Change the default background colour for text fields added to PDFs in Preview? In Preview you can add text fields to PDFs using the text tool on the toolbar. Every time I add such a text field the background colour is reverted to transparent. All other text properties (i.e., size, font, foreground colour etc) are remembered from the last text field when creating a new text field.
Is there any way to make Preview also remember the background colour setting when adding text fields to PDFs?

Is there any way to make Preview also remember the background colour setting when adding text fields to PDFs?

There is no Preferences… setting in Preview to remember the last used color shown in its Color Well for the Fill Color when using the Tools > Annotate > Text menu item, or its ^⌘T keyboard shortcut , or clicking Text on its Markup Toolbar.
If there is an unpublished setting to change the default behavior, i.e. the Fill Color is automatically reset to none upon the aforementioned actions, I am unaware of it.

Workaround Solution 1
As Preview does remember the last used color shown in its Color Well for the Fill Color on its Markup Toolbar, until using the Tools > Annotate > Text menu item, or its ^⌘T keyboard shortcut, or clicking Text on its Markup Toolbar, this allows for the use of a Service/Quick Action in Automator, using a Run AppleScript action with UI Scripting code, to then be assigned a keyboard shortcut that when pressed will automate the process of setting the last used fill color to a new text field.

1 The colors used in this workaround are from the standard pallet as shown when clicking on Fill Color on the Markup Toolbar, and shown in the image below.

The example AppleScript code, shown below, was tested under macOS High Sierra thru macOS Big Sur, with Language & Region set to English (US) in System Preferences, and worked for me without issue, sans adding Preview in: System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility
Using Automator I created a Service/Quick Action setting Workflow receives [no input] in [Preview], with a Run AppleScript action, replacing the default code with the example AppleScript code, shown below.
Saved the Automator workflow as Preview - Add Text with last Fill Color, then assigned a keyboard shortcut of ⇧⌘T in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services for the Automator Service/Quick Action.
Example AppleScript code:
tell application "Preview"
    activate
    if not (exists front window) or ¬
        not (visible of front window) ¬
            then return
end tell
tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "Preview"
        if (exists menu item ¬
            "Show Markup Toolbar" of ¬
            menu "View" of first menu bar) then ¬
            click menu item "Show Markup Toolbar" of ¬
                menu "View" of first menu bar
        tell front window
            tell (toolbars whose ¬
                description is "edit toolbar")
                set lastFillColor to the ¬
                    value of every color well whose ¬
                    help is "Fill Color"
                click (every button ¬
                    whose description is "Text")
                tell (every color well whose ¬
                    help is "Fill Color")
                    click
                    click (every button of ¬
                        UI element 2 of ¬
                        UI element 1 whose ¬
                        description is ¬
                        lastFillColor)
                    if result is missing value then
                        click (every button of ¬
                            UI element 3 of ¬
                            UI element 1 whose ¬
                            description is ¬
                            lastFillColor)
                    end if
                end tell
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

Notes
If you'd prefer to use the default keyboard shortcut (⌃⌘T) for the Automator Service/Quick Action, then you can change the default keyboard shortcut used by Preview by adding it to: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts
Click the [+] button and set:

Application: [Preview]
Menu Title: Text
Keyboard Shortcut: ⇧⌘T

Then assigned a keyboard shortcut of ⌃⌘T in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services for the, e.g. Preview - Add Text with last Fill Color Service/Quick Action.

The example AppleScript code shown, as is, worked under macOS High Sierra thru macOS Big Sur without needing to be modified, nonetheless, future releases of macOS may require modifications beyond any localizations done for other settings with Language & Region when set to other than English (US) in System Preferences.

For this Automator Service/Quick Action, as coded, to work properly, in regards to Accessibility settings and Automation settings, one should be prompted to allow certain events and you may see messages such as:

The action “Run AppleScript” encountered an error: “System Events got an error: com.automator.runner.xpc is not allowed assistive access.”
“Preview“ would to control this computer using accessibility features. Grant access to this application in Security & Privacy > Privacy preferences, located in System Preferences.
“Preview“ wants access to control “System Events“. Allowing control will provide access to documents and data in “System Events“, and to perform actions within that app.
Or similar type messages.

This means under:

System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility

Preview needs to be added and checked.

System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Automation

Preview should show with System Events checked.

    As applicable to the version of macOS this is run under.

All testing was done on an Intel based Mac and I cannot speak to whether or not any of this, as is, will work on an M1 based Mac.

How It Works
In the first tell block, Preview checks that a window exists and is not minimized, otherwise the remaining code would fail, and stops the script if the conditions warrants.
In the second tell block, System Events does the following:

Checks whether or not the Markup Toolbar is showing and if not, shows it.
Reads the current value of the selected color of the Color Well for the Fill Color, assigning it to the lastFillColor variable.
Creates the Text annotation.
Sets the fill color of the Text annotation to the value stored in the lastFillColor variable.

Understanding the code for clicking the Color Palette
Unfortunately UI Scripting is necessary to perform the task required to set the fill color by clicking on the color palette just as if being done manually, however, automating this certainly beats dealing with continued manual repetition.
In the image of the Color Palette below, you will see how its broken-down into three UI elements.   UI element2 and UI element 3 are two distinct sections of the color palette.

As I tend to use the colors from the larger selection (UI element 2), I've coded it to click this section first, and if the target is not there, I click the smaller section (UI element 3).
I'm mentioning this so if you typically choose a color from the smaller section (UI element 3), you'll want to switch the numbers of the two UI elements, switching 2 for 3 and 3 for 2 in the code shown below.
tell (every color well whose ¬
    help is "Fill Color")
    click
    click (every button of ¬
        UI element 2 of ¬
        UI element 1 whose ¬
        description is ¬
        lastFillColor)
    if result is missing value then
        click (every button of ¬
            UI element 3 of ¬
            UI element 1 whose ¬
            description is ¬
            lastFillColor)
    end if
end tell

The example AppleScript code is just that and sans the included error handling does not contain any additional error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted. Have a look at the try statement and error statement in the AppleScript Language Guide. See also, Working with Errors. Additionally, the use of the delay command may be necessary between events where appropriate, e.g. delay 0.5, with the value of the delay set appropriately.


Can SquashFS filesystems work with macOS El Capitan? I am converting some .tar.gz to SquashFS (using squashfs from homebrew) using xz compression because I want to be able to mount the archives and read the content without extrating and also because the compression is about 10% better in my case.

Now I only found one implementation of SquashFS for OSXFuse here.

I am wondering what sort of driver or shim or software would be needed to let macOS work in any way (and hopefully read+write) with SquashFS?

If you have homebrew installed, it's as easy as running brew install squashfs, and then either unsquashfs or mksquashfs depending on if you want to extract or make a comrpessed filesystem.


Mac ports package name search from command line? I tried to install gnuchessc with Mac ports, but there's nothing like that.

sudo port install gnuchessc
Error: Port gnuchessc not found
Before reporting a bug, first run the command again with the -d flag to get complete output.

Actually, it should have been gnuchess not gnuchessc. Is there a way to let Mac Ports teach me that there is gnuchess instead of gnuchessc from command line?

port search $TERM

The MacPorts Guide is really useful for these sorts of things.


Is there a way to load a LaunchAgent as another user? From a script run as root I copy a LaunchAgent .plist to /Users/xyz/Library/LaunchAgents.

If I load that via launchctl logged in as user xyz it works without problems. If I try to load it from the script with the following command:

sudo -u xyz launchctl load /Users/xyz/Library/LaunchAgents/x.y.z.plist

it doesn't work. The error message is

Could not open job overrides database at /private/var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd.peruser.0/overrides.plist: 13: Permission denied
launch_msg(): Socket is not connected

Is there any other way to accomplish my task?

It looks to me like the permissions error is just a symptom of a much deeper problem: you're trying to load the item into the wrong mach bootstrap context. Specifically, you're running the launchctl command as xyz, but it's trying to load the item into root's context, which xyz doesn't have permissions to do. What you want is to load the item into xyz's context instead (which xyz should have permissions to do).

Ok, let me back up a bit, and give you a bit of a summary of the launchd hierarchy in OS X. When the OS boots, it starts a master instance of launchd (the "system" launchd), which loads items from the various Library/LaunchDaemons folders.

When a user logs in (or otherwise starts a "session"), a new "bootstrap context" is created, a new instance of launchd (the "user" launchd) is started (in that new context) which loads items from the various Library/LaunchAgents folders (all within that new context).

When you use sudo -u xyz ..., it switches user IDs to xyz, but doesn't switch to xyz's context.

Now, there are a couple of cases here: first, if xyz isn't logged in (i.e. doesn't have an active session), they don't have a bootstrap context or a launchd instance, so you can't load a LaunchAgent as them. Basically, LaunchAgents load into user sessions, so if there's no session there's nothing to load it into. On the other hand, this shouldn't be a problem: next time xyz logs in, your item will be loaded automatically (as long as it's in the right place).

If xyz is logged in, you can get the process ID of some process within their session, and use launchctl bsexec to switch to that process's bootstrap context (and then use sudo -u xyz to switch UIDs to xyz, and then load the item):

loadUser=xyz
loadPID=$(ps -axj | awk "/^$loadUser / {print \$2;exit}")
launchctl bsexec $loadPID sudo -u $loadUser launchctl load /Users/xyz/Library/LaunchAgents/x.y.z.plist


How to solve "An error occured while verifying firmware" when updating to Mojave? I just bought an early 2015 MacBook Pro that comes with macOS sierra. I want to update it to Mojave so i could run newer version of Xcode. But unfortunately i got this error everytime i tried to update it:

  An error occured while verifying firmware.

I tried to update it to High Sierra, but it does the same thing.

I borrowed my friend's bootable USB with High Sierra and change my SSD format to APFS, but it still gave me that error. I've tried to google for an answer and one of the forums that discussing this issue tells the original poster that it might have a problem regarding the logic board of the MBP. Which kinda freaked me out.

Why is this happening? And what should i do? Because i just switched to a mac from a windows laptop, so i still have zero knowledge about macos.

I prefer to get my installers from Apple, especially when I get an error with the download like you may have.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

If your Mac is operational, absolutely get a good backup now before you attempt another install. That way you can escalate to an erase install which removes all your existing system and data and ensures if that install fails you know your hardware or network is the cause of the error.

