Mavericks: Window across multiple monitors? I just updates to OS X Mavericks on my iMac 27" late 2012 with an additional monitor.

In previous versions of OS X it was no problem to have one window visible across both monitors, which is very helpful if you work on big spreadsheets. But since the update to Mavericks this seems to be impossible. If I put a window so that parts of it are on monitor 1 and the rest on monitor 2, then only that part is visible that is located on that monitor where the mouse pointer was when i released it after dragging the window. The part covering parts of the other monitor are not displayed after end of dragging.

Is this just a matter of settings? I really hope so. But I did not find anything in the settings.

Can you help me to make all parts of a window visible in all monitors it touches?

Quoting from John Siracusa’s review of Mavericks (emphasis mine):

  If you prefer the old behavior, uncheck the “Displays have separate Spaces” checkbox in the Mission Control preference pane. Doing so will also restore the ability to have windows that span more than one display.

So yes, it’s just a setting. It’s been put in the Mission Control pane, rather than Displays, because the effect of this change is to allow you to have different full screen apps on different displays.

The page of the review that I linked to explains the change in more detail (and specifically discusses the window-across-multiple-displays behaviour that you want).


How can I convert a Word (.doc or .docx) file to a PDF on an iPad? I would have thought this was one of Goodreader's many tricks, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

If you have network access you could send it to Google Docs (upload, email, whatever) and then fetch the PDF from there.


How to close specific URLs with Applescript I'm trying to write a little applescript that closes tabs that have URLs that do not contain certain text, but I can't get it to work.

Right now, my script closes every tab regardless of the URL. When it should only close specific URLs.

Can anyone tell me where I've gone wrong?

Here's the script…

tell windows of application "Google Chrome" to close (tabs whose URL does not contain {"business.facebook", "pinterest"} as text)

This works:

tell windows of application "Google Chrome"
    close (tabs whose URL does not contain "business.facebook" and URL does not contain "pinterest")
end tell

In an AppleScript whose clause you need to spell out each criteria fully and join them with a logical operator. You tried to use a list to make an implicit and; that makes sense to the human brain, but AppleScript can't parse it.


Resetting Mountain Lion iCloud login request The first time you log into a new account with Mountain Lion, a special iCloud login screen is shown. Once you "skip" this screen it is never shown again.

When setting up an account I like to add a few things (like a welcome note of my own). But I'd also like to leave the iCloud login screen intact for the first time the intended user logs in.

Is there any way to reset this login screen so that it will be presented on the next attempt to login to a given account?

If all you want to do is add some files to the user's desktop or documents folder, you can create the account in system preferences, then add these files to the relevant directories by navigating to the user's home folder in Finder ( /Users//Desktop ) without logging in at all. The user will then be prompted to setup iCloud the first time they log in.


MacBook Pro 13 inch for work I have just sold my iMac 27 inches for the reason it being too big! I will avoid mentioning the reasons, but...

Now that I have got the exact money to buy the new 13 inch retina one. Problem is I am a programmer and I am wondering if such screen is not too small for working. I doubt I will have, in a good span of time this money again so chances are the following:

buy MBP 13 inch retina, that has a very good display for my sight.
buy any other random laptop that is 15 inch or more or an older version of MBP.

So in short, the question is:

Does the MacBook Pro 13 inch retina have a good ( / big ) enough screen to be productive at work, particularly for a programmer?

Any experience with this?

If your programing needs include displaying an iPad with retina simulator, then perhaps a 13" MBP limited real estate will slow you down. Choose a 13" MBP for mobility.

From my talks to programmers who are happy with only MBP 13" (without external display) are programming HTML, Terminal/console shell scripter types. The others who develop apps for iOS tend to either have an MBP 15" or MBP 13" with an external display.


Why is Automator not working with Spotlight Search? I'm running an Automator Workflow that searches a provided directory, and then does a standard Filter Finder Items in order to make sure it's only going to be working with aliases.

Spotlight failed to find the file named "NUCLEUS SOUNDLAB Pantheon III.rfl."  Please make sure privacy has not been enabled for this file in System Preferences. (-212)

The files being processed are on an external HD mounted over Firewire 800.  I definitely do not have any privacy settings in spotlight at all.

Since it appears that the Spotlight index may be hosed and not working, I have been scouring for ways to force it to reindex the specific directory containing the file it's complaining about.  Thus far, all attempts have failed:

Tried adding the HD to and removing it from privacy, no indexing
occurred.
Tried using mdutil at the command line, no indexing
occurred.
Tried removing all .spotlight references and reindexing, no
indexing occurred.
Tried unmounting/remounting and rebooting, no change.

I'm at a loss as to what else to do.  If I remove the "offending" file from the directory being searched in the workflow, it STILL throws the error on it - even if it's moved to a completely different volume and is very clearly NOT listed in the automator results of the task that succeeded prior to the Filter Finder Items task.

How can I get past this issue?

What happens if you try in terminal.app (change /Search/Directory/ to yours):

mdfind -onlyin /Search/Directory/ kMDItemFSName == "\"NUCLEUS SOUNDLAB Pantheon III.rfl\""

Or in applescript editor.

    set searchPath to "/Search/Directory/"

    set this_item to "/Users/USERNAME/Desktop/NUCLEUS SOUNDLAB Pantheon III.rfl"

    set theFileName to "\\\"" & (do shell script "basename " & quoted form of (POSIX path of (this_item))) & "\\\"" as string

--set theFileName to quoted form of (do shell script "basename " & quoted form of (POSIX path of (this_item))) as string

  set theOrigFilePath to paragraphs of (do shell script "mdfind -onlyin " & searchPath & " kMDItemFSName == \"" & theFileName & "\"")


How to get iLife '13 for free (update from iLife '11)? I currently have iLife '11 installed on my iMac from a retail disk purchased new from eBay. Under the updates section of the App Store, there is nothing that says iLife Update.

I thought updates for iLife '11 to iLife '13 would be free?

You thought right, the update to new iLife is free.

However, Apple had dropped the "iLife" name a while ago, now the apps are just being called iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand.

To get the new versions of the apps, follow these steps:

Upgrade to Mavericks via App Store. This requires at least OS X 10.6.8 to be installed.
Change system preferred language to English and reboot your Mac.
Open App Store and search for GarageBand. It is free now, no matter if you had iLife before.
Go to Updates tab and wait for a minute. Newest versions of iPhoto (9.5) and iMovie (10.0) should appear.

Note, that even pirated and demo versions of Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie, iPhoto and Aperture can be upgraded via App Store. They will appear in Purchases tab a few minutes after the upgrade.

Troubleshooting

If you do not see a response to Update button click, check your
Launchpad. Upgrades are downloading in background.
If you are getting an error about wrong Apple ID when trying to
upgrade, try installing OS X Mavericks in a virtual machine
(VMWare Workstation or VirtualBox) and repeating the fourth step.


Homebrew installation failed I was trying to re-install homebrew on my Mac. I used the following command.
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

I got the following error. Could someone help me with what to do here?
==> Checking for `sudo` access (which may request your password).
Password:
==> This script will install:
/usr/local/bin/brew
/usr/local/share/doc/homebrew
/usr/local/share/man/man1/brew.1
/usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions/_brew
/usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/brew
/usr/local/Homebrew

Press RETURN to continue or any other key to abort
==> /usr/bin/sudo /usr/sbin/chown -R aryan:admin /usr/local/Homebrew
==> Downloading and installing Homebrew...
HEAD is now at 227445ece Merge pull request #11288 from Homebrew/update-manpage
fatal: 'origin' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
Error: Fetching /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-core failed!
Failed during: /usr/local/bin/brew update --force --quiet

I removed the HomeBrew files by running the following command. After that, I ran the installation as mentioned in the above post. It all worked fine. I was able to install all the packages I need.
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/HomeBrew


Change finder thumbnails size In previous Mac OS versions (<10.9) I was able to change the images' thumbnails in the finder by zooming or unzooming with the trackpad. Now that I run on Mavericks, I can't find a way to do it. Does anyone know a trick for that ?

In any folder or window (including Desktop) simply press :
CMD+J


How do I get the terminals in terminal.app to go to the right directory after restart with tcsh? The terminal.app keeps the tabs after a restart and it even shows the content of the buffers. But all open tabs are at the home directory rather than the working directory they were in at shutdown. I am using tcsh and I learned that this is the problem. It works for bash and Chris Page posted something for zsh, but I do not know how to adapt this to tcsh.

Add this to ~/.cshrc:

if ( "$TERM_PROGRAM" == Apple_Terminal ) then
    alias precmd 'printf "\033]7;file://"; hostname | tr -d "\n"; printf %s "$PWD" | xxd -p | sed -E "s|(..)|%\1|g;s|%2f|/|g"; printf "\a"'
endif

http://www.stairways.com/blog/2011-08-07-tcsh-remembering-path uses Perl, doesn't escape characters like % or ä, and doesn't ignore iTerm.


Can't log out of someone else's find my iphone without their icloud password I just got a previously used iphone from my work. However, the previous owner is still logged into their icloud account. Whenever I try to logout of their account it requires their icloud password to log out of their find my iphone. Even when I try to wipe the entire phone it requires the password, what should I do?

Contact the pervious owner and ask them to log into iCloud themselves and release this phone.

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH2702

Failing that, ask if work has this device enrolled in an MDM or to contact Apple to validate via the serial number that the device is not owned by a consumer or different company. In that case, your IT department can bypass this activation lock. If work has an HR department, they can request / require the previous owner to follow Apple's steps to release the device. Legal could bill the past employee for the replacement cost.

How secure is Activation Lock on iOS 7 (and later)?

You probably need to just turn the device in or wait it out since bypassing the lock isn't viable.


Permanently trim Live Photos If you're editing a Live photo, you can trim a section off of the beginning, but if you re-open the editing mode, the trimmed section will still be there.

As a result, if you try to use the Bounce or Loop mode, they'll start at a part of the clip you've supposedly removed. Is there a way to bake in the trim, so that it doesn't remember being longer?

Found a workaround! By saving the image to Files, and then re-importing it to Photos, the length gets cropped to your desired one.


