Create symbolic links for multiple books collected from command `find` I'd like to create symbolic links for multiple books searched from running find command.

Firstly, I collect all the JS books

find ~ -type f -iregex  '.*javascript.*\.pdf' > js_books.md 2>/dev/null

It returns 35 books

../Coding/Books/HTML_Collections/Freeman E.T., Robson E. - Head First HTML5. Programming Building Web Apps with JavaScript - 2011.pdf
../Coding/Books/HTML_Collections/Learning Web Design - A Beginner's Guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics - Jennifer Niederst Robbins - 4th Edition - August 2012.pdf
..

Additionally to copy them to directory js_books

mkdir js_books
find ~ -type f -iregex  '.*javascript.*\.pdf' -print0 -exec cp '{}' js_books

It works, however, multiple copies consume lots of disk space.
So I delete the books and try to make symbolic link within.

find ~ -type f -iregex  '.*javascript.*\.pdf' -print0 -exec ln -s '{}' js_books/'{}' \;

It returns nothing in dir js_books.

How to work out such a problem?

You can loose the -print0 primary and the strong quotes around {}. I suggest that you use a glob pattern instead of a regex. Something like:

 find ~ -type f -iname '*javascript*.pdf' -exec ln -s {} js_books \;


How do I change the default font size for reading the body of messages in Mail 14.0 How do I change the default font size for reading the body of messages in Mail 14.0? I know that I can use ctrl ⌃ + +, but I want the reading pane to default the body of the message to a larger font without lowering the default resolution.
This is related to a previous question but the suggested methods no longer work.

Mail > Preferences > Fonts & Colors provides selectors for font style, size, usage (list, text body), and color.
Here's the Fonts & Colors preference pane:

To change the text font, style, and size, push the "Select" button that appears at the right end of the line "Message font." Doing so brings up the regular macOS font selector dialog:

Make your selections, and in a moment or two Mail.app will update its display.


What are the In App Purchase subscription durations when testing subscriptions through TestFlight? When I test an internal development build In App purchase subscription durations are greatly reduced according to the table at:

http://help.apple.com/itunes-connect/developer/#/dev7e89e149d

Actual Duration Test Duration
1 week          3 minutes
1 month         5 minutes
2 months        10 minutes
3 months        15 minutes
6 months        30 minutes
1 year          1 hour

In an internal development build when I purchase a 1 month subscription, it actually expires after 5 minutes.

When I submit a build to iTunes Connect to use with Testflight, will my beta testers see the shortened durations (5 minutes) or will they see the actual durations (1 month)?

The durations are the same as with other sandbox users.  Thanks @fsb


How to listen to iTunes library stored on Time Capsule on iOS I know that storing the iTunes library on a Time Capsule isn't recommended as it won't be backed up. But with iTunes in the cloud and iTunes Match this isn't as big a deal. So I figured I'd move my library to my Time Capsule.

However, now that I've moved it, I'm unsure how to watch and listen to the media from my iPhone. Is there any way to start Home Sharing from the Time Capsule, or are there any apps that are designed to play iTunes libraries from NASs?

For the Time Capsule directly? No

Sharing is done via iTunes running, irrelevant of where the files are stored. However you can look at something like Subsonic to share the music with multiple devices.

In both instances however this needs to run off another machine connected to the time capsule.


how to stop iphoto from organising photos (physically relocating)? Many years ago I considered ditching picasa for iPhoto but stuck with it as I didn't want my pics being physically rearranged on the disk (Picasa is rightly okay with your pictures being where you want to store them)

Is there a way to prevent iPhoto from doing this?

Go to iPhoto → Preferences → Advanced  and uncheck Copy items to the iPhoto Library.

Note that iPhoto will still copy files to its library if you import photos from an SD card, etc. Instead, copy them where you want first then import them.

Also, changing this setting on an existing library will not relocate media that has already been imported. You can create a new library by holding ⌥ whilst opening iPhoto.


iMovie 11 - Fix iMovie projects that don't open after iMovie crash I was asked today to fix a friend's problem with iMovie. The initial report was that iMovie won't open and play the projects. The iMovie owner also said that there was an iMovie crash while working on one of these projects recently.

Indeed there are only certain projects that won't open, while most of them will play fine.

Trashing the iMovie preference .plist file has no effect.
These projects seems corrupted and there is no backup. Is there any way to fix them?

After some troubleshooting, I concluded that the issue with these projects was not inside the projects themselves, but in the events that have been used in these projects and to be more precise, with the thumbnails of these events.

It looks like something went wrong during or before the iMovie crash and affected the events video thumbnails.

The solution in my case:

  I forced iMovie to re-create the thumbnails of these events, by deleting
  the thumbs folder inside iMovie events folder in Finder.

Here is some further info, regarding the issue and how I ended up with recreating the thumbs:

The iMovie owner, had a special structure in separating his iMovie projects in folders by project topic. I found out that it was only some 8-10 projects under a specific folder that were unable to open-load inside iMovie. Some of them, they were able to open, but all they were showing in the viewer was just a gray screen.

Also, its worth noting that all the other iMovie projects in the library were working fine.

I also noticed that when right-clicking on the problematic projects inside the project library, I was not getting the extended contextual menu that presents commands like duplicate, export etc, but only 2 commands: to create new project or new folder.

Trashing iMovie preferences file had absolutely no effect, nor renaming the project files either. Searching on Google for similar issues, I couldn't find anything similar. Running onyx's cleaning features, repairing permissions, checking hard-drive system for corruption - all these were also in the mix - but with no result.

Finally, I had an idea:
I sent a project file (containing no events/video) to my own mac and tried to open it. It opened just fine, with the exception that it couldn't find the source files.

That lead me to think that the project files were fine and that I rather have to check for the events.

The owner had a similar folder structure for his events as well. So, all the events used in the above projects, were inside their single folder in iMovie Events folder. As first move, I moved that folder outside of iMovie events folder and opened iMovie.

At this time, all projects were able to open. Also, the extended context menu appeared back. I was close to my final conclusion but yet I wasn't sure what was wrong. The videos, the caches, the thumbs? So, putting back in the events folder, one by one files and folders, I got my answer.
The thumbs were corrupted.

Just to make sure everything will be fine, I finally let only the actual events video files inside that folder, opened iMovie and let it re-generate/optimize the events videos of that folder.
It took about 4 hours for iMovie to complete this, but after that all projects are working fine.


Centrally Managed Apps/Home Folders on Mac OS X Lion Server I'm trying to allow access for multiple Mac clients with OS X Lion and user directories on a Lion server so users can login from any Mac in the network and access their profile.

I also want to install/autoupdate software or put configs on all clients.

I already took a look at patch management tools like munki but they don't seem to do what I'm looking for or their purpose/usage isn't clear.

I would be glad if somebody could point me in the right direction.

Well... You will need to run Open Directory, and set up network home folders within there.

Then, when yous OD clients log into yous Macs, they will be given access to their home folder from the server.

For mobile users, you will want to set up a Mobile Home Folder, perhaps with HomeSync.

Check out these documents from Apple:
https://help.apple.com/advancedserveradmin/mac/10.7/

For your installing of software and configs, you will probably want to use Apple Remote Desktop


Mail app: switch-off auto-synchronisation of some accounts I have multiple email accounts that I have configured in the mail app. Is is possible to turn the synchronisation off selectively for one or two accounts?

Ok... after looking over and over again, there is a solution. Right-click on the account and then click "take account offline"


Remove duplicates from contextual menus In addition to Time Machine I do a weekly clone of my system drive to a volume on a second hard drive in my 2011 MacBook Pro. I also made a clone in another volume before I upgraded to Lion.
Now some of the apps from the Snow Leopard drive clone are starting to show up as duplicates in "open with" contextual menus.  If I choose one of the duplicates it will open the app from the cloned volume.
How can I remove these items from the menu and make sure OS X doesn't think these are installed apps?
Screenshot:

I had the same problem, rebuilding the Launch Services database did the trick for me. Entered the following in Terminal:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain user

Then log out and back in. The open with menu should be clear of duplicates.

Credit: https://discussions.apple.com/message/15251482#15251482


Quick event app for iPhone I am looking for an app (or builtin feature) that allows adding calendar events in my iPhone using text. For example, in my Google Pixel I have an app called Quick Event that when I open a simple text field appear. If I type "Lunch with Bob thursday at 3pm" the information is parsed and an event is created in my calendar. Anything similar for iOS? I have searched all over but cannot find anything similar. I will preferably be able to add this to google calendar.

There's literally dozens of calendar apps in the App Store that do the same thing. For instance, I use Fantanstical and use that method to enter all my events. What have you tried already and why didn't it meet your needs?
  —-From comment by @fsb


Safari Toolbar Icons Blank Regularly, after some time using Safari, 3rd party icons in Safari toolbar become blank.

Restarting Safari fixes the problem, but after some time it happens again.

This happens to me as well. Only 3rd party buttons go blank.

Go to Preferences > Extensions
Turn Extensions OFF
Turn Extensions ON

The icons should come back.


Change window keyboard shortcut So there's this gesture on touchpads where you move 4 fingers downward so you change between multiple windows of the same application. I'm working on an iMac now, so I don't have a touchpad, is there any keyboard command (or maybe a gesture on the magic mouse) to produce this?

By default, the shortcut is Control+Down.


Python no longer working, Config directory empty I tried debugging this on my own, but to no avail. Here's the problem -

I have a MacBook Pro 13" OS X 10.7.3 with Python 2.7 (no other version installed)

I recently installed MAMP from their website. It's a good way to test out site building. But today, when I tried installing a python package using easy_install, it just doesn't accept the request. Here's the error -

nitin:~ nitinthewiz$ easy_install virtualenv
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site.py", line 553, in <module>
main()
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site.py", line 535, in main
known_paths = addusersitepackages(known_paths)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site.py", line 268, in addusersitepackages
user_site = getusersitepackages()
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site.py", line 243, in getusersitepackages
user_base = getuserbase() # this will also set USER_BASE
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site.py", line 233, in getuserbase
USER_BASE = get_config_var('userbase')
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/sysconfig.py", line 535, in get_config_var
return get_config_vars().get(name)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/sysconfig.py", line 434, in get_config_vars
_init_posix(_CONFIG_VARS)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/sysconfig.py", line 287, in _init_posix
raise IOError(msg)
IOError: invalid Python installation: unable to open /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/config/Makefile (No such file or directory)

I checked out the folder at /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/config/ and guess what, it's Empty!

