How do I remove unused partition (El Capitan)? I have a partition that I no longer use. I've tried erasing with the disk utility GUI, but when I try to remove (with the '-' minus button on the partition view) this feature is disabled. I've also tried reducing the size of the unused partition and applying changes, but they don't save.

This is the out put of diskutil list from the console:

/dev/disk0 (internal):
    #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
    0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
    1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
    2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh H             68.3 GB    disk0s2
    3:          Apple_CoreStorage BOOTCAMP                181.2 GB   disk0s3
    4:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s4
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
    #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
    0:                  Apple_HFS BOOTCAMP               +180.8 GB   disk1
                             Logical Volume on disk0s3
                             E4625018-24BC-4F8B-8B57-1131F79B331A
                             Unencrypted

BOOTCAMP is my main storage, and I don't want to lose any data, here. Macintosh H is the unused partition that I'd like to remove and add the space to BOOTCAMP

You can't move the start block of a CoreStorage Volume Group ("BOOTCAMP" in your case) non-destructively (OK, there is a workaround: please check the Scattered Physical Volumes method at the end of my answer). The same is valid for non-CoreStorage partitions with on-board tools. AFAIK only iPartition and gparted work for the latter. Therefore you can't easily reclaim empty space with a lower start block and an arbitrary size and add it contiguously to existing CoreStorage or non-CoreStorage volumes.

You may either remove the partition Macintosh H or repartition the internal drive. I recommend the latter because removing one partition will not increase the size of the second partition!

Preparation:

Attach a backup drive and use Time Machine to backup BOOTCAMP.
Detach the backup drive
Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup. Booting to Recovery Mode is not conducive because the Recovery HD will be removed in one of the steps below. And you can't remove a partition used as a boot volume.

The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an Apple/Akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (preferably Yosemite or El Capitan) or a thumb drive containing a full system (preferably Yosemite or El Capitan). If you boot to a full system and login as admin you have to prepend sudo to execute special commands like gpt ...!

Either remove one partition (not recommended)

Open Utilities -> Terminal
Enter diskutil list
Enter diskutil umountDisk /dev/diskX with diskX: disk identifier of the CoreStorage volume (probably disk2)
Enter diskutil umountDisk /dev/diskY with diskY: disk identifier of your internal drive (probably disk0)
and
Enter gpt -r show /dev/diskY to get an overview and the index number of Macintosh H (probably 2)
Enter gpt remove -i 2 /dev/diskY with diskY: disk identifier of your internal drive (probably disk0)
Enter exit and quit Terminal

Or remove all partitions (recommended)

Open Utilities -> Terminal
Enter diskutil list
Enter diskutil umountDisk /dev/diskX with diskX: disk identifier of the CoreStorage volume (probably disk2)
Enter diskutil umountDisk /dev/diskY with diskY: disk identifier of your internal drive (probably disk0)
and
Enter gpt destroy /dev/diskY with diskY: disk identifier of your internal drive (probably disk0)
Enter exit and quit Terminal
Open Disk Utility and partition your internal drive

Either reinstalling OS X booted to IRM

Quit Disk Utility and open Restore OS X
Install and configure OS X
Download the latest OS X and upgrade to OS X El Capitan
attach your backup drive
Use the Migration Assistant to import your old users/data

Or reinstalling OS X booted to a bootable El Capitan installer thumb drive (recommended)

Quit Disk Utility
attach your backup drive
Install OS X El Capitan
Use the Migration Assistant to import your old user(s)/data

If you hesitate to reinstall OS X and migrate your data, you may convert the first OS X partition of your disk to a Physical Volume and add it to your Logical Volume Group. After extending the Logical Volume, BOOTCAMP will cover almost all of your disk. The content of BOOTCAMP will be preserved.

The approach is similar to a Fusion Drive (two Physical Volumes -> one Logical Volume Group/Logical Volume) however using only one disk.

Scattered Physical Volumes method

Attach a backup drive and use Time Machine to backup BOOTCAMP.
Detach the backup drive
Restart to Recovery Mode by pressing cmd R at startup.
Open Utilities -> Terminal
Enter diskutil list to list all partitions
Enter diskutil cs list to list the CoreStorage items
Enter diskutil cs addDisk lvgUUID diskYsZ to add a Physical Volume
lvgUUID is the UUID of the Logical Volume Group, diskYsZ is the disk identifier of the empty partition Macintosh H (probably disk0s2). The content of the partition will be destroyed!
Enter  diskutil cs resizeVolume lvUUID size to extend BOOTCAMP
lvUUID is the UUID of the Logical Volume, size: size in t, g, m, k or b (in your case 250g. If you get an error regarding missing space use 249g).
Enter exitand quit Terminal.
Open Disk Utility and verify the CoreStorage Volume Group.
Reboot to your main volume.

The pros:

it's fast; it takes about 3 minutes.

The cons:

your CoreStorage LVG is non-contiguous and fragmented.


Making audio calls on iPhone via Automator in macOS Sierra I was using this script by Evan Carmi to make audio calls via my Mac:

on run {input, parameters}
  open location "tel://" & input & "?audio=yes"
  return input
end run

This worked great until I recently updated my Mac to macOS Sierra 10.12.5. Now it returns an error (popup window that says "the action run applescript encountered an error"). The script allows any number to be called from any application (see this).

Does anyone know how to update this script so that it works on macOS Sierra 10.12.5?

This works for me on the latest version of Sierra

set input to "0123456789" -- input real phone number
    open location "tel://" & input & "?audio=yes"
    delay 1
    tell application "System Events"
        key code 36
end tell


OS X Yosemite - cannot remember Keychain access password Is there any way to recover this?  Can I change it without knowing my current password?

No. You cannot recover the contents of the keychain without the password. There is no way to reset the password retaining the keychain data.

If you want to access a login keychain after changing user's password, the keychain will still be accessible using the old password.

If the problem is reappearing password prompt after a login password change, you can delete and recreate the keychain, but the original data is non-recoverable.


My iPhone is showing an orange dot in the status bar every time I make a phone call I noticed today that my iPhone has suddenly started showing an orange color dot at the top of the screen every time I am making a call. I clearly remember this did not used to be the case before, but has started happening today.
This is how it appears:

I have not changed any phone setting. Does anyone know why is this dot appearing? What does it mean? Can I remove it?

Your iPhone has been updated to run iOS 14.
iOS 14 has introduced a new privacy feature which causes an orange dot  indicator to appear in the iPhone status bar when the device microphone is used by an app. Additionally, if an app is accessing the device camera, a green dot  is shown in the status bar.
The feature is also available on iPads running iPadOS 14.
You can learn more about it in the Apple Support document here:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT207354

If you see orange or green indicators in the status bar
With iOS 14, you might see an orange or green indicator in the status bar on your iPhone. These indicators appear when the microphone and/or camera are being used by an app.

An orange indicator  means the microphone is being used by an app on your iPhone.

A green indicator  means either the camera or the camera and the microphone are being used by an app on your iPhone.

This is intended to let the user know that an app is using the device microphone or camera, and to check against any unintended access to the microphone or camera.
To determine which app is accessing the microphone or camera, you can open Control Center to see the name of the app:
Microphone:

Camera:

Can I remove it?

This features is enabled by iOS and is turned on by default. It's not possible to disable it.


macOS: Disable popup showing accented characters when holding down a key How do I disable the display of popup which appears when holding down a key? It slows my typing speed and makes me do so many mistakes in my writing and programming. I need it at time when I wish to enter an alphabet twice.

In macOS, when a key is held down while entering text, a popup is shown which lets one choose between various accented forms of the character. To disable this execute the following command-line in the Terminal.app:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

Now, you'll need to log-out and log back in. This should disable the display of the popup and character typed should start repeating when the key is held down.

If you ever wish to return to this behaviour, execute the following command-line in the Terminal.app:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

You'll need to log-out and log back in again for the setting to take effect.


Clone strategy - alternating partitions on USB drive? I clone my Mac weekly to an external USB drive, with Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC).

Ideally,  I'd use 2 separate USB drives, and alternate which I clone to each week.

But SSDs are expensive, so with just 1 drive, should I ...

have 2 partitions, and alternate which I clone to each week?
have just 1 partition / 1 clone, no alternating?

Does the alternating-partition method really provide any benefit? Any physical issue would effect both clones. And for any corruption, I could just redo the clone.

Your expert thoughts?

It’s much more important to back up your data than to make clones of your computer.

The idea is that you can get back up and running quickly even if you’re on a different computer; even if it’s a PC!  A clone will be specific to your machine.  If it’s a 2015 (for example) and it gets lost/stolen or sent in for repairs and a kind soul loans you a 2013 model, that clone is useless as it won’t function on an older machine.

How to backup Time Machine's backup to a cloud?
Offsite Backup Strategy for Multiple Macs
How to backup data from one external drive to another (one-way)
What's a good setup to back up macOS data and restore to Linux?

(IMO) a clone isn’t necessary anymore especially if you’re using APFS as it has a built in snapshot feature that allows you to make an immediate point in time backup of your drive. Instead, put together a strong backup strategy that allows you to get up and running quickly.

And speaking from personal experience, while I have a Time a Machine backups, when I upgraded to Catalina I didn’t even do a migration.  I took the opportunity to “tune” my new system with respect to the new shell (ZSH) new features like iCloud Drive, etc.  I relied much more on my cloud files than Time Machine.  That said, I still wouldn’t go a single day without having that continual TM backup.


How to download file under same filename? I have DropBox enabled on my Mac running Sierra and I have changed my Safari download location to the Downloads folder I created in my DropBox folder.

Whenever I download a file under the same name, Safari downloads it as 'name.extension', 'name-1.extension', 'name-2.extension' etc. Is there a way how I can prevent safari from doing this? When I download a file with the same filename, it is normally because it is an updated version from stuff that I make. Since DropBox allows you to revert to the previous version, it does not matter if I accidently  write to the same name since I will be able to restore it.

There is no way to override that "feature" permanently.  However, there are a couple of workarounds:
Hold the Option Key
Hold down the Option key when you click on the link and it will tell Safari to overwrite the file if it already exists.
I just tested it on Safari 10.10.3 and it works as expected.

