Is there a way to know when a new iOS app is released by a specific company? I'd love to know when Kairosoft gets a new game released on iOS.  Is there an app or site that monitors the daily release list against a user supplied criteria?

One quick way is on AppShopper.com.

Enter "Kairosoft" in the search box.
Click on any app title link.
Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on the "Other Apps By This Developer" link. This will bring up a custom page for that developer listing all of their app titles and update info.
A custom RSS feed is also generated in the upper-right corner of the screen. This feed will update for any new app releases.


Upgrade path for iTunes Connect TestFlight external testers after release to App Store? When releasing to the App Store after using iTunes Connect Testflight beta testing, what's a good way to ensure that external testers get cleanly upgraded to the official App Store version? Specifically:

Will external testers get a notification on the device that a new app version is
available?  Will this be a regular iOS notification, a notification
from the Testflight app, or both?
On the home screen, will the beta app's icon show any indication that
it's been superseded by a non-beta app?
If the user has automatic app updates enabled, will the app store app
download and install automatically, replacing the beta app?  Or will
the user have to upgrade manually even if auto-upgrades are enabled?
If the user opens the Apple Testflight app, will they see any
indication that the build they were testing has been superseded by a
released build?
[worst case scenario] If auto-update isn't enabled or doesn't work for beta apps, then what happens when the user tries to open the app after our app store release? Will the app simply crash with no indication to the user what's happened or how to fix it?

If the answers to some of the above questions are "maybe" then what configuration or settings should we use to ensure that app updates work as expected? (where "expected" means that when we release the app to the app store, then all testers should be updated with that new version of the app).
Googling on this topic hasn't been very helpful, perhaps because Apple's TestFlight support is only a few months old so Google is dominated by non-technical news links instead of technical blogs and other places that may offer more details. I've been unable to find any programmer blogs which talk about the "upgrade from external tester to app store version" workflow.
Apple's documentation is clear about what happens from the perspective of the iTunes Connect web application (see excerpts below, coalesced for clarity) but not very clear about the external testers' user experience, which is what I'm trying to figure out.  Here's excerpts from Apple's Docs illustrating this:

Finish Testing an App. To stop testing a prerelease version of an app that is actively being
tested in TestFlight beta testing, set the Testing switch into the Off
(white) position.
Submit to the App Store When you are done using TestFlight beta testing, you can submit the
app for final review. Before you submit it, make sure you no longer
want to test it or any builds you uploaded earlier than it. When the
app becomes Ready for Sale in the App Store, testing automatically
stops on earlier builds, and you will be unable to view or test them.
See When builds become unavailable for more details. If you want to
resume testing of an earlier build, you can upload it as a new build
associated with a new prerelease version.
When builds become unavailable
Before your app becomes Ready for Sale, the Prerelease pane lists all builds for all prerelease versions
you have uploaded. After the app becomes Ready for Sale, some of the
builds will be removed from the pane:
The build used in the app is removed from Prerelease, as are all other
builds in the same prerelease version. All builds in earlier
prerelease versions are also removed from Prerelease. On the
Prerelease page, the sections for those prerelease versions will be
removed.

BTW, I previously asked this question on Stack Overflow where it was deleted for lack of answers, and it looks like a better home for this may be Ask Different where iTunes Connect questions are apparently encouraged.

The pragmatic way to ensure all testers are off the app is to wait the 30 days for the build to expire and have them manually grab the store version.

You could also upload a new beta build instructing them to do the same. That way they get an email from Apple with the news you want to convey to them and a limited duration to get them all off that build.


iOS Screen recording I'm wondering if there is an Apple policy against screen sharing? My basic use case is similar to the mirroring feature from iPad to Apple TV, except I'm seeking to mirror the device onto a Mac (as opposed to a TV).

What I ultimately need to do is record the actions from a Mac (or PC if that works) that are taking place on an iOS device -- which includes opening the app store; so emulating is not an option. If anyone can think of a clever way to record what's happening on the iOS device, without pointing a camera at it, I'm all ears.

In case anyone comes across this, Quicktime's screen recording + Xcode's emulator should work under normal circumstances. My use case is just more demanding.

Starting from iOS8 and Yosemite You can capture the screen of iOS device from Quicktime directly. Here's the steps:

Connect your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to your Mac via a Lightning Cable.
Open the QuickTime app.
Go to File and select ‘New Movie Recording’.
A recording window will appear. You will a see little arrow for drop down menu in front of the record button. Click that arrow and select your iPhone.
Select the Mic of your iPhone if you want to record music, app/game sounds.
Click the Record button. Now perform the tasks on your iOS device that you want to record.
Once done tap the stop button and save the video.
Done!

NOTE: works only with iOS8 and Yosemite and devices with Lightning Cable.

All steps taken from: ioshacker website. Enter there for screenshots.


How can I see the call history from one month ago? Someone called me last month. I know date and approximate time, but I'm unable to see that call in my iPhone. Is there any way to do this?

There's no way to see the true call history as a proper timeline through the iPhone, although with a bit of work it can be achieved however apps like PhoneView allow you to see your call history as individual, historical calls.

When you connect to the app, it downloads your call history for you, and you can then clear it on the iPhone without losing the history in the app.

Now, one of the things that the iPhone history does is try to group conversations into one event.  If you compare my call log from my iPhone and from PhoneView below.

This first image is the output from PhoneView, showing a list of all my calls for most of a week in February, date ascending.

The second image is a screen cap of my iPhone call history for the same time frame, dates descending just to confuse you.

As you can see, the iPhone does some grouping on calls, both incoming and outgoing, to the same number.  Note that 11 calls on the 10th, plus 2 each from the 12th and 13th, and finally one on the 14th appear against the call log for the 14th making a total of 16 calls.

Here's what the iPhone tells us about that grouping (thats by pressing the blue arrow next to the item)

So what does this tell us:

either you deleted the call log for that call (swipe to delete)
they called again, or you called them on a different date and the
call log is now on that date and you are looking in the wrong place
you accidentally assigned the number to an existing contact and
    you are looking in the wrong place


Using the command-line / Terminal, is it possible to determine if this Mac has Touch ID or not? I am trying to find a way, using the Terminal/command line, to determine if the Mac I am using has Touch ID or not.

So far web searches have not turned up any answers.

I would have thought that either ioreg or system_profiler might have the answer, but my attempts to use them have not uncovered anything useful.

(I did find one reference to Multitouch ID but I believe that has to do with the trackpad not Touch ID.)

You can also look for hardware info and match it against apple provided info about Touch ID enabled Macs.

  Only the 2016, 2017 and 2018 MacBook Pros with "Touch Bar" have Touch ID.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8597511 Though a more credible and updated source would be better.
Also,  If system pref > Touch ID exists, this can be an indicator.

Using command line how to open a specific section of GUI System Preferences?
How do you access network preferences from the Terminal?

https://ioshacker.com/how-to/use-touch-id-for-sudo-in-terminal-on-mac look for tid (I don't know where)


Backup app to use with Amazon Cloud Drive? I am backing up my iMac locally using Time Machine, and now I am looking for a cloud backup to provide offsite redundancy. I have signed up for Amazon's unlimited storage option for their Cloud Drive, and I have been testing Arq as a local backup app. Arq works okay, but it's lacking some features, such as the ability to restrict uploads to certain hours, such as 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM.

Can you recommend a backup app that works with Amazon Cloud Drive, and provides good configuration options? Thanks for your help.

Don't know whether this is a new option, but Arq actually allows you to restrict operations to a specific time window:


Yosemite on an Early 2008 iMac 20" with 4GB gives too many beachballs Question

Can you suggest a (series of) test(s) or monitoring that can show what is happening when the system fails, or some test that can show that the harddisk is borked or if some network issue is at hand?

Background

Upgraded from Mountain Lion. For a week or so it was like my box was on steroids, then I saw the beachballs more and more often. Took a backup, formatted my disk and re-installed Yosemite from scratch - no improvement.

Symptoms:

Last two times I started the box, Safari, which I just ran to save a wallpaper is stuck with a great big spinner. Nothing else can be run and even the top bar was missing. When I turned the computer off and on, I was sent to System utilities which made me suspect a harddisk failure is imminent and perhaps the root problem.
I have now let the computer sort itself out - when I woke it, all tabs in Chrome were in a state of loading, but immediately got the pages loaded and I have for now as I write this a very responsive system.
When in Chrome (my default browser, I sometimes get no response, then a beachball, then more often than not an "Aw Snap" or Kill page? which make me suspect a network issue (all other devices are happy with my time capsule - iPhone apple TV and iPad - yes I am 100% Apple here)

I contacted Apple Support with this story as a Yosemite issue and was told to re-install snowleopard which came with the machine. I want to make sure my iMac is borked first since then I will upgrade to a newer iMac instead.

The fact that I am now breezing along with no issues and pages loading and switching much faster than under Mountain Lion makes me want to first investigate if there is something you guys can detect based on some test you can suggest.

Hardware Overview:

  Model Name:   iMac
  Model Identifier: iMac8,1
  Processor Name:   Intel Core 2 Duo
  Processor Speed:  2,66 GHz
  Number of Processors: 1
  Total Number of Cores:    2
  L2 Cache: 6 MB
  Memory:   4 GB
  Bus Speed:    1,07 GHz
  Boot ROM Version: IM81.00C1.B00
  SMC Version (system): 1.29f1

UPDATE If your iMac slows down and hangs like mine, have a look in the console for hardware issues. An SSD in addition to the 4GB I already had resulted in a fast iMac.

There are a couple of Things you could try:

run "Disk Utilities.app" from /Applications/Utilities and start 'Check Volume' and 'Repair File Permission' there are probably some issues here
start the "Console.app", also found in /Applications/Utilities/ and check for errors while starting
Clear the Caches either by starting the Mac in single User Mode (press and hold the shift-key while starting up) and restart the Machine again. Best would be to run 'Onyx' and clear out the Boot Cache.

