Export iOS Health data daily Is there a way to export iOS Health data daily?

I know about the in-app export option, but is there a way to automatize this process. Could be an app as well.

Probably something like QS Access, but this tool is lacking automatic export as well.

A daily email export would work as well.

Quantified Self have created QS Access, an app that lets you access your HealthKit data in a table you can explore in Excel or Numbers.

This free app is at present the best way to export and analyze the data Health collects. Install the app, give it the permissions it needs, select the data you want to export and it will gather the results and present them in a CSV spreadsheet you can share.


If my app *links* to pirated content, does my app "contain, display or access third-party content”? I know that question is borderline, but my app does not contain third-party content: only links.

Yes, it is highly likely your app will be deemed to "contain, display, or access third-party content".

Apple considers links to content the application developer's responsibility. You must prove to Apple you have permission to use the content being linked to or included.

If your application is judged, by Apple, to break laws or promote the breaking of laws, the application will be rejected. These may be the laws of judicial zones other than your own.


Can't iMessage with a Samsung Phone I am having trouble using iMessage with one of my contacts.  I can send messages to iPhones without any issues.  My contact's phone is a Samsung Galaxy S3.  Does anyone have any suggestions for me?

iMessage only works between apple devices. If you were using an iPhone it would be able to use SMS instead of iMessage when the other person has a non iOS device, but since you are using an iPad you can't contact them.


Upgrading to Lion from Snow Leopard I really want to upgrade to Lion, however I have some concerns with upgrading an OS, believe me, upgrading OS is far too scary for me, anyway, I just read on upgrading from Snow Leopard to Lion, now I want to understand what I have to do, can I just download Lion from the App Store then just open it, which will install Lion.

The part that gets me, when installing/upgrading, will my files on Snow Leopard be intact, because I have so much to transfer if I were to upgrade. I have no external HDD which I'm thinking of buying soon.

All I need is some piece of advice and explanation what goes on in the installation/upgrading process.

Thanks!

EDIT:

Just upgraded to Lion, everything went well! :-)

I've had never any problems with upgrades and never lost any files.

You should make a backup — or better, make a bootable clone of your current hard drive:

Buy an external hard drive
Install Snow Leopard on the external drive.
Reboot into the clean external Snow Leopard drive, migrate over users and apps and run all updates. Run from that external to be sure it's a workable copy of your internal drive.
Disconnect the external drive and put it on the shelf.
Reboot back into your regular internal hard drive and proceed with the upgrade to Lion.
Download Lion and run the installer!

Until you're certain that Lion works perfectly, keep the clone around - several months is usually enough time. If you ever need any files from it, just attach the drive and drag-and-drop them. If something goes really horribly wrong, you can boot into the clone, and then clone it back to the internal drive (you'll lose any changes made since you installed Lion). This second drive is really valuable for when you discover three months down the road that one seldom used piece of software won't work on Lion.  You can reboot into Snow Leopard where everything still works and get that one task done. It's a great lifesaver and means you can start using Lion rather than checking that every little thing works perfectly right after the upgrade.

EDIT:
Thanks Trombone for editing my broken-english post, but please, never add your own ideas into my post. My solution uses pure apple tools, so why bother with SuperDuper, when you can do it with nice clean install and Migration Assistant.

I never recommend any third-party products when things can be done with default Apple SW. Of course, you can prefer SuperDuper, it is your way - but not mine. Please add another answer explaining how to use SuperDuper or other awesome tools so that people can have a choice. Let's keep this solution needing no additional tools.


Can a time capsule be set to sleep? I've noticed that my time capsule continually whirs away and never seems to take any down time. This can't be good for the drives or for my power bill!

Is there any way to manually force the time capsule to go into sleep mode, powering down the hard drives and awaiting instructions?

Cheers, P.

The Time Capsule is part wireless router and part hard drive. The wireless-part is always on, and creates a constant low humming from the fans, there isn't really anything you can do about that, other than unplugging it whenever it's not needed. If it's part of a larger WiFi-network and can be spared at some hours, that might be an option.

The hard drive's fans are a bit louder because it needs more cooling. The TC is meant to be silent when the disk isn't being accessed, and it shuts down the disk automatically after 5 minutes or so (not exact) of disk inactivity.

If your TC is constantly whirring like the disk is being used, make sure it isn't! If it isn't, you could try unplugging it from the power for a few seconds and turn it on again and see if that helps. If it doesn't help, there might be an issue with the disk and it's fans, and you might want to contact Apple for technical support.

I can't think of a way to manually putting it to sleep or power down the hard drives, other than disconnecting the disk from all your computers (AirPort Utility 5.6 has a nifty button for this under Disks).


Apply "Floating/Translucent Window" to all existing sticky notes? If I have a large number of sticky notes on my desktop, each of which a varying permutation of "Floating/Translucent Window", is there a way to "Select All" stickies and apply the "Floating/Translucent Window" operation to them all?

You can set Floating Window as the default behavior for all new stickies, but for existing stickies you will need to set this value one-by-one.

To set the default:
On one sticky (any sticky), click Note from the menu bar and set "Floating Window" and/or "Translucent Window" to checked.  Then select "Use as Default" from the same menu.

All new stickies will have the new settings.  You can turn these off on a sticky-by-sticky basis, or you can re-set the defaults using the these instructions.


What information is accessible through iCloud? Can the administrator on my home PC access these files? Recently my texts were accessed somehow and I'm not exactly sure how this person did it. We share the same PC at home but have separate user accounts with passwords on them. My iCloud and iTunes also is password protected. However, this person is the administrator of the PC. Are there any files that this person has access to that could be from having my iPhone automatically backed up to iCloud though a wifi connection? Is there anything I can do to keep this from happening in the future?

Assuming your talking about Windows and the other user has administrator rights:

There are tools that may allow the Windows administrator account (which has access to all files on the computer) to view locally stored backups and extract them. This will only be possible if the data is actually on this computer, and not encrypted.

If you are sure that is not the case –because you only backup to iCloud– this person will need your Apple ID and password to access your iCloud data. This information may be stored in your session (recorded by Chrome for instance) but it is encrypted with a key associated with your Windows password, so not accessible to the administrator.

If the administrator changed or knew your Windows user password he could have accessed your session and pretty much all of your data. You will notice on the first case because he will have asked you to recreate it, or use a new one. It does not seem possible for the administrator to see your stored password, only to reset it.

Finally, someone could have installed a keylogger or some other form of monitoring on this computer, and all the information entered could be retrieved.

On the other hand iMessage is encrypted end to end according to Apple and others, but probably available to Apple or someone with access to Apple's servers (see this answer on Information Security SE). Sniffing your traffic on the local network and extracting iMessage from there does not seem to be a feasible attack vector.

To keep this from happening:

Change your Apple ID password. Check your recovery email and security answers to see if it any of them have been changed.

If you use the PC to access iCloud

Change your Windows user password.
Don't store passwords on your Windows user session (browsers mainly). At least not your iCloud password or the passwords of the email accounts associated to it.
If you suspect a keylogger or other monitoring tools, stop entering information associated to iCloud on this computer.


Do MacBooks support NVMe SSD drives via the use of a Sintech adapter? My question:

Can anyone confirm or disprove the support of NVMe drives (like the Samsung 960) by the Sintech M.2 PCIe SSD MacBook adapters for macOS Sierra and High Sierra, or would you have any information that could help me confirm or disprove this support?

Below are the results of my research so far.

SSDs comparison

"Official" MacBook SSDs

Officially supported MacBook SSDs are really expensive. For example, with the Macbook Air/Pro 2013, 2014 and 2015 models:

OWC Aura: $299 for 240GB, $399 for 480GB, $649 for 1TB
IFIXIT: $524 for 256GB, $649 for 512GB, $949 for 1TB.

Equivalent PC SSDs

Globally, an officially supported MacBook SSD (PCIe M.2 AHCI with a proprietary 12+16pin connector) cost from about $1 to $2 per GB, while equivalent PC SSD (PCIe M.2 AHCI and NVMe with a key M connector) cost from about $0.4 to $1 per GB.

NVMe:

Intel 600p: $196 for 512GB (low quality)
Samsung SSD 960 EVO: $219 for 500GB
Corsair Force Series MP500: $316 for 480GB

AHCI:

Kingston Digital HyperX Predator: $300 for 480GB
Samsung SM951: $450 for 512GB

So standard PCIe M.2 devices seems to be up to 3x cheaper than the MacBook PCIe M.2 SSD. Plus, NVMe SSD are globally way faster.

NVMe SSD compatibility?

Connector adapter

At first for the connector, I often seen the  Sintech adapter recommended to use the AHCI SSD above in a MacBook Air/Pro. The product page clearly stipules only compatible with a limited set of AHCI SSDs, but I do not see any reason for these "incompatibilities", as there is no other software/hardware standards for the PCIe M.2 AHCI models. It seems they simply give as compatible the list of the AHCI SSDs they've tested, and as incompatible the most known NVMe SSD models.

Interface compatibility

Then for the interface, what I understand from AHCI/NVMe is that it is only a controller interface, depending on the system drivers on the MacBook and not on the hardware itself.

Which seems to be consistant with:

  I emailed the store which sell that adapter and problem is that macOS doesn't support 3rd party NVMe SSDs, but Windows 10 and Linux do.

  -- From a Youtube comment on a upgrade video with a AHCI SSD and the Sintech adapter.

So Sintech may have given these NVMe SSD as incompatible not because of the adapter incompatibility, but because of the destination OS incompatibility.

System support

Finally for the system, macOS now support NVMe SSDs, from unofficially OSX El Capitan (with a patch to boot) and natively macOS High Sierra (even as boot, see an article about the NVME support and a confirmation from the Hackintosh community).

I sent an email to Sintech to get more informations on their adapter. I got a reply with some references (added to this post), but no answer since.

Edit (23/06):

  Unfortunately, we are busy in other projects, and still can't get new system to test it.

Similar researches

After I created this post, I seen there is some people with the same question in other communities, waiting at the same step. I share the links there in case of some of them got a return from a test with the Sintech adapter or an other one.

On IFIXIT - MBP early 2015 SSD can upgrade with Samsung 950 pro?

