WifiDiagnostics files filling up drive even with logging disabled Since upgrading to OS X Catalina, I started getting disk full notifications. After some looking, I discovered the cause is ~400 MB files in /private/var/tmp like this:

WiFiDiagnostics_2019-10-23_12.58.55.713_Mac OS X_MacBookPro15,4_19A602.tgz

Option-clicking on the wifi icon in the menu bar shows "Enable Wi-Fi Logging" (indicating it's disabled; if it's enabled, it shows "Disable…").

My findings so far:

It seems to happen more frequently on certain wifi networks than others.
It seems to happen more when Wireguard is running, and more when Wireguard is in use for a VPN. (It still happens with Wireguard quit, but not as much, it seems.)
At one point, it was creating a new file (~400mb) every 5 minutes.
I've tried enabling and disabling wifi logging, without luck.

I haven't been able to find anything on google. How do I stop the auto-generation of diagnostic logs?

Update: I've updated to 10.15.1, and also did an OS reinstall (not full disk wipe), and am still getting the log files appearing.

Update 2, Resolution? Short version: Somehow the command+option+control+shift+w key combo is triggering this.

Longer version: I did a full disk wipe and reinstall, then kept an eye on when this issue reappeared and installed my normal apps slowly. This file reappeared once I installed Karabiner to make my caps-lock key map to command+control+option+shift, which I use with Alfred App to make application keyboard shortcuts.

One of the shortcuts I made was command+control+option+shift+w to open iTerm. I'd noticed before that hitting this key combination made the screen flash white, but I couldn't find any information (at all, anywhere) nor any existing keyboard shortcuts indicating what that key combination would do. But sure enough, 5 minutes later, I had the log file show up.

My belief at this point is that that particular keyboard shortcut, command+option+control+shift+w, triggers something in OS X (possibly Catalina only; I don't have an older OS to test against) that starts the wifi logging.

I'm super interested to know how/why/where shift+control+option+command+w is actually being mapped. I've tried figuring out the com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist file but without luck. I also tried that key combo on another Catalina install and it doesn't seem to do the same thing, so perhaps there's another app I have installed that configured that keyboard shortcut. But at this point I don't have the time to re-wipe the computer and set it up again to track it down.

(Answering my own question, since others seem to be having this issue as well.)

The "hyper+w" (command+option+control+shift+w) key combo is triggering the the wifi logging. Note that "hyper+>" also seems to trigger this. I haven't been able to figure out why it's happening, but that's the culprit.

I've used Karabiner Elements to disable those keyboard shortcuts entirely, to prevent accidentally triggering this wifi logging. Here's the relevant section from the karabiner.json file to make those key combos trigger an escape instead of the wifi logging. To add these rules, go to the "Misc" tab, and do the export/import "Open config folder", then edit the karabiner.json to include the following two rules.

"rules": [
    {
        "description": "Disabling command+control+option+shift+w. This triggers wifi logging.",
        "manipulators": [
            {
                "from": {
                    "key_code": "w",
                    "modifiers": {
                        "mandatory": [
                            "command",
                            "control",
                            "option",
                            "shift"
                        ]
                    }
                },
                "to": [
                    {
                        "key_code": "escape"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "basic"
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "description": "Disabling command+control+option+shift+>. This triggers wifi logging also.",
        "manipulators": [
            {
                "from": {
                    "key_code": ">",
                    "modifiers": {
                        "mandatory": [
                            "command",
                            "control",
                            "option",
                            "shift"
                        ]
                    }
                },
                "to": [
                    {
                        "key_code": "escape"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "basic"
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "description": "Change caps_lock key to command+control+option+shift. (Post escape key when pressed alone)",
        "manipulators": [
            {
                "from": {
                    "key_code": "caps_lock",
                    "modifiers": {
                        "optional": [
                            "any"
                        ]
                    }
                },
                "to": [
                    {
                        "key_code": "left_shift",
                        "modifiers": [
                            "left_command",
                            "left_control",
                            "left_option"
                        ]
                    }
                ],
                "to_if_alone": [
                    {
                        "key_code": "escape"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "basic"
            }
        ]
    }
]


Vim frozen and unresponsive on startup I am using zsh on macOS. When I type vim, it opens, but it is completely frozen:

Anything I press on the keyboard does not display or change the window. In order to exit, I have to terminate the terminal session.
I did recently uninstall Homebrew, so it could be that this corrupted the program.
Does anyone know how this can be fixed? Is there a way to reinstall or update the system Vim (preferably, without Homebrew – it causes more problems than it solves).

When vim starts, it reads these two files from your home folder:

.vimrc, a configuration file that contains initialization commands
.viminfo, a history file that contains, among others, string and pattern search information

vim may become unresponsive if any of these two files are very large or contain corrupt entries.
To prevent vim from reading them, either:

Rename them:
 cd ~
 mv .vimrc .vimrc.bak
 mv .viminfo .viminfo.bak

where ~ is shorthand for your home folder.
(Ignore any No such file or directory errors, it just means the file doesn't exist.)

and start vim as usual:
 vim

or, alternatively, start vim as follows:
vim -u NONE -i NONE

where the -u NONE option tells vim not to read ~/.vimrc and -i NONE achieves the same result for ~/.viminfo.
If vim starts normally, you can rename back one file at a time to find the culprit and delete it.
If you want to find out more about the differences between .vimrc and .viminfo, see this answer. For information on the use of ~, see the Bash or Zsh manual.


Can I set the iPhone to vibrate except for one contact? iPhone 5s, iOS 9

I currently leave my phone almost exclusively on silent mode using the switch on the side so that it vibrates on notifications. But I want it to ring when one particular person calls me. Is this possible?

I've seen a similar workaround using the do not disturb function, but I don't think that solves my issue. I want it to vibrate on all notifications, texts, and calls, except ring when one particular person calls.

Buy a 'silence' ringtone from the iTunes Store. Make this your default tone, except for that one person.


Apple ID Password email address is inccorrect but store email address IS correct after restoring iPhone 4S So weird thing happened last night.  I was updating the iOS to my iPhone 4S when the cord accidentally got jerked out of the phone.  I had to reset the phone and restore from back-up.  Now when I try to update the apps the window pops up asking for my password but weird thing.....the email address that it show is NOT my email address.  When I go into my phone setting AND the Apple Store it shows my Apple ID email correct.  Any suggestions?

If an app was installed by someone else (say, a friend or family member) using their Apple ID, you will be required to type in that Apple ID's password to reauthorize the app to your device now that it has been wiped & restored.

If it is a free app it is asking you to authorize, you can also remove the app and re-download through the App Store using your own Apple ID account.


.DS_Store creation disabled on network shares, but I want them enabled for a specific share I use my Mac in a corporate Windows environment all the time, and have it set so that it doesn't drop .DS_Store turds all over the network.  I used the following well-known terminal command to disable it:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

However, I also have a server at home as well as a Time Capsule, and I would like the .DS_Store file created on those shares.

Is there any way to make an exception to the rule?

I'm running Mavericks BTW.

I don't think you can have it both ways.

I can imagine a bit of a work around that involves the Mac knowing what network it is on, and then changing the defaults write command to match the network.
Something like http://www.controlplaneapp.com/about/ would help you get that done.

(not the simplest solution I'll admit)


Disabling /usr/bin/svn to use brew installed svn I use Lion, and the svn /usr/bin/svn is 1.6 version. As I need to use subversion 1.7, I installed svn from brew to be installed in /usr/local/bin/svn.

How can I disable the svn* files so that I can use svn from brew?

There is a better and safer way to specify which version of an executable you want your computer to use without having to modify the executables that came pre-installed on your Mac. It's generally not recommended to alter your default system tools in any way.

You can take advantage of the PATH environment variable, which allows you to list several directories that you want your Mac to search in when looking for executables.

In order to use the latest version of svn, or any other tool you installed  in /usr/local/bin with Homebrew (or MacPorts, manually, etc), you want to tell your Mac to first look in /usr/local/bin before it looks in the default /usr/bin. You do that by defining the PATH in your .bash_profile, which is a file that gets loaded automatically every time you open a new Terminal window.

You can write the PATH to your .bash_profile by running this one-liner from the Terminal:

echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:~/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

This command takes everything between the single quotes (echo) and adds it (>>) to a file called .bash_profile in your user’s root (or home) directory (~/).

To have these changes take effect, you can either quit and relaunch Terminal, or run this command:

source ~/.bash_profile

If you want to do it all manually, open your .bash_profile with your favorite editor, then add this line to it:

PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:~/bin:$PATH"

and save it. Then quit and relaunch Terminal.


Is it possible to connect a 15" MacBook Pro screen to a 13" MacBook Air? I’m trying to fit late 2008 model 15 inch MacBook Pro screen to a 13 inch MacBook Air from 2013. Is this possible? Do you have experience with the display's sockets and connectors ?

This is a hobby project; I don’t mind if it costs more than a new MacBook Pro. I just wanna see a 15 inch MacBook Air! I have few other MacBook Pro 15 inch machines to kill.

The target resolution is 1400x900. I read that Retina display won’t work here as graphic card may not be giving the high resolution.

I am looking for guides, resources, or insights into how to achieve this.

No.  It is not possible.  Similar to this question previously asked

Replace MacBook Pro screen with Screen from old MacBook

The 2008 MacBook Pro uses a 30pin LVDS connector while the newer one uses the 40pin connector.


Big Sur Mail all archives folder In Big Sur the mail client doesn't show a folder combining archives of all accounts. I'd like to have such a folder and tried creating a smart mailbox for this purpose as I'd successfully done to create an All Junk folder.
Here's the smart mailbox configuration that I thought would work:

However, it throws this error:

Any tips on how I can access an archive across accounts?

With the Mailboxes column showing click the plus sign to the right of the header "Favourites", which appears when hovering the pointer over it.

Then, in the resulting window, select "All Archive" as the Mailbox to add:


How to reduce MacBook Air 2013 1.7GHz CPU power consumption? I'm seeking a way to reduce MacBook Air 2013 1.7GHz CPU power consumption -- or any MacBook for that matter -- to save battery life.  I want to vary the CPU power consumption variably, so that I can get "full speed" when I want and "better/best power savings" at other times.

