files are being downloaded with .html suffix Every time I download a file from my school site, it gets .html suffix.
For example, if I download a file called file.docx from my school site through the safari, it is saved in my downloads directory as file.docx.html.

This issue happens just at my school website and not at any other website whatsoever. Additionally it happens just through Safari and not through Chrome or any other browser.

How can I resolve this?

This is outside of your control - the headers being sent by the school's web server determine what file type Safari thinks it is, and therefore appends the extension it thinks is appropriate. In this case, most likely the Content-Type and/or Content-Disposition headers are not being sent, or not being sent correctly. See this for a more technical explanation.


How to turnoff screen / lock Macbook Pro with touch bar using keyboard? This was working on older Mac using CtrlShiftPower. But this doesn't work on the new Macbook Pro 2016 with touch bar. Can someone please help. I want to lock my Mac without putting it to sleep.

you can add the sleep function to the touch bar through system preferences > keyboard > customize control strip and then drag the sleep icon to the touch bar, allowing you to put it to sleep by pressing 1 button.


Removing emojibubbleshooter chrome notification I have emojibubbleshooter notification on chrome every once in while.
(https://emojibubbleshooter.com/?utm_source=notif_wct)

I haven't installed new extensions for few months so I am not sure why I am getting this ad.

I checked notification tab, and found the following :

What is this 'games alert'? I checked my application folder but I don't have an app named like that. I can set the notification to None but is there a way to remove this 'Games' completely from my mac?

Currently using Nod32 Internet security for mac and no virus apparently.

My list of installed extensions from chrome://system:

  aapocclcgogkmnckokdopfmhonfmgoek : Slides : version 0_10
  ahfgeienlihckogmohjhadlkjgocpleb : Web Store : version 0_2
  aiimdkdngfcipjohbjenkahhlhccpdbc : Flash Video Downloader : version 31_2_3
  aohghmighlieiainnegkcijnfilokake : Docs : version 0_10
  apdfllckaahabafndbhieahigkjlhalf : Google Drive : version 14_1
  blpcfgokakmgnkcojhhkbfbldkacnbeo : YouTube : version 4_2_8
  cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm : uBlock Origin : version 1_14_24
  dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo : Tampermonkey : version 4_5
  eocfeihmkgnmldnhgijijlffdpegocnh : jBart Crawler : version 0_8_4
  fdpohaocaechififmbbbbbknoalclacl : Full Page Screen Capture : version 2_2
  felcaaldnbdncclmgdcncolpebgiejap : Sheets : version 1_2
  fhbjgbiflinjbdggehcddcbncdddomop : Postman : version 5_5_1
  gfdkimpbcpahaombhbimeihdjnejgicl : Feedback : version 1_0
  ghbmnnjooekpmoecnnnilnnbdlolhkhi : Google Docs Offline : version 1_4
  hdokiejnpimakedhajhdlcegeplioahd : LastPass: Free Password Manager : version 4_5_0_5
  ipkbbcamfcnlflkedfdaokofdmfgocfp : Mudfish - HTTP Proxy : version 4_4_5
  jpfpebmajhhopeonhlcgidhclcccjcik : Speed Dial 2 : version 2_2_0
  jpkfjicglakibpenojifdiepckckakgk : Gestures for Google Chrome™ : version 1_13_4
  kbfnbcaeplbcioakkpcpgfkobkghlhen : Grammarly for Chrome : version 14_824_1430
  kmendfapggjehodndflmmgagdbamhnfd : CryptoTokenExtension : version 0_9_46
  mfehgcgbbipciphmccgaenjidiccnmng : Cloud Print : version 0_1
  mgijmajocgfcbeboacabfgobmjgjcoja : Google Dictionary (by Google) : version 4_0_8
  mhjfbmdgcfjbbpaeojofohoefgiehjai : Chrome PDF Viewer : version 1
  nbokbjkabcmbfdlbddjidfmibcpneigj : SmoothScroll : version 1_6_1
  neajdppkdcdipfabeoofebfddakdcjhd : Google Network Speech : version 1_0
  nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome : Google Hangouts : version 1_3_5
  nmmhkkegccagdldgiimedpiccmgmieda : Chrome Web Store Payments : version 1_0_0_3
  ocpcmghnefmdhljkoiapafejjohldoga : Context Menu Search : version 2_93
  ojplelelocihfchkdaebocpankipadmp : Scopus Document Download Manager : version 2_0_2
  pfmgfdlgomnbgkofeojodiodmgpgmkac : Data Saver : version 2_0_2
  pjkljhegncpnkpknbcohdijeoejaedia : Gmail : version 8_1
  pkedcjkdefgpdelpbcmbmeomcjbeemfm : Chrome Media Router : version 6317_1002_0_5

What are these strings before ':' by the way?

Thank you.

Game Center(or simply Games)
is an application that comes with any Apple-made device(no need to delete it).
"Games alert"
should be broken up into "games | alert style"
Strings before :
not really a part of this question but: Seems to be some kind of ID string.
Removing the ad
has nothing to do with Games, you have to do it in Chrome settings(somewhere with "notifications" or similar)


Can you monitor a folder for changes? Let's say I have a folder that is located in "/tmp".
Let's say it is called myfolder "/tmp/myfolder" and I would like to protect this folder or I would like to be notified if changes are made to this folder.
I heard it should be possible with "syslog", how it works I don't know

We can monitor folders in at least three ways:

Using AppleScript Folder Actions, which can monitor when files are added or removed form a folder, or when the folder window is opened, closed, or moved int he Finder. see Folder Actions Reference.
Using a launchd launch agent, which can launch a unix script or script application when the file system changes at a particular path. See Launch Daemons and Agents.
Create an AppleScript application that uses AppleScriptObjC to receive notifications for file system changes. I can add an example of that if you think it's necessary, though I'd recommend using one of the others for most cases.

I suppose something could be done using syslog, but it seems like a lot more work than the approaches I mentioned.


How to remove old device from Safari iCloud Tabs? I returned a MacBook to Apple Store, however apparently I forgot to sign out of iCloud and the latest tabs I was browsing still appear in Safari iCloud Tabs of my new MacBook and existing iPad.

I removed the device from icloud.com -> Find My iPhone but it didn't work. Tabs list from my old computer is still there and I am trying to remove it from my devices list. I appreciate any ideas.

From Apple's iCloud Tabs support article (emphasis added):

  If you can't access the device that shared the tab, the tab will automatically be cleared from the list after 14 days if the tab isn't updated.

So, any leftover tabs should be gone after two weeks.


Will the MAS prompt me to keep my Xcode 5? I have Xcode 5.11. If I try to install the newest (6.0) Xcode from the Mac App Store, will I be prompted to keep my current Xcode?

No, Xcode 6 on the Mac App Store will replace the existing Xcode installation. Only the Xcode betas install separately (by default) and only downloading Xcode from developer.apple.com and doing the install manually (by copying Xcode from the DMG to /Applications) will prompt you to replace or keep both.


How to change the default macOS login window keyboard layout? I type using a keyboard layout other than the standard QWERTY. This question will apply to those who type using Dvorak, Colemak, QWERTZ, or any other international or non-standard keyboard layout.

My keyboard layout (Dvorak) is different than the standard keyboard layout for my country / locale. So this question isn't simply solved by setting a default locale; I also need to specify a default keyboard layout.

When I log in to my macOS user account, my personal keyboard layout is always used. It's also selected on the Lock Screen if I ever Lock the computer.

But when I first boot my Mac after a Restart or Shut Down, the QWERTY keyboard layout is always selected.

I'm forced to hunt-and-peck my password because my keyboard layout is not set. Or, I can manually change the keyboard layout via the Input menu (which is shown, but is not the focus of this question).

How can I change the default keyboard layout used on the macOS login window / startup screen?

In Terminal, run this to copy your keyboard settings to the default settings:
sudo cp ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist /Library/Preferences/
via Change the default keyboard of OSX login screen permanently


Outlook 2016 email and events not showing in Spotlight preview I am running Outlook 2016 on Yosemite.  I noticed that the Spotlight indexed Outlook files, such as mail and events, are not showing in the Spotlight preview.  Please see screenshot.  Anyone seen this as well, or know how to possibly fix this?  Thanks in advance...

I was able to solve a similar problem by updating the timestamp on all my Outlook mail files.  After that Spotlight properly indexed them.

I used a terminal window, went to the Outlook messages folder using the following command:

cd ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook\ 15\ Profiles/Main\ Profile/Data/Messages

and then used find command to touch the files.

find . -type f -name \*.olk15Message -exec touch {} \; -print


How to disable Macbook Pro internal display when using external monitors I have a Late 2011 Macbook Pro 13" (running Lion - OS 10.7.4) which I use with a dual external monitor setup. I have two 21" LCDs that I use as external monitors. One uses the built in Mini Display Port on the Macbook Pro and the other is connected via a USB to DVI adapter (Diamond DVILink).

The problem I am having is with the 13" built in display of the Macbook Pro. I would like it to remain closed and unused (I prefer the dual monitors at same resolution), however I cannot seem to "disable" the display in the display preferences applet. So even though the Macbook Pro lid is closed the operating system still makes use of the display, even though the apple logo on the back of the display is unlit. I have tried to move the laptop screen off out of the way in display preferences but I find when I "sleep" my setup that any applications that remain open move to the laptop screen. This makes it difficult to locate the application windows when resuming from sleep.

Does anyone know of a way to disable the laptop built in display so it is not seen by the OS when external monitors are being used?

Turning the brightness down as suggested above turns the monitor off on my MacBook Pro - mid 2014 model. Keeping the lid open allows better dissipation of heat and keeps the fan noise to a minimum so this is my preferred mode of working.


How do I revive the Magic Mouse after replacing batteries? When I replace the batteries in my Magic Mouse, I turn the mouse off, replace batteries and turn the mouse back on. The problem is that the system does not notice the mouse after this procedure, the mouse cursor stays stuck. I have to put the computer to sleep and wake it again to make the mouse work. Is there a better way to “wake” the mouse, maybe using some keyboard shortcut or a special click combination?

A simple click should do it. I find that it takes a second sometimes to reconnect so I usually click and move the mouse side to side until I see the mouse cursor move.