"Speak selected text" reads whole document in Preview Recently I enabled Speak selected text when key is pressed feature in Accessibility menu.

It works well in Safari, Finder and other apps. But in Preview and other PDF readers like Skim, it acts wired. Although I selected a single word, it starts speaking from the first page of document, and if the first page contains only cover image, it says nothing. (silence)

It's macOS High Sierra with latest updates installed.

while the Preview is active select your text then on the top menue select "Edit" then select "Speech" then "Start speaking". You can create a keyboard shortcut for it by adding a shortcut key combination to the Keyboard in System Preferences:
 https://support.apple.com/kb/PH25377?locale=en_US


Is there a way to save notes to the iPhone itself and not to any account for syncing? On the iPhone and presumably applies to the iPad as well, running iOS 5.1.1.

Right now, I've got my iCloud and Gmail account on my phone syncing everything including notes. When creating a note using the stock Notes app, notes are saved to my default account (which happens to be my Gmail account). However, I would like to save some notes to the phone itself and not synced with any account. I do not see an option to explicitly enable this option.

But I've also discovered a funny quirk that seems to allow this option to unexpectedly show up:

Disable the syncing of notes for all accounts
Add a note (which I'll refer to as "the note") to the Notes app (making sure there are no existing notes)
Re-enable notes syncing with accounts
Go back to Notes and the option to save to the iPhone only will show up

Quirk: Delete the note, reopen the Notes app, and that option to save to your iPhone only disappears.

Is this supposed to be normal? Is there a way to keep the "On My iPhone" option on at all times?

In Notes.app when you are in the "On this iPhone" section, any notes you create will exist only on the phone (not synced with google or iCloud). The option disappears when all your notes are synced, presumably to encourage you to save to iCloud by default, but the solution is simply to leave one in the "on this iPhone" folder.


iPhone: get Internet via Bluetooth Is it possible to get the internet connection via Bluetooth (PAN) on an iPhone 3gs ? Note: I'm not asking about sharing the iPhone's internet connection via bluetooth to other devices; I want to do the opposite.

Pair your iDevice and Mac (Turn Bluetooth on for both devices, setup Bluetooth device, etc.)
Now go to Bluetooth Preferences. You should see your iDevice in the list of devices.
Click on the iDevice and then click the gear at the bottom of the list (next to + and -). There will be an option called "Update Services."
Click "Update Services" option AND press the the "Device" that is your computer on your iPad under the list of devices in SystemPreferences/General/Bluetooth. (Ex. on the iPad, under system preferences/general/bluetooth I have a list of 2 devices, Apple Wireless Keyboard and MBP. I press MBP to attempt to connect using the iPad)
For some reason, Updating Services makes the two connect. You'll get the two linked rings in the top left corner next to "iPad" or "iPod" or "iPhone."

There's an excellent thread in the Apple Community forums about how to do that:   https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3125423


Prevent dictionary from coming up in Lion On Lion, a three finger double tap brings up the dictionary. The problem is I have to disable this feature on multiple Macs and cannot be done by clicking on each system. How can this be achieved? Can I use a script? Is there a table with all the multi-touch commands? And maybe I could disable it there?

This applescript will turn the option off. Make sure that access for assistive devices is turned on, which is found in Universal access.

tell application "System Preferences"
    set current pane to pane "Trackpad"
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "System Preferences"
            if window 1's tab group 1's checkbox 3's value is 1 then
                tell window 1's tab group 1's checkbox 3 to click
            end if
        end tell
    end tell
    quit
end tell


Terminal uses one theme for the first window and a different theme for later windows I want to set the "Homebrew" theme to be the default in Terminal.
I've changed the setting in the preferences: I chose "on startup, open" : "new window with settings" : "Homebrew".

Here is a screenshot:

Terminal uses "Homebrew" only for the first window. Then I do cmd-W to close the window and cmd-N to get a new window. The new window appears with the "Basic" theme! But if I do cmd-Q and restart Terminal then it gives me a "Homebrew" window again. Why don't terminal themes work properly?

Go to Terminal → Preferences → Settings → Profiles, select the Homebrew theme, and click the ‘Default’ button. Then quit Terminal and restart to confirm it works.


MacBook Pro lags when at 0% and charging I have a 2010 MacBook Pro with 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM.

However, it lags horribly when it's down to 0% - even when connected to the power source. Also, it takes over half an hour to get to 1% - then, it starts charging at an adequate speed.

Additionally, it won't get to the 1% at all when it's on. It has to be sleeping or off.

It's been doing this even before it became obsolete (in June 2017).

Why is my MacBook doing this? How can I fix that?

This is known/expected behavior as the processor lags noticeably when the battery is removed on any recent MacBook to MacBook Pro. If you can avoid getting the battery below 10% or replace the battery - all normal performance should resume.

Is it possible to disable CPU throttling on a MacBook Pro with a completely dead (not recognized) battery?
How to disable the SpeedStep when using MacBook Pro without a battery?


Can I have iTunes 11 revert to filtering by word instead of phrase? The filter/search in previous iTunes worked on a word-based matching system.  If each of the words matched anywhere in the song info (title, artist, genre, etc) then a song was returned.  It appears that the new default in iTunes 11 is for it to be a phrase-based match.

This breaks searching as far as I'm concerned.  For example, there's no longer any way to search by artist and genre.  If I have an artist with a bunch of different genres and I want to listen to a subset I'm not unable to do this.  Example:  "sufjan christmas" used to bring back all my Sufjan Stevens Christmas music.  Now it brings back nothing because nothing has the phrase "sufjan christmas" in it.

Is there a way to revert to the old method of filtering?

I was able to revert to the old functionality by clicking on the magnifying glass in the search box and unchecking "search entire library".  This had the side effect of speeding up the searching greatly as well as filtering in place instead of taking me to a different screen when I clicked on the search result.


When renaming files, how do I use keyboard to rename the next file? Using Windows, pressing TAB will finish renaming the current file and start renaming the next one in the list. This is the behaviour I'm looking to replicate on macOS.

Enter > Down > Enter would not work as the first Enter would likely alter the file's placement in the list. Assume that batch renaming is not applicable here.

EnterDownEnter will work and the file will retain its position, if the Finder / View / Arrange By is set to None.


How can I remove a sim lock when I'm no longer an Orange France customer? I bought an iPhone 4 in France. When moving to Belgium, I've put a belgian SIM card but I noticed that the phone is SIMLOCKED. I contacted the person who sold it to me and explained everything. He proposed me to contact Orange France to UNLOCK the iPhone.

I tried to contact them but couldn't reach them.

If someone experienced the same problem, please tell me how you fixed this?

Thank you in advance.

From http://assistance.orange.fr/desimlocker-votre-mobile-2839.php:

obtenir le code de désimlockage pour les anciens clients Orange mobile
Si vous n'êtes plus client Orange mobile, pour désimlocker votre mobile, vous devez envoyer un courrier à l'adresse postale suivante :

Orange service clients Mobile
41965 BLOIS CEDEX 9

Dans ce courrier, précisez : votre nom, prénom, adresse mail, numéro de mobile résilié et le numéro IMEI à 15 chiffres du mobile concerné par votre demande.


How can i speed up the animation of hiding the menu bar? I recently installed OS X El Capitan and figured out I could hide the menu bar. But it would be nice if i could accelerate the animation. For hiding the dock menu I use these defaults. I wondered whether I can do this for the menu bar?

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 10;

How can I get there anyway behind how I can change this in the future for other things? Is there anywhere documentation of adjusting defaults?

Thanks in advance.

As of macOS Sierra 10.12.6 there is no preference for controlling the animation speed of the menubar hiding animation. It used to be there, but was removed in Yosemite. The only workaround is to press Ctrl-Fn-F2 (or Ctrl-F2 if you inverted the Fn key) to immediately show and activate the menu bar. You can then navigate by keyboard or click items with the cursor.


Finder folder icons look like document and image files I've got an annoying issue for a couple of weeks now. My folder icons got corrupted from time to time:

Left side is the view I get when I'm switching between views, but when I open finder or navigate to a folder I see its content as on the right side of the image. When I have multiple files and subfolders in a folder, icons of the folders appear as icons of images, and documents around them...

I have the latest updates and I've never used any app that customises Finder.

Has anybody experienced something similar?

Update: I have Tuxera NTFS 2012.3.4 and OSXfuse 2.5.4 installed. Removing OSXfuse and disabling Tuxera doesn't affect this behaviour.

Update: Same behaviour with OSX 10.8.3

Try resetting the Launch Services database. Dig into your Utilities folder and paste this into Terminal:

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

You may need to restart the Dock and Finder to see if it's worked:

killall Dock; killall Finder

Alternatively, just reboot after you've reset the Launch Services database.


How to reset a disabled 5th gen. iPod without access to a computer? My 5th gen. iPod is disabled because my son tried too many wrong passwords. How do I unlock it without a computer or iTunes. I just want to restore, there's nothing important on the iPod.

I've already tried holding power button with home button at the same time.

You need iTunes to restore an iOS device. It doesn't have to be your computer—any computer from friends/family will will do.

If Find My iPhone is enabled on the iPod and the iPod is connected to a Wi-Fi network, you can log in to iCloud and erase the iPod. Once the iPod is erased, you can sign in with your Apple ID to deactivate Activation Lock and set up the iPod as new.


What is the size of a typical iPhone backup to iCloud? I currently backup my iPhone and iPad to iTunes. I’m considering switching the backups to iCloud, but I am not ready to purchase one of the additional storage plans.

If my 32 GB iPhone has 3 GB of free space, does the backup to iCloud only backup settings, phone data, etc. which would require far less space? Most of the space used on my phone is my music collection; surely it doesn’t backup all of the music as well, right?

What is the typical size of an iOS backup stored to iCloud?

If you use iCloud Photo Library, then your photos won’t be uploaded to iCloud for backup. The same goes if you use iTunes Match and MUSIC: you music won’t need to be uploaded to iCloud for backup.

If you don’t use those services then yes, your iCloud backup will contain your photos and music. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to restore your device the way it was.

And yet, even though I’m an iTunes Match and iCloud Photo Library user, my fairly barebones iPad takes up 1 GB of storage for backup.

