Why does my Mac Mini (2012) lock up with a fresh Mavericks install? I've reinstalled OS X Mavericks from scratch twice on my (usually headless) Mac Mini, but it keeps locking up after ten or fifteen minutes of use - even just Safari browsing. I use Screen Sharing with the firewall off (for now - to rule that out as a cause of the problem).

I connected an HDTV to see what was going on when the Mini locked up and I saw this:

...which doesn't look good.

I've run a full 'memtest' in single-user mode, twice, and that says it's OK. I'll try AHT when I get the chance, but does anyone have any advice or suggestions as to the cause?

I eventually found that the problem was caused by not-quite-firmly-seated RAM.


Do I need "Install OS X Mavericks" after I've upgraded? I have "Install OS X Mavericks" in my Applications folder even though I installed it a while ago. Does the system require this for utilities or something, or is there any reason to keep it around?

No. If you have no use for it, delete it. The OS doesn't need it any more and if you want to reinstall OS X you can use the Recovery HD, so there's generally no need to keep it.

The post-install script will even delete it for you if its found in the default location as far as I know, but if you still have it there's no problem deleting it yourself.


MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) keboard and trackpad are not working As title suggests, keyboard and trackpad are not working. However, force quit (shift+control+alt/option+power) had worked.

Where is the problem and how can I fix it?

In this model the trackpad and keyboard plug into the logic board directly, the top case just houses it but has no logical components for those in it.

This issue might not actually be the logic board, if I remember correctly the logic for the keyboard goes to the logic board, route back through the trackpad then back to the logic board via the trackpad IPD cable.

Since you've already reset the SMC and it didn't permanently fix it, I would first try another IPD/trackpad cable, if not resolved then try replacing the trackpad itself next.

It's unlikely to be the keyboard, hopefully not the logic board.


How do I prevent widgets from moving around on the dashboard? Is there a way to disable moving widgets around in the dashboard? I have a neat layout all set up, and would like to prevent accidental widget movements.

In Finder, press ⌘ShiftG and type ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dashboard.plist and press Enter. Press ⌘I to bring up the file information pane. Click the Locked checkbox.

This will not prevent you from moving widgets around,opening new widgets, etc., but will preserve the arranged state of widgets at the time of locking such that any future time you launch Dashboard (rebooting, logging in, restarting Dock, etc), they will be preserved in their state at the time you locked the Dashboard.


Charging suddenly stop when I try to use the device It's my first time with a mac computer, I have a macbook pro 2011 .

The problem , charger works fine when the laptop is closed or idle, when I start using it like for example opening Finder, simply the charger lights turns off and stop charging.

Thanks in advance .

I would start with resetting your Mac's System management Controller (SMC) and also checking your battery status.

Reset the SMC

To reset the System management Controller on your particular MBP, follow these steps:

Shut down your computer
Keep the power cable plugged in
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the built-in keyboard) and the power button and hold all these down for at least 10 seconds
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

After resetting the SMC, use your computer to determine if the issue still persists.

I'm also guessing you won't know the history of the battery, so it'd be good to check the status of your battery once the SMC reset is done.

Check battery status

Ensure your MacBook is connected to a power source
Go to Apple > About This Mac
Ensure you have the Overview tab selected
Click on the System Report... button
After the System Information window appears, click on the Power option (it's listed in the lefthand menu within the Hardware section)
Now on the righthand side take note of the following items:

Under Charge Information: Charging and Full Charge Capacity
Under Health Information: Cycle Count and Condition

Now report back the results via the comment option below, also letting me know if your MBP is charging properly now.


2013 Macbook Pro - hard drive always full! I have spoken to Apple support but didn't make any progress. I have very little stored on my SSD but for years it's consistently full. It seems like its replicating itself as when I last deleted some obsolete files the space increased but then decreases again soon after. Most of my work is in the cloud and I back up to a time capsule.

I've read that time machine sometimes saves itself locally when time capsule not available, if this is correct how can I find these and remove them.

I'm now stuck as I cannot upgrade pages as requires iOS upgrade but App store isn't offering me any such upgrade.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Currently running Yosemite 10.10.5

The first step is to get two different tools to examine where the space is allocated, and then dig into it a bit.

I would recommend using Daisy Disk since it’s much faster than spotlight and Apple. Then I would get a second opinion on Apple’s system information window - run through the Apple cleanup steps so you know to an approximation - how many tens of GB are allocated to the big buckets.

The level of detail you have provided isn’t going to be helpful for people to offer specific advice, but there will be dozens of great questions and answers once your situation can be mapped into the questions here on how to customize space allocations or avoid cached copies in specific.

Or you might find Daisy Disk’s documentation lets you find, diagnose, and optimize / solve your issue.

Same for Apple’s tools - the documentation is quite good now on how to optimize your mac.

https://support.apple.com/guide/system-information/optimize-storage-space-sysp4ee93ca4/mac


Can I prevent a remote Mac from entering sleep via a remote ssh connection? Since I upgraded to Mountain Lion, i've the feeling my Mac (early 2008 iMac) goes to sleep randomly when i'm connected through SSH.

It's there a way I can prevent my Mac to go to sleep when i'm connected over SSH ?

Caffeine prevents your Mac from falling asleep. Maybe, it can help you out with your issue too. The sleep isn't at all random, but in fact is set in the Energy Saver system preference as well from the terminal using pmset.

You could use pmset to inspect and change the sleep settings if you have admin rights on the remote.


Text is deleted when trying to place the cursor (magnifying glass) I am having a hard time finding documentation on this behavior. The negative response received from this user on everythingiCafe makes me think that this is a bug. Basically, what happens is:

When you have a string of text that overflows behind the visible input box, or have a string of text which wraps inside the input box, if you move the text cursor around (using the magnifying glass), sometimes the text before the cursor will start to be deleted if you continue to hold the cursor.

It is worth noting that this rate of deleting characters is much faster than holding down the Delete key.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is it a bug? If not, what are the conditions which trigger this unintuitive method of deleting text?

I am using an iPhone 4 (MD146LL) and have experienced this with iOS versions 5.0, 5.0.1, and 5.1.

I have never observed such behaviour.

It is a bug.

Selecting text is not supposed to delete text.


OS X reinstallation and Amazon software. I just purchased a second hand, 2-Week old MacBook Air. I downloaded the Mac Office from Amazon. When installing, I'm prompted to enter an Administrator Password, which I still don't have, as the guy who sold me the computer has not yet given it to me.

So, can I reinstall the computer without this password? And if so, will I be able to re-download the Office file from Amazon Software Library? And, would this reinstallation solve my problem of not having the computer's Administrator Password?

I the first place, there are ways of resetting the Administrator's Password.

Answering your questions, yes, you can reinstall the computer without this password. Just follow Apple's instructions.

And, yes, you'll be able to re-download the software from Amazon, as stated in its Help Page:

  You can download an unlimited number of times for personal use. To re-download, go to Your Games and Software Library through the "Your Digital Items" link at the top of the screen and click the download button.

And, again, yes, making a clean installation will make a new Administrator user, with a new password which will be chosen by you.

Note: Both of the links regarding OS X reference Lion, as you never stated which version of OS X you are using. These instructions, though, will work for Mountain Lion too.


How to make a portable, cross-platform, TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt USB stick? I'm using VeraCrypt, a fork of TrueCrypt.  TrueCrypt had a mode called "Traveller Mode" on Windows, that allows for the encrypted volume/file to be accessed without requiring an installation of TrueCrypt itself.

Unfortunately this functionality is not in the Mac version (nor is it in VeraCrypt).  I want to have a USB stick that will be accessible on both Mac and Windows (with the password), without anyone having to install anything first.

I have tried creating two volumes using FAT format - 1 that is encrypted and 1 smaller one that is not, then placing a copy of the installed VeraCrypt.app onto the unencrypted volume.  Unfortunately that copy of the app crashes when launched on a computer without VeraCrypt installed.

Is there a way to create a portable, cross platform, encrypted USB stick with VeraCrypt or TrueCrypt on a Mac running OSX Mavericks and if so, what is it?

Format the stick in FAT format, then create truecrypt image on it.


Partition of harddisk lost/unusable I'm using OS X Yosemite - version 10.10.2. I have 1.12 TB fusion drive on my system. Recently I wanted to make a partition on my system, while making the partition on the system using disk utility some error occurred and partition was not created successfully.

The unusable partition of the disk.

The partition is not available here either.

So, here I'm not able to access the free space partition of my disk.
The disk utility is not working with the free space partition. I want to resize the partition and want to have only single partition disk

You have to boot from another device or to Internet Recovery Mode and then use the command line to modify the CoreStorage volume.

Preparation:

Backup your data.
Detach any external drive (especially your external Time Machine backup drive).
Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.
The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot to a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an apple/akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (Mavericks or Yosemite) or a thumb drive containing a full system (Mavericks or Yosemite).

Modify CoreStorage:

Open in the menubar Utilities/Terminal
Enter diskutil cs list
Enter diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID size with LVUUID: UUID of the logical volume and size: the final size of your Macintosh HD
Example:
diskutil cs resizeStack C6AE5E40-1B4F-4AED-BD80-9E71EB6F1352 1000g
to expand it to 1.0 TB
diskutil cs resizeStack C6AE5E40-1B4F-4AED-BD80-9E71EB6F1352 0g or
diskutil cs resizeStack C6AE5E40-1B4F-4AED-BD80-9E71EB6F1352 100%
to expand it to the full size with magic numbers.
Enter exit and quit Terminal.
Reboot to your main volume.


SIGSEGV when trying to install Java EE SDK 7 on OS X Mavericks I tried to fresh install Java EE SDK 7 Update 45 on OS X 10.9.1

I did

export DISPLAY=:0

then

sudo ln -sf /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home/bin/java /usr/bin/java

and

export JAVA_HOME="$(/usr/libexec/java_home)"

followed by

sh Downloads/java_ee_sdk-7-jdk7-macosx-x64.sh

This results in

Extracting the installer archive...
Extracting the installer runtime...
Extracting the installer resources...
Extracting the installer metadata...