The reason I mentioned MAMP in the beginning was because I realized that MAMP has it's own python 2.6 installation within itself and I thought maybe it's interfering with my python 2.7. But it seems that's now the case because when I type python into the terminal, it refers to my python 2.7 as you can see from the path above.

Can anyone help? I was hoping to begin playing around with python after a long time today but this error is making me go crazy! Also, I play around with a lot of things in python and have a lot of packages installed. I have not been able to find a command to list all the packages installed under easy_install.

Can anyone help with either of my problems??

I've solved this problem (I hope)

I simply went online and downloaded the python 2.7.3 DMG installer for Mac and installed python again. Hopefully, this will let me run everything I want.

As of now, easy_install has started working and I'm going to start playing with Django... :)


Where file revisions are stored on OS X? Most Apple applications in newer OS X versions, like OS X 10.9, automatically save all changes to all files and documents without your approval, and file versions and revisions are automatically available from within a submenu within the File menu.

Where are such revisions saved, filesystem-wise?

If one is to exchange such files, how would one ensure that none of the history gets exchanged, too?

What if one did want to exchange the history, is there a way to accomplish that as well?

Versions are stored within the same file so a myfile.pages will have all there versions stored within it.

A version is only stored when you save from the file menu or use cmd- S

The version is just a bit of text that details the changes made since the last version so is not a copy of the file at that stage.

So if you sent the file to someone else they should get all the previous versions as well.


Nginx on 10.7 with homebrew I've purchased an "old" Mac Mini (macmini2,1) from a coworker to serve as a media server beneath my TV. It runs 10.7.5 and can't update any further, it's got a 1.83Ghz Core2Duo and 4Gb RAM, and I've stuffed a 128Gb Apple SSD in it.

I'm trying to install nginx on it to act as a small home web server, to quickly share files with colleagues and host some development I'm doing. I'm used to do this on Debian installs, but it's the first time I'm doing it on OSX and I want to do things well.

So I've installed nginx with Homebrew:

brew install nginx

and I'm trying to set it up so that:

it loads at boot, without the need to login (via /Library/LaunchDaemons, though I'm not proficient with that yet) – can anybody help me with the plist?
it runs as www-data, not root – can anybody tell me which is the best way to create this user account? It does not need to be able to login through the window manager, it's just meant to be a unix account. Though I'd appreciate being able to connect to the mini with AFP as www-data and directly share the /var/www (or equivalent) folder on my LAN, that'd help me drop files easily. Probably /usr/local/var/www from what I understand. Again, I'm accustomed to doing that with Debian (with the help of netatalk and avahi).

What's the best setup for doing this? Directory structures, configuration files?

Any pointer appreciated for the nginx.conf too, cause the stock config provided by Homebrew is quite different from what I'm used to on Debian.

Also, won't it conflict with the stock Apache? I want to run it on port 80 (and eventually make it available to the whole world).

(PHP would be welcome too, but for now I just want a solid, plain old webserver, before adding PHP to it).

[Note: I'd rather tag this question nginx, but I can't as I haven't earned enough rep here. Can somebody tag it for me?]

If you type brew info nginx you should get answers to many of your questions.  In particular, you should see something like:

To have launchd start nginx at login:
    ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/nginx/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
Then to load nginx now:
    launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.nginx.plist

So I expect if you link the plist to /Library/LaunchDaemons instead of ~/Library/LaunchAgents it will load at boot.

I don't know what you want to change, but it's the same nginx as you use on Debian, so you can copy over your Debian nginx.conf if you want.  Also the brew package comes with a set of default/example configuration files installed under /usr/local/etc/nginx/.

The default conf runs on port 8080, so you have to edit it to run on port 80, and yes it will conflict with Apache running on port 80 so you have to turn Apache off or put it on another port.  Apache config files are in /private/etc/apache2/ and you can turn it off via System Preferences -> Sharing -> Personal Web Sharing.  (Note that this option has been removed in Mountain Lion.  Mountain Lion still ships with Apache, but it is disabled by default.)

You can, of course, set it up however you want, but if you're looking for what's easy and Mac-like, just follow the Apache setup, which uses user and group _www and uses /Library/WebServer/Documents as document root and serves user content out of ~user/Sites.


Macbook Pro 17" mid 2010 + NEC upd720202 Express Card USB 3.0 I have a MacBookPro6,1 running well and stable on MacOS 10.9.5,
I use it for video image editing, so I have a lot of data on external drives.
Recently found out that I can speed up all transferings via ExpressCard,
so I purchased one with NEC upd720202 chipset (the only one available here) but it doesn't work correctly. There is a mini disk with Windows driver, but I can't find any driver for MAcOS, niether at NEC, nor at Renesas web site.
When inserted there is an appropriate icon  at the top of the screen, but it doesn't see any device connected to USB ports.
I've read many posts about switching SIP, but it is not useful for my OS.
Looking for solution, thankful for any help!

As pointed out, the info is inaccurate for the MacBook Pro 2010 as it doesn't have Thunderbolt yet. The 2011 models have Thunderbolt and the info is accurate below. The 2012 models have USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, so the adapter is irrelevant

I'm not a big fan of adapters used to try and improve speed as they tend to not work as well as you expect.

I hunted around for a product that might help and the best option I could find was to get you Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 via the Kanex Thunderbolt to eSATA plus USB 3.0 Adapter.

Kanex makes a bunch of stuff for Macs and their stuff is hit or miss. At least they offer support for their products so if it doesn't work you can return it or talk with someone who makes the product.

If you have Amazon, you can find the adapter there, or you can get it straight from Kanex directly. It's a bit pricy though at around $75-$100 USD so it might make more sense to get yourself a thunderbolt drive or put the money towards a newer system at this point.

Here's the Kanex link for the product: Thunderbolt to eSata + USB 3.0 Adapter

Note: Sonnet used to make a ExpressCard to USB adapter that would have worked, but they no longer sell the product or support it. I would advise skipping the ExpressCard slot on your Mac altogether for this issue.


Outgoing e-mail server from Safari / text document When I send/share a URL in Safari I want the default outgoing sender to be my gmail and not iCloud address.  How do I set that. Also when I'm in a text document and I want to share/email it, the default shows my iCloud email, but I want it to be gmail.  I know I can change the outgoing in the e-mail program, but I want it to be the default.

Inside the e-mail program gmail is set as the default outgoing server.  The problem arises only when I'm sending/e-mailing/sharing straight from Safari or a document on my MacBook Pro.  When the e-mail program comes up the @iCloud account is the default outgoing server.

Assuming you're using OSX 10.8, under Mail > Preferences > Composing, the drop-down menu for "Send new messages from" can be changed from the default "Account of selected mailbox" to the specific account you want (in your case, the Gmail account).


Do I really need to configure each subfolder in my Exchange inbox for push on an iPhone? I have an iPhone 5 running iOS 7. I have an Exchange inbox with at least a dozen subfolders and server-side rules that "pre-sort" mail to these subfolders. If I want to receive push notifications for these subfolders (and I do), I have to configure this for every single subfolder. When I add new folders in Outlook, I need to remember to add it on my phone.

Is there a way to tell the iOS mail client to push all subfolders of a given inbox automatically?

The answer appears to be no, and it is a longstanding issue.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1868
https://discussions.apple.com/message/23132172#23132172
https://discussions.apple.com/message/8516130#8516130


How to do a complete refresh in Safari 10.1.1 on MacOS Sierra I'm developing a website and there's a text input in my website's top menu and what bothering me is:

I loaded the site in Safari before my style.css file was edited and after that I edited my style.css and gave a border-radius styling to my text input now I can't make safari show the changes, Of course it is working very well in windows after I pressed ctrl+F5. I want to know the equal of ctrl+F5 in Safari.

Note that I've tried the shortcuts in this link but I still see the old styling of my text input in Safari.

  Also I must mention that I use this code in order to make sure that
  Safari accepts the stylings:

-webkit-border-radius: 10px;
-moz-border-radius: 10px;
border-radius: 10px;

Shift-click the refresh button, or choose View → Reload Page From Origin (⌥⌘R) to refresh ignoring cached resources for the current domain. You can observe the effect in the Web Inspector's Network tab.

What I suspect is catching you out here is how a force refresh only bypasses cache for the same domain as the site you're refreshing. Even with a force refresh, resources may still be cached, such as from CDN domains.

To bypass cache for all resources, open the web inspector, choose the Network tab, then select ‘Ignore the resource cache when loading resources’. Refresh the page normally (all refreshes ignore cache now, not just ⇧-refresh) and all resources will be loaded from origin.


Windows 10 will not boot anymore Urgent! I have an existing Windows 10 installation via Bootcamp which has been on my Mac for months without issue. However for ages I have been wanting to read my Mac partition from Windows which it doesn't allow me to do, so I looked online which suggested making a third partition for both OS's to read from.

So I made a 10GB partition on Disk Utility which worked fine, and my Bootcamp drive is still there (it wasn't formatted, I can still view all Windows files from OS X), only problem now is Windows will not boot! If I hold down alt at the white screen, only my Mac partition shows up. When I go to system preferences and choose boot options, bootcamp is still there!? I removed the 10GB partition but it has not remedied the problem... I don't get it, please help!!

I can help you if you've a live USB linux distribution, ex. Ubuntu.

Boot into Ubuntu live USB by pressing alt when upon
restarting and choose EFI Boot.
Choose to Try Ubuntu.
Open Terminal by ctrl + alt + T.
Install efibootmgr by entering sudo apt-get install efibootmgr.
After installing it, check bootOrder and boot values by entering sudo efibootmgr.
Usually you OS X boot value is 0x80, please get your Windows value.
You can change booting order by sudo efibootmgr -o <comma separated boot values>.
Adjust your bootOrder assuming your Windows boot values is 0x01 then you should enter sudo efibootmgr -o 1,80 <- Windows first. So that your Mac should try booting to Windows first as you mention that you need an urgent solution.
Reboot to your live USB again and readjust the bootOrder by letting Mac boot into OS X first by sudo efibootmgr -o 80,1 <- OS X first.
Don't use any 3rd party bootloaders as you can easily adjust everything manually.

