Consequences of disabling kext signing What are the consequences of disabling Kest Signing on OS X Yosemite? I have disabled it to keep TRIM enabled on my aftermarket SSD. What are the security issues I could run up against? If I install applications only from trusted resources can I run in any kind of trouble?

I couldn't find online extensive answers to these questions. Sorry if it's a duplicate.

TRIM Support has been enabled for Third Party SSDs in OS X El Capitan. You can google it or watch this Youtube video


How to create a hotkey for opening a new iTerm2 window? I typically have multiple terminal sessions across different screens. Since opening the terminal is such a frequent task, I have a hotkey bound to open -b com.googlecode.iterm2 . with Karabiner-Elements. This way I can open a terminal from anywhere with one keypress.

Unfortunately if a terminal window is already open, this hotkey does not create a new window, but creates a new tab in existing windows. The existing window is often some long running "background" process like top or watch, meant to run undisturbed on a secondary screen while I do my work on the main screen. When a new tab is created in it, this causes problems for my workflow:

Hides the monitoring session, which I probably want to see
Opens the new terminal on the secondary screen, even if I had been working on the primary one
Moving the terminal to my main screen also moves the monitoring session to the main screen, so I have to move it back when done
Separating the tab requires finicky and tedious mouse dragging

These may seem like minor complaints, but I develop software and have to go in and out of terminals a lot. Depending on what I'm working on, I may need to open and close new terminals every few minutes, sometimes multiple times a minute. Reusing the same terminal is not really an option because often the terminals have distinct sessions (eg. TUI programs that run continuously, SSH to multiple different machines).

Is there a command I can bind that also creates a new iTerm2 window?

In theory I could command-tab to the terminal first and use a hotkey to make a new window. This has 2 problems:

Instead of one key press, I need to make several key presses to switch windows first.
Doesn't handle edge case where terminal is not running already.

This is already built into iTerm2.  See the Hotkeys section in their documentation.

Show/hide all windows with a dedicated, system-wide hotkey
Create a dedicated hotkey window.

In its simplest form, it's a system-wide terminal window that you can open with a hotkey.

You can find these options in Preferences -> Keys
OSXDaily has an excellent write up on this (with pictures)


Time Capsule Multiple Backups: Both Encrypted? Got new Time Capsule. Got new iMac (OS 10.8). Hooked up Time Capsule and enabled encrypted iMac backup.

Next, to my (little bit older) MacBook Air (OS 10.7). Trying to enable encrypted backup, but "Encrypt My Backup" checkbox is disabled (greyed-out).

Opinion differs. Some say MacBook Air backup is encrypted too, because "entire volume" of Time Capsule is encrypted by iMac.

Not convinced. No user feedback on that from MacBook perspective.

What is the answer?

Encrypted backups only work when the backup disc is connected via USB.

It seems that there is a workaround for it using sparse bundle:
Mac OSX Lion Secure Backup to Time Capsule


iPhoto refuses to open, even after deletion and reinstall Here's the error message:

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: /Library/Frameworks/NyxAudioAnalysis.framework/Versions/A/NyxAudioAnalysis
  Referenced from: /Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Frameworks/iLifeSlideshow.framework/Versions/A/iLifeSlideshow
  Reason: no suitable image found.  Did find:
    /Library/Frameworks/NyxAudioAnalysis.framework/Versions/A/NyxAudioAnalysis: mach-o, but wrong architecture
    /Library/Frameworks/NyxAudioAnalysis.framework/Versions/A/NyxAudioAnalysis: mach-o, but wrong architecture

Anyone know what I can do to rectify?

Either copy a working version of that NyxAudioAnalysis.framework from a working machine or reinstall the OS.


How do I turn off typing suggestions in iOS 10? Several iOS 10 apps enable typing suggestions by default, even if these were disabled prior to iOS 10. This is especially notable in Messages, where the suggestions include emoji.

How do I disable typing suggestions in iOS 10?

Tap and hold the language key (the one that looks like a globe or possibly an Emoji smile face) and set the toggle for "Predictive" to off.


Apple ID isn't working I was given an iPhone 6s by a friend. It was completely reset and the sim card was taken out. Every time I try to sign into my Apple ID, it says "Could not sign in."

My steps -
"Set up manually"
"Set up as new iPhone"
"Enter Apple ID and Password"
"Agrees to Terms and Conditions"
"Message pops up 'Could Not Sign In"

There's several possible reasons for this. I've personally had it happen that the iCloud authentication servers just could not be reached for a while, so I was scratching my head for quite a bit until it all of a sudden worked...

Assuming that's not the case for you here, the first step to do would be to ensure that the phone is no longer associated with the apple id of your friend. For this your friend should go here, log in and ensure the device is not listed anymore (if it is, remove it). Something that I noticed is that this doesn't necessarily remove the device from "Find my iPhone" in iCloud, so your friend should probably also go to iCloud and verify (and possibly remove) it's gone there as well. Make sure to have them do so under "Find my iPhone" (or whatever it's called in English, I'm on the German equivalent atm) and in the "Settings".

Unfortunately I can't guarantee this does the trick, as said I've had weird sign in problems in the past as well, so this is just a hunch. In the end, you might have to contact the support if the problem persists.


Is there an easy way to get web page shortcuts on the desktop to use the favicon from the site? All of the web shortcuts on my desktop look the same.  Any reason they can't be using the site icon (favicon) the same way the browsers do?  Is there a way to do it in OSX 10.6?

As the favicon is something that is accessible via the web, it is not an impossible request. But I cant seem to find anyway to change an icon without gui work, which means I guess you might be able to do it with Applescript if we are talking an entirely automated solution.

The way I had my web location show my favicon as its icon was:

Drag bookmark to Desktop for site I want.
Select the bookmark and press Cmd + I.
With the site still open, delete everything but the root TLD and add /favicon.ico (example http://support.apple.com/ts1275 becomes http://apple.com/favicon.ico) and go to that url.
Right click and copy image in Safari, and then paste on the image of the webloc.
Profit!

Honestly, I think the other websites description of using their images or material from the site is a lot better idea, but this is how you can actually use the favicon.


When does macbook second HD work? I changed my optical drive with my old HDD and it works great. Now i have a SSD samsung 840 evo 250 GB. The battery doesn't last as long as before, but still works quite well.

The only thing it pisses me off is that sometimes the second hd starts working even if i'm not using it, does anyone know why? can i stop it?

I've try to google it but i couldn't find any solution.

Every time an application access a files on the HD, it will start itself. Sometimes it can be a background process who does this, that's why it may happen although you don't access a file directly.

You can watch this with this command : lsof | grep "/Volumes/HDName"

lsof lists the files accessed by the all process. The grep selects only the files located on the HD.

If you want to stop the hard-drive, just unmount-it.


Where to find shutdown causes errors list? Are there any longer shutdown causes error codes lists than this?

https://georgegarside.com/blog/osx/shutdown-causes/

I've updated that page with more shutdown causes.

OS X Shutdown Causes

Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be an 'official' list.


How can I add a custom message in the macOS login screen? Our community group has just had three Apple Macs donated to us. Two are laptops with macOS Sierra installed and one is an iMac with macOS High Sierra installed.

I’ve been asked to add a custom message to the login screen acknowledging the donation, but I am not familiar with Apple Macs. It only needs to be a simple message like:

  This Mac was kindly donated by X.

Is there a way of doing this without having to use any 3rd party software? I would need some very clear steps.

This can be done without 3rd party app. Simply open System Preferences.app -> Security & Privacy -> Show message when the screen is locked. Here are the steps:

Open "System Preferences" (located in you applications folder)
Select "Security & Privacy"
Unlock the padlock
Set the lock message


How to set proxy configuration file in command line? Sometimes I need to use ShadowsocksX to bypass GFW, but ShadowsocksX will clear my proxy configuration file.

When I come to my company, I've to set proxy configuration file manually, I'm wondering if there any OSX's command can help me to set  proxy configuration file? So that I can create an alias in my zshrc file.

networksetup is a configuration tool for network settings in System Preferences. I don't really known what the ShadowsocksX project is,
but this command can help you up.
For instance, for a certain .pac config file, you could do:
networksetup -setautoproxyurl "Wi-Fi" "http://somedomain.com/proxy.pac"

PS: if you just need to set the proxy for something like wget, or curl, then you can use the fairly universal http_proxy and ftp_proxy ENV variables (e.g., export http_proxy=http://myproxy:port).


How to back up Windows 7 on Boot Camp to a Mac-formatted external drive? I have MacBook Pro with latest Snow Leopard on it. I just bought an Iomega eGo external HDD for Time Machine backup.

I also run Windows 7 on Boot Camp partition and I normally use Parallels 6 to run it, but I noticed that Time Machine does not backup Boot Camp partition.

I went to Windows 7 Backup and Restore tool to see if I can backup Windows separately but it didn't recognize my Iomega HDD probably because it's Mac-formatted.

I discovered MacDrive that allows Windows to work with Mac-formatted disks. I'm wondering if that will allow me to use Windows Backup and Restore tool to backup to Iomega HDD.

Will it work?

What is your Boot Camp Windows 7 on-site backup strategy? I'd like to avoid buying another external HDD for Windows...

Using Snow Leopard Disk Utility, I made three partitions on an external hard drive:

HFS+  for Time Machine
MSDOS, subsequently converted to NTFS, for Windows 7 backup
EXFAT for shared media e.g. iTunes Library

I have not yet made a final decision about what backup package to use for Windows 7.  At the moment, I'm using Microsoft's Windows 7 backup solution, with manual image files, and trying to keep any data files in the Cloud.

I do not yet have even 10 days experience with this setup.


iBooks vs epub: What's the difference? Until now, I was under the impression that ePub was the de facto standard for Apple and the default format used by iBooks. But recently I downloaded some ebooks from the iTunes store and found them to have the .ibooks extension instead. What's the difference between the two? Also, how can one convert an ePub document into an ibooks document, if that is possible?

.ibooks files are a special Apple-only multi-touch version of the epub standard.  They can only be created using the iBooks Author app, and they can only be read by the iBooks app on an iOS device or a Mac running OS 10.9 or higher.

