Is there a way to disable this "often used with" prompt on an iPhone? Sometime within last 6 months my iPhone started showing a prompt on the bottom for apps that I don't have running in the background. I use the task switcher to close apps after I am done with, say, ordering food or what-now. And for most apps, like Audible mentioned in the prompt in below image, the "background app refresh" is turned off.
It looks as shown below.

Some additional details:
My iPhone 7 is running iOS v14.6. I may have had my iPhone connected to an Apple Watch at the time this message popped up. My internet search so far had found these instructions here (to disable it in Settings -> iTunes & App Store -> turn off suggested apps for installed apps) but the instructions do not seem to be valid for v14.6.
So with this background, would anyone know if there is a way to disable this "Often used with Bluetooth device connected" prompt?

I believe if you turn off “Siri Suggestions” you will not see those.

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/about-siri-suggestions-iph6f94af287/ios

Option in on app usage patterns lets the “neural engine” process app history and look for patterns to suggest. I also find if you dismiss these, Siri sometimes takes the hint and stops suggesting things if you never tap in to use a class of recommendations.
I’ve also found it handy to leave these enabled but “bench” a few specific apps I never want suggested, indexed or searched.


Using macbook running Lion, some software I'm using thinks there's an external monitor I'm using the plotting package Veusz and when I last used it I had my mac plugged into an external monitor using VGA, with Veusz on the external. I just have my mac at the moment, and Veusz is still opening on a second desktop, even though there's not one. I have tried 'Detect displays' and this doesn't help, since my mac appears to know that there is not a second monitor. How can I move the window back to my desktop without having to plug it in to another monitor and drag it across?

I use a window manager by default (I highly recommend them anyway) and that will let you move windows back (my personal recomendation is Divy http://mizage.com/divvy/ - but I think they are all pretty similar)


Yosemite: Accessibility zoom + multiple monitors = poor performance Ever since upgrading to Yosemite, the accessibility zoom feature is unusable when connected to an external monitor.

Steps to reproduce:

Enable Zoom in System Preferences - Accessibility.
Connect an external monitor, not using mirroring (second desktop).
Zoom in using CTRL+(two finger gesture) - or OPT-CMD-=

Expected:

Zoom is buttery smooth, everything renders at 60fps, no lag whatsoever

Actual:

All display on both screens is delayed, including video playback, mouse movement and keystrokes/text entry. System becomes unusably slow while zoomed in (8-12fps, while still trying to "catch up" on missed frames). It takes a long time to "recover" from a zoom by zooming back out.

Hardware:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)
According to other sources, this seems to affect all Mac hardware running Yosemite

This has been reported on the Apple discussion forums multiple times: one
two
three
four

I have not been able to find any acceptable solution.

Note that zoom performance is "perfect" (read: acceptable) once the external monitor is disconnected. It is also "perfect" when mirroring is used.

Edit: Removed link to http://testufo.com as it's too fragile under normal circumstances to be a useful reproduction.

Edit 2, Nov 18 2014: After upgrading to Yosemite 10.10.1, the performance is slightly improved, but still not up to previous standards. For example, go to https://kraken.io/ and move your mouse over the image slider. Then try doing the same thing zoomed in - it's unbearably slow. It feels like when zoom is activated (on multiple screens), it drops down to software rendering or something equally slow. The same test with only the single screen is perfect.

Edit 3: Other workarounds that have been suggested have had poor results:

Restart (or kill the WindowServer process, which will log you out). The first few minutes of usage are comparatively smooth, but still not 100%.

Edit 4: Enabling Increase contrast seems to be the best workaround so far. See my 2nd answer.

Edit 5: This is now completely fixed in 10.10.2.


Is there a way to sync an iPhone 3GS with Mac OS X Tiger? We recently bought an iPhone 3GS for my stepson. He has my old iMac G5, running OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger), and iTunes 9.2.1.

When we connect the iPhone to this computer, we get an error window saying "The iPhone cannot be used because it requires iTunes version 10.1 or later. Go to www.itunes.com to download the latest version of iTunes."

However, the iTunes download page says that iTunes 10.1.2 requires OS X 10.5 or later, and indeed, trying to download and install that version results in an error window saying "This package type requires Mac OS X 10.5."

So, is there any way to get a version of iTunes that supports the iPhone 3GS and runs on OS X 10.4.x?

If not, would upgrading the iMac to Leopard solve the problem?

(This is all a bit surprising, because iTunes 9.2.1 worked fine with an older iPhone and with an iPod Touch. It's hard for me to imagine what new magic in 10.5 is required to support syncing with a slightly newer model of iPhone.)

Yes, upgrading the Mac to Leopard will work.

Each new iDevice has certain identifiers (model number, etc.). When Apple releases a new one, the old version of iTunes would need an update to recognize it. (Sometimes this even happens with new device OS/firmware versions.) They bundle these updates with feature and bugfix updates, so you're stuck with a new version.


syncronize icloud contacts with iphone contacts I have contacts on my iPhone6 that don't appear when I search for them in contacts on icloud (as in the website).  How can I get my phone accounts to get into the cloud?

Tried so far: went into iPhone Settings -> Contacts -> Default Account and selected 'iCloud'.  This apparently had no effect.

I restarted my iphone and verified that 'iCloud' is still listed as my default Contacts account.  After re-loading icloud.com, still some contacts are not appearing.

Update:  iOS version 10.3.2.  I also verified that contacts is turned on.  Changing the title to reflect that I don't see a problem with my phone -- the problem is that icloud is not seeing the contacts with my phone.  So the problem is icloud.  Of course, the broken link could be anywhere, including my phone.

You didn't mention what version of iOS you're using so I'm assuming you're using the latest version.  Be sure you follow these directions from Apple's support page to setup the sync between your iPhone and iCloud:

Get started

Make sure that you’re signed in to iCloud with the same Apple ID on all of your devices.
Set up iCloud on all of your devices. If you have a PC, download iCloud for Windows.
Make sure that you're connected to Wi-Fi or have an active Internet or cellular connection.

Set up iCloud Contacts

When you turn on iCloud Contacts, all of the information stored on separate devices uploads to iCloud. If you turn off iCloud Contacts, your information won't automatically move from iCloud back to your device.

On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud. If you’re using iOS 10.2 or earlier, go to Settings > iCloud.
Turn on Contacts.
When you're asked if you want to Merge or Cancel, tap Merge.

All of the information stored in Contacts uploads to iCloud.

On iCloud.com or iCloud for Windows

After you turn on iCloud Contacts on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac, your contacts upload to iCloud. You can find and edit your contacts on iCloud.com or in iCloud for Windows. Any changes that you make automatically update on your other devices.

If you turn off iCloud Contacts on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac, your contacts won't delete from iCloud, they won't update automatically, and any changes you make won't update across your other devices.

If this doesn't work, follow the troubleshooting steps on this Apple Support page.  There's many steps to try and options to take so I can't list them in this answer.


Mail, Contacts & Calendars refuses to connect to Google Since yesterday the System Preferences pane on Mail, Contacts & Calendars refuses to connect to Google to setup e-mail, calendars and contacts. It started after Contacts.app did not want to sync with Google Contacts and asked and refused my correct password. After that Mail.app and Calendar.app did the same. I removed the account from System Preferences and attempted to start anew.

However, now it throws the following error at me:

Nowhere in any log I know can I find more information on the error. When I monitor the connection using Little Snitch it shows that the following connections are attempted:

I can ping them all through Terminal.app successfully.

I have no 2-step verification, so I'm not using application specific passwords in Google.

This is what I've tried, all without a positive outcome:

Add a Gmail account in the Guest user (same error).
Make a new Gmail account, try to add it (same error).
Enable 2-step verification, make application specific passwords (same error).
Run Keychain first aid.
Verify & Repair permissions.
Verify & Repair disk (volume bitmap needed minor repair for orphaned blocks). After repair still the same situation.
Reverted /etc/hosts file to default.
Disabled Little Snitch.
Boot from external drive into Yosemite, try to add the Google account.
Try connection through ethernet instead of airport express.
Try connection through a different network entirely.
Following the troubleshooting steps from Google.
Allowing "less secure application" (that still use OAuth 1.0) to login to Google.
Resetting the Keychain

I've really exhausted my Google-fu and little knowledge I have on Macs. I would really appreciate some pointers on where to look further.

According to this Gmail help forum thread this is an issue that is fixed in Mac OS 10.10.3. There user jbrandtAUS writes on the 29th of May:

  From others I have talked to, starting yesterday, people have not been able to add their Gmail accounts to Mail or System Preferences > Internet Accounts if they have 10.10.1 or 10.10.2... if you update to 10.10.3 it will work

So the solution is to upgrade to anything above Mac OS 10.10.2.


How do I disable the three finger double tap to zoom gesture? On my macbook, when I double tap with three fingers, the screen zooms in (same as the accessibility zoom), and this type of zoom zooms in the entire screen. How can I turn this off?

The three finger double tap to zoom is controlled in System Preferences > Accessibility > Zoom > Advanced > Controls.  I suspect you have the "Use trackpad gesture to zoom" enabled.  Untick it!


Remote connection to Time Capsule I've found the link below which provides useful info on how to configure Time Capsule for remote connection.  I've followed this and am able to connect to remotely manage the TC (via Airport utility) but still cannot connect in order to access files.  I'm trying from a Windows PC.

How can I access my Time Capsule remotely?

The first thing to check is if the Time Capsule was told explicitly to share the files over the internet using bonjour or simply sharing to the WAN.

Have you verified that the active profile on the Airport is set to allow this?

My example has these turned off (you can see them under the guest access control)


How do you delete an unwanted album in the Photos app on an iMac? How do you delete an album name from the side panel in the photo albums section of the iMac?

Select the album name in the left side panel, hit ⌘+⌫.

There is no menu entry, hence you are not sure which level of destruction you will perform.

If this album contains photos, Photos will inform you that the contained photos will be removed from this album.
Of course, if this is the last album in which these photos were, they will be completly removed.


Remove duplicate menu bar icons in macOS Sierra When I upgraded to macOS Sierra, a lot of my menu bar icons were duplicated. This included time, wifi, AirPlay, and Notification Center. I've been able to remove all of them except for Notification Center.

Any thoughts?