Something akin to Linux's cpuspeed command (to reduce CPU clock frequency) would be helpful, but could be anything.  Note I'm seeking CPU-only power-consumption tips.  Please do not clutter answers with tips for non-CPU things like display brightness, avoiding Adobe Flash, employing different web browsers, etc.

I think the upcoming Mavericks OS update is supposed to help somewhat. http://www.apple.com/osx/preview/advanced-technologies.html


Reinstalling Lion on a 3rd party SSD I've purchased an SSD drive INTEL SSDSA2CW120G3 and had a guy in Apple Reseller store clone the original HDD to the SSD.

The problem is, that the original HDD was almost dead and there were some problems while cloning. They also cloned some kind of hidden/encrypted partition, which is required for Lion.

They told me that I should use my Snow Leopard install DVD to format the main data partition and then reinstall Snow Leopard and upgrade to Lion from App Store.

They also said something about having problems with cloning the hidden partition.

Is there any safe way that I can check, if I'm going to be able to install Snow Leopard and then safely upgrade to Lion after I format the SSD? Or even better, is there any way to install Lion directly?

edit: looking at the restore partition, it looks like it's empty

Use this - it runs you through how to use it. You just need to download the app from the app store and follow the instructions.


Mac is really slow and I can't get Apps to open When I try to open an App it does nothing. I go online and it is extremely slow. I have tried some of the idea's on here but, nothing has helped. I also tried to download a Clean up program. It isn't compatible for my Mac. I have a OS X 10.6.8

Open Activity Monitor and see if something is using an excessive amount of CPU.

Open disk utility and mark your volume.
Check how much Space is available on your drive.
Verify hdd and volume.


Is git pre-installed on macOS Sierra? I am very new to macOS, knowing Ubuntu a little bit, and am wondering whether git is pre-installed on macOS or not. Typing

which -a git

results in

git is /usr/bin/git

But when I init a test-repo and checkout a myBranch, the command

git branch

results in a empty line. So is there anything I do forget? I installed Homebrew before checking for git, so maybe this causes some interdependencies?

macOS does come with a binary at /usr/bin/git, however by default it's a wrapper around the command line tools installer. Running the command will print the following and return immediately.
note: install requested for command line developer tools

A prompt will ask the user to install the command line tools, with a button that downloads and installs the toolset.

Once installed, /usr/bin/git will be a proper version of Git compiled by Apple (noted by the ‘Apple Git’).
$ /usr/bin/git --version
git version 2.24.3 (Apple Git-128)

If Git is installed using Homebrew, it will be at /usr/local/bin/git by default on Intel, at /opt/homebrew/bin/git on ARM.


How to display photos during iOS Shortcuts script I am trying to build a workflow in iOS Shortcuts app that helps me sift through and clean up my iOS photos. The idea is to randomly select 20 or so non-favourite photos from iOS Photos app (I have that part working) and pass the result into a loop which - for every photo - displays the photo and then brings up a menu that asks me to either do nothing or sort the current photo into one of two albums (I have the menu and sorting part working, too). I can’t seem to find an action in the Shortcuts app that displays a photo object inside a workflow, though.

Can anyone help?

Quick Look will preview passed photos in a modal popup, with Done and Share button.


How do I reassign numbering of Displays when you have more than 2 monitors connected to mac mini I have three displays connected to my mac mini. (I have used Arrangement to make sure they are connected correctly left to right, so mouse movement works correctly.) The leftmost is the primary with the dock. However, the middle display is call "Display 3" and the rigtmost is "Display 2". Even if I swap the cables, it still stays the same, so OSX must remember the displayid. This is a problem because Desktop numbering (in Spaces) are out of sequence rigt to left across the displays. It is also confusing that when you assign an app to a display, you have to remember that 3 is the middle display. I know I could just physically swap display 2 and 3, but can this be solved through macOS Display settings? :-)

Any suggestion on how one can reassign the numbering of the displays?

This is a very annoying problem and I have not found any official documentation on how to control the numbering of the Desktop on each monitor. However, through a lot of trial and error, I've discovered these rules that will help you order the Desktop numbers.
First, a few key points on how the numbering behaves

Your 'Home Screen' (the display with the Dock) will always have the lowest number (e.g. Desktop 1, Desktop 2 if it has 2 desktops)
When you drag the Dock (in Displays >> Arrangement) from one display to another, it will swap the numbering between the two monitors that you dragged it to and from. For example if you have 3 monitors that is setup as follow

Monitor A (Desktop 1, Desktop 2) ==DOCK LOCATION==
Monitor B (Desktop 3, Desktop 4)
Monitor C (Desktop 5, Desktop 6)

If you drag the DOCK from Monitor A to B, you'll end up with the following:

Monitor A (Desktop 3, Desktop 4)
Monitor B (Desktop 1, Desktop 2) ==DOCK LOCATION==
Monitor C (Desktop 5, Desktop 6)

Therefore, by planning the sequence of DOCK position swaps, you can reach the final ordering that you desire.
The ordering may get messed up again if you disconnect the monitors or return from sleep or restart. I have no idea how to 'save' the settings. But at least this will help you reconfigure quickly.


What's the legal status of my Snow Leopard once I've upgraded to Mountain Lion? I've upgraded Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion using the App Store. What's the legal status of my Snow Leopard copy?

Is it still "bound" to that install, i.e. the Mountain Lion only legally counts as an "upgrade" and I'm required to keep the original one, or
it is now "free", such as if I want to use it to install it elsewhere, I can (legally) do it (i.e. I would have one system running 10.6 and another one running 10.8)

(hint: I'm not talking about dual boot)

(hint: I'm not talking about if it is feasable, only if it is legal)

Yes, for the first question. Whenever you sell your Mac, you're expected to sell it with the OS it came with, which in this case is Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Your upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion purchased from the Mac App Store belongs to you for your use and cannot be transferred to another person (on the other hand, if you bought a Mac with OS X Mountain Lion preinstalled, you're allowed to do a one time transfer to another person).
From section 3. Transfer in the SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR OS X MOUNTAIN LION (emphasis mine):

A. If you obtained the Apple Software preinstalled on Apple-branded hardware, you may make a one-time permanent transfer of all of your license rights to the Apple Software (in its original form as provided by Apple) to another party, provided that: (i) the Apple Software is transferred together with your Apple-branded hardware; (ii) the transfer must include all of the Apple Software, including all its component parts, printed materials and this License; (iii) you do not retain any copies of the Apple Software, full or partial, including copies stored on a computer or other storage device; and (iv) the party receiving the Apple Software accepts the terms and conditions of this License. For purposes of this License, if Apple provides an update (e.g., version 10.8 to 10.8.1) to the Apple Software, the update is considered part of the Apple Software and may not be transferred separately from the pre-update version of the Apple Software.
B. If you obtained your license to the Apple Software from the Mac App Store, it is not transferable. If you sell your Apple-branded hardware to a third party, you must remove the Apple Software from the Apple-branded hardware before doing so, and you may restore your system to the version of the Apple operating system software that originally came with your Apple hardware (the “Original Apple OS”) and permanently transfer the Original Apple OS together with your Apple hardware, provided that: (i) the transfer must include all of the Original Apple OS, including all its component parts, printed materials and its license; (ii) you do not retain any copies of the Original Apple OS, full or partial, including copies stored on a computer or other storage device; and (iii) the party receiving the Original Apple OS reads and agrees to accept the terms and conditions of the Original Apple OS license.

For the second question, yes, you can install Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on one other Mac that you have. Look at the SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR MAC OS X, where section 2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions states (emphasis mine):

Single Use License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, unless you have purchased a Family Pack or Upgrade license for the Apple Software, you are granted a limited non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one computer at a time, and you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at the same time.

You can do a one time permanent transfer of the Mac OS X Snow Leopard license. Section 3. Transfer in the agreement states (emphasis mine):

You may not rent, lease, lend, sell, redistribute or sublicense the Apple Software.
Subject to the restrictions set forth below, you may, however, make a one-time permanent transfer of all of your license rights to the Apple Software (in its original form as provided by Apple) to another party, provided that: (a) the transfer must include all of the Apple Software, including all its component parts (excluding Apple Boot ROM code and firmware), original media, printed materials and this License; (b) you do not retain any copies of the Apple Software, full or partial, including copies stored on a computer or other storage device; and (c) the party receiving the Apple Software reads and agrees to accept the terms and conditions of this License. You may not rent, lease, lend, redistribute, sublicense or transfer any Apple Software that has been modified or replaced under Section 2H above. All components of the Apple Software are provided as part of a bundle and may not be separated from the bundle and distributed as standalone applications. Apple Software provided with a particular Apple-branded hardware product may not run on other models of Apple-branded hardware.


Does installing Wireshark via homebrew provide a graphical interface? I installed wireshark using homebrew with the command brew install wireshark. Everything seems to install fine and I can use dumpcap to capture packets but now I want to view them. Using a text editor like vi doesn't format some of the output very well due to an abundance of unreadable characters.

It looks like there should be a Wireshark.app to view the trace files with, however, I do not see how to start it.

Any ideas?

Type brew options wireshark to show the options provided with wireshark.

To install Wireshark with the UI :

brew install wireshark --with-qt

If you've already installed, you can use the reinstall command instead. This should only download the required qt dependencies.

brew reinstall wireshark --with-qt


How do I disable the Apple ID sign in when logging into my Mac? Whenever I restart my Mac, I'm first required to sign in with my Apple ID and after that the Mac (local) account and password. It's sort of a two-step process and I don't remember where I may have accidentally configured this setting, which is really annoying right now.

How do I turn off the Apple ID sign in, so I'm only required to log into to my MacBook using my local user account?

