Can a Body Dent on Mac book pro be repaired? I have a Mac book pro 15 inch mid 2010 & there is a small dent between the touch pad & space bar as i dropped a metal ball by accident however it does not effect the performance of my Laptop at all, can it be repaired ? It does't look good...!!!

Not at the Apple Store.  They will give you a quote to replace the housing.  You'll have to bring it to a body shop to find out if it can be repaired!


Edit (colorized) terminal output before printing? A very similar question has already been asked on SuperUser but none of the answers works satisfactorily for me.

I can actually get almost what I want by simply:

Running the Terminal for the whole session with the terminal width that I want to appear in the printed output, and
Using Command-P (⌘-P) to print the terminal scrollback history (including colors!) to PDFwriter.

However, I can't then edit the terminal scrollback history before printing.

If I save the Terminal Saved Output with ⌘-S, I can edit the text, but it is plaintext only—no colors.

I want to use this printing capability to create correctly colorized example output PDFs demonstrating the correct use of command line tools, so it is important that I be able to edit the scrollback history for clarity.  For instance, if I make a typo halfway through a long demonstration, I don't want the mistake to appear in the PDF to confuse students/readers, but I also don't want to restart the demonstration.

Really I would like to be able to add page breaks at specific points, and have page numbering.  But at the very least I must be able to edit the text before it is turned into a PDF.

How can I do this on Mac OS X?

(I'm running Lion, 10.7.4.)

Before starting your session, run the command bash | tee stdout.rtf. This starts a new bash session, recording the output in a file stdout.rtf. Now, simply edit stdout.rtf and print.


Which process is using port 4000 (identified as remoteanything by nmap)? I've run nmap -sS [computer ip] and see that i only have one service running:

PORT     STATE SERVICE
4000/tcp open  remoteanything

What service is this? Should i close it? I've googled and only found some shady stuff: http://remote-anything.com/
Maybe it is used by some of my other programs?

nmap just makes a guess at the service here, as basically any application can bind to any port. To see which specific application it is in your case, run

lsof -i :4000


Linux 'Byobu' equivelant for mac So at home ive been a linux user for a while, and frequently use byobu in the terminal. After a little searching I was unable to find anything like it for a mac, which I now have to use at work. I'm curious as to there being any software available to macs that can do this, or has a similar setup.

No need to look for an equivalent. It's available for the Mac. You can quickly and easily install it using the excellent Homebrew package manager. Once you have Homebrew installed, just type brew install byobu from the Terminal. It'll download the source, configure and install it.


Uptime since boot excluding sleep for osx yosemite? How can a I get the total uptime since boot (excluding the sleep time)?

I can use the uptime command which shows how long since the last boot, but this does not differentiate between active use and sleep or hibernation.

As far as I know there is no simple command executed in Terminal to get your desired result.

Here is an example for a workaround to get the uptime and the sleep time(s):

uptime && pmset -g log|grep 'date'|grep -E ' Wake | Sleep '|grep -v 'Dark Wake'

with date: dd/mm/yy (example: 23/07/15)

Example (10.9.5 Virtual Machine):

machinename:~ user$ uptime && pmset -g log|grep '23/07/15'|grep -E ' Wake | Sleep '|grep -v 'Dark Wake'
14:59  up  1:09, 3 users, load averages: 0.58 0.47 0.51
23/07/15 13:51:39 GMT+2  Sleep                  Software Sleep pid=90: Using AC                                             10 secs
23/07/15 13:51:49 GMT+2  Wake                   Wake [CDNVA] due to power-button/User: Using AC                             149 secs
23/07/15 13:54:18 GMT+2  Sleep                  Software Sleep pid=90: Using AC                                             91 secs
23/07/15 13:55:49 GMT+2  Wake                   Wake [CDNVA] due to power-button/User: Using AC                             1872 secs
23/07/15 14:27:01 GMT+2  Sleep                  Software Sleep pid=90: Using AC                                             7 secs
23/07/15 14:27:08 GMT+2  Wake                   Wake [CDNVA] due to power-button/User: Using AC

Now do the math and calculate the non-sleep uptime. (6540 secs - 108 secs = 6432 secs).

Depending on your operating system and the hibernation mode you set, you may have to alter the grep part in the above command. Check pmset -g log for the appropriate strings. You also may omit the ' Wake ' part of the command to simplfy the output.


MacOS Sierra - Automator/Shortcut to disable proxy? Our company policy allows us to use the company laptop for personal matters, but of course, the proxy prevents us to visit some sites like Netflix etc. So I frequently disable the proxy - I'd like to have a shortcut or a more convenient way, than actually digging through the menu every time. I tried Automator, but it doesn't seem to recognize my click on the "Advanced..." tab in the settings, so it crashes at that step:

Is there a way I could set Automator or a keyboard shortcut up to disable the proxy easily? Thanks!

UPDATE:

I tried networksetup -setwebproxystate Wi-Fi off, but it doesn't seem to do anything. After running the command, the proxy setting is still the same:

Instead of using Watch Me Do for scripting System Preferences UI interactions, add a Shell Script action with the following:

networksetup -setautoproxystate Wi-Fi off

where ‘Wi-Fi’ is the name of the network service you are modifying, shown selected in the left sidebar when viewing the Network preference pane.


Firmware Locked Password I have an 2012 imac with the most current
Update software being High Sierra. I've seemed to have locked the firmware and I can't get passed it I don't have a receipt so no in store help. I've put "resetpassword" in terminal, I've took out the ram, I've made a bookable removable disk, I've put the original DVD that came with it and at this point I have a great looking paper weigjt. Please Help!!!

Firmware passwords are a security measure intended to stop a stolen Mac from being used. Quite correctly, in my view, Apple won't help you unless you have a receipt or some other way of establishing ownership.
Have a read of this from Topher Kessler which talks about how the firmware protection is implemented and the steps needed to erase the firmware password.
If you do find a way to bypass the firmware password, you probably should not publish it here.


Limit cellular data usage on iOS I have a cellular data contract which offers me a very small amount of data every month. Going over this data limit causes me to automatically be charged for an extra gigabyte, which I want to avoid.

On Android phones it is possible to set a data cap which prevents you from using a certain amount of data. So, for example, you can set the limit at 100 MB and your cellular data will turn off once you reach that limit.

I have noticed a significant amount of “system services” data usage on my iPhone (which Apple does not allow you to control or disable all), which is why I am afraid I will inadvertently shoot over the data limit by accident.

I am aware that there are third party applications which have widgets showing you your data usage, but this is not what I’m looking for.

One possibility is getting notifications when you’ve reached some limit, such as 100 MB. While not ideal, this helps in controlling data usage. However, my experience with the app I tried, My Data Manager, was quite lousy: it alerted me of my limit at the end of the day, long after I had, without realizing, spent 1 GB  of LTE data.

Another possibility is using a burner Android phone, putting the SIM card in it, creating a personal hotspot and using that with my iPhone. The Android phone would have the data limit instead of the iPhone. However, this is obviously a silly idea in practice.

So does iOS have a similar feature, either on vanilla iOS, a third-party app (e.g. through an automatically VPN), or some other app which makes monitoring this data passively easier (like the ones mentioned above)? Or is it the assumption by Apple that all iPhone users have unlimited data plans?

It is not possible to have the phone disable your cellular data use when you reach a certain amount of usage, nor is it possible for it to notify you.

My experience is that most networks offer a service to notify you when you reach or just before you reach the limit, and some offer the option to cut off your data when you reach your limit taking you to a page where you can buy more.

It is unfortunate that this is the way it is, but I wouldn't speculate that Apple presumes everyone has unlimited data, but that data limits are a network issue, and that network providers often provide their own solutions to this, if your network doesn't that is unfortunate, but perhaps a consideration for when you choose your next network provider.


Installing fonts from terminal instead of Font Book? I know how do install new fonts using Font Book.

Is there also a way to install fonts from the terminal, using some smart shell command?

You can simply copy them into /Library/Fonts (for system wide use) or ~/Library/Fonts (for use by current user).


MacBook Pro 2009 won't go to sleep when lid is closed My macbook pro 2009 stopped hibernating after closing the lid, also keyboard back light seems stopped working as well, I tried LabTick but no luck.

Assertion status system-wide:
   BackgroundTask                 0
   ApplePushServiceTask           0
   UserIsActive                   1
   PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep    0
   PreventSystemSleep             0
   ExternalMedia                  0
   PreventUserIdleSystemSleep     1
   NetworkClientActive            0
Listed by owning process:
pid 139(coreaudiod): [0x0000008f000101e7] 00:09:05 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "com.apple.audio.Boom2Engine:0.context.preventuseridlesleep"
    Created for PID: 348.
   pid 98(hidd): [0x0000004900090168] 00:10:15 UserIsActive named: "com.apple.iohideventsystem.queue.tickle"
    Timeout will fire in 109 secs Action=TimeoutActionRelease
No kernel assertions.
Idle sleep preventers: IODisplayWrangler

Looks like that well-known Mac-borker.. Boom2

com.apple.audio.Boom2Engine:0.context.preventuseridlesleep

Uninstall it [your speakers will last longer] or see if there's an update that fixes the issue.


Mounting Encrypted Core Storage Volume(s) On Startup Okay, so I have three main volumes for my system; one for the OS (SSD) one for users and files (Fusion Drive) and one for backup.

All three are encrypted Core Storage volumes.

The problem is that only the OS volume is unlocked on startup, the other two won't be unlocked until a user logs in. That's fine except that only my system's administrator user is on the OS volume, all the others are on the users and files volume, so they can't login until that volume has been unlocked.

Currently this means that on start-up I need to login as the administrator so that the drives unlock, and then logout and login as the correct user which is is kind of annoying, as really I don't want to login as the administrator at all as it's only there for permissions or recovery).

The two non-OS volumes have their keys stored in the system keychain, with CSUserAgent permitted access, however the name of this tool suggests it won't run until a user logs in.

What I'm wondering is whether there's a way to trigger an unlock sooner without having to do something insecure (like put the password into a script)? Since the passwords are in the system keychain, I thought perhaps I could just permit access to the appropriate process, or even that a script run as root (i.e - a LaunchDaemon with RunAtLoad) might be able to unlock the volume(s)?