The main attraction of the .ibooks format for authors is that it can easily incorporate a large variety of interactive features via widgets.  The Apple list is at http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2789 and a 3rd party list is at https://bookry.com/author/widget/library/

.epub is an open standard which can be produced by a number of apps (including Apple's Pages) and can be read on any platform using a variety of apps (including Apple's iBooks).  There is no way to convert .epub to .ibooks, other than to put the content into iBooks Author and republish it from that app.

Starting with version 2.3 of June 2015, iBooks Author can also produce .epub format, as long as one of the .epub templates is used.


Is a Sparse Bundle image or Sparse Image better for many files 3 TB external hard drive 4TB? I'm on a Mac and Windows PC, and have many files (videos, photos, documents, iTunes Backups, but without Windows or macOS system backup)
the size is 3TB or larger in my old external hard drive.
I use macOS 10.13.2 and Windows 10 (Build 1709)

I plan to copy this data into an single macOS Image and put it on the new external hard drives (4TB).

it is recommended to create a disk image (sparse image or sparse bundle image, I am not sure what is better) of macos with a single size of 4tb.

what file system (hfs+, apfs, exFAT) should the macos image have for the future?

are there any experiences with a single 4tb macOS image? are there any reports, where the image can no longer be opened by updating the system os? or other bugs? can you open it under windows?

This data that I use so far is a backup, no new data will be added. The data will not be edited, it should only be used for consumption.

are there users here who tested it, how was it? was it fast? were there problems?

It sounds like you are making a bootable image. In that case, you'll want to use one of these:

Carbon Copy Cloner
Super Duper

If those satisfy your needs, you can stop reading. If not, read on!

If you are simply storing a lot of Mac files and you want to do it using a Mac-native filesystem, you should use a sparse bundle. The man page for hdiutil helps explain this:

  As of Mac OS X 10.5, a more reliable, efficient, and scalable sparse
  format, UDSB (SPARSEBUNDLE), is recommended for persistent sparse
  images as long as a backing bundle (directory) is acceptable.

Take note of that "backing bundle" statement -- it means that the file system on which your sparse bundle is stored must support directories with a large number of files (those are the bands of the sparse bundle). Remember, you have external hard drive disk itself to format before you place the sparse bundle image onto that disk.

The man page also gives the (huge) max size for a sparse bundle:

  ..the maximum [size] for SPARSEBUNDLE is just under 8 exabytes (2^63 - 512
  bytes)

You can format the disk itself however you'd like, as long as the format supports the large number of files sparse bundles make in a single directory. Format your sparse bundle as HFS+ and then convert it to APFS in the future. The reason for this is there are still a few bugs in APFS, specifically regarding sparse bundles, cf. this well-explained bug report and video:

  I noticed that an APFS-formatted sparsebundle disk image volume showed
  ample free space, despite that the underlying disk was completely
  full.

(2019 update: macOS Mojave resolved the free space issue above. Using an APFS sparse bundle on Mojave and newer can be safely recommended).

You can use Disk Utility to create your sparse bundle. If you are doing a lot of deleting from the sparse bundle, periodically run this command to remove unused bands and reclaim the space:

hdiutil compact /path/name.sparsebundle

Note that hdiutil compact only removes completely unused bands. So, deleting 10GB of data from your sparsebundle may only result in, say, 6GB of bands deleted when you compact. Reducing band size generally will make compact operations free up more space.


Open custom file with keyboard shortcut On my Mac, I have some applications that were recently made in Java that I will be using quite alot. I want to know, is there a way that I can bind a shortcut on the keyboard to open the file?

For eg. CTRL + CMD + OPTION = Open test.jar located on Desktop.

Is there any 'vanilla'  way or if there is, any 3rd party software that can allow me to do so?

You can use Keyboard Maestro with a macro such as this:


Difference between auto-downloading "all" podcasts vs. "most recent" On my iPhone 5 with ios 7 I can choose to automatically download "all" episodes or "most recent". At first glance it sounds obvious what the difference is, but since I've had the "all" setting checked for a while on a podcast that has not started auto downloading (I have enough free space) I have to ask. The app has had plenty of wifi access. The podcast has some added but not downloaded episodes.

Auto downloading the most recent episode only makes sense if it keeps downloading the most recent episode at all points in time from then on. So basically that's the same as "most recent and all future episodes". The "all" setting should then download everything, but what is confusing in that case is that as an explanation of the auto-download settings it says "automatically download new episodes". So is the "all" option "all future episodes" or what? If so there's almost no difference between the two settings.

From my experience, the Podcast.ipa will stop downloading podcasts if you haven't listened to several recent ones. It will update the list to say that they are there but it will not download them unless, I think, the most recent 3-5 episodes have been placed.

"Most Recent" in the context of Podcast.ipa means it will keep the 3 most recent episodes on your iOS device. It will still sync/save where you last listed to previous episodes but it removes it to conserve space. If you have all selected it will download the most current one and update in the future while retaining all episodes that it/you has/have downloaded until you "physically" delete it from the list/device.

But I too have noticed an issue with the last couple versions of the Podcast.ipa where it doesn't download even though I am subscribed and it is set to download "All" I think this is bug at this point in time and hope that they fix it soon. (http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html)


What's a good iPhone running app with a heart rate monitor? I'm looking for a combination of an app like RunKeeper that tracks my running speed, with an app (+hardware?) to track my heart rate.

I'm currently running with RunKeeper (to track my speed) and also wearing an chestband+wristwatch (to track my heart rate). It would be nice to get rid of the wristwatch, if there's some app (and chestband receiver hardware?) to combine the data.

I've seen some apps that only do heart rate monitoring, but I don't want to switch between 2 apps while running.

There is Digifit which is software that works with any ANT+ enabled devices by brand names such as Adidas, Garmin, StarTrac and Timex.


Installing MacOS 10.8 printer driver on MacOS 10.13 High Sierra? I wanted to print from my work MacBook (MacOS 10.13 High Sierra) to my old Canon Pixma IP4300 printer at home, but when I connect them I'm told to look for drivers on the manufacturer's website. However, the latest available driver is a "CUPS" driver for MacOS 10.8 Mountain Lion, dated september 2017.

Would it be wise to try to install this 10.8 driver on a 10.13 system, and is that even possible at all? I'd like to avoid messing up the system's printer settings and running into trouble when printing at work.

ps: I know about Gutenprint, but I'd like to avoid installing something like that on my work laptop if possible.

Have you tried one of the built-in MacOS drivers?
What about removing the printer and re-installing it to see if the Mac can identify it?

https://support.usa.canon.com/kb/index?page=content&id=ART160388&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1517974032259

Otherwise I'd contact Canon support or check around for some forums to see if they have a work around since that printer needs specific troubleshooting and MacOS isn't identifying it for you.


How many monitors can be hooked up to a Mac Mini? How many monitors can be hooked up to a Mac Mini?

I've only ever hooked a Mac Mini up to 2 monitors, but I'm interested in going up to at least 4. Is this even possible?

According to Apple's Mac Mini feature description page:

  You can daisy-chain up to six peripherals to a single Thunderbolt 2 port.

Does this mean that more than 2 monitors is possible?

Only one Mac Mini (to date) has supported three simultaneous monitors. The Mid 2011 Mac Mini (Macmini5,2) came with an AMD Radeon HD 6630M that was powerful enough to drive two Thunderbolt displays while simultaneously driving an HDMI display. 1

The current Late 2012 Mac Mini, along with the other Mid 2011 Mac Minis, all have integrated Intel graphics that are only able to drive, at most, two Thunderbolt displays or one Thunderbold and one HDMI display.


How can I image my Macbook Pro's hard drive prior to sending to Apple for repair? I don't just want to back up my data. In case the hard drive comes back completely wiped I want to avoid the hassle of reinsalling everying OS X as well as a Bootcamped Windows install.

What tools can I use to backup/image my hard drive such that when I got my laptop back and if I needed to, I could just dump the image back onto the hard drive and be right back where I was last?

I would choose either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. Make a clone of your hard drive that is a bit-perfect bootable copy. You can either use an external drive or one of those docks that you pop bare drive into.

SuperDuper costs just under $30. Carbon Copy Cloner is donationware. Either one is great. But I like CCC because it can schedule cloning sessions on a regular basis.


What happened after an upgrade to Catalina I recently updated my Mac to Catalina. After the update the screen I used to swipe to the left that held my Sticky notes is not there. I would like to recover them as they had information on them I need. Where is that screen now, and if it's permanently gone is there a way to at least get the Sticky notes back? It was the same screen as the calculator, and other widgets.

The widgets feature is known as "Dashboard", and was retired with macOS Catalina. The screen with the notes, calculator, etc. is gone.
You can access your sticky notes by opening the app Stickies. All your notes should have been imported there.


Why would Preview save just my annotations? I was using Preview to annotate a screenshot for a question on Apple.StackExchange.com and I saved it. For some reason, it only saved my annotation. I must've spaced out and accidentally pressed something, but what might that something be?

Select All and Delete would have been done the trick :)  You've deleted the screenshot (which was in the background) but kept the annotations.


How do I stop my external monitor from occasionally blacking out? I have a 2011 MBP which is connected to a 1920x1080, 144 Hz monitor.  I am using one of these cables to connect it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YOQYQWY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

On occasion the display will go black for a few seconds before turning back on.  It's not actually disconnecting since I would get a notification on my laptop screen of that event.  Sometimes I even hear a click noise when this happens.

It only happens when the resolution is set to 1080, even if I lower the refresh rate.  At lower resolutions it never happens.  If I use the DisableMonitor app to turn off my laptop's main screen my external display will still sometimes black out.  It seems to occur regardless of activity, as I can leave it idling with nothing on the screen or I can be playing an intensive game and it won't happen any more or less frequently.  This happens on Windows as well.

Anyone know the cause of this?

Does it sometimes go completely black and you can not seem to get it turned on again?
Does the monitor have its own menu button on the monitor itself to change monitor settings?

I aks because sometimes the monitor has its own sleep mode independent from the operating system.

Check the monitor-menu and check what settings are there and try find a manual - either online or the one made out of paper that came with your monitor.


How do I find links for iTunes U Videos to download using the 'resume' feature in curl I have a flaky internet connection and I was trying to download some course videos on iTunes U. Three attempts to download 800 MB files failed because the connection was reset. So I'm now trying to find a way to use curl and its -C - option to download the videos with the ability to resume.