Advice:
Format your shared partition as ExFAT =)


Make a link to login items? In the course of installing some app, I came across the following.

Put a link to it in your Login items to have it start up automatically when you login.

How can I do that? How to make a link to login items with Mac OS X?

To add an item to your Login Items:

Open up the Accounts Preference Pane in System Preferences
Click on your Account and the click on the Login Items tab on the right hand side of the window.
Click the '+' button to navigate to the application or document you wish to open up on login.
If you wish you can check off the "Hide" checkbox to hide the application by default after it launches during login.


Turn off vibrate when charging wirelessly When I place my compatible iPhone on a wireless charger, it slowly falls off the charger over time as vibrations come in from messages. I appreciate the notification, but not if it will cause the phone to eventually fall off the charger. Are there any other options besides (1) manually turning vibrate mode to ring, which sometimes vibrates anyway, or (2) manually activating Do Not Disturb?

Build a stockade.

Cabinet maker's supply stores sell stick on bumpers that are used to keep wood hitting wood on cabinet drawers and doors.

The set below is from Lee Valley Tools.

Stick them on the edge of your charging device so that it can't crawl off, and then let it skate to it's heart's content.


Can I share a .ipa file (iOS app) among multiple users? Is it possible to share a .ipa file between iOS device users who have purchased the app? The reason is we do not want to download the app (especially if it has a large file size, like 1GB).

For example, User 1 has purchased 'Scrabble' and User 2 has also purchased 'Scrabble'. User 1 has a good internet connection and finished downloading. User 2 has a bad internet connection. In this case, User 2 would benefit by copying the .ipa file to his computer (if Apple allows). Since both users have purchased the application, it is not piracy or illegal.

I just don't have two accounts to try and I don't know where to look for the answer. Answers or a link to read would be appreciated.

That's a really interesting question.

But first I give you another situation:
If user 2 wants to use an app already bought and downloaded by user 1, the only thing user 2 needs to do is add the .ipa file of that app in his iTunes and authorize his computer with the apple id of user 1. (in iTunes click on 'Store' > 'Authorize this computer')

If two people want to use the same app they don't need to both download the app. They don't even have to both purchase the app. They can share the .ipa file if they authorize each other's computers.

In the situation you present - where user 2 also bought the app but didn't download it - I think he would still need to authorize his computer with the apple id of user 1 in iTunes. That's because I think the identity (apple id) of the buyer/downloader of the app is stored in the .ipa file, but I'm not 100% certain about that.


How can I switch back the SMB file service to SMB1? I am using an Canon print workstation to send files to OS X. Unfortunately OS X El Capitan uses SMB3. It's no longer possible to send files scanned PDF files to OS X. How can I switch back to SMB1 for the OS X El Capitan SMB file service?

Update: The command isn't correct.

echo "[default]" >> ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf; echo "smb_neg=smb1_only" >> ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf

It sets the default network protocol to the slower but more reliable SMB 1 protocol. However I don’t want to connect to a SMB Windows file server. It’s the other way around. I am using the built-in OS X SMB file service (SMB3) and the printer connects to OS X.

Anyway, there aren’t many articles on how to force OS X SMB server to use SMB1. There is also a application SMBUp which replaces Apple’s OS X native netbios and SMB services. You can find a detail tutorial here
http://www.tweaking4all.com/os-tips-and-tricks/macosx-tips-and-tricks/smbup-mac-os-x-smb-fix/

Solution: Finally I said goodbye to SMB and switched to FTP file protocol.

I ran into this problem a few years back and I found the cleanest way was to install Samba (which still supports the older protocols) via Homebrew and use that instead of the version built by Apple.

I used these instructions, which are for Mavericks but I think they should still work for newer versions of OS X.


iOS System Services > Time & Location uses excessive cellular data. Why? How to disable? Since iOS 11 update I noticed that my iPhone 6s started to drain cellular traffic very fast. Before, I was able to keep within 500 MB per month but now 1 GB is not enough.

I looked at the settings and noticed: the traffic is mostly drained by the system services. And not by the analytics but by the "Time & Location". Surprisingly, isn't it?

Here is the stats for last 10 days:

479 MB totally
308 MB for system services
261 MB for time & location
26.6 MB for push notifications

Here is some screenshots:

The first question is How the f.. they do it?

I'll not be a lier if I say that I'm paranoid about this. Look, I spent only 171 MB for messengers, maps, social networks and browsing. Why time and locations use so much traffic? 261 (two hundred and sixty-eight) MB!!! What are they downloading? A sound recorded 24/7? Or videos a videos of me?

Time is so simple to synchronise through the NTP. I can't believe that it can take more then a kilobyte. And there is no need to sync time more then once per month.

Location is simply provided by GPS. No cellular data required at all. But even if Apple want to track each my step it can't take more then 1 MB of text data per day.

So, it's a big mystery where is my traffic sucked in. Apple, please, collect your data using Wi-Fi.

And the second practical question is about how to fix this trouble

I noticed a similar question: Disable system services to save data

I have disabled some of items in Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services. I don't want to disable the other such as "Find My iPhone" because I think they are important.

I currently use a very simple solution: I'm turning of the cellular data when I don't need it and turn it on to check messages, for example. But if forget I can easily lose 50 MB for a night.

Well @grgarside was right. The problem was not in the system itself but in a bike tracker app which use Location Services excessively. I figured it out by disabling Location for all the apps and then enabling them one by one. Now I think I need to contact the developer of that app and the question is closed.


iOS6 update to 8 or greater I have an iPhone with iOS 6.0.1. I need to update it to iOS 8 or later. I also have a MacBook Pro with macOS Sierra v 10.12.5.

Problem

My MacBook has Thunderbolt 3 ports, and no usb ports. My old iPhone only has a usb cable. (I don't have a Thunderbolt 3 to usb adapter).

Question

Is it possible to upgrade the firmware on the old iPhone given my situation?

I have tried via bluetooth, I can get the devices to pair, but then don't see the iPhone in my MacBooks iTunes.

Any help appreciated.

You can't.
Due to the limitations of the iPhone 3GS and the design of Apple's iOS, you are unable to update any iPhone 3GS past iOS 6.1.6.
The only way you will be able to test you app is using the iOS simulator on your computer, or using a different iPhone.
In addition, it appears that you will no longer be able to upload 32-bit apps to the App Store, and the 3GS is a 32-bit device. Sorry!


Minimum required ping time for computer on LAN? I want to ping all possible IPs in my LAN, and I have the code for it, but right now, I've already cut the weight time from 5s to 2s, and it's still about 8 minutes to test them all. How long should it take to ping an IP on my same LAN?

Thanks

It should take less than a millisecond to ping a host on the same physical network.  In reality, networks get busy and hosts get slow - it might take 5 milliseconds.

Like UDP, there is no guarantee that you'll receive a reply at all.


How can I configure shortcuts to special symbols or emojis in El Capitan or later I would like to input faster some special characters (math symbols, emojis, etc.).

I found this article, but the instructions are obsolete for EL Capitan or later.

I would like to add either keyboard combination shortcuts or a long-key-press popup (like for diacritics.)

Any ideas how to achieve one of the two ways?

You can make shortcuts via system preferences/keyboard/text/replace with

You can make a custom keyboard layout with

http://scripts.sil.org/ukelele


Can't SSH for 5 minutes+ after boot up I'm running Mojave 10.14.6 on a new MacBrook Pro and whenever my mac is completely off and then comes back on, it seems to take at least 5 minutes to be able to connect or access anything over ssh. The first time it happened, I thought the credentials had been changed, but I'm glad I waited because after multiple attempts with the same credentials, it worked. This has happened a few more times, if my laptop dies or it runs an update and restarts. It's especially frustrating when I'm ready to start working for the day and when it finally does reconnect, all of the files I was in before get closed out.

If I ping the ip, it responds, but if I try and ssh from the terminal, the "connection is refused" -- it doesn't even give me the option to enter a password. If I try and go through my usual interface (Coda) to connect to the server/database, it gives me a similar error, something like "connection failed". I don't believe it's a Coda problem as I've used it on other macs just fine and it also threw and error in the terminal.

Has anyone else had this problem, or does anyone know what could be causing this?

Edit:
Added updated info

I believe the previous photo I posted was incorrect, I think the result of the command must have been right after I was re-connected. The above photo is the correct one.

Here are the results that @FrancisfromResponseBase asked for, though I'm not sure when exactly the connection re-opened, so while I was hurridly running through the commands, it may have re-connected before I realized. I'll try to double check the next time it happens to better pinpoint it and to make sure I'm getting the right results for the before commands I run:

Not working/Before:

Working/After:

My friend, I suggest that we examine the routing table in a 'before / after' manner: before the problem occurs; after the problem has occurred.

Could you kindly post the output of the following before and after the behavior occurs:

sudo netstat -nr

I assume from looking at the ssh debug you posted that you are ssh'ing to the ip address, and not a hostname.  Is this correct?  If not, then we should look at the domain name resolution.

sudo scutil --dns

as well as

sudo cat /etc/resolv.conf

would help in this case.

Lastly, let's rule out any egress filtering on the firewall.  It is a lot of information, but better that we have the full perspective, from rules to NAT to timeouts and states:

sudo pfctl -vvv -sa

F.


Notes, Drive and Keychain not syncing to iCloud from Mojave This one is strange. I have one computer which is unable to fully sync with iCloud. What's odd is that some items do sync, including Calendar and Contacts. I suspect there's a corrupted / locked library file somewhere wreaking havoc, but I'm unsure of where to find it. The most telling fact is I've isolated the issue to user account level. None of the issues happen with a fresh user. Here's what I know:

Details:

Problematic computer is running 10.14.3 (Issue has persisted since 10.13)
In iCloud preference, Notes is checked on. So is iCloud Drive and just about everything except Keychain and Photos.
The affected computer does not display any notes created from other devices. And no notes created on the affected computer sync to my other devices.