Drat... shortly after I posted this I found a way to kill off the SystemUIServer which was just the kick it needed.

killall -KILL SystemUIServer

PS: I searched before I posted originally. :)


How to delete Macbook from Find My iPhone without erasing data? I have an iCloud account and there are my phone and a macbook which not belongs to me. I removed it from Apple ID and settings in iCloud, but it is still in Find my iPhone. I only able to erase this macbook. Is there a way to just deatache it from my account without erasing data?

In Find iPhone you should be able to tap on the device you want to remove. That will take you to the screen where you see the Erase option.

At the top-right of that screen is the option to Remove that device (see my iPad screenshot below).

If the Remove option doesn't appear immediately, give it a few minutes to show up. After tapping Remove you'll get a confirmation dialog box. Once you tap Agree the device will be removed.


macOS Time announcement -- how to speak a longer phrase In macOS (Big Sur), ever since I did:
defaults write ./com.apple.speech.synthesis.general.prefs TimeAnnouncementPrefs -dict u -bool YES

the system announces the time as, for example, "four-thirty," whereas it used to announce the time as "It's four-thirty" (with the word "it's" and, on the hour, "o-clock").
Here's the prefs structure (~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.speech.synthesis.general.prefs):
{
    TimeAnnouncementsEnabled = 1;
    TimeAnnouncementsIntervalIdentifier = EveryQuarterHourInterval;
    TimeAnnouncementsPhraseIdentifier = ShortTime;
    TimeAnnouncementsVoiceSettings =     {
        CustomVolume = "0.2046729";
    };
 }

I've tried:

With and without TimeAnnouncementsPhraseIdentifier.
Deleting the file com.apple.speech.synthesis.general.prefs and then turning on the time-anounce checkbox in System Preferences.  That restores the file, but not the long speech.
Using Time Machine to restore an old version of com.apple.speech.synthesis.general.prefs.

After each change, I've killed the Dock to reload the preferences.
How do I get back the "it's" and "o'clock" wording?  What values can TimeAnnouncementsPhraseIdentifier take on?
Edit: here's the System Preferences pane:

The solution:

(Optional) to get the plist in com.apple.speech.synthesis.general.prefs correct, set the structure as shown in my original question.  Or, simply delete that file and turn on the Time Announce checkbox in System Preferences (Dock & Menu Bar, Clock).  That will re-create the file.

In the two defaults commands, use -dict-add (rather than -dict) so the commands won't delete any existing parameters.  At this point, the defaults command can be used to turn the time announcements on and off.  But, "it's" and "o-clock" are still missing.

Reboot, and "it's" and "o'clock" will return.  I still don't know what values TimeAnnouncementsPhraseIdentifier can take on, but ShortTime works (after a reboot).

But, my original idea of using defaults write to change the plist didn't work anyway.  The changes do not take effect without a reboot because the OS caches the plist.


Is it possible to download and install macOS on a HP computer? I am wondering if it is possible to download and install macOS on any computer, or do you have to buy an Apple computer?

I am using an HP computer.

Downloading and installing are two different things.

You could download macOS on a HP computer, but Apple’s software license doesn’t allow installation of macOS on any hardware that isn’t Apple hardware.

Likewise, macOS can be installed on virtual machines, but Apple’s software license doesn’t allow installation of macOS on a virtual machine that itself isn’t running on Apple hardware.

If you’re asking if it’s technically possible to download and install macOS on non-Apple hardware, the answer is yes. However, in addition to being in breach of Apple’s software license, it’s also not an easy thing to do and is out of scope for this site.


What deficiencies in Classic Mac OS led Apple to replace it? In the movie "Steve Jobs" with Michael Fassbender, it is implied that Jobs started NeXT, not to sell hardware, but to develop a new OS and have Apple buy the company, only for the OS. We all know the history and know that this is exactly what happened.

Now I am diving a little into Apple OSs and find that the OS Apple had/developed while Jobs was away, was the "Classic Mac OS". In the movie it is said that Apple "really needed" a new OS.

This all made me wonder: what was so bad about the classic Mac OS?

Did Not Multitask

It had limited, cooperative multi-tasking, but this was spliced on top of a fundamentally single-tasking OS.  That meant if a (say, background) task was greedy or had a problem, the whole system ran badly or locked up.

There was a point when Microsoft was "eating Apple's lunch" because multitasking worked so much better on Windows - and Apple lost a lot of market share.

No crash protection

It did not have any way to contain the failure of one particular app.   So when one app "crashed", the system crashed.  Being able to run multiple applications concurrently, to say nothing of the array of often dozens of desk accessories, extensions and whatnot, that created a huge vulnerability.

It was common for a Mac to come into the shop with so many desk accessories installed that you had to scroll to see them all.  I said "They did to this Mac what a pimp does to a Cadillac."  No wonder it was in the shop.

No security

Also related, there was no hardware-based memory protection, so one app could scribble another app's memory from a simple bug.

This also meant an application, DA etc. could snoop on the contents and activities in system memory. What's the point of having password logins when your free screensaver DA can simply scan memory looking for the passwords?

Without an ability to keep applications contained, this also meant filesystem security was a lost cause. Among other things, there was no way to keep applications from damaging or hacking the OS.

Viruses started on the Mac, you know.  This sort of thing is why.  They also virtually ended when OS X came out.

No shell

Okay, that only matters to a few people, but there was absolutely no robust back-end from which to keyboard/script system tasks.  No way to, say, "rsync" a directory to a backup; you had to rely on packaged products.  Of course there were developer tools, but that was not readily available to end users, you had to sign up and if I recall, pay some fees.

Upgrading OS 8/9 to proper multitasking was a hard problem - a veritable Gordian knot.  It needed an "Alexander the Great" solution, and that's where Steve came in.


How do I create a groups OS X Mavericks Contacts app that remains local to my machine? When creating a new group in the OS X Mavericks version of the Contacts apps the group is automatically synchronized to iCloud. I'd like to keep this group local to just the machine where I created it.

How can I make a group that stays local to the machine and does not sync to my iCloud account?

Open Contacts
For the On My Mac account, click the + button to add a new group.

Enter a group name and press Enter.


My Macbook Air isn't outputting the correct resolution I bought a DELL P2416D with a 2560x1440 resolution but I didn't know that it wasn't compatible with OS X.

I use a mini Display Port to HDMI adapter.

Also the Mac detected the monitor as a TV and so used the YPbPr color format but I already fixed that issue by forcing the RGB color format and I would like to know if I can force a higher resolution or if you know a better solution to my problem.

I ran into the same problem when I bought a Dell UltraSharp Monitor to use with a MacBook Pro.  It appears you may be using an older spec mDP to HDMI cable (Probably HDMI 1.2)

  Version 1.2 HDMI 1.2 was released August 8, 2005 and added the option
  of One Bit Audio, used on Super Audio CDs, at up to 8 channels. It
  also added the availability of HDMI type A connectors for PC sources,
  the ability for PC sources to implement only the sRGB color space
  while retaining the option to implement the YCbCr color space, and
  required HDMI 1.2 and later displays to allow low-voltage
  sources.

That would explain why it showed up as a TV using YPbPr color format.

This particular monitor has a native DP interface - per Tetsujin, I would use that port instead of doing the conversion from mDP to HDMI.

If you want to go with HDMI, you will need an an mDP to HDMI 2.0 adapter and an HDMI 2.0 cable

My suggestion is to go native mDP to Display Port - it's much easier and you don't have to buy separate cables.

As for your MBA, every model from 2010 onwards supported the 2550x1400 resolution.  So unless you are using a 2009 model, you should be able to get the full resolution you are look for with either of these solutions.


Boot Camp Windows 10 not connecting to Magic Mouse 1 A week or so ago I installed Windows 10 on my 2015 MacBook Pro Retina with Boot Camp. At the start my Magic Mouse 1 and my keyboard were already paired. Today my mouse wouldn't click for some reason so I unpaired the mouse, now the mouse won't pair. In the Windows 10 Control Panel I don't see any drivers that aren't installed. I already tried restarting my laptop and turning the mouse off and back on.

Whenever I try pairing the mouse I get an pop-up from windows saying it can't find the mouse anymore and asks me to try this again. I just finished installing all my programs, I really don't want to do that again.

Anyone knows how to solve this issue?

So far, I learned from experimenting and the blogs: I have to REMOVE (not just DISCONNECT) the Bluetooth mouse in Mac OS X, before I can pair it in BootCamp Windows. Since this is not comfortable enough, I'm not fully done yet.

After another entire day of fumbling around in blogs, Apple sites and the machine itself, it seems to work.

1st of all, I have to correct myself - the mouse is an Apple Bluetooth MIGHTY Mouse (not a MAGIC one). Sorry for the wrong place - there is not much word about the Mighty in the blogs.

The machine is a late 2006 MBP15 (2,2 A1211). The Mac OS X is a Lion, the BootCamp is 4.0.4 running Windows 10. Apple doesn't support this combo. They don't provide Windows Support Software for it either (the download attempt through BootCamp Assistant fails). So I'm in fact on my own.

Having eventually learned that, I decided to UNPAIR (not REMOVE) the mouse in Mac OS X, before I switched to Windows 10. In Windows 10, I managed to pair it within the Bluetooth Preference window. However, the transition had switched the mouse OFF, so I had to switch it OFF/ON again. And, I had to toggle the Bluetooth switch in the Preference window; otherwise the radio wouldn't at all search for the mouse! I think that I even had to click the mouse - but I'm not sure about that. Anyway - the mouse worked than, and I could open the Device Manager to check the Bluetooth entries and the Mouse entries. (With the mouse, the Bluetooth entry has to have 2 extra sub-entries, while the Mouse entry has to have just one extra sub-entry.)

From there, I could switch to Mac OS X. Of course, the mouse was dead, but I could pair it after having switched it OFF/ON and clicked to make it alive.

For the return to Windows 10 I could keep it paired. Arriving in Windows 10, I had just to switch the mouse OFF/ON and click to make it work.
I'm going to test this for a while - happy that there is no need for additional drivers.


Installing OS X 10.1 "Puma" on new HDD from CD onto a iBook G3 Found an old iBook G3 M6497 at an estate sale, so I bought it for $2 in hopes to restore it to its original glory.  It did not come with any install or recovery disks.  This is my first purchase of a Apple device since my old iPod that broke, so please bear with me.

