Work with selected application I am trying to write a AppleScript which will move my active app window to second display in full screen mode. In order to do this I am looking for a way to:

Target a selected application. Doesn't matter whether it is Firefox, Spotify or Calendar.
Move selected app to second display.
Display selected app in full-screen view.

I am struggling to find a way how to target selected/active app/app window. Any idea? I am running macOS High Sierra.

The information you need in order to work through your project are in those other threads:

1) Applescript to click green (zoom) button with Option down
    --->   You can find there (^) how to fullscreen a window (or only maximise it)

2) Retrieve the screen's resolution of a window [which screen is used?]
    --->   Information on how size and position are defined on (different) screens

If you start this script (or app) from Editor or Apple's -used-items-menu you will need lines 2 & 3.
Otherwise, e.g. called by a shortcut, they must be deleted.
ANYWAY: Better test this script with a new empty window!

Your script might look like this:

tell application "System Events"
set visible of first process whose frontmost is 1 to 0   -- These 2 lines MAY be
delay 0.2                                                -- necessary, or may NOT.

set dTopSize to size of scroll area 1 of process "Finder" as list  -- Screen size
set frontApp to first process whose frontmost is true    -- Frontmost app
set win_Size to size of window 1 of frontApp as list     -- Window size

-- EITHER [1.]: to move a window onto a screen to its right side:
set position of window 1 of frontApp to {item 1 of dTopSize, 22}
perform action "AXPress" of (first button whose subrole is "AXFullScreenButton") ¬
  of window 1 of frontApp

-- OR [2.]: to move a window onto a screen to its left side (=> negative value):
set position of window 1 of frontApp to {(item 1 of win_Size) * -1, 22}
perform action "AXPress" of (first button whose subrole is "AXFullScreenButton") ¬
  of window 1 of frontApp
end tell

I do not use a secondary screen myself, so I can only deduce this code from source 2).
Please take care to use EITHER [1.] OR [2.] … if BOTH are called, funny things may happen …
(Be aware that fullscreen mode temporarily "creates" an additional work space.)
You might want to test behaviour with "AXZoomWindow" instead of "AXPress".

Please post your experience(s) and/or problems with this code here !!!


Can't change startup disk iMac Here is my situation: I've only the mouse paired with my iMac because I rent the keyboard to a friend. Unfortunately the startup disk is set to a fallacious Windows partition that don't want to boot. It sucks on "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" so I can't boot in any working partition. So, I've two questions:

There is a way to change boot partition or to go to recovery using only mouse?
If I buy a standard usb keyboard, can I just plug the usb cable and use it to change the boot partition or it won't boot, because of the drivers?

I think you need a keyboard to boot holding Alt ("Option") key, to show boot partition and disks.
Yes, if you plug in a USB keyboard it simply works. Mac OS X has the driver for standard keyboards.


How to a pull a window to my second monitor that's above the current one when the menu bar is in the way? The menu bar is in the way so I can't pull one of my windows there. I had to move the bar up to that monitor as well so it wouldn't be in the way.

I've just tried this in Snow Leopard (10.6.8) without issues...

Menu bar on bottom (primary) screen, secondary screen above and dragging windows between the two is no problem.

To do this, I've used the following configuration under Displays in System Preferences:

Check that your settings match and let us know how you get on.


Is there a way to reset your computer enough to let you create a New Apple ID? Is there a way to reset your computer enough to let you create a New Apple ID with out getting the message that you have to create one by going to the iCloud.com?

No need to reset your computer to create a new Apple ID account.  Simply sign out of the existing Apple ID.  Once signed out you will have a login that will allow you to create a new account. If you don't want to sign out you could also create a new user account for your computer, sign into that new user account, then create a new Apple ID in system preferences under it.  You can also use iTunes or the Apple ID website to make a new Apple ID account.  To create the iCloud portion of the account you have to sign into iCloud with the Apple ID using an Apple device.


Using Kaleidoscope with PhpStorm I'm currently trying to get PhpStorm to use Kaleidoscope as a diff tool, but struggling a little. So far in Storm, I've...

gone to Preferences
gone to the External Diff Tools tab
set Kaleidoscope to be used as the tool to compare files (/Applications/Kaleidoscope.app/Contents/MacOS/Kaleidoscope)
also tried setting the parameters (%1 %2 %3) to no avail

When I open a file with Storm, then browse to another file in the Project tool in Storm and go Right Click -> Compare File With Editor, I get 2 separate Kaleidoscope windows each with a left-hand-side, instead of 1 window with a left and a right - any ideas?

Eventually sussed it - if anyone comes here in future, you want to install KSDiff (also available from the Kaleidoscope site), then go to the External Diff Tools tab in Storm, and set it up as:

External Compare Tool: /usr/local/bin/ksdiff
Parameters: %1 %2

Then open Kaleidoscope and leave it running - if you don't, nothing will happen.


Previous shutdown cause 0 on Mac Pro 2008 'Previous shutdown cause 0' would appear to be 'power disconnected', from grg's Shutdown Causes.

I would have assumed this would only apply to laptops if they ran low on battery, or a desktop if there had been a power cut.
Standard indicators of an actual power cut - flashing kitchen clocks or other computers rebooted, there is no sign.

However, I've noticed my sleeping Mac Pro 3,1 has rebooted mysteriously with this cause twice this week. I heard it boot at 7.13 this morning & after investigation found another similar even from 4am two days prior to that.

This machine is used as a media player & so really the only thing running is VLC. The indicator, if I don't hear it start up is that VLC's playlist is empty - so I can pretty safely say it's only ever done this twice, as I rely on the playlist knowing where it is every evening when we sit down to watch TV. It's the kind of thing you notice if it's empty.

From previous questions, pmset details as follows [I'm currently remoted into it, preventing sleep]

pmset -g
Active Profiles:
AC Power        -1*
Currently in use:
 hibernatemode        3
 womp                 1
 networkoversleep     0
 sleep                30 (sleep prevented by screensharingd)
 Sleep On Power Button 0
 ttyskeepawake        1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 autorestart          0
 disksleep            10
 displaysleep         30

OS is 10.11.6
I've reset the SMC, just in case, & run AHT, short & long tests, no errors. I would be keen to hear if anyone has any other ideas as to how to go about diagnosing this.

Considering it is an eleven year old machine, I can quite safely say (from three decades as a hardware tech) that either the power supply is starting to play up, or one of the voltage-regulator blocks that keep its Xeon(s) well fed are starting to get constipated with age. Either scenariou is equally plausble.

When was the last time the ol' cheesegrater had a full strip-down, clean (which includes taking the cover off the PSU, they make excellent dust filters!) and some fresh thermal re-paste?


What iPhone maps app can I use if I don't have a SIM card? I'm going to be using my iPhone overseas without a SIM card, but I want to use turn-by-turn navigation to walk and drive around.

I'm willing to plot my route via wifi before I leave the house, but I won't have internet because my phone won't have a SIM card.

Navigon
TomTom
CoPilot*

Navigon offers different apps for worldwide coverage.

Depending on where you are headed TomTom has several different apps for particular regions. Scroll down on the iTunes page to see some options.

*It appears that CoPilot offers directions when offline, but not turn-by-turn directions.

On all of these apps be sure to check and verify that they provide maps for the country (or countries) that you will be visiting.


Headphone jack broken for music, yet works perfectly for telephone calls I have a peculiar problem when using headphones on my iPhone SE.

When playing music, podcasts, videos, or doing Facetime calls, sound only comes through the right side. Yet when I make a telephone call, audio comes through both sides / ears.

Some things I've tried:

Cleaned the headphone port with a cotton swab and with a paperclip.
Ensured the "channel" slider in Accessibility settings is centered.
Tried different pairs of headphones.

None of the above affects the issue. Any ideas on what to try next?

It is likely music, etc is in stereo, while telephone voice audio is in mono. Mono goes to both channels, but in stereo, its separate channels. If this is the case, perhaps one of the channels is broken on your headphone plug (or jack). In other words, L or R is broken.

Of course, your options are repair, or try a different set of headphones or since this is an SE, you have the option of using the Lightning port as a headphone jack. Simply purchase a Lightning to headphone adapter from Apple, and you should get the audio back.


Run a shell script when switching to battery power User Story:

As a MacBookPro user I want to run a script that ejects my USB drive when I disconnect the power source so that I don't have to remember to eject it before grabbing my laptop and hurrying off to a meeting.

Acceptance Criteria:

NO third party apps
NO polling.  It must be event driven

I already have a script that I use for detecting network cable changes.  I launch it using launchctl with a WatchPath like this in my .plist file:

<key>WatchPaths</key>
<array>
    <string>/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration</string>
</array>

I'm hoping to find a similar way to launch a different script when my power cord is connected/disconnected.

I already know how to detect whether AC power is connected or not... I just need to find an event that tells me I can do it.

AC_POWER=`ioreg -l | grep ExternalConnected | cut -d"=" -f2 | sed -e 's/ //g'`

if [[ "$AC_POWER" == "No" ]]
then
    for MEDIA_PATH in "/Volumes/Backup Drive 1/" /Volumes/MyPhotos/
    do
        if [ -e "$MEDIA_PATH" ]
        then
            echo "Ejecting $MEDIA_PATH"
            diskutil eject "$MEDIA_PATH"
        else
            echo "$MEDIA_PATH not mounted"
        fi
        done
else
    echo "AC Power connected"
fi

ControlPlane, which picked up where the cool-but-buggy Marco Polo left off, allows you to build context-based rules that can do things for you based on where you are and what you're doing. It uses an evidence-based approach to determining where you are and, once your location criteria passes a certain confidence threshold, executes actions for you based on the confidence that you're "in that location".

It's pretty cool.

One of the evidence sources it supports is current power source. And its evidence source support is all based around event-driven sources.

And it's open source.

And free.

You can set it up to run an AppleScript (or a shell script) for you when ever the power source changes or just when it changes in one direction.


The first column reflects the address/position of the data within the file (on the first line of your output it should start with 0000000 unless you have used xxd -s), the last column contains the textual representation of the file content (for bytes which have a printable ASCII value).


Cloning macs within a context of no internet access I'm shipping a project which my client (the army) wants to run on new MacMinis2019, which they, being less tech saavy consider a whole (the mac with all the software and configuration installed on it is the product).

