Why do I have to reenter my passwords after moving HDD between Macs? I recently had to transplanted my HDD into another Macbook Pro (after my own broke). I could boot without any problems in the new machine, but for some most (all?) applications wanted me to reenter my passwords (e.g. for all mail accounts, etc.). The passwords were still in the keychain. I could open the Keychain app, unlock the password entries and copy them again into the applications to continue. A couple of days later, I had to repeat the procedure and transplant the HDD again into another Macbook Pro. Again, I had to reenter all the passwords despite them being stored already in the keychain.

So the question is:

Why do I have to reenter passwords that are already stored in the Keychain app after migrating to a new hardware?

The problem lies in changes to the OS X Keychain apparently introduced with the extended iCloud support in Mavericks.

The Keychain has a new chain called Local items. The local items are stored in an sqlite database in a folder corresponding to the hardware UUID of the mainboard. Additionally it appears to be encrypted is a way that involves details from the mainboard (probably the UUID).

There are various people reporting to be unable to recover their local items after a hardware failure or after moving to new hardware. The only workaround to be affected by this problem appears to be enabling iCloud synchronization for the Keychain, thus the saved passwords are synced from the cloud to any new hardware. Of course, that is not helpful for people who are not interested in using iCloud.

See also:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6543257
New "Local Items" Keychain in Mavericks: What's it all about?
http://www.faqssys.info/how-do-i-migrate-my-keychains-local-items-to-a-new-mac/
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/data-migration-local-keychain-passwords-not-appearing.1905840/

If anybody knows a way to actually recover/decrypt the local items after moving one's account to a different hardware, I'd be happy to learn about it.


Possible to create a blockquote in Apple Notes? I'm using Apple Notes for lots of things lately (especially after discovering the Safari note taking workflow described here). Often I want to indicate a section is a quote, much like I can with Markdown, here in Stack Exchange, in GitHub, Slack, etc.

Like this

Is there any way to do a blockquote in Apple Notes?

I have never seen such an option. In macOS, the built-in help (Help > Notes Help) makes no mention of a block quote feature in the "Write and format notes" section, and a search within Notes help for "quote" did not return any results.
I think your best option is to increase the indentation of the text using Format > Indentation > Increase (⌘]).
On iOS and iPadOS, there is an option to increase indent under the format (Aa) menu.


Will Lion download from Mac App Store resume if network connection interrupted? I'm contemplating downloading it but I'm in an area prone to connectivity outages. Or does it install a pre-loader which then downloads the actual disk image (which I can curl)?

App applications downloaded from the App Store will automatically resume if your network service is interrupted. The Lion download is a DVD sized .dmg file that contains the OS, not a pre-loader.

If your download does get interrupted you can control + click on the Lion icon in your dock then click resume.


Deleting Photos: How do I delete across devices and cloud? I have an iPhone, and MacBook Air. If I delete a photo off of my iPhone, will this delete across all devices, or is there a way to only save in the cloud?

Edit: I am using iOS 10, macOS Sierra, and I am using iCloud across devices.

You didn't say what version of iOS or macOS you're using nor did you mention if you used iCloud or not.  This answer applies to the latest versions of all those.

If you are currently using iCloud to sync your photos across devices, once you delete a photo on any of those devices, it will also delete on iCloud.  Here is an Apple site about iCloud and how to use it.

iCloud is a syncing system designed to give you access to all your content regardless of what device you're using.

If you want to delete the photo from your device but keep it in a cloud solution, you need to use a 3rd-party cloud service.  Services such as Dropbox or Onebox can be used as a backup/storage solution.


Quickest way to share an iOS app I have a game app installed on my iPhone by the name of Odyssey. One of my friends likes it, and asked me to share it with him. I asked him to search by the name on the App Store, but he was unable to do so.

How do I share the app with him? Is there a quick and simple way to do so?

I am using an iPhone 8 and my friend is using an iPhone 7.

Update (September 2019)

Some of the information provided in the answer is no longer valid (specifically discussed in point #1), due to the changes introduced in the subsequent releases of iPhone hardware and iOS 13 software. They are discussed in the latter part of the answer.

The original answer applies well to iPhone equipped with 3D Touch hardware capability, and running iOS 12 or earlier supported version of iOS. Here's a list of iPhone that shipped with 3D Touch hardware:

iPhone 6s/6s Plus
iPhone 7/7 Plus
iPhone 8/8 Plus
iPhone X
iPhone XS/XS Max

Original Answer

It is not possible to share an app directly from one iPhone (iOS device) to another. What can be done instead is to share the App Store link for the app. Your friend can then install the app from the App Store onto their iPhone. There are different ways you can share the App Store link with your friend. I'll list them down, starting with the simplest and quickest one.

1. Using 3D Touch Quick Actions:

iPhone 6s and newer (excluding iPhone XR), namly 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus, X, XS, XS Max include a feature called 3D Touch. It gives users an additional mechanism to interact with the iPhone by using pressure to peek into and pop open content on iPhone. This is a hardware feature built into the display, and is not available on any other iOS device (iPod touch, iPad mini, iPad and iPad Pro).

You can use use Quick Actions to easily and quickly share the link for the app with your friend. On your iPhone, go to the Home Screen, locate the app, and apply a little pressure on the app icon until the iPhone gives a haptic feedback and reveals the Quick Actions menu like this:

Now simply tap on the Share Odyssey item to reveal the Share Sheet. You can AirDrop the link to the app to your friend, which will directly reveal the app in the App Store on your friend's iPhone. He/She can simply proceed to install it.

To use AirDrop, you'll need to ask your friend to enable it on their iPhone. AirDrop can be turned on by going to Settings app → General → AirDrop and tapping on Contacts Only or Everyone. AirDrop can also be turned on from the Control Centre (revealed by swiping from the bottom of the screen on the model of your and friends iPhone).

This is the quickest, easiest and the most newbie friendly way to share an app from one iPhone to another.

2. From your App Store purchase history:

Open the App Store app on your iPhone. Now tap on your profile picture shown at the top right. Tap Purchased to see the list of all the apps that you have bought and are linked with your Apple ID. Make sure All section is selected at the top.

Now locate the app in question from the list. You can also use the Search facility if your list of apps is lengthy. Once you have filtered down to locate the app, tap on the app icon to reveal the App Store page. Now tap on the blue circular button with three dots to reveal the action sheet. Tap on Share App... item to open the Share sheet. You can choose the usual sharing options to share the app with your friend (AirDrop, Messages etc.).

3. Searching on the App Store:

Quite often, the display name of an app (the one shown below the app icon) differs from the actual name. Searching the App Store by the display name shows the app in the results in most cases (you may have to scroll through in some cases). To search for the app, open the App Store app, tap on the Search item and enter the app display name in the search bar.

Once you have located the app under the search results, simply tap on the icon to reveal the App Store page for the app. Now tap on the blue circular button with three dots to reveal the action sheet. Tap on Share App... item to open the Share sheet. You can choose the usual sharing options to share the app with your friend (AirDrop, Messages etc.).

4. Searching on the Web and sharing the link:

You can also search by the app name or the display name on Web using a query similar to "app name + iTunes link" (Odyssey + iTunes link in this case). This is sometimes more efficient than searching on the App Store. (There's no right or wrong approach, the search logic for App Store and Web search work differently).

Now once you have the link for the app, you can share it by any suitable means as discussed above with your friend. When searching on Web on your iPhone, tapping on the link opens it directly in the App Store app.

The app in question is a beautifully designed game called Alto's Odyssey. You can share the following App Store link for the game with your friend:

https://itunes.apple.com/app/altos-odyssey/id1182456409

Update

3D Touch, a hardware feature has been subsequently been removed from the recent generation of iPhone. The functionality is simulated using a software based feature called Haptic Touch. Instead of detecting a physical pressure on screen, long tap is detected, and the device provides a Haptic feedback using the build in Taptic Engine in iPhone 6s and later (barring iPhone SE). Here's a screenshot from an iPhone 7 running iOS 13 with Haptic Touch in action for sharing App Store link to an installed 3rd party app.

Long press was earlier reserved to make the app icons wiggle, so that users can easily uninstall or rearrange apps, move them into folders and rename folders. As Haptic Touch has taken over it in iOS 13, the options are now made available in a similar menu as peak menu shown earlier. While earlier, an app could only display a share command, now every 3rd party apps shows at leat two commands, namely, Rearrange Apps and Share App.

Performing either a 3D Touch or a long tap on the devices that have the 3D Touch hardware, presents the same peek context menu.

iPhone XR, introduced in the year 2018 was the first iPhone to get rid of the 3D touch hardware, while the concurrently introduced iPhone XS and XS Max retained it. 2019 line of iPhone, namely, iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max all got rid of the 3D Touch hardware. They all rely on Haptic Touch to offer the similar functionality as discussed in point #1 above.

One of the earlier iPhone models, namely iPhone SE lacked 3D Touch hardware but supports running iOS 13. Since Haptic Touch is a software based feature, it received the similar functionality, which was not available previously.

P.S.: A quick and informative guide on difference between Haptic Touch and 3D Touch can be found here:

Haptic Touch vs 3D Touch: What's the Difference?


Video controls in Chrome shake when I'm watching YouTube videos in Flash So when I'm watching embedded videos from YouTube on websites in Mac OSX Lion in Google Chrome browser, the video controller bar shakes and looks weird if I mouse off the video to make the controls disappear. Is there a fix for this weirdness?

Update Google Chrome to the latest version and try disabling the experimental HTML5 player for YouTube.


If i deleted something from iPad notes how can I get it back? If I deleted something from iPad  notes can I get it back somehow?

