/etc/hosts ignores some entries Giving the command below shows my /etc/hosts all similarly formatted. Trying Safari to go to facebook.com indeed gives the URL: safari-resource:/ErrorPage.html
but for some or many of the other entries it doesn't work. It also doesn't work for Tor browser for that matter but I guess that's a different question. I've tried blocking these domains using parental control in my router but that also doesn't work.
dscacheutil -q host -a name facebook.com gives

name: facebook.com
ipv6_address: fe80:1::1

name: facebook.com
ip_address: 127.0.0.1

I think that the non-facebook entries are rerouted by Safari, given this question for reddit. So that if it doesn't find doubleclick.net, it will ask a DNS server for an alternative.

$ cat -vet /etc/hosts
##$
# Host Database$
#$
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface$
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.$
##$
127.0.0.1^Ilocalhost$
255.255.255.255^Ibroadcasthost$
::1^Ilocalhost$
127.0.0.1^Ifacebook.com$
fe80::1%lo0^Ifacebook.com$
127.0.0.1^Ifonts.googleapis.com$
127.0.0.1^Ifonts.gstatic.com$
127.0.0.1^Iwww.facebook.com$
127.0.0.1^Iadservice.google.com$
127.0.0.1^Iadservice.google.nl$
127.0.0.1^Iwww.adservice.google.nl$
127.0.0.1^Idoubleclick.net$
127.0.0.1^Igoogle-analytics.com$
127.0.0.1^Iwww.googletagservices.com$
127.0.0.1^Ifonts.googleapis.com$
127.0.0.1^Igoogleads.g.doubleclick.net$
fe80::1%lo0^Ifonts.googleapis.com$
fe80::1%lo0^Iadnx.com$
fe80::1%lo0^Igooglesyndication.com$
fe80::1%lo0^I360yield.com$
fe80::1%lo0^Ifonts.gstatic.com$
fe80::1%lo0^Iwww.facebook.com$
fe80::1%lo0^Iadservice.google.com$
fe80::1%lo0^Iadservice.google.nl$
fe80::1%lo0^Iwww.adservice.google.nl$
fe80::1%lo0^Idoubleclick.net$
fe80::1%lo0^Igoogle-analytics.com$
fe80::1%lo0^Iwww.googletagservices.com$
fe80::1%lo0^Ifonts.googleapis.com$
fe80::1%lo0^Igoogleads.g.doubleclick.net$
fe80::1%lo0^Ifonts.googleapis.com$
127.0.0.1^Iadnx.com$
127.0.0.1^Igooglesyndication.com$
127.0.0.1^I360yield.com$

Have you ruled out JavaScript in the web browser that tries several resolutions? I’m thinking making hosts entries won’t cut the mustard and most people will need something more strong like a custom DNS server to help escalate this game of whack-a-mole

https://pi-hole.net/

Pi Hole is my current favorite DNS sinkhole these days and simplifies our efforts above greatly if you don’t mind setting up a robot army to shield your network.


Remove Airdrop function to do tightening of OSX Could you tell me how to remove Airdrop function to do tightening of OSX?

Looks somebody accessing my Mac via AirDrop. I would like to remove the function.
Please tell me how to remove the function except for not to turn off.

I did some looking around and came up with that the removing the AirDrop will give you only 150kb of space.

So I am not sure it is wort messing around with it, since I do not know what dependencies are there, and the disk space gain is not worth mentioning it.

You can look it up in your

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ShareKit.framework/Versions/A/PlugIns/AirDrop.sharingservice/Contents/MacOS


Ipad keyboard menu bottom of screen while typing Someone please tell me what this keyboard menu thing is that appears every time I start typing—-and how to TURN IT OFF. I’m using an IPad Air 4 with a Logitech folio touch keyboard. But it shows up without the keyboard too, so not sure if the hardware matters. See photo attached. It covers things up and I don’t every use it to switch between keyboard types. Don’t want it there ever. Thanks in advance.

Source: Let's Talk Tech.

By default, the iPadOS keyboard has a predictive text & shortcut
bar above the main QWERTY keyboard, offering things like formatting
options and copy/paste buttons. When you hook up your hardware
Bluetooth keyboard, however, this row of predictive text options and
keyboard shortcuts sits at the bottom of your iPad display while you
type.

On your iPad, open the Settings app.
Tap on General > Keyboard
Disable the following two options from that menu: "Predictive" & "Shortcuts"

That’s all. Once you disable those two options the on-screen predictive text bar will disappear and you can win back those extra pixels.


Can't access Yahoo account on iphone- says 'IMAP server"apple.imap.mail.yahoo.com" isn't working' My yahoo account has stopped working on my iphone 4s.
I can access the account on a desktop but not the iphone.
Comes up with 'The IMAP server "apple.imap.mail.yahoo.com" is not responding. Check your network connection and that you entered the correct information in the "incoming Mail Server' field.'

Any idea how to fix this? Hasn't happened before.

The incoming IMAP server you are getting ("IMAP.apple.mail.yahoo.com") is not a real Yahoo IMAP server. Like @Buscar said, deleting and re-adding should resolve the problem. However, it seems like the settings are getting recreating incorrectly.

What I'd do, after re-adding the email, is manually fix the settings to the right servers. To fix them, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts & Calendars > (select Yahoo account) > Account. You should have the option to edit the IMAP server in the Advanced section.

If it doesn't allow you to change it, add the account manually by going to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account > Other. You can fill in the information found here: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/mobile-mail/imap-server-settings-sln4075.html


Reinstalling OS X on old MBP. Tried Internet Reinstall and Newer OS X USB Install I have an old Macbook Pro running OS X Lion that has been completely wiped. I want to reinstall OS X.

I first tried going into Recovery and using the Internet Reinstall, but the download/install timed-out and froze.
I then used my newer MBP to burn a Mavericks USB with Diskmaker X. However, when I plug in the Mavericks USB into the older Lion MBP and select the Mavericks Install USB in recovery, it shows the Apple icon with a loader, and then boots into the Lion Recovery menu.

I'm stuck any suggestions?

You said "an old MacBook Pro." Perhaps if you could be a little more specific? This article from Apple will tell you if it is compatible:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5842

If it is not that may be why it didn't work.

Internet recovery may have timed out due to WiFi issues, besides no matter how fast your WiFi is its still slower and less reliable than an ethernet cable plugged directly into your router. You might want to try that.


merging two Apple ID accounts/emails I had an ATT iphone and have changed to the Verizon iphone today. I wanted to sync my apps and google mail/contacts and was told that I had to connect with itunes and it would update.

I opened itunes and plugged in my new phone. Itunes asked to login but would not recognize my password. I clicked the forgot password but I think the email it has was from my old company and not able to be received. Because I have work this weekend with an app I had on my phone, I set up a new account with apple ID to get myself the app for the weekend but now I have two apple IDs. All my purchased apps are on the applie ID that I can not find the password.

How can I merge these to email accounts into one that I can access my purchased Apps?

Currently apple offers no way of merging accounts. They are rumored to be working on a solution.

In any case you will have to retrieve your Apple ID.
There are 2 ways to do that. You tried the email. the second being the security question:

The last resort would be contacting apple and trying to get them to change the e-mail address of your account (if you have a credit card attached to your account they might be able to authenticate you using this).


How to plot a histogram to show occurrence of a certain number using Numbers Sorry for this newbie question:

I want to do something like in a column there are numbers 0.2, 0.3, 0.2, 0.4,

0.2 occur 2 times, whereas 0.3 and 0.4 occur once, I want to make make histogram that first bar show 0.2, the y value will be 2, and 0.3, 0.3 only 1

Here is one way.
Step 1

Make a new sheet.
Make a table with one column and add your data to that column:

0.2
0.3
0.2
0.4

Make sure that this first table does not have a header column or a header row.

Step 2

In the same sheet as the first table, make a new table with two columns.
Give that table four rows (or more).
In the new table, make the first column a header column.
In that first column add in a list of values you want to 'count' on, e.g.:

0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4

In the second column, enter this formula in the first row =COUNTIF(Table 1 :: $A$1:A$4,A1) where 'Table 1 :: $A$1:A$4' is referring to the column of data in the first table, and 'A1' is referring to the cell in the first row of the first column in this second table.
Copy down the formula to the remaining rows in the second column of the second Table.

You should end up with the second table looking something like:

0.1    0
0.2    2
0.3    1
0.4    1

Step 3

Select the second table and click the Charts icon in the toolbar.
The first chart type (vertical bar chart) should be what you need. You can then use the Inspector to change the design of the chart.

Hope this helps. See the screen grab as that might help more.


How do I use both GPUs on a MacPro? My MacPro (Late 2013, OSX Yosemite) has two AMD FirePro D500 GPUs and three Cinema HD Displays.  When I look at the System report all of the Displays show up under one GPU and the other GPU has nothing.

Is the other GPU (slot-1) being utilized at all?  How do I tell?

Can I move a display to the unused GPU?
Will this help performance for rendering or calculations?

AMD FirePro D500:

  Chipset Model:    AMD FirePro D500
  Type: GPU
  Bus:  PCIe
  Slot: Slot-1
  PCIe Lane Width:  x16
  VRAM (Total): 3072 MB
  Vendor:   ATI (0x1002)
  Device ID:    0x679e
  Revision ID:  0x0000
  ROM Revision: 113-C3861J-687
  gMux Version: 4.0.11 [3.2.8]
  EFI Driver Version:   01.0B.687

AMD FirePro D500:

  Chipset Model:    AMD FirePro D500
  Type: GPU
  Bus:  PCIe
  Slot: Slot-2
  PCIe Lane Width:  x16
  VRAM (Total): 3072 MB
  Vendor:   ATI (0x1002)
  Device ID:    0x679e
  Revision ID:  0x0000
  ROM Revision: 113-C3861J-687
  gMux Version: 4.0.11 [3.2.8]
  EFI Driver Version:   01.0B.687
  Displays:
Cinema HD:
  Display Type: LCD
  Resolution:   2560 x 1600
  Pixel Depth:  32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Display Serial Number:    [redacted]
  Main Display: Yes
  Mirror:   Off
  Online:   Yes
  Rotation: Supported
  Adapter Type: Apple Mini DisplayPort To Dual-Link DVI Adapter
  Adapter Firmware Version: 1.03
Cinema HD:
  Display Type: LCD
  Resolution:   2560 x 1600
  Pixel Depth:  32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Display Serial Number:    [redacted]
  Mirror:   Off
  Online:   Yes
  Rotation: Supported
  Adapter Type: Apple Mini DisplayPort To Dual-Link DVI Adapter
  Adapter Firmware Version: 1.03
Cinema HD:
  Display Type: LCD
  Resolution:   2560 x 1600
  Pixel Depth:  32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Display Serial Number:    [redacted]
  Mirror:   Off
  Online:   Yes
  Rotation: Supported
  Adapter Type: Apple Mini DisplayPort To Dual-Link DVI Adapter
  Adapter Firmware Version: 1.01

Have you tried doing some heavy graphics load on two different monitors? I've read in the past that the 2013 Mac Pro attempts to use only one GPU for the most part and leave the second one available for OpenCL / GPU compute functions. However, if you increase the load on the GPU enough it will switch one of the displays over to the unused GPU (e.g. run a demo like Unigine Heaven on one and Valley on the other screen).