These machines are deployed in "Internet-free" zones entirely cut from the internet in order to avoid possible leakages of sensible data.

As part of the many procedures they wish to have access to, one of them is to clone one of the macs onto another one which may be presenting behavioural defects in the software, or whatever... it's no longer doing what they want and the quick and easy fix for them is or rather used to be (with old 32bit MacMinis) to clone a "working" one onto a "broken" one in order to have them all work once again.

I'm having trouble holding up this part of the bargain with the new Macs especially given the no internet constraint.

Here's what I've tried.

I plug in a thunderbolt cable between the two macs, I boot the broken one holding T so it has the thunderbolt logo on screen.

then I boot into the other normally and install and run Carbon Copy which I then use to clone.

The process is error-free and I even sometimes reboot the affected machine to a sucess... once and then on the new reboot it shows me the question mark logo.

sometimes I get this straight away.

I try rebooting holding R to access the disk utility and run First Aid. I then try to select a startup disk from the apple main menu and select the Hard Drive and click "Restart..." but I get a message saying :

  You can't change the startup disk to the selected disk.

  An internet connection is required to update this startup disk. Check
  the network connection and try again or select another startup disk.

As I explained above resorting to connecting to the internet is utterly unacceptable for my client.

Why is this happening? is there a better way to clone? is there a command line to type or some other solution to not be prompted for internet connection?

I'm assuming you've disabled SecureBoot, and that the volume name is identical in what follows:

It's possible that the T2 chip on these new (2018) Minis makes 'straight' cloning difficult.
I had the same problem when I cloned my old 2012 Mini's volume onto my 2018 Mini : I too got a flashing question mark. I was able to fix it by installing Mojave on top of the newly cloned disk. I used a USB install media (after disabling SecureBoot!). The disk booted perfectly after that, with all my files still in place.

I tried blessing the startup volume (though I may not have used the correct commands); and resetting NVRAM, without luck. I can only assume that the T2 chip 'knows' something has been changed and it requires an Apple installer to reset.

It may be possible to perform the 'reset' without having to do an entire OS install, but I don't know what the procedure might be.


How do I set up an Exchange Account in Mac Mail? I am having trouble transferring my account settings from Entourage to Mac Mail.  Specifically, what is the equivalent setting in Mac Mail for the Domain setting in Entourage?

In Entourage I have the following account settings.

PERSONAL INFORMATION
  Name: My Name
  E-mail Address: me@mycompany.org

AUTHENTICATION
  Account ID: myUserName
  Domain: NETBSA

SERVER INFORMATION
  Exchange Server: https://path.to.webmail
  [x] This DAV Service requires a secure connection

I can see in Mac Mail where all the other settings match up when creating a new account, but I'm not sure what "Domain" means or where I can specify it in Mac Mail. Is it some quirky Microsoft thing that only Exchange supports?

Whenever I try to set up my account in Mac Mail the server just times out.

Domain shuld be the beginning part of your username when you logon to your machine or account at work.  It's the name of your internal corporate network.  It looks like this when you sign on to machines at work:

netbsa\myusername

You might need to specify this format as your username in mail.app.  However, if it's timing out, it's probably more likely that the server settings are wrong.  Don't use the https:// part in the server settings and see if it will connect.


Yosemite - Finder has a disconnect button when attached to OSX Server, not working You can endlessly click disconnect, but you are never disconnected.  On the OSX Server (Yosemite Server.app 4.0.2), you can see your user account still connected, on the client (Yosemite 10.10.1) the finder still shows the folders and the disconnect button.  Any ideas?

In the Finder, select the "Go" menu > "Connect to Server...", then click on the Recent Servers menu button (button with tiny clock, to the right of the "+" button) and select "Clear Recent Servers".

Now go to a Finder window, select the server from the list and click on the Disconnect button and the server will be disconnected.

(OS 10.10.3)


DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter doesn't play audio on Samsung TV I can't make my MacBook Pro mid 2009 play audio on my Samsung LCD TV. I am aware that only recents MacBook Pro have audio out through the Mini DisplayPort and mine doesn't have it. This is why I bought an adapter that includes digital audio.

I can see the video on the TV but can't hear anything, the sound is still going out of my laptop.

I tried to go in "System Preferences > Audio > Output" but I can only see "Internal Speakers" from here.

Do you have any idea what did I miss here?
Thanks.

Without resorting to AirPort or other networked setups, your only option is probably to just use a 3.5mm jack from your headphone port, which would unfortunately only give you stereo audio.


How can I delete duplicate albums from my photo library? Since I updated to iOS 5 I have 4 photo albums in the Photo App. Camera Roll, Photo Stream, Photo Library & iPhone.  Photo Library & iPhone are identical. How do I delete one or the other?

Camera Roll, Photo Stream and Photo Library are system albums and cannot be deleted. (Photo Library is a smart album and displays all your photos, regardless of where they actually are).

Your photos are probably only in the iPhone album, if you delete it, they're probably gone. However to delete it hit the "Edit" button, then the little red minus in front of the album you want to delete.

If you added the album to your phone by syncing it from your computer, you won't be able to remove it from the phone. In that case connect your phone to iTunes select the photos tab and uncheck the album you want to remove.


Compressing server into .jar file Currently I'm attempting to compress a decompressed jar file that I have changed into a jar file. How can I do this via the command line? I know that there is a jar command in terminal, I'm just having trouble learning how to compress that folder.

If the folder's directory (probably not correct term, but hopefully you get the idea) is /Users/Odinulf/folderone/foldertwo (foldertwo is directory that I want compressed), what would be the exact code to do this?

Thanks in advance,

Odinulf

cd /Users/Odinulf/folderone
jar cvf myjar.jar foldertwo

For example:

/Users/ian/code/tmp [ian@Ian-Cs-MacBook-Pro] [19:13]
> jar cvf myjar.jar 8779
added manifest
adding: 8779/(in = 0) (out= 0)(stored 0%)
adding: 8779/.DS_Store(in = 6148) (out= 355)(deflated 94%)
adding: 8779/logs/(in = 0) (out= 0)(stored 0%)
adding: 8779/logs/MasterLog.txt(in = 3044043) (out= 207357)(deflated 93%)
adding: 8779/logs/StartLog.txt(in = 6984480) (out= 685836)(deflated 90%)
/Users/ian/code/tmp [ian@Ian-Cs-MacBook-Pro] [19:13]
> ls *.jar
myjar.jar

Breaking it down, the options are:

c - create a jar file
v - be verbose when you do it
f - put the bitstream in to a file instead of standard out

Then you give it the file to put the bitstream in to. In this case myjar.jar. And then you give it a list of directories and files to put in to that jar bitstream. Relative and absolute pathing for contents is generally maintained so be careful with that.


Can't move files or folders to some positions As you can see in the below video, I can not move files or folders to some positions on desktop. There is nothing that blocks me to move. I couldn't solve what causes this problem.
Sometimes the problem can be solved by just restarting but not always.

Disabling "Snap to Grid" is not the solution of this problem. I want my files and folders to be snapped to the grid. Please watch the GIF above. As you can see from there, the folder can be moved and snapped to grid everywhere except top-left.
What might block one of the grid spots from receiving an icon on the desktop?

It's something I've seen before but cannot reproduce at will.
It's easiest to repro if you're dragging close to another item with a longer name, but that doesn't always seem to be the issue.
Usually it requires some combination of toggling Sort by… or Snap To Grid - though that will upset a lot of otherwise carefully-placed icons that you'd have to reset afterwards.
if you'd rather not do that, then if you hold  Cmd ⌘  as you drag, it will stay where you put it [not snapped, but you can usually get it close enough by eye]
Sometimes you can clear it by enlarging the grid spacing on the desktop, or reducing the font size - then when you return it to your previous settings, the issue magically goes away.


Milliseconds delay after unlocking phone causes unresponsiveness Does anyone realise a delay after unlocking the iPhone screen on iOS7 ? You cannot swipe left or right until the animation finishes at 100%, rendering the phone unresponsive till then.

This is kind of annoying, albeit a small issue, but it affects the whole snappy experience I'm having with iOS7.

Any fix for this ? I expected it to be fixed by iOS 7.0.3 update, but it isn't.

It looks like you have to just wait for the animation to finish.

By turning on 'Reduce Motion' you get another animation, which looks like it is a bit faster. But this function changes the whole feeling from iOS 7. You can find it at General - Accessibility -  Reduce Motion.


Messages and soagent making CPU spike - any solutions? I've had my MacBook for 3 years and have never had this issue... Recently (maybe a month ago?) Messages and soagent are making my CPU spike. It sounds like my MacBook is about to take off into outer space so I have to kill both processes in my Activity Monitor. That fixes my issue, temporarily, until I open Messages again and it starts all over. I've tried researching this but don't really seem to find a fix.

I'm running Mac OS Sierra, v 10.12.6

This is driving me insane... any suggestions?

I had similar issue after I updated my mid 2012 mac book to Mojave. SOAGENT & CALLEDSERVICES were taking up more than 100% CPU.

I exported all the contacts to the VCF file format and saved on desktop.
Deleted all the contacts from the contacts list
Restarted computer
Imported back the contacts

My issue was resolved. Hope this helps


Using iCloud with iPhoto without upgrading to iPhoto 9 Is there any way to use iCloud on OS X Lion to share pictures with my iPhone without upgrading to the newest iPhoto? I know the newest iPhoto isn't that expensive but I don't use it for anything at all so I don't want to pay the $16 for an application I don't use.

EDIT: iCloud doesn't work with iPhoto 8 (which is what came on my computer) and the only way I know to use iCloud to share photos is to buy the newest version of iPhoto. Which I don't really want to do so is there another way to share photos or a way to use iPhoto 8 instead?

As outlined in this question, a workaround does exist, but it's ugly.

You'd need to run a virtual machine running Windows (I'm not sure if you could do it with Wine, or if you'd need an actual copy of MS Windows (which is much more expensive than $16). You then download iCloud Control Panel from Apple and install it on your virtual machine. Then, you can use it to send photos to iCloud.

So yes, it can be done. But you're likely better off spending the $16.


