OSX Services - character substitution + for _ I've created a service to use primarily in a browser for searching IMDB, so instead of copying and pasting the film's name I just select the text and run the service I created which will automatically search IMDB for the selected text. This works perfect.

I was hoping to do the same for Wikipedia and so i've been trying to modify the same service but have come across a problem. The search query places a "+" between each word.

This doesn't work for Wikipedia. They place underscores between their words.

I wondered how I can substitute the + for _?
This is what I currently have

open "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$(ruby -rcgi -e 'print CGI.escape $<.read.chomp')"

Kinds regards and Merry Christmas :)

open "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$(ruby -rcgi -e 'print CGI.escape $<.read.chomp' | sed 's/+/_/g')"

sed 's/+/_/g' replaces all instances of + with _


Grey screen when booting from original disk, doing Internet recovery or booting from High Sierra boot disk I own a MacBook Pro from 2012 that pops a gray scren everytime I try to boot.

When I try to boot from my original disk, the screen is gray with a question mark folder. I tried Internet recovery and it seems to work out. When the loading bar is full, a screen with Apple logo appears for like 10 seconds, and then a blank grey screen, nothing happens even if I wait for a while.

I then tried to boot on Linux mint with a live key to test the hardware, it fails to install, and the screen remains blank for a while as well, same for any other Linux distribution.

Lastly, I tried to boot from a High Sierra disk that I created using a friends MacBook. The screen asks me to install it, I do so, and after about 80% of the loading bar, the screen turns grey again...

It does look like a hardware problem, but I can't manage to load hardware test by holding down D key.

What is the reason for this behaviour? How can I resolve this issue?

The flashing question mark means that it could not find a volume to boot from. This indicates either that the volume is corrupt, disk not working or an error in the SATA controller that talks to the disk (or all of the above). The grey screen I believe comes from the stuck storage device enumeration right before the OS X Utilities window should show.

I've encountered the exact same behaviour on a MacBook Pro of similar age and it in my case it turned out to be a failure on the internal hard drive controller. I'd suggest you open it up and disconnect the hard drive, then try starting from Internet Recovery, the diagnostics and running from an external storage (such as live CD or USB stick). It may be that only your hard drive failed so a drive replacement could be a complete fix.

It is quite easy to open the computer and temporarily disconnect the drive, see the detailed procedure at iFixit


TV app home screen on iOS and Apple TV not working So the TV app in iOS and Apple TV, where you setup your favorite shows in a carousel isn’t working. When I open it up on iOS or iPad or Apple TV, the first tab shows the scrolling circle and nothing appears.

The other tabs work. Now my iCloud account is logged in and podcast, App Store and everything else seems to work. I’ve restarted my phone, logged out and in of iCloud, and reset network. I have no idea what else I can do.
I basically want to see my HBO and other shows that are personalized according to my viewing.

You can delete the TV app and download it again. It often helps as it clears the cache files and sometimes even takes care of these kind of bugs and even app crashes. It’s not ideal but it often works.


Create gigabit bond from 2x100Mbps ethernet I followed the instructions from: Combine Ethernet ports into a virtual port on Mac to create a bind between two 100Mbps Ethernet interfaces.

However the bond itself is only a 100Mbps interface. It there a way to make a Gigabit bonded interface to get 200Mbps out of the two interfaces at once?

This is called link aggregation.

First off, to bond two Ethernet ports together, your switch must also support this and have the ports configured to do so.  From your description of things, it appears this part was overlooked because you still only have a 100MB connection.

Secondly, you can’t get a gigabit link (1Gb) from two 100MB connections. 1Gb = 1000Mb.  Two 100Mb links aggregated is 200Mb.


Why won't Windows 8.1 64 bit (MacBook Air) recognize all 1GB video memory? My 2011 MacBook Air has 8GB of RAM and Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024 MB

My Windows 8.1 partition (64 bit) doesn't recognize more than 128MB of video memory, causing graphics oriented programs to crash.

Is there some sort of driver update or anything I can do to fix this?

Windows is always kept updated.

Your MacBook Air has integrated graphics so the system memory (total RAM) is shared between the OS (traditional RAM) and integrated graphics (stuff that handles drawing pictures on the CPU, that needs some RAM to itself as well).

OS X dynamically partitions that amount of VRAM versus system RAM at any given time (per Apple). Windows likely doesn't have this function built-in, but it looks like there are a few ways to control it.


checking the status of an ongoing "sleep" process from the terminal Is there a way to check how long a running "sleep" process has left to go before it ends within the terminal?

The sleep command in itself offers no service that allows the monitoring of the remaining sleep time. It is also not displayed anywhere.

As the sleep command operates without issuing a series of system calls for the kernel, you won't be able to use a typical debugging tool such as dtruss either. If you try to use the lldb debugger to attach to the process, you'll find that the sleep command is also interrupted and cannot be continued.

So it is not as such possible to very precisely determine the amount of time left. If you can make do with an imprecise result, do the following:

First run this command:

ps xa | grep sleep

This should show you the sleep command with the number of seconds that it is supposed to sleep in total. For example:

1234 s0123 S+    0:00.01 sleep 789

Here 789 is the number of seconds that the command is supposed to sleep in total.

Then afterwards run this command:

ps xa -o etime,command -c | grep sleep

It will show you the total time the process has been running:

  03:15 sleep

This means that the process has sleep for 3 minutes and 15 seconds = 195 seconds. The remaining sleep time is 789 - 195 = 594 seconds.


What does a vanilla jailbreak offer over a vanilla iOS firmware? Based on my experience for the two minutes for which my device was jailbroken, I saw little difference between a jailbroken device and nonjailbroken device. All I noticed was a little Cydia icon. Presumably I can add software via Cydia, but I'm curious to know what else jail breaking offers out of the box on an iPhone 4 running iOS 5. Is Cydia really the only starting point, or do other settings magically appear in the Settings app or elsewhere? Are there other benefits?

My understanding is only Cydia.  Everything that changes the phone via jailbreak comes in via Cydia. :)


Internet Recovery doesn't see disk, but able to boot normally I have a MacBook Pro (mid-2015) that I want to completely wipe.
2+ years ago, I installed my own 1TB SSD. Everything works completely fine, and always has; I can boot into the OS, it runs fast, plenty of space left on the drive (600+ GB).
But when I boot up with CMD+R to try disk utility, things get weird.

It boots into Internet Recovery instead of MacOS Recovery.
Once Internet Recovery loads (~5 minutes), Disk Utility doesn't show my 1TB Drive. Only the "disk0" & "OS X Base System."
Reinstall OSX doesn't give me the option of selecting my 1TB drive, or any drive for that matter, given only the 1TB drive is installed. Plus, Reinstall OS X is trying to reinstall Yosemite (10.10) meanwhile the 1TB drive has Big Sur (11.1) installed.

Any idea why this is happening, or what I can do to wipe the drive? I have everything I need from it, so I don't need to salvage any data in the meantime. Preparing to give it away, and need to make sure my data is erased.
Things I've done:

Reset SMC & PRAM (SMC a few times).
Ran Disk Utility - First Aid on the disk while inside the OS.

Before I get to erasing your Mac, I have some recommendations for non-obvious steps to take before erasing it. Some of these are covered in Apple Support Document HT201065 ("What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac"), but I have a couple of additions:

Do you have Two-Factor Authentication set up for your Apple ID? Is the Mac the only second factor for it? If so, you'll save time and pain later if you set up some other second factor options before erasing it. Either sign into your Apple ID on an iPhone/iPad/other Mac and set that up as trusted, or log into your Apple ID at appleid.apple.com, go to the Security section and add a trusted phone number.
You may need to deauthorize the Mac in iTunes, and possibly any other subscription services that the Mac is authorized in.
Turn off Find My/Find My Mac, so the next owner isn't faced with an authorization-locked Mac.
Sign out of iCloud (in System Preferences) and iMessage (in Messages).
Unpair any Bluetooth devices that aren't going with the Mac (unless you don't have a wired keyboard and/or mouse for the rest of this process).

Ok, now for how to erase the Mac. It sounds like the problem is that your SSD is formatted with the new APFS volume format, but it's starting in an older version of Recovery that doesn't know how to deal with that format. There are a couple of ways to deal with this:

My recommendation would be to download the installer app, and use it to create a bootable installer flash drive. Apple's instructions are in HT201372, but there's one preliminary step missing: format the flash drive with a GPT partition scheme (most come with MBR instead):

Run Disk utility, and plug in the flash drive you want to use.

Choose View menu > Show All Devices.

Select the flash drive (not the volume(s) listed under it).

Click the Erase button. You should see an Erase dialog with Name, Format, and Scheme options. If Scheme isn't there, you may've selected a volume instead of the entire drive; back out and try again.

Leave the name "Untitled", set the Format to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and the Scheme to "GUID Partition Map".

Click Erase and wait for it to finish. If it fails (it does sometimes), try erasing it again.

Once it's successfully erased, quit Disk Utility and run Terminal instead.

Run the createinstallmedia utility in the OS installer. The command will be something like:
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled

(See the Apple Support Document if it's something other than Big Sur.)

Enter your admin password (it won't echo), follow the prompts, and wait for it to set up the drive.

Once that's done, you should be able to select the drive in System Preferences > Startup Disk pane, then restart your Mac. If that doesn't work, restart and hold Option (note: it'd be the power button on an Apple Silicon Mac) to get the startup manager, and select it there.

If you don't want to do that (or don't have an erasable flash drive available), try restarting with Command-Option-R held down. That should get you Internet Recovery using the latest version of macOS that's compatible with your Mac (Big Sur at this point), and its Disk Utility should know how to deal with the APFS volume.

The installer drive is a bit more work, but it gives you a lot more options if anything (else) goes weird during the process, so (again) I'd recommend doing that instead of the Internet Recovery method.
[EDIT: and as I was writing this, you apparently tried the second method and something else went wrong. According to this question, that might be due to a network problem. Try the installer disk method.]


How can I scan from my Canon Pixma MP140 to Mojave? I tried using Image Capture, but there are no devices found.

I tried using Preview, but the "Import from Scanner" menu item is greyed out. I also tried this answer with no luck.

Then I tried using MP Navigator but it's not compatible with the Canon MP140.

Finally, I  tried using TWAIN-SANE but I get an error: "scanimage: no SANE devices found.”