Here is the official document from Apple:

  If you turn your mouse or trackpad off
  or turn off the Bluetooth option in
  your computer, the connection between
  the computer and the mouse or trackpad
  will be lost. When you turn on the
  mouse or trackpad and Bluetooth, you
  can re-establish this connection by
  simply clicking the mouse button or
  trackpad surface.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3081


Apple Business Manager - what am I not understanding about the process? We recently had an issue where a company owned iPhone was handed to a member of staff, they set it up with a new icloud account and password that they then forgot, they left the company and handed back a device that was working (they knew the passcode, it would boot up) but couldn't have anything installed on it because the icloud account was not known

I've been through the process of:

setting up a Miradore MDM account,
setting up an Apple Business Account,
linking ABM to Miradore's MDM server,
installing the Miradore profile on the phone,
recovering the old employee icloud account details after plenty of calls with apple and waiting 16 days for a reset,
logging into their icloud and erasing, then removing the phone from their account (in icloud FindMyIphone),
using Apple Configurator 2 to run a prep on the device and
finally having Apple Business Manager assign the device to the Miradore MDM via its serial number

The phone is provisioned in a "stops at Hello setup screen and the user it is given to may set it up as a new iphone/restore it accordingly" way

Before giving out the phone again I thought I'd test the process of recovery, which I was hoping would have gotten easier, that happened last time. I would:

pretend to be a forgetful user,
register the phone to a new icloud account,
pretend I forgot the password,
hand it back to the IT dept saying "sorry, here;s your device, I forgot the icloud password i set it up with"

I fully expected that they could just open Apple Business Manager, or Miradore (I'm not sure which), hit "wipe" and poof; it becomes a new iphone again ready to be handed to the next user, because Apple know it's owned by the company and they would scrub the icloud details off it/release it from any association with "Forgetful Me"

Having hit the option in Miradore to wipe the iphone, it's restarted with an activation lock that is demanding the details of the test user I created..

This isn't how I was hoping it would go; I wanted it to revert to being a brand new iphone with no activation lock. As it is right now it's saying it is activation locked and can only be unlocked by test.user@mycompany.com - exactly the same situation I was in last time with the real forgetful user

What have I missed about the whole setup? How can I make things so that the company owns the phone and can wipe any employee logins, data, details, activation locks etc off at any point?

Is the device enrolled with Apple DEP? If not, you can’t remotely remove activation lock with a simple click.

The WIPE button can do 1 of 2 things. It really depends on how it’s configured

Wipe Managed App Data (these are apps from your Volume Purchase Agreement). The customer data stays in tact (including their Apple ID).
Wipe all data. This is probably the default configuration for your MDM. It erases all data as if the customer tapped SETTINGS -> GENERAL -> RESET

If you are NOT enrolled in Apple’s DEP then you’ll need to supervise the device. This will provide you with a lot more options. You can remove the Apple ID, change the background wall paper, turn on or off the GPS, etc.

Reference: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202804

I am an AirWatch MDM Administrator


How do I return a lost de-activated phone to the owner? I found an iPhone 5s in the back of a taxi and kept it with the hope of returning it to the owner (this happened to me). By the time I woke up the next morning the owner had obviously deactivated the phone. Is there anyway of returning it to the person? Or if not is there anything I can do with iPhone - as otherwise it's just a useless piece of equipment / wasted phone.

Thanks.

If you want to return the phone to the owner after it has been wiped, then you will need to contact the carrier.  Use a small paperclip to remove the SIM tray and access the nano SIM card.  On one of the sides you should see a printed number which is the ICC-ID.  Enter the number here to determine the carrier if the carrier name is not printed on the card.  Call the carrier's customer support number and explain that you found a wiped phone and all you have is the ICC-ID number and the IMEI/MEID number.  That should be enough for them to pull up the subscriber information if they are willing to do so.  The only other information they might need in order to identify the owner is the IMSI in which case you would have to take the SIM card to a phone repair shop to read the number off of the SIM card.  As for whether the carrier will help, I don't know.

Note, the IMEI/MEID is engraved on the back case, near the bottom of the phone.


What is Mac OS X Lion's Finder Font? What is the default font that Mac OS X Lion use in it's apps, more importantly the Finder window?

Here are the default font settings for Mac OS X

as displayed by the Bresink TinkerTool utility. TinkerTool also permits the user to change these defaults, within certain parameters, as explained in the screen shot. I am posting this screen shot here because it provides a nice chart of all the fonts and sizes and how Mac OS X uses them.


OS X Server: Open Directory PasswordService crashes I'm running an OS X 10.9 Server (it's a Mac Mini) that is providing a few services (iCal, VPN, file sharing, etc.) to a small group of Local Network Users.

After we installed a security update today, the machine did not reboot properly. When it came back up, the LDAP server seemed a bit confused; the users were nowhere to be found.

After a lot of trial and error, we ended up cleaning it up using db_recover, and openldap appears to be running fine again.

However, not all is well yet. While the users do show up, they cannot actually use any of the services. Adding new users is also a grayed-out button at the moment.

Based on the Console output, it appears that PasswordService is not starting properly. The following error appears in the Console every few seconds, and it does not seem to be very helpful so far.

com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.apple.PasswordService[2141]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault: 11
com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.apple.PasswordService) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
ReportCrash[2137]: Saved crash report for PasswordService[2141] version 400.1 to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/PasswordService_2016-04-12-000455_miniserver.crash

I'm at a loss here. A segfault in Passwordservices.. what can I do to debug this?

Naturaly, when I disable OpenDirectory, the error goes away. But that's precisely the point.

Edit: turns out, even when I start PasswordService directly from the shell, I get the segfault straight away:

sh-3.2# /usr/sbin/PasswordService -n
Segmentation fault: 11

I come bearing an unfulfilling answer (but it worked): upgrade to OS X El Capitan and Server 5. The reason for the segfault remains unclear, but it was fixed when the configuration was automatically migrated during the upgrade process. Or Apple changed the PasswordService binary - I'm not sure.


Boot Camp install of Windows 10 gets stuck on first logo and spinner I follow all the steps of the official documentation https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201468 . I have a MacBook Pro 2016 with macOS High Sierra. The computer restarts automatically and attempts to boot into the windows setup.

As soon as the screen below shows up, the computer seems to freeze. The dotted progress spinner does not spin. I've waited for hours and nothing happens.

After I forcefully shutdown and restart into macOS, I can see that the partition was created fine.

Edit with output of diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         134.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                116.7 GB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +134.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            39.9 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 19.9 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                520.8 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4

So turns out the problem for me is booting up with an external gpu attached. In the photo you can see the little thunderbolt cable on the left. Even though it works fine booting into macOS, it doesn't work when booting up into windows for some reason.

This freeze happens even after the Windows OS is installed. The workaround is to unplug the egpu and re-attach post bootup.

For anyone else coming across this, my egpu is a mantiz venus w/ rx 570.


MacBook Pro mid 2012 OS X Yosemite hard drive error So I went to my MacBook the other day and the screen shows nothing but a folder with a question mark flashing. It won't reconize my hard drive. I can still hear it spin up and running so is this still a hard drive issue? I have tried all the recovery and Cmd Opt P start-ups and have still gotten nothing.

You must try to use low level format, this software run on windows... After the format, it ask choose MBR or GUID... You must select GUID, and install again OS X.


Latest OS X I can install on Mac Pro 3,1 After many years of having kernel panics with black screen shut downs I finally bought 32 GB of brand new 800mHz memory and all seems fine now.

I would now like to upgrade OS X. What is the latest OS X I can install? I presently have 10.6.8?

MacPro3,1 A1186, 32 GB 800mHz, 2.8GHz, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275, 30″ Apple Cinema Display

The Mac Pro 3,1 [Early 2008] Can quite happily run the current OS X - at time of writing El Capitan 10.11.3.  I have one here running just that.

As of Sierra, 10.12, the above still remains true, yet further clarified - El Capitan is the final OS to support the 3,1 [& indeed 4,1 unless it has been firmware updated to 5,1]

I would, however, be wary of such a long jump in one go. Be certain you have an up to date backup & be prepared for the fact that a large number of your existing apps, if they are the same age as the OS, will also need updating.

I would also make sure you have a tested, bootable, recovery path should anything go wrong during the update. I've never managed to get a 3,1 to boot from USB; I've always needed a ready-prepared second HD. These days, that's just the recovery partition on my Time Machine drive, but 10.6.8 doesn't have a recovery partition.

For belt & braces, I'd clone your exiting drive using something like Carbon Copy Cloner then remove it, so it doesn't cause confusion.

Wish you luck.


How to boot linux from an external hard drive? I am looking into booting the latest Ubuntu distro (14.04) from an external hard drive using my Macbook Air mid 2012 running Mavericks. I've looked around and couldn't find a link to any step-by-step or instructional page to help me do this (or if its even possible).

That looks interesting but I am wondering why they tell you to boot from the 3rd party boot CD.

Once you have a bootable drive wouldn't just pressing OPTION at boot allow you to select the external Ubuntu USB drive? Or am I missing something here?


Tag and Metadata searching doesn't work in Spotlight There's a problem with searching for a tags and metadata e.g. kind:movie in my Spotlight. Actually, it doesn't work even tag:Red in Spotlight. It's weird, because I can search easy using Finder, but not using Spotlight. It might be problem with indexing. Can someone help me?

You could try reindexing:

sudo mdutil -E /

This will reindex the entire drive and all connected volumes.


Bootcamp: Bluescreen after installing drivers For a week now I have been trying to install Windows on my late 2011 MacBook Pro 15". After struggling through the whole installation part (see here), I finally managed to boot into Windows 8.1.

First thing I saw was the Bootcamp drivers installer. The first few times I actually tried running it, but It would always result in a BSOD when trying to install the Intel HD drivers. The BSOD would always say SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (igdkmd64.sys). My Windows installation was broken every time this BSOD occurred (Boots into blackscreen and reboots after 5-10s).
I eventually found out that removing the IntelHDLegacyGraphics64.exe file from /BootCamp/Drivers/Intel on my installation device would (temporarily) fix that screen.

