 :) this would be a really really really big problem for me :P

For more modern video cards (and software renderer) OSX does use 3.2 See Apple's doc on current video cards


Batch repack of mkv files Can anyone tell me how to batch repack a bunch of mkv files to mp4 keeping the same file names using the Mac command line.

For ffmpeg use the following command.

for i in *.mkv; do ffmpeg -i "$i" -codec copy "${i/${i##*.}/mp4}"; done

This should create copies of all your MKV videos, converting the containers to MP4 format but not re-encoding the video and audio data within them and keeping the same filename but changing the extension from mkv to mp4.