Sort photo collection from iphone into folders by year, month and city/region I'm using Photostream to wirelessly sync the photos on my iPhone to my computer. In time my photo collection grew bigger and bigger and since Photostream just dumps everything into one folder I'm looking for a tool that would automatically sort the entire collection into folders using this format:

YYYY-MM-GEOLOCATION

example:

2013-05-Rome

where GEOLOCATION is either the city or the region where the photo was taken. this can be gathered from the GPS information in the EXIF data of each image (just like the Places function in the Photos app on iPhone)

I'm looking for a tool that would:

Create a folder structure as described above
Move photos to their respective folders based on date and Geo-location information

I have found AmoK Exif Sorter but it can't interpret the GPS information in the photos. Do you know a tool that can help me do that.

Answer #1  Requires script writting, exiftool, and the creation of a places database.

A partial answer would use a script and exif tool.

Exiftool can read both the exif and IPTC as well as most other metadata in an image.  Geolocation is part of the data it can read.

So if your photostream is in folder ~/PhotoStream  (I've no idea where you keep it.)

foreach photo in ~/Photostream {
  (year,month,lat,long) = exiftool {bunch of flags} photo
  foreach placename in ~/Placenames {
    # Place name has lat, long, name, radius
    # Calculate angular distance from present lat/long to each placename
    distance = sqrt((picture_lat - place_lat)^2 + (picture_long - place_long)^2)
    if (distance < place_radius) { # found one!
      if not exists directory year-month-placename {mkdir MyPics/year-month-placename
      move file year-month-placename
    }
}

The problem with general sorting for geographical data is that it is intrinsically two dimensional.  If you sort just by lat, you end up with New York City being adjacent to Rome.

The script above while not enormously difficult will take some time to get working right, mostly due to the place names.

Answer #2 Sort into folders by date, and add places manually.

I would suggest that unless your place names are fine enough grained that they change multiple times in a day.  (E.g. you have separate entries for your hotel, the temples, the coliseum...) that doing a first bin by date, then rename the resulting folders manually.

I recently went through my aperture file (15000 images) and essentially did this by hand.  Few of these pics have geolocation info.

A:  Renamed each image in the format yyyy-mm-dd hh-mm-ss.  Aperture can do this automatically.

B:  Make a batch of year folders. Made a project in each one called 'unsorted'

c:  Manually moved each year's pix into year folders/unsorted.

d: Make a batch of month projects in each year folder.

e: Move the pix from unsorted into appropriate month folder.

f: In some cases I would make a special project yyyy-mm-project_name where I had a large number of photos dealing with a single topic.

This didn't take as long as it sounds.

Much longer was going through each folder and applying keywords.  Well worth doing.


What is the benefit of purchasing a Mac formatted External Hard Drive? I have seen in shops that you can buy external Hard drives in both Windows and Mac format.

I was under the impression that an external Hard drive will work across both platforms, however having seen this and the fact that the Mac formatted one was £20 ($32) more expensive for the same capacity. I wanted to know what the difference is and what the benefits of a pre-formatted hard drive were.

It's probably no different hardware-wise, just already formatted for the Mac. There's a whole pile of people who still think Macs need special everything, so the companies take advantage of that to fleece them out of an extra £20.

In general, you don't need special Mac-only hardware stuff anymore. Hard drives, RAM, peripherals, etc. are all fairly generally universally compatible; even the stuff that's generally seen as "Mac" (i.e., FireWire and now Thunderbolt) is Windows- and Linux-compatible and will generally work fine.

EDIT: I guess I can think of one good reason to buy a pre-formatted "Mac" drive: if the user is not someone who is comfortable formatting disks. On the other hand, Disk Utility is sufficiently straightforward I've walked my parents through formatting drives a couple of times over the phone, so I wouldn't waste the money.


How to make MacVim remember its zoom level Every time I open the MacVim, the font size of its contents are just too small to read. So I have to zoom in (with Command + +) several time before editing stuff.

The problem is it doesn't remember its zoom level when next time I open the MacVim, I have to do the zoom in actions again...

Any helps are welcome!

mitnk

To make the settings permanent try adding something like the following lines to your .vimrc file. Those lines below will tell MacVim to set the font and the fontsize you would like to use by default. For more information do :help guifont from within a normal mode buffer in MacVim.

"Set the guifont
:set guifont=Menlo:h12


Can I charge an iPad from a 14 volt cigarette lighter socket? I have a small airplane which provides 14V (volts) through a cigarette lighter socket. Can I use this to charge an iPad?

Yes, but you have to check the input range of the adapter.

DC voltages in a car can vary between 10V (at rest) and 16V (charging).   Most USB chargers you buy can handle this variance.

However, there are some applications where the voltage can be (much) higher like aviation, trucking, and marine where the voltages can reach up to 24 volts.

This is where paying attention to the specifications and buying high quality is very important. Here are two high quality ones that I personally use

Scosche Dual ReVolt - Up to 16V
Anker PowerDrive Speed 2 Ports - Up to 24V

I use the Scoshe mostly because it's low profile and I can close the ash tray door with it still plugged in (though it always gets "appropriated" by someone else).


Where are Time Machine local backups/snapshots stored? Out of curiosity, I'm wondering where in the file system Time Machine stores its local backups/snapshots.

Under the new file system in High Sierra (Apple File System (APFS)), this it is different.  You can see what is considered the "local backups" via command line like this:

sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

Ones that are listed as "(dateless)" will cause all sorts of problems:

com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-23-090037 (dataless)

so you can delete any backup by command line like this (deletes the one listed above, note only date used in reference):

sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2017-12-23-090037

Note that in my latest problem with macOS, the "bird" process was eating up egregious amounts of CPU. It was suggested that dumping backups that were damaged (damaged, who knew?) would help.


Just Upgraded to Mojave and started getting the Out of Application Memory box I have just migrated to Mojave and with no applications open, except whatever runs in the background, I receive the Out of Application Memory panel.  The only app it shows as running is Finder.  I am running on a Mac Mini with 815 Gbytes available on my system drive. I did not have this error before upgrading to Mojave.

You are NOT out of memory !

That notification is false.

It shows you are using 3.1GB out of 8GB, so you have 5GB free Memory.

So your hardware is fine.

That must be a bug in Mojave, not sure which one. For some reason the Applications are reporting wrong Memory usage, even so the Activity monitor does not show that.

You also have a lot 3D party apps running. Some might not be Mojave compatible, so for now Just turn them all off, Presto Scan...and others.

It is also advised to completely remove MacKeeper, since it has been reported as Malware, and Mac OS X is perfectly safe without it.

Possible fix:

Go to Dropbox icon > Cog wheel at the bottom left > Preferences Disable "Enable Finder Integration"


Which RAM will be better? Cheers! Which RAM will be better for my iMac 27" mid 2010 with i7 2.93GHz and MacOS 10.9.5:

this, this or ADATA DDR3 SO-DIMM 8GB 1333? Also I have saw Kignston KVR1333D3S9/8G but according to it data-sheet it works with 677MHz instead of 1333MHz (as I understood my iMac supports up to 32GB 1333 MHz PC3-10600 DDR3 SO-DIMMs with 204-pin). Which one is better?

Actually I want to get 20GB of RAM - 8GBx2 new plates + 2GBx2 of stock memory.

Anything that matches the required spec should work. I've used Corsair and Kingston RAM without issue, and branding seems to be a somewhat personal preference. Most of the time, I get my Mac RAM here though and have never had issue.

Your aspiration for 20GB will be fine in your poroposed config.


Unable to share screen over iChat I've been trying to set up iChat screen sharing between an iBook G4 and my MacBook (both running the latest Leopard) for some time now without success. iChat has been configured on both computers with Jabber connecting to GChat (both accounts are GMail addresses). I've been able to get it to work when both computers were on the same network, but I get this message when I try to connect over the Internet:

Thanks, iChat. That's a lot of help. I do get this line in Console.app if it helps any:

No iChat delegate set for vcc:initiateConferenceCompletedForParty:

Googling for this phrase yields only a handful of posts on the Apple forums, none of which are very helpful in addressing this problem. Is this a firewall/router issue? Is there a workaround?

Oh, and I do know that Skype now supports screen sharing on Macs, and I'm going to attempt to use it as soon as I can talk my grandmother through installing it (no easy feat, so I'd much rather have a fix for iChat)

Another thing to try is to use Screen Sharing directly. This means:

Turn on Screen Sharing from the Sharing preferences
If the computers aren't on the same network, set up port forwarding for port 5900
Open Screen Sharing from /System/Library/CoreServices/, type in the IP address of the other machine and connect.


How to disable thumbnails icon preview only for video files in Finder? I hate my finder opening slow because of loading all those icons for video files. While I still want thumbnails for PDFs, documents, music, I don't want previews for video files because they're useless anyway (most of them are simply black but take time to load).

I managed to do it on previous OS X versions but on my Mountain Lion I can not locate /System/Library/Frameworks/QuickLook.framework/Resources/Generators/ folder where I was able to delete generator for video files in the past.

How to turn video icons preview thumbnails off?

The Mountain Lion default QuickLook generators can be found in the folder /System/Library/QuickLook/ .


Windows Explorer stopped working after connecting external display (monitor) to My Apple Mac Book Air 2011 Earlier i was using Window 7 32 bit (bootcamp), and i have replaced my new SSD and load the windows 7 64 bit. After installing windows 7 64 bit, i was facing display driver issue due to incompatible drivers automatically loaded after running bootcamp, and intel HD graphic 4000 (version 10.18.10.5129)  installed. i restarted by laptop, and after restarting black screen was coming, so i copied the display driver (Intel HD graphic 4000 version 8.15.10.2778) from my 32 bit SSD and installed the driver. After installing display driver version 8.15.10.2778, i can boot in windows 7 bootcamp and also it is working fine but when i connect external display (monitor) via thunder bolt to VGA port then it is showing windows explorer stopped working and i have to restart the windows explorer then i can see the external display on my monitor. This error coming each time, i connect external display with my Mac.
Kindly help to resolve this issue.