But I struggled to find an effective way to get the link from which iTunes downloads the videos. There might be CDN's hosting the content and the URL's will change over time. But how do I find out which link curl must download the video files from right now?

These are free videos and I don't think there's authentication involved. Even if that were the case, there should be some way to get the relevant cookies and use them with curl.

Update: I found a link to the RSS feed in this case and I picked up the link to the relevant mp4 files. But in general, how do I get to the rss feeds for iTunes U courses?

It turned out to be pretty simple in the end. I just had to grab the source of the rss feed that instructed my browser to switch to iTunes. Once I download the rss feed using a tool like curl, this one for example, it's a matter of scraping the links to the mp4 files and downloading them with curl.


How to monitor multiple macOS system usage? For GNU/Linux systems that runs as a server, we can get a dashboard with system information like cpu, memory, network usage etc. What software is used to collect this information?
For macOS, is there any similar application where I can see all the system health of macs. I am basically looking for running a couple of macs as a server and would want to monitor the system health.

macOS includes a graphical Activity Monitor application. This application provides an overview of the running processes, memory use, disk and network transfer.

UNIX Underpinnings

macOS is a FreeBSD based operating system. So if your needs extend beyond Activity Monitor, you can use almost any popular monitoring tool you like, i.e. https://collectd.org


Unable to install Signal from App Store on iOS Each time I try to install Signal Application from App Store on iOS, I get the message:

  This item is currently being modified. Please try again later.

How can I install this app on my iPhone?

This issue has been there for about 2 months. There is news that Signal is blocked in my country. I have used a VPN and also I get the same problem.

Either the app developer is pushing out a price/code change, the App Store servers are down, or there's a problem with the app within the App Store.

When developers make a change to the app, including price, it can takes several hours for the change to propagate through the Apple servers.  You can keep trying for a few hours and see if this clears itself.

If after 24 hours you still see the same error, you can contact the developer's support (usually from their website) and let them know.  It's not uncommon for this happen when the developer hasn't made any changes at all; there's dozens of comments about this throughout the years in the Apple developer forum.

The developer is the one losing revenue so it would be in their best interest to contact Apple about the problem and work with them to resolve it.


With a firmware password set on a Retina MacBook Pro, what are recovery options? I am considering setting a firmware password on my Retina MacBook Pro for security reasons. If I do this and later lose the password (or other such extenuating circumstances), how can the data be recovered? Is it even possible?

It is possible for the lost firmware password to be reset, but not by a normal user.  As an Apple Certified Macintosh Technician working for a third-party service centre, if someone brings in a machine that has RAM soldered to the Logic Board and they have forgotten their firmware password, I can upload the serial number and request a firmware password reset.  We're then provided with a disk image that can reset the firmware on the machine with that specific serial number.  I believe, but can't confirm at this stage, that the utility on the disk image may expire after a certain length of time.

For all those concerned about privacy, any technician that requests a firmware password reset will have their details logged on Apple's end — so if it's reset for nefarious purposes, the details about which technician performed the reset can be tracked down quickly.  The reset also requires direct, physical access to the machine - the password cannot be reset remotely.


Unset Fn Key Activating Expose When I first got my Macbook Pro, I somewhere came across a setting that let me map the Fn key to the same action as the 'F3' command, which I guess is the 'Expose' feature where it shows all open windows.

Since that was set, I've been unable to find where to UNset it, because now I'm unable to use Fn + Function Key to activate F1, F2, etc.

I've checked the Keyboard preferences, but all Expose options show they are mapped to the usual F1-12 keys, with no reference anywhere to Fn.

I've also clicked the Reset to Defaults button there, but no change.

Any ideas where I can find this?

If I open "Expose & Spaces" preference panel,  I see an option to select the "fn" key to different Expose actions.  This is on 10.6.


Will the new lightning EarPods work with iPad? The new iPhone 7 has no headphone jack, meaning that Apple has to release EarPods with a lightning connector. Will these new EarPods work with older devices? I'm assuming yes, since I'm pretty sure all the lightning cable has always included optional audio output, but I'm not sure.

The System Requirements from EarPods with Lightning Connector states:

  Works with all devices that have a Lightning connector and support iOS
  10 or later, including iPod touch, iPad, and iPhone.

  Compatibility

  iPhone Models

  iPhone 5iPhone 5ciPhone 5siPhone SEiPhone 6iPhone 6 PlusiPhone 6siPhone 6s PlusiPhone 7iPhone 7 Plus
  iPad Models

  iPad with Retina displayiPad mini 2iPad AiriPad Air 2iPad mini 3iPad mini 4iPad Pro (9.7-inch)iPad Pro (12.9-inch)
   iPod Models

  iPod touch 6th Generation


What is the keyboard shortcut to set the language for text in MS Word 2011? I usually write in English, but I often quote things in other languages like German or French. I know that you can set the language, like the font under Tools -> Language. Is there a keyboard shortcut to make this easier?

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and there will be various shortuc setups for almost anything. If you see something that is not listed, Make a service in Automator and add it as shortcut:

Here you see the service in Automator. It ain't always have to be an AppleScript. You can chose other services from the Menu on the left.

And here is a screenshot of enabling the service and assigning a shortcut by double clicking the shortucts on right, and pressing a combination of keys.

here is a full tutorial on services and automation as a little bonus to the question.


Copying one file multiple times and then renaming them I need to copy a Word doc (it is a different Word document each time) a certain number of times into a new folder and then rename them sequentially starting at a different number.

For instance, I have ThisDoc.docx and I need to copy it 105 times into ThatFolder with the name ThatDoc005.docx starting with value 005 (the numbers need to be always three places).

The result of this should be a folder that contains the 105 copies of ThisDoc.docx but renamed ThatDoc005.docx, ThatDoc006.docx, ThatDoc007.docx, ThatDoc008.docx, etc.

It can be done in Terminal, though, while I have admin privileges on my personal computer, at work, I need to be able to do it in one line.

The Windows Powershell equivalent is:

5 .. 110 | %{cp path/ThisDoc.docx ("path/ThatDoc{0:D3}.docx" -f $_)}

In Automator, I have the problem that I can't access it at work so it needs to be able to be saved as an application that will ask for the first file, the destination folder, the number of times it needs to be copied and and starting file number.

Thank you in advance, for any and all help!

Try this:

for i in $(seq -f "ThatDoc%03g.docx" 5 110); do cp ThisDoc.docx /path/ThatFolder/$i; done


My MacBook died and won't start anymore I have a 6 year old MacBook. It suddenly died last Sunday. When I started it the battery was charged to 100% - some minutes later it was at approximately 20%. Then the screen suddenly turned black and shut down.

I wasn't able to start it again since then. It usually shows the grey screen and the progress wheel but then either remains in that state for hours or turns black again.

I tried everything from Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup: from safe boot, resetting the NVRAM/PRAM, to starting from installation disc. With the only result that it does not eject the disc anymore.

As I read, everything indicates that the hard disc is broken. Is there anything else I can do than to buy a new notebook?

Update:
- AHT didn't inspect any problems
- boot after removing the battery didn't work

so, I bought a new hard drive. installed it today and brought my MacBook back to life finally.

Did already love the idea to own a new MB Air ... maybe next year.

thx for your help guys!


Automator Help: take Fixed-Position Screenshot, click "Next Page" and Repeat (that's it!) I don't know code which is really embarrassing for simple tasks like this one.  All I'm trying to do is to make a Quick Action in Automator for this:

take a screenshot based on two fixed points
click a "next" button in an app (in my case; Kindle for Mac)
Repeat X times

Caveat (if relevant): my screenshots capture in JPG format (not PNG).

Though my "watch me do" was not successful, the recording process did capture me depressing the app's page-advance button which I see is called "Next Page."

A workaround would be to use CliClick to push the advance button, if which I already have installed if "Next Page" might not work for whatever reason.  The repeating screenshot would be a pre-defined pair of coordinates based on upper-left and lower-right (which I can get via CMD+SHIFT+4).

Thanks so much in advance!  Any method to pull this off in Automator is fine by me.  Cheers!

EDIT 1: added code for @ankii below here
EDIT 2: deleted what was added in EDIT 1 (no longer relevant)

Kindle is not AppleScript scriptable in that it does not contain an AppleScript dictionary within its application bundle; however it is, within limits, using System Events and UI Scripting. Note though that with UI Scripting one must not use the system for other things while the script is running as Kindle needs to remain frontmost while the script is running.

The following example AppleScript code, tested under macOS High Sierra took screen shots of the first 5 pages of the BASH Reference Manual:

set saveToLocation to POSIX path of (path to pictures folder)
set bookName to "BASH Reference Manual"
set pageCount to 5

set pathFileName to saveToLocation & bookName

tell application "Kindle" to activate

delay 0.5

tell application "System Events" to ¬
    tell window 1 of application process "Kindle" to ¬
        set {position, size} to {{693, 66}, {1006, 1089}}

repeat with i from 1 to pageCount

    set shellCMD to ¬
        "screencapture -R837,124,770,994 -t jpg '" & ¬
        pathFileName & " - Page " & ¬
        i & " of " & pageCount & ".jpg'"

    do shell script shellCMD
    delay 1.5
    --  # Press right-arrow key.
    tell application "System Events" to key code 124
    delay 1.5

end repeat

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not contain any error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted. Have a look at the try statement and error statement in the AppleScript Language Guide. See also, Working with Errors. Additionally, the use of the delay command may be necessary between events where appropriate, e.g. delay 0.5, with the value of the delay set appropriately.


How to enable "Show message on Lock Screen" with Script So, In Mavericks, you can set text to be displayed on the lock screen by checking the box: System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General > "Show a message when the screen is locked", then clicking "Set Lock Message..." and entering the desired text.

My problem: I want to do this to dozens of Macs by sending them a script.

Now, I found that I can set the text to be displayed with this command:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow \
         LoginwindowText 'Enter desired text here'

But, I cannot figure out how to check that "Show a message..." checkbox via either a script, an MCX setting, or a Profile.

Any ideas?

I'm an idiot! Just having the "LoginwindowText" key set to a string value is all you need!

My "problem" was two-fold:

The GUI won't display the checkbox as "checked" until you log out and back in.
I had a typo in the key name in some of my notes that I was copy-pasting from.

