Can I upgrade the memory in a MacBook Pro 2019? my Mac is a MacBook Pro 2019

I do not have any information about Mac or cp.

I am using R and I am running a heavy model, but I can not get a result because of lack of memory. Is there any way to fix it, like swap memory?

Please help me step by step if it is possible
If it isn't possible let me know

The memory in the 2019 MBP (two Thunderbolt 3 ports) is soldered to the motherboard, and is not user-upgradeable.


How to use the Homebrew installed git on Mac? I have installed the newest version of git (1.8.3) using homebrew but when I type

git --version

in my terminal, it prints:

git version 1.7.10.2 (Apple Git-33)

What should I do to replace the old version of git with the new one?

Thanks everyone for helpful answers. In my case adding

export PATH="/usr/local/bin:${PATH}"

in ~/.bash_profile followed by

source ~/.bash_profile

solved the problem for my user.


How often and for how long does Trim Enabler need to run? As of Yosemite, DIY, or non-Apple installed SSDs have Trim support challenges using applications such as Trim Enabler. Assuming one keeps their TRIM supported SSD in Yosemite,

what is a good strategy for using Trim Enabler periodically so there are no issues with kext-signing and potential OS update conflicts while Trim Enabler is disabled?
Can this be worked around by periodically using Trim Enabler?
How long should Trim Enabler be run?
How often?
If SSD usage, e.g. amount of read/written data is relevant to how long/often Trim Enabler should be run, is there a way to evaluate guidelines on light, moderate, heavy use.

An excellent feature for TE would be a scheduler to run based on need, then toggle TE off and turn kext-signing back on after a scheduled maintenance run. At least until/if Apple ever reopens kext-signing to software and hardware devs. Cheers -

What I used to do was enable TRIM, reboot, create and delete an encrypted disk image that almost filled the free space, leave my MBP idling overnight, disable TRIM, and reboot. That restored performance.

I'm not sure r/w volumes will tell you anything useful. The OS reuses erased blocks and the current controllers garbage collection is supposed to make TRIM largely irrelevant (or at least that's what I read).

I don't have that machine anymore and it seems like a lot riskier process under 10.10 so I'm not doing anything with TRIM on my Mac Mini w/ a Samsung 840 EVO.


Random Signal Strength Drops I have a Macbook Air (Mid-2011) at home and a Verizon Actiontec MI424WR Rev. I router. Recently, I noticed that the internet got slower for about 10 sec. and went back to normal. I then opened Wifi Explorer to monitor the signal strength, and sure enough, I see a drop in the strength.

Also, sometimes when waking from sleep, the wifi icon indicates that it is searching for my network. I have to turn wifi off then on to let it reconnect. This problem has appeared on Mavericks and Mountain Lion after I downgraded.

UPDATE 01/25/2014
I installed Windows 7 using Boot Camp. Strangely, it does not exhibit this problem.This leads me to believe that it is a Mac OS X problem. Anyone have any ideas?

UPDATE 02/14/2014
I retract my earlier statement. It does exhibit this problem.

well sense you exhibit the same problem on your bootcamp suggest to two things. either one, its your hardware, or two your internet. your hardware can be testet quite easily, just find another wifi and try it out for a while. if it is your internet however, it gets a little more complex sense it can be your router, modem, or provider... so i would try another wifi first, then contact your provider


If you deactivate an iPad from your Apple ID, will it still receive iMessages? I recently went on the iTunes store and took my Apple ID off of my iPad. Will text/iMessages that I receive on my iPhone still go to the iPad?

Simply signing out/removing your Apple ID from iTunes & App Store (by going to Settings app → Your name (shown at the top) → iTunes & App Store → Apple ID, or, Settings app → iTunes & App Store → Apple ID) won't completely disassociate your Apple ID from your iPad.

You will continue to receive iMessage/text messages (if text message forwarding is enabled), as long as you are signed into iCloud on your iPad and Messages is enabled.

On your iPad, go to Settings app → Your name (shown at the top) → iCloud and toggle the switch shown besides Messages to enable/disable receiving them on your iPad.


Mount .sparseimage from .bash_profile I need to mount a .sparseimage from .bash_profile but I don't get how to do it. I tried:

alias of22='hdiutil attach "Documents/OF.sparseimage" -mountpoint "$HOME/OpenFOAM" > /dev/null ; . $HOME/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-2.2.0/etc/bashrc'

but this gives me:

hdiutil: attach failed - no mountable filesystem

if I double-click on it or I put it in Startup Items it works (but i need also to source the bashrc after the mount)

What's the problem?

The open(1) command can do it:

/usr/bin/open /full/path/to/OF.sparseimage


How can I remove the Mac recovery partition from an external drive? My early 2011 MBP came with a 500 GB HDD, which I recently changed out for a 128 GB SSD. The old internal drive now serves as a backup drive... however... I'd love to get rid of that Recovery HD partition so that I can A) use the space, and B) stop being asked about ejecting multiple partitions when I eject the drive.

Yes, I've seen this question which is almost a duplicate, except my situation is a little different and I don't want to break anything!

Some output from my terminal:

Macbook-Pro:~ matt$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *128.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         127.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS OS X                   *126.8 GB   disk1
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk2
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         499.2 GB   disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk2s3
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Backup                 *498.9 GB   disk3
Macbook-Pro:~ matt$

... and I'm confused, because I only have my internal, 128 GB SSD and my external, 500 GB HDD connected at the time I ran this. My question is two-fold:

Why are there 4 disks showing up in diskutil list? I only have the two physical drives connected... what do the * characters mean? Ultimately, which disk should I be re-partitioning?
How can I safely remove the recovery partition on my now-backup-only drive? Of course I want to keep the one on my 128 GB drive, so obviously I won't mess with disk0 or disk1... I assume this will involve the same/similar steps as in the question I linked to above.

Just wanted to be sure before I did anything potentially destructive... cheers for your advice.

Your disk1 and disk3 are the virtual disks created by CoreStorage, that is, the system underlying FileVault 2 (full disk encryption). This is why your data partitions on the "real" disks (disk0 and disk2) have type Apple_CoreStorage.

The recovery partition on your external drive is this one:

   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk2s3

Deleting it may however not be a good idea. Because CoreStorage drives are encrypted, the bootloader can't read any data from them - the OSX kernel (with the CoreStorage driver) needs to be loaded to ask for the user password, which opens up the main drive containing the rest of the operating system and data. So with CoreStorage enabled, the Recovery HD partition doubles as an unencrypted boot helper.

I don't have much experience with CoreStorage, and you haven't made it completely clear what your backup disk contains. I know that unencrypted Time Machine disks are bootable. I would imagine that encrypted ones are, too, with the caveat of requiring a boot helper, but I don't know for sure. Furthermore, since you only mention "backups", maybe you're using a different backup system which may or may not be bootable.

If your backups are not intended to be bootable, I think you should be able to delete the Recovery HD, although there is a certain risk that CoreStorage relies on it nevertheless. If they are bootable, deleting it outright will make them fail to boot. You could try writing the partition parameters displayed by gpt show disk2, deleting the partition using gpt without overwriting it, rebooting, and checking that it still works, and recreating it with the exact parameters (again using gpt, not diskutil) if you have trouble accessing your backups.

However, boot helpers don't actually need to contain a full recovery system. Prior to OSX Lion, boot helpers (e.g. used for software RAID) were always 128MiB in size, and this is still enough for Lion and Mountain Lion. Still, recreating a deleted boot helper isn't exactly straightforward.

Then there's the question of what you'll do with the extra ~520MB you gained. I don't think you can resize core storage partitions, so all you'll be able to do is create a ~400MB additional partition, which isn't terribly useful.

Overall, I'd say it's not worth the risk/trouble to gain ~500MB.


ZSH - missing git icons Hi I've just installed ZSH and it looks awesome but git icons are still missing and I don't know what I miss.

What I should do?

Turns out I didn't have powerline font.

You can get it from here

After download, double click to install and set as defalut font & non-ascii font


Migrating from MacPorts to Homebrew. Is there any specific advice in how to minimize disruption? I want to stop using macports, and use homebrew instead, I have been reading on their approach and it makes more sense to me.
Now, I don't care much about having to reinstall my packages, even if some of them might not exist yet -- apparently, creating a new formula is straightforward.

But I'm a bit concerned about data which is installed in system-owned directories, like the data in MySQL or PostgreSQL. I'd like a bit of advice on how to proceed so as to have the less amount of problems migrating data from one installation to another.

I'm also curious about start scripts for daemons. Macports have complicated wrappers for launchd, but I don't know how homebrew manages that aspect. Can anyone clarify this for me?

Also, any generic advice you can provide regarding this migration will also be welcome. Things to look for, what to avoid, etc.

A bit off-topic but wanted to share my experience on this topic.
About 6month / a year ago, I decided to do some cleanup and uninstalled port and fink to the benefit of brew, which I prefer.

Today... Got the three again. Why?

brew as my main source
port provides MANY more packages than brew and I needed some of them (like wireshark+nox11)
fink for some rare packages (I think I only reinstalled it for some dpkg utils)

Just my 2 cents, not everyone needs these packages. But before uninstalling port, check twice the packages you need ;)


Youtube wont fullscreen properly with Safari 9 After one of the latest Safari update (9.0.1 I believe) I can't use fullscreen option on Youtube properly. When I open youtube page and press F the player goes fullscreen, but the video area itself doesn't (and actually became smaller), so the rest of display is black and unused. If I press "space" (stop the video) or scroll using mouse the video area stretches to the full screen, but this is very inconvenient to press "space" twice each time I full screen.

I checked that the problem is still present when I sign out from my youtube account. But if I watch a youtube-video (embedded) on the other cites there is no problems with it. And there is no such a problem with Opera.

How to fix this problem? There are a lot of materials about it in the Internet, but most of it seems to be outdated. I tried to:
1. Press "Privacy/Remove All Website Data".
2. Uncheck "Security/Allow Plugins".
3. Disable extensions.
4. Press "Develop/Empty Caches".

This doesn't help.

Safari 9.0.2. OSX 10.10.5.

I have never had that issue with YouTube, but similar things happen a lot with Facebook's videos and this helps.

Pinch with 2 fingers to zoom all the way out until you see this:
Once you see this, click the YouTube tab again.
Hover over the URL Bar so you can see the refresh icon like this:
Click on the refresh icon so that the page refreshes.


