Upgrading Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion and preserving Bootcamp partition I have a 2010 MacPro running SL with a bootcamp partition (on the same bootdrive) containing a Windows 7 x64 installation which I use for work. I was about to upgrade the Mac to Mountain Lion but I'm concerned that doing so will make the Windows 7 partition unbootable. If its an anavoidable side-effect of upgrading I will have to image the windows partition and restore it once I've done the upgrade, but with >500GB on the Windows side of things, I would rather not.

I can't seem to find a definitive answer on the web, can anyone confirm or deny my suspicions?

I have succesfully upgrade two machines without having any issues with the Bootcamp Partitions or the actual installation. The upgrade doesn't seem to the touch the actual partition scheme unless it is a HFS partition. I also did the upgrade on a Tripple Boot MacBook without any issues.

I have also done a clean installation of Lion onto a machine that had a bootcamp partition without issues, as long as you don't delete the partitions.

As always, make sure you have a backup of the important Windows portions as for safety, however go ahead with the upgrade, it should only affect your existing OSX partition.


How can I rename music videos on my iPhone? I want to find some music videos and rename them, but I can't figure out how to do that?

I am using iPhone 4S - iOS 5.0.1 - a jailbroken phone and using iFile And iFunBox.

I don't believe it is possible to rename the title of the Music video. The workaround would be this (NOTE: This does involve using a paid Cydia package, Bridge ($1.99)):

Open Cydia and search for "Bridge". Buy it, install it, respring.
Navigate to /var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/Music via iFile (or SSH Client of choice)

This is where your music, music videos and movies are stored on iOS.

Tap on the gear icon in the left lower corner, go to File Manager > Search Format and change it to Wildcard if not already selected.
Go back to File Manager and turn on "Song Titles" if not already on. Press Done in the upper right corner.
Swipe up to reveal the search field, select "Hierarchy" and type "*.m4v"

NOTE: If your video files are not M4V, then you would type their extension in it's place eg. *.AVI or *.MP4.
This should search all of the subfolders (F01, F02…) for any video files.

Unfortunately iTunes names them things like "AAWA.mp3", that is why we turned on song titles. It should display the title above the file name for the video.
Once you find the file, note it's location in case you mess up the next step:
Long press over it and choose "Select".
Tap the clipboard in the lower right corner and select copy.
Navigate to /var/mobile/Documents/Downloads and paste the video.
Go to Bridge on the home screen and navigate to /var/mobile/Documents/Downloads
Choose the video file to import, on the info page select "Music Video" and choose a title for it.
Tap import and you should be all set! :-)

It is quite a long and convoluted way to rename a video file, but it is possible (sort of!).


Can I ask Time Machine to backup only some data to a smaller disk? I have two backup hard discs for Time Machine: 1.5TB, and 1TB. My backup fits in 1.5TB, but Time Machine sometimes complains that it can't backup to the 1TB disk, because the space is not enough.

Can I ask it to automatically select only some directories to back up, instead of failing to back up? I still want everything backed up to the 1.5TB disc.

I'm not using the 1TB hard disc, anyway, so I would like to backup some data to it rather than none, in case both my computer and the 1.5TB hard disc fail.

You can exclude items from a backup to save space on your backup disk, or to exclude items you back up using another method.

Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Time Machine.

Click Options.

Click the Add button , then select one or more items. You can also drag items to the list. To remove an item, select it, then click the Remove button . For example, you can exclude system files or the Applications folder from Time Machine backups using Time Machine preferences.

The backup disk is automatically included in the list of items that shouldn’t be backed up.

Click Save.

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18847

Notice how this setting is for both timemachine destinations though. Excluded files will (eventually) be deleted on both destinations.


Unable to export .p12 certificate from Keychain Access I'm trying to export a Developer certificate from Keychain Access. I've followed all the instructions and got to the point where I need to enter the "login" keychain password.

However, when I enter this password and press Allow, nothing happens.

I've checked the password multiple times. The Keychain Access is set to Keychains = login and Category = My Certificates. I've tried with other categories too.

I had the same problem when logged in via VNC / remote desktop - it appears that if your mac detects a 'security risk' it will prevent you from pressing the "Always Allow" / "Allow" buttons.

No error message is shown and the box doesn't shake (although the button does highlight blue when clicked.)

The same issue seems to exist with KVM programs such as Synergy.

To solve the problem, simply log in to your mac using a physical keyboard and mouse, ensure remote desktop / KVM connections are turned off and try clicking the "Allow" button again


How to know which iOS apps are restricted to a country? I'm actually using an US iTunes account, but I'm interested in switching my country to another (as people suggest here) to my original country to be able to use my credit card (with address in my country).

The problem is that I may have apps only available in the US App Store, and probably I don't really care about those apps but I would like to know which are those apps to be sure if I could live without them.

Do you know how or where to check that?
If it's something automatic, would be great, but if I need to look each of my apps it's not a problem at all.

I don't know of anything automatic - but you can browse the iTunes store here:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/browse

This is the US store - if you browse to your app, and then replace the 'us' part of the URL with the country code for the store you want to check (e.g. 'fr' for france, 'ie' for Ireland, etc) - you'll either get brought to the entry for the App in that country, or get an error message that the app is not available.

I don't think you'll find a huge number of apps that aren't available.

If you use Apple TV, do consider that the films/TV choices in other stores may be much more limited.

You might want to consider keeping two accounts rather than changing. It can make management a little more inconvenient, but you'll have a bigger choice of things to buy/rent.


Mac OS X 10.6.8 - Can't remove SophosUpdate Packages/Folders on Desktop Every day a new "SophosUpdate" folder/package will appear on my desktop (see screenshot).

When I highlight it my trash can turns into an eject button.  When I drag them to the eject button nothing happens.  Also nothing happens when I right click one of them and select "eject".

The only thing that got rid of them once was starting up in safe mode but they keep coming back after that.

Does anyone know what I can do?  I'm stuck.

When I highlight it my trash can turns into an eject button.

This is a huge clue, because it indicates that this is a mounted volume (presumably a mounted image of the update package) and not an actual folder in ~/Desktop.

If you enter mount or diskutil list at a terminal prompt, does anything called SophosUpdate show up? If you see one or more of these listed, you should be able to unmount it with sudo diskutil unmount force /dev/diskN where N is the disk number. Alternately, sudo diskutil unmount force "/Volumes/Volume Name" has the same effect.


USB thumbdrive plugged into Macbook Pro which instantly goes black, bricked? New 2011 Macbook Pro 8,3 less then three months old, this is my first ever Apple product.
I have an old USB thumbdrive I couldn't remember what was on it so I plugged it into the USB port nearest the Thunderbolt port and nothing.
Then I tried the USB port closest to the front (nearest me) and my Macbook instantly goes black.
Even the light on the power adapter, the magnetic end at the laptop, is not lit.
Long pressing the power button does nothing, I've left the power plug out to kill the battery hoping some error will clear itself. Other than that there isn't much to do to it unless I remove the back cover but it's still under warranty and I don't want to void that!
Did I just brick my Macbook?
edit: It's working again! Through no action other than leaving it unplugged and powered down. The battery was 0% and the date and time was set to "2000-12-31 8:15pm". Nice but, what the hell happened in both situations?!
Are there system log files I can view?
edit #2: Found it: Console (to console me?). The last two kernel.log entries before the crash shows:
Nov 29 21:18:40 DGH-MacbookPro kernel [0]: 0     0 AppleUSBDC: start - initDevice failed

Nov 29 21:18:40 DGH-MacbookPro kernel [0] USBMC Identifier (non-unique): 0x90c 0x3000 0x100
So would "AppleUSBDC" indicate a problem with the USB power?

Either your USB thumb drive is broken, or the specific USB port on your MBP is.

The easiest way to test is for you to plug another USB device to the same USB port, then

Locate the Apple logo on the top left corner of your display, and click on "About This Mac"
A window will appear. Click on the "More Info…" button
If you're running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, skip to the next step. If you're running OS X 10.7 Lion, another window will appear on which you'll have to locate and click on the "System Report" button.
A new window will appear, on the left column, locate "USB" which is listed alphabetically under "Hardware". The details of the USB device you connected to that USB port should be displayed. If it is, then your USB port is working normally, which means your USB thumb drive is the problem.


Automatic downloads in iTunes & App stores UPDATES on In my iPhone 6 iTunes and App stores there is automatic downloads in which my Updates are on. Can I keep these Updates on or shall I turn off to prevent mobile data usage on roaming, or will these updates only happen on Wifi?

It's a configurable option.

  You can also turn Automatic Downloads on or off over your cellular network on an iPhone or iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular. Go to Settings > [your name] > iTunes & App Store and turn Use Cellular Data on or off. Cellular Data downloads are limited to a file size of 150 MB or smaller.


Isn't there a faster way to delete events from the Calendar on my iPhone/iPod-touch? Do I really have to:

Enter the event
Select the Edit button
Scroll down
Select "Delete Event" button
Confirm "Delete Event"

Isn't there a faster way to delete an event on my iPhone/iPod-touch?

There is not a faster way to delete events in the Cal app.

in the iOS5 beta, you could quickly delete an event in the day view by holding and dragging up, this feature was removed from the full release. There is a blog post I have dug up here

my personal opinion on this is that it would be easy to delete an even when changing it to one hour earlier by draggin it up.


How do I install MySQLdb on my MacBook or is there a way I can skip install and use sqlalchemy without it? I have macOS Sierra and XAMPP installed (with mariadb as database).