Malfunctioning cables, hubs and displays can cause good hardware to freeze, no matter which OS you choose. I would try running the Mac for several days without any accessories to validate it’s a cable or accessory causing the freeze.
Perhaps someone has got better troubleshooting expertise on windows than I and can answer thusly, but my steps above are often needed on troubleshooting macOS as well since they are so effective and easy to perform.


Is there any way to ignore a heat sensor on a macbook pro? I recently replaced the ribbon cable which connects the top case assembly on my macbook pro 4,1 (early 2008).  My keyboard is now working but unfortunately the fans are reving up to 6000 rpms and staying there.  after a visit to the apple store i've discovered it's due to a faulty palm rest heat sensor.

surprisingly, the genius at apple failed to inform me that this particular heat sensor is actually part of the cable i replaced.

now i could go buy another cable, but seeing as these run $80 a pop i thought wouldn't it be nifty if i could tell my mac to simply ignore the faulty sensor and just rely on the 13 others which are working fine.

presumably this is a function of the SMC, but can it be changed?

as a temporary workaround, i found a nifty little terminal utility which allows me to set a slower fan speed.  obviously this is less than ideal for a variety of reasons, but it does prove that user interaction with the SMC isn't impossible.

any ideas?

I have the same problem.  I used this program.  You can set which sensor (only one as far as I can tell) to tip the fan to higher speeds.  Best solution I could find, but if one of your other chips overheats, you might be out of luck.

http://www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control?ref=fancontrol_mac


Avoiding electrical shocks/statics I bought a MacBook Pro mid-2012 non-retina from the previous owner.

Some parts of my MacBook like the top-left most area of the touch pad will get me electric shocks when I touch it.

At my living room downstairs, it kind of makes we want to drop my macbook. If feels like someone flicks my finger.

At my room upstairs, it feels like being bitten by an ant or something small with sharp appendages.

What do you guys do to prevent this?

A friend suggests buying original power adapter but I'm unsure how to verify if my current adapter is original.

I had a similar problem where my Mac Mini Late 2011 was giving me vibrations when I run my fingers over the aluminum part of the body - also known as "humming current". This type of current is very feeble and does not result in any shock to the body or cause any harm to the hardware components. But it is annoying. I zero-ed in on the faulty grounding of the electrical outlet. I had to run an extra grounding wire to discharge extra / spiked voltage from my power outlet into the fan loop made of iron in my ceiling. After that the problem is solved.


Transferring a Clash Royale account with the removal of Game Center So I heard that recently Apple has decided to remove the standalone app for game center and replace it with all this gimmicky stuff. I was wondering how am I supposed to transfer my clash royale account to a new device without game center?

You can still login into Game Center inside the Settings. On a new device you login into Game Center with the same Apple ID as your old device and your done.

So all the synchronization of high scores, progress and achievements still works. Apple decided to focus on the background technology for Game developers instead of the stand alone app.


Installing macOS on a new HDD from USB drive stuck on grey screen with Stop sign Here is the sequence of events :

I have a 15" MacBook Pro (mid 2012 IIRC 2009). Its HDD crashed.
I replaced the HDD with another Toshiba HDD from my Dell laptop (which was running Windows 7). The Apple service center guys did it for me.
I have another 13" MacBook Pro (Early 2015) which is running El Capitan
On this second MacBook Pro, I created a bootable installer for macOS Sierra on an 8GB USB drive as per the steps here : https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT201372
Inserted the USB drive into the old MacBook Pro, started it up, held down the Alt (Option) key.
I am shown HDD and USB drive as options for boot disk. Touchpad doesn't work, only keyboard works. I choose USB using right arrow key and hit return.
After a couple of seconds screen turns grey with the stop (Forbidden) symbol at the center. A minute or so later system shuts down.
I try to boot multiple times, same result.
I reset PRAM (Cmd + Alt (Option) + p + r), but no difference.
Cmd + R at system startup to get into Recovery Mode did not work. (I guess this requires a OS to be installed)

What am I doing wrong? Any help in getting macOS installed on the replaced HDD is greatly appreciated.

Few things to note :

The old MacBook on which I am trying to install macOS sierra is a HDD machine, which the new MacBook on which I downloaded the OS and created the bootable installer is a SSD machine.
The replaced HDD put in the old MacBook is good and functional because just before being put in, I attached it to my new MacBook using an HDD adapter and copied contents.
I do not need the data on the HDD. It can be wiped clean before installing macOS Sierra.
The last OS version run by the old MacBook Pro is Mavericks (10.9). I am absolutely fine installing a version of OS X as old as Mavericks. I am not particular about macOS Sierra itself. I just need to know where I can get older versions.

Please let me know if any more information is needed to suggest a solution.

Answer to this question talks about using Disk Utility from the USB drive. How do I do that?

Update 2 :

I was able to boot the new MBP using the USB drive. It went all they till I was shown the options to install or start disk utility, etc. So Thumbdrive is all good, the new HDD is also good. So is it the case that since the installation USB drive was created on a newer MBP, the bootable part was created in such a way that the old MBP is not able to understand. Have there been changes in the boot table across Macs? UEFI v/s BIOS or EFI v/s MBR - anything like that?

Update 1 : Adding photos showing the screen state

Windows is trying to bootup. So HDD is good

USB drive is appearing as a boot option. So drive is properly formatted?

It stops at this point on selecting USB drive

My old MacBook Pro is a mid 2009 model which is not supported by macOS Sierra.  - Only MBPs Mid 2010 and later are supported.

I created an bootable USB disk from El Capitan (which I re-downloaded from "My Purchases" in AppStore) and that is booting up on my old MBP. Installing it now.


iPad LTE edition and SIM from smartphone I am thinking if it is possible to use my phone's SIM card in iPad's SIM slot?
This because I need the 4G just only very few times, so when it will be necessary to use it, I will move the SIM from my smart-phone to the iPad.
It is possible this scenario?

Yes, this should work fine. I don't know if I have to answer any longer, but you have to check whether your device has a simlock by a provider. Else you should be free to do this.

You could also use personal hotspot.


How do you open a specific folder in Finder without applescript? Background
I've replaced Finder as the default folder-opening app by editing ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist:
<snip>
{
    LSHandlerContentType = "public.folder";
    LSHandlerPreferredVersions = {
        LSHandlerRoleAll = "-";
    };
    LSHandlerRoleAll = "org.yanex.marta";
},
<snip>

So now when I type open . or similar in the terminal, it opens the directory in Marta instead. That's good, I want that.
Issue
There's only one exception where I want to use Finder, and that's when opening the /Applications folder, since Marta is unable to delete stuff from /Applications.
I know this can be done with applescript, but applescripts have a few seconds' delay before they run, which I'm hoping to eliminate by using bash instead.
The purpose of all this is to have a script which can be called from raycast.
So far I've tried:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app /Applications # requires sudo

open /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app --args /Applications # just opens Finder but doesn't open the folder

Testing in both macOS Catalina and macOS Big Sur, the following command in Terminal opens a Finder window to /Applications:
open -a Finder /Applications


Applescript for moving recently added files (not created or modified) to another folder? I would like to get a recent downloaded pdf file ( !: it corresponds to the Finder sort method Date Added, not Date Created nor Date Modified) and either just moving to one another folder (if using plain AppleScript) or ask the user to perform this action (if using FolderActions).

So the idea is to move some new downloaded pdf files to another location.

Is it possible with either AppleScript or with FolderActions or anyhow? Are there any examples for that?

The answer depends on what version of OSX you are running.

Snow Leopard doesn't appear to store Date Added or Creation Date of files.

$ stat -x testfile
  File: "testfile"
  Size: 7            FileType: Regular File
  Mode: (0644/-rw-r--r--)         Uid: (  501/ vic)  Gid: (   20/   staff)
Device: 14,2   Inode: 12130091    Links: 1
Access: Mon May  5 21:49:18 2014
Modify: Mon May  5 21:49:15 2014
Change: Mon May  5 21:49:15 2014

For Lion and later, there are a couple of ways that Google revealed:

Try the following code  taken from

https://discussions.apple.com/message/23974953#23974953

tell application "Finder"
    set latestFile to item 1 of (sort (get files of (path to downloads folder)) by creation date) as alias
    set fileName to latestFile's name
    log "Created/Added Date: " & (get creation date of latestFile)
end tell

Alternatively have a look at the code that uses the mdls command line tool as shown here

https://secure.macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=37910

Unfortunately I am running Snow Leopard and cannot test the above.


Applescript / Javascript : select menu I'm filling a webpage using Applescript / Javascript,

one of them is a dropdown menu, which I fill with this code :

document.querySelector('select#reasonPopUpButton').value = '18';

the issue is the index change time to time.

Can I select the good menu using the title instead of the index?

Here what I tried so far :

tell application "Safari"
    do JavaScript "document.querySelector('select#reasonPopUpButton').value = 'Unauthorized purchase';" in current tab of window 1

end tell

You can filter the list of options for one with the text you're looking for, then select that one. This can be achieved with the following JavaScript:

Array.from(document.querySelector('select#reasonPopUpButton').children)
  .find(el => el.textContent == "Unauthorized purchase")
  .selected = true;


Rebuild icudt51l.dat file? What's the best way to rebuild the icudt51l.dat file in /usr/share/icu/? ICU (International Components for Unicode) is a set of C/C++ and Java libraries I think, that seem integral to OS X as built-in apps as well as apps using vital system services refuse to work properly or crash after this file got accidentally deleted. I'm attempting to retrieve it, but as this is on a system drive getting it back might not be possible.

Another solution for this is to boot into your recovery partition with CMD+R while your machine is booting. From there you can open the Terminal from Utilities in the menu bar. Then you can copy the file with:

cp /usr/share/icu/icudt51l.dat /Volumes/YOUR_DRIVE/usr/share/icu

If your drive has FileVault enabled you may have to unlock that through disk utility first.


Wi-Fi sync with iPhone and iPad fails often When I try to sync my iPhone or iPad via Wi-Fi it happens very often that the symbol of the device disappears after iTunes is telling me that it's searching the device. After a couple of minutes the symbol re-appears. Syncing via USB works flawlessly.