Note that macOS does NOT support two GPUs driving one display (a.k.a. CrossFire or SLI), so you would only use the second GPU for graphics if you have two displays connected and the load is sufficient to switch on the second GPU.


Paid consumables and App Store Terms & Conditions I have a friend who works for a charity that offers courses on a donation basis as a way to fund themselves. Recently the charity built an iOS app so people can download the course videos and other material to their devices. It also allows users to buy the courses by going to the charity website.

The app was rejected by Apple, as the people building it didn't know that all In-App purchases must go through Apple (yes, they are very green developers, and I wonder if it's the first app they built).

I'm wondering how the app could be changed, so the purchases don't break App Store's Terms & Conditions, and at the same time don't need to be done through Apple, even if they need to be done outside the app (on a desktop computer). The App Store Terms & Conditions that the app supposedly broke are:

  3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage, and approved services such as classroom management apps), provided that you agree not to directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods are not designed to discourage use of in-app purchase.

  3.1.3(b) Multiplatform Services: Apps that operate across multiple platforms may allow users to access content, subscriptions, or features they have acquired elsewhere, including consumable items in multi-platform games, provided those items are also available as in-app purchases within the app. You must not directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods must not discourage use of in-app purchase.

So I'm wondering which of the following might be OK, or break the Terms & Conditions; please let me know if there are other options!

Only allow access to the content that has already been purchased, without any mention that more courses are available.
Show other courses, but without a price and some text saying "log in to the website to know more".
Show courses with a price and text saying "log in to the website to know more".

For what I know, having a link to an external website to do the purchase is against the Terms & Conditions, so that's out of the question.

Out of the three, going with the first option would be your best bet.

  Only allow access to the content that has already been purchased, without any mention that more courses are available.

As mentioned in the first point 3.1.3(a), you can't directly or indirectly target users to an alternate mechanism to purchase content.

You can let the users view other available courses, and let them get info/sample of them, but can't hint about purchasing from an alternate medium within the app (if need to, you'll have to go via Apple by leveraging In-App purchases or subscriptions).

A good way to approach it would be to think of the iOS app as a client app for media consumption and not for content promotion. Your marketing efforts should be directed to the website with the iOS app simply acting as a consumption means.

Mention the iOS app on the website, with the App Store link (once approved). Apple provides marketing resource on its website where you can obtain official App Store badges and use them to link to your iOS app on the App Store.


Mouse moving vertically up and down, as well as clicking, on its own While away from my desk, but the screen still visible, I noticed the mouse start to move. It went up to the current window's top bar, double clicked. This caused that window to minimize. Then it selected something on the next window (it was an Amazon window, it selected a particular shirt color). Then went to that window's top bar and double clicked. The next window was still a chrome window, but the content of the webpage wasn't interactable. On it, the mouse then zoomed in, dragged around a little, then went to the top of the screen and double clicked a running application's menu bar icon. Incidentally, this triggered a macOS dialog box to open asking me if I'd like to grant permission to the application to register all key events from all applications.
At this point I immediately stepped in and started moving the mouse around to prevent it from hitting accept. I think it's important to note here that the mouse wasn't moving like a person would move it, but jumping from point to point. Despite intervening, the mouse just kept exhibiting what seemed like programmed behavior. Then in an effort to prevent any more activity I locked the screen. To my surprise, the behavior continued, then after several minutes stopped on its own.
Not long after — perhaps 20 minutes — it started exhibiting what appeared to be the same pattern of motion (moving up, double clicking, moving to the center, clicking, etc.). This all happening on the lock screen.
I tried disconnecting my trackpad and even my keyboard, but it did not stop the behavior. Now, it has been some hours since it first started, it stopped a couple of times more, but now it seems perpetual (been going on for two hours now).
Is there any way for me to determine what could be causing the mouse to click and move without my input?

A couple of suggestions to get you going…

Disconnect it from the network [not just the internet]. Reboot.

Disable any Automator actions ~/Library/Automator [perhaps zip them, then delete, as there can be many in there for legitimate reasons]. Reboot.

Repeat 2 with anything in ~/Library/Services & ~/Library/Scripts & also see if you have a folder in ~/Library/ called QuicKeys.

Install & run Malwarebytes.

Report back…


How do I restore my notes on macOS Sierra? As mentioned in the title, I need to restore my notes from files I previously copied manually from:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes

I know that may sound stupid, but I was on a hurry to update my macOS, and I just thought I could copy the files manually and restore them back later.
Now even when I copy the files back to their original location and reopen Notes app nothing shows up.

EDIT:

If anyone knows about a way to display my notes (Terminal command, open source tools or scripts...) from those backed-up files that would help, I do not mind copying everything manually.

A very quick grab of all of the note body fields from the database:

sqlite3 ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/NotesV6.storedata "select ZHTMLSTRING from ZNOTEBODY" > ~/Desktop/notes.html

There is more organization in the database, but this will give you all of the text itself. The titles are listed separately in the database but should also be at the top of every note body, so this should be enough for reconstruction hopefully!

Edits:

Replace the ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/NotesV6.storedata with the location of your NotesV6.storedata file ;)

Also depending on the version of OS X/macOS Notes that made the file, it may be NotesVN.storedata for a different N.


Why do I have 2 cursors? OS X Yosemite I have a MacBook Air 11 inch, connected to a Xerox monitor. For some reason I have 2 cursors, one lagging slightly behind the other. I tried unplugging the Xerox monitor, and that worked but when I tried it again, I still had 2 cursors

I have no idea what made it work correctly again (I only have 1 cursor). I think its because it was all disconnected and shut off. Not exactly sure though


I dropped my iPhone 5c and it cracked; now the screen is changing colors Can I just get a new screen and is it not covered under AppleCare?

If your screen is cracked and it is showing "lots" of colors, it means your digitizer is cracked/broken as well.

AFIK, AppleCare doesn't cover accidental damage, AppleCare+ does.

If you don't have AppleCare+, then you need to take it in to an Apple Store or to an authorized repair shop.

All of this is spelled out clearly at Apple's service page for iPhones:

https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/pricing
https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service

For an out of warranty screen repair in the US you should expect to pay $129 and if more things are broken than just the screen the total could go up to $269 before it's considered "totaled" or "beyond economical repair". Apple support should be able to tell you if your phone has AppleCare plus from the second link above for iPhone service center information.


Time Machine backup on per app basis with application preferences? When backing up using Time Machine, all your applications are backed up along with their preferences.

I know that the preferences are restored when doing a full system restoration.

However, what if I uninstalled an app along with its preferences using cleaning tools - and now I want to restore just that one app with its latest preferences?

The short answer to your question is 'it depends on the app'. This thread in the Apple Discussions Forums implies that, at least for basic apps that do not have complex connections with the system, it is possible to restore via Time Machine.

If I am not mistaken, Time Machine works the same way in all folders (including Library and Applications) as long as they are not listed as an exception in System Preferences. What this means is that if you open a new Finder window showing the user's Library folder and then call Time Machine, that should bring back the preferences subfolder for your app when you "go back in time" to when you had it installed. Naturally, you would have to know in advance the name and location of the app's preferences folder within your user's Library folder.

After that is done, then opening Time Machine in a Finder window showing the Applications folder should bring back your app if you "go back in time" to when you had it installed. It's a two step process, but I don't see why it would not work at least for simple apps.


How to fix "The item can't be moved to the Trash because it can't be deleted" error Got this error:

The item XYZ can't be moved to the Trash because it can't be deleted.

Never seen this before. How to I enable it to be deleted?

File is stored on an SD card.

Checked permissions. Says:
You can only read

Which I have also never seen.

Tried touch /Volumes/<Name of SD Card> and got the response: touch: /Volumes/<Name of SD Card>: Read-only file system

Found the issue. The Lock Switch was set to Lock.

A client had sent me the SD card with video files. I didn't even think to check the lock switch when I loaded it up.

So flipping that to unlock, and it fixed the error and the permissions.


How to export multiple PDF pages into 1 PDF I have opened all of my PDF's in Preview (Mac). I then drag-n-droped the PDFs to make a master list of PDF's.

Question

How do I export all of the pages into 1 PDF?

What I tried

File -> Export as PDF (This just made a PDF of 1 page)
Selecting all PDF thumbnails, File -> Export as PDF (Same as above)
Selecting all PDF thumbnails, File -> Export Selected PDF Documents (This exports each page as an individual PDF document)

I have also seen people just say do a file -> print but I am not sure what setting to use because it will then ask to print the files as 1 document size for all the PDFs. The PDF's I have combined vary in size.

Open, in Preview, the documents you wish to combine and select: View > Thumbnails

Do this for each document.

Choose one of the documents that will become the (temporary) container document in which you'll drag and drop thumbnails from other documents to create the combined document.

Note that when dragging and dropping thumbnails into the document, being use to create the combined document, that the thumbnails are dropped either in-between other thumbnails or always above the horizontal grey line that signifies the end of the original document.  If the Thumbnail view shows more then one document title the pages will not be combined. See image below.

Rearrange thumbnails as needed/wanted.

Once you have what will be the combined document ready, you can then choose how you want to save this combined document.

You could simple save it as is at this point, using File > Save, although it will overwrite the original document you used to be the container document.

