Is it possible to evaluate an expression in launchd's ProgramArguments array? Is it possible to compose my launchd.plist file so that an embedded expression is evaluated and not treated as a literal value? And, if so, how?

I have a ~/Library/LaunchAgents/setenv.JAVA_HOME.plist file which contains a /bin/launchctl call as follows:

<?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>setenv.JAVA_HOME</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/bin/launchctl</string>
        <string>setenv</string>
        <string>JAVA_HOME</string>
        <string>$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v1.8)</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>ServiceIPC</key>
    <false/>
</dict>
</plist>

Problem is, the $(/usr/libexec/java_home -v1.8) expression is not evaluated and instead the JAVA_HOME environment variable is assigned the literal value $(/usr/libexec/java_home -v1.8).

I asked this question in Stack Overflow last week but have had so few views I'm guessing that that's not the place for it.

Got an answer in the original Stack Overflow question, Is it possible to evaluate an expression in launchd's ProgramArguments array?

It is possible by means of this bash command:

/bin/bash -c '/bin/launchctl setenv JAVA_HOME $(/usr/libexec/java_home -v1.8)'

The plist file you want is as follows:

<?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>test.so</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/bin/bash</string>
        <string>-c</string>
        <string>/bin/launchctl setenv JAVA_HOME $(/usr/libexec/java_home -v1.8)</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>ServiceIPC</key>
    <false/>
</dict>
</plist>


How to record if and when my Macbook is opened I like to know when my family goes on my Macbook for numerous reasons. Is there a way to record when or if people go on my Macbook when I leave it laying around?

Try the command last

It will show you every login since the last reboot.

Open Terminal and just type (using my dev xserve as an example)

[admin@xserve1 ~]$ last
admin      pts/0    allans-imac.home       Wed Mar  2 23:20   still logged in

utx.log begins Wed Mar  2 23:20:07 EST 2016
[admin@xserve1 ~]$

This would be correct since nobody but me (the admin) had logged into it.


How can I get Apple mail or Outlook 2011 to look up SMIME encryption certificates for users? I want the ability to lookup an encryption certificate for SMIME in Outlook for recipients who have SMIME certs, but I just don't have their public key.

I noticed the keychain has a directory feature.  Can I use this to add a compatible directory to lookup their public key for SMIME encryption?

According to the Apple TS article "Using Keychain Access to search directory services for certificates", if your Mac

is configured to use a directory service,
has the CA signing certificate trusted in either your login or the system keychains,
has a valid signed user certificate with the appropriate attributes,

then Keychain Access can be configured (Preferences → General → Search directory services for certificates) to search for certificates on the configured directory service.  Mail.app will also automatically search for certificates as well.

Unfortunately, I haven't done this personally, so I can't vouch for how well it works or have any advice on any issues.  This reads to me like a feature designed to be used with a centrally-managed IT infrastructure with directory and certificate services.  It does not sound like it is designed to work outside that sort of environment.


What to do when macbook pro's battery starts to spurt out flame? I am not sure whether this is the right place to ask about hardware incident, but I am not sure where else to ask. If you know a better place, please kindly share with me.

I failed to dismantle my macbook pro's battery. It's currently lying on the ground outside my house.

Here's what happened:

I bought a new battery for my Macbook Pro 15' Retina early 2013 and started to remove the old one today. I made several mistakes along the way:

I had only experience with installing SSD, but was thoughtless to think it's the same.
I wasn't intellectually prepared. For example, it might be better to use up the battery before dismantling it. Mine was fully charged.
I used a metal chisel to pry up the battery from the base (it was glued tightly with the base) . I should've used plastic materials.

The battery looks like this:

I successfully pried up the leftmost two batteries and the rightmost two batteries, leaving the two central pieces. When I began prying one of central ones(quite hard), an orange flame flashes!

In case it exploded, I dropped it outside of my house and put warning signs around it. I even called the fireman asking what to do, but he just told me to be cautious..??

The worst part is, the chisel is still stuck between the battery and the base! I tried to remove it, but instantly the flame showed up again.

Here is what it looks like now:

I am considering ask for some help from local computer repairment shops. But in case they are not able to help (since it's rather dangerous), should I give up fixing it or not?

If so, what is the safest way to dispose the battery, and the laptop?

You punctured the Lithium Ion Battery. Basically, you created a small "short" somewhere between the electrodes inside the cell.

  A mild short will only cause elevated self-discharge and the heat
  buildup is minimal because the discharging power is very low. If
  enough microscopic metallic particles converge on one spot, a sizable
  current begins to flow between the electrodes of the cell, and the
  spot heats up and weakens. As a small water leak in a faulty hydro dam
  can develop into a torrent and take a structure down, so too can heat
  buildup damage the insulation layer in a cell and cause an electrical
  short. The temperature can quickly reach 500C (932F), at which point
  the cell catches fire or it explodes. This thermal runaway that occurs
  is known as “venting with flame.” “Rapid disassembly” is the preferred
  term by the battery industry. 1

There is an excellent video on YouTube that shows exactly what happens when you puncture one.

So, how do you dispose?

An electronics recycling center.  A simple Internet Search will bring up centers in your area.

Given your lack of experience and the high likelihood of a dangerous situation, your best bet is to let someone with skills in this sort of disassembly handle the procedure.

  am considering ask for some help from local computer repairment shops. But in case they are not able to help (since it's rather dangerous), should I give up fixing it or not?

Fix it?

You shorted out the contacts of the battery that connects it to the main board, used a chisel to pry off the adhesive from a paper thin aluminum housing and proceed to puncture the battery which caused a fire.

If you can get the chisel out without setting it ablaze and your logic board is still functional, you still have the top case assembly to replace.  Is it worth fixing?

As for your chisel...it's a good opportunity for a trip to Home Depot.

1  Safety Concerns with Li-ion  Battery University, Last Updated 2016-09-27


3rd Gen Macbook pro randomly suspends My 3rd Gen (late 2013) MBP randomly suspends.

I've already seen this and this and this and this. And unfortunately, none of them quite match what's happening to me.

I will be in the middle of working on my MBP and it will randomly suspend so I have to hit the power button to wake. Pressing the power button resumes from suspend but then it will do it again within a few seconds of use unless I plug it in. Does not seem to necessarily be tied to the remaining battery life (happens more often < 40% but it's happened at 68% and I've gotten down to 5% as recently as this week without seeing the problem).

This is a core i7 machine with 16 GB RAM and a 500 GB SSD. Coconut battery reports that I still have 75%+ of the original battery capacity left. This is a machine that otherwise has plenty of life left in it if I can get this resolved.

Any ideas what could be wrong?

Your battery is dying.  It's time to replace it.
You have very similar symptoms to the issue in this other post Fully charged MacBook Air turns off when power cord removed, but the major difference is that you have enough "juice" to allow macOS to suspend rather than just turn off all at once.
One of the biggest factors in batteries dying is it's age.  This is a 2013 MacBook Pro, so it's got 6 years on it.  The average lifepan of a battery is 3 to 5 years so (some last only 2 while some go 6 or 7), you're outside it's usable life.
Battery utilities
Coconut Battery, et. al. are neat little tools, however, they can only give a point-in-time calculation of your battery's heath.  It does it by measuring the current (volts and amps) and the current draw.  What it can't do is measure the charge like a fuel gauge in your car.
This is why you're seeing the (confusing and conflicting) "battery's ok but system sleeps when not plugged in" symptom.


Recognize externel hard drive as internal I need my 2018 Mac mini (Mojave) to recognize the external hard drive as an internal one so I can use Bootcamp and install Windows on it.

I tried the answer in "How to let MacBook Pro recognize my external hard drive as internal hard drive?".   However, the command dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2 bs=1 count=1 didn't work for me. I can still eject the hard drive and in Disk Utility it is still listed under "External".

Are there any other options to get my Mac to see my external drive as internal?

It's not so much as recognizing if the drive is internal or not, it's whether it's removable or not.  Whether or not a drive is identified as "removable" is dependent on what the firmware of the external drive has set; it's called the Removable Media Bit or RMB for short. Microsoft has a good write up on this.

The removable media device setting is a flag contained within the SCSI
Inquiry Data response to the SCSI Inquiry command. Bit 7 of byte 1
(indexed from 0) is the Removable Media Bit (RMB). An RMB set to zero
indicates that the device is not a removable media device. An RMB of
one indicates that the device is a removable media device.

But wait; those are SCSI devices, not USB!  Actually, USB devices are seen as SCSI devices.
So, to do this, you have to "flip the bit" in the USB device's (not your Mac's) controller firmware.  Some allow you to do it, some don't.
Flipping the Bit
There are several tools out there for doing this (I only know of the Windows utilities).

Lexar BootIt
BootIce

Important Note:  The procedure is different for different brands of drives and you may brick your external drive as you are writing to the USB controllers firmware.
There are many "Mass Production USB Prep Tools" like Ameco available (that's a search link as I'm not providing any links to this software; use at your own risk) for download.  I don't often source quotes from discussion forums, but this one from Hak5: Collection of Production Tools for USB-devices bears repeating:

WARNING : THIS IS NOT FOR NOOBS . USE AT YOUR OWN RISK & RTFM

Don't take that as being new to IT or computers.  Take it as if you don't know how or have never manipulated individual bits (1s and 0s) and written them to firmware, this is not for you.  I'm not saying you shouldn't try and experiment - I fully encourage you to do so, but you shouldn't do this on a production piece of equipment you paid good money for.
TL;DR
Don't do this. (IMO) It's better to have Windows installed on your genuinely non-removable drive.  You don't need much to have a Windows install (I have a VM with only 40GB allocated to it).  What you can do is migrate the user profile to the external drive (mine is an iSCSI LUN from a Synology NAS).   This will allow you to use minimal space for Bootcamp while allowing you to have as much space as needed for what you need to do with Windows.


iTunes Match and syncing iOS device with iTunes Library Is it possible to have iTunes match turned on, on my device/itunes. And then sync songs from my iTunes Library to the device.
At the moment my internet connection is very slow, so downloading all the songs I want to listen too takes time, it would be easier if I'm near my computer to sync with a local library.

Currently, no. If you are using iTunes Match, it takes over playlist and music syncing for you.

The only way to get around this currently is to disable iTunes Match on the device, and then you can do a cable or wifi sync like you have been able to do. Match just gives you access to your library anywhere, so if its smaller than the device size, you can just sync everything. Or if you don't always need that access, then just cary what you want with you. iTunes Match will still be helpful for upgrading bit rates of files, as well as if you have other machines with a better internet connection.

