Quicksilver will not open on my Mac (OS 10.6). Can you help? I installed Quicksilver and due to some problems I have with the "shelf" feature I decided to uninstall it (using appCleaner).

When I tried to install it again the application wouldn't install the second time and it gave me this option

  "The previous version of Quicksilver was located in "Quicksilver 3".
  Would you like to move this new version to that location?"

I clicked "OK" and the QS logo came up but disappeared within seconds.

There is no file on my computer with the word "quicksilver"

Is there anything you can recommend I do?

I am new to the Mac (got it only 2 day ago).

Here is the excerpt from Quicksilver's User Manual that should deal with your problem (note the "~" denotes your user account home directory):

The Quicksilver.app is usually in /Applications/ or ~/Applications/. When first used, the following per user files and folders are created:

~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/
Actions.plist - list of installed actions
Catalog.plist - the configured catalog sources
Mnemonics.plist - learned inputs, defaults and abbreviations
PlugIns.plist - the list of available plug-ins and how they are configured
Triggers.plist - the configured triggers
Caches/ - another cache folder
Indexes/ - folder of indexed items
PlugIns/ - installed plug-ins
Shelves/ - where items on the Shelf and clipboards are stored
Actions/ - not installed but create this folder to add scripts that implement actions
Templates/ - not installed but create this folder to use with the Make New... action
~/Library/Preferences/com.blacktree.Quicksilver.plist - stores various preferences and internal state
~/Library/Caches/Quicksilver/ - stores various state in binary files

To do a complete uninstall use the Uninstall Quicksilver button in the Application preferences, or remove the above files and folders.

It can also be useful to move or rename these while trouble-shooting a problem. If you are having trouble installing plug-ins check that the owner of ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/ is the current user and not System. If it’s not, change it and restart Quicksilver.


Change SMS/iMessage display format Is there a way to display sent/received iMessages in a "horizontal" format rather than the current "vertical" left/right bubble format?

In iOS, aside from using accessibility's large text features, there are no options to adjust the display of messages in the Messages app.

On OS X, all of Message's display options present new messages vertically – each new message appears below the previous one. There are three settings to choose from and only (the default) one displays them in a left/right format.

To change the way Messages displays messages, you have to 'secondary-click' (AKA control+click or right-click) in the blank space between messages. That brings up a contextual menu with only three options:

Show as Balloons
Show as Boxes
Show as Compact

You can secondary-click in the Messages (main chat) window or in the sample transcript found in Messages > Preferences > Messages.


Editing Boot Menu options Mac (Bootcamp) I had a problem where I was wanting to make my windows partition bigger using Winclone. I also used a file-based backup in Windows. I made the wrong, move and after restoring the Winclone image, I then restored the file based backup on the wrong partition. Luckily I had a backup of my Mac from a few hours before, so it was nearly a train smash. I've restored my Winclone image to a new (bigger) partition.Just wondering how to get rid of the 'recovery-10.xx.x' drive from the boot menu after pressing option key? Bootcamp and MacOS still show up fine by the way.

If I recall correctly (no guarantee of that ;-) the Recovery partition usually shows up in the "Option boot menu."

If I am inexplicably wrong likely the only way to get rid of it would be to boot from an OS install thumb drive that you created previously (you did create one previously, didn't you?) and reinstall from scratch. during the OS install open Disk Utility, delete both partitions and then create one new one to install Mac OS onto and install. The install process will re-create the emergency boot partition behind the scenes. Once that is done you can restore your files and apps from your back up that you cleverly thought to make before wiping your hard drive.

There I think I have covered most of the bases here... I hope.


Is iPhone X availble in the USA I am living in Germany and want to know if is currently possible to buy iPhone X in the USA? If I visit an Apple Store tomorrow will I be able to get iPhone X or not?

Yes, the iPhone X is currently available to purchase online and in Apple stores.

However, there's no guarantee that the store you visit will have the X in stock when you arrive.

You can try to order one thru the Apple US store site, select a pickup store, and then check the store stock (all thru the store site).  That's your best way of ensuring a store has stock when you place your order.


Why does Spotlight keep reindexing my system after updating to Lion? Since I installed Lion, the Spotlight database keeps reindexing (which is taking several hours). It does this at least every second day.

Are any other users experiencing this problem with Lion (i.e. is it just a 10.7.0 bug)?
If not, how can I diagnose what is causing it - I see no suspicious entries in Console?

Just being able to reset the spotlight history and have it rebuild would be nice to know.

I, too, had the reindexing problem happening after I upgraded to Lion. However the problem didn't exist for every user, just for the one that was using FileVault 1.

After a few weeks I got overfrustrated and ran… †

$ sudo mdutil -a -i off

… in Terminal — and the same minute I realised that the setting was applied system–wide. I shrugged and enjoyed a few hours worth of reindexing–free session after which I decided to turn Spotlight back on, as it is crucial to my workflow on other user accounts; so:

$ sudo mdutil -a -i on

And while I was at it, I decided to erase the old index and rebuild new from scratch with:

$ sudo mdutil -aE

I did this about a month ago and I haven't encountered "useless" reindexing since. I'm happily surprised because fixing the issue was merely a coincidence.

So, have you tried turning it off and on again?

†) the -a flag will apply the action to all volumes  which might not be something you want — and actually wasn't what I wanted either, but I just wanted to go blitzkrieg on the issue.


Cursor selection behavior When clicking something on the Mac screen, the cursor will

a) take up residence as directed,

If I click again, it will

b) select the whole word,

If I click again, it will

c) select the whole passage.

In Windows, I can click a fourth time, and the cursor will return to "a," the "residence" mode.  On the Mac, it stays in "whole passage" mode. I have to move the cursor out of text, so restore it to "a."

I frequently click a fourth time and expect it to return to mode A. I don't like having to correct this and move the cursor.
How can I make the fourth click return to mode A, "residence"?

Clicking will reset to the "residence" mode provided that you leave enough time after the previous clicks that it isn't treated as a quadruple click.  At least, that's the way it works for me in Chrome on my MacBook Pro.


How to save and exit "nano .bash_profile" in Terminal? I need to add some line to nano .bash_profile in Terminal. Then:

1) I enter with this command line: nano .bash_profile

2) Add the line I need

3) now I don't know how to Save and Exit

I thought it is :w + enter. If this is correct I need some direction to use it.

No, :w is a /usr/bin/vi command. Use the combination control+x to exit. You will be prompted to save the file if you have made unsaved changes.

Nano is intended to be a bit friendlier / simpler to new users than vi/vim or emacs which both cater to more power users that have spent time learning how to use them effectively.

To get started in nano - look for commands along the bottom of the window when nano is open. (^ stands for the control key)

^X      (F2)            Close the current file buffer / Exit from nano
^O      (F3)            Write the current file to disk


Visual Studio Code App wont run from Applications folder The latest version of Visual Studio Code will not run ("can't be opened" is the unhelpful error) when I copy it to the applications folder.  It runs fine after unzipping to the Downloads folder, but just wont from the applications folder.

I don't think it's the security setting as that's already set to allow apps from anywhere.

OS X El Capitan on a Mid-2014 Macbook Pro

I had this issue and I found a workaround, which may work for you...

Unzip Visual Studio Code in the download folder.
Right-click Visual Studio code, in the download folder, and select 'Open'. If you're prompted by Gatekeeper, open the application.
From the 'Code' menu, select Preferences > User Settings.
Once the settings files open, you can immediately close them both.
From the 'Code' menu, select Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts.
As with #3, you can immediately close the files.
Quit Visual Studio Code
Copy the Visual Studio Code application into your Applications folder.
Open it from Applications.

This worked for me - I have no idea why, perhaps a bug to do with accessing the preference file(s)?
Maybe this might work for you?


How to safely dismiss the apple pay screen I like the apple pay feature. however there are times when the apple pay pops up even though I am not buying anything or even close to a shop.

The problem is that when the apple pay screen pops up, if I touch the touch id then it will end up making a payment.

I want a sure shot way of safely dismissing the apple pay screen when it pops up without a reason.

I am using iphone 8 plus with latest ios 11.

Press the home button with a finger not registered with TouchID or press the On/Off button on the right side of the phone. Either will dismiss the Apple Pay window.


Access IPhone in Finder Is there a way to access iPhone in Finder, similar to the way Windows can access it in Explorer? Going through some growing pains in doing things the "apple way" ...

Generally without jailbreaking the device, no. Apple makes it quite difficult to access the filesystem of your iOS device - whether attempting to navigate directories on the device directly, or remotely from your computer.
However, there are certain programs recently made available which enable one to do so. For example, iFunBox is an iOS file management application for your desktop that allows you to browse and manipulate the filesystem without jailbreaking the phone.
Additionally, you may find it helpful to use iOS's Spotlight feature to quickly find and access content on your device:

"To access Spotlight, swipe down on your home screen to reveal the search field."
"Spotlight searches certain text fields in the content of your device for text beginning with your search phrase. It is not case-sensitive, so you can search using uppercase or lowercase letters and get the same results."


External Storage to LaptopStorage NAtive I have a 128gb sandisk USB for my macbook pro 2015 13' (the storage capacity for the laptop is 128gb). Can I make the USB like my SSD for my mac (on laptop) so combined it will be 256gb total?

You could try making a DIY fusion drive, but I would expect bad results due to the slowness of the USB drive.

Can I make a DIY Fusion Drive?

Worse - if you ever unplugged your USB drive or jolted it - the OS would likely crash. It would probably be better to just save less used files on the drive and mount it when needed.


Old Mac Pro starts randomly hanging - how do I figure out what's wrong? I have a 2006 era Mac Pro I've been using as a file server.  It's running Lion Server, the latest version, and all software is up to date.  There's very little installed on it beyond the OS.

When I boot it up it runs fine for some random amount of time, then it freezes.  It is headless but I have left screen sharing attached and can confirm that it's not crashing, it just stops responding.

I've got a copy of the system log and there's nothing out of the ordinary in it.  Of course the log is full of errors, as they always are, but nothing is jumping out at me.  The last line before most of the freezes is

Sep 16 19:16:59 mastiff servermgrd[81]: No requests in 300 seconds, shutting down

But from what I can see in Google that's not likely to be causing the problem.