If you do not want to overwrite the original document press the control key as you click the File menu and select: Save As...

You could also choose to print it as a PDF Document although using Save or Save As... should be sufficient.  To print as a PDF click, File > Print... PDF > Save as PDF...


iPod 2G not allowing sync of supported video I have some videos that I would like to copy onto an old iPod Touch 2Gen for my daughter, so that she doesn't have to see the horror of YouTube.  The specs for the device (as taken from here) show that the following are supported video types:

  H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

Quicktime shows the following when playing the video:

And iTunes has the following in Get Info:

But when I try to copy the file via iTunes, it says the file is not supported:

How can I found out exactly what is is complaining about, so I can fix it?

I have seen people mention that when they had an issue like this they changed the resolution to 640 by 480 pixels.


2010 iMac with new firmware IM112.0057.03B (2015-002) can't install windows 7-10 anymore So I've been installing and uninstalling windows 7 and windows 10 since it came out on my iMac for a long time! My iMac does not have a dvd drive because I took it out. I've been installing windows 7 and 10 from a bootable usb stick for years

All of a sudden I can no longer do it. I recently formatted my Mac because I wanted to go back to windows 7 since I was having issues with win10 turning off after an extended sleep period (I know my iMac was not compatible with windows 10 as per apple) anyways I been trying to re-install windows 7 for a while now and it just does not appear as a bootable hdd when you restart and hold option! It does appear with win 10 stick but then when I choose the EFI BOOT that pops up nothing happens or it freezes.

I've been doing a lot of reading and frankly, I am lost. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with a new firmware or bios update that is blocking whatever the hell!

My iMac has 3 hdd's installed and no dvd drive. I did buy a dvd drive and tried doing a dvd windows 7 install but that does not work either.

What gives and how do I fix it?

I find it surprising you were able to boot the Windows installer via a USB port. I have year 2006, 2007, 20011 and 2013 iMac models and only the 2013 model can install Windows correctly using a USB flash drive installer. I not saying you did not install Windows via the USB port, rather that you probably were not suppose to. (I assume your have a mid 2010 iMac.)

When you were able to install from the USB port, I would like to know if you used a BIOS or EFI boot method. Although, knowing would not help in answering your question.

I am interest if Windows 10 was a clean install or an upgrade from Windows 7? If a clean install, then where did you acquire the "Boot Camp Support Software"? Answering might help in determining why you are having problems with Windows 10.

Below are the links to two alternative methods for installing Windows 7. Both require you to install a free copy of VirtualBox, which is only used to help install Windows 7.

"Boot camp install of Windows 7 issue, no bootable devices"

"Installing Windows 7 Pro 64 bit without DVD or Flash Drive"

Below is another example tested on Windows 10, but probably could be adapted to work with windows 7 installed on a internal disk. I have not actually tried this one, so use at your own risk.

"Is it possible to use Boot Camp with Windows 10 from an external HDD?"

If you have any questions, post a comment.


iTunes Match Songs Don't Appear on iPhone My iPhone 5S says it has synced with iTunes Match but some music is missing from the iPhone.  I have Show All Music turned on.  Is there some way to debug what is happening?

Just to make sure you have all the necessary settings turned on, make sure you have:

The latest version of iOS
Navigate to Settings > Music > iCloud Music Library and turn it on;

Also, make sure you are connected to a WiFi network (the default behaviour of Music app is to only allow music downloads through WiFi). If you don't have a WiFI connection, enable Data Downloads navigating to Settings > Music > Use Mobile Data and turn it on.


How can I listen music on OSX without let iTunes take a copy about it? It is annoying that I just get from some source a music, and I start to listen it and iTunes automatically copy it and save it in its file structure again. Dataspace will be filled up.

If you want iTunes to play it but not copy, then as you said, uncheck Copy files to iTunes... Though that will still add it to iTunes' music, with a reference to its original location, which will then be irritating if that file is no longer there at some point in the future.

...however, if you just want to listen to it once then trash it/file it for future reference/etc without bothering iTunes at all, then just select the file & hit the Space Bar - Quicklook will play it.


How can I stop apps I do to not want appearing in the dock? I have got into system preferences and there is no recents uncheck. How do I stop app icons from sticking in the dock?

Actually there is. See the last item in System preferences -> Dock.


How can I create bash_profile and bashrc OS X 10.11.2 El Capitan

I want to create some alias, so I go to ~/ folder and there is no .bash_profile or .bashrc.

I have been looking for some info and I learn that .bash_profile is only read when bash launch an interactive login shell (default type of terminal in OS X) and .bashrc is only read when bash launch an interactive non-login shell. But I don't find how to create .bash_profile and .bashrc for my user. How can I do it?

After @klanomath answer:

Open Terminal and enter:

touch ~/.bash_profile
touch ~/.bashrc

To edit the file(s) use:

nano ~/.bash_profile
nano ~/.bashrc

Instead of nano you can use any decent text editor (e.g. BBEdit, TextWrangler).

To immediately enable any changes in the file .bash_profile use source:

source ~/.bash_profile


How do I stop messages appearing on the homescreen of my iPad2? How do I stop iMessages from appearing automatically on my home screen?
Does anyone have any ideas?

Settings -> Notifications -> Messages.  Set Alert Style to None.


Resize system partition? I found some questions like that here but it doesn't help me.  I use Paragon hard disk manager & disk utility to resize it and have screenshot like below.

But I can't add free space to main osx partition. I found that I have to move free space section to near main partition so I can able to resize it.

So how do I do that?

Thank you

Don't even start this without a solid backup.

Right click the NTFS partition & select Move/Resize Partition.
Drag the Free Space After slider all the way to the left.
This will move the NTFS partition to the end of the disk & the free space into the area outlined below, between the APFS container & NTFS partition. This should then consolidate your free space.

Volumes on APFS containers will not show as filling all the available space, due to their 'live expandability' feature, even though the container itself does. I don't have an example with APFS & NTFS to show, but this is my 1TB SSD which shows as having 456GB 'free' at the end whereas the container itself & in the Finder the Volume is actually [almost] the entire 1TB.

So, to complete your changes, you need to select the APFS Container [not the Volume on it] & again using Move/Resize Partition, change the New Size until it fills your moved Free Space.

Remember to Apply Operations afterwards.

Note: This is likely to be a very long, slow operation; whilst potentially a lot faster on SSD [on which I have never actually tried to do a data move of this size] on HD I'd expect to come back to it in the morning, so make sure you have plenty of time & keep the Mac on mains power.


Auto login boot camp partition in VMWare Fusion? My VMWare Fusion is set up to use a Boot Camp partition. Is there any way to have it automatically login to a user account when the virtual machine starts up, but still require a password when booting via Boot Camp?

The reason I ask is because when launching VMWare Fusion in unity mode, you always have to interact with the machine the first time it logs on. It would be nice if you can just run an application from the VMWare Fusion menu, and have it seamlessly startup the virtual machine, login, and launch the application without any interaction required.

As the auto-login or password is in Windows, and Windows doesn't know if it is booted via BootCamp or VMWare, I don't think you can do this from the Windows side.

It doesn't seem likely, but perhaps you can set it to always require password, but then use AppleScript and VMWare, or Automator GUI Scripting, to enter the password for you.


Is it possible to disable Personal Hotspot on iPhones with a configuration profile? The company I work for is having an issue with users racking up huge data bills with iOS hotspot tethering. Is there a way we can push a profile that will disable this feature? I have looked through the iPhone Configuration Utility and cannot find any settings for this feature.

As of iOS 9.2, there is no way to disable the Personal Hotspot feature through Configuration Profiles.

The best you can do at the moment is to use an MDM server to report on the status of the Personal Hotspot feature and manually instruct users to switch it off, or arrange to disable it through your carrier.


Run 'real VNC Viewer' in full screen mode Full Screen Mode
After updating to Yosemite you can now run applications in 'Full Screen Mode' (Application runs in full screen without the OS X toolbar at the top) if it's supported.
Problem
I am running 'real VNC viewer' to access my Raspberry Pi's screen over the network. The only issue is when I put 'VNC viewer' into full screen I still have the OS X toolbar at the top. Is there a way how to fix this?
Before solution

As you can see, the toolbar and window buttons (quit, minimise and full screen) are visible.
After solution (What I want)

The OS X toolbar an window buttons have now gone.
Is there a way on how to do this?

VNC viewer has it's own 'full screen' mode.

To access it, move your mouse to the top of the window (where the arrow is pointing) and click the full screen icon.

The only issue with this is you cannot view multiple desktops (using the trackpad gestures) without closing full screen mode.

To toggle full screen mode quickly you can press F8 (fn+play/pause) then when the menu pops up press F


VPN breaks AirDrop, Sidecar etc. - any idea how to set up VPN to enable them? My workplace uses Cisco AnyConnect VPN (but I have seen same problems with other VPNs as well, eg. here) and it seems to break AirDrop, Sidecar and similar Apple's local network services.

While I am connected to VPN on my macbook, I cannot AirDrop files to my macbook, and Sidecar doesn't start (shows a timeout error after a while). When I disconnect, everything works again.

Is there a know set of things (ports, port ranges, network broadcasts?) I could change or enable in VPN settings so that the 'Apple stuff' would still be routed to a local network at home? It seems that now everything gets routed into work VPN.

Thanks! I googled, but so far found only threads asking for help, with no solution.

I just spent couple of hours trying to figure out how to solve this issue, and the solution was quite simple.
The problem with AnyConnect and cisco VPN is that it forces whole traffic to go through it, which includes local network (thus making other LAN hosts inaccessible). There seems to no to little config options in AnyConnect itself. Plus using USB seems to be working up until VPN connection is made.
However, I found thanks to some forums that one can use openconnect to connect to PPTP VPN instead.
brew install openconnect
and then
sudo openconnect --user your_vpn_user --protocol=anyconnect vpn.server.com  establishes equivalent connection and doesn't interfere with LAN addresses! Plus it doesn't even need any cumbersome and slow GUI to do this. So it is a win win.
P.S. I was close to turn my spare Raspberry Pi into a WiFi access point with VPN tunnel there and properly set up routing. Saved myself more problems.


Copy all the text of an entire `man` page from Terminal.app I am reading a very long man page (man ssh). I want to save all of that text for more convenient reading in a text-editor.