Por Chumjan (02/27/2016):

  I think about to upgrade. Samsung 950 pro is interesting. But i'm not sure it can use for this model.

trumanhw (12/21/2016):

  You can buy an adapter from M.2 to MBPr or Air for about $20... (...) The REAL question is if the NVMe protocol will be a hiccup (as in, I don't personally know that answer) ... and if it'll get the full speed of the 950. In principle, I don't see why it wouldn't. And I WILL be testing this out.

Fabio (06/10/2017):

  [ About the patch ]. It is meant to be used on hackintosh but I think it might work on a macbook pro from 2015 with the adapter and a nvme ssd like the samsung 960/950 evo/pro. If someone tries or has tried it please let me know.

a little update here...

macOS High Sierra beta 9 (and GM) brings us a BootRom update for ALL Macs supported by HighSierra, so that they can boot from APFS drives.

The very, very good news about this is that this update ALSO brings NVMe boot ability on every mac back to the Mac Pro 6.1 (Late 2013) upwards...

So every Mac which have an Apple 12+16 PCIe connector now owe the ability to boot from any NVMe drive, once they have been at least upgraded to High Sierra (and their BootRom updated).

Put it simply :

take a MacBook Pro retina 13" Late 2013
upgrade it to High Sierra
clone the OS to an external USB drive with CCC
power it off
change the stock Apple AHCI SSD to a brand new Samsung 960 Evo (for example)
use a sintech (or other) M.2 ngff to Apple 12+16 adapter (and protect the pin with kapton tape)
boot from your USB backup of High Sierra
copy back your OS and data to the new SSD

everything works (TRIM, SMART status, deepsleep etc.)

So since the beta of High Sierra and the BootRom update, the new results are following :

As for Apple NVMe drives:

Mac Pro late 2013 : works from 10.10.2 (at PCIe 3.0 4x speed)
MacBook Air 11" & 13" mid 2013 : works from 10.10.2 (PCIe 2.0 speed 2x lanes)
MacBook Pro retina 13" late 2013 :works from 10.10.2 (PCIe 2.0 speed 2x lanes)
MacBook Pro retina 15" late 2013 : works from 10.10.2 (PCIe 2.0 speed 4x lanes)
MacBook Air 11" & 13" early 2014 :works from 10.10.2 (PCIe 2.0 speed 2x lanes)
MacBook Pro retina 13" mid 2014 : works from 10.10.2 (PCIe 2.0 speed 2x lanes)
MacBook Pro retina 15" mid 2014 : works from 10.10.2 (PCIe 2.0 speed 4x lanes)
MacBook Air 11" & 13" early 2015 :works from 10.10.2 (PCIe 2.0 speed 2x lanes)
MacBook Pro retina 13" early 2015 : works from 10.10.2 (PCIe 2.0 speed 4x lanes)
MacBook Pro retina 15" mid 2015 : works from 10.10.3 (PCIe 3.0 speed 4x lanes)

As for non-Apple NVMe drives, (Samsung 960 evo/pro etc) :

Mac Pro late 2013 : works from 10.13 (PCIe 3.0 speed 4x lanes)
MacBook Air 11" & 13" mid 2013 : works from 10.13 (PCIe 2.0 speed 2x lanes)
MacBook Pro retina 13" late 2013 :works from 10.13 (PCIe 2.0 speed 2x lanes)
MacBook Pro retina 15" late 2013 : works from 10.13 (PCIe 2.0 speed 4x lanes)
MacBook Air 11" & 13" early 2014 :works from 10.13 (PCIe 2.0 speed 2x lanes)
MacBook Pro retina 13" mid 2014 : works from 10.13 (PCIe 2.0 speed 2x lanes)
MacBook Pro retina 15" mid 2014 : works from 10.13 (PCIe 2.0 speed 4x lanes)
MacBook Air 11" & 13" early 2015 :works from 10.13 (PCIe 2.0 speed 2x lanes)
MacBook Pro retina 13" early 2015 : works from 10.13 (PCIe 2.0 speed 4x lanes)
MacBook Pro retina 15" mid 2015 : works from 10.13 (PCIe 3.0 speed 4x lanes)

PCIe 2.0 speed is around 350 MB/sec by lane so :

with 2x lanes of PCIe 2.0 expect up to 700 MB/sec
with 4x lanes 1400 MB/sec

PCIe 3.0 speed is around 750 MB/sec by lane so :

with 4x lanes of PCIe 3.0 expect nearly 3000MB/sec


mount "nolocks" option ignored on Mavericks 10.9.1? I'm not 100% sure if this is just my misinterpretation of the mount output, or if this is actually an issue.  I'm mounting an nfs share with the following command:

mount -t nfs -o nolocks,noowners 10.0.0.1:/vol/shared ~/shared

But when I look at the output of mount I see the following:

10.0.0.1:/vol/shared on /Users/ryan/shared (nfs, nodev, nosuid, noowners, mounted by ryan)

Why isn't nolocks listed in the options?  The reason I need this option enabled is that the server I'm connecting to doesn't have locking enabled, and when I try and use the share I experience extremely slow performance as a result (at least this is the most likely reason).  I'm fairly sure that it isn't mounting the share with locking disabled, because I'm still experiencing the same issue.

nfsstat -m

It shows the options from mount_nfs


What is the correct version of xcode for mojave 10.14.4 I installed Mojave on VMWare. Below are the details.

I downloaded and installed xcode 9 and it was not compatible with this mojave version.
How can I get to know about the correct version of xcode for mojave 10.14.4?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xcode#Xcode_11.x_(since_SwiftUI_framework)

For macOS 10.14.4, Xcode versions compatible are: Xcode 10.2 - 11.3.1.
Xcode 11.4 onwards requires macOS Catalina, 10.15.2
With a free Apple Developer account, one can download older versions of Xcode (all the way back to Xcode 2.3 as well as new as 11.5 at https://developer.apple.com/download/more/
Also a nice catalogue:  https://xcodereleases.com/


Two Bluetooth devices + MacBook Pro + 2.4gHz WiFi = no network throughput; why? My wife has two MacBook Pros.  One is old; the other is new as of a week or two ago.

We have a combination of three Bluetooth devices: two keyboards (one Apple; one Logitech) and a magic mouse.

We have a Comcast-supplied barely polished turd of a combination 2.4gHz 802.11n WiFi gateway/router (standard XFinity fare).

The problem: any combination of two or more Bluetooth devices paired to either machine causes network throughput to drop to effectively zero.

This is true regardless of WiFi channel and is always reproducible.

This is not a pairing issue—that is, it's not the case that the keyboard is actually paired with some other machine; we've tested this with only one machine powered up at a time.

This is not a machine per se issue; the old MacBook Pro is from circa 2010; the new one is from 2014.

This is not an OS issue; both MacBook Pros are running fully updated versions of Mavericks.

Our iMac from late 2013 has two Bluetooth devices paired with it just fine.  It is closer to the router in case that has any bearing.

Wireless Diagnostics shows an "Excellent" signal-to-noise ratio throughout on all machines in our household.

Any tips or pointers?  I've read the threads on generic Bluetooth interference, but this seems very specific to that second device being switched on, and very specific to something that two MacBook Pros from different years must share in common.

I had the same issue. Did a bunch of troubleshooting with Apple over the phone and in store. The final diagnosis was a logic board and wireless card replacement.

When they took it in to repair it, the tech noticed only one of the three antennas were connected to the motherboard. His theory is that the one antenna was enough to support a connection or two but became overloaded in certain situations, very easily. After reconnecting them all has been working well.

So my suggestion to you is to either open it up yourself or bring it to Apple and see if that may be the issue.


How to check status of Wi-Fi adapter through command line? I read a few stacks on the internet but command line was used only to turn Wi-Fi on or off, but none of them to check the on-off status of Wi-Fi.

Any possible way to check status of Wi-Fi adapter on or off in command line?

You can use the ifconfig command, e.g.:

$ ifconfig en0
en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    ether # Removed for Security.
    inet6 fe80::c44:6ce5:5d57:5b93%en0 prefixlen 64 secured scopeid 0x9
    inet 192.168.2.101 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
    media: autoselect
    status: active
$

You can also filter the output, e.g.:

$ ifconfig en0 | awk '/status:/{print $2}'
active
$

When not active the output is, e.g:

$ ifconfig en0 | awk '/status:/{print $2}'
inactive
$

If you do not know the device name for the Wi-Fi network adapter, you can use the following examples:

$ networksetup -getairportpower $(system_profiler SPAirPortDataType | awk -F: '/Interfaces:/{getline; print $1;}')
Wi-Fi Power (en0): On
$

Or:

$ ifconfig $(system_profiler SPAirPortDataType | awk -F: '/Interfaces:/{getline; print $1;}') | awk '/status:/{print $2}'
active
$


Flag/Unflag shortcut in mail.app I learned that ⇧⌘L in mail.app should toggle the flag of a selected message. However, it doesn't work for me... I'm using Snow Leopard and Mail 4.5. Any ideas?

In Lion the shortcut is exactly that and you can actually take a look at the menu:

Make sure you're using the right one. If you wanted to alter those, you'd have to go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts and add a new one:


One Apple ID Required for iPhone and iPad My husband and I share a computer. We both have our own iPhone, mine a 4S and his a 3S. My husband also has a new iPad.

The problem: when I set up his new iPad it would not accept the Apple ID used on his iPhone, therefore I had to create another Apple ID for the iPad. Can one not have a single Apple ID and password for both devices?

You can use the same Apple ID on up to five devices.

I would reset the iPad and begin from scratch. I recently came across a similar problem with a new iPad and resetting it worked perfectly.


iPad mini Wi-Fi - can I use in UK and Australia? I want to buy an iPad mini Wi-Fi for my sister whilst she is in UK travelling. She will then go back to Australia. Will it work there if she has downloaded apps in UK? Can she change her account to Australian store once home months later? It is only the Wi-Fi version I am looking at and not the the latest retina display one.

You can continue using the previous account and country, for a change of country check this and contact Apple for further support:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201389


Why does recovery mode keep failing to install OS X on a new hard drive? I had a hard drive die in my Macbook Pro (from ~2012) and I replaced it. I booted into recovery mode and tried to install an OS on the new SSD, but it keeps hanging at "installing additional components" and eventually (after several hours) failing.

I used command + l to see the logs, and it keeps counting up the chunks it receives, only to eventually say "Failed to verify InstallESD.dmg: hdiutil verify failed", at which point it restarts the download process.