With the bootcamp drivers installed (actually without them too, but I couldn't use things like wifi then), I was now finally able to actually boot onto the desktop, but there would always be this little error message from AMD catalyst that there was some kind of error with my graphics drivers. At first, I tried to fix this by going to device manager and updating the drivers of my graphics card, but I would always get the same igdkmd64.sys BSOD, which rendered my Windows installation useless. Also, I did not find any "Intel HD" devices in the device manager, even with "show hidden devices" turned on.

After 5 or so more installations, I noticed that the BSOD would occur 5-10 Minutes after boot regardless of what I would do, as long as I didn't do nothing. I couldn't even run Windows Update for the same reason (I unchecked the Intel HD drivers update).

The frustrating thing for me is, that even if I do not have a igdkmd64.sys driver installed (I checked) it still crashes with this file given as as reason. I some installations, I actually found that file and tried deleting/renaming/moving it, but it would always reappear after a reboot.

Edit:
I installed Windows 8.1 64 bit from a USB flash drive created with the BootCamp Assistant, which also downloaded the support software. I also tried installing Windows 8, but this resulted in it blackscreening after ~20s and restarting in the setup (where you are asked to enter your username and such).

It is hard to answer your questions. Mostly, because you have not fully answer my questions. I am going to guess that you are trying to install Windows to boot using the EFI firmware interface instead of the legacy BIOS interface. If so, you have not been the first to try. It is really not a question of whether or not you can get Windows to boot using the EFI, but rather what method the "Boot Camp Support Software" expects you to use.

I did an experiment last night. I have a mid 2011 iMac. The "Boot Camp Support Software" for 64 bit Windows 7 is version 5.1.5621. Your Mac would use the same software. My internet connection is 40 Mbps so downloading was not a problem. I also used the Boot Camp Assistant running under OS X 10.11 to download the software to a flash drive. I then compared every single file using windiff.exe. The files are identical. This is not proof that version 5.1.5621 do not contain any EFI drivers, but I do not think the drivers have not changed since the release of Windows 7. When Windows 7 was released, no Macs were booting Windows using the EFI.

OS X does not boot using the EFI specification. To use the specification, OS X would have to store software in the FAT formatted EFI partition. It does not. OS X does not even require a EFI partition to boot. The firmware is capable to reading HFS formatted partitions and recognizing the OS X operating system. Many Linux operating system take advantage of this. Fedora, for example, appears to the Mac firmware to be OS X. Once loaded, it transfers control to grub to finish the booting process.

In the end, I think you are trying to do something that can not be done. If your MBP was a year newer, the story would probably be different.


Upgrading OS slowing down machine How does one know if upgrading OS will slow down their relatively older machine?

For example I bought a MacBook Air a couple of years ago. It came with Leopard and I've already upgraded to Snow Leopard, but now want to download Lion. I'm concerned though that it may slow down my machine.

I've heard of this before where upgrading OS slows down performance on older hardware.

How can one know if they risk a slower performing machine if they update OS?

Lion seems to use a lot more memory than Snow Leopard. I had to upgrade my 2 year old iMac from 4GB to 8GB of memory, and it still feels slow sometimes. You may want to avoid the Lion upgrade if you have less than 4GB of memory, and definitely if you have less than 2GB.


How do I debug Airport Extreme (5th gen) + iPhone 5 wifi performance problems? Right around when I bought iPhone 5s for my wife and me I also moved in to a new, larger house. I was finding that wifi performance on our fancy new phones was terrible: I have a 35mbps internet connection but the performance was so bad that iCloud backups could rarely complete. The SpeedTest app would show that performance varied between 5mbps and 0mbps (no activity, just frozen). At first Apple replaced our iPhones, but that didn't help one bit.

Since then, I've learned a few things: 2.4GHz signals perform poorly on iPhones and moderate on other devices, wile 5GHz performs very well (30mpbs+) on all devices, though range is limited with the iPhone compared to my MBP.

In order to compensate for this, I set my house up with two Airport Extremes connected via ethernet wired in the house: a 4th generation connected to my cable modem on one side of the house, and a 5th generation (hosting printer + disks) connected via ethernet broadcasting wifi on the other side of the house. I had hoped by doing this I could just use the 5GHz signal and the range issue would be addressed with my phones.

Surprisingly, I found performance to be incredibly spotty -- to the point that network activity would stop entirely until I turned wifi off/on on the phone. On other devices, everything was fine. Debugging this further, what I discovered is that my 5th generation AE basically freezes up wifi traffic on my iPhones after a certain amount of traffic and it never recovers. I confirmed this by sending a separate wifi signal from that base station and connecting directly to it. Sure enough, SpeedTest clearly shows the weird behavior.

I've tried various things:

Holding Alt in the advanced settings to only broadcast N signals
Broadcasting combined as well as separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz signals
Switching between "automatic" and manual channels for both frequencies
With authentication on and off
With guest wifi on and off

So far, the results are consistent no matter what: my 5th generation AE seems to simply lock up when sending data through my iPhones. One strange thing I can't find answers on, and my gut says is part of the problem, is what exactly "data rate" means when looking at connected clients. For my laptops, it's always very high (150Mbps) but for my iDevices & AppleTV, it can range between 1Mbps (usually) and sometimes as high as 60Mbps. I can't find any documentation on what this really means, but I am assuming it's not a coincidence that higher numbers equal better performance

Does anyone have any tips on what to do here? I'm past my Apple Customer Care period for all my AEs and iPhones, but I'm glad to pay $20 for a one time ticket if it'll help. Is it possible my 5th gen AE is just broken? Has anyone else had 5th gen AE + iPhone 5 wifi issues?

Thanks!

PS: I'm attaching a screenshot from my iPhone showing the weird behavior on my 5th gen AE. This does not happen on the 4th gen and I would just use that if it weren't for the unexpected range and 2.4GHz performance issues I'm also seeing.

PPS: The wildcard in this whole thing may be interferrence. I have read that sattelite dishes can sometimes cause problems (we have DirecTV). Our house is not in a dense urban area, but we are on a hill and not too far away (half mile?) are quite a few major broadcast towers for the Portland TV (and radio?) markets.

To understand signal vs noise, and how to interpret those numbers, see very useful guide, Airport Optimal Base Station Placement.


Disable iBeacon settings There has been a lot written in the last day or two about iBeacon. Are there settings I can tweak so that

I'm not tracked in stores
I won't receive messages about products in my vicinity?

The quick answer is that iBeacons use bluetooth low energy, so simply turning off bluetooth will opt you out of tracking as well as notifications.

The longer answer is that iBeacons don't track you or your iPhone/iPad in the same manner that WiFi scanning and cell towers actually can track your devices. You choose which beacons to pay attention to.

Think of the difference between a red traffic light and a red light camera. The red light is a beacon that you could choose to track and pay attention to. The red light camera doesn't care whether you are paying it attention - you get captured if the device is recording. The license place on your vehicle is the same as your WiFi MAC address. It is trackable and traceable. Bluetooth low energy and iBeacons doesn't have any trackable item until you pair with a specific device so you are safer than with WiFi.

For this reason, most retailers have been tracking WiFi for years before iBeacon bluetooth were introduced. Even though bluetooth has the ability to work at shorter ranges and provide a more precise location, it has privacy built in to the way beacons are architected. You will want to disable WiFi and perhaps turn off your cell entirely if you want to have more meaningful privacy in store spaces where companies are monitoring traffic. With iOS 8, you can just forget all the WiFi networks you don't want to track and the device should be anonymizing your WiFi MAC address (the license plate) so that everyone has the same "mask" on until you actually join a specific named network.

In summary, to avoid seeing any iBeacon advertisements, don't install apps that will look for certain beacons and do things. If you do install those apps or passbook items, then disabling bluetooth will still opt you out of iBeacon activity on the device.


How can I see everything authorized to use my Apple ID? Does Apple only provide you with information about what devices are currently signed into your Apple ID account?  Is it possible and how can I see all devices, computers, Home Sharing, Audible websites, AirPlay devices, Sharing, and all the other things that have ever been authorized to use my Apple ID?

If you login to www.icloud.com with your AppleID you can go to Settings and look under "My Devices" to see all systems (Phones, iPads, Macs) authorized and logged in to that account.

This will also allow you to sign out of any other browsers signed into your account.

I am not aware of any way to see any information on what particular computer is logged into your account via iTunes (PC or Mac) but you can "De-authorize" those computers all at once. That can be done from iTunes that is currently signed into your account.


iPad Pro Microsoft OneNote: How to get more space below? I have the latest iPad pro 2020 firmware and the latest Microsoft OneNote installed.

When using OneNote on my Windows computer I can use the little arrow below the scroll bar to get more empty space.

How can I do this on my iPad?

I am able to use the down arrow for hundreds of repetitions to keep scrolling empty content in my OneDrive backed notebooks. The physical keyboard is faster, and I’ve tested Bluetooth and hardware connected keyboards. Also, two finger zoom (pinch and expand) and tapping lets me add new text boxes anywhere.

I wonder if you don’t have an O365 license and activated the product or there’s some other difference between my setup and yours, but this has never been an issue for me the last 18 months using the iOS OneNote app on iPhone or iPad.

Version 16.36 (20040600)
iPadOS 13.4.1
Enterprise E3 and E4 O365 licenses tested

Lastly, the in app feedback is really good imo - in many ways better than AppleCare and in some ways worse. Have you tried vendor support to be sure there’s not a setting or FAQ/Guide that covers this?


Windows sees iPhone but iTunes does not I'm running Windows 7 in VirtualBox with Linux as a host. I'd like to sync my iPhone with iTunes installed in the VM.

I've set up USB filters in VirtualBox, and Windows sees my iPhone upon connecting, however its icon doesn't show up in iTunes.

It did show up once after a few trials, I don't know if it was random or if I did something, but I can't get it to appear again.

This is what Windows displays when I connect my iPhone:

How do I get iTunes to detect my iPhone?

I've tried restarting my computer, the VM, and the iPhone, with no progress. Also, when I click "Open device to view files", I see only the DCIM folder in "Internal storage".

iTunes version is 12.3.1 which is latest

Try updating to your iTunes into the latest version. It happened to me one time but when I upgraded the my iTunes to the latest version, then it worked fine.