Unfortunately with it being headless I can't watch it boot, so I'm not seeing the boot messages. It's so old I don't have a monitor that will connect to it.

I need suggestions as to how to figure out what's really wrong, so I can determine if it's possible to fix.  Thanks in advance!

Is Lion Server a fresh install, or is it updated from a prior OS? My suspicion is that you're likely suffering from a hardware issue (the only times I've experienced that sort of problem, HW was the culprit), but your first step is to get it running as vanilla as possible and see if you're still having the issue.

Best bet is borrow a monitor, run diagnostics on the boot drive (make sure the drive isn't dying and the culprit), wipe the drive and install the OS fresh. Confirm you don't have any weird third party hardware connected and see if you're still having the issue. RAM is notoriously finicky, so I'd also look into that (although I admit I've never heard of janky RAM causing this sort of problem) - if the RAM has been upgraded at some point, try just running the original RAM that came with the machine when new.

If you can eliminate software being an issue, then at that point you'll know a hardware tech (Genius Bar or otherwise) would need to root out the hardware cause.


Sending Whatsapp message through Automator I have the Whatsapp MacOS app installed. I am trying to experiment sending a whatsapp message using the Automator Workflow.

What I've tried to do: 1. Create a new workflow/application in automator. 2. Started Record 3. Opened the whatsapp application and sent a message(m) to a person(x) 4. Stopped recording

I believe it got saved under the "Watch me Do" workflow. But when I try to run it, I get a "OS Status error operation status -50". I made sure the accessibility permissions are available for the Automator in Security and Privacy settings.

Can you please let me know where I'm going wrong and what I can do to get over this?

First you should check if the Whatsapp is also enabled on Privacy Settings. Plus you can try doing that using a Run Applescript action. Something like this:

on run {input, paremeters}
     tell application "Whatsapp"
          activate
     end tell
     tell application "System Events"
          keystroke "Your message here"
     end tell
end run

Assuming you have the right group/person window already selected.


Will Windows 7 want two license keys if I go Bootcamp + Parallels? I read that Parallels 6+ can use Bootcamp installations of Windows, and I'd like to go this route. But I've read reports that Windows will detect a major hardware change significant enough to ask for a new product key.

Does anyone have experience with this? I'm not asking about legal issues, I'm mostly interested in how Windows will behave. With a single license for Windows, can I install it using Bootcamp, and use that installation with Parallels?

You should be able to use a single license for both Boot Camp and Parallels 6. When I set up my Mac this way, I just had to activate it twice, first booting directly into Windows 7, and again after setting up Parallels to use the Boot Camp partition.

I think I may have actually had to activate it once again the next time I booted directly in to Windows 7, but certainly after a few activations, the activations in both environments finally stuck.


Apps on iPhone Not Updating Properly iPhone 7 Plus with iOS 10.3.1

I had three apps that were experiencing issues with updating.

Symptoms:

• I went into the App Store to see if any apps needed updating. Several were listed. I touched "Update All" and all of the listed apps appeared to update.

• Upon returning to my Home Screen, I noted blue dots next to the apps that had updated. I opened each app and the blue dots went away.

• I returned to the App Store later and found that three of the previously updated apps required updating. I was not sure if this was an additional, more recent update. I touched "Update All" again, and all three apps appeared to update again.

• Once again, I returned to the Home Screen and found blue dots next to the applications noting their updated status.

• Curious as to what was occurring, I immediately returned to the App Store. The same three apps needed updating. By checking the updated dates, I determined these were not new updates. They were the same update I had already installed.

Troubleshooting:

• I uninstalled all three apps. Restarted my iPhone. Then reinstalled the apps. The problem described above persisted despite the apps being reinstalled.

• I went to the App Store and cleared the cache by tapping the bottom navigation bar 10 times. The screen flashed white to indicate the cache clearing. I returned to the Updates tab and determined the problem above persisted.

• I did a two-button hard restart on the phone. On the iPhone 7 Plus, this is done by holding down the power button and the volume-down button until the Apple Logo appears, then release. Upon returning to the App Store, I determined the problem persisted. All three apps were still listed as requiring updates.

• I restored the phone from a backup on my computer. I went through many of the steps listed above, including clearing the App Store cache, after the restore. The problem persisted.

SOLUTION:

I went into Settings > iTunes & App Store and SIGNED OUT of the App Store. I restarted my phone. I went back into Settings and logged back in to iTunes & App Store. Upon checking the App Store for updates, the problem has been resolved.


How can I choose to unrar with the default application? I recently installed unrar for Mac Os X but i found it useless sometimes and bug-full.
So i uninstalled unrar. Now if i open a .rar file, another application (VLC) open it.
But i want the default unrar application to manage .rar files. How can i do that? If i select the "Open with" options and i look for that application in the applications folder i cant find it.

There's no default application to handle .rar file on Mac OS X.

You might want to try The Unarchiver. It can open many format besides rar files.

Then once you installed it, open its preferences and select all the file format you want him to manage.


Can I use Time Capsule to run programs and processes in the background? I want to install homebridge onto my Time Capsule, but I was wondering if that is possible. Can I install things and run them on Time Capsule via a Terminal window on my Mac? It would be super helpful to have homebridge running on my Time Capsule instead of my Mac because sometimes I shut my Mac down and I would like to have homebridge running on a device that is always on.

You can't run any of your own processes on the Time Capsule itself. The closest you can get is to put the files on the Time Capsule, then run the application from a Mac over the network. The Time Capsule doesn't act as a standalone computer.


Problems running Britannica 2013 in OS X 10.8 I recently installed the Encyclopædia Britannica 2013 Ultimate DVD in my Mac running OS X 10.8.2 Mountain Lion. In the box is stated that only 10.6 - 10.7 versions are supported, and indeed I've run into a couple of problems: both the "Timelines" and "A-Z Quick Search" windows display a blank screen.

I contacted technical support and the only answer I received was that OS X 10.8 is not a supported version, and they don't seem to be planning a patch to fix the issue. To the best of my knowledge, I'm on my own. It appears to me that the problem is related to the Java version in use, given that Britannica's application is written in that language. Maybe someone has faced the same problem and can suggest a workaround? for the record: I'm using JDK 1.7.0_13-b20

Personally I don't trust Oracle JDK at all. I use JDK from Apple. Can you try it?


Is there a way to split touch bar to have both function keys and touch bar utilities I love the way I can adjust volume, brightness and locking macOS with the touch bar. However, the fact that the left half of the touch bar is always empty is terrible. There's an Esc key on the left, enormous amount of blank black space and then utility icons like brightness.

Is there a way to put at least F1, F2, F3, F4 on the left half of the touch bar without removing the utility buttons?

BetterTouchTool can do this. You can add your own buttons to the Touch Bar, placing what you wish instead of the app controls area on the bar. To retain the control strip alongside BTT, select the app to customise on the left, then App Specific → Touch Bar Behaviour → ‘Show Better Touch Tool Touch Bar, show system control strip’.

Keep in mind the left half isn't always empty unless you're only using apps which don't provide app controls on the Touch Bar. Using Better Touch Tool for a certain app hides the app controls area.


Wrong icon for Application folder For some reason, my Applications folder is using the Address book icon in the Dock.  How do I change this back to the correct icon.

I am using Mac 10.7.2 (although the problem has been there since 10.6).

The icon is not "wrong" : You just have to select "Folder" in the "Display as" menu, not the "Stack". Do this by right-clicking on the folder and select stack.

"

PS : Just right click on the icon in your dock to make this menu popup.


how to reactive the lost mode on iPhone 5 I upgraded my phone to iPhone 6 and in the process of erasing data etc on my iPhone 5, i somehow put the lost mode in find my phone.  I have since sold my iPhone 5 and now it is still linked to my current apple id.  How do i deactivate the lost mode lock on my old phone?

It's explained in http://support.apple.com/kb/ph2702:
Remove an iOS device you no longer have
If you no longer have the iOS device because you gave it away or sold it, you need to remotely erase it before you can remove it.

Sign in to icloud.com/#find with your Apple ID (the one you use with iCloud).
If you’re using another iCloud app, click the app’s name at the top of the iCloud.com window, then click Find My iPhone.

Click All Devices, then select the device.

Click Erase [device], then enter your Apple ID password. Because the device isn’t lost, don’t enter a phone number or message.
If the device is offline, the remote erase begins the next time it’s online. You’ll receive an email when the device is erased.

When the device is erased, click Remove from Account.
All your content is erased and someone else can now activate the device.


IOS 10 Control Center volume linked to Gas Buddy on iPhone If I uninstall Gas Buddy, it returns to Music. But as soon as I reinstall Gas Buddy...yup, reverts back. Any suggestions?

The sound control in Control Centre gives either the currently playing source of sound or the most recent source of sound. I'm assuming Gas Buddy had some kind of background sound going on. If you start to play music through the Music app, Control Centre should list Music as the app.


WI-Fi Calling Notification keeps coming back This notification keeps appearing on my Mac running Mac OS X 10.13.6 (17G65):

  Wi-Fi Calling
  You can use your phone number to make and receive calls directly on this Mac using Wi-Fi.

I have:

Clicked "Not Now"
Clicked "Turn On"
On my Mac: Turned off all notifications for FaceTime
On my Mac: Logged out of FaceTime
On my iPhone: Went to "Settings" » "Phone" » "Wi-Fi Calling" and turned off "Add Wi-Fi Calling for Other Devices"
On my iPhone: Went to "Settings" » "Phone" » "Wi-Fi Calling" and turned off "Calls on Other Devices"

Still, after all of that, the notification keeps coming back every few minutes.

Any ideas how to kill this thing?

I tried Google but all of the results were about turning this feature on, not off.

The answer appears to have been this:

Turn on the feature on my iPhone.

Wait awhile.

Turn off the feature on my iPhone.

Reboot the Macs that were showing the notifications.

One of those things made it go away.


Is winebottler safe to install? I've been missing Notepad++ since changing from Windows to macOS and there's an article that says if I use WineBottler (that's the only thing I miss), it should run.

  WineBottler packages Windows-based programs like browsers, media-players, games or business applications snugly into Mac app-bundles.

The notepad aspect is inconsequential (in fact I nearly didn't add it in). I'm aware of other editors, I'm expressly asking about WineBottler. I don't want to know about running Parallels, etc.