Adding a photo to iPhoto by right clicking in the Finder How does one add iPhoto to the list of choices when right clicking on a photo in the Finder?

You can create a custom service for Finder using Automator.app.
Open Automator.app located in /Applications/ folder by default.  When prompted to choose a document type, choose "Service".

On the top you will see a a box with drop downs.  Select "image files" for the drop down box "Service receives selected" and choose "Finder" for the in.

Then on the left hand side with the "Actions" tab selected choose "Photos" then drag "Import Files into iPhoto" into the workflow area to the right.

Configure the settings to where the photo will import into iPhoto.  The defaults are Existing album and Events.

Save your workflow and give it a name that will make it obvisous when you choose Services in the Right click menu.  (Ex.  "Import photo to iPhoto")

Services you create from Automator are saved in the path: ~/Library/Services/


How to print to a HP Photosmart C4599 printer from Sierra? I am desperately trying to print from my MacbookPro running Sierra to a HP Phtosmart C4599.

Does anyone have any idea? Is there a solution?

If the driver doesn't get installed automatically, it can be downloaded from HP's website -> HPPrinterDrivers5.1.dmg


Do I need to set up individual Apple IDs for all my kids' iPads? I will be giving my three children three iPads as their christmas presents.  I am now currently using my iPhone 4 with my only one Apple ID for the App Store.

My question is if I set up their iPads using my Apple ID that I am currently using now, does that mean that if they download a game or anything from the App Store, will it appear on my iPhone 4 as well?  And if I delete the app from my iPhone, will it delete on their iPad too?  If that the case, should I set up a different Apple ID for them?

I strongly recommend you keep a separate ID for each person. When buying a song, for instance, you can share among 5 authorized devices. My computer, iPad, iPod, and iPhone make four.
Now that my wife and daughter have iPhones, and daughter, a MacBook, I glad they have their own accounts. No crazy apps I don't know about clogging my devices.
You want your own apple ID and iCloud. Really.

Edit - Using your Apple ID for Apple services will help clarify the iTunes vs iCloud ID usage.


How can you install new versions of Ruby, Rails, and Git without running into the old versions? I've been having this problem for the past several years where I like to stay up-to-date and install the latest versions of software like Ruby, Rails, and Git. However, I somehow always seem to have difficulty using the latest versions.

For example, I go to the terminal and type

git --version

Which tells me that I'm running git 1.7.3.4

So I go to the git website and pick up the handy installer file (git-1.7.6-x86_64-snow-leopard.dmg). Then I mount the disk image and run the .pkg file... successfully installed.

However, when I go back and type git --version again, it still says I'm running git 1.7.3.4 and not the newly installed 1.7.6.

Generally whenever I've had these problems it has turned out that I had successfully completed the installations of the new software, I just don't necessarily know where it's installed. What is the best way to keep clean installations of these and not have a bunch of different versions lying around in different places on the file system?

This would be the case where you may want to use a packange manager like MacPorts or Fink. They generally install in a seperate directory like /opt/local/bin so as not to collide with the already installed software. (Note that these download the source codes and dependancies and compile them instead of fetching a compiled binary, so it can take some time for larger packages.)

Another think to do is open up the .pkg file in Installer and Get Info (⌘I) to list all the files, and often where they go. You can also show the log (⌘L) to see where things have been written and what has been done.


Macbook and external hard drive : A better solution? I have an external hard drive. I use windows and macbook both. The problem is, plugging and unplugging from Mac is very much pain. If I accidentally remove it without 'ejecting', Mac doesn't recognise is next time I plug in. This is a very irritating problem and it keeps coming. Sometimes, while moving laptop here and there, connection gets loose and hard drive gets unplugged without 'safely ejecting'. Windows only warns, but recognises it every time I plug it in. Please suggest a solution. I don't wanna do all commandline stuff to make it work each time.

What do you want to use this drive for? Storing Documents, Backup, etc?

If you have a router with an usb port you could use this to set it up as a network drive that you can automatically connect when you login.


Should I charge the Magic Keyboard 2 only when needed? I have a new Magic Keyboard 2 and I was wondering if keeping it connected all the time to the USB port can somehow damage the battery

In general, keeping it connected all the time will not damage the battery.  Apple has designed these peripherals to only accept a charge when it's needed.  When it doesn't need the power, it simply will not use it.

However, it's a good practice to periodically, every month or so, unplug the keyboard and let it run on its battery until it gets very low (below 10%) or stops working.  Then you can plug it back in and leave it alone while it charges.  Apple has a nice section on batteries and their maintenance here.


Disable Google Play Music menu bar icon Is there a way to disable the Google Play Music icon in the menu bar, while keeping Google Play Music running?

If you've already tried Command-dragging it out of the menu bar (although draggable menu itmes are a private API feature, as pointed out by comments below and usually only works with system icons like Time Machine, clock, battery, and volume), I'd recommend
Bartender (free in beta, $7 full version)
Bartender allows you full control of your menu bar by adding a second, hidden but easily accessible menu bar to organize all of your icons. Alternatively, you could request that Broomstick (free) be updated for Google Play.


How to reset Mac OS X text substitution? Whenever I type "foo" it gets replaced by "bar". It is working system wide. I can see this behavior in Chrome, TextEdit and other apps. Even partial text like "Somefoo" gets converted to "Somebar". After initial search, I tried changing settings in "Language & Text". I can't find any entry for "foo" or "bar" in it. I tried disabling substitution. It didn't work. I tried "Restore Defaults". It didn't work. I even tried adding rule like "foo" to be replaced by "qux". It doesn't honor this rule and "foo" still gets replaced by "bar". I don't know what else I can try. How can I reset this substitution? Is their any system file or something which I look where these rules are written so I can change it?

I'm using Mac OS X 10.8.4.

Thanks!

Try running these commands:

defaults delete -g NSUserReplacementItems
defaults delete -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems

Then quit and reopen some application and test if it worked.

NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems is used in 10.9 and NSUserReplacementItems is used in 10.8 and earlier.


Is a Mac Mini G4 capable of 1080p MP4/H.264 playback? Looking for a HTPC, and I noticed the G4 Mac Minis are relatively cheap to get. I just wonder, do they support 1080p playback for MP4/H.264 files?

As CanuckSkier said, it won't be reliable, even if it does Full HD. I have a Early 2009 lowest spec Mac Mini and it skipped enough frames to make a Full HD video unplayable when the bit rate was high enough, so i'm guessing a G4 Mac Mini would be far worse.


How to restore MacOS Desktop Workspaces, Mouse, and Keyboard (etc.) settings? I walked through the procedure of changing my MacOS user short name.  Somehow screwed it up - such that on reboot, MacOS went through the "new user initialization".  I fixed it ... and got everything back ... except ...

All of my multiple desktops settings (number of desktop workspaces), mouse settings (eg scroll direction), keyboard shortcuts, etc. are gone.  I assume that the "New User Initialization" wiped these out.

Fine.  I have Time Machine backups.  But - I haven't been able to figure out how to selective restore just the settings preferences related to my keyboard shortcuts, mouse preferences, workspaces (mission control?), etc.   I've spent several hours searching but my search phrases seem to be far too generic and sending me down many rat holes.

I did find that there is ~/Library/Preferences directory - but that was preserved in my new account - so unless it's a subset of selective files in there that are related - which got reset with the "New User Initialization" baloney?

Any hints would be greatly appreciated.  I simple can not abide by "natural" scroll direction ... :)

I would suggest you open a finder window of your ~/Library/Preferences, click on "Date Modified", open System Preferences, make any change in relevant settings (mouse, workspace ...), watch and note down, which files get to the top of your file list.

These should be the ones that you should replace with the ones from a Time Machine backup, I'd presume ...


Tethering SIM-disabled on iPad but SIM can be used to tether on Windows phone? I've got a SIM from a windows phone for which tethering (internet sharing over wifi) works fine.

When I put the same SIM into my iPad (3rd Gen, iOS 8.1) - it tells me that I need to contact my carrier to enable Tethering. (I have a second SIM for which tethering works just fine on the iPad).

My question is: Is it possible for tethering to be SIM-disabled on one device - but work fine on a device from other vendor?

Yes, this is entirely possible. Your SIM card number is provisioned by the carrier to include features X, Y and Z based on your rate plan with them. This can include tethering by device type. If you have multiple SIM cards, it is possible they have enabled the feature for one SIM card but disabled it for the other, either by accident or on purpose.

You would need to contact your carrier directly to find out if they have disabled it.


Prevent Mavericks from generating new volume name for external drive I have an external HDD, formatted exFAT, I believe. Whenever it is re-mounted, it gets assigned a new volume name (e.g., "MyVolume", "MyVolume 1", "MyVolume 2"...). As far as I can tell, this happens whether it is properly ejected, or if it is still mounted when the system is powered down.

Aside from going in to /Volumes/ and deleting all the existing "MyVolume*" files before attempting to mount the drive, is there a way to prevent this from happening?

Question re-asked because of lack of input.
Got some clues. Found answer related on discussion of ntfs-3g (though problem was not related to ntfs mounting).
See https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/issues/119


Myriad of (relatively minor) issues on my rMBP in the last few days Not sure how to generalize this, but my rMBP 15" 2014 has started having several weird issues in the past few days:

Typing freezes (briefly) in Notes
Searching “Keychain” from spotlight returns some results but NOT “Keychain Access”
Xcode stops building files because “too many open files on system”, fixed by restart
Mail autocomplete doesn’t work -> Restart Mail, freezes on open -> Restart again, same -> Open Internet Accounts in System Prefs, freezes -> Restart computer, works
Beachball opening folder from Dock -> Downloads (about 10 seconds)

None of these issues seems to stay for long. For example, if I search Spotlight for "Keychain" now, it returns the correct result.

More info, I'm running 10.10.1, 16gb RAM, my 500gb hard drive is about 2/5 free. I clean installed Yosemite about 6 months ago too.

Does anyone know this might be? Hardware issue, like failing motherboard or something? Or (hopefully) some kind of software bug?

We've had a couple of machines at work in a similar state, they were brought back to normal operation by starting in safe boot then moving the Containers folder from the user's Library folder to the desktop. This has the effect of clearing the startup caches, performing a disk check and resetting sandboxed applications back their default settings.

