How to force password to be typed before answering a call? Is there any way of asking for a password before picking up a call?

The iPhone's lock screen password works for not allowing people to access the iPhone main screen, but it allows anyone to pick up incoming calls.

No unfortunately this isn't a feature that is currently supported on iOS (I suppose it would be possible on a jailbroken device).


Transferring Keynote to Youtube or Quicktime with delay in music and timing of slides I am having a problem when I transfer my keynote project to Youtube or Quicktime. The slides don't change at the time I designed it in Keynote and my song only plays on the first slide when transferred eventhough in keynote I designed it to play for all of the songs.  In keynote it plays perfectly but when I transfer to these other programs, it just isn't working right.  Any insights? and or directions to fix this issue?

Thank you
Dawn

When exporting a Keynote prevention to video, be sure first to set all transitions to the timing that you wish.  All click events will be set to the defaults in the dialog shown below.  Change this to 0 seconds for timing and export again.  By working between the timing of your automatic transitions (usually the length of your song) along with looking at your click transitions, you should be able to get the timing right.


How can I call Don Melton's transcode_video script from a shell script? I'm trying to create a Folder Action to transcode videos using Don Melton's scripts.

When I run the script, transcode_video complains that HandBrakeCLI is not available, but when I run the command directly from the terminal it runs fine.

I'm guessing this is some kind of bash script security thing, but I'm an amateur at this game. Is there a way round this? I've had to revert to calling HandBrakeCLI directly, which is not as easy to optimise.

Two things:

Fix your path. This is as simple as adding the following as your first line. I installed the scripts through gem, not git, so transcode_video is in /usr/local/bin - you'll need to set it as appropriate.

export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"

Make sure you cd into the directory you want to save the files into, as a step too. Otherwise, writes them out into $HOME, which appears to be the default working directory for automator bash scripts.

My total working code:

export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"
for f in "$@"
do
    echo $f > /tmp/filename.txt
    cd ~/Desktop/SAmple/
    transcode-video --mp4 -v "$f" > /tmp/transcode.out
done


Stolen iPhone + iMessages on MacBook My iPhone was stolen and I have filed a claim to get a new one. When I receive it the old one, wherever it is, will be deactivated. I have my messages synched onto my Macbook pro also, I have photos and some saved voicemails there that I don't want to lose, will all of my messages also be deleted or will they be alright?

When you wipe an iPhone via the Find My.. app or website it will only erase the iPhone itself. Any data you've synched to the cloud will still remain on the cloud.
Regarding photos and saved voicemails, as long as your iCloud backups were going ok on the phone you should be able to restore everything as-is back to the new phone.
Photos would also already be on your MacBook Pro if you had iCloud Photo Library enabled.
If you go to iCloud.com, sign in, then click on the Find iPhone option near the bottom right, you can put the phone into "Lost Mode", which would still allow someone to track the phone down. If you haven't done that yet you may want to enable that feature first. Then if you're sure you won't get the phone back you can click Erase iPhone as you had been planning.


After I delete an app on my iPhone, iTunes copies it over on next sync On my iPhone, I go to the App Store. I download some app. It's crap, so I delete it, by clicking the 'x' when the icons start wobbling.

Some time later, I turn on my mac, and iTunes starts syncing with my iPhone. For some reason, iTunes copies the APP I DELETED over to my iPhone, so I have to delete it again. Only when I delete it again will it stop copying it.

I find it hard to believe this is a design decision. It would be understandable to keep the app on my computer, but why does it copy it over to my iPhone even though I deleted it there?

Specs: latest version of iTunes on latest version of Lion, and latest version of iOS on iPhone 4.

The issue here is to do with the Automatic Downloads feature of iTunes and iOS. I believe (not 100% sure) that when you update to iTunes X and iOS 5 the feature to automatically sync apps between devices is enabled by default, and it is up to the user to disable it.

Basically, when you download an app with this feature enabled, it will download a copy to your computer also. You can then delete this app from the iPhone, but however it will remain on iTunes.

Now, when you plug your iPhone in, there is another setting that means the deleted app will be sent straight from iTunes back onto your iPhone. Navigate to the App section in the iPhone tab when it is connected in iTunes, and beneath the list of apps that will sync there is an option to 'Automatically sync new apps.' This causes iTunes to send that app it copied when you originally downloaded it from your iPhone straight back onto your iPhone. So, to fix your problem, deselect this.

If you want to disable the automatic app downloads completely, in iTunes go to Preferences - Store - and deselect the 'Apps' checkbox. On the iPhone, navigate to Settings - Store, and do the same.


apache on OSX 10.8 not starting I had Apache working on my 10.8 MPBR.  I haven't used it for a few weeks, and now it doesn't seem to start.  I get nothing in /private/var/log/apache2.  Nothing, meaning no logging at all, error or otherwise.  Permission on the log folder is drwxr-xr-x root wheel

I have tried all ways of starting, stopping, and restarting apache.  I have checked for activity on port 80, there is nothing happening.

Configtest is Syntax OK.  I have not fiddled with apache in any way in the time between now and when it was last working.

I do get a 'weird reason' error in the console.

1/17/13 8:47:34.592 PM com.apple.launchd[1]: (org.apache.httpd) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
1/17/13 8:47:44.594 PM com.apple.launchd[1]: (org.apache.httpd[22855]) Job failed to exec(3). Setting up event to tell us when to try again: 2: No such file or directory
1/17/13 8:47:44.594 PM com.apple.launchd[1]: (org.apache.httpd[22855]) Job failed to exec(3) for weird reason: 2
1/17/13 8:47:44.594 PM com.apple.launchd[1]: (org.apache.httpd) Job should be able to exec(3) now.

The 'No such file or directory' bit is suspicious, but don't know what file/dir is missing.  My next move will be to try and start from a plain vanilla setup and see if that works.

I'd rather not install MAMP, I only need the web server, so hopefully I can figure out what got borked.

Anyone know how to get better debugging on what the Console is on about?

Anyone care to guess what might have gotten out of whack?

I had exactly the same problem. I started Apache without DocumentRoot(s). It did the trick.

sudo apachectl -T


How can I get iTunes to redownload a deleted Podcast item? This question is pretty much the same as How can I redownload an episode of podcast which I accidentaly deleted?. That old question had an answer,  although a comment says the answer is no longer relevant to later versions of iTunes. I'm not sure what the protocol is for this situation, but since I have the same problem today I thought I'd re-ask the question.

I am running iTunes v11.1.4.62 on Windows 7. I needed to reclaim some disk space so I manually deleted some of the downloaded podcast files from the iTunes folders.

How can I redownload that file via iTunes when I wish to listen to it again? The Podcast listing indicates that that file is already downloaded (i.e. there is no cloud icon to click on to initiate a download)

Press the three dots right next to the name when you select the Podcast row. Select (-) Delete. That will delete the row.

Then on the main Podcast, right-click and select "Refresh podcast". The row will re-appear with a little cloud next to it.

If the publisher has deleted the Podcast from their library, I guess you cannot recover it.

Hope that helps.


How to move boot and recovery partition from HDD to SSD Today an Apple Certified Macintosh Technician has installed an SSD into my iMac medio 2011. The iMac was born with an 1TB HDD but now a Crucial M4 SSD is also installed inside the mac. I've moved my OS X to the SSD using the OS X Recovery, where the OS was installed using an Time Capsule Backup. Afterwards I did an Erase of the old HDD in Disk Utility to get the old OS removed and my data has now been transferred to new, clean partition. The name of the partition on the SSD is Crucial M4 SSD and the name of partition on my old 1TB HDD is Storage.

Please see this output from diskutil list:

iMac:~ dennis$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *256.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Crucial M4 SSD          255.7 GB   disk0s2
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         999.9 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk1s3
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Storage                *999.7 GB   disk2

First of all, it seems that the OS X Recovery was not installed on the SSD. Right? How can I recreate this? Then I'm wondering why the Apple_Boot is located on the old disk1. Shouldn't that be on the SSD as well? What is the difference between disk1 and disk2? Please tell me, if anything else is looking strange.

EDIT1:

After I run the reinstaller, I get this output:

iMac:~ dennis$ diskutil list/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *256.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Crucial M4 SSD          255.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         999.9 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk1s3
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Storage                *999.7 GB   disk3

What is the EFI and Apple_Boot on /dev/disk1?

You are correct that the recovery partition is not on your machine.

On my Lion machine I see:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.1 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

You could clone your existing drive "Crucial M4 SSD" to an external disk, then repartition and reinstall Lion, then clone it back, though reinstalling Lion over your existing volume may also work! You could also try downloading the Recovery Update and see if that can add it:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1464


Automator services replace selected text's spaces with underscore Looking to create a simple automator service that I can use when selecting text. If the text has spaces, it will replace it with underscores.

Thanks in advance.

Here is one example of how it can be achieved using an Automator Service and a Run AppleScript action:

on run {input}
    set input to replaceText(" ", "_", input as string)
end run

on replaceText(find, replace, textString)
    set prevTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to find
    set textString to text items of textString
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to replace
    set textString to "" & textString
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to prevTIDs
    return textString
end replaceText

Set the service to the settings shown in the image below:

Note that in macOS Mojave a service is now called a Quick Action.

Note that the replaceText(find, replace, textString) handler was something I found on the Internet too many years ago to remember where and give credit to its source.


Turn off all connectivity except GPS I am leaving on a camping trip tomorrow. I have an iPhone 6 from my employer. I would like to use the phone for GPS (vis Google Maps) over the weekend, but do not want to receive a single notification for a phone call, text message, calendar invite or email (I am using the Good app). Is there any way to put my phone on airplane mode but keep GPS on? Thanks in advance.

If you want to completely disable all cellular abilities (calls, texting, data) you could simply take out the SIM.  True GPS still works fine, as that does not use the cellular network.


