Dropbox folder not syncing after move I moved my dropbox folder to a different location, following the instructions provided by dropbox. (I use the desktop client. OS X 10.11.5)

Specifically, I clicked on the Dropbox icon, went to Preferences -> Account, and changed Dropbox location. It took a while to copy the files. Now, for some weird reason, most of my files are stuck in 'syncing'. I don't understand why it has to sync anything at all, since the files were copied within the hard drive, and no file was modified in the cloud.

It's been stuck at 6,990 files remaining for the last two hours. When I move the mouse over the dropbox logo, it says Indexing 6,990 files and Can't sync "x (Access Denied). What does this even mean? There are shared folders in my dropbox that I need to use right now. What do I do?

It turns out the issue is with the fact that I moved my dropbox folder to an external drive. In that case, OSX creates a bunch of files named ._filename, which dropbox cannot sync. To clean these files, someone wrote this small script that works in the background. I installed and ran it, and my problems were solved.


Any way to get more powerful rules for Mail.app? Is there a way to enhance Mail.app with better rules?
What I'm missing most is regexps and the ability to group conditions and not only get "If all rules match" or If one rule match"
Alternatively is there a way to use apple-scripts as rules?
Note:
I'm not after Junk Mail Filtering

There is no way I can think of to use AppleScript to filter messages directly, but I guess you could go the ugly route of redirecting "All Messages" to an AppleScript and then handling them from there back to Mail.app.

==== Update:

To give you a better idea of what I´m talking about, you´ll have to create a new rule with condition "All Messages" and execute an Applescript. For example to check for the subject, you´ll want something similar to this:

using terms from application "Mail"
    on perform mail action with messages theMessages for rule theRule
        tell application "Mail"

            repeat with eachMessage in theMessages
                set theSubject to subject of eachMessage

                if theSubject contains "test" then
                    -- do something here, like move message to a folder
                end if
            end repeat

        end tell
    end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from

Note that of course you could easily use a do shell script statement here to use whatever command line tool you want to compare the subject with a regexp, like if (do shell script "*your regexp that returns 'true' if matched*" ) is true … and so on.


Install Mac OS X Lion from newly installed SDD in Mac Book Pro A1260 (2008 model) I have an old Mac Book Pro A1260 (2008 early model), and I need to replace the old HDD with SDD. In doing so, I'm thinking about installing Mac OS X Lion.

Can I install Mac OS X Lion directly to my Mac? Do I need to install snow leopard first, and then upgrade to Mac OS X Lion?

You can

Get a copy of lion from the app store on another Mac and follow this guide

http://lifehacker.com/5823096/how-to-burn-your-own-lion-install-dvd-or-flash-drive?popular=true

You can clean install from the USB / dvd worked fine here


How do you connect the new MacBook Air to the Cinema Display? The MacBook Air has the magsafe and a USB port on one side of the chassis and the mini display and another USB port on the other side of the chassis.  Does the 3-port cable for the Cinema Display work, seeing as how the magsafe and the mini display are on opposite sides instead of all lined up like on the MacBook Pro?  If so, is it graceful or ungainly?

Yes, it works, but it's not graceful, it's ungainly:

Source: Apple Insider


Seagate Hard Drive Not showing in Disk Utility I have a Mac OS X EI Capitan Version 10.11.6. Also got a 1.5Tb Seagate External hard drive. The hard drive is about a year old and my mac is only a few months old. The hard drive always work fine, but when I plug it in now, it doesn't mount at all and doesn't even show in Disk Utility? I thought of just re-formatting the hard drive. But I can't format it if it doesn't show in Disk Utility, it also doesn't show when I go to the Terminal. Type in diskutil list, it only shows my Mac hardrive. The hard drive is running, I even replaced the usb cord but still nothing. It doesn't even show up in my Time Michine. I added screenshots. Please can someone help me.

Barring also testing it on another Mac, that sounds like a hard drive logic board failure. Your best bet might be to source a logic board from another identical hard drive, with an IDENTICAL board model identifier (including the revision if any), and swap for yours, then see if it works.


Does AppleCare warranty follow the device or the user? I've bought a used MacBook Air and according to the serial I've noticed that the previous owner has linked an AppleCare plan to it, up to 2017.

Does the warranty follow the device or the user? Better put, as the new owner, can I take advantage of the warranty or is there a need of some sort of transfer?

The previous owner has to transfer it to the new owner.  See, "Is the AppleCare Protection Plan or AppleCare+ transferable?" under AppleCare Products Frequently Asked Questions, it states:

  Is the AppleCare Protection Plan or AppleCare+ transferable?

  Yes. If you choose to sell or give away your Apple product, you can
  also transfer the ownership of the AppleCare Protection Plan or
  AppleCare+. Please see the Terms and Conditions for complete details.


MBP A1150 still does not power on after logic board replacement Two years ago my MacBook Pro A1150 Core Duo 15" died. How? Basically the MagSafe will stay green, but the machine will not power on. The DVD drive will make some noise, but it will do nothing else.

I took it to Apple service and they diagnosed a burned logic board; please shell out $1000 kthxbye. So the machine went in a drawer for the next two years.

Recently I bought a brand new logic board replacement on eBay at $250 with the hope of bringing new life to the MBP. I followed the iFixit guide for logic board replacement to the letter, and Ii'm pretty sure I did everything correctly.

However, when I connected it to the power adapter, it will show up green, but it will not power on. The DVD drive makes some noise, but it will do nothing else.

If this sounds exactly what was happening before, then you would be right. So I'm tempted to believe that Apple service did a bad/lazy diagnostic and the problem is something else. The question is how to diagnose the source of the problem?

I am tempted to think it might be the left-side I/O board which houses the power controller. But I would like to be sure before going back parts shopping.

Sadly, the way to diagnose these things is to replace one thing at a time and avoid breaking things like fragile connectors until the symptom goes away. This is a losing battle for one-off repairs and why only large shops can afford to have the experience and tools / parts on hand to repair machines with symptoms that are not simple or obvious. You can't see most damage and even testing for it is usually harder than exchanging a whole component to see if it addresses the larger system issue.

Without the manufacturer knowledge and diagnostic tools, you (and I) are at a handicap at telling what is really failing and doing subcomponent repair is extremely tricky without a professional shop and dedicated tools / test rig to ensure the new logic board is functioning.

If it's worth $400 to get fixed, perhaps go back and have Apple or an authorized tech check your work and see if it's still eligible for a repair. Worst case is you have to pay the labor fee to get it looked at - in the US I believe it's $39 for labor and no parts used for any Mac repair.

I would suggest being up front with them as there are three scenarios if you admit having been inside the mac to try and fix it yourself:

They just dismiss you as a hack and don't even look at the work to see if the mac was damaged during the repair - this is far less likely if you aren't actively deceiving the tech.
They appreciate the honesty and can see that things are broken and might quote you to fix whatever is wrong - covering anything they can be sure was a manufacturing issue - charging you for any damage caused by whatever.
They appreciate the honesty (and gumption to attempt a repair like that) and can see you did great work. In this case there is no damage to fix and they can just proceed with a normal repair where it wasn't worked on. You almost certainly want to have the original logic board inside the mac if there's any doubt it's the wrong part.

Having been inside the computer, you will know how well you got all the minute connectors off and back together and can appreciate how delicate and cramped the connectors and parts are inside. It's entirely possible one of the cables needs to be repaired in addition to (or in stead of) the main board. Also, what if the problem was in the magsafe board or some other part drawing too much current / blocking the communications buses to allow the machine to start. You can't know until you do all the work to isolate the issue at which point the issue is trivial to remedy.

In your specific case - being in Panama, you might have to just arrange mail in service in the US (or another country) and pay to have it shipped. Just be clear on what the charges might be for diagnosis / shipping if it turns out to be damaged or not repairable under the flat rate (no damage / no unauthorized repairs) plan.


Prevent application from displaying badge icon in Dock Any Spotify desktop user has likely noticed their pervasive notifications: whenever "one of our friends" joins Spotify, there's both an in-app notification as well as a red badge that appears on Spotify's icon in the Dock.

Is there a way to disable an application's ability to show a badge on its Dock icon?

I'm using Lion (10.7.8), and therefore don't have the 'Notifications' prefpane that was introduced in Mountain Lion.

I tried digging around in the app's resources and .plist file to see if there was a setting to enable/disable this... to no avail.

No - the normal path is to use the Notifications prefpane to turn off notifications, but this would not help, since Spotify is not listed there.

I'm also very annoyed by Spotify's constant flood of notifications. I wonder if there was a way to drop all the social-related network traffic that goes into Spotify and somehow nip these notifications at the bud.


How do I completely start over with an iPhone? After a botched attempt at jailbreaking, then removing the jailbreak, half the stuff does not work on the iPhone (apps won't sync, iPod app crashes, Settings don't "take", sync freezes the phone for 5 minutes after iTunes says its done, etc...).

I'd like to start over.  I will re-download the apps manually and sync all my photos, addresses, etc... after the fact.

So how do I start over?  I guess, if this was a PC, I'd be asking how to reformat the hard drive.

Does iTunes recognize your iPhone? If so, you can start (non-jailbroken), by just going to the Summary page when its plugged in and selecting restore.


Protective film for iPad 10.2 I have a 10.2" iPad with the apple pencil. As I need to use the pencil lots of hours per day, I'm a bit worried that the screen may deteriorate. I was considering to buy a protective film, and I have two questions:

does it have a bad impact on the writing experience?
if I don't use it, will my screen deteriorate in time?

A protective film will have an impact on the writing experience. If it is enough to notice as "bad" is really subjective.
I don't think you need to worry at all about your screen deteriorating from the use of the Apple Pencil. After all the screen is made of glass, and your pen has a rubber tip. It's made for this purpose.


Is it possible to use an AT&T gsm iPhone 4 with any other carrier or pay-per-use Is it possible to use an AT&T gsm iPhone 4 with any other carrier

Once the AT&T iPhone 4 is unlocked, you can get a no-contract SIM from Straight Talk (which is sold at Walmart) or from T-Mobile.