Please don’t tell me that the only option is to spend $45 on VueScan software to get my scanner working!  How can I get this scanner working on Mojave?

This question is a bit scattered, but if I understand it correctly, you can’t get this scanner to work with your Mac.
This scanner is EoL - End of Life
Looking at the support page for this particular multi-function device, the last version of macOS that was supported was OS X 10.5.x (Leopard) and that version was released in 2009 and support ended in June 2011. The drivers were released for both Intel and PowerPC architectures, the latter being EOL itself since 2006; just about a decade and a half ago at the time of writing this answer.
Development has (obviously) stopped on this product.  If it were to have TWAIN drivers, it probably would continue to function.  Unfortunately, it requires it’s own drivers provided for by Canon.
As far as the Intel drivers go, being that they are so old, they are 32-bit drivers.  If you’re attempting to use this on Catalina, this will be a non-starter as Catalina doesn’t support 32-bit apps or drivers..

Please tell me the only option is not really to spend $45 on VueScan?

It’s possible.  I can’t speak to the viability of the software.  While I’m a huge proponent of extracting every last ounce of usability out of a computing device, there are certain types of products that become much more expensive to maintain than it is to simply purchase new.  Scanners and laser printers have consumable parts like pinch rollers (usually made of rubber), stepper motors, and sensors that do fail.  When these items fail especially the rollers - they become dry and hard and no longer “grips” the paper, I usually dispose of the device unless I can find a quality “rebuild kit.”
Perhaps you can get it working again, but keep in mind, you’ll be spending $45 and in the end, you’ll still have an obsolete scanner that’s nearly a decade and a half old.
I’d spring for a new scanner.


How to delete all the recordings from the Voice Memos app on iOS? I need to delete all the tracks from Voice Memos app in iOS, in order to free up storage on my device. Deleting tracks one at a time is not an option since I have hundreds of them.

I am using an iPod touch 4G.

Open the app and you'll find a little symbol with 3 horizontal stripes in the right bottom corner.
You'll get a list and you can tap the memo and click "delete" right afterwards.

Or in iTunes you can select all voice memo's after you've synced them to your PC and delete them from there.


How to iterate over Reminders using AppleScript I'm trying to write an AppleScript that simply iterates over uncompleted Reminders and displays the name.  The code below generates this error: Reminders got an error: Can’t make name of reminder (reminder id \"x-apple-reminder://838D4BDF-C520-440A-ADF2-B66FD602ADDC\") into type string

I figured out how to make it work by iterating from 1 to (count of notCompleted); but I would like to understand why the code below doesn't work. (The fact that I expect the code below to work suggests that I am misunderstanding what kind of objects are in notCompleted.)  What exactly is contained in notCompleted, and what exactly is the type of currentReminder?

tell application "Reminders"
    set snoozeList to "Snooze"
    set notCompleted to reminders in list snoozeList whose completed is false
    repeat with currentReminder in notCompleted
        display dialog (name of reminder currentReminder)
    end repeat
end tell

Your understanding seems on point, apart from two small items.  As you already know, notCompleted contains a list of reminders that are not completed.  The variable currentReminder in each iteration of the repeat loop will therefore contain a single reminder object.  Therefore, firstly, you don't need to (or rather, you ought not to) use the reminder specifier in name of reminder currentReminder.  Instead, just use name of currentReminder.

This doesn't entirely solve the issue as the name of currentReminder is returned in a partially de-referenced format (which is something I won't go in to here, but is a consequence of how the items are enumerated under the hood).  This means that to access the actual text data, you either have to coerce it to text like so:

display dialog (name of currentReminder as text)

or use the get command, which basically does the same thing:

display dialog (get name of currentReminder)

So it's nothing that you're doing wrong in a strict sense, just quirks of AppleScript.


Mac Calendar add shared calendar for email account with 2 letter email address One of the meeting rooms at our new offices has a short email address (tv@ourdomain.com).

The calendar sharing function only works on a search for email addresses (I can't type in an address manually) but the search only starts after the 3rd character before the @ symbol (and stops after the @ symbol).

Is there any way around this? Or any way to add the address manually? On adding it manually it says that it can't be found (although sending an email in mac mail finds the address easily and allows sending).

I'm using Mac Mail and Calendar with Microsoft Exchange accounts.

Many thanks

Sometimes using wild (global) characters in a search field to fill in the space helps.

Try using

?tv

or space tv

or !tv

or >tv

try any of those :)


iPhone USB Tethering Problem I have a strange little problem on my hands here.

All this while, I've been using iPhone tethering via USB, and all was well.

However, today afternoon, my iPhone USB interface in the Network pane keeps stating that my iPhone USB interface is 'Not Connected'.

Enabling and disabling the Personal Hotspot option on my iPhone does not seem to get it back.

Does anyone here have any idea how I would solve this?

Machine: MacBook Pro, OS X Lion v10.7.3.

iPhone: iPhone4, iOS 5.0.1

Over here the iPhone USB interface in the Network pane also keeps displaying 'not connected' when the USB cable is connected to the iPhone.

Mac OS X: 10.6.8
iPhone: 4
iOS: 5.1
iTunes: 10.6.3
iPhone Configuration Utility: 3.5

The cause is a faulty /System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext, though the version 2.3.0 is correct, its size of 78 KB, 60.892 bytes is not.

A known to be working AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext for iPhone USB tethering is version 2.3.0, but 225 KB, 189.646 bytes.

The fix is:

In Terminal: $ sudo rm -r /System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext # to remove
Restart (not sure whether this is necessary)
Reinstall iTunes (in our case 10.6.3), this also installs the good AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext: download iTunes from https://www.apple.com/itunes/ and run the installer, this will install the correct AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext.

When tethering still doesn't work:

Apple menu > System Preferences > Networking > remove iPhone
add the iPhone again
hit the [Apply] button

PS According to our backup software somewhere around May 7th, 2010 a newer version of AppleUSBEthernetHost.kext was installed.


Is it possible to use mini jack to lightning adapter for input? As now new iPhones are shipping with a mini jack to lightning adapter and AFAIK lightning connector should be super-programable, is it possible to get audio input from a mini jack plugged into adapter? In other words if I take a radio, and I pug a male-male mini jack into a headphones port, can I record the audio on my iPhone?

No, unless you use a special adapter, the audio from the radio will be send over the audio output channel of the 2.5mm headphone jack, not the input channel. This means that your radio does not function as a microphone/aux input and you can't record the audio from the radio.


Why does Terminal not honor preferences? Sometime in the last week my Terminal stopped honoring the "New tabs open with: Same Working Directory" setting.  Testing with "New windows ..." gave the same result.
My shell is zsh.
I was able to get this to work by following an answer here from Dan Rosenstark
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/340778/398648
# http://superuser.com/a/315029/4952
# Set Apple Terminal.app to resume directory... still necessary 2018-10-26
if [[ $TERM_PROGRAM == "Apple_Terminal" ]] && [[ -z "$INSIDE_EMACS" ]] {
  function chpwd {
    local SEARCH=' '
    local REPLACE='%20'
    local PWD_URL="file://$HOSTNAME${PWD//$SEARCH/$REPLACE}"
    printf '\e]7;%s\a' "$PWD_URL"
  }
  chpwd
}

But: I do not know how I could have determined this for myself, or how I could have debugged a similar problem.
Any tips or tricks to figure out what those initial steps of Terminal are would be greatly appreciated.
Things that did not work:

Toggling settings for New Tab or New Window
Renaming or adding return at the first line of .zshrc, .zsh* files
All of the suggestions in Open new Terminal tab in current working directory doesn't work

Other potentially useful info:

The "Same Profile"/"Default Profile" settings are honored when changed
Adding pwd as the first line of .zshrc shows the directory is already /home/<myuser>
I have installed and uninstalled some tools and projects involving nix recently (including nix-darwin)

Metadata:
OS        macOS Catalina 10.15.7 (19H2)
Terminal  2.10 (433)
zsh       5.7.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin19.0)

If you click on "Escape sequence…" in that screenshot, you get to see the following:

What this doesn't tell you, though, is that this is normally taken care of in the file /etc/zshrc_Apple_Terminal, which is called from /etc/zshrc. There are several things that can prevent /etc/zshrc_Apple_Terminal from being called or which can override what it tries to do:

You are starting Zsh with zsh -d or zsh -f.
You have a file ${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zshenv or ${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zprofile in which you have setopt NO_rcs or setopt NO_globalrcs
The parameter $TERM_PROGRAM does not have the value Apple_Terminal.
Zsh does not have read access to /etc/zshrc_Apple_Terminal.
When /etc/zshrc_Apple_Terminal gets sourced, the parameter $INSIDE_EMACS is non-zero.
You define a function precmd sometime after /etc/zshrc_Apple_Terminal gets sourced, which then overrides the one defined by add-zsh-hook.

What you can do to debug:

Start a subshell without non-global config files and see if the bug happens there, too:
cd $(mktemp -d); HOME=$PWD ZDOTDIR=$PWD zsh

If the problem does not occur in this subshell, then that means the problem is somewhere in your non-global dotfiles. You can get a list of these files by doing
ls ${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.z(log(in|out)|profile|sh(env|rc))(-^/)

Restart Zsh with exec zsh -vx and study the output from the beginning to see if /etc/zshrc_Apple_Terminal gets sourced and whether anything later overrides the precmd hook it sets up.


“Cannot connect to the store” when trying to install games on iPod touch 1st Generation Whenever I try to install an app on my iPod touch 1G (iOS 3.1.3, connected WiFi, I’m signed into iCloud on it, I checked, the app is compatible with iOS 2.0 or later) it only says what it says in the picture.

No matter how many times I press retry, it says the same thing.

Your device mode is classified as obsolete by Apple:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201624
“Some obsolete hardware products can no longer use the iTunes Store”
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208104


Python IDLE can't be opened by double-clicking .py files in Finder I can't open .py files in IDLE by double-clicking them in Finder (IDLE is currently set as the default program for opening such files).  Nor can I open those files by right-clicking and selecting IDLE.

If IDLE is already open I can open .py files through the File > Open method.  Once IDLE is open I can also just double-click .py files and they will open in IDLE.  Finally, in the Terminal, I can open .py files just fine by typing idle -e file.py even if IDLE has not yet been opened.