Don't forget that spotlight would be reindexing your machine after an upgrade, so that could be an explanation for the slow performance at first.


Terminal process stopped when MacBook Pro was closed and opened I am installing files from a website using wget in Terminal and when I closed and reopened my Mac, the download stopped. Is there a way to start it again?

Assuming you installed wget from MacPorts or HomeBrew (it doesn't come preinstalled on macOS), you can resume a download using the -c or --continue flag.

$ wget -c http://foo.bar
$ wget --continue http://foo.bar


How do I AirDrop hidden ("dot") files? I'm fairly new to OS X and just started working on a Lion box at work.  I went ahead and purchased a new MBP with Lion, and am enjoying it immensely so far!

I have tried to transfer some files from my work desktop to my MBP using AirDrop.  This works well and quickly for normal files.  When I attempt to transfer a "dot" (in particular my .emacs) file, upon dragging the file to the AirDrop icon for my MBP there is a white circle with a line through it indicating this is not allowed.

Is this intended behavior?  Is there a workaround that allows AirDropping of "dot" files?

To enable seeing hidden files in Finder, I did the following if it makes any difference:

$ defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

There are a few restrictions with .files, mainly because they are usually files important to the system. For example, aside from being hidden by default you can't rename a normal file to ".file" (You will get a system alert, I'm pretty sure), nor you can rename a ".file" directly from any Finder window, like most other files: you need to "Get Info", and rename it from there.

One plausible solution I can think of is perhaps renaming it before you send it, though if you want to avoid this (because they are sensitive files after all) you can compress it and then rename the zip file you get. Simply:

Control click on the file and select "Compress ..."
Control click the zip file and select "Get Info"
Under "Name and extension" you should be able to change the name of
the file. Simply remove the period.

I know its kind of a log workaround, but its the best I could find. :/ Hope it helps though!


Launchpad Icon in my Launchpad I have accidently "dragged" launchpad onto the launchpad icon in my dock, thus it added the launchpad icon into my launchpad, how can I remove it from my launchpad?

Help appreciated!

To delete Apple aps from Launchpad without installing another questionable program from www you can do it your self from Terminal.

  sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db "DELETE from apps
  WHERE title='APPNAME';" && killall Dock

...replacing “APPNAME” with the name of the application you want to remove from Launchpad :)


Can I fix my iPhone's "No Internet Connection" problem? Network is fine I am typing this question on my mac using my home WiFi network. The internet connection is fine.

My iPhone 5 running iOS 10.0.2, on the other hand, tries ad infinitum to connect to the same network, but displays a "No Internet Connection" in orange text under the network.

I've never had this problem before.

I've tried turning the phone on and off, stopping/starting WiFi, going into and out of airplane mode, but the phone persists. When it tries to connect to the WiFi at my job, it does not display "No Internet Connection", but it also tries ad infinitum to connect without success.

What is causing this problem, and how can I fix it?

Update

I wrote this question quite a while ago. I still do not know what the issue was, and unfortunately I do not remember what fixed it, and I think it may have fixed itself in a few days. If I had to guess, I would expect the fix to involve resetting network settings and restarting BOTH the phone and the modem/router (unplug first, wait 20–30 seconds, then plug back in). I would also tell the phone to check for software updates, and repeat if it installed anything. I think it MAY have been due to either a bug in a software update (which the developers quickly would have fixed), or my router/modem was having issues.

I’m really sorry I don’t remember anything more helpful. I hope that this helps somebody in some way, though!

If anyone finds an answer to this, post it!

The best thing to do is to reset your network settings by going to Settings>General>Reset>Reset network settings.


iOS whatsapp offline pending messages not supported I'd like to know if there is a way to press the whatsapp "send" button while I'm offline (for instance on the metro) so they are send latter when rich connection.
This can be done on the Android version and is a useful feature. There is a way to do it on the iOS version? If not do you know if there is any intention to implement this feature?

Thanks in advance!

Here in iOS that's not currently possible, in fact when you've no connection and try to send a message, the Send button will be disabled, and even though you could successfully tap it before the connection goes off, the message wouldn't get sent and a red icon would appear on its right side, to alert you it was not sent and it won't until you don't get connection back.

Summary

So the only messages which will be sent when you get the connection back will be those who were sent when you had actually a connection, but got lost during the process of sending the message.

Instead you won't be able to do that when you have no connection at all.

Though, developers love to hear their customers feedback, so I highly suggest you to give it a try and contact WhatsApp support (support@whatsapp.com) for iOS and let them know your idea, who knows it may be added in the next update hopefully!

Hope this helped you out!


Some items missing from my iTunes Purchase History I purchased some audio books and movies on the iTunes store before  (2-3 years ago).

But when I use the new iPhone 4S to look at my account, the "Purchased" show 1 audio book but doesn't show the other one I can clearly remember (in fact, I purchased that audio book twice, hoping the second time won't be any charge, but there was).

Also missing are some movies, such as Toy Story...  Is the only thing I can do to contact Apple iTunes Store Customer Service to resolve this?

ok, the best way I found, is to use the Express Lane.  Just google for: Apple Express Lane and you will find it.


Mac mini and VNC remote performance I'm looking to get a Mac for iOS development, and with about $700 to work with, a Mac mini with upgraded RAM seems like the way to go. My problem is I never work strictly in one place (i.e. the office). I'm always at different locations, be it at home, with clients, or simply sitting outside at a coffee house. I always bring my laptop along and have looked into using VNC to access the mini remotely. However, I've read snippets of other users experiencing less-than-stellar speeds/performance when using VNC.

iOS programming (i.e. Xcode) is the only tool I'd be using during remote connections - no surfing, downloading, game-playing, nothing graphics-intensive. The image of me typing a line of code and having Xcode lag two to three characters behind doesn't sit well as I really despise any type of lag. (I know. I'm picky.)

So, I'm wondering:

Would VNC allow me to feel as though I'm interacting with the mini itself and offer (at least almost) instantaneous feedback? Is there a better option out there with my budget?

Any help is greatly appreciated, and apologies for the length; just wanted to be thorough.

P.S. - If there's a way to simply plug the mini into my laptop and use its monitor, that would be better, though I haven't found that that's possible.

Our development team all use Macs. I have personally tried to use VNC both with Apples built in and premium Apple Remote Desktop ($79.99), as well as Jolly's Fast VNC. I had a Mac Pro tower at work and really needed the remote capability, and was able to work reasonably well with Apple Remote Desktop, but when my tower came off lease I went with a Laptop, because the lag and poor display quality were just too annoying. I found that I needed to degrade the display quality in order to keep the performance reasonable, which meant a blurry display.   Overall I found it frustrating and avoid remote access, but it does work, although I would strongly recommend buying Apple Remote Desktop to get the full screen capability. Jolly's was fast but at the time had some bugs that resulted in a corrupt screen sometimes. That was over a year ago, the new version may be better.

There are other developers I work with who think that the VNC solution works just fine for them, so I think it depends a lot on how fussy you are about responsiveness (I am fussy).

If your previous experience with remote access involves Microsoft's Remote Display Protocol (RDP) then you will be very disappointed with VNC. The RDP technology is superior in both display quality and performance. One of the few things I really miss from the Microsoft world.

In short, I'd recommend moving to an Apple laptop and then running your Windows virtually. I started with a mini originally, and just ended up moving to a laptop eventually.


Can two iPhone 5c phones be paired with Bluetooth Is it possible to pair two iPhone 5c phones with Bluetooth? Both phones have OS 8.1.2, both are shown as having the same name; they are in the same Verizon plan. I’ve gone to Bluetooth, activated it, and both phones are shown as discoverable. Neither will show the other device.
Can they be paired? If so, how do I accomplish that?

No, it's not possible. While Bluetooth technology is capable of sending files between smartphones, computers and other devices, Apple has limited the function of Bluetooth on its iOS devices. You cannot send files, contacts or playlists between iPhones or computers with the default software. Third-party apps may let you transfer files with Bluetooth; however, these generally work between iPhones and iOS devices only rather than phones and computers.


Cannot pause downloading mojave from launchpad Today I started to download macOS Mojave from app store and it appeared in launchpad as usual. When I tried to pause the download by clicking on the downloading icon, it won't pause. I can only delete the download by long press on it. The same thing happened previously when I tried to download High Sierra 10.13.6.

Another way I tried to pause the download from app store but I can only pause the apps but not the OS download.

Is there a way by which I can pause the download?

This topic is quite old, but I found out that connecting my VPN will abort the download. All already downloaded data is then lost.

Maybe this is helpful for others with the same problem.

BR
Cryptos


MacBook Pro 2017 SSD write speed slow I just bought a new MacBook Pro 2017 (no TouchBar) a month ago. I have run a speed test with Blackmagic Disk Speed Test application. The result is in image below.

I think SSD write speed is a little slower than normal. Anyone can help me with this? Thanks so much.

Im also getting very slow speeds with my MacBook Pro 2015 SSD. It is most likely something wrong with the app, in the past I got much faster with the same app on a older version with the same Mac.


Is there a way to import stopwatch data into Numbers? I use the stopwatch app to collect data sometimes, and often I'll have ~100 datapoints. (as an example, my light creaks periodically after I turn it off after leaving it on for a long time, so I timed that once to find out how the period of the creaking changes over time). After recently getting an iPhone 6s with iOS 9, I tried using the Numbers app to graph some results. However, typing in the ~100 results is a bit tedious, and I was wondering if there was a way to transfer the data from the stopwatch to Numbers.

Down load BEST STOPWATCH and there is a copy option. This can then be transferred to an email or text. Then the data can be copied into a spread sheet.


Admin Password refused I have got a slightly strange issue. The other day I logged into my macbook without problems. It went into sleep mode, I tried in the evening to log in again. My password was refused. I reset the password via another admin account. I was able to log in, but not to update the keychain. Also checking Keyboard Settings.