Here is a script that automatically unlocks: https://github.com/jridgewell/Unlock

Unlock allows the system to unlock and mount Core Storage encrypted volumes during boot. In other words, this allows you to log in as a user whose home directory is on an encrypted secondary disk without any problems.

Install Lock

Run this in the terminal.

curl -L https://raw.github.com/jridgewell/Unlock/master/install.sh | bash

You will be asked for your login password.
Follow the prompts

The install script will find all Core Storage encrypted volumes connected to
your computer (it will ignore the startup volume).
It will then loop through the volumes it finds and ask you if you want to
unlock the volume during boot.
If you do, it will then ask for the passphrase used to unlock that volume.

Everything should be set up! Restart your computer and log in to test.

Uninstall Lock

Run this in the terminal (you'll be asked for your login password)
to remove all traces from the system.

curl -L https://raw.github.com/jridgewell/Unlock/master/uninstall.sh | bash


Mis-Typed iCloud Email Address. Want to create new iCloud email address I made a foolish mistake when creating my iCloud email address.  There was a misspelling that I did not catch.  Now, my iCloud email is unacceptable to me with this spelling error.  I understand that one can not edit the email address.

Items:  I have iPod Touch, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

AppleID:  I have only one.  It is NOT a mismatch of iCloud email address to AppleID.

Default Email:  This is correct and it is NOT my iCloud id.

Actions taken so far:

on apple.com website, under account management, I deleted the verified iCloud email.
on the ipad, under settings/icloud I clicked "delete account" with addition option of delete everything in lieu of "keep on iPad"

Results:
/fail.
When I reactivate the iCloud on my iPad, the settings automatically revert to the unacceptable iCloud email with the mistyped/misspelled id.

What I Need Help With:
I need someone to help me identify the ways to do the following:

delete the old iCloud id that I don't want
create a new iCloud id (abc@me.com)
associate the new iCloud id with my AppleID and all my iDevices

There are two different ways around this problem.

The first to self help. If you haven't verify the email address that you probably can go back in and change it. Unless you just created this Apple ID hours ago  and can walk away from it and just create a second one that is correct, Apple asks for many other pieces of information such as birthday security questions to factor in front Acacian that would allow you to change the one piece of information that's wrong.

The second is to engage Apple customer support. The Apple support webpage will channel you to iCloud account support staff and it will typically be a web form where you can place your correct contact information and explained the mistake you made. They might be able to assist you with things that you can't do for yourself. Additionally, they speak many languages and can often educate you about your options better than a catchall procedure on the Internet can.


1TB ssd in late 2013 rMBP 2.4 i5 I bought a 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display (Late 2013, 2.4GHz i5), and it only has 128GB storage. I found a 1 TB PCIe that will fit into the rig, but I'm a little confused from what I was reading on Apple. From what I gathered, it says that the 2.6GHz i5 is configurable up to 1TB, but says nothing about the 2.4GHz. Is this just how Apple sells it - they just don't give the option for 1TB on the 2.4 - or will this much storage not actually work on this computer?

According to the folks at iFixit, there aren't any compatible drives out yet.

Source: https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/181479/SSD+possible+%28%29+upgrade+on+ebay#answer181496


Dictate and speak/read text from Terminal I have an idea in mind for a Terminal command I run often. I haven't found answers to these on my own, and they all have to do with voice/dictation:

Dictation in Terminal

Can I dictate to the Terminal? I've tried the standard Fn-Fn, but it only plays the sound effect that it makes when you've cancelled it. No microphone bubble appears either. Is it not possible to do this? I notice that in the Edit menu of Terminal, I find that Start Dictation is not greyed out; it's still an option.

I am positive that Dictation is setup correctly, it works great system-wide.

Reading output from Terminal

Can I get the output of one Terminal window and have it read to me by the system (via AppleScript)?  I am essentially trying to reproduce this behavior with continuous output (I want every line that follows the first to be read):

say. You can download different voices in Mountain Lion (not sure about older versions) and can be looked up from System Preferences

Usage: say [-v voice] [-o out] [-f in | message]

You can use command | say to stream output of the command once its completed.

The famous Vicki voice from Portal.

say -v Vicki Do not adjust your screen. You will be assimilated. The process is quick and painless, stand by


Buying itunes gift card for friend in NL I have a friend's birthday who lives in the Netherlands (I live in the UK). Is there any way I can buy a gift card from the netherlands that will send to them? Googling seems to throw up a lot of sites - not many of which seem trustworthy. Many thanks!

Yes. You can buy them directly from Apple and have it either shipped or emailed to them.


Mouse disconnected after booting Everytime I boot up my iMac (OS X 10.9.3) it doesn't find my mouse. If I unplug the mouse and reconnect it after around 20 seconds, it works.

It's an USB mouse. Every other USB device works fine.

I think this is the entry for the mouse:

  AND :

  Produkt-ID:  0x0001
   Hersteller-ID:   0x13ee
   Version:  0.10
   Seriennummer:    @ɌAB
   Geschwindigkeit: Bis zu 1,5 MBit/s
   Hersteller:  MOON
   Standort-ID: 0x24310000 / 5
   Verfügbare Stromstärke (mA): 100
   Erforderliche Stromstärke (mA):  100

My system language is german but I can change it, if you need this in english.

Perhaps you need to download drivers for the mouse - I've found that personally, my RAT 7 works atrociously on OS X without the drivers and software for it.

It'd help to know what brand and model mouse you have, however generic it may be.


Random keyboard input on shutdown will power up Macbook Pro I am using a 2018 15" Macbook Pro (MR932). It is the base model for the 15". My mac is on Mojave (OS X 10.14).

After I shut down my mac, any random key input will switch my mac back on. I have tried resetting my SMC and the problem still occur. Is it related to software or hardware? It is quite annoying since that sometimes I need to shut down my mac to clean my keyboard. Is there any solution to it?

Assertion status system-wide:
   BackgroundTask                 1
   ApplePushServiceTask           0
   UserIsActive                   1
   PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep    0
   PreventSystemSleep             0
   ExternalMedia                  0
   InternalPreventDisplaySleep    1
   PreventUserIdleSystemSleep     1
   NetworkClientActive            0
Listed by owning process:
   pid 208(mds_stores): [0x0000cfd0000b9a16] 00:00:00 BackgroundTask named: "com.apple.metadata.mds_stores.power"
   pid 178(coreaudiod): [0x0000cc0c00019977] 00:16:04 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "com.apple.audio.BuiltInHeadphoneOutputDevice.context.preventuseridlesleep"
    Created for PID: 384.
   pid 100(hidd): [0x0000c85b00099855] 00:00:00 UserIsActive named: "com.apple.iohideventsystem.queue.tickle.4295221011.3"
    Timeout will fire in 300 secs Action=TimeoutActionRelease
   pid 6959(Folx): [0x0000cccb000199de] 00:12:53 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "PreventUserIdleSystemSleep"
   pid 254(UserEventAgent): [0x0000cce4000b99e5] 00:12:28 BackgroundTask named: "com.apple.AddressBook.ScheduledSync"
    Created for PID: 12084.
   pid 12084(AddressBookSourceSync): [0x0000cce4000199e4] 00:12:28 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "Address Book Source Sync"
    Timeout will fire in 1051 secs Action=TimeoutActionTurnOff
   pid 56(powerd): [0x0000cc19001082f6] 00:02:31 InternalPreventDisplaySleep named: "com.apple.powermanagement.delayDisplayOff"
    Timeout will fire in 148 secs Action=TimeoutActionTurnOff
No kernel assertions.
Idle sleep preventers: IODisplayWrangler

UPDATE

Apple have reply to my Bug Report and it happened to be a feature instead of a bug.

  This issue behaves as intended based on the following:

  This a new feature with laptops where lid open and key presses cause
  system to boot.

  It is called boot on any key press feature.

  We are now closing this bug report.

  If you have questions about the resolution, or if this is still a
  critical issue for you, then please update your bug report with that
  information.

The best way to shut down your Mac is to choose Shut Down from the Apple () menu.
Just as your Mac follows a startup process after it turns on, it follows a shutdown process before it turns off. That process includes automatically quitting all open apps and logging out of your macOS user account.
If your Mac doesn't shut down, try Force Quit to close any apps that aren't responding. If that doesn't work, press and hold the power button until the Mac turns off.

Ok, here are the 3 power button options

Press the power button (briefly) to turn (off or on) the Mac or wake from sleep. Also called the normal method.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds or longer without lifting to force your Mac to turn off. Also called brutal method. Do not use frequently. It will not wake up after by any keyboard combination until you press the power button.
Press and hold power button for 1.5 seconds to get the turn off dialog. This dialog will ask if you want to restart, shutdown or put the Mac to sleep, this is the same as you would do with click under the Apple Icon (top left)

Other stuff...
You have a app called FOLX 5 Downloader that is preventing your Mac to Sleep. Quit that program, if it is still running, Open Activity Monitor find it and Quit it. You can also find it under its PID number pid 6959

Here are some instructions how to deal with the T2 chip.


Does an iTunes backup to my computer save restrictions settings? If I have restriction settings on my iPhone 7, and I back it up on iTunes after the restrictions are put on, then will the restrictions be there if I reset my iPhone and the restore from the backup?

Yes, Restriction settings are backed up and will be restored.

Note that if you restore to a different iPhone, you’ll need to do an encrypted backup for the restrictions pass code to be backed up and restored.


Why does a full screen application black out the other display? When I go into (at least some) full screen app(s) the other  display gets blacked out. An example is Zoom.  Is there a workaround for this that would allow me to continue using the unused display for other applications?
Note there is a similar question here : Is there a way to run one application in Full Screen mode on one display and still be able to view and access applications on a second display? .  However that question  is very old (2012 OS/X Lion) and does not have any OS/X builtin answer but instead depends on a third party library.
I am on catalina on a macbook PRO.

Enable the setting System Preferences > Mission Control > Displays have separate Spaces:

It requires you to log out/back in, and then you will be able to use other displays as regular when an app is full screen in one of the displays.


Is it safe to leave the iMac turned off for months at a time? Is it safe to leave your iMac turned off for months at a time? I haven’t used it for a while, and won’t be using it for some time while in lockdown.
Will it be ok performance wise?

Thanks

Is it safe to leave your iMac turned off for months at a time?