You could try this to disassociate your Apple ID password from login:

To Stop Using an iCloud Password to Login to a Mac:

Go to the  Menu and choose System Preferences (alternatively use LaunchPad or Spotlight to search for System Preferences
Choose Users & Groups and select the primary Mac login that you want to disassociate the iCloud password and for which you wish to use a unique separate password
Click the Change Password... button next to the user name
At the prompt "Do you want to change your iCloud password, or stop using your iCloud password to unlock this Mac and create a separate password?" – choose "Use Separate Password…"
Set and confirm the new password and close out of System Preferences when finished

Now when the user is logging into macOS, a separate account password will be used rather than the iCloud and Apple ID account password. This setting is specific to individual user accounts.
Source and further reading: OSX Daily


While my MacBook sleeps, the network drops off? I have just moved over to a Macbook Pro from my old Macbook. Thanks to the Migration Assistant, it was an easy task, but I am now having an annoying issue: I have both computers on with all the same settings and everything identical. The wifi settings, the Energy Saving settings - everything.

Now, when the computer goes to 'Sleep', the behavior is different is between the two computers. I have Skype on. If I'm away for about an 1 hour, Skype will go offline. As a result if someone were to Skype me, the old Macbook will react - my Skype will ring when they call me and obviously they see me as online (despite the screen being off and the computer in sleep mode).

However, my new Macbook Pro will not ring. The party that wants to reach me will think I'm offline because the network connection gets disabled somehow. On my old Macbook, I just need to touch the trackpad and the screen comes on, but on my new Macbook pro I need to press a key (some websites state that this is the new thing on new version such as Lion and Mountain Lion), and the computer will quickly come on, pick up the wifi and only then all e-mails and Skype lines/calls will filter through and I will reappear as online.

How can I stay online even when my computer goes to sleep?

There are a couple of things that could be causing this:

Make sure "Wake for network access" is checked in Energy Saver.  This should work if Skype is sending data over Bonjour.
Your prior computer may only be turning off the display instead of sleeping the computer entirely.  In the Energy Saver control panel, try setting the computer sleep time to Never.  You can retain your display sleep time.

My understanding is that #2 is likely the solution as I don't believe the type of traffic on which Skype relies will trigger the Wake-On-LAN feature.


Sending multiple audio streams to different places simultaneously Using only built-in macOS functionality, or possibly a Homebrew package, is there any way I can send audio from one music program (eg. iTunes) to a Bluetooth speaker, whilst simultaneously sending the audio from another music program (eg. Spotify) to the local audio device (ie. headphones or a USB-connected sound card)?

Some audio apps have a "Output Audio Device" setting, but neither iTunes nor Spotify has this.

Both a specific solution for the specific case above, and a general approach to sending n number of audio streams to n number of different audio devices (including Bluetooth) is interesting.

You can send one or more audio inputs to one or more outputs by creating a new aggregate device in the Audio Midi Setup app in your Utilities folder. This Apple Support document explains the steps.

Other options include Soundflower, the open source virtual audio output device which was maintained by Rogue Amoeba for a while, or Loopback, which is Rogue Amoeba's current (non-free) solution.


Avoid inadvertent "Shut Down" of Mac For a Mac mini or such acting as a server in a server room or colo, accidentally choosing the Apple > Shut Down… menu item is a major problem. Without physical access, you cannot start the Mac up again.

  Is there a way to make it more difficult to inadvertently shut down a Mac?

One workaround is to set System Preferences > Energy Saver > Schedule (button) > Start up or wake (checkbox) to boot the computer, say 2:00 AM if you often do admin work at midnight. But I'm looking ways to avoid the shut down problem in the first place.

You could remove Shut Down… from the menu entirely. This Ask Different question looks like it has instructions on how to do that. Good luck!


Why does updating Garageband 6.0.5 to 10 cost money? I have Garageband 6.0.5. Why does updating to Garageband 10 (next version, don't get fooled by numbers) cost money? I thought updates were free!

When you bought garageband 6, you cannot update to the new version because it was released as a new program, not an update.


Log into the desktop remotely and automatically I have an OSX machine I'm trying to automatically run applications on remotely via SSH.  Everything works great, as long as the user is already logged into the computer.  If I log out, or reboot the computer, my application fails until I log in again.

Is there any way to trigger a desktop login over SSH?  I'm looking to avoid needing to manually intervene via Remote Desktop and the like.  In case it matters, I'm running Mavericks presently, but will be upgrading to Yosemite soon.

I could, in theory, configure it to login automatically at boot, but I'd prefer a scripted solution I can run, assuming such a thing is possible.

I also found this article from 2005 suggesting this is possible with osascript, but it fails on Mavericks:

$ osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to keystroke "USERNAME"'
_RegisterApplication(), FAILED TO establish the default connection to the WindowServer, _CGSDefaultConnection() is NULL.
36:55: execution error: An error of type -10810 has occurred. (-10810)

For now, I'm going to just configure the computer to login automatically at boot.  Instructions for Mountain Lion and Yosemite.

If anyone knows how to configure this via the Terminal, rather than System Preferences, I'd prefer that solution.


Logic Pro disappears after download I recently got a new (old) MacBook Air, to help record on the road, and whenever I try to download Logic Pro X, it finishes the download (~800mb from IIRC) but then disappears from the Launchpad. I managed to successfully download and install Final Cut and MainStage with no problems, but Logic just won't stay there. I've got about 100GB of free space and I've tried searching through Finder for the app but to no avail.

I had the same problem.

The reason it's happening is that Apple is having a problem with their Australian download server. You can get around it by using a VPN to connect to somewhere in America, and then downloading Logic via the App Store as usual.

Alternatively, if you have Logic on another computer, you can copy it from the Applications folder - just drag and drop onto a USB thumb drive. Then drag it from the thumb drive onto the Applications folder of your new computer.


How do I change the owner name on my MacBook Pro? When I use Terminal my computer says

Last login: Thu Jun  7 22:00:00 on ttys000
John-Does-MacBook-Pro:~ John$

That was the default account name on the computer when I bought it. I have been using it for 2 weeks now and I am pretty much set with the OS and I really don't want to do a reinstall. I deleted the John Doe account but that did nothing.

How do I change my Terminal so it doesn't display that any more?

In System Preferences, go to Sharing and change the name at the top of the window.


I can no longer boot into macOS after resizing my bootcamp partition in EaseUS I tried to enlarge the bootcamp windows 10 partition by 17gb. I went to disk utility on my mac, resized the mac's partition to smaller leaving 17-18gb of free space, then booted up the windows in bootcamp mode, started easyus partition master. I saw the 17-18gb partition (the only one of that size), wiped it and tried to merge it with the windows partition. EasyUs informed me that the system needs to restart to make these changes. The restart failed 2 times (windows crashed) and finally booted successfully the third time. The partition hasn't change the size. I tried to boot into my macOS to see what is the current structure but it doesn't appear among the bootable Operating Systems after restarting and hiting alt.

My question is similar to this one but I don't seem to have a HFS recovery volume visible. I tried to fix it with gdisk but since I can't find the Recovery HD volume I can't set its GUID nor its properties.

The partitions in EasyUS- the largest one is the MacOS 353,9 gb:

What do I need to do in order to get my beloved macOS back? I have a backup but it's not that recent and I'd love to get this back. From what I understand I will have to change GUID types and attribute value but on what partitions?

I suppose the partition of 492 mb might be the missing Mac recovery partition but is surprisingly  formatted in NTFS...

I attach below the details of macOS 353gb partition. There is an info - there's no volume associated with this partition - seems to be a problem.

In this case, the APFS partition type had been changed by EaseUS utility. That is why only Windows showed up on startup. I used gdisk to repair this and everything is on place, with no harm to the data.

How I repaired this?

I booted to Windows on bootcamp, downloaded gdisk for windows, opened cmd(terminal) as the administrator, opened the directory of downloaded gdisk and then the following list of commands inside of this program (each confirmed with enter key):

gdisk64 \\.\PhysicalDrive0 ->this opens the gdisk program
t
2 -> that is the number of your MacOS partition, in my case it is 2
af0a -> hex code for the GUID APFS format
w -> write
y -> confirm

I hope I was able to help someone else by posting this answer.


Diagnosis or Hardware Test on a mid 2009 Macbook Pro with MacOS 10.9.2 I would like to test hardware on a mac book pro model from 2009 with Mac Os X 10.9.2 installed. Since it is running unreliably I would like to perform a diagnosis/hardware test.

What is easy to find on the internet is, that on pre 2013 models, the apple hardware test was to be run, on models after that, the apple diagnosis, see

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5781?viewlocale=en_US
and http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14291

Now I wondered what to do with a macbook that has had its OS version updated (10.9.2 Maverick).

I have plainly now  just tried starting the laptop while keeping D pressed multiple times and I never ended up in a AHT or diagnosis mode.

The Apple Hardware Test is included in the installation DVD. Insert it, hold D and boot from it.

If you don't have the installation DVD at hand, have a look at https://github.com/upekkha/AppleHardwareTest


Is phone call history available on OS X? For example, we know messages are saved in ~/Library/Messages/chat.db however where are calls saved? Is there a folder or file?

I found my history at:

~/Library/Application Support/CallHistoryDB/CallHistory.storedata


Can I capture photos in Raw mode on iPhone 6 without have to pay for a 3rd party app? I am looking for a solution (preferably free of cost) to capture photos in RAW mode on my iPhone 6. The solution/tool should be able to capture RAW mode image before camera converts to JPEG/PNG.

I am also willing to Jailbreak the device if required.

The built-in camera app in iOS doesn't support capturing RAW photos. You'll have to rely on a 3rd party app.

Since you are not looking for a paid app, you can download VSCO a free app that supports capturing photos in RAW mode.

OTOH, on the paid front, Halide Camera is a highly regarded app by photography enthusiasts and power users alike.

Note: No affiliation whatsoever. The answer is based on personal experience and ratings on the App Store.


Is the first boot after a full system restore from TimeMachine supposed to take a long time? I have had the hard drive in my iMac replaced and now I'm trying to restore it from my TimeMachine back up. I thought the TimeMachine back up was corrupt but maybe I'm just not patient enough, or I'm misunderstanding the restore process.