I ran first aid. No issues. I tried recovery mode with first aid. no issues.  I did recover one of my backups, my password was refused, I reset it, key chain update worked. I was able to access the key chain but not my "Safe notes".
After a day or so, again, my password was refused. Again resetting my password. keychain did not update the password.

Also tried another keyboard, with no luck. In any case, I was running Malwarebytes, but everything is clean.

Do I really need a clean install?

Do you have any other ideas how to solve this issue?

Thanks a Lot in advance!

(High Sierra)

I would suggest going to an Apple Store or calling Apple Support.  They will be able to go step-by-step to help you find out what the problem with your Mac is and fix it.


Shortcut to eject all external hard drives but not MobileBackups So far I've been using the following AppleScript to eject all external drives at once conveniently using a shortcut:
tell application "Finder"
    eject (every disk)
end tell

This script is is stored in /Library/Scripts and I have assigned a shortcut to trigger it in FastScripts.
But there's one problem. When you have Time Machine Backups enabled, OS X mounts a virtual MobileBackups volume in /Volumes to store local snapshots. This volume will be ejected alongside all the physical external volumes. I want to avoid this as this will stop local snapshots from being made (until it's mounted again at next login).
How can I add an exception to exclude /Volumes/MobileBackups in the AppleScript above?

You can do the following instead:

tell application "Finder"
  eject (every disk whose ejectable is true)
end tell

If you have partitioned disks mounted, hold down the
"Option" key, run your script, then release the key when done.


Why it shows "You are opening the application 'Xcode' for the first time? I am running XCode v.5.1 in my Mountain Lion, I don't know why, but I'm getting this message after a successful start of Mac computer. I was already using this version of XCode before and now suddenly it's showing me this message? What's wrong? It is something that Apple forgets its my first run?

If you're not able to set the quarantine status on the app, then it will forever have that status and will prompt you. You can manually remove quarantine from the app with…

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Xcode.app


How to get OpenVPN details from macOS to iOS I have a VPN which I connect to on my MacBook with Tunnelblick. I would like to setup my iPhone 6 to connect to the same VPN, however I am struggling to find an app or way to do this.

In Tunnelblick, I can see the configuration file which looks like this:

dev tun
proto udp
remote vpn.crmpicco.co.uk 1194
cipher AES-128-CBC
auth SHA1
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
persist-key
persist-tun
client
verb 3
auth-user-pass
<ca>
 [Security-related line(s) omitted]
</ca>
<cert>
 [Security-related line(s) omitted]
</cert>

<key>
 [Security-related line(s) omitted]
</key>

Can anyone advise me on how to connect to this VPN on iOS?

Assuming I understand your question correctly, you can use iTunes on the MacBook to transfer the profile you're using into OpenVPN on your iPhone.

Broadly speaking, you need to:

Download and install the OpenVPN app from the app store onto your iPhone
Locate the OpenVPN config file (it should have a .ovpn extension) you downloaded on your MacBook so you know where it is
Connect your iPhone to your MacBook
Launch iTunes
Select your iPhone (within iTunes)
Click on Apps on the left-hand menu
Scroll to the bottom in the main window (on the right-hand side) and click on the OpenVPN icon in the Apps box
Drag and drop the OpenVPN config file (the one you located at Step 2) into the OpenVPN Documents box
Click on Done
Open the OpenVPN app on your iPhone
You should now see the new certificate listed
Click on the green + sign
Enter your username, password etc
Tap on the Save toggle

Now when you want to connect to the VPN from your iPhone, just tap on the toggle that appears below the Disconnected label. You should be connected shortly thereafter.


DiskAid is not recognising my IPOD I installed DiskAid and its not recognising my iPod Shuffle (it's showing message "Please connect your device" when I have already plugged in my iPod). Is there any other good app for OSX which is useful to copy and paste music on iPod?

To use DiskAid with an iPod Shuffle you need to enable "disk use" within iTunes.

Plug your iPod shuffle into your PC or Mac.
Open iTunes.
Select your shuffle in the list on the left-hand side of the iTunes window.
Check the "Enable disk use" box under Options near the bottom of the Summary tab within iTunes.
Click Apply.

If you open DiskAid now, you should be able to use it with your shuffle.


Working Quick Look Plugins For Mountain Lion Trying to find reliable info on working quicklook plugins for Mountain Lion.

I'd like to at least find working ones for colour code syntax highlight in source code previews, and preview plain text files like "README" without a file extension.

If you install Xcode, most source code files are shown (albeit without color) natively. The "without a file extension" makes things interesting since unless the file is typed, quicklook (and the spotlight importer responsible for determining what type of file each one actually is) has less context to decide how to classify a blank README file.

Have a look at the qlcolorcode plug in for colored syntax quick look and QLStephen for README and other ASCII plain text files.


Problem With the Click Command - AppleScript I'm trying to do some GUI scripting with AppleScript but every time I try to use the click command, it will work but cause an error. If I use a try statement it works fine, but I shouldn't have to do that. Here's some code that I started to turn on Speakable Items:

tell application "System Preferences"
    set current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
    reveal anchor "SpeakableItems" of current pane
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    click radio button "On" of radio group of tab group 1 of window 1 of application process "System Preferences"
end tell

The 'On' radio button gets clicked, but I get this error aswell:

error "System Events got an error: radio button \"On\" of radio group of tab group 1 of window 1 of application process \"System Preferences\" doesn’t understand the “click” message." number -1708 from radio button "On" of radio group of tab group 1 of window 1 of application process "System Preferences"

Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

It seems that even though the UI Element shows up as radio group in 'Result', you need to specify radio group 1 for the click command to work.


Add a link to Reading List from Terminal Is it possible to add the links to the Reading List from terminal or Alfred without opening Safari?

Maybe some AppleScript snippet would do?

Actually it seems that somebody thought about that already. Here is an Alfred workflow that does exactly that:

https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/4524-safari-reading-list/


Is there a way to browse the OS X App Store from iPad? There are times that I'd like to browse the OS X App Store from my iPad - to get info for future reference.  But when I try, I get a message that I have to use a Mac.

Is there a way around this?

As @jaume has mentioned, you can use the Mac App Store Preview on Apple's Website to browser apps from the Mac App Store. The same exists for iOS apps and is labeled as iTunes Preview.

As you will have already noticed, the search box on Apple's website is not very helpful when searching for Apps. The best alternative I can think of uses a google query. In the Google search box type:

site:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ "Mac App Store" MyKeyword

...which uses the URL:

http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/%20%22Mac%20App%20Store%22%20

Copy and paste the URL
Add your keyword to the end (separate multiple keywords by %20)


A white line sticks on the top of on my MacBook Pro 15 inch 2016's screen Recently I've bought I new MacBook Pro 15 inch and after a while I noticed that a thin white line appears on the top of my MacBook Pro's screen as it's show in the pictures below:

  Please note that I have installed Windows 10 on my device too (using
  bootcamp) and this issue does not show up in windows at all.

My macOS version is Sierra.

How can I fix this issue? Does anybody have any idea?

I had a problem vaguely like that that turned out to be in one case an icon and in another case an oddly placed window.

Try this. Open a Finder window and look at the contents of your desktop in list view. Compare that to the icons that show up on the desktop if there is seemingly one or more icons in list view of the Desktop folder that may be the cluprit. Delete it or move it elsewhere.

Close or hide all windows on the desktop. Tap Command w. See if the line disappears.

Quit out of all open applications, ALL of them. Tap Command Tab. Is there anything in the list besides Finder?

Change your desktop background to an Apple supplied picture, and try a solid color (one light, one dark) see if the line vanishes. It might be a part of your desktop background, though that is less likely if it shows up in other apps.

Boot the Mac in safe mode. If the line disappears it is something that you installed that runs automatically and puts that line there. Start removing startup items.


How to properly download the following plugin video? After nearly a week browsing all over the web, using Safari 5.1.10 Develop menu, Activity Monitor, etc…, how can I download the following video to my Mac:

http://screengrabber.deadspin.com/messi-opens-copa-del-rey-final-scoring-with-marvelous-g-1707941937

I can't find the video's URL to download on Safari activity monitor nor web inspector.

Right-click on the video and select Inspect Element.
Click the disclosure triangle next to the video element to reveal the source element.
Click the src attribute value to download the video.


Corrupted GUID partition table on secondary hard drive I have a Hackintosh computer, with a secondary hard drive installed with a bunch of data on it. I was trying to partition off part of the secondary hard drive to install Windows so I could dual boot, and I have managed to completely ruin the partition table and I'm afraid that I've lost my data. I used the Windows 10 installer to create a partition, but it did some weird stuff where it labeled my existing data partition as a recovery partition, so I ended up deleting everything that the installer did but I cannot see my old data back in OS X now. Here is the output of diskutil list:

/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk1
   1: DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC               1.9 TB     disk1s1

$ sudo gpt -r show disk1

       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34      409606
      409640  3798935504      1  GPT part - DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC
  3799345144   107683991
  3907029135          32         Sec GPT table
  3907029167           1         Sec GPT header
$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk1
Disk: /dev/disk1    geometry: 243201/255/63 [3907029168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE    0   0   2 - 1023 255  63 [         1 - 3907029167] <Unknown ID>
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

disk1s1 was where my data originally was, but it is no longer recognized by Disk Utility and I cannot mount it.

Is there anything I can do to repair this, or is my data all lost?

edit: I ran fsck and it recognizes the volume type and name, so it appears that it's still there:

sudo fsck_hfs -fy /dev/disk1s1
Password:
** /dev/rdisk1s1
   Executing fsck_hfs (version hfs-285).
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
   The volume name is Macintosh HD
** Checking extents overflow file.
** Checking catalog file.
** Checking multi-linked files.
** Checking catalog hierarchy.
** Checking extended attributes file.
** Checking volume bitmap.
** Checking volume information.
** The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK.

I'm not sure how to mount the drive/fix the partition table, however.

edit2: so, using this method I was able to mount the disk and see the data. Is there an easy way to fix the partition?

