Monitoring power consumption on Mac The Android OS monitors the power consumption of running apps and hardware (display). As you may guess, this is a useful feature as it allows to track down energy greedy apps.

Is there an application that would do such monitoring on Mac OS?

It should calculate the percentages of the charge that an application/process/hardware has used.

I use plenty of little software that runs in the background permanently. It would be nice to know if such little helpers drain the battery significantly.

As of Mavericks, this is provided by the OS. Activity monitor has a tab devoted to displaying the energy use of running (and recently running) apps.

Also, the battery icon shows applications that use significant energy on Mavericks and newer.


Why might I get a "Service cannot initialize" error in my console when a plist file is run? I have set up a plist file and loaded/started it with launchd. Whenever it is time for the script to run, I receive the following error in my console:

12/9/15 12:53:19.344 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (kjuvbot[742]) Service could not initialize: 14F27: xpcproxy + 13421 [1402][AD0301K4-D354-31AE-8BA7-B5KBECE64P0B]: 0x2

Does anyone have any idea why this error might occur? Here is my .plist file:

kjuvbot.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>kjuvbot</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>python3</string>
        <string>/Users/me/workspace/Learning/src/kjuvbot.py</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>3600</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

Does it by chance need com. in front of the filename?

Here are the permissions (I created the file as myself):

-rw-r--r--@ 1 me  staff  427 Dec  9 19:28 kjuvbot.plist

python3 is not in the path used by launchd which will be less that that in the terminal.

Try using the full path in the plist

e.g.

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/usr/local/bin/python3</string>
    <string>/Users/me/workspace/Learning/src/kjuvbot.py</string>
</array>


Pool Multiple Hard Drives in ONE Network Share I've researched for a few days now and could not get any result.
Maybe there is a good tip for Mac I have overlooked.

What I want to do (in a nutshell) is to create a Virtual Folder that contains all of my Disks.

For example I have:

/Volumes/Music (1 Hard Drive for Music)
/Volumes/Movies (1 Hard Drive for Movies)
/Volumes/Movies2 (2nd Hard Drive for Movies)
/Volumes/Data (1 hard Drive for Data)

and so on.

Now lets say I create a folder /share and start creating symlinks. Those symlinks are not working, when sharing the folder. Also, when using ZFS, I can only share a whole pool, but if a filesystem is on top of the pool, it disappears.

For example:

zpool create tank /dev/disk1 dev/disk2 #(merging Movies for example)
zfs create /tank/MoviesA
zfs create /tank/MoviesB

Sharing /tank results in an empty folder, even if MoviesA and MoviesB are filled with Movies.

I also tried to simply share the hidden folder /Volumes but as you can guess, it does not work. I know this does not work and has its reasons, but I tried it to see what is possible.

So the main idea should be clear: creating a network share that contains all drives, but keeps them independent from each other.

I could share a whole zpool, but if a disk fails, it gets lost. Also i could use something like mhddfs but in that case I have no control over the place where a file is stored.

In an ideal situation I would have one big network share called "Server"
which contains all my hard drives by their names, and lets me browse and move stuff from one to another. Simply as said above when I tried to share the folder "Volumes".

I hope there is anybody out there who can help me out with this. There has to be a simple solution...anything virtual.

What obviously is working:

Transmit -- Mount the SSH connection under /Volumes

Transmit then creates a Virtual Drive, but this is not shareable via SMB or AFP and does not show the correct size.

What I have not tried yet:
- play around with NFS
- OSXFuse and SSH (probably the same as Transmit does)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I do know that there are other options. I also thought about Spans, JBODs, RAIDz, RAID1 Mirror sets in ZFS Setups...

Some Info on the available HDDs: 2x4 TB, 3x2 TB, 1x1 TB and a 640 GB Disk.

If you have any other idea, please share. I am simply trying to have everything in a nutshell, but not like a JBOD so if one drive fails everything gets lost. And I don't need a RAID because the data is not that important and is going to be backed up on the 2x4 TB or the other way around.

There are two ways to do this. I've my combining both solutions I've found that I've been able to maximize both resiliency and flexibility.
1 - Server Side.
Use OSXFuse (https://osxfuse.github.io/) and  mhddfs, the latter of which you can install via MacPorts, to create a large drive pool. Then share that. (A wrinkle here here is that mhddfs runs in user space, typically after login, so file-sharing may need to be restarted after mhddfs fires. I'm still trying to work out that kink. If you figure anything out, please do share.)
Know that you can then also share the drives independently. Use the DrivePool share for reading, and the individual shares for writing (so that you have more control over where the files go).
2 - Client Side.
Use auto_mounter and mount all the drives individually on the client, but in the same folder. Although they are individually mounted, auto_mounter is smart enough that after a short sping-up-and-connect delay they basically act as a large, laggy folder on the client machine. This solution is suprisingly robust.
The settings will be a combination of two client-side manifest files, (1) /ect/auto_master, and (2) conventionally at /etc/auto_resources. The best tutorial for this is here - http://useyourloaf.com/blog/2011/01/24/using-the-mac-os-x-automounter.html. It's old, but the instructions still work perfectly on my machine using 10.9.5 on the client and server.
3 - Combine both solutions!
I have my mhddfs master drive pool on my client at /mnt/DrivePool, and the individual drives at /mnt/IndividualDrives/D01 through /mnt/IndividualDrives/D10. It looks a little clunky at first, but it is actually quite robust and flexible for my needs.


Using visudo to edit sudoers on Mac I have managed to make the sudoers file on my Mac erorr.
eg.

$ sudo visudo
>>> /etc/sudoers: syntax error near line 45 <<<
sudo: parse error in /etc/sudoers near line 45
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting

So, I went and got the standard sudoers file from here, logged in as root and copied it from Documents to /etc.....but still no joy.

If I try to run 'visudo' using root it fires up Sublime Text and I see a blank sudoers.tmp which I understand is the lock file.

If I try and copy the contents of the downloaded sudoers file into sudoers.tmp using Sublime I get the above error.

So, does anyone have a solution to this?
What should I see when I run the 'visudo' command, Sublime Text and sudoers.tmp?

many thanks,
George

If your visudo does not work as expected, maybe because your editor does not work correctly, try setting the the EDITOR environment variable to a sane value, then launching visudo:

EDITOR=nano visudo

for sh, bash, dash, and compatible.


How can I make reminders show on the lock screen on iOS 12.01? I'm on iOS 12.01 with my iPhone 6s and I need to set a reminder and I want it on my lock screen but I can't figure out how to put it there, any help please? It's preetty urgent

A reminder automatically appears on the home screen if when you set the reminder, you select Remind me on a day in the info menu of that reminder shown as follows:

Then at the selected time it will appear on the lock screen as shown below:

This is the only way to let a reminder appear on the lock screen.


How to pass user input to Apple Script then execute? How do I configure Automator to ask for a text input (example: enter website url) and pass the answer to an AppleScript that executes this command:

video-dl (user input)

So, this would be executed in the terminal:

video-dl http://www.example.com/video.mpg

There is no need to use AppleScript here, you can pass data from Automator directly into a shell script.

Depending on where you've stored the script, you may have to include the full path to the script in the action (/path/to/video-dl "$@").


Error message com.apple.Safari.History was closed unexpectedly Since updating to Max OS 10.11.6 this morning I've seen this message several times. It's a bit weird as I never use Safari. I suspect it might be something to do with the AppStore trying to update. Any ideas on how I can stop this?

From the report that this generates it's clear that Spotlight is the culprit (thanks Dmitri for pointing this out)

Process:               com.apple.Safari.History [4881]
Path:                  /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SafariShared.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.Safari.History.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.Safari.History
Identifier:            com.apple.Safari.History
Version:               11601 (11601.7.1)
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           Spotlight [464]
User ID:               501

Folks,
I have a workaround doing ok on an iMac 5k with 10.11.6 with the latest update and the same error.

I open System Preferences - Spotlight and un-check "Bookmark & History".
Then quit Safari.
Again open System Preferences - Spotlight and check "Bookmark & History".
Try a spotlight search. For me it worked.
I also could start Safari again and the error does not come back.

BUT the error is back after restart, maybe also after hibernating (did not test yet).

Maybe the workaround works for you as well until there is a fix.

By the way, letting spotlight create a whole new index did not help, so likely you can spare that try.

Cheers Sepp


How to disable/restrict any and all music on my iPhone 5c? I have an iPhone 5c and would like to restrict any and all music, including the music app in the restriction settings or just plain delete the radio all together.

This is currently not possible without jailbreaking. You can provide feedback to Apple here:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html


My Macbook’s hard drive is encrypted using FileVault 2. Will adding a new user with a different password break the encryption? I want to add a separate account or accounts to use as chroot accounts for an FTP server, and I want to use different passwords for these accounts.  I know the AES-128 key used by FileVault is calculated from the password, so will using a new password cause FileVault to try to encrypt using a different key, making the ciphertext inconsistent?  Or does FileVault calculate the key based on the password you used when you first encrypt the hard drive?  I'm not sure about this, and I don't want to break my computer.

FileVault 2 will encrypt the boot volume and allow you to unlock that volume based upon existing user accounts.

Adding a new user account on OS X El Capitan (10.11.6) will automatically add that account to FileVault 2's list of enabled users.  So no, you won't revert your existing setup or remove an existing account's ability to unlock an encrypted volume.

The built-in fdesetup account is also very useful (requires sudo privileges):

 list       [-extended] [--offline] [-verbose]
            List enabled users, or locked volumes.

 enable     [[[-user username ...] [-usertoadd added_username ...]] |
            [-inputplist]] [-outputplist] [-prompt] [-forcerestart]
            [-authrestart] [-keychain | [-certificate path_to_cer_file]]
            [[-defer file_path] [-forceatlogin max_cancel_attempts]
            [-dontaskatlogout]] [-norecoverykey] [-verbose]
            Enables FileVault.  This command will fail if no recovery par-
            tition was found on your disk.


login page font very thin MacOS Sierra on macbook pro 2015 15'' retina

After upgrading to Sierra the font looks blurry and I tweaked AppleFontSmoothing and font looks very thin, then I googled for a solution

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

and ticked 'Use LCD font smoothing' option in system settings, now everything looks normal again except the font of login menu:

as shown in pics the menu bar font looks thin before login but normal after login.