My iPhone has a few more apps, (2 pages’ worth). However under iCloud → Storage, only one app stores over 200 MB (Runkeeper) with everything else taking under 50 MB. The vast majority takes up mere kilobytes. I don’t backup my Health data because this seems to be causing issues. Somehow my iPhone’s backup takes up 2.2 GB.

As far as data consumption, I believe iCloud performs differential backups, because while the initial backup takes a significant amount of time, subsequent backups seem to complete much more quickly.


Is it possible to create a Mac-Based Distro? ElemenataryOS is a linux distro.

But I like things like Hammerspoon. Is it possible to make an OSx distro? With custom stuff like custom apps installed?

Then I can re-install things quickly on all my OS devices.

Sure. Apple delivers the asr command which is called from the graphical Disk Utility to clone user data into a disk image. There are other tools like Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper that do similar and extra tricks for backup and cloning.

You can delete the user accounts and home folders and also remove the AppleSetupDone file to get a new system boot if you prefer that.

As long as you’re running licensed macOS on hardware that’s correct for the version, imaging is something you can do. Others also automate tools like brew so you can dump on .dotfiles and install apps by recipe instead of by imaging.

You will want to get a lawyer to read the license if you are distributing software as opposed to scripts or methods to automate things. Laws and licenses vary and most people need lawyers to know if local laws make licenses more or less effective.

https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/


Difference between iOS and OSX/macOS connecting to Exchange? I'm using an Exchange account. I configured it both on my iPhone and on the Mac (tried El Capitan and Sierra).

On iOS everything works fine (Calendar and Email work). On the Mac only email works. I talked to IT and they explained to me that it might have to do with the Exchange configuration ("on premise" vs something else - I don't remember).

Whatever the difference is: why would it work on iOS but not on OSX? Can I somehow force macOS to use the same type of connection (whatever that is on iOS)?

This is because your iOS device supports the Exchange Active Sync (which is for mobile only) protocol where Mail and Calendar do not.

For your OS X Mail and Calendar to work, you either need:

Exchange protocol support in Mail and Calendar meaning Apple has to pay for licensing (not likely to happen)
IMAP, CalDav, and/or POP3 service enabled on the Exchange Server

It sounds like your company has enabled IMAP and/or POP3 support, but nothing for the calendar which is why email works and calendar does not.

However, if you have Outlook 2016 and VPN in (or they enable services on an "edge server"), Outlook Mail and Calendar will be able to sync up.


How to determine what the repair people did to fix my MacBook? Recently, my MacBook stopped powering up. When pressing the power button, nothing at all happened. The usual green-yellow light on the power supply appeared normal, but no lights or sounds came from the MacBook itself. Only very rarely, after trying many times throughout the week, would it power on after pressing "power on". Once on, it never powered it off without me instructing it to shutdown.

I took the MacBook to a repair store. They said I should leave it for a few days. When I returned, it worked, albeit they lost a few of the screws, didn't completely bolt the parts firmly together, and got it really dirty. They refused to give me any details about what they did to fix it, but showed me that it works fine now. I don't know if they made significant changes, such as replaced internal parts, or just wiggled some wire and got it working again.

Are there any steps I can take to investigate the computer to identify how the repair store fixed?

I work at an Apple Authorized Service Provider, and the fact that they won't tell you what they did means it was probably just an SMC reset that took two seconds. From Apple Support:

  The System Management Controller (SMC) is responsible for many
  low-level functions on Intel-based Macs. These functions include:

  Responding to presses of the power button

I'm guessing they didn't tell you this because all it takes to reset the SMC is holding down 3 keys and the power button at the same time while plugged in, and you'd possibly argue about having to pay them. It seems pretty shady of them, because we have machines come in needing a simple SMC reset all the time, and most of the time we waive labor charges, but for them to not even tell you that that's what they did doesn't make a lot of sense.


Sharing and permission How can I set sharing and permission on Mac os x to be -rwx for all?
When I create file or folder it is read and write for me but for all others it is Read only. If there is more files just copied from USB to some unlocked folder, automatical it is read only for all other users. Because we share files it is annoying. So please help.

Set your umask to 000 and reboot, then all files will save with full permissions for everyone. Here is the documentation http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2202


Convert mp3 file for podcasts into one that will show up in iOS Music (not Podcasts) app I would like to convert mp3 files for podcasts into "plain" mp3 files of the kind that when synced to iOS will show up in the Music app's playlists but not in the Podcasts app.

I've had some success in the past with converting ID3 tags to version 1.0 (Convert ID3 Tags ... in context menu) but for some reason this does not seem to work with current iTunes 12.

So how can one perform this conversion on OS X Yosemite (with iTunes 12), preferably without third-party software?

You should be able to change it by Right click > Get Info

In Options, change the media kind to Music.


Paste preset html code via Applescript into text edit Hi so I want to preset specific line of html code, and then paste it with key combo using Applescript.

Here is the html code:

Topic title goes here

I want Applescript to paste all of this html code into my text editor using a key combo. I tried a script but it gets confused by the quotes in the html code itself. Please advise. Thanks!

Create a 'service' in Automator.

Give it the following settings:
Service receives 'no input' in 'any application'
Check 'Output replaces selected text'

Add the following 'Actions'
Get Specified Text - insert your clip here
Copy to Clipboard
Run AppleScript - replace the (* your script *) with 'the clipboard'

Click the 'Run' button to test the workflow. If there are no issues here, save the service.

To test whether the service works, put the cursor in a text doc of some sort (any place that you can paste multi-line text) and right-click… you should see the service's name in the menu. Click it and see what happens. Hopefully, it will paste your clipping into the text area which the cursor is in.

If it works well, go to the System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and click Services. Scroll through the resulting list on the right to find the name of your newly created service (should be in the Text section). Give it a keyboard shortcut (hopefully one that doesn't conflict with any other), and you're done.

So what does the service do? You specify the text for the clipping, it copies that to the clipboard. The applescript pastes the clipboard wherever you trigger the service.

As an aside, you don't mention what text editor you're using which might make it easier to devise a solution. BBedit was mentioned in the comments but the are other apps such as Coda that also offer some variation of a clippings feature. And as a further aside, I am unable to include a screenshot with my post.


Unable to link Apple ID with User Account in Lion 10.7.3 I'm desperately trying to link my user account with my Apple ID. After entering my ID and password a yellow warning sign appears in System Preferences beside the Set Apple ID button and the console shows the following error message:

2/8/12 10:07:02.936 PM System Preferences: _CSAddAppleIDAccountUsingCompletionBlock failed with -100

Any hints for me?

Hiho,

again I solved my own problem... error was related to some weirdo ACL problem of the keychain directory/files in ~/Library/Keychains . I got the hint from console showing

"*ERROR:password_store_mac.cc(263)] Keychain data load failed: 100013*"

when starting Chrome and this error ID is related to permissions.

  Chmod -RN

did the trick. Takeaway: Don't use finder to manipulate permissions. ;-)

Cheers
Roland


export from photos (mac) including edited metadata I received a bunch of photos that didn't have any correct metadata. I have then manually corrected the time and gps information within the photos app.
When I export this files, those information are gone. They are not visible in the exifdata.
What can I do to get an image out of photos without loosing all those edits?

Metadata edits and location information assigned using the Photos application exist only in the Photos library database. The Photos application does not modify your original images. I.e. it does not write EXIF / IPTC geotags to your image files.

The Photos application can bake some of the metadata into JPEGs you export. These are JPEG copies of your images with your adjustments applied. You need to allow the Photos application to include location information for published items. There is a setting for this when you export photo. A second setting in Photos > Preferences applies when you use drag-and-drop to export photos.

You should consider proper geotagging that writes GPS location information into the your original image files. Be sure to use a tool that does so without compromising image quality by recompressing JPEG files. Writing GPS tags to EXIF metadata within the files creates files similar to what a GPS-enabled camera produces. You can be sure that the information always stays with your image files even as you move to a different photo software.


Apple Repair Service Image of cracked bezel -or- what am I looking at? A simple battery exchange for a 2014 15" Macbook Pro turned into a major repair - at least that is what Apple's Repair contractor claims. All I got after a very disappointing chat and call with Apple's Support Hotline was this blurry image - apparently the reason why they claim not replace the battery is that they would only to this along with repairing this:

Now, this image tells me nothing but hopefully someone here has an idea what I am looking at. Would I have been able to see the defect prior to sending it off? Would the Genius at the Apple Store have seen this? MBP ran perfectly fine with the exception of the bloated battery.

As far as I can tell from the blurry picture, it seems you're looking at the display itself and the bezel that surrounds it. If you look at the lower, right corner, you'll see that the bezel is cracked.
Was the bezel cracked before you sent it in? - If so you had this pre-existing damage that you probably didn't declare.
If the bezel wasn't cracked when you sent it in, it was probably cracked during transportation. You should inform them of this to see if there's an insurance or similar that covers such an event.


Any way to send messages to Mavericks Notification Center from another machine on the local network? I need a way to have a Linux-based machine send a message that can be received and displayed by the Mavericks Notification Center. I used to do this on an older version of OS X by running Growl, and using its built-in ability to listen for incoming notifications. On the Linux box, I run a Perl script that uses the Net:Growl module to send the notifications. This was simple and worked well, but since everything is moving from Growl to Notification Center I'd like to be able to use that under Mavericks.

As far as I can tell, Notification Center has no way to receive incoming messages from another system on the network and post them. Is there really no way to do that, or am I just missing it?

My other thought was that if I could send the message as a Bonjour message then iChat could display it, but I don't know of any way to have a script send a Bonjour message from a Linux box. Note that the Linux box is a server, and therefore has no desktop or GUI.

I was hoping that perhaps someone else has run into this and has figured out a way to push notifications from another machine on the local network and display them in Notification Center. If so, would you please be so kind as to tell me how you did it, or perhaps point me to a useful page that explains the procedure?