I knew right away that the hard drive was shot, so I followed the iFixIt tutorial to replace the hard drive with a new, 40GB IDE HDD. So this hard drive is brand new and not formatted to an OS X Extended partition, which may be part of the problem.

I burned an install CD from this website which hosts old version of MacOSX.  Everything boots up correctly, by holding the C key down when turning on the computer. I get to the installer wizard, and I get all the way to the 'Select Destination' part of the install, and this is where I get stuck.

The installer doesn't show a hard drive partition, so I can't install it anywhere.  I know that I need to format the hard drive, but I didn't have the tools to mount it on my Windows machine to pre-format it before putting it in the computer.  I burned a live-cd of Ubuntu 12.04 for PowerPC architecture, and tried to boot to an environment to format the hard drive, but I can't get past a couple kernel panics that I'm encountering (not sure if it's a bad CD burn or Ubuntu not liking the computer...).

So, my question:

How can I format this new HDD to OS X Extended?

Other sources say to just open the terminal from the installer and use fdisk, but I don't see a way to do that, closing the installer window just restarts the computer, and there are no other programs to run.

So, as it turns out OS X 10.1 DOES come with Disk Utility, but you need to access it BEFORE you start the installer!  If you start the installer and move past the Introduction section, you cannot get back to the Disk Utility, you have to restart the computer!

So, to format my new hard drive:

Booted up with the OS X 10.1 CD in the CD-ROM drive, held C to boot to the CD
After first load, BEFORE selecting a language in the dialog
Go to Installer > Open Disk Utility... in the menu bar at the top
It found my new HDD in the side menu
Erase and partition it from the separate tabs
Close the Disk Utility and go back to the installer wizard

Your HDD should now show up under the Select a Destination menu in the wizard!

The YouTube video of the installer that klanomath posted was a huge help.  I'm reposting it here for future people:

Mac OS X 10.1 Puma: Installation and first boot

Thanks!


How to disable creation of spaces on macbook? How to disable creation of desktop workspaces on macbook?

Somehow they get created when I don't need them. [OS: Mojave]

If there’s no window on a space, do the three finger swipe up gesture or F3 and you can hover on the top left corner of the thumbnail and a cross appears. Just delete the space.

If there is some window on some space, you can drag it and bring to the other space to make the previous one empty. In the same mission control state, hold the window in one space and drag it to destination thumbnail.

If it is made by a full screen app, as Tetsujin says, it cannot be deleted and when app returns to its original space, the other one is automatically deleted.


How do I restore files accidentally deleted by the move operation in finder? I’m using Mavericks

Suppose we have the folder /a/photos which contains

/a/photos/jan
/a/photos/feb

And we have /b/photos which contains

/b/photos/mar

In the command prompt, if we write

mv /b/photos /a/photos

Then /a/photos will contain all of them (merge):

/a/photos/jan
/a/photos/feb
/a/photos/mar

However, I did the move operation in Finder (command+c, command+alt+v) and pressed the “overwrite” button thinking it has the same behavior as in mv

Now all my original files in /a/photos are lost. The only thing remaining is:

/a/photos/mar

How do I recover it?

Thanks a lot

STOP ALL FILE OPERATIONS AND UNMOUNT YOUR HARD DRIVE

If you haven't written to the Drive since then, it will eventually save you.

When Moving files like this, they get marked as deleted on the drive.
Therefore you can only try to recover them.

Which means:

Get a Recovery-Software like DataRescue
Or a free (CLI) programm like PhotoRec
Try recovering the files.


MacBook Pro 15" mid 2015 1TB w graphics major boot and keyboard problems So, a couple weeks ago I went to wake my computer up and the screen just stayed black. Strangely I could feel clicks in the touch pad (which means there is power and the haptic engine is working) but absolutely nothing else. I tried literally all day, to charge it, uncharge it, pressed the power button 1000 different ways and then nothing. So I got an idea:

I opened up the computer and unplugged the battery. Then I plugged in the power... Instantly it boots up. It gets stuck in a loop of half loading, crashing and then starting again. So at this point I plug the battery in and everything boots up and seems good. Except... now the keyboard doesn't work.

So for almost a week I used an external USB keyboard with my computer, scared to death to let it shut down. Then one day... the keyboard just started working again, everything except the arrow keys and the question mark. The arrow keys came back the next day after randomly pressing themselves a bunch, the question mark never did.

Anyways, I was OK with my situation, copy pasting a question mark in from the notepad when I needed it. But now this morning I had the black screen again. This time nothing worked at all, except there was music playing and I could turn the volume up and down and skip songs, but nothing else worked (not the keyboard lights, not the power button)... so I unplugged the battery and jump started it again.

Now my command keys don't work.

This is getting incredibly frustrating and I am appalled that this $3000+ machine has so many strange random problems that have nothing to do with physical damage.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on?

If you still have AppleCare coverage I would contact Apple for support and disregard the rest of this answer

There are a few things you could try to troubleshoot this - but you will need to be patient as troubleshooting is often a process of elimination and takes time.

For starters, I'd do a NVRAM and SMC reset (in that order). Before following the steps below, ensure you have no external hardware connected and that you're using the built-in keyboard.

Reset the NVRAM

Reset the NVRAM on your MBP as follows:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your MBP reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your MBP reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Reset the SMC

There's a couple of ways you can reset the SMC on your MBP, however I prefer the following steps:

Shut down your MBP
Keep the power cable plugged in
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button

After resetting both the NVRAM and SMC, use your computer to determine if the issues still persist.

If you're still having problems, the it's time to test your hardware with Apple Diagnostics.

Run Apple Diagnostics

Follow the steps below to run Apple Diagnostics:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the D key and keep it down until you see the Diagnostics screen appear
Wait for Diagnostics to finish (this typically only takes a few minutes)
Once complete, one of two things will appear on the screen:

a No issues found message
a brief description of any errors found plus further instructions

If the diagnostics test does find errors, take a note of what they are

Note: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Regardless, take a note of what happens and let me know how you went.


Quickly switch sound output from HDMI to Headphone jack OS X 10.10.5 How do you quickly change the output from the HDMI to aux/headphone jack in OS X 10.10.5?
Currently I change it this way.
System Preferences -> Sound -> Output
In windows it default switches to the aux/headphone jack when you plug in headphones.
Is there a way to accomplish this in OS X 10.10.5?
Without Apple Script.

If you enable the "Show volume in menu bar" option from System Preferences -> Sound, you can quickly change default input/output devices by holding alt and clicking the volume icon in the menu bar.

(Note: I'm no sure in which version this was introduced, but I think it's already in 10.10.5)


Very slow screen refresh on server screen share I have a brand new Mac Mini, configured with Intel i7, 16GB, dual SSDs... basically the top of the line Mac Mini you can buy as of 2/1/2014. I also purchased the latest Airport Extreme, with 802.11ac and I'm connecting to my Mac Mini with the greatest and latest MacBook Pro, which also has an 802.11ac.

For some reason, when I use screen share to connect to my Mac Mini from my MacBook Pro (through the Airport Extreme), the screen redraws very slowly, the mouse pointer tracks very slowly, and the whole experience is just sluggish even at 1280x1024.

Just before I upgraded to the Mac Mini, I had the same setup with the previous generation Airport Extreme, and a 27" Intel i5 iMac. When I connected with my MacBook at native 27" display resolution, the response was very fast and snappy.

How could I possibly have a faster computer and network and have terrible screen share performance?

As a side note (not sure if this is related), I run Windows 2012 Server in Parallels on that same Mac Mini, when I connect to is via Remote Desktop Connection, I have the same problem. Again, the previous generation setup (Windows 2008 on the older Airport Extreme and i5 iMac) worked far faster.

The CPU and memory is idle 99% of the time on the Mac Mini.

Thank you.

After much ado, I figured out that the reason the performance is so terrible in the remote Mac Mini is because it is head-less and the GPU is not being engaged (according to this answer). I ended up ordering the headless adaptor for $15 and problem solved.


How to ignore faces permanently in iPhoto? How to tell iPhoto to ignore the specific faces permanently if I want to ignore them. When I click close button it doesn't work, because the next time when I find faces, THE SAME faces appear again and again.

Anyone knows how to fix this issue?

When you click on "search faces", you will be presented with groups of four faces. Hover with the mouse over the picture of a face, and a small circle with an "x" will appear in the top left corner. When you select this x, this face will never pop up again.

But you have to do this for every instance of that face. If you have hundreds of images with one particular person which you will not add to your known faces, you will need to click on every instance of it.


After home button replacement my screen colour went negative I just replaced my home button. But when I reassembled it, the colour went negative. From red to blue and blue to red. Although I've turned on and off the invert colour function, it's still not displaying right. Did the screen break? Or do I just need to double check the cable?

The screen also looks like it's flashing really fast which normally it doesn't.

That definitely looks like a hardware problem as the invert colours feature doesn't really look like that. The flickering also reinforces this as this would not happen normally. I would reopen the device and make sure that all connections are connected properly and intact.


Strange thing happening with drag and drop on finder I have a Mac OS X 10.7.5. Sometimes, when drag-and-drop-ing files on the Finder, a strange thing happens, i.e. the file I'm dealing with "sticks to the cursor" and releasing the trackpad button has no effect, whereas it should let the file be transferred or copied. Btw I've been dealing with this many times, and for a long time, and have just found out today that tapping the trackpad with two fingers eliminates this strange thing, therefore placing the dragged file in the directory the cursor is on, or copying it there if I'm holding the option key. Any idea why this happens?

It sound like a macOS bug. If the side effects are still present, try restarting Finder service by the following commands:

launchctl stop com.apple.Finder
launchctl start com.apple.Finder


Undo typing dialog appears often recently, in Safari Recently it started happening on my iPad that a small dialog asking "Undo typing?" appears on a web page in Safari.

The two options offered are Cancel and Undo. No matter which I tap, both make the dialog disappear and nothing else seems to happen.

Why does this dialog appear? What is its purpose?

I run the latest iOS 12.1.1

Go to settings -> general -> accessibility and look for shake to undo. If enabled that box should appear when you shake the device.

If you don’t want it turn it off.


