How do you disable Smart Invert or truly invert all of your screen colors? In previous macOS, when you used the Invert Colors feature (Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Invert Colors), all the colors on the screen would become inverted, including images, so a page like this one would look like this:

Note the image has blue tones and the rolling dice is black at the top

In recent macOS (I use Mojave), a feature called "Smart Invert" makes it now impossible to invert images on a webpage.
The same page would now look like this:

Note how the dice and the image on the right have "normal" colors - and not the top left logo for some mysterious reason

How does one disable the so-called "Smart" part of the invert?
It simply doesn't work for anyone trying to invert images, which a lot of people deal with very often, whether in the art world, historical research or any other photography-related fields. Besides, "Dark Mode" already does that.

How do I quickly invert images on my display?

I noticed the issue you were facing - it seems to happen on Safari. Have you thought about trying Firefox? It seems to not "Smart invert" on Firefox from what I can tell.

(I can't add a comment due to reputation).


Why does iPhone Music app show me "Apple Music" logo instead of my iTunes songs? I synced all of the music in my iTunes Library to my iPhone (like it was an iPod).

I've been listening to the music in my Jeep for weeks by plugging into the USB port and choosing songs and playlists from the in-car radio's touchscreen.  (So I know the music is on the iPhone.)

Today, I want to listen to my music with headphones.  Thought I'd try Siri ... I told Siri to "Play Accept Yourself by The Smiths", and sure enough she played it!  (I thought it was pretty cool that worked, actually.)

When the song ended, I thought I'd chose something manually.

On the iPhone I touched the "Music" app/button on the home screen, it took me to a photo of a girl wearing headphones and the "Apple Music" logo.

No lists of songs, no other options.

I went to the "Settings" app, and selected "Music" and I noticed that "Show Apple Music" was switched to ON.  So I turned it OFF.

Went back to the "Music" app, and there's still nothing but the photo of the girl and the "Apple Music" logo.

What am I doing wrong?  How can I see the songs that are my iPhone?

Thanks!

I've learned more ... I may have an answer to my question.

According to this article here ... when I told Siri to "Play Accept Yourself by The Smiths", she may have played that from Apple Music, not from my own library.

That would explain why "Apple Music" got turned on.

But I don't know why this would happen because I did not renew my Apple Music subscription after the trial last summer.

After ensuring the "Show Apple Music" setting was OFF, I powered off my iPhone.  Restarted, and it looks like I'm back to "iPod" mode in Music.


How to turn off Two-Step verification How I can turn off the Two-Step verification, it's driving me crazy.
here is ICLOUD security settings from my MacBook Pro-2015

As you can see from the below pictures I don't have the option to turn off the two-Factor authentication.

Another screenshot of my ICLOUD's security apple.com


Apple Aperture Tutorial I am looking for a good Aperture tutorial and would appreciate some recommendations.

Which tutorials can you recommend?

You could start with Apple's free training videos at Aperture 3 video tutorials. Also see the list of Aperture training resources and general Aperture resources (including downloads, extras and training).

There are other paid video tutorials from VTC, Lynda, Kelby Training, etc.


iCloud storage iPhone backup 2 iPhones show on my iPad as being backed up. I only have one, so I guess one is my old phone. I would like to delete it but I'm not sure which one I should delete, I don't want to remove the wrong one.
How can I tell which is which?

Go to https://www.icloud.com/#settings which should show all registered devices & their names. Using the device name, model & even Serial Number or IMEI info, you can decide which to delete.


How to hide audio volume pop over? How can I disable/hide this automatic volume level pop over that appears when changing the sound level. Is there switch or secret flag to not show this when I change the volume using the volume keys on the keyboard (Macbook)?

I found an answer here

Basically it is going to

  /System/Library/LoginPlugins/BezelServices.loginPlugin/Contents/Resources/BezelUI/HiDPI/.

You'll see there a lot of pdf-pictures, one of them volume.pdf. You'll want to overwrite that one (backup the old one!) with an empty .pdf. You can also overwrite the mute.pdf, but I dont think that is necessary in movies.

When you open this PDF in Preview, you will see a white square, by default, Preview will show transparency as 'white'. As the illustration is white, and the transparency is white, you will see a white square instead of the white volume logo. You can turn the white transparency off. Go to View, Show Image Background (AltCommandB)


Window Position Makes Applications Open Off-Screen | Mavericks I am having trouble with applications reopening halfway off-screen on my second display in Mavericks.

Is this a bug? or a preferences/settings issue?

I like many apps to launch on the second display.
I set this by: Dock > Options > Assign to Desktop on Display 2
This works, but apps always remember their maximized position a few inches from the left side of the display, effectively hiding half of the window off-screen.

If I drag the window back to the 0,0 position and then close it, Mavericks does not remember the position the next time a new window opens.

I've seen a few people discuss this issue, and most recommendations say to turn off 'Displays Have Separate Spaces' in Sys Pref > Mission Control.
While this works, it basically brings settings back to pre-Mavericks conditions and breaks full-screen support.

From what I understand, now that each display has its own spaces, Mavericks is only acknowledging the dimensions of the largest display. If one display is smaller than other, it will cut windows off when you open them on the smaller display, because it remembers a window position as if it were opening on the largest display.

I can clarify if that doesn't make sense.

Mainly, I just want to know, is this a bug Apple has not fixed yet with Mavericks, or is there something I'm missing here? I am surprised more people are not talking about this if it is a bug.

I have found that you can move the app window if you position the mouse over the edge to get the horizontal or vertical resize arrows.  The trick is to move the mouse horizontally if you have the vertical resize arrows or vertically if you have the horizontal resize arrows.  It is a bit tricky, but it works on Mavericks 10.9.x  This trick does not work with the diagonal resize arrows.  The trick works better if you get the resize arrows the furthest away from the window without turning back into a normal pointer.  You can practice this trick on any window, off screen or not.


How to see contacts that are suggested when composing emails? When composing emails I get suggestions for who to send to based on previous received and sent emails. Is there any way to see this list? I'd like to add them to my actual contacts list.

The easiest way to add a contact from the iOS mail app is to see their address in an e-mail. Received or Sent does not matter.

Simply tap on their e-mail address, or the name it displays for them and a callout window will appear with the choices 'Create New Contact' or 'Add to Existing Contact'. Tap on one of those and add the details as necessary.

Note that if you already have them in your address bar, following this process will show all the contact information you have for the individual.


How do I edit RAW in Photos on iOS 10? In Photos on macOS it is clear when I am editing a RAW file:

I need to explicitly choose Image > Use RAW as Original, and
the type of the file (e.g., Raw vs JPEG) is clearly indicated in several places in the UI.

However Photos in iOS 10 lacks both these features.

How can I be sure I'm editing RAW in Photos on iOS 10?

You will need to use an app from the App Store in order to both take photos in RAW as well as edit them. The two apps I am familiar with that do this are Adobe Lightroom and Obscura Camera.


Life without optical input I'm upgrading from a Mac Mini to an iMac and am quite surprised to learn that I'm losing some connectivity options. Firewire I can live without, but I quite needed the optical input on my Mac Mini.

I have a PC and a Mac, and one set of speakers. So I used the optical output from my PC to the optical input on my Mac Mini and was quite happy with that arrangement. But it seems the iMac lacks optical input. What options are open to me? I can find professional solutions from M-Audio that would work, but I'd rather not have to pour hundreds of dollars into making up for a missing port.

You can connect the optical outputs of your two computers to an optical switch, then connect the switch to your speakers.

Since most switches have TOSLINK inputs you might need 3.5mm optical -> TOSLINK cables to connect your computers to the switch.

All of these parts are common and relatively cheap.


ls -axi (what does it do)? So I was messing around in terminal, and when i opened it, I typed cd applications .

Nothing bad here.

Then, I typed ls -a\ in applications (or maybe /, I don't know, but it opened the > thing after for a multi line command.

Not remembering how to exit, I tried to type exit but instead typed xi and hit enter on my MAcBook Air. It said that it was doing something, but i tried to quit the terminal seeing it was deleting/restoring something (pls don't question my logic here).

Have no idea what it did, but when i go up in terminal, it says i typed ls -axi

What did this do?

ls -axi would have performed a regular directory listing, but with more contents (-a showing dot-files), a horizontal sort (-x) in columns, and with the inode number present (-i).

From the man page for ls:

-a

  Include directory entries whose names begin with a dot (.).

~ $ ls
Desktop     Downloads  Movies  Pictures
Documents   Library    Music   Public

~ $ ls -a
.          Downloads  Pictures
..         Library    Public
Desktop    Movies
Documents  Music

-x

  The same as -C, except that the multi-column output is produced with entries sorted across, rather than down, the columns.

-C

  Force multi-column output; this is the default when output is to a terminal.

~ $ ls -ax
.          ..         Desktop
Documents  Downloads  Library
Movies     Music      Pictures
Public

-i

  For each file, print the file's file serial number (inode number).

~ $ ls -axi
686312 .          643912 ..         686338 Desktop
686325 Documents  686327 Downloads  686313 Library
686390 Movies     686333 Music      686336 Pictures
686386 Public


Trouble sending emails in Apple's Mail Application I can't send any emails on one of my email accounts in Apple's Mail application even though I can receive emails with this account. My other accounts send and receive. I have no problem sending from this account on my iPad or iPhone, so it's not the account, it's definitely the Mail application.

My wife is having the same problem on her Macbook with her Gmail account. I've deleted the Keychain entries for the accounts, and then entirely deleted the accounts and created them again -- neither worked.

I'm using a Macbook Pro running 10.8.3 with Mail version 6.3

Is anyone else having this problem?

Look in the Account settings in Apple Mail and look at the Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) setting and see if it matches the correct mail service. (i.e. is it using the Gmail smtp server if it is a gmail account. Also, you can use the drop down list and select Edit SMTP Server List to select that particular SMTP server's settings. For Gmail it would be smtp.gmail.com and mine is set to use the default ports, has Authentication as password, and has my login credentials.

Hope this helps.


