Saving an iTunes playlist to USB, whilst keeping edits and track numbers in place? I'm trying to save a playlist from my iTunes onto a USB stick ready for an event, most people seem to recommend drag and drop which does work, but the order of the songs is completely out, and any edits I've made through iTunes to the start/end point of songs and normalising the volume are no longer in place.

I was tempted to try to burn it to a CD and then re-import it somehow, but that seems really clunky and the playlist won't fit onto a CD anyway.

Any suggestions please? I know I can do it manually, but it's a large playlist which will be changing all the time. Thank you

I am assuming that the USB stick has no software on it and whatever is playing the music simply reads the audio from the stick/SD card. Is it a Pioneer CDJ by any chance?

Seems the best way to play the tracks from the USB/SD in the same order as the iTunes playlist is to add track numbers to the music files. That way even the most basic audio player will 'most likely' read from 01, 02, 03,... etc.

So how to rename the tracks easily.

By hand, might prove too time consuming as you say there are a lot.

Use an Applescript from Doug
https://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=incrementnumbertags
or the older
https://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=numbersongsplayorder
would probably suit your situation.

Note, renaming tracks may mess the iTunes library in a way you don't want, so maybe, to begin with, you should work with duplicates.

I forgot to add one last thing. Assuming you're using a recent iTunes you don't need to duplicate the tracks first.

The workflow would be
Select your Playlist you want on the USB stick. (make sure the playlist is in the play order you want)
Selcect the Script to add 01, 02, 03, etc to your track names in Itunes. (it won't rename your track files, just the track name you see in iTunes)
Now you have the tracks numbered you can select them all and use the iTunes convert to (whatever your import settings are set to - choose itunes plus or 320 mp3) function and a bunch of new tracks will be made with numbers at the front of the names.

The downside to this method is that you are converting from lossy to lossy, so you wouldn't want to do it a twice as the audio quality will suffer very quickly.


When I try to enter a user password to delete an account, it doesn't work. and I know the password I'm using is correct I got a new computer today. I my parents logged in with a username I didn't want so I made another admin. Now, I'm trying to delete the old account.

when I go to Users & Groups in System preferences, click on the old account, hit the - sign to delete it and enter the password, the popup shakes like the password didn't work. I'm sure the password is correct because I used it multiple times to log into the account. I tried switching the old account to admin but that didn't work.

If you can't delete the user for some reason, you can remove it at the command line.

Launch "Terminal" (from /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app, or search via Spotlight) and type:

sudo dscl . list /Users

...followed by your administrator password.  Then hit enter

The output will show you the shortname of your local users (towards the bottom).
Here I called the user to be removed "testy" (I'm only showing the last few entries):

...
admin
daemon
Guest
nobody
root
testy

Now remove the user from your system and from System Preferences (exchanging the shortname "testy" with your own, found earlier):

sudo dscl . delete /Users/testy

Then hit enter.

The home folder of that user you can either keep, if there are important files, or delete it with...

sudo rm -r /Users/testy

...and again hit enter.

PS. A speculative answer for the permissions error received and mentioned in the comments section can be found at StackExchange:
What causes eDSPermissionError when running dscl?


How to sync Yosemite Photos library to Synology Diskstation? I'd like to know if anyone has found a way to sync the new Photos app on Yosemite with a Synology diskstation. I know backing up is easily done either using Time Machine or another app, but I want to sync the 'Events' of Photos to my Diskstation to allow for it to index the files to the built in Photo Station application on the NAS.

I'm doing that with Phoshare.

I'm using automator for running an apple script when my iMac starts. This script calls phoshare to sync my events with the NAS.

The apple script look like:

cd /Applications/Phoshare-1.5.2.app/Contents/MacOS
./Phoshare \
  --export "/Volumes/photo/2015" \
  --iphoto "/Users/toto/Pictures/iPhoto Library.photolibrary" \
  -e ".*2015" \
  --foldertemplate "{mm}-{name}" \
  --nametemplate "{title}" \
  --captiontemplate "{description}" \
  -u -d -f -K --gps


Can I use iPad/Airport/Mac Mini as a development network? I am thinking of getting a Mac Mini as an inexpensive development server. I want to install MySql and get up and running quickly. Can I :

Use my existing AirPort to create a wireless LAN so that my Windows PC can use the Mac Mini as a database server?
Use my existing iPad to remote access the Mac Mini so I can install and configure the MySql instance?

If anyone knew of any books or documentation of how to do this, that would be cool.

A new Mini is most likely 'enough' computer, but you also have options as to which OS you run on it.

Do you intend to run your development server on OSX?  You could also run Windows or Linux either natively or virtually.  Given the myriad options, I'm sure it's possible to do what you're looking to do.

Your AirPort will allow communication between the Windows PC and the Mini.

As far as the iPad goes, there's and app for that.  I've personally used the Teamviewer app and the RealVNC app.  Both have served me well.


Script to unmount mounted image automatically after some time I have a sparse image that can be mounted as an encrypted volume.
I want to make sure it doesn't stay mounted once I am done using it.

To get help doing that, I had earlier asked this question, but got no response.

So, I am asking this new, hopefully simpler question:

How can I do the following:

1) When the volume is mounted, a script should start running.

2) The script should ask even hour whether the volume should be unmounted, and depending on the response unmount the volume (If that is too complicated, this will suffice as well: The script should just attempt to unmount the volume, and indicate if the unmount failed due to the volume being in use)

3) The script should stop executing once the volume is unmounted (ideally by "listening" for its unmount event, or if that's not possible, simply as the next step in the script's execution once it has effected the unmount -- the former having the benefit that even a manual unmount would end the script)

I have only very recently moved to the Mac from Windows and have no experience with AppleScript. So, a working script would be ideal, but if I am given pointers on how to carry out the individual steps, I should be able to piece them together as well, hopefully.

Thanks.

Here is a way to accomplish most of this using a simple Automator script:

Save the script as an Application. Place on desktop or dock. When you want to open the encrypted disk image, simply drop it onto the script icon and it will mount it, pause, and ask for confirmation from you to close the disk image after a certain amount of time has elapsed. The only thing here is that if you choose not to have it unmount, you will need to manually unmount later. You can also remove the confirmation prompt altogether. Then you will simply get an error message if it tries to unmount while still open (which should also stop the script from running).


How to reset iPhone to factory settings from computer if screen doesn't work? I dropped the phone and the screen is not responding.
Before I take it to get it fixed I want to restore the iPhone to factory settings because I'm logged in on my apps, and I don't want the person fixing the phone to get access to my Facebook and other accounts.
I tried to turn it on again but the screen is not responding.

How can I reset my iPhone from computer if the screen doesn't work?

Indeed, placing the iPhone into recovery mode, then connecting to iTunes and restoring will do the trick. Here's an Apple-provided article on how to place the iPhone in recovery mode: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1808

Make sure you use the official Apple to USB lightning connector when attempting this recovery process. I tried several non-apple cables and I was unable to follow the recovery process and generated errors in the recovery process. As soon as i used an official Apple cable - no issue.


Limiting different users on a single machine to different connectivity I have a iMac running 10.6 where I have been tasked with creating two different users who can use different network profiles(locations).

User 1 will be connecting via Ethernet through a filtered network, all other connections are disabled, which works fine.

User 2 needs to connect to the unfiltered Wi-Fi but no access to any other connections.

I have most of this implemented in Network Locations, the problem is that both of these locations are available to both Users.

What I'd like to be able to do is assign the customized Location as a Default for each user.

From a security standpoint it isn't perfect, but if I can get this sort of thing working, I'd like to assign the Wi-Fi connection to the guest user, so they can navigate without the filters. Then the Regular user will have Ethernet, and will not be able to switch Locations, or enable Wi-Fi.

The trick with this is that the User will be a single user. They will know both user passwords, they will just need to switch users to perform different tasks.

Is it possible with plain OSX, or will I need external software/scripts?

Well, I cracked it, it wasn't loginHooks I needed, but launchctl.

Basically, create two scripts (executable of course, you can make em root only too):

User1.sh

  !/bin/bash   ifconfig en0 up; ifconfig en1
  down;

User2.sh

  !/bin/bash   ifconfig en1 up; ifconfig en0
  down;

These of course make the assumption you're using an imac, en0 is the enthernet, en1 is the WiFi.

Then create a plist file (with root ownership, 644), mine was this:

User1's went in /Users/user1/Library/LaunchAgents/org.user1.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>org.user1.plist</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Users/user1/bin/User1.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

User2's in /Users/user2/Library/LaunchAgents/org.user2.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>org.user2.plist</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>/Users/user2/bin/User2.sh</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
    </dict>
    </plist>

After that run

  sudo launchctl load -w
  /Users/user1/Library/LaunchAgents/org.user1.plist

and

  sudo launchctl load -w
  /Users/user2/Library/LaunchAgents/org.user2.plist

as each user.

That's it, it's quick, simple, and if you set the owner of the scripts as someone else (and on another path), it's fairly secure (not bulletproof, but that's not in my scope at the moment).


iCloud Photo Library If I press the 'disable and delete ' button will my photos come back onto my phone or go somewhere else ? Where will they go and is there any way I can get them back into my photo library ?

If you do not have those 1060 photos in your phone, and they are only on your iCloud, then if you press the 'disable and delete ' button then those photos and videos won't come to your iPhone automatically. You will have to manually download those photos from iCloud, then copy them to your iPhone using iTunes. If you do not download them from iCloud within 30 days, then they will be deleted forever from iCloud, and you can never get them back


Macbook Pro freezes after I enter my password The mac starts up fine and goes to the login screen. After I enter my password the losing bar circles once then freezes, followed a few seconds later by the cursor changing from normal to the frozen-working-stuff-out-wheel-of-many-colours. The mac then stays in this condition perpetually.

I will gladly accept suggestions as to a course of action.