A new Containers folder will be automatically created. Any applications that have lost important data after moving the Containers folder can be restored by copying the relevant folder from the old Containers folder to the new one - I always make a copy of the ARD folder as any custom UNIX commands will be lost otherwise.

As a matter of course I would also want to run a disk permissions check and give the drive structure a check with DiskWarrior.


Set a custom dock icon for an application instance via Terminal I'm frequently opening multiple instances of applications, especially Emacs, since I may be working on different projects on the same time, and I find this the best way to manage this (yes, I know there are lots of project management extensions for Emacs, I don't need to be taught in Emacs).

I'm doing this with open -n -a Emacs.app which opens a new separate Emacs instance. But it would be really nice to set a custom dock icon for the opened instances, so I can easily differentiate them when doing Cmd+Tab.

Do you know any hack or way to set a custom Application (Dock) icon for a instance? Even if it is a rather complex shell command (I could then create a shellscript for this).

What I really want to achieve is to create a shellscript for this so I can call opennew Emacs.app x and then it would fork the Emacs icon and add a badge with an x in it.

Then I can call opennew Emacs.app s for "school related", opennew Emacs.app p for "project related" etc.

I don't have a complete solution for you, but from looking through the man pages, I think I kinda see how one might be crafted.

open(1) provides the --args option for passing arguments on to the invoked application.
emacs(1) will read values from an .Xresources file. One of the values it reads is emacs.iconName.
X allows you to select Xresources for a specific app by setting $XENVIRONMENT to contain the path of a file containing Xresource values. Also, X programs are supposed to support the -name and -title options for setting (I think) the name of an Xresource file to be loaded and/or the title of the application instance.

So I haven't tested this, but you might be able to do something like:

open -n -a Emacs.app --args "-name <resource-file-path> -title school"

Then, in the resource file, a line that says

emacs.iconName:<path-to-school-icon-file>

In another resource file, you'd have iconName set to a work icon, etc.

If you try this, I'd be interested in knowing how it works out.


How can I increase the maximum allowed swap space? When I try to do a calculation that needs to allocate and use 128 GB of memory (it is a command line program written in C), the kernel kills my process with extreme prejudice.  This console log entry is an example of one instance:

  9/25/15 7:08:40.000 PM kernel[0]: low swap: killing pid 6202 (huffgrp)

The calculation works fine and in a reasonable amount of time when it allocates and uses 64 GB of memory.  My machine has 32 GB of RAM and beaucoup space on the hard drive.  I also tried this on another machine with 8 GB of RAM, on which the 64 GB calculation runs fine as well, taking longer of course, but the 128 GB calculation gets killed by the kernel in the same way.  On both I am running Yosemite 10.10.5.

By the way, malloc() never returns an error, no matter how much space I ask for.  The kernel will only kill the process once too much of that memory is actually being used by the process, resulting in lots of swapping to the hard drive.

So there appears to be a secret swap space limit somewhere between 64 GB and 128 GB.

My question is: how do I reconfigure the kernel to permit more swap space?  I found a promising looking file, /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist, but I don't see the secret number in there.  The man page for dynamic_pager says that all it does is set the name and location of the swap files. There is an older version of the same man page that documents a -S option to set the size of the swapfiles created. I tried that, requesting 160 GB swapfiles, but it had no effect. The swapfiles were still 1 GB each, and the process was still killed by the kernel.

While I could not find any more recent documentation, Singh's "Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach" mentions two obscure limits in /sbin/dynamic_pager (p. 919 f.):

  The absolute minimum and maximum swap file sizes are 64MB and 1GB, respectively.
  The maximum swap file size must not be greater than 12.5% of the free space available on the volume that contains the swap file. Moreover, the maximum swap file size must not be greater than the amount of physical memory on the system.
  At most, eight swap files can be created.

  [...]

While the book is a bit dated and the numbers are likely to have changed, the 12.5% rule sounds very suspicious to me.

Singh implies that those are hard-coded limits in the binary and thus the property file you found is likely not to be of use. Also note that the swap system creates several, but only up to eight, distinct swap files.

/sbin/dynamic_pager is documented, as you noted, as a very rudimentary man page, and there is a conflicting statement in the current developer documentation on Virtual Memory, stating that

  To give processes access to their entire 4 gigabyte or 18 exabyte address space, OS X uses the hard disk to hold data that is not currently in use. As memory gets full, sections of memory that are not being used are written to disk to make room for data that is needed now. The portion of the disk that stores the unused data is known as the backing store because it provides the backup storage for main memory.

  [...]

  Note: Unlike most UNIX-based operating systems, OS X does not use a preallocated disk partition for the backing store. Instead, it uses all of the available space on the machine’s boot partition.

(emphasis mine)

Hence, at around this point, I'd go for some pragmatic workaround. Perhaps try increasing your disk space even further to check for a correlation in the obtainable swap size, thus checking the 12.5% limitation mentioned above.


How can I compensate for red blue font discoloration in 2018 MBP Displayport? I recently moved from a 2017 macbook pro to a 2018 macbook pro with a configuration like this:

# Works perfectly
MBP 2017 -> USB C -> Displayport -> Dell Ultrasharp U2415

# Red / blue font discoloration
MBP 2018 -> USB C -> Displayport -> Dell Ultrasharp U2415

On the 2017 MBP the colors work perfectly, but on the 2018 MBP, my letters arbitrarily turn red or blue. See picture below taken with an iPhone. What's going on?

Display calibration (basic and advanced) makes no difference
Monitor calibration makes no difference
When dragging a window, the red/blue/black changes in the characters

Here's a video of the effect on this question if the example below is to blurry.

Actual (taken with an iphone cam, ignore the grid, but notice the red and blue in the letters) :

Expected (yes a screenshot, but the text should be just plain black):

Go to System Preferences -> General -> and uncheck "Use LCD font smoothing when available" (bottom of the pane). Close all apps and restart your Mac. Then it works for me.


"USB Needs more power." - Mac Pro with 7 Keyboards? I am in the process of setting up a MacPro whose sole purpose is to run VMs on each of the six possible screens each with it's own keyboard and mouse.
So what I have is six DVI monitors with six dual-link display-port to DVI/USB adapters and an Anker 10 port USB hub/charger to power them all.  The VMs are to be each assigned their own keyboard through virtualbox USB filters.

Originally the monitors were having some trouble coming up all at once (and in order) with a Macally 7 port hub so I'd thought the issue was the amount of power the hub was outputting.  Additionally none of the keyboards except for the one attached directly to the MacPro itself were being recognized so more power was figured necessary.

However even with the more powerful Anker USB Hub the system will not work with the extra keyboard and mouse attached through the hub with a single monitor running.  The "USB Needs more power." message still comes up. These all happened to be old extra Apple keyboards.  I've also tried with a couple of non-Apple specific keyboards and it appears that they only work when hooked up directly to the MacPro even though the USB power message does not come up. Next I'll be trying separate hubs for the display port hookups and the keyboards and mice to see if it is some sort of weird dual-link display-port to dvi issue.

Will MacPros only recognize a single Apple Keyboard? Only keyboards hooked up directly? Is this by chance a software issue I can disable or work around with extra software?

This kind of applies to all hardware, not just apple computers. I did a search for Anker USB Hub. None of the results showed a powered USB Hub. They all relied on the USB Bus for power.

The average USB port has about 500 mA available. (900 mA in USB3.0) USB Keyboard uses between 50 mA and 100 mA. The USB hub itself also needs power, more if it's got all those pretty LED's on it. This puts the load between 400 mA (idle?) and 800 mA (all in use?)

So, it seems like your using more power than a single USB port can provide. You may just need to upgrade to a hub that supplies it's own power to devices. Which would require a hub with an AC adaptor.


How do I print an email from Mail.app without mail headers? I would like to be able to print emails without including the default email headers (from, to, title, date) from Apple’s Mail application. It looks like I am not the only one who wants this as the question has been asked numerous times on the Apple Support Communities.

It looks like the answer used to be going into Preferences, then the Viewing tab, and then select ‘None’ for ‘Show message headers’. [1] [2]

The latest Mail included with Yosemite (version 8.1) does not include the option ‘None’, only ‘Default’ and ‘Custom’. Leaving the custom settings empty will still show the default headers.

How do I hide the mail headers for printing?

It's a workaround. But when you select the text you want to print. Right click and select under services the option 'New Text Edit window containing text'

This opens the selected text in a new text edit file.. From there you can print.

How to turn it on

If this option is  not visible.. you can turn it on at

System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Services

Scroll to the text section and turn on 'New Text Edit window containing text'

Automator Action

I've made an automations..

selected text -> right click -> services -> print email

Instructions and download are here...


Why does the Apple Watch health reminders pop up at 50 minutes past the hour? The Apple Watch gives me health reminders about standing or walking goals. These reminders pop up at 10 to the hour - ie at XX:50.

This seems like an opinionated choice, but I thought there might be something behind it, some reasoning I'm missing.

My question is: Why does the Apple Watch health reminders pop up at 50 minutes past the hour?

The Apple Watch wants you to stand each hour to complete your stand goal. So if you haven't stood during all the hour, it will remind you to do it 10 minutes before the next hour to give the the time to stand a little and add an hour to your stand goal !

It's anyway what apple says on their website :

  Even if you’re active part of the day, sitting too long has its own health risks. So Apple Watch senses when you stand and move just a bit and gives you credit. And if you’ve been sitting for almost an hour, it reminds you to get up. You close the Stand ring when you’ve stood and moved for at least one minute in 12 different hours during the day. It may sound like a small thing, but sitting less can improve your health in significant ways.


How do you change the environment variables for VLC on macOS High Sierra? Recently, I was working on a project when I cam upon the following instruction (one of the many here: https://github.com/alexa/alexa-avs-sample-app/wiki/Mac#3---install-dependencies) :

  After you've installed VLC, set the following environment variables:

  VLC_PATH: point this to the VLC libs folder.
  Sample Mac OS X location: /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib

  VLC_PLUGIN_PATH: point this to the VLC plugins folder.
  Sample Mac OS X location: /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/plugins

How does one do the following? I am using High Sierra, macOS. My Shell is ZSH.

