Why do Location Services turn off on its own sometime? I have an iPhone 3Gs and the latest iPod Touch.  Neither have 3G data connectivity and are only connected to the Internet via WiFi.

When either device spends a while not being connected to WiFi (for instance, when camping), the Location Services turn off on their own.

Why is this?  Is it by design?  How do I make Location Services stay on?

Apple works very hard to conserve battery life, and determining location, no matter if it is through GPS, cellular, or wifi connections takes extra battery. The arrow displays any time a 3rd party app requests your location. For instance, when you open Maps, the arrow will likely turn on because Maps needs to pinpoint where you are. The arrow may also turn on for system level locations services (settings can be adjusted in Settings > Location Services > System Services), and depending on your settings, the arrow may or may not appear for that.

As for Location Services being on or off, you can set that in the settings (Settings > Location Services), but if you see the arrow, it is likely on already.

The arrow only appears when location services are active, and may or may not show when it is just on.


What is the difference between Personal VPN vs VPN Configuration profiles? I noticed that the VPN menu in the iPhone settings menu has two different kinds of VPN connections and I am troubled by it. There are two different types of VPN connections shown, Personal VPN profiles and a type for VPN Configuration profiles. After searching for a while, I haven't been able to find out the difference between the two. ( iPhone 5, iOS 8.3 )  Do the two different types have different types of encryption? Different types of connections?Should one be preferred over the other? Any clarification would be appreciated. Thank you.

EDIT: After reinstalling the profile, I realized the Personal VPN configuration isn't signed like the regular VPN configuration.

EDIT #2: Often times when I use the normal VPN configuration connection, it gets detected by the wifi I am connected to as a proxy and I receive warning messages because of it. If this is relevant I hope it helped.

In short, no. Both are instances of VPN configurations profiles.

By default, the “VPN Configurations” pane should be the only one that exists if you are installing a VPN configuration profile under the natively supported protocols (PPTP, L2TP/IPSEC).

The “Personal VPN” option appears only after installing certain software, such as Unlimited Free VPN by Betternet, which requires that you deploy the configuration profile in the form of a “preference pane profile” rather than deploying it either from the web, say, or through manual configuration. Additionally, the authentication involves a certificate exchange:

Details:

Apparently, it’s an implementation of the Network Extended Framework API:

  The Network Extension framework (NetworkExtension.framework) provides support for configuring and controlling Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnels. Use this framework to create VPN configurations. You can then start VPN tunnels manually or supply on-demand rules to start the VPN tunnel in response to specific events.

I’m not a developer, but having read the documentation and browsed around a few Stack Overflow discussions on it, it’s basically a plug-in that allows the user to manage an otherwise unsupported VPN protocol (IKEv2), and to do so within the native iOS VPN preference pane.

  Do the two different types have different types of encryption?

At face value, no. If we are comparing the protocols, yes. The encryption depends on the protocol you are using and the VPN provider. With the exception of PPTP, the de-facto standard is 256-bit AES for transfer. IKEv2 supports and implements this.

  Different types of connections?

In this sense, yes.

Sidenote: I use a third party application that supports OpenVPN to connect to my VPN provider (iPhone 6, running iOS 8.3) - as advised by them. The configuration profile appears as expected, under the default "VPN Configurations" pane.

My personal opinion would be to avoid all free VPN services unless you are rolling out your own. I use Private Internet Access, both on OS X and iOS, and highly recommend it.


I deleted partition and now I don't see the free space in Disk Utility so I do have a problem. I create a backup partition, by mistake via Time Machine on my disk. I wanted to deleted 'cause it was above half of my memory. I couldn't, so I type some commands I found on internet, and now I don't have that partition. But I don't see any free space in Disk Utility.

I'm Pole so that's why language is polish. Anyway problem is that my disk is 500 GB, but I can see only 200GB claim, by "MacOSX". How can I add those almost 300GB space to "MacOSX" partition? I tried using Stellar:

So I know it's possible, but i don't have money on full version of the program. So I ask You for help. How can I do it for free?

Have you try these steps to fix your issue:

$ diskutil list

It will list your physical drive detail. Note the drive name for unallocated space.

sudo diskutil eraseVolume "Free Space" %noformat% /dev/disk0s3

Assuming your volume is named disk0s3

Next, resize your APFS Container

diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0

With value zero at the end, diskutil will automatically claim all available free space.

It should be fine and then you can re-setup macOS from Recovery mode.


How do I change the format of the name in Terminal? I don't know what this is called, can anyone clarify? Is it called the name / hostname. I don't know what you call it.

On Ubuntu my Terminal shows kalima@coolbox:~$

But on OSX my Terminal shows compname:~ kalima$

Is this normal? Is there a way to change it so they're both consistent in format?

That's called your "prompt". You can define the PS1 variable to control it.

Add the following to your ~/.bashrc file:

PS1='\u@\h:\w\$ '

See the bash manual for more details.


What exactly does this “palm tree” icon under “Recent” in iPhoto (9.6.1) represent? Is there a way to disable it? I’m sorting through photos in iPhoto (version 9.6.1) on my Mac OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan) machine and just noticed this odd “palm tree” icon listed under “Recent” and utterly have no idea what it represents or means.

In my case it’s showing exactly one—seemingly arbitrary—photo from March 7, 2016 and for the life of me I have utterly no idea why this would be the case; see screenshot below.

The “sorting” I am doing encompasses simply renaming photos so they have a human readable name—instead of DSCN_ or IMG_ and such—and nothing else. I’ve rebuilt the iPhoto database by holding down the Command+Option keys a few times, but it doesn’t seem to affect anything.

Does anybody know what it means? Is there any simple way to disable it? Some online forums seem to suggest exporting all photos (!) and reimporting them again (!!!) which seems insane to me. Heck, I’m planning on moving over to the newer Photos app when the dust settles on my iPhoto sorting so I’m sure that would clear things up.

What what the heck does this thing mean now in iPhoto?

After posting the original question—and noticing the same palm tree icon appears at the top of the sidebar list under “Library” under the name “Events”—I experimented and it seems that the the listing under “Recent” represents the last batch of event photos you have viewed. Very odd feature if you ask me.


Can I install and use Windows on an external USB 3 drive in Boot Camp I'd like to try Windows 10 Technical Preview before it is released for purchase.
I am curious and have never used a windows based machine before.
Question: Is it possible to install and run Windows 10 Technical Preview under BootCamp

You can install windows via BootCamp on an external drive. However to install a newer version of windows that BootCamp doesn't support you need to first install a supported version then upgrade inside of windows to a newer version. My best suggestion though is to install via a virtual machine.


Unlike other folders, dragging apps out of /Applications create an alias. What controls this behavior? I usually install Cyberduck by dragging the .app bundle into the Applications folder on the root of my hard drive (/Applications). However, on macOS versions 10.7 Lion and newer, if I later decide to move Cyberduck to my desktop, Finder will create an alias by default, instead of actually moving the .app bundle.

By contrast, if I instead install Cyberduck to my user Applications folder (~/Applications), and later attempt to drag Cyberduck to my desktop, the .app bundle will be moved like any other file.

What makes the /Applications folder so special? Is it possible to add the same behavior to another folder, or—if SIP is disabled—to modify /Applications to behave like a normal folder?

A couple things I have already tried:

/Applications is owned by root:admin. However, sudo chown root:admin ~/Applications has no effect on dragging behavior.
Inside of a test VM, I renamed /Applications to /Applications2. The renamed Applications2 folder retained the same dragging behavior as before, suggesting that the functionality is not hard-coded to a specific path.

Sadly, the premise behind this question was flawed. I originally posted this observation:

  Inside of a test VM, I renamed /Applications to /Applications2. The renamed Applications2 folder retained the same dragging behavior as before, suggesting that the functionality is not hard-coded to a specific path.

Unfortunately, this only remains true until a restart of Finder. In other words, if I rename the /Applications to /Applications2, Applications2 will retain its special dragging behavior only until Finder is restarted! If I killall Finder, Applications2 will gain normal dragging behavior.

This also works in reverse—a user-created directory moved to /Applications will gain special dragging behavior when Finder is restarted.

So, I think it's safe to conclude that the behavior is hard coded to specific paths, and cannot be changed. I'm disappointed, but it does make sense. I do wonder if these hardcoded Finder paths are stored in a config file somewhere that could be changed... but knowing Apple, probably not.


French accents on Yosemite How can I set my macbook pro to type the French accents by showing them on top of each vowel instead of pressing option keys?

On a English keyboard.

From Apple KB - OS X Yosemite: Enter characters with accent marks

  Press and hold a key on the keyboard (for example, e) to display an accent menu.

  If the key you press and hold doesn’t have any possible accent marks, the menu isn’t shown.
  Select a character (for example, é).

  Click a character, press the number key shown for a character, or use the arrow keys to cycle through the characters. Then press the Space bar to select one.

  You can also enter characters with accent marks using the Keyboard Viewer or Character Viewer.

  Use the Keyboard Viewer
  Use the Character Viewer
  Use input sources to type in other languages
  Format text in documents

The press & hold accent menu can be enabled or disabled from Terminal

To disable the character accent menu in OS X, launch Terminal from /Applications/Utilities, enter the following command and press Return:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

To re-enable, change false to true


Copy/Migrate FileVault 2 encrypted hard drive I'm running OS X Mavericks and have the entire hard drive encrypted with FileVault 2. I intend to upgrade to a larger hard drive (actually an SSD). In the past when not using FileVault, I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the entire disk to the new hard drive. Can this be accomplished with a FileVault protected drive?

SSD is different, it needs a separate driver from OS to work properly. It is better that you archive your drive using time machine, install OS X as usual and than, during the last install step, restore your home directory. This will ensure that your system uses all correct drivers and your SSD will live a healthier life.

When archiving with time machine, you can drag /System into the exclusion list to avoid archiving OS X itself (you'll be reinstalling it).


What is the 1k that shows up where LTE would be? It shows up sometimes and I lose my 4g and go straight to that and have no connection, how do I get rid of it?

It's "1x" not "1k".

This is the core fallback 2G cellular connection of a CMDA (Verizon in the US) network. It's not showing up to replace your 4G LTE connection, it's your LTE that is failing and 1x is the only signal that can reach your phone.

The same thing happens with any carrier and it is by design. If you are in an area that is at the edge of their premium 4G service, you fallback to 3G then 2G.

See Wikipedia page on CDMA for more details.


macOS remove lkysearch virus from chrome I have lkysearch malware installed in chrome. I tried multiple ways to remove it even tried uninstalling and reinstalling chrome but no luck.

Chrome does not even allow removing the suspicious "search engine"."Resetting settings" does not work either.

