Why does Lion mount a network volume twice at login? I just set up a new NAS at home and created a few volumes on it, along with enabling  access to those volumes (i.e. enabling the Mac File Service on the NAS), and creating an account for myself.

On the iMac, I went into Finder and provided credentials and stored them in my keychain. No problem - I can see and access the NAS volumes.

I then went into System Preferences, Users & Groups, and added those volumes to my Login Items so that they'd be mounted automatically when I log in. I did this with my previous network storage (a Windows Home Server) and it worked fine.

However, in this case, I'm seeing the volume I want mounted at login get mounted TWICE... the "Home" volume, which is unique to my account on the NAS, gets mounted twice and appears twice both on the Desktop as well as in Finder when I click on the NAS' name in the sidebar.

Why would a volume get mounted twice like that? Is there some other place I should be looking to find the duplicate mount setting?

AFP mounts are tied to both a path and an authentication.

An exported volume might have multiple paths.  For example, an OS X server might export its root, the /Users/ folder, and the /Groups/ folder.  Each of these can be mounted separately.  In your case, your NAS may be exporting its volume under multiple paths.  It might even be exporting the same path multiple times.  Check the NAS' settings.

Each AFP mount is tied to a particular authentication (username/password).  You can mount the same volume/path multiple times using different authentications.  Its possible that the credentials you used in those two different places are subtly different.  Depending on the NAS, it might even come down to whether your long username or short username are used.  Your NAS might not even require a username (only a password) and might ignore whatever username is given.  OS X has no way of knowing that and so two different usernames (long versus short) might produce two different mounts even though they lead to the exact same volume.


Does using Spaces slow down the system? Did anyone experience if using Spaces slows down the system? Is there are difference between using 4 spaces vs 9 spaces?

your application windows are opened already (and rendered) no matter what space they are in.
if you do "show spaces" (either with "corner" or hotkey), OS X must transform each space into the "reduced" form so you can see it on-screen.

If you have 8 windows in 4 spaces, only 4 spaces will render
if you have 9 spaces, the OS will render 9 spaces (and the same 8 windows).

each Space eats additional memory

I'm using 9 spaces and here is my own experiences:

There in NO difference if you have enough memory (no swapping to HDD to render everything)
There IS a difference if you don't have enough available memory to avoid a swap to the HDD (perhaps too many apps are open). In this case, when you do "show spaces" there is an increase between showing 2 spaces vs 16 spaces (but nothing that is really bad or terribly noticeable)

So,

spaces does not slow down your system noticeably (in the most cases), but
definitely eats some more memory (but a small amount), so you may get swapping a little bit sooner, and swapping is that what is really slowing down your system.

ps: these are my experiences, others may have other opinions.


Name of the developer on App Store the same of Apple ID? Is the name displayed on the App Store page of an app the same of the Apple ID or it can be changed on iTunes Connect?

For example, if I use my father's Apple ID to publish an app (because I'm under 18), will the name of the developer be mine or his on the App Store?

Log into the Member Center and select the Your Account tab.  In the Developer Account Summary section is the Name line.  That is what is shown on the App Store for the Company/Organization.

It is not user editable so if it is showing your father's name but you want it under a new company name, you will need to call Apple to ask to have it changed.


Do I lose data when canceling iCloud plan I have downloaded the iCloud photos on my Windows PC through iCloud app and I am able to view the photos in a folder name iCloud Photos in my file browser, but will the photos be still available if downgrade my subscription from 200GB to 5GB? Will I lose all photos and data?

No. Your data won't be deleted automatically when you downgrade your plan. You'd be given a grace period to download your data. Also, the storage decrease takes effect after your current monthly or annual subscription ends.

If you have more data than the space available in your iCloud storage, the excess data won't sync to the iCloud servers and you'd be alerted that you are out of space.


Is there a way to access the TOR network on iOS devices? What are my options for using TOR on an iPod Touch, either using something similar to the VPN settings, or through dedicated apps for browsing/email/RSS ?

I suspect you would be able to use TorVPN's PPTP Server, just make sure you switch the "Send All Traffic" switch on the VPN configuration settings to "on". Otherwise it will be astoundingly ineffective :).

Note that I have not used this service, but knowing what iOS supports (L2TP/IPSec, PPTP, Cisco L2TP), I have a hunch that it will work.


BenQ PD3220U with 2014 MacBook Pro Retina (USB hub question) I want to buy the BenQ PD3220U monitor but I am not sure if I will be able to use it how I intend to. As The following post shows that I should be able to connect to the monitor from my Thunderbolt 2 port using an adapter: Is Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 (type C) possible?
This way I should be able to get 4k 60Hz output. I don't know however if I will also be able to use all it's other features such as the integrated USB hub and KVM switch. Does anybody know if it will work?

If you have another system (PC or Mac) and this 2014 MacBook Pro, you can have a DisplayPort KVM switch to have both systems share the monitor and keyboard/ mouse/ other USB devices.  With the DisplayPort KVM switch, you don't need to have a Thunderbolt 2-to-3 converter.  And you also can get extra USB sharing ports at the same time.
Just carefully to select the right DisplayPort-to-Type-C active converter for the connection between the KVM switch video out to the Type-C monitor.
We tested and recommended CAC-1557 for the cable  and UDP-12AP for the KVM switch.


External Bluetooth Microphone - iPad I have a pair of Bluetooth headphones with a microphone and I want to use the microphone on the Bluetooth headphones to record some audio into an audio recording app on the iPad. I have tried multiple apps so this isn't the problem.

My problem is the iPad won't pick up the audio from the microphone on the Bluetooth headphone. I know that the audio from the microphone can be picked up by the iPad as there is an option when you are face-timing to change the input source.

How can I change the input for the audio in the iPad settings?

I am in a nearly identical situation as you. I have been manically searching for this answer for the past two days, finding little. But here is what little I've found:

The Bluetooth mic is used during phone calls, facetime, and speech-to-text. It is not used for anything related to recording, as if the software is only ok with using that input if the evidence is destroyed immediately, if no record is kept. Wired headphones that have mics built-in will work for recordings, but for some reason the Bluetooth headsets are treated differently. This is true for my iPad mini and for my Android phone.

The most plausible theory I've heard is that there might be some safety regulation that is responsible. Like the government thinks it would be too easy to eavesdrop on people through their headsets if they didn't make these restrictions. But that is just speculation.

Anyway, I hope I was able to tell you something you didn't already know. I will be anxiously monitoring your post to see if someone who knows more than me shares new information. Good luck!!


Using a USA charger in Europe I am about to buy an Apple charger on Ebay coming from USA, yet I am not sure if I can use it here in Europe, more precisely in Portugal.

I'm not concerned with the plug itself since I have the plug from my old broken charger and given that I can easily detach and attach it to the new charger this is not a problem.

My concern is related to the different electrical system used in USA and in Europe, so do I need to buy a converter or is it safe to use it ?

Best regards,

Filipe Silva.

If it’s a genuine Apple charger, you should be fine, those are universal. If it’s not (and it’s not unheard of for counterfeit items to be sold on eBay), all bets are off.

See for instance Ken Shiriff’s teardowns of iPhone chargers to see what enormous differences there can be among charger designs and their safety: http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html


How to know if I can rely on an app to keep my password? How can I know if an app of an unknown author (like gTasks) is reliable for me to give my mail password to use it?

You have to trust the developer of the app. Period.

Besides code analysis there is no way to eliminate the possibility that an app does send your password somewhere.

And even tools like Little Snitch won't help you if the app is allowed to send emails from your account.
If you send an email to somebody it would just use the established connection to afterwards send another email with your password. Since the connection is encrypted you can't see what the app is doing. And because the whole purpose of the app is sending emails the connection is not suspicious at all. Same thing is true for all apps that need access to the internet, if you enter the password to an facebook app it could just use facebook to send a private message with your password and so on.

To make it even more difficult to detect, the developer could implement it in a way that the malicious routine waits 30 days before it sends your password. And if the developer is a smart criminal (he wrote a great app so he probably is) he can detect testers who just fast forward their device date setting too.
If the developer is smart it is nearly impossible to figure such things out without looking at the code.

Entering your password somewhere is all about trust.
And with all those apps from unknown developers it's hard to figure out which app you can trust enough to give it your password.
That's the reason Twitter, among others, uses an authentication process where the app never knows your password.

Having a different password for different services helps in case you have accidentally trusted an untrustworthy developer.
But your email password is a little bit special because usually it can be used to gain access to almost all services you use.


How do I remove purchased GarageBand content? I recently purchased GarageBand's additional content (the $4.99 for everything one) specifically to acquire the drummers. Now I've got around 10GB of unused content eating up a significant portion of my hard drive. How do I remove the sounds and loops installed by GarageBand?

You should look for it in the following place, copy following and paste it in to the Go to Folder in the Finder.

/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Apple Loops for GarageBand

Know-how:

*If you are wondering how I did it, since I do not use the Garageband:

I used the mdfind -name Garageband in Terminal that showed me all locations for it. After that it was easy.*


Can I use a Mac os x 10.6.6 that came with a newer iMac to install it on another one? I recently purchased a brand new 27" iMac that came with snow leopard as the default os. I was wondering if I could use the back up disc that it came with to install it on my old 21" iMac that is 5 years old. I have seen on various forums that the discs that come with computers are machine specific, and thus the result is a message stating that "Mac OS X Snow Leopard cannot be installed on this computer." But I've heard there are workarounds to this. Does any one know what they are? Thanks.

If you have the gray installation CD you probably won't be able to do it because they are machine specific, but its worth a try. If you boot from the CD & it is not compatible with the machine it will just tell you to press the power button to turn off your machine. Then just boot normally & eject the CD, no harm done.


If I restore my Iphone will my photostreams be deleted? I need to restore my phone, I backed up all my photos onto a photstream going to my Ipad. Will they be deleted?

The Photostream itself, populated with photos from the last 30 days(up to 1000 images), will still exist after you restore your phone. However, because of the transitory nature of Photostream, it would be prudent to direct the flow into a more permanent repository such as a computer.

Shared Photostreams persist beyond the 30 day limit.

Apple Support articles:

iCloud: My Photo Stream FAQ

iCloud: Using and troubleshooting Shared Photo Streams


Mojave: possible to disable menubar transparency? I hate the transparent menubar in modern macOS versions. I used to avoid this by enabling the "Reduce Transparency" option in System Preferences > Accessibility > Display.