RELEVANT INFO:

2008 Late, MacBook pro 13, running High Sierra

For some reason (which I'll gladly accept an explanation for) I cannot use any commands on startup, such as recovery, safety, and NVRAM, as it simply doesn't load anything. (I have a feeling that's related to me forcefully boot-installing the MacBook to high Sierra (HS) a few years ago, because originally it's spec wasn't up-to-date-enough to support HS, but am open to other ideas for the cause of that.)

There is no vital data on the machine, as I am operating entirely from Google drive.

I have the spare (so-slow-it's-effectively-non-functional) original HDD from the Mac (which I removed during a recent SSD upgrade.)

due to my internet speed being quite slow, I'd much prefer not wiping the machine and starting afresh, if it can be avoided.

ONE SOLUTION: if you've a spare OSX hard drive, re-fit it, and connect the SSD via SATA_USB cable. Boot holding alt, and select the SSD. It should be able to logon without issue. Next, shut the machine down, take out the old hard drive and refit the new, power her up, and the problem, for me at least, was solved.


Switch from Outlook 2016 Mac to Apple Mail I have been using the mac for a long time, earlier I used Entourage as my email client, then came the Outlook 2011 for Mac and now its Outlook 2016 for Mac.

Due to some official guidelines I now need to switch over to Apple Mail. This includes transferring my database from Outlook 2016 Mac to Apple Mail.

Question
As I am completely unaware of this process, I am looking for some help in terms of what I need to do to migrate to Apple Mail. A simple and faster approach will be more preferable.

TLDR;
I will be honest upfront, without paid software this will be next to impossible to achieve, I therefore recommend that you stay with Outlook 2016 for Mac and save yourself the trouble and expense. Last time I checked, Outlook 2016 for Mac meets all "Official Guidelines" in he industry, hence is compliant with them. But since you ask, let's move forward.

Background
You are fortunate in that you already have all your mail on the same mac and do not need to deal with a device-to-device data transfer. If your Outlook 2016 would have been on a Windows machine, transferring to Apple Mail would have been a challenge in itself, but lets not worry about that as this involves a few steps too, due to incompatible and proprietary mail databases/formats.

Assumption: I am assuming that you run the latest and greatest macOS High Sierra.

Verify your export options

Open Outlook 2016 for Mac
Go to: File > Export...
In High Sierra an export selection (i.e. Mail, Calendar etc.) windows pops up, look at the title and check if it contains Export to Archive File (.olm)
It means that the final format you get out of Outlook 2016 for Mac will be a .olm file.

Check your import options

Open Apple Mail
Go to: File > Import Mailboxes...
You should see two options, either Apple Mail (used when you transfer from another Apple Mail - i.e. from another computer or account etc.) and Files in mbox format. This is the option you will have to use to import into Apple Mail.

So far, what we know is the format is at each end. We use Outlook 2016 for Mac to export a .olm file, which we somehow have to turn into a .mbox format to be imported into Apple Mail.

What do we use?
I recommend you check out OLM Exporter (ca. $9.40USD) to do the conversion from .olm to .mbox efficiently. Simply feed it the Outlook export (.olm file) and let it create the .mbox which you can import into Apple Mail.

Remember
The .olm files contains all the options you selected upon exporting from Outlook (i.e. Mail, Calendar etc.) however, an .mbox file is (as the name may suggest) a message box so it contains emails only. When using the OLM Exporter, seperate files will be created for any non-mail items you selected upon export (such as .ics for Calander entries or .vcf for contacts. These can easily be imported into their respective mac components. Should they already exist (since the data came from the same mac), you will need to verify the obvious things like contact duplicates.

Conclusion
Being in the IT sector, I deal with this task on a regular basis and hope my answer added something valuable instead of the typical "google is your friend" response. I know this can be difficult to get your head around at first, but it is relatively easy once you have the process down. Let me know how you get on with the mail migration as I would be interested in following up with you about this.


How can I make a keyboard configuration become default when I hook it up? At work, I have a MacBook Pro and a RHEL workstation that share a HP keyboard and mouse via a KVM switch. I do most of my work on the Mac so I prefer to change the modifier keys so they command and alt are in the same positions as an Apple keyboard. Here is a screencast to demonstrate the exact options I change:
http://screencast.com/t/5mYQwMEVzwP0

The problem is, whenever I switch the KVM or disconnect the Mac, I have to usually have to go back into System Preferences to make the change. Is there some way I could automate this?

I'm not sure if it'll support the switching case you describe 100%, but KeyRemap4Macbook will probably get you most of the way there. You can set different options for the internal and external keyboards, for example.


Automator, Show/Hide hidden file I'm still running El Capitan so I don't have that shortcut for show/hide hidden files. A while ago I've created automator service, which using the keyboard shortcut could show/hide hidden file depending on previous state. I've clean installed the os and decided to recreate what I did before, and I am stuck on getting if [ Commandresult = State ]; then part to work.

#!/bin/sh
if [ defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles = "FALSE" ]
then
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
else
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder
fi

I've seen Show/Hide hidden files without restarting finder?, but I know it could be shorter like this since I had it working with something like this before.

Your if statement test,[ ... ], is not properly formed, change:

if [ defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles = "FALSE" ]

To:

if [ "$(defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles)" = "FALSE" ]


Text input trouble on OS X Snow Leopard - text doesn't show up before mouse click I have this strange problem on my MacBook Pro, running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. It comes and goes, but I haven't found out why or when.

The input cursor is displayed in a text field, e.g. the URL field in Chrome or Safari. When I type some text, nothing shows up. When I click with the mouse somewhere, the text that I typed shows up. If I continue to type, the same thing happens. Nothing shows up until I click the mouse.

There is another annoyance that I think is related. In a larger textbox, like the Xcode editor, the same thing happens, but when I click the mouse, it selects all text from where the input cursor is to where I click. Then it outputs the text that I typed, replacing what where selected.

If I click multiple times, it will always select all text from where I clicked to where I last clicked.

I have no good strategy for solving the problem. Sometimes switching between applications solves it, other times I need to close the affected application.

Have anyone experienced anything similar?

Is it possible that the mouse button is sticky or not clicking properly? This would mean that the cursor could be someplace on screen but the software is trying to follow mouse movements and expects you to click again where you want the text to go. We did have a mouse button on a MacBook Pro that just would not function properly, although the problem was different – you had to pound it to have it register. We ended up with a Bluetooth mouse that works brilliantly.


keyboard or logic board problem? I have a 2008 13" MacBook (A1278) and it has a problem.
The keyboard has a few keys on it that aren't exactly not completely broken, but sometimes when pressed they will send a few weird sequence of letters and symbols. Now before I go off and buy a new keyboard to replace it, is there a way to tell if it is a keyboard problem, or if it might be the logic board? Please, any suggestions would be appreciated. I did not spill anything on it.

If the only thing that's broken is the keyboard/typing, your logic board is most likely fine.

The logic board (motherboard) will cause lots of problems if it's broken. The fact that your computer is working (mostly) normally means that the logic board is probably fine.
If you want to know for sure, you can run Apple Hardware Test to find out.

It is entirely possible that your keyboard isn't working, but before you buy a new one you may as well look to make sure it isn't a software problem.
Can you detect any pattern in when you have this problem? Are some apps worse than others? If so, it's likely that this is a software problem instead of a hardware problem.

To troubleshoot a software problem, I recommend that you do a safe boot and try typing. If the problem doesn't occur, you know that it is being caused by something related to your account. Try quitting apps and making sure that no startup items are being troublesome.


Can I prevent previews of images in Finder? I often upload images to the internet, and doing so is always a pain. The Finder's Open/Choose dialogue takes over 5 seconds to load image previews, regardless of the size of the image (very small screenshot pngs take the same amount of time as 8MB jpeg photos). While waiting for the preview to load the whole window locks up so I can't click 'Open' until the preview has loaded.

Is there a way of preventing image previews from displaying in the column Finder view, or stopping them hanging the upload Finder window?

Chrome, Mavericks, 2012 Macbook (non-retina) 15"

Yes you can disable the image previews on Finder.

Right-click on the folder and select "Show View Options."

A long window will appear. On the 5th group from the top, you should see a checkmark called "Show icon preview". Deselect it.

Once you are done, select the "Use as Defaults" bottom, which is located at the bottom of the window.


Open Preference Pane from command line on El Capitan (Mac OS X 10.11) I'm trying to open Preference Pane from command. However, when I invoke open /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Dock.prefPane as in
How do you access network preferences from the Terminal?, I get Finder that contains the preference pane opened instead.

What might be a way to open the preference pane? I also tried /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Dock.prefPane/Contents/MacOS/Dock to invoke the binary to have this error message.

-bash: /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Dock.prefPane/Contents/MacOS/Dock: cannot execute binary file

You can open System Preferences using its URL scheme:

open "x-apple.systempreferences:"

You can jump to a specific anchor on a specific pane using:

open "x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.keyboard?Text"

You can get the list of panes and anchors using AppleScript:

tell application "System Preferences"
    set myIds to the id of every pane
    set myAnchors to anchors of current pane
end tell

Update: Apple has restricted use of the URL scheme in 10.11. As of this release only preference panes with NSPrefPaneAllowsXAppleSystemPreferencesURLScheme set in their Info.plist can be opened via the URL scheme.

Source: @Matt Stevens answer


Can I move the com.apple.bird directory to an external drive? I'm looking to save some space on my internal drive and noticed that com.apple.bird takes lots of space - 76 Gb to be exact.

As I understand from What is com.apple.bird? Why does it grow so big? it's part of the iCloud stuff and should only keep the data temporarily. This wasn't true for my machine in the past 3 years. No matter what I did to it it just kept growing to the same size.

Now my question is whether it is safe to move com.apple.bird to an external drive and just create a symlink to the folder on the external drive?

This process contains cache for Apps using iCloud-Backup. Might check to see which applications are using the most space in your Library/Caches/com.apple.bird folder.

There is a script available here https://github.com/bwesterb/blame-bird to help with that.


What are the requirements around account de-registration? When one uploads an app on the App Store, do you need to include a delete account (or even log out account) option? Is it required to wipe that data off the server?