Mac SSD Partition Type Incorrect I have been using an external SSD as my primary drive on my iMac for over a year. I'm not sure if it got unplugged or nudged while powered up but it now doesn't work. I can mount the drive but I get errors when trying to mount the main partition.

I have followed advice given here:

External disk - Unrecognized file system (-69846)

Mount external HDD readOnly option

How to change the "Recovery HD" partition to type "Apple_Boot"?

however none of the solutions have had much effect.

Looking at my partition list I see that the partition type and name for my main partition is screwy:

 /dev/disk4 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *275.1 GB   disk4
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk4s1
   2: 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC               274.9 GB   disk4s2

I presume that they should be "Apple_Boot" and "Macintosh HD".

I had hoped that using

sudo asr adjust --target /dev/disk4s2 -settype "Apple_Boot"

would do the trick (or at least help) but all I get is

asr: Volume adjustment failed: Invalid argument

and as there appears to be very little documentation on the "adjust" functionality of asr I don't know how to proceed. I bought a new drive and hoped to restore my data from a Time Machine backup but it turns out that's corrupted!! So, I really do need to try and get this drive back into action again. Any help would be hugely appreciated.

Drive was running OSX 10.14.3 Mojave.

Here, I assumed "primary drive" meant a drive containing a APFS container from which you boot Mojave.

I have not seen an recent posts referring to asr adjust. There is is no mention of adjust in the man page of asr in both High Sierra or Mojave. I would recommend avoiding the use of undocumented commands when other documented commands can accomplish the same task. In this case, you could have used gpt or the third party command gdisk.

In your case, you are trying to change a value that is already correct. The GUID for a APFS container partition is suppose to be 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC.  I assume when you executed diskutil you were booted to either a macOS (OS X) operating system or recovery that was too old to recognize the APFS partition type.

If you wish to boot to macOS Recovery over the Internet, then you should use the key combination Option-⌘-R to boot to the latest version compatible with your Mac. See the  Apple website About macOS Recovery for more information.


Script menu: how to reference user-path utilities (PATH / environment is missing) Summary
How can I execute scripts from the system-wide Script menu with a normal environment? It seems the environment is not being setup at all.
Scripts that are run from the script menu can find and execute commands from the base system. However, user-installed utilities are not found on the path. Also, /usr/bin/env foo is not finding commands that are installed outside of the base system.
Background
The system Script menu appears at the right side of the menu bar. It is enabled via Script Editor.app > Preferences > Show Script menu in menu bar. It displays scripts located in ~/Library/Scripts and other system locations. The menu can execute AppleScript, JXA, bash, python and other scripts (use shebang as needed).

Investigation So Far
Scripts that are run from the Script menu don't inherit the user's bash environment. They know the shell is BASH and your USER name, but no initialization occurs. I ran a little script to dump the env to a text file
~/Library/Scripts/dump_env.sh (be sure to make executable):
#!/bin/bash
env > ~/env.txt
ps -ef >> ~/env.txt

Here are the interesting entries.
USER=mat
LOGNAME=mat
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
PWD=/
HOME=/Users/mat
_=/usr/bin/env

It is very vanilla. None of the custom paths are included. For example, the following are unavailable:
/usr/local/bin/svn # Subversion source control client
/opt/local/bin/python3 # python3 installed via MacPorts
~/bin

The latter two are normally sourced in my .bash_profile. /usr/local/bin/ is setup by path_helper which is called by /etc/profile (though apparently not for the Script menu).
I'm running macOS 10.13 High Sierra, but I'm interested whether others are getting different results.
Ideal Solution

Avoid hard-coding path to executables in shebang. Ex: if I install a different python version / distribution, I want to use it in all my scripts. /usr/bin/env python3 accomplishes this, but it seems to depend on the PATH?
Finds utilities in /usr/local/bin
Specify PATH once for CLI and Script menu (and GUI?). If I install a new Python I would like it to be used everywhere.
Specify PATH only for user-level processes. I don't want system processes using binaries from in my add-on path entries (especially user-permissioned path entries).
Avoid breaking 3rd party builds/installers/programs that were written with assumptions about what is present on my macOS install.

I'm looking into launchctl, which can be used to setup environment for GUI apps. Not sure if it still works or if it will work with the Script menu.
Update

I added trace statements to all of the bash environment files: /profile, /bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bashrc. These statements export environment variable so I can see that the file has been sourced. None of these are getting run for scripts run from the Script menu.
launchctl setenv KEY VALUE will set an environmental variable for all processes subsequently launched by launch services (launchd) in the user space.
This works for Terminal.app, GUI applications and scripts that are double-clicked in the Finder. However, it does not work for the Script menu.
I added ps -ef to the dump_env.sh script. This tells me the Script menu is not invoking bash with any arguments that would strip the environment (such as -r or -p). The parent process is UserScriptService.
Running…
otool -tV /System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/Versions/C/XPCServices/com.apple.foundation.UserScriptService.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.foundation.UserScriptService.

…reveals a symbol named __NSUserScriptTaskServiceStart. This sounds awfully similar to NSUserScriptTask in the CoreFoundation API. From the API doc:

The NSUserScriptTask class is able to run all the scripts normally run by the one of its subclasses…

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nsuserscripttask?language=objc
I strongly suspect this is what the Script menu uses to execute scripts. The API doc does says nothing about the script's runtime environment.

bash can startup in three different ways and how it uses rc files is different in each case.
To give a short answer when it is called as a login shell it reads .profile or .bash_profile to set things like PATH. When it is called as an interactive shell but not a login shell, say you run bash from the command line, then it reads ~/.bashrc to set these things.
If it's run from a shell script (or by launchctl) then it looks for an environment variable BASH_ENV and runs the file named in the variable.
Check https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bash-Startup-Files.html
To answer your question you should set all variables in .bashrc, call that in your .bash_profile file with the line if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then source ~/.bashrc; fi Finally in .bashrc you should set the BASH_ENV variable export BASH_ENV='.bashrc'
This would then give you a PATH and so on everywhere.
When you move to the zsh shell things are slightly different, read http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Intro/intro_3.html
Most Mac admins and engineers ignore it all and we hard code the path to all our software in scripts. I've certainly never seen an Apple script that didn't have all the tool paths hard coded.


Show today’s anniversaries (if any) from contacts I would like to be able to run a script which would look through my Contacts list and output the name (and, preferably, phone number) of anyone whose ‘Anniversary’ date matches today. (The script should be something I can run on OS X 10.9 and output to stdout.)

I can do the same for birthdays using the contacts command from
http://www.gnufoo.org/contacts/contacts.html (or brew install contacts) but it does not do the same for addresses.

I found a Mac OS X Hints post which suggested that it might be able to work via sqlite3 but I have not been able to get that to work. (Which isn’t to say that it can’t be done, only that I haven’t been able to do it.)

It occurs to me that someone might have already invented this particular ‘wheel’ and I am just not aware of it. Other than the two links above, Google has not been particularly helpful.

Looking at the database being opened by that SQLite snippet in Navicat I don't see any data there; I would assume that the iCloud move caused some changes but perhaps I am not viewing it right.

If you have a developer account you might look in the documentation for Address Book programming. There's pretty rich support for searching and I would be shocked if you couldn't look for matching dates. Anniversaries seem to not have their own distinct type - there's a property constant for kABBirthdayProperty but nothing like Anniversary, so it presumably falls under kABOtherDatesProperty.

kABOtherDatesProperty
Dates associated with a person (ABMultiDateProperty containing dates).
Available in OS X v10.3 and later.
Declared in ABGlobals.h.

And sure enough, there's an identifier (seemingly the only pre-provided identifier) for other dates.

Other Dates Labels
Labels for values contained in ABOtherDatesProperty multi-value properties.

kABAnniversaryLabe l
Constants
kABAnniversaryLabel
Anniversary date.
Available in OS X v10.3 and later.
Declared in ABGlobals.h.
Availability
Available in OS X v10.3 and later.

I imagine this sub-listing is why the command line app you reference doesn't spit out anniversaries; it would need to be cognizant of the possibility of other date types in that "other" category. But I would think it could be extended to handle them (if it still works?)

Given the above you might see if you can write a simple Swift app to spit out all entries with anniversaries. You can do command line apps with it. Applescript won't help you - the Contacts as interface doesn't seem to share out other type dates.


How to change attributes of ALL master slides in a KEYNOTE theme at once? Is there a way to change multiple masters at once in Keynote.  Examples

Change the background color for ALL slides from grey to green.
Change all fonts from Copperplate to Garamond
Insert a company logo onto all slides simultaneously.
Change the default background to all text boxes to #6699EE

There is a similar question but the accepted answer explains how to do it for ONE master.

This question was asked once before, in November 2011.  Has this situation changed?

I don't think that it's possible. Each of the Keynote masters are pretty different items, with completely different fonts, objects, etc. It's a failing of the system.


Mac mini (Late 2014) second monitor I have a Mac mini (Late 2014). I want to connect a second monitor to it. I have a monitor connected to the HDMI port. The Mac mini has two Thunderbolt 2 ports and the second monitor that I want to use only supports DVI and VGA. My question is, do I need a special Thunderbolt 2 to DVI/VGA adapter or can I use a Mini Display to DVI/VGA adapter?

The Thunderbolt 2 ports on Macs support mini-DisplayPort natively, so you can absolutely use an mDP-DVI/VGA adapter.


Can I cancel a download of a Mac Store app? I just got a really large Mac App Store app, (2GB), but Im having some trouble with my diskspace...

Is there a way to completeley cancel the download of the app? I mean not just pause it but cancel it. The icon on the dock kind of stresses me out, and it reappears even if I drag it out.

Specifically in Lion, here's how to do it:

Go to Launchpad, click and hold on the downloading item
All icons will start wiggling
Click the (X) on the download

or

Hold down the Option key from the “Purchases” menu in the Mac App Store, this causes the “Pause” button to turn into “Cancel”. See this article for detail.

It will ask for a confirmation. I confirmed delete, and it was still there    - a reboot made it disappear, but I suppose you could restart just Launchpad as well.