From the terminal

nano .profile

Then paste the following lines:

export VLC_PATH=/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/lib
export VLC_PLUGIN_PATH=/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/plugins

To save, press Ctrl + X then press Y and finally Enter. Afterwards, restart your terminal.


Getting an error after every iPhone sync that some items could not be found After every sync, I am alerted that two items could not be transferred because they could not be found. That is not surprising to me: they are two podcast episodes which were deleted long ago and I don't even subscribe to those podcasts anymore. However, for some reasons there seems to be some data of them stuck and I'd like to get rid of that.

Downloading the episodes again and then deleting them would have been the first thing to try, but they are no longer available.
When I edit the iTunes Music Library.xml to remove the entries for those files and the corresponding key from all playlists, that does not help at all.

Since then I've seen at support.apple.com/kb/ht1660 that the relevant information is probably saved in the iTunes Library.itl file, which I cannot edit because it is not using xml. Any suggestions what I could do? I don't want to disable the alert, because generally I'd like to be notified when things go missing.

As stated above, try disabling podcast sync, then syncing the phone without the podcasts and re-enabling podcasts sync again.


Windows 10 stuck on boot mode on mac I try to install Windows 10 on my Mac. After the installation I rebooted my Mac but it got stuck in Windows boot mode like in that picture.

When it gives you the advanced settings option after 2 failed reboots, choose "Restart with Low-Res Video"


Safari - is there a way to set a preferred screen size? As the title says, I would like new windows to open in a set screen size. I believe that the default is that they open in the size of the last window. Sometimes, I want to make a window smaller for some reason, but I want new windows to open as usual. Is there a shell script/command to accomplish this? Thanks

I use the following bookmark, which you can create as many as needed, to resize my safari window to a specific size:

javascript:self.moveTo(0,0);self.resizeTo(1250,screen.availHeight);

This moves the window to the far left, top and then makes the width 1250 pixels and makes the hight fill to the available (limited by the dock hight, if not hidden).

To use, bookmark any page and then edit the address with the code above.

Every now and again, an update to safari will break this, and then it'll work again after a subsequent update.


Tilde/backtick is coming out as section/plus-minus on my external keyboard In my external keyboard only, the tilde/backtick key produces   section/plus-minus symbols. On the internal keyboard, they work fine. (Hebrew/English keyboards).

This problem has been discussed 1 2. However, the solutions do not work. I tried re-recognizing the keyboard in Settings and defining mappings in Karabiner as in the screenshot below, but these do not fix the problem.

You can probably find backpack/tilde on the topmost leftmost key instead of where you expect it.

Here is a custom layout made with Ukelele which may put it back where you want it.


I cannot delete one text message at a time In iOS 8, I can't delete one single text. I can delete the whole conversation, but not a single text.

THe method changed with IOS 8.

Hold you finger on the message, and when the "copy | more" bubble appears then pick "more".  THen you will see how to delete one message.


RAZER SYNAPSE issue - binding modifier key only to mouse button is not working I just bought Razer Naga Trinity, I tried to bind any modifier key only to mouse button on the Razer Synapse but it does not work, I hold it and press a key, it only types the key, it should launch the action. I also tried Macro with Command Left Down only on the macro, it behaves like sticky key. Have anyone got this working on their mouse?

EDIT

I was having problem with binding any modifier like mouse buttons 3, 4, 5 in the screenshot.

Thanks for all. I finally resolved my issue, I have to install Karabiner extra software to resolve it. Now I have an issue with mouse scrolling speed too slow but it's ok I can bare with this.

https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/

The option must be checked


Push notifications only work every now and then My iPods push notifications only work every now and then and I'm always on the same router. All my notification settings are turned on but like I said they only work occasionally. Does anyone know how to fix this so they work everyday all the time?

Is your iDevice jailbroken?
If it is you could potentially use Push Doctor to fix the push problems you're having.


How do I change mouse settings instantaneously from Terminal? My school has a bunch of Macs that are always logged in as Guest and have very annoying default settings (natural scrolling, no secondary mouse button, etc), so I am trying to write a terminal script that will change all the settings to my liking. One thing I would like the script to do is set right-clicking on the mouse to the Secondary Button; for some dumb reason, both the left and right buttons are set to Primary Button by default. Is there any way for me to do this from Terminal?

I would also like the script to disable natural scrolling; however, the only terminal command I have found ("defaults write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.swipescrolldirection -bool false" and some variants of the same thing) require the user to log out and back in to take effect. Given that I can manually disable natural scrolling in System Preferences without needing to log out, surely there must be a way to make the change instantaneously from Terminal, right?

Any help on either of these problems would be much appreciated!

AppleScript is a nice way to go !

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal pane "com.apple.preference.mouse"
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    tell checkbox 1 of window 1
        click
    end tell
end tell

It works on Mavericks. It might need some modifications on older OS X because the UI of the mouse preferences changed.


Temperature different of adapter since Mountain Lion (maybe only rMBP related) Since I've got ML (Mountain Lion) installed, I've got the feeling that my adapter (Magsafe-2) is not getting as hot as before?

Since this is my first Macbook, I really wasn't familiar with the adapter's temperature. My rMBP's adapter seemed to get so extensively hot, that I could actually smell it when holding it somewhat close to my face and could almost not keep it for longer period of time in my hand.

Though, since I've got ML installed, it seems my adapter is cooler through charging my Macbook then before. Still, ofcourse, it gets hot, but definitely not as hot as before.

I wondered - though not getting anything worthy out of knowing - if you guys are experiencing this as well?

That's interesting, I a have been running a non-Retina i7 for over a year, Lion OSX, and have found that CPU and GPU get drastically throttled as MagSafe-1 gets hotter and hotter. Nothing unusual I guess but I didn't expect it to impact the performance of the machine.
I may just upgrade to Mountain Lion, hopefully that will fix the throttling!


How can I get rid of extra "Photo Stream" album on iPhone? On my iPhone (and iPad) I have "Photo Stream" enabled for my primary Apple ID (I have others setup for mail, etc).

On my iPad it works fine - I see the one "Photo Stream" button and everything shows up there.

On my iPhone (iPhone 4) there are two "Photo Stream" albums for some reason. One is the correct one with my pictures, and one is blank and when I go into it there is just the message that explains what the stream is and says "No Photos".

If I disable "Photo Stream" temporarily on the phone the album disappears with my pictures, but the blank album remains.

How can I get rid of this blank album?

Yes, you can ! You have to turn it back on, take a picture and wait for it to upload to iCloud. Then you turn it off and and confirm the warning that says that all the pictures will be deleted. The album will then disappear.


Prevent Image Capture from opening when a memory card is inserted Every time I plug in a SD memory card, Image Capture launches, is there a way to disable this? I am running OS X Mavericks.

Your Mac doesn't really know the difference between a Camera and the SD card. It treats them all pretty much the same. So, in the iPhoto Preferences you can select 'Do Nothing' when a camera is connected, and that will stop Image Capture launching.

iPhoto Menu -> Preferences -> General


How to make Powerline fonts work with iTerm2 I have a problem with using Powerline fonts in the iTerm2. I followed the tutorial for installation and I have chosen Hack font in the profile settings (Non-ASCII is set just to make sure). My .zshrc file is here if it helps.

However, the prompt still looks like this

I am running Mojave with ZSH 5.7.1 (I am not sure if any ZSH configuration applies to this issue). Thanks a lot for help

I am not sure about the setup that you did. But the following process worked on my system:

https://medium.com/@elviocavalcante/5-steps-to-improve-your-terminal-appearance-on-mac-osx-f58b20058c84

I suggest you change the theme from default ZSH_THEME="robbyrussell" to ZSH_THEME="agnoster".

The above guideline helped me to get the font in terminal and in iterm2 too


How can I run Windows in a VM using VirtualBox? My image is always permission denied I'm attempting to run a Bootcamp partition in a virtual machine using VirtualBox.  It's a Windows 10 install with latest Bootcamp drivers (which I guess is irrelevant here) and latest version of VirtualBox.

I have created a .vmdk file from my partition using the following command:

$ sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "windows.vmdk" -rawdisk /dev/disk0s3

This created my file successfully.  When I then create my VM using this file as my virtual hard drive I get the following error from within VirtualBox:

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine Win10.

VD: error VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED opening image file '/Users/mike/windows.vmdk' (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).

VD: error VERR_ACCESS_DENIED opening image file '/Users/mike/windows.vmdk' (VERR_ACCESS_DENIED).

Failed to open image '/Users/mike/windows.vmdk' in read-write mode (VERR_ACCESS_DENIED).

AHCI: Failed to attach drive to Port0 (VERR_ACCESS_DENIED).

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: ConsoleWrap
Interface: IConsole {872da645-4a9b-1727-bee2-5585105b9eed}

I have also done the following:

chmod 0777 windows.vmdk
chown mike:staff windows.vmdk
sudo chmod 0777 /dev/disk0s3 (my bootcamp partition)
I've even tried chown mike:staff /dev/disk0s3

There are a few posts online that suggest ticking the Use Host I/O Cache box under the Storage area of the VirtualBox GUI.  Doing this doesn't error VirtualBox, but just gives me a black screen stating:

A disk readerror occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

I'd imagine running a VM from a partition is a reasonably common use-case, so would appreciate any help.  I'm on MacOS 10.14 (Mojave).

Most users wishing to do what you want to do purchase VM Fusion or Parallels.

VirtualBox is not really designed for what you are trying to do. Think of what would happen if you were to clone your Windows partition to another entirely different PC. You should not expect Windows to boot because you did not copy any boot code to the new PC. If you were to fix this problem, then you should expect there to be problems with the fact that the hardware peripherals would be different. I suppose you could have generalized Windows before the copy, then installed new drivers after booting Windows on the new PC, but generalization was not meant to be performed after Windows is in use. Anyway, this what you are attempting to do by booting a Boot Camp install of Windows in VirtualBox.

Below are some items you may need to worry about.

You have no boot code. You can use the Windows ISO file to create boot code, but the procedure depends on whether you are going to BIOS or EFI boot.
You have not mentioned if VirtualBox is set to boot the same way. In other words, will you need to BIOS or EFI boot in VirtualBox?
You may need to run "C:\Windows\System32\sysprep" to generalize before booting in VirtualBox.