Unfortunately, choosing either of :

Edit → Select All → Copy
Shell → Export Text As...

results in saving only a screen-full of the text, not all the text that scrolled by.

How do I extract the text of an entire man page?

You can push plain text to the clipboard by piping to pbcopy, to paste anywhere as usual.

man ssh | col -b | pbcopy

or equivalent

man -P "col -b | pbcopy" ssh

the latter of which is nicer if you want to use it as an alias, like mancp ssh, given:

alias mancp='man -P "col -b | pbcopy"'

There are methods to go to HTML/PDF: Can man pages be converted to html and/or pdf format?

If it's just the nicer reading experience you're after, you can right-click on a selection of a command and open its man page as a separate window/tab, with normal scrolling and ⌘F find.

You can customise what this looks like in Terminal Preferences → Profiles, under the Man Page profile which is one of the default profiles to exist.
This includes font family and size (also see View menu) and background/foreground colours.


How to prevent a folder to sync to iCloud I have activated the synchronisation of my Desktop & Documents Folders from my iMac to iCloud so that I can share it seamlessly to my Macbook Pro and my iPhone.  This is working well.
I'd now like to prevent one of the folders inside the Documents folder to sync to iCloud.  I see, for example, that the Microsoft User Data folder is not being synchronised because it is ineligible.  That shows with a struck-through cloud icon.  And I don't see this Microsoft folder appearing on my iPhone.
Apple documentation says that ineligible folders are usually because there is not enough iCloud storage for the element.  That does not seem to be the case with my Microsoft User Data folder as it is only 40 Ko and I have nearly 1 GB available on my iCloud space. To me, it seems that behaviour is specific to the Microsoft directory.
How can I replicate that behaviour to another folder?  I don't find any option for that.

Does anybody know?

there are 2 name extensions that will stop iCloud syncing.

.nosync

.tmp

if you add .nosync to a folder name you will need to add it also to the folder contents.
if you add .tmp to a folder name it'll stop syncing the folder & its contents.


Where are the Safari bookmarks stored on a computer I just purchased a new iMac. I want to know how to transfer my old bookmarks from my old iMac running High Sierra to my new iMac running Catalina.

Transfer the entire account with Migration Assistant, which should include all settings including bookmarks.


How can I find "Install OS X Mountain Lion" (installESD.dmg) in the applications folder? I've just downloaded and installed the Mountain Lion update from the Mac App Store, but when I can't find it in my applications folder.

I want to copy installESD.dmg to be able to perform a clean installation.

How can I find "Install OS X Mountain Lion" (installESD.dmg) in the applications folder?

It gets removed once you perform the update. You will have to redownload it. It may tell you it's already downloaded, use the Option key and select the 'Downloaded' button and you can download again.


Do I need the Developer Program to sign an app for my own use? I installed iTerm2 from MacPorts; since it was built from source, it wasn’t notarized. If I want to sign it for my own usage (not distributing any app), do I need to (pay $99 and) join the Developer Program? I have not joined the program, but apparently there is a local certificate with name “Apple Development:” followed by my Apple ID. Can I use that to sign? I tried
codesign --force --sign 'Apple Development: foo@example.com' /Applications/MacPorts/iTerm2.app

and saw error message:
/Applications/MacPorts/iTerm2.app: code object is not signed at all
In subcomponent: /Applications/MacPorts/iTerm2.app/Contents/XPCServices/pidinfo.xpc

background
The reason I want to sign iTerm2 is that unsigned version can’t run osascript to control another application. To verify:
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to display dialog "hello!"'

With unsigned iTerm2 I got authorization error (-1743). (Of course I intended to use OSA for more complicated automation.)

You do not need to join the $99 Developer program.
There are two cases:
Intel Mac: You do not need to sign the app.  And there may be an advantage to that as it then doesn't need to be checked for certificate revocation or notarisation.
M1 Mac: It must be signed, but you can do that with an ad-hoc signature with codesign -s - appname.app
Have a read of this from Howard Oakley.  It is focused on avoiding OCSP (certificate revocation checks), but has the detail you need which is not very much!
There are Apple documents too.  For example Open app from un identified developer.  Basically saying to Control-click and open.


Add video to camera roll without using iPhoto? I have a bunch of video recorded and stored in Dropbox from another iOS device, I'd like to move this onto a new iOS device.

So far, the only way I can see of adding these videos to my Camera Roll is to put them into iPhoto on the Mac, add them to an album, then Sync that Album to the new device.

Any ideas?

The best solution I found in the end was to use iTunes, select Photo syncing then instead of using iPhoto, manually selecting a folder full of video. This had to be video that iOS could play natively, it didn't do any kind of conversion or compression.


Why does Safari frequently log me out of websites? Recently, Safari started to act differently and to bounce me out from websites such as Gmail, so I need to login after reboot or long sleep etc.

Why is this happening? How do I make Safari "remember" I'm logged in?

This seems to be a common issue (which I also experience). I know that Safari is particular with how it handles cookies, which is a likely cause. I'm assuming this is on Apple's radar.

I have some suspicion that it's because I have website tracking completely off, but never tested it fully as I prefer to have it off.

As a temporary fix, the use of a password manager (iCloud Keychain is built into Apple devices) makes the login process faster.


Are man page sections 2 and 3 available in macOS Mojave? Are the system calls (section 2) and library class (section 3) of the man pages available in macOS Mojave? I recently upgraded from an ancient MacBook Pro running OS X El Capitan and they aren't installed with Xcode, and I haven't found anything on how to get them installed.

The manpages are installed with the command line tools. When I get a chance, I’ll edit the exact location to install from inside XCode. But, yes, there are manpages for sections 2 and 3, in Mojave.


Is moving without shutting down good for MBP My friends told me,while I am moving to other places, I can just close my rMBP without shutting down the computer.

Is it a right concept?
Will it damage hardwares?

That's perfectly safe to do, it's best to wait until the hard drive spins down and the sleep light activates before moving it. On a MacBook with an SSD (like the Retina or Air), you don't even need to wait for that, since there's no spinning hard drive.


macOS changes screen arrangement when waking from sleep I have a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (MacBookPro13,3, 2016 - running 10.12.6 as it's a company laptop and I cannot update) with two monitors plugged in, each using a USB-C port (but using a USB-C to DisplayPort adapter for each). Whenever it wakes from sleep, the screen arrangement of these two monitors will have switched from what I set it as and I have to go into System Preferences and move them back to get my preferred arrangement back. Just to clarify - the cables have not been switched during this time.

I feel like I remember reading about this issue a while ago on the MacBook Pro but cannot find anything about it. Does anyone have a solution?

I have the same problem with my MBP running Mac OS 10.13.1. My non-Apple monitors are plugged into an OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock using USB-C to Display Port and Thunderbolt to Display Port cables. So far, the only solution I have come up with is to keep my monitors awake. I am using a black screen saver to make the monitors go dark after 10 minutes. While this is not ideal, it does solve the issue of the displays changing places.


Opening a website on iPad also opens other random websites I use a website called UkuTabs which tells me the chords for songs.

Every-time I go to the website on my iPad, it always pops up with this random scam website which tells you that you will earn a lot of money. Even if I click cancel, it will take me there anyways. It won't even let me tap the back button. I don't know if this is a virus, but it never happens on my phone or computer.

I tested that web site and nothing happened. Granted it was on Firefox and Mac High Sierra.

May I suggest in your case usually cleaning Safari history does the trick.

Here is what Apple says how to do that.

  Delete history, cache, and cookies

  Here's how to clear information from your device:

  To clear your history and cookies, go to Settings > Safari, and tap Clear History and Website Data. Clearing your history, cookies,
  and browsing data from Safari won't change your AutoFill information.
  To clear your cookies and keep your history, go to Settings > Safari > Advanced > Website Data, then tap Remove All Website Data.
  To visit sites without leaving a history, turn private browsing on or off.

  When there's no history or website data to clear, the setting turns
  gray. The setting might also be gray if you have web content
  restrictions set up under Content & Privacy Restrictions in Screen
  Time.


Burn marks on iMac Screen I'm wondering has anyone seen anything like this before? Was using my 2009 Unibody iMac this morning and noticed black, burn-like, marks appear on the screen gradually.

The machine wasn't under heavy usage or anything, however the screen felt extremely hot to touch.

The previous week there was condensation looking areas behind the glass.

Any input appreciated, thanks.

This happens all the time.

Condensation and fog like effects are almost always benign and transient. Shut down form15 minutes minimum and restart.

The image persistence is somthing all LCD will eventually succumb to and some can show that even when brand new. Either power off entirely for hours or days or have an all white screen saver engage and prevent partial content from staying on screen static.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_persistence


iPhone 5s screen separation; what will happen when I take the device to an Apple Store genius? Today I discovered that my iPhone 5s is coming apart on its own. The front screen is intact, but has lifted by about 1 centimeter at the top left of the device. The screen backlight is separated from the glass in that area. The device wasn't plugged in or near any heat source, and showed the depleted battery icon when I tried to turn it on. This is no longer my primary phone; I bought an iPhone 6 a few months ago.

I bought the 5s new in October 2013 without AppleCare, so the one-year warranty has lapsed. The metal band around the edge of the phone has scuffs and dings. I certainly can't prove it, but that damage happened months before the screen separation. What I suspect is happening inside the device is that the battery has altered its shape and forced the screen to detach. Or perhaps an adhesive has deteriorated.

If I take this phone to a genius at an Apple Store, what will happen? Will Apple take responsibility for a manufacturing defect even though the phone is out of warranty? From Apple's support website, I see that the standard out-of-warranty cost for a 5s is US$269. It's possible I purchased this phone with a credit card that offers automatic warranty extension; I can look into that.

The phone turns on and works. I no longer need this device, but I'd like to recover some value from it.

Some people are saying that the Apple Store will replace it for free regardless of Applecare coverage within 36 months of purchase. Certainly worth a try.


iOS 8.1..camera roll and photostream / deleted pictures Before the update, photos saved to camera roll would automatically go to photostream, too. You could then delete them from camera roll but they would remain on your photostream.

Now, you can still add photos just like you could, but as soon as you delete them from your camera roll, they are also simultaneously deleted from your photostream.

Any help on how to keep your deleted camera roll photos on your photostream?