Permanently set microphone input to MBP Mic Every time i connect a bluetooth device, headphones or speakers, the output switches to the new device.

This is fine, however, the input also switches.

I would prefer for the microphone input to never switch.

How can I permanently set 2013 MBP Microphone to onboard hardware mic?

edit

also, if there is a way to switch inputs via applescript or alfred workflow, I would love to try them out

Introduction
Right now, to the best of my knowledge, it is not possible to prevent the input/output switching between external devices and the onboard instruments using built-in features from the Operating System. I have added a simple trick (that you may already be aware of) to switch between input devices quickly and given an explanation as to why macOS behaves this way. I may not be the answer you are looking for but I wanted to share this information with you anyway, in the hope that it shows the problem from a different perspective or somebody is able to add to my thinking.

TL;DR
Input switching occurs when the new input/output device has microphone capabilities, which (in theory) gets the mic closer to the user thus produces greater audio and reducing background noise through less distance between the source and the mic - as the majority of headphones/earphones do with a built-in mic. This is how Apple views it and most customers don't want to put up with picking the right source every time they connect a pair of headphones.

Why might it be a positive?
Unlike in the Windows world, where a Default Device can be set in the Sound Settings, Macs (unlike PC's) have a built-in speaker and microphone in pretty much every single (recent) computer ever released. Microsoft does not restrict Windows to a select group of systems (the way macOS only works on an Apple device, with the exception of unsupported Hackintosh builds). That is a major factor in the lack of flexibility when it comes to different ways of settings the input devices because if Apple knows an interface exists, it becomes the default (and fallback) interface - there would be no reason to think otherwise.

Apple, known for its user experience, has decided that for the majority of its customers, the headphone goes into the socket, it detects whether it has microphone capabilities, switches inputs accordingly and is in that way able to deliver and send clearer audio between the mac and the headset (the headset presumably being closer to the user now than the onboard microphone).

A Common Workaround
The most common (and simplest) trick is to adjust the sound I/O interfaces themselves by switching to the desired device(s) through the menu bar.

Find the Speaker icon in the menu bar (if not present, go to: System Preferences > Sound > Check/Enable: Show volume in menu bar.
Hold the Alt/Option key and click on the Speaker icon in the menu bar.

You will now be able to switch between the devices as required. It may cost you a second or two of your time but it is by far a better alternative to messing with the system in other ways that may produce unknown side effects.

Conclusion
I hope I was able to shed some light on Apple's way of appealing to the majority and the reason why they believe auto switching is better than the manual way. I understand this is a rather long-winded explanation of a simple no but it was important to get the point across anyway.
Maybe you, like me, are able to forgive Apple for making an inflexible choice in their OS design that disregards a portion of the market's needs. I never found a reliable piece of software to prevent the switching so I learned to live with the quick menu bar trick and never let it bother me again. Maybe one day Apple adds a preference for preventing auto-switching of inputs.

Let me know if that was helpful in any way or if you have any other questions, I'd be more than happy to follow up with you on this.

Is there a way to switch inputs via AppleScript?
Absolutely, there is! Let me show you how.

AppleScript

tell application "System Preferences" to activate
tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "input" of pane id "com.apple.preference.sound"
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    tell table 1 of scroll area 1 of tab group 1 of window 1
        select (row 1 where value of text field 1 is "Line In") --> Or change to "Internal Microphone"
    end tell
end tell
quit application "System Preferences"

What next?
You will need to allow the ScriptEditor to control your computer. Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility, then add the ScriptEditor/Compiled script to this list. This is an essential (security) step because your script is manipulating the GUI and in a way intercepting the window events. If you have no clue what any of that means, don't worry now, just paste the code into your ScriptEditor and run it - an error will tell you if anything was not done properly.

Potential Improvements
I'll leave you to your imagination but you could very easily make a toggle switch script (although the before mentioned menu bar trick pretty much does this already). One suggestion might be to find the Terminal equivalent and simply run a do shell script command through AppleScript. Such would involve looking for the .plist file which contains the current state (input selection) of the Sound Preferences and manipulating it to your choice. This is highly OS-specific and has a tendency to require the user to log out for the changes to take effect. With that method, I think we are simply looking for trouble where we don't need it. As the age-old KISS principle states: "Keep it simple, stupid" - sometimes it's just better to do the simplest task that anyone without the technical knowledge (AppleScript/Terminal) can achieve.


Free up over 70 GB of Applications Today I checked out my MacBook Air's storage and found that my Mac is using 70.53 GB on applications out of 120.47 GB. I can't figure out where it is being used as I didn't download any applications. How can free up my Mac's storage?

To see the size of each application

open the /Applications folder in Finder
switch to list view
make sure to have 'Size' selected in the options (Cmd-J)

and wait a few minutes until all folder sizes are calculated by the system. Then sort by Size and remove any big apps you don't need any longer. I wouldn't recommend to delete the standard applications though.


ssh -X does not work on Yosemite Can no longer use X11 with ssh. Have XQuartz2.7.7 installed. Logging in with X11 via ssh gives the warnings

  Warning: untrusted X11 forwarding setup failed: xauth key data not generated
  Warning: No xauth data; using fake authentication data for X11 forwarding.

In my own system, echo $DISPLAY gives

  /private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.GuewxwWwKS/org.macosforge.xquartz:0

However, when I try xauth  generate $DISPLAY . trusted, I get the error

  xauth: (argv):1:  bad display name "/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.GuewxwWwKS/org.macosforge.xquartz:0" in "add" command

Any ideas in how to fix this?

UPDATE

Developer Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia announced yesterday that this problem is solved in XQuartz 2.7.8_beta2:

  XQuartz 2.7.8_beta2 is available for download.

  You can see http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/wiki/X112.7.8 for a
  full set of changes, but most noteworth ones are:

  1) xauth now correctly parses the Yosemite launchd $DISPLAY socket path
  2) libGL has been updated to Mesa 10.4.4
  3) Various exploits were fixed in xorg-server, freetype, and libpng
  4) A bug preventing automatic updates in some cases has been fixed

The bug report is closed and marked as fixed:

If you can't (or don't want to) install the beta, you can still use the workaround I explain below.

ANSWER

Analysis

(scroll down for the workaround section)

My first thought was "the DISPLAY variable is wrong". But it's not.

As it turns out, on OS X 10.10 Yosemite (and back to 10.8 Mountain Lion) the DISPLAY variable stores a launchd socket path:

/private/tmp/<socket name>

instead of the familiar display name:

hostname:displaynumber.screennumber

(I've added some information about the hostname:displaynumber.screennumber format at the end of this answer.)

This  means that xauth has to know how to deal with this special incarnation of the DISPLAY variable, and as of Mavericks, it did, but the socket used in Yosemite has a different path (more precisely: /private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.XXXX instead of /private/tmp/launch-XXXX), and xauth breaks.

This bug was reported to the XQuartz team on Nov 18 2014 (3 months ago) (http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/ticket/2068):

  The xauth program has code in both gethost.c and parsedpy.c to look
  for $DISPLAY names that start with "/tmp/launch", and to treat that as
  a local socket. However, the location seems to have changed, $DISPLAY
  now starts with "/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd", so the code that is
  looking for /tmp/launch doesn't catch it. (...)

According to the bug description it is to be solved in XQuartz 2.7.8, which is 4 months late (see the project roadmap page at http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/roadmap).

The patch that fixes the problem was committed on Dec 31 2014 to the freedesktop.org project (http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/xauth/commit/parsedpy.c?id=f990dd936b5fd1a40290bb88cde517a0ac38f823):

diff --git a/parsedpy.c b/parsedpy.c
index c591b77..7365224 100644
--- a/parsedpy.c
+++ b/parsedpy.c
@@ -42,6 +42,9 @@ in this Software without prior written authorization from The Open Group.
 #include <X11/Xauth.h>         /* for FamilyLocal */
 #include <X11/Xmu/SysUtil.h>

+#include <sys/stat.h>
+#include <sys/syslimits.h>
+
 #if defined(UNIXCONN) || defined(LOCALCONN)
 #define UNIX_CONNECTION "unix"
 #define UNIX_CONNECTION_LENGTH 4
@@ -158,8 +161,32 @@ parse_displayname (const char *displayname,

     if (!host) return False;

-    if(strncmp (host, "/tmp/launch", 11) == 0) {
-        family = FamilyLocal;
+    {
+        /*
+         * If using launchd socket, remove the screen number from the end
+         * of $DISPLAY and check if it is a path to a socket.
+         */
+        char path[PATH_MAX];
+        struct stat sbuf;
(...)

So it's only a question of time until this patch finds its way into the next release of XQuartz.

Workaround

(tested on OS X 10.10.2 Yosemite.)

Add:

alias ssh="ln -fs $(echo $DISPLAY | sed 's:\(/private/tmp/com\.apple\.launchd\.[^/]*\)/.*:\1:') $(echo $DISPLAY | sed 's:/private/tmp/com\.apple\.launchd\.\([^/]*\)/.*:/private/tmp/launch-\1:'); ssh"

to ~/.bashrc and either start a new Terminal window or source it (. ~/.bashrc) in your current Terminal session.

This alias first symlinks the socket path to /private/tmp/launch-XXX (for example ln -fs /private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.GuewxwWwKS /private/tmp/launch-GuewxwWwKS) and then starts ssh:

For the curious, traditionally, the X server's display name has had this form (from man X on Ubuntu):
The X server's display name has this form:

hostname:displaynumber.screennumber

where:

   hostname
           The hostname specifies the name of the machine to which the display  is  physically
           connected.   If  the hostname is not given, the most efficient way of communicating
           to a server on the same machine will be used.

   displaynumber
           The phrase "display" is usually used to refer to  a  collection  of  monitors  that
           share a common set of input devices (keyboard, mouse, tablet, etc.).  Most worksta‐
           tions tend to only have one display.  Larger,  multi-user  systems,  however,  fre‐
           quently  have  several  displays so that more than one person can be doing graphics
           work at once.  To avoid confusion, each display on a machine is assigned a  display
           number (beginning at 0) when the X server for that display is started.  The display
           number must always be given in a display name.

   screennumber
           Some displays share their input devices among two or more monitors.  These  may  be
           configured as a single logical screen, which allows windows to move across screens,
           or as individual screens, each with their own set of windows.  If  configured  such
           that each monitor has its own set of windows, each screen is assigned a screen num‐
           ber (beginning at 0) when the X server for that display is started.  If the  screen
           number is not given, screen 0 will be used.