In Mojave (on non-Retina systems) this has nasty side effects and generally makes everything look like garbage.

I found a hidden setting that apparently used to work, but has no effect in Mojave:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleEnableMenuBarTransparency -bool false

My current poor-man's workaround was to create a 1920x1080 PNG with my preferred background picture, and add a 22px high 100% white bar at the top. This simulates the effect of having an opaque menu bar.

Does anyone know of a better way?

edit: to help illustrate the difference, check out the side-by-side comparison below. The image on the left is with my "hack" of placing a 22px high 100% white strip across the top of an otherwise solid gray background. On the right is the same transparent menu drawn on top of Apple's "stock" solid background. Note the reduction in readability/contrast:

On my MacBook Air (Early 2014) checking the box "Reduce Transparency" does the trick:

System Preferences > Accessibility > Display

It being an older Mac (non-retina) I'm wondering if it works the same on newer Macs with/without retina display.


Possibility to recover data from restored iPhone? My iPhone4 said it needed an update to the new softwear so I went to settings and hit update.
Then it went to a screen that had a little iTunes box and  connection cord underneath it.

It stayed on that and wouldn't shut off or restart. I read online I needed to download iTunes to get into recovery mode which I did when it was done and my phone finally came back on EVERYTHING was gone.

Is there anything I can do to get my contacts/ pictures back?

Unless you had a backup, no. Do you have a copy of your contacts anywhere? iCloud for example? Visit www.icloud.com and login with your AppleID, see in the contacts tab if you still can find your contacts.

If this isn't the case, I don't think you can do anything but learn out of it and make backups regulary.

iTunes is offering you this option. See the support document on iOS: How to back up and restore your content for a complete description.


Mac Book Pro 2013 connect to projector with resolution bigger then laptop screen I want to connect my projector to my Mac Book pro. Projector has resolution 1920x1080 Full HD. My question is how to output the same resolution from MacBook. My Mac Book pro display has resolution 1280x800, I am not sure if I can make output 1920x1080.

According to everymac.com, your particular MacBook Pro will display 2560x1600 maximum resolution (Thunderbolt) and 1920x1200 via HDMI.

If your projector supports 1920x1080, and it being "Full HD" as you described, it will most likey have an HDMI port.  All you will need is a quality mini Display Port (mdP) to HDMI adapter


Can I continue downloading Mountain Lion In Sleep Mode? I am downloading OSX Mountain Lion via the App Store however it is taking a while, will it continue downloading in sleep mode?

No, however if you were already running ML, and you had a Flash-storage based Mac that supported PowerNap, then it would likely be able to do so as part of it's ability to automatically download updates etc (which are provided through the Mac App Store) when in sleep.

Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy though ;)


why does my ipad not sort series properly I have several tv series on my ipad mini running ios 7.1.2 and itunes is on windows 8, now my ipad has started to sort the seasons so that a few episodes are under 1 season tab and the rest of the season is under another which is very annoying as for example it shows me having 2 tabs for the 1st season of something. I have tried using itunes to change it but cant see how too and I deleted and re-downloaded all the series I'm having problems with but nothing has worked, please help me sort this

iFlicks 2 is a great app to manage video files in iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iflicks-2/id731062389?mt=12


2010 27" iMac vs 2011 27" thunderbolt display I have a 2011 27" thunderbolt display where the display doesn't light up. It's dead. Speakers work, screen still shows up when connected in displays, but nothing displays.

My friend has a 2010 27" iMac that most likely has a broken hard drive. I did a couple of ebay searches and the displays look like they are the same exact model.

I would like to take the display from the iMac into the Thunderbolt display. Does anyone have any info on this by any chance? I'm seeing that the display part is identical, but not sure if the connectors are. Figured i would ask if anyone has done this, or attempted!

If anyone is wondering the answer to this… The actual panels are identical, but the connectors on the back of them are different. Also the display mounts on the actual display are different as well. So in conclusion, without some insane modifications, this cannot be done.


Google Chrome vs my Keychain Since I've left Chrome as my main browser, every time I use it as secondary browser, Chrome enters in an eternal loop requesting my password to access each keychain bundle of my system. No matter how many times I click "cancel" it just keeps asking access to my passwords.

Is it possible to just make Google Chrome stop asking for my keychain? Once this start, browsing is not possible. The whole window is blocked with the repeated pop ups.

You mac has saved Chrome passwords in the key chain.

Open your key chain and sort by typing the name Google in search window so you can do the following easier.

This is what it looks like on my MBA.

Click on the first one of the Google password and then open the

  access control tab

Set to

  allow all applications to use

If you are not confident with that setting then use the + and add the Safari browser in to the allowed list.

  Always Allow Access by these application


Preventing MacBook from sleeping when closing lid on Sierra Is there any way to prevent my MacBook Pro from sleeping when I close the lid on macOS Sierra? I used to use NoSleep on OS X El Capitan; unfortunately it stopped working properly after Yosemite and I've heard that on Sierra it causes problems, so I don't want to install it and potentially cause damage.

Does anyone use anything that they personally have used that prevents MacBooks from going to sleep when the lid is closed on macOS Sierra?

InsomniaX works perfectly on my MBP 13" 2015. I am using macOS Sierra 10.12.

There's also an app called NoSleep, but it hasn't been updated in years, only use it if you're on older OSX like Mavericks or Yosemite.. I wouldn't recommend using it on Sierra..

UPDATE: 1st FEB, 2020
InsomniaX is not being mantained anymore & you SHOULD NOT use it. No sleep is a better option until MacOS Mojave. Haven't tested any of these with MacOS Catalina. If anyone has tested with Catalina, let us know in the comments.


Native OS X Windows Snap Features 2018 As an Ubuntu and MS-Windows user, I regularly used the hotkey to snap a window to half the screen.  This feature was built-in to the operating system.   There are 7 year old threads which lists third party apps, which means enough time has elapsed to build the capability into the OS.

Question: What is the proper term that one would use to search?  Is the capability baked into 2018 versions (10.11.6) of OSX?

It’s not baked in. Magnet seems to be the most popular app, and it’s what I use.


Is it possible to display my Mac on my iPhone using a USB cable? I've tried AirDisplay and Splashtop but they aren't fast enough, they are always delayed . I need something to see videos and play games without any kind of delay. Because AirDisplay and Splashtop use wifi connection they doesn't work the way I want. Is there any option to mirror my Mac to an iPhone but using a USB cable so it can't be delayed?

Thank you.

They are the only options as of now. They are slow because of your internet.

Even USB have speed limitation.

And using a USB cable 6 or 12 feet long would defeat the purpose (you are to close to the Mac for any benefit).

Your WiFi speed should be good enough to watch streaming Videos without delay showing > 200kb/s.

To check, click on the WiFi while holding the alt key, that will open more detailed information on your WiFi.

In there it should say

MCS index >10


How can I erase all photos on my iOS 11 device that can't be removed with Image Capture trick? I have over 17,000 photos sync'd from my Mac on to my iPhone running iOS 11. As seems these days, the synced photos do not give you the option of deleting them from the phone (yes, I understand this wouldn't delete them from my Mac). The problem is that I don't want all these photos on there, I only want the last few weeks or so but I think iTunes and the phone are confused as I'm not sure how to get rid of the extraneous photos.

To be clear, the photos in question are ones previously sync'd to the phone from iTunes on a Mac that runs the Photos.app; there are no photos in the camera roll. Photos that have been sync'd do not give the option to be deleted, that privilege only exists for those in the current Camera Roll. As well, the Image Capture trick suggested does not work because that method only addresses pictures in the Camera Roll; it does not see the sync'd photos.

In the past, I should have been able to simply uncheck the "Sync Photos" box and accept the "Remove from Phone" button, sync and then see the photos disappear from the phone. However, that doesn't do the trick - the photos are still there. I've tried re-enabling and sync'ing with a subset of photos which appears to complete successfully, but then when I try to uncheck and "Remove from Phone" and sync again, they still don't delete.

In the past you used to be able to go into the Settings app and under storage for Photos you could press a button to delete all photos from the phone; it doesn't appear to exist as an option anymore, only "put everything on the cloud" which is something I do NOT want to do. It just seems that iTunes sync doesn't try to remove the old photos like it doesn't understand that they're there.

Is there any way to delete all the photos on my phone or do I have to completely wipe my phone and start all over again? Strangely, the last backup iTunes took of my phone was nearly 3 months ago and the button to manually do one is grayed out thus I'm a little hesitant to do the restore.

I found the answer and it requires some surgery by deleting the sqlite databases that the iPhone keeps for synced photos, the photos thumbnails and the photos themselves. I've documented the steps in a blog page here: http://dronefone.com/brian/blog/Entries/2018/3/7_Removing_Synced_Photos_from_iOS.html

Note this works for iOS 12 as well.


App or process to show Youtube videos offline without a computer? I'm trying to avoid having to sync my iOS devices with a computer for any reason, but so far haven't been able to come up with a way to find a youtube video and cache it locally so when I leave an internet connected area I can still view it.

The methods to do it that are most common all involve a computer:

Saving online videos (e.g. YouTube) and moving them to iPad for later offline viewing?

Is there an app, or a process I can follow, that will cache youtube videos on the iOS device for viewing in a slow internet situation, or away from internet access?

Video Downloader Pro Lite is the app you're looking for.

  To begin a download:

  Browse on the web.
  Select any video on any website,
  Click download.

It works pretty well for me!


Copying Clipboard from IDE and pasting on iPad while keeping color formatting I'm taking a course in java and I'm using my iPad to take notes (using the notability app). I wanted to know if there's any way to copy code I'd be writing on my Mac (IntelliJ IDE) to my iPad. It needs to be transferable quickly and easily so I can incorporate the code in my notes as a textbox in notability. The catch is, it also has to retain the text color so I can read it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

There isn't a single great option for this because you can't copy directly into the clipboard of the iPad from the background, so in a sense you can't sync your clipboards.

However there is Pastebot which was quite good, it's a bit old now, but should work still.

Alternatively iCloud syncing through Notes.app is pretty fast.


