Thunderbird not being scaled properly on Retina display when an external display is also connected If I use Thunderbird with only the Retina screen of my MBP it's fine. However, if I connect my MBP to an external display with normal resolution, then Thunderbird won't scale properly according to Retina resolution if I move the app back onto the Retina screen, resulting in the fonts being extremely small. I'm not sure if this is an ubiquitous occurrence only happening in my case. If no, there might have already been a solution to it?

OK it seems to have been caused by a plugin called Theme Font & Size Changer. After I removed this plugin, Thunderbird renders properly.


OS X status bar wifi icon - meaning of bars? On my MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac mini, the status bar includes the standard "radiating sector" wifi icon which you can click on to select a wifi network, or Option-click on to see additional info such as BSSID, Channel, RSSI, transmit rate.  The icon itself show 1, 2, 3 or 4 lines in black to indicate how good the wifi connection is.  My question is this - what do the different numbers of lines indicate?  Is it various thresholds in signal-to-noise ratio?  Transmit speed?  RSSI?  Bit-error rate?

The built-in WIFI Diagnostics app (I'm running Mountain Lion 10.8.4) tells me that RSSI is -65 to -70 dBm, noise is between -85 and -90 dBm, SNR is between 10 and 25, Quality is either Good or Excellent, and Tx Rate is between 1.0 and 11 Mbps.

The reason for asking is that I'm at the end of a pretty poor wifi connection right now, but the wifi icon is constantly showing all 4 lines in solid black!  Why?

RSSI or Received signal strength indication is what is used for the display of the bars.

The higher the number ( closer to 0 ) the better your signal strength.

For Apple devices they used a scale of -100 to 0. But you'll never see 0, or even close. Most people will see a number between about -50 and -80, with around -50 being excellent.

-50 will show all the bars and -90 will show gray bars. Not sure if it will go to -100 since you don't have a signal then ;)

So if you're asking for a scale I think its around 10 to 12.5 RSSI per bar.

While you have a good signal strength, your throughput speed ( Tx Rate ) isn't that fast.

  One method to calculate signal quality is to compute the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). SNR is the signal level (in dBm) minus the noise level (in dBm). Both of these values are typically represented as negative numbers. For example, a signal level of -53dBm and a noise value of -90dBm would yield an SNR of 37dB (i.e., SNR = Signal - Noise = -53 -(-90) = 37)

  The calculated SNR value, as measured from a wireless client, would decrease as the range to the base station increases due to applicable free space loss. Also an increase in RF intereference from microwave ovens, cordless phones, walls, ceilings, etc, which would increase the noise level, would also decrease the overall SNR value.

  SNR Guideline

  40+dB = Excellent signal

  25dB to 40dB = Very good signal

  15dB to 25dB = Low signal

  10dB to 15dB = Very low signal

  5dB to 10dB = Little or no signal

In your case -65 - -90 = 25 or -70 - -85 = 15

So you have a 15db to 25db signal OR as diagnostics calls it SNR which isn't that good but isn't really bad either.


Mulitiple wifi connections on Macbook I have an external, long range, wifi antenna that I use for picking up internet and I also have a wireless nmea network on my boat for my marine instruments.  The problem that I am experiencing is that I must disconnect from my nmea network in order to get anywhere on the internet because when I have both wifi nets active, the Macbook Pro wants to use the nmea network to connect to the internet and it can't.  It doesn't matter which way I connect [internet on airport/nmea on external, or the other way around] the internet is inaccessible when the nmea net is active.

Can I make it so that the internet will only come through the external antenna and the nmea net will only come through airport?

Thanks for any help

If the external wifi device shows up in system preferences network pane, ensure that the internal adapter is above it in the "set service order" dialog (get to this by clicking the gear icon near the bottom left corner and selecting "set service order")

Do note that some external wifi devices do not show up in system preferences or don't obey this setting, so YMMV. If it doesn't show up or doesn't obey the service order, your only option would probably be to change it manually in Terminal.

Note that if you don't have a valid IP address on one of them it will automatically be lower than one that does.

Also, if the two networks also share the same IP scheme (ex 192.168.1.xxx), the computer might be getting confused by this. The way you describe this makes me think this is the problem, but service order is also a distinct possibility.


Display resolution options disappeared after upgrade to Sierra After I upgraded an MBPr to 10.12 Sierra, the 4k external display connected to it shows significantly less options under Display > Resolution > Scaled (pressing Option to see the resolutions). Before, I always used it at resolutions between 2160p and 1080p, generally 1440p, but those are gone now.

What could cause this? How would you troubleshoot it? I'd rather fix it without having to force the resolution in configuration files (like I had to do years ago), but that'd be better than this situation.

Thanks!

I purchase a new MacPro (the little black trash can) and shortly after, chose to install the Sierra update. Upon restart, it would not recognize my Apple Cinema's high res settings. After 3 hours with Apple tech support, they filed a report to Apple engineering who solved my problem with this solution:

Shut down your machine
Unplug all of your monitor's connections (in my case, 2 USB and 1 Thunderbolt) and reconnect using only the ports on the RIGHT side of the Mac.
Voila! They said they are aware of the glitch, are attempting to fix it, and until now, this should work.


File System seems slow/unresponsive: how to measure/test? I'm running a MacBook Pro, Mid 2010 model, that I recently upgraded to Mountain Lion. Around that time, or maybe shortly after, I began noticing some problems that I can only attribute to a general slowdown in accessing files on my hard drive. I have 8GB RAM, and rarely run out, so I don't think it's just a matter of paging vs not paging.

The evidence is reasonably convincing. For example, I'm a Java programmer and use NetBeans. The app I have configured takes over a minute on this machine to run, but only 30 seconds or so on a more-or-less identical setup on a much weaker machine: a late 2008 MacBook with only 4GB RAM. And what it's mostly doing is reading and processing several hundred files of various kinds.

So far, though, the evidence is entirely anecdotal. I'm looking for some kind of test I can run that will see whether my file system/HDD is performing as expected or whether it's something else entirely. Also something I could take to the Apple Store and say, "look this thing says there's a problem." Does such a thing exist?

Edit: another interesting difference. This Mac takes just shy of three minutes to reboot (that's desktop disappearing to desktop reappearing). The older MacBook I'm comparing against (also running 10.8.3) takes just over one minute.

The upgrade might have corrupted your Spotlight index - which would result in the computer constantly reindexing itself (or at least, seeming to). I've heard this is a common occurrence when upgrading through OS X - it happened to me when I upgraded to Lion.
You can destroy the Spotlight index by doing the following:

Go to System Preferences → Spotlight → Privacy and exclude your HD, reboot and then include it again. This should prompt Spotlight to reindex (having destroyed the old index). Source

If that doesn't work, try deleting the Spotlight index manually. This will force it to reindex.

In terminal run man mdutil - this will allow you to verify by using the manual function that this is a command related to spotlight.

Once satisfied run mdutil -i off, switching off the Spotlight index.

Run sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100 This will delete the entire Spotlight cache.
You may prefer to rename it using sudo mv /.Spotlight-V100 /disabledspotlight - it will have the same effect, and gives you a backup.

Run mdutil -i on to restart indexing.

Leave for a few hours while it does its thing.

Some references as to the safety of doing this:

MacRumors Forum Thread: "Is .Spotlight-V100 safe to remove?:
Apple Support Communities Thread: "Removing/deleting Spotlight-V100?"
the Apple Genius that helped me when I was having Spotlight issues.

This could be totally off, and not your problem at all - but on the other hand, it might help.


Will deleting Clash of Clans on an old device affect progression on a new device? My sister transferred her Clash of Clans to her new iPhone. Now I have the old iPhone. I want to download and play Clash of Clans. Will her Clash of Clans be deleted from her new phone if I delete her Clash of Clans on the old phone?

You can delete Clash of Clans from the old phone and it won't affect Clash of Clans on the new phone.

You should create your own Game Center ID to play on the old phone. This will ensure your games don't interfere with her games. See http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4314 for steps to create a Game Center account if you don't know how to do this.


If I block and then unblock someone, will I get their SMS sent while that person was blocked? While using an iPhone 5, iOS 9, if I block someone, wait some time, and then unblock that person, will I receive SMS messages sent to me while that person was blocked?

No, the messages are blocked and they're not stored anywhere.


macOS Mojave Installation I have downloaded macOS Mojave from some other website due to Mac App Store download problem. So now I have to boot the installation file, to do so the help box of the website says I have to press and hold Option key on system restart.

Does this action erase my whole mac hard disk?

No, holding option on restart simply lets you boot off a different device. It doesn't erase anything. But having said that, downloading MacOS updates from anywhere except Apple is very risky, and I wouldn't recommend it. Booting from a different device won't erase your hard disk, but running a rogue installer could.


Create a disk image for recovery In Windows there is a concept of creating a "disk image" for recovery, where one creates a complete copy of the operating system drive so that if the operating system doesn't work, the disk image can be reloaded into the computer, effectively bringing the computer to the state it was when the image was created. This is done with a rescue CD or flash drive - the flash drive is connected, the computer is started up, thereby booting from this drive, and the software on the drive can then reload the disk image from an HDD or wherever that image is located.

I'm looking for the same functionality in a Mac but can't find it, perhaps because I'm using the wrong term for it. I'm new to the Mac world, and the term "disk image" seems to mean something different in that world.

So how do I get this recovery functionality (-recover to a previous state from a completely unusable operating system) with a Mac?

Boot to the Recovery HD by holding ⌘R on boot. Choose Disk Utility, select your system partition from the sidebar, then select File → New Image → Image from "<partition name>". Follow the instructions to choose a save location.

To restore your image, boot to Recovery, create a partition of equal size or larger than the image you saved (if necessary), then select that partition and choose the Restore button on the toolbar.

The options are greyed out in the above screenshots as I am not booted to Recovery.

The Recovery System is part of macOS and should already be a separate partition on your startup disk (hidden in Disk Utility). You can use Internet Recovery with ⌥⌘R on most Macs to perform a NetBoot-esque recovery using Apple's server, for example if you have a fresh HDD that you want to restore on to.

If you want to put a Recovery System on an external disk or secondary internal disk, you can use Recovery Disk Assistant (1 GB required).