Finally, you can also submit a feature request to Apple at the iTunes Feedback Page. For example, make a request to do local network syncing before iTunes Match syncing if the file exists on your local network. Dropbox somewhat works this way with their LAN sync - items are synced on your network first, and then any other changes are pulled down from the 'cloud'.


Xcode is constantly hijacking my Editor settings for .rb files I'm quite baffled by this as i can't find how and why it's happening.
For years i'm using Sublime Text to open ruby files and surely i have Xcode installed but except of command line tools i don't use Xcode as an IDE ever.

Just since today and no software update has been installed in this regard for weeks Xcode registers itself to open .rb files.

When i noticed i used Finder / Get Info and all the normal procedure to fix this.
and this works but only for an hour or so.

Suddenly clicking a ruby file i notice how the file icon changes mid click from the dark grey with orange icon to the white page with red icon from Xcode.

Played this game 5 times today and even tried rebooting.

Is there a way to prevent this from happening?

Stop Xcode from Hijacking my File Associations

Sounded similar but only so far that for me this happens without any updates just after a short while multiple times a day.

From the comments:

  By chance, do you use Firefox and uBlock Origin?

  Yes using both, why?

This is due to a mysterious bug in Firefox that is triggered by a recent update to uBlock Origin.

A fix has been applied to uBlock Origin to avoid the bug, however that patch has not made it to the latest release yet.


Macbook Pro Superdrive Only Works With DVD-ROM I have a 2007 Macbook Pro with a Superdrive. However, whenever I insert anything other than a DVD-ROM, it waits a moment and then ejects it. It should be able to read and write DVD-R, -RW, etc. - below is an excerpt from System Information:

MATSHITA DVD-R   UJ-857E:

Firmware Revision:  ZA0E
Interconnect:   ATAPI
Burn Support:   Yes (Apple Shipping Drive)
Cache:  2048 KB
Reads DVD:  Yes
CD-Write:   -R, -RW
DVD-Write:  -R, -R DL, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW
Write Strategies:   CD-TAO, CD-SAO, DVD-DAO
Media:  To show the available burn speeds, insert a disc and choose File > Refresh Information

Thanks in advance!

It's extremely likely that the drive needs replacing. The lasers get worn out over time and this how they can react.


Unusual wifi issue with iPhone 4S I've had the iPhone for less than a week. And the issue occurs while using my home WiFi network. Basically, Siri does not work, and I also have difficulty with logging in to specific sites using the app for the site (as opposed to using Safari).

While away from home using the carrier 3G network, Siri works very well. Also, as an example, I can use my local library app for using my library account. The App Store works fine.

At home with a strong wifi signal, Siri tells me that it can't deal with my request right now and the library app continuously loads and then times out. I also have endless loading/timeout issues with the App Store.

My guess is that it's either an issue with the wireless router/modem or the iPhone itself?

The router uses 801.11b/g. Other devices in the home (MacBook, Mac mini, a Windows machine, iPad 2, Nook Color) have no problem and perform as expected within the WiFi network.

I have Googled and visited forums to troubleshoot this to no avail; and I'm not sure where to look next. Are there any ideas on possible router settings or iPhone settings that I need to consider at this point?

More info from a test:

  Cellular Data Off / Wireless On:

  Safari browse to various websites - OK
  Library App - Links in the app work except for the login page.
  Siri - Always says it can't help me right now and to try again in a little while.

  Cellular Data On / Wireless Off:

  Safari browse to various websites - OK
  Library App - Works properly - OK
  Siri - Works as expected - OK

I managed to solve this on my own: I gave my phone a static IP address different from the router assigned one, and everything works fine now.

I discovered that my roommate had set up a particular IP address for VPN while working from home a while back. When I got the phone and joined the network, the router assigned my phone that IP address which had various Application and Port forwarding assigned to it. Simple but took digging around in the router settings and logs.


Why can't I use Indian rupee symbol (₹) with Arial font? I wanted to use Indian rupee symbol (₹) with Arial font, in TextEdit on macOS Mojave.

However, whenever I select the text which includes that symbol and change the font to Arial in the dropdown, rupee sign font changes to PingFang SC font and the remaining text changes to Arial.

Can someone explain this behaviour?

This is because macOS Mojave uses Arial version 5.01.2x, which includes the following list of characters:

! " # $ % & &#x27; ( ) * + , - . / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ? @ A B C D E F G
H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ ] ^ _ ` a b c d e f g h i j k l
m n o p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~   ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬  ® ¯ ° ± ² ³ ´
µ ¶ · ¸ ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿ À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö × Ø Ù Ú Û
Ü Ý Þ ß à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ö ÷ ø ù ú û ü ý þ ÿ

Indian rupee sign is not on this list, so TextEdit uses PingFang SC, which is a system fallback font introduced in OS X 10.11 El Capitan:

  OS X 10.11, aka El Capitan, comes with a new system font for Chinese users, named PingFang, it includes 6 weights for both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. The same font also appear on iOS 9 as the default UI font, though Apple didn't mention it explicitly.

No single font contains every possible character.  To see which ones a particular font does have, go to Applications > Font Book, select the font, and do View > Repertoire.  To see which fonts do have the rupee symbol, open the Character Viewer (Edit > Emoji & Symbols), select the character, and look at the Font Variation pane.


Can I use BootCamp on an existing Windows partition? I have a Windows 7 PC which is getting old and flaky. I am switching to a Mac Mini as my primary desktop (since I also do Mac development) but will use it mainly for Windows.

What I'd really love to do is clone my W7 partition onto a new SSD and then use this on the Mac Mini, so I can carry on using my "old PC" without having to reinstall everything. I know I could do that cloning process if I was keeping the same PC but replacing the disk with SSD.**

Does BootCamp allow you to "wrap"/load an existing partition or do you have to create a new clean partition and then install an OS?

**I'm aware that Windows doesn't like fidning the PC spec has suddenly totally changed but that's a separate issue really, I'd rather not distract the main question here

This is a whole bunch of links so I'm not really sure it qualifies as an answer...

Windows -> Parallels - possible with the Parallels Transporter Agent software - http://kb.parallels.com/uk/115007

Parallels -> Bootcamp - http://www.tylercrumpton.com/?p=90

Windows straight to Bootcamp [needs WinClone, not free] - http://twocanoes.com/winclone/support/migrating-a-real-pc-to-boot-camp-with-winclone-4


How is font metadata stored? Right after downloading a font, you can see it has a lot of metadata. For example, if you download the Sansation font and run mdls Sansation_Regular.ttf you will get this output:

com_apple_ats_name_family      = (
    Sansation
)
com_apple_ats_name_fond        = (
    "Sansation Regular"
)
com_apple_ats_name_full        = (
    "Sansation Regular"
)
com_apple_ats_name_postscript  = (
    "Sansation Regular"
)
com_apple_ats_name_style       = (
    Regular
)
com_apple_ats_names            = (
    "Bernd Montag",
    Regular,
    Sansation,
    "Sansation Regular",
    "Version 1.31",
    "\U00a9 2011 Bernd Montag"
)
kMDItemAuthors                 = (
    "Bernd Montag"
)
kMDItemContentCreationDate     = 2012-10-31 15:59:10 +0000
kMDItemContentModificationDate = 2012-10-31 15:59:10 +0000
kMDItemContentType             = "public.truetype-ttf-font"
kMDItemContentTypeTree         = (
    "public.truetype-ttf-font",
    "public.truetype-font",
    "public.font",
    "public.data",
    "public.item"
)
kMDItemCopyright               = "© 2011 Bernd Montag"
kMDItemDateAdded               = 2013-11-21 16:21:51 +0000
kMDItemDisplayName             = "Sansation_Regular.ttf"
kMDItemFonts                   = (
    Regular,
    Sansation,
    "Sansation Regular"
)
kMDItemFSContentChangeDate     = 2012-10-31 15:59:10 +0000
kMDItemFSCreationDate          = 2012-10-31 15:59:10 +0000
kMDItemFSCreatorCode           = ""
kMDItemFSFinderFlags           = 0
kMDItemFSHasCustomIcon         = 0
kMDItemFSInvisible             = 0
kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden     = 0
kMDItemFSIsStationery          = 0
kMDItemFSLabel                 = 0
kMDItemFSName                  = "Sansation_Regular.ttf"
kMDItemFSNodeCount             = 78464
kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID          = 20
kMDItemFSOwnerUserID           = 501
kMDItemFSSize                  = 78464
kMDItemFSTypeCode              = ""
kMDItemKind                    = "TrueType font"
kMDItemLogicalSize             = 78464
kMDItemPhysicalSize            = 81920
kMDItemVersion                 = "Version 1.31"

Now, if you check this file in a git repository, push it to a remote server and clone that repository, a lot of metadata is lost in the process. After being cloned, running mdls Sansation_Regular.ttf gives the following output:

kMDItemFSContentChangeDate = 2013-11-21 16:31:26 +0000
kMDItemFSCreationDate      = 2013-11-21 16:31:26 +0000
kMDItemFSCreatorCode       = ""
kMDItemFSFinderFlags       = 0
kMDItemFSHasCustomIcon     = 0
kMDItemFSInvisible         = 0
kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden = 0
kMDItemFSIsStationery      = 0
kMDItemFSLabel             = 0
kMDItemFSName              = "Sansation_Regular.ttf"
kMDItemFSNodeCount         = 78464
kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID      = 0
kMDItemFSOwnerUserID       = 501
kMDItemFSSize              = (null)
kMDItemFSTypeCode          = ""

I tried to run mdimport Sansation_Regular.ttf but the lost attributes did not come back.

What happened? Is there a way to ask the system to recreate all the missing metadata attributes?

I’m running OS X 10.8.5.

It turns out the metadata was not available because I cloned the repository inside the /tmp directory which is not indexed by Spotlight. Cloning the repository somewhere indexed by Spotlight works fine.


Why is my podcast validating correctly but getting rejected by iTunes? I have a podcast that passes all validation tests I can find, yet iTunes won't accept it. I'm hoping someone here can tell me what's wrong with it.