What are the technical and license restrictions around virtualization for Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion? I have a 500 GB hard drive on my MacBook Pro. I have OS X 10.7 (Lion) on my main partition and Windows 7 Ultimate on a secondary partition. Because I have older applications that I would like to run in OS X 10.5 (Leopard), I was thinking of creating an additional partition and install either Leopard on it. This raises the following questions:

What are the license restrictions on doing this type of install if I
own all the software?
What are the license restrictions on using virtualization tools like VMware Fusion to access these partitions? I have read the only OS X Leopard Server was allowed to run    virtualized, but I cannot seem to find an authoritative answer on
this. I do not have Leopard Server, but regular Leopard.
Are these license restrictions different in Snow Leopard?

And then, there are the technical questions, like: Does VMWare even allow for me to access, say virtualized Lion from Leopard or virtualized Leopard from Lion? I know I can get to the Windows partition from either one, but I have never tried any OS X virtualized. What are your thoughts? Thanks.

Legally, you can only run OS X Server in a virtual machine for 10.5 and 10.6. With Lion, they allowed regular OS X installations to run in up to two virtual machines. VMWare Fusion does support Leopard and Snow Leopard Server virtual machines (but not yet Lion), but I don't know if it will let you use the same installation both booted from disk and in a virtual machine.


How to install apps which require a newer version of iOS on a 1st gen. iPad? I have a 1st generation iPad and when I download apps it tells me “this requires iOS 6.0 or later” but when I go to update it tells me it's fully updated? Why is this happening, and is there any way I can fix it?

iTunes 12.7 or later makes this answer into a no - you can’t do it.
Now that iTunes can not manage Apps, you’re not able to side load them over USB.

The only workaround for now is to install a precedent version of iTunes (see this answer) and follow the rest of this answer.
Here's the easiest way to download apps onto an old iPhone/iPad that doesn't support downloading apps through the App Store (if you're getting an error that you need a greater software version to download):

On your old iPhone/iPad, go to Settings -> Store -> set Apps to Off.

Go onto your computer (it doesn't matter if it's a PC or a Mac) and open the iTunes app. Then go to the iTunes store and download all the apps you want to be on your iPad/iPhone.

If the iTunes on the computer and your iPad are both signed into the same Apple ID, and the iPad is connected to the internet, then go on your iPad/iPhone to App Store -> Purchased -> tap on an individual app you want to install.

You'll get a message that says "The current version requires iOS 6.1 or later, but you can download the last compatible version," just hit Download.

This method should at least allow you to have most apps on your outdated device. Most of them will work, but sometimes even once you have the app installed on your it still won't run correctly. That's just tough luck. But in my experience that's not too common; apps usually work just fine.


sshd not setting locale Edit: I should have mentioned in my original question that I was using MacPorts SSH client, as it turned out there were two root causes. See my own answer below.

When I SSH into my OSX machine, it's not setting the locale properly:

LANG=
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_ALL=

This should be using a UTF-8 locale. It should look like this:

LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

I'm running OSX 10.11.6 (El Capitan), and I've enabled the SSH server in System Preferences.

I'm using putty as a client on my Windows machine. When I use the same putty configuration to connect to a Linux server, the locale information is fine.

When I run a local terminal on the OSX machine, locale is fine. If I then ssh localhost, I have the same problem: no locale is set.

It seems that my OSX SSH server is ignoring or discarding the locale information from the client. I have the following in my (unmodified) /etc/ssh/sshd_config:

AcceptEnv LANG LC_*

To the best of my knowledge, that's all that's required.

My putty configuration is sending TERM=xterm-256color, which is being honored; it's only the locale information that isn't working, and to reiterate, it happens when I ssh localhost from OSX to itself, so I don't think putty is the issue here.

I will not accept answers that suggest setting the locale in my .profile; there are plenty of answers on here suggesting that, but it's a hack, not a solution.

Turns out there were two problems here:

First, PuTTY wasn't actually sending any locale information. Apparently the Linux servers were configuring the locale automatically, or based on TERM or something. I fixed PuTTY by configuring environment variables for it to send:

Second, I'm using MacPorts (updated question since this was missing in the original), and MacPorts ssh does not send locale variables. I can't imagine why MacPorts configures SSH this way, but I had to add the following to /opt/local/etc/ssh/ssh_config:

Host *
  SendEnv LANG LC_*

That really ought to be the default MacPorts config; it's the default on any standard Linux system, and it's even the default in OSX's own SSH. Figured out that MacPorts was part of the problem when SSH from Linux to OSX did set the locale.

I've filed a ticket with MacPorts suggesting the default be changed.


Messages in iCloud not exhibiting expected behavior So I have Messages in iCloud enabled on my iMac - High Sierra, 10.13.6.  My iPhone - version 12.2 and iPad - version 12.1.4.  The issue id like to solve is this - on the iPhone an iPad when I delete a message, I get the warning / confirmation that if I delete a message it will delete across all devices, do I want to delete?  When I answer yes, the message will delete from the iPhone and iPad but not the iMac. When I go to delete a message on my iMac, I get no prompt / confirmation, the message will just delete.  I have sent numerous logs to apple, enabled a pin code for them to rest my iCloud account and sent them some sort of profile info, but they have been unable to get my messages to sync when deleting across all the devices.  I have also disabled and re-enabled iMessages in the cloud on all devices with no luck.

Can anyone help me to get the iMessages deleting across all devices?  I am almost certain it did work properly at some point, but started this after an update.  Sorry to not be more specific on what I did with apple, but I did not write down all the info - but they have collected a lot of info and I do not remember for 100% sure when it started to act up.  This has been ongoing for awhile now and they just won't respond any longer.  Tks much!

So I tried again with another apple senior advisor today as the previous one would never do what he said he would.  I think the issue is solved....  Heres a screen shot of what she had me uncheck in the Messages preferences tab on the iMac and the messages are all now acting the same in syncing...


Remove specific shared links in Safari How do I remove a specific link in the shared links list? I have some links in there that I do not want to keep since it's taking up a lot of space and it makes me hard to search for the links I actually care about.

Are you referring to the list of sharing options presented at the bottom of the page when you tap the Share button?

Have you scrolled all the way to the right side of those icons and tapped the button with 3 dots with More underneath?

That will allow you to turn share sheets off, on, an rearrange them in the list.


xxd not found in Recovery Mode, Mac OS X 10+ In Recovery Mode, I was trying to access my password hashes, except bash 3.2 returned command not found for xxd.

Any help would be appreciated.

The recovery partition neither contains xxd nor od. Use the one installed to the main OS X volume by entering:

/Volumes/NameOfMainVolume/usr/bin/xxd

Don't forget to escape spaces in the name of your main OS X volume with a backslash. If you want to save something to a file also use your main volume. The Base OS X you are booted to is read-only and all the smaller r/w disks with less than ~50 MB are lost after a restart because they are in RAM.


Why does my iPhone still think I have 7gb of pictures on it even after I deleted all of them? I didn't have any space left on iCloud so I went to check what's going on there. I saw that my iPhone was taking up a lot of storage. My storage for pictures was still 7gb even after I deleted all of my pictures. I'm not even sharing any pictures and I also deleted all of my recently deleted pictures. All of them. Why is it still showing me under "usage" that I have 7gbs? I'm not able to backup my phone because I apparently I don't have any space when really I don't have 7gbs of pictures.

Make sure to look in the recently deleted album. They stay there for 30 days unless you go in there and delete them permanently.


Unusual iMessage received from my mom, who wasn't aware she sent it I received a iMessage via my mom's locked iPhone 4 while simultaneously calling her.  I stated I just received a message from you. She was confused because she doesn't use or know how to use this feature.

The content said "Can't talk now - On my way.".  I sent her a screenshot of this verbage to which I was referring to.  She allowed another family with more experience of iPhone to investigate.  They had no record or proof on their end of what I had sent but the rest of the message thread was identical.

How can I receive a random message seemingly via my mom's telephone number that she did not send?  Can we be part of someone else's spying on and unlocked phone?

I am extremely confused.  I called AT&T and Apple and neither could help me.

Check the following:

Settings
Phone
Click the third line (free translated) "Answer with text message"
The exact text you received is right there.

If you have a running phone call, your screen will turn black once the sensor will notice the darkness of your face being close to it.

Once you click on your phone during an incoming call, you can decline the call and answer with one of the messages explained above.

This has nothing to do with spying and hacking.


Do iCloud email addresses ignore periods like Gmail? In a Gmail email, you can put periods in your email, but in the end, the address is seen without them.
So dave.tess@gmail.com is also seen as davetess@gmail.com or even d.a.v.e.tess@gmail.com.

My question is, does iCloud handle emails this way too? If I have an address with periods in it, could I send an email to the same address without periods and receive it?

No, this doesn't work for iCloud email addresses. Just tried it and the email failed to deliver — the email must be exactly correct.


OSX 10.X App Compatibility Legality - Parallels I've been a very long time Windows user and software engineer and last year I bought my first MacBook Pro.

One of the issues I've been genuinely shocked by is the questions around application compatibility after a 10.X update.

I have code I wrote and apps I used on Windows 95 that still happily runs on Windows 7, 8 and will no doubt continue to run on Windows 10 when it arrives.

I have a vast gap in my knowledge as to why this issue exists on OSX and would love to hear from people here what the nuts and bolts issues are.  To my Windows leaning understanding I could understand this with a major version increment but I don't get understand why a minor version number update would be such an issue.

One particular issue for me has been with Parallels Desktop.  For the last few months my installation of Parallels has been telling me to upgrade from version 8 to version 10 as version 8 is "incompatible" with Yosemity and "will not work".

There are posts from Parallels employees on their own support forum stating this repeatedly to users as well as the application offering a dialog on application launch also repeating this message.

One of their support staff even stated in a post that when they tried it in their labs the VM software simply wouldn't even launch.

Well, yesterday I updated to Yosemity and launched Parallels 8 and ran my VM without any issues.

I don't know about other countries but this is completely illegal marketing practices in the UK.  They have so clearly told me that what I did would categorically not work when in fact it did.  I have saved myself a £35 upgrade by all accounts.