Boot to your OS X system
Open Terminal and enter diskutil list
Enter sudo gpt -r show diskX with X the device number of your external disk found in the previous output (probably 1 - below I assume it's 1 but use the disk number found in your environment in the commands below)
Enter diskutil umountDisk disk1
Remove the one and only partition:

sudo gpt remove -i 1 disk1

Add the EFI parititon:

sudo gpt add -i 1 -b 40 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B disk1

Add the main partition:

sudo gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 3798935504 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk1

Verify disk and volume:

diskutil verifyDisk disk1
diskutil verifyVolume disk1s2

If you get an error in the last two steps add a comment.


How to make Time Machine backups over network without OS X server? At our institute, we have several Macs (from 10.6 to 10.8) but not one is running a server version. In the one running 10.8 there are 4.5 TB of hard-drives from which 2 x 2 TB are raided together (mirrored) with to goal to use them as a Time Machine backup for all other Macs. All the Macs are connected over the institute network.

Now, how do I set up everything such that all Macs can use Time Machine to backup to this one Mac?

I've read that this might be easier when the target Mac would run OS X Server.

How is it also possible without installing OS X server?

The officially sanctioned answer: buy an Apple Time Capsule device.

Unsupported but well-known alternative: enable a hidden option that allows you to use any network drive. Open the Terminal application and run this one command:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

It will allow you to select any network drive from System Preferences: Time Machine.

The network drive should be a HFS+ file system over AFP (standard file sharing from another Mac). I would strongly discourage you from using any other setup if you are not prepared to manually restore one file at a time from the backup.


Can I set up Boot Camp in a headless mac pro? I have this headless Mac Pro in the living room. I access it from my MBP through the network, ssh and sometimes with a remote desktop solution. I use it to run data/computing.

Now I need to get Windows in; there's a piece of software that's only available there. To avoid virtualization drawbacks, I'm thinking of setting up a dual system like Boot Camp, but I've never done it, much less without a monitor.

Is it doable? (setting it up without a screen)

Is it doable? (setting it up without a screen)

No. Installing Boot Camp will reboot the system into the Windows installer. You will need to see the screen to complete the installation. Any remote desktop software you've set up in macOS will be unavailable in Windows, including during the Windows install process.


Google Maps' "Nearby Transit" iOS widget doesn't work I'm using the Google Maps app v4.11 that includes a Notification Center widget for Nearby Transit. The problem is that it always says that there are no transit stations nearby. I'm in the middle of San Francisco, so this seems wrong.

The Google Maps app itself works fine so it's able to access my location data. I have "Allow Notifications" and "Show in Notification Center" enabled in Settings.

So why isn't the widget ever returning anything?

I had the same problem and it fixed itself. In 4-5 days.


iPhone 11 erratic airplane mode My iPhone turns airplane mode on or off randomly. I put AM on at bedtime and get awakened by alerts in the night.Do I have to start my iPhone 11 off to get some sleep?

Switching off communications modes from the lock screen panel is overridden by the OS each night - they wil be back on in the morning, though I'm not certain what time they trigger.
You can avoid this by using Do Not Disturb instead.
Settings > Do Not Disturb. You can set it manually or on a schedule.


Merging two systems? I'm not too sure if this is the right title but anyway... I have an old macbook early 2009 that I bought through my school and purchased the digital software as well- I have no disks and I don't know how to link anything to my name? Is that even possible if someone else set it up? So my old laptop has great programs to use on it but I now have a new 2014 macbook pro mid range and I would only like to transfer some of the applications, but from my research- correct me if I'm wrong, large applications like adobe acrobat pro have files throughout the computer and can't just be copied over. I don't want all the applications so a time machine transfer is out of the question. What can I do?

Thanks in advance.

Generally speaking the Apple Migration Assistant will (optionally) transfer applications as well as documents. How well that works with any individual application will be up to the application vendor. And that info may be on their web site.

So it is theoretically possible to transfer settings, documents and applications from one Mac to another (ethernet, Firewire, Thunderbolt, etc...) though I don't believe you can choose exactly which Apps, Docs, Pics, etc. get transferred. So you may have to transfer everything and then delete the stuff you don't want/need.

Just run the Apple Migration Assistant on the two computers that you have connected together and follow the prompts, it's real easy...


FusionDrive + Encrypted CoreStorage Volume - Problems writing to volume Has anyone had experience with encrypted (home made!) FusionDrive volumes and intermittent failure of writes to this disk?

I'm on a Late 2011 MBP 13" with (currently) 4 GB RAM, a 128 GB SSD and a 750 GB SATA disk.

When I'm trying to rsync data (from a TM backup) onto it, I get write failures.  I also could not successfully decrypt the volume when I tried.

I have stress tested the disks and they seem fine, and checked RAM, so other than a fault with the drive controller, which I doubt, I don't think it's a hardware problem.

Can anyone post success or similar failures with this kind of setup?

It happens to me when I have the SSD at the second bay, all was fixed when I put the SSD at the main bay in order to be shown as disk0


Selective contacts on iphone I've synced my google (gmail) contacts to my iphone5, but i'd like to have some contacts not show on my phone.  Is there a way to select either on the phone or on gmail which contacts to show on my phone?

iOS will show all contacts under "My contacts" on Google / Gmail.
If you move contacts out of that group, they will not show on your iPhone.

To do that, go to http://gmail.com and login with your credentials.
Click on Mailon the top left and select Contacts.

There you can see which contacts are on which groups and move the contacts you'd like to hide from iOS (and OS X, by the way) out of "My contacts".

This has even helped me when deleting contacts by mistake, as they don't dissapear from your Google account, they just get moved to "Other contacts".

You can group them if you like but those groups will not be available or selectable for display / hide on your iPhone on the standard configuration. When you have multiple contacts lists from different accounts, a Groups option appears on the top left menu on the Contacts app, and Google Apps may show Address Book and Global Address Book as options, but the latter will take you to an empty list designed to search from the organization list of addresses. Or –as of right now on my iPhone after showing me those options– it may show you only one option per account (All (name-of-the-account)), to toggle on or off.


Tried factory resetting my Macbook Air but won't erase disk I tried factory resetting my Macbook Air following a guide on Macworld, and the first thing I did I went to Disk Utility (in Recovery Mode) and erased Macintosh HD - Data, but now it won't let me erase Macintosh HD. It says that it couldn't be unmounted because it is in use by process 712 (kextcache). Tried unmounting and it won't let me either. What should I do? Right now i can't even book an appointment at the Genius Bar because of Covid.

Try erasing the entire drive, not just the volumes.
In Disk Utility, Hit  Cmd ⌘   2   (or see the View menu) to show Devices instead of just Volumes.  Select the overall drive you will now see over the volumes (now in a disclosure triangle instead of separate) and Erase that, GUID/APFS.
If you aren’t following an internet recovery factory erase, here is the best one:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

Click through to the erase portion.
Selecting the correct item in Disk Utility almost always gets an erase completed without reverting to the terminal app and command-line tools.  Also, Apple Support is now delivered almost entirely without Genius Bar visits.


iPhone 3.5mm Audio jack specification (buttons) I have done some research in regards to this but I seem to get conflicting requirements.

So Android defines and have published a specification for this.
https://source.android.com/devices/accessories/headset/plug-headset-spec.html

Apple on the other hand, I am unable to find out if they publish this information.
I have also found out that some Android headset (3 button) does not seem to be compatible with iPhones.

Does anybody know what methods Apple iPhone devices use for 3 button detection?
Is there somewhere a publish specification released?

Apple will give you the information to work with/duplicate the "Headset Remote and Mic" (aka the little box on each pair of EarPods that have the three buttons and microphone) if you join their MFi program, as noted in the MFi FAQ and on BoingBong when the three-button setup first came out. I haven't seen anyone online reverse-engineer it and publish information about how it works.


Is there a tabbed PDF reader for Mac OS X? I am looking for a tabbed PDF reader, preferably with annotation support (highlighting mostly) for Mac OS X. I looked at the Skim FAQ which said that tabs would never come to Skim.

I am currently writing where I need to have multiple PDFs open for reference (at the moment 17). This is a lot of windows which clutters upp my Exposé.

Does anybody know if such a PDF reader exists for Mac OS X?

I have had a look at Adobe Acrobat Reader, Skim, Preview.app, PDF Pen.

I found Dioretsa which has tabs, but no sadly no annotation.

Update 2015-11-20: Funny how history repeats itself. PDF Expert recently released a Mac version (Readdle's PDF Expert for iOS has been around for some time). The pase years I have been using Preview, but PDF Expert is now my goto PDF reader with tabs and annotation. It's fast as well (which cannot be said about Adobe's PDF products).

Update 2012-05-16: Saving annotations in the PDF itself is also a must. E.g. Skim and Mendeley do not do this. Otherwise, Mendeley would have been a good choice.

Two years later, I may have found something. There is now an app on the Mac App Store called PDF Reader X. It's free, has tabs and supports annotation!


How to check if my iPhone's connection is being throttled? AT&T now throttles the connection speeds for those on the unlimited plan. How can I know if my iPhone's connection is being throttled or if I'm just getting poor speed due to other reasons?

Whether your internet connection is slow may have several reasons:

poor, instable connection
geographic location
total traffic on the network
you've reached your cap (see contract)

For the normal users it's difficult to determine what the exact reason is. Especially in dense areas, the promised speed is not reached sometimes because the total traffic of all users is very high. Where I live, the same network is used by different providers, adding additional complications.

In order to judge if your network connection slower than usual, you should test and record your network speed for several times throughout a month.

You can use Mobile Speed Test to get stats about Download, Upload and Ping. You can use this data to check the speed you've been promised by your provider. Check your contract to see what speed you have been promised. Most contracts throttle the speed after you have reached a cap.


How to get an application executable path from Terminal In macOS, applications can be launched from the command line with open -a < application name>.