When I attempt to enable Keychain on the affected computer, after entering my iCloud password I'm presented with an error saying "iCloud Keychain couldn’t be set up because there was a problem communicating with iCloud."
Other devices: iOS device running latest OS (no syncing issues), Mac running 10.13 (no syncing issues), Mac running 10.12 (no syncing issues)
Notes created on iCloud.com show up and sync as expected on all devices except the one Mac

Troubleshooting Steps (so far):

Signed out of iCloud, restarted, signed back in (about a dozen times)
Updated to latest version of Mojave
Attempted syncing on a new user account (and it WORKS!)
I've also reset user permissions on the home folder with diskutil resetuserpermissions / id -u

I don't know what combination of Containers, Application Support directories, and Preferences I'd need to target to resolve this, but I suspect if the correct set are deleted and regenerated the issue might go away. My goal is to get syncing to work in the current user account to avoid the headache of manually transferring over a fragile command line tools and preferences. But if I can't find any solutions soon I may have to just wave the white flag.

The Notes application for macOS has been very unreliable throughout MANY macOS's so including Mojave! Even in the time it was still written as Mac OS X. So even if you cure your Mac, which you could do and I explained in https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251096810 it will most likely be temporary and at some point in time you will notice that the continuous spinning wheel in Notes will get back to nag you. And the non-syncing will be back again.

A better way is to start using Notes through the web interface, on www.icloud.com directly, and bookmark Notes for direct access.
Its interface is smooth and complete and will allow flawless syncing with all your other devices like you iPhone and iPad where you leave Notes on.

Notes on iOS and nowadays also iPadOS however is pretty stable. So if you you these in combination with the Notes web application through the icloud.com website your are fine.


Is there a list of punctuation commands for iPad dictation? I'm sure Apple has published something similar for Siri, but now that the iPad dictation is out, where can I find a list of commands for dictation? Can I do things like hit the enter key, or type symbols? I'm obviously able to enter periods and question mark's, but beyond that I'm not so sure. So, how can I type out the words question mark Without actually getting a question mark?

Siri dictation is never going to be 100% accurate and the easiest way to get the result you want may be to edit the text by hand after you've dictated the body of the message.

Jim Rhoades provides a useful list of Siri dictation commands.


ffmpeg upgrade fails due to nettle no longer compatible with highSierra I use HighSierra 10.13.6 on my Mac.
When trying to upgrade youtube-dl, the process also tries to update ffmpeg which fails because of a library called "nettle". As a result of this, ffmpeg was removed from my macOS and I cannot install it again.
Is this library important to "normal" use of ffmpeg? Where normal means converting downloaded videos from YouTube and/or between formats such as mp4, mp3.
Is there a way to pass options to homebrew to tell not to use this nettle library?
If not possible, is there a way to tell homebrew that for ffmpeg library use a locally built nettle installation directory?

As other answers have noted, Homebrew no longer supports High Sierra.
While I suspect you will eventually want to switch to MacPorts, you could also download a static build of ffmpeg from https://evermeet.cx/ffmpeg/ and drop it in /usr/local/bin. These self-contained "static" binaries include all of the library code they need to run.


How to resolve app uninstall without adhoc When I installed the app with help of this link onto my device but this procedure has problems under iOS 7 which i have reported to apple but i'm wondering if someone knows of a fix in the mean time?

When you click the link to install, the app installing icons appears and after a short time a second icon appears with the proper app icon but the install one does not disappear (see image below) even if i delete the app the installing icon stays. Any ideas on how to fix this would be much appreciated.

A few suggestions:

  Load a earlier Backup from the iCloud and "restore" it to this state
  Log Out of your Apple Account and reboot.
  Connect your iPhone via cable with your PC/Mac and sync your apps


How to disable autocomplete on macOS but not iOS? How do I disable autocomplete on macOS Sierra for MacBook, please, without disabling it on iOS 10 for iPhone?

Seems to occur only in native/Apple apps. Appears below my typing as blue text in a white rectangle with a close button on its right.

It flashes for a split second before inserting its suggestion into my typing, without feedback from me.

The suggestions are listed in Syst Prefs / Keyboard / Text / Replace…With. These I created on my phone's device Settings / General / Keyboard / Text Replacement, but I never asked for them to be applied to macOS. How'd they get there?

If I delete them from the Mac, they also delete from the phone. How might I remove/disable them from one but not the other? Thank you.

Explanation

The text replacements in System Preferences > Keyboard > Text (macOS) and Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement (iOS) are tightly integrated into iCloud.

In fact, both sync using iCloud and are stored in your iCloud Drive (com.apple.TextInput). This is an invisible folder.

Disable text replacements on macOS

In order to disable them on your Mac, you have two options:

iOS: In Settings > iCloud > iCloud disable 'iCloud Drive'.
macOS: In System Preferences > iCloud > iCloud Drive (Options) disable 'System Preferences'.

Now you need to delete your text replacements from your Mac. You may create a backup of them by selecting all (CMD+A) and dragging them on your Desktop.

Was this answer helpful?


How to disable moving a window by its edge adjacent to scroll bar? In Mac OS X Yosemite, I find that the scroll bar is a small target for the mouse, and sometimes when I wish to scroll, I end up moving the whole window by grabbing its edge to the right of the scroll bar.  This is never the behavior I desire.

How can I disable the ability to move a window by grabbing anything other than its title bar?

I try scrolling with scroll bar because there is a scroll bar. Sometimes it's better than scrolling with mouse. (smooth scrolling)

To change, go to System Preferences: General settings -> Show scroll bars -> Always


Macbook Pro not detecting bootable USB with Yosemite I created a Yosemite boot USB, from the App Store version 10.10.1.

When I hold option during Boot, the USB drive doesn't show up on the menu.

I have an aluminium MBP, bought in 2009. It is the full body aluminium with the Superdrive.

Per Apple, this is my machine:

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009)

The only drives I see when holding down option are Macintosh HD and Recovery. When I try to run recovery, it runs for a little and then goes to a "no" symbol, with the spinner still spinning. I am concerned that the HD may be dead/dying, but I don't want to jump to that conclusion yet.

How do I either boot to my USB, or just get a restore done?

I have already successfully backed up my files. I just want to restore the machine.

Edit 1

I made the USB Boot drive from this guide:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2367748/how-to-make-a-bootable-os-x-10-10-yosemite-install-drive.html

Specifically choice number 1, where I downloaded the OS from the App Store and ran the terminal commands on a pre-formatted USB drive.

Edit 2

Below you will see the Disk Utility for the USB drive. Not sure how to tell if it is a Boot disk or not.

Edit 3

The below screenshot shows EFI in Debug mode in Disk Utility.

For what it's worth, when I plug in this drive into my working MBP, I see the "Install OS X Yosemite" get mounted in Finder.

Edit 4

Here is a screenshot of the "Startup Disk" option within "System Preferences" on my working MBP that has the Bootable USB plugged in - which proves that it was properly created, I believe. You can check the screenshot to confirm though.

Edit 5

Output from bless --info... command:

$ bless --info /Volumes/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite/
finderinfo[0]:    597 => Blessed System Folder is /Volumes/Install OS X Yosemite/.IABootFiles
finderinfo[1]:    615 => Blessed System File is /Volumes/Install OS X Yosemite/.IABootFiles/boot.efi
finderinfo[2]:      0 => Open-folder linked list empty
finderinfo[3]:      0 => No alternate OS blessed file/folder
finderinfo[4]:      0 => Unused field unset
finderinfo[5]:    597 => OS X blessed folder is /Volumes/Install OS X Yosemite/.IABootFiles
64-bit VSDB volume id:  0xA76212D6C7E30EC3

You might try resetting the pram on your mac.
I understand that startup disk settings are stored there.

If the disk is bootable on other Macs, it stands to reason that it should boot on this one.

You can reset the pram by doing the following:

Shut down the Mac.
Locate the following four keys:  option,
command, p and r. You'll need them in the next step.
Power on the Mac, then immediately hold option, command, p and r.
You need to do this before the grey screen appears.
Hold down the keys until you hear the startup sound twice, then release them.
Plug in the bootable USB stick, restart the Mac, and hold option.

I can't guarantee that it'll work, but it won't hurt, so it's worth a try.


Can iPhone 4 use GPS when out of cell tower range? There seems to be some dispute on whether the iPhone can still get a GPS signal when out of cell tower range, see this archived Apple support thread, for example.

I had a friend out in the woods hunting this weekend, and he said that he couldn't get a location via gps, it was just giving errors.

Does this depend on how the app is coded? Are there specific location-aware mapping apps (like the built-in maps tool) that someone can firm either do or don't work properly with no wireless signal?

Update: I guess its kind of obvious that it entirely depends on how the app is designed. The built-in maps app tries to download map tiles from the internet, and won't be able to do that, so that probably explains his errors.

So my underlying question really is: If I'm going camping, do I need to buy a dedicated "wilderness" GPS like one of these? Or is there an iPhone app that can do the same things when away from a wireless/cell signal?

This summer I took some photos out of cell range and they were all geotagged so it's definitely possible to use GPS out of cell range, but some apps (like the Maps app) use a data connection to get map tiles and routing data, so those features wouldn't work if you're not in range of either cellular data or wifi.


Prevent deletion of apps from the Chrome App Launcher by other users How do I protect apps inside the Chrome App Launcher on a MacBook from being deleted by different users of the laptop?

Make their accounts non-admin.

You cannot stop an admin from doing anything.

System Prefs > Users & Groups

Unlock
Disable


cannot access files in trash previously on external harddrive I have no problem making a list of all files in the trash provided those files were previously on the main harddrive, but when those files were previously on an external harddrive I can't access them with Terminal or Python. At first, I ran into permission errors but I've since changed the permissions.  For example,
ls /users/me/.Trash

will print out what is actually in the trash.  But when I do the following:
ls /volumes/edrive/.Trashes

I just get 503 even though there is a file in there not named 503. For some reason the trash folder is called .Trashes when it's on an external hard-drive.  I'm also trying it with Python which is what I want to use anyway:
import os
os.listdir('/volumes/edrive/.Trashes')

Outputs
['503']

The drive-wide Trash contains the deleted files of all users, with one directory per numerical User ID. Run
ls -l /Volumes/edrive/.Trashes

to see that 503 is a directory, and
ls -l /Volumes/edrive/.Trashes/503

to see its content.
PS: You can see your own user id by running id -u . If it is not 503 you'll need to run sudo ls -l /Volumes/edrive/.Trashes/503 instead.