Maintaining 1:1 rendering on high res screen (Snow Leopard) I hace A Dell U2713HM screen that is 2560x1440 capable, but my Mac Mini is only 1920x1080 capable. How can I force the mac to display its output at 1:1 on the screen without scaling, so the display will remain sharp (even if it will be displayed smaller) ? I do this on my PC into the nVidia drivers, but I don't see where it can be done on Mac OS.

Go to System Preferences (the square gray icon with gears on it) in the Dock and choose Displays, then select the resolution from the scrolling list of possibilities.  You should certainly be able to set 1920x1080, though of course there will be wide black bands around the output.

Generally, on OS X, unlike Windows, video hardware manufacturers do not install their own control panels or preference apps.


Safely destroying Apple Software RAID 1 If an Apple Software RAID (RAID 1, mirrored) exists and one of its members is failed. It is possible to destroy the RAID and keep the data on the functional disk intact? If so, how is this accomplished.

In general, Disk Utility forces you to erase a drive to turn on or off the RAID wrapper it places on the actual data.

If you set up a mirrored set (RAID 1) you still have access to the data and could just ignore the RAID wrapper since it allows you to add more drives as mirrors in the future, but doesn't force you to do so and you can keep using it as a single drive perpetually. I might turn off AutoMirror on that drive to ensure the OS never decides another drive is the master and proceeds to delete your data (an edge case, but I'd hate to experience this no matter how remote the chance).

The method Apple recommends to undo RAID is to back up the data elsewhere and delete the RAID wrapper and then copy the data back. My guess is if you erased the RAID wrapper and didn't otherwise do anything to the drive file recovery software could patch back together most if not all the files but I certainly wouldn't risk it for any data I wasn't prepared to walk away from.


How can I know which formula create this file $ brew link binutils

Linking /usr/local/Cellar/binutils/2.24... Warning: Could not link binutils. Unlinking...

Error: Could not symlink file: /usr/local/Cellar/binutils/2.24/share/info/configure.info
Target /usr/local/share/info/configure.info already exists. You may need to delete it.
To force the link and overwrite all other conflicting files, do:
  brew link --overwrite formula_name

As I see I can not link binutils because there is configure.info file in my filesystem.
I am just wondering if there is any way to know which of installed home-brew formulas had installed this file ?

If the file was installed by Homebrew, it is a symlink to a file in /usr/local/Cellar/:

$ ls -l /usr/local/share/info/bash.info
lrwxr-xr-x  1 admin  wheel  45 Mar 15 15:25 /usr/local/share/info/bash.info -> ../../Cellar/bash/4.2.45/share/info/bash.info

It's also possible that the file was not installed by Homebrew. /usr/local/ is often the default installation target in makefiles, and it is also used by installers and by other package managers like pip.


Keeping iPhone 4 Free from Oil Without Using Damped Cloth The guidelines I read on the Internet ask me to clean the oil off my iphone 4 surface by using a slightly damped cloth.

But is there any method that I can use to clean off the oil without using damped cloth?

Apple says:

  Cleaning iPhone

  Clean iPhone immediately if it comes in contact with any contaminants that may cause stains, such as ink, dyes, makeup, dirt, food, oils, or lotions. To clean iPhone, disconnect all cables and turn off iPhone (press and hold the On/Off Sleep/Wake button, then slide the onscreen slider). Then use a soft, slightly damp, lint-free cloth. Avoid getting moisture in openings. Don’t use window cleaners, household cleaners, compressed air, aerosol sprays, solvents, alcohol, ammonia, or abrasives to clean iPhone. The front and back covers of iPhone 4 are made of glass and have an oleophobic coating. To clean these surfaces, simply wipe with a soft, lint-free cloth. The ability of this coating to repel oil will diminish over time with normal usage, and rubbing the screen with an abrasive material will further diminish its effect and may scratch the glass.
  — iPhone
  User Guide, page 54

(emphasis added)

Or in other words: remember that little piece of cloth that came with your iPhone? That's all you should need.


How to get back old configurations of app windows if lost because of reboot? Macbook froze (the rainbow beachball was just twirling) because of low memory, so I needed to do a reboot using the power button.

Might have done a safe mode reboot (not sure).

After I restarted all of the windows, PDFs, etc where not back on the screen. Restarted again choosing not to start up with the same windows, hoping the old setup would appear again.

This time some app windows such as Evernote and Safari was back to normal but not the PDFs.

Is there some way to get back the old setup of app windows? Perhaps with Time Machine or some backup cache.

By opening up the OSX preview app there is a chance that the PDFs will show up again. That worked for me.


Smaller Album artwork in iTunes 12.5.1.21? I have hundreds of different albums in my iTunes library and would like to see as many of them as I can while still remaining in windowed mode. Unfortunately, iTunes does not have a clear option to display albums in a smaller format.

I have gone under Preferences and selected "List View" as Smallest and I have also tried using Command-J to select View Options but neither has had any impact.

How can I make these unnecessarily large album cover icons smaller so that I don't have to scroll through the equivalent of several pages to see my entire library?

I don't think there is anyway you can make them smaller.  The Grid view, in Album View, I think is inoperable to size change.  For me, I like larger album covers so I deleted the microphones in Artist view (and Artist view itself) and use List in the Album View.  Of course, I can expand to about 14" x 14".  The only smaller album coverwork are the microphones but they seem to be controlled by the iTunes Store box sets, so many people have missing artwork---and lots of microphones.  That's why I eliminated them.


Lost Wi-Fi after running USB to Ethernet driver I recently bought a USB to Ethernet dongle, and I ran the package script and restarted the computer, only to find that I had the infamous ‘Wi-Fi: no hardware installed’ issue. I've tried:

Reset NVRAM
Reset SMC
Moved and renamed /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist

Ran the AHT, and entered recovery mode.

On attempt 3, after it didn't work, I undid it.
On attempt 4, I found no hardware issues, and when I clicked the link, I could connect to Wi-Fi.

MacBook Pro 12,1, Insignia USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet adapter

I decided to brute-force my way to a solution. I first ran the AHT by holding down "d" while booting up. Then I held down Command R when booting up, and reinstalled the OS. That worked.


Macports installer public signing key The MacPorts installation guide says:

  Download the latest MacPorts-2.3.1-....pkg installer from the MacPorts download directory. [...]
  Double-click the downloaded package installer to perform the default “easy” install.

In between steps 1 and 2, however, a user may wish to verify the integrity of the downloaded package, using the PGP signature file also found in the Macports download directory.

If SIGNATURE_FILE is the name of the signature file, I get the following result:

$ gpg --verify SIGNATURE_FILE
gpg: Signature made Thu 26 Jun 00:37:12 2014 BST using DSA key ID B4AAE6CD
gpg: Can't check signature: public key not found

Where can I find the public key? Google doesn't seem to know.

The key ID is B4AAE6CD, from your command output. You need to search and retrieve the key from a keyserver:

gpg --recv-keys B4AAE6CD

Then your verify command should work.


Can I use a Walmart iPhone 5c charger instead of the original one I got a new charger at Walmart and it does not charge the phone. Is it because it is cheap?

When buying an iPhone charger what you want to look for is the lightning cable (the one for your 5C) having a MFI-Certification, this means that it is certified by Apple to work (most likely). These may be more expensive but are better than the .99 gas station chargers. It may still work for a while buy there is a fairly high chance it won't or it will die after just a few weeks. Your best bet is a more expensive one from a place like Amazon or one sold at an actual Apple store.

To answer your question, cheap chargers are not nearly as good and could not end up working.


How to close application completely when clicking red button on any app? I'm a long time windows/Ubutnu user who have recently migrated to Mac OS X and running 10.7.4. One thing which i'm unable to get used to is that  while the red button closes a window, the program will remain open until you quit the application using the Menu Bar. One option to bypass it is use the key combination Command+Q but by doing that all the instances of that program opens up the next time I open that application. Is there a way out?

You can't close the application by clicking on the red button, as you said it is meant to close the window...

Using cmd-q is not a bypass but the shortcut to close the application. And the windows are not instances of the application, they are in the same instance...

What bothers you is the "resume" functionality that restores the state of an application -- e.g. all open windows -- when you restart it.

Look here or here to see how you can tune or disable this "resume" feature.


make custom user agent change permanent I need to navigate a site that makes use of javascript that checks for user agent and only permits IE9.0 (don't ask). I am using safari and can set IE 9 in the user agent submenu of the develop menu. However, when the site directs me to another page in its collection, an exception is thrown because the new page sees I am using Safari. Reseting the user agent in the develop menu does not work because the page reloads as a safari user agent. Yes I edited the com.apple.Safari plist to include the following item:

Key:    CustomUserAgent
class:  String
value:  Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/5.0)

But safari deletes that entry every time it opens a new tab/window and reverts to default! The plist reverts back to 'normal'.

Is there a way to make this change permanent?

You can set it with defaults write:

defaults write com.apple.Safari CustomUserAgent "\"useragentstring\""


Accessibility missing from the Privacy tab While installing drivers for my drawing tablet on my macbook. I went to go look for the accessibility option in the privacy tab. In the image shown below, the accessibility option is just not there, and have not been able to find a solution to fix it.

I am the only user of the laptop, and I have admin privileges. I run macOS  / OS X 10.8.5

Am I missing something here, or is there something wrong with the laptop?

Your version of macOS predates this setting. You don’t have any restrictions to grant as they are not in place.

Can you validate your macOS version (or perhaps it’s still called OS X) from About this Mac and also cross reference the driver software version and requirement?

If in the end it’s not working, we might need a follow on question documenting the versions for someone to help. Since there are dozens of macos versions and many dozens of accessories that have tablet form, it’s not likely there’s a single solution for all cases you report of the hardware not working.

Nothing is likely wrong other than perhaps the wrong version of OS or wrong instructions being followed for the install.


How to decode a .chm file? I'd like to extract content of old .chm file into individual html files.

Is there an app or command line tool for this?

This is pretty easy to do for free you just have to use Terminal and install Homebrew and chmlib.

Open Terminal. (/Applications/Utilities/)
Install Homebrew by visiting http://brew.sh/ and follow the installation instructions. Or just copy paste this command into Terminal and run it.

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

After the install is complete type brew install chmlib in Terminal and press enter.
Move the file you want to extract to your Desktop.
Go back to Terminal and type:

extract_chmLib ~/Desktop/name_of_the_file.chm ~/Desktop/name_of_the_file

Just be sure to replace name_of_the_file.chm with the actual name of the file. This will create a new folder on your desktop.
Open the folder and double click the file index.html. This will open the document in your web browser.


