Downloading all App store purchases? So there is no "good" way of seeing all my purchased items in iTunes (only the very cubersome "purchase history" screen). Is there, however, a way to download all my purchases to the computer? e.g. when I install iTunes on a new computer?

There is the store/check for available downloads button. However, it has no effect in my computer and I suspect that it's not intended for apps, but for music/videos purchased from iTunes (which are not available at my country).

Is there another way? Maybe even an external application?

Unfortunately there is no easy one-click solution to downloading all your previously purchased apps.  Best you can do is look through the list of purchased apps and re-buy them (you will not be charged again).


On new Mac, upgrade old Snow Leopard install or start with clean install? I've got an old 2008 Macbook which is not eligible for upgrade to anything supported at the moment. So, I am looking to buy a new MacBook Pro.

My question is,

Is it better to copy/move my HDD to the new machine and then do an upgrade or start with the clean install of OSX already on the machine and slowly reinstall all the apps I need, as needed?

Thanks.

You're five major system updates back from  El Capitan, and Apple has made a lot of changes to code, file arrangements, database structures, network connectivity etc. in the meantime.
Apple usually does a pretty good job of clearing away the old to make way for the new, but things do slip through. I recently killed a few prefs files from 2007 that Migration Assistant kindly transferred to my 2014 mini. Invisible files and such often gets copied too. iTunes data structures have changed significantly, with loss of artwork or metadata upon upgrade being fairly common.

Apple is pretty good, but they're not infallible. With a jump of that many years, I'd go for the clean install, followed by thoughtful installation of needed Apps, and manual transfer of docs, pics, music etc. That way you'll end up with a thoroughly modern System rather than a System that also contains a hodgepodge of used or unused pieces dating from an earlier decade.


Why can I not reject the exclusion of a partition in Time Machine? I have a MacBook Air 11-inch Mid-2012 running OS X 10.8.2. I have an external hard drive connected via USB. The hard drive has two partitions: an HFS+ partition that I use for Time Machine and a NTFS partition that I use for storing large files that I don't want on my small internal hard drive.

(Side Note: I use NTFS because the drive may need to be shared directly with Windows machines at some point in the future as hardware comes and goes through my hands a lot. I use Tuxera NTFS to write to the NTFS partition with great success so far.)

When I open Time Machine, I see that the data storage partition is in the exclusion list (that partition is named "EXTERNAL"):

When I select the "EXTERNAL" partition and remove it from the exclusion list, there are no errors and the partition is gone. Also, I see that the estimated backup size has increased by the amount of used space on the "EXTERNAL" partition:

However after I click save and then open the "Options..." window again, I see that the "EXTERNAL" partition is still in the list of excluded partitions, exactly like in the first image.

Why can I not back this partition up with Time Machine? I have seen other Mac Users report that that they can backup one partition of a disk to another partition on the same disk, but it does not appear that I can. (My reasoning for doing this is that I'd like the local version control that Time Machine offers for quick restoration of accidentally deleted or modified files. I backup both the internal SSD as well as the "EXTERNAL" partition using CrashPlan for offsite data protection in the case of a full disk failure.)

The problem is that Time Machine is designed for HFS+ formatted volumes.

You might have luck with the Paragon NTFS driver but if the NTFS volume is case-sensitive and your normal mac partition is not, you will have problems backing both up to the same Time Machine volume.

You might be able to use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the contents of the NTFS volume to an image file but not a bootable one.

Also check out this blog which talks about related NTFS issues.


Get nick name of current user I want to get the nickname of the currently logged in OS X user via Apple Script. Currently can only retrieve the full name or the nickname of a contact, I wasn't able to combine the two scripts.

tell application "System Events"
    get full name of current user
end tell

Returns my full name.

tell application "Contacts" to get nickname of person "My Name"

Returns my nickname.

I'd like to get the nickname of the vcard of the currently logged in user.

I've managed to solve it quite o.k.

tell application "Contacts"
    tell application "System Events"
        set theName to full name of current user
    end tell
    set theNick to nickname of person theName
    if theNick is not missing value then
        return theNick
    else
        return word 1 of theName
    end if
end tell

It would be better to select the vcard associated with the user account and not just match the name. But I couldn't find out how to do this.


Avoid two-character umlauts in PDFs Introductory explanation

An umlaut is a German vowel, represented in writing as a letter with two dots (diaeresis) over the basic vowel. Examples of umlauts are ä, ö, and ü.

These three letters can be represented in text either as one single character – for example, ü as Unicode U+00FC – or as two characters: the basic vowel (e.g. u, U+0075) and the combining diaeresis ( ¨, U+0308).

Both the single character umlaut and the two-character umlaut look the same in a PDF document, but their underlying code is different. This animation shows text copied from the same (!) PDF file opened in Firefox (top) and Preview (bottom) into a plain text editor (BBEdit) and then deleting individual letters:

When the umlaut is represented as one character, and you search for a German word with an umlaut, e.g. Tür "door", in a text, you will find that word if it is there. If on the other hand the umlaut is represented as two characters and you search for Tür, you will not find it:

Die Tür ist offen.  <= you will find "Tür" in this text
Die Tu¨r ist offen. <= you will not find "Tür" in this text

Question

In Apple's Preview and Safari, but also in the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (18.011.20058), umlauts in PDF documents are represented as two characters (vowel plus diaeresis), while in the same PDF document, when I open it in Firefox, Chrome, or an older version of Adobe Acrobat X Pro (10.1.16), they are represented as a single character.

Why is that so, and how can I avoid two-character umlauts when I create PDF documents?

Whether you wind up with 1 or 2 characters depends on how Unicode Normalization is applied by the apps and processes you are using.

I don't know if there is any way to guarantee one or the other except perhaps via a utility like UnicodeChecker.

Since the two forms are equivalent, a competent search system should find either of them.


No bootable device - insert boot disk and press any key When I boot my Macbook Pro 13" Retina (running newest Mavericks), it is showing me this error:

However! If I boot holding the ⌥ alt-key, it shows Mavericks as option. When I  press ⌤ enter-key to confirm, it will boot normally. (I'm using this Macbook now to type this question).

Why won't my Macbook boot anymore? I did not use disk utility or something. What can cause this issue?

Boot normally then open System Preferences.app > Startup Disk. Select your drive and reboot. This should bless the drive and make it the default when powering on.


Do more desktops occupy more ram? I was an exposè addict and so do I am for mission control.
I was wondering if for many desktop you have "instantiated" the more your computer slows.

Since I am a developer i always have at least 5 screens, does this impact on performances or it is just a really bit thing in front of actual software running in those desktops?

I've never seen a single instance here I could pin a performance issue on Mission Control having 5 spaces instead of 15 instead of one.

Something else always seems to be the constraint such as RAM pressure or IO pressure. The code that manages the window system already treats each layer virtually and the math is done in some heavily optimized routines and the data structures there are quite well designed so although in theory - tracking more pixels could be a problem for performance, in reality it isn't.

If you are skeptical, you can reboot your Mac and do this test:

Open whatever set of Apps and documents you want to test with.
Enter Mission control and delete all the spaces except for one.
Open terminal and run vm_stat 60
Watch for a few minutes to be sure all the running processes are done allocating RAM. Switch to each App and hide or show the windows you want for your test. Once the free and active numbers are steady - open mission control and leave it open for a minute or two - then go back and inspect RAM allocations.
Add another 10 spaces and see how RAM allocations change.
Move app windows to any desktop and verify that no significant RAM allocation changes happen when you are using Mission Control and that they only happen when an app opens a new document or window.

Yes - if you tend to keep more things open when you have more "virtual space", that takes more RAM, but the fact that you have X apps and Y windows open is what takes the RAM - not which of Z mission control virtual screens you have open at any one time.


Can I use the Dvorak layout on Japanese keyboard on macOS? Recently I switched to Dvorak, but found out that although my Chinese layout also switched to Dvorak, the Japanese layout didn't.

I deleted the Japanese layout from the list on the System Preferences, but got no luck.

Why is the Japanese keyboard doesn't switch to Dvorak layout as well, and how can I, if possible?

I use High Sierra.

You can choose the layout you want for Japanese inside the preferences for that keyboard.


Is using Time Capsule better than using an external hard drive because it won't stress the hard drives? (for using Time Machine) I just plugged in an external hard drive that has Firewire 800 and started Time Machine, but it seems that both the internal hard drive and external hard drive work frantically copying about 75GB of data from the iMac to the external hard drive.

And in fact, I dare not use the computer while it is copying that much data, as I don't want to over work the hard drive's head.

If it is the case of Time Capsule, backing up using Wireless, then won't it actually work better, because if Wireless-G is limited to 1 or 1.5MB of data per second, then it won't stress the hard drive, and user can work on anything without affecting the hard drive's hard work?

(Updated: Details: 1MB/s, instead of about 75MB per second if using the Firewire 800.  In that case, the user can use the Mac and won't stress the hard drives, especially if the Mac OS X might read 50MB at a time, and put that data in RAM (as a hard disk cache), and just pass this data to TIme Capsule by Wireless-G -- then there is no need to read any data again until 50 seconds later, if assuming the copy speed is about 1MB/s.  Would this be true?)

That last paragraph is very difficult to understand, but if I follow, creating a RAM disk is not going to help...primarily because there's no problem to fix in the first place; Your concerns are unwarranted.

Time Capsule hard drives in particular are very low failure rate, and above that, Time Machine does not tax your system indefinitely. When the timer starts a new backup, the hard drive will spin up. On completion, it will spin down as necessary. These drives, like most of decent quality today have a high MTBF & MTTF, so relax.


How to use Apple Mail as default email program in Windows 8 running under Parallels? I am using Microsoft OneNote, Visual Studio 2013 and Visio 2013 under Windows 8.1 running on Parallels 9 on my iMac. All of these have support for sharing content via e-mail.
Is there a way to configure the host's Apple Mail application as the default application under the virtual Windows? Is there maybe some kind of proxy EXE that would fire up the Apple Mail app?

Yes, this should be possible!
First things first: I have Parallels 8, but I expect this setting to not have moved significantly since.