Change installation directory of XQuartz on Mountain Lion Mountain Lion doesn't include X11 any more, and XQuartz is the substitute.  Having installed it, I see that XQuartz 2.7.2 installs in the non-standard (though commonly used) directory /opt.  It also installs symlinks from /usr/X11 to /opt/X11.

I would prefer having XQuartz only use /usr/X11 and not create /opt/X11.

Is there a way to change the installation directory of XQuartz on Mountain Lion?

Get the sources and compile it yourself, setting the paths you prefer.


Can I import photos from iPad to iMac that aren't in camera roll? I lost all data on my iMac recently, including some 1500 photos.  These photos were synced to the iPad from iPhoto on my iMac.

How can I transfer them back to my iMac since they are not in the camera roll on my iPad?

iExplorer is an app that does the trick. I just tested it, and it works.

So it's quite simple and straightforward. Launch the app, and select you iPad from the sources, there will be a Photos section, and everything should be there.

The same thing happened to me once, but I used Time Machine to backup. It must be terrifying, anyway, hope it helps!


Can I format new MacBook hard drive from OSX DVD? I have to install a fresh new drive into my MacBook pro 2009.

I haven't formatted yet, nor do I have a USB dock to do so from my current osx installation.

If I install the new drive and boot from the osx DVD that came with my Mac, will be able to do what's necessary to get every running ok?

Yes, you have full access to the Disk Utility program from within the installer process, so you can partition and format to your hearts content.


How to cmd-tab to a group of windows, from different programs? I am writing a LaTex document in a Terminal text editor, which is automagically rendered as a pdf in a Zathura window (which is drawn by XQuartz). Each window occupies half the screen.

I would like to be able to ⌘-tab between a maximized Firefox window and that pair of windows. Can this be done?

If this could be done if it weren't for the XQuartz rendering, I could switch to Skim (with a regular macOS window). I own BetterTouchTool and Alfred, if either might be useful in a way I have not thought of.

You can achieve this by using multiple desktops on your Mac.

Start off by going into mission control (either swipe up with 4 fingers on your trackpad or press the f3 key) and then move your cursor to the top left of the screen and press the plus button. Drag the windows you want over to the new desktop then click on the new desktop and arrange the windows. You can quickly switch between desktops with cmd and he left or right arrow.


How do I run an app in Full Screen mode on OS X Lion on my second monitor? How do I get an app to run in Full Screen mode on OS X Lion on my second monitor? It seems to be stuck on my first monitor, and I'd like to move it.

This is an excerpt of Apple's AppKit Release Note for Lion regarding full screen apps & multiple desktops.

  Multiple Monitors and Full Screen (New since early 2011 seed)

  We have made some simplifying assumptions for Lion Full Screen
  behavior on multiple monitors. Multiple monitors are treated as a
  single unit by Spaces, and therefore are also treated as a single unit
  in Full Screen. This means that all monitors will be dedicated to
  windows belonging to the full screen application, and there can be
  only one primary full screen window visible at a time. A secondary
  monitor is useful for inspector windows.

  Secondly, because the menu bar is located on the main monitor, the
  primary full screen window will be located on the main monitor as
  well. This allows the menu bar, floating toolbar, and full screen
  window to maintain their interrelationship on the same monitor.

The full document can be found here:
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/AppKit/RN-AppKitOlderNotes/index.html#10_7FullScreen

According to this document, your full screen apps will always be shown on your primary monitor, and there is nothing that can be done about it.


SYNC-Bluetooth Audio 'jumbled' on car start I have an iPhone 4 and a 2011 Mustang with SYNC. The system works fairly well (outside Of the connection issues many others have experienced) but I have an annoying problem whenever I start my vehicle (maybe 95% of the time).

Upon starting the vehicle, Bluetooth Audio comes on and begins playing my music from my phone. However, for the first ten seconds or so, the sound is jumbled/garbled in a peculiar way: it's really sped up for a second or so, and then silent for a second or so, then sped up etc. It does this cycle about 3-5 times before it finally starts playing normally. If I'm listening to a Car Talk podcast, it might sound something like this:

"Yourelisteningtoc............artalkonnation............alpublicradiowithcl.............ickandclackthetap............pet brothers, and on today's show..."

It's like pinching a hose for a second, and then letting go and having a bunch of words come out at once, then pinching it again.

Any ideas?

Generally when a vehicle cranks the engine there is a lot of stress on the electrical system, in some cases the power supply to ECUs, such as the SYNC module or the ACM can go below the minimum required for them to function, so straight after a crank they can be doing a lot of initialising processes at the same time as trying to play your audio.

I'm sure that the SYNC module uses a 400MHz processor, which isn't really that powerful compared to modules that other automotive manufacturers are using.


Using iMac as Mac Pro display I currently have a iMac (27-inch, Late 2009, 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) which I would like to use as display for a new Mac Pro.  How do I do that?

You can use the MiniDisplay Port on the back of the iMac and put the iMac into target display mode, turning it into an external display.

More info: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3924


How do I delete a locked, invisible file in the Trash? On an external disk (that contains a clone), the /.Trashes/501/Users/myusername/Desktop folder contains (within some subfolders) a locked invisible file that I cannot delete. The whole folder starting with 'Users' is visible in the Trash in my Dock.

I have tried:

secure empty trash (it asks whether I want to delete locked files and I say yes)
empty trash via Cocktail
launched Terminal as root and went down to the file (admin user alone cannot cd into ./Trashes)
files has these properties: -rw-------@ 1 myusername  myusername  4635 Mar  3  2010 int10923.ris
rm asks me whether I want to override override rw-------  myusername/myusername sappnd,arch,schg,hidden for int10923.ris?
I say yes, and it answers: Operation not permitted
a get info on the file (in the Dock trash, first enabling viewing of invisible files for the Finder) shows it as locked but unchecking the box, it immediately re-checks itself, it permissions are myusername Read & Write, everyone No Access, trying to change that immediately reverts back to its previous state
trying chflags nouchg or chflags dump on the file changes nothing (with Terminal running as root)

The file could simply still be open by something. Use lsof <file> to see which process is hogging it, if any.
Otherwise sudo rm -rf /.Trashes/501/Users/myusername/Desktop should get rid of it
If that didn't work, try removing all the flags it's complaining about first: chflags nohidden,nosappdn,noarch,noschg <file>


Safari 8.0 Full Screen Shortcut Not Working After updating to OS X Yosemite (Public Release), Safari and several other applications stopped recognising ⌃+⌘+F as the shortcut to enter Full Screen. I can use Shift+Command+F to enter Full Screen in Chrome, but not in Safari.

The shortcut worked when I was using OS X Yosemite Beta and Yosemite Beta 2. How to fix this problem?

I do not know about Yosemite, but on my Mavericks it is the

ctrl cmd F

The cmd-shif-F brings the search window.


Safari using significant energy I am currently using a 2017 Mac Pro touch bar that is still on Mojave 10.14.6. My safari is consistently shown using significant energy on my menu. In my activity monitor, I noticed there are many apps running behind my safari despite only opening 4 tabs: mailbox, youtube, google and apple stack exchange. Is there any way to remove the apps shown running as shown in the screenshot and to prevent safari from using significant energy?

First off, the high number is the average energy impact, not the current.
This is in line with what you say you currently have open: merely 4 tabs.

Since I don't know what you have been doing before, I can't tell you exactly what might have caused this energy impact. But there is quite some cached Safari web content (Safari is using too much RAM. How can I reduce its memory footprint?, quite old though).

Probably the easiest way to solve the issue is to (force) quit Safari (Activity Monitor → Safari → in the left upper corner X → Quit/Force Quit) and restart your MacBook Pro.

If the problem persists try to delete web page cache with Safari → Preferences → Privacy → Advanced → Show Develop menu in menu bar, then in the menu bar at the top Develop -> Empty Caches.

You can also follow this guide, it also explains how to delete cookies:

https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/clear-safari-cache-3496193/

Note: Flash Player is a notoriously bad extension (slow and unsecure). If you have it installed, remove it. You shouldn't need it these days. You can read more about it here:

https://lifehacker.com/you-really-shouldnt-be-running-adobe-flash-player-anymo-1829721122


Can I remove the text beneath apps on the iOS 7 home screen (SpringBoard)? The text beneath the apps looks really out of place with the new iOS 7. Is there any way to turn it off without jailbreaking?

No this is not possible. Not in the standard iOS package anyway.

I have no experience with jailbroken iOS, but I would assume so, although there is no JB for iOS 7 just yet.


Phone wakes up a few minutes after every text message. Can I make that stop? I have an iPhone 6S with the latest version of iOS. For a couple of months now whenever I receive a text message and put the phone back down it will wake up again for no apparent reason.

Sometimes it seem to randomly do so without a text message, but the text message one is reproducible.

Anyone have any idea why that might be and if I can stop it?

Settings -> Notification -> Message -> Repeat alarm -> Never


Automatically migrate to Family Sharing? Before Family Sharing, my wife and I always used her iTunes account for all purchases, including iOS apps. Now that Family Sharing exists and also now that two-factor authentication makes it annoying to keep my iPhone authorized to her iTunes account, I'd like to find all the apps on my iPhone that were downloaded under her account, and re-download them under my account (by way of Family Sharing).

After upgrading to iOS 13, I keep getting prompted to sign into her account, presumably because some app on my phone was downloaded under her account, so it's only authorized to run if my phone is signed into her iTunes account.

Is there any easy or automatic way to find all the apps on my phone that are only authorized for her account, and delete and re-download them from my account so I don't have to stay signed into iTunes as her?

Unless I'm misreading your question, doing the following will make the process easier for you:

Launch the App Store app on your iPhone
Tap on your account at the top right corner
Tap on Purchased
Now you should see a listing for all accounts in your family group
Tap on your wife's listing
At the top, below your wife's name, you'll see two buttons All and Not on this iPhone
Make sure that the All button is selected
Now you'll see a listing of all apps* ever purchased under her account
The ones that have the OPEN option at the right are the ones installed on your iPhone
Now make a list of the apps in question so you can delete them from your iPhone and install them under your account

* Accept for any apps she's actively hidden.


macOS X Catalina cannot be installed on Macintosh HD I am currently on a Early 2015 Macbook Pro on El Capitan 10.11.6.