Mac Mail downloads my entire gmail account can i just get the last 30 days? Mac Mail every few days i find that it's downloading my entire account all over again. That's like 8 years work of email - which is really beginning to annoy me.

Can I configure mail to only get recent mail?

Apple's mail will get all the messages by design. There isn't a setting to tell it to stop after a certain volume of downloaded content or some message count or attachment count.

You'll find that altering the server settings if you can will be the only way to change the volume or number of messages.

Exchange has a setting to limit the number of messages and calendar items that sync. Gmail also has settings you can configure (under settings) for IMAP to download only the last 1000 mails. You can also exclude entire mailboxes and folders in Gmail to prevent them from ever being seen by an IMAP client such as Apple's OS X Mail or iOS mail apps.

If you can't alter your server settings, you may have to change the volume of messages you store in that email account.


How can I make an Automator service run a shell script and display the output? I'm using Automator to run a shell script (ffmpeg transcode to h264) as a 'Service', so that I can just right click the high res .mov file and select the service. It works fine, but as it's ffmpeg it would be good to see the output in a Terminal window. Is there a way to see the output in real time?

Shouldn't make a difference, but here's the script just in case:

for f in "$@"
do
/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v libx264 -vf yadif -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 21 -preset slow -movflags faststart -c:a copy ${f%.*}_h264_yadif.mov
done

Nice and clean solution is to display message via Notification Center.
Just execute the following terminal command in your script.

osascript -e 'display notification "All files converted" with title "ffmpeg converter"'

'osascript' command runs any AppleScript from terminal, 'display notification' pops up nice notification.

Also you can use 'display alert'. It has no limitation of message length and it's easy to add OK button to it.

osascript -e 'set alertResult to display alert "Bad news :( Error converting your video file." buttons {"OK"} as warning'

Here is Apple Script commands reference. Look for 'display notification' and 'display alert' for more information.


Windowing system on El Capitan, and XQuartz I've just installed XQuartz on my Macbook Pro Retina 13" which runs El Capitan, because a development tool I'm using required me to do so. I know that XQuartz is (kind of) like the new X11, supported by Apple through an open source community, but I'm confused as to what the relationship is between XQuartz and El Capitan.

Here is what I'm thikning. If I had to install XQuartz by hand, then clearly El Capitan was using some other windowing system. But what? Having now installed XQuartz, what's changed? Have I downgraded my El Capitan in any way? I haven't noticed anything different yet. Is it reversible?

By the way, I haven't yet set up time machine, and I now regret it.

XQuartz is a windowing system on its own, just installing it doesn't change anything. If you need to run application requiring X11/XQuartz, you need to start the Xquartz app (aka X11 server) before you start the application. The X11 server will then run "on top" of OS X, so the behaviour of other applications doesn't change.

See also What is XQuartz? for more details.


possible to run Dell monitors as a single monitor with a MBA 2013 I do software development and would like to run two Dell U2414H's in portrait mode as a single screen. Is this possible with a MBA 2013? Like this:

The MacBook Air will require a Dual-link DVI output using Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter to connect to the two monitors (so the monitors need DVI cables/connectors) and as long as the combined resolution of the displays is no more than 2500 x 1600 then it will work as that is the max resolution of an external display with this Mac.

If the combined Max resolution of these displays is higher than 2500 x 1600 it may well support both but you won't get the maximum resolution out of the displays.


What are the command line options for afconvert? macOS includes a tool called afconvert which describes itself this way in the man page.

  Audio File Convert will convert a source audio file to a new audio file with the specified file and data types

However, that's the entire man page. What are the command line options required and supported by afconvert? What are some basic examples of how to convert audio files back and forth?

Audio File Convert exports to 20 audio file formats and a multitude of codecs, all of which are shown with the -hf option.

Uncompressed Audio

File formats: AIFC AIFF NeXT Sd2f WAVE RF64

The original formats for storing audio files were all uncompressed because these are easy to work with, and can be played by even very early CPUs. However, uncompressed audio files are very large, easily going up to 10 MB/minute. These formats all share similar codec options like I8 BEI16 BEI24 BEI32 BEF32 BEF64. Smaller numbers give smaller files, but larger numbers give higher quality. If you're not sure what to choose, go with BEI32 or LEI32.

Compressed Audio

File formats: 3gpp 3gp2 adts ac-3 amrf m4af m4bf caff ec-3 flac mp4f

Not every codec is supported by every file format, but you can use this as a guide to get started choosing your codec. Once you've chosen a codec, you can look at the output of afconvert -hf to pick a suitable container file format.

aac MPEG-4 Low Complexity AAC
aace MPEG-4 AAC Enhanced Low Delay (without SBR)
aacf MPEG-4 AAC Enhanced Low Delay (with SBR)
aacg
aach MPEG-4 High Efficiency AAC
aacl MPEG-4 AAC Low Delay
aacp MPEG-4 High Efficiency AAC Version 2
ac-3 AC-3
alac Apple Lossless
alaw aLaw 2:1
drms Apple DRM
ec-3
flac Free Lossless Audio Codec
paac
pac3
pec3
samr
sawb
QDM2 QDesign2 Music
QDMC QDesign Music
Qclp QUALCOMM PureVoice
Qclq Qualcomm QCELP

(Note: I have excluded the MPG formats such as MPG3/MP3 from this list because they just do not work.)

Syntax

Once you've chosen a file format and codec, you run afconvert like this:

afconvert -f FORMAT -d CODEC SOURCEFILE [-o DESTINATIONFILE]

It is necessary to specify both the file format and the codec, otherwise an error is shown. If you omit the -o option, afconvert will pick a name and extension based on the other inputs.

Examples

If you have an audio file called MyAudio.m4a you could try these commands.

# AIFF
afconvert -f AIFF -d BEI32 MyAudio.m4a -o MyAudio.aiff

# WAVE
afconvert -f WAVE -d LEI32 MyAudio.m4a -o MyAudio.wav

# Apple Lossless
afconvert -f m4af -d alac MyAudio.m4a -o MyAudio.m4a

# FLAC
afconvert -f flac -d flac MyAudio.m4a -o MyAudio.flac

# AAC
afconvert -f mp4f -d aac MyAudio.m4a -o MyAudio.mp4


Connection to Shared Diskstations I have two Synology Diskstations. One of them (diskstation-8) is always connected to my mac pro. For some reason the other one (diskstation-5) is not and I need always to click on it when I want the disk station connected. I have recently transfered to El Capitan. I would like to have my disk station-5 connected at login and stay connected (like my diskstation-8 ... but I don't remember how I fixed that)

I dropped an AppleScript into my Login Items.

tell application "Finder"
    try
        -- open location ("afp://DiskStation.local/Archive")
        -- open location ("afp://DiskStation.local/Documents")
        -- open location ("afp://DiskStation.local/Media")
        mount volume "afp://DiskStation.local/Archive"
        mount volume "afp://DiskStation.local/Documents"
        mount volume "afp://DiskStation.local/Media"
        mount volume "afp://DiskStation.local/Pictures"
        on error number n
          display alert ("Error " & n & " on network share mount")
    end try
end tell


Updating OS X El Capitan to macOS High Sierra as a developer I'm working as a software developer and have a project that I've taken over from an old colleague which is developed on a mac with OSX El Capitan.
I'm having some problems updating Xcode to the newest version and from what I've read I have to install a more current version of the OS, so I've downloaded macOS High Sierra.

Before I go ahead and install it I just wanted to ask someone who has more experience with this to avoid losing anything important.

I've backed up the data using the Time Machine feature, I've done it twice just to check if it could and it looks like it works.

Is there anything special that I should be aware of about the OS in general & as a developer that affects the update process?

Is there any way to validate the backup just to make sure that nothing on it is corrupted?

Any information is appreciated.

First off, why do you need to update beyond El Capitan? Yes, it will be end of life in a little less than a year, but if your concern is just getting started with the development project, you don't need to update macOS. A project built on Xcode 7.x and El Capitan will work just fine on (High) Sierra.

Putting that aside, yes, the latest Xcode will require the latest version of macOS. If you've done Time Machine backups of the box, then you shouldn't run into any issues with the OS and environment provided the backup is good (which you've indicated). For extra peace of mind, you could copy the project itself to an another disk or just make sure it is up-to-date with the source code repository (it IS in version control, right?!)

A project created with Xcode for El Capitan will (I believe) work without modifications on Xcode for High Sierra. However, you'll need to update the project for it to take advantage of the features of the newer OS / frameworks (e.g. something like Siri integration wouldn't be available without re-targeting the project to a newer framework version). Just be sure that if you're going to move to the newer version that you stay mindful of what minimum OS X / macOS version you want to support; you can easily lock out anything older than High Sierra which might not be your intention. In general, you want to support the minimum OSX version that has the features you need, so perhaps Mavericks (10.9) or Yosemite (10.10) would be a good starting point, but I'd probably just leave it as it was set by the previous developer.


Why so many shell in /bin Here is the ls output of my /bin directory:

[csh       ksh       zsh       bash      dash      tcsh      sh      ...]

Prior to catalina bash was the default and now zsh is default. What's the usage of others?

There are a lot of different shells available for Unix-like systems, and different users have different preferences. So on most Unix systems you'll find some of the most often used shells installed, to give users a choice in using whatever they prefer.

For more information about the differences between various shells see:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4317247/bash-vs-csh-vs-others-which-is-better-for-application-maintenance
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/199661/what-linux-shell-should-i-use
bash vs. zsh: What are the practical differences?

The default shell is just the shell newly created user accounts get assigned as a default shell. This can easily be changed by using chsh or changing the entry in the Users & Groups preference pane. And it's worth nothing that the default shell of existing user accounts will not be changed during the upgrade to Catalina.


Using Applescript in Automator app to run ffmpeg ffmpeg runs exactly like I want it to.  I'm sure the following is not super clean but it does work with one exception: it simply adds the .mp4 to the original filename so that the new filename appears to have two extensions.

I've spent days searching for similar problems on multiple forums with no real help.  I've tried copying and pasting suggestions with different errors.  I would really like to drag a video file onto this applet and have it run ffmpeg the way I've specified in the shell portion with the resulting output file being created in the location of the input file but with a different extension.

