Font smoothing is wrong after Mavericks update on MacBook Pro with high-res display (not retina) After I updated to Mavericks, the font smoothing is terrible, tried playing with the setting in system preferences (didn't restart yet) and nothing changed.

I have a 15 inch early 2011 Macbook Pro with high resolution anti-glare screen (not retina)

Here's a sample:

Here's Finder menu bar in Mountain Lion

vs Mavericks

In this example you see that the left of "F" in "File" is noticeably fuzzier in Mavericks.

The problem is all over: window bars, menu bars, web pages (Chrome & Safari), apps, etc.

The system font was changed to a modified version of Lucida Grande. It was mentioned in the What's New in Cocoa presentation:

The normal Lucida Grande doesn't seem to have changed:

There is still this hidden preference for using a lighter text rendering style:

defaults write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 1

Quit and reopen applications or log out and back in to apply the changes.

The regular faces of the new and old versions don't look that different, but the bold face seems to be bolder in the new version.

The screenshots posted by gooogalizer have bigger differences though, so maybe the new version is rendered in a different way on high-resolution displays, or maybe something else changed in the way text is rendered on high-resolution displays.


Trash missing from Dock I can't find my Trash folder on my Mac — it isn't on my Dock and I really don't know where to find it. I'm new to OS X.
Does anyone know where I can find my Trash? I can put items in my Trash, but I want to empty some files not all of the files that are in there.

You shouldn't be able to delete the Trash folder from your Dock. To put it back, reset your Dock settings:

Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app)
Run the following command to delete the Dock preferences file:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

Log out and back in.


Where did this iCloud profile avatar come from? I created an iCloud account for my daughter, and her profile has an avatar assigned to it that I didn’t choose:

I think it’s Stitch from the Disney film Lilo and Stitch and appears in my daughter’s contact record and in the family iCloud settings. The picture has been on the account since the moment I created it, and my daughter does not currently know of the existence of this account (or currently have any iOS devices), so can not have uploaded it herself.

Was this automatically selected by Apple? I created an account for my son last year and it didn’t have an avatar, and neither does my own, so I was wondering if this could have been picked up from another service she has a profile on (although I checked Gravatar and she doesn’t have one on there).

I asked her (without giving away why) if she’s used this as a profile picture elsewhere and she told me it’s the pic on her YouTube profile. I added her Google  email address as a secondary email (for account recovery) when I created her iCloud account, so Apple must have scraped her Google account for a profile picture.


How do i know if install isn't malicious I just got my first osx device (a late 2012 mac mini), the last owner said he did a fresh install of yosemite. Is there a way to check that he didn't install any mallware/spyware?

You can't be 100% sure unless you do it yourself (with an Apple provided DVD or DMG).


Changing local IP address with networksetup command on OSX? My computer routinely receives connection from another host in the local network. However, the router changes its ip address quite frequently, and maybe netsh's equivalent, networksetup, can help?

The command to manually set an IP address is:

networksetup -setmanual Ethernet 192.168.0.6 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1

This assumes the following:

netmask is  a /24 (254 hosts)
the router/gateway is the "common" 192.168.0.1
Your interface is Ethernet

You will need to adjust your settings accordingly.  To get a list of network services (interfaces), you can issue the command:

networksetup -listallnetworkservices


OS X Mountain Lion won’t update I am running version OS X 10.8.2. In the App Store it shows an update for OS X 10.8.3. I tried to update, but it’s showing the following error: An error occurred while downloading the updates. (102).
Any help regarding this issue will be appreciated...

This happened to me last night. Close the App Store and Re-Open. Hit Update again next to the 10.8.3 description and it should start up again. This happens when your download connection drops out. The App Store application is actually just a web browsing frame which caches cookies with a delay for queries so it sometimes takes a minute to "refresh" itself to try again.


How to Restore backup from external drive to itunes or iphone in Windows 8? I back my iPhone up to My Windows 8. Since I don't have much space on my C: Drive, I moved my iTunes backup folder to an external drive (mklink/J "%APPDATA%\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup" "J:\Backup"), and then created a symlink from the normal backup folder to the location on the external drive where that particular backup folder is located.

Now, there are two problems I've noticed with this. Firstly, when I connect my device and look in iTunes, it says "Latest Backup: Your iPhone has never been backed up to this computer" – even though it has been backed up (although to an external drive). The worse part is that the "Restore Backup..." button is grayed out, not allowing me to restore my iPhone from the backup.

Another thing I should mention is that when I go to iTunes > Preferences > Devices, I don't see my iPhone backup in the list.

So, how do I restore my iPhone from my backup external drive in my windows 8.. Please help

iTunes doesn't work with symlinks very well. Try to copy the backup of your device back to "~\MobileSync\Backup" folder. Your backup is a folder in "Backup" folder with 40 random chars in name (device UDID).

After copying the backup, restart iTunes. It should now see the backup and allow you to restore it.


Can a Non-Thunderbolt device (like a mid 2010 iMac) connect to a Thunderbolt Display? I've been browsing different forums for this answer and the closest answer I could find was a post on this Stack Exchange.

However this post is still a 'may be' it won't work and it targets the general question 'Non Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt ?' which I would understand to be negative.

My question is more on the display side, since the thunderbolt technology carries both a display signal as well a pci express signal, can a non-thunderbolt diplay with a simple display port still carry that signal to a thunderbolt cinema display ?

Thanks for your knowledge on that matter.

No, it cannot. That's the reason Apple is still selling the non-thunderbolt 27" display, for the devices like yours.

Source: Apple Online Store, where under system requirements it says:

System Requirements

Thunderbolt-enabled Mac computer, including MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac


How can I forward all my iCloud emails to a Gmail address? As the title of the question states, I would like to forward my iCloud email to my Gmail address. Specifically, I have an iCloud email that I made with my Apple ID as well as a Gmail address I made back in 2012 or something. Most of my emails go to my Gmail address, but I would still like to use my iCloud address for a few specific things. I know the easy answer is "go into your mail app and set up a filter to forward everything to your Gmail address," but the only Apple device I have is an iPhone and (as far as I can tell) you can't make filters from there.

Given this information, how can I forward all my iCloud email to my Gmail address?

In iCloud Mail, click the Action pop-up menu in the sidebar (as in the picture), then choose Preferences.

In the General pane, select Forward my email to, then type the forwarding address in the text field.

If you don’t want to store a copy of each forwarded message in iCloud, you can select: Delete messages after forwarding.

Keep in mind that storing copies of forwarded messages decreases your available iCloud storage space.

At the end clink: Done.


Sleeping mode and start up inconsistens behaviour MacBook mid 2012, no retina, OS X 10.10

When I close my MacBook it should go into sleeping Mode (I dont know if it does, it seems like there are several "sleeping modes")
When I open it again some weird things happen.

Sometimes it takes ages for it to start again. When I watched a video, closed it while the video was still running (or music on iTunes) and I open the Computer after a while again, it takes ages till I can type in my password in the prompt. Instead, the video/music starts, it fetches emails, updates my calender etc. Sometimes the screen turns even black again that I have to press the power button. Then I can type in my password. So in short, it starts up everything else (sometimes it takes up to two minutes) before I can type my password.
I have FileVault activeted. When I shut the computer and come back after two hours, sometimes the computer seems to be in "deep sleeping mode". So I hear the harddrive starting up, I have to type in my password for the first time to deactivate FileVault (why is that the same password than my normal password?), and then I can type in my normal password. Sometimes, however, it seems like the sleeping mode is not that "deep". I open the computer after a night and can type in my password straight away and the desktop appears. There is no need for the FileVault password and it does not take ages as described in (1).

How comes its that inconsistent?!

You are experiencing more or less the same as me. However I can't change my settings right now.

Normally your mac will simply sleep, i.e. turn everything into a low power mode and supply the RAM with electricity so it does not get deleted and you can quickly restart working. Then after one hour or so autopoweroff will kick in to save more energy (in order to comply with EU regulations). This is normally set by the autopoweroffdelay. As far as I know this is more or less a suspend-to-disk mode. That means the contents of your memory (RAM) is written to your disk and the RAM is taken offline. So when you next start your Mac, it will first have to load the RAM back from the disk which can take 10 to 60 seconds depending on your drive's speed and RAM size and usage.

To make things more complicated there is also a standby mode.

Now the implementation with FileVault2 is IMHO a bit unfortunate. What happens is that your Mac will first need your password to decrypt your disk. Only then it can start the RAM restoration procedure. This is particularly annoying if the acwake feature is on. In this case the Mac will power on, if you remove the power cord. When I first bought my Mac, it happened to me a couple of times, that I had to leave in a rush, removed the power cord, put the Mac into my bag and when I opened it the battery was half drained. The problem is that it will not sleep again once it is waiting for your FileVault2 password.

Therefore I disabled acwake with the following command: sudo pmset acwake 0.

In order to secure your FileVault2 further, you can use the command sudo pmset -a destroyfvkeyonstandby 1 hibernatemode 25. With this setting the FileVault key will be destroyed once the Mac goes into standby. That means that only suspend-to-disk is used. You may also want to reduce the standbydelay.