How to update PHP syntax file for vim? I notice the syntax file for PHP for vim is quite out-dated.
Does anyone know where is these syntax file located in Mac so I can do the upgrade?

Solved myself,
here are the steps :-

locate vim | grep php
turn up is this file /usr/share/vim/vim73/syntax/php.vim
sudo mv /usr/share/vim/vim73/syntax/php.vim /usr/share/vim/vim73/autoload/phpcomplete.vim.orig as backup
download latest php vim file from http://www.vim.org
untar the tarball
copy the php.vim to /usr/share/vim/vim73/syntax/php.vim


"Minecraft" is damaged and can't be opened on Mountain Lion I'm trying to run Minecraft on Mac OS X Mountain Lion. I downloaded the zip file (link here) from minecraft.net and unzipped it. Double clicked on the icon and it tells me,

  "Minecraft" is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the
  Trash.

I've downloaded it several times and 2 other unzipping tools don't complain. Is it some issue with Mountain Lion? I have Java installed with versions as follows:

$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_37"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_37-b06-434-11M3909)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.12-b01-434, mixed mode)

UPDATE: I did the Show Package Contents for minecraft and ran the JavaLauncher on the jar file, seemed to work. But after minecraft updated itself, I got this error:

      Minecraft has crashed!
      ----------------------

Minecraft has stopped running because it encountered a problem; Failed to start game

A full error report has been saved to /Users/scott/Library/Application Support/minecraft/crash-reports/crash-2012-11-25_10.25.30-client.txt - Please include a copy of that file (Not this screen!) if you report this crash to anyone; without it, they will not be able to help fix the crash :(

--- BEGIN ERROR REPORT 99374f70 --------
Full report at:
/Users/scott/Library/Application Support/minecraft/crash-reports/crash-2012-11-25_10.25.30-client.txt
Please show that file to Mojang, NOT just this screen!

Generated 11/25/12 10:25 AM

-- System Details --
Details:
    Minecraft Version: 1.4.5
    Operating System: Mac OS X (x86_64) version 10.8.2
    Java Version: 1.7.0_09, Oracle Corporation
    Java VM Version: Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (mixed mode), Oracle Corporation
    Memory: 22467144 bytes (21 MB) / 71499776 bytes (68 MB) up to 1060700160 bytes (1011 MB)
    JVM Flags: 0 total;
    AABB Pool Size: 0 (0 bytes; 0 MB) allocated, 0 (0 bytes; 0 MB) used
    Suspicious classes: No suspicious classes found.
    IntCache: cache: 0, tcache: 0, allocated: 0, tallocated: 0
    LWJGL: 2.4.2
    OpenGL: ~~ERROR~~ NullPointerException: null
    Is Modded: Probably not. Jar signature remains and client brand is untouched.
    Type: Client (map_client.txt)
    Texture Pack: ~~ERROR~~ NullPointerException: null
    Profiler Position: N/A (disabled)
    Vec3 Pool Size: ~~ERROR~~ NullPointerException: null[failed to get system properties (java.lang.NullPointerException)]

org.lwjgl.LWJGLException: Could not get the JAWT interface
    at org.lwjgl.opengl.AWTSurfaceLock.lockAndInitHandle(Native Method)
    at org.lwjgl.opengl.AWTSurfaceLock.access$100(AWTSurfaceLock.java:49)
    at org.lwjgl.opengl.AWTSurfaceLock$1.run(AWTSurfaceLock.java:89)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at org.lwjgl.opengl.AWTSurfaceLock.privilegedLockAndInitHandle(AWTSurfaceLock.java:86)
    at org.lwjgl.opengl.AWTSurfaceLock.lockAndGetHandle(AWTSurfaceLock.java:64)
    at org.lwjgl.opengl.MacOSXCanvasPeerInfo.initHandle(MacOSXCanvasPeerInfo.java:53)
    at org.lwjgl.opengl.MacOSXDisplayPeerInfo.doLockAndInitHandle(MacOSXDisplayPeerInfo.java:56)
    at org.lwjgl.opengl.PeerInfo.lockAndGetHandle(PeerInfo.java:85)
    at org.lwjgl.opengl.MacOSXContextImplementation.create(MacOSXContextImplementation.java:47)
    at org.lwjgl.opengl.Context.<init>(Context.java:120)
    at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:858)
    at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:784)
    at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:765)
    at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.a(SourceFile:232)
    at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.run(SourceFile:515)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)
--- END ERROR REPORT adc22a49 ----------

The problem actually was that Mountain Lion gives this nonsensical error message to any app not authorized by Apple or from the App Store, by default. You just have to go to Apple -> System Preferences... -> Security & Privacy -> Allow applications downloaded from:

Then select "Anywhere". Seems like this is useful, but I couldn't get Minecraft to run without disabling this security check.


Why is my MacBook Pro (late 2013, Retina) crashing? So...my Mac had a spinning beach ball of death (SBBOD), and has been having these about once a day for the past two weeks. :-(

I manually turned off my computer (held power key), waited ~3 minutes, then rebooted. I went straight to Console to figure out what was up, since it's the place to look for crash reports.

I looked there under "All Messages", and found the last few messages before my reboot:

Here are the last half-dozen or so lines:

10/1/15 11:26:05.493 AM sharingd[291]: 11:26:05.493 : SDActivityAdvertiser::continuity:didFailToStartAdvertisingOfType:withError: Activity (The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.identityservices.error error 200.))
10/1/15 11:26:07.340 AM sharingd[291]: 11:26:07.339 : SDActivityAdvertiser::continuity:didFailToStartAdvertisingOfType:withError: Activity (The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.identityservices.error error 200.))
10/1/15 11:26:07.340 AM sharingd[291]: 11:26:07.340 : SDActivityAdvertiser::continuity:didFailToStartAdvertisingOfType:withError: Activity (The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.identityservices.error error 200.))
10/1/15 11:26:07.389 AM WindowServer[168]: _CGXGetWindowMovementGroup: Operation on a window 0x19 requiring rights 0x5 by caller Dashboard
10/1/15 11:26:07.389 AM DashboardClient[1057]: _NXMoveWindow: error moving window (1000)
10/1/15 11:26:11.638 AM SubmitDiagInfo[416]: SubmitDiagInfo sucessfully uploaded 117 diagnostic messages
10/1/15 11:26:11.668 AM SubmitDiagInfo[416]: Submitted problem report file:///Users/ME/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/com.apple.MailServiceAgent_2015-09-30-123002_MY-MacBook-Pro.crash
10/1/15 11:26:16.706 AM sharingd[291]: 11:26:16.705 : SDActivityAdvertiser::continuity:didFailToStartAdvertisingOfType:withError: Activity (The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.identityservices.error error 200.))
10/1/15 11:29:12.000 AM bootlog[0]: BOOT_TIME 1443724152 0

(Note: I changed my username to ME and computer name to MY-MacBook-Pro for anonymity.)

This led me to read the crash log at /Users/ME/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/com.apple.MailServiceAgent_2015-09-30-123002_MY-MacBook-Pro.crash. Here are the most relevant pieces of information:

Process:               com.apple.MailServiceAgent [524]
Path:                  /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MailService.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.MailServiceAgent.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.MailServiceAgent
Identifier:            com.apple.MailServiceAgent
Version:               8.2 (2104)
Build Info:            Mail-2104000000000000~1
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           com.apple.MailServiceAgent [524]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2015-09-30 12:30:01.204 -0700
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.10.5 (14F27)
Report Version:        11
Anonymous UUID:        [I am omitting this too :-)]

Time Awake Since Boot: 280 seconds

Crashed Thread:        2  Dispatch queue: NSOperationQueue 0x608000030940 :: NSOperation 0x608000243090 (QOS: LEGACY)

Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'Append action must have account'
terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException
abort() called

What's going on? From the look of it, Mail is crashing because I don't have an account. That makes no sense. If I don't have an account, there shouldn't be activity, right?

How can I fix this, besides creating an account?

Started as a comment, but got too long. You are asking two questions. The "spinning beach ball of death" and the crashing MailServiceAgent are most likely unrelated.

To clarify. The "spinning beach ball of death" doesn't actually indicate that anything is crashing. It indicates that an application (most of the time, temporarily) is not responding to messages from the operating system.

From Apple's Human Interface Guidelines:

  The spinning wait cursor is also standard, but it is displayed
  automatically by the window server when an app can't handle all of the
  events it receives. In general, if an app doesn’t respond for a few
  moments, the spinning wait cursor appears. If the app continues to be
  unresponsive, users often react by force-quitting it.

If you move the cursor around, does the wait cursor still appear if it is over another application or over your desktop? If you ALT+TAB to bring another application to the foreground do you still get the wait cursor? If it only appears over one application then that application alone is having an issue. If it appears over all applications or if you find you are unable to move the cursor or to ALT+TAB to another application then you have a wider system problem rather than a problem with one specific application.


Is it possible to enable "Focus follows Scrolling"? I tried out Focus follows mouse and found too many occasions when it really annoys me. Thinking about the cases when I would need focus follows mouse, I realized that it's only necessary when I'm scrolling in a non-active window.

So: Is there the possibility of having the focus switch to a window in that I scroll? Either via some setting or external application?

I find that many applications already behave this way.  At least with a trackpad.

If I am working in this window, responding to your comment, and I hover over another Safari window, OR over my iTunes window, I can scroll without clicking on the other window.

My computer is not set to Focus follows mouse.

It may well be that some applications do not support this...

Do you have a specific set of apps in mind?


High CPU runs in launchd My fan on my Mac has been running all the time. I did google some solution for this problem. However, I didn't see any error on the system.log
Could anybody have any better recommendation for my Mac.

My best guess would be that launchd is trying to launch something that is failing  and it's just trying over and over and over again. I remember seeing something similar before.

First thing I'd recommend is downloading and running EtreCheck. Amongst other things this will look at all your launch agents and launch daemons scripts and point out any that have missing components that might result in this repeated behaviour.

Look for items highlighted in red like in the screenshot below.


How do I get different colors for directories, etc. in iTerm2? I have a new MacBookPro, and I installed the latest release of iTerm2.

Even after I imported various color schemes, I notice that they just change the color of the text and background only.