I assume you entered the commands given below.

sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "windows.vmdk" -rawdisk /dev/disk0s3
sudo chown mike:staff windows.vmdk

I would have entered the commands given below.

sudo vboxmanage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "windows.vmdk" -rawdisk  /dev/disk0 -partitions 3
sudo  chown  $USER  windows*.vmdk

  Note: You will need to enter the command diskutil unmount disk0s3 immediately before starting the virtual machine.


Can I make the mouse hairpin in the terminal more visible? It often takes me a while to find the mouse crosshair when working with Terminal.app. Is there a way to make it more visible?

There's an app available to download called Mouse Locator which will put green markers around your cursor if you press a hotkey.  That might help you but I don't know if it's still a working program under current OS X releases.


Android File Transfer I installed the "Android File Transfer" to move some data. So far so good.

But there is one issue annoying me. Every time I connect my mobile via USB, the Mac changes to the main desktop and opens the "File Transfer" app.

So, is there a possibility to bear it down? I couldn't find any option to change it.
...the connection is not very stable, so every time I touch my mobile it dis- and reconnect and push the window.

You can disable the auto start of Android File Transfer, and only open it in case you need it.

Here are the steps you need to do:

Open up User & Groups and remove Android File Transfer from the Login Items
remove the agent from Google's app's library: rm -r ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Android\ File\ Transfer/Android\ File\ Transfer\ Agent.app
remove the backup agent from Google's app: rm -r /Applications/Android\ File\ Transfer.app/Contents/Resources/Android\ File\ Transfer\ Agent.app

The removing steps are needed, as otherwise the app will unfortunately reinstall itself to the login items the next time you start it. Also instead of removing, you can just move them away for backup in case you might need them.

After doing these steps the app will not start when you connect a phone, and you need to open it manually (CMD+Space plus start typing "Android File Transfer") when required.


Is there a way to hide all file extensions in OS X? Is there any way to globally hide every single file extension in OS X? I've seen the option in the Get Info menu to hide the selected file's extension, but I'd like to never see a file extension unless I chose to.

In the Finder, selected the Preferences menu item from the Finder menu. Click the Advanced Tab. Make sure to un-check Show all filename extensions. Close the window.

I had thought this was unset by default, but perhaps not.


Is it possible to configure an iOS device to remember credentials for a Wifi SSID but NOT auto-join it? I want to:

leave Wifi enabled on the device
Make iOS remember the password for SSID A (e.g. Private corporate network)
Make iOS never connect to SSID A silently

This allows the following flow:

Manually connect to SSID A from the Wifi menu
Upon disconnecting from SSID A, require step 4 prior to re-connecting to SSID A

Example: By default, upon entering the range of SSID A, using the iOS device continues to use either built in cellular or SSID B. After step 4 above and until the end of the day, the device will be on the network.

For now the workarounds are:

Switch Wifi off when at work. Failure point: Forget to do it in the morning, leading to use of the network when not intending to. Further cons: consumes LTE bandwidth unnecessarily, and disables Wifi (which would disable e.g. tethering)
Forget SSID A in the menu. Dealbreaking pain point: have to use a clipboard manager or other insecure tools or brain power to restore the password for SSID A when actually required to connect.

There's isn't a great solution but one possible workaround is to set SSID A to use a non routing static IP and just switch it back to DHCP whenever you actually want to use it. Just click the circled i to the right of the network name and click the Static toggle.

You'll need to enter a valid (but non functional) static IP and Subnet Mask (I tested with 10.1.1.1 and 255.0.0.0) or it won't keep the static IP setting. This let's you keep wifi on all the time and never enter your password again.


No Sound from Mac Mini after OS X Server Reinstall I had to reinstall OS X Lion Server 10.7 on my Mac mini (late 2011) due to partition and boot record corruption. Since reinstalling, I have not have sound. The only sound device that shows under Utilities > Sound is "Internal Speaker". Previously, "Headphones" also appeared. I have a Harman Kardon Soundsticks 2.1 sound system. It has only one sound connector. I always plugged it into the green port on the mini. It worked fine. Since reinstalling I have no sound at all. Any ideas out there? Solutions? I've been through the Cmd-P-R deal, reinstalled OS X Lion Server - all to no avail.

Go to ~/Library/Preferences and trash your com.apple.systemsound.plist file. Drag it right into the trash. Empty trash and restart your Mac.

A new plist file will generate automatically, look for the speaker/sound icon in your Finder menu. If that doesn't resolve the issue, try Command ⌘-Option ⌥-P-R again during reboot and make sure you hear the Apple chime at least two times for a full recycle.


Unmounted hard drive times out ejecting or mounting I have a Drobo connected via Firewire to my MBP which is causing me some issues.  Here is the diskutil info:

Device Identifier:        disk2s2
   Device Node:              /dev/disk2s2
   Whole:                    No
   Part of Whole:            disk2
   Device / Media Name:      MacDrobo

   Volume Name:              Mac Drobo

   Mounted:                  No

   File System Personality:  HFS+
   Type (Bundle):            hfs
   Name (User Visible):      Mac OS Extended
   Journal:                  Unknown (not mounted)
   Owners:                   Disabled

   Partition Type:           Apple_HFS
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 FireWire
   SMART Status:             Not Supported
   Volume UUID:              A97C9EAF-E18F-3BE3-80CD-8A8C6FB6E8E7
   Disk / Partition UUID:    3776B4B3-8530-495E-A413-AFB0A221281B

   Total Size:               2.2 TB (2200000000000 Bytes) (exactly 4296875000 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        0 B (0 Bytes) (exactly 0 512-Byte-Units)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (not mounted)

   Device Location:          External
   Removable Media:          No

It is not mounted but it is still very active in reading and writing...I can hear it thrashing about.  When I try to eject or mount I get time out errors, when I try to run verifyVolume, I get a bit more of a complex error.

MacTravis:~ travis$ Sudo diskutil eject disk2
  Volume timed out while waiting to eject

MacTravis:~ travis$ Sudo diskutil mount ReadOnly disk2
  Volume on disk2 timed out waiting to mount

MacTravis:~ travis$ Sudo diskutil verifyVolume disk2s2
  Started file system verification on disk2s2 Mac Drobo
  Verifying file system
  File system check exit code is 8
  Error: -69845: File system verify or repair failed
  Underlying error: 8: POSIX reports: Exec format error

I assume my computer is doing something in the background as when I unplug the drive it stops being active, and becomes active again when I plug it back in.  I have tried using Disk Utility to see what is up but if the drive is plugged in then DU never loads completely, if its open then I plug in the drive nothing shows up.  Is there any way to see what is going on with the drive, if OS X is fixing it in the background, or what is going on?

Looking at the total size of the disk I suppose you are hit by the 2.2 TB limit of MBR partition tables.

  Since block addresses and sizes are stored in the partition table of an MBR using 32 bits, the maximum size as well as the highest start address of a partition using drives that have 512-byte sectors (actual or emulated) cannot exceed 2 TiB−512 bytes (2,199,023,255,040 bytes or 4,294,967,295 (2^32−1) sectors × 512 (2^9) bytes per sector). Alleviating this capacity limitation was one of the prime motivations for the development of the GPT.

So repartition the disk with a GPT partition table.


How to disable service workers in Safari? Is there a way to disable Service Workers completely in Safari (as a user)?

This is for Safari 12.0.3, the experimental feature set is different in different Safari versions.

Enable the Safari developer menu. Safari Preferences > "Advanced" pref pane > "Show Develop menu in menu bar" checkbox at the bottom.

Then, in Develop menu, go to "Experimental Features" menu item and disable "Service Workers" in the sub menu.


How do I delete imap email accounts without opening Mail After Yosemite update Mail crashes as soon as I open with an 'Absolute path' error. I've tried all the usual things

removing the Envelop Index (hangs without crashing)
turning off all the mail accounts in System Preferences

The error message indicates its an issue with some IMAP account but I still have a POP account that I need to keep, so I can't just delete the ~/Library/Mail folder. Is there a way to delete the IMAP accounts by editing the plist files.

Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'Absolute path passed into -[MFIMAPAccount mailboxForRelativePath:isFilesystemPath:create:]: //Archive'
abort() called

Go to Settings -> Internet Accounts -> Delete / Disable your email.


iPhone not turning on, not responding to hard reset, not responding to charger About 2 days ago, my iPhone 6 decided to stop working.

I tried to see what the error was but it decided not to respond to a charger, it would not respond to a hard reset or even when I tried to connect to iTunes.

I took it into a repair store, and they said when they tried several different things, like replacing battery, LCD, and even screen, it would not turn on.

I am getting a bit worried as there were a lot of important things that I had on that phone that cannot be recovered as they are specific to that phone and cannot be accessed anywhere else.

Please let me know any tips and anything I can do to try and make it work again.

I would get a quote and send the device in to a microsoldering capable repair shop. These are highly specialized and not the typical, fix broken screen type shops.

They can and will fix liquid damage / no power on situations as well as make the system healthy enough in a lab setting to get you your data back and not spend even more money fixing it to run permanently.

https://www.microsolderingrepairs.com/blog/iphonedatarecovery

No power / data recovery are generally less than $250 for non-liquid damaged phones and maybe double that if there is liquid damage / corrosion to be remediated.

You’ll possibly pay more than going to shops like you visited, but the more capable shops have much more expensive tools and skills and can recover data that’s far too gone for a place that specializes on the easy repairs. These sort of shops are generally less expensive than full blown data recovery shops, but you might get a couple quotes before sending it off - just be sure what diagnostic fee you owe and when you are charged if they do or don’t get your data back.


iPhone: how to see if GPS is working Is there a way where I can see if GPS is working? Or what the location service is using right now and why it is not using GPS?

(Because the location service has become very inaccurate after a recent jailbreak I did and I was wondering how I can check if it is really not working anymore or if I just had bad luck.)

I'm guessing turning off WiFi, standing outside and opening up Maps.app would do the trick, if it correctly displays where you are it works, if it doesn't... it doesn't.


Looking for an iPhone app or script that turns off “Cellular Data” when on 2G and then BACK ON when on 3G As some of you might know, 2G (GSM) or 2.5G (GSM/Edge) does not support data and calls at the same time. Using the Internet while on 2.5G and lower causes incoming calls be bounced.

3G does support data and calls at the same time by pausing Data while a call is received.

I am an architect, working in and around buildings under construction.