You can list your timers and options by typing pmset -g into the terminal. You will find more info by typing man pmset.


Kernel Task is using 1000% of The CPU on macOS Catalina My MacBook Pro running on macOS Catalina is really slow and the kernel task is using 1000% of the CPU !!

I tried all the solutions suggested in MUF How to Fix Your Mac’s “kernel_task” High CPU Usage Bug.
I still have the same problem.There is only one solution that I was not able to do exactly like it was mentioned, it is the one suggested by Victor Petterson in How to fix kernel_task CPU usage on Yosemite.

It involves removing the « model identifier ».plist file. I was not able to find the file with my model identifier so I removed all the files in :
../ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin.kext/Contents/Resources

After removing the .plist files I have restarted my MacBook and re-enabled the SIP. Now the files are removed and the kernel task still using 70% of the CPU with a maximum speed of fans.

Does anyone have the same problem and was able to find a solution to the kernel task issue which is different from the ones mentioned above ?

Kernel_task is a dummy process which takes up CPU resources from other applications in order to cool the system down. So I would look at your system's cooling, maybe use fan tools such as Mac Fan Control and perhaps disabling turbo boost with a tool such as TurboSwitcher. Also on some MacBook Pro's you can cool the system a bit by using a TB3 port on the right-hand side to charge from rather than the left.

Some other issues related to Kernel_task problems.

Update software (so bugs get fixed)
Check for malware.
Adobe Flash! if you have this uninstall it is well known using up CPU resources. It is not needed anymore.
Boot into safe mode see if that solves the issue
If #4 works try uninstalling third-party software with kernel extensions (kexts) by using AppCleaner or CleanMyMac X,
find them using terminal  kextstat | grep -v com.apple and match them to the software packages. Do not remove Apple's, hence the command line filters them out of the listing of extensions.
Use System Preferences -> Users & Groups -> Login Items and remove those applications you don't need to start upon login.
Clean out your system using a tool like CleanMyMac X and uninstall applications you no longer use.
Try resetting NVRAM
Upgrade macOS
10.Reinstall macOS


Apple says I'm signing an app with old OS version, and I'm not I'm trying to submit a Java-based app to AppStore. After having the worst headaches in my life trying to sign everything my last problem (I hope!) is this:

  Invalid code signature - Signatures created with OS X version 10.8.5
  or earlier [v1 signatures] are obsoleted and will no longer be
  recognized by Gatekeeper beginning with OS X version 10.9.5. To ensure
  your apps will run on updated versions of OS X they must be signed on
  OS X version 10.9 or later [v2 signatures]. For more information, see
  OS X Code Signing In Depth

I don't understand this message because:

1) I'm running a 10.10.1 version

$ sw_vers -productVersion
10.10.1

2) and my app is signed with version 2 signatures

$ codesign -dv MyApp.app
Executable=/Users/jess/git/MyApp.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaAppLauncher
Identifier=com.myapp
Format=bundle with Mach-O thin (x86_64)
CodeDirectory v=20200 size=286 flags=0x0(none) hashes=5+5 location=embedded
Signature size=4351
Signed Time=20/2/2015 16:31:42
Info.plist entries=20
TeamIdentifier=D38HW9S49C
Sealed Resources version=2 rules=12 files=15
Internal requirements count=1 size=204

(You can see the line saying Sealed Resources version=2 rules=12 files=15)

So, what is the problem ? What am I missing ?

Thank you

I found it ... I know this answer seems crazy, but it's the solution.

When you bundle the app, the folder YourApp.app/Contents/PlugIns/jdk1.{your_version}.jdk/Contents/  dissapears, so you have just to recover it from the JDK home, and the bundle "will looks fine" to Apple.

So:

cp -r /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.{your_version}/Contents/MacOS YourApp.app/Contents/PlugIns/jdk{your_version}.jdk/Contents/

And it's working !

Thank you Apple for a message so clear :-P


Removing a sound device - VP3268-4K I recently got a new monitor Viewsonic VP3268-4K. The monitor installs itself as a sound output device (see picture 'VP3268-4K'). Now I don't want this as it constantly defaults to this sound as opposed to my DAC. How can I remove drivers/sound output device so it is not visible as an option? Few things I have already tried

Checked /library/audio/hal - nothing to delete here
Checked the monitor for any options to disable the speakers and broadcaster as a sound output device. Nothing. All I can do is mute.

I am on Mojave. Any help or guidance much appreciated. Thanks.

The problem here is that HDMI carries audio.  Period.  When you plug in your monitor to your Mac via HDMI it's going to detect that there's an audio device attached.  And, like you said, all you can do is mute, but mute has no effect because it doesn't remove the (audio) device; it just lowers the volume to zero.
The second problem is macOS.  It assumes that whatever the latest audio device you plug in is the one you want to use.  FreeBSD allows me to enumerate my audio devices then using /etc/sysctl.conf tell it which one I want as my default.  macOS has no provision for this.
(This is one of the things that drives me nuts about macOS - it assumes I did one thing, so I must want this other thing to happen.  It's like an Apple engineer resurrected Clippy from a bit bucket somewhere). <\rant>
There are two ways to attack this:

Don't use HDMI.  The specifications page for your monitor state that it has mDP (mini DisplayPort), HDMI, and DisplayPort inputs.  Use either of the DisplayPort inputs instead (you'll get better performance and reliability anyway). I've found that most monitors don't carry the audio even though DP has the ability to do so.  I'm guessing monitor manufacturers assume you want to use it as a computer display.

Use an HDMI audio extractor/de-enabler.  This will allow you to intercept the audio signals in your HDMI cable and "remove" them for redirection elsewhere (i.e. SPDIF port on a home theater).  If the end device doesn't present as an audio device as HDMI, there won't be anything to switch two.

Personally, I would go with the first option.  It's the easiest and least complex way to achieve this - it's just a cable.


File in /.Spotlight-V100 on bad block So I have a file

/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/9ED490D0-6169-4B28-A1B6-46E34ABD0CD1/5.indexPositions

which when read causes an IO error

disk1: I/O error.
         0 [Level 3] [Facility com.apple.system.fs] [ErrType IO] [ErrNo 5] [IOType Read] [PBlkNum 694560423] [LBlkNum 5087]
         0 [Level 3] [Facility com.apple.system.fs] [DevNode /dev/disk1] [MountPt /] [Path /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/9ED490D0-6169-4B28-A1B6-46E34ABD0CD1/5.indexPositions]

consistently. S.M.A.R.T status shows no problem, nor does Disk Utility.

For the moment I'm happy to just move the file away and forget about it, it's not too big; however I can't imagine this would be good for spotlight and would like to repair the damage after the fact.

What would be the best way to handle this situation?

First: do you have a good backup? If not, make one before doing anything else. If you have one, make sure it's up to date (but don't delete the old backup history -- it's possible you'll run into other disk errors, and you don't want to overwrite your last good backup with a corrupted one). Multiple independent backups are also a good idea. Testing your ability to restore from it/them is very good idea.

Read errors that make it through to the OS are a very bad sign for your drive's health. SMART will try to detect drive problems, but it doesn't always work (and Disk Utility doesn't really know how to interpret it very well), so not seeing any problem there doesn't mean there actually isn't a problem. I remember we had a drive come into our shop that sounded disturbingly like a coffee grinder when spun up, but the SMART status came back as verified. We replaced it.

Your drive might run fine for quite a while... but I wouldn't count on it.

Once you have your backups in order, you can delete & rebuild the spotlight database with these commands:

sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo rm -Rf /.Spotlight-V100
sudo mdutil -i on /

It'll ask for you admin password after the first command (note that it won't echo as you type). Be sure to type the second command very carefully. Anytime you see the rm command used with either sudo or -R, that's an indication you're doing something potentially dangerous and should make sure you know what you're doing; in this case it has both, so you should be really awake. For example, if you typed a space (instead of a period) between "/" and "Spotlight-V100", it would immediately set about erasing the entire volume. Did I mention you should make sure you have a good backup first?


How to go from tvOS beta to public build? I have tvOS 11.3 beta installed and I’d like to install the regular, default current version so that my aTV is both stable and continues to update itself. How can I do this and can I avoid wiping the device first?

Turn off beta software updates in the updates menu in settings. Then wait for the next public release and you'll be updated to that.

This is the only way to do it without attaching the AppleTV via USB to a iTunes for a complete restore.


Dock Icons behaving like they'd be locked, but they are not? I just noticed a weird behavior on my dock. The icons seem like if they'd be locked but in fact they are not. For instance when I try to move the icons around, I can take them and move them up. While I'm holding the touchpad, the icon moves with my cursor (that's not the case if the dock would be truly locked), but there won't open any spaces on where I'd like to move the icons to.