At one point, I did get through the process successfully, but since that got me to a desktop with Snow Leopard, I immediately tried to update to El Capitan using the App Store, which also failed, saying "This copy of the Install OS X El Capitan application can't be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading."

Why are these installations failing?

Bad drive cable

I finally took this to an apple store, and the techs diagnosed it as a bad drive cable - a common problem for Macbooks from that year, they said. With a new cable, the Recovery Mode installation worked, the El Capitan upgrade worked, and the machine has been running smoothly for months.


Clear terminal and prevent restoration There is some sensitive data (credit card numbers and such) that I store on my hard drive, encrypted. I use a script to decrypt the data and display it in the terminal window. When I am finished, I would like the script to clear the terminal, so that the sensitive data can no longer be viewed (even if someone gains access to my computer).

I have read here that ⌘+k clears the terminal output. To implement this in a script, I used AppleScript as suggested in the accepted answer to this question:

/usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "Terminal" to keystroke "k" using command down'

Finally, my script closes the terminal window with

killall Terminal

The problem: if I leave the terminal window with the sensitive output open for about 30 seconds or longer before closing if, then the next time I open terminal, it restores the sensitive data (the text [restored] is displayed below it). If the data was initially displayed for less time, it is not restored.

  How can I clear the terminal window from within a script, and prevent Terminal from restoring the cleared data?

I am running OS X 10.10.3.

Final Solution:

Remove the Terminal saved state, located in:

~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Terminal.savedState/*

Then, make that folder read-only so that it can't be written to.

You can use the clear command to clear your terminal window from within a script.  As noted on this other thread, the following commands in sequence will clear the current buffer, then the scroll back buffer:

clear && printf '\e[3J'

  Please note:
  (The clear command looks up the appropriate sequence for clearing the screen for the current terminal, but the “erase scroll-back” escape sequence is custom and must be hard-coded. If you put this in a shell script that you don’t know for certain will only ever be run with Terminal, you should check that $TERM_APPLICATION is Apple_Terminal before sending it.)

Alternative 1

Turn off Terminal.app's window restore functionality:

defaults write com.apple.Terminal NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false

Alternative 2

You can also store sensitive information in the Secure Notes section within the Keychain Access utility.


Automator script for restarting an application minimised without AppleScript How do I get an Automator script to restart an application and make it minimised after restart?
The application in question has no support for AppleScript.
I have an application (Setapp version of MoneyWiz) with the very annoying feature that if it is not started at least once a week it will delete all its saved files in the cloud. Continuously running the application does not count, it has to be (re)started.
I created a calendar automator script that runs every other night that restarts the application, but that brings the application to the front, and I want it to be launched in the background. Due to the application's lack of AppleScript I cannot use the
tell application [...] set miniaturized
which is the common solution I find when I search the web for solutions.

As you stated "I created a calendar automator script that runs every other night that restarts the application, but that brings the application to the front", I assume you have the parts of the workflow in place that closes your application on a timed-basis.
It sounds like the part you need solving is how to open the application after it's closed, so that it does not appear in the foreground.
Using a Run AppleScript action (deleting any and all sample code that may be present):
ignoring application responses
    tell the application named "..."
        if it is not running then run
    end tell
end ignoring

You should make sure that the part of your workflow that shuts down the application has completed before moving onto attempt a relaunch.  If the above script executes while the application is in the process of shutting down, it will not do anything.

For completeness, here's an example script that would handle the closing and relaunching of an application in the background.  It would be run using a Run Shell Script action, and assumes you have zsh installed:
#!/usr/bin/env zsh
bgreopen () {
        pkill -xi "$*" &&
        osascript <<-OSA
            ignoring application responses
                tell application "$*" to ¬
                    if it is not running ¬
                    then run it
            end ignoring
        OSA
} &>/dev/null

bgreopen Microsoft Teams

Replace "Microsoft Teams" with the name of your application.  It uses osascript to execute the AppleScript from the earlier part of this answer, partly to demonstrate its incorporation into a larger solution, and partly because it's very reliable at launching apps silently.
The shell command open has an option flag -j used to launch an app hidden.  It has been slightly less reliable at abiding the request to remain hidden in the past, but this was in an earlier version of the OS.  If you want to give this a try instead, it would actually be a more ideal method as it keeps everything executing in the same language rather than calling in and out to other places.  It's also a much more elegant solution:
#!/usr/bin/env zsh
(){    pkill -ix "$*" &&
       open  -ja "$*"
} &>/dev/null Microsoft Teams

Additionally, open has a -g option flag, which specifically stops apps being brought to the foreground upon launch.  Used independently of -j, it would open the app behind whatever you're working on, but not necessarily be hidden.  The -j flag ought to imply -g as well, but perhaps it doesn't and explains my varying mileage with it in the past.  So, you can experiment to see what works for you, and you can combine their use together with: open -jga "$*" (just make sure a is the last of the option flags immediately before the "$*" argument that represents the name of the application).

If you wanted to optimise efficiency of this process, you can google launchd.  It's the macOS launch demon that regulates execution of programs on a schedule, and would allow you to remove Automator and calendar alarms from the equation.  It would only require a .plist file that defines how often you want to run a script, and the script body or path to a script file, which would simply be the shell script above.


In Preview, how to set 'Rectangular Selection' as the default (NOT 'Text Selection' In Preview on the Mac, how can the default Selection be changed from 'Text Selection' to 'Rectangular Selection'

I am opening PDFs and want it to default to 'Rectangular Selection'

Currently I need to go into the menu bar -> Tools -> Rectangular Selection.

How to change default?

I am using Yosemite.

This is not a "permanent" change, but it speeds up the inconvenience of needing to use the "Tools" menu, by adding a keyboard shortcut:

Here is the first option for something you can do:

CREATING A KEYBOARD SHORTCUT

Open System Preferences
Click "Keyboard"
Open the tab titled "Shortcuts"
Scroll down to the last item on the left-hand frame's list: "App Shortcuts"
Click on the "plus sign" [+]; a smaller window will pop-up, asking for three lines of information:

— Select "Preview" for the application

– For "Menu Title", you must type EXACTLY what appears in the "Tools" menu of Preview: for OS El Capitan (Mac OS 10.11), this is currently "Rectangular Selection" (don't include quotation marks)

— For "Keyboard Shortcut", use whatever combination you want, so long as it does not conflict with any other pre-existing or currently used shortcuts. As an arbitrary example, I use "Command+Shift+R". Invent whatever alternative you might like.

Just a SIDE-NOTE: if you repeatedly press your keyboard shortcut [which you define in step 5], I have found that Preview will switch back to the "Text Selection" tool [when it is available], which might be occasionally [rarely!] convenient... since, (like you), I too wish that Rectangular Selection were the default... (especially for cropping, etc.)

Here is a second option, involving a "built-in" keyboard shortcut, combined along with one mouse-click [instead of the two required if using the "Tools" menu]:

Press "Command+Shift+A" to make the sub-toolbar, "Markup Toolbar" appear or disappear; [note: this toolbar has the rectangular selection option on the left].
With sub-toolbar available [see step 1], click the 2nd item in from the left, to enable rectangular selection.

Hope that helps!...

Note that, for some reason, I have not always had success with the 1st Option [programming an app-specific shortcut using System Preferences] in certain versions of Mac OS or with particular apps -- even though the menu item might be spelled precisely and correctly as it appears. It was thus pleasantly surprising to find that this custom keyboard-shortcut option indeed works under El Capitan [OS 10.11], as of the time of writing this here.

Hope this helps others!


Mac mission control add new space + icon is on left - not the right How can I fix this?

I don't recall changing a setting for this, but I really wish it was on the right as per normal (was like this prior to Big Sur update as well.)
Normal is right I assume - much better!
https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204100

Having the dock on the right hand side causes this (unwanted) change. Hoping to find a terminal command to fix this be still unsure why Apple feels this is necessary.


Why do text messages not appear when off of wi-fi? I have an iPhone 4 (iOS 7) with cell plan but no data. When texting with non-iPhone users, I get the texts to and from no problem. When texting with iPhone users, though, the messages will only appear when I'm on Wi-Fi. It appears that when iPhone users (like my wife) try to send me a text message, it defaults on their end to iMessage, and those messages won't appear until I reconnect with Internet.

I can send text messages to everyone at any time no problem. Shouldn't messages that can't go through as iMessage be delivered as text? Do I need to delete my Apple ID from Messages to ensure that it only attempts text messages (but then I won't be able to share pictures/etc. via Messages when I AM on Wi-Fi)?

iMessage is designed to prefer sending a message over Apple's servers vs sending via the carrier's SMS system.
When you send a message, iMessage checks to see if the recipient is registered with Apple's Messages server. If the target you are messaging is not registered with Apple's Messages server (ie they use an Android phone), your iPhone will send the message via SMS.This uses the carrier's Voice protocols, not Data protocols. This is why you can send a text even without a data plan or with a 'dumb' phone.
When sending to a Registered Messages user, iMessages will send a message via Apple's Messages server. This requires a DATA connection. Apple assumes every iPhone has a Data connection, and since iMessages is designed to NOT use SMS (saving the user money), it will wait until it gets a data connection before sending the message. A Data connection is either EDGE/3G/4G from the carrier, or Wifi.
This is why you can send to a non-iPhone user right away, but an iPhone user does not get the message promptly.
Now, Apple didn't assume everyone pays for text messages, so in case they actually have a texting plan, and PREFER to send via SMS, there is a setting in iMessages that will send a message via SMS, if it fails to send via the preferred Data connection. While by default iMessages will not send Registered users via SMS, its easy to tell it to do so. Simply go into iMessages settings, and enable the 'Send via SMS" setting, and you will be able to send to other iPhone users.

Very long additional info:
Messages is really a combination of SMS + Instant Messaging services. For users of iDevices, it really is a great experience and how a message is delivered is seamless. However, if you use other devices, or if your device is not 'standard' in some way, Messages can be difficult to manage and understand.
Since Messages combines both SMS and IM, it allows Messages to be delivered via both methods. "IM" style messages are delivered via the Apple Message Server, while SMS messages are sent via the carrier service. Where it gets confusing is that even iDevices that have no carrier service at all, such as iPod Touch and some iPads, can send Messages.
The Confusion
If all devices had carrier services, this would be simple: if data service was available, Apple Messages service would send via data, and use SMS all other times. But since all devices do not have carrier services, it gets tricky: An iPhone can send a SMS to another device, and data-based Messages to any iDevice. Of course, it can't send a SMS to an iDevice that does not have carrier service.  Likewise, an iDevice without carrier service can not send a SMS to an iDevice, nor any other device, but they can send a data-based Message to any iDevice. Here is a summary:

iPhone > iDevice:   Messages (data) only
iPhone > iPhone:    Messages and SMS
Android > iPhone:   SMS only
iDevice > iPhone:   Messages only
iPhone > Android:   SMS only
iDevice > Android:  not possible with Messages
Android > iDevice:  not possible with Messages.