Use Download Linked File As...
You can also specify interactively if you want to overwrite the file using the Download Linked File As... option.
Click on the link while holding the Control key (or right click) and you will be presented with a context
 menu.
After the "Save File Location" dialog box, if the file exists, you will be prompted to Replace or Cancel.

Set Safari to alway ask where to save downloads
This is done in Safari Preferences (⌘, while in Safari).  With this set as Ask for each download. if the file you are attempting to save already exists, you will be presented with a confirmation dialog as above.


Parition disapeared after deleting Linux I had a 70gig partition running Ubuntu that I deleted from Disk utility (was gonna reinstall with Kubuntu instead). However, once the operation was complete, I was just left with the Mac partition (~170 gig out of 256) and the formatted Linux partition was not visible. I tried to repair it from recovery mode, but it keeps telling me to open first aid in recovery mode (which I am).

If I'm understanding you correctly, you are trying to format a linux partition from your OS X diskutil app. Far better would be to access it via an external linux boot device, either USB or DVD. Since what you do to that partition as far as a reinstall of linux should (fingers crossed) only mess with the linux partition, your ability to later on reboot into OS X should be (fingers crossed) fine. As I am finding out myself, deleting partitions within one or the other systems may well befoul everything. But reinstalling to one of them should have less risk involved. BACKING UP the OS X partition first would be a stellar idea.

I say this as someone running a MacBook late-2011 15" with Mint Linux as first partition and MacOS as second.


Can you tell different iPad Configurations by their Weight? Just wondering, would there be a weight difference between a 32GB vs 128GB or Wifi vs Cellular configuration of the same iPad model (e.g. iPad Air)?

According to Apple, the LTE version is 9 grams heavier than the WiFi version.

When you look at that picture of the logic board of the iPad Air (http://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/rqfMxwyBxWTko3xN.huge, taken from iFixit iPad Air 16 GB teardown, the yellow one is the Toshiba NAND Flash chip) you can see that there's not much room for more chips, so they would just integrate the same chip size with more NAND inside for e.g. 128 GB configuration. So I did some research about that and it seems there are up to 128 GB chips in the same size since 2010/2011 (just that time Apple first released a 128 GB model, what a coincidence :D). So theoretically this would be possible. Of course, you'd need to see a teardown of a larger model to say for sure.

Having said that it'd be hard to tell the difference in weight between those configurations, independent if they put more NAND in one chip or used maybe 2 chips for larger configurations (what looks difficult if you take a look at the layout of the motherboard: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad+Air+Teardown/18907). The difference would be just below 1 gram...


Preview: Remove all annotations Is it possible, using Preview (or maybe some other tool if not doable with Preview, but Preview preferably) to remove all annotations from a PDF file, without manually deleting every annotation?

In the "Tools menu", choose "show inspector". In the inspector, select "Annotations inspector".

Press CMD+A to select all annotations, then click backspace to delete them.


Is there a way to log all incoming Push Notifications in OS X El Capitan (v 10.11.4)? I need the ability to write all incoming Push Notifications (APNS) to a log file. Basically, I would like to end up with an ongoing record of all the Push Notifications that I receive. What is the best way for a newbie to do this in El Capitan?

You can install Growl. It can be configured to logs all the events including Push Notifications.


Kernel: I/O error on new OWC Mercury 6G SSD I bought a mid 2011 Mac Mini mit dedicated graphic card along with the iFixit dual hard-drive kit and a OWC Mercury 6G SSD.

After I installed the ssd into the Mac Mini with as second hard drive, the boot time of Lion on the factory hdd increased to about 4-5 minutes. On login, a dialog appears, stating that a uninitialized hard drive was found. So I tried to partition the SSD with GUID partitioning scheme and one HFS+ Journaled partition. The partitioning process was stuck at about 50% and failes after about 2 minutes with a posix input/output error.

Formatting the SSD with diskutil from terminal succeeded once, but after a reboot the partitioning scheme was set back to master boot record acording to disk utility. Also the same unintialized disk dialog appeared again.

In the system information tool the ssd is recognized with correct values and also 6g sata speed.

On the system console tool, a kernel: I/O error appears everytime I try to format or partition the ssd.

I also tried installing Lion directly on the SSD, but installation failes somewhere around 10 minutes after starting the installation.

So my question is: Is this a bad SSD and I have to return it to OWC, or is there some thing I have forgotten to make the SSD useable as system hard-drive. I want to avoid sending the SSD back to OWC before I try every possible fix, because living in Germany, sending a package to USA is always a hassle, because of duty and shipping cost.

First thing I would do is contact OWC support. They have an excellent support team. I suspect that you might need to update the SSD's firmware.

http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/


Mac OSX upgrade Adobe Flash Player, download stops I am on Yosemite 10.10.1. For some reason (maybe corrupted initial download) the 1.2MB installer stops at around 30% (34%, 35% or 36%) downloading the full installer.

I spent some time why but I just gave up. Here is my workaround and I hope it will help others. The workaround is to download the offline installer from this page http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html. Download the "DMG Installer (for System Administrators)" and install. After installing restart Safari for example and verify from http://www.adobe.com/uk/software/flash/about/ that you have installed.


Can any apps print from the iPhone? Can any apps print from the iPhone? Preferably via WiFi...and to an Epson PX710 all-in-one in my case.

If you want to print pictures and photos, you can use Epson iPrint (there are similar apps from other printer manufacturers, e.g. Canon iEPP, HP iPrint Photo 2.0, Kodak Pic Flick or Lexmark LexPrint). For printing PDFs or other documents, the already mentioned "print n share", "Print Bureau" (both from eurosmartz) or Air Sharing Pro from Avatron could be useful.


Streaming local content from iPhone to Apple TV without WiFi or data connection I'm going on a trip abroad - where I will not have a data plan - to a place where there is no wifi. There is a TV, however, and I was thinking of bringing my 3rd gen Apple TV to be able to watch some media on the screen. The plan is to create a local hotspot on the phone; let the Apple TV connect to it and then use Airplay to play already downloaded content from my phone.

Will this work? I can't test it without the data plan without leaving the country.

This post discusses a similar issue, but they seem to have a working data connection.

Yes this works!
You must switch on Bluetooth on both devices.
Afterwards go to the Control Center and check if AirPlay is diplayed. When the AirPlay Button don't show up you might restart and try it again. When it's working you have to turn on 'Mirror'. That's it.


Ask for password input when mounting a volume via Automator I have Automator mounting a volume with hdiutil, but it requires a password to mount.

Natively macOS would prompt with a hidden-password input field; but I don't know how to trigger the same when running hdutil. In fact, running in an invisible bash script then the password prompt can't be shown.

So I've added "Ask for Text" to provide the password to the script, but this shows the typed password in clear plain text; that is not ideal for security reasons.

How can I show asterisks instead? Or how can I trigger the the native macOS mount password prompt?

I don't think the "Ask for Text" action provides that feature so you'll have to run an AppleScript command instead to display the dialog:

on run {input, parameters}
    return {text returned of (display dialog "Password:" ¬
        default answer "" with icon note buttons {"Cancel", "Enter"} ¬
        default button "Enter" with hidden answer)}
end run

which produces the following dialog:

Now, I don't know about hdiutil but this is how you might be able to use it:


How can I set the user picture from a file in Mavericks? How can I load an image from a file as my user image in Mavericks?  The interface changed so the Mountain Lion instructions aren't applicable, and the Mavericks instructions don't cover loading it from a file.

Open up the Users System preferences.

Select the user and then drag your file onto the current image.


How to remove default apps on iPhone 5? There are default apps on the iPhone 5 (and the others I'm sure). How do I remove them off my screen? Such as the default Mail client?  I have my own that I use and like.

Most if not all of Apple's own apps aren't removable like apps you download from the App Store. The only way to get them "out of the way" is either put them all in a separate screen, or put them in a folder (by dragging one over the other to create such folder) and then keep them there or drag the folder itself off screen (to a screen you don't use and don't have any other apps on)

To drag applications, either to change their placement or create folders, tap on any app and keep holding until they start to "shake". Press the Home button to turn off this mode.


Can you make OSX mount just certain partitions when you connect an external HDD? I have an external HDD with 4 partitions.

My question is the following: is there a way of telling the OS to mount just two of them (One FAT and one HFS+) when I connect the HDD? It is rather annoying to have 4 "disks" connected on the finder, and it makes ejecting the drive a test to my patience.

I would appreciate your suggestions. If it's impossible I guess I'll just have to fiddle around and get everything in 2 partitions... :/

Yes. You'll need to create a file called "fstab" in /etc if it is not already there:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Next, we'll need the partitions Unique Universal Identifier (UUID). Open Disk Utility, and highlight the partition you'd like to no have auto-mounted. Then hit CMD+I and you'll be greeted with the following screen (notice the UUID highlighted):

We will then need to enter the following line into our fstab file. The following example will prevent my "Shockwave" partition from auto-mounting:

UUID=27C2148B-1734-3900-B89C-FE3EB7E11DBC    none   hfs   rw,noauto

Hit CNTRL+O to save when you're done. You can add as many as you like; one per line. Reboot and those partitions specified in fstab will not be mounted.

The UUID is the partitions unique identifier (consult the man-page below if you'd like to use device's label instead). The noauto tag tells OS X not to auto mount on load. You can still mount them using Disk Utility, but OS X won't do it for you initially.

If you'd like to learn more about fstab and what you can do with it, you can view it's respective man-page.


Script to run Adobe Update Remote Manager as Launch Daemon at Boot without MDM Scenario: I need to figure out how to run the /usr/local/bin/RemoteUpdateManager at DeepFreeze maintenance cycle. During this maintenance cycle, the computers will restart to the login screen and enter a thaw and locked mode for a period of time. As mentioned we do not have a MDM yet, so I created a launch daemon which to my understanding should run the script at boot without requiring any input or to login.