I just can't open IDLE itself by double-clicking on .py files, or by right-clicking on .py files and selecting IDLE.

I'm using OSX 10.8.2 and Python/IDLE 2.7.3.  Anyone know how I can fix this?

You can right-click on a python file and select get info. Near the bottom of the get info window is a section that reads Open With. You can select a version of Idle to use. There is a button below that reads change all. If you click this, then all files with .py extension will be opened with idle. Just tested this and it works.  Below is an image indicating the relevant points.


Factory Resetting Phone w/ out computer Today I went to:
Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Contents and Settings

I did this because I was told that would be the only way to get jailbreak off of my iPhone 5C. However, now my phone has been showing the white buffer icon for the past 2 and a half hours.

I didn't think it was suppose to take this long to restore my iPhone 5C back to its factory settings? Could it be because it's trying to delete the jailbreak? I really need to delete the jailbreak so I can update my IOS and other features on my iPhone.

P.S: My brothers friend jail broke my iPhone 5C this previous winter.

To remove the jailbreak it is advised to restore the iPhone from the computer, but as you have already reset it mannually I would suggest to download the latest firmware from here, and then put the phone iPhone into DFU mode. Open iTunes and press the restore button holding the option + Restore if on a mac, or Shift + Restore if on PC and select the downloaded ipsw file. This should remove the jailbreak and put you to the latest iOS version for your iPhone.


Highlight sentence feature with text-to-speech Up to now, text-to-speech (TTS) combined with highlighting sentences is by far the best way I found to read fast and at the same time very relaxed. I need an application or browser extension that enables highlighting sentences while reading them using text-to-speech (TTS) method.

I'm currently using TTS feature of Mac OSX but I really need this feature since I tested it with Moon+ Android App, for example, and facilitates a lot the reading. Basically, it allows you to read without directly reading each word, just visually follow sentence length.

Do anyone know any App for Mac or browsers extension? Thanks!

I believe that this is among the features of Kurzweil reader. They offer a free trial, so you can see whether this is what you'd like.

Another solution is Apple's own VoiceOver, which is built into the system. See especially the chapter on Working With Text.


Do Macs need to be defragmented? I don't see any application to defragment my Mac (running OS X).

Is defragmenting not necessary for Mac OS X?  If so, why not?

It's not necessary. For more details than you could possibly want, read Fragmentation in HFS Plus Volumes by Amit Singh (author of  Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach).


How to add location info to Calendar using "Quick Event" In OS X Yosemite Calendar, I can quickly add an event by pressing Cmd-N and typing "lunch tomorrow 1-3pm at McDonalds".  But how can I set a location?  In this example, the event title will be "lunch at McDonalds" and the location will by blank.

For example, these attempts at providing parsing hints do not work:

Attempted Text -> 'Interpreted Event title' [Interpreted event time]

Movie Friday 7pm at 1 Infinite Loop -> 'Movie Friday 7pm Infinite Loop' [1pm today]
Movie, 1 Infinite Loop, Friday 7pm  -> 'Movie, 1 Infinite Loop,' [Fri 7pm]
Movie at 1 Infinite Loop, Friday 7pm -> 'Movie at 1 Infinite Loop,' [Fri 7pm]
Movie, location:1 Infinite Loop, on Friday at 7pm -> 'Movie, location:1 Infinite Loop,' [Fri 7pm]

(The desired outcome is an event with title 'Movie', time Friday at 7pm, location '1 Infinite Loop'.)

Is there some syntax or hint for the app to parse the quick event text to populate the location field?

As far as I know (and I'm purposefully not citing anything here, because I have found absolutely nothing on the topic after much Googling, other searching, etc.), as of El Capitan there is no way to achieve this.

My rather simple workaround is to type out my event, such as

  Dinner with Will on Wednesday at 7 PM

And then to quickly tab to the location field in the event inspector, and fill in the event's location there there, e.g.:

Happy to update this answer as a more fulfilling solution presents itself.


Deactivate sound for iPhone calls on Mac OS Yosemite When somebody calls my iPhone it rings on my Mac Yosemite, too - which is great!
But i would love to only have the visual hint and a silent ringtone!

Unfortunatelly i cannot find any settings for this issue.
Who has a solution for me?

There is the option in FaceTime preferences to choose a Ringtone.  Unfortunatly there is no option for "NONE".  As a workaround I found you can edit the file that sets this.  The file is com.apple.ToneLibrary.plist

The file is located in:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.tonelibraryd/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ToneLibrary.plist

If the file doesn't exist the below command will create it.  Running the below will not deactivate facetime calls only silence them.

sudo defaults write ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.tonelibraryd/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ToneLibrary.plist ringtone "system:"

After you run this either logout and back in or run the below commands:

killall cfprefd
killall Finder

The part in the above command that is setting it to silent is the "system:", if you want to set it back to a sound ringtone you would do something like "system:crystal".  Where as crystal is the name of the ringtone.

Not sure if anything else is reliant upon this file so make a backup before hand if the file exist on your system.


How can I get an Applescript to copy the contents of a variable to the clipboard? This has to be fairly simple. I'm using Applescript with Pashua: Native macOS dialogs for scripting languages. What I'm trying to do is enter data into a text field in a dialog, and then copy that text field to the clipboard when the dialog box closes. Simply setting the clipboard to the variable tf doesn't work.

How can I get this script to copy the contents of tf to the clipboard? The Applescript results window shows {tf:"testme"} for an input of testme, but I don't want the output markup, only the text testme copied to the clipboard.

The relevant part of the script is at the bottom of the full script:

-- Get the path to the folder containing this script
tell application "Finder"
    set thisFolder to (container of (path to me)) as string
    if "Pashua.app:" exists then
        -- Looks like the Pashua disk image is mounted. Run from there.
        set customLocation to "Pashua:"
    else
        -- Search for Pashua in the standard locations
        set customLocation to ""
    end if
end tell

try
    set thePath to alias (thisFolder & "Pashua.scpt")
    set pashuaBinding to load script thePath

    tell pashuaBinding
        -- Display the dialog

        try
            set pashuaLocation to getPashuaPath(customLocation)
            set dialogConfiguration to my getDialogConfiguration(pashuaLocation)
            set theResult to showDialog(dialogConfiguration, customLocation)

        on error errorMessage
            display alert "An error occurred" message errorMessage as warning
        end try
    end tell

on error errStr number errorNumber
    display dialog errStr
end try

-- Returns the configuration string for an example dialog
on getDialogConfiguration(pashuaLocation)

    if pashuaLocation is not "" then

    end if

    return "

# Set window title
*.title = Page Settings

# Add a text field
tf.type = textfield
tf.label = Example textfield
tf.width = 310
"

    set the clipboard to tf   -- how do I set this variable to the clipboard?

end getDialogConfiguration

If you check Pashua's documentation, you will see that the result from showing the dialog is a record, with keys for the interface elements that you have declared.  To get specific items from the dialog, just get the value for the desired key.

The getDialogConfiguration handler just configures the dialog - the showDialog handler is what actually shows the dialog and returns a result, so that is where you would work with whatever parts of the result you are interested in.  Assuming you have the Pashua script and application in the same folder as the script, an example would be something like:

tell application "Finder" to set thisFolder to (container of (path to me)) as text -- get the folder path
try
    set thePath to alias (thisFolder & "Pashua.scpt")
    set pashuaBinding to load script thePath

    tell pashuaBinding
        try
            set dialogConfiguration to my getDialogConfiguration() -- configure the dialog
            set dialogResult to showDialog(dialogConfiguration, "") -- show the dialog
            set the clipboard to tf of dialogResult
        on error errmess number errnum
            display alert "Error " & errnum message "There was an error with the Pashua dialog:" & return & return & errmess
        end try
    end tell

on error errmess number errnum
    display alert "Error " & errnum message "There was an error setting up the Pashua script:" & return & return & errmess
end try

on getDialogConfiguration() -- return the configuration string
    return "
# Set window title
*.title = Page Settings

# Add a text field
tf.type = textfield
tf.label = Example textfield
tf.width = 310
"
end getDialogConfiguration


How to connect Apple TV (3rd Gen) to the Internet through proxy? I have an Apple TV 3rd Gen (a1469) running OS 7.2.2.  I need it to connect to the Internet through a proxy.

I've tried downloading AppleConfigurator2 Version 2.7.1 on a Mac with macOS 10.13, but I don't see the Apple TV from AppleConfigurator's interface.

How do I connect the Apple TV (3rd Gen) to the Internet through a proxy?

I've not used this particular service but from the looks of it it seems pretty straightforward and easy to setup and configure with a Apple TV. There's a video titled: Apple TV Setup for Smart DNS Proxy on that page that'll guide you through the steps.

Basically what you'll be doing is the following steps:

Setup an account on Smart DNS Proxy website from a PC
On your Apple TV go to Settings → General → Network
Go to Configure DNS and select Manual
Select an IP for a DNS server from this page that's reasonably close to you
Reboot your Apple TV

NOTE: The full steps are here if you need to change your location etc.


Disable automatic iTunes launch when iPhone is plugged in via USB How do I disable automatic iTunes launch when iPhone is plugged in via USB (for charging)?    In fact, I would like to disable automatic launch of anything when an iPhone is plugged in (including photo sync).

iTunes

Open iTunes, select your device, go to the Summary tab and unselect either Open iTunes when this iPhone is connected, or Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected depending on your version of iTunes.

Also, you might wish to disable iTunes Helper. Go to System Preferences → Users & Groups → Login Items and delete iTunes Helper from the list.
iPhoto

Open iPhoto, open Preferences (iPhoto → Preferences or ⌘,). Select General tab and set Connecting camera opens to No application.
Photos (new version of iPhoto)

Let Photos open when you connect your device, select the "Import" tab and untick the box for "Open Photos for this device"


Usb drive is constantly active: why? I recently bought a large USB drive and stored about 300GB of new data on it.1 I haven't changed anything on the drive, and I'm not reading any files right now. But the drive is active -- I hear the read/write heads flicking back and forth like mad. What on earth is OS X doing?

I assume it has something to do with metadata. But it would be great to have a sense of what kind of metadata is being generated, and whether I can stop it (or would want to). I can see the amount of disk space used slowly creeping up!