Yes, it is perfectly safe to leave your iMac turned off for months, as long you follow the proper storage guidelines, i.e. keep it in a cool and dry place and away from exposure to dust. Specifically, follow the storage guidelines laid out by Apple, as discussed here:

Important handling information for your Mac

  Storage temperature: -40° to 116° F (-40° to 47° C)
  Relative humidity: 5% to 95% (noncondensing)

  Storing your iMac. If you are going to store your iMac for an extended period of time, keep it in a cool location (ideally, 71° F or 22° C).

Storing an iMac unused for an extended period of time won't have any affect on its performance.


How to store iCloud Photo Library only in the cloud My iCloud Photo Library is 16GB. Because the drive in my Mac is only 128GB I don't want all my photos to be stored locally on my Mac but rather just load the photos when I open the Photos app.

Any idea how to do this?

If you don't want any of your iCloud pictures on your computer.

Go to System Preferences > iCloud and turn off iCloud Photo Library. If you click on the Options button in the category, you can turn off single parts of iCloud and keep others on.

Photo has it on > You deselect it obviously

From Quora: How do I eliminate photos from my mac without eliminating them from icloud

Also see Apple's support article on how to Get help with your iCloud Photo Library


Is it possible to hide the scrollbar in Terminal? In the 10.4 or maybe 10.5 versions of Terminal.app it was possible to hide the scrollbar completely. Does anyone know if this is still possible in the 10.6 version of Terminal.app?

As of OS X Lion 10.7 scrollbars can be hidden system-wide, including in Terminal, with

  System Preferences > General > Show scroll bars

If you have a “touch” input device, like a trackpad or Magic Mouse, they are hidden by default.


Printing full calendar invitation? I use OS X Mail and iCal connected to my company's MS Exchange server. Sometimes a co-worker sends a calendar invitation (using Outlook) with lots of agenda details in it. I'm trying to find a good way to print that.

iCal has an option to print the day's events in list format, but the output is in two columns and a few of the lines write over each other and are completely unreadable.

If I try to print the invitation as it came to me in Mail, the output has an iCal icon showing the attachment -- not the contents of the attachment.

So, short of copy/paste into TextEdit, Word, etc, is there a clean way to print this?

I asked this on superuser a few months ago and got no answers at all. Are the apple fanboys more active here?

Better question: If the output from iCal was readable, would it be sufficient? The reason I ask, is because iCal word wraps within the two day columns, making the overlapping issue unusual. Perhaps the issue is with the iCal Application Support files or .plist


How do I play video through a projector without seeing the player buttons? This is probably one of those questions with a really easy answer but either I'm not phrasing it right or there isn't a way to do what I'm wanting. At my church, we occasionally play videos from a MacBook Pro or our new 2019 iMac. The video pipes out to the projector just fine, everything works fine.
The issue is when a video needs to be played or paused 300 people can see the mouse move over the Quicktime player's play/pause button. This seems very amateur hour but for the life of me I can't figure out how to play and pause a video in the booth without the buttons showing up on the projector screen.
I feel like I saw a video on how do do this years ago, but I haven't been able to figure it out.
Can this be done?
Thanks!

Both Quicktime Player & VLC will show the cursor & transport if you move the mouse, but both will respond to a simple Spacebar tap to play/pause without showing the interface. VLC has an optional || or > indicator.

If you never need to use playlists or run consecutive movies, then stick with Quicktime Player, otherwise, VLC is a much more comprehensive structure.


Bash commands that work on an iphone I've jailbroken my phone, and I'd like to execute some commands on it from my phone, namely, the Say command. That, unfortunately, does not work. What commands COULD I execute on the iphone, other than the standard ls and cd?

Thanks.

For an exhaustive list, you can simply do ls for all of the directories in the shell's $PATH variable--that's what the shell uses to search for a command when you type it.

ls ${PATH//:/ }

The above runs ls using the path variable as an argument, but with the $PATH's usual : separators replaced by a space.


OS 10.11 Can't access photo library from Finder file upload box I'm running OX 10.11.6 and using the stock Photos app. Whenever I attempt to access the media browser from the Finder file upload box, such as when attaching a photo to an email or social media post, I am unable to access my library. The finder gets stuck in a loading state, forcing me to open the Photos app itself, drag the file to my desktop, and then attach it that way. It goes without saying that this manual approach is extremely cumbersome.

Here's a screenshot of what I see when I try to access my photo library from the finder:

Now I've read numerous posts on this same issue that suggest going to Photos > Preferences > General and checking if the photo library is the system default. This usually solves the problem for people, however I've already done that to no effect. See screenshot below:

I've also tried rebooting my machine, repairing the photo library and then rebooting again, but to no avail. Upgrading my OS X install isn't an option for me because I'm on an older machine (2009 13" MacBook Pro) that is no longer supported.

Is there any way to remedy this issue that doesn't involve reinstalling OS X?

I'm wondering if an application/bug/corrupted setting is causing this. We can test that by trying it on a completely blank slate by creating a new OS X account real quick.

You can do this over in Users, Systems & Groups in System Preferences. Create a new admin user account (no iCloud necessary) restart into the new account & test there, ideally with the same exact photos library. I would share the one you have, here's a how to about it on the Apple support site.


Where is system.log in TimeMachine backup I would like to get older versions of /private/var/log/system.log files from TimeMachine.  Is this possible?  How?

I see current system.log files. I went to folder /private/var/log then invoked TimeMachine.

When I go back to previous backup, I do not see system.log files.

relates to
can-i-find-out-the-last-time-a-specific-usb-was-connected-to-my-mbp7

User want to look through macOS log files to see history of external drive mounting. Data is in "/private/var/log/system.log".  Needed data is a month old. A month is longer than normal backup of system.log is keep.  Attempted to look in timemachine backup but it seems the older system.log files are not kept.

Everything in /private is excluded by rule - including /var/log/system.log

tmutil isexcluded /private/var/log/*

More details on this are at On OS X, what files are excluded by rule from a Time Machine backup?

You would need another tool to back these up as I’ve not had luck using the tmutil removeexclusion /var/log/system.log command which might have worked if the exclusion was based on a file pattern and not the rule.


Is there any way to get an email notification when someone leaves a voice mail? There is no cell reception inside the building where I work so if someone calls and leaves a voice mail I don't find out until I'm driving away from work. Is there any way to get an email notification (or just a notification) when someone leaves a voice mail? I don't need the audio, just something that says I received a call. I'm with Verizon on an iPhone 6 running iOS 9.

Adopting a Google Voice number would allow you to do this, but only for calls placed to your Google Voice telephone number. It will also allow you access to SMS (non-iMessage) messages to that number.


OWC SSD speeds in mid-2012 MacBook Pro much lower than rated speeds I have a MacBook Pro 15" mid-2012 (i7 2.6GHz, 16GB RAM, GT 650M 1GB). I installed OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD in the hard drive bay. I ran Blackmagic Disk Speed Test and got only 220 MB/s write speed and 460 MB/s read. OWC's website says they have 527 MB/s write and 559 MB/s read. So I am far far away from this. Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be?

Check to see what your Serial-ATA link speed is. You can find this in system profiler.

It will be something similar to this.

If your speed isn't 6 Gigabit but is 3 Gigabit then that would be why you aren't getting the speeds you'd expect.


Trying to install drivers manually without admin pass Hi I'm trying to install the drivers for xone on my Mackbook Pro running 10.9.5.
I don't have admin rights and it is in .pkg file form. Help?

You will need the admin password to install the driver.

Xone comes with a kernel extension aka kext file. Kernel extensions are installed in /System/Library/Extensions/, only administrators can modify the contents of this folder.

Ask an admin if he is willing to do it for you :)


How do I remove messages that sometimes keep showing up in the Flagged-folder in Mail although they are unflagged? (With Gmail-Accounts?) sometimes emails that were unflagged erroneously keep showing up in the Flagged-folder of Mail.

The only solution I found is moving the messages to Trash manually. Afterwards move them to the Inbox again.


If you store a document locally on one device and also has that app use iCloud, will it be available on other devices? Take an application, say Pages. You have the document saved locally on one of your Apple devices. You also have Pages turned on in Settings > [name] > iCloud > Apps using iCloud > Pages. Will the same docs be available on other apple devices logged in with the same ID?

The document would not be available on other devices unless you save it in iCloud (or on Desktop or Documents folder and you have Desktop & Documents folder syncing for iCloud enabled).


MP3s cause QuickTime to crash - how do I reinstall QuickTime on Mountain Lion? QuickTime crashes whenever I try and play an MP3. It says 'QuickTime Player quit unexpectedly'.

This is for all MP3s. Ableton Live also refuses to load any MP3s, either because QuickTime is broken, or for the same reason that QuickTime won't work.

How do I reinstall QuickTime? I really don't want to have to reinstall Mac OS or upgrade to Mavericks.

Please don't just say 'use iTunes' or 'use VLC'. I want to get to the root of the problem so that I can get MP3s working again in Ableton, but I reckon the problem will be easier to sort if I start by fixing QuickTime.

I have a 2007 iMac 24" with 4GB RAM and it works perfectly for everything else.

Here's the first part of the error dump:

Process:         QuickTime Player [5432]
Path:            /Applications/QuickTime Player.app/Contents/MacOS/QuickTime Player
Identifier:      com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX
Version:         10.2 (603.17)
Build Info:      QuickTimePlayerX-603017000000000~5
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [244]
User ID:         501

Date/Time:       2014-05-14 14:49:01.397 +0100
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.8.5 (12F45)
Report Version:  10

Interval Since Last Report:          14517 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:           33
Per-App Interval Since Last Report:  55 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   2
Anonymous UUID:                      F3543854-08AC-CD30-0E57-60991570096A

Crashed Thread:  0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000

VM Regions Near 0:
-->
    __TEXT                 0000000107b8f000-0000000107dec000 [ 2420K] r-x/rwx SM=COW  /Applications/QuickTime Player.app/Contents/MacOS/QuickTime Player

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   com.apple.CoreFoundation        0x00007fff91090bb2 CFDictionaryGetValue + 18
1   com.apple.QTKit                 0x00007fff8d91997a CopyLocalizedStringFromTable + 17
2   com.apple.QTKit                 0x00007fff8d9197e6 QTTimeFormatterCreate + 682
3   com.apple.QTKit                 0x00007fff8d920e86 -[QTHUDTimeFormatter _QTTimeFormatter] + 93
4   com.apple.QTKit                 0x00007fff8d922979 -[QTHUDTimeFormatter stringFromTimeInterval:] + 133
5   com.apple.QTKit                 0x00007fff8d922448 -[QTHUDTimeFormatter stringForObjectValue:] + 380
6   com.apple.AppKit                0x00007fff8fa521ad -[NSCell setFormatter:] + 221

I know you "don't want to reinstall OS X," but the easiest way to reinstall Quicktime (the current version, which is not a standalone download) is to reinstall Mountain Lion via Recovery Mode. Following the introduction of Lion, Quicktime became apart of the OS X installation package. There is no need to take a roundabout method. Reinstallation using recovery is non-destructive and only reinstalls OS X builtin applications and system components.