Parallels customers are complaining about the upgrade cycle and leaving the Parallels platform in droves by all accounts and switching to the free Virtual Box and after this experience I am certainly not giving them any more of my cash.

It seems that many vendors talk about a minor OSX version increment like it's a completely different OS and application model under the hood which to my mind just doesn't make sense.

Since I'm yet to take up Mac software development with any real world software I'm not aware of what these issues might be and now that I feel I have been completely mislead by Parallels I'm feeling particularly annoyed that I could have spent £35 on a software update based on what appears to be lies.

What are these potential incompatibilities?  Obviously new features of the OS wont by used by "old" software but to be told that my apps won't even launch when in fact they do is seriously questionable business practices and is even illegal in my country.

To provide an insight into the API level changes between OS X versions, Apple's What's New in OS X developer document is useful.

The deprecated framework and function lists can be extensive between 10.x releases:

  Deprecated Frameworks and APIs

  Periodically, Apple adds deprecation macros to APIs to indicate that those APIs should no longer be used in active development. When a deprecation occurs, it is not an immediate end of life for the specified API. Instead, it is the beginning of a grace period for transitioning from that API and to newer and more modern replacements. Deprecated APIs typically remain present and usable in the system for a reasonable time past the release in which they were deprecated. However, active development on them ceases, and the APIs receive only minor changes to accommodate security patches or to fix other critical bugs. Deprecated APIs may be removed entirely from a future version of the operating system.

  As a developer, avoid using deprecated APIs in your code as soon as possible. At a minimum, new code you write should never use deprecated APIs. And if your existing code uses deprecated APIs, update that code as soon as possible. Fortunately, the compiler generates warnings whenever it spots the use of a deprecated API in your code. You can use those warnings to track down and remove all references to those APIs.


Why do my Macbook Pro's WiFi speeds drop significantly when paired with Bluetooth devices? NOTE: This question is NOT a duplicate of Bluetooth and Wifi interfering with one another since Yosemite. That answer pertains to 1) The 2.4 GHz band only and 2) Yosemite only.

Background:

Though currently I’m running Yosemite (10.10.3), I have consistently experienced this issue since purchasing my Macbook Pro (Late 2013, originally running Mavericks). Whether it be a bluetooth mouse, headphones, or even iPhone, whenever I pair a device with my Macbook Pro, my Wifi speeds (running on 5 GHz band) drop by at least %50. I can reproduce this issue repeatedly. It only occurs when a device is paired via bluetooth to the machine. It does not occur when bluetooth is simply enabled on my computer.

At this point, I just don't connect devices via bluetooth anymore since the WiFi drop is noticeable. I am using a Logitech nano receiver mouse (and using up one of my precious two :( USB ports in the process) rather than using a Bluetooth mouse.

Machine Specs:

Model Name: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)
Model Identifier:   MacBookPro 11,3
Processor: 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
System Version: OS X 10.10.3 (14D136)
Kernel Version: Darwin 14.3.0

Speed Tests1:

WiFi speeds with Bluetooth-enabled, no devices paired:

WiFi speeds with Bluetooth-enabled, any device paired:

Troubleshooting:

I’ve ruled out my LAN set-up:

I use a TP-LINK Archer C8 Router connected to a modem provided by my ISP (running in bridge mode). I use the 5 GHz band exclusively. To rule out any band interference, I’ve tested the WiFi speed on the 2.4 GHz band as well. The same drop occurs regardless of the band.
I’ve used my ISP’s modem as a Gateway to directly connect to the internet (to rule out the TC-Link Router as the cause). Same result.

I’ve isolated the issue to that of a Wireless one.

There is no speed drop when my machine uses a wired connection (Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter > Ethernet Cable > WAN)

I’ve ruled out a specific Bluetooth device as the cause:

Originally, I thought the issue was with my Logitech M557 mouse. I tested my Magic Mouse instead. Both yielded the same drop in Wifi speed. The same has gone for any device that I paired with my MBP - Apple brand or not. Sidenote: I’ve unpaired the devices after testing. I only have one device paired (though not actively connected).

I’ve ruled out third party software:

The issue persists without any third party kernel extensions loaded. Additionally, with no other third party software running (Dropbox, for example).

I’ve ruled out a specific OS X:

This issue has occurred since purchase, in Dec 2013. Across OS X Mavericks - Yosemite. Additionally, the machine has had a clean install of OS X from a fresh Yosemite image.

I’ve ruled out my Macbook Pro’s hardware:

I ran the Apple Diagnostic Test, repeated times, with no error codes. On a separate issue (blown out builtin speaker recently), I had brought my machine into Apple. I had them run their in-house diagnostic test to confirm no BT related hardware issues. Additionally, as stated, this issue has been a problem from Day 1.

My Question:

Why does my Macbook Pro's WiFi speed drop by 50+% when paired with any Bluetooth device? Is there a solution?

1Courtesy of speedof.me

UPDATE:

Screenshot of detailed Wifi connection with a BT mouse paired. The SNR and Tx Rate are good:

In fact, nearly identical without BT device paired:

I found this answer here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6803542, a guy named 'Todd Berliner' had similar issues. Credits for him if this fixes your issue

Todd has similar problems and worked with an Apple senior supervisor for several weeks and came to the following fix:

Turn off bluetooth.
Disconnect all peripherals from your computer.
Open System Preferences. In the "Energy Saver" preference, de-select "Wake for network access" (no check, and leave it that way).
Open the finder. Select the "Go" menu.  Select "computer." Select "Macintosh HD."  Go the the "Library" folder.  Go to the "Preferences" folder. Find the preference file "com.apple.bluetooth.plist."
Rename "com.apple.bluetooth.plist" as "com.apple.bluetooth.plist.old" (i.e. add ".old").  Eventually, if this solution works for you, you can delete this "old" preference file.
Restart your computer (this will create a new "com.apple.bluetooth.plist" preference file).
Turn bluetooth back on.

Apparently, the problem is a bug caused by a bad interaction between the bluetooth preference file and wifi.


Prevent EarPod play/pause button from activating Siri on macOS Sierra I have installed macOS Sierra.  I often work on my Mac while on the go, and then I play music using iTunes over my EarPods connected via the mini-Jack plug.

The button allows me to pause the music, but now in Sierra, every time I press it, I am asked whether I want to allow Siri.  Refusing will simply bring the window up again when I press the button.

I don't want to use Siri on Sierra.  At all.  How can I prevent it from trying to activate when I press play/pause on my EarPods?

Added after reading comments: When I enable Siri, Siri doesn't activate when I press the button, unless I press it really long.  But when I disable Siri entirely, it asks whether it's allowed to activate every time I press the button, even if it's just a short click.

It may be related to the fact that although you "disable" Siri, the process is still running. You can easily see that in the Activity Monitor, by searching for Siri.

If you try to kill it, it will be restarted by launchd. To stop the automatic restart, disable it by editing /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Siri.plist and setting Disabled to false.

To do that, you first need to disable SIP (system integrity protection), edit /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Siri.plist, then enable SIP.


How to return screen brightness to default level I accidentally changed the brightness on the iPhone SE ios 13.3   How do I change the screen brightness back to the default level, and if this is impossible, can someone tell me what the default level is?  Thanks.

If you go to Settings on your iPhone and scroll down you should see a tab for "Display & Brightness". Tap this tab and you'll immediately see a slider marked "Brightness". There is no default level as such (default is to auto-adjust to ambient light levels) but you can adjust the slider to any level you want.


Disable "show password" in Keychain Access Is this possible?

I know some users use this function to recover forgotten passwords, however revealing a password in plaintext feels like extremely bad practice.

In my case, multiple users share a workstation, and all have the admin password. Keychain stores passwords to my personal accounts that we do not share. My password is sitting there waiting to be ripped off.

The keychain is an encrypted container and only the user who has the password can unlock it.  Being an admin on a computer does not allow you to unlock the keychain.  Not even root can do it.

Of course, as an admin, there are ways to install software and get the data but it isn't as simple as opening the keychain and looking.


My Seagate 4TB HDD doesn't mount in OSX El Capitan My Seagate 4TB HDD doesn't mount in OSX El Capitan on my MacBook Retina. I have been using it for the last week on this computer, but today it doesn't mount. It shows up in Disk Utility, but when I click "mount" it doesn't.

I ran First Aid on it and it still doesn't mount.
I tried it on an iMac with the same results, but other drives work fine.
I tried to shut down, restart                - same outcome
on a different computer iMac - same outcome
different drive solid state and normal - both worked fine
I ran First Aid in Disk Utility

When there is not something wrong with the format, it is an hardware issue.
Do you have any Seagate software installed?
If yes, completely uninstall it, then restart the mac, it is counterproductive.
If no: when there is not something wrong with the format, it is an hardware issue.


Why mouse zoom in,out not working on icloud.com find my iphon? I am using Linux Ubuntu. When trying to use www.icloud.com/#find any mouse movements like zoom or scroll not working.

Any solutions?

I suggest you use the +/- buttons on the upper left. At the time of posting, there is no mouse-input way to zoom the map in or out.

I tested it on Safari on a Mac with Yosemite (10.10).


Cannot get duplication of screens to work with mini display between iMac & Macbook Have an iMac 21", 2.5, Mid 2011 and a MacBook Pro Mid 2012 and I just bought a Mini display to connect them through the Thunderbolt. I cannot see that they are connected or the choice to connect it in the screen logo in the menu bar. Command F2 doesn't work.

Any idea whats wrong? how can I get the option to have them connected, not for data, just sound and image?

The problem is that you need to use a Thunderbolt Cable to use your iMac in Target Display Mode.  From Apple's website:

From your original question, you mention that you purchased a "mini display" which I can only deduce is that you meant that you bought a "mini Display Port cable."  If this is in fact the case, it's the wrong cable; which is why it's not working.


TextEdit wants to save as RTFD because of graphics, but I have used no graphics I have been copying and pasting lots of contact info into a Textedit file.
I have been saving as I go along and it saves as .RTF
Now suddenly it says:

  This document contains graphics and will be saved using RTFD (RTF with graphics) format. RTFD documents are not compatible with some applications. Save anyway?