With Straight Talk, you're pretty much forced to buy a voice/texting/data plan for a minimum of about $50/month -- they won't let you use a voice/texting-only plan into a smartphone chip. Data is capped after 2GB.


Where are scanner drivers located, and what (file) form do they take? I'm attempting to make use of this scanner (Dymo Cardscan 800):

It has no generic or publicly available drivers for any version of MacOS (or Windows, for that matter). The makers intend for you to use their software... and yesterday I stumbled across a copy (demo, I get 100 scans before it locks me out). I tested it on Sierra, and it works.

In the dotapp bundle, I see several executables. Only one is executable from the command line. That one just launches the application, gui and all.

However, in the Frameworks folder, there is one named "Alpha.framework". And within that, I have another Resource bundle for it named "alpha.drv.bundle". It's just a resource bundle, but in it are a bunch of .string files, which have error messages you might expect out of a scanner driver.

I was wondering if this was some internal driver that could maybe be extracted and used generally. But I have no clue where scanner drivers are in the OS, or what form they take.

Using the proprietary software (even were I to buy a license) would be miserable... it doesn't save the scans. It OCRs them immediately, deletes the image file, and that's it (found where it puts the image file... I see it flicker into existence and then it's gone before you can click). Hoping for a minor miracle.

Scanner drivers are located in /Library/Image Capture/Devices/ as Tetsujin so helpfully points out.

These scanner drivers are App bundles, but quite a bit different than regular applications. An executable binary is inside Contents/MacOS, along with the obligatory plists, Resources, etc. Even so, they're typically quite a bit more barren than an actual Application bundle.

If Tetsujin wants to include an answer here, please upvote his rather than mine since mine is basically just repeating information that I got from him.


Spotlight re-index every time I restart/boot iMac I have an iMac Late 2006 with Lion installed. I don't know since when, but since 3-4 weeks ago I am having this problem.

The point is, every time I restart my iMac or boot it, Spotlight starts to reindex again.

I already test to disable Spotlight, remove /.Spotlight-V100 and enable Spotlight again but it didn't solve it. I don't know how to debug/detect the problem but it is so bad, because it impacts on iMac performance...

I don't know if it is important, but I also have installed Windows 7 on Bootcamp. However it is marked as non-indexing volume on Spotlight's Preferences. I also tried to repair permissions, but it didn't work.

I "fixed" it forcing a new indexation but excluding the User directory. What happens? It is too slow, but has an end. Not is eternal. When it finish, you can add again your User directory and, after it finish, you can reboot safely without scare :)


How to get rid of a standard user in my accounts on Mac? I added another user to my Mac and then didn't know how to fill out all the technical questions. The problem is I cannot use my trackpad when the computer starts. I have to use a mouse.

I would like to get rid of this standard user, or somehow figure out the answers to my questions on filling out the standard user form in hopes the trackpad problem will go away. Or have I somehow lost my trackpad functionality in the opening screen of the computer forever?

System Preferences > Users & Groups

select the user in the list on the left.  Click the minus sign at the bottom of the list.

If the preference pane is locked (see lock icon and text in lower left corner) you will need to unlock the pane before you can make changes.


Search for a folder using applescript I am trying to make a folder to go on a server, that people can add photos to and then the script sends them to the correct place, however I'm having trouble with the search part.

As you can see below in my code, the part where it finds where to send the folder to is commented out, because I have no idea what the syntax is for it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

global theWatchedFolder
set theWatchedFolder to choose folder
on idle
tell application "Finder"
set theDetectedItems to every item of theWatchedFolder
repeat with aDetectedItem in theDetectedItems
    set jobNumber to display dialog "Please enter the job number for this photo." buttons {"Submit", "Cancel"}
    display dialog "File detected: " & jobNumber
    --tell finder
    -- search for jobNumber in (path to desktop)
    --set jobFolder to top search result
    --end tell
    --set colourFolder to jobfolder & /colour
    move aDetectedItem to the desktop --move to colourFolder
end repeat
end tell
if theDetectedItems is not {} then
activate
display dialog "test move complete"
end if
return 1
end idle

Also, I am concerned that if this script is on the server, watching a folder on the server, then it won't create a pop-up for anyone who adds a file to the folder on the server. Hopefully I am wrong but if someone could confirm this one way or the other then that would be awesome. Thanks :)

For local files/folders
you can use spotlight's command line tools. In Terminal
$ mdfind -onlyin ~/ "kMDItemDisplayName == 'xyz*' && kMDItemKind == 'Folder'"

will give you all folders whose name starts with xyz with the search begining from your home folder ~/. Remove * in xyz* above to find an exact match. For more information on mdfind read the man page using the command man mdfind in Terminal app.
You can use it in your script like this...
set res to (do shell script "mdfind -onlyin ~/ \"kMDItemDisplayName == 'xyz' && kMDItemKind == 'Folder'\"")
set fList to (every paragraph of res) as list
log "Count:" & (get count of fList)

For remote files
that spotlight doesn't know about, you can use the good old UNIX find command.
$ find ~/ -iname "xyz" -type d

You can use it in your script the same way as mdfind but it may be a bit slower.
Hope that helped.


Cannot format MacBook Air SSD, stuck at waiting for disks to reappear I have a Macbook Air with 128GB SSD and 4GB RAM with OS X Mavericks. I was using my Mac normally but suddenly Chrome got stuck. So I held down the power button and force-shut down the Mac.

When I switched my Mac on again, it won't start. I tried to repair my SSD using Disk Utility from Recovery Partition, but it says something is wrong with my Partition Map and that I have to erase and reinstall OS X. But I cannot erase my SSD. The progress bar gets stuck at 50%.

When I used command line diskutil eraseDisk, it shows "Waiting for disks to reappear" and is stuck at 50%.

Is it a problem with my SSD. If yes, will I be eligible for Warranty?

It is completely possible that the SSD is toast. It is also possible that Disk Utility just can't fix it. There are other disk repair utilities out there like DiskWarrior, Drive Genius and the like.

If you don't have one, you should. you won't use it often but will be glad you have it when stuff like this happens.

Failing that and assuming that you already have a backup you can boot to the recovery partition and use disk utility to remove the current partition and reformat a new one. Then use internet recovery to re-install the OS.

If Disk Utility won't format/re-partition the SSD then the drive is likely toast and you should make an appointment with an Apple Genius to have it repaired.


How do I get my S1300 scanner to show up in Yosemite Preview File > "Import from scanner" option? I have a Fujitsu S1300, and a MacBook Pro 15″ with Yosemite.

My patience is running thin. I can scan using Fujitsu's software. But I can't using Preview.

But when I look at Preview > File > Import from Scanner, it's greyed out.

I've done all the things listed here.

And... there is paper in the loader. I'm connected directly to usb (no hub).

PS: I was inspired to use preview to scan from this article.

You can only scan into Preview and other applications which use Apple's standard scanning architecture (such as Image Capture) if the scanner is provided with an ICA scan driver. Fujitsu do not supply ICA drivers for the ScanSnap scanners (at least as far as I know) and therefore the ScanSnap scanners will not work with preview or Image Capture etc. Fujitsu supply their own scanning drivers which other applications have to support directly, and some do (such as Mariner Software's Paperless).


is it possible to add two developers to the development of an app? I am just starting to work with XCode and I am kind of lost. I am working on an iOS app and I want to add a friend who will help me to develop the app.

How can we both work on the app? is there any way to achieve this? If I add him on my account as a team member, will he be able to see the source code?

Thank you for your help.

To work together on any development project, you preferably need a version control system like GIT or SVN. Apple supports this with Xcode Server. If you're not working on the app at the same time, I imagine that DropBox or any other file sharing system would work as well.

Being on the same Apple Developer team would hardly mean anything in this matter at all. Note that you need to apply as a company to the Apple Developer Program in order to have more team members. The only direct benefit during development is that you can use the same certificates for distributing your app. The package you upload to iTunes Connect for distribution via the App Store is a binary, a compiled version of the app from which it is not possible to extract the source code.


Black screen after High Sierra update, MacBook Pro w/user-installed SSD Ran the High Sierra updater, walked away as it ran. Came back after 40 minutes or so to find a black screen. That’s it.

Keyboard was backlit, and pressing keys (spacebar, arrows, esc/fn/command/option) don’t wake things up. If I leave it alone for a while, the keyboard goes dark, but a key press lights it back up...but still no screen.

It’s a late-2011 15” Core i7, 2.2 ghz, with 4gb RAM and a hard drive upgraded from 500gb rotating media to 1tb SSD (Samsung 850 EVO).

(As a side note, my late-2014 Mac Mini updated just fine.)

Any thoughts on how to proceed?

UPDATE: a pal suggested shutting the lid, waiting 30 seconds, then re-opening the lid. That powered it down...somehow. Then I held down the power button till it restarted, and all is (now, thankfully) well. Hope this helps someone out.

Mikey_S has answered the question on his/her own:

  a pal suggested shutting the lid, waiting 30 seconds, then re-opening
  the lid. That powered it down...somehow. Then I held down the power
  button till it restarted, and all is (now, thankfully) well. Hope this
  helps someone out.


Is this prompt for iCloud credentials legit? So recently I bought Ethernet Status and activated the full version for an added €2.29 ($1.99 I guess...) and activated the full features. I still have the confirmation e-mail.

Today I noticed the "Full version", apparently, was no longer active:

So I click the "Check Full Version Features", no big deal, and should be able to re-activate. Just click "Restore Purchase", right?

And then it hits me...

This is no native Apple UI, is it? How can I be sure it's not just the app trying to trick me into entering my AppStore password? Who's to say it won't send my entered credentials to the maker (or anyone, for that matter)?

I entered an incorrect(!) password while I let WireShark watch over my shoulder; hoping I could see something fishy. But I couldn't find anything proving either way; no direct link to Apple and no direct link elsewhere. A bunch of IP's, a lot of traffic (tried to close as much applications as I could) and most, if not all, of it encrypted with SSL. Nothing of interest to see actually and the amount of data is a bit too overwhelming for me to make sense of it.