I have my launch agents which looks like

λ ls -l ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
total 40
-rw-r--r--  1 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  625 Jan 13 17:16 com.2313585054741982361.8750939818.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  494 Mar  7  2019 com.code42.menubar.plist
-rw-r--r--@ 1 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  812 Feb 17 17:31 com.google.keystone.agent.plist
-rw-r--r--@ 1 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  918 Feb 17 17:31 com.google.keystone.xpcservice.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  524 Dec  5  2017 com.skype.skype.shareagent.plist

com.2313585054741982361.8750939818.plist looked suspicious and tried removing it and related Application Support link but does make any difference. Its content is

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>com.2313585054741982361.8750939818</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>/Users/prayagupd/Library/Application Support/com.4884030244826106462/12888126840620735487</string>
            <string>D066FFCB-6A22-4C60-A8BD-42C577B51B1A</string>
            <string>FE700AF0-117A-40A9-8CDA-8EC25B44007B</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true />
        <key>StartInterval</key>
        <integer>10800</integer>
    </dict>
</plist>

And extensions I have are,

λ ls -l /Users/a1353612/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Extensions
total 0
drwx------@ 3 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  96 Feb 17 17:31 aapocclcgogkmnckokdopfmhonfmgoek
drwx------@ 3 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  96 Feb 17 17:31 aohghmighlieiainnegkcijnfilokake
drwx------@ 3 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  96 Feb 17 17:31 apdfllckaahabafndbhieahigkjlhalf
drwx------@ 3 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  96 Feb 17 17:31 blpcfgokakmgnkcojhhkbfbldkacnbeo
drwx------@ 3 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  96 Feb 17 17:31 felcaaldnbdncclmgdcncolpebgiejap
drwx------@ 3 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  96 Feb 17 17:31 ghbmnnjooekpmoecnnnilnnbdlolhkhi
drwx------@ 3 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  96 Feb 17 17:31 nmmhkkegccagdldgiimedpiccmgmieda
drwx------@ 3 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  96 Feb 17 17:31 pjkljhegncpnkpknbcohdijeoejaedia
drwx------@ 3 prayagupd  NA\Domain Users  96 Feb 17 17:31 pkedcjkdefgpdelpbcmbmeomcjbeemfm

It also does not make any effect after removing the Extensions folder.

Also tried updating google policies using terminal but can run delete command, as recommended at https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/9267779?hl=en

defaults write com.google.Chrome HomepageIsNewTabPage -bool false
defaults write com.google.Chrome NewTabPageLocation -string "https://www.google.com/"
defaults write com.google.Chrome HomepageLocation -string "https://www.google.com/"

defaults delete com.google.Chrome DefaultSearchProviderSearchURL
2020-02-17 22:52:03.470 defaults[6456:41690]
Domain (com.google.Chrome) not found.
Defaults have not been changed.

λ defaults delete com.google.Chrome DefaultSearchProviderNewTabURL
2020-02-17 22:52:16.409 defaults[6468:41815]
Domain (com.google.Chrome) not found.
Defaults have not been changed.

λ defaults delete com.google.Chrome DefaultSearchProviderName
2020-02-17 22:52:21.361 defaults[6472:41852]
Domain (com.google.Chrome) not found.
Defaults have not been changed.

I don't have any "paid virus remove softwares". And I see the the malware is only on chrome but not on safari.

How can I manually remove the malware from my machine?

Ok, so this is how I removed the malware.

1) sudo rm -rf /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.ElementarySignalSearchDaemon.plist

the content of plist was,

cat  /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.ElementarySignalSearchDaemon.plist
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>com.ElementarySignalSearchDaemon</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>/Library/Application Support/com.ElementarySignalSearchDaemon/ElementarySignalSearch</string>
            <string>r</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true />
        <key>StartInterval</key>
        <integer>14400</integer>
    </dict>
</plist>

2) sudo rm -rf /Library/Application\ Support/com.ElementarySignalSearchDaemon/

3) restarting the chrome did not work, so edited the plist file and removed the occurrence of links in that file,

This is because chrome://policy had Mandatory level.

sudo vi /Library/Managed\ Preferences/prayagupd/com.google.Chrome.plist

4) remove suspicious profiles,


MBA mid 2011: Artifacts on screen after wake from deep sleep I'm using Macbook Air (mid 2011) and there is one problem with it. After macbook waking from deep sleep, it has some "artifacts" (i don't know how to name it correctly) on the screen:

Artifacts on the top under the menu bar on the second image are always present after deep sleep, but other artifacts can be or can't be. And I don't know if this a hardware or software issue, but these artifacts were always present through every my Mac OS X update. Now I have 10.7.5 Lion.

Artifacts disappear after reboot. So I can't use deep sleep as I should. Has anybody experienced this?

Those are very characteristic failures of a hardware nature.

the LVDS cable that carries the signal could be faulty or loose
the GPU could be having problems (perhaps heat related, perhaps not)
the LCD panel could be physically failing or loose or electrically failing
much less likely causes would be RAM, Storage or software (erase and reinstall)

I would start with contacting support in the country of sale and/or country where you are now:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HE57

They will be able to advise you where and how to request a quote for service and then you can decide to pursue hardware repair or further troubleshoot software. Faulty software could cause this, but it's unlikely to come and go and you might waste time reinstalling the OS, clearing preferences, etc…

If the issues only happen after sleep, you might also consider a failure of the RAM or storage where the sleep image becomes corrupt or the part of the RAM that backs the GPU has problems. Again, on an Air, there are no parts that Apple recommends anyone but a trained technician to service, and they have access to additional resources and can send the diagrams to engineering if they don't have enough experience on that particular model. Most Apple store geniuses would know typical failure modes of each model since they see so many broken machines, but they don't work from home or by phone unless you have a paid support plan.


Can not add invitees to a calendar event after the event has been created I can not find a way to add an invitee after the event has been created and the invite emails sent. Is it possible?

Below is the already created event, where I do not see the field to "add invitees" any more:

Here is an event that has not yet been created, thus possible to add invitees:

EDIT: I use Exchange as the backend for the calendar... though had same issues with Google Calendar as backend as well.

Using Calendar Version 9.0 (2155.15)

If you click on the list of invitees, there should be an "Add Invitees" field which appears below the list.


How could passwords on OSX keychain for one user end up in another? Our home MacBook has two users on it: my wife's and mine.  This morning we noticed when logged in as my wife's user that in the KeyChain Access it has all of my web passwords.  Including passwords I only use on my work laptop.  How is this possible?

To clarify exactly what's going on let's define some things:

MacBooks

Home-macbook
Husband-work-macbook

Apple/iTunes accounts

Wife-apple-account
Husband-apple-account

OSX users on home-macbook

Wife-osx-user (uses Wife-apple-account)
Husband-osx-user (uses Husband-apple-account)

OSX users on work-macbook

Employee-osx user (uses Husband-apple-account)

So this is what happened exactly:  On Home-macbook, logged in as Wife-osx-user, we could see passwords in the KeyChain Access program that were only ever used on work-macbook as Employee-osx.

Now if Employee-osx passwords showed up on Home-macbook when logged into Husband-osx-user, that could make some sense.  But why are the passwords being shared between users?  Are they linked through OSX somehow and can I turn that off?

One important note is that this home-macbook was recently upgraded from Snow Leopard to Yosemite.

Update

When I delete these passwords from the KeyChain Access app, they almost immediately are re-added automatically!  How can I stop this?!

The problem is that I have logged into Chrome under wife-osx-user.  Chrome saves passwords into keychain.   And then keychain makes those available to Safari.  Not AT ALL the desired behavior but I suppose it makes some sense.


Make Skim save PDF's with embedded notes by default I had been reading several papers and highlighting important points, pressing Command-S every so often to save my notes.

But when I opened them back, BAM! All my highlights were lost.

It turns out that I have to do File > Export...  then choose to save the PDF with embedded notes. Add to that, I cannot press Command-S to save with embedded notes on the same file.

That's totally counterintuitive, takes too many mouse movements and keystrokes, breaks my train of thought, and just disheartening.

How can I make Skim save over the PDF with my notes included, simply by pressing Command-S by default? It was the default behavior until recently. It turns out they changed it in Skim 1.3.22

Skim preferences has an option for "Automatically save Skim notes backups" which I highly recommend you turn on. This creates a .skim file next to the PDF. Skim still saves annotations to the extended attributes, but I've seen them go missing after sync with Dropbox. It's not supposed to, but it did. Hence, I always keep a notes backup in the .skim companion file.

Skim's big advantage over Preview and every other PDF annotating app is fast saves. This is possible only because Skim keeps the annotations separate from the PDF content. The PDF format is such that adding an annotation to a PDF page requires rewriting the entire PDF back to disk, which can be quite slow. Skim avoids this drawback elegantly because it doesn't rewrite the PDF, only the extended attributes.

So, turn on the backups option, and continue using CMD S in Skim for saving your work. If the extended attributes get wiped out, then when you launch the PDF in Skim, it will detect the .skim file and offer to load it & you can continue your work.

Bonus tip: DevonThink supports Skim annotations natively. So, if it finds a .skim file or extended attributes for the PDF file you're viewing in DevonThink, it will show the annotations too. This avoids the step of having to export a PDF with embedded notes from Skim, which is required for other apps to view annotations you've made in Skim. (Skim provides a free SDK for its annotations format, so other PDF viewers should be able to support skim annotations too.)


Reinstall or Time Machine? How do I get back up and running? I just got an SSD for my White Unibody MacBook. What's the fastest way to get back up on running on 10.7.3 with a Time Machine backup (on an external disk via usb 2.0) and a Lion 10.7.0 DVD?

Can I restore directly from backup? Do I need to install 10.7.0 first? Do I need to run System Update after that, or will migration assistant install the patches for me?

A SuperDuper clone will be easy and will move your exact setup to the SSD. Put the new SSD in an external USB drive, format  the SSD in Disk Utility, and clone the boot drive onto it. You don't need to purchase SuperDuper as the Erase then Copy option works in the unregistered version.

If your current boot drive data takes up more space than the SSD can hold then you need to delete files to slim it down or use a custom script in SuperDuper to exclude what you don't want transferred.

After the clone is successful boot the computer with option held down and make sure you can boot from it. If that works shut it down and swap the drives.


Remove disk image from the disk list In Disk Utility I see two disk images (Flash Updates)

But I cannot find where the image file could be.