I don't believe so. In my app Free Bitcoin I don't provide a delete option (one can contact me through the app and I will manually remove their account), and log out is performed by removing and reinstalling the app. The app was approved by Apple without any trouble.


Purchase a MagSafe 2 Cord Only? My dog decided it wanted to make my MacBook Air Charger (MagSafe 2) his new chew toy. Is it possible to buy just the cord that connects to the charger and the MacBook Air?

I can only find the charger box (for lack of a better term) and not just the cord which is what I need.

I'm assuming you're talking about the detachable AC Cord (http://support.apple.com/en-us/ht2346)

Amazon has one for US outlets:  http://www.amazon.com/Power-Adapter-Extension-Apple-Macbook/dp/B009OA61UK
But, it is not an official Apple part, and (especially when it comes to power supplies) you might feel safer to stay with the sanctioned parts.

Your best bet for a real cord is to find a friend with a MacBook who plugs their charger directly into the wall, and ask them for their spare cord.


Open Notes.app notes in an external editor I'd like to be able to search for words within the notes that I write in Notes.app. Since the search bar only narrows the list of notes, and doesn't actually highlight the word, I'd like to be able to open the notes in an external editor to perform searches.

Are the notes in for Notes.app located on the filesystem somewhere such that I can open them in an external editor?

If you search for some local notes with Spotlight or Alfred, the results will contain files like ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/CoreData/ExternalRecords/*/IMAPNote/_records/0/p8.notesexternalrecord. Opening them opens the notes in Notes.app, but they're just empty property lists.

The contents of local notes are stored in a binary format in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/NotesV1.storedata.

I don't know if there are any other applications that can edit or import the notes, but there's no rtfd files for them or anything.


Upgrading a 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 2.8 GHz dual quad CPU to the newer 4GHz CPU Will the early 2008 MacPro dual 2.8 GHz quad core function with the newer Intel 4GHz chips? If so, which ones?

Nope! As Intel releases new processors, they also release new processor sockets, so the new processors, besides not being supported by the computer, literally won't fit in the computer.

The highest upgrade you'll be able to do is something from the same product line. The highest processor in that line is the X5492, which clocks in at 3.40 GHz. According to this Apple forum, these processors will work, although your fan speed may increase.

If you have never replaced a CPU before, ask someone who has for help and watch some tutorial videos, or take it in to somewhere to get it done for you. As someone who recently completed their first processor replacement, I can testify that forums and videos will be essential to a successful upgrade. Good luck!


How to disable screenshot option shortcut in Mojave CMD+Shift+5 Using Skitch, I now get duplicate screenshot options.

I want to disable the screenshot shortcut option in macOS Mojave.

How do I do this?

Go to: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Screenshots

Uncheck: Screenshot and recording options


Automated/Simple Deletion of Apps from iTunes Library Is there an approach to querying the local iTunes library to remove apps that aren't currently installed on any of your devices?

I might suggest a really wild -- possibly dangerous -- approach. If you have a good backup, it is less dangerous, but until you have restored from that backup there still can be snags and problems in a restore that you want find until that point. The good news is you don't need the backup, it's just there I case a crash happens in the middle of this process.

First make sure you've got a good backup of your iTunes library.
Then delete all your apps from iTunes.
Finally, sync each of your iDevices and when it tells you it found apps on the iDevice(s) that were not in the library, make sure you tell it to restore them back to the library.

You should end up with only those apps that are installed on at least one iDevice!  (In theory, at least.) And if anything fails, restore the library from its backup.


Changed phone number to new contact but messages still shows old contact My phone is an iPhone on iOS 12.1.  I had a second phone that was not an iPhone and in my personal contact card on my main phone, I had the second phone number added as an additional entry for mobile number.  So my contact card "MyName" had my main mobile number and a second number in it.  When I would loan my second phone to my daughter, it would appear as though I was texting myself but it was fine for the time.

Now I've moved the SIM card from the temp phone and put it into an older iPhone and now that phone and number are officially my daughter's phone.  I removed the second phone number from my contact card and created a new contact card "Daughter" with that phone number on it.

The problem is that when I text to "Daughter", as soon as the message finishes sending, it switches to show that it is "MyName" instead of "Daughter" and it's back to looking like I'm texting with myself.  I've confirmed that my daughter's phone number doesn't show up in my contact card and that my number doesn't show up in hers.  And I've confirmed that on the phone contacts as well as in iCloud.com just to be sure nothing is hanging around there.  I've tried doing this iMessage off and on and I get the same result.

My daughter's phone doesn't have any confusion - it shows "MyName" when received from me.  It's only my phone that is confused showing "MyName" when coming from my daughter's phone.  When I tap on the name (and then the "i" and then the arrow next to the name) for a message received from my daughter, it shows my whole contact card and does not include the her phone number in that list.  Clearly something is cached somewhere but I can't figure out where that would be to clear it out.  Any suggestions short of clearing out my phone and starting over?

Additional Info:  I just tried calling from my daughter's phone and my phone showed my daughter's contact info on the incoming call.  I also tried calling from my phone to my daughter's phone and it showed her info on the outgoing call.  So the phone app has the right contact info but the Messages app is where the problem is.

Months later, with no better answers in sight, I decided to try deleting my own contact card (where "Daughter"'s number had been used as mine at one point but had since been removed).  I'd been trying to be more surgical about the problem and wanted to avoid this big hammer.  It solved the problem.

The detailed steps I took are below.  Some of the steps are probably unnecessary but I really didn't want to take a chance.  And you could probably do it fine without needing MacOS Contacts connected through iCloud but I found it made it easier to reimport and know I got exactly my contact info back the way it was (and I don't know how I would have done that just within iOS).

Started with iMessage off on the phone but iCloud active for
Contacts on both phone and MacOS
In linked Contacts on MacOS, exported my own card - the one with the
problem - to the Desktop as a vcf file
On the phone, deleted my own contact; verified it went away from my
MacOS contacts through iCloud sync
On the phone sent message to Daughter; confirmed it stayed saying
"Daughter"
On MacOS, imported my vcf file into Contacts; confirmed the card
reappeared on the phone through iCloud sync
On the phone sent message to Daughter; confirmed it stayed saying
"Daughter"
On MacOS, used the Card -> Make This My Card; confirmed that the
silhouette showed up on my card on the phone through iCloud sync (discovered you have to not have your own contact open on the phone for this to sync)
On the phone sent message to Daughter; confirmed it stayed saying
"Daughter"
Turned on iMessage on the phone and accepted connection on MacOS
 for the phone number
On the phone sent message to Daughter; confirmed it stayed saying
 "Daughter"


MacBook Pro beeps and powers on after 5 tries I have a MacBook Pro from mid 2009 annoying me.

When I turn it on, the led blinks rapidly, about 14 times, and then the Mac beeps once. The screen remains black and nothing happens. So I have to hold down the power button to force a shutdown. When I turn it on again, no beep or blinks, but still a black screen. I repeat that 3 more times and the Mac finally turns on and works normally. I use it, shut it down and when I want to use it again, I have to go through that process all over again: the beep, blinks and 4 tries until it comes back to life.

I've opened it and tried changing the memories, the hard drive, but no different results.

It's worth mentioning that I was reinstalling it for triple boot when that happened, however I've repartitioned the HD and it's back to the original state now, so I believe it does't have to do with that reinstall.

I'm not able to run the hardware test pressing D before startup, even with the original disc.

I googled for it but couldn't find any alike pattern.

Any ideas?

Found the answer. The problem was due to the installation of rEFIt for the triple boot.

I found the detailed video solution here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPoU8838KDo


How to upgrade from OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 to macOS Sierra 10.12.6 I have OS X El Capitan Version 10.11.6 installed and want to upgrade to macOS Sierra 10.12.6

I have downloaded macOS Sierra version 10.13

I have .dmg file of macOS Sierra 10.12.6 but when I am going install it gives me the following error:

I found a lot of .dmg of version 10.12 but I didn't get anywhere then I got version 10.12.1.

Now I am confused that do I compulsory need to fine 10.12 and install it and than after update 10.12.4 and than after 10.12.6?

You have downloaded some updater files for macOS Sierra which require at least an already installed macOS Sierra 10.12.

They are useless if OS X 10.11 El Capitan is installed.

Go to the App Store, download the macOS Sierra installer and install it. If it isn't available the following trick may help:

  Mission accomplished: after installing this command-line tool ('https://github.com/mas-cli/mas'), the command
  mas install 1127487414
  purchased*, downloaded, and installed version 10.12.6 of correctly.

  * By which I mean, the program not only downloaded Sierra, it did so using the Apple-supplied App Store frameworks in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks, resulting in an application bundle containing a properly-signed MAS receipt linked to my Apple ID.

or try bmike's answer.


iPhone connectivity issues abroad I have a fully functional iPhone X which works as expected in Sweden. However, when traveling to some countries I experience connectivity issues.

Eg. in the US I get no reception at all, whereas in Ireland I get 4G connection which works well for data, but can't seem to place voice calls most of the time - when it works occasionally, the call gets dropped after about 30 sec following weird garbled sounds. When I visited France on the other hand, I experienced no issues at all.

I might add that this is not a problem with my service provider as I have tried several SIM cards (even bought local ones) which all exhibit the same issue.

This leads me to believe that it might be an issue specific to band frequencies, but I understand too little about the subject to troubleshoot the issue. Has anyone had similar experience and can point me in the right direction or the right (focused on mobile tech or similar) forum to ask?

You are right. There are about three different models of the iPhone X, each supporting the cellular networks of different regions of the world.

According to GSM Arena https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_x-8858.php, they are:

A1865 (USA, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, China)
A1901 (EMEA, UAE, LATAM, Canada, USA - AT&T/T-Mobile, Singapore)
A1902 (Japan), A1903 (Unknown market)

You can see that all of Europe uses Model A1901, which is probably the one you own. If you get a T-Mobile SIM card in the U.S., it should work with that model, as well.