I have not intentionally put graphics onto document.  How can I find the 'graphic' and delete it?

Try showing package contents in Finder and deleting all the image files.

You can then either move the rtf file outside the rtfd folder, or open the rtfd file in TextEdit, duplicate it, and save it as rtf.


Can I have custom GarageBand track icons? Is it possible to manually define a custom icon on track in GarageBand? Having something like a usericon I see on web sites makes knowing whose track I'm editing much easier than having to read relatively small text with the person's name on it.

I found this eHow video. I couldn't get it to load on my computer (it's slow because I'm rendering video in FCE). I also found this article. I'm not sure if that'll help or not.

According to this article:

There is some code somewhere in GarageBand that allows you to expand the number of icons you can use. But dog if I know where it is. There are two things you can do, either spring for a JamPack and let it automatically expand your icons, or replace ugly or stupid icons (there are plenty) with the ones you want.

As to the "How to", go to the link below and download my custom icons and directions to accomplish this.
http://garritan.com/GPO-GarageBandPage.html
Here is a direct link...
http://garritan.com/support/GB_Icon_Set.zip

To make your own icons, just open one of the triads in Photoshop and then save as a tif file.

As Wheat noted below, the links are dead, but you can download the icon set here (go Wayback Machine!)
The other link is here on Wayback Machine.


Second SATA drive stopped working (after lion upgrade) Since I upgraded to Lion, my second SATA drive stopped working. The issue occurs only for reading files, not writing. I can unmount it, but I can't rename nor delete files.

I have two SSDs installed in my MacBook Pro and when I look at 'System Information' it lists both drives. So they are properly recognized.

However, the first drive is listed as:

"Solid State SATA"

and the second (working) one is listed as

"Flash Storage"

Both drives are formatted as OS X Journaled, so they are of the same format.

Does someone has any idea what's going on over here? And how can I solve this?

Have you updated your EFI?  Lots of potential problems depending on the drive and the model of MacBook.

In particular it appears that SATA 3.0 drives (6.0 Gbps) are not well supported. The EFI update resolves some problems, but not others. Is the read only drive in the optical bay? That would be consistent with the kind of problems reported.


Using mv to rename files on terminal ended up with lost files I'm on macOS Mojave 10.14.4, on a APFS SSD. Last week some students delivered me some image files over an image processing assignment. I have an automated routine on Matlab to grade the assignments, but it only loads files with a specific ".jpeg" extension.

Rather than rewrite my routine, I usually just rename the files (a mess of ".jpg", ".JPEG", ".JPG") on terminal. I'm used to do that on my University issued linux desktop. But that day I had my MacBook Pro with me, so I got them with it.

Alas, my terminal command "mv *.jpg *.jpeg" returned with a no such file or directory error, so I left this task for later. Earlier today I got to work after a three day weekend and when I opened the folder, I realized that about half of the files were missing.

My guess is that the mv didn't "fail properly" and, based on some thing that I've already looked around, may have lost the data for good! My Time Machine is at home, so it never got to back up those files.

I have already looked for possibly hidden folders where the files might have ended up, but no luck. Does anyone has any idea where the files may have gone? Or if they are truly lost?

Att.

Osmar

If you have a directory/folder of JPEG files that have either a .jpg and or .JPG extension and you want to change the extension to .jpeg, then in Terminal, use the following compound command after changing directory cd ... to the directory containing the JPEG files:

for f in *.[jJ][pP][gG]; do mv -n "$f" "${f%.*}.jpeg"; done


Sending messages from an iPhone sometimes goes to email rather than to mobile I have an iPhone 4S. When I send a text message it sometimes sends to the contact's email address rather than their mobile, if within the contact I have both email and mobile included. How do I prevent this - I always want to send to the mobile number.
Also, I can't tell whether it goes to email addr or mobile number - the receiver tells me eventually.

When you create a new message, it will prompt you to chose between somebody's email and phone number to create a conversation (for MMS and iMessage conversation)

You probably chose the email by mistake once (and maybe the phone number another time), so now, you have 2 conversations for the same person. One to the phone number, one to the email.

You will need to delete the email one by opening the conversation, scrolling to top and selecting "Contact". From this view, you will see either the email or the phone number in light blue. If it's the email, go back and delete this conversation.


iOS Minecraft app re-installation/re-purchase For many years, I've owned Minecraft app. I played it a lot during my childhood. It's been updated many times, even to v1.8 with no problems. But now, when I uninstall and then try to reinstall it, apparently I don't own the app.

Is there any way to get this app back? I am able to go through iCloud purchase records if I need to show them to Apple.

The first thing to do is to confirm a couple things. Namely, you need to confirm:

you're logged into the same Apple ID account as you used when originally purchasing Minecraft, and
that you're trying to install the same version of the Minecraft game you previously purchased.

Let me clarify the second point. When I say 'same version' I don't mean the same version number, but the same game within the Minecraft franchise. In your screenshot you're showing Minecraft Pocket Edition. This is not the same as Minecraft.

Once you've confirmed the two points above, then take a look at Redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books from the App Store, iTunes Store, and Apple Books on Apple's website.

If this doesn't help, then use Apple's Get Support option.

Another option is if you’ve got a prior version of it backed up somewhere (eg Time Machine etc), you could then install it via an appropriate version of iTunes or Apple Configurator (see this question). But, I really think Apple can sort it out for you. You’ll probably have to be patient though, it may take a few days especially at this time of year.


Formatting an external harddrive with TrueCrypt as NTFS? I've been trying for a couple of hours to figure out how to encrypt my external harddrive with TrueCrypt. I need it to be formatted as NTFS, however TrueCrypt doesn't let me choose any other filesystem than HFS+ (Mac OS Extended).

This is how the TrueCrypt window looks like upon trying to pick the filesystem:

I've got both Tuxera NTFS and MacFuse installed so I can perfectly mount, write, read and format disks as NTFS via the Disk Utility. I just can't seem to encrypt it via TrueCrypt. The reason I need it to be NTFS is that it needs to be 100% Windows compatible with as little hassle as possible, otherwise I would have settled with HFS+.

I'm using OS X 10.8.5 on a 2011 MacBook Pro, the external harddrive is a Western-Digitals 1TB drive.

I don't think you can format your external hard drive as NTFS using TrueCrypt -- in my experience it can only be done from a PC. I also work with macOS and Windows, so what I did was to use the Portable TrueCrypt for Windows on a PC, and then I was able to encrypt the external NTFS-formatted hard drive with TrueCrypt. The advantage of using the Portable TruecCrypt for Windows is that the program doesn't have to be installed on the PC, and the TrueCrypt volume can be mounted on both OS. Hope this helps!


How do I safely eject or unplug an iPad, iPhone, or iPod when iTunes is not running? When I connect one of my many iOS devices to a computer for synchronization purposes, I have iTunes running. In the iTunes left-hand area, I see an eject button to the right of the device's name. I always use "eject" after a successful sync, before unplugging the device cable.  I'm presuming this is meant to be similar to Windows' "USB Device Safe Removal" feature (though iOS devices don't appear to show up there?) .. or when I choose "Eject" from the context menu of a USB-connected disk on my Mac's desktop.

Yet, sometimes I'm connecting my iOS device to a computer without having iTunes running.  For instance, when using the device for USB-based "Personal Hotspot" connections, I don't need iTunes running.  My questions are:

Is there a need to safely indicate removal of an iOS device from a computer, prior to removing the device cable?
If yes, must I fire up iTunes simply to access the "eject" button, or is there another easily accessible mechanism available?

I use both PCs and Macs so answers covering the two are appreciated. Good answers will also provide definitive supporting references.  Thanks!

In the Finder in Mac OS X, press Command-Shift-G to Go to folder. Type /Volumes. This will take you to the “Volumes” folder. If your iDevice is mounted as a drive, it will appear here. You can select it and press Command-E to eject it. If it does not appear here, it is not mounted as a drive, and you can simply unplug it. Note that it may or may not appear on your Desktop or in a Finder sidebar depending on your settings, but it should always appear in the /Volumes folder.

On Windows, in the system tray, there is an icon you can click to “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media.” Right-click the icon, find the name of your iOS device, and click it to eject it. If it does not appear on this list, it is not mounted as a drive and you can simply unplug it.


Why can other users see my files in MY user folder? This is a screenshot of my private folders/files inside my user folder, but seen from a different user on my MacBook. Several folders are basically openly accessable for everybody, even when created inside my very own /user space.

My questions are:

Why is it like this ?
How can I prevent other users from accessing my files (unless i move them inside protected folders)

This is because Finder creates new folder with default permissions set to 755, or rwxr-xr-x (I agree that's questionable behavior). This means that new folders in your home directory are readable (r) and executable (x) by both users not-only in the same group, but all users on the system.
You can lock down the access to just your user from Finder's Get Info dialog by removing the group access entry and setting the "everyone" entry to "No Access".
Alternately, you can use Terminal to chmod your directories with chmod 700 ~/your_directory to accomplish the same thing.


Umask doesn't change after reboot I'm new to umask so please correct me if i'm wrong.

We have a mac OS X file server at work with multiple SMB shares. Whenever users create files, they get created as -rw-r--r-- as this is the default umask (022). I want to change it to (002) so created files will have -rw-rw---- as default. This way all users in the same group can access the files.

Apple advises to change umask like this:

  sudo launchctl config user umask nnn

After doing sudo launchctl config user umask 002 I got the following message:

  Configuration applied. You must reboot for changes to take effect.

I rebooted and got the following:

  $ umask0022

what am I doing wrong, please advise.

I'm running OS X Server 10.10.3 Yosemite with Server.app 4.1

I can only guess but I think it's an error in 10.10.3 which is solved in 10.10.5 (or maybe 10.10.4) because none of my 10.10.5 hosts show your 10.10.3 behavior.

So I recommend to update to 10.10.5/4.1.5.