Since yoU don’t need a backup, I would do the erase install and go to the latest possible.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904 (explains how to steer which version installs from recovery)
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255 (explains the overall process)
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496 (erase steps - read last, start here)


Will changing an Apple ID remove the media content currently on the phone (iTunes?) My son and husband share the same Apple ID and have all the same media on both iPhones (games, itunes) etc.  We are now experiencing a problem where my son receives all my husbands sent and received text messages through iMessage.  I was told to change the Apple ID on my son's phone to his own so he would no longer be receiving the messages.  When I change the ID, will he lose all of his iTunes?  That is his greatest concern.  Thanks.

The good news is that iOS allows you to have a separate iMessage Apple ID then your iTunes store Apple ID. To remedy your problem follow the steps below:

Open Settings.app (on your son's device) and go to "Messages".
Scroll and tap on "Send & Receive"
At the top select "Use your Apple ID for iMessage".
Tap "Create new Apple ID".
Enter in the information and follow the prompts.

After this is done, you can go to Settings.app -> iTunes & App Stores, and make sure the Apple ID there is set to your Apple ID.

And, to firmly answer your question: No, having a separate Apple ID for iMessage and iTunes (and the process of changing it) will not erase content.

Note: instructions provided work best with iOS 6, but should be workable with iOS 5.


How do I sort photos by date taken in Apple Photos? Is there a way to sort photos in an album in Apple Photos by date taken? The answer must be "yes", but I can't find it. The options that seem to refer to date (e.g., Keep Sorted by Oldest) seem to sort by the date the photo was added to the album.

On the menubar click:

View > Keep sorted by date


Can I add different size RAMs to iMac 5K? I have an iMac Retina 5K (27-inch, Late 2014) with 8 GB of RAM (2 * 4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 memory modules).
There are 2 memory slots free/available, and I want to add RAM to these two slots.

My question is - Am I required to add only 4 GB memory sticks into these empty slots, or is it perfectly fine if I add a higher capacity RAM (8 GB sticks) in these empty slots?

I don't want to swap out the existing 4 GB RAM sticks. I want to keep these two as is, and add two more RAM sticks of 8 GB each.

I want to do this if I can be perfectly sure this works, and does not affect the system performance/reliability in any way.

I reached out to Apple customer support, and the customer service agent told me he wasn't sure, and that I should just stick to 4 GB uniformly across all slots.

Any of you good people have tried this already and have some advice?

Thanks

The newer imacs support dual channel what means that tou can have 2 different sorts of ram memory.
But make sure that there are at least 2 of the same installed so:
2x 4 gb and 2x 8gb should work fine. For more info, this link


Changing Apple ID on second hand Macbook Pro I bought a Macbook Pro second hand and the previous owner did not disable their iCloud account. Is there any way to erase it back to factory settings so I can set up my iCloud account on the device?

Can you go back to the seller? I'd try to contact them and have them remove it. Or contact the original owner.

Also check and see if its firmware locked.


MacBook 5,1 Upgrade, Leapfrog to Yosemite and MBA Backup My 2014 MacBook Air was recently stolen, but I have a full backup available via Time Machine saved to an Airport Extreme base station. For now I'm using an old MacBook 5,1 with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2 GB RAM.  After using the Air for so long I kind of like the feel of this machine better and don't mind of the bit of extra weight. I am inspired by all the info available about upgrading this model, and I think it's a better solution for me than buying a new MacBook.  There seems to be plenty of info available about the process, but before I dive in I'd like some input from the folks that know a helluva a lot more than I do about this kind of thing:

My plan is to upgrade the 2012 MB with an internal SSD drive and enhance the memory, but once that is done, can I then use the Time Machine backup from my 2014 MBA to populate this computer, or will the format switch from MBA to this MB wreak havoc?  If it is a problem, can I just upgrade and do a clean Yosemite install and then just move over key files and applications from time machine to the 2012 MB?  As mentioned, the backup is saved on a Airport Extreme base station, and I have a memory stick startup disk from a clean re-install that I did on my MBA about a month ago.  Obviously I can't recreate that without my 2014 MBA, so can I use that or will it also cause issues? In the AppStore I still have the option to download Yosemite, so if I can't use that start up disk what are my options?  I'm only as good as the last YouTube video I watched about this stuff, which is dangerous.

No, your Time Machine backup should restore to a supported Mac just fine.  I do it all the time to save time installing multiple machines from scratch.


How to I enable point-and-hold on iPhone5/iOS7 for atomic web? I have run Atomic Web for many years on my iPhones (3, 4, now 5).  However, when I upgraded to iOS7, when I hold a link, the menu no longer comes up.  Nothing happens.  I haven't been able to find any setting which would change this.  Is there something new with iOS7 which I didn't know about before upgrading?

I downloaded the app to test what you were taking about, and I can confirm the issue. They last updated the app on November 20, 2012, so this is most likely a bug that will need to be fixed by them. You can try to contact them at atomicbrowser@gmail.com about the issue.


Reset TCP/IP Stack without Rebooting? This is a bit of an unusual question but I have a Mac server that gets hit with a lot of DDoS attacks. Usually my data center's mitigation system catches them but sometimes they slip through. When they do, they often can completely kill my system's TCP/IP. Even accessing localhost does not work. TCP/IP is completely dead. But the system is not frozen. It still runs perfectly fine otherwise. I know this because once I reboot the system, I can see all of the log entries from my scripts from the entire time it was offline. I have screen shots of the desktop from when it was offline.
Rebooting the server in this state returns it to normal. But I'm hoping there's some way I can restart just the TCPIP stack without rebooting the whole OS? That would at least let me regain access to the machine in a way that, while clumsy, would be significantly less so than hard remote reboots via IPMI.
This is all just a band-aide while we work out ways to shore up the DDoS mitigation. But it would be a good band-aide. Also useful, and along similar lines, would be a way to hard flush ALL TCP connections, established, half open, everything including all state information.

I don't think there is a way to restart the TCP stack, but the question should be why TCP becomes unresponsive, it must be hitting some limits in the stack.
If the service creates new connections to answer incoming requests, it is possible you're hitting the default 16K limit on ephemeral ports and the even more problematic 30s (MSL*2) timeout on TIME_WAIT connections until they can be reused.
You can use sysctl to tweak those:
sudo sysctl net.inet.tcp.msl=1000 # default 15000
sudo sysctl net.inet.ip.portrange.first=16384 # default 49152

The default TCP queues are also rather small (128 waiting sockets):
sudo sysctl kern.ipc.somaxconn=2048 # default 128

If you are also getting port scans or DoS to unused ports you can reduce backscatter by enabling blackhole mode and limiting ICMP/RST responses:
sudo sysctl net.inet.tcp.blackhole=2 # default 0
sudo sysctl net.inet.udp.blackhole=1 # default 0
sudo sysctl net.inet.icmp.icmplim=50 # default 250

Once you are happy with the sysctls you can persist them in /etc/sysctl.conf.
Use something like sudo vim /etc/sysctl.conf to create it.
I would also suggest to install HAProxy on your server in front of your services and use it to apply rate limiting and filtering for backend connections. You can even do packet inspection like dropping connections with invalid SNI headers. The easiest way to install haproxy on the Mac is through Homebrew.


What is AEServer and why is it requesting macOS Accessibility permissions? What is AEServer in the macOS Accessibility permissions panel?
System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility > AEServer

Why is AEServer requesting to control my computer via accessibility APIs?
Should Accessibility permission be granted for AEServer?

As benwiggy already said, AEServer is a background process that processes incoming AppleEvents from remote Macs.
AppleEvents are the underlying technology used by the Apple Event Manager, which is in turn used by e.g. AppleScript to communicate with applications and processes.
Starting with macOS 10.15 Catalina, remote AppleEvents have additional security requirements: The user account sending the remote events has to be the same as the one receiving them. More details in the release notes.
To turn off this restriction and revert to pre-10.15 behavior, you can use the following Terminal command:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AEServer RestrictAccessToUserSession -bool false


Receiving spam email from my own iCloud account and my own IP address I found a thread with a similar problem but it didn't seem to have a solution for this situation, so here goes:

I have, on 3 occasions now, received spam email (iPhone XS fake promos) to my personal Gmail account from my own iCloud account.

These emails have only been sent when my Mac is turned on. They show up in my iCloud account's "Sent" folder within the Mail app. I have verified that they have come from the IP address of my Mac. These emails have gone to my personal Gmail account and to no other addresses within my contact list. My Apple login is secured with 2FA and there have been no abnormal login attempts.

I share the Mac with family and it is possible that a ..questionable.. piece of software was installed by my son (pirated version of an app from a torrent site). Though, nothing that would have required an administrator password, which he does not have.

So, what do you think is happening here? And how do I stop it? I am currently using the latest Catalina public beta. I looked into Malwarebytes and it is not yet compatible.

Thank you in advance for any help you can offer!

I believe I've figured this out. This is the well known Gcal spam, but in my case, at least, and I assume @derpymcderpson's case, the Google calendar is linked to Calendar.app (formerly iCal). That means that an email alarm from Calendar when the Gcal spam is added sends an email from your primary email account using Apple Mail (or, more specifically, MailServiceAgent). No hacking. Just unfortunate behavior. It's also, fortunately, why it only goes to your own Gmail account.


Quickly change host for bluetooth keyboard A while ago I stumbled upon an app that made it possible to change the device that a Bluetooth keyboard is connected to. This would allow me to quickly switch the keyboard between being connected to the iPad, or iMac or MacBook. Unfortunately, I forgot the name of this utility.

Does anyone know of a utility that would allow me to do this? In my case I'd want to switch between iPad and a MacBook.

Do you mean type2phone? It allows you to use the keyboard of your Mac on your iDevice...


Resize and position windows using keyboard shortcuts Possible Duplicate:
  What Window Management Options exist for OS X?

I want to be able to resize and move a window without using a mouse.

Recently I found shiftit, which is 80% what I need. The only thing it is missing is the window resize. And it is not updated since 2010 :( .

Is there a better alternative?

Have you considered Moom http://manytricks.com/moom/ or MercuryMover http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/ ?