Unable to import S/MIME certificate and key into my iPhone (iOS7) I tried to generate a S/MIME certificate from comodo.com. On my Mac it perfectly works. But I am unable to use it on iOS 7. This is what I did:

generate certificate on Mac
export certificate and private key in p12 format from keychain
sent the p12 and the Comodo cert (COMODO Client Authentication and Secure Email CA.cer) via email to iphone
import both certificates
enable S/MIME in email client on iPhone

When I look into my Profiles (General > Profiles) I see the comodo certificate as TRUSTED (1) as well as my private cert (2) . But when I look into the S/MIME settings from the email account on iPhone it is NOT TRUSTED (3).

My emails got not signed / encrypted then.

What am I doing wrong? I am lost.

Surprisingly I had a look into my certificate in the mail accounts section. It was untrusted. I then got into the section of profiles and had a look into the imported profile. It was trusted.

Then I went back to the certificate in the mail account section and it was trusted!

This seems all quite buggy, Apple.


Dual SIM: How to choose phone number when replying to SMS message in Messages I have an iPhone with an eSim and physical SIM and therefore 2 different phone numbers.
There is a message thread in Messages that contains messages sent to both of these numbers.
I want to know, when replying to the last message, how do I choose the phone number I am sending from?
The Apple documentation explains how to do this when starting a new message thread for a contact with no chat history:

You can use iMessage or SMS/MMS to send messages with either phone
number.* You can switch phone numbers before you send an iMessage or
SMS/MMS message. Here’s how:
Open Messages.
Tap the New button, in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
Enter your contact's name.
Tap the current phone number.
Tap the number that you want to use.

However, it is conspicuously quiet about my query. I want to choose the number for sending to a contact with an existing chat history, without deleting prior messages and/or removing SIM phone numbers.

I’ve been exploring this and it seems its still not possible.
A few possibly helpful notes/workarounds:

Clicking on the number at the top, and selecting “info,” text will be displayed that says “Using Primary/Secondary for this conversation.” That at least tells you which number is being used, but its not clickable or changeable.
There is a workaround for changing which number you iMessage from (does not apply to SMS/MMS texts): Go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Uncheck the number you are currently iMessaging from to disable it in the “You can receive iMessages and reply from” list, and check the number you would like to iMessage from under “Start new conversations from.” Go back to Messages, and send a message to the contact/conversation you would like to switch numbers on. The first may go through as an SMS from your switched number, but after that iMessage should be re-enabled. After you’ve sent one iMessage on a thread from the correct number you would like to use, go back to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive and re-enable all lines as you would like them. Conversations will continue to use the last number you set. Repeat this unfriendly process whenever you need.
I don’t know of any workaround for SMS/MMS other than deleting the entire conversation history. If you delete the entire history with that contact, it will show up as a new conversation, and you can choose which number to initiate that conversation from.
Hopefully Apple makes this easier soon


Can I delete my iCloud email account? I signed up with iCloud and I see that there is an @me.com email account associated with my account.  I don't have any interest in using email with iCloud - I use gmail for email.  Is there a way to remove email from my iCloud account all together?

Perhaps I am being paranoid, but I am afraid there might be security risks from having another email account around that might be used for Apple account change notifications.  Since I never check that account I wouldn't know if something seemed wrong.

It seems to be impossible to get rid of this account.

What I've done is:

Connect to my iCloud account (with my Apple ID, the same for the App Store and others).
Go to Mail.
In Preferences (top right), choose rules…
Add a rule to redirect all emails received at my @me.com address to my main email.

It can take several minutes to work, but I don't lose anything like that.


Why are swiffy files without sound on iPads? According to Google, "Swiffy converts Flash SWF files to HTML5, allowing you to reuse Flash content on devices without a Flash player (such as iPhones and iPads)." - https://www.google.com/doubleclick/studio/swiffy/

But, if you check the "Supported features and browsers" - at https://www.google.com/doubleclick/studio/swiffy/gettingstarted.html - it turns out sound in swiffy files is "partially supported", which means not at all by Mobile Safari iOS 5, Android Browser 4.0.3 and  Firefox 15, but is supported (maybe only "partially", it's not clear), by Chrome 22, Safari 6.0, Internet Explorer 9 and Opera 12.

I have converted a few flash-movies-with-sound to swiffy and seems to me the Google table should be about "Supported features and operating systems". Swiffy files play, with sound, on all my Windows browsers (IE, FF, Chrome). But on an iPad,  using both Safari and Chrome, swiffy.html is dead silent.

So the question is... does anyone know why it is that on iPads, regardless of the browser (or at least those two), swiffy sound cannot be heard and is there any solution? If there isn't, swiffy has been oversold as a means of "reusing Flash content on devices without a Flash player (such as iPhones and iPads)" if on those devices there's no sound.

It's a mystery why Google hasn't figured out a way of having swiffy deliver sound on iPads through Chrome. So is the problem Apple's iOS, and why?

HTML audio has shaky compatibility across all the different browsers.

For this to work correctly, the audio would need to be converted into MP3, OGG and WAV formats. (in addition to converting the video, which different browsers prefer different formats, too)

In short, HTML audio and video is young, and a fuller experience will come once the standards mature, and the browsers homogenise format compatibility.


How do I kill pboard from command line? I'm sick of manually killing the pboard process in Activity Monitor to recover my copy & paste.

Is there a Terminal Command I can run instead?

Try killall pboard. That should kill it. I'm not sure it restarts by itself, though.


Can I automatically mark/categorize photos as "uploaded" on iPhone? I take a lot of photos on my iPhone, and they occupy a significant percentage of my storage space. Many of these photos, however, are eventually uploaded to several services (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc). If I could "delete all photos that have already been uploaded", I could probably free up a lot of space. It seems this a "already uploaded" album would be something trivial to implement, however iOS doesn't seem to provide it out-of-the box. Am I right or am I missing something? Is there at least a third-party app that provides such a feature?

PS: If this is not an appropriate question for this platform, I apologise. Just let me know and I'll remove it and post it elsewhere. If you could recommend a better place, I'd appreciate it.

If you enable iCloud Photos, your iPhone can manage this for you automatically.

On your iPhone, go to Settings > Photos and toggle on iCloud Photos to upload all your photos to your iCloud account (note, this process can take a long time, but it will run automatically in the background and only when you're on Wi-Fi).

Below that, you'll see two options: "Optimize iPhone Storage" and "Download and Keep Originals." If you select "Optimize iPhone Storage," iOS will automatically replace full-size photos in your local storage with thumbnails as space is needed, with the originals stored on iCloud. You can still browse your entire library locally, and if you tap on a thumbnail to view the full-size photo and it isn't already in your local storage, it will automatically download from iCloud in the background. The original will then remain in your local storage until iOS next decides to purge it, again based on available storage space.

You can see how much storage space you'll save before the full upload is complete (or even before you turn it on at all) by going to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and looking under "Recommendations." In my case, my full photo library is 48.53 GB, and turning on Optimize Photos would save 47.02 GB – a 97% reduction! (I leave it off only because I have a 128 GB phone and plenty of available storage space).

You will likely need to purchase iCloud storage to fit all your photos, as your iCloud account only comes with 5 GB for free (in 2019, ridiculous!). However, 50 GB of iCloud storage only costs 99¢/month, and 200 GB of storage is only $2.99/month (you can also share 200 GB and larger plans with family members). I find it well worth it for the peace of mind having an online copy of all my photos, and for the ability to keep them in sync with my other devices (Mac, Apple TV, iCloud.com in any web browser, etc.).


Deleted OSX Partition but Wish to Install OSX Again A few months ago I installed Windows 10 on my late 2013 iMac without any drivers. Stupidly, I deleted the OSX partition because the only thing that didn't work perfectly was audio, which I was fine with at the time.

I've recently started using Ubuntu on my iMac and audio is back to it's good ol' usual. However, I want to switch back to OSX so I can dual boot between OSX and Ubuntu. How can I reinstall OSX?

Thank you in advance.

You can use OS X Internet Recovery to install the version of OS X that came with your machine. See the Apple web site: About OS X Recovery. Be sure to hold down the three keys at startup: OptionCommand (⌘)R. From this, you can go to the App Store and download and install newer versions of OS X.

An alternative would be to use another Mac to download OS X. You can then transfer the download to a USB drive. You then use the USB drive to install OS X on your Mac. The instructions are given the Apple web site: Create a bootable installer for OS X.


What is the file path to an iCloud Drive file? Imagine I have a file in iCloud Drive/Sounds/Foo.mp3. I want to play it via the Play sound action in the Shortcuts app.

I need to use Get File. When I use Get File I can choose the iCloud Drive service, but then if I want to hardcode the sound file to play, it asks me to manually enter in the path starting with /Shortcuts/.

I tried entering /Shortcuts/Sounds/Foo.mp3 and /Shortcuts/Sounds/Foo, but both said:

  The file doesn't exist.

  The file "Foo" couldn't be opened because there is no such file.

How do I specify a path to a file in iCloud Drive in the Shortcuts app?

If you go to the Files app, you'll notice that there is a folder located at the root of your iCloud Drive called Shortcuts. You must move your file from /Sounds/Foo.mp3 to /Shortcuts/Sounds/Foo.mp3, it appears that the Shortcuts app cannot read files that aren't located inside the /Shortcuts/ folder.


Always show function keys on control strip when using terminal I would like to show the function keys when using the terminal app. However, when I use system preferences to try to set this up in Keyboard Shortcuts, the Terminal app is not selectable.

Screenshots:

The reason for this is that Apple doesn't seem to treat its Terminal app in the same way as other apps in terms of permanently setting Functions keys in the Touch Bar. Instead, you need to follow these steps:

Launch the Terminal app
Go to View > Customize Touch Bar
Drag the Function keys onto the Touch Bar
Click Done

Another option is to use another app as your terminal (such as iTerm2) and follow the usual steps for permanently setting the Function keys on the Touch Bar.

Based on your screenshots, it seems you know the steps for doing this, but just to be sure and for the benefit of others:

Go to Apple > System Preferences
Select the Keyboard preference pane
Click on the Shortcuts tab
In the left sidebar, select the Function Keys option
On the right-hand side click on the plus + button
Search for the app you want to use (e.g. iTerm2)
Add the app

Now, whenever you are using the app, the Touch Bar should display all the function keys.