You could ssh to the destination machine and run the following for each notification.

osascript -e 'display notification "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" with title "Title"'

Alternatively, there are a number of ways of running AppleScript remotely. You can do it with Keyboard Maestro, which allows you to run macros (that can run AppleScript) over the network:


How can I use cloud-based text-to-speech services as native voices in Mac OS? I want to be able to use cloud-based TTS services (like AWS Polly or Google Cloud Text-to-Speech) as if they were locally-installed voices. I've found the native voices to be inadequate for some accessibility needs and the cloud-based TTS services appear to offer the most pleasing and affordable way of addressing these. However, I can't find any tools that can help with this (e.g. creating a system voice that connects to a service on a cloud platform and facilitates the functionality). How might I be able to do this?

https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/quickstart-protocol
This article lists all the steps required.

Enabling the service's trial in Google Account.
Installing SDK

^ This is one time setup. The following is to be repeated.

Make the curl command that a shell can execute. This has three parts, two of which are fixed: voice type and audio config. The third one, input needs to be changed. *
Get the JSON response and save it to text file.
Decode the text file, to mp3 using

base64 synthesize-output-base64.txt --decode > synthesized-audio.mp3

Play it.
Bind all of this in a shortcut for the preferred app as a service.

Most of your shell task can be done via "run shell script" in automator.

* For changing the text part, you can find multiple questions, or even ask one to know how to get selected text in an automator variable. Another option would be to copy paste text in an Automator's app's popup.

Next, put that text variable in the shell script.

Then make a dedicated folder for all the text and audio files that will be made in an action. Save the received JSON response there. The command to decode it will be fixed, since the file location and name is the same.

All of this can be put in an Automator app which displays a popup that has a text field and a Submit/ Play button.


How can I "go to page" in preview via toolbar? I would like to select the page directly from the window, but it is not accessible :

Control click on the toolbar and add the page control field.

It looks blank and has page for the help text in english.

Then you can type whatever page you wish directly into the toolbar without needing to use the Command-Option-G keyboard shortcut to go to a specific page.


MacPorts issue, "Error: Port aircrack not found" on OS X El Capitan Using MacPorts 2.3.4 on OS X El Capitan, I get an error when issuing the following command:

sudo port install aircrack -g

I get the message, Error: Port aircrack not found.

I've updated the list of ports using, port upgrade outdated.

The name of the port is "aircrack-ng", not "aircrack", and the install command is:

sudo port install aircrack-ng


Can't click anything in Mac OS Lion (mouse movement works, no hand cursor for clickables) I have Mac OS Lion, version 10.7, and after my screensaver activates, sometimes I can no longer click anything successfully.

I'm using a Magic Mouse with almost full battery.

These things still work:

Moving the mouse cursor
Right-clicking things

However, when I move the mouse cursor over something that's clickable in the browser, I don't see the hand cursor. Also when I mouse over the right-click context menu, the rows don't highlight in blue.

I can't click in to any window, menu bar, or desktop item. Switching to another virtual desktop doesn't help. When I did move to another virtual desktop, I noticed that there was a bandbox selected on the desktop that was still attached to my mouse movements, but when I right-clicked it went away and the mouse still doesn't work as described above.

The only solution right now is to logout. I haven't installed any drivers on this machine, it's a brand-new Mac Mini that came with Lion on it.

I'm running these programs:
* MacVim
* Adium
* Google Chrome
* iTunes
* iTerm latest version

These are the same applications I run on my MacBook Air with Lion installed, and I never get the same problem even with a Magic Mouse connected.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

I also have a Magic Trackpad connected, and it continues to work fine. Clicking with it doesn't un-jam the mouse, though.

It seems that disconnecting and reconnecting the mouse works.

Does anyone think the mouse is defective?


How can I enable natural scrolling for my trackpad, but disable it for my mouse? Is there a way to enable natural scrolling on the trackpad, but disable it for mouse?

I think that natural scrolling does make sense on a trackpad, but with a mouse it doesn't feel natural at all


How can my Mac still be falling asleep with Caffeinate? After long-running problems where my Mac mini (Late 2012 unibody) won't wake up from sleep, I started running caffeinate -s. But even this doesn't fix it. My Mac claims to still be running, flickering lights on my external hard drive, etc., but the monitor is asleep and says there is no signal.

My only options are to hard-boot, or weirdly to turn the hard drive off and on. This brings the monitor back awake "the Mac will shortly restart".

What can be going on? Is something sleeping and failing to wake? Is my Mac just dying? Is my DP-based monitor trying to be too smart? It's a Dell U2715H.

Missing some information, but I'll make some guesses:

caffeinate -s only applies when system is running on ac power

So maybe assume this is an iMac? (from your reference to a "DP-based monitor")

caffeinate -d might be worth trying, but it's hard to say if an iMac can keep a non-Apple monitor from sleeping.

The fact that you're seeing activity lights on your external drive may or may not mean something... I have an external drive that blinks when it goes into idle mode :)

You might also try this: Start an app on your Mac, get its PID (e.g. 123) from Activity Monitor, and then run caffeinate - w 123

A couple of other things to try that would verify the true state of your Mac: initiate a VNC connection to your Mac from another Mac or PC, or alternatively enable the remote login service for your Mac, and make an SSH connection to it. This would allow you to verify whether your Mac is really sleeping, or whether something else is going on. Simply pinging your Mac might also give some indications.


Macbook Pro (Early 2011) running hot with OS X Lion I recently bought the baseline 13'' Macbook Pro with i5 CPU and Lion preinstalled.

I mostly work with Firefox (without Flash), NetBeans IDE and iTerm running and the machine tends to get really hot at the bottom and in the upper left area of the keyboard after few hours of work.

I checked the Activity Monitor and no process is above the 5% CPU usage.

My friend who has the same MBP with Snow Leopard started to have the same issue after he upgraded to Lion yesterday. Lots of threads on Apple.com support forums report the same issue, but without any working solution.

What should I do? Should I bring it back to the shop? Should I try to take some steps to prevent the overheating?

Because you have a base unit, your machine has an integrated GPU. So just looking at CPU cycles can be a red herring.

You can test this behaviour by turning on Cover Flow in iTunes and scrolling through your entire library for a minute or two. Since it is quite GPU intensive, after some time, your fans will ramp up to bring your chips temperature down. Bt if you consult your CPU usage, it will be quite minimal.

It could be the case (very likely) that Lion is working as intended. Lion introduced much more animations and graphically intensive processes, such as swipe animations when navigating websites using the trackpad, pop-up animations on dialogue boxes, swipe animations when sending mail, etc. Even moving or re-organizing icons in Finder now has an animation attached to it

You are certainly free to take into an Apple Store and talk to a Genius about your concerns, but I'm fairly certain they will test the unit and report that it is very much within "spec."


Removing characters from a string via Terminal My main goal is to be able use Terminal to turn

http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F1885509&t=N2M3YmNhNjQzODU5MjI2NmE5ZjljY2Y4NWVhOTVhM2IwYzgyYzYyYixLOHhQakVRbA%3D%3D

into

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1885509

I thought a good place to start would be with finding a way to remove the http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=.

I triedtr -d; however, there does not seem to be a way to remove only the first instance of a group of characters.

The following (using cut) will only work consistently if there length of the string never changes, which means there is no guarantee for future use.

 echo 'http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F1885509&t=N2M3YmNhNjQzODU5MjI2NmE5ZjljY2Y4NWVhOTVhM2IwYzgyYzYyYixLOHhQakVRbA%3D%3D' | cut -c31-83

This looked promising:

 var="http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F1885509&t=N2M3YmNhNjQzODU5MjI2NmE5ZjljY2Y4NWVhOTVhM2IwYzgyYzYyYixLOHhQakVRbA%3D%3D" | var=${var:30}

But because I can not get | pbcopy to work, not could I get outer to print, I have idea what it actually does.

I don't know if there is shell script that will allow me to keep what appears between the equal signs. From the tutorials and questions I have found, sed looks like it would be my best option (if I can figure it out) but it seems to work for files, not strings.

Where is a better place for me to start?

This seems to work:

$ echo 'http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F1885509&t=N2M3YmNhNjQzODU5MjI2NmE5ZjljY2Y4NWVhOTVhM2IwYzgyYzYyYixLOHhQakVRbA%3D%3D' | awk 'BEGIN{FS="=|&"}{gsub(/%3A/, ":")}{gsub(/%2F/, "/")}{print $2}'
https://archiveofourown.org/works/1885509
$

What happening here is the URL string is placed in single quotes and using echo is piped | into an awk program.

Example Syntax:

echo 'URL' | awk 'BEGIN{FS="=|&"}{gsub(/%3A/, ":")}{gsub(/%2F/, "/")}{print $2}'


macOS Sierra Finder doesn't automatically authorize network-mapped folders on login After updating to macOS Sierra, the OS no longer seems to automatically authorize network-mapped folders on system login. I have mapped NAS drives to connect to on startup, using System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items.

Keychain does save the login information, but it only appears pre-filled, and the network locations aren't automatically mounted on start-up.

So every time I boot the machine, I am presented with a "Connect" dialogue with pre-filled passwords.

In El Capitan, there was no need to manually authorize mapped network locations.

I don't know if changing to an iCloud-based Keychain and Two-Factor Authorization in conjunction with the Sierra updated changed anything.

I have tried removing the mappings from Login Items and adding them again, as well as rebooting etc. I have tried this on two separate computers and I have the same issue on both.

There is an update from Apple.

  When connecting to a server that requires a user name and password,
  macOS Sierra 10.12 or later asks you to click Connect, even when the
  name and password have been saved in your keychain. This helps you to
  avoid transmitting login credentials to a server you didn't intend to
  connect to.