What is the function of the triangles and circles that appear in the ruler when working with text in Keynote? I just discovered that two downward-facing triangles appear whenever I'm working with a text object in keynote; those serve to define the initial and final tabs. But I noticed that clicking on the ruler between these triangles creates additional shapes (left and right-facing triangles, a rhombus/diamond, and a circle). I've tried moving them around, but I haven't seen any change in the text. Maybe I don't know how to insert proper tabs while I'm typing. Any ideas?

The outer two are Margin guides [the edge of the printing area], the inner ones are Tab-stops; Markers that text & numbers will line up to if you separate them by using the Tab key instead of just some spaces.

The orange lines are mine, for illustration.
'Right tab' in the picture unfortunately has an accidental space after it, which stops it lining up with the orange line properly - my bad - but it illustrates that the space itself is included in the tab-stop.

You can see & edit a Tab function by right clicking a Tab marker...

BTW, if there's not enough room for the tabs, compared to the typed text, they simply don't [can't] work.

One last note - Tabs are set for that line only unless specified globally before you start typing, or if you Select All.


Cannot share a Windows 7 external drive with a Mac I am having a bit of a strange problem. I have a PC with shared folders on 2 separate external drives. I can successfully access the share on one of the drives but I cannot access a share on the second drive. I have tried creating new folders and sharing them and I still get the same results. The message I get when I try to access the problem share is:

  The operation can't be completed because the original item for 'folder name' can't be found.

I can successfully access both shares from another Windows 7 box.

Anyone have any useful ideas?

It may be a Windows sharing or security issue. May be.

Get properties on the folder you are sharing that is inaccessible. Click the sharing tab > Advanced Sharing and verify the folder is shared. Click on permissions ad verify the "Everyone" group has change and read checked under the Allow column. Click OK to get back to properties and click the Security tab. Click the Edit button and then Add. Enter "Everyone" in the lower text field and click OK. Back in the Security tab make sure "Everyone" is selected and click the checkbox next to "Full control" under the Allow Collumn. Click OK.

In the share properties we have just added anyone who can connect permission to connect to and make changes to the network share. In the Security properties we did the same thing, but this time we set those permissions on the file system (NTFS permissions)

Generally you don't have to set NTFS permissions to access a share but in some cases they may be necessary.

I am not certain this is the issue, but it could be and it is easy enough to do this to find out.


How can I remap Caps lock to both Escape and Control? I generally run Linux. I use Vim a lot, so the Escape key is extremely important. I also use other keyboard shortcuts a lot, so Control is "key" as well. On Linux, I've solved this by using xcape to map the Caps lock key to Escape if pressed by itself, or Control if pressed in combination with another key. This puts the best of both worlds within quick reach of my pinky finger. Is there any way I can do this on a Mac?

Yes, using Karabiner (formerly KeyRemap4Macbook).

First, go into the Keyboard preference pane, click "Modifier Keys…", and change Caps Lock to Control. Then, go into Karabiner and search for this option:

  Control_L to Control_L
         (+ when you type Control_L only, send Escape)

Check that, and you're done. With Karabiner you can do lots more interesting things, like mapping your (now kind of useless) Escape key to a Hyper key with even more keybindings.


`AppleCamera` used by Google Chrome even with all extensions+apps disabled/tabs closed I'm noticing that Google Chrome (Version 65.0.3325.181 (Official Build) (64-bit) — current version as of writing this question) has enabled my MBP camera and, perhaps, the microphone:

$ lsof | grep "AppleCamera"
Google    1466 areynolds  txt       REG                1,6     354304 4305421720 /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/AppleCamera.plugin/Contents/MacOS/AppleCamera
$ ps -p 1466
  PID TTY           TIME CMD
 1466 ??         0:38.47 /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome

I have no tabs open (just one window, which defaults to https://www.google.com). I have also disabled all Chrome extensions and apps.

I went into Chrome's settings and set the switches to require sites that use the camera and microphone to first ask my permission.

How do I stop Google Chrome from enabling my camera and microphone without permission? If relevant or useful, I am running OS X 10.13.4.

EDIT

Perhaps an alternative or more general question is: Given that this application is accessing the camera without permission, is there a way in OS X to block access to the AppleCamera device (or any particular device, generally) on a per-application level, as a general security measure? Is there a way to lock down OS X to this degree (perhaps via LDAP attributes used via OS X Server/Open Directory)?

You have presumed too much from the software's name. The CoreMediaIO Device Abstraction Layer (DAL) Apple.Camera.plugin does not control the camera, and wouldn't know how to control it even if you gave it permission. It has one job: to manage video (and muxed) streams from video devices that are already streaming. With no hardware driver running in the kernel, there can be no power sent to the camera--no kext, no power, no picture: Apple Documentation

So, why is it running? It helps avoid a little wait time when it is called into actual use. It's been there for well over ten years, and if AppleCamera.plugin was a vector for intrusion, we'd have heard much sooner.


Safari and Firefox displaying different colors than Chrome On this website, the blue button has the defined color #1E9AE2. In Safari and Firefox on macOS, this color is displayed as #449AE0:

In this screenshot, Safari is on the left, and Chrome to the right.

If I switch the following setting to "sRGB IEC61966-2.1", Safari and Firefox display it like the others too:

What's the reason for this difference?

Do all macOS computers have this setting as a default?

The difference in color rendering is because of color profiles. Some browsers support color profiles, others don't. Embedding color profiles in your images will make their file sizes a bit larger, but will cause truer colors across browsers.

Please see:

https://css-tricks.com/color-rendering-difference-firefox-vs-safari/
http://cameratico.com/guides/web-browser-color-management-guide/
https://fstoppers.com/education/how-your-web-browser-affects-way-colors-are-rendered-77241


MacBook Air/Pro: run script upon lid close? How can one configure MacOS (10.8 or higher) to automatically and immediately call a user-designated script (probably a bash script) upon the user closing the display lid of a MacBook Air or Pro?

Details.

I want to do this because in some scenarios my MacBook Air 2013 running 10.8.5 does not immediately sleep/lock the screen upon lid close (possibly because a VPN client is trying to open a connection).  As such, I want the system to immediately execute a script which calls this screen-saving-and-locking procedure upon lid close.  However, I don't know how to call scripts upon display-lid closing.

There does not seem to be a way for a program to get notified when the lid is closed. However, the state of the lid can be monitored periodically (and in this particular case, every second) and actions taken based on the lid state.

I do not know of any program that can provide a complete solution for your need, but you can use the following information to build a solution yourself.

Download this clamshellstate.pl perl script
You can run it in Terminal (under /Applications/Utilities) like:

./clamshellstate.pl 1

to get an output like "Open" or "Closed" indicating the current lid state
Create a shell script like (substitute script-to-run with a shell script you'd like to run):

./clamshellstate.pl 1 | grep Closed > /dev/null && *script-to-run*

Configure this script to run once every second using launchd.plist. Or use Lingon to easily configure launchd.plist.

Note: Instead of clamshellstate.pl, you can also use the following command in Terminal:

ioreg -r -k AppleClamshellState | grep '"AppleClamshellState" = Yes' | cut -f2 -d"="

to get a "Yes" for the closed state and a "No" for the open state.


How to paste today's date *and initials* with keyboard shortcut? This question will be asked and answered, thanks to the contributors to this previous question.

I am on High Sierra OS X.

I want to be able to hit some keyboard shortcut and then have today's date and my initials inserted into text. This will be a date stamp used when making entries into a CRM database.

Below is the Service created to put your date stamp and initials into any document.
The first line returns today's date.
The second line is the text to include after the date.
The third line appends the date and text together.

Following the directions in the previous thread, create the Service and assign a keyboard shortcut in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services. (In System Preferences, Services are organized by type. The new Service you created will appear under the "Text" group of services.)

Note that your new Service will not appear in the Services menu unless the cursor is inserted into a field as if you were about to type the date and initials manually.

The output of this shortcut is circled in red below.


Control Macs volume with headphones I have the Bose Quitcomfort 25 headphones for Android and on it there are 3 buttons (volume up, down and play pause toggle).

I was able to get the Play Pause toggle up and running by installing BeardedSpice

Now I'm wondering is there any way to get the headphones volume up / down buttons working on my Mac?

The problem here lies in the fact that there are "Apple" compatible headsets and "Android" compatible ones.  The reason is because of the TRRS (tip, ring, ring, sleeve) connector at the end of your headset.  See the photos below:

If you notice, the Mic and Ground connectors are swapped.  While your microphone works because microphones don't care about polarity, the switches (volume up/down) won't work because it will be connecting to the "mic" conductor and not the "ground."

The way the volume up/down buttons work is that one of the signals is shorted to ground  So, for instance using the "Android" (OMTP) pinout, if you press "Vol Up" then pin A and pin D is shorted.  But, on an "Apple" product, pin D is the Mic and nothing happens.  This is obviously really simplified.   In actuality, there is most likely a change in resistance different that what is already there from the left/right speaker or mic.

Notice the switches.  Let's use SW3 (FF/Next) as an example.  When SW3 is open, the microphone is connected and completes the circuit (green trace).  When SW3 is closed (as in pressed), it shorts the circuit before getting to the microphone bypassing it, it goes through a 600ohm resistance and completes the circuit at ground (yellow trace).  The phone then sees the 600ohm resistance as a signal to "skip" passes that to iOS and iOS skips to the next song.

The same happens vol up/down, I just don't have the schematic for those.  If you use an adapter that has the ground in a different place, the circuit will never get completed thus the signal never gets to the phone.

There is no software that's going to fix this because to get a signal to the hardware so that OS X can "sense" it, something must be shorted to ground.  Shorting to mic does nothing so the system can't see it.