I've tried method in

All pages in Google Chrome are rendered with a very thin, bad looking serif font

but no luck, hope anyone could help thanks!

The issue is you're modifying two different global settings: AppleFontSmoothing and CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled.

AppleFontSmoothing is an integer, represented from 0-4, whereas CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled is boolean. I'd recommend starting by deleting both, both as your user and globally (sudo) defaults delete -g AppleFontSmoothing; same with CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled.

The Menu Bar's process is called SystemUIServer. So you can restart the Menu Bar (see what your tweaks do) with killall SystemUIServer.


How to reconnect VPN by using Tunnelblick from command line? The use case is that I need a particular VPN connected at all times on one of my servers which runs macOS. It's set up with Tunnelblick. And I know how to re-connect to it manually using Tunnelblick GUI. But I noticed that sometimes due to network sometimes disconnecting due to instability or some such, Tunnelblick could get into a state of repeatedly trying to reconnect to the previously connected VPN but would never succeed. Therefore, I'm hoping I can create a cron job to periodically check if the VPN is connected (probably by pinging an URL only accessible via the said VPN), and if not, reconnect to it by restarting Tunnelblick and reconnect to the VPN. What should the command line be? I intend to add the command line into my crontab.

You should have a look at this Answer (comments are interesting too):
How to start Tunnelblick VPN connection via Terminal

This will guide you to create an AppleScript and then you may launch it by command line or crontab.


My MacBook boots into recovery no matter what I select as a startup disk My MacBook no longer boots into macOS after I tried installing rEFInd. Instead, it always boots into recovery mode no matter which disk I select.
Before that (I know OS X El Capitan isn't officially supported on my MacBook), everything (except GPU Acceleration) was working great.
I've tried booting into Safe Mode, running First Aid on Disk Utility and resetting the NVRAM and SMC without any luck and I can't reinstall macOS because I can't boot into the patched installer and the Installer from Recovery Mode isn't patched.
I think that my bootloader isn't working properly after I tried installing rEFInd
Here are the specs for my MacBook:
Model identifier : MacBook2,1
System : Patched OS X El Capitan
CPU : Intel Core 2 Duo (64Bit)
Name : Late-2006 MacBook

I want to at least boot into the installation medium, so I can reinstall macOS
The patcher I used for installing macOS/OS X El Capitan is RMC's OSX PATCHER

I found that the EFI Partition was faulty and that I still can boot into my Debian 10 Live Medium so the solution was to reinstall macOS or to fix the EFI partition
In my case, I simply need to reinstall macOS/OS X Snow Leopard and then repatch the El Capitan installer and install and then, I'm done (Yes, I can just repair the EFI partition but I've erased my disk without doing it in purpose).
In the case of others, just reinstalling (without erasing anything) will fix the issue.
I hope that everyone is doing well and that my answer helped.
Vitali64


Photos.app: Unique smart album criteria for identifying iOS screenshots? Looking for a way to automatically collect iOS screenshots and add them to the Screeenshots album, but with high accuracy (trying to avoid false positives).

It's fairly simple to track down the various device resolutions, and that the camera was iPhone/iPad/iPod, etc. However, that doesn't really narrow it down, as those also include photos taken from the device, as well as wallpapers. Maybe in a future Photos.app update, these will update automatically. Just wondering if anyone can guess at the metadata criteria Apple uses, or if they simply place that image in the Screenshots folder by default.

I highly doubt it, I wonder if you can pass in regex as a filename pattern. That would make it a lot easier.

Screen captures do not have a camera on the metadata. You can use that to weed out most of the pictures as all pics taken with the integrated camera will state the iPhone model (and even if taken with the front or rear camera).

Second, as @bjbk said, all screen captures are .pngs.

I tried a text filter for each resolution, including one for landscape and another for portrait orientation. I couldn't reproduce the behavior described here, which states that it does not matter the order of the dimensions. You will have to track down each dimension pair relevant for your case.
Moreover, I couldn't catch all screen captures when adding this filter; in a seemingly random fashion, some pictures were correctly selected for each resolution pair and others with the same resolution didn't.
I checked the metadata on Adobe Bridge to find out what was the difference between images but could not find any.
Also important, the dimensions of the screen capture differ from the dimensions of photos taken with the device:

iPhone 6:

Screen captures: 1334 × 750
Pictures with rear camera: 3264 × 2448
Pictures with front camera: 1280 × 960

So that won't be a problem for filtering; anyway, the Text filter did not work as expected.

All in all, a filter made by selecting Filename - ends with - .png AND Filename - starts with - IMG_ AND Camera Model - is empty gave me the best results.

I didn't try regex because I can't get my head around it; I've had some success following guides when I find which version / syntax is appropriate for the case at hand and a good guide, but I don't really understand it.


Searching through a whole lot of PDFs on an external disk I do have one Tera of Texts (mostly PDF) which is really really much (something like 100'000 documents). They are on an external USB3 and, of course, spotlight-indexed.  When I look by text search (not name search) for files with a particular content it takes quiet a lot of time, first accelerating the disk, then running it with a lot of noise and obviously spinning the disk like crazy. I wonder if another disk might make a difference and want to ask you about Thunderbolt or even Thunderbolt-on-SSD.

How can I benchmark my Mac so I can make an informed purchase decision on buying a faster drive?

Part of it might be a setting in your energy saver settings that allows hard drives to sleep if not in use, you could check on that setting and see if adjusting it makes the job easier and searches quicker.

A USB 3 drive (assuming it is on a USB 3 port) should be plenty fast enough to handle the necessary bandwidth. What might be slowing you down is the speed of the drive. If you have a 5400RPM drive that would slow things down and moving to a 7200 might make it fast enough for you. But fast enough is hard to quantify.

Thunderbolt on SSD would be as fast as an internal SSD, but these drives are pricey and when I was looking for one recently found none that were suitable. Many being multiple drive RAID chassis. Instead I went with a Firewire 800 drive case (from OWC) and a Samsung 1TB SSD.

As my Mac did not have USB 3, Firewire 800 was fast enough for my needs. And if you already have a USB 3 case putting an SSD in it might be your best bet for maximum speed and affordability...

Unless of course you spring for an external Thunderbolt RAID chassis...


How to get back all notes when Notes icon disappeared or the Notes.app got deleted My Notes icon from iPhone 6 seems to have got either accidentally deleted or somehow disappeared while it was in my pocket with keys etc. I have so many important work notes, and desperately need it. The icon does not show up in spotlight, is not hidden in any other app folder and there was no iCloud backup.

Have you attempted to go on the App Store and look for Notes by Apple? It will be there (the Notes app by Apple). If it just shows "Open" instead of (arrow pointing down from the Cloud), then you do have it on your iPhone, just hidden away "somewhere". You can use Spotlight to find it (drag down slightly below the top (not so high that you activate the Notification Center) and type in Notes.

As regards losing all your info by deleting an Apple default app - a friend of mine removed his Mail app on his iPhone by accident and panicked, thinking he had lost all his Mails, Mail settings etc.

He brought the iPhone in and I went to the AppStore, clicked download on the Mail app there (the correct one), and all the settings reappeared and everything was alright.

Tell us how you get on with this project and good luck!


Toolbar keeps hiding on Safari I am trying to keep the toolbar visible all the time....when I select 'View' the 'Hide Toolbar' is grayed out.  My wife has the same machine, and her's has 'Hide toolbar' not grayed out which I assume she could select and would get the result I am getting.  Any help would be appreciated, it's getting annoying now.

If you're in full screen mode, this behavior is normal (the hide toolbar option greyed out, not the lack of visible toolbar contents). If your not in full screen mode, then:

Go to View -> Customize Toolbar...
Then, perform the "...drag the default set into the toolbar" option.
Now, go to the View drop down again and the Hide/Show Toolbar option should be accessible.


What does .ipa stand for? What does the .ipa file extension (used for iOS app bundles) stand for? I'm guessing that it has something to do with iPhone app, but I'm not sure.

Your guess was correct.

.ipa stands for iOS App Store Package

Each .ipa file is compressed with a binary for the ARM architecture that can only be installed on iOS devices. If you change the extension to .zip you will be able to unzip it and view the contents.


Blocking iOS Wi-Fi automatic update downloads? I've got several iPads connected to Verizon mifi devices(MiFi460LE)
iOS has a "feature" that automatically downloads OS updates in the background without user input. (You still need to manually install the updates, but the downloads happen automatically).
The 6.1 update may break the functionality of some in-house applications, and I'd rather not hand users an iPad with a flashing self-destruct button that tells users to "download now!"
Is there a specific port that could be blocked to prevent iOS OTA software updates? If that's not sufficient, would blocking hosts from DNS or another way of preventing these downloads be feasible?

Without jailbreaking, or using an MDM (mobile device management) solution, you could just block the Apple site at your router. The site URL is appldnld.apple.com. All of Apple's IPSW files come from that location.


App Store thinks apps are installed I had a few apps originally purchased through the App Store that got corrupted. I removed them with the intent of re-installing them from the App Store, but it seems that the App Store thinks they're still/already installed. The action button is disabled. I found How can I reinstall an application that the Mac App Store thinks is installed already? but the solution reported there didn't work for me.

The app doesn't exist in either /Applications or /Downloads. Do you have any idea about what I might be able to do to re-download the app?

Try the following steps in order:

Quit the App Store
Eject all disks (including any .dmg files you have mounted)
Use Spotlight to search your hard drive for anything with a similar name to your application.
If you find anything related to the application in question remove those files.
Delete the file at ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.appstore.plist
Delete the file at ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.appstore/Cache.db
Delete the file at ~/Library/Cookies/com.apple.appstore.plist
Delete the file at ~/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist
Open terminal and run this command: /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
Logout of your computer & log back in
Reopen the Mac App Store
Try to install the application again.


Can I block entire area codes from my iPhone? I get 4-5 telemarketer calls each day.  Each time they call, it is from a completely different phone number.  Including different area codes.