I simply want to know if WineBottler is malicious or not.

Is this known to be safe?

Run Wine

  Wine is a translation layer for Windows applications. It's a bit like
  a virtual machine but doesn't require the Windows OS. It sits between
  the Windows application and OS X and makes the application think it's
  running on Windows by translating all the Windows calls its making to
  OS X calls.

  There are two choices of know of here. The free WineBottler and
  the paid-for CrossOver Mac from CodeWeavers.

  Some commercial software is delivered for OS X this way -- I know The
  Sims 3 game that my wife likes to play on her MacBook Pro is actually
  the Windows version of the game running under the Wine emulator.

  Pros:

  You don't need to buy a copy of Windows
  Your OS X-based data can be accessed from your Window programs

  Cons:

  Application support under Wine can be hit-and-miss. Some apps work well, some don't. Check at http://appdb.winehq.org/ to see if your
  applications are on the list of tested, supported applications if
  you're going to try WineBottler. CodeWeavers keeps their own list.
  Because the Windows applications think they're running on Windows, and not everything Windows does translates perfectly to OS X, some
  applications can behave erratically.

Source: How can I run Windows applications on a MacBook Pro?

  It basically installs enough windows frameworks i.e. registry, and
  DLLs needed by Windows applications to run. It doesnt install a full
  out version of windows. It is more or less sandboxed, as well as when
  you compile an application, you can further sandbox that application
  in its "own" windows subsystem, making it modular, like most macOS
  applications. It is safe and does not alter your HD filesystem.

Source: Reddit - WINE - is it safe to use?

Notepad++ 7.x in Wine:

  What works

  Installs Launches (slowly) Opening/saving files Searching What does
  not

  Default font is not monospace Some high Unicode codepoints (surrogate
  pairs?) do not display correctly Really slow to launch Workarounds

  What was not tested

  Anything but basic functionality Hardware tested

  Graphics:

  GPU: Intel Driver: open source Additional Comments

  It works out-of-the-box, you just need to change the font to a
  monospace one that you have installed.

Source: WineHQ - Notepad++


iPhone Outlook app still fetches mail when in Low Power Mode, while the default Mail app doesn't I'm trying to compare the default Mail app that comes with iOS and Microsoft's Outlook for iOS.

The use case I'm particularly interested in is when the Low Power Mode is enabled. From what I understand, that feature disables some background activity, such as Background App Refresh and Push (not sure if there's a difference between the two, but anyway), which is supposed to pause the background activity of the apps installed. My concern is whether a non-default app would follow that. This article claims that:

  If I have Airmail or any other third party mail app running, that app will still push and fetch mail like normal. Unless I manually disable those features inside that particular app, I’m not reaping all the benefits of Low Power Mode.

And I can see where does that point come from, because when I enable the Low Power mode, the default Mail app does actually stop fetching e-mail, while Outlook doesn't.

So I searched Outlook's Uservoice iOS section and they do claim they actually addressed that, and all you have to do is just shut down Background App Refresh:

  completed Microsoft Outlook responded:

  You may disable Background App Refresh on your iOS setting.

  iOS Settings >> Outlook >> Toggle Off Background App Refresh

The thing is, Background App Refresh is already turned off and even grayed out because, again, I'm in low power mode. But Outlook still keeps somehow reciving e-mail immediately.

So this doesn't make any sense to me. I know Outlook could have some custom code polling mail servers in a loop directly, but since the emails arrive almost immediately, that'd be like constant polling which would kill the battery even faster. So that must be some kind of push, but again, it's supposed to be off while in Low Power?

There is a chance that support representative doesn't have a clue of what's going on - I had to call Microsoft once, ended up talking to their outsourced people, and that's the impression I got. So if that's the case, that means the issue is not fixed as he claimed, but that still doesn't clarify why Outlook keeps fetching mail while in Low Power.

I've tried to research as much as I can, but if I missed something, please clarify. Thank you.

If you turn off cellular data (open 'Settings' and select 'Cellular' then turn off 'Cellular Data' option which controls all the apps) this will prevent Outlook from fetching mail.  Yes, it will disable all other cellular data to all other apps, but there doesn't seem to be any other way to disable/change Outlook behavior.


Problem to change the country of my Apple Store? I am a French expatriate in Dubai and I would like to be connected to the French Apple Store instead of those of the United Arab Emirates. If I enter one address in France, the system requires a credit card number corresponding to a French bank account and I don't have an account in France anymore. What can I do to solve this problem?

I had this problem as well. I thought of maintaining 2 accounts (one for each country) but that just seemed clunky, so I opted for having just one in my "home" country (USA). Which is what I'm guessing you did too.

This was a couple years ago, but I remember contacting iTunes Support and explaining the situation. They basically said it was OK to go either way, but there's no bending the rules about what country the account is paid from, and you're still liable for all taxes etc. as if you were in the country you choose.

That doesn't answer your question yet, but since I have credit cards in neither country, I've had to get a bit creative. I've ended up funding all my iTunes and App Store purchases with gift cards.

If iTunes/App Store gift cards are available in France, you're pretty much set. Get a friend or relative in France to buy the card and send you the code. Set the iTunes account up using the gift card.

If you don't have anyone in France to buy you cards, I'm sure there are sites where cards are sold by third parties (and the codes delivered digitally).

I don't know of any for France, but I've used one to get my US cards and it worked perfectly. Do expect them to charge a commission on top of the value of the card. They have to stay in business too.

If gift cards aren't available for France then this option won't work for you.

You might be asking yourself how I bought the US gift card if I don't have a CC in the country where I am now. I have a prepaid VISA debit card here. Many sites will accept this as a credit card, so I used that to buy the iTunes gift card.

Yes, a bit complicated, but it occurs to me that, if this type of VISA debit card is available in France, you could just get one of those and use it in lieu of a credit card.

I have no idea if the France iTunes store will accept it though, but the fees for creating a card like that are usually like $10US upfront, nothing recurring (which is what I assume you're trying to avoid by not having a card in France), and they last for 2 years or more. So that might be worth a shot.

Hope you figure something out. Let us know what you end up doing.

PS: I helped a friend with this exact problem a couple months ago, actually walking them through the sign up. I noticed that since he was connecting from a non-US IP, it kept trying to sign up for the local store, even though the gift card was for the US store.

The solution is to use a VPN or proxy that makes it look like you're connecting from the country the card is for. This only happens if you're creating a brand new account with a card, and it only happens the first time.

Once the account was set up it continued working flawlessly WITHOUT the VPN, even when entering newly bought cards. I suspect this is just Apple trying to keep people from doing silly things, the same way you can't paste a password when changing your Apple ID password. It's a shame for those of us using password managers though...


Is there any way to bring back H.264 support in Chromium I'm using Chrome on a daily basis or to be exact, latest-builds of Chromium. I recently uninstalled Flash, in order to increase battery life on my MBP and in general rid my laptop of the evil Flash imply.

Now with Chromium's drop of H.264 codec support, enjoying the web is becoming harder and harder. Is there any way to re-enable H.264 support in Chromium?

I know Microsoft (of all players) released such a codec plugin for Chrome recently. Safari isn't really an option although it's sweet.

While announced in January, Chrome hasn't actually dropped support for H264 yet.


Is there a way to provide a sort order to an mdfind query? In trying to get a list of all music files from a particular album using mdfind I see that the files aren't necessarily returned in any order.  I'd prefer album/track order if possible, but can't find a way to provide the sort order on the command line.  The current invocation is something like:

mdfind -onlyin "$MUSICROOT" -literal "$MDQUERY"

where:

$MUSICROOT is ~/Music/iTunes
$MDQUERY is "kMDItemContentTypeTree == 'public.audio' && kMDItemAlbum == '*$1*'c"

Ideally I'd want to add something like the following to the query:

ORDER BY kMDItemAlbum, kMDItemAudioTrackNumber

I used the following shell function to provide the sort:

function sort_file()
{
    TMPFILE=`mktemp /tmp/sortable.XXXXXX` || exit 1
    export MDLS="mdls -raw -name kMDItemAlbum -name kMDItemAudioTrackNumber"
    export TR="tr \"\0\" \"\;\""
    awk '{system( "$MDLS \"" $0 "\" | $TR" ); print "\;"$0; }' $1 > $TMPFILE
    sort -t\; -k 2n -k 1f $TMPFILE | awk -F";" '{ print $3; }' > $1
}

META NOTE: I would have put this in a comment in the above answer, but couldn't get it to format correctly.


Mobile Safari opens tab with window.scrollY set to large negative number, only Smart Banner visible I'm trying to figure out a very vexing bug (which might well be a mobile Safari issue) where opening a URL from an app is causing the page to load with a large negative scroll value and only the Smart Banner appearing.

In the example below, window.scrollY = -324. This is on iOS 8.1.2, both iPad and iPhones.

The page does not have any scrolling-related javascript executed on page load. Everything appears as expected in the DOM, but when Smart Banner is enabled, this scroll issue happens somewhat sporadically. (It appears to happen most consistently

The issue resolves itself after any touch or rotate event, suggesting the browser knows that window.scrollY should be 0.

Has anyone dealt with a similar issue?

This appears to be a bug in mobile Safari. I was able to replicate this bug using a demo iOS app. Full details are here: https://github.com/than/Mobile-Safari-Smart-Banner-Viewport-Bug

Video of the bug in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEILZ9uyH4g


Why is my Macbook Pro going to sleep while using it? 2012 Macbook Pro 15" Non Retina
Randomly goes to sleep while I'm using it. Sometimes it resets altogether.
Its not a magnet, or Hot Corners
It takes 30-60 seconds to wake up.
The indicator light on the front lip stays solid for a long period and then fades on and off before I can wake it back up.

First thing to do is examine your power manager logs:
pmset -g log | grep "Entering Sleep"

When you find the timestamp(s) correlating to the unexpected sleep, please update your question with the full text of the relevant time range from pmset -g log.


Download Mojave on a non-Mojave suitable computer I want to do a fresh install (and SSD upgrade) of Mojave on a mac-mini that currently runs Mojave, but whose performance is so horrendous that it is barely usable1.  Easy .. just download Mojave and create a bootable installer and I'm off to the races.