This is very annoying, especially because I don't get any error message. The device's symbol simply disappears.

I have experienced similar issues from time to time. Normally, if the device is ineligible to sync (for example, if it somehow disconnected from the same wifi that the computer is on), it will disappear from iTunes in the same way if you were to disconnect an iOS 4 device that had been plugged in with USB. I'm guessing the device's connection is somewhat faulty, and is ultimately responsible for it's disappearing (this is just my guess/thought).

I have found, however, that if I initiate the sync from the iOS device after it has disappeared, that it will typically come back and work well. This can be done from Settings > General > iTunes Wi-fi Sync.


How to get back all iMessages into newly installed OS X El Capitan? This is not related to the broken Messages app.

After I formatted my drive, installed clean El Capitan and received a code on my iPhone I can send iMessages from my Mac. Messages are received by my contacts and I can also see them on my phone.

The problem is that I would like to see all existing (previous) messages I have on my phone, again in my Messages.app. That is, everything I wrote before formatting the drive.

I haven't made any backups. I thought that simply everything will be synchronised like Contacts etc.

Currently only newly created messages are visible. Since yesterday, I've been reading a bunch of topics. Is this normal? Or am I missing something? As I said, it doesn't look like a sync issue since the new messages are working.

Since you formatted your drive, your old messages will no longer exist on your computer. Unfortunately, iCloud does not sync iMessages with OS X as of this time. You also can't sync up using iTunes either. It's possible that you could extract them from your phone, but you wouldn't be able to simply put them back into the app again.

In the future, should you reformat, you should backup your user's library folder as this contains most customizations you have set for your apps, along with the iMessages you had before.

Even if you had made a backup, however, the structure of messages will likely change over time and I know some folks even from Yosemite were unable to simply pass these files from a backup to El Capitan.


Bash Tab-Completion for OSX Specific commands I've been looking around and I can't seem to find a bash completion rule set for macOS specific utilities. (i.e. diskutil, kext(*whatever), networksetup, defaults, launchctl, etc.) comparable to tab-completion for git commands.

Specifically, I would like to have TAB print a list of the options for the tool.

Does that exist?

If you use a package manager (Homebrew, MacPorts, etc) it's worth checking if it provides any - brew search completion returns launchctl-completion, for example, though the other tools you mention aren't listed. You don't mention tmutil, but if it's useful there's a completion for it here:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
### 補完関数。
_tmutil(){
  list=$( tmutil | /usr/bin/grep -v ^$ | /usr/bin/grep ^Usage | awk '{print $3}' )
  COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "$list" ${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}  ) )
}
complete -F _tmutil tmutil

That might also be a good basis for hacking your own completions?


Can man pages be converted to html and/or pdf format? The command man bash produces a lot of output. What I desire would be to either search the results or print the results to paper. So, is there a way to convert a man page to a html and/or pdf document.

I would prefer the answer work for not only man bash, but rather for any man page.

I know the output from man bash has been posted on the internet, but usually these posts are not current.

Yes, there are numerous tools to convert manual pages to HTML and PDF.

UNIX Approach

Converting a man page to HTML, PDF, and text provides detailed instructions for macOS:

cat /usr/share/man/man1/osascript.1 | groff -mandoc -Thtml >man_osascript.html

If the file ends in .gz, then substitute the following.

gunzip --to-stdout /usr/share/man/man8/cupsfilter.8.gz | groff -mandoc -Thtml >man_cupsfilter.html

For converting from HTML to PDF:

cupsfilter man_osascript.html > man_osascript.pdf

For other tool chains, see these related questions:

How do I convert Linux man pages to HTML without using groff?
What's the easy way to convert all man pages to html?
Convert all Linux man pages to text / html or markdown

pandoc

Another approach is to use the popular pandoc tool. This tool can convert manual pages to a wide range of formats.

Link x-man-page

macOS's Terminal.app offers a x-man-page URL scheme for pretty printing manual pages. Try opening the link below to see the ls man page:

x-man-page://ls


Replace Specific Variables In Selected Text Via Script So for my work, I am constantly generating links that have to variables that need changed (Ex. http://www.thedomain.com/ajdkeial.html?keyword1={keyword1}&keyword2={keyword2} )

The link is generated with those brackets, to be replaced.  Now I am completely illiterate with code, but I am looking for a way to:  Select the text, and replace {keyword1} with the actual keyword I want, and {keyword2} with the second.

I envision this being done with clipboard history for the variables to grab via the app "Alfred", however I'm not sure how I could write a script that grabs these variables and replaces the text, then gives me the finished product.  If anyone had any direction to go to, it would be greatly appreciated.

This is a job for text item delimiters. If you aren't familiar, a delimiter is a separator, normally between words the separator is a space. With text item delimiters, you can change the normal space to any text value you want. In this case, you would make "{keyword1}" the text item delimiters, then the script will see the original text as only two words, everything before "Keyword1" and everything after is the second word. Then you set text item delimiters to whatever you want to replace the "{keyword1}" with, and cram the two words back into one text item.

I've written some basic code that does what you ask below, with some inline comments. One note, whenever playing with text item delimiters, always finish the script by setting them back to the default. I stored the original text item delimiters in a variable called "tid", then set them back at the end of the script.

--Set the variables
set originalText to "http://www.thedomain.com/ajdkeial.html?keyword1={keyword1}&keyword2={keyword2}"
set key1 to "{keyword1}"
set key2 to "{keyword2}"
set subKey1 to "NewKeyWord"
set subKey2 to "AnotherKeyWord"

--Main Script
set tid to text item delimiters
set text item delimiters to key1
set tempList to every text item of originalText
(* the line above returns two item, everything before {keword1} and the second item is everything after {keyword1} *)
set text item delimiters to subKey1
set newText to every item of tempList as text
(* The line above takes the two items from tempList and puts the replacement key word between them *)
--Below, do the same for the second keyword
set text item delimiters to key2
set tempList to every text item of newText
set text item delimiters to subKey2
set newText to every item of tempList as text
set text item delimiters to tid
return newText --> "http://www.thedomain.com/ajdkeial.html?keyword1=NewKeyWord&keyword2=AnotherKeyWord"


Does apple pages sharing strictly require an iCloud account? My client is attempting to share (via an email address) a Pages document.

I walked him through using his iCloud account to do this, which worked.

However, his first choice would be to have the file come from his business email. Is this possible with Pages?

On Mac, it's -

Share menu > Send a Copy > Mail

on iOS -

Ellipsis menu > Share > Mail

In either case, the choice of email account is set from within the mailer software, before sending.


Kill TCP connections on a Mac in Terminal I just want to kill a specific tcp connection on my mac (similar to tcpkill on linux). By port or ip, preferably port but i'll settle. I don't want to pay for a service or download another software, I want the simple terminal command that will allow me to do this like tcpkill.

I've tried fixing up the rules on my firewall, and tried to make a bash script so it would run but to no success because the tutorial I found was very old.

Why does this seem to be such a difficult task to find information on, or do?

Option 1

You can install tcpkill. It is part of the dsniff package which is in MacPorts. You said you don't want to install other software. Nevertheless MacPorts is really useful if you work from the command line. I suggest you check it out.

Option 2

On StackOverflow there is a related post: Find (and kill) process locking port 3000 on Mac. The suggested solution there is to create a function that kills all connection on a specific port:

function killport() { lsof -i TCP:$1 | awk '/LISTEN/ {print $2}' | xargs kill -9 }

If you change the function by taking away the argument the function should kill all applications that have an open TCP connection.

function killport() { lsof -i TCP | awk '/LISTEN/ {print $2}' | xargs kill -9 }

Disclaimer: I haven't tested this.

Disclaimer 2: It's a brute force method and can have some serious side effects. I would recommend against this approach.


Strange available and purgeable space on High Sierra My Mac has been complaining about low disk space in recent days. I tried deleting lots of huge files and folders (more than 20 or 30 GB of them) but I still got the complaint and the free space does not increase. It seems like what I deleted has become purgeable content instead of free space.

Here is my storage overview:

Cool, more than 60GB of available space. Not quite, here is what is shown in my disk utility:

Okay, more than 60GB are purgeable. No matter how many files I deleted from the system, the purgeable content is increased, not the free space.

Do you know what is going on? I suspect it is related to the encryption process because it is running at the moment (the progress is 80% at the moment), but I am not sure.

Thanks in advance

Oddly enough I had just under 60GB of purgable space.

I read around and found a few posts where people mentioned creating large files as once you ran out of space osx would start using purgable space. It works but you don't need to!

You can run bootcamp assistant- it will remove local time machine backups AND icloud cached content. Not only did i get my 60GB purgable space back, but i got an additional 60GB.

Considering I'm on a 250GB SSD and want to dual boot, extremely pleased. Hope this helps!


Proliferation of unknown bash processes when invoking ps I'm having some very strange behavior in my shell that I don't even begin to understand. I apologize for being somewhat lost, but I can't seem to turn up many obvious answers in a web search.
I'm using iTerm2 and the fish shell, and after upgrading to Catalina, invoking the ps command seems to cause an unspecified bash process to proliferate which has an overwritten name and cannot be killed in the conventional way.
After invoking ps several times I get the following output:
  PID TTY           TIME CMD
18710 ttys000    0:00.03 /Applications/iTerm.app/Contents/MacOS/iTerm2 --server login -fp username
18712 ttys000    0:00.74 -fish
18732 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)
18796 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)
18821 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)
18846 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)
18867 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)
18892 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)
18917 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)
18942 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)
18967 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)
18992 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)
19017 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)
19042 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)
19067 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)
19092 ttys000    0:00.00 (bash)

I'm assuming this has something to do with the move from bash to zsh as the native shell in Catalina, but I'm otherwise completely baffled. I don't know if anyone has a solution, but even a hint on how to diagnose it would be helpful.

Okay, I think I found out the source of the problem. After removing the fasd plugin for the fish shell (https://github.com/oh-my-fish/plugin-fasd) the issue seems to have gone away. Reinstalling it brings the problem back, so it must have been that. Absolutely no idea why it was doing this though.