The feed is http://www.loatoday.net/feed/mp3/

It validates correctly at validator.w3.org/feed

It validates correctly at castfeedvalidator.com

It validates correctly at www.feedvalidator.org

It even passes validation at podcastsconnect.apple.com/#/new-feed

The only possible problem I can find is a warning message that states, "line 1, column 38: Use of unknown namespace: http://podlove.org/simple-chapters"

I've checked with the developer of the WordPress plugin (Podlove Podcast Publisher), but they claim that this shouldn't be a problem and that all of the other podcasts using their plugin (they have more than 2000 installs) work just fine in iTunes.

I've asked for help at discussions.apple.com and the resident iTunes help expert (Roger Wilmut1) at that site says he can't find anything wrong with it either.

I've tried writing to PodcastSupport@apple.com for their assistance on two different occasions over the past 8 days, but so far I have received no reply from there, either.

The error email I receive doesn't really help either. It says: "An error was encountered while trying to add your feed."

That's all it says about the error. Then it gives me links to standard podcast resources.

I'm at a loss what to do next. Can anyone here tell me why Apple keeps rejecting my podcast feed submission?

ADDITIONAL EDIT: Just for the heck of it, I tried commenting out the namespace that the validators didn't like. It validated again, this time without incident, in all four places, but submitting the podcast resulted in the same, non-descript error email.

Any help anyone can give would be greatly appreciated.

Well, it looks like the problem may have been related to http vs https.

I found this interesting note on Apple's "Podcast best practices" page at https://help.apple.com/itc/podcasts_connect/#/itc2b3780e76

"Pick a reliable podcast host and be sure to host podcast episodes, artwork, and XML on an HTTPS-authenticated server. Podcast providers are reliant on the up-time, security, and speed of the podcast host distributing their RSS feed, podcast artwork, and episode files. For more information, see Podcast Partner Search."

So I added an SSL cert, cleared the cache, and resubmitted. This time, I got an email back saying, "Your podcast feed, [ https://www.loatoday.net/feed/mp3/ ] was successfully added and is now under review."

This is particularly weird because Roger Wilmut1 over at discussions.apple.com told me that Apple used to refuse https feeds. So apparently this is a change they instituted sometime in the past year or two. Maybe it is an outgrowth of the Apple vs FBI controversy over the terrorist's iPhone earlier this year? Who knows?

All I know is that by changing http to https I was able to get Apple to accept my submission for review.


What Makes an macOS "Package" Show as a Package? A package is just a directory, apparently, but somehow Finder and Path Finder know it's a package.

How is this indicated in the file system? I've tried a few changes to a directory to make it a package but to no avail.

Short answer

To register a document as a package, the developer of DayOne would have had to modify the document type information in the DayOne app's information property list (Info.plist) file.

Long Answer

A package is a file system directory used by macOS and iOS. It's basically a directory that will appear as a single file, but which may in fact contain a preserved state of files and folders. So, a folder could have a number of subfolders and many files, but as a package it will be displayed to users like a single file. For example, in macOS the Finder will see a package as a single file to avoid users mucking around with the actual  contents. However, users can view the contents through various methods such as right-clicking on the package and selecting Show Package Contents from the context menu.

Apple's Bundle Programming Guide, available on their Developer site, has a whole section on Document Packages. Below are some relevant quotes:

  To register a document as a package, you must modify the document type
  information in your application’s information property list
  (Info.plist) file. The CFBundleDocumentTypes key stores information
  about the document types your application supports. For each document
  package type, include the LSTypeIsPackage key with an appropriate
  value. The presence of this key tells the Finder and Launch Services
  to treat directories with the given file extension as a package. For
  more information about Info.plist keys, see Information Property List
  Key Reference.

  Document packages should always have an extension to identify
  them—even though that extension may be hidden by the user. The
  extension allows the Finder to identify your document directory and
  treat it as a package. You should never associate a document package
  with a MIME type or 4-byte OS type.

Source: Bundle Programming Guide

On the off-chance you can't access the document, let me know and I'll include some additional quotes from the page.


Download App updates seperately for Mac and iPad? If I download iPad App updates via iTunes on a Mac, shouldn't they automatically sync when I connect the iPad to the Mac?

I plugged an iPad 3 (iOS 6.1.3) into a Mac (OS X 10.6.8) running iTunes (11.0.2).

The iPad was waiting for 8 App updates, as was the Mac.  I downloaded, via iTunes, all the updates on the Mac, and then ran a sync.  The iPad was still waiting for the 8 updates.

Music and photos seem to sync OK.

Is this the normal behaviour?  Seems strange to have to download everything twice...

A solution is as follows:

Download updates on the iPad
Connect iPad to computer running iTunes
In iTunes, select File > Devices > Transfer Purchases from "<iPad name>"

This causes the update that you've already downloaded on your iPad to be transferred to your computer, and iTunes shouldn't try and download it again.


Bootcamp choose Windows ISO opens ISO instead of selecting ISO In Bootcamp I am installing Windows 10. When I select choose ISO Image, the USB that has the image shows in locations. When I select the image it opens up the folder of the ISO. It will not open in Bootcamp. I will have the choice to select from autorun.inf, boot folder, bootmgr, bootmgr.efi, efi folder, setup.exe, sources folder, support folder.

I have tried selecting several of these and some will open in Bootcamp, but all I get is the error "Need 64-bit Windows or 10 or later ISO file". I am sure the file is good I downloaded it from Microsoft and used both their installer and rufus to make 2 files. Both have same error.

I should also point out that I was running Windows 8.1 in  Bootcamp and deleted it to do a fresh install of Windows 10. I did use Bootcamp to delete the partition. This is on a Mac Pro 2013

You appear to have created USB flash drive Windows 10 installers by using both rufus and and the Microsoft media creation tool. Both of these methods bypass the use of the Boot Camp Assistant. You are suppose to use the Boot Camp Assistant to copy the files to the USB flash drive.

You should go to this website from Microsoft and download Window 10. The last time I checked, the October 2018 update (1809) will not work with BootCamp. This only applies to older Macs that use a flash drive to install Windows. This includes your Mac. So you will probably want to download the April 2018 update (1803).

If you have High Sierra or Mojave installed on your Mac, then you can also create the USB flash drive installer without using the Boot Camp Assistant. The instructions are given here.


iMovie: select parts I want to use I'm new to iMovie

I have imported the raw footage I want to edit

Here is the noob question:

How do I select the parts I want to use?

It seems, in older versions of iMovie, this was done simply by marking (click and drag to select) the part, and then move it down to timeline

How is it done now?

Macbook Pro 15" retina 2012 with Yosemite

Create a new project (on top), with or without a theme. Then the timeline will be on bottom and the iMovie library on top. Now you can drag pieces in, just like before.


Can I enable more key combinations for keyboard shortcuts? I'm wondering if there's any way to enable more key combinations to be used for various actions than those we can use through the standing keyboard shortcuts preference page. For instance using left shift+right shift as a keyboard shortcut to change the input language, or using fn+s for grabbing a screenshot, etc.

Perhaps there's some hack I can use, or an external tool, or just some hidden preference?

QuickKeys allows you to record actions or define macros and assign them to keyboard shortcuts. I don't know if the Macintosh draws a distinction between Right Shift and Left Shift though.


Is there a way to turn Wi-Fi on/off using Spotlight? Is there a way to turn Wi-Fi on/off using Spotlight, or do I always have to use the mouse and click on the Wi-Fi icon in the taskbar?

Spotlight is pretty powerful, and I would love to have an easy way of enabling/disabling the Wi-Fi connection. Is there a built-in way of doing this, or do I need to create a script for this, and then call the script from Spotlight?

Not sure if this is the best method, but there's at least one way to set a keyword to trigger stuff in spotlight, and that is by making an application with Automator.

Personally I use Alfred for this type of stuff, but it's not overly difficult to do this with Automator.

Open Automator.app

It should by default ask you what type of file to make, but if it doesn't ⌘ + N

Choose a type for your document: Application
Start writing: shell
Press ↵ Enter twice
It should now look something like this
Replace the cat text with: networksetup -setairportpower en0 off
Save ( ⌘ + S  )
Name it: Wifi OFF.app
Duplicate ( ⌘ + ⇧  +  S  )
Rename to: Wifi ON
In the networksetup -setairportpower en0 off text, replace the off with:  on
Save ( ⌘ + S  )

Now if you open spotlight and write wifi, you should see something like this:

If you want to change the icons, here's an article explaining how in detail: http://osxdaily.com/2013/06/04/change-icon-mac/

Short version:

Open the desired image in Preview.app (png works the best)
Select all ( ⌘ + A  )
Copy ( ⌘ + C  )
Select the Wifi On.app in finder
Go to file info: ( ⌘ + i  )
Click the current icon on the top left
Paste ( ⌘ + V  )

After changing the icons, you might not see them change immediately. You can force spotlight to see the new icons faster by trashing the apps and then undoing it (taking files off the trast).

Links to the icons I used:

Wifi OFF
Wifi ON


Why an AVI video file cannot be imported to iMovie? I'm using iMovie and try to import a .avi file, 730.5MB. But iMovie keeps saying that "None of the selected files or folders can be imported. Change the selection and try again."

Small .avi files created by my camera are able to be imported, but the 730.5MB one cannot, which was downloaded from Internet. Why can't it be imported? Is it because of its size too large?

I can't tell you why some AVIs can be imported but this one can't, but if you know that the file itself isn't corrupt or anything, I can give you a remedy: Handbrake is an app that can convert almost any video format to MP4, which iMovie should definitely be able to handle. Open Handbrake, select your video file, enter the destination path you want if you don't like the default, and press Start to run the conversion. When it's done, see how iMovie reacts to the MP4. Good luck!


Windows 7 only boots to Windows boot manager with Continue Recovery not going anywhere Windows 7 Boot Camp doesn't boot on MacBook Air 2011. The only option I get in Windows boot manager is "Continue Recovery",

If I press "Continue Recovery", I get a black screen with flashing cursor. macOS boots as normal. I wanted to boot Windows in Safe Mode to try repairing it there. However, there is no reaction on either F8 or fn+F8: whatever I press I'm being brought back to Windows Boot Manager.

A normal Boot Camp assisted install of Windows 7 on your model Mac places the System Reserved and Windows Recovery Environment (WRE) files on the same partition as Windows 7. So, if your Windows 7 partition has been compromised, then  you may not be able to correctly access the boot manager or the recovery files. Basically, Boot Camp places all your eggs in one basket.

The correct procedure would be to boot from the original installation media and select "Repair your computer", when the image below appears.