This is why this is not an Apple issue, but an Android one.


After using a virus scanner to clean my Mac, it will no longer start I had been getting a lot of pop-ups and browser ads on my Mac and I suspected it might be due to a virus so I installed Avast. After running a virus scan, Avast found 10 viruses and 18 warnings, which I told it to delete.

It might have deleted some system files because now my mac will not start. If shows the Apple logo on boot and then it shows an error logo with the processing bar and that's as far as it ever gets.

Please tell me how I can get my Mac back in to a working state?

Since we do not know what was deleted, I suggest you

Press Command-R during startup

That will start from the OS X Recovery System

to repair your OS.


Bought iPhone 3GS with iOS 5.1, can downgrade to 4.1, any hope of going to 4.2 or 4.3? I'm an iOS developer and have been searching for devices running older versions of iOS to use for compatibility testing.  (the iPod touch I have been using for this purpose recently gave up the ghost)  You wouldn't believe how hard this has been, even on the used market -- either sellers don't specify the iOS version in their item descriptions (meaning you have to take your chances), or they "helpfully" upgrade to the latest iOS before selling it.  Anyhow, I thought I finally hit pay dirt when I found an iPhone 3GS whose auction prominently listed iOS 4.x as a selling point.  Well either the guy was outright lying or he didn't know what the hell he was talking about, because when I received the device, it had iOS 5.x on it.  I know I could probably file a Item not as described claim or something to that effect, but I am not in the mood for a long drawn out battle, hostilities, negative feedback war, etc. and so at this point I was ready to cut my losses and live with it running 5.x.

That is, until this afternoon, when I was idly playing with TinyUmbrella, and found, to my delight, that Cydia has a saved SHSH blob for this device running iOS 4.1.  Apparently this device must have been jailbroken at some point in its lifetime.  So I was able to restore to iOS 4.1, and jail broke using limera1n.  All is well.

Now for my question: Is there some way I can get this device to 4.2 or 4.3?  (4.1 is a bit too old for my taste)  My (admittedly very minuscule) understanding of SHSH and related matters leads me to believe that the answer is "no," but I'm asking anyway in the vain hope that there is some hacking trick or something that would make this possible.

I'm surprised that you found an SHSH blob for a firmware that low. Consider that a treasure. Unfortunately, though, you can only install the version of iOS that corresponds to the SHSH blob. The blob contains a signature that is unique to the device and unique to the iOS version. It is like the key to your device for that version. It can't be faked, but it can be saved. So in short, you're stuck with iOS 4.1 or 5.1.1, and there isn't anything that can be done now to change that (besides, the change from iOS 4.1 to 4.3 only added AirPlay/Print, Safari's Nitro JavaScript engine, iTunes Sharing, and Ping; which shouldn't be big enough features to worry about unless your app integrates AirPlay).


Downloading 123d catch I'm looking for 123d catch on the app store, but there isn't. Where can I find it?

Thank you in advance.

Autodesk has discontinued this app and is no longer available to download.

You can take a look at Autodesk Remake or Tinkercad. I've heard of people finding success with that who were previously using 123D Catch.


Secure Login Equivalent on OS X On Windows you can configure "Secure Login" so that you have to press Control + Alt + Delect to show the login screen like so:

Does this feature exist on OS X or is there a third-party application that can achive this?

Short answer: No.  This feature does not exist on Macs.

On a side note, it's also useless in Windows too.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, CTRL+ALT+DEL sent a hardware interrupt to the PC's BIOS (which would immediately reboot the computer in the DOS days).

That interrupt also had the happy side-effect of breaking things like keyloggers and programs designed to steal your password, so when Windows NT arrived on the scene, Microsoft trapped that interrupt to prove that you were a real, live human sitting in front of a keyboard.

That has not been the case for many, many years.  I have no idea why we're still dragging this stupid three-finger salute around after all these years (tradition maybe?)  It offers no meaningful security these days and I personally disable it with Group Policy on every domain I administer.


Can I Boot VMWare or Parallels from an internal OS X hard drive? The SSD on my MacBook has 4 partitions, each of which has a bootable installation of OS X. Is there any way to boot from one of these partitions with a virtualization app? I don't want to create an image from it, just boot directly to the drive within an app.

It looks like Parallels and VMWare will only boot from images. I want to boot directly from the existing partition on my HD.

Parallels Desktop 8 can run Windows from a Boot Camp partition.

Getting Started With Parallels Desktop (PDF)

VMWare Fusion 5 can also run Windows from a Boot Camp partition.

VMWare Fusion Overview

I believe Boot Camp support is available in earlier versions of both products, but it's definitely in the current shipping versions.


pmset standby is missing I have two Macbook Pros (10.7.2) and both are missing the standby option in pmset:

$ pmset -g
Active Profiles:
Battery Power       -1
AC Power        -1*
Currently in use:
 womp       1
 halfdim    1
 sms        1
 panicrestart   157680000
 gpuswitch  2
 hibernatefile  /var/vm/sleepimage
 networkoversleep   0
 disksleep  10
 sleep      180
 hibernatemode  3
 ttyskeepawake  1
 displaysleep   10
 acwake     0
 lidwake    1

$ pmset -g cap
Capabilities for AC Power:
 displaysleep
 disksleep
 sleep
 womp
 acwake
 lidwake
 halfdim
 sms
 gpuswitch

I've seen this guy has this option:lion pmset standby
Any ideas?

From the pmset man page:

  STANDBY ARGUMENTS

  standby causes kernel power management to automatically hibernate a
  machine after it has slept for a specified time period. This saves power
  while asleep. This setting defaults to ON for supported hardware. The
  setting standby will be visible in pmset -g if the feature is supported
  on this machine.

  standby only works if hibernation is turned on to hibernatemode 3 or 25.

  standbydelay specifies the delay, in seconds, before writing the hiberna-
  tion image to disk and powering off memory for Standby."

The bold text is my highlight.  This would indicate that the two Macbook Pros you're using do not support the standby arguments.

For a list of machines that support standby mode, see HT4392.

I hope this is helpful.


osx - launchagent vs cronjob vs calendar alarm So I was wondering why would you choose one over the other on a mac if they essentially do the same thing?  Which is run a script on a specific time or frequency.  Does one of them actually wake up the sleeping mac and execute?
why would you use one over the other?

launchagent
cronjob
calendar alarm

thanks

Prefer launchd
For non-graphical scripts, launchd is Apple's preferred approach.
cron is available but no longer recommended by Apple. This is for energy efficiency reasons as cron checks every minute for due tasks.
In comparison to cron, launchd's time based trigger is limited but this allows launchd to reliably calculate an absolute date and time of future events. Knowing these dates, launchd can remain idle until they arrive.
Calendar.app's alarm is useful for graphical scripts, such as AppleScript and Automator. For this to work, your Mac must be logged in and awake.
Graphical versus non-graphical scripts
Graphical scripts are those that interact with running Mac applications. These applications are assumed to have windows and a user interface. This means they require a graphical user session to work – and thus a user must be logged in for the application to be launched and kept running.
Graphical scripts include AppleScript and Automator.
Non-graphical scripts are those that limit their actions to command line tools and processes. They do not require a user to be logged in. The computer only needs to be awake for the script to complete its task.
Non-graphical scripts include shell scripts and command line tools.
Waking or powering on for a script
None of the built-in tools will power on or wake your Mac to perform your script. You will need a third party tool, such as Power Manager for this. I am affiliated with Power Manager, so feel free to get in touch with any questions.


OS X: Suddenly only one window/application visible at the same time I have a rather weird problem with my desktop of my MacBook Pro. I use El Capitan 10.11.15.

For reasons I don't know I'm no longer able to keep more than one running application visible at the time.

For example, if I start Terminal, it opens. But when I start TextEdit, Terminal will hide or minimize and TexEdit will become visible instead. The same goes for every other application.

When I open Mission Control, it also shows only one active window, no matter how many other applications are running.

I must have accidently activated it but cannot recall how. I've tried playing around with Dock and Mission Control settings, but nothing changed it.

Does anyone know how to get it back to normal so that I have more than one window/application visible at the same time?

This answer lifted in its entirety from Super User : Snow Leopard desktop - I want two files from two different applications open at the same time. Won't let me

  Have you per chance turned on "Single App
  Mode"?
  This hidden preference causes Mac OS X to hide all applications but
  the current active one.

  You can tell by running the following command in Terminal.app:

defaults read com.apple.dock single-app

  If it prints a 0then it is not turned on. If it prints a 1 then
  yes, it is turned on.

  You can disable this trick by running:

defaults write com.apple.dock single-app 0


Full screen application causes screen saver to not start (Lion) When I am in a Full Screen application mode, the screen saver doesn't start. So I have to shift to another screen that doesn't show a full screen app. There the screen saver starts!

This naturally happens only in Lion.

A workaround would be to assign a Hot Corner to start the screen saver. To do this, go to System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Screen Saver > Hot Corners… and select "Start Screen Saver" in the drop down menu of your choice.

(Side note: Hot Corners is also accessible from the Mission Control prefpane.)


How does one upgrade a jailbroken iOS device? We have an iPad that is jailbroken and I'd like to upgrade it to iOS 5.1. What is the proper procedure for upgrading a jailbroken device? Do I have to back up the jail break data before upgrading? Or do I have to "un-jailbreak" it first?

You will require iTunes. Connect the device, then right click on it in the iTunes side bar. Select "Back Up." Allow it to runs its course. Close iTunes.

Then put the device into DFU mode:

1) Power off the device.
2) Disconnect it.
3) Hold the power button for 2 secs.
4) Without letting go of the power button, press and hold the home button for 10 secs.
5) Let go of the power button but not the home button for another 10 secs.

Reconnect the device and launch iTunes. It will detect your iPad and inform you it is in recovery mode. From there, it will check for the newest available update (5.1), download it and install it. When that completes, simply restore your device from the backup you made earlier.


Is there a keyboard shortcut for enabling dictation on iPad? I‘m using an iPad Pro 10.5 iPadOS 13.5 and a Slim Combo keyboard case. I use dictation a lot. Is there a keyboard shortcut for that?
Right now I have to toggle the default on-screen keyboard and touch the microphone key, but I would rather do it with an actual physical keyboard shortcut.