Cannot restore iTunes backup - not enough space! I am trying to restore an iTunes backup of my daughter's iPhone SE that was made via iTunes on a Mac.

The Mac runs macOS 10.14.1 and iPhone is running iOS 12.1

When I click "Restore Backup" it starts a progress bar, counts down for about five minutes and then says "Not enough space on iPhone".

This seems bizarre to me - surely the backup is some sort of snapshot of the contents of the exact same phone, so how can it now be too large to fit back into the phone?

Apple Support simply suggest Restore iPhone (i.e. erase everything) and hope that the backup works then - obviously since the backup has already failed, I am reluctant to double down on it.

Is there any way to find out how much extra space is actually needed?

You could back the device up to iCloud or another Mac if you suspect the current backup isn’t good. If you’re willing to forego that extra safety, net then the first thing is to erase all content and settings to see how much space is free.

Try the restore again and then optionally restore the device.  I’ve seen this happen on rare occasion - especially on iOS devices with the smaller flags storage if they’ve been updated over the air a few times. It also could be a sign the storage on the device has started to fail. When SSD fail, they just mark blocks as bad and you get less free space than normal.

You could also make an iCloud backup, omitting some of the apps you don’t need to back up so that the payload is less size. Tap through the settings app and iCloud and manage storage and the device in question. Then turn off the largest items you don’t need (not shown below the content is the apps in CHOOSE DATA TO BACKUP)

Just turn off some and make a second backup in case you need a smaller iCloud backup to restore as a last resort.


Are there any reasons to turn off MacBook Pro instead of just sleeping it? I do not completely turn off my MacBook Pro and I only sleep it.

Are there any limitations to consider when doing this for several months in a row?

There's actually some validity to “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”.

Extremely simply put: Over the course of being on, the OS accumulates a lot of “leftovers” from all of the processes that've been running (Automatic garbage collection isn't perfect). When the system is restarted cache is purged and only needed processes are started. Sometimes processes that run for a very long time can use more memory and even — at times — stop working. Also, it's not all apps that clean up properly after themselves which can lead to unused processes taking up memory and/or CPU cycles.

OS X handles this excellently (compared to Windows) but I think it's impossible to create an OS that is entirely immune to the "littering" of a system that is often used over extensive periods of time.

Note: This is just my experience from 10+ years working with computers. I probably can't give a scientifically correct explanation :)


How do I move to the beginning of text in a line, not to the beginning of line? I just switched from Windows and I'm giving Xcode a try. It's really nice, but I have an annoyance when coding - I want to be able to quickly move to the beginning of text in a line of text. However, CMD+left arrow go to the beginning of line, leaving me to manually press right arrow until I get to the first letter.

Can I do something to get a similar behaviour as in Windows?

From the online OS X: Keyboard shortcuts page @ http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343z:

Command+ ▶ Move the text insertion point to the end of the current line
Command+ ◀ Move the text insertion point to the beginning of the current line
Command+ ▼ Move the text insertion point to the end of the document
Command+ ▲  Move the text insertion point to the beginning of the document
Option+ ▶  Move the text insertion point to the end of the next word
Option+ ◀  Move the text insertion point to the beginning of the previous word

with the ◀ icons being the arrow keys on full sized keyboard. Happy typing.


JPG & RAW file transfer iPad to MacBook How can JPG & RAW files be transferred from iPad to MacBook Pro & still maintain the albums built in iPad?

In the iPad Photos app I've put my photos in different albums. On iPad I'm using Photos & Affinity Photo. On my Macbook I've used Photos, Image Capture and iTunes & they import everything but not the albums, which is daunting because I've got 10,000 photos I'm importing. Which is also the problem with iCloud because it wants to backup everything & it's not obvious that it also imports the albums (at least Apple Support can't confirm that either)>

Photos app on macOS, via iCloud syncing maintains album structure. If the photos are in albums in photos app on iPad, turning on selectively iCloud for photos app only and turning off backup on iCloud can do what you want to achieve.

Though some offline method would be great too!


Secure Empty Trash can't count? On the few occasions I've tried using secure empty trash, it takes forever (I hear this is normal) but when it's in progress it counts the number of items to delete incorrectly.  I put one file in the trash, secure empty it, and it shows a progress bar stating that 5 items still need to be deleted.  It was a large file, so maybe it's split into 5 parts?  Or are there some other hidden files associated with my file that are being deleted as well?

Secure emptying takes long because instead of marking the areas of your disk which stored the files you're deleting as "available", it overwrites them with junk in order to make difficult recovering those data.

What you say happens to me too, I think it's pretty normal. i.e. it could be deleting .DS_Stores when you delete a directory.


Mysterious hard disk space vanishing? I'm running Snow Leopard on a Late 2009 unibody MacBook.

At the moment I was trying to do some late spring cleaning, and clearing up some HDD space. Now here's the weird part:

My User's folder shows that it occupies 179 GB of space. However when I go into the folder and add up the usage of all sub-folders and files within it, it comes to somewhere about 75GB.

I'm just very curious as to where the other 104 GB resides.

Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks!

Might I suggest using one of the myriad apps available at your disposal to hunt down and find the rogue files that plague you? An excellent option that I found (and free to display the content, though not to delete from within the app) would be the DaisyDisk app. It'll show you exactly what's using up your space in a relatively intuitive/futuristic display.

From there, it's a little matter of simply deleting the files in question.


delay after opening lid display dark until key pressed okay so my MBP Mid 2010 was took a little tumble (it was in a felt sleeve which was inside a backpack) today and since has been acting weird.

when i open the lid, the login screen does not come back on automatically, i have push a key, move a finger or two on trackpad and only then does the display get powered

what to do? I am on OSX 10.8.5 and non SSD, 4GB Ram.
Plz help!

Check that pmset -g hibernatemode command in Terminal gives you 3 or 0 and not any other value. If it gives you something else, execute pmset hibernatemode 3 (this is the correct default).

Sometimes these settings go wrong for unknown reason.


Is it possible to run macOS in a virtual machine on Linux? I have an slightly-aging iMac running the macOS Sierra (fully legal) and a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud that I keep around just for handling incoming files and punting them into my usual Linux based workflow. Often this means pulling something apart that came from a designer in Illustrator and exporting the pieces to for use in an open source publishing workflow.

Unfortunately this computer has gone on the fritz and is giving me nothing but the Spinning Beach Ball of Death™. I've tried to no avail to figure out what ails it and am desperate to convert some AI stuff that came in to sane SVG's.

Is it possible to run a full-legal version of macOS inside a virtual machine on Linux? Have lots of RAM and plenty of horsepower, I just don't know where to start. I remember playing with some pirated images in VirtualBox back in the day and they ran like a mule on drugs—and were more ornery. I need something to actually get a couple hours of work down without it taking all week.

What's the best emulation system to use and what's the legal path to acquire a  machine image? Or is there another way to do this? Is there a cloud provider that I can VNC into and run my licensed software on? What tree should I be barking up?

Well... if we assume that by 'legally' you mean according to Apple's EULA [there's a lot of bickering about that, so to avoid complication that's the definition I'll use.

Apple's EULA states, in short, that you can only run an Apple OS on Apple hardware; anything else is 'illegal'
see, I had to use that term, didn't I? ;-)

So, of course you could run it in a VM in Linux, but only if your Linux machine was actually a Mac [which would be rather pointless].

They only alternative I'm aware of would be to use a cloud instance & the only one of those I've really heard of [though never used] is MacinCloud
It was discussed on Stack Overflow a few years ago [2012] so that might be worth a look at.


In Finder, first tag vanishes while adding a second tag MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2011)
macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 (17G7024)

This is a problem I've been having since Mavericks first came out, and it has persisted through at least two complete OS reinstalls (though always on the same hardware).

Suppose I open a PDF in Preview. If I click on the file name in the title bar, I get the little drop-down dialogue that lets me change the file name, tags and location:

I can start typing in the 'tags' field, and add a tag either by autocompleting an existing tag or by typing the name of a new one. Once I've finished typing this tag or selected an autocompleted tag, I press return and the tag is 'locked in':

If I then start to enter a second tag, about 75% of the time, the first tag will vanish after I've typed the first 3-4 letters of the second tag:

In this picture, it looks like I've deleted the first tag, but I haven't: I've just started typing the second tag and the first one spontaneously vanished on its own. Usually, I have to re-enter the first tag two or three times before it 'sticks'.

The issue occurs in any app with the 'document model' drop-down in the menu bar.

This behaviour has been driving me nuts for nearly six years. Is there any way to fix it?

This person seems to have had the same problem, but no solution was posted

Not seeing the tag in the tag-line is not a proof the tag is not there.
Try moving the cursor while it is in the tag-line (like it is seen in the second of your screenshots) using the left arrow keyboard key. In my case I can scroll that way through all my attached tags.


How to split app screen on my Mac? I can reduce the size of pages to make multiple of them fit on my screen, but then they are never oriented properly :( Is there a way to actually split my screen as a command on my MacBook Air? I imagine that would line the pages up automatically.

The supported Apple way of using split-screen for El Capitan onwards is documented at https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204948 in the section titled 'Use two apps in Split View'. It works nicely for apps that support it. The most up-to-date docs for Mojave are at https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/use-apps-in-split-view-mchl4fbe2921/mac

You can hold and drag the green maximise button of a window to one side of the screen to 'lock' it in position, then select another window to fill the other side. The same functionality is also available in Mission Control (ctrl-up arrow).

I'm not aware of a command that will do what you require, but it's possible using the GUI gestures.


Does MacOS 10.15 still have a file for the webcam inside: /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/? I was searching for a solution for a "broken" camera on a MacBook 12" and found a source that said that this file AppleCamera.plugin should be inside this folder: /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/ is this still the case for newer versions of MacOS?