How to get 60Hz on a 4K Monitor using a 2018 Mac mini I do a lot of work with music, and have two external 4K displays hooked up to my Mac mini. I’m using two LG 24UD58-B monitors, but I cannot get 60Hz out of them using an HDMI cable, which is then connected to a Thunderbolt 3 to HDMI Adapter. On LG’s website, it says 60Hz is only possible with a DisplayPort cable. I’m not sure which cable I would need in order to get 60 Hz on both of these monitors, so if anyone could recommend one, and which way it should be connected, I would really appreciate it. For example, would I need a Thunderbolt 3 to DisplayPort cable, with the DisplayPort end connected to the monitor, and the Thunderbolt 3 end connected to the Mac mini itself? Getting only 30Hz out of these monitors makes them feel really sluggish so I would definitely prefer to get the 60Hz out of them if I could.

Get this USB-C (Thunderbolt) to DP cable.

I use it myself to run a 4k Dell monitor with 60hz, and it works flawlessly. You are right that most HDMI adapters don't support 4k with 60hz, although the official specification supports it theoretically from HDMI 2.0 onwards. Using the mentioned USB-C to DP cable solved this issue for me.


Resizing sparsebundle in Disk Utility I want to resize (shrink) the capacity of the backup.sparsebundle to approx. the size actually taken up the files.

What I did thus far

I already compacted the image:

 # hdiutil compact backup.sparsebundle
 Starting to compact…
 Reclaiming free space…
.............................................................................
Finishing compaction…
Reclaimed 0 bytes out of 265.2 GB possible.

The stats

My system:

# system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType

  System Version: OS X 10.11.5 (15F34)
  Kernel Version: Darwin 15.5.0
  Boot Mode: Normal
  Secure Virtual Memory: Enabled
  System Integrity Protection: Enabled

Disk image size:

# du -sh backup.sparsebundle
213G    backup.sparsebundle

Volume size:

# diskutil info /Volumes/backup | grep -E 'Free Space|Total Size'
   Total Size:               501.8 GB (501806010368 Bytes) (exactly 980089864 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        284.8 GB (284753629184 Bytes) (exactly 556159432 512-Byte-Units)

The problem

The problem is that hdiutil doesn't allow to shrink the image, because the target size is below the content-min-length allowed:

# hdiutil resize -size 224GB MBA11-backup.sparsebundle
hdiutil: resize request 469762048 is below minimum size 800587800 allowed.
hdiutil: resize: failed. Invalid argument (22)

Here are the limits:

# hdiutil resize -limits MBA11-backup.sparsebundle
min         cur         max
800587800   980089864   34359738368

The values are in 512 sized sectors, so the minimal size is (800587800 * 512) = 409900953600 bytes or 409.90 GB.

What I want to achieve

I would like to get rid of the free space and shrink the image Total Size of 501.8 GB to approx. the space actually in use of 217 GB (Total Size minus Free Space).

Why is the minimal size allowed so much greater than the actual space in use?
How can I reduce the minimal size set in order to shrink the image to the approx. actual space in use?

there seem to be a lot of questions around disk images, esp. sparse bundles and none of the answers I found here provide easy solutions.
You seem to have a few problems, I can help you with the first one (I ran into the same problem myself):

  Reclaimed 0 bytes out of 265.2 GB possible

Mount the image
Note the path to the mounted Volume, i.e. /Volumes/VolumeName
in Terminal type:

  diskutil secureErase freespace 0 /Volumes/VolumeName

For this step to succeed, there must be enough space left on the main Volume where the sparse image lives (I found roughly the space reclaimable plus a few GB to be a reliable rule of thumb.)

Then you can unmount the image and compaction should succeed.

freespace 0 fills the empty space with zeroes, all other options of diskutil secureErase freespace write random garbage to disk so other files are not recoverable.

The rest of the commands should work fine now, at least for me they did...

I realise this question is old and you most likely have moved on, but maybe it's a help to someone...


How can I use Logitech Options to lock my screen with my MX Ergo? On Windows I'm used to locking my screen via a Logitech Mouse Gesture. Unfortunately, I cannot select "Lock Screen" in the menu on MacOS. Is there still another way to lock the screen?

Given that Logitech Options allows me to launch a specific app, is there an App that I can launch to lock the screen?

In Logitech Options, you can assign a keyboard sequence to a button.  For this example, I assigned the top button  on the side (the one highlighted in green) the shortcut to lock the screen CommandControlQ.

Now, when I press the button, it's as if I've pressed the keyboard shortcut.


Mac Mini Thunderbolt ports to 2 Mini Display Ports Can the Thunderbolt ports on current (writing this question in March 2017) Mac Mini, drive two Apple Cinema Displays (which I believe utilize mini display ports?

I got contradictory answers to this at the local Apple store.

Yes.

According to Apple's own Tech Spec page for the Mac Mini it has

  Support for up to two displays at 2560 by 1600 pixels, both at
  millions of colors

Specifically with the Thunderbolt Port:

  Thunderbolt digital video output

  Native Mini DisplayPort output
  DVI output using Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter (sold separately)
  VGA output using Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter (sold separately)
  Dual-link DVI output using Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter (sold separately)

Keep in mind that Thunderbolt 1/2 is a "multiplexing" of DisplayPort and the PCIe bus on one cable.  This is why you can use native mini DisplayPort adapters in the Thunderbolt port.

So, as far as your two Cinema Displays, you just plug the each of the mini DP plug into each of the Thunderbolt ports and you're done.


How to see what apps you have bought after doing a clean install How can I get my apps back after a clean install if I bought all of them directly on my iDevice and never bothered to sync them to my computer?

Background: I lost all of my apps on my ipad when I updated (10/22/11) they were all gone.

On your iPad log into the AppStore with the Apple ID you used to purchase the Apps. Then go to the Purchased tab and select them to be downloaded again.

If you did not make a backup, which iTunes would have asked you to do before upgrading, you will lose all your data however.

You can also do this from iTunes by logging into the AppStore and clicking on Purchased and then selecting Apps under purchased:


Keyboard and Emoji Viewer menu vs. Input menu? I'm using macOS High Sierra (10.13.6) on a MacBook Pro 15. In the Keyboard Preferences pane, I have "Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar" option in the "Keyboard" tab turned on:

Sure enough, as desired, there's a menubar icon that, when clicked shows these in a menu:

Here's the strange thing: sometimes that icon is the "window with command key icon" icon:

and sometimes it's a US flag:

When it's a flag, clicking it turns it back to the "window with command key icon" icon, and shows the previous menu.

My guess is that this is triggered by my having the "Show Input menu in menu bar" option in the Keyboard Preferences' "Input Sources" tab turned on:

If I turn "Show keyboard" off and leave "Show Input menu" on, then the icon stays a US Flag, and reliably shows an input menu:

So: any idea why these two menus can't coexist, and that the "Show viewers" option (mostly) overrides the "Input sources" optoin? Is this a macOS bug?

I don't know exactly when Apple changed the behaviour of the icon in the menu bar
(somewhere between Yosemite and High Sierra?).

To recover a flag always telling you which is the keyboard in use, here is my workaround:

In:

System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources

add another keyboard mapping with the lower left + button.


Where does Photos.app store its library and files? I switched from iPhoto to Photos and now one feature that was important to me is missing: "Show referenced files in Finder".

For example, that feature was useful to me for selective sharing. Also for other things, like complete Library backups, I think it is very important to know how Photos.app works and where it stores the files.

After looking for it, I found it. Quite obvious actually, it is next to the former iPhoto Library.

~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary

Researching a little more, because both libraries report the same size, the import from iPhoto to Photos changed all original files to hardlinks.
So either library contains a pointer to one file on disk, thus saving disk space.

For a full backup, I think it is sufficient to backup ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary.


After my brother deleted some system files from my Macbook Air I can’t reinstall macOS After an accidental deletion of some system files the MacBook Air shows only a flashing files with a question mark. I’ve tried reinstalling the system through Internet Recovery. After choosing Reinstall macOS I get the message „To download and restore macOS, your computer’s eligibility will be verified with Apple”. After a short moment I am presented with „The installer information on the recovery server is damaged”. How can I fix that?

Thank you for your help in advance.

This is a pretty rare failure since the installers are signed. You would want to review a couple things:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

If you have a backup - consider using Disk Utility to erase the internal drive - then the installer would have less work to do. - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496
Consider your network - are you behind a proxy / firewall / or located a distance away from the main servers in US? Taking your mac to a new network might fix everything without needing to erase things.
Shut down any caching servers that are local to your network. This might be hard to figure out if you aren’t the network admin or don’t have a mac. If you have another Mac running - run the command AssetCacheLocatorUtil

In the end - your computer couldn’t get a good image to start the install. This is almost always a network / server issue, but you might be able to fix it moving to a new network, validating the date/time on your Mac before you install the OS or changing the version of OS you request.


Connecting two DVI monitors to a MBA 2012 Can anyone tell me whether it's possible to connect two external DVI monitors to a 2012 macbook Air?

Ideally I'd like to do this through the thunderbolt connector with an adapter to drive both displays, but otherwise can anyone recommend a decent USB3 -> DVI adapter is acceptable if it's equal to or better than what I would get via thunderbolt.

I'm not watching movies or gaming on the displays, as this is just for work which consists primarily of programming so maybe a USB -> DVI adapter would be acceptable as well.

It is not officially possible to connect two external DVI monitors to a MacBook Air. Apple's support article states that you can only connect one non-Thunderbolt monitor per Thunderbolt port.

Additionally, you can look at hooking a second screen up via USB, using a product like those made by DisplayLink.


Is there a PDF annotation application for OS X that doesn't suck? I am starting to hate OS X. I've tried many PDF applications to read and annotate PDF documents. Skim was good until OS X El Captain. It became useless for annotation (by annotation, I mean drawing lines in the document. I use this way in PDF documents where words are not recognised). Preview has just stopped working 10 minutes ago and I lose a lot of annotations. Is there any sophisticated app that works well on my mac?

Maybe you could try PDFPen. It's a bit expensive thought. A trial is available
https://smilesoftware.com/PDFpen/index.html

For me Foxit Reader does the job.


Playing CoD: Modern Warfare on a Macbook Pro 13" (Mid-2009) I have a mid-2009 MBP (13"/ 2.53Gzh/ 8GB). I installed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on it at the weekend only to find the on-board GPU can't cope with it.