Update.sh

#!/bin/bash
rum=/usr/local/bin/RemoteUpdateManager

if [[ -f $rum ]]; then
echo "Starting Adobe RemoteUpdateManger..."
sudo $rum --action=list #Listing the updates for now, but will install later
else
echo "Adobe RemoteUpdateManager not found."
fi

Based off Adobe's RUM guide, link, you have to use sudo for RemoteUpdateManager

com.test.schedule.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>EnviromentVariables</key>
<dict>
    <key>PATH</key>
    <string>/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:</string>
</dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.test.updateschedule</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>sudo</string>
    <string>sh</string>
    <string>/Library/Scripts/Updates.sh</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<string>/var/log/EsoUpdateError.log</string>
<key>StandardOutPath</key>
<string>/var/log/EsoUpdate.log</string>

Steps Taken

Copy update.sh to /Library/Scripts/ and the .plist to /Library/LaunchDaemons/
sudo chown root:wheel .sh
sudo chown root:wheel .plist.
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/.plist
The moment I load the .plist, it creates two logs at /var/log/. The standardoutpath log lists all the updates which is exactly what I want.

Issue

After restarting the computer to see if results stick, I notice that the results cannot be replicated. Instead I receive the following in StandardErrorPath log:

  RemoteUpdateManager exiting with Return Code (1)

Based of the RUM guide, Return Code (1) is: "Generic error, for example an internal error. For example, this might be the case where Adobe Application Manager installation is corrupted or network is not present. In this case, typically, the process of downloading or installing updates cannot be started at all."

I went as far to apply chmod 777 and chown root:wheel to both the .sh and .plist, along with `/usr/local/bin/RemoteUpdateManager'. Tried without sudo in the .plist and .sh.

Since the launchd plist is in /Library/LaunchDaemons/ it's going to be run as root. Given that, you don't need to call sudo as your first program argument, nor do you need it in the shell script. Also, it's good practice to use full paths in program arguments so /bin/sh instead of sh.

That's all just housekeeping though. What I find interesting is that it works when you are logged in as a user but does not work when launchd runs it upon load during restarting. The launchd.plist man page section for RunAtLoad has this little warning:

  This key should be avoided, as speculative job launches have an adverse effect on system- boot and user-login scenarios.

For that reason I avoid using RunAtLoad true for root level launchd tasks. I suspect what you're seeing is that the system is not ready to run RemoteUpdateManager at the moment when launchd loads your plist.

RunAtLoad is awfully handy, though, so you may have to stick with it, but I'd play around other mechanisms to tell launchd when to run your script. You could try using StartInterval 60 or something to give the system 60 seconds to fully spin up after loading the plist. That assumes your maintenance window is at least 60 seconds long plus whatever time is needed by your script. An alternative could potentially be to use StartCalendarInterval but you'd want to be very sure that the maintenance window is rigidly defined in time and not cancellable by your users.

You could also keep RunAtLoad and use KeepAlive with SuccessfulExit true to make launchd keep trying to run your script until it successfully exits. It's not an elegant solution but it may work. If you're doing this make sure to set your ThrottleInterval to something reasonable or else launchd will complain mercilessly if the task is permanently failing.

The last thing to keep in mind is that your plist is going to cause your shell script to be run at EVERY restart. You should incorporate some mechanism in your shell script to detect if you're in a maintenance period and exit 0 if not.


Transfer PDF in iBooks from iPhone to iPad How do I transfer a PDF I've saved in iBooks from my iPhone 6 to my iPadPro?

Thanks

There are a couple of options.

If you're using iCloud Drive, opening iBooks, scrolling to the item (a PDF, ePub or book) and tapping on the Download icon will download the item to your library. If you're not currently using iCloud Drive you can always turn it on under Settings / iCloud / iCloud Drive.

Syncing through a Computer. If both devices are synced with the same computer, you could go into iTune's device's Settings and enable Sync Books. Then syncing both devices would share the item. Bear in mind that if iTunes is set to sync only selected books, you'll need to manually check the checkbox next to the PDF you want to sync.

Send the file attached to an Email. Attaching the PDF to an email, opening it from the other device and saving the PDF file into iBooks would do the trick, too.


What are all possible ways a keyboard shortcut could be bound in Safari? What are all of the ways a keyboard shortcut could be bound in Safari?

I am aware of the following:

The app’s own standard shortcuts
System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts >

App Shortcuts >

All Applications
Safari

Services

Safari Extensions
KeyBindings.dict
3rd party utility applications

Alfred
FastScripts
Keyboard Maestro

Are there other obvious paths I could be missing? Are there ways of figuring out how a specific keybinding is being handled?

For context, I created a utility shortcut for myself to send the current Safari tab to Chrome by pressing ^c. I did this a few years ago with an Alfred Workflow, with a Hotkey trigger scoped to com.apple.safari and a simple AppleScript to get and reopen the front tab's URL.

Great. However, changing the keybinding of this workflow today I discovered that it also seems to be captured by something else I set up at some point (and bound to basically the same action). With the Alfred workflow disabled, its keybinding changed, or Alfred itself quit and not running, I have verified that the Alfred version does not run, but something else is triggering the page to open in Chrome.

I do not have FastScripts or Keyboard Maestro on this Mac. I do not see any bindings for this key in the System Preferences. I do not have /Library/KeyBindings/ or ~/Library/KeyBindings/ folders on this Mac. I don’t see any bindings in any of the areas of the Keyboard > Shortcuts preference pane. There don’t seem to be any plausibly-related Safari Extensions installed.

Shortcut Detective can detect when Alfred catches a keybinding from Safari, but sees nothing when the still-caught ^c is handled by whatever else is grabbing it.

I can’t for the life of me figure out where else I managed to bind this shortcut, and therefore can’t figure out how to unbind it short of wiping my account.

I've run across this post on StackOverflow that addresses this.  Basically, there's no central repository of all the shortcuts created because, in the end, the application isn't required to register the event with the system.

However, they did recommend an application (KeyCue from Ergonis, €19; Free Trial) that has the ability to find all of the shortcuts that are assigned to an application (i.e. Firefox).  I downloaded and tested the application and it seems promising.

(Thanks to user Nimesh Neema - see comments below), you can also use CheatSheet ($0; free as in beer).  Both work in the same manner with roughly the same output (KeyCue is shown below).

Holding down the ⌘ Command key for a couple of seconds brings up an overlay showing all of the keyboard shortcuts that are assigned to the "front most" App - in this case, Firefox.

If you're searching for a particular shortcut you'll have to go through each running app manually to find it.  So, as stated in the SO answer, while not perfect, this will get you close to what you're looking for.


How to change a table cell from $ to € in Pages? I'm using Pages' Invoice templates, and it's been grand so far. Now I need to send an invoice to Europe, and the sums need to be in euros rather than dollars. How can I change the currency type in the table?

Use the inspector to change the table cell formatting symbol.


HELP ! Terminal is frozen while copying files in recovery mode : What should I do? total noob here,
I have a late 2008 Macbook Pro that is finally (almost) dead.
I've managed to use terminal in recovery mode to copy the contents of my User folder to an external drive using the cp command.
However, after many hours copying away, the mac is totally frozen.
No mouse response, no trackpad, no keyboard, the computer doesn't sleep when i close the screen, it's stuck.
My uneducated guess is that it reached the damaged part of the HD and can't copy any more data.
During the copy process it did hang for a few seconds from time to time but not for long periods.
It would also go to sleep every once in a while, but whould wake up easily and imediately continue copying. It also slept all night and, again, woke up easily this morning and carried on where it had left off.
It's been totaly frozen for the last several hours.
I already had 90% of my data backed up but need to salvage the last few folders on the mac before laying it to rest.
What should I do?
Can I long press the power button to turn it off without making things worse?
Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

If it's completely frozen, unless you have remote access via SSH and can start a new session, there's only one thing you can do: restart it. You'll have to continue the copying from where you left off – Allan 7 hours ago


How to change secondary/fallback language on iOS 8? I'm using an iPad mini 2 with iOS 8. My language has always been set to Mexican Spanish and the iPad falls back to English by default, which is my native language.
However, recently I installed a Japanese keyboard so I can enter specific words from anime to my friends easier, but I don't actually speak a word of it. Now my iPad is in Spanish with Japanese as the fallback so some buttons and apps are in Japanese even though I never changed any display language settings and just installed a keyboard. Going into my language preferences I get this.

When I tap on either of them, they highlight but nothing happens. If I go "Agregar idioma"(add language) and select English, the iPad asks me "Are you sure you want your iPad to display in English?" Which I don't. So how do I change or remove the second language?

EDIT:
I added English as a language and this added English to the bottom of the list so now I have the exact same issue with random words being in Japanese and no way to remove Japanese from the list.

For the future reference of anyone reaching this page VIA Google, I found an answer to the problem here. Basically, at the upper-right corner of the screen there's an "edit" button that allows you to change the order of or remove languages, but this Edit button looks like it has nothing at all to do with this "preferred languages" setting which is the second in the list on this page.

(because logic)


iBooks on Mavericks Beachballs Whenever Text Styling Occurs Whenever I want to change text styling in iBooks the app becomes unresponsive. I kill it in the terminal (killall iBooks), and then the system reports that CoreText.FontDownloadHelper has crashed. My current theory is that if I'm to sort out CoreText.FontDownloadHelper, then the crash in iBooks won't occur any more. Am I right?

Here's the crash report, with the UUID removed.

Process:         CoreText.FontDownloadHelper [2865]
Path:            /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/ATS.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/CoreText.FontDownloadHelper.xpc/Contents/MacOS/CoreText.FontDownloadHelper
Identifier:      CoreText.FontDownloadHelper
Version:         1.1 (1)
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [398]
Responsible:     CoreText.FontDownloadHelper [2865]
User ID:         501

Date/Time:       2013-10-22 20:17:31.634 -0400
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.9 (13A603)
Report Version:  11

Crashed Thread:  0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
Configuration error: Could not create listener. xpc_main() was probably called from a process that is not an XPC service bundle.