What I was expecting to see were different colors for files VS directories, VS hidden files, etc etc. How do I do that on iTerm2?

A related question is how do I actually specify what I want the colors of directories, files, etc to be?

Thanks

You have to do two things:

set the LSCOLORS environment variable
create an alias for ls so that it shows colors by default

In your ~/.bash_profile add the following:

export LSCOLORS="EHfxcxdxBxegecabagacad"

alias ls='ls -lGH'        <-----This shows in list format, follow symlinks colorized

The the colors are set by each bit above; the first being foreground and the second being background.   The first two characters refer to directories having a bold blue foreground and a light grey background.

However, there's a great online utility to see what each of the colors mean and look like in real time.  It will even generate the "code" for you.  (I am not affiliated with this at all).  It will work in both MacOS/FreeBSD and Linux.  Make sure you select the BSD option for macOS.

LSCOLORS Calculator

The order of the attributes are as follows:

1.   directory
2.   symbolic link
3.   socket
4.   pipe
5.   executable
6.   block special
7.   character special
8.   executable with setuid bit set
9.   executable with setgid bit set
10.   directory writable to others, with sticky bit
11.   directory writable to others, without sticky

The color designators are as follows:

a    black
b    red
c    green
d    brown
e    blue
f    magenta
g    cyan
h    light grey
A    bold black, usually shows up as dark grey
B    bold red
C    bold green
D    bold brown, usually shows up as yellow
E    bold blue
F    bold magenta
G    bold cyan
H    bold light grey; looks like bright white
x    default foreground or background


Run an application as another user in Mac I have tried various methods mentioned across many sites, but cant able to run perfectly on newer versions of mac os.
I have tried:
sudo -i -u otheruser -H
OR
sudo login -f otheruser

And try running the app in the new prompt using /Applications/Sketch.app/Contents/MacOS/Sketch
Also I have tried:
su otheruser -c "/Applications/Sketch.app/Contents/MacOS/Sketch"

All of these run the app. But as soon as I open something which require system events (such as requesting macos native file picker) the application crashes. The following error is visible when such events are started.
+[NSXPCSharedListener endpointForReply:withListenerName:]: an error occurred while attempting to obtain endpoint for listener 'com.apple.view-bridge': Connection interrupted

I have tried with many applications. Exactly same error occurs. Please help.

You can‘t run UI applications as user A while being logged in as user B. The easiest way to get something similar is to enable Fast User Switching and then switch between user A and user B as needed. But each user will have its own Finder etc then, you can‘t use applications on the same screen at once.


Why does DNS resolution fail for one user account every 10 minutes on Yosemite? My daughter has a user account on our iMac.  She is not an administrator, and parental controls are not enabled.

When she logs in, she has about ten minutes of connectivity before host resolution fails.  If she logs out, and logs back in, everything is OK for another ten minutes.

There is no spyware or malware on the machine.

When I log in as me, I have no such problems.

The dig command works fine; it can happily resolve hostnames.  ping fails with an error indicating that it cannot resolve the same hostname.

Where should I begin looking to solve this vexing problem?

apparently a bug with yosemite... I had the same problem on my son's account... no ping while dig or nslookup were working fine...
I have updated my mac with 10.10.1  (beta version available for developer) and everything is now back to normal..http://www.macrumors.com/2014/11/10/yosemite-10-10-1-build-14b23/


Buzzing noise after reassembling iMac 20" 2009 I changed my iMac's hard drive to a SSD, following the iFix It guide. It all worked well, but after some hours using the machine, a buzzing noise appeared in the top left corner of it.

I read in the forums people having problems with defective PSU, but mine was working fine before disassembling the iMac. What do you think I could've made wrong in the assembling?

Thanks

-- edit --

curiously, after keeping the computer some minutes unplugged, and turning it on again, the sounds disappears. It's actually working for a few hours and the noise didn't come back yet. Weird.

The most likely cause would be the fan causing the noise. See this post from bMike 'Is it possible to install an SSD ...imac'  where he points out that
"..the immediate downsides - You will need special tools and be handling some delicate parts. Also, there is concern that the temperature sensing since the 2009 model iMac causes the fans to run faster with non-apple drives."  I have also had the problem with the fan going into overdrive and creating a horrible buzzing, so I am aware they are susceptible to this happening.  It is also possible that some foreign material got lodged around the fan, so that is worth checking too, and definitely keep an eye on the temperature.


OSX: run an application and prevent users to close I'm trying to run an application in OSX, but I need that users can not close the application. the application is used as part of a system similar to a internetcafe.

How can i do it?

Edit:
is a java application that receives some data from a server and block the screen. so the user can't use the machine until the machine is unlocked from the server. basically, like a  locking system for a internetcafe.

for security and functionality reasons the user can't close,  otherwise the software is useless.

Could you just relaunch the program immediately if a user quits it? To for example relaunch TextEdit if it is quit, you can save this plist as /Library/LaunchAgents/relaunchtextedit.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>relaunchtextedit</string>
  <key>Program</key>
  <string>/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit</string>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>
  <true/> <!-- run the program again if it is terminated -->
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/> <!-- run the program at login -->
</dict>
</plist>

Make sure the file is owned by root. Then run sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/relaunchtextedit.plist or log out and back in to load the plist. (You could also save the plist in the user library, but then the user can unload it without having to enter a password.)


Is safe to turn off iphone for 3 months My phone was taken by my teacher because i play with it while the school time, is it safe to turn it off for 3 months with battery 100% ?

It is recommended that you store you iPhone at roughly 50% charge. If you store it for more then 6 months, then you should charge it back to 50%.

For more information:
https://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/


Mounting Ext3 filesystem with OS X 10.7.4 I'm trying to mount an Ext3 external USB hard drive in OS X 10.7.4. I installed OSXFUSE (with macfuse compability layer), which worked fine. After that I tried to install EXT2FS but the install processs always aborted.

Any ideas?

I have successfully used Paragon's ExtFS driver in OS X Mavericks (and Mountain Lion previously) with full read/write access. This has worked for me with ext3 and ext4 file systems.

My only concern would be if you are mounting your Linux root (or any other system root) and you are therefore able to touch sensitive files (/etc/ comes to mind) that may stop working (Linux does not boot, etc) if the wrong permissions get applied. The solution to this is to mount read-only but I cannot say that Paragon's software really has that as a built-in option. The default mode (as is with OS X in general, except for the built-in NTFS driver) is read/write.

Also, do not expect performance in any case. I tried to use my external drive with iTunes and the performance was intolerable.


Is there any screen with resolution of 3440x1080 that is supported by a mid 2012 13" MBP? I have a mid-2012 13" MacBook Pro with an integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU and Thunderbolt / DisplayPort v 1.2 ports.

Can I connect a screen with 3440x1080 resolution? If not, is there anyway to connect two monitors on extended mode?

Intel HD Graphics 4000 supports resolution up to 1920×1200 through HDMI and 2560×1600 through DisplayPort.

Your Mac technically can only support it's own internal display and one external display.

I say technically, since people are creative and here is an example of 3 external monitors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8gE-ckBwjE


"No device connected" for Wacom One tablet I have a Wacom One attached via mini-USB to my macbook pro 2020 running Catalina.  This device is still supported under Catalina / macOS 10.15:

The Wacom driver was successfully installed and can be seen as running via Activity Monitor :

The various settings were also set properly:
Settings | Input Monitoring

Settings | Security & Privacy | Accessibility

However the Wacom Desktop Center reports that the tablet is not connected:

What else should I check/do ?
Update I rebooted with the Wacom One connected but still get the "No Device Connected" fro the Desktop Center.

Well well.   I plugged in my iPhone and the Wacome One woke up!

What does the first action have to do with the second?  Apparently the "tremendous weight" of the usb-c cable for the iPhone - which was a bit entangled with the mini-USB cable to the Wacom -  was just enough to put the Wacom connector out of sorts. Jiggling the cable to the iPhone apparently undid that "flakey cable" issue.
So the only potential value now to this question is to confirm YES the Wacom One is  working (surprisingly I might add) with macOS Catalina.
Update Apparently there is a specific power cord for Wacom that has a few parts including hdmi, power cable, mini-usb.  I must have tossed it / lost it some time ago.  So this device is a small-ish brick now.


Facebook Page notifications in OSX 10.8.2 Notification Center I currently have my Facebook account linked up to my Notification Center on my Macbook Pro - great!

However, I do have a Facebook page (relatively low traffic) and I'd like to receive notifications from it as well as my personal facebook page in Notification Center. I am the owner and sole admin for this Facebook page.

Any ideas?

I would not use OS X Notifications, but would instead use Growl, and a management tool such as Babble, which supports both multiple Facebook accounts, and Growl notifications.


Can I unlock an iphone and still develop apps for it? I am being offered an iphone 4 but it is locked to orange and I want to use my O2 sim in it.

The thing is that I want the phone so I can go into app development and have heard that working with a jailbroken phone can be a problem.

I have read here that jailbreaking and unlocking are different things but unlocking needs jailbreaking however jailbreaking can be reversed but there's no info on weather that will undo the unlocking so I am really confused :S

So can I unlock an iphone and still develop apps with no problems assuming I have a developers licence and update regularly?

According to this KB, Orange UK offers authorized unlock, so if the person that is giving you the phone is out of contract, he/she could be able to ask Orange to unlock it. This way you don't have to worry about the whole jailbreaking/unlocking business, if you only care about unlocking. Authorized unlock is like having never locked (factory unlocked) phone and doesn't affect/change the firmware, which is the issue that you are worrying about.


iPhone is being accessed remotely and sending messages My ex and I are going through a custody battle. I have had my email hacked and broken into many times and I receive forwarded emails of my ex talking to someone about these happenings. Recently I found out in one of the emails that she is accessing my iPhone and blocking and unblocking her phone number in my contacts, then sending messages remotely from my iPhone to herself while she is blocked so I will not see the responses. WHAT CAN I DO??? I have changed my passwords, iCloud accounts, everything I can think of to prevent this but it continues. Is this even possible? If so how is it done? I want her to get in trouble in court as she is trying to keep my 9month old son away from me. Please help.

Inform your lawyer immediately. If you don't have a lawyer, get one now. It is essential that what is happening is documented. Law enforcement (your local police, constabulary or gendarmerie) may be able to assist if you are being harassed.