If you want to disable this security feature so that you can connect without providing additional confirmation, follow these steps:

Update to macOS Sierra 10.12.2
Open the Terminal app
Enter the following command: sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkAuthorization AllowUnknownServers -bool YES
Enter your administrator name and password when prompted

To disable this command and return to the previous more secure behaviour, follow these steps:

Open the Terminal app
Enter the following command: sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkAuthorization AllowUnknownServers
Enter your administrator name and password when prompted


What are the large .f136 and .f171 files in my Downloads folder? Today I discovered two large files in my Downloads folder:

$ ls -laht
total 19283784
-rw-r--r--@  1 mmorin  staff   6.0K  9 Sep 11:39 .DS_Store
drwx------+ 11 mmorin  staff   352B  9 Sep 11:39 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 65 mmorin  staff   2.0K  2 Sep 09:43 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 mmorin  staff   495M 25 Sep  2018 .f171
-rw-r--r--   1 mmorin  staff   8.7G 24 Sep  2018 .f136
-rw-------   1 mmorin  staff     0B 29 Jan  2018 .localized

They haven't been modified in one year. A cat of .f171 showed it was a binary file. I removed both files and the available space on the computer did not increase by 9.2 gigabytes immediately as I expected but it did after a day. I can recover them from a backup if needed.

What are these files?

I found the following comment on Reddit.

  tl;dr you need to add ffmpeg or avconv executables to your PATH Sounds
  less like a problem with youtube-dl and more like you do not have
  ffmpeg or avconv on your PATH. Without one of the two, the streams
  cannot be muxed into a single file, so you're winding up with two
  files named .f136 and .f251 then you have a separate audio and video
  files, where you probably just want the single file with both audio
  and video streams contained in MP4/MKV/WEBM.

and,

  They are separate audio and video files. You don't have ffmpeg
  installed and working, so it can't merge them into a single file.
  Install ffmpeg and make sure to add it to your path (google how to do
  this).

I cannot find anything about a .f171 file.


EarPods sound problems I have a pair of earpods and when I connect them to my MacBook the sounds is more bass-y that it should.. The fun fact is that if I don't plug the mini jack completely into the port the sound is 'as it should be'! But when I put the plug correctly for 1 second the sound is ok an then it turns to very bass-y again... I presume that something is wrong with configuration or something?! When I plug it into my iphone is the same effect.. Anybody knows what's the problem??

Sounds like you have bad EarPods. Take them back to the store where you purchased them if they are new.


Should a late 2012 Mac Mini be able to drive these two monitors? A Raven MTi2, which is 1080p on HDMI, and an LG 34U97, which is 3440x1440 on Mini DisplayPort. It works sometimes, but after an hour or so the LG just says "Out of Range". Sometimes with them both plugging in, the Raven gets a messed up display while the LG is blank. Either one works just fine on its own. I've tried replacing the cable several times, making sure in particular that the MiniDP one is rated for that resolution.

Answers like this suggest it's not possible, but why does it work sometimes?

Officially, the late 2012 Mac mini will support two monitors in the following combinations:

one HDMI monitor while using one Thunderbolt monitor
two Thunderbolt monitors.

As for the supported resolutions, the late 2012 Mac mini supports up to 2560 x 1600 on Thunderbolt monitors or up to 1920 x 1200 on HDMI monitors.

Of course the above is the official position. Your testing has shown you that you can exceed this, but with mixed results.

If you really wanted to get both monitors working you could play around with the resolutions to ensure that they're within the specs I mention above.

You may also find my answer on another question of interest, especially in terms of real life scenarios. In that question the Mac is a MacBook Pro, but the overall findings may interest you.


Prevent macOS Messages.app from quitting when I close its window? I use a very specific workflow with the Messages app on the Mac:

Read my messages
Close the Messages window with CMD-W
Messages app is still running
When a new message comes in, CMD-Tab to the still-open Messages app
Press CMD-0 to re-open the Messages window

After closing the Messages window, the app has always remained open and running in the Dock and app switcher.

In Mac OS 10.14 Mojave, I similarly close the Messages window. After closing the Messages window, the Messages app is still in the foreground, running, and shows the menu bar.
When I click to some other app, however, the Messages app then immediately seemingly Quits.
The dot disappears from the dock, and (this is the key issue) I can no longer CMD-Tab to the Messages app in the app switcher.

I'm forced to go click the dock icon with my mouse or otherwise re-open the app, which is inconvenient and annoying.
After the app has Quit, besides being "Quit", it seems to behave more-or-less exactly how it used to behave pre-Mojave. The Messages process is still running and visible in Activity Monitor. Notifications continue to arrive. The dock icon gets badged.

How do I prevent Messages from quitting when I close its window?

rdar://46142132 - Mojave Messages.app should not quit when I close its window
Engineering has determined that your bug report (46142132) is a duplicate of 42085189 and will be closed.

Related links:

With Mojave (macOS 10.14), why does the Message app close itself?
Messages app now quits when close window?

Messages app quits on Mojave instead of closing

As far as I can see that's just another case of "Automatic Termination", similar to Preview, QuickTime Player, etc.

If you launch Terminal (from /Applications/Utilities/) and run the following command with Messages quit, Messages should stop terminating, when the window is closed:

defaults write com.apple.iChat NSDisableAutomaticTermination -bool yes

Then press enter.

To undo it again:
defaults delete com.apple.iChat NSDisableAutomaticTermination


Non-secure Jabber/Google Talk connection in Messages Every time I enable my Gmail account (Google Talk) in Messages, I get a message asking if I wish to continue with an unsecure Jabber login. This message reappears every time I open Messages on OS X Mountain Lion, and every few minutes if I keep the account on.

I could just click "Continue" each time, or better yet, disable the warning in Settings, but I would rather connect with a secure login.

Is there a way to get Messages to connect securely to Google Talk?

econ-mit posted the answer here:  https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3745358?start=0&tstart=0

Messages > Preferences... > Accounts (select Gmail Google Talk) > Server Settings > uncheck "Automatically find server and port" > click SSL

When I did that, the Server field changed from gmail.com to talk.google.com and it immediately worked.


Text substitution does not work with Slack on Yosemite I have a text substitution setup within the System Preferences. This works most places within OS X as far as I can tell, but it does not work in Slack. (Their native app for OS X version 1.1.4 - 2814)

Does anyone know why?

UPDATE
It looks like this is not specific to Slack at all

Even after following the instructions in the accepted answer, this still did not work for me until I followed these instructions. Basically, run the following in a terminal:

defaults write -g WebAutomaticTextReplacementEnabled -bool true

or to only change Slack's behavior (and not pollute your global domain):

defaults write com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap WebAutomaticTextReplacementEnabled -bool true


Get to last app playing music on iOS8 In iOS6 and before, you could double-press the home button then swipe the bar of running apps right to get to music controls and an icon for the app last playing (or currently playing) music. This was very convenient to quickly get into Pandora/Slacker/Spotify/Beats/whatever and thumbs up or down a song.

In iOS8 (and 7 I'm told although I skipped it), it seems the only way to reach the app last playing is to scroll through the obscenely widely spaced full screen images of running apps and guess the one you think was last playing.

Is there any simple way to get to the app last playing or currently playing music?

Sliding up the menu from the bottom of the screen gives you access to the currently playing music app (as well as to things like the Flashlight or Airplane mode toggle).

Touch the name of the song playing and it will take you to the app playing the song.


My iPad is in English but apps are in Russian. Why? My iPad 3 is set to use English as the main language for everything in the settings (International and Keyboard settings).

When I download an app, it's very often in the Russian language (when there's a translation available). And I don't know why. I don't even understand their alphabet so the apps are very unusable.

I already checked my AppStore account - but it's in Czech (that's where I live), which has got a classic alphabet.

Sorry about my English, I'm not a native speaker.

I just had the same problem and I solved it. My iPhone apps were very often in German but my iPhone was in Swedish. The problem is: I believe that your iPad's secondary language is set to Russian (Apps display in the first language they find on your list for which they have a localization included). So I believe that if you change your secondary language you should have apps in your desired language. To change secondary language, go to Settings > General > International > Language and choose whatever language you want (presumably English in your case) as secondary language. Then, when the language is set, switch back to your original language and you shall be all set.


Apple Software Update catalog URL I was recently testing our internal SUS but am wanting to get back over to the beta update catalog (one used to get 10.10.1 beta) but did not make a backup. Does anyone have this or know where I can find this?

I have found the answer on my own.

Catalog URL: http://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-10.10seed-10.10-10.9-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog


automate file text edits I have an online website that I'd like to move to a new URL.
Therefore I need to edit all website html files (100+ files) to update the URL links inside each file of this website.

I'm thinking of making an off-line copy of the website files to edit.

Is it possibile to use Automator OS X to
- open each file in the website file folder
- search inside the file content for a specific URL link (say "www.website.com") and change it to the new URL (say "www.website.com/old")?

Else, do I need to rely on a text editor + Automator to make this process?

Or, can it be done using a UNIX script that you run in the Terminal ?

Thanks for any advice on how to perform this process!

Assuming all files are in the same folder:

mkdir new
for i in *.html; do
    sed 's|website.com|website.com/old|g' "$i" > "new/$i"
done


Is it possible to use a 21" iMac as an external monitor from a MacBook Pro via Thunderbolt? I'd like to get an external monitor for my 15" MacBook Pro, but the 27" Cinema Display is too large (and too expensive) for me.  Ideally I'd like a 21" version of the Thunderbolt Cinema Display but such a beast does not exist.

Is it possible to use a 21" iMac as an external monitor from a MacBook Pro via Thunderbolt?

Thanks.

The answer is sometimes yes. I found a list of iMacs that support "Target Display Mode" here ...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3924#1

... and it includes "iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2011)" and "iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012)".

That would imply that any iMac with a Thunderbolt port can be used in Target Display Mode.


Will OS upgrade from Snow Leopard to Mavericks erase other partitions? I have Macbook6,1 Late 2009 Unibody white Snow Leopard with dual boot Debian Wheezy installed on the other partition.
I use EFI to show boot options at startup.

Will upgrading to Mavericks overwrite/delete other partitions?

Debian is what I use primarily. I would however like to upgrade to Mavericks for security reasons.

Updating will not affect any partitions you do not choose in the set-up process. If you're not asked, then it will install on the partition the OS X install originated on.


iTunes 11 on Snow Leopard Where can I download iTunes 11? I have an older Mac, max OS X 10.6.8 and have problems with synchronising iPhone iOS8 and iPad iOS7 with iTunes 11.4 (the latest version on this OS X-system for this old Mac ;). Synchronise stays grey. So I searched and searched for answers. On the AppleSupport I found a solution: trash iTunes 11, empty the trash, restart, reinstall iTunes 11. Now I can't find iTunes 11 on the web(site) to reinstall.