Hope this helps somebody else... I spent some serious time banging my head against a wall!


Is it possible to update an iphone 3g ios 4.2.1 to ios 5? I've tried to go on iTunes (check my updates)- but it says your phone as been updated your current version is 4.2.1 is it possible?

No ,you can't update the the iOS 4.2.1 to iOS 5 in iPhone 3g.

The highest supporting operating system of iPhone 3g is iOS4.2.1.(Apple discontinued iPhone 3g on June 2010).

If you need iOS 5 like features on your iPhone 3G, try Whitedoor(it may help you).

Note: Whitedoor is just an iOS 3.1.3 so you won't be able to run your iOS 4.0-4.2.1 applications on it, but it has a separate store with the last 3.1.3 supported versions with a lot of application.


Can't find AutoUnattend.xml? I have followed this link https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/316512/408833 in order to download Windows, and I have reached the part where I need to edit the AutoUnattend file, however I can't seem to find it on my USB. I've tried redownloading the support software and the iso file but still nothing (also tried the terminal command, says the file doesn't exist). Any help?

I have no idea the model/year of the OP's Mac, therefore this answer is based what I think would work.
The Windows Support Software provided by Apple for the newer model Macs no longer includes an AutoUnattend.xml file. This file is not required to install Windows 10. With respect to this answer, you can skip step 3 and replace step 7 with the step 7 given below.

Enter the command below to start the Windows installation.
setup

When you finish installing Windows, you will have manually run the Windows Support Software installer, as explained in step 10.

Note: The questions and answers linked to your question were created at a time when Apple was having the Boot Camp Assistant install Windows 10 with a separate recovery partition. The newer versions of the Boot Camp Assistant no longer do this, which significantly simplifies the installation procedure from what I previous posted.


What is that circle that replaces the WIFI icon on my iPhone 2G sometimes? It's probably the phone's way of showing me there is no WIFI connection. Is that it? Probably not since that would probably be a "no icon" thing.

Anyway, couldn't find it in the user's manual so here you go... question asked.

Thx

The circle indicates that you're on the cellular GPRS data network. The fact that it's visible also means that you don't have a wifi connection:


Can you play Clash of Clans using the same Apple ID? Me and my brother want to play Clash of Clans with different game progress but somehow he always gets my progress when he plays it.

He got a new Apple ID and a new Game Center, but somehow the same problem is happening: we can't play the game separately - we tried and tried but it still doesn't work.

What can we do to play the game using different progress?

This game saves progress to Game Center. If you both use the same AppleID for Game Center to log in, that would explain what you are seeing.


Does PlainText transmit data securely? Does the iPhone App PlainText transmit data securely (i.e. does it use SSL?), or it there a risk of my data being read by third parties when I sync with dropbox?

On dropbox's web site, it says:
All transmission of file data and metadata occurs over an encrypted channel (SSL).

Furthermore, data send over the 3G cellular connection uses a 3G over-the-air encryption protocol (which will likely be unencrypted for forwarding to the internet past the cell tower).


How do I copy text from another application without switching to it? I know that I can highlight text from another window without changing the focus to that application by holding down Command and selecting the text. Once I have the text selected, what are my options in regard to copying the text without changing focus to that window?

It seems that when I press Command-V, it copies text from the application which is currently in the foreground.

You can right-click the selected text and choose "Copy" from the menu that pops up. If you need to copy only a single word, you can just right-click the word without selecting it first, which works in both foreground and background apps.


Controlling audio output's sample/bit rate on OSX from command prompt Is there a way to limit the output format of a soundcard on OSX, apart from Audio MIDI Setup? I have noticed that OSX has a bad habit of resampling audio while it is not needed at all (say the output from Spotify or Tidal). I would like to systematically prevent such a thing from happenning, while still having a choice on the output format. The solution can use shell or Apple script, so that I can run it with a shortcut.

Here is an AppleScript that fixes the default audio format of the default output card before launching Spotify (tested on El Capitan only), but I prefer very much a solution that does not depend on GUI:

set desiredRate to "44100.0 Hz"
set desiredDepth to "2ch-16bit Integer"

tell application "Audio MIDI Setup" to activate
tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "Audio MIDI Setup"
        if not (window "Audio Devices" exists) then
            click menu item "Show Audio Devices" of menu "Window" of menu bar item "Window" of menu bar 1
        end if
        tell group 1 of tab group 1 of group 1 of splitter group 1 of window "Audio Devices"
            click button 1 of combo box 1
            select (text field 1 of list 1 of scroll area 1 of combo box 1 whose value is desiredRate)
            keystroke return
            click pop up button 2
            click menu item desiredDepth of menu 1 of pop up button 2
        end tell
    end tell
end tell
tell application "Audio MIDI Setup" to quit
tell application "Spotify" to activate


How would I architecture Network Attached Storage? This is a sequel (1, 2) question.

I'm interested in setting up a home networking solution. One or more individuals would be able to access their accounts from any one of multiple Macs around the house.

Direct Attached Storage is one solution.

Here I'm pursuing the alternative, Network Attached Storage.

What hardware do I need for a minimal installation. Say two Macs are the "terminals". Is a third Mac needed as a server?
Presumably I need some kind of RAID disk. Can you confirm?
is macOS server needed?

You need a NAS server, not a third Mac
You need some standard SATA drives to mount into the NAS or buy one that ships with disks included
No


Windows taskbar in Parallels VM I'm running Windows 7 in Coherance mode in Parrellels desktop, and have the task bar visible at the bottom of the screen.

Is it possible to move the task bar down, behind the Mac Dock, without turning on Dock hiding?

Like this:

As far as I know, you cannot, because the dock tells the window server to reduce the windows max height to : screen height - dock current unmagnified size.

So the taskbar (which is in a window), is automatically placed on top on the dock.


How to fix choppy scrolling on 10.9 Mavericks? I just upgraded my mid-2012 MacBook Air to 10.9. Now whenever I scroll down a page, the effect is very choppy. The scrolling seems to stop and start very quickly. Also, sometimes the left part of the page will scroll down but the right part of the page will stay put for a fraction of a second. The net effect is very flickery and distracting.

Any ideas on how to fix this? Slighly different case, but this guy was able to solve a very similar problem (external monitor) by opening AutoCAD (what the heck?).

I also tried resetting the SMC as recommended here. Still no luck.

Try System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Automatic graphics switching -> Off


Launch apps full screen I quite like using full-screen apps on OSX Mavericks (Safari, iTunes, Mail, etc).  I'd like all apps that are capable of running full-screen to launch in full-screen mode automatically, instead of me having to press Ctrl-Cmd-F each time, is that possible?

You can use automator to create an application that will launch the application that you want to open in full screen and run an apple script. The script can perform a keystroke to run the shortcut for full screen.

Launch Automator, Choose Application, Drag "Launch Application" from library and choose desired app, Drag "Apple Script" from library, enter apple script (check with specific app for correct keystroke), this works for chrome

here is the script for google chrome fullscreen app:

on run {input, parameters}
    tell application "Google Chrome" to activate
    delay 2

tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "f" using {command down, control down}
end tell

Screenshot

[

Link with tutorial to create Automator Full screen application
https://youtu.be/5L5ikafzCzI


No web tab on the OS X Lion Server interface I just installed Mac OS X Lion Server and it doesn't have the Web tab in the services pane. This looked like it was supposed to come standard.

How else can I access the Web part of the server?

My guess is that you are using the wrong app: in Lion Server, you no longer set up web in Server Admin, you set it up in Server app.

Either this, or you are using a display with a very low resolution and the Server app window is too small to display all its services.


Send very large files through Ethernet between two Mac computers My coworker uses a MacBook Pro, I use an iMac, both running El Capitan. We need to send a file from her computer to my computer very quickly. The file is over 200Gb.
We don't have an external hard drive of that size, she can't zip it because her storage is low, and AirDrop is taking forever.

We do however have an Ethernet cable. But when I plugged it in, I was really at loss for what the next step should be.
AirDrop needs Wi-Fi and Bluetooth so I assume it wouldn't use the cable. When we try with AirDrop it's very slow and usually fails, and it's not faster if the Ethernet cable is plugged in between the two computers (is the cable even detected?).
I looked online and found articles that were very vague and didn't go into details, and when I went into the System Preferences to change settings in Sharing or Network panes I was afraid to mess up my preferences.

How can we quickly send this file over to the other computer (ideally using the cable rather than our slow internet, if that's faster)?

Yes, you can use an ethernet cable to quickly transfer files from one computer to the other.

It's really quite simple.

Plug in the cable
Go to System Preferences, and make sure that Ethernet is enabled. (it should be in the "Network" list.)
Unlock the "Network" preference pane, and click on "Ethernet"
Click on Advanced, and select "Manually" from the "Configure IP v4" dropdown.
Type in an IP address that's not commonly used, so you don't have conflicts: i.e. 10.2.0.1
Subnet Mask should be: 255.255.255.0
Router should be: 10.2.0.1
Repeat these steps on your friend's computer, but in step 5, enter: 10.2.0.2 (the difference is the last digit)

Make sure "File Sharing" is enabled in the "Sharing" preference pane on the computer you are connecting to, so your friend's computer, in this case.

Now, in Finder on your machine, click on the "Go" menu at the top of the screen, and select "Connect to server."

Type in 10.2.0.2, and click connect.  You may have to authenticate (this will be her login name and password) and then you should be able to drag the file from her computer to yours.

To reverse these steps, just put both "Ethernet" connections back to DHCP.


Boot Windows from USB with EFI password I've created an USB with Windows 10 from where I can boot:

Restart pressing option.
Select USB EFI partition.
Windows starts.

When EFI password is active it will be asked when booting pressing the option key, and unless I know the password I can't boot using a different partition.

I tried to set Windows as Startup Disk using System Preferences, but end up with this error:

  remove disk or other media press any key to restart

Is there any alternative to boot Windows from USB without pressing the option key, but behaves the same way and I'm not asked for the EFI password?

Here are some details, I'm on a MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013) running OSX El Capitan 10.11.3 (15D21). Booting using a USB 3 with Windows 10.

What you are asking for is not a common configuration. I can confirm my answer works on my 2011 and 2013 iMacs running High Sierra and Mojave. I can not guarantee success on a 2013 MacBook Air running El Capitan. You would have to try the solution.