Where things get really confusing is when you have registered BOTH a telephone number on your iPhone, and an email address with the Apple Messages Server. If you have an iPhone, it will default to registering your phone number, allowing you to add an email address. an iDevice will allow only an email address, since it does not have a phone number.
For iDevice and iPhone uses, they do not notice or care which contact form was used to send the message: either will do. But in order to send to a non-iDevice, a user of an iPhone MUST send to a phone number (since it goes via SMS). But an iDevice can not send to a non-registered non-iDevice, such as an Android phone at all, since it does not have SMS capability. Nor can an Android phone send to an iDevice over SMS for the same reason.
Therefore, when there is a mix of iDevices, iPhones and Android phones, the user must carefully choose what contact form to use. For example, I have an Android phone, an iPad, and a Mac. I can send Messages to my wife's iPhone from my iPad, to either her phone number or email address, both of which are registered. But to send her a message from my Android, I can only use her phone number. When she contacts me however, she must think first: if she messages me at my email address, it will go to my iPad and Mac, but in order to reach my Android phone, she must choose my phone number. Since most people simply open existing conversations, this gets really confusing it they were conversing using a different contact form.
Your device problems:
I believe your issue is that your iPhone is 'non-standard' in that you do not have a carrier data plan. Therefore, it behaves much like an iDevice like an iPod Touch. Only if an iPod Touch has wifi will Messages work. But since you have SMS, you are able to send an SMS, and likely receive an SMS from non-iDevices. But if another iDevice sends to your registered email, it will fail, until you are on Wifi. I suspect this is true if you send to a registered iphone phone number too: Messages is going to try long and hard to send via data, so will wait until connected. You can force it to use SMS as discussed above.
So, carefully look to see what contact form your wife and you are using when you use Messages. If your wife is sending you Messages using your registered email address, they will not arrive on your phone till you get Wifi, whereas if she is sending to your phone number, you will likely get it right away. An Android will be able to text you immediately, since it is sending via SMS.  I suggest that you both use the phone number only (and set her phone to send via SMS). You can register to receive Messages sent to a registered phone number via your Mac Messages as well, so that you can receive Messages sent to the iPhone via both iPhone and Mac.


some apps are not in settings app on iOS I noticed that the apps I developed and tested on my device, doesn't appear in the Settings. Actually a lot of apps are missing there. Why is that?

This image depicts what I mean.

Not every app needs separate settings. In order to have settings in the app developer would need to implement separate Settings.bundle in the app.
More about Settings.bundle on the Apple Site.


iPhone/iPad GMail Stopped Sync'ing Properly I have a couple of GMail accounts which I track on my iMac, iPhone, and iPad. On the iOS devices, both of the accounts are setup as Exchange accounts with Push delivery. I read that this is the recommended way to setup iOS with GMail and everything has been working flawlessly with this configuration for years.

A few days ago, the iOS devices stopped sync'ing properly. They receive all inbound emails immediately. However, if an email is read or deleted on my iMac, this isn't reflected on the iOS devices at all unless I force-quit the email app and restart it. It's getting really irritating because the iOS devices are constantly showing unread mail even when my inbox(es) are completely empty.

What happened? Does it have something to do with this latest iOS update (6.1.2)? The release notes said it had something to do with Exchange but I didn't read closely because technically, I don't use Exchange and I figured it didn't apply to me. Did they screw something up somehow? Shall I revert back to prior iOS version?

Any ideas appreciated.

Go to mail, contacts, calendars>Fetch Data> check every 15 minutes!!
Took me a few minutes and found no one posting this fix!!


Account on Mac restored from Time Machine has FileVault turned off My Mac book pro was stolen.
ML 10.8.2.
I successfully restored all system from Time Machine backup.
I remember having turned on FileVault on my user account on original system.
But on restored system that account has FileVault turned off.
Does it mean account on original system had FileVault turned off as well?

And related question. FileVault was turned on on Lion or even earlier. Usual system upgrades should keep FileVault turned on, right?

Mount the Time Machine drive / volume on your desktop and navigate to the snapshot you used to restore the Mac.

In the /Volumes/path_to_tm/Backups.backupdb/Mac_Name/Latest/HD_Name/Users folder, you will either see a directory or a file.sparsebundle named for your user's short name.

If you see a .sparsebundle, you had FileVault 1. If not, then not.

The answer here also depends on which version of FileVault (1 or 2) you were using on the missing Mac.

FileVault 1 is based on encrypting just the home folders of accounts as opposed to encrypting everything on the Disk. If you enable FileVault in OS X 10.3 - 10.6, this is what you get; upgrading to 10.7/10.8 will leave the encryption intact (now called "Legacy FileVault").

If you recover an FV1-protected account, the encryption should be maintained. Since your recovered account is not encrypted, you didn't have this enabled on your account on your old computer.

FileVault 2, on the other hand, is based on encrypting the entire startup volume -- all accounts, the OS itself, etc. If you enable FileVault in OS X 10.7 or later, this is what you get. You can also "upgrade" from Legacy FV to FV2 by disabling Legacy FV, then enabling FV2 (note that Apple recommends doing this, but it is not automatic).

If you had FV2 enabled on your computer, there's no way (at least, no easy way) to tell from the backup. 10.7 and later allow you to encrypt the backup, but that's independent of encryption on the startup volume (i.e. it's entirely possible to have an unencrypted backup of an encrypted system, or an encrypted backup of an unencrypted system). Also, the restored account will be unencrypted, unless you specifically enable FV encryption on the new computer.


Excel CSV export encoding According to my tests, Excel on Mac, when asked to save data as CSV file, uses MacRoman encoding. My questions are:

Does it always happen or there is some setting that controls it?
If there's a setting, is there a way to make it save as UTF-8? If not, is there a way to export Excel file with characters not in MacRoman preserving these characters?

I found the easiest thing to do was to just let excel export to csv in its own dumb way, then open up a terminal and do the following:

iconv -t UTF8 -f MACROMAN < file.csv > file-utf8.csv


Trouble with importing photos from iPhone to Mac when I have enabled iCloud Photo Library and selected "Optimize iPhone Storage" I have enabled iCloud Photo Library and selected "Optimize iPhone Storage" on my iPhone. There are 20000+ photos and videos in the "All Photos" album on my iPhone, but since the storage of my iPhone is only 16GB so most of the photos and videos on my iPhone are not full-resolution copies. Now when I connect my iPhone to my Mac and try to import all the photos and videos to a blank library in the Photos app, it says there are only 200+ photos available for importing. Is there a way I can import all the photos and videos on my iPhone to my Mac?

Note that I don't want to turn on iCloud Photo Library on my Mac Photos app, because at some point I will reach the storage limit of iCloud Photo Library and I will have to start deleting photos from it, and I don't want to lose the local copies of them on my Mac.

My situation

My iPhone has only 16GB of storage and it fills up quickly because I take tons of photos and videos. I don't want to import them every week, and I also want to look at photos or videos from one or two years ago, so I purchased 200GB of iCloud storage and enabled "Optimize iPhone Storage". This works great.
I want to incrementally back up the photos and videos to an external hard drive which hosts my Photos library.

I’m not sure I can address everything in your post, but here are some things that might help narrow down some options.

If you have “optimize photos” on your iOS device/iPhone - then it is designed to upload the full, original images to iCloud. Full stop.
Then you are expected to download those photos to all other devices from the ful version in iCloud.
At best - you always get the perfect version and the downsampling only happens to the local / non-permanent copy that’s on a device with low storage space internally.
At worst - you fill up the iCloud space and have to buy more to store all the originals - and you still retain the full size versions online, but at a cost.

Depending on where you split from this general idea - you may or may not have some issues that I didn’t anticipate, but I would probably reach out to Apple Support to verify your iCloud is correct and full and see options to get everything from the phone to iCloud, everything from the Mac to iCloud and then sort out the options.

Getting the local cached copy from the iPhone is very against the design so I would think you’d need specialized skills or software much more involved and time consuming than just fitting into the intended use pattern.


Middle mouse button stops working from time to time I have a very strange problem, and it started since I got my LG 5K Ultrafine screen and started using an external keyboard and mouse.

I usually notice it in Blender, so it might be related to that.

I use the middle mouse button to rotate the view in Blender, and suddenly it acts as if I'm holding down the mouse button, even if I'm not, and when I move the mouse the view rotates.

Now if I switch to a browser, like Chrome, the middle mouse button doesn't work. I can't close tabs for example, which usually works.

Using the track pad, I can triple finger click, and it works as it should.

I have a couple of mouse controlling apps, to make it work like I'm used to from PC, and it might be causing these issues.

Smart scroll (to controll scroll speed in different apps)
USB overdrive (to disable the horrible acceleration)
Logitech control center (which only works when a Logitech mouse is in)

I just tried switching to a Logitech mouse, and it has the same issues as the other mouse, which is a Corsair (which doesn't have Mac drivers, but it usually just works)

Suddenly it just starts working again, and also a reboot helps, but it's so annoying since it happens like once every 30 minutes or so.

So it's a weird problem, and I'd be happy to know if anyone has had anything similar?

USB Overdrive was the culprit, and I found that it happened when I held the scroll wheel clicked and scrolled at the same time. By disabling/enabling USB Overdrive, it started to work again.

However, when I disable the setting "Wheel button: Middle button", this stopped happening, and the middle mouse button works as it should.


iCloud Documents and Desktop empty - macOS High Sierra I logged out of my iCloud account. Now I logged back in, and the Desktop is empty, and so is the Documents folder.

If I check online, all my files are still there. But they are not showing on my computer, running macOS High Sierra.

I have tried signing out again. In iCloud settings, I have checked Desktop and Documnet Folders to check that it syncs.

How do I get the contents of Desktop and Documents to sync to my Mac?