How can I change my font and coloring in Oh My Zsh to match a theme I want I'm using Oh My Zsh and I was using the "Agnoster" theme for a while, but now I want to switch to "Amuse". So I went into my ~/.zshrc file and changed the theme config line to ZSH_THEME=amuse
This only gets me part of the way there. My font and color scheme doesn't seem to match still. The theme is supposed to look like this:

But mine looks like this:

I saw the theme on this page but I can't seem to find info on font or coloring, nor can I figure out how to change it in Oh My Zsh manually. I did see the note about Powerline Fonts and I believe I already have those installed because the Agnoster theme I was using previously needed them too.
How can I get my terminal to match the Amuse theme exactly?
Thanks for any help!

The shell defines the basic colours, then you specify how the Terminal displays those colours used in Terminal Preferences, under Profiles then the profile you're using.


Mac refusing to shut down because of finder? When I shut down, restart, or update and restart my mac goes about shutting applications down to get ready to turn the computer off as it normally does but after my top bar and desktop icons have gone away it just stops.

Its just a dock and a wallpaper, the only application that's open is Finder which is stuck in a half-closed state that no amount of relaunching will fix.

While trying to fix this glitch disk utility also went into a state of refusing to force quit and freezing.

When it's in this glitched state I can start opening up applications and use them like normal although they sometimes get a bit buggy especially if they need major graphics card usage.

I can shut my mac down after this in three ways, hold down the power button, unplug the computer, or use the command shift - command - power. But when I try to update my mac and click restart and then do one of those three methods the update doesn't get installed.

So far I've tried resetting the VRAM and booting into safe mode neither of which have worked. Please help I'm desperate.

Im using Sierra currently on a 2015 iMac

There are 2 tools I recommend to use to narrow it down.

One is called EtreCheck (you have to download it)

The other is built-in system check from Terminal. The following command runs system diagnostics and creates a text file.

sudo sysdiagnose -f ~/Desktop/

It might take 5 minutes but creates complete report.

We could also just look for it in the Console.
For that you need to note exact time when you try to shut down.
Now go to the time stamp in the Console and see what it says.


Numbers default colors The default grays in Numbers don't suit my needs (the gray is too dark). Is there any way to adjust this pallette? I always find myself diving into the colors palette but this gets time consuming and leads to inconsistent colors across my documents.

You can replace the colours in the default palette. Once you have set a cell to your preferred colour, drag the new colour from Current Fill to one of the palette slots:

This will replace the colour in the palette:


Garageband workaround: Tempo change post-recording? Is there a way to change the master tempo in Garageband after you've already recorded some audio tracks?

Use case:

Create analog audio tracks (e.g. record guitar, voice, etc.)
Manually figure out the tempo of the recorded audio
Set the master tempo to this value
Add a drummer track which plays at this tempo

Any time you change the master tempo, it re-times all the tracks, which is exactly NOT what I want it to do.  I want it to not touch my analog audio tracks, and just add a drum track at the tempo I specify.

I realize Garageband isn't really intended for use as a DAW, but this seems like such a simple -- and common -- use case.  Yes, I know I could create the drum track first and pay along with it;  but that's not the question.

Any ideas?

Turns out there's a simple answer:  all this is supported in Logic.  Garageband and Logic are the same piece of software;  Garageband is the limited version.

I upgraded to Logic after being frustrated with this (and many other limitations).  It was well worth it.


How do I diagnose the source of crash on my MacBook Pro? My Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro 15" has been crashing more and more.
Previously there were various types of screen-freezes.
Now the screen-freeze is being followed by an auto-reboot, which suggests to me a serious memory fault. Auto-reboot is a 3-5 second freeze followed by sudden system reboot, that reloads the OS like normal.
I have backed everything up and run Drive Genius programs to defrag and verify the drive, but the problems have come back.
My current plan is to replace the hard drive.
My question is: what else could be going on here?
Can RAM or CPU chips be the of cause this? Is there any way to check that?

Screen-freezes include any of the following:

everything but the mouse freezes
everything freezes but no graphics distortion
all graphics distortion (whole screen; couple times with trippy mouse tracer effect)
all graphics fade to an eerie pale blue color (3 second fade time)

Specs

Processor 2.16 Ghz Intel Core Duo
Memory 2 GB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM
100GB hard drive (profiler doesn't show me the model)
This is the first generation of Intel MBPs; purchased new in 2006 I think.

Doesn't sound like a hard drive failure to me; maybe RAM or - worse - anything logic board.

Try the already mentioned AHT and try to find error logs via Console (if you don't know where to start looking, try narrowing your options by looking at the timestamps, they'll pretty much stop after whatever went wrong and then continue after the reboot with a noticeable time shift)

Other things you could try:

Verifying Volume and File Permissions, ideally while booting from a
recovery/install disc, not the installation on the hard drive.While
the graphical errors don't seem to be caused by a hard disk problem,
the OS crashes themselves might be because of corrupted files that
cause problems when being read/written.
Running a memory test and / or removing RAM modules to see whether one of those is faulty. In my experience though, faulty memory is
more likely to result in the device not starting up at all.
Try to check the temperatures of various parts of your machine, e.g. with iStats (and/or check whether you can simply feel your
machine getting noticeably hot). Graphical errors and/or freezes
might be due to overheating of components resulting in an emergency
shutdown to prevent damage to the hardware.


Apple software: moving Mail to an older computer My Macbook Pro under Sierra needs repair. While it is being repaired, I am reverting to an old machine running Yosemite. Does anyone know if the format of Apple Mail files has changed between Yosemite and Sierra?

My idea is to copy Library/Mail from the machine for repair to the Yosemite machine. Will that work? Are there other files (for Apple Mail) that I should copy before taking it to the repair shop? Presumably plist files should not be copied over.

Thanks, David

I moved mail from Sierra to El-Capitan and it worked fine. There are no reported problems with the scenario you're describing. I'd suggest following this Apple Doc before sending your mac for repair and check that everything is working, though.

Mail for Mac: Import or export mailboxes


Where is "Voice" on New Projects in GarageBand now? In my old GarageBand App under New Projects there was a "Voice" tab.  How do I locate that or is it no longer in the app?

They have taken that option out of the new project area in the latest version. You can use "Songwriter" and delete the drums and guitars, or chose "Empty Project" and add a vocal track.

If you want to get the settings you've used before you can open an old project and use "Save As..." after deleting all the audio (not tracks) to get a blank project with the settings you like.


How can I add an action to search for the selected Terminal text in Google? I want to be able to add an action to search Google with any selected text in Terminal. Any ideas?

You could use the one that's built into iTerm2 … (which is a viable replacement for Terminal anyway, if you don't know it yet)


How do I share my Thunderbolt Ethernet through WiFi in a hidden way? I want to share my internet connection in such a way that my SSID is not visible/discoverable on other devices. I want to allow access only to devices which know my SSID/mac address. Is there a way I can accomplish this?

While most routers provide the option to hide your SSID by not broadcasting it, to the best of my knowledge there is no built-in macOS way to do the same thing.

However, if the main reason you wanted to hide it was because you wanted to limit access to only those devices you wanted to connect to it, you can do this by setting a password on the Wi-Fi network your Mac is creating/sharing.

You can do this from the System Preferences > Sharing pane.

When you look at the Internet Sharing options, click on "Wi-Fi Options" button at the bottom-right of the screen and then you will be able to set the name, channel, and password of your ad-hoc network.

By doing this, other devices may be able to see your network, but they can't connect without the password.


Identifying which admin changed another admin's privileges Have a bit of a people issue and one user who has admin has changed another's privileges from admin to standard.  This is a university setting, but the student association not the university's network; I am the parent of the user who was (temporarily) demoted; some experience as a user but not admin using Linux and Apple systems (as well as Windows)...

The root user did not do it and privileges have been restored; current root user is not experienced as a sysadmin though.  Does OS X keep log files which would show who made this change?  assuming so, which log file(s) would need to be examined to get this information (I take it one needs to look at the asl logs through Console - but which logs?)  I do not have access to the system and need to describe this to those who will do it...

Any help would be appreciated.

You may also be able to glean some info from the BSM audit logs. The log files are in /var/audit and are viewed with praudit(8). I don't know the format of the audit record for changing an account, but there should be some clues. You can check the date range and look for privilege escalations. The text section may have mentions of the '/Local/Default' node.


Can I edit iOS Shortcuts in a text editor (or something) on my Mac? Is it possible to create or edit iOS Shortcuts using something other than an iOS device?
I've created a shortcut that rolls on a table and provides the output of that roll.  Entering in 100 entries on my iPhone is rather painful, especially as there are a dozen or so tables I'd like to program.  If I could edit the shortcut's definition as JSON, XML, or whatever on my Mac and then import it back into the Shortcuts app, that would be wonderful.  Is this possible?
I've never used XCode but is that a possibility if text editing is not?
I have the complete list of table entries in plain text format already, if there is some other approach rather than retyping all of them.

Currently this is not possible, unless you want to edit it in a plist format as states by @grg, but you could use an application called ScPL to write your shortcuts, then convert it to a .shortcut file and import it. There is also Shortcutor, however it is a paid app.


Window always stay on top on Catalina? With Catalina, is there an easy solution to have a window (not just a browser window) always on top of other windows?
This is an example (Mutify) of a window that I always want to show on top:


Share iPhone developer account for multiple devices I have a question, is it possible to share a developer account between a couple of devices? The reason is, I want to build a certain open source software myself, and upload to mine, and mine friends devices. We do not want to sell any applications etc in store, just use open source software, modified to our needs to communicate with each other. Is it possible? Or maybe there is a some free alternative besides jailbreak?

You are allowed to register up to 100 iOS devices for testing and Ad Hoc distribution per membership year. Please Note: Although you may remove a device from your account, it will continue to count against your 100 device limit.

Source

-> Yes. Yes it is possible.


Getting Applications location in Automator How do I get the directory where the app created in automator resides?

Example:

Create App using automator
Save to ~/Documents/Automator
Run automator app, which does something in it's directory

Add an AppleScript step which contains:

on run {input, parameters}

    set p to POSIX path of (path to me)
    return {p}

    return input
end run

From there, you can use the "p" parameter.