Users cannot change their password when connecting to OS X Server Mavericks I set up a bunch of users on my OS X Server 3 (Mavericks) requesting they reset the temporary password I gave them.
However, no one is able to do that: when connecting via AFP for the first time, they enter their temporary password and are asked to change it, but the form does not accept any value. I don't know if it doesn't accept the current password or the new passwords but I suspect the first: any subsequent login doesn't accept the old password and refuses to even show the change password form.

GV jan 13th: We are having the same issue; Our admins do not seem to have this problem, the weird thing is only the other users have this issue.

I have a Mavericks server with this issue, I have found that if a client is using Mountain Lion or earlier, it resets fine. But Mavericks or El Capitan... no dice. So bizarrely, it may in part be a client issue. Hope that helps you get to the bottom of it.


Sky blue dot next to app I got an iPhone 7+ on iOS 10.2 and I just got this sky blue dot next to an app, instead of the normal blue one.

As you can see in the screenshot, there's a real difference between the sky blue and the normal one

Do you guys know what that means?

Thanks

I'm going by memory on this answer because I can't recall at this moment the Apple Support doc that covered this (I'll have to look it up later or someone can update my answer if they have the link).

Both colors indicate that an update was performed and you haven't opened the app since that update.

The dark blue dot means the app was updated manually.  This means you saw an update was available and you tapped the button to perform the update.

The light blue dot means the app was updated automatically.  This means you have automatic updates turned on and the App Store checked, saw an available update, and updated the app without your initiating the update.

I hope that makes sense and that it's not vica-versa.


What are the disadvantages of jailbreaking iPhone 4 even if it's legal? What are the disadvantages of jailbreaking the iPhone 4 even if it's legal? I'm interested in disadvantages in any and all terms, but especially about the warranty, future updates of iOS, and bricking?

Will I have to jailbreak after each iOS update?

Disadvantages:

Potential reduced stability of the iDevice

More-than-usual application crashes
Unusual application behavior
Buggy connections (like WiFi), especially on beta releases of jailbreaks. (In other words: wait until the people who write the jailbreak say it is ready for regular use. Otherwise, expect occasional pain.)

Potential failure of application features

Most notably of late was the issue that iBooks would lock users out of DRM'd material if they were jailbroken. It could determine this by attempting to run unsigned code, which if it ran, would let iBooks know the device was jailbroken. A hack was released later to resolve the issue, but there is always the chance another application will also implement such features.

Inability to receive Apple support

Apple doesn't want to support any jailbroken device (nor should they be required to do so). If you run into something critical, restore/upgrade to an unjailbroken state first, at which point Apple should be able to help. (Although chances are very good the particular problem will also have gone away.)

Increased Memory Load

On the iPhone 4 it isn't as obvious, but it is (IMO) very obvious on the iPad 1 -- when you add services that must always be running (e.g., SBSettings, etc.) you increase the memory load on the device. Apps that were previously very close to running out of memory may do so when they least expect it, leading to unexpected crashes. This isn't particularly the fault of the jailbreak itself -- but typically one doesn't jailbreak and then not install other jailbreak-specific apps.

Increased Likelihood of Strange Behaviour after iOS upgrades

Example: I had a 5-row keyboard installed on my iPhone 4. After I upgraded to 4.3.2, I ran into an immediate problem: whenever I needed my keyboard, most of it didn't appear, and most of it didn't work. Apparently parts of the 5-row keyboard configuration had stayed around after the upgrade, and the only fix was to go into General -> Keyboards and switch to the English keyboard. (At the time there was no untethered jailbreak for 4.3.2, or I would have continued the jailbreak, which likely would also have restored keyboard functionality.)

Increased Security Concerns

Jailbreaking can oft mean adding software that hasn't been through Apple's vetting process, which may make it easier to get malware or other software that does "bad things".
If you add SSH functionality, be sure to change the root and mobile passwords; otherwise you'll get hacked in no time flat.
On the other hand, you can also sometimes get increased security. IIRC, there was a Cydia app that was used to add security to the device (essentially something Apple should have done, but hadn't to that point).

Personally, the pros of jailbreaking far outweigh the possible cons. I've had far more strange behavior than typical for an iDevice, yes, but I also expect it and know how to deal with it. Some features are such that I really expect that Apple should have implemented them to begin with, and sometimes Apple does occasionally remove one or two particular jailbreaking reasons. But until they satisfy my (very) long list of jailbreaking features, I'll keep on doing it.


Can't see FAT32 and NTFS external partitions on OS X El Capitan when SIP is enabled I've installed Homebrew, FUSE for OS X and NTFS-3G. It helped to see external partitions (FAT32 and NTFS) when SIP is disabled (OS X El Capitan).  But when SIP is enabled, I can't see NTFS and FAT32 external partitions in Finder and Disk Utility. When I run command diskutil list in a Terminal, it shows all partitions, including NTFS and FAT32.

What should I do now to read/write with SIP enabled?

Output from diskutil list:

/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            499.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           +499.0 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 DD75E058-1FC0-4B05-B0F2-FB02A06EC189
                                 Unencrypted
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                80.9 GB    disk2s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS osxboot                 53.2 GB    disk2s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data NF                      365.6 GB   disk2s4

After command 'diskutil info /Volumes/NF'
Result was 'Could not find disk: /Volumes/NF'

The reason that FUSE will not run with SIP enabled, is that (amongst other things) SIP blocks changes to the /sbin filesystem location by default and this is where the "mount_XXXX" executable lives.

Instead of turning SIP off completely you can disable just the part that protects the filesystem support by running the following command in a recovery console.

  csrutil enable --without fs

This is the recommended way to get the NTFS module working in FUSE by the people who maintain OSXFUSE.

Note that the command will give you the following warning but it will work for now.

  csrutil: requesting an unsupported configuration. This is likely to break in the future and leave your machine in an unknown state.


Find readable with Permissions as POSIX? Aimed systems: Linux and OS X. Original code which works in Ubuntu 16.04 but not OS X, but follows unsuccessfully POSIX standards

gfind ~ ! -readable -prune -o -type f -name "*.tex"

where

! is about Negation of a primary; the unary NOT operator.
-readable TODO this does not seem to be POSIX
-prune is about The primary shall always evaluate as true; it shall cause find not to descend the current pathname if it is a directory. If the -depth primary is specified, the -prune primary shall have no effect.
-o is about Alternation of primaries; the OR operator. The second expression shall not be evaluated if the first expression is true. That is if not, then this.
-type about type, here file f
-name about filename, here *.tex

Output

gfind: paths must precede expression: type
Usage: gfind [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] [expression]

Fix proposal

Use -perm 0744 instead of -readable but not sure if it is equivalent

gfind ~ ! -perm 0744 -prune -o -type f -name "*.tex"

Output: /Users/masi. Expected output: list of .tex files.

How can you set permissions of find correctly for readable?

The double negation at the beginning makes this rather complex. Just using

gfind . -readable -type f -name '*.tex'

should work.

PS: Or find . -perm +0666 -type f -name '*.tex' for the default find.


How to make keyboard shortcuts work with dual keyboards? So I decided to experiment with two keyboards for the ergonomics, which it accomplishes fairly well (so left hand on left side of left keyboard, and right hand on right side of right keyboard). However, it does break the intuitive nature of keyboard shortcuts.

For instance, let's say I do my capitalisation by holding down the right shift key, which would now be done on the right keyboard. If I then press a key of the left keyboard in addition, say the letter Q for instance, then it remains lowercase. If I pressed the left keyboards shift then it would have worked fine, as all held keys are on the same keyboard.

The same applies for pressing cmd on the left keyboard, and space on the right keyboard, spotlight will not appear. As such, modifiers only work on the same keyboard, not across keyboards.

Is there a way at all to have keyboard shortuts take into account the state of all connected keyboards? As otherwise, the inutility of keyboard shortcuts under this model would outweigh the benefit of the ergonomics.

Ok seems installing Karabiner (website, github) was what was needed. Found it via the deprecated my-multiple-keyboards github project.


Silhouette of full screen app using mission control stuck on screen I was trying to move a full screen app from my external monitor to the macbook screen after activating mission control by dragging and dropping. The app was not moved across screen. Instead only a silhouette was caught on the macbook screen. I managed to move the full screen app over after a second trial but the silouette from mission control is stuck on the macbook screen and blocking the top left part of the screen.

Please see the attached screenshot fyi.

How do I get rid of the silhouette?

Mission Control is part of the Dock process. Restart the Dock to fix it.

killall Dock


No more Xcode 4 for Snow Leopard? I'm trying to download Xcode 4.0 for my Mac and they want me to upgrade to Lion and download 4.1. Is there a way to download 4.0 without having to change my entire operating system?

The App Store only distributes one version of each app. Xcode 4.0 is no longer available as Xcode 4.1 replaced it.

If the author of the software wishes to keep an older version on the store, the new version has to be uploaded as a different sellable item.

In this case, Apple didn't choose to leave both.

You can get multiple versions of Xcode by joining the paid developer programs. Last time I checked, Xcode 3 was available with the free account. It runs on Snow Leopard - but it doesn't look like you can buy Xcode 4.0 anymore without a paid developer account - it might not even be available to the developers - you might ask before paying money if you really need 4.0 and only 4.0.


Can you remove metadata from already sent photos Is there any way to remove the location from photos already texted to someone via iMessage?

No.

Once they have it, what they have is a completely separate copy, entirely in their control.


Search Numbers spreadsheet for \n If I search for "\n" in a Numbers spreadsheet, it only shows me any cells that have line breaks in them, it does not show me cells that have "\n" written in them.
Is there any way to search for \n?
Thank you!

Literal "\n" a blackslash with the character 'n' is different from a newline character.  I was able to search for newline characters by pressing Option + Return but that didn't find literal "\n" in cells but it did find newlines when I inserted them with Option + Return in cells.


Is it safe to mount 2.5" SSD in Mac Pro w/o bracket? I have a 2.5" SSD (Crucial CT480M500SSD1) that I want to use as my boot drive on my mid-2010 8-core Mac Pro. It doesn't fit the hard drive mounting brackets, which are designed for 3.5" drives. Because the SSD (a) is very light and (b) has no moving parts (and therefore no gyroscopic effects and no vibration), I'm considering mounting it without using a bracket at all—just plugging in straight into the socket, and letting the socket hold it in place. Is this reasonably safe?