Could anyone confirm or disprove my suspicions? Any advise (besides not entering my actual password in that UI)? I may have even entered my AppStore password when I initially installed and immediately upgraded; thank god I also use 2FA and I have changed my password moments ago just to err on the safe side. So now I'm left with an app that I suddenly don't trust (which may be unjust!) and not sure if I should go ahead...

Apparently, starting and logging into iTunes and going to the Account -> View my account -> All purchases , as ankii mentioned:

If you don't see your in-app purchases
See your purchase history on your computer

When you go back to Ethernet Status and then click "Restore Purchase" you're already logged in to iTunes and it doesn't prompt for credentials. Problem solved!

Also: Enable 2FA. That's not only a good idea for Apple/iCloud but it always is, everywhere. Whenever 2FA is supported, enable it!. It may be a pain in the behind at times, but the alternative, a hacked account, will be much, much worse.


Where is lynx.cfg stored on mac? I would like to configure my lynx installation but need the  /etc/lynx-cur/lynx.cfg.  Where is the stored on a mac?  I essentially just did.

brew install lynx

I did

find /usr/local -iname lynx.cfg -print

(because brew installs stuff to /usr/local)

and it showed me

/usr/local/etc/lynx.cfg
/usr/local/Cellar/lynx/2.8.9rel.1/etc/lynx.cfg

Then I did

ls -l /usr/local/etc/lynx.cfg

which showed me this:

lrwxr-xr-x 1 luomat admin 38 Sep  4 00:05 /usr/local/etc/lynx.cfg -> ../Cellar/lynx/2.8.9rel.1/etc/lynx.cfg

So I would say the answer is /usr/local/etc/lynx.cfg


Macbook crashed now iMessage not working correctly So my computer crashed due to a power cable issue. Now that that's resolved I was attempting to send messages to known iMessage users (ie people I've sent iMessages to prior to the crash) and now something doesn't accept other users as iMessage recipients. It says I'm sending an iMessage and it failed because the user is not registered for iMessage.

How do I fix this?

Log out.
Log in.
Check for each existing conversation that the small tab at the top of the main window is not red. If it is, click it & re select their correct number/address.


Keyboard Shortcuts For Navigating Spotlight? I find keyboard shortcuts very useful, and whilst I know quite a few of the "general ones", I don't know any concerning using Spotlight with the exception of

Command-SpaceBar to launch it.

What other keyboard shortcuts exist (if any) with regards to using Spotlight (that may make things "lightening fast" when using it) ?

(I'm sure the number of shortcuts available cannot be that extensive - if they exist that is).

⌘R or ⌘↩ reveals an item in Finder
⌘I shows an information window
⌘Y shows a Quick Look window
⌘D selects a dictionary result
⌘B selects a web search result
⌘K selects a Wikipedia result
⌘T selects the top result
⌘, opens Spotlight preferences
Holding command shows a preview popover
Holding option and command shows the full path of a file in a preview popover
⌘↓ moves to the next section and ⌘↑ moves to the previous section
⌃↓, end, or page down selects the last item


Logitech C615 webcam not detected (Mac OS X 10.8.2) I have a Mid-2010 Macbook Pro running Mountain Lion (10.8.2) and I purchased a Logitech C615 webcam because I read it is compatible with Mac. I installed the Logitech Camera Software, opened it and the camera worked for that first session, but when I opened the Logitech software later it immediately crashed and output a diagnostics log. I've tried uninstalling the Logitech software, restarting and re-plugging in the USB with no luck. I've tried plugging the camera's USB cable into my D-link USB hub as well as straight into the Macbook Pro itself. The camera goes undetected in all cases.

Any idea as to how I can fix this?

Thanks

I ended up installing the macam driver, which works but is not very stable.

  Macam is a user space USB Webcam driver, supporting Aiptek, 3com, Phillips, Creative, Dexxa, DigitalDream, Dolphin Peripherals, IDT, Intel, Kensington, Lifeview, Logitech, and many other Webcams.


Find a file/folder within another folder with OSX UI I often have project folders clientA, clientB, personalproj1 etc
and often they all have commonly used files/filers e.g. They might all have myCode.js, so when I type myReusedCode.js in spotlight (or alfred) it will return every file. I REALLY want to be able to type something like this (into Alfred)find clientB myCode.js to get THAT instance of myCode.js

I realise its possible via terminal - but I really wanna do this via finder as most of my "next steps" invovle the UI. I'd like to do it via Alfred if at all possible, i really like that app.

Any ideas/product recommendations?

Since you tagged this with “quicksilver”…

In Quicksilver, assuming all the project folders are in your catalog (which is easy to accomplish), you could type something like ca/mc↩ to open clientA/myCode.js.

Specifically, create a custom catalog entry that scans the parent folder containing your projects, or if they’re spread all over the place, you could tag them and add them to the catalog based on that, or list their paths in a file and scan that, or… There are a few options. :-)

Once they’re in the catalog, you can type the entire folder name (like clientA) if you hate yourself, but really, just type the first thing that comes to mind as fast as you can think it and Quicksilver will find it (like clta or ca). After doing this one or two times, it will become the top result.

With any folder selected, you can hit / or → to get at its contents. (For this reason, it’s unnecessary to have your catalog entries scan deep into the contents, but that’s an option if you want.)


What is the fastest way to transfer 200GB data from 2014 Macbook Air to 2016 Macbook Pro What is the fastest way to transfer 200GB data (~ 2 million files) from 2014 Macbook Air to 2016 Macbook Pro and how long will it take?

The fastest method is to use Target Disk Mode using the Thunderbolt ports on the machines.

You can refer to this guide from Apple:

https://support.apple.com/en-ug/HT201462

Note that because your MacBook Pro features Thunderbolt 3, you'll need to use an adapter to interface with the older Thunderbolt port on the MacBook Air. The directions on getting the correct adapter is also in that link.

Regarding how long time it will take is hard to calculate precisely - it involves many factors such as the type of SSD in your MacBook Air, the file system used, what else the computer is doing at the same time, etc.

An estimate would be approx. 7-10 minutes.


Routing traffic back and forth through a Mac mini server with 2 network interfaces I have my office network that looks like this:

My office network looks like this:

the office network (wifi and wired) has the subnetwork 192.168.88.0.
I have some server machines on the subnetwork 192.168.2.0 (NODE_1,.... NODE_10).
I have a machine (it is a Mac mini) with 2 subnetwork interfaces that acts as:

the gateway for all machines in subnetwork  192.168.2.0.
exposes a VPN service (the Mac server app default one)
and provides extra services, such as a DNS)

The Mac mini configuration is my big problem. This is how it looks:

Ethernet interface en0

address: 192.168.88.10
netmask: 255.255.255.0
gateway: 192.168.88.1

Ethernet interface en2

address: 192.168.2.1
netmask: 255.255.255.0
gateway: 192.168.88.10

I need routing from machines in 192.168.88.0 to those in 192.168.2.0.

To do so I have activated the "Internet sharing" feature of Mac OS: actually I do not know what happens under the hood, but the machines NODE_1 ...NODE_10 go to internet.

Then, when I'm connected to the office network, so that I get an IP such as: 192.168.88.33 I add a routing rule such as:

 sudo route -n add 192.168.2.0/24 -gateway 192.168.88.10

So far so good: everything works fine!!!!!

The big problem is when I connect through the VPN.

VPN Connection

I connect successfully to the VPN exposed at: 192.168.88.10, then I add the routing rule.

 sudo route -n add 192.168.2.0/24 -gateway 192.168.88.10

I'm not able to reach the machines in subnet 192.168.2.0.

Sniffing the packets I see that the packets follow the hops:

-> 192.168.88.10
-> 192.168.2.1
-> 192.168.2.110
<- 192.168.2.1
<- 192.168.88.1

The packet goes to the gateway 192.168.88.1 instead of the 192.168.88.10. Looking into the Mac mini routing tables I see:

192.168.88.202     192.168.88.10      UH              2       93    ppp1
192.168.88.202     40:6c:8f:3:d5:e7   UHLS2           0        0     en0

40:6c:8f:3:d5:e7 is the mac address of 192.168.88.1.

I would like to change the routing without using the internet sharing in order to allow internet access for 192.168.2.0, and cover both the VPN and local scenario, but I don't know the steps I need to do, and how to hand write the rules.

Thanks a lot.

It should be possible to create a bridge with en0 and en2 and enable net.inet.ip.forwarding to get rid of all routing problems. The bridge acts more or less as another switch between en0 and en2.

Disable Internet Sharing
remove the gateway in the en2 settings of the Mac mini and change the IP-address to an available one in 192.168.88.0/24 (e.g. 192.168.88.11)
remove all additional static routes
Check for bridge interfaces with ifconfig
On the server create a file bridge:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin/ #only if the folder is missing
sudo nano /usr/local/bin/bridge

with the content

#!/bin/bash

sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
ifconfig bridge create
ifconfig bridge0 addm en0 addm en2 up #use the first available bridge number here and the proper interface device names

enter sudo chmod +x nano /usr/local/bin/bridge
Create a launch daemon usr.bridge.plist:

sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/usr.bridge.plist

with the content

<?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>usr.bridge</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/bin/sh</string>
        <string>-c</string>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/bridge</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/usr.bridge.err</string>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/usr.bridge.out</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Load the plist

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/usr.bridge.plist

Change the IP-addresses of node_1 and node_10 to available ones in 192.168.88.0/24 (e.g. 192.168.88.101 and 192.168.88.110). Change their default gateways to 192.168.88.1 and the DNS server to 192.168.88.10.


Why does it appear that I apparently "do not have access to Command Line Tools" in ML? I just upgraded to Mountain Lion, and now gcc, make, g++, etc. are not found when trying to launch them in Terminal.

So I went to Xcode Preferences, Downloads, and clicked "Install" next to Command Line Tools.