I'd like to do a bit of gaming on it, but am concerned that modern titles are going to be too much for it. Can anyone suggests workarounds to let me game on my otherwise lovely laptop?

OnLive actually works surprisingly well on those little MBPs, I was using it for a while as I'm not a particularly hardcore gamer so don't mind the graphics not looking amazing.


Inbox of iOS Gmail App Not Syncing on iPad I have installed the Gmail app for iPad, and configured my gmail account. However, the inbox does not sync at all. It always shows 'No offline messages'. But I am able to see the messages under All Mail and Important labels. I have enabled the POP and IMAP settings for my gmail account (under settings).

Please help me resolve the issue so that my inbox syncs up automatically. Thanks a lot in advance.

The preferred method for syncing your GMail account with an iOS device is by using Exchange with Google Sync. I could detail the directions here, but Google has a great writeup that is far more robust.

If you have multiple calendars you'll want to follow this guide to configure your device to access them as well.


Macbook 2011 Audio Input/Output Question I am preparing for a streamed music show via ZOOM on May 17.   I have connected a mic & guitar pre-amp to my 2011 Macbook Pro audio line input port.   In the AUDIO SETTINGS I have selected that input rather than the internal microphone, and I show signal coming in from both the mic and my guitar.  I have the OUTPUT set to headphones, but I cannot hear the mic/guitar input signal through the headphones.   I tested an MP3 on my Macbook--and it sounded good through the headphone.   Is there a second setting to get the line-in signal to come out via the headphone out?

On my iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2011), I have to open QuickTime Player and select File->New Auto Recording from the menu bar. This will produce the Auto Recording window shown below.

You should make sure you have Line In selected, as shown below.

You should also set the Output volume and the Line in Input volume in the Sound pane of System Preferences, as shown below.

Also, you should also set the Headphones Balance in the Sound pane of System Preferences, as shown below.

You should be able to hear the sound from the input jack. You should be able to do this without actually recording the sound.

The version of macOS was High Sierra 10.13.6.


Can I undelete a note on iPhone 5s I have Accidently deleted a note in the Note app and I really need it back! Tried a couple programs, like Phone Rescue, but my laptop virus protection said it was corrupt. Appreciate any ideas!

If you have backed up your iPhone with iTunes or iCloud before deleting the said note, you'll be able to get it back easily with a restore. There is no need to use third party software that pretend they can restore lost data because they will probably not work.


Folders on icloud.com are not on my computer I've just restored my MacBook Air.

On icloud.com, I can see all the folders and files I used to have on my computer before the restoration:

But locally I no longer have them:

What can I do to make them appear on my Mac?

Thanks for your help!

edit:
After four days, it finally appeared on my computer! Thank you all for your answers

If you have access to the folders and files in iCloud I think that you can view them in iCloud. There you can click the download file next to the folders or files that you want back on the computer.


Remember desktop state after reboot Does anyone know if desktop switching can be done programatically? Exposé activation and deactivation? I know of the screencapture command for the last part of my proposed solution.

I would like to be able to restore my desktop work environment after a reboot. I have one idea how to do this.

Reason: I reboot every 2 - 4 weeks. I have 9 virtual desktops, each with a few to a dozen windows and applications. After a computer reboot it feels like a brain reboot and takes a few days to get everything back.

Concept: Manually prior to a planned reboot, or perhaps once a day via cron in case of accidental reboot or system freeze, I'd like to somehow capture the system state in order make recovery post-reboot easier.

Ideal Solution: I prefer the CLI. My ideal solution would be a text file of open files on each desktop, and terminal windows on each desktop, and what folder those terminal windows are in. I could then write a script that would go to desktop 1, open all the PDFs there in Preview, open all the .m files in AquaMacs, and open the terminals and cd them to the correct folder, etc. Repeat for each desktop.

I think AppleScript could easily tell me what PDFs are open in Preview.app, but I don't think it can tell me what desktop they are on. Same with Terminal.app

Proposed Solution: Screenshots of each Desktop while in Exposé mode.

Is there a way to script switching from Desktop #1 through Desktop #9, where at each Desktop, it activates Exposé and takes a screenshot?

Now, after a reboot, I can at least go to a folder, open the 9 screenshots, and manually see what application and what files were open where.

do you ever try Relaunch application:

Relaunch saves you time by taking Snapshots of which applications you are using, and starts them back up for you. Think of it as a launcher on steroids that lets you switch between work contexts with one click.

you can take a snapshot before restart your system and after that double click on the snapshot you created then it restored all your files and application you worked on.


How do I change my (non-interactive shell) PATH? For example, when I launch Emacs from the terminal (an interactive shell), I can use "M-x shell".

When I launch Emacs from the dock (which spawns process from some other shell), I cannot, because "grep isn't found" (or 'ls' or 'some other universal UNIX command'). Also, half my non-default applications have stopped working (MATLAB, DrRacket, X11, etc).

How do I change the environment of the shell that is called by the dock?
What shell does the dock call / what else ought I know about different shells on a mac?

You should create the file ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist with inside

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>PATH</key>
<string>/Users/gio/.dotfiles/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin/:/usr/sbin/:/bin:/sbin</string>
<key>PYTHONPATH</key>
<string>/Users/gio/.local:/Users/gio/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages</string>
</dict>
</plist>

What I wrote above is just an example, but I think you get the main point here. After you create the file, log out, log in, and you should be all set. You could have a ruby path as well, etc.


Has anyone turned off FileVault after it has completed? I have a 1TB SSD in a 15" Mac Book Pro

It took about 30 hrs to Encrypt, which during, the computer was virtually unusable. It just finished with that and now it says it is optimizing with 5 DAYS!!!! remaining. I wish I never agreed to do it. Has anyone turned it off after the whole process is complete and if so how long did that take?

Just go to System Preferences, click on Security, then FileVault then click the button that says turn off FileVault. But if you have it on, I would recommend leaving it on. It increases your security, and may take a while to turn off (decrypt) your files, but it's your choice.


Can't tab between dialog options on Finder's Replace File dialog Despite enabling Full Keyboard Access for All Controls in the Keyboard settings, I can't tab between dialog options on Finder's Replace File dialog.

This worked fine in previous versions of macOS – I used it for years – but doesn't in Mojave.

I replace files several times per day so it's getting pretty annoying. It works on other dialog screens. Does anyone have a workaround or know why they removed a feature?

Looks like another example of Apples notoriously great user interface. In order to use keyboard to interact with the dialog, you have to click on it first.  But it has to be on the text of the question, not the title bar or blank grey areas around it.

When the dialog is activated, it's the focused window.  You can tell by looking in the Window menu.  The "Copy" window has checkbox next to it.  But it's in this magical-apple-great-interfacy focused state.  In order to make it focused proper, you have to click on the text. Oh, also, like all great UI's, it will not give you a visual cue that it went from apple-magical-focus to normal focus.  But if you press tab, the buttons become selected in a rotation.

The only solution I can think of involves Apple's wonderfully user friendly and clever programming language AppleScript.  Or some automation tool like Keyboard Maestro.  Or skip Finder all together for an option that's less magical like Terminal or ForkLift.

PS Sorry about all the sarcasm.  It's just the only thing that annoys me more than Apples awful UI's is their marketing boasting how user-friendliness is their forte.


I Mac wireless keyboard return key not working My wireless keyboard return key isn't working, it randomly stopped with no damage to the keyboard and is not stuck down i.e still clicks, can you help please?


Gmail on iPhone app : pictures broken The native Gmail iPhone 4 app on my phone behaves weird, it is not showing pictures that come as attachment, when I click on the picture it starts downloading the picture but it displays those classic picture not available pic with a question mark. I tried deleting account and adding it again still no luck..

Any clue?

I'm on iOS 4.1

I haven't found anything that officially says there's an iPhone file-size limitation, but I have noticed that over 3G, some larger pictures will not download to my mailbox. Try over WiFi or get 3G Unrestrictor and see what happens.


Cannot connect to Wi-Fi (The Wi-Fi network "network name" requires a WPA2 password) I have had my MacBook Pro for a couple of months (recent Windows convert and total Mac novice). I am running OS X 10.8.4.

Our cable company recently upgraded our modem and cable box and I am no longer able to connect to the Internet over Wi-Fi.

I can connect via Ethernet. Also, two windows laptops, two iPhones and an iPad are all connected via Wi-Fi so I believe the wireless signal is working and can be connected to.

I can see the network but when I enter the password the login box shakes like an incorrect password was entered. This is the same password I use for the other devices and I have carefully entered it many times so it should work.

I would appreciate any thoughts you might have.

Thanks,
Jason

I would recommend removing the wireless network from your preferred networks. You can do this by going to your network preferences. As follows:

Open Network Preferences > Select your Wi-Fi connection > Advanced.

Select the network from the list on the first Wi-Fi Tab and hit the [-] key then click OK.

Once you have done this, click Apply on the next screen.

Next you want to remove the password from your keychain to make sure its gone. So open up Keychain Access Application.

Search for the wireless network name. Select the network name and hit delete key. Click the delete prompt to be sure.

Close Keychain access and retry connecting to the wireless. This should have removed all traces of the wireless network from your computer and allow you to try it again.


merging folders via Cyberduck I want to upgrade my existing MODX install and this is the message that was in the upgrade instructs: "Do Not Overwrite Directories! Make sure your FTP program merges directories and does not overwrite them!"
So when dragging new folders from local server over existing folders in the remote server, Cyberduck is asking me what I want to do but I don't see the option "merge" - there is only "resume", "overwrite", "rename" and "skip". How do I merge files?

I am not on my Mac right now, but a quick google resulted into this. Altough it is an old post, I think it is still possible (I use cyberduck myself a lot, but not this option).

You should not replace or upload the folder directly, but rather hit Synchronize in the 'File' dropdown menu. Then it merges the two folders.


Prevent AirPods from opening Mac's Music (iTunes) app? How do I prevent my AirPods Pro from launching my Mac's Music App (formerly iTunes) when I squeeze the stem to play?
I wear my AirPods Pro pretty much all day and I'm constantly switching between my  my Mac and my iPhone. If I put the Mac to sleep, and then, forgetting that I'm still connected to my Mac, squeeze the stem to play something on my iPhone, the Music app will launch on my Mac.
I understand what's happening here and I get why it's programmed that way… and I totally understand that it's my fault for forgetting that I'm connected to my Mac and not my iPhone… but it's still annoying. How do I disable this behavior?