Force a file to overwrite instead of appending I've got an application that won't overwrite a file with the same filename. It will only append the filename with a 'space 1'. If I write a file more than once I get something like this:

filename.jpg
filename 1.jpg
filename 2.jpg

What I need is to only ever have the newest file without the extra space and number.

Is there anyway around this? Perhaps an applescript running in the folder?

The application is in complete control of how it saves files (overwrite v. append). The answer is to pre-clean your destination before you start whatever work flow you are doing in Capture One. There are any number of ways to accomplish that.

use the rm command from the terminal
write a bash script that does something more complicated
write an applescript
create a new folder each time to point the application at
create a disk image via Disk Utility that you can clone and throw away when finished

These are just some of the ideas. I am sure there are other ways as well. Just need to find one that works for you.

A final thought, contact the makers of Capture One and make a case for why you would like them to change the software. Perhaps they will listen. :)

Good luck.


Launchd network access control in Mac OS Lion First of all, I've used pf extensively on OpenBSD so I know its rule set quite well. Even though I'm more used to the more recent versions.

However, I would like to know if there is a simpler way to regulate network access to launchd, or more specifically afp.

I tried putting ALL: ALL (or launchd: ALL and other combinations) into /etc/hosts.deny but I don't think launchd uses these files at all. Can someone please confirm this? hosts_options(5) shows extensions made to it, by Apple perhaps, yet I can't figure out how to reload launchd to use these files.

My solution right now is to block all connections to port port 548 and then only allow my home computers. To do this I've modified /etc/pf.conf as follows, added the last line.

#
# Default PF configuration file.
#
# This file contains the main ruleset, which gets automatically loaded
# at startup.  PF will not be automatically enabled, however.  Instead,
# each component which utilizes PF is responsible for enabling and disabling
# PF via -E and -X as documented in pfctl(8).  That will ensure that PF
# is disabled only when the last enable reference is released.
#
# Care must be taken to ensure that the main ruleset does not get flushed,
# as the nested anchors rely on the anchor point defined here.
#
# See pf.conf(5) for syntax.
#

#
# com.apple anchor point
#
nat-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr-anchor "com.apple/*"
anchor "com.apple/*"
load anchor "com.apple" from "/etc/pf.anchors/com.apple"
include "/etc/pf.userrules"

And in /etc/pf.userrules which is my own creation that might get overwritten at the next Apple update.

block in inet proto tcp from any to port 548
pass in inet proto tcp from { 10.10.10.11, 10.10.10.12 } to port 548

This works, but I wish I could uses the hosts access files.

launchd doesn't use the libwrap, as shown by the command:

nm -a /sbin/launchd | grep hosts

The fact that this command doesn't output anything means that
launchd isn't using any entrypoint within the libwrap library
of TCP wrapper.

This answer was checked on Snow Leopard and Lion.

On lion for example, libwrap is used by sshd and not telnetd nor launchd:

% nm -a /usr/sbin/sshd | grep hosts
                 U _hosts_access
% nm -a /usr/libexec/telnetd | grep hosts
%

The libwrap library doesn't exist on Mountain lion.


How long does text stay in Spotlight Search? The text you enter in Spotlight search stays there if you close it and reopen it, but it automatically disappears after some time limit. How long is such amount of time?

Every time you reopen (to look at it) it the timer starts anew.

If you leave it closed, it will expire (refresh) after 5-10 minutes as I measured.


DNS Resolution Fails for ping and curl, but not dig I'm running DNSMasq as a local DNS server, so I can resolve *.local.pcfdev.io (as discussed here Using PCF Dev Offline with Mac OS X). Everything worked when I first set things up.

A couple of days later, after a few restarts of my MacBook, whilst offline I can no longer resolve things like api.local.pcfdev.io using curl or ping. However, dig does the right thing.

$ dig api.local.pcfdev.io

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> api.local.pcfdev.io
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 46877
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;api.local.pcfdev.io.       IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
api.local.pcfdev.io.    0       IN      A       192.168.11.11

;; Query time: 1 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)
;; WHEN: Tue Sep  6 10:17:44 2016
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 53

$ curl api.local.pcfdev.io
curl: (6) Could not resolve host: api.local.pcfdev.io

I've tried adding -AlwaysAppendSearchDomains as an argument to /usr/sbin/mDNSResponder in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist and restarted the mDNSResponder with launchctl, but to no avail.

UPDATE 1

There is definitely something listening on the right local IP:

$ nslookup api.local.pcfdev.io
Server:     127.0.0.1
Address:        127.0.0.1#53

Name:   api.local.pcfdev.io
Address: 192.168.11.11

$ ping api.local.pcfdev.io
ping: cannot resolve api.local.pcfdev.io: Unknown host

$ telnet 192.168.11.11 80
Trying 192.168.11.11...
Connected to 192.168.11.11.
Escape character is '^]'.

HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request

Connection closed by foreign host.

UPDATE 2

After trying the suggestion below of removing all DNS servers from Network Preferences except 127.0.0.1, I can't resolve anything. I managed to get some debug logging out of mDNSResponder:

mDNSResponder[91]:  74: DNSServiceCreateConnection START PID[32612](ping)
mDNSResponder[91]:  74: Error socket 75 created 00000000 00000001
mDNSResponder[91]:  74: DNSServiceQueryRecord(15000, 0, api.local.pcfdev.io., Addr) START PID[32612]()
mDNSResponder[91]:  74: Error socket 75 closed  00000000 00000001 (0)
mDNSResponder[91]:  74: DNSServiceQueryRecord(api.local.pcfdev.io., Addr) ADD    0 api.local.pcfdev.io. Addr
mDNSResponder[91]:  74: Cancel 00000000 00000001
mDNSResponder[91]:  74: DNSServiceQueryRecord(api.local.pcfdev.io., Addr) STOP PID[32612]()
mDNSResponder[91]:  74: DNSServiceCreateConnection STOP PID[32612](ping)

I did also observe that as explained in the proposed answer, nslookup and dig don't cause anything to be logged by mDNSResponder, but other tools (ping, curl) do.

So it seems like for whatever reason either dnsmasq isn't working (I can establish a TCP connection to 127.0.0.1:53) or mDNSResponder isn't using it.

UPDATE 3

etc/resolve.conf ceases to exist when my wifi adapter is active, but I'm not connected to a network. Could this be why CLI tools don't use the local dnsmasq server?

Had this same issue. I think the local DNS cache had bad data from my previous testing. It was quickly fixed by:

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder


Batch modifying file metadata I'm looking for an application or command line tool that can batch edit file metadata. I have some audio files recorded using a recorder that was off by 1 hour, and I want to modify the creation date to the correct time.

You can use "touch -mt YYYYMMDDhhmm" followed by your file name/path, of course replacing YYYYMMDDhhmm with your desired date.  I recommend typing "man touch" into terminal to look at the manual and different command options there.


How can I type the “@” symbol via VNC with a PC keyboard? I'm connecting from a PC to a Mac via VNC. Now I want to enter some special characters like @. How can I do that?

This page didn't help. Other keyboard shortcuts I found out:

Alt = cmd

Shift + 7 = _

Shift + - = ?

I'm using a German keyboard, but it seems that the English keyboard layout is used by VNC, because y is z. The clipboard also don't seem to work correctly ...

Edit:

Physical keyboard layout PC:
German keyboard layout “T1” according to DIN 2137-1:2012-06

Logical keyboard layout PC:
German

VNC mapping

Logical keyboard layout Mac:
German

Physical keyboard layout Mac:
German

From the menu bar select System Preferences

Select the Keyboard Icon

Select the Keyboard tab

Select the "Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar" check box.

From the menu bar select either the Character or Keyboard viewer.


I can't enable iCloud backup on my phone My iCloud backup is currently off.  So I go into Settings/iCloud/Backup and switch the iCloud backup slider to on.

It comes up with warning stating that the phone will no longer back up to my computer automatically when I sync with iTunes.  I say Ok.  Then the phone thinks for 2 seconds and comes up with an error saying iCloud Backup Failed, `There was a problem enablling iCloud Backup'.

Why can't I enable backup?

You can perform the same function through iTunes on your Mac. Just plug it in, go into the iPhone's settings, and set it up from there. May have better results.


How is Internet Recovery able to connect to my Wi-Fi access point even after I changed the hard drive? I wanted to upgrade my MacBook Pro. It should get a newer version of macOS and also a SSD instead of a HDD. So I pointed the macOS Installer to the SSD that was connected using a USB to SATA connector.

After replacing the Hard Disk, while the battery was disconnected, I tried to boot into the newly installed macOS. That didn't succeeded, so it booted into Internet Recovery.

Since the Hard Disk where the password was stored, was completely removed from the computer, where did the Mac get SSID and password for accessing the Wi-Fi access point?

I wiped the SSD to reinstall the OS. Internet Recovery was still able to connect to the Wi-Fi access point. From this it follows that the Wi-Fi configuration (of the last used Wi-Fi access point) must be stored somewhere else. Where and how can I read from there?

Passwords for the previously connected Wi-Fi access point are also stored in your Mac's NVRAM (along with the keychain which is managed by macOS and is stored in your hard drive).

From the Apple Support article, Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac:

  NVRAM (nonvolatile random-access memory) is a small amount of memory that your Mac uses to store certain settings and access them quickly.

  Settings that can be stored in NVRAM include sound volume, display resolution, startup-disk selection, time zone, and recent kernel panic information. The settings stored in NVRAM depend on your Mac and the devices that you're using with your Mac.

That explains why your Mac is able to retrieve and connect to previously known Wi-Fi access point, even after swapping the hard drive.

The data stored in NVRAM is for use by your Mac and is not directly user accessible.


MacBook SSD replacement — sudden motion shock sensor in optical bay? When looking to upgrade a MacBook Pro with a solid state drive (SSD), one option is to:

First, install the SSD instead of the spinning hard disk drive (HDD).
Then, install the HDD instead of the optical drive (SuperDrive).