If you plan on "plugging in straight into the socket" that would be a very bad idea. The SSD is light, but all of that weight will now be supported entirely by the two SATA sockets on the computer and drive. Over time the small amount of weight on the SSD will brake the bracket on the Mac Pro (expensive), or worse the drive (data loss).

If you can find the correct cable you could run a cable from the socket to the hard drive, and double stick tape the drive like the above answer said.

Or just buy a 3.5 to 2.5 adapter and install it in the drive carrier. It is cheaper than repair.


How to remove apps from iTunes? I sync my iPhone 4s with iTunes. In the past (way back in 3Gs days), I tried a bunch of apps, then removed them from the phone, since I didn't need them anymore.  However, for reasons unknown, they are still in the list in iTunes.  Note the screenshot:

For instance, I no longer use DeepFish and Bubble Ball, but they are still in the list.  How do i get rid of these apps?

Yes - just delete the apps from your Library on iTunes and they won't show in the list of apps that could be synced.

The long version is click on Apps in the Library, then select one or more apps and press the delete key. Answer a few dialog questions to confirm you want to delete and move the file to trash (or not) and you are done. The next sync will remove that app from your iOS devices.

Do note, that if you don't sync for a while, the iTunes could see the apps on the device as new and needing a transfer back to your library, so be sure to sync sooner or just pay attention when a "items were found on your device" dialog pops up and asks you to transfer purchases back to the library.


Macbook PRO 2017 touchbar - Screen won't turn on sometimes Sometimes when I open the lid of my MBP, the screen won't turn on.
No black screen - the screen is just completely off.

macOS is definitely running on the background, since I hear sounds, the touch bar is active, and I can use the caps lock key - the light goes on and off.

To get it working I close and open the lid again multiple times, until the screen comes up.

I wonder if this is a sign that I'll have a bricked MPB soon.

These symptoms sounds like a flimsy display cable issue - where backlight shutdown occurs after opening the display to a certain degree.

If so, you'd unfortunately have to get your whole screen replaced. AFAIK, Apple only has a replacement program for 2016 MBP models despite it affecting later models as well. Best of luck.


List contents and extract individual files from password protected archive file I want to list contents of a compressed archive file, then choose some individual files to be extracted. Archive is password protected.

I tried Unarchiver and Keka but it seems none of them has a file manager feature like 7zip. Both apps extract the file immediately. When archive file size is big this behaviour causes a waste of time and disk space.

How can I do this on Mac OS X (Mavericks) ?

[*] There is a feature request here for Keka for this problem but it is unfortunately 3 years old.

Software recommendations are really off-topic for SE, as they go out of date rapidly, but, until such time as the question is put on hold...

Better Zip - $20 - can extract or add individual items, or
Zipster - £10 - makes archives look & act like folders, work in progress so not all formats yet but looks like it will be good


Where can I download Xcode (n) Beta? I want to start developing in Swift. I already own an apple developer account, yet am struggling to download Xcode (n) beta.

How can I do this?

Thank you in advance.

If you are an Apple Developer for iOS or Mac OS X, which is $99 a year, go to the Xcode page and scroll down to Xcode 6.

If you are already signed into the Apple developer portal, you can download the Xcode disk image.


Why did my desktop and documents suddenly get renamed "Desktop - Local" and "Documents - Local"? Here's my iCloud settings:

As you can see, the Desktop and Documents Folders checkbox is unchecked.

Despite this, my Desktop and Documents folders have suddenly been renamed to "Desktop - Local" and "Documents - Local" respectively.

The only reason I can think of is this may be due to installing iOS 11 on my iPhone, but I'm not sure.

Can anyone suggest any other possible reasons?

This is caused by iCloud Drive. This is to distinguish it with the Desktop and Documents folders on your iCloud Drive, which are named "Documents — iCloud", even if you didn't setup iCloud Drive on your Mac.

The most probable cause, as found by the OP and me, is installing and running the new Files app on iOS 11.


iMessage synching in Yosemite 10.10.5 Is there a way to prevent iMessage from downloading all the messages and attachments to each of my Apple devices?  If I send a video from my iPhone, it goes to my laptop, my iPad, the iPad mini, my iMac and my tower.  I am on a Verizon hotspot so I pay exorbitant fees for bandwidth and it is useless for it appear everywhere and expensive.  Or, is there a way of just blocking incoming files?

As far as I know, your old data does not sync between devices, only new messages from the point which the device was setup.

That being said, with each iOS device you have, you may have to just disable syncing or use different iMessage addresses.

Do this from the iOS device:

Go to Settings
Select Messages
Select "Send and receive"
Select which account you want to use on your device (whether its phone number, or email address).

This would cause it to not sync across all other devices, but would also mean that you can't receive messages at all of your devices either.


Where has WhatsApp gone? WhatsApp was updating on my phone, but then I got a message so interrupted the update.

WhatsApp then disappeared from my home screen. When I go to WhatsApp in the App Store I am prompted to open, but nothing opens.

How can I get the app back?

Just restart your phone. Then the app must bear visible on the springboard.


How do I stop my Mac from syncing my whole library to my iPhone? Every time I plug my phone into my Mac, iTunes tries to synch hundreds of songs to my phone. If I just let it, it uses up all the available storage. I can't seem to find any menu option anywhere to stop the auto synch or to reverse the direction.

This is fairly straightforward to disable. Follow these steps:

Launch iTunes
Go to iTunes > Preferences
Select the Devices tab
At the bottom, uncheck the Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically
Exit Preferences

Let us know if this doesn't resolve your issue.


Mac mini clean El Capitan install -- with bluetooth keyboard? I am trying to do a clean install of El Capitan on my Mac mini but it seems that restarting while holding the Option key does not work. I guess it's a Bluetooth issue, and keyboard signals are too late. So, I wonder is there any way to make this happen?

Apple's Bluetooth hardware controllers activate after all of the system's self-tests at boot complete and the EFI firmware loads successfully, which is indicated by the system playing the standard Mac startup sound. It is at this point that the system will accept boot variables, either stored in the PRAM or those being sent via keyboard inputs. These are then passed to the OS X kernel to invoke the desired startup sequence.

If any inputs are being sent via the Bluetooth keyboard before the controllers are active, then they will not be recognized by the system. However, if these inputs are performed after the controllers are activated, then they will be properly read. Therefore, for Bluetooth keyboards, be sure to press the desired key sequences after you hear the boot chimes and not before.

This does all assume the keyboard has previously been paired with your Mac. If this is not the case, boot into the existing OS and pair the keyboard first.


iTunes sync podcasts Is there a way to sync iTunes podcast subscriptions across two iTunes installations; one on a Mac and the other on a W7 ?

You can copy the list of subscriptions between them, but I don’t know how to keep them in sync.

In the sidebar of the first iTunes installation, select Podcasts, right click, then click Export. I use the OPML file type, but others might work. (Let’s call it Podcasts.opml).
Using a USB stick, Dropbox, or some other method, transfer Podcasts.opml to the computer with the second iTunes installation.
Select File > Add to Library, and find Podcasts.opml. Once you open it, your second iTunes installation will have the same podcast subscriptions as the first.

Two comments:

This won’t keep them in sync; if your podcast subscriptions change, you’ll need to repeat the above to carry the changes across.
There may well be a much easier method, using something like Home Sharing or Dropbox, to keep the single library file synced between the two machines.


Is there any way to apply open-ended keyword tags to songs in iTunes? Other iLife apps like iPhoto already support this functionality, like assigning "vacation" or "mountains" keywords to certain photos.

Is it possible to add tags to songs in iTunes without resorting to the rigid options currently provided (i.e. the 'Comments' or 'Grouping' fields)? See this mock-up for an idea of what this type of tagging would be like:

In the above mock-up, we could assign sub-genres to a song. This would allow us to create smart playlists based on these sub-genres or do whatever else we'd like with them.

Currently, someone would have to use comma-separated values in the 'Comments' or 'Groupings' field to apply this type of sub-genre tagging. It's very inflexible and annoying.

Why doesn't this type of tagging exist? Can it be implemented with plugins?

It currently is not possible to add tags in iTunes like you can in other iLife applications. The only reason I can think of why its not available is that most people would just group their music by genre, and that be enough.

Other than using the comments field or the like, there are really not many other options. In some searches I did come across an app called Qloud, but it seems to no longer exist.


Why can't I upload ALL my live Apple photos to my windows PC I understand that when uploading Apple live photos to my windows laptop that they will come across as a JPEG and a MOV, but I am missing several and I don't know why. I can see them on my phone but I can't see them when plug my phone into my laptop and look via explorer. Any ideas ? There are lots of them !

I would suggest that they are in iCloud. Can you tap Settings > [your name] > iCloud and check if Download and Keep Originals is checked? Here is Apple article just in case:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204264

If not, check it and leave the device for 3-4 hours with a robust Wi-Fi connection while photos will be loaded from the cloud (there is no progress bar). After this, check if you will see the photos.

If you still can't see them, do you use any cloud or streaming service for photos? Also, you just connect the phone to PC and open the DCIM folder, right? No iTunes or 3dparty software?


safari can't reload off-line saved reading list items I am on safari 12.0.1 and macOS 10.14.1.

Safari simply cannot reload whatever I saved offline in the reading list -- the console get full of the same error message

Thanks for the support.

Had the same problem. I think it's all about permissions and privacy.
I did this and it's helped:

Pull down the  Apple menu and choose ‘System Preferences’
Choose “Security & Privacy” control panel
Now select the “Privacy” tab, then from the left-side menu select “Full Disk Access”
Click the lock icon in the lower left corner of the preference panel and authenticate with an admin level login
Now click the [+] plus button to add an application with full disk access
Navigate to the /Applications and choose “Safari” to grant it Full Disk Access privileges
Relaunch Safari and try to open saved pages in offline mode


AppleScript to find and delete a folder inside an FCPX library I need to write or find a simple script to find, select and move to trash, folders within a Final Cut Pro X library. Because these libraries are bundles you can't search them in the normal way.