How do I delete music thats not downloaded? How come when I deleted all my music off of my phone, there is still music on it that just isn't downloaded? And how can I delete that music?

In iTunes, when viewing the Album or Artist, click on the ... to the right of it and then click Remove From My Music.


How do I reinstall Apple Software Update in Windows? I uninstalled Apple Software Update in my Boot Camp Windows 7 install as it was crashing every launch, and a repair of Apple Software Update through Programs and Features didn't fix the problem.

However, re-running Boot Camp Tools' setup.exe (it gives me a choice to do a repair) does not reinstall the Apple Software Update it initially installed.

I suppose you could be in the same situation if you chose not to use Software Update when prompted during the Boot Camp Tools install.

How do I install the Apple Software Update associated with Boot Camp when Boot Camp is already installed?

Ah, Software Update can be reinstalled by running AppleSoftwareUpdate.msi in the Boot Camp Windows support files under Drivers Apple

(To get the Boot Camp Windows support files, boot into Mac OS and use Boot Camp Assistant to save them to e.g. a USB drive that Windows will be able to read -- see https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/247252/5231)


How can I format a USB stick that's falsely marked as read-only? I was trying to create a bootable disk with Windows on it through bootcamp, but something went wrong during the installation. Now I have a read-only USB stick with corrupt files I'd like to fix. My USB stick doesn't have a read-only feature. Is there anything  I can do to force a reformat?

Try to partition the disk first.

If fails then by using Vendor and Product IDs of you flash drive find manufacturers' utility to perform low-level format. You will need Windows for that.


Github and credential-osxkeychain delete access Today I went to push to my Github account and got an authentication error. Surprised, I looked in Keychain Access to see if there was anything wrong as I had setup git to use git-credential-osxkeychain. I freaked a little when I saw that there were no references to git at all. I went to log onto the GitHub site and found that my password wasn't working either. After calming down from a I've-been-hacked-panic-attack I saw that Github had sent me an email that they had to reset some users passwords due to an internal error. Annoying but OK.

Here's the question: Is it possible for a service like git-credential-osxkeychain to delete keys from a keychain? Could this have been done by Github from their end somehow?

I ask as I went back to my backups of my keychain file and the old Github key is in there, and I definitely didn't manually delete it.

Yes, git-credential-osxkeychain can delete the GitHub entry in your KeyChain. It will do that when it gets a failed authentication, I've had it happen to me.

I'm not sure it's a good idea, but I understand the reason. It has the access to do it and it's not like it serves any purpose any more.

GitHub can't do it from their end, they don't have the permissions over your KeyChain.


Is it possible to change the iphone date picker? I'm new to apple products, just got a new iPhone 7.
I've been an avid GNU/Linux and Android, but decided to give iOS a chance.

I was wondering if it is possible to change the phone calendar picker (looks like a roulette wheel) to a calendar grid.

I'm looking for a way to change the date picker of existing applications, such as Gmail and Safari, e.g., by activating/deactivating a setting configuration or tweaking the application.

Precisely, I want to change from this:

to this:

An individual application could present their own date picker if it were programmed that way. You cannot change the applications made by other people.

A jailbreak tweak could potentially try to make this change, but I do not know of any.

If you are looking to make your own application, I would recommend asking in the regular Stack Overflow.


Paste text stored on Clipboard to a variable using pbpaste I have some text stored on my clipboard. I want to store this text onto a shell script "variable".

So something like:

ls -altr > pbcopy
tmp="something"
pbpaste > $tmp    # this doesn't get the ls command output :(
echo $tmp         # should not print something

Try

ls | pbcopy
tmp=$(pbpaste)

And don't forget to remove the files called pbcopy and something you created with your first and second line.


Options for Replacing 60w Magsafe Power Supply For the second time in four weeks I've had to re-solder the mag safe cord back on to the power supply. This time, unlike the first, the cord broke on the negative terminal on the circuit board itself. I was able to put a dab of solder back on the terminal to keep the power supply working, but the connection is weak, and I'm not sure how long it's going to last (I repack my charger a few times a day when I'm in school).

To that end, my question is this: would it be possible to solder the proprietary end of the (i.e. the magsafe cord) of the a/c adapter to a generic 60w adapter? I'm no electrician, but it seems as though nearly all 60w power supplies would be more or less equal in the whole scheme of things, but I could be wrong, and I don't want to fry my laptop.

Has anyone tried this?

Thanks in advance

No, you cannot just arbitrarily solder the cord from the MagSafe Power Supply on to a generic 60w power supply as the output voltage and amperage need to be matched as well.

That said, since you're having issues where it's connecting to the power supply I have to assume your starting off by wrapping the cord to tight around its ears.  You're not supposed to bend it tight at it base!  Start wrapping it by allowing it to stay sticking straight out from the power supply, as in the picture below, and then start a bend to wrap it around the ears.

My previous MacBook Pro which I had for 7 years I wrapped it as in the picture and never had and issue with it.  I still have the old MBP and power supply and it looks a good as the two year old one in the picture below.


iPhone 4s Can't turn on WiFi button because no response I haven't backed up my phone in almost a year. Now today I had a strange issue appear that the phone froze for hours and I couldn't do anything at all. Now it mysteriously unfroze and i'm afraid that if I don't back it up i'll eventually have to restore it and I'll lose everything.

To back up the iPhone 4s, wi-fi needs to be on however, the wi-fi button is off and it won't let me click wi-fi on. The button doesn't respond. The button hasn't responded in months. What can I do to turn on wi-fi and how do I get the button to respond? Did I accidentally click something somewhere that makes the Wi-fi button never respond?

Simply don't use wi-fi to backup. Use a USB cable. Even if wi-fi backup is enabled, you can always plug your iPhone into your computer and initiate a backup via USB. Plus, it is much faster.


How can I recover files in an app bundle that were lost after an OS update? I saved a file in an app's application content (right clicked the application file, and then clicked Show Package Contents) for security issues. However, during the upgrade to OS X Lion, I completely forgot it was there and subsequently the app was updated and the file is gone! It was the application Stickies, in case that's helpful. Does anyone know if there's any way I can recover it?

EDIT: No longer looking for a solution, files have been found using diskdrill.

I managed to recover my file by downloading the free version of Disk Drill.  I used the deep search options locate removed files on my Mac; you can view results by type of file, however names as far as I can see are not conserved, so you will have to preview each file one by one.  To actually recover the file you must upgrade to the Pro version of the software.


Use Siri to play all songs (shuffled) in iOS 9 In iOS 8.4 and below, I could tell Siri, "play all songs, shuffled" or "shuffle all songs" no matter where in the OS I was. But now when I try that, Siri tells me that I must be in the Music app, playing a song for that command to work. And even when I am in the Music app, it only shuffles the songs in the current album or playlist.

Does anyone know how to tell Siri to "play all songs (shuffled)" in iOS 9?

"Siri, shuffle all my music" - that worked for me!


Why is the Lock feature not working on my folder? I have a private folder on my drive that I keep personal docs in and i want to make it password protected. So I thought I would click Get Info > make it write only in the Sharing & Permissions section > lock it in the General section, then click the padlock at the bottom corner to prevent changes, which means if anyone wants to get access to the folder, they would have to click the padlock, type in a password, uncheck the Locked tick and then change the permissions to read & write.

This worked for a while, but now when I access the folder, I go through all those steps and when I click the padlock, I don't hear the locking noise and I can still make changes to the folder.

Is there a setting somewhere that I need to fix/unfix? Is there something in Terminal I can do to make this folder password protected?

If your goal is to prevent someone accidentally stumbling into a folder, making the folder un-readable through the Finder dialog would likely accomplish that goal (and without needing a password — one is unlikely to "accidentally" open the File Info dialog, change the permissions settings, then open the folder.

If you are concerned about some snooping that isn't quite accidental, you really need more protection. I'd recommend using an encrypted disk image. That way you can give your folder real password protection, and the password you use doesn't have to be the system password (which users of your computer might need to know).


"Updates are ready to install" but I couldn't install My company had given me an iMac to use and apps like iMovie, iPhoto had been installed by a former employee who had been using this iMac before me. Now the problem is; Updates are available for those apps, but I could not install updates of those apps because OS asks for password of that person's Apple ID. OS daily prompts me about updates but i can't install updates as well as stop notifications to prompt.

I seriously don't like these notifications and can't find a way to stop them.

I need either of the following possible solutions:

No more "update" notifications.
Change Apple ID of those apps.

Is there a way to achieve any??

BTW I m using OS X Mavericks 10.9.1

See this answers to your questions:

Also to take full ownership of the computer:

Make a user account with administrative privileges, and disable the other account (the previous owner)


Songs will not sync or transfer Certain music downloads in my iTunes library appear with an "!" to the far left. The download has 6 songs, with only one song transfered to my iPhone 3GS. Five songs had the "!" and they will not transfer or sync.

The songs will not transfer for the same reason iTunes displays the "!": iTunes probably can't find the file. In the Finder (or Explorer, if you're on Windows), see if the files are where they're supposed to be. (One easy way to do this would be to right-click on the file that works and choose "Show in Finder" or "Show in Explorer" and see if the other files are anywhere near that one.)


Why can't I transfer purchases from my jailbroken iPhone 3GS to iTunes? I have a jailbroken iPhone 3GS and I cannot transfer purchases to iTunes.

This is a recent issue; I could transfer purchases earlier.

If both iTunes and the iPhone are logged into the same iTunes account and you still can't sync the apps and you don't want to play with the iPhone too much (jailbreaking does weird things sometimes, seemingly irrelevant stuff can break things), you can just download the apps again in iTunes. All purchases can be re-downloaded for free.


Plugging MacBook Pro's display assembly onto MacBook Air Logic Board As a temporary replacement, can I plug a MacBook Pro 13" mid 2009's display assembly onto my 13" mid 2011 MacBook Air's logic board?

It is ok if it cannot close, or is not transportable. All I need is to be able to troubleshoot my MacBook Air.

I am wondering :

whether it will work
whether it can damage either the display or the laptop

Technically speaking, it should work.

Even though (according to Everymac.com), the 2009 MBP display has a resolution of 1280x800 and the 2011 MacBook Air has a display of 1400x900 it is capable of a resolution of 1280x800.