Open your virtual machine's configuration
Go to options
Select "Programms"
On the right side you'll see "E-Mail" and a drop down list where you can select "Open in Mac" or along these lines.

Mind you, I have a German installation, so this is freely translated by myself, the wording might be slightly different.


macOS update closed all my applications? At exactly 4 a.m., macOS gave a popup saying, “Update Available,” then abruptly closed all my applications. I don’t remember receiving any earlier popups or warnings about updates being available.

Is this normal behaviour? Can I prevent it from happening again somehow?

Having this happen at exactly 4 a.m. seems significant. Maybe it assumes I’m not active at that time?

You will normally be prompted to install updates as they are detected. However if you were away from your computer you may not see those notifications. Also if you delay them enough times they will eventually be installed for you. Lastly if the updates are detected overnight they may be installed right then as well. This is usually done sometime after 3 a.m.

You can go to  → System Preferences → App Store and uncheck the following:

Install app updates
Install macOS updates
Install system data files and security updates

This will keep macOS from installing updates, quitting apps and/or restarting your system without asking you first.

You will still be notified when updates become available, and offered the choice to install them.


DNS name of virtual machine I need to reliably access the SqlServer running on my Windows 7 VM. I've tried setting a static ip and reserving that ip for the machine in VMWare's Nat config but that cuts off WAN access from the VM. Right now I am just editing my database url every time I restart the VM. Does anyone have a complete set of instructions on how to configure an internal NAT static IP in VMWare Fusion 5.0?

You'll have to manually edit VMware's network preferences and add static hosts to get this working. The file necessary can be found at /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmnet8/dhcpd.conf. The file is read-only so chmod it writeable first.

For each static host you'll have to add the following and change the hostname, MAC address and IP to your VMs:

host yourhosthere {
    hardware ethernet 11:22:33:44:55:66;
    fixed-address 192.168.87.100;
}

I'd recommend selecting the IP from outside the DHCP range, which is defined in the same file on the row starting with range.

After this you have to restart VMware services with sudo "/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/boot.sh" --restart

As for the DNS name, after you have a static IP you can add it to your /etc/hosts file using the following syntax:

192.168.87.100 yourhosthere


How do I get my iTunes "Album Artwork" to add to the individual files instead of "~/Music/iTunes/Album Artwork/" iTunes saves Album Artwork to ~/Music/iTunes/Album/Artwork/Cache/[some seemingly random folder name here]/
The problem is that if I move actual MP3 and AAC files from this computer (and/or iTunes database) to another one, I (assume that I) will lose the connection between those songs and the cached artwork.
Right now there is 826 MB worth of of cached images in 950+ files.
I am almost certain that it is possible to add album art directly to the media files, but I need a solution which can be automated (at least most of it) because I really don't want to do this 950+ times, and I have a lot more music to clean up in the future.

Footnotes:

[Non-free solutions are entirely welcome, but please let me know if your proposed solution isn't free, and how much it costs, if you know.]

I have both MP3 and AAC files, so hopefully any solution will work on either kind of files.

Check out this AppleScript from the excellent dougscripts.com: Re-Embed Artwork v.1.0. If that doesn't do it for you, you may find something else useful on that site.

Note: I haven't run this script myself and can't vouch for its efficacy, though I believe its source is well-regarded. Use at your own risk.


Cmd+Tab breaks "Assign To This Desktop" Running Mavericks (recently upgraded from Snow Leopard) I have three apps open on three of my 5 desktops -- Safari on desktop 1, TextEdit on 2, and Calendar on 3.  I right-click on each icon in the dock on their respective desktops, and check Assign To This Desktop.  I can right-click again any number of times to verify that that option is indeed checked.  I can Cmd+right and Cmd+left across them, or Cmd+<number> to jump to the numbered desktop, and everything works fine.  In particular, the apps stay where they're supposed to.

But now I try to use Cmd+Tab to switch apps and the desktop choice gets changed.  Using the example above, if I'm on desktop 3 looking at Calendar, and Cmd+Tab to Safari (which should be on desktop 1), Safari gets pulled over to desktop 2, while TextEdit gets pushed to desktop 1 (and I get taken to desktop 2).  The same sort of behavior happens with more apps and more desktops.  Basically, the desktops get shuffled so that the Cmd+Tab app is closest.

I have no extra monitor or anything else unusual that I can think might be screwing anything up.

Is there any way to permanently assign an app to a particular desktop and/or turn off this terrible shuffling behavior?

The apps are not being moved to different desktops, but the desktops are being rearranged. To see the difference, put two apps on a space, then Cmd-Tab to one of the apps.  You will end up in a space that contains both apps, although the space will have been renamed and shuffled in the order.

To stop this,

Open System Preferences
Go into Mission Control
Uncheck Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use


Macbook air 100 GB hidden space + error when verifying volume I used DailyDisk to analyse my Macbook Air (Late 2014, 256GB SSD).
Result: 100GB of hidden space => No idea where this is coming from

What I tried:
- tmutil listlocalsnapshots / => I have no local snapshots
- diskutil verifyVolume / => error: invalid value 18604, 20 (see screenshot)

Do you have any idea on how to repair my disk and get my disk space back?

Forget the space calculations if your disk has accounting errors.

Back up any data that’s not already safe.
Try repairs until you’re out of patience or feel it’s not going to work
Erase the drive (Apple support erase install guide is below - search for erase or format)
Re-run the disk check.
If you have a clean check, then validate the storage settings before you load any data. Erase again if you aren’t convinced the clean install is correct.
Seek hardware service or repair if the check won’t pass after two erases.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904


/bin/sh don't read .profile after update to mac os x 10.10 I have updated my mac os x to 10.10 and got a lot of problems with program compilations. It looks like that default /bin/sh are not reading .profile anymore. So, all scripts, which are dependent from environment variables don't works. Even make cannot perform compilations because it cannot find compiler executables in non-default paths. Some (but not all!) macports ports are broken now, I think because of this problem. Does anybody know, how to fix this?

Thanks in advance,
Pavel.

Check to see if something loaded a '.bash_profile', which would be read in preference to .profile.  If so, you can probably move it out of the way:

mv .bash_profile .saved_bash_profile


See live report of process's status Under Linux, I can use top to see a live report of what processes are running. An important field I use is the Process Status field, which shows whether a process is running, a zombie, sleeping, etc.

I was reading the Mac OS X manpage for top, but I don't see Process Status.
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/top.1.html

Is there another way of doing this from the command line in OS X? I'm debugging a program that uses fork(), so I need something that shows me a live feed of the processes currently being executed.

In OS X's version of top the field is called STATE and it shows you what state the process is in. For information on the stuck state see: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/58718/292

The ps command on OS X can also show process status. For example, ps aux includes the STATE field. And the ps man page has this to say about the field:

 state     The state is given by a sequence of characters, for example, ``RWNA''.  The first character indicates the run state of the process:

           I       Marks a process that is idle (sleeping for longer than about 20 seconds).
           R       Marks a runnable process.
           S       Marks a process that is sleeping for less than about 20 seconds.
           T       Marks a stopped process.
           U       Marks a process in uninterruptible wait.
           Z       Marks a dead process (a ``zombie'').

           Additional characters after these, if any, indicate additional state information:

           +       The process is in the foreground process group of its control terminal.
           <       The process has raised CPU scheduling priority.
           >       The process has specified a soft limit on memory requirements and is currently exceeding that limit; such a process is (necessarily) not swapped.
           A       the process has asked for random page replacement (VA_ANOM, from vadvise(2), for example, lisp(1) in a garbage collect).
           E       The process is trying to exit.
           L       The process has pages locked in core (for example, for raw I/O).
           N       The process has reduced CPU scheduling priority (see setpriority(2)).
           S       The process has asked for FIFO page replacement (VA_SEQL, from vadvise(2), for example, a large image processing program using virtual memory to sequentially
                   address voluminous data).
           s       The process is a session leader.
           V       The process is suspended during a vfork(2).
           W       The process is swapped out.
           X       The process is being traced or debugged.


Exclude mails from specific Inbox in "Inbox" view Is it possible to exclude a specific mailbox from the "Inbox" view in Mail.app?

I got 3 mailboxes in mail.app, 2 of them are mail accounts for normal mail communication, 1 is used for receiving mails from senders which sometimes send to much mail (newsletters etc.). The problem that occurs is that all the newsletter mails show up in the "Inbox" view preventing me to see the mails from the other mailboxes.

Update - Mail has a filter option to the right of the 'sort by' at the top of the email column where you can choose which mailboxes, or to only show unread, etc.


Dashcode (3.0.5) crashes in Mountain Lion (10.8.4) I'm trying to get Dashcode to run in order to make a dashboard widget to surprise my friend. The app opens but crashes almost instantly (even in safe mode and Mavericks). The console yields the following errors:

6/23/2013 10:38:23.041 PM Dashcode[743]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.
6/23/2013 10:38:23.043 PM Dashcode[743]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:fromRect:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.

Dashcode interacts with the iPhoto library on startup - Start iPhoto with the option and command buttons held down. You then get an option to rebuild the library (there are four different radio buttons, start at the top - checking whether DashCode launches between each rebuild - if it doesn't work still try the next rebuild option in iPhoto)


Set pagezoom of Safari programmatically I recently bought a 4K monitor and love the screen real estate. But the standard fonts are becoming a bit too small to read. So I plan on writing a script in Keyboard Maestro to change the default PageZoom in Safari to 125% when I press a button.

I have figured out that I can set the pagezoom with this command in the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DefaultPageZoom  "1.25"

This works because defaults read com.apple.Safari DefaultPageZoom reports the set value back. AND the Safari preferences also show the value set.

But page in Safari doesn't change. However, when I change the PageZoom in the Preferences manually the page DOES change.
I've tried reloading the page and changing the window size after setting the PageZoom in the Terminal, but nothing works.

What do I need to do to make the defaults write setting become active?

I don't want to use the CMD+ and CMD- keys all the time.

In the end I want Keyboard Maestro to trigger this script when I plug in a device that signals I'm using this monitor.

You need to

close Safari
run the Terminal command
re-open Safari

Most (if not all) defaults write commands require you to quit or kill the affected application or process to see the results.