The basic steps are given below.

Allocate space for new small partition that is FAT formatted.
Install rEFInd in this new partition.
Edit refind.conf to configure rEFInd to add boot options for Windows and macOS.
Add a Startup application to macOS
Add Startup application to the dock. (optional)
Launch Startup application to select default operating system.

An example of the Startup application is shown below.

You can install rEFInd in a small FAT formatted partition  and application on


Share a wifi connection via another wifi connection Having just recently discovered how easy it is to share a wifi connection via Ethernet, I wondered whether I could plug in another wifi USB stick and get another "WLAN" entry on this screen (my apologies it's in German)

which would allow me to select it in the dropdown on the left here:

Unfortunately I was not succesful with the USB wifi stick I had at hand (it is capable of creating a hosted network - at least on Windows and on my Raspberry).

What do I have to do what I want to achieve with OS capabilities preferably?

It turned out the wifi dongle was not fully compatible/supported by Mac OS. For instance with this dongle it works as expected after installing the drivers.


Diagnosing a broken laptop I have a 12" PowerBook with no HD and a dead screen. I'm trying to determine if the actual LCD is broken or if it is "just" the graphics card, without taking out the screen and transfering it to another computer (which I intend to do if the screen is working). I've tried connecting the computer to an external monitor, but, since there is no HD, nothing happens. The same nothing happens when I connect my working 12" PowerBook to the external monitor.

Is there a secret keyboard combination that tells the laptop to throw some characters onto the screen (from BIOS or something), and to mirror or output to the external monitor?

No. Just get a small, cheap HD (even just a 20 GB will do fine here), put it in, and boot from a system installation disk as if you were going to install the OS.


Official apple Lion USB Thumb Drive licensing I own two macs, one running Snow Leopard and one running Leopard. My partner also has a mac running leopard. I am planing to upgrade all three to Lion and am looking at the Official Lion USB Thumb Drive as a way to do this.

So my questions are as follows:

Does buying the thumb drive bind a license for Lion to my iTunes account? I then assume I can install Lion on up to 5 of my own macs.
Can I use the same thumb drive on my partners Mac? Do they need to purchase Lion from the app store as well afterwards?

This is a very good question, because the ability to link your purchase to your iTunes account it tied in within the actual purchase from the Mac App Store.  I have read, but cannot confirm, that when you purchase a new Mac that has the drive included, they will "credit" this against your iTunes account (or provide a facility to allow you to do this).

New Macs with the stick included are in an odd situation, because they come with the drive, but also come with the Recovery partition included as Firmware (not as a disk partition) that will allow you to re-install online.  The online install option required authentication to prove validity, so this would be useless if they did not make the connection somehow.  I think actually it's related to your system serial number, they know it was sold with Lion, so they will let you download even without a purchase history or Apple ID connection.

It should be noted that the Ts&Cs for the stick suggest that once you have installed via the retail thumb drive, you cannot then subsequently reinstall or recover using the recovery partition, in fact I believe that it does not create one.  Some suggest this is because there is no mechanism to link the thumb drive purchase to your Apple ID.

I think the best solution is to avoid the retail stick, purchase Lion through the MAS, and then burn your own install DVD/USB/HDD installer from the package that you download.  This get's it linked to your iTunes account and provides the license to do multiple installs, and provides you with both the means to do a full local restore without internet connectivity, as well as online recovery.

Whether this is technically against the license to install on your partners machine is hard so say, depends, I suppose you could own the machine, but just not use it as the primary user - there is no problem with his/her machine being subsequently used by a different iTunes ID.  The spirit if the MAS license is all your home PCs, which I take to mean all the ones in your home, not just the ones which legally belong to you.  Unlike purchases from the MAS the OS does not require you to have proof of purchase to install etc.

EDIT: Put it this way in summary, the multiple install license is a feature of the Mac App Store, and not specific to Lion.  Purchasing Lion outside of the MAS might not afford you the same rights, certainly it removes the right to do online restores.


Unable to expand ".zip" into "downloads" (Error - 63 file name too long.) Unable to expand "zip" into "downloads" (Error - 63 file name too long.) on my MacBook Pro with OS X 10.9.5.

If you install Better Zip or Pacifist Zip, you will be able to open the zip file and inspect the contents, file by file.

The file with the problematic long name - including folder names -  should be evident. If not, you can then extract the files one by one until you find the one(s) with the long name which are causing the problem.

You can rename the problematic files when using Better Zip and then resave the zip file.

http://macitbetter.com/ Better Zip

https://www.charlessoft.com/ Pacifist Zip


Yosemite changes QWERTY keyboard layout I have a qwerty keyboard, but I type in french and japanese quite often.

Up until now, I used to have kotoeri activated with Romaji writing for english and french. I used to write accentuated letters by :

option + e + letter for  é, ó, etc…
option + ` + letter for à è ù etc…
option + i + letter for î, û, ê, etc…
option + u + letter for ü, ï, ö, etc…

Under yosemite, this doesn't work anymore.

To get it back I had to activate US International – PC. But it still doesn't work properly. There is a huge bug :

when typing ' then a letter, I get á, é, etc… This is preventing me for writing properly stuffs like

l'arrosoir  → lárrosoir
qu'un → quún

There are a lot of stuffs like this in french. And even worse, auto-correction kicks in and transforms:

quún in quant

How can I fix this ? How can I still continue typing without learning a new keyboard layout ?

CLARIFICATION
=============

I am talking about several separate bugs.

Bug on U.S. International PC keyboard layout

While using this keyboard pressing option + e then a vowel produces the right output (for instance á) the key 'actually adds an accent to a letter instead of producing the 'character (for instance quelquúninstead of quelqu'un). This is most inconvenient as the character ' alone is quite frequent in french.

Bug on U.S. keyboard layout

Hitting option + e then a vowel has no effect (same for option + u then a vowel, etc…)
→ Solved by deactivating and and activating again this configuration. This is the only working configuration.

Bug on kotoeri

Kotoeri configuration let the user choose which keyboard configuration to use for romaji. I have selected U.S. as usual, and I have the same issues as with the U.S. configuration below. If I select US International PC, nothing changes, I don't even get the behavior of International PC without kotoeri. This is most definitely wrong.

UPDATE
======

Selecting US Extended yields the desired behavior (the old one from US international PC). However, US Extended is not available for kotoeri.

As far as I know, Yosemite Romaji IM's failure to honor option and shift dead keys is a bug that Apple will have to fix via an OS update.  It has been reported elsewhere (e.g. https://discussions.apple.com/message/26864874#26864874  ).  It would be good to use Apple's feedback channel to encourage quick action on this.

The OS X 10.10.1 update does not fix this bug in Kotoeri, but the 10.10.2 update of Jan 27, 2015 DOES fix it.

The behavior described for the US International PC keyboard layout is not a bug, but intended.  People who use this keyboard want the ` ~ ^ " ' keys to be dead keys for producing accented characters, and they learn to add a space when they need the stand alone version.

I have not seen any other reports of the US keyboard layout not working right in Yosemite.  When the US flag is showing at the top right of the screen, you should be able to use the standard option dead keys to produce accented characters without problems.  You should also be able to use the Character Picker, where you hold down the key for the base letter and a popup menu appears where you can select accented versions.  If that is not the case for you, the OS is broken somewhere and may need to be reinstalled.


Use the bundled USB-C cable with Target Mode Can I use the white USB-C cable provided with new MacBook Pro to copy files from my MacBook Pro to another one, even if the transfer rate is poor?

Yes - according to Apple:

Compared with Apple USB-C Charge Cable

The Apple USB-C Charge Cable is longer (2m) and also supports charging, but data-transfer speed is limited to 480Mbps (USB 2.0) and it doesn't support video. The Apple Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) cable has Thunderbolt  logo on the sleeve of each connector. Either cable can be used with the Apple USB-C Power Adapter.

See here for reference.


MacBook mouse pointer lockup MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)

In recent days the mouse pointer will be inoperable after waking from sleep. If I cmd tab I can find the pointer, but it will not respond to trackpad movement or clicks. It does not recover if I close applications, open the force quit window or resleep. Only a reboot will bring it back.

Just now it froze as I was typing. Additionally, the character I was typing repeated, as if I was holding my finger on the key combination (it was the '$' character). Again, only a reboot would stop it.

SMC reset did not fix it.

How can I resolve this so that it does not happen again?

I had a problem similar to this and it was because of a bluetooth mouse which had been left switched on in a bag. The button was held down by something resting on it and it was overriding the trackpad. If you use the keyboard shortcut (usually cmd+spacebar) to bring up spotlight and type bluetooth you can use the down arrow key to select the bluetooth system preference and you will be able to see if there is a connected mouse there causing the problem.


How does encryption work when data is backed up to a NAS Time Machine backup? I have a Linux machine which I'd like to use as a NAS backup, so I'm following this blog post by Sam Hewitt.

My MacBook's drives are not encrypted with FileVault, and I'm on El Capitan 10.11.5. I am wondering how encryption works when data is backed up to a NAS Time Machine backup. More specifically:

If I select the "Encrypt Backups" options in Time Machine Prefs, will my backup be encrypted before being transferred over my network?
Is the transfer protocol used by Time Machine secure?
Will backups on my remote NAS always be encrypted, unreadable by anyone who can somehow access the machine?

First, a warning: unsupported backup targets are unsupported for a reason. I don't know the details, but apparently there's some special sauce (or at least a newer version of the AFP protocol) needed on the server to cleanly handle things like getting disconnected partway through a backup. As a result, backups to unsupported network servers seem to get corrupted more than they should, which isn't good for a backup system.

Now about security: the backup is stored on the server in the form of an encrypted disk image (in sparse bundle format). The image is mounted on the client (your computer), which means that the encryption/decryption takes place on the client, and all that goes over the network (and is seen / stored by the server) is encrypted blocks of the image.

To answer your questions directly:

Yes, the backup is encrypted before being sent to the server.
No, the AFP protocol is not particularly secure, but it doesn't matter because the data being transferred over AFP is encrypted.
Yes, the TM data on the NAS is encrypted.

BTW, be sure to store your backup password somewhere safe -- If your HD dies, and you don't remember the backup encryption password, there'll be no way to get your data back.