I'm able to restore successfully, but on reboot the machine shows me the white screen with the Apple logo and the spinner. I can hear some occasional sounds from the hard drive in the machine.  The occasional hard drive sounds make me wonder if it's doing and fsck or similar operation on the drive before the system boots.

It's been at this screen for a good hour now.

I have not heard a chime (and have been in front of the machine working the entire time).

Is this just what happens after a TimeMachine restore or should it have booted at a near-normal speed?

Sounds like you have a problem.  Have a look at this apple support document on what to do if this happens.


Apple ID for child younger than 13 and parent with no Apple device I bought a brand new iPad for my child that's younger than 13.  During setup iPad wants to create an Apple ID.  I seem to have have two options:

Create one for myself and just hand over the iPad to my child to use
Purchase another Apple device, and create my Apple ID on there.
Then create a child's Apple ID linked to mine for use on iPad.   Continue setup on iPad and use child's Apple ID

I really, really don't want to do option 2) in the next year or two. Is there another way?  Brainstorming here: I have root access to apple hardware at work including apple IDs, but those devices don't belong to me... will that help somehow to bootstrap me?  Emulators?  Virtualization? Hackintosh?  I'm guessing not, but had to ask.

Now, back to option 1) there are several sub options here:

1a) Use my First name, Last name and my birthday and just live with the fact that when my child is interacting with others it's under my name.   Am I understanding this right?  Maybe this name and age will not always show up?  Maybe it can be overwritten by display names and other settings?  What are the limits and flexibilities here?  For example, I want that when my child is using iMessage, Facetime etc it shows up with child's name, not mine.

1b) Use child's First name, Last name and fake birthday of 13+.  What are the negative consequences of this approach?

1c) Use child's First name, Last name and fake birthday of 18+
What are the negative consequences of this approach?

Is there option 3) that I haven't considered?  ... For example, one thing that came to mind is that I could do option 1) and then create child's account from the iPad, signout of apple ID and then re-sign in with the child account.  Seems like it would work, but has anyone tried it? What could go wrong with that approach?

My biggest concern is that these days it seems like apple ID is used as a proof of ownership (more than having the actual device in my hands) and by messing with birth dates and such it will create some hassle later on in the device's life cycle: device lost, password resets, sale, etc etc

Also, apple ID seems to be connected to device's serial number.  If I have multiple accounts linked to single serial number like option 3) is that going to create a problem?

Note that I do not plan to enter my credit card in any scenario, so I'm not worried about child making unauthorized charges.   If I do, it will be very rarely ... maybe once per year (and then I would remove the credit card info again)

I have a feeling that there is no "best way" and I will have to choose between different trade-offs.   What are those trade-offs to be aware of?   What would you do if you were me?

Thank you

You will have the least headaches to bribe (or make time) to wipe the device - and set yourself up as the Family Owner using your own Apple ID.

To start, just use parental controls and have the child come to you for authorization. Once you have gotten a few purchases in, maybe with a $25 gift card - then consider if you can approve purchases from an inexpensive used iPad with your credentials or via email from your device of choice and then put your child’s account in as a managed / family / child account.

You can set up your family at https://appleid.apple.com once you register yourself first on the device. Put in your charge card, address, and save your security questions - make sure your cellular and recovery email are safe and operational if you go two factor auth.

You asked about 5 great questions in the original post, so hopefully this is enough to get you started. Take the time to set up your account, then make a family and create the child accounts. You will be super glad you spent the time to use the managed route.


Is it possible for a broken iSight cable to prevent a 2009 Macbook Pro from booting? OK I took a 2009 MBP to the Apple Store/Genius to get looked at as basically it was only getting to the white screen with apple logo. I was pretty sure the hard drive had died, so I left the MBP with the Apple Store for day. When I returned I was told I needed a new hard drive which I expected and also a new Display assembly part 661-5040 because my isight cable was broken or almost broken and it would stop the MBP from starting up correctly when a new drive was installed into the machine.

I basically asked surely a new cable can be installed, but was told a new display assembly had to be installed which i thought was strange and very pricey at £355.
Along with a new hard drive, the Apple store wanted me to pay £598.80 in total to get my MBP fixed.

I basically just wanted to know, if anyone had heard of the an isight broken or wore cable causing a MBP not to startup?

I've since booted up my MBP with an external drive and the isight camera is working fine along with the display. I've ordered and new hard drive myself to install as £120 for a 500gb drive i thought was too pricey from Apple.

Anyone else been misdiagnosed by there Apple Store???

Any information would be helpful to me.

Unsure about a 2009 MBP, but I had a 2010 MBP that booted fine even when the iSight cable was not connected to the motherboard (the motherboard was new and was being tested before all cables are connected).


How to import photos/videos from iPhone 7 on Windows when moving fails with "A Device attached to the system is not functioning"? When I try to move photos off my iPhone 7 on Windows 10 it suddenly stops saying "Error Moving File or Folder: A Device attached to the system is not functioning."

The error occurs on only some specific pictures or videos.

How can I get these photos/videos off my phone? I want really to keep them.

This is what I have tried:

I have connected the phone via USB/lightning cable.
I have tried using various different cables as well as different USB ports.
I have tried powering the phone off and on again.
I have tried hard reseting the phone by holding in the volume and power buttons.

The photos and videos work just fine if I view them on the phone itself.
I have tried sending the videos and images to myself using Signal. Then importing them on Signal on the PC.
However, Signal seems to compress the files (lossy) so this is not really a viable option.

I would like to avoid uploading them to Google Drive or similar and then importing them from there because I do not want to share my photos, etc. with Google or any other cloud provider.

I have captured a video of what happens here:

One more thing to add: I bought a completely new original Apple ligning-to-USB cable just to make sure it was not the cable.

On your iOS device,

Go to Settings > Photos and scroll down,

Find the “Transfer to Mac or PC” section.

And select “Keep Originals”.

It will resolve your current issue.


Can I swap an Apple SSD from one laptop to another? I have a liquid spill on my previous MacBook Pro 2014 Retina 15ʺ MGXC2LL/A.
The logic board is dead and fixing it does not make any sense. But the SSD has all data saved and a technician told that it's fine and safe.

If I purchase another MacBook Pro 2014 MGXC2LL/A with same SSD, CPU etc, can I just switch the SSD card? I want to get my profile, apps and all data.
Or is it too dangerous and it can wipe all the data? I heard that every piece of hardware have their own serial number and I can't just switch them between laptops.

I'm pretty sure it will work by just swapping the SSD. But remember a few things:

You will void the warranty by opening up the laptop
You might break the laptop if you are not experienced in opening it up.

I would just recommend a USB SSD drive enclosure like this one (definitely not the best one but it works). Then transfer all the datas from the old SSD to the new one. Plus you can use the old SSD as an external storage.


New Terminal At Folder service in El Capitan doesn't use my Terminal profile settings I have my Terminal preferences set to use the "Pro" profile. When I launch a Terminal session from the dock, it uses the "Pro" profile (black background). However when I launch a Terminal session from "Services -> New Terminal at Folder" in Finder, it uses the "Basic" profile (white background). How can I set it to always use the "Pro" profile?

After launching Terminal.app the active profile of the shell  window is determined by the settings chosen in: Preferences > General > On startup open...

The profile of the next Terminal window opened or the one launched by Services -> New Terminal at Folder uses a default profile which can be configured here: Preferences > Profiles > Text: choose a profile in the left pane and hit the default button at the bottom.


Games no longer appear to be using Retina graphics I just opened up Angry Birds Seasons today and the graphics looked blurrier than usual. I don't know how reliable a screenshot is but here is one I took and you can see it looks blurry. (Also, the image came out at 800x534 pixels, but apparently the Retina display is 960×640.)

I recently upgraded from an iPhone 3G to the 4S and transferred all my settings directly, so I wondered if the games were perhaps still trying to use the non-Retina display. However, I hadn't noticed any problems with the games until today, and another game I've downloaded since the upgrade also doesn't look quite right today.

What could be the problem here?

It seems the Angry Birds Seasons you're trying to play, doesn't have retina support. If you take a look at the customer reviews, you'll see some people complaining about the lack of retina support.

And if you're used to an iPhone 3G screen and make the switch to the gorgeous retina display, you'll see a huge difference. But so far, no retina support for Angry Birds Seasons.

UPDATE:
It looks like Rovio is adding Retina support  to his latest creation (Space), so I'm guessing it won't be too long when the others games will support the Retina display too.

(Or maybe the opposite, they don't add Retina support in order to convince the users to buy the latest Rovio products...)


2017 MBP screen flashes green or yellow when waking from sleep Ive got a 2017 MBP 15". I have File Vault enabled.

When its been sleeping and I wake it, the screen flashes either bright green or yellow for about a second before going to the login screen. Is this something to be concerned about? The machine is still under warranty, but i dont want to take it to the Apple store unnecessarily.

Ive noticed this only happens after waking the machine from a deep sleep, if i close the lid and re-open it after about 20 mins it does not happen.

Im running OSX 10.13.6

What version of macOS are you using? High Sierra + Metal did cause some issues. There is a Reddit thread about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/73nc9h/after_high_sierra_weird_colors_when_waking_up/

It is a software problem. Double check to see if the OS is updated.

Definitely visit the store if this persists.


Plot drawing software Could you please recommend me software for drawing plots? I need something like the Grapher application that is included with Mac OS X but with these functions:

Axis naming
Error bars
Advanced working with input datasets(I need to plot data from physics labs)

For reference by default Grapher is installed in /Applications/Utilities/

It's tough to tell precisely what you're after.  Perhaps you could give an example of what you're looking for.

My first response is to recommend that you look into R http://www.r-project.org/ and some of the GUIs based on it.  It's quickly becoming a standard in any field requiring statistical analysis, from quantitative finance, to medicine, to social sciences.