However, the system that I want to use to create the bootable installer is not capable of running Mojave (see my previous question), and when I go to download the installer from the App store, Apple stops me with a message saying:

  We could not complete your purchase.

  This version of macOS 10.14.3 cannot be installed on this computer.

Is there any way to get around this limitation?  I am not attempting to install Mojave, just download it to a working system.

Edit

Note that I the suggested dupe is not a dupe of my problem.  The nominal answer suggests using the direct links on the App store to download the installers.  But as I mentioned above, that is what I have already tried to do (and have failed with the above noted message).

I am also trying to do the opposite of that question.  I am trying to download a newer version of macOS onto to a older computer.

And I've gone through all the standard checks and can't see anything that would cause the situation.  But there seems to be lots of people suffering unexplainable slowdowns.  This fresh install and new SSD is meant as a hail Mary.  And at $70 for a 500GB Mushkin SSD it is a no-brainer anyway.

Tetsujin is correct in that using your recovery partition to do a clean install on your Mojave-supported Mac Mini is ideal.  You can then download Mojave from the App Store as usual.

If that is not a viable solution for you:

After reading through the extent of the information given to you in your previous question, would recommend you use dosdude1's Mojave Beta installer tool.  Create your USB installer, install on the Mac Mini's new SSD, and then immediately upgrade to the full version of Mojave

Alternatively, if you're feeling brave, you can follow the instructions here to obtain a copy of the Mojave or High Sierra installers via the download links.

It will take a little bit of work, but you can get it done!


How can I determine plist changes while changing System Preferences to automate them next time? I am trying to automate the process of setting up a new laptop as much as possible. There are certain changes I always end up making manually on a new Mac, such as enabling screen zooming with the Ctrl modifier and setting up keyboard shortcuts to map ⌘⌥← to "Select Previous Tab" in all applications. I’m sure there is a preferences.write equivalent to do this, but gosh darn it, I have no idea how to determine what it is. Can I somehow monitor or "diff" my preferences after making the change manually, perhaps?

Apple stores most relevant preferences in a database now, so your best bet is to ignore plist files on the filesystem and focus on the output of defaults read com.apple.whatever for the things you change. Unfortunately, there isn't a good Rosetta Stone that says if you are in preference X - look for changes in these seven preference domains. Where Apple stores iCloud or security information doesn't map to each visual icon in system preferences so you'll need to issue more than one defaults read to capture the entire state of most preference panes since most panes write to more than one setting domain.

Alternatively, you could just use MDM and configuration profiles and scripts to make all changes so that you just push the changes to all machines from your management tool and skip the whole reverse engineering process entirely.

https://support.apple.com/profile-manager
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Miscellaneous/Reference/MobileDeviceManagementProtocolRef/3-MDM_Protocol/MDM_Protocol.html
https://www.jamf.com
https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/15362/learn-mcx-and-configuration-profile

In the past MCX was the path to managing enterprise configurations and that's the equivalent of your wanting to look at the .plist files that stored those settings initially at the dawn of OS X - but the current system of configuration profiles, scripted changes and MDM hooks has left MCX and .plist to just the dusty corners that haven't been updated for the new central database to store user and system defaults.


Terminal.app: changing shell behavior problem? I'm having problems setting Terminal.app's default shell.  It appears to work using a command line utility which sets the shell for the account, however not in Terminal.app's dialog which is for each session.  I find that if I set the shell system with with 'chsh', the $SHELL variable in Terminal.app correctly reflects the shell.  If I change the shell in Terminal.app only, $SHELL does not correctly reflect the shell, however the shell appears to be the correct shell running.  I tried this on a temp account to rule out other interactions and it has the same behavior.

Here is a use case:
When I run in Terminal.app:

$ chsh -s /bin/ksh

and invoke Terminal.app, the shell is correctly changed:

$ echo $SHELL
/bin/ksh

The problem is if try similar through Terminal.app->Preferences->General->Shells open with->Command->/bin/ksh

$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash

Yet when I try command completions with TAB, it reflects ksh behavior.

Therefore, my suspicion is there is something overriding the SHELL environment variable where it is always SHELL=/bin/bash, despite the shell being different than that.

Does anyone know if Apple has a bug here?

The following information is taken from

SHELL environment variable still points to zsh after using bash and
What sets the $SHELL environment variable?

on Unix & Linux, which applies to macOS as well.

You are running the Korn shell if the Terminal preference is set to /bin/ksh. The output

$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash

is misleading because the SHELL variable is set by the login process to

  The user's shell, as specified by the password database.

(On macOS it is a user database and not the /etc/passwd file as on Linux, where that information is stored, but that does not matter.)

You can type

$ echo $0
-ksh

or

$ echo $KSH_VERSION
Version AJM 93u+ 2012-08-01

to verify that you are running the Korn shell.

Setting the shell via

$ chsh -s /bin/ksh

sets the login shell in the user database, and then SHELL is set accordingly:

$ echo $SHELL
/bin/ksh


Transfer folder from MacBook to iPad I want to transfer folder that contains many video files from MacBook to iPad. I don't want to use iCloud. I use AirDrop. Is there any 3rd party App, or how can I easily transfer and see the files in the folder in iPad?

You can use some File Manager app. You can AirDrop the entire folder to the Mac, or vice-versa.


Streaming MacBook to TV I have a MacBook and recently tried connecting it to my TV with a HDMI cord. I bought the adapter so I am all set there.

My issue was when I plugged it into the TV it only showed my background. I Googled and saw someone suggest dragging the screen all the way to the left which I did and it worked but it took the screen off my computer so it wasn't visible there any longer.

My other issue was the TV picture kept freezing. The sound was good but the picture was not. Any suggestions? Trying not to buy Apple TV at this point but will if I have to.

Open System Preferences, click Displays, click arrangement, click mirror checkbox in bottom left corner of window.


Apple notarization and 10.14.5 We distribute an app for Mac OS outside of the Mac App store.  We have an apple account that we have used to generated signing certificates.  We heard about the new notarization requirements.  We have tested on 10.14.5 and we see no difference.

Where does Apple document this so we can understand if or how our account is grandfathered for builds in the field?

Apple documents the requirements here:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizing_your_app_before_distribution

The section that governs is yellow and hilighted:

  Important

  Beginning in macOS 10.14.5, all new or updated kernel extensions and all software from developers new to distributing with Developer ID must be notarized in order to run. Beginning in macOS 10.15, notarization is required by default for all software.

So, your whole account isn’t new so unless you make a new developer account, you are not required to notarize anything that’s current or in the field as long you don’t have a kernel extension.

Those are mandatory today for all updates and new builds. Your tests are what I expect and you surely can notarize everything now so you are set for 10.15

The developer I read closely for all the underpinnings and reverse engineering of this process is Howard Oakley and his Eclectic Light blog - it’s amazingly well written, clear and technically deep about how gatekeeper works in practice and what things Apple has and has not documented yet.

https://eclecticlight.co/tag/notarization/


iMac 2011 27" Thunderbolt 2 adapter to connect Thunderbolt 3 hub I have an iMac 27-Inch "Core i5" 2.7 (Mid-2011) and I want to connect a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) hub via the Thunderbolt 1/2 port.
In all my searching I could only find a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter. The only issue is that I need the opposite, as most of the hubs I have found seem to have a Thunderbolt 3 connector.
So I am looking for a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) adapter that will let me plug the Thunderbolt 2 port into my iMac and connect the Thunderbolt 3 port to a hub like this.

The Apple part is bi-directional, but since the hub you want to work is USB and not Thunderbolt, I would use a much less expensive USB A to USB C adapter to test. You will likely not get the power or signaling to make USB-C 3.0 to work without a proper thunderbolt dock. The adapter you have will let a TB 3 dock work as will the less expensive (perhaps used) Thunderbolt 2 docks like Belkin, Elgato or OWC.

https://www.macworld.com/article/2920233/thunderbolt-2-docks-roundup-connecting-multiple-devices-to-your-mac-laptop-has-never-been-easier.html

The best way to get USB 3.0 from a TB 2 mac is this part, but it’s not got as many output options as the inexpensive USB-C devices or the proper docks above, but it splits the difference between your hub and the full dock price.

https://www.kanex.com/thunderbolt3-esata


Why is my applescript for checking if a file exists failing? I have an applescript application that inputs a username and starts a download based on that username. In the app I use the code below to check if a file exists already and then rename the file if it does.

tell application "Finder"
if exists "~/Downloads/Conversion/" & cbUsername & ".flv" as POSIX file then
    set x to 1
    repeat
        set newCbFilename to cbUsername & "_" & x as string
        if exists "~/Downloads/Conversion/" & newCbFilename & ".flv" as POSIX file then
            set x to x + 1
        else
            exit repeat
        end if
    end repeat
    copy newCbFilename to finalCbFilename
    display dialog "Filename already exists " & "File will be named: " & finalCbFilename & ".flv" buttons "OK" default button "OK" with title "Error" with icon caution
else
    copy cbUsername to finalCbFilename
end if
end tell

All of a sudden yesterday it stopped working correctly. I had added the following code to ensure that the folder I was saving to existed.

tell application "System Events"
if not (exists folder "~/Downloads/Conversion") then
    do shell script "mkdir ~/Downloads/Conversion"
end if

Even when I comment out that code now it still doesn't work. What did I do wrong?
    end tell

It looks like the Finder needs the absolute path to the home folder instead of the relative path. Instead of starting the path with ~/, it needs to start with /Users/username/.

Instead of hardcoding the username into the script, you can have AppleScript build the absolute path on the fly:

set homePath to POSIX path of (path to home folder)

Then you can replace "~/ with homePath & "

For example:

if exists "~/Downloads/Conversion/" & cbUsername & ".flv" as POSIX file then

would become

if exists homePath & "Downloads/Conversion/" & cbUsername & ".flv" as POSIX file then

Alternatively, if you only use ~ with the path ~/Downloads/Conversion/, you could instead change that whole path to a variable:

set cbPath to POSIX path of (path to home folder) & "Downloads/Conversion/"

Then the final script would be:

set cbPath to POSIX path of (path to home folder) & "Downloads/Conversion/"

tell application "Finder"
    if exists cbPath & cbUsername & ".flv" as POSIX file then
        set x to 1
        repeat
            set newCbFilename to cbUsername & "_" & x as string
            if exists cbPath & newCbFilename & ".flv" as POSIX file then
                set x to x + 1
            else
                exit repeat
            end if
        end repeat
        copy newCbFilename to finalCbFilename
        display dialog "Filename already exists " & "File will be named: " & finalCbFilename & ".flv" buttons "OK" default button "OK" with title "Error" with icon caution
    else
        copy cbUsername to finalCbFilename
    end if
end tell


How can I neglect a update in App Store? How can I neglect a update in App Store since it's annoying?