I discovered, that you need to give it some time to restore the Desktop & Documents info from iCloud back to your Mac. If you keep signing back out, you just start the process all over again. Make sure you are connected to Wifi, and walk away. Check it in a few hours or tomorrow.


MacBook Pro Hardware & Software Issues under warranty I have a MacBook Pro(13-inch Retina display), bought on 27 November 2015, from Bangalore India.

Last Monday it got some booting problem, and I was not able to go forward from the boot screen, always got stuck up at OS booting view.

I have given the device to service center, and after one day I got a response from service team saying that device dose not have any hardware issue, it might be a OS issue, so they need to format all data and re install the OS. I allow them to format all data.

For next two days I didn't got any update from the service center. Then I tried to call Apple Customer Support Team for more information on the status of the device. After 2 days recursive trying we got chance to talk to the service center people. And got an update that,

  There is some issue with some chip, which they want to replace with a new one. So they are going to order it from the warehouse. That will take around 4 days to ship from there. And if it is not there it will take more time to repair and get back the device.

I am a Developer by profession, I have lot of pending work due to this issue, also lost lot of my work which I need to do again. There is no Physical Damage to the machine. Service center team is not ready to provide me a machine as a placeholder till my machine gets back.

I would like know, where and how I can ask Apple for getting a new machine instead of existing one, as there is no idea to anyone from Apple Support Team and Service Team when the issue will get resolved.

And this particular machine is under warranty.
Please help me out on this.
Many Many Thanks.

Just visit Apple's support page:

Apple Support

There you'll be able to check if your product is still under warranty, and contact Apple to ask for a replacement.

It doesn't seem clear to me whether you actually purchased the computer from Apple, or from a local retailer, so they might not be able to help you with repair progress information from a local shop.


Boot camp assistant gives "Windows support software could not be saved to selected drive" Error Installing Win 10 on MBP2015 I'm new to mac and trying to install Windows 10 on my Macbook Pro with specs

Macbook Pro Retina Mid 2015
Using macOS Sierra 10.12.6

I'm tying to install Windows 10 with BCA. But all the time I get this error at the end.

“Windows support software could not be saved to selected drive. An error occurred while saving the Windows support Software”.

My Macbook saves the Windows support software and windows ISO somewhere inside the mac-OS system so I don't need flash drive. And BCA don't give me the flash drive and download support software options. It asks for Windows ISO and then partition the drive and then goes straight for the downloading of Window Support Software.

Another problem is each time I get this error, BCA downloads all the Windows Support Software again. Which takes time and data (I'm using WiFi-connection speed 350kb/s).

I have also tried manually installing Windows 10 But that gives me this error while selecting the target window partition that I have created using Disk Utility.

The output from the command diskutil list is given below.

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                    TYPE NAME              SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:   GUID_partition_scheme                  *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                     EFI EFI               209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:               Apple_HFS Macintosh HD      499.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:              Apple_Boot                   650.0 MB   disk0s4

So, anyone please help me to solve this. I've spent last week searching on internet but nothing works.

Thanks

I will address your attempt to manually install Windows 10 without the use of the Boot Camp Assistant. Here are some points.

You are using Sierra. This is good in the sense that High Sierra has introduced APFS. This has caused some problems that you will be avoiding.
You created a bootable USB installer. I do not know how you did this, but you do have to copy the Windows Support software to this USB flash drive before installing Windows. If you can not do this, let me know.
I appears you created a FAT formatted fourth partition labelled "BOOTCAMP". I do not know what procedure you used do accomplish this. However, a FAT format for this partition caused the Windows installer to incorrectly believe you have a MBR partitioning scheme. You should have formatted this partition as "Mac OS Extend (Journaled)".
When the Windows installer asks "Where to install Windows?", you should proceed as follows. First, delete the fourth partition. Next, select the free space. Finally, select "Next" to continue.


No wi-fi detected in Windows 7 in boot camp partition I've installed Windows 7 on a Boot Camp partition on a 2013 Macbook Air. However when booted into Windows 7 no wi-fi network can be detected. The Mac partition is fine. A Google search indicates this is a widespread problem but I can't seem to find a solution. Any help?

Sorry about this but I've solved the issue. I went back to the external hard drive I had onto which Boot Camp had downloaded the Windows 7 drivers during the installation process. I had to manually activate the application found in Bootcamp/Drivers/Broadcom/BroadcomWirelessWin7x64. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone else.


Why do I get a plain blue screen when I connect my Mac Mini to an external monitor? I have one of the new mac mini's and run multiple users on it.  At any time up to 5 users may be logged in.  I have a keyboard and monitor that I connect to alot of machines so very often the mini has no monitor plugged in.  When I connect my monitor - Dell Monitor, VGA to HDMI adapter that came with mini - I get just a plain blue screen.  It looks like the blue that you see when the mac is switching users.

I've turned off all the energy saver options thinking that it might be going to sleep and not awaking.  Any other ideas as to what might be causing this and how I can prevent it?  Every time I connect my monitor I need to reboot to use the mini.

Update:  I've tried a couple of more things - I turned off the screen saver also, I tried connecting to the machine using LogMeIn (http://logmein.com) all with similar results.  It's as if when a monitor is not attached the mac stops outputting display.  It is still running, I just can't get the display to work.

Update - this what I get when I SSH in and do a top command:

Macintosh-5:~ litmus$ top
Processes: 134 total, 2 running, 132 sleeping, 590 threads             10:39:24
Load Avg: 0.48, 0.46, 0.24  CPU usage: 1.87% user, 4.22% sys, 93.89% idle
SharedLibs: 4872K resident, 11M data, 0B linkedit.
MemRegions: 15034 total, 760M resident, 47M private, 228M shared.
PhysMem: 411M wired, 787M active, 382M inactive, 1580M used, 467M free.
VM: 335G vsize, 1042M framework vsize, 41811(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts.
Networks: packets: 17481/3381K in, 18709/11M out.
Disks: 20134/790M read, 4894/76M written.

PID  COMMAND      %CPU TIME     #TH  #WQ  #POR #MREG RPRVT  RSHRD  RSIZE  VPRVT
547  top          6.4  00:00.26 1/1  0    24   43    1064K+ 264K   1640K+ 19M
538  SyncServer   0.0  00:00.12 5    3    42   87    1328K+ 5452K- 5988K  16M-
537  PubSubAgent  0.0  00:00.03 4    2    58   65    1528K+ 1412K- 3356K  33M+
521  SyncServer   0.0  00:00.13 3    1    39   83    1268K+ 5440K- 5924K  15M-
520  PubSubAgent  0.0  00:00.04 4    2    55-  65    1532K+ 1400K- 3384K  33M+
513  bash         0.0  00:00.02 1    0    17   24    256K   244K   920K   17M
512  sshd         0.0  00:00.05 1    0    11   68    284K   2492K  728K   584K
506  sshd         0.0  00:00.13 2    1    37   68    492K   2492K  4720K  796K
500  cupsd        0.0  00:00.06 3    1    48   68    1344K  328K   2916K  41M
497- LMIPSUser    0.0  00:00.03 9    0    44   55    452K   248K   1240K  31M
484  CCacheServer 0.0  00:00.00 2    2    35   53    604K+  320K-  1648K  33M+
483  AppleVNCServ 0.0  00:00.01 4    1    46   56    884K   276K   3708K  31M
478  Litmus Test  0.7  00:01.61 10   3    148  118   47M+   6116K  51M+   77M
477- LogMeInGUI   0.0  00:00.09 4    1    84   82    1168K  5544K  3832K  31M

Finally figured this out.  The issue had to do with the fact that I am using multiple users and Fast User Switching.

You can read more details about it in this thread:  http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2177922&start=15&tstart=0

The gist is that each user has it's own loginwindow process running.  These multiple loginwindow process' reek havoc with any method of remote controlling the mac -VNC, Apple Remote Desktop, LogMeIn even unplugging/plugging in a monitor is affected.

So you need to kill all loginwindow processes before connecting.

To do this:

Connect via ssh
issue a ps auxwww|grep loginwindow to find the current loginwindow processes that are running - there will be one for each user + one for console
for each process call sudo kill -9 pid where pid is the process id

* note:  you do not need to kill the loginwindow for console

Much thanks to Martin Marconcini who led me down the path of investigating the running processes via SSH.


Mac keyboard shortcut to open recently closed pdf file on preview Lately, preview on Mac is not saving all the pdf highlights (seen some discussion online about this with no solution yet). I highlight quite a bit of pdfs regularly. The one solution, although extremely inefficient, I found is to save and close the file regularly after 1 or 2 new highlights and open it again. Even with this, unfortunately, the highlights are not saved properly 10 to 20% of the time. Anything more than 2 highlight changes, I am certain they all are not saved 90% of the time.
My question is if there is a keyboard shortcut to open a recently closed preview file? It's a pain to right-click preview every time and open the just-closed file from the list? Any ideas to avoid this problem with preview is also very welcome. Thanks in advance!

My question is if there is a keyboard shortcut to open a recently closed preview file?

The following was tested in macOS Catalina 10.15.6 and worked for me while Preview has focus. (No third-party applications needed.)
If you just want to open the most recently closed document in Preview, then the following example AppleScript code used in a Run AppleScript action in an Automator Service/Quick Action and assigned a keyboard shortcut in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services can do it.

In the Run AppleScript action in the Automator Service/Quick Action, replace the default AppleScript code with the following example AppleScript code:

tell application "System Events" to ¬
    click first menu item of ¬
        menu 1 of menu item "Open Recent" of ¬
        menu 1 of menu bar item "File" of ¬
        menu bar 1 of application process "Preview"

If you want to choose from the Open Recent menu in Preview, then the following example AppleScript code used in a Run AppleScript action in an Automator Service/Quick Action workflow and assigned a keyboard shortcut in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services can do it.