How to remove a container disk and reclaim space with main partition? (Similar to another question) So basically im an idiot and dug myself a hole. Im nearly out of this mess but I still have one thing to do. Just need to get the data back that is in these containers. Help is much appreciated. I can send you some cookies

To convert a container to free space requires two commands. For example, disk1s5 is a APFS container. To convert to free space, you would need to enter the following commands.

sudo diskutil apfs deleteContainer disk1s5
sudo diskutil eraseVolume free none disk1s5

Free space can be added to a container, if the free space reside immediately after the container. In your case, if you converted disk1s5, disk1s4 and disk1s3 to free space, then you probably would be able add this free space to disk1s2, by entering the command given below.

sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk1s2 0


iPhone asks for Mac password (or Mac asks for iOS password) During iPhone update to iOS 10.3.1, I was asked for my password using the correct machine name for my Mac mini. To be clear, the request was not for my iCloud password, my actual local user account password for macOS. This can also happen in the other direction - setting up a Mac may ask for verification for you to enter your iPhone / iPad passcode (and not your iCloud password)

I could not find any information about this kind of access. I was thinking it was security for iCloud and possibly related to two step authorization or two factor authorization. This is the first time I can think of that I entered a desktop password outside of that actual desktop.

I don't have a screen shot but I recall an implication that some files in my Mac are encrypted and need my password. '... need to enter the password for .'

Are there settings I can I control this assuming it's a legitimate part of iCloud setup process or iOS setup process?

When you reset all settings or restore a backup from iCloud (or set up a device as new), the Keychain / iCloud and local USB trust pairings are removed and you should be prompted to trust the Mac when it connects to your iPhone.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202778

After the trust setting dialog pops up (if you are connected over USB), there is now a screen that asks you to enter your iCloud password to finish setting up the iOS device. I have not seen the follow on passcode/password page ever until today. In my case, it wanted the passcode on another iPad and not a Mac ( I have two iPads, an iPhone, Apple Watch, two Mac connected to my iCloud account as primary accounts / keychain sync enabled on all).

Enter Passcode for Other iPad

  Access to your account is protected by the passcode for "iPad". Your passcode is encrypted and cannot be read by Apple.

In my case, the iPad in question is named iPad Air 2 and there's a blue link with the text "Forgot iPad Air 2 passcode?" Tapping that lets me select another device to enter a passcode. I then selected my Mac Pro and the text changes to:

Enter Mac Pro Password

  Access to your account is protected by the password for "Mike's Mac Pro". Your passcode is encrypted and cannot be read by Apple.

I do have two step authentication enabled for my iCloud account so this seems a legitimate change that Apple has implemented recently to secure backups and/or joining a "new" device or OS to the keychain syncing / trust chain.

After entering the password, there was a long delay (the iPad screen went dark) and the next step was the iCloud Keychain dialog which also was slow to continue when I tapped that.


iPhone Accessory warning - without any accessory I am getting following error:

Previously I connected iPhone headphone/handsfree. It was working fine. Now, I disconnected my headphone/handsfree & my iPhone started giving warning as follows.

I am not sure what's wrong with the phone. I have restarted iPhone many many times, but anything didn't work. I am not able to talk with iPhone without handsfree. iPhone forcing me to use handsfree.

I think the problem is caused by circuit shortening on the iPhone dock connector. This means that the iPhone detects some kind of an accessory is connected (pin shortened), but cannot verify that it's genuine. Try cleaning it with compressed air.


How can I type the “<” symbol via remote desktop with a Nordic keyboard? I have a Nordic/Norwegian keyboard.  I'm sitting on an iMac with Mountain Lion and are remoting to a Windows 7 computer with Remote Desktop Connection.  I can't find the < or > shortcut (pressing < gives a different character (pipe)).  Does anyone know?

I am aware of this question and know how to find most other characters, having tried numerous combinations, but not the < sign.  I also know I can get the character palette, but that is just too slow when I need it relatively often.

Edit:  I do not have a numerical pad on the keyboard.  This is the smallest version of the Nordic Mac keyboard and is the default delivered with an iMac in Norway.

Edit 2:  Here is a picture of my keyboard:

Edit 3:  Thanks to @koivo I learned that < is called an angle bracket.  I did some googling and found only one unanswered question asked at a different forum (ars technica).  I have also tried all sorts of key combinations, but no luck so far.

Edit 4:  I have now learned that using CoRD (which is slightly buggy and discontinued in development) or Royal TS (which cost money) will give me angle brackets (<) on the angle bracket key itself.  However, I have added a bounty to see if it is possible to do with Remote Desktop Connection that comes with the iMac out of the box.

Edit 5:  This is written after the correct answer and bounty has been awarded.  Even though a shortcut is available, using the free version of Royal TSX is just a simpler solution, as stated in one of the answers!

Try going to System Preferences:Language & Text:Input Sources. Enable and display the keyboard viewer to get a better view of the next steps.

The first step to try is to turn on the U.S. keyboard.  This should cause shift+comma and shift+period to yield the desired characters, < and >, in place of ; and :.  You can switch between keyboard layouts either using the flag menu that will appear on the right of your menu bar, or by setting keyboard shortcuts.

If switching to the U.S. keyboard layout doesn't work, enable Unicode Hex Input to allow the entry of any Unicode characters by holding down option and typing the hex code point. <alt/option>003c yields < (LESS-THAN SIGN) and <alt/option>003e yields > (GREATER-THAN SIGN).  See http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0000.pdf for a table of common ASCII based Unicode characters. LESS-THAN SIGN and GREATER-THAN SIGN are the official Unicode names for the angle brackets.

For what it's worth, when I turn on, for example, a Swedish keyboard on my U.S. system, the key to the left of the number 1 offers < and >, as opposed to what I see in your picture.  Showing the keyboard viewer should help clarify what to expect.

From the other question you reference there is also the suggestion by @Tom Gewecke:

  Perhaps you could set up another keystroke to produce @ via system
  preferences/language & text/text/symbol and text substitution.


AppleTV 3 on a LAN network (no internet) with a PPC Mac and iPhone I have had a few different things told to me on this situation. I have a wifi local area network set-up with  NO Internet connection.  I want to know if AppleTV will

work at all with a PPC Mac
mirror my iPhone ie AirPlay
work at all without Internet (again Mac and iPhone on wifi LAN).

I do connect to my Mac from iPhone 4S for a number of things now , and sync via USB (although I've heard that's not possible).

The iPhone and the AppleTV should work just fine together (with or without internet).   Note that some router models do not work well together with AirPlay so if you encounter transmission problems this should be the first suspect.

Regarding your Mac I believe that the latest iTunes for OS X 10.5 can do AirPlay. If you run an older version of OS X you should consider the most appropriate upgrade path.  It might give a better experience to buy a new mac instead of upgrading to OS X 10.5


iPhone Version 9.3.3. Newsfeed from Sky News showing annoying symbols Why has Sky News in the News feed on my iPhone started to show annoying numbers and symbols in the text. (All the other news feeds are okay.) It looks like it might have something to do with computer commands for punctuation or something. (You can probably tell I'm not very tech savvy!)

It's a problem with how Sky News or Apple is formatting the text in their feed.  It has nothing to do with your iPhone, in case you were wondering.

I can't post a picture right now but so others understand what the problem is, in Apple News if you go to an article from Sky News, you'll see a mixture of text & symbols like &#160; in the article/headline.  It looks like these are some symbols or letters that are not being converted correctly.

Usually, these types of things get corrected fairly quickly.


How to change default contact template When i create a new contact and go to insert a phone number the default category for this is "Home", I don't have anyone's home phone number now as this is 2015 not 1999. How can i change this default so that the category that appears first is "Mobile" ? IOS 8.1.3

This isn't a feature in iOS 8 or iOS 9.

If you don't want a new number to be categorized as "home" you need to tap and change it. Luckily, third party apps can and do provide more customized interfaces to your contact database.

I would start with a tool like Interact for setting up a more flexible default contact addition interface as well as extending concepts such as groups and smart parsing of contact details.

The time you save with one-tap contact addition and share sheet access to this app will more than make up for the expense and effort needed to have a better tool for contact management than ships with the OS.


Optimize filesystem for speed over integrity On Linux, I use the noatime,nodiratime,nobarrier,data=writeback mount optioins in /etc/fstab to trade filesystem safety/consistency/integrity for speed which makes sense for local development.  Is there a way to do something similar or to otherwise make such a trade off for the other OS X developers on my team?

Going with the default filesystem on a OS X/macOS install
The man page for mount on macOS lists only two options that are performance related to hfsplus:

 - async         All I/O to the file system should be done asynchronously.
                 This can be somewhat dangerous with respect to losing
                 data when faced with system crashes and power outages.
                 This is also the default.  It can be avoided with the
                 noasync option.

- noatime        Do not update the file access time when reading from a
                 file.  This option is useful on file systems where there
                 are large numbers of files and performance is more criti-
                 cal than updating the file access time (which is rarely
                 ever important).

So, only the noatime option is left to further improve on the default behaviour.
Since there is no fstab on macOS you have to (re-)mount your filesystems in another way.
The most popular search engine hit to achieve an automatic re-mount lists this method:
Create a file called com.noatime.plist in /Library/LaunchDaemons. If you only have 1 SSD partition – that is where your OS is booting from – this is all you need.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>com.noatime.root</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>/sbin/mount</string>
            <string>-vuwo</string>
            <string>noatime</string>
            <string>/</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
    </dict>
</plist>

Set the ownership of the file with the command
sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.noatime.plist
sudo chmod 644 /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.noatime.plist

Restart the system or
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.noatime.root.plist
To verify, enter the command mount at a Terminal prompt. You should see noatime listed as an attribute of your filesystem.
But what does it do? Well, simply put: it executes this command at boot time (well, after boot, during the load sequence for the rest)
mount -vuwo noatime /

I’m assuming you have a clue what the “mount” command does, but look at the options:
-v     = verbose; actually… this is not absolutely required since it’s a headless command above; although presumably it might show up in the system log somewhere and in cases of failure
-u  the -u flag indicates that the status of an already mounted file system should be changed. (By this point in the load sequence our filesystems have already been mounted)
-w  mount the file system read-write - probably not 100% needed)
-o noatime (Set the noatime option)
Going with alternate filesystem options altogether
Apple filesystems are quite bad from the start  and support for alternative filesystems is also lacking. But that does not  mean you are completely out of options.