It has a hideous programming language but a huge package archive http://cran.r-project.org/.  I would recommend poking around the statistics stack exchange site for pointers, but some notable GUIs include RapidMiner (http://rapid-i.com/content/view/181/190/), RStudio (New and just getting out of the gate, so don't expect a lot right now http://www.rstudio.org/), Red-R (http://www.red-r.org/), R Commander (http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/), and Rattle (http://rattle.togaware.com/).  R is also integrated in SAGE, with which you may already be familiar.  One huge benefit of R is Sweave, which allows integration with LaTeX, so your papers can render your data and publication at the same time.

If you just want a graphing solution, WaveMetrics IGOR (http://www.wavemetrics.com/) is probably the best bet.  It's available on Windows and Mac OS so you can share files with other people fairly easily.

KaleidaGraph (http://www.synergy.com/) and pro Fit (http://www.quansoft.com/) are notable options as well.

One of the secrets you'll find out when hanging out on various visualization forums, especially Edward Tufte's (http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1), is that a large number of the published graphs (especially his) often start in Excel and are exported to be manipulated in Adobe Illustrator.  You may have a graph in mind that comes from this pipeline, which has a large manual effort but a magnificent potential output.  I've also done similar with Mathematica (my tool of choice) when needing print-quality output.


Move through images in a folder with Preview.app When looking at an image in a directory with the Preview application, I'm used to the Windows behaviour of using the ←/→ keys to move through all the other viewable images in that directory.

Preview.app doesn't do this - I first have to select all the images and then open Preview.app. This is a little annoying.

Is there something I can turn on or install to get this behaviour?

Also, how do I open an image in a new instance of Preview.app, say for comparison purposes?

If you are just skimming the pictures do this:

Instead of opening a picture in Preview.app by double-clicking it, just press space to preview the picture when selected in Finder.

This way you can still use the arrow keys to navigate between the pictures.

↑ and ↓ in list view
↑,↓,← and → in icon view

You can still open the picture in Preview.app when needed (top right corner).


How to reset an iPhone photo library with all data and meta data I am trying to resolve an issue with a corrupted photo library on an iPhone running iOS 13. It will crash apps, as soon as you try to select older photos from the library for uploading or whatever. The library is shown empty on my mac although there are new photos in the library.

My idea is to save the remaining Photos of the phone via 3rd party tools.

In the end I like to really factory reset only the photos database. How can this be achieved? Is it possible to delete the associated database files and picture DCIM folders on the iPhone?

To answer my own question:

I felt brave and fired up a 3rd party tool that could access the iPhone filesystem. In the directory Media I renamed the directories PhotoData to PhotoData_old, DCIM to DCIM_old and Photos to Photos_old.

Then I restarted the iPhone. After reboot completed I checked the Media directory again. PhotoData, DCIM and Photos directory had been recreated. Photos was telling me: No photos found.

I deleted the _old directories and synced photos from a good and stable library to the phone.

The iPhone photos library is now usable.


Cannot delete old Exchange account from Internet Accounts in El Capitan I have an old Exchange account, I don't have access to it nor remember the password.

I want to delete it.

When I go to Internet Accounts, select it, and click "-" to delete it, it asks "are you sure", I say "yes", and nothing happens. The account is still there.

If it was installed using a Profile sometimes you cant remove it using Internet Accounts. Instead you need to go to System Preferences -> Profiles and remove the email profile.


Will Apple Store employees activate my new iPhone? I bought a SIM FREE( Unlocked) iPhone 6s from the Apple Store in Glendale the other day.

The reason I used more money to get the SIM free one is because I'm here in L.A for a little vacation, but I live in another country. What I wanted was to use my new phone to take photos, use wifi, but it turns out I can't if I don't insert a valid SIM card.

I tried everything: cutting the SIM card I had in my old phone (from another country), connecting the phone to iTunes, searching if other people ever had the same problem, but nothing!

If I go to the Apple Store and ask them to activate it any way they can, will they? Does anyone know what I should do? I really want to use the phone, I thought the hardest part would be to save the money to buy it, how funny it is that now that I have it in my hands I can't do anything with it?

Please help me activate?

Camila, you can give Apple a call regarding your issue and they will fix it for you I believe. I've had my new iPad locked for a few months. I called them up from my country Bangladesh and then they asked me some security related questions. Within 24 hours my iPad was unlocked. Hope it helps. You can also go to the Apple Store and see if they can help. You might need to bring your purchase receipt.


Connecting MacBook Pro Retina late 2013 with Thunderbolt 2 ports to USB-C hub Can anyone confirm that if I purchase Apple Thunderbolt 2 adaptor I can connect my MacBook Thunderbolt 2 port via Thunderbolt cable to adaptor and then connect to USB-C hub. Will it provide power to the hub when connected?

Don't confuse USB-C the port with USB 3.0 the protocol.  The Apple Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter will connect to USB-C hubs, docks, and devices with a USB-C port and supports the Thunderbolt protocol.  The TB2 to TB3 adapter does not support the USB protocol and does not provide power.
I've seen people report that a TB3 dock will support USB 3.x (USB 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2) devices when the dock is connected by a TB2 adapter and cable.  The dock must have a USB-C port, a female receptacle, and not a USB-C jack, a male connector, for this to work.  USB 3.x docks and hubs often have a captive cable (cannot be removed without breaking something) with a USB-C jack or a micro-USB-B receptacle.  USB 3.x docks and hubs with USB-C ports exist, but are rare in my experience, and will not work with the Apple TB2 to TB3 adapter.
If your MacBook Pro has USB 3.x ports then use them to connect a USB 3.x hub or dock.  If there are no USB 3.x port then you can use a TB2 to USB 3.x adapter to gain those ports, these adapters will have USB-A ports and not USB-C ports.  Adapters to turn USB-A ports to USB-C ports exist but break the USB spec, using them can damage equipment, or simply not work as desired, and so should not be touched.
The Apple TB2 to TB3 adapter does not support DisplyPort so if you intend to plug in a USB-C DP display or adapter then you need the right kind of DP cable or dock.  There are TB3 docks that will support DP displays but not necessarily with the TB2 to TB3 adapter.
There are USB 3.x docks that will support video out with a DisplayLink chip if there is a desire for video out from the dock.  These are separate video chips from the one in the attached computer which comes with it's own pros and cons.
I know that's more than you asked for but I've seen questions like this before and I'm anticipating follow-up questions you are likely to have.


I cannot do bootcamp but my hard disk only have machintos HD and Data The bootcamp said that my disk cannot be partitioned or restored as single partition.

I am using macbook pro 15" but idk the version but the graphic card said gt320m 256 MB and 350 GB HDD i5

do i have to remove the data before do bootcamp or is there anything i can do beside remove the data?

The simplest thing is to delete the "Data" partition and resize the Mac partition to take the whole area.

At that point, you are one click away from running BootCamp Assistant.

Options are to use Disk Utility to make an image of Data to an external drive (or perhaps to Macintosh HD if there is space). Another option is to clean as much files off Data or back it up to an external device.

It's really a balance between how valuable the files on "Data" are to you what step to take next.


Mouse sensitivity is set to zero on game startup I'm currently using a Macbook Pro and wanted to play a game and came up with Warsow. I downloaded it, dropped the app in my applications folder (is it even called folder on Macs?^^). As soon as I started the game I noticed my mouse sensitivity was significantly lower. I opened the options and played around with the ingame sensitivity and it didn't change my mouse speed at all.

After quitting the game and looking up my mouse settings in the system preferences it was set to 0 (or the lowest possible setting on the slider).

Important notices:

I'm using a "Gaming" mouse (Speedlink Kudos), which works fine. Even some of the side button settings I made on my Windows machine work properly. Also the DPI change works. Sadly Speedlink only provides Windows drivers
I'm using "Kill Mouse Accell" app by adding "Automatic Kill Mouse Accell" (Apple Script) to my starting objects. This is intended to "disable" the nasty mouse accellaration of Macs.

Warsow related results:

The only search result related to Warsow on Macs is this forum posting on warsow.net:

  Disabling that !"#€%&/ mouse acceleration, is it possible?

  There are several ways to make this darned broken mouse acceleration more tolerable.

  First way is to use built-in hack in Warsow to disable it (same as in NQuake/QuakeWorld Mac version): in_disablemacosxmouseaccel 1 and restart Warsow

  Known bug with this is that this also resets mouse sensitivity setting to zero on some Macs.

  (source: http://www.warsow.net/forum/thread/11839/1)

However no comments relating this particular issue were made in the answers. Same with search results.

My question:

I don't really know what to do. What may solve my problem? Or if it can't be solved, how to counteract? (Maybe with an apple script bound to a shortcut which sets the mouse sensitivity back to normal?)

I've managed to solve this problem on my own.

Warsow has a built-in "hack" to disable Mac OS X mouse accelleration, which is on by default. This is redundant to using my "Automatic Kill Mouse Accell" script on startup and causes this problem.

solution:

Open Finder and navigate to your user folder /Library/Application Support/Warsow-1.0/basewsw/ and open the config.cfg file. Search for
seta in_disablemacosxmouseaccel "1" and replace it with
seta in_disablemacosxmouseaccel "0".

source: http://www.warsow.net/forum/thread/t/216237#post-216237


Why does my Messages app keep crashing before it even starts on my Mac Computer? This question is very specific to Mac, and not mobile devices.
I am using a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019), running macOS Bug Sur 11.2.3
But I went to start work today, tried to open my Messages App and it crashed before the app window would open. Messages works on my iPhone, and iPad, but on the Mac it fails to start and immediately asks me to send a report to apple.
Why does Messages keep crashing?

The problem is that the pList is corrupted or there's something wrong with it.
We have to access the Library directory to fix it.

hit Command + shift + g to pull up the directory search, and enter ~/Library

1a. If you still cannot get to the ~/Library directory, we need to show hidden files.
open your Terminal, Enter: ⌘ + ⇧ + . (Command + Shift + .)
That's a period if it's not clear.

From there you want to go to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.plist

Move that file to your desktop

restart your computer

open messages, verify it's operating correctly.

If it works okay and all your contacts and messages are still there,
delete the plist from the desktop.

If that doesn’t work, repeat the above steps with com.apple.imagent.plist

To re-hide your files Enter: ⌘ + ⇧ + . (Command + Shift + .)