It asked me for my Apple ID, which is weird and unnecessary, but I entered it anyway. Note that I am a registered Mac OS X and iOS developer (so I pay 2x $99 per year).

Much to my surprise, it tells me:

Um, what?! And why is it asking?

It thankfully seems that this was a temporary issue, probably due to the increased load on the Apple servers on Mountain Lion's release day.

I am now able to download the Command Line Tools as before so it seems the issue has gone away.

Alternatively, if you're still having problems, this link worked for me when the "Install" button in Xcode didn't.


How to increase the adhesive grip of a Magic Keyboard 2 rubber feet? The "rubber" feet under an Apple Magic Keyboard 2 (MLA22D/A) are too slippery.

What's the simplest, ideally reversible, way to increase the adhesive power of the rubber feet without ruining what is underneath the external keyboard, or a way to augment them with different anti-skid pads, feet, rubbers?

The rubber feet on Apple's newer keyboards are teeny, tiny, little hard bumps, and they don't prevent the keyboard from sliding around on some types of surfaces at all (like they should). Judging from the dirt on mine they look like in addition to being very hard plastic they also only have a contact area of one square millimeter.

I think the easiest, least destructive, and cheapest way would be to buy new soft rubber feet. The main point would be to make sure they are soft, not hard. Also, the larger the rubber feet, the more force they will be able to resist when being pushed around.

I found two products on Amazon that could do the job just fine. If you don't mind the shape of these rubber feet, they are a good solution:

but if you prefer to have a larger contact area, these would be a great choice:


How to recover after iOS update? Being silly I have agreed to update my iPhone 5c to latest iOS and now my phone looks dead.

When boots, it displays the following screen

If I connect it to my notebook, iTunes proposes to update phone and starts long term operation, which fails with error 1671.

Next time operation takes longer, now it is 60 mins.

What is it doing for 60 mins? Calculating the mass of proton with QCD? How to avoid this calculation?

How to recover my phone?

If I agree to reset my phone, will I loose all my photos?

When iTunes offers to update, tell it to download only.
If that is successful, at least you have the download on your machine, instead of trying to re-fetch it every time there's a fail.

If you have to reset the phone in order to restore, then you will lose any data since your last backup.

If regular Recovery Mode doesn't work, then try DFU (Device Firmware Update) mode.
'Connect to iTunes' is Recovery, black screen is DFU.

To force the phone into DFU mode for restoration

Plug into iTunes
Turn the phone off
Hold power & home for 10 seconds
release power but continue to hold home
wait for the computer to recognise the device
if the screen lights up while you're doing this, you didn't get to DFU mode & will have to try again; reports say the 10 seconds needs to be fairly accurate

iTunes should recognise it has a device in DFU Mode & restore should now work.

BTW - Golden rule for OS updates is…
 in iTunes

Sync
Backup
if you really want to be thorough
Download all app updates
Sync again
Backup again
Download update file
Update

That way if anything goes wrong you can be back where you were in minutes.


VPN - split tunnel routing I would like to use a VPN to access all sites external to our local intranet, but preserve local routing so that I can still access sites on the local intranet (e.g. in 10.0.0.0/8). I am using the Mac OS X native L2TP VPN client. How do I configure it to set this up?

I have tried something like route add 10.0.0.0/8 [local router address], which works fine, but I would like to automate this process so I don't have to look up the local router address and run the command each time.

The Split Tunneling Set is done by the Server (VPN Concentrator) in your Company. This is the common setup. Most of the Cases you want to surf the web and this works over the vpn tunnel if you are connected. In my Company we have to use the proxy of the intranet during the vpn connection. Anyway it is not possible from the client side automatically. But if you use a proxy in the intranet, you can configure this in the properties of the vpn tunnel.


Mac cannot get to sleep properly My Macbook Pro 15" Yosemite (model 3 years ago) has a problem with sleep mode.
I even formatted the disk and reinstalled OS X.

When I click the Apple icon and choose sleep from the menu, the mouse can move around (within 3-5 pixels) but the display is not turning off.

I wait for perhaps 30 seconds, the display then goes off but the Macbook does not sleep properly. When hitting the power button, the screen shows the Apple icon with the loading bar at 80%.

The computer then freezes, I cannot do anything except force shutdown.

This occurs even when no applications are opened in that session. I have no idea how to debug or troubleshoot this problem.

Please advise.

Found out that the MEMORY is broken.

To troubleshoot this kind of problem, running the Apple Hardware Test
by pressing D or Command-D after restart the Mac OSX.


Concatenating date and cycle count to file on startup I have the following code from here to find the cycle count of the battery on my computer:

system_profiler SPPowerDataType | grep "Cycle Count" | awk '{print $3}'

I will enclose it in a simple app that I will put in the Utilities folder in my applications folder as follows: NameofApp.sh.app->Contents->MacOS->NameofApp.sh. I will have it open on startup by means of System Preferences->Users and Groups->Login Items.

I was hoping to use the date command in terminal which gives output (As I'm sure you know) as Tue Oct  7 19:32:33 EDT 2014. I was hoping to delimit the date and the cycle count so I can easily separate it in excel.

The final product I was hoping for consist of a program that upon startup, prints the date + delimiter + cycle count to a new line in a text file (On desktop).

For example,

Tue Oct  7 19:32:33 EDT 2014#776
Tue Oct  8 13:55:02 EDT 2014#776
Tue Oct  8 21:23:16 EDT 2014#777
.
.
.
.
.
Tue Dec 12 07:34:56 EDT 2015#????

I'm having trouble combining the date with the output of the program above.

Thank you in advance

Thanks to @MateusvSzlosek, The following one-liner works:

echo `date`@`system_profiler SPPowerDataType | grep "Cycle Count" | awk '{print $3}'` >> output.txt


Case-insensitive ls sorting in Mac OSX How can I make the ls command in Max OS X Lion sort files and directories similar to how Ubuntu Linux does (case-insensitive, directories NOT on top, dot files NOT on top)?  Ideally I'd like to do this without piping output to another command such as sort.

For example, I want to see:

foo
Foobar
MyStuff/
.stuff/
test.txt

instead of:

.stuff
Foobar
MyStuff/
foo
test.txt

In Linux, ls sort order is controlled by the system's locale, specifically LC_COLLATE.  When LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8, ls will sort items like I want.  When LC_COLLATE=C, ls will sort similar to OS X.

LC_COLLATE is set to en_US.UTF-8 in OS X, but ls still sorts the old POSIX way.  Does anyone know how I can make this behave more like Linux?

It might not be possible:

  Taking a look at the source code for ls, it uses strcoll to sort
  the filenames, and so should respect LC_COLLATE.

  Some postings online suggest that the locales in BSD (and Darwin/OS X)
  are somewhat broken compared to those in Linux. I wrote a quick
  sorting program of my own which explicitly set it's locale and tested
  it using both the en_US.UTF-8 and C locales on my machine (Mac OS
  10.6.3) and a university machine (Linux, FC11?). While sorting works as expected on the linux machine, ("a B c" vs "B a c"), the mac always
  sorts them as "B a c".

Source: http://ask.metafilter.com/130292/CaseInsensitive-LS-on-Mac-OS-X

ORIGINAL ANSWER

This command does not sort dot files, but shows additional directory listings

ls -f1

I got close to this:

.
..
.stuff
foo
Foobar
MyStuff
test.txt


how to sync videos from PC hard disk to iPhone with itunes? I don't know how to sync videos using itunes, it is appreciated if you tell step by step to get videos from pc to iphone.
IOS version is : 7.0.4
itunes version : 12.0.1.26
thanks guys

I assume you have the video's you want to sync to your iPhone allready in iTunes. When not, you can drag the video's into itunes.

Connect you device with the lightning/30-pins cable to your pc and open iTunes if it doesn't pop up automatically.

At the upper left corner there should be a small iPhone/iPad icon. Click on the icon to view more information about it.
In the left panel is a menu called video (or something like that)
check the checkbox that you want to sync video's with your device. When the video's are correctly loaded into iTunes they should popup here.
select the video('s) you want to have on your device.
in the lower right corner click on apply/sync (if i'm right)

This will start syncing the video's from iTunes to your device.

When i'm right the video's can be found in the app called "video's".


Cannot dismiss Trust this Computer even with the cable disconnected I plugged my iPhone to my Mac using an USB cable and noticed the Trust this Computer dialog was randomly flashing. I couldn't tap any of the two buttons (Trust / Don't Trust) and I assumed it was because the modal was not staying on for long enough.

I tried a few more cables, I assumed they were just bad. The one I used first I only ever use for charging, so I figured its data lines were broken. The other cables didn't help, the modal was still flashing which each one. It's possible they were all bad, it was a mix of the official and 3rd party ones (I tried like five) and both kinds are known to suck.

However, trying the last cable, I noticed the modal stopped flashing and stayed on. The buttons still didn't react to tap, so I disconnected the cable figuring that it will disappear and I'll reconnect and try again with yet another cable.

However, the modal didn't dismiss itself after the cable got disconnected. Instead, it stayed on, unresponsive. I can't use the area outside of the modal to do anything, I can't even slide up to unlock (this is an iPhone X) and FaceID failed too many times and now I need to enter my unlock code, which I can't do, because the modal is over the numpad.

I wanted to restart the phone, but iPhone X reset is volume up, volume down, power and then slide on the screen. I can't use the shutdown slider because the fricking modal is over it, too!

Is my only hope now to let the phone discharge enough so that it dies and recharging it to restart it to make the modal go away? And if so, can I make the phone discharge faster? I can't even turn on the torch and tapping the screen to keep it awake and using energy gets really old really fast. I always hated these undismissable modals, but I never expected it was mutual.

I found out that the slider is not necessary. Pressing and releasing volume up, the pressing and releasing volume down and the long-pressing the power button turned the phone off.


Change all photo durations at once in iMovie 10.1.1 I'm doing a quick project in iMovie but it's anything less than quick! I have imported all the pictures I want, no videos/clips. I have added them into the project and want them ALL to be the same length. I can edit them individually but not all at the same time. How can i do this?