You might go for RAM-Disks
You could try to use alternative filesystems like ZFS or another filesystem to your liking via fuse.
You might try and use the as of Sierra, hm, 'usable' new filesystem AFPS (strongest caveats: is beta still and will behave like one for months to come)
You might be a conservative blockhead and sacrifice overhead things like journaling or corestorage volumes with encryptions (that would be otherwise not recommended, but considering your special needs…). Alas, these are not mount options but need you to provide partitions in that style. (And while the mount option noatime might be applied there also, I do not have benchmarks ready to compare on a modern Sierra system running unjournaled filesystems vs the defaults.)


Can I disable the trackpad on a MacBook Pro? I have a mid-2007 MacBook Pro, the one with the trackpad that had the physical button on along the bottom edge. The trackpad is not well and using it can cause it to stick and freak out OS X.

Is there a way to disable the trackpad that's a little more low-level than the method outlined in this question and answer? A BIOS setting perhaps? I'd like the trackpad to never be useable on the unit, whether an external mouse is connected to it or not.

You should be able to do this by unloading the kernel extension (kext) that controls the trackpad from the command line.

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBTopCase.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBTrackpad.kext to disable it. Change kextunload to kextload to re-enable it.

When I tested this, it complained that it couldn't unload the kext, but it appeared to disable the trackpad (and it didn't show in System Prefs) despite the warnings.

Warning for Magic Trackpad Users: I don't have a Magic Trackpad, so I don't know whether this kext is responsible for that device or not. Careful testing this out, you may accidentally disable all your mouse inputs at once.

Edit: I did a little more digging, and there is a "AppleBluetoothMultitouch.kext", which sounds like it's responsible for the Magic Trackpad, so it's likely you can disable the internal trackpad independent of any external ones.


Save the URL in Finder as a bookmark via Automator Since the possibility to tag files in Mavericks, I save my bookmarks in Finder to be able to tag them and find them later more quickly.

To do this I simply drag the URL in Safari to a my bookmarks folder in Finder.
After doing this for many times, I found it inconvenient to do this manually. It would be nice if this steps can be automated, and I think Automator would help me in this.

The workflow would look like this.

Copy the URL of the webpage in the active Safari window.
Save the URL in a clickable URL file in a folder in Finder.
Prompt me the Info screen to edit metatags, like Filename, Tags, and Comments.

Unfortunately, after some trying in Automator, I'm still not able to create this workflow.
I hope through this post somebody can help in the right direction.

You could install tag with for example brew install tag and then use a script like this:

set tags to text returned of (display dialog "" default answer "")
tell application "Safari" to tell document 1 to set {u, t} to {URL, name}
tell application "Finder"
    make new internet location file at POSIX file "/Users/username/Bookmarks" to u with properties {name:t}
    set p to POSIX path of (result as alias)
end tell
do shell script "/usr/local/bin/tag -s " & quoted form of tags & " " & quoted form of p

For Chrome, use tell application "Google Chrome" to tell tab 1 of window 1 to set {u, t} to {URL, title}. Separate the tags with commas in the dialog.


OS X Mixed languages in dialogs I have a Macbook Pro 15" with Touch bar and Touch ID. The company has been bought from a Finnish store, and its language was Finland when bought. I changed it to English after booting up the computer first time.

Now there is an issue with OS language in some dialogs. Some OS dialogs show up in Finnish language, even when my only language in settings is English. Languages work correctly on my iMac and older MacBook Pro Retina.

For example, Thunderbird shows an OS dialog for entering password to secure storage, and its contents are in Finnish:

This is not limited to Thunderbird, but also other software show dialogs partly in Finnish language.

So, at first I just added English, chose it as a primary language and then deleted Finnish from Language & Region settings.

When I tried to fix the issue, I added Finnish again, set it as preferred language and then removed it again. There was no change to behaviour.

Then, I also tried the instructions described in https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7348459?start=0&tstart=0.

That is, I added and removed the Finnish language, tried reseting the PRAM and also ran sudo languagesetup, selecting Finnish as the language. None of these changed the behaviour.

I wasn't able to find any other suggestions in Google.

Any ideas what I can try?

Is there some cache for language stuff that is out-of-date?

After looking up into the issue more closely, I realised it was only ThunderBird initiated system dialogs that contained Finnish language.

I was able to fix this by downloading Thunderbird again, making sure to download the English version, and then installing it over current installation. This fixed the issues with language dialogs.


What is the difference between "Learn" and "Ignore" in spell checkers When right-clicking a word in Pages and Sublime Text, the user is offered to either "Learn" or "Ignore" the word.

What is the difference between learning and ignoring? To me it would seem the same, that the word is simply "accepted" by the spell-checker and not highlighted as incorrect (red) anymore.

But since it's two different choices, there's obviously a difference. Couldn't find information about this anywhere.

"Learn" means you are teaching this word to the machine so it knows the word for the future and even suggests you the word if you type it slightly wrong in the future.

"Ignore" means that the machine still does not know the word, but does only not highlight it as wrong anymore in this specific case when you selected "ignore".


Sips: resize image's smallest side, not largest side The command sips -z 2000 image.jpg will resize the biggest side of an image to 2000 if it is greater than 2000, while preserving the original aspect ratio.
Is there a similar command that will resize the smallest side of an image to 2000 if it is greater than 2000, while preserving the original aspect ratio?
The rationale behind this request is that if I try to downsize the greatest side of an image to 2000, it will greatly affect the resolution of panoramas and other long/wide images.

Apparently using ImageMagick yields more favorable results when compared to sips, so using ImageMagick instead might be better. The command to do so is:
convert image.jpg -resize '2000x2000^>' image-resized.jpg

The 2000x2000^ resizes the image so that its shortest side is at least 2000 pixels. So, for example:
6000x4000 → 3000x2000
4000x6000 → 2000x3000

The > character prevents it from acting upon images that would be upscaled, and as a result:
600x400 → 600x400
8000x1500 → 8000x1500


How to change the default location of the screen shot? I use Command + Shift + 4 + Space to screen shot.

But you know the default place of the screen shot is Desktop.

So, how can I change the default location? I want to the location to be a custom document folder, not desktop.

You can change this with a bash command.

Open the Terminal Application and enter this:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures/

And change '~/Pictures/' to your preferred Location. For example, if you have in your User folder a Folder named 'screenshots' then change the command to:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/screenshots/

Press enter to execute command
Next: Enter: killall SystemUIServerto reinitialize the 'SystemUIServer' to adopt changes

For more information check out: oxdaily


Do I have to turn on find my Mac on my computer? Does find my Mac have to be turned on under the system preferences in the computer or can I somehow link the serial number to my icloud and still be able to use it? Asking because I believe my macbook pro was stolen and I didn't have find my Mac turned on in the physical computer.

You are out of luck. If you didn't turn on Find My Mac in System Preferences > iCloud your MacBook was never registered, and cannot broadcast its location, or respond to location pings. If you have all the important information about the computer (serial number & whatnot) you should report the theft to your local police station, constabulary, gendarmerie, etc.


Set Print Range in Numbers.app Is there any way to set a print range in Apple Numbers.app spreadsheets, to print just a subset of cells rather than entire document?

Apple's Numbers is designed in a fundamentally different way than Microsoft's Excel or other spreadsheet solutions.  Numbers uses "Canvases" instead of large tables of thousands of columns and rows.  This allows for placing tables, even those made up of a single cell, anywhere on the canvas needed.  Instead of merging cells and hiding borders, (which of course can be done with Numbers) Numbers allows more freedom to create a document designed for printing.  For example, placing text, charts or even graphics anywhere on the canvas that seems logical.  Setting the print range in Excel only allows for a continuous subset of cells.  Also, the ability to have several tables on a single canvas allows for more creative use of the space.  (See this Apple Support article on printing with Numbers.)
One can still use a very large data set in a large table as well.  However, this concept of making spreadsheets on canvases can open up many opportunities for print layouts.  The OP does not state how their spreadsheet is laid out, but it appears from the brief description that is styled in a traditional manner, which is perfectly acceptable, but this limits how it can be presented for printing.
One method I use, particularly with printing off invoice or expense type sheets, is to keep the working data on a separate sheet from my print sheet.  Using formulas, such as one would use in Excel, data can be easily and automatically
displayed in a printable format.
Below is a very simple example.  The Data sheet contains the data not for printing.  The [Print] sheet contains two simple tables with a colored rectangle object in the background.  Changing data in the Data sheet changes the totals in the Print sheet accordingly.  In the case of a traditional spreadsheet, a subset of the table could be displayed in the print sheet, each cell with a reference to the corresponding data sheet cells desired to be printed.  This table could then be formatted for printing by adjusting fonts, size and scaling as noted in the Apple Numbers Help link above.

Data Sheet [Non print]

Print Sheet

Print Sheet - Print view


Force Messages to send as SMS on Yosemite I have an iPhone with iOS 8 and a Mac with Yosemite, which means I can send SMS messages from my Mac (which I absolutely love). However there are some special cases that it doesn't handle as I would like it to.

For instance, my sister has an iPad with iMessage set up, but she uses an Android phone (i.e. no iMessage). If I try to send her a message from my Mac, it usually (not sure if always) sends to her iMessage account. This is a problem since she doesn't always have her iPad with her so sometimes she doesn't see my message for a long time. On my phone my messages with her are split into two threads, one for iMessages and one for SMS messages, so I always reply to the correct address. However, on the Mac they are merged into one thread. So sometimes she sends me a SMS from her phone, which I receive on the Mac, but when I reply it sends an iMessage.

Is there a way to either force Messages on the Mac to send to a specific address or to split the thread as it is on the iPhone?

you can choose where your message will go: click on the little down arrow right to the recipient's name, and select the destination Message or iMessage (or even other chat system like jabber or bonjour).


Google search via AppleScript I would like to make a Google search with an AppleScript. The code looks like this:

set search to text returned of (display dialog "Google Search" buttons {"OK"} default answer {""})
open location ("https://www.google.de/#q=" & search)

The problem is, how can I change the spaces to a +?

Here's a subroutine for replacing characters:

on replace_chars(this_text, search_string, replacement_string)
  set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the search_string
  set the item_list to every text item of this_text
  set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the replacement_string
  set this_text to the item_list as string
  set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
  return this_text
end replace_chars

Source: http://www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/sbrt/sbrt-06.html

Between those two lines of AppleScript, insert the following:

set search to replace_chars(search," ","+")


Is it possible to share iCloud Notes with non-Apple device users? Similar to how I can create a doc on Google drive and get a shareable link that allows anyone with that link to view the content.