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   libxpc.dylib                    0x00007fff8d637b06 xpc_main + 359
1   com.apple.Foundation            0x00007fff8913d12b -[NSXPCListener resume] + 108
2   com.apple.CoreText.FontDownloadHelper 0x000000010a430f7b main + 106
3   libdyld.dylib                   0x00007fff91b045fd start + 1

Thread 1:
0   libsystem_kernel.dylib          0x00007fff87c4de6a __workq_kernreturn + 10
1   libsystem_pthread.dylib         0x00007fff87688f08 _pthread_wqthread + 330
2   libsystem_pthread.dylib         0x00007fff8768bfb9 start_wqthread + 13

Thread 2:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.libdispatch-manager
0   libsystem_kernel.dylib          0x00007fff87c4e662 kevent64 + 10
1   libdispatch.dylib               0x00007fff864e043d _dispatch_mgr_invoke + 239
2   libdispatch.dylib               0x00007fff864e0152 _dispatch_mgr_thread + 52

Thread 3:
0   libsystem_kernel.dylib          0x00007fff87c4de6a __workq_kernreturn + 10
1   libsystem_pthread.dylib         0x00007fff87688f08 _pthread_wqthread + 330
2   libsystem_pthread.dylib         0x00007fff8768bfb9 start_wqthread + 13

Thread 0 crashed with X86 Thread State (64-bit):
  rax: 0x00007fff8d642684  rbx: 0x00007f819950d620  rcx: 0x00000000000000ac  rdx: 0x0000000000000003
  rdi: 0x000000000000040b  rsi: 0x0000000010000003  rbp: 0x00007fff557d0bc0  rsp: 0x00007fff557d0b10
   r8: 0x0000000000000000   r9: 0x0000000000000000  r10: 0x00000000000000ac  r11: 0x0000000000000206
  r12: 0x000000010a468010  r13: 0x0000000000000000  r14: 0x00007fff8913d12b  r15: 0x0000000000000000
  rip: 0x00007fff8d637b06  rfl: 0x0000000000010206  cr2: 0x00007f8199402000

Logical CPU:     0
Error Code:      0x00000000
Trap Number:     6

I've managed to get rid of this problem by doing this:

open Font Book
run File > Restore Standard Fonts…

That basically moves all user-installed fonts to ~/Library/Fonts (Removed). So I suppose the problem is caused by one (or more) of the manually installed fonts.


Source code build error (noob error) First time wading into coding... well, not actual coding, yet, but trying to build from a GitHub source. This is for macOS 10.12.6 Sierra, and that is the system I'm using to build this.

I've installed the prerequisites listed:

xcode
python
wxpython
twodict
gettext
ffmpeg

all the latest versions.

Following instructions I changed directory to the source code's folder and typed

python setup.py install

I got this immediately:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 73, in <module>
    from youtube_dl_gui import (
  File "/Users/davec/Downloads/youtube-dl-gui-master/youtube_dl_gui/__init__.py", line 26
    print error
              ^
SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to 'print'. Did you mean print(error)?

So what did I miss? My first build, and I'm falling on my face. lOl

I haven't edited any of the source files; I'm not yet brave enough for that...

Project is here:

youtube-dl GUI

Thanks.

It is a python2 source. You are 'building' it with python3. macOS comes with python2.

You can try these shell commands.

# Verify the version of python in $PATH
python --version

# Use stock python
/usr/bin/python setup.py install
# Or
python2.7 setup.py install


Can't click using trackpad on Macbook Pro (2010) I am trying to troubleshoot a 2010 Macbook Pro with a trackpad that won't register clicks. The trackpad makes the click-clack noise and it can be used as a pointer with no issues, but the clicks don't register. I've read this question and I'm trying to figure out if there's anything else to try before I open it up to examine the battery/screws (as seen here). Here's what I've tried.

Checked to see if the laptop will work/click with external mouse. Yes.
Checked to see if it happens on other user accounts. Yes.
Checked to see if I can turn on "tap to click" in System Preferences. Yes.
Checked Accessibility Settings in System Prefrences just in case.
Ran Disk Utility to verify/repair permissions.
Did an SMC reset.
Upgraded the OX from 10.6.8 to El Cap, no change

I don't see any evidence of battery swelling but that seems to be the next step. The trackpad clicks but it definitely clicks more on the bottom than on the top, if that makes sense. The laptop belongs to my elderly landlady who would prefer it works the same as always, even though she's been able to use it with a mouse. I'm not sure tap to click is going to solve the issue for her. Anything else I can try? Thanks.

OK, I did some more troubleshooting and took the thing apart. No signs of battery swelling though I did unseat/reseat the thing. When I put it back together I literally banged on the trackpad until it started being responsive again. This would not normally be my plan but a tech suggested it and, oddly, it seemed to work.

Long term plan is probably replacing the battery or just replacing the entire unit altogether.


Making a Bootable Windows 7 USB without Bootcamp I recently got a macbook pro with the intention of dual booting Windows 7 so that I can play some old games I still have that don't run on anything more recent, and generally access my Steam library. I was frustrated to find that Bootcamp would not allow me to use Windows 7, despite the fact that my laptop is compatible, and therefore set out to create a bootable USB on my own.

It's been really, really frustrating. I've searched for a couple hours online, but I must be doing something wrong, because all of the tutorials I can find either do not work, or tell me to use bootcamp - Which won't let me doing what I'm trying to do.

I have a Windows 7 Iso that I legally downloaded, I have a USB stick with 8 gigs of storage. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make that USB stick function as a bootable drive, so that my Macbook will let me install Windows.

Any advice, or links to a tutorial that actually works?

Microsoft has a tool for creating a bootable USB stick installer that works with Windows 7, 8 and 10. You can find it here. http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool#installation

The caveat is that you will need a windows PC to use the utility.

Now Bootcamp will do the same thing plus it will put all the right drivers in the installer to be installed with Windows and help you resize the Mac partition and create a Windows partition. You don't technically have to do it that way though. If you open the Boot Camp package there will be a Windows driver installer package you can copy onto your Windows 7 install USB media and then run once you have windows installed.

Note that you will likely have to re-partition the drive yourself. the Windows 7 installer will not likely resize your Mac partition, you'll probably need one of those Linux bootable "rescue" utilities that will let you resize your Mac's partition so you can install Windows in the partition you could create with it.

It is not terribly difficult but does require enough computer experience to not mess things up and do everything in the right order.

One bit of advice though make a backup image of your Mac's HD before you do anything else. As things going wrong are not unlikely at all.


running emacs on a terminal: problem with meta-key I am on Mavericks and I am running emacs 24.4.1, but I have the same problem also with 22.1.1. When I open mac on a terminal on the remote host, it does not recognise option key (alt) like the meta key. I have modified the .emacs in the following way

 (setq mac-option-key-is-meta nil
       mac-command-key-is-meta t
       mac-command-modifier 'meta
       mac-option-modifier 'none)

this should change the meta key to command, but also in this case the meta key doest work . This only work on the X version of emacs (when I open emacs in a new window), both with the option as meta key that as command as meta key. This is a problem I have with emacs in the terminal-only.

Now I don't know how to run commands in emacs! is there any keybinding I can use?

I had this problems some time ago. Turns out your Terminal app is configured to not use option as meta key. I'm running Mavericks and this is the default setting.

All you have to do is open your Terminal app, click on the Terminal > Preferences > Settings > *Whatever profile you use* > Keyboard, mark the option "Use option as meta key"


Does macOS have equivalent command line tools like `lshw` or `lspci` for enumerating PCI hardware devices? The closest thing I know of is system_profiler but it spits out way too much unnecessary information and I don't have a good way to filter / transform that output.

What's the closest alternative to something like lshw or  lspci on  Mac OS X?

Try parsing the output of the ioreg command.

I tried ioreg -l | grep PCI and got a bunch of info.


iPhone 4 has 3G connectivity but can't access internet Just last week, my access to the internet over mobile data networks has stopped working. I've already talked to my operator, and they gave me a new SIM card and tested that 3G works in another phone with it.

Basically the operator is expecting this to be an antenna failure, which seems odd as I still get full connection bars, WiFi works flawlessly and my 3G does transport e-mails, just nothing else (like opening websites).

I do have 21M/2M speed, so the connection isn't just clogged.

Does anyone have any idea what this could be?

If nothing comes up, I will probably have to get a new antenna and install it myself.

I've discovered that SSH connections are working on 3G. This is becoming really weird...

Settings -> General -> VPN (should be not connected, if this is a personal device)
Settings -> General -> Cellular -> Cellular Data (turn off, reset the device)
After the device boot-up
Settings -> General -> Cellular -> Cellular Data (turn on, reset the device)

IF that doesn't help (follow this )

Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings (this will delete all Wi-Fi passwords)
Settings -> General -> Safari -> Clear History -> Clear History
Settings -> General -> Safari -> Clear Cookies and Data -> Clear Cookies and Data
Settings -> General -> Safari -> Advanced -> Website Data -> Remove All Website Data -> Remove Now (** All data saved in Safari will be deleted)
Reset the  device


How to connect iPhone 3GS to a computer monitor without jailbreak? I have to do a presentation where I want to demo some apps on an iPhone 3GS.

Is there a way to mirror the iPhone screen on a computer screen without jailbreaking?

For a 3GS, no.

There isn't a way on any iOS device aside from the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S.


Access Target Disk 2nd Macintosh HD How does one connect using Terminal to a mounted Macintosh HD when there are 2 drives with the same name?

$ cd /Volumes
$ ls -l
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root      wheel     1 Jul 27 19:10 Macintosh HD -> /
drwxr-xr-x  35 robertsd  staff  1120 Jul 27 17:09 Macintosh HD 1

I am actually trying to access the 2nd (sick) Macbook's ~/Library via Thunderbolt cable with:

/Volumes/"Macintosh HD"/Users/robertsd/Library/

but this finds the 1st Macintosh HD.

The second hard drive is mounted as "Machintosh HD 1". You should be able to access the User Library data by navigating to it with the command

cd "/Volumes/Macintosh HD 1/Users/robertsd/Library"

(or what username you are trying to access).


How to get and set metadata of a m4a file? I am trying to automate some changes in m4a metadata and would prefer doing it through AppleScript other than popular solutions like mutagen.

How can I address m4a files metadata? I need not only setting metadata to specific values, I need to read these values first.