1. I'm not sure if it's relevant, but the data consists of page scans and OCRed text from about 350,000 books from HathiTrust, stored mostly in zip files.

It's probably Spotlight indexing the drive, which is going to include full-text indices of those PDF scans if they've been OCR'd.

If you want detail--to see the status of the indexing, for example, there is a handy chart at http://commandlinemac.blogspot.com/2008/12/spotlight-on-command-line.html


Update emacs that comes with OS X Is there a way to update the emacs terminal editor that comes with OS X? I could remove the binaries and install Emacs using a dmg package, but the idea was to upgrade to a newer version with some command.

Apple controls when / if they update emacs so most people just install a newer version of the tool and change their PATH variable so the new version is found first and runs by default.

If you like the sound of that, I recommend installing Homebrew:

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

Then install emacs:

brew install emacs

Add a link so that it'll work as emacs in the Terminal:

ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/emacs/24.5/Emacs.app /Applications

This will install the 'stable' version. As of this writing, that's 24.5:

» brew info emacs
emacs: stable 24.5 (bottled), devel 25.0-dev, HEAD
GNU Emacs text editor
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

This is significantly newer (24.5.1) than the version that came with El Capitan (22.1.1):

» emacs --version
GNU Emacs 22.1.1


How to transfer printer drivers from one mac to another? I have two macs: one I upgraded to High Sierra without wiping it. All my existing printer drivers function properly.

The second mac I upgraded fresh to High Sierra after a complete wipe. The printer drivers aren't working.

I have a Konica Minolta Magicolor 7540 Grafx II. On the machine with the fresh OS install, the option for duplexing 11x17 is missing. I've tried several different versions of the driver, from various sources, and when I can get it to duplex, it only prints out the left hand side of the page. On one side of the double-sided print, it prints the left hand side of the page, properly positioned on the left hand side of the paper. One the second side of the duplex print, it prints the left hand side of the paper, but it is scooted over to the right, so there is a huge blank space on the left.

Is there a way to transfer all the properly function print drivers from one mac to another? I have tried copying the file from Library> Printers> and Users>Library> Printers. That does indeed give me a second installation of the printer, but the duplexing issue is still there.

Konica has not upgraded their print driver for almost two years, so simply downloading a new one for OS 10.13 isn't possible. The print driver that currently functions properly on my upgraded machine is version 1.7.

I have tried downloading new driers, both of version 1.9 and version 1.7. I have tried copying the Printer settings from the old machine to the new machine. I've tried using the Add Printer function in the System Preferences.

I don't know what else to try. Can anyone assist?

I went through this yesterday and I found a solution -- at least a solution that worked for me.

I have an old Xerox WorkCenter printer for which Xerox no longer produces OS drivers ... but the printer works great.  After loads of experimentation, here's what I discovered:

Folders such as /Library/Printers/... seems to be a repository of drivers but these are not drivers that are in use ... they are simply drivers that could be selected to support a printer that needs such a driver.
When you install a printer, it will search the folder for matching drivers.
The driver you select will be copied to /etc/cups/ppd and renamed based on the name you gave your printer.  (Note that the top level /etc folder is a symbolic link to /private/etc these days)

Example:

My Xerox WorkCenter C2424 was working on another mac and the driver was /etc/cups/ppd/WorkCenter_C2424_93_93_1b_.ppd   This name was previously auto-generated by the other mac based on the final octets of the printer's ethernet address.

I copied the above file to the new mac but put it in the /Library/Printers/PPDs/Resources/Contents folder and renamed it back to just Xerox_WorkCenter_C2424.ppd.

I then used the "System Preferences" -> "Printers & Scanners" to install the printer on the new mac.  Except rather than letting it auto-select the driver, I chose the "Other..." option which opens a file navigation window and navigated to the /Libary/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources folder and selected the driver I copied and renamed from the other mac.

This caused the mac to copy that PPD to the /etc/cups/ppd folder on the new mac and to rename the copy based on the name given in the printer list (you can give it any name you want).

I tested the printer to make sure all features worked and verified this did indeed get the driver to the new mac (the new mac is running Mojave).

I'm not sure if I'll get away with this trick whenever it comes time to upgrade to Catalina ... since Catalina seems to have strict rules on not supporting 32-bit code and these very old drivers are probably not 64-bit drivers.


IP address changing too frequently My Macbook pro is connected to my router over the AirPort. The IP address it gets changes every few hours. Is there a way on the mac to request the same address.

I do not have access to the router to configure it.

Unfortunately this depends entirely on the configuration of the router. Perhaps the DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol) server is configured with a very short lease time for clients, and a new IP address is assigned whenever a client has no network activity for only a short time.

To fix the problem you will need to ask the administrator of the router to lengthen the lease time, or consider creating a reserved IP address for your MacBook Pro. The means of doing that vary with the make and model of the router.

After you have worked with the administrator to reserve an IP address, you will want to create a custom network profile on your MacBook Pro for use when you are connecting to that particular WiFi router, to disable DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol), and configure a static IP address.

If all of the above is not possible, perhaps someone could propose a means of writing a script on the Mac that would cause the Mac, every few minutes, to renew its IP address lease to the DHCP server that the WiFi router uses, in order that the IP address assigned by DHCP would not expire, and the DHCP server would not automatically assign a new IP address.

TRY THIS TIP: Leave Apple Mail open all the time and configure it to automatically check for new mail every 60 seconds. This might be enough to keep your IP address renewed on the DHCP server of the WiFi router.


Are these root certificates suspicious? On a fresh install of Leopard when I look at the root certificates this is what I see when I order them by expiration date.

I find the names, dates, and number of certificates suspicious. Is this all normal?

Yes the installed certificates are valid, however I would advise updating to the latest version of Leopard and make sure that the compromised Diginotar certificates are uninstalled:  This link at ps Enable provides an easy method for this.

On Root Certificates, they are by their nature long lived since they are the "Master" certificates and having them expire too often would cause issues with SSL certificate chain's world-wide.


How do I move a file into a folder in the iOS version of DropBox? I uploaded a file from my email to DropBox on my iPad. Then I got several more files of the same type and realized that it would be appropriate to keep all of them in a folder.  I created the folder and was able to put the new files into it, but I see no option to move existing files into existing folders.

Hold-and-drag doesn't seem to work.
The 'edit' menu doesn't seem to work.

Is it possible to move an existing file into an existing folder in DropBox on the iPad? And if so, how?

Steve

There is no method on either iPad or iPhone to move an item between folders.


GarageBand auto stored wrong Apple ID GarageBand was updated using a different apple ID than my own. Since then it will not let me use my own credentials to update.

Once a new update came out for GarageBand it prompted me to enter in my credentials. The login box had the Apple ID that is not my own greyed out and filled into the apple ID box. It prompts me for the password but will not let me change the login. I use my Apple ID for all other applications but it will not let me update GarageBand with my own credentials. Any help would be great! Thanks

Just delete the app and go to AppStore and try downloading it from your Apple ID . I had the same issue and now it’s resolved!


Yahoo! two-step authentication with iOS Mail and Apple Mail I have recently activated two-step authentication for my Yahoo! e-mail account. I am now no longer able to use iOS Mail (on iPhone) or Apple Mail (on macOS) even though I have created third-party app passwords as recommended by Yahoo!.

The error messages read "Invalid Password. Please try again." (in Settings | Mail | Accounts | ...@yahoo.com | Re-enter Password) and "Wrong Password. Try again." for iOS Mail and Apple Mail respectively.

So how can I successfully configure Yahoo! third-party app passwords into iOS Mail and Apple Mail?

When you sign in with third party apps into Yahoo Account, the password you have to give is not the account password that you use , instead you have to use a key which is provided by yahoo for that particular third party application.

ie, in Yahoo Account Security Settings you have to generate a key for each application which you use to login the Yahoo Account. Next time during login to Yahoo Account through application you have to give this key in place of your password.
More details in Yahoo Account Security Setting https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN15241.html
Hope this helps


Cleaning Milanese Loop band for Apple Watch The Milanese Loop band for Apple Watch has the tendency to show some dirt after a few months of regular use. How do you remove this grime?

I'll expand on Apple's sparse support article.

Remove the band from Watch.
Take a clean cloth (I used a microfiber cloth) and dampen it with water.
Wipe down the band, stroking it gently and repeatedly.
Turn the band over to the other side and repeat step 3.

The grime should be gone from your band and deposited upon your cloth, as illustrated below.


How can I force MacOS to make a binary conversion of filesizes in MB, GB...? I noticed that MacOS (10.6) makes a decimal conversion for file sizes, instead of  binary:

Is there any way to force it to make binary conversions instead in Finder? Because my mind kinda works in powers of 1024, regarding the file sizes.

Unfortunately, you can't.  See this apple support document which explains that since 10.6 they started measuring storage capacity according to the decimal GB (Gigabyte) rather than binary GiB (Gibibyte) values.  This matches up with how hardware manufacturers measure the capacity of storage devices.  OS X 10.5 and earlier, along with iPhones, iPads and iPods still use binary measurements.


How can I set up a keyboard shortcut for switching input source? I have to change my language option very often. It is hard when I write something with combination of both "English" & "Bangla", because I have to change that option rapidly.

Is there any way to set a keyboard shortcut, so that I can change my language option by it while typing?

I am using MacBook Pro with OS X.

Here is a screen shot:

Screen Shot of my Preference:

Go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → Input Sources and define a keyboard shortcut there. As you only have two sources, set a single shortcut for one of the options, then pressing the shortcut will toggle the input sources.


Mac 10.14.2 Snapshot warning: inode_val, object has invalid bsd flags During routine maintenance (running DiskUtil), I received the error message below:

warning: inode_val: object (oid 0x3024a71c3): invalid bsd_flags (0x10)

I did not notice any issues with performance and I am still able to boot the machine. I'm currently in Safe Mode and creating a new Boot Drive so that I may run Drive Genius; however, can anyone kindly advise on how this error may have occurred and/or best practice on how to address it? I do have a very recent Time Machine backup to which I can revert, but I'm not sure what caused the issue and if this will occur again (or escalate from this point).

Thanks to Olleg's link in his answer, it becomes clear that to find the file referenced in Disk Utility's error message has to be converted to an inode number first.
The "oid" (object ID) is hexadecimal, while the "inum" (inode number) is decimal.