I also tried the commands

defaults com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool FALSE
killall Dock

But in fact this doesn't change anything. Is there some additional flag which prevents adding new icons to the dock? I also tried some commands from this list here with no success: http://secrets.blacktree.com/edit?id=2279

Actually executing defaults read com.apple.dock contents-immutableresults in "0". I'm also able to remove icons to the dock, but not add new ones.

Thx for any hint


AppleScript editor to connect and disconnect again to specific server I's trying to write an AppleScript to disconnect and connect again to specific server:

    tell application "Finder"
        mount volume "smb://serveraddress/sharename" as user name "username" with password "password"
    end tell

But it is connecting only. I'm trying to do both: to disconnect and then to connect again.

I finaly figered out how to do that so i write this code and it works

tell application "Finder"
    try
        eject alias "Volume name"
    end try
    mount volume "afp://Server/volume"
        open alias "Volume name"
end tell

I hope it will be helpful.


During an iTunes sync, are MacBooks prevented from going into sleep mode? I want to know this as I sometimes leave my iPhone unattended while syncing and I want to make sure that there's no cut off to the iPhone sync.

Your MacBook shouldn't go to sleep while iPhone sync is in progress.  iTunes' sync needs to copy files from your Mac to the iOS device, and vice-versa. In either case, your Mac is accessing the hard drive.

Refer to Mac OS X: Why your Mac might not sleep or stay in sleep mode – Apple Support. This section roughly halfway down the page is relevant:

  Open applications can affect sleep

  Software that accesses the hard drive will delay sleep mode until it
  is either quit or done accessing the drive.  For example:

  Songs playing in iTunes.
  A movie disc playing in DVD Player.

  [... lots more detail in the article ...]

In your case, songs aren't playing in iTunes, but iTunes does keep accessing the drive as long as the sync is in progress, which should keep your MacBook awake.


Repairing macports after deleting image folders I was having problems uninstalling a package in macports (gimp2-devel, to be exact) due to some "directory not empty" errors. I discover from comments made by the maintainer of macports that it's OK to delete these folders, so I went and did so, thusly:

rm -rf /opt/local/var/macports/software/aalib/1.4rc5_4

(There was another one as well; I forget which.)

However I am now re-installing gimp2-devel, and it bombs out thusly:

--->  Computing dependencies for gimp2-devel
--->  Dependencies to be installed: aalib
Error: Target org.macports.activate returned: Image error: Can't find image file /opt/local/var/macports/software/aalib/1.4rc5_4
Error: Failed to install aalib
Log for aalib is at: /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_graphics_aalib/aalib/main.log
Error: The following dependencies were not installed: aalib
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.

So, it seems that the advice I followed has in fact borked the two libraries I had to remove folders for. My question is - can I restore them with a macports command? I really really don't want to have to remove macports and reinstall it - my web server install and its dependencies are working quite nicely, and I don't want to upset it!

I've tried a port selfupdate, and also a port clean all, to no avail. Any ideas? :-)

Edit: an answer below raises a good point about checking the logs. This is what I get:

version:1
:msg:main --->  Computing dependencies for aalib:info:main .:debug:main Searching for dependency: ncurses
:debug:main Found Dependency: receipt exists for ncurses
:msg:main
:debug:activate activate phase started at Sat Aug  6 11:12:28 BST 2011
:debug:activate Executing org.macports.activate (aalib)
:error:activate Target org.macports.activate returned: Image error: Can't find image file /opt/local/var/macports/software/aalib/1.4rc5_4
:debug:activate Backtrace: Image error: Can't find image file /opt/local/var/macports/software/aalib/1.4rc5_4
    invoked from within
"registry_activate $subport $version $revision $portvariants [array get user_options]"
    (procedure "portactivate::activate_main" line 4)
    invoked from within
"$procedure $targetname"
:notice:activate Log for aalib is at: /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_registry_portfiles_aalib_1.4rc5_4/aalib/main.log

Edit 11th Aug: I've also tried "port build aalib" which is initially quite promising, but subsequently trying Gimp again was just the same:

--->  Computing dependencies for aalib
--->  Fetching aalib
--->  Attempting to fetch aalib-1.4rc5.tar.gz from http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for aalib
--->  Extracting aalib
--->  Applying patches to aalib
--->  Configuring aalib
--->  Building aalib

I ran into something similar, however, it was during an upgrade outdated that the problem occurred. The issue happened because I had a connection failure part way through the transfer of gcc44, and it truncated the tar archive. I deleted this and expected it to fetch it again, but I just got the missing image error, and I couldn't find out how to get a copy of it. I tried all kinds of things like those above including rebuilding it, cleaning etc, but what eventually fixed it was

sudo port uninstall -f gcc44
sudo port install gcc44


What tools exist to recover a file I clobbered using cpp in terminal? I accidentally typed cpp Scriptname.py DestinationDirectory, intending to copy the Python script into the folder.

I realized afterward that I should have used cp, but now my Python script is completely gone. I have tried the locate command, but it says that it's still present in my user directory. When I type ls in my user directory, it is nowhere to be found.

What are my options here for recovery? I'm asking the cpp angle on the unix site in case that tool saves a copy of files before it clobbers them, but what Mac tools exist to get my original file back?

Here is an exact replica of what I did, showing how the script 'MYSCRIPT.py' disappears from the home directory.

vav7:~ tuc40953$ ls
 Desktop            Dropbox         Movies         New.java
 Public         scripts
Documents       Library         Music           Peptoids      Theultimatescript.py
Downloads       MYSCRIPT.py     New.class       Pictures        rename.py
vav7:~ tuc40953$ clear

vav7:~ tuc40953$ cpp MYSCRIPT.py Desktop/Peptoids/Final-Structures/MyScript/
cc1: fatal error: opening output file Desktop/Peptoids/Final-Structures/MyScript/: Is a directory
compilation terminated.
vav7:~ tuc40953$ cpp Desktop/Peptoids/Final-Structures/MyScript/ MYSCRIPT.py
cc1: error: Desktop/Peptoids/Final-Structures/MyScript/: No such file or directory
 vav7:~ tuc40953$ ls
Desktop         Dropbox         Music           Peptoids          Theultimatescript.py
Documents       Library         New.class       Pictures            rename.py
 Downloads      Movies          New.java        Public             scripts

Here are a few options to recover a file from user error of this type:

TimeMachine - your best hope.
Dropbox also keeps deleted files and versions if you stored that file in a folder that synced.
mdfind MYSCRIPT.py #better than locate and searches inside files, not just file names
Check your repositories if you use code control software like git or mercurial or svn or other tools
General undelete software like Data Rescue

As you're now aware, the terminal is unforgiving and doesn't have an "are you sure you meant to clobber that file?" design mentality. It gets worse when you realize recursive commands and the fact that everything is a file (directories, disks, disk images, etc...) and errant commands can delete vast amounts of work in the blink of an eye.


What font is used during verbose boot mode? When booting OS X in verbose boot mode (⌘+v on startup), the log is printed on screen.

It seems different to the kernel font, but it might just be a smaller version of it.

inverted screenshot Yosemite 10.10.1

Anyone know what font is used and have a credible source?

The font used seems to be a somewhat nameless cowboy apparently just called Iso-Font and was made by Ka-Ping Yee. He doesn't seem to care about this accomplishment, since he does not list it on his CV.

The sources for this font are compiled into the kernel and the sources to that are to be found at https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-3789.70.16/

In there it simply says:

/*
 * ISO Latin-1 Font
 *
 * Copyright (c) 2000
 * Ka-Ping Yee <ping@lfw.org>
 *
 * This font may be freely used for any purpose.
 */

This rather unsatisfactory naming seems to be accurate nevertheless, as an email transcript on Russian site reveals:

Ka-Ping Yee ISO Latin-1 Font in linux kernel

That site also illustrates how to use this on a Linux console and  will show you how it looks when booting linux:


Is it possible to set touch bar in F1-F12 mode for a specific app? I am happy with touch bar in general, but when I am working I want F1-F12 keys when editor is open. Is there a way to make touch bar go in function keys mode when editor becomes active?

Yes:

System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts

Select "Function Keys" and hit the plus sign.

Select the app you want to have the function keys display for as default.


External HD doesn't mount when USB plugged in (Lion) I have an external USB hard drive I use for backing up my MacBook (running the latest Lion).  FWIW, it's a Western Digital internal 3.5" SATA drive in an Antec HD enclosure.  Anyway, of course every so often I have to unplug it so that I can take my MacBook places, so I eject the drive as usual and everything's cool.

But when I plug the drive back in, it doesn't mount.  If I plug it in and then power-cycle the drive itself, then it mounts just fine, but due to how my office is laid out, this is inconvenient.  And, too, I shouldn't have to power-cycle the drive, right?  I should be able just to plug it in and have the MacBook recognize it, no?

So: what's going on and how can I fix it?

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

There is a workaround, sometimes the drive will detect but not mount. If you open Disk Utility it should be listed on the sidebar and you can manually mount it from there.

This doesn't resolve the underlying issue of why OS X hasn't automounted, but if you check in the system logs when you plug it in you might get a clue towards that.