Apple apparently didn't realise just how many photos people were going to want to keep online, so they've dramatically reduced the retention.
If you want to keep photos, don't keep them on iCloud, keep them on your computer.


How to create multiple printer profiles on Mac? I have a Mac, but sometimes need to print with legal/landscape and other times with letter/portrait. In Windows I can create two printer profiles for the same printer to easily toggle between these. How best to do this with a Mac?

While this is not a direct answer to your question, you can create settings presets for that -- which can be selected in every GUI app using the standard print dialog as easily as a different printer:


Why does Mail generate random new messages in Lion? Ever since upgrading to Lion on my 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, Apple's Mail sporadically generates random new mail messages, sometimes when mail isn't even running. And example of the latest contained the following text:

  As is and is and will will will will will and me and him and him and him and him him and him near his yes and that he is and he really didn't even see you as yet your letters (and me and yet very silly. And the people in England in the little well citizens in inhabitable monies that she made 13 276 did the phone will not have it in this. Can is been secretly he felt his ear as he leaves pretty drastically as easy as he steps in and see me in stress really hoping that he can see his risk as the rent is

No subject line and new addressees. Anyone have any idea what's going on?

Are you running Dragon Express? There's a short discussion of this on the Apple.com forums. I've seen this problem, too, and by Th.e process of elimination have narrowed it down to Express. It seems to keep the mic open even when you aren't using it. You might also see random web searches with the same sort of garbled text.

My guess is that at some point the input buffer fills up and it launches either Mail or Safari with what it's heard.


Time machine and Mac repair I'm using time machine to make backups everytime. Now I'm going to bring my laptop to repair center, and there is a chance that they will replace it to me. It means that I could get back totally clean OS. Will "time machine" help me to get everything what I had before ?

Yes, Time Machine should restore all your applications, personal files, and preferences, provided you have not made any files private the Time Machine system preferences pane.

When you get your new Mac (or freshly installed OS), it will ask if you want to restore from a Time Machine backup, and I think the process is self-explanatory from there.

One caveat - if you have partitioned your hard drive, I believe only the first partition will be automatically restored. You'll have to manually restore the others.


`scutil --nc start` not connecting PPPT VPN - OS X 10.11 From the answer to this question I have tried scutil --nc start 'us.justfreevpn.com' to connect a PPPT VPN, but all I get is the following popup:

Frustratingly, if I manually start the connection from the menubar, I can then stop it using scutil --nc stop 'us.justfreevpn.com'

scutil --nc list gives the following:

Available network connection services in the current set (*=enabled):
* (Disconnected)   16DB05C1-0843-447F-9EA0-AD43139270AF PPP --> PPTP       "us.justfreevpn.com"             [PPP:PPTP]

And scutil --nc show 'us.justfreevpn.com' this:

* (Disconnected)   16DB05C1-0843-447F-9EA0-AD43139270AF PPP --> PPTP       "us.justfreevpn.com"             [PPP:PPTP]
PPP <dictionary> {
  ACSPEnabled : 1
  CCPEnabled : 1
  CommDisplayTerminalWindow : 0
  CommRedialCount : 1
  CommRedialEnabled : 0
  CommRedialInterval : 5
  CommUseTerminalScript : 0
  DialOnDemand : 0
  DisconnectOnFastUserSwitch : 1
  DisconnectOnIdle : 0
  DisconnectOnIdleTimer : 600
  DisconnectOnLogout : 1
  DisconnectOnSleep : 0
  IPCPCompressionVJ : 0
  IdleReminder : 0
  IdleReminderTimer : 1800
  LCPEchoEnabled : 1
  LCPEchoFailure : 15
  LCPEchoInterval : 20
  Logfile : /var/log/ppp.log
  VerboseLogging : 0
}

The log just shows the following:

Tue Feb 23 10:18:44 2016 : publish_entry SCDSet() failed: Success!
Tue Feb 23 10:18:44 2016 : publish_entry SCDSet() failed: Success!

And last exit code is 0:

$ echo $?
0

What am I doing wrong?

OS X 10.11.3

Was running into same issue. Ended up going the AppleScript route:

tell application "System Events"
        tell current location of network preferences
                set VPN to service "UniVPN" -- your VPN name here
                if exists VPN then connect VPN
                repeat while (current configuration of VPN is not connected)
                    delay 1
                end repeat
        end tell
end tell

(From https://superuser.com/a/358663/17760)


Unknown Binary in Application Samples I recently started sampling applications that freeze on my machine.  I have an iMac with 8 cores and 32GB of RAM running Catalina 10.15.1 fully patched.  It's far from resource constrained yet certain applications freeze regularly. I see threads marked as unknown often in the traces.  Are these normal threads?  If so what would make a thread show up as completely unknown in a sample.  It seems strange that the library a thread is linked to could be known in some cases but unknown in others.

I think you're confused about what parts of the output actually represents threads:

Yes, the threads you see in the output from "Sample Process" in Activity Monitor are definitely "normal threads".

However, each of the lines in your screenshot do not represent a thread each.

Activity Monitor clearly labels each seperate thread with the word "Thread" - the whole line is in lightly blue color (compared to the rest that is black).

The screenshot you have does not indicate that a thread is "unknown", nor does it indicate that "the library a thread is linked to" is unknown.

I'll explain how to read the output from "Sample Process":

Each blue line indicates a thread.

Each black line below the blue line is a function that has been executed by that thread.

The percentage indicates how much time was spent inside the function. You can choose when viewing if you want it displayed as a percent of the thread or the parent.

The number in the brackets (such as [0x1100007ffd]) is the memory address of the function.

The field right next to the percentage is the name of the function, and in parentheses, the binary file from which the original contents on the memory address was loaded.

Here's why unknowns can appear:

Note that the name of the function is only available if the function was loaded in from a binary that contained what's known as a "symbol map". This makes it possible for the sample program to known that the code at a given memory address was generated from a function with that specific name in the original source code. If you haven't got that information, it is listed as ???.

Typically you'll see that Objective-C programs will show you these names, while C programs typically won't. The developer of a C program chooses whether or not to expose the names, but for performance/size reasons, these are typically left out in programs meant for "the public" (as opposed to internal testing).

Similarly the name of the binary file is known only if code in question was loaded in via the actual program binary itself, or by the dynamic linker from a .dylib or similar shared library. If the code at the memory address came to be there for any other reason, the sample program cannot know the name and it is displayed as unknown.

In addition you'll often see that programs that internally employ dynamic languages, JIT compilers, interpreters, etc. will show up as "??? (in unknown binary)" in these listings. This is because the code at that specific location wasn't there from the start - it was generated dynamically by the program as it executed.

Word explanation:

If you do not know the meaning of the word thread, an rough, high-level explanation is as follows:

Think of a CPU as a machine that executes instructions in a sequence. The current state of the CPU itself is the contents of the registers (internal memory locations inside the CPU that are seperate from RAM) as well as the program counter (the address of the instruction currently being executed). Each time an instruction is executed, the registers can be changed by the computation, and the PC is set to a new address. Typically the PC is set to address of the next instruction in memory, but it can change arbitrarily.  In this view, the CPU executes a single program.

In order to (seemingly) run multiple programs at the same time, the system is setup so that CPU executes a single program as described above, but at various times "switches program" by saving its state (registers and PC) to RAM, and loading in another state. Thereafter it is now executing at a different place in memory. By "switching" back and forth between these programs, you get the illusion of running multiple programs at the same time.

Each of these "programs" are actually what is known as a thread. So a thread is essentially just a saved state consisting of the values of registers and the program counter, which the operating system continually saves and restores.

In comparison, a "process" is what you observe as a running instance of an application - i.e. the whole thing you're sampling in Activity Monitor). The concept is very similar to a thread in that the operating system allows for running multiple processes at a time by continually saving/restoring state, whereby switching between processen. A process can have one or more threads, so part of switching between process is actually switching between threads as describe above. However more state is being saved/restored, as for example memory mapping are also saved/restored. This is the reason that threads within the same process can (in general) access the same memory, whereas different processes (in generally) cannot access each other's memory.

Note that in real life things are much more complicated. A system can contain multiple cores and multiple CPUs, meaning that you have multiple sets of registers and program counters at the same time. Threads will also have various attributes that are not described here.


Why can't Finder quicklook the mp4 I just encoded with ffmpeg? I just did ffmpeg -i My\ Movie.mov vid.mp4 to convert iMovie output to an MP4.
I can't quicklook the mp4 as usual (by pressing space), nor does Finder show a thumbnail for it.
Here is ffmpeg -i information for a quicklookable mp4:
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'playable.mp4'
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
    encoder         : Lavf58.45.100
  Duration: 00:00:21.04, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 746 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 640x360 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 612 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 12800 tbn, 50 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : ISO Media file produced by Google Inc.
    Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : SoundHandler

Here is ffmpeg -i vid.mp4:
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'vid.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
    title           : My Movie
    encoder         : Lavf58.45.100
    keywords        : iMovie
  Duration: 00:00:53.40, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 316 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High 4:2:2) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv422p10le, 480x270 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 190 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 12800 tbn, 50 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : Core Media Video
      timecode        : 00:00:00:00
    Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 119 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : Core Media Audio
    Stream #0:2(eng): Data: none (tmcd / 0x64636D74)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : Core Media Video
      timecode        : 00:00:00:00

How am I meant to use ffmpeg to turn My Movie into an MP4 that can be quicklooked?

You may not have the same issue, but in my case, the problem was that the
handler_name cannot be more than 29 characters. To fix, you could try a
command like this instead:
ffmpeg -i 'My Movie.mov' -metadata:s handler_name=SoundHandler vid.mp4

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/3623


Moving the treeview to the left side in QuollEyeTree Is there any way to move the treeview to the left side in QuollEyeTree? By default the treeview is located at the top half:

For example in Macintosh Explorer the treeview is on the left side by default:

Your comments got me thinking, and I knocked up a vertically oriented view.
This works, but hasn't been through a full testing cycle.

I will probably include this in the full version, with options for either mode. This will require another set of changes to allow independent configuration of both modes.

EDIT
I included the vertically oriented view as an option in the normal Beta
http://binnie.id.au/Downloads/QuollEyeTree-2.03.dmg


Can OS X dump cores in the working directory instead of /cores? I don't know when it started, but at some point, OS X started dumping cores into a special folder (/cores). This is a pain since they get jumbled together and it's hard to keep track of which core files goes with which execution. Is there an environment variable or special flag I can set to have cores dumped into the working directory (as with other operating systems) instead?