Welcome to GlassFish installer

Using the user defined JAVA_HOME : /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_45.jdk/Contents/Home
Entering setup...
SwixML 1.5 (#144)
#
# A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:
#
#  SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0x000000011eb05ab9, pid=844, tid=50439
#
# JRE version: Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (7.0_45-b18) (build 1.7.0_45-b18)
# Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (24.45-b08 mixed mode bsd-    amd64 compressed oops)
# Problematic frame:
# C  0x000000011eb05ab9
#
# Failed to write core dump. Core dumps have been disabled. To enable core     dumping, try "ulimit -c unlimited" before starting Java again
#
# An error report file with more information is saved as:
# /var/folders/yj/fk34rncs79vcfyq_853334qr0000gn/T//hs_err_pid844.log
#
# If you would like to submit a bug report, please visit:
#   http://bugreport.sun.com/bugreport/crash.jsp
# The crash happened outside the Java Virtual Machine in native code.
# See problematic frame for where to report the bug.
#
/tmp/install.123113224830/install/bin/engine-wrapper: line 139:   844     Abort trap: 6           ${JAVA_HOME}/bin/java ${JAVA_OPTIONS} -    Dinstall.engine=${theInstallEngine} -Dinstaller.resources.url=${MEDIALOC}/ -Ddefault.resources.url=file:${INSTALL_HOME}/lib/resources/ -classpath ${theCP} -Dsims.native-file-dir=${INSTALL_HOME}/lib     org.openinstaller.core.EngineBootstrap ${INSTALLPROPS}

What could cause this problem?

Found the solution here.

$ sudo ./java_ee_sdk-7-unix.sh -a silent_install_answer_file -l /Users/username/temp -s

silent_install_answer_file:

ClusteredInstance.Configuration.CLUSTER_NAME=c1
ClusteredInstance.Configuration.CREATE_CLUSTER=false
ClusteredInstance.Configuration.DOMAIN_NAME=domain1
ClusteredInstance.Configuration.INSTANCE_NAME=instance1
ClusteredInstance.Configuration.SERVER_ADMIN_PORT=4848
ClusteredInstance.Configuration.SERVER_HOST_NAME=localhost
ConfigType.Option.CREATE_CLUSTEREDINSTANCE=CREATE_CLUSTEREDINSTANCE
ConfigType.Option.CREATE_DOMAIN=CREATE_DOMAIN
ConfigType.Option.CREATE_STANDALONEINSTANCE=CREATE_STANDALONEINSTANCE
ConfigType.Option.NO_CONFIGURATION=NO_CONFIGURATION
Domain.Configuration.ADMIN_PASSWORD=password
Domain.Configuration.ADMIN_PASSWORD_REENTER=password
Domain.Configuration.ADMIN_PORT=4848
Domain.Configuration.ADMIN_USER=admin
Domain.Configuration.CREATE_SERVICE=false
Domain.Configuration.DOMAIN_NAME=domain1
Domain.Configuration.HTTP_PORT=8080
Domain.Configuration.SERVICE_NAME=domain1Service
Domain.Configuration.START_SERVER=false
InstallHome.directory.INSTALL_HOME=/usr/local/glassfish4
InstallType.Option.CONFIG_ONLY=CONFIG_ONLY
InstallType.Option.INSTALL_AND_CONFIG=INSTALL_AND_CONFIG
InstallType.Option.INSTALL_ONLY=INSTALL_ONLY
InstallUserType.Option.ADVANCED_USER=ADVANCED_USER
InstallUserType.Option.BASIC_USER=BASIC_USER
JDKSelection.directory.HIDDEN_JDK=
JDKSelection.directory.JDK_FROM_LIST_CHOICE=false
JDKSelection.directory.JDK_LIST=
JDKSelection.directory.JDK_TYPE_IN=
JDKSelection.directory.JDK_TYPED_IN_CHOICE=false
RegistrationOptions.regoptions.CREATE_NEWACCT=CREATE_NEWACCT
RegistrationOptions.regoptions.DUMMY_PROP=
RegistrationOptions.regoptions.SKIP_REGISTRATION=SKIP_REGISTRATION
RegistrationOptions.regoptions.USE_EXISTINGACCT=USE_EXISTINGACCT
RegistrationOptions.regoptions.USERNAME=
RegistrationOptions.regoptions.USERPASSWORD=
SOAccountCreation.accountinfo.COMPANYNAME=
SOAccountCreation.accountinfo.COUNTRY_DROP_DOWN=
SOAccountCreation.accountinfo.COUNTRY=
SOAccountCreation.accountinfo.EMAIL=
SOAccountCreation.accountinfo.FIRSTNAME=
SOAccountCreation.accountinfo.LASTNAME=
SOAccountCreation.accountinfo.PASSWORD=
SOAccountCreation.accountinfo.REENTERPASSWORD=
StandaloneInstance.Configuration.INSTANCE_NAME=instance1
StandaloneInstance.Configuration.SERVER_ADMIN_PORT=4848
StandaloneInstance.Configuration.SERVER_HOST_NAME=localhost
UpdateTool.Configuration.ALLOW_UPDATE_CHECK=true
UpdateTool.Configuration.BOOTSTRAP_UPDATETOOL=true
UpdateTool.Configuration.PROXY_HOST=
UpdateTool.Configuration.PROXY_PORT=

Be patient as it may take a while without any visual feedback.


Applescript File vs Alias I have these two Applescript commands in which they both point to the same file

alias "Macintosh HD:Users:scott:Dropbox:Downloads:AppleScriptFinderGuide.pdf"
file  "Macintosh HD:Users:scott:Dropbox:Downloads:AppleScriptFinderGuide.pdf"

The alias command works just fine.  However the file command does not as it reports this error:  "Can’t get file "Macintosh HD:Users:scott:Dropbox:Downloads:AppleScriptFinderGuide.pdf"."

Any idea why the file command fails?

Thanks in advance, Scott

You are not referencing the file correctly.

Try

tell application "Finder" to set myFile to file "Macintosh HD:Users:scott:Dropbox:Downloads:AppleScriptFinderGuide.pdf"


Add files to Home Videos without physically copying the file I have a wifi based disk on which I have many movies. I can access this disk from my mac finder and see all the files.

I want to add these files to my itunes home videos folder without physically copying the files from the wifi disk.

I thought the right way to do this was to open itunes movies -> home videos then drag and drop the files from the finder on the home videos.

but in my case, it starts physically copying 100s of those files from the wifi disk to the local storage of the computer.

I don't want this.

I want itunes to just use the wifi disk. I know this is possible and I have done it from other computers.... but right now I am not able to do this.

iTunes menu > Preferences > Advanced tab > uncheck "Copy files to iTunes Media folder ..."

Note this will disable it for music and other media, too. If you want to keep using it for music and other media, disable the option, add all your videos, then re-enable it. iTunes will then keep track of the fact that the videos are in one place, and your music will still be copied into the iTunes Media folder when added in the future.

If you do this, do not select File > Library > Consolidate Files, or it will attempt to copy all your videos into the iTunes Media folder.


The deleted certificate will be restored after rebooting. But why? I installed a file *.developerprofile. Then I went to the keychain and deleted 3 certificates (they were expired). Everything is OK. But deleted certificates appeared when I rebooted my Mac. But why?

I had a possibly similar problem, related to a PPTP VPN and user certs.

Be sure to delete all old certificates from each keychain in Keychain Access. Also: be sure to choose "All Items" as the category.

In any case, I'm curious to hear whether you came up with a solution, so please remember to log any remarks on this page.


Is there a difference between recovering data from the original drive VS a clone of it Following up from How to create an accurate byte-level copy of an SSD to another drive?, I did a clone of my entire internal 256GB SSD of my Mac 10.14, with 13-15GB free areas. I have .img file now.

Will trying to do data recovery from a clone of a drive affect the chances of recovery VS doing recovery on the drive itself? Do all data recovery software that can attempt to recover data on the original drive also be able to attempt to recover data from .img clone that I have?

No, there's no difference when you have a byte-for-byte identical clone as you have. And yes, data recovery software should work the same for an original drive as for an image-based clone.

In other cases than yours there could be a slight difference - namely when we're dealing with defective hardware. If you have a broken hard drive for example it might be that if you do a naive clone multiple times, you'll end up with different images. That is not good.

In your case, I advised you to use "dd" to create a clone. That works perfectly well with functioning hardware.

If you had broken hardware, I would have advised instead to use "ddrescue". That utility has support for things like reading the same block multiple times in order to get as much correct data as possible from a malfunctioning drive. Also it can do stuff like leave holes in the clone image that corresponds to the non-working parts of the original drive.

Note that because of TRIM a functioning SSD drive could limit your possibilities of recovering data from the clone. However if you use data recovery software you run yourself on your Mac, then the clone and the original will let you recover exactly the same data.

The only difference is if you access the flash ICs on the SSD drive directly to try to recover data that has been TRIM’ed away. However that is not possible from macOS (or Windows or similar), rather you would typically need specialized hardware and software not commonly available. If you are considering sending in your data to a professional recovery service that has these capabilities, you’ll definitely want to stop using the original drive and send that in - and the continue working on your clone drive instead. NOTE: I know of no such recovery service in existence anywhere for your hardware - I think your only bet is Apple at the moment.


How can I colorize Finder icons in Mavericks? I don't like the new "tags".

I'd like to be able to colorize some Finder icons.

Preview allows me to "adjust the color" of icons, but only between Purple and Green.

Is there a simple way to add other colors?

Thanks.

If you mean to change the actual icon that represents the folders (i.e. double-click on it to open the folder), then there's a good, short article at http://www.visualpharm.com/articles/change_mac_icons.html that explains how to do this if you have icons you would already like to use.

In a nutshell, you right-click (control-click) on the Documents folder and choose "Get Info" from the menu that pops up. Then, choose an icon you'd like to replace it with.* Double-click it to open it in Preview, select all by pressing command-a, and then copy it by pressing command-c. Click on the icon of the Documents folder at the top of the Info window and paste the copied icon into its place using command-v. To remove the custom icon, select the icon you pasted in the Info window and press the delete key to restore it to its original icon.

As for colorizing icons, there are numerous applications that allow you to edit images. Pixelmator is a good one, relatively inexpensive as far as image editors go, and has a colorize option, as well as Adobe's Photoshop. There are also free alternatives that can be found with a bit of web searching.