How to turn off icloud when no account has been set up by me I updated my Phone 5S with ios8 mostly just to get rid of the Notification on my Settings Icon. Now every time I open the phone to use it I am asked to enter my iCloud password (yes, same as iTunes) and yet I have never established an iCloud account.

I can't find anything to help me to get rid of the bloody reminder. Help

Well i found an easy solution for your problem.You can remove your iCloud account with this tool.The most important think is:your device must be legit(not stolen or declared as lost by another person).It takes you 3-4 minutes and is done.Then you can setup another iCloud or leave it empty.Click this link
=> bypass icloud activation


Screenshots not appearing on desktop When I take a screenshot with my Mac, the screenshots are not appearing on my desktop. Could the screenshot destination location have been changed on Mac? Is this a common problem?

To reset the default location of screenshots to your Desktop, type this in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop

then restart.


How do I restore the "Quick Start" migration from my iPhone X to a newly bought iPhone 11 Pro Max? I just bought a new iPhone 11 pro max.

After turning it on and did some very simple settings, it asks me to transfer data from my previous iPhone.

However, I accidentally switched to another app on the previous iPhone. After switching back to the home screen, the popup about transferring data was gone. I could never manage to restart the "Quick Start" feature.

How can I restart the "Quick Start" feature so that I can complete transferring apps from the old phone to my new phone?

You can’t resume an interrupted Quick Start. You can start again by erasing your new phone (Settings → General → Reset → Erase All Content and Settings) which will start the phone back at Setup, where you can begin Quick Start again.


How can I remove "Where from" information from downloaded .mkv file? I have downloaded an .mkv files from Safari. When I open "Info" in Finder on the file, I see the following link to where it was downloaded from:

How can I remove that metadata from the file?

The link listed in "Where from" is stored as an extended attribute named "com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms" on the file in the file system - it is not actually saved within the .mkv file itself.

You can remove it by opening Terminal.app and running the following command:

xattr -d com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms filename.mkv

where filename.mkv is to be replaced with the actual path and name of the file. The easiest way to do that is simply to write the first part of the command, and then drag the .mkv file into the Terminal.app window.


In iTunes 11, is it possible to show the genre of an album in Artist view? In iTunes 11 I use the artist view. In artist view, I see the artists on the very left, then the album covers and the track multi-columned at the right side of the cover. Is it possible to also show the genre of the album?

The only way I know to access the genre is to right-click the cover or a track, open "information" and look at "Genre".

Short answer: NO

Apple has custom view options screens for Artist, Albums, Genres views and therefore you cannot change the columns beyond what they allow. It seems it is only available in song and playlist view.

I am guessing the reason for this is that the artist view is meant to group and display a specific set of data. I would suspect in future versions they may introduce the ability to do this, however for the moment it is not possible.

Sidenote: The View Options screen has been drastically modified for the song view compared to the previous version.


How can I enter recovery mode (for Mac OS, on an iMac) remotely? Our team administrates several Macs. To save costs (flights, etc.) in events where we have to remotely restore a system at our client location, we are trying to understand how to enter recovery mode without being physically present at the keyboard to enter recovery mode by pressing Cmd + R.

Can I pass a flag to sudo reboot or something similar, to initiate a reboot into recovery mode?

(All of the internet searches I've done have turned up "Press this series of keys on the keyboard" to enter various flavors of recovery.)

You can set NVRAM options from command line to boot into recovery:

sudo nvram "recovery-boot-mode=unused"
sudo reboot

This will put your system into recovery mode.

NVRAM (nonvolatile random-access memory) is a small amount of memory that holds certain settings and can be accessed at boot by the Mac's firmware.


Macbook pro won't start after update to Mojave I've just updated my 2012 MacBook Pro to macOS Mojave but it won't boot (the caps lock light won't turn on and off.)

So I've try to hold CMD+R during the boot but it asks me for a password, but I don't remember having set a password in the past. Does someone have a solution?
Also I want to know if the password box is in qwerty or azerty (normaly my mac is in azerty.)

I've solved my problem, I've simply deleted the content of the folder /Library/Extensions


Can I mount an external NTFS drive as writable when running the install DVD? I have an old Macbook Pro on which I'd like to try Mavericks. Before doing so I want to make a back-up of my current Mac OS X install (10.6.8).

I will use the disk utility option (and not the time machine option), as outlined here, since I already have a 1TB NTFS disk, that I use for other back-ups as well. However, NTFS is mounted read-only, by default. Since I don't feel like creating a FAT partition on this disk, nor feel like purchasing another HDD (because 1TB is more than enough for my back-up needs) I want to mount the disk writable.

Now, I know I should be able to mount NTFS drives by tinkering with /etc/fstab. However, I assume that /etc/fstab will not be read when booting from the install disk. Is that correct?

If so, my question is: can I mount an external NTFS drive as writable when running the install DVD?

I figured it out:

I opened a terminal window and executed mount_ntfs similar to this:

mount_ntfs -s -o rw /dev/diskXsY /Volumes/SomeMountDirectory

where:

-o rw is the crucial part and means use the readwrite option;
-s means mount case sensitive;
/dev/diskXsY represents the actual partition to mount (in my case /dev/disk8s5);
/Volumes/SomeMountDirectory represents the mount point.


disk become empty after delete a large file I have a 2T mobile disk with the format of NTFS. I store 1T files on it, including a large file with the size of 260G.

After I delete the large file, all the file was gone. I remount the disk again and again , it remains the same. I am using os x lion.

Here is the result of df -h

Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity   iused      ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2   931Gi  486Gi  445Gi    53% 127448441  116532301   52%   /
devfs          332Ki  332Ki    0Bi   100%      1149          0  100%   /dev
map -hosts       0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%         0          0  100%   /net
map auto_home    0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%         0          0  100%   /home
/dev/disk1s1   1.8Ti  874Gi  989Gi    47%     57185 1036883723    0%   /Volumes/Seagate Backup Plus Drive

Notice the last line, 874Gi Used but 0% iused. What I can concluded is the files are still on the disk but I can't see them. Maybe some inode is broken.

So how can I save my file on the disk. Any method to copy the file to another disk or repair the mobile disk?

The first thing I try is testdisk. Choose the advanced mode, I find my files all are there. Cheers!

I copy them all out. Then I try further to get the disk repaired so that it show all files.  But further try on testdisk results nothing.

Then I google a little more. And find ntfs is more compatible in windows. So I mount the disk on windows and use chkdsk. 10 min later, all things become right!


How to create TextMate project that contains all files in a folder (and updates dynamically)? I'd like to create a TextMate project that consists of all files in a particular folder, with the added stipulation that as files are added to (or removed from) that folder that they be added/removed from the TextMate project.

Is this possible?

I'd love to have a TextMate project that can mirror the list of files being worked with by the folder storing Elements files...

Isn't it how it's working already?

I just tried drag'n'dropping a folder on the Textmate icon, it opens in "project mode", then I added a file to the folder, which Textmate did too, when gaining focus. And deleting the file and focusing Textmate made it disappear from the project pane.


HyperKit - Docker Desktop for Mac - Is it possible to launch traditional Debian VMs? Docker for Mac currently uses HyperKit (reference: https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/docker-toolbox/)

Docker Desktop uses HyperKit instead of Virtual Box. Hyperkit is a
lightweight macOS virtualization solution built on top of
Hypervisor.framework in macOS 10.10 Yosemite and higher.

Is it possible to run a traditional Debian/Ubuntu VM using HyperKit on a macOS 10.15.5 or newer?

Multipass
It is now possible to launch an Ubuntu instance on MacOS (with HyperKit). Use Canonical's Multipass.

Multipass is a mini-cloud on your workstation using native hypervisors of all the supported plaforms (Windows, macOS and Linux)

multipass allows you to quickly startup an Ubuntu instance on MacOS much like Docker.


Is macbook pro 15 inch over-heating fixed? I want to buy a macbook pro 15 inch with i9 processor but I have heard that it has unacceptable over-heating problem. To what extent is this true? and is the problem likely going to get fixed? or am I better off to wait for next year where the issue is completely resolved.

I think that overheating problem w i9 addressed by Apple through a software update:  https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-software-update-macbook-pro-core-i9-overheating-2018-7
Cheers


Is there a command similar to Linux's command-not-found? Most Linux operating systems have a package like command-not-found (http://packages.ubuntu.com/utopic/command-not-found), which provides suggestions when a shell command was not found, e.g. because the command was misspelt.

➜ puthon
No command 'puthon' found, did you mean:
 Command 'python' from package 'python-minimal' (main)
 Command 'python' from package 'python3' (main)

Is there similar functionality for OS X, e.g. through Homebrew?

Searching Google for "homebrew command-not-found" (without the quotes) one of the results was: Ubuntu’s command-not-found equivalent for Homebrew on OSX

I have not personally tried using it, so I cannot comment on how well it may work.


What's the maximum amount of users I can have on OS X and how many of these can be logged in at the same time? One of my friends controls hundreds of Macs for a school. They have Lion.