Right-click on the update and choose Hide Update.

You have to right-click on the white background, not on the text, for the option to appear.

To unhide updates, choose Store → Show All Software Updates (only visible if you have a hidden update).


What is the best way to charge I'm currently using Late 2008 MacBook (Aluminum). My battery cycle is currently 111 and has went for replacement of battery 6 months ago + warrenty is ending soon. Hence I want to let the battery last as long as possible.

The common question are whether to charge my MacBook when using. But can I charge it for few more hours after it is fully charged? And also charge whenever I found a power source? So that the battery cycle will not increase tremulously.

What are the proper steps to charge MacBook batteries for long lasting life?

The battery cycle is exactly what it says, a cycle. This means that it will count charge and discharge cycles as a whole.

An couple of apple genius guys I talk to recommend at least 2 charge cycles per month, and trying not to leave it plugged in at all times will keep it relatively healthy.

You don't need to completely drain a battery before you charge it either, but the more complete the cycles are, the better accuracy will be on the battery meter.

It's a hotly debated subject, but apple do have information on their website.

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html


Thunderbolt bridged with ethernet gives poor performance I have both iMac and MBP, so I thought it might be a good idea to connect MBP to office network through iMac with thunderbolt bridge. The setup is quite simple:

office server <- 1GbE -> cisco switch <- 1GbE -> iMac <- Thunderbolt -> MBP

where iMac has a bridge0 interface with en0 (1GbE) and en3 (Thunderbolt) interfaces attached.

iperf shows following performance:

iMac -> office server: ~ 940 Mbps (as expected)
office server -> iMac: ~ 940 Mbps (as expected)
MBP -> iMac: ~ 5.7 Gbps (wow!)
iMac -> MBP: ~ 5.7 Gbps (wow!)
office server -> MBP: ~930 Mbps (quite a boost to WiFi's ~160 Mbps)
MBP -> office server: 70 Kbps (WTF??)

MTU doesn't seem to be a problem as I can perfectly ping office server from MBP with MTU size packets (1500). However, I'm pretty much sure that the issue must be somewhere in the configuration of iMac bridge. I would much appreciate any idea or clue where should I look.

The best way to diagnose a network issue is to look at the packets.

sudo tcpdump -i en0

You can compare the types of errors and retransmits and high level aspects of the good transfers with the slow transfers. Since the logs are very  might need to save them to a capture file (see the manual page for tcpdump) and use a tool or script to summarize the data.


schedule to wake up and power-on I set the computer to wake up at 4:45 AM,
I have a script scheduled to run at 4:50 AM to play wake up music.

However, this morning, it didn't work as I intended.

It seems that the machine wake it up at 4:45 AM, but get himself asleep again after the power-on password is requried.

How could I ensure the machine to wake up and input password to power-on itself.

I need the password when I leave home and stay at office.

I would make a second user that just has the music for your playlist and is not an administrator.  You can then save that password so when you power on, that user auto logs in.

Unless you can relinquish the password requirement, this is going to be harder than you want. You need to be sure you power off or always have this second user active when it sleep.

You will have a lot better luck with iOS for this sort of alarm situation and even a several year old iPod / iPad / iPhone would do very well for this if you don’t want to compromise on macOS as an alarm clock / timed music player.


External DVD reader suddenly not working anymore I have a Iomega SuperSlim USB 2.0 8x DVD Writer External Optical Drive that I used without any issue on my Macbook Air.

Now all of a sudden it doesn't work anymore. The DVD spins, a "Audio CD" item pops up on the Finder sidebar and vanishes a few seconds after. Over and over again.

iTunes manages to get the track info after some attempts, so the DVD is readable.

I've tried to plug the same disc and DVD reader on a Windows machine, it worked seamlessly. So I guess this has something to do with the mac, maybe a recent software update?

Is there anything to do to troubleshoot such issues? It's the first time I have a hardware/driver issue (or similar) on my mac.

HW: MacBook Air 13-inch, early 2014 w/ 8GB or RAM and a Core i7
SW: OS X Yosemite 10.10.3

That it works fine on a Windows PC but not your Mac is puzzling.

Think back to when you know it worked properly. What software have you updated since then? That could be the cause. For example if you went from OSX 10.10.3 to 10.10.4 and that is the only change there may have been a problem with the update.

In that case you may want to try re-applying the latest Combo Updater for your current OS version. If it was an app of some sort you may have to contact the manufacturer to see if they have had similar issues from other customers.


NAT64 enabled on OSX, iPhone still gets an IPv4 IP Address I've enabled the "Create NAT64 Network" option in network "Sharing". I connect my iPhone and it seems to work (tested in Safari). However, when I look at the Wi-Fi information for the connection my IP address is an IPv4 one (or at least has that format)

IP Address: 169.254.34.19
Mask: 255.255.0.0
DNS: 2001:2:0:aab1::1

The DNS has a v6 address, but I was expecting the device itself to also get such an address.

How can I be certain I have a IPv6 only connection, and possible how can I get such an address?  I'm trying to test connectivity of an App to be distributed in the App Store.

Addresses starting with 169.254 are called APIPA or link-local addresses. It's what your interface automatically gets when the DHCP client is enabled but no DHCP server can be found. They are not usable to connect to the internet.

Don't worry, it seems that your test environment is IPv6-only.


Can't download facetime from cloud on my iPhone My facetime was uploaded to the cloud, but when I tap on the facetime icon, it says download not available at this time. I've tried many different times, on different days, but I always get the same result.

What happened?

If you are having trouble downloading it from the App Store try resigning in to your Apple ID and trying to download it again.

If you can’t make calls:

Go to Settings
Go to FaceTime
Turn the switch on:


File sharing between OSX Lion (10.7) and OSX Tiger (10.4) I recently purchased an iMac with OSX Lion already installed. My parents have an iMac running 10.4 Tiger. I have been trying to file share between the two but when I try to open the dropbox (from Tiger) it says I do not have permission, yet I cannot find anywhere on Tiger to grant the permission.

I'm sure there is something simple and easy I am missing but I can't find it?

You can't open the Drop Box - just like a physical drop box. You can put files in it, but you can't open it or see what's there.

If you want to browse files on the Tiger machines, click "Connect as" and type in the username and password of an account on the Tiger machine.


ePub book not showing up in iBook bookshelf on first generation iPad I purchased an expensive technical monograph (> $100 (US)) from the iTunes store for use on my 1st generation iPad. It downloaded correctly and I used it for several months with no problem.  A little over a year and a couple of iOS upgrades later, I tried to refer to the book and found it was not visible on my iBooks bookshelves, and not found in search either.

The book does show up in the iTunes folder on my Mac desktop machine, and it shows up in the list of books in the iPad management tab in iTunes on my desktop machine. I have iTunes configured to synchronize selected books, and the book is checked. I'm not having this problem with any other books on the iPad.

I've noticed that the book is no longer available from the iTunes store, so I wonder if the problem is a digital rights management issue, and the iPad can no longer verify that I have a right to view the book. The iTunes store customer support service is unfortunately useless, as I can't get them to actually read my email before they respond with "No refunds" or "Restore from backup".

Any suggestions for fixing or troubleshooting this?

Following @bmike's suggestion in a comment I tried copying the book from iTunes on my Mac onto my iPhone. That worked. Having established that the copy of the book on my Mac worked, I unchecked the book in the book synchronization tab for my iPad in iTunes, synched, so that the book was removed from the iPad, then rechecked the box and synchronized again. The book then showed up in iBooks and I was able to access it.


Adding social media icons to email signature apple mail with url or SVG, not by attachment link to LinkedIn banner

I want to add a LinkedIn badge in my email signature.

However, even if I drag-drop from the browser, It is inserted as an attachment, which is personally super annoying.

Is there a way to insert it to be loaded directly from the source from the web? So, as if  tag in website.

I tried to copy+paste it from web format. It worked for email content but didn't work for signature.

Since it was possible for content, it doesn't seem impossible for mail but can't find how to do it.

+) if it can be done with SVG, it will be even better.

So, to my knowledge SVG isn't possible in HTML email. As I understand it you have to create a placeholder signature and then find the .mailsignature file in your system. This will be in the iCloud folder on more recent systems and in the Library folder on older systems. From there you should be able to replace the <body></body> tags in the signature file leave the header as is. The process is a little more complex, as you'll have to make sure your signatures aren't using the default font and that you configure your text editor to open as unformatted HTML. There's nuances to the process, but there should be no reason you couldn't use an URL for an image. They will get treated as attachments unfortunately regardless of how you add it I believe, and you can't really do much about how the signature looks past the first time it is delivered. Good luck and I hope this helps.


Cannot Create a User Account on Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard I am having trouble with iMac running OS X 10.5.8. I used to be all the time in the administrator account (mine) but I forgot my password so I did the reboot thing. Now it sends me to the Create Account (Apple video intro, select a language, and everything) and when I'm done creating the account it sends me again to the start. What can I do?

You will need an original OS X install disc for a computer that old if you can't get it to start up and get to the desktop.

Reinstall the original OS by following a guide such as this. Re-initialize the disc and create a new administrator account.

Then you could use "Software Update" that is built-in to the OS, to update to a newer version of the OS if you like.

Good Luck!


How to remove, but not delete, podcast episodes? I want to remove podcast episodes on my iPad to free some space. But I don't want to lose them nor do I want to remove them from the saved episodes. I want to "re-cloud" them basically.
Is here any way to do this without factory resetting the iPad regularly?

Podcasts are not stored on iTunes Match. So basically you can remove them from your iPad by deleting them in your podcast app and re-download them as long as the producer of the podcast keeps this episode online.


Can Mavericks behave like Lion on multiple screens? I've switched to Mavericks and like the new features so far. But one thing bothers me - the new multi-screen behavior.