No - there's only plugins-info.txt in /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL on macOS Catalina ProductVersion: 10.15.4


How can I do a batch conversion of HTML entities to Hanzi? I have a huge .txt file which contains lots of HTML entities representing Unicode characters, like this:
&#21696;&#29282;&#23665;

In Pinyin, this would read "Ai Lao Shan" or "Ai1 Lao2 Shan1", to be more precise.
I need a tool or command line or Pages/Numbers macro, whatever, which replaces all strings like &#....; in said file into proper Hanzi, which in this case would be:
哀牢山

Any suggestions for a tool or script or program that runs on macOS?

You can install recode via the Terminal with Homebrew:
brew install recode

and then use it to convert HTML to Unicode, like this:
echo '&#21696;&#29282;&#23665;' | recode html..utf8

This produces

哀牢山

(inspired by @creving's answer on Stack Overflow)


Add a BBC Podcast to iTunes I used to subscribe to BBC podcasts by clicking on the 'Subscribe' icon and selecting iTunes/IOS - simple.  Now when I do it, the programme opens up Winamp and nothing is added to iTunes.  Has something changed?  Should I be directing this question to the BBC?  I am just using my PC and Windows 7, nothing fancy.

It sounds like Winamp has claimed podcast/RSS feeds, rss://, on your computer. This means when an podcast/RSS feed is clicked, Winamp is launched rather than iTunes.

The BBC's Podcast help suggests copying and pasting the podcast link directly into iTunes:

  Subscribing using iOS, Android or Window

  Select your operating system. Once you have installed your chosen
  software simply click on the relevant button and the software will do
  the rest.

  Subscribe using a feed reader

  Clicking on RSS will take you to the actual podcast feed page.

  Some browsers may display instructions at the top of the page in which
  case simply follow them.

  Or, you can copy and paste the feed URL into a new feed in your
  podcast software or feed reader - just look for buttons or links
  marked "Add feed" or "Subscribe".


Notes on MacOS Sierra I just upgraded to MacOS Sierra and I lost a week-long of notes in Notes. It happened, after I restored a backup from a week ago and then installed Sierra. All my notes sync with iCloud, but there simply aren't any notes now from since last week.
Is there any kind of way to recover those notes, because they are reaaaaaally important to me...
Thanks:)

No.  They are gone.  iCloud, for a lack of a better word is a "sync conduit" between your devices; it's not a backup.    This means that a change you make on any of your devices is what gets synced.

When you restored the 1 week old backup from Time Machine, more than likely, Notes did a sync which overwrote what was on iCloud because it "assumed" that was the latest data to be synced.

What you should do in the future....prior to upgrading your OS do a manual Time Machine backup so it saves the latest state. This way you know for a fact that what you restore is your most recent version.


How to exclude everything from TimeMachine backup except one folder TimeMachine backs up all my mac and also if I have external hard drives will  back them up too.
My goal is to add some general exclusion list that basically stops it from backup my mac and ONLY want it to backup my external hard drive.
I thought if I add the hard drive labeled "Macintosh" to exclusion list then it won't backup my mac, but it did!
So basically I have two external hard drives ( A 2TB Lacie and a 2TB Apple AirPort Time Capsule) and I want time machine to only backup my Lacie one to the AirPortTime capsule one but don't want to to backup the rest of my laptop because I won't have enough space for that.

You can use bash script deux_ex_tmachina to help you generate desired blacklist.


Why are my iPad landscape screenshots rotated the wrong way? All my iPad landscape screenshots end up rotated to portrait view. In other words, they are 90 degrees turned the wrong way. It's annoying. No I don't have the rotation lock on when taking them. I am on 4.2, but it has always done this even before 4.2 update. I am jailbroken, so it may be one of the jailbreak apps. Has anyone else experienced this? Any ideas?

This is default behavior and is not an issue with jailbreaking. Even my new iPad 2 straight out the box does this on 4.3. I see this as a bug and hope Apple fixes this.

The fastest and simplest iPad app that I've found that I like for rotating, cropping and flipping is called Crop Suey HD.

UPDATE: It appears as though iOS 5 has finally fixed this annoying bug. And the even better news is that they are now throwing in photo editing tools right in the photo viewer app; including the option to rotate.


If I remove GarageBand and iMovie from my MacBook Air, can I restore them later? I have just bought a new MacBook Air 13" (2013).

It comes pre-installed with GarageBand and iMovie. I don't really need these applications and I want to save my disk space, so I was thinking about removing them.

However, if I do remove them, is it possible to restore them if I want them later?

You should be able to download them with your Apple ID (the one used when you bought or registered your new Mac) from the Mac App Store.
You can try to log in, and then see if you have access to them (you should also have access to the OS X, so you can re-install it too), otherwise you should contact Apple, so you get access to the free apps - and OS X Mountain Lion.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

Restoring iLife applications after Internet Restore of OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion
If you erase install OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion on a new Mac that shipped with OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion installed, you can download iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand from the Mac App Store.

After installation, start (up) from OS X.
Double-click the App Store icon in the dock.
Enter your Apple ID and password.
Click Purchases.
If you haven't previously accepted your bundled iLife applications within the Mac App Store, you should see your iLife applications appear in the Accept portion of the screen. Click Accept.
You may be asked for your Apple ID and password once again. Your iLife applications now move to the Purchased section. These applications are part of the software that came with your Lion based computer. Your account will not be charged for them. Click Install to complete installation of your applications.


How do you create an APFS volume inside an ordinary file? Normally in the Disk Utility you need to select a device.  Is it possible to create an AFPS volume as an ordinary file in other filesystem?  And if so, how would that be done?

If you have a file that contains a raw image of a disk, you can use the following command in the Terminal:

hdiutil attach -imagekey diskimage-class=CRawDiskImage myimage.raw

If you haven't got an existing image, you can create a new, empty file named myimage.raw and then attach it without mounting:

hdiutil attach -imagekey diskimage-class=CRawDiskImage -nomount myimage.raw

Then you can create APFS volumes on there as you would have a physical disk and mount them. This can be done via the command line with a command such as:

diskutil apfs create disk5 MyNewVolumeName

where disk5 needs to be replaced with the device name, you've received from the attach command earlier.


How can I determine if my MBP running Snow Leopard has been attacked by a virus? 5 yr old MBP Intel bought for video editing ran fine for 4 yrs, using Tiger & FCE 3.5.  Past year has been stormy.  Onset was unrecoverable crash dx'ed as not-worth-fixing logic board failure by genius at Mac Store.

Community-based Apple tech repaired logic board, which made computer bootable, but  occasional crashes recurred.  Additional servicing was done:  new 250GB hard drive, upgrade to Mountain Lion, followed by partial downgrade to Snow Leopard (clean install) to restore compatibility with FCE 3.5.

System seemed to be working but multiple worsening crashes began yesterday after transferring ~ 3 GB iTunes tracks from old Tiger CCC bootable clone.  Currently running an Apple Hardware Test from Tiger install disc.  But viruses apparently do attack Macs and I would like to know the best way to determine if my MBP is infected.

Any advice would be appreciated.  This is my first Mac, and I'd much rather be editing video than troubleshooting!

Apple Hardware Test will not test for virus, try some anti-virus scanner from reputational software provider like free anti-virus for mac. But remember all anti-virus can only check for known virus or bug, small or custom virus cannot be detect.
If you have extensive knowledge about computer you can open "terminal" and type "top" to see all the computer process and look for the process that take up all the memories, then exit with "contrl+z"


Cannot mount bootable Windows 10 drive I am trying to make a bootable USB with the dd command since Boot Camp does not work. If I execute this command:

sudo dd if=Win10.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=1m

I get a disk formatted as Universal Disk Format with a GUID partition scheme making it unbootable. The way I changed it to Master Boot Record (FDisk) partition scheme was to erase the failed USB contents, change it to FDisk, and run the dd command with disk1s1 instead of disk1 (disk1s1 was the identifier of the only partition on the USB).

What that has done was made an unmounted partition called disk1s1, formatted in FAT and with the FDisk partition scheme, but it is unmountable and I cannot boot from it. When I try mounting it, nothing happens, and the terminal command output is Volume on disk1s1 failed to mount. I cannot repair disk and Verify disk says Invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block: 000000

As far as I can remember, Ubuntu's bootable USB showed similar behavior with the unmountable disk, but it was detectable by rEFInd.

UPDATE:

The error message I get in VirtualBox is:

VD: error VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED opening image file '/Users/username/RawWinDisk.vmdk' (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).
VD: error VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED opening image file '/Users/username/RawWinDisk.vmdk' (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).
Failed to open image '/Users/username/RawWinDisk.vmdk' in read-write mode (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).
Failed to attach driver below us! Not supported. (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).
AHCI: Failed to attach drive to Port0 (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).

I am using OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks), and I have a 13-inch, Mid 2012 MBP

Let me know if anything goes wrong! I have tried to update everything for the latest version of VirtualBox, but I may have messed up somewhere...

The method I use relies on VirtualBox for its operation. Follow these steps:

Install the latest version of VirtualBox from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads. Make sure it installs the command line tools.
Once installed, open it and create a new VM by clicking "New" on the top left.
Select the type to be "Microsoft Windows", and select the version as "Windows 10 (64 bit)", then give it a name of your choosing.
Select "Do not add a virtual hard drive". We will be creating one on our own for our purposes. Click "Create".
If you have not created a partition for Windows, do so now in Disk Utility. Click on the disk (not any partition) in the sidebar, and click the partitions tab. Then click the "+" button, and make a new partition as large as you want it to be. 30GB is a good minimum size.
Now we have to open the Terminal. Type the following command: diskutil list. From the list of disks, make a note of the disk identifier in the last column that belongs to the partition you created for Windows. We will need this in the next step.
Run the command sudo chown $USER /dev/disk#s#. Replace disk#s# with the identifier from earlier. Enter your password and push return. Also run sudo chown $USER /dev/disk#s1. Use the same identifier, but replace the last number with a 1. Also run sudo chown $USER /dev/disk# using the first half of your identifier (minus the s# part).
Unmount the disk by typing diskutil unmount /dev/disk#s# using your identifier.
Now we have to create the disk for the VM to use for installation. Run the command VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ~/RawWinDisk.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk# -partitions 1,#. Replace "disk#" with the appropriate first half of the identifier from earlier, and replace the second # sign with the last number in your identifier.
Unmount the disk again diskutil unmount /dev/disk#s#, using your identifier.
Now you should have a ".vmdk" file in your home folder. Go back into VirtualBox, select the VM you created, and click "Settings". Select the "Storage" tab, add an IDE controller by clicking the second "+" icon at the bottom, click on the "IDE" controller and click the second "+" sign directly to right of the controller (the hover text is "Add Hard Disk").
Click "Choose existing disk", and navigate to the VMDK we just created, which should be in your home folder. Click it and select "Open". Now you should see the newly added disk just below the "IDE" controller.
Click on "Empty" just below the "SATA" controller, check "Live CD/DVD", and click the little CD icon next to "SATA Port #".
Click "Choose Virtual Optical Disk File...", navigate to your ISO, and open it.
Start the VM and install windows on the 30G partition.
When the installation is done and you're logged in, shut down Windows and you should see the disk created by Windows appear on the desktop. You can get the Boot Camp drivers for your laptop from https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1720?locale=en_US. Put this on a flash drive formatted as ExFAT or FAT so Windows can read it.
You should now be able to reboot into Windows by holding alt down, or selecting the disk in Startup Disk preferences.