To solve your problem you may think about setting the display resolution from 3840 x 2160 to 1920 x 1080 (Retina / HDPI). This will increase the size of all display elements including text in Safari.

Go to System Preferences > Display and change the resolution there.


In iTerm, why is a command shell's command not picking up things on my $PATH? I've got a script in my ~/.bin directory that changes iTerm's background before starting an SSH session (as detailed here, script slightly modified from this version).

If I start a regular login session and run my command, sshb servername, it works fine! The background image loads and the SSH session starts.

However, if I set up a profile to start a session with that same command, it errors out and says it can't find sshb. If I make my command ~/.bin/sshb servername, it runs the command, but says it can't find the ImageMagick convert command used in that script.

It seems as though the command shell command doesn't know about my $PATH. I suppose I could figure out where convert lives and edit the script to use the full path, but that seems to be treating symptoms, not the problem. Is there a way to make the command shell load my environment variables before it runs that command?

Environment variables like PATH and TERM are normally inherited from the shell. When you run the script directly, they are unset.

You can run the script as a child process of a login shell by setting the command to bash -lc "~/.bin/sshb servername".


Is this a normal fan speed and CPU temperature for an idle MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) Is this a normal fan speed and CPU temperature for an idle MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015). The fact that fan 2 is not spinning worries me. I can get 'loaded' fan speeds and temps if that would be helpful.

--- CPU Stats ---

CPU temp: 52.38°C

.

--- Main Fan Stats ---

Total fans in system: 2

Fan 0 speed: 2154.0 RPM

Fan 1 speed: 0.0 RPM

.

--- Other Temp Stats ---

TaSP Unknown  30.0°C
Ta0P Unknown  30.13°C
Th1H NB/CPU/GPU HeatPipe 1 Proximity  37.5°C
Th2H Unknown  38.13°C
Ts0P Palm rest L  26.0°C
Ts0S Memory Bank Proximity  32.5°C
Ts1P Unknown  24.63°C
Ts1S Unknown  32.78°C
TBXT Unknown  27.19°C
TB0T Battery TS_MAX  27.19°C
TB1T Battery 1  27.19°C
TB2T Battery 2  27.19°C
TCGC PECI GPU  56.0°C
TCSA PECI SA  61.0°C
TCTD Unknown  -0.42°C
TCXC PECI CPU  68.06°C
TCXP Unknown  68.06°C
TC0E CPU 0 ??  66.97°C
TC0F CPU 0 ??  68.75°C
TC0P CPU 0 Proximity  47.0°C
TC1f Unknown  70.72°C
TC1C Core 1  67.0°C
TC1F Unknown  70.72°C
TC2C Core 2  62.0°C
TC3C Core 3  62.0°C
TC4C Core 4  58.0°C
TG0D GPU 0 Die  35.0°C
TG0F Unknown  35.0°C
TG0P GPU 0 Proximity  45.0°C
TG1D GPU 1 Die  -127.0°C
TH0a Unknown  32.25°C
TH0b Unknown  31.25°C
TH0c Unknown  30.25°C
TH0x Unknown  -127.0°C
TH0A Unknown  32.25°C
TH0B Unknown  31.25°C
TH0C Unknown  30.25°C
TH0F Unknown  -53.75°C
TH0R Unknown  -53.75°C
TH0V Unknown  31.08°C
TM0P Memory Slot Proximity  40.25°C
TM0S Memory Slot 1  37.64°C
TPCD Platform Controller Hub Die  44.0°C
TP0P Unknown  40.13°C
TW0P AirPort Proximity  36.31°C

UPDATE

I sent the mac off to be fixed and it turned out to be something stuck in the right fan causing it to not move! Looking at my fan speeds now:
left: 3000rpm
right: 2800rpm (seems consistently slower so maybe slightly damaged :L)

CPU temp is now idle at: 48°C ish

Long story short if one of your fan's is around zero then its got stuck or has broken!

The various temperature readings look absolutely 100% fine!

This resource (which can be filtered) clearly shows that your CPU temp at 52.38°C is nothing to worry about.

My MBP temp is regularly between 66 and 81 degrees, and my fans are regularly at 6200 RPM when my CPU usage is high.

However, the fact that your stats indicate only one fan is spinning warrants further investigation. I would run an Apple Hardware Diagnostics to see if it finds any errors. To do this:

Fully shut down your MBP
Restart your MBP
Immediately press the D key and keep it down until you see the Diagnostics screen appear
Wait for Diagnostics to finish (this typically only takes a few minutes)
Once complete, one of two things will appear on the screen:

a No issues found message
a brief description of any errors found plus further instructions

If the diagnostics test does find errors, take a note of what they are

Note: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Let us know how you go.


How to Decouple iCloud-Sourced Photos from the iCloud in Photos Application Is there a way to decouple photos from iCloud in the Photos application when they arrive?  Basically, on macOS, I would like iCloud to deliver new photos and otherwise leave my local photo library alone.  If this is not possible, is there a work around, such as a method for creating independent copies of photos that arrive via iCloud?

I have found similar questions that explain that iCloud tightly couples photos across devices but nothing about how to work around the problem.  Clearly different devices have different storage capacity, so it makes sense that one would like to enforce different policies on each device.

You cannot in Photos designate some photos as "local" and others as "iCloud Photo Library". It is all or nothing.

However, you can have locally stored photos outside of the Photos application, which will be untouched by iCloud Photo Library.

Regarding your comment about storage capacities: In Photos Preferences under the iCloud tab, you can set your storage policy to either (a) store photos and videos in full resolutions on this Mac, or (b) store photos and videos in full resolution on iCloud primarily and only cache photos/videos in full resolution locally as available storage allows.


Not able to copy files to another Mac in the network via AFP I have an iMac and an MBP connected to the same network and I want to transfer files from one machine to the other. I can see the other device listed in my Finder sidebar and connect to it from there. I am able to view the remote files as well. However, when I try to copy files to the remote machine, it doesn't work. When I try to copy, Finder creates a file with the same name but zero bytes in size. It then warns me that a file with the same name exists and do I wish to replace it. On confirming replace, I get the following erorr:

  The operation can’t be completed because an item with the name “” already exists.

I checked the remote machine and see that empty file which just got created remains there with zero bytes size. What could be wrong?

A few more points:

I have the same user account present on both the machines and I am logging in with that credentials.
I am the owner of the target folder and my account has got write permissions. I have also tried to CHMOD the folder and contents to 777.
One machine runs Lion and the other Snow Leopard. However, I was getting the same error with two Snow Leopards as well.

Any help will be much appreciated.

It turned out that the issue was indeed different UIDs though the usernames were the same.

From the Apple Support Communities link:

  borbye:

  The first user that is established on an OSX disc is given UID number
  501. Normally next user is given UID 502. In my case I could not import my existing user during first run with my new MB Air. Had to
  establish a testuser and later import my existing user. It turned out
  that the testuser was giver UID 501 and my existing user was given UID
  502. Result was the existing users on the two macs are not the same even thoug the username and login is identical..

I tried what was suggested in the support thread and screwed up my entire system - as he had clearly warned.

  borbye:

  Check your users in systemprefs -> accounts - open the lock and right
  click on user -> choose advanced options.

  NB: Dont even think you can just change the UID for the user and it
  will work..... If some more advanced users have a script to change the
  UID for all files in a home folder, please let us know..

The workaround suggested at the thread didn't quite work for me. But I am not sure if I missed any steps. So you can try this at your own risk.

  one51mac:

  borbye is correct that this will remedy the problem but there is a way
  to do it and have your account work. after changing the user UID and
  group UID to 501 you will have to restart. then when you log on your
  home folder will still be your default but you will not have any
  access. Since you are still an admin you can change that. right click
  on the home folder and select get info click arrow for sharing and
  permissions. Your old UID account will show up as _unknown delete this
  user and add your user to it giving yourself read and write privilege.
  click on the cog on the bottom and select apply to enclosed items. A
  warning box will appear stating that this process cannot be undone do
  you wish to proceed? click yes and a status bar will come up. once the
  bar is gone the process is complete. since you didn't have access to
  your home folder you cannot save your settings, this is a good thing
  since your account will not look remotely the same as yours most
  likely. all you have to do now is logout and then back in. Your
  account will look as it did before the change with all the access
  settings and so forth as before the change... minus some permissions
  due to the overwrite. It's a minor repair to the permissions to some
  shares considering you will be able to now move files to and these
  shares without the permissions alert that only creates a 4kb file
  instead of the real thing. Takes 5 minutes at most. Have fun.

Ended up doing a fresh install and created a user with the same username as the first one. It took a lot of time to backup and restore all the data but finally I am back on track.


How can I get Snow Leopard to properly reconnect to my Windows network drives after it goes to sleep? My mac goes to sleep. It wakes up. The volumes mounted to a Windows server in my house all work. I can see pictures and listen to music. Until I can't. After two or three sleep/wake cycles, I can't connect to the Windows server at all, with Finder hanging infinitely on trying to connect. I have to reboot the entire machine to reconnect properly. With OS X 10.5, I never could get the volumes to reconnect after sleep, but at least they didn't sabotage Finder. Anyone have any ideas? I hate leaving the mac running all the time.

(27" 2010 iMac, OS X 10.6.4)

This is a known issue, and has no current hotfix or resolution.  The problem is in the samba implementation.

The only thing I can think of doing is writing a script to umount your samba just before sleep, and mounting right after sleep.  (Nobody has done this yet)

Most educated source on the problem I could find:
https://superuser.com/questions/144327/mac-os-cant-connect-to-smb-shares-after-sleep


MacBook takes screenshots without user input Yesterday my desktop MacBook with Yosemite took a screenshot although I did not use that facility. It made the sound and created a file that I threw away fearing it was a virus. The doc created was not in fact a photo from the camera or the screen.

Today it happened again: the same sound of screen shot, but this time there is no file to be found in the computer.

Can this be a virus or an intruder?

According to Trend MICRO (September 12, 2016) the symptoms you describe do confirm that this could be a virus or intruder:

Infection Channel: Downloaded from the Internet, Dropped by other malware

This backdoor enables the attacker to steal a range of information, including screenshots, audio, and keylogs. It can also execute commands and communicate using encrypted data.