However, on my local MacBook I am running this Python code to create table:

from sqlalchemy import create_engine

def create_db():
    from sqlalchemy.orm import sessionmaker
    engine = create_engine("mysql://username:password@localhost/exchange_rate", echo = True)
    # Session = sessionmaker(bind = engine)
    # session = Session()
    # import pdb
    # pdb.set_trace()
    meta = MetaData()
    exchange_rate = Table(
        'inr_exchange_rate', meta,
        Column('id', Integer, primary_key = True),
        Column('as_of', Date),
        Column('rate_per_usd', Float),
        Column('last_modified', DateTime),
        )
    meta.create_all(engine)
    return True

if __name__ == '__main__':
    parser = get_parser()
    args = parser.parse_args()
    print(args)
    if args.create_db:
        print("Create db called;")
        create_db()
        exit(0)

but I get this error

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "exchange_rate.py", line 73, in <module>
    create_db()
  File "exchange_rate.py", line 50, in create_db
    engine = create_engine("mysql://username:password@localhost/exchange_rate", echo = True)
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/sqlalchemy/engine/__init__.py", line 386, in create_engine
    return strategy.create(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/sqlalchemy/engine/strategies.py", line 75, in create
    dbapi = dialect_cls.dbapi(**dbapi_args)
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/sqlalchemy/dialects/mysql/mysqldb.py", line 92, in dbapi
    return __import__('MySQLdb')
ImportError: No module named MySQLdb

then I tried to follow instruction on the link given by @bmike:

$ sudo pip3 install MySQL-python
Collecting MySQL-python
  Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/a5/e9/51b544da85a36a68debe7a7091f068d802fc515a3a202652828c73453cad/MySQL-python-1.2.5.zip (108kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 112kB 490kB/s
    ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:
     command: /usr/local/opt/python/bin/python3.7 -c 'import sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = '"'"'/private/tmp/pip-install-oxqg62fi/MySQL-python/setup.py'"'"'; __file__='"'"'/private/tmp/pip-install-oxqg62fi/MySQL-python/setup.py'"'"';f=getattr(tokenize, '"'"'open'"'"', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('"'"'\r\n'"'"', '"'"'\n'"'"');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, '"'"'exec'"'"'))' egg_info --egg-base pip-egg-info
         cwd: /private/tmp/pip-install-oxqg62fi/MySQL-python/
    Complete output (7 lines):
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
      File "/private/tmp/pip-install-oxqg62fi/MySQL-python/setup.py", line 13, in <module>
        from setup_posix import get_config
      File "/private/tmp/pip-install-oxqg62fi/MySQL-python/setup_posix.py", line 2, in <module>
        from ConfigParser import SafeConfigParser
    ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'ConfigParser'
    ----------------------------------------
ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1: python setup.py egg_info Check the logs for full command output.

but If I try to install config parser, I get its already installed message.

$ pip3 install ConfigParser
Requirement already satisfied: ConfigParser in /usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages (4.0.2)

To address the MySQLdb error - try reinstalling the package and then test just that.

sudo easy_install pip
pip install MySQL-python
python -c "import MySQLdb"

https://stackoverflow.com/a/22513919/475228

The above link would be if you can’t get this going - using homebrew to install MySQL helps with path and getting you set up with the proper environment / diagnostics and easy updating as the software gets patched over time. But, you don’t need that to reinstall the package that threw the error.

Also - be sure you choose python3 or python2 - it’s a bit of a hassle to mix them if you can even get that to work. If you are going to have both I’ll double down on using homebrew to manage things instead of using XAMPP.


Can I transfer a call to another number mid-call (on my iPhone)? I would like to transfer a call (mid-call) to another number. Is it possible?

What you can do is add another number to the call once you’ve started it, then you can talk using the other phone number that you added.

The only thing is you cannot hang up on he original number once you add the second number or else both numbers will be disconnected.


Homebrew: can't remove 'keg-only' OpenSSL application Given the recent OpenSSL scare I'm trying to clean out older versions from my machines but Homebrew won't let me:

$ brew dirty
openssl (1.0.1e, 1.0.1f, 1.0.1g)
$ brew cleanup openssl
Warning: Skipping (old) keg-only: /usr/local/Cellar/openssl/1.0.1e
Warning: Skipping (old) keg-only: /usr/local/Cellar/openssl/1.0.1f
$ brew dirty
openssl (1.0.1e, 1.0.1f, 1.0.1g)

How can I purge these old versions of OpenSSL from my Mac?

As of Homebrew f4d2141 there is a --force option.

brew cleanup --force openssl

References: man brew


How to delete all conversations all at once in iMessage? It's clear on how to delete conversations in iMessage one by one. Does anyone know how I can delete multiple or all conversations all at once? Thanks.

In Mojave the keyboard sequence is to first delete the message with Command + Delete And then keep Command pressed and press d
You can't delete multiple message at once unfortunately, but keeping the button Command pressed and alternately press Delete and d makes the delete process a lot less cumbersome.


pmset -g: UPS Power -1; AC Power -1* When issuing the command pmset -g in macOS (tested on El Capitan through High Sierra) the first two lines come up about the active UPS and AC profile:

Active Profiles:
UPS Power       -1
AC Power        -1*

What does the negative one (-1) refer to and what is the asterisk (*) denoting?

The question "Default settings for pmset -g?" makes references these values, but doesn't explain what they mean.

This is expected behavior.

The -1 denotes that a "custom" profile is being used.
The * denotes the profile currently in use.

So, from this we can see that there is a custom profile for both UPS and AC and that it is currently using the AC profile.

When using the macOS defaults as seen in Energy Saving Preference pane (above image), pmset -g gives the following:

Active Profiles:
UPS Power       -1
AC Power        2*

Now, the UPS is the only profile with a custom setting and the 2 denotes a predefined (default) setting for AC. Setting it back to a custom setting returns the profile value to -1.


External Storage Options for MBP non-retina My system specs:

late 2011 13 non-retina
thunderbolt (1?)
optical drive
usb 2
sdxc @ 2.5 gt/s
firewire 800
128gb ssd

I am wrestling with a few options since I don't have USB3.0:

USB 3 drive running at usb 2 speed
Firewire 800 drive
A few SDXC cards

I am also considering for the long term:

Thunderbolt to USB3 adapter to usb 3 drive (not ideal since I can't
use my TB to dvi anymore)
Thunderbolt dock (would consider this heavily if it allows me to run
2 external monitors, but I am still not sure if this is possible)
Thunderbolt drive (expensive)
Replace optical drive with SSD or HDD (expensive)

I am looking for a solution with less wires and as quick as possible. I am not sure how the transfer rate of the SDXC stacks up to firewire800 and usb 2, but I appreciate the lack of wires. I can get a firewire drive or usb 3 drive pretty cheap locally (obv the usb3 drive would run at usb2 speed but would be more compatible in the future). I am planning to use this for movies, music, dev project backups.

The Thunderbolt dock is interesting to me since it claims you can run an external TB display from it, 3 usb3 slots, AND an external hdmi monitor but it states "Yes, the Thunderbolt Station can support two monitors if one of them is an Apple Thunderbolt Display". If it can support a non-apple thunderbolt display then I would be more interested since were talking about a lot of cash for this setup, still waiting for them to get back to me.

The TB drive isn't really an option if it can't support the daisy chain either, so also looking at a very pricey setup that way.

It seems like replacing the optical drive with a non-ssd is also bad practice since it will increase battery load? And it doesn't really seem worth it to spend so much to add another low capacity ssd?

I am thinking the best options are either the firewire drive (the one I'm considering requires external power), or just picking up some SDXC cards.

Anyways, I apologize for the novel, would really like hear any opinions or experiences with this. Thankee-sai!

Replacing your optical drive would seem a logic choice to me. No wires, fast transfer speeds and you have your disk always with you. If storage is your main concert, just go for an HD (And replace your SSD with a bigger one while you are at it...)

It is not expensive at all. You need a philips screwdriver, a hard drive enclosure kit specially made to fit the Unibody MacBook Pro, and a new hard drive. This enclosure holds the drive that fits into the MacBook Pro’s optical drive slot and costs about $40.

Buy it here: iFixit, MaxUpgrades, MacSales or OptiBay


Change default tab on Characters pop-up dialogue box I am a physics teacher who routinely uses Greek letters while typing, and I insert them with the Characters pop-up dialogue box (  ⌃-⌘-[space] ).  Unfortunately for me, most of the population uses Characters for emojis. Accordingly, Characters default tab is Emoji.

I want Favorites to be the default tab in Characters. How might I accomplish this?

I ran a couple of experiments on this, to try figure out what the 'rules' are. It appears that if Frequently Used was selected the last time the window was opened, then it will not be selected & instead the item at the top of the list will be instead.

Assuming that list would remain alphabetical I removed all I had checked above Greek, then tried again - success, Greek became the top of the list.

The surprise was that once I added back all my other choices - Greek remained at the top of the list.

So - it doesn't appear that you can force Frequently Used to be selected by default, but you can force Greek to be at the top of the list & therefore be the default if no other below it was previously selected.


What IR receivers would work on a 2010 MacBook Air? If you didn't already know, the 2010 MacBook Air doesn't have an IR receiver.

Does anyone know of a very small and cheap IR receiver that would work with a MacBook Air and the Apple Remote?

Here are a couple of examples, do you know if they work?

Micro Mini USB to Infrared IrDA Wireless Port Dongle Adapter Receiver PC
Syba SD-U1IRDA-NM USB Fast Infra-Red Adapter

Also, are there any good bluetooth remotes that work similarly to the Apple IR remote, and have similar design quality and size?

For IR, it sounds like you want Twisted Melon's Manta TR1 ($20).

As far as a Bluetooth remote goes, it depends on what you want to do with the remote. If all that matters to you is cheap, take a look at the Targus Bluetooth Laser Presentation Remote (~$20).


Local User LaunchAgent via SSH: Operation not permitted I have a launch agent on a remote machine which runs Yosemite. The LaunchAgent is saved to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ and I am the owner:

$ ls -l ~/Library/LaunchAgents
-rw-r--r--@ 1 me  staff  803 Jan 13 15:13 org.my.custom.plist
$ ls -l@ ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.my.custom.plist
-rw-r--r--@ 1 me  staff  803 Jan 13 15:13 /Users/me/Library/LaunchAgents/org.my.custom.plist
    com.apple.TextEncoding   15

When logging in via SSH (as that particular user), attempting to load the file produces the following exchange:

$ launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.my.custom.plist
/Users/me/Library/LaunchAgents/org.my.custom.plist: Operation not permitted

Why is the operation not permitted when I'm the owner? It works fine under Sierra.

This appears to be an issue with the launchctl 'session' that is used for the agent and that is incorrectly inferred by the start command. The new version of launchctl has some new commands for loading agents that allow you to specify this, see here.

The following seems to work via SSH:

launchctl bootstrap gui/<UID> /Users/me/Library/LaunchAgents/org.my.custom.plist

You can then (re)start the service using

launchctl kickstart -k gui/<UID>/org.my.custom

Here <UID> is the user's UID which can be found with id -u <username>.