I am looking to update to Catalina but I get the error message in the title of this post. I got this error after doing diskutil verify disk. Before that I got the message that I am missing a firmware partition.

my diskutil list information is as follows:

/dev/disk0 (external, physical):
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *960.0 GB   disk0
1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            959.2 GB   disk0s2
3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1 (disk image):
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        +8.4 GB     disk1
1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
2:                  Apple_HFS InstallESD              8.1 GB     disk1s2

Update: Upgraded to Sierra. Cannot advance to High Sierra or Catalina due to the same missing firmware partition error.

Update 2: System Information says this:

Macintosh HD
Available:  920,7 GB (920.699.588.608 bytes)
  Capacity: 959,18 GB (959.180.382.208 bytes)
  Mount Point:  /
  File System:  Journaled HFS+
  Writable: Yes
  Ignore Ownership: No
  BSD Name: disk0s2
  Volume UUID:  FA831049-5446-3393-952B-D5EC501F181C
  Physical Drive:
  Device Name:  OWC Aura SSD
  Media Name:   OWC Aura SSD Media
  Medium Type:  Rotational
  Protocol: PCI
  Internal: No
  Partition Map Type:   GPT (GUID Partition Table)

The problem is that you have a third-party internal SSD. You need an OWC firmware update in order to upgrade past High Sierra.

Installing High Sierra on OWC Aura SSD - missing firmware partition


Control iMac and LED Cinema Display Brightness Simultaneously I have a iMac 27'' and a LED Cinema Display 27'' connected to it. And I've noticed that to be able to control brightness I need to open the Display.prefPanel  and modify the brightness of the displays individualy.

Is there a way to do this SIMULTANEOUSLY? Maybe with a third party app? If not, is there a way to assign a keyboard shortcut to the second display brightness?

I just started using Dimmer Than Dim, a free app in the App Store. I only have one display (iMac), however.


What is x3d? Help needed deciphering console crash log For a few days now my Macbook Air seems to hang for a second every five seconds or so. It is only noticeable in my browsers. Chrome, FF and Safari all have the same issue where the browser just locks up for a second before continuing. I looked in console and it is the same crash report being generated every five to ten seconds. The beginning of the log mentions a process x3d:

Process:               x3d [3646]
Path:                  /private/etc/.x3/x3d
Identifier:            x3d
Version:               ???
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        launchd [1]
Responsible:           x3d [3646]
User ID:               0

Did some searching but came up empty handed. I've pasted the full log here:

http://pastebin.com/G9cTLFLR

The issue seems to go away if my computer is offline.

Does anyone have any idea what this is from?

Thanks in advance!

Try clearing all your cache files for your browsers. I was having the same issue with the same crash log for the last few days. I took it to the Apple Store for that and another unrelated issue with my display. They cleared out the cache folder for Chrome, and the issue quit just like that. No more freezing browser, no more crash logs. I was a little embarrassed I hadn't tried that, when I'd tried just about everything else I could think of. There seemed to be a chrome and/or x3d daemon that was hanging. Hopefully that will clear up your problem as well.


How to disable switching user with Touch ID? So here is a hypothetic scenario:

I'm at work presenting something to a colleague and we are both looking at my screen, when suddenly I have to access a service that requires a password. I use 1Password as my password manager, so I hit the key to autofill the password and when 1Password prompts me I will use Touch ID to identify myself. But here is the deal - things went a little fast and I did not notice that 1Password was expecting my to type a password and not use Touch ID and when I pressed the Touch ID button Mac OS would instantly switch to my "private" user and resume my "movie watching session" from last night, providing a greatly amusing experience to my colleague and less so for me.

How do I disable this stupid feature without actually disabling the ability to sign in with Touch ID? I'm perfectly happy with doing a few mouseclicks when switching user, but I fill in passwords many, many times a day and I'm not interested in being switched to my secondary user by mistake.

I've checked the system preferences panes for Touch ID and users and found nothing.

It’s not possible to just disable Fast User Switching with Touch ID without disabling unlocking with Touch ID. However, it should be noted that the action of switching user with Touch ID is with a press of the Touch ID button, whereas a fingerprint read for the purpose of providing authentication is with a rest of your finger.

When prompted for Touch ID for authentication, such as by 1Password or a system dialog, rest your finger on the Touch ID button. Don’t depress the button.
When you want to use Fast User Switching, when no prompt for authentication is present, press down and click the button with your finger on Touch ID.

These are two distinct actions, with the former performing no action if there is no active prompt for authentication requiring Touch ID. Therefore you won’t inadvertently perform a user switch.


Bandwidth monitor in topbar for MacOS I used to have Du-meter app to track the bandwidth status (upload / download sped) from the topbar, but it was discontinued some years ago.
I recently saw someone in a video call using an interesting app to track not only bandwidth, but other indicators such as CPU usage, Memory usage, etc. At least, I was able to capture a screenshot:

Zoomed shot of relevant area

I tried to find system & network applications within the App Store, but most of them are old and not updated.
Is anyone able to recognise the app from the screenshot?

It looks very much like iStat Menus.
There are many view & information options, but I'm reasonably sure that's one of them.

BTW, the orange highlighted segment in your image is actually mostly disk read/write speed. Network usage is just to the right - I re-imaged, labels are to the left


How to combine two images into one on a Mac? Say I have two photos (or any images), for example with the following dimensions:

+----------+       +----------+
|          |       |          |
|          |       |          |
|320 x 428 |  and  |320 x 428 |
|          |       |          |
|          |       |          |
+----------+       +----------+

I want to combine them into a single image, side by side. So the result should be

+----------------------+
|                      |
|                      |
|      640 x 428       |
|                      |
|                      |
+----------------------+

What's the simplest way to do this on a Mac? Is it possible with some default app like Preview, or would you recommend some 3rd party tool for the job?

Solution ✅

If I could, I'd accept these two answers:

If you want a GUI solution, use Preview
For a smooth command-line solution, use convert from ImageMagick

I often have to do this with images of plots of data.  I use the command line tools that come in the Imagemagick package; I think I installed it on my system with MacPorts. You could also choose to install with brew (brew install imagemagick).
The actual tool you want to use from Imagemagick is the convert tool.  If you have your two 320x428 images, say a.png and b.png, you can do
convert +append a.png b.png c.png

to create a new file, c.png, that has the a.png on the left and b.png on the right.  Alternatively, you append them vertically with -append (instead of +) and a.png will be on top of b.png.  With convert, you can do a ton of other things.  For example, you can switch to a different image format for the output
convert +append a.png b.jpg c.tif

This isn't a GUI application, but maybe some others might have a better solution.  Alternatively, you could put this in some sort of automator script.
2020-12-10：
I used it on 2020-12-10 and now the correct code is
convert +append a.png b.jpg +append c.tif


How to change boot login How Do I change the user for the Boot login? I had changed my username recently and have deleted the temporary admin that has been made to change my username, but the Boot Login has somehow changed to the temporary admin.

Is there any way to change the Boot Login so that I don't have to deal with putting in two passwords everytime I turn on my macbook?

You can set which account is automatically logged in under the "Login Options" section of the "Users & Groups" pane of System Preferences:


Is there a (free) graphical SSH file transfer client for Mac? Possible Duplicate:
  What's a good graphical SFTP utility for OS X?

I'm looking for an SSH client that includes drag and drop file transfer functionality. I'm aware of CyberDuck, but it's a bit pricey. I found one or two other programs, and they're not free. I need it for my computer science class this semester. (I'm technically ok using the Terminal, but some of my Mac using classmates are not.)

FileZilla can also do full SFTP (FTP over SSH) and it's free.

The downside obviously is it's not a very pretty application under OSX.


Has the step counter been recalibrated with iPhone 7 or iOS 10? I walk the same route to work each day, however I have noticed that recently I am doing 500 - 1000 steps less each journey. This is an upto 25% difference.

I haven't noticed at what point the this happened, and if it was gradual, but it is certain;y lower since upgrading from my iPhone 6 on iOS 9 to an iPhone 7 on iOS 10.

I am walking the same route, wearing the same shoes and keep my iPhone in the same pocket. Have I lost these 1000 steps, or was it over-reading before?

The motion coprocessor is a different version in the iPhone 7.

Embedded within the A10 chip, there is another chip, called the motion coprocessor, M10. The new version of the coprocessor is likely to account for these errors in step counting.

In addition, this step counting is really only supposed to be an estimate. If you want an actually somewhat accurate step tracking solution, you should go for a dedicated wearable device, like a FitBit or Apple Watch.

The motion coprocessor is simply a gimmick to match competitors' phones.


Macbook Pro 5,1 will only boot after multiple SMC resets I have a Macbook Pro 5,1 (late 2008) running El Capitan (10.11), which is the latest officially supported OS for that machine. When I turn it off I cannot turn it back on without resetting the SMC multiple times (sometimes up to 20 times, sometimes just once is enough). The problem only occurs when the machine is turned off for at least a few hours, otherwise it turns on perfectly. This makes me think, that there could be some kind of small battery on the logic board which drains too fast due to the age of the Macbook? It doesn't matter how much the main battery is charged.

What I've tried so far:

quick Apple Hardware Test without any results
used different RAM
used different internal HDD
resetted NRAM/PRAM
installed a new copy of the OS and then imported everything (Data and Settings) with the migration assistent

Any other Ideas?
Thanks in advance!

I’ve seen this before and it could be one of two things (generally speaking):

failing power supply
failing/failed SMC chip

When I mention "power supply" it can mean either the physical power supply like that in a Mac Pro (workstation) or the circuitry on the logic board of a MacBook (laptop) that manages where the current is sourced from - battery or external adapter.  There's power that goes to the SMC so that it can handle how and where power is distributed throughout the logic board.

It wouldn’t be a battery because when power is removed from an SMC chip, it actually resets.  So, resetting an already reset SMC wouldn’t do anything as you’ve demonstrated with the other numerous resets. However, what we have to remember is that when an SMC reset occurs, the whole system is being reset (warm power cycle).