How much space does xcode 14.2 really need? $ df -H
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity iused      ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1s5    251G    11G    39G    23%  488329 2447612991    0%   /
and yet "you have no space to install xcode"
39 gig is no longer enough?

Correct, when it says that you haven't got enough disk space to be install Xcode, you need to free up more space in order to complete the installation.
As far as I remember approx. 40-45 GB of free space is needed to complete the install.


Second language doesn't show up in keyboard - iOS 8 I use two languages on my iPad. Both show up in settings, but the "world" key, used to change from one language to another on the keyboard, has been replaced by an emoticon key. Emoticon does not show up on the list of languages in settings. How do I get rid of the emoticon key and replace it with the "world" key on the keyboard?

Never mind, figured it out. Went to settings/ keyboard/ added the second language there and deleted emotcon language there.


Message, Phone apps started showing only phone numbers, not names About three days after upgrading from iOS 11.4 to iOS 12 my messages and phone apps (recents & voicemail) started showing only phone numbers, not contact names. In some cases, they would display "Maybe: [name]".

Trying to figure this out, I noticed that my contacts app was not formating numbers correctly.  Instead of (123) 456-7890, it would show 1234567890.

I tried a lot of fixes that were suggested on the internet (edit one contact, restart, stop the apps and re-start, etc.) but none worked.

How can I fix this?

I figured this out.  Note that this fix works for an iPhone 5s running iOS 12, with contacts synced to Google/Gmail.  Your mileage may vary.

The problem seems to be that the phone numbers in the contacts app have lost the proper format. They should be in the form (123) 456-7890 and they have become formatted as 1234567890. It seems that iOS does a really literal comparison and it can't resolve this difference. I tested this theory by editing a contact to put a "+1" international code in front of the number. That forced the number into the correct format and the phone app and messages then displayed that person's name.

The challenge was how to do this without editing every phone number.

I fixed this by changing my region from the US to Canada. That evidently forces a re-formatting of the erroneous numbers. Then I changed it back to the US.

Go to Settings, General, Language&Region, Region, select "Canada", then press "Done" (I bet selecting any region would work). The change takes a bit of time. When it is complete, look at your recent calls, voicemails and messages--they should be displaying names. Look at your contacts--phone numbers should be correctly formatted. If so, the problem should be fixed. In any case, change the region back to "United States."

Good luck, I hope this works for you.


Why is my mac replacing my name on all my email as "Holiday In The United States"? Recently I noticed that on both Spark and the default mail app, my name is being replaced as "Holiday In The United States". This is happening on all my accounts, with various email providers. I have verified my name in both System Preferences, Spark Preferences, and Mail Preferences. Additionally, I have checked my name on each email provider's settings. To clarify, I am only seeing my name as "Holiday In The United States" from my Mac, not online.

Any way I can fix this? It is really annoying having to log-in from the browser to send mail.

I am currently on a MacBook Pro Mid 2014, running Mac OS Sierra 10.12.3.

The good thing is that you haven't got a virus, or been hacked. The bad thing is this has been a bug (for want of a better word) that seems to appear from time to time and it's been around for way too long!

There is no single catch-all solution that works in all cases, so it's not so easy to provide a quick answer here. However, you may find the following online discussions useful:

My gmail name comes up as Holidays in the United States
Why does my name say Holidays In United States
Mail changes my name to some odd contact or calendar group


Setting up Open Directory for already existing user accounts I work for a small business, for the few years we've been running we've had individual MacBooks with local user accounts. We need to formalise this a bit in order to get an industry security accreditation, we need to prove password rotation and things like that.

I've set up Apple Server on a spare Mac Mini and created the network, I'm able to set up new users and login via the connected macbooks. The issue I have is we've all got long established profiles, apps, settings and so on, so I need a way to get these existing profiles tied to the users, there doesn't seem to be a standard way to do this and any guides/videos I find are very outdated.

I created a open directory user matching my local user, renamed my user (home) directory, deleted my local account using the root user and signed in to my network user on my macbook, then logged back into the root got rid of the network users user (home) directory and renamed my old one back, I tried to set the ownership of the directory to the network user account but when I logged in it was a world of pain, I couldn't even open apps due to the permissions.

I ended up losing my old local account, luckily I was able to get all of my files back and set the user and group permissions to my new user, although I've lost my settings and configs. There was obviously a whole load of other files I wasn't aware of in the Library that just didn't like the change.

Is there a way I can link Open Directory users to already existing local mac users, or somehow switch over?

Thanks!

This is my old note, that I did. I am writing here as this might help you. All instructions may not be accurate for the path as macOS has changed a lot. But I would suggest you give a try on one machine first. Please make a backup of everything or try on one idle machine.

Step 1: Steps 1 – 24 (Basic setup)

First, ensure that the local mac user account password matches the password for the AD account that you want to migrate to.
Log into the computer under any Admin account (or create a new admin account) other than the account that needs to be migrated.
Enable Root user from Open Directory Utility.
Add the computer in the domain and choose create mobile account.
Select the local user account that you want to migrate to an AD account and choose Delete (-).
At the Delete prompt, select option to 'Don't change the home folder (the home folder remains in the user folder). This will rename the user folder by adding '(Deleted)' at the end of the folder. Click 'Delete User'.
Log out of the computer.
At login screen, select Other and log into computer with AD account and if prompted, select the option for 'Create Mobile Account'. Skip any configuration prompts upon login.
Log Out of AD account and log back in as root.
Navigate to Users folder/new AD user folder and delete new AD user folder. Restart computer, log back in as root, and empty trash.
Rename the old user folder. Go to the user folder and delete the '(Deleted)' and any spaces from the folder name. The name of the user folder needs to match the AD username.
Select the User folder and choose Get info.
Unlock Permissions
Click + and add Network User and type in and select the correct AD user and click ok.
Set the user with Read, Write permissions. Select user, click gear and choose 'Make user owner'
Click + and add Network Groups and add 'Domain Users'
Set 'Domain Users' group permissions to be Read Only.
Delete 'Staff' group
Under the 'Name' column in the 'Sharing Permissions:' section, you will see an owner account listed and under the 'Name' column, it may read 'Fetching'. Select it and delete this entry.
Go to gear and select 'Apply to Enclosed Items'

Step 2: Steps 25-27 - Reset User folder Permissions and ACLs

Download Batchmod.
Open Batchmod and browse to the user's user folder.
Apply permissions EXACTLY as follows and make sure ALL options are checked (above image):

Now, in Batchmod, browse to the user's Public folder and select the Drop Box folder and apply the following permissions:

After all steps are complete and the user can log into their domain account successfully and see all their data, then log back into the local admin account you have been using and do the following:

Disable root (within directory utility)
Remove the user profile you used to test and confirm you could log into a domain account.
Open a terminal window and run dsconfigad -passinterval 0 (this supposedly helps the Mac to pick up password changes more accurately when mandatory password intervals hit.)
Make the newly migrated user a local admin if appropriate. (Hint: usually not appropriate.)

I recommend leaving the local admin account in place so you can get into the machine in the future if anything ever goes awry with the connection to the domain. It can happen.

Go through this also: http://www.walcott.com/blog/converting-a-local-mac-user-account-to-and-open-directory-server-mobile-account


Cannot find image saved to cloud from preview I wanted to post a cropped image on FaceBook.
I scanned the image into preview (import from scanner), cropped it and when "save in the cloud" was suggested I was quite happy to save it there.

Then I clicked image in FaceBook, clicked photos, but could not find the image anywhere. No Cloud folder and not in my stream. It is only available to preview as far as I can see.

Where can I find my image back when in an upload dialog?

PS: Today I wanted to upload a few flagged images from iPhoto, but they also did not show in the "Flagged images" in the upload dialog.

Any suggestions as to how to

a) find images saved to the cloud from my iMac when uploading and
b) refresh the flagged folder in the upload dialog

System: Latest Mountain Lion and iOS6.0.1 on all other devices

All iCloud documents get saved locally to ~/Library/Mobile Documents and preview has a folder there named com~apple~Preview with a Documents folder.

From Finder use Shift-Command-G to go to the folder

 ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~Preview/Documents

You can then copy or move the file elsewhere as needed.


What can the LCI (liquid contact indicator) tell you? So the iPhone official website states

"An LCI will activate when it contacts water or a liquid containing water. The indicator's color is normally white or silver, but when it contacts water or a liquid containing water, it will turn fully red. An LCI won't activate because of humidity and temperature changes that are within the product's environmental requirements."

I also know that

Once the LCI changes color it does not come back; i.e. it's permanent

Can it tell you whether(=can you infer from the two statements above whether it is true that)

If no amount of moisture was present during the history of its use, to light the LCI, then no moisture was present to seep into the iPhone and damage it.
If no amount of moisture was present during the history of its use, to light the LCI, then no moisture was present to seep into the iPhone and expose the user to non-charging electrocution risk* (unless of course your hands are wet again)

non-charging electrocution risk = electrocution risk while not having the iPhone charged.

In regards to 3 - no, you cannot infer that because an LCI hasn't changed color, then liquid was never present in the phone. It just means that the LCI didn't come in contact with the liquid. Another part of the phone might have been in contact with water. Also in case of "moisture" then slight dampness in the air doesn't necessarily activate an LCI.

In regards to 4 -  again no, you cannot infer that. However, I must say that it sounds extremely, extremely unlikely that you could be electrocuted by a dry iPhone while not charging. I think you probably want to say more about why you're asking this question in the first place.


Stop iOS auto-downloading updates On my iPhone, the Software Update section in Settings used to have a "Download Update" button. With iOS 11 it is replaced by an "Install update button", which means its downloading updates automatically.

Sometimes I get a message saying “Update will be installed after 10pm if connected to power”.

In order to get rid of the update data file, I used Settings -> Storage to delete the update. After few days the update was downloaded again and asked me to install.

My internet connection is a 4G hotspot with limited, expensive data. Every time an unnecessary update is downloaded it is a loss of money..

I have tried the Mikoto jailbreak tweak, but it doesn't work for this.

How do i get this tvOS Profile?