I would like to know if there is a command that returns the executable within
the application bundle, when the application is not running, I'm hoping for something like this:

awesomeCommand <application name>
/Applications/***/MacOS/Content/application_executable

I would like to know if there is a command that returns the executable within the application bundle

There is no such command, but I've written a shell script that does exactly that for any application bundle in the file system of your startup disk.

It uses several command line tools included in macOS and leverages Apple's documentation on Launch Services, Application Bundles and Core Foundation Keys. The script does the following:

Searches /Applications for the application bundle.
If it can not be found in /Applications, queries the Launch Services database, only considering application bundles on the startup disk.
If an application bundle was found, inspects the bundle's Info.plist and looks for a key namedCFBundleExecutable that stores the executable (see below in the background information section for more on that). Otherwise, print an error message an exit.
Prints the path to the executable to standard output.

The script understands both an application name with or without its extension, checks arguments, displays a usage message and a short description if run without arguments and returns an exit status with an error message if necessay.

Since the script searches /Applications and may do a time-consuming query to Launch Services, it isn't super fast (from ~ 1 sec to several seconds), but it was 100% accurate in my tests.

This is the script, with explanations on what is done in every step:

#!/bin/bash

# https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/334635
# Variables
app_name="";
app_path_and_name="";
path_to_lsregister="/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/";

# If run without arguments, issue a usage summary and exit
if [[ "$1" == "" ]]; then
    echo "$(basename $0): returns name of bundle applications’s executable file";
    echo "usage: $(basename $0) [application name]";
    exit 0;
fi;

# If argument doesn't end with '.app', append it
if [[ "$1" =~ \.app$ ]]; then
    app_name="$1"
else
    app_name="$1.app";
fi;

# Look for the path of the application bundle
# Search /Applicatinos first
app_path_and_name="$(find /Applications -type d -name "$app_name" -maxdepth 5 | grep -m 1 "$app_name")";
# If not found, search the the LaunchServices database (this is the time-consuming task)
test "$app_path_and_name" || app_path_and_name="$($path_to_lsregister/lsregister -dump | grep -v /Volumes | egrep --max-count 1 "/$app_name$" | sed 's:.* \(/.*\):\1:')"
# Check if Info.plist exists and is readable
if [[ -r "$app_path_and_name/Contents/Info.plist" ]]; then
    # Extract the CFBundleExecutable key that contains the name of the executable and print it to standard output
    echo "$app_path_and_name/MacOS/$(defaults read "$app_path_and_name/Contents/Info.plist" CFBundleExecutable)";
    exit 0;
else
    echo "Application '$1' not found";
    exit 1
fi

You can save the file (for example as pbex for "print bundle executable") and make it executable as follows:

chmod a+x pbex

If you prefer a function, use this instead:

function pbex ()
{
    # https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/334635
    # Variables
    local app_name="";
    local app_path_and_name="";
    local path_to_lsregister="/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/";

    # If run without arguments, issue a usage summary and exit
    if [[ "$1" == "" ]]; then
        echo "$FUNCNAME: returns name of bundle applications’s executable file";
        echo "usage: $FUNCNAME [application name]";
        return 0;
    fi;

    # If argument doesn't end with '.app', append it
    if [[ "$1" =~ \.app$ ]]; then
        app_name="$1"
    else
        app_name="$1.app";
    fi;

    # Look for the path of the application bundle
    # Search /Applicatinos first
    app_path_and_name="$(find /Applications -type d -name "$app_name" -maxdepth 5 | grep -m 1 "$app_name")";
    # If not found, search the LaunchServices database (this is the time-consuming step)
    test "$app_path_and_name" || app_path_and_name="$($path_to_lsregister/lsregister -dump | grep -v /Volumes | egrep --max-count 1 "/$app_name$" | sed 's:.* \(/.*\):\1:')"
    # Check if Info.plist exists and is readable
    if [[ -r "$app_path_and_name/Contents/Info.plist" ]]; then
        # Extract the CFBundleExecutable key that contains the name of the executable and print it to standard output
        echo "$app_path_and_name/MacOS/$(defaults read "$app_path_and_name/Contents/Info.plist" CFBundleExecutable)";
        return 0;
    else
        echo "Application '$1' not found";
        return 1
    fi
}

Just add it to .bashrc, source it:

. .bashrc

to use the function.

If you need to execute it as a (rather long) "one-liner", use (replace <app name> with the name of the application without the .app extension):

bash -c "app_name=\"<app name>\.app"; app_path_and_name=\"\"; if [[ \"\$app_name\" == \"\" ]]; then exit 2; fi; app_path_and_name=\"\$(find /Applications -type d -name \"\$app_name\" -maxdepth 5 | grep -m 1 \"\$app_name\")\"; test \"\$app_path_and_name\" || app_path_and_name=\"\$(/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -dump | grep -v /Volumes | egrep --max-count 1 \"/\$app_name\$\" | sed \"s:.* \(/.*\):\1:\")\"; if [[ -r \"\$app_path_and_name/Contents/Info.plist\" ]]; then echo \"\$app_path_and_name/MacOS/\$(defaults read \"\$app_path_and_name/Contents/Info.plist\" CFBundleExecutable)\"; exit 0; else echo \"Application \"\$app_name\" not found\"; exit 1; fi"

(You write in a comment that the "command has to be launched from within a QProcess"). You could do the following:

process.start("bash", QStringList() << "-c" << "app_name=\"<app name>\.app"; ...");

See https://stackoverflow.com/a/20901985 for more information.)

Examples:

$ pbex
pbex: returns name of bundle applications’s executable file
usage: pbex [application name]
$ pbex "Microsoft Edge"
Application 'Microsoft Edge' not found
$ pbex Finder
/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/MacOS/Finder
$ pbex "Quick Look Simulator.app"
/System/Library/Frameworks/Quartz.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/QuickLookUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Quick Look Simulator.app/MacOS/Quick Look Simulator
$ pbex "BalTax 2016"
/Applications/BalTax 2016/BalTax 2016.app/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub
$ pbex ColorSync\ Utility
/Applications/Utilities/ColorSync Utility.app/MacOS/ColorSync Utility

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The structure of a macOS bundle app bundle is well-known and documented by Apple.

According to The Structure of a macOS Application Bundle, the basic structure of a Mac app is:

MyApp.app/
   Contents/
      Info.plist
      MacOS/
      Resources/

where the MacOS folder "contains the application’s standalone executable code. Typically, this directory contains only one binary file with your application’s main entry point and statically linked code. However, you may put other standalone executables (such as command-line tools) in this directory as well."

The Info.plist file is required for the Finder to recognize an application bundle as such. This information property list filecontains XML property-list data that identifies the configuration of your bundle. The key that is of interest for us is CFBundleExecutable, which stores "the name of the main executable file. This is the code that is executed when the user launches your application."


Where does OS X store your current desktop picture? Where does OS X store your current desktop picture? I read somewhere else that it was in /Library/Caches/com.apple.Desktop. But I don't have that directory.

In current versions of macOS (at least in Mojave, probably since Sierra, not sure about others) the location of the desktop pictures are stored in a SQLite database located at ~/Library/Application Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db.

I did not dig into details of the database structure but you can get the file path with this command:

sqlite3 -readonly ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db \
    'SELECT * FROM data ORDER BY rowID DESC LIMIT 1;'


How to get rid of this icon on my lock screen? I have the Pokémon Go app displayed on my lock screen and on this other screen. Is there any way of removing the icon from the lock screen?

Go to Settings → General → Handoff & Suggested Apps and disable Installed Apps under Suggested Apps. This removes suggested apps from both the Lock screen and app switcher — it's not possible to disable one without the other.


Mac randomly stopping Internet I'm really kind of clueless as to what is going on here, but it is really becoming frustrating. I haven't ever came across this issue on any other Macs, and it seems to be unique to me for some reason. So what happens is my computer will be connected to the internet and wifi just fine, and then sometimes my mac seems to have just randomly dropped connection to the internet. The wifi bars are all full, and the other computers in the house seem to be working fine during that period. However, for me I have to restart my computer to actually get the internet on the computer to begin working again, and it is ok once or twice but this occurs once or twice every day which is beginning to get frustrating.

Please Note: I am kind of confused about what could possibly  be going on, so I would be more than happy to provide information such as system logs, etc. But just ask.. I don't want to just dump potentially irrelevant information into the question.

Good call on not dumping the kitchen sink. The first step is to run Network  Diagnostics - once when things work so you can see what it does and again when things are broken.

It will guide you through changes to make, so keep a short log of when you run it and what it has green/yellow/red and what changes are needed to fix each breakage.

Over time, you'll probably find a pattern to one thing breaking and can ask a more narrow follow up question.

To run the tool:

Open Finder
Use the Go manu - Go to folder
paste in /System/Library/CoreServices/
Drag Network Diagnostics to your dock so it's easy to access

You can also use the "assist me" button in network settings - it's bottom right next to apply:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21585


My terminal prompt has a weird, unfamiliar name in it. What's up with that? Breezy's iPhone?

This is the beginning of all my terminal prompts.

First, I'd check what WiFi access point your Mac is connected to.

One explanation for your screenshot is that your MacBook is acquiring (or has recently acquired) its IP address from a DHCP server on the device called Breezys-iPhone. That's most likely to happen if that iPhone is acting as a tethered hotspot, and your Mac is connecting to it rather than your usual WiFi access point.

You can find additional information about the hostname shown in the terminal prompt in the answers to this question.


What cables do I need to power 2 external displays? I have a late 2015 macbook pro and 2 external monitors. The monitors have usb-c input. Is it possible to use my monitor to power my laptop with a usb-c to thunderbolt 2 cable? If not, what is the most efficient way to power 2 external displays?

Your MBP is a 2015 model, which means it only uses the MagSafe 2 connector for power. It does not have USB-C and can't take power in over Thunderbolt from the monitors (assuming that they can supply power out via USB-C, which is not known at this point).