The 6th grade Macs have the 6th grade accounts (~100), the 7th grade Macs have the 7th grade accounts (~120) and the 8th grade Macs have the 8th grade accounts (~90). There are also some staff accounts.

He doesn't have all the users on all the Macs; I believe that he has them set up to grab the profiles from a server - thus, a user's desktop on one computer is synced with that user's desktop on another computer.

I'm wondering whether or not it's possible to put all ~400 users on each computer so that the grades can use each others' Macs interchangeably. Is it possible to put this many users on a Mac? And how many of these can be logged in at the same time?

I'm wondering whether or not it's possible to put all ~400 users on each computer so that the grades can use each others' Macs interchangeably

Most certainly. I'm at a university where they do this on a much larger scale (think about 10–20k), so 400 should be possible — but, it also depends on the school's IT infrastructure. The user directories and settings are all on a central server (or perhaps server farm, I don't know) and each machine pulls the info when you login. You can login from any machine anywhere in the campus.

Typically, the maximum number of accounts the server can have is limited by the storage space, and the number of simultaneous logins are typically limited by the amount of memory, processing power available and network bandwidth (the clients need to communicate with the server and a single server can only process a certain number of requests at a time). So a definite answer is hard to provide.

The general approach is to spread the load (when demand spikes) over a cluster of servers or a server farm such that the end-user performance remains the same. Of course, no one expects the entire campus to be connecting all at once (there probably aren't enough machines for that). You can read more load balancing here.

This discussion mentions a software enforced default limit of 1024 simultaneous connections, extendable up to 2048. If you find yourself running at the far end of this limit, then you're either not balancing your load properly or you're under equipped.


Update from macOS Big Sur public Beta to official release My MacBookPro is currently running macOS Big Sur Version 11.0 Beta. Now that an official release for Big Sur has arrived, is it possible to move to the public release, just like a regular software update?
In the "Software Update" settings, it still looks like I am suggested to install the new Beta version, rather than the official release.
How should I fix this?

The public beta FAQ covers how to de-enroll from beta builds.

https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/faq

See the Support section.

At any time, you may unenroll your device so that it no longer receives these updates. Then, when the next version of commercial software is released, you can install it from iOS Software Update, the Mac App Store, tvOS Software Update or watchOS Software Update.

https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/unenroll


How can I install Mac OS X Lion in VirtualBox, or any other type of virtual machine? I purchased bought a license of Lion and heard that it supports virtual machine install.

I want to install Lion into my VirtualBoxVM on Lion on an iMac. How can I do this?

10.7 (Build 11A511) guest in VirtualBox 4.1 greater
Whilst end user forums are currently limited to Mac OS X Server, not updated for Lion, there is discussion of Lion (not always Lion Server) in that context.
With the most recent VirtualBox it is unnecessary to convert disk images; .dmg files are recognised.
Depending on your approach, you might see:

This version of Mac OS X is not supported on this platform!

— (example) — I saw that at least once.
Suggestion A: await media from Apple
I recommend this most strongly.
Await Apple's provision of Lion on a USB thumb drive. It may be something greater than 11A511 and if so, that greatness may be more suitable for use in virtual machines without the need to hack (see caution below).
Suggestion B: attempt upgrade from Snow Leopard within the virtual machine
In the virtual machine: install Snow Leopard then (honouring Apple's license for Snow Leopard as far as possible in this situation) use that installation for nothing other than an immediate upgrade to Lion. Attention please to agreements at Apple — Legal.
Suggestion C: hobby hacking with BaseSystem.dmg

mount the hidden Apple_Boot Recovery HD

use ditto or cp to set aside from that volume a copy of the following file:
/Volumes/Recovery HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg

unmount Recovery HD

use chflags with the nohidden keyword to remove the hidden flag from the copy that you set aside

if you can boot the virtual machine from that .dmg then use Mac OS X Utilities to  reinstall using the electronic software distribution downloaded from Apple

if at step (5) you fail, discuss in Ask Different Chat.

Suggestion D: hobby hacking with InstallESD.dmg
At least one Apple Exchange user reports some success with a home-produced DVD burnt from an InstallESD.dmg
This may be most tempting and most likely to yield immediate success, of sorts, but in my estimation: hacking with this particular .dmg (ignoring Apple's .app for 11A511 as a whole) carries the greatest long-term risks.
Caution!
By using any .dmg out of context, as suggested above, you may be risking the integrity of your installation in ways that we can not predict. Please consider the following extract from Ask Different Chat:

home-produced bootable media for Lion: known risks and unknowns around 10.7 (Build 11A511)

With that caution in mind, my strongest recommendation is (A) to wait for Apple to provide USB flash media (scheduled for August 2011) with the assumption that it will be both (i) greater than 11A511 and (ii) more suitable for virtual machines and other environments that lacked broad support from Apple on the day of Lion's release.
(Bear in mind: day one was almost totally oriented to download-based upgrades from Snow Leopard.)


Apple Holiday Calendar for Vietnam Apple used to maintain its own set of calendars, but that page no longer exists, and recently my subscription for Vietnamese holidays (pulled from Apple’s now-retired page) stopped updating in the Calendar app.

It’s easy enough to derive certain countries’ holiday subscriptions from the US one. For instance you can subscribe to French holidays at https://p20-calendars.icloud.com/holiday/FR_fr.ics. However there doesn’t seem to be one at https://p20-calendars.icloud.com/holiday/VN_vn.ics.

Does anyone have the address for Apple’s Vietnamese holiday calendar? I realize there may be other sites that offer such calendars, but I’d prefer to use Apple’s.

Okay, Apple had made it so that you have to change your region in Language and Region Preferences in Settings to Vietnam. Also, you need to add the regional language as well to see the holidays of that region, but you don't need to make it the primary language. View here for more information.

There isn't a link for apple's calendar subscription, so the easiest is to just use another calendar for Vietnamese holidays: Vietnamese Calendar.

Hope this helps ;D


Unicode escape is ctrl+[ , why does this work in terminal or vim, but not safari or other parts of OS? When i'm working in VIM i'll often times use ctrl+[ to exit insert mode.  But if i need to press escape in other parts of the OS ctrl+[ does not act the same way as escape.

For example if search a page in safari you can't escape out of the search with ctrl+[

can anyone shed light why this is and possibly tell if it's possible to get ctrl+[ to always be escape with out custom plugins or weird 3rd party software?

For example if search a page in safari you can't escape out of the search with ctrl+[

It's because Safari is not operating in an ASCII/ANSI Terminal environment.

The Escape character is

octal: \033
hexadecimal: \x1B or ^[
decimal: 27

It's just a series of characters the terminal looks for that interprets it as actions or special characters.

As for working in vim (or vi), you aren't limited to sending ^[ (^ Control[), you can simply press the Escape key.  It will do the same thing.


Disabling "access to contacts" dialog box with terminal I am trying to disable the following dialog box that pops up all the time when I open Mail.app:

Is there a way to do so using terminal?

Thanks!

Mail will ask you only one time, and if you deny it should stop asking.

You can use the

defaults write com.apple.mail SuppressAddressHistory -bool true

However if you need to deny the access already given following are the instructions for that.

According to OS X Man pages you can reset privacy for apps to use your address book.

I did not try it since I do not want to revoke my settings, but it is safe to say it works on 10.9 according to Apple.

DESCRIPTION

The tccutil command manages the privacy database, which stores decisions the user has made about whether apps may access personal data.

One command is current supported:

reset    Reset all decisions for the specified service, causing apps to prompt again the next time they
              access the service.

EXAMPLES
     To reset all decisions about whether apps may access the address book:

   tccutil reset AddressBook


External storage device formating error? Trying to repair an external storage device in Disk Utility I first clicked "Verify Disk..." and then "Repair Disk..." but i got the below error:

  Verify and Repair volume “disk3s2”
  Repairing file system.
  ** /dev/rdisk3s2
  Invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block: cc4542
  File system check exit code is 8.
  Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
  Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.

How do I solve the problem?

Specs: OS X Yosemite 10.10.5

You could easily wipe the drive and start fresh - use care that disk 3 is really the disk you wish to erase everything.

diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ UntitledUFS disk3

If that fails, you likely have a hardware error (unless the failure is your OS or not using an account with sudo permissions). If that succeeds, you could then use Disk Utility to rename things as you please or learn more about diskutil and use it to rename / repartition / reformat the drive going forward.


Macbook stuck at login screen My macbook is stuck on the login screen after entering the password. I've been using this MBP for the past 4 years and it's been slowing down of late. However, I'm now having trouble logging in to my primary account: after I enter the password, I can proceed no further, although I still have access to the Guest account.

I've gone through some of the steps mentioned here and in other forums: resetting PRAM, reinstalling MacOS, etc. I ran disk utility and I'm getting an error. What should I do?

You need to backup the disk ASAP before your data is lost.  Then replace the bad hard drive and I would reinstall macOS from scratch on the new drive.  Last copy your data back to the drive.  If you have a time machine backup you can restore that to the new hard drive in one step.