How can I stop iOS from automatically downloading updates?

If you've already turned off Updates in iTunes & App Store and deleted the update in Manage Storage, then your final option is to totally block the update domains

https://appldnld.apple.com
https://mesu.apple.com/

in your hotspot.  This will block all software updates to any device connected to the hotspot.  [1]

However, a variety of reliable sources (NY Times, USA Today, WSJ, Associated Press) would recommend updating to iOS 12.  Many of them cite speeding up older devices as the primary reason.


How Many Genius Mixes Are There in iTunes? Every so often I'll add a couple hundred new songs to my iTunes and discover a new mix has been created. It makes me wonder then, exactly how many mixes are there, what genres are they, etc.

Here's a photo, in case you're unsure what I'm talking about.

We can crowd source this:

  Please type very carefully. Don't split combinations that use "&" or
  "/"- just list them as you see them. Do remove the word "Mix" from the
  end.
  If you have Brit Pop and Brit Pop 2, add in ( 2 ) or ( 2 3 ) if
  you have more than one mix with the same name.

These mixes have been observed already "in the wild."

Acoustic Blues
Adult Alternative
Adult Alternative Pop
Adult Alternative Rock
Adult Contemporary
Adult Pop/Rock
Alt. Folk
Alt Metal
Alt Pop
Alt Singer/Songwriter
Alternative Country
Alternative Pop/Rock
Ambient
Americana
Animation
AOR Classic Rock
Art & Experimental Rock
Art & Progressive Rock
Big Band & Swing
Black & Death Metal
Bluegrass
Blues, Boogie & Southern Rock
Bossa Nova
Brazilian Pop
Brazilian Folk & Traditional
Breakbeat
Brit Pop
Brit Pop & Rock
British Invasion
Canto-Pop
Celtic
Chamber Pop
Children's
Christian Pop/Rock
Christian Urban
Classical
Classical Crossover
Classical Instrumental
Classic R&B
Classic Hard Rock
Classic Punk (2)
Classic Rock (2)
Classic Ska
Classic Soul
Comedy
Conscious Rap (2)
Contemporary
Contemporary Country
Contemporary Folk
Contemporary R&B
Cool & West Coast Jazz
Country
Christian Rock
Dance Pop
Danceclub
Dancehall & Ragga
Disco
Dream Pop
East Coast Rap
Electric Blues
Electro Pop
Electronica
Electronica Mainstream
Emo
Europop
Folk (2)
Folk Rock
Folk-Pop
French
Funk
Gangsta Rap
Goth (2)
Gothic Metal
Grunge
Hardcore & Thrash
Hard Bop & Post-Bop
Hard Rock & Stoner Rock
Heavy Metal
Hip-Hop/Rap
Honky Tonk & Outlaw
House
Indie Pop
Indie Rock
Indie Rock & Lo-Fi
Industrial
Israeli
Jam Bands
Jazz
Jazz Vocals
Jungle / Drum n' Bass
J-Guitar Rock
J-Pop
J-Pop Dance
J-Pop Female
J-Pop Urban
J-Rock Female
Kammerpop
Korean Pop
Latin Dance/Pop
Latin Folk & Traditional
Latin Rock
Latin/World Jazz
Lounge
Mainstream Rock
Mandarin Pop
Meditation
Metal
Minimalist
Musicals (3)
Neo-Soul
New Age
New Age/World Music
New Wave
Nü-Metal
Old-School Rap
Pop
Pop Metal
Pop-Soul
Post-Modern Rock
Post Punk
Power Pop
Progressive House
Progressive Metal
Punk (2)
Punk Pop
Punk Rock
Quiet Storm
Reggae
Rock Singer/Songwriter
Singer/Songwriter
Ska
Soft Rock
Soft Rock Oldies
Soul
Soundtracks
Southern Rap
Surf/Garage Revival
Swing Revival
Synth-Pop
Techno/House
Teen Pop
Traditional Acoustic Blues
Traditional Folk
Trance
Trip-Hop (2)
Urban Crossover
Video Games
Vocal
West African
West Coast Rap
World
'50s Oldies
'60s
60's Psychedelic Pop/Rock
'70s Pop


Apple Configurator 2 - How to edit an installed Configuration Profile? I wish to modify an existing Configuration Profile installed on an iPhone, but I do not have a disk copy of it, nor can I download it again from the source (no longer available).  Using Apple Configurator 2 there appears to be no way to export to disk, or modify, the full contents of an already existing and installed Configuration Profile.  Nor indeed to inspect its contents (which would provide a tedious but manual way to re-create a new profile by inspecting the contents of an existing one)

Is there a way of extracting an installed Configuration Profile from an iDevice to disk so that I can then open it and modify it using Configurator?  Thanks.

There isn't a way to do this. The device doesn't keep the complete profile around.


I can't access apple.com from my Macbook For some reason I cannot access apple.com from my MacBook since last week. Was Lion at that time, so I thought updating to Mountain might help, but no luck. Also a full reset and back to original settings of my router didn't help.
Funny thing is though, my iPhone and iPad can go to apple.com via Wifi and the Macbook will as well when it is connected by LAN cable. Just not via Wifi. Also iTunes can only reach the Apple Store via cable, not wifi. The iOs devices have again no problem.

Somebody??

I would run /System/Library/CoreServices/Network Diagnostics.app and isolate what isn't working on the Mac.

It's hard to guess based on the information you have edited into the question.


Full size keyboard with built in stand for iPhone? I'm looking for bluetooth keyboards for use with my iPhone. I'd like a full size keyboard that has a built in iPhone stand. Everything I've found so far with a built in stand is almost full size but not quite. Are there any full size keyboard options with built in iPhone stands? A case for the apple bluetooth keyboard that had a stand built in would also work but I haven't found one of these.

For what it's worth, have you taken a look at the Apple iPad Keyboard Dock Wired Keyboard?

It doesn't have a number pad but otherwise is a full sized keyboard that shouldn't even need bluetooth.

Of course I am assuming that it will work with an iPhone even though it was made for an iPad.


Macbook Pro battery life with Android Studio 2.2 running I have a late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina 15 inch with i7 2.3 GHz, 16GB Ram, nVidia 750m 2GB and 500GB PCIe SSD.
I've always been happy with the machine and battery life, except when I work in Android Studio (always updated to the latest version).
I can never get past 2,5 - 3 hours of battery life. Is this normal ?
I never run the emulator, as I always use a real device to test my apps.

I've tried SMC and PRAM reset with no impact.

Any ideas?

There was a long-standing problem with Oracle JDKs/JREs causing the discrete video card rather than the integrated one to be used on Retina displays, with a consequent hit on battery life. The problem became apparent when JetBrains started bundling Oracle's JRE with IntelliJ-based IDEs (see, for instance, IDEA-119858 in their bugtracker). Android Studio is based on the IntelliJ platform so would have suffered from the same problem.

That said, the problem has been fixed for quite some time in JetBrains IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA, and issue 80173 in the Android Studio tracker says it was fixed in Android Studio 2.2. So since you say you're using the latest version perhaps your problem has another cause, or perhaps the problem's not in fact fixed in all cases. gfxCardStatus (as linked from the JetBrains bug report) might be useful in checking which card is actually being used. I used the tool for a while on my own mid-2012 Retina MacBook Pro back in the days when IntelliJ IDEA was suffering from this problem.


Control draft saving in Apple Mail? Is it at all possible to change the time for saving drafts in Apple Mail. I use MobileMe and whenever I send a mail, the draft is not automatically deleted. I don't want to switch off saving of drafts, but would like to increase the time between saves, since I don't need to save drafts for short emails.

If you go into Preferences, Accounts, select your account, then select the "Mailbox Behaviors" tab, there's an option to disable saving drafts on the server. I know you said you didn't want to disable saving of drafts, but this option will still save the draft on your computer, yet it won't mess up Mobile Me.


Play/Pause/Prev/Fwd buttons not working What I have: macOS 10.10.2(Yosemite) on an iMac mid-2011 + original wireless keyboard.

Suddenly, buttons for controlling iTunes (they are located on F7, F8 and F9 buttons) stopped working. Meanwhile, other buttons (volume, brightness, launchpad, etc.) still work.

The keys work in other applications but not with iTunes.

Where should I look to fix this? Notice, the issue happened before updating to OS X Yosemite.

I found this to solve the problem for me, thanks to Major Hayden!

...check your keyboard shortcuts in Chrome:

Choose Preferences in the Chrome menu in the menu bar
Click Extensions in the left sidebar
Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page
Click Keyboard Shortcuts
Look at the key bindings in the Google Play Music section
Remove them all by by pressing the 'X' icon next to them.


How can I move my PDF files listed in the Acrobat app from the iPad storage to Adobe Document Cloud? I use Acrobat on my iPad to read PDFs. They are currently stored on the iPad. How can I move all my PDF files from the iPad storage to Adobe Document Cloud?
Note that:

I can't transfer multiple files+folders at once from the Acrobat app on iPadOS 13 or 14 directly to my computer, which runs Windows 7.

The following screenshot shows some action that can only be applied to 1 PDF file at a time. However, I am looking for a solution to upload all my PDFs at once to Adobe Document Cloud, since I have a few hundreds of them.

Safari
You can upload all files at the same time using Safari on your iPad.

Open Safari and visit https://documentcloud.adobe.com
Sign in and press the upload icon
Select Browse... and navigate to "On my iPad" (located in root) then Adobe.
Select the three dots icon (...) and choose the Select option.
Select all files you would like to upload and press open.

Files app
You can e-mail or export all files at the same time using the Files app.

Open Files app
Navigate to "On my iPad" -> Adobe
Select all files you would like to export. You can select multiple items from the three period menu (...).
Use share icon and select preferred exporting method.


Can I modify a terminal command to do additional stuff? I've looked into aliases, functions... but I have not come up with anything satisfying. Let me give you a couple of scenarios:

95% of times that I cd into a folder, I follow up with a ls
command.
90% of times that I mkdir, I cdmyself into it.

You get the idea.

What would be the "cleanest" way to bind those commands together (or other functionality)?