You can either manually convert it to decimal, or use one of the many online converters.

In your case with an OID 0x3024a71c3, the converted inode number is 12923335107.
To search for the file with the inode number (inum), launch Terminal from /Applications/Utilities/, or find it via Spotlight and type:

find / -inum 12923335107 -print 2> /dev/null

This should show you the file in question, including path, in its output.

In Olleg's link this seems common for the OneDrive folder.

The inode is also shown, when running a file system check with the debug flag (-d) on the container: fsck_apfs -d
Example: APFS: fsroot tree is invalid after Time Machine backup - how to recover and avoid in the future?


macOS no longer recognizes environment.plist I need to set up environment variables for Pixar RenderMan Pro Server in macOS 10.13.

Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra and High Sierra no longer recognize environment.plist located in a hidden .MacOSX directory:

<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH</key>
        <string>/Applications/Pixar/RenderManProServer-21.5/lib</string>
        <key>RMANTREE</key>
        <string>/Applications/Pixar/RenderManProServer-21.5</string>
    </dict>
</plist>

At the present time I'm using .bash_profile to set up environment variables:

echo RenderManProServer environment variables are set...

export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Applications/Pixar/RenderManProServer-21.5/lib/
export RMANTREE=/Applications/Pixar/RenderManProServer-21.5/

  What else methods besides the described above allow Mac user to set up environment variables in macOS High Sierra?

If you are looking for a system-wide setting, you can add a snippet to /etc/profile for all shells, or /etc/bashrc for just interactive Bash instances.


Using Redsocks on Mountain Lion I'm trying to use redsocks on Mountain Lion for system wide SOCKS proxy. How can I configure the iptables on OSX to redirect tcp traffic to redsocks.

The redsocks documentation mentions the following rules -:

# Create new chain
root# iptables -t nat -N REDSOCKS

# Ignore LANs and some other reserved addresses.
# See Wikipedia and RFC5735 for full list of reserved networks.
root# iptables -t nat -A REDSOCKS -d 0.0.0.0/8 -j RETURN
root# iptables -t nat -A REDSOCKS -d 10.0.0.0/8 -j RETURN
root# iptables -t nat -A REDSOCKS -d 127.0.0.0/8 -j RETURN
root# iptables -t nat -A REDSOCKS -d 169.254.0.0/16 -j RETURN
root# iptables -t nat -A REDSOCKS -d 172.16.0.0/12 -j RETURN
root# iptables -t nat -A REDSOCKS -d 192.168.0.0/16 -j RETURN
root# iptables -t nat -A REDSOCKS -d 224.0.0.0/4 -j RETURN
root# iptables -t nat -A REDSOCKS -d 240.0.0.0/4 -j RETURN

# Anything else should be redirected to port 12345
root# iptables -t nat -A REDSOCKS -p tcp -j REDIRECT --to-ports 12345

# Any tcp connection made by `luser' should be redirected.
root# iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp -m owner --uid-owner luser -j REDSOCKS

Before 10.7, Mac OS X used IPFW, but it is now deprecated for ipfilter (pfctl) from OpenBSD.

The bug that causes sshuttle to have occasional kernel panics is not with sshuttle, but with IPFW on OSX 10.7 and 10.8, so redsocks will have the exact same issue.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough ipfilter to get it working with redsocks, but if I ever figure it out, I'll definitely share it.


Where does Chrome's Gmail Offline store its files on my Mac? I have added Gmail Offline to Chrome on OS X Mavericks. Where on my Mac are the offline files (such as attachments) and the app itself stored?

Google nor StartPage are very helpful in finding any real answers.

Gmail Offline usually stores its files under your profile path.

You can find your profile path by typing chrome://version in the address bar, and searching for Profile Path.

The path is usually:

  /Users/%username%/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/

Alternatively, if you are logged in under the account you want to explore, the path is:

  ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/

If you have a Chrome user profile other than the default one, replace Default with that profile name.

You should then look at the "Local Storage" and "Local Extension Settings" directories under that path.


If you give your iPhone + Passcode to someone, what harmful things could they do to your data/privacy/security? Assume you give your iPhone (iOS 12.2) + passcode to someone (e.g. teacher, law enforcement, airport security, etc.) for several hours, and then they give you your iPhone back.

Assume the person is technically skilled and motivated to harm your data or compromise your security/privacy after the device is handed back.

What harmful things can they do to your data/privacy/security? What traces would be around to identify those actions?

In particular, I'm interested in harmful discrete things (e.g. setting up a proxy so all web traffic is monitored). The non-harmful and easily detectable things (e.g. changing your iPhone's background) could be good to document as well, though.

I hope the information in the answer is used keeping ethical intent in mind, and there's no intention to misuse the information.

  What harmful things can they do?

Playing devil here, I would do the following:

Change fingerprint/face data for use with Touch ID/Face ID. I'd remove existing fingerprints/faces and add mine. (This action could go somewhat undetected in case wherein you have multiple fingers registered. I could remove just one finger and register one of mine. This would however be caught when accessing 1st party app such as App Store, where you are asked for your Apple ID password, as discussed in point #3 below).
Change the passcode itself. (This could go undetected initially, until you chance upon entering the passcode, say for example after a restart).
If I change the Touch ID/Face ID data, I'll obviously be able to lock and unlock the iPhone freely without restrictions using either Touch ID/Face ID or Passcode.

Having entered my own Touch ID/Face ID data will give me access to host of settings. I'd also be granted access to the whole host of 3rd party apps that were protected by Touch ID/Face ID, such as WhatsApp, Dropbox etc. (Although 1st party apps such as App Store will require you to enter your Apple ID password before enabling new fingerprint/face data). Some 3rd-party apps such as 1Password are well guarded as they will ask to authenticate via the account password before enabling newly registered fingerprint/face data.

I'd be able to send unintended messages using commonly used chat apps such as Messages/WhatsApp to contacts. I'd also delete the conversation to remove the traces.
Wipe data off iCloud. This will lead to irreversibly losing critical data synced to and stored on iCloud such as contacts, emails, photos, notes, documents etc.
Remove data stored and synced on iCloud by 3rd-party apps.
Uninstall apps freely which will likely cause you to lose locally stored/non-backed up data.
Remove other devices linked to your Apple ID via iCloud settings.
Change privacy settings by enabling/disabling specific apps access to location/contact data etc.
Simply access/copy-off private data such as contacts, notes, photos without changing anything as discussed above and thus, you never noticing it.
Copy data off your iPhone from apps that support File Sharing. Once simply needs to unlock iPhone, connect to a computer with iTunes installed and trust both on computer and the iPhone.
I'd be able to link a brand new device to your Apple ID using iOS Quick Start. If your email client app if set up on the iPhone with your Apple ID email, I'd delete the email alert that you receive when a new device is linked to your Apple ID.
Delete the call log from Phone app.
Leave app reviews and ratings on the App Store. This may be hard to notice easily.
Enable/tweak Family Sharing and invite myself your family. I can then access paid apps and music on my device. After doing the deed, I can also remove myself from Family Sharing or disable it, and remove the traces.

I would obviously not be able to access/change settings which require Apple ID password. This includes turning off Find My iPhone and logging out/resetting the iPhone.

  What trace would be around to identify those actions?

From the user standpoint, there could be minimum to no traces to identify the actions. There's no on device mechanism to access device access logs.

Assume that the user never attempt to unlock the iPhone or apps using Touch ID/Face ID and always use the Passcode. They could still access and copy off data such as photos, contacts via unidentifiable medium such as AirDrop.

It appears that Face ID is slightly better at protecting you here compared to Touch ID, as it currently allows only one face to be registered at a time.


How to bring back multi-touch gestures after it crashes without reboot? After a clean install of Yosemite, multi-touch gestures have stopped working on two occasions on my Macbook Pro 2011. Each time, the symptoms are the same:

Gestures stopped working both built-in trackpad and bluetooth trackpad.
BetterTouchTool still works. Restarting, stopping BTT doesn't help.
Hey, at least two-finger click -> right click still works.

I've tried the following:

Toggling trackpad configurations doesn't bring back the gestures.
Disconnecting, reconnecting, removing bluetooth trackpad from list of bluetooth devices doesn't work.

Restarting solves the problem. However, a restart in my case is a time-consuming process. It involves properly shutting down apps, dismounting network storage, disconnecting VPN, etc - only to revert all the steps again on startup.

I suspect the process interpreting multi-touch crashed when the malfunction happened. CPU was quite busy at both point. So I wonder if there is a process I can call up when it happens again, to avoid restarting the machine.

Type killall Dock in Terminal.

In my case, only Mission Control gestures had stopped working (three finger swipe left/right to switch spaces, three finger swipe up for overview, mission control etc).


iPod Nano 2G audio started skipping during music playback - what causes this? My 5 year old iPod Nano "2G" 8GB has recently began skipping during song playback.  It sounds like when a CD skips, a kind of digital glitching sound.  But lately it's gotten really bad, where it will skip repeatedly over a whole verse of a song.

I did some research and found that it's actually possible for Flash memory to get fragmented. Does this really apply to my iPod Nano?

It is significant to mention this skipping just started happening as I've recently filled the iPod full to capacity.

How can I resolve it?  I have a Windows XP computer.  Would I really want to Defragment this iPod like you would with a spinning hard disk?  Would I be safe to simply Cut & Paste everything off the iPod's drive letter in Windows Explorer?  (Move it all temporarily to my hard drive, and then restore it?)

I have encountered an issue similar to this on my iPhone, both on the 4S and 3GS. It took an embarrassingly long time to diagnose my headphones as the issue. I have a set of Sennheiser earphones with an inline remote, and if the jack becomes damaged, internal wires can get crossed and can start sending commands to the iPod application. I found that the play button would get hammered repeatedly as a result, and caused playback to stutter.

So, if your earphones have an inline remote and a damaged jack, try changing them. You might find a fix is cheaper than expected.


Dump a user's mailbox to a file (e.g., .mbox) from server for archival My company has a policy that when an employee leaves, we need to dump their e-mail account and write it to a DVD to archive it.

How do you dump a particular user's e-mail into a .mbox or other archivable file format from the server (without access to the client-side of the user's e-mail account)?

I didn't see any options in the Server.app GUI, so is there a Terminal command I can use?