External HD (Time Machine) sleep issues I have a 4TB WD external hard drive with three partitions on it, one being a Time Machine partition. When a Time Machine backup is running and the computer goes to sleep, it triggers a few different annoying issues.

First, I can no longer seem to eject the partitions properly. I get an error saying that the drive is in use. The application What’s Keeping Me? tells me that mds and its related processes are keeping the drive from unmounting, but no matter how many times I kill the processes they return and makes it impossible to unmount.

Second, it seems that the drive will continually mount and unmount during sleep, which is terrifying. When I open the computer again, I see a whole bunch of notifications that I manually have to dismiss (Norwegian OS in the image).

Third, Time Machine gives me an error saying it couldn’t complete the backup, and I have to force an unmount and replug the drive for it to work properly again.

I’ve excluded Spotlight from indexing the external drive, excluded Time Machine from backing up the other external partitions, there is no sleep timer on the WD drive itself, but Power Nap is enabled. What should I do?

Edit: ‘Put hard drives to sleep when possible’ is unchecked in System Preferences.

To answer my own question:

Most likely the issue was caused by the WD Driver Utility app, as reported by many in the WD forums.

If not that, it was caused by an unpowered 7x USB-A to USB-C hub that the HDD was connected to earlier.

Either way the problem is now gone.


Does constant charging harm my Macbook Pro? I usually connect my macbookpro with the charger 12-15hour/day and 7 days a week. I'm afraid the battery could lose capacity over time. However, I believe modern electronics should be able to handle this kind of scenario and automatically stop charging the battery once it's full. Does this apply to macbook pro? Or do I need to continue disconnecting it once its fully charged?

(I'm not a native speaker, so please feel free to edit this question to clarify my words.)

See http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html. This link suggests that you should fully discharge and recharge the battery at least once a month. I did not see this on that page, but I read somewhere that it is ok to leave a mac plugged in for an extended time, so just make sure you exercise the battery and let it completely discharge every once in a while.


Where does iTunes store my iPhone and iPad backups? Where does iTunes store data for iPhone and iPad backups? I know that—on a Mac—the following folder is ostensibly the only location.

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

I actually replaced this with a symlink to an external hard drive to free up space on my laptop, and was thus a bit surprised to find that backing up my iPhone nevertheless continued to decrease the free space on my laptop's hard drive. I eventually discovered that the following folder was the culprit.

~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media

Are there any other folders that iTunes uses for its backups?

Mobile applications (.ipa files) are stored in the following folder and can take up a lot of space:

~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications


Adium + Office Communicator We are required to use Office Communicator at my work for instant messages.  I am currently using the multi-protocol client Adium for my other accounts (AIM, Gtalk).  I don't see a way to add an account for Office Communicator, so I'm wondering if there is any 3rd party support for this?

All of the searching I've been doing only points to running a separate application (which I already use), or to requests to add this feature to Adium.  I've haven't tracked down a 3rd party module, so I thought I would ask here if anyone knows of one.

A SIPE plugin is under development. Here's a link to an Adium plugin binary: dropbox

And here's the link to the Adium issue tracking system so you can follow progress: trac.adium.com

Looks like a number of people are interested and development is active.

See comment 144 for plugin installation instructions.


OS X does not remember my network passwords anymore My OS X always forgets its Wi-Fi network passwords after disconnecting or sleeping. Do you have an idea of how should I troubleshoot this or what might be the cause?

OS X El Capitan 10.11.5, MacBook Air

This might be a permissions issue.

I sometimes have similar problems with settings not getting saved when the home folder has bad permissions (probably issues with the ~/Library folder). Using the terminal command resetpassword from the recovery permission may help as per http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/15/repair-user-permissions-in-mac-os-x-lion/

Restart using the recovery partition (hold down Command+r when restarting)
Under the "Utilities" menu select "Terminal"
In the Terminal window, type resetpassword and hit Return
When the Password Reset Utility launches, select the startup drive's icon and then select the user account that is having the difficulties (or go through one-by-one and select them all)
Click on the "Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs" button at the bottom.

Unfortunately, recent versions of macOS (10.14 and above maybe?) do not seem to have this feature within the Password Reset Utility. This seems to do the same thing without the Password Reset Utility or requiring restarting in the Recovery Partition. From https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203538

From the Finder menu bar, choose Go > Home. Your home folder opens.
Choose File > Get Info. An Info window for your home folder opens.
If the Sharing & Permissions section at the bottom of the window isn't open, click the triangle in that section to open it.
If the lock at the bottom of the window is closed lock, click the lock and enter an administrator name and password.
Click the action menu , then choose “Apply to enclosed items.” Click OK to confirm the action.
A progress bar appears at the top of the window. When done, restart your Mac.


How can I create a zip archive for Windows and Linux users? In Finder, when I create an archive ("Compress items..."), the resulting zip archive has .DS_Store files in folders and files have resource forks. How can I create a zip archive suitable for cross platform sharing from Mac OS X?

zip -r -x .DS_Store directory.zip directory

zip removes extended attributes and ACLs by default

find directory -name .DS_Store -delete; ditto -ck --norsrc directory directory.zip

--norsrc implies --noextattr and --noacl; --noextattr would require --norsrc
-c is compress, -k uses PKZip (zip) instead of CPIO

COPYFILE_DISABLE= tar --exclude .DS_Store -czf directory.tgz directory

Setting COPYFILE_DISABLE tells tar to remove extended attributes and ACLs instead of creating ._ files

The files that start with ._ are AppleDouble files (not resource forks), and they are used to store extended attributes and ACLs.

Extended attributes are used to store the quarantine status of files, the source URLs of files downloaded from the Internet, information about aliases (aliases stop working if extended attributes are removed), Spotlight comments, the encoding of files saved with TextEdit, and so on.

You can list extended attributes and ACLs with ls -l@e. You can remove extended attributes and ACLs recursively with xattr -cr .; chmod -NR .


osascript and AppleEvents I logged the AppleEvents that get sent from a Terminal window. The event that the osascript command sends to the AppleScript compiler/interpreter wasn't logged. How come?

In greater detail, the following argument consists of three hypotheses followed by their logical conclusion. However, experiment shows that the conclusion is false. Hence the argument is faulty. Unfortunately, I don't know why it is faulty. Where does it break?

Hypotheses

macOS comes with a built-in AppleScript compiler/interpreter that is installed as an OSA component.
The Terminal command osascript does not "know" AppleScript. When passed a line of AppleScript code, it passes it on to the AppleScript compiler/interpreter via the OSA architecture by sending out an AppleEvent.
The following line of code, when run in the Terminal, will cause all AppleEvents sent by commands that are executed from the same Terminal window afterwards to be printed out in the Terminal:

export AEDebugSends=1

Conclusion

After running the following two commands in a Terminal window:

export AEDebugSends=1
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to activate'

two AppleEvents should be printed out:

One directed from osascript to the AppleScript compiler/interpreter to compile and run the command 'tell application "Finder" to activate'.
One directed from the AppleScript compiler/interpreter to Finder to activate itself.

Actual output

Only one AppleEvent gets printed out, the one sent to Finder:

  AE2000 (4085 ): Sending an event:
  ------oo start of event oo------
  aevt('misc'\'actv' transactionID=0 sourcePSN=[0x0,e00e "Finder"] timeout=7200 eventSource=3 { &'subj':null(), &'csig':magn(65536) })
  ------oo  end of event  oo------

tl;dr : Language components are just dependencies used by the executable and can be accessed through the shell without Apple events.

A: Your argument breaks at a couple of points made in number 2.

a. "The Terminal command osascript does not "know" AppleScript."

Agreed, it does not have all of the languages it supports self contained in one executable.  However, that's where dependencies come in, and when you think of it that way; it's not too troubling that it can access dependencies through your shell like any other application can.

b. "it passes it on to the AppleScript compiler/interpreter via the OSA architecture by sending out an AppleEvent."

  "When a scripting component executes a script, statements in the script may result in Apple events being sent to applications (developer.apple.com)".

The executable is not limited to only using either code within itself or an Apple event call. Similar to almost every process or application on your machine, it relies on various core libraries and specifically it uses the osa language components installed on your system. It does not use Apple events for passing your script to the language component.

see supported languages:

❯ osalang

these language components live here:

❯ ls /System/Library/Components/

Since osascript can access your system's language components directly through the shell, you'll never seen an Apple event triggered just to process/interpret the script input.

for example compare these two commands where the first uses the AppleScript language but does not interact with any other applications:

❯ osascript -e 'set myVar to "hello" & "world"'
helloworld

and the second where we tell terminal to do something:

❯ osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to do script ("echo helloworld;")'
AE2000 (63917 ): Sending an event:
------oo start of event oo------
aevt('core'\'dosc' transactionID=0 sourcePSN=[0x0,dd7dd7 "Terminal"] timeout=7200 eventSource=3 { '----':utxt('utxt'(TEXT("echo helloworld;"))), &'subj':null(), &'csig':magn(65536) })
------oo  end of event  oo------
tab 1 of window id 32644

Only the one that interacted with an application, not just the AppleScript language itself, triggered an Apple event.

Read over this article again and you will see how this explination fits now.  OSA Architecture implemented via Apple events is the powerful construct allowing for automating between applications; but interpretation of the input script itself is just done by your system's compatible language component behind the scenes.


Why might a Macbook Pro go back into sleep shortly after waking up? Whenever I wake up my mac by opening the lid, approximately 20 seconds later it will put itself to sleep again, even though I'm actively working on it. I'm guessing it's "deep sleep" (hibernation) because the indicator light turns completely off, not just blinking.

Waiting until the sleep process is completed and then pushing the power button will wake the laptop again, and this time it will work fine. So the whole business takes less then a minute, but it's still a little annoying.

What causes this behavior, and how can I fix it? This happens every time I open the lid, but it's a relatively new thing, just happening for the past week or two.

Possibilities include (listed from the best case to worst case):

Incorrect SMC settings. To fix this: read
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964 (your situation is described the Power section)
A battery that's not retaining its charges. To check: read about Battery Cycle Count at http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1519

There are other possibilities but let's try these first. Feedback if these doesn't work for you.


Enable/Disable Sharing (SSH/File) Based on Network? Is it possible to enable and disable the Sharing features (ssh, file sharing, etc) based on the current network?