Apple added new shortcut in the recently release. Just press ctrl twice.


How do you use your iPhone as a usb key? I saw a friend of mine manage to use his iPhone as a usb key. I had a large file that I needed to transfer to his computer. So he gave me his iPhone cable, had me open iTunes, open his iPhone in iTunes, select some app that was on his iPhone, drag and drop my file there, and then he could get the file to his machine.

Which app was he using? I want it, too!

I haven't tried it yet, but from this description, it looks like Air Sharing is what I want.


Sharing & Permissions has 2 "everyone" entries, OS X 10.10.5 I was doing some stuff with the system administrator to my computer and we are not sure what we did to have this happen but we now have 2 everyone permissions in  nearly every file on my compute. The only thing we did was try to install cocoa pods and give my account the proper permissions to read-write to files application and other files. I am currently trying to run Illustrator and it says I don't have read permissions here eiher.

Edit: also if i change the everybody with a custom perm to no access it says I have read and write again but sometimes it will still say you have custom permissions above the permission area.

and this picture

You can use Onyx - [freeware] to check/repair the disk, fix permissions & reset ACLs.

Maintenance tab > permissions, check the box at the top & Execute.

Make sure you get the Yosemite version, they're OS specific.

This will default whatever it is you did to the permissions structure... which looks a bit complex to pick through manually.


Batch open JPGs in Preview I've had a look already on the forums for an answer to the problem but most of the time it is in the context of batch converting files (with disparate names). I only want to just open a range of JPEG files in Preview.

I capture images of particlar items in my workshop using "Workflow" for iOS. That has a script of its own that saves the files in the format 00000-0.JPG where the first five zeros are the article number and the final zero is the sequential order of that particalular item. e.g 78934-4.JPG is the 4th photo of item "78934". The number of images for given item can vary a lot.

These all wind up in a folder (on my Mac) with several thousands other images, all with the same naming convention. I would like to speed up the process of finding and opening these (akin to being in Finder, selecting a range of images by hand and double-clicking the range and having them open in one "instance" or window of Preview - to minimise having to drag windows about) with AppleScript.

Here is what I've written so far...

tell application "Finder" to set myFiles to folder "Macintosh SSD:Users:me:ownCloud:Bilder_neu:Einzelbilder"

set file_extention to ".JPG"

set articleNumber to display dialog "Please enter article number" default answer "" with icon note buttons {"Cancel", "Continue"} default button "Continue"

I am not sure how to manage the "for loop" to find and then open the images.

Thanks for any help given

The following example AppleScript code assumes that the macOS default of images opening in Preview is still in play.

set theImages to quoted form of POSIX path of ¬
    ((path to home folder as string) & "ownCloud:Bilder_neu:Einzelbilder")

set articleNumber to text returned of ¬
    (display dialog "Please enter article number:" default answer ¬
        "" with icon note buttons {"Cancel", "Continue"} default button "Continue")

do shell script "find " & theImages & " -type f -iname '" & articleNumber & "-*.JPG' -exec open {} +"

If Preview is not the default handler for image files, then change the do shell script command to:

do shell script "open -a Preview $(find " & theImages & " -type f -iname '" & articleNumber & "-*.JPG')"

Note that "pure AppleScript" is not required!

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not employ any error handling and is meant only to show one of many ways accomplish a task. The onus is always upon the User to add/use appropriate error handling as needed/wanted.


How to make /private/etc/hosts available on macOS Sierra? After searching related questions and answers, I find my issue still unsolved: editing /private/etc/hosts does not work on macOS Sierra.

What in my /private/etc/hosts is the following two rules.

127.0.0.1   localhost
127.0.0.1   www.yahoo.com

These two rules cannot be applied in Safari and Chrome, even after running the command sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder. The website yahoo is not redirected to 127.0.0.1.

So what do I miss in the above operation?

And the output of ping -c 3 www.yahoo.com is as following.

PING fd-fp3.wg1.b.yahoo.com (116.214.12.74): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 116.214.12.74: icmp_seq=0 ttl=47 time=138.418 ms
64 bytes from 116.214.12.74: icmp_seq=1 ttl=47 time=74.284 ms
64 bytes from 116.214.12.74: icmp_seq=2 ttl=47 time=69.702 ms

--- fd-fp3.wg1.b.yahoo.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 69.702/94.135/138.418/31.369 ms

If you can ping your /etc/hosts entries as root but not as regular user then try changing permissions on the hosts file to allow everyone to read. This worked for me.

sudo chmod a+r /etc/hosts


Share Clipboard with VNC Server on Ubuntu from Mac OS X Mojave I am unable to share clipboard from my Mac OS X 10.14.6 Mojave MBP to the remote Ubuntu 16.04 desktop running x11vnc or vino VNC server. I am able to copy/paste from remote Ubuntu to MBP. Cannot copy/paste the opposite way. I have already tried viewers from RealVNC, Tiger VNC and Chicken. Chicken works but it exits claiming the server is sending unknown tiles. It is unreliable.

I connect to remote using SSH tunnels. I have already set to True the following RealVNC properties: ClientCutText and ServerCutText.

Are there any reliable solutions?

The paid solution JollysFastVNC works. Instead of "Paste", I had to use "Paste as Keystrokes".


How to selectively sync playlists from iCloud to iPhone I am using Apple Music and all my purchased songs & the playlists are synced to the cloud. However, I don't want every single playlist from showing up on my iPhone when I turn on the iCloud music. Is there any way to choose which playlists shows up and which do not?

I know I can delete them from my iPhone but the songs will still show up in my library. Also, I don't know if deleting them from my iPhone will affect the sync in all my other devices.

You cannot disable a playlist from showing up while still using iCloud Music Library.

You can, however, control which playlists are downloaded by clicking the (•••) and changing wether it keeps songs offline.


Wipe Data, Not Software My iMac has slowed waaaaaay down to the point where even just running a browser feels like running a marathon or locks up my machine completely.

I'd like to do a fresh install of OSX, but I've lost track of about 90% of my software keys for things like Office, the Creative Suite etc...

Is it possible to do a fresh install of OSX Mav without losing my Applications?

Cheers!

First of all, the direct answer - yes, you can wipe data without loosing your apps. This will not give significant if any at all improvement in mac's performance, though.

To do it, just clean your home folder, but be careful not to remove the following folders:

~/Applications
~/Desktop
~/Documents
~/Downloads
~/Movies
~/Music
~/Pictures
~/Public

Also, you can remove all contents of all folders except ~/Applications to keep applications intact.

Now let's move to actions which will actually help to improve the performance.
Macs get slow for a reason. What's good about OS X is that you can always see this reason.

Open ActivityMonitor application which is within Utilities folder and sort the list by "% cpu" in descending order (two clicks onto column header). Now you see which applications consume most of CPU power. Probably the violator will be there. It is up to you whether to uninstall these apps or to keep them.

Next, open Console, which is still within Utilities and look in All Logs section. If you see some king of logs dropping constantly with high speed that's another possible violator.

Next, open Disk Utility and perform Check Disk and Check/Repair permissions. Sometimes helps.


Drag&Drop Support in VMWare Fusion I am using VMWare Fusion 8.5.8 on MacOS 10.12.6 with a guest of MacOS 10.12.5.

Periodically drag and drop stops working.  Usually I can reboot and it will start to work again.  This time a reboot did not fix it.

I contacted VMWare and they declined support because they claim it does not work and it never worked.  They sent me this link supposedly supporting that, but by my reading it does not support their claim:
https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1032440

I am quite sure that I use drag and drop between the guest and host previously as it is part of my development workflow.

Further supporting my claim that it previously worked I previously submitted a ticket about it not working, but by the time the support person got back to me I had to reboot and no longer had a test case for them to work on.  They then suspended the ticket.

If someone could run a quick video of drag and drop working on they similar setup I would appreciated getting a copy so I could send it to VMWare to get them to take my issue seriously.

What can I try to get drag and drop to work again?

[EDIT] I updated the guest machine to 10.12.6 and drag and drop started to work again.  Problem solved except I want to get to the bottom of it to keep it from happening in the future.

I just got this email from VMware claiming that this feature does not work:

  ** Please do not change the subject line of this email if you wish to respond. **

  Hello Michael,

  Thank you for your response.

  This feature is not supported. Kindly refer the knowledge base article
  which lists the limitations for VMware Fusion 8.5.8 and also for the
  latest Fusion 10.

  The feature may have worked in the earlier builds or may work
  intermittently with the newer version. However, we have checked with
  the engineering team and they have confirmed that we do not support
  the drag and drop feature.

  These were the inputs which were shared directly from the engineering
  team: For MacOS guest, Drag & Drop/Copy & Paste file is not supported,
  it only supports copy text between guest and host. Like copy a string
  in TextEdit from guest and paste it to host's TextEdit.

  So, it's not a bug

  We request you to submit a feature request.

I found out today that it does work with VMware Fusion 10.1.2 and VMware Tools 10.2.5 on Mac OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan but it doesn't work for me on macOS 10.13.4.

Probably this has something to do with User Authorized Kernel Extension Loading (UAKEL). If your Mac is managed by an MDM, kernel extensions are managed by User Approved MDM Enrollment (UAMDM) a management profile.

As far as I understand how Drag and Drop works, it used some kind of filesystem driver. Maybe this used to use a (third party?) kernel extension which is no longer trusted?

Further Readings:

UAKEL: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2459/_index.html

UAMDM: https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2018/04/12/whitelisting-third-party-kernel-extensions-using-profiles/?_sm_byp=iVV4WQj4MknqbVsJ


Use an iPhone 5 Nano-SIM in an iPhone 4? I dropped my iPhone 5 into a pool and had to downgraded to an iPhone 4S. U wanted to transfer my data from the iPhone 5 Nano-SIM card to the iPhone 4.

Are there any adapters or ways to transfer that data?

There are a number of Nano-SIM to Micro-SIM adaptors on the market that will let you drop your iPhone 5's Nano-SIM card in to your iPhone 4. Not only would this bring along any data you had saved on the Nano-SIM, but you'd get your phone number from the iPhone 5 would presumably be assigned to the iPhone 4 assuming all things were equal and the phones were on the same carrier network. Once in your iPhone 4, you could copy the data off the SIM on the phone's internal storage.