*You can create the icon from the one already there by selecting it in the Info window, pressing command-c to copy it, and opening up a blank document in your favorite image editor and pasting it into it. From there, you can edit it any way you like, then save it as a .png to use it as an icon.

If you mean the color-coded bars that would highlight the text, called labels, those have unfortunately been retired in Mavericks in replace of tags. Hope this helps solve your problem.


Now when Chrome is 64-bits, how do I install the Java plugin? As long as Chrome just was 32 bit, the Java plugin was not supported since Java for Mac OS X is 64 bit but now when Chrome (since version 39) is 64 bit, how do I install/enable the Java plugin?

Googling just returns old results such as

https://java.com/en/download/faq/chrome.xml (that refers to this blog post http://blog.chromium.org/2014/08/mac-chrome-when-im-sixty-four-bits.html)

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2429779?hl=en (talking about Java 7, I have Java 8).

You can download the latest version of Java, install, and reboot, and it should be listed in chrome://plugins. Make sure that it's enabled (there should be a button saying Disable):

Note: You probably want to check Always allowed because Java always pops up and asks you if you want  it to run.

Once you finish this, you can test java.


Creating power point presentation using iphone photos I have iPhone 5S and I want to create a powerpoint presentation but want to keep on the original resolution of the photos I take from my iPhone.
How can I insert the photos from iPhone to my power point presentation AND keep on the quality of the photos?

Thanks!

Once you have inserted the pic in PowerPoint, use the Compress function where you can select the resolution, or keep the original.


Calculator Paper Tape window not capturing any information I am able to bring up the Paper Tape window, but no calculator entries end up on it. Any hints as to what might be the issue?

OS X El Capitan 10.11.5, Calculator v10.8 (123).

The paper tape only records when pressing =. Press the equals button at the end of your calculation to record the calculation on the paper tape.


How preserve JPEG date stamps during Automator scaling? Automator services embedded as a context menu are a great way to quickly scale down JPEGs in the finder. Right click the file, choose your scaling script, done in seconds. The problem is it obliterates the files' date stamps, overwriting them with the date of the scaling operation.

Is there a way to use Automator to preserve date stamps during scaling?

If not in Automator is there a better way of doing this?

Here is one way of achieving the stated goal with an Automator Service. Instead of using Scale Images use Run Shell Script with settings, Shell: /bin/bash and Pass input: As arguments and add the following code to it:

for f in "$@"; do

        # Get the creation date time stamp of the target file, saved as 't'.

    t="$(/usr/bin/GetFileInfo -d "$f")"

        # Get the pixel width of the target file and divide it by 2 for a 50% scaling, saved as 'w'.

    w="$(/usr/bin/sips -g pixelWidth "$f" | /usr/bin/grep pixelWidth | /usr/bin/awk '{print $2/2}')"

        # Scale the target file.

    /usr/bin/sips --resampleWidth $w "$f"

        # Set the modified and creation date time stamps of the target file to the saved value held in 't'.

    /usr/bin/SetFile -m "$t" -d "$t" "$f"

done
        # Notify User operation is finished.
/usr/bin/afplay "/System/Library/Sounds/Purr.aiff"

Note that the last line in the code above can be omitted if you are going to use Show Growl Notification, which I don't have and why I used a system sound.  This was done under OS X 10.8.5 and you'll need to verify the path to the executables are the same on your system, although they should be the same.  The reason I'm using the fully qualified pathname of each executable is because Automator errors out if I don't.  You can get the FQP in a Terminal using which, e.g., which sips returns /usr/bin/sips.

Note that GetFileInfo and SetFile are a part of Xcode Tools and if not already installed you'll need to install, which can be triggered by typing GetFileInfo in a Terminal and following through with the prompts.

You can read the manual pages for each of the commands used to garner a more through understanding of what's happening.

Manual Pages for: GetFileInfo, sips and SetFile


Where is the "Open in Low Resolution" setting stored for an app? I'd like to script the opening of an app - which is normally used in retina resolution - to open in low resolution.

set low resolution setting
open app
clear low resolution setting

But where is the "Open in Low Resolution" setting stored for an app?
It seems different macOS store it in different places. I'm using Mojave.

Where is the “Open in Low Resolution” setting stored for an app?

When checking/unchecking the Open in Low Resolution checkbox on an App's Get Info window in Finder, an entry is created/modified under LSHighResolutionModeIsMagnified in the following file:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist

In the image below, Item 1 showing a value of 3 is when checked, and 2 when unchecked.

Update to address comment.
From Terminal:
$ defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist
{
    LSHighResolutionModeIsMagnified =     {
        "com.adobe.adobeconnect.app" =         (
            <626f6f6b ...>,
            3
        );
    };
}
$

Note in the above output that the value of the first item of the array is truncated to <626f6f6b ...> for brevity.
Also note the difference in how Xcode displays the contents of the PLIST file verses the defaults command in Terminal.
If using the PlistEdit Pro application, it will show the elements of an array with just a numerical value as its label while omitting the word item.

In either case using a GUI both labels are virtual and do not exist in the actual data structure of the array. Only the output of the defaults command represents an accurate data structure of the data itself.

Tested on macOS High Sierra.


Where is the "Send to Archive" option in High Sierra I have recently updated to Mac OS X High Sierra and noticed that there is no longer a archive or compress option in the context menu in finder.

Has this feature been removed or is a there a setting to enable to use this?

It should be in the same place still (and it is also in the File menu):


How do I increase sudo password remember timeout? I already know that I need to tune /etc/sudoers file but I would like to see full information and also a solution that would not require me to use vi editor.

Update: never, ever try to edit the file with something else than visudo.

Run sudo visudo and add this line:

Defaults    timestamp_timeout=-1

See man 5 sudoers. -1 causes the password to never timeout. You may change the number to whatever you like in minutes.

The man page for sudo says that sudo -v "extends the sudo timeout for another 5 minutes".

Running 'sudo visudo' instead of editing the file directly causes the system to validate the sudoers file before it commits the changes.  For instance, if you leave a stray character somwhere, when you save and exit, it will say "there is an error in the sudoers file, what would you like to do?" ... hence giving you a chance to go back in and edit.  This actually just happened to me 10 minutes ago.


Force system to use local hosts file before DNS (OS X El Capitan) I want to find a way to force my system to resolve through the local hosts file on my system before it makes a DNS query. There's a reason for this, and here's my context:

I live in China. I need a VPN to get to the 'real' Internet. In my case I'm using Astrill.
Inside my company, its local DNS points our intranet, wiki and other online resources to local IPs. When outside the company, the DNS entries are obviously those available on external IPs for everyone.

When connected to the VPN, I don't want my machine to look up by public IP, I want to still use the local IP that the local DNS gives me, but all traffic is going through the VPN.

A solution that I thought of was to put the local IPs in a DNS entry in the hosts file.

Then I read about a *nix technique which uses a file called nsswitch.conf to tell the system to always use the file first, then DNS. But OS X doesn't seem to use this (the file doesn't exist in /etc/ anyway).

This would be ideal because then I could always try to use the local resource wherever I am - normal Internet, VPN connection, or inside or outside my company.

I can't find any documentation for OS X support of nsswitch.conf or information about if it automatically checks hosts before DNS anyway.

This is already the default in OS X. I.e. if you specify a host name in the hosts file, lookups will use the IP address you've specified there instead of doing a DNS lookup.

Note that this is only true for programs using the system standard resolver functions. Programs can use their own resolving mechanism that is not guaranteed to honor anything you write in the hosts file. However, those programs should be rare and far between.


iPhone sync hangs on 1st generation iPhone I have a 1st generation iPhone which is suddenly failing to be able to sync with iTunes. It starts the sync process, but then part way through iTunes just hangs and becomes non-responsive. I have to kill the iTunes process to recover - even cancelling the sync on the phone leaves iTunes in a non-responsive state. The last status message in iTunes isn't consistent - sometimes it's copying an audio file from the phone, sometimes it's copying a video file to the phone.

Any tips for getting past or diagnosing the problem?

You seem to have tried all you can really do before proceeding to:

1) Put the phone in Recovery mode and go from there:

  Disconnect your iPhone and turn it off by holding the “Sleep/Wake” button for about five seconds and then sliding the red slider. If your iPhone is already off, there’s no need to turn it on and then off again. Once it’s off, press and hold the “Home” button and plug your iPhone into a Mac or PC with iTunes installed. Keep holding the “Home” button until you see a dock cable pointing to the iTunes icon. iPhones running older software will display a yellow triangle and text which says “Please Connect to iTunes”. Once you see this image, you can release the Home button.

  Open iTunes (if it’s not already open)
  and you will be told that “iTunes has
  detected an iPhone in recovery mode.”
  Click “OK” and you will be taken to
  the iPhone pane. Click “Restore” and
  you’re done, it’s that easy! Depending
  on the extent of your iPhone’s ills,
  it may take some time to do a full
  restore. Once you’re done, you should
  again have a perfectly working iPhone.

2) If recovery mode doesn’t work, it’s time to go to DFU (Direct Firmware Upgrade) mode:

  To enter this mode, plug in your iPhone and turn it off. Hold down the “Home” and “Sleep/Wake” buttons for about twelve seconds. You’ll briefly see the silver Apple logo and then your phone will appear to turn back off. Release the “Sleep/Wake” button but continue to hold the “Home” button until you see a message in iTunes stating that it has detected an iPhone in recovery mode. Choose “Restore”

It would be good if you tell iTunes to not auto sync:

Another idea is perhaps start with a fresh Library. Start iTunes by pressing alt and create an empty library in another folder in your hard drive. Try to sync from there. please note that this may wipe your phone if you’re not carefully.

If after all this it continues to fail, you may need to go to a Genius bar, but if it’s a 1st gen iPhone, you may be out of luck.


Holding down arrow key no longer quickly moves cursor to the right or left I use an iMac running High Sierra 10.13.6. I use the command line a lot and recently its developed a problem. I would use the left or right arrow key to move the terminal cursor along a previous command or line. If I made a mistake in a long line I was typing on the command line I would hold down the left arrow key and the cursor would quickly move along the line until I got to where the mistake was. That has stopped happening. Holding down the arrow key takes a second or more to move a single space. Continuing to hold it down is just too slow. It's much faster now to just repeatedly tap the arrow string. This is very frustrating and time-consuming. Does anyone know what happened? The arrow keys used to work fine. I've tried restarting but that hasn't helped. This also happens in text windows and other applications.