The power supply (circuitry) could be failing in that not enough current is getting to the correct power rails until finally there’s enough capacity to get it to work; there could be dry solder contracts on any of the SMC components including the chip itself; or it could just be dying.

The least expensive DIY test you could do would be to replace the power supply with a known good one (if on a workstation), next followed by a replacement of the logic board.  Unfortunately, to get a proof positive diagnosis, you’d need high level told like an oscilloscope to accurately measure the power going to the individual power rails.

Ultimately, you'll need to send it in for service because there's nothing more that can be done from a DIY perspective.


Is it ok to set the MacBook Pro to never sleep when plugged in? I'm having some issues with my remote desktop software and the Wake-on-LAN feature.

On that note, is it ok to set the MacBook Pro (17" 2009 unibody) to never sleep when plugged in?

Am I somehow shortening the lifespan of the Mac by doing this?

I'll probably be doing this 9 to 5 as it were while at work during the week.

All other energy settings are default including all on battery settings and the hard disk and screen off settings for plugged in.

Cheers

You can leave your MacBook Pro running when plugged into an external power source. This should not dramatically reduce the life span of your computer.

Be sure to allow the display to sleep after idle time. Leaving a typical display powered on constantly can reduce the life span and cause problems.

When your Mac is not plugged in, try and follow Apple's notebook battery advice. Apple recommend running down your MacBook Pro's battery once a month or so. This will help maximise the battery's life.


Using terminal and the open command I am trying to open a new browser instance followed by 2 tabs I can open a new single instance using open -na "Firefox" --args --new-window "https://website.com" however I can't seem to get my script to open a second tab populated with a second url address after that. It only opens with the first site and a blank tab

Set an alias to the executable inside Firefox.app.

alias firefox_cli=/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
firefox_cli --new-tab "site1"
firefox_cli --new-tab "site2"

For more help, run

firefox_cli --help

To remove alias,

unalias firefox_cli


A better workflow for screen real estate than spaces? My impression of the general feeling toward spaces is that it's a good idea that doesn't work very well and so most people don't use it. I do use it and I can't imagine having all my windows open on one screen as being easier to navigate.

I'm interested in any better workflows people have in play.

My primary machine is a 15" MBP (no separate monitors), with a space each for mailplane, browsers, omnifocus, evernote, and two clear work spaces for whatever projects I am working on with relevant apps and windows within.

Really, you can't beat two physical 1080 monitors and an extra, smaller (~1024x768) one (touchscreen a plus). This works best for headless machines, or machines with an integrated 1080 display. Here are example workflows for different scenarios (Big1=1080 main, Big2=1080 extra, Small1=small extra):

Coder:
Big1: The piece of code you're actively working on. Big2: The list of related files (like in XCode), and the interface design. Small1: Where the app's windows(s) go when you test it, unless it's big. Or music controls.

Web Developer
Big1: Code. Big2: Browser preview. Small1: FTP client or ebooks or list of files or editor utility panels.

Photo Editing/Design
Big1: Editing window (Ps controls, image, etc). Big2: List of photos w/ previews.
Big 3: Original image or music controls or editor panels.

Student (the one I spend the most time in)
Big1: Paper/essay on the left and outline on the right. Big2: Research websites, ebooks, works cited, etc (two open simultaneously works well). Small1: Music controls or assignment sheet/project requirements.


Using an iPad to view video from a set top box / DVD player over HDMI? From time to time I need to test set top boxes / DVD players, currently I carry around a 20" HDMI monitor to test them on, but is it possible to use an iPad as an display with an HDMI input adaptor (perhaps also requiring an app to view the video feed). So the setup would be:

Set top box --hdmi--> adaptor ----> ipad

It can be expensive. iPads are really designed to only output video, but if you have a thousand bucks you want to spend on this device, it should work.


Out of disk space when restoring iPhone backup from iTunes Trying to restore an iPhone backup I took tonight, but can't because when it tries, the startup disk runs out of space. I have other drives, but I can't remove anything else off of the startup disk.

What can I do to restore this backup?

You may want to consider using a utility like OmniDiskSweeper (free) or Daisy Disk ($20) to see if there aren't some unusually large files hiding somewhere, eating up disk space. You can find more apps like these in the answers to How can I free up some disk space?

If your disk is that full and you really can't remove anything else from the startup disk, I would definitely advise upgrading to a larger hard drive. It's generally recommended to keep about 15% of your disk free, and I would certainly advise against getting below 10 GB of free space on your startup disk.

Not having enough disk space on your startup disk can easily cause severe performance problems and more frequent crashing — especially if you completely run out of space.

Other than upgrading your hard drive, you could consider temporarily moving some larger files to another drive until you have enough room for the restore, then, after the restore has completed successfully, you could copy them back to the startup disk.

Depending on what's taking up disk space, it may be worth looking into permanently moving some files to other drives. For example, iTunes and iPhoto libraries, which can often take up a lot of space, can be moved to other drives fairly easily.


Can spotlight be reset when it misbehaves, is wrong or constantly indexing? On my 4-month old mid-2012 MacBook Pro I observe that Spotlight seems to want to ALWAYS re-index. I frequently notice that the performance will get unbearably slow and I can hear the hard drive clicking away. Then I go and click the Spotlight icon and sure enough, "Please stand by while we index your hard drive." A few minutes later, it finishes and things return to normal.

Please be aware, I'm NOT talking about the first indexing that can take several hours (or all night). "Just let it finish" is not the answer. This is an issue that has plagued my computer for months. The re-indexing jobs pop up every few minutes and finish a few minutes later.

I found an article where somebody is apparently having the same issue, and tried his suggestions to no avail.

I'm at my wit's end! Spotlight is constantly saturating my I/O with its indexing and making my shiny new Mac unbearably slow.

I am grateful for any additional ideas, including more open-ended suggestions about how to go about trouble-shooting such problems in general. Perhaps a command/tool or particular log files which could help me pin down the root cause.

Close all applications and stop Spotlight

sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo mdutil -E /
sudo rm -Rf /var/folders/*
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100/*

then reboot and turn Spotlight back on

sudo mdutil -i on /

These commands turn Spotlight indexing off, erase the existing index files and turn spotlight indexing back on.

UPDATE:

According to your latest information the above does not help in long term.

Lets try finding what makes it index.

Disable all areas that you "normally" do no search.

Add Folders like System to the do not search.


How to stop programs stealing focus when initializing a build in XCode? I'm currently using XCode in conjunction with Unity. When I initiate a build in Unity, it automatically runs XCode. XCode will then steal focus from whatever app I happen to be in. Is there a way of disabling apps stealing focus in OSX?

You can add this to the Info.plist of Xcode to make it launch in the background:

<key>LSBackgroundOnly</key>
<string>True</string>

(You might need to get write privileges on the Info.plist if you downloaded Xcode from the Mac App Store)

Source and details about what it can break: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20085680-263/keep-applications-from-stealing-focus-when-opening-in-os-x/


Format menu bar time to english words I saw this screenshot of someone's menu bar and their time formatting is set in readable English.

Is this a this party app or a setting / script I can run on OS X?

I wrote a script to do this.

To show it in the menubar, use BitBar. A small app which creates menubar items from shell script output.

Once you download BitBar, save the following code into a file called lingualtime.1s.php then point BitBar to where you saved it.

#!/usr/bin/env php

<?php

# <bitbar.title>Lingual Clock</bitbar.title>
# <bitbar.version>v1.0</bitbar.version>
# <bitbar.author>Stan Hutcheon</bitbar.author>
# <bitbar.author.github>stnvh</bitbar.author.github>
# <bitbar.desc>displays the current time in a sentence</bitbar.desc>
# <bitbar.dependencies>php</bitbar.dependencies>

$time = array_map(function($time) {
    return intval($time);
}, explode(' ', date('g i')));

$st = array('hour' => '', 'minute' => '');

$past = '%s past %s'; $to = '%s to %s';

$pastHalf = false;

function get($int) {
    $numbers = array(
        1 => 'one', 2 => 'two', 3 => 'three', 4 => 'four', 5 => 'five', 6 => 'six', 7 => 'seven', 8 => 'eight', 9 => 'nine',
        11 => 'eleven', 12 => 'twelve', 13 => 'thirteen', 14 => 'fourteen', 15 => 'fifteen', 16 => 'sixteen', 17 => 'seventeen', 18 => 'eighteen', 19 => 'nineteen',
        10 => 'ten', 20 => 'twenty', 30 => 'thirty', 40 => 'fourty', 50 => 'fifty'
    );

    return isset($numbers[$int]) ? $numbers[$int] : '';
}

if($time[1] >= 35) {
    $pastHalf = true;

    $time[0] = $time[0] === 12 ? 1 : ++$time[0];
    $time[1] = 60 - $time[1];
}

# get lingual values
foreach(array('hour', 'minute') as $key => $part) {
    if($time[$key] < 20) {
        $st[$part] = get($time[$key]);
    } else {
        $currTenth = floor($time[$key] / 10) * 10;
        $currRem = $time[$key] - $currTenth;

        $ling = get($currTenth);
        if($ext = get($currRem)) {
            $ling .= '-' . $ext;
        }

        $st[$part] = $ling;
    }
}

printf(($pastHalf ? $to : $past) . PHP_EOL, $st['minute'], $st['hour']);


Why can't I choose to set up Internet Sharing to computers using AirPort? I'm using OSX 10.9. I'm trying to set up Internet Sharing to connect my Android to my Mac directly over Wi-Fi. Every tutorial I've come across (including the one published by Apple) mentions checking a box for "AirPort" in a "To computers using" list. However, the option is simply not available on my machine:

I have a few related questions:

Why isn't the AirPort option available?
Is there anything I can do to make it available?
If there isn't, how can I work around it to finish setting up Internet Sharing so I can connect my Android and my Mac directly over Wi-Fi?

The option is not available because you have selected to share your connection from Wi-Fi.

You can't share your connection from Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi. Use an alternative method of obtaining a connection to the internet (e.g. Ethernet) so that the internet connection can be shared over Wi-Fi.