If you have synced your notes with an iCloud account and your iPad is not connected to the internet you have a chance to access your notes at iCloud.com.
If your iCloud account is set with other devices like iPhone, Mac, and even Windows with iCloud application installed you have more chances to recover your note before connecting them to the internet.


Cannot erase disc in disc utility before trade in Looking for some help please.
I am preparing my 2014 MacBook for a trade in. I followed the instructions that Apple sent but failed on the 'turn FileVault off' stage. I did this, but my prediction now is that at some point during the process my battery went flat as everything I'm reading implies that my disc is still encrypted.
I booted up into recovery mode to complete the Erase Hard drive and reinstall MacOS process.
Using Disc Utility I then erased the top disc it showed me - 251 GB Apple SSD SM0256F Media.
I then went to erase the 2nd disc it showed Mac OS X Base System (which shows 1.15GB used)
However I am unable to erase this in Disc Recovery. In the Erase tab the 'erase free space' / security options / erase buttons are all greyed out.
How can I erase this disc? Presumably this is what I need to reinstall MacOS as currently when I try to run reinstallation from disc recovery no disc shows in the installation dialog
Thanks so much

The Base System (& the potential 20 or so tiny volumes you may be able to see below that) are part of your current Recovery session. You cannot erase them - nor do you need to. They are ephemeral & will disappear once you again boot to a normal OS.
You install your new OS to the main drive, once it has been erased.


Uninstalled zsh, terminal gone weird I uninstalled zsh pretty soon after I installed it as I realised I had got used to the normal Terminal. The uninstall went successfully and I restarted Terminal, but now it displays my computer-name (tommbp) with a % next to it, as display below:

I'm not sure if this impacts on using Terminal but I'm not a Terminal superuser or anything so I'd rather just have it back how it was. Also, I am a front-end dev for a Rails app and when I went to restart the rails server, it says it's not installed and when I try to install it, nothing loads.

Does anyone know how to fix these two issues?

How did you uninstall it? The title bars in the screenshots show that the current command is still zsh, or maybe /bin/zsh.

If you changed this setting in Terminal's preferences, change it back to the default login shell:

If you changed the default login shell, you can change it back to /bin/bash with chsh -s /bin/bash.


How do configure Skype For Business to not start when macOS starts? Skype For Business 16.2.145 automatically starts and sign's in when my machine starts.

The usual solutions for Skype don't work for Skype for Business. I cannot change this setting in the dock or in the app's preferences.

How do I change this setting?

Check System Preferences - Accounts for Sierra, Users and Groups for Catalina - Login Items and make sure it's added there.

Alternative 1:

Open the context menu on the icon in the dock -> options -> uncheck "open at login".

Alternative 2:

Open the terminal and type launchctl list | grep skype.

Then use sudo launchctl remove <name from the previous output> to prevent it from starting at login.


How do I perform a partial clone between 2 MacBook Pros? I would like to switch from 13 inch to 15 inch Macbook Pro (both are non-retina) because the 15 inch is 2 years newer and has 16GB RAM. However, I don't want to clone every single thing and I also don't want to lose the development environment setups (XAMPP, Virtual Machines, Eclipse) I have in my 13 inch Mac. What would be the best way to make the switch smoothly without losing these environments that are time-consuming to setup, but also leave behind a bunch of files cluttering up the SSD?

I would think that the easiest way is to use the Migration Assistant to copy your user account from the 13" to the 15" MacBook Pro.

This would ofcourse copy both the stuff you want to hang on to, and the stuff you don't want to hang on to. After migration has completed, you will need to delete the stuff you don't want.

The 13" MacBook Pro will continue to work as before - you will not loose your development environment there.

The only real alternative to this is to manually copy over only the bits you want - I'm guessing that it is much easier to delete what you don't need instead.

Also remember that with SSDs small files "cluttering" the drive is not the same technical issue as it could be with hard drives (i.e. fragmentation, etc).


Adding words to Hiragana input's dictionary I am trying to figure out how to add new words to the Japanese dictionary.

Specifically, my problem is, name of one of my friends is Manaka, spelled
愛可 (yes, that's 可愛い in reverse).  Problem is, if I type in まなか and try find an appropriate kanji substitute, the only one that I find is 愛花 (and yes, I've tried looking at the general kanji selection, by the reading, by radical,  names, etc).

Currently I type her name in by typing in あいか, which is annoying.

Is there a way to teach the hiragana input, that when I type in まなか I want to see 愛可 as one of the options presented to me?

MacOS X 10.7, MBP 13", English UI with Hiragana input added.


OS X unusably unresponsive after upgrading 10.6 to 10.8 Every other click and keystroke seems to cause my MacBook to just freeze for minutes at a time.

(I saw How to fix OS X Lion being unresponsive? but I'm not seeing much swap activity nor is my RAM filled up, according to the Activity Monitor.)

At this point I'd just like to salvage my data off the machine so I can do a clean reinstall, which hopefully will address the problem.  But it's taking forever to do anything, even bring up a menu/Finder or type in "terminal."

I guess my questions boil down to:

Ideally, is there a service/process/etc. that I should disable/stop/kill?  (If I can even get to it....)  I don't see any processes consuming much CPU/RAM, so I have no candidates to kill.  Is there a service that I should be disabling?  I'm new to OS X so I'm not sure how to debug this issue.
Otherwise, is there any way for me to at least get a "bare minimum" system up so that I can copy my files off, and perhaps run a few applications so as to export certain data that aren't neatly available for copying off as files?  Should I be rescuing via a live CD (which means I won't be able to run OS X applications to export data but if that's the only option then so be it)?  What would be a good live CD for this - Ubuntu?

Thanks.

Ultimately I discovered that there exists a Safe Mode, which you can access by pressing and holding Shift after the gray boot screen appears. In this mode the system was responsive again, and I could actually copy my data off.

There also exists a more restrictive Recovery Mode, which you can access by pressing and holding Command+R, and you can use Disk Utility there to copy entire disks around. However, that wasn't necessary for me (until it came time to wipe out and reinstall the OS).


How to repair damaged hybrid partition table from Windows? I am using a 2010 27" iMac with Mac OS High Sierra and Windows 10 via Bootcamp. Recently, I have had an issue where every Mac update renders the Windows partition unbootable. This means that after every Mac OS update, I need to use Gdisk to fix the hybrid partition table so I can boot Windows again. Unfortunately, this time after I did the repair the Mac partition will no longer boot. Is there a  way of fixing the hybrid partition table from Windows so I can get the Mac Partition to boot again, it doesn't show up in the ALT menu on startup and if I try to boot using Refind, the boot process begins but doesn't complete with a crossed out circle on the screen.

When I open Fdisk and run list partition, I get the following:

DISKPART> LIST PARTITION

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Primary           1370 GB    512 B
  Partition 2    Primary             14 GB  1370 GB
  Partition 3    Primary            478 GB  1384 GB
  Partition 4    Primary             16 KB  1863 GB

The Mac OS is installed on Partition 1, Partition 3 is the Boot Camp one.
The Mac OS partition still doesn't show up, even if I try to reinstall High Sierra from a USB drive.

Running the commands suggested below gave the following results, sorry for including them as an image, I could not work out how to save them from the USB boot drive.

What is the procedure to try and restore the Mac Partition? I think I will need to use GDisk from the Boot Camp partition. I think I messed up the last time I used GDisk on the Mac to get Windows working again so I want to be careful this time! Windows is working so how can anyone help me use FDisk/GDisk on Windows to restore the partition table to a working state?

The usual request is for the OP to post the output from the commands gpt -r show /dev/disk0 and fdisk /dev/disk0. You can enter these commands while booted to macOS Recovery. Normally, you boot to macOS Recovery by turning on your Mac and immediately pressing and holding Command (⌘)-R key combination. Continue holding until you see the Apple logo. Startup is complete when you see an utilities window similar to what is shown below.

Once boot to macOS Recovery, you can select to open a Terminal window from the menu bar.

If you can not boot to macOS Recovery and can boot Windows, then you can download and use GPT fdisk to print the contents of the GPT and MBR partition tables. After downloading and extracting, you will need to enter the command gdisk64 \\.\PhysicalDrive0 from an "Administrator: Command Prompt" window. To print the tables, enter the following when prompted by gdisk64.

r
p
o
q

After posting the content of these tables to your question, I would hopefully be able to advise on the next step.

Update:

Here are instructions for using gdisk under Windows to fix the MBR partition table.

Start by entering the command gdisk64 \\.\PhysicalDrive0 in an "Administrator: Command Prompt" window. Here, I assume the current directory in the window contains the gdisk64.exe file downloaded from gptfdisk at SourceForge.

Below are the commands to enter in to gdisk.

R
H
2 7
Y
AF
N
07
Y
N
W
Y

Below is sample output. Note: Your output might vary slightly from what is shown below.

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.4

Partition table scan:
  MBR: hybrid
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): R

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): H

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

Type from one to three GPT partition numbers, separated by spaces, to be
added to the hybrid MBR, in sequence: 2 7
Place EFI GPT (0xEE) partition first in MBR (good for GRUB)? (Y/N): Y

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

Creating entry for GPT partition #7 (MBR partition #3)
Enter an MBR hex code (default 07): 07
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): Y

Unused partition space(s) found. Use one to protect more partitions? (Y/N): N

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): W

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

Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): Y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to \\.\PhysicalDrive0.
Disk synchronization succeeded! The computer should now use the new
partition table.
The operation has completed successfully.