BTW the integer in /var/db/com.apple.xpc.launchd/config/user.plist is calculated by converting the three binary "triplets" to a decimal number:

002 = 000 000 010 =   2
022 = 000 010 010 =  18
666 = 110 110 110 = 438


Completely new Time Machine backup? I made use of Time Machine to restore my Mac's OS and data to a new drive after the old one failed. Time Machine doesn't seem to recognize that the new drive and the back ups are related. Is there a method to connect the two, or do I need to wipe that drive containing the old history, and just start a new TM backup?

The Time Machine backups became disassociated with the new drive because of the change to the UUID of the new drive. With a little usage of tmutil in Terminal following the directions here, you can rebuild the association of the Time Machine backups to the new drive.


Big Sur bootable installer cannot be created or corrupted after creation I have an iMac 27" 2015 that I want to do a clean install of Big Sur on it.
I followed the tutorial on creating the bootable installation media but it failed with an error: "/Applications/Install macOS Big Sur.app does not appear to be a valid OS installer application."
I found a question like this here that said that you must start the installation and let it download the missing files and when it asks to restart you just quit the installer and create the bootable installer again.
I followed the instructions and was able to create the installation media and I restarted the iMac and booted into the installation drive and erased the fusion drive and started to install the macOS.
After choosing the fusion drive to install the OS and accepting the EULA, I had an error message that says that it cannot continue installation because the package is corrupted
I tried it two times and both times the same corrupted error and I wanted to ask is there a sure and tried way to create an install media for Big Sur?

I ran into a similar issue when trying to create a bootable installer for Big Sur as well. I found this page to be helpful:
https://mrmacintosh.com/big-sur-installation-failed-an-error-occurred-while-installing-the-selected-updates/
Basically you open Safari and access this URL to directly download the installer:
http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/50/49/001-79699-A_93OMDU5KFG/dkjnjkq9eax1n2wpf8rik5agns2z43ikqu/InstallAssistant.pkg
For me, it would pause every minute or so, but I just kept clicking resume and eventually I had downloaded the whole thing, and I was able to generate a working bootable installer that has worked on at least 2 macs for me.


Does iMessage work internationally with only a number? My friend and I have a sim from say country A. If my friend goes to country B and temporarily uses a sim from country B (I.e. not data roaming with the original sim), can I still use iMessage given that I only have the original number from the country A sim?

Yes, you can still use iMessage in this case.

The phone number used in country A is registered with Apple's servers, so when you use iMessage to message that number, they'll send the message to the devices logged in to iCloud with the account that has that phone number registered for iMessage.

Your friend can register multiple such numbers, and from the Settings => Messages on his iOS device choose which numbers to actually use for sending and receiving.

If your friend does not want this to be possible, he needs to deregister his phone number from iMessage. He can do that by following this guide from Apple.


Two Finder processes are open. Neither works. What gives? I can't get Finder to do a darn thing. Specifically, it won't open new windows, show files on the desktop, or be the app in focus when I click its dock icon or the desktop.

Weird! Fine, I'll relaunch Finder. That usually clears it up.

Er:

I can hit 'relaunch' on both of those Finder items, and it changes nothing. Neither did restarting the computer.

Apps can still manipulate files, and Alfred can open them - but not find them.

There are zero Finder processes open according to Activity Monitor:

What are my next troubleshooting steps?

Try restarting the LaunchServices database. Launch the Terminal app (Cmd+Space, "Terminal"), and type in

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

Then quit Terminal, restart your mac, and let us know if that fixed it.


How is the Y value for the Memory Pressure graph in Activity Monitor calculated? How is vm.memory_pressure's value bounded / calculated on OS X 10.10.2 - Yosemite?

I've researched several answers to this question and am trying a few things on the command line to get exact values rather than looking at the graphs in Activity Monitor.

With the system under light load:

~ ❯❯❯ sysctl -a vm | grep page_free && sysctl vm.memory_pressure && sysctl kern.memorystatus_vm_pressure_level
vm.vm_page_free_target: 4000
vm.page_free_wanted: 0
vm.page_free_count: 2683717
vm.memory_pressure: 0
kern.memorystatus_vm_pressure_level: 1

The kern.memorystatus_vm_pressure_level looks right, and appears to be what it uses to color the graph (green for 1-NORMAL, yellow for 2-WARN, red for 4-CRITICAL). However, vm.memory_pressure is 0 and the graph has some amount of green to it, and it's jagged, meaning the value is clearly changing over time, not just sitting at 0.

Under heavy load it looks like this:

❯❯❯ sysctl -a vm | grep page_free && sysctl vm.memory_pressure && sysctl kern.memorystatus_vm_pressure_level
vm.vm_page_free_target: 4000
vm.page_free_wanted: 0
vm.page_free_count: 32572
vm.memory_pressure: 1693
kern.memorystatus_vm_pressure_level: 4

Or this...

~ ❯❯❯ sysctl -a vm | grep page_free && sysctl vm.memory_pressure && sysctl kern.memorystatus_vm_pressure_level
vm.vm_page_free_target: 4000
vm.page_free_wanted: 0
vm.page_free_count: 5431
vm.memory_pressure: 277
kern.memorystatus_vm_pressure_level: 4

Or this...

~ ❯❯❯ sysctl -a vm | grep page_free && sysctl vm.memory_pressure && sysctl kern.memorystatus_vm_pressure_level
vm.vm_page_free_target: 4000
vm.page_free_wanted: 3220
vm.page_free_count: 805
vm.memory_pressure: 1
kern.memorystatus_vm_pressure_level: 4

Here's where I'm confused. None of these values alone could possibly be the Y value of the graph for a couple of reasons.

First, vm.memory_pressure just sits at 0 almost all the time under normal load, and the graph doesn't sit at 0.

Second, they are not consistent with one another. Looking at the memory_pressure value, it is lower when it actually had wanted pages (3220 wanted and pressure of only 1) than when it had 5431 free and none wanted (pressure was 277). And somehow that's even lower pressure than when it had 32572 free (and had 1693 pressure).

So, when it plots that graph, what's the calculation for the Y value, and how can I get the data I need to calculate it from the command line? I'm looking to make a command line tool that will spit out a percentage of how high the current line would be on that graph, so I need to know how to calculate the value at any given time, as well as what the range of possible values are.

This is currently only a partial answer. This answer not complete until this sentence removed.

The thing about this question is that on the face of it, the Memory Pressure graph doesn't quite make sense when comparing it with what's reported in Terminal when using the command outlined by the OP:

sysctl -a vm | grep page_free && sysctl vm.memory_pressure && sysctl kern.memorystatus_vm_pressure_level

However, the problem here is that this command limits the vm values it's reporting back. In fact, there's actually 105 values in total but this command only reports the following five values:

vm.vm_page_free_target:
vm.page_free_wanted:
vm.page_free_count:
vm.memory_pressure:
kern.memorystatus_vm_pressure_level:

NOTE: Numerical values would normally appear after the colon (:), however I have not included these.

Obviously, the overwhelming majority of the 105 vm values are not part of the actual calculation that determines memory pressure, but the problem here is that the five values above are not the only ones used to calculate memory pressure.

For example, while the above output provides some of the various free values, it's not providing any of the inactive values, etc.

These values are important because the memory pressure algorithm calculates a ratio between those values, and the relationship between those values isn't apparent from the output produced by the command in the OP's question.

I think I may have some technical information that can shed more light on this. I will update this answer either way within the week.

[STATUS UPDATE]

I've been unable to find the technical information I was looking for. However, I am fairly certain I do still have it - probably on some old CDR/DVDR backups. I will update this answer once I've found it, or after I'm certain I won't find it.


CMD + W doesn't work anymore on macOS Mojave After installing the .dotfiles on my new Macbook (Mojave) the keyboard combination CMD + W to close tabs or windows stopped working system wide.

I found out that when I press fn + CMD + W it works. But this is not my desired solution.

Any suggestions on how I can get CMD + W to close tabs or windows?

Resolved by installing the dotfiles again. Still don't know what caused the problem…


Extract /var/mobile/containers/data/application from an IPhone or backup I need to extract my Snapchat data which is located in a folder in /var/mobile/containers/data/application/(snapchat).

The problem is it doesn't seem any of the backup browsers offer this?

I also tried sideloading iFile but I can't access it from there, and my phone is not Jailbroken and can't be(10.2.1).

Does anyone know how  I can get this? It's very important to me.Thanks!

Apps can choose to not include data in their container from an iTunes backup, so the folder won't appear in a backup. Snapchat do this, which means the container isn't backed up when you do an iTunes backup and the data inside won't be able to be accessed.

You can't access other app's containers without jailbreaking. Unfortunately, this means that data isn't accessible.


How to keep a MS Word installation working after exchanging HDD without license key at hand? I changed the HDD of a Macbook with OS X Yosemite by taking the HDD out of the computer and making a byte-by-byte copy with dd on Linux. Now MS Word refuses to start saying the copy isn't licensed. It seems to calculate a checksum over the license key and hardware serial numbers and fail due to the change of the HDD.

I have both HDDs at hand and could restore the old installation by putting in the old HDD. How can I prepare MS Word (license) to survive the HDD change?

You need to copy

/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensing.plist

from the old machine to the new one.  Make sure you put it into the exact same location.


How do programs access ~/Library/Mail under OSX 10.14 (Mojave) After upgrading to 10.14, I am unable to access the ~/Library/Mail directory, either as the user or as root.

[~/Library/Mail 14:01:42]$ ls -l
ls: .: Operation not permitted
[~/Library/Mail 14:04:11]$

So that's pretty weird. It happens even if I am root.

No system flags are set on the directory.

So presumably, this is another system integrity or sandboxing thing. Unfortunately, I have code that wants to access the sqlite3 database inside the ~/Library/Mail directory.  So how do I grant my software access to my mail?

This seems to be related to the 10.14 privacy protections.

Full Disk Access

Add your application or tool to the Full Disk Access list within System Preferences > Security & Privacy.

This is related to the new macOS Privacy Protections in 10.14, aka Mojave.

If you want programs launched from Terminal to be able to access ~/Library/Mail, you will need to add them to the Full Disk Access list (below). I originally added Terminal and still couldn't access the folder. It turns out that I use iTerm2, and not Terminal. That had to be added also.