MacBook Air:

How you are implementing it, however, will be th how you make the connection.  With a little research on iFixit.com, you can see that the LVDS connecorts for the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air are on opposite sides of the logic board

(Left Image is MacBook Pro and right image is MacBook Air)

So, even though closing and mobility is not a big concern, you would have to at least turn the display the "wrong way round" to just make the connection.

If you do attempt this, I highly advise you to isolate the logic board from any potential shorts by putting a silicone or plastic barrier (think place mat) over the logic board.


Ctrl + → to have the same effect as ⌥ + → How can I make Ctrl + Arrow to have the same effect as ⌥ + Arrow, i.e. move to the previous/next word?


Access photos only from select albums on all my devices I would like the ability to view photos grouped under two "People" (two children, say) in Photos 3.0 on all of my Apple devices. Basically I take new photos with my iPhone and occasionally sync them over to my MacBook. I want to view all photos in those two albums on the iPhone (when visiting relatives, say).

I don't want to upload all of my photos to iCloud, so iCloud Photo Library does not seem to be the right option.

I want the ability to view all photos from those two albums (people) on my devices, so My Photo Stream (which covers only recent photos) also does not seem to be the right option.

I want to "share" these photos with myself, not necessarily with others, so iCloud Photo Sharing does not seem to be the right option either?

Is there native support in macOS and iOS for what I want to accomplish?

I guess I was halfway stuck between an older way of doing things (sync) and a newer (cloud). The older way still offers selecting individual albums (e.g. for the two faces) for syncing between two devices.

Photos apparently still makes lots of mistakes in assigning photos to albums (as is its want) and therefore the result is still less than optimal overall, but it is probably the right way for me to go.


Multiple credit cards with Apple ID Is it possible to use multiple credit cards with your Apple ID and switch between them?

This is a common option with most online merchants, so I don't see why Apple wouldn't have this as well. For me the issue is that I have a private credit card I use for buying apps, music, etc. and a company credit card for paying for stuff like iCloud Storage. I don't want to manually have to update my credit card info each time I need to make a purchase with the company card.

You are not able to switch cards with your Apple ID. The only option is to create a new account with a different card.

Only with Apple Pay can you switch cards when making physical purchases.


Updating OS X Mavericks without entering payment information? A while back I created a Apple ID for my self on a loaned iPhone 4 at work.
Recently my partner upgraded her MacBook Pro to Mavericks, and being the IT guy in the house, I installed the first few updates that popped up after signing in with my Apple ID on my user account.
Today she received more update notifications on her account, so she proceeded to install them. She was asked for my account password. Strange that that carries across user accounts, but okay... clicked the Store menu, Create Account. All goes fine, until the billing information step. Neither of us has a credit card, nor do we understand why one is needed for system updates.
I looked around for a solution and came across this article in Apple's knowledge base:
Creating an iTunes Store, App Store, iBooks Store, and Mac App Store account without a credit card.
It suggests using "None" as the payment option, but such an option does not show up for us.

Now I know similar questions have been asked before, but none seem to answer this question: How to update Mac OS X Mavericks without entering any payment info?

Also: Why can I install updates even though I haven't entered any billing info either? We don't have any iOS devices to try to duplicate the results.

I think I solved it.
The reason my partner was asked for an Apple ID in her user account in the first place, was because I was signed in to the App Store with my ID under my user account. After signing out of the App Store on my account and logging back into her account, she was no longer asked to enter my password or an Apple ID altogether anymore.

I would consider this a pretty strange bug, an apparently rare but easily reproduced one at that, but perhaps this will help other people who share a Mac.


Get a copy of iphone lock screen I no longer have the photo I used for my iPhone lock screen, and I would like to retrieve a copy of it, or a full screen shot of the lock screen without the slider bar and time/date display.  Is there a way I can do this?

I wanted to keep a background from an older version of iOS that was no longer available.  I did the following.

Take a screenshot of your lock screen by pressing the Lock and Home buttons simultaneously.
Get the screenshot onto a computer by email or syncing.
Go to Google Image Search, press the camera icon, and upload the screenshot.
Find a suitable copy to download.

Unfortunately, if it's a photo you took, this won't show any results unless you've also uploaded the photo to the internet at some point.


Outlook 2011 Reading pane: wrap the subject text instead of truncating with ellipsis When viewing a mail with longer subject, in reading pane it shows the subject only in one line and if it exceeds it truncates with ellipsis notation.

Is there any way to display the complete subject with line wrapping?

One alternative is on hovering the subject,it shows the complete subject in a tooltip.

Outlook 2011 does not provide a way to change the behavior from ellipsis to line wrapping however you can try the following options to achieve a similar result.

Outlook 2011 contains 3 main window panes.  The navigation pane (furthest to the left), the email list pane (the middle pain that shows the list of emails -- I think this is the pane you wish to change) and lastly, the reading pane (furthest to the right).  This is the pane where you read the contents of a particular email.

Change the location of the Reading Pane.  I think by default the reading pane shows on the right hand side of the application.  From the main menu in Outlook choose 'View > Reading Pane > Below'.  This moves the entire reading pane below the list of emails pane.  Moving the reading pane below the email list pane allows the email list pane to span more horizontal real estate thereby allowing more of the subject line to show.
Hide the Reading Pane.  This will turn off the reading pane all together.  This option will afford you more horizontal AND more vertical space.  To read an individual email you have to double click to open it.  Note that for both option 1 and 2, in the email list pane you may have to also adjust the columns that are displayed or the width of those columns in order to see more of the subject column.  Move the mouse over those column boundaries until you see the slider.  Click and hold the slider to make a column more or less wide.
Make the Reading Pane Smaller.  If moving the reading pane to below the email list pane or hiding it out right is not an option you could click and drag the left hand slider of the reading pane to the right.  By making the reading pane smaller (less wide) you are effectively increasing the width of the email list pane.  A wider width will show you more of the subject line.

Happy Computing!


Tell iPhone that this wifi is a hotspot so it doesn't download 1MB/s for no reason when idle I've just connected my iPhone to my mobile 10GB wifi hotspot. Went to the hotspot's setup page and it turns out the iPhone is consuming about 1MB of data per second.

iCloud Drive and Backup is turned off, automatic App Store updates are turned off, iPhone is in low-power mode and I've tried force-closing all apps with no success.

I'm really frustrated with this, what else is there to deactivate?

No - on iOS 12 and lower, the device will not conserve data when you connect to WiFi.

Apple has previewed and announced that there will be a low data mode as part of iOS 13. This announcement was made at WWDC in June 2019 and also listed toward the bottom of this feature announcement page:

https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-13-preview/features/

  Low Data Mode

  Apps on your iPhone reduce their network data usage.

You would need some more elaborate networking filter to reduce data usage via WiFi when tethered or just connected to WiFi today on shipping iOS. For now, the practical way is to closely monitor and manage your updates and settings so you don’t automatically update when connected to WiFi or ensure those downloads and syncs complete before you rejoin your hotspot.

You can use services to proxy or log data connections. Two I think are very useful are CharlesProxy and guardian firewall:

https://www.charlesproxy.com/documentation/ios/
https://guardianapp.com/blog/2019/06/introducing-guardian-firewall-for-ios/

They both do more than simply meter bandwidth, but are trusted and clear how they generate revenue and are unlikely to abuse your data or privacy if you cannot wait for Apple solutions.


Mac swift process blocks system, high memory pressure Recently, since XCode 11, my Mac starts a process (it seems like it does so when indexing or building files) called swift and my Mac soon starts to lag. This process gathers a lot of memory (sometimes it gathers up to 70 GB) from my computer and I have to kill the process every time in order to get back to normal and start using my Mac as before.

How do I stop this memory pressure from increasing this much ?

To clean your build in Xcode (under Product menu) and deleting cache in ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/ (not the whole Developer folder, as it has simulators etc. too) was my original suggestion.

Finding on Stack Overflow got me these:

Restart your Mac.
After making a copy of your project in a safe place, right click on the project file and select "Show Package Contents". Delete the .xcworkspace file and rebuild your project. Use the backup file if it persists.
Bugs in Swift which can be triggered by

Declaring arrays in multiple lines
Programming errors.
Several concatenations in one line

  ...it was caused by a 20 item array literal. Had to switch to different syntax.

and so on..

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24782721/xcode-swift-indexing-forever
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13831559/xcode-stuck-on-indexing
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26494082/swift-xcode-index-freezing-or-slow

New ones:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58874341/xcode-indexing-takes-ages-and-uses-gigabytes-of-memory says cocoapods.
And https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58649756/xcode-uses-huge-ram-memory-90gb This and some under the search Xcode swift memory indicate that it might be a new bug.

Your best bet is to use search and sort feature on SO, see linked and suggested questions to find problems in your code. Might even want to use source control to move back to the part where it was not problematic. After you've exhausted your search and trials, edit the question, I'd put a bounty. If it is not helpful, ask mods to kindly migrate.


Disable accent functionality from backtick button I often type backticks (`) in various situations (Markdown, Github, SO, etc), and since the button used to type them also is used to modify letters (é/è/ú), writing backticks is generally a pain. On a scandinavian keyboard you also have to add the shift modifier, which doesn't help.

Currently, I feel like shift+backtick+space is the most predictable way of typing backticks.

But! I realized that I never use that key for anything other than backticks, and figured that it would be neat to modify the key to simply always output a single backtick. I can totally live with losing the accent functionality, but I guess it could potentially be kept accessible through modifiers.

I looked into Karabiner to achieve this, and while it's possible to rebind the key, it doesn't seem possible to map its output to a single backtick character.

And ideas?

It's pretty easy to make a custom layout which removes the dead key function from a key using Ukelele.


How to delete a folder that has 65535 links on it? Somehow a folder from /var/folders (/var/folders/2j/8_50ggln3wz21k4gmfx86drh0000gn/T/ on my machine) got 65535 links to it. This caused my machine to not boot anymore.
I managed to fix the booting issue my renaming it to something else (mv T X) in recovery mode.