However, your question is how to power the displays. You'll need to read the manual to see what power inputs they have. I think it's unlikely that they take power in over USB.

If you want to know how to connect both displays to the Mac: your Mac seems to support 2 displays via Thunderbolt only. So don't use the HDMI port: get a Thunderbolt 2 to USB-C cable/adaptor (or other port on your display).


Restore main APFS container to full disk I tried installing Windows 10 on my Macbook Pro with Bootcamp on Mojave, but through a series of manipulations, I broke my Windows installation and Bootcamp would not let me restore my system as it was before. So I deleted the Windows partition to the point where "diskutil list" gives me this:

MacBook-Pro-9:~ sarbogast$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         2.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk2         1.8 TB     disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Untitled                196.7 GB   disk0s3

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +1.8 TB     disk2
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            1.6 TB     disk2s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 64.7 MB    disk2s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                1.0 GB     disk2s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk2s4

How can I reclaim the 196.7GB that used to be occupied by my Windows partition so that my main container is almost 2TB again?

Note that I tried the resizeContainer command but got this:

MacBook-Pro-9:~ sarbogast$ diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk2 0
Started APFS operation
Error: -69519: The target disk is too small for this operation, or a gap is required in your partition map which is missing or too small, which is often caused by an attempt to grow a partition beyond the beginning of another partition or beyond the end of partition map usable space

You need to first remove the 196.7 GB partition. Try the commands given below.

diskutil eraseVolume free none disk0s3
diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0


In a MacOS Mojave bash script "-w /etc/passwd" is false even for root An old bash script I have tested to see if a user was root by seeing if /etc/passwd was writeable.  In MacOS High Sierra it returned true for root, and false for anyone else.  But in macOS Mojave the test returns false even for root.

If I run that test [ -w File ] on other files with the same permissions and ownership, such as /etc/hosts , it correctly returns true for root and false for anyone else in both Mojave and High Sierra.  I see no special file flags or extended attributes on /etc/passwd.

The script is no problem to fix, but I'd like to know how/why this test is different on that file vs other files and why this is in Mojave only.  If this has to do with SIP, then I'd like to know how one can test to see if a file or directory is somehow protected by SIP.

Update: I found that disabling SIP made things work as expected, that is, for a root user the bash test "-w /etc/passwd" would be true.  Enabled SIP again and all is working as expected.  I don't know if I should delete this question, or leave it just in case someone runs into a similar problem.  Doing an "ls -O /etc/passwd" does not show the file as restricted.

Checking to see if a file is "writable" as a way to determine if a user is root is a bad way to check permissions.  For instance....

you can add a user to a group (i.e. wheel) that has write permissions to a file that's normally owned by root

a file can be flagged to not have write permissions even by root even though you have root access.

a file may have had its permissions changed to "non-writable" by root (intentionally or not)

SIP, or System Integrity Protection (as you've already discovered) will prevent even the root user from writing to system files.

Check for the User ID
Instead, you should look at the UID of a particular user with the function id
$ id -u

A root user, will have an ID of 0.
To see how you can use this in a script to check for root privileges, see the answer in the post Running a Script with Administrator Privileges.
Checking SIP
This is actually pretty easy....
$ csrutil status

However, if it is enabled, you will have to boot to Recovery Mode to disable SIP.  This isn't something you can do on the command line (or from a script) in a normal session.  It is much easier to simply test for the UID as described above.


Is there a way to sync bookmarks between chrome and safari on an ongoing basis? I have Chrome and Safari both installed on my Mac.

My underlying need is wanting to use Chrome on my MacBook Pro and to have all bookmarks I create to sync to mobile Safari on my iOS devices.

Yes, I could just use chrome on my iPhone, but I don't want to as iOS directs other apps to always open URL in Mobile Safari.

Is there a way to have two way sync from OS X Chrome to iOS Mobile Safari whether through a cloud service or my Mac which can run 24/7?

The chrome extension "Xmarks" may serve your needs. The extension syncs bookmarks between computers.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ajpgkpeckebdhofmmjfgcjjiiejpodla
seems to be available for both chrome and safari. Then if you use icloud sync, bookmarks "should" propagate to your mobile device. Changes on the idevice would propagate back to desktop safari. What is unknown, is if you would have to periodically launch Safari on the mac to get things in sync. NOTE that this solution runs on PCs only (Using a '.com' ap / program). If on Apple only, will work only if your Mac also runs Windows.


Norton not completing setup, Allow Button in iMac not working even with Tips (tab, spacebar etc....) Norton setup not completing, installation in iMac requires Allow button in preferences (security/privacy:general) not reacting when 'clicked'.  Tried all tips on this sight (unlock, tab, spacebar etc...) not working. Does anyone know if this was changed and if there is a new way to work the allow button to complete the Norton setup? I have tried EVERYTHING on the web to resolve this issue to no avail. I also have 3 other iMac computers that are running High Sierra 10.13.6 as well, and they loaded the Norton software without issue.

the only way you can hit allow is from that computer's mouse, while in front of that computer.  if you try with teamviewer, ARD, vnc, etc, it will fail.  if you're clicking it "in person", perhaps it's confused by some periph or needs uninstall/reinstall.

as a support person, this is a big stumbling block with our users.


Should I buy DDR3 or DDR3L RAM for late 2012 MacBook pro 13 inch? I have a MacBook Pro 13", late 2012 model.

This MacBook has 2x2gb 1600MHz DDR3 RAM. I am planning to upgrade it to 8GB of RAM.

I am wondering, should I buy DDR3 or DDR3L type of RAM?

Apple has a RAM upgrade guide located here. For your computer(MBP 13" mid-2012),  it provides this information:


Boot straight to an Application when Mac is turned on I have a client who wants to use Mac OS X and a Mac Mini to sell a software solution to end users that ALWAYS boots straight to an application when the Mac is turned on. They can't access the login screen, desktop or anywhere else (in fact they should NEVER even see it.) the only thing they would see is the grey apple screen on boot up.

That being said, we'd also need someway of being able to get at the desktop and the rest of OS X for an Admin person (my client or myself).

I've looked around, and everything seems to either be focused on a kiosk web browser or booting to desktop and then launching the application... both of which are NOT what the client wants to happen!

Any ideas on how best to accomplish this action?

See This Apple Tech Note on creating a kiosk type UI in OS X. Be careful you configure a way to boot normally, in case of mis-configuration, application starts hanging, etc.


iPhone 6s: apps greyed out after restore from another phone's backup So I had an iPhone 5 for a few years.

I bought a 6s recently and after restoring a backup from my iPhone 5.

After the restore, most of my apps are greyed out.

When I tap an icon, the name of the app switches to "Waiting" but nothing seems to happens.

On top of that, it seems like my passwords have been lost. For example, I've got 6 email addresses on the phone and when I open the "Mail" app it asks me to enter the credentials again, I'm not sure if it's related.

NB: I do not use iCloud at all.

I looked it up on the internet and already tried the following:

Restore again
Resync everything
Log out and log back in my iTunes / App Store account
Reboot the device

NB: I know it's possible to get my apps back by using the "Purchased Items" from the App Store but I do not want to delete my apps as I do not want to loose the data from them.

Waiting normally means the phone is doing something with the app store. The iPhone 6s is larger then the iPhone 5, so therefor the apps that work on a 5 probably won't work on a 6, or at least they will look a bit weird. Leave the phone connected to the internet and let it do its thing, if after a while the apps are still "Waiting" then the only other reason for this is, the apps just aren't compatible.


iPod app won't delete My Facebook Messenger app will not open, and when I click it nothing happens. It will not let me delete the app. My iPod was updating the app for over a whole day and nothing was happening, as I am in Thailand at the moment with very bad Internet. I tried to delete the app so I could reinstall it. However, nothing happens, and now it remains shaded grey and says 'waiting' at the bottom.

Go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Storage: Manage Storage

Scroll down until you find Facebook Messenger. Touch it. Touch "Delete App."

Once it has been deleted, you can reinstall it.


org.postfix.master - Service exited with abnormal code: 1 I've googled a lot on this issue, yet still seem to have found nothing that quite matches my situation.

Initially, I saw a lot of this error in main Console, repeating every 10 seconds

08/04/2015 19:11:11.102 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (org.postfix.master[1129]) Service exited with abnormal code: 1
08/04/2015 19:11:21.198 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (org.postfix.master) Service only ran for 1 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 9 seconds.

I have found a lot… a lot.. of tweaks & fixes for this, but combined with this error in /var/log/mail

postfix/master[***]: fatal: bind fe80::1 port 25: Can't assign requested address

I could find nothing except references to Mac OS Server & the inet_interfaces structure.

I'm running regular Yosemite on a Mac Pro 3,1 - no server structure at all on here.

From my 'not geeky enough to qualify' perspective, it looks like it's trying to find some kind of IPv6 connection yet failing...

Thanks to Postfix not working on MacOS Yosemite I managed to find the solution…

I tweaked my hosts file from

fe80::1%lo0    localhost

to

fe80::1%lo0    127.0.0.1

& the 9 second respawn has vanished.


Does OSX Mavericks Have an Equivalent to the F11 Show/Hide Shortcut in Snow Leopard? In OSX Snow Leopard, one can push all of the open windows to the side of the screen (revealing the desktop) by pressing F11. Further, by pressing F11 again, all of the windows are returned to their original state. My question is: Does OSX Mavericks have an equivalent shortcut and if so, what is it? (Note that this Snow Leopard shortcut is not enabled by default on portable Macs).

First, the keyboard shortcut in 10.6 Snow Leopard (and almost all versions of OS X) for Expose "Show Desktop" is not F11 unless you have 'Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys' clicked in System Preferences > Keyboard.

It's actually, by default fn-F11. Exactly the same as it is in 10.9 Mavericks. I suspect that under 10.6 you had the System reversing the standard by clicking the above and got used to that and 10.9 is set to the default where F11 adjusts the volume. Try fn-F11 and it should work. Of course if you want it the other way round then change it in System Preferences.