Alternatively, if you use zsh, to hide/show files I have aliases in my .zshrc:

alias showFiles="defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES; killall Finder /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app"
alias hideFiles="defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO; killall Finder /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app"

Not sure if that's helpful, but that's what I use to hide/show files since before it was available in a shortcut.
That should fix the issue with Message app on a Mac computer! Enjoy!


Is there an easy way to find the specification pages for old Apple Computers that have now been removed from the Apple Support pages? I recently noticed that it no longer appears possible to view the specifications for old Apple computers directly from the Apple website; their specification pages appear to have been deleted. I'm mainly referring to MacBook/MacBook Pro/iMac/MacBook Air/Mac Pro models produced between 2006 and the current day. I'm aware that multiple third-party websites exist that have this info, but is there an easy-to-find list of archived URLs for the spec pages for these older models that were previously contained on the Apple Support pages?

I find Mactracker to be a very useful app for this. It's available for both macOS and iOS.

The app has technical details for almost all the hardware Apple has ever released all the way back to Apple 1.

Just a fan of the app.


OS X Mavericks - hybrid hibernate does not work? I have MacBook Pro, late 2010.
For a while I was using OS X 10.6 and sleep logic was next:
1. after closing lid macbook go to sleep (with momentary wake up on lid open)
2. after day or so of sleeping macbook changes it state to hiberante (ram2diskc I suppose). wake up should be performed with power button and it will take some time (like several minutes or so)

Recently I've upgraded my macbook with 8gb ram and ssd + OS X Mavericks. After closing lid macbook will go to sleep, but in my case it was "sleeping" for 3 days without hibernation (and about ~40% of battery was used). On ohter hand, Mavericks has option resume apps state after shutdown and it works almost nice except I would really prefer to have hibernate instead (e.g. I need state of my terminal with open programs/running commands inside it, some background services running, etc).

To see what the current sleep mode is (in Terminal):

pmset -g | grep hibernatemode

To change the sleep mode to hibernate:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25

To set back to the default:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

More info: tutsplus - how to hibernate a mac


getting Red background in Safari I'm getting a strange red background when I visit some pages using Safari.
on Chrome the page is rendered in white normally.

I am not using any extensions and plugins.

How do I fix this bug?

Safari: Version 10.1.1 (12603.2.4)
macOS: Sierra Version 10.12.5

Edit: I do not have the paint flashing feature turned on, I also noticed that this bug occurs on local images with a transparent background without any stylesheets (see image below).

I tried opening a local file image, and it opens normally on Chrome and Preview. However on safari, the images has a red background.

I think this is a feature for web developers called "paint flashing".

Right-click on a blank bit of a page and select "Inspect Element", this will open the Web Inspector in Safari.

In the top-right corner of the Web Inspector there are a few icons. One looks like a paint brush. On your machine I bet it is selected.

Click it to turn it off.


Automator: Correct syntax for calling an AppleScript file I'm attempting to write an Automator application that will mount an external disk. I have an AppleScript that does the job and I'm attempting to insert it into an Automator application. However, rather than paste in the script I want to call the file, I have the following in Automator:

on run {input, parameters}
    run script file "Macintosh HD:Users/username/Documents/Scripts and Automator/mountdrive.scpt"
end run

However, this produces a syntax error:

  Can’t make some data into the expected type.

Any suggestions as to the source of the problem?

run script also accepts a "POSIX path", you don't need the explicit run handler:

run script "/Users/username/Scripts and Automator/mountdrive.scpt"

You could also add a Run Shell Script action where the content is osascript ~/Documents/Scripts\ and\ Automator/mountdrive.scpt.


Mac Mail "Not Responding" with Gmail IMAP account I'm experience some issues with my Mac Mail on my MacBook Air.
I hasn't been there all the time, as far as I can remember it started around Yosemite.

In my mail, I've two accounts. One is my work mail which is an IMAP for Google Apps gmail and the other is my private mail which is just a standard Gmail, also with IMAP.

On my private mail I've two-factor turned on, while this is not the case with my work mail.

Now, seemingly random my Mac Mail gets non responding and I've to hard quit it and reload it. It has something to do with the synchronizing and my private mail but can't seem to figure out what.

I hope someone has a solution or has experienced this before and know what to do.
I rather not turn of two-factor of my private Google account if I can avoid it.

Cheers

Do you have a Google "App password" set up?  If not, you need one.  This thread has a lot of information about how to do that: How to setup Gmail SMTP server for OSX Mail with 2-step-verification and App-specific password?

If that is not the problem, it may be that the Yosemite upgrade broke it.  I posted a detailed list on the apple forum of steps I took to fix a similar problem.  Although I am not using two-step verification, some of these steps might help you, because there seems to be some significant issues with Yosemite upgrades "breaking" Mac Mail.  I didn't use detailed instructions regarding navigating to all the settings; if you need assistance with that, reply here, and I'll elaborate: https://discussions.apple.com/message/28551720?tstart=0#28551720


What is a good RAW File Processor/Developer/Editor for Mac? What is a good quality, and ideally free or cheap, RAW file processor for Mac OS X 10.7? Until I switched to Mac from Ubuntu, I used RawTherapee, which served me well, but unfortunately it's not supported on Lion.

Ideally I'd prefer not splashing out on a pro-level graphics suite; I just want some basic abilities like exposure/color adjustment, aligning, etc. - with output to .JPG. If the tool also has a general photo management capability, great, but I can live without that.

I'm struggling to find anything that quite meets what I'm looking for. I tried Raw Photo Processor, but the interface is cumbersome and confusing.

Apple iPhoto '11

Let's not forget that Apple iPhoto '11 costs $15 in the Mac App Store, and that it has processing tools for RAW as well as frequently-updated profiles for working with many makes and models of cameras that produce RAW image files.

Google Picasa

Google Picasa is free and supports many RAW formats.

Canon Digital Photo Professional

version 3.11.26 is compatible with Mac OS X Lion. If you already own an earlier version that came with your Canon camera, you can download the updater from canon.com for free. Otherwise, here is how you can get it:

Canon Digital Photo Professional comes on a CD with a suite of programs called Canon Digital Camera Solutions Disk ver. 38.1.

I recently bought a used Canon Powershot G10 whose seller did not provide the original software sold with a new Canon. So I called up Canon's customer service, explained that I bought a used Canon, and asked them if I could purchase their tools on CD. They sold me the suite for US $20 plus tax and shipping (it came to $27).

  ...you may purchase the latest Canon Digital Camera Software Solutions
  disc for your camera through Canon USA's Customer Support Center at
  1-800-828-4040. Residents of other countries should contact their
  regional Canon customer support center for further assistance.

I installed the whole suite on Mac OS X Lion, then downloaded the latest updates from canonusa.com to make sure they were compatible with Lion.

The suite includes Canon Digital Photo Professional, for processing RAW images, a batch-file processing utility called Canon Digital Photo Professional Batch, the Canon Image Browser for general photo management, and Photostitch for making panoramas.


How can I avoid that my wife’s iPad sounds an alarm every time I add an event to a shared calendar in iCal? I share my work calendar on iCal with my wife (synced with iCloud). Every time I add an event to that calendar, my wife’s iPad plays a sound. Because I live in Europe but work for a company in the US, this often happens in the middle of the night for us, and the pings wake her up.

Is there a way to disable these sound notifications on her iPad?

This can be done in the Notifications settings.

How to adjust notifications for iOS Calendar

On the iPad:

Go to Settings
Select Notifications
Select Calendar
Select Shared Calendar Changes
Select Sounds
Select None

One can also adjust several other types of notifications as well or even completely disable notifications for the Calendar app.

Another setting to look at is Do Not Disturb
This can be set manually or on a schedule.

From the settings:

  When Do Not Disturb is enabled, a moon icon will appear in the status bar and incoming FaceTime calls and alerts will be silenced.


Changing apple-touch-icon for a website For aesthetic reasons, I'd like to change the apple-touch-icon (the icon that is displayed in the favourites grid in Safari), for a website that I do not own (such as YouTube).

I thought I would be able to do this by editing the html to include <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="http://url-to-image.png">, then re-adding the website to my favourites. No luck. Although this did work in Windows to create a custom live tile.

Is there any other way this can be accomplished?

Safari doesn't use the HTML of the current page when obtaining the apple-touch-icon. Safari makes a separate HTTP request to the page when you add it as a favourite, and then at regular intervals later on to keep the icon updated.

You might find success replacing the icon in the Safari cache, then locking the file so Safari can't overwrite it. You can find the icons at:

~/Library/Safari/Touch Icons Cache/Images/

Once you've found the image you wish to change and replaced it, use Get Info to lock the file.


Why are load averages on macOS always over 1.0 My load average on a bunch of Macs running Catalina and Big Sur is always over 1 (1.2 -> 1.5), with just finder open, or safari idle...
On my other linux boxes raspberry pi etc, I usually see close to 0.
Why is a full core always engaged on macOS? is this a BSD thing? i.e. is 1.0 equal to 0 on linux? (or does 1 mean a full core is always used).

My load averages are routinely 0.29 so we would need to look at your build and details to know why you’re over 1.0.
bmike@dev ~ % iostat 10
              disk0       cpu    load average
    KB/t  tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
   12.20    7  0.08   0  0 99  0.13 0.16 0.18
    5.23    9  0.04   0  0 100  0.11 0.15 0.18
    5.18    2  0.01   0  1 99  0.10 0.15 0.18
    0.00    0  0.00   0  0 100  0.08 0.14 0.17
    0.00    0  0.00   0  0 100  0.07 0.14 0.17

The code that became macOS code measures relative task scheduling as opposed to core loading which is different than Linux I suppose. You will want to recalibrate your scripts if you take action upon this measure.