New in Mavericks

Multiple status bars
separated fullscreen modes

I don't like (need) a status bar on each screen simply because it reduces space and I have to click on the status bar to activate it, and I never use the fullscreen mode.

I have my browser opened on my small screen (MacBook) and all other applications on the big one.
When I click a link in Mail, Chrome always opens a new window instead of a new tab (the main reason I don't like it).

Sorry for all the extra stuff, here is my question:

Can Mavericks behave like Lion on multiple screens?

Is there anything like a third-party plugin or a hidden setting via the terminal?

For your second menubar problem, you can unset the last checkbox in Mission Control preferences panel.

To do this: System Preferences > Mission Control. Uncheck the fifth checkbox "Display have separate spaces"


Can I make iTunes stop asking to access my phone? I plug my phone (iPhone 5s, though I doubt it matters) into my laptop at work in order to charge it. Every time I do, if iTunes is open (it usually is, because music), it pops up a dialog to ask if I want to allow iTunes to access information on the phone.

I don't, and I'm getting tired of clicking through the dialog every time. Is there a way to get it to stop asking, either for this specific device, or in general?

Get a "charge only" or "data block" lightning cable.

One example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01F7AU62E/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_FZmiAbB2FJDDE

These cables only let power thru, data is blocked or not connected.


Purchase movies from US store using itunes giftcard I would like to know whether I can buy movies from the iTunes store using just a US iTunes account and an iTunes gift card (purchased in the US), in a different country.

Yes you can buy anything. Your appleid must have a US address. I use an Apple store address ;-)


How can airplane mode interfere with WiFi? I am in a hostel for the second night.  WiFi worked great yesterday.  Today, it asks for the password instead of remembering, but doesn't accept it.  Keeps asking.  I have airplane mode on to prevent cell usage but WiFi and Bluetooth on.

So I turned off airplane mode and the WiFi immediately connected without asking for password.  (However, it later disappeared.)

Airplane mode turns WiFi off

From the Apple Support article

  When Airplane Mode is on, you'll see [an airplane icon] in the status bar of your screen or on your watch face. In Airplane Mode, these wireless features are turned off: Cellular (voice and data) Wi-Fi Bluetooth


Updating multiple machines to Yosemite We have about 10 Mac Minis in the office. All are running Mavericks. I want to update them all to Yosemite but each downloading the 5GB update seems a bit inefficient.

Is there any way to download Yosemite once and somehow get this onto each of the minis?

On one machine download Yosemite from the AppStore.  When the Yosemite installer pops up you can quit that.  Go to Applications-->Install OS X Yosemite.app and copy the installer app. Then copy the installer to the other minis using your preferred local distribution method (ex. flash drive, ARD, cmd line).


How to disable auto preview for *.doc *.docx in finder? In finder, when I set the view mode as columns(cmd+3), finder will auto preview the file.But when I select doc/docx file the finder will be very slow even I cann't do anything for a while.How can I disable auto preview for doc/docx? Thx

Open Finder, press ⌘+G and enter /System/Library/QuickLook/ to go to the QuickLook plugins folder. Click on Office.qlgenerator, press ⌘+I and rename the file to Office.qlgenerator.backup. Now, press ⌘+⌥+esc and relaunch Finder. If ever you want to turn the plugin back on, simply remove the .backup from the file name.

Essentially, plugins tell QuickLook how to render a preview of a given file type. Without the Office plugin, QuickLook will by default show only the icon and information about the file (i.e. size, date created, etc.)

Note I'm pretty sure this removes QuickLook's capabilities of previewing OpenOffice files as well.


OS X Security Update hangs during restart I am trying to install Security Update 2019-002 for OS X Sierra (10.12.6). Everything seems to work until I do the required restart. That starts out okay, but eventually, it says "5 minutes remaining" and just hangs there for hours, at which point I force restart, and the computer works fine (but the update has not been applied).

I've retried this a few times, but it always gets stuck in this same spot. I have tried installing the update both with the app store and with the DMG download available from the Apple support website. There are no error messages present.

Is there any way to diagnose and or fix this (short of a clean install)?

Booting into Safe Boot and then installing the .dmg image of the update worked for me. If I tried to install it via the App Store my computer would get stuck even before displaying an estimated time remaining.


Is there a USB brick / portable battery that will work with the MacBook (2015+, USB-C) and regular USB? ?I have the early 2015 MacBook with USB-C charger. I want to have one brick for that AND my iPhone. I also bought a USB-A to USB-C cable, but I can't find a USB-A brick with enough power to charge my laptop. Is there a brick (or preferably portable battery) that will allow this

If your goal is to have one charging brick, then buy Apple’s USB-C to lightning cable. The you can use your MacBook’s charging adapter to charge either the MacBook or the iPhone.


Who are the clients of my shared iTunes library? Is it possible to see who is currently connected and listening to a shared iTunes library? Is it possible to see which songs they listen to and how many/often?

It's not really important; I'm just curious about it. Would be nice to know which colleagues love my music…

From
Macworld:

  Keeping tabs on who’s listening

  The Sharing pane in iTunes’ preferences will tell you how many users are connected to your shared library. But what it won’t tell you is what they’re actually listening to. To find out, open Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities), highlight the iTunes entry, and then click on the Inspect button in the toolbar. Now click on the Open Files And Ports tab and then scroll to the bottom of the list in the window below. If you’re listening to something in iTunes, your current song will show up first, but anything someone connected to you is viewing or listening to will show up like this:

 192.168.1.3:daap->192.168.1.8:56089
/Volumes/Backup/iTunes Music/Brian Eno/Another Day On Earth/01 This.m4a

  In this example, the person is connected from IP address 192.168.1.8 and is listening to Brian Eno’s “This.”


Can iOS apps upload camera roll pictures automatically So today I opened Facebook iOS application and I click photo tools option in your photos menu. I was shocked to find out that Facebook application had loaded my private camera roll picture there ready for posting and it was just missing post content with ready to share. So am wondering is that flaw in iOS or what I mean like that every app can secretly read your camera roll picture and will be uploading to their servers right. After that I went to settings of my iPhone there in privacy section I looked for Facebook and photos where permission was read and write , so just wondering tomorrow some another app will ask for profile picture upload and it will ask for permission you give it and forget to disable permission again that mean this app have got access to your camera roll by tricking you by asking to upload profile picture knowing that a lot of lazy pictures will not revoke this permission from settings manually.

I think Apple should limit this and should never ever give full time read write permission to apps. Apps should be allowed to read picture which use select in camera roll and app permission should be revoked automatically every time use finish up selecting picture from its camera roll , because this is privacy issue that these Facebook and instagram like applications ready pictures from your camera roll and displaying in front of you without your permission one mistaken click would share them to internet and also no body knows that they are not uploading it to their servers. I mean their are tons of apps on App Store apple can’t check their apps code that what it’s doing in background.

In the iOS settings app - privacy - disable photo permissions for the apps you don’t trust.

Then add those apps as receivers when you use the photos app to push only selected photos.

Or delete the apps from your iOS devices and only use web versions or eschew them entirely.


Can I get Mission Control to show minimized windows? Exposé in Snow Leopard showed minimized windows — if any — in a dedicated area at the bottom. This was extremely helpful and efficient, especially combined with the "Minimize windows in application icon" setting of the Dock.

Mission Control is apparently done with this behavior, so monitoring and fetching minimized windows is now a pain.

Is there a way to show minimized windows anywhere in Mission Control?

If you exposé (three finger swipe down or whatever shortcut you've set up) you can then switch through all of the applications by pressing tab.

Pressing tab on its own will go through each application showing all windows (minimised or not), pressing cmd and tab will show you the swap icon bar (in middle of screen) at the same time as going through the applications.  The arrow keys followed by enter will help you select what window you want.

It's certainly not as elegant as SL used to be, but it's the only thing I've found that kinda/sorta/maybe comes close.


How can I use an iPhone to "tag" a location using GPS so I can bookmark a location? I need to tag a "location" of interest such as

An nest or hive out in nature where no cellular service is available
Location of a good view on a mountain (where no cell service is visible)
Location of a restaurant, bar, other spot that is hard to find.

And I'd like to get relative directions to where that target is (north 500 feet) without having to deal with apple maps, or better still, the ability to plant virtual waymarkers that guide me along the best path using GPS.

Does such a technology exist?

I use the Maps app to drop a pin and then either save it later once I get data access or save it to a new contact and then work on it from the Contacts app at a later date.

This avoids needing a dedicated GPS app to save waypoints, but there are hundreds of those as well should you want to go shopping on the iTunes store for a more GPS like experience.

You can also get many apps to do this - here are the ones I like and use:

Pro Compass - most basic - compass and coordinates - no log file functionality.
Spyglass - basic Augmented Reality (shows camera and an overlay of GPS and other data). No log file functionality, so you would save snapshots of the screen to the camera roll.
Theodolite - Has log file functionality and all of the above. Can snap the screen easily, add annotations to the locations it logs, etc... A veritable swiss army knife.

None of the above apps need data connection - just your iPhone with enough battery charge to run.


What baud rate should I set for bluetooth TTY to Xbox controllers? I'm trying to do screen tty.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port 9600 on my mac, but I'm not sure about my baud rate. How can I determine this? It's just giving me a "Cannot open line" error.

I'm trying to view output from an Xbox controller.

What baud rate should I set when using screen tty for Bluetooth?

Baud rate isn't dependent on how you connect to a serial console whether it be via bluetooth or hardwire.  It has to do with how fast the host (in this case the XBox controller) is sending bits through the UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Trasmitter)

What matters here is that you match the two UART settings with the XBox controller.  Those settings are:

Baud (bit rate)
Serial Port Parameters

Data bits
Parity bits
Stop bits

Baud is the speed at which you're going to transfer data.  Common values are 9,600, 28.8K, 56K, or 115.2K (or more commonly as known 115,200).  Your XBox console will likely be either 9600 or 115200.