  Note: If you get macOS to boot, but Windows fails to boot, then you will need to rebuild your Windows BCD file.


macOS: Can I hide running apps with no active window from the Dock? I want to hide app icon from the Dock that are running but doesn't have an active window. I googled it, but the answers I found were all app specific.

I am looking for a generalized solution.

In general, majority of macOS apps are programmed to display it's icon in the Dock when it's running (exceptions are apps which display an icon only in the Menu bar when running).

If an app icon is not added permanently to the Dock, it's icon remains visible as long as it's running. The icon is removed from the Dock upon quitting the app by selecting App Name → Quit App Name from the app menu, or by invoking the keyboard shortcut Command + Q with the app in focus.

So, the only way to remove an app icon from the Dock is by quitting it.

Some apps are programmed to automatically quit when it's last visible window is closed either by clicking on the close button

at the top right, or when the close window keyboard shortcut Command + W is invoked.

Thus, it's up to the developer of the app to choose which of the two behavior to implement, and can not be changed by user.


Where does OS X store mouse preferences? I couldn't figure out where the settings I change with the "Mouse" system preferences are stored. Neither plist ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple..plist nor /Library/Preferences/com.apple..plist changes significantly if I change the mouse pointer speed.

My problem: at work I plug in a usb mouse, at home I use my bluetooth mouse.
When I switch I always have to change the speed because for usb the slider must be at the very left, for bluetooth mouse far at the right. So I wanted to write a script that changes and was hoping to be able to use

defaults write ...

The tracking speed is stored in ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist.

$ defaults read -g | grep mouse
    "com.apple.mouse.doubleClickThreshold" = "1.1";
    "com.apple.mouse.scaling" = "2.5";

The slowest speed shown in System Preferences is 0.0 and the highest is 3.0

You can change the speed by editing the plist directly or with defaults, but you have to log out and back in.

defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling -float 2.1

This would change the speed immediately:

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal pane "com.apple.preference.mouse"
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    set value of slider 3 of window 1 to 9.0 -- maximum, minimum is 0.0
end tell
quit application "System Preferences"


Update Macbook to newest supported OSX version? My Late 2008 Aluminium Macbook has 10.9.5 on it. The update tool offered me Sierra but then predictably told me I can't have it as this Mac is too old. I don't know what the last supported OSX version is for this Mac... is there a way I can get it?

In an ideal world I'd like to do a clean install as this MacBook is full of all kinds of crud I don't want anymore.

The latest OS supported on a Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook is OS X 10.11.6 and can be downloaded from this link which will open in the App Store.

Note that while is starts off saying "This version of OS X El Capitan is for users running OS X Snow Leopard...", it also says...* "This version of El Capitan can also be used on Mac computers that are not compatible with Sierra.".

You can use the instructions in Create a bootable installer for macOS to create a USB Installer to do a clean install of OS X El Capitan.

  Use the 'createinstallmedia' command in Terminal

  Download the macOS installer from the Mac App Store. Quit the installer if it opens automatically after downloading. The installer
  will be in your Applications folder.
  Mount your USB flash drive or other volume. You could also use a secondary internal partition that has at least 12GB of available disk
  space for the installation files.
  Open the Terminal app, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
  Use the createinstallmedia command in Terminal to create the bootable installer. For detailed usage instructions, make sure that
  the appropriate macOS installer is in your Applications folder, then
  enter one of the following paths in Terminal:

  Path for El Capitan:

/Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia

  Example

  This is the basic syntax of the command. Replace volumepath with the
  path to your USB flash drive or other volume, and replace
  installerpath with the path to the Install OS X app.

createinstallmedia --volume volumepath --applicationpath installerpath

  The following examples assume that the OS X installer is in your
  Applications folder and the name of your USB flash drive or other
  volume is MyVolume:

  Example for El Capitan:

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app

After creating the USB Installer, you can boot the Mac with it and do a clean install.  Make sure you backup anything you do not want to loose before erasing the HDD and installing OS X El Capitian.


When does it help to restore an iDevice using iTunes, as opposed to "erase all content and settings"? There are two ways to factory reset an iDevice:

On the iDevice, open Settings > General > Reset > Erase all content and settings. (Reference)
Plug in the device to a computer, open iTunes, and click the Reset button. (Reference)

One difference between these two is that (2) causes iTunes to download and install a fresh copy of iOS. Obviously, you'd use this technique when your iOS installation is so messed up that it doesn't even boot.

What are the other situations in which there's a difference between these two techniques for performing a factory reset?

Concretely, my iPhone suffers from poor battery life. I've exhausted all the other options I can think of, and I'm about to do a factory reset. Is it better I do it using iTunes in case my iOS installation is corrupt in some way?

I don't want to be in a situation where I do a factory reset on-device (technique (1) above), find that it still doesn't solve the issue, and then have to (2) anyway. If there's a chance of that happening, I'd rather go straight away to (2). Thanks.

Erase all content and settings does exactly that, it erases user data and restores default settings - but leaves the current version of iOS intact.

Performing a full restore through iTunes is the only way to completely erase the device and perform a fresh installation of iOS.

If you've any doubts then the iTunes restore is probably your best option as it will update your version of iOS, with the option of backing up and subsequently restoring your apps, music and other settings with the minimum of effort.


Upgrading from OS X El Capitan to macOS High Sierra I'm in the process of planning an upgrade from OS X El Capitan to macOS High Sierra, and I'm using things like Homebrew, Composer, Elasticsearch, and — by extension — Java.

I'm using MAMP Pro with the files stored in: /Library/WebServer/Documents/.

I need to know if these things will remain intact after the upgrade, or whether I have to install them again afterwards?

All the software installed in macOS (along with the ones you mentioned) remain intact between OS upgrades.

However, it is advisable to keep an up-to-date backup before performing the upgrade.


Set the default order and width of colums in the list view for all the folders in Finder I can set the order and width of columns in the folder that's currently front in the screen as default view of that particular folder, but how can I set it as the default view of all the folders? I'd like the columns to always sit in the Name, Date Added, Date Modified, Size, Kind, Date Last Opened, Date Created order, and the width of column for anything other than names to be narrow which ever the folder I'm looking at.

OS X Mountain Lion

If you don't want to use third-party Finder tweaking applications, the Finder has a display settings panel for windows that you get with Cmd-J. The settings you make in the panel are for the currently active  folder window, but there is a Use as Defaults button which does just that for new folder windows. This includes the column order and column width in the active window.

However, this doesn't override the display settings of folders that have been opened before. So in order to make your new display setting the default for all folders, you need to delete all folder display settings, then relaunch the Finder. Resetting is done by deleting the invisible .DS_Store files within each folder, in which the Finder stores the display settings. To do that, you can copy&paste the following Unix command into the Terminal application. The command execution requires you to put in an admin password and will take two minutes or so:

sudo find / -name ".DS_Store"  -exec rm {} \;

When it has finished, relaunch the Finder: Press Cmd-Alt-esc to open the 'Force Quit' window where you select 'Finder' and click 'Relaunch'. You will notice that icons on the Desktop are realigned to a standard grid. Now open a Finder window and create the new default display setting.

(This has been tested on OS X 10.7.5 Lion)


Why can I see two Push settings in iPhone? I know more or less how Push works, but why is there a Push on top (in Settings → Accounts & Passwords → Fetch New Data) then other options for iCloud, Outlook, Gmail etc?.

Is any of these related to My Photo Stream or iCloud Photo Library? Do these use Push or Fetch too?

The top push toggle allows you to override any accounts that have push set up. The data will then be fetched from the servers according to your fetch settings at the bottom.

iCloud and Outlook will be fetched with your current settings because you’ve essentially disabled push from any of your accounts (which saves battery and cell data). If you turn it on, they will both be pushed immediately (meaning your phone is constantly “listening” to the server for any updates) because that is how you set them on an individual level (the override is now off).

If you click on iCloud/Outlook you’ll see this explained when push is selected:

  “If Push is not available [because you toggled it off], the Fetch schedule will be used.”

———

In the comments of Nimesh’s answer you explain a flawed experiment. When you opened iCloud Drive on your phone, it fetched immediately. The way to test would be to send yourself an email from another device to either your Outlook or iCloud account and see how long it takes to get a notification,

If you have it set to fetch (check the server) every 30 minutes, it should come within 30 (not at 30 exactly, as it may be closer to the next time it checks the server).

Push, on the other hand, would be instant.

Of course the actual server changes immediately when you send an email etc but fetch vs push refers to how often it checks for those changes on your iPhone without you opening it “manually”. In practice, this is really only visible in terms of notifications (also whether the data would already be populated when you open the app).


How can I sort by date consistently in the Finder? I would like to use the "arrange by date" feature of Finder on Mountain Lion (version 10.8.2, all current system updates installed) and view the result in a consistent manner from "newer" to "older".

In this thread there is an example for what the "arrange by date" option does:

In this example (I found the same behavior on my machine) the table sections are sorted with newer items at the top and older items at the bottom. However, within each table section, the sort order is newer items at the bottom and older items at the top.

Is there a way to way to arrange everything in a consistent order and keep the sections for grouping the files into date categories?

When in finder, go to "view" in the menubar and then select "Show view options" (or something similar, or alternately just press cmd+J) When presented with the new window configure the options how you like them, and then press the "use as default", and now everything should be consistent.


If my phone is lost and locked, how will someone know how to contact me? My iPhone 4S is currently in someone else's hands. I can see it with Find My Phone. I have sent a number of messages to the phone in the hope that whoever has it will return it. But since the phone is locked, does that mean I have to include contact information in the messages I send? Or is there some information in the message that lets this culprit know how to get in touch?