Rebuilding Shared Albums after restore from Time Machine I recently had cause to wipe and reinstall my Mac from a Time Machine backup. My Photos library appears to be complete except all the Shared Albums, including the ones I shared, are missing. I wouldn't have been surprised if the photos had gone and they had to redownloaded, but there's no reference to them at all. All I get is the button "Start Sharing" but I'm worried if I press it it'll replace my subscriptions on the server. They are still on my iPhone

Turns out it was a pretty simple case of turning off Shared Albums in Preferences, quitting and restarting it, then turning on Shared Albums again and they call came flooding back.


Having painstakingly deleted hundreds of unwanted photos, dare I re-sync another Mac to iCloud that still has many of the deleted ones? I have already deleted hundreds of photos in iCloud, and this works fine on my iPhone and Macbook.
However, I also have an IMac which WAS synced to the other machines up till 2017. This means in Photo it  has all the photos I ever took up to 2017 including the hundreds that I have carefully deleted from iCloud.
I want to set it so it syncs to iCloud again. But if I do, will the deleted photos get added back into my Photos from this IMac? So wasting the many hours of filleting.
Is there any risk of this? Is there anything I can do?
Should I actually delete all the photos from the IMac before syncing? Would this run the risk of deleting them all from iCloud once I sync (I would not want to risk that!).
I have checked other questions but this seems to be new.  My question is the opposite of many others I see, when people cannot get deleted photos to sync to another device.
Its an old iMac using OS X Yosemite 10.10.5
Thanks for advice.

There’s no risk if you have a backup. Cloud syncs, just like RAID are not backups.
I’ve had very good experience with Apple tracking when I delete files from a fully health sync setup. Adding a new device to sync generally wants to combine all.
Also - look at a tool that can easily clean duplicates if you run into this situation often.

https://fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/

If you want to be safe, set up a new photo library or export all the photos before you start. Designate the empty library as the system one and then go slowly once you’re sure the sync is solid.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204414


Disable Apple Watch Screen Capture How can I disable or modify the screen capture feature of the Apple Watch?

Although it may one day be a useful feature for me to take a screen capture of my watch, the hardware realities of the Apple Watch make this an extremely annoying implementation. It is all too easy to unknowingly and accidentally depress both the side button and digital crown at the same time.

Yes, I've tried wearing the watch higher up my wrist, and several different bands. I don't want to switch the watch's orientation because it would be at the cost of making the crown much less accessible. When I wear the watch while working out or doing physical work, I end up with a bunch of unwanted images propagating to all sorts of cloud backups, etc. I've taken to using the Screenshots album on my iPhone to mass delete, but they're already clogging my bandwidth and aforementioned storage.

In watchOS 3, go to the Watch App -> General there is a toggle called Enable Screenshots that should be disabled by default (you have to scroll down a bit). When the switch is disabled, you can't take screenshot on the Watch.


Change APFS Volume to case sensitive I have a macbook pro with 1TB internal glued flash drive, of which around 600GB are full.

I would like to change the volume format from APFS (case insensitive, encrypted) to APFS (case sensitive, encrypted). Is that even possible?

Or should I make a second volume / partition with the right setting and try to move everything there? Is that even possible?

I had a similar issue and this is how I went.
Warning this involves a total reinstallation of your OS, wiping and partitioning your drives. With an SSD, it might be possible to push files into a new partition and by doing this repeatedly, squeeze your data into 3 partitions and then down to the desired two without wiping anything (maybe), but with billions of read/writes going over and over the same cells, such a method has the potential to noticeably age your SSD max life cycles. Backup, Partition and Restore has a much better outcome

My set up: iMac late 2012: macOs 10.14, 1TB HD, 1TB Time Machine, 0.6TB external HD, and about 45 GB synced in 315 GB in GDrive space.
All my personal documents are live synced to gdrive and also backed up to Time Machine. Some of my lesser projects are also synced to gdrive and also backed up to Time Machine.  I would strongly recommend you use multiple backup strategies for your most critical documents.  I only have a few files in my home directory, rather I have everything linked from the cloud in the Documents, Pictures, Music &etc directories.  All my big projects, archives, and video editing I keep in …/Shared as they are way too large to sync to the cloud.
Having said that, I followed the recommendations from Apple and other reliable gurus and accepted that APFS case sensitive is not recommend for applications. So I prepared to split my hard drive 100 GB for macOS ( / ) APFS regular and 900GB APFS case sensitive for /Volumes/Users.
I was going to relocate my home directory and the Shared directory from /Users to /Volumes/Users/……
Determine how much you are going to need for your macOS drive, which mounts at /.
First determine how much you have in /Users and the subtract that amount from the total usage on your 1TB. On my iMac, for 110+ apps all the libraries and system files and other normally hidden folders it was about 60GB total, so a 40% margin for growth was fine. Your situation may be different.
On my 0.6TB external drive I have kept a repository of all the dmg, zip, tar, and pkg files that installed programs on my Mac.  I have also kept a text file list of all the application in my /Applications and under /usr/local/Cellar & …Caskroom to aid in reinstallations where needed.
Now with a full Time Machine backup of the entire SSD and extra backups, installation files, and lists, you are ready for a smooth transition. And you are covered pretty much if everything goes south too.

With an active internet connection, do the reboot Cmd-Opt-R iNet recover. Do a new install and partition the SSD  as desired, first partition APFS regular 10-20% of space (as you have pre-determined will be needed with growth room included) Make a second partition using all the remaining space (less if you have a plan for a 3rd partition for special use) using APFS case sensitive and name it "Users".   I would choose that name so as to reduce some possible confusion for certain programs looking for a relative path, but you could call it Data, if you wanted. Continue with the installation and set the first partition (I named mine "macOS") as the install destination drive.
When installing use the same username/password for yourself, this will greatly simplify your efforts.
After installation and rebooting login as yourself and then, if you don't know how to set up root as a user and login as root, create second user, anyname, as administrator and log in as them. COPY the nearly empty new folders from /Users over to the new volume, /Volumes/Users. Choose copy over move because in a worst case loss of your Data volume, you can still boot in as you with your permission intact. (Hint: once in awhile you might want to copy your hidden user setting file over to /Users/yourname—I use midnight-commander to do that. By using a second administrator, all of the files will be free to copy the can be copied.  Your admin identity is now safely in two locations.  You can logout and back in as yourself.
You are now ready to move your home folder assignment. In the System Preferences/Users & Groups, unlock the settings first. Remove the second admin you created and all their files & directories. Now right-click on your ID in the left-hand table and choose advanced options.  It is here you can "move" your home directory to the new one on the second, case sensitive partition, /Volumes/Users/yourname.
Once you have changed your home directory, you can reboot and and log in. /Users/yourname and …/Shared are now orphaned.
Here is where you have to choose, speed OR security and reliability: Note you can not just restore as that will try to put everything back on the now much smaller first partition.
A. the faster method:

open two finder windows, one at / the other at Time Machine
press command-shift-. to see all the hidden directories
use finder to navigate to the last full backup on Time Machine
highlight everything in that backup EXCEPT /Users and copy all the folders over to root ( / )

This method holds the probable risk that your moved identity will not recognize most of the restored programs/have the right settings for them, and if you then go on to restore yourname from the Time Machine in the same way, you also won't have the right settings restored.
B. the surer (slower) method
Next, you should re-install all your previous programs. Once done, you should re–establish your email settings and other on-line accounts through System Preferences. If you archive your emails, like I do, you can't just restore them because the directories are no longer have the same names. However, you can import  them through Mail out of Time Machine under your old file structure, ~/Library/Mail/ into your "new" email. Once they are imported you can rearrange them as you like.
Important: do not re-establish your Time Machine drive as the current backup drive before you are satisfied that everything has migrated correctly, or the app will start dumping older files to make room for the "new" ones without ask you.
Next, you can start restoring all your Document, pictures and such, and if you have used …/Shared to file all your project data, and however you have used it, those folders can all be dragged out of Time Machine and copied back to their original location.  I recommend this way as it will make sure that all of your permissions remain as before.
When finish, your OS should be on a APFS case-insensitive boot partition and all your user identity and all your data should be on a APFS case-sensitive data partition.
You can go back into the Time Machine if you find some settings just won't work and look for the originals.
If all else fails, you can rewind it all back by restoring (with re-partitioning) from your original Time Machine backup.
I was up and running in about 4 hours but I have a LOT of customizations and it was three more days before I was happy.
Be patient and methodical and this should work well for you.
Richard


Is there a fix for Mac OS Preview, file opening window not showing on opening the application? Hello I am using Mac OS 11.2.3 M1 Macbook Air
When I open Preview no window shows up to select a file to open. But when I secondary click on the logo and open a recent file everything works fine. Is there fix for my problem?
P.S. all functions inside preview seems to work but my inner perfectionist is screaming!

If you have un-checked Preview in System Preferences > AppleID > iCloud Drive Options, then it won't show the file dialog by default.
Weird, I know, but there you have it.


Move Secure Notes items from Keychain of one Mac to another? I have a keychain created, to hold a bunch of Secure Notes items. These are not in the default keychain files created by Apple.

In previous versions of macOS, I was able simply drag the keychain file from one Mac to a new Mac. Now in macOS Mojave, this is not working. When I drag the my_own_keychain.keychain-db from my home folder > Library > Keychains on the old Mac, and place it in the same location on the new Mac, the Keychains app fails to recognize it.

How can I get my own keychain file moved from old Mac to new Mac?

Keychain Access.app > File > Add Keychain…

You got it half-way right.

Quit Keychain Access.app, just to be safe.
Locate your keychain file, named whatever.keychain-db as you mentioned.
Get a copy of that file onto your new Mac, perhaps via a thumb drive.
Put that file in your home folder, in Library folder, in Keychains folder.In other words: ~/Library/Keychains/your_keychain_name_goes_here.keychain-db
Open Keychain Access.app on that new Mac.
Choose File > Add Keychain….
In the file-picker dialog, choose the file you just placed in the Keychains folder.

We are not really importing or doing any processing here. We are merely informing the Keychain Access app about the existence of this additional keychain file.


What's Apple Configurator? There is an error "This root certificate is not trusted" in my Keychain Access.

What is "Apple Configurator"? And what should I do about this error?