Installing Microsoft Windows VM on OS X I'm kinda new to the Mac OS, in fact I got this current Mac this week so I'm pretty noob with it.

I need to run a VM with windows 11 and 10 for testing purposes. So I downloaded  and the virtual machines from MS in this link
VM Dev

After doing all the proper steps to install it, anytime I run one of the machines it get a blue screen on booting, and the VM restart itself.

Here is the error

Working on a MacBook pro 15" with latest OS el capitan (but tested before on yosemite and the same thing happened)

This is the Machine configuration

Do I understand correctly that you wish to transfer an existing Windows machine configuration, with all its apps and data, to your Mac? If so, and Boot Camp is a no-no, then you need something like Parallels Desktop 11, which will enable you to run Windows 7, 8 or 10 alongside OS X and switch from one to the other very easily. Indeed, if you have sufficient storage capacity, two or more Windows virtual machines can be set up.  I have 7 and 10 virtual machines on my MacBook Pro. Installing Windows is a breeze, but transferring the existing machine configuration will be an unavoidable chore; I don't know of any shortcuts.


How do I fix this sudo permission issue - UID 503, should be 0 - El Capitan Whenever I try any sudo command whatsoever in terminal, I get the following error message:

sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by uid 503, should be 0
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting

I have tried logging into single user mode and typing in the following commands:

mount -uw

chown /private/etc/sudoers 0

After typing in the chown ownership line, I get an error message saying “illegal username”.

Other things I have tried:

Reinstalling the OS X (El Capitan)
Disabling System Integrity Protection (SIP).
Calling Apple Care who say that sudo commands have been disabled in El Capitan.
Logging in under Single User mode and typing in the following code:
chown root:wheel /private/etc/sudoers This produced the error message “Operation Not Permitted” in my Standard, Admin, and Root accounts.
The error message “Read-Only File System” came up when I logged in in Single User Mode.

FYI

When I run ls -la /private/etc/sudoers in Terminal, I get the following:

-rw-r-----@ 1 MY-ADMIN-USERNAME staff 67 18 Feb 14:03 /private/etc/sudoers

Note I’ve replaced my actual admin username with “MY-ADMIN-USERNAME” just so you know what’s showing.

I need sudo commands to work for a range of reasons, one of which is to get CrashPlan to work.

My hardware is a 2010 iMac, 3.2GHZ, 16GB Ram and 500GB SSD which was installed about a year ago.

These problems have only come up with El Capitan. I didn’t have them in the past with Yosemite.

Looking around online, I can see the many people have had similar issues but the resolutions unfortunately have not worked for me.

Try to repair your sudoers file from Recovery Mode:

Boot to Recovery Mode by pressing cmdR while booting.
Open Terminal from the menubar -> Utilities
Enter cd "/Volumes/main_volume_name/private/etc". Replace main_volume_name by the real main volume's name (check diskutil list), keep any spaces and upper/lower case characters as they are. If you use quotation marks like in the command here you don't have to escape spaces with a \
Enter chmod 440 sudoers
Enter chown root:wheel sudoers
Check the file with cat sudoers. The default sudoers file should look like this:

## sudoers file.
##
## This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
## Failure to use 'visudo' may result in syntax or file permission errors
## that prevent sudo from running.
##
## See the sudoers man page for the details on how to write a sudoers file.
##

##
## Host alias specification
##
## Groups of machines. These may include host names (optionally with wildcards),
## IP addresses, network numbers or netgroups.
# Host_Alias    WEBSERVERS = www1, www2, www3

##
## User alias specification
##
## Groups of users.  These may consist of user names, uids, Unix groups,
## or netgroups.
# User_Alias    ADMINS = millert, dowdy, mikef

##
## Cmnd alias specification
##
## Groups of commands.  Often used to group related commands together.
# Cmnd_Alias    PROCESSES = /usr/bin/nice, /bin/kill, /usr/bin/renice, \
#               /usr/bin/pkill, /usr/bin/top

##
## Defaults specification
##

Defaults    env_reset
Defaults    env_keep += "BLOCKSIZE"
Defaults    env_keep += "COLORFGBG COLORTERM"
Defaults    env_keep += "__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING"
Defaults    env_keep += "CHARSET LANG LANGUAGE LC_ALL LC_COLLATE LC_CTYPE"
Defaults    env_keep += "LC_MESSAGES LC_MONETARY LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME"
Defaults    env_keep += "LINES COLUMNS"
Defaults    env_keep += "LSCOLORS"
Defaults    env_keep += "SSH_AUTH_SOCK"
Defaults    env_keep += "TZ"
Defaults    env_keep += "DISPLAY XAUTHORIZATION XAUTHORITY"
Defaults    env_keep += "EDITOR VISUAL"
Defaults    env_keep += "HOME MAIL"

Defaults    lecture_file = "/etc/sudo_lecture"

##
## Runas alias specification
##

##
## User privilege specification
##
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL

## Uncomment to allow members of group wheel to execute any command
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

## Same thing without a password
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

## Uncomment to allow members of group sudo to execute any command
# %sudo ALL=(ALL) ALL

## Uncomment to allow any user to run sudo if they know the password
## of the user they are running the command as (root by default).
# Defaults targetpw  # Ask for the password of the target user
# ALL ALL=(ALL) ALL  # WARNING: only use this together with 'Defaults targetpw'

## Read drop-in files from /private/etc/sudoers.d
## (the '#' here does not indicate a comment)
#includedir /private/etc/sudoers.d

Since your sudoers file is very small (67 bytes) you are probably missing some or all content. You may have to add/replace at least the lines without a prepending "#":

Defaults    env_reset
Defaults    env_keep += "BLOCKSIZE"
Defaults    env_keep += "COLORFGBG COLORTERM"
Defaults    env_keep += "__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING"
Defaults    env_keep += "CHARSET LANG LANGUAGE LC_ALL LC_COLLATE LC_CTYPE"
Defaults    env_keep += "LC_MESSAGES LC_MONETARY LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME"
Defaults    env_keep += "LINES COLUMNS"
Defaults    env_keep += "LSCOLORS"
Defaults    env_keep += "SSH_AUTH_SOCK"
Defaults    env_keep += "TZ"
Defaults    env_keep += "DISPLAY XAUTHORIZATION XAUTHORITY"
Defaults    env_keep += "EDITOR VISUAL"
Defaults    env_keep += "HOME MAIL"

Defaults    lecture_file = "/etc/sudo_lecture"

and

root ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL

with:

/Volumes/main_volume_name/usr/bin/nano /Volumes/main_volume_name/private/etc/sudoers

The file should finally contain at least the following content:

Defaults    env_reset
Defaults    env_keep += "BLOCKSIZE"
Defaults    env_keep += "COLORFGBG COLORTERM"
Defaults    env_keep += "__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING"
Defaults    env_keep += "CHARSET LANG LANGUAGE LC_ALL LC_COLLATE LC_CTYPE"
Defaults    env_keep += "LC_MESSAGES LC_MONETARY LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME"
Defaults    env_keep += "LINES COLUMNS"
Defaults    env_keep += "LSCOLORS"
Defaults    env_keep += "SSH_AUTH_SOCK"
Defaults    env_keep += "TZ"
Defaults    env_keep += "DISPLAY XAUTHORIZATION XAUTHORITY"
Defaults    env_keep += "EDITOR VISUAL"
Defaults    env_keep += "HOME MAIL"

Defaults    lecture_file = "/etc/sudo_lecture"

root ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL

The file requires a trailing empty line! (Please don't simply copy the above because the last line here doesn't contain a new line but a zero-width space)
Boot to your main volume and log-in as an admin
Enter sudo xattr -c /etc/sudoers to remove the (false) attributes.
Restore the complete sudoers file with sudo visudo /etc/sudoers by editing in the above default sudoers' content
Finally the file info should reveal the following:

host:~ adminuser$ ls -laO /etc/sudoers
-r--r-----  1 root  wheel  compressed 2299 31 Jul  2015 /etc/sudoers

It hasn't to be compressed though and the date will obviously be different.


Logitech MX Ergo Scroll wheel doesn't work Whether or not I have scroll direction "natural" checked or not, when I use my mouse wheel to scroll nothing happens. I can scroll with two fingers on the trackpack but turning of the mouse wheel of the MX Ergo that I linked via bluetooth gets ignored.

I have installed Logitech Options and can successfully map actions to mouse buttons with it.

Is there anyway to get mousewheel scrolling on my MacBook Pro 2018?

I needed to give the Logitech Option Dameon the ability to control my computer in System Preferences -> Security&Privacy -> Accessibility -> Privacy


I just tried to clean my iPhone lightning charger port with the graphite out of a mechanical pencil and now it won't charge at all I have been having problems getting my iphone to charge once it's already plugged in lately. Like a bad headphone cable sometimes just wiggling it around gets the little lightning bolt to pop up over the battery.

So, figuring there were some tiny debris in there I looked for a toothpick, could not find one, and proceeded to click out the "lead" (graphite) of a mechanical pencil and use that.

The phone does not charge at all now. Have tried two working chargers in different plugs, flipped sides, rubbed on it, wiggled it, etc and it absolutely will not charge now.

Turns out graphite is a decent conductor. Is there any way I can clean it out of there using common household items?

Graphite is a really good conductor of electricity - so the chances are what you just managed to do is connect together all the contacts in the socket.

I think you probably need professional cleaning now.

If the phone had a removable battery, then I'd say remove it, grab some spray contact-cleaner from Radio Shack/Maplins etc & douse it... but not while the contacts are still live.


15.4" Retina MacBook Pro (Mid 2012): Broken metal pieces from connector on the motherboard Yesterday I was replacing the housing on my 15.4" Retina MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) (A1398). When I was removing the Logic-board, I broke this little metal parts from one connector. I don't actually know what is that connector for (MagSafe 2 charging port maybe?). Is it important? Is that maybe grounding/earthing? Should I be worried about that and fix it?

MacBook is Working normally but it seems to me that it has some static electrical charge right now. I was reading little bit about that - and it says on forums that electrical charge may appear once the laptop is disassembled.

If it is the connector for the part you have circled in red in the left picture on the bottom row, that is a microphone assembly, containing two microphones. So if i understand you correctly in that the connector where the flat cable contact for this assembly slides into, on the motherboard, partially broke, you will now probably not get any mic input registered on your Mac, although I am uncertain if this model also has a mic in the lid next to the camera.


phpMyAdmin 403 Forbidden Error after upgrade to Yosemite I upgraded my Mac to Mac OS X Yosemite.