While the phone is locked with a passcode, the only way someone could find the device's identity is to use a paperclip to remove the SIM tray. There the serial number and IMEI are printed on the tray. Also the ICCID (your SIM number) may be visible as well.

At that point, the finder could potentially reach out to Apple and/or your carrier that both presumably have some form of contact information to reach you - but your best bet is to send a message to the device with your contact information.

Unless you want to call your phone and hope someone answers. That also could place some contact information on the lock screen depending on your settings.


Bonjour visibility dropping over ethernet only I'm using a recently purchased 2012 Mac Mini and installed the latest Yosemite.
So far, it's being used headless as an iTunes server and I also have OS X Server 4 running on it for some basic home server stuff.

I'm using the Finder's Screen Sharing to log into it.  This works fine over Wi-Fi.  However, when I use ethernet, it will work for a while, then just drop out of nowhere.  I'm guessing that Bonjour is dropping as I can no longer see the Mini in the Finder server list.    I haven't been able to find a pattern as to why it is dropping yet.  I have to hook in a keyboard, mouse, and monitor; then re-enable wi-fi, and it pops up in the list again.
I would rather just hook it into my Airport Extreme using ethernet and leave wi-fi off.

In iTunes it also drops out of Home Sharing along with the Finder view.
I've tried 'Connect to Server' using the IP, and nothing.

Any ideas on how to proceed?

Thank you,
Glenn

Bonjour Sleep Proxy on Yoshitonme is broken.
When your Mac Mini goes to sleep it goes off the grid and Bonjour no longer can wakes it up via ethernet. No fix for it and none expected.

Work around is go to System Preferences > Energy Saver >  Slide "Computer Sleep" to "Never" and reboot Mac Mini.


Teaching mdworker some manners Ever since my SSD upgrade, I'm having troubles with my MBP Mid-2010 shutting down "randomly". To be more precise, it seems to be caused by mds/mdworker utilizing 100% of my CPU. As a fix I have disabled Spotlight indexing on my whole disk now, and the computer has been stable since then. However, I'd really prefer to still be able to search my disk if that's possible at all.

So, is there any way to each Spotlight/mdworker not to utilize all of my CPU capacity?

You could throttle the specific program using AppPolice:

https://github.com/fuyu/AppPolice

However, this is usually the wrong way to go about it.

If programs using 100% CPU makes your computer shutdown, you have a hardware issue. It would be better to fix the hardware issue.

Usually a problem like the one you described means that the fans in your computer have stopped working to spec. They probably need to be cleaned or replaced.


How to get the Disk Image property using terminal? Let's say I have the volume path.
Normally I can right-click and 'Get info' to get its Disk image.
I want to replicate the same on terminal (basically need to code it in objective C)
mdls doesn't seem to helping. Not xattr, putils etc.

The Disk Utility application shows the following on my Mac.

If I select "Get Info" on Marlin, I get the following popup.

I can also get information about the volume labeled Marlin by entering the following command in a Terminal application window.

diskutil  info  Marlin

Doing so produces the following output.

   Device Identifier:        disk0s4
   Device Node:              /dev/disk0s4
   Whole:                    No
   Part of Whole:            disk0

   Volume Name:              Marlin
   Mounted:                  Yes
   Mount Point:              /

   Partition Type:           Apple_HFS
   File System Personality:  Journaled HFS+
   Type (Bundle):            hfs
   Name (User Visible):      Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
   Journal:                  Journal size 24576 KB at offset 0x64fa5000
   Owners:                   Enabled

   OS Can Be Installed:      Yes
   Booter Disk:              disk0s5
   Recovery Disk:            disk0s5
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 SATA
   SMART Status:             Verified
   Volume UUID:              E0633113-8178-33A2-8ADF-95B61C49FD19
   Disk / Partition UUID:    398EA755-F8F5-403B-B946-0C75B5AD2783
   Partition Offset:         149075562496 Bytes (291163208 512-Byte-Device-Blocks)

   Disk Size:                250.0 GB (249999994880 Bytes) (exactly 488281240 512-Byte-Units)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

   Volume Total Space:       250.0 GB (249999994880 Bytes) (exactly 488281240 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Used Space:        237.4 GB (237416558592 Bytes) (exactly 463704216 512-Byte-Units) (95.0%)
   Volume Free Space:        12.6 GB (12583436288 Bytes) (exactly 24577024 512-Byte-Units) (5.0%)
   Allocation Block Size:    4096 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         No

   Device Location:          Internal
   Removable Media:          Fixed

   Solid State:              No
   Hardware AES Support:     No

Which is basically the same as using the Disk Utility application.


How do I get a single file that is 22GB onto a MS-DOS FAT 30GB memory stick? A commenter has suggested that a MS-DOS FAT memory stick has a limit of 4GB for each file. I have a 22GB file that when moved or saved to the stick says it is 'too large for the format' of my 30GB memory stick. I've used the Disk Utility to help reformat/clean the memory stick (which is new by the way).
What else do you suggest please?

You can format the memory stick as ExFAT. Go to Disk Utility, click the Erase button, and select the Format as ExFAT. ExFAT supports much larger file size and you'd be easily able to copy 22GB file on a ExFAT formatted filesystem.

ExFAT is supported on Mac, Windows as well as Linux and any of those OS can both read and write to an ExFAT formatted filesystem.

Alternate approach, if you wish to stick with MS-DOS FAT filesystem:
You can use the split command-line utility. The split utility comes pre-installed in macOS (I have assumed you are using a Mac).
The split command-line utility lets you split a large file into smaller chunks which can be managed separately. The command lets you specify the size of a chunk and the input file is broken into the chunks of mentioned size with the last chunk equal to or less than the chunk size.
The chunks can at a later point be re-joined to restore the original file.
This command-line utility comes in handy in cases where you have restrictions on file size such as yours (or such as when wanting to email a larger file which is over the limit for the attachment size allowed in an email).
This is how you can use the split command to break the 22GB file in question into chunks smaller than 4GB each. On your Mac, launch Terminal.app, use the cd command to navigate to the directory where you have the original 22GB file and type the following command:
split -b 4000m "original_filename" "pattern_name."

where the original_filename is the name of the input file and pattern_name. would be the name used for chunks. The chunks would be generated as pattern_name.aa, pattern_name.ab, pattern_name.ac and so on. The output file chunks would be generated and saved in the current directory. Each chunk would be 4000m or 4000 megabytes in size, which is under 4GB. You can choose any other appropriate chunk size as well.
Now you can copy the individual chunks on the memory sticks as they are smaller than the allowed size for the filesystem.
At a later point, when you want to re-join the chunks, copy the chunks onto a filesystem which supports larger file size (such as other Mac, or the same Mac in future), and run the following command:
cat pattern_name.* > original_filename

where the original_filename is the name/path for the output file.
Additionally, if you'd also want to make sure that the integrity of the file is maintained, you can derive and verify with the MD5 checksum for the original and the re-joined file.
The MD5 checksum for a file can be obtained by running the following built-in macOS command:
md5 original_filename

which should give an output similar to the following:
MD5 (original_filename) = 00e47d9d1414d49ab5ab3eee653ed96b

The value for checksum should match before and after the split. The value of checksum shown above would differ in your case.


My desktop background won't change automatically. OS X 10.6.7 In the Desktop & Screen Saver panel of System Preferences, I check the "Change Picture" box and set it to "Every 30 minutes".

The desktop background doesn't change.

I tried deleting com.apple.desktop.plist to no avail.
Any ideas?
Thanks for your help,

Damian

You might need to select a new folder of pictures and then back to the pictures you prefer. Deleting one of the plist files not all of them can sometimes leave the preference pane in a state of confusion.

Step one is to get some change, then re-enable the automated change part.


Middle row of keyboard (a-;) duplicating top row (q-p) I have a 2010 white Macbook and the middle row of the keyboard has gone funny. The keys all work fine still but they no longer correspond to the correct key. Pressing a for example prints q, h prints y, ; prints p.

Caps lock, ', \ and Return all work fine on the middle row however.

I've tried reducing it to one stick of RAM, tried it in both slots to see if that was the problem. Still the same results.

With the keyboard viewer open I can see the same results being highlighted, as if the middle row isn't there.

I have bootcamp installed and the same results happen in Windows too.

I've tried hunting around for the same issue but I can only find broken keys, not mismapped keys. Does anyone know how I might go about attempting to fix this?

Also to my knowledge nothing was spilled on the laptop it just stopped working one day.

SMC reset hasn't fixed it and external keyboards working fine.

Thanks

The keyboard in your Mac may need to be replaced, but you could try just disconnecting and reconnecting the keyboard using a guide from iFixit for repairing polyurethane MacBooks. Select your model from the list and then select keyboard replacement. I've repaired a slightly older MacBook than a 2010 for one of customers before, and it wasn't all that difficult, but just take a look at the guide from beginning to end to make sure you're comfortable with the repair before you attempt it.


How to install a specific version of OCaml on MacOS? I am trying to install version 4.02.3 of OCaml on MacOS 10.14.6 with the following command
brew install ocaml@4.02.3

but I get an error
Error: No available formula with the name "ocaml@4.02.3"

I need that specific version to compile unison with that specific version, so I can use unison between a Linux box (where I cannot install a different version of ocaml and the Mac).

You can use the git history to obtain the formula for OCaml 4.02.3

Go to the local directory where formulas are stored:

cd /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-core/Formula

Look at the history of the OCaml formula:

git log ocaml.rb

It appears that the last commit of version 4.02.3 is commit 3cdad82334496ca9fe8d8fb37.