I don't want to link to specific purchase sites for these things since that kind of information. But here's a search query that'll turn up many options: https://www.google.com/q=nano+sim+to+micro+sim+adapter


How to make KEXT files open with Finder I frequently edit files inside of kernel extension (.KEXT) files on OS X.  To do this, I have to right-click and "Show Package Contents".  To save time, I would like to simply double-click the package and have it open with Finder.
Ideally, Finder would show the full folder hierarchy in column view.  Currently, when I show the package contents, the folder hierarchy is "reset" with the package as root.  As you can see in this screenshot, there is no horizontal scrollbar, so I can't quickly traverse up the hierarchy as I could in a normal directory tree.  I'm working in Sierra, but this question could apply to any recent version of OS X.

Create an Automator Service using the setting in the image below.

Then assign it a keyboard shortcut in: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services

I assigned it: optioncommandK

Code for Run Shell Script:

for f in "$@"
do
    fn="$(basename "$f")"
    ext="${fn##*.}"
    if [[ $ext == kext ]]; then
        open "$f/Contents"
    fi
done


Mail.app Rules Applied Inconsistently Mail.app 14.0, macOS 11.2.3, IMAP email account.
I'm subscribed to several mailing lists and have Mail.app rules that sort mail from the list servers into specific mailboxes.
About one half of the list mail from the servers is correctly sorted, while a significant proportion isn't. If I select the unsorted mails in Mail.app's Inbox, then Mail > Message > Apply Rules, the unsorted messages immediately move to the correct specified mailbox. In all other respects, Mail.app runs correctly and quickly.
My setup uses Spam Sieve, but these Rules are below the Spam Sieve rule in Mail.app's Rules list, so SS has already done its exam and, I think, isn't involved in this oddity. The only Rule that runs an AppleScript is the Spam Sieve "Remote Training" Rule, which appears on the Rules list above the Spam Sieve Rule. The non-sort behavior also occurs if the machine (an iMac) is in Safe Mode.
The same issue has been asked about here and here. As suggested, I discarded all the rules, then quit Mail.app, restarted the Mac, and then recreated the rules from scratch. The same behavior continues.
Any idea what's going on here, or how I might improve Mail.app's performance?

The issue was mine.
I deleted all the existing rules, and remade them from scratch. Some new rules didn't work well at first, but I modified the conditions (adding a condition with a problematic email selected creates a condition based on that email's attributes) and then used the "Apply Rules" selection from the "Message" menu to test their effect.
After a few days of testing, sorting is now almost always correct, and immediate.


What is the data corruption risk of force shutting down a running Mac? Eg when the power supply is cut or someone presses the power button for 5 seconds? How big of a risk am I taking to my data?  Is it a 1% chance of corrupting data? I know most mac these days have a Journal-ed File system, so I am guess the risk is very small? Is this an accurate assumption?

Assuming the Mac is writing data, whats the risk of data corruptions?

Assuming the Mac is idling, whats the risk of data corruptions?

The journaled file system practically eliminates the chances that the filesystem itself will be in an inconsistent state after the next reboot.  But "consistent" is not the same as "correct".

Before journaling, the filesystem structures themselves could become damaged which could lead to more corruption occurring after the next boot.  So journaling limits the damage to whatever files were being written at the time of the crash.

If a file was being written at the time of a crash, the odds of its contents being incorrect are about 100%.  Exactly what manner of incorrectness would depend on exactly how it was being written at the time.

If data was simply being appended, then the last few blocks will probably be truncated off when the journal is replayed.  But if bits of data were being modified throughout the file (such as in a database store), its likely to be in a very inconsistent state.  Applications which write files in that way sometimes have their own consistency checks for that purpose.

But most files in a typical OS X system get written sequentially.  In fact, many programs write a temporary file and don't move it in to replace the old version until the new version has been committed to disk.  This ensures that even a forced shutdown in the middle of writing a file only loses the new version, but preserves the old one.

Bottom line: something bad will happen to any data being written at the time of a crash, but how bad depends on the application.


Open Zoom meeting email link (URL) on iPad Air I am not a regular iPad user. On Windows I can open a Zoom meeting directly from the link I receive with the invitation email. I just click on that link, the Browser opens and Zoom starts connected with that meeting.
How do I accomplish the same on an iPad? What happened in my case was that the Zoom App opened, but was NOT connected to that particular meeting. I had to manually copy/paste the id/password parts to get connected.
How can I directly open a Zoom meeting from the invitation email on iPad?

Zoom steers iOS meeting very strongly to download the native app by default.
You will have significantly less friction and more features and control if you install the app.
That being said, zoom does not support Safari or Mobile Safari for their web client but you may be able to find several links to click and tap to see if you can coax a web meeting to happen.

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/214629443-Quick-start-guide-for-the-Zoom-web-client

The person sending the meeting can force you to see the client install link first, be careful: look for fine print or links as you follow the “onboard links” and avoid clicking the super large install client link and button.

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115005666383-Show-a-Join-from-your-browser-Link

If you don’t use one of the recommended browsers on your iPad, consider asking mobile safari to Request Desktop Website when you activate a zoom invite link / landing page.


homebrew libgfortran My Python app is using scipy which apparently needs libgfortran. After a recent brew update/upgrade, my Python app fails to run due to a libgfortran dependency issue:

dlopen(<snip>/scipy-0.14.0-py2.7-macosx-10.10-intel.egg/scipy/linalg/_fblas.so, 2): Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/gcc/4.9/libgfortran.3.dylib

I have gcc 4.9 installed, but there is no fortran library or anything matching /usr/local/lib/gcc/4.9/fort. There are tons of other libs in /usr/local/lib/gcc/4.9/

I successfully installed gcc 4.9 through homebrew, however I could not get gfortran installed:

➜  ~  brew install gfortran
Error: No available formula for gfortran
GNU Fortran is now provided as part of GCC, and can be installed with:
  brew install gcc
➜  ~  brew install gcc
Warning: gcc-5.1.0 already installed
➜  ~  brew install homebrew/versions/gcc49
Warning: homebrew/versions/gcc49-4.9.2_1 already installed
➜  ~  brew install homebrew/versions/gcc49 gfortran
Error: No available formula for gfortran
GNU Fortran is now provided as part of GCC, and can be installed with:
  brew install gcc
➜  ~  brew install gcc gfortran
Error: No available formula for gfortran
GNU Fortran is now provided as part of GCC, and can be installed with:
  brew install gcc

It should be installed and linked from the gcc formula:

~ » readlink `which gfortran`
../Cellar/gcc/5.1.0/bin/gfortran


Issues creating Bootable USB for EL Capitan Public beta I'm trying to follow tutorial over at: http://osxdaily.com/2015/06/11/make-bootable-os-x-el-capitan-beta-install-usb-drive/

to create bootable usb for El Capitan Public Beta, however after completion I get this error in console:

Mount of outer dmg failed.

I tried running

hdiutil verify /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan\ Public\ Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia

And it returned:

hdiutil: verify: unable to recognize "/Applications/Install OS X El Capitan Public Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia" as a disk image. (image not recognized)
hdiutil: verify failed - image not recognized

I'm not sure why. I downloaded beta installer and it launched correctly. It sits in Applications folder.

I tried many things talked about here and on other top Google searches:

Redownloaded (three times)
Tried moving the .app to Desktop
Changed permissions of .app
Verified the .dmg with hdiutil
Used different Mac

Eventually got it to work by using a different USB flash drive. My original USB was a 16 GB Kingston, the second I tried that also didn't work was a 8 GB Lexar. The third and final one that did not get the "mount of outer dmg failed" error is a PNY 8 GB.

For reference I used the command:

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan\ Public\ Beta.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan\ Public\ Beta.app --nointeraction


Which Apple app condenses day names into weekday and weekend? There's a somewhere in one of the Apple apps where they condense the days of the week into "weekdays" or "weekends" etc. can't find it. Any idea? I'm trying to mimic this in one I my apps but I can't find the behavior to examine it.

Which Apple app condenses day names into weekday and weekend? Is it calendar? Reminders?

The Alarm Clock on iOS.

When you create an alarm, and set it to only repeat on the Weekdays or Weekends, the Alarm overview page will display the appropriate term.


Window out of visible workspace range / unreachable I'm running OS X Lion on a MacBook Air 11", and when I unplug my secondary display, some windows (e.g., Finder) are overflowing at the edge of the screen.
This usually happens on the right-hand side of the [work]space, so I have access to their title bar to drag them back.

But this time, the MS Word 2011 window is overflowing out of visible workspace range in a way that makes it unreachable: it's like having a big negative offset on the vertical axis.

I can see the window in Exposé, tried moving it to another [work]space (and back), but the window position stays the same.
The three finger drag is enabled, but I cannot reach the window's title bar.

Researching through other questions, I saw that Afloat counts among it's features the ability to

  Move windows from anywhere, not just the title bar.

just like other window management apps.

But I'm primarily interested if there's any built-in solution within OS X Lion for this specific issue.

Is there a key combination to move a window from any active area?

Or how can this be solved w/o re-attaching the secondary display?

I was puzzled and annoyed by this problem too in Mac Snow Leopard. The application (MS Word) has a solution. Open file that is not visible. Go to menu Window-->Zoom Window, which then brings that file up front and center.


How to update macOS when the system thinks the update is already installed I've been using a 2010 iMac with OS 10.9 for a few years. Now I need to update the OS to 10.13 (the latest one this system supports).

Here's the catch: months ago I attempted to install 10.13 on an SD card plugged into the system. The install failed, possibly because it ran out of space on the card.
But now when I go to the App Store and try to download 10.13, it tells me the version is already installed. It's not! It still boots 10.9 from the internal drive.

Removing the SD card and rebooting had no effect. I tried reinstalling the OS in Recovery mode and it said it was unable. So now I'm in the process  reverting to 10.9 from Time Machine.

I presume there is some sort of config file lurking somewhere, left over from my failed install to the SD card, that tells the system I have 10.13 installed.

I've searched for instructions on making a bootable High Sierra installer on a USB stick but what I've found seems obsolete and doesn't work.

I seem to be stuck between a rock & a hard place. Any ideas? (I read recently that installing Catalina on an external drive would corrupt your main drive; am I looking at something similar here?)

Spent a fruitless hour on the phone with Apple support—nothing I tried had any effect. Finally solved it by downloading the High Sierra installer on another, newer Mac, and using its Terminal's createinstallmedia command to make a bootable USB thumb drive installer. Transferred this to the target iMac via sneakernet, and was able to run it and install High Sierra.