There was a suggestion on another site:
Window->Show Adjustments Bar

ALAS! This option does not exist in my copy I guess. I click Window and Show Adjustments Bar is not present. I want to change them all at once! This will help ALL future projects.

Click EDIT
Select In Movie
Photos

Then go to "i" top right and select time.  Seems to be min limit of 0.1sec

Do the same for transitions to remove.


Do iOS Contacts work with Prius car navigation systems? According to the manual for my Prius, the contacts from a paired BT device, including an iPhone or iPad, should appear under the "Phonebook" tab in the car's navigation system, with entries containing addresses enabled for selection as destinations. This much works as expected with my (successfully paired) iPhone 4S running iOS 5.1. But none of these entries work as destinations: selecting any of them results in an error stating that the address is "not navigable".

Is iOS 5.1 capable of sharing "navigable" address information from the address book over Bluetooth? If so, is this a known bug with either iOS 5.1 or the Toyota navigation system pairs with an iPhone?

BT Phone/Address systems use different Bluetooth "Stacks" or APIs. You have to check compatibility for each one at the mobile vendor's site or through third party enthusiast sites. Sadly, this level of detail is often beyond your average auto parts department because as an extension of sales they will simply say, "Yah, sure. It's Bluetooth, it'll work." For example our 2005 Prius could not speak Apple Address Bluetooth, but our 2012 Chrysler can.

Sadly, you won't get much milage (pardon the pun) out of hacks and jailbreaks because it comes down to the low level Bluetooth (sometimes at the chip level) that the equipment uses.

Also, to be an iOS compatible BT device, the device has to go thru the process of MFI certification.

So, again. you'll have to call your auto support line and in the case of the Prius; prepare for disappointment.

In the case where you have been able to exchange address book entries, you will likely need to make sure that the address book entry is in the right format. (Country, state, label, etc) Again... check with expert forums on that.

In the case of a Prius, I stongly recommend: PriusChat


Message shows as delivered only on one device What does it mean if I send a text to someone and it does not say delivered on my iPhone but it says delivered on my iPad? Does it mean the received it but not on their phone. I'm confused.

It probably just means that your two devices (iPhone and iPad) are not synced correctly with one another. My guess is that it doesn't actively search for whether the recipient received the message, only gets a "delivered" message on the device you sent it from. You could probably do a test check with texting a friend or family member's phone and compare how it responds from sending test messages from both devices.


macOS: saving images from the clipboard using `pngpaste` is faded and white When I take a screenshot on macOS, and use pngpaste a1.png to save it, the image is faded:

This only happens when I take a fullscreen screenshot using CMD+SHIFT+3, and not with CMD+SHIFT+4.

Using these instead works fine:
function pngpaste() {
    local name="${1}"
    ensure-args name @MRET
    ensure isDarwin @MRET

    [[ "$name" =~ '\.png$' ]] || name+=.png

    osascript -e "tell application \"System Events\" to ¬
                  write (the clipboard as «class PNGf») to ¬
                          (make new file at folder \"$(pwd)\" with properties ¬
                                  {name:\"${name}\"})"
}
function jpgpaste() {
    local name="${1}"
    ensure-args name @MRET
    ensure isDarwin @MRET

    [[ "$name" =~ '\.jpg$' ]] || name+=.jpg

    osascript -e "tell application \"System Events\" to ¬
                  write (the clipboard as JPEG picture) to ¬
                          (make new file at folder \"$(pwd)\" with properties ¬
                                  {name:\"${name}\"})"
}

Usage:
pngpaste a1.png


Magic Mouse / Wireless keyboard not fully functional after Archive & Install I'm having multiple issues with my 2008-model MacBook Pro.  I took it to the Genius Bar and they suggested an Archive & Install, which I did.  But now I have a new issue.

I have the wireless/bluetooth Apple Magic Mouse and Wireless Keyboard.  Since the Archive & Install, neither is working properly.  The mouse tracks and clicks, but the "touchpad" features like scrolling and swiping don't register at all.  Also, the function key on the wireless keyboard doesn't seem to do anything.

If I go to the System Preferences and select Mouse, then "setup Bluetooth Mouse" I get a "Searching..." and a spinning wheel forever.  The mouse is paired but I can't configure the Magic features.

Similarly for Keyboard.  It's paired, and I've clicked "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys" so that if I want to use the keyboard to change the volume or something I should be able to use the combination Fn-F11.  But both F11 and Fn-F11 do an Exposé thing.  If I click "Set up Bluetooth Keyboard..." I also get "Searching..." and the eternally spinning wheel.

If I go to the Keyboard Viewer I see a keyboard layout that looks like the wireless one, but as soon as I press a key the Keyboard Viewer changes to a layout that looks more like the extended keyboard.  Pressing Fn changes the keycaps on the ⌫ key to ⌦ , and the arrow keys change, too, but actually pressing these key combinations doesn't do what it says it will do: Fn-⌫ and ⌫ are doing the same thing.

Casting the "put to sleep/wake up" and "restart" spells don't seem to have any effect.  Any clues?

The "software update" spell solved it.  I had a number of updates come down last night and everything seems to work now.


Disable automatic "ligature" handling in PDF/Preview on El Capitan I may have found a serious bug in EC...

As a college student I frequently need to copy and paste short passages out of PDF documents into other documents (e.g. for quoting). Previously, on Yosemite, I simply used Preview to do this. Preview is awesome because its AI algorithms almost always properly determine where paragraph breaks are. Just about every other PDF viewer I've used simply puts hard returns at every visual line break in the PDF.

On EC however, certain common "ligature" characters (i.e. two or more characters rendered together, such as "Th", "ffi", "ff", "fi", "ft" - these are the ones I've found so far) end up copying as blank spaces. In other words, if I have a PDF containing text that reads:

"This is different from those who can afford to pay for college first; such students may find it less difficult by at least fifty percent."

I'll get this output when I copy and paste this text:

" is is di erent from those who can a ord to pay for college  rst; such students may  nd it less di cult by at least   y percent."

This is clearly not the desired output!

When I slowly select the text character by character I can clearly see that the selection is moving over all of the letters in the ligature at the same time - in other words, it is treating the ligature as if it is one character.

I tested the PDF on a lab machine at school which is still running Yosemite and it did not exhibit this behavior so this is very definitely a bug introduced in EC.

Is there a setting perhaps via defaults that I can use to completely disable this behavior?

(As a side note, I found out this bug after turning in a paper and having a professor ask why my quotes looked so funny... I didn't proofread as carefully as I should have, but still.)

Are you sure it isn't a simple font substitution error? What font is the PDF rendered in? Do you have that font installed? Does the lab machine have it installed? Does the document you are pasting into use the same font as the source PDF?

I did a simple test using your sample text, placed in a Word document (with ligatures enabled), then saved as a PDF using either Apple's in-built PDF or Acrobat Pro.

The original text, cut and pasted from Word:
“This is different from those who can afford to pay for college first; such students may find it less difficult by at least fifty percent.”

Apple PDF, cut and pasted from Preview:
“This is different from those who can afford to pay for college first; such students may find it less difficult by at least fi,y percent.”

Adobe PDF, cut and pasted from Preview:
“This is different from those who can afford to pay for college first; such students may find it less difficult by at least fi�y percent.”

Adobe PDF, cut and pasted from Acrobat Pro:
“This is different from those who can afford to pay for college first; such students may find it less
difficult by at least fiy percent.”

All of the above attempts pasted correctly, with the exception of the "fty" ligature, which differed in rendering based upon the PDF creation and rendering method(s) used. This character likely didn't translate correctly into plain text because I have enabled more than just basic ligatures in Word (optional and discretionary, but not historical).

All in all, it looks to me to be nothing but a font encoding or substitution error. Remember that a PDF document will have any necessary font characters embedded in the file itself, but when pasting, the target font will not necessarily match the source, especially if you are using a system with a clean install (meaning fewer fonts).


How can I prevent stuck keys when VNC into OS X El Capitan loses focus? tl;dr: I'd like to avoid OS X thinking the [Command] key is being held down when I [Alt][Tab] away from a Windows TightVNC session, or at least get the [Command] key to auto-release after a period of time.

I'm using TightVNC on a Windows 8 x64 box to access a Mac OS X El Capitan box through standard built-in OS X Screen Sharing.

The combination works great for my purposes, with one exception: when TightVNC has focus and I hit [Alt][Tab] on the Windows box to switch focus to another application, the OS X understandably sees the [Alt] key go down, but never come back up.

Because the Windows [Alt] key maps to the OS X [Command] key, the OS X box is left thinking I never released the [Command] key.

Therefore, when I return to the TightVNC session a minute, hour, or month later and begin typing, the results are often surprising and sometimes bad, because OS X still thinks the [Command] key is depressed.

Is there a way I can avoid this situation without relying on changing my habits, which hasn't yet worked out for me after a year of occasionally getting burned by this? :)

I'm thinking the a good approach would be something running under OS X that watches for the [Command] key being depressed for several seconds, and forcibly "unsticks" it.  Such a gimmick wouldn't create any problems for my workflow, but I don't know of a way to accomplish it.

Best solution I've found is to click the blank space in the menu bar, and often.  The left Alt key is mapped to command on my Mac from this PC, and I'll Alt-tab in windows or in my viewer and the Alt key sticks, so all clicks are Command-clicks in the Mac.  So I quite often just Alt-click the menu bar to clear that stuck key.


Switch between images in a folder I'd like to tell an older person, how to open images from his USB stick or SD card and continue to the next images in the containing folder very easy.

On Windows, he can plug in the memory device, wait until an explorer opens and double click an image. Then he can use the arrow keys left/right to show the other images in this directory.

On OS X, you can open a finder after attaching, double click an image but in preview.app, which opens then, you can not navigate to the other pictures. Another option is to select all images (CMD + A) and drag and drop them to the preview.app-icon in the dock. But thats very error-prone if he accidentally rise the mouse button while dragging.