I finally figured this out. It turns out that this is a kernel parameter controlled by sysctl. You can set this on a per shell basis to dump in the current working directory with:

sysctl -w kern.corefile=core.%P

Since I never wanted my core dumps to end up in /cores, but always in the current directory, I added this plist to /Library/LaunchDaemons/:

<!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>sysctl</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/sbin/sysctl</string>
        <string>-w</string>
        <string>kern.corefile=core.%P</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

UPDATE:

Since I wrote this, it looks like the sysctl command changed. I've updated the examples above, but if you were previously using kern.core_pattern, that doesn't work anymore.


Can Airport Extreme host a standing VPN connection? I'm not sure how to word this to even google if this is possible even without an Airport Extreme, but my network has the AE providing network services to it.  What I want to do is have the AE establish the VPN to another network so that the computers behind the AE just think the remote VPN computers are available.

In other words, from my mac at home, I can easily VPN to work.  But I'm looking to have the AE do the VPN connection, so that I don't have to manually set it up on my computer each time.

No, the Airport Extreme does not provide any VPN services.


How to update Mac OS X 10.6.8 to 10.7 I have Cienega on my Mac and did a recent update.  Since the update I'm not able to open in Applications Cienega.  I'm receiving a error message that says  I have Mac OS X 10.6.8. The application requires Mac OS X 10.7 or later.  How do I upgrade?

Apple has started selling OS X Lion redemption codes,  for £14 (in the UK) so you can still buy the old OS if you need to.

See also: Is It Possible to Still Upgrade to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.


Changing from HDD to SSD I have a MacBook Pro mid 12 with a 500 GB HDD. For performance purposes I want to upgrade to a SSD. My HDD is nearly full I have used 440 GB with a lot of important business files that I cannot afford to loose. How can I migrate so that I keep everything from my old hard drive to my new SSD. I cannot loose software or files.

There are a variety of ways you can do this. I'll cover the two cleanest ways here.

Restoring the disk from the source or image

This will require that you have simultaneous access to at least two disks.

If you can't access the HDD and SSD simultaneously, Image the HDD to another disk you can access via Disk Utility.

Boot via Internet Recovery (recommended) or an external bootable volume/installer.
Select your HDD in Disk Utility.
Click "Image" in the menu bar (if it's not there, add it by right clicking and dragging it in.)
Save your image to an external volume.

Install the SSD.
Boot via Internet Recovery (recommended) or an external bootable volume/installer.
Open Disk Utility.
Restore the SSD from the HDD or image of the HDD.

Select your SSD in the sidebar of Disk Utility.
Click "Restore" in the menu bar (if it's not there, add it by right clicking and dragging it in).
Select the proper volume/image.
Restore

Using Migration Assistant

This will require you have simultaneous access to the two disks from two separate Macs or a Time Machine backup of your HDD.

Follow the instructions from here.


OSX Mountain Lion - Login hangs after restart Mac Book Pro purchased in November, 2012, running OSX 10.8.current (Mountain Lion).

I shut down all apps, and restarted the laptop.

After the reboot, I selected my account and provided my password. The laptop hung with the apple logo and the spinning gear for about two minutes.

I restarted again and logged in as Guest. No problems.

I restarted and tried my account again. The laptop has now been stuck on the spinning gear (not the beach ball) for 10 minutes.

My home directory is encrypted, but I don't get any messages saying the laptop can't access the filesystem.

(And, of course, I'd muted the speaker before I restarted, so I don't get the start up tone. I'm going to give this attempt a few more minutes before trying to boot into safe mode.)

This is a totally new type of problem for me. Does anyone have any hints on what to look at to see what might not be starting properly?

Thanks!

UPDATE 1

I couldn't manage to restart in Safe Mode (shift key). I did restart into Restore mode (Cmd-R) and was able to run Disk Utility. The disk itself passed all verify tests, the Encrypted LVM was inaccessible.

While in Restore mode, I picked Start-up Disk... from the Apple menu and provided the password for the encrypted LVM. That was accepted and the partition appeared.

After restarting, a test login is again hanging...

Whatever is was, CMD-R on restart and reinstalling the OS fixed it. :-/


AppStore is missing after updating to iOS 10 Just yesterday night I updated my iPhone with iOS 10.0.1 but after updating I have found that App Store is not there so I cannot download and install new apps . I realised I cannot even delete apps from phone

Make sure you don't have Restrictions set up: go to Settings -> General -> Restrictions and make sure restrictions for deleting and downloading apps are off. Then find the App Store app:

On your home screen: Just tap its distinctive blue icon.

Using Siri:
Hold down your iPhone's home button and say, "Launch App Store".

Using Spotlight Search:
From your home screen, swipe your finger down from the center of the screen, then start typing "App Store".


OS X firewall code-signing not working for nginx etc I am trying to connect to a web server (nginx) on OS X El Capitan - on local wifi from an iOS device. I know from earlier that this is not easy.
Tried this without success.

Have you come across anything that works?

Not a great solution, but have you tried turning off the firewall?

If that works, then try the following, which may prompt you to allow nginx to bypass the OS X firewall: nginx -g "daemon off;"; this will make nginx run in the foreground instead of with the daemon, which seemed to help OS X recognize that it needs firewall permissions.

If you're not getting that popup, try turning off the Automatically allow signed applications option in System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Firewall -> Firewall options..., then toggle the firewall off and back on, and toggle the "lock" off and back on (lower left hand corner if you have it set to require admin password to modify security preferences).

Once I got it to give me the popup and I clicked Allow, I found it would let me access nginx for that session.


Old iMac Hard Drive not readable as external My friend's iMac would not boot.  I ran TechTool Protogo using a thumb drive with TTP 9 to test the hard drive.  It reported several hundred failed sectors on the drive, so I recommended we replace it.
Before replacing the hard drive in the iMac, I booted off an old hard drive from an old laptop using a USB to SATA adapter to make sure the iMac would boot off another drive, in other words, I wanted to make sure the problem was in fact the hard drive.  It booted fine, although I could not access the damaged internal drive as it was encrypted with FileVault.
I went ahead and completed the hard drive replacement, putting in an SSD and connecting the damaged internal to my USB to SATA adapter.  I expected I could get the password for the old hard drive later to copy any data I could save from it.
I used internet recovery to install the original OS that came on the iMac to the new SSD, and then upgraded to High Sierra, which is what my friend originally had on it.  The iMac now boots fine.
The problem I have is the former internal drive will not mount using the USB to SATA adapter, rather the iMac reports it is unreadable.  I also used the adapter to try and mount the hard drive on a MacBook Pro, but got the same warning,
Is there something related to FileVault that would prevent this drive from working outside the iMac?  I had researched this earlier, and thought I was okay.  Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

iMac Model: 21.5-inch, Late 2013
OS installed on failed disk...  High Sierra
OS installed on new SSD ... High Sierra
OS installed on MacBook Pro ... Mojave

I did find a thread on here with a similar problem and tried fixing it with GPT commands in terminal.  I wonder if I have made it worse...
Please help me.  I really wanted to help my friend and though I got her iMac up and running, I really, really want to help her get files back.
------- Additional Information -------
The drive is a HGST SATA drive, model 5K1000-1000.
The USB to SATA adapter is the CablesToGo #3050.
@benwiggy, When I booted from the laptop HDD, the iMac started up fine. A window appeared and I believe it said the internal drive was encrypted and asked for its password. I simply ignored it assuming I could access it later as an external drive and get the same prompt. When I tried to access it as an external drive, it said it was not readable and offered me the option to ignore, eject, or initialize. I chose ignore.
Terminal Commands and the results:
Bobs-MBP:~ bob$ sudo gpt -r show disk2
  start       size  index  contents
      0          1         PMBR
      1          1         Pri GPT header
      2          4         Pri GPT table
      6  244190635
244190641          4         Sec GPT table
244190645          1         Sec GPT header

Bobs-MBP:~ bob$ diskutil list
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
 #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk2

Do a cold boot and enter the password for the encrypted drive at that time. FileVault 2 doesn't allow access to encrypted drives after boot if you don't provide the password then.

When FileVault setup is complete and you restart your Mac, you will use your account password to unlock your disk and allow your Mac to finish starting up. FileVault requires that you log in every time your Mac starts up, and no account is permitted to log in automatically.

See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204837


How to change the input source to different language with shortcut (only one key combination)? I want to use four language in my OS X system (English, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese), and I know I can change the language with ⌘ + Space. However, I have a pathological hatred for switching with it, because it requires me to select from so, so many choices! I also know I can change it from the menubar on the right of the bar, but it's much more disgusting than the ⌘ + Space solution.

So I rather want to change it with easier shortcut, like the following:

left ⌘ switches to English
right ⌘ switches to Spanish
left ⌘ + left ⌥ + C switches to Chinese
right ⌘ + right ⌥ + C switches to Japanese.

I tried to use Karabiner (the descendent from KeyRemap4MacBook), but it doesn't work on the first attempt on Chinese, on which when I switches to Chinese, it remains English (the input source icon on the menubar changes, but the keyboard does not work). But for some reasons if I switch from English to Chinese to English to Chinese (two attempts), then the Chinese keyboard finally works.

So I don't like the idea of using Karabiner. So what is the better way to change the input source?

I ran into the same issue with Chinese and Japanese. (The icon on the menu bar changed but the input source was not actually changed until I switched to another input source and back.) It's a known bug according to a post at Karabiner's mailing list:

  It's one of the most annoying bug of OS X.

  Changing CJK input sources directly from program is not handled appropriately.

  So, you need the following procedures.

  Step1:
  Enable "Select next source in Input menu" (command-option-space) on System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts.

  Step2:
  Change input source by sending command-option-space.