Basically what I need to do is, set TRACK_NAME to ARTIST + " - " + TRACK_NAME, and then TRACK_NAME to ALBUM_ARTIST. This is required for my media player to not spread compliations all over the library. It doesn't know any better, unfortunately.

Here is a quick something to get you started. If you also want the filename changed too, then it is easy to add in the copy section...

set dpath to "/some/path/some/where/"
set qdpath to quoted form of dpath

# Choices of apps to use depending what files you have
# mp3
set tapp3 to "/usr/local/bin/id3v2 -t "
# m4a
set tapp4 to "/usr/local/bin/mp4tags -s "

tell application "iTunes"
    set iSel to selection

    repeat with trk in iSel
        set aloc to location of trk
        set loc to quoted form of (POSIX path of aloc)
        set tname to name of trk
        set tartist to artist of trk
        tell application "Finder"
            set fname to name of file (aloc as alias)
            set fext to name extension of file (aloc as alias)
        end tell

        # Copy
        try
            do shell script "cp " & loc & " " & qdpath
        on error eStr
            display dialog eStr
            return
        end try

        # New path
        set qnewfile to quoted form of (dpath & fname)

        # Choose right tool...
        if fext is "mp3" then
            set tapp to tapp3
        else if fext is "m4a" then
            set tapp to tapp4
        else
            display dialog "Unknown file type. Don't know what to use..."
            return
        end if

        # Tag
        try
            do shell script tapp & "'" & tartist & " - " & tname & "' " & qnewfile
        on error eStr
            display dialog eStr
            return
        end try
    end repeat
end tell

Since you don't like using command line tools and Applescript doesn't have built in support for audio tags, you are left with iTunes. So here is a version of the above with just using iTunes,

set dpath to "/some/path/"
set qdpath to quoted form of dpath
set listname to "MyList"
set adpath to (POSIX file dpath as alias)

# Copy selected itunes files
tell application "iTunes"
    set iSel to selection

    repeat with trk in iSel
        set tloc to location of trk
        set atloc to quoted form of (POSIX path of tloc)
        set tname to name of trk
        set tartist to artist of trk

        tell application "Finder"
            set fname to name of file (tloc as alias)
            set fext to name extension of file (tloc as alias)

            try
                duplicate file tloc to folder adpath with replacing
            on error eStr
                display dialog "Copy failed for track: " & tname & return & return & eStr
                return
            end try
        end tell
    end repeat
end tell

# Get audio files in selected folder
#   -- alas no recursive search results without a lot more code... :(
set afiles to {}
tell application "Finder"
    repeat with ext in {".mp3", ".m4a"}
        set l to (every file in adpath whose name contains ext)
        repeat with f in l
            set end of afiles to (f as text)
        end repeat
    end repeat
end tell

# Add to iTunes and change Tags...
#
tell application "iTunes"
    if not (user playlist listname exists) then
        make new user playlist with properties {name:listname}
    end if

    set view of window 1 to playlist listname

    # Add and change tracks' names
    repeat with afile in afiles
        try
            set tid to (add afile to playlist listname)
        end try

        set tname to name of tid
        set aname to artist of tid

        set name of tid to ((aname & " - " & tname) as text)
    end repeat

    # Clean up now?
    set r to display dialog "Done. " & return & return & ¬
        "Remove tracks and list now?" as text buttons {"No", "Yes"} with icon note

    if button returned of r is not "Yes" then
        return
    end if

    # Remove playlist tracks from library; will remove from playlist(s) too
    #   -- WARNING: If track added multiple times all entries will be removed!!
    repeat with t in (every track in playlist listname)
        try
            set pid to persistent ID of t

            # Thanks Doug Adams, it was driving me nuts....
            delete (some file track of library playlist 1 whose persistent ID is pid)
        end try
        delay 1
    end repeat

    delay 30

    # Remove all tracks from playlist v2
    try
        # Fast mass deletion - Thx to http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/56463
        # but only removes from playlist.. they remain in the library!
        #delete tracks of playlist listname
    end try

    try
        delete playlist listname
    end try
end tell


WindowServer process takes a lot of memory I'm using a MBP 13" 2014 on macOS high Sierra with a 4k monitor.

The memory usage of WindowsServer can go quite high (up to 40 GB).

The only solution I found is to reboot my computer -- as the memory usage never goes down. The problem started with MacOS Sierra I think.

Does someone has a piece of advice or a better solution than rebooting my computer ?

And after closing all the running apps on my computer, it is nearly the same memory usage:

According to this article  this appears to be a bug in the system when used with a Scaled Display resolution

  This seems to be a bug with scaled screen resolution (specially with 4K monitors) in MacOS High Seirra (and perhaps in older versions of the OS as well). Using "Default for display" screen resolution seems to fix the issue (Not my ideal resolution, but a temporary fix until an MacOS update with a fix is available). More information here: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/windowserver-memory-leak-on-high-sierra.233510/

I am using a scaled (external) display and I am facing a similar problem which is what led me to this topic.


How do I open X11 on Mac OS X? Is it possible to add an icon to my applications folder? How do I directly open X11 on my mac?

How can I add the X11 icon to the applications folder?

I'd recommend installing XQuartz, which is a very nice X server for OS X.


Hosting a remote Aperture image library on a Mac mini server We take a lot of pictures, and it would be very convenient for us if we were able to organize all of our pictures into one massive, remote "Aperture image repository." So, I got this idea to get a Mac mini server which could host all of our pictures, and possibly set it up to "replicate" (in whole or in parts) to several Macs via our local area network.

The basic goal would be to set this up so that several Macs can "connect to" and work with one remote image repository, without needing to have the files locally on their local harddrives. And possibly download selected images when needed.

I am familiar with programming and scripting for Mac OS X, so it is okay if the solution involves some light programming. I just wanted to check first if anyone here knows if this is something Mac OS X Server and Aperture can do "out-of-the-box?" Have any of you set up something like this, and if so, how is it working? Do you have any better suggestions on how to do this?

One other thing that I thought about was to set up a Git or Mercurial repository on the Mac mini server, and check all the pictures into that, and basically check stuff out on the separate machines locally when needed. This could work as well, but I'm afraid this solution might be a little bit "overkill" and add too much "headachey."

I don't own a Mac mini yet, so I can't play around with it to figure it out. The answers to this question will help me decide if we should buy a server or not. Oh, and I am aware of this question, which is similar, but I would like to know how well this would work with Aperture.

Thanks in advance!

Update:

I found this post on StackOverflow, talking about using Git as an image repo. Adding it here, for future reference.

The approach we have used is a simple shared folder containing an Aperture library. I can report that this solution is ok but fragile -- permissions on the shared folder need to be fixed every so often.

Dropbox would certainly work in your case, but I suspect that you'll need substantial storage space, which would be rather expensive. If cost weren't critical, though, Dropbox offers a very reliable way of replicating an Aperture library file locally while keeping the copies synced smoothly. Your solution of a GIT repository may be a labor-intensive way of re-creating what Dropbox is already offering.


MacBook Air SMC Update v1.8 MacBook Air SMC Update v1.8
This update addresses a rare issue on some Apple notebooks where a battery that has accumulated more than 1000 charge cycles may unexpectedly shut down or stop functioning.
https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1688

I have an MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2011) running El Capitan 10.11.6 (15G22010).
I have ignored this update for a long time because my battery, though not in good health, has 332 charge cycles, nowhere near 1000 charge cycles.
Do I need to apply this update at all? Should I apply it anyway?
If I install High Sierra 10.13, do I need to apply it before upgrading? Or will the OS upgrade make the SMC update obsolete?

Do I need to apply this update at all?

Is your Mac exhibiting any of the symptoms described?  If not, then no, you don't need to apply it.

Should I apply it anyway?

There are two schools of thought concerning this, so you're not going to get a concrete answer.  They are:

All updates should be applied to keep the machine up to date whether it needs the update or not.

Updates should only be applied to fix/address a particular problem.  With this line of thinking, you can refer to the old adage "If it ain't broke, then don't fix it."

What should you do?
Move forward with installing High Sierra.  If the problem manifests, then you want to install the firmware.  But even after you install High Sierra, you have to do a "gut check" of sorts.

Do you feel more comfortable with a system with all the latest updates?  Then do the update
Are you OK with not having the latest firmware especially since there isn't a problem to fix?  Don't apply it, keep calm and carry on.

The thing is, it comes down to you and how secure you feel about it.


Which monitor is used to show the booting screen? When I am booting my mac mini, how does it pick which of the three monitors it uses to show the apple logo and password screen on? (This is not necessarily the same screen declared as the primary for the menu bar.)
I have three monitors that are positioned like a TIE Fighter, and I would prefer not to have to look at the boot info sideways as it is starting up. Based on the answer, I should be able to determine a method by which proper screen can be obtained.

The Mac mini models, that support up to 3 displays, normally use one of the USB-C ports for the display with the initial Apple logo. The HDMI port would only be used for the initial Apple logo display when there are no USB-C port connected displays. I can only assume that if three displays were connected, then the same USB-C port connected display would always be the initial Apple logo display. In other words, you not going to know which of the two USB-C port connected displays will be chosen for the initial Apple logo until you turn on the Mac. And, that this choice would be consistent.


How do I sync friend- shared google calendars? I have an iPhone, iMac, Macbook Air and a girlfriend. So far, so good.

I have multiple Google Calendars that sync perfectly to my iDevices.

The trouble is, I haven't found out yet how to sync the calendars my girlfriend shares with me to the iPhone. They do show perfectly on the Macs though.

Could anyone share the procedure if they managed this arcane spell?

I have exactly the same set-up :)
Mac, iPhone, iPad and girlfriend. I've got a bunch of calenders, and so does my girlfriend.

In Google Calenders, hover on the agenda you want to share and hit the little arrow on the right. A new menu pops open and select "Share this agenda". Now you can invite other people to this agenda by submitting their e-mail address. And you can give them rights (read, write, read/write...)

I hope this works! If not, please let me know cause it's a delight to work with a Mac, iPhone, iPad and girlfriend. Trust me, I know ;-)

EDIT
To get the agenda of your girlfriend, look for the label "Other Agenda's" on the right and paste your girlfriends' e-mail there. And if your girlfriend has shared her agendas with you, they will appear on yours.


UK MBA keyboard layout vs Apple external keyboard layouts This question is not about remapping keyboard layouts and different languages. This is about the actual differences in the physical location of keys.

My June 2011 UK Macbook Air has the same keyboard layout I'm used to from previous Macbooks - a double height return key and the backtick/tilde key inbetween left-shift and Z.

I recently got to Australia and bought an external keyboard in the Apple store, not realising the physical layout would be different. The keyboard looks like this:

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MB110Z/B

I want to get an external keyboard which matches my Macbook Air - which I guess would be the external wireless keyboard. Unfortunately, even the Apple Store suggests the layout of the "British" one is not what I'm expecting:

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MC184B/B

Can anyone explain if/when the keyboards changed? Is is possible for me to get an external keyboard with the same layout as my MBA?

Thanks y'all

Regarding the extra key to the left of the z, you should get that with any "ISO" keyboard sold in Europe.  In the US, keyboards are "ANSI" and are missing that key.  Other countries may vary.  See this note:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2841


Batch adding names to mac os spelling dictionary I work at a school, and I would like to add a number of unique names to the local dictionary so that they won't be flagged as misspelled by the spell checker.

I've discovered the local dictionary at ~/Library/Spelling/

I also see that words are added to the localdictionary text file each on individual lines.

However, when I try to paste in a large number of names (or to simply replace this file with another) I find that the new entries aren't recognized by the spell checker, even after killing the applespell process, or restarting altogether.

Ideally, I'd like to set this up so I could create a script to install this custom dictionary on all computers at the school (this works in MS Office). Is this possible?

The entries in that file must be ordered lexicographically (case-insensitive).

I assume Apple implements some sort of search algorithm, so if fzgwhduef is after xdejfu, it won't be found when spellchecking it.

Edit ~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary, keep the entries sorted, and killall AppleSpell in Terminal to make it read the changed file the next time you use it.


Mac Keychain problems after deleting .AppleSetupDone So one day I decided to restart my macbook pro mid 2012 13" but then i noticed my user is gone and it is asking me for a name and password, so i tried to type my username and password yet it was wrong. So what i did was delete .AppleSetupDone and after I delete that everything was good and I was able to setup a new admin user and after that I'm having issues with my keychain like let's say opera asks me if i want to save the password or not and if i hit save it actually doesn't save it next is everytime i log back in i am no longer connected to the wifi and everytime i connect it will say it cannot find a keychain that can store something so i click reset to defaults (smth like that) and then the window just dissapeared. So what I did was go to keychain access > Preferences and clicked reset my default keychains but then it shows unable to obtain authorization for this operation and since keychain first aid is gone already I no longer know what to do

As @Tetsujin pointed out your question a a wall of text and is difficult to read.

Although you reset your user password/created a new one the Keychain is encrypted using the old password.

Take a look a the following articles, they should solve your problem.

Reset Keychain Password
If you keep getting prompted to enter your keychain password

Also take a look at this AskDifferent answer describing some possible fixes.

How do I delete or fix my Keychain after changing my password?

If none of these work, please edit your question to clarify your issue.


Safari asks for Flash to be enabled for every website? I have gotten along quite well without Flash for a long time.  But recently I had reason to install it for one particular website.  Since it is installed, I figured I'd have it prompt me if another site wants Flash.  But I've been asked to enable it for every website, almost all of which have worked fine without it and work fine after I say "never for this website."

I've tried FireFox on a few of those sites, with no apparent difference from before.

Should I report it as a bug?  Can I put a stop to it, and if not, how do I remove Flash without breaking other things?

Go to Safari Preferences, Security tab, and click Plug-In Settings. Select Flash Player on the left, and ensure that "when visiting other websites" is set to Off, rather than Ask.


How can I mount SFTP/SSH in Finder on OS X Snow Leopard? My Question is seemingly simple. I need to mount an SSH/SFTP volume and make it visible in finder to be able to use it as if it were a local volume (think SMB share). I have tried everything I could find (MacFUSE + sshfs (whatever version), Macfusion (couldn't install),...).

Is there anyway to do this seemingly simple thing? It feels like I'm missing something here. Also, I'm not looking for an SFTP client for download/upload. My personal machine is an Ubuntu box, and that's easily doable on that.

The best solution I've found today (2017) is to use Homebrew and Cask to install osxfuse and sshfs:
brew install --cask osxfuse
brew install sshfs

And then:
sshfs username@hostname:/remote/directory/path /local/mount/point -ovolname=NAME

It works! :-)


Need help in figuring out why my MacBook (mid 2012) crashes even after reinstalling ElCapitan My MB Pro mid 2012 is crashing since already some time quite often.
~2 years ago I put in 16GB Ram and a Samsung Evo SSD, no problems after that. Just recently those "crashes" started to appear.

What happens is that the current window freezes and then it seems like a chain reaction freezing everything else. I can open the force quit window and applications do close when force quit, if I relaunch Finder, the dock (and finder?) seems not to work (frozen dock in weird position). No Finder appears again in the force quit window.

The system temperature is then increasing quite rapidly and I have to turn off the MB by holding down the start button.

So, yesterday I reinstalled ElCapitan. Since then everything was fine. But now it just happened again.

I am worried that the computer is being damaged, and also since it's annoying I would like to figure this out for good.

It seems not to be the Safari problem that was in the news recently since my MB is older and the newest ELCapitan update is installed. I also ran chrome and I still had crashes (before reinstall).

Can you please let me know how to proceed?

Under Console I have a lot of files, including 4 crash reporter files from: com.apple.networking.eapol.log.20160623T225508-04.gz

and 2 diagnostic reports from backupd and Clean my Mac 3.

Please let me know how to proceed, I would appreciate your help a lot.

Best,
Moritz

When you have spontaneous problems with your Mac, there are several things you can try to resolve the issue (listed in order of increasing difficulty):

Reset SMC
Reset PRAM/NVRAM
Swap out memory modules*
Swap out hard drive*

The SMC (System Management Controller) handles a lot of low-level system components. Fan issues, power issues, or spontaneous program unresponsiveness can occur if SMC is having problems.

NVRAM (Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory, or PRAM in older Macs) stores system settings that the Mac needs to access quickly. Resetting it doesn't always fix anything you are describing above, but it also never hurts to try it as part of your troubleshooting.

If you have a bad memory module, you'll get weird crashes and system hangs. If you have multiple chips installed (e.g. two 8 GB modules) try removing one, then if no issues, switch and run the system with the other chip for a while. Possible that only one of the two is bad.

If your hard drive is bad, you'll get periodic problems and unpredictable behavior. Unfortunately, a bad hard drive can also mean lost user data... so hopefully you have backups if your drive turns out to be the problem.

(*For those with newer Macs - swapping out memory or hard drives is obviously not a possibility if they're soldered to the system board.)


How are filesystems mounted in Lion? I posted a question a while back regarding network mounts.  But I have a more general question. If Lion no longer uses /etc/fstab how are standard mounts in addition to network mounts handled? I would like to be able to customize this.  For instance how is root mounted and such? Also for instance, how is removable media mounted?

I know this is probably a bit late for your uses, but my understanding is that this is determined by the file /etc/auto_master. You should read auto_master's documentation here or running man auto_master in the Terminal.


Cannot install iOS update I have an update iOS 7.1.2 waiting which I cannot install since it tells me that I don't have enough free space. The update is 28.8 MB and I have 1.1 GB free. But the update apparently requires 1.5 GB free to install, which is absolutely ridiculous. I realize that the update itself will not use the 1.5 GB afterwards, but this just reeks of bad design. This means that on my 16 GB iPad (where I already have to economize the space) I have to waste 10% of the disk in order to be able to install updates.

So, is there a way around this issue other than deleting additional apps or data? I have already deleted more than I cared for.

Updating through iTunes rather than OTA has a smaller storage space requirement on the device. I believe it's much closer to 1 GB, but I don't have an actual number to provide.

To update through iTunes, connect your device over USB, select it and click Update.


Automatically Add To iTunes sending .m4v to Home Movies folder I updated iTunes to version 11 recently on my Windows 7 machine and now when I add Handbrake encoded movies (.m4v) via "Automatically Add To iTunes" it is moving those movies to the "Home Movies" section instead of "Movies".  Prior to iTunes 11 I could add an .m4v to that folder and it would put them in the "Movies" folder.

Is there a way to revert that behavior?

There's a setting in Get Info > Options to change it from being a Home Movie into being a Movie.


OS X Calendar won't sync to iPhone If I put an event in Calendar, on my Mac, in does not sync to my iPhone. However it does sync if I put an event into the iPhone when it will then pick up the previous unsynced events.

I have found that creating a "dummy" calendar event on my iPhone will unjam synching issues and force OS X and iOS systems to talk to each other. This is not a very elegant method, but it's effective. Simply delete the fake entry when your Mac and iPhone have shared their respective calendars.


Found an iPhone submerged in a river, what (if any) components may be salvageable? I was walking in the woods the other day and while wading in a nearby river I found an iPhone submerged in the water (and partially in the mud).  No way to know how long it has been there, but I would assume at the very least several weeks (possibly months).  Naturally I assume it is dead beyond recovery.  But are there any components that might be salvageable?

It depends. Other then testing each individual part, no one could really say. What I'd do is take the whole thing apart, rinse everything off with water (distilled would be best, but at this point it probably doesn't make a difference) and clean everything with isopropyl alcohol. Dry everything off and reassemble the iPhone. Try to power it on. If it powers on, take note of what still doesn't work and email the Apple ID associated with it (maybe you could get it back to them and charge a repair fee, they may also just let you keep it and, if they're VERY trusting, let you use their Apple ID password to take the iCloud lock off of it). If not, sell it as-is on eBay, where, depending on the model, you still might get $100+, $200+ for it.


How can I expand the number of special characters I can type using my keyboard? I am aware that when I press ⌥ or ⇧⌥ on my Mac, I can type a variety of special characters. I also know that I can insert special characters using the character palette. Is there a way to expand the number of special characters I can type while using the keyboard? I am particularly interested in solutions that work in Lion and Mountain Lion.