On the console with diskutil I see

/dev/disk2 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        +16.9 MB    disk2
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Flash Player            16.9 MB    disk2s2
/dev/disk4 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        +17.2 MB    disk4
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk4s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Flash Player            17.1 MB    disk4s2

And with diskutil info

   Device Identifier:        disk4
   Device Node:              /dev/disk4
   Whole:                    Yes
   Part of Whole:            disk4
   Device / Media Name:      Apple UDIF read-only compressed (bzip2) Media

   Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)

   Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)

   File System:              None

   Content (IOContent):      Apple_partition_scheme
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 Disk Image
   SMART Status:             Not Supported

   Total Size:               17.2 MB (17170432 Bytes) (exactly 33536 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          Yes
   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)

   Device Location:          External
   Removable Media:          Yes
   Media Removal:            Software-Activated

   Virtual:                  Yes
   OS 9 Drivers:             No
   Low Level Format:         Not supported

Is there a way to know where these images are on my disk?

hdiutil will show information about all mounted DMGs:

hwd@hwds-iMac:~$ hdiutil info
framework       : 415
driver          : 10.11v415
================================================
image-path      : /Users/hwd/Downloads/mountedImageOne.dmg
image-alias     : /Users/hwd/Downloads/mountedImageOne.dmg
shadow-path     : <none>
icon-path       : /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskImages.framework    /Resources/CDiskImage.icns
image-type      : UDIF, nur Lesen, komprimiert (bzip2)
system-image    : false
blockcount      : 22528
blocksize       : 512
writeable       : false
autodiskmount   : TRUE
removable       : TRUE
image-encrypted : false
mounting user   : hwd
mounting mode   : <unknown>
process ID      : 5376
/dev/disk2      Apple_partition_scheme
/dev/disk2s1    Apple_partition_map
/dev/disk2s2    Apple_HFS   /Volumes/mountedImageOne
================================================
image-path      : /Users/hwd/Downloads/mountedImageTwo.dmg
image-alias     : /Users/hwd/Downloads/mountedImageTwo.dmg
shadow-path     : <none>
icon-path       : /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskImages.framework/Resources/CDiskImage.icns
image-type      : UDIF, nur Lesen, komprimiert (zlib)
system-image    : false
blockcount      : 20480
blocksize       : 512
writeable       : false
autodiskmount   : TRUE
removable       : TRUE
image-encrypted : false
mounting user   : hwd
mounting mode   : <unknown>
process ID      : 5416
/dev/disk3      GUID_partition_scheme
/dev/disk3s1    48465300-0000-AAAA-AAAA-000000000000    /Volumes/mountedImageTwo


How to set up routing tables on OS X to redirect VPN traffic? I am trying to setup route table on my OS X machine so regular internet traffic doesn't go through VPN but only specific destinations will be targeted via VPN.

When I connect to VPN it creates new 'default' route for interface 'jnc0' destination which redirects all the traffic to VPN.

netstat -nr
Routing tables

Internet:

Destination     Gateway        Flags      Refs     Use     Netif Expire
default         10.1.1.1       UGSc       36       65      jnc0
default         192.168.0.1    UGScI      20       0       en1

Is it possible to set priority so all traffic goes via default 192.168.0.1 en1 instead of default 10.1.1.1 jnc0 ?

I have script for Ubuntu which creates routing table but I am not sure how to adjust it for OS X.

Here is the script:

SET_PRIORITY=$(sudo ip rule  | grep -c $ROUTE_TABLE_NAME)

if [ $SET_PRIORITY -eq 0 ]; then
    sudo ip rule add from all lookup $ROUTE_TABLE_NAME prio 1000
fi

sudo ip route flush table $ROUTE_TABLE_NAME

sudo ip route add default via $ROUTER_IP dev $LOCAL_IFACE metric 0 table $ROUTE_TABLE_NAME

sudo ip route add default via $VPN_IP dev $VPN_IFACE metric 1 table $ROUTE_TABLE_NAME

sudo ip route add 172.0.0.1/16 via $VPN_IP dev $VPN_IFACE table $ROUTE_TABLE_NAME

When I try to execute:

sudo ip rule add from all lookup $ROUTE_TABLE_NAME prio 1000

I get sudo: ip: command not found.

Also when I try to execute:

sudo rule add from all lookup $ROUTE_TABLE_NAME prio 1000

it doesn't work either with error sudo: rule: command not found.

Here is the code:

sudo ip route flush table $ROUTE_TABLE_NAME
sudo: ip: command not found

sudo route add default via $ROUTER_IP dev $LOCAL_IFACE metric 0 table $ROUTE_TABLE_NAME
route: bad address: via

sudo route add 172.0.0.1/16 via $VPN_IP dev $VPN_IFACE table $ROUTE_TABLE_NAME
route: bad address: via

I would appreciate any help and guidance.

If your VPN client sets a default route when it connects you'll have to delete that route after connecting.  Then the static routes that you've configured should take effect.  To edit routing table in macos you should use the route command with sudo.  The synopsis is:

route [-dnqtv] command [[modifiers] args]


iPhone 5 Battery - Help me diagnose issue I'm having a weird issue with my iPhone 5, that I think is related to the battery, but might be something else.
Symptoms

The battery indicator is wrong. It sticks to the value it fetches when rebooting the phone. Currently, it shows 58% regardless that it's been charging for hours. If I reboot it, however, I get an accurate value, and it sticks to that one.
I get the following error message in the Console when plugging it to Xcode:

    CLTM[14] : CLTM: partial sensors: count 5156, current 39fffe, mask 1b, expected 1b
    CLTM[14] : CLTM: Could not get event from temperature service
    CLTM[14] : CLTM: Could not get value for gas gauge battery
    CLTM[14] : CLTM: Could not get event from temperature service
    CLTM[14] : CLTM: Could not get value for gas gauge battery
    CLTM[14] : CLTM: Could not get event from temperature service
    CLTM[14] : CLTM: Could not get value for gas gauge battery
    CLTM[14] : CLTM: Could not get event from temperature service
    CLTM[14] : CLTM: Could not get value for gas gauge battery
    CLTM[14] : CLTM: partial sensors: count 5160, current 39fffe, mask 1b, expected 1b

The value in partial sensors: count XX increases as the iPhone runs.

After rebooting, with the battery too charged or too discharged, the iPhone enters a reboot loop, where it will reboot every 5 minutes. Eventually, when the battery reaches 75% or so, it remains on. At that point, I can use it "normally", with a wrong battery indicator.

Here's the tricky thing: I live in Argentina where the iPhone is not officially for sale, and no authorised services are available. I got it when travelling to the US.
I can easily have the battery replaced (parts are available and not too expensive), but if it's not the battery (maybe the charging circuit?). Since the service is not authorised, however, I'm reluctant to have them open my iPhone if it won't solve the issue.
My question(s) therefore are:

Did anyone experience something like this? If so, was the problem the battery?
Does anyone know what CLTM in the Console log could mean?
Is the battery level meter part of the battery itself (and therefore will be fixed when changing the battery) or is it a separate thing?

It might not help the OP, but Apple has battery replacement program for iPhone 5. You can check eligibility on Apple site

  Apple has determined that a very small percentage of iPhone 5 devices may suddenly experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently. The affected iPhone 5 devices were sold between September 2012 and January 2013 and fall within a limited serial number range.
  (...)

  The program covers affected iPhone 5 batteries for two years after the first retail sale of the unit or until March 1, 2015, whichever provides longer coverage.


HOME dir on another disk, how do I restore from TM backup? I have two disks in my MBP. One is small SSD for the OS and applications, and the other is  slow HDD for my HOME folder, downloads and stuff like that.

I have Time Machine set up. Everything seems to be backed up smoothly. I have changed location of my user dir in the Settings -> Users&Groups. Also I have created a symlink /Users/sergio that points to /Volumes/MacintoshHD/Users/sergio (where actual data lives).

I tried restoring from this backup, the user gets created in the process, but I can't login. Probably because it's another machine which has only one disk.

What I was expecting (I don't know why) is that restoration process would walk that symlink in /Users and "dereference" my user dir onto system disk. Apparently, it doesn't do that.

Did anyone try restoring a backup with similar setup? Is it even possible? If it isn't, I might as well stop backing up :)

Time Machine backs up symbolic links, it does not follow them.  The operating system would not restore correctly otherwise.

Time Machine will back up multiple volumes, if you allow it to do so in Options.  However, I believe you need to restore them separately.  If you were to restore both volumes in the same configuration as the original, then it should work.  Linking anything through /Volumes is a bit fragile, so you might need to adjust the symlink after restoring both volumes.


Can an iPad get hacked from outside? Can someone get into my iPad, access my camera and turn on the webcam and record without my knowledge? I got an email that said they did.

Any app you install can (if you allow it) access the camera. So if you by accident installed such an app and granted access to camera and microphone, yes it‘s possible.

An attack through the Internet into an iPad with the most recent iOS version might be possible as well, but it‘s rather unlikely.

PS: The mail you got might just be spam though


How to install OSX El Capitan downloaded from ftp server? I downloaded OSX El Capitan in one Mac, then I copied installation files (.app) to shared ftp folder. In another Macs It doesn't start. Is it for security? Can I do that? Can I copy installation files to USB?

When you download the installer from the AppStore, it is saved as Install OS X El Capitan.app in the Applications folder. Behind the scene .app files are really just folders which are treated as a single file by the OS. My guess is that you either have an incomplete file or something has gone wrong when you copied the file to the ftp server.

If you compress the .app (control+click > Compress "Install OS X El Capitan") and then copy the resulting archive to the ftp folder your other macs will be able to download the archive, uncompress it and run the app.
Or you can just copy Install OS X El Capitan.app to a USB drive or even create a bootable USB drive which you can then use as a rescue installation drive.


How to search multiple spotlight sources / drives simultaneously? I have my files spread between the main drive and a volume that is mounted most of the time. Spotlight is enabled and properly indexing both of them.

When searching through the top right spotlight menu, only results from the drive show up.

When searching from a finder window, I get two options in the header for where to search "This Mac" or "My Volume". "This Mac" (the default) only shows results from the drive, while "My Volume" only shows results from the volume...

How can I get all results, across both the drive and the mounted volume, to show up in a single list?

[I should mention that for merged results limited to filename searches a solution could be to use an app called Alfred. However Alfred doesn't apply search queries to file contents as does the regular spotlight search.]

You can use HoudahSpot to search multiple locations.

HoudahSpot is an advanced front-end to Spotlight. It lets you build complex queries to search metadata stored in the Spotlight index.

In the HoudahSpot "Query Pane" you will find a "Where…" section. Here you can specify which locations / drives / folders to search. There is also an "Exclude…" section where you can specify folders to ignore. E.g. you could search your Home folder, but ignore results from the ~/Library folder.