In the Run AppleScript action in the Automator Service/Quick Action, replace the default AppleScript code with the following example AppleScript code:

tell application "System Events" to ¬
    set OpenRecentMenuList to ¬
        get name of menu items of ¬
            menu 1 of menu item "Open Recent" of ¬
            menu 1 of menu bar item "File" of ¬
            menu bar 1 of application process "Preview"

if the number of items in OpenRecentMenuList is greater than 2 then
    set OpenRecentList to items 1 thru -3 of OpenRecentMenuList
else
    display dialog "The Open Recent menu is empty." buttons {"OK"} default button 1
    return
end if

set menuItem to (choose from list OpenRecentList) as string

if menuItem is "false" then return

tell application "System Events" to ¬
    click menu item menuItem of ¬
        menu 1 of menu item "Open Recent" of ¬
        menu 1 of menu bar item "File" of ¬
        menu bar 1 of application process "Preview"

I assigned the following keyboard shortcut to the Automator Service/Quick Action in: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services

Note: The usual security caveats apply. Permissions will need to be granted as prompted and or required in: System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy >

The example AppleScript code is just that and does not contain any error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted.


How to prevent iTunes from stopping when switching users? iTunes stops playing when you switch users under Mac OS X. This has been the case for rather long.

I agree that this is the most sensible behaviour. After all, the user that has switched herself in might want to use her own iTunes and music.

However, there are still valid use cases where you'd like iTunes to keep playing. I have two: I personally have several users for different kinds of activity. Or even when I am together with my SO, we share the same iTunes library and choose together. So when she logs in to her account, she still wants my iTunes to keep playing. And the other way around.

So whether this is appropriate or not, is there a way to trick iTunes into keeping playing when the user account is switched out ? (not logged off of course).

There is no way to do that. As soon as a user is switched, the inactive one looses all access to input/output devices on system-level.


Closing Preview documents without confirmation dialog AND without quitting Preview Is there any way to close "Untitled" Preview documents without getting the confirmation dialog box (where it asks "Do you want to save the changes made to the document ....?")?

I don't want to just quit, or force quit, the Preview program, because I often have some other documents open that I want to combine and/or save with different names LATER.

I've tried un-checking the General System Preferences option "Ask to keep changes when closing documents", but that didn't work, even after a reboot. And there doesn't seem to be anything relevant in the Preview preferences.

I just want to quickly close a bunch of untitled documents so I can free up some memory or reduce clutter, without having to mouse over to each individual dialog box and click "Don't Save".

If that isn't possible, here some ideas for other methods that would also be helpful - I just don't know if they're possible either:

A. Select a bunch of Untitled documents in a multiple document Preview window and:

Close them all at once without saving any of them.
(There is a File menu option for "Close Selected Documents", but it opens up a separate confirmation dialog box for each one.)
Save or Rename all of them all at once (i.e. Untitled1, Untitled2, etc). Then if I have the General Systems Preference "Ask to keep changes..." unchecked I could close them all at once by closing the multiple document window.
Combine them all into one document. (I know you can use Print to convert them into a single new document, but you still have to close the original separate documents).

B. Use a keyboard shortcut for the "Don't Save" button, so at least I can get through all of the separate dialog boxes more quickly.

Try using ⌘-⌫ (Command-Delete). I read the list of system keyboard shortcuts for documents, and it is near the very end, and I just tried it, as I have had the same question for a few years now. Previously, I had not read far enough before giving up.


Macbook charging with USB-C Monitor I have a Macbook pro 13'' 2018 model and a Dell 24 USB-C Monitor: P2419HC. Whenever I plug my screen to the laptop, the laptop charges. According to DELL website, the monitor provides 65W power.

The Macbook original charger gives 20.3V === 3A which is 60.9W.

Will the monitor harm the Macbook battery in the long term in any way?

Normally when you provide more watts+volts+amps the device will simply draw less . Its the opposite that brings trouble i.e a cheap usb charger with 500mA and ur phone requires 1.0A. It will draw more than the charger can produce and heat up and more than likely damage ur phone. there are some differences in maintaining voltages steady for particular devices but thats very particular. Just make sure w.e the Dell can dish out across the board is more than the Mac charger and you should be fine


Why can't I place desktop icons everywhere when snapped to grid? The area marked in the image cannot be used for desktop icons.

The filename is probably too long on the folder next to where you're trying to place it.
Try moving those Untitled folders over one grid space & test using the short name folders at the top.


Itunes won't play .m4a or m4r tones Windows 10.  iTunes 12.7.0.166.

I followed the directions found everywhere to create a new aac file less than 30 seconds long and rename it to .m4r  then removing original (newly created) file from library.  When dbl clicking the new .m4r file iTunes launches but nothing happens.  I noticed that I have this same behavior with files already in my Tones folder which are a mixture of .m4r and m4a files.

The files play fine in other players such as groove.

It appears that I am now unable to import custom ringtones.  Any ideas on what I may be doing wrong?

In iTunes 12.7, the ringtones functionality has changed. You can still copy custom ringtones to your iOS devices using this guide from OSXDaily, or this Apple Support article.

If you still need access to the features in previous versions of iTunes, Apple made iTunes 12.6.3 available for cases like this: Deploy apps in a business environment with iTunes

Check out this Apple Support document for more information on the iTunes 12.7 update: Changes in the new iTunes


Can I use my Mac's speakers and AirPlay / Bluetooth at the same time? I have an iMac at my home office that I'm often playing music on from the output speakers. I also have an AirPort Express with a speaker connectable to via AirPlay / Bluetooth. I was wondering, is there any way to play my music from the standard output on my iMac, and at the same time, play it from my AirPort Express using AirPlay or Bluetooth?

Reference:

iMac 27" Late 2013 running OS X 10.11.3

AirPort Express Dual-band 802.11n

Try using the midi setup application included in OS X it can let you group sound outputs together. You just need to create a new multi-output group with the + button.


macOS High Sierra - Time Machine no longer recognizing iMac backups on USB drive My iMac backups that are stored on an external USB drive are suddenly not being recognized for backing up. Using option key and pull-down menu, I can select the set of backups on this USB drive and can restore from them, but I cannot get Time Machine to use that folder for more incremental backups — It wants to create a brand new backup (for which there is not room).

I have deleted the file /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist and rebooted the iMac, but the problem persists. I think the cause may be related to my very brief use of this USB backup file with Migration Assistant to put files onto an external hard drive: that drive now seems to be linked to this backup file in the Backups.backupdp folder.

How do I change that? I have discussed this at length with Apple support but was given no really useful advice.

The answer turned out to be very simple. In the command for tmutil I had copied the format and so I typed "[-a]" when I should have typed "-a". The error message always gave me the impression that the addresses were not correct. The proper error message should have said I should not include "[" or "]"


Can I "Forget this Network" when the wifi network is not in range? I have an iPod Touch that I upgraded to iOS 4 (but this an issue that also existed in iOS 3.1). When I travel, and I join a WiFi networks (e.g. hotel, etc), I don't always remember to forget the network before I leave.

iPod touch: Wi-Fi Information and Settings tells you to "Forget this Network" if you can choose it from the list of Wi-Fi Networks.  However, when the network is not in range, you cannot select it to forget it.

Is there either a way I am not seeing in iOS to do this, or a third party application I can download?  Does the fact I have extra WiFi networks in the list affect the performance of my device when it is trying to join known networks?

Update: I now have doubts a third party app exsits based on that Apple Drops Wi-Fi Sniffers from iPhone App Store reports "sniffers were dropped because they use a private framework, hooks in the operating system that are not documented nor allowed for third-party developers to use."

Seems like no way to do this at the moment. Workaround:

  The only solution seems to be to rename a spare access point to the SSID of the network you want to forget, connect to it with the iPhone, and choose the option to forget the network. This kludge seems like a lot of work and something that an average user probably doesn’t know how or want to do

via http://www.novainfosecportal.com/2010/07/08/forget-this-network-pretty-please/


Is it possible to load single directories into iCloud? Triggered from the Mac Finder? I’m currently thinking about buying paid iCloud storage, because I’ve got several directories on my Mac which I’d like to have backed up that way.

My first look at iCloud was disillusioning, however.

Obviously it isn't possible to upload whole directories via the web interface. Only single files. An alternative would be making compressed directories. But that option isn't great.

Is there a software application for desktop with which one can upload single directories?

I’d like to trigger the upload via the right-click context menu or something similar, and have the upload take place in the background. Ideally such an app would also “watch” the selected folder and keep it synchronized with iCloud.

Is this possible in the current state of iCloud Drive, and does a solution exist?

iCloud Drive on your Mac will upload the contents of your iCloud folder, including all subdirectories, to iCloud.

It is not possible to cherry-pick folders to exclude within your iCloud folder, or folders to include outside of it. Everything inside the iCloud folder gets synced with iCloud every time it changes, and that’s all.

Starting with macOS 10.12 Sierra, you may also specify the Desktop and Documents folders to be synced to iCloud. But those are the only exceptions. I believe the way this works is the original folders are replaced with symbolic links, and the actual folders moved into your iCloud Drive (I don’t use this feature, so I haven’t verified this myself).


Multiple simultaneous wifi connections With the release of airdrop it is apparent that my WiFi network card is capable of making more than one network connection.  Are there any apps, documentation, command line tools, etc. for managing multiple wireless connection on my mac.

in a nut shell can I get my single wireless nic to act like two wireless nics?

I am asking about this because I have applications on my iPad that can only communicate with my macbook via WiFi (apple doesn't allow hard wired transmission of data for most apps).  Right now my laptop can either talk to the internet or my iPad(network im on blocks everything but internet access so my macbook and ipad can't talk on that network).  It would be great if my laptop could connect to both since it seems the hardware is capable.

I poked around a bit more and it looks like its pretty simple to add a vlan on the wired interface but there isn't an option in the gui to set one up for the wireless.  Using the ifconfig commands from this page I have managed to get a vlan for the wireless interface now but i'm not sure how to use a wireless interface from the terminal.

I was also able to modify my preferences.plist as described by bmasterswizzle and have the virtual wireless interface in my system settings. Unfortunately I'm missing something because I can ping the virtual interface from that machine but I can't ping the virtual interface from other systems on the network.

PING 10.0.0.114 (10.0.0.114): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: No route to host
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0

I'm inching my way closer but I think there are some routing issues I need to address.  I'm not really an expert on more complicated networking setups.