Apple Configurator is a piece of software from Apple that allows you to centralized manage multiple iOS devices (e.g. remote wipe, remote software rollout,...). It's made mostly for companies, organisations,schools, etc.

To be able to help you with the certificate you need to post the certificate details.


Can I replace my old model MBA battery with a 54-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery (12 hrs) for the newest model MBA? I have a A1304 MBA and need to replace the battery with a new one.  I was considering to install a 54-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery (12 hours battery life) for the newest model MBA.  Is it compatible to my old model MBA? Will it have a technical problem after I install it?

This won't work. See Geek.com's teardown for details, but the battery looks physically larger and differently shaped than the old MBA battery.


Key logger/watcher suggestion I'm thinking my Mac in for repair again and last time I lost data.

Can someone suggest a key logger or watcher so I have a bit of granularity in terms of what the repair guy is doing..

I would assume the repair technician has total control over your files since he or she controls physical access, can remove the storage and image it, knows how to reset passwords, make secondary admin accounts, etc.

Most technicians have high standards and should explain the procedures they will take to guard your data, but you'll still be extending trust to someone with the training and opportunity to make a copy of your data and/or poke around.

As to observing them, unless you reported a software problem and they are going to fix your software, you won't learn anything by logging the keys pressed.

They will use their computers to do research and likely boot off their software to see if your problem is your settings or your particular copy and version of the OS.

If you install audio or video recording software, you may want to get legal advice since you don't want to break any laws spying on them. Again, check the terms of service - you will likely be granting them permission to erase, modify and inspect your computer when you hand them the hardware.

If your goal is to track what they do, why not ask them to provide you with steps and then check their work by running tmutil compare to see which files changed after service from a backup that happened before service?

I've never found key loggers to be useful and other recording software is buggy and slow IMO.

What I do is delete the drive entirely and give them a test account or use FileVault to encrypt everything you care to "watch" and just not give them the password or key to decrypt the volume if for some reason you din't want unauthorized access.


How to disable Finder triangle reveal animation in 10.7 Lion In Finder's list view, you can click the little triangles to the left of folder icons in order to reveal the contents of the folder. In 10.7 Lion, this reveal/expansion is accompanied by a vertical sliding animation.
My problem is (a) the animation slows me down and (b) the animation will often hiccup even on my new i7 Mac Mini with external video card (especially on folders containing many files).
I've searched high and low on the googlesphere for a solution to this, but I've only come across these terminal commands, to no effect:
1
defaults write com.apple.finder AnimateInfoPanes -bool false

No effect on Finder, info panes don't seem to have reveal animation anyway
2
defaults write com.apple.finder DisableAllAnimations -bool true

No discernible effect on Finder
3
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool NO

This does disable the zoomimg new window animation in all apps, but doesn't affect my issue
Is this an issue for anyone else? Does anyone have a solution?

I've been looking for this solution for quite some time.  What this is is an NSOutlineView.  The expanding and collapsing of an NSOutlineView now always animates the roll down and roll up of the content and makes you wait for it to finish before you can actually see and use the content.  It's infuriatingly irritating that we can not turn this unwanted "feature" off so that it functions as before.

According to a developer at Apple, there is no way to do this and I was encouraged to file a request since this is an annoying addition to the OS that you can not turn of that was not present in previous system releases.

I've reported the bug/usability regression to Apple.  It's bug# 14442959.


iPhone 3G dead and unresponsive to charger and buttons My wife synced her iPhone 3G and installed two new apps yesterday.  While my son was playing with one of the new apps in her company (ie no dropping or water) the phone went blackscreen.  Son says the rotating gear icon etc did not appear.  The app was a Disney game.

The phone does respond to 60 seconds of pressing of the home and on buttons together (ie hard shut down/restart) and attaching it to various Apple brand charges and computers never produces the Battery Charging screen.

Is there anything to be done short of locating a repair shop?

You could attempt to put the iPhone in DFU Mode, and see if you can restore from iTunes. But this is almost certainly a hardware problem, and will require a trip to an Apple Store or a service provider.

To try DFU mode (note that this does a complete wipe, you'll have to rely on whatever backups you made previously):

Plug the phone into your computer.
Turn it off.
Hold the sleep/wake and home buttons for 10 seconds.
After 10 seconds, release the sleep/wake button, but keep holding the home button.

If this is successful, you should get an iTunes popup stating that it has detected an iPhone in recovery mode. You can then follow the iTunes instructions to restore the software.


Is there a way to set another shortcut for "Eject" in the Finder without using a third-party application? I use that shortcut system-wide for something else. Unfortunately although you can set menu item shortcuts from the settings, you can set it for a specific menu item. That means I can set it for Eject, but if I have a drive called Test it'll become Eject "Test" which I obviously won't have a shortcut for.

I would also prefer not having to drag the drive all the way to the drive each time.

The only way I can think of to achieve this without any 3rd party software is to do the following steps:

Use Automator to create a service that runs an Apple Script
Use System Preferences to assign a keyboard shortcut to the service

Below are the steps involved for each. Don't worry, the whole thing should only take 5-10 mins.

1. Create a service using Automator

Launch Automator (usually found within your Applications folder)
Go to File > New.
Select Service and click Choose.
In the top right hand of the window that appears, ensure that "No input" is selected from the Service receives drop-down list.
Ensure the In drop-down list is showing "Any application".
In the second column containing the long list, find "Run AppleScript" and double-click on it.
This will add the Run AppleScript window on the right.
Now, replace the ( Your script goes here ) with the following code:

set exceptionsList to {"HD1", "HD2", "HD3", "HD4"}
tell application "Finder"
    set diskList to the disks
    repeat with mountedDisk in diskList
        if name of mountedDisk is not in exceptionsList then
            eject mountedDisk
        end if
    end repeat
end tell

In the first line of code, add your exceptions by changing the references to HD1, HD2, etc to any names of drives you do not want to eject. For example, HD1 should be replaced by your Macintosh HD (or whatever it's called). You may also want to add any Time Machine drives to the list, etc. You can add more by adding a comma and placing the name within quotes. Likewise, you can remove any you don't need.
Save the service using a meaningful name (e.g. EjectAll).

Now to the next step.

2. Creating your shortcut

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts.
Select Services from the sidebar.
Find your service (it'll be in the list on the right-hand side).
Add a shortcut by double clicking on the service name.
Now go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy.
Select Accessibility in the sidebar.
Click on the + sign (you may need to unlock the padlock if it's locked).
Add Automator.
Add Finder (to find this you will need to navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app).
Exit your System Preferences.

Now you should be able to do two things:

1. Eject your drives from any application by going to the Services list within any Application menu (e.g. Finder > Services, Safari > Services, Mail > Services, etc) and select the service you just created. This will eject all drives not within your exception list.

2. Use the keyboard shortcut to run the service.

NOTE: I am aware that for some users keyboard shortcuts do not seem to work even though they've been assigned to a service. This is a whole other topic, but if this happens in your case, at least you should now be able to eject all drives from within any application you're using.

Hope this helps you and others.


What's the best NAS for home usage with Macs? Please share your experiences and reviews about NAS (Network-Attached Storage) below. In particular, rate their compatibility with Macs, OS X, iTunes, Time Machine, AppleTV, and other Apple-specific tools. The goal is for future users to be able to easily find the best Mac-compatible NAS appliance.

Rules:

Use a single answer for each NAS (no duplicates, please).
Vote (up or down) on any NAS you have experience with.

Also welcome: useful reference links, such as this one from xlr8yourmac.com.

Synology DiskStation
The Synology DSM software has built-in support for Macs including Apple Fileshare Protocol (afp) and Time Machine support. It has an iTunes server in addition to a regular DLNA Media server. As it is Linux based it is easy to configure the NAS to do rsync backups (ssh login).
It has a great web-based desktop-style interface that is very easy to understand and use. The DSM software is constantly being updated and improved.
They have solutions from 2-disk on up to 15-disk.  You can find the 4-disk DS411j without drives for less than $400.


How to get text from a webpage from the command line? I am looking for a command line equivalent to the Get text from webpage option in /Applications/Automator.app. The Get text from webpageoption is pretty self explanatory, it gets the text only, without HTML tags, CSS, JavaScript, etc. from a webpage. I know I can use wget or curl but that will give me all the HTML tags, CSS, JavaScript, etc. not the only text version of the webpage.

Your best option is the textutil command. Read the man page, but something like:

textutil -convert txt webpage.html

should work.


Making MacBook faster? -> What preferences or other things might I miss, when install a fresh OS My MacBook 2,16 GHz (13" white with the max. 3 GB RAM from about 2007) feels quite slow.

I read somewhere that upgrading and keeping old user profiles can slow the Mac down my current user profile in OS 10.6.5 is based on that from 10.4 (which might be even based on 10.3 or so...)

So would it make sense to "start fresh"?

What Preferences might I miss after a clean install
or would it be enough to start with an empty new profile?
May I get problems with permissions?

The best way to experience the "how would start from scratch be" without starting from scratch is to create a new empty user, remove all "login items" and work from there. That's as close as you can get. Of course there are other factors that you might have installed and might be slowing down your system (old extensions, drivers, etc that may be logging in excess, faulty services, etc.).

If you do perform a clean install (and have a backup on another drive), "manually" migrating is not that bad. You will have to:

Drag your apps from Old_Drive to the New_Drive (a good opportunity to not drag those old things you don't use anymore) :)
Before starting them up, find ~/Library and migrate Preferences and Application Support for the apps you want to conserve (tho sometimes trashing the preferences is a good fresh start).
Also check /Library/Application Preferences and all the libraries in general.
Copy over your Documents, Music, Pictures, Movies, etc. (Another great time to leave old stuff behind).
Reconfigure your new computer too, network, your dock, the finder settings you had, your wallpaper, etc. All that stuff.

In regards to your specific question, it's "half correct" in my experience. I upgraded from 10.3->10.4->10.5 but then Snow Leopard reappeared, tho I was going to Upgrade, my drive crashed and I decided it was a good time to start again. I had backups but didn't feel like migrating (because Migration assistance won't let you pick individual applications it's an all or nothing) and I had old copies of Photoshop and stuff that I didn't want behind.

Also the Differences between "Snow Leopard" were "huge" in terms of underlying OS, so It looked like a good idea.