If you can afford to purchase a new iPhone, even a refurbished 5s without all the extra RAM & whatnot, do so. Create new email & iCloud accounts. Use a password manager such as LastPass, any two-factor authentication available and turn off the old phone.

To block your Caller ID information from being displayed temporarily for a specific call: Dial *67. You will need to dial this for each call you want to block. Enter the number you wish to call (including area code).
Tap the Call button. The words "Private," "Anonymous," or some other indicators will appear on the recipient's phone instead of your mobile number.


Where does launchpad store folder information? (database, etc?) So i've been searching around and trying to figure this out but can't seem to.

I know that the launchpad SQLite db is stored at ~/Library/Application Support/Dock/some-uuid.db (ref), but as best I can tell it doesn't seem to include any information about folders created in launchpad.

Does anyone know where this information is stored, and in what format?

Edit: Found the location, details in my answer below. The only bits I can't figure out now are:

How to programatically create a new folder and move apps into it (using this db)
What the db-shm and db-wal files are used for.

SQLite temp files (write ahead log & shared memory files)

Whether ~/Library/Application Support/Dock/some-uuid.db is used at all anymore, or if it was just leftover from an osx upgrade.

Ok, I think i've found it. Turns out that (at least under El Capitan) things are a little different.

This AskDifferent answer by Greg Hacke pointed me in the right direction.

It seems the databases are stored in $TMPDIR/../0/com.apple.dock.launchpad/db/, with the main sqlite db being aptly named db.

(After reading Geoff Hackworth's AskDifferent response, it seems a better way to get the path would be getconf DARWIN_USER_DIR rather than $TMPDIR/../0/)

Editing this with a sqlite GUI showed that the groups table stores the folders, with title holding the folder name.

After making any desired changes, and writing them back to the db, we still need to do a killall Dock to refresh the launchpad screen.

Some observations:

There are a number of groups that don't have a title (set to null), so not really sure what they are for.
It seems that just creating a new entry doesn't cause a group to show up (maybe because it would be an 'empty folder'?).

In this case, how can we create a new folder and move apps into it from the db?

By editing the title field in the apps table we can change the display name of the app.


How do I connect my calendar on my Macbook, ipad and iphone? I have an iPhone 6s, a Macbook and a new iPad. Right now events I create on one do not show on the others.

How do I connect the calendar on all three?

Since you have Apple products listed, iCloud calendars would be the place to start.

Go to:

https://www.icloud.com

There is a link in the top right on the instructions for setting up each of your devices to use iCloud for calendar syncing:

https://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/

Start with one device - then check in the cloud using https://www.icloud.com/#calendar once the cloud and one device sync, move on to the next device and repeat until they all have syncing enabled.


Occasional screen shadows iPhone 5S I have a 2013 16Gb iPhone 5S, It worked properly until an annoying screen/touchscreen issue appeared yesterday .
Here is the issue :

The screen suddenly gets slightly darker and some shadows appear under black texts and shapes.
The touchscreen stops working but works back when I lock and unlock my iPhone.
The slightly darker screen and the blacks shadows issues continue after locking-then-unlocking and then suddenly go away.

So the issue is a sudden screen issue (it gets darker and so shadows appear under black shapes and texts) along with a temporary touchscreen problem that goes away after locking then unlocking the device .

Great picture. I'm not sure I would be able to answer from the words alone.

If you focus on two areas - just above the words Airdrop - the fading/smearing looks quite evident.

the speaker icon for mute/low volume has definite "smearing"
the >> fast forward black triangles also exhibit "smearing"

I don't know the technical term for that bleed, but it's a hardware issue with the voltage controlling the LCD panel. Either the chip that drives the graphics is failing or the connections between the circuits embedded in the LCD and the controlling chip. Basically, reseating the LVDS cable would be the first things I would try if I were a repair technician and needing to fix a phone with that display.

To check your phone against other phones and devices, this web page is fabulous for test patterns:

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/all_tests.php

You'll want the detailed pages for how to use them, but the link above is my gold standard for just looking at two screens side by side to get a quick check of the LCD calibration and performance.

Without opening the hardware and inspecting things, here are questions I'd ask before getting a repair:

Has the phone been dropped recently or had a large shock (even in case, a drop can cause internal damage)?
Is there warranty or AppleCare coverage? (If so - seek repair before it expires)
Has the phone been opened by Apple or anyone else recently (or ever?)?


Identifying and removing unknown Sound device Since I use my Mac for presentations at workshops and conferences, I've apparently picked up a whole bunch of "exotic" drivers that come as part of presentation AV equipment. The latest addition seems to be the "Data Source Item 0" in the Sounds-drop down. I think I found the culprit in the Audio MIDI Setup (at least there's an audio driver from one of those AV-rooms), but the - button is not available for any device.

How do I go about identifying where this is coming from and removing it?

As @Allan suggested, system profile below -- how would I go about axing the ESHOW-device:

$ system_profiler SPAudioDataType
Audio:

    Devices:

        Built-in Microphone:

          Input Channels: 2
          Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
          Current SampleRate: 44100
          Transport: Built-in
          Input Source: Internal Microphone

        Built-in Output:

          Default System Output Device: Yes
          Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
          Output Channels: 2
          Current SampleRate: 44100
          Transport: Built-in
          Output Source: Internal Speakers

        ESHOW录音:

          Default Input Device: Yes
          Default Output Device: Yes
          Input Channels: 2
          Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
          Output Channels: 2
          Current SampleRate: 44100
          Transport: Virtual
          Input Source: Data Source Item 0
          Output Source: Data Source Item 0

I also suffered from this problem after installing a software to use a wireless projector. Though the name is not ESHOW but DongleAudio in my case, I guess this works for you.

In Terminal.app, cd /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL
Remove the driver by rm -rf ESHOW.driver or rm -rf DongleAudio.driver
Reboot your Mac

I hope this helps.


Does AirPlay Use Wi-Fi? I was curious how AirPlay worked and if it uses my Wi-Fi router, or some other technology?

I was trying to use AirPlay with my 2011 MacBook Air and the new Apple TV and it was a bit laggy. Would a router upgrade improve the situation?

AirPlay goes through your local network, whether that's over Wi-Fi or wired ethernet or both.

To resolve your problems, you should probably clarify what you mean by "laggy".

Latency (Delay)

There is some latency (delay between when your Mac sends a signal and when it's displayed) inherent in the AirPlay technology, which can be compounded by latency in Wi-Fi. For something like playing a movie, a few hundred milliseconds of latency isn't a big deal, but it can be if you're trying to use it for something more interactive (e.g. a presentation, gaming, etc.).

The best way to reduce latency is to use wired instead of wireless networking, however given the limitations of AirPlay, it may not be sufficient for some intended uses (like gaming).

Other Issues

If you're experiencing poor quality or videos having to buffer, that's likely a problem with bandwidth, rather than latency. In this case, the issue could be your router — some simply have higher throughput than others, but it could also be an issue with the environment around you. The more Wi-Fi networks and other EM interference, the worse your signal will be. The construction of your house can also be a problem.

A better router can help in some, but not all situations — if the environment isn't conducive to good Wi-Fi (long range, lots of other networks, or thick walls), then a better router may not help. A wired network can help, and will certainly be more reliable.

There's no surefire way to know what your issue is without a bit of trial and error. If a wired network is possible, that will guarantee the best speed and reliability, but if you're looking for low latency over AirPlay, it may not be enough.


Is there any risk to using Crossover instead of natively running Windows (e.g. via Bootcamp)? In short, I basically want to run a few pieces of Windows specific software (ironically emulators) on a Mac. Instead of natively running Windows (e.g. via. Bootcamp) I was intending to go the CrossOver route as I know that all the pieces of software run via. it cleanly.

https://www.codeweavers.com/products

In short I had a thought though, am I opening myself up to risks by emulating a Windows environment effectively (without doing the Bootcamp thing) on my clean Mac?

I'm figuring others have done this (either via. CrossOver or Bootcamp) What are the risks?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Using Crossover Office to run a couple of Windows programs on your Mac usually works quite well, IF the program is specifically supported by Crossover. If it is not specifically supported it may work but some features may not, it might crash, etc.

Not sure what you mean by "risks." Though I don't use Crossover Office (or the open source that it is based on: Wine) it emulates part of the Win32 API allowing Windows programs to run outside of Windows.

This may be safer than running Windows in a virtual machine (Parallels or the free Virtualbox) as you don't have the whole Windows environment that may need continuous updating/patching or even it's own virus checker.

But generally speaking I have heard that Crossover Office is a reasonably well working app that does what it advertises with minimal issues.


Will an iphone in lost mode enable celular data on its own? My iphone has been put into lost mode by some hackers like this.

I have regained access of my iCloud account and removed the lost mode from there however the phone has not updated yet because I always have cellular data disabled(because I dont have a plan for it) and I see that its not connecting to wifi.

I can get 10MB data for a day from the Cell company.

My question is: Will iOS enable Cellular data on its own while in lost mode?

I have an iphone 4 with ios 7

In short - if your device doesn't have cellular, the lost mode transmission won't be received until / unless it rejoins or connects to the internet via WiFi or someone puts in a working SIM chip with compatible data plan.

This link may help you determine the answer to that question.

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19299

In this article, you will see the following. Hopefully this answers your question.

  If you used Lost Mode, when tracking begins, you see your device’s current location, as well as any changes in its location on the map.

  If your device is online  when
  you put it in Lost Mode or lock it, it locks and tracking begins (if
  applicable). If Location Services is turned off on the device, it’s
  temporarily turned on to track your device’s location. A confirmation
  email is sent to your Apple ID email address.

  If your device is offline ,
  the passcode lock and tracking (if applicable) take effect the next
  time it’s online.


Installed Mojave, then my mac couldn't start the next day, now it asks to install Mojave again From High Sierra, I was prompted to upgrade to Mojave; did that, successfully completed (I guess, no errors were reported or something, but I don't remember if I restarted my laptop at that point. Moreover I didn't check if the version was upgraded in "About this Mac".).

Next day, I try to start my laptop, nothing... Eventually it says there was a problem finding the launcher or something. Laptop started successfully (phew!), and High Sierra is still installed.