The Serial Port Parameters (or "Configuration") defines how each block of data is to be send/received.  This must match or you will get garbled info.  Common values are:

8-N-1 or "eight-none-and-one" for 8 data bits, no parity bits, and 1 stop bit
7-E-1 or "seven-even-and-one" for 7 data bits, an even number of logical ones, and 1 stop bit

TL;DR

To launch screen and set your communication parameters, use the following syntax:

$ screen <device> [speed],[config]

(You can get the device name by listing the contents of /dev/cu.* after you plug in the Bluetooth serial adapter)

So, in your case, assuming 9600 baud and 8N1 configuration, use the command:

$ screen /dev/cu.usbserialdevice 9600,cs8


I dropped my iphone and now it smells weird My iphone 5 fell around 40ft down a stairwell, the screen got smashed and the touchscreen hardware appears to have partially popped out. The phone still works, but it has a very strong smell. Should I be concerned?

Yes - moderate concern is warranted. Even from a fall from 3 feet / 1 meter, the lithium battery could get damaged and overheat and cause plastic to melt. A wire or board could short circuit as well. Worst case, you have a fire that ignites and releases not safe for human smoke and chemicals in addition to the idea you have a fire where you don't want one.

Your drop was so far, it’s amazing anything works so please get it checked out or take immediate steps to prevent a fire.

If you can power it off and disconnect from any charger, that would let you know if it cools off and stops making odors. I would probably keep it in a safe place if you can't watch it or get it to someone that knows electronics / repairs iPhones.

It could be coincidence and nothing, but I'd rather not risk it not being able to see pictures or know what may have moved / broken inside.


Vertically accessible 3-finger multi touch windows MBP 15" user - 95% trackpad - LOVE the 3-finger swipe navigation.
I assume Apple limits the potential of an app like this, but maybe not.
Is it possible to add vertical functionality to the 3-finger swipe?
To clarify: Saying "Swipe left/right/up/down" implies the end result of the movement, not the actual direction of my fingers. Swiping right means go to the window right of my current window. Swiping down displays all your windows/desktop background. Swiping up does nothing.
Really all I want, is to be able to swipe up to Spotify from any window or have a second set of windows on a level above the current, 1-dimensional horizontal window set.
Made a simple mockup as to what I am describing. Is there already an app like this? Would download in a heartbeat!

Currently you have 6 spaces: 2 desktops and 4 full-screen apps.
You could simulate "vertical spaces" with desktops (you'd end up with 4 desktops and 2 full-screen apps).
So instead of full-screening chrome, just make a new Desktop to house it. Open Chrome on the new Desktop and resize its window to fill the entire available space. Then open outlook on top of it and make outlook's window size the full size of the desktop as well.
Then using three finger swipe up, you can exposé both windows and click the one you want.


What happens if I plug both sides of one USB-C cable from one MBP port to another of its ports? I've got a MacBook Pro 13" 2017 - two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports. It came with a standard USB-C cable to support power supply. If I plug this cable into both USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports the Mac seems to think it's connected to a power supply. IMHO it's dangerous for battery in laptop, but I have to ask: is it any risk?

What can happen to my MBP if I plug this one cable between both of its USB-C ports?

There isn't any risk in doing this, but it'd be a self-defeating practice. Basically, what happens to your MBP will depend on which of the following scenarios is true:

If the MBP is not also plugged into AC power - In this scenario, it's not a good idea as the MBP will slowly lose power faster than it would if the cable wasn't plugged into both ports.
If the MBP is plugged into AC power - In this scenario, the MBP will automatically except the charge from the AC outlet source, rather than any other source. In other words, plugging a USB-C cable between two of its ports will have no effect.

Also, according to Apple:

  Your MacBook Pro draws power from only one power supply, even if more    than one is attached—so using multiple power supplies won't
  speed up    charging.
  If you connect multiple power supplies to your MacBook Pro, the one    that provides the most power will be used, regardless of the order in
  which you connected them.

Source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207256

Finally, the MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2016 and 2017 models) and MacBook (13-inch, Late 2016 and 2017, Four Thunderbolt 3 Port models) can power two devices that use up to 15 watts, and two more devices that use up to 7.5 watts. It doesn't matter which side of your MacBook Pro that they're connected to—power is delivered on a first-come, first-served basis.

In the case of your MBP, it can power one device that uses up to 15 watts and one device that uses up to 7.5 watts. However, this will have no impact when connecting the MBP to itself, beyond what I stated at the beginning of my answer.


The movies on my iPhone don't show a preview icon They used to show a preview, but don't show anymore on my iPhone or iPad (synched to the same library). The videos under the Home Videos tab appear with normal thumbnails, but the Movies tab are just gray film strips.

Is there a way to fix this or trigger iTunes to regenerate thumbnails?

I've had that happen to me, the only workaround was to turn off Movie sync'ing in iTunes, Sync your device, then turn Movie sync'ing back on, Sync again.


Reminders badge shows wrong count on different devices I have an iPhone, iPad, MacBook and Mac mini and am using Reminders on all my devices synced through iCloud. I have several lists created and no incomplete items at the moment. However, the Reminders badge count on MacBook shows "2" while on Mac mini it shows "1". On both iPhone and iPad the count is none ("0"), which is correct. If I check on my iCloud.com account the count is also none.
Where do these phantom alerts come from then? And how do I get rid of them?

TLDR: Launch the Calendar app, go to Settings, Alerts, then enable "Show shared calendar messages in Notification Center" and reboot.

Longer explanation follows.

I was having this same problem: no badge on my iOS devices, but a badge of "1" on my Mac.

After searching through the Console app, I found some messages from CalNCService that indicated it was requesting a badge count of "1" on behalf of a EKCalendarInviteReplyNotification. This suggested that the badge was the result of some activity on a shared Reminders list. It even printed out the name of the list in question - a shared list that I had "left" a while ago.

But, there were no notifications in Notification Center related to this list. Well, it turns out the notification was being filtered out by a setting in the Calendar app. I went to Calendar.app -> Settings -> Alerts and enabled "Show shared calendar messages in Notification Center".

That by itself did nothing, because the event was already filtered. So I went to Activity Monitor and force-quit the CalNCService. I restarted the Calendar app so it would restart the service (rebooting would do the trick too), and BOOM, the system presented me with the missing notification!

The notification was that I no longer had access to this shared list (sigh, who cares). I'm guessing the person who originally shared it with me had deleted it. So I simply dismissed that notification and the badge went away.

Bonus explainer:

Why does Calendar have anything to do with Reminders? It's because Reminders, internally, was originally (and seems to still be) implemented using "secret" hidden calendars. They did this because, in the days before iCloud, Calendar syncing was one of only a handful of ways to share data between devices. So you could sync and share your Reminder lists even if you were using Google or Yahoo or whatever else. Another way to share data was through email servers - which is exactly what the Notes app did. Reminders == Calendars, Notes == Emails.

Clever at the time, but I'm sure the engineers are quite sick of it now.


Can wiping and reinstalling OS damage the SSD? Computer is new 13" retina MBP. 2.9GHz i5, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD.

I have been working on some dotfile setup scripts for my new computer and thought I had them dialed in, but did not really work how I wanted. So I restarted, hit CMD+R and chose "reinstall Yosemite" because I wanted to try again.

It just occurred to me I was not sure if doing that, repeatedly if needed, can cause any issues with the hard drive or anything?

You would have to do that at least a couple hundred times to even remotely becoming an issue.

There was an article on hardware.info where these guys put some SSDs through some torture tests and ended up "writing" what equated to about 22 years of data.

The bottom line is that the drive's reliability will outlast your ability to fill it up and buy a newer bigger one.


Is users' discussion/chat on Jailbreaking allowed in an Apple-approved app? We have a 'web service' iPhone app where users can generate new content (which is publicly viewable) by uploading texts.

So, wanted to confirm: is it okay if they discuss/chat on benefits or on how to jailbreak?

Will the Apple take action once they find out? Or considering it to be user generated content, it will be ignored?

EDIT:
The app is not specifically meant for discussing Jailbreak. The app has many categories, including a "general chat" category, where it is being discussed by the users.

Unless Apple is hosting the user-generated content and the discussion of jailbreaking is in violation of the terms of use of that site, I don't see how Apple could take any action  against such a discussion.

There are certainly people using various Facebook, Twitter, and other public communication apps on their iPhones to discuss jailbreaking.


macbook pro 2017 and dell U2417H hdmi adapter issue I have a 15" macbook pro with 4 USB-C/thunderbolt 3 ports. I bought a multiport adapter from USB-C to HDMI and also a U2417H dell monitor which has 1 DisplayPort, 1 Mini DisplayPort and an HDMI port.

Every time I plug my mac into the monitor, I have to reboot it. Sometimes however, the mac will recognize that it is connected to a Dell monitor, but the monitor stays and with the message "No Signal."

I haven't tried a USB-C to HDMI cable or a DisplayPort adapter or cable because I want to ensure that there is not an issue with the monitor before I buy anything else for it.

The monitor works fine with a windows machine using the same HDMI cable.

What could be causing my monitor to have these issues?

I have same problem with MBP 2017 15" with plain Full HD monitor.
MacOS always says it is connected but no signal to the monitor.

As Jackson1442 says, rebooting sometime works but not all the time.

My MBP 2014 has no problem so I doubted my hub and then the hdmi cable. I replaced those but no changes.

I now doubt about 2017 model itself as Mohannad Kattan mentioned. It is so annoying.

I will try USB-C to HDMI cable without hub.


Save multiple photos from iPhone camera roll to dropbox As you know, when you're in the camera roll on an iPhone you can select one or more photos from the "send" button and take various actions.  One such action I have is "Save to Dropbox", but this is only available until I select more than one photo.

Beyond that, I can click "Save to Files" and one of the options is "Dropbox"; however, it's grayed out/disabled -- regardless of whether one photo or multiple photos are selected before clicking "Save to Files".

So how do I save multiple files from the camera roll to Dropbox?  Why would it not be possible using the standard method?

Note: I know that I can go to the Dropbox app and select multiple files to upload from the camera roll.  This question is specifically about doing this procedure from the camera roll.

This has always annoyed me, that Dropbox does not allow you to save to your Dropbox from within the photos.app. Grr...

And from time to time I (re-)discover how Dropbox wants you do do this:

Open Dropbox
Tap the "+" button labelled "Create"
Tap "Upload Photos"

...and you will be presented with your camera roll, and if you scroll up, the rest of the pictures on your iPhone. You can now select as many as you want.

I've often hated on the way Dropbox does this as it is intuitively backwards but if you can do better than me and remember this "trick" you should be good to go.