What I want is a script that runs every day, searches the libraries finds Folders (and their contents) called "Render Files" and then moves them to trash.

I can use automator to find the bundles, and to list the contents, but then I cannot get it to select only the 'Render Files' folders.

Add the following to your crontab (env EDITOR=nano crontab -e):

@daily /usr/bin/find /path/to/fcplibraries -name "Render Files" -type d -delete

Keep backups and make sure you've got the right path.


iOS WriteRoom editor feature replacement? One of my favorite features about WriteRoom is that as soon as I open it, I see a listing of a Dropbox directory I have previously configured. No extra steps. This lets me very quickly get to my notes and records without navigating around, since I always want to go to the same directory.

Since WriteRoom will soon become incompatible with iOS 11 since it is a 32-bit app and is not being actively developed, does anyone know which of the many text editors available has this feature?

Per @patrix suggestion, here are prioritized features for a Dropbox text editor:

Open directly to a particular Dropbox folder at launch, after a one-time configuration step. No additional navigation. Speed is #1!
Sync that Dropbox folder's contents to the device, so that it can be accessed offline, and the changes reconciled after coming back online
Text search through the entire folders files, and also within the file once it is open.
Sort the folder list by name or date, descending.

My suggestion is Ulysses. A pleasant, focused writing experience combined with effective document management, fast syncing and flexible export make Ulysses the first choice for writers of all kinds.

Here is some info about synchronisation with Dropbox. A quote from that post really describes the function you are searching for.

  Once your Dropbox account is linked, you can navigate through its hierarchy and choose folders to add to Ulysses’ library.

I do not have financial ties with Ulysses!


What's the fastest charging power adapter for an iPhone 7 Plus? With my previous iPhone 6 Plus, it was recommended that I use a 12W adapter and I found that (or at least convinced myself that) the phone charged faster with the 12W than with the 5W. However my iPhone 7 Plus ships with a 5W adapter.

Can I charge my iPhone 7 Plus with a 12W adapter?
Will my iPhone 7 Plus charge faster with a 12W adapter?

What's the fastest charging power adapter for an iPhone 7 Plus?

For some reason, Apple often chooses not to include the best charging option with its devices. This is particularly odd with 9.7” iPads, which ship with a 10W power adapter. Those haven’t been available for sale from Apple since 2013.

According to the Apple Online Store, the 12W USB Power Adapter is compatible with the iPhone 7 and 7+.

Both 4.7” and 5.5” iPhones can use up to 10W power adapters to charge faster, as measured by an ammeter and System Information.

Either way, power is drawn by the “receiving” device, so there is no risk in using an adapter that provides more power. If the charger can provide the requested wattage, it does; otherwise, the highest power output is negotiated.

If you plug into a Mac’s USB port, your Mac will deliver 2.1A (10W) to iPads and to the larger iPhones (6 and above). It will deliver 500mA to WATCH and 1A to smaller iPhones (SE and lower).

I have tested this with a 2013 iMac. It is possible that newer Macs are able to provide 2.4A to iPads.

Update 2017/03/22: iPad 5 and iPad mini 4 now ship with a 12W power adapter. According to the chosen verbiage, this may be the standard going forward.

  Which power adapter should I use to charge my iPad?

  The 12.9-inch iPad Pro, 9.7-inch iPad Pro, iPad (5th generation), and
  iPad mini 4 come with a 12W USB Power Adapter. Some previous iPad
  models came with a 10W USB Power Adapter. If you need to purchase an
  additional adapter, choose a 12W adapter because it can charge all
  iPad models.


How do I stop sharing bookmarks and browsing history between my MacBook and my dad's Mac mini? My MacBook was connected to my Dad's iTunes account for awhile, but my Safari is still somehow linked to his Safari. He uses Safari on his Mac mini. The bookmarks are the same. I'm wondering if his Safari is connected to mine and if he can see my history?

How do I make sure my Safari bookmarks and history are completely disabled from my Dad's account?

Bookmarks etc are synced via iCloud. To ensure that your two devices aren't syncing in this way you will need to make sure you're not both signed into the same iCloud account.

To do this:

Go to Apple > System Preferences
Click the iCloud preference pane
You should now see the account you're currently logged into.
Assuming you're logged into your dad's account, click on the Sign out button at bottom left

NOTES:

Depending on the arrangement between you and your dad, you could continue using the same account and opt instead to untick the Safari checkbox as this is the setting that is sharing your bookmarks, history, etc.
If at Step 3 you see that you're actually logged into your account, then you will need to access your dad's Mac mini to follow these steps to sign him out of your account.
Note that if you also have an iPhone, iPad, etc you may also want to check your iCloud configuration on those devices as well to make sure you're not using your dad's account etc.

You may also want to read Apple's iCloud page to familiarise yourself with all of its functions etc.


How can I view the desktop version of a page on a website with faulty redirects? The iPhone has a great built-in web browser, and since its first introduction it was touted as being able to run the full web, not the watered down mobile versions many phones use. Unfortunately, people have seen the need to "optimize" the experience on mobile and as a result, a significant portion of the features I can access on the desktop are simply not available on my iPhone. Furthermore, faulty redirects compound this problem, and make entire pages of content inaccessible.

I was excited to see the new iOS 8 Request Desktop feature, but due to a faulty redirect I was never on the correct URL long enough to request the desktop version of the site.

Example: I wanted to go to http://example.com/some_page, but it immediately redirected me to http://m.example.com. Since I was immediately redirected, the Request Desktop link acted on http://m.example.com instead of http://example.com/some_page. This caused me to be forwarded to http://example.com instead of http://example.com/some_page.

How can I view the original desktop version of this page on my mobile device?

To Request the Desktop version of a website with faulty redirects:

Turn on airplane mode to disable all internet access.

Warning: This next step will get rid of any open tabs you have in Safari, so make sure you don't have anything important on there.
Go to Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data

(Many redirects are often cached, so this is a way to prevent it from redirecting you while you are offline.)
Launch Safari and type in the full desktop url (e.g. http://example.com/some_page)
Press Go to navigate to the website.

Obviously this will display the "Safari cannot open the page..." error message.
Tap the address bar again, and scroll down to tap Request Desktop Site.
Disable airplane mode, and tap the refresh button.

It should now bypass all redirects and request the full Desktop Site.

Unfortunately this isn't a complete solution since only a small portion of users on mobile devices are going to be using the desktop site for webpages such as these. This means that some things on that site may be broken since they aren't likely to have been tested on mobile devices.


xcode 4 download not completing properly Yesterday I started downloading Xcode 4 to my iMac. It's a very large file, around 4 GB. The next day I found that only 2 GB of it is downloaded and the download had stopped. Before leaving my computer to download, I disabled the automatic sleep setting. Why did it stop? The computer was still on in the morning, and there was no power failure. Is there any way to find what happened?

It sounds like the server timed out. Just try downloading it again. If you got it through the Mac App Store you can see it and all your purchases under the Purchases tab at the top next to Updates.


calling open from terminal with smb file path and preview as application opens finder instead of preview I am trying to open a file on an smb share in preview from terminal. The following command opens the containing folder in finder instead of the file in preview.

open -a /Applications/Preview.app "smb://myshare._smb._tcp.local/path/to/file/my_file.pdf"

Update 1: I tried with and without the -a switch. The same thing happens in both cases: finder is opened with the last folder (/path/to/file). Preview is already associated with PDFs, so it should open automatically.

Just use /Applications/Preview.app/Contents/MacOS/Preview /path/to/file.pdf instead of /Applications/Preview.app /path/to/file.pdf and it should work.


Glitch or bad design during booting on Mojave? After enabling FileVault with recent T2 firmware patch the loading bar looks weird like its missing pre-cached image:

I replaced default Mojave.heic with a test image and gray "transparent" area kept test image framed while the rest of the screen remains black after system switched to user scale. Setting Display -> Scaled back to Default  returning smooth booting. Is this a design issue or missing cache?

macOS 10.14.5 (18F203)

The firmware controls that rendering process and it’s by design not using the full graphics library so it’s hard to say if it’s a glitch or hardware issue or if an engineer figured the risk (or manager figured the priority/cost) to embedding more code outweighed the “let’s be pretty about everything” design goal.

Time will tell if Apple patches that or if others can reproduce it on their equivalent hardware and then you’ll know if it’s hardware defect, by design and if that design got someone to tweak the code / drivers to remediate that visual artifact.


Mac startup sound keeps coming back to haunt me Seriously though, even after applying the terminal command (below) that sound will be back after x numbers of shutdowns or restarts:

sudo nvram SystemAudioVolume=%80

I'd appreciate a truly permanent answer to silencing that startup sound.

You could try using a free application called Deeper by Titanium Software. You can download it from this link here, or by using homebrew cask in which you can enter the following terminal command after installing homebrew/homebrew cask:

brew cask install deeper

Once you have installed deeper and allowed it proper privilages, open it up and go to the "Login Tab". From there you will see a button to turn off your mac's startup sound. Click it and you should be good to go.


How to get rid of the "ears" in the bottom of the screen? I have a mild form of OCD so by ears I mean this:

I know that I can hide the dock, but then I do not see the opened programs.

What solutions are available to extend the opaque dock background to the edges of the screen so that visually it is a wider bar matching the screen width?

On a Windows machine you have a notification area wth clock and date in the "right ear" and the start button and search etc. in the "left ear".

If you put the dock on the left- or right-hand side of the screen instead of at the bottom, the unused space around it will be much smaller.


Increase precision in numbers In Numbers, when I enter 0.981, it gets automatically formatted as 1. How can I increase the precision?

When I double click on the cell I can see 0.981 but as soon as I deselect it, it goes back to 1.

From the Cell tab of the sidebar you can select the number of decimal places or set it to "Auto". Pick whatever best suits your needs.


localizedTitle in my iOS app with In-App Purchases I'm writing an iOS application and since yesterday i have problem with in App purchases. I receive list of products but localizedTitle and localizedDescription are nil.