It's a pain the first two days, but then you quickly begin to get things back and, to quote the movie The Abyss: "the body will remember". ;)

Another thing that may or may not be annoying, depending upon your software, is that you'll have to re-register some apps but you have 1Password with all your licences, don't you? :)

Finally, you shouldn't do this without having a backup (bootable clone) of your current drive, JUST IN CASE. A Time Machine is "ok" but I wouldn't only trust that as the recovery process is much slower than a simple boot the new drive :) So if you have a cloned drive, you can always reinstall and see for yourself, if you don't like it, clone your drive back.

Good luck!

P.S.: To directly answer your concerns: You shouldn't get much trouble with permissions, nothing you can't really "force" and fix and preferences… well… all of them until you start copying stuff back! :)


Is it possible to read the accessibilityLabel attribute of an item using AppleScript? I'm trying to extract the list of cookies according to Safari.

I have the following code fragment:

tell application "Safari" to activate
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Safari"
    keystroke "," using command down -- display preferences
    delay 1
    click button "Privacy" of toolbar 1 of window 1
    delay 2 -- let the cookie count update
    click button "Details…" of group 1 of group 1 of window "Privacy"
    get <what??> of row 1 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of sheet 1 of window "Privacy"
end tell

Which is fine except that I can find no way to get the cookie name from the row. Tantalisingly, however, VoiceOver can read the value and Accessibility Inspector shows it to be held in the accessibilityLabel attribute.

Hence the question: is there a way of getting the value of the accessibilityLabel attribute in AppleScript?

Versions: Safari 9.0 / El Capitan.

PS: I know there is a Cookies.binarycookies file in the user's library. I'd still like the answer to my question for future reference at least!

You can access the 'description' of the 'UI Element' of each row. Like so:

tell application "Safari" to activate
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Safari"
    keystroke "," using command down -- display preferences
    delay 1
    click button "Privacy" of toolbar 1 of window 1
    delay 2 -- let the cookie count update
    click button "Details…" of group 1 of group 1 of window "Privacy"
    set z to description of UI element 1 of every row of table 1 of scroll area 1 of sheet 1 of window "Privacy"
end tell
return z


Locking my Macbook when I remove my smartcard I have a smartcard paired with my account on my 2015 Macbook. I'm running Catalina 10.15.4 (despite the horror stories). After I first paired the card, when I removed it my screen would lock. I changed something at some point, but I don't recall what it was. Now when I remove the card nothing happens.

Does anyone know what setting/configuration I need to modify to re-enable this?

Figured out where to configure this. Put a check in the box next to:

System Preferences->Security & Privacy->Advanced->Turn on screen saver when login token is removed


Keep Mac mini on Wi-Fi (for screen-sharing), but disable internet access... How? I have a Mac mini, running El Capitan, which I use as a media server. I access/control it and control it via screen-sharing. The Mac Mini has no display attached, so it must remain connected to my Wi-Fi or I can't access/control it.

There is however no need for it to be permanently connected to the internet. Beyond the security risk, it also uses up bandwidth for background tasks which I have no use for.

I would like to disable web access, while keeping Wifi connectivity. Possible? How?

There are a couple of things you can do, but by far the easiest is to just manually configure your IP address (don't use DHCP) and leave the router field blank.  See below...

Before you select "Manually" in the drop down, take note of the IP address that was assigned to it by DHCP.  Then when you select "Manually" just re-enter that same IP address.

With the Router field empty, your Mac Mini will not know how to get out to the Internet.

Update:  As pointed out by user3439894 in the comments, reusing the IP address from the DHCP pool could pose a problem.  To avoid this, assign it an address outside the pool.

Most routers will have a starting address (Netgear's typically start their addressing at 192.168.1.100 and assign 50 or 100 address).  So you either have addresses up to 192.168.1.49 or .199.  To make sure you don't cause conflict, just assign it an address either higher than or lower than the pool (i.e. 192.168.1.30 or 192.168.1.210)


App download progress in redesigned Mac App Store (macOS Mojave) I am using macOS Mojave which features a major redesign of the Mac App Store app. When installing app(s) from the new Mac App Store, how do I check the status of download(s) in progress?

It is possible to check the progress of downloads in the Purchases tab in the previous design of the Mac App Store, but that appears to be no longer available in the redesign.

Has this been removed in the redesign?

Has this been removed in the redesign?

Yes.

The dedicated Purchases tab present in the older design of the Mac App Store has been moved under the Accounts tab (accessible by clicking on the user's display picture towards bottom left). The new Mac App Store no longer shows the currently downloaded and total size numbers for app installation in progress.

For newly purchased app(s), you can check the download progress by clicking on the profile picture and looking for the app icon(s) towards the top. The apps are listed in order of purchase with most recent purchase shown on top (just like older design of the Mac App Store).

Download progress is also shown on the specific app page in Mac App Store.

However, Mac App Store has adopted iOS style of circular progress bar to show the installation progress which doesn't show the app data downloaded and the total size.

As an alternative measure, you can launch Launchpad.app (by clicking on its icon in Dock, searching in Spotlight or from Applications folder) and still see the progress in terms of data downloaded and total size just below the app icon.


Adding random suffixes to filenames I would like to change the filename of a lot of files by adding a random suffix to the existing filenames.

I have tried to change this code (changes the filename instead of adding a suffix) but with no succes.

#!/bin/bash

chars=( {a..z} {A..Z} {0..9} )

function rand_string {
    local c=$1 ret=
    while((c--)); do
        ret+=${chars[$((RANDOM%${#chars[@]}))]}
    done
    printf '%s\n' "$ret"
}

for file in ~/Desktop/test/*; do
    ext=$(echo ${file} | sed 's,^.*(\.[^\.]*$),\1,')
    mv "$file" ~/Desktop/test/"$file$(rand_string 10)"${ext}
done

A command line or automator solution would be preferable

If you just want to append a randomized string the for loop is rather simple:

cd ~/Desktop/test/
for file in *; do
    suffix="${file##.*}"
    base="${file%.*}"
    mv "$file" "$base.$(rand_string 10).$suffix"
done

Change the 10 to the number of random characters you want to add.


System proxy settings inaccessible by Java, Firefox, VMware Fusion, etc.? I'm stuck on what appears to be an issue with the accessibility of system proxy settings by other programs. I came across this problem while trying (and failing) to run Processing-generated Java applets in Safari.

First, my setup on a MacBookPro8,2:

Mac Host: OS X 10.7.2, Safari 5.1.2, Java for Mac OS X 10.7 Update 1, Chrome 16.0.912.77, Firefox 7.0.1, Processing 1.5.1, Processing 1.2.1, and Processing 2.0a4

Windows VM: VMware Fusion 4.1.1, Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit, IE 9.0.4, Java 1.6.0_30, and Processing 1.5.1

Here's a list of the problems/evidence, and what I did to try fixing them (all attempts at which have failed except where noted).

I can't load Java applets in Safari. A page with an applet will reserve a space for displaying that applet, but nothing shows up and the page hangs (I can't scroll, for instance).
Reinstalled Java for Mac OS X 10.7 Update 1.
In Safari, tried (i) turning "Enable Java" off and on; (ii) clearing caches via "Reset
Safari...".
In Java Preferences, tried (i) turning "Enable applet plug-in and Web Start applications" off and on; (ii) clearing cache via "Delete Files...".
Note that Java itself seems to be working fine: (i) Processing (which uses the JDK, I think) continues to work; (ii) typing java -version into Terminal gives the correct version; (iii) Java works in Windows.
Java applets also do not work in Chrome.

---- Now, for why this seems to be a proxy issue ----
I have no problems at home, where I don't use a proxy! This is only a problem at work, where I've configured proxies for HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and SOCKS with Automatic Proxy Configuration selected. This was all done in the Network preferences panel, and the settings all show up in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist. They show up in the Terminal via sudo scutil --proxy.
Firefox works fine at home, but it doesn't load any http sites via proxies at work (it does load simple hostnames on our network, though). Note that Chrome and Safari both seem to obey the system-wide proxy settings. If I specify Firefox's proxy settings manually, then Firefox both (i) loads http addresses correctly (via the proxy) and Java applets load correctly too.
In Windows, the situation with IE9 is similar to #8 above. Manual proxy settings make all problems go away: Java works, and pages load. Please note that I never had to set the proxy settings manually before. Windows seemed to pull the appropriate settings from OS X via VMware Fusion.
I checked the Java net.properties file to make sure that the "java.net.useSystemProxies" setting wasn't affecting me. According to the comments in this file, even though this is set to "false," the setting will be ignored by OS X. I tried changing it to "true" anyway, with no effect. (Changed it back to "false" afterwards.)
This one's odd: I just noticed that in Terminal, the hostname is showing up as something set by our network, rather than as my computer name. I think that this is a new behavior that has cropped up at around the same time as the Java issue.
By the way, tried repairing preferences via Disk Utility. No repairs were reported.
Created a new user. Problem was present in this account as well.
Tried starting in Safe Mode. Problem present.

So, all of the above leads me to believe that the problem is based on programs (Firefox, Fusion, Java) being unable to access the system-wide proxy settings. Again: I can't recreate any of these problems when I'm not using proxies, and they go away in instances when I can clearly specify them for specific applications (Firefox, Windows).

How can I fix this problem? After trying tons of stuff and searching for everything I can think of, I'm at the end of my line here. I'm absolutely trying to avoid reinstalling Lion, but that's the last option I can think of. I'm hoping that someone comes up with a better solution. Your thoughts?

I have the same issue. When I use a proxy.pac file certain applications fail to pick up the settings. Among these are:

Firefox
Chrome
Java apps (like eclipse)

Some apps that do work with the pac file are:

Safari
Skype
Adium
Evernote

What I have found though, is that when I manually add a proxy server to the system preferences it is picked up by all applications. So something in the pac handling is broken. Maybe old/new APIs in Lion?


Find, compare, delete duplicate music files with Terminal I am trying to clean up my iTunes. I have a lot of duplicate files (* 1.mp3 or * 1.m4a). I want to make sure before I find/clean the duplicates ending in ' 1' that they are truly bit-for-bit duplicates of the files not ending in ' 1'. Many are downloaded from iTunes match and want to make sure I'm not deleting a complete file and keeping a partially delete file (if, somehow an error had occurred that interrupted the download), etc.