I usually get a low (2G) signal when I enter one and a good (3G) signal when I come out. Together with all the apps I have, the phone finds itself using my Internet connection when on GSM, causing calls to be dropped. I'm effectively unreachable.

I don't want to use 2G internet, only 3G. I would like cellular data to be on only when on 3G. My phone calls take priority over Internet connectivity when on 2G.

A left field suggestion:

Turn off cellular data and use a Mifi device (such as the Huawei E585) for your internet connection.
Yes this does mean another device and another SIM card, but you may be OK with that.

I've used this combination with an iPhone and it works really well.
You can leave the Mifi in your pocket, so forget it's even there
(just remember to charge it!).
You get other benefits, for example it means using a laptop or tablet "in the field" is possible also as they'll be net-connected.


Mail.app accidentally deleted (OS X 5.8) How do I restore Mail.app after it was accidentally deleted?

I have complete time machine backup of system, but can't find Mail.app in it.

I tried optional install from original disks, but Mail.app was not recognized on there -  possibly because it is out of date?

I also tried updating Mail.app on top of original Mail.app, but that failed with an error message something like:

  "Update couldn't recognize original app."

The only way to re-install applications that are on your computer is to use your Mac OS X Install DVD (if your computer is running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or below), or Internet Recovery (if you are using OS X Lion or Mountain Lion).

In your case, it's Mac OS X Leopard. This support webpage from Apple should do the trick.


ipod touch 4th gen doesn't turn on My ipod touch 4th gen has this CYDIA, I accidentally uninstalled one file from it. After that, the ipod crashed and never turned on since then.

It turns on (showing apple logo) for 10 seconds, then turns off. After 2 seconds, it turns on again. Whole process repeats. Until battery's exhausted.

I tried this:

Hold the power button for 2 sec. Without letting go of the power button, press and hold the home button for 10 sec. Let go of the power button but not the home button for another 10 sec.

It connects the ipod to itunes, itunes detects the ipod. However, it has an error message " the ipod software update server could not be contacted".

You have turned your iPod in DFU mode, now you can do one of the following things to turn on your iPod touch back

Press power and home button of your iPod simultaneously for 10 sec. Then press power button until apple logo appears on screen. If this does not works then follow step 2.
Take your iPod again to DFU mode using your step -->

a. Hold the power button for 2 sec. Without letting go of the power button, press and hold the home button for 10 sec. Let go of the power button but not the home button for another 10 sec.

b. Then by pressing the home button connect your iPod to the iTunes. It will ask for restore. Do the Restore.


Keeping MacBook Pro on Sleep Mode for days I usually use my MacBook Pro for programming purposes and is mostly open about 14 hours a day, with 2-3 hours being plugged in until the charging is complete and then I disconnect from power afterwards to cycle the battery. When I leave for home, I just put the machine on Sleep Mode by closing the lid and not actually shutting it down. I only shut it down every Friday for the weekend.

Will this harm my MacBook Pro in some way? Will the battery life get reduced if this is done? It is also connected to Wi-Fi the whole week, if that matters.

This is pretty close to my typical MacBook Air usage. Luckily, it seems that we're on track:

  For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time. An ideal use would be a commuter who uses her notebook on the train, then plugs it in at the office to charge. This keeps the battery juices flowing.

See Apple's page on laptop batteries for lots more information: apple.com

Keep in mind that MacBook batteries are estimated to live through around 1000 charge-discharge cycles before their max capacity drops to 80% (same source). Try to approximate the ideal scenario Apple describes, and avoid running the battery to near-zero between every charge.


iMac High Sierra-Windows 10 So, I installed Windows 10 on iMac mid 2011. This is unsupported, but I did it. And, what I did was install it over the main partition. Now I do not know how to go back to macOS. Any help? I beg you to help me! I tried booting a USB with High Sierra installation, but it is not showing up!

If you installed over the main partition, then I would assume you will not be able to go back and boot macOS. You will need to reinstall macOS. Windows should be installed to BIOS boot. If you did this, then you probably will have to erase the entire drive before reinstalling macOS. If you installed Windows to EFI boot, then you will not have to, but you should since the Window Support Software was designed for BIOS booting Windows.


How to uninstall hide.me VPN? I'd like to uninstall Hide.me VPN (e.g. following the instructions on https://www.uninstallmacapp.com/hideme-1-12-removal.html), but I can't seem to get rid of it.

Firstly, I open the 'task manager', but I don't see Hide.me VPN among applications running:

Then I go to Finder > Applications, right-click on 'hide.me VPN' can choose "Move to trash". However, I get an error message that the program is open:

How do I 'really' close Hide.me VPN in order to uninstall it?

There is still a process from Hide.me running in the background. You need to quit that process first before you can remove the app.

Open Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities)
Select All Processes on the drop-down menu at the top of the window.
Select the process(es) associated with Hide.me in the list
Click Quit Process icon in the left corner of the window
Click Quit in the pop-up dialog box (if that doesn’t work, then try Force Quit).


Delete calendar event from iPhone I received an e-mail with an .ics attachment and I opened it on my iPhone. I opened the attachment and added it to my calendar. Now I want to delete the event. How do I do that?

More Details:
When I open most entries in the Calendar app, they have an "Edit" button in the upper-right, and then a "Delete Event" button on the Edit screen. But not this Calendar entry.

I'm guessing that I can sync to my Mac and delete it from there, but that's not a good option since

I'm at work
I don't use my Mac very often
Deleting an entry from the calendar shouldn't require a 5 minute process

Update: Not only am I unable to edit anything about the event, but I can't even change the Alert time. There must be some way to edit events received via .ics.

Was it added to a calendar? Or as a calendar?

Go into the Settings under Mail, Contacts, Calendars and see if it was added as a full calendar.


iOS 5 or iOS 4 performance I have an 3rd generation iPod Touch with iOS 4.0 installed and running smoothly. Should I update to iOS 5 and will it run as smooth as iOS 4?

No rush. If you're having a smooth experience with OS 4 for now, keep using that OS and wait a few updates... the first version (in this case 5.0) always has a few bumps. I know I have!

But if you need any one of the new gadgets (like iCloud, or iMessage), then you can switch anytime. Just make sure you do a full sync before with your iTunes (the one the iPod has always been synched to) and do a restore, not an update. It'll clean up the whole iPod and start fresh, then sync your personal data. Installing a fresh OS from time to time really does help... :-)


Repairing Ipad mini 3 wifi My ipad wifi "switch" does not work, even after a complete reinstall. Is this something I could buy a spare part and repair my self?

The wifi 'switch' is in the iOS software, and it is certainly not a discrete physical object that can be replaced.

From the iFixit teardown of this particular iPad, you can see that replacing the wi-fi chip itself is next to impossible to repair or replace. iPad logic boards are replaced in their entirety, and individual modules (like wi-fi chips) cannot be swapped.


Can Automator's 'find finder items' ignore subfolders when searching? I am using the Apple Automator to build a simple program that opens all the documents that belong to a project. All files are in the same folder and can be identified by the first characters of the file name; I am using the 'Find finder items'-action to find all these files, and then open them. However, there also files with similar names in a subfolder, that I do not want to open.

I would like the action to search only in the main folder, and to disregard the content of any subfolders. Is there a way to do this in Automator?

yes use the action "Ask for Folder Contents" (i hope its called like that on an English OS - I'm currently on a German one there it is called "Ordnerinhalt abfragen"), there you can say if you also wanna use subfolders or not.

I added a demo workflow for you.

Demo Workflow


How to sync Notes over iCloud? I am having trouble getting my iPhone to see the notes that are stored on my iCloud account.

So, my computer is running OS X Lion, on System Preferences > iCloud the "Mail and Notes" option is checked, and using the Mail app I can see my notes under the "iCloud" folder. However, these notes do not appear when I open the Notes app on the iPhone.

Now on my phone (3GS running iOS 5.1) I have on Settings > iCloud all options activated (including Mail and Notes). If I go to "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" I also see there my iCloud account registered, and Notes is as well selected. In Settings > Notes I only get an option to select the Font.

What am I missing? What should I do so that the Notes app on the iPhone is able to show my iCloud notes?

Update: Probably related to this issue, I've noticed that even if the phone is set to sync with iCloud mail as well, it only "sees" my gmail and work accounts/inboxes, and not the iCloud inbox. What could be the problem?

Nevermind, I managed to get it working following the advise of another discussion thread on the Apple forums; namely:

  Same thing happend to me on my 3gs, i went to Settings...iCloud...Delete Account
  then signed in again to add it. The iCloud inbox was displayed afterwards.

This also fixed the problem of notes, which now show up properly on the notes application.


Find, select and move/copy multiple files at once via Terminal I looked for relevant posts extensively before writing but I apologise if it has been already asked and solved.

I'd need to find, select and move/copy some files from a folder starting from a list in a text file (but could also paste it directly if needed).

I've found some posts that could've helped and more precisely the ones at the following link: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29311880/finding-files-from-list-and-copying-them-into-new-directory

This seems perfect but I've got a permission error (cp: /found_files: Permission denied) and couldn't find a work around (tried sudo and many other combinations).

This one seemed fine as well: Find multiple files at once via Terminal. It works very well to find the files but I couldn't find a way to select them in order to be able to move/copy them to a new directory.

Tried all this on macOS Sierra 10.12.6 with no special configurations or changes in the Terminal.

You get cp: /found_files: Permission denied because the script in the linked post, in its current form, is written to copy the listed files to the /found_files directory. The /found_files directory doesn't exist on your Mac and cp interprets found_files as a file located in /. Since / is not writable, you get the permission error.