At present, many websites (if not most) suggest to do it this way. However, I am concerned about the safety to the spinning HDD (hard disk drive) when in the SuperDrive slot.

The main bay has a sudden-motion-sensor (SMS). It is an accelerometer that detects when the MacBook is falling and prevents damage to the HDD as it is spinning by retracting the reader arm that could scratch the hard disk — damaging/corrupting data.

Although the SuperDrive bay may have the same SATA connector as the main bay (depends on the year of your machine, some have a combination of SATA II and III), it is suggested that it may not have an SMS, which can be a pretty serious issue:

  Why not install the SSD in the regular hard drive bay? Good idea! The
  only problem is that the regular hard drive bay is the only bay that
  features sudden motion protection. If you drop your MacBook, it’s
  smart enough to safely park your non-SSD hard drive so it won’t be
  damaged by the impact. The optical bay interface has no such feature.
  This is harmless to your ... SSD because it has no moving parts,
  but any spinning platter-based drive [HDD] will be at risk if installed in
  the optical bay.

  You can have it both ways if your secondary hard drive has its own
  native sudden motion detection (the ... factory-installed MacBook hard
  drive [does not]).

But posts on a forum suggest otherwise.

Which do we believe?

If the optical bay lacks the shock sensor, then it would likely be better to leave the HDD where it is, and install the SSD in the optical bay, but this method seems to have an issue with waking from hibernation and sleep.

This solution may not directly answer your question, but it may be relevant: I would advise you against putting your HDD in the optical bay.

I tried that. Putting the SSD in place of the HDD, and moving the HDD in the optical bay, which is just under the keyboard… And I got to hear the noise of the HDD spinning and the noise the heads when accessing cylinders… Bad idea. After a few hours, I switched HDD and SSD.

So, I would recommend you to leave the HDD in its bay and to put the SSD in the optical bay. That way your question is solved, and you don't get to hear the HDD working.
And if you notice an extra delay when booting, just select the SSD (which is in the optical bay) as booting drive in the system preferences. You will need to enter your password twice, once and for all. Then, your mac will immediately find the SSD when starting up.


Create emacs-style keychains keybindings in hammerspoon? I discovered Hammerspoon today, a keybinding and desktop automation tool reminiscent of i3wm or awesonewm for linux, but combined with something like xdotool.
I am an emacs user, and find emacs's (and similarly vim's) solution of using "prefix" keys to support more keybindings useful.
In emacs (and vim) you can support "prefix" keys, which once pressed select a different map of keybindings. So for example:
C-x  followed by  ,   followed by  v could be bound to a single keybinding which is different from v.
Is there any way to acheive this in hammerspoon (short of writing my own library that toggles bindings on and off as I press keys)?
Research

This script seems to implement a special case of this sort of logic in a handcode way
This native component, hs.hotkey.modal, looks to provide "modes" similar to i3.
https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon/issues/208
https://www.hammerspoon.org/Spoons/RecursiveBinder.html

If you're still wondering how to do this, then the RecursiveBinder Spoon for Hammerspoon will do the trick. I wrote a Medium article about how to use it to make a leader key for macOS.
Here is a minimal lua snippet on how to use it.
hs.loadSpoon("RecursiveBinder")  -- Load the spoon

spoon.RecursiveBinder.escapeKey = {{}, 'escape'}  -- Press escape to abort

-- singleKey is a convenience function provided in the Spoon
local singleKey = spoon.RecursiveBinder.singleKey

local keyMap = {
  [singleKey('b', 'browser')] = function() hs.application.launchOrFocus("Firefox") end,  -- 'b' is the keybinding, 'browser' is the text shown in the onscreen helper text
  [singleKey('t', 'terminal')] = function() hs.application.launchOrFocus("Terminal") end,
  [singleKey('d', 'domain+')] = {  -- Separate layer
    [singleKey('g', 'github')] = function() hs.urlevent.openURL("github.com") end,
    [singleKey('y', 'youtube')] = function() hs.urlevent.openURL("youtube.com") end
  }
}

-- Calling recursiveBind returns the activation function, and here, it is bound to option+space
hs.hotkey.bind({'option'}, 'space', spoon.RecursiveBinder.recursiveBind(keyMap))

Here, pressing option+space activates the first layer with b, t, d (browser, terminal, domain respectively)
Pressing d will activate the layer with g and y.
At each level, a helper text is shown, like which-key in emacs.


How to upload the full-resolution pictures taken by Instagram to Flickr? When Instagram takes a pictures, it send a lower resolution version to Flickr, but saves the full resolution in the Camera Roll. Right now, I am:

Taking picture and letting Instagram send the lower resolution version to Flickr, so something is available online right away.
Later on, transfer the pictures to my Mac (through iCloud or sync), and replace one by one the pictures on Flickr with the full resolution version I have locally.

This last step is time consuming and error prone. Ideally, I'd like Instagram to upload the full resolution picture for me when over wifi. But short of that, what would you do to streamline this process? Maybe "there is an app for that"?

As a side-note, you might wonder why I am using Instagram, and not taking pictures with the Camera app or the Flickr app:

I like to enter a title right away, just after taking the picture (so the Camera app wouldn't cut it).
I like the fact that the version of the picture sent right away is lower resolution, not to kill my limited mobile quota (so the Flickr app wouldn't cut it).
(I also like the square format: IMHO, it makes framing simpler, and creates pictures that just looks better for online viewing.)

I use the Posterous Spaces app to save full resolution photos from the roll to the web and have that linked to push to flickr. You could also use the native flickr app to pick them from the roll.


iPad memory used if far higher than sum of all App's memory usage I've got two iPad Air, one 64GB the other 16GB. Both on iOS 7.1.2.

On my 64GB iPad, the sum of memory used by all Apps very closely matches the memory used figure above the list of Apps (40.3GB vs. 41.2GB). On the 16GB iPad, the sum of memory used by all Apps amounts to ~720MB but memory used is reported as 7GB.

How do I find out what is using the ~6GB? It can't be iOS itself, is it? I guess, I would expect to see a ~6GB difference between the numbers on the 64GB iPad, too, if it was iOS.

When your iPad is connected to the computer, click on the Device and look at the bottom of the screen. There is a bar that shows how much data each category is using.  What is the size of the "other data" category?

Your iPad stores not only the Apps but there is a lot of stuff like:
Browser cache,
Mail cache,
Mail messages,
Mail attachments,
Safari's Reading List,
iTunes Backups,
Game data,
Saved data files,
Call history,
Notes,
Media,
Voice memos,
etc.

To see what is using the memory space on iPad: Settings->General->Usage

In this list: All installed Apps are listed, tap on any App to see the actual App size and the amount of documents and data used by this App.

To delete this data, you have to delete the App, restart your device (press and hold Home and Sleep until you see the Apple logo) and reinstall it from the AppStore.


Find my iPhone: how to identify each device? A friend of mine got her iPhone stolen. When entering iCloud to activate the "Find my iPhone" feature, I see that her account has 3 phones associated with it. The 3 phones are named:

Iphone
Iphone
(Name)'s Iphone.

How can I know which is her current one? Her previous models are a iPhone 4S, an iPhone 5 and an iPhone 6. I don't see any place to check each phone's model.

It's too late now to identify the iPhone.  This must be done prior to losing the device, when you're able to provide a name for it.  Find iPhone doesn't list the specific device.

To name the device, go to Settings -> General -> About and in the Name field enter a specific device name (for example, 'PaulJ's iPhone 5s').  Then, when you need to locate the device, it will get the name you entered and it can be identified.

The only thing you can do now is the process of elimination.  Figure out which of the 3 devices listed is not accounted for someplace or, perhaps, not turned on.


Extract a disk image without diskimagemounter I have an account on a school system where they won't allow us to mount virtual images. I can run arbitrary programs as a user, though not as root. I've tried mounting it from the command line using diskutil and hdiutil (or somethings like that), and I have an application to convert it between .iso, .cdr, .dmg, and .img. I don't want to have to use Disk Utility to burn it to a CD each time to open it and don't want to need additional hardware (i.e. a CD-R or flash drive). I just want to get files off it. The particular image is Chrome for Mac.

Pacifist allows you to examine the contents of packages and archives, including .dmg files, and extract individual files. Unfortunately,  it may require you to authenticate as an Administrator to do so.

I would advocate caution in proceeding. Be certain you're not circumventing the intentions of your school's system administrators even if your actions are seemingly allowed based on the restrictions imposed.


How can I remove the window shadow in Mountain Lion? There's an application called ShadowKiller that seems popular and supposedly works for Lion, but it just seems to die as soon as I try to start it on Mountain Lion.

I'd like to get around of the shadows surrounding a window.

This one works well for me: toggle-osx-shadows.

It is easy to compile and use, and there are only 17 lines of code.


My old voice memos don't sync via iTunes I have switched computer which I'm using to sync with my iPhone 3Gs. The problem is that all my old voice memos aren't added to my iTunes library, but they're still on the iPhone.

So I wonder how do fix so I can get all my voice memos to sync with iTunes?

Voice memo's didn't sync like music with older versions of iTunes. With any current version of iTunes it should sync properly.

I doubt that this question is still active, but for future problems I've added an answer.


how to see all files on external hard drive I have 200g of content on my 500g External Hard Drive but according to "get info" 471g of space is being used up, what am I not seeing?
(To arrive at 200g I manually added all folder sizes using 'get info') Could it be hidden trash?

Yes, it was simply that the trash was not emptied: I have learnt that to remove items from an External Hard Drive I must empty the trash while it is connected!  Otherwise the files remain hidden but using space up on the drive.


Command Line Tool to Batch Convert .EML/.EMLX/.MBOX to Searchable PDFs? I need to convert about 500k emails into searchable PDFs. By 'searchable' I mean that macOS will be able to scan them for specific words rather than simply treating them as an image. My searches, thus far, for a tool to do this have ended in proprietary database apps and over-priced sketchball x-to-pdf converters which basically perform the built-in macOS functionality of Print To PDF. Is there a single tool or two complementary tools that could be used together in Terminal to just batch convert all the emails to searchable PDFs?