If you have a couple of computers kicking around to test AirDrop on, you can open a terminal on each machine and enter something like 'ifconfig -a' which will list all your networking interface cards.  I'm not near a Mac or Unix box to show, but what you will see is a network interface that might be called say "en0" (Ethernet0) which is a physycal interface (may be wifi, or cabled) and a further one called "en0:0" which is a logical interface that piggybacks on top of the physycal interface.  In this way you can run multiple virtual interfaces using just one physical one, and this is how AirDrop works.  It is possible to manually create these interfaces yourself, and "multihome" your mac by having one interface say on a 192.168 address, and the other on say a 172.16 address, thus allowing it to talk to 2 networks at a time.  It was always relatively straightforward on cabled interfaces, but I am not sure how tricky it would be (from a hardware support viewpoint) with wireless connections, but it's clearly possible in some way.  See this question and answer for more details, but in short you need to be familiar with such terminal commands as ifconfig, netstat, route etc.
Use the Airdrop network to access a computer?


Find my iPhone contact What does it mean when it says enter a phone number where you can be reached it will be shown on this iPhone after it has been erased does it mean that the iPhone will text my all contacts

If an honest person finds your phone, they need to know who to contact to give it back.

As they cannot get into the phone itself because it is locked to your ID/thumbprint, then the contact number can be displayed on the lock screen.

Personally, I have my emergency contact number embedded into the lock screen photograph itself - in case of accident & you haven't triggered the Find My iPhone functionality.


Iphone app that will count up or down with voice I am in need of an iPhone app that will count down or up from a particular number for a visually impaired individual.

For example if 60 is entered a voice would say 60,59,58,57 and etc.

Does something like this exist for an iPhone 6?

I found this app "Voice Over Timer" which looks to be configurable to do close to what you want.

AppStore Link:
https://appsto.re/us/TeCFM.i

edit upon further review, it looks like the countdown can only be announced for the last ten seconds. The AppStore page mentioned a customization but it is a customization from among pre-determined options.


Mac Book Pro Rretina (2014) will not charge I accidently drained my mac book pro retina battery and now it will not charge.  The power source is adequate and there does not appear to be any debris concerning the magnetic connector.
I have left my computer plugged in for days on end.  Have I ruined the battery?

I strongly doubt you've ruined the battery.

Here are some steps to try:
1) https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295 - reset the SMC as someone else suggested also

2) unplug your power adapter from the wall for over 2 minutes. There is breaker-like circuitry that triggers when there is a fault with the power adapter (usually thermal, like if it was lying on the carpet and overheated). Unplugging for 2 minutes resets this

3) sometimes rarely, something weird happens and the battery just needs to be unplugged/re-plugged. Don't do this yourself unless you know what you are doing. The battery in these laptops can be actually dangerous (think boom) without the right equipment. Take it to the Apple store along with the power adapter and just tell them "it stopped getting power, please help." Diagnostics are free even if the thing is out of warranty. You don't have to lie about what happened if they ask - leaving your laptop un-powered for a few days is not a crime nor warranty-voiding if you have a warranty.


MacBook Pro Battery Problems I have a MacBook Pro late-2012 model.
And my cable started showing symptoms of fraying.
So I ordered an offbrand cable from Amazon with good reviews and it arrived today and I tried it and the Mac recognized that it was getting power but the percent won't go up it's stuck at 95% but when I click on the battery icon in the status bar it says Battery Is Charged same thing with the original MagSafe but I just noticed this behavior now.
But with the MagSafe it would reach 98% sometimes and stop other times it would go to 100.

Should I just ignore this or do something?

It is common for the Macs battery to stop charging around 93-98%. It does it to prolong the overall life of the battery. Plus, your battery will have some wear and tear now depending on how many charge cycles you have used up.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1446#Troubleshooting

But if your MagSafe adapter is charging to 98% consistently and the off brand one is not, then the new cable is a suspect. Charging on Apple devices depend on several factors and there is some intelligence built into the battery IC which I believe communicates with the adapter to tell it when to stop charging. I am not sure if an off brand adapter plays well with the battery IC.


Will Docking Station make Early 2013 MacBook Pro faster I am using my Early 2013 MacBook Pro (max spec.) connected to an external 4K monitor (as described here: Early 2013 Macbook Pro with 4K).

Everything is good, but it seems a bit slower than before and I notice that it gets hot. Would using a docking station keep it cooler and make it appreciably faster? I'm thinking of one of the vertical Henge ones.

Would using a docking station keep it cooler and make it appreciably
  faster?

No, a docking station has no "compute" power built into it so it can't offload any processing of any kind from the CPU or GPU.  This means it won't be cooler nor faster since the CPU and GPU are still handling the workload.

The reason you are seeing a "slowdown" when your 4K monitor is connected is because you are driving an external high resolution display with a integrated graphics chipset - the Intel HD Graphics 4000.  Being that it's integrated, it allocates up to 1.5GB of system RAM and uses CPU cycles for GPU processing.

Your MacBook Pro is slower because you are pushing it to (and past) it's limits in terms of capabilities.


Black Border in External Monitor OSX El Capitan 1920 x 1080 I've got this issue with OSX El Capitan. My existing monitor show black border in resolution 1920 x 1080. The black border is shown only on left side of monitor. This never happen previously in Yosemite.

What I've tried but didn't work:

set resolution in safe mode
unplug and plug again my mini to VGA cable
Restart
play with my monitor setting (reset setting)

Here is the screenshot:

Thank you for your help

Same problem with my Acer monitor. I've researched a lot online. Next few days my ordered VGA-DVId will test my last resort. So I suggest you might change your monitor's input to DVI. This solved the issue for me.


Some of "Services" menu is in Portuguese I tend to assign keyboard shortcuts to the services I use most often. Occasionally, I need to access one from the toolbar menu. When I dropped the menu down today, I noticed that some of the items were in Spanish. All of the aforementioned items seemed to be the core services - ones I had installed or built myself are still in English.
No idea how this happened. Please see the screenshot below.

Running 10.6.8 on a late 08 MBP.
Cheers

Although it seems unclear why did that happen (perhaps you've got some permission issues?), you could delete the Portuguese language package from your System with Monolingual, and that should do the trick.


Multilingual spell checking on Whatsapp Desktop is not working Multilingual spell checking (French and English) is working very well generally on my mac OS install. I set it up correctly following these recommendations.

However, there seems to be something particular with the Whatsapp Desktop application that makes it not work. Only English spell checking is happening and any word in French (not colluding with an English word of course) is underlined in red.

Is someone having the same issue? Does anyone have a solution to this?

I had the same issue with Spanish and English. I followed these instructions to change the language priority, putting Spanish over English, and the issue was resolved.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/21/set-language-priority-mac-os-x-lion-auto-correct/


MacBook Air phantom files I deleted all of my files and even did command/power-command and reinstalled OS X Lion. But I still don't have all of my hard drive space available. When looking in About this Mac it shows 12GB of audio, movies and photos of which there are none.

Where are these files and how can I delete them to regain my HD space? I'm trying to bring my MacBook Air back to new and start clean.

Download and run a free tool like Disk Inventory X or OmniDiskSweeper. It will point out where disk space is being used, by which files/folders and also allow you to delete them from the tool.

There are also paid applications that have similar features, like DaisyDisk.


Mac Calendar has stopped allowing events to be entered on Sundays from month view? Mac Calendar has stopped allowing events to be entered or viewed on Sundays from the Month view.  If I double click on a date on the month view, for a Sunday, nothing happens but if I go to the day view there is a default New Event on the day.

If I enter an event from the day view it does not appear on the Sunday in the month view.

Having been a Windows user for a long time I did wait to ask this question until I had turned the machine off for day and then back on the next day.

Is any one else experiencing this issue?
Is there a setting somewhere that got changed?

Quit iCal, and try removing the com.apple.iCal.plist file from your Mac

Open Finder
Go Menu, hold the option key and click on Library
Go to Preferences
Remove the com.apple.iCal.plist file or put .bak behind it (backup)
Logout or reboot your Mac and your problem should be fixed.


How do I copy the location of a track to the "Comments" section in iTunes? I dont understand why this is not working. If anybody knows how to resolve this issue:

tell application "iTunes"
  copy location of track 1 of playlist "Test" to Comments
end tell

Applescript does now show an error but when I see in iTunes, the "Comments" field is still empty.

Thanks!

Because you copy the location to the Comments variable.

Here's how to put the location in the comment tag.

tell application "iTunes"
  tell track 1 of playlist "Test" to set comment to (its location as text)
  -- or set comment  of track 1 of playlist "Test" to (get location of track 1 of playlist "Test") as text
end tell


iOS calendar crashed on March 2013 When selecting March 2013 in the Month view, Calendar crashes. Does anyone know what could be the cause of this ?

Ps: I tried march 2012 and the weekly view for march 2013 and there is no problem.
Ps2: it's on a iPad 3 with iOS 6.0.1
Ps3: I've tried the same thing on my father's iPad : It's crashes also on march 2013. (the synchronized calendar are totaly different)
Ps4: Just found out that Facebook's birthdays are crashing the app on my iPad.

I would like to report that the update to iOS 6.1 solves this problem. I had the issue and now it's gone.


Permission denied when I try to change a file’s access and modification times I can't change a file’s access and modification times. When I enter touch t- CCYYMMDDhhmm.SS file.example , I get "permission denied". It works for other files. I tried to use chmod +x file.example but I am not sure I am using it correctly.  What should I write, please ?

The command should be touch -t (date) file.example

chmod +x just makes the file executable – it should not affect the date - but if you still want to use it, you can do it like this:

chmod +x file.example
touch -t 0401200 file.example

Also, check that you have write permissions on the file by running ls -l file.example (or right-click on the file in Finder and choose Get Info, then look at 'Sharing & Permissions').


Apache works, 127.0.0.1 is accessible, but http://localhost/ is not In 10.7.2 update Apple roll out new bug, - hosts bug. This crashed broken hosts. I had tried install and configure dnsmasq, reconfig /etc/hosts/, and after this manipulations http://localhost/ doesn't load. If you need more info, please request it ))

My /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1   localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost
#

My /etc/resolv.conf file:

#
# Mac OS X Notice
#
# This file is not used by the host name and address resolution
# or the DNS query routing mechanisms used by most processes on
# this Mac OS X system.
#
# This file is automatically generated.
#
domain RT-G32
nameserver 8.8.8.8

dig localhost

ps sorry for a little broken english ^_^

Also check to see that there is a loopback interface configured for 127.0.0.1; it should be lo0:

#ifconfig
lo0: flags=8049 mtu 16384
    options=3
    inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
    inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
    inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128

If there is no interface attached to the IP address, then the packets have nowhere to be delivered.