I modified the script so that it works with other destination directories and expanded it to support copying and moving files:

Launch Terminal. Select a directory where you save your scripts, for example ~/bin:

cd ~/bin

Create a file named cplist.sh with these contents:

#!/bin/bash

source_dir="$1"
destination_dir="$2"
file_list="$3"

# Sanity checks
if [[ $# -ne 3 ]]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 <source dir> <target dir> <file list>"
    exit 0
fi
if [[ ! -d "$source_dir" ]]; then
    echo "$0: '$source_dir' could not be found"
    exit 1
fi
if [[ ! -d "$destination_dir" ]]; then
    echo "$0: '$destination_dir' could not be found"
    exit 1
fi
if [[ ! -f "$file_list" ]]; then
    echo "$0: '$file_list' could not be found"
    exit 1
fi

# Copy or move?
if [[ $(basename $0) == "mvlist.sh" ]]; then
    command="mv"
    action="Moving"
else
    command="cp -a"
    action="Copying"
fi

# Copy files
while read filename
do
    echo "$action file '$filename'"
    if [[ -f "$source_dir/$filename" ]]; then
        find "$source_dir" -name "$filename" -exec $command "{}" "$destination_dir" \;
    else
        echo "File '$filename' is listed in '$file_list' but could not be found"
    fi
done < "$file_list"

Make the file executable:

chmod a+x cplist.sh

Link the file to mvlist.sh:

ln -s cplist.sh mvlist.sh

To copy a set of files, use cplist.sh as follows:

./cplist.sh <source dir> <destination dir> <file list>

where <file list> is a text file that contains file names, for example:

file 1.pdf
file 2.pdf
...

To move a set of files, use mvlist.sh as follows:

./mvlist.sh <source dir> <destination dir> <file list>

For example:

 ./mvlist.sh
 Usage: ./mvlist.sh <source dir> <target dir> <file list>

 ./mvlist.sh /tmp/ /nonexistentfolder filelist.txt
 ./mvlist.sh: '/nonexistentfolder' could not be found

 ./mvlist.sh /tmp/source/ /tmp/destination filelist.txt
 Moving file 'file 1.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 2.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 3.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 4.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 5.pdf'
 Moving file 'file a.pdf'
 File 'file a.pdf' is listed in 'filelist.txt' but could not be found
 Moving file 'file 6.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 7.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 8.pdf'
 Moving file 'file 9.pdf'


iMessage Freezes/Hangs when sending screen shots Worked fine sending 114k file of .png screen-shot; a 254k file freezes it dead.

So bad that I couldn't open up a tab in Safari. I suspect Evil Forces, but would be amused to learn it's a known issue.

Tested further just now sending 169k jpg file: hung so badly that again couldn't type here in Safari. Like it's sucking up all the good electrons and puppies.

Kernel panic? And why?

I had similar problem just recently. Here is what I did.

follow this to fix the problem

~/Library/Preferences

delete com.apple.ichat.plist


How do I get my Downloads files back on my Mac? I didn't lose the Downloads folder, just the files. When I clicked inside the folder, poof! Everything just disappeared, leaving nothing but an empty Downloads folder. They're not in Trash. When I do Command-R and load an older backup. Same thing! It shows me the files are there, but when I click to enter the folder, everything inside Downloads disappears, again.

I've lost the Downloads folder itself a few times before and was always able to drag it back into the window. Now the problem has a new wrinkle. Dang it! Anybody have a solution?

$ ls ~
Desktop
Documents
Downloads
DownloadsTHAT'S THE WAY THE WIND BLOWS BY JOHN LATINI, YPSILANTI, MI
Dropbox
Library
Movies
Music
Pictures
Public
hewletts 2018.dvdcrtproj
iCloud Drive (Archive)

$ ls ~/Downloads
~$2018_ KATHYFORSTE.docx

Harrys-iMac:~ harryhewlett$ ls ~/Downloads
Downloads/
DownloadsTHAT'S THE WAY THE WIND BLOWS BY JOHN LATINI, YPSILANTI, MI/
Harrys-iMac:~ harryhewlett$ ls ~/Downloads
Downloads/
DownloadsTHAT'S THE WAY THE WIND BLOWS BY JOHN LATINI, YPSILANTI, MI/
Harrys-iMac:~ harryhewlett$ ls ~/Downloads

Harrys-iMac:~ harryhewlett$ ls -lF ~
total 0
drwx------@  4 harryhewlett  staff   128 Dec 20 06:39 Desktop/
drwx------@ 14 harryhewlett  staff   448 Feb  2  2018 Documents/
drwx------+  5 harryhewlett  staff   160 Dec 20 06:44 Downloads/
drwxr-xr-x   3 harryhewlett  staff    96 Dec  5 18:45 DownloadsTHAT'S THE WAY THE WIND BLOWS BY JOHN LATINI, YPSILANTI, MI/
drwx------@ 43 harryhewlett  staff  1376 Dec 20 06:43 Dropbox/
drwx------@ 71 harryhewlett  staff  2272 Dec 24 04:09 Library/
drwx------+ 12 harryhewlett  staff   384 Sep 15 16:12 Movies/
drwx------+ 10 harryhewlett  staff   320 Oct 19 12:39 Music/
drwx------+ 14 harryhewlett  staff   448 Nov  2 22:22 Pictures/
drwxr-xr-x+  5 harryhewlett  staff   160 Jun 29  2015 Public/
drwxr-xr-x@ 10 harryhewlett  staff   320 Jun 14  2018 hewletts 2018.dvdcrtproj/
drwxr-xr-x  21 harryhewlett  staff   672 Feb  2  2018 iCloud Drive (Archive)/
Harrys-iMac:~ harryhewlett$
Harrys-iMac:~ harryhewlett$ ls -lF ~/Downloads
total 8
-rw-r--r--@ 1 harryhewlett  staff  162 Oct 17 15:33 ~$2018_ KATHYFORSTE.docx
Harrys-iMac:~ harryhewlett$

Harrys-iMac:~ harryhewlett$ ls -l ~/Downloads*
/Users/harryhewlett/Downloads:
total 8
-rw-r--r--@ 1 harryhewlett  staff  162 Oct 17 15:33 ~$2018_ KATHYFORSTE.docx

/Users/harryhewlett/DownloadsTHAT'S THE WAY THE WIND BLOWS BY JOHN LATINI, YPSILANTI, MI:
Harrys-iMac:~ harryhewlett$

Open Terminal by pressing Command + Spacebar and typing terminal.

Press Enter.

Type cd ~/Downloads then press Enter.

Type open . then press Enter.


How to fix macOS Sierra language switching bug? Changing languages input does not work, you can see the video.

Go to system preferences/Siri and turn off Siri and make sure that the keyboard shortcut is set to None, and then restart.


Mark up tool for Notes in macOS Is there a way to use the mark up tool in notes? Or something that works like that would? I want to be able to put shapes with text on top of copy pasted images. So I want to use a shape, be able to type text on the shape then put it on top of a image.

With the image inserted in Notes, choose the disclosure arrow from the top-right of the image (shown on hover) and select Markup.

From here you have access to the standard markup tools including shapes and text.


Open folder in graphical file manager I used to use nautilus . command to open the graphical folder / file viewer in red hat linux. Now I moved to mac and it seems that there is no nautilus support in it. Is there any equivalent command that I can use. My scenario is like this, I open a Terminal, go to the folder I want let's say /Users/user1/myapps and I do want to use a command that by typing it in Terminal, it bring me the graphical folder / files view where I am.

Yes, there's a command for this, just type:

open .

open is the command line equivalent of double clicking a file or directory in the Finder. open either starts the standard application associated with the filesystem object provided as argument or, when used with option -a , the application specified.

open has some other interesting options, see man open for more information.


How to calculate max with condition in Numbers? How can I calculate max with condition in Numbers?

In other words, I want something like maxifs, which operates max operation instead of sum operation for sumifs.

Numbers version 3 on Mac and the equivalent web app/ios app do not have that level of abstraction, but on a Mac, Numbers is fairly scriptable in powerful ways.

I would probably dump the data into a SQLite database if your comment means you are familiar with that. This is documented at the wonderful OS X Automation site.

https://iworkautomation.com/numbers/sqlite-make.html

You could also program the logic you wanted in Applescript or possible the new javascript bridge for AppleScript on later OS X versions. Here is an example of complicated logic used to format cells. You could likely adapt that to process the data and then write the results to a new table.

https://iworkautomation.com/numbers/examples-highlight-intersection.html

It's not the same, but it would let you use numbers and not Excel for Mac.


Images centered on safari Is there a way (preferably stable —doesn't matter if it's difficult to configure— but you forget about it once done) to make Safari displaying images centered?

I mean, if you are viewing an image www.blah.blah/blah.png (or .jpeg, or .svg, or any image), Safari aligns it at the left top corner. I would like it to be centered on the screen. Is that possible?

Building on lhf’s comment above, when you view an image in Safari it’s actually still HTML under the surface, so it’s possible to apply a custom stylesheet. This style declaration should do what you want. I've tested it in Safari 6.

html > body > img:first-child:last-of-type { display: block; margin: 0 auto; }

You'll need to save that line as a file with the extension ‘.css’, then choose it via Safari's Preferences → Advanced → Style sheet setting.

Here's the logic I used to come up with the code.

  If there is an <img> element that is:

  a direct child of a <body> element, which is itself a direct child of an <html> element
  the first element within the <body> element
  the last element of that type (i.e. <img>) within the <body> element

  …then center it by setting the side margins to be calculated automatically.

It's very unlikely (though not impossible) that you could encounter a page with only one image on it that happens to be the first element on the page, in which case this rule would also apply. Other than that it should work as you intend.


Re-mapping tilde ~ to escape with hidutil, hex code is wrong on technical note? I want to map my esc key to ~ tilde.

Using this reference: How do I remap a key in macOS Sierra, e.g., Right Alt to Right Control?

I found this technical note

Using this code:

hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping":
    [{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000029,
    "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000032}]}'

The problem is the escape key outputs \| and not ~.  I thought that maybe a typo resulted in the codes being swiched.  so I also tried 0x31, 0x32, 0x33, 0x34, 0x35.

BOTH 0x32 and 0x31 result in \| back slash char...  Does anyone know the correct code to use for the tilde ~ key, that one you use to go to the home dir. Thanks

Edit:  langue is US English, Mac OS 10.14,

So i thought I tried 35, but i guess i missed it.

The `~ key is 35.

So just to be clear this [technical note] Has everything correct however i was confused by the non-Us keyboard vs graveaccent/Tilde names.

~  key is 35

\| key is 31 and 32 (for us keyboards)


Troubleshooting: how to see errors from folder action scripts I am trying to set up a "drop" folder: i.e. A watched folder with an associated Apple Script in "Folder Action Scripts".