Check out this commit:

git checkout 3cdad82334496ca9fe8d8fb37

By default, Homebrew make an update before an install, so you have to specify to not update before the install:

HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1 brew install ocaml

Check that you have the right version with:

ocaml -version

When finished, don't forget to go back to the master branch, in the /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-core/Formula directory:

git checkout master


Beam projector works in bootcamp, but do not work in macos The HDMI beam projector in my classroom works fine when I boot with Bootcamp (win 10), but it shows "no signal" when I boot with macOS (10.14.6)

I have changed all the available screen resolutions, and tried rebooting, but it was useless.

But I think there should be a way to resolve this problem.

MBP 15" mid-2014.

Any ideas to solve my problem?

HDMI on Macs is a curse, because Apple decided to take the HDMI spec more than just literally – not only do they rigorously enforce HDCP, but they take the unusual move of letting the display set the rules, not the host machine. Nor do Apple stick completely to the DisplayPort spec; getting 4K out of a 2013/2014 machine requires one part luck and one part voodoo – and you can forget about display daisychain :)

macOS is also extremely fussy about the output device resolutions that it will respond do – if the display signals (via EDID) to the Mac a resolution that doesn't exist in its lookup table, it goes all "talk to the hand, la la la …". To get macOS working with something it otherwise turns it's nose up at, you can either phone Apple Support and ask for an EDID Override file for that specific display device, or you can buy a copy of SwitchResX which will let you edit in whatever display resolutions you like.


Is iWork for iOS a real office document editor? Can I use iWork on my iPhone and iPad as a complement to my employer issued Windows PC? I know that iWork boasts some Microsoft Office compatibility but how is it implemented? If office documents are imported and converted to a iWork format and then have to be exported to a Office format on save, isn't there a risk for dataloss?

Ideally iWork would edit actual office documents but I'm not sure if this is the case.

There surely is a risk for data loss, mostly in the formatting of documents. As you suspected, the files are converted when opened (and saved) to the iWork format. Certain features in Office aren't present in iWork, such as SmartArt or VBA applications.

For handling simple letters it could be a compliment, but for business critical documents that shouldn't change their formatting all the time I would stick to one of both. Since your employer decides what you use at work I don't think iWork would be a very good option in this case.


Starcraft 2 update crash I'm trying to update Starcraft 2 to patch 1.3.1. Everytime it tries to write the patched files the entire system freezes and eventually also crashes.
The OS is 10.6.7 there is no log from starcraft itself most of the Times sometimes it tells me to Run the Blizzard Relais Tool. I tried fixing Disk permissions and Erlangung the filesystem. Also reinstalling didn't help.
Any ideas?

I had a similar issue. Starcraft has a temporary file that generally sits at /Applications/Starcraft II/Battle.net/Battle.net-patch.MPQ, when I deleted this file and started the repair tool at /Applications/StarCraft II/Support/Repair it worked beautifully.


How do I lock iPhone 5 in landscape mode? How do I lock iPhone 5 in landscape mode? I see how to lock it in portrait mode, and I've tried locking it in landscape mode using the assistive touch feature, but that isn't working for me.

Apparently you can!

If you want to try this out for yourself, here is the navigation to get to the setting:

Enabling AssistiveTouch:
Settings App>General>Scroll Down to Accessibility>Scroll Down to AssistiveTouch '
Toggle on AssistiveTouch.

Switching to Landscape:

Lock the device in portrait mode
Press Floating Square>Device>Rotate Screen>Left/Right

http://www.todaysiphone.com/2011/10/tips-tricks-lock-iphone-orientation-in-landscape/ ......................


How to fix contacts being read-only? My Contacts (accessible via Mail or the Contacts applications) are read-only on my Mac Book Pro running Mac OS X 10.8.2. Contacts reports itself as Version 7.1 (1167).

I have 5 total contacts currently, including Apple and "Me". Not sure what I did to add the other 3, but they cannot be modified or deleted, nor can I add any new ones.

If I add or edit a contact it behaves normally, until I close Contacts. When I reopen it then all the changes are gone.

I thought maybe the contacts folder was read-only in my Library, and thought I double checked that, but maybe I missed something.

The interesting thing is both the "On My Mac" and "iCloud" contacts are read-only.

It looks like there is, as you mention, a file permission problem, or maybe the Contacts database is corrupt.

In either case, try rebuilding the database:

Open Contacts and export your contacts with File>Export...>Contacts Archive....
Quit Contacts.
Open ~/Library/Application Support/ in the Finder (you will need to switch to the Finder, press Shift⌘G, type ~/Library/Application Support and press Enter).
Rename ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook to ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.bak.
Start Contacts. You will notice that there are only two contacts: Apple and you. Delete them.
Import the previously exported contacts with File>Import....


iMac is slow, memory pressure green I really need help with this one. It's extremely important, I can't afford to buy a new computer. So maybe like 3 or 4 weeks ago I got a virus. We got rid of the virus, but the computer was sill INCREDIBLY slow. It got so extreme I had to wipe the drive and install a fresh copy of macOS Sierra. This still did not make it faster. It sure helped, but it didn't fix it. I have to do frequent restarts to get mild preformance for like 10 minutes. As of time of writing, it's being very slow. I'm barely able to type.

So I asked on StackExchange, but I didn't pose my question correct I guess, so at the end, the answer was, I do not need more RAM. I want to fix my computer all the way and make it fast like it was before the virus. I ran like every command on the internet and an EtreCheck to make sure that I have all the information any of you will probably need, if I don't, I'll gladly run any diagnostic.

Apple Hardware Test: Passed

SMART Status: Verified

EtreCheck Log: http://pastebin.com/KN4Ad1hS

Terminal Commands: http://pastebin.com/Gyjm6keX
(sorry it wouldn't let me post more than 2 links, so I put the 2 command's pastebin links in one pastebin)

diskutil list:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            999.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

diskutil verifyDisk disk0:

Started partition map verification on disk0
Checking prerequisites
Checking the partition list
Checking the partition map size
Checking for an EFI system partition
Checking the EFI system partition's size
Checking the EFI system partition's file system
Checking the EFI system partition's folder content
Checking all HFS data partition loader spaces
Checking booter partitions
Checking booter partition disk0s3
Verifying file system
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
The volume Recovery HD appears to be OK
File system check exit code is 0
Checking Core Storage Physical Volume partitions
The partition map appears to be OK
Finished partition map verification on disk0

Computer Info Image:

Activity Monitor Image:

Please help! Thanks :)!

I remember your other questions, so will try and help you get to the bottom of this. You need to understand though, that troubleshooting is a process of elimination and, as a result, can take some time.

Before we start, I am going to ignore that you had a virus a few weeks ago, because that could be confusing things. In other words, we need to start afresh because the virus and this issue may be totally unrelated.

I can see from the various images you posted that you do have plenty of free hard drive space, so that's one possible cause we can eliminate. So, one by one, let's try and resolve this.

1. Let's start your computer in Safe Mode

Our first test will be to see what happens when you start your iMac in Safe Mode. Doing this forces your iMac to perform some tests and also prevents some software from automatically loading or opening.

Follow these steps:

Shutdown your iMac
As soon as you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Shift key
Once you see the Apple logo, let go of the Shift key

Don't be concerned if your iMac takes longer to boot up (remember it's performing some tests). After it's booted, use it for a while. Do this for long enough for you to be satisfied that the problem still persists (or not). Once you're done, restart the computer normally to exit Safe Mode.

Note: While in Safe mode you won't be able to do everything you normally can, and your macOS environment may appear/work differently. Do not worry about this.

When ready, report back on how you went.

2. Create and log in to a new user account

Our next test is to create a totally new user account and check whether logging in to this has any impact on performance. In case you don't know how to do this, follow these steps:

Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences
Select Users and Groups
Click on the + sign at bottom left to add a new user (you may need to unlock the padlock below that to make changes)
Set your user options and ensure that automatic login is off
Exit System Preferences

Now restart your computer and log in to the newly created user account. Once logged in, do not install any new software etc. Instead, just use the computer for a while to determine if it is still slow.

When ready, report back on how you went.

3. Install macOS Sierra on an external drive

Our next test is to take advantage of your external hard drive to try and determine whether we have an issue between macOS Sierra and your computer. If not, it may indicate either a problem with your internal hard drive or 3rd party software.

Use this process:

Do a full installation of macOS Sierra on the external hard drive but do not install any 3rd party software.
Restart your Mac.
Immediately press and hold the Option key.
The Startup Manager will appear and shouldn't take too long to list your internal hard drive and the external drive.
Use your mouse or the left/right arrow keys to select the external hard drive you just installed macOS Sierra on
Double-click or press the Return key to start your iMac from the external hard drive

Now use your iMac from the external drive for a while doing a few things to get a sense of how well it's responding. Please only use default Apple apps (such as Safari etc) for now.

When ready, report back on how you went.


How to undelete files removed with rm -rf on an APFS SSD disk? Is there any way to restore files removed with rm -rf on an APFS formatted SSD?

No. It's very unlikely you're going to recover anything.
The reason being is that when you delete something from an SSD, the way it's deleted makes it virtually impossible to recovery.  Basically, when you delete something, it tells the drive to mark the sectors as deleted just like in a traditional hard drive.  However, when subsequently asked to read back the data, the drive will respond back with either zeros or garbage.

How to get the "securely erase" function of Disk Utility on El Capitan & Sierra
Can the data on an MacBook Pro SSD be recovered after formatting using Disk Utility

Note:  It's not impossible to not recover any data, you will need to send it to a lab or to the manufacturer who can get around the mechanisms that secures the data.  However, this is usually very cost prohibitive unless it's for forensics and provided that the sector hasn't been overwritten already.  Unlike magnetic media, it only takes a single write to send the preexisting data into oblivion.