Is there a way that I can send a link to someone who doesn't have an Apple device so that they can view a note that I've created in the Note application?

The web app for iCloud notes is quite accessible cross platform. I don’t think you can invite a random non-iCloud account, but have you tried that?

I do know photo sharing works for people on Linux / windows (pc and phone) and android using web version of the iCloud photos, so notes or files might be next to ship.

Worst case, get them to create an AppleID / iCloud and you’ll be able to collaborate with them going forward even if Apple doesn’t open up notes sharing more widely outside of registered accounts.


OSX password issue with special chars in recovery mode I had an issue with my MacBook (latest version) and I tried restarting in recovery mode (cmd+r).
The issue is that my password contains a special character (umbreakable space) for security reasons  with an alt+Space combination.
However the recovery mode does not consider the alt key and the default space is typed instead, therefore the password is incorrect.

Now I’m stuck in recovery mode when booting anyhow with the black screen and a grey lock and I don’t know how to get out of there.

Note that my hard disk is encrypted if that has any impact.

What happens if you go in to terminal and type resetpassword?  That should take you to a dialog to reset your password.  You have to select your disk and your user account along the way...

Warning:  Changing your password like this might break your keychain.


Desktop Background is blank I change my background in system preferences and it says my background is a picture, but my desktop is still a blank gray. How can I fix this?

Try opening Terminal, type killall Dock and press return. Dock controls the desktop background in Lion.

If it's still grey after that, try rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop then killall Dock


webcam not working anymore I was using Skype, and suddenly the internal iSight camera stopped working. It's not the first time this has happened. I already fixed this problem with a reboot, but I would like to find a solution without a reboot. Is there a way to push the driver back, or do some more accurate diagnostic?

I have MacOSX 10.6.7 on a macbook 13" unibody.

I found out that the camera is taken over, somehow, by the google talk browser plugin. I solved by doing the following. From a terminal, I issued the following command

ps uaxw |grep Firefox

It will show a list of the processes under Firefox. One of them may be something like

sbo      21173   0.0  0.1   414040   2492   ??  S     5May11   0:07.47
   /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app/Contents/
   MacOS/plugin-container /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/googletalkbrowserplugin.plugin
   -omnijar /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/omni.jar 21168
   gecko-crash-server-pipe.21168 org.mozilla.machname.855559451 plugin

I wrapped the long line. I then proceeded to kill this process (the pid is the first number)

  kill 21173

and the iSight started working again.


Data use for email to multiple recipients Does sending a large email message to multiple recipients use more data than sending the same email to only one recipient?

No. The large email will be uploaded to the server only once, regardless of how many recipients it has. The server will then take care of sending this large email to all its recipients.


MacBook Air 2020 does not support 100hz display? The display is samsung C34H89x, ultrawide 100hz. I'm connecting it with USB-C and my MacBook Pro supports 100hz, but the air does not. Is that a limitation of the air?

According to MacTracker (fan, not affiliated) the Macbook Air (retina, 13inch, 2018) supports:

  One external display with 5120 by 2880 resolution at up to 60 Hz, Up to two external displays with 4096 by 2304 resolution at up to 60 Hz

The 2020 air is as follows:

  One external 6K display with 6016 by 3384 resolution at 60 Hz, one external 5K display with 5120 by 2880 resolution at 60 Hz, up to two external 4K displays with 4096 by 2304 resolution at up to 60 Hz

So not 100Hz.


Can't edit/delete some events on my iPad's calendar I've had a problem since upgrading my iPad to IOS 5 in that I can't seem to edit/delete some events on my calendar. It mainly seems to be repeating events that have the problem. Any ideas about what may be causing this?

Have you checked your www.iCloud.com account to see if the events are editable/duplicated or have any errors in fact. Also check your icloud settings and make sure in (Mail-Contacts-Calendars) you only have one calendar synced, and make that one you iCloud one.


How to increase font size of Eclipse globally? I'd like to know how to increase the font size for Eclipse so it adjusts the whole GUI to not look so darn small on my screen.

For NetBeans there is the --font-size switch which can be set in netbeans.conf, is there something similar for Eclipse?

(In case it's useful, I'm on Snow Leopard.)

Go to Preferences > General > Appearance > Colors and Fonts, expand the "Basic" folder and select "Text Font" and change that to whatever size you like.

For Eclipse Neon:
To Increase Ctrl +
To reduce Ctrl -
for Macs, use the command key, not the control key


App Store Blank and Gray I have an iPhone 3G with iOS 4.1, but don't have an Apple ID. I just got this used phone recently. It is jailbroken and unlocked to work on T-Mobile. I looked on the app store and noticed some apps that required a higher iOS. Looking online, I edited SystemVersion.plist with iFile to make the system think I have iOS 5.1. The app store worked perfectly then (still don't have an ID). Then I tried to get even higher to iOS 6.1.1, but I noticed the app store was all gray. I tried to put the iOS back to 4.1, but the problem persisted. I am unable to restore the phone. Is there any backup or other solution to this problem I could use?

Have you tried resetting settings?
Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings

If that doesn't fix your problem, try signing in to the App Store. I believe you can do this from the Settings > Store menu.


Pictures folder on iMac has a 4 GB Photo Library In my Home directory on my iMac I have a Pictures folder. In it is a 4 GB Photo Library named Photos Library.photoslibrary. I have iCloud Photo Library turned on, and it has been on for more than a year.

Why do I have this 4 GB photo library on my iMac? Shouldn't all photos be in iCloud? Can I delete it or should I just leave it?

Leave it. Photos still needs to download your Photos when you decide to view them. It will either download a device-optimized or full-resolution copy depending on your chosen settings.

Think of this file as a local cache of your photo library, although it also contains other things that are not stored in iCloud, such as Smart Albums and facial recognition data. If you delete this file Photos will need to recreate it and rebuild your library from iCloud data. In particular, it will need to re-download thumbnails for all of your photos.

The idea is that if you do run low on storage, Photos will start purging photos you haven’t viewed in a while, in albums you haven’t specifically marked as Download Originals to this Mac.


VLC 3: Adding file to existing playlist (enqueue) VLC 2.x.x used to have the option --playlist-enqueue to add a file to the existing VLC Playlist. VLC 3.0.4 no longer has that option

$ vlc  --playlist-enqueue ~/Music/John_Mayer_Daughters.opus
VLC media player 3.0.4 Vetinari (revision 3.0.4-0-gf615db6332)
vlc: unknown option or missing mandatory argument `--playlist-enqueue'
Try `vlc --help' for more information.

Running /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC with arguments will result in another instance of VLC being created.

$ vlc ~/Music/John_Mayer_Daughters.opus
VLC media player 3.0.4 Vetinari (revision 3.0.4-0-gf615db6332)
[00007fbacb531620] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[00007fbacb500980] main libvlc error: interface "(null),none" initialization failed
[00007fbacb500980] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.

There does not seem to be any setting for VLC to run in a single instance only.

Question

How can I:

Add a file into VLC's playlist from the command line?
Do the above without launching another instance of VLC?

To add a file to VLC playlist from the command line (without starting a new instance) use the following syntax:

open -a /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC <your_media>

To prevent VLC from autoplaying the media you just added, go to Preferences > Show all > Interface > Main Interfaces > macosx and uncheck the box "Auto-playback of new items" below the Behavior subheading.


Can't navigate dialog using keyboard only I checked this other question and I have a problem navigating through dialog boxes that is not answered there.

I'm copying + pasting folders and when the dialog "Stop/Replace/Merge" appears I can't navigate with the TAB because the dialog box never gets focus.

If I click on the dialog box then I can tab between the buttons, but that defeats the point of using the keyboard and slows me down (I have several folders to paste in different locations).

Is this a bug? I do have "Full Keyboard Access" turned on. I also checked this question and nothing there helps me. I already updated to Mojave.

It’s annoying, macOS is generally pretty good with keyboard shortcuts but there are one or two places where it doesn’t work!

I think the dialog does have focus (it’s technically a window and appears ticked in the Window menu, and you can press ⌘M to minimise it) but it just doesn’t allow you to use the keyboard to activate the buttons. Let’s both send feedback to Apple on this.


Is there a way to capture popovers in macOS? I want to capture popovers in macOS, to use them in my blog.
But I couldn't find a good way to do it: whenever I try to capture them as windows (CMD+Shift+4, then spacebar), the area will include the windows they attach to.
Is there a better way to capture the popovers (clean, but including their shadows)?

Found the solution by accident: after the camera icon appears, press and hold ⌘ key, then click the popover or sheet.


MacBook not able to connect to IRC server over Airport I have a MacBook Air connected to an Airport Express and I am trying to connect to an IRC server.

I am able to connect to the IRC server down the street at the cafe.  I am able to connect to the IRC server over LTE when tethered to my phone.  I contacted my ISP and they were able to connect to the IRC server.

Hence, I believe there is some setting with the Airport Express that needs to be adjusted.