Can I use the USB-C Apple adapter, to charge my MacBook 12', with USB-A port? I have:

MacBook 12"
USB-C AV Multiport Adapter
USB-A to USB-C cable
USB-C Macbook 12' charger

Basically I want to keep the USB-C port on the adapter free.

So, instead of using a USB-C cable to plug the charger to the adapter, I want to use the USB-A port on the adapter.

Will this work?

No, this will not work.  You cannot charge through the USB-A port.

The USB-A port is a 3.0 port which will supply 5V of power, but it will not be able to negotiate to receive power per the USB 3.1 spec.

Per the Multiport AV Adapter specifications:

  Use the standard USB port to connect devices such as your flash drive
  or camera, or a USB cable for syncing and charging your iPhone, iPad
  or iPod. You can also connect a charging cable to the USB-C port to
  charge your Mac.


How can I get TextMate's QuickLook plugin to render HAML and YML files? TextMate's QL generators are supposed to render QL views for files that TM recognizes, while TM is open. Out of the box, it only renders the basic ones (C, Perl, etc), but this article on Ciaran Walsh's Blog explains how to add other UTIs to the generator, to have them rendered properly.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work with Dynamic UTIs which are the only type I can find for HAML and YML files (dyn.ah62d4rv4ge80u2prru and dyn.ah62d4rv4ge81w5pq on my system) using PathFinder's ShowInfo command.

Is there a way to use Dynamic UTIs in the TM QL generator's info.plist? Are there standard UTIss for HAML and YML files? Or am I out of luck?

Dynamic UTIs are assigned to unknown file types so they have a UTI other than "data".

I suggest you define UTIs for file extensions .haml and .yml and use them in your custom QLGenerator. See this post on SU. The linked topic also contains another answer that suggests to use a QuickLook plugin for the public.data UTI every file falls back on.


How to Restrict iOS Wifi Settings from being Changed? I have iPad Mini 3 with iOS 8. I set the restrictions under Settings > General > Restrictions but some important settings are not covered like WiFi, Proxy and DNS settings.

How can I restrict WiFi settings from being changed to some other values other than mine? I need this for parental controls. If possible how can disable or hide Settings app all together?

This may be possible if you setup and install a custom security profile like many businesses do for devices they issue.  Apple makes a Mac app called Apple Configurator 2 that I am going to look into.  I will try to remember to post back if I figure it out.


Seeking a clean way to mount a directory on one HFS+ drive as a directory on another such drive on same machine I need to seamlessly mount (and automount, e.g. via fstab) a directory (folder) on one drive to appear at the commandline and GUI level as a directory on another, on the same machine. This is to defeat some "smart" software that detects that symlinks and aliases are not "real" directories and refuses to act on them.

In Linux, this would be trivially easy, with:
 mount --bind /path1/source_dir /path2/target_dir
However, Mac OS's version of mount does not support this bind functionality (in any form, including mount -o bind, or mount -B), as far as I can determine. It also appears that none of Macports, Homebrew, or Fink supply a ported version of mount with such an option.  Some available more specialized mounting tools don't seem to relate, either (e.g. xmount is for disk images, and djmount is for network volumes).

To be clear, I'm not trying to mount a disk or partition as a volume or as a local directory, nor to create a share to be mounted arbitrarily by various users on various machines. Rather, I want to mount a folder, owned and writable only by a particular user, on an HFS+ disk as if it were a folder on another HFS+ disk, locally, in a way that is effectively transparent, with the same permissions and no security/integrity issues.

A sloppy workaround is to create a CIFS share of the folder to be mounted, and (calling a custom, one-shot variant of smb.conf) limit its permissions in Samba just-so, such that it is not public, and has the same permissions as the target location, exactly the right file and directory mask, etc.; then mount it that way. But this would be inefficient, since it would be using the bletcherous Windows filesharing protocol, plus creating a visible share that shows up as a mountable volume from the SMB server, to anyone who can access this machine though SMB/CIFS (even if they cannot actually mount it). The Mac GUI will probably also represent it as a volume being shared.

To mount a hard drive on a custom mountpoint:

  You can do this with diskutil mount and the -mountPoint option.
  From the man page:

    mount [readOnly] [-mountPoint path] device

    Mount a single volume.  If readOnly is specified, then the file system is mounted read-only, even if the volume's underlying file
    system and/or device and/or media supports writing; even the
    super-user may not write to it; this is the same as the rdonly option
    to mount (8).  If a -mountPoint is specified, then that path, rather
    than the standard path of /Volumes/VolumeName, will be used as the
    view into the volume file con- tent; a directory at that path must
    already exist.

    From man diskutil, section 'Verbs'.

  The syntax to mount to a custom mountpoint is as follows:

diskutil mount -mountPoint /path/to/custom/mountpoint [volume (identifier/UUID/label)]

  Bear in mind that /path/to/custom/mountpoint must be a
  directory, just like with mount, and that your
  identifier/UUID/label are specific to the volume (i.e. /dev/diskXsY
  not /dev/diskX). Mounting to a custom mountpoint cannot be done with
  diskutil mountDisk, and only works with a single volume at a time.

From my answer to How to mount disk by UUID or LABEL in OS X El Capitan.

I've tested this by "mounting" a USB stick on an external hard drive. As an example,

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh SSD           499.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS HDD-1T                  999.8 GB   disk1s2
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *31.6 GB    disk2
   1:               Windows_NTFS USB-32                  31.6 GB    disk2s1

As you can see, /dev/disk2s1, or USB-32 is the name of the USB stick I am going to mount on the hard drive, /dev/disk1s2, or HDD-1T. To do so, make use of the -mountPoint option. But first, make sure there is a landing directory to mount onto:

$ mkdir /Volumes/HDD-1T/mountpoint

And now, to mount:

$ diskutil mount -mountPoint /Volumes/HDD-1T/mountpoint /dev/disk1s2

The mounted disk will appear in the following locations: /Volumes,  and /Volumes/HDD-1T/mountpoint as USB-32 and mountpoint respectively.

Be sure to unmount (diskutil umount) your USB-32 equivalent before remounting on your HDD-1T equivalent.


How to create an Automator "Mail Service" to compose the body of email from the content of a file? I would like to create a "Mail Service" with Mac Automator to create a New Message that automagically fills the body with the content of ascii file ~/Documents/MailBody.txt

I can select the file with "Find Finder Items", but not sure how to get its content to pass it as input to "New Mail Message". Note I want to add the content of the file to the body, not to attach the file itself.

Thanks a lot in advance.

The solution I have found is this: the first action in the workflow is "Run Shell Script" which just cat ~/Documents/MailBody.txt. This actions returns "text", which is passed as input to action "New Mail Message". It seems to work fine, even when the txt file has multiple lines.


MacBook 15" (2017) - Battery Charging Problem Since yesterday my MacBook charges really slow, so I gave coconutBattery a try, and it showed that my MacBook is only charging with around 14 Watts. I am charging with an Apple 86W Power Supply.

So my question is with how much Watt are batteries supposed to charge?

Checking your charging status within macOS

macOS provides a great deal of information about your power usage. To access this follow these steps:

Go to Apple > About This Mac
Click on the System Report... button
In the left pane under the Hardware heading, select Power (it's about 2/3 of the way down)
On the right-hand side, scroll down to view the AC Charger Information
This will show you whether it's connected to a charger, the amount of wattage it's receiving, and if it's currently charging or not

Typically for your model MBP it should show about 85W/86W when connected to an Apple 87W USB-C Power Adapter. Assuming you're getting this figure, you should be right in terms of your charge rate.

As for the figure in coconutBattery, remember:

this will vary depending on how much load the MBP is currently under
it's not a reflection of the total wattage as most will be used by your MBP for its power requirements

If you're not seeing near the 85W/86W, then read on.

I know you've stated that you've already reset the SMC, but I'd do both a NVRAM and SMC reset (in that order). Before following the steps below, ensure you have no external hardware connected and that you're using the built-in keyboard.

Reset the NVRAM

Reset the NVRAM on your MBP as follows:

Shut down your MBP. That is, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down for about 20 seconds or until you see the Apple logo
Let go of the keys and let your MBP reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Reset the SMC

Shut down your MBP
Press and hold the power button for at least 10 seconds
Let go of the power button and wait 5 seconds
Power up your MBP again

Once you've reset the NVRAM and SMC use your MBP as usual and monitor the charging. If you still feel it's not charging as it normally would, then reset the SMC again but with the following steps instead:

Shut down your MBP
Press and hold the right shift key and the left option and control keys for 7 seconds before then also pressing and holding the power button down for another 7 seconds (i.e. the keys will end up being held down for 14 seconds, the power button for 7 seconds)
Let go of all three keys and the power button
Wait 5 seconds
Power up your MBP again


Infinite scrollback in Terminal (Yosemite) I would like to save the scrollback history in terminal basically forever.

I don't mean bash history, I mean all the text that ever scrolled past in the terminal, not just the commands entered.

I found the files where they are stored in:

~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Terminal.savedState/

But I would like the data to persist beyond current sessions, after I close the terminal, the data persists indefinitely.

Also, is there a tool that will let me read those data files?

Thanks for any info

Here's an option for running a script on startup to append everything to a log file. Searching a text file will likely be a better option than manually scrolling up in Terminal, or filling up a buffer.

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20120507163311559


iPhone 4S: how to set up multiple phone numbers under text messages send/receive option Under

settings
text messages
send/receive

I had 3 phone numbers listed - mine and my children.

I am not sure how this setup occurred although they have iPhones that use and are associated with my email and Apple ID.

Recently my Apple ID was changed and I lost this functionality.  I'm wondering how to get these phone numbers back.  I am interested in monitoring my children's texts using this feature.

This question covers the procedure you will follow to re-enroll your children's phone numbers under your new Apple ID.

On their two phones, go to settings app, tap iMessage and sign out of e old account. Sign in on your account and set their "Caller ID" for sending iMessage to be their phone number. Repeat for any/all devices that use your new Apple ID.