I'd tend to make a new command for this. I think it would even be logical to combine them into a single one.

go() {
    if [ -d "$1" ]; then
        cd "$1" && ls
    else
        mkdir -p "$1" && echo "Created directory $1" && cd "$1"
    fi
}


Automaticly and seamlessly sync iPhone photos as soon as they're taken (over the air) I use Snappy. That's my preferred photo app of all! So, please, keep this in mind.

Ideally I want to be able to sync to picasa and dropbox. But I wouldn't mind if it was flickr, picposterous or whatever, as long as it's really automatic and seamless, unlike this guy's solution. I've tried many apps and couldn't find a single one (apparently unlike this guy, which is the reason why I started this question).

Dropbox app like few others do let you take photos from inside the app and submit the photo. But that's not even a seamless sync - if there's no internet connection the photo won't be sent as soon as internet becomes available unless the app stays open.

Maybe a good solution would be just an app able to monitor the DCIM folder and send any new ones through e-mail as soon as it sees it. Then we could use pixelpipe, instapaper, sendtodropbox or anything! That way the iOS already handles sending e-mails exactly the way we expect - it will go through as soon as a connection is available.

For now, I'm using Picbox - it softens the whole manual process at least... But that's still not it!

I too have tried to find something to do this, with little success. Documenting what people have tried may be helpful, so here's my list:

Cinq -- offers to sync with iPhoto on the Mac, or to the filesystem on a Mac or PC; only works for photos taken within Cinq
DropPhox -- syncs with Dropbox; only works for photos taken within DropPhox
Eye-Fi -- syncs to local machine, and lots of online services (Picasa and Flickr but not Dropbox); free (although nags to upgrade); will sync photos that were taken with any camera app on the iPhone; requires (as far as i can see) an Eye-Fi card to set up an account and get it working

All of these have their drawbacks; would love to find the app that can upload all photos automatically.


How to auto join my hidden SSID home network from my iPhone on iOS5 Ever since upgrading to iOS 5 my iPhone(s) have problems auto joining my home wifi network.

They seem to auto join it for a few days and then it just stops working.  The phone can still see the wifi networks if I go to settings->Wi-Fi, and once I do it will even auto-join it after a few seconds.  However; it only remains connected for a few minutes and then disconnects.

The only solution I've found so far is switching my Router's channel from auto to a specific number.  That works for a few days and then stops working again, if i bump the channel number in either direction it then works for a few more days.

This was a problem with my iPhone 4 after upgrading to iOS 5 and has been a problem with my iPhone 4s since purchase.

My (original) iPad has no issues and remains connected regardless of what I do to the router channel.

Apple recommends not using hidden SSID's. There's no security in hiding them and as you have found out, it causes a problem with iOS devices discovering and joining the network after they come out of sleep mode.


Move programs and games to external storage I want to move some programs, games from MacBook Pro SSD to the external HDD. With Xcode it was no problem. Because Xcode was under Applications and I could copy it and create link to it.

But I have some games that are not asking about installation path. And that are installed in many different places on my SSD. For example under User->Documents etc.

If I move it simply to an external drive - it doesn't work. I think they have some internal references, maybe under config files, to each part.

I want to move - GarageBand (with all additional sounds etc.), WarThunder and World of Warships from internal to external drive.

Are there any general solutions to move the programs and games
that are not stored under Application?

Or maybe guides, articles etc.

There are two ways developers can make their apps for Mac. The recommended way is to put everything the app needs into a "bundle". Apps created in this way enclose everything they need in the .app. As a result, these apps can be moved to anywhere you want, and they'll still work.

If you installed an app by dragging it's .app file from the DMG into Applications, or whatever folder it's in, it can be moved without any problems. Xcode is one of these kind of apps. Just drag the app anywhere you want. (Note: you may need to reset paths to your custom files once you open the app, such as pointing to the locations of your custom sounds, movies, whatever.)

The other way of developing apps involves using files external to the .app bundle. These apps generally have files in the system or user's Library folders or other folders, usually hidden to the average user. As a result, these apps must be "moved" differently - if they can be moved at all.

If you installed an app by double-clicking the .app or a .pkg file from within a DMG, it is very likely one of these more complex apps.  Creative Suite is an example of one of these. You might be able to move these apps in one of these ways:

use the app's installation process to select the new location, or
search around or contact the vendor to get the locations of all the external items you'll have to move, point to, or change in order to use the app from an external drive

Note: these are rules of thumb, so apply generally. Apps you get from the App Store are required to be in the bundle format, but that doesn't mean that once you open the app it doesn't store some stuff in other locations. I believe GarageBand does store information in some of the Library locations, for example.


Best strategy to transport a MacBook backup I just bought a new MacBook Pro overseas. I currently own a MacBook Air and I need to bring a backup of this current computer to US, so I can restore it on my new computer when I arrive.

I currently do incremental backups to a Time Capsule, but bringing it is not an option. What would be the best strategy to back my data up to an external HD and restoring it later on this new MBP?

I am OK if I need paid solutions too, but of course freebies are better.

Update: I used the approach of adding an extra drive to Time Machine and it worked beautifully! I got my new MBP and it had Lion installed. When I used the Migration Agent, the user was successfully migrated but it wouldn't recognize my password. I had to reinstall from scratch, add a new user, login, update to Mountain Lion and finally run the Migration Agent again. Once that was done, everything worked.

Have you considered using Time Machine to backup your computer to an external drive? If you change the Time Machine backup destination in System Preferences > Time Machine, it will stop backing up to your Time Capsule, and backup to your external. Then once it has completed a backup to the external, just point Time Machine back to the Time Capsule.

Carbon Copy Cloner is one of the best applications for this. It is free and makes a complete bootable backup of your hard drive to an external. I've used Carbon Copy Cloner many times and I highly recommend it.

SuperDuper! is another option. It allows you to create a fully bootable backup of your hard drive. The backup part is free, so you don't need to pay the $27.95 for the scheduling part. I've used SuperDuper! as well and it is a great application.


Is it possible to prevent Magic Keyboards from pairing without disabling Bluetooth entirely? In our office, we have a whole bunch of Magic Keyboards, and for various reasons too complex to go into here we have a habit of moving them around and connecting them to different Macbooks. As soon as they are connecting with a Lightning cable, they will typically auto-pair with the machine via Bluetooth, meaning that even once the cable is removed, they continue to be connected. It's both annoying (and potentially even a minor security risk) for someone else to have access via a keyboard they just pick up.

We can't return the Magic Keyboards; is there a way to either disable their Bluetooth behaviour or prevent the machine from auto-pairing, so they only work over USB?

No. (Not that we’ve found)

These devices are designed to pair like rabbits. Rapidly, without delay and as often as possible.

People prank each other at our work as well by taking a keyboard and plugging it into all the iMac down the row. (Or shuffling up the mice)

The best you can do is set a name for each keyboard and laugh when a charge turns into a pairing event.


Arrange different external displays of same model to different positions I am running Mac OS X (Version 10.10.5) on a MacBook Pro (13 Inch, Mid 2010) and want to arrange an external monitor of the same type to different positions.

First, let me explain my setup:

monitor at my office: DELL U2312HM (located above the MacBook's screen)
monitor at home: DELL U2312HM (located left of the MacBook's screen)

As you can see, I am using different monitors of the same type (they have different serial numbers displayed in the System Overview window). However, they are located either above or left of the internal screen.

Since the only way I know to arrange an external monitor is draging the blue boxes in the monitor section of the system preferences, I need to do this every morning after connecting my monitor in the office and every evening after coming home. The monitor arrangement does not depend on the monitor's serial number but on the model since saving the arrangement of different models works as desired.

So is there a way, a hidden setting, a hidden setting accessible through the terminal or even a third-party app which enables different monitor arrangements for the same monitor model but based on the monitor's serial number as shown in the system overview?

The behavior which seems to be a system default is very annoying and does not feel very apple-like.

There is a product out there that will remember your monitor configurations - it's called Stay

From their website:

  Stay can store a set of windows for every combination of displays that you use with your computer. Stay can also be configured to automatically restore windows as displays are connected and disconnected.


Remove sudoers using script At the moment I'm working on a solution to prevent all admins users (except one particular) from running sudo. I can add a specific user to sudoers by running:

sudo -i
echo '$username  ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL' >> /etc/sudoers

Then I'd like to remove %admin     ALL = (ALL) ALL within sudoers file which would just leave the above admin as the only sudo admin. However I cannot seem to find a way on how to remove/replace a particular string within sudoers.

I'd like to make this into a script hence using visudo and manually adjusting won't work for me. If there a way to run visudo from script and adjust a particular line within sudoers that would be ideal, but I couldn't find anything when researching on the Web.

I've seen a solution here:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/brian/entry/edit_sudoers_file_from_a_script4?lang=en

which works in Linux. Is it possible to make it work in macOS?

For what it's worth, you can use

printf '/^%%admin ALL = (ALL) ALL$/d\nw\nq\n' | ed -s sudoers

or, if you want to catch the line independent of the number of space characters, tabs etc used

printf '/^%%admin[[:blank:]]*ALL[[:blank:]]*=[[:blank:]]*(ALL)[[:blank:]]*ALL$/d\nw\nq\n' | ed sudoers

in bash to remove the admin line (the double %% are required to prevent printf from interpreting them as formatting instructions).

The usual caveats about editing sudoers without relying on the syntax checks done by visudo apply. So it might be safer to run the following, or at least have another root shell running so you can fix any issues without getting locked out)

cp /etc/sudoers /tmp
chmod +w /tmp/sudoers
printf '/^%%admin[[:blank:]]*ALL[[:blank:]]*=[[:blank:]]*(ALL)[[:blank:]]*ALL$/d\nw\nq\n' \
    | ed /tmp/sudoers
if visudo -c -f /tmp/sudoers; then
    echo "All well"
    mv -f /tmp/sudoers /etc/sudoers
    chmod -w /etc/sudoers
else
    echo "Uups, something went wrong"
fi

(Script untested, because I don't want to mess with my sudoers file)


com.apple.iconServicesAgent using a lot of RAM in 10.9 I performed a fresh install of OS X 10.9 and now the process com.apple.iconServicesAgent is using >300MB of RAM, that is quite a lot. This process is using the second most amount of memory of all processes, after the kernel task.