I've performed all of the usual procedures to combat this.

•  Contacted my carrier (AT&T).  They will block 30 or so numbers for free but then it costs after that.  This is useless because I get 30 different numbers in a week.  AT&T suggested changing my number (for a FEE).

•  I've changed my number.  It went from bad to worse.  I actually get more on this new number.  I swear I don't put my number out there, I don't sign up for garbage, etc.

•  I've tried telling these "companies" to remove me from their list.  They immediately hang up on me when I do that.  I've tried calling the numbers, it never goes through.  They are unreachable.  Even AT&T admitted they can't track them.

•  I've registered for the national "do not call" registry.  This hasn't helped at all.

I'm running out of ideas.  I'd love to just turn my phone off but I can't because of work.

For each number I get, I immediately add it to the block numbers.  But this only stops repeat numbers.

So, my question is, is there a way in iOS to literally block entire area codes?  I seriously don't care if I block a few legit numbers for the sake of sanity.  I sometimes get telemarketers from my area code but those are more rare.

I have an iPhone 6 with the latest version if that helps.

Yes, there IS a free and easy way to block incoming nuisance calls on an iPhone!

(1) Get and install a silent ringtone (I use one called "10 seconds of silence" which I found on the internet for free).
(2) You know who your regular callers are. Give each contact a ringtone other than the default. (Yes, it takes a few minutes, but it's a one-time thing.)
(3) Set your phone's default ringtone to "10 seconds of silence".

From then on known callers get cause your phone to ring with whatever ringtone you've assigned that particular caller.

Calls from unknown callers will not cause your phone to ring. These callers can leave a message if they wish. Most spammers don't bother.

Repeat nuisance callers can have their numbers added to a special "Spammers" contact which you can block so that such callers cannot even leave messages. Just remember that if you do this, you have to unblock and re-block this contact each time you add a number. Don't worry about whether you indicate the number is fax or mobile or whatever--doesn't matter. I used to do this last step, but found it was unnecessary. Plus I kind of like to look once or twice a day and see where the spammers are ostensibly calling from--of course, their really using spoofed numbers using VoIP over the internet.


Notification area icons are sometimes invisible in Windows 7 (Boot Camp) For some reason, sometimes my notification area icons are invisible in Windows 7 64-bit (Boot Camp, on an iMac mid-2010), as seen in this screenshot. Clicking on an invisible item does nothing. Restarting the computer will fix them, though. These icons are invisible during about 25% of all Windows 7 startups.

This installation of Windows 7 64-bit is completely fresh; I just installed it, then installed the latest Boot Camp drivers, and that's it.

Anyone know what's going on here and what I can do to fix it?

What I did to fix this was disconnect the Ethernet cable from my iMac, and when installing Windows 7, don't connect to wifi just yet. Then, install all Boot Camp drivers, and only then can I reconnect Ethernet and wifi. This prevents Windows 7 from automatically downloading drivers when it is unable to communicate with the iMac's features, since the Boot Camp drivers were not initially installed.

So, the notification area problem seems to somehow be related to conflicting Windows 7 and Boot Camp drivers. I notice the problem briefly returns when I install Windows 7 updates, so that seems to prove my point.


Where can I download iPad apps in macOS Catalina Beta? I have heard that macOS Catalina can run iPad apps. I have the public beta version of macOS Catalina. Where can I download iPad apps?

It's up to the developer to release apps, so in the case of Apple, you have some of these apps already on Mojave. News, Home, etc...

https://developer.apple.com/ipad-apps-for-mac/

  Now it’s incredibly simple to start building a native Mac app from your current iPad app. Your apps share the same project and source code, so you can efficiently convert your iPad app’s desktop-class features, and add more just for Mac.

What's left unsaid, is the developer needs to finish a Mac version of the app and then ship that app in a way of their choosing (through the Mac App Store, through direct download / side load) so the developers would release the app to you or to the world when and how they choose and you wouldn't somehow run an iPad version of the app on MacOS Catalina.

More Apple apps are listed as coming from iOS/iPadOS on Catalina and I would expect developers to start releasing these (perhaps through the TestFlight framework) and publicly once each Mac version of an iOS/iPadOS app is ready for you to run.

So far, I've seen no real apps yet since it's so soon in the testing cycle, but as we get closer to fall, I would be surprised if you don't have some companies extending tests to Catalina pre-release over time for a public beta of their work before the official release date.


How to check what is starting Finder? I have Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard, and installed the Path Finder file manager for replacing the builtin Finder.

Because of that, I have Path Finder setup so that the original Finder is quit during startup. However, during system use sometimes Finder would seem to spontaneously start. Is there a way to check what I did to trip it, or what application, is making Finder start?

Thanks.

The answer may be in the code of some applications.

What applications support Path Finder?
The vast majority of applications support Path Finder with absolutely no compatibility >problems, but some applications go one step further and had special integration built >in.
A small list of examples include:
A-Dock
Quicksilver
Butler
Name Mangler
DragThing
Default Folder X
LaunchBar
Change Desktop
Some applications do require Apple's Finder to work properly as they are hard-wired >this way. If you would like to see compatibility added for one of your favorite apps, >visit our forum and let us know!

Their forum is located at http://www.cocoatech.com/forum/. See if you can find any applications that you use that are listed there that have issues. Finder is such an integral part of the operating system that replacing it requires applications not to call Finder or for Path Finder to intercept those calls I assume.


How can see ALL devices (including ethernet) connected to Airport Extreme? I am running Airport Utility 6.3.  I can see the list of WIRELESS clients connected.  I can't see anywhere in the utility where I can see WIRED/ETHERNET clients connected.

Other posts on this site refer to an Advanced Settings Tab on Airport Utility 6.x. or else Manual Setup.   I don't see this anywhere in the GUI.  Under the Network tab, you can reserve static IPs, but that's not what I want, I want to see which WIRED (not just wireless) devices are actually connected.  I'm trying to troubleshoot an issue with my DirecTV box which doesn't seem to be connecting even though I have reserved an IP for its MAC address.  Yes, I can ping the IP, but the point is if I want to set it to DHCP, I wouldn't know the IP, and it would be nice to just see what all the devices are.

There's a great shell command that scans your network on all interfaces that are connected.

The command is arp -a.


App Store Connect - Can't see my app rejection issues in TestFlight I uploaded a build of my app to App Store Connect and submitted it to a group of external testers in TestFlight (without submitting to App Store).
The build status goes from "waiting for review" to "rejected":

The problem is that I didn't received the "Unresolved issues" or reviews. I searched in every page and can't find it.
How can I see "Unresolved issues" of a build in TestFlight only?

Okay so this is how I found the resolution centre:

Login to App Store Connect
Select my apps
Select the app with the issue
In the AppStore tab, look on the left under General you will find Version History, click on it.
On the right, you should see the Resolution Centre there as depicted below


Downgrading from macOS Catalina to macOS High Sierra I have macOS Catalina installed and I want to downgrade back down to macOS High Sierra. After I have downloaded the macOS High Sierra installer from the Mac App Store, opening it says:

  This copy of the "Install macOS" application is too old to be opened on this version of macOS

How do I install macOS High Sierra on my Mac?

Did you try the following Recovery key combination as in your case Shift-Option-command-R may help

Command - R: Install the latest macOS that was installed on your Mac.
Option - Command - R: Upgrade to the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac.
Shift - Option - Command - R:
 Install the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available.

See if your High Serria is still available from it. I think it should be as you can still get it from App Store.


Can I create a Desktop Shortcut/Alias to a Folder from the Terminal? I'd like to create a desktop shortcut to a specific folder, buried deep within ~/Library/. Library is Hidden by default in Lion, and I'd like to keep it that way, for a variety of reasons. Is there a one-step, command line action I can use, to create a desktop shortcut to a given path? I'd like to avoid solutions that involve unhiding the Library, creating the Alias using Finder, and rehiding it. I know how to do that, but for my purposes, a single line that can be pasted into Terminal and be done with it would be preferable.

It's possible to do it in one line of Terminal. Let's say you want to alias to the file "/Users/me/Library/Preferences/org.herf.Flux.plist".

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder"' -e 'make new alias to file (posix file "/Users/me/Library/Preferences/org.herf.Flux.plist") at desktop' -e 'end tell'

You should replace to file with to folder if you have a folder.

Here's a shell script that allows you pass in a file or folder path to create the alias:

#!/bin/bash

if [[ -f "$1" ]]; then
  type="file"
else
  if [[ -d "$1" ]]; then
    type="folder"
  else
    echo "Invalid path or unsupported type"
    exit 1
  fi
fi

osascript <<END_SCRIPT
tell application "Finder"
   make new alias to $type (posix file "$1") at desktop
end tell
END_SCRIPT

If you name this script make-alias.sh, chmod u+x make-alias.sh and put it in /usr/local/bin, you can run e.g. make-alias.sh ~/Library/Preferences.


Can't write to Seagate external hard drive on other macbook pros I have a "new" 2gb Seagate external hdd.  I used it to copy files off of my old Macbook pro, circa 2014, which worked fine.

I just plugged in the drive into my new Macbook pro, circa 2018.  I can read files off the external drive.  However, I can't copy files onto the drive from the new Macbook.  I grabbed my friend's Macbook (circa 2014 so same model as my old laptop) and same issue, I can read files from the external drive but I can't copy files onto the drive.  I don't have my old laptop anymore so I can't try to copy things to it.

I plugged the hdd into a Windows 7 laptop, and I'm able to copy files onto the drive, create a new folder, etc.

I found several links that said I need to reformat the hdd to make it usable with my Macbook but it makes no sense since my old Macbook was able to read/write to the drive without being reformatted but now with any other Macbook, it doesn't allow me to write, only read.

What happened?  How come I can only read files from the hdd from any new Macbooks but a Windows laptop I can read and write?  Why does it seem like the drive is married to my old Macbook?  If it is married to it, how to I break this bond so I can use it with my new Macbook?

If the drive is NTFS the MacOS default driver is read/only.

You probably have installed a driver at one time on your old system that provide read/write.