There is a support page on Apples website:
http://support.apple.com/downloads/#itunes


Simplenote or Evernote or something else? What is the best way to keep my notes stored in the cloud? I want to access them fast and they should be editable on every device I use. (iPhone, iMac, Windows, etc.) What do you personally use? Simplenote or Evernote or is there another contender?

I personally prefer Simplenote because it's simpler, plain text and not that fancy. Well, it's just text snippets and notes for me.

Google gets you loads of comparisons:

Simplenote and Evernote – in a rather large nutshell
Simplenote vs Evernote
Evernote vs. Simplenote

EDIT

If you want to look into Simplenote check out Notational Velocity!


Service Battery issue My battery is in 'service-required' state since couple years back. I am in South Korea and the first apple branch will open in Seoul in March this year. I wonder if this is part of the reason why it takes so long to retrieve the needed components as they say.

It was to take about 10 working days here to fix it, at the cost of apx. 200 USD. More because of the time, as I'm heavily dependent on the computer I understand so little, I decided to stick with it. It turns out I have another friend in the same situation in this country.

It's uncomfortable that the laptop has to be connected to the cord at all times, but without it I have troubles to deal with anyway. I found out about the kits provided by iFixit, but they don't ship overseas. Plus, lithium-ion batteries have special rules at the customs of the airport; not a daily convenience stuff to ask for friends to smuggle in when they visit for holidays.

So I have been wondering for quite long, if you take it to an apple branch in America or other countries with good industrial network, how long does it cost to fix this state?

I currently use Macbook Pro of 2012. (OS: High Sierra 10.13.2)

Wait depends on two factors: a) whether the Apple store or the service provider has the battery in stock; wait for delivery from Apple is probably a day or two; and b) the existence (or not) of sufficient techs at the store or shop to do the work that customers have ordered. If work is backed up, it'll take longer.

A battery change should take .5 - 1 hr, and if the customer is lucky (i.e., battery in stock and a tech available), might be able to be accomplished while the customer waits.


Connect 2 monitors to Macbook Pro 2012 I own a 2012 Macbook Pro with Core i7, 1GB Nvidia Graphics, 8GB RAM and 1 TB HDD. I want to connect 2 external monitors to it using the thunderbolt port because thats the only port I have. It doesn't have HDMI or VGA port.

Right now I have one external monitor connected using thunderbolt to dvi adapter. I was wondering if its possible. I have another VGA monitor that I wish to connect. But I am not sure how to do so, there are some accessories available which are too expensive.

I came across this product which is a thunderbolt to HDMI/DVI/VGA (3 in 1) adapter.
I was wondering if it would be able to support two monitors at once.

http://www.amazon.com/VicTec-DisplayPort-Thunderbolt-Adapter-ThinkPad/dp/B00K43Q8BS/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1422420455&sr=8-10&keywords=thunderbolt+to+dvi+vga+hdmi

No, that 3-in-1 adapter will not drive multiple monitors.

What you need is either a system that combines 2 monitors, or a system that chains them. While DisplayPort allows for daisy-chaining displays, this only works on supported hardware. This means your monitors need to both have two DisplayPort connectors and official support from the vendor and inside in the chipset to make this work.

I believe that you aren't going to buy two expensive chain-able monitors since, well, you don't want to buy an expensive adapter ;-) The next stop would be stuff like Matrox's DualHead2Go. That is a device that allows 2 displays to be connected to a computer as one big display. http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/dh2go/digital_se/
It does cost quite some money, so it might be in your category of 'expensive adapters'...

The problem with your question is that it is rather specific. It's a niche that most people don't even know about, and not a lot of sales or development is happening there. While it could probably be done cheaper, there simply aren't a lot of options here.

Just remember: one video port can only ever drive 1 display, unless it's a daisy chained display port system or a device that turns 2 screens into 1 big virtual screen for the video port. There is no cheap 2-in-1 adapter to make this happen.

Small addition: you might be able to solve your problem with a USB DisplayLink adapter if you do not need 3D video or accelerated 2D video. It's a video card with a USB connector on one end and a video port on the other. It won't be fast or high-performance, but if you simply want more desktop space, it might work for you. You would end up with one of these: http://www.displaylink.com/shop/adapters


Backup from iPhone on Linux without iTunes Is it possible to back up short messages from an iPhone on Linux, without iTunes?

Yes, you can use the libimobiledevice project to backup your iPhone.
The project website is: http://www.libimobiledevice.org
However, most Linux distributions have it available in their package managers for easy installation.
After you have libimobiledevice installed, run idevicebackup2 to take a backup of the short message and other data from the phone:
idevicebackup2 backup myfolder

where myfolder is a path to a folder, where you want to store the backup.
If you neeed to enter passwords, you'll want to run it as:
idevicebackup2 -i backup myfolder

where -i means to ask for passwords interactively.
To then browse the backup in a traditional file tree format run:
idevicebackup2 unback myfolder

or
idevicebackup2 -i unback myfolder

A thorough guide can be found at this  link.


Weird font in system windows Suddenly all the system windows have this weird font. I can't read nor understand what the system is asking me. How can I change it to normal fonts?

I'm using OS X Yosemite 10.10.3

Open Font Book and choose File → Restore Standard Fonts…

If that doesn't work, restart in safe mode (hold the shift when you hear the boot chime).


Why doesn't Numbers remember my last cell position? For latest release of Numbers for iPad, it seems that it doesn't remember the active cell when I close the spreadsheet.

I have spreadsheets with many (several hundred) rows and in previous releases, when I close and then re-open the sheet, it would remember what cell I had been in and display at that point again.

Now, every time I close and re-open the sheet, it displays a cell somewhere near the top of the sheet and I then have to swipe loads of times to get back to the bottom where I want to add a new row.

Has anyone else noticed this behavior and do you have a solution?

Many thanks

It appears that this was a known issue.

The latest version released today (2015-11-11) Version 2.6.1 has this note:

  Resolves and issue where spreadsheets would not open back to their last saved positions.

See if updating to this latest version solves your issue.


iPhone 5 tethering, device hard to discover, normal or a problem? I often use tethering now that it's enabled on Softbank network in Japan.
I normally use WIFI connection. The thing is, my iPhone 5 is usually hard to discover from my computer (Macbook Air). Normally when I turn on the tethering and wait around 10 seconds, it shows up in the available networks in the computer. But after closing the computer, doing something else, than later (minutes, hours or days), without having switched tethering off on the iPhone 5, I don't think I was ever able to discover the iPhone 5 from the computer, without switching tethering on/off on the iPhone 5.
Sometimes even after discovery, the connection itself fails because of "timing out". It seems the tethering discovery with iPhone 5 is weak. Is this normal or an issue? Is the iPhone 5 faulty? (I know most/many iPhone 5 have really bad WIFI hardware and/or software. Maybe it's related.)
iPhone 5 is at iOS 6.1 I believe.

You should verify which software level you're on. 6.1 isn't available to the public yet. iOS 6.0.2 specifically fixes a Wi-Fi bug (Apple doesn't say what the particular bug is, but it affects Wi-Fi). Check to make sure you're not on 6.0.1. If you are, upgrade to 6.0.2 and see if the problem is resolved.


Hide unused icons from Dock I just installed Mountain Lion, and I notice that the icons for Launchpad, App Store, To-Dos and Notes cannot be removed from my Dock — if I try to drag them off my Dock, they float back in.

Is there a way to hide or remove these icons?

I have not tried it myself, but I read in a review that they intentionally made it harder to accidentally remove icons from the Dock.

Trying dragging the icon a good distance away from the dock and holding it there for a couple seconds, it should show you some kind of "about to poof this" indicator, and then drop it.

At least, that's what I got from the review I read.


Recommendation for minimal Mac to run iOS Simulator I am rather new to Mac and iOS. I have been a Linux, Windows and iPad user to this point.

I am considering getting a Mac, mainly for the purpose of running an iOS simulator. (I am sure I will discover other joys of being a Mac user, but simulating an iPhone is my top priority.)

Is there any known minimal CPU/RAM/storage capacity needed to be able to run up to 2 parallel iPhone simulators?  Is Xcode required for this purpose?

Any pointers would be appreciated.

All current Mac models are capable of running the iOS simulator (and yes, you need Xcode for that, but you'll need Xcode anyway for development).

Apple has a website for developers at https://developer.apple.com, where you should be able to find more or less anything required to get started.


Connection is invalid error when running Applescript and Safari The following applescript waits for a page to load before continuing with the do javascript "document.body.innerText" part of the script. It seems to work really well except for one thing. If Safari is running but no window is currently open, running this script results in

  error "Safari got an error: Connection is invalid." number -609

Yet if I run this when Safari is closed it launches Safari, goes to the specified URL and once the page loads, runs the javascript portion. I don't understand why it gets an error if Safari is running with no windows open.

tell application "Safari"
    activate
    if not (exists document 1) then reopen
    tell front document
        set URL to "http://example.com"
        repeat until length of (source as text) is not 0
            delay 0.5
        end repeat
        do javascript "document.body.innerText"
    end tell
end tell

The error always highlights the source as text part of the script. I tried changing length of (source as text) is not 0 to repeat until name is "example domain" but the error still occurs if no windows are open and Safari is running.

You need to swap the position of the activate line of code with the if not (exists document 1) then reopen line of code.

Example:

tell application "Safari"
    if not (exists document 1) then reopen
    activate
    tell front document
        set URL to "http://example.com"
        repeat until length of (source as text) is not 0
            delay 0.5
        end repeat
        do javascript "document.body.innerText"
    end tell
end tell

The screenshot of the Script Editor, below, was run with Safari open and without any windows opened.

First I had to check "[√] Show Develop menu in menu bar" (Safari > Preferences… > Advanced) and then on the Develop menu click "Allow JavaScript from Apple Events". Next I copied and pasted your AppleScript code in Script Editor and clicked the Run the Script button and it ran without error and returned the text of the http://example.com web page. However Safari was closed when I ran the script the first time.