Full disclosure: I am the developer of HoudahSpot


Whenever I want to type "A, the text is converted to Ä Whenever I want to type "A, the text is converted to Ä

For example, I want to type the following text:

"A wonderful letter"

When I start typing, I get this:

Ä wonderful letter"

How to fix the issue with the Ä letter appearing instead of "A?

I had "US International" keyboard selected. After replacing it with "US", the problem disappeared.


iPad mini retina doesn't boot My iPad shows the Apple logo, and then it turns off.

I tried reinstalling iOS with iTunes (update) and it returned error 27?

Any ideas of what to do?

Have you researched error 27: https://www.google.com/search?q=itunes+update+error+27&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari
It appears to be a hardware problem, so you may need to go to the Apple Store.


iPhone 5s goes to airplane mode by itself How does my iPhone 5s get to airplane mode if I do not go into Settings and change it manually to airplane mode?


i have an iPhone 4s but can't download songs I'm getting trouble with my iPhone 4s. I don't have songs in the iPhone. I've tried many time but I can't find the perfect answer.

Apple phone's does't support downloading option we have only choice to download apple software in our PC and copy it from my mobile


How can I enable SNMP on latest Time Capsule 802.11ac? There is a known issue that latest Time Capsule and Airport Base stations have SNMP disabled. But SNMP ports 161 and 162 are still reserved by Time Capsule for SNMP. It leads to the question: Is there someone who was able to enable SNMP on the latest models of TC and AE?

Neither the AirPort Extreme 802.11ac nor the AirPort Time Capsule 802.11ac appear to support SNMP or syslog data to maintain or monitor these devices.

You'd have to load some custom firmware or discover an older management tool that can convince them to configure either of those services. Nothing I can find from Apple shows that either functionality remains on the current AirPort line of hardware.


How to connect a mini DisplayPort Windows PC with a Thunderbolt iMac I want to use my mid-2011 iMac as a secondary display for my Windows PC.

My iMac features a 1st gen Thunderbolt port, running on macOS Sierra
My Windows PC has a Mini DisplayPort, and is running on windows 10.

My main concern is that (if I understand right), the 'Mini DisplayPort Source to Thunderbolt Monitor' is not guaranteed to work with any kind of cable, and after lots of googling I haven't found a case where it worked.

I know that there are several related answers for this topic, but there are lots of caveats (OS compatibility, Mini DisplayPort to Thunderbolt port limitations), and I'm still not absolutely sure about some details:
- Is it possible?
- What kind of cable do I need to buy?
- Do I need to use some specific software like AirDisplay?

This is not possible using Apple's hardware and OS.  As per Apple's kbase:

  You need the following to use Target Display Mode:

  A Mac notebook or desktop with a Mini DisplayPort or Thunderbolt port. If your Mac has Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports, you can connect it using the Apple Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter.

  A Thunderbolt cable or a Mini DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort cable

  A supported iMac with OS X v10.6.1 or later

  See the list below for iMac models that support Target Display Mode, the type of cable you need to connect that model of iMac, and the kind of port you need on your other Mac.

A software solution, such as AirDisplay or Spacedesk, will be your best bet.

You might also be happier removing in to the PC from the Mac as that typically is faster response times than pushing the PC screen to the Mac. Microsoft RD app is quite good running on Mac OS.


Connecting Apple monitor to Dell latitude E6540 I have an Apple monitor with mini DisplayPort and a Dell laptop E6540 that I want to connect. The Dell provides output for HDMI and VGA, its docking station also provides DVI.

Although I have found adapters for miniDP to DVI or VGA (e.g., to connect a Mac to a projector) I have not been able to find the inverse adapter (DVI, VGA or HDMI to miniDP).

Does someone know where I can find such adapters?

Stepping down from DisplayPort to DVI or VGA is a relatively simple & cheap task.

Unfortunately, going the other way is not so simple... & certainly not so cheap.

I've managed to find these 2 examples of DVI - > DisplayPort adapters, though for the prices you could just about buy a new monitor instead.

I would also be very, very certain that the Apple monitor is, in fact DisplayPort & not Thunderbolt. The connectors look the same & you didn't specify the model in your question.

http://www.startech.com/uk/AV/Converters/Video/DVI-to-DisplayPort-Adapter-with-Audio~DVI2DPA

http://www.amazon.com/AT-DP400-Displayport-Converter-Designed-Convert/dp/B003CWEXWO


Bluetooth audio devices stop working after a few minutes Update Dec 3: I keep experiencing this issue whenever there's little memory left. I.e., Bluetooth audio stops behaving correctly whenever Memory Pressure in Activity Monitor is high; the only way to get it working again afterwards is to disable and re-enable Bluetooth.

When I connect an audio device and use it to play music, audio stops working after a few minutes and switches to internal speakers instead (but the device continues to be shown as "Connected" in Bluetooth). This happens with all my Bluetooth audio devices (3 in total). I don't experience any of these issues when using the same devices with my smartphone. The issue started around a month ago, roughly at the time when I upgraded to macOS Catalina. I'm using a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015).

I have tried the following steps already:

Moving my bluetooth device right next to my laptop
Updating to macOS Catalina 10.15.1
Disabling and enabling Bluetooth
Restarting the laptop
Removing and re-adding all Bluetooth devices
Deleting the file "com.apple.Bluetooth.plist" in /Library/Preferences/
Resetting PRAM
Searching StackExchange and the internet for more advice

None of these have helped, not even temporarily.

This is what it looks like when the issue is present:

When hovering over the audio device, its name disappears; when clicking it, the audio menu bar icon becomes animated and looks like it's searching/loading in a way I haven't seen before.

At the same time, the device looks normal in Bluetooth:

I'd greatly appreciate any help!

I tried a whole bunch of additional things that are related to sound rather than bluetooth. The issue is now resolved. I don't know which of the steps fixed it but if you have the same issue, doing all of them will likely resolve it:

1. Reload coreaudiod

Enter the following into Terminal:

sudo killall coreaudiod
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist

Then restart the laptop (or do step 3 (below) at the same time).

I got errors when doing the above, but perhaps it still helped somehow.

2. Unload the kernel extension

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext
sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext

Again, I got errors when doing the above, but perhaps it still helped somehow.

3. Reset the SMC

Shut down the laptop, connect it to power, hold the four buttons cmd-option-shift-power for at least 10 seconds, release, start the laptop again.

--

After performing these steps, everything was back to normal.


How to associate a route with an interface? I have a Mac with two network interfaces, connected to different networks.  For the sake of argument, let's say one is connected to a private network and the other to the Internet.

I understand that I can use the Networks system preference pane to place the Internet interface higher in the "service order" than the private network and that, by doing so, its "Router" will become the system's default gateway (and the other interface's "Router" is ignored).

However, this obviously results in all traffic being routed over the Internet (except the specific subnet of the private network to which the machine is directly connected).  I want to override this behaviour for the entire private network, routing all private traffic via the appropriate interface.

What is the "Apple Way" of accomplishing this?  Merely executing sudo route add ... only creates the route temporarily, whereas I want to associate it with the interface in some permanent way (i.e. that will survive the interface changing state, or the system rebooting).

I presume that the solution will involve launchd invoking a script after the interface has come up… but how?!

1 - Here is a copied solution but deprecated:

First of all, you have to be a local admin.

Open a terminal and change to the StartupItems directory

cd /Library/StartupItems

Then create a new directory with root priviledges, e.g. AddRoutes and change into it

sudo mkdir ./AddRoutes
cd ./AddRoutes

Now you have to create and edit the bash script

sudo touch ./AddRoutes
sudo nano ./AddRoutes

Paste the following Lines into the bash script and adapt it for your network

#!/bin/sh

# Set static routing tables

. /etc/rc.common

StartService ()
{
sleep 10
ConsoleMessage "Adding Static Routing Table"
sudo /sbin/route add -net 10.0.0.0 -netmask 255.0.0.0 -gateway w.x.y.z
}

StopService ()
{
return 0
}

StopService ()
{
return 0
}

RestartService ()
{
return 0
}

RunService "$1"

When you finished with the script, save it.

Then create the corresponding plist.

sudo touch StartupParameters.plist
sudo nano StartupParameters.plist

When you created the plist file, paste the following lines into it.

{
Description = "Add static routing tables";
Provides = ("AddRoutes");
Requires = ("Network");
OrderPreference = "None";
}

When you finished the plist file, save it.

Finally you have to set the access rights

sudo chmod 755 /Library/StartupItems/AddRoutes/*

At the end you have to reboot and now your permanent static routes are set.

You can verify with the following

netstat -nr

2 - Here you may find a more up-to-date solution involving a little program:

staticroute

  Configured static routes survive a restart, and will automatically be added and removed as network interfaces go up and down.


Is it possible to switch from Safe Mode to Normal and back without a reboot? Since 10.6.3, Apple has decided change the AppleIntelCPUManagement kexts, which leave me stuck with a kernel_task that pegs out at 135-185%, generating a lot of heat.

Anyway, since I doubt anyone has a fix to the above, is it possible to switch from Safe Mode to Normal (and vice-versa) without a reboot?

No.

To start at the beginning, Mac OS X loads certain kernel extensions very early in the boot process. And, intrinsically, kernel extensions will only function if they are loaded at the start of the boot process.

The purpose of Safe Mode is to boot the computer without these kernel extensions.

In Normal mode, these kernel extensions are permitted to load right at the beginning of the boot.

So, by definition, the only way to have Normal mode is to load all the kernel extensions at boot time. Hence, if you are in Safe Mode, you must reboot to create Normal Mode.


imac: keyboard stuck on caps lock From time to time the (Apple USB) keyboard of my imac (21.5-inch, Mid 2010, mac os 10.12.5) gets stuck on caps lock (namely all letters are printed capital, and I can't turn capital off), and I have to unplug the USB cable to fix this; when I plug it back, the light is on, and I can turn caps lock off. This happens more frequently after installing mac os updates, then it gradually becomes less frequent.

Are there an explanation and a solution for this issue?

Just unplug the USB from the back of your computer. Plug the USB back into the computer. Solved.


Export video to Live Photo So everywhere I see how to convert a Live Photo into a video or a gif, but how do you save a video as a Live Photo?

The goal here is to take a video and make a Live Photo for use on iOS lock screen.

intoLive - Live Wallpapers app is the app you are looking for.

It takes a video and exports it to Live Photo which can be set as video wallpaper on supported devices.


Can I quickly delete all local music? I subscribe to iTunes Match. I recently did a massive song metadata (tag/ID3) update without using iTunes itself. This appears to have updated the metadata in iCloud, but another issue appeared.