Such a driver frequently come with external harddisks. I have personally found this preloaded on recently purchased Seagate drives formatted as NTFS, but that only supported Seagate drives.  Paragon sells the full driver from https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/ (they also have for other filesystems).


Macbook pro making clicking noise I'm not sure when it has been started to make clicking sounds randomly, but it has been bugging me a while. Any idea that what could be cause this problem?

I'm using MAC OS X 10.8.2 and late 2009 13 inches macbook pro.

My guesses would be either the hard drive or the DVD drive. Your best bet is to have Apple take a look at it. You should make a genius bar appointment at the apple store nearest to you. Unfortunately if they find something wrong your machine is probably out of warranty, but at least you can get it diagnosed for free.


Meaning of Time Machine configuration keys Interval, Delay and GracePeriod I just wondered if there is any kind of documentation regarding some Time Machine related configuration settings, especially Interval, Delay and GracePeriod.

Interval seems to be obvious to me (least or most (?) amount of time between TM backups), but I'm not sure about the details.

Additionally, what about controlling local TM snapshots?

Thanks in advance!

From https://www.baligu.com/pondini/TM/13.html and based on the default values of Interval, Delay and GracePeriod one could conclude that:

GracePeriod (with default of 30 minutes) determines the following effect: Restarting your Mac will reset the TM schedule, but it won't run a backup immediately, even if it's more than an hour since the last one. It will wait about 30 minutes, to avoid conflicts with other things that may run automatically, or manually by the user, after startup.
Delay (with a default of one hour): When your Mac wakes from sleep, it will do a backup immediately, unless one was done within the previous hour. That will reset the schedule.
Interval (with a default of one hour): TM will start the next backup an hour after the start of the previous backup, if your Mac is awake and the backup drive is available.


Chrome MBA 2013, causing audio cracking, all flash videos! I recently purchased a MBA 2013, 13 inch. Used it for a week; was great with Chrome. I suspect after I tried installing some Quicktime plugins to watch an Apple Keynote, my audio started going downhill from there. This resulted in using Safari for the last week, but I cant take it anymore. Need to fix Chrome back.

I've tried
- installing flash again,
- disabling/enabling different chrome://plugins

- install, reinstalling chrome using these long patch of commands

rm -r /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/
rm -r ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/
rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/CrashReporter/Google\ Chrome*
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.google.Chrome*
rm ~/Library/Preferences/Google\ Chrome*
rm -r ~/Library/Caches/com.google.Chrome*
rm -r ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/com.google.Chrome.savedState/
rm ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/Actives/com.google.Chrome
rm ~/Library/Google/Google\ Chrome*
rm -r ~/Library/Speech/Speakable\ Items/Application\ Speakable\ Items/Google\ Chrome/

I am willing to do anything really, except re-install a fresh copy of Mountain Lion.
I thank everyone in advanced!

I'm having the same problem and I have spend several hours on the web trying to find an answer but it sounds like it's the new IOS for mac book problem, as the camera on Skype - not working and if you open Safari with google Chrome the screen will start to crashdown ..


Trackpad gesture that minimizes all windows? This has been driving me nuts for close to a year. I hope someone can tell me what triggers it. I've searched many times over several months and have never found any mention of it.

I use an MBP running OS X 10.8.3 with external monitors, external keyboard and external trackpad. Occasionally while I am manipulating windows with the trackpad (usually moving them by dragging, I think) all of the open windows for all apps will begin minimizing to the dock, one at a time, using the genie effect. Depending on the number of windows I have open, this can take several seconds. I have no idea what, specifically, I'm doing that triggers this behavior.

It is NOT "show desktop" -- the windows definitely fly down to the dock and are minimized, they do not slide to the edges of the screen. The windows are not hidden -- they don't come back with cmd-tab, for example, and they don't disappear instantly -- they "genie" down to the dock. The closest I've found is option-cmd-M, except that it only minimizes windows for the current app -- the behavior I'm asking about minimizes ALL windows from ALL apps.

Help? Please? Thanks!

I've found no default bindings that would make this occur, but I have found an application that possibly could be triggering what's occuring. There is a background application called MagicPrefs which allows for the addition of non-default bindings. MagicPrefs would also allow you to bind AppleScript to things like this as well.


How can I customize the background of the FileVault login screen in 10.8? I've successfully changed the background image for OS X login screen, but cannot do it for the FileVault login screen.  This makes sense as the contents of the disk are still encrypted at that point in the boot process.

Per this link: superuser.com it appears possible, but I honestly cannot understand what they are suggesting here.  Any ideas or interpretations?

There is a workaround to get your custom background image copied onto the FileVault login screen without having to mount the encrypted partition and copy it manually, the workaround is detailed in this guide.


Password-prompt diologue box Sometimes, when one is installing a programme, a dialogue box will appear asking for an administrator password to allow the installer to ‘make changes’. That seems fine, but wouldn’t it be easy for an installer to fake this and send the password back to the author (and the IP etc.)? Is there a way to make sure this diologue box is indeed from the OS? (And see what exactly is being allowed?)

I just wrote this Apple Script that tests if:

SecurityAgent is running.
SecurityAgent is displaying something.
SecurityAgent lives at the correct location.
SecurityAgent is unmodified, meaning code signature is undamaged.

tell application "System Events"
    set processList to get the name of every process
    set saWindows to {}
    if processList contains "SecurityAgent" then -- does it run?
    set saPath to POSIX path of application file of application process "SecurityAgent"
    if saPath is not "/System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/MachServices/SecurityAgent.bundle" then -- assume this location is protected enough to be geniune
        tell application "Finder" to display dialog "There is a SecurityAgent, but it's the wrong one!" with icon stop buttons {"OK"}
        return
    end if

    try -- is it signed
        set saSignature to do shell script "codesign -d /System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/MachServices/SecurityAgent.bundle/Contents/MacOS/SecurityAgent"
    on error
        tell application "Finder" to display dialog "Signature broken!" with icon stop buttons {"OK"}
        return
    end try

    set saWindows to every window of application process "SecurityAgent"
end if

if saWindows is {} then -- Does it display a dialog?
    tell application "Finder" to display dialog "No official password dialog is opened." buttons {"OK"} with icon stop
    return
end if
end tell

display dialog "Seems legit." with icon note buttons {"OK"}


Strange keyboard shortcut icons in Mac OS 10.6.7 Running on Mac OS 10.6.7.  Don't know of any changes that could of happened to make the keyboard shortcuts different.  Tried Googling and found nothing helpful. Anyone know why this happens and how to fix it?

Those look like the placeholder glyphs from the LastResort font. Check your fonts folders and their permissions. Is that the case in every menu all over the system, in every app?


Find out how long a MacBook has been running since its production Is it possible to find out how long a MacBook has been turned on since its production?

There's a Terminal command ac

AC(8)                     BSD System Manager's Manual                  AC(8)

NAME
     ac -- display connect-time accounting

SYNOPSIS
     ac [-d] [-p] [-w file] [users ...]

DESCRIPTION
     A record of individual login and logout times are written to the system
     log by login(8) and launchd(8), respectively.  The program ac examines
     these records and writes the accumulated connect time (in decimal hours)
     for all logins to the standard output.

     Options available:

     -d      Display the connect times in 24 hour chunks.

     -p      Display individual user totals.

     -w file
             Read raw connect time data from file, instead of the system log. >
     users ...
             Display totals for the given individuals only.

     If no arguments are given, ac displays the total amount of login time for
     all active accounts on the system.

It looks about right when I type it in my new machine, but my 9-year-old Mac Pro gives the same figure for its current user as total hours - which means it's lost track of my old account [still active on there but rarely used now] which as been in place since 2008. It just gives 0 hours.

It wouldn't be able to account for any hours the machine may have been on with no-one logged in.


Cannot resize APFS container even though there is a free space directly after it - diskutil error: -69743 I upgraded to a larger SSD (120 GB to 250 GB), and copied my existing mac SSD to a larger one with dd (clonezilla live usb). It is a hackintosh with a latest OpenCore 0.5.9.
However, I cannot resize the APFS container into a newly available free space:
❯ diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0

Started APFS operation
Error: -69743: The new size must be different than the existing size

Here is a disk layout showing a lot of free space after second GPT partition:
❯ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *250.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk3         119.8 GB   disk0s2

❯ sudo gpt -r show disk0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  234031968      2  GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  234441608  253955527
  488397135         32         Sec GPT table
  488397167          1         Sec GPT header

Here's how the attempt to resize partition ends up in Disk Utility:
The disk is 250 GB

APFS container is 120 GB

Disk utility shows APFS container and free space properly ...

... so I delete the free space ...

... confirm ...

... and end up in a same place.

Any idea what to do?

Apparently a partition map needed repairing. It is worth noting, that this worked, while running First Aid from Disk Utility didn't help.
sudo diskutil repairdisk disk0

It warned about possibly destroying an EFI partition, so I backed up its contents:
Repairing the partition map might erase disk0s1, proceed? (y/N) y
Started partition map repair on disk0
Checking prerequisites
Checking the partition list
Adjusting partition map to fit whole disk as required
Checking for an EFI system partition
Checking the EFI system partition's size
Checking the EFI system partition's file system
Checking the EFI system partition's folder content
Checking all HFS data partition loader spaces
Checking booter partitions
Reviewing boot support loaders
Checking Core Storage Physical Volume partitions
The partition map appears to be OK
Finished partition map repair on disk0

... but the EFI partition survived, and then the resize worked:
diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0


Do MacBook Air's SSDs fail? I have seen many discussions describing SSD as fail-prone. I have read Jeff Atwood's warnings. Portman Wills' experiment looks alarming:

Super Talent 32 GB SSD, failed after 137 days
OCZ Vertex 1 250 GB SSD, failed after 512 days
G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 251 days
G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 276 days
Crucial 64 GB SSD, failed after 350 days
OCZ Agility 60 GB SSD, failed after 72 days
Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 15 days
Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 206 days

Further research yields that a rule of thumb makes an SSD cell with more than 100,000 writes practically unusable.

While not being specific, Wikipedia warns against Flash SSDs. DROM SSDs, on the other hand, are safe, according to them.

What type of SSD are MacBook Airs built upon? Are they fail-safe? What is the typical lifespan one can expect?

MacBook Airs ship with either Toshiba or Samsung MLC SSD drives.

No SSD drives are fail-safe.

Lifespan of an SSD drive depends on what wear levelling techniques are employed by the manufacturer and the operating system and what exactly a user does with his/her computer. There is no reliable figure.

My own view with SSDs (as it has been with hard drives) is prepare for the worst and backup regularly. Take advantage of the manufacturer's warranty should a drive fail.


Double clicking the title bar of iTunes 11 does not minimize the window With Mac applications I can double click on the title bar of the application and then it will minimize. iTunes 11 lost this behaviour.

Is there a way to restore it?

I'm on OSX 10.6.8 and using iTunes 11.0

This has been an annoying feature of iTunes 11. Other internet forums here and here, are already discussing the issue and as yet are without a solution. Imagine it's something that needs to be implemented by apple.


Clear photo cache when iCloud Photos optimization is enabled I started using iCloud Photos recently and love it. I have photos syncing on my iPhone(16gb), my MacBook Pro(240gb), and in the cloud of course.

My issue is that I have 12 photos on my phone that are not syncing to the cloud. I am on WiFi, the phone is fully charged, and they are just stuck on my phone. I've looked on my MBP and they aren't there. I've looked on the iCloud via the web app and they aren't there.

When I go on my phone to iCloud / Photos, the message says "Low Disk Space - Uploading 12 Photos" I have 163mb of free space on my phone, and 125gb of free space in iCloud.

My Question is, is there a way that I can manually clear the cache of photos that have downloaded to my phone. I have 750mb used in the "Photos & Camera" application, and I am sure a good chunk of that is from me browsing old photos which are temporarily downloaded to the phone for viewing. When I typically look at my library on my phone, the photos start off as empty white squares and that's okay. I've looked at a bunch, and it downloads thumbnails and lower res images of the files. Can I clear these caches to free up some space?

Also, I've read that the system requires at least 300mb of free space on your phone to upload photos to the cloud. Is this true? I can't see why this would be a requirement.

Apple doesn't list a required/minimum free space, so you'd need to work with Apple support to get that sorted. As for the cache, you've already done all you can.

iOS has several low storage warnings it sends to each and every app to clean up cached files and with < 500 MB of free space, I'd wager you've exercised those limits continuously and it's surprising to me if this is the only thing that is broken on your device right now.

I would:

Delete one or two large apps that you know the data is safe/unimportant. Try to get 2 GB of free space if you can but 1 GB of free storage should be sufficient.
Power off the device and power it on to let system cache files re-generate
Open photos on the device and on iCloud and see if normal operations resume. I've had good luck with photo libraries coming back from all sorts of intentional abuse like you've unintentionally performed. It can take 24 hours or more (if you hit any upload limits) for the cleanup script(s) to trigger so you might wait 48 hours to see if the added space lets iOS complete the upload work that is queued.

Also, Apple does offer debugging profiles for iOS cloud sync if you call in for support and if their "cookbook" method doesn't yield results. If your case get escalated to engineering specific error messages contained in the debug logs can often assist you in further diagnosing why all the photos are not syncing.

You could also just push the photos to a computer or other iOS device using AirDrop or USB and upload them to the cloud from another device and then remove iCloud Photos temporarily from your iPhone to allow enough space to resume normal operations and then re-enable the library with the option to reduce file size.

Basically, the system is designed to stop working when there isn't enough space for temporary files to work. This is the same design as OS X and other unix in general.

These operating systems use free storage space to cache things and make your experience better by accelerating slow resources like network and CPU by saving work when it's done to reuse it later. When you deprive the system of that buffer, things slow and eventually stop.


Mission Control occasionally freezing computer and garbling screen content Every so often (usually when I have a ton of windows open) I trigger mission control and I get this:

I have to do a complete restart of the computer in order to resume.  This happened to me on both OS X Lion and now OS X Mountain Lion.

I'm running a Mac Book Pro 2.53 Intel Core i5 (with 8 GB of memory).  It's plugged into a 27" Cinema display via the display port. To my memory this has only happened when plugged into the Cinema display.

I'd really like this to stop happening, so I'd love to know if there is a fix for this.

You can do a couple resets to the computer to see if it resolves the issue.

Disk utility (application) > select 'Macintosh HD' on the left-hand column > and click VERIFY disk under FIRST AID.

This takes about 2 - 3 minutes and will let you know if you have a corrupt hard drive which might be causing that issue

Reset PRAM -- Shut computer down > hold down: p + r + Command + Option > with these four keys held down, proceed to hold down the 'POWER' key as well in the top-right hand corner of the keyboard. > hold down all 5 keys until you hear TWO sounds come out of the computer.

It'll be that familiar chime sound that it makes upon starting up normally

These steps work for all Mac computers -- let me know if this works


An exhaustive list of all graphics cards by all vendors ever put on mac? Where can I get an exhaustive list of all graphics cards ever put in a mac? Or at least in the last 10years...

I am NOT interested in mobile devices, just desktops and laptops.

Mactracker.app

Has a list going back all the way to the beginning.


Difference in disk usage MS DOS vs Extended Journaled Searches on Google and the Apple forums didn't get me any answers or couldn't clarify this for me, hence this question.

I have two following external USB hard drives connected to my iMac:

"Lacie1" with a capacity of 499.64GB, formatted as MS-DOS (FAT32)
"Lacie2" with a capacity of 499.76GB, formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

I copied all of the contents from Lacie1 to Lacie2 and to see if everything was copied well, I opened the show info dialog of both drives and noticed that there is an enormous difference in used disk space between the two:

Lacie1: 221.357.604.864 bytes (221,36GB)
Lacie2: 187.714.969.600 bytes (187,71GB)

To be sure I checked how many files are on each drive and they both contain 17297 parts.

Is this because of the formatting of the drives that there is such a difference in disk usage or is there indeed a 'problem'?

Any explanation is appreciated! :)

FAT32 on a large drive has a larger block size that HFS+. This means that the small amount of "wasted" space per file is larger and therefore the same files will take up more space. It's because FAT32 only uses 28 bits for it's cluster index while HFS+ can use it's entire 32 bits.

One of the marvelous things about Steve Wozniak is that he designed a disk system for the Apple ][ that was both efficient, extensible and easily implemented and the original Macintosh File System (MFS) was built on top of his work after Wendell Sanders created a single chip implementation of Woz's drive controller the IWM chip. It was replaced by the Hierarchical File System (HFS) and then HFS+, otherwise known as Macintosh Extended.


How to delete files on iMac with no menus -- Your startup disk is full I have an iMac with the 10.4 OSX operating system installed.  When I boot the computer it prompts me with this message:  "Your startup disk is full.  You need to make more space available on your disk by deleting files".  I am able to login and see the desktop background, but I cannot see any menus.

How can I delete files or erase all the data?  I have the startup disks but when I hold down C as the disks instructions say, nothing when I reboot.

Try deleting files in single user mode:

Restart
Hold ⌘S after hearing the startup sound (it doesn't work if I start holding it before the computer has restarted)
Run mount -uw / (fsck -fy is not needed)
Run something like rm -r /Users/username/.Trash/
reboot


Clicking links on Safari using ctrl + F I am looking for a convenient method to navigate safari (mainly clicking links) using keyboard only. I'm already familiar with the Tab key (or opt + Tab), but I noticed that in Chrome and Firefox you can ctrl+F, type the text of the like you with to click, after highlighting the link, you can click esc (the link keeps being highlighted) and press return to navigate the URL.
Is there a way to configure this in Safari? or any other way of being able to click links?
The problem of the Tab option is that many times it requires clicking on it many many times until getting to the desired link.

Using Vimari (Safari extension - link below) one can press f then all links on the page are assigned by letters which you can use to access each. This is very convenient and can save a lot of mouse time.
This extension provides other vim style keybindings that I found really useful (page scrolling, tabs navigation and focusing on input fields)
Vimari GitHub page


Airplay icon disappears after mac wakes up from sleep I have found that when my mac wakes up from sleep, sometimes there is no airplay icon. The  only way I can fix this is by doing a recycle of my MacBook Air. I was wondering if there was any other way to have the airplay icon back on my MBA without having to restart it. Perhaps there is a command I can type on the Terminal. Anyone has a clue?

(FYI - Restarting the AppleTV does not solve the issue so I believe its a Mountain Lion part of things.)

Try cycling your MBA's Wi-Fi? I would expect powering your machine's antenna down and then back up would re-engage the Airplay internals.


Is there any way to convert a bunch of .ogg files in a folder to .mp3 using ffmpeg? Is there any way to convert a whole heap of .ogg files in about 30 folders in a folder containing those folders to .mp3 files and put them in another folder using the command ffmpeg? The previous methods I have tried all led to the same error: "*.ogg no such file or directory"

If possible could you please tell me how? I cant find anything relating to this specific question.

Edit: I've tried to edit the command and now it's giving me this error:
(this goes for all of the files in the folder)

/Users/Macbook/Downloads/Minecraft+Sound+Pack+1.13/step/wood6.ogg~/Downloads/Minecraft\ Sounds/step/wood6.mp3: No such file or directory

I used this:

$ for file in ~/Downloads/Minecraft+Sound+Pack+1.13/step/*.ogg
> do
>     fullfilename=$(basename "${file}")
>     filename="${fullfilename%.*}"
>     ffmpeg -i "$file""~/Downloads/Minecraft\ Sounds/step/$filename.mp3"
> done

I think it's trying to link both directories together.

As an example, I have a bunch of .ogg files in my Downloads directory, so... to batch convert a bunch of .ogg files in a given directory to .mp3 files in the same directory, I did the following in Terminal:

cd Downloads
for f in *.ogg; do ffmpeg -i "$f" "${f%.*}.mp3"; done

This created an .mp3 file for each .ogg file I have in my Downloads directory.