Built-in display in MacBook 13 late 2011 non-retina looks weird About a month ago I bought this MacBook.
Light colours are very light, dark colours are very light. I don't see difference between between some.

In Finder I don't see lines:

But under shadows:

I tried to reset NVRAM by holding Option+Command+P+R till boot, trying to calibrate display in expert mode, but it doesn't nothing radically changed.

I'm tired and it driving me crazy :(

Maybe it isn't original display? I need colorimeter like Spyder5?
Or only new laptop with godlike Retina IPS will solve this problem?

Last option is reinstall entire OS. Going to do that on second hard drive.

Sorry for bad English.

System Prefs > Accessibility > Display > Display contrast.

If this slider is set to anything other than Normal, this is the effect you will see - though it doesn't show on screenshots, except on the same machine, as it's a 'live' effect only.


Cannot enter "app wiggle"/delete mode on iPad Air, iOS 11 I recently charged and turned on my iPad Air (Wi-Fi, US, 1st Gen) that I hadn't used for a while. It was on iOS 11.2.6 and after using it for some minutes, downloading and managing some apps, I noticed that the iPad refused to enter "app wiggle" mode upon holding apps. I can still delete apps from Settings, but not from the home screen.
I am also able to move apps around by holding and dragging them, similarly to an Android phone, but I can't get the apps to wiggle and have the "X" delete button. I have to hold and drag each app, while on other iOS versions I could just hold down once for ~1 second and then all apps would be draggable without any additional holding down.

I tried fully restoring the iPad to 11.4.1, the latest and the only signed version, with iTunes, and I even tried manually downloading an IPSW file and repeating the full restore. What surprises me most is that even after a full reset, the device still exhibits this bug.

On the other hand, all my other iPhones all work with wiggle mode in iOS 11. I couldn't find any information about this type of issue on the internet. Is this normal/expected behavior on iOS 11 iPads, or if not, what can I do to fix my iDevice?

To enter app wiggle mode on iOS 11 and up, only on iPad systems, it is necessary to hold an app icon for about four seconds, whereas on older versions it would activate much quicker. On the other hand, on iPad, apps can be moved without entering app wiggle mode.


iPod Shuffle 4th generation - red light and not charging My iPod Shuffle 4th generation for a long time it doesn't charge and when I charge it, it only shows 5 second red light. When I plug in and out, it only shows a continuous red light. So what I do next because I put the charger in the wall plug off mobile charger and now it is not charging?

Assuming the battery is still able to hold a usable charge, restart your iPod Shuffle. The red light typically means less than 25% charge.

  How to force restart your iPod shuffle

  Unplug your iPod shuffle from its charger and from your computer.
  Use the power switch to turn off your iPod shuffle. If you see green by the switch, your device is on. (Can't find the power switch?)
  Wait for ten seconds. Then turn on your iPod shuffle again.

If this does not work, it is likely the internal battery has failed.


Symbolic link to Emacs 24 not working I like to create a bin directory in my home directory and make it the first item in my $PATH. I then create symbolic links to override the default MacOS installed version of certain apps. I have done this in the past with Emacs.

BTW I also like to launch emacs from the command line so, I create an alias of 'alias e="emacs -nw"' in my .zrshrc or .profile file.

I am now on Yosemite and I can't get this working. Mind you Emacs is running when I click on the Emacs.app in Applications (in Window mode).

Here is what i get when I run the symbolic link version from the commandline:

Warning: arch-dependent data dir `/Users/build/workspace/Emacs-Multi-Build/label/mavericks/emacs-source/nextstep/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/libexec/': No such file or directory
Warning: arch-independent data dir `/Users/build/workspace/Emacs-Multi-Build/label/mavericks/emacs-source/nextstep/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/etc/': No such file or directory
Warning: Lisp directory `/Users/build/workspace/Emacs-Multi-Build/label/mavericks/emacs-source/nextstep/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp': No such file or directory
Error: charsets directory not found:
/Users/build/workspace/Emacs-Multi-Build/label/mavericks/emacs-source/nextstep/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/etc/charsets
Emacs will not function correctly without the character map files.
Please check your installation!

After a little guidance from Mark (see comments above). What I did was to create a file in my bin with the name emacs and with the the following contents ...

#!/bin/sh
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$@"

then

chmod 755 emacs

and I am up and running from the command line with a new shiny Emacs 24.4 and ignoring the built-in Emacs 22


iPhone shows 1.3GB of photos but I don't have any Edited:

Orginal question:
My iPhone 4S shows that I have 1.3GB of photos but I don't have any.
How to empty this amount of space and make it available?

I go to "settings" -> "general" -> "usage" -> "manage storage" and then "Photos & Camera" shows that there is 1.3GB of using space but I have no photos at all. So I go to that "Photos & Camera" and I see that "Shared Photo Stream" takes most of it, so about 1.3GB but I don't share any photos.
But! If I take one photo using camera and then it appears in "Photos" -> "Camera Roll" then I go to "settings" -> "general" -> "usage" -> "manage storage" -> "Photos & Camera" then it shows that "Photo Library" uses almost 1.3GB of storage space in my iPhone and "Shared Photo Stream" almost none. And if I delete this one photo then "Shared Photo Stream" shows that there is almost 1.3GB using space and "Photo Library" uses almost none.

I use iOS 8 but before when there was iOS7 the problem was the same and it was the main reason why I updated to iOS8 because I was hopping it resolves this problem but the problem is still there.

Help please
End of original question.

Added latter:
No matter which iOS and build is installed same problem was even if the newest iOS is installed. I said was coz
only solution is to instal for example iExplorer on PC then plug in iPhone to PC and using iExplorer delete all picture cache data on iPhone. It seams picture cache on iPhone is kept even if iPhone was restored to complete factory setting and set as new. As I said problem solved by third party software. Apple has had no idea how to fix it.

I'm pretty sure I have your answer!  I just had the same problem myself.

It seems that the Photos app has a "nice feature" called "Recently Deleted" that CONTINUES TO KEEP deleted photos on your device for a certain period of time.  SO ... Just click on your photos app, then click on its RECENTLY DELETED folder, then empty its contents.

Hope that helps!


iPhone Mail, Send only account I have an account on dreamhost that autoforwards everything on to my GMail. This is fine as it all gets pulled into my phone, but if I try to reply on my iPhone, it shows the google address, not the fancy forwarded address.

To fix this I attempted to add the forwarded account via IMAP to my phone, fixing the problem, and introducing a second. Now I have duplicates of emails one for GMail and one for the original account. What'smore, spam sent to the fancy email is not being filtered, so I'm getting both duplicates of normal emails, and unfiltered spam.

What I'd like is to set my iPhone so it can send from that account, but either does not check for emails, or cannot check for emails.

In the past I've set my phone up to use the 'from' trick, which has almost worked ( users can still tell it's not quite from that address though it gives the illusion ), and the instructions fail when applied to iOS5 ( impending death of the trick? )

I have found the solution!

I set up a second email account on my server with an obscure name, then, I changed the POP/IMAP settings to use that account for receiving, and left the send/SMTP details unchanged.

This now gives me the desired behaviour. It also gives me a receive only account ( which could also be desirable ).

If you are on iOS4 or below, you can also refer to Hand-E-Food's answer. My instructions will work for iOS5 ( due to the extra checks iOS5 makes to verify what you've entered )


How do I have Safari (v12) auto download PDF files On previous versions of Safari, I have been able to auto download PDF files by using the following code in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool YES

When I got a new MacBook Air running Safari 12, this option no longer works.  Does anyone know of a solution while still using Safari.  I run a lot of reports that I need to download and not just view.

The Acrobat/Reader plug-in for Apple Safari is based on Netscape Plug-In API (NPAPI), which is supported only till Safari version 11. In Safari 12, support for NPAPI plug-ins is removed, and hence the current Acrobat/Reader plug-in will not work. For detailed information, please refer to help articles Display PDF in browser Adobe Acrobat, Acrobat Reader

What’s New in Safari - Apple Developer

Source: Adobe.com


Can anyone recommend a decent free stop watch widget for MacOSX? I would like something that is simple to use.

Depending on the functionalities you want :

Simple & Design : iChrono

More features & like a real stopwatch : Stopwatch widget


Is there a legal way to get a US App Store account from outside the US? I noticed that many useful applications are unavailable in Russian App Store, as US Store seems to be the primary target for developers. I wonder if there is any legal way to obtain a US Store account (I'm interested in iPhone and Mac Apps, no music) if I don't live in the United States.

I'm not sure if using a fake address would be legal.

Technically, you can create an account in the US Store using an iTunes Gift Card and a fake address/phone number. You can buy iTunes Gift Cards in eBay (some sellers will expedite things by sending activation codes by email).

If you're only interested in free Apps, you can create an account without the Gift card. There is an Apple support document describing the process.

Regardless of payment, Apple asks for a valid US address to establish an account, so the legality of this depends on where you live.


Mac screen flashes when f13 pressed? I recently discovered that when I press f13 on my mac keyboard, the screen flashes white. It look exactly like when you take a screenshot except, it's not taking a screenshot. I have looked through all my keyboard shortcuts in settings, and can't find anything that is assigned to f13. I have tried to search online and I can't find anything on f13 assigned to anything on mac. I also have a hard time believing that this would be assigned to anything on mac by default because you have to have the extended keyboard to press f13.

NOTE: I am on a mac with yosemite.

EDIT: It also seems to occur when you press backspace in terminal when there is nothing left to delete

EDIT 2: I currently don't have the setting to flash on alert, so I don't know what it is.