<autogen>
  __KeyToKey__
  KeyCode::K, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L,
  KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTMODE_US,
  KeyCode::VK_WAIT_100MS,
  KeyCode::SPACE, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_R | ModifierFlag::OPTION_L,
  <!-- adjust wait for your machine -->
  KeyCode::VK_WAIT_10MS,
  KeyCode::VK_WAIT_10MS,
  KeyCode::VK_WAIT_10MS,
  KeyCode::SPACE, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_R | ModifierFlag::OPTION_L,
  <!-- adjust wait for your machine -->
  KeyCode::VK_WAIT_10MS,
  KeyCode::VK_WAIT_10MS,
  KeyCode::VK_WAIT_10MS,
  KeyCode::SPACE, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_R | ModifierFlag::OPTION_L,

  Option::NOREPEAT,
</autogen>

changeinput is affected by the same bug.

Another workaround is to just change to another input source and back:

<root>
  <vkchangeinputsourcedef>
    <name>KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_HIRAGANA</name>
    <inputsourceid_equal>com.apple.inputmethod.Kotoeri.Japanese</inputsourceid_equal>
  </vkchangeinputsourcedef>
  <vkchangeinputsourcedef>
    <name>KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_SPANISH</name>
    <inputsourceid_equal>com.apple.keylayout.Spanish</inputsourceid_equal>
  </vkchangeinputsourcedef>
  <vkchangeinputsourcedef>
    <name>KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_US</name>
    <inputsourceid_equal>com.apple.keylayout.US</inputsourceid_equal>
  </vkchangeinputsourcedef>
  <vkchangeinputsourcedef>
    <name>KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_CHINESE</name>
    <inputsourceid_equal>com.apple.inputmethod.TCIM.Pinyin</inputsourceid_equal>
  </vkchangeinputsourcedef>
  <item>
    <name>inputsources</name>
    <identifier>inputsources</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyOverlaidModifier__ KeyCode::COMMAND_L, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_US, KeyCode::COMMAND_L</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyOverlaidModifier__ KeyCode::COMMAND_R, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_R | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_SPANISH, KeyCode::COMMAND_R</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::C, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L | ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_CHINESE, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_US, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_CHINESE</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::C, ModifierFlag::OPTION_R | ModifierFlag::COMMAND_R | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_HIRAGANA, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_US, KeyCode::VK_CHANGE_INPUTSOURCE_HIRAGANA</autogen>
  </item>
</root>


How do I find and kill an application which keeps restarting? I am writing an application in Swift and I have attempted to allow it to launch at login by following a number of tutorials. This involves creating a launcher application and enabling it using SMLoginItemSetEnabled.
Things have gone horribly wrong. I followed the instructions to remove the main storyboard, but neglected to remove its reference in Info.plist. I think that as a result the launcher application crashes.
However the real problem is that I am now in an an endless loop. I get an alert that the launcher quit unexpectedly. Ignore simply restarts it, and Report… does the same. I cannot get it to stop restarting.
I have logged out, restarted, and also done so without reopening windows. I cannot find anything in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/, and, indeed, I can’t find the application anywhere.
In my /var/log/system.log I get:

Service exited due to SIGABRT
Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.

How do I go about finding this process and killing it once and for all?

You fix this simply by deleting the .application bundle. Then fix the problem with Info.plist in Xcode and rebuild.


How to "Undo" further steps in Final Cut Pro X I am using Final Cut Pro X version 10.4.8. I need to undo more than 10 steps or even 20 steps backward but the software does not allow me. How can I achieve this goal?

You can undo whatever you did since the last time you have opened the app. Further than that you will need to get a backup version of that "library" (meaning the file project in Apple's brain) located in your backups folder, defined in the Library Properties panel. Also it is a good idea to snapchat your "projects" (meaning the timeline/sequence) from time to time, so you have older versions.


PDFScanner Automation I recently purchased PDFScanner to convert a bunch of scans into searchable, smaller-sized PDFs. I specifically picked PDFScanner because of its AppleScript automation (see "Features" section on PDFScanner's website).

However, when I put together the above script using the built-in commands as documented in PDFScanner's AppleScript library and tried to run it, I got the following error:

At this point, I'm stuck. I've contacted the developer. He said this exact same scripts works for him and that I should try to delete and reinstall PDFScanner, which I did to no avail. Can anybody figure out what the problem is?

Here's the complete script:

on run {input, parameters}

    tell application "PDFScanner"
        deskew input
        rasterize input
        ocr input
    end tell

    return input
end run

As it turns out, the cause of the problem was trivial. I simply used the wrong type of (formatted) quotation marks in tell application "PDFScanner". After removing the formatting, everything worked like a charm. This workflow saved me quite some time:

on run {input}

    tell application "PDFScanner"
        repeat with PDF in input
            deskew PDF
            rasterize PDF
            ocr PDF to PDF
        end repeat
    end tell

    return input
end run


Network settings won't save DNS servers This has to be simple: I can't save DNS servers in Network>(Location)>Advanced>DNS

I add the DNS servers

  1.1.1.1

  1.0.0.1

  2606:4700:4700::1111

  2606:4700:4700::1001

save, and then after a sleep, they revert back to what I assume are my ISPs DNS servers.

Any ideas? Is there a way to lock the panel settings?

Sierra Macbook Pro 1014

Turned out to be simple - my DSL router had DNS servers configured, and those were overriding the settings in the Network Control Panel due to DHCP being used. DHCP was grabbing the servers from the router and ISP.

So I changed DNS servers in the router, restarted the router and the Macbook, and then could see the 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 servers in the Advanced>TCP settings; they were grayed out since they were set in the router.


ipad charging problem For 5 hours it only charge 10% . How could I solve this problem.

This page from Apple details how to charge an iPad.  It recommends plugging it into either the 10w Power Adaptor that comes with the iPad or a high powered USB 2 port.  Some USB2 ports are not high powered and will either not charge the ipad or only trickly charge it very slowly.

This article details how long it should take to charge the iPad with various techniques.  As you can see charging the iPad with the charger it comes with takes about 3 hours (to 80% capacity).

If you are not getting satisfactory charge times (and are using the recommended chargers), then you should book to have your iPad checked out at an authorized Apple repair centre or Apple Store.


How do I switch monitor focus with the keyboard? I have 2 monitors connected to my Mac.
Each monitor has multiple spaces setup, for example - monitor 1 has Desktop 1, 2 & 3 and monitor 2 has Desktop 4 & 5.

ctrl+← and ctrl+→ only move between spaces on the currently focused monitor.

However, I can't find how to switch monitor focus using the keyboard.

If focus is on monitor 1, I need to point and click my mouse on monitor 2 and only then can I switch spaces on monitor 2.

Even if I switch to an application open on monitor 2 using ctrl+tab, the monitor focus and space switching still occurs on monitor 1.

Using Yosemite.

fwiw, I think this question has already been asked and answered...

Keyboard shorcut to switch focus between multiple displays on OS X Mavericks


Auto-complete to multiple possible file extensions (Edit:  I suspect this was a better fit for the Unix and Linux stack exchange network -- could someone migrate this over there?  Or do I have to make an account over there myself?)

I'm converting some of my old terminal scripts (typically written in tcsh) to run as bash scripts in OSX.  In particular, I'm trying to get my terminal to auto-complete inputs to certain programs specified by my .bash_profile settings.  For example, the command

complete -f -X '!*.tex' emacs

correctly auto-completes emacs inputs only to .tex files.  I was hoping something like this would work so that it would only tab-complete to .tex OR .txt files:

complete -f -X '!*.@(tex|txt)' emacs

But this fails.  Any suggestions?

Cross referencing your answered cross post so future Googlers can find it
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22854848/specifying-two-file-extensions-in-bash-complete


How do I refresh the graph in the iOS 9 Stocks app? In the Stock app, when I click on a ticker and select "1W" to specify one week's worth of stock data on the graph, it pulls the data and displays the graph.

If I go back many hours later, the graph shows the cached version of the graph.

Is there a way to get the app to update the graph?  The only way I know is to close the app and re-open it.

It seams like the only option is closing the app via multitasking and reopening it again.

A "swipe down to refresh" function could be useful to have in this case.


Detect if ctrl key is pressed In JavaScript for Automation (JXA), we can detect if the ctrl key is pressed with

ObjC.import("Cocoa")
$.NSEvent.modifierFlags & $.NSControlKeyMask

If ctrl is not pressed, the return will be 0. If it is, the value will be different.

But NSControlKeyMask is deprecated. I found NSEventModifierFlagControl but can’t get it to work.

What is the current way to detect if the ctrl key is pressed?

Per your latest comment, you state that the code you have quoted works in practice, and your only problem is you want to get rid of the deprecated NSControlKeyMask.

Simply replace that word with NSEventModifierFlagControl and this is it.

The only thing Apple did is to change the name. In recent macOS NSControlKeyMask is even defined as simply being equal to NSEventModifierFlagControl. Both have the value 1 << 18 (i.e. the 18th bit is set to 1, rest is 0).


Delete unused Today Widgets I'm trying to remove unused Today widgets from the Notification Center panel, although it's not clear on how to get rid of them (delete permanently).

The unused items show up after clicking the "Edit" button at the bottom of the Today Screen, but the only thing that the +/- seems to do is either add it to the panel or put it in a pile of unused widgets. I would like to remove some third party today widgets entirely, as I don't even have the application installed any longer.

The following assumes you've got a widget called ExampleWidget.

Ensure that you've removed the application, even if it's running out of your Downloads folder.

To do this, launch Terminal.app on your Mac and type the following commands:

rm -fr /Applications/ExampleWidget*

rm -fr ~/Downloads/ExampleWidget*
Restart Notification Center by running the following command:

pkill -9 -f "NotificationCenter$"


iOS 14: call controls not displayed in lock screen Seems like I’m missing something obvious but can’t seem to find an answer.
Before upgrading to iOS 14, 3rd party apps like Teams would show call controls like mute, hang up etc, on the Lock Screen, while in a call. Now it seems the best I can do is click the green bar, unlock the phone, find the call controls I want inside the app somewhere.
I’ve tried changing the Incoming Calls setting to full screen, swiping every which way on the Lock Screen, no luck.
It looks like people have asked similar questions in the past when the call controls screen behavior changed in previous iOS releases...
iPhone SE 2020 with iOS 14

I found perfectly working WORKAROUND:
During Microsoft Teams meeting, just go to home screen, start dialing any number via built-in Phone app and stop even after 1 second. Your Teams meeting won't dissconnect, it will just pause. After that, when You go back to Teams and lock the screen, call controls will appear every time! Simple as that!!!
Of course You have to repeat those steps on every new Teams meeting.
I hope you find this guide useful.