After reading your question again, I was able to reproduce the error by having Safari open without any windows open.  I then looked more throughly at your code and noticed activate was before if not (exists document 1) then reopen and activate needs to be after it to avoid the error.


What automatic script runs with Bourne Shell (/bin/sh) for root? I want to add some aliases to my OSX command line environment for easier navigation when in the root prompt (sudo su to root). On the Bourne Again Shell (/bin/bash), I can edit /var/root/.bash_profile. But with the Bourne Shell (/bin/sh), what script do I edit for that?

This answer comes close to answering the question, but I need to start using sudo su - instead of sudo su in order to switch from regular user to root or the /var/root/.profile script won't execute.

Now, unless Apple changes this, regular users by default will get the Bash shell, instead of the Bourne shell, which is unlike the root user. So, for those users, simply editing ~/.bash_profile will work fine.


macOS 10.15.1. Software Update won't pick up upgrades I'm running macOS 10.15.1 on a macBook Air, 2015 model, and I need to upgrade to the latest version.
There are upgrades available, up to 10.15.5, but when I open "Apple Menu > About this mac > Software Update" I get the following...

I know there are newer updates.
I also downloaded and installed the updates from Apple Support, but I always get the following error.

I have:

Plugged into ethernet
Plugged into power
Restarted in Safe Mode
Flushed the SMC, PRAM, and NVRAM
Tried with and without a VPN
Tried with most of the intermediate DMG
Deleted some files in /var/db/crls
Tried sudo softwareupdate -ia
I've got c. 20Gb of disk space

Any help gratefully received

Make sure you use the combo updater if you are trying to manually update by more than one "point" release - 10.15.6 is the latest - https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2048
For future reference, Google can always find these very easily - just search "combo update 10.15" etc & the latest will be the first result.
The combo updater is capable of jumping from any point release to the latest.
It may at the same time fix your Software Update control panel issue, though you may not find that out for sure until the next update.
If that still doesn't work, double check your free drive space. Use Disk Utility & the "Free" value rather than the "Available" value.


How to search PDFs and extract matching pages with Automator? I am trying to make an Automator workflow that will alllow me to:

Specify a folder to run the actions on
Search all PDF files in that folder for a certain word (my client's name)
Create a new PDF file with just those pages on which my client's name appears
Save that file on the desktop

Thus far, I can do steps 1 and 2. But is there any way to see what pages the matches were on or to create a new PDF for the matching pages?

I realise this is a year after you asked the question but I liked the challenge. So, in summary this is how I would accomplish this...

For every PDF in folder, convert it to Text.
Use a perl command to search the text files for keyword and return the page number(s).
Use command line tool to extract page(s) from PDF.
Merge extracted pages.

You can do the first part easily enough with applescript/automator.

The perl command to get the page numbers is:

perl -ne 'print "$1$2" if /blah/ .. /--- Page (\d+) ---(\n)/'

The command tool to use to extract pages from PDF file can be found at
users.skynet.be/tools/

Finally to merge the single pages can be done with automator or the above tools as well.

Hope this helps.


Remove unused Finder tags I make extensive use of Finder Tags, both built-in and user generated. I have ended up with a huge bunch of tags would like to better manage them.

Is there a way to easily visualize the count of files tagged with a particular tag? That way I can easily get rid of the unused tags (tags with zero associated files) which have accumulated in due course.

To view all the available tags in Finder, follow these steps:

Enable display of tags by going to Finder → Preferences → Sidebar → Tags → Recent Tags.

In the Finder menu, enable show Sidebar and Status Bar if they are hidden.
Under Tags section in the Finder Sidebar, click on All Tags.... This will display a list of all the available tags (pre-created + custom) sorted alphabetically.
Click to select a tag from the list. The count of files/folders associated with the tag is shown in the Status Bar.

To delete a tag, right click on it and select Delete Tag "Tag_Name"... from the context menu.

For more information on tags in Finder, refer to the Apple support document, macOS Sierra: Use tags to organize files.


Airport Express can't handle multiple devices I have an Airport Express connected to my modem (which provides 60 mbps download speed). The Airport Express is in DHCP + NAT mode, has one computer connected to it via Ethernet, and has other devices connected to it via Wi-Fi.
For some reason, when one device on the network is using a lot of download throughput to connect to the Internet (e.g., video streaming, downloading software updates, etc.), the other devices are unable to get more than minimal throughput to the Internet (e.g., simple webpages barely load). The device using a lot of throughput could be connected via Wi-Fi and even the computer connected via Ethernet will get little throughput.
Has anyone experienced this before and know how to ensure all devices have reasonable throughputs? I assume the issue is with the Airport Express. I have tried restarting the router along with reseting it and setting up the network again.

This is normal, especially with older routers like the AirPort.  TCP is a “greedy” protocol, it will take all that it can when it can, so if you have a node (computer on the network) consuming lots of bandwidth other nodes experienced high latency and low throughput.
You may or may not remember, but places with free WiFi would often have horrible connectivity when the “business” crowd showed up with their VPN clients.  Basically, they would hog the bandwidth whether they were transferring lots of data or not.  Many places blocked VPN traffic because if this.
You need a new, modern router
The way you fixed this was you configured QoS (quality of service) for individual clients and protocols.  More advanced routers would  allow “packet shaping” where the router would limit the amount of bandwidth per node and/or protocol.
Modern routers take care of a lot of this for you automatically. Many can allow you to prioritize  traffic.  For instance! http/https takes highest priority, but email takes lowest. More advanced routers (I use pfSense) allow much more granular control to limit bandwidth by node and by protocol/application.  A regular retail, consumer grade router should be enough for your needs.


Why Mac OS X requires any amount of free disk space? I understand the OS needs some free disk space for running. So does windows or any *nix.

But OS X is regarded as a very polished system and my question here is more like, shouldn't it already reserve all disk space that it needs so it won't ever complain (or bug out) about not having enough space?

If it's 10 gb, then get a 64 gb disk and say "you got 44 gb free space, because 20 is used by the system" (supposing OSX already takes 10). Just take the free space needed already! Make a partition if need to be! Hide it if you really want.

Then it wouldn't need to bother the user with worrying about that. There must be a good reason why it's like this, but I couldn't find out. Can you please explain?

The amount of space the OS needs is neither fixed nor predictable. It depends on a huge number of factors: what programs you run, what you do in them, what background activity they trigger, what background activity happens for other reasons, etc. Hard drive space is used for overflow from RAM, logs, temporary files, etc.  If the system reserved a fixed amount of space for this, it would wind up being bigger than it needs to be a lot of the time (and hence waste space), and too small some of the time (which would be very bad).


Removing smell from leather Apple Watch band? I have a "Classic Buckle" style leather band for my Apple Watch.  After having it for about two months now, the band has really begun to stink due to moisture and sweat!

Has anyone found a good way to clean the band and manage the smell?  I have done a simple wipe down like Apple recommends, and also taken it off for longer periods to dry out, but that hasn't really helped.

Since it is just a normal leather watch band if you remove it from the apple watch, I suggest following the same cleaning directions as normal analog watch owners use.
a quick google search yielded this result: ebay watch band cleaning guide


How to remove purgeable spaze in Mojave I'm having some problem with my mac (MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)). I freed some spaces by deleting some folders but when I analyse mac HD I get the following:

Available: 79.29 GB (44.52 GB purgeable)

Installing windows 10 on bootcamp still returns the error "not enough space" so I started looking at tutorials on how to get rid of that "purgeable" space. I have tried everything, enabling store optimisation, apple cloud, disabling everything, nothing worked.

I stumble upon a tutorial that suggested to create fake files to fill the hard disk and then remove them (with iCloud disabled).

The problem is that the command suggested in the tutorial:

mkfile -n 10g ./test

Doens't work, it creates a file, but if I analyse the file:

Size: 10,737,418,240 bytes (4 KB on disk)

So it should occupy 10 gigs but in reality it occupies almost no space at all.

What can I do to get rid of that space?

Try using a tool like CleanMyMac, they usually have an option around the lines of "Remove System Junk".


Mid 2010 Mac Pro 5.1 Drive Is Failing It still works but am afraid it will unexpectedly die. I bought a new drive that's compatible but don't know how to transfer data from old to new after I install the new drive.

Can I use Time Machine, Disk Utilities or what?

The old drive is Sierra 10.13.4 and the new drive is formatted with Sierra 10.12.

First (after installing the new HD) you'll need to install macOS on the new drive. You can use internet recovery (boot with CMD+OPT+R) or make an install USB.

If you have an external hard drive available you can use Time Machine to create a back up and then restore that backup to your new machine.

If you don't have an external hard drive you could upload your files to iCloud or another online service and restore them later.

Another option is to purchase a SATA to USB adapter (such as this) and either use Migration Assistant or simply copy the files you'd like manually.


Devices with FTDI not seen on macOS I'm using an macOS machine. I was working with my devices without any problem (Arduinos, external MIDI devices, etc.) until I installed the FTDI 2.4.2 drivers.

Suddenly, all my devices stop working. I uninstalled the FTDI drivers, unloaded the AppleFTDI kext, install the FTDI drivers, and so on.

Nothing happened.

I can't see the devices when I attach them to the machine. I know it is been seen by the computer because I can list them with lsusb. Also, I know that the FTDIUSBSerialDriver is loaded as is listed when I do a kextstat.

After a while...

I found the solution. I had the D2XX.kext from FTDI being loaded. It claims all the /dev/tty.*, so I needed to disable it. Now everything is working again.


How can I save tabs in iTerm 2 so they restore the next time the app is run? Can I save tabs on exit in my iTerm 2, so I don't have to open same directories again after restart?

Like Chrome does, for example.

I couldn't find such option in settings. Maybe "Arrangements" is what I want, but it seems that it requires me to explicitly save tabs.

You can Save and Restore Window Arrangement with ⇧ ⌘ S and ⇧ ⌘ R options under the Window screen in iTerm2

You can start the default Arrangement Option to enable are at Preferences -> General -> Startup  -> Open default window arrangement .

You can add arrangements with the ⇧ ⌘ S and manage them under Preferences -> Arrangements tab .