To check which iPhone model you have, you can navigate to:

Settings > General > About and tap on the Model Number line to make the Model number appear.

It's the same with the newest iPhone 11 (Pro). You can check the regions they support under:

https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/


MacBook Pro: OS X reinstall is taking "forever", (over 12 hours) to finish This is my first time ever dealing with a Mac OS X reinstallation.
About a week ago, while working online, my MacBook Pro just started to be very very slow to do anything. I would get the WHEEL spinning for over a minute for each click on anything.

I looked for trouble shooting info and followed the procedures to use disk utility, etc. No issues with hardware were reported.
I only had like 3 issues with registry entries I believe.

I decided to backup my important files....took me 3 days because each click would take ages to be executed.

Now for over 18 hours, I'm waiting on OS X Mavericks to finish installing on my computer which is under 2 yrs old.
Oh, after the initial stage of 'installation', the download and install, which took like 4 hrs, the computer rebooted (as was expected according to videos on yt).
However instead of going to the setup page, it went back to installation window which was supposed to take 24 mins initially but I'm still waiting 4 hrs later.

Is this common with Macs?

If not, what's the problem with this Mac and how can I fix this please?

I get the long wheel spinning even during this reinstallation and I'm totally baffled by this.

Thanks for the help.

This is not common.  I have never had this problem and I upgrade to every new version.

I always create a bootable USB installer.  Here are the instructions from Apple: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5856.  This will let you check your disk and reformat.  I always reformat so that I know everything is the way it is supposed to be, but it is a bit more time consuming.


macOS Sierra does not fully eject my external hard drive I bought a Seagate Expansion Media 2 TB and formatted it with Mac OS Extended (Journaled). All went well until I enabled Time Machine. I encrypted my backups (so, the drive) and now when I eject the drive the LED on it is still on, and the plates inside it are still moving. When I disconnect the cable, it makes the exact sound as if it's force disconnected. Can you help me, please?

You can try to eject it via Terminal.app. Go to Spotlight and search for Terminal. It should be the first option. In the interface first type in diskutil list. You should get a list that looks a little like this

diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.1 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Encrypted               499.8 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk1s3
/dev/disk2 (external, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS TMBackup               +499.3 GB   disk2
                                 Logical Volume on disk1s2
                                 AED60A02-41C4-46B8-B762-3D37E10A09CE
                                 Unlocked Encrypted

Now this part is completely in your hands. You have to identify which of those disks is the one that you are having problems ejecting. If you find this tough, you may ask me and I'll tell you which one it is.

After you have obtained your disk's identifier (column on the extreme right) you have to unmount the logical volume, followed by the physical disk. Therefore first unmount the logical volume by running

diskutil unmount /dev/*

Over here you need to replace the "*" with your identifier. The logical volume is the one the looks like this: disk2 <-- This is an example, your's may be called something else.

Then you need to unmount the the physical disk by running the same command

diskutil unmount /dev/*

But this time the identifier will look something like this: disk2s1 <-- This is an example, your's may be called something else. Unmount all the physical disks in your specified drive.

and then finally run

diskutil eject /dev/disk*

Her you have to put your own disk's name. You can see this on the left column of the terminal output.


How does macOS store Unix file permissions in ZIP files I am trying to extract a ZIP file in Java which was created on a Mac using the built-in archive functionality of the Finder. As the ZIP file contains an application bundle, it is important to retain the Unix file permissions, especially the executable flag.

When extracting the ZIP file using the Finder, the permissions are retained. So I know they're stored somewhere in there.

Now my question is: how does macOS store Unix file permissions in ZIP files? Unfortunately I could not find any information about this on the net.

The permissions are stored in the same manner as they are on other Unixoid systems, such as for example Linux.

If you look at the central directory header in the zip-file, you have for each file stored in the Zip-file a field called "external file attributes". The field is at byte 36 in the header and is 4 bytes long.

The two last bytes in that field contains the file permissions on macOS - to be precise it is the last 9 bits (the least significant 9 bits). Their meaning is just like traditional Unix file permissions.


Extracting latency value from output of ping I am trying to pull a latency value from a ping with the following command:

ping -c 1 206.190.36.45 | awk -F" |=" '/time/{print $10"ms YH"}'

But I want to remove the digits after the .

So instead of 282.117ms US

I would like to see 282ms US

What needs to be added to the command to do so?

There are probably hundred of ways to accomplish this with standard Unix tools. To list just some of them:
# extending what you have
ping -c 1 206.190.36.45 | awk -F" |=" '/time/{print $10"ms YH"}' | sed -e 's/\..*ms/ms/

# using awk only
ping -c 1 206.190.36.45 | awk -F" |=" '/time/{printf "%i%s\n", $10, "ms YH"}'

# using sed instead
ping -c 1 206.190.36.45 | sed -n 's/.*time=\(.*\)\..*/\1ms YH/p'

# a rather different approach (just for the fun of it, not really recommended)
echo "$(ping -c 1 206.190.36.45 | fgrep time= | cut -d= -f 4 | cut -d. -f 1)ms YH"


Can I use boot camp to install windows if I already have two versions of macOS? I have a MacBook Pro with a 1TB SSD, it currently has two APFS volumes one I boot into for high Sierra (for when I need to use legacy software) and my normal one for Catalina.

Is it still possible to use the boot camp utility to install and boot into windows or is that not a good idea? There’s plenty of information about dual boot and dual operating systems but I just wanted some clarification before I go and ruin my machine and have to wipe it and restore everything

Thanks for your time and consideration any help is much appreciated

output of diskutil list

I have heard of triple booting and people succeeding, so I don't think it will be a problem if you install windows and have 2 versions already. Just make sure to choose the correct partitions when using Bootcamp and setting up windows.


Boot iMac G5 17 iSight from external USB optical drive? Is it possible to boot iMac from external USB CD-ROM?

I can't say for certain that booting from a USB optical drive wouldn't work but I would be surprised if it did.  PowerPC (G3, G4, G5) Macs only natively supported booting from Firewire devices.

With that said, there are old tricks to making a PowerPC based Mac boot from a USB2 hard drive.  I've never tested it with a USB optical drive but you might give it a shot none the less.  The text below is copied from the excellent tip at Mac OS X Hints...  This may work for your needs but I would strongly urge you to proceed with caution as it involves making alterations to Open Firmware.

  First off, I have tried and tried again over the years to boot various PowerPC Macs via a USB2 disk. Thankfully, somewhere about the time the iMac G5 with the ambient light sensor (ALS) was released, Apple tweaked their Open Firmware, which allowed us to boot PowerPC Macs from USB2 drives.

  Machines that I have tested this hint on and made it work are:

  iMac G5 w/ ALS

  iMac G5 w/iSight (thanks to the eager user who emailed me)

  12" PowerBook 1.3GHz

  Without further delay, here's the process to follow.

  Note: As with all hints that have to do with Open Firmware, proceed at your own risk! I have not experienced a problem and I don't see how this hint could render your Mac useless, since the default can always be recovered by resetting the SMU.

  Here's what you need to do...
  You need a USB2 drive with an OS X system installed (I am using 10.4.3, though any I think will work as far as what the machine can boot). As you know, there are many different ways of getting a system on a USB drive; contact me if you have any questions on how to do that, or search macosxhints.com for that information.

  Connect the drive to your machine, and find out which partition the OS X system is installed on. I usually find this by going to Disk Utility and looking at the info for the partition on the USB disk with OS X. That is, disk2s3 is usually for a USB disk with no OS 9 drivers installed that is the second disk disk. disk3s9 might be a USB disk with OS 9 drivers that is considered the third disk. There are other ways of finding this out, but in my case, my disk is disk2s3 (the 3 on the end will come into play soon).

  Start up the machine in Open Firmware (this is the fun part). Hold CommandOptionOF right after the machine is turned on.

  Here is the moment of truth. If this step does not work, I have had very limited success getting a machine to boot off USB2. In Open Firmware, type devalias, and you should get a list as output. In this list, look for ud, usually below where you see hd (ud is "USB Disk," I presume). If found, it will usually have beside it /pci@f2000000/usb@1/disk1, or something similar. Again, if you see this, I have not had this fail yet.

  Now type printenv boot-device, which will usually get you output of boot-device hd:,\:tbxi. (See where this is going yet?)

  Type setenv boot-device ud:3,\:tbxi where the number after the colon corresponds to that partition number we found in step two. You should get an ok back.

  Type printenv boot-device, and you should see the change displayed already. Something like:
  boot-device   ____     ud:3,\:tbxi   ____     hd:,\:tbxi"

  Type mac-boot and cross your fingers.

  And now some more fun, there is a Unix script that can be written to enable this, because after all we are only changing a nvram variable. The command would be similar to this:

  nvram boot-device ud:3,\\:tbxi

  Now this looks a tad bit different then what we typed in Open Firmware, but that's because we have to escape the two backslashes, each with a backslash of its own.

  If this fails, there is a remote possibility that you can still boot off of USB2, but you may need to substitute ud for /pci@f2000000/usb@1/disk1, or something similar. If the firmware cannot list the contents of the drive, it seems it cannot boot off of it.

  As you should know (thanks to the owner of the iMac G5 w/iSight for letting me know I should mention this), USB2 booting is not supported, therefore you should remember OS X has no support for booting USB 2 and the firmware has no support. So in System Preferences, the USB disk will not be shown as a bootable drive. In the optional boot menu (reached by holding down Option during boot), it also will not show.

  So the two ways that I know how to enable it are through terminal by using the nvram command, and directly in Open Firmware. Hope this hint helps someone out there. I figured my trick was shot as soon as the Duo Core machines came out, but I now realize there are quite a few people with PPC Macs that might be able to use this hint.


iMac external display (EA232WMi) won't sleep I'm using an iMac 11,3 (27 inch, mid 2010) with an external display (an NEC EA232WMi).

Over the past week or so (beginning just prior to 10.9.2), when the iMac's display sleeps, the external display won't stay asleep.