I had to do this with ~180 emails, and I used a command tool I found on GitHub that converts .eml to .pdf via .html: https://github.com/nickrussler/eml-to-pdf-converter

It takes a little while to convert each .eml file - 22 minutes for 186 emails with lots of images - so it's probably not helpful for a 500k email task. (Maybe if you're reeeally not in a rush and not afraid of multiprocessing!) If it is helpful for you or anyone else, though, here's how I got it to work in the bash command line:

git clone the repo
Install the wkhtmltopdf tool from binary (installing with pip is insufficient) from here: https://wkhtmltopdf.org/downloads.html
From within the cloned repo, generate the email converter .jar file: ./gradlew shadowJar
Run for loop to convert every file in the .mbox (or a directory of .eml):

for file in /path/to/mailbox.mbox/*;
do
   java -jar ./build/libs/emailconverter-2.0.1-all.jar "$file";
done


Buzzing sound on Macbook Pro mid 2012 due to optical drive fixed? Am aware of the fact, there is a known problem as mentioned in this Apple KB: Mac notebooks with optical drives: Noises from the optical drive link, that is produced when the OS is initializing the optical drive. It seems to be occurring in OS X Yosemite for now, but would like to know if there is any possible fixes for it in the same OS version or upgrading it to OS X El Capitan will fix the problem.

Mine is the MBP 2012(mid-version), with 8 GB RAM and 500 GB SATA HDD.
Any help regards to this appreciated!

The sound is totally normal on older MacBook models and it's not a bug. It's from the optical drive looking for a boot up disk.


How to hide a photo in the new Photos.app I would like to know if it's possible to hide photos in the new Photos.app

Select any [or more than one] photo.
Right click > Hide [number of selected] Photo


Does official AT&T unlock also upgrade the operating system? I have an AT&T iPhone 4 running iOS version 5.1.1. My contract with AT&T is complete, and they have authorized my unlock. However, the process is to backup and restore from iTunes, according to the instructions they sent.

It seems like an obvious question, but I couldn't find the answer searching. Does going through that process upgrade the operating system? I do not want to upgrade the OS because I am concerned it will make the phone slow.

UPDATE:  I followed the instructions from M K, with the results described EXCEPT no iTunes unlock message.

However, even though I had received an immediate response on the AT&T portal with instructions how to unlock, 24 hours later I received an email from AT&T, containing the same instructions as the portal, but now asking me to wait 24 hours after receipt of the email.  So I will wait and try again tomorrow.

UPDATE #2: I followed the instructions from M.K. again on the following day, 48 hours after I had submitted my request, with the results described EXCEPT that when I reconnected the phone, iTunes gave me a spinning beach ball, and then crashed.  Then I got a message box telling me that iTunes quit unexpectedly.  I took the "restart" option.  iTunes came up, processed for about 20 seconds, and then gave me the message that my iPhone had been unlocked, in the main iTunes window.  No OS update (still version 5.1.1)  Thanks!

UPDATE #3: The unlocked phone is, in fact, unlocked -- I took it to Sri Lanka and the Maldives.  In each country, I was able to buy a cheap GSM card, only about $3 in Sri Lanka, which let me surf the Internet and make and receive local calls for the week I was there.  And I am still running iOS version 5.1.1

Yes, a backup and restore will force iTunes to update the device with the latest version of iOS. In order to get around it, follow a slightly different procedure described at How to restore iOS without updating (edited instructions here):

  Backup the iPhone in iTunes
  Disconnect the iPhone from the computer
  On the iPhone, go to Settings > General > Reset and select "Erase All Contents and Settings"
  Wait for the phone to display the swipe to setup screen
  With iTunes already running, connect it to the computer
  iTunes will display the unlock message
  Click on Done
  iTunes will present the option to restore from a backup
  Restore from the recent backup you made
  iTunes will also sync all your apps after the data and settings restore is completed (the entire process may take a while depending on the amount of space used on the iPhone)

See:


How can I select a single photo form a photo burst using Photos.app on MacOS Catalina? I have a few photo bursts in Photos.app version 5 (MacOS Catalina), and Photos.app identifies them as bursts, but I cannot find any tool in the interface to select one picture in the burst or even to view them all. I don't remember if the bursts were taken with my iPhone or with a Sony a6000, and surprisingly, it does not tell in the info of the photos.

UPDATE:
Also, there is no Make Selection... button when I open the photo burst that appears, as was suggested in an answer below, or as I have seen in some tutorials. I don't know if this is caused my something particular with my pictures or if Photos.app version 5 is different.

Double click on it, click "Make a Selection..." on the top left corner, and you'll get an interface for that.


Can not successfully re-install MYSQL 10.8.2 Removed the old installation as explained here:

https://superuser.com/questions/129193/how-do-i-uninstall-mysql-on-mac-os-x-snow-leopard

Installed the package contained in the mysql 5.1.67 DMG downloaded from MySql.com
Installed the preference pane item
Installed the startup item [THIS FAILED]

MySql will not load, it's preference pane show the error message displayed below:

 The MySql database server installation was not found.
 Please make sure the /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin file is present

I don't have much familiarity with unix commands so I'm not clear how to troubleshoot this further.

Try to uninstall the lates version completely and install the new one. According to your error log i think that you have another mysql server running on your machine. Try to find it out and uninstall it.


How to connect to wifi while connected to a device through thunderbolt bridge Macbook --> Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter --> Ethernet Cable --> Device under test with IP address

The device under test is not connected to the internet. While I am testing the device I still need an internet connection, but the non internet device connected with the Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter takes over and I cannot connect to the internet through wifi.

Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Network. In the
list on the left, you see the connections/services.
Click the Action pop-up menu at the bottom, then choose Set Service
Order.

Drag a service, in your case WiFi, to the top of the list.

Click OK, then click Apply to make the new settings active.


Files wrongly considered as damaged in encfs volume I am using encfs @1.7.5 and osxfuse @2.6.4 installed via MacPorts 2.2.1 on my MacBook Pro Retina Late 2013 which is running OS X Mavericks 10.9.2.  When opening certain files (e.g. xlsx, pdf) in my encfs volume, I get an error "X is damaged and can't be opened." as well as a suggestion to move it to trash.  However, when I copy that file elsewhere (i.e. not on the encfs volume), it appears to work just fine.  Why is this?

EDIT: I looked online and found a post involving disabling GateKeeper.  It did the trick.  In essence, you go into "Security Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Allow applications downloaded from: Anywhere".

I understand that the solution works, but I would like to know why it works.  Thanks in advance.

EDIT 2: Also, if someone could tag my post with encfs, it'd be very appreciated.

I've found the answer here (for BoxCryptor):

Under special circumstances, Mac OS X adds the extended attribute 'com.apple.quarantine' to a file which was e.g. downloaded from the internet. This can also happen to files within the BoxCryptor Folder. If an encrypted file has this extended attribute set, you receive the "is damaged" error message when trying to open the plaintext file in the BoxCryptor Volume.

Also try this, more secure workaround:

x) Open Terminal (Applications -> Utilities)
y) Run the following command (substitute the path):
$ xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/encfs/mount/point


iMac 27" Catalina with Split Fusion Drives I need to have a clean iMac with new OS but experiencing problems.  Having commenced Recovery mode twice with new OS I am seeing Four drives.  One is the 1Tb SSD but the main primary drive is showing as iMac (121.12Gb) plus another two named as iMac2-Data and iMac2-Dat-Dat.  How to have just two drives, SSD plus primary drive?
Here is terminal screen image.

First: it is normal with APFS to list the internal physical drives, followed by 'synthesized' volumes. So you should expect to see /dev/disk0 to 3.
Catalina uses two separate volumes for a system disk: iMac2 is the read-only volume for your OS, and iMac2 - Data is for your apps, user data and everything else.
However, from the looks of it, iMac2 is too small to hold an OS. It looks like you've installed the OS onto iMac2 - Data, and the OS has created a matching  'Data' partition called iMac2 - Data - Data.
I'd suggest erasing the entire device - you may need to check "Show All Devices" in the View menu in Disk Utility - and then install from scratch.


Open two applications in full spit screen using Bash script I am trying to write a Bash script to open two applications in full split screen, for example:

#!/bin/bash

LESSON="$1"

echo operating on lesson $LESSON

open /Applications/Pages.app /Users/username/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~Pages/Documents/$LESSON*
open /Users/username/courses/chemistry/$LESSON*

This works, but I want to open Pages and Preview in full screen and split view.

Get the Magnet app from the App Store, far less effort and does exactly what you want.


Missing "view" button in disk utility I'm unable to encrypt an external hard drive because the encryption option seems to be missing. Various answers pointed to doing something with the 'partition' button, but that button is greyed out. To solve the greyed-out issue, evidently I first need to click on the 'view' button as explained here. But I have no view button! I want my view button, give me my view button!

(Specifically, I don't see a view button on my screen whereas it clearly shows up in this explanation.)

Speculation: The view button is missing because disk utility defaults changed and now everything is viewable by default.

As for the greyed out partition button, notice that the external drive tab has two levels, a parent and a child. The 'partition' button becomes un-greyed-out again if you click on the parent instead of the child. This seems to be working fine now.


Web Inspector quickly inspect element How do I quickly inspect an element using Safari's Web Inspector, preferably by keyboard shortcut?

Expected functionality

In Chrome, command+shift+c enables the function and the mouse then selects an element.

How things work in Safari

In Safari, the same combo seems to work, but only if Web Inspector is selected. Here are some example scenarios:

Web Inspector is not open. Pressing command+shift+c does nothing.
Web Inspector is not open. Pressing command+option+i opens and selects Web Inspector, so following up with command+shift+c enables inspection mode.
Web Inspector is open, but user has interfaced with web site and Web Inspector is not selected. Pressing command+shift+c does nothing and pressing command+option+i closes Web Inspector.