I've tried the "filesString" way and the \"f\" + "{$f%.*}" and for whatever reason that doesn't seem to do anything but open terminal with the text of the shell.  Other options result in a message stating that there's "NO SUITABLE OUTPUT" which I have finally figured out means, "whatever you're doing is great, but I'm going to give you this error until you take the spaces out of your file name/folders."

So:

To drop a file and have it convert to file with the standards specified. (check)
Have that output file go back to the folder where the input file lives. (check)
But with only the new extension. (fail)
A bonus would be to edit the script such that I could drop a folder of files onto the applet and have them convert 1 at a time.  I believe I can drop a folder at this time but then it opens multiple instances of Terminal and processes simultaneously.  I'd like to have the files process 1 at a time.

on run {input, parameters}
    repeat with file_ in input
        tell application "System Events"
            set inputFilename to name of (get properties of file_)
        end tell
        set inputFilePath to quoted form of (POSIX path of file_)
        set outputFilePath to quoted form of (POSIX path of file_)
        tell application "Terminal"
            activate
            do script "/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/3.0.2/bin/ffmpeg -i " & inputFilePath & " -aspect 4:3 -vf yadif=0:-1:0,scale=720:486 -acodec libfdk_aac -cutoff 20000 -vcodec libx264 -preset medium -pix_fmt yuv420p " & outputFilePath & ".mp4"
        end tell
    end repeat
    return input
end run

This takes care of number 3, the double file extension issue.

I've modified the code below from your original code in the following ways:

Added the remove_extension(this_name) subroutine from the bottom of the Essential Sub-routines page.

Changed:

set outputFilePath to quoted form of (POSIX path of file_)

To:

set outputFilePath to quoted form of (my remove_extension(POSIX path of file_) & ".mp4")

Removed & ".mp4" from the end of the do script ... line.

I then tested it on an actual .mkv file and while the process started, nonetheless I did stop it shortly there after, as it was just a test to see the original filename.mkv was writing to filename.mp4, and it was.

on remove_extension(this_name)
    if this_name contains "." then
        set this_name to (the reverse of every character of this_name) as string
        set x to the offset of "." in this_name
        set this_name to (text (x + 1) thru -1 of this_name)
        set this_name to (the reverse of every character of this_name) as string
    end if
    return this_name
end remove_extension

on run {input, parameters}
    repeat with file_ in input
        tell application "System Events"
            set inputFilename to name of (get properties of file_)
        end tell
        set inputFilePath to quoted form of (POSIX path of file_)
        set outputFilePath to quoted form of (my remove_extension(POSIX path of file_) & ".mp4")
        tell application "Terminal"
            activate
            do script "/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/3.0.2/bin/ffmpeg -i " & inputFilePath & " -aspect 4:3 -vf yadif=0:-1:0,scale=720:486 -acodec libfdk_aac -cutoff 20000 -vcodec libx264 -preset medium -pix_fmt yuv420p " & outputFilePath
        end tell
    end repeat
    return input
end run

If you want to use the AppleScript's text item delimiters method, wrapped in a subroutine, then replace the existing on remove_extension(this_name) subroutine with the following one, while leaving the others changes I made to your code as I did.

on remove_extension(this_name)
    try
        set oldDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"."}
        if number of text items of this_name > 1 then
            set this_name to (text items 1 thru -2 of this_name as text)
        end if
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelims
    on error
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelims
    end try
    return this_name
end remove_extension

This is essentially doing the same as the original on remove_extension(this_name) subroutine I first used, it's just a different method using what was mentioned in user14492's answer, only presented in what I'd consider to be a more proper form.


I can't open port 25443 I am not used to using OS X as I normally use Windows but in my new job I have a machine with OS X 10.9.5 so I kind of have to use it.

Anyways, I need to open port 25443 as I need it to access a website that runs there. I am not using the OS Firewall. I've been reading about it and I tried ipfw but it seems to be deprecated. I've been looking into pfctl but no luck. How could I open that port?

These are the outputted messages in different browsers:

Safari:

Chrome:

Opera:

The website is on a server in the Internet, is not accessed locally

I've tried to access other websites using HTTPS. It doesn't show any error and it show without any problem.

Not an answer, but I do not have any issue from my MacBook. I also don't see anything wrong with the certificate. Can you access other https sites?


How do I make my iPad Retina wifi hotspot discoverable (tethering 3G) when off and unplugged like my iPhone 6S? I can use my Ipad Retina (4th Gen, iOS 9.3.1) when plugged in via USB to tether the 3G connection.

After it is plugged into USB, then I can see it shareable via wifi from other devices.  (My Mac which is it plugged into via USB, and my iPhone 6S).

After I unplug the USB from the Macbook, the devices that connected to the iPad via wifi can still maintain the connection, but it is no longer discoverable on wifi. (And if I restart the iPhone it remains paired).

My question is: How do I make my iPad Retina wifi hotspot discoverable (tethering 3G) when off and unplugged like my iPhone 6S?

You'd have to be on the Personal Hotspot menu from Settings. This "forces" the broadcast and allows devices to connect while you're on this menu.

AFAIK I'm afraid you can't make it discoverable while it's off, though I think there is some sort of timeout after leaving the Personal Hotspot settings that allow connections from other devices.


When I click on Install App, nothing happens I am trying to install Mavericks on my 2009 Macbook Pro running OS 10.7.5.

When I click on Install App in the App Store, Mavericks doesn't install. Either nothing happens, or a spinner briefly appears at the top and then disappears.

An I doing something wrong here? I've never used the App Store before, so maybe there's something I'm missing. The first time I was prompted for my Apple password, which I put in.

Here's a video I made of what happens.

I solved this issue by doing the following

Turn on the Debug Menu in the App Store using

defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true

Using the Debug Menu, clear cookies and reset the application
Open the Downloads directory and delete the com.apple.appstore folder
Quit the App Store and kill the storeagent process
Try to install again

I had to do the above steps a couple times before I got it to work.


Can't upgrade Yosemite from Mac App Store I can't upgrade Yosemite at the Mac App Store. Everything else works but the last upgrade ( iTunes 12.3.2, Safari 9.0.2, etc.) It seems it is starting, but stops downloading.

Have you tried the manual upgrade outside app store? Try to download packages manually and see if you can then upgrade them.


How do I prevent the Mac from sleeping while on display sleep on battery power? So while on battery power you have the option to prevent the computer from sleeping when display is off. How ever this option is only available while on power adapter. Is there a way to do this on battery power? Prevent computer from sleeping when display is of but on battery power? thank you in advance

Amphetamine is a free application that will give you a lot of power and flexibility about keeping your Mac awake under various conditions.
It has been around for a number of years and considered very trustworthy. I would recommend it without reservation.
Amphetamine even has an option to disable itself when the battery reaches a certain percentage, which will reduce the chance that you will unwittingly run the battery to 0% (it is not generally advisable to run the battery fully empty). Obviously, the final choice is up to you.


Changing the $HOME environment variable in terminal on mac 10.8 To be clear im not looking for a workaround that will execute a change directory command on startup. I want to alter the $HOME env var so that tilde commands work and so that entering a 'cd' command will return me to that directory.

I am sure it is possible I am just not able to find the command.

I have tried setting it in my /etc/profile but it doesnt seem to work. I have tried about 4 different settings in there. The ones I can remember trying are:

$HOME = /directroy
$HOME = "/directroy"
setenv HOME /directory

I may be missing something simple but I'm unable to find a solution.

In bash (the default shell of Terminal on 10.8) the syntax:

HOME=/your/path
export HOME


Terminal not logged in properly I'm having a bit of an odd issue with my terminal.

I'm used to the prompt being Joosts-Macbook:~ Joost$ or something of that nature, but all of a sudden it displays a number I don't recognise: n041134:~ Joost$. I've added a screenshot of the Terminal below.

It does not seem to properly start bash either, since I can't do ./script.sh to execute a script anymore - it requires me to type bash script.sh fully.

I'm on Mountain Lion 10.8. I'm not aware of anything I may have done that has caused this. I noticed it when I was trying to execute a shell script that did some find and replacing using sed, but it might have been like this earlier.

I tried the obvious fixes such as logging out and rebooting, but to no avail.

I was just told that this is in fact my host name, and by calling hostname the mystery was effectively solved. It turned out to be because I was connected to the university's network rather than my own, which changed my hostname.

The reason I couldn't properly execute shell scripts was an unrelated oddity. Apparently the permissions on the scripts I tried were not set properly. Coincidences made me link the two problems.


Why are notifications on MacBook Pro slower than on an iPhone? I have an iPhone 4 on iOS 6.1.3 and a MBP 13' 2012 i5 on OSX 10.8.3 connected to the same WiFi network. Now whenever a notification comes, be it Facebook or Messages (exceptions: Reminder and Calendar), iPhone alerts me before the Mac does.

I checked, but couldn't find a place in the Mac where I can edit these settings to make checking for notifications more frequent.

Can you tell me how do I make it better. Because the lag is sometimes more than 30 seconds.

This seems to depend on how your Notifications are configured. If you have your notifications set to Banners, the order will be Watch first, Phone second, Mac last (if unopened on Watch and Phone). If you have your notifications set to Alerts the order will be whichever device is open currently and then the rest of the devices will not receive the alerts. Thus if your Mac is open you will receive an Alert and none of your other devices will receive it. However if you have Banners on then the notification will flow down the line of iOS devices until you open it.


How to mount HFS+ rEFInd partition as boot in Arch Linux I am currently trying to set up dual boot on my Mac. I installed rEFInd to its own partition (512MB), formatted as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". I wanted to use the same partition as my boot partition under linux. But every time I pacstrap my system, I get an error message stating that "/mnt/boot is mounted as read-only". It's probably because it can only read the mounted partition based on the filesystem I used.
I read that installing it on the existing EFI partition has caused some problems for other people so I wanted to go and take the "safe route".

I want to use rEFInd to start my OS', I do not really care if it shows up on the Startup Manager provided by Apple. I just want to be able to boot into OS X if something happens and goes horribly wrong :)

Is using FAT32 as the formatting a good idea? It would allow me to mount is as rw and make it usable as my boot partition. Or how do you guys have installed rEFInd on your systems?