In my Music list, for albums that changed more significantly, they are now listed twice. Once without a Cloud icon (the previously downloaded version), and one with a Cloud icon. There are many of these albums, and identifying them and manually deleting them has become cumbersome.

Is there a function within iOS to allow me to delete all locally downloaded music? Essentially resetting the Music library state?

Go to Settings; Tap on General > Usage > Music, then swipe across All Music and tap the delete button that appeared.

That should delete all your local music.


Boot Camp'd Windows 8 Trackpad interferes while typing When I type on a MacBook Pro (2013), which is Boot Camp'd with 5.0, the built-in trackpad interferes while typing under Windows 8.  While typing it will place the cursor on random lines.  Apple does not have a fix for this on their website that I can find.

Device Manager/Human Interface Device shows Apple Multitouch and Apple Multitouch Mouse drivers as up to date.  I tried updating the drivers and pointing to the local bootcamp/resources folder.

I can't find under windows 8 where I can even see the trackpad options.  Do I need to install 3rd party software to be able to disable the trackpad while typing or reduce sensitivity?  I've seen references to Trackpad++, but it doesn't support Windows 8.

for win 8.1 on mac: in the device manager you need to change settings for your apple multitouch, find it under Mouse --->t Hardware tab (or similar), clik properties, than change settings. there you can turn it off and you won't be troubled by this any more:)


What's the purpose of the adhesive under iPhone 6s screen? (which doesn't exist in iPhone 6) I work in a workshop that repairs iPhones etc.

I find it strange that the iPhone 6 doesn't have any glue/adhesive surrounding the enclosure rim under the display.  Yet, the iPhone 6s does.

When doing repairs to the iPhone 6s without the adhesive, the iPhone passes all tests we've done at the workshop and is perfectly functional.

I have asked a number of Apple technicians about this, and none of them know for certain what the adhesive is for. Some speculate that the presence of this adhesive is just to make it difficult to remove the display, so that non Apple technicians using non-Apple tools will find it harder to remove, while others are guessing it was to make it more waterproof.

Can someone shed some light on this so we can have some more certainty in the workshop when repairing iPhone 6s models? We want to ensure we're not adversely affecting customer iPhones in any way.

The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus were actually designed to be more water resistant (although not officially so). I've seen inside these and the difference compared to earlier models is obvious (the adhesive you refer to is one example).

You can read more about this here.

However, do not mistaken this to mean the iPhone 6s has any sort of official IP rating. It does not. You may also be interested in my answer to this question.


Deleted thousands of photos from Photos library, and the size is the same I have a a Photos library which is around 335GB.

I deleted 23k photos from it (leaving only the photos from 2015-2016) and the size is almost the same: now the size is 330GB.

After deleting them I also emptied the Recently Deleted album.

How to solve this? How to speed up the deletion process?

Using the latest Photos and macOS versions.

Photos does not reclaim disk spaces immediately after you empty the Recently Deleted folder. Keep Photos opened and allow it to reclaim the disk space. It does take some time. I believe that they are the image caches, thumbnails, indices for searching and all other metadata files being cleaned up in the background. There are a lot of layers to how the photos are stored, so there is a lot of different files to clean up. I'd connect to the ac power and just don't let your disk or computer go to sleep.


Magsafe-2 car charger for 2015 MacBook Pro? Is there such a thing as a Magsafe 2 charging cable that can be used from a car's 12V power outlet (UK).
This is for a 2015 MacBook Pro.
Thanks

I tried to find this kind of product a few years ago. I could not find anything relevant. Nowadays, no more luck.
An inverter may be the only solution, although it may not be the best for you.
There are also integrated battery+inverter products like GoalZero Yeti but it may be too expensive or "over the top" depending on your needs.


Chrome crashes computer when I insert USB Ethernet adapter It seems that Chrome causes a crash on macOS whenever I insert a USB Ethernet adapter.

For a long time I didn't know the reason; I just plugged it in and tried it again and again until my Mac accepted it and let me use it. I thought it was just a problem with macOS.

But yesterday, I changed the default browser to Safari, and I was able to successfully use my adapter the whole day. At the end of the day I decided to make Chrome my default browser again, and my Mac crashed.

Today I experimented more and found that whenever I connect to the Internet via Ethernet, everything is OK until I open Chrome. I tried disabling all my plugins but it didn't help.

What can I do?

It's the realtek drivers which cause the hang which the USB ethernet adaptor tries to use and Chrome seems to get mangled into it.  If you're running the latest Sierra you probably don't actually need these installed.  You can either remove them both through /library/extensions RTL815 or run the scripted uninstaller that comes with the package from
http://www.realtek.com.tw/Downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=14&PFid=55&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false


Shared printing is no longer working I run a Mac mini as a server in a small company. With macOS Server. Also a print server with a few shared printers.

This is the error message in the CUPS log:

Unable to encrypt connection, internal error

Yesterday the macserver.local self signed certificate expired. So I renewed it. Restarted the Mac. Still the same error.

What I tried:

Restarting CUPS
Turning off Sharing Printers (in system preferences > sharing)
Changed trust settings of certificate in Keychain to Always
Removed shared printer and re-add it again
Everything suggested here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7610729 (excluding reinstalling macOS)

Still the same error. What is the solution for this problem?
If there is additional information required please let me know.

Cups error log:

E [11/Oct/2018:19:57:26 +0200] [Client 16] Unable to encrypt connection: Internal error

cupsd (security) in console:

CSSM Exception: -2147409622 CSSMERR_TP_NOT_TRUSTED

I believe this thread could be of benefit to you.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7610729

This sounds like an access/trust issue to the certificate.
You can try changing the trust setting on the certificate within Keychain>Doubble Click on certificate>Trust>Always Trust

If not, the CUPS logs could be beneficial to narrow down the issue


Why is /tmp a symlink to /private/tmp? Why is /tmp a symlink to /private/tmp on Mac OS X? In other words, why isn't /tmp just a regular directory, like on Linux or BSD? I understand how it works and I don't mind it, I'm just interested in the (historical?) reasoning behind it.

As I understand it, it's a holdover from NextStep (which OS X is based on), and NextStep did it to support NetBooting.  The idea was that you could boot from a network-hosted volume (probably read-only, and certainly shared with other computers), and early in the boot process mount a local (writable) volume on /private; as g mentioned, this allowed runtime-modification of /var and /tmp, as well as per-computer settings in /etc.

This isn't needed anymore, as Apple's current NetBoot system uses a shadow disk image to store changes anywhere on the boot volume.  But some programs/docs/etc now assume the files live under /private, so it'd be too much trouble to switch them back...

Update: since I wrote this, Apple has stopped supporting NetBoot, so the original purpose of /private is even more obsolete. However, in macOS Catalina (version 10.15), they've added a new volume split. In this case it's for security rather than to support NetBoot, but it works in a fairly similar way.

Catalina's system volume is mounted read-only, with a read-write volume mounted at /System/Library/Data (analogous to the old system that mounted a RW volume at /private), and "firmlinks" making parts of the RW volume appear at their usual locations in the filesystem (again, analogous to the symbolic links that make parts of /private appear at their usual locations). For example, /Users is now a firmlink to /System/Library/Data/Users. The Eclectic Light Company has a good summary.

Catalina also still has the symbolic links to /private; thus, when you access /etc on Catalina, it follows the symlink to /private/etc, and then the firmlink to /System/Library/Data/private/etc


Can I get an alert when my iPhone 5S is unplugged? My iPhone 5S gives a beep or buzz when I plug it in to a charger, but doesn’t provide any notification, apart from the lightning bolt in the top right hand corner disappearing, when it gets unplugged.
I’d like to get such a notification because my phone has a tendency to stop charging if the cable has the slightest touch to it - this happens with many different cables.
My phone is not jailbroken, so https://www.idownloadblog.com/2013/02/23/unpower-jailbreak-tweak/ doesn’t help. I’m on iOS 12.5.1, and according to Apple security updates, the iPhone 5S isn't supported for iOS 13 or 14.

You can reach that with the shortcut-app by creating an automation:

Open Shortcut-App and create a new Automation (click +)
Choose "Create Personal Automation"
Scroll the page down and select "Charger"
Choose "Is Disconnected" and click "Next"

Click button "+ Add Action"
Select "Show Notification", findable through the search field
Write the show notification as example "Is Disconnected from Power", then "Next"

Deselect "Ask Before Running" if this shortcut should be triggered automatically
Click "Done" and your shortcut is finished and executable


Scrolling does not register each click of the wheel Whenever I scroll using my mouse, my computer does not register the small, individual clicks of the scroll wheel. I have to scroll much faster to make anything happen.

I have tried this with two different mice, the Razer Death Adder and Logitech G403, same problem.

Computer specs: iMac, Late 2012, 10.12.1

This site is very helpful and I discovered this post: Change the mouse wheel scrolling acceleration

It's exactly what I needed!


Update to Yosemite: will I be able to sync iCal to iOS6/7? I have Mountain Lion and want to upgrade to Yosemite.
I need to use iCal on my old iPad (iOs6).
I heard Yosemite asks you to update to iCloud Drive (that can't be installed on iOs6/7) and that you won't be able to sync some apps until you update.
Will iCal sync on Yosemite if you don't upgrade to icloud drive? If not, should I update to Maverick instead?

I eventually updated and checked myself, and the answer to my question yes: even if you don't update to iCloud Drive, iCal keeps working and syncs on your devices connected to the old iCloud.


Shut down via Terminal/AppleScript without restoring How can I shut down my Mac via Terminal or AppleScript, but without restoring?

tell application "Finder" to sleep

works not, the windows will be restored.

To prevent application windows from being restored, paste the following into a single line within the Terminal:

"curl http://goo.gl/Z4EFC -L -s -o ~/fixlogin.sh && chmod +x ~/fixlogin.sh && sudo ~/fixlogin.sh ; rm ~/fixlogin.sh"

For more info on the above script, look here

http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/25/disable-reopen-windows-when-logging-back-in-in-mac-os-x-lion-completely/

Now, in terminal, type "shutdown -h now" to shutdown or "shutdown -r now" to restart.


How to make a demo video using a Mac? How can a simple demonstration video like this be made using a Mac?

In particular, I need:

To edit and cut some of the raw materials, as some of it may not be very interesting to the audience.
Add some words in the video.

Could anyone can give me some help?

There are two parts to this:

Preparing your content: screenshot the pages you want to present. Use Cmd+Shift+4 to get all the screens. Don't worry about getting some incorrectly, just do a few tries is you have to, you can filter them out later.
Build a presentation: create slides, add highlights and transition animations,  time it just right and practice your speech. You can use Apple Keynote for this, or any other presentation software.
Record your show: do your screencast in "Present" mode and record your screen. Open QuickTime player and use the option File → New Screen Recording to get some (limited) editing options after you record it. On the start screen, set the audio recording options to pick up or ignore your microphone

If you want to fine-tune the result, or to export it to other formats, make an iMovie project out of it.