Right-click an element, then choose Inspect Element. This opens the developer tools and selects the element in the DOM. This can be scripted with Automator/Keyboard Maestro/etc for activation with a keyboard shortcut if you wish.


How can a Mac mini drive 3440 pixels wide display instead of 1920? I've bought a new 21:9 IPS screen with a native resolution of 3440x1440px. The display has only two inputs: 1x DisplayPort which is connected to a workstation and 1x HDMI port which should go to my Mac Mini (Late 2012).

Unfortunately on the Mac, I only get 1920x1080@60hz in the system settings. Probably because HDMI hasn't enough throughput. My plan was to lower the Hz to 30. But this isn't possible. Only 60Hz and 50Hz are selectable under El Capitan.

The Mac Mini has two different outputs. 1x HDMI and 1x Thunderbolt/Mini-Displayport.

Do I simply need a different hardware adapter to get 3440x1440@30hz on the thunderbolt port using a HDMI<->Mini-Displayport adapter?

Yes. The limitation is in the adapter cable. The one you listed should work well and there are many others now like the cable matters one linked below.

http://www.apple.com/shop/product/HHLY2ZM/B/belkin-4k-mini-displayport-to-hdmi-cable-2-m-65-ft?fnode=8b
http://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-DisplayPort-Thunderbolt-Compatible/dp/B00K0UDJFI


Quote a filename in a script passed to chmod? I'm having trouble quoting a filename that's eventually passed to chmod. The script was originally written for SSH's StrictModes and authorized_keys, but I had to expand it due to a bad UMASK that caused some filesystem discomfort. The script is below, and its producing boatloads of:

chmod: /Users/<user>/Library/Application: No such file or directory
chmod: Support/TextMate/Managed/Bundles/HTML.tmbundle/Macros/Delete: No such file or directory
chmod: whitespace: No such file or directory
chmod: between: No such file or directory
chmod: tags.plist: No such file or directory
...
chmod: /Users/<user>/Library/Caches/com.operasoftware.Opera/Media: No such file or directory
chmod: Cache/index: No such file or directory
cut: stdin: Illegal byte sequence
...

I've tried a few workarounds, but none of them have helped. I tried double quoting like ""$file"", but the issue persisted. I also tried the back ticks (that are discouraged in this case), but the issue persisted.

The closest I got to actually quoting was the dysfunctional "\"""$file""\"". But then chmod complained the filename (with quotes) was not a real file:

$ sudo ~/fix-perms.sh
chmod: "/Users/Shared/.localized": No such file or directory
chmod: "/Users/<user>/.CFUserTextEncoding": No such file or directory
chmod: "/Users/<user>/.lesshst": No such file or directory

How do I quote the filename that comes out of find that gets passed onto chmod? Or how do I get chmod to take the filename as a single argument?

$ cat ~/fix-perms.sh
#!/bin/bash

# Directories
find /Users/* -type d -exec chmod 0700 {} \;
find /Users/Shared -type d -exec chmod 0777 {} \;

# Files
for file in `find /Users/* -type f`;
do
    if [ `file "$file" | cut -d":" -f 2 | grep -i -c executable` -eq 0 ];
    then
        `chmod 0600 "$file"`
    else
        `chmod 0700 "$file"`
    fi
done

for user in `ls -A /Users`;
do
    if [ -e "/Users/$user/.ssh/authorized_keys" ];
    then
        chmod 0600 "/Users/${user}/.ssh/authorized_keys"
    fi
done

fwiw, find [options] -print0, when used in conjunction with (piped to) xargs -0 [options], handles filenames with spaces, without messing with for loops or IFS:

find /Users ! -path '/Users/Shared*' -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} \
    bash -c 'if [[ "$(file -b --mime-type -- "{}")" = "application/x-mach-binary" ]]; then
                 chmod 700 "{}"
             else
                 chmod 600 "{}"
             fi'


Help emailing short videos from iPhoto I uploaded short videos taken w/iPhone 4S (IOS7) to iPhoto on my iMac 10.7.5 "Lion"

I want to email them to my family but iPhoto will NOT allow videos.

Must I put all my videos into iTunes or iMovie? I don't know how to use iMovie.

Any help will be appreciated,

Ingrid Phillips
ingy59@gmail.com

Since you uploaded the video using iPhoto they are in the iPhoto library on your Mac.

To show you where, select the video in iPhoto, now click on the File in menu bar and select show in Finder.

That will show you where the Video is on your disk.

Go to it and right click selecting share by email BUT:

The file is 177 MB (to large to send by email), so you need to upload it to the web (like your Google drive..ect..) a place where you family can access to down load.


How do I delete unlinked folders from iCloud.com How can I remove unlinked folders, such as  "Readdle Documents" in iCloud Drive, left behind after uninstalling the app?

On new iOS, you can use the files app to navigate and delete these files.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206481

Before that app shipped, there wasn't a file browser on iOS and Apple didn't expose that functionality to users.

There is a file browser on OS X, but the "truth" for App Folders is currently stored in iCloud, so you can't delete a folder on OS X and have it stay deleted. The bird daemon will re-download the folder from the cloud if you try. The developer that created those folders will have to implement a clean up routine (similar to how 1Password allows you to instruct the app to delete iCloud data and the program itself removes the data).

If you created the folder or document from OS X, then you can drag that folder to your desktop (or elsewhere) and you'll be notified of the pending
deletion from iCloud.

Pay attention to the kind column to determine if you need the App to delete things or if you are trying to delete a normal file or folder. For more information you can use the command brctl log --wait to see status, minor errors and warnings of the iCloud folder and file syncing from OS X using terminal.app.


BetterTouchTool 3 finger swipes stopped working I tried to configure 3 finger swipes to a new app. after I added them 3 finger swipes stopped working on all apps.

Any idea what should I do? I tried toggling all the prefpane settings restarting BTT and the computer

Thanks

If you are using Yosemite 10.10.2 beta, according to the developer it's due to a bug in OS X.
Here is the tweet from the developer:

https://twitter.com/boastr_net/status/538498628500082689

You can also find a temporary fix there.


Apple Watch - Passbook "location aware" notification keeps appearing Ever since I went to a Starbucks and paid with the Passbook app, I keep getting (what I assume is) a location aware notification to use my Starbucks passbook app.

The trouble is that I keep getting this notification (for this particular store) whether I am actually near it or not! It's getting a bit annoying as I keep thinking I have a notification when I actually haven't. I will clear it, and after 10 minutes or so, it's back again! I am wondering if this is could also having a negative impact on battery life (I haven't noticed this though).

Any ideas on how I can stop it doing this? Thanks.

Go into the Apple Watch companion app on your iPhone, then go to Notifications->Passbook & Apple Pay and check "Custom", and then a "Show Alerts" switch will appear. Switch it off and you shouldn't be able to receive any more notifications for Passbook on your Apple Watch.


How can I tell whether a drive is asleep? Is there an application or command-line utility for Mac OS X to query a hard-disk to see if it is 'asleep' or 'awake' right now? (i.e. as controlled by Energy Saver / pmset disk sleeping preferences). Note that I'm after the current sleep state, not just whether the system will put the disk to sleep when its idle.

I have two hard drives in my MacBook Pro, an SSD for the System and a much larger "regular" mechanical drive for various large files I don't often use.

I'd like the physical drive to be put to sleep when not in use, and in general stay asleep unless I'm actually using it. I'd like this to be automatic, rather than mounting and unmounting the drive on a regular basis.

I've set up Energy Saver to put the disk to sleep, but I can't actually tell when the drive is asleep or awake (even pressing my ear against the laptop its hard to tell what's fan noise vs disk noise), so I don't know if I've appropriately divided my files between the two drives.

Is there some way of querying the drive to see if it's asleep, without actually waking it, so I can monitor this to see if its generally asleep or not?

I guess an alternate, equivalent question is, What is the Mac OS X equivalent of the Linux command:

hdparm -C <device>

Note: It need not be an exact, command-line equivalent. Any means of finding out would be useful.

Some places I've looked so far, without success:

The built-in Disk Utility and System Information applications don't seem to provide any information on sleep/wake state of drives.
pmset -g (built-in command) offers various query functions, but the events seem to be about the system sleep events, not disks.
smartctl -i -n sleep (smartmontools via MacPorts) seems to always think all drives are asleep for me! (would be interesting to hear if this is true for others)

No, there isn't any utility or tool to find out this kind of information.

ps. I'm posting this as an answer, because I have researched this question few months back and I'll be more than happy if someone proves me wrong.

Edit: Seems to be the same conclusion as the developers of SmartMonTools based on their response to this issue, in which they claim the SmartMonTools' output of drives always sleeping is a bug, and have now corrected it to note that Power Mode is not available on Mac OS X / Darwin.


How can I Change the Apple Configuration Signing Certificate? I use the Apple Configurator to craft a Mobile Configuration Profile able to configure some settings such as the LDAP Directory as an example.

When exporting the profile, I check the "Sign" checkbox to sign the profile with the Apple Configurator certificate.

The problem is that when installing this profile on an iOS device, it is flagged "Non verified" and displays an alert when proceeding further.

Q: How do I change this obviously self-signed certificate with a valid one of my own?

No clue in the built-in help, neither in the prefs. Google does not seem to be helpful with this issue...

This is currently how the Apple Configurator works - it doesn't have a provision to load a certificate but instead generates self-signed ones automatically. If I run across a way to hack this, I'll link it here. If you need profiles to arrive with a signed certificate, look into Lion server or another MDM solution.
In practice - you only see the certificate warning when you are sitting in front of your Mac and connecting devices via USB. I'm not sure what additional layer of security a signed certificate can provide in this case. It's not like you are connecting to some remote server when these profiles get installed.