I don't believe there's currently a way to disable this.

Squeezing the stem triggers "play" on the device it's connected to, and as of now there is no way to alter this behavior.
Therefore the only solution is to disable "play" from opening Music on your Mac. Unfortunately, solutions to this no longer work with the current version of MacOS.


Mountain Lion is stuck with "See network administrator" when joining Wi-Fi network I recently clean installed Mountain Lion to my mid 2011 iMac, and ran into a frustrating issue when joining my Wi-Fi network. All my other Apple devices have no trouble accessing the same wifi, except this very iMac. The typical error message is either "See network administrator" or "Connection time out"

I did try to update the iMac to the latest (10.8.2 at the time of writing), and I still can't join the WiFi.

On the same iMac, if I reboot and boot into ubuntu Live CD, I was able to join the WiFi using the same internal wireless card. It leads me to think that something is off with Mountain Lion.

The router currently uses WPA2. I also did a wifi analysis and picked a channel that is least used by nearby routers.

I also spent quite sometime doing research. I cleaned up the Keychain-access, and I removed and re-added the network within the Wi-Fi network settings. I also make sure that SSID of my router has no "-" or any other weird characters. I also reset my router a few times, but it didn't help

The iMac came with Lion, and the WiFi connection to the same router wasn't all the stable, but at least I was able to connect. With Mountain Lion, nada no dice, not even connecting once

I am running out of ideas, and the current workaround is to rely on wired cable directly to the router. Or if I really want a stable wifi on this iMac, ubuntu. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

I faced a similar issue on my MacBook Pro with one particular WIFI connection. It was giving me the "Connection time out" error message.

I was able to workaround it by:

1) Removing the WIFI connection: System Preferences > Network > WIFI > Advanced > Select the relevant connection and click the "-" sign > Click "Show All" or close the window.

2) Adding the connection manually: System Preferences > Network > WIFI > Advanced > Click on the "+" sign > Enter the connection settings manually.

This has worked for me and that particular connection never gave me issues afterwards.

Hope this helps.


Raid 0 - Why am I constantly losing data? I have a Mediasonic 4 bay drive enclosure like this with four 3TB Toshiba HDD's attached to my hackintosh machine.

The drives are in a RAID 0 configuration setup with Disk Utility. I've had this setup now for several months and it seems to be very unreliable in terms of actual data loss.

I'm constantly reading and writing large files and often they just disappear from the folders they are in. Other times the drive will become totally unresponsive and I will have to use Drive Genius to repair it.

Usually when I un-mount/re-mount the drive, the lost+found folder will appear with some data that was lost. I'm hoping some of you might have suggestions for me as to possible causes and solutions?

You do know that RAID 0 is only striping and not only provides no redundancy, but increases the risk of data loss as the failure of any single drive can mean the loss of the entire storage pool? RAID 0 is only for increasing read and write speeds, for example for video editing.

You need at least RAID 1 or 5 for redundancy.

That being said, if you're losing data, one of the drives may be bad our you have a controller problem. I'd resolve that before moving to a higher RAID level.


Skipped iCloud Keychain configuration during install of El Capitan During installation of El Capitan I skipped the iCloud Keychain configuration because it wouldn't validate the code sent to my phone.

What was this process for and how do I restart it now that the instillation is complete?

Settings > iCloud > Keychain. You should be able to set it up from ther. Make sure your phone is also on iOS 9.


Apple Mail stuck on "Preparing to Move Messages"? In the last two weeks, Apple Mail is starting to get "stuck" with increasing frequency, showing a "Preparing to move messages: 1 of XXX" message in the lower left corner. Apple Mail still allows me to read messages, but attempts to delete or move messages fail as described below.

This typically occurs when I'm in the process of deleting messages from my inbox; Apple Mail cheerfully removes the message from the window, but rather than moving the messages upstream using IMAP, the transfer simply bumps the count of messages that are being "prepared." So, for instance, my Mail is currently stuck, showing "Preparing to move messages: 1 of 22". If I delete a message, that goes up to "1 of 23."

Turning network off and on appears to make no difference.

Quitting and restarting Mail "solves" the problem in the sense that it's no longer wedged, but all of the pending transfers are aborted, and my inbox suddenly again contains dozens or hundreds of messages that I already "deleted." Deleting then appears to work correctly... for an hour or two.

Relevant facts about my mail setup:
1) OS X 10.13.3
2) I'm using IMAP...
3) ... to communicate with a machine running Dovecot.
4) "Connection Doctor" within Mail indicates no problems with the network connections, and I can refresh the status at will.

Many thanks in advance for any advice!

I deleted my imap account on my powerbook and then added it again. Apple Mail then downloaded about 4000 msgs and everything is back to normal.


Suggestions for a Comprehensive Network Monitoring Solution We are looking for something that can provide a view (GUI or CLI) of all network traffic on our network.  We are running all Apple computers, with SonicWall routers.  Essentially, we'd like to have the ability to see what someone is looking at on the Internet when we notice that they are exceeding a regular traffic quota.

I know we could use wireshark; but, I'm not sure if we can run that on the entire network and still be able to sift through all of the data that it would return, in a reasonable amount of time.

Rubbernet
You can do this with Rubbernet. Install the daemon on all the Macs you want to monitor, then remotely monitor the apps (and the servers) that are using bandwidth.

Note that this screenshot is from an older version of the software and doesn't show the reverse IP lookup — it is possible to show the domain rather than the IP.

Real-time network dashboard
Rubbernet provides real-time monitoring so you can keep an eye on the exact state of your live network connections.

Remote monitoring
Monitor all computers on your network from one Rubbernet instance on your Mac. No need to get up and open Rubbernet on a remote Mac to see its network statistics.

Multi-user support
Have multiple user accounts on your Macs? Rubbernet automatically assigns every incoming and outgoing connections to the users they belong to.

App bandwidth usage
Rubbernet provide a breakdown of per-app network usage, so you can quickly detect apps that phone home, connect to certain servers without your knowledge, or blame the app that's slowing down your network.

Live graphs
Real-time charting displays download and upload transfer rates for all active apps on all monitored Macs

One-click enable/disable
Unlike other network monitoring tools, there is no complicated setup. It takes just a second to install or uninstall the necessary tools for Rubbernet to work. After that, they sit quietly in the background and provide the app with live data with minimal resource consumption.


Screen Sharing stopped working after Lion upgrade Screen Sharing stopped working after I upgraded to Lion. Trying to connect back home to my still yet not upgraded Snow Leopard machine.

Logs says

  PM Screen Sharing: MVS Codec - bad rectangle size - clossing connection 0

Has anyone else notice this?

Not at all - I have three classes of macs that all worked flawlessly with the upgrade to Lion. They all share their screens with the basic VNC technology:

basic OS X - turn on VNC or remote management - bonjour location is local
basic plus MobileMe back to my mac for locating the mac over the internet
basic plus Screens app from edovia to locate the mac over the internet

I haven't seen a good Apple writeup of the Lion changes - but when you log in with your OS account rather than with the VNC password - you get a distinct loginwindow process for that account whether or not that user is shown as logged in locally. This change could be causing you grief.

Put another way - screen sharing and log in is now a virtual concept - you are no longer limited to one mac log in session or tied tightly to the physical screen. User A can be using the mac and User B logs in remotely and gets their own workspace rather than seeing what A is doing or forcing A to log off.

The writeup inside the screens app is nice if you have purchased it.


Found my iPhone 6 screen separated, how to repair it? I was traveling by air very recently, and once I got home I noticed that the button on my iPhone 6 seemed to be more deeply recessed. After a while I realized that this did not make any sense mechanically, so I removed the Rhinoshield phone protector and discovered that the screen of my phone was slightly pulled off!

How this happened I do not know, but phone is old and the battery is going downhill these days fairly quickly. It was also opened several years ago for a screen repair, so I supposed it might have somehow spontaneously popped open.

Is there any way that I can try to close this back up myself?

Could battery swelling have caused this, in which case I shouldn't try?

The poor quality photos are from my laptop. I have turned off the power of the phone right now for safety reasons.

Yes, the swollen battery could have pushed the display outwards (the battery is just beneath the display)

I would replace the battery with this guide:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+6+Battery+Replacement/29363


My name shows up for every call to my gf's iPhone? android guy here.  Recently my gf's iPhone has been showing my name for any contact that calls here, even if they're in her contact book.  She's not very tech savvy and I'm not close to her phone to check it out.
I don't even know where to begin googling this.  It's gotten annoying at this point.  Has anybody experienced this issue?

Does this help you: https://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/Account-Support/Caller-ID-Name-Display-Showing-Wrong-Name/td-p/396434
I have never experienced this but I could relate to it!


Can applications compiled with an old version of Xcode run on newer iOS? Can projects compiled in older versions of Xcode run properly (or at all) on newer version of iOS?

For example, can a project compiled in Xcode 4.2 run on platforms with iOS 8.

Is this possible?

If You're not using removed API it should run OK. However some methods behave differently. You can have problems with UI (for example Alerts and Actionsheets now uses different API). If You targeted iOS < 7 then UI will definitely be messed up.

You can check API differences on Apple Developer site (it's iOS 7.1 - 8.0 diff, check the earlier diffs to be sure).

To sum up: if You've been following Apple recomendations while writting code in earlier Xcode for earlier iOS there should not be many problems. But You'll never know until You run and test it.


Process "mtmfs" is using 98% of cpu, heating up the core and runing the fans flat out Process "mtmfs" is using 98% of cpu, heating up the core and runing the fans flat out.

I have quite the process through activity monitor, but does anyone know a longer term solution?

I am running a MacBook Pro 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7 with 8GB RAM and OS 10.7.1

Presumably you're using Time Machine?  mtmfs is Mobile Time Machine file system daemon.  Have you tried disabling Time Machine?


Cleaning up time machine Is there a way to remove some of the absurdly old back ups from my time machine so I can continue using the disk that is now too full?

Or is this even the best idea?

I'm not sure you need to delete old backups (although maybe it depends on what you mean by saying the the disk is "too full"). Time Machine is designed to fill up the drive with backups and then start deleting old backups once it is full.

This Apple support page says:

  Time Machine keeps hourly backups for
  the past 24 hours, daily backups for
  the past month, and weekly backups
  until your backup drive is full.