The problem is I can't get rid of it (rm -rf or even ls on it hangs).

ls -tahl ~/.Trash
total 0
drwxr-xr-x+    67 <user>  staff   2.1K Nov 30 00:30 ..
drwxr-x---  65535 <user>  staff   139M Nov 29 22:14 X
drwx------      3 <user>  staff    96B Nov 29 22:01 .

And if I try:

rm -r ~/.Trash/X
...(hanged, does not return)

Wow.  I suggest  trying the following:

cd ~
sudo find ./.Trash/X -delete

If that stalls out, then try:

cd ~
sudo rm -rf ./.Trash/X/*
sudo rm -f ./.Trash/X/*
sudo rm -rf ./.Trash/X

If that triptych also fails, then I would like to see the output of

sudo stat -x ./.Trash/X

Hope that this helps,

F.


Why does my phone sometimes unlock with TouchID, but not go to home screen/app? I have an iPhone 7 running iOS 11.0.1. I just started using TouchID to unlock the phone, and I've occasionally encountered an unexpected behavior.

I thought that when pressing the home button it would unlock and go to the home screen, or last app. I have on multiple occasions pressed the home button to find myself at the lock screen, with the "Press home to open" message at the bottom, and the lock missing at the top. I can't seem to replicate this with any consistency.

The end result is exactly as if I pressed the hold button to wake the phone, and then touched the home button to unlock.

Is there some specific way that I'm pressing the home button to cause this?

I would prefer this behavior to opening to my last app because my natural grip on the phone makes it easier to press the home button than the hold button, and I like to check notifications on the lock screen.

Are you using raise to wake? There is a timing that is difficult to duplicate, but can be repeated, where you can press the home button and raise to wake at the same time. The Touch ID unlocks the phone, but the wake seems to register from the raise instead of the home button press and so you stay on the lock screen instead of opening to the last app/home screen.

If you want the behavior of the phone being unlocked, but staying on the lock screen so you can look at your notifications, then just raise to wake, rest your finger on the home button, but don’t press until you’re ready to leave the lock screen.


How can I stream audio to multiple computers at the same time? I'm trying to stream music to different computer's speakers simultaneously. Currently I'm doing this by physically timing the start of the song on each computer.

Are there any built in utilities or applescripts that will sync one instance of a song on two devices? I'll resort to commercial options if necessary but I'd prefer some nifty scripting.

I have a 2006 Intel iMac and a 2012 Macbook Air.

You can combine AirPlay in iTunes 11 and up with something like AirSever to accomplish this with good results and very little effort. (Note: For more options on how to turn your Mac in to an AirPlay receiver please see: Can I use a Mac Mini as an Airplay audio receiver?)

Install the AirPlay receiver software of your choice on the machine you want to stream audio to.

Start iTunes on the machine you want to stream audio from. In the upper left hand corner of iTunes, right next to the volume slider, you'll see the output device selection icon. It looks like this:

Press it and select the "Multiple" tab at the top of the screen. Select both "Computer" (which is the computer you're running iTunes on) and the name AirServer machine from the list.

Play something in iTunes and should play, simultaneously, on both machines.


Yosemite -Airdrop not working between 2012 Mac Mini and 2012 MacBook Pro Retina I have a 2012 Mac Mini, and a 2012 MBP Retina both on Yosemite. Airdrop worked very well under Mavericks, and I waited to see if the 10.10.1 update would fix it before posting this. My MBP detects my iPhone 6+, but not my Mac Mini, and my Mac Mini does not detect Anything with Airdrop. My Mac Mini is ethernet, but wireless is on, just not connected. How can I get them to see each other?

Old Airdrop and new Airdrop are different apps.

This may or may not help you but I found it while trying a mid-2011 and late-2013 iMacs. The docs say anything older than 2009 iMacs and MBP meet the system requirements for Airdrop, however, they don't mention that anything before 2013 is using a different version of Airdrop altogether and it's almost name-only in similarities.

I don't know how this affects your two 2012 versions, but perhaps this is the case for late-2012 and you can check both computers to see if either are affected by this. You will know if one computer has a message like "If you would like to share with another Mac, ask them to open Airdrop in the finder." This is the old Airdrop version message.

If you see two links with selectable options with who to allow discovery of your machine, and another link that says, "Don't see who you're looking for?" Then this is the message with the new version of Airdrop.

If one of your computers is new version and one is old, you can fix this by clicking the "Don't see who you're looking for?" link on the newer version and select "Connect with older Mac."

Now you should see each other in your finder. If this is not the case, then these instructions will not help you.


How do I know what iTunes credit is for? So I have "2 Credits" showing on the top right of the iTunes Store screen. I've purchased music, but that hasn't changed the number of credits. Are the credits specifically to be used for certain items, if so how do I know what items?

From https://discussions.apple.com/message/11510256#11510256

  It means that your next two purchases of that type won't be charged to a credit card or count against a gift card balance. They are sometimes granted by the iTunes Store staff.

Screenshot:

From https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100207142341AA3Kh6k

  It means you can get one[in your case 2] song download using that credit.

Screenshot:

From http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/itunes-is-displaying-5-credits-next-to-my-email-address-in-store-what-does-it-mean.1478823/

  5[in your case 2] free downloads. Did you report any problems with a purchase to them recently? They give them out for that kind of thing sometimes.

Screenshot:


Terminal - lose useful keyboard shortcuts during SSH connection I'm encountering an annoying issue. When I'm connecting to a Linux VM through my terminal by ssh, I don't have tab completion, or I can't navigate through my past commands with the directional arrows.

Do you have any idea on how to fix the cumbersome problem? Is it linked with the configuration of my terminal? Here is the output of the env command:

TERM_PROGRAM=Apple_Terminal
SHELL=/bin/bash
TERM=xterm-256color
TMPDIR=/var/folders/7m/9zh3pls10rd37f0bf1zgqtwm0000gn/T/
Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.jILyAJx9OV/Render
TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION=421.1
TERM_SESSION_ID=BB429A67-27F3-4A50-A891-DD5F15C2E2D9
USER=***
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=***
PWD=***
JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_161.jdk/Contents/Home
XPC_FLAGS=0x0
XPC_SERVICE_NAME=0
SHLVL=1
HOME=***
LOGNAME=***
LC_CTYPE=UTF-8
GOPATH=***
DISPLAY=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.7rCzuMNc2V/org.macosforge.xquartz:0
_=/usr/bin/env

Thanks!

Tab completion etc is configured in the shell, not in Terminal. So if you miss that functionality when logging in into a remote system you need to configure it in the shell you are running there.


Is it possible to combine two iPhones with tethering to increase bandwidth or fault tolerance? I'm using a MacBook as a "server" and want to keep it always connected to the internet, over cellular.

I have two mobile phones (one GSM, one CDMA) and would like to connect to each of them to achieve fault tolerance, or ideally, increased bandwidth.

Is there any way for me to

Simultaneously connect to two iPhones
Use the joined connection for fault tolerance, or increased bandwidth

I have the option to use Wifi, USB-C, or bluetooth to combine these phones, in any combination

Technically speaking, you can connect two iPhones simultaneously; it's called multi-homing (this is good for fault tolerance).  The pf firewall has this capability and is built into macOS, but writing the rules file is outside the scope of this question.

However, you can't combine the bandwidth to get a larger "pipe."  You'll still have two smaller pipes.   In order to combine bandwidth, you will need to aggregate the pipes or bond them which is something that the ISP/carrier will need to do for you - different carriers (GSM and CDMA) are very unlikely to do this.


How can I make preview stop wrapping around when paging? If I open a PDF document in Preview and navigate through the pages normally using Page down and Page up, then if I hold down the keys to trigger auto-repeat, when I reach the bottom (or top) of the document, Preview wraps around and shows me the top (or bottom) again.  For example, if I press and hold Page down to page forward, then when it reaches the end of the document, it doesn't stop there; it starts back at the top, going around in a kind of loop.  The behavior only happens if I set my key repeat rate (in system preferences) to the maximum possible.
What could cause this, and how can I prevent this from happening (short of reducing the keyboard repeat rate), so that Preview stops when it reaches the top or bottom of a document?
This is on macOS 10.13.6, on an iMac. This happens both with a Kinesis Pro keyboard and a bog-standard Dell USB keyboard; both have dedicated page up/down keys. In Preview settings, "opening for the first time" is set to continuous scroll. Example of a random PDF file where it happens: https://www.apple.com/procurement/pdf/impact-accelerator.pdf  Here is a video recording showing the behavior: https://share.getcloudapp.com/8LubXNo5

As discovered, this issue currently only exists with Preview when the Key Repeat slider on the Keyboard tab of the Keyboard pane in System Preferences is set to Fast, where the slider is all the way to the right. By default it's one position from the right.
This is a workaround solution that sets the Key Repeat slider to the default position when Preview is activated, and to Fast when it's deactivated, (i.e. given/lost keyboard/mouse focus).
It uses the third-party application Hammerspoon along with a bit of Lua code to watch for Preview being activated/deactivated, and an AppleScript script using UI Scripting to adjust the Key Repeat slider on the Keyboard tab of the Keyboard pane in System Preferences.
The example Lua code and exampleAppleScript code, shown further below, was tested under macOS High Sierra and macOS Catalina with Language & Region settings in System Preferences set to English (US) — Primary and worked for me without issue1.

1  Assumes necessary and appropriate setting in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility have been set/addressed as needed.

Note that the download and install instructions assume Safari and default preference [√] Open “safe” files after downloading checked.

Download Hammerspoon

https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon/releases/latest

Click the Hammerspoon-n.n.nn.zip link.

Install Hammerspoon

Open the Downloads folder and drag and drop the Hammerspoon application bundle into Applications.

Before you open Hammerspoon, add it to: System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility

Open Hammerspoon from Applications or Spotlight, then:
From the Hammerspoon menu,  on the menu bar, click it, then click Preferences…, and set them as follows:
Hammerspoon Preferences
Behavior:

[√] Launch Hammerspoon at login
[√] Check for updates
[ ] Show dock icon
[√] Show menu icon
[ ] Keep Console window on top
[ ] Send crash data (requires restart)

Accessibility: Accessibility is enabled. Your all set!
         Enable Accessibility (Should be grayed out.)
Close Hammerspoon Preferences.