For example, I want file sharing and SSH to be enabled on my trusted home network.  However, I don't want these enabled when I am connected to untrusted public networks.

Is it possible to set up this policy?  To differentiate between a home and public network?

I don't think this occurs by default because I often see shared folders and shared itunes libraries on public networks.  While they are protected by passwords, I would rather be completely sealed up on public networks.

Thanks!

You can use ControlPlane for this. It allows you to control your context, like home and other, and set actions for it: when 'enter' home context, enable file sharing, when 'leave' home context, disable file sharing.


cmd-w to close pinned tabs Is there a keyboard shortcut to close pinned tabs in Safari?

I tried cmdW like for normal tabs but it didn't work.

As a workaround, I'd set up a keyboard shortcut in Safari for both Pin Tab and Unpin Tab to the same shortcut, e.g., ⌥⌘P and then you can toggle the pinned status of the Tab with the same keyboard shortcut.

This way when a Tab is pinned and you want to close it, using the keyboard, you'd first press, e.g., ⌥⌘P then: ⌘W

System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts


Cannot access user files with root using osxfuse I mounted external server via sshfs root@example.com but I cannot access user files (ie someuser:somegroup) that have no permissions set for other (ie drwx--x--x. 17 graphica:graphica foldername).

There is no problem accessing this folder via ssh or sftp when I access the server as root.

Shouldn't sshfs have the same root privileges as ssh?

I just found the solution.

I was missing -o defer_permissions from my command

The following post has more info in this topic:

https://github.com/osxfuse/filesystems/issues/1#issuecomment-3612902


Dictionaries on iOS 9 not working I just updated to iOS 9, and I noticed that the built-in dictionaries, I previously used, aren't working. I had used American English, British English, and Apple Dictionary. Now, when I try to define any word, I get a "No definition found" error. The dictionaries I previously used show a blue circle (while all the others show the cloud download icon).

Sounds like a bug to me. Not even iOS is completely immune to them, even after a long public beta period. So, not a lot that you can do other than wait for iOS 9.0.1 and hope that it will fix that issue with the dictionary.


Considering 27" iMac. Can I use it as a TV? I may be considering to get the iMac.

I don't own a TV, but I would love to be able to use it as such. I understand it has a DisplayPort input for these types of purposes.

What would I need to get to get my Wii and analogue TV (PAL) hooked up to this?

The best way to get TV hooked up to a Mac is through a TV Tuner. The best TV Tuners for Mac are by far the EyeTV tuners. The TV tuner could also be used to hook up to your Wii, however that is a bit impractical. Instead consider buying an adapter from RCA to Mini-Display Port to use your iMac as a Monitor for the Wii.


iPhone 7 Plus randomly wouldn’t let me do things? My iPhone 7 with iOS 11.3.1 has a problem with its microphone and headphone jack.

When I make a call, I am unable to click on the loud “Speaker” button, and also am unable to hear the person on the other side of the call. They also aren’t able to hear me. Basically my phone can make calls, but I am unable to hear the other person and the other person can’t hear me. Also my speaker DURING calls is greyed out, so there’s definitely an issue with the microphone, as if it was disabled.

Additionally, my headphones cannot be recognised by the phone when plugged in, however the phone is still able to charge. I know for a fact that the headphones are not faulty, it definitely has to be a phone issue.

I still have three months left on my warranty before I can get a new phone, so any help will be deeply appreciated!

-Cambria

Being unable to hear through the speaker and the speakerphone button being grayed out are symptoms of a hardware failure with the device.  The troubleshooting you could try is:

Force restarting the device - Do this by holding the power button and the down volume button together for ~10 seconds.  When you see the Apple symbol let go of the buttons. Then test to see if it's working.
Reset settings - Under Settings> General> Reset, select 'Reset All Settings'.  After the reset test to see if it's working.
Perform a restore - Backup you device before doing this step using iCloud or iTunes.
Best way to do restore is by connecting to a computer with iTunes, then performing the force restart steps, holding the buttons slightly longer until you see the iTunes symbol show on the iPhone screen.  Then follow the prompts in iTunes.  Once restore is complete setup as new if possible then test again to determine if issue is still happening.

Since your device is still under warranty I recommend contacting Apple Support.  They will make sure you have completed all necessary steps and if the issue is still occurring be able to present you with replacement options.


Unexpected limitations on "Updates" folder? Apple sent me 4GB of updates to go to macos 10.14.5 this morning. As I have several systems needing this update, I thought I would try to save the contents of the /Library/Updates folder to use rather than allow each system to DL the 4GB of data. I was able to copy the contents to my desktop, but when trying to delete the update from /Library/Updates so that I could replace them with my copies to test my theory, I found that the system would not allow be to do so. I couldn't delete, move, or chmod the parent directory, or any of its contents. Command line returns "Operation not permitted". Whoami returns "root", but apparently not. What's up with that, any ideas?

On one system, before you install the update - enable caching in the sharing preference pane. Save the cache files to an external drive - speed there isn’t much of a limiting factor since the downloads stream well and any recent hard drive or SSD will be almost as fast as the network can serve files.

Then the first machine to do the download will get the file cached. All the rest of the machines will pull from the cached version.

This is much better than trying to stage the updates on each system as the permissions and code checks are designed to not let you easily place a file on macOS for updating.


Could not unlock file inside Application contents For using RoboVM on OSX, I need to edit a file called info.plist, which resides inside the contents of the application called Android Studio.

Last year I managed to edit the file for Android Studio 1.5 (right image), but I now installed Android Studio 2.13 and I didn't succeed (left image).

It seems that the contents of this application are read only. How do I edit this file? I only need to change one value.

Assuming you're an admin you can add write permission to the group using the chmod command:

sudo chmod g+w /path/to/info.plist

Update:  Turns out they were launching the application directly from the disk image, which was likely mounted as read-only. Copying it to the local disk lets you make changes like this.


iPad Contacts app incorrectly formats telephone numbers Some time ago my iPad Contacts app has begun an odd behaviour of incorrectly formatting American telephone numbers. Instead of displaying "(415)-123-1234", for example, it displays "41 5123 1234". Even when I create a new contact on the iPad, the telephone number is forced into the same odd spacing pattern.

I've checked all of the international settings I can find. I am set up for American telephone numbers, both on the iPad (General > International > Region Format) and on my Mac (System Preferences > Language & Text > Formats). On my Mac, the Address Book displays numbers with the correct formatting, and when I log into iCloud directly the numbers are also displayed correctly. Since the iPad syncs with iCloud, I'm surprised that the formatting isn't carrying over.

I do spend a lot of time in England, so I have quite a few telephone numbers in the British format as well as lots in the American format. I don't recall having ever set the device to British standards, though, and manually entering the correct spacing and punctuation seems to have worked until recently.

I've taken the iPad to the Apple Store and wasn't able to get a very helpful answer (though I haven't yet made a specific appointment for this at the Genius Bar). It's a fairly minor annoyance, but I thought I'd post the question on the off chance that someone can see an answer that I've not thought of myself.

The phone number format is set in Settings -> General -> International -> Region Format.

But believe it or not, it seems like your carrier is actually able to override whatever you've got set there (on my WiFi iPad, changing the Region Format updates Address Book's format, but on my iPhone it doesn't have any effect).

While researching it I saw some mention of Verizon fixing this issue by dialling *228, waiting for it to connect, then dialling 1 and waiting for it to disconnect.

Is it a 3G iPad? Perhaps while you were in England, something got switched over.


Make a single line of text bold in Mail message using Automator? I have an automator script that creates a new email using the Mail app.
In this message, I would like a single line in bold as seen here:
on run {input, parameters}
    set clipContent to (the clipboard as text)
    tell application "Mail"
        set myMessage to make new outgoing message at the beginning of outgoing messages with properties {subject:"subject"}
        tell myMessage to make new to recipient at beginning of to recipients with properties {address:"email@email.com"}
        set myMessage's content to "

Line of text

" & clipContent & "

Line of text <---- I want this line in **BOLD**

Regards,
Name"
    return input
end run

The following example AppleScript code is one way of achieving your goal:
set clipContent to (the clipboard as text)

set lineOfBoldText to "Line of text <---- I want this line in **BOLD**"

set myContent to linefeed & "Line of text" & linefeed & linefeed & ¬
    clipContent & linefeed & linefeed & linefeed & lineOfBoldText & ¬
    linefeed & linefeed & linefeed & "Regards," & linefeed & "Name"

set x to offset of lineOfBoldText in myContent
set y to x + (length of lineOfBoldText)

tell application "Mail"
    set myMessage to make new outgoing message at ¬
        the end of outgoing messages with properties ¬
        {subject:"subject", content:myContent}
    tell myMessage
        make new to recipient at ¬
            end of to recipients with properties ¬
            {address:"email@email.com"}
        set font of characters x thru y to "Helvetica Bold"
    end tell
end tell

Having copied to the clipboard "In this message, I would like a single line in bold as seen here:" from your OP and run the example AppleScript code, shown in my answer, in Script Editor, here is a screen shot of the results:


How to export and read .txt files using iPhone? I've some text files (a few thousand lines each) on my PC. How can I transfer them  to the iPhone so that I can do my reading on-the-go?

(Sure I could simply email them to myself, but I'm looking for a more convenient and less time-wasting solution.)

One solution would be to use Dropbox or iCloud to hold/sync your notes and read them with a simple text editing or note taking app. I use Byword.


How to use "Find My Phone" beeping feature (not location sharing) with a different Apple ID My girlfriend and I both have iDevices. We each have our own Apple ID. Every once in a while one of us misplaces a device... you know the drill, "Honey, could you call my phone for me?" And then it turns out it's on vibrate so we can't hear it, or it's my iPad we're looking for, and we have to go to a computer and log in with that person's account, to trigger the "Find my phone" sound.

We'd much rather be able to do that from our mobile devices. Is this possible? I know that I can use "Find my Friends" to see the location of a device on a different account, but what I need is the "ring at full volume" feature of "Find my phone." Is there any way to do that from another device? Also, can it be done from an Android device? (The iCloud website doesn't allow android devices to log in.)

You can do it from Find My iPhone on another iPhone, you just need to sign in as the person whose phone you're trying to find [or get them to do it].

Alternatively, you can find all members' phones if you use Family Sharing.