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/Mach/Mach.html
http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20090715034920

Asking why is tough since engineers committed the code and it shipped. Im not entirely sure if this is a BSD thing as much as Mach kernel, but it’s real on macOS.


two-factor authentication not working, not even asking me for security code I'm in a bit of a difficult situation at the moment. I have an iPhone 6 and a MacBook Air, which are both asking me for two-factor authentication every day. The only problem is, all that ever seems to happen is a never-ending "waiting for device". In order to do that it asks for my phone password on my phone and my computer and Apple ID password on my computer. I've read some answers here and they all say to turn off Keychain and then turn it on again to enter the security code, but when I tried that there was no little box for the security code. I really need an answer since I may get a new phone and I won't be able to upload my iCloud drive if I don't get this fixed.

You can manually obtain a verification code

iPhone: Settings → Apple ID → Password & Security → Get Verification Code.
Mac: System Preferences → iCloud → Account Details → Security → Get A Verification Code.


Force Mac OSX to restart instead of waking up Whenever I put my MacBook to sleep and then let it run out of battery, it takes a very long time (5-10 minutes) to wake up and let me log in, and then it runs slowly for 15-30 minutes after that. This is slow enough that in many cases, I would rather just restart my computer and pull up the work I was doing beforehand by myself.

When I open my laptop's lid to wake it up from sleep, is there anything I can do to interrupt the wakeup process and immediately have my computer restart instead?

You can hold down the power button for 10 seconds, wait a couple seconds, then press the power button again and it should boot.  However, if the computer battery is still dead, it may take a few minutes before the battery will charge up enough before the computer will boot.

So, once the battery has had enough time to charge up from dead (~5-10%) it should allow you to restart it.


How do I add lyrics to a song in iTunes? How do I add lyrics to a song in iTunes so that it shows the lyrics on the iPod/iPad?

I own iClip Lyrics and I was fortunate enough to download it before they discontinued it.
(It still works even though they aren't developing it, and if you can find it online I highly recommend it)

All you had to do was play a song, it would search the internet, grab the lyrics, and automatically add them to the ID3 tag for the the MP3 file.

There are some other apps out there that do basically the same thing:

GimmieSomeTune
TuneLyrics
iLyrics


Launch Gedit while sshing in terminal I know i can do it in linux, anything similar in osx?

Firstly make sure X11 is installed (it's an optional install on the OS X dvd)

You need to ssh in with X11 forwarding.

Open terminal and type ssh -X username@host  where username and host are the relevant details.

This will log you in.  Once logged in type gedit and the X11 server on your mac will start and show the gEdit window.


What can be done when the headphones won't stay seated in an iPhone? Recently, my iPhone 4's headphones won't stay seated in the jack. I'll push them in firmly, and then a few seconds later (without touching the phone, the headphones, or anything else), they'll pop back out – just enough to no longer make contact, pausing audio playback.

I first I thought it was the headphones themselves, but I've tried an older pair of iPod headphones (without the clicker), and the same thing happens, although not as badly.

If I fiddle enough with either pair, I can eventually get them to stay seated, but I can't tell what it is that makes them stay in on one particular attempt vs. another.

Is there anything I can do? The jack appears to be free of any dust/lint – should I try blowing it with some compressed air? I can't imagine that it's physically damaged on the inside, but I don't know why else the plug would pop out.

@Gerry was right: there was dust or lint in the jack that was preventing the headphones from fully seating. I couldn't see it, but I used the end of a floss pick to clean it out and that fixed it. The headphones stay in so snugly now that I can actually lift the phone by pulling on them (not that I would do that normally; I just wanted to confirm it really worked!).

Amazing that just a little bit of dust could make all the difference. I'm just relieved that the phone itself wasn't damaged somehow since it's out of warranty.


What must I enter into Terminal, using sudo to make myself an administrator? My user account is a standard account on my Mac. What must I enter into Terminal using sudo, to make myself the administrator?

If the actual user < user_name > has a standard account, you would have to enter

sudo dscl . -append /Groups/admin GroupMembership <user_name>

to make < user_name > an admin.

Only a restricted number of users are sudoers (i.e. accounts which are allowed to run su or sudo with root privileges successfully) though. The standard sudoers file (/etc/sudoers) in OS X looks like this:

...
# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Uncomment to allow people in group wheel to run all commands
# %wheel    ALL=(ALL) ALL
...

So only root and members of the admin group are allowed to run sudo by default. The above command run by < user_name > will fail consequently, because  < user_name > isn't in the list.

To enable sudoing for < user_name >, you would have to add < user_name > to the list (below # User privilege specification) or uncomment the %wheel line with sudo visudo which has to be run by sudoers again (that's the Catch22 mentioned by Tetsujin).


copying data from a removed mac book pro hard drive to another working mac book pro. My partners daughter has frazzed her mac book pro due to water damage and has been told that the data can be recovered for £?????. I can remove the hard drive myself and my partner has a mac book pro so can I obtain a cable (SATA?)and hook up the removed drive to the working mac book pro?

That's a good plan. You can inspect the drive and see if it got wet, allow surface wetness to fry thoroughly before attempting to power it up.

As long as it spins, you'll likely be successful in recovery and might not even need something like Data Rescue to perform an undelete or partial recovery if the catalog is damaged.


Encrypted e-mail using a certificate not issued for that e-mail Scenario

I'm using Apple Mail and S/MIME to encrypt my e-mails. If there is a certificate for an e-mail address I want to send an e-mail to, everything is fine. After inserting the e-mail address, Mail enables the blue lock and the e-mail is sent encrypted.
My problem is now: If I want to send an encrypted mail to a person whose certificate I have but this certificate is issued to an alias of the e-mail address the lock won't be enabled because mail does not find a certificate for that address.

Example

I have a (public) certificate installed for firstname.lastname@domain.com
I want to send an e-mail to lastname@domain.com encrypted with the certificate of firstname.lastname@domain.com because the two addresses are aliases.
Nevertheless, Mail cannot encrypt the e-mail because it doesn't find a certificate for that address.

Question

Is there any way to configure Mail that for encrypting e-mails to lastname@domain.com the certificate of lastname@domain.com has to be used?

That is not possible. It is the certificate that specifies the email address it can be used with. The allowed email address is in the email field, as well as in the rfc 822 name field, where more than one email address can be given.

It does not make sense to allow the sending client to use a certificate for email addresses that are different from those allowed by the certificate, because that presumes knowledge about internal alias mappings on the recipient side. If the recipient could and would want to accept emails encrypted with the certificate to any additional email addresses, they should have been listed in the certificate.


How to upgrade my iPad mini OS? I have never upgraded iOS before and this is first time I would be doing. My current iOS version is 8.0.4(I guess) and want to upgrade to latest 8.x version(if possible) otherwise the default 9.x version as it's showing.

I want to know how can I take a restorable backup first on my Mac before going to upgrade? I am not so concerned about apps. My main concerns are books(Pdfs,epubs) that I open in iBooks app. Those app have not been bought within iBooks.

Is there anyway to take backup of books before I go for upgrade?

If you connect your iPad to your mac via its lightning cable and then open up iTunes, the iPad will show up as a device.

Click on it to bring up an info page that has an overview of everything stored on your iPad. From here you have to option to do a full back up by clicking the back up option. This will save all of your user data (including files added to iBooks app) in a back up to be stored on your mac.

You then have the option to update iOS in iTunes, you can't update to 8.x unfortunately, you'll have to update to the latest version of iOS 9.x whatever that may be when you do the download.

Alternatively after you've done the backup you can unplug your iPad and download the update via wifi from within the settings app of the iPad.

Hope this helps


iOS Messages phone storage usage different from iCloud I have a conversation log in my iPhone (iPhone 11 Pro, iOS 14.0.1) that goes back to 2009. iOS says it is occupying 15.96GB:

I have the phone set to save everything in my conversations (e.g.: high resolution images and videos) and I don't want to change this setting.
I want to back it up in iCloud so I upgraded to 200GB and connected my phone to WiFi and a charger. It started displaying the “Uploading messages” message and progress bar at the bottom of the screen. This message and progress bar no longer shows up and it has only uploaded 8.1GB:

This number doesn't change anymore regardless of me charging the phone or not. I don't have Messages iCloud sync activated in any other device. Any idea why this seems to have gotten stuck?

The number eventually grew to 15GB after a few weeks. Still no progress bar visible but at least it arrived there so I guess it just takes a long while, even with WiFi.


Get Keychain to remember an additional field I regularly log on to a financial website using Google Chrome

This requires me to enter a Account number, a password and also an Employer number.
I store the Account and password in my Keychain, but have to enter the 8 digit Employer number each time.

Is there any way of getting Keychain to remember this additional number.

There's no way to force Keychain to store the additional field.

I use 1Password for things that Safari/Keychain refuse to remember.
You can manually add fields for sites such as banks [at your own risk] where credentials will not auto-save.

There's also LastPass, but I haven't tried that


iTunes select/create library dialogue doesn't show I have tried the advice given on here to restore iTunes from backup but I don't get the dialogue box pop up which asks if I want to create library or choose library.

For OS X: Immediately after clicking the iTunes icon, leave Option (Alt) pressed. The dialog should appear.

For Windows: Keep Shift pressed and click the iTunes icon. When the dialog appears, you can release the Shift key.


How to clear space on c drive on windows 7 laptop I had to download the latest iPhone software update via iTunes, as my iphone’s Wi-fi stopped working. I have installed the update on my phone, but the c drive on my laptop is now full and in the red. Can I delete the software update from my laptop; if so, how?

On the Apple iTunes end - I would do anything to not remove the Apple Software Update program since it’s small and provides security updates.

Run a tool to find large files you can delete. Removing the installer or the application is really a mole hill compared to the mountain of video files, music files, other files you might have hanging around on the C:

If this is about should you delete that app, I say no. Either uninstall iTunes entirely and uninstall the update tool or keep both and find another way to save space or move data files to a different drive.


macOS Sierra Archive Utility compress popping up new windows After updating my macOS to Sierra I've started experiencing a strange bug. When trying to compress some stuff to a zip (via the Archive Utility) it pops up a new Finder window after each compression.

Here are my Archive Utility settings:

As you can see "Reveal archive in Finder" is turned off. I've also tried turning it on and off a few times, but result was always the same.