What happened to Exposé? Before Lion I used Exposé daily. Now with Lion it's gone and Mission Control is in its place. Now when I use MC it groups all my open pages instead of showing each page. This is kind of a pain when swapping between applications.  Is there a way I can use a Hot Key or pointer swipe to show ALL of my open pages, spanning different applications?

In OS X 10.7, Exposé has been outmoded by Mission Control. It essentially combines Exposé and Spaces into one set of gestures. How you access it will depend on your computer and its configuration.

MacBooks with glass, buttonless trackpads and desktops with the Magic Trackpad can access it by swiping four fingers up, I believe. Older MacBooks that run Lion can access it with the Exposé button on the keyboard. And, of course, all Macs can be configured to launch Mission Control by moving the cursor to a corner. It can all be accessed via the Mission Control pane in the System Preferences.


Trying to reinstall OS Sierra I've a Mac Mini and I tried to reinstall Sierra yesterday.

I used Command + R at the log screen
Erased my Hard Drive
Click on Reinstall macOS Sierra

But when it was close to finish my internet dropped because of the rain and the reinstall failed. I tried again but nothing happened, so I restarted and now I can't access the recovery screen. My Mac boots directly to a grey folder with a question mark and the Command + R doesn't work.

What can I do now?

Internet recovery does depend on the network - so if your network was what made the first Command+R boot work, you will need to get back to a working network.

Most Macs don't erase the local recovery HD so you wouldn't likely have "shot a gun towards your own foot" if you simply erased the Macintosh HD and you would still be able to boot to recovery locally.

Only if you repartitioned the entire physical volume would you have erased your own recovery.

As to the fix - you could make a recovery drive on another Mac that is working and has an internet connection or take your Mac to a working network and try internet recovery.

How do I boot into Internet Recovery on a iMac?
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202481 - lists the network requirements for internet recovery
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904 - how to reinstall macOS


Using iCloud as file storage and synchronization service I am considering to choose iCloud Drive vs Google Drive to store old music and photos folders present in external drives.
Is it possible to upload large folders to iCloud Drive that are not present in my Macbook SSD, but in an external drive?
What is the best option for this kind of purpose?
May I use both services, each one for a certain task?

You can not selectively sync content explicitly. If you allow it in iCloud settings, it will delete local copies of large files–but this cannot be directly controlled. You cannot sync iCloud drive to an external disk.


How long are Windows Server 2003 Active Directory credentials cached on Snow Leopard? I have a few Macbooks that will be added to our Windows 2003 domain controller. Since these are mobile units, concerns arose of how long they (the machines) will maintain login rights after their last contact with the domain.

Active Directory password policies are enforced, so you are in control of this.  See this resource for more information.


Is a 2014 Mac mini fully compatible with Sierra? I bought a 2014 late Mac mini today from a shop where it was a test device. It has been registered but I got it cheaper. My problem is: it has macOS Sierra installed on it, which runs very slow, and the finder seems to be messed up. It does not show any file content.

Mac mini specifications:

CPU: Dual-core i5 1.4 GHz
RAM: 4 GB
HDD: 500 GB

Are current Mac mini devices shipped with Sierra, or it has been upgraded from El Capitan? It has been registered in 15 May 2017. Is this model fully and sufficiently compatible with macOS Sierra?

I would suggest re-installing the latest macOS that was installed on your Mac, without upgrading to a later version. This can be accomplished by pressing and holding Command-R immediately after pressing the power button to turn on your Mac mini.

Source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904


Why does SwiftKey lose "full access" on a phone reboot? I'm using SwiftKey on my iPhone 5s (iOS 8), and have it set as the default keyboard, with Emoji also enabled. I have removed the default keyboard.

Whenever I reboot my iPhone, SwiftKey seems to lose it's "full access" rights; at least, each keyboard I bring up warns about this, and the keyboard is using the default theme, rather than the one I selected. If I got into the Settings app, and change the SwiftKey full access permissions to off, and then on again, it starts working again.

This is irritating. Is this by design, or is this a bug?

Seems that 8.0.2's update for iOS fixed the problem for me.


Updating iphone 5 with ipsw file I have an iPhone 5 with iOS 6.0.1.
Can I update with an ipsw file to iOS 6.1.2?
I don’t want to have iOS 7.

Or can I only update automatically to iOS 7?

As you can see here that version of iOS ins't signed anymore by Apple. It means that you can't install that version unless you have saved the SHSH blob with softwares like TinyUmbrella. You can save SHSH blobs for certain firmware until it is signed.


Using Automator to move subtitles files Is it possible to use Automator to automatically move a subtitle file .srt to the folder where a video file with the same name is located?

Let's say I have a file ~/Videos/MyVideoFolder/my_video.avi and I download a file ~/Downloads/my_video.srt, I want it to automagically move it to  ~/Videos/MyVideoFolder/.

The subtitles files are identifiable by its extension .srt, but videos can be of any type.

Consider using AppleScript instead of, or in combination with, Automator. Automator does not easily fit into workflows that require conditional branches.

Conditional branches are steps within the workflow that perform an action depending on some state or situation. In this case, if the video file is present in the destination folder.

AppleScript can handle this type of task; as could a perl script or other scripting language.

See Can Automator branch based on the value of a variable or the result of a step? for a script based approach combined with Automator.

Scripted Approach

For tasks like this I prefer scripting languages like perl. Below is a script that should get you started - or that others can build on. It is untested, so treat with care:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use File::Basename; # for fileparse

# WARNING: lack of error checking

# Use: ./move_srt.pl <path to source folder> <path to destination folder>

my $source_path = shift;
my $destination_path = shift;

# Get the video file names - without their 3 or 4 letter suffixes
my @destination_video_files = glob($source_path.'/*');
my %named_video_files = map { $_ => fileparse($_,qr/\..{3,4}/); } @destination_video_files;

# Get a list of srt files
my @source_srt_files = glob($source_path.'/*\.srt');

foreach my $source_srt_file (@source_srt_files) {
    print "[Encountered] $source_srt_file\n";

    # Strip suffix and check if video exists with same name
    my $named_srt_file = fileparse($source_srt_file,qr/\.srt/);
    if (exists($named_video_files{$named_srt_file})) {

        # Move the matching srt File
        system('/bin/mv '.$source_srt_file.' '.$destination_path);

        print "[Matched] $source_srt_file\n";
    } else {
        print "[Unmatched] $source_srt_file\n";
    }
}


Close [X] kills Chrome/Firefox/Safari Tabs I am new to OSX - but I have a behaviour that is not normal I suppose:
When I quit browsers (doesn't matter if Chrome/Firefox/Safari) via the red [X] = hide -> all tabs are lost although I turned windows saving on in browser options. If I use Cmd+Q this does not happen. I already tried the OSX option "Close windows when closing" - but this had no effect...

Yes, this is how it's supposed to work. Closing the window will literally close the window, but quitting the application closes the application, saving the state of the application (if it supports it) including the windows. The red × does not quit the browser—it just closes the window. The browser itself is still open.


Need help to install software on a Mac Mini I have one Macbook Recently I purchased a Mac Mini base model and need to access several CD to install software (for a Dell S2230MX monitor and the wireless router)

As is known by some, the Mac Mini does not come with CD / DVD. I searched the site search how to install software on the Mac Mini but came up blank. As I understand it, but with a Macbook can install programs on the Mac Mini from it's DVD drive.

I do not want to buy a super drive from Apple to fix this. How do I set things up?

You need to share the optical drive from the MacBook. Go to System Preferences -> Sharing -> and turn on "DVD or CD sharing". There's more information in this Apple support article.


Failing Superdrive(?) and Problems with Bootcamp I'm running a 27" iMac from 2010, and I just recently installed Mountain Lion (10.8.5). On Snow Leopard, I had a Windows 7 partition that I had installed from a burned DVD, and everything was working fine. But I had to reformat the HDD to install ML, and so now I'm looking to reinstall a Windows 7 partition.

First off, I think my Superdrive is failing. I insert the DVD I used to install windows before, and it just whirs away for a few seconds and then spits it back out. When I try and re-burn the original .ISO file to a new DVD at max speed, it gives me a "burn failed because of a medium write error". When I try and re-burn it on the slowest speed, it starts successfully, and then when "finishing" it spits the disk out (instead of mounting the image) and says "burn failed because of a medium write error" again.

However, I have an external DVD drive. So when I tried going through the Bootcamp Assistant, it recognized the disc on this drive, and everything seemed to be going fine. It got the partition set up, and restarted the computer as it should. However, when it came time to reboot, I got a black screen with "NO BOOTABLE DEVICE -- INSERT BOOT DISK AND PRESS ANY KEY". Am I right in assuming that this is because the OS doesn't know to scan my external DVD drive upon booting up?

After I manually rebooted, erased the failed Windows partition, and rejoined the empty space to my Mac partition, I tried this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmHxkahbK-g

Because I'm on Mountain Lion, there isn't any native support in Bootcamp for creating a bootable USB Windows install. So as the video suggests, I edited the .plist file, and made a USB bootstick from there. However, when Bootcamp rebooted this time, I still got the same error. Even when I manually rebooted and held down the option key, it didn't recognize my USB stick.

My question is a two-parter:

(1) How can I verify that my Superdrive is failing, and if it is indeed, can I get it replaced? Mind you this computer is almost 6 years old now.

(2) This user had the same problem, except they eventually got their Superdrive to read the disc: Unable to install Windows via Bootcamp without superdrive (mountain lion)

Can anyone else offer some alternative suggestions? I don't have much faith that I'm going to get my DVD to stay in the Superdrive. Is there some other way I can have it recognize my external DVD upon rebooting?

Thanks in advance!

Apple has a service provider lookup at https://locate.apple.com and I would start with an authorized service provider. Those era Macs aren't that hard to open and work on and the cost you might pay might make a DIY repair more likely than the more modern Macs that are designed more for factory trained technicians and have adhesive and very fragile connectors that you typically replace rather than reseat.