Now, it asks me to upgrade to Mojave again, but I am afraid. What are the risks in accepting to upgrade? What should I do? Maybe I could stick to High Sierra...

What should I do?

If it were me, and my machine was running at this point, I'd backup the disk, then separately backup my home folder, and put those media aside. Then I'd redo the upgrade.


Use Macbook Touch ID button to sleep/lock I'm not sure if this has been asked before:

I want to use the Touch ID button to sleep or to lock my 2017 Macbook Pro 13". I know there are other shortcuts for doing that, but I want to be able to use the power button as such... (I also want to explicitly use the power button, I know I can add buttons to the Touch Bar).

By now, apart from using it as Touch ID, I can only use it to do a hard-turning off by pressing during 6 seconds or to access accessibility options by pressing 3 times fast. I want to lock my mac by simply pressing the Touch ID button.

I can't believe that something like that is not possible, or at least configurable... If it isn't, is there a way to use it as another regular key in order to make a shortcut? (if I try to create a shortcut, pressing the Touch ID button does nothing)

I've seen that some years ago, pressing the power button during 3 seconds pops up a menu for choosing what to do, but that also doesn't work in my case. In this Apple's tutorial (recently updated) they also mention the possibility of doing that by pressing the power button, but again, it doesn't work for me.

Thanks!

This is not possible.

From this Apple Support page:

  Pressing Touch ID won't put your Mac to sleep. Instead, choose Apple
  menu > Sleep. You can also add a Sleep button to the Control Strip in
  the Touch Bar: Select View > Customize Touch Bar.


How can I export a QuickTime File with Chapter Markers from iMovie HD? I have a video with chapter markers in iMovie HD 6.03 (267.2).

What settings do I need to use when exporting to get a file with chapter markers viewable by QuickTime and iTunes?.

Looks like you can do it using Metadata Hootenanny.

    It allows you to edit and search the metadata that can be stored in  QuickTime movies (mov files), including chapters. Quicktime files support a large number of metadata options, but the QuickTime Player doesn't provide an easy way of accessing them. Metadata Hootenanny does.

You can read this forum thread for more info.


iCloud email adding extra character to each line I have an auto response to direct iCloud emails to my preferred address.
The message being sent is having an 'r' added to the end of each line like so (except the last line....):

Hi-r
In the future please use my main email address:r

Name@mydomain.comr

This email has been forwarded on to that address automatically.r

Thanks!r

Joe

Answering my own question....

I went into iCloud and saw that sometime recently it had added a \r (translating a return??) to each line of my auto reply.

Deleted that and all is well.


Will enabling FileVault convert my HFS+ disk to APFS? I have a 2017 5K iMac running Mojave 10.14.6.  It has a 2 TB Fusion drive internally formatted as HFS+.  FileVault is not enabled, but I wish to do so.  Will the disk have its format changed to APFS if I enable FileVault?
My recollection is that the disk was originally formatted as HFS+ from the factory and when I turned on FileVault, the format changed to APFS.  Granted that was over a year ago, so I could be very off-base.
I want to prevent going to APFS again.  The performance degraded to dismal levels.  Now that I have reformatted as HFS+, it is surprisingly speedy.

FileVault and APFS are two very different things; enabling one doesn’t enable (or necessitate) enabling the other.
FileVault is encryption - it scrambles, to put it simply - the contents of your drive with a known key.  Specifically, it uses a 128bit AES encryption with a 256bit key.  See Use FileVault to encrypt the startup Disk for additional details.  You can encrypt JHFS+ formatted volumes as well as APFS volumes.
APFS (Apple File System) is simply Apple’s next generation file system.  As far as encryption goes, it supports it natively unlike JHFS+.


How can I filter and sort videos by orientation (portrait or landscape)? I'm attempting to filter and sort all videos in a local folder based on their orientation. I can't find anything in AppleScript, macOS file search, or video metadata that will make this easy. My guess is that I'll have to grab the video's height and width, and then generate a folder for each distinct combination. I'll then have to eyeball which sizes are portrait and landscape.

My goal:

Export all original videos from iCloud Photos (~400GB) and store them locally
Filter and sort them by portrait or landscape orientation
Remove videos that meet further specified criteria (under 15 seconds, duplicates, etc).

After testing @CJK's answer, here's what I came up:
#!/bin/bash
shopt -s nullglob

for f in *.{mp4,MP4,mov,MOV,m4v,M4V}
    do
        height=`mdls -raw -name  kMDItemPixelHeight "$f"`
        width=`mdls -raw -name  kMDItemPixelWidth "$f"`
        mkdir -p "${height}x${width}"
        mv "$f" "${height}x${width}"/

        printf "File: $f\n"
        printf "> Dimensions: $height x $width \n\n"
    done

printf "All done! \n"

This will grab the height and width of each video type in a specific folder, and then sort it into its appropriate folder. With a bit more scripting, you could then sort the folders into portrait/landscape folders by comparing height vs. width.


Stop Preview from opening every file in its own page Every single time I open a picture to view in preview or preview itself it opens every document in a individual page. Which must be forced quit to close?

I have already tried going to System Preferences → General to make sure "Close windows when quitting an app" is unchecked. Using command-option-Q and command-option-w do not work either.

This happens with every single photo folder or individual picture I attempt to look at. For example, clicking on a photo in a folder opens opens 247 documents with 247 different pages?

How do I stop this? Can I remove Preview and use any other picture viewing option?

You didn't say what version of OS X you're using and I don't know it Preview in different versions of OS X have different preferences however, in OS X 10.8 anyway, I went into Previews's Preferences (Preview > Preferences... > General) and changed what I assume is the default of Open groups of files in the same window, since I've never changed Previews's Preferences before now, to Open all files in one window, as shown in the image below.

With Open groups of files in the same window selected and when only opening one file at a time the default behavior is to open each file in its own window until it's changed to Open all files in one window.


snow leopard(10.6.5)freezes on startup with bootcamp and windows7 Help! I've installed boot camp and Windows 7 on my black Macbook Santa Rosa (2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM) and have a serious problem where I can no longer boot into OSX.
OSX freezes with the apple logo and timer, but also has an extra progress bar that I have not seen before.

Has anyone else encountered or heard of this problem?

This is the second time that this exact thing has happened (the last time I just reinstalled everything, as I wanted to increase the size of the windows partition anyway), but really don't have the time to go through all of that again.
The first time that this happened, I ran disk utility from the Snow Leopard disk, and attempted to verify permissions and disk but to no avail.

Any help would be most appreciated...

Can you start it in Safe Mode?

Method is explained here:  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455


Modify SATA link speed down (Mac won’t boot) I have a MacBook Pro (Early 2011, MacBookPro8,2) which I cannot reboot, otherwise I have to reinstall Mavericks every time. Sleep mode works, luckily, but sometimes I need to reboot.

In April my HDD started to fail. I have noticed general slowness and the drive finally failed,  I decided to install a SSD, and I choose a Samsung 840 EVO 500GB, which seemed to have good reviews.

The installation went fine and the drive worked perfectly, but since then, from time to time, but lately almost every time, I cannot reboot the machine. It stays stuck in the Apple logo with the spinner under it.

At this point I can access the recovery partition, the Apple Hardware Test, the single user command line mode. I tried once to boot from the Time Machine drive, but either it was very slow (and I was very impatient) or it didn’t work.

Following this http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2570 the Safe Mode (Shift) doesn’t work (it does the progress bar until one third, then the spinning wheel forever). Verbose Safe Mode (Shift+Cmd+V) shows the output until just mounting the hard drive (or just before mounting). Single user mode (Cmd+S) gives me a prompt, I can do fsck (no problems), I can mount the drive, I can modify files, but as soon as I type exit it just get stuck again.

The first time this happen I think I remember being able to reboot by doing a NVRAM reset, but that doesn’t work anymore. Another time it happened, I opened the laptop again and removed and re-attached the SDD, which seemed to work, but again, that doesn’t work anymore. The only thing that works is reinstalling from the Recovery partition (which is 30 minutes of downloading and 40 minutes of reinstalling).

I found this thread on Apple forums https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5413626 which describes a similar situation to mine. It seems that even if the controller claims SATA 6Gbps, the cable might not be fully prepared for it. It also seems that there was a EFI update to fix some problems with SATA drives (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1450), which I must have installed back then.

Obviously changing the cable seems like an option, but I would like to know if someone knows a way to force the driver/EFI/whatever to force a slower link speed negotiation. Currently I have 6Gbps, but I will like to see if I can boot with a capped 3Gbps.

From other posts I have found people wanting to increase the speed, but I want just the opposite. Maybe it will fix my problem, and I can live with a lower speed.

More information from the System Profile:

Model name: MacBook Pro
Model identifier:   MacBookPro8,2
Boot ROM version:   MBP81.0047.B27
SMC version:    1.69f4

Intel 6 Series Chipset:
  Manufacturer: Intel
  Product:  6 Series Chipset
  Link speed:   6 gigabits
  Negotiated link speed:    6 gigabits
  Physical connection:  SATA
  Description:  AHCI Version 1.30 Supported

Have you tried to change the SATA cable?

Also have a look to the kernel logs inside the /var/log/system.log with the command:

grep kern /var/log/system.log -a2


Does Parallels 10 fix the Fn keys issue? In order to use the Fn Keys on Windows VMs with Parallels 9 you have to set them as standard function keys on Mac OS, which requires you the press the Fn key to access the special functions (brightness, playback, volume etc.).

Does Parallels 10 fix this, allowing you to use the special keys on Mac and the F keys on Windows?

parallels can't 'fix' this issue, because the Fn+FKey combination is done in the keyboard itself, before being sent to the OS.

The Fn key itself does send a key code, but the combo doesn't.


Why is "Find My Mac" still complaining about "Wake for network access" being inactive, although I just activated it? Environment

MacBook Pro 15" (Mid 2014)
macOS 11.2.1 Big Sur
Find My Mac gets activated for the first time on this device. There was no other user before ever, I bought it refurbed from Apple.com, and I do not recall that I have ever used that function before, but now I wanted to activate it.