2015 Retina iMac Unable to Display 4k@60 Hz on My External Monitor Recently I purchased a 4K monitor for my Mac. I have a MiniDP to HDMI 2.0 converter and a HDMI 2.0 cable. I connected my late 2015 Retina iMac to the external monitor. I was able to get 4k@30hz on my external display. However, I was unable to achieve the 60hz refresh rate.

After some research I figured that late 2015 iMacs with the thunderbolt 2 ports should support 4k@60hz video output. I can't seem to figure out why I can't get the 60 Hz refresh rate.

When I open System Preferences, the Refresh Rate drop-down menu is gray.

Mac Configuration: iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, Late 2015)
MacOS: Catalina

I connected the same monitor to my 2018 MacBook Pro using a USB-C to HDMI 2.0 cable. My MacBook Pro was able to drive the display at 4k@60hz.

Thank you for your time and consideration!

The late 2015 21.5-inch Retina 4K iMac is fully able to drive a 4k display at 60 Hz. The monitor you have also lists that it supports 4k at 60 Hz.

The problem here must then either be your HDMI cable or your DisplayPort to HDMI converter.

I would suggest simply trying a different cable/converter.

The easiest to get working is to get a simple mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable, as the monitor has a DisplayPort input. This way you haven't got the converter as an extra point of failure.


Tag selected files in Finder with single keyboard shortcut It's been well covered how to create a keyboard shortcut for the Tags... menu option in Finder. What I want is a way to tag selected files or folders with a single keyboard shortcut. The same shortcut should untag them.

The solution is to use the OS X built-in Automator and the great tag command-line utility.

Create a new Service that accepts selected files/folders from Finder (follow the steps here)
In Run Shell Script, select "Pass input:" as arguments and use the following code:

TAG="Red"
tag="/usr/local/bin/tag"

for filename in "$@"
do
  if $tag --list --no-name "$filename" | grep "$TAG\b"; then
    $tag --remove "$TAG" "$filename"
  else
    $tag --add "$TAG" "$filename"
  fi
done

replacing the value of TAG with the name of the tag you want to use and tag with the location where tag is installed (the one above should be default for brew).
Assign a shortcut to this service in the System Settings.

The script simply checks for each file whether it is already tagged with the given tag, and removes or adds the tag to switch it. You can go fancier from here.


Whole disk encryption with a Windows only Bootcamp I've purchased myself a Mac Book Pro Retina (Haswell) and after giving Mac OS a fair shake have decided to go full Windows 7 and Bootcamp. There is no Mac OS install left on this system.

I am now looking for a way to encrypt my entire hard drive. My requirements are simple:

AES based whole disk encryption (to take advantage of AES-NI)
Ability to boot by just entering a password

I've looked at the following:

Truecrypt is a no-go because it is not recommended for use with SSDs
Bitlocker is a no-go because there is no TPM in this system and I
don't want to haul around a USB thumb drive with me every time I have
to boot.
Symantec Whole Disk Encryption appears to meet all of my requirements

Before I drop $100 on Symantec I figured I'd ask the exerts if there is any other software out there I can use. I prefer Open Source but understand that might not be possible.

It's worth noting that BitLocker can be run without needing a USB key. More information can be found here, scroll down to "Use BitLocker on a Drive Without TPM."


Word 2011 creates a 66 MB PDF from a 1 MB Word file I have a 1 MB Word file (text with 3 or 4 PDF graphics inside, and 1 bitmap JPEG image), which Word 2011 exports as PDF into a 66 MB file. Using the "Print > Save as PDF" feature leads to a file of the (approximate) same size, i.e. also much too big.

This happens for this file, most others are okay when exported to PDF. Are there settings that could help reduce the file of the PDF file generated?

Courtesy of the ever-useful Dr. Drang, you can try using a Quartz Filter to downsample the images to reduce the file size, often without any apparent reduction in quality.

Open ColorSync Utility and click on the Filters tab.
Add a new filter, give it a name you like.
Click on the grey arrow, select Color Image Sampling under Add Image Effects Component.
Enter 150 in the resolution box.

Now we need to create an Automator service to apply the filter to the PDF file.

Open Automator and make a new Service.
Change the top drop-down to PDF Files.
Add the Apply Quartz Filter to PDF Documents action, and select the filter you just created in the drop-down.
Save it with a name of your choice.

Now you should be able to right click on a PDF file, and you should see the service you created near the bottom of the menu. Click it, and a few seconds later you should have a smaller PDF.


macOS does not browse folder on SMB share (folder displayed as light-blue folder) macOS does not browse a folder on SMB share. The folder displayed as light blue folder. The folder was copied onto this share exactly from the same Mac with the same user. Permissions are 100% okay on the server.
I can happily create a new folder without problems next to it (Co...shows the folder that does not work):

Here is the output when I switch to the share in Terminal and use ls -@ -la:
Mac:share user$ ls -@ -a -l
total 153
drwx------  1 user      staff  16384 Dec 22 20:09 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 7 root      wheel    224 Dec 22 20:08 ..
    com.apple.FinderInfo      32
-rw-r--r--@ 1 user      staff  10244 Dec 22 20:09 .DS_Store
    com.apple.FinderInfo      32
drwxrwxrwx  1 user      staff  16384 Dec 13 23:58 .zfs
drwxr-xr-x@ 1 user      staff  16384 Dec 22 12:55 Co......
    com.apple.finder.copy.source.inode#N        8
    com.apple.finder.copy.source.volumeuuid#N     36
drwxr-xr-x  1 user      staff  16384 Dec 22 20:08 test

In the samba logs I can see that the Mac accesses all files but they still don't show up.
Also, the directory can be traversed and written to without any issues in Terminal!
Other shares on the same server work well.

For some reason, something was wrong with the file creation date. Which is weird because everything on the Linux side was definitely fine (stat)!
SetFile -d '12/21/2020 01:01:01' Co.....

fixed the issue, as described in Grayed out folder won't open in finder.


Is it possible to have audio follow window across multiple displays I'm using multiple monitors and would like to have the audio from any particular app window come from the speakers associated with the display where the app window is shown.

Anyone know of a solution?

This is iMac Pro or MacBook Pro running Mojave. It would be any application that produces sound. I would like the sound directed to the display upon which the app's window is displayed.

This is not possible.

Apple does not "link" audio devices and video devices in any way.  As far as macOS is concerned, you have discrete audio devices and discrete video (display) devices.  In fact, you cannot even control audio from a Mac connected via HDMI or DisplayPort

Some Apps (i.e. Vox Music Player) allows you to select a different audio device from the default.  If the App you're using (Safari for example) is playing a YouTube video, it would have to be able to be "aware" of the other audio devices (it's not).

Your app would not only have to be aware of the additional audio devices but the location of it's Window in relation to the monitor it's connected to.  It's highly unlikely app programmers would include that functionality.


Does the 'iPhone' label on a Contact's phone number enable any special handling? When entering a contact's phone number in the Contacts app on iOS or the Address Book on OS X, the number can be labeled iPhone rather than, say, mobile. Does doing so have any effect on how the number is treated by the OS or applications? Or is it provided for purely aesthetic purposes?

The iPhone label does not provide any special handling instructions or added features of any kind.  It's a purely aesthetic touch that only impacts the display and voice dialing of a contact's number in the same way any other label does, such as "Home", "Work" or "Mobile".

If you are looking for further information on how the iPhone does provide special handling for other iPhones, such as iMessage and FaceTime, there is a great thread, right here on Ask Different, that details just how the iPhone, in conjunction with Apple's servers, uses the UDID and Apple ID associated with the device to provide all those special iOS only features.


What are the dimensions of the head of a thunderbolt cable? I am wondering what the dimensions of the head of the thunderbolt cable is and what the size of the input port is.

Are these standard ports or documented by Apple or do we just need to put calipers to a bunch of cables and report what gets shipped?

Thunderbolt 1 and 2:

(source: staticworld.net)

7.4mmx4.5mm male, 8.3x5.4mm female

Thunderbolt 3:

8.3mmx2.5mm male


El Capitan, Finder.app, and Fan Performance Since upgrading today to El Capitan, my fan has been going non-stop. Under "Apps that Use Significant Energy", Finder.app is the culprit. Does anyone have a solution for this issue?

Same here, apparently it may have to do with Path Finder + Finder combination, I'm reading on the PF forum... I'll check it out more in detail later.


Can I make tmux scroll from my trackpad? I want to set up iTerm2 to pass scroll events to tmux, so I can trivially enter (and exit) scrollback mode for whatever pane is active. Is this possible to do with iTerm2, or automation of some sort, or ...?

The mode is referred to as "copy mode" and as long as you're running tmux 1.5 or higher you can add:

setw -g mode-mouse on

to your ~/.tmux.conf file and tmux will automatically enter and exit copy mode when you use the scroll wheel on your mouse.

As a bonus, this option allows you to select the tmux pane with your mouse:

set -g mouse-select-pane on


How to remotely install software on Mac by scripts? I am a windows guy new to Mac, I need to deploy software to lots of Mac.

I do centrally install software by scripts on Windows platform, but I still have no clue how to do it on Mac after having done some research.

Can someone tell me

What are some key components I need for centrally pushing out the software on the Mac?
What language do I need to use for the scripts?
Is there a Mac image create/deploy service available, like WDS on windows?

What you ask is basically the trade of being a Mac administrator and there are three major ways to get this done and one where you let everyone do the work:

Train your end users to install things
Use Apple's legacy tools to manage installs (ARD and AppleScript)
Use ssh and tools like homebrew https://brew.sh and shell scripts to install software and entire applications.
Use a modern MDM - the popular open source choice is Munki and the popular vendor supported choice is JAMFpro (which is the new name for the Casper Suite/JSS for the upcoming version 10 release)

You probably have asked this question since you have ruled out options 1 and 2 - but they are realistic and scalable options for organizations in the 10 to 100 client range. Past 100, you're probably going to want some sort of Apple push / MDM / automation framework and using one that's already in service is better than making your own for almost all cases.

Also, be sure to evaluate your end user "self-service" options. Munki has the managed software installer and I'm using JAMF's name for their end user portal for app installs, scripts and management. Even once you have a push framework set up to script things, letting users fix things themselves is the winning move if you want to scale up your support without hiring help desk staff to do everything for your clients.