Give us some model info on your Mac and we can advise you more.


Others in Macintosh HD How can I reduce the size of my HD folder? I have more than 22 GB in "others".
It is actually using more memory than my documents and apps and does not show contents.
I have deleted the main info in mobileSync folder, but is still very big.

I'm a big fan of Daisy Disk. It gives you a graphical display of the usage of your drive. It lets you delete items pretty quickly too. You can try it for free. (Disclaimer: not associated with Daisy Disk except as a satisfied customer.)


Connection refused: MongoDB 4.2 on Mac OS I am trying to set up a MongoDB 4.2.X Community instance on my local computer.
However, I am getting the following error message:

Error: couldn't connect to server 127.0.0.1:27017, connection attempt failed:
    SocketException: Error connecting to 127.0.0.1:27017 :: caused by ::
    Connection refused : connect@src/mongo/shell/mongo.js:341:17

I have followed all instructions on https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-os-x/ and couldn't find any suitable help on the internet.
Does anybody know how to fix this?

==> Summary
  /usr/local/Cellar/mongodb-community/4.2.0: 21 files, 272.3MB, built in 5 seconds

Juliens-iMac:~ julien$ mongod --config /usr/local/etc/mongod.conf

Juliens-iMac:~ julien$ mongo
MongoDB shell version v4.2.0
connecting to: mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/?compressors=disabled&gssapiServiceName=mongodb
2019-10-19T11:47:04.088+0200 E  QUERY    [js] Error: couldn't connect to server 127.0.0.1:27017, connection attempt failed: SocketException: Error connecting to 127.0.0.1:27017 :: caused by :: Connection refused :
connect@src/mongo/shell/mongo.js:341:17
@(connect):2:6
2019-10-19T11:47:04.090+0200 F  -        [main] exception: connect failed
2019-10-19T11:47:04.091+0200 E  -        [main] exiting with code 1

Juliens-iMac:~ julien$ brew services list
Name              Status  User   Plist
docker-machine    started julien /Users/julien/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.docker-machine.plist
mongodb-community started julien /Users/julien/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb-community.plist

I faced same problem on my mac catalina.
So I followed instructions you mentioned, and then removed everything manually from /usr/local/var/mongodb

After restarting the mongodb-community service I could successfully connect to it.


How do I get the scaling options for "larger text - more space" for an external display? The first time I connected my 27-Inch 4k display to my macbook it offered me to virtually scale the resolution of that display, so I could take full advantage of the 4k resolution while having it in 2560x1440 scaling, so similar to the iMac. After re-connecting the mac to the display it's been virtually scaled to 1080p and everything is just huge. When going to the screen options I'm only offered resolutions up to 1920x1080, even when clicking the options key it'll show up until 4k but it'll no longer scale texts and windows to make it look like 2560x1440.

I basically just want the same options as my macbook screen offers, like I said it worked the first time I connected to the display and I've already tried holding the options key.

I had the same issue as you on an LG monitor an I think I found a solution to get the Larger Text - More Space option back.

When I got my LG 43ud79-b, everything worked fine. The mac recognized the monitor with 4k res and I was able to go in to my monitor settings and select the more space option.

At one point the monitor had a suggestion overlay saying turn on HDMI Ultra HD Deep Color by going to Picture -> Picture Adjust -> HDMI Ultra HD Deep Color to on, which I did.

After that point, the monitor was only recognized as a 1920*1080 monitor and the scaled options only had resolutions instead of the Lager Text - More Space options.

Turning off the HDMI Ultra HD Deep Color option makes the mac recognize the monitor as a 4k monitor again and brings back the original scaled option. Hope that works for you.


How does photos app in mac imports pictures from hard disk? I copied some pictures in my mac from my phone using a usb. But in photos app some of them are being shown and some not shown. Some of them I have deleted are being shown and some are not being shown after deletion from finder as jpeg files. My question is how does photos app work?

The Photos app works by creating a library of your photos files.   A regular library has two important parts, the books on the shelves and some kind of cataloging system to help you to find the book that you are looking for.  If you brought a cookbook that you bought into a real library, other library patrons wouldn't be looking at your cookbook because it is not a part of the library's collection.

In the same way, if you copy pictures onto the hard drive of your computer, but do not tell the Photos app about them, then they are not considered a part of the Photos library.

There are several ways to import photos into the Photos App.  Photo's usually opens when you connect a phone, for example and will attempt to import photos that way.  If you have a folder with pictures though,  you can either drag that into the window of the Photos app or from the Menu Bar with Photos open click File>Import.  For more check out https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21297?locale=en_US


Writing to an NTFS volume is disabled on 10.9.2? Hi I recently upgraded to 10.9.2 and I cannot write to NTFS anymore - in fact I cannot mount NTFS anymore unless I removed the the lines that allow me to write NTFS in the past in /etc/fstab...

I also tried NTFS-3G and it's the same result - the system won't mount my NTFS drive unless I reverse to the default system files or settings (which only allow me to read NTFS, without enabling the write feature).

Did Apple disable NTFS write? Why?

Also I tried Tuxera NTFS and it gives me this error message:

I updated my guide - turns out the issue is that osxfuse is just needed with ntfs-3g - fuse4x has to be removed.

http://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/how-to-write-to-a-ntfs-drive-from-os-x-mavericks/


How can I redial using Voice Control or Siri? Is it possible to dial the last dialed phone number on iOS via Voice Control or Siri?

Sorry, but not yet.  Apple could add this in the future, but it isn't in iOS under Voice Control or Siri currently.  If you know who called, you could ask for them by name.  Unfortunately, that's the only solution with Siri.


Change Finder Icon in macOS Catalina without rebooting? On previous versions of macOS, it was possible to change the Finder icon in /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/. However, this doesn't seem possible in Catalina anymore, even if I try disabling SIP.
I’d love a process that works immediately, but any solution will be considered.
Are there step by step instructions how to place the new image for Catalina systems?

With all default security measures of Catalina enabled you can't change neither Finder's icon nor Dock's Finder icon without rebooting.
To overcome the involved hurdles (and re-enable them later), you have to reboot at least twice.
These are:

disable SIP
mount your system volume read/write (usually it's read-only)

Step-by-step How-To:

Boot to macOS Recovery (AKA Recovery Mode) by booting|rebooting and pressing cmdR right after the startup chime

After booting is completed you'll see a window titled macOS Utilites. In the menubar open Utilities > Terminal

In the Terminal type csrutil disable and hit ⏎ Return/Enter to execute the command

In the Terminal type reboot and hit ⏎ Return/Enter

After rebooting to the standard macOS and logging on to a user with admin privileges, open Terminal in the folder /Applications/Utilities/

In the Terminal type sudo mount -rw / and hit ⏎ Return/Enter to execute the command

Now modify Dock's Finder icons: (/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/finder.png and /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/finder@2x.png) or Finder's Finder icons: /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/Finder.icns

To remove the original icon type:
 sudo rm /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/finder.png

and hit ⏎ Return/Enter

Copy the new icons with the Terminal to the Resources folder(s). Example (assuming the new Finder icon finder.png is on your desktop):
 sudo cp /Users/your_username/Desktop/finder.png /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/

and hit ⏎ Return/Enter

Remove Dock's icon cache:
sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -exec rm {} \;

and hit ⏎ Return/Enter
11. Kill the Dock.app: killall Dock and hit ⏎ Return/Enter
12. Reboot to Boot to macOS Recovery and re-enable SIP by typing in the Terminal csrutil enable and ⏎ Return/Enter to execute the command.
13. In the Terminal type reboot and hit ⏎ Return/Enter
14. Proof for the modified Finder icon in the Dock:
[![enter image description here][1]][1]

After point updates (e.g. 10.15.2) the icons will be replaced probably and you have to re-do the whole icon customization.

Alternative way (kudos to user3439894) without disabling SIP and only one reboot:

Download/prepare your pics (i.e. finder.png and finder@2x.png) e.g on your Desktop

Boot to macOS Recovery (AKA Recovery Mode) by booting|rebooting and pressing cmdR right after the startup chime

After booting is completed you'll see a window titled macOS Utilites. In the menubar open Utilities > Terminal

Here I assume Macintosh HD is the name of your main volume and user_name is your user name. Replace them accordingly with the names in your setup in the commands below . In the Terminal enter (hit ⏎ Return/Enter after each line):
 cp /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/user_name/Desktop/finder.png /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/
 cp /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/user_name/Desktop/finder@2x.png /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/
 find /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -exec rm {} \;
 reboot

If you are unable to navigate to the path /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD, make sure your disk is mounted. Follow the steps below to mount your disk.