Custom text entry key bindings

OS X has a very nice text editing system, which you can extend using Key Bindings. You can, for instance:

Set up special characters to be entered when you press a certain key command.
Insert more than one character at once.
Include navigation commands and change the selection.
Use multi-stroke key bindings — this is how I type the ⌃⌥⇧⌘ characters.

To set this up, you just create the file ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict and put your customizations there. This article describes the steps in detail.

Here's a list of the default key bindings, and here's Apple's official guide to the text system and key bindings.

Diacritics

If you're just looking to be able to type more diacritics, and you use a U.S. keyboard, consider using the  U.S. Extended keyboard layout:

This allows you to type such characters as oòôȯóöơōṯțőo̊ɵỏọţǒŏõǫȏṵṷȍ. You can enable it from the Input Sources section of the Language & Text system preferences.

"Press and hold"

In Lion, you can type many special characters by holding down a similar key on your keyboard:

(It turns out this can be customized, if you're up to the task! All it takes is to edit a plist file.)

Arbitrary text substitutions

If you have specific phrases or characters you'd like to use, you can also set up custom substitutions for them in the Text section of Language & Text preferences:

Character palette

I guess you already know this, but I'll include it for completeness. If you enable "Keyboard & Character Viewer" in the Input Sources section of the Language & Text prefs, you can open the Character Viewer and browse through the entire Unicode character set (and you can also browse characters by category):

This window is easily accessible in most applications with ⌃+⌘+space (in older versions of OS X, the shortcut was ⌥+⌘+T).


Pair a bluetooth mouse with the keyboard only I have an iMac running OS 10.4.2. It used to have a wired mouse, but it doesn't work any more. I have a Magic Mouse (the kind that takes AA batteries) that was paired with another Mac before. I'd like to pair it with this one.

I can use CMD+space to open system preferences and see that the mouse is discovered. However I can't figure out how to access the pair button with the keyboard.

I've tried CTRL+F7 to change the way tabs move focus. That still doesn't let me focus the pair button.

Found a solution.

CMD+SPACE to open spotlight search.
Enter "mouse" and select the "Mouse" system preferences panel (probably the first item that comes up).
CTRL+F7 (or CTRL+Fn+F7) to change the way the tabs move focus.
TAB until "Set up Bluetooth device" is in focus.
SPACE to press the button.
Turn the mouse off and back on to put it pairing mode.
The mouse should come up in the list of devices. TAB to focus it, then space to pair.

Normally, by the time you get to step 2, OS X will automatically attempt to locate your mouse. In this case, the computer was already paired with some other mouse (which I can't find) so it didn't do that.


OS X esc key stops working (randomly) I have a 2011 MacBook Air with OS X Mountain Lion (I've upgraded from Lion). And ever since upgrading my escape key randomly stops working. And it's not that the keyboard on the laptop would be damaged as the same happens if I use Apple's Bluetooth keyboard. So I'm guessing it's a software issue.

Also in some cases pressing ctrl+esc achieves the same thing as just esc so I'm 100% it's not  a hardware problem.

Does anybody have any idea what this might be all about and how to fix it?

edit: the escape key stops working completely but it starts working again after I restart the computer.

edit2: this usually happens after the computer wakes from sleep. So it's not like that is just stopps working in the middle of using it, but rather after I put it to sleep (or just close the lid) and then open it again.

Has nobody got the same issue? Is there a better place to ask OS X related questions than Super User maybe?

For anyone who ends up here after installing the macOS Sierra release candidate. I had to disable Siri and then kill the Siri process using Activity Monitor.


iTunes keyboard shortcut service only works when in focus I have created an Applescript that will favorite the current track. I saved it as a service, and gave it a shortcut.

on run {input, parameters}

    tell application "iTunes"
        set loved of current track to true
    end tell

    return input
end run

However, it only works when the iTunes window is in focus. If I press the shortcut when iTunes is not the window in focus, I don't even see the Services gear appear in the system tray, indicating that the script is not running.

How do I make the script run regardless of what window has focus?

It was a set up as a service that takes no input and runs in any application.

But that wasn't the problem. Indeed, @Tetsujin seems to be correct. It was a conflict with a keyboard shortcut in the application that had keyboard focus. I used a different shortcut and it works.


MacBook unibody 2010 will not charge reliably I have a 2010 MacBook unibody (the white one, not the Pro) and I have been having all sorts of trouble with it. While I have most of the other problems figured out, there is one that keep persisting and I've tried everything I can think of (or find) to fix it:

the MacBook will not charge reliably.

It will charge for about a week, then it quits working and dies and I can't use it for a few days. Everything I know/tried is listed below.

What I Know:

the MagSafe charger seems to work for a few days, then stop working for a few days
it only seems to stop working when my MacBook's battery dips below 30%
once it stops working, I can not get it to work again unless I unplug it from the wall and the MacBook and let it sit for over 24 hours
the MagSafe charger is immaculate. No dirt anywhere on the charger or the port
the MacBook discharges even when the adapter is connected
the light on the charger is off when it does not work (even when connected)
all pins are making proper contact with the MacBook
there is current going through the cable and into the MacBook.

What I Have Tried:

cleaning the charger and port
using different wall adapters
using different outlets
resetting the SMC and the NVRAM
warming up the charger.

Unfortunately I don't have access to another first generation MagSafe MacBook or MagSafe charger so I have not been able to find out which part is broken: the MacBook or the charger.

Taking it to the Apple Store is not something I am willing to do, so I'd prefer a solution that does not involve me leaving my house.

Thanks.

Unfortunately you've tried everything... If there is enough power left to boot you could go to the Apple Menu > About this Mac > System Report > Power > AC Charger Information and have a look if it recognises the charger, and check the battery health.

If this isn't an option because the battery is flat, or health is good and the charger isn't recognised. Then sadly you are going to have to leave the house.


Macbook connecting to hotspot - slow wi-fi after wake from sleep I have a macbook pro 15" 2017. I use an Android hotspot to connect to internet.

Every night I put my Mac to sleep and turn off the hotspot. When I come back in the morning I turn the Android hotspot on and wake up my Mac. The wi-fi is slow and sometimes drops. Pinging google.com shows results from 30ms to 2000ms.

If I restart my Mac everything works normally – ping is around 30. What can I do so that I wouldn't have to restart my Mac every day?

( Also windows device on the same network works perfectly well )

This is technically not a fix but I think toggling wifi off and on solves the issue, without having to restart your mac. I have the same issue on my 2018 mac mini, and the only way I found to avoid this issue is to not put it to sleep.


Is it possible to get an app for internal employees in the AppStore? We're developing an app for internal employees for easy communication. Now we want to remove all potential barriers for our employees (1500+) to install the app.
Therefore we would like to host the app within the AppStore - employees can then download it like they are normally used to download other apps.
Of course there will be a login screen in advance to make sure that only employees see the right information.
The app got rejected with the following:

Guideline 3.2 - Business
We found that your app is an in-house app, intended for employees or
members of your organization. As such, it is not appropriate for the
App Store.
For information on distributing proprietary, in-house apps, please
refer to the Apple Developer Enterprise Program.

We tried to use the Enterprise path, but when the employee downloads the app you're getting to this part:
https://support.apple.com/en-vn/HT204460
We see the Manually install and trust an enterprise app as a big barrier for getting our employees to download the app. Is there any way to solve this?
Is there an 'AppStore' for internal business apps?
How are huge companies with 15.000+ users handling this when there is a Bring your Own Device policy?

First, it is not possible for an organisation to get an internal app into Apple's App Store.

Most large organisations manage both corporate and BYOD devices using a Mobile Device Management (MDM) system.

My organisation uses AirWatch but others include JAMF, Microsoft InTune, SimpleMDM and Meraki.

An MDM can either deliver the app automatically or provide some form of self-service for internal apps.

All of the MDMs listed above have an associated cost. There are some open source MDMs available but at the moment they all seem more focussed on Mac management than iOS.


Will upgrading RAM on my Macbook Pro significantly improve speed? I have a mid-2012 Macbook Pro 13, 2.5 GHZ, non-retina, with 4 GB RAM, running Mavericks. I occasionally get the swirling beach ball when running various applications, such as XCode and iPhoto (not necessarily at the same time), and the overall speed of the computer isn't impressive.  However, when I look at my memory pressure, it is almost always in the green.  The virtual memory is in the 5 GB - 6 GB range, for what it's worth.  Will upgrading the RAM to 8 GB help the overall speed of the machine, or does the memory pressure tell me everything is fine concerning RAM?

It might be different depending on what type of app you are using, but generally speaking, it sure is beneficial to update from 4 GB to 8 GB since 4 GB is not a lot for a Mac and you are using Xcode.

The iPhoto app might not change much, because it has to load lots of photos, its latency depends more on the disk instead of the memory.

The value of virtual memory might not be very informative, you should look more at swap used right below virtual memory, this is the memory that is actually stored on the disk since the physical memory is not enough.

If you see that swap used is often more than zero, your priority should be absolutely to change for 8 GB memory. Otherwise, installing a SSD might be a better choice though that's more expensive...

edit 1:

Generally speaking, I would recommend upgrading the memory over upgrading to a SSD.

A SSD affects only the loading speed of things, that is, the time that it takes for the computer starts up or for an app to load itself. But the size of memory affects the speed of apps when you are opening lots of them.

On the Mac, the concept is switching more and more to holding the app inactive in the background instead of closing them completely, that enables the apps to respond quickly since we don't have to load them again from disk.

Despite Apple's memory compression technology, opening lots of apps still takes a considerable amount of memory, so upgrading the memory prevents the mac to swap some memory to disk, and makes the mac faster when you have lots of apps in the background.


How to ensure that spotlight indexes my entire drive? Spotlight, is a fantastic tool. Took some years, but now I use the command line tools and it's awesome.  However today, I found that spotlight does not index /System (!)  I'd like spotlight to index everything and that way I can cobble together a nifty IDS solution.

How can I index every single thing on my drive?  Querying the last modified time would help a lot in security.