I ended up doing this via Terminal on the server.

cd /Library/Server/Mail/Data/mail
sudo ls -l users | grep <username>

(where  is the username you're looking for)

This returns the user's ID (e.g., 006638A6-9664-4CB4-8814-525A253B6E33)

sudo cp -a <id>/ ~/Desktop/<username>

This will copy the user's mail directory to a directory on the desktop. I then dumped that directory onto an external hard drive used for archiving former employees' mailboxes.

Thankfully we'll be switching away from macOS Server (which will be removing the Mail service in an upcoming update) to Exchange, so I won't have to deal with this anymore!


Why can't I  update to iOS 5 my iPod Touch 4th gen? I am trying to upgrade my 4th gen iPod touch to iOS 5.
First I downloaded the IPSW file from iTunes.

When I press shift + "Restore" button, I get the following error:

  The iPod cannot be restored at this time because the iPod software update server could not be contacted or is temporarily unavailable.

What can I do to prevent that? I have looked into the iPod update logs and see that I am getting error 1602 but don't know how to proceed.

In general, you need to be connected to the internet to validate the install iOS packages with Apple's servers at the time of the restore. It is part of the install process that confirms to apple that your software has installed correctly and it generates the user license rather than asking you to enter a serial number for you allowing you to use the software.

Specifically for Error 1062 you need to remove iTunes and Apple Mobile device support from you applications. Then install the latest version of the software on your PC/Mac.


I have several hundred expired certificates starting with com.apple.idms.appleid.prd. What are they and are they safe to delete? I recently looked at Keychain Access and found that I have 394 certificates prefixed with com.apple.idms.appleid.prd, all of which are expired.

When I get more info on one of them, I see that it is from the Apple Certification Authority.

What are these certificates? Why do I have so many of them?

I tried to delete them and got this scary warning:

Unfortunately, I am not certain that I no longer need the selected key. So I'd like to ask: will I be needing the hundreds of expired keys, and is it safe to delete them?

Expired certificates can be safely deleted.

They were likely generated as a result of a problem authenticating with iCloud.


Bluetooth doesn't stay connected after update 11.2 Updated to iOS 11.2 and now my bluetooth device (tune2air) only stays connected for approx 30 seconds before disconnecting.

If I restart the phone, or tune2air device then it will reconnect but again only for 30 seconds. It will allow me to play music within that 30 second span.

Go into Settings > Bluetooth > MY DEVICES and tap on the Information icon ('I' in a circle) to the right of the device, then tap Forget This Device. Tap again on Forget Device (in red) to remove the device. Re-pair the device and see if it stays connected as expected. This has worked for me with other Bluetooth devices (I don't own a tune2air) that have developed intermittent connections.


Why is sudo taking way too long? I recently updated to macOS Sierra 10.12.4 Beta (16E144f) and it might be what is causing sudo to delay up to 10 minutes as it's the most recent change I recall since this problem occurred. I have never had to wait so long for a basic program and something is clearly wrong. The command eventually succeeds, but after waiting way too long.

I've been using this question as a reference. So far, I've tried adding my hostname to the end of the 127.0.0.1 line in /etc/hosts as well as. I checked /etc/resolv.conf and I did have some extra entries from when I was on a network that needed manual DNS entries, but I removed them and there has been no difference. I used the networksetup -setdnsservers command to restore the original values. Internet still works fine but still a very slow sudo.

I tried the logger 'test' command thinking it would write to /var/log/system.log, but it looks like it totally deleted that file although it was soon made anew.

I was hoping to use the strace command to see what was happening while sudo ran but that command is not available on OS X. Has anyone ran into this problem on this operating system before?

/var/log/system.log has the following messages that may be relevant. Again the command does eventually succeed as normal:

Feb  1 00:07:39 mycomputer com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.imfoundation.IMRemoteURLConnectionAgent): Unknown key for integer: _DirtyJetsamMemoryLimit
Feb  1 00:07:56 mycomputer com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.quicklook[2355]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.quicklook
Feb  1 00:08:16 mycomputer System Preferences[1886]: I can not do what i want
Feb  1 00:11:23 mycomputer com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.opendirectoryd[2335]): Service exited with abnormal code: 70
Feb  1 00:12:07 mycomputer syslogd[54]: ASL Sender Statistics
Feb  1 00:16:35 mycomputer com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.opendirectoryd[2395]): Service exited with abnormal code: 70

Any help would be appreciated.

ErikMH's answer gave me the idea to first just try to revert the sudoers file, without reverting/upgrading my whole system again. So in short:

Run this to get a root shell: sudo -s
Make a copy of /private/etc/sudoers
Run: cp /private/etc/sudoers\~orig /private/etc/sudoers
Fix permissions by running: chmod 440 /private/etc/sudoers ; chown root:wheel /private/etc/sudoers
Move any files in /private/etc/sudoers.d/ away from there
Test out sudo in another terminal
Don't forget to exit this shell to prevent inadvertently running commands as root when you don't mean to

Now running sudo should work again.

Next step is to check the differences between the old sudoers file (you copied away in step 2) and the current one and add those changes step by step back to /private/etc/sudoers or /private/etc/sudoers.d/, each time running a command using sudo to check if the change breaks it.

In my case, I had specified a nonexistent group in the sudoers file. Correcting that fixed my issue.


Force BootCamp to use GPT I have installed BootCamp manually to the last partition on my SSD /dev/disk0s13. It works, no problems, but every time I manage my partitions from OS X (or any other OS that is not Windows), the computer creates a new hybrid MBR, which makes Windows unbootable because it can’t find the Windows partition. I have to manually remove hybrid MBR via gdisk every time I manage my partitions.

I have a MacBook Pro 2015 13" Model with 512 GBs of storage and has 6 Operating Systems installed on it. I have macOS High Sierra and OS X Yosemite installed. I mostly use High Sierra.

Is there any possible way to either stop OS X from creating hybrid MBR or force Windows to use GPT? By the way, I'm using Bitlocker, not sure if it makes a difference.

UPDATE 1: I was trying to reproduce hybrid MBR with Disk Utility, and I discovered Disk Utility no longer produces that problem. Not sure about GParted.

If you have hybrid partitioning, then Windows will only see the partitions defined in the MBR table. There is no workaround for this. High Sierra removes hybrid partitioning in favor of a fully protected MBR. Yosemite can convert to hybrid, especially if partitions 2, 3 and/or 4 in the GPT are type EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7.

  Note: Type EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7 will appear as Microsoft Basic Data in output from diskutil list.


Uninstalling an incompatible color theme Today I did a mistake I normally never do - I blindly installed a software on my mac without knowing what I was doing.

I was looking for a dark color scheme and ran into this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT1CqiHqUXI

Went ahead and installed the software from here http://wavespell.deviantart.com/art/Snow-Leopard-Dark-Dock-wK-155508613

Only after installing I realized that it didn't work on Lion.  Everything looks awful.  The uninstall program does not work either.  Is there a way to go back to defaults without having to reinstall the OS?  (All user accounts on this Mac are affected by this change).  Thanks in adv.

You should be able to manually delete it. I would say that you need to open the installer again and go up to the point where it installs it, but don't install it. It should tell you where it is going to install it. From there, you can manually delete it.


Removing phone number from iMessage I'd like to remove my phone number from my iMessage account, but still have my phone enabled to receive messages sent to my email address (also used on iPad, Mac). Is there a way of doing this?

You can remove your phone number from Messages on your Mac and iPad. On your Mac, go to Messages > Settings > Accounts. Select your account. Uncheck the box corresponding to your phone number. On your iPad, go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Uncheck your phone number.

You cannot remove your phone number from receiving messages on your iPhone, because this is also where your text messages come in. However, you can set your email address as the default. This will guarantee that all new messages sent from you will show your email, and all responses will come back that way. Go to Settings > Messages. Select to "Start new conversations from" your email. I hope this helps.


Mid-2012 Retina Pro - shouldn't I have Mountain Lion? I recently reinstalled OSX, Win7 and Linux on my mid-2012 15" Retina (purchased August 19, 2012), and just noticed that I, apparently, am now running OSX Lion (10.7.5).

I recall that this machine came with Mountain Lion. I'm not sure exactly how this happened, but the only fix I have in mind at the moment is to do an internet recovery, which I hope will get the system back to ML; but, I'd rather not have to back up and restore 500+GB of Linux and Windows stuff in order to get a 4GB installer to download.

Suggestions?

Update

Forced internet recovery, which also says Lion instead of ML. Going to try nuking the recovery partition to see if that helps.

Depending on when you purchased it, it's possible that your machine came with OS X Lion preinstalled and you got the free upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion in July 2012. Apple's press release on the Mid-2012 MacBook Pro Retina dated June 11, 2012 states:

  The all new MacBook Pro ships with OS X Lion. Starting today, customers who purchase a Mac are eligible for a free copy of OS X Mountain Lion when it becomes available.

You can just visit the Mac App Store, sign in and install OS X Mountain Lion from there.


Display contents of file and also copy it to the clipboard I would like to create a helper function that displays my public key in the terminal and also copies it to the clipboard. How would I do that?

I tried cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | pbcopy, but this only copies the key to the clipboard.

Just paste the clipboard into the terminal window-

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | pbcopy; pbpaste

or use tee in the pipe with process substitution

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | tee >(pbcopy)

or forget about using pipes altogether

pbcopy <~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub; pbpaste


Turn off and disable the "Coherence" feature of Parallels Desktop for Mac On Parallels 15.0.0, I have accidentally triggered the "Coherence" feature within a VM running macOS Catalina as a guest on my macOS Mojave host. Now the apps are opening in within native windows on host machine, rather than being contained within a single "desktop" window. This is unworkable for me, making Parallels worse than worthless.

➥ How do I turn off the now-active "Coherence" feature within a VM?

➥ How do I entirely disable the "Coherence" entirely, so I never accidentally invoke it again?

I tried turning on the Configuration > Security > Isolate virtual machine from Mac. But this did not stop the Coherence feature.

Choose Exit > Coherence

To get out of the now-active "Coherence" mode, bring the "desktop" window to the front.

While the VM’s windows have "flown the coop" and no longer display within the desktop window, that desktop window does continue to exist. If you cannot find the window, on the host macOS, press Command+Tab to see the switcher bar with various app icons. Switch to the icon of a grey Apple logo with a pair of red vertical bars layered on.