For those that might have similar questions/problems. You have to explicitly disable journaling using diskutil on the command line. Using Disk Utility.app does not work properly.


using automator/applescript to upload files to a web form? I have a bunch of files I want to upload to web page. Unfortunately the web form for uploading only allows me to specify one at a time (it spawns and 'open file' dialog). Is there an easy way to do this with some combination of automator/applescirpt?

I followed @drevickos very good instructions. Didn't manage it with Safari, but Firefox works perfectly.
Below the downloads for the Service file UploadFilesWebForm and the Automator file UploadFirefox3.

With these files, I managed to upload multiple files to SAS on AWS.
For any other website, you should adjust:

Watch me do procedure to fit your web form in the UploadFirefox3 file
The delay needed for upload specified in the UploadFirefox3 file

UploadFilesWebForm.workflow.zip
http://www45.zippyshare.com/v/QQm0SKJ5/file.html
UploadFirefox3.workflow.zip
http://www45.zippyshare.com/v/bHyKGi2g/file.html


What is this macbook keyboard popup bubble? While I am typing, my macbook randomly (to me anyway) pops up a speech bubble with alternative characters. I can be flying on typing the rest of the sentence before I realise a number of characters have not typed. I do not understand what triggers this to appear. Does anyone know what this bubble is and how to turn it off?

It must be some accessibility feature? But I cannot see what the setting is and how to turn it off?! Its driving me crazy!!

Update:

OK, so thanks to replies I know now it is the mac accent character picker. But I'm not holding down a key when it appears, I'm typing normally without pause. Before I turn it off completely as suggested, is there any sensitivity setting I can check to confirm how long it waits for a key to be held down?

If not, I guess it might indicate a hardware problem with my keyboard then and turning it off completely is the only option.

This is the character picker for entering accented characters. This appears when you hold down a key on the keyboard. This can be disabled globally using defaults:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false


How to cleanly remove Homebrew How can I cleanly remove Homebrew. I might have a faulty older installation, and I'd like to have a fresh start.

This rm -rf will not ask if you are sure when you delete, so be sure the cd command works to get you out of /tmp (the cd /tmp gets you to a safe place in case you copy/paste everything in one go so you don't delete files from your current directory)

Try this in your Terminal:

cd /tmp
cd `brew --prefix`
rm -rf Cellar
brew prune
rm `git ls-files`
rm -r Library/Homebrew Library/Aliases Library/Formula Library/Contributions
rm -rf .git
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew

More info about this topic can be found in the Homebrew FAQ.


Surprisingly many network interfaces on macOS: are these legitimate? ifconfig reveals a surprisingly long list of network interfaces on my MacBook, which is running macOS High Sierra (10.13.6): lo0, gif0, stf0, XHC20, en0, p2p0, awdl0, en1, en2, bridge0, utun0.

There is an F5 VPN client installed, but I've rebooted the MacBook since the last VPN connection.

Are all of these network interfaces legitimate or is this something I should worry about?

These are perfectly normal.

lo is the loopback interface
en0 and en1 are your hardware interfaces (usually Ethernet and WiFi)
p2p0 is a point to point link (usually VPN)
stf0 is a "six to four"  interface (IPv6 to IPv4)
gif01 is a software interface
bridge0 is a software bridge between other interfaces
utun0 is used for "Back to My Mac"
XHC20 is a USB network interface
awdl0 is Apple Wireless Direct Link (Bluetooth) to iOS devices

In my personal setup I have 2 addtional en interfaces (en2 and en3), as well as two software interfaces specific to VirtualBox, vboxnet0 and vboxnet1.  Other virtualization applications like VMware, Parallels, and Docker will create their own interfaces as will VPN clients.


How to make Numbers accept the "." instead of the comma "," when inserting data? I'm from elgium. In Dutch, as probably in some other languages, you write numbers like this: 3,141592, where in English it'd be 3.141592, but the Numbers app only interprets my input as a number when I use a comma, which messes things up when I export it as a csv. How do I make it accept the . instead of the ,? My system language is already set to English.

Numbers seems to use the decimal separator selected in System Preferences:

I didn't find any way to use both comma and period as decimal separators though.

Note that if you change the region from the menu at the top, it also affects things like the default values of locale variables in Terminal and iTerm.


How to turn off Finder Tabs in OS X Mavericks? Initially I did not have tabs in Finder after installing OS X Mavericks. After pressing Command+T, now I always have at least one tab in the Finder window.

How do I turn the tabs off?

You can hide the tab bar by going to View → Hide Tab Bar.


Why can't I AirPlay mirror my iPhone XS FaceTime video to my AppleTV in landscape rotation? I always did this in the past with my older iPhones and a 3rd Gen Apple TV: launch a facetime session, enable AirPlay mirroring to the TV and turn the phone sideways to get landscape mode so that the image would take up the entire TV screen.

My wife now has an iPhone XS and has been trying to do a landscape FaceTime with me while I'm away and it never fills the 46" HDTV. Yes, it rotates when she flips the phone, but it only rotates within the narrow vertical space, i.e. as if someone was to take a vertical video and display it on a widescreen TV.. massive unused space on left and right of image.

I've made sure that the "lock rotate" button is not enabled, but I can't find any reason why it isn't rotating into a landscape view and taking up the whole TV screen.

Any thoughts? Did Apple remove this feature for some reason?

EDIT: I found this link which someone seems to suggest it still works, but I can't find elsewhere on the internet anyone claiming it works.

my wife's iphone xs is in the mail, so this is speculative, but i would guess the new resolution is causing an under/overscan issue to manifest. Try adjusting on the apple tv and see if it works.

On Apple TV 4K or Apple TV (4th generation), go to Settings > AirPlay > AirPlay Display Underscan.
On Apple TV (2nd or 3rd Generation), go to Settings > Audio & Video > Adjust for AirPlay Overscan.


Do I need a screen protector for my new touch-screen smartphone? With my old dumbphone I never really worried about the screen, but my new iPhone 4 has a pretty gorgeous screen that I certainly would never want to come to harm. So I was wondering how many people out there use a screen protector, and what your experience has been.

Specifically:

Do you use a screen protector for your smartphone?
Do they interfere with touch-sensitivity of a touch-screen?
Are all screen protectors created equal? Are there "good" ones and "bad" ones?
Are they more resistant to fingerprints than the glass?
Do they get grimey/dirty/cloudy?
Are they harder to clean than the glass, or do you just replace it?
How often would you need to replace it?
With glass on the back of my iPhone4, do I need one on the back as well? Or is that just stupid?

I guess the most important question is:

Do they really protect the screen in any meaningful way? Or do they just make you feel better?

No, I hate screenprotectors
Most of them really don't
There are certainly bad ones, that are hard to apply or peel off easily, I've even had one that would blur the screen
Only the ones that blur your screen ;-) They have a slightly matte finish so fingerprints won't be as obvious
Yes, yes, and yes.
I suggest you just replace them, they're not that expensive
I believe it is all stupid...

They just make you feel better. The glass on the new iPhone is incredibly difficult to scratch, and even the older ones hardly scratch at all. I suggest you stop caring so much about a little scratch, the device is supposed to be used. You'll hardly notice it if there even ARE tiny scratches.

If you want to protect it, what you really need to worry about is the thing breaking after you drop it, try a protective case instead. :-)


Targeted Display Mode using Henge Docks Vertical Dock I have a 2012 MacBook Pro with Retina Display and a Late 2012 21" iMac. I just purchased a Henge Docks Vertical Dock, to use at home, and the plan is to pop my MacBook Pro in and then use the iMac in Targeted Display Mode.

My question is, will this work? Thinking about it, I usually have to wake the MacBook Pro up for it to work in Targeted Display Mode, but as the lid is kept shut by the Vertical Dock, I am not sure it will work.

Has anyone had any experience with this set up?

If not, that's fine, I was planning to go and pick up a 27" monitor anyway (future plan is to run an external GPU for gaming).

Based on the specs you provided above....

  I have a 2012 MBPr and a late 2012 21" iMac....

This should work.  From Apple's website Use your iMac as a display with Target Display Mode

Basically you need a Thunderbolt cable to connect from your TB port on your MBPr to your TB port on your iMac.

Once connected and booted, you just press CommandF2 to toggle Targeted Display Mode on/off.


Old iPad completely fails to fetch any e-mail tl;dr My old iPad's Mail app does not fetch any e-mail. Inbox remains empty all the time. Everything seems configured OK. I can send e-mails from this iPad. And receive them. And I can sent e-mails to this iPad. And they're not returned with error.

I have never run into situation like that previously, so I don't even know where or how to start a potential investigation.

I have a 7-8 years old iPad with iOS 9.3.6 (13G37), model MD544FD/A. Since I am completely not using its e-mail address for communication nor Mail application, it took me several months to realize that I have completely empty Inbox all the time (other boxes like Sent are full) and I cannot receive any e-mail to it. This my only Apple device that I have, if that matters.

(all cites and text below are my own translation from Polish)

I can send e-mail to this device as normally:

I'm sending them from my PC, through Gmail to firstname.lastname@icloud.com,
I've sent dozens of e-mails like that past months and none of them were ever returned with error,
Mail says "Updated: a moment ago" (after manual Inbox refresh / forced fetch), but Inbox remains empty.

Account seems to be working normally:

I can install and update any application from App Store using this account / e-mail address,
Settings > iCloud shows this account in second line,
Settings > iCloud > iTunes and App Store shows this account as my Apple ID,
Settings > iCloud > Advanced > Mail > shows this address as Email and has SMTP pointing to iCloud SMTP server.

Mail application seems to be working normally:

since I'm not using this e-mail / account for e-mail exchange at all, Inbox, Drafts, Spam, Bin and Archive boxes are empty,
Sent box contains about 40-60 e-mails ever sent by me directly from this device,
I can sent any e-mail from this device and within 1-2 minutes I can receive it in my Gmail.

My Gmail shows me 20 e-mails sent to firstname.lastname@icloud.com in 2013-2020 period. None of them can be found in my Inbox, Spam or Bin. All these folders remains empty.

Directly before writing this question I've sent two e-mail to my account / @icloud.com e-mail / iPad. One was a new message, the other one was a reply to a message that I've sent to myself from this iPad just a minute ago. None of these messages were rejected / returned with error. None of these messages were received by iPad -- Inbox remains empty as of writing this.