Quit the terminal
Select the Disk Utility option
On the left side of the window, you will see the list of Disks where Macintosh HD might be greyed out. Click that and select mount from the central top panel.
Quit the Disk Utility and open terminal again. You will be able to navigate to the paths mentioned above

A quick & dirty bash script iconreplacement.sh (which can be refined) based on user3439894's alternative approach automates some tasks:
#!/bin/bash

#Variables

DOCKRES="/Volumes/$SYSVOLNAME/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/"

#Change Finder icons in Dock.app, clean Dock's icon cache and reboot to normal system

if [ ! -d "/Users/$USER" ]; then
    cp "/Volumes/$SYSVOLNAME/Users/$USR/Desktop/finder.png" "$DOCKRES"
    cp "/Volumes/$SYSVOLNAME/Users/$USR/Desktop/finder@2x.png" "$DOCKRES"
    find "/Volumes/$SYSVOLNAME/private/var/folders/" -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -exec rm {} \;
    reboot
fi

#Reboot to Recovery Mode

sudo nvram "recovery-boot-mode=unused" > /dev/null 2>&1
sudo reboot > /dev/null 2>&1

The variable DOCKRES defines the path to the Resource folder of Dock.app in Recovery Mode.
The if statement detects whether the Mac is booted to Recovery Mode. Only then the resource files will be copied to Dock.app's Resource folder, the iconcache will be deleted and the Mac reboots.
The sudo commands reboot your Mac to Recovery Mode. sudo doesn't exist in the Recovery Mode base system and executing it throws an error. In my environment this happened sometimes because reboot was too slow to kill everything (or sudo ... too fast). The error message is suppressed with ... > /dev/null 2>&1.
Move the bash script to your admin user's Desktop. The two Dock resource files (finder.png and finder@2x.png) have to reside on the same user's desktop.
To execute the bash script (save any open files and quit all apps first) and reboot to Recovery Mode enter in Terminal:
cd Desktop
./iconreplacement.sh

In Recovery Mode open the Terminal. The shell command and the script require to set the name of your main volume and the admin user. Example:
SYSVOLNAME="Macintosh HD"
USR=capatane

So enter and replace Main_Volume_Name and user_name accordingly:
SYSVOLNAME="Main_Volume_Name"
USR=user_name
cd "/Volumes/$SYSVOLNAME/Users/$USR/Desktop/"
. ./iconreplacement.sh

The first .  (dot and space) is intentional and is required to export the user definded variables (SYSVOLNAME & USR) to the shell script!
Use this script at your own risk. No responsibility is taken over for errors, omissions, interruptions, defects, delays during operation etc.


Can't select option in OSX Utilities I'm having a pretty bizarre problem in OSX Mavericks. I'm attempting to install a fresh version of the OS, so I boot to OSX Utilities (Cmd+R). The option that I'm looking for is listed (re-install operating system), but I can't select it or anything else from the list.

I can move the mouse around, but clicking does not work. I tried with both the trackpad as well as a USB mouse. I can navigate through the options with the arrow keys, but pressing enter has no effect.

How the heck am I supposed to do anything from the utilities?

To get around this problem I went to the option I wanted with the arrow keys then got frustrated when I couldn`t click.

What I proceeded to do was start in the bottom right with the options key and push all the buttons across and up the next two rows skipping the Cap Locks. The continue button then illuminated. To then select it I pushed the space bar. Hope this works


Is there a shortcut which invokes the "Login Window..." fast user switching command? Firstly, let me say that there's two questions on Think Different that claim to answer this question but do not:

Does the MacBook Air have a Fast User Switching (Login Window) shortcut key?
The answer to this question seems to "lock" the mac, but doesn't invoke the "Login Window..." command.
Can I assign a keyboard shortcut to bring up the Mac OS X Login Window?
The answer to this question provides a shortcut which initiates a log out, not a user fast switch.

So, is there a shortcut for this command?

thanks.

Control+Shift+Eject

or

Control+Shift+power-button

The latter doesn't seem to work in Mac OS X 10.11(.6), but the former still works.

To guarantee that the login window is shown immediately after entering one of the above shortcuts, make sure to change the relevant security setting to require a password (i.e. require logging-in) immediately "after sleep or screen saver begins":

Enter ⌘+space to open Spotlight search.
Type "security" and hit Enter when "security & Privacy" is suggested; the "Security & Privacy" settings should be shown.
Ensure you're on the "General" page.
Change the "Require password ..." setting to "immediately".

Source for info about the password security setting:

How to lock your Mac like you did on your PC - fixedByVonnie


How do I print a single page document to multiple copies, double sided? I have a single page document, say "A".

I'd like to print it multiple copies with double-sided, like below:

sheet 1 front: A, back: A
sheet 2 front: A, back: A
...

However, when printing with Preview, even with "double-sided" selected, I got:

sheet 1 front: A, back: empty
sheet 2 front: A, back: empty
...

Any methods?

You can’t print a single-sided document double-sided. There is no second side.

Here’s what you can do.

Use the “Print” function in your app and choose “Save as PDF”.

Name the file something like “TwoSided.pdf”

Then open “TwoSided.pdf” in Preview.app.

In Preview.app, choose View » Thumbnails.

The top of the document will say “TwoSided.pdf (1 page)”

Then go back to Finder.app and drag “TwoSided.pdf” from finder to the Thumbnail column on the left hand side. Drop it when you are over the “Thumbnails” sidebar column.

Now it should say “TwoSided.pdf (page 1 of 2)”. (or “page 2 of 2”… it’s the “of 2” that is important.)

Go to File » Save

Now go to File » Print and choose “Two-sided”.


Can't Remove "Previous System" I upgraded Yosemite to Catalina.

Deleted "Previous System" folder.

When emptying Trash the OS complains "item 'xxx' is in use".

Rebooting doesn't help
sudo rm -rf doesn't help
rm -rf in Recovery Mode doesn't help
Disabling SIP doesn't help
Trash it doesn't help

Please help.

It looks like you jumped ahead to some steps that aren’t needed. Apple recommends these steps:

Quit any programs you know were using the file, then try emptying the trash.
If that doesn't work, restart your computer to kill off background processes, then try emptying the trash.
If that doesn't work, restart your computer in safe mode by holding down the shift key as it boots to prevent login items and automatically launched programs from running, then try emptying the trash.
If that doesn't work, restart your computer in Recovery mode by holding down ⌘-R, and when it boots, select "Disk Utility". In Disk Utility, use the "First Aid" feature to repair the disk containing the file you wish to delete. Then reboot your computer and empty the trash.

That is the end of the advice in the linked article from Apple, but if all that fails, make a Time Machine backup, erase the drive and reload your data. If Disk Utility and Safe Mode don’t clear things, it’s usually more hassle for trained mac admin to diagnose and fix than erase and reinstall.


How to open iterm from Finder? Imagine I'm in /Users/beauthi/Documents in Finder. I want to launch commands in my default terminal, which is iterm, in that location. Is there a specific trick in the Finder app to launch iterm and get directly to the directory /Users/beauthi/Documents ?
Thank you very much !

A solution would be using an app like "Open In Terminal" (free/open source).
https://github.com/Ji4n1ng/OpenInTerminal
This app adds a menu to the Finder toolbar which opens the current directory in your default terminal app or your preferred text editor. Most terminal apps and text editors are supported, including iTerm.
There are also a "lite" versions for either opening the directory in the terminal app or in the text editor with a single button.


How do I know if my iPhone device is using WiFi 6 I have an iPhone 11 and a new Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Lite AP. I can’t see any way to know from the phone (or the AP) if the phone is using a WiFi 6 connection or not.

In a nutshell, WiFi 6 is a marketing term for 802.11ax and the fastest way to know it’s working is to check radio details on the Ubiquity app and know exactly which encoding scheme is used from moment to moment. The radios adapt and steer traffic based on interference and other radios which change constantly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ax

Even with WiFi 6 available, if you’re stuck behind a slow router, a well engineered device might connect in a more power-efficient manner until it needs extra speed.
Both Apple and Ubiquity have a long track record of working together well -  in the end, I recommend you look at the WiFi quality on Ubuiquity side and check your iOS device MAC address in the UniFi App and check your transmit rate / channel / RSSI to make sure your speeds are negotiating to the fast speeds you expect. As long as WiFi is faster than your server connection, it likely won’t matter if you’re on 5 or 6 flavor of the technical / marketing side of things.
To illustrate this recommendation:

I currently have a 802.11ac connection so the 866 MBps means I’m either running MCS 9 with two spatial streams and 256-QAM modulation on 80 MHz channels with 400ns GI or MCS 9 with one spatial stream on a 160 MHz channel and the other radio parameters the same. Since WiFi 6 includes older standards, you could argue I’m already using a WiFi 6 connection with my hardware for this specific answer.


Upgrade Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 Any experiences with upgrading a Windows 8.1 bootcamp install to a Windows 10 install? Is it safe? Will it somehow mess with the efi/bootcamp settings so boot up problems might ensue?

I updated from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 on a MacBook Pro 15 inch Retina 2013.

Best is not to do a clean install but choose to upgrade the existing OS, Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. This will avoid a lot of problems with the authentication key you need for Windows 10 and the necessary drivers.