So, using your directory path, do the following:

cd ~/Downloads/Minecraft+Sound+Pack+1.13/step
for f in *.ogg; do ffmpeg -i "$f" "${f%.*}.mp3"; done

That said and considering your dealing with a sound file pack you downloaded from the Internet, Minecraft+Sound+Pack+1.13.zip, which contains 131 directories, some nested 3 or more deep, and 1406 .ogg files, of which some of the filenames are the same, I would handle the situation with the following conditions in mind.

I downloaded the Minecraft+Sound+Pack+1.13.zip file from the Internet.
Expanded the zip archive by double-clicking on it in my Downloads folder in Finder. Note that this is because I do not let the Browser unzip downloaded archive files. This also retains a copy of the zip archive in case I still need it afterwards.

With that done, I used the following example bash script to convert each .ogg file within the hierarchal folder structure to an .mp3 file at the same location. Then delete the .ogg files, as I still have the original zip archive.

#!/bin/bash

    # s="/Path/To/Source/Files"

s="$HOME/Downloads/Minecraft+Sound+Pack+1.13"

for d in $(find "$s" -type f -iname '*.ogg' | sed -E 's|/[^/]+$||' | sort -u); do
    cd "$d"
    for f in *.ogg; do
        ffmpeg -i "$f" "${f%.*}.mp3"
        rm "$f"
    done
done

You only need to change the value of s="..." as or if needed and as a general rule I like to use $HOME in place of ~.

Note that this is just how I choose to deal with the situation in the moment and there are many different ways that a script could be written.  This however I believe achieves the end goal of having the hierarchal folder structure of the 131 directories intact with the 1406 converted .mp3 files.

By the way... On my old MacBook Pro, (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013) 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, it took just under 9 minutes to process the 1406 .ogg files.


Google Chrome crashes with EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION on Sierra New iMac running Sierra 10.12.5. 3 days ago suddenly started freezing intermittently for 3-5 minutes at a time. Activity Monitor was showing CPU spikes that corresponded to the freezes. Console reported some push spawn incidents. I pasted code into Terminal to get system report. The output is too long to paste here, but I have pasted into pastebin. Shortly after that, the computer froze and crashed. Tried to shut down, but it froze on shut down so I had to turn it off.

Restarted in safe mode. Seemed okay, so I started up Chrome - which at once reported that it had not shut down properly and began to act very unstable, flickering and loading from bottom over and over. I quit Chrome, uninstalled it and downloaded it, then reinstalled. But on opening it, it repeated the same bizarre behaviour.

In the meantime, Console system log shows:

  Jun 11 03:58:44 iMac com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.watchdogd): >Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
  Jun 11 03:58:54 iMac Console[919]: BUG in libdispatch client: >kevent[EVFILT_MACHPORT] monitored resource vanished before the source >cancel handler was invoked
  Jun 11 03:58:54 iMac com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.watchdogd[937]): >Service exited with abnormal code: 255
  Jun 11 03:58:54 iMac com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.watchdogd): >Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.

And it was constantly repeating the same thing.

Crash log shows:

  Process:               Google Chrome [776]
  Path:                  /Applications/Google >Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome
  Identifier:            com.google.Chrome
  Version:               58.0.3029.110 (3029.110)
  Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
  Parent Process:        ??? [1]
  Responsible:           Google Chrome [776]
  User ID:               501

  Date/Time:             2017-06-08 23:53:55.944 +0800
  OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.12.5 (16F73)
  Report Version:        12
  Anonymous UUID:        B346C290-BA5B-BE25-2627-258EB9202EB0

  Sleep/Wake UUID:       09EEC28F-8E0C-41B3-8428-51BCC9E7DD6B

  Time Awake Since Boot: 70000 seconds
  Time Since Wake:       13000 seconds

  System Integrity Protection: enabled

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

  Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL)
  Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000000

There's more to the crash log, but it's too long to put here.

What is causing the freezing? How can I uninstall Chrome and put things right again?

Also deleted Chrome & Chrome folder in Application Support/Google. Before I can reinstall Chrome, Console is continuing to report pushing:

  respawn: Jun 11 10:29:55 iMac com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.quicklook[2749]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.quicklook Jun 11 10:29:57 iMac com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.watchdogd[2750]): Service exited with abnormal code: 255 Jun 11 10:29:57 iMac com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.watchdogd): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.

This sounds like a bug in the Google Chrome application itself. This probably is related to word predictions feature (e.g. when switching input method and then typing right away).

See the existing bug report No support for Chinese Input Predictive Completions on Mac OS Sierra. People reporting it are having very similar crash reports.

If you think the problem is related to something else, feel free to report a new bug against Chrome.


MacOSX Big Sur - Terminal ZSH Shell Command's Execute Sometimes With "!" Exclamation Symbol In Front Is this normal behavior for MacOS Big Sur ZSH (Z Shell) terminal?   Sometimes shell commands such as find and or launchd as just a simple example execute properly. This is with the exclamation symbol "!" in front, leading with the expected output and no privilege escalation.
For example, running: !find / will still work.
Or !sudo will execute.
But !echo '@' will not. But lead to the next command sometimes.

Output for !echo

zsh: event not found: echo

Output for !launchd

launchd
launchd cannot be run directly.
It seem's weird !sudo outputs sudo syscallbypid.d

!str   Refer to the most recent command starting with str.
this is the history expansion behavior.
type
man zshexpn

and check 'Event Designators', you will get the answer

An event designator is a reference to a command-line entry in the history list.  In the list below, remember that the initial `!'  in
each item may be changed to another character by setting the histchars parameter.

   !      Start a history expansion, except when followed by a blank, newline, `=' or `('.  If followed immediately by a word designator
          (see the section `Word Designators'), this forms a history reference with no event designator (see the section `Overview').

   !!     Refer to the previous command.  By itself, this expansion repeats the previous command.

   !n     Refer to command-line n.

   !-n    Refer to the current command-line minus n.

   !str   Refer to the most recent command starting with str.

   !?str[?]
          Refer to the most recent command containing str.  The trailing `?' is necessary if this reference is to be followed by a modi-
          fier or followed by any text that is not to be considered part of str.

   !#     Refer  to  the  current command line typed in so far.  The line is treated as if it were complete up to and including the word
          before the one with the `!#' reference.

   !{...} Insulate a history reference from adjacent characters (if necessary).


Does OS X process sound in any way other than volume adjustment before outputting it? Some Windows systems have various "sound enhancer" functions enabled by default (depending on the audio driver).  This changes all sounds that are sent to the speakers by applying equalisation and possibly mixing together the right and left channels of stereo sound for a "better surround effect".

I would like to know if OS X applies any similar transformations by default, and if yes, how I can turn them off.

I need precise control over sound output for a physics experiment with two speakers.  I would like to play a pre-generated wave file exactly as it is, without any post-processing.  Most importantly, the two channels must not be mixed at all, and preferably no non-linear transformation should be applied to single channels either (this is less important because some non-linearity is unavoidable when the signal goes through the analog hardware).

Note: The question is about OS X in general, not about iTunes, which does include a sound enhnacer.  I won't use iTunes for playback.

I believe the output is unmodified except for amplification.  For specific settings, you might find the Audio MIDI Setup utility useful as it includes per-speaker amplification settings.  As I'm not a big audiophile I can't attest to the specific settings you mention but that's where I would start to test things out.


How can you disable the low battery warnings for bluetooth devices? I use a bluetooth apple trackpad and keyboard, and once the battery hits 20% the bluetooth indicator in the menu bar starts flashing this lower battery warning. Normally, I wouldn't really care, but 20% battery is about 1-2 months of usage so the thing just flashes at me constantly for over a month.

Is there a way to disable this behavior?

I don't mind the alert or warning, but I do mind the weeks of having a blinking icon in my Menubar.  Here's what I did in Terminal:

$ cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/Bluetooth.menu/Contents/Resources/
$ sudo cp lowbatt.pdf lowbatt.backup.pdf
$ sudo cp BlueTooth_Connected.pdf lowbatt.pdf

This replaces the low battery icon with the same connected icon.  I assume the icon is still "blinking" in that it's switching one for the other, but since they're now the same, you don't notice.

Now I get the 20%, 10%, 5% alerts, but no annoying blink.

This is in Lion.  It's likely that system updates and perhaps even Mountain Lion will undo this, but it can probably be reapplied after updates are performed.

For Mountain Lion, the relevant files are named:

Bluetooth_Low_Battery.pdf
Bluetooth_Connected.pdf


Problem with passing iTunes payment method I wanted to use iCloud on my iphone, and therefore created an apple ID, but when I'm trying to sign in to itunes it says since it's my first time using this ID I Should select a payment method, and despite I can see the "none" option in my itunes menu I can't use it. Since I don't have access to either a credit card or iTunes gift card, I was wondering if somebody could tell me if there is another way to pass the payment method.
I have an iPhone 5S with iOS 8.1.3.
Thanks.

You can buy a gift card and charge your account with it. Then it won't bother you anymore.


How to detect if Mac if rebooting after a power failure using terminal? As I asked in the title, how can I check if a Mac is rebooting after experiencing a power failure. It would be preferable to check this using terminal or some other script, as I would like to test this automatically in a script upon system startup.

You can check for the "Shutdown Cause" in the log.

5 is a normal shutdown
3 is pressing the power button
0 is loss of power

In El Capitan and earlier:

cat /var/log/system.log | grep -i "shutdown cause"

In Sierra and newer:

log show --predicate "process == kernel" | grep -i "shutdown cause"

Or....just using awk to get the code:

log show --predicate "process == kernel" | awk '/shutdown cause/ {print $12}'

In Mojave and Catalina, you can issue the command to get a more fine grained approach to the log:

log show --predicate '(process = "kernel") && (eventMessage CONTAINS "shutdown cause")' --last 48h --style compact

This will process only the last 48 hours and output in a nice "compact" layout.


Downloads stack progress bar "stuck" at 100% after completion of downloads As you can see, the downloads stack's progress indicator is at 100%, and is permanently stuck there even after the completion of all downloads. The only way I can remove the progress bar is by restarting dock (killall Dock) or rebooting. Is there any reason this is occurring and/or any way to prevent it?