Here is output from nmap, traceroute, ping:

$ nmap -sT -p 6697,6667 irc.xxxx.com

Starting Nmap 6.46 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2014-05-14 09:23 PDT
Note: Host seems down. If it is really up, but blocking our ping probes, try -Pn
Nmap done: 1 IP address (0 hosts up) scanned in 3.09 seconds

$ traceroute irc.xxxx.com
traceroute to irc.xxxx.com (64.156.193.80), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  10.0.1.1 (10.0.1.1)  3.066 ms  1.178 ms  1.119 ms
 2  64-46-0-1.aquarius.gw.novuscom.net (64.46.0.1)  1.421 ms  1.338 ms  1.308 ms
 3  novus-entertainment-10000m-van.demarc.spectrumnet.us (216.243.24.2)  1.354 ms  1.635 ms  1.275 ms
 4  69.90.98.210 (69.90.98.210)  1.236 ms  1.635 ms  1.312 ms
 5  10ge-xe-0-0-0.van-hc21e-dis-1.peer1.net (216.187.115.129)  1.408 ms  2.051 ms  1.374 ms
 6  10ge.xe-0-2-1.sea-coloc-dis-1.peer1.net (216.187.89.186)  4.753 ms  5.010 ms  4.656 ms
 7  10ge.xe-4-0-0.sea-wes7-dis-1.peer1.net (216.187.89.189)  4.766 ms  4.833 ms  4.973 ms
 8  xe-10-0-0.edge1.seattle3.level3.net (4.59.232.1)  5.223 ms  5.053 ms  4.957 ms
 9  ae-31-51.ebr1.seattle1.level3.net (4.69.147.150)  34.778 ms  35.108 ms  35.086 ms
10  ae-7-7.ebr2.sanjose1.level3.net (4.69.132.49)  35.043 ms  34.841 ms  34.659 ms
11  ae-2-2.ebr2.sanjose5.level3.net (4.69.148.141)  34.890 ms  34.928 ms  35.195 ms
12  ae-6-6.ebr2.losangeles1.level3.net (4.69.148.201)  34.953 ms  34.929 ms  34.774 ms
13  ae-82-82.csw3.losangeles1.level3.net (4.69.137.26)  35.948 ms  34.772 ms  35.104 ms
14  ae-71-71.ebr1.losangeles1.level3.net (4.69.137.5)  34.706 ms
ae-81-81.ebr1.losangeles1.level3.net (4.69.137.9)  35.080 ms
ae-91-91.ebr1.losangeles1.level3.net (4.69.137.13)  35.781 ms
15  ae-5-5.car1.sandiego1.level3.net (4.69.133.205)  49.450 ms  35.271 ms  44.764 ms
16  giglinx-inc.car1.sandiego1.level3.net (4.79.33.230)  35.403 ms  35.212 ms  35.657 ms
17  * *^C

$ ping irc.xxxx.com
PING irc.xxxx.com (64.156.xxx.xx): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2

When you network the Mac directly into the novuscom device (bypassing the Aiport) are you able to connect to your IRC?

Is the Airport Express acting as a DHCP server?  Is the novuscom device also acting as a DHCP server?  Problem might be the double NAT.

If so does putting the Airport Express into bridge mode fix the problem?

This discussion also looks promising:

Apple's routers do not use UPnP.

They do offer a similar type of feature, which is called NAT-PMP, or NAT Port Mapping Protocol

Open AirPort Utility - Click Manual Setup
Click the Internet icon
Click the NAT tab below the icons
Insure that there is a check mark next to Enable NAT Port Mapping Protocol

Click the Configure Port Mappings button if you need to specify specific ports to use and set them up on the next window that appears


How do you turn off Bluetooth on startup using MacBook Air and macOS Sierra? Every time I turn on my laptop (from a completely off state) the Bluetooth is on by default. How can I prevent it from turning on at startup and then only turn it on (manually) when I want to connect any Bluetooth devices like mouse and keyboard?

If you're still looking for solutions to this, you could try this Terminal command:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist ControllerPowerState 0

Source: Apple Support Communities thread


Forcing a script to run in english My Mac is running Mavericks in English, but because my region is set to Portugal  and my keyboard is the portuguese one, when I run some scripts they shows messages in portuguese. I generally hate to run software created by non-native people in Portuguese because the translation is always crappy. I end with messages like "cubra is not defined". What the hell is a "cubra"?

So, these scripts are reading something from the system and switching to portuguese. Is there a way to force them to always run in english?

My terminal has this option selected:

Terminal > Preferences > Settings > [profile] > Advanced > Set locale environment variables on startup

It depends upon the program. If it uses gettext which is a common library for doing internationalization then setting the LANG environment variable to en_US (or en_UK if you want British Enligh vs. American English) should do the trick.

If you only want specific applications to use english messages then you can alias the command to something like LANG=en_US command-you-want-in-english.

Aliasing is dependant upon which shell you are using but in bash (the default shell on MacOSX) you would put the following command in your .bashrc or .bash_profile:

alias command='LANG=en_US command'

When in doubt - look to the man page or manual for the command you are running to see if they give details on how their internationalization is implemented and how you as a user can control it.


Family Sharing, iCloud Drive I remember years ago, family sharing was a cool feature but I didn't get involved with it as I didn't like the fact one had to share the same credit card / payment method, across all accounts.
Thus if I added my Wife and Son to my family sharing, they would both be using my card whenever they made purchases.
This was years ago, recently I moved to the 2TB iCloud Drive plan, and I'm now interested in sharing that resource, but only if I can keep our accounts/payment/files self-sovereign.
I searched for authoritative documentation, but can't see any.
If I just shared iCloud Drive, can I keep these aspects separate per user, whilst sharing my space?

Yes, when you set up family sharing it will ask what you want to share. You can share iCloud storage space without enabling purchase sharing, which does still require the family account organizer pay for the family purchases.
Here you can see I’m sharing iCloud, Apple Music, and Apple TV+, and Purchase Sharing is not enabled.


Prohibited symbol trying to boot into Recovery Mode MacBook Pro early 2011 model with El Capitan (10.11.1 - edit - just noticed there's an update. Not sure if relevant but I'm running it now). I can boot fine into OS X and log in. But I'm trying to boot into Recovery Mode (Apple Key + R on boot) but it always gives me the Prohibited symbol. I can boot into Internet Recovery (Apple Key + Options + R) just fine. I can open Disk Utility while logged in with my user, so I ran the First Aid on the disk with no problems found.

The only thing I can see an issue with is there is an old bootcamp partition on the drive.  I didn't put it there, it's just always been there but I've never used it.

The reason I want to boot into Recovery Mode so I can restore my current HDD to an SSD I will connect via USB then swap them out. I just did this on my other (exact model) Macbook yesterday without a problem.

This is exactly the type of convoluted situation that calls for having a 3rd party software cloning utility in your toolset. If you need to transfer Apps, system settings & one or more user profiles to the replacement SSD then using a cloning tool would be ideal. It would enable you to clone just the boot partition to the SSD after which you would need to reinstall the OS from an internet restore session so as to get a functional local restore partition on the SSD as well. This can be done without harming the data that already exists on the drive.

If you want to reuse the original drive for backups as an example, then once you can successfully boot from the SSD you can reconnect the old drive & use Disk Utility to repartition it so you have access to its entire storage volume.


2009 MacBook no longer boots after SSD upgrade I recently installed a new SSD on my 2009 MacBook and it ran fine for less than a day. However, it stopped recognising the keyboard and trackpad.

As a workaround I tried using an external keyboard and a Bluetooth mouse but now it won't even turn on.

I don't know if the power button is faulty or not, but I know the battery is definitely charged.

I tried taking out each of the RAM modules but that made no difference, so either they're both fried or this isn't the problem. I also tried using the SSD/HDD but it still won't turn on. Even the white light that turns on at start up or during sleep won't turn on. Absolutely nothing.

How can I troubleshoot this further?

Edit: After it failed to detect the keyboard/track pad,  I did put the old Hdd back in. So when it stopped turning on at all,  it had the original hdd in it.

Also important : I had to reset the date (back to 2015) in order to be able to install El Capitan. Otherwise, it showed the error,  'this file can't be verified and may have been corrupted or tampered with'

Take out the SSD and put in the original hard drive, see if it will work then. If not, take it to an Apple Store. They will run a diagnostic to see what's wrong. Don't tell them you've opened it yourself and don't leave in the SSD otherwise they're gonna tell you the warranty is voided. BTW in case you're a smoker, I would also recommend cleaning the inside.


How can I highlight text on a screenshot using Markup in macOS? When I take a screenshot in macOS Mojave, I get a handy screen with Markup tools to edit the screenshot. But I’ve never been able to get the “highlight” feature to work.

I want to highlight text on a page in yellow, similar to a highlighter pen. It looks like it should do it, but the highlighter tool is always disabled. Nothing I do seems to enable it.

Does this tool work? How can I use it?

You can open the image with Preview and build your own sticky. Under the Tools menu go to Annotate and select a rectangle. Adjust size of rectangle and then set fill color to yellow and the line color to none. This results in a yellow rectangle. Now under Annotate select text. This puts a small text box on your image. Move this to inside yellow box and type in your own text. Now save the file as a  jpeg or whatever you like and your image will have a yellow sticky on it.  This maybe be to long a process for you but it works. See image below for an example.


Error Installing Jekyll on Mac I'm trying to install Jekyll, a simple, blog-aware, static site generator.  When I attempted to run the terminal command gem install jekyll, I got this error:

I then tried to update my RubyGems, using the command sudo gem update --system.  That didn't work.  Hopefully, I don't have to re-install Ruby.  What a headache that would be!

Following Seth Warburton's steps on Install Jekyll in OSX Mavericks, try adding sudo to the install command:

sudo gem install jekyll

If you need to update or re-install Ruby, consider using an isolated edition via brew.


Can AppleScript or any other script measure a Macbook's wifi signal strength? At my home I have two separate routers due to poor signals when being in one location opposed to another.

When I work on my Macbook from different locations I find it annoying when I have to switch between routers. The eventual goal is to run a more complex script under launchd to identify if a better networks is present and automate the change over.

I've tried experimenting with networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder and networksetup -listallhardwareports but have had no luck.

In AppleScript or any other scripting language a way to measure two router's strength similar to what's visible on the menu bar's wifi signal?

If your main priority is to have your Mac automatically switch to next strongest access point.....

Your Mac can do that for you already.

Of course you have to have set up both routers as Automatically Join and at the top of your list.

Then tell it to roam and it will automatically connect to next stronger signal network.

Even better is if your SSID and WPA are the same for both.

To turn the roaming on in case it was off do this in Terminal:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.airport.opproam enabled -bool true

Then set it up to automatically join next strongest access point

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport prefs joinMode=Strongest

You are done, now you can move around and your Mac will keep you connected to the strongest signal.

More reading material here

And Apple explains it how it works

If you still prefer scripting this process here is the list of Airport commands /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport


FileVault Performance Compromise? I'm thinking of using FileVault to secure my computer - it looks like an ideal solution for everything. However, I'm wondering - will it effect the performance / battery life of my computer significantly?

I've got a 2010 MBP with 8gb RAM and a 500gb WD HDD, and the battery at the moment is good for about six hours. I'm running OSX10.7.1.

I can't comment on how Lion's FileVault 2 affects battery life, but I've had it running (Full Disk Encryption) on an older (2007) MacMini with 3GB of RAM for a few months, and it is a great solution for keeping a computer that might get stolen secure.

Beyond the initial encryption, which took a few hours, I really haven't noticed any performance difference. Given that this is an older machine, any negligible difference I might have missed would be even smaller on a newer machine like yours.