I've read that about 2 years ago some people had similar problems and it was Apple's fault.

However today I've got message from Apple about all of my In-App Purchases:

  "In-App Purchases have been returned and are highlighted in the table
  below"

All of them still have status:Waiting For Review.

So I'm wondering if it is possible that because of returning products i'm receiving 'nil' or is this (again) something wrong with apple?

Can I do something to fix it?

I've found solution at devforums.apple.com

  https://devforums.apple.com/message/966757#966757

Basically it appeared that each product language had status rejected (while product had status waiting for review). Adding new language to each product solves problem.


Retrieve email error message on iphone 3gs Verified and re-verified mail settings on iphone3gs but when I try to retrieve emails from my external email account an error message appears saying 'the server is not responding. check settings'. When I called server they said it's an Apple issue. Doesn't sound correct. Any ideas?

Since you did NOT specify the email type (server) lets use some generic methods to find out if the server is responding.
You can use something called

  Ping

an IP address or hostname in the Terminal for Mac OS X

What Ping does is it send a signal to the server (IP address) and check for respond. So if the server is alive it will respond. That will however not say if they have specific problem on the server.

To do that open your Terminal in Utilities.

Type:

  ping [-Options] ip or hostname

Usage: Ping's an IP-address or a hostname (which can be used to troubleshoot connection problems to another computer or a server).

Options

-c (num)    Stop after sending and receiving  number of packets.

-f  Flood ping: Flood ping, output packets as fast as they come back or 100 times per second.

-i     Wait for  seconds between sending each packet.

Example
ping 127.0.0.1  Ping your own computer (localhost)
ping -c 10 google.se    Ping google.se and stop after 10 sent and received packages.

Quick tip: If you're using ping and the response keeps coming in without stopping. Hold down "Ctrl" and hit "Z" (Ctrl+Z) to abort.


how to move a video from photo to icloud I have very little space on my 16Gb iPhone, however I have a ton of space now in iCloud, how can I move videos from my iPhone to iCloud?

Unfortunately, iCloud will not sync your videos from your iPhone.  They will not be available in your photo stream or when you do a restore.

Check out For more reference


Free up disk space during Catalina update I tried updating to Catalina, but it got stuck on not having enough disk space. It says I have to quit the installer, select a start disk and boot from that, but my system's drive is not in the list of drives that I can select...

So, instead, I started the Terminal, went to the drive through that and I started deleting things. But every time I run df I don't see a change in the amount of disk space. Between reboot changes are persisted though, even creation of new files.

I then installed Mojave on an external drive and mounted the internal drive, it shows up as 52GB free (vs 12GB from df). But when I run df I still see only 12GB free.

I figure there is some sort of place where deleted files are getting moved to in order to provide me with some fancy restore magic for when the installation is done. Where is this magical place and how do I delete files from there so that I can continue the installation?

The answers here don't address my issue because I already know what was eating my disk space.

So, after a few hours of working on this (mainly making rsync backups) I have it working.

What was crucial was creating a new macos installation and mounting the old disk on that. I didn't really delete any files and df kept showing the same amount of free space, but after a reboot to the original disk the install passed.

I think it has something to do with things being purged by the new macos install (Mojave on an external drive).


Apple App Store submission review time vs update time I've released an app to the App Store, it's been waiting for review for about 9 days.

Upon running my own dev version I've realised I'd left a critical part out. Would it be worth waiting for release and then pushing an update or remove it and resubmit?

Will the update be processed faster than a resubmission?

Updates are generally processed faster than the first submission of an app for review, but not drastically faster. It's usually around a day shorter (5 days) compared with the average 6 or 7 days for a first submission.

Note that iOS 8 has caused an increase in submissions and a consequential increase in review times; Apple may be prioritising updates more to make apps compatible with iOS 8.


Using multiple iMacs (27 inch 2009) as displays I have 3 Apple iMacs (27 inch, 2009).

Is it possible to use two of those iMacs as displays for the other iMac?

If so, how do I achieve this?

It’s possible to use an iMac as a secondary display of another iMac. You’ll only be able to use one of your ‘other’ iMac’s to do that.

To do so, you need to activate ‘Target Display Mode’ on the iMac you want to use as a display.

Both iMac must be turned on and both must be logged ‘in’.
Connect the ‘Mini DisplayPort’ or ‘Thunderbolt’ cable between the two computers.
Press ‘Command + F2’ on the keyboard of the iMac that you want to use as a
display.

Your target iMac will now display the desktop of the other, connected Mac. To exit TDM, just press Command + F2 again.
It will also exit if you disconnect the cable or shut down/sleep the other Mac.

Remark: this only works on iMacs up to 2014, The 5K Retina and newer ones don’t support this.


System slowness: How to disable or short-circuit tccd in Mojave? (slows app & subprocess startup) There's a serious problem that's come up especially in Mojave and Apple seems to not really be interested in resolving this from my discussions with engineers in the know. It especially manifests itself when opening certain apps and subprocesses therein (two examples are python and emacs). This didn't seem to be so much of a problem initially in Mojave, but it's getting worse and it most certainly was not a problem in High Sierra.

It appears to happen due to tccd (some discussions; there are many mentions of these issues in obscure spots around) somehow generating some additional overhead that wasn't present before in previous OS releases.  While Apple may consider this to be acceptable, there are many of us who are struggling with the additional time that it's adding to process spawning.

This seems to be able to be reproduced via any app that's existent under any of the sections under System Preferences → Security & Privacy → Privacy.

Quick answer:
You have to use configuration profiles that can only be deployed via an MDM (Mobile Device Management Software) to disable tcc and tcc prompts. Unfortunately TCC is written strong into Mojave's code and doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. This is a downfall for developers/engineers/users/administrators as we all are going to have to learn learn how to walk with TCC. Apple's push for security is stronger than ever and has been written on the wall for Mac Admins for quite some time.

Longer Answer:

Apple is pushing for companies to move over to DEP/MDM workflows for deploying machines to their users: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204142

With Mac OS Mojave, Apple wants users to validate the use of programs gaining access to their files, hence the TCC messages of programs wanting to gain access. What does this have to do with your question you ask? Well...

There is some hope for companies that manage their machines with DEP/MDM solutions such as JAMF (for an example). Apple has pointed this out and the annoying prompts can be disabled by using an MDM and configuration profiles here:

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT209028

  You can allow apps to access certain files used for system administration, and to allow access to application data. For example, if an app requests access to your Calendar data, you can allow or deny the request. MDM administrators can manage these requests using the Privacy Preferences Policy Control payload, as documented in the Configuration Profile Reference.

Mac admin Carl Ashley has also pointed this out in more detail here:
https://carlashley.com/2018/09/28/tcc-round-up/

  You will absolutely need an MDM to deploy these profiles as they cannot be deployed direct to a machine through a package, or other installation method.
  This will mean either a DEP to MDM enrolment workflow, or through User Approved MDM (users manually enrol their Mac into MDM).

If you try to do this with a non-managed mac and install the config profile without an MDM, it will defeat the purpose of using both the MDM and the config profile because the config profile will prompt the user to install it in System Preferences > Profiles.

Example:

This might possibly change if Apple announces a new OS this summer with 10.15. For unknown reasons Apple also has not explicitly documented to developers the need to add the NSRemindersUsageDescription key string in the Info.plist file of their applications to prevent their applications from crashing.

It is counter intuitive for developers to revert back to Xcode 9, where this problem doesn't seem to occur, unlike in its successor Xcode 10. Hoakley also validated this when he tried to use an older version of a program he developed with a Xcode older than v10 in Mojave and it ran fine, allowing the newer version of the app to prompt the user for consent to use the computer files/programs as intended.

  I then tested an older version of xattred(Hoakley's program), and discovered that, instead of crashing, it did produce the expected user consent. Once added to that list, the newer version stopped crashing, and could access all protected Calendar files without any more dialogs.

After the user consents to the application, this app in question appears under one of the lists under System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy and usually under Accessibility.

On the bright side:

Trust me, all of us as Macadmins are on the same page of busting our heads on the table over TCC. I can imagine its much worse for the normal user who likes to dabble in the administration domain. Hopefully we will see better, sane, implementation of TCC with future updates of Mac OS.

If you are curious in dabbling with creating profiles, and possibly have an MDM you can try the following:
https://github.com/carlashley/tccprofile

https://github.com/erikberglund/ProfileCreator

I hope this explanation is of use to you as a developer/engineer.


Not able to access localhost via local IP I want to connect to my local Web Server (NodeJS server) which runs on my MacBook with my iPhone.

On my Mac I can access the server via http://localhost:3000/.
Now all it should take is to replace localhost with my Mac's local IP address like this http://192.168.0.13:3000/. However, on my iPhone I cannot access the server this way and even when I try to open http://192.168.0.13:3000/ on my Mac there is no connection being established.

This is definitely a problem with my Mac and not with my program because when I run the server on Windows and try to connect to it with the local IP address it works just fine.

Also trying this in another Wi-Fi Network does not help or changing the port does not change anything either.

I am using Mac OSX 10.11.5 and my firewall is turned off.

How can I solve this problem?

Routing Tables (netstat -r)

(Deleted)

As far as I can tell the behavior is correct. A basic node web server uses dns.js to resolve any hostname – which itself uses the system's DNS resolution method.

A hostname "127.0.0.1" as well as "localhost" can't be resolved by OS X's mDNS responder (neither non-reverse nor reverse).

So either use your Mac's IP (i.e. 192.168.0.13) or its hostname (e.g. tims-macbook-pro) as hostname. To advertise the service in Bonjour you have to use dns-sd.

Or create several listening IPs like in this q&a.


MacOS SFTP Public Key Authentication We can enable SFTP on our MacOS by going into System Preferences -> Sharing -> Remote Login

This works fine and we can easily connect to our local server by sftp localhost and then provide the password of the current user.

Now, some professional FTP Servers, allow you to connect to the FTP server by using a SSH key. (so you don't have to enter username/password).

https://www.cerberusftp.com/products/features/public-key-authentication/

I wonder if the SFTP server on MacOS can also be configured to authenticate users using keys rather than raw username/password.