Can I use   partitions for multiple OS X installs? I'm curious about whether possible to install OS X on multiple partitions. I am already using several user accounts in one installation, putting different accounts into different installations of OS X.

This has nothing to do with Bootcamp. Simply split your hard drive into several partitions with Disk Utility, and run the OS X installer. You will be able to choose whichever partition you want to install onto, and switch between each by pressing ⌥ on startup.

However, please note that this is not compatible with Bootcamp. I.e. you won't be able to have a Windows partition, at least not with Bootcamp (you'd need a solution like rEFIt).

Regarding whether you'd need to buy OS X again or not: as per the OS X EULA:

  This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one computer at a time

…which I'd take for “it may exist several times on the same computer at a time”.

I know that's not what you asked for, so I'll keep it as an aside, but I can't resist saying it: this “partitioning” habit really is a switcher thing. There's no need for that under OS X, especially if you fully encrypt each partition (which I'm curious about, by the way).

The only reason I personally have two partitions is because I am totally dependent on my machine for my daily work, and I keep another OS in case of system corruption. But I aliased my user folder on the emergency partition to the one on the main drive, as an OS without my data is as useless as no computer. This fear of “a trojan” that would kill your system is irrational, and this setup will cost you much more in terms of maintenance (rebooting, keeping two systems updated in parallel…) than the advantages it will bring.


Multiple app versions from different developer accounts Can I submit the same app from multiple developer accounts with just different app icon and some color difference inside the app?

You may be able to do this but without a clear and compelling reasons Apple might reject later editions.
Acceptable reasons might include differing legal ownership for different geographic regions.
From Apple's App Store Review Guidelines:

App Store Review Guidelines
2. Functionality
2.11 Apps that duplicate Apps already in the App Store may be rejected, particularly if there are many of them, such as fart, burp, flashlight, and Kama Sutra Apps


Can I create an alias or a shortcut to a file in Spotlight? I have a file named Chemical Principles the quest for insight 7e by Peter Atkins.pdf but I want it to appear on Spotlight search when I look for the keyword Chemistry textbook.

Is that possible?

Use Tags.

Right click on the file you want
Select "Tags"
Type in the custom text for the tag (i.e. "Chemistry Textbook")

Now, in Spotlight, execute your search by prefacing it with tag:
tag: Chemistry Textbook

As an example, I assigned a sample text file (Chemistry.txt) the tag "Chemistry Textbook".  Upon doing a Spotlight search, it found it immediately.

You can find more information on how to fully use Tags from the Apple Support Document:  OS X: Tags help you organize your files


Where did the content of my Downlods folder disappear to? My actual downloads have completely disappeared. Not just in the folder in the dock, but the Finder downloads folder is also completely empty. The continuously given answer is to assume one just needs to "go to Finder and drag the Downloads folder to the dock and presto. But the Download folder in Finder and in the dock are bare.

Can anyone please help me?

Time Machine backs those files up. Have you checked your backup?

If you don’t have a backup, you might need to follow any of the several questions here about software that looks for deleted files and folders and shut down the Mac immediately to prevent further data loss from overwriting free space with new files.

How to recover a deleted file on Mac OS X?

If you don’t care about recovery of files, get a backup of what you still have and then boot to Recovery HD and check the disk for errors before recreating the folder.


Is there a good Hotmail client for Mac OS X? I have had an Hotmail account since 1997 (i.e. don't ask me to switch - have hundreds of filters and folders and thousands of contacts) and I recently switched to a Mac and I am looking for a Mac client that would deliver the same functionality as Windows Live Mail did in my PC. Also, don't ask me to forward/import to Gmail. I have tried that numerous times - Gmail fails at importing filter rules or nested folders properly from Hotmail and it also has numerous issues with sync and contacts etc when importing from Hotmail.

The Mail.app only supports POP3 for Hotmail which I hate because it is only local sync - I am looking for either IMAP/DeltaSync/Exchange (i.e. 2-way sync) for my Hotmail to work in Mac. I tried Postbox/Sparrow Lite/Outlook in Mac Office 2011/Thunderbird with webmail plugin/Eudora and none worked. I tried mBox for Mac and it worked great for about 2 weeks and now it stopped working with the new Lion Mail.app update. In anycase, mBox has been out of development since 2009. I looked at IzyMail but I am not willing to pay a subscription - I don't mind paying a one time fee though.

Hotmail used Exchange ActiveSync which works well on my iPhone. Mac's Mail program works with many Exchange servers, so I am really confused why Mac Mail cannot ActiveSync with my Hotmail account which apparently supports Exchange.

I just want a mail client that truly syncs with Hotmail. Information to a POP3 clients flows one way so the Mac cannot update the server with read status, reply status and more.

I am willing to pay for a solution and I just can't find such a software! I am also willing to pay a one-time fee for an IMAP gateway too and I can't find any such thing either.

Is it really that hard to get Hotmail working in Mac?

Pipe your hotmail through a Gmail account, either by forwarding everything from Hotmail to Gmail or by setting Gmail to download your Hotmail using POP.

Configure your Gmail to send using your Hotmail credentials.

Then access your Gmail in Mail.app via IMAP.


What devices can receive an iOS AirPlay audio stream? In addition to printing, the other feature in iOS 4.2 that I'd been looking forward to was AirPlay. My understanding from the keynote when it was introduced was that it allowed iOS to stream audio to existing AirTunes equipment (as well as provide video to the new Apple TV), but I can't get my iPhone 4 running iOS 4.2 to stream audio to my old Apple TV like iTunes can. Is this a known problem? Are there any workarounds, besides buying one of the new Apple TVs (which I can't because my TV is component, not HDMI)?

Yes, this would be known.

First, the old Apple TV won't be getting the update (since its now iOS based), and therefore wont support airplay.

Not sure of any workarounds for an old Apple TV that use the actual AirPlay standard. A hack may exist after 4.2 has been out for a while, but I think most people decided to just move to the new Apple TV instead.


Removing ACLs from files... can I do damage? Can I do any damage to files if I remove ACLs from them using something like

chmod -RN /directoryWithABunchOfFiles

What is the purpose of these ACL attributes?

It depends on the purpose of the file you are removing them from.  Remove them from system files, and you may find a world of pain if you do it wrong or remove from the wrong file.  Your own files, less of a problem.

ACLs are a way of extending the normal permissions system that is used to control access to a file/folder.  Ordinarily the permissions system works by explicitly allowing either read, write or execute permissions against the owner, members of the same group, and other people.  An ACL allows you to extend that by providing exceptions and additions to these normal operations, so a file might be writable by the owner, readable by members of the same group (say Users), but not accessible to anyone else.  However you could drop an ACL in that allowed user Bob write access, even though the standard permissions should only allow him read access through his User grown membership.


GUI service manager for OS X? I am looking for a GUI application, with in icon on the top bar, that can be used to start and stop different services on OS X.

These do not have to be real OS X (launchd) services/daemons, it is enough for me to be able to define them, with a name, a start and a stop script.

Mainly I want to use it for development to manage things like tomcat, nginx, postgresql... which are not usually started.

I'd rather have this a comment, but for some reason I can only post answers.

Have a look at LaunchControl: http://www.soma-zone.com/LaunchControl/. While it does not offer a menu item to start/stop services it provides a list of all available launchd jobs, their current status and a way to start/stop them with the click of a button.

EDIT

LaunchControl now does offer a menu item for controlling selected jobs:


How to prevent Script Editor from scrolling (and losing cursor location) on compile? I have some lengthy .scpt files. By "lengthy," I'm talking character counts (excluding spaces) of 200,000.

I use Script Editor.app to create and edit AppleScripts (simply because Script Editor was already installed).

If I save a long file in Script Editor (e.g., by pressing ⌘ command + S) the file will almost always scroll much further down in the file. The result is that I am far removed from the location in the script where I was just editing, and my text cursor is lost. If I type some text immediately after saving, the text is placed on the very last line of the document.

So, I have to spend a decent bit of time trying to find the line or area of code that I was just editing. I save often, so this time significantly adds up.

To make matters worse, after saving, the scrollbar in Script Editor is buggy and erratic for around 30 seconds. This makes scrolling manually largely counterproductive. Sometimes this erratic period is up to one minute.

Combined, these two errors result in a frustrating and time-consuming saving experience.

The only scenario where I have seen these two issues completely disappear is when the script is short. As in, short enough to not possess a scroll bar whatsoever.

I generally don't have many programs running on my computer when I am using Script Editor and they are never applications that are demanding. I usually have a couple Chrome windows, a couple TextEdit windows, one Script Editor window, and that's it. My machine is an Early 2013 Retina MacBook Pro with 16 GB of RAM.

Is this Script Editor behavior normal? Is there anything that I can do to mitigate it?

I just tried what you explained with script editor in Sierra and did not experience the same problem you are experiencing.  This may not be the best solution to your questions but it will definitely save you some time.  Why not just throw in a little comment at the place in the script where you want your cursor located after a file save.  Just adding something like --cursorand copy that commented --cursor to your clipboard then after you do ⌘ command + S , then go ahead and click ⌘ command + F (which will open the find field right there in your script editor window) then you could click ⌘ command + V (which would automatically paste that short commented line into the find field) this of course will highlight that text in your script and bring you right to its location.