I had a AMP stack installed via Homebrew on Mavericks and it worked fine.

After upgrading to Yosemite, I have the following problems:

when trying to load phpMyAdmin at http://localhost/phpmyadmin I get the following error:

  Forbidden

  You don't have permission to access /phpmyadmin on this server.

The error log shows: [Mon Oct 20 11:34:17.235518 2014] [authz_core:error] [pid 70303] [client ::1:50374] AH01630: client denied by server configuration: /usr/local/share/phpmyadmin

When trying to load localhost, I get a blank page. The error log does not have any entries related to that.
I had set up dnsmasq, but now it doesn't work.

When I try to ping a domain name under the *.dev structure, it doesn't respond. It doesn't even time out. Just no response at all, and I have to ctrl-C to exit the ping. However, if I try dig, it gives a response as follows:

 ➜  dig cs.dev

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> cs.dev
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 35355
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;cs.dev.                IN  A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
.           3600    IN  SOA a.root-servers.net. nstld.verisign-grs.com. 2014102000 1800 900 604800 86400

;; Query time: 38 msec
;; SERVER: 172.16.0.1#53(172.16.0.1)
;; WHEN: Mon Oct 20 12:18:36 2014
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 99

I am at a loss as to how to reconfigure my AMP stack to work properly.

Ali

Since upgrade to Yosemite updated your Apache, you have to update phpMyAdmin.conf to use new Access control syntax.

Have a look at: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/upgrading.html

In my case I need changed /etc/apache2/other/phpMyAdmin.conf

Order allow,deny

Allow from all

to

Require all granted

More info here: http://www.zoubi.me/blog/you-dont-have-permission-access-phpmyadmin-server-after-upgrading-yosemite


Turning off OSCSP Process Apparently there's a process names oscsp that takes a lot of bandwidth. I'm not sure what it's for; but I came across an article that showed how to turn it off in Keychain Access Preferences.

I'm not sure if this raises any problems. Any suggestions?

OCSP (and its performing daemon ocspd) as well as CRL are two different but similar methods to check the revocation status of public certificates and are part of the PKI (public key infrastructure).

The revocation status (beyond other statuses) determines the validity of a certificate.

The revocation status of a certificate may be good, unknown or revoked. The status will be changed from good to revoked if the publishing CA (certificate authority) or the certificate itself was compromised (e.g. the CA was hacked or the private key of a certificate was stolen or was published by accident).

Using a revoked certificate (without knowing that it was invalidated) on the client side may compromise its security.

You are strongly advised to enable OCSP and CRL and prioritize OCSP.

Addendum:

I supervised the needed bandwidth of ocspd with Little Snitch.

By searching for ocspd in the network monitor, marking the process and hitting the info button (highlighted in red) I get the total traffic.

After an uptime of ~5 hours I get 3.97 kB outgoing and 23 kB incoming traffic.

You may download and install Little Snitch and hunt down the culprit yourself. Besides the whole traffic of the process you can get the traffic to and from a single host also by choosing one them. Little Snitch runs in demo mode for three hours, and it can be restarted as often as you like. The Network Monitor expires after 30 days.


cdto (to open a terminal) does not work in Mavericks I've just switched to the Mavericks operating system in my Mac. I used to utilize a quite nice app called "cdto" that serves to open a terminal at the current directory where Finder is. The point is that now "cdto" does not seem to work with Mavericks.
Before I used to utilize "OpenTerminalHere" but it is now obsolete.

Anyone with the same problem and any solution?

Please download the latest version at :
https://github.com/jbtule/cdto/releases

Note: on Marvericks, you need to hold down the Command Key to drag the cdto.app into the toolbar.


If I delete my backup on my old phone, will anything happen to my new phone? I broke my iPhone 5, so I got a iPhone SE but I still have the iCloud backups for my old iPhone. I cannot backup my iPhone SE before I delete my old iPhone backup because my iCloud storage is full.

Would deleting my old iCloud backups ruin anything on my new phone?

No it shouldn't, because the backups don't affect anything anyway.

  The short answer is no—deleting your old iPhone backup from iCloud is completely safe and won’t affect any of the data on your actual iPhone. In fact, even deleting the backup of your current iPhone won’t have any impact on what’s actually on your device. The information stored in your iCloud Backups is just that—a backup, or copy, of what is currently on your iPhone.

From http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/deleting-old-icloud-backups


OS X Server 10.7.4: VPN Authentication Failed for new users I can't seem to get new users to access VPN on our OS X Server. If I use my login credentials with the VPN connection, everything works. But when I change to a recently created user I get a error window: "VPN Connection Authentication failed.".

OS X 10.7.4
VPN are set to L2TP.

Are there any hidden settings pr anything I am missing?

Have you somehow set things up so you need to add each new user explicitly to a security group to allow VPN? Check the Access tab in server admin to ensure all users are allowed to authenticate for VPN connections.


Internal Hard Drive Not Visible I have an early 2009 MacBook running OSX 10.9.  Last week, my hard drive crashed.  I bought another and installed OS 10.9.  Everything works.  I do not, however, see the drive's icon on my desktop.  Therefore, I can't open it.

How can I fix this?  Re-booting doesn't fix it.

Thanks!

go to Finder > Preferences > General

Then select  Hard disks under "Show these items on the desktop:"


With New Photos app on Mac, how do I manage photos on my iPhone? I have 2 iMacs at the office and at home; an iPhone; and an iPad.

I recently installed the new Photos app on both iMacs. In both cases, I’m using iCloud Photo Library. So, any new photos I take on my iPhone appear on both iMacs. This is great — now I know my photos are backed up (both on iCloud and on two iMacs), and they're available from any machine on which I'd like to access them.

In other words, as I understand it, Photos and iCloud are keeping all my devices in sync.

The problem is that I don't want to keep all my photos on my iPhone. Once the photo is saved to iCloud and my iMacs, I’d like to be able to delete it from my iPhone, while keeping it on both my iMacs and on iCloud. As it stands now, if I delete a photo from my iPhone, it also disappears from my iMacs.

So my question is, how can I delete photos from my iPhone without deleting them from iCloud or my iMacs? Is there a setting that makes this the default behavior?

The default behavior is for iCloud Photo Library not to store full-size versions of your photos on your iPhone and iPad:

The theory is that only thumbnails are stored on your iPhone/iPad until you decide to view/edit/share the photo, at which point a device-optimized or full-size version of your photo is downloaded from iCloud.

(Note: I know a full-size copy is downloaded when you edit/share, but it appears that if your iPhone has plenty of space it will download a full-size copy for viewing as well, as opposed to just a device-optimized version. This is likely to avoid having to do a second download later if you decide to share the photo.)

When you start running low on space, iOS will begin pruning less-accessed photos and return to simply thumbnails or device-optimized versions of those.

All of this happens automatically in the background and you shouldn't have to worry about managing space yourself.


Apple Music splash screen won't go away! I can't get to my music on my iPad because whenever I launch the app I get a splash screen for Apple Music with no apparent buttons or links to get past it. Does anyone know how to get out of this? (Restarting the iPad doesn't seem to help.)

This happens when the Music app cannot connect to the internet on its first startup.

Make sure the Music app can access the internet (connect to a WiFi or enable mobile data usage for the Music app in the settings). A button to skip the message will appear. Once you skip it the message won't appear a second time (at least not until you update again).


Which APP should I use if I want to draw a workflow with mathematical expressions on Mac? I want to find a graphic application that can draw basic workflows with mathematical expressions. For example, I want to draw something like the following figure from "Implementation and Optimization of Differentiable Neural Computers" by Carol Hsin.

Keynote on the mac can do both. It has standard shapes and the ability to draw lines connected to those shapes.  It's a simple way to draw a flowchart. If also supports mathematical expression thru latex. There is an option to insert an equation and you can define anything you like by using latex.

Here is a link to help you with Latex. On this link, you can see what the latex command is for most any symbols you can imagine. I use this page to help me find the correct latex command to put in Keynote.

I have included a very simple and crude flowchart I made in about 5 minutes using Keynote.  The math equations are bogus as I was just trying to show the capabilities of Latex.


Is TimeMachine Apple's System Restore? I have recently moved to Mac from Windows. Rarely I find that I may have to use System Restore to fix an issue that the OS has incurred. What I would like to know is whether Time Machine is the Mac equivalent to this feature?

I do not need Time Machine file backups itself as I already make regular backups using rsync. But if Time Machine can also backup the OS will use it.

Yes, TimeMachine is Apple's way of doing backups (both user, and whole system, as long as you aren't excluding system files).

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427


Mac Encrypted USB drive giving different capacity I have an existing 1T USB drive (disk5 in the screenshot). I formatted another 1T USB drive (disk4) and starts to rsync files from disk5 to disk4.

Near the end (the current state in the screenshot) I still have 100+G of files that I'm unable to copy to disk4.

From the screenshot, there are still about 250K files and 26 folders not copied over to disk4. Yet disk4 has less free disk space.

Based on finder, the size of the uncopied files is 110G.

Things I that tried:

empty Trash
run rsync with --delete

disk4 is essentially a "rsync -a" backup of disk5, what cause the huge discrepancy in disk space?

Anything else I can do or missed?

UPDATE

Based on hunch, I did the following.

reformatted disk4 again
using Finder, first copy some folders with huge files (VM images)
after the above copy completed, copy rest of folders

All files fits into disk4 this time!

I'm not sure, which of these fix it.

reformatting
copying large files first
not using rsync
none of the above

UPDATE 2

Here's the Information for both drives after the above Update.

Notice that:

Used space is almost the same (0.18G less in disk4)
36203 files more reported in disk5
27 folders more reported in disk5

"rsync -av" did not report any more files to sync.

I guess Apple is hiding some files.

You could look to folders that you can zip into a compressed folder. This should give you additional space on disk4, so long as you erase the files that have been added to the compressed zip file. You can either use Compress Files in Finder or zip in Terminal.

UPDATE

While this does not address rsync directly, this is another option that you may consider.