This problem is so weird to me that I don't even know where to start tracking for a source of problem or for a possible solution.

For past 25+ years, since I've been using e-mails it was always either message delivered to the account or message rejected. So far I was lucky enough to never lost a message, i.e. like with this iPad -- message neither received nor rejected and returned to sender.

Since:

other boxes and
other iCloud account's aspects

are working without any problems, my suspicions came to Inbox directly.

After reading this answer and this blog post it turned out that I have mail forwarding + delete source message option enabled. All my e-mails are being forwarded to the account that I stopped checking years ago.

Turning delete source message option off resolved this particular case and e-mails started to appear / remain in my Inbox as previously.


Recover ssh private key from Keychain Access I have OS X 10.8.5 – I just accidentally deleted my .ssh directory. I have backups, but would prefer not to have to go through the trouble. The keys still "work" right now (they're loaded into Keychain Access and I can ssh into remote hosts) but I assume they will be lost once I log out.

I tried finding the key in Keychain Access, right-clicking on it, clicking "Copy SSH: …", but that only seems to have copied the password for that key. Is there some way to recover the private key from Keychain Access?

"Export "SSH key"" (or whatever the name of your key is) should be available below the copy and removal options in the right-click context menu of a key in keychain access.

Don't you see an option for export?


Enable f12 shortcut for firebug I was wondering, how to enable the F12 shortcut key on OS X for Firebug? I don't really use Dashboard, so I'm more than happy to disable it.

You can disable or change the shortcut for Dashboard in System Preferences -  Mission Control for Mac OS X 10.7+. In older versions of Mac OS X the appropriate preference pane should be called Exposé.

After you changed the shortcut, it should correctly activate Firebug instead when Firefox is active.


Update to 10.15 Catalina even though Big Sur is released I'm still on 10.14. I would like to work with Xcode 12 now, which only supports 10.15+. Yet, no direct download for 10.15 can be found anymore.
I do not want to make the move to macOS 11 Big Sur yet as it seems too unstable.

Turns out it is still in the App Store, even though a search did not find it.
Direct link: https://apps.apple.com/app/macos-catalina/id1466841314
Instructions: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683


What makes the bash interpreter utility interpret differently standard and smart double quotes, present in a shell script, created in TextEdit? While learning bash scripting by going through a Beginner's Guide, I tried writing some lines of code in the .sh file, created in TextEdit on macOS Yosemite and running it using the command bash \path\to\script\file\example_script.sh in bash Terminal.

Line of code that I first tested:

echo “The path to my home directory is: $HOME”

Standard output (stdout) in Terminal:

“The path to my home directory is: ??

instead of getting:

The path to my home directory is: /Users/Ri$hi

Then, I got to know about the curious case of "smart quotes" from a stackexchange, and played with some funny combos, like below:

Line of code that I tested later:

Scenario 1:

echo “The path to my home directory is: $HOME (foo) bar”

stdout:

-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

Scenario 2:

echo "The path to my home directory is: $HOME (foo) bar"

stdout:

The path to my home directory is: /Users/Ri$hi (foo) bar

Scenario 3:

echo “The path to my home directory is: $HOME” “(foo)” “bar”

stdout:

-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

Scenario 4:

echo "The path to my home directory is: $HOME" “(foo)” “bar”

stdout:

-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

Scenario 5:

echo “The path to my home directory is: $HOME” "(foo)" “bar”

stdout:

“The path to my home directory is: ?? (foo) “bar”

So, I thought why not find out the reason interactively on this forum.

NOTE: Terminal always displays standard double quote " when Shift+" is pressed, but it allows displaying smart double quotes “ ”through ⌘+C, ⌘+V operation.

There are two things going on here: First, bash recognizes the plain ASCII double-quote, " (character code 0x22) as a double-quote; it does not recognize the fancy unicode left double-quote, “ (unicode U+201C, UTF-8 encoding 0xe2809c) and the corresponding right double-quote, ” (unicode U+201D, UTF-8 encoding 0xe2809d) as anything other than random sequences of bytes (or maybe as random characters, if it's using a UTF-8 locale). This is the fundamental thing to realize: as far as bash is concerned, “ and ” are not actually quotes, they're just things that happen to look like a quotes when they're printed out.

The second complication is that the unicode double-quotes are multibyte characters, so if bash isn't in a UTF-8 locale it may treat some of the bytes differently than others(!)

To see the effect of the first thing, try replacing each occurrence of a double-quote with the string WIBBLE -- another arbitrary sequence that has no special meaning to the shell:

$ echo "The path to my home directory is: $HOME bar"
The path to my home directory is: /Users/gordon bar
$ echo “The path to my home directory is: $HOME bar”
“The path to my home directory is: /Users/gordon bar”
$ echo WIBBLEThe path to my home directory is: $HOME barWIBBLE
WIBBLEThe path to my home directory is: /Users/gordon barWIBBLE

In the first command (with ASCII double-quotes), the quotes are parsed and removed by bash before the argument(s) are passed to the echo command, and hence not printed. In the second and third (with fancy double-quotes and WIBBLE in place of plain quotes), they're just treated as part of the strings to be passed to echo, so echo prints them as part of its output.

$ echo "The path to my home directory is: $HOME (foo) bar"
The path to my home directory is: /Users/gordon (foo) bar
$ echo “The path to my home directory is: $HOME (foo) bar”
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('
$ echo WIBBLEThe path to my home directory is: $HOME (foo) barWIBBLE
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

In the second and third commands (with fancy double-quotes and WIBBLE), bash sees parentheses in a non-quoted portion of the command (remember: as far as bash is concerned, fancy quotes are not actually quotes), in a place where they aren't allowed by shell syntax, and therefore complains.

$ echo “The path to my home directory is: $HOME”
“The path to my home directory is: ??
$ echo WIBBLEThe path to my home directory is: $HOMEWIBBLE
WIBBLEThe path to my home directory is:

Here, something weirder is happening. In the second command, it's looking for a variable named HOMEWIBBLE, not finding it, so replacing it with blank. In the case of the first one, with the fancy double-quotes, it looks to me like it's treating each byte of the UTF-8 encoding of ” as a separate character, treating the first as part of the variable name (again causing the variable not to be found), and then just passing the second and third bytes through, giving an invalid UTF-8 character, which gets printed as ??. Using a hex dump to get a better idea what's going on gives this:

$ echo “$HOME”
“??
$ echo “$HOME” | xxd -g1
00000000: e2 80 9c 80 9d 0a                                ......

Note that the first “ goes through fine, and shows up in the hex dump as e2 80 9c (the expected UTF-8 encoded fancy double-quote), but after that is just 80 9d -- the first e2 of the second fancy quote got eaten somehow! (BTW, the 0a at the end is a linefeed, marking the end of the output.) To see what's happening, let me define a shell variable as HOME+the first byte of the encoding of ”, and watch what happens:

$ eval $'HOME\xe2=foo'
$ echo “$HOME”
“foo??
$ echo “$HOME” | xxd -g1
00000000: e2 80 9c 66 6f 6f 80 9d 0a                       ...foo...

...So there's what's going on: it's treating the first byte of the double-quote's encoding as part of the variable name, substituting it (if defined), and then just passing through the orphaned second and third bytes, leaving invalid UTF-8. I'm not sure if this is a bash bug, oddity of its parsing, or what.

Anyway, the details are rather messy, but the takeaway should be clear: don't use fancy quotes in your shell scripts; they won't work right. And the same applies to fancy single-quotes and other unicode punctuation marks.


Diary App for Mac OS X (equivalent to Chronories) I am looking for Diary App for my MacBook (Leopard) and MacBookPro (Snow Leopard)

One of the famous Diary App is Chronories (link), but I need something else (if it's free, it would be good)

EDIT: I basically need a diary, that's my only requirement. But I need some free alternatives too. BTW, I have never used Chronories, I just knew about that app, so I mentioned it here.

Don't know exactly what features of Chronories you use the most and would like to find in another tool but here are two possibilities.

MacJournal
Mémoires

Both work on Leopard and its snowy friend.

edit following question's clarification:

With low requirements and going for free solutions, you could simply go to EverNote. You'll have as a bonus the possibility to sync your notes from everywhere, including mobile devices.
You have the possibility to order your notes by date, which would then mimics a diary. It's far less sexy than the above solutions but could fulfill your requirements.

second edit
A new one I saw today on the Mac App Store:

Day One

Seems quite nice, low price and good feedback until now.


Do I need to format Macbook Pro md101hn/a? Yesterday I bought a used macbook pro from a person.
Though I have removed that users account from laptop and erased home directory too.

Now I have 2 questions related to it as below.

Do I need to format the disk?
Any tools to measure performance of the laptop?

Nuke & Pave.

This should really have been done by the previous owner. Basic security precaution. If a bad actor had hold of this machine, half his life would now be in their hands.

You don't want anything inherited from the previous owner - good or bad.
The possibility you inherited a virus etc are very very small, but at the moment, all the Apps on there & even the OS itself still belong to the previous owner & you would need their Apple ID log & pass to update anything at all.

So, go for a clean start.
Wire up to your ethernet if at all possible; WiFi if you really can't, but avoid any WiFi that uses a Portal structure, that will not work.

  Start up from Internet Recovery by holding down   Cmd ⌘   Opt ⌥   R  immediately after turning on or
  restarting your Mac. Release the keys when you see the Apple logo.
  Startup is complete when you see the utilities window.
  Open Disk Utility from the utilities window, then use Disk Utility to erase your built-in hard disk using the Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
  format. Quit Disk Utility when done.
  Choose Reinstall macOS (or Reinstall OS X) from the utilities window, then follow the onscreen instructions. This installs the
  system that came with your Mac when it was new. It isn't associated
  with your Apple ID, so the new owner can use the App Store to upgrade
  to a later version using their Apple ID.

Source: Apple KB - How to reinstall macOS - If you're selling or giving away your Mac

Don't do Step 4 from that page, proceed as the new owner & set it up using your own credentials.