As to your failures, one bad drive can bring down the entire storage controller and/or bus, so you might open and just disconnect the superdrive to see if that helps the other storage devices work.

http://ifixit.com might be the best place for a take apart and quick quote on the parts you might need for that repair.


What would happen if I use a power supply with a different wattage than the system is designed for? My girlfriend has a Macbook Air.  The power supply is smaller and lighter than the Pro.  It has an output of 14.85V and 3.05Amps.  My Pro Retina has a power supply that is 20V and 4.25 Amps.

Both supplies have the same Magsafe adapter, so the power supplies seem interchangeable at a physical level, but what would happen if one of us plugs in using each other's adapter?

Could damage result from under-powering my MacBook Pro? (like a brownout)?
Could damage result from over-powering her Air? (like a power surge)?
Will the Macbook Air charge faster with a Pro adapter?

You can safely use the 85W adapter on any Mac, it will only draw as much power as it needs. The 45W adapter from the MacBook Air may just about manage to power your MacBook Pro but it won't charge it. It will not damage your Mac, but you may notice the battery may still deplete when using it.

Here is the information, straight from Apple:


Copying one video from Mac to Iphone without syncing I need to copy a video file from my Macbook to my Iphone 4. The Iphone is not synced to this Macbook but to my home computer, but I'm away from home, and I don't want to sync it to the Macbook because it will wipe everything else in the phone.

I could copy the file from the Macbook to Dropbox and download it to the Iphone from there, but my net connection here is pretty slow. Isn't there any way to copy the file from the Mac to the Iphone without syncing?

I'm using OS X 10.8.2 in the Macbook, iOS 5.1.1 on the Iphone and iTunes 10.6.3.

You can use iTunes to move files directly without a sync over USB.

Attach your iPhone, iPod or iPad with the datacable to your the Mac.
In iTunes, in the top right corner, click on your device. In my case it's an iPad.

Now go the the 'Apps' tab and scroll down to 'File Sharing'

Choose the program you want to sent your file to

Click on the 'Add' bottom in the bottom right

The newer versions of Dropbox app supports syncing from their servers and local WiFi syncing over a LAN so you can experiment with this if you don't want to try iTunes. Apple's documentation can be found here. There are also third party tools that sync files, but for one file it's hard to justify downloading anything and just use iTunes for the task.


Changes in terminal are not displayed in finder and other programs I am a new Mac user.

Recently I've noticed that the changes that I make in terminal, e.g. moving files, creating new ones and removing are not displayed in finder and other softwares - its like I am connected to a remote system.

Can someone help me?
Thanks

Edit: The problem has been solved. This was related to the wrong username in my terminal: for some reason it changed. After I set it to my local username everythin became normal.

When these weird things happen I noticed that I was logged in as another user: in my terminal user name was different. The way I solved is by executing exit and opening new tab.

Thanks


Can I use other brand laptop chargers instead of my macbook pro adapter? I recently watched a video on Youtube which claims you may charge your Mac through an adjustable power supply, by setting its output voltage on 18.5 and connecting your MacBook adapter’s wire (the one connected to the MagSafe connector) to the power supply. The circuitry at the top of the MagSafe connector determines how much power your mac is going to draw from the power supply, so even if the power supply supplies more voltage and/or amperage, your mac would not be allowed to draw more than the required power from the power supply.

Now, I just want to know your ideas on this video and if you consider it safe? Does higher voltage, say, 20 v. hurt the chip located at the MagSafe connector or my MacBook’s logic board? And based on all this, may I use a different adaptor instead of my original mackbook MagSafe charger? An adapter like the following HP charger:

HP PPP016H 18.5V 6.5A Laptop Charger

The link to the YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3w8nwyrdYw

Let's start off by addressing the video you linked to....
It's a video by Louis Rossman of The Rossman Group the owner of a laptop repair facility that specializes in component level repair (repairing logic boards).  In it, he explains why he uses a bench top power supply to deliver exactly 18.5V; so he can monitor the amperage draw.  Suffice to say, it's not a "wall wart" he is using.
The MagSafe Adapter.
The MagSafe power adapter can supply voltages from 14.5V to 20VDC.  However, it's not the "brick" that determines if it can charge or not, it's the actual MagSafe adapter that actually determines whether or not it will interface with your Mac.  The brick just supplies the power.
The connector end is what communicates with your laptop and tells the brick how much power to supply.  Basically, the way it works is that it that it identifies the power supply as having so much capacity (wattage).  If it's enough, it will charge/power the laptop.  If not, it won't accept the voltage.
This is why you could use a 90W adapter on a Mac that came with a 40W but couldn't use a 40W adapter on a Mac that needed a 90W.  This is true with all other power supplies except Apple added some logic into their connector.
Is it safe to Use a 3rd party power supply?
If you know what you're doing, then yes, it is.
Will the 18.5V, 6.5A charger work?
It should because it's supplying 120 watts of power (18.5V * 6.5A = 120W; more than enough to satisfy any Mac.
TL;DR
Yes, based on the info you supplied that power adapter will work.  Whether it's safe or not depends on your skills with DC power supplies and electrical circuits.


How to hide FaceTime audio macOS High Sierra Version 10.13 Is it possible to hide FaceTime audio?

It certainly was possible to hide or move the window in earlier macOS versions but with macOS High Sierra I can't select the window nor can I hide it with shortcuts.

The old version:

The position in the top left corner is very annoying and sometimes I have to resize windows to click on something (for example Safari buttons).

This seems like a bug.

Also other people had this kind of question too: Apple discussion

I have found three temporary workarounds (the last one is the best). All of them force quit the process FaceTimeNotificationCenterService:

Open Activity Monitor and search for FaceTime. Then select FaceTimeNotificationCenterService, press the red circled button and choose Force Quit.

Open Terminal and type killall -kill FaceTimeNotificationCenterService then press return (⮐)

With this command you essentially Force Quit the process. (For more information type man killall; -kill sends the signal kill instead of the default signal term to the process)
For a more permanent solution you start Automator make a new Application. Here you go to Utilities and drag Run Shell Script to your workflow. Write killall -kill FaceTimeNotificationCenterService in the text field and you can save the document.

As a shortcut you can place this Application in your dock so it needs only single click to activate.


Option to use AirPort Express with 1 TB harddrive for Dropbox equivalent I have an AirPort Express with a 1 TB harddrive, obviously this airport is connected to the internet and in the next month our house will be conected to the optic fibre network giving us 200 megabits/seconds connection speed. Now to me this looks like a great opertunity to store some fairly large files on a shared disk.

One problem is that the AirPort Express also functions as the backup device, so ideally we would only split of 100 GB so as to allow the other 900 GB to continue functioning as a Time Machine. Idealy this would be approachable from both inside and outside the network (with passwords!) so that I can connect to it from a university as well as at home.

Additionally the network has the following operating systems connected to it that would ideally also be able to connect to the harddrive: OS X Yosemite, Ubuntu 14.04, Windows 7 and probably in the near future a Linux Mint installation.

You can surely do this but please not that doing so will void your Apple warranty with the Airport Extreme.

What you need to do is:

Pull the HDD out of the Time Capsule (take it apart)
Install the HDD in an enclosure or caddy
Connect the enclosure to your Mac
Use Disk Utility to create a 100GB partition
Reinstall the HDD in your Airport Extreme and you are good to go!

When you partition the drive anything stored on it should not be affected since it is only resizing the current partition.


Making Screen Saver Images full screen I set up the screen saver to a folder containing some of my photos.

How do I get the screen saver in Mavericks to display them full screen?

Since the Classic mode might not show full screen (depending on original size)

I would use the:

Ken Burns Option in the settings.

Go to System Preferences → Desktop & Screen Saver and choose Ken Burns mode.

There is some animation going in that mode but it is rather pleasing.


Native OSX Dictionary Is there a native dictionary on OSX?

I would like to be able to click on a word (in any open window), and get its meaning in a quick popup windows.

Mouse over a word and tap the trackpad with three fingers, or enable the Dictionary service in System Preferences to assign a keyboard shortcut (by default, it's ⌃⌘D).


Unlock GSM iPhone 4? Can I unlock a GSM iPhone 4 so that I can use a CDMA SIM card and make calls using the CDMA card?

Short answer is no...    the GSM phones cannot work on the CDMA networks, even when changing SIM cards.   The hardware is actually slightly different.

If you have a GSM iPhone, you'll only be able to unlock it and move it between cell companies using GSM.

This article gives some additional info on the topic...


Is there any way to detect suddenly closed tabs and restore them on iOS Safari? Today I found out that many of opened tabs on my iPad Safari are gone. Yesterday there were 50+ tabs on Safari but for some reasons now it is 14.
It is very frustrating so I tried to restore the data from my yesterday’s backup, but found that on iOS I can only backup from the most recent backup, which happened in the morning.
So I could not restore the backup from yesterday’s, but now I don’t know there is any way to restore the opened tabs, or at least detect which pages they are in order to manually open them again one by one. Is there any way to restore them?

Depending on how long ago they were closed, you might be able to see them in a list an open them (one by one).

Tap the lower right button to view the list of tabs open.
Tap and hold the plus button to show recently closed tabs.

This does not work for private tabs.


Numbers auto date on template only Is it possible to use the =today() function (or something else) to insert the current date but then not update each time the file is opened?

I want to create a numbers template for my invoices. I'd like it to auto fill invoice date and date due then, when I save the document, store the values, not the function.

Go to Insert > Date & Time.

Double-click the date and format to taste. Make sure "Automatically update on open" isn't ticked.


How to find out frame rate (FPS) of an AVI video on OS X? Pretty straightforward question: How can I find out FPS of a video file on Mac OS X?

(QuickTime does not open the video because of not installed codec; but VLC does, though.)

With a recent version of VLC, go to the "Window" menu and choose "Media Information" (or press ⌘ I). If you have more than one video in your playlist, make sure the desired one is selected.