It looks like your settings in System Preference Keyboard are off

Move the Delay Until repeat Slider to the right to as fast you like it


Movie downloaded from iTunes store on iPad, not available on Mac I downloaded the movie "Hugo" from the iTunes store during Apple's "12 days of gifts", on my iPad. I have iTunes match for my music (and presumably also for movies), however when I go to see the list of movies on iTunes on my mac, it doesn't show "Hugo." Why would this be the case? Normally when I download something on my iPad (apps, music) I can also get them on my computer. Both my mac & iPad are signed in to the same iTunes account.

I believe you can find a Purchased section in iTunes Store, under that section, you can select to view your movies.

Also, you can log out and log back into iTunes Store (not authorize/deauthorize, log in and out). You do have to rematch iTunes Match after signing out, but it is just a single one-pass scan which will be fast.

If it not there, you may have to contact iTunes support.


HDD on the verge of dying? So, I've found myself in a quite tight spot regarding my internal HDD.

I've got a 13" Late 2011 MBP, running macOS 10.12.1, which is behaving very strangely lately: Mail will refuse to open, with an error message complaining about network and home folder problems; Finder won't let me create new directories (they appear and then instantly vanish - they weren't created at all, according to my Dropbox log); and Disk Utility gives inconsistent results: sometimes it will say everything's fine, while other times it indicates disk corruption.

Stranger still, is that no external storage appears on my Desktop. They do show in System Information under the respective USB controller, but no signs of life either from Finder or Disk Utility.

I've tried rebooting the system to see if things would come back to normal; instead, I was greeted to a Kernel Panic at startup, complete with white text under a black background. After trying to use the recovery partition to run Disk Utility again, a second attempt would result in a "block sign" being displayed if I tried accessing said partition, and Internet Recovery's Disk Utility just hang up after an hour checking the Catalog File.

I was only able to boot back into macOS by trying to boot into verbose mode (Cmd+Shift+V), and for some reason the system came back to life. It still has the exact same problems as before, with the addition that, after choosing to send Apple a Crash Report, the "ReportCrash" process is now taking an entire processing core for about an hour, with no signs of high disk activity.

This is quite frustrating, given that it's been about 6 months I've replaced its original 750GB HDD for a 1TB Toshiba hybrid drive (1TB disk; 8GB flash), and things were working very smoothly until then.

Before I reboot my Mac again, I'd like to know if anyone has ever encountered a similar isse, and what can be done to minimize the damage. I have a 30-day-old Time Machine backup, and can read the drive using a secondary Linux machine in order to not lose more data, but as-is, what is the best course of action?

EDIT: After following @Allan's suggestion and running the Apple Hardware Test (online version) on extended mode, the HDD is indeed reported. The output is as follows:

Test Results
________________________________________

Alert! Apple Hardware Test has detected an error.

4HDD/11/40000004: SATA(0,0)

Pass Number: 1,
Total Time Testing: 44 mins 53 secs

Guess I'll try to image the HDD this night under Linux, using ddrescue, and restore to the older 750GB HDD; I'll follow up with more progress later. Thanks to @jksoegaard and @Allan for the moment!

EDIT 2: On trying ddrescue the drive oddly reported no read errors, even though almost every time I run it through fsck.hfsplus the reported results are different. I've also decided to check its S.M.A.R.T. data; to my surprise, it reports no reallocated sectors, but an alarmingly high rate of UDMA CRC Errors (11752, out of a 253 worst-recommended value).

I've decided to try to save as most as I could from my home directory using the Linux machine (fortunately only a couple uninportant files seemed corrupt, even though macOS refused to read the disk through an external SATA<->USB converter), and put back the original 750GB HDD on the MacBook, which is being currently restored from the aforementioned Time Machine Backup.

Next step is to return the HDD under warranty and try to claim a new one, I suppose. Thanks so much to everybody for the help!

The best course of action is to use the secondary Linux machine to read the drive and make a bit-for-bit copy as soon as possible. Use a program such as ddrescue to ensure you get as possible out.

After you've made the copy, do any recovery attempts of file contents on the image you've created with ddrescue.

Your hybrid drive is most probably failing and failing fast. Hybrid drives have a lot more failure modes than a regular hard drive or SSD drive, so that's why you can experience very odd things happening - without for example it being the same sectors that are "bad" all the time.

You'll need to replace the drive. As it is only 6 months, perhaps you can get it replaced under warranty from the drive manufacturer or seller.


Pastebot Mac software says Disabled in menu I don't use Pastebot on this computer very often, but it has worked previously without difficulty.  Today, the menu shows "Disabled..." in grey text, and Pastebot doesn't allow me to copy & paste between Mac and device.

I downloaded the Mac preference pane and installed it again.  This seemed to work OK, although there were two messages about "... is from an unidentified developer", to which I said Open.
I followed the Pastebot process to pair my new iPad 4, and this seemed to work OK: the numeric password showed up on the Mac, and I typed it.  But I still see Disabled in the Mac menu bar, and it doesn't seem to sync.
This was working previously with my iPhone 4S, but it doesn't now.
Pastebot is turned on in the Mac pref pane.
The Firewall is turned off on the Mac.
The Pastebot support site doesn't seem to mention this possibility.
I can't see any relevant messages in Console.app.
Everything else about the Mac, iPad, iPhone seems to be working OK.

Any ideas how I might get Pastebot working again?

Well, the answer was right in front of me, but I didn't see it.

To fix this problem, choose the first item in the menu: "Enable Pastebot Sync".

Duh!


Some iTunes URL generate 404 response from python but still work when you browse them from a web browser I am using python requests to get itunes URL responses.

for some links it works and for others it doesn't, for example:

working - https://itunes.apple.com/SA/app/id944846798?ls=1&mt=8

not working - https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1029783189?mt=8
(getting a 404 error)

I noticed that the difference between the 2 links is that if i paste the working one in the browser, it opens it correctly, and if i paste the non-working one, it tries to open itunes and get stuck.

I tried few user-agents, for example:

  "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101
  Firefox/57.0"

  "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_6) AppleWebKit/537.36
  (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/62.0.3188.0 Safari/537.36"

Since spoofing a user agent isn't enough for my python tool to appear like a web browser, Is there something else I can try?

I found a way to bypass it.
It seems that itunes is sending back a 404 response for some applications, especially (from what i've seen) if they have restricted content such as gambling.

the way get around it is instead of sending a request to the main apple store like here

  https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1029783189?mt=8

one should send the request to the local appstore.
In this example case, the Australian one:

  https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/id1029783189

Thanks for everyone who tried to help.


Anything to watch for when buying a 2009 MBP? I have the option to buy a 2009 13" MBP for $500 - mid 2009 with the 2.53 GHz C2D. At this point, I'm leaning towards it (I'd be using it for iOS development). I know it's been well taken care of.

However, before purchasing, I would like to know if there is anything particular to watch out for when buying this year of MBP. I know that the 2008 models had problems with the NVIDIA graphics.

So, my question: What should I watch out for when purchasing a machine like this?

I used to work as an Apple Hardware Technician, and the biggest non-damage related issue I've seen with those machines is usually the battery (which is not technically user-replaceable). I'd make sure that it runs for at least 3-4 hours on a full charge. Also make sure that the optical drive works, because I've seen a number of those go out, as well, but that can be said for any notebook computer.

You will also want to check for the normal stuff: Impact to the casing, cracked screen, liquid damage, etc.

That seems like a pretty good deal, however. It looks like the average price on eBay is around $600, and that machine will have plenty of power for your purposes. Heck, I still do development on a 2009 Macbook and it works great.

For future reference, you can always find a listing of the open repair extensions (which are basically known-issues) at Apple's website.


Deleted iCloud contacts keep coming back Tried to delete several contacts on iCloud.com, but they keep coming back! I have tried several times with no success.

These contacts are still on my device with iCloud sync enabled.

If I don't want to disable iCloud sync do I have to remove these contacts on the devices as well?

I had the same issue before. After some experiment, here is what I have found working:

Go to Setting > Mail,Contacts,Calendars > Fetch New Data > iCloud > Select "Push" (if you select "Fetch", the iPhone changes will supersede changes made on iCloud. It is up to individual preference)

After "Push" is selected, you may make all the changes you want to iCloud Contacts. Your iPhone will be updated in the next Sync.

Hope it works.


Can I Sync Two Macs With iCloud Instead Of MobileMe? If I move over to iCloud can I still sync two Macs (calendar and address book) as I am doing now with MobileMe? Or does iCloud only sync iOS devices?

Yes as long as the Macs are all running Lion, there currently isn't any check that enforces the "you need an iOS device to get iCloud started".

Just head on over to https://www.icloud.com and follow the instructions. The guides and tutorials that are linked as part of the signup process are fantastic and answer all of the questions you have about the service.

If you are not ready to start, you can see what the setup looks like on a Mac (or PC or iOS device) from How to set up iCloud.


Has Unix directory usage or policy changed in High Sierra? I understand that macOS has its own policies about how various standard Unix directories are used, and that these are (or at least have in the past been) documented in the "File System Programming Guide". I'm about to update to High Sierra (from Sierra) and wonder:

have these policies changed in any way between 10.12 and 10.13; and
does the update process force changes (e.g. by enforcing new policies or reimposing old ones that have been customized) in organization or existing permissions.

For example I see that it is no longer possible under 10.13 to chown /usr/local/, and wonder what other changes the update will make to these standard Unix directories in (a) structure, (b) permissions, or (c) my ability to change permissions or organize the directories.

No super big changes on directories is my feeling / opinion.

High Sierra changes very little with respect to SIP protection and you can easily use ls to read ACL and restricted status protecting from root / super user modification of files.

Everything that was changed materially was versions before. High Sierra does introduce APFS and the concept of snapshots and radically more efficient storage and access speeds - but on the UNIX directory level - this is a snoozer of an upgrade.

Your /usr/local change is the only one that's notable - you can't get rid of it* but you're free to roam within it and change things to suit your needs.

Apple provides additional details about SIP Protected directories.