It keeps waking up.

I can see the power indicator repeatedly going back and forth between the "on" and "energy save" modes. When it wakes, it shows its usual message about not receiving any video input signal. The iMac's internal display doesn't (visibly) do anything at all.

It doesn't seem to be related to any apps-- if I reboot the iMac and leave it there at the login screen until the display sleeps, the same thing happens.

This only happens when the display is off but the iMac is still awake. When the iMac sleeps, everything seems normal.

If I move the external display to a different Mac (which is also running 10.9.2), the display sleeps normally, so it seems to be specific to the iMac.

I did an SMC reset and even zapped the PRAM (yes, voodoo) but they had no effect. What can I look at to figure out why the iMac keeps waking the external display?

Additional: Wondering if this might be related to an external device, I tried unplugging everything from USB. No change. Turned off Bluetooth? No change.

Update with some requested information:

Console logs. All that I get is the following. In this test, the main display slept at 10:10 AM and the external display problem appeared. I let it continue until 10:16 AM. These are all the messages that appeared in Console.

3/15/14 10:10:14.227 AM WindowServer[127]: device_generate_desktop_screenshot: authw 0x0(0), shield 0x7fa8028e4910(2001)
3/15/14 10:10:14.253 AM WindowServer[127]: device_generate_lock_screen_screenshot: authw 0x0(0), shield 0x7fa8028e4910(2001)
3/15/14 10:10:14.581 AM WindowServer[127]: device_generate_desktop_screenshot: authw 0x0(0), shield 0x7fa8028e4910(2001)
3/15/14 10:16:10.580 AM WindowServer[127]: handle_will_sleep_auth_and_shield_windows: Deferring.
3/15/14 10:16:10.582 AM WindowServer[127]: CGXDisplayDidWakeNotification [59971881496111]: posting kCGSDisplayDidWake

System report "Graphics" data. Looks OK to me, let me know if you see anything that seems wrong.

ATI Radeon HD 5750:

  Chipset Model:    ATI Radeon HD 5750
  Type: GPU
  Bus:  PCIe
  PCIe Lane Width:  x16
  VRAM (Total): 1024 MB
  Vendor:   ATI (0x1002)
  Device ID:    0x68a1
  Revision ID:  0x0000
  ROM Revision: 113-B9710C-238
  EFI Driver Version:   01.00.417
  Displays:
iMac:
  Display Type: LCD
  Resolution:   2560 x 1440
  Pixel Depth:  32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Main Display: Yes
  Mirror:   Off
  Online:   Yes
  Built-In: Yes
EA232WMi:
  Resolution:   1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz (1080p)
  Pixel Depth:  32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Display Serial Number:    1X312924NA
  Mirror:   Off
  Online:   Yes
  Rotation: Supported
  Connection Type:  DisplayPort
  Television:   Yes

Update 2

In case it helps, I uploaded a system profile of my iMac which I generated using system_profiler -detailLevel mini.

Update 3

Since @Buscar웃 is deleting their answer, I'll add these details here:

"Wake on Network" is disabled
There's no screen lock (no password required to wake the Mac)
All sharing services have been disabled (several were active, including screen sharing and DVD sharing, bu disabling them had no effect).

Update 4

In case it's useful, the cycle time of the wake/sleep process is 8 seconds. Meaning, if I watch the display and its power indicator, this cycle repeats every 8 seconds:

Monitor shows its "no signal" screen
Monitor goes into power save mode
Monitor comes out of power save
Repeat

Update 5

I tried doing a safe boot; this also had no effect.

Update 6

Just for completeness I also used the external display's menu system to reset it to its factory defaults, but again, this had no effect.

Lets get more surgical here.

Facts are:
The external monitor stays in sleep mode on another Mac. It is unknowen if that mac has a Mavericks installed.

The Console report shows nothing unusual.

The Monitor configuration profile is still to be questioned (since it identifies the monitor as TV capable?

Recommended actions:

Use the PleaseSleep app
http://www.dragonone.com/products/macosx/pleasesleep/

Alternatively -Verify, Repair or replace the existing ICC profile

To verify use the Colorsync Utility and publish the current monitor profile

To repair use the ColorSyc utility and perform the repair of the external Monitors ICC

Alternatively download and install new ICC profile

New ICC profile for TFT monitor
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/icc_profiles/nec_ea232wmi.icc


OS X Lion: How to disable RPC? Remote procedure calls are considered to be a security risk. Is there a way for me to disable RPCs on OS X to make my Mac more secure?

Here are my recommended settings for locking down your Mac. I'm assuming you're running OS X Lion. If that's not the case, let me know and I'll try to adjust my answer for other versions of OS X.

Turn your Firewall on: System Preferences -> Security & Privacy Tab Settings -> Firewall tab. Make sure it's on and that you click the lock in the lower left corner to prevent changes without an administrator's password.

Turn off all sharing services: System Preferences -> Sharing Settings -> Make sure all the stuff in that window is unchecked. Make sure the lock in the lower left corner is locked to prevent changes without an administrator's password.

Turn off Bonjour (mDNSResponder): For OS Lion you don't need to completely disable mDNSResponder (which is good because if you disable it completely you lose DNS in Snow Leopard and newer OS X). Instead you can follow these steps to disable just Bonjour features in mDNSResponder (Note: do this carefully as a malfunctioning mDNSResponder service can prevent a Mac from booting. Make sure you have a TimeMachine backup before making changes and that booting to your recovery partition works.):

Make a back up copy of the mDNSResponder.plist file as a precaution.
Open the mDNSResponder.plist file in Terminal using your preferred text editor. Here is a sample command:

sudo nano “/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist”

Add <string>-NoMulticastAdvertisements</string> to the array in the ProgramArguments section. In other words:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/sbin/mDNSResponder</string>
<string>-launchd</string>
</array>

becomes…

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/sbin/mDNSResponder</string>
<string>-launchd</string>
<string>-NoMulticastAdvertisements</string>
</array>

Save the file.
Restart your Mac.

You may also want to look at locking down BlueTooth on the system (System Preferences -> BlueTooth Settings). Specifically you may want to uncheck 'Discoverable' so your BlueTooth chipset doesn't advertise itself to other devices nearby. If you're not using any BlueTooth devices consider turning it off altogether.


Unresponsive Trackpad Click After Battery Depletion I had a very odd situation happen with my machine at the weekend and wondered if anyone could shed some light on it.

I have an early 2013 Retina MacBook Pro and I was watching a DVD on it using the internal battery power.

I had my magic mouse connected via bluetooth, a Superdrive attached via USB and my UE Boom speaker attached via bluetooth.

Basically the battery ran out and the machine immediately shutdown when the power ran out.

However, when I plugged in the wall wart charger to charge the machine and carry on watching the Trackpad click wasn't functioning.  What was really odd was the cursor moved fine but none of the clicking worked (either the tap or the actual click on the trackpad).  Also what appeared really odd was placing the cursor over any of the window icons in the top left (the close, maximise, minimise) buttons didn't show the X, +, - glyphs as it usually does.

I rebooted the OS multiple times (I think 5) until it actually worked again.

This makes no sense to me at all.  Anyone else seen this?

Usually OS X machines will go to sleep when they run low on battery.

The fact that yours didn't suggests a battery fault.

I used to be a technician and I saw clicking affected when the battery swells (as the battery sits directly on top of the trackpad assembly).

Does the click feel normal (still get the normal click noise when you press the trackpad)? If not, I would suggest taking it in to be looked at by a technician.


How to disable dmg autorun? I have downloaded a dmg file called BaiduYun_2.2.0.dmg, which, on double-click, shows the license agreement window straight away, instead of showing an installation package or an application that can be dragged to the Applications folder. I have never seen any installation on Mac OS X like this before. Is there an autorun setting anywhere that I can disable this behaviour? Additionally, it does not show up as a mounted device on Finder windows.

A DMG can be set to display a license agreement before it will allow you to open it. This is normal and nothing to be alarmed about. Once you accept the license agreement, it will mount and open the normal Finder window showing its contents.

See this thread on Cocoa Builder.

There is no way to disable it and nothing is being auto-run.


iPhone doubles screenshots Whenever I take screenshots everything seems fine, but then when I wake up, in photos all my screenshots are doubled. Mixed in with each other randomly there are two copies of each screenshot. This always happens overnight some time, since I never see it happen. Anyone else have this happen?

Check any automation triggers you may have such as IFTTT.

Specifically it seems that iCloud photos may wait until overnight to sync, thus causing the IFTTT to not trigger until overnight.


How do I activate my old iPhone 4s? So, my mom gave my brother her old phone to use as an iPod. He used it for a while and asked me to reset it because he couldn't download apps (We didn't have enough storage on it) So I did.

After resetting it, I got the the "Hello. Slide to set up" Screen. I went through that and got to the "Activate iPhone" part. I put in my Apple ID and Password. It didn't work.

I remembered that my mom made a new Apple ID so I put that in. It also didn't work. For the next few days or so, I tried to put in the same ID and password. It wasnt working.

Can anyone tell me what was wrong? My brother is mad the he won't get his used iPhone and I don't want him to be disappointed.

You NEED a SIM to activate the phone. After activation you can take the SIM out.


AppleTV ethernet over HDMI? I have an AppleTV 4K connected to a Sony screen over HDMI. The AppleTV is connected to the Internet via WiFi, the Sony is deliberately not connected - just power and HDMI. Recently I have learned that there is such a thing as ethernet over HDMI. How can I confirm that the AppleTV is not providing this to the Sony? I don't want the latter to phone home, "upgrade" its firmware, run Android apps or anything else - I just intend for it to be a dumb (i.e. non-smart) screen.

HDMI Ethernet Channel never took off, and no commercially available devices support it. Your Apple TV, HDMI cable and TV would all have to support it, and it’s almost certain that none of them do.

See AVforums' List of HEC and ARC enabled devices? discussion.