Corrupted iPhone App after IOS 5 Upgrade Harraps Dictionary App is corrupt after IOS 5.0.  How do I restore it. I can see no way to download the App again through iTunes.

It should still be in the purchased tab - you can check on a computer before you delete the corrupt version and re-download the latest version that was sold. I've been able to download many apps that are now no longer for sale so that seems to be the rule rather than the exception for apps that are no longer available for new purchasers.


For iTerm2, how do I make the working directory appear in the window title? I recently switched to iTerm2 from the default Terminal app and have a usability issue.

On Terminal, the working directory you are in shows up on the title bar along with the process and pixel size.  For example, when you click on Window to switch between different Terminal sessions, you'd see: working_directory - process - pixel_size.

On iTerm2, unfortunately only the process shows in the title bar.  So if I'm working in multiple iTerm2 windows on different directories, I can't easily differentiate which is which when I click on Window to choose one.  I know I can easily switch between iTerm2 windows once I select one, but I'd like to identify exactly which window I want right away.  (By the way, I use Witch, and Command-tabbing doesn't help either because here again only the process shows up on the list).

Any suggestions?  I looked through all the preferences and didn't see anything.  Creating profiles isn't exactly what I'm after--I'd just like to see the current working directory in iTerm2 window titles.

With the \033]0;TEXT\007 escape sequence.

Example of use in Bash: echo -ne "\033]0;$PWD\007"

Which you could add to your $PROMPT_COMMAND if you use Bash, or otherwise attach to you PS1 so it gets re-evaluated often.

Example: export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;$PWD\007"'


How can I get back a system file after deleting it from my Mac? I've deleted a system file from my Mac and need to get it back.

System files can include:

hidden files in the root of / - especially unix files in /private
/System files
/Library files
/Applications files that ship with the core OS

System files are not any app, user files or files that can be regenerated by a known sequence such as cache files, Spotlight index files, etc…

Canonical question and answer for this comment by bmike♦.

If you have a recent Mac then it has a recovery partition.

Power on your Mac and hold down Command+R until the Apple logo appears. This will cause your Mac to boot using the recovery partition.

Once you are in the recovery partition, you can then reinstall the operating system.

This Apple technical note, OS X: About OS X Recovery, gives more details.

You can reinstall the OS and leave your files intact. Apple removed the erase/install option so you don't have to worry about the Recovery Installer erasing your files. You now have to explicitly launch the Disk Utility tool to erase or reformat/repartition a drive when booted from recovery OS.


MacBook Pro shuts down when unplugged I have a late 2008 MacBook Pro work computer. Here's the sequence of events:

I fully charge the battery
I unplug the Mac from the power cable
The Mac immediately shuts down

Before unplugging the Mac, I press the battery power indicator button and all lights are green. When I unplug the Mac I press the indicator button again and only one light is green.

I've tried resetting the PRAM, SMC and even bought a new battery but the problem persists. Here is the System Information.

How can I get my MacBook Pro to stay powered on when not plugged in?

Update: It was a dead battery. Apple gave me a new one for free.

Looks like your battery is dead. Your system report states that:

37.   Condition:    Service Battery

Time to either stay plugged to power, or get a new battery.


Should a 3m cable charge speed be significantly different than a 1m cable? I recently bought a 3m (meter) Apple charging cable and found that it was charging my iPad slower than usual.

I plugged it to a USB tester and found that it charged at ~5v 1A.  By comparison, my 1m cable charged at around 5v 2A.

Is it this normal, should there be that much of a difference?

I'm testing by charging an iPad. The wall adapter is the genuine 12W iPad wall outlet rated at 5.2v at 2.4A. I have a genuine Apple 1m cable and I also bought a 3m and 1m cable third party cable off eBay. They are unbranded.

Both genuine and non-genuine 1m cables charged my iPad at around 5v 2A.
The non-genuine third party 3m, cable charged the same iPad at a bit less than 5v 1A.

The cable nor USB tester gets warms up enough to feel, but the wall plug does, so I don't think it will be (hope it won't be) a fire hazard.

Here are some pictures of the USB tester, maybe that will help. First one is a with the 3m cable

This one for the 1m cable

The 3m (meter) 3rd party cable is the problem here.  There are two possibilities:

it's for an older iDevice that didn't have or support quick charging (iPods, iPhones, etc.)
it's a cheap knockoff where the manufacturer didn't supply the correct chip to request higher power delivery

When selecting a 3rd party (non-genuine) Apple accessory, it's always good to go with known brands - I myself prefer Anker or even Amazon basics.

Understanding power adapters and cables

There's a lot of misunderstanding in the question about the role cables play in the charging process.  Let's clear some of that up...

The cable itself, doesn't dictate how much power drawn.  Two cables of similar AWG (gauge or diameter of the wire) isn't going to draw vastly different amounts of power.  For the inherent resistance of the cable to become a factor in dropping power, we start looking at distances in the kilometer range (a thousand times longer than what you're working with).
A typical 20 AWG copper cable can support from 4A (multi-core like braided wire) and up to 6A (solid core) of current.  At 2A, you are well within the tolerances and "getting warm to the touch" is perfectly normal.
There are many differences for the amount of current draw on a device:

Load -  an idle computer draws less power than one crunching away displaying video
Charging state - a fully charged battery draws less power to charge than a depleted one.  Also intelligent chargers go from "rapid charge" to "trickle charge" once a threshold has been reached.
Power Negotiation - intelligent devices like quality Apple cables or USB 3.1 chargers negotiate the amount of power delivered.

The issue specific to your situation is the last point - power negotiation.  In Apple cables - both Apple branded and high quality 3rd party - there is a chip that negotiates with the power brick how much power to deliver

Photo courtesy Chipworks

If the chip in the cable only requests 1A of power, the power brick will only deliver 1A of power.


Use gzip to uncompress svgz file: unknown suffix I tried to uncompress a .svgz file using gzip, but encountered gzip: p1.svgz: unknown suffix -- ignored.

$ gzip -d p1.svgz
gzip: p1.svgz: unknown suffix -- ignored

I added the suffix .gz to the .svgz file, and still didn't work.

$ gzip -d p1.svgz.gz
gzip: p1.svgz.gz: not in gzip format

Here is the header of my .svgz file.

<svg viewBox="0 0 1172 1600" version="1.1" preserveAspectRatio="xMinYMin meet" text-rendering="geometricPrecision" class="p1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><defs><style type="text/css">text{white-space:pre;font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;fill:none;unicode-bidi:bidi-override}@font-face{font-family:"p1_g_d0_f1";src:url("data:application/font-woff;charset=utf-8;

file p1.svgz returns p1.svgz: SVG Scalable Vector Graphics image.

If you already can read the header of the file with head or cat, the file is not compressed at all.


Missing disk space on macOS I have a 250G disk on my Mac with around 100G in use. But the system reports only around 20G of free space. I'm using macOS 10.13.2. I have the problem at least since the upgrade to High Sierra, but probably also before.

"About This Mac" --> "Storage" reports that "System" is using around 180G. But if I check the complete disk, it looks like that:

$ sudo du -cxhd 1 /
  0B    /.HFS+ Private Directory Data
1.0K    /home
4.3G    /usr
4.2G    /.Spotlight-V100
1.0K    /net
 34G    /nix
  0B    /.PKInstallSandboxManager
  0B    /.PKInstallSandboxManager-SystemSoftware
2.6M    /bin
  0B    /Network
1.1M    /sbin
3.8G    /Library
  0B    /.Trashes
6.5G    /System
476K    /.fseventsd
du: /private/var/db/ConfigurationProfiles/Store: Operation not permitted
du: /private/var/folders/z7/[...]/0/SafariFamily: Operation not permitted
du: /private/var/folders/z7/[...]/0/com.apple.LaunchServices.dv: Operation not permitted
du: /private/var/folders/z7/[...]/0/com.apple.nsurlsessiond: Operation not permitted
du: /private/var/folders/z7/[...]/0/com.apple.routined: Operation not permitted
du: /private/var/folders/zz/[...]/0/com.apple.nsurlsessiond: Operation not permitted
8.0G    /private
8.6M    /.DocumentRevisions-V100
  0B    /.vol
 32G    /Users
 11G    /Applications
207M    /opt
5.0K    /dev
4.0K    /Volumes
  0B    /cores
104G    /
104G    total

df also says that only 20G are available:

$ df -h /
Filesystem     Size   Used  Avail Capacity iused               ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1s1  234Gi  211Gi   20Gi    92% 4019132 9223372036850756675    0%   /

Any tool I was using (Finder, Disk Inventory X, etc.) shows more or less the same numbers like df and du.

Output of mount:

$ mount
/dev/disk1s1 on / (apfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
/dev/disk1s4 on /private/var/vm (apfs, local, noexec, journaled, noatime, nobrowse)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)

I read and tested many, many things like:

https://superuser.com/questions/1270727/macos-10-13-1-high-sierra-disk-space-imac
https://superuser.com/questions/1259175/mac-disk-full-error-but-plenty-of-space
High Sierra disk space issues
How can I figure out what's slowly eating my HD space?

... but with no success. So what could consume more than 100G of disk space without showing up in any tool?

Update

Running „First Aid“ in recovery mode:

What does this error message mean?

error: btn:1: invalid key order (1) oid 440198 / oxid 114577
fsroot tree is invalid.

Update 2018-01-25

Another report of the same error: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8246182 (but no answers, yet)

I'm pretty sure this file system error is the root cause for the missing disk space. But I have no idea how to fix that. I was hoping that 10.13.3 would maybe solve it, but it didn't change anything. I guess I need to reinstall...

It seems like the two most likely candidates are a mounted (shared) disk overwriting a location with large files, hiding them from your view, or large (or many many small) files that are held open by a process, but have already been deleted. If you haven't rebooted the computer yet, that's worth a shot, but also booting into recovery mode and running first aid on the disk might help. lsof | grep deleted might also reveal interesting information, if lsof is available on OSX (I assume it is, but I've never looked)

I've also noticed in my own use that if I use a tool like DiskInventory or Grand Perspective and there are other users on the system, they won't show the size of other users files if I don't have read access to them (reasonably so). If you have other users on your system, they may have large files in their home directory you're not seeing.