——

* Of course, you can still get rid of SIP protected files / folders / directories by disabling SIP by doing the hokey-pokey of reboot, disable, reboot, change, reboot, re-enable, reboot (Assuming you want SIP in general but not for this one thing). But then, the next time an OS update comes, your work customizing the OS could (and eventually will) fail since the installer will then put the file back where Apple intended it to be - existing and protected by SIP.


How can I disable showing iTunes music purchases in iOS 9? I just updated my iPhone 5S to iOS 9. Things work well, but one setting I remember seeing in iOS 8.4 and earlier was the ability to enable/disable showing music purchases in iTunes seems to be gone.

This is quite annoying since I am old fashioned, don’t do streaming and like to have my music offline and directly on my iPhone. So music purchased from iTunes ends up having duplicate track entries. One for the MP3 on my iPhone and another for the iTunes purchased item that's there to let me download it again; see pic below:

I checked all of the settings and even searched settings for the “Show iTunes Purchases” but all I can find is an option to enable/disable that for video content but not music; see pic below:

So what happened to this feature for music in iOS 9?

And FWIW, when I go to “Settings -> Music” the “Show Apple Music” option is deactivated. And I am not using “iTunes Match” so that option is simply shown as “Subscribe to iTunes Match” so there is no “iCloud Music Library” in place to activate/deactivate.

So this the ability to enable/disable showing iTunes purchases still exists, but it's not under settings. It’s right in the iTunes app itself.

Launch the app and then click on the pull down which allows you to select iTunes listings like by artist, album and all that; pic below for reference:

When you click on it look at the bottom of the list. There is a toggle called “Only Offline Music.” Pic below:

Select that and then… Violà! Listings are back to normal again!


Installing OS X Server with existing OSX I have a running OSX (El Capitan) system which I don’t want to harm.

I am considering buying the OSX Server app. Apart from the cost, are their any disadvantages to doing this?

I’m thinking of impacting on performance, or interfering with using the machine normally.

Thanks

Due to its UNIX nature, there isn't much difference between running a Mac without or with Server services enabled. Even on an out-of-box OS X installation there are already a lot of background services running if needed, the difference between client and server is a bit academical in a way.

Buying (and running)! Server.app is the intended way of using OS X Server, so there isn't any disadvantage. Basically the application itself primarily is used to administer and install all the server services and configurations (some of them you could also configure already manually by editing the corresponding config file).

At the end, these services (if activated) will need some additional CPU cycles, but this shouldn't be a problem with the hardware you are using (aka the hardware able to run 10.11), at least not if you only have a handful of clients accessing the server.


MAC MAIL won’t open. asking about permissions I keep getting this message:

mail can’t open because its index is read-only.

I’ve reinstalled the os, i’ve “fixed permissions”

Nada

I've seen this once before and was able to fix it by deleting the index rather than changing the perms.  I didn't (and still don't) really understand what I did to get into the situation, nor what it did by deleting the files, but I got away with it.

Disclaimer: I use mac mail as an IMAP client so blowing away files willy-nilly isn't overly dangerous for me. If you delete each message from the mail server as you download it and the only copy of your mail is on your client, your mileage may vary, at the very least, take a copy of anything important.

On Mavericks, the indices are located in your home directory under Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Envelope Index


Removing XCode while keeping the command line tools (on El Capitan) As by subject.  There are a number of links, such as this that deal with the issue but are not El Capitan specific and/or are just not that on the subject or are not up to date.

Is it possible to Uninstall XCode 7 while keeping the Command Line Tools (and still being able to get the CLT upgrades)? Should I just uninstall everything and reinstall just the CLT (how?)?

Any other way?

Personally, I think that instead of trying to "bodge" a method of uninstalling Xcode while leaving CLT intact is too cumbersome.  My suggestion is to:

Uninstall Xcode completely
Install Xcode CLT

Doing this should take you less than 5 minutes total and is quite simple.

Uninstall Xcode

There are a number of different ways to uninstall Xcode.  An excellent tutorial can be found at OSXDaily.

However, the most reliable way I have found to uninstall software is with the free app recommended by Macworld.com called AppCleaner.  You can "drag and drop" or "Search" for your apps that you want to remove and it will find all related files/directories for you - even the ones that get installed as launch daemons.

Disclaimer:  I am not affiliated with the app or the developers of the app in any way.

Install Xcode CLT (Yosemite through Sierra)

Installing Xcode CLT is actually quite simple.  In Terminal, execute the following command:

xcode-select --install

You will get a dialog box that will prompt you to "Get Xcode," "Cancel," or "Install."  Select "Install" to install the CLT only.

The installer will do its thing and will notify you once it's complete.  Once finished, you will have access to tools such as git and svn.  You can execute those commands by testing them out in Terminal.

CLT will be installed to /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/

That's it!  Xcode CLT are installed and ready for use.


What can cause the SMC to repeatedly need to be reset? I currently have a problem with my MacBook Pro where the SMC keeps getting screwed up and needing to be reset. The result is always that my keyboard and trackpad become useless, and I have to use an external keyboard and trackpad.

I took it to the Apple Store and they just reset the SMC, which seemed to fix it, but within a few hours it happened again.  I was once or twice able to reset the SMC myself with an external keyboard, but the latest time it happened (always within a short time of the last reset) I could not get the key sequence to work using an external keyboard (and obviously the built-in keyboard is useless!).

This is really aggravating.  Is there anything that could be causing this?

Repeatedly needing to reset the SMC indicates a hardware failure. Apple generally replaces entire components - so you'd get a new logic board / GPU / processor board and then that failing board would get analyzed / repaired as appropriate.

It could be as simple as some sensors that are bad and reporting continuous bad readings that the SMC can't handle. It also could be the SMC itself has issues. Without analyzing the logic signals of that processor - hard to guess. The main idea would to realize that a mail in repair for MacBook run about $300 and take a few days - so when your aggravation exceeds that cost to remedy - you can get it fixed. If you don't feel that computer is worth the $300 - you can consider a new computer once you can't rely on this hardware. Be sure to keep good backups, SMC and logic board failures generally leave the system unbootable so it costs more to recover data after it fails. On T2 Macs, you can’t get data off a failed SMC/T2 module as the decryption keys are exclusively stored there in a Secure Enclave.


How do I queue up an album in the built in iPad Music app? I see that I can play individual songs by tapping on them, but I'm trying to figure out how to play albums, and ideally I'd like to do that by queuing them after what's currently playing is complete.

This is on an iPad 2 with the latest iOS update.

Is such a thing possible in the built in app?

There are two ideas that come to mind with this question:

Make a Playlist

Fairly self-explanatory. Tap the playlists icon on the bottom left hand side of the iPad's Music app (if under iOS 5), then choose New in the top right hand, and you can browse through your library and add things to listen too.

When the song completes, you can go back to the playlist, tap on it, and then the first song in the list in order to start playback of the playlist in order.

You can play an album in full, only if you select if from the 'Album' view.

Note that when you are in the full 'Songs' view, selecting a track will play all tracks after it in alphabetical / listed order. If you choose it from 'Album' view instead, the tracks will play back from that track forward in the album.


NFS Mount failed and now it says `Device not configured` I have Macbook Pro 2015, running El Capitan 10.11.1 and I am having issues with NFS mounts. I also have an Android TV Box and it mounts NFS without any issues, so I guess the issue is with my laptop. Here is the NFS config(/etc/exports):

/media/mypassport 192.168.2.0/24(insecure,rw,all_squash,anonuid=1000,anongid=1000,no_subtree_check)

When I run showmount:

$ showmount -e rpi

Exports list on rpi:
/media/mypassport                   192.168.2.0/24

I mount from Finder > Go > Connect to Server and enter: nfs://rpi/media/mypassport

This mounts my NFS drive, however sometimes it disconnects and I am not able to remount again. I have to restart my machine and keep trying till it doesn't disconnect.

When I ls into /Volumes I get following error:

$ ls

ls: mypassport: Device not configured
Macintosh HD

Whats the issue here? Why it keeps unmounting or gets disconnected? And how do I remount without restarting?

Restart NFS without Rebooting

Issue the following command in Terminal:

sudo nfsd restart

This has the effect of stopping the NFS daemon, starting it back up, rereading your config and processing what's in your /etc/exports

OS X Disconnecting from NFS

Try this:

find . -name ._* | xargs rm on the R-Pi  in the directory that gets mounted.  That will remove any of the hidden "_filename" files that OS X creates when going through a directory

Based on this Apple Support Forum with similar symptoms:  https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2733032?start=0&tstart=0


MacOS dmg file question Not entirely sure if this is where to ask this, but I can't find another place to...

I've recently switched from Windows to Mac and I am trying to understand more in depth what I'm working with.

My question is: are .dmg files the equivalent of .zip files in Windows? I came to this theory when downloading a .dmg and when I opened it, it contained a .app and and text file read me. To me, this seems like a compressed file.

Is this correct?

A DMG file (Apple Disk Image) is a disk image file that is mounted as a volume, just like a physical disk. They can be password protected and compressed (like ZIPs), and are usually used for packaging and downloading Mac software (amongst other things).

DMGs are exclusively an Apple file format (though can be opened as read-only on Windows computers with 3rd party software), while a ZIP file is universal, and can be opened on both Mac and Windows. The nice thing about them is the ability to mount them, as I mentioned earlier. When you open a ZIP, it extracts the files to your computer, taking up more space on your hard drive. A DMG once mounted, however, can be interacted with and ejected without copying any files or taking up space on your hard drive.

@klanomath said it best in their comment on this answer, so I will quote them here:

  All valid DMGs contain a file system - so they are mounted exactly like a real partition to a file system. They get their own device/disk identifier (like all disks) Check diskutil list after opening a DMG.


Do new Macbook Pros come with SATA 3.0Gbps or 6.0Gbps I'm thinking of buying a SSD or hybrid drive for my new Macbook Pro. Is the SATA connection in new Macbook Pros SATA 3.0Gbps or 6.0Gbps?

They come with 6.0 Gbps, which were recently enabled through a firmware update.

Source


Restarting iPhone 6 Plus during Restore preventing the Restore from happening In an attempt to restore my iPhone 6 Plus, and update it to the latest iOS version, my iPhone 6 Plus keeps on restarting during the Restore. It happens during the stage where iTunes displays Extracting software...