Dual Boot Mavericks + El Capitan I was using El Capitan without issues till now. I'm starting to use Pro Tools 10 which is incompatible with El Capitan, so I will need to install a previous OS X version like Mavericks to make it work.

I really don't want to transfer all my files and downgrade my Mac, so I came up with the idea of dual booting my Mac. Is there any way to install Mavericks and use it like it was another Mac, even though it would be in the same physical drive?

I won't need to share any files between these two OS, so I will be using Mavericks when I have work to do on Pro Tools, and El Capitan for the rest of the time.

I think I can get Mavericks from Internet Recovery, as my Mac came with this OS X version. Using a new version of Pro Tools (now compatible with El Capitan) isn't an option for me now.

Thanks!

PS: Just found this community and from what I read it seems great!

Macbook Pro Retina 13" Late 2013

What you need to do is to create another partition on your Mac, and install Mavericks on it:

On your El Capitan partition, open Disk Utility (in Utilities) and select the physical hard drive in your Mac. It should be titled "APPLE HDD ... MEDIA" or something similar:
Click "Partition" and click the "+" sign at the bottom of the pie-chart hard drive. Select how big you want the new partition to be and give it a name:

Make sure the format is "OS X Extended (Journaled)" and click "Apply". It may take a few minutes to create your new partition.
Next, you will need to obtain a copy of the OS X Mavericks installer. If you have previously downloaded it, you can redownload it from the "Purchased" page in the Mac App Store, you could download it from a friend's computer (if he has purchased OS X Mavericks), or if you are on a paid Apple developer account subscription you could download a build on the ADC Downloads page.

If you have the Mavericks version of Internet Recovery, as you said you might, you can boot into it by holding Command-N at startup and clicking "Reinstall OS X Mavericks", and skip to step 10 and onwards. However, it is possible that with an OS X upgrade the process upgraded your version of Internet Recovery to the El Capitan version, for example.

Once you have the OS X Mavericks installer, you should copy it to a USB thumb drive. Copy the installer onto the thumb drive by dragging-and-dropping in the Finder.
Leave the USB drive in your computer with the Mavericks installer.
Shut down your Mac.
Hold the "option" key while turning your Mac on. You can release the "option" key until you see the Apple logo.
You will be presented with icons of your hard drives and external drives. Use the arrow keys to select the USB drive you made with the Mavericks installer on it and press the "Enter" key.
Go through the Mavericks installer process. When prompted for which disk you want to install Mavericks on, choose the new partition you created in Disk Utility.
The Mavericks installer will copy over all the files needed, and restart as part of the process.
You will be taken through initial setup of your "new computer" and when it is finished you will be using OS X Mavericks on a partition of the hard drive.
You can select which OS to boot into at startup by holding the "option" key while turning it on until you see the Apple logo. Use the arrow keys to select which partition.
You can set your default startup disk (i.e. what disk the computer automatically boots into without having to hold the "option" key) in System Preferences > Startup Disk.


Apple Watch Series 3 Workout not adding to my Exercise ring! Why not? I have one of those new fan dangled Apple Watches and sometimes my workouts don’t count towards my green exercise ring. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t! Why?

-Extra info-

Before anyone questions this, I know this to be fact because I’ve tested it as follows:

I take a screenshot of my rings
I start an Outdoor Walk Workout
I walk for 20 minutes
I stop the Outdoor Walk Workout
I check my rings and the red Move ring has grown, but the green Exercise ring hasn’t changed

I’ve done the above test many times this week. The only thing that changes is that sometimes the green Exercise ring grows, but usually it doesn’t.

Not happy. :(

Is your walk actually exercise?

Considering the intermittent nature of your issue, I’m wondering whether all your walks are actually exercise?

According to the Health app on your iPhone:

  Every full minute of movement equal to or exceeding the intensity of
  a brisk walk counts towards your daily Exercise Minutes.

NOTE: Emphasis mine

So, if you’re just going for a casual walk it’s not likely to count towards this ring. If your walk happens to be at a faster pace, it will. This would explain the intermittent nature of your experience with the Exercise ring, and also explains why the Move ring still works, because even a casual walk will burn calories.


Changing CPU frequency policies in OS X I have Core i5 processor with nominal 2.3 Ghz speed. But, according to Intel Power Gadget, most of the time the frequency is much lower. Even during intensive usage. It's 0.8-1.6 Ghz.
I noticed that some operations work slower than they could.

So I'm wondering, is there a way to change default CPU frequency policy? You know, on Windows there are 3 modes, on Linux there are also several options (ondemand, performance, conservative, powersave etc.)

Run the command top in the Terminal. This will tell you where all your CPU and/or memory is going in more detail than activity monitor (man top to learn more about it). My immediate assumption is that your CPU isn't maxing out because it has no reason to. The default power management by both Apple and Intel does its job very well; I would guess you get this slow tab switching when you have lots of applications open, or a few very large ones.

If your Mac is taking time to compress and expand memory, it will run slower. If (heaven forbid) you have actually used more memory than you have physical RAM, your MacBook is dumping dynamic data to the hard drive. This will run SUPER slow, but use relatively few clock cycles.


How Do I Partition A Raid 0 Using Disk Utility? I have just purchased a WD My Passport Pro. It comes in a striped RAID 0 configuration comprising of two 2TB drives.

I want to partition the drive into 3:

Photoshop Cache
Lightroom Catalogue
Video files

I am not worried about backup as I am backing up regularly from this RAID.

When I look at the drive in Disk Utility there is no tab for partitioning, so I am unable to create there partitions. How can I do so?

Things to check for. Some Raid devices are set/Fixed for only one type of Raid 0 or 1. You should check the box and see if this can be used for anything other than Raid 1. Also there maybe software from WD on the drive that will change the Raid for you. If the WD is not hardware locked to be only a Raid 1 and you are unable to find WD software you can try the steps below.
If you can not erase the WD with Disk Utility then try looking over instructions to erase it from the command line on this site.
http://www.theinstructional.com/guides/disk-management-from-the-command-line-part-1

We will do this in three steps.

Erase
Create the Raid
Partition the Raid

The hard drives you will be using as members of the RAID 0 striped set must first be erased. And since a RAID 0 set can be severely impacted by a drive failure, we’re going to take a little extra time and use one of Disk Utility’s security options, Zero Out Data, when we erase each hard drive.

When you zero out data, you force the hard drive to check for bad data blocks during the erasure process, and mark any bad blocks as not to be used. This decreases the likelihood of losing data due to a failing block on the hard drive. It also significantly increases the amount of time it takes to erase the drives from a few minutes to an hour or more per drive.

Erase the Drives Using the Zero Out Data Option

Make sure the hard drives you intend to use are connected to your Mac and powered up.
Launch Disk Utility, located at /Applications/Utilities/.
Select one of the hard drives you will be using in your RAID 0 striped set from the list on the left. Be sure to select the drive, not the volume name that appears indented under the drive’s name.
Click the ‘Erase’ tab.
From the Volume Format dropdown menu, select ‘Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)’ as the format to use.
Enter a name for the volume; I’m using StripeSlice1 for this example.
Click the ‘Security Options’ button.
Select the ‘Zero Out Data’ security option, and then click OK.
Click the ‘Erase’ button.
Repeat steps 3-9 for each additional hard drive that will be part of the RAID 0 striped set. Be sure to give each hard drive a unique name.
Now that we have erased the drives we will use for the RAID 0 striped set, we’re ready to start building the striped set.

Create the RAID 0 Striped Set

Launch Disk Utility, located at /Applications/Utilities/, if the application is not already open.
Select one of the hard drives you will be using in the RAID 0 striped set from the Drive/Volume list in the left pane of the Disk Utility window.
Click the ‘RAID’ tab.
Enter a name for the RAID 0 striped set. This is the name that will display on the desktop. Since I will be using my RAID 0 striped set for video editing, I’m calling mine VEdit, but any name will do.
Select ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled)’ from the Volume Format dropdown menu.
Select ‘Striped RAID Set’ as the RAID type.
Click the ‘Options’ button.
Set the RAID Block Size. The block size is dependent on the type of data you will be storing on the RAID 0 striped set. For general use, I suggest 32K as the block size. If you will be storing mostly large files, consider a larger block size, such as 256K, to optimize the performance of the RAID.
Make your choices on the options and click OK.
Click the ‘+’ (plus) button to add the RAID 0 striped set to the list of RAID arrays.

With the RAID 0 striped set now available in the list of RAID arrays, it’s time to add members or slices to the set.

Add Slices to Your RAID 0 Striped Set

Drag one of the hard drives from the left-hand pane of Disk Utility onto the RAID array name you created in the last step.
Repeat the above step for each hard drive you wish to add to your RAID 0 striped set. A minimum of two slices, or hard drives, is required for a striped RAID. Adding more than two will further increase performance.
Once you add all of the hard drives to the RAID 0 striped set, you are ready to create the finished RAID volume for your Mac to use.
Click the ‘Create’ button.
A ‘Creating RAID’ warning sheet will drop down, reminding you that all data on the drives that make up the RAID array will be erased. Click ‘Create’ to continue.
During the creation of the RAID 0 striped set, Disk Utility will rename the individual volumes that make up the RAID set to RAID Slice; it will then create the actual RAID 0 striped set and mount it as a normal hard drive volume on your Mac’s desktop.
The total capacity of the RAID 0 striped set you create will be equal to the combined total space offered by all members of the set, minus some overhead for the RAID boot files and data structure.
You can now close Disk Utility and use your RAID 0 striped set as if it were any other disk volume on your Mac.


How do I recover bookmarks on chrome for Mac? Alright so today, my chrome decided to just simply not load anything. No matter what url you visited, it just wouldn't load. However, when I browsed as a guest, chrome worked perfectly fine. So from there I found out that the issue was with my account. I tried removing my account from chrome then adding it back on, and then I realized I lost all my new bookmarks. Google was able to sync my old bookmarks, but my more important and new bookmarks were unable to get synced.

That being said, where does chrome store bookmarks so I can recover them?