There's a bug with Google Chrome that seems to have been fixed. Make sure your Chrome is up to date.

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=150743


Double entries in Launchpad (Mac OSX 10.7, Lion) I have many double entries in Launchpad. (Address Book, DVD Player, Image Capture). Any idea why and how to fix it?

Launchpad looks for applications in at least two different locations: the Applications folder in your Home directory, and the "root" Applications folder sitting in "Macintosh HD." If it sees an application in more than one place, it puts an icon on the Launchpad for each place it's in. (Try using Spotlight to see if you have more than one Address Book!)

Moving the extraneous apps out of ~/Applications should put them out of Launchpad's sight (at least, as of the next reboot).


How to activate lost mode on iCloud for iPhone that cannot be located? I lost my phone in a taxi just after landing at an airport. My phone was in airplane mode and I cannot locate it with iCloud. On iCloud help pages, it says I can turn on the lost mode.

I tried:

Locate my phone, wait for it to fail. No menu appeared to ask if I wanted to lock it
Go in Settings -> my iPhone. I clicked on "lost your phone ? ...? " which did nothing but bring me to a help page

Is that normal ? I'm using Ubuntu/Chrome if it can help.

Login to iCloud, go to Find My iPhone, select your phone in the drop down list on the top of the page, provided it has Find My iPhone enabled it should show up as offline. Lost mode should be available.


How can I make sure my Mac has access to files on its own SMB server? I have a Mac mini that runs a Samba server through the "file sharing" option in settings.

I can create files on it and my clients can access it. However, creating files on the client end causes my Mac not to have access to those files.

There doesn't seem to be a way to change that on the client end. I tried going into properties and unchecking the "read only" option on the file but it gets checked again when I hit "apply." My clients are Android and Windows.

This is the reason why companies set up shared directories - to allow or deny group read / write permissions to files.

You will want to think about how you wish to have people authenticate and whether all shares can default to everyone can write.

On the Mac - files like this typically are homed in /Users/Shared so you could move those files to a place that’s naturally open to all accounts or change the permissions on the files you chose to share from the sharing panes.

Another last bit of advice, spend a little time thinking if you can use POSIX group / ID based permissions or want to layer on Access Control Lists (abbreviated ACL) that are more granular and can do things like add a group and then deny one member of that group from files and folders.


Safely deleting files downloaded by Safari Sorry to ask such a basic question, but I am remotely helping my parents who have a Mac, and I am not familiar with that system, nor have I it at home.

They received a fake order confirmation email and my father clicked the button to cancel the order. This opened another tab alleging a security issue and it downloaded a number of files. They could not close the tab.

First I told them to restart Safari with the shift key pressed so that tabs were not restored.

Second they inspected the download list and cleared it (unfortunately before taking the picture I requested).

Now I am not sure as to whether the files are still on the computer. It is kind of assumed by a number of sources including https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/safari/sfri40598/mac that clearing the download list deletes them, but I am looking for a positive confirmation. Could please someone familiar with OSX/Safari confirm this?

My mother told me she could find no folder named "Downloads" (or its localized version). Could it be that the folder is hidden when empty?

Finally, if there is such a folder: What is safest way to empty the "Downloads" folder without risk of opening one of the files? Keeping in mind I must explain the procedure on the phone.

I do not think anything worse has happened. This looked like a scam to have them call a phone number, where they would have been requested to pay for "technical support".

Thanks in advance.

The Downloads folder is still usually visible to the user when empty. Some malware can be difficult to find and it may have even moved out of the Downloads directory. First, in Terminal, try chflags nohidden ~/Downloads and then cd ~/Downloads then ls. You can also try sudo chown Username:Staff ~/Downloads then sudo chmod 755 and then see if the folder and its contents are visible. Do they see any files in there then? If not, then try starting in Safe Mode. This startup mode allows macOS to start with only basic files that are required. To enter Safe Mode, reboot the Mac and hold Shift. You may need to login twice. Once you are in, try looking in Finder and Terminal for the downloads. You can also try applying the above Terminal commands again. Which version of macOS is the affected Mac running? If it is macOS Catalina, then Safari will always ask for confirmation before downloading the files. If none of the above are working, then your best bet is using Malwarebytes to remove malware found on your Mac. Good Luck!


Install BootCamp drivers in Windows 10 to fix bluetooth and keyboard issues I recently installed Windows 10 20H2 along with MacOs on my MacBook Pro, but upon booting Windows I can see the touchbar doesn't work in Windows(doesn't display anything), and Windows isn't detecting the Bluetooth hardware. I downloaded Windows Support software from bootcamp and tried to install it manually in Windows. But I am facing these errors:

Is there anyway I can manually install drivers?? I also checked on Windows Update but there was no driver updates there either.
My mac OS is on Big sur latest version and Windows is on 20H2.
Update 1
If I force install BootCamp.msi by msiexec /i BootCamp.msi I get this error:

Update 2
Turns out the issue was with the pendrive I downloaded the support software on, using a different pendrive solved the issue. However I am surprised with the poor Trackpad support with no additional multi-finger gestures and also the scrolling is inverted. Can I use precision driver instead of Apple's driver?

Unless you have one of the very early Intel Macs, the Windows Support Software is suppose to be available to the Windows installer during the installation process. This is so the Windows installer can access any drivers included in the Windows Support Software that are not already part of the installation software provided by Microsoft.
If you have an older Mac and are using the current Windows 10 release, then most likely any required drivers in the Windows Support Software will be already included in the Windows 10 release. In this case, having the Windows Support Software available to the Windows installer during the installation process may not be necessary.
Once Widows is installed, additional software can be installed by executing the Setup.exe application included in Windows Support Software. Afterwards, additional software can be installed through the Apple Software Update application. Windows Update may also provide software.

Your question indicates you downloading the Windows Support Software after installing Windows. You can post a comment, if I am wrong about this.

My best guess would be you used the Boot Camp Assistant on a Mac of a different year and/or model to download the Windows Support Software. This is a common mistake. If you did this, then most likely the wrong Windows Support Software was downloaded.
The other possibility is your Mac Pro is older than the 2013 model. In this case, Apple does not support Windows 10 for your Mac. If this is true, then you should have included this in your question.

The fact that you do not mention running Setup.exe, but instead mention BootCamp.msi, indicates that you did run Setup.exe which terminated early with an error message. The message either states lack of support for Windows 10 or you have the wrong version of Boot Camp.


Repairing Mac OS X Leopard without Time Machine I did a dumb thing and accidentally overwrote my copy of /usr/bin/sqlite3 on my Mac OS X 10.5.8. I don't have a Time Machine backup so I can't grab the file from there. When I try to run Apache2, I'm getting the error:

dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libsqlite3.0.dylib
  Referenced from: /usr/sbin/httpd
  Reason: no suitable image found.  Did find:
/usr/lib/libsqlite3.0.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture
/usr/lib/libsqlite3.0.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture
/usr/lib/libsqlite3.0.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture

How can I retrieve or rebuild /usr/bin/sqlite3?

Edit: Before all of this, I ran the 10.5.8 Combo Update in case something on my system was corrupted.

Reinstalling the entire Mac OS X is the guaranteed way to ensure all system components are correctly installed.

Sometimes you can get away with running a Combo Updater (the 10.5.8 in your case), it can repair a slightly damaged (or corrupted) installation.

If you are unsure of why things are missing or damaged, better to reinstall or at least run a Repair Permissions in Disk Utility. System files should be protected from deleting and you don't know if other protections are missing or changed.


How to stop uTorrent on specific network? I go to a university where there is a weekly network usage limit, and I don't want uTorrent sucking it up.

I know the simplest way to go about stopping it is from working is closing it when I get to school or stopping my torrents, but this can result in me forgetting about it.

Is there an automated way to block uTorrent while I'm connected to this specific network?

MarcoPolo can be used for launching scripts based on using specific NetworkLinks or IP addresses.

Your applescript then should contain something like:

tell application "uTorrent" to quit


Troubles install Xcode 5 on Mountain Lion A few days ago I started to download the new Xcode 5, but I canceled this update at nearly 40%.

Today I'm tried to download the update but it won't download. When I go to Mac Appstore, Updates it says "no updates available". I searched for Xcode in the Mac Appstore and on the Xcode app site there is the update button. But when I click on it Mac Appstore shows me up an dialog telling me

  You have updates avaiable for other accounts. To update this application sign in to the account you used to purchase it.

I've never used another account to install Xcode. (Yes, I'm really sure.) I tried with log out and then sign in again in. I also tried the suggestion in this question: Why can't I install Xcode 4.4 on Mountain Lion?

Has anyone an idea?

I had a similar problem with one of the Xcode 4 versions.  What worked for me was to log in to Apple Developer Network (this will work with your free developer account login), at https://developer.apple.com/xcode/

Although that page says to get the most recent version of Xcode at the App store, there is a link that says "For past versions of Xcode or additional tools -- view downloads".

Click the downloads link
Unselect all of the checkboxes on the left except "Developer Tools", type "xcode" in the box at the top of the left column, and hit Enter
The top result will be Xcode 5 - click the disclosure triangle to view the download link for it.
Download the .dmg, double-click on it to mount it and run the installer

Note that the downloads page says that Xcode 5 requires OS X 10.8.4.

As I mentioned, this worked for me when the App Store locked me out with one of the Xcode 4 versions.  If this happened to you, please leave a comment indicating whether this solution works for you.


Clear Automatic Proxy Configuration box in MBP Network settings (El Capitan) So I input the URL for my school's proxy server in the automatic proxy server box in network settings (under advanced and then proxies). I want to now clear this box (yes, I realize I can uptick the box to turn off the proxy server). However, if I delete the URL, click OK, then press Apply, when I go back into the proxy server settings the url is still there.

Does anyone know how to clear the field so it stays cleared (I also realize I can replace it with 0000000 or something nonsensical, but I prefer to have it cleared).

Admittedly, I have not tried a computer restart (and pram reset), which is dumb on my part, so I will try that now. If I don't edit this post saying that cleared the box,though, then it did not work.

I just ended up going to the preferences.plist file and manually changing the settings, which worked.