However, there are problems with this approach.  Just be aware that when you get your children's messages, you only get their iMessages (message sent from an Apple computer or an iOS device only). SMS from non-Apple phones still go directly to their phone without you seeing them.

Your children will receive a copy of all of your iMessages as well and they could send messages as you (but not your SMS).


No sound out of both sides of Beats solo3 wireless when on Bluetooth I have a pair of beats solo3 wireless headphones that used to work.

They still work when wired.

When connected to my phone over bluetooth, I can see the iPhone volume indicators change on the iphone when I press the volume buttons on the headphones. So it's definitely connected to bluetooth.

I tried resetting by holding power button and volume down button for 10 seconds. It didn't help.

Tried getting it to work with Apple Watch and iMac but it doesn't work with them.

I no longer get chime that I used to hear when the headphones are first turned on.

After fiddling with it some more, I was able to briefly get some sound  out of one side at a very low volume. Then I got sound out of the other for about 5 seconds and then it cut out completely. So they are still not working but there seems to be a glimmer of hope.

After sticking the wired cable into the jack on the left can about halfway in while they were connected to bluetooth, I was able to restore sound do the right can. Still no sound out of left can. Very weird.

Any other ideas or are these things toast?

SOLVED!
So after 7) above, I poked the wired cable into the jack again (the cable was totally disconnected at the other end this time). The headphones turned themselves off. After I turned them on, they miraculously started working.


Is there a way to force Finder to attempt to move something from a read-only folder? Usually, if you hold down command while dragging a file (or folder), the Finder will move it rather than copying. This works if you want to quickly move something between volumes (the default is to copy.) However, if you're dragging from a folder you can't write to, command has no effect.

Is there a way to make the Finder always try to move something if you hold down command, or an equally fast way use the Finder to move an item out of a read-only folder?

No, this is an implicit feature of the permissions system. Moving a file out of a folder is effectively deleting it from that folder, which is a write operation, by the permission system's logic, hence it's forbidden if you don't have write permissions.

Read-only access is typically used in situations where users need to access files, but shouldn't be allowed to modify or delete any. Being allowed to move files (potentially to locations where other users couldn't access them) would break that paradigm.

If you want to move that file, you could do so from the Terminal, using sudo mv file destination (sudo means perform the command as the super-user, i.e. a user that has write permissions), or you can change the folder's permissions from the Get Info window (in the right-click menu, file menu, or press ⌘I).


Make the iPhone "recents" album more recent The "Recents" folder in my iPhone seems to contain every photo I've ever taken, not strictly 'recent' ones. Where is the setting that determines how far back in time this folder goes to stay in recent vs. getting moved into "All Photos?"

The Recents album is a generated view of all photos and videos by each’s date added to the library.
This is in contrast to the All Photos view which is always in date captured order.
For example, if someone uses AirDrop to send you a photo they took on their phone, the photo will appear at the bottom of Recents but in the right date position for when it was taken in All Photos.
This cannot be customised. Usually, use the All Photos view, unless you’re specifically looking for media by when it was transferred.


OSX won't automatically connect to WiFi About a week ago, my OSX machine stopped connecting to any WiFi networks automatically. If I open the WiFi menu from the top bar and select the desired network, it connects OK. Also, if I enable "Ask to join new networks" from the Network preferences, it shows the "No preferred networks found" dialog, even though the network is both in the list shown in that window AND in the preferred networks list in Network preferences -> WiFi -> Advanced...`.

The issue is repeatable both in my work and home networks. As far as I know, I've done no configuration changes or updates or such since the 10.8.3 update.

UPDATE: This may be hackintosh-related, since I get an error message from the bootloader saying Unable to handle key preferred-networks. I'm not sure what this site's stance on hackintoshes is so I posted this on the bootloader's forum as well.
UPDATE 2: Not an issue of the bootloader.

Edit: In reference to Buscar's comment, this is my view of the network preferences:

Reading this question reminded me that I had dealt with the same problem with my Mac awhile ago.

I fixed it by writing a shell script which was automatically called via launchd whenever /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ changes.

You'll have to configure a few things, mainly create a list of known SSIDs and passwords for the networks that you join.

You can find it here:
https://github.com/tjluoma/airport-autojoin


Spotlight search returns no results on iOS (intermittently) I'm on 8.0.2 but it happened on 8.0.0 too.

Spotlight just won't show anything no matter what I type.

I have this to they only resolution so far is either go old turn off and on again or reboot then seems to work again. Do you use other keyboards too? because I thought it was linked to this.


Display interactive notifications (with buttons) via Terminal I'd like to let my bash shell scripts to display gui notifications with two buttons that the user can click and then execute some commands depending on the button pressed.

What options exist?

I'm a big fan of Tkinter since it has far more tutorials that help a new person solve real problems and python/tk ship with all Macs and the versions have been stable for years of OS X releases.

To get started, run this command:

python -c "import Tkinter;Tkinter._test()"

If the free tutorials linked above aren't working for your needs, the professional ones on lynda and python classes like https://www.coursera.org/learn/python are fairly easy to get started with limited time or limited funds.

You could also start from the GUI with Platypus and have it call your desired bash scripts for each button that's pressed. You could then open the "app" with open -a to get things started.


Can an Apple Time Capsule be used to store/watch movies on iPads in a car? I have a 2TB time capsule.  I am driving from PA to FL with 3 kids.  I have a hundred of so movies/TV shows stored on a 2TB Time Capsule.  Can I use a power converter in my minivan to power and use the TC for the kids to each watch whatever they want on our road trip via wifi (they all have iPads)? It seems like it would work, but I'm not sure what the possible "issues" might be.

Thx

Theoretically, it should work. the Time capsule will just go into infrastructure mode, creating a self-made IP, and provide IP addresses to the iPads. So you will get your own little wifi bubble in the car, connected to nothing. But, the iPads will be connected to the time capsule.

However, you need more than that: iPads don't have a file browser to be able to find the movies on the time capsule hard drive. They really need iTunes running to serve up those movies.

So, now you need a laptop, plus the time capsule. (or now just wifi router, since you don't need the hard drive in a time capsule, you have a laptop)

You could do this with a DLNA server app, and a DLNA viewer app on the iPads as well, if you don't want iTunes, but you still need something to serve as the DLNA server. You could use a wifi router combined with say a WD My Cloud hard drive, or similar for example. This would eliminate the laptop, but you still need another device.


Getting this error constantly: IOUnserialize has detected a string that is not valid UTF-8 I'm getting these errors constantly from various processes, the invalid string is always the same though. How do I find where the string is located?

Here are the latest ones. I removed the duplicates.

3/27/14 04:57:51.705 SystemUIServer[331]: FIXME: IOUnserialize has detected a string that is not valid UTF-8, "~?�".
3/27/14 04:57:57.568 airportd[65]: FIXME: IOUnserialize has detected a string that is not valid UTF-8, "~?�".
3/27/14 04:57:57.685 configd[18]: FIXME: IOUnserialize has detected a string that is not valid UTF-8, "~?�".
3/27/14 04:57:57.698 Little Snitch Daemon[77]: FIXME: IOUnserialize has detected a string that is not valid UTF-8, "~?�".
3/27/14 04:58:47.176 com.apple.preference.network.remoteservice[12469]: FIXME: IOUnserialize has detected a string that is not valid UTF-8, "~?�".
3/27/14 04:59:35.939 CrashPlanService[75]: FIXME: IOUnserialize has detected a string that is not valid UTF-8, "~?�".
3/27/14 05:16:13.434 Finder[347]: FIXME: IOUnserialize has detected a string that is not valid UTF-8, "~?�".

It looks like your Mavericks installation had a hick up.

Reinstall it.

To find out the source one has to open the pref files of all named processes and look for the UTF-8, "~?�"

You wont be able to fix it there but maybe see it.

You can try the search with Terminal fgrep -iR "~?�" /Library/Preferences

There is also a way to investigate the

  configd

You can debug configd by running another copy. You type in the terminal:

sudo /usr/libexec/configd -dv

It will ask for you password. This should give you debugging info about each bundle as it loads and dump any messages that normally go into the syslog to the terminal window.

You can load each bundle mentioned in your console log one at a time too e.g:

sudo /usr/libexec/configd -dv -t /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/Logger.bundle

Use ctrl-c to quit the process.

The number is the process id listed in the leftmost column in the Activity Monitor next to the process you want to close.

Looking at your console log, it looks like the common theme is Network. It might have to do with your airport app, but not sure since insufficient information given.

Does it comes up in Safe mode?


How to see the full date on macOS Big Sur? With default settings, the clock on macOS Catalina shows the current day of the week and the current time. You can click the clock to reveal the full date.
In the Big Sur update, this dropdown seems to have vanished, instead opening notification center on interaction.
I don't want to see the full date at all times. It takes up space in the dock, and most of the time the full date is not really relevant information. I would prefer to be able to use the old behavior if possible.

The option is there, Preferences -> Dock & Menu Bar -> Clock and select "Show Date".


How to transfer a PDF file to my picture album on my iPhone I have an iPhone and when I was saving some pictures I saved them as PDF in iBooks. I want to transfer them to a picture album on my iPhone. Can I do it?

No, it is not possible to transfer PDF files in picture album in iPhone to view in the Photos app.

You will either need to export the PDFs in an image format (PNG or JPG) to transfer in an album in Photos app, or you can sync and view them in iBooks app on your iPhone.


iPhone iCloud contacts and over the air sync As I understand, the "over the air sync" is different from iCloud sync (for the contacts). Is it the case?

Is the over the air sync just a sync with my Mac itself? So it is just an cordless version of the iTunes sync?

You are correct: the iCloud sync sends data to and from the iCloud servers, and the Wi-Fi sync sends data to and from your computer running iTunes.


Auto-completing words in any program I am looking for a program running on Mac OS X that allows the user to auto-complete words in any program.

For example, if the user types soft, the program could suggest software or soften in a dropbown menu, similarly to the auto-completion feature present in most IDEs:

Ideally:

the program should allow the user to view the auto-completion options by using a keyboard shortcut.
the options given by the program are listed by likelihood (e.g., using some language model)
the program could be disabled in some programs.