Windows 10 will use the Bootcamp Windows 8. 1 drivers which are already installed on your PC. They all work ok except for the bluetooth driver.
It is installed but bluetooth doesn't show up. That's the only problem I had with upgrading to Windows 10.


How to remap the "Send tweet" hotkey? In Mountain Lion there is a "tweet sheet" when sharing from either notification center or an app. The default hotkey for "send tweet" is CMDShiftD. I'd like to use something like CMDRETURN. Is there a way to remap this?

You can use Spark to set custom keybindings for nearly anything in OS X. You can set up a shortcut to execute an AppleScript and use the following script:

display dialog "Tweet?" default answer "" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
set mytweet to text returned of result

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Notification Center"
        click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 1
        click button 1 of UI element 1 of row 2 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of window "window"
        keystroke mytweet
        keystroke "D" using {command down, shift down}
        keystroke space
    end tell
end tell

Source: TUAW


Some SMB shares unavailable from Mountain Lion? I've recently upgraded one of the machines in our office to Mountain Lion.  Since doing so, when connecting to (or browsing to via Finder) our Windows 2008 R2 file server, some shares no longer appear in the list of available shares on that server.  Not all shares have disappeared, only five out of approximately fifteen shares are not visible.

This does not appear to be a user rights issue, as the shares do not appear for multiple administrator and non-administrator accounts.  Additionally, the shares were perfectly accessible from the machine pre-ML upgrade, as well as still being accessible from all other OSX machines in our environment.  In other words, the issue appears to be confined solely to our single machine that was upgraded to Moutain Lion.

Has anybody discovered a solution?

Additional information:

MacBook Pro upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion
Server is a member of our AD domain
Machine is not a part of the Active Directory domain
Credentials used to connect to server include Domain Admin credentials, user account with domain admin rights, and multiple user accounts without admin credentials but with credentials to view the missing shares
Server is running Window Server 2008 R2
Machine has no trouble accessing files on our XServe running 10.5 Server
Essentially, all other variables seem to be constant with no known changes to the network and server infrastructure involved

We faced the same issue. At the office you can't see the shares, but connect through smb. Through a VPN this ain't possible. The answer is in the length of the share-name. Mountain lion can only see them if the length of the sharename is 12 characters or less. Seems like a bug to me. Changing the sharenames is what we did to resolve this issue.


Photos deleted before wifi still appear in photo stream when I take a picture (not connected to wifi) and delete it before I connect to wifi, it still appears in photo stream once I connect to wifi. Is there a way to turn that off and not just turning off share to photo stream?

As ksh above said, its because the photo is going into your recently deleted album, you should delete the picture from this album too, that'll stop the problem.

Theres currently no feature that allows you to turn off the recently deleted folder.


How to restore OS X after installing Windows in a single boot configuration I want to restore OS X after installing Windows in a single boot configuration.
So Windows is occupying the whole disk. Now I want to erase the hard disk and restore Mac OS X Mavericks. How do I do this?

You can restore OS X in Internet Recovery Mode if you have a newer Mac:

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing altcmdR. The prerequisites for an Internet Recovery are listed here: Recovery/Internet Recovery.
In a few words you need the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated for a successful internet recovery.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot to the Recovery Netboot image which is loaded from an Apple/Akamai server.

Open Disk Utility and partition your internal disk: GUID partition scheme (use the "Options..." button at the bottom of the main pane for this), one partition, journaled HFS+.
Sometimes Disk Utility won't allow you to erase the internal disk: open Terminal and enter diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0 and dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0 bs=512 count=1. Then retry to erase the disk with Disk Utility.

Close Disk Utility

Open Restore OS X and restore the original OS X. This will restore the OS X version your Mac came with.

After rebooting and configuring your Mac open App Store, download and install Mac OS X Mavericks (if an older OS X version was installed previously).


Dual monitors Dell P2415Q 13" MacBook Pro 2018, 2.7 GHZ Quad Core i7, 16gb RAM, 256gb SSD I'm looking to buy dual Dell 4k 24-inch P2415Q monitors for my new 13" Macbook Pro 2018. I'm concerned about iGPU performance.

Has anyone already tried to run dual 4k monitors on 13" Macbook pro 2018 with 2.7ghz quad core i7 and 16gb RAM? Apple says it's possible, but what about your real experience and performance when you do additional WEB development and light graphic works.

If it's not possible to keep fans cold and quiet, daily UX lag-free, probably I will stay with a single 24" or 27" monitor.

Front-End Development: Chrome, Firefox & Safari (with many loaded tabs), Sublime Text (IDE), CyberDuck (FTP), Sequel Pro (DBS), SourceTree (Git)

Graphic: Pixelmator (light photos/logos editing), Sketch (simple drawings), Figma, Axure RP, Google Web Designer

Other: MS Office, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Harvester, Viber, WhatsApp, Spotify, Slack, Skype, Telegram

BTW, I'm not interested in 15" Macbook Pro. Waiting for any opinion. Thank you.

I'm using dual 4K Displays with my MacBook Pro 2017. The Performance is okay, no lags or problems with the fans.

It's the best Workstation I've ever had, so I hope you'll have fun with it.

Edit: I'm using two LG UltraFine 4K Display


macOS Sierra 10.12.3 iCloud email is STILL in system preferences after signing out Story: Okay, so I have this "old" Mac which was fully signed in and connected to my Apple ID. But now that I have a newer Mac, I want fully sign out of the older Mac. So I navigate to System Preferences>iCloud>Sign out.

Click Sign out, wait a moment, and it says it signed out.

Problem: However when I navigate back to iCloud in System Preferences, inside 1 of the 2 sign-in boxes is my email I use for Apple ID.

I tried everything I could think of, but the stubborn thing just won't forget my email. And I don't like the fact that if someone were to snoop on it, they would have half of the information they need.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Well after a few hours of continuously searching for what is causing the problem, I finally found it.

Solution: Turns out that I was still somehow connected (Not signed-in) to Game Center inside System Preferences>Internet account. After I deleted that, it finally forgot the Apple ID email.


Apple Calendar: Share busy/nonbusy information for several calendars I have a set of calendars, which I would like to share together as busy/nonbusy. That is, I want others to see (on a single calendar) whether I am busy in any calendar at a given date or not.

This does not necessarily have to go through Apple Calendar, but I would like to keep using it. That is, if there's an external software, I hope I don't have to change too much of my current structure.

Nice-to-have: In case I'm busy, people could see which calendar caused that.

/EDIT

Several calendars are google-calanders that I read in, but then there is also some iCloud calendars (Standard iCloud + Facebook)

I recommend you try the Google for that.

The explanations on how to will take to much space in here, but if you follow the instructions here, it is explained nicely.


How is the Apple Watch connected to the Internet? The Apple Watch uses the Internet for a lot of things : Siri answers, sending messages...

But how is the Apple Watch connected to the Internet ?

I have searched a bit, to no avail. This information must be too technical. ;-)

From the "Apple Watch User Guide"

  Apple Watch uses Bluetooth® wireless technology to connect to its paired iPhone and uses the iPhone for many wireless functions. Apple Watch can’t configure new Wi-Fi networks on its own, but it can connect to Wi-Fi networks you’ve set up on the paired iPhone.

  If your Apple Watch and iPhone are on the same network but aren’t connected by Bluetooth, you can also do the following on Apple Watch without iPhone:

  Send and receive messages using iMessage
  Send and receive Digital Touch messages
  Use Siri

The watch is using the Wi-Fi settings from you paired iPhone to access the internet.  As stated above it can connect to networks you have set on the iPhone.  The Bluetooth will connect to the phone and pass data back and forth.


Mouse scrolling speed setup on Mac I do two tests - I rotate the scroll wheel on my mouse the same angle very slowly and very quickly. On Mac when I rotate the wheel very slowly it scrolls on the same webpage say 1 line. When I scroll the same angle in max speed it scrolls 1 page. Why the scroll is not consistent on the mouse and how can I fix this?

You can probably correct this by disabling the "scrolling inertia" option.

Go to System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad and under "Mouse Options" or "Trackpad Options" (try both) choose the "without inertia" option of scrolling.

I hope it helps, let me know ;)


Is there a way to password protect individual apps? Is it possible to password protect a specific Mac application?

For example, I am interested in protecting Mail because even if you cannot retrieve new emails, you still can read all the already received emails.

This is not a question about security. It's about sharing a device within a family. I don't have crucial information. I just want to avoid my girl or son to send accidentally emails from my account or prevent them to read some of them.

Regarding your comment on Paul's answer, wanting to leave your computer for a moment: you have to lock your computer. Period.

Open System Preferences, click Security (top row, second to last option), under the "General" tab, check the box for "Require password [immediately] after sleep or screen saver begins".

Then, when you go to walk away from your computer;

Ctrl ⌃+Shift ⇧+Eject ⏏

(Additional notes: Click the above line.)

Lock your Mac. Walk away. Come back, enter your password to unlock it. Secured console.


Is there a way to use update command to locate files on OS X without having to run updatedb manