File browser alternatives with remote connections I have been linux person for 6 years, now converting to mac world.

I am looking for the file browser, which would enable me to:

delete files and folders by pressing delete
rename files by shortcut or right mouse button
enter folders by pressing "Enter"
navigating in the tree by shortcuts (keyboard only)

and also importantly:

do the same things on REMOTE linux servers, especially edit files on the fly
open remote text files in my favorite editor (whichever I want, such as Sublime)

In Ubuntu, I just typed to the directory address ssh://name@server and file system acted completely the same way as if I was on the local computer. Perfectly easy to use and understand.

I don't mind paying small/medium amount of money if needed.

You can use sshfs or Transmit to mount SSH locations as local volumes.

↩ renames files in Finder. ⌘↓ or ⌘O opens files, ⌘⌫ moves files to the trash, and ⌥⌘V moves files copied with ⌘C.

You could also take a look at Forklift or Path Finder. Both support making return open files but not making forward delete move files to to the trash.


Application to automatically find related documents on your entire Mac? DEVONthink has a “See Also” feature that shows you documents that the software thinks are related to the one you are currently viewing. I would like to experiment more with using this feature. Unfortunately, AFAIK DEVONthink limits its search for related documents to those that you've put inside the same DEVONthink database. I'm — at least at this time — not interested in using DEVONthink exclusively to organize all of my documents.

Is there any application that offers a similar “See Also” feature that's more integrated with the Finder and that looks for documents on your entire Mac (or a specified set of folders)? Or perhaps DEVONthink can also be configured to do this?

This will be extraordinarily difficult to do at run-time, and with any document.  The few solutions that have implemented this technology (remembrance agent http://www.remem.org/ and Dashboard http://nat.org/dashboard/ are probably the most notable and "successful") required specific search indexers for each type of application and up-front document analysis.  (Very much how you can't search in Spotlight while it is "updating".)

For example, if you typed the word "from", you would not necessarily want to see all of your email messages just because they all feature the word as part of their metadata.  However, if you typed "Art Taylor", you would expect to see email, chat, and other documents related to me.

The problem is of summarizing the semantic content from the structural content.  That's why DEVONthink requires you to import the documents.  It can summarize the documents and present results more or less in real time, because it has done the summarization up front.  Spotlight does some of this as well, but no great context aware knowledge and memory augmentation applications have popped up that offer universal document support.

If you google "knowledge augmentation", you will find a large number of articles and papers on the topic.  People are very interested in this and I think it is just a matter of time before someone attacks the problem with a commercial solution.  Gordon Bell had a tantalizing project called "MyLifeBits" http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/mylifebits/ that was a little over the top, but IBM http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24750.wss is doing some research on associative recall.  Note the "Capture" and "Ingest" stages.  The scope of both of these is much beyond simple document relationships.

Years ago, I tried the DEVONthink "put it all in there" approach, and as you probably suspect, it was a disaster.

Best of luck.


fsck -fy hangs on Checking catalog file + issues booting (MacBook) Last night my MacBook Pro crashed. This morning I tried turning the computer on, and it had a few issues..

Computer doesn't get past initial boot up loading.
Fan activates loudly while starting up.
Screen is generally slightly tinted green, with light green horizontal stripes going across the display every couple pixels.
Initial loading screen has a green progress bar.
Screen occasionally has a black stripe with rainbow pixels dotted across the top of the screen.
Rendered pixels are generally shifted up or down a single pixel every few inches across the screen.
After hanging with a white screen for ~4 minutes, it switches to a blue screen with vertical red stripes.
A couple minutes later the computer reboots and the process restarts.

So I try using single-user mode, because obviously I'm not getting anywhere with this boot-up loop.

I follow this process:

$ /sbin/fsck -fy
** /dev/rdisk1
** Root file system
   Executing fsck_hfs (Version hfs-305.10.1).
** Checking Journaled HFS Plujs vloume.
   The volume name is Macintosh HD
** Checking extents overflow tile.
** Checking catalog file.

It proceeds to hang here until I ^C out of fsck.

I try rebuilding the catalog...

$ fsck_hfs -y -Rc -d /dev/disk0s2
Unable to open block device /dev/disk0s2: Resource busyjournal_replay(/dev/disk0s2) returned 16
** /dev/rdisk0s2 (NO WRITE)
        Using cacheBlockSize=32K cacheTotalBlock=16384 cacheSize=524288K.
   Executing fsck_hfs (version hfs-305.10.1).
        Block 975093950 is not an MDB or Volume Header
Journal is empty
** Checking JOurnaled HFS Plus volume.
   The volume name is Macintosh HD
** Checking extents overflow file.
** Checking catalog file.
** The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
       volume type is pure HFS+
       primary MDB is at block 0 0x00
       alternative MDB is at block 0 0x00
       primary VHB is at block 2 0x02
       alternate VHB is at block 975093950 0x3a1ec0be
       sector size = 512 0x200
       VolumeObject flags = 0x03
       total sectors for volume = 975093952 0x3a1ec0c0
       total sectors for embedded volume = 0 0x00
       CheckHFS returned 7. fsmodified = 0

It says my hard drive is corrupt. To repair the hard drive you generally use /sbin/fsck -fy, right? The only problem is that gives me the same as before, hanging on the catalog file.

I'm not really sure what to do!

When you can't get a clean run of fsck (which you might need to let run for a handful of hours) - then it's time to make a decision:

back up what you can/need to and erase the volume
seek other software options to attempt repair

In my expereice, if you don't have lots of IO errors (-B option for fsck_hfs) then the erase will restore full function and you can reinstall the OS and restore from backup. I've also not had much luck forcing fsck_hfs to rebuild parts when the plain /sbin/fsck -fy fails - but you could get lucky there with an unusual corruption pattern on this drive.

The second option doesn't have great promise. Disk Warrior seems to be one of the decent utilities to try when fsck won't work - but unless you have lots of specific corruption issues - the time you spend wiping and reinstalling usually doesn't outweigh the cost of that software. It also may or may not work. If Disk Warrior also fails to repair or rebuild the catalog, you're back to the decision point - wipe or escalate to even more expensive / specialized support like opening an engineering ticket with Apple or someone that's able to dump the filesystem structure more deeply for analysis.


How do I install Windows with Bootcamp? I am using El Capitan on a 15" MacBook Pro mid 2015. I downloaded a Windows 10 iso file from the Microsoft website.

Then I used Boot Camp Assistant and selected the file. I allocated 120 GB to the Windows partition. It did it's thing and then restarted automatically. It booted back to OSX.

When I look at About This Mac, I see the Bootcamp partition.

If I hold the option button while the Macbook reboots, it only shows me my Mac OS partition.

Did something go wrong? It's like Windows 10 didn't install.. what should I do from here?

Boot Camp Assistant is a glorified partitioner. It doesn't do any actual installation of anything. For that, you'll have to actually launch the Windows installer from the ISO, by burning it to a disk first, and booting off of that.


Apple Music checkbox is disabled and greyed out in Music In the restrictions for Music, the Apple Music checkbox is disabled, and greyed out.

Things I tried/checked:

I am the administrator on this mac.
I'm signed in to iCloud on this computer.
I can sync my library to my Apple ID.
Restarting the computer
Restarting music

I called Apple and they helped me in about 10 minutes, all you need to do is enable iTunes. For some reason, you need iTunes enabled to have Apple Music enabled.


Set Time Machine to backup once per day instead of once an hour I use Time Machine to backup my Mac (running Mavericks 10.9.1). The backup process runs at the standard once per hour. This often slows down my machine while I'm trying to work on it. Understanding that it will provide less protection, is it possible to adjust Time Machine to backup at a different interval (e.g. once per day) instead of once per hour without installing third-party software?

No.  Given that there are several third-party utilities that provide this functionality (and nothing else), like TimeMachineEditor, it seems highly unlikely that there's a built-in way to do it.


Mac app store doesn't show any updates Lately Mac app store has stopped showing any updates. It always says 'No updates available'.

Please see a screenshot here.

It doesn't even show about OS installed. Can somebody share a solution to fix this?

EDIT

I can state that something's wrong on the basis of difference between installed version of 'Numbers' in my system and the version available on App store.

This is a known issue with the fix required of removing your main hard drive from indexing through the Privacy screen.  You may have to add the main hard drive to privacy first, then remove it, then restart, and allow the hard drive to be indexed again.

When I have had problems with the App Store, I have found that the boot volume was entered in the System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy pane. If the boot volume is included, it is excluded from the Spotlight indices, and the App Store uses those indices to determine what applications are installed.

Once the volume is removed, and the indices updated (you have to wait...), the App Store started finding updates.

For better technical details, see: Mac App Store: "Cannot update App Store purchases or updates do not seem available" and "Mac App Store Update issue in Yosemite"


How to change color profiles on ssh iterm2 on SSH? mac os x lion;
Using Iterm2;

I wish to change my iterm2 color profiles if I do ssh on terminal.

Can this be done ?

Very late answer, but I've found a way here that I wanted to share. This assumes you're running Zsh and oh-my-zsh but with some shell scripting experience you should be able to adjust this to other shells.

I've copied these instructions here for posterity:

Create two iTerm profiles:

*   Your personal preference theme (can be named anything)
*   SSH color theme (must be named SSH)

Go into your ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom directory and create a new file entitled iTerm2-ssh.zsh. Copy and paste the following or copy from the repo:

function tabc() {
    NAME=$1; if [ -z "$NAME" ]; then NAME="Default"; fi
    # if you have trouble with this, change
    # "Default" to the name of your default theme
    echo -e "\033]50;SetProfile=$NAME\a"
}

function tab-reset() {
    NAME="YOUR_CUSTOM_PROFILE_NAME_HERE"
    echo -e "\033]50;SetProfile=$NAME\a"
}

function colorssh() {
    if [[ -n "$ITERM_SESSION_ID" ]]; then
        trap "tab-reset" INT EXIT
        if [[ "$*" =~ "web*|production|ec2-.*compute-1" ]]; then
            tabc SSH
        fi
    fi
    ssh $*
}
compdef _ssh tabc=ssh

alias ssh="colorssh"

The breakdown of this code:

tabc() grabs the ssh name after the command $ ssh is entered. This
changes the SetProfile name to ssh.

tab-reset() is responsible for when you exit the ssh session to return back to
a profile name of your choosing. Remember to create a custom profile name and replace the _YOUR_CUSTOM_PROFILE_NAME_HERE_ with your profile name.

colorssh determines when to change the SetProfile name. Currently it will
change to the SSH profile when one of the following values exist after $ ssh:

-   web *
-   production
-   ec2-.*compute-1

Again, not my code, just a happy user. Thanks for this one, Hector Leiva!


iPad locked up due to iCloud Backup I have an issue with my iPad; it is locked up with the message that iCloud Backup has not been done in over 2 weeks.

It won't do anything or go any further even when all conditions for backup are met.

I cannot even turn it off because I cannot slide to power off and I get no response when touch "OK" button on iCloud Backup notification.

Any ideas on resolving this issue?

This works on the iPhone, so I can't see it not working on the iPad.

Hold the Power and Home buttons for approximately 10 seconds, the iDevice will shut down without having to slide the Power Off slider.


What is it that prevents using a 3rd party SSD in a 2015 rMBP? I bought an Early 2015 MacBook Pro Retina model with the 128GB SSD and have been wondering what to do if I need more disk space.. then I found out that it's currently not quite possible to just stick any connector-wise compatible drive in place of current drive as an means of upgrading the storage.

OWC, Transcend etc sell nothing, Apple does not sell anything (at least not without installation at an ASP), however it seems eBay has some Far-East sellers that have some kind of adapters which allow for 3rd party SSDs to be attached, but they seem to have various limitations as some will not make the new drive bootable, some will boot, but do not support passwords etc leading to believe they just emulate some bit of the original drive but not all.

My question is - what is it exactly that causes this incompatibility? Is there some kind of white-list in the EFI firmware that allows only specific SSDs to work? Or is there perhaps some actual additional handshake/encryption/protocol that happens during the EFI boot that helps "to secure" the boot-up process to actually justify this incompatibility?

The reason for the "incompatibility" is simple: there is no SATA-based SSD in this Mac. Apple is transitioning away from SATA-Based SSD drives and moving towards PCIe based SSD drives.

I thought there were a couple of manufacturers that had upgrade parts for PCIe SSDs and a quick search for "MacBook Pro PCIe SSD" should yield some results for you.


My app store can't dowload some apps or update I can't update WhatsApp, Snapchat and many other apps in my system, that is 9.0.1.

I tried to change date and time, turn off my iPhone and sign out.

According to Apple Support System Status, at the time of writing 2015/10/13, the iTunes Store Service may be unavailable for some users.


Mac Pro CPU temperature discrepancy Before I just rush into ripping apart my machine & putting new thermal paste on the CPU heatsinks, I thought I'd try running this past Ask Different.

I have a 'Franken-Mac' Pro 4,1 with the full 5,1 upgrade.
It now has dual 6-core 3.46GHz Xeons - X5690
64GB RAM

From comments
'Franken-Mac' = Non-stock model. Mac Pro 4,1, upgraded to higher 5,1 spec than was available when new. All Apple, but there was never a 3.46 model originally.

I have no idea what was in it before, as I bought it ready-upgraded.

What worries me is that the 'main' temperatures reported by iStat Menus - which on this machine are the CPU A & B Tdiodes [not that I really know what they are] - are consistently out by about 15°C
Under minimal load, this comes out as approx CPU A at 60°C & CPU B at only 45°C
If I put the machine under load, I've seen that lift to perhaps 75°C & 60°C
The booster fans always run at the roughly same speed as each other, whatever that speed might be, increasing with load of course.

BTW, it's not always exactly 15° but around that value.

I have an older Mac Pro 3,1 which, though iStat measures a different sensor for the 'main' temperature [CPU A & B Heatsink], is always within a degree, right now 35/36°C

I'm not worried about the apparent temperature difference between the two machines, as not the same thing is being measured.

So, my question is...
Does anyone know if this difference between CPU A & B temperatures is normal, or if I need to be looking at the thermal paste etc?

The airflow is clean. I do it regularly anyway & did it just before I posted this question.

I've never stripped a Mac right down to the CPUs before [though I've done dozens of generic PCs over the years] so I wanted to get a second opinion.

A small side question - does anyone know which is A & B, physically? Is A to the front, B to the rear? I know they're labelled on the PCB, but it's not visible until you strip them & I can't find a picture of sufficient clarity.

Solution to the side question - CPU A is to the rear of the machine, so the air hitting it will have already passed over CPU B's heat-sink.

I upgraded my 4,1 Mac Pro to a pair of X5690s and am seeing exactly the same Tdiode temperatures as you - CPU A around 61°C and CPU B around 46°C at idle.

It seems to be normal owing to the inline airflow and discrepancies in heatsink size. As others have said, as long as the Tcase max temp is not exceeded on either CPU, I think we're fine and can rest safe in the knowledge that it's not due to bad/inconsistent thermal paste application.


Can the hard drive in an Apple TV be upgraded? How? I own an Apple TV, with 160GB of internal storage.  I'm interested in replacing that hard drive with a larger one, perhaps 640GB, or else the largest 2.5" drive I can get that would be compatible.

Is it possible to replace the internal hard drive in an Apple TV, i.e. DIY?

If so, how, or where can I find more information?

Any tips about the challenges I will need to overcome: e.g. opening the device, copying old drive contents over, etc.?

Thanks!

p.s. I don't care about my warranty; it's long gone.

Yes, you can. Good thing you don't care about your warranty though. Engadget published an article about it with instructions some time ago.


How to recover a deleted folder from Time Machine back-up disk? I wanted to clean my external disk that I use to back up my mac, but I didn't do it right... I deleted the folder 'Mac's Name' with my back ups, but the weird thing is that there is no extra free space on my external disk. So I learned that you have to delete your back-up within the Time Machine Interface. But I can't recover this folder from the trash can because of this message: "The operation can’t be completed because backup items can’t be modified."

If you haven't emptied the trashcan, then you can manually move the files back from the /Volumes/<diskname>/.Trashes directory inside a terminal window

Note: You need to be root, so first sudo su -
and then cd into the .Trashes directory, and use mv * .. should move and make them available again


cpu is 100% used, yet no application shows significant usage Since a few days my IMac started showing weird behaviour.
In Activity Monitor it shows that my CPU is 100% used. Literally 0% idle, but there are no Applications using anywhere near this much resources.
The highest percentage would be from Activity Monitor itself, but this just uses 2.5% at max.
The amount of CPU used is shared over 'User' and 'System' they both use around 50% CPU at the same time.

Also, the amount of threads running is around 300 to 375, but the sum of all running applications their threads doesn't go over 100.

My question is:
Is there any explanation for this behaviour?
And can I do something against this?

Info about my Mac:

OS : Mac OS X 10.7.5

CPU : 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Memory : 4 GB 1067 MHz RAM

(iMac Late 2009)

EDIT:

After making sure that I was looking at 'All Processes' that are running on my iMac, I found that Norton Deepsight was causing a big part of my issue.
By changing a setting in my Norton-AntiVirus I managed to take atleast 50% of CPU usage away.
Yet my System is still using around 50% to 60% of CPU, which is caused by 'kernel_task' and 'SymDaemon'

Is there a clear reason to why these to processes are using this much CPU?

Thanks to some helpful answers I managed to find the answers to this question.

The main cause of this CPU usage is Norton AntiVirus.
A Setting in the AntiVirus called 'Norton Deepsight Community Submission' makes it constantly use around 50% CPU, just to collect data and send this to Norton I guess.

The other 50% is also caused by Norton AntiVirus, yet I am not a 100% sure which setting or process causes this.

Hopefully this helps other people in the future.

Many thanks to the commenters on my main post, which helped me find the cause of this problem.


How can I move videos back into the Camera Roll? Every so often I move all the pictures and videos off my phone onto my desktop in order to free space on the phone. I have this app called 1 Second Every Day which uses video clips from my Camera Roll to build longer videos.

I moved all my pictures and videos off of my roll before realizing I'd need them to make this month's video. Is there a way I can restore videos taken with the phone back onto the Camera Roll?

I'm running Windows 10 with iTunes 12.3.12.25.

Turns out you can bring them back into your Camera Roll, or at least in a place where you can use them in 1SE, just by copying them into Dropbox.

Copy your MOV files into Dropbox.
Install the Dropbox app on your device.
For each video, select the ellipsis icon and then Export, then Save Video.


Xcode Quad Core Optimization Is Xcode (Using Xcode 4.2) optimized for a quad core processor? My real question is will Xcode's performance be noticeably different with a dual core i7 as opposed to a quad core i7?

I might be purchasing a new computer soon, and want to know if it would be worth it to go with the quad core 15" instead of the dual core 13". I'm not really worried about screen size.

Thanks!

Xcode will make good use of many cores - especially when running the simulator, unit testing at build time and just coding / compiling / searching documentation.

Also check to see if the processor with more cores has a higher speed boost when only one core is running. The rated speeds are controlled more by thermal conditions under full or benchmark loads and can run faster when the current workload is single thread dominated.

In general, the IO is the first thing to slow down a developer doing multiple normal dev tasks. Next is insufficient RAM and a distant third underpowered CPU. Do take your Xcode installer and some sample projects into an apple store and ask if you could run some tests on an air as well as larger machines. Some specific code bases and settings might be more polarized than the general case and more biased to CPU with larger cache or speeds, but the smallest air is so much faster than my three year old 15 MBP it's not very funny at all.


Why does my iCloud tabs on Mac OS X not work? I have a number of Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Macbook and Mac Mini). I would like to use iCloud tab syncing between the devices, I have successfully enabled my macbook, iPhone and iPad but I'm unable to get it working on my Mac mini.

I can confirm the settings are all switched on but the tabs are still not visible in Safari.
Anyone have any suggestions to fix this?

All devices are using the latest available software (iOS and Mac OSX)

Sign out and sign back into iCloud on your Mac.

There was also a bug that if you had iCloud drive turned off for safari, your tabs wouldn't sync. So I would make sure that Safari is checked under iCloud Drive as well as iCloud settings.


Due to problems with Time Machine, I've switched to Backblaze as my backup. Is this as useful as Time Machine? I encountered a problem with Time Machine and it has stopped working. I tried the suggested repair path but it didn't work. I have turned off Time Machine and switched to Backblaze as my backup option. If anyone is using BackBlaze or another 3rd party backup plan I am curious how it compares to Time Machine in terms of usefulness and is there anything I should be aware of.

No, because you cannot use if for a system restore or getting files versioned earlier in time. It is often worth it to resolve the time machine issues instead.

Backblaze itself is a wonderful effective offsite backup solution, and I often recommend such a service as a fallback to timemachine.


killing httpd spawns new processes In short, I need to kill all httpd processes so I can run a particular program. When I go to Activity Monitor and Quit all of the httpd processes, a new one is immediately spawned. I'm not sure what is causing this, and would like to know how to effectively kill httpd without it launching again. I'm guessing something else is requiring it and thus the automatic spawning, so maybe you can help me determine where that's coming from.

I'm running 10.8.2, and trying to run Tiny Umbrella to store my SHSH blobs so I can downgrade my dev phone after upgrading to iOS 6.

This daemon doesn't start by default on OS X, so the stop procedure depends a bit on how yours is configured to start. Have you tried issuing apachectl stop to see if that is sufficient to unload the launchd job?

You can read up on the default starting and stopping of httpd via the apachectl tool on the manual pages (locally or online) .


iBooks alternate language dictionaries? Is there any way to change the dictionary used in iBooks? When reading books written in a non-English language I would like to have access to the dictionary function in the book's language (not translation, just dictionary lookup).  Currently I'm reading Don Quijote in Spanish, and it would be really helpful to be able to lookup unfamiliar words.

This has changed in iOS7. Look up a word, at the definition UI push "Manage" in the bottom left, and a list of foreign dictionaries comes up:

English, Apple, Oxford-EN, Spanish, Korean, KOR-EN, JP-EN, Italian, German, French, Dutch, Simplified CN, SCN-EN, and Japanese.

Any & all can be downloaded from inside this "Manage" screen, and the definitions will trail (as things do on the OSX side with Dictionary.app).


Which kind of USB device attached - equivalent for the full functionality of lsusb on macOS? Neither 1) System Information, 2) ioreg -p IOUSB -w0 -l, 3) system_profiler SPUSBDataType nor 4) jlhonora's "lsusb" for macOS
(brew update && brew tap jlhonora/lsusb && brew install lsusb) tell me which kind of USB device is attached like the Linux command lsusb:

  DESCRIPTION lsusb  is  a  utility for displaying information about USB buses in the system and the devices connected to them.

Use case: I want to know what kind of USB device is attached (e.g. USB 2 or 3) - not which type of port the device is connected to. Per this answer on askubuntu:

This may take a bit of extrapolation, but use the value from "Speed" in system_profiler

For example, looking at the Logitech USB receiver (for my mouse and second keyboard):

$ system_profiler SPUSBDataType | grep Logitech -A5
          Vendor ID: 0x046d  (Logitech Inc.)
          Version: 12.01
          Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
          Manufacturer: Logitech
          Location ID: 0x14200000 / 3
          Current Available (mA): 1000
          Current Required (mA): 98
          Extra Operating Current (mA): 0

Looking at the "Speed" value, it tells me that it's a USB 1.1 device.  Doing the same lookup for my Seagate FreeAgent Go USB disk, I get the following:

system_profiler SPUSBDataType | grep Seagate -A5
              Vendor ID: 0x0bc2  (Seagate LLC)
              Version: 1.48
              Serial Number: 2GE7WLWG
              Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
              Manufacturer: Seagate
              Location ID: 0x14320000 / 23
              Current Available (mA): 1000
              Current Required (mA): 100
              Extra Operating Current (mA): 0
              Capacity: 500.11 GB (500,107,861,504 bytes)

It tells me it's got a speed of 480Mb/s which is a USB 2.0 device.

You don't have to output all that extra data, I am just using it for illustration purposes, instead you can just narrow it down to the line containing the speed value:

$ system_profiler SPUSBDataType | grep Seagate -A5 | grep Speed
              Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec

For reference, USB speeds/specs are as follows:

USB 1.x - 12Mb/sec
USB 2.0 - 480Mb/sec
USB 3.0 - 5Gb/s
USB 3.1 - 10Gb/s


iTunes 10.6.3 opens every time I put in an audio CD In system preferences> CDs & DVDs I have everything set to ignore. Yet iTunes still opens every time I put in an audio CD - is there a way to turn this off?

As a follow up in iTunes > Preferences > General > When You Insert A CD: I have the following options

Show CD (The selected option)
Begin Playing
Ask To Import CD
Import CD
Import CD and Eject

There is no ignore option within iTunes - is there some other way to disable iTunes opening?

In iTunes you can go to preferences > General > you can choose among:

– display
– play
– import
– import and eject

just choose display. It seems that you can't get rid of this trouble.


Why can't I hide my active application (e.g., Chrome)? This happens from time to time: the "hide" option is just grayed out and the usual shortcut doesn't work. I'm not doing anything special or stuck in a modal window—it just isn't available.

This is OS X default behavior in every app if you have hidden all other apps before with "Hide Others" or ⌥+⌘+H. In such a case it's not possible to hide the front most app, that's why both options are greyed out/inactive.


Missing photos on my iPhone I have a Macbook Pro and an iPhone that share the same iCloud account. On my Macbook's Photos I have a smart album that contains 52 photos. On the iPhone the album contains 40, with 12 photos are missing.

How can I resync the missing 12 photos with the iPhone?

Smart Albums are not fully supported yet. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204478

I would suggest trying to create a new smart album, perhaps with slightly different parameters, and see if you can work around the bug. Or, worst case, you could create a regular album.


How to tell if Macbook is using 802.11ac I just got a new Macbook Air and a new Airport Extreme, both of which support 802.11ac.

Is there an easy way to tell if my Macbook Air is connecting to the Airport Extreme via 802.11ac?  Relatedly, can I tell if I'm connecting at 5GHz band or 2.4GHz band?

I've already done a speedtest, and the results are inconclusive.

When you're connected to the Wi-Fi network, hold down option and click the Wi-Fi icon in the OS X menubar. You'll see additional details about your connection, including one item labelled PHY Mode:. That will show you whether you're connected via 802.11ac, n, g, etc.

There's also a Channel: entry that tells you the radio frequency and channel.


Why is 2017 MacBook air battery life so much better than 2014 MacBook pro's? Why is my girlfriend's 2017 MacBook air battery life so much better than my 2014 MacBook pro's (after just having brand new battery installed) when the batteries have the exact same device name (bq20z451)?

Format: her computer/my computer

Processor: 1.8GHz i5/2.2GHz i7
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 6540/8230
Cycle count: 628/10
Device Name: bq20z451/bq20z451

Hers is notably better, maybe about 2x better. No, I'm not storing or editing insanely big video files. We both run code but haven't done much of that recently.

I calibrated my new battery and it helped but just not that much.

I dropped £199 on a new battery and I wanted an absolutely sick battery but I'm really disappointed in this. Yes it's better than it used to be but nothing like when I first got the machine.

Does my 2.2GHz i7 processor really drain it 2x faster? Why would it matter if neither of us is maxing out the CPU anyway? Maybe my bigger motherboard is more demanding even when idling but really is it bad enough to account for this drastic of a difference? Bluetooth is off in both cases.

You have the 15" 2014 MBP, judging from the CPU speed. So you have an older CPU that uses more power; four times the number of pixels to push; and older battery tech. On the plus side, you have a larger capacity battery.

Your MBP requires an 85W charger, and the MBA uses a 45W charger. So that's indicative of power consumption.

Apple advertised the 2014 MBP at 8 hours of wireless web usage; the 2017 MBA is rated at 12 hours. So you should see 1.5x on the MBA.

I have the same model of MBP, and also recently got the battery replaced. I get about six hours using audio apps, Xcode, DTP stuff, etc.

The Device Name bq20z451 you quote is the model of the Battery Controller chip, rather than the serial of the battery itself, and is the same across a wide range of Macs with different battery characteristics. (Every battery also has a unique serial number.)


Is there an iPad app to play movies from an SD card? Is there an iPad application which is capable of playing iPad compatible movie files from an SD card via the Apple Camera Connection Kit?
I prefer App Store apps, no jailbreak apps please.

The "Camera Connection Kit" is called that for a specific reason. The USB and SD Card readers are meant to either directly connect your camera to it, or just the SD card from it.

This means also that the readers only function with the Photos application, and nothing else. This is also the reason why most external keyboards don't work anymore.

There is no SDK access to the Camera Connection Kit, so third-party apps may not use it.

IIRC, Movies taken by your camera are imported into the Photos app as well. I do not recall whether or not you can view them from within the Photos app.


Mass Load of Keyboard/Text mappings in Mavericks Under System Preferences/Keyboard/Text, you can enter a list of "spelling corrections" which can easily act as a macro-replacement for quick typing.

It is easy to enter them one-by-one, but is there a way to mass-load a long list of mappings?

Say from some kind of text file like a .csv file?  Or could I potentially write something in AppleScript to do this?

Also, is there a limit to how many mappings I make?

I'm thinking on the order of thousands.

The settings are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist in the NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems array in 10.9 and in the NSUserReplacementItems array in 10.8 and earlier. The format of the array has not changed, so the commands below should work in 10.8 and earlier versions of OS X if you replace NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems with NSUserReplacementItems.

Print the current settings:

defaults read -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems

Add one setting:

defaults write -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems -array-add '{on=1;replace=cmd;with="⌘";}'

Replace all settings:

defaults write -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems '(
{on=1;replace=cmd;with="⌘";},
{on=1;replace=opt;with="⌥";}
)'

Print the current settings as XML:

defaults read -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems | plutil -convert xml1 - -o -

Replace all settings:

amp() { local x=${1//&/&amp; }; x=${x//</&lt; }; printf %s "${x//>/&gt; }"; }
out='<array>'
while IFS= read -r l; do
  out+="<dict><key>on</key><integer>1</integer><key>replace</key><string>$(amp "${l%% *}")</string><key>with</key><string>$(amp "${l#* }")</string></dict>"
done <<< 'cmd ⌘
opt ⌥'
defaults write -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems "$out</array>"

You can apply changes made with defaults by quitting and reopening applications.


Is there a way to force clockwise pane rotation in iTerm2 with the shortcut keys? I've often found that when using iTerm2, I'll have like 3 or 4 panes open in one tab.  And the shortcut keys for moving between them Cmd + ] and Cmd + [ are very useful, but unpredictable.  The reason is because "next" and "previous" panes are determined by the order in which panes had last focus.  So if I have 4 panes open in a window shape, sometimes Cmd + [ may circle around them clockwise, sometimes counterclockwise, and sometimes neither.  And I can't remember which pane had the 3rd last focus.

The problem is correctable by simply clicking on each pane in clockwise order and then using the shortcut keys, but this is kind of annoying to have to do each time.

Is there a setting where I can lock the shortcut keys into clockwise (and counterclockwise) rotation only?

I posted about this on the Google Groups for iTerm2.  The program author has now added to the program the option to rotate clockwise.


How to show directories before files in Finder? I would like to have windows in the Finder sort directories before files, in the manner of Microsoft Windows' Explorer as well as Linux KDE.

I tried following this link but it did not yield the desired outcome, specifically some directories had contents sorted that way but some had files first then directories and some were still mixed.  Also, I would like to know what the difference is between sorting and arranging in the Show View Options screen.

If you want to view things in a more Microsoft Windows-like fashion, there are several third-party commercial utilities that can provide more options. I do not know which of these will provide the exact layout you want, but you can download trial versions of one or more of the following:

RAGE Macintosh Explorer (This app is free)

Binary Age Total Finder

CocoaTech Path Finder

St. Clair Default Folder X (for Open and Save dialog boxes)


Usage problem with my iPad Air I have an iPad Air and I want to update this game that needs 1.4 GB. I only have 5 apps on my iPad and when I go to Settings to look at my storage it says I have used 11 GB. I added up the usage for all my apps and I counted only 3.3 GB. I don't know how to fix this, I've restarted my iPad but it didn't work. I don't know where the other 8 GB is coming from. I also have the same problem on my iPhone 4s.

First, you should update your iPad to the latest iOS system and then if it still takes up you much space, I guess maybe there is much junk files or "other" storage on your iPad Air. You should know what is the Other storage clearly firstly. There are just too many things that require physical storage. That's why Apple chose to lump a lot of things into the "Other" category. Also you can refer to this thread who has the similar situation with you. Hope it's helpful to you. https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/3elqfe/iphone_6_says_storage_almost_fullexcept_its_not/


Moving Messages History from Macbook to iPad Mini I have my messages synced with my iPad Mini and computer, but I've had the computer longer and I want to copy my message history from my computer over to my iPad. What's the easiest way to do this?

Follow these steps to back up and restore Messages (and other app data) from one iPhone to another:
1. Connect the old iPhone to a power source and turn on Wi-Fi.
2. On the old iPhone - assuming you're running iOS 8 or later - tap Settings > iCloud > Backup. The Backup switch is near the bottom of the large group of controls. (On iOS 7 or earlier, you should tap Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup.)
3. Make sure iCloud Backup is turned on.

Tap Back Up Now, and wait for the backup process to complete. You'll need to remain connected to Wi-Fi for the entirety of this process.
Turn on your new iPhone. If you haven't done so already, you'll need to go through the setup process. When asked, tap Restore from iCloud Backup and Next. If you've already been through the setup process, you'll need to reset your iPhone. Tap on Settings > General > Reset and > Erase All Content and Settings.
Enter your Apple ID and Password.


How to make Mac Terminal restore working directories when restarting I use the Mac Terminal with a hand full of tabs each assigned to a different working directory. I have configured it to open new windows with the same working directory. Nevertheless, when I am quitting Terminal, and restart it it rebuilds all the tabs, their names, even shows me the last output in the window but stays in the user home directory and does not restore the latest working directory of each tab.

What am I doing wrong? Can this be caused by some setting in the ~/.bash_profile?

(For reference, we’re talking about the Resume feature of Mac OS X Lion 10.7 and later.)

Terminal automatically restores the working directory if you’re using the default shell, bash. If you’re using some other shell, you’ll need to adapt the code in /etc/bashrc to send an escape sequence to communicate the working directory to Terminal so it can restore the directory later for Resume. If you’re using zsh, see my answer to Resume Zsh-Terminal (OS X Lion), in which I include the appropriate code for zsh.

If you have a custom ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc you may need to ensure that you’re not undoing the default behavior by modifying /etc/bashrc’s customizations. In particular, it sets the PROMPT_COMMAND environment variable to send the escape sequence at each prompt. If you customize that variable, you’ll need to prefix or append your code to the current value, e.g.:

PROMPT_COMMAND="<your code here>;$PROMPT_COMMAND"

Also, generally, ~/.bash_profile should execute ~/.bashrc:

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
    . ~/.bashrc
fi


Why should I jailbreak my AppleTV 2G? Why should I jailbreak my AppleTV 2G? I'm confused on what extra functionality it brings. I understand you can browse the full internet with something like a typical web browser, but that doesn't interest me at all. What else is there?

Other options are installing XBMC or Plex, and having much more control over your Apple TV - you can then play any media format, more easily access data from your other computers, access the full internet (as you pointed out) and find lots of different plugins for a range of different things.

If you are interested, you can check out this article on Lifehacker about jailbreaking and installing XBMC - it's really a very straightforward process.

If you'd like to have a play around, you can also download XBMX and Plex for your Mac or PC to see what they are all about. Good luck.


Photo library on external network drive I am quickly filling up my hard drive and would like to move my iPhoto library to an external drive. I understand that it must be on an HFS+ formatted drive to properly work. I would prefer to attach an HFS+ formatted drive to my TimeCapsule and use that drive via WiFi to store my iPhone library. But I see that there are issues with network dropouts. I would prefer to not have to schlep a drive out of the closet or upstairs every time I want to import photos.

So, my question what, if any, other options do I have if I want to get my photo library off my local storage and onto some sort of network option? I am open to switching away from iPhoto to Aperture or Lightroom if needed.

There are two main options which I would go for:

Put your library and contents on a network volume

This is the option that I went for on my setup, mainly because I did not consider the second option at that point in time. This option works fine for me — even when the network drops (which is pretty rare): the data transfer pauses and continues when the network reconnects.

This works fine for my relatively large Aperture library, but I see no reason for this not to work in iPhoto.

✓ Easy to set up, just copy your entire library to a network drive and ⌥-launch iPhoto
✓ Uses no space on your local machine
✗ Possibly susceptible to network dropouts causing problems
Put your library on your local machine and the contents on a network volume

This alternative is probably better, but requires that you switch to Aperture. This way, you keep the library on your local machine but the media is stored on a network drive. This means that it uses very little space on your local machine but even if the network drops there is no chance of corruption/etc.

✓ Much less likely to have problems due to network dropouts
✓ Uses very little space on your local machine
✗ Does use some space on your local machine
✗ Harder to set up — not as simple as just copying your entire library


Why does OS X keep forgetting my trackpad settings I am running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on an early 2010 15" MacBook Pro. After restarting from scratch (what I don't do often usually) my trackpad is set back to "click" instead of "touch".

This started happening lately and I suspect this came with an update.

Is this a known bug and/or is there a solution to this?

The symptoms you describe are caused by the preference not getting saved to disk. Sometimes the cause is that there is a problem with the file permissions (as per thaatz's answer).
Another possibility is that the preference file somehow got corrupted; if this is the case, you can move the preference file (I think the relevant one is ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.trackpad.plist) from its location: this will cause the preference file to be recreated.
Of course this will work also for other preferences (though identifying the correct file isn't always as easy); remember to keep the file around (instead of deleting it) so you can restore it in case this fix doesn't work.


How can ZFS be used with encryption on OS X? Ideals:

protection of home directories should be better than in Lion (for multiple administrators: FileVault 2 alone is less secure than FileVault 1)
resizing a file system should be simple and nondestructive.

I'll begin with an answer should be good for released and beta builds of ZEVO on OS X 10.7.4. It does not meet the ideals above, but it's food for thought.

Wish for Mountain Lion and greater versions of OS X to offer better support in these areas.

Answers may be added or improved after any of the following:

release of OS X 10.8
improvements to ZEVO
improvements to ZFS (encrypting ZFS is currently limited to Oracle Solaris).

OS X 10.7.4 Core Storage for encryption, ZEVO for ZFS

Example

Objective: one physical disk, five volumes. One of five non-encrypted, one encrypted with a passphrase, three encrypted with a different passphrase.

Starting point:

/dev/disk2 – a physical disk
/dev/disk2s2 – a JHFS+ volume to be kept, unprotected
/dev/disk2s3 – a slice to be destroyed, to be reused with encryption and ZFS.

Hints

Since HFS+ has a single global lock for all metadata updates (held across the I/O) it is highly sensitive to disk latencies. So whilst the mixture of ZFS with JHFS+ on a single disk is possible, for most use cases the file system mixture is not recommended.

This example also makes some use of compression, and of child file systems.

Summary of commands

diskutil coreStorage create pusscats /dev/disk2s3
diskutil coreStorage createVolume 370260EF-D772-4739-BAF6-F4CD6F49A60D jhfs+ Billski 50% -passphrase
diskutil coreStorage createVolume 370260EF-D772-4739-BAF6-F4CD6F49A60D jhfs+ Pickle 100% -passphrase
diskutil unmount disk3 && diskutil unmount disk4
sudo zpool create -O casesensitivity=insensitive -O normalization=formD Billski /dev/disk3
sudo zpool create -O casesensitivity=insensitive -O normalization=formD -O compression=on Pickle /dev/disk4
zfs create Pickle/button
zfs create Pickle/button/nose
sudo chown gjp22 /Volumes/Billski
sudo chown gjp22 /Volumes/Pickle
zpool export Billski && zpool export Pickle
diskutil unmount /Volumes/slice\ two

The output, in Terminal

sh-3.2$ diskutil list disk2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *8.0 GB     disk2
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS slice two               1.5 GB     disk2s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS slice three             6.0 GB     disk2s3
sh-3.2$ diskutil coreStorage create pusscats /dev/disk2s3
Started CoreStorage operation
Unmounting disk2s3
Touching partition type on disk2s3
Adding disk2s3 to Logical Volume Group
Creating Core Storage Logical Volume Group
Switching disk2s3 to Core Storage
Waiting for Logical Volume Group to appear
Discovered new Logical Volume Group "370260EF-D772-4739-BAF6-F4CD6F49A60D"
Core Storage LVG UUID: 370260EF-D772-4739-BAF6-F4CD6F49A60D
Finished CoreStorage operation
sh-3.2$ diskutil coreStorage createVolume 370260EF-D772-4739-BAF6-F4CD6F49A60D jhfs+ Billski 50% -passphrase
Passphrase for new volume:
Confirm new passphrase:
Started CoreStorage operation
Waiting for Logical Volume to appear
Formatting file system for Logical Volume
Initialized /dev/rdisk3 as a 3 GB HFS Plus volume with a 8192k journal
Mounting disk
Core Storage LV UUID: 22CF33F0-9EB1-424C-AFFA-FFA45A75A828
Core Storage disk: disk3
Finished CoreStorage operation
sh-3.2$ diskutil coreStorage createVolume 370260EF-D772-4739-BAF6-F4CD6F49A60D jhfs+ Pickle 100% -passphrase
Passphrase for new volume:
Confirm new passphrase:
Started CoreStorage operation
Waiting for Logical Volume to appear
Formatting file system for Logical Volume
Initialized /dev/rdisk4 as a 3 GB HFS Plus volume with a 8192k journal
Mounting disk
Core Storage LV UUID: 500E7D8F-27A3-4704-BF9F-5AE5D6BB6982
Core Storage disk: disk4
Finished CoreStorage operation
sh-3.2$ diskutil unmount disk3 && diskutil unmount disk4
Volume Billski on disk3 unmounted
Volume Pickle on disk4 unmounted
sh-3.2$ sudo zpool create -O casesensitivity=insensitive -O normalization=formD Billski /dev/disk3
Password:
sh-3.2$ sudo zpool create -O casesensitivity=insensitive -O normalization=formD -O compression=on Pickle /dev/disk4
sh-3.2$ zfs create Pickle/button
cannot mount '/Volumes/Pickle/button': failed to create mountpoint
filesystem successfully created, but not mounted
sh-3.2$ zfs create Pickle/button/nose
cannot mount '/Volumes/Pickle/button/nose': failed to create mountpoint
filesystem successfully created, but not mounted
sh-3.2$ sudo chown gjp22 /Volumes/Billski
sh-3.2$ sudo chown gjp22 /Volumes/Pickle
sh-3.2$ zpool export Billski && zpool export Pickle
sh-3.2$ diskutil unmount /Volumes/slice\ two
Volume slice two on disk2s2 unmounted
sh-3.2$ clear

At this point, with all volumes of the physical disk unmounted, you can disconnect the disk. Reconnection should allow use of the child file systems:

sh-3.2$ zfs list
NAME                  USED   AVAIL   REFER  MOUNTPOINT
Billski             1.04Mi  2.37Gi   684Ki  /Volumes/Billski
Pickle              1.87Mi  2.37Gi   472Ki  /Volumes/Pickle
Pickle/button        808Ki  2.37Gi   412Ki  /Volumes/Pickle/button
Pickle/button/nose   396Ki  2.37Gi   396Ki  /Volumes/Pickle/button/nose
sh-3.2$ clear

sh-3.2$ mount | grep /dev/
/dev/disk1 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
/dev/disk0s2 on /Volumes/11E53 (hfs, local, journaled)
/dev/disk2s2 on /Volumes/slice two (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)
/dev/disk4 on /Volumes/Billski (zfs, local, journaled)
/dev/disk6 on /Volumes/Pickle (zfs, local, journaled)
/dev/disk6s1 on /Volumes/Pickle/button (zfs, local, journaled)
/dev/disk6s1s1 on /Volumes/Pickle/button/nose (zfs, local, journaled)
sh-3.2$ clear

sh-3.2$ ls -l /Volumes
total 40
drwxr-xr-x@ 32 root   wheel  1156  3 Jun 09:08 11E53
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root   admin     1  4 Jun 15:17 11E53-2012-06-03 -> /
drwxr-xr-x   5 root   wheel     5  4 Jun 22:27 Billski
drwxr-xr-x   6 root   wheel     6  4 Jun 22:33 Pickle
drwxrwxr-x   7 gjp22  staff   306  4 Jun 21:41 slice two
sh-3.2$ clear

sh-3.2$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *160.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS 11E53                   25.0 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:          Apple_CoreStorage                         25.0 GB    disk0s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s5
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS 11E53-2012-06-03       *24.7 GB    disk1
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *8.0 GB     disk2
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS slice two               1.5 GB     disk2s2
   3:          Apple_CoreStorage                         6.0 GB     disk2s3
   4:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk2s4
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.9 GB     disk3
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:                        ZFS                         2.6 GB     disk3s2
/dev/disk4
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:             zfs_pool_proxy Billski                *2.6 GB     disk4
/dev/disk5
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.9 GB     disk5
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk5s1
   2:                        ZFS                         2.6 GB     disk5s2
/dev/disk6
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:             zfs_pool_proxy Pickle                 *2.6 GB     disk6
   1:       zfs_filesystem_proxy button                  2.5 GB     disk6s1
   2:       zfs_filesystem_proxy nose                    2.5 GB     disk6s1s1
sh-3.2$ clear

sh-3.2$ diskutil coreStorage list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (2 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group ED97CA61-2077-45CE-9CBB-8AA0A7600CB5
|   =========================================================
|   Name:         b
|   Sequence:     1
|   Free Space:   0 B (0 B)
|   |
|   +-< Physical Volume 5C79B2B6-CE01-4F02-9222-2AD898791AC5
|   |   ----------------------------------------------------
|   |   Index:    0
|   |   Disk:     disk0s4
|   |   Status:   Online
|   |   Size:     24999997440 B (25.0 GB)
|   |
|   +-> Logical Volume Family 7A9C5B98-287F-4F6B-9F9C-9641EFBC16E1
|       ----------------------------------------------------------
|       Sequence:               11
|       Encryption Status:      Unlocked
|       Encryption Type:        AES-XTS
|       Encryption Context:     Present
|       Conversion Status:      Complete
|       Has Encrypted Extents:  Yes
|       Conversion Direction:   -none-
|       |
|       +-> Logical Volume 3A130C9E-63AE-4F00-A1C3-E750B1570381
|           ---------------------------------------------------
|           Disk:               disk1
|           Status:             Online
|           Sequence:           5
|           Size (Total):       24681226240 B (24.7 GB)
|           Size (Converted):   -none-
|           Revertible:         Yes (unlock and decryption required)
|           LV Name:            11E53-2012-06-03
|           Volume Name:        11E53-2012-06-03
|           Content Hint:       Apple_HFS
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 370260EF-D772-4739-BAF6-F4CD6F49A60D
    =========================================================
    Name:         pusscats
    Sequence:     1
    Free Space:   0 B (0 B)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume F64F6909-25BF-4638-8647-CD058D60968B
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk2s3
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     6020829184 B (6.0 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 4D42970B-FAB7-4EFE-B120-2057A9A7A7E5
    |   ----------------------------------------------------------
    |   Sequence:               2
    |   Encryption Status:      Unlocked
    |   Encryption Type:        AES-XTS
    |   Encryption Context:     Present
    |   Conversion Status:      NoConversion
    |   Has Encrypted Extents:  Yes
    |   Conversion Direction:   -none-
    |   |
    |   +-> Logical Volume 22CF33F0-9EB1-424C-AFFA-FFA45A75A828
    |       ---------------------------------------------------
    |       Disk:               disk3
    |       Status:             Online
    |       Sequence:           2
    |       Size (Total):       2934915072 B (2.9 GB)
    |       Size (Converted):   -none-
    |       Revertible:         No
    |       LV Name:            Billski
    |       Content Hint:       Apple_HFS
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 3A009EF4-4B3D-4BC8-8B47-EFE88B2BA12A
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Sequence:               2
        Encryption Status:      Unlocked
        Encryption Type:        AES-XTS
        Encryption Context:     Present
        Conversion Status:      NoConversion
        Has Encrypted Extents:  Yes
        Conversion Direction:   -none-
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 500E7D8F-27A3-4704-BF9F-5AE5D6BB6982
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:               disk5
            Status:             Online
            Sequence:           2
            Size (Total):       2934910976 B (2.9 GB)
            Size (Converted):   -none-
            Revertible:         No
            LV Name:            Pickle
            Content Hint:       Apple_HFS
sh-3.2$ clear

sh-3.2$ zpool status
  pool: Billski
 state: ONLINE
 scan: none requested
config:

    NAME                                         STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
    Billski                                      ONLINE       0     0     0
      GPTE_7CBD336C-568A-41AE-8E61-291CBD8EF783  ONLINE       0     0     0  at disk3s2

errors: No known data errors

  pool: Pickle
 state: ONLINE
 scan: none requested
config:

    NAME                                         STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
    Pickle                                       ONLINE       0     0     0
      GPTE_25BF8159-FB8D-4589-B52A-184F6675176E  ONLINE       0     0     0  at disk5s2

errors: No known data errors
sh-3.2$

The end result, in Finder

Known issues

In CoreStorage world the content hint Apple_HFS will be not true for the ZFS end result. I have asked Apple to allow a more suitable hint.

At unlock time, the system may appear to reject the passphrase (maybe because of the content hint mismatch). When rejection appears:

wait
the unlocked volume (and any child file systems) should mount
escape from the password dialogue.

If you wish, use Keychain Access to add to a keychain the passphrase for the UUID of a Core Storage logical volume.

Mountain Lion no longer supports diskutil eraseDisk placement of partition maps on Core Storage logical volumes –

gpes3e-gjp4:~ gjp22$ diskutil list /dev/disk4 && diskutil list /dev/disk5
/dev/disk4
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *8.0 GB     disk4
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk4s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage test                    7.7 GB     disk4s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk4s3
/dev/disk5
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS test                   *7.3 GB     disk5
gpes3e-gjp4:~ gjp22$ diskutil unmount /dev/disk5
Volume test on disk5 unmounted
gpes3e-gjp4:~ gjp22$ sudo zpool create -O casesensitivity=insensitive -O normalization=formD Billski /dev/disk5

Unable to begin erase operation: Placing a partition map on a Core Storage logical volume is not supported (-69671)
diskutil eraseDisk failed, exit status 1
gpes3e-gjp4:~ gjp22$ sw_vers
ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.8.5
BuildVersion:   12F37
gpes3e-gjp4:~ gjp22$

– thanks to mgrosman for the alert.

Repairs

Considering Apple's design of Core Storage to work primarily with content hint Apple_HFS, and the bugs in fsck_cs:

I don't know whether 'forcing' alternative types (ZFS, zfs_pool_proxy, zfs_filesystem_proxy and so on) might impair the ability of fsck_cs to effect repairs in case of difficulty.

Proceed with caution.


What's option-drag in Display Arrangement do? In macOS Mojave, when in the Displays control panel, on the Arrangement tab, holding down option and dragging a display turns the cursor white.  What does this mean?  Does it do something special?

Holding down the Option key allows the currently dragged display to be dropped on top of another display to enable mirroring.

The dragged display still snaps to the edges of the other displays at first, but if you drag further towards the center, the displays can be made to overlap and this turns on the "Mirror Displays" checkbox.


What is the resolution of the Apple Thunderbolt Display's built-in camera? Apple's tech specs for the Thunderbolt Display merely lists a:

  Built-in FaceTime HD camera with microphone

I've not been able to find what the maximum possible resolution is. I say maximum possible because Photo Booth takes 4:3 pictures, where Quicktime Player's video recording can take what I believe is a full frame, 16:10 (or 16:9) video.

What is the maximum possible resolution image and/or video that a Thunderbolt Display's built-in webcam can take?

4:3 or 16:10 or 16:9 is aspect ratio.  As for maximum resolution, open Quicktime to do a video recording thru the camera and set the quality to maximum.  You don't have to hit record, just do ⌘+i for the movie inspector and you will see the recording resolution there.  The camera will record at the highest possible resolution it can.


Why is my iPhone transmitting in airplane mode? I switched my iPhone 8 into airplane mode, but it continued periodically transmitting on 1.8 GHz, as measured by an electrosmog meter. Why? Isn't airplane mode supposed to turn off the radio transmitters? Or is airplane mode on an iPhone only a low-power mode?

After enabling airplane mode, I powered the phone off and booted it in a Faraday cage. It still transmitted on 1.8 GHz, despite not being able to receive any cell tower signals.

The issue might be related to the "persistent settings to Airplane Mode" since iOS 11. This means that I can go into airplane mode and enable Bluetooth or WiFi and Bluetooth or WiFi will remain on whenever I'm in airplane mode:

However, this does not explain why the 1.8 GHz cellular transmitter still transmitted in airplane mode.

I reset network settings and rebooted the phone a few times, now it isn't having this issue.


How can I get rid of this context menu option? I deleted AppDelete from my computer because I used it once and it sat on my computer for like forever. Now every time I click on something in finder, it gives me the option to delete it with AppDelete. How can I get rid of this?

You can see it is the bottom option in the popup menu.

From: http://www.reggieashworth.com/appdelete

  AppDelete keeps a .workflow file to provide a contextual menu item for convenience. If ever removal is required simply delete it from your /Library/Services folder. Or on Leopard your /Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder folder.

It appears you should be able to remove that menu item by deleting an item from one of the afore mentioned folders depending on which OS you have installed.


I am trying to play music from an external hard drive to my TV using my Apple TV and Network with no success This is an apple household with Apple TV HD, Airport Extreme base Station, Macbook Pro 16 (2019), Catalina, not to mention iPhones and iPads.
I have a large amount of music, almost 400gb, on a SanDisk 500GB Extreme Portable USB 3.1 Type-C External SSD. This is far more than the capacity of the Apple TV.
I would like to be able to access my music on the drive directly on my Sony TV using the Apple TV. I have 2 computers accessible through the Apple TV and Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil to play music through the network by connecting it to the TV through my network, but I'd rather be able to directly access the drive and my music through the Apple TV without using my computer.
I did try to plug the hard drive directly into the Sony TV's USB port, but it said the device was not supported-perhaps because it's too large?
Is there a way to access my music on the drive directly using the Apple TV?
Thanks in advance for any help and ideas!
marc

You can use VLC which can play most media formats - both movie and audio.
Under “Local Network” map your External drive, and then you should be up running.
But the External drive need to be on the network e.g. as a NAS or added to your router as a media drive.


Multiple remote logins from Windows clients to a Mac mini server I would like to share a Mac mini (currently running Mac OS X Server 10.6.8) allowing coworkers running Windows XP on their boxes to perform a remote login using their username/password. They should each get a session of their own in which they can use MacOS without interfering with other users.

As far as I know the usual remote desktop sharing mechanisms like VNC only share the desktop of the user that is currently logged in.

Is that scenario possible?

Thanks for your help!

With Lion this is possible, but I think there is a limit of 2 sessions, and you don't need to be running the server tools.  When you screen share a Mac that has it enabled, you can choose to either just take over the screen as per the scenario you are used to, or move to the "virtual display", where you can log in as a 2nd user.

Many (particularly PC/Windows) VNC clients are getting tripped up by this new behaviour and do not connect at at all at present, so you might need to careful with your choice of client.

Edit: I think the 2 session limit is to provide the ability to allow an administrator to login on the 2nd session to work without interupting the normal user, I would test whether more than 2 sessions are available, but I can only get it to work from a Mac client using screen share via the finder rather than a specific VNC client app, and I only have 2 Macs...


Obtain a private URL to a file in iCloud Drive without making the file available to anyone with the link I would like to get links to files in my iCloud Drive so that I can paste links to them in other apps (notes, email, etc) for quick access to these files in the future. I know that I can share the files and make them available to anyone with the link, but I don’t want anyone but me to be able to see these files — I want to make it impossible for anyone who can’t log in to iCloud as me to see these files, even if they obtain the URL.

Is it possible in Finder to get a URL to a file that only works for me and no one else? If I try to share the file and select “Only people you can invite can make changes”, then I have to share the link with someone before it will let me copy the link.

You're doing good except for the last line where you will have to share the link with someone.

Share the link with yourself.

Choose imessages as the sharing option and enter your email or number. And add yourself.

To check the validity, This is a .Pages file and please try to access it and tell me if you can open and edit it or not.

Since this requires sign-in, I don't think you will be allowed to edit or even view it.

Only bad thing is the file name is in the URL


iPhone 8 proximity sensor not working after display switch so I've changed a splintered display including a new flex-cable with front camera, brightness and proximity sensor of an iPhone 8 for my first time and it is working nearly as wanted... nearly!
The proximity sensor does not work anymore but everything else: The front camera, the display, the home button, the automatic setting of brightness and also the earpice is working without a problem. The sensor is plugged in its place and can "see" through the cut-out.
My question is: Is there any step missing? Do I (which I doubt) have to activate again because it is a new hardware component?
Thanks in advance!

No, you don’t need to take any further steps. There are no additional settings for the proximity-sensor. I see only this steps to repaire your sensor:

Restarting your iPhone
Trie to restoring from a backup
Trie to restoring to factory-settings
The proximity-sensor is malfunction (already delivered defective, or by assembling), so change the display again with a new one

If no step is helpful, I would advise to contact the apple support and make a appointment to show the iPhone bug.


How to extract an .ace compressed file? Is there a way to open .ace compressed file on macOS? I tried searching for solutions but haven't come across any method to extract it yet.

Shameless plug: With acefile there is now a python based solution to uncompress ACE archives, that is slow, but works on OS X.  Simply make sure you have Python 3 and then install acefile:

pip3 install acefile

Then you will have the acefile-unace utility installed, that you can use to extract ACE archives, including the newer ACE 2.0 format that is not supported by most archivers with ACE support on platforms other than Windows.  Run something like:

acefile-unace -x example.ace

You may have to explicitly give the bin path of your python installation if you don't have that in your PATH (e.g. /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/bin/).


How to reset Launchpad ordering in OS X Yosemite? Previously I can remove the files end with db in ~/Library/Application Support/Dock/ to reset the ordering of apps, but now doing the same thing doesn’t help. Do anyone know where the new path that organizes the Launchpad is located?

Enter this line in the console:

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true; killall Dock

Removing the db doesn't seem to do the trick any more. So this two steps are necessary to reset the Launchpad in Yosemite:

  rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db ; killall Dock
  defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true; killall Dock


What is the minimum Mac OS Partition size when using Boot Camp on a Macbook Air? And does it vary with 128GB or 256GB size hard drives?

I don't see how this would depend on the type of Mac or hard drive. Instead, it should only depend on the version of OS X that you're running.

While Apple's documentations for OS X 10.7 Lion state 7 GB as a required minimum, BootCamp 4.0.3 allows a minimum of 8GB for the OS X partition. Probably, because this includes the 650 MB for the recovery partition (end of page).


Advancing to Next Slide when current slide has multiple videos I'm new to Keynote, and I'm happy to have created a slide with multiple embedded videos that auto-play thanks to the animate functionality. While the videos look great on the first pass, if I want to go back to this slide at the end of my presentation, Keynote "sees" each video and the animation as something to toggle through. What I want is for the arrow buttons to ignore the videos all together and to be able to toggle back and forth without getting caught up in the video content.

The closest I've come to resolving this issue is putting the whole document on "self-playing", but the maximum delay is too short for my comfort. I love how slick it looks on the first play though, but if I wanted to go back to another slide at the end of my presentation, I'll get tangled up in the video/animation on this slide.

Is there a way to make the presentation ignore the videos/animation while navigating through slides?

Try pressing Shift - ▼ (Shift - Down Arrow) to advance through slides without triggering slide elements (animations, video playback etc.).


How can I stop my mac from switching desktops when I receive a phone call When my phone rings the phone call shows up on my mac, which is great except that it also switches my display from the full-screen application to the main desktop screen.

Since the FaceTime popup is basically the same size and shape as a regular notification, is there any way to get it to pop up like other notifications instead of switching to the desktop and interrupting my work?

Assign it to either "All Desktops" or "None."  Right Click to access the context menu and then select "Options"

I have mine set to "None" and regardless of where I am, it does't switch but the notification pops up in the Notification center as expected.


I'm finding my iMac 21" late 2015 to be unstable after upgrading to High Sierra If I leave my iMac for a while, it refuses to come out of sleep mode; the screen remains black, the mouse, once it unfreezes moves slowly and then the pinwheel appears forever. I'm forced to force power down (pressing the button).

To explain :

I've just bought a reconditioned "as new" 21" iMac which came with High Sierra, but unfortunately the setup was all in German despite my choosing the UK language.

Apple support advised me to erase and reload my OS X, but of course my last registered OSX is El Capitan. All went well with that and the migration of my files from Time Capsule backups, but I thought I should follow Apple support's advice and upgrade to High Sierra.

It hasn't really worked well since. It's sometimes very slow to respond despite it's fusion drive, while at others it works fine.

Any ideas? I think I'd rather return to El Capitan which seemed to be okay...

It's highly unlikely you'll have an instability issue on one OS and not the other.

I'd focus on getting High Sierra installed and running since Apple will support that the best for you. Also - you could wipe and reinstall with no apps, no data - just use the brand new install for a day or three to be sure the system is stable.

If not - you'll know to seek a return / price adjustment from the seller or at least know you need to fix the Mac and it's not a software issue if you do a clean install and it's not working.


How can I have ClickToFlash except for YouTube? I use the ClickToFlash Safari extension, out of concern for Flash security vulnerabilities and to remove annoyances. However, I do not like its replacements for YouTube video players over YouTube's own player.

How can I configure ClickToFlash so that it does not affect YouTube players (whether on YouTube pages or embedded), but blocks/replaces all other Flash? Putting “www.youtube.com/” in the “Allow Flash on these sites:” list works for YouTube itself, but not embedding.

bmike's comment prodded me into actually, y'know, reading the manual, which led me to find that the whitelists are in fact substring matches. Therefore these settings work:

I had to find the /v/ URL by looking at the source of a page with a YouTube embedding.


iPhone 6 stolen. Did I accidentally cancel my pending data erase by removing account from iCloud too soon? I lost my iphone 6 maybe 2 hours ago and proceeded to do some damage control by accessing the Find My iPhone feature on iCloud. In the following order in the span of maybe 10 minutes, I turned the iPhone on Lost Mode, selected the  remote wipe, and selected "remove device from account." I also called my carrier to make sure the account with that phone is cancelled.

However...my iphone has been OFFLINE the whole time, including the time it was stolen. Since I selected the "erase data" and "remove device from account" fuctions while it was offline, will the data still be removed? I read somewhere that removing the device from the iCloud account might cancel the pending iphone data wipe. Does that mean the thief will have access to my phone and all its files? Or will my phone wipe automatically since I selected the "erase data" function? I just want to make sure the thief won't be able to access any of the data on that phone.

I appreciate the help. Thanks!

It was really wrong that you have choosen to remove device from account. If you have passcode on it your data is probably safe but since you have removed it from your account it can now be restored as new without any iCloud lock whatsoever.


How does one send MIDI files from iOS Garageband? Simple as asked. There's already info for GB as target; what about source?

Unfortunately the answer is just as simple: you can't.

At least not using GarageBand for iOS only. It doesn't have an "export MIDI" function, in fact you can only export the entire project, not individual tracks, so I suppose it isn't too surprising.

This is not to say it is impossible to get midi from the software instrument tracks in a GB for iOS project.

The first idea that comes to mind is to open the .band file in Logic or GarageBand for Mac (transfer via USB or use the sharing option) then export the project or tracks as a midi file (actually I am not 100% sure about GarageBand, I know you can in Logic).

It would be nice if you could do this without having to resort to using a Mac though, (especially since Apple markets the iPad Pro as being more powerful than many laptops; the iPad version of GarageBand can't do this either) and it's not like it is a fundamental limitation of iOS, it's just GarageBand for iOS doesn't have the feature. If there is an app that can open the .band files saved by GB for iOS and save the software instrument tracks as midi files, you could do what you want entirely on your iOS device.

But it still wouldn't be possible with GarageBand for iOS alone, at least currently. I'd recommend submitting feedback, both in the App Store and the Apple Support website, IMO this would be a popularly welcomed feature if it is implemented, I don't use GarageBand too often so I was surprised the only export/share options was as a bounced audio track and project file.


Where can I find the installed package path via brew I installed some packages via brew. But I can not find where they are.

I can not get access by typing hping on terminal

% brew install hping
(git)-[master]
Warning: hping-3.20051105 already installed

Use the following to show the installation path of a package:

brew info hping

Example output:

pcre: stable 8.35 (bottled)
http://www.pcre.org/
/usr/local/Cellar/pcre/8.35 (146 files, 5.8M) *
  Poured from bottle
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/pcre.rb
==> Options
--universal
    Build a universal binary


Is there a way to keep internal drive segments unmounted while booting from external device For forensic imaging of drives and/or segments with a native Mac application, I'm booting from external device (usb, hdd, etc.) into BaseSystem. I want to keep the internal drives and/or segments unmounted during the boot process. Later will disable disk arbitration, mount these drives/segments and image them. Since the drives should be kept unmounted, there is no way of knowing drive/segment volume names and/or UUID.

I've created a deamon (System/Library/LaunchDeamons) for mount blocking (on external boot device), but it only blocks newly attached devices, not internal ones.

Also, I've also tried disabling "diskarbitrationd" daemon (desperately, on external boot device), but not worked.

Note: I've created boot image from BaseSystem.dmg of Sierra (10.12.1), and modified the contents.

Nobody even commented. There may be a solution from a clue keyword  autodiskmount


How can I guarantee that audio only from my media player hits the speakers? I'm DJ-ing and I want to make sure that my music and nothing else is getting pumped out the speakers.

Undesirable things that may hit the speakers include:

Calendar.app reminders
Messages.app alerts
Calls (e.g. via FaceTime or Continuity)
Media playing in other applications, such as YouTube in my browser
System sounds (such as when you change the volume)

Of course, many of these things can be mitigated by turning WiFi off or fiddling with settings here and there. But it would be better if there was an explicit way to somehow specify that only audio from my media player gets to the speakers.

Is there a straightforward way to do this?

I don't know of an explicit way (I doubt there is one), but ClickToFlash and Do Not Disturb mode (Option click the notification center icon to toggle) will cover most of those things.

To disable the volume "popping" sound effect: open System Preferences > Sound > Sound Effects tab, and uncheck play feedback when sound is changed


Restart the computer when the system freeze I'm working on a code but sometimes the memory gets full and the system freeze. I've been searching a little bit and there is an option that restarts the computer when the system freeze, but I can't find that option in my iMac. It's important to mention that the Mac is in another place. I access to the Mac through AnyDesk but as I mentioned some times the Mac freeze and I can't be in that place to reboot it manually, I want to know if there is an automatically way to reboot when the computer freeze. I'm using macOS 10.14.6.

Here is how:

sudo systemsetup -setrestartfreeze on

just need to setup this once. It keeps the setting forever, until someday you set it to off again.


Option to choose reply from address on mail.app in Lion My default position is to stay within the OS X ecosystem unless their is a compelling reason to use use a 3rd party product. Gmail (with Sparrow) has long been keeping me from using mail.app on my desktop, but I'm thinking it's time to reconsider. I'm hoping someone can answer this to save me doing the work just to find out - Can I choose which of my accounts to reply from or am I limited to the address it was sent to ?

On the fly in the reply dialog:

Set default in the preferences:


What is hardware type ID in keylayout xml file? In a ".keylayout" file there is <layout> element where you can specify a "mapSet" and "modifierMap" for a range of keyboard types. Apples Technical Note TN2056 describes the XML file structure, but not what a "keyboard type hardware ID" actually is. They say:

  Apple will map new keyboard hardware IDs to one of the existing ones,
  so it is usually sufficient to copy and paste the entire
  element from an existing keyboard layout.

Great, but I really would like to understand what this ID is.

At first look it seems like ID 0 through 17 are ANSI keyboards, but when I look at the key layout for European layouts (which are usually ISO keyboards) I find ID 0 and 1, so I guess the IDs are not related to ANSI/ISO/JIS.

I got an excellent answer in the Google Group "Ukelele Users" (link directly to the answer) from John Brownie. The hardware ID is what is returned by CGEventSourceGetKeyboardType. Mr Brownie writes:

  The keyboard ID is what is reported back to the system when certain
  system calls are made. Historically, these were 'gestalt' calls, but
  currently it uses Quartz Events, calling CGEventSourceGetKeyboardType.

For a list of IDs, see the answer in the group.


In AirPort Utility, what is the menu item "Restore Default Settings"? In AirPort Utility v.6.3.2, what is the menu item "Restore Default Settings..." I see under "Base Station" and does it relate to a soft, hard, or factory default reset? Thank you.

According to AirPort Utility 6.x: Reset your base station, it will reset your base station to Apple factory settings, meaning that you will lose your current setup and it'll be just as if you were setting it up for the first time out of the box.

Use this option if you're having issues with your base station and nothing else seems to be helping ... or when you're getting ready to sell it.


Bypass Mavericks Setup Assistant I just upgraded my system from Mountain Lion to Mavericks.  When my system restarted, the Setup Assistant ran.

The Setup Assistant is asking me to configure things on my system that are already configured — location, internet connection, etc.  Plus, it is forcing me to create a new user account, but my user account from Mountain Lion still exists (evidenced by the fact that when I try to enter my previous user name, Setup Assistant informs me that username is taken and won't let me continue).

Seeing as how my system is already configured, I'd like to skip the Setup Assistant.

How do I do that?

It may be possible for you to bypass the Setup Assistant by creating a file at /var/db/.AppleSetupDone. This can be done by: booting up into single user mode.

The following command will mount the boot drive as read/write device, create the .AppleSetupDone file, and restart your computer

mount -uw / && touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone && reboot

If your user account is actually intact, you will be able to login to the computer, and everything will be normal. However, in some of these situations, it's possible that your user account doesn't actually exist (unlikely based on the fact that you can't recreate it), or that your password hash is not a supported one (or is missing).

If you cannot login normally after disabling the Setup Assistant, you can re-enable it by removing the file that you created above. This can be accomplished by booting back into single user mode, and performing the following command:

mount -uw / && rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone && reboot

Once you've restarted, create a differently named user account (Admin?), and use that account to survey the scene. With the newly created user, make sure that you see an existing account for your previous user in System Preferences. If the user exists, it may help to reset the password for that user (to re-create the hash), and then attempt to login.


Import Chrome bookmarks in to Safari? How do I import my Chrome (35.0.1916.153) bookmarks in to Safari (7.0.4)?

Just noting that Safari 8 has an option to import directly from Chrome. In Safari, select File > Import From from menu bar.


iOS Parental Controls and Passcode On iOS 12, with parental controls enabled, is there anyway to override or bypass the system passcode (on the lock screen, not the passcode specifically for parental controls)?  Parental controls seem a little useless if the child can just lock the device and prevent you from accessing it.

On iOS 12 the feature you are referring to is called 'Screen Time'.  With Screen Time you can restrict the ability to change the device's passcode.  You would find this under Settings → Screen Time → Content & Privacy Restrictions → Passcode Changes, then set to 'Don't Allow'.  That way the device is secured with a passcode but the child cannot make changes to it to lock you out of the device.


Download mac os from the app store to external USB Does anyone know how I can download mac os 11.3 to an external USB
seems like the most basic thing but I can't find out how every time I google it I just get articles about making a bootable USB which isn't what I'm interested it.

If you want to have a copy of the macOS installer on an external drive, it's fairly easy to download. This link (https://tidbits.com/2019/10/28/redownload-archived-macos-installers-to-address-expired-certificates/) contains links to several versions of macOS.
These installers are just applications, and how you download the installer varies depending on which version of the operating system you're trying to download. Recent versions require using the Mac App Store to download. It will show up in your Applications folder. After it's finished downloading, just drag it to your external drive.
Apple doesn't make finding these files easy; it wants everyone to use System Preferences to update or Recovery Mode to reinstall. I suspect that's because it's the best way to make sure you have the most recent version (security patches included).


Outlook 2016 shared calendar doesn't show appointments I'm using Outlook 2016 on my mac connecting to office 365.

I can add shared calendars fine, and most calendars work absolutely without an issue for calendars that have permissions set to User = Default, Role = Reviewer.

But on some calendars where the Properties are set to User = Default, Role = Free/Busy, time, subject, location (i.e. the owner of the calendar doesn't want me to see the notes on the meeting), I can't see any appointments at all. It simply shows a blank calendar.

When I use Outlook 2013 on Windows with the same account, I can see the calendar entries for that use just fine.

Does anyone have a pointer on how to make Outlook 2016 respect the privacy settings of the shared calendar but still display the appointments as it should?

Outlook 2011 users must be granted "Reviewer" access to another person's calendar to be able open that calendar and view details. If a user sets permission levels only to allow free/busy or free/busy limited details, an Outlook 2011 user will not be able to see any details of the shared calendar.

PC users must grant "full details" to the Outlook 2011 user. Mac users must grant the "Reviewer" role to Outlook 2011 users.

Basic free/busy time viewing is only viewable via the Outlook 2011 Scheduling Assistant feature, or via OWA. (Note: Outlook 2011 users who have a "Reviewer" role may also be able to select another users name within the Send As / From drop down menu. Unless you have explicit permissions to Create Items within the selected users mailbox, Exchange will not allow you to send on the behalf of that person).

Above is true for Outlook 2016


Finder windows keeps turning off and on All of a sudden my Finder windows keeps disappearing and reappearing every 30 seconds or so. I restarted the computer, and emptied the trash can as some Google search suggested, but none of them worked. Any ideas? I was just browsing the web, wasn't installing/uninstalling anything.

BTW, it's a 2010 iMac with Mavericks.

I just solved it on my side, are you running Google Drive? If so, turn it off and the problem goes away. I did so on my machine and it was back to normal, the moment I started Google Drive, the Finder Windows flashed again.

You can see more people with same issue on the Apple Discussion forums


Partition alert message when using Boot Camp Assistant: "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition." I have a 13" Early-2015 MBP Retina in which I am trying to install Windows 8.1 on. When I went into bootcamp, I received the ever so common error of:

When I went to the newly designed disk utility, it told me I had 2 partitions. Of course, I knew this couldn't be true, so i went into terminal and typed diskutil list and got:

bash-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh SSD           81.0 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS Data                    39.3 GB    disk0s4
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh SSD          +80.6 GB    disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 9839618F-7659-4E0C-BF5C-48B0C94D5E37
                                 Unencrypted

I want to know:

Which partition to delete
How to delete it in a (preferably safe) way that would make my hard
disk "clean" of everything but my main Macintosh HD partition

Thanks!

You have to delete the Data partition. disk1 (Macintosh SSD) is no real partition/disk but a virtual volume residing in disk0s2 but containing your system.

Backup the content of Data
Open Disk Utility
Choose the superior disk and hit "Partition":

Click on the Data partition and hit the - button:

Click Apply

The Data partition will be removed, the Recovery HD moved to the end of the disk and Macintosh SSD will be expanded:

diskutil list #before
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *68.7 GB    disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage System                  51.2 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS Data                    16.5 GB    disk0s4
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS System                 +50.9 GB    disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 4AACDE41-E3A1-444A-A5F6-C1491F46149E
                                 Unencrypted
diskutil list #after
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *68.7 GB    disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage System                  67.9 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh SSD          +67.5 GB    disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 4AACDE41-E3A1-444A-A5F6-C1491F46149E
                                 Unencrypted


Is there a way to require USB drives that are connect a Mac OS X to be encrypted? I have a customer who is concerned that the staff might be using USB drives to move data around.  They would like to require that these drives are encrypted with TrueCrypt or other method.

Is there a way to require that they are encrypted before they are accepted on the Mac OS X device?

I found this article, New USB Enforced Encryption Device for Mac OS, and possible solutions:

  It has always been a challenge for IT administrators to find solutions
  and tools compatible with Mac OS X, but now securing the network and
  data Mac users access is also becoming a priority.

  CoSoSys' Endpoint Protector 4 with Enforced Encryption on
  removable storage devices for Mac OS X solves these problems.

  It offers an easy, yet secure way for Mac users to encrypt data copied
  onto USB storage devices. With intuitive 'drag & drop' and copy/paste
  features, all information copied on the device is instantly protected
  by password-based military strength AES 256-bit encryption. The
  Enforced Encryption functionality also incorporates an additional
  security feature that deletes information if an attempt is made to
  tamper with the data, or when the device gets lost or stolen.

 Therefore, stopping users from taking classified information from Macs minis, iMacs, Mac Pros, MacBooks onto portable devices has become an imperative for the companies' data security. Locking down and monitoring proactively the use of USB, CD/DVD, card readers, etc. is possible with Device Control by Endpoint Protector for Mac OS X and can be managed centrally from the intuitive web-based interface.


What do I do if the disk image data is corrupted? I am trying to install Sims 3, but it opens a window saying that "The following disk images couldn't be opened because the image data was corrupted." What can I do to resolve this issue?

The error message means that the downloaded file is corrupt and can't be opened.

Re-download it and try opening it again. If it fails again, make sure that the download isn't being interrupted.

If you can obtain a checksum for the file, you can check it against your download by running openssl sha1 ~/path/to/download which will show the checksum for your download. Comparing the results should show if the file you downloaded matches what you should expect to download.


Mavericks - I need to be notified when a wifi network becomes available My university's wifi connection goes up at random times. It's faster, so I would want to be notified when it becomes available so that I can surf faster and I don't have to pay for mobile data that I consume while using my phone as a hotspot.

You could use Shell script in  a Applescript Application that checks the available  wifi list. And pops up a notification when the one you want is in the list.

The code is commented to explain how it works.

on idle -- A on idle handler will run the code within it and then set the app to idle. Using little cpu. It will then repeat this every #n of seconds ( determined by its return number)
    set theWifi to "weehronetwork" -- the wifi SSID
    set theList to paragraphs of (do shell script "/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -s| awk '{print $1}'") -- get the wifi list
    if theList contains theWifi then

        display notification with title "The WIFI" subtitle (theWifi & "  IS BACK UP") sound name "Sosumi" -- display a notification.

    end if

    return 60 -- run again in #n seconds

end idle

Save the Applescript as an Application and check Stay open.

When you first run the App. and it displays a Notification, it will then be shown in the System preferences --> Notifications. From here you can determine the Notification type.

Note. I have used a sound in this code. But if you uncheck 'Play Sound for notifications' the sound will not play.


Finder folders have no triangle to twirl I am running 10.9.5 and some folders in list view have no triangles by the subfolders. I would love to know why this happening and how to fix.

I think you have set the folder to be "Arranged By..." something e.g. name.  Go to the View menu; choose "Arrange By", then "None".  You can still sort the columns.