Time Machine may prompt you when the disk is full to say that it is starting to clear down old backups but this is really to inform you that old data is being deleted rather than an error.

According to the page linked above, it is also possible to delete all the backups of a particular file or files from the Time Machine interface by right-clicking on them and choosing "Delete All Backups of..." from the context menu. This information is in the section right at the end of the page.


What is SimStreamProcessorService? When you click on the battery in the menu bar in OS X it shows you how much battery power you have left. It also shows the processes that are using the most battery power.

But last week a process called SimStreamProcessorService showed up in that list. I don't know what that does. When I open up the activity monitor it does not show up in there, which means I can't shut it down. So I wanna know if this is malware or not.

Does anyone know what SimStreamProcessorService is/does?

I had SimStreamProcessorService grabbing 33% of my CPU and a lot of memory. But at the time I also had an XCode simulator starting up for the first time, and the "iOS OS" was starting up in that simulator. Once the simulator came up to the home page, the SimStreamProcessorService stopped running.


How do I do control-shift-eject on a MacBook Air? Possible Duplicate:
  Is there a similarly fast alternative to Crtl + Shift + Eject for new Macbook Air?

This keystroke turns off the display on most Macs.

But the Air does not have an eject key. How do I achieve the same result?

Control + Shift + F12

see also: Is there a similarly fast alternative to Crtl + Shift + Eject for new Macbook that lack eject keys?


Where else can I download the legacy Java SE 6 runtime? I just upgraded to OSX Yosemite.

I am trying to open my Adobe Flash CS6 app, but it says

  To open "Flash" you need to install the legacy Java SE 6 runtime.

A simple google search yields this page: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6604985

There are several links there - however, they all lead to the same site: a downloads page from Apple that offer the required Java SE runtime. The page is the following:

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572?locale=en_US

But it cannot be viewed, since it has a redirect loop.

Where else can I download this?

Go to https://www.apple.com/support/ then search for DL1572

See Apple Knowledgebase pages often blank

 EDIT - or in this case, not… as it doesn't seem to fix it

Update:
Original KB link appears to be working again.
Would appear to have been an Apple issue, now resolved.
https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572


Splicing a lightning cable? I need to connect a female end of a lightning to the male end of a mini USB. I have found one online, but its out of stock. How would I go about splicing these together? Would it work? Just match the wires together?

Unlikely as lightning cables have circuitry in them.

If you are just replacing the USB end of the cable it MIGHT work, but it would depend on what kind of circuitry is in the cable and where it is located.

If there is anything beyond a bog-standard USB on one end then probably not, if one end IS just USB then this might work.

If you do it post back to this question with your results.


diskutil and df show different sizes I had a failure trying to repartition an external drive (a Drobo array) using Disk Utility.  Now Disk Utility says my drive is 8.8 TB, but it has only one partition on it using 5.4 TB using up "all" of the space (according to the pie chart).  I've been trying to increase the size of that partition to 6.4 TB with no luck.

diskutil shows this:

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
 #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
 0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *8.8 TB     disk3
 1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
 2:                  Apple_HFS Drobo Time Machine      8.8 TB     disk3s2

But df shows this:

/dev/disk3s2   4.9Ti  4.9Ti   26Gi   100% 13373254 4281594025    0%   /Volumes/Drobo Time Machine

Why is one showing me 8.8 TB while the other shows 4.9 TB?  How can I increase disk3s2 to use more of the physical drive?  Obviously I don't want to use all 8.8 TB because I don't really have that much physical storage.  But I do have more than 6.4.

You can't format a Drobo with Disk Utility. You need to use the Drobo tools -
see this tech note

Key part:

  Although some utilities (such as Apple's Disk Utility in OS X 10.5 and
  later) allow you to repartition or dynamically repartition a volume
  without losing data, Drobo device volumes do not support these
  utilities. Drobo storage device volumes should not be repartitioned
  using any application other than Drobo Dashboard. If you repartition a
  Drobo device drive using a third-party utility (including OS
  utilities), you risk losing the data on the drive.


Shortcut to move one screen to the right/left in Excel The official docs say to use Option-Up/Down

I tried that - as well as Option-Left/Right and Command-(any arrow keys) and they all do different things than the page right/left.

So is there any way to get this functionality short of point and click?

Update By playing around a bit more an answer was discovered:  the Command-Left|Right Arrow will page left/right to the next non-empty cell. I had been seeing it page to the beginning/end since the particular rows had few entries.

Hold on ..  So the behavior is that the `Command-Left|Right Arrow will move to the next non-empty cell if there were other intervening empty cells.  So in the case of a row with all entries filled - e.g. the Header Row - a single invocation puts you at beginning/end of the entire row: so in that case it behaves like Row Home/Row End.

This is not acceptable behavior: is there any workaround?

Although it seems counter intuitive not to use the left/right arrows, (that is a subject for giving Microsoft some feedback) using the following key combinations work for Excel 15.xx for Mac:

Using Built-in MacBook Keyboard:
Page Right: fn+⌥ option+↓ down arrow
Page Left: fn+⌥ option+↑ up arrow
Using External Apple Wired Keyboard:
Page Right: ⌥ option+page down
Page Left: ⌥ option+page up

As noted in the OP's screenshot.


How to wipe huge .MobileBackups folder? I found my .MobileBackups folder quite large, it weighs 160 GiB. Shouldn't the .MobileBackups folder be wiped after the Time Machine 'backup session'?

Since I have backup done on my external drive how can I get back my 160GiB of HDD space? Can I simply remove this folder or maybe set some limit of mobile backups?

To disable local backups issue this command in terminal:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

This almost never is necessary as the system will automatically prune and disable local backups as your drive fills. You can search for backupd using the console app to see if and when the storage cleanup happens due to low space.

There is a lot of confusion as to the purpose of local snapshots. It's not to take snapshots that then get dumped to your actual Time Machine drive when you run a backup, it's a separate set of snapshots that let you restore files you've accidentally changed or deleted, when you're away from your Time Machine drive. It's not a true backup -- it won't help you if your laptop's drive fails -- but it will help out if you're on the go and you accidentally lose something while on the go. As such, they don't get cleared out after TM backups.

On my computer (a Macbook Air with flash memory), it deletes old mobile snapshots after a week. The behavior may be different on devices with hard drives, as they don't experience longevity issues with full disks. According to Apple's documentation, they aren't deleted after a week. Note that the available space shown in Finder does not take into account the local snapshots, because they will automatically be deleted if you need the space, and it will automatically keep at least 20% of your disk space free -- so you generally shouldn't worry about space taken up by local snapshots.
However, if you don't want them around, you can disable them with the command sudo tmutil disablelocal. This will free up the space taken by your local snapshots, and if you reenable it with sudo tmutil enablelocal, it'll start again with an empty set of local snapshots. So, a quick way of clearing out what's on there is to disable and re-enable local snapshots.

You can see how many old backups are being stored by activating Time Machine. White tick marks indicate local snapshots, and purple ones indicate real backups.

There's more information from apple and here.


Way to add reverb in iMovie I know its possible in Garageband but is there a way to apply a reverb effect to video or audio clips in iMovie?

By the way I have iMovie Version 10.0.6 installed on my mac.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

From 10.0.5 [not sure about 10.0.6 as that's Yosemite only]

Top bar, to the right of the icons, next to the info button, then below, Audio Effect...
 3rd row, one of the rooms or cathedral


Macbook, Can't boot from USB because has no administrator in startup utility When I was going to ReInstall a fresh copy of Catalina MacOS on my Macbook pro 2019 16 inch, unfortunately I deleted all partitions instead of erasing them. As my internet connection is so unstable as much as I repeated installing the OS from the net, it was failing with different errors usually related to the network errors or usually it says can't decode raw data.
I created a bootable media flash drive by these steps https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201372.
Now when I want to boot the device from the USB drive,

it says "Security settings do not allow this Mac to use an external startup disk".

I waned to allow my Mac booting from external media (as this link https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT208198) but It shows me the error: "Authentication Needed - You will need to authenticate as an Administrator to change the boot security settings."

And when I click on Enter macOS Password I see this error : "Recovery is trying to change system settings. No administrator was found."

Notes:

I had never set a password for my mac T2 security
I had forgotten to sign out my apple id from the Macbook but I've removed my device from my apple account after that.
The Macbook doesn't have any operating system now, so I can't use solutions like rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

I've searched a lot and watched lots of youtube videos but didn't succeed anything yet. How can I fix my issue to allow me boot from the flash drive?

You can try to run the installer on your USB directly in Recovery mode.
Open up terminal and run ls /volumes. Identify your USB, and then run /volumes/<USB Name>/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/MacOS/InstallAssistant. The macOS installer should appear.
If it did not launch, you can copy your installation partition on the USB over to your internal drive. In Disk Utility, you can create a new partition on the internal drive and "restore" the USB drive to the new partition you just created. Then, select your internal installation partition as a boot drive and proceed to standard installation.


Browse another encrypted time machine backup that's on a NAS I have a Time Machine backup of my MacBook Pro pro that's encrypted and saved on a Synology DS212j NAS (OS X detected my NAS as a possible location to save my backup). Right now I'm on my MacBook Air. Is it possible to browse the MacBook Pro's encrypted backup on the NAS? All I see is a "sparsebundle" file. My MacBook Pro is currently being repaired so I don't have access to it.

If OS X detects the NAS as a possible backup destination, you should be able to option-right-click (hold option while right-clicking) the Time Machine icon in the menu bar, and select "Browse Other Backup Disks". The AFP mount should show up there and you should be able to browse it.

Alternately, just mount the sparsebundle. It works just like a .dmg. If double-clicking doesn't give you the option to type in the password and mount it, you can drag it into Disk Utility and mount it from there.


Is there a way to resize Dock in macOS using keyboard shortcuts? I would like to be able to resize the Dock in macOS strictly using  keybindings. Ideally, this would be incrementally and work similar to the way that volume/brightness increase/decrease keys work.

I use BetterTouchTool for most of my gesture/shortcut customizations, and I have been able to achieve just about everything I've needed with it, but this is one thing I've yet to figure out.

Has anyone ever successfully achieved this? If so, what was your approach (software, tools, etc.)?

The approach I ended up taking was a variation of @Paolo's solution, and is simple to implement using a tool like BetterTouchTool (as @blizzrdof77 mentions in his original question).

Instead of preparing two AppleScripts, this single script takes one argument - a numeric value between -1.5 and 1.5 - which determines whether the dock will increase or decrease in size.