It started to happen after upgrading to Sierra.

My current macOS version is 10.12.2.

Is there any fix to this?

After some experimenting, I finally found a solution of sorts.

Before I get to it, just a word on the Archive Utility preferences. As far as I can tell, the preferences on the lower half of the window no longer have any effect on the Finder's archive creation process. It may have in the past, but the Finder no longer uses Archive Utility for archive creation, only for expansion. For the record, Archive Utility is located at /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/Archive Utility.app.

The problem arises from the Finder's desire to reveal the archive it's just created. If you are in column view and are viewing the contents of a folder, and want to compress that folder and do so like in the image below, the Finder may open a new window to reveal the archive because it doesn't want to lose your folder selection in the current window.:

If instead in column view, you select a file (it must be a file) in the same column as the folder, and then right-click on the folder you want to compress, like in the image below, the Finder won't open a new window (it will change your current file selection to the newly created file).

So far, that's the closest I've come to any kind of "solution".


Which iPhone 4S Cases actually fit? Alot of existing iPhone 4 cases are now being marketed as iPhone 4S cases; but I'm not sure that all of them would be compatible with an iPhone 4S. Can anyone who has found a case that fits add it to the answers?

  For example my girlfriend has two Incipio iPhone 4 cases (DermaShot
  and NGP) and neither of them fit my new iPhone 4S (due to the position
  of the mute switch and the volume buttons) despite the Incipio site
  saying that they are iPhone 4S cases.

Cases that are cut for specifically the iphone 4s or the CDMA version of the iphone 4 should fit the 4s.

Some iphone 4 cases will fit the original (gsm) version of the iphone and the CDMA version (the cut away around the mute button is large enough to support it in either position, basically). These should also be fine.

I've got an iphone 4 "bumper" from Apple that's been cut for both versions of the iphone 4, and it fits my 4s just fine.


Where has my route gone in the Activity app? I did a cycle ride at the weekend and recorded the workout on my Apple Watch. When I finished I saved the workout and could see the route in the Activity app on my iPhone.

Now a couple of days later I can view the workout stats such as distance and average speed. However, I can no longer see the route. I can see routes for other workouts.

Has anyone else experienced this and has a fix for it? I'm sure the data is still there

I recently had the same issue. I force restarted the watch and the next activity it showed a map again.
Still testing if it resolved the issue for ever.


Privacy aspects of Safari extensions I'm wondering about privacy aspects of Safari extensions, or which pieces of information active extensions can obtain about my web browsing activities. Should I expect that an extension will generally be able to collect information about everything I'm doing in Safari, or are there any restrictions on what extensions can access? The question is it possible to disable Safari extensions when using Private browsing? seems to indicate that there may be privacy issues when extensions are enabled.

More specifically, I'm interested in the Google Scholar extension that installs a button in the toolbar. Should I expect that this extension communicates information to Google only when I'm actually clicking the button, or can it communicate more?

In general, extensions should only be installed from trusted sources. See the popup that appears when you attempt to install an extension below. Unlike Chrome's extension API, Safari does not require that extensions request specific rights from the browser that the user must in turn grant when installing the extension, or specify a set of domains that the extension is allowed to operate on.

The developer of a Safari extension must, however, be part of Apple's Developer Program, and must obtain a signed security certificate from Apple for an extension to load in a user's browser. Unlike iOS or Mac App Store apps, though, this does not mean that Apple reviews extensions that are not hosted in the Safari Extension Gallery on apple.com.

The second part of your question is out of scope for this site, as it requires interpretation of Google's TOS and Privacy Policy (as linked from the page you linked).


Unable to erase, reformat, or repartition USB drive This afternoon I attempted to mount a .iso of Windows 7 to a bootable USB drive. It's about 370GiB, so more than enough to store it. I did the following to get myself into this mess. Note,/sda/disk2 is the right disk.

mightybee at mightybook.T-mobile.com in [~]
12:06:27 › sudo dd if=/Users/mightybee/Desktop/en_windows_10_multiple_editions_version_1511_x64_dvd_7223712.iso of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m
12:10:21 › diskutil eject /dev/disk2

After that, I was left with a disk that was reformatted to look like this:

The disk is not bootable and doesn't do what I wanted it to do. Furthermore, the disk is actually un-reformattable, unreadable, and practically unusable. When I run eraseDisk, I get this:

diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 WINSEVEN /dev/disk2
Unable to begin erase operation: The target disk is too small for this operation (-69771)

So my question is this: How do I regain the ability to erase and try another method to write to this disk?

Your command should work if your disk looks something like mine below (note disk1 vs disk2):

diskutil list disk1
/dev/disk1 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        +1.5 GB     disk1
   1:       Microsoft Basic Data WINSEVEN                1.5 GB     disk1s1

I would unmount the disk as opposed to ejecting it next time.

diskutil unmountDisk disk2

You can pull the drive and reconnect it and see if a lower level erase is possible.

diskutil eraseVolume FAT32 WIN8 /dev/disk2s1

I would expect you to use FAT32 with eraseVolume as opposed to eraseDisk so you might need to repartition things first and then try erasing the volume or recreating it.

diskutil partitionDisk disk2 1 MBR FAT32 WINSEVEN R

After the above command - you should have something similar to the below with the exception of disk2 replacing disk1

$ diskutil partitionDisk disk1 1 MBR FAT32 WINSEVEN R
Started partitioning on disk1
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Waiting for the disks to reappear
Formatting disk1s1 as MS-DOS (FAT32) with name WINSEVEN
512 bytes per physical sector
/dev/rdisk1s1: 2923976 sectors in 365497 FAT32 clusters (4096 bytes/cluster)
bps=512 spc=8 res=32 nft=2 mid=0xf8 spt=32 hds=255 hid=2 drv=0x80 bsec=2929726 bspf=2856 rdcl=2 infs=1 bkbs=6
Mounting disk
Finished partitioning on disk1
/dev/disk1 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        +1.5 GB     disk1
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 WINSEVEN                1.5 GB     disk1s1


Show Keynote presenter view but share only slides via Zoom? Back when I was in the office, I'd connect my MacBook Pro to a conference room's large display via HDMI cable and, using Keynote, show only the slides on the large display, but the presenter view (with notes) on the laptop display.
Now that I'm working from home, I have only the laptop display, but, when I give a talk via Zoom, I want the same thing, i.e., share only the slides, but see the presenter view on the laptop display.
Is this possible?  If so, how?

The easiest way is to buy a dummy plug that acts as a tiny (but high resolution) external screen. And then you share your slides as usual. I already tried and it works well.
Of course you can use sidecar to make your iPad a second screen but this dummy plug is really easy to carry!


iCloud / iOS / Mac Syncing Troubles I have an iPhone 7 running iOS 12.1.4, and a MacBook Pro running OS 10.13.6. I am running iCloud using the same ID, syncing contacts from both devices. This should sync seamlessly, but it doesn't. I have duplicates on the Mac, and the iPhone; contacts that appear on the Mac, and not the iPhone; and contacts that appear on the iPhone, and not the Mac. I want to merge the two databases into iCloud, and eliminate duplicates. I have tried logging out of iCloud on both devices, waiting 30 minutes, and re-connecting. I still have the same issue. Any suggestions as to how I can get my contacts in sync in all three locations would be greatly appreciated.

To remove duplicate contacts:

  Make a copy of your contacts.
  Open Contacts.
  From the Card menu, select Card > Look for Duplicates.
  When asked, click Merge.
  Repeat steps 2 and 3 until no duplicates are found.
  Make another copy of your iCloud Contacts.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203565

Then sync those contacts to iCloud.

Afterwards, turn off contacts on the iPhone in iCloud settings,
remove all remaining contacts and turn it on again.


iPhoto opens with spinning beach ball and won't stop My daughter's MacBook Pro has a problem with iPhoto. Just get a spinning wheel after opening. I've tried deleting and reloading from time capsule backups when it did work. That didnt work. Anyone have any ideas?

Try holding the ⌥+⌘ key when launching iPhoto and rebuild your library.


Can OS X Lion Server automatically set up Mail using Open Directory information? This is my first experience with OS X Server, I setted Open Directory up and added some accounts through Workgroup Manager.

When I login in on one of the remote Apple computers with one of the network accounts it mounts the file sharepoints nicely. But it doesn't automatically configure the Mail.app.

I searched on the internet but Lion differs a lot from (Snow) Leopard at this point. Is there anyone who can help me find the right setting to configure this?

Log into profile manager as an administrator using Safari and set up a profile for a user to change mail settings.

https://server.local/profilemanager/

You will want to spend time making sure DNS and SSL are correctly installed - starting with making a self-signed certificate if you don't want to pay for a real SSL cert for your server.

Here's what to look for when you want to test setting IMAP settings for users.

As you might be able to see - pick a user, then edit their settings and finally choose email.


How to mute notifications on macOS Sierra? Before macOS Sierra I could do "alt + mouse click" on notifications icon (placed on the top right corner of screen, on the menu bar).

It doesn't seem to work on Sierra. How to mute notifications on Sierra?

⌥-clicking on  works fine for me in macOS Sierra, but you can also enable Do Not Disturb by opening Notification Center, scrolling up and sliding the switch to On.


Can't install Flash - Installation failed This week my El Capitan system reported that the Flash player was out of date.  So I did the usual thing and went to Adobe, downloaded the latest (21 A) installer and kicked it off. After entering my password, the installer went through the usual "downloading .." part and commenced on the installation part, at which point it failed, showing me this:

What I did was the same as I had done many times before, but this time it failed - and I tried multiple times and also downloaded the installer multiple times.

Any ideas?

I had this problem on & off for years, it's something to do with my firewall, which I've never been prepared to fiddle with just so I can get an online installer to function properly.

The simplest workaround is to go get the full downloadable .dmg version instead of the online installer.

For the past few years, it's been located at http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html
or you can Google "adobe flash player offline installer download" which always finds it.

I did eventually find a solution to my Flash problems...
... I uninstalled Flash from every machine in the building ;-)