It's not a solution to import the photos in any application like iPhoto, Lightroom or so for this case, because the Mac is just for viewing them. They are always imported later on another computer. I'm afraid of the suspense, which files are the most up to date ones or to clean his Mac every two weeks.

I'd like to have a simple tool for that, I can install. Ideally, it will pre-load the next pictures I can navigate to, to speed things up. Windows does so.

Use Quick Look. Select the first image, then press Space. The arrow keys can then be used to navigate through the images.


How do I burn a single ( > 7GB) file to multiple DVDs? I have single file that is 7GB that I want to burn to multiple DVDs. Is there a way to do this that's built into Mac OS X?

When I try through the finder, it informs me there is too much data and tells me to remove files and try again--so I realize it doesn't work that way. I've seen information about doing it through a shell script, but those seem too "Unix"-y, and this is something I'd like to be able to hand to a friend to copy.

Failing anything built-in, can you recommend software (paid or free) to accomplish this task?

The built-in way is to use the split command in the Terminal, which, yes, is Unix-y. Alternatively, .rar files can split a single file into multiple files. You might check out SimplyRAR for this route.


What is the default wm for mac I am sorry if this is a stupid question, but which window manager does macOS use?

There is no separate window manager on macOS, the windowing environment is part of the OS itself.


Cannot partition external drive I  have an external drive that I just cannot partition. It's blank, so i have used Disk Utility and diskutil to erase, verify,repair etc., but nothing works.
It gives me this sort of thing:
Error: -69845: File system verify or repair failed
Underlying error: 8: POSIX reports: Exec format error

Trying fsck on the external drive does nothing useful but returns a bunch of hex with some recognizable text:
fsck_hfs -y /dev/disk2
returns a very amusing "got" and then 2 lines later "U"
fsck_hfs -y /dev/disk2s1
text is "Non system disk Press any key to reboot"
I'm not sure where i can go from here.
I attempted to use GParted and received the error
The backup GPT table is corrupt, but the primary appears OK, so that will be used.
I then removed the GPT using GDisk and changed the partition table to MBR.
Then I had no issues creating multiple partitions under MBR, but any attempt to go back to GPT led to the message above re backup table and failure to create multiple partitions under GPT.
I have created a single HFS+ using GParted and will see how that travels.
FINAL UPDATE - I have declared it dead.

The error that your getting...
Exec format error

Is a response from the SATA controller (USB to SATA bridge) to diskutil that there was an error when you tried to format your drive.  This points to a failing drive.
fsck is a utility to fix A corrupted file system and will not have sny effect here.  Looking at it from a simplified perspective, in order for fsck to work, you have to have an existing filesystem in place for it to fix.  formatting a disk is the act of wiping away whatever was there in order to install a new filesystem.  It’s like bulldozing your property to build a house. In this case, the guy doing it reported a problem that prevents you from doing it (they found a fault line).  Running fsck at this point would be like calling the plumber to come fix the pipes because you can’t clear away your property.

External Hard Drive no longer working

Basically, you need to replace that drive.
From your further attempts:

Then I had no issues creating multiple partitions under MBR, but any attempt to go back to GPT led to the message above re backup table and failure to create multiple partitions under GPT.

This further lends credibility to the diagnosis that your drive is failing. Where the tables are stored is in different places on the drive; the “whole” drive doesn’t have to be completely inaccessible for the drive to be considered bad.
I’ve seen this many times: folks will spend countless hours trying to get a drive to format that keeps generating errors. Then, they’re successful once, get it formatted, copy data over, do work, then suffer a catastrophic failure because the drive was dead (dying) to begin with.
Formatting a drive is a super easy task. If it takes you multiple utilities and days of effort, something is very wrong.  Don’t risk your data; get a new drive.


Disk space lost after quitting disk partition My MacBook Pro came with a 500 GB hard disk, and I used about 250 GB.
I was trying to get a new logic partition using the OSX disk utility, and then my Mac Book Pro froze and I had to quit the Disk Utility.

Then the available space just disappeared.

Disk Utility shows that the logic partition has a total capacity of 498.88 GB, available 10.48 GB, used 243.75 GB, which does not add up.
Disk Utility shows that the hard drive has a total capacity of 499.25 GB, available 19 MB, used 499.23 GB.
running df -h shows

Filesystem     Size   Used  Avail Capacity  iused   ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1     237Gi  227Gi  9.8Gi    96%   59509256      2559899 96%   /

Things I have tried:

all check and repair functions in Disk Utility
fsck -f
reboot and cmd+R and open the command line  tool, but I cannot mount /dev/disk0 with -t hfs. It tells me resource busy

You probably tried to manipulate a CoreStorage volume with Disk Utility. Core Storage volumes are built after enabling File Vault 2, creating a Fusion Drive or often after updating to Yosemite.

If you don't have a second internal hard disk attached, disk0 is usually mounted to /. In your case disk1 is mounted to / which is a typical hint for Core Storage Volume Group - in case of an internal Fusion Drive disk2 is mounted to / and disk0 and disk1 usually don't appear entering df -h.

Open Terminal and enter diskutil cs list to get all CoreStorage objects in a tree-like view.

Use this comprehensive list of documented and undocumented commands to manipulate your CoreStorage Volume Group.


How to prevent the Mail app from restoring its previous state? The Mail app on my iPhone 5s crashes while launching. I assume that it is trying to restore its last state. Unfortunately that last state was what originally crashed it. So restoring that state results in a Mail app that will always crash on start up. What can I do to prevent the Mail app from restoring its last state on start up?

I already tried the following:

disabling all Mail accounts
send myself a mail to launch the Mail app from lock-screen
closing the Mail app
rebooting the phone
contacted Apple support - only to find out that restoring an old backup is the only thing they know will help

I do not want to restore from a backup, because it is probably not possible to restore the Mail app backup only.

I finally fixed the issue without data loss. Here is what I did:

Created a backup from the iPhone while the Mail app was still broken
Run Restore iPhone... within iTunes (I tried Restore Backup... which did not fix the issue)
After the iPhone was reset to its factory defaults I set it up using the backup I did in 1.


How to clone an entire disk with Lion (+Rescue) & Bootcamp Partitions I have a faulty (hardware-wise) drive in my 2011 macbook pro and will probably get a replacement drive from the vendor, but I was wondering whether there is (by now) a way (tool) to clone the disk completely, including the (main) lion-, its rescue- and finally the windows7 bootcamp partition without having to completely re-install both systems?

I know this is not a fully integrated solution, but you can use the tools available on Mac OS X and on the Mac OS install DVD/FlashDrive. You will have to restore both systems separately, but it will save you from having to reinstall everything in Windows and OS X.

Note: If your drive is phisically damaged you might end up with corrupted data or being unable to clone your partitions.

There is a thread here explaining how you can save and restore your Bootcamp partition using only Disk utility and BootCamp: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=997823

It goes along the lines of (parts are just copied):

Use Disk Utility to backup your bootcamp partition to an external drive.
You can also use Disk Utility to backup your Mac OS partition if you didn't use Time Machine.
Install/Restore Mac OS to a new Hard Drive
Use Bootcamp to setup your drive for windows and to allocate the new space.
Use Disk Utility to restore your .dmg image to the new Boot Camp partition you just created. Be sure to run IMAGES --> SCAN IMAGE FOR RESTORE in Disk Utility before restoring. You may need to unmount the Boot Camp partition in Disk Utility before it begins to restore.
Use fdisk in Terminal to mark the Boot Camp partition active. First, enter the fdisk MBR edit mode by running the following:

$sudo fdisk -e /dev/disk0

Ignore the error "could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0: No such file or directory". Then, determine which partition number to mark active by running the following (in bold):

fdisk: 1> show

Your windows partition should be #3 labeled "Win95 FAT-32". Now, mark the partition active:

fdisk: 1> flag 3
Partition 3 marked active.
fdisk:*1> write
Device could not be accessed exclusively.
A reboot will be needed for changes to take effect. OK? [n] y
Writing MBR at offset 0.
fdisk: 1> exit

Now, reboot and hold the OPTION key and Windows should be listed as a bootable option."


Can I open a PDF file that is possibly locked on mac? I have one book that I purchased online, and the company seems to allow users to read the book only through their app (which I'm not 100% sure, but the error message below implies it).
However, I could no longer access the account so I could not read it on app. The book data is under ~/Library/ApplicationSupport as PDF file. There is another file with an extension .dat on the same directory.
But when I tried opening the PDF file, the dialog appeared, saying it may be damaged or use a file format that preview doesn't recognize. I tried installing Adobe Acrobat Reader but there appears the same error message.
Is there any way to read the PDF file, possibly on iBooks?

Some vendors of PDFs do encrypt them in third-party DRM, which requires the use of a special reader, or a plug-in for Adobe Reader/Acrobat. (Such as FileOpen).
Realistically, you need to ask the vendor about whether the files they supply can be read on standard PDF readers, and what to do about recovering access to your account.
It's arguable whether such files are 'true' PDFs. The first four characters of a 'normal' PDF file should be %PDF, so you can open a PDF file in a text editor and see if the files you've found are indeed PDFs. (Of course, it's possible for them to be incomplete or damaged even if they have this header.)
I'm not sure whether iBooks can handle DRM: It's likely just the same PDF engine as is used in Preview.


Add access to the macbook camera for the terminal application I am trying to run a OpenCV tutorial that uses the cv.VideoCapture(0). This does require permission from terminal to access the camera. Here is a blog description showing that they see the terminal app included in the Applications list:

But for me the Terminal is not provided as an optional App:

That is actually not at all surprising. But then how to add Terminal?  The apple docs only show this:  https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-access-to-your-camera-on-mac-mchlf6d108da/mac :

No mention of how to add other apps is included.  So how to add Terminal?  (Actually I would also be interested in adding for iTerm2 ..)

You can force your terminal to request access to your Camera.
I used the following commands (these are meant to click a picture from your MacBook's camera):
ffmpeg -f avfoundation -list_devices true -i ""
List the devices attached to your computer. Get the device ID of your camera

ffmpeg -ss 0.5 -f avfoundation -i "0" -t 1 capture.jpg
Capture the photo.