The AppleScript:
Create a new file called "change-dock-size.applescript" with the following content:

on run argv
    tell application "System Events"
        -- Get dock size
        set docksize to dock size of dock preferences
        -- Increase or decrease based on argument version
        set docksize to docksize + (item 1 of argv)
        -- Constrain value to 0.1 -- 1.5
        if docksize > 1.5 then docksize = 1.5
        if docksize < 0.1 then docksize = 0.1
        -- Set dock to the new size
        set dock size of dock preferences to docksize
    end tell
end run

Running It From The Command Line:
You can run this from the command line using osascript - like this:

# Increase Dock Size
osascript /path/to/script/change-dock-size.applescript 0.01
# Decrease Dock Size
osascript /path/to/script/change-dock-size.applescript -0.01

Adding Keybindings to BetterTouchTool:
To use this in BTT, add two new shortcuts with the "Execute Terminal Command" action, and use the above examples as the commands (I've provided a screenshot of my setup below). I hope this helps!


Is it safe to edit App Bundles in Core Services? There is a default preference I want to edit (or delete and recreate in the English.lproj) in the Dock bundle in System/Library/CoreServices.

What are the possible negative repercussions to editing these app bundles?

What's the worst that can happen?

1) You break something and have to safe boot or target mode boot to put the original file back in place? You have to have a short term plan to fix things.

2) You forget you edited it and some system update or process changes and the mac crashes later? No worry if you have backups (running Time Machine keeps you an hour or so of lost work plus whatever time you lose realizing, fixing and restoring from the last backup) You might lose some time scratching your head later, but even though it could ruin other data, it probably would just be a crash or an error that would be obviously wrong and you'll eventually remember the change you made.

Protect yourself, get a second boot drive ready, and have at it would be my advice.


Purple dot near app which downloaded by iCloud sync I added my account to my old iPad mini and I downloaded this app on it. Then, I used my iPhone and saw that the app downloaded too on it. Is the purple dot DOES mean that it downloaded by sync? And can I shut this feature off?

A blue dot before an apps' icon name means that it has not bee run yet (or it is a new version that has not been run).

An orange dot means that the app was downloaded as a beta as installed through Testflight.

The last is from this SO answer which also suggests the colours alter if on a different background.

Try a plain black or white background to see if the colour changes to one of these known ones.


Photos not going to iCloud from iPhone My photos stopped going to the iCloud in February.  When I logged into iCloud.com, there is nothing after 2-28-15.  I went to the Apple Store, and the genius guys said "fascinating."  They checked all kinds of things, and couldn't solve it.  My phone is 2+ years old, and I am due for a new one.  Will a new phone solve this problem?

It's unlikely that adding another device to the mix will help.

Did the genius explain that AppleCare over the phone supports iCloud for issues like yours and mine?

If you have an iPad or can borrow one, you can test adding a new device to iCloud without needing to buy an iPhone.


Problems in OS X with Transmit “Mount to Disk” after Mac upgrade to El Capitan I got a problem in Transmit, after upgrading my Mac to El Capitan (v 10.11). When I tray to "Mount to Disk", I get the following Error:

  Internal error (rc=1) while attempting to mount the file system. For now, the best way to diagnose is to look for error messages using Console.

Anyone got a Fix?

This was/is a known issue on transmit 4.4.8 and lower.

Go get version 4.4.9 or later to work around the known issues.

The developer support page here should be updated and the second link is the announcement of the delay:

https://library.panic.com/general/mac/el-capitan/
https://twitter.com/panic/status/648970332473192448

  Quick El Cap Status: Coda mostly works (2.5.12 will bring fixes) — Transmit works — Transmit Disk doesn't work, but we're working on it. — Panic Inc (@panic) September 29, 2015

You can check for updates or get on the developer's email list / watch their blog and twitter account for when they have released a version of Transmit Disk that works with El Capitan. The rest of the normal functionality seems to work for me, just the disk mounting part is needing work.


Which Personal Hotspot mode uses least battery? Both iPad and iPhone's Personal Hotspot mode allows 3 ways to connect:

WiFi
USB cable
Bluetooth

I want to use Personal Hotspot on my MacBook Pro, this means that I can use either of the three. Therefore I was wondering:

Which connection type uses the least battery of the device providing the Personal Hotspot service?

USB tethering will use the least battery because the phone will charge while it acts as a hotspot. Bluetooth should be next (especially if both devices go into Bluetooth 4.0's low power mode), with WiFi last.


How to screen record higher than 1920x1080 I just made a new app that I'm selling, and I'm using a mp4 video on the home page of the sales site. It looks pretty fuzzy on retina displays:

http://mapleapp.info

I've been capturing this video with QuickTime, but i can only export up to 1920x1080. All I need to do is export at a higher quality in order for it to look OK. I've found some third party solutions, but anything I've found that's capable of exporting video at higher than 1080 also comes with a hefty price tag (> $20). Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for paying for apps, but this is something that I'm going to use very rarely and I just can't justify paying that much for something that I'll only use on occasion.

Does anybody know of a way to screen record on a Mac and export at higher than 1080 quality? Preferably I'd like built in or free solutions, but I would be willing to pay for an app if it were less than $10. Any suggestions greatly appreciated!

A quick Google search found one of my favorite tips for OS X: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20131030130206132

Essentially, go to System Preferences > Displays, option-click the Scaled button, then select a  new resolution. Your QuickTime movie should record at the new resolution, but remember bigger resolutions take up more graphics power.


Catalina Dynamic Wallpaper doesn't change with the time of the day Both Apple stock dynamic wallpapers aren't changing accordingly to the time of the day. For example Catalina Dynamic wallpaper is stuck during the day in one picture and it doesn't change and transition. Night time Catalina Dynamic wallpaper isn't completely dark, but looks like sunset one. And Auto Appearance doesn't work either, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
What can I do, as I tried resetting, doing PRAM, changing wallpapers, trying 3rd party apps like Night Owl, sacrificing virgins to the volcano, idk. Help!

Same for me... I tried to play with the manual time setting. Set different times and checked if the wallpaper changed accordingly. There seems to be NO night wallpaper for me... Only when you set the standard non-dynamic one. After playing around with the time settings, my dynamic-wallpaper is now totally confused. It's 01:30AM and it looks like sunset/sunrise in the wallpaper...


Automatically Trigger Automator through mail I want to trigger a workflow in automator every time I receive a new email in "mail.app". How can this be done?

Yes it can:

You can use the normal Mail rules with a perform action: Run Applescript.

Create a normal  Mail rule applescript. But include code to call your automator workflow via the unix command /usr/bin/automator.

The /usr/bin/automator command will run the workflow you point it at and optionally can pass input  onto the workflow using the -i option.

Here is a quick example of a Applescript Mail rule which gets the subject of the email/s and runs a automator workflow that speaks any text passed on to it. In this case the email subject.

The script MUST be saved in: your ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail  folder for mail.app to see them.

  You can attach a script to a Mail rule. For example, you could have an
  incoming message trigger a script that copies information from the
  message and pastes it into a database that works with AppleScript.

  Choose Mail > Preferences, then click Rules. Add a rule or select an
  existing rule to edit.

  Choose Run AppleScript from the “Perform the
  following actions” pop-up menu.

  Choose a script from the pop-up menu
  of scripts that are located in ~/Library/Application
  Scripts/com.apple.mail.

  Or choose “Open in Finder” to open the folder
  so you can copy a script into the folder first.

  If you later move or rename the
  script, your rule will not work.

  Click OK to save the rule.

The example Applescript for the Rule

(Change the  workFlowPath property to reflect the full path to your Automator workflow file)

property workFlowPath : quoted form of ("/Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail/mailSpeakTest.workflow") --CHANGE THIS TO YOUR FULL WORKFLOW FILE PATH example  "/Users/joeblogs/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail/mailSpeakTest.workflow"

    using terms from application "Mail"
        on perform mail action with messages theMessages for rule theRule
            repeat with eachMessage in theMessages
                (*Get the email Subject *)
                set input_Argument to subject of eachMessage
                (*Run subroutine for workflow *)
                my runAutomator(input_Argument)
            end repeat
        end perform mail action with messages
    end using terms from

    (*Workflow  Subroutine *)
    on runAutomator(input_Argument)

        (*Path to workflow *)

        (*Setup and Run the unix command *)
        set command to "/usr/bin/automator   -i " & quoted form of input_Argument & space & workFlowPath
        do shell script command
    end runAutomator

The Automator workflow is simply


Create new folder for each file I have been trying to create some kind of script to automate the move of around 408 items sizing about 1.5 TB.

What I am wanting to do is create a folder based on the filename, but exclude the extension, then move the original item with the same name into the folder. All files have different extensions, and also have periods throughout the name. It need to run as either a shell script or AppleScript, as it will be running under launchd after the initial move is done for automated moves of files. Is there a good way to go about this? (Even not using AppleScript). I don’t mind using the shell or any other method that is suggested.

I found this post on StackOverflow, but could not make too much sense of it, as it seemed to just generate errors. Any help is appreciated. The files have alphanumeric sequences and random characters in the names (I think this is what is catching in AppleScript.

Edit: Sorry for the wait... was at work.

Have something like:

Movies
    |- Anchorman.mkv
    |- Big Buck Bunny.mov
    |- Spy.mp4
    |- Shawshank Redemption.avi

And I would like the result:

Movies
   |- Anchorman *"This is a folder"*
       |- Anchorman.mkv *"This is the file"*
   |- Big Buck Bunny
       |- Big Buck Bunny.mov
   |- Spy
       |- Spy.ext
   |- Shawshank Redemption [1994](1080p)
       |- Shawshank Redemption [1994](1080p).avi

I'll assume that all 408 are in the same folder and it have extension. Something like this:

Folder
|- File1.ext
|- File2.ext
|- File3.ext
|- File4.ext

And you want the following result:

Folder
|- File1 *"This is a folder"*
   |- File1.ext *"This is the file"*
|- File2
   |- File2.ext
|- File3
   |- File3.ext

|- File4

   |- File4.ext

If that's the case you can do it with the terminal with the following command (execute it inside the folder where the files are stored. It will fail creating the folder for the files without extension):

for FILE in *; do FOLDER=$(echo $FILE | sed 's/\.[A-Za-z0-9]*$//'); mkdir "$FOLDER"; mv "$FILE" "$FOLDER" ; done