How to get MySQL's port on Mac through the terminal? I started MySQL with its PrefPane in System Preferences:

When I enter ps aux | grep mysql I get the following output:

ldl              33675   0.0  0.0  2432804    772 s003  S+   11:01上午   0:00.00 grep mysql
_mysql           33474   0.0  0.1  2829668   8108   ??  Ss   10:55上午   0:00.54 /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld --user=_mysql --basedir=/usr/local/mysql --datadir=/usr/local/mysql/data --plugin-dir=/usr/local/mysql/lib/plugin --log-error=/usr/local/mysql/data/mysqld.local.err --pid-file=/usr/local/mysql/data/mysqld.local.pid

But how do I know which port MySQL is using on my Mac? Entering lsof -i tcp:3306 I find nothing.

If you have turned on Apache on your Mac and also enabled PHP, you can run the phpinfo() command which will give you tons of information such as:

Based on what I've read, 3306 is the default, so if you didn't specifically change it, then it's probably that.

You can also use MySQL Workbench from Oracle. When I launch it, it shows:


Share iTunes purchase If I have purchased an album, may I share it with my husband's iPhone? I have tried the air drop feature, but he is unable to retrieve it.

Apple offers Family Sharing, which is intended for this use.

Apple Support HT201088

Start a family group

On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:
Go to Settings > iCloud.
Tap Set Up Family Sharing, then tap Get Started.

Confirm that you want to be the family organizer and that you're signed in with your personal Apple ID.
Follow the onscreen instructions.

Invite people to join your family

On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:
Go to Settings > iCloud > Family > Add Family Member.
Enter your family member's name or email address.
Follow the onscreen instructions.

Join a family group

You can accept or decline an invitation to join a family from your device:

On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, go to Settings > iCloud > Invitations.

If the invitation is sent to your email address, you can respond right from your email.
To accept an invitation, follow the onscreen instructions. Here's what you'll be asked to do when you join:
Confirm your Apple ID and password.
Choose if you want to share your content and which Apple ID you want to share from.
Choose if you want to share your location. If you agree, your location can be displayed on family members’ devices in Find My Friends and Messages, and the location of your shared devices will also appear on family members’ devices in Find My iPhone.


How to switch off "natural" sort order in Finder and enable pure alphabetical sort order? I have a set of pictures named as hex representation of UUIDs. I want to see them ordered alphabetically as strings, but regardless what I try, the app shows me it differently:

I have these settings about grouping:

and sorting:

I think I figured out the order it represents. It looks like it tries to cut the longest string of decimal digits from the beginning of the name, interprets it as a number, and orders by this number. Albeit it can be convenient in some cases, it is not desired for me.

Is it possible to switch off this feature in Finder and obtain normal alphabetical sort order?

EDIT: this question shines a light on the sorting algorithm but does not suggest how to switch it to normal string sorting.

Apple's Finder has been using "natural" sort order (where strings of digits are ordered as single characters) for file names for nearly 20 years, since OS X 10.0 There's no way to change it as far as I know. If you want the other kind of sort order, you have to use Terminal or a 3rd party app.


A Windows' Ctrl+Z equivalent for OSX On many operating systems if you want to undo something you can press Ctrl+Z. I tried this on Mac OS X and it does not work. What is the suitable equivalent?

Command + Z check Edit menu if you are unsure if the shortcut is available for a program or a scenario.

On a side note, Command works as the default shortcut key on Mac OS X where Windows' default modifier key is Ctrl

This holds for Copy, Paste, Open, etc...


How do I resize all my windows when I switch displays? Is there an app that will let me automatically resize all my open windows when I switch between working on my laptop screen and my external monitor?

I spend my time either working on an external monitor connected to my mbp or just my mbp.  When I switch from monitor to laptop, all my fullscreen (the old definition) apps have windows that are bigger than my laptop resolution.  I have to resize all of them, but then when I reconnect to the external monitor they are all smaller then I would like them.

I've tried moon, but have only been able to resize windows on a single space at a time, I typically have multiple applications in fullscreen mode (the old definition) open across multiple spaces.

There are endless ways to do this, so here are a few:

Before you unplug the external monitor open up the Displays
Preference Pane in System Preferences and click on the "Gather
Windows" button.

[or if you already unplugged]
Hold the Option key down and choose "Arrange in Front" from the
Window menu.

[or]
Use the Option key and click the (+) at the top of any
Finder window and it will resize them all automatically.

This Applescript script might also work:

tell application "Finder"
-- get desktop dimensions (dw = desktop width; dh = desktop height)
set db to bounds of window of desktop
set {dw, dh} to {item 3 of db, item 4 of db}
end tell

tell application "System Events"
repeat with proc in application processes
tell proc
repeat with win in windows
-- get window dimensions (w = width; h = height)
set {w, h} to size of win

-- get window postion (l = left of window; t = top of window)
set {l, t} to position of win

-- nh = new window height; nw = new window width
set {nh, nw} to {h, w}

-- window width is bigger than desktop size,
-- so set new window width to match the desktop
if (w > dw) then ¬
set nw to dw

-- window height is bigger than the desktop size (minus menu bar),
-- so set new window height to be desktop height - 22 pixels
if (h > dh - 22) then ¬
set nh to dh - 22

-- r = right coordinate of window; b = bottom coordinate of window
set {r, b} to {l + nw, t + nh}

-- nl = new left coordinate; nt = new top coordinate
set {nl, nt} to {l, t}

-- left coordinate is off screen, so set new left coordinate
-- to be 0 (at the left edge of the desktop)
if (l < 0) then ¬
set nl to 0

-- top coordinate is above bottom of menu bar (22 pixels tall),
-- so set new top coordinate to be 22
if (t < 22) then ¬
set nt to 22

-- right coordinate extends beyond desktop width,
-- so set new left coordinate to be desktop width - window width
if (r > dw) then ¬
set nl to dw - nw

-- bottom coordinate extends beyond desktop height,
-- so set new top coordinate to be desktop height - window height
if (b > dh) then ¬
set nt to dh - nh

-- if we have calculated a new top or left coordinate, reposition window
if (l ≠ nl or t ≠ nt) then ¬
set position of win to {nl, nt}

-- if we have calculated a new height or width, resize window
if (h ≠ nh or w ≠ nw) then ¬
set size of win to {nw, nh}
end repeat
end tell
end repeat
end tell

Of course there's also the paid alternative, which might include Stay, Divy, Arrange, etc.


How can I update MacBook Air Lion when I can't review Apple ID with El Capitan? My wife has bought a used MacBook Air with macOS 10.7.5 and needs to update to allow installation of a couple of apps.

The problem:

Cannot update macOS from App Store without reviewing Apple ID
Cannot review Apple ID without updating macOS

I've tried adding myself as a new user with Admin. privileges, but the same problem occurs.

Neither of us have any other Apple devices, and we don't use Windows.

You cannot 'inherit' anything on a new [used] Mac you bought.

You must 'nuke & pave' - wipe it & start over.
The seller ought to have done this before parting with it - because everything on there belongs to the seller, including the OS itself.

Full instructions at Apple KB - What to do before you sell or give away your Mac
If you have no contact with the original owner, you have to start from Step 6 [& hope they had the sense to do the first 5].


How to fix bootcamp boot after removing hybrid MBR I've updated bootcamp to Windows 10 which should support GPT with protective MBR without any hybrid tricks. I have 6 partitions on disk0 so hybrid MBR is also inconsistent with GPT and it's somewhat dangerous.

I've used gdisk to remove hybrid MBR but now Windows can't boot with "No bootable device ..." error on black screen. I've tried to use windows rescue disc and run bcdboot C:\Windows /s C: /f UEFI and bootrec /fixmbr (this one returns an error) but it doesn't help.

What am I missing? Should I put windows BCD to Windows or EFI partition? I use rEFInd as boot manager.

Romans-MacBook-Pro:Microsoft root# diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            120.8 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             1.3 GB     disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data System                  215.4 GB   disk0s4
   5:       Microsoft Basic Data Data                    608.0 GB   disk0s5
   6:       Microsoft Basic Data Var                     54.7 GB    disk0s6

Romans-MacBook-Pro:Microsoft root# gdisk -l /dev/disk0
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.1

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/disk0: 1954210120 sectors, 931.8 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 059ED97F-5648-C842-89C2-7E8F3FC9388F
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1954210086
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 262445 sectors (128.1 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00
   2          409640       236427711   112.5 GiB   AF00
   3       236427712       238966783   1.2 GiB     AB00  Apple
   4       239228928       659873791   200.6 GiB   0700  Windows
   5       659873792      1847439359   566.3 GiB   0700  Data
   6      1847439360      1954209791   50.9 GiB    0700  Var

Moved bootloader (EFI folder) to EFI partition and everything started to work properly


ScanSnap S1500M Time-out Not sure why, but after about 5 minutes of scanning, my ScanSnap just bails on me. I would use their documentation, etc. but nobody knows what this error code is so I wanted to seek the geniuses here and I think it likely that others must have had this problem.

When I’ve used this scanner with another computer it works fine.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software many times, but I’m not sure I’ve completely uninstalled the software because it still retains my custom profile, which I believe may be the source of the problem. Maybe that would be a great first step is to get a complete list of the files to uninstall, since there must be at least a portion of it which is manual.

Time-out occurred during communication. (0xd0020002)

I have one of these scanners and have noticed it can be sensitive to how it's connected on the USB bus. If the problem continues, try connecting it directly to a USB port on your Mac instead of through a hub (if it's not already directly connected).


pip install mysql-python throws error I am on MacOS Mojave 10.14.6 (18G103).
When I try to install mysql-python it throws an error :

$ pip install --upgrade setuptools
Requirement already up-to-date: setuptools in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages (41.5.1)
$ pip install mysql-python
Collecting mysql-python
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/a5/e9/51b544da85a36a68debe7a7091f068d802fc515a3a202652828c73453cad/MySQL-python-1.2.5.zip
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    sh: mysql_config: command not found
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
      File "/private/var/folders/90/6l6jqf191f74hg282swdz5080000gn/T/pip-install-RetBjz/mysql-python/setup.py", line 17, in <module>
        metadata, options = get_config()
      File "setup_posix.py", line 43, in get_config
        libs = mysql_config("libs_r")
      File "setup_posix.py", line 25, in mysql_config
        raise EnvironmentError("%s not found" % (mysql_config.path,))
    EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found

    ----------------------------------------
Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in /private/var/folders/90/6l6jqf191f74hg282swdz5080000gn/T/pip-install-RetBjz/mysql-python/

You can install mysqlclient or pymysql,I prefer the latter:

pip install pymysql