Step 1. Open up "Finder" and go to Macintosh HD ->Users ->Your user name ->Library ->Application Support ->Google ->Chrome ->Default; in the Default folder, you will see two files (Bookmarks & Bookmarks.bak).

Step 2. Now, you need to copy, rename and save Bookmarks file to another location. Then, go back and delete the original file.

Step 3. Next (very important step!), go down to Bookmarks.bak and rename it to simply "Bookmarks"(leave out the .bak extension, and this will make your backup copy of the bookmarks as the original bookmarks folder).

Step 4. At last, close Finder. Restart Chrome window, you shall see all bookmarks you've collected coming back.


What do I have to take into account if I want to replace my iPod touch with an iPhone? I have an iPod touch which is regularly synced with my PC/iTunes at home. I have bought some apps and music.

Can I easily plug in my new iPhone (I don't have it yet), start iTunes and have it synced with it? Will all songs and apps be copied on it? And will the apps be running on the iPhone (speaking of license).

What about my mobileMe-account? Will it be synced correctly after I setup the account on the iPhone?

Do I have to check out or unsubscribe the iPod? Or can I just reset it? Again, speaking of license here.

I hope I could make clear what I mean.

I've not tried this myself but this guide on ehow.com makes it look fairly simple using iTunes.

Basically as long as the host computer is authorised for iTunes use, you can connect your old iPod, right click on the icon from within iTunes and select Transfer Purchases to get the apps onto iTunes. Then connect the target device and sync the applications to it.


How to add person to a photo in Photos app I'd like to (manually?) add people "tags" to photos in the Photos app that were not recognized automatically. How would I do this?
My phone recognizes pictures of my baby from the front just fine but I'd like for photos taken of her back-side, for example, get tagged to her as well.
I have an iPhone 11 and a Windows laptop.

Unfortunately it's not possible yet. You can only add people when their faces appear on the photo.
If it hasn't detected all the faces in your pictures yet you have to leave your phone charging and locked.


Mac Freeze and Screen Goes Weird After RAM Upgrade I've a MacBook Pro. I upgraded it's RAMs to 16 GB of 1600MHz(two 8 GB modules). Even though Apple suggests a maximum of 8GB, everymac.com's tests yield that it supports 16GB. And it did.

After the upgrade my Mac booted as normal and everything was usual until I got a freeze and the following situation in my screen.

I restarted my Mac and it was back to normal until it happened again. I also thoroughly cleaned the inside of my Mac(including the RAM ports) so that no dust is in the way of the circuitry.

A quick Apple hardware test returned no problems as well. At night, I left it alone to make a thorough test but when I woke up, it was long finished and booted automatically into OS X. So I couldn't see those results.

I also reseted my NVRAM, SCM and used Disk Utility to fix the permissions and check the hard-drive state.

Therefore I replaced it back with the old modules that came with my Mac.

I'm thinking of bad RAM modules. When it goes to that block it crashes. I already started the return process for the new RAMs I purchased but wanted to get a second opinion. The broken pixels with the ripples are related with the RAM modules, right?

Thanks.

TL;DR: You probably want to exchange the RAM you bought for new sticks.

From your picture, it looks like that's a MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012). As you mentioned, it does support 2x8 GB (16 GB total) at 1600 MHz (PC3-12800).

If the issue doesn't occur with the original RAM, you can be fairly sure that your memory slots are good. It's very likely that the issue lies in the modules themselves.

You can use a tool like Memtest86+ to test the RAM completely to help narrow down where the issue is. It could be one stick, or it could be both.

I recommend installing a single 8 GB stick, running through the full battery of tests, and then repeating with the other stick in the same slot. By testing them one at a time, you can easily determine which module is bad.

If both pass, then you can try the same together. If they only fail as a pair, there could be a timing issue or something else going on with the RAM.

To be absolutely sure that there's not an issue with your memory slots (read: logic board), you should test your old modules as well.

Finally, you mention that you purchased 1600 MHz RAM, but you'll want to confirm that. A common issue with Mac RAM installation is the use of higher clocked RAM under the assumption that it will correctly work on boards that want a lower clock.

For example, if you bought 2x8 GB at 1833 MHz, you might expect it to downclock to 1600 MHz for your computer. While normally that's true, Mac logic boards are very sensitive to the clock speed. Often, you'll get kernel panics, graphical issues, and general instability even though it may report as the clock speed you expect.

The solution is to purchase RAM that's the exact speed you want.


Access iTunes for Windows Keychain This might be a long shot, but I have a problem where I've lost the encryption password to an iPhone backup created with iTunes for Windows. On a mac this shouldn't bee too much of a problem, since the password is persisted in the keychain, at least as long as you still have access to machine the backup was created on.

The problem is that iTunes asked to set the encryption password when that options was checked several months ago, and never again. I created a backup moments before resetting the device, which worked just fine, but was unable to restore from the backup because of the lost password. I was sure that this would be the iCloud account password and only saw the error when it was too late.

I had a look around the iTunes files on the Windows machine where the backup was created and found a file named keychain-2.db, which seems to be an sqlite db with some probably encrypted data (or binary blobs?). The tables inside are named cert, genp, inet, keys, sqlite_sequence, tversion.

Is there any possible hope of restoring the backup encryption password through this? I don't have a lot of hope, since I haven't found anything regarding this idea online so far. Should any more information be necessary or just interesting, I'd of course love to provide it.

Various ideas:

Have you tried any typo variations on your iCloud password (since you mentioned you thought it was the same)? Another goofy thing about the backup encryption is that there's no second password field to ensure it's typed correctly.
If I remember right, Elcomsoft Phone Breaker's free trial will let you preview two characters from the backup password on Windows in case that will help trigger your memory. I'm not sure if it's compatible with iOS 10.2 and later backup encryption yet though. (I don't work on this program, but I work on other software that reads iPhone backups, and sometimes I suggest this to help people remember their password ;))
Did you setup that iPhone by restoring from a previous encrypted backup? If so, the backup password should be the same password for the backup you set up from.

Otherwise, you're pretty much left to trying to put yourself in the mindset of a few months ago to remember what you would have used for a password. :(


Verification required My iPhone (5s) has randomly started to ask for verification (before you can make purchases, you must tap continue to verify). Now my problem is that with my apple account I already have a bank account linked to it which I have used on several occasions. Now it's saying my payment method has been declined, and the problem isn't with my bank account because I have tried to put in 3 other bank cards all of which been declined for no reason.

Has anyone encountered this sort of problem before. If so, do you know how to fix it? Additionally I can't remove any payment methods because in my settings there's no 'None' option to select if i don't want a payment method.

I did not have the same problem, but I also had to verify my payment details. I contacted Apple support about this problem.

They told me that I have to edit my Apple ID address via apple.com
I made a little change in my address and saved it. Than I restored my address like it was before. When I want to download an app now, it had no problem.

It could be that you need to verify your details once again after changing your address.

I'm not sure if this will solve your problem but for me it dit.


"Remote Desktop Client" updated, but NOT installed I just purchased a used iMac yesterday. Today, the app store updated "Apple Remote Desktop Client". I can not find an app called that in my app folder. Could it be hidden? Could this be used to 'spy' or grab info from my Mac?

Not patching that software is the most insecure thing - so approve the update. All OS X ship with some version of the Remote Desktop Client but it is not enabled by default.

Secure your Mac if you don't want this by:

Turn on the firewall in the security preference pane
Open sharing preference pane and deselect Screen Sharing and Remote Management if they are checked.
Don't let people know your user name, short user name or password or re-use a password with another service that could get compromised and then be used to try that same password against your Mac.

It's not malware, but malware could be used to change the settings or snoop your password (key logger) or phish you to enter your username and password where it can then use it for bad purposes. Out of the box, you shouldn't be open to exploits due to Apple shipping the Remote Desktop Client on OS X.


Can I restore items from a Mavericks Time Machine after upgrading to Yosemite? If I upgrade from Mavericks to Yosemite, will I still be able to recover items from my Time Machine backup?

There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to recover files from a Time Machine backup saved using Time Machine under Mavericks simply because you upgraded the Mavericks system to Yosemite. A system upgrade doesn't normally break continuity of Time Machine. There will likely be a lot more data backed up during the first backup after the upgrade, so if you don't have enough disk space for the new backup data, some older backup data might be removed to make room for it.

As long as you have credentials to access the backups, you can recover from your current Time Machine backup from another Mac that has been configured for Time Machine whether it was upgraded to Yosemite or whether Yosemite was originally or cleanly installed. Just connect your Time Machine backup to the computer you want to use to recover, hold down option, then click the Time Machine menu and choose "Browse Other Backu Disks...".


How do I make band names appear on iTunes/Music? On the right are songs I've purchased on iTunes itself, and on the left are songs I've bought (yes, I paid for them/supported the bands) from other sources, namely their websites and a code from a tour.

How do I make the bands' names appear (Undercast and Sick Puppies, respectively) below the album names as they do on the right?

Thanks!

Select the songs in iTunes, then Get Info (⌘I) and add the name of the band to the Artist field.

If you want different tracks to be by different artists, you can unify the album under a single artist using the Album Artist tag.


why is my iphone 5c opening apps uncontrollably by itself? my iPhone 5c is opening/ closing apps and typing randomly and uncontrollably without me touching the screen or even holding the phone, I am now also locked out of my phone because it has typed the wrong passcode in by itself and is disabled for 1 hour. what can I do to fix this and what could be the problem?

An appointment at the Genius Bar can confirm, but it's likely a hardware problem with a component called the digitizer, which translates touches on the screen into input the phone can understand. Sounds like it is malfunctioning.

Can you lower the phone off and on again? Is the problem constant or does it come and go?