With the desktop window in front, on the host macOS window bar for the VM, choose View > Exit Coherence. All your app windows snap back to the desktop window.

That takes care of half your Question. Perhaps someone else can post on how to kill the Coherence feature entirely.


xCODE 11.3.1 - Failed to create provisioning profile I'm trying to create a project, which will run on the xCODE's simulator, not on an iPhone. Right after the project is created, there are multiple errors. The first one is:

  Failed to create provisioning profile. There are no devices registered in your account on the developer website. Plug in and select a device to have Xcode register it.

I found many similar issues, but the given solutions didn't work in my case, or the issues where slightly different than mine, so I couldn't use them.

If there's any information needed for anyone to help, tell me and I'll provide it.

The solution for this error is emptying the field at the Code Signing Identity at Build Settings.

I thought it didn't help since there are still multiple errors. I now realize that those errors are not related to the one this question deals with.


How to use find to list all files except those under .git? I want to find a list of file (no directories) excluding those under .git

I am trying out some suggested find syntax to achieve as suggested in this SO question:

https://superuser.com/questions/397307/how-to-ignore-certain-filenames-using-find

Here are what I attempted

find . -type f ! -name '*.git*'

find . \( -type f  -prune -o \! -name '*git*' \)
find . \( -type f  -prune -o \! -name *git* \)
find . \( -type f  -prune -o ! -name *git* \)

But the output always contains files in .git. Here is a partial listing

.
./.coveragerc
./.DS_Store
./.git/.DS_Store
./.git/COMMIT_EDITMSG
./.git/config
./.git/FETCH_HEAD
./.git/HEAD
./.git/hooks
./.git/hooks/disable-commit-msg
./.git/hooks/pre-push
./.git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg
./.git/index
./.git/info
./.git/info/exclude
./.git/info/refs
./.git/logs
./.git/logs/HEAD
./.git/logs/refs
./.git/logs/refs/heads
./.git/logs/refs/heads/1312

The version OS X is El Capitan, and I am using zsh. find is located in /usr/bin

Is it an OS X find issue? If so, how can I achieve my intended result?

EDIT

I tried this command

find . \( -type d -name '.git' -o -type f  \)  -prune

and it is closer to what I want. However in the output I can still see the folder .git

The accepted answer is not correct but with a comment it starts you off.

To get no html files

find . -type f   ! -name '*.html'

-name loks at the file part of the path for the whole path you need --wholename so

find . -type f  ! -wholename '*/.git/*' ! -name '*.html'

So only get files (-type) ignore the .git directory - note you need to enter the directory delimiters and the . or else you remove files like .gitconfig which are valid ones

OK this looks at all file -prune might look at less but the speed probably does not matter it is better as in all code to get an understandable working thing first


Is it possible to watch mp4s on an iPod Nano 6th Gen? I have tried to upload .mp4s to my iPod before, but all it would do is show a screenshot of the video and play the audio. Is there a way to actually watch the video and have the audio play as well?

The 6th Generation iPod Nano does not support video decoding or playback1.

However, it can demux video files and play any supported audio streams in those files2. Instead of the video stream, it displays a single keyframe. This is useful for music videos or podcasts, where you might still want to listen to the audio only, but it's not the same thing as full video playback.

Note that the 5th- and 7th-gen both support video decoding and playback3; its omission from the 6th-gen seems to be an anomaly.

1 Sources: everymac.com, apple.com, wikipedia.org.
2 Source: ilounge.com.
3 Sources: 5th-gen, 7th-gen. For those devices, handbrake is a great option, as per @iamkrillin's answer.


Can I assemble an Apple labeled hard drive in another laptop? A lot of hard drives delivered with Macs come with an Apple logo.

Is it possible to put those drives in other laptops like Asus, Acer, Toshiba etc.?

Those hard drives are OEM-drives build by Seagate, Toshiba or other hard drive manufacturers for Apple.

Usually there should be no problem to put them in other non-Apple laptops if they fit physically.

You won't be able to mount the HFS-volumes on those drives without special file-system drivers like Paragon's HFS+ for Windows in a dual-bay configuration.

There might be rare cases however, where drives with Apple firmware in conjunction with special SATA- or IDE-controllers used in non-Apple laptops might not work reliably. Without knowledge and special hardware it's almost impossible to detect occurring errors (e.g. bit-errors).


macOS app icon stuck on my screen I just tried to open Spotify's Mac app through the OS X LaunchPad, and when I clicked on the icon, the Mac app icon remains stuck on my screen.

I've attached some screenshots to show you. I don't know how to get it down. No matter what I do to the screen, the icon is always stuck "on top" of it.

How do I make this go away? If you're curious, Spotify opened on the second attempt. The first attempt it just got stuck.

Turns out, I just had to reset the 'dock' process. I opened Terminal and typed

killall Dock

and pressed enter. The screen flashed for a second, and everything came back with my stuck icon gone.

If that fails, the issue may be with Finder (this is the case with the similar issue of Stacks categories "burned in" to your desktop background). Running

killall Finder

will address that.


Correct Syntax to change default Screenshots and Screencapture save location? I would like to change the default screenshot location for OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 using Terminal. But this command is not working, where subfoldername = "name of my sub-folder" I want to store my screenshots in.

author$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture location -string “$HOME/Desktop/subfoldername"

You need 2 lines

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

and the

killall SystemUIServer


External monitor has blurry font on a MBP retina There are indeed countless of these questions, some of them succesfully answered.
I recently purchased an ACER R241Y.

I started using Sketch and noticed the fonts quality was noticeably worse when on the Acer.

System Information:

El Capitan 10.11.6 (15G1217)
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013)

Here are the screenshots:

I tried the infamous patch: Force RGB mode in Mac OS X to fix the picture quality of an external monitor, the defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -integer X setting.. I am using a DVI -> Thunderbolt(Mini DisplayPort) cable. (I tried HDMI<->HDMI as well).

The MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) has an Intel Iris 5100 GPU and is capable of supporting an HDMI-compatible device, including 4K, while using one Thunderbolt display or it can support two Thunderbolt displays.

In terms of external resolution, this model supports up to 3840 x 2160 pixels at 30Hz or 4096 x 2160 pixels at 24Hz (using HDMI) or up to 3840 x 2160 pixels at 30Hz (using Thunderbolt).

According to the specs of the Acer R241Y, this has a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080 at 60Hz. And, according to the user manual, this resolution is achieved using VESA mode.

Possible solutions

On your MacBook Pro:

REFRESH RATE - As a first step, I would check the Refresh Rate set in your MBP. You can find this under the Display tab within System Preferences > Displays. If you change it, you may need to wait a couple of minutes to ensure the change has taken effect properly.
RESOLUTION - I would also double-check you're not using the Scaled option for your resolution. Instead, make sure you have the Best for display option selected - also found in System Preferences > Displays.
RESET NVRAM - It may be worth resetting your NVRAM. If you're unsure how to do this, refer to my answer here. Make sure you look under the PRAM/NVRAM heading.

NOTE: If, at any point, the display switches off after configuring options in your Displays System Preference, just press the Esc key to undo the last change.

On your Acer R241Y display:

If you're still having issues after checking/trying each of the above, try the following:

Mode type -  If your display is already in Auto mode, manually try each of the others (e.g. Standard mode, Graphic mode, etc) one by one. If it's already on a specific mode, then try it in Auto mode instead.
Focus - You can also manually configure the display's focus. You should be able to do this by going to the Picture Menu.
Reset your display - There should also be a Reset option on your display's menu. It may be worth trying this if all else fails.

[EDIT]

Since your issue is around how fonts look, there is also a setting in your System Preferences > General. Maybe try ticking/unticking the Use LCD font smoothing when available option to see what difference that makes.


How to recover emails backed up in iCloud I use Mail on my iPad mini iOS 9.2 with 3 different email addresses coming in, one of which is Gmail set up as IMAP to download onto my iPad and my iPhone 6. I have iCloud set to backup everything including Mail. Today, for whatever reason, all my emails from my Gmail account just disappeared as I opened Mail, and they are gone from my Gmail webmail online too. Gmail says they can't help. I am hoping that I might be able to recover them using my iCloud backup, but don't know how to do it. Please can anyone help? Thank you.

This issue is most likely something to do with Gmail and it's syncing. Check Gmail.com to see if your mail is still there.

If it is, try deleting your Gmail account from your iPad (Tap Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > (your Gmail account) and press "Delete Account". Then add the account back by tapping Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > New Account. Select Gmail and input your credentials. This should bring back your mail.

If you need to restore from an iCloud backup because the mail on your phone was archived locally and not synced to Gmail, restore from an iCloud backup as detailed in Apple's Support article:

Erase your iPad by tapping Settings > General > Reset All Content and Settings
After your iPad has been erased and your device has presented the greeting screen, follow the steps. Join a Wifi network, and follow the next steps.
Tap "Restore from iCloud Backup". Sign into iCloud and choose the backup you want to restore to your device.
Continue to follow the steps until you have restored your iPad and your locally archived mail should be where it was put.


How to force open TCP 443 on my machine? I turned off the firewall. Then, using nmap in the terminal, I issued the statement

nmap 127.0.0.1

and got

Starting Nmap 7.12 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2016-08-15 11:00 PHT
Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)
Host is up (0.00016s latency).
Not shown: 968 closed ports, 27 filtered ports
PORT     STATE SERVICE
22/tcp   open  ssh
80/tcp   open  http
631/tcp  open  ipp
3306/tcp open  mysql
9000/tcp open  cslistener

How can I force open TCP 443 on my machine?

To force open any port you can use nc (netcat).

The command sudo nc -l 443 will open port 443. Of course this will not serve any web pages. But it will be listed in your namp output as open port.

By specifying an interface with -b <if> you can bind it exclusively to it - other interfaces (e.g. en1) shouldn't show an open port 443 then:

sudo nc -b en0 -l 443

Check for more options by executing man nc.


SSH, passphrases, keychains, Could not open a connection to your authentication agent I will be very surprised if anyone has the answer to this. I have googled for a long time but no luck.