Mac Mini late 2012 second monitor resolution I have a dual monitor setup for mac mini 2012, 2 x lg flatron w2243 one is connected through dvi to hdmi adapter and works fine at a 1920x1080 resolution, the other has a vga to mini display (thunderbolt) connection, but the highest resolution it works at is the 1280x720 and I want them both at 1920x1080.

As soon as I increase the resolution on the second monitor, the monitor goes black and occasionally flickers.

As for vga to thunderbolt adapter, it works fine as i've tested the same monitor with my MacBook Pro 13" Retina and it's working great at a 1920x1080 res.

Let me know if you have any ideas or if you need any more info.

Thanks

According to this page on EveryMac.com the resolutions you want to run should be supported.

The problem might be the adaptor.

I would try a PRAM reset (restart while holding down Command-Option-P-R), or possibly an SMC reset, detailed in Apple's Support system.

If these don't work, I'd try a different adaptor.

Good Luck.


Auto add subtitles into the MP4 videos? I am using Handbrake to convert various movies to MP4 format, so they can be played by iPhone/Ipad... but by default Handbrake does not include the subtitles inside the output files.

I am looking for a batch solution that would allow me to do this (so I can do 20-30 files at once, not only one by one).

You might use mkvextract to extract subtitles:

brew install mkvtoolnix;for f in *.mkv;do set $(mkvmerge -i "$f"|awk -F'[ :/)]' '/^Track ID [0-9]+: subtitles/{print $3,tolower($7);exit}');[[ $1 ]]&&mkvextract tracks "$f" "$1:${f%mkv}$2";done

Then use the external subtitles with the mp4 files.

The mp4 container doesn't support srt or ass subtitles, but it does support ttxt (MPEG-4 Part 17) and VobSub (sub and idx files). I couldn't get ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c copy -scodec mov_text output.mp4 to work though, or at least the subtitles weren't displayed by VLC or QuickTime Player.


How do I activate middle-click to close browser tab? How do I configure FF or Chrome to close a tab when I middle click on it?

(I'm in the midst of migrating to OSX from linux)

This was due to using synergy - when I plug my mouse in directly, it works as expected.


Is there a way to force iphone 5 to 2.4ghz? Upgraded my wifi router to a Orbi RBK22 with 2.4 and 5. I have a wifi camera that only uses 2.4. To set up the camera on the new router, the iphone with the camera setup app, must both be on 2.4. Problem is the Orbi auto uses 5 if the device (iphone in this case) is capable. There is no way to set up a 2.4 ssid and a 5 ssid in the Orbi where one can select the particular channel and stay on that channel. So one approach is to have my iphone 5 on 2.4.

Is there a way?

In iOS there is no option to force selecting 2.4Ghz wifi network.

If you have the possibility to change the SSID on the router to set two SSID like :

Wifi_24
Wifi_5

You'll be able to choose which network use and then configure your camera on the 2.4GHz Wifi.


Login or unlock screen on a Mac using an NFC tag? Does OSX have support for unlocking the screen (or logging in) using a NFC or RFID tag?

The ACS ACR122T USB NFC dongle (a PC/SC device) seems to have working OSX drivers, but no software suite for login is available.  Rumors has it that Dangerous Things are working on that.

A workaround is to use a RFID/NFC reader that acts as an HID/input device, such as the RfidLoginer.  But that doesn't sound very safe, especially since the linked device only sends the RFID device ID.

In earlier versions of OS X (i.e. 10.9 and older) you had the /usr/sbin/pcscd executable, which the driver that comes with your ACR122T dongle can talk to.

In the latest OS X (10.10), pcscd has been replaced by something new called com.apple.ctkpcscd, which will be running in a default install of Yosemite.

The documentation for this new daemon is available from:

https://smartcardservices.macosforge.org

Here you can also get the source code, etc.


Can I connect to wifi but still use cellular? I would like to be able to connect to my cars dashcam via wifi while in the car but still be able to use my iPhone's cellular connection.

The way the dashcam works, it appears as a wifi access point so the phone tries to connect to the Internet through it. How can I be connected to the access point while still using my phones cellular?

Actually this is possible!...

Use the following instructions:
1. Tap the blue arrow next to the name of the AirPort Express WiFi network to view more options.
2. Select "Static" as the type of IP address, and then enter the following IP address and Subnet Mask :

IP Address : 10.0.1.4 (for example)
Subnet Mask: 255.255.0.0

Make sure you leave Router, DNS, and Search Domains blank! This tells the iPhone that it should use its cellular network to route internet traffic rather than trying to do it via WiFi.


MacOS: Get Notification System Update How do I get notification that there is an update for the MacOS system? I can find some questions on how to turn it off, but my problem is that it doesn’t appear to notify me at all.

The last update is one I read about. After that, I went to

System Preferences | Software Update

After that I checked manually. On then did I see any notification.

My selected Advanced settings are:

Check for updates
Download new updates …
Install macOS updates
Install system data files …

MacOS 10.14.3

On my iMac I have AppStore app in the dock. Whenever I have a software update, a number appears on the AppStore icon indicating how many updates I have. This applies to System Updates as well. I think that is the only way I'm notified.


Can't login to Gmail via Mail on iOS I am having trouble accessing my Gmail account via Mail on my iPad. It keeps saying my username or password is incorrect when it's not. I have that rotten two-step authentication turned off and this is still happening. How do I fix this?

If you do have two-step verification enabled you can just go to the App passwords page to generate an app-specific password, although you shouldn't need it on recent versions of iOS / OS X.

If you are sure that two-step verification is turned off I suggest to verify your password. And if you're 100% sure it's correct try changing your password, or if turned off recently turning two-step verification back on.


iOS (iPad / iPhone) "screen burn" My device isn't broken. I confirmed this on many iPad 2 and iPad 3 I have access to, both with iOS 6 and 7. But I can't reproduce it at will.

There is something that triggers it. And then it becomes easy to reproduce. Just leave the home screen on for long enough (make it 10 minutes) and lock the phone (so you'll be sure to notice the effect). You'll see the dock bar icons are still slightly "burned" in the screen. Here's the best photo I could take so far (since I decided to pursue this):

See the safari icon slightly burned there, in the center? It can get much worse. I've added a reference as what the icon originally looks like, rotated 90 degrees in that image.

So, question here is: Can anyone else reproduce this? Is this really an apple issue? Did this happened in previous iOS versions? I never seem it in any android device.

Obviously it isn't the same hardware issue as the original screen burns, but it's so weird that if it wasn't stand still in the same screen place even after rotating the screen, I would suspect it could be some odd software / firmware bug.

I can't reproduce it, I can however tell you that it's a pretty common problem.

I've had the same thing happen on my Retina MacBook Pro. Rumor has it that it's especially common on displays manufactured by LG.


iTerm2 where is [ ] keybindings? Is there a reason why ALT+8 / ALT+9 does not produce [ and ] in iTerm2 ?

I'm running with defaults and a .bashrc/.bash_profile that produces the correct result in Terminal.app.

iTerm2's defaults for the Option keys are called “Esc+”, which basically means it will type an escape character (\033) before any character you type while holding down Option. To get the same behavior you see in Terminal, go to Preferences > Profiles > (your profile) > Keys and select Meta under both "right option key" and "left option key".


invisible rectangles blocking upper left of screen Since upgrading to Catalina (2016 Macbook Pro) a few weeks ago, every now and then I find there are "invisible rectangles" on on the screen where I can’t move my mouse.
They're always [edit months later: not 100% always, actually] anchored to the top left, and could be on the primary or secondary monitor. They're varying widths and heights that don’t seem to correspond to any specific application windows. They don’t go away if you quit or hide applications. The usual width is anywhere from about 100 to 400px, and the height is anywhere from 200px to the full height of the screen.
Theses things do disappear on their own sometimes, but disconnecting the external monitor doesn’t get rid of them — it just moves them the laptop screen, but usually with different proportions. They're always gone after a restart.
I can’t seem to connect these to any specific app; like I said, they persist even if I quit all apps including utils that just run in the menu bar.
Here’s a screen recording of me trying to move the mouse to the upper left corner, via regular moving and dragging a selection area: https://imgur.com/a/lyVPhrq
I've tried looking in Activity Monitor when this is happening, but even with all the regular apps quit, there are still tons of system processes going on so it's hard to spot anything unusual.
This look/sound like anything any of you have seen before?

In case people miss it in the comments under the question, here's a link to the resolution that someone noted on a different post for the same issue:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/405842/45269


Mail keeps crashing on my os 10.11 My OS X  El Capitan mail app crashes immediately when I click on it. Why is this happening?

I am using Windows 10 to send this email

I had this issue. Turned out it was OpenPGP. Went to their website, upgraded to the beta. Issue stopped.

Also, you might want to check for other Mail plugins.


Set Default NFS v4 when connecting from Mac OS X Lion I have installed an NFS File Server on Ubuntu 11.10, and that is working well.

I am only able to connect to the NFS server from my Mac with this command:

 mount -t nfs -o vers=4 10.0.10.26:/srv /Users/admin/Desktop/mount

But I cannot connect via Finder (nfs://10.0.10.26:/srv) or through any third party programs that don't allow for the version parameter. The Syslog error is

  mount_nfs: can't mount /srv from 10.0.10.26 onto
  /Users/admin/Desktop/mount: Program version wrong

Is there any way to set this to V4 by default? Either server side or on my Mac? I need to be able to connect without the extra parameters.

Thanks

Hmmm, seems we need to have this question re-answered every major release of OS X.

So I can only say this works on 10.10.x :)

From OS X's man page for mount_nfs

"nfs.conf(5) can be used to configure some NFS client options. In particular, nfs.client.mount.options can be used to specify default mount options"

To get the Finder to default to using NFS v4 add the following to /etc/nfs.conf using the terminal command "sudo vi /etc/nfs.conf"

 nfs.client.mount.options = vers=4

Again, to check after mounting use "nfsstat -m" and check the "NFS parameters".


How can I charge an iPod with an unsupported cable? I bought 2 usb cables to sync and charge.
The problem is that my iPod Touch says "unsupported cable" and will not charge (but can sync over usb).

Is there a cydia hack to stop the os detecting the unsupported cable and start charging?

Or a mod to the cable itself?

You can block the warning with an app called Pop-Up Blocker, but if you are charging with too much juice, it's on you if you fry your iPod.

You can also look for an app called "ReSupported" if you are having problems with video out cables.