Adding the Lua code to Hammerspoon
Open the Hammerspoon configuration file by clicking the Open Config command from the Hammerspoon menu,  on the menu bar.
Add the example Lua code to the init.lua configuration file and save the document, then close it.

Example Lua code:
function applicationPreviewWatcher(appName, eventType, appObject)
    if (eventType == hs.application.watcher.activated) then
        if (appName == "Preview") then
            local asFile = "/.hammerspoon/Scripts/ChangeKeyRepeatValue.applescript"
            local ok, status = hs.osascript.applescriptFromFile(os.getenv("HOME") .. asFile)
        end
    end
    if (eventType == hs.application.watcher.deactivated) then
        if (appName == "Preview") then
            local asFile = "/.hammerspoon/Scripts/ChangeKeyRepeatValue.applescript"
            local ok, status = hs.osascript.applescriptFromFile(os.getenv("HOME") .. asFile)
        end
    end
end
appPreviewWatcher = hs.application.watcher.new(applicationPreviewWatcher)
appPreviewWatcher:start()
-- appPreviewWatcher:stop()

Adding the AppleScript script to Hammerspoon
In Terminal:
mkdir -p ~/.hammerspoon/Scripts
touch ~/.hammerspoon/Scripts/ChangeKeyRepeatValue.applescript
open ~/.hammerspoon/Scripts/ChangeKeyRepeatValue.applescript

Close: Terminal (Assumes no errors from previous commands.)

In Script Editor:
Add the example AppleScript code, shown below, to the opened ChangeKeyRepeatValue.applescript document, then save it, and close the document.
Close: Script Editor
NOTE: With that done, you can now click the Reload Config command on the Hammerspoon menu,  on the menu bar.
This should now toggle the Key Repeat slider on the Keyboard tab of the Keyboard pane in System Preferences as Preview is activated/deactivated.

Example AppleScript code:
--  #
--  # NOTE: Hammerspoon does not allow the use of the
--  #       AppleScript line continuation character.
--  #       Therefore code must be written in long form.
--  #       It also doesn't like the use of some characters
--  #       such as symbols for modifier keys and others
--  #       in comments and possibly in code as well.
--  #
--  # ChangeKeyRepeatValue.applescript
--  #
--  # Change the value of Key Repeat on the Keyboard tab
--  # of the Keyboard pane in System Preferences.
--  #

--  # Check to see if System Preferences is
--  # running and if yes, then close it.
--  #
--  # This is done so the script will not fail
--  # if it is running and a modal sheet is
--  # showing, hence the use of 'killall'
--  # as 'quit' fails when done so, if it is.
--  #
--  # This is also done to allow default behaviors
--  # to be predictable from a clean occurrence.

if running of application "System Preferences" then
    try
        tell application "System Preferences" to quit
    on error
        do shell script "killall 'System Preferences'"
    end try
    delay 0.1
end if

--  # Make sure System Preferences is not running before
--  # opening it again. Otherwise there can be an issue
--  # when trying to reopen it while it's actually closing.

repeat while running of application "System Preferences" is true
    delay 0.1
end repeat

--  # Get the name of the frontmost application.

tell application "System Events"
    set appName to name of process 1 whose frontmost is true
end tell

--  # Open System Preferences to the Keyboard tab of the Keyboard pane.

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "keyboardTab" of pane id "com.apple.preference.keyboard"
end tell

--  # Change the value of Key Repeat as coded.

tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "System Preferences"
        set i to 0
        repeat until exists slider 2 of tab group 1 of window 1
            delay 0.1
            set i to i + 1
            if i > 30 then return
        end repeat
        if appName = "Preview" then
            set value of slider 2 of tab group 1 of window 1 to 6.0
        else
            set value of slider 2 of tab group 1 of window 1 to 7.0
        end if
    end tell
end tell

delay 0.1
tell application "System Preferences" to quit

Notes:
As currently coded, it assumes when Hammerspoon is first loaded that the Key Repeat slider on the Keyboard tab of the Keyboard pane in System Preferences is set to Fast and Preview is not frontmost.
It is normal to see the System Preferences icon on the Dock bounce once briefly showing the open indicator under it when Hammerspoon sees that Preview has been activated/deactivated. It's running the AppleScript script to change the position of the Key Repeat slider on the Keyboard tab of the Keyboard pane in System Preferences. This on my system takes less than a second. If I can find a way to programmatically behind the scene make this change without having to use UI Scripting with AppleScript I will update the code and notify the OP.
There is an issue with this workaround when manually clicking on System Preferences in the Dock when Preview is frontmost. To manually open System Preferences from the Dock when Preview is frontmost you need to set focus away from Preview first before clicking on System Preferences in the Dock. The behavior when Preview is frontmost and  manually trying to open System Preferences from the Dock results in System Preferences being opened and closed, bouncing on the Dock, without further user interaction. (I'll see what I can do to resolve this issue, although I think it's a nature of the beast type bug that one will just need to be aware of and live with for the benefit of what this solution provides.)
I am not affiliated with the developers of Hammerspoon, just a satisfied user of the product.

Note: The example Lua and AppleScript code is just that and sans any included error handling does not contain any additional error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted.


What's the keyboard shortcut to select the non-default button on a pop-up alert? Look at the screenshot. I want to select the non-blue button with a keyboard shortcut. What is it?

Tab key to navigate the focus between buttons, and press the space bar when a button is selected.

The effect is as above image.  When a blue box around a button, press the space bar, the button will be "pressed".

If you found that the focus cannot be set to the button, pen the Keyboard preference, and config it as following:


Boot hangs on grey screen (even when booting from USB drive with fresh OS X install) My MacBook Pro 15" Late 2011 (MacBookPro8,2) with AMD Radeon 6770M exhibited display corruption and associated system crashes/resets over a period of two weeks before it entirely failed to boot. The boot would progress through the grey screen with the Apple logo and spinner, but just when it seems it should have switched to the login screen the Apple logo and spinner would disappear and hang on a blank grey screen.

Initially I suspected hard-drive corruption and went about trying to remedy that. Unsuccessfully, I tried the following, with each continuing to hang as described above:

Safe boot
Boot into recovery (including Internet Recovery)
Boot from install media on USB drive
Boot from OS X installation on USB drive
Clear NVRAM
Reset SMC

I also ran the Apple Hardware Test many times without it finding any issues.

Verbose safe boot (Cmd+Shift+V) output everything that I'd expect to see but would then hang as described above.

After coming across more posts online of GPU related problems I revisited this as the cause:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/22751155#22751155
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577?start=210&tstart=0

Attempting to boot Ubuntu from a USB flash drive, I could only get as far as Grub. When trying to boot Ubuntu Desktop or run the graphicstest in Grub the system would hang.

At this point, running Apple Hardware Test hung right before the end of the standard test, possibly [guessing] when doing a video test.

Based on the advice in the Apple Discussions posts above I did the following:

Boot into Single-User mode
Execute the following commands:

    /sbin/fsck -fy /
    /sbin/mount -uw /
    mkdir /Disabled_System_Library_Extensions
    cd /Disabled_System_Library_Extensions
    mv /System/Library/Extensions/ATI* .
    mv /System/Library/Extensions/AMD* .
    touch /System/Library/Extensions
    exit

This time the machine booted all the way through. However, graphics are extremely slow, even just transitions when minimizing windows. I will be taking my MBP to Apple to demand a replacement as the large number of reports of others facing similar issues makes it look like a recurrence of a similar GPU-related failure that resulted in them doing a recall.

Solved: Booted to Single-User mode and disabled Radeon GPU.

Details of investigation:

Initially I suspected hard-drive corruption and went about trying to remedy that. Unsuccessfully, I tried the following, with each continuing to hang as described above:

Safe boot
Boot into recovery (including Internet Recovery)
Boot from install media on USB drive
Boot from OS X installation on USB drive
Clear NVRAM
Reset SMC

I also ran the Apple Hardware Test many times without it finding any issues.

Verbose safe boot (Cmd+Shift+V) output everything that I'd expect to see but would then hang as described above.

After coming across more posts online of GPU related problems I revisited this as the cause:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/22751155#22751155
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577?start=210&tstart=0

Attempting to boot Ubuntu from a USB flash drive, I could only get as far as Grub. When trying to boot Ubuntu Desktop or run the graphicstest in Grub the system would hang.

At this point, running Apple Hardware Test hung right before the end of the standard test, possibly [guessing] when doing a video test.

Based on the advice in the Apple Discussions posts above I did the following:

Boot into Single-User mode
Execute the following commands:

    /sbin/fsck -fy /
    /sbin/mount -uw /
    mkdir /Disabled_System_Library_Extensions
    cd /Disabled_System_Library_Extensions
    mv /System/Library/Extensions/ATI* .
    mv /System/Library/Extensions/AMD* .
    touch /System/Library/Extensions
    exit

This time the machine booted all the way through. However, graphics are extremely slow, even just transitions when minimizing windows. I will be taking my MBP to Apple to demand a replacement as the large number of reports of others facing similar issues makes it look like a recurrence of a similar GPU-related failure that resulted in them doing a recall.


Can I upgrade to the Lion Mail app alone, without upgrading to Lion in general? I'm currently on 10.6 and I really like it so I'm not really thinking about an upgrade right now. Two things I really like about 10.7 are the full screen apps and the Mail client.

Is it possible to somehow upgrade/purchase the Mail client of 10.7 alone? It would be really nice if I could do that.

These apps (and the full screen mode) require APIs that are not available on versions prior to Lion. Even if one could purchase Mail separately, it wouldn't run.


What is the highest resolution I can use with OS X 10.7.5 and DELL 30inch monitor? What is the highest resolution I can use with OS X 10.7.5 and DELL 30inch monitor?

OSX lion doesn't limit screen resolution, screen resolution is only limited by the graphics ability of the computer you're using and the screen res of the monitor you're using. If you're running lion then you have an intel chip mac. Older intel macs (pre 2009) with shared GMA video cards supported up to 1920×1200, however pretty much anything post 2009 will support up to 2560×1600 (which is what your Dell 30 inch monitor will be if its the current 3007WFP model)


Is there a way to make the iPadOS scrollbar permanently visible across apps? See the title. I’m using a mouse1 with my iPad (as of iOS 13.4). The lack of persistently visible scroll bars2 across apps (e.g. in Notes) is reducing my productivity, as I have to do a pointless scroll wheel manoeuver to make it appear (exacerbated by the fact that the hidden scrollbars do not become visible when touching the right hand margin).