Google tells me that other people have this problem, too, but I found no solution so far.

Is there any way to reduce the RAM consumption of this process?

Observations

You may observe natural rises and falls in usage.

You should not treat the usage as a problem.

Background: about icon services

For an idea of what's done by icon services (the com.apple.IconServices daemon, com.apple.IconServicesAgent processes and related files), run the following command in a Terminal window that's maybe 257 characters wide, or wider:

sudo fs_usage -w -f filesys com.apple.IconServices | grep write

Then in Finder:

browse a folder that has not been browsed since you started the Mac
browse away
browse back to the same folder.

You should find that:

the initial browse causes writes (to a cache)
second and subsequent browses cause no additional caching, for as long as the contents of the folder are unchanged.

To abort the command, Control-C

For an unfiltered view of things:

sudo fs_usage -w -f filesys com.apple.IconServices

Benefits of icon services in Mavericks

It seems to me that Apple's approach to caching icons is of particular benefit to apps/processes where primary functions include reading metadata from a variety of types of file system. Apps such as Finder, processes such as Dock, and so on.

As part of a broader approach to maximising performance, icon services should allow presentation with minimal delay of the subset of metadata that is of greatest interest to the user.

For the Recent Applications stack in Dock: probably names, icons and dates/times as essentials within a subset.

For views in Finder: subsets may be entirely different, depending on what's required by the user.

Additional thoughts

In HFS Plus (Mac OS Extended), with reference to retired documentation, we have the performance-oriented hot file B-tree, attributes file and so on. With everything else that has been done to that file system, it is now debatably over-extended.

The performance-related benefits of icon services should be relatively file system-agnostic. This is pleasing. I expect the benefits to be realised by users of ZFS on Mavericks, and so on …


How do you pronounce the clover-like key (⌘)? How do you pronounce the clover-like key ⌘ ?

This is usually called the "command" key. Others just call it the "apple" key...


Does factory reset notify me of device removal on Find My iPhone? I have just got my iPhone stolen today. I live in fairly safe neighborhood but I got unlucky. Now, I have searched this question on internet for a fair amount of time now. Making a rookie mistake, I have not put a passcode on the device.

My question is, if the device is reset from the Settings, do I get notified that a device has been removed?

The device is running iOS 7.0.4. Lost mode was activated and the device is now offline.

The device can't be removed from Find my iPhone by resetting it. Furthermore, you can and probably should set the device to lost mode if you want to put a PIN on it and lock the device with a helpful message to contact you for the eventual return of the device. If you really just want the device wiped, then you can erase it, knowing that still it will show your lost message:

  With iOS 7, Find My iPhone can continue to display your custom message, even after your device has been erased.

When you press the Reset button in Settings, it asks for your Apple ID, and will only reset the device when it's been entered.

Attempting to turn off Find my iPhone through iCloud settings will prompt for your Apple ID.

If the device is factory reset when powered off through iTunes, it will still require activation using your Apple ID.

Putting the device in lost mode is probably better since eventually the thief will decide to return it once they realize whomever they sell or give it to will keep getting reminded that the device was lost and should be returned to you.


Unable to remove Windows Partition on Bootcamp I have a problem with removing the windows partition on bootcamp.

Using diskutil list, this was the result:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         184.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                66.2 GB    disk0s3
   4:           Windows Recovery                         543.2 MB   disk0s4

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +184.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            119.9 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 44.0 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                517.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4

I want to know the safest way to remove the Windows Partition because I am really confused on what all of this means.

There are two ways.

Option 1 (recommended):

Go to Boot Camp Assistant, which is in the Utilities folder. Then click continue until you see this window:

Select "Remove Windows 10 or later version", and click continue. Follow all the steps, and it should remove it.

Option 2:

Open up Disk Utility, which is in your Utilities folder in Applications. Then, as shown in the image below, click the top left button and click Show All Devices.

Once you have done that, you should see something like this:

Click on the - sign when the windows partition is selected and click Delete.

After the process finishes, the Windows partition should be removed.


Warranty for power adapter and earpod I recently bought an iPhone 6s and given 1 year warranty by Apple. Does the warranty covers other items as well? i.e. the power adapter and the earphone?

According to Apple's Service FAQ:

  Apple accessories (including the power adapter and Apple iPhone cases) are also covered by Apple's One Year Limited Warranty. Online service might not be available through Apple for all accessories. Contact your carrier, Apple, or an Apple Authorized Service Provider for details.
  Read Apple’s One Year Limited Warranty for iPhone Accessories

Warranty coverage may vary depending on the country you are in, so please verify this for your country.


Trying to find the culprit taking up space on Catalina HD I am at a loss of how to clear up system files manually on a 2017 MBP. Upon running du -h -d 1 I get;

Now the private folder is way too big and I am cautious to clear that out. I know I could clear the private/var files to an extent but want to try and avoid that. The user caches say they are  only taking up 7.3GB, after running du -sh ~/Library/Caches.

Any guesses of where/what I can purge to get this system's storage down? Any help is greatly appreciated.

You should use DaisyDisk or Disk Inventory X.  These apps will make a color map of your disk showing what's taking up space. Daisy Disk is not free but has a free trial. Disk Inventory X is free.  These will break down you system folder to show what is using disk space.


Airport Express with New Firmware 7.8 - Problems with connectivity and Airport Utility I have multiple Airport Express which seem to have some problems since i have updated to the new Firmware (7.8)

The Airport Express looses Connection very often (with the old Firmware this never happend)
If they are connected and working, The Airport Express wont show up in Airport Utility (with the old Firmware this was never a problem)

Has anybody experienced the same? Hints where I can start searching for a solution?

Apparently there are connectivity issues with this new firmware, in particular when extending networks. Here are other people describing the same:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/34061766

Right now, the solution seems to be to downgrade to the previous firmware, in case you don't want to use AirPlay 2.

I don't have any major issues when using the Airport Express just as an AirPlay 2 client, but of course this leads to loss of the extender function.


What file system should I choose when formatting a flash drive? I need to write a few large files (larger than 4 GB) on a flash drive, but I can't do it, because the file system of the flash drive is MS-DOS (FAT32).

How should I format the flash drive, so I can write down large files into it, and then open it on a PC on windows and download these files?
What file system should I choose when formatting the flash drive?

exFAT is the only format which will work for you as it will allow files greater than 4GB and work on Windows. Disk Utility can format using exFAT.


Screen Sharing with VNC -- is it on? I'm using OS 10.11.1. I turned on Screen Sharing:

and disabled "VNC viewers may control screen with password":

But as you can see, it still says "Other users can access your computer's screen at vnc://...". Does that mean that, when "VNC viewers may control screen with password" is unchecked, VNC viewers can control my screen WITHOUT a password?
Or does it mean that VNC is disabled?

(Ideally I'd like to allow VNC over SSH, rather than with a password.)

You are safe. Anyone that requests vnc://192.168.1.100 has to enter both an existing user name and the matching password for that user.

If you enable the anyone may request, then the incoming request is shown and you make the choice to enable the sharing. Until you accept, no view happens.

If you enable the VNC password then it's like a guest account where the user name is not checked but that password will show the screen contents.


Mountain Lion : Take an image of OS X joined to a domain I've been using MacBook Pro. My question is how to capture a disk image of a Mac running Mountain Lion that is currently bound to an Active or Open Directory? What do you recommended for that?

The binding should remain in place when the image is captured.

Boot to your Recovery partition by holding option while powering on your Mac, then selecting Recovery
From the Mac OS X Utilities window choose Disk Utility
In Disk Utility, choose File > New > Disk Image from "Macintosh HD"
You will be asked to name the image (Save As) and select a destination (Where).  Fill in a name and select your external hard drive as the destination.
Once your image is created, which can take a long time depending on how much data is on the Mac, it will appear in the left hand pane of Disk Utility.
Select the image from the left hand pane in Disk Utility and from the menu bar choose Images > Scan Image for Restore.  This will scan the image and append the info for Disk Utility to later restore it to a disk as needed.  This process can take a while as well.

My only concern would be re-binding with the proper computer name if you end up restoring the image to a different Mac, this could be accomplished by editing the Active Directory info in Directory Utility.

Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Options and click the Edit button next to Network Accounts.

Click on Open Directory Utility.

Click on the lock in the lower left corner of Directory Utility and enter your password when prompted.
Double click on Active Directory.

You might take a screenshot of your different settings here, under User Experience, Mappings and Administration, just in case they get wiped out and you have to re-enter them.  You can capture a screenshot of this window by pressing commandshift4 and using the cross hairs to grab the part of the screen you'd like to capture.
Click Unbind to unbind from the directory.  Make whatever changes you need and then click Bind to re-bind the Mac to the directory.  When re-binding you'll need to authenticate as an administrator for the corresponding directory.


How can I copy and paste the complete contents of a PEM file? I found out that I can view the contents of a PEM file by pressing the Spacebar, it's not possible to select the text.

How can I copy and paste the file contents, because I need to paste it in this text field:

https://api.playfab.com/docs/tutorials/landing-players/push-notification-basics/push-notifications-for-ios

The contents of my PEM file look weird after opening it in the terminal. Is this normal? Because when I open the file with Spacebar the contents look completely different and much more normal than these lines.

In Terminal:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIFtzCCBJ+gAwIBAgIIRA1/KqHYmg8wDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEFBQAwgZYxCzAJBgNV
BAYTAlVTMRMwEQYDVQQKDApBcHBsZSBJbmMuMSwwKgYDVQQLDCNBcHBsZSBXb3Js
ZHdpZGUgRGV2ZWxvcGVyIFJlbGF0aW9uczFEMEIGA1UEAww7QXBwbGUgV29ybGR3
aWRlIERldmVsb3BlciBSZWxhdGlvbnMgQ2VydGlmaWNhdGlvbiBBdXRob3JpdHkw
HhcNMTkwNjE4MTQzNTE1WhcNMjAwNjE3MTQzNTE1WjCBtjE5MDcGCgmSJomT8ixk
...
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

I found out that I can view the contents of a PEM file by pressing the Spacebar, it's not possible to select the text.