UPDATE - NEW DIFFERENT APPROACH

Just add this handler to the bottom of any one of your script files.(I like to put my handlers at the bottom of the script to keep them from cluttering up the rest of the body of the script)

Calling the handler at any point in your script will ultimately get the coordinates of your scrollbar, then it will automatically save the current script with the keycode command , then will return your scrollbar back to its original coordinates.  Just comment or un comment the calling of the handler depending on whether you want to save or not save your document.  Leaving the calling of the handler as un commented
 As I have it set now, Will automatically save your script every time you click the “RUN” button within script editor.

on setScrollPosition()
    tell application (path to frontmost application as text) to (path to me as text)
    set theFile to result
    set theFile2 to alias theFile
    tell application "Finder"
        set theName to name of theFile2
    end tell
    delay 1
    tell application "System Events"
        get value of value indicator 1 of scroll bar 1 of scroll area 1 of splitter group 1 of splitter group 1 of window theName of application process "Script Editor"
        set thePosition to the result
        key code 1 using command down
        delay 10
        set value of value indicator 1 of scroll bar 1 of scroll area 1 of splitter group 1 of splitter group 1 of window theName of application process "Script Editor" to thePosition
    end tell
end setScrollPosition

setScrollPosition()

SIDE NOTE:  I have the delay set 5  which gives me time to play around with the scroll position after clicking “Run”  to see if it actually works or not (which it does in the latest version of Sierra)  you can adjust the delay value or comment it out if you don't need it.


I lost my iPhone; how can I see my messages? I lost my iPhone. I have my Apple ID and password, FaceBook password, phone number and email password. Is it possible for me to view my texts, photos etc. and access them through my MacBook Pro laptop without having my phone?

Yes, you can do this (assuming your talking about your iMessages).

Messages app

On your MacBook Pro:

Launch the Messages app
Assuming you haven't already signed in previously, then sign in with the same Apple ID you use for your messages on your iPhone

That's all you need to do. Now you can receive and send messages from your MBP.

Note: - You'll only get the messages that come through since you've set this up on your MBP. In other words, if you have 5yrs of message history on your iPhone, then you won't get all that history via this process.

Photos

If your iPhone was set up to upload photos to iCloud then you can also access these from your MBP.

Go to Apple > System Preferences
Click on the iCloud preference pane
Next to Photos click on the Options button
Now, depending on your situation, select either (or both) iCloud Photo Library and/or My Photo Stream
Click Done

Note: What you can access from your Mac will depend on how you had iCloud configured on your iPhone.

iCloud

From iCloud preferences you can access other information as well.

Go to Apple > System Preferences
Click on the iCloud preference pane
Go through the various options to select what you want.

Note: What you can access from your Mac will depend on how you had iCloud configured on your iPhone.

Further info

The following resources will be of help:

iCloud Photo Library
Use messages with your Mac
Set up iCloud on all your devices
Find My iPhone: Use Lost Mode


Disable Microsoft Office for one user I share a Macbook Pro with another user (we are both Admins). The other user has a Microsoft Office 2016 account, and I do not.

I work with a lot of CSV files, and it's extremely annoying that MS Office insists on being the default for loading CSV. I keep setting SublimeText to be default for CSV, and LibreOffice or Numbers for XLS/X files, but Excel doesn't get the hint. I have changed the settings to allow Apps from any source to open files.

To make it worse, I can't simply Force Quit on the toolbar icon, I have to X-out of the Excel pop-up.

I'd like to do one of the following:

Remove Microsoft Office for my account
Disable Microsoft Office for my account
Reliably set another program (SublimeText) to be my CSV editor, and LibreOffice to be my XLS/X editor.

You should be able to set a default application for a certain extension specific to a user. Right click on a file, click "Get Info" and open the section "Open With". Select your preferred application and click "Change all".

Alternatively you should be able to delete Excel from your Applications folder (drag to Trash).


why use yosemite bootable usb installer when you can use recovery HD for clean install? i just re-installed Yosemite from Recovery HD. Performed a clean install as i erased my HD from Recovery HD before installing the software.

Yosemite is being downloaded since a few hours but it would be the same with the USB Installer as Recovery HD is an Installer too.

So in both cases you need internet.
Am i right or wrong?

A bootable drive saves the entire OS X installer locally. If your current reinstall were happening from a bootable drive, the "downloading Yosemite" step would be nonexistent because everything's already there.

As in, you're wrong. The specific benefit of a bootable drive is the ability to reinstall OS X without needing to download it on the spot. (Of course, first you needed to have downloaded the OS X installer and run through the bootable drive-making procedure at some point beforehand, but the point is that once you've done that one download, you've got it for whenever you need it.)


Is there a way to prevent voice dictation from turning off the system audio? How can I configure OS X to allow audio playback while I use voice-to-text?

--

As empowered as my MacBook makes me [feel], an important part of my personality is indefinitely numb from familiarity with a feeling the still hopeful ones of us will also integrate into their being eventually: devastation that "no, you can't." is literally the  correct answer to their Apple-related how-to question.

... so, with carefully managed expectations, I await ...

Run these two commands in terminal.

defaults write com.apple.SpeechRecognitionCore AllowAudioDucking -bool NO
defaults write com.apple.speech.recognition.AppleSpeechRecognition.prefs DictationIMAllowAudioDucking -bool NO

Then restart Dictation.


Preview App bug - "Highlight" shortcut not working normally I'm not able to use "Highlight" shortcut. No matter I press control+command+h or control+command+u, it results in underlining text. Clicking the "Highlight" button also underlines text. I can highlight text using highlight with specific though.

But it's quite inconvenient that I am not able to use shortcut to highlight. How could I fix it?

Try clicking the highlight button (while not having any text highlighted) and select the highlight colour. It'll show a check mark beside the one you choose. Then unclick it and try the highlight shortcut again and it should make the default that colour highlight.


Install Windows 7 with Bootcamp on OS X Yosemite with USB Key I have an iMac (bought in 2011) and I recently upgraded it with Yosemite.
I am trying to install Windows 7 on it via Bootcamp.

However, its optical drive does not work, so I chose the USB key solution using the trick of modifying the file info.plist of Bootcamp (type 'usb bootcamp youtube' in google to see a video of this trick).

So I follow the process religiously and end up with the classic and famous boring screen 'No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key'.

So I tried to use Unetbootin ( http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net ) to make my USB Key bootable, and tried to boot on it through the screen that appears when you maintain the Option key (Alt button) while starting the mac. Result: I never managed to have my Unetbootin-formatted USB key appear on this screen :(

I read some stuff about reFit ( http://refit.sourceforge.net ) and GParted, but I just don't know how to use them...

If someone managed to install Windows 7 on his/her iMac with Yosemite using a USB Key, please help me understand why I can't see the USB as a boot option.

Found this on an apple forum. It'll allow you to create a bootable USB on older macs through boot camp without an optical disk. I used this method on my late 2011 mbp and I now have windows 8.1 pro running on it perfectly::

Before you do anything, make a backup of Info.plist or the whole Boot Camp Assitant app so that you can go back if necessary. Rename it something like "Info old.plist" or "Original Boot Camp Assistant."

First, edit the plist of Boot Camp Assistant:

Go to Applications/Utilities
Right click Boot Camp Assistant and view package contents
Find Info.plist in the Contents folder and edit it in Text Edit (it will make you duplicate the file first)
You want to edit FOUR things:

Add your model to DARequiredROMVersions
Delete the word "Pre" from UEFIModels and add your model
Delete the word "Pre" from USBBootSupportedModels and add your model
Remove your model from Win7OnlyModels (if its there)

To add your model to these lines, just copy and paste an exsiting row and replace the data between the two  tags with your model code. You can find the right codes to use for the plist by going to Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Info > System Report. Use the "Boot ROM Version" and "Model Identifier" as appropriate in the plist.

Once you make these changes, save the file and replace the old Info.plist with your new one. It will ask you to type your password.

The last step is to do a code sign. Boot Camp Assitant will not run if it's been edited. You need to resign it. Open Terminal (use spotlight to find it) and type this:

sudo codesign -fs - /Applications/Utilities/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant.app

It will probably ask for your password. Then it will say you need to download a developer tool from Apple. Agree to download it. (You don't need to install the whole X-Code, if it asks.) Once its been installed (its automatic), you need to go BACK to Terminal and run that command again. This time it will work.

After you've done that - open your hacked Boot Camp Assitant (it should run now) and have it make the Windows installation drive for you. Have the Windows ISO handy, and plug in a flash drive thats about 4-8 GB or more. The entire flash drive will be erased. This process can take a while. When its done, restart your mac and hold the option key. The USB drive that Boot Camp made for you will be there for you to install windows from. Its a yellow disk icon labeled EFI Boot.


iPhone 4 Internet Problems I think my phone is broken but I am not sure. I have always been able to access my home internet and I still can. I can run small apps, like Clash Of Clans, but I cannot run any larger apps. I cannot use the App Store (It says I need to connect to wifi to access it even though I am) I cannot use Discord and many other things. And I really do not know why. Like I said, I can use apps that require little data usage but nothing large. It is definitely connected. Even if I switch to my mobile data I still have this problem. Please help.

Try enabling your airplane mode for 10 seconds. Then disable and try accessing your App Store/apps. If this does not fix it. Do a hard reset.

Hold close iPhone button/sleep and the home button, till the screen blacks. Wait a few seconds and then hold the close iPhone/sleep button to turn it back on. (iPhone 4's top button)

If you don't trust the hard reset idea, google it.

Hope this helps. :)


Best Torrent Client that supports auto unrar I used to be a PC boy and now been in to Macs for a few years. I am after a good torrent client that supports auto unrar and move on completion.

Anybody know of anything like this? Google doesn't seem to turn up much.

Thanks

Lee

Transmission is generally regarded as the best BT on the Mac, and can definitely do move on completion. That's found in the Transfers - Adding tab in Preferences.

It doesn't have auto unrar built in, but it can run a script on torrent completion.

There are several available scripts on the Transmission forums. Torrentexpander claims to work well on OS X and is written for Transmission.

As far as I can tell, the steps to using it are:

Unzipping it and putting the torrentexpander.sh file into a suitable folder.
In Transmission, open Preferences, and click on the Transfers tab.
In the Management sub-tab, tick Call script when download completes, and then point it to the torrent expander.sh file.

In theory, it should then Just Work. I've not tested it, but it's all free and worth a shot. Post back if you're successful!