Enjoy :-)


Process is too verbose, how to stop it from flooding system.log? I'm using this application (Solar.app) from Logitech to monitor the solar cells and batteries from their own solar keyboard (K750)

One process is much too verbose and logs approx. 400 bytes in /var/log/system.log at each keystroke.

I'm looking for various solutions to prevent the process from flooding system.log.

Jan  5 17:32:11 pc96 Solar Service[702]: Input data callback for device 0x6047d0
Jan  5 17:32:11 pc96 Solar Service[702]: End of data
Jan  5 17:32:11 pc96 Solar Service[702]: Event = 1 device index = 1
Jan  5 17:32:11 pc96 Solar Service[702]: Input data callback for device 0x6047d0
Jan  5 17:32:11 pc96 Solar Service[702]: End of data
Jan  5 17:32:11 pc96 Solar Service[702]: Event = 1 device index = 1

I have been able to  find a rule to match those messages, but:

1/

# ? [= Facility com.Logitech.Solar-Service] file solar-Service.log format=raw

This rule (when used alone) actually logs the messages to a different file, in addition to system.log. Here is solar-Service.log:

[Level 4] [Time 1452071909] [TimeNanoSec 309468000] [PID 702] [Sender Solar Service] [Facility com.Logitech.Solar-Service] [CFLog Local Time 2016-01-06 10:18:29.309] [CFLog Thread 160b] [ReadUID 501] [Message Event = 1 device index = 1] [UID 501] [GID 20] [SenderMachUUID C4A60E0E-5968-829C-BC55-931BBEB0A7F7] [Host pc96]
[Level 4] [Time 1452071909] [TimeNanoSec 951289000] [PID 702] [Sender Solar Service] [Facility com.Logitech.Solar-Service] [CFLog Local Time 2016-01-06 10:18:29.951] [CFLog Thread 160b] [ReadUID 501] [Message Input data callback for device 0x6047d0] [UID 501] [GID 20] [Host pc96] [SenderMachUUID C4A60E0E-5968-829C-BC55-931BBEB0A7F7]

2/

? [= Facility com.Logitech.Solar-Service] ignore

.. but this rule (when used alone), does not ignore the messages.

and I don't understand why it is so.

To follow up on bmike's answer, the app identifier is com.logitech.Solar-App.  So the code you want to put in your asl.conf is

? [= Facility com.logitech.Solar-App] ignore

If you want to confirm that I'm right about your app identifier, try:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Print CFBundleIdentifier' /Applications/Solar\ App.app/Contents/Info.plist

And if you want this to go into effect right away, you can restart syslogd with something like this:

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist


Mountain Lion Doesn't Download from Store I just bought Mountain Lion in the App Store and it shows the download link. But after I click it and correctly enter my password it does not continue to download. Nothing happens. It just remains on the "download" button. I have installed every update imaginable, including Java and the latest Lion compatibilities, iTunes, everything from the App Store. I checked if my Macbook (2010) is compatible and it is, including the space on the harddrive, 64 bit etcetera. What could it be? Why is isn't it downloading?

Try one of the following solutions:

Quit the App Store and reboot your Mac. Most of the times, your problem will be solved.
Try again in 15 or 30 minutes. Sometimes, as large as the server farms might be, they simply can't handle the overload in request. Maybe later, there will be an open slot for you
Flush the cache of the App Store. Opeq Finder and use the "Go to" option to go to ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.appstore. Remove the file and make sure you've emptied your trash.

I hope one of these things will help you out.


Duplicated table in Numbers I think I have exactly the problem described here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250476270?answerId=250909160022#250909160022 - Numbers apparently drawing the spreadsheet on top of itself, offset, for no obvious reason. Presumably I hit the wrong shortcut key and didn't notice at the time.

I assume the given answer will solve my problem... but I don't understand what it's telling me to do, and I don't seem to be able to add a comment to the thread. What it suggests doing is as follows:

Select both, then open the format inspector, choose Table and check the Table Names checkbox.
Both tables should have the same name. The duplicate will have " - 1" added to the end.
Afte checking that any recent editing has been done in the origina (and repeating it there if that is not the case)l, delete the duplicate.

This isn't at all clear to me.
How do I "select both"?
I have the format inspector opened... I think... but there is no Table Names checkbox. (Maybe this is due to my failure to "select both"?)
How do I "delete the duplicate"?
(OS 10.14.6, Numbers 10.1 (6913))

The table is selected by clicking the little circle thing.

There's no need to fiddle about as suggested in the forum post - just press the Delete key to delete it.


Problems opening links on internet iphone 5S When I search something on google and try to click on the returned items/links nothing happens. Please help, do I have to do something in my settings???

The bug affects not only links in Safari and Mail but also in Messages. I depend on the latter for employment, and it's a race with others when notifications come through, so copy & paste is waaay too slow. Not happy!! >:-(
I'm using iOS 9.2.1


Create bootable USB disk with Bootcamp 6 I have OS X El Capitan with Bootcamp 6 in an Early 2015 Retina Macbook Pro. I want to create a bootable USB disk with Windows 10 to install it and then completely remove OS X. I have read different answers:

Can i remove OS X completely and install Windows?
Creating A Bootable USB Of Windows 8.1 On OS X?
Bootable Windows 7 USB won't boot
How to Create a Windows 10 Installer USB Drive from Mac OS X

But I can't get my USB to show when booting and pressing the "Option" key, only my external disk with the Time Machine backup and the internal SSD is showed. I tried using Bootcamp to create a USB disk as shown here:

But with Bootcamp 6 it just asks me for an ISO and then proceeds to repartition my disk, I can't create a bootable Windows disk. I also tried using RUFUS to create a bootable Windows USB disk but it is not detected neither. Any solution or alternative?

Solved it! I created the bootable USB with Rufus, just select the Windows ISO and format the disk as FAT32. The partition scheme must be MBR Partition Scheme for UEFI if you select compatibility for both BIOS and UEFI-CSM it won't be detected on startup.


File with removed tag showing up in Finder I recently learned about the tagging system on macOS and tagged the file with name DA1 with a yellow tag. Shortly after that, I removed the yellow tag but the file keeps popping up in my Finder window. What should I do to remove that file from Finder?

I have not found a stable way in the finder to apply tags. Usually any new method I try works for the first 5 files, and then the problems arise. Even the Get Info window will not reliably work (the tags appear to be fixed, but if you close the Get Info window and open it again, none of the changes have been kept).

However, recently I have been applying tags through an application's Save dialog box. Often this works to add or remove tags when the Finder doesn't. Maybe that will work for this problem file.


Can't Set Desktop Background in Fullscreen App I have an 11" Air so I usually run all of my open applications in fullscreen mode. I have a launchd job for my user that runs a script every hour and every login to set the desktop background according to time of day. The problem is that, despite running in the background, unless I am logging in or idling on the Desktop "space", it will not get set.

Weirdly, it also changes to dark mode at night (or light mode during daytime) and that part of the script works just fine.

So, if I go to my fullscreen'd Terminal.app and run the following lines, they do not work to change the desktop background:

osascript -e "tell application \"Finder\" to set destop picture to POSIX file \"<path>\""

or

osascript -e "tell application \"System Events\" to set picture of every desktop to \"<path>\""

or even

tell application "System Events"
    set desktopCount to count of desktops
    repeat with desktopNumber from 1 to desktopCount
        tell desktop desktopNumber
            set picture to "<path>"
        end tell
    end repeat
end tell

Does anyone know how to get this to work?

I'm late to the party, but this should work for you:

-- Set user_project_path to the folder that contains this AppleScript
set user_project_path to POSIX path of ((path to me as string) & "::")

-- Assuming your images are contained in user_project_path directory inside an images folder
set images_directory to user_project_path & "images/" as string

tell application "System Events"
  set desktopCount to count of desktops
  repeat with desktopNumber from 1 to desktopCount
    tell desktop desktopNumber
        -- Change my-desktop-image.png below to the name with extension of your desired image
        set picture to images_directory & "my-desktop-image.png"
    end tell
  end repeat
end tell

If you have questions, let me know


Always show language status Is there an small app to always show language status?

The ideal app changes the color/shape of cursor depending on current language.

Or it can be a float icon on top with current language.

Update: Mostly I'm working in full screen mode, usual scenario for me is type something to understand what is my current language. Always show menu bar is not so comfortable for me.

This can be done by enabling the keyboard shortcut.

Now in full screen mode there will be a pop up when you use the keyboard shortcut (cmd+space) letting you see or change the input language.

The advantage of this method is you do not have something floating on you full screen all the time, but only when you call for it.


Time Machine backup permissions set to 711 after a restore Had to erase and restore my internal drive on my MacBook Pro. I selected restore from Time Machine my settings, User accounts, and Applications after doing a fresh install of 10.8. Now my Time Machine volume does not show the old backups I need to finish my restore.

Looking at folder in the finder all the folders in /Volumes/TM/Backups.backupdb/hd are locked. Looking at the permissions in Terminal I see the folder is:

root@MBP_LOCAL /Volumes/TM/Backups.backupdb> ls -la@
total 0
drwx--x--x   3 root  _unknown   102 Jan 28  2012 .RecoverySets
drwx------   2 root  _unknown    68 Oct  5 23:08 .spotlight_repair
drwx------   2 root  _unknown    68 Nov  9 03:34 .spotlight_temp
drwx--x--x@ 60 root  _unknown  2040 Nov  9 09:58 mbp
    com.apple.backupd.BackupMachineAddress    18
    com.apple.backupd.HasRecoverySet       3
    com.apple.backupd.HostUUID    37
    com.apple.backupd.ModelID     13

The extended attributes look ok and match my system UUID and mac address but the 711 does not seem right. What gives here since the ACL is set to:

drwx--x--x@ 60 root  _unknown  2040 Nov  9 09:58 mbp
 0: group:everyone deny add_file,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,writeattr,writeextattr,chown

So I assume something changed to 711 during the install or restore. What are the proper permissions?

I manually changed the permissions and now all is well. I can once again see the old backup and restore. Used the following commands.

cd /Volumes/TM/backups.backupdb
chmod -N hd
chown root:wheel hd
chown +a 'group:everyone deny add_file,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,writeattr,writeextattr,chown' hd

tmutil associatedisk -a /Volumes/TM /Volumes/TM/Backups.backupdb/hd/2012-11-08-145609


How do I install sudo insults on Mac? How do I install sudo insults† on Mac terminal?