Note that I had to disable csrutil (system integrity protection). I'm not sure if that is new to El Capitan or not.

Edit: Sorry for edit, just want to say that that seemed to mess up some stuff (for example it would connect me to a network but say I was not connected). I'm not sure how I messed up... but I just went with replacing the preferences.plist with a time-machine backup of it. I should have just don't that in the first place.


Different Node versions in OS X El Capitan Is it possible to run different Node versions in OS X El Capitan with Homebrew?

Yes. When node updates a package, it doesn't remove the old version. You can also install old versions of a package using brew versions, but you will probably need to install the boneyard tap in order to be able to do this. See here and here.

Based on this answer:
Use ls $(brew --cellar) to determine what you have installed, and brew ls -v to see installed packages and versions. You can then call the installed binaries directly (or make your own aliases to them).


How can I share or send a radio program I've recorded from the Tune in radio app on my iPhone 5s? I recorded an AM radio interview via the Tune In radio app on my iPhone 5S.  I would like to share the recorded program by sending the link, if there is one, to someone else by email or text.  Is this possible?

Your supposed to be able to share recordings via their app but I think there is bug that prevents that from happening. I have the TuneIn Radio Pro app and recorded a bit of a station. Then I tried to share it by clicking on my recording and then tapping the little share button (the only options it gives are send via email, text message or G+) and it gave me a url like this: recording://1414797133.74747 I was unable to open this link when shared to friends with the app, or even open it myself. This was tested with version 6.5 of their app.


iMac Fan runs fast and hard Is it common for an imac fan to kick into full swing when booting up and never idling down even after 10 minutes? It sounds like a vacuum.

Would going in to the BIOS(no idea how to do that on a mac) and resetting help solve the problem.

Not normal. I had the same problem with an iMac a few years back and had to have the logic board replaced (under warranty thankfully).

You might have a SMC (System Management Controller) problem. This article explains how to reset it:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

You might also look at a tool like iStat Menus:
http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

What I found with iStat was that my CPU was running extra hot, hence the extra fan speed.

I did end up using an app called SMC Fan Control to mitigate the problem before getting the logic board replaced.


Want to delete app but can't force quit app through activity monitor Downloaded the font manager FontYou, but since then the creators shut it down. I get an error message on startup from FontYou so have been trying to uninstall the app. I try to delete it in applications but get the message that I can't because the app is running. I tried to force quit through Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor but this isn't working either. What else can I do? Thanks!

The instructions on their website say to logout using the FontYou icon in the top menu bar, and then drag the application to the Trash.

https://fontyou.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207787615-How-can-I-uninstall-Fontyou-

However choosing "Quit" from the menu will close the application and then let you delete it.


how does the "Time since last full charge" update in iOS settings? I struggle to understand how this updates, anyone so polite to explain?

From what I've noticed, the Time Since Last Full Charge only resets to 0 min when you charge your device completely. If you, for example, had been using your phone for a day, put it to charge in the evening, but without charing it to 100%, the timer will not reset. If you do the same thing the following day, it would display "2 days", even though you have charged your phone last night.

And it also doesn't start counting the time until you unplug your phone from the charger.


Safari reloads bookmark icons upon every restart I'm on macOS 10.13 High Sierra with Safari 11.

I noticed that whenever I close an re-open Safari, it keeps reloading all of the favicons for every bookmark as if I freshly set it up. When I made the upgrade to High Sierra I reinstalled my MacBook from scratch. Since then the issue with the bookmark icons surfaced. The new tracking protections under privacy settings don't seem to cause the issue, since icons reload even when I turn them off.

I tried deleting Safari .plist files in ~/Library/Preferences, deleting the ~/Library/Safari directory but to no avail.

Although it's just a minor issue it's annoying and could burn a lot of data when I'm on the go and use my iPhone as mobile hotspot (from what I understand Safari loads the .png web app icons instead of the favicon.ico files which should be considerably larger in file size).

I realise a "me too" is not helpful, but I wanted to keep the discussion alive. This is the first post I have found on this subject after several attempts. So, good to know I am not alone.

Unfortunately, the answer from Geek is only a work-around. I work a lot on my Mac with a data plan and I like the favourites tiles / icons on my new tabs.

However, this does not happen on all Macs. I have a much-older MacBook air where this does not happen in High Sierra, but on a more recent MacBook Air I do see this every time.

The main difference between these machines, is that the one that has this issue is configured as a work Domain account, or in other words, as a Mobile device.


How can I delete duplicate entries in keyboard shortcuts services? I have several duplicate entries in the keyboard shortcuts services.
I want to delete the duplicate entries, and right clicked and clicked show in Finder to find the location of these. But it leads to Applications folder.

So I tried find these location manually, but I could not.

Custom services can be found in ~/Library/Services.

If showing the service in the finder led you to the Applications folder it's a service that came bundled with an app. These should be defined in that app's Info.plist.

You can access it by right clicking on that application in the Finder, selecting Show Package Contents and navigating to Contents.
Once you've opened the file look for the Services key. Expanding it will show you all services that come bundled with that app. Deleting a service's key might remove its entry from Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services. Be sure to make a backup of the .plist file first, in case something goes wrong and you want to roll back the changes.

  Note that you might need extra software (like Xcode) to open .plist files.


When i try to install my certificate in keychain, the error says: Unable to import - Error Code 25294 I am using the 10.9.5 version and ios 8. When i try to install my certificate i got through my developer account for push notification for my app in the keychain local items, its not importing. The error says: Unable to import the certificate and the error code is 25294

Try adding the certificate to the "login" keychain.


Unable to place folder or file to left border of desktop Unable to place folder or file to left border of desktop. See video bellow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xij6ybzcins

I have last version of OS X El Capitan.

How to fix this bug?

Snap to Grid is turned on
This happens if Snap to Grid is turned on.

You can adjust the icon size and grid spacing in View Options (⌘J or View > Show View Options) to get your desired results.


"Turn display off after" setting is not saved I have a 16" Macbook Pro which is suffering from a common bug that causes it to kernel panic every time it sleeps. Until Apple fixes this (presuming they actually do), I am trying to work around it by telling the Mac not to sleep while plugged in:

However, every time I restart my computer (because I have to unplug it sometimes and then it sleeps and crashes), it forgets this setting and resets it to 5 minutes! Why isn't this setting saved?

I'm using MacOS 10.15.5.

I would start with resetting the SMC and NVRAM on your system -- If I recall a lot of the sleep settings are in one of the two -- likely SMC.

To reset SMC: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

To reset NVRAM: Shut down computer. Hold Apple, Option, P, R on keyboard as you power on -- keep holding until you hear the startup chime a second time and let go.
Typically I use my left hand to get Apple, Option, P. Then right hand to press power and quickly get the R held down.


Configure MacBook Air at Apple Premium Resellers in Singapore I am Abhimanyu, located in Singapore. I have a question for you all: Can I configure MacBook Air at one of the Apple Premium Resellers?

I want to buy 13" MacBook Air, but I need 8 GB Memory, instead of default 4 GB memory. Can I get my system configure at one of Apple Premium Resellers? Is it safe to do it? Does that void warrenty?

BTW, what is difference between Apple Premium Resellers and Apple Authorised Reseller?

If I cannot get MacBook Air configure at Apple Premium Resellers, can I get it configure at Apple Authorised Resellers?

"Difference between Apple Premium Resellers and Apple Authorised Reseller": The premium resellers are supposed to have better service and more knowledgable staff.

Unless the Premium resellers stock the CTO (configure to order) models then you will need to order it online.

The majority of Apple Retail Stores will not carry that model but some Resellers do.  So I would check with the particular store.

As the other commenter stated you cannot physically put more ram into a MacBook Air once it is already put together.  The ram is soldered onto the Logic Board.


How do I export a Keynote Presentation to PDF while embedding the font It seems like the export to PDF option currently exists on Keynote (version '09) does not embed the font I use.

What are my options besides buying Adobe Acrobat Professional?

I have tested the font you mention in exporting pdf (best quality) from keynote and it is both embedded and displays correctly on my iOS devices using Adobe Reader or iBooks to open the file.  It should work for you as well.  If not, feel free to send me an example of your pdf for testing (tom at bluesky dot org).


How can you install Windows 7 on a 2017 MacBook Air running macOS Catalina? I want to install Windows 7 (not 10) on my 2017 MacBook Air, which is running macOS Catalina. I want Windows 7 since some programs I need don't work the best on Windows 10. It's also faster than Windows 10 and takes up less of my hard drive space.

Is it even possible to install Windows 7, and if so, how?

Windows 7 has to be installed to BIOS boot. Your 2017 MacBook Air does not have a BIOS in the firmware. Therefore, you can not install Windows 7 on a physical 2017 MacBook Air.

You should be able to install Windows 7 in a virtual machine. VirtualBox happens to be a free product that can be used to run Windows 7 as a virtual machine. Usually the older operating systems run adequately fast in virtual machines on newer Macs.

The latest version of Windows 7 with SP1 can be downloaded from Download Windows 7 Disc Images (ISO Files). You will need a product key to download. This ISO can be installed in VirtualBox without entering a product key, if you want to test before committing. Of course, after a trial period, you would need to provide a product key. VirtualBox does provide all the required Windows 7 drivers, which can be installed after installing Windows 7.


Why won't my restored iPhone 4S accept my Apple ID credentials? I recently had to restore my iPhone 4S (iOS 7) and when I turned it back on and the activation screen came up, it prompted me for my Apple ID credentials. I put in my Apple ID username and password but it says that it's wrong. I tried to change my password, but when I did, and tried the new password, it still doesn't work.

What should I do?

I obviously can't even use my phone to make a call.

Try connecting via https://appleid.apple.com/ probably something wrong with your password.

Consider once you have access to the page to check your contact information, add a secondary e-mail etc…

If you still experience problems you should contact an Apple adviser via http://support.apple.com/


How to restore default sharing extension under Yosemite OS X Yosemite introduce few extensions like sharing extensions. With some defaults one like share with Apple Mail, iMessage, ... but today thoses extensions are missing for me. Is there's any knowed way, even with CLI to restaure them ?