Any price or license is fine.

I have crossposted the question at:

http://qr.ae/TbWFBy
https://redd.it/6a6bas

The Touch Bar integrates word prediction similar to iOS, which provides you with three word suggestions as you type. Tap a word to insert it. The more you type, the more the words filter. The screenshot shows when a new sentence is being started — type and the predictions finish your word.

Use the Touch Bar on your MacBook Pro

Touch Bar word prediction is available by choosing View → Customise Touch Bar and enabling "Show typing suggestions" if they are not already available.

The options are listed with the most commonly used word in the middle and other common alternatives either side.
You can disable word prediction by tapping the › button on the left of the suggestions.


Mac how to remove instance icon from array When I close an app, sometimes it's icon still shows up when I press ⌘ + ⇥. On my Mac that command brings up an array of icons whose instances are still running.

It's quite annoying. How do I remove it from this array of icons?

I don't know the right term for this "array", but it's like the horizontal bar that shows up midscreen when you press Control + Tab on Windows (I've remapped my Mac keys so I don't know the Mac specific command for it).

It sounds like the issue you are facing is converting from Windows to Mac.

In macOS most applications are disassociated from the closing of windows, an example would be in the Safari web browser. If you close all the windows the application remains open because you only closed the windows, you didn't quit the application.

This is signifciantly different from Windows where closing a window typically quit the application.

In some applications on macOS closing the last window will quit the application but it isn't standard or default behaviour.

There is no option to make this happen. You can quit the application using ⌘ + Q (Command + Q), the shortcut you mentioned you forgot is  Command + W.

Essentially Command + W is not the same as Alt + F4 and there is no way to make macOS behave this way as unlike Windows you cannot easily make macOS open multiple applications from the same link, i.e. clicking Chrome twice doesn't open two Chrome windows, it opens Chrome then brings it to the front on the second click.


Keyboard Viewer crashes when I use keyboard command When I try to invoke the Emoji and Keyboard Viewer via the Keyboard shortcut (CRTL + CMD + SPACEBAR), the menu bar icon crashes on me and the viewer does not invoke.

I tried removing the preference file com.apple.HIToolbox.plist as suggested in this Apple Forum answer. After restarting the keyboard viewer icon appears in my menu bar (American Flag). I can select items in the menu. As soon as I invoke the keyboard shortcut however it disappears:

Do I have a corrupt preferences file somewhere?

I am running macOS Sierra V 10.12.3.

After further investigation I found my startup drive was corrupt and I needed to run Disk Utility. Steps I took:

Delete com.apple.HIToolbox.plist from Library/Preferences/ folder.
Restart machine.
Hold down CTRL + R to run Disk Utility from Recovery HD.
Selected Disk Utility from Recovery HD menu.
Ran First Aid on my machine.
Once finished, I restarted.

After restart the issue went away.


Automator workflow or AppleScript to close Safari after a period of time I would like to create an Automator workflow (or some similar function) that will close down Safari after a specified period of time.

For instance, I simply want to run Pandora in Safari during the night, but have it close out after 30 minutes to 1 hour, as sort of a sleep timer. I am a very new Mac user so detailed instructions would be great. I have familiarized myself with creating some simple Automator workflows, but I have no experience using AppleScript.

Here is the AppleScript code, which you can put in your workflow, by implementing an AppleScript item, and copy-paste the code in.  The time is configurable, but you need an exact sleep time, which I can add if you could elaborate some more on the time.  Here is the code via CulturedCode.

global quit_after, check_every

set quit_after to 2700
set check_every to 10
set minute to quit_after / 60

display dialog "Check is performed every " & check_every & " seconds. Things will be quit after " & minute & " minutesof system inactivity."

on reopen
    display dialog "Check is performed every " & check_every & " seconds. Things will be quit after " & minute & " minutes of system inactivity."
end reopen

on idle
    set idletime to do shell script "echo $((`ioreg -c IOHIDSystem | sed -e '/HIDIdleTime/ !{ d' -e 't' -e '}' -e 's/.* = //g' -e 'q'` / 1000000000))"
    if (idletime as integer) > quit_after then
        tell application "System Events"
            if ((name of processes) contains "Safari") then
                tell application "Safari" to quit
            end if
        end tell
    end if
    return check_every
end idle


"A password reset request was sent..." System-level phishing? Over the course of the last two days I have received upwards of ten notifications alerting me that a password reset request was sent from some device. When I go to check my Apple ID email, I see no notifications to this effect. When I click the "Show" button, I am taken to System Preferences and given the opportunity to type in my administrator password to reset my Apple ID password. I have not done so.
The full message of the notification reads: "A password reset request was sent from a device at the location shown below."
I have a hard time believing this is a legitimate communication from Apple. The few others who have posted similar questions here and elsewhere have received unhelpful answers. Any idea what's going on here? Has my system been compromised somehow?
10.15.7 (19H2)

I suggest changing your iCloud password and enabling 2-factor authentication if you haven't already.  But DO NOT click the notification to do this.  Go to Apple's website to do it.  (Also, don't trust anyone on the internet to give you a good link.  Check your URL bar to make sure you are at appleid.apple.com when you click even my link.)
Also, go to System Preferences -> Notifications and see what apps have notification access and restrict notification access to anything that looks suspicious.
Judging by the way the notification looks, it does not look legitimate as it does not have an app icon.  You can call Apple if you want to make sure, though.


What application can record a cursor location and multi-touch input heatmap? Are there any applications out there that can record mouse interaction, and save a standard image1 that adequately conveys the exact situation that using the mouse created?

Due to the proliferation of gestures in Lion, I would like to include an image conveying exactly what I do in bug reports. Take for example my question regarding Chrome's use of Two-finger forward/back gestures. I would love to attach an image that conveys my exact touch pad usage (and a standard mouse could be beneficial too in other cases) when filing a bug report regarding my gesture grievance.

1 Where standard image file is something like an animated gif, or perhaps an annotated jpg/png with indicators of finger number, and stroke direction.

I don't know of an app that displays gestures, but FingerMgmt displays the locations of your touches (and the size, dimension, etc.) in a window. You could record that to attach to your bug reports.


How to delete backups shown in about my computer Storage section of about my computer showing about 2.86GB as backups. I never backed up anything. What is this backup? How can i delete them?

If Time Machine is enabled, this is (probably) a Local Snapshot. These allow Time Machine to back up your files even when a backup disk is not available. However, OS X automatically deletes these as space is used up. From the Apple Knowledge Base:

To make sure that you have storage space when you need it, Time Machine creates and retains local snapshots only when there is plenty of free space on your startup drive:

If less than 20% of the total storage space on your startup drive is available, Time Machine removes local snapshots, starting with the oldest, until you have more than 20% free space.

If less than 10% or less than 5GB of storage space is available, Time Machine removes local snapshots more quickly. When only one snapshot remains, Time Machine stops creating new snapshots. As free space increases, Time Machine at first replaces the previous snapshot with a new one, then eventually resumes creating snapshots as normal.

If you need to free up space used by this remaining snapshot, disable Time Machine and it will be deleted. However, this means you won't have backups, which is not a good idea. If you want to disable local snapshots, run this Terminal command:
sudo tmutil disablelocal

If this doesn't delete the local snapshot, disable Time Machine until it is removed and enable it again.
For more information/troubleshooting regarding disabling Local Snapshots, read this forum discussion.


Extract images from a pages document I want to extract all of the images out of a large pages document. I found an article about it from 2006 ( see http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060324033125571 ) which states you can open the pages file as a package and extract the images. Right clicking shows no 'open package' item and using pkgutil --expand mydoc.pages . errors with "Could not open package for expansion" I'm guessing the pages file format is now somewhat different.

So how can I extract all of the images from my pages document in one go? (there are around 100 pictures, so too many to do by hand unless I absolutely have to)

The Fastest way to to do this is to change the file extension from name.pages to name.zip (actually manually click on the file name and change the extension to .zip)

Now just unzip your document and you will get a folder with all the images in it.  Same works for ePubs.


Stop Automatically Switching to Bluetooth Audio I have a pair of headphones that I really like. I also spend over 12 hours a day in front of my MacBook. As such, I prefer to use some voice commands using Speakable Items. However, due to the placement of my MacBook on my desk, I can't use the internal microphone without yelling (can't yell in the lab).

Therefore, I picked up a bluetooth earphone/mic combo to solve this issue. The earphones are detachable, so I'm using it only as a mic. I've mapped the correct audio-in in the Speech prefpane.

So my headphones are plugged into the audio-out port, but when I power up my bluetooth mic, my macbook automatically sets the bluetooth as the audio-out device. This is suboptimal, as I have to manually switch the audio-out device when this happens. Now, I could write an applescript to automatically switch back the audio device when this happens, but that's putting a band-aid on the issue.

Is there a way to stop my MacBook from automatically switching to the bluetooth headset when it powers on?

Bonus points to solutions that don't disable automatic audio-out switching entirely as I would like my macbook to auto-switch to the external sound card that I plug in when I go home

This little menu bar app works for me to quickly switch audio sources:

Audio Switcher

It's more of a Band-Aid then an actual fix of the problem.

NOTE: This app is not available in all regions.


iBooks automatically generating cover pages for PDFs? I've loaded some lengthy PDFs onto my iPad in iBooks, and I've noticed that for only one of them, it's seemed to have created a beige cover page for the PDF thumbnail with what looks like the file name. It's nice, but I was unaware of this feature and ideally I'd like it to include the author and paper title instead of the file name. Does anyone know more about this functionality or how I can change what this new cover page says?

I am pretty sure the thumbnail is created from the first page in the pdf document.

So to alter the icon you could add another coverpage to the pdf document.


Launch app periodically with Automator How can I launch an app in Automator periodically, like in 15 minute intervals?

You can also use AppleScript instead (/Applications/Utilities/AppleScript\ Editor.app/).

The following script starts the Terminal.app every seven seconds:

on idle
    tell application "System Events"
        tell application "Terminal"
            run
        end tell
        return 7
    end tell
end idle

Save this script as an application and let it "stay open after run handler".