After it's very quick reboot (It only flashes the white screen, and darkened Apple logo for a split second), it returns to the iTunes logo with and arrow and lightning charger below it. The problem is that iTunes then looses connection with the device and when it comes to actually restoring it - It fails.

It would be fantastic if anyone could help me with this.

As a note, I am using MacOS Sierra on a MacBook Pro (13 inch, Mid-2010) and iTunes is the latest version currently available to my device.


What are the effective scaling modes on OSX with a 4K display? Is an effective real estate of 2560x1440 possible? I have a 2015 retina macbook pro, the default scaled resolution of 1920x1080 would be too small for me. I currently have a 2560x1440 display and couldn't accept less real estate.

Under the display settings, if you select "scaled" you should be able to choose between "larger text" or "more space". If I understand correctly, all of these options should use 3840x2160 pixels to render the output (ie, the monitor wont know the difference). The default scaling option should be the equivalent of 1920x1080. I was wondering if you choose "more space" it would allow for the equivalent of 2560x1440 (but scaled so should look crisper than a 2560x1440 display).

As a bonus question, would this be comfortable on a 24" display (eg, Dell P2415Q)

I bought one (the Dell P2415Q) so can offer the results...

Scaled options are:
1504x846, 1920x1080, 2304x1296, 2560x1440 and 3008x1692

That is to say, the macbook always outputs 3840x2160, 60Hz as far as the monitor is concerned. It just "looks like" those resolutions in terms of real-estate.

1920x1080 is the default, and other scaled resolutions are given with the warning that "Using a scaled resolution may affect performance".

eg.

Looks like 1920x1080:

Looks like 3008x1692:

Source: My MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015), running 10.10.4, 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5, Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 MB


How to earth a MagSafe2 adaptor for 15" MacBook Pro with retina display? There is no earthing pin, only a socket with a metallic rim. Will it require some special socket that has a projecting earth pin?
This is for use in India @ 230W. My adaptor is 85w.

The ground / earth is comprised of the outer-most two pins in the MagSafe connector (both original and the thinner + wider MagSafe 2) and requires that the ground be connected to the other end of your AC to DC adapter.

Rather than using a two prong plug, you could use a longer two prong cord and then ground the metal disc that serves to hold the "duck head" on the transformer/rectrifier/filter that makes up the bulk of the MagSafe adapter.


Benefits of updating apps If you update your app, does it get bumped to the top of the free apps section? Does it help improve visibility?

Only new downloads will count, redownloading or downloading an update does not. And the top is based on number of downloads per time-unit.

Updating your app, on the other hand will (probably) keep users satisfied with new features and layout. If they spread the word, or advertise in any way about your application you will get more downloads. But that's not what you initiately asked.


iPhone mail using 700Mb with no accounts While trying to clear up space on my iPhone, I deleted all email accounts, as Mail was using well over 700Mb. I was expecting this to also clean up the excessive space being used by Mail, but it hasn't touched it - Mail is still using over 700Mb. I've powered off and back on again several times, and tried re-adding and removing the account multiple times, but Mail still uses loads of space.

Anyone have any ideas how to clean this up?

It seems like I have answered a number of questions with this particular solution, but let's go for it again.

Often times a backup, wipe, restore process will clear out the cruft still sitting around in the rather opaque IOS filesystem. I don't know why but it works:

Backup: Connect the iPhone to your computer and do a manual backup to that computer. Password protect the backup so you don't have to re-enter passwords.
Wipe: Once you have a good backup go into the iPhone > Settings > General > reset > Erase all content and settings. And let it do its thing.
Restore: Once the phone reboots and is waiting on it's welcome screen plug it back into your computer and restore it from the backup you just made.

9 times out of 10 all the inexplicable space usage on the phone goes away and you have got your space back.


Can I upgrade an iPhone from iOS 4 to to iOS 5 now that iOS 6 has come out? If I have an iPhone running iOS 4 that I want to run iOS 5, but don't want to lose Google Maps by upgrading to iOS 6, is this possible?

You can still download the IPSW files that contain iOS from Apple - here's a list of all of them. Just find the correct 5.1.1 file for your model.

The problem is installing that IPSW. The trick to make iTunes use a specific IPSW instead of downloading the latest from Apple is to hold option (shift on Windows) while clicking the Update or Restore buttons. There is a limit to how long Apple will allow installations of old versions (without using jailbreak-related hacks), so you'll want to try this ASAP.


iMovie picture in picture resizing I am placing multiple video picture in pictures in my iMovie project. Is there a function with which, once I find a size I like for the first one or two, I can then apply that same universal size to every picture in picture in the project?

I'm trying to avoid having to do all 40 odd clips manually and I want to be sure each is the same size, rather than just guessing.

Use the paste adjustments tool. Here is a quick video on how to use it. You're right, it will save you A LOT of time. http://youtu.be/kYWsFwBLNHY


May I register with ©copyright my songs made mixed with just apple loops or must be copyleft, creative commons, royalty free, etc...? I'm starting to use GarageBand for making music, and I have several songs of my own; but I find xtremly funny mixing loops, so, I have another ones that are only loops mixes.

I know that they are royalty free if you mix the loops, I've read a lot, and I didn't find the answer to my question in the web. (February 2016)

I want to sell the songs, but I don't know if I can put my ©Copyright stamp in the only loop ones.

Can somebody help me understand the licensing terms?

Royalty free means you can release music that incorporates the loops without paying or crediting anyone. The only thing you can't do is sell the loops separately.


Forgotten Game Center Nickname After updating my iPad to iOS 9, it crashed and I lost ALL apps that hadn't been backed up. So how do I access my Game Center if I've forgotten my Game Center nickname?

Your Game Center account is linked to your Apple ID. Your nickname is not important, as one can change it whenever he wants. Just launch Game Center and sign into it using your Apple ID and password. As far as Game Center data goes, it's probably lost unless you wish to restore one of your backups, if you have one.


How do I increase the ulimit -n on 10.10.3 There way on lion was this.From a previous post

echo 'kern.maxfiles=20480' | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
echo -e 'limit maxfiles 8192 20480\nlimit maxproc 1000 2000' | sudo tee -a /etc/launchd.conf
echo 'ulimit -n 4096' | sudo tee -a /etc/profile

but the first two files don't exist on Yosemite

Now it's easier with OSX 10.11.4
sysctl.conf does now exist, or can be created if it doesn't.
First line above

echo 'kern.maxfiles=20480' | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf

Second line above.Setting environment variables.
Can be set up ... Use this link. A short but useful how-to.

Third line above:
/etc/profile exists.

echo 'ulimit -n 4096' | sudo tee -a /etc/profile


IOS : connect to router when "no internet" detected I been through a few topic online but can't fine a solution.

Sometime my internet is offline, and iOS won't let met connect to the local network anymore so I can access the router settings or other local server.

The router have DHCP reservations but my iOS getting the IP automatically, however same issue if I setup a manual IP.

Anyway work around ?

I actually managed to connect by entering the IP and router IP manually


No connection to network drive MacOS 10.15 (Catalina) I updated to Catalina today and now I cannot connect to my network drive via SMB.

I've tried:

using the ip-address, server name
the method of creating a nsmb.conf file

Regardless, all I get is an error message stating 'There was a problem connecting to server "name".'

I know the network drive is fine as I can still access the it from my phone and Windows 10.

Any ideas how else I might try to resolve this in macOS?

I was able to resolve this (temporarily) by restarting my Mac. I later discovered that I could restart the Finder to resolve it. Apparently the Finder app is responsible for network connections for other applications too.

While this does not prevent the reoccurrence, restarting Finder is a minor inconvenience. Hopefully this is a bug that Apple will resolve.

How to Relaunch the Finder

Hold ⌥ while right-clicking on the Finder dock icon → Relaunch
Open  Menu → Force Quit → Finder -> Relaunch


can i find usb path and save to variable for quick backups? i would like to add the path to inserted flash drive named backup1 to a variable so i can copy /Documents/dir to this flash drive path in one script without user interaction

Try B=/Volumes/backup1 and then cp -p /Documents/dir/* $B.


Is there a app or software to do random photo selection on iphone? I am looking for an app on iphone to do this:

I can select a bunch of photos into the app
I click a button
Then the app will randomly pick a photo from what I have selected and show up in the screen.

If possible the app could quickly slide through all the photos I have selected and randomly stop at one of them.

This app is very useful in a party and when people want to do a raffle gift drawing.

Is there such an app there?

The built in slideshow would work to set the order of photos to random if you've already classified the photos into an album. Just set the delay to a while and remember to re-choose the album to re-seed the randomness if you choose to repeat the selection.

If you need to classify photos on the go, you can use the iPhoto app to import / sort / add / remove photos from a group and then set up your random slide show for the ordering of them at random.

As a bonus, you can play music if desired while you set things up. I don't know of an app to provide your slot machine animation but perhaps someone can find just that app on the store for you.


iPhone 6 - Phone call keypad not recognized Recently, when I am on a call that requires pressing a number on the keypad (for instance: to select an option or join a WebEx), I can press the appropriate button and I see the press respond and hear the tone, but the other end of the line does not recognize that the number was pressed.

I thought it was only WebEx, but two other calls did the same thing today (one of them being an Apple support call).

How can I fix/debug this?

I tried searching Google for "iPhone 6 numeric keypad not working" but came up empty. Is there another term I should use in my search?

As an update, I have not had this happen since upgrading my phone to iOS 10, so I can only assume that it was a bug with previous versions of the operating system.

Aside from that, I have not found a "solution".


Applescript to mute Discord Edit: My initial question does not appear to have a solution. Instead I used an alternate method. Scroll down to see the alternate method.

I'm looking for a solution to mute my mic in Discord that I can then add to my touchbar via bettertouchtool.

BTT cannot send key combos to Discord for whatever reason. As far as I can tell I have two options.

Use applescript to activate the Discord window, send the key press, then hide the window. This works, but flashing the application up for a moment is annoying. Worse when it's on another desktop as it will flip desktops over and then back.
Use applescript to click the top menu  to click the Discord menu, and work down through the UI elements to click the Mute button.