Problem
I did my initial setup of "Find My" on the Mac exactly as Set up Find My on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac (HT210400) describes, but in the process got a warning about "Wake for network access" being not active, although it was.
Reproduction
Exactly as HT210400 instructs. Numbers correspond to my screenshot series:
1 ) Preconditions: System Preferences > Security & Privacy:
"Enable Location Services" is ON, "Find My" is also ON. All fine.
2a) System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud > Find My Mac is currently OFF. Toggle "Find My Mac" ON.
2b) In the dialog press "allow".
2c) "Find my Mac" not shows as ON but has a warning symbol and a "Details…" button. Press that button.
2d) Dialog informs that you need "Wake on network access" being active. Press button "Open Energy Saver". Btw an outdated label, the former prefpane "Energy Saver" in macOS Big Sur is meanwhile called "Battery".
2e) I get redirected to the prefPane "Battery". Activate "Wake for network access". In my screenshot session I already did so earlier.
2f) Go back to prefPane "Apple ID" and "Find My Mac" still shows an error due to missing "Wake for network access". Note: You can repeat cycle 2a-f as long as you want: The status icon is not refreshing properly as long as "System Preferences.app" is running!
3 ) In prefPane "Battery" I checked both sections "Battery" and "Power Adapter". Option "Wake for network access" is only shown in section "Power Adapter" and there it is on.
Why is "Find My Mac" still complaining about "Wake for network access" missing, although it is activated?
Solution
4 ) Quit "System Preferences.app". Restart it. Then go to: Apple ID > iCloud > "Find My Mac" now shows as ON and without any error symbol.
Screenshot series

In reality this is just a refresh issue as I as a tech-savvy user later realized. But average Mac users won't, as everywhere else on macOS you typically do not have these kind of refresh errors, but the software objects update each other quite reliably.
Step 4 in the question now shows the solution: Simply quit and then restart System Preferences. Then the status of "Find My Mac" in preference pane "Apple ID" shows updated correctly.


What to do when my Time Machine drive is getting disk errors? My Time Machine drive is getting disk errors. I used Disk Utility and ran "Repair Disk" on my Time Machine partition (NOT the drive) and I got the error "Incorrect number of directory hard links" including hundreds of related errors that look like "Indirect node 41745332 needs link count adjustment". The final line of the verification says "Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."

So, if I get a second drive to copy my Time Machine backups to, can I just move the backups to the new drive by performing a simple "copy" operation as outlined here? Or should I use Disk Utility to clone the partition? And if I do one of these steps, would the errors copy over as well or would they be fixed on the new drive?

It sounds like you might be out of luck if Disk Utility was unable to repair your partition. You are also correct that a clone of your Time Machine partition would copy over the problem to a new drive. It is probable that your best "solution" at this point would be to erase the partition and start Time Machine backups again. If you end up doing this I would also make sure to run "Verify Disk" on your internal HDD (or SSD if that's what you have) to make sure there aren't any errors there, either.

This might be a symptom of a failing drive; however, it is also possible that it might simply be a bunch of directory errors that can be repaired if you boot from a recovery partition, clone, or use another Mac to repair. I have had both dying drives and drives that looked like they were dying, but were actually just errors piled on one another. Before you throw the drive away, try repartitioning. Do systematic checks with Disk Utility and keep an eye on system logs (either in Console.app or /var/logs/system.log). If you continue to see the same problem, then it is indeed time for a new backup drive; however, you might find that a quick erase fixes the issue.

Also, see this article over at Pondini.org. The article essentially corroborates what I've already said, but the rest of the site is an excellent resource for all the headaches that Time Machine can throw your way.

Sorry you have a bunk backup - hope you get it sorted without much extra trouble!


Automatically parse dates in Safari for adding to calendar In Mail.app, when the text looks like an appointment (date and time, etc) you are offered a shortcut to add it as an event in the Calendar app. There is no such thing in Safari (as far as I can tell.) Has anyone done an add-in or other trick to accomplish that?

If you have a force touch trackpad (built in or magic trackpad) you can force touch on dates, and then you'll be able to add them to your calendar.

If you don't have a force touch trackpad, but a normal trackpad, you can just move the cursor on top of a date, and the touch the trackpad with three fingers, and then you'll be able to add them to your calendar.


Watch Me Do or other method for exact pixel coordinate of mouse click (Automator) Is it possible to specify how a mouse click point is recorded or processed in Watch Me Do?

had thought it was exact pixel position recorded but it seems that in a safari browser it is relative to the page scroll...

Is there another way to simulate actions clicking in exact locations (irrespectivec of browser scrollbar)?

Specifically, I would prefer a non-third party tool solution - using Automator if possible.

Automator can ‘Run AppleScript’, and you can click at a coordinate using AppleScript:

tell application "System Events"
  click at {123,456}
end tell

How do I make the mouse click at current location using AppleScript?


Wireshark pane couldn't display I installed Wireshark Version 2.0.0 on OSX 10.11 with XQuartz 2.7.8
But it doesn't display any pane, I don't know what happened...

Any suggestions?

I mean when I open the Wireshark, the layout supposed to display three pane(Packet List, Packet Details &Packet Bytes)

If you double-click on Wireshark, it will not show the three capture file panes, because there's no capture file to show!  That's been the case for several releases now, since before the 2.0 release - the 1.12 release does the same thing.  If you double-click on a capture file, it should open that file and show you the three capture panes.

  instead of the native UI...

The splash screen (which is what your screenshot shows) and the three-pane list are both part of the UI, whether it's in the 1.12 release (which, on OS X, uses X11) or the 2.0 release (which, on OS X, uses Qt directly atop Quartz with no X11 - this is not a "native" vs. X11 issue).

  I think when I open this app, it should has different UI...

That's not what it was written to do - not on OS X, not on Windows, and not on {Linux, Solaris, *BSD, HP-UX, AIX, etc.} with X11 (or Wayland or Mir).  If you open it directly, it shows the splash screen, just like the screen you saw; if you open it by double-clicking on a file, it'll open the file and show you the three panes.


How can I get my iPhone to automatically download podcasts I have subscribed to? I am using the standard podcast app that comes with iOS 7.  I have subscribed to about 8-9 different podcasts.  Commonly I will take my phone with me when I leave the apartment, and then when I get on the subway I will attempt to listen to a podcast.  Invariably, the podcast won't play because no cellular connection is available.  To solve this issue I have indicated through the podcast app that I would like episodes to be automatically downloaded when they become available.  However, they don't get automatically downloaded.  This absolutely infuriates me.

Indeed, check the "Refresh Podcast" option and set it to every hour.
Also, set Auto-Downloads to ALL


App that provides a keyboard shortcut to mute/unmute the microphone? Is anyone aware of a third-part app that provides a quick shortcut to toggle mute/unmute state of the built-in microphone?

You do not need an app for this. You can open Automator, and create a service. You can then double-click Run Applescript , and type in
on getMicrophoneVolume()
    input volume of (get volume settings)
end getMicrophoneVolume

on disableMicrophone()
    set volume input volume 0
end disableMicrophone

on enableMicrophone()
    set volume input volume 100
end enableMicrophone

if getMicrophoneVolume() is greater than 0 then
    disableMicrophone()
else
    enableMicrophone()
end if

Then save and go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts - Services, search for the name of the Automator file, and add any shortcut you want.
More information can be found here.


Get all the files that changed most recently I have a program that changes a few files in the file system. I would like to know exactly which one it changed. How can I see all the files on the system that were changed 5 mins ago by a specific program. Is that possible?

It will also work if I could find all the files that were changed most recently and than manually check which one belongs specific program.

Try setting up a search in Finder like so:

This won't search system files however. For that you'll want to use EasyFind. It also won't specify which program modified the file.


Restoring Catalina timemachine back-up to Mojave I have read a few posts and answer but I am not quite sure...
I was on Catalina and for multiple compatibility reasons, I need to go back on Mojave. I did a time machine back up on Catalina, erased the startup disk and Mojave (which my Mac was shipped with) is now installing. What is going to happen when I restore from my Catalina time machine backup?
I don't want the OS restored. I want everything I had on Catalina switched to Mojave.

If you already have the system software installed, time machine will install your personal files and the files you select. It will not install the system software.
See this answer for more detail.


Why does my FCE export to DV take forever? I am exporting a sequence from FCE 3.5 with these settings:

Export Using QT Conversion…
Quicktime Movie>Options
    Deselected "Prepare for Internet Streaming"
    Video
        Size>Dimensions>"HD 1920x1080 16:9"
        Settings>Compression>Quality>Best

The export progress window pops up and tells me that it will take 9 minutes. Over the course of the next 2-3 hours, it bumps up to 4 hours or so. After letting it sit overnight, the progress window reads 2 days. I have tried this twice and I still get between 44-48 hours in the morning after it has sat overnight. Any suggestions why this would be taking so long?

Computer Specs:
13" MBP running 10.6.8
2.3 GHz Intel Core i5
4 GB DDR3 RAM

EDIT: I am not exporting it to a DV Stream. I accidentally put it as exporting to a DV Stream, but I was actually exporting it to a QT movie.

   Render window after sitting all night (probably close to 15 hours)

I figured out why it was taking so long. The reason was because I store all my video on an external USB drive. When I exported it, I exported it to that external USB drive. To fix the problem, I exported from the external USB drive to the internal drive.

Update: I also found out that I need to render all my video first, then export it. This dropped the export time from days down to 20-45 minutes. One of my other problems was that I needed to make sure my footage was in the Apple Intermediate Codec format. Then, FCE doesn't have to bend over backwards to accommodate an "unsupported" format.


How to sort files by date in Safari file picker When I am uploading file(s) in Safari using file picker, I have 3 view options (icons, list, columns). I cannot figure out how to sort files by date (e.g. date modified) when I am in columns view. Please refer to the screenshots below for the clarification (p.s. I am referring to sorting, not grouping):

The 'Sort by' drop menu is at the top of your file-picker - using a crop of your own pic as example...

you get these choices...


How to auto connect to VPN upon login/boot? So far, I've been using the build-in VPN tool of Lion.

I would like to auto connect my VPN whenever I'm connected to the internet.

Is it possible to auto connect my VPN whenever I'm connected to the internet with the build in tool?

If auto connect is not possible with the build in tool, can you provide me with an alternative that is free?