This feature is called Quick Look in macOS. Quick Look is a handy tool to quickly view a file's content without launching any app.

To quickly copy the contents of the PEM file to clipboard, launch Terminal.app, change to the directory containing the PEM file and run the following command (Here assume the name of the PEM file is pemfile.pem and it is located in ~/Downloads directory):

pbcopy < ~/Downloads/pemfile.pem

The command won't output anything in Terminal. The PEM file contents are now copied into clipboard.

Now you can go to the desired text field and paste the copied contents by using the macOS paste keyboard shortcut Command + V.

  The contents of my PEM file look weird after opening it in the terminal. Is this normal? Because when I open the file with Spacebar the contents look completely different and much more normal than these lines.

The contents are completely normal. That's how the contents of a PEM file looks. The actual textual contents of the PEM file are not shown when using Quick Look. To view full contents of the PEM file, open it using a text editor.


Disconnect BT device on iOS 7 How can I disconnect one single Bluetooth device from iOS?

Background: I usually use my BT headphones with my iPhone, but sometimes I'd like to use the headphones with my computer. I have BT turned on on iPhone also for my Pebbles SmartWatch, therefore I don't want just turn the BT off on iPhone

If you don't want to unpair the device, but just want to disconnect from it, Apple have 3 methods:

Turn the device off and hope it doesn't reconnect back to your iOS device when you turn it back on again.
Turn Bluetooth off on your iOS device, you obviously don't need to stay connected to more than one Bluetooth device.
A very natural and simple process Apple have thought about carefully is that you simply walk your iOS device away from the device, about 5-20 metres, until it is out of range. You don't even need to unlock you iOS device to perform this step! Once out of range your iOS device will disconnect and you can walk safely back into range again.

I hope this helps, Apple have clearly thought these processes through and have delivered easy to understand and intuitive methods for disconnecting iOS from your Bluetooth device.


How to change OSX System (Default) Shortcuts? In OSX (now is Mavericks), how to change the System Default Shortcuts, for example which are currently like:

Command + Shift + Q .. for current User Logout.
Command + Q .. for current (active) Application Quit.
Command + Down Arrow .. for Opening A File.

Blah blah .. I don't like any of those, honestly.

How to permanently change them, please?

(I would even PAY for an App if it the only way to do.)
Thanks!

This is pretty easy. I already answered a similar question for someone who wanted to redefine Command-V here.

Basically you need to go into System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and define a new shortcut under "All Apps". If you don't want to change it to something useful you will have to define a shortcut you will never use such as Shift-Command-Option-1.

If you want to get rid of all the shortcuts then I suggest 'Karabiner-Elements' and spend some time understanding how to write a private.xml config file for it. You might also want to grab a copy of 'Key Codes' so you can figure out which keys push out which keycodes and modifiers.

It's certainly possible to map the "Log Out …" as Shift-Command-Q out of the way. You just enter it into Shortcuts with the name and the ellipsis and the shortcut no longer works. Command-Q is impossible with the shortcut method but it was the only one I could find.

(I also wouldn't be rude and peremptory to people who were trying to help me but that could just be me.)


Fan / Processor picks up and runs hard when I let MacBook idle and sleep. Botnet? This problem just started happening since I got to my new apartment. I've had this computer (2014 maxed out MacBook Pro) for about a year, and it never happened before moving here.

Basically, when I am using the computer to browse the Internet or work on docs etc it is quiet and responds normally. When I stop using it for a while, but leave it on (or in sleep mode) it enters very intense activity. Or at the very least the fan starts running like crazy.

The activity/fan only stops if I power down the machine completely, or if I start using the machine again, in which case it gradually slows down (the fan noise) and then stops completely after about 20 secs of me being on the computer again. It is counterintuitive that the computer fan / activity picks up when I am NOT using the machine, rather than vice versa.

I have been able to find very little that is helpful based on Google searches, although I did find at least one post suggesting that this could be due to botnet infection, which was my initial thought and concern (prior to seeing that post).

Probably not much that can be done diagnostically via a message board analysis, but I thought I would post since there doesn't seem to be a lot of easily available info on this phenomenon. I suppose a less nefarious explanation would be that there are major updates that need to run in the background, but that explanation doesn't seem consistent with my experience using Macs previously.

Could be running Spotlight. Leave it on overnight and see if it eventually stops.


MacBook Pro 2020 with 2 x Dell U2518D monitors I looked thoroughly, but could not find a configuration for the 2020 MBP. Here is the setup:

13" MacBook Pro 2020 (2 x USB-C ports)

2 x Dell U2518D monitors (not Thunderbolt-equipped)

I tried connecting everything together with a Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock, but it does not seem to work, unfortunately. I connected one monitor via HDMI-HDMI cable to the dock, and the other monitor via Thunderbolt-DP cable (that came with the monitor), and then connected the dock via USB 2.0 to USB-C to the laptop.
I think the problem might be the link between the dock and the laptop, but I have no idea how I could connect it otherwise. Any ideas?

Your issue is very much like the one in this question about a MacBook with only two USB-C ports as well:  MacBook 4K/60Hz adapter is working directly, but not via USB-C hub
While you have two Thunderbolt ports, the MacBook only had USB ports that supported DisplayPort.  So, in your case, you have a couple of options:

Plug one display into one of the USB-C ports and use the USB-C Hub w/ Power Delivery as described in the answer in the above linked question to connect your devices and your charger.

Use a proper Thunderbolt 3 Dock.  The problem that you're having with the Belkin Thunderbolt 2 dock is that while Thunderbolt is technically backward compatible, Thunderbolt 3 uses passive cables where as Thunderbolt 2 cables were active.  A number of "high bandwidth" devices like storage and display require an active cable which the standard USB-C cables are not.
I recently wrote an answer about this for the question LG UltraFine & replacement Belkin USB-C cable gives blurry text.  Basically all (quality) USB-C cables are Thunderbolt 3 cables.  However, not all are active.  Active Thunderbolt 3 cables carry power and cost about $50USD more than regular ones.  I believe this is why your Belkin dock isn't working properly.

I would go with the first option: using the USB-C hub with PD.  This gives you a lot of options out of the gate without spending too much money.  If/when your needs outgrow the hub, go for the Thunderbolt 3 dock as you'll have much more room for growth.
You can try getting the active TB3 cable, but to me, it's more of a bodge and I'm not convinced the Apple TB3 to TB2 adapter carries power.  There are lots of folks looking for Thunderbolt 2 docks because they have 2017 and older MacBook Pro laptops they'd like to expand but can't because of product availability; it could fetch a nice price online and help pay for that Thunderbolt 3 dock.


Bought Apple Watch Series 4 Cellular from US, will it work in India? Did I make a mistake? Is there any way to start using cellular feature in India with US watch model?

Yes, you made a mistake I'm afraid. The Americas-regional model of the Apple Watch 4 won't work in India. For that you'll need the Europa/Asia/Pacific-regional model.

In addition to that you'll need a supported carrier in order to get an eSIM for the watch. In India this is only supported with Airtel and Jio. For details refer to Apple Watch Carriers webpage and search for India:

https://www.apple.com/in/watch/cellular/


How can I define CLASSPATH variable For a school assignment I need to add a folder to my classpath. It says that I should do this by adding a line to the file .bashrc. However, this file doesn't appear to exist in my computer. I also read something about a file called .profile which doesn't appear either. I found /etc/profile, but it says I have no permission to open it.

Could you please help me? I simply need to add a folder to the classpath.

Yes, this file doesn't exist by default. The difference between bash_profile or .bashrc versus .profile is that the latter will be read by shells other than bash. For your purposes, you can simply name it .bashrc. Open up Terminal and enter the following command:

cd ~/; touch .bashrc; open -a TextEdit .bashrc

Now you have a created a profile, which the bash shell will read from everytime you log into it.

Next, simply enter the variable as plain text in the document:

export CLASSPATH=/path/to/folder

Or, if your have a current $CLASSPATH that needs to be added to, append the folder to it in your profile:

export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/path/to/folder

Save the .bashrc file. Exit Terminal and open Terminal back up (or run . ~/.bashrc in Terminal without exit/reopen).

To test, enter:

echo $CLASSPATH


Seems like my trackpad is never sleeping/shutting off I'm experiencing some funny behavior with my Retina MacBook Pro and my Magic Trackpad. There are two symptoms that I believe could be related:

The batteries on my trackpad drain far more quickly than the ones in my Apple wireless keyboard. The last time the trackpad warned me about low batteries, I put fresh batteries in both the keyboard and the trackpad. As of today, the keyboard is still at 100% and the trackpad is down to 14%.
My computer seems to be waking up periodically when I am away from my desk. I keep the MBP in clamshell mode on my desk at work with two Thunderbolt Displays connected. I put the computer to sleep when I leave the office via the Apple menu, but I frequently return to my desk in the morning to find messages in Adium from people for whom I appeared to be online.

My hypothesis is that the trackpad is not going to sleep or shutting itself off properly, and that is both draining its battery and causing my computer to wake up periodically.

Is this plausible? If so, what lullaby do I sing to my trackpad?

I've had to track this down and have found that keeping a log has helped me identify which trackpads are going through batteries faster than the others.

Once a week, I'm recording what the OS thinks is the battery level. I've been able to catch bad rechargeable cells as well as one faulty trackpad (among lots) that seemed to be less power efficient. Showing the log to the genius bar was all they needed to offer a swap.

If you don't have a lot of devices - it might be something you just throw good alkaline batteries at until you have a feeling if it's normal. I would go into the genius bar with the Mac and the trackpad to establish the idea you'll be testing it and ask if they have any insight.

Unless you have something capacative on the surface (or very near the surface), it shouldn't matter if your Mac is awake or asleep as the trackpad itself will go to sleep. You can also disable sleep / PowerNap and such once you are sure of the normal weekly drain on a battery and see if it makes any difference.

As to catching the culprit for wake issues - open the terminal and type pmset -g log to dump the history of sleeps, wakes and much more. The manual page for pmset will help if you need more detailed logs than that, but hopefully you can catch whatever event is causing the OS to wake up.