I was curious about this myself at the time and found this AnandTech article, which boils it down to a negligible CPU load, and a slight hit to your hard drive's throughput. They were using an SDD though, so the results may not exactly correspond with a spinning disk.

So if you're reading and writing to the disk a lot, you might notice a slight decrease in battery life as reads and writes will take a bit longer, but I doubt it'd be anything too drastic.


Is it possible to transfer images from iPhone to SD card directly? There is: http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MD822ZM/A/lightning-to-sd-card-camera-reader

It’s easy to download photos and videos from your digital camera to your iPad or iPad mini
After you insert the SD card into the reader, your iPad automatically opens the Photos app, which lets you choose which photos and videos to import, then organises them into albums.

Description mentions only iPad (not iPhone)
Description mentions copying from SD card into the device

What I'm trying to do?
Travelling. Don't want to take computer with me. I'd rather rather use a spacious SD card and use it a storage to offload photos / videos to keep my internal memory free (allowing me to shoot / record more)
Possible?

From my own testing, I have verified that unfortunately, you can only use the SD card reader with the iPad. You can also only transfer photos/videos from the SD card to the iPad, not the other way around. I think these would be great features (take it from a 8GB iPhone 5c owner) to have, but unfortunately they are not available at this time.

You can send feedback to Apple at http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html as I have.

Edit: Now you can use the Lightning to SD Card adapter with the iPhone if you update to iOS 9.2! However, you can still only import from the SD card to the iOS Device and not from iOS Device to SD card. They have even updated the item description to mention iPhones at http://www.apple.com/ca/shop/product/MJYT2AM/A/lightning-to-sd-card-camera-reader. Still not sure about iPod touch (don't have one).


How do I take a screenshot in iOS without hitting the Home Button and the Power Button? I would like to take a picture of this Apple Pay popup, while TouchID is active. However this seems impossible to do, since the TouchID sensor is also the home button, which prevents a screenshot from being taken.

Is there any alternative to taking a screen shot?

You could enable AssistiveTouch in Settings > General > Accessibility and then clicking on it's icon, and tapping Device > Take Screenshot.


How can I put the Dashboard icon on my dock in Mountain Lion? I have no Dashboard icon in my Dock.

How can I put it on my Dock as there is no option to 'Keep in Dock' that I can find?

Any app that is currently running can be pinned to the dock by right clicking it, and choosing keep in dock, but occasionally you find a program like Dashboard or Mission Control or Launchpad etc that overlays the dock area when running thus not letting you add it.  The simplest solution is to find the application within your /applications folder, and simply drag it to the dock, where it should add a suitable shortcut that stays put.

However, I would generally advise for these sort of program that remembering the keyboard shortcut or trackpad gesture is often much faster and results in a less cluttered dock.


How to delete files in /System/Library/Desktop Pictures on Catalina? I tried to delete files in the default desktop picture directory (/System/Library/Desktop Pictures) on macOS 10.15 Catalina with sudo permission but failed.

$ pwd
/System/Library/Desktop Pictures

$ sudo rm *.heic
Password:
rm: cannot remove 'Catalina Clouds.heic': Operation not permitted

Is there a hassle-free way to solve this problem?

As a general rule I do not recommend deleting system files, however, if you really want to remove the default wallpapers you can do the following:

Boot to macOS Recovery by pressing ⌘R when booting the Mac.
Using Terminal, from the Utilities menu, use the following commands:

cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Desktop\ Pictures
rm *.heic
reboot


Blinking yellow light on my Apple Time Capsule What does a blinking yellow light on my 2TB Time Capsule indicate?  Seems as if my WiFi is still working.

Check out Tesserax's Answer on the Apple Support Communities.

      A persistent, flashing amber light indicates that any of the several potential conditions may require your attention:

  The base station has not yet been configured because it is new, or    the reset switch has been set.
  You have selected a security configuration that is not recommended.
  One of several other conditions, such as a disconnected Ethernet cable or invalid IP address has been detected.
     (ref: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305101)

  If you run the AirPort Utility, it will show an amber circle on the summary >page next to the area(s) causing the

  problem. Click on this amber circle and it should provide an explanation.


How do I stream Mac audio to Linux computer? is there any way to stream audio from my Mac to my Linux computer (my av receiver is connected to that)?

I think VLC can stream the audio over the network - take a look at http://www.videolan.org/doc/streaming-howto/en/


Install COBOL on OSX Lion Is there any way to install COBOL on OSX Lion? I tried installing OpenCobol 1.1 for Mac http://www.opencobol.org/ using fink using these command fink install open-cobol-1.0-1. Everything is installed well but when I enter the cobc --help to check OpenCobol status, terminal only returns -bash: cobc: command not found

Any workaround on how to properly configure OpenCobol on OSX Lion? or is there any other way/s to install COBOL on Mac?

Fink installs software in /sw/bin which isn't in your PATH by default. According to the manual you need to run
/sw/bin/pathsetup.sh

after installation.

[This] command runs a little script to help set up your Unix paths (and other things) for use with Fink. In most cases, it will run automatically, and prompt you for permission to make changes. If the script fails, you'll have to do things by hand (see below).
(If you need to do things by hand, and you are using csh or tcsh, you need to make sure that the command source /sw/bin/init.csh is executed during startup of your shell, either by .login, .cshrc, .tcshrc, or something else appropriate. If you are using bash or similar shells, the command you need is . /sw/bin/init.sh, and places where it might get executed include .bashrc and .profile.)
Once you have set up the paths, open a new Terminal.app window, and close all other ones. That's it, you now have a base Fink system installed.


Bought a movie on Apple TV 2. Can't play on computer My Apple TV 2 is configured to use my single iTunes account. When I use my Macbook Pro to login into that account in iTunes, I can't play a move I bought (and can play) on the Apple TV. I get this error message:

This computer is already associated with an Apple ID

I've tried "Store -> Authorize this computer" in iTunes, but it makes no difference.

Shouldn't I be able to play this movie on my laptop?

Movies rented on your Apple TV are not transferable to any other device and can only be viewed on your Apple TV.

See here under 'additional information'. If you purchase on your computer, you can move to Apple TV, but not the other way around it seems.


How to disable 3D acceleration on the Mac Book Air? I have a Mac Book Air 2010 with an NVidia GeForce 320M chip. When I use Xcode 6 in the View Debugging tool (a 3D interface that allows debugging the view hierarchy of an app),  the computer crashes and then reports an error with GPU driver (similar bug reported here).

One solution might be to disable the 3D acceleration with a utility called gfxCardStatus. Unfortunately, this solution does not work for the Mac Book Air. Is there any other method to tweak the graphic driver?

Many thanks!

One way of disabling your graphics is safe mode. I don't know if your xcode debug tool will run in safe mode but unless you know otherwise, I think it's worth a shot. good luck

OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?

  Safe Mode in Mac OS X v10.5 or later also disables Quartz Extreme (hardware accelerated graphics). Applications that depend on Quartz Extreme do not open in Safe Mode, and the Mac OS X menu bar will appear solid even if "Translucent Menu Bar" is enabled in Desktop & Screen Saver preferences.


ping: Lacking privilege for raw socket I installed ping/inetutils via Homebrew inetutils on macOS 11.1 (20C69) Darwin 20.2.0 but can't use ping even as root:
$ sudo ping 8.8.8.8
ping: Lacking privilege for raw socket.

Setting S bit didn't help
$ ls -l `which ping`
lrwxr-xr-x  1 denys  staff  15 Jun 10  2015 /usr/local/opt/inetutils/libexec/gnubin/ping -> ../../bin/gping
$ sudo chmod u+s /usr/local/opt/inetutils/bin/gping
$ sudo chmod u+s /usr/local/bin/ping

Most likely the owner of gping is not root so setting the S bit alone won't help. You need to change the owner to root first and set the S bit afterwards, you also need to make sure to change that on the actual binary not on any symlinks pointing to it.
$ gping 8.8.8.8
ping: Lacking privilege for raw socket.
$ ls -l /opt/homebrew/Cellar/inetutils/*/bin/gping
-rwxr-xr-x  1 verence  staff  113824 Jan 25 14:29 /opt/homebrew/Cellar/inetutils/1.9.4_2/bin/gping
$ sudo chown root /opt/homebrew/Cellar/inetutils/*/bin/gping
$ sudo chmod +s /opt/homebrew/Cellar/inetutils/*/bin/gping
$ ls -l /opt/homebrew/Cellar/inetutils/*/bin/gping
-rwsr-sr-x  1 root  staff  113824 Jan 25 14:29 /opt/homebrew/Cellar/inetutils/1.9.4_2/bin/gping
$ gping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=0 ttl=112 time=1.423 ms
^C

PS: /opt/homebrew is the default installation directory for Homebrew on M1 Macs, use /usr/local instead for Intel Macs.


Open a large XML file I am trying to open a relatively large XML file (50mb) but my Mac just won't open it: No errors though, just been waiting for almost 10 minutes but nothing happens.

Tried using TextEditor, Xcode

Any other suggestions?

Depending on the source of the file, you may wish to investigate its contents in other ways than just opening it (double clicking).  For this, you should use the command line.

Some suggested starting points (where "whatever.xml" is the name of the file):

file whatever.xml

This will tell you what type the file is.  Not by file extension, but by actual examination of the contents.

head whatever.xml

This will show you the first ten lines of the file.  However, be warned: It is possible to have an entire 50 MB XML file consisting of a single line.  Press Ctrl-C to stop if it starts spewing garbage.  (Yes, Control C, not Command-C.)

To just view the file without even the possibility of editing it:

less whatever.xml

If the file does consist of very long lines, for reading it, you could force periodic line wraps (formatting):

fmt whatever.xml | less

But actually, less will wrap the lines by default unless you tell it not to.  For no wrapping of lines (so you can use sideways arrow keys to scroll):

less -S whatever.xml

It is a good probability that one of these commands will disclose a problem with the file.


iOS: Adding googlemail account button does not respond So I have two google accounts already set up on my phone. These were set up prior to iOS 12 update. Now when I try to add a new Googlemail account, nothing happened a when I tap on the button in “settings > passwords and accounts > add account”.

Any ideas what might be going on? It can’t be a security thing because I don’t even to the screen which asks for credentials.

Same as that - button doesn’t work.

I added my gmail account via Exchange instead. Works fine!

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.imore.com/how-set-exchange-accounts-your-iphone-ipad-or-ipod-touch%3famp