Oh I found the answer. we just have to add the public key to the authorized_keys file

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh localhost "cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"


How can I change Fn keys usage based on application? I would like to know if there is any application that can enable you use use Fn keys differently based on the current application.

For example in terminal or you favourite IDE you want to use them as standard function keys but for other applications you want to keep the default Apple keys.

Fluor is a relative newcomer to this space that does exactly what you want:

  Fluor is a tool that allows you to automatically change the behaviour of the keyboard's fn keys depending on the active application.

It is open source, works on macOs Sierra and is actively developed (as of March 2017).


Do I need a credit card to install free apps on my MacBook Pro? I'm using MacBook pro. My problem is: every time when I want to download an app it's asking about my credit card information. I used to have a credit card but I don't have it now. I can't even download free apps.

Open iTunes.
From the Menu Bar, select Store > My account. You will be prompted for your Apple ID and Password. Enter it.
Under “Payment Type” click the “Edit” link.
Select “None” and then click “Done”

This will enable you to download free items without needing to provide any financial information. Obviously, if you want to purchase an app in the future, you’ll need to update your payment method.


Lost Gmail inbox, can't restore with TimeMachine Friend woke up today to find only 15 of his 9000+ emails in his Gmail Inbox. Have confirmed on iPhone and Gmail website that for whatever reason, these emails are gone -- they don't show up in "All Mail" and they aren't int the trash.

Compounding that, although his TimeMachine backup has been running, when I go to restore for him, there are two problems preventing him from actually restoring anything.
1) when choosing a date/time on the timeline, although the email count changes, the screen doesn't animate
2) the Restore button never becomes active

If I try to restore something in a Finder folder, TimeMachine restore works fine.

Has something changed in El Capitan that prevents email from being restored? perhaps due to it being a Gmail or IMAP account?

Running Mac OS X 10.11.4

If it is an IMAP account (don't know if GMAIL accepts POP3) I'm afraid the Time Machine is useless because those mails were not in the local storage - your HDD or SDD, so there is no way Time Machine keep it in backup files. This emails was in a remote Google server and you will have to try their recovery tools.

Usually, the server will keep the deleted messages for a while, even not showing in the trash. This is good place to start: Google Support


My seagate disk that was detectable earlier is now showing SMART status "not supported". Anyone experienced similar thing before? External hard disk seagate is not readable suddenly and when i click on "Initialize", i am taken to Disk Utility which among other things also says "S.M.A.R.T status" isnt supported. What options do I have now?

I have already verified but i get the error invalid b-tree node size.
Thanks .

I haven't seen an external drive where SMART was supported, so you can probably ignore that aspect and just focus on the rest of the information you can obtain about the drive's health.


Why does OS X use swap memory when memory pressure remains low? My system (Yosemite / 10.10) has been paging out to swap memory despite my memory pressure reading less than 50% over the last 7 days (tracked with iStat Menus). How is this possible? It would be one thing if memory pressure exceeded 100% at some point in the last week and then the swap file was activated, but that doesn't seem to have happened at all and yet I've got 1.25 GB of 2.00 GB being swapped right now, with 36% memory pressure. Shouldn't the new memory model introduced in Mavericks behave differently?

This is one of the all-too-few times where the answer is officially documented by Apple.
The short answer is that the system tries to keep a certain amount of memory free so it can quickly provide memory to an application when the application requests it. When there is not enough free memory, then memory that has not been "touched" in a while gets swapped out. Often this is memory that the application "leaked", which is to say allocated, used for a while (maybe just once), and will never use again, but forgot to tell the OS it was done with.
In Yosemite and other versions of OS X, SystemUIServer was notorious for leaking lots of memory. This would be a prime candidate for getting swapped out, because it was not needed by the app, but could not be reclaimed by the OS. Swapping this memory out to disk is all upside for performance; the only downside is a relatively tiny amount of disk space used.


Is it possible to erase sensitive data from a dead Retina MBP SSD? My Retina MacBook Pro has died spectacularly after just over 30 days with what appears to be an SSD fault. No boot, no recovery, and after internet recovery, Disk Utility can't see the SDD at all.

I've persuaded Amazon to extend the returns period, so a replacement machine is on the way - but is there any way I can wipe the SSD before the returning the dead machine to remove personal data?

I'm 99.99% certain the answer is 'no', in which case what precautions can I take in future to make sure personal data stays 'personal' in the event of SSD failure
?

Fire. Unfortunately that would seem to be at odds with Amazon's return policy.

If Disk Utility can't see the drive, it's unlikely you'll be able to access it to overwrite anything (and overwriting on SSDs can be tricky in any event). Additionally, because the drive in the rMBP is a proprietary form factor, it's difficult to take it out and try to access it from another computer (which might not help any way). There may be adapters made in the future, but I'm not aware of any for sale at the moment.

The best preventative measure for this would be to employ some form of whole drive encryption, like Apple's FileVault. That way even if someone is able to read the data off the drive, it won't be useable unless they have your encryption password.


Sharing & Permissions has two “everyone” entries, only for applications by Apple OS X 10.12.6, Sierra

My Sharing & Permissions says "You have custom access" and it's showing two entries for "everyone" where the first is set to "Custom".

This only seems to be affecting every single one of Apple's applications in the Applications and Utilities folders.  I have no idea what other files are affected but a random search only turned up all Apple applications.  All third-party applications are unaffected.
I did permissions repair using Onyx but it had absolutely no affect on these applications.
I cannot manually change permissions as the minus sign is grayed out after unlocking (see picture).  Even if I could, it would take a very long time to manually find/repair.
I do not know what triggered this problem as I just discovered it today.  However, I recently cloned my hard drive over to a new solid state drive using Carbon Copy Cloner.
I've already followed this official Apple procedure for fixing my Home folder permissions and I don't seem to have any problems there.
Everything appears to be operating, however, I'm seeing some strange problems like my ICC color profile will not stick after a reboot (permissions seem fine in the Library), but the ColorSync Utility instantly crashes when I click the "Repair" or "Verify" button.

I've already found and followed this thread, but the answer did not help.

This is a normal behavior of the Sharing & Permissions Info window in macOS systems protected by SIP.

The three latter are the POSIX permissions:

rwxr-xr-x@  3 root      wheel  restricted   102 Jul 22  2017 Activity Monitor.app
    com.apple.rootless

rwx read/write(/traverse(execute)) for the user root/system
   r-x read(/traverse(execute)) for the group wheel
      r-x read(/traverse(execute)) for everyone

The first entry (everyone > Custom) is a result of the restricted flag/com.apple.rootless attribute and can be interpreted as an ACL: group:everyone deny delete and the ACL can't be modified!

An (older) list of all restricted/SIP protected files and folder can be found here: System Integrity Protection – Adding another layer to Apple’s security model


Does the iPhone 7 have true tone display? I got the iPhone 7, and I can't seem to find the true tone display setting. Is it still iPad Pro 9.7" exclusive?

True Tone was not implemented in the iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus' display. There is, however, a wider color gamut (P3) and "improved color management".


What is the meaning of 'no acceptable variant' ERROR message? I have a Mac mini Server with Mac OS X Server 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard), where I run a WebDAV Server for syncing my OmniFocus (Mac <> iPad). But I don't use the Web-Server itself (only WebDAV).

When I do a sync in OmniFocus from my iPad, I can see the following ERROR message in the apache2 error_log file:

[..14] [error] [client IP] no acceptable variant: /usr/share/httpd/error/HTTP_UNAUTHORIZED.html.var

OmniFocus has no problem and sync just works fine (debug logfiles show clearly that WebDAV works as intended and the client has the needed User permissions & rights).
Only the Web-Server is making trouble.

I suppose that an ERROR message in my WebServer logfile means that something is not configured as it should be?!

I understand that it has something to do with 'Multi Language Custom Error Documents' which is on by Default and is dependant on several Apache Modules. But even after reading several Readme files and studying online Tutorials it is far beyond my understanding of how this works together.

My Mac mini Server is still not in productive mode and turned off most the time. I only turn it on to resolve this last remaining ERROR message.

What I tried so far:

• extensive Google search / even on SE sites
• read all possible (available) Apple Server manuals
• started reading the Apache Server manuals
• I spent several nights trying to fix the problem (fiddling with .conf files)
• I did reset to default settings for the Apache Server
• I talked with some hackers about 'Apache Modules' at the 30C3 Congress in Hamburg
• Installed a 2nd Mac OS X Server on another Volume to recover default conf files/values

• Could someone please explain me the meaning of 'no acceptable variant' ?

• Why does this ERROR matter? What do I need to understand to fix this ERROR?

Inside the httpd.conf file there are the following lines of code:

AddLanguage de .de
AddLanguage en .en

# LanguagePriority allows you to give precedence to some languages
# in case of a tie during content negotiation.
#
# Just list the languages in decreasing order of preference. We have
# more or less alphabetized them here. You probably want to change this.
#
LanguagePriority en de

# ForceLanguagePriority allows you to serve a result page rather than
# MULTIPLE CHOICES (Prefer) [in case of a tie] or NOT ACCEPTABLE (Fallback)
# [in case no accepted languages matched the available variants]
#
ForceLanguagePriority Prefer Fallback

You should understand what it means and how you can alter its functions. Maybe you ask an Apache Server Guru ;)


g5 ppc osx 10.5.8 i can't change administrator password I have a problem with my G5 PPC with OS X 10.5.8. I bought this Mac from an English friend of mine. He forgot an administrator password. I don't have the system CD or Internet connection.

I tried to follow your instructions in other post (command+s) but this is what happens when I do that (on the Mac).

I wrote the command like post and i tried to write in different mode. If you look the last row the command was not found or nothing found to load.

Now i have a new problem. following your instruction this is the results !

i hope you can help me please step by step ... because i'am desperate

Excuse me for my english

From the screenshot, I see that you've already gotten to "Single User Mode". (Command-S at power on should get you there unless there is an Open Firmware password - in which case you'd need to clear that by changing the installed RAM).

After mounting the filesystem:

mount -uw

You can change the password of a user:

passwd username

If you don't know the username, list the user home folders:

ls -l /Users/