I doubt there's any way to do it from an Android. That really wouldn't be considered safe.


iPhone 6s activation I want to use LTE network to activate an iPhone.

How much data volume is needed to activate an iPhone?

The activation process itself uses less than a Megabyte of data.

More data may be necessary once you sign in to an iCloud account with a lot of stored photos.


How do I move a window vertically above the menu bar? How can I move a window so that the title bar of the window is above the menu bar?

I've tried using AppleScript…

tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    set position of windows to {-100, -100}
end tell

…and whilst the x variable works, moving the window partially off-screen, the y doesn't, moving the window up to the menu bar and no further.

I've also tried Keyboard Maestro:

…but have the same problem: the x value works but the y does not.

This question is related, but opposite: How do I move a window whose title bar is off-screen?
I want to be able to cause the title bar to be off-screen.

Finder does not allow this as a general rule. Sometimes a glitch can make this possible, but relaunching Finder usually rectifies it. There's currently no known way to actually get this to happen as a desired behavior, sorry.


Microsoft Office 2016 reporting not enough memory I have 2016 MBP with Touch Bar, Radeon Pro 460, macOS Sierra 10.12.2 installed. Word 2016 is sluggish and keeps reporting that I either won't be able to undo an action or am not able to perform it at all because I do not have enough memory.

I have 16 gigabytes of RAM, Word consumes about 350MB while working on 40-page document. It doesn't matter if I have 1 or 10 gigs free memory, the message appears regardless of that. I have over 800GBs free on my SSD. Is that another bug in Microsoft's product?

The problem disappeared when I turned off SourceTree, which was locking files during periodic refresh. I also noticed that Office for Mac has issues with synchronization while working on files that were opened from OneDrive. So if you're having a similar memory problem, make sure that while you work on the document no other program accesses it.

It seems that Microsoft's products just don't handle file access denial well and I'd consider this behavior a bug.


Enabling Wireless Before Logon for Active Directory We are purchasing computers in the next week on our Enterprise network and will have a mix of Macs and PCs. We are currently running our AD server on Windows Server 2008R2.
We use folder redirection and mounting for all of our users, and would want the folder to automount on login for Apple. We have a LAN and also a radius authenticated wireless network on PEAP.

I have successfully joined the AD with my MB Pro, but cannot login to AD due to the wireless not working before login.

Has anyone ran across this issue before or know of a fix?

note: this will get the laptop online before login, so all users are online using the same credentials--there could be a way to enable wifi so that users can get online themselves before logging in (Apple bring that back!!)

since newer MacOS dropped the plus in 802.11x pill (and we want it as a computer profile, not user profile), I used "Apple Configurator 2" app, File menu > New Profile, then configured my Certificates (I first went into my Keychain Access app, searched for "pitt.edu", my school domain, then click and dragged that cert out to my desktop to make a copy easy to find), opened aformentioned .cer, then configured Wi-Fi, noting that I had to click the Trust pill and check the box for the aformentioned cert, closed and saved (note: you may not need a cert, so you might skip that stuff)

then I right-click and open with TextEdit that new xml file, and inside the first <dict></dict> section, added (like right after where ssid mentioned):

   <key>SetupModes</key>
   <array>
      <string>Loginwindow</string>
      <string>System</string>
   </array>

then in terminal, run (be sure to be root or sudo, otherwise, it will just be a user profile add):

   sudo profiles install -type startup -path thefileyoujustcreated.mobileconfig -forced
   sudo shutdown -r now


Connect Apple TV iPad Air and hotel wifi Have iPad Air Apple TV 3rd generation and wireless internet at hotel but cannot get Apple TV to connect cause no login page to accept hotel agreement

Try authenticating with the iPad, then mirroring its screen to the Apple TV.  This won't give you access to AppleTV content, but will give you the big screen experience.


Why does iMovie change QuickTime Video's size I used QuickTime to record my iPhone 6 device video. Format of iPhone 6 QuickTime video on desktop H.264, 750x1334. Size= 406x722. Then I import this QuickTime video into iMovie. When I export the video from iMovie back to desktop the format is now H.264, 1920x1080 and size= 1280x720.

Why does iMovie change the size? I want the size to always stay exactly the same as what I recorded on the iPhone 6 device into QuickTime NOT the size iMovie exports back to desktop.

How do I make iMovie keep the size of the original QuickTime iPhone 6 video?

iMovie only generates video at specific resolutions. It's intended for simple use-cases, and so has a really cut-down feature set for video editing to make it harder for novice users to make mistakes. Unfortunately this means it often doesn't do what you want.

If you're only clipping the start/end of your video, you can just use Quicktime alone to achieve this. If you need to add titles or otherwise do some editing on your video, you can:

use iMovie, export to the maximum resolution available, then down-sample to your desired resolution; or
use some video editing software that actually supports custom output resolutions (Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, Lightworks, etc).


Error trying to backup both iPhone4 and iPad (1) after 4.3/iTunes/XCode updates After the slew of updates this week I'm no longer able to backup either my iPhone 4 or iPad.  There are two errors:

"iTunes was unable to load data class information from Sync Services. Reconnect or try again later"

and

"iTunes could not back up the iPhone "Lee Hinde's iPhone" because the backup session failed."

Probably not coincidentally the existing backups don't show up in iTunes (preferences/devices).

My searching on these errors indicates they mostly seem to happen to Windows users and I'm on Mac 10.6.6.

Synching actually works. Odd. I.e., if I update an app on either device or the Mac, they are transferred as they should. It's the backup that's not happening.

I also updated XCode and the one similar issue I saw on Twitter was from a developer, so I'm leaning towards blaming XCode.

Did a Repair Disk Permissions.

Any tips appreciated.

I would try manually checking the backups folder(username/Library/Application Support/Mobilesync)and then deleting anything in there. That error message makes me think Xcode but you could try resetting Sync History from preferences in iSync and resetting the SyncServices folder as per http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1627 . Doing that will wipe sync settings for your iPhone so you will have to re-check the information you want to sync in iTunes. I am running Xcode 4 on 10.6.7 and I have not run into this issue. Hopefully this resolves the issue, let me know if this helps. Also as per the last suggestion I would recommend following the instruction on the apple support site for reinstalling iTunes @ http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1224


My car no longer recognizes media on my iPhone 7 I recently switched to Spotify after using the Apple Music app. My car was able to recognize the song name and time, etc.

After I switched to Spotify and deleted Music, my car doesn't recognize anything anymore -- it just plays the music without any information. I am using a Lightning cable to connect my iPhone 7 (running iOS 12.0) to Mazda 6 2017.

Before deleting Music app:

After deleting Music app:

but my friend's iPhone is working with my car so the issue with My iPhone!

I figured out how to fix it:

(You Must Have Apple Music with one song at least).

Power cycle your phone by powering off and powering on.
Open Apple Music and play any downloaded song.
Connect USB/lightning cable while the music still playing on the phone.

Now you can see the song name on the screen and controllable by steering wheel, and you can use any app that plays music it will be compatible.


16" MacBook Pro Doesn't Wake Up Screen on LG 5K External Monitor I keep running into a frustrating situation. Here's what's going on.

Step 1 - I leave my 2019 16" MacBook Pro plugged into an LG 5K Ultrafine monitor. After a while, the screen and the laptop go to sleep. The laptop lid is always closed.

Step 2 - When I wake up the computer, the LG 5K screen never shows anything (it's black). I know the MacBook Pro is awake because I hear interface sounds and I also feel my Apple Watch tap me when it automatically unlocks my machine. No matter what I do with the external keyboard and trackpad, the screen never comes on.

Here's what I've tried:

I unplug the computer from the monitor and plug it back in. This makes the screen come back on about 30% of the time.
I open the lid of my laptop, wait a while, and the monitor comes on about 70% of the time.
I reboot the machine and leave it plugged into the monitor. This works 90% of the time.

Sometimes I get a kernel panic when trying all this and the machine hastily shuts off and I have to boot it up from scratch.

While MacBook Pros have almost always had sleep/wake issues since I first got one in 2007, it's noticeably worse with the 16" MBP. I know this because I also have a 15" MBP for work and it doesn't have these problems with the same monitor on my desk. It wakes the screen right up when I wake up the laptop with the bluetooth keyboard.

Has anyone run into this? Any suggestions?

The issue has to do with the clock sync.  Basically, the Mac "knows" that the monitor is connected (I've verified that EDID data was being received), but since the Mac and the display "won't get on the same page" so to speak, the monitor shows blank.

I'd bet if you were to test this with a Bootcamp install of Windows on the same machine, you'd have no issues.  The Windows drivers are just more forgiving than the macOS kexts.

Many times you can solve the issue through hardware by using an active adapter if you are converting the signal (i.e. DisplayPort → HDMI).  However, if you're going DisplayPort to DisplayPort, there's nothing the active adapter is going to do to fix it.

External monitors show blank screen until restart
MacBook Pro detects syncmaster (monitor) but doesn't display
USB-C to Displayport cable or adapter

You may also want to try powering cycling the monitor (if the power button doesn't work, try unplugging from the mains) while the Mac is awake.  This solved it for a number of folks.


How do delete stuck download of Xcode 5 from app store? Initially I was downloading Xcode 5 from the Mac App Store, but I found it extremely slow, and so I stopped the download. Then I downloaded it from the developer web site instead, which was much faster. I installed it without any problem.

But now I have two Xcode 5 icons in my /Applications folder. One Xcode 5 icon is from the Mac App Store install with a progress bar at the bottom (progress stopped at one fourth). I tried to delete it a few times, but every time I restart my machine, it comes back again. How do I delete this partial download?

I am running OS 10.8.5.

It may help to manually remove the Launchpad databases from your home directory. The databases should be located at ~/Library/Application Support/Dock...The files may have UUID names (long string of hex chars)...Removing those files, performing a logout/login (or a reboot) should allow those files to be rebuilt from the exiting applications in /Applications.

You can get into the Library folder by holding down the "Option" key on the keyboard, clicking on the "Go" menu (when you're in the Finder), and choosing "Library".


What do I if I used "Reset All" or "Erase All Content and Settings" on a jailbroken iOS Device? I recently received an iOS device and it was jailbroken. When I wanted to unjailbreak it, I used "Erase All Content and Settings." The loading screen came on and it has not changed. After rebooting the device, it is now stuck at the Apple logo. What should I do?