Cannot copy certain podcast episodes to iPhone My iPhone (3GS, 5.1.1) has decided that certain new podcast episodes simply cannot be copied to the phone. When I move them from the iTunes Podcasts category in the library to the phone, nothing happens. This applies only to the newest one or two episodes of each affected podcast. Other episodes copy nicely.

I tried deleting all podcast episodes on the phone, rebooting the phone and restarting iTunes.

Any ideas?

Some podcasts are video and if the resolution is too high for your device, it will not work.


Can I write a script to take an action right before the computer is going to go to sleep? I think my computer is randomly not syncing email correctly with Apple Mail, but it's only a problem when it wakes from sleep.

That issue is neither here nor there. What I'd like to do is write a script / something that will quit Apple Mail if it detects that the computer is going to sleep.

Ideally, there'd be a similar process to open Apple Mail upon waking from sleep, but that's less of an issue.

I tried looking for a system event library of some kind, but all I can find is fsevents (which I don't think has anything about sleep).

Thanks!

I suggest using a daemon like SleepWatcher. Once you’ve installed SleepWatcher (ref. the README included with it), you can run commands like the following.

/usr/local/sbin/sleepwatcher -s /path/to/sleepscript -w /path/to/wakeupscript

The script

#!/bin/sh
osascript -e 'quit app "Mail"'

will quit Mail, and the script

#!/bin/sh
open -a /Applications/Mail.app $1

will open it. You can save these as .sh files and reference them from sleepwatcher, but ensure you run chmod +x filename.sh on them before you try running them. Otherwise, OS X won’t recognize them as executable.

Now, you have two options for loading sleepwatcher: you can manually run it, you can configure a LaunchAgent to do so. I like the latter, so create a file in /Library/LaunchAgents/ named com.custom.mailfix.plist (the name is unimportant, but I recommend you keep the formatting, the “com” and the “plist”). The file’s contents should resemble the following.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.custom.mailfix.plist</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/usr/local/sbin/sleepwatcher</string>
    <string></string>
    <string>-s /path/to/sleepscript</string>
    <string>-w /path/to/wakescript</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

As before, replace the script paths with paths to your shell scripts. To tell OS X to launch this agent at startup, run

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.custom.mailfix.plist


Why chrome 34.0.1847.137 crash my os x 10.9.3? Chrome crashes my 13" and 15" rMBP.

  I got to press the power button to reboot to solve it.

The shutdown monitor log and chrome://crashes is empty, so I check the system log.

5/17/14 16:12:45.946 Google Chrome[306]: CGSCopyDisplayUUID: Invalid display 0x1b559efe
5/17/14 16:12:46.066 Google Chrome[306]: CGSCopyDisplayUUID: Invalid display 0x1b559efe
5/17/14 16:13:57.443 Google Chrome Helper[4105]: CoreText CopyFontsForRequest received mig IPC error (FFFFFECC) from font server
5/17/14 16:13:57.443 Google Chrome Helper[4105]: CoreText CopyFontsForRequest received mig IPC error (FFFFFECC) from font server
5/17/14 16:13:58.361 Google Chrome Helper[4105]: CoreText CopyFontsForRequest received mig IPC error (FFFFFECC) from font server
5/17/14 16:13:58.361 Google Chrome Helper[4105]: CoreText CopyFontsForRequest received mig IPC error (FFFFFECC) from font server
5/17/14 16:14:27.394 Google Chrome Helper[4105]: CoreText CopyFontsForRequest received mig IPC error (FFFFFECC) from font server
5/17/14 16:14:27.394 Google Chrome Helper[4105]: CoreText CopyFontsForRequest received mig IPC error (FFFFFECC) from font server
5/17/14 16:14:30.231 Google Chrome Helper[4105]: CoreText CopyFontsForRequest received mig IPC error (FFFFFECC) from font server
5/17/14 16:14:30.231 Google Chrome Helper[4105]: CoreText CopyFontsForRequest received mig IPC error (FFFFFECC) from font server
5/17/14 16:15:04.180 loginwindow[78]: magsafeStateChanged state changed old 1 new 2
5/17/14 16:15:21.030 loginwindow[78]: magsafeStateChanged state changed old 2 new 1
5/17/14 16:15:34.039 SophosWebD[99]: <SMENode: 0x7f9af3e09c70> localNode csc:1ERROR! encountered an error while writing to outputstream| error:Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=32 "The operation couldn’t be completed. Broken pipe"
5/17/14 16:15:35.099 Google Chrome Helper[4105]: CoreText CopyFontsForRequest received mig IPC error (FFFFFECC) from font server
5/17/14 16:15:35.099 Google Chrome Helper[4105]: CoreText CopyFontsForRequest received mig IPC error (FFFFFECC) from font server
5/17/14 16:16:37.447 Google Chrome Helper[4105]: CoreText CopyFontsForRequest received mig IPC error (FFFFFECC) from font server
5/17/14 16:16:37.447 Google Chrome Helper[4105]: CoreText CopyFontsForRequest received mig IPC error (FFFFFECC) from font server

Chrome Version:34.0.1847.137
extensions:
Google Docs 0.6
OneTab 1.6
Pocket (formerly Read It Later) 1.7.1
plugins:
QuickTime Player - Version: 7.7.3
Widevine Content Decryption Module - Version: 1.4.2.464
Adobe Flash Player (2 files) - Version: 13.0.0.214
PPAPI (out-of-process)
OS X:10.9.3

Is there anyone else got the same problem?

I also have Sophos installed. Maybe that breaks internet access? Edit: Seems to be the case. Have a look here: Sophos Website


Failed to expand to the maximum partition size There are two partitions currently allocated on my 100 GiB hard disk. However, only  ~85GB is formatted and I cannot expand /dev/disk0s2 to the maximum size with various attempts such as diskutil and gpt. The last ~20 GB free space does exist, but it cannot be partitioned. disk0 is a VMware vmdk resized from 85 GB to 107 GB with vmware-vdiskmanager.

What may cause this? And how should I achieve the goal?

Since resizing the partition that is currently mounted for the operating system is impossible and the filesystem (FS) may be corrupted. One of the solutions is to use a live CD, especially GParted Live ISO which has installed many tools related to disk management such as partition.

However, GParted can check the integrity of the FS, but it is not able to resize the partition to the maximum size. Hence, parted, a command-line tool, is used. (Thanks for @klanomath 's hints.)

Step 1:  Find out which partition has to be expanded.

$ sudo parted /dev/sd[x]
(parted) unit s print free  # unit: sectors

Step 2:  Expand the selected partition to the designated sector.

(parted) resizepart <partition> <end>s

Step 3: Shutdown the Live system.

Step 4: Restart the macOS VM, and repair the disk.

$ sudo diskutil repairDisk disk[y]


How to memorize the Option key ⌥? I wonder if there is a good way to memorize the Option key ⌥.  I almost always think of it as the Shift key, because it looks like a lower level and a higher level (the small hyphen elevated).

Or maybe a way to memorize it better is, what is the shape of this symbol for?  I mean, what does it represent symbol wise?

Weird/cool question!

I think I went through a similar thought process at one point: the way I think of it is like a set of train tracks. The train enters at the left and reaches a fork or split, giving it the option of the upper or lower path to the right. In the glyph, the tracks are set for the lower option.

Shift does have its own glyph: ⇧, which can be remembered as pushing the case of the typed letter up.


Applescript: Comparing variable to string is failing I have an applescript that gets a list of items and then iterates over them:

tell application "GeekTool Helper"
    set names to name of geeklets

    repeat with currentName in names
        if (currentName is equal to "Top_CPU_Processes") then
            display dialog "found it"
        end if
        return currentName
    end repeat
end tell

The names variable gets set to an array of strings properly. When I repeat over the list I'm able to get each of the currentName variables returned separately without an issue.

The problem that I'm running into is the if statement. I'm never getting the dialog box that display's "found it".

I've tried the comparison as if (currentName = "Top_CPU_Processes") then as well and it still never evaluates as true.

Is there something that I need to do to have the contents of the variable evaluate against the string?

When you have a list/array of variables and you iterate(repeat) over them, you are getting references to each item - such as "item 1 of names". In other words, you don't directly get the value, you get a pointer to the item in the array. You have to coerce the item reference to it's actual value to compare it.

Try:
if ((currentName as string) is equal to "Top_CPU_Processes) then

Also, if you are using Script Debugger, it's a lot easier to see what goes on with the script, it has much much better debug capability than the Applescript Editor.


iMessage via WiFi only Is there a way to rig iMessage so it receives (and, I guess,sends) messages only when connected via WiFi and not when connected via the carrier's data plan?

No, there's no such option / preference. You could, though, turn off your carrier's data plan altogether by turning off the Cellular Data option (under Settings / General/ Cellular on iOS 6 and Settings / General / Network on iOS 5).


Steps to send a file with FTP? I can connect to my server in my terminal with ftpcommand. Then, I connect to my site with open xxx but I don't know how to send file from my computer (local) to this server, with put.

Can someone explain it to me ?

If you type put and add a space after that command, you can then drag a file into the terminal window, it will paste the full path to the filename and add the extension from the filesystem.

Press enter and the transfer from the Mac to the server should start...


Two iPhones on separate accounts I got a new iPhone, and I want to give my old one to my son.  Naturally, I want to disable my Apple account and iMessage on the old phone. How do I do this without affecting my own account?

My son has his own iTunes account and will be on a different network than me.  The phone is unlocked.

The best way is to go into settings/general/reset and select Erase All Content and Settings.

This will reset the phone to an out of the box state, and allow him to set it up with his account without any of your data on the phone.


USB install Drive vs USB Recovery Drive I have two USB sticks:

An "installation" drive created with Disk Utility by locating the .dmg file hidden in the contents directory of the Mavericks installer. I used an 8GB stick for that. ( this method )
A "recovery" USB stick ( 1 GB stick ) created with Recovery Disk Assistant. ( this method )

The answer:

Do I need both of them ? If I do, why? If I don't, why ?

They do different things.

Recovery USB allows you to boot your Mac and run recovery software and "investigate" Tue condition of the software, hardware, etc. To use that to reinstall OSX requires an active internet connection (Ethernet I think) to download an image to install again.

Install USB does a'll that, and can perform a full reinstall with no internet connection.