Can iOS receive email from two Apple ID but iMessages from only one of the two email addresses? I have an iPod Touch and an iPhone, both on separate Apple ID accounts. What would happen if I added the iPod Touch email to the "receive at" on my iPhone (in addition to the separate email already in place) and confirmed that email address?

I would like to recieve messages for both email accounts on my iphone, but have my itouch only get the messages from one of those accounts.

Would only my iPhone get both account's messages? I want two addresses sending messages to my iPhone and only one to my iPod touch.

Based off of my tests, when you choose what email addresses you want to use to receive iMessages, this is set on a per device basis. It's true that each Apple ID will have the same verified email addresses wherever you look. But the checklist in each devices' iMessage settings allows you to choose which email addresses you want to receive messages on that device.

So if you added the one from your iPod Touch as an address to receive at on your iPhone, only one thing would change: you would begin receiving messages sent to that email address on your iPhone.

All this being said, I would recommend you use only one Apple ID for all of your iMessage needs. Changing it around at first will seem a little tricky but should pay off in the end. (Tap the 'Apple ID: ______' button in your iMessage settings and you can change it out without messing up anything else Apple ID-related on your device.)


Command + Shift + 4 not saving image to clipboard I saw that Command + Shift + 4 gets a regular selection for a save of your screen. When I press the shortcut, I get the rectangular selection, and when I select, I here the camera shutter noise, but then the image is not saved to my clipboard.
When I cmd+v, no image gets pasted, the thing in my clipboard is just what I had previously saved to it.

Command + Shift + 4 saves a file to the desktop, not to the clipboard.
Use Command + Control + Shift + 4 to save to the clipboard.
Take a look at this comment I wrote a few years back for the full list of keyboard shortcuts related to screenshots:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/204387/60161


How to find when "Find My" location tracking was enabled for a contact I noticed that "Find My" location tracking on my phone was enabled for one of the contacts. Is there a way to find when this was turned on for that contact?

You will see a notification* in your messages with that contact stating "You started sharing location with..."

*This is not a message/text, it's a notification. I believe you can't do a text search for this through Messages app on Mac, unlike the usual text messages.


How do I rename files by moving the first 4 numbers How do I rename files by moving the first 4 characters (numbers in my case) in file name to the end of the filename using A Better Finder Renamer?

I made an example scenario in Better Finder Rename 10 (10.20)

My filenames:

0001 - Example.svg
0002 - Example.svg
0003 - Example.svg
0004 - Example.svg
0005 - Example.svg
0006 - Example.svg
0007 - Example.svg
0008 - Example.svg
0009 - Example.svg
0010 - Example.svg
0011 - Example.svg
0012 - Example.svg

I used the Multi-step drawer to do this, since I wanted to also clean up the new filename so that there is a space between the numbers once they are at the end and I also wanted to remove the - in the front, since it wouldn't be needed anymore.

First I add a space to the end in preparation of the numbers:

  This is its own step

Category: Text
Action: Add text to end
Add:  <- a single space
Change: The filename without the extension

Then I move the numbers to the end:

  This is its own step

Category: Character Positions & Ranges
Action: Move a range of characters to position
From text position: 0, From the front
A number of characters: Next, 4
To text position: 0, From the end
Change: Only the file name

...and all that is left is to remove the spacer I had between the numbers and the text -:

  This is its own step

Category: Text
Action: Remove text from beginning
Remove: - <- space dash space
Change: The file name without the extension


Prevent iOS device from sleeping if plugged to charger This is available in Developer options in Android's system Settings. I'm trying to look for an equivalent in iOS. This is great if I want the screen to be always visible for screen updates/notifications. No problem with battery since it is plugged in anyway.

Is there a Jailbreak tweak for this?

This setting applies for both plugged and unplugged. I'm looking for something specific to a plugged device.

In the past there was an Cydia App called ScreenDimmer.

I hope you can find this application via your iPhone and fix your problem.

One of its features:

  Doesn't dim the screen if the battery is being charged.


Double click to open documents and folders Before I installed Lion I was able to open folders and documents by using double click/tap on the trackpad. Now it doesn't work anymore. Did this happen to anyone else?

How do I resolve this problem?

Make sure tap to click is enabled:

If it still doesn't work more information is necessary.


Bulk removing Wifi networks from an iOS device This article, "What we give away when we log on to a public Wi-Fi network", demonstrates how dangerous it is for you to turn on Wi-fi on your phone. It advertises the name of every network it has connected to. And will connect to any network named, for example, “Starbucks”, even if you are not near a Starbucks.

I know you can turn this off when you are in range of a network by opening the Wi-Fi settings tab, clicking a few times and then checking “Forget Network.” But it doesn’t seem like there is a tool for managing these in bulk.

I was wondering if there are any tools—built-in or otherwise—for manually removing networks from the auto-join list.

Mac OS X for example allows you to add/delete/reorder networks:

You can completely reset network settings under Settings > General > Reset.


What keyboards can reliably be used to start up recovery or diagnostics mode on a Mac mini? I have a Mac mini which is stalling during boot. I have been trying to boot it to recovery or diagnostics mode, but run into an unexpected problem.

The keyboard I'm currently using with it is a Corsair K95 Platinum RGB which includes a lighting controller. This means that the keyboard has a short startup time, only a few seconds, but enough that macOS apparently does not allow it enough time to start up between the USB initialization cycle and the deadline for detecting the startup key presses.

I then tried again by attaching a second keyboard, but again the system would not respond to startup keys; the documentation is silent on the behavior of startup keys when more than one keyboard is connected or on how priority is determined.

I was eventually able to get a startup key to working using an ancient keyboard, but I would not like to be stuck without a keyboard that cannot do this.

What are the requirements for a keyboard to be able to invoke macOS startup keys?

All USB keyboards have either a windows or command key so should work.

The connection method of Bluetooth can be bit more sketchy if it’s not an Apple keyboard due to pairing and wake / connect before the OS is loaded, so I would say use any wired USB keyboard you care to use if you can't pre-pair and test the keyboard to connect preOS boot.

The left windows key and the r key is all you need for Internet Recovery. Here’s the code used in the project below and also referenced in a question about Arduino that confirms the mapping to a windows keyboard.

https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/32388/which-key-is-key-left-gui

Of course - Mac keyboards send KEY_LEFT_GUI when you hold down the command key and not the windows key.

Heck, there’s even an open source project to turn an Arduino into a device that holds command R and then types out commands to help automate restore and recovery.

https://twocanoes.com/automating-macos-and-package-installation-from-the-recovery-partition/
https://bitbucket.org/twocanoes/macdeploystick

BootKeyboard.begin();
delay(500);
BootKeyboard.press(KEY_LEFT_GUI);
BootKeyboard.press('r');
delay(5000);
BootKeyboard.releaseAll();

The only thing I’ve heard of messing this up is of you hold down the keys too soon in the boot process, the system doesn’t see the press so unless you have some exotic gaming keyboard that wants to listen for the host and then decide to send key presses - the cheapest, whatever handy USB keyboard you have works well across all the Macs from the latest to ones 10 years old or more.


Question mark on finder's side bar -- could it be malware? When I click on this question mark finder tells me it can't open it because the original item couldn't be found. A week ago I downloaded a file that I suspect could have been malware. Could a malware manifest this way?
Thanks!

No. A question mark is the usual symbol for a link to a file that no longer exists or cannot be found.
Malware is designed to go unnoticed.


How To Remove old login screen of MacOs? I upgraded my Mac air from Mojave to Big sur, but after the upgrade when I start the computer it will ask me to log in with the old Mojave login screen then it will proceed again to big sur login screen. There are two log in screens now in my laptop and I want to remove the old Mojave login.

Seems like somehow you're stuck at Mojave's Preboot environment.
With FileVault 2 on, the Preboot environment (the Mojave one that you see), instead of full-fat macOS, is booted first to ask you for your FileVault 2 password in order to decrypt your data and then, proceed to normal macOS startup procedure (when you see the Big Sur startup interface).
The strange thing is that the preboot environment itself should be upgraded along with your recent Big Sur installation, but wasn't. If you're using MacBook Air 2018 or later, T2's magic may be to blame.
The solution is: manually updating your preboot environment. Here are a few suggestions:

Enter macOS Recovery, and

Install Big Sur again
OR, if that still didn't work, turn off FileVault 2 and:

In macOS Utilities, open Terminal.
Run sudo diskutil list to get Preboot's identifier (usually disk1s3).
Run sudo diskutil apfs deleteVolume IDENTIFIER.
Install Big Sur again like in method 1.

Either way, your data should be unaffected. But be sure to make a backup in case something bad happens. Make sure to turn off FileVault 2 and wait for it to get fully decrypted before proceeding to recovery method 2.


I need help signing up for iTunes Match I have an older Apple laptop and want to load iTunes match. When following the directions the "Match" tab, trying to "Enable iCloud Music Library" or any other reference to the path that I can sign up for the service is never presented.

What am I missing?

The first thing is to check that your iTunes is new enough for the subscription service. You didn’t mention how old your OS is so if you need help figure I get that out, Apple offers presales support via phone and web chat.

I believe iTunes 10.5 is required, so try to update your Mac OS and then iTunes as far as you can to current.

Next, if you’re sure your iTunes is ok, it’s likely a payment or date/time error. Again, without some specific details we might struggle to help you out further.


Is it possible to play a Blu-ray Disc on iMac? There is no any drive with my iMac and I know apple doesn't have program that could play Blu-ray until now, so can anyone give me some ideas about how can I make my iMac play Blu-ray disc movies?

You might to check out this MacWorld url.

There are several Blu-ray external USB drives available, but the url above will point you in the right direction.


Keyboard and Trackpad not working after login after spilling liquid I accidentally spill some liquid on the keyboard of my MacBook Air. It wasn't too much and I turned off the computer right way. The computer works perfectly fine, but after I log in the keyboard and trackpad stop working.
Does anyone have any clue on what is going on?

As physical connectors heat and cool, they may loose contact with what they are connected to.  Rather than logging in immediately upon boot up, let the computer get up to temperature.  In other words, wait 5-10 minutes.  Can you log in at that point?  If not, the increased heat from normal startup may have exposed some hardware damage done by the liquid.