Is it possible to use a Mac mini as a docking station for a MacBook Pro? Is it possible for me to connect a Mac mini to my MacBook Pro, and then use the Mac mini as a docking station?
My idea is to plug in an Ethernet cable, an SD card, some USB devices, and a FireWire device into the 2012 Mac mini and have it all show up on my MacBook Pro.
Ideally I would also be able to plug in a display via HDMI as well as audio devices (headphones/microphone) into the Mac mini and be able to use them on my MacBook Pro.
I plan on connecting the Mac mini to my MacBook Pro via a Thunderbolt 2 cable.
The reason for this odd question is because a used 2012 Mac mini is actually cheaper than buying a used Thunderbolt 2 docking station. On top of that, the Mac mini offers even more connectivity (e.g. and SD card slot) than many of the old Thunderbolt 2 docks.
Note: I could just use the Mac mini as my main computer and use the devices directly. However, my question is focused on wether I can essentially replace a Thunderbolt 2 docking station with this Mac mini somehow. Perhaps this could be done with a program which "forwards" data and video through the Thunderbolt 2 port of the Mac mini?

The concept is nice.  But you can't connect a Mac mini to the MacBook Pro and have the mini act like a docking station.
Nevertheless you can enable file sharing on the Mac mini and all directly connected storage devices (USB, Firewire, SD) become available to the MacBook Pro via SMB networking.
Other devices can't be accessed as if the Mac mini were a docking station.  That would include the audio port, non-storage USB/Firewire devices and HDMI.  I don't know of any software solutions which enable this.
Other things you might consider:
Screensharing allows you to show the desktop (and use the mouse and keyboard) from one computer to the other.  And there are better performing products (e.g. Jump Desktop) than the inbuilt screen sharing.
You can find software that will enable the mini's screen to act as an extension to the MacBook Pro's screen.  My limited experience with this has not been very successful.


Mail Client Rules Window Issue I am using Mac OS X 10.12.5 with the Mac Mail client Version 10.2 (3259).   When I try to add a new rule to account in Mail, the part of the rule where the action to perform on the email is not fully expanded for some odd reason. Here is an example

As you can see, where it says Perform the following actions is just showing a horizontal line instead of the dropdown where you would normally select what action you want to have the rule perform.

I have tried to change my resolution to every setting allowed by my monitor, but it does not seem to change the rules dialog.

I just checked my existing rules that i have added to the Mail client, and all of those rules are showing up the same way :(

Any idea how I can fix this issue with the Rules dialog in the Mail client?

I’ve found quitting and reopening Mail to be the quickest reliable fix.  It’s been a known issue for years, persisting through several major Mail upgrades.

I eventually got tired of hearing myself cuss at it and wrote a Service which quits and returns to the rules prefs window with a keyboard shortcut.


How do I enter a degree symbol – ° – on an iPhone or iPad? Let's say I'm working on my pork belly recipe [I'm not – there's only one you'll ever need] and I want to record a temperature. I don't want to write out "500 degrees" I want to write "500°". How do I do this?

I've looked around for this several times but today I just found its hiding spot – the 0 key! Just hold 0 until the alternate characters are shown. In the case of 0, the only alternate character is '°'.


How to activate root using the Single-User Mode in Catalina I can't activate root using the Single-User mode since the Catalina update got released...

$ /sbin/mount -uw /
$ launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist
$ passwd
     Enter password : root
     Repeat password : root
passwd: Authentication server failed to complete the requested operation.
Authentication server failed to complete the requested operation.
$

How can I fix this?

With the slightly different volume scheme in Catalina - compared to pre-Cataline systems - you have to mount /System/Volumes/Data to prevent the read-only mount point /:

/sbin/mount -uw /System/Volumes/Data

Then the usual commands:

launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist
passwd root

and enter the password.

On T2-chip Macs you have to boot to Recovery Mode and use dscl to enable root:

dscl -f /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD\ -\ Data/private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default localhost -passwd /Local/Default/Users/root

If your main volume has another name than Macintosh HD, replace Macintosh\ HD with this name (e.g SystemCat):

dscl -f /Volumes/SystemCat\ -\ Data/private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default localhost -passwd /Local/Default/Users/root


Minimize all but the active of the current application's windows I switch to, for example, Safari and find the window I want. I can Command-Option-H to hide all the other applications, but I also want to minimize all the Safari windows except the one I'm using (the front-most one).

Is there a way to do this? Would settle for an AppleScript I can trigger with Keyboard Maestro.

Here is an AppleScript that achieves the results of what you originally explicitly and specifically asked for, before editing the question after it was answered.

tell application "Safari"
    activate
    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke "h" using {command down, option down}
    end tell
    set miniaturized of (windows whose index is not 1) to true
end tell

Note: The above AppleScript works for me under OS X 10.8.5 and Safari 6.2.8 however I have not tested it on any other version of OS X. That said, I believe it will work fine on other versions of OS X.

Update to address the edit of the original question:

I played around a bit with different methods and what I found was, within the ways I tried, most apps worked while some would not. In other words, I didn't find a universal method that worked with all the apps I normally run. So, I'm adding a block of code that you can try and see if it can work for you.

Ideally simply hiding all other apps and minimizing the non-active windows of the current app so as to have a smooth appearance in action it what's desired however Finder presented a challenge.  So in this example code Finder must minimize all it windows first and bring back what was the frontmost while other apps have a nice cascading effect to minimized non-active windows while leaving the frontmost windows as is.

tell application "System Events"
    set frontApp to name of first application process whose frontmost is true
    set windowName to name of first window of application process frontApp
end tell

if not frontApp is "Finder" then
    tell application frontApp
        activate
        tell application "System Events"
            keystroke "h" using {command down, option down}
        end tell
        set miniaturized of (windows whose name is not windowName) to true
    end tell
else
    tell application frontApp
        activate
        tell application "System Events"
            keystroke "h" using {command down, option down}
            keystroke "m" using {command down, option down}
            tell process frontApp to click menu item windowName of menu 1 of menu bar item "Window" of menu bar 1
        end tell
    end tell
end if


Could the High Sierra root bug have been exploited over SSH? I'm sure we're all familiar with the recent security issue in High Sierra/OSX 10.13. It is well known that remote access can be gained using Screen Share, but I've not seen anything definite regarding the feasibility of a similar exploit over SSH, so:

Could this bug have been exploited over SSH, either with the default settings or after changing them?

(that is, attempt to log in over ssh as a nonexistent root user, thereby creating the root user in the same manner as when exploiting in person)

My thinking is that this shouldn't be possible by default, as the default sshd_config PermitRootLogin is probably set to no, but I've seen comments that suggest it is possible sometimes, which strikes me as being much more serious.

I don't own a mac, so I'm not able to verify for myself.

The login mechanism for SSH and for Aqua are two entirely different things.

sshd is the OpenSSH daemon (what allows you to log in via SSH) is sourced from BSD.  This vulnerability doesn't exist there.

Additionally, the default configuration for OpenSSH is to disalow the root user to login whereas this bug/flaw allows you to log in as root with no password by simply pressing a button twice.


How to watch air broadcasted TV with VLC Player on a Mac I want to watch my air broadcasted TV with VLC Player on a Mac.

I have a standard European TV connection (free air-broadcasted TV), and I would guess I need some sort of USB TV tuner to connect the antenna cable to my Mac.

Can I just buy any USB TV tuner, or do I need to get anything specific?

Could you give me an example of device I need to buy? I'm not asking for suggestions about what to buy, but just an example to define the category.

Do you have any particular reason for needing to use VLC?
If you don't you could try EyeTV as it supports a good range of tuners (mine is a miglia) and has a streaming app for the iPhone / iPad

http://www.miglia.com/
http://www.elgato.com/

Elgato also do network aware tuners


How does changing key photo in Live photo differ from burst mode? I notice when using Live photos you can change the key photo if you want. Is there any quality loss based on doing this? How does this differ from taking Burst mode photos? Is there a difference in how the camera (focus/aperature etc) behaves?

Does this function mean that if I have Live photos enabled there's no technical reason to use Burst mode (other than perhaps more control over how long to capture images for?)

Changing the key photo of a Live Photo is not a replacement for burst mode in terms of quality.

The video segment of a Live Photo is 960×720, which is a huge drop in resolution.
Burst mode takes full resolution photos.


iCloud photo library causing duplicate photos Ever since I started using iCloud photo library I am getting duplicates in photo on iMac OS X El Capitan. Also, all photos that went into the iCloud photo library  uploaded on iPhone too.

What am I doing wrong? I don't want all photos on iPhone and certainly don't need duplicates in photo.

iCloud doesn't duplicate the photos, it just stores them in iCloud.

The purpose of iCloud Photo Library is to allow you to access your photos on all your devices. If you don't want your photos on your iPhone, don't use iCloud Photo Library.


Get Weekly Calendar to display. On my IPhone, my ICal calendar displays only a monthly calendar.
How do I switch it so I can see a weekly calendar?
I have clicked on 'TODAY" ; CALENDARS; AND INBOX, and find no way to switch to a weekly display.

Hold your iPhone in landscape orientation. Calendar will show five days, which is kind of close to a week.


Keep Mask in Same Spot While Key-Framing Transform - Final Cut Pro I would like to make it look like an object is rising from behind another object. The way I was thinking of doing it would be using a mask and key-framing the "Transform". The only problem is that the mask seems to move with the "Transform", stopping it from working. Is there another way to do this, or is there a way to lock the mask.

I recently did this (as an experiment) by keyframing the motion of the mask in the opposite direction to the keyframed motion of the transform. In my example someone sitting in a chair (in front of a greenscreen) appeared as if they rose up out of a barrel in some background footage: I keyframed a mask where the bottom edge of the mask started at their head and worked down to their waist; at the same time the keyframes for the transform motion moved the greenscreen footage of their body upwards. The end result was a bit messy, but the bottom edge of the mask stayed roughly level with the lip of the barrel as the superimposed footage moved upwards.
To key frame the changes into my four-cornered mask I started with a narrow mask where all four corners were just above the head and set a first keyframe. I then moved to the end frame and modified the mask so that the bottom two corners were now at waist level, and set the second keyframe. So the mask height grew over the course of the transform.