I'm sure there is a script that can compare the 2 files and delete the ' 1' if it is identical to the original but don't know how to write something like that.

I would want it to go through my Music folder recursively.

Use iTunes as per Apple's note

  Choose View > Show Duplicate Items to show duplicate items (matches are based on the song name and artist).

  Duplicate items will be sorted next to one another. Review each item to determine which one you'd like to remove from your library. You can compare the track length, date added, genre, play count, size, bit rate, and more to help you determine which item you'd like to keep and which item you'd like to remove.

Then choose the item to delete and hit the delete key

There are apps that automate more of this e.g. Dupin


Time in milliseconds since epoch in the terminal How do I get the time since the epoch, in milliseconds, in the OSX terminal?

The Linux/Ubuntu equivalent is date +%s.%N:

Linux $ date +%s.%N
1403377762.035521859

Which does not work in my OSX terminal:

OSX $ date +%s.%N
1403377800.N

The date program in OS X is different than GNU's coreutils date program. You can install coreutils (including gnu-date), then you will have a version of date that supports milliseconds.

As the installation from source can be a hassle for native OS X users I advise you to use Homebrew.

To install these tools using Homebrew run this oneliner in your terminal:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Homebrew is now installed (it is wise to follow the installer's suggestions after installation). Now we will install coreutils using brew.

brew install coreutils

As the installation says, all commands have been installed with the prefix 'g' (e.g. gdate, gcat, gln, etc etc). If you really need to use these commands with their normal names, you can add a "gnubin" directory to your PATH (~/.bash_profile) like:

PATH="/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"

You can now run

gdate +%s.%N

and this will output your time since the epoch in milliseconds.


What is a safer way to write this applescript I sometimes use a third party application with a built in terminal when writing and/or testing a script. I wrote this short applescript to fully clear the terminal screen regardless of which application I'm using. I set it as a function at the top of some of my scripts. I never had a problem until earlier today when I carelessly ran this in a while true loop.

clear(){
    osascript -e \
    'set theApp to (get the path to the frontmost application) as text
    set this_app to the name of application theApp
    activate application this_app
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "k" using command down'
}

Obviously running this endlessly is not a good thing. I was forced to manually power off the computer because it was stuck in the frontmost application hitting cmd k endlessly. Is there a better way to write this so this doesn't happen again?

A much safer way is just to action the menu directly.

clear() { osascript \
  -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "Terminal"' \
  -e   'click menu item "Clear to Start" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Edit" of menu bar 1' \
  -e 'end tell' \
  -e 'return'
}


My Apple E-mail is incorrect I tried going to the AppStore and iTunes, etc. and it said that I have the incorrect Apple email (for the Apple ID) and I tried changing it to my actual email but it pops up as a different email.

Is there anything that I can do to reset it to my actual email?

In iTunes...

Tap Featured at the bottom of the screen.

Scroll to the bottom and tap the account name then Sign out.

Tap Sign in and use the account you want.

Then tap Updates.

source: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3078909?start=0&tstart=0


echo $PATH not reflecting saved paths I have attempted to add, export PATH="$PATH:/Users/My_Name/desktop/My_Folder, to .bash_profile, .bashrc, and .profile. I executed the command source ~/.bash_profile, source ~/.bashrc, and source ~/.profile to refresh the $PATH and it does reflect that when I execute echo $PATH.
However, when I open a new terminal and execute echo $PATH it is unchanged.
The issue is my system (macOS Big Sur) will not recognize the updated $PATH when I open a new terminal unless I execute the source command every time to refresh my $PATH.
For context, I edited all three because I have scoured multiple sites for suggestions and have exhausted all my options.

I realized that I was using zsh. To change I executed chsh -s /bin/bash to change my shell to bash.


How to remove highlighting from emails in Mail? I created a rule that applies a mint green color to a lot of emails in my mailbox. I no longer want that color on those emails and I do not see a way to remove this highlighting for even a single email. I know I could create a new rule to give them a different color, but there is no rule semantics for removing color either.

It seems that all of my email's subjects in Mac Mailbox are now permanently stained.

Looks like you can do it by adding a new Rule [I haven't tested it, because I don't want to actually reset my own colours…]

Try setting Any condition > Every Message > Set Colour…

Note: the 'Other colour seems to depend on your current Colour choice in the Colours floater - Format > Show Colours…

You can do it manually, select one message, pick a colour - but it seems very hit & miss, sometimes works, sometimes doesn't.


Can I use a Macbook (or an iMac) as a Bluetooth Player? We all know that iPhone, iPod, and iPad cannot act as bluetooth players since they only have the hardware to act as a Bluetooth server. My question is if Macbook and iMac are similar.

If not, I like to set up a home network where multiple of my computers can play the same audio stream at the same time.

The reason that I do not use wireless audio system is because my apartment is jammed with wifi channels. There are around 200 wifi channels around me and wireless audio system doesn't work - same goes with airplay. I tried all the wireless system, only bluetooth works.

You actually cannot. Let me explain why:

The bluetooth hardware of Macbook and iMac are designed to be "sender" rather than "receiver"...
The software/driver is designed without considering using the computers as bluetooth receivers.

If you must connect two computers in an area where wifi channels are all taken, you can try using 5G wifi connection rather than the 2.4G - and if that still doesn't work, you are out of luck.

Note: wireless audio receivers usually are designed with special hardware component to eliminate lags - and even so there are so significant lags on all devices. So do not expect your computers will sync - in fact, there should be half or one second lag even in an ideal condition.

Hope this help!


Clean reinstall of Mountain Lion deleted my iLife applications. How do I get them back? I purchased my 13-inch Macbook Pro in July of 2010. It came with Snow Leopard and allowed for a free upgrade to Lion, which I duly took up.

I have since purchased Mountain Lion. I decided it was worthwhile doing a clean install of Mountain Lion and did so successfully except for the one (major) hitch -- iLife is not available anymore.

I've read things in forums that say I should "accept" something or other on the Purchases tab in the App Store to get iLife back, but nothing of the sort appears on the Purchases tab.

How do I get back the iLife suite? Are they lost without shelling out more money, which seems a ridiculous thing to need to do.

This depends on whether your copy of iLife was purchased through the App Store, installed from DVD, or was just the version that came with the MacBook originally. If you had purchased from the App Store, it should be just as easy as going to the app store and redownloading your apps. If not, then you'll either need to reinstall from DVD or purchase the new versions of iLife. Your MacBook should have come with an install DVD for both OS X, and for iLife.

Another solution is to use the Migration Assistant and Time Machine to restore your apps. That's by far the easiest way to get all of your old stuff on your new system. Of course, it'll pull in more than just iLife.

Finally, if you have a Time Machine backup, you can still restore from it. Option-Click on the Time Machine icon at the top right, and choose "Browse Other Backup Disks". That will let you get into the backup from your previous setup.

Good luck!


Aircrack-ng Makefile error with ‘#include ’ I'm trying to install Aircrack-ng on my MacBook but I've hit a brick wall.

First I tried with MacPorts as suggested on Aircrack's homepage but I found that some tools were missing like Airmon so instead I decided to try the more traditional way of installing the .tar that I downloaded from the homepage aswell.

Now running the command sudo make install Makefile produces the output:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/make -C src all
sh ../autocfg gcc ..
gcc -g -W -Wall -O3  -mavx2 -DJOHN_AVX2 -pthread -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_REVISION=0  -fstack-protector -Iinclude -DSIMD_CORE   -c -o aircrack-ng.o aircrack-ng.c
In file included from aircrack-ng.c:65:
./crypto.h:43:10: fatal error: 'openssl/hmac.h' file not found
#include <openssl/hmac.h>
         ^
1 error generated.
make[1]: *** [aircrack-ng.o] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 2

Reading that, I see that it's missing the file hmac.h from the openssl folder so I tried to include it in the file the best I could (I have no idea what I'm doing I'm new to all this)

Here are the lines around where I added the include and the include itself:

AC_ROOT     = .
include     $(AC_ROOT)/common.mak
include     /opt/local/include/openssl/hmac.h

DOCFILES        = ChangeLog INSTALLING README LICENSE AUTHORS VERSION

Running the Makefile again I get the following:

/opt/local/include/openssl/hmac.h:1: *** missing separator.  Stop.

I have Googled the problem and seen loads of suggestions to fix this and that its' probably due to whitespaces but I've been unable to fix it. I've used tabs and no whitespaces.

You can use Homebrew to install it. This will install all the dependencies for you automatically.

brew install aircrack-ng


Retrieve image coordinates at mouse cursor in Preview.app I want to measure the precise pixel coordinates within an image where the mouse cursor sits.

Are there stock OS X or third party tools that can easily do this?

You can do this simply by dragging from the desired pixel to the upper left corner of the screen. This will create a selection rectangle, and the size of that rectangle is shown in the screen. Since the rectangle can only stretch until it reaches the origin (the corner), its size will be the same as the pixel coordinates you're looking for.


Why does my Apple Watch keep entering Power Reserve mode? I updated to Watch OS3 last week, and now my Apple Watch keeps entering Power Reserve mode, even when I have plenty of power on it!  As it sits right now, I have 87% power, and it has already entered Power Reserve three or four times today!  I did not ask it to go there, and it has enough power.  Has anyone had this problem, and if so, how did you resolve it?

Someone (I don't recall who, and I'm surprised their comment isn't here - whoever you are, thanks!) suggested that it could be the Battery complication, which I really like for monitoring battery status.  However, when you touch it, it presents a big percentage display and a very large button that covers the bottom of the watch face; touching this button puts the watch in Power Reserve mode!

The problem is that I had the Battery complication at the bottom right, so two touches in that corner results in Power Reserve mode!  At first I thought I had to give up the Battery complication, but then I realized that by putting it in the upper left corner, I avoid the simple two touches in one corner; now, in order to put it in Reserve mode, you have to touch two distinct, separate areas.  It has now not gone into Reserve mode since then!

Of course, it would be even nicer to have a Battery complication that just shows the battery status, without causing this nasty behavior...