Apparently Apple has cleaned it up from Darwin, so adding Defaults insults through sudo visudo does not help.

† The insulting things sudo command says when you enter wrong password.

To install a sudo with insults you have to compile it yourself:

Requirements: Xcode 8.0, Sierra 10.12, probably SIP disabled

Backup sudo and visudo:

sudo cp /usr/bin/sudo  /usr/bin/sudo.backup
sudo cp /usr/sbin/visudo  /usr/sbin/visudo.backup

Create a dir: mkdir sudo
Change to the directory: cd sudo
Curl the Apple open source sudo:

curl https://opensource.apple.com/tarballs/sudo/sudo-83.tar.gz | tar zxf -

cd to the source folder:

cd sudo-83/src

configure, make and make install it:

./configure --with-password-timeout=0 --disable-setreuid --with-env-editor --with-pam --with-libraries=bsm --with-noexec=no --sysconfdir="/private/etc" --with-timedir="/var/db/sudo" --with-all-insults
make
sudo make install

The file sudo-83/src/INSTALL contains a lot more tweak options for the configure command!
The files may be installed to /usr/local/bin/ and /usr/local/sbin/ so you may have to move them (in my case I had to):

sudo mv /usr/local/sbin/visudo /usr/sbin/visudo
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/sudoedit
sudo mv /usr/local/bin/sudoreplay /usr/bin/
sudo mv /usr/local/bin/sudo /usr/bin/sudo
/usr/bin/sudo ln -s /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/sudoedit

or modify your path and prepend /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin.
Enter /usr/bin/sudo /usr/sbin/visudo
Add the line in insert mode (simply hit i)

Defaults        lecture_file = "/etc/sudo_lecture" #<-already there
Defaults        insults

Save the file after hitting esc with :wq!.
Probably you have to quit and relaunch Terminal now.

Results:

host:~ user$ ls -l /usr/bin/sudo*
-rwsr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  restricted 225428 Oct 19 02:01 /usr/bin/sudo
-r-x--x--x  1 root  wheel  restricted 369136 Oct 19 02:00 /usr/bin/sudo.backup
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  restricted     13 Oct 19 02:03 /usr/bin/sudoedit -> /usr/bin/sudo
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  restricted  49544 Oct 19 02:01 /usr/bin/sudoreplay
host:~ user$ sudo openssl sha1 /usr/bin/sudo*
SHA1(/usr/bin/sudo)= 87d9ad990813b5a949d07267d566bb3a1fddeec0
SHA1(/usr/bin/sudo.backup)= 088c317bf7b8a146803533173699021b9aef5b16
SHA1(/usr/bin/sudoedit)= 87d9ad990813b5a949d07267d566bb3a1fddeec0
SHA1(/usr/bin/sudoreplay)= f76c5ad8d6f2aebbc24d77fee54a54ba9d207e25

Last login: Wed Oct 19 02:09:33 on console
host:~ user$ sudo ifconfig
Password:
Do you think like you type?
Password:
He has fallen in the water!
Password:
I don't wish to know that.
sudo: 3 incorrect password attempts

The files may be overwritten after a system update/upgrade!

Recompiling sudo with insults also works in older systems - you have to choose the respective tarball though (e.g. sudo-73.tar.gz should work with 10.9 and 10.10).

By modifying the ins_*.h in the src folder you should be able to include more insults. You can also add additional ins_*.h files but then you have to include them in insults.h like the other four already are. You may also include non-english insults of course!


MacBook Pro running OS X lion stuck on boot screen My MacBook is stuck on the boot screen like this:

I have tried multiple things such as launching it in safe mode and pressing some buttons as soon as the computer boot logo shows up.

This happened to me only in 2 cases:

Incompatible SSD installed
Hard drive failure

There is a good chance that if you leave your MBP running for a few hours like that it will end-up displaying a files not found logo.

The best way to test if it is a hard drive failure is to replace it or to connect an external hard drive and install Mac OS on it.


Syncing Contacts to iOS on Mac OS X 10.6 What is the oldest Mac OS version that can do iCloud sync from Contacts/Address Book to a current iOS 9 device (iPhone SE, in this case)? The goal is to sync contacts between my Macbook running OS X 10.6 and my iPhone.

If iCloud sync is not possible, what synchronization options in 10.6 would allow for contact synchronization to current iOS?

According to http://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/mac.html iCloud requires 10.7.5 or later.

Since iCloud encrypts data between the client and the server, you won't find third party options. I would get whatever software you need on 10.6 upgraded and then upgrade the OS or set up virtualization to run 10.6 from within a newer OS if iCloud data sync is needed.

Perhaps you could find a different cloud sync between to that's likely more work and aisle than the above.


Should I be concerned if the helpd process is eating RAM after an upgrade to Lion? Hallo, I've recently upgraded to Mac OS Lion from Snow Leopard on my 2009 Unibody Macbook. Now, checking in activity monitor I often find a strange process named helpd taking large parts of the memory ~400 MB.

What is it? Is there any solution for it?

I hope the fine author of Lingon doesn't disapprove of me using his app to answer this, but here are the reasons why helpd will run.

(the daemon of help)

It's hard to tell if this is one of the processes that needs to run a bit the first time it starts and then it will happily update itself more rapidly when needed (like /Applications being changed) as well as early every Sunday AM.

The virtual memory system should keep the RAM fine, so unless you see it constantly - it's just taking the RAM it needs to serve your help menu with fresh and up to date documents.

You can also disable that launchd job if it's causing you grief until you can isolate why.


Messages taking a long time to appear When I receive a message there will immediately be a notification, however when opening the Messages app, the message will usually take about 5 seconds before it appears.

If there a known issue with the OS or a quick fix for this issue?

iMessage and iCloud have lots of issues with delivery, sync, and reliability. There's no fix, but you can always write feedback to Apple or file a bug report (free developer account required).


How do I fix printing from El Capitan to shared Windows printer? We have a small network that consists of 3 workstations:

Windows 8.1 Pro 32 bit PC with Canon LBP 6020 printer connected to USB and shared to network.
Windows 7 Pro SP1 32 bit notebook.
MacBook with macOS 10.11 El Capitan installed.

2 and 3 use the shared Canon printer connected to 1. Though, MacBook (3) is unable to print after the update to macOS 10.11. The print task freezes in queue with "Sending print data" status. On the Windows 8.1 PC we also have a task in queue freezed with "Putting in queue" (it's the translation) status with size of 62 bytes.

What I've tried already:

Disabling antivirus and firewall on Windows 8.1 PC.
Updating Canon driver on macOS to 3.87.
Resetting print system on macOS.
Adding the printer manually using the smb://user:pass@ip/LBP6020 URI.
Adding the printer manually using the lpd://ip/LBP6020 URI - from the "Printers & Scanners" and from CUPS web-interface - the result is the same and it's weird: the URI automatically changes to cnbma://localhost:59687 and obviously doesn't print to LPD.
Connecting the printer to MacBook directly by USB - it works like a charm out of the box, but MacBook is not always in the office, so Windows 8.1 PC should be the print server.

Please help me fix this issue so it will be possible to print from MacBook again.

Well, this worked pretty much: http://tweaks.com/windows/46495/enable-ios-airprint-support-on-windows/

15 minutes to set up and test.


How does Fing detect the model and MacOS version of a device I was running Fing on my iPhone. My Macbook Pro is on the same wireless network and I noticed that Fing not only detected my laptop's name (this is understandable, it is broadcasted, I can see it on the router too), but it also detected the model generation  (say Macbook Pro 13 in, 2017-2018) and the MacOS version (MacOS 10.15 Catalina). How is it able to determine the exact model and the exact OS version and is it possible to prevent broadcasting this info?

It's called Network Discovery.
Basically, Fing can get this information because your computer (not limited to Macs) is both broadcasting who/what it's resources are and responding to requests about what resources are available.
There's lots of tools (mostly professional) that will do a "network inventory" of not only what's connected to your network (type of device), but name, OS, installed software, etc.  Network Inventory Advisor is an example of such software (this one is Windows based, but it's product info pages give good examples of what info can be obtained).
So, how can it get it?

DNS Client (how your computer gets an IP address)
SSDP Discovery - Simple Service Discovery Protocol
UPnP - Universal Plug & Play
Zero Config (Bonjour)
OUI (Organizational Unique Identifier)

Using Wireshark (FOSS Network Sniffer) and just evaluating what ports respond, you can start building a network map and determine what computers are on your network.
The OUI alone can give you a clue as to what computer's identity - there are many free tools on the internet like Wireshark's OUI Lookup Tool.  Try it for yourself, paste your MAC address (obtained from ifconfig and see what vendor is identified.  You can obtain all of the MAC addresses on your network segment by pinging your broadcast address.
These are just some of the services on your client machines that advertise what resources are available.  All Fing is doing is utilizing one or more of these (which one they use specifically, I don't know) to do an inventory of the network.
Preventing Discovery
Can you prevent this? To a point.  No matter what, even your MAC address (unless you spoof it) is going to give up some of the goods on you.  Your browser's User Agent String tells whatever server you connect to what your running including the host operating system.  Give it a try with the site WhatIsMyBrowser.com. What does this mean?  Even your applications are giving up the goods on you.
When you attempt to prevent this, you are going to find it difficult to strike a balance between user convenience and perceived security.  These identifiers are shared so that the end user doesn't have to go back to the 1970s and 80s and manually configure services (i.e. printing or network file sharing).  For example, turn off a zero-conf service and you have to manually configure your printer on your client.  You also have to manually configure your printer to not use DHCP because if that IP changes for whatever reason, you have to reconfigure that service again.
Remember, these services are added for user convenience.  Can you turn them off and firewall your computer so it doesn't respond?  Sure.  Have you secured anything?  Not really.
In the book The Art of Deception, the author, Kevin Mitnik (convicted hacker) describes many ways systems are compromised.  There are many tools and steps you can take technologically and yes, you should implement them.  But knowing what OS you're using is irrelevant when the weakest link can be found between the keyboard the chair.  You can turn all of this off tomorrow and with very little effort, can get all this information via social engineering; in other words, just talking to the user.
TL;DR
Basically, you can spend a ton of time trying to make your system invisible with firewalls and disabling services and in the process, "break" the conveniences that were built into the system that makes your computing experience a good one.  Instead, focus on security practices that harden your system.  Knowing that you use macOS Catalina on a MacBook pro or Windows 10 on a Dell XPS is meaningless if you use the same password on a majority of your systems/services, for example.   You would be better served by focusing on not letting unauthorized people onto your network in the first place and if you do have to allow guests, segment them to their own VLAN with access to nothing but the Internet, put time/bandwidth limits in place and lock down the protocols they can use (i.e. http/https only).