EDIT:  Simply for reference.

 mdutil -pEsa -i (on|off) volume ...
    Utility to manage Spotlight indexes.
    -p      Publish metadata.
    -i (on|off) Turn indexing on or off.
    -E      Erase and rebuild index.
    -s      Print indexing status.
    -a      Apply command to all volumes.
    -v      Display verbose information.
NOTE: Run as owner for network homes, otherwise run as root.

EDIT:  Upon further investigation, the tool I wanted was radmind

From a great deal of research, and looking around, I have some data on this issue:

By default, spotlight will not index certain folders:

/System
/usr
hidden files or directories.
Other user files.

To add a file path to spotlight you can run

mdimport -r /path

man mdimport

has the information on that.

Now, since I am aiming for a poor mans IDS out of all this stuff, this desire being driven by the knowledge that Spotlight indexes my drive all  the time, which is what would happen anyway with other host based IDS there were some  considerations and other tools to involve.

Considerations:

Spotlight will only show you what your user should see

That's what the documentation says. I can  see stuff I installed as root, but I can't see my other user.  However,I can see /usr /usr/libexec and the /System tree.  That'll do.

Hidden files and folders do not show up in the search

This will be good when the RIAA remotely scans your drives for music without proper credentials ( Trust your feelings you know this to be true. ) but is not the greatest news in this case.

To conclude, there is a lot of stuff to do to use this tool effectively.  The secret is that Apple signs everything digitally.

man codesign

will tell you about

codesign -v file

which should return nothing if the file is unmodified.  Note that this is not a checksum but a digital certificate from Apple, so only big money will allow this to be faked.

I of course meant to say that it will be quite secure, and easily detectable if a binary program is changed.

Won't stop everything, but it will allow me to periodically bark

"Did anything just change?" , run a spotlight search on the "kMDItemKind" attribute , pipe it through codesign -v and see if something did change, or search on modification time or whatever.

To address the userland statement above, I can check to see I have the same spotlight ( I have copied codesign to my recovery media. ) intact spotlight means that I can trust it to do it's ordinary tasks. Using the mdimport -r /path is indeed a better idea, since that will exit if run as root.

Certainly there is a question of security here, but as mentioned above, spotlight indexes a bunch of things, and shows you what you should see.  Your little sister will not be able to find your collection of late 1990 artistic nudes, nor will you be able to find her secrets, but root should be able to see everything.  There is a straightforward system of authorizations in OS X that govern which right a program can have, but since this is virtually unknown to most, they simply type in a password when a box comes up to authenticate something they have downloaded, and it installs as root.  A certain search engines software does exactly this.  Hell, the system is actually more secure than before, I ran the old python importer, and it failed, because it asked for my admin password and tried to run mdimport -r as root!  I had to run it myself.

(Oh it's very nice with the python files, lovely really)

Hope this helps somebody else.


Mac OS X doesn't recognize hard disk I replaced my CD drive with a Western Digital 750GB hard drive using the iFixit guide.
My Mac for some reason throws error on any interaction with the hard drive,
for example on disk utility when I tried to create 1 partition of FAT:

When I try to setup BootCamp I get this error:

I have successfully managed to erase and format the hard drive while booting up to GParted, but I want to install windows on it.
Do you have any suggestions? Ideas?

I recently ran into this issue as well. I originally suspected a damaged SATA cable, but swapping the SSD into the optical drive bay and the HD into the primary hard drive bay solved the issue for me.


Quarantined root directory on primary drive? I've been experiencing performance issues on my mid-2011 mac mini (running El Cap) for a while now -- beachballs, spotlight issues, general slowness -- and have been so far unable to discern the actual cause (this is, in part, why I haven't yet upgraded to Sierra). I just noticed that the root of my primary drive is marked as quarantined:

andy@Aurora[14:57:14]: $ ls -ldeO@ /
drwxr-xr-x@ 40 root  wheel  - 1428 Jan  7 16:20 /
    com.apple.quarantine      68

Is it possible that this is the cause of my problems? And how would I go about fixing it?

Before doing anything else I would strongly recommend you backing up all your files and (after that) double checking for malware on your Mac.

You can remove the com.apple.quarantine attribute with xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /.
For a more in-depth explaination of the com.apple.quarantine extended attribute, see this answer.


Photos folder on external hard drive incessant disk usage for 5 years My photos collection has way over 500 gigabytes, and when I got a new Mac in 2015, I moved the collection to an external hard drive, and pointed Photos (iphoto by then?) to the external hard drive.
So far, so good. Everything works most of the time, with all the known glitches of Photos which are covered in many other questions.
My question is regarding disk usage. My hard drive is being used 100% of the time (and quite loudly), since 2015. The thing NEVER stops.
I have spotlight disabled for that hard drive, and the people search doesn't show anything anymore (like that "X images still need to be scanned).
The processes using the hard drive are

mds
filecoordinationd (4 threads, same PID)
com.apple.MediaLibraryService (also 4 threads, 1 pid)
photolibraryd (12 threads)
cloudphotod
com.apple.CloudPhotosConfiguration (4 threads)
revisiond (4 threads).

If I kill all those processes, I end up with fseventsd in 1 thread, 28 threads of photoanalysisd, 1 thread of mds, and 4 threads of revisiond. It quiets things for a while, and the activity comes back after a while.
Why is this happening and how to fix it?
Again, this is bothering me for FIVE YEARS. It's not something temporary.

You’ve moved to a new Mac and a clean, maybe even a newer OS with newer versions of the software (iPhoto vs Photos).  There’s a lot that macOS is going to do with all those files in their new home on your external drive indexing, analyzing photos, facial recognition, etc.
These things are going to happen so you’re going to have disk activity.  Every time you kill these processes because you believe there’s an issue only delays and prolongs the process that needs to happen.  You have, as you say 500GB of files most likely with a ton of meta data attached - it’s going to take time to process them.
To draw an analogy, this is like seeing your car rev its engine a few RPM’s higher on start up than normal and rushing to the mechanic because you believe it’s a problem.  It’s not.  It’s behaving normally for the conditions which is probably much colder that day than normal and requiring more revs of the engine to warm up; sorta like having 500GB of files in a new location not normal and having to spin the drives and process them. Once everything normalizes, your car will rev down and so will your drives.


How can I verify that an iOS app has or has not been updated? Today I noticed that an app needed to update. Updates is set to be done automatically, but did not update as it normally would.
When I entered the updates list it just started blinking between the Update- and Open-button, and mostly as Open. After reading the question "Can't update apps in iOS App Store; can only Open" I force quitted the App Store app hoping that could do the trick, hoping the app would appear again with the update. When the App Store restarts the update is gone and has still not appeared in the list after an hour.

The app in question was the Facebook Messenger app. I know by looking at the information in App Store that there were in fact a release of the app today.

How can I verify that the app has or has not been updated?

You can check the version of Messenger installed by going here:

Settings > General > Storage (& iCloud Usage) > Manage Storage > Messenger
Version will be displayed next to app icon.

And you can check the latest version of Messenger in the App Store by going to its page and check the version.

If they are the same, you are good to go. If not, I suggest closing App Store, restarting your iPhone and then checking App Store. It will probably says Update and you can do so.


iTunes Sync Calendars does not show Outlook I want to sync my iPhone calendars with Outlook via iTunes.
Here are the instructions from Microsoft support Office, which require iTunes.
Step four says:

  Under Calendars, click Sync calendars from, and then click Outlook.

But there is no such option in my iTunes which I just downloaded.
Check the image, that does only show Sync Calendars, but not chance to choose from neither Outlook:

However, this page and this one show a similar image with that possibility:

Can anyone help on this, please?

A partial answer to my own question in an issue opened in Apple Communites.

Basically it says that, when using iCloud to sync your contents across all your devices (which is my case), it is not possible to use iTunes to sync the Calendars and Contacts.

From https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201253 :

  If you use iCloud or other services like Apple Music to keep your content up to date across all of your devices, syncing through iTunes might be turned off.

So instead of using iTunes, I just use iCloud for Windows which synced Calendars, Contacts & Mail.
Below is an image of my work Calendar created in Outlook plus the imported ones from iCloud:


How do I create a new iCloud account? Hi I would like to ask how do I create a new iCloud account for my iPad Mini. I forgot my old one. How can I do this?

Just visit https://appleid.apple.com/account on mobile Safari and fill in the required fields.


Why does iTunes and my iPhone not agree on how much free space I have on my iPhone? Ok so I have a 32gb iPhone 4s that is updated all the way. When I plug it into my computer (PC) and run iTunes it (iTune) will tell me that I have a ton of free space on my phone howeer, when I look at my phone it says I barely have a Gig of free space. I am really confused. I don't have a lot apps or a lot pictures anymore so how do I sync iTunes with my iPhone so it will tell me how much storage space I have?

This happens from time to time. You can get a recalculation of the space by connecting to iTunes and power cycling the phone.

If that doesn't work, you may need to back up the phone and erase it and set up as new - seeing that the space used is correct, then erase a second time and restore the backup.


Does HiDPI (Retina) technology utilize GPU resources? As I understand it should, but I can't find any explicit statement. This is important for me because I'm trying to understand which MacBook should I use - with external GPU or not. Still I can assume that the answer to the question is yes because Apple sells 15-inch with external GPU while 13-inch without it.

UPDATE:
In discussion bellow I found that my original question was wrong (also the wrong term was used - external, I meant discrete). I believed that OS resolution is an absolute setting for all applications. Now I assume that some functions work with native resolution, so it's obvious why they work slower on higher resolution.

Example of scaling to native resolution: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/devicePixelRatio

Retina is just a marketing word for a high resolution monitor.  The trick is then that instead of just allowing the user to use a lower resolution than the display is physically capable of, macOS lies to the application about its size so it thinks that it is e.g 800x600.  All the system calls that then actually draw stuff like text and graphics then knows about the lie and can utilize the full resolution of the monitor.

All this require GPU support (and was introduced a long way back) to work well so that is not the criteria.

The external GPU is useful however if you for any reason need more strength than the internal GPU can provide.  Games and intense visualization rendering are obvious choices.  As they consume more power they usually are only enabled when actually needed falling back on the internal GPU for normal chores.

Unless you know already that you will run these kind of programs the internal GPU will do fine.