What software extends quicktime to support codecs as an alternative to Perian? Now that Perian is closing its doors (and thus ending support), I'd like to know if there are any alternatives to Perian - specifically alternatives that add Quicktime support for more filetypes (and thus all the benefits with Apples Video editing/burning applications)

Of the alternatives that Perian themselves have suggested, none have Perians integration with Quicktime:

Niceplayer - standalone application that relies on Perian(!)

VLC - standalone application that doesn't integrate with Quicktime

MPlayer - standalone CLI program that doesn't integrate with Quicktime

So, are there any other QuickTime-integrated codec applications out there? Bonus points if like Perian it's one application that bundles many codecs.

If even Perian themselves do not suggest anything that has QuickTime integration — they should know — I assume you are out of luck. I miss Perian, too, but have made the switch to Zongyao Qu’s MPlayerX, which is current, useful and pretty (not the Sourceforge flavor!) …


How to decrease the font size / zoom out in Chrome on a mobile device I prefer very small fonts: on my MacBook I use full retina 2560x1600.  My iPhone7 Plus can show a lot - if I can force chrome to stop making huge fonts on it.  But how to do that?  The desktop chrome allows to decrease magnification by hitting Command-Minus. There is no keyboard on the iPhone so then .. what is the equivalent?

By the way I already have the Text Size slider set to absolute smallest in the general Settings| Text Size

Try enabling “Text Accessibility”

Type chrome://flags into a Chrome tab.
Search for "Enable text accessibility in web pages"
Select "Enable"

Force quit Chrome and restart.

Answer sourced from a Google help page about the same topic.


How to change how long notifications stay on a Mac? I have a webpage that will display notifications to OS X's notification (system notifications).  But it will disappear in 10 to 15 seconds.  Is there a way to change how long it stays?  (and what about change to not disappear at all?)

I found several pages dated 2014, which suggested using

defaults write com.apple.notificationcenterui bannerTime 60

or use 3 instead to make it 3 seconds. But this method doesn't work for my Mavericks and El Capitan OS X.

I was able to get this to work as of Catalina (10.15.2)

First, you need to specify -int before the number of seconds parameter:

defaults write com.apple.notificationcenterui bannerTime -int 2

You then need to restart the NotificationCenter process by signing out/rebooting or running:

killall NotificationCenter


Is it possible to hide dock on launch bar? When I open the launch bar the dock is always there taking up spaces. Is there a terminal command that allow me to hide this?

The easiest way to hide the Dock is to press Command+Option+D. Is there a specific reason you want to use a terminal command?


Apple Mail - Do not apply rules automatically As I understand it, active Apple Mail rules automatically get applied when mail comes into the Inbox.

Is there a way to prevent rules from being applied automatically, so that they are only applied when I click the "Apply Rules" menu item (or use the shortcut, cmd-option-L)?

Apple Mail rules run automatically only the first time they're set. After that rules will only run manually.

Going into Preferences and unchecking 'Active' will deactivate the rule and will never run it.


Workaround for connecting two 2017 iMacs and using one as a second display I am using my iMac 2017 5k as my main machine and want to use my 21 inch 2017 iMac as a second screen. I have learnt from the previous question that I asked that the target display mode is not going to work. What are some workarounds to use the real estate on the second 21 inch 2017 iMac while on the main machine?

There's a product called AirDisplay from Avatron Software that allows you to extend your display to another Mac.

  Extend your main Mac screen to a nearby iOS or Android device or to
  another Mac or PC. Increase your productivity with an extra screen or
  mirror your main display to up to 4 screens.


Preview: PDF Highlighting & Search Stop Working until Restart A problem has recently become much more prevalent for me when using Preview to search PDFs for text (using Command + F or the search box in the upper right).  At first, everything generally seems to go fine:

(as it should be) a list of thumbnails appears in the sidebar, indicating all of the pages that contain the search term.
Generally, though not always, the term I search for will be highlighted on the first page that it occurs on.

But, after this, things quickly start malfunctioning:

Generally speaking, if I click on thumbnails lower on the list, Preview will take me to that page in the PDF (like it used to).  But, it will no longer highlight the searched for terms.
Instead, Preview will make a low-pitched beeping noise of the sort that occurs when one tries to perform some un-permitted action in a variety of mac situations.
Furthermore, once this occurs, I cease being able to make any highlights at all in the document I am viewing with Preview.  In fact, I can't even select any text any more.

Below is a list of unsuccessful efforts to resolve this:

Closing the side bar does not work to resolve this.
x-ing out the search box in the upper right does not resolve this.
Selecting the "Tools" menu and then "Text Selection" does not work either, nor does clicking on the text selection icon in the edit panel.
If I quit preview and then re-open the PDF, I am able to highlight again.  But, the problem will re-surface as soon as I try performing another search.
Working with the same files in other PDF programs (e.g. Skim, Acrobat, etc.) poses no problems.  I'm quite certain it isn't a problem with the underlying PDFs.
None of the responses to this question resolve this.  (indeed, I supplied one such response myself a while ago, but that trick and the others no longer work).

I've used Preview for many years without problem.  This issue started cropping up relatively recently for me, I believe within the past 3-4 months.  I had hoped that upgrading to Catalina might resolve it, but it did not.

I'd like to think I am fairly sophisticated with computers (I have a reputation of close to 8,000 on the main stackoverflow page), but I am baffled by this.  I also don't have a good handle on how I can get diagnostic information or how I can create a reproducible example.

Any leads on how to tackle this would be greatly appreciated.

The issue seems to be resolved (from personal testing) in macOS Catalina 10.15.2

Here is the operating system info:

System Version: macOS 10.15.2 (19C57)
Kernel Version: Darwin 19.2.0

So, updating to macOS 10.15.2 (stable) will fix the issue.


Where are "import from iPhone" photos stored in the iPhone? Using Mojave on a Macbook while using Pages I found today the option "import from iPhone" which I used a picture I took with my iPhone to a Pages document in my Mac. I liked the photo and later I looked for it on my iPhone but could not find it. I googled a bit but found no information about this. Anybody knows where can I find these photos on my iPhone?

The Joe Friday Answer:

The picture was never recorded on your iPhone. That's the way the "Import" and Insert features work in Pages.
You can get your picture from the Pages document easily:

Open the document in the Preview app
control-click on the picture, then select Share, Add to Photos. From there, you can export if you wish.

The Long Answer:

As I understand your question:

You imported a picture you took on your iPhone to your Mac.
You inserted that picture into a document you created on your Mac using the Pages app.

Your question is ambiguous with respect to whether you "imported" the picture directly into the Pages app, or if you imported the picture from your phone to your Mac using some other (e.g. Photos) app.

You may ask, "Why do I say your question is ambiguous?" Part of the reason is your wording (though certainly this subject is arcane), but the main reason is that the Importfrom iPhone item in the Pages menu is only available when you have selected an image that already exists in your Pages document. If your insertion point (i-beam, whatever) is at a blank spot in the document, then the menu item is Insertfrom iPhone. At least, this is the behavior that I see - your experience may differ. And so, if one uses Pages only occasionally (as I do), one might wonder if you got this mixed up with the Import feature in Photos (which always uses the word Import. But in any case...

If you "Imported" or "Inserted" directly from iPhone to the Pages document: The picture was never recorded on your iPhone. Sorry, but this is just the way the "Import" and Insert features work in Pages; apparently that's by design.
If you imported from your iPhone to your Mac using the Photos app, then there is most certainly an option to delete from the iPhone, or to retain the image on your iPhone. If this is what you did, then you have selected the option to delete it after the import! And AFAIK, you don't get a "do-over" for that; the picture is no longer on your iPhone.

And so, as to the location of your "missing" picture, it is in one of two places:

If you imported the picture from your iPhone to your Mac using Photos, you can find it in your Photos app on your Mac, or in "iCloud" if you use that option. You can also export it from there if you like, again using the Photos app.
It exists only in your Pages document. Again, not a big Pages user, but I'd guess there is some way to save or export the picture from the document. If you can't locate a better method, a couple of fall-back approaches are:

Do a screen capture of the photo in your Pages document (commandshift5).
Open the Pages document in the Preview app. From Preview, you can control-click on the picture, and then select Share, Add to Photos to add it back to the Photos app database - where you may have expected to find it in the first place!  :)


Disable Mail notifications on a per account basis In the iOS Mail app I have two accounts configured.
It is possibile to have notifications (banner and sounds) turned on only for one of the two accounts, or the setting in Notification under Settings is global for all the accounts?

I'm using an iPhone 4 with the latest version of iOS 5.

This is possible with iOS 6. Under Settings → Notifications → Mail, notifications can be changed or disabled on a per-account basis.

Once you select the account: Choose notification settings - Notification Center and Alert Style (Off and None, I assume). Then choose "New Mail Sound". Select the New Mail Sound and Select the Vibration (None and None, I assume).


What displays work with the Mac Pro (2019)? What displays besides the Pro Display XDR will work with the 2019 Mac Pro? Is there a list somewhere of (both Apple and non-Apple) displays that are compatible?

The new Mac Pro can be configured with a range of graphics card options.

Regardless of the option chosen by the user, it can be connected either via HDMI 2 or Thunderbolt 3 to compatible displays, and also provides the option for DisplayPort connections*.

The various graphic card options also provide different combinations of these ports. For example, the base level AMD Radeon Pro 580X comes with two HDMI 2 ports and four DisplayPort connections that can support the following combinations of external displays:

six 4K displays
two 5K displays
two Pro Display XDRs

The AMD Radeon Pro Vega II, on the other hand, comes with one HDMI 2 port, four Thunderbolt 3 ports, and two DisplayPort connections that can support the following combinations of external displays:

six 4K displays
three 5K displays
two Pro Display XDRs

And finally, the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo comes with one HDMI 2 port, four Thunderbolt 3 ports, and four DisplayPort connections that can support the following combinations of external displays:

eight 4K displays
four 5K displays
four Pro Display XDRs

Of course, with the expandability of the Mac Pro you also have the ability to use different graphics cards and therefore the types of displays compatible with it will depend on the card you're using.

Finally, with the use of adaptors you may be able to support other displays as well.

* DisplayPort connections are routed to the system to support internal Thunderbolt 3 ports