The script is fairly simple. It defines a source link (the watched folder) and a destination path (a folder with the same parent as the watched folder) and runs a python script on the dropped file using the two variables defined as python arguments:

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
    set dropFolder to quoted form of POSIX path of "IN/" -- use relative path
    set destinationFolder to quoted form of POSIX path of "OUT/" -- use relative path
    try
        repeat with EachItem in added_items
            set ItemInfo to info for EachItem
            if not folder of ItemInfo then
                set FileExtensionOfItem to name extension of ItemInfo
                if FileExtensionOfItem is "txt" then
                    set theBaseName to my getBaseNameOf(ItemInfo)
                    set pythonArg1 to theBaseName + "/packageElement"
                    set pythonArg2 to destinationFolder
                    set run_cmd to "python parser.py " + pythonArg1 + " " + pythonArg2
                    tell application "Terminal" -- pass file name to python using BASH from within this script
                        activate
                        do script run_cmd
                    end tell
                end if
            end if
        end repeat
    end try
end adding folder items to

There is some problem - likely minor in the script. Or perhaps there is a file permissions error?

I normally would trace my code using some simple technique like display dialog ...; however, I can not see these dialogues if they are run from the watched folder.

My question is this: What tools can we use to troubleshoot a folder action script such as this?

I've found it useful to put the folder action code into a template that can also be run as an applet, droplet, or from the Script Editor.  It can then be used for testing and/or manually run for chosen files:

on run -- applet or from the Script Editor
    doStuff for (choose file with multiple selections allowed)
end run

on open droppedItems -- droplet
    doStuff for droppedItems
end open

on adding folder items to theFolder after receiving newItems -- folder action
    doStuff for newItems
end adding folder items to

to doStuff for someItems -- do stuff with the file items
    try
        repeat with anItem in someItems
            -- whatever
        end repeat
    on error errmess number errnum
        display alert "Error " & errnum message errmess
    end try
end doStuff


How do I prevent Shared Photo stream I have recently bought an iPhone 6s and transferred my 5c to another family member. I have updated both photo libraries of both phones to my Macbook Air. My problem is that all photos appear on each device at any time, and if I delete a photo from any device then it is deleted from them all, (with or without a cable connection). I would like to use the Macbook as a library for both phones, but keep different photos on each phone.
How do I do this without losing any photos now?

You need to set up separate Apple Ids for each user, possibly using Family Sharing to share purchases and other things.

A simple iCloud id, which is what you have, assumes you want everything syncronised between all your devices.


How to run diagnostics on iPhone? My iPhone currently has me stumped. It's an iPhone 6 running the latest iOS. I have a Mac running Yosemite and the latest iTunes. I can't figure out what's wrong, so a diagnostic method would be great. I've no access to a genius bar etc.

Initially the wifi indicator stayed grey. Then there seemed to be weird charging issues. Then it had moments of shutting off (once it even came with a blue screen,) but this may be down to the charging.
This all happened within a few hours.

Then it went to charging with only the apple logo. I assumed I was screwed.

A few days later (I was on vacation when all this went down,) I turned it on and it appeared to be working as normal, albeit with the wifi greyed. It allowed me to make a backup, which was nice.
I reset the network connections - no joy.
I reset the other settings - no joy.
I had to wait until later to completely restore the phone and by that time I was left with an unresponsive phone never making it beyond the apple logo.

I connected to itunes and got nothing until putting it into DFU mode. iTunes picked it up and I tried a restore. Initially I got error 4013, then tried again and got 4005. I keep getting 4005 and can't get the phone off the "connect to iTunes" screen.

Really don't know where my phone is at, so a diagnostics method would be great.

The diagnostic function on an iphone does not appear to have a user-trigged capability.
Apple can invoke this remotely by pushing a Profile to your device, assuming that it can both boot up and is able to join a network.

The profile causes a new item to appear in

Settings ➔ Privacy ➔ Analytics

When you tap on this the tests run and immediately send the results back to a support agent and I presume they‘re recorded in a database somewhere too.


How to set up an iMac not to look for USB Flash drive info during boot up? Short question: is there a way to disable an iMac's USB Flash Drive boot up so that boot up time is faster?

Details:

My iMac has an external USB hub, and it has 3, 4 or sometimes 6 or 7 USB Flash drives plugged into the hub.  But during the boot up of the iMac, there seems to be 20 seconds or 25 seconds before the spinning wheel of the Boot up screen shows up.  During this 20 to 25 seconds, the light of the USB Flash drives can blink for several times.

If I unplug all those USB drives, then the boot up is faster.

Is there a way to tell the iMac not to look for the USB Flash drive info during boot up time?  Maybe it was trying to see if those drives contain any bootable image...  I already set in the System Preference to boot up from the Hard Drive, so maybe there needs to be some extra setting to tell the iMac not to look for any boot info in the USB Flash drive -- is there any way to do that?

Interesting question, but I assume there is no way you can disable the "probing" of attached USB devices on startup. After all, the system has to find out about the characteristics of attached devices, be it sound in/outputs, keyboards, mice or mass storage devices.


Replace a failed disk in a Disk Utility RAID 1 I have LaCie 2big thunderbolt 2-disk device configured as a RAID1 from Disk Utility. One of the drives appears as "failed", so I unmounted the raid, replaced the drive and plugged it all back in.

Now Disk utility reports that one of the slices is missing from the RAID, and it shows my new disk separately on the list to the left.

The "slices", including the missing one, have a lock icon in front of them, and even after dragging my new disk to the list I can't rebuild the raid.

How do I rebuild the raid?

I was unable to find how to rebuild the RAID from disk utility after a couple of hours of research. However, I managed to do it from the command line.

sudo diskutil list  // to get a list of disks. Note the disk number of your new disk (e.g. disk4)
sudo diskutil appleraid list // note the uuid of the raid in question
sudo diskutil appleraid add member disk4 UUID-OF-YOUR-RAID

It will then kick you back to disk utility and start rebuilding the raid :)

Also, if the failed disk remains on the list, you can remove it:

diskutil appleraid remove UUID-OF-FAILED-DISK UUID-OF-RAID


Get nic name and interface via command line? What I am trying to do is to get the interface name and the nic name (description) via command line in OS X.

On Windows the following command gives me the result I am looking for:
wmic nic get name, index (this outputs for example: 11 Realtek blah )

On OS X I would like to see: en0 Realtek as the output.

Thank you for your help and sorry for my explanations (its late at night and my english is not so good)

This isn't a pretty way to do it, but it does get you the info you desire:

system_profiler | grep "Interfaces" -A15

The command is slow, mostly because of how much data system_profiler spews out.  But as a summary:

system_profiler lists loads of info about the system
| is a "pipe" and puts the output of 1 to another command (3)
grep searches for patterns/words, in our case "Interfaces"
The switch -A15 prints out the 15 lines following the match.

Example output:

  Interfaces:
    en0:
      Card Type: AirPort Extreme  (0x14E4, 0xEF)
      Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.100.17)
      MAC Address: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
      Locale: FCC
      Country Code: US
      Supported PHY Modes: 802.11 a/b/g/n
      Supported Channels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 100, 104, 108, 112, 116, 120, 124, 128, 132, 136, 140, 149, 153, 157, 161, 165
      Wake On Wireless: Supported
      AirDrop: Supported
      Status: Connected
      Current Network Information:
        mynetwork:
          PHY Mode: 802.11n
          BSSID: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

You can limit -A15 to a lower number (say 3) to just get the card id and the Firmware version (i.e. That'll be the chipset).  If that is too much info, you can always get some info on your interfaces with ifconfig or network setup -listallhardwareports, but neither includes info about the chipset/manu unless you want to parse it out of the MAC address (first 6 chars, I think).

Otherwise, you could look into installing lspci, but that is probably in the scope of another question.


Fluctuating low/normal headphone volume on iMac Sound was working normally on this pretty new iMac for a few weeks, listening to YouTube when this strange behaviour started:

There is a little pop sound, then suddenly headphone audio goes very quiet (maybe 10% normal volume). There's no change in the indicated volume level (ie, the Mac thinks it's outputting normal volume).

Maybe 30-60 seconds later, another pop and it's back to normal volume.

And then repeat...

It affects the whole system (ie, sound effects), not just Chrome.

Any ideas?

I have this problem. The solution that woks for me is to open Audio MIDI Setup and mute-unmute channels in Output.


Batch read file name and change content creation date I have a lot of photos/videos named: 2012-04-05 19.21.34.jpg

Somehow, the creation date has been completely changed however.

Is there a way to replace the creation date with the info from the filename?

If the naming convention is the same for all files in the same directory, then in Terminal, cd to that directory and use the following compound command:

for f in *.*; do touch -t $(sed -e 's:\.[a-z].*::' -e 's:\.::' -e 's:[- ]::g'<<<"$f") "$f"; done

Explanation of some of the compound command:

for f in *.*; do ...; done - Loop through files.
touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS] - Change the access and modification times to the specified time instead of the current time of day.
$(...) - Command substitution, replaces the command(s) with the result, literally.
sed - Stream editor for filtering and transforming text.

−e script - Add the script to the commands to be executed.
's:\.[a-z].*::' - This strips the file extension in e.g.: 2012-04-05 19.21.34.jpg

Returns: 2012-04-05 19.21.34

's:\.::' -  This removes the first . in e.g.: 2012-04-05 19.21.34

Returns: 2012-04-05 1921.34

's:[- ]::g' - This removes - and the space in e.g.: 2012-04-05 1921.34

Returns: 201204051921.34

Which is the perfect format for the -t option in the touch command.

Please note that the original compound command is formed a bit loose. In other words, it can be written to expressly target .jpg files where the extension is lower case as in your example, e.g.: 2012-04-05 19.21.34.jpg

Replacing the *.* in for f in *.*; do ...; done with: in *.jpg
Replacing the [a-z].* in sed -e 's:\.[a-z].*::' with: jpg

for f in *.jpg; do touch -t $(sed -e 's:\.jpg::' -e 's:\.::' -e 's:[- ]::g'<<<"$f") "$f"; done

Since the -t option is being used with the touch command, any filename that doesn't produce the expected output, the worst case scenario with it written a bit loose is its not going to impact non-target files and will simply error out on those files with:

touch: out of range or illegal time specification: [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]

So, written a bit loose or more targeted, the end results will be the same and, only files with the naming convention of e.g. 2012-04-05 19.21.34.jpg will be touched.

NOTE: Always make sure you have a current backup before wholesale processing files.