Apple Script provides a good solution:

on idle
    tell application "System Events"
        tell current location of network preferences
            set myConnection to the service "VPN University"
            if myConnection is not null then
                if current configuration of myConnection is not connected then
                    connect myConnection
                end if
            end if
        end tell
        return 120
    end tell
end idle


All files disappeared on local drive, folder are still here I have no clue what happend but (almost) all the files on my local drive disappeared. The folders are still there, but if I click on "Get info" it shows they are nearly empty so there are no files in there.

The weird thing is: if I look at the "date modified" tab it shows they all got edited at the same time: 29 Jul 10:11. See screenshot attached.

The trashcan is empty so nothing is in there. Is there a way I can see what happened?

I didn't have time machine turned on :(, so does that mean there is no chance for me recover my files?

Time Machine is the only built in recovery solution, so the file changes are not logged in a way you could guarantee a trace of what happened if you didn't configure Time Machine to make external and/or local backups.

If you shut down the computer soon after you discover missing files, sometimes you can use software to look at free space and reconstruct missing files. That tends to work better on HDD as opposed to SSD, but some recovery is often possible. Not having the machine on actually increases the odds of recovery since you are counting on no other program over-writing the free space where those files used to be stored.

I'd start with something like Data Rescue if you want to try to recover any files.

Once you've decided to not seek recovery or you've done the recovery, you might check the storage in Disk Utility to see if the catalog needs repair.


How to avoid password prompt in terminal? So sometimes my Mac loses its connection to the Internet.

When I'm in front of it physically I can use the terminal and do the following to repair it:

networksetup -setnetworkserviceenabled ethernet off

type my password then:

networksetup -setnetworkserviceenabled ethernet on

and type my password again.

The thing is the machine is hosting several servers and I need them to be running even when I'm not physically present. So I wanted to run a daily script that would do this when I'm not present and be sure the connection is reset at least once a day. But since I haven't figured out a way to include my password in the command line I can't do that.

So my question is: is it possible to do what I described?

Ok, thank you Batman for suggesting to edit the sudoer file. Instead of crontab or launchd to schedule it once a day (which wasn't good enough anyway), I instead wrote that applescript to do it more regularly and so far it seems to be working:

repeat
    repeat
        try
            do shell script "ping -t 15 8.8.8.8"
            exit repeat
        on error
            display notification "Reconnection attempt"
            do shell script "sudo networksetup -setnetworkserviceenabled ethernet off"
            do shell script "sudo networksetup -setnetworkserviceenabled ethernet on"
            delay 9
            display notification "Connection should be established"
        end try
    end repeat
    delay 5
end repeat

I'm adding more details: I exported it as an .app then I edited the .plist of it with the lines:

<key>LSBackgroundOnly</key>
<string>1</string>

To make it invisible when it runs (no dock icon) and finally I made it run on login.


Outlook for Mac - do not automatically add meetings to calendar In Outlook (both for Windows and for Mac), the default behavior is to automatically respond with tentative to meetings requests, which results in meetings automatically added to the calendar.

I receive a lot of meeting requests, and only need to attend a few of them (which I manually accept), so I'm not interested in all those meetings requests cluttering my calendar.

Is it possible in Outlook for Mac to prevent meetings automatically being added to the calendar?
I found I thread on how to do it in Outlook for Windows: http://www.msoutlook.info/question/747, but wasn't able to configure it in the Mac version.

I'm using Outlook for Mac 2011, Version 14.3.2.

Thanks,
Ido

This actually isn't client-side (that is, Outlook) setting.  This is a server setting on Exchange.  Depending on how your Exchange server is configured, this might or might not be a setting that you are allowed to change.

If you are allowed to change it, you can do so via Outlook Web App.  The instructions that I'm giving here are for Exchange 2013.

Open OWA.
Click the "Settings" gear (upper right corner), then select "Options".
In the left navigation pane, select "Settings", and then select "calendar" in the main pane.
Scroll down until you see "automatic processing".  If you can change this setting, you'll see a tick box titled "Automatically place new meeting requests on my calendar, marked Tentative".  Untick that box.
Click save, and then exit the settings.

Earlier versions of Exchange also allow this, although the path to it is slightly different depending on which version of Exchange you're in.  They should all be in the calendar settings, you might have to poke around to find the exact location in your version of Exchange.


How best to restore BootCamp partition from Acronis TrueImage backup? The replacement for my dead Macbook Pro Retina arrived yesterday, and the Mac side of things was restored from a Synology NAS in 30 mins, which was great...

But on the BootCamp partition, it's a different story: I was using Acronis TrueImage for my Windows backups, and a recent backup was indeed sitting happily on the NAS - but, how to restore it?

The Acronis Recovery CD won't run on a Mac, apparently (and, I have no superdrive...)

After some thought and experiment, here's what I ended up doing

Installed Acronis trial version on a 'real' PC
Connect a USB disk to the PC
Recover the bootcamp partition to the USB disk
Connect the USB disk to the Mac
Install WinClone on the Mac ($20 well spent...)
Create a WInClone image file from the USB disk (slow...)
Create a FAT partition on the Macbook SSD
Restore the WinClone image onto the FAT partition
Reboot, and pray...

Now, while this worked, and the bootcamp partition was successfully re-added to VmWare fusion, it feels like a really long-winded way of doing it.

So, Is there a more direct way of doing this? Could Target Disk mode help (thunderbolt, remember...)

Note - I know I could in future just keep a Winclone backup on the NAS, but then I'd lose the ability to extract individual files from the backup, and also I'd be backing up the entire partition each time, rather than just the changes.

By using enclosure for your 2.5" disks, I think you could just run the True Image on a PC to copy your TIB backup to your new partition on the SSD. How about this as an idea?


iOS 11 & Apple Maps: Hide Search Box in Landscape Orientation I’m not sure what that box is called, but it’s the one with the search at the top of it, and the history below.

In Portrait Orientation you can swipe down on it and it reduces to a single search box. It’s annoying how much space it takes up, but at least it doesn’t cover half the screen.

In Landscape Orientation, I can’t see any way to reduce the search box, so that it always covers half of the screen. The main reason to use Landscape Orientation is to see more horizontally, not less.

Is there any way to get rid of that search box?

I have iOS 11.1 on an iPhone X, but the problem also occurs on iPhone 6 etc.

I have this same issue. I have no solution, but believe this is a software issue that is exclusive to "narrow" iPhones (i.e., anything but the Plus) running iOS 11.

I have been using both an iPhone 8 Plus and an iPhone X for the past week, and have noticed this issue only exists on the X. On the 8 Plus, I am easily able to close the search box in landscape mode. On the X, I cannot. I have tried deleting Maps and re-installing, but with no change. It's almost as if the bottom of the search box on the X runs off the bottom of the screen, and that's the problem.

I've also tried a friend's 8, and an old 6, but running iOS 11, and both devices have the same issue -- can't close the search box in landscape mode. However, trying this on an iPhone 5 running iOS 10, and it's not an issue (in landscape mode, the box remains to the bottom of the screen, not the side, and compresses to the bottom).

It would be useful to hear from (1) people running iPhone SE or 5S using iOS 11 and (2) people running a 6/6S/7 under iOS 10 and see if this is an issue, to confirm my hypothesis.


My iPad won't text to phone numbers my iPad Air 2 used to text to all apple products and now I can only text to iPods and iPads that use email. I looked at what everyone else did but it didn't help. I get the red error when ever I do try. Please help!

It sounds like the iPad is having difficulty associating numbers with the Apple IDs associated with the people you're contacting. Back up everything via iCloud or by connecting to iTunes and then restore your iPad https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201252

Restore information from your iCloud and iTunes backup and make sure that iMessage is activated in the settings of your iPad and try to send your messages again.

If it's still not working then restore the iPad again but set it up brand new.


How to use Maildrop on original iPad mini? I have an original iPad mini running iOS 9.3. When sending large eMail attachments, it doesn't ask me if I want to use Maildrop and fails miserably.
My iPhone SE offers me to use Maildrop though

How can I convince the iPad to try Maildrop?

Apple's support page says that the only requirement is iOS 9.2.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204230

First, make sure MailDrop is enabled. I don't own an iPad mini but this may help.

Choose Mail > Preferences, click Accounts, select the account, click Advanced, then select or deselect “Send large attachments with Mail Drop.” (Steps may vary based on the iOS version.)

This link points out that only IMAP email accounts had a checkbox to activate the MailDrop/iCloud option.

One thing I noticed is it may not prompt MailDrop but it may still use MailDrop on the background if you made sure you enabled MailDrop for that account.

You can check that by sending a test email with large attachment and check the inbox of the recipient . If it shows a preview similar to the one below, it already used MailDrop.

Let me know if you have further questions, or if this doesn't solve your problem.


is it safe to remove language files to save space in osx? It seems like by removing Language Files I can save about 1.18Gb space.

I did a google on this and I find conflicting views regarding this.

I don't need these language files. I just want to confirm it is side-effect free

Just to provide an actual answer to this, even if it is speculative...

Like some of the commenters, I've also tried this in the past, with varying results. I don't remember specifically which apps were affected, but it was sufficient that I needed to reinstall some.

I'd say on balance it's simply not worth the risk/effort, balanced against the amount of space they take up on your drive.

I will also add that a lot of those clean-up apps like to invent 'problems' that they can 'solve' for you, in order to justify their existence.


Preview on Lion will open all images I opened last time, and need to close each window one by one? Say if I clicked open 10 image files, and 2 PDF files, and quit Preview, then next time when I click on 1 image file or just start Preview, all those 12 other windows will open too...  I was playing a clicking game to close them one by one... is there a quick way to make Preview not do that or "Close All"?   (while keeping other apps to open the previous state).

Something like RestoreMeNot or Tinker Tool can be used to selectively control which apps restore their windows and should be able to do what you want.

Alternatively, using ⌥ + ⌘ + W in Preview (and most other apps) will close all currently open windows.


Is it possible to backup my iCloud contents? One of the major features in Mountain Lion is the ability for almost all programs (certainly all the pre-installed ones and any newer MAS based apps) to store the files that they create and/or edit in iCloud.

I think this is a great thing on the whole, and I will be using a lot for certain apps from now on.  Ignoring the argument about (for example) having a txt file that you can only open in Textedit because it is in the Textedit ubiquity container for example, I think it's a good system for those files that are not inherently truly portable between apps.