Make sure you update your BootCamp with Apple Software Update once you have BootCamp installed on the Windows side. These are technically Windows 8.1 drivers, which should work well enough for you to at least connect to the internet and get the latest version.


Prevent websites from taking over audio on iPhone? An increasing number of websites like CNN.com take over the audio of my iPhone's Safari app with advertisements and pause the Music app.

How can I prevent this. I only need the audio on Safari when I am watching a video.

If your device is jailbroken, you can install Don't Kill the Beat. This prevents apps other than Music.app from playing music. To allow an app to play music (e.g. a video in Safari), pause the music in Music.app manually yourself, such as with the Control Center.


Delete book but keep it in iBook? I have a lots of book in a folder but they are all in the iBooks app. Can I delete them if they are in ? I have tried with one book look like nothing happens but I want to be sure before I remove this folder.

All purchases made from Apple can be restored if deleted by selecting "Purchases" then selecting the book and clicking on "Download".


Macbook Air suddenly will not power on without charger and shuts down without I have a Macbook Air model A1466 (mid 2013 model). I replaced the battery early 2020. It worked as normal again until now. It suddenly switched of randomly and after doing this for a day or 2 it will not start unless on the charger. Even worse, when it enters standby mode, when the lid is closed or when the charger is disconnected it will immediately shut down hard. When the charger is reconnected I need to press the power button to do a cold boot.
First guess was the battery. But when i run system_profiler SPPowerDataType it gives me this:
Battery Information:

      Model Information:
          Manufacturer: SMP
          Device Name: BQ20Z451
          Pack Lot Code: 0
          PCB Lot Code: 0
          Firmware Version: 2
          Hardware Revision: 00aa
          Cell Revision: 1
      Charge Information:
          Fully Charged: No
          Charging: No
          Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 7094
          State of Charge (%): 95
      Health Information:
          Cycle Count: 124
          Condition: Normal

To me this seems that the battery is ok.
Same when I run a demo version of the app Watts:

I also tried to do a reset of the SMC but that did not change anything.
What can be the issue?

Your logic board is likely starting to go. The battery is in good health but chances are there are other components failing.


XCode Problem - Couldn't load settings from contents.xcplayground I recently moved a few playground files from my documents folder to iCloud Drive. Then I noticed they all the files have been duplicated and non can be opened.
I moved them back to the original location to the documents folder and still they don't open.

Any suggestions on how I can bring back the codes I've written?

UPDATE:
I had a copy of one of the files in my dropbox. It turns out the playground file, consists of a few files and some files were missing or didn't get uploaded to iCloud. (iCloud bug? Shame!)

So then I took a look at the contents (right click > show package contents) and found a swift file which had my code in it.

This happens when you zip and unzip files and Mac turned some files into .xml file depend on your mac settings. The solution is:
right-click the "xxx.playground" file -> show package content, you will see the "contents.xcplayground" file. Right-cilck this file and go to "Get info". Now in file name and extension section, remove the .xml at last.

Do the same for "contents.xcworkspacedata" under the "playground.xcworkspace" workspace folder.


Move all events from one iCal calendar to another I would like to consolidate several iCal calendars.  So, I'm wondering if there is a way to move all events from one iCal calendar to another.  I'm not interested in changing the time, etc. of any of the events, as asked here, and I'm not interested in simply deleting all the events in my calendar, as asked here.

I'm running iCal Version 5.0 (1535) on OS X 10.7.

Select one of the calendars you want to merge
choose File->Export...->Export
Make sure the filename matches the calender you've chosen above. The calendar will be exported to a .ics file
Choose File->Import...->Import and find the file you've just saved.
ical will ask you to which calendar it should add the events. Just select the another one of the calendars you want to merge.
repeat until all calendars are merged.


Terminal Command Line to find corrupted files I do have just one corrupted photo into my Photos Library.

Is there is any UNIX command line that I can use in terminal in order to scan my Photos Library Folder and find out which file is corrupted?

My first thought was that ImageMagick is bound to have something for this, and indeed it does. You could run something like this

find . -name "*.JPG" -exec identify {} \; | grep Corrupt

where you can replace . with your directory of choice (it will descend recursively) to check each file or image with ImageMagick's identify command. Grepping for 'Corrupt' will print you identifys output for those files which are in fact corrupt. You could probably trim the output to make it more readable, which would involve some regexing for grep.

Obviously, you need to have ImageMagick installed for this. If you use MacPorts, it's as simple as sudo port install ImageMagick.


2010 Mac Pro suddenly getting stuck booting Last week my 2010 Mac Pro running 10.12.3 suddenly started getting stuck booting at the gray Apple logo and progress bar screen. The strange thing is that booting in verbose mode completes as expected. That can be a work around, but I don't trust the stability of the computer if something is getting in the way under normal operation.

Attempted fixes

Running first aid on the boot disk and rebooting. No change
Resetting PRAM and SMC. No change
Wiping the boot drive (data is on a separate drive) and reinstalling macOS. Gets stuck after the installer reboots
Reseating the drives and CPU tray (along with a cleanup of internal dust). No change
Swapping out the boot drive with a spare. No change

Not really an answer, but what I'd try next to try to reduce the problem cause further...
This can be tweaked if we get closer to a solution.

Remove all other drives, PCI cards & any external USB devices.
Reduce the RAM to one stick [or one matched pair]
Put the original GPU back, if it's been swapped out [& you still have it]
Boot to Safe Mode [Shift key at the chimes]
If you can get to Safe Mode, make a new admin account & try logging into that.
If possible, set up a known-good boot drive on another Mac Pro & swap it in [This is possible between 3,1 up to 5,1 [I haven't tested other models], a boot drive made on one machine can be swapped directly to another, up to El Capitan but not Sierra]
Test if it can boot from Time Machine directly & if a restore from there works.
Test if it will boot from El Capitan or Yosemite rather than Sierra. I had some odd issues with one El Cap security update which would leave me staring at a white screen & going back to a point before it was my only solution.
Security update 2016-003 10.11.6 issues - which has no real conclusion, just a whole lot of working method. Might be interesting to read if you're bored ;-)


How is the hidden interface bridge100 working? This interface bridge100 has been introduced with
Mavericks and exists on Yosemite.
(On Mountain Lion the same kind of mechanism was
taking place with the bridge0 associated with the visible interface: Thunderbolt Bridge).

This interface is related to the starting of Internet Sharing.
When Internet Sharing is off:

$ ifconfig bridge100
ifconfig: interface bridge100 does not exist
$

When Internet Sharing is on:

$ ifconfig bridge 100
bridge100: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICASRT> mtu1500
        options=3<RXCSUM,TXCSUM>
        ether ••My_Ethernet_@MAC••
[...]

But this interface doesn't appear within System Preferences > Network.

Where is the correct documentation about this hidden interface?

How to make this interface appear within the System Preferences > Network list of interfaces?

How is this interface configuration managed?

(This is isn't a correct answer, but just a starting point.)

Not mandatory

This bridge interface is not at all necessary. Here is the way to inactivate it:

Stop Internet Sharing through the GUI.
Wait one full minute for all the processes to terminate their house keeping:

ps ax | egrep '[ /](PID|Int)'

modify the Internet Sharing plist:

cd /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
/usr/bin/sudo -s
# make a quick backup
cp com.apple.NetworkSharing.plist com.apple.NetworkSharing.plist~orig
vi com.apple.NetworkSharing.plist

within the ProgramArguments array, insert the 2 new arguments -B (disable bridge interface) and -v (verbose output), so that this array definition will look like:

<array>
    <string>/usr/libexec/InternetSharing</string>
    <string>-B</string>
    <string>-v</string>
</array>

save this new file and exit vi
start Internet Sharing through the GUI,
do a verification ifconfig -a.

Now Internet Sharing is directly working on en1 and all necessary processes are started correctly: pfctl, wifid, natpmpd, bootpd.


Setting environment variables for scripts run by launchd? I have a script that worked in the past, but seems to be having issues now (I believe it's due to Yosemite). What I had done was created an environment variable that was set to "false" and then my script would set it to "true" so that if the script took too long and started again before it finished it would not attempt to run again concurrently. However, it doesn't work anymore.

I set the variable initially with /etc/launchd.conf

setenv autoBackupImagesInProgress false

And the part of my script that doesn't work anymore is

#Ensure that this script isn't already running
if [ -z "$autoBackupImagesInProgress" ] ; then
   #Concurrency variable was not setup so this will not work;
   #edit .bashrc or .profile to include export autoBackupImagesInProgress=false
   #should be /etc/launchd.conf
   print "WARNING: Concurrency protection unavailable"
elif [ $autoBackupImagesInProgress = true ] ; then
   #Another process has already started this, but has not yet finished
   print "WARNING: Already in progress; aborting."
   exit 0;
fi

This works if I initiate the script from the terminal or Spotlight, but not when this is started with launchd. When run from launchd this will always print the first warning and never hits the elif.

Open your Script Editor(Launch Pad -> Other -> Script Editor)
Type scripts like this:

do shell script "launchctl setenv autoBackupImagesInProgress false"

Use multiple lines if you want to set multiple variables.

Save this script as Application, open SystemPreferences → Users & Groups → your user → Login Items and add your saved script.