If this is solely a backup, and you are not actively using the data on disk4, i.e. it would only be used to restore lost data, or recover incremental data, then I would say try CrashPlan by Code42. The software is free and you do not need to buy their premium cloud backup services to use the local backup functionality. The only thing is that without the premium plan, I do not think that they unlock the ability to set the backup schedule for local backup. They do however give you a thirty-day free trial for the premium service, so you can determine how important having control over the backup schedule is.

It works very well, and is very light on resource utilization, so you won't know it is there. I in fact view it as a flaw in the software, as they are only addressing a single core of multicore processors, which can extend initial back up times. You have control over how much you allow CrashPlan to use your systems resources.

The benefit is that it significantly compresses the data to the backup drive, depending obviously on the data you are backing up. While you cannot use the information directly from Finder, the GUI lets you see the file structure and you can easily restore a single file or the entire disk.


Does OS X's terminal app support mouse? According to this answer over at SuperUser, OS X's terminal app should use Alt+Mouse Click to send mouse events to applications running in the terminal. I tried that with the Midnight Commander, but it does not work. I am running OS X Mavericks.

Is there any way to enable mouse support in the terminal app, short of switching to iterm2 or something like that?

Indeed, OS X Terminal can receive mouse input through ⌥-clicking:

However, certain Terminal apps don't receive the passed mouse input.

You can install MouseTerm which will pass mouse events to the terminal.

  Mouse button reporting.
  Mouse scroll wheel reporting.
  Simulated mouse wheel scrolling for programs like less (i.e. any fullscreen program that uses application cursor key mode).
  Terminal profile integration (with preferences dialog).

It's a SIMBL plugin, so you'll need to install SIMBL to make it work. I recommend installing EasySIMBL instead though.


Change text to speech voice mac? Is it possible for me to change the text to speech voice (For example, right clicking any paragraph or text in TextEdit, clicking Speech --> Start Speaking) from the default American version to the UK voice (Daniel Compact, for example)?

I've tried to do this in voiceover but it does not affect the voice for Text to Speech.

Thanks in advance.

Go to System Preferences -> Speech -> Select the "Text to Speech" tab, then choose the voice you want from the "System Voice" drop down.

On my Lion machine (not sure whether it's the same on Mountain Lion), I had to click "Customize..." from the dropdown then select "Daniel" to download from the "English (United Kingdom)" section.


Does erasing the HD and then restoring from time machine backup remove applications? My wife has a 2017 MBP and after upgrading her OS to Big Sur, the laptop has become dog slow. It takes literally seconds for a new program or browser tab to open. The OS should be called 'Big Slow'.
Anyway, I thought I might try erase her HD and reinstall the OS, but we have some concerns.
We want to ONLY reinstall the OS. We do not want to lose any data and we do not want to have to reinstall any applications. She does regular Time Machine backups.
There are a lot of posts with the same question I have here, but for whatever reason, they all ignore the question about applications... so I am asking again.

Will using the 'reinstall OS' option result in DATA being removed?
Will using the 'reinstall OS' option result in APPLICATIONS being
removed?
Must we reinstall the OS and then restore from the Time
Machine backup, or a simple 'reinstall OS' is enough?

Thanks

This is an answer to the question as asked, but I suspect further investigation will be necessary.
Reinstalling the OS without removing existing detritus will quite likely return you to the exact same state.
Reinstall from Recovery without erase will clean up the OS itself without affecting any other data/apps. If the OS itself was at issue, then it will fix the OS. It will not fix anything user-installed that is slowing the OS down.
Erasing then installing from scratch then migrating in from Time Machine will return you to the Mac as you last had it. No change, except the OS cleanup from the previous step.


How to clear "bell" flag (icon, sound) in Terminal tab? The Terminal tabs in OS X can sometimes trigger a persistent "bell" condition where a bell icon appears in the title tab, and every time I navigate to that tab using cmd-tab, the alert sound occurs, and the bell icon fades away, and then whenever I change tabs again, the alert sound occurs again and the bell icon reappears. Switching screens can also trigger the same pair of alert sounds.

The upshot of all of this is that I can easily enter a condition where I'm hearing spurious alert noises many times per minute; it's irritating. Obviously, I can just close that particular tab, but this causes several problems--I many have long-running processes in the background of that tab, or a specific arrangement (the leftmost tab contains a particular job, for instance.

EDIT: I think I didn't make it clear that I don't want to disable the bell sound; I want it to occur when a bad thing happens. What I don't want is for a given Terminal tab to have a permanent error condition where every change to that tab sounds the bell.

Here's a movie:

https://brinckerhoff.org/tmp/terminal-bell-movie.mov

Unfortunately, these movies don't include the irritating sound--I think Apple doesn't want to make it too easy to capture computer audio--but you can see the bell icon disappearing and reappearing, and imagine the bell occurring for both of these.

Terminal > Preferences, Profiles > Advanced and disable Audible and Visual bell.


Selectively control when Aperture/iPhoto opens Both Aperture and iPhoto have a setting of whether to open "when a camera is connected." I want this option to be checked, but I don't want it to consider my iPad a camera. How can I enable it for some devices but not others?

1) Open Image Capture from the Spotlight (You can also find it in the Applications folder)

2) Connect your iPad

3) You should see your device listed under devices column on the left. Select it.

4) In the bottom left, choose "No Application" under the option for choosing which application opens when this device is connected.


No sound MacBook Pro 2016 13" touchbar macOS Sierra 10.12.2 My new macbook laptop keeps losing the sound, anyone knows anything I can do besides restarting or logging out?

Last time It fixed itself automagically, it's a macbook pro 2016, 13" with touchbar

I can even hear a tick when I switch from hdmi to the headphones but it wont output any sound from youtube or VLC or anything else.

I can only hear Siri.

I can't afford to be restarting my computer manually every time this happens.

On linux I can restart the service and fix it but I don't know how to do it in mac.

OS Version: macOs Sierra 10.12.2


Active Directory account locks for no apparent reason I've been troubleshooting this problem for two years and it keeps coming back.  Our Mac users authenticate to our Active Directory server which is running Windows Server 2008 Standard.  One of the Mac users in particular has had a recurring problem where she can't log on and causes her AD account to lock before the maximum log-in attempts has been reached.  The problem started again this week and yesterday I reconfigured her networking and Active Directory settings.  This morning I logged on to her computer using her ID and password and had no problems.  When she tried it twenty minutes later, her account was locked.

All Macs have Snow Leopard 10.6.7 and they all have the same network and AD settings, but this particular Mac continues to have a problem.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Kent

Bear in mind that interactive user logons are not the only thing that count as failed logons when it comes to Active Directory account locks. Services that are set to run as a network user and network resources with saved logins can rack up the failed logon count and lock the account.

Hobs' comment to your question is the direction you should head. Check the Security log on the domain controller that the computer authenticates against and you should get the information that you need as far as the source of the failed logons. The fact that it works on other computers only reinforces this. Something is definitely failing, it's just a matter of finding what.


How to update 100 iPad's? Last year, I had to update 100 iPad to iOS 8. I did them one at a time and it took forever.

We use AirWatch as our MDM.

Is there a better way to update them all?

Yes. You'll want to look at caching server on OS X to avoid downloading 100 copies of the software image and either ground control or Apple Configurator 2. Both can be highly automated and scripted and will re-enroll the devices into your MDM once the job is done.


How to reformat a hard drive previously used for Time Machine Previously I had backed up my Mac files on my old external hard drive on time machine. This made the hard drive only visible and usable by Time Machine. How would I reformat the drive so it goes back to FAT32 or something usable like a normal hard drive? The hard drive is not being recognised or detected by disk utility either.

If Disk Utility or the terminal diskutil list shows no drive - you have a hardware or cabling issue.

Disk Utility or the command line equivalent is the correct way to erase / repartition / re edit (whatever you want to call it) any drive. They should show up as a connected device within 5 seconds of powering them on.

Once you’ve worked out hardware issues (or software if you have anti virus or other problems that are blocking the normal mounting of any connected drive) - then you can choose MBR/APS/GPT for the drive overall partition scheme and then build up whatever filesystem you choose.


How can I sketch in the Messages app Before iOS 8 was released, I remember watching an Apple demo where they sketched on a picture inside of the Message app before sending the message. Does anyone know how to do this? Was this functionality pulled from the release of iOS 8?

This is not your just your memory. In response to your question that feature requires the jail broken platform "Cydia". The specific feature is called Graffiti and you need 2 or more languages enabled on your device's keyboard for it to work, once you have that hold the globe icon on you're keyboard for it to work.
For more info I found this site and I think it explains best here's the link Hope it helps :)

http://www.redmondpie.com/how-to-compose-texts-or-imessages-on-iphone-with-drawings-handwriting-and-sketches/


How to use iCloud as a stacks folder? I'd like to know if anyone knows a backdoor way to use the iCloud drive as a stacks folder in the dock? Like shown in this picture:

Apple advisor told me that it's not possible. Another Apple advisor had me create a copy of the iCloud folder on my desktop and drag that folder to the dock to use. I know that option won't work. The point is, he thought it was possible. So I'm not sure if it's possible or not.

This may achieve what you're looking for: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6605847?answerId=26864942022#26864942022

Copy and paste from the above link:

  It's pretty much impossible to get the complete iCloud Drive folder in
  your dock. I did, however, find out how to add just the folders from
  iCloud drive that I manually added. It's a bit of a workaround, but
  this is how I did it.
  - In finder you have to use go to folder (CMD+SHIFT+G) and navigate to ~/Library/
  - Scroll down to Mobile Documents (This folders seems empty, but actually all your iCloud folders are hidden here)
  - Drag Mobile Documents to your dock (Once added to your dock you can see it's contents).
  - Look for the iCloud Drive folder via your new dock folder and drag this one to your dock again (yes it's possible to drag a subfolder,
  opened via dock, back to your dock)
  - Now you have a Folder called iCloud Drive in your dock. Remember this only contains the folders you manually added to iCloud drive, it
  doesn't show the standard folders. So this solution might not be
  good/work for everyone.

  As far as I understand, it's not possible to add your complete iCloud
  drive folder to your dock. The reason for this is that it's contents
  are actually fragmented in the ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ folder.

  Ow and don't play around (e.g. delete) any of the folders you find
  under Mobile Documents. This will damage your iCloud Drive
  functionality. That's a situation you don't want!