Although this did not click a picture (returned an error), but it did force the terminal to ask permission to access the Camera.
P.S: You need to have the ffmpeg package installed. You can do brew install ffmpeg
I got these commands from this stackoverflow answer
Update by Question Asker  This does work and here is the screenshot


iMac 2006 stuck at grey screen with apple and spinner I have an imac 2006 running snow leopard.  The matte screen is great on the eyes so I found a few articles on upgrading the hard drive and processor to a core 2 duo (had the core duo) that might allow me to emulate 64bit and run the newer mac OS versions. (http://lowendmac.com/2016/cpu-upgrade-options-for-2006-imacs/)

I've completed the hardware upgrades (no software updates)and the iMac starts up but gets stuck on the grey screen with an apple and spinner.  Using a MacBook pro on the same network I can see the imac under my shared devices, I can connect to it and view all my files and applications.

I tried all the following and couldn't boot:

-from the snow leopard install disk

-safe boot

-recovery boot

-c held down

-apple hardware test (holding d)

I tried a nvram/pram reset, no change.

Anyone seen something like this before and have any ideas. I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to fix this issue.

Updating with specs:
2GB RAM installed
Original CPU Intel Core Duo T2400 1.83 2MB 667 MHz GHz Socket M
New CPU Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 2.33GHz 4MB 667 MHz Socket M

I removed the new hard drive and re-installed the original drive. It booted up with no issues. I connected the new drive externally and checked it under Disk Utility. It appears the hd was corrupt and needed repair. I verified the new drive when I originally cloned it so not sure where things went wrong. Anyways I erased and recloned the drive. All is good.


Crop multiple pages in a pdf file I can use Preview app to select a region and crop a page. Can I do the same cropping for a whole pages in pdf? Are there tools (commercial or free) available for it?

I got a hint that works from this page

Using the Sidebar, make it Thumbnails view, and Select All pages (Cmd-A)
Select the area to crop using Tools > Rectangular Select
Do the Tools > Crop (Cmd-K)


Transfer data from one iMac to another I have an iMac that sounds as though the hard drive is about to fail. It has the following spec:

I then have a newer iMac with the following spec:

Is there a way I can transfer all the data from the old iMac to the new one without it affecting any settings or adding accounts etc?

Essentially I want to treat the new iMac like a portable hard drive as I don't have access to one.

I'm going to replace the hard drive on the old iMac then transfer the data back as if nothing had happened!

p.s In a way I want the new iMac to act like a time machine for the old one.

Approach this in either of two ways, depending on the size of your old drive and your new drive.  The second is quite involved and requires a lot of technical know how.

Method one:

Buy a new drive with an enclosure. Replace the failing drive with the new one.  Put your old drive in the enclosure, install Mac OS X on the fresh drive and transfer your data from the old drive.

However that is not what you requested.

Method two:

The second method is to use the dd command and ssh via terminal. The two machines will need to be on the same network, and will need to be able to see each other.

I've looked up both your machines on everymac.com and will assume that your dying drive is 500GB and the new one has 1TB.

You will need more than 600GB of free space on the new machine for this to work and you need to know what you are doing.

You need to download and burn a copy of any selfbooting Linux distribution (I have tested this with an old copy of Ubuntu 12.04 I have lying around).

Once you have the disk burned you need to boot your dying machine with the DVD/CD you just created by holding the alt key while your machine reboots, then selecting the media in your DVD drive to boot from.

You will need to set up your old iMac on your network, I would use cables rather than wifi (because there is less to go wrong and it is easier).

Make sure both your old and new machines can "see" each other via ping.

On your mac open System Preferences>Network>Ethernet.

Configure the IPs:
I used the IP 10.10.0.1 and subnet mask of 255.255.0.0, on the "Linux" mac I used 10.10.0.2 with the same subnet mask. From the command line on either machine you should be able to ping 10.10.0.1 and 10.10.0.2 before you proceed to the next step.

Enable remote login on your new machine.

Find the partition on your old mac you want to copy via Linux command line.  This is most probably going to be /dev/sda

You will need to be root on your "Linux" machine so do sudo -s

From your old machine (Linux) issue the command (via the shell):

dd if=/dev/sda | gzip -1 - | ssh user@hostname dd of=image.gz

This assumes that the drive on your old machine you want to copy is called /dev/sda, you will need to replace user with your username on your new machine, and hostname is the IP address of your new machine.

The command will take a long time as it copies your old disk perfectly to a new image on your working iMac.

Once you have replaced the old disk on the failing machine you can restore the image by booting Linux again and issuing the following command:

ssh user@hostname dd if=image.gz | gunzip -1 - | dd of=/dev/sda

This will take the created image and put it on your new harddrive.


My Macbook Air won't connect to the internet I have a Macbook Air I bought in November 2011, v 10.7.4 and I have issues connecting to the internet. Though the wifi symbol shows that I have a strong connection, I have no internet access. The only way to get it is to shut down my laptop, and reset my router by turning the power off and waiting for a bit then turning it back on. I know I don't have a problem with my router/internet access as other users in my flat have no trouble. Anyone have any idea what the trouble is?

Things to check:

If you are using WIFI only, you need to set the Service Order and the first will be your WIFI.

From System Preferences > Network

Then Click "Set Service Order"

Drag and drop the WIFI connection to the top of the order list

On your Network Settings > Wifi > Advanced > DNS, add your Router IP there.

HTH


Apple Pay clashes with other cards in the phone case I have Apple Pay enabled on my phone. In the phone case is a card that supports contactless payments. When using the phone case (containing both a phone and card) the phone seems to always have preference over the cards.

This seems to be a known behaviour.

But I was wondering if there is some technical background for this, or could it be that the phone when enables the NFC takes over the cards due to strong signal, etc?

It's called card clash & is a very real issue.

If you carry more than one NFC device in the same container, you don't know which one is going to pay. Most payment devices I've seen in London, UK[1] will detect 'more than one card' & refuse to proceed until you offer up a single card, but you don't know if that will be true for all payment devices. There is a definite possibility of paying twice in some circumstances.

For an iPhone with Apple Pay then nominally, unless you were actively triggering it with Touch or Face ID, simply offering up a wallet wouldn't trigger Apple Pay.
If you are intentionally triggering Apple Pay but have another NFC card in close proximity, then you really don't know which will actually pay.

The current advice is simply to never keep multiple NFC devices in the same container, or take out the single device/card to offer up to the machine. It's the only way to be certain.

[1]The entire public transportation system in London is powered by NFC cards. You can't get on a bus with any other method, no cash, no tickets. Trains & the tube you can pre-pay & get a magnetic strip paper ticket [pretty much a tourist-only structure], but the barriers are otherwise entirely contactless.
That means more than 30 million journeys per day have to be handled seamlessly - which is why the 'clash detectors' are pretty good on TfL.

Conversely, some small retail devices are known to take both payments on occasion - our local pub has had to remove their contactless system recently, until they can install a better system, for precisely that reason.


Can you read and write from and to APFS under High Sierra to FAT external hard-drives? Like many I have backups on external hard-drives, some are in HFS and others are in FAT32 or NTFS.

What happens to those backups with APFS ? I won't be able to access, read and write to or from them if I update to High Sierra to get APFS ? Thanks !

What happens to those backups with APFS?

Nothing happens.

Only the main internal drive is converted to APFS (and its contents are preserved anyways).

You will be able to use your external drives as before.


VPN with two mac users I have two users accounts on my computer, one needs to stay connected to a VPN while the other account, both being logged in, is not supposed to use the VPN. OS X 10.9 seems to only give me global VPN access or none. Does anyone know a solution?

I have a very dirty work around. So I hope someone will come up with a better solution.

What I did is setup a Virtual Box virtual machine with some minimalistic Linux that can do VPN. Once the virtual machine is connected the user can use the VPN inside the machine (but other users not). Since I needed to use some apps in the host system I finally set up a proxy in the virtual machine that would forward my VPN users data.

As I said dirty...


How to fix my MacBook Pro that goes straight into sleep/hibernate? I have a MacBook Pro (mid-2009) that I just installed Mountain Lion on. After the install everything appeared ok, but a day later it goes straight into sleep/hibernate whenever I turn it on.

This happens even when I press Command+R during startup - before it gets to the menu screen it hibernates.

What can I try to fix this?

Before doing an SMC Reset as suggested by @Thecafremo, I decided to clear the PRAM/NVRAM (because the SMC Reset page says: "an SMC reset should only be attempted after all other standard troubleshooting has been performed")

This seems to have been enough to bring the MacBook back to life at least for the moment.

Clearing the PRAM/NVRAM is achieved by holding down Command+Option+P+R during boot before the gray screen appears and letting the startup go thru three chimes before releasing the keys.


"Do Not Disturb" on iOS iMessage does not work When I mute a group conversation in Messages (by enabling “Do Not Disturb” in the Details screen of the thread), I still get a notification with every new message. This happens regardless of whether everyone in the group is using an iPhone or mixed (non-iOS and iOS). This also happens when my phone is both locked and unlocked.

I am running iOS 10.3.3, but it's been happening for some time. Is there a workaround to fix this?

This is how Do Not Disturb was designed for text conversations. This feature blocks sound notifications and that’s it.

In fact, it works the same way the global Do Not Disturb works, with one major difference: going into Settings → Do Not Disturb and setting Silence to Always does NOT block banners or alerts for muted threads. The only way to disable those is by disabling them for ALL incoming text messages, or by activating the global Do Not Disturb.

If you are displeased with Apple’s implementation of this feature and believe it should work differently, I strongly advise you to voice your feedback to Apple.

Many people would agree with you, as a quick search will reveal.


iPad with retina display? I'm about to buy an iPad, but I don't want to, if in 6 months, the new version has cooler features like retina display.

Is there a chance for it to happen? Or should I buy it now, and just, enjoy it for the next months.