To apply changes, logout your account and log in again.


iTunes can't restore backup but I can find the specific file? I backed up my iPhone prior to taking it to Apple for repair, and ended up with a new iPhone.

When I tried to restore the backup onto my new iPhone however, iTunes informed me I have no backups available. I located the backup file under MobileSync/Backup but I can't get iTunes to recognise it.

I really only care about 1 specific Note, since I manually backed up my photos. Does anyone know how to restore the full backup, or even just get my Notes back?

AppleCare couldn't help me either. They said the version of iOS on the old iPhone being older than the one on the new iPhone might cause some sort of backward compatibility issue, but they couldn't offer any solutions.

You can only restore a backup onto a version of iOS that is at least equal to the one that was used to create that backup. For instance if your old iPhone was running iOS 10.3.3, then you can only restore its backup onto another iPhone also running iOS 10.3.3, or iOS 11.

Replacement iPhones & iPads are often running a version of iOS that is several months old. You will need to update it to iOS 10.3.3 before iTunes will allow you to restore it from backup.


Resource is busy, but lsof doesn't think so Occasionally, I get file (typically after they are edited by Microsoft Word) that I can not delete:

> rm -rf foo.docx
rm: M_AI_SO.docx: Resource busy

However, lsof doesn't report anything, even I run it as root:

> lsof | grep docx
>

How can I determine who is locking the file. And even more important: how can I delete it without a reboot?

lsof does not show all the processes when run as a normal user. Try with

sudo lsof | grep docx

See the SECURITY section of the man page


Music won't play on my iPhone 5s why not? I go onto my music and select a playlist I want to listen to, I then click shuffle or select and song and it won't play. It looks like it is about to play but then it automatically pauses and skips to the next song. If you click play it restarts the song - no sound comes out and if it switches to a song that does decide to act normally there is no sound at all. I have tried plugging in head phones; this makes no difference and then taking them out; this again makes no difference. I have tried turning on the ringer and turning it off, again this makes no difference. Mobile data on, data off, no difference. Bottom line is I can't play my music. I am using an iPhone 5s with iOS 10.2. Please help :)

Have you tried also restarting the phone? I have the same phone model and do have to reboot it every once in a while.


How can I reformat an HDD to HFS+ in Ubuntu (without using a Mac)? I have attached an HFS+ hard drive with Mac OS X installed to an Ubuntu machine because while booting the Mac shows a blinking folder with a question mark. I searched Google and the results say that the 3 TB HDD is damaged. When I attach the HDD it reads well in Ubuntu.

So my question is how can I reformat the HDD with HFS+ in Ubuntu without using Mac OS X?

I am using Ubuntu 14.04 and the HDD is perfectly fine - I have tested it. Just wanted to reinstall every mac osx hdd so that it can boot up.. I paid a lot for that ...

To answer your question:

You can format a drive in Ubuntu with the HFS+ format by using either gparted or by installing the hfsprogs package - use sudo apt-get install hfsprogs to install the program.

As for the additional details in your post, it is concerning that you have determined through Google that your drive has failed.  To properly determine if your drive has failed, you need get the SMART diagnostic info from the drive itself.  If it responds back with anything but "Verified" then your drive has a problem.

It is also important to note that "formatting" a drive will not repair it.  You will just make those bad sectors availble for writing again which can and will lead to data loss.

Under OS X, you can get it by issuing the command:

diskutil info diskx | grep SMART

(Substitute x with your disk number; most likely 0)

However, that may not be enough.  There is a free utility I have used to verify my drives, it's called DriveDX and it's reporting capability is completely free.

Before formatting your drive, I highly suggest you take a look into these areas first.


On iOS, clear Safari history without discarding open tabs? In most browsers, clearing the history leaves currently opened tabs untouched.

In Safari on iOS however, the only method of clearing the history I know of is Settings → Safari Clear History and Website Data, which also closes all tabs. This is never my intent, and has tripped me up several times already.

Is there some method to clear the history but keep the current tabs?

Turns out, this is just a case of awkward design.

There is no warning about "Clear History and Website Data" also closing tabs.
There is a "Clear" button in the in-browser history view, which doesn't affect tabs. It doesn't communicate however, whether it also deletes cookies and website settings.

To use the latter:

In Safari, open the bookmarks pane.
Select the history tab of the pane (the clock symbol).
Click clear at the bottom-right of the pane.


Are there any standard apps in iOS that implement isIdleTimerDisabled=true? I'm wondering if any of the built-in applications in iOS have isIdleTimerDisabled set to true at any time?

If so, which app, and how do you get in the state to activate it?

Note - if an app is in this state, it will have its display stay on, and never turn off while the app is active.

Why do I want to know this?

I have a company iPhone that has the auto sleep option set so the phone's display locks after ~ 2 or 3 min, and it can't be set to "Never" sleep due to company policy lockdown.

But one day I noticed that if I had a certain app open, the display never went to sleep. I did some research, and it appears the app is using the  isIdleTimerDisabled feature to keep the display on permanently, if the app is in the foreground.

The benefit of this is that it allows me to receive 2FA notifications on my phone and approve them without leaving the app that's keeping the display awake.

This works for me, as I own this paid app, but I'd like to share this idea with others on my team, preferably using a built in app, so no one has to install anything.

Note if none of the built in apps support this, are there well known, trusted, 3rd party apps that do this as well? YouTube or Netflix come to mind, but I'd like it to be something people wouldn't mind running on their phone at work and having their boss see it!

Though I haven't found any built in apps that do this, I guess it can be done in Safari using a glitch/hack.

This demo page utilizes the hack, and clicking the button on the page keeps the page awake forever.

https://richtr.github.io/NoSleep.js/example/

It is open source, and works on all iOs versions except for 13.4, but will probably be fixed for that too as well!

Note that it may not work as well as a native app though, as I find that if my power is low and I'm not plugged in, this doesn't work (display turns off)


Best way to switch the signed-in iTunes Store account on an iPhone without affecting apps I have an iPhone 4S that uses account "B" for iCloud and account "A" for iTunes.
I also have an iTunes installation (on a Windows 7 machine) that is authorized for account A.
I have many apps installed and configured on the iPhone, several of them cost money.

I now wish to switch over to using only iTunes account B on both the iPhone and the iTunes installation.
What is the smoothest way to do this?

I am worried about several aspects, mainly apps:
What will happen to the apps? Will they be erased? Will they keep their settings?
I am not looking to avoid paying, I am fully prepared to pay (on account B) for the apps that cost money. Should I do that on the PC before switching accounts on the iPhone?
Do I have to do anything about the free apps? Will all apps keep updating after switching account?

The FAQs I've read about this action state that it is possible, but not really what will happen to apps and settings:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1311#

If you switch your iTunes account on the phone from account A to account B all your apps from account A will still exist on your phone and will function properly.

The only issue you will face will be with updates. Every time an update wil exist for one of the apps in account A, you will get the numbered badge on the app store app. However, you will not see the update in the app store itself until you switch accounts back from account B to account A.


Transferring photos and music between Mac and iPhone I'm using a 2011 iMac running macOS Sierra 10.12.6 and an iPhone SE using version 13.1.3

I can no longer connect the two by USB or Bluetooth. Is there another was to transfer photos from the phone to the Mac and music from the Mac to the phone?

There are several ways.

A simple and popular way to copy files and share files among your devices.
https://www.dropbox.com/

"Box lets you store all of your content online, so you can access, manage and share it from anywhere. Integrate Box with Google Apps and Salesforce and access Box on mobile devices" Rated the most secure cloud storage by SkyHigh Networks.  You can buy a license to run box one of your servers.
https://www.box.com/

Using iTunes to transfer files:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4094?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
chinajon provides an explanation on how to do file transfers
https://discussions.apple.com/message/30289293#30289293

"iMazing is the all purpose iOS management software: expand your control over your mobile data beyond what is normally possible, without jailbreaking your device. With iMazing, you can easily browse and manage your backups, extract and print your text messages, or drag and drop songs to your iPhone. To put it simply, iMazing allows you to go way beyond what iTunes offers"
https://imazing.com/

Files Connect -- "Cloud Storage services like Dropbox, MobileMe iDisk, Google Docs/Picasa, Facebook photos, FTP, SFTP, WebDAV ... AFS (Apple File Shares) SMB (Windows shares)  protocols"
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/files-connect/id404324302?mt=8

Windows File server
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/filebrowser-access-files-on/id364738545?mt=8


Recursively search for images, and move them to a date folder Asked a question 9 months ago about how to copy images to a backup folder. That worked in that case! But now I have another problem. I have 233 GB of unsorted data, mostly images, and they are located in a unsorted directory structure.

I was thinking to sort the images based on date (if that is possible on all images), and keep the original filename.

I found a question here, but I haven't tried it - afraid to mess things up.

My question is: how do I recursively search a folder, and move the image of type bmp, jpg, JPG, jpeg and gif to /home/username/Documents/backup/[date] folder (ex. /home/username/Documents/backup/2013-06-10/DSC01158.JPG), and if that folder dosen't exist - create it. And keep the filename, if possible.

System used: macOS Sierra 10.12.4

Edit:
The date has to be extracted from the metadata, because the files dosen´t include date in filename.

Change to the folder you want to search and run

find . -type f -iname '*.jpg' | while read file; do
    ts=$(stat -f '%Sm' -t '%Y-%m-%d' "$file")
    folder="/path/to/backup/folder/$ts"
    [[ -d "$folder" ]] || echo mkdir "$folder"
    echo mv "$file" "$folder/"
done

Best to test this on a small sample first, and remove both echos if the output looks reasonable.


Can't make Home Sharing work on my iPad I've got the latest iTunes on my Mac [10.2.1(1)], I've downloaded iOS4.3 to my iPad, so I've got all the software that should be necessary, right?

My Apple I.D. and password have both been correctly entered on the Mac and the iPad. Home Sharing has been activated on the Mac, but the iPad can't see it.

Last night I was actually able to get it to function for a couple of hours, but this morning it was gone again. And even when it was working last night I could go to the "sharing" preferences pane in iTunes on my Mac and the status would read: Status: On, no users connected.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Can anyone help me out?

Just figured it out. All I had to do was restart my wireless router. Duh.

I didn't think it was at fault because I was getting a full signal to both the Mac and the iPad. But that was just the trick.

Works great now.