As an iOS developer who will shortly be welcoming a new team member I want to set up a continuous integration server so that anyone who checks in code will kick off a build, which will in turn set the status of a build light providing a visual indication of code status. If the build breaks it won't stay that way for long because we'll see a big red light.

The ingredients I picked to make this work are Jenkins, Git and a Mac mini. Day to day I won't have physical access to the mini but the build light is controlled by ethernet - no problem.

The first step in getting Jenkins to manage a build is to clone the git repository. For obvious reasons it discards any old code and grabs a copy of the entire repository. I'm using a git "Repository URL" of gitfella@boardroom.local:repo/ProjectName.git. Naturally I did 'su - jenkins' and become user jenkins, then going through the process of scp id_rsa.pub gitfella@boardroom.local. As gitfella I appended that public key to authorized_hosts.

The surprise came when I went back to being user jenkins and tried ssh gitfella@boardroom.local - I was asked for the passphrase for jenkins. At this stage I realised the repository clone was failing because the passphrase could not be entered while Jenkins was running without an interactive shell.

The way to get the passphrase into the keychain is ssh-add -K (and prior to Lion I don't remember having to do this ever) but this does not work in a ssh shell, it fails with the message Could not open a connection to your authentication agent. Executing ssh-agent shows the environment variables that need to be set to allow this to happen, and once that's done ssh-add -K works. Then the git clone is OK. Then I thought the problem was solved but next ssh login I'm asked for the passphrase again.

I now have the git clone phase of the build working but I would rather not have to remove the passphrase for Jenkins entirely...

How can ssh-agent values be set on every invocations of this Jenkins build process? Jenkins is started by executing launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.jenkins-ci.plist - would it be possible to set the ssh-agent environment in here somehow? Would these settings persist as long as Jenkins does (per boot)?  I'm reluctant to mess with this now I have this little problem mostly sorted, but maybe some expert knows the right fix.

The ssh-add -K  command add the key to the Apple's Keychain, but there is a SSH specific keychain, unrelated do the Apple's one.

It runs as a deamon and interacts only with SSH.

I don't know if this will help you, but I have strong feeling that it will.

Keychain is available as a homebrew package so if you get nomebrew available at your system to install it just type brew install keychan. After that a man keychain will help a lot.


Is my hard drive missing if a iMac 2011 purchased at a garage sale boots up with a flashing grey question mark? I bought a iMac 2011 at a garage sale. But when I boot it up, I get a flashing grey question mark. Disk utility can't find Macintosh HD. Probably owner deleted files and HD? Do I need to install SSD drive to reinstall Sierra?

Try this: Press and hold Option+Command+R or Shift+Option+Command+R at startup and use Internet recovery mode.


High Sierra forgets display layout on reboot Since I upgraded to High Sierra, my 2-display layout gets reset to side-by-side every time I reboot, when instead it should be vertical to match the physical layout of my monitors.

While potentially unrelated, High Sierra also lost my Login Items after the upgrade.

I'm using a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017), running 10.13.

How can I get High Sierra to remember my display layout?

Your MBP uses Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM) to store various settings. It may be worth resetting this.

To reset the NVRAM on all Late-2016 and 2017 MacBook Pro models (with and without Touch Bar) follow these steps:

Shut down your MBP. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then immediately press the commandoptionpr keys.
Keep these keys pressed down for at least 20 seconds!
Let go of the keys and let your MBP reboot normally.

Note 1: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Note 2: If your Mac is using a firmware password, you will need to disable the firmware password before resetting NVRAM.


Edit Table of Contents in Preview? In Preview, is there a way to change/edit the names of links in the Table of Contents of a pdf?

You could use a combination of tools to remove the old ToC, and attach a new one:

use PDF SAM ("split and merge"; it's FOSS and cross-platform) to take off the old ToC;
use PDF Outliner ($4.99 in Mac App store) to generate a new one.

See other helpful tools in another Q&A.


Unified Switching between Keyboard Layouts in Various OSs I have a Mac with VMWare installed and run Windows- and Ubuntu-powered virtual machines there. The problem is that in each of the operating systems I have to use different keys to switch between keyboard layouts (English->German->Russian).

Does anybody know whether there is some way to unify the layout switching key combination in all the OSs? For instance switching the layouts using Apple/Windows key and Space Bar.

Yes, should be possible. You just need to unify your keyboard shortcuts in each OS.

For OS X it's in "System Preferences" → "Keyboard"/"Keyboard Shortcuts" for Snowleopard it's in "Keyboard & Text Input" on the left side and then you enter your desired shortcut by clicking on the assigned shortcut and pressing the combination you want.

Note that cmd+space is usually assigned to Spotlight search, so you would need to change that too.

And I think you know how to change it in Windows and Ubuntu, or you're able to find out - right ?


Extreme lag when opening folders, new tabs, dragging/minimizing any windows. and clicking on any text box When I use Finder, whenever I open or close a folder, even if it just has a single text file inside, my computer completely freezes for 30 seconds to one minute.  In addition, whenever I click the green button to unfullscreen a fullscreen application, my computer lags for 5-10 minutes, and does so again if I try to drag the application.  The computer also lags for a minute  when closing any application.

A possibly related issue is less extreme lag when clicking on any text field, regardless of if its in a chrome browser or part of the OS.  Even clicking on the title and body sections when asking this question induced 15 second freezes each.  This text lag affects the login screen.

My computer can still run KSP and Minecraft easily, so I don't think its a CPU problem (though my computer lags if I click on a text field in those games).

Additionally, the first tab, be it in Safari or Chrome, that I open after each midnight takes 5-10 minutes to open.

Restarting and resetting NVRAM has no effect.

spindump is used by various system components to create reports when an unresponsive application is force quit. Reports are stored at:
/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/

So what you could do is to have a look at that directory to see which application required a lot of forced quits (aka crashes). Please raise a new question if you need help in reading the log.

In the meanwhile you can do the following to keep your system usable:

Keep a Terminal window open
When the system slows done to a crawl, switch to Terminal (via CmdTab)
run sudo pkill -STOP -l spindump; sudo pkill -STOP -l tailspind (you will be asked for your password once)

This will pause any running spindump processes (which is better than outright killing them because then they will be most likely restarted immediately).
Two caveats here

This will only work if the user you are logged in with has admin rights. If it doesn't, please add a comment and I can show you how to make this work for a non-admin user
It helps to put this in a shell alias (less character to type to execute it). If you need help with that, comment accordingly as well


Turning on iCloud Photo Stream If you turn on iCloud Photo Stream, does it automatically share all your old photos with everyone? Or just the recent ones?

Photo Stream doesn't share photos with anyone. It simply makes your photos available on multiple devices of yours (signed in with your Apple ID) for up to 30 days or 1000 photos, whichever comes first.

It does not work retroactively. Only photos taken after it's turned on will be uploaded.


How can I fix Safari iCloud Tabs failing to display in Big Sur? I have a 2016 MacBook Pro, an iPad Air 3rd generation and an iPhone SE 2020. The MacBook Pro doesn't display any iCloud tabs, while the iPad and iPhone both display all open tabs from both the other devices.
I've tried signing out of iCloud on all devices and on just the Mac and signing back in again, and just toggling Safari off and on in the MacBook Pro's iCloud settings. I did the latter three or four times and it did temporarily fix the problem once, but only for about 24 hours. Also, it may be relevant that to switch Safari back on, I have to click the tick the Safari box and agree to merging data twice instead of once.

This problem may have fixed itself, or been fixed by Apple. It might be due to using a flaky internet connection (ours typically goes down for a few minutes every 50 minutes or so). I'll do some further tests over the Christmas period to see if the problem recurs.


How to always show "Library" in the Finder its "Go"-Menu without holding a modifier key? I often use the "Library" folder in my home folder ~/.
The Library folder there (~/Library/) is shown (unhidden), and that is not the question.

I would like to also always show the menu point "Library" in the Finder menu under the word "Go".
Normally it only shows when I hold the Option ⌥ key the menu is open.
I tried to assign "Library" to the shortcut for "Downloads" and gave Downloads another shortcut, like it worked for "Save As…". But it only shows up then holding down the Option ⌥ key.

How to always show the "Library" menu point under the Finder "Go" menu, without holding down a key?

In the screenshot I am holding down the Option ⌥ key:

There is no system-tweak-able setting (for now) that will change the "Go" menu behaviour.

Basically, whether you have a shortcut defined to open Library or not, you'll have to hold "Option" to make Library visible in the menu.

Alternatives from the comments for quick access to Library (as a workaround to it appearing) are to

add ~/Library to your Finder toolbar
add ~/Library to your Finder sidebar
define a Finder keyboard shortcut
unhide the folder with chflags nohidden ~/Library
automate typing ~/Library and use Go To… Command-Shift-G
place the folder in the Dock or an alias to it on the Desktop (or elsewhere)


How to make a Mac (Macbook Pro) not hibernate? I have already set in the Energy Saver of System Preferences that

Computer sleep: on Battery Power, Never
                when plugged in,  Never

so if I close the cover of the Macbook Pro running Mountain Lion, so that it sleep, then if I open up the cover within a few hours, then it wakes up right away -- which is all fine.  However, if I open up the the cover and not touch it, then after some 12 or 24 hours, then it will wake up from hibernation, taking about 2.5 minutes before any password can be typed in. (update 2015: this Macbook Pro was running with a non SSD hard drive. The wake up time is a lot better if it is an SSD drive).

This is all when the Macbook Pro is plugged in (powered by the power adapter).  Is there a way to make it not hibernate?

This behavior is documented by Apple at Mac computers: Progress bar appears after waking from sleep:

  With the release of the OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.2 supplemental update 2.0, a new feature was introduced to enter safe sleep after four hours of the computer being connected to AC power. This is an effort to comply with the European Energy Standards (ErP Lot6). This will only occur if there is no wireless or Ethernet activity and no activity from external devices such as USB storage devices.

  This is normal behavior for the following units:

  MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 and later)
  MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012 and later)
  MacBook Air (Mid 2012 and later)
  iMac (Late 2012 and later)
  Mac mini (Late 2012 and later)

To disable this, turn autopoweroff in the sleep settings by running the following command in Terminal (under /Applications/Utilities):

sudo pmset -a autopoweroff 0

The -a option disables auto poweroff for the Mac while on the charger as well as on battery. Use -c (instead of -a) to disable auto poweroff only when it's plugged in.