Resetting a jailbroken iOS device using the option in settings will cause no end of bad things, usually resulting in a device stuck in a boot loop, which appears to have been the case here.

You'll have to restore your device in iTunes. Connect your device to iTunes, then hold power and home until the screen turns off and back on with the Apple logo, then let go of power but keep holding home. Once the device appears in iTunes, restore it.


Can I change the label of an entry in the Finder sidebar? I have a couple folders in my Finder's sidebar. Since they're nested (on the actual file system), the names aren't very descriptive. Is there a way I can change the name of the entry in the sidebar without changing the actual name of the folder?

This was possible in Tiger (As far as I can remember or Leopard) but on Snow Leopard, the “alias” is automatically resolved.

If you create an Alias on your desktop for a folder XYZ and then drag the Alias onto your sidebar, it’s automatically resolved. So it doesn’t seem to be possible to override this.


Mac App store apps use a different user ID so I can't install updates The OSX Mavericks machine that I use for work has Keynote, Pages, and Numbers installed under the company's Apple ID. (It was purchased in December 2012, pre-Mavericks. It was recently wiped and replaced with an image that I'm guessing already had iWork installed.)

Every day the App store bugs me about installing updates. When I try to do so, I'm prompted for the password, which I don't have. And it won't let me sign in under my personal Apple ID.

Is there a way for the helpdesk to transfer these apps to my personal account? Or any other way for me to get the updates aside from opening a helpdesk ticket and waiting patiently?

You have to re-buy it with your own account. I don't think there is any way to transfer purchases.


How to access ProXPN's settings? I installed ProXPN on my Mac and successfully used it. It installs an icon in the menu bar which you can use to enable and disable the application. I was messing around with the settings and clicked on the option which said something like "show icon near spotlight icon in the menu bar". After restarting my computer, I no longer see the icon in the menu bar. When I try to launch the application from my Applications folder, it doesn't seem like it's doing anything.

How can I access the program or its settings?

I tested this on my mac, and all this seems to do is to not place the icon next to the spotlight icon.  When I relaunched proXPN, it placed the icon on the left side of all icons on the top. At first, I couldn't see it either but that was due to the app I had open having too many menu items taking up real estate - I switched to finder and voila!  There the proXPN icon was.


Middle click with trackpad in MBP and Mojave I want to setup the middle click with a MBP using the trackpad.

The middle click is very useful to me since I can open/close tabs, can use 2 clipboards like linux (select and middle click to paste, besides regular copy/paste). I was using very well this middle click with High Sierra and the MagicPrefs app, but with Mojave this started working terribly bad and had to uninstall it. Have tried another paid app named Multitouch but does not even work as MagicPrefs.

Do you know how I can setup middle click in Mojave?

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:   MacBookPro11,3
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed:    2.5 GHz

MagicPrefs is no longer supported nor updated.

Possible replacement for it is the Better_Touch_Tool.

You can try it risk free for 45 days.


How do I change the microphone input sensitivity on iPad 2? Is it possible to change the microphone sensitivity (input volume) on the iPad?

If so, how?

What you can do with the built-in microphone is limited. You should investigate purchasing a third-party microphone, or better yet an audio interface with a microphone preamplifier, into which you plug a microphone. This will cost money but give you much more control.

Look for products from Tascam, Apogee, Line 6, IK Multimedia, and Griffin.


Moving Fusion VMs to ESXi I am in the process of moving several VMs created in VMWare Fusion 5 into ESXi 5.1, which I just installed on a Mac Mini Server. I am able to connect just fine via the Windows application installed on another VM. I have created two OVF files, one for Server 2003 and another for Server 2012. Both files were created without incident. I am able to upload them to the ESXi server seemingly without issue as well.

However, when I start either of the VMs, I get the following error(s):

Console:

And in the GUI:

I'm unsure how to proceed, as I have followed the steps outlined to create an OVF file and upload it to the ESX. Both of these VMs work fine through Fusion.

Thanks in advance.

After arduous research and trial and error, I've finally been able to solve this issue. First of all, if you're migrating Fusion VMs to ESXi, I recommend not using the OVF tool. At least for me, it never worked properly. Instead, I used the vmware-vdiskmanager tool, which is built into Fusion. The instructions for this migration are listed below:

  Open Terminal.
  Run the following command, inserting the correct VMWare Fusion vmdk file source and new vmdk destination:

    /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-vdiskmanager -r /PATH/TO/vmware_fusion.vmwarevm/vmware_fusion.vmdk -t 4 /PATH/TO/esxi.vmdk

  The conversion process, once complete, will create two files: filename.vmdk, and filename-flat.vmdk.
  Launch the vSphere client through your web browser to your ESXi server.
  Once logged in, go to File | New | Virtual Machine.
  In the Configuration window, select Custom.
  In the Storage window, select the datastore location to store the new VM.
  In the Virtual Machine Version window, use the default option of Virtual Machine Version: 8.
  Select the desired settings for Guest OS, CPUs, Memory, Network, and SCSI Controller.
  In the Select a Disk window, choose the Do Not Create Disk option.
  Click the Finish button.
  In the ESXi server settings, select the Configuration tab then click on Storage.
  In Storage, select your datastore and right-click to select Browse Datastore.
  Select the folder name that corresponds to the new VM.
  Select the Upload button.
  Upload the filename.vmdk and filename-flat.vmdk files from Step 3.
  Once complete, you will only see the filename.vmdk file in the datastore.
  Select the VM and Edit virtual machine settings under the Get Started tab.
  Click the Add button in the Virtual Machine Properties window.
  For Device Type, select Hard Disk, and choose Use an existing virtual disk.
  Locate the datastore and select the existing disk.
  In the Advanced Options, leave the default settings.
  Select Finish and OK to close the Virtual Machine Properties.
  At this point, you should be able to boot to the newly migrated VM.

Guidance for this came from MacTech's June 2013 issue, reproduced at the author's blog here. Many kudos to Rich Trouton for this article.

Some updates for vSphere Client 6.7

Step 5: Go to Actions | New Virtual Machine.
Steps 6 - 9: Configure as desired.
Step 10: In the Customize hardware dialog, remove the New hard disk.
Step 12 - 13: Select storage, then Files.
Step 18: Select the VM and then Actions | Edit Settings....
Step 19: Click the Add New Device button.
Step 20: Select Existing Hard Disk.
Step 22: Ignore.


MacOSX El Capitan: admin password only working from login screen Since a week or so, I have a very strange issue on my Mac... I can login from the login screen, but any further action that requires my password fails: from a terminal if I try to sudo, or from any system preferences pannel that prompts for my password. I cannot add "Show Input menu in login window" because this requires to enter my password... I have only one keyboard configured in System preferences so it is not even an issue of different keyboard layout as far as I can tell. And since my account is not bound to my appleid (and I need my password to do it) I am really stuck...

Is formatting the only option ?

Open Textedit and type there your password
to check which problem might be yours:

typing errors,
bad repeating tuning,
num lock,
keys problems,
session configuration error.

If you think you have a typical problem with just the login window,
just configure your login so as to take advantage of your name
part of the login window to check how your keyboard and your software
are behaving.
Configure System Preferences > Users & Groups as follows:

Within the Name: part of the login window, type all the characters
contained in your password and check for:

bad repeating tuning,
num lock,
keys problems.


Can Applescript be used to automate a screen recording session on OS X? I need to accomplish the following tasks from a script:

Initiate a screen recording (with system audio).
After a set delay, stop the recording.
Save out to a file.
Close the recording.

I've tried a few different approaches here and ran into roadblocks. One thing I've tried for example was a QuickTime script found here.

tell application "QuickTime Player"
    set newScreenRecording to new screen recording
    tell newScreenRecording
        start
        delay 10
        stop
    end tell
    set newDoc to last item of (documents whose name contains "Untitled")
    set f to "" & (path to desktop) & "quicktimeFile"
    export newDoc in f using settings preset "Quicktime Movie"
end tell

This script doesn't error, but it doesn't save anything either.

In the past I've used iShowU HD, but I've ran into significant performance issues there which have caused me to go back to the drawing board.

I'm willing to pay for a third-party application provided that it meets my requirements, so feel free to suggest anything that could get the job done.

Running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Try this script:

tell application "QuickTime Player"
    set newScreenRecording to new screen recording
    tell newScreenRecording
        start
        delay 3
        stop
    end tell
    tell last item of documents
        close
    end tell
end tell

It will make a new recording for 3 seconds (edit the delay 3 line to change the length), which gets automatically saved in the Movies directory of your Home directory, then closes the recording window.

If you want to automatically export to a different format, you can do that by adding the line export in ("" & (path to desktop) & "quicktimeFile.m4v") using settings preset "480p" before the close line. The presets you can choose from are defined in the File > Export dialog:

Check the actual dialog for further details on the presets (note that they are "up to" the resolution listed - it will fit into the horizontal pixels available, so "480p" gives you 640x400 for a 16:10 recording). As far as I know, you can't make custom presets.

If you want to capture your system sounds, and not mic/line-in audio, check out this question: Can I get system sound along with QuickTime Player screen recording?

For the curious, there are a couple notes about why the original script doesn't work and QuickTime Player's AppleScript peculiarities:

The set newDoc […] line tries to grab the most recent document with the string "Untitled" to account for the newScreenRecording reference becoming invalid once the recording is stopped (which is probably a poor design decision, but oh well). However QuickTime Player under Lion (and possibly Snow Leopard) auto-saves screen recordings as "Screen Recording", "Screen Recording 2", etc., so it was finding no documents. Having it grab just the most recent document solves this, and future proofs it to a degree.
The export line references a preset that no longer exists (or has been renamed). Unfortunately neither QuickTime nor AppleScript gives any errors about this, it simply fails silently (more poor design).
The AppleScript dictionary for QuickTime Player lists a save action, but I couldn't get it working—I suspect the functionality was killed, but the dictionary entry wasn't removed. You'll note that there's no Save functionality in the GUI, only export (and auto-save). So if you want to change the save location without exporting a new file, you'll have to get the file location, then move it through the Finder.


Dismiss Calendar notification popups more easily After upgrading to Big Sur, calendar notifications on Mac OS have become harder to dismiss.  The notification appears in the upper-right of the screen, and to dismiss it, one must hover over the upper-left of the notification to cause an 'x' to appear, and then click on the 'x'.  Subjectively, I find it tedious to dismiss the notification: the zone where I have to click seems small and requires fairly precise work with my mouse.
Is there a faster way to dismiss the notification?  Perhaps a keyboard shortcut or some other trick?