Maybe the right question to ask is: is current featureset of the gadget worth the money over the expected period (6-18 months) until the new version arrives ? If yes, go ahead. Waiting for better improved version may also mean you never get one as there is always going to be better version.

What works for me is skip-one, buy-one approach, getting every second update. You can decide whether you start with version one or two: I had same dilema with iPhone: I skipped the version one, bought 3G, skipped 3GS and now considering getting iPhone 4 when it arrives to Canada.

With iPad, I bought one right away as I waited for eBook reader that works for me and iPad is definitely one. I will very likey skip iPad 2 and likely get iPad 3 2-3 years from now.


Can't connect my Mac Pro4 to a Wifi I've always had an Ethernet cable to connect to, until now. There is a wireless Internet signal at my location but I think this computer may not have the hardware to connect? I don't see the antenna icon that would normally appear in the bar at the top on Wifi equipped machines.

What do I need to purchase for this computer so it can connect to a wifi?

To see if your Mac Pro4 has a wifi device installed, go to System Preferences > Network and see if Wi-Fi appears in the list of connection types:

If you do have a wifi device installed, you can turn on its menu bar icon by clicking this checkbox:


iOS MDM Monitoring Internet Search History My school have asked the students to bring their iPads and use them for school purposes.

The IT technicians have installed an MDM on our iPads and I receive this message...

Does this mean that the school can monitor my search history?

What else does it monitor?

Also, I have included some screenshots of the profiles that are installed...

Your school doesn't need MDM to log all your network activity. Nothing about iOS or macOS or any other OS can prevent them from logging:

Every DNS lookup you make
Setting up a web proxy to save all the search terms
Inspecting the contents of packets to look at what sort of traffic you are generating.

Being able to control the configuration profiles means the IT can make it easier to push your device to a specific web proxy or ensure your network traffic goes to a different device than others, so it might make it a bit easier to manage traffic, but anyone that knows how to run the MDM will know how to do the above activities.

The one big dividing line is "supervised" - I would be sure you talk with your parents and school leadership to carry a supervised device with you. That's a GPS beacon that could report your location at any times you have a working network connection to the MDM. Hopefully there are strong protections on access to that information and some audibility to ensure it is only being used properly.

When a device is not supervised, you can opt out of that management and remove the MDM but you will also have to face whatever sanctions or policies the organization has established for use of their network. When a device is not supervised, you may be able to opt out of network configurations that make it easy for the school to track things.

When a device is supervised, you no longer have that control and can only choose to power on that device or power off that device.

The rest of the profiles are routine and don't change with supervision on/off status.

The MDM profiles are quite clear about what they allow and you can take each one pretty narrowly. As you can see Apple explicitly forces the MDM provider to tell you if it can "list all profiles" or has elevated "add/remove profiles" so there's not much nefarious snooping that can be done on the iOS side that you won't be able to inspect.

I would sit with a teacher and ask them to walk through that part with you and discuss the social and privacy concerns. Being engaged is a good thing and you will probably need to look at each item and really think about the benefit and harm of going along with the setup and then make your choice what to do.

Good luck and be glad you're on an OS that respects your right to know what's happening with control and your information.


Multiple copies of files in need of deletion I have maintained backups of 'All My Files' on an external secure shell card and have overwritten the originals several times.  Now there are multiple copies of several files wherein they are labeled 'example_1', 'example_2', 'example_3' and so on.

Is there any way to differentiate between these copies and the originals so that I can delete the extras and free the space they're taking up without damaging my computer's functionality?

I'm fairly certain some of the copied files are possibly data files and other necessary items.

Here is a screenshot of what I am describing:

Firstly, a better way to make backups would be to use Time Machine. This will maintain a backup that can be restored, as it was backed up.

Simply copying files to another disk is a fine backup method, but copying files from All My Files will copy them "out of context". All My Files is a sort of "smart folder" that dynamically displays documents from your Mac or iCloud Drive. This view can be useful for your viewing & access. But this view of those files does not show any folder hierarchy for where those files are actually stored.

I notice that one such file that you've copied is __init__.py, which is a special file for the Python language. I'm guessing it originally was located in a folder for, perhaps, a cloned GitHub repository? Copying this file to a "backup" is fine, but for it to be useful, it needs to be kept with the other files/folders it was with.

One of the most important elements of making backups is that the backed up data can later be restored in a usable state, as it was originally arranged. This is why I'm recommending making backups with a tool, such as Time Machine. Or, if you'd rather backing up a smaller set of things from your computer, for limited space available on your backup media, you should not make those backups from a dynamic view such as All My Files. But instead, make backups of the literal folders of things you'd like not to loose.

Now, as far as all those duplicates, in certain situations of copying files, Mac OS will increment a number "at the end of the filename". So, for the example of __init__.py, the duplicates all are named __init__NN.py. (The files with additional/incremented numbers at the end, before any last .name are extra copies.)


How can I fix Lion Mail's search functionality? I made a clean install of Lion, configured Mobile Me in System Preferences.

So, when I opened Mail, my Mobile Me account was already configured and it started downloading my mails.

Everything worked fine except search. I can't search among every mails. The only search I can do using is "from" or "to" a contact of my address book.

Searching the web, I discovered some potential solutions that I tried unsuccessfully. Here's a list of what I already done :

repairing permissions
disabling Spotlight and re-enabling Spotlight for my whole disk (via the preference pane & via the terminal)
deleting the "envelope-index" file and get mail re-index all my mails
rebuilding each mailboxes
deleting ~/Library/Mail, ~/Library/Mail Downloads, ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.* in order to start over
starting again from my ~/Library/Mail folder from my Snow Leopard installation.
starting again without configuring Mobile Me in system preferences but directly in Mail (as different computer user)

None of these actions fixed my problem.

Have you got any ideas?

Edit :

I made a new clean install of Lion on an external hard drive, configured my Mobile Me account directly when opening Mail.app and everything worked fine. I tried to copy Mail.app-related files to my main installation of Lion, but that didn't work. My latest solution would be install Lion again on my internal hard drive, but I would prefer not to do so. I'm still hoping there's another solution.

I had the same problem and it turned out the index was broken.

A rebuild didn't work for me so I had to quit Mail and type (in the terminal):

cd ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/
rm -rf Envelope\ Index Envelope\ Index-shm  Envelope\ Index-wal

After that, reopening the Mail app took some time for the index to rebuild but it fixed the search index.

Thanks to MacRumors for the answer


How to stop mac from moving windows from external display to laptop when opening laptop lid I have an external monitor connected to my MBP via HDMI. I can use my laptop in 'clamshell' mode, where I close the laptop's lid and work off of my external monitor.
The problem I have is that when I open the laptop's lid some of my windows move off the external monitor to the laptop. Some trial and error shows that if a window is on the laptop when I close the lid, that window will reappear on the laptop if I reopen the lid, even if I move the window around while it is on the external monitor.
How can I prevent my mac from moving windows to the laptop. I want all windows to stay on the external monitor until I physically move them to the laptop, and once I close the lid they should stay on the external monitor even if I re-open the lid.

Welcome to Ask Different. I think your experimentation has you on the right track. If you drag a window to the external monitor before closing the lid on your laptop, it should stay on the external monitor after opening the lid again. You may also want to check which monitor you have as primary - that's where your desktop icons will first appear. In System Preferences, go to Displays and then click on the Arrangement tab. The display with the white bar on top is primary. You can drag that bar to the other display to make it primary.


Enabling Personal Hotspot feature My current carrier does not allow the Personal Hotspot feature for iPhone 4 so this option is missing in the menu. Is there a way I can enable this? I don't mind jailbreaking it. I don't want to use MiWi or any aditional application. I want to use the native one. Thanks

Tetherme is an app you can purchase and install on a jailbroken device that will attempt to enable the iOS personal hotspot feature on devices and with carriers that don't support it.

Reports are mixed, some user indicating it doesn't work with their particular configuration, others reporting that some carriers detect this usage and disconnect when the personal hotspot is active.

While you are interested in using the iOS personal hotspot, chances are good that the more reliable method is to use a third party utility.

However, if you must use the iOS personal hotspot feature, tetherme seems to be only available option right now.


dtmf dial recording for playback to bypass automated dial-in systems I'm looking for an app that would offer the ability to (among other things) record your dtmf key presses into a sort of recording or macro.  The reason behind this would be to go through calling a 1-800 number and pressing various sequences of:

1,3,0,# etc

till you get a live person.  Obviously the ability to "pause" for a certain amount of time will also needed to be added.

Does something like this exist? If not how hard would it be to make an app that does this function?

The iOS Contacts app allows pauses and waits to be programmed into phone numbers.

With the number input pad visible, press the special characters key on the lower left.

This will reveal options to input 2 second pauses (you can use multiple pauses to increase the time) or to wait until the dial key is pressed again.


Remove ZoomAudioDevice from Audio Devices I'm a mac user for years, even a developer, but I cannot remove this audio device from "zoom.us" from my Mac.

Any ideas appreciated ...

It appears the ZoomAudioDevice is now located in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/ and is no longer a kext.

To uninstall it, I deleted it with the below command and restarted.

sudo rm -r /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/ZoomAudioDevice.driver

This is with a new install from May 2019. Perhaps old installs continue using the kext if its already installed. Though, the readme here indicates the .driver file is used on MacOS 10.10 and above.


Where should I put my custom applications? I have downloaded some third party software, should I just put under /Applications or should I put under my home folder, e.g. ~/MyApps/?

It depends on what applications you want to keep to yourself and which ones you want to make accessible to all users:

Applications stored in /Applications are installed for all users.
The ~ stands for your home folder.
Applications stored in ~username/Applications are only for access by the user username.


How to set Inspector in Numbers for macOS hidden by default? Whenever I open a spreadsheet in Numbers for macOS, the Inspector's Format tab opens up. I'd prefer to have it hidden by default.

Is there any way to change this behaviour?

Numbers for macOS remembers the Inspector visibility setting for every spreadsheet when you close it. So, once you have hidden the Inspector for a spreadsheet and closed it, opening it subsequently will keep it hidden.