I'm not experienced enough with applescript to make the second option work, but I think it could work. Using UI browser I was able to get the path to the UI element:

How can I make this work? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

ALTERNATE SOLUTION What I am wanting to do here does not appear to be possible, so I'm just muting my mic at the OS level instead of Discord, and then adding a toggle button to my touchbar with BetterTouchTool. This has the added benefit of working system wide. Here's video of it in action:

Streamable

In case anyone else was wanting to do this these are the steps I took:

1. Create a new Applescript with the following script:

property storedInputLevel : missing value
if input volume of (get volume settings) is 0 then
    set volume input volume storedInputLevel
    return 1
else
    tell application "System Events"
        set storedInputLevel to input volume of (get volume settings)
    end tell
    set volume input volume 0
    return 2
end if

Save the script somewhere.

2. Open up Better Touch Tool and create a new Touch Bar widget and set the widget to Run Apple Script and Show Return Value

3. In the window that pops up after selecting Run Apple Script and Show Return Value you'll want to erase the test line in the box and give your widget a name:

3.a Click the appearance and settings button

4. In the Appearance and Settings window you'll want to configure the following settings:

You don't need to set an alternate background color, but it helps to see you're muted at a glance.

For the icons you can use these:

Make sure that you set the Alternate color and icon if result matches regex setting to 2.

Click Save.

5. On the new widget you created click on the drop down for Predefined action and choose Run Apple Script (async in background).

6. In the window that popped up you'll want to click on Select Apple Script File and then Choose Apple Script file from Disk and browse to the script file you created earlier. Click save and you're done.

That's it. Your widget should toggle your mic on and off and the change should be reflected in the icon on your touch bar.

Firstly, well done for exploring and doing your own research with which you've come armed to ask how it can be applied to form a solution.  It makes it so much easier to provide useful help.

With that in mind, the screenshot from UI Browser is immensely helpful, as it literally lays out the hierarchy of UI elements that we need to traverse in order to reach the target menu item and issue a click via AppleScript:

tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "Discord"
        tell menu bar 2
            tell menu bar item 1
                click

                tell (a reference to menu 1)
                    repeat until it exists
                        delay 0.2
                    end repeat
                    tell menu item "Mute"
                        click
                    end tell
                end tell
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

However, there is a known and well-queried/documented/complained-about phenomenon of an irritating 5-second inexplicable delay between the first click that shows the menu, and the second click that selects the menu item.  This isn't specific to Discord, but seems to apply to menu bar icon menus.

Various solutions have been put forward to workaround this, but I won't go into them in detail because none of them are a) reliable, b) without side-effects, or c) clean to implement.  You'll undoubtedly do a quick search yourself, and come upon the most common solution, which is to kill the System Events process between the first two click events.  But you'll find upon further reading that later on, users report that this method stops working; and in the interrim, causes System Events to throw other, unrelated errors where it didn't before.

Therefore, this solution for you is bittersweet, I'm afraid.  I've shown you how to AppleScript your way to the menu item you want; but the end result may not be any more appealing than your first option.

EDIT: Possible Non-AppleScript Solution

Having downloaded a copy of Discord myself to see what's what, I first note that my version of the application has no such menu bar icon to speak of.  It must be a setting I haven't gleaned upon.

What I did glean upon, however, is the option to set a user-defined keybinding that triggers one of a selection of functions, one of which being a toggle for the mic mute:

Here, I set up one to bind ⌘⌥⇥ to Toggle Mute.  As you'd expect, it works within the application.  Surprisingly, it works outwith the application too, when it doesn't have focus, and even when it's minimised.  Even more surprisingly, it worked when Discord was resident on a separate desktop (space), and at no point did the Discord app need to attain focus or the active desktop be switched away from.

I believe this is exactly the solution you're after - a hotkey that operates globally on your system to mute your Discord microphone.


Is there a way to see what time a message was sent? There are many websites that incorrectly claim that you can do this by swiping left and holding within the Messages app, but this actually shows the times that the messages were received, not sent.
I'm talking about a situation in which the sender or recipient doesn't have reception, the recipient's phone is off, etc. The Android Messages app shows both sending and receipt time, which I find very handy.
Is there a way to see on an iPhone what time a message that I received was sent?

Generally, no.
The only easy source of send times is visual inspection on the sending device.
Forensic analysis of the message database would be needed to get more precision or data that is not displayed by the iOS app.

https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2020/10/the-forensic-view-of-imessage-security/

There will be server logs in some cases (SMS being less secure / more logged than Apple as a carrier using iCloud and your AppleID for delivery) as well, but on the receiving device you will likely need to jailbreak it and dig into the database and log files.


I have an SSD installed on a mac I do not use, how do I use it on another desktop? Do I have to format an SSD from OS X in order to re-use it on an Windows desktop?
Or Is there no limitations to where to format the drive?

If you're referring to a standard 2.5" form factor SATA SSD drive then it should be able to be used elsewhere, internally on another system or in an external enclosure, supporting the same form factor. As to partitioning/formatting, if the target OS is Windows then I'd partition/format it under Windows.


iPhone 6 won't work unless plugged in My iPhone 6 fell down the toilet two days ago but now it works fine. It charges fine when I plug it in, but once I take it out, it shuts off, and tells me there is not enough battery, when it was at a 96 percent. When I plug it in again, it works perfectly and it is at the same percentage that I had left it at. What can I do?

From your question I'm assuming the iPhone battery worked well prior to being dropped in the toilet.

It looks like you need to have the battery replaced.  If you have AppleCare, you should go to and Apple Store or contact Apple support to have the battery properly assessed and, if needed, replaced.  See this Apple page for info on replacing the battery.  I would recommend going this route as it appears to be the lowest cost option.

If you don't have AppleCare, you can go to any 3rd party that you trust to replace the battery.  You can also go to Apple to pay to have them replace it.

If you're handy, you can also replace the battery yourself.


MacBook Air 2013 bad wifi when internal monitor off while using external monitor As absurd as it soundsmy macbook shows the connection to WiFi but does not load anything when connected to external monitor.

I use MacBook Air 13 inch 2013 1.7 i7 chip and 8gb ram and DNS L270 1440x2560 monitor connected via display port and mini dp to dp adapter at 60 hertz (NTSC)

Here is how I came up with my conclusion:
The way I use them is by having both on the desk, I mirror displays so I only use the external monitor a mouse and a keyboard, while my macbook is open and left aside with the screen brightness turned to none. I was bothered with poor wifi on the MacBook for some time, while other devices worked just fine in the same room. Sometimes I would take my MacBook and go to another room to see if wifi works better on it and it did. This morning I got pretty annoyed how I could not open a news article in my room, but could stream 1440p videos on Youtube no problems just outside the room. So I grabbed my desk out of the room and to my surprise it still would not work properly. However as soon as I unplugged the external monitor, the wifi works just fine. After a few 'try and see' I worked out that wifi works fine when the brightness on the internal screen is on. I have no idea why it works like this and I am probably wrong with my guessing.

My problem is to have wifi work while the internal monitor remain none of the brightness.

When researching on this topic I found this and looked into it. However I never shut the lid so it's not a case here. Apart of that question I could not find anything close to my problem. So I wonder if anyone had a similar issue and any possible solutions?

You should try to do a PRAM reset. You do it by holding command + shift + P + R on the MacBook keyboard on start-up, when it does the boot sound the second time, stop holding the keys. This should solve.  Even though I suggest you to use an ethernet cable with your MacBook lid closed. If your setup isn't near your modem try using some powerlines. Here  you have a link for some pretty good ones.

http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-PA4010KIT-Powerline-Adapter-Starter/dp/B00AWRUICG/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?ie=UTF8&dpID=31IYBNuPwFL&dpPl=1&keywords=powerline&pi=AC_SY200_QL40&qid=1436666780&ref=plSrch&ref_=mp_s_a_1_1&sr=8-1


Is there a button in iTunes to say "Stop after playing this song"? Because I might just want to go to bed after this one song (but don't want to stop it midway – It's a classic).

Edit: Found a workaround in iTunes 11, a two-click solution but it works. See my answer.

iTunes 11

Click on the Up Next button and press clear. It will stop after the current song regardless where you start the song from.

iTunes 12

"Clear" is at the end of the Up Next list, rather than the top, so you'll have to take the extra step of scrolling to the bottom.


Set maximum fan speed Is it possible to set the maximum computer fan speed on the latest Macs, ideally with Terminal? I understand this is a terrible idea as it will likely lead to hardware overheating and failing, but I'm curious if that level of control is still available. From what I can tell, popular options like smcFanControl only set the minimum temperature.

Just found one software option - https://www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control - this can set a constant fan speed. I tested and was able to set a fan speed below the auto level. Still would be nice to find a Terminal command.


I put some mp4 videos into a working iTunes U folder. How do I get iTunes to recognise them? I want to play videos using iTunes U. I put them into the correct folder. But cannot see them in the iTunes U section in iTunes on os x.  Do I need to tag them or something?

My files are mp4. They are in the same folder as other files which work which I downloaded from the iTunes Store. What is different about the iTunes store files? How do I get my mp4 files to work in iTunes U?

The meta data for a video file destined for iTunes must have the right internal identifier for the file type.

For example, I might rip a DVD then encode it with handbrake.  If I throw this file in iTunes to move to my iDevice it thinks it is a home movie.  Slight inconvenience.  I use a free program, meta z, to set the internal identifier to "movie" and now it will show up in the right place.  Meta z also can set cover art and other web scraped data to make rips look professional.  A similar kind of processing needs to happen for iTunesU content.

Youtube will not preserve the internal file meta data that iTunes needs for the file to be identified as an iTunesU file.  Meta Z can set whatever bit of meta data needs to be set for the file to be associated as an iTunesU file.  iTunesU is in the video type dropdown in Meta Z so it should work though I have not personally tried it.  Though you will also have to set all the other meta data too, which may be annoying.

Meta Z is free so give it a shot I guess.
Griff.github.io/metaz/


MacBook Pro Retina rattling noise About two months ago, I purchased a MacBook Pro Retina, 13-inch (model MF840LL). Recently, I have noticed a quiet rattling noise when doing something performance-intensive (some webpages in Firefox, for example).

What is causing this, and what should I do about this (if anything)?

I also have a Speck seethru case on the computer - could the case be rattling against the computer?