This is a really good question - I am bothered by the same issue.  I Googled, and found this exact topic, posted here about 6 years ago.
Can macOS have a keyboard shortcut to dismiss notifications?
There's a pretty good discussion about this, and I downloaded the "Alfred" workflow solution since I own the app.  The alfred-notification-dismisser by zakyum on GitHub is located here.


How to publish an app internally for users of my organisation and not publicly? I want to build and deploy an iOS app only for my company specific users.

I do not want to publish it for normal users on the iOS App Store. How can I do this?

You are looking for Apple Developer Enterprise Program.

This program, created specifically with the said need in mind lets you distribute and manage apps internally in your organization, without going through public faing iOS App Store.


iPad mini wont update over iOS 10 I have been trying to update my iPad mini. But I don’t know what version it is. And I tried on the Mac computer, but it says current update is iOS 9.3.5. And it won’t let me make a new Apple account.

You apparently have the original (first generation) iPad Mini. The last version of iOS released for the generation of iPad Mini is iOS 9.3.5 (iOS 9.3.6 for Wi-Fi + Cellular models). So it's not possible to update it to iOS 10 or later.

  it won’t let me make a new Apple account.

You can register for a new Apple account by going the the Apple ID website on any computer. Visit the following link:

https://appleid.apple.com/account#!&page=create


How do you restore the OS without restoration disks? Recently got a new macbook pro as an upgrade from an older macbook(white). I remember that there were restoration disks containing the installed OS in the packaging with the older machine. However, with the new machine there were no disks or any other storage media.

In the future, if I needed to reinstall the OS, would I be forced to buy another copy from the App Store?

No, you do not have to purchase OS X more than once.
If you are referring to OS X Lion and Mountain Lion, both of which were distributed from the App Store, one purchase is enough for every Mac that you own or control.  (see Apple's EULA for this) Additionally, Lion and Mountain Lion have Internet Recovery, which means that a drive that fails or any new drive installed without OS X will be automatically connected to the Internet and installed with a fresh copy of your respective OS.
Additionally, Apple has their own Recovery Disk Assistant for making USB drives for physical media recovery solutions, or you can use LionDiskMaker. Make sure to read LionDiskMaker's FAQ (in the link provided),  as this answers crucial questions concerning the application's usage.


Login in the app store in Turkey I recently purchased a Iphone 5 in turkey, and when i try to log in into the app store is asking me for a credit or debit card.
How do I by-pass this? Why I get asked for such info?
Thank you.

In the settings for your Apple ID there is a payment options selection, where you can chose none.  You can find this in the menu called Settings in your iPhone.  You may also have to check the settings under iCloud.

There is a really super answer here, check it out for lots of details, even pictures; this is for the most part, the same on the latest versions.

I understand, you want to just get free "apps!"

If you might also want to pay for things sometime, another really nice option, is that you can go to almost every kind of shop (even a convenience store) and buy an iTunes gift card with cash, which will come with instructions about how to add this credit into your iTunes (and therefore also automatically your "App Store") account.


iPhone app that displays temperature as a notification badge I'm looking for an app similar to Fahrenheit, that gives a notification badge indication of the current temperature.  A problem with Fahrenheit that I have is that it's too slow in updating.  I need something that updates the badge at least every 30 minutes (so I don't have to open up the app to get it to refresh).

There are several Weather Apps that perform this function. The one I am currently using (as I live in Canada and it has good Canadian weather support) is Degrees.

You could also try Weather Live or eWeather HD. I'm sure there are many more.

One limitation of those badges, if you live in a part of the world like mine, is lack of negative numbers in the badge. Since I use Celsius, this is an issue even this time of year. :)


Display connected via DisplayPort disconnects, reconnects when resuming, resizing windows on display I have a new LG 29UM55 29" Ultrawide monitor, resolution of 2560 x 1080, connected via DisplayPort to my 2012 MacBook Air 13" via a Cable Matters Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable that reportedly does have pin 20 wired correctly. I had previously tried connecting via HDMI, but as the manual for the display indicates, Macs are apparently unable to use the full native resolution when connected via HDMI.

A negative experience I'm having is that, when the MBA goes to sleep, the display appears to disconnect. This is noticeable only when waking it: the extra screen blanking of the display automatically reconnecting is almost imperceptible, and would otherwise be of negligible consequence, except for the result that all of my windows that were on that display are resized to fit on the MBA's built-in screen's resolution.

So, I find myself having to constantly re-maximize or rearrange windows whenever I walk away long enough for the screensaver to turn on and/or the computer goes to sleep. This is really aggravating, as I do arrange my windows quite particularly.

My options are seemingly thus:

Replace cable - maybe this is a manifestation of the pin 20 problem, but the display does awaken, just dis/re-connects annoyingly.
Replace monitor - maybe something is wrong with this unit or this model?

I don't have another DisplayPort monitor easily accessible, but I might be able to borrow one or at least find one I can use in a store just to demonstrate that it's a DisplayPort or OS X problem and not a unit/model problem.

Tweak something in OS X - maybe there's a setting that I can alter that will disable this behavior, without having to disable screensaver or sleep. Suggestions welcome!
Replace MBA - I'm already planning to pick up a new Macbook Pro this month, but I don't know if I'll get it in time to be within the display's return period, should I decide to return the display. I have a feeling this is not a reliable solution, because it's unlikely that the new machine wouldn't exhibit this behavior unless the behavior would change between Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2.
??? - this is where you ingenious answerers come in.

This appears to be an issue with OSX & Windows. HDMI devices are able to be queried by the connected computer to check display resolutions even when powered off, so this is a non-issue. DisplayPort devices seem to not have this feature. When Windows & OSX wakes up from a sleep state, it checks to see if the monitor is still connected but finds the DP monitor to be in powersaving mode and cannot determine if your 2560 x 1080 desktop is still there and so resizes everything down.

Windows users appear to have a bassackwards solution:

Connect monitor via DisplayPort and HDMI/DVI
Configure Windows to mirror desktop on the 2 displays.


Terminal: I press "@" or "#" and terminal write "?" I have this problem only on the terminal.

When I would like to write these symbol, for example "@" or "#" the Terminal write this "?" and a do a sound bell.

screenshot:

I don't understand why.

thank you

Solved !

Open the Terminal preferences, go to "Keyboard" tab and unpin the

Use option as meta key

:)


Programmatic access to connect to a wifi network Very similar to this question, but as encouraged to do my @bmike I wanted to re-ask this question as it was not a duplicate of Create AirPort network from the command line.

I am looking for a programmatic way to connect to a wifi network. It can be saved (remembered) or unknown, preferably in Apple Script or via Automator.

I have done this on a Windows PC through the following command:

netsh wlan add profile wifi.xml user=current

(creating it, as the only available wifi network, would attempt to connect to it)

The real problem I am having is: I have a Mac Book, OSX 10.10, shared by two users. One user should be able to access (and preferably connect by default) to SSID "Wifi1" and the second user should be able to access SSID "Wifi2", but neither user should connect to the other user's wifi. The Windows netsh wlan with option user=current accomplishes this but I don't see this being supported on a Mac.

Disabling SSID remembering, and having the users type the password in each time, would of course accomplish this goal but I'm searching for a more automated solution.

I have not found a way to accomplish this via preferences, wifi priorities, remembering networks, or anything else.

Also to note, Fast User Switching is enabled (this appears to make scripting difficult in my research because there is no reliable trigger or event to listen to for the script to run).

This should do it, although it may need some modification. Every time a user switches, a system log entry is created. Knowing this, you can monitor for user switches quite effortlessly:

global wifi_device
on run
    set wifi_device to do shell script "networksetup -listallhardwareports|grep -A1 'Wi-Fi'|grep Device|sed 's;Device: ;;'"
end run
on idle
    set user_name to do shell script "tail -n0 -f /var/log/system.log|grep -om1 'context values set for .*'|sed -e 's;context values set for ;;'"
    if user_name is equal to "presaccount" then
        do shell script "networksetup -setairportnetwork " & wifi_device & " presaccount_network password"
    else if user_name is equal to "other_account" then
        do shell script "networksetup -setairportnetwork " & wifi_device & " other_account_network password"
    end if
    return 1
end idle

Just change the network names, passwords, and account names to whatever you need them to be.

Basically, we're checking for the log entry containing "context values set for", which occurs on every switch, and contains the username switched to. We use this username to determine which network to join, and that's it! I'd recommend only allowing admins to change the wifi network in system preferences. This actually uses nearly no resources, because the script cannot continue past the first line, until a user switches. Keep in mind that this was done on 10.11. I can't verify if the log entry is present on 10.10, so YMMV. You'll have to save this as a stay-open app in Script Editor.


How do I reclaim the "other" space on my iPad? I have 3.3 gigs of space in the "other" category on my 16 gig iPad. The space for "other" has grown over time.
I've synced. I've powered down. I've turned all running apps off.
How do I reclaim this used space that I'm not using?

The "Other" space is not necessarily unused as you imply.  It could simply be your user data from your applications.

If you check in Settings > General > Usage you can gauge how much space your apps are using up including their data (might be photos, or podcasts, or pictures, or anything).

For example, my Instacast it taking up 406Mb of space, but the application is only 3.3Mb.  So that's over 400Mb of "other" space taken up right there:

If you were to add up your the data in this list, then subtract the total amount of "application" usage from it, it should pretty much equate to the bulk of this "other" data.  Of course, there are other things that are included as "Other", including your mail data, sms messages, internal log files and location data stores etc etc etc which may fluctuate over time but the big portion is just your apps contents.


Transferring contacts from iCloud to Android I have a Samsung Android phone and need to transfer my iCloud contacts to that phone. How do I accomplish this?

You can use the app SmoothSync for Cloud Contacts to accomplish that. The app will just add another standard sync account in Android under System settings > Accounts & sync where you can login with your Apple ID:

After you've setup the new account all your iCloud contacts will be synced down to the Android device and appear in the People app. Moreover, it's a full two-way sync so you can edit your iCloud contacts from your Android phone and the changes will get pushed to iCloud and your iDevices immediately.