So e.g. is there a setting like on the Mac to make the scrollbar always visible?

1:  Not an Apple Magic mouse, but various mice with scroll wheels
2:  Including the standard, dedicated margin above & below the scrollbar acting as a page up & down hit target


Unable to boot into recovery mode on El Capitan MacBook Air I want to disable System Integrity Protection, So i am trying to run this command csrutil disable On recovery mode, But i am not able to boot in Recovery mode, It keep showing user login screen, I tried to Hold this Command+R combination as well as Command+E+R till The Apple logo shows, But no luck.

This the output of diskutil list command

You could do Command+Option+R to boot into internet recovery (from Apple servers). Ensure a stable internet connection. You can then run csrutil disable in the terminal.

As far as your recovery partition. If it is truly not working, you can delete the partition, download the latest OS X installer from the App Store and then reinstall OS X (this will not delete your files, think of it just like an OS X update). As part of the OS X reinstall, it will add a fresh new recovery partition.

Hope that helps.


lost phone and password Apple ID I have used iPhone 6s before it was stolen in December 2016. I bought an iPhone 7 Plus but cannot login into my old account. I already tried to sign in but it failed. It seems that the password has changed. I tried all my password possibilities but it still will not work.
I need to login to my Apple ID because all my applications are linked with the old iPhone.
I had also tried to enter my credit card number but still not work.

If you are sure that you have the correct email address for the Apple ID, you could try to reset the password using the following link: appleid.apple.com

The website will ask for your birthday and possibly also your security questions.

If you don't know the answer to your security questions anymore, you can contact Apple Care. The phone number for Apple Care in your country is listen on this page from Apple: Apple Care phone numbers


controlling a machine with usb boot or target mode I need to change some preferences on a mac of which statup disk I can't control due to video issue (I don't see the desktop and so on ), I can use an usb disk to boot or launch it as target disk.... but can I operate on hits preferences?
thanks for now

If you boot your Mac into Target Disk Mode, you can access all of its files (provided you have the pertinent credentials) using another Mac. To start, reboot while holding down the T key on the Mac of which you would like to access the disk.

Once booted into Target Disk Mode, connect it to another Mac. This can be done using a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable, or using a USB Type C > USB Type A cable if you have the MacBook (Retina 12") (note that Apple does not sell this cable, but Belkin will soon. You can use your standard USB Type C cable if you're connecting it to another MacBook).

Then, to get to your displays preferences, open the property list located at ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver.<uuid>.plist. It's binary plist, meaning that you must either open it using a tool like Xcode, or convert it to XML by running plutil -convert xml1 com.apple.windowserver.<your_uuid>.plist on the command line in the appropriate directory to make it suit for opening by text editor. (Note that after this you will need to convert back to binary using plutil -convert binary1 com.apple.windowserver.<your_uuid>.plist).

When it's all said and done, you should be able to change your display settings back to ones appropriate for your display.


iOS contacts app that can print data from vCards Is anyone aware of an iOS app that can sync with CardDav to get a contact list and can then print off a nicely formatted contact card?

Basically, I want to be able to print information for referrals for patients.  Contacts can work great for holding this information, but we can't print it from iPads

The way to get the contacts out is to use the Workflow app as it can receive contacts from the Share Contact control and then parse the input.

If you want the address, just dump the entire contact to the printer. If you want to customize things, you can select specific fields or set variables / pass the data to a python script that runs in Pythonista.


Remote desktop to Mac with broken graphics card We have a mac with a broken graphicscard (Lots of stripes etc.)

Is there some way to run it remotely without being disturbed by the graphics card?

This is a iMac G5 (PowerPC with everything in the screen).

The question is more for apps than the whole desktop.

Screen Sharing can be enabled via the terminal : sudo sh -c "/bin/echo -n enabled > /Library/Preferences/com.apple.ScreenSharing.launchd"

I have had the AppleVNC service freak out because it couldn't determine the clients screen resolution.


Purchased Logic Pro X not showing up in updates I purchased Logic Pro X on the app store. It's never showing in the updates, I just realised I still had the 10.3.1 version and I cannot update it to 10.4.6.

I use Catalina, so the update should have been done automatically. How can I get it done?

This is due to your Apple ID. Make sure that you are signed in using the same ID that you used to purchase the download.


Can I access an OS X Yosemite Time Machine backup if I revert to OS X Mavericks? I've had problems with Yosemite since I've installed it but I'm also wondering if it is even worth it to revert since I've done everything on Yosemite?

Generally speaking, no, you can't simply 'restore' from a newer version of TM to an older OS.

That said, you can access the data.  And, if you understand how TimeMachine works at the UNIX level, you can use the hardlinks created to manually restore what you'd like.


Shell scripting: Select folder based on part of file name My project

I'm creating a bash shell script to execute from the Terminal. Its purpose is to archive lots and lots of project folders. Each folder follows a prescribed nomenclature: [YYYY.MM.DD] - Medium - Client - Project name - details--details - JobNumber. For example: [2006.02.01] - Print - Development - Appeal I - Kids Art Show Insert - D0601-11. These projects are currently one folder. I want to sort them into folders by Client name. There are 7 (internal) clients, so I'm using the following shell script:

#!/bin/bash

# Go to the Completed Projects folder.
cd /Volumes/communications/Projects/Completed\ Projects/

# Find a folder with a specified string (e.g. "Academics") in its name.
# Move (not copy) the folder to its corresponding sub-folder of the Archived Projects folder. (e.g. /Academics)

for folder in *; do
    if [[ -d "$folder" ]]; then
        if [[ "$folder" == *Academics* ]]; then
            echo "Archiving $folder to Archived Projects → Academics...";
            mv "$folder" /Volumes/communications/Projects/Archived\ Projects/Academics/
        fi
        elif [[ "$folder" == *Admissions* ]]; then
            echo "Archiving $folder to Archived Projects → Admissions...";
            mv "$folder" /Volumes/communications/Projects/Archived\ Projects/Admissions/
        fi
        elif [[ "$folder" == *Alumni* ]]; then
            echo "Archiving $folder to Archived Projects → Academics...";
            mv "$folder" /Volumes/communications/Projects/Archived\ Projects/Alumni/
        fi
        elif [[ "$folder" == *Communications* ]]; then
            echo "Archiving $folder to Archived Projects → Academics...";
            mv "$folder" /Volumes/communications/Projects/Archived\ Projects/Communications/
        fi
        elif [[ "$folder" == *Development* ]]; then
            echo "Archiving $folder to Archived Projects → Academics...";
            mv "$folder" /Volumes/communications/Projects/Archived\ Projects/Development/
        fi
        elif [[ "$folder" == *President* ]]; then
            echo "Archiving $folder to Archived Projects → Academics...";
            mv "$folder" /Volumes/communications/Projects/Archived\ Projects/President/
        fi
        elif [[ "$folder" == *Student\ Life* ]]; then
            echo "Archiving $folder to Archived Projects → Academics...";
            mv "$folder" /Volumes/communications/Projects/Archived\ Projects/Student\ Life/
        fi
    else #Folders that don't match the pattern prompt the use to move them by hand.
        echo "$folder does not have a Department name. Move it by
done

My problem

My script would mis-parse and mis-file a project named [2006.03.01] - Print - Development - Academics and Accreditation - D0601-08. It would read "Academics" before it ever got to the conditional for the client "Development". As a result, it would be files into "Academics". And I'd have to pick it back out by hand!

My system's advantage

My colleagues and I have been scrupulous about our nomenclature (described above). I know that the Client name falls in between the 2nd and 3rd hyphens.

My question

How to leverage my system's advantage to solve my problem? I want this script to match only the part of the folder name that comes after the first two hyphens and before the third hyphen, i.e., I only want this script to search the Client "field" in the folder name. I keep thinking "regular expressions" but have no idea how to implement them.

Note: I prefer for a solution to augment my current script, rather than replace it. I arrived at it via @patrix on this site and his idea circumvented some errors.

How about using awk with the field separator option -F  and separate the field by the hyphen. Then get the third field.

UPDATE

I have updated the code to use the result returned from the awk to place the destination folder. This saves on a lot of code. And also used the separator " - " as Ian C pointed out in the comments.

#!/bin/bash

# Go to the Completed Projects folder.
cd /Volumes/communications/Projects/Completed\ Projects/

# Find a folder with a specified string (e.g. "Academics") in its name.
# Move (not copy) the folder to its corresponding sub-folder of the Archived Projects folder. (e.g. /Academics)

for folder in *; do
    if [[ -d "$folder" ]]; then
        thirdfield=`echo "$folder" | /usr/bin/awk -F ' - ' '{print $3}'`;
        echo "Archiving $folder to Archived Projects → $thirdfield...";
        mv "$folder" /Volumes/communications/Projects/Archived\ Projects/"$thirdfield"/"$folder"
    fi
done

I have also added /"$folder" at the end of the move so the folder itself is moved. you can change this if thats not what you want by removing the "$folder" from the end of the mv command.

You can also cross check against an array of the 7 names so only those folders that correspond will be moved. ( you can insert an else statement where needed)

#!/bin/bash

# Go to the Completed Projects folder.
cd /Volumes/communications/Projects/Completed\ Projects/

# Find a folder with a specified string (e.g. "Academics") in its name.
# Move (not copy) the folder to its corresponding sub-folder of the Archived Projects folder. (e.g. /Academics)

# Array of names to check against
ArrayName=(Academics Admissions  Alumni Communications Development President Student)

for folder in *; do
    if [[ -d "$folder" ]]; then
        thirdfield=`echo "$folder" | /usr/bin/awk -F ' - ' '{print $3}'`;

        for var in "${ArrayName[@]}"; do
            # Only move the folder if its key name exists in the arrary
            if [ "${var}" = "$thirdfield" ]; then
                echo "Archiving $folder to Archived Projects → $thirdfield...";
                mv "$folder" /Volumes/communications/Projects/Archived\ Projects/"$thirdfield"/"$folder"
            fi
        done
    fi
done