Assuming your case is not the cause of the rattling issue (in other words take it off for a while and see) then this is an issue that should be brought to the attention of an Apple Store Genius near you.

The days of computers, especially laptops, making any kind of noise (barring the occasional optical drive seek noise...) is long over.

The Mac is still (essentially) brand new and under warranty and Apple needs to have a look at it.

Be advised that if they need to send it off for work they will not guarantee data on your HD stays in place. So make sure you have (at a minimum) an up-to-date Time Machine backup. Me, I'd image it (SuperDuper or CCC) just before heading out the door to my Apple Store appointment.


Complex recurring event - Is there a way? OK, I want to look at my calendar and know when I will be paid. I normally use Apple's Calendar, but I also have access to Microsoft Outlook.
The rules are as follows:

I'm paid every month;
I'm paid always on the last possible day before the 28th day of the month;
I'm paid always on a working day.

Therefore, notwithstanding the bank holidays (public holidays in the UK):
I should always be paid on the 27th, except when it's on a Saturday or Sunday, in which case I'm paid on the previous Friday.
It's pretty simple, really, but for some reason that looks impossible on my calendar:

The options for recurring are.. [[first to fifth]|last] [day|weekday|weekend day|[a day of the week]] and nothing else. I cannot specify it must be before the 28th. I can tell it to recur every 27th, but it will be wrong two or three times in a year.
Then I remembered there's a bunch of calendars that can be synchronised online, like webcal.fi, and I read about it and they use a small file format called iCalendar, with extension .ics, but I can't figure out how to make complex recurrence rules. I thought "how do they calculate the recurrence of easter, for example?" and proceeded to look for it. Alas, all the iCal references for easter I found are a bunch of hard-coded dates for each year, no logic involved.
Thus.. my question: Is there any way I can set this event recurrence up? Can it be done? How?
Thank you!

No.  You can't create a recurrence for this granular of a rule set.

I'm paid every month;
I'm paid always on the last possible day before the 28th day of the month;
I'm paid always on a working day.

So, to simplify it, you're paid the 27th of every month unless it's a weekend or holiday, then you're paid the previous workday.
Your options are as follows:

Schedule a year or two of a monthly recurrences for the 27th then go through the next 12/24 entries and manually fix the ones that fall on a weekend or holiday.  This is probably the quickest and most effective method because you can quickly scan your calendar for conflicts.
Using the calendar below, you can find only 3 instances where the 27th falls on a weekend in less than 30 seconds.  Easter being a 4th entry is also simple to modify.  It's simply not efficient to code these one-offs.

Create a CSV (Excel) file of your pay periods and convert them to .ics.

You're finding hard coded calendars with no logic because it's far easier to make the single change manually than to write the logic for it.  Your payroll admin also processes these anomalous events manually.  The problem with trying to automate this is...

holiday events vary too much from culture to culture
holiday events in calendars aren't "calculated;"  they're event entries like every other event entry (team meeting, dentist appointment, parent/teacher conference, etc.)
holiday events are not all equal.  Not all banks/companies will observe all holidays (close).

You could create the code using an opensource ics library to generate the .ics files your particular organization, but you're not going to find this recurrence pattern available in the calendar apps.


iMessage went from showing what time it was read to just delivered? I sent an iMessage and it showed it was read at 18.01. Few hours later it just says delivered and the message i sent before the last one shows the time it was read. Why did it go from read at 18.01 to just delivered? Have i been blocked by this person or what?

I have seen this too on my own device. It is a bug, though it has persisted through several iOS 9 releases. (I think it started with 9.3 but I'm not positive on that.) It does not affect read receipt display on Messages for Mac.

Read receipts are not retroactive, so even if you were blocked or the other person changed their read receipt setting, this would not occur. If you watch, when a future message is received, you will likely see that the last read receipt shown will move forward one message, to the message immediately before the latest message (in other words, the one where it is not displaying right now).

You can use the iPhone feedback tool to report this bug to Apple.


"One-way synchronization" between Mail and Gmail? In the past (say, with Snow Leopard, although I don't remember exactly when I set up my old client) it used to be possible to have a "one-way synchronization" between the Mail client and a gmail account in the following sense: the Mail client would download any new messages that were sent to my email, but would not notify gmail of any changes that I made locally.

The main advantage of this setup is that I could have an unofficial "cloud storage": my local client would be where I actually did my work. It would contain the emails I actually needed to respond to, and my drafts, etc.  But I could recklessly delete things locally with the knowledge that if I ever really needed them, even years later, I just had to log into my account online.

Is there any way to do this with El Capitan? or at least to simulate the effect somehow?

You are describing an account set up with POP3.
To achieve that behavior follow this instructions:

First, set up POP in Gmail

On your computer, open Gmail.
In the top right, click Settings Settings.
Click Settings.
Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
In the "POP Download" section, select Enable POP for all mail or Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on.
At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes.
Next, make changes on your email client
Go to your client, like Microsoft Outlook, and check these settings.

Incoming Mail (POP) Server: pop.gmail.com

Requires SSL: Yes

Port: 995

Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server: smtp.gmail.com

Requires SSL: Yes

Requires TLS: Yes (if available)

Requires Authentication: Yes

Port for SSL: 465

Port for TLS/STARTTLS: 587

If you use Gmail with your work or school account, enter mail.domain.com, then select Port 110.

Server timeouts Greater than 1 minute (5 is recommended)
Full Name or Display Name   Your name
Account Name, User Name, or Email address   Your email address
Password    Your Gmail password

When adding your account choose "Other" instead of "Gmail" on Mail app.


Android Studio on El Capitan - issues in setting up the SDK Having issues while trying to set-up Android Studio (latest release, 2.3) on a Mac (El Capitan 10.11.3). Studio is installed, but when I launch it a window for configuring the SDK appears, and after a few passages I get this error:

"An error occurred while trying to compute required packages"

Anyone got this?

This is what worked for me:

Download the command line tools, place them in the SDK folder (e.g., on mac: /Users/user/Library/Android/sdk), unzip there and then add the tools/bin folder to the PATH.
Install the latest platform: in a terminal, execute sdkmanager "platforms;android-25"
Open Android Studio, and go to the SDK Manager (Appearance and Behavior > System Settings > Android SDK)
Click on "Edit", and then select the sdk folder. Then "Next" > "Next" > "Finish".

I hope this works for you too.

Original answer found here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42732684/dependant-package-with-key-emulator-not-found-while-updating-android-sdk-and-too

P.S: I'm on Sierra, but I think that's not a macOS problem but Android Studio installer for mac.


How to set No Access (restrict) permission to a user on a folder? I'm trying to deny my user access to a certain folder. I can't.

I set an admin account to be the owner of that folder, but i can't set "No Access" for any user on that folder. But i can do it for "everyone".

What i really want to do is cut myself off from a certain folder (the old xcode apps) without having to delete them and empty trash, i want to keep them, but make sure my user can't access any files in that location anyway, unless i override it again.

So these are two questions, but i expect my first question to be answered. Maybe there is a way i can do that through command line, which i'm still not sure, but is there a way using the OSx interfaces?

Thank you

You could set the folder to have the following permissions to deny access from yourself, do this with your admin user:

Everyone: No Access
admin user: Read & Write

After this delete the line with your own user, so that you fall under the group "Everyone". This way only the admin user has an exception to the "no access" rule.


iTunes audio cuts out at random times when listening to music This has been an ongoing problem for over a year now. When listening to music in iTunes, something is causing the audio to cut out for a second or two at seemingly random moments. I never stream music. All the music I listen to is stored locally on my machine. I've had the same machine for several years now and it didn't always do this. It used to play music perfectly no matter how many programs I had open or how many labor intensive tasks I was performing. In fact I can recall instances where I was doing some video editing which slowed the machine to a crawl. And even with the spinning wheel of death and everything being frozen, even then, if I were listening to music, it never missed a beat. But now it seems like the least little network activity or the least little bump in cpu usage causes not only iTunes but also audio through VLC Player to cut out. The problem has persisted through more than one complete hard drive wipe and across multiple versions of OS X. Also, I'm not sure if this is related but it seems like the overall output volume is lower them what it used to be. My system in a nutshell:

OS X El Capitan 10.11.4
iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012)
Processor - 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory - 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M 512 MB
750 GB free of 999

I've searched all over the Internet for an answer to this problem and so far I've come up short. If anyone has any suggestions, advice or ideas; any feedback at all would be much appreciated.

I was having this problem with some VBR MP3s I ripped a decade ago with LAME 3.92.  The problem went away when I converted them to fixed rate MP3s in iTunes (File > Convert)

iTunes 12.4.1.6, Mac OS X 10.11.5


Is it possible to crop multiple pages in Mavericks Preview.app? Is it possible to crop multiple pages or image files in the new Mavericks Preview application just as described in this answer?

The functionality was there with Snow Leopard but disappeared in Mountain Lion.

Yes.

Open a PDF.
If not already enabled, View → Thumbnails.
Select some pages (click first then select all; command+click or shift+click)
Use the rectangle tool to select region on page. (On versions of OS X prior to 10.9, you should see a preview of the selection on other pages too).
Select Tools → Crop (or Command+K). All your selected pages should be cropped.
Save or Save As.


No access to an old Apple ID due to incorrect information The Apple ID which is linked to my iPhone can't be accessed. I have tried 'Find my ID' but it won't accept my birthdate and emails are not being received to any of my current or old email addresses.

Contact Apple Support, as they are are able to access and recover account details - something nobody outside of Apple can do for you.

Be prepared with any information you might have. Helpful details include (but are not limited to) current/previous addresses, credit card information, and purchase receipts that are automatically mailed to you following any (app/music/movie/etc) Store purchase.


Ability to share .pdf using email not working in Preview Preview has the ability to "share" documents by mailing them. When I select this feature, nothing happens. I don't get an error  message.

Is there a fix for this?
I've already tried removing com.apple.Preview from containers and group containers, but this did not work.

I'm running OS-X 10.10.2 on a late 2013 MBPr.

Your icon on Mail would seem to appear that Google Chrome is set to be your mail client.

It works fine if Apple Mail is set as default mailer.

I can't even persuade Chrome to be accepted as a mailer from RCDefaultApp. I'd certainly be tempted to try switching the default to something else.