Bootcamp windows installation not allowing Windows 10 Hi I am trying to install windows 10 on my macbook pro 8,2(late 2011), when I open Bootcamp it is having options to create windows 10 installation in usb as seen in image.

Now, I am able to create the windows 10 install disk sucessfully using the iso, but after that the bootcamp popups the error message as seen in image

So after reading the message i decided to make windows 7 install disk which not in the list but i tried checking the same windows 10 option and added the iso file of windows 7 then again the bootcamp pops up the the error as seen in image

As seen it is not allowing me to go in both the cases, if I do the partition manually it is also not seen in startup disks also.

Want to install windows on mac any kind of suggession will be helpfull.

it should be possible to install Windows 7 on your Mac using Boot Camp. Apple has a rather lengthy KB article on exactly how you should proceed.


Using rsync to copy data from one Drobo (NTFS) to another Drobo (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) I have been using Windows 2008 in Parallels on my Mac Server to serve up files to my Windows clients on the network with a USB attached Drobo (NTFS). Now I want to move these files to my Mac Drobo (Mac OS Ext) and maintain as many file attributes as possible, such as date created and modified.

Recently I learned how to copy large amounts of data using rsync on my Mac. I assume permissions will not translate, but can I use the same command to copy the data from a NTFS formatted Drobo to the Mac OS Extended Drobo and maintain file attributes/metadata?

Here's the commend I used before:

sudo rsync -va --progress /Volumes/SourceName /Volumes/DestinationName

Thank you.

Check out the man page for rsync. In particular, the -a (archive) option you show will invoke the -rlptgoD options.

-r, --recursive (recurse into directories)
-l, --links (copy symlinks as symlinks)
-p, --perms (preserve permissions)
-t, --times (preserve times)
-g, --group (preserve group)
-o, --owner (preserve owner (super-user only))
-D (preserve device and special files)

Permissions can be preserved, but everything you copy will be owned by you unless you run under sudo so the -o option will take effect. Also note that without sudo, rsync gives you no special abilities to copy files that you do not have access to on the source drive.

You may also want to look at the -E option, but I don't know if it will work from an NTSF drive. Maybe it will preserve ACLs (if they exist on the source)?


Unable to boot from USB Mac I am running OS X 10.9.2 on a late 2011 Macbook Pro. I created a Windows 7 install usb using bootcamp successfully but the startup screen is not recognizing the usb on reboot. Please help.

Note: I had to create a 30 GB windows partition manually as the bootcamp option for the same was disabled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQIaDO9nR6Y&t=639s
I have used the process shown in this video for booting Ubuntu on Mac several times, I think this should work for windows as well. Give it a shot.. Hope this helps.


Voicemails found on iPhone that shouldn't be there Recently, a friend of mine who borrowed my old iPhone 5 informed the that he was able to listen to all my old as well as new voicemails (so they were updated on the iPhone 5 as well).

Before I gave him the phone I did the following:

Erase all contents
Log out from my Apple ID
remove all connections / log out from all accounts on the phone (iMessage, ...)
Remove the phone from my Apple ID (via iTunes)
Erase all content & reset the phone

(* during that process, the phone did not have a SIM card inserted.)

Are voicemails connected to my Apple ID? And if not, how could this happen?

(Should I inform my telecommunication provider about this matter?)

Make sure that your friend does not have your SIM card or the voicemail password you set up with your carrier.  If those two things are save your voicemail should be as well.


How do you save an environmental variable? Trying to save an environmental variable.

cd ~
mkdir Projects
export PROJDIR=/Users/David/Projects
cd ~
cd $PROJDIR //can execute.
cd ..
open .bash_profile //was told this was the file you add the variable to.

Then terminal tells me there is nothing with that name.
To check

ls -a

And there are two files with bash .bash_history and .bashsessions
.bash_history isn’t executable and when I open .bashsessions I’m not sure how I’d add

export PROJDIR=/Users/$USER/Projects

to the file. So that doesn't seem right either.

‘export’ doesn't write anything to file. It's for making variables available to subprocesses.

If you've never written anything to .bash_profile, it's unsurprising that it doesn't exist, since it's not created for you. You'll need to create it yourself and write that line within.

For example, touch ~/.bash_profile (to create the file) then edit it in an editor of your choice such as TextEdit (open using Finder or open -e ~/.bash_profile). Alternatively, nano ~/.bash_profile. Paste in export PROJDIR=/Users/$USER/Projects and save the file, then reopen your shell or source the profile.


Something wrong with the root shell Today, I've tried opening a root shell and, oh surprise, weird answer...

Any idea of where it could be from ?

It seems you set up some sort of git info function to be included in your bash shell. This function now can not be found. Did you update your profile / shell?


How to stop FN key changing my keyboard layout (macOS Big Sur)? I've got my new MacBook Air m1 very recently. I changed default behaviour of F-keys to normal F1, F2, etc. So in order to activate 'media' keys like volume up/down I need to press Fn+F-key. Now, what I've realised is that pressing Fn with F1, F2, etc sometimes (50/50 chance) changes the keyboard layout as well! God, it is so annoying. It shouldn't be so 100%. I think that's just a bug. So, how can I disable Fn for changing my keyboard layout?

This new feature of MacOS Big Sur can be turned off by unchecking a box in System Preferences > Keyboard.


Brew doctor complains about 2 unbrewed dylibs (possibly remnants from Samsung Sidesync) I've just found that brew doctor gives me the following error :

Please note that these warnings are just used to help the Homebrew maintainers
with debugging if you file an issue. If everything you use Homebrew for is
working fine: please don't worry and just ignore them. Thanks!

Warning: Unbrewed dylibs were found in /usr/local/lib.
If you didn't put them there on purpose they could cause problems when
building Homebrew formulae, and may need to be deleted.

Unexpected dylibs:
    /usr/local/lib/LibSideSyncOSX9.dylib
    /usr/local/lib/ss_conn_lib.dylib

I am suspected that these are remnants of Samsung Sidesync program that I tried to use recently but it never worked, so I uninstalled it (using iTrash).
Should I manually remove those two libraries or not(one of them is 1.7mb)?
Thank you.

Yes you should remove them. Package managers will complain if there are files installed in the area they manage. So with Homebrew only Homebrew installed files should be in /usr/local

In this case I would guess from the names the first is definitely from Sidesync but the second could also be used by others


Automatically Adjust Sampling Rate Based On File I have an Apple Lossless audio file recorded at 96 kHz but the light from my DAC is signaling that its a 44.1 kHz file when I play it.
When I go into the Audio MIDI Setup and change it to 96 kHz the light turns to green signaling its a higher sampling rate.
I have a lot of tracks at 44.1 kHz which I don't want to upsample but still want the HiRes files played at their maximum sampling rate for the best audio quality.
Is there anyway the format setting can be automatically adjusted without manually changing it by hand?

Just set the output to 96kHz.
Anything actually lower than that will either be transmitted at their own bit-rate & your DAC will auto-select or at worst will just be filled with empty bits. it won't make any practical difference; they're basically noise-floor bits anyway.


Using php5-rar to extract files with an RAR extension Recently, I received a compressed file with an RAR extension from a colleague. Not being able to view it under MacOS, I went on to download the MacPort php5-rar thinking that it would solve my problem.  I soon realized that this was not a utility, but an API for viewing, extracting and creating RAR files programmatically.  Please correct me if I am wrong, since the only documentation I have been able to find on this MacPort thus far is an API reference manual.

By later browsing this SE, I discovered that there is another utility called iUnarchive, which allows one to extract/view RAR files.  As I am a bit ignorant when it comes to these things, if I were to download and install it, would it interfere with the php5-rar MacPort that I installed earlier?

Furthermore, as iUnarchive appears to be a tool only for extracting/viewing files, is there an equivalent (free) tool under MacOS that can be used to create RAR files?

There does not appear to be any freeware RAR compression software according to this Wikipedia article. However, if you are willing to consider trialware (or "nagware"), you can download the commandline RAR for OS X (also see here).


iPhone and iPad not downloading all iCloud emails I moved all my emails (13k messages) from Outlook to iCloud a couple of days ago using Outlook 2016 on a Windows computer and Apple's iCloud client for Windows. I see all of my emails in iCloud's web client so I assume that the emails have successfully been moved to iCloud. However, not all emails are being downloaded to iOS' default mail app on both my iPhone SE (running iOS 11 GM) and iPad (running iOS 9.3.5).

The iPad has synced all my emails up to 2013 and my iPhone has synced all mails up to 2014. I'm missing all emails of after that time on my devices (even after I manually pull down to refresh), but they do show up in iCloud's web client. According to iCloud my mailbox size is 773MB and both my devices have plenty of storage space left (>5GB), so that shouldn't be an issue here.

Any idea what I'm missing here? What do I need to do to have both my devices download the remaining messages?

I somehow managed to work around this. First, I copied all my mail in my iCloud inbox to a folder. Then I copied all mail older than 1 year back to the inbox and let both my iPad and iPhone sync. After this was done, I copied all remaining mail back to the inbox and let my devices sync again.

Now all email is synchronized on both devices. Don't ask me how or why though.. :)


What readers annotate PDFs better than the Preview app? I usually spend around 3 or 4 hours a day working with and annotating PDFs. I've always used Preview, but there's a few things that bother me about it. Mainly the large icons used when you place notes, which can get in the way in tightly formatted documents.

Is there an alterate PDF reader that is any better for annotating documents?

Skim is a pdf reader specialy designed to annotate pdf.

Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file.
Stop printing and start skimming.
Explore the links to the left to investigate Skim and consider helping out with the project.

  Features:

  Viewing PDFs
  Adding and editing notes
  Highlighting important text, including one-swipe highlight modes
  Making "snapshots" for easy reference
  Navigation using table of contents or thumbnails, with visual history
  View all your notes and highlights
  Convenient reading in full screen
  Giving powerful presentations, with built-in transitions
  Handy preview of internal links
  Focus using a reading bar
  Magnification tool
  Smart cropping tools
  Extensive AppleScript support
  Bookmarks
  Saving passwords in Keychain
  Export notes as text
  Automatic download of remote PDFs
  Support for Apple Remote Control
  Interaction with LaTeX, SyncTeX, and PDFSync
  Integration with BibDesk and other third party applications
  Spotlight support
  Highly customizable
  And much more...