Switch to the "Codec Details" tab, then click to expand the details for each stream until you find the video stream. The frame rate is listed there.

The screenshot below comes from VLC 2.0:


ipad & iphone have been compromised Please help me. Someone has supposedly used a clean up app on my iPhone & iPad.
Spoke with Google & they said I need to talk with Apple. Of course with the Holiday that is impossible. I found it going into my contacts. My name was in my contact list. Clicked on it & found my email accounts & Twitter. He has also got
in my calender & has revised it. There was a note that said use my photo & name for a Unified card. Looked online but not specific on exactly  what a Unified is & how the hell did he do it.any advice ASAP...would be a blessing. Just bought a new laptop & has u can see, not to savey with it yet.

Sincerley,
Karen

Someone has supposedly used a clean up app on my iPhone & iPad.

That would be you. Where did you install the app from? Is your phone jailbroken with strange apps installed from random websites?

  My name was in my contact list. Clicked on it & found my email accounts & Twitter.

That's normal. you are supposed to have a record in Contacts that identifies you.

It is highly unlikely that your phone has been compromised. You may remember recently that the FBI had some difficulty getting into one. Malware is basically non-existant on the iPhone platform.

However, it is quite likely that your iCloud account has been compromised if you used poor passwords ("Karen1234", "P@ssw0rd" and so on.)

  He has been linking all my accounts, apps, etc.

Who is "He"? A google technician won't do that. Someone pretending to be a google technician might try in order to get access to your account.

Big question: have you told your account password to anyone for any reason? If yes, change it now. And don't do that again.


How to resolve Microsoft Excel for Max OS X Yosemite error "Cannot use object linking and embedding"? What is the best way to resolve Microsoft Excel for Mac OS X Yosemite error  "Cannot use object linking and embedding"?

Here is an effective method detailed within the Microsoft Community Forum:

Open Finder and search for the following file: com.microsoft.Office365.plist.
Delete aforementioned file.
Issue resolved.


Import wav files to iPhone using SD card reader I have the below SD card reader that imports photos and videos to iOS photos app. Is it possible to import .wav files onto my iPhone using the Apple lightning port SD card reader?

No, you can only transfer certain images and videos.  This adapter will not transfer documents or audio files.

You could put those audio files on Dropbox or a network drive and then access them with the iPhone.  You should be able to transfer the wav's that way.


iCloud for Windows can't upgrade, uninstall, or repair. How can I proceed? Lately Apple Software Update has been popping up with a recommended upgrade to iCloud 5.0. (I am currently on 4.1.1.53, on Windows 10 with the Fall Update).

Each time I attempt to upgrade, the upgrade fails.

I tried uninstalling the application using the uninstall utility, but that failed as well.

Finally, I tried to "Repair" the program, but that did not work either.

Any other suggestions? At this point I just want iCloud off Windows for good.

Try to remove manually all the file in:

c:\program files x86\common files\apple\internet services
or
c:\program files\common files\apple\internet services

Then, via https://discussions.apple.com/message/29281327#29281327 -

Press Win + R (the "Run" prompt should appear)
Type "regedit" (for the registry editor) & press enter.
Make a registry backup first: press File > Export and save current state of registry
Find and delete all folders containing "icloud"

Finally, you should be able to restart the computer and download iCloud from the Apple Web Site

iCloud for Windows

Reinstall the program.


Run OS X Yosemite inside OS X Yosemite I have a MacBook Pro and I am looking for a way to run another OS X Yosemite inside it.

I tried Virtual Box, and installed OS X, but it doesn't support guest additions for OS X guests. It keeps the display at 1024x768 and the mouse moves very slowly.

What is the best way to run OS X inside another OS X? Note that I have a legal OS X and I am not talking about Hackintosh!

Both Parallels Desktop 10 and VMWare fusion support virtualising Yosemite. Both are better than Virtual Box.

In Parallels you can create a virtual machine with Yosemite immediately by using the recovery partition.


Can I change input source per physical keyboard? Possible Duplicate:
  Internal keyboard QWERTY; External Keyboard Dvorak

I want to alter my keyboard layout per keyboard, so my MacBook's keyboard is Dvorak and a bluetooth keyboard is QWERTY. How can this be accomplished? I can find a setting for changing modifier keys per physical keyboard, but not layouts.

Not possible as far as I know.  You have to switch the layout using a keyboard shortcut (normally Apple/command + space) or the Input Menu on the screen.


How can I change the lock screen background image in Lion 10.7.4? With Lion, I know that, in order to change the lock screen background image, I have to change

/System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Versions/C/Resources/NSTexturedFullScreenBackgroundColor.png

In particular, I used an image with the same size as the resolution of my MacBook screen (1440x900).

So far so good, but after the update to Lion 10.7.4, the lock screen background switched back to the gray texture. I thought that the upgrade overwrote my custom image, but it didn't. I tried overwriting my image, but again, nothing changed.
Now I'm stuck with that dull texture. Can someone help me please?

Note: Please note that I'm not trying to change the login screen background, there are plenty of answers related to that problem.

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/LoginUIKit.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/Log inUICore.framework/Versions/A/Resources/appleLinen.png

This is the new location to change the login screen wallpaper but im still figuring out how to put it to the fullscreen.


PHP not locating mcrypt while using MAMP I'm using MAMP on a MAC. And in the php info page on MAMP, it says that mcrypt is enabled. However, when I run "php -m" on the terminal, I can't find mcrypt between the php modules.

Any advice??

I don't think MAMP relies on the php package installed in Terminal (or in OS X for that matter). MAMP uses it's own php version located at /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.5.3

The modules are in the folder I noted above in a subfolder called /modules. You would have to manually get mcrypt in the modules folder for MAMP to work with mcrypt.


How to do Remote App Installs from iTunes in Macbook to iPhone After the iTunes version 12.7 it seems impossible to install an app from iTunes and sync it to the iPhone: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/12/16298988/apple-itunes-desktop-update-removes-app-store

However, there still exists the option in settings of iOS 9.3.5 on my iPhone 4s. Is it redundant?

Is there any way at all to install an app in my iPhone from my MacBook Air? From web browser, iTunes or otherwise?

You can browse the App Store on your Mac/Windows PC and install apps on your iOS devices by installing iTunes 12.6.3 with App Store support. More information and download links are available in the Apple Support article, Deploy apps in a business environment with iTunes.

As far as the options shown in the screenshot are concerned, it enables automatic installation of apps purchased on other devices which are logged into with the same Apple ID as this device.

To further clarify, using the mentioned setting enabled, your iPhone will only download any new apps purchased either on any other iOS device linked with the same Apple ID or Mac/PC with iTunes 12.6.3 or older installed and logged in with the same Apple ID. It can't be used to install any previously purchased app not already installed on your iPhone.

Installing iTunes 12.6.3 is the only resort for the time being if you wish to manually sync apps from your iTunes library.


iTunes album cover is not the correct cover for that album My iTunes shows the wrong cover image for a handful of albums. How can I correct this?

You can look for covers yourself (i.e. on Amazon or w/ Google Image Search) and copy & paste them in the "Get Info" dialog (select all songs of an album, press Cmd-I, paste the image into the "Artwork" area).

There are tools like CoverScout which automate these tasks which is feasible if you have a large music library w/ lots of broken covers.


Xcode saying Network Extension capability is not enabled when it is I have been having a lot of issues for the last two weeks trying to sign and distribute a 3rd party MacOS app. I am unable to sign an app with Xcode properly because Xcode is saying that I do not have the Network Extension entitlement when I have it enabled both in Xcode and in the Apple Developer portal.

I am not a paid Apple Developer, but I am part of a team and I have the correct keys from the creator of the team (who is a paid developer). I am able to sign other apps and distribute them using the codesign tool but as soon as I try to sign the app with entitlements I run into issues.

Sending the app to other people results in it exiting with a Killed 9 or a SIGTERM which I assume is indicating that there is something going wrong in the signing.

This is the error I am getting when selecting the provisioning profile that I created in the developer portal

In Xcode I have it enabled though

And it is also enabled in the developer portal

Even with that I am getting this issue when attempting to sign it with that provisioning profile

So I am very confused. I am using the correct bundle ID, I have set everything up correctly as far as I can tell and I am still unable to sign and distribute this application. I am sure that there is something simple that I am missing here but I have no idea what that might be.

For anyone wanting to use Network Extensions in their macOS app:

Developer ID provisioning profiles actually don't support the Network Extensions entitlement. Development and App Store provisioning profiles on the other hand do support it. It's not well described in Xcode or the developer site (which show it as enabled). It's not until attempting to distribute an archive with the Developer ID provisioning profile that you will see that it is not included, or by running security cms -D -I Developer_ID.provisionprofile.

See question #8 in this Apple developer forums post: https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/67613


How to get screen to display a notification or indicator when Caps Lock is turned on or toggled? I'm on OS X Mountain Lion and would like to know how to do this.  I know the button has a light to indicate, but I'd like have and indication on the screen.

CapSee Notifies You When Caps Lock Is On!

The little app shows you huge icon when caps in on!


Launch "App Shortcuts" from outside of app By default OSX gives you the ability to create 'App Shortcuts' and this works great however it appears you need to have the app open in order for the shortcut to work, is there any way to create an 'App Shortcut' or something that accomplishes the same thing but is able to start from outside the app itself.
Example
I create an 'App Shortcut' for App 1, but I want to be able to execute that shortcut within another app let's say Google Chrome or some other app.
Thanks in advance.
Reference: System Preferences -> Keyboard -> App Shortcuts (this is what I'm referring to).

This is not possible. One of the intended purposes of these sorts of shortcuts is to let you make a shortcut that takes priority over a "global shortcut" that uses the same keyboard input. What you are asking for is to make a shortcut that's intended to circumvent global shortcuts in to a global shortcut - a clear contradiction.