Restore system to point in time Running time machine and High Sierra, my MacBook Air got invaded.
So I want to restore it to the backup on Time Machine from earlier this morning.
But it’s not clear how I can specify from when I want to restore the machine.
I’ve tried using the Migration Assistant.
So, how do I recover the entire system from a specific point from my Time Machine backup?

i guess you are looking for something like this: https://maclovin.org/blog-native/2017/restoring-from-a-snapshot-with-apfs. It can alternatively be done from command line as tmutil restore. See man tmutil for more information.


Best way to stream video from iPad or iPhone to Macbook ? I am planning to create some app tutorials (screencasts) using Screenflow on my Macbook

The apps are iPhone and iPad apps so I want to show the live app in the tutorial and mix in other aspects which Screenflow lets you do.

I think therefore I just need to get the iPad to stream to a Window on my macbook - then I can capture it.

I have an Apple TV and I think I read that this is the best way to do this -  but not sure the exact set up - can anyone advise?

If you have an iOS 8 device with a Lightning cable (i.e. no iPhone 4S) and Yosemite, you can do this without an Apple TV.

Plug in your iDevice to your Mac.
Open QuickTime.
Click File > New Movie Recording.
Select your iDevice as the input source.

You can find these instructions online with pictures here.


Windows won't maximize on multiple monitor setup I have two external monitors connected to my macbook and the dock is on the very leftmost monitor.  The non-dock monitor seems to think it has the dock because it will not allow me to expand windows into the area where the dock would be.

Additionally the monitor with the dock will expand windows fully right behind the dock.

I have tried moving the dock to this monitor and then away from it and disconnecting and reconnecting the monitor altogether but I have not restarted yet as I would prefer to solve this problem without a reboot if possible.  Does anyone know how to resolve this issue?

I am running macOS Catalina 10.15.3 on a 2016 macbook pro

I was able to resolve this by killing the Dock process (it will restart on its own):

sudo killall Dock


Blank rows/ spaces when copying and pasting from Excel to Keynote Chart When I copy from Excel for Mac (version 16.11), and paste into Keynote (version 7.3.1), the formatting jumps every time. This means I have to paste individual cells one by one instead of the whole table of numbers, which is time consuming every time.

Eg 1:

Copy(CMD+C) this from Excel:

Paste (CMD+V) and get this in Keynote:

Eg 2:

Copy(CMD+C) this:

Get(CMD+V) this:

Found a simple workaround: just copy paste into Apple's Notes, then paste it into Keynote. Fast and easy.


smb not working for me on 10.13.6 (dtruss inside) my Finder is not able to connect to ANY smb-share. It doesn't matter, if the network-folder

is on linux (SAMBA 4.1.17)
is on OSX  (10.11.6)
is on Windowsserver
is public for everyone or in a ADS

It simply stops in the Finder with "Couldn't connect"

In the terminal you see the following

$ ping server
PING server (192.168.0.123): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.0.123: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=1.017 ms
^C
$ mount_smbfs  //johndoe@server/johndoe test
mount_smbfs: server connection failed: No such file or directory

on a Debian-VM on the same macbookpro following command works perfectly

$ mount.cifs -o username=johndoe //server/johndoe test

In the logs is nothing, despite having kloglevel=15 in /etc/nsmb.conf and i have already tried 'configureLocalKDC' to reset the krb5.keytab

So i disabled System Integrity Protection and made a dtruss for the first command.

dtruss -cf mount_smbfs  //johndoe@server/johndoe test >& mount.log

mount.log has 2050 open-calls for the /dev/nsmb..

15734/0x1b2bd3:  open("/dev/nsmb\0", 0x2, 0x5F719DF8)            = -1 Err#2
15734/0x1b2bd3:  open("/dev/nsmb0\0", 0x2, 0xFFFFFFFFE84BC430)           = -1 Err#6
.... 2050times ...
15734/0x1b2bd3:  open("/dev/nsmb3fd\0", 0x2, 0xFFFFFFFFE84BC820)                 = -1 Err#2
15734/0x1b2bd3:  open("/dev/nsmb3fe\0", 0x2, 0xFFFFFFFFE84BC820)                 = -1 Err#2
15734/0x1b2bd3:  open("/dev/nsmb3ff\0", 0x2, 0xFFFFFFFFE84BC820)                 = -1 Err#2

/dev/nsmb0 exists .. the other ones not.
smbfs-module is loaded

$ kextstat | grep smb
  184    0 0xffffff7f8700b000 0x63000    0x63000    com.apple.filesystems.smbfs (3.2.3) 8BD2FFC5-F081-3B29-B2AB-BEF58E24BAAD

Has anyone hints, what I could do? I already tried mb_neg=smb3_only, protocol_vers_map and so on

Thanks

Oh my god..

it appears to be a problem with a 3rd party kext

see Mac mini can't connect to my corporate SMB server. Was working some days ago

WTF apple. Fix your damn Error messages.


iTunes artwork doesn't change I change the cover images for the songs in my iTunes library using:

Right Click > Get Info > Artwork > Drag-Drop > OK

and in most cases the artwork updates immediately. On some tracks, though, it doesn't.

I then tried removing the artwork (so nothing should appear in Cover Flow), but the track then keeps the image it had previously.

iTunes holds its data in an XML structure. On the surface what may appear to you to be a single Album file consisting of 10 separate tracks may, in fact, be 10 separate tracks, each with a separate link to the Album artwork. How this comes about I am not sure, but I think it's related to how the files were input to iTunes. For example, ripping your own CD may produce a different result from 'acquiring' the same album from - shall we say, a download sharing site.

Normally what I do is

(1) if an album has no artwork, I select all the tracks and drag'n'drop the artwork (from Amazon for example) into the box for Selected Item. Normally this will lock the artwork to EVERY track in the album. If, however, the structure isn't 'correct' the artwork will only be locked to a single track. You can check by clicking on several tracks in the same album.

(2)If the artwork isn't there for all the tracks, you can select all the tracks, then go to File>Get Info and drop the artwork into  the Artwork Box. You should then have artwork for every track

(3)Failing all this, as a last resort I drop the artwork in for each track separately.

One of these methods always works for me.

Bit tedious for a few albums, but for more than 1500 albums in my Library, I've only had to go the most tedious route a few times.

I should add that iTunes allows you to include several versions of the artwork for each track. If you replace artwork you may in fact simply be adding another version. Which one gets displayed is determined in the following way. Click a track. Go to File>Get Info>Artwork... here you will see all the versions of the artwork. Delete the ones you don't want. The one you are left with is the one that gets displayed.

I know.. it's confusing..


Options for getting into passcode-locked iPad 2 / iOS 5.1.1 (JB'd)? I have an iPad 2 running iOS 5.1.1 and it is jailbroken (though as far as I know, not running SSH). A few hours ago I set a new 4-digit device passcode which I subsequently forgot. I've tried a few times now and it blocked me out for a full hour twice now, I suspect if I try again it will completely block the device.

I last made an iTunes backup and synchronisation about 3-4 months ago on a laptop that I still have, but is currently unusable (the HDD is in another country, I won't be able to use that laptop for at least 2 more weeks).

I have other computers with iTunes, when I connect my iPad to this other machines I get a message telling me that I have to unlock it first before iTunes will connect to it, which means that I cannot browse the filesystem using iExplorer or iFunBox (then I would be able to delete the keychain file and get in that way... I hope). I think that if I connect my iPad to my original laptop (2 weeks away) that I'll be able to get-in without needing the passcode? Is this true?

I found out about the Gecko iPhone Toolkit, however that only works up to iPhone 4 (A4) whereas the iPad 2 is an A5-powered device. I also couldn't find any download links, oddly enough.

I read about a Ramdisk that I could boot from in Recovery Mode that has an SSH server, but the steps looked too complicated and the forum posts don't mention the iPad 2 and iOS 5 which made me wonder if it would work or not, I didn't want to risk it.

I see that commercial forensics tools like Elcomsoft's iOS Toolkit and Cellebrite UFED claim to be able to get into my device, but if they can do it how come the jailbreakers can't?

Coincidentally, I contacted a local data recovery company and they left me a voicemail just now saying that they wouldn't be able to recover data from an iPad 2, only a first-generation iPad, which is a bummer - but I don't know what tool they use.

I'll try contacting other data recovery companies in the meanwhile, but is my situation really helpless?

Update:

I tried another passcode attempt and that caused my iPad to be disabled. Ho-hum. I returned home today and plugged my iPad into my laptop and while iTunes did not offer to remove the passcode I was able to access the raw filesystem using iFunBox, which I could not do when my iPad was connected to any of my other computers.

I deleted the keychain-2.db and com.apple.springboard.plist files and rebooted my device, however the passcode prompt still persists.

I'm not too bothered about the passcode on the device preventing me from logging-in because iFunBox gives me the raw filesystema access so I can grab the files and data I need (such as my iMessages database) and wipe the device at a later date if I can't get the passcode back.

Still, if anyone knows why deleting keychain-2.db didn't work, please let me know.

The canonical way to fix this is to erase and restore the device.

See http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT1212 for more details and options.


Receiving payments from iTunes - are there foreign currency exchange fees? Apple collects payments for our apps in many currencies, converts all of them to our country's currency (CAD), then sends it to us in a single payment.

My question: Does Apple charge a foreign currency exchange fee for this?

Thanks!

No. You will be paid by units sold. Let's see an example:

You sold 100 apps with a price of 1 CAD.

You will get 0.7 CAD per app sold x 100 units.

Total 70.0 CAD.

If some of your sales are on foreign country, the process is the same, except currency exchange applied is the payment's day exchange, without fees.

This quoted text is from iTunes Connect Payments and Financial Reports:

  This amount is only an estimate. Actual amount may vary, based on
  foreign exchange rates. Amount shown does not include any applicable
  withholding tax, which will be applied when the payment is made.


Incoming phone call is going to the phone audio instead of my blueetooth connected headset I have just taken a call and was using my bluetooth headset. It has been connected the entire time since the call ended.  A new call came in and the iPhone audio was chosen instead of the headset.
This has been the pattern. It is annoying and confusing to the caller who has to wait while I re-select the headset audio . Note the headset did not need to reconnect: it was already connected/available.
Why is the headset not retained as the default audio device? Is there a configuration to achieve this?
I am on an iPhone6s on ios 14.2

I have had this happen throughout the iOS 14, even back to the betas. I reported it using the “Feedback” app but it still persists even in 14.2.1.
Your best option is to report the bug using this webpage:
https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html