Best guess would be …

System Prefs > Accessibility > Audio
You have "Flash the screen when an alert sound occurs" checked.

F13 has no default task - & any invalid key pressed whilst in Finder will generate an alert [doesn't really do it in other apps, but does in Finder]


Notification Center "Show Message Preview" doesn't work In Notifications Preferences, I have the "Show Message Preview" option disabled for Mail.app, but nonetheless, message previews still appear in Notification Center.

How can I fix this?

macOS Sierra, Mail.app 10.3

The checkbox only affects the notifications when they display as a notification, not when they are subsequently shown in Notification Center. Notifications are always shown in full with the message preview when viewing them in Notification Center.


How to reinstall OS X on an iMac which only has Ubuntu installed on it? I have a 2011 iMac with only Ubuntu installed. It's not a dual-booted iMac, it only has Ubuntu installed.

How do I revert back to original OS X and remove Ubuntu? I've tried pressing various keys (⌘ Command R, Alt, etc.) to enter the boot menu,  but so far it hasn't worked.

I have installed only Ubuntu. it warned that i may not be able to recover. However, if you hold Alt (option) key since the booting, it will prompt you to select a Wireless network (so make sure there's one available). Once connected it will ask you to confirm on Internet Recovery Mode. Select the option and proceed. This will take a while, so be patient.


MacOS user password no longer working I just got a new iMac and after going through setup it no longer seems to recognize my password. I was stuck outside my account so I reinstalled using recovery hoping it would reset everything including user information but I still get prompted for my initial password. I wonder if this is happening because I changed the username to lowercase at one point and somehow the change didn’t properly register in the OS? Anyway, is there any way around this problem?

Resetting User Account Password - This will work so long as you do not have a firmware/'EFI' password set on the machine.

1) Boot into your Recovery Partition holding down command + R at the startup chime

2) Select Terminal from your Utilities Menu Bar

3) Type the following bolded command in: resetpassword

4) From the new window that appears, select your user account and proceed.

5) Type in the new password and confirm the new password

6) Click Save, close this pane and quit Utilities

7) Select your boot volume when presented with "choose startup disk" and reboot your machine


Monitor & restart SecurityAgent Process We are running Mac Pro's with 64GB & 10.12 as VDI-Servers.

We have problems with the SecurityAgent. The process will take more than 100% CPU (how can this be?) after 6 hours of work according to top.

At this point no user can login anymore. We have to reboot or kill one or more SecurityAgent instances (Sometimes there are more then 5 instances running)
I would like to monitor this and restart the Service when the CPU load exeeds a given limit.

My questions are :

How can I determine the CPU load for this process and their instances with a shell-script?
Since simply killing the process seems to be a bad idea, I would like to restart (kickstart?) the process instead. How can I achieve this?

Security Agent

The Security Agent is a separate process that provides the user interface for the Security Server in macOS (not iOS). Its primary purpose is to request authentication whenever an app requests additional privileges.

Test by running in Safe Mode.

Boot into safe mode then restart normally. This clears out a number of caches that may stop the process from eating up so much CPU time. Safe mode is much slower than a normal startup, so be patient.

How to boot macOS in Safe Mode

Start or restart your Mac, then immediately press and hold the Shift key. The Apple logo appears on your display.
Release the Shift key when you see the login window. If your startup disk is encrypted with FileVault, you might be asked to log in twice: once to unlock the startup disk, and again to log in to the Finder.

To leave safe mode, restart your Mac without pressing any keys during startup.

In most of the forums they have written that after running in Safe mode, it has resolved the issue.

I haven't use Kickstart on the remote machine yet, but this might be helpful for you if you want to look into it:

sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -restart -agent

You can check Apple official site for more detail: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201710


How to downgrade Composer via homebrew? My Composer updated to version 2 but I need to keep it running in version 1.
How could I downgrade my Composer via Homebrew since I don't see different formulas to version 1 and 2?
I already tried to run these commands below but it didn't work.
brew switch composer 1.10.15
brew install composer@1.10.15

To check the versions available you can run this command:
brew log composer

Then install Composer and change the version directly via Composer command.
brew install composer
composer self-update 1.10.15


Encrypted image duplicates backup in time machine I have some sensitive work data on my mac that i keep in an encrypted backup.  It's a big file of about 19gb.

I can open and access it fine using the password i set, however, i have noticed that every time i do this and then open some of the files within and then finish and dismount the volume, time machine will begin backing it up.

However, it doesn't simply back up just the changes i made, it backs up the entire encrypted image again and so makes a duplicate of it, this is rapidly using up space on my time machine drive, is this supposed to happen and how do i stop it?

NB:  It also does this even if i don't make any changes to the encrypted image and simply view some of the files within the volume and then close it.

Many thanks for any help you can give.

Time Machine backups files as seen in Finder, it can't look inside your encrypted image. So every time you modify the image (even just the access date of some of the files in it) TM will register the image as a changed file and backup the whole image again.

You can exclude folders in TM preferences, so you could move your image into a dedicated folder and exclude it. And then use other means, e.g. a USB drive, to backup the image manually.

You could also use DiskUtil to create a new encrypted image as a "sparse bundle" and move the confidential content into this newly created image. Using the "sparse bundle" format should, in theory, allow for a more granular update record so TM doesn't need to backup the whole image each time. I had some mixed experience with this in the past though.


Video call and share writing This summer, I will be having meetings with my Ph.D. advisor, and since he's traveling, we'll be meeting via Skype or FaceTime. Since we are working on mathematics, we need a way to see each other's writing, so we can quickly suggest ideas to each other and talk about them.

He will be using a MacBook Pro 2017 and I'll be using my iMac 2018 or MacBook Pro 2017.
I have an iPad pro with Apple Pencil; I'm not sure if he does. I mention this because it may be a solution that we have separate writing apps open on our iPads even as we FaceTime. In case he doesn't have an iPad already, he will of course need to get some device that has the ability to receive handwriting.

What is the best solution? Including what gear he'd need to have.

This would also be a great question for online tutoring.

AWW App

From a simple Google Search (and some testing) I have found a WebApp that allows real time collaboration on a whiteboard. From my tests the board is updated once the mouse is released.

It works in realtime on Mac's and iOS devices meaning you and your Ph.D. advisor could use it at the same time no matter what device you guys are on.

You can...

Draw with different colors
Type text
Add Shapes
Create Post-it notes
Add Pages
Export your board as a PDF or Image
Save your board for future use
Add collaborators

Extra premium features are available.

Note: I am in no way affiliated with this company or product and will not be impacted by the purchasing (or not) of this product


Small bump in my 15" MacBook Pro 2018 I finally upgraded from my old MBP 2015 and got the 2018 15" base model. So far I'm in love with this machine, clean thin design and very performant (the addition of a 6 core CPU and DDR4 RAMS is much welcome).

However, there's one issue that I can't figure out if it's just me or it's something to do with the machine. Whenever I look at my keyboard, It feels like it's raised a little bit in the top middle kinda like there's a small bump. I showed it to my friends, some seem to notice it and some don't. Some are saying that it's just an optical illusion.

Has anyone come across any information to suggest this is a known issue? If so, what?

Here’s how I would try to figure this out.

if you have a straight edge, perhaps a 12" metal ruler, try laying that ON EDGE across the keyboard at the bottom, top, and middle, and perhaps even a couple diagonal angles. I'm not sure if the newer models are like mine at home, but the keys rest just ever-so-slightly below the case, so you should be able to see if anything is approaching the ruler's edge across the span.

if you're unable to tell, something like this could probably warrant a pic or two added here, or even if just taken from your phone, which could then be examined by eye and perhaps by selection in a photo editing app. it wouldn't be 100% accurate, but if there was an upward shift of pixels in the middle versus the two ends, you might have something.

either way, better to be sure now while under warranty, so you can at least get it on notice in case it gets worse. if it's related to heat, or perhaps some sort of battery swelling, it might be more noticeable at certain times. I've had several batteries expand over the years, and I believe they all stayed the bloated width, but before they became damaging or even just noticeable, they might have swelled and reverted, I can't say.


Make iPhone silent while sleeping When I go to sleep I tell a smart alarm app (Pillow) that I'm going to sleep. When I wake up I tell that same app that I'm awake. Between these two events, I would like for my iPhone not to vibrate or make any other noise. How can I achieve this?
EDIT: To clarify, I'm looking for a way to do this automatically.

A partial solution is to create an "Automation" with the "Shortcuts" app that enters Do-not-disturb mode whenever the smart-alarm app is opened. Then one has to manually exit Do-not-disturb mode every morning upon waking up. Not a perfect solution by any means, but I think it's probably good enough.


How to make terminals open side-by-side? I use terminals a lot, and I frequently open and close them. The problem is that whenever I open a new terminal using ⌘+n it overlaps the current one, and I have to move it out of the way first. Is there a way to make them open side by side from top left to bottom right?

This behavior won't happen in OS X by default, but a whole bunch of 3rd party window-arranging apps ought to be able to help:

SizeUp http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/
Divvy http://mizage.com/divvy/
Breeze http://www.autumnapps.com/breeze/
ShiftIt http://code.google.com/p/shiftit/
Mercury Mover http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/details
Optimal Layout http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/
Cinch http://irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/


Does iTunes Sound Check Lower Sound Quality? I have found that many do not like the Sound Check feature in iTunes.

Will enabling Sound Check lower sound quality?

Why does/does it not reduce sound quality?

No, it is not bad to have sound check enabled in iTunes.

Having it enabled does not make the sound quality of songs worse.