Anyway, my question is that whilst I like the system, I cannot necessarily totally trust it (yet).  I am concerned about the following scenarios, some short, some possible longer term.

What happens if my internet connection dies and I cannot contact iCloud
What happens is iCloud suffers an outage
What happens is iCloud loses or corrupts my documents
What happens if someone gains access to my account and deliberately deletes things

These are just some scenarios that could cause me to lose my data.  Previously with iDisk, at least you could keep a 1:1 local copy of all your stuff.

Now, I am aware that cached copies of the documents are located at ~/Library/Mobile Documents/..., but from my understanding these files are just the latest versions that the computer knows about, and it's possible that other computers have more recent versions etc, and that also sometimes what you have is just the metadata, with the actual data waiting to be transferred.  I'm not sure it is safe to call that a canonical copy for backup purposes (or even that it's safe to open anything in there directly), and anyway it looks a horrible old mess in there and it's barely possible to work out what is what, made worse by the fact that you can see all your iCloud stuff in there on your Mac, even the iPad app data for which there is no Mac app version:

Is there any way to do any or all of the following:

Force iCloud to complete any downloads so that you can take a point in time backup
Backup those files (I am presuming that the above folder is not excluded by Time Machine, so this could be simple (but a specific 'certified' local copy like iDisk used to provide should be ok)
Safely navigate and use the files within the backup for emergency access to files and folders

In short, if I don't trust iCloud, what can I do to feel safe that my data is secure.

I discovered recently that TimeMachine backs up all iCloud data. As long as you use TimeMachine, it is safe to use iCloud. If you want to recover your old (accidentally) deleted files, simply open Pages.app for example in the iCloud view. Then, you can just browse through your file history.

E.g., if you deleted the file today, just go back to yesterday and recover the file in TimeMachine


Sync multiple devices to iTunes but only one device for playcounts or ratings We have several iOS devices in our household (iPod Touches & older iPhones) that all sync through my account.  All of them except my iPod Touch are set to manually manage music.  However, I'm finding that when syncing, the play counts and ratings assigned by my kids are updating in my account.  I thought that the manually manage setting should have prevented this.  Is there any way to keep their ratings and plays from showing up in my library and on my device?  One of my kids primarily has an iPod Touch for the games and only has about 20 songs on it (which he plays on repeat overnight), which means those songs have play counts in the thousands, while my most played songs are lucky to break into double digits.

I'm pretty sure sure that any time one of your devices is plugged into iTunes it's going to update the play counts regardless of whether or not you have "manually manage music and videos" turned on. More than likely this is because the metadata is completely separate from the fact that you are manually managing the syncing of songs to and from devices.

I'm not 100% sure if that's the case with the metadata but it seems to be given that play counts are updated on your iTunes library even with "manually manage music and videos" enabled.

The only way I could think of checking that would be to enable "manually manage music and videos" on all of your devices and run a test again to see if play counts update. If they're still updating then I would say that the play counts are part of the metadata in the song file that's transferred to and from your library by the devices even when no actual song files are being transferred or synced between them.


Project based Finder window presets Does anyone know of software that would allow me to pull up a set of finder windows based on a project type.  I'm a user experience manager who's constantly switching between projects and it would be awesome to be able to select "cart/checkout redesign" and it brings up all folders right where I left them.  Finder windows are just the start to this dream tool of mine.  Would love to be able to pull up everything right where I left them: files, applications, emails, etc.  Almost like having a different computer for each project.
I've researched the heck out of this and have found nothing like this.  Spaces doesn't do it.  There's lots of tools for managing windows but none that will pull up a set of windows and file locations based on a preset.  "Finder Window Manager" is an old piece of software that sounded promising, but it didn't work at all given what I'm looking for.

Apple's solution for this is to use Mission Control (if you need multiple desktops) and Finder Tags for each file/project.

From there, you can use finder's tag filtering and/or smart folders to assemble your views.

Also, saving these to your Favorites and removing things you don't use make quick access to these "views" possible across finder and other app open/save dialogs.

Lastly, look at Divvy to automate window placement - it's very scriptable and you might use LaunchBar or another tool to speed actions if spotlight isn't action oriented enough for your automation.


Stop autocorrect in Microsoft Office changing custom symbols to emoji I have set up a number of custom shortcuts for math/logic symbols to use in Word and OneNote, including the left/right arrow ↔. This works in OneNote, but I also need it to work in Word, but it keeps autocorrecting to the corresponding arrow emoji which is incredibly frustrating.
I have tried the following:

changing the shortcut to add a space after the ↔. This still corrects to the emoji.
selecting "change back to [custom shortcut]" – this does what it says, and corrects it all the way back to the shortcut, rather than to the arrow symbol I want
using the inbuilt shortcut \leftrightarrow (which I want to avoid because it's so much faster to type a three-character shortcut than that) also autocorrects to the emoji outside of math fields in Word
changing the shortcut trigger to something different. This still replaces the arrow with an emoji.

Within specified math fields, this issue doesn't occur, but I want to be able to continue to use these symbols outside of math fields, because that's the only way I can still use it within OneNote as well due to the way the Autocorrect dictionary for Office is set up.
I suspect that the issue is due to the fact that there is an inbuilt auto-replacement function for the arrow symbol to be replaced by the arrow emoji itself, much like how the smiley symbols started getting replaced by emoji a few years ago too, but I wouldn't know where to look to disable that to allow insertion of the actual arrow symbol itself. Any suggestions? Right now I'm copying and pasting but obviously this is not an ideal solution.
I am using Microsoft Word for Mac Version 16.46.
Thank you in advance, this is driving me up the wall!

For some reason your Word would appear to be using Apple's Color Emoji font by default for symbols. Changing the font for them should fix it.
The representation of symbols as emoji or text can be a complex issue, see this document.


iTunes thinks there is a podcast on my ipod when there isn't Every day I listen to podcasts. When I'm done with them, I plug the iPod into the computer and uncheck the ones I no longer want, and then hit "sync" again. iTunes thinks that there is a podcast on my iPod... but there isn't, and nor should there be. Not a huge deal, but very annoying. How should I fix this?

I reset my iPod to factory settings. That fixed it!


How do I turn off the passcode requirement on my iPhone? On an iPhone 8 and after the update of 13.1.2 why do you have to have a passcode? How can I delete the passcode that I put in and no longer have to have it.

Source:

Go to Settings -> Touch ID & Passcode.

Scroll down until you see the "Turn passcode off" button.  You'll need to enter your passcode first and then you can turn the passcode off.

This image is of an iPhone X with Face ID but the screen flow will be the same for your iPhone 8.

You might be prevented from performing many iOS and app functions by having this weak security.  I'm sure you're already aware of these implications since you decided to not have the passcode.


When I type 'echo $path' in Terminal, I see only a blank line - why? I know I have a $path variable. If I type 'env' or 'set' at the Terminal command line, I can see what's in the $path variable - along with lots of other extraneous stuff. But if I just type 'echo $path', I see only a blank line. What is wrong? I'm El Capitan (10.11.6).

The environment variable name are case sensitive. Try typing echo $PATH instead.


How can I get my pictures back from when i backed up my iphone? I reset my iPhone 4s a couple weeks ago to see if FaceTime would start working again (it didnt!). I did back it up before I reset it, but I did not import my photos to iPhoto as I always do. Is there anyway I could get those pictures back? I haven't backed up my iPhone 4s since then.

it sounds like you have a recent backup -- so that's great news.  don't let anything over write that before you can extract your files from it.

in this case, utilities like  will let you parse through the backup files/folders and get to the photos.  these guys have a free one i just did a quick test with, and it is simple once it reads the backups and parses through it:

http://www.easeus.com/data-recovery/iphone-data-recovery/extract-iphone-data-from-itunes-backup.htm

let us know how it goes.


Apple script Call the following handler when.... assign applescript situations I Received Messages Text invitation. script .Is it showing me how to do something? Is it used to send messages I get someplace else or hide in some way? Is it being used to block messages?

(* INSTRUCTIONS

Messages includes the ability, within its preferences panel, to assign AppleScript scripts to a wide variety of Messages events. The following handler is called when a text invitation is received.

*)

using terms from application "Messages"

    on received text invitation this_message from this_buddy for this_chat

        (*EXAMPLE: this routine automatically accepts a text chat invitation for specified buddies

        set this_name to the name of this_buddy

        if the name of this_buddy is in {"Johnny Appleseed"} then

            set the greeting_name to the first name of this_buddy

            if the greeting_name is "" then set the greeting_name to this_name

            accept this_chat

            send "Hello " & greeting_name & "!" to this_chat

        end if

        *)

    end received text invitation

end using terms from

I think your question is, "What does this script do?". This script is a sample script, that will receive a text message invitation. If the name of the person sending the text message is "Johnny Appleseed", it will respond in the chat with a text message that says "Hello Johnny Appleseed!".


Program for finding duplicate photos? I used to use Visipics and completely loved it, it's simple yet powerful. However it's only for Windows which I have abandoned. Are there any OS X (Lion) programs that do the same? I'm sure there are, am just wondering if there are any that stand out. After taking all the files from multiple computers and putting them on one hard drive to be organized and regrouped I'm sure there are a lot I will find of varying quality. I would prefer free software, since Visipics is free and worked fine, however if there's something outstanding that costs money I'll consider it.

I use photo fixer pro and works well too bad in the past with iphoto there was an auto select photo app now you have to select each one and for me its a pain why well because i have 80,570 photos mixed with videos


Save program from iPad to Mac I bought some program for iPad and this program became crucial for my work - if the iPad will corrupt/+developer delete the program from AppStore I will be in great trouble.

So, my question is how can I save the program from iPad to MBP (from MBP to external HDD) to prevent any future corruptions of the program/store etc. Could I reinstall the program back to any new iPad from HDD only (if it will be unaccessible from Appstore).

You can log into your iTunes Store account in iTunes on the Mac and download the app there. As long as you have a copy on your Mac you can always sync it to your iPad if required.

The .ipa file (the app) is stored in /Users/<youruser>/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications, the name may need some guessing. You can also right-click on the app icon directly in the App view in iTunes and select "Show in Finder"