Sound Check works simply by dynamically raising or lowering the playback volume, just as you yourself can raise and lower the playback volume in iTunes without affecting sound quality.

iTunes raises/lowers playback volume according to the audio normalisation ID3-tag within the audio file. These tags are created automatically when you rip a CD with iTunes, and automatically added when you import files lackings these tags into iTunes.

The normalisation tag simply tells what the average volume of the song is. Note that iTunes recognizes albums, so that when playing back and album, it will adjust according to the average track volume of the album as a whole, instead of changing the playback volume for each song individually. Therefore your album listening experience is not harmed.

iTunes automatically ensures that the volume is not raised so high that neither clipping occurs or compression effects are introduced. Therefore your sound quality is not harmed.

All in all this means that enabling Sound Check is safe, does not change the audio content of your songs, thus not reducing their quality. It simply change the playback volume slightly so that you get an pleasurable listening experience without having to tweak your playback volume every time you select a new album.


Where is my mbox located at? The Terminal keeps telling me I have mail from scripts that are hitting errors, and then when I scroll through the messages to read them, it tells me afterwards saved x messages in mbox.

Where is my mbox, I cannot find it?

Open Terminal and type mail

For example, I created a test message for the purposes of this answer.  Now, when I type the mail command:

mail version 8.1 6/6/93.  Type ? for help.
"/var/mail/allan": 1 message 1 new
>N  1 allan@Allans-iMac.ho  Sun Mar  6 23:34  14/464   "test"
?

You can type ? for help, or just select the message number, in this case 1 to read the message.  If you want to delete the message, type d1.  When you are finished type quit.

To go back to a message that has been saved in your mbox, just issue the command:

mail -f ~/mbox and it will open the mailbox of the currently logged in user.  From there, you will be able to access read/reply/delete to mail that no longer shows up as unread. Please note that the "f" option has to be lower-case.

For a full listing of commands, just type man mail for the manual pages or go to mail command for reference.


Identify tower being used in iOS At my cottage field test mode tells me I am -116 dB. I need a booster with a yagi.
The problem is where to aim it. There are two towers about the same distance but very different directions.
Is there anything in field test that lets me identify the exact tower I’m using?

I like to just do speed tests as you adjust the antenna when I don’t have a software defined radio and/or oscilloscope to measure the actual signals.
I’ve not seen any good tool that uses the compass or just shows that weak a signal since the noise is so large compared to the signal.
So, no - you’ll need to try them sequentially and also sight things visually or do even more measurements.
Hopefully someone has a better guide to field test, it’s so changeable based on hardware I try to do anything else but use that anymore. It was great when ATT and iPhone original came out, but after a while it’s needing a PHD to decipher.


Use APFS VM Volume From Another Disk Due to the sad demise of my main machine, I'm booting a much less capable system from an external drive to keep myself going while I await a replacement. The machine itself has its own internal drive. Both the machine's own internal drive, and my recovered (now external) drive, are formatted APFS, and both have the full set of system volumes (preboot, recovery and VM).

The problem is, when booting from the external drive, macOS wants to store swapfiles on it, even though the performance is poor when doing this, especially since this emergency setup has a lot less RAM making swapping a lot more likely.

What I'd like to know is; can I tell macOS Mojave to mount the internal drive's VM volume and use that for swap-files, rather than using the external disk?

One oddity is that although the external drive has its own VM volume (not that I want to use it), macOS Mojave isn't utilising that either, instead it's storing swap-files under /vm, rather than mounting the VM volume at /private/var/vm as normal.

In case it's easier to visualise, my drives look like this, where disk0 is internal, and disk2 is external, and was pulled from my dead machine:

diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *320.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         319.9 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +319.9 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            34.4 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 41.8 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                507.4 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      20.5 KB    disk1s4

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk3         1000.0 GB  disk2s2

/dev/disk3 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +1000.0 GB  disk3
                                 Physical Store disk2s2
   1:                APFS Volume macOS                   102.5 GB   disk3s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 64.3 MB    disk3s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                1.0 GB     disk3s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      20.5 KB    disk3s4
   5:                APFS Volume Users                   321.0 GB   disk3s5

To clarify; I'm not looking to disable swapping entirely, but to use the internal drive as the swap-file location. Indeed, swapping is necessary on the older machine I'm using, as it was never used for much more than a media-centre, and only has 4gb of RAM, which fills fast!

I believe I've found a solution to this thanks to an answer to a similar question, the process that is responsible for the swap-files is /sbin/dynamic_pager, which is triggered by a launchd task found at /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist. Since this file is located in /System it means that this solution requires System Integrity Protection to be disabled, and for Catalina you will need to perform the changes from your recovery volume.

First step is to take a backup of the original plist:

cp /System/Library/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist /System/Library/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist.orig

Now we want to modify the command that is executed. In the original it will look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>EnableTransactions</key>
        <true/>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>com.apple.dynamic_pager</string>
        <key>KeepAlive</key>
        <dict>
                <key>SuccessfulExit</key>
                <false/>
        </dict>
        <key>POSIXSpawnType</key>
        <string>Interactive</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/sbin/dynamic_pager</string>
        </array>
</dict>
</plist>

I modified my ProgramArguments section to the following:

        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/bin/bash</string>
                <string>-c</string>
                <string>diskutil mount -mountPoint /private/var/vm disk1s4 &amp;&amp; /sbin/dynamic_pager -F /private/var/vm/swapfile</string>
        </array>

This now runs two commands, the first to mount the internal VM volume at /private/var/vm and the second is a modified call to dynamic_pager telling it to create swapfiles at the new location.

NOTE: In my case the VM volume was disk1s4, and while this should be the case for most systems, you should double check with diskutil list first and modify the new command accordingly.

To activate the changes, either restart or, if you're sure you aren't using a swap-file at the moment, you can unload and reload the launchd task immediately:

launchctl unload /System/Library/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist
launchctl load /System/Library/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

The new swapfile location should now be set, and if necessary you can remove any leftover swapfile(s) (in my case at /vm).

UPDATE: Simpler method

It occurred to me that there may be a simpler solution to this problem; since the dynamic pager launchd task doesn't supply a specific location for swapfiles, it seems it will choose in order of preference, with /private/var/vm being preferred if available. To this end it may be possible to force the use of the internal drive's VM volume like so:

Get the VM volume's UUID (diskutil info disk1s4)
Run sudo vifs
Add a line like so: UUID=9e2cd41c-1566-11ea-9237-ef9cfb4e0fac       /private/var/vm  apfs    rw,nobrowse,union swapping in your volume's UUID

This should cause your system to automatically mount your VM volume at /private/var/vm, and since this will occur before the dynamic pager runs, it should see and select this location, with no need to disable SIP or edit its launch daemon.


Is it possible to run commands from spotlight? I run commands in terminal a lot and i'm wondering if it is possible to run the commands from spotlight. For example in spotlight  would like to run the command(because i have a lot of network issues):

ping google.com

And then spotlight to load terminal and execute the command instead of having to load terminal because it takes so long to load. So is this possible?

Just a heads up that Alfred app now has both global hotkeys which allows you to launch apps/commands/applescripts with a key combo, as well as Terminal/Shell integration, which lets you run any Terminal command without launching Terminal.

For example, create a script to auto-shorten a URL using goo.gl then copying it to clipboard (here's how you can do that). Or launch any terminal command (e.g. ping yahoo.com) to pop up a Terminal window.

It's part of the Powerpack and is in pre-release right now, going to general availability next week :)

Vero (community gal for @alfredapp)


How can I merge two photos using software that is provided with OS X? I have two photos of a group of ten people. Unfortunately, one person has the eyes closed in each photo.

I would like to merge one person from one photo into the other so that everyone's eyes are open in one picture.

Are there any tools or applications that are provided with OS X by default that will allow me to do this?

You don't need anything special at all, you already have the tools you need to give it a go - frankly it's worth a pop in Preview.

I'll have a quick and dirty go in this answer and see how we go.  I've taken 2 photos, one with my eyes open, and one with them shut.  I will transfer the eyes from one to the other to create a composite picture of the two.  Excuse the poor quality, but they are taken from my webcam in a dimly lit room:

Eyes Open:

Eyes Shut:

Opening the picture I want to copy from (just double clicking it should use Preview as the default app on most systems) ensure first that you have the correct edit tool bar showing, and select the elliptical select tool:

Now, draw a nice oval around one eye, starting in the top left and moving right and down.  If you get it wrong, just single click anywhere outside the selection and start again.  Repeat until you have got a good outline of the eye.  You can fine tune by grabbing the handles on the selection tool and moving them a little:

Now simply copy this selection, open up the other picture, and paste it in, moving it to the required position (and potentially resizing a tiny bit if required).  To remove the selection marks, click anywhere outside them to "set" the paste.  If it's not in the right position, click undo, and paste again:

Repeat with the other eyes, and here is a finished composite:

Top tips:

This works better with smaller snippets, obviously the more closeup it is, the more accurate your cropping has to be and the more obvious the effect is.
Your photos need to be pretty similar in terms of lighting, zoom levels etc to get a consistent look.
Zoom in if required to get more accurate selections.
If it's a group shot as you say, then chances are everyone's face is quite small unlike my full face image example, and any imperfections are less likely to be spotted
Keep your selections as small as possible, copying a couple of eyes is going to be easier and look better than trying to move a whole head, or person.
Other software will provide for more complex features like smoothing the joins over to reduce any hard lines where the colouring is marginally different etc
If you had to copy say a piece of eyebrow in order to get the whole eye, and it will not line up in the new picture, then use an intermediate empty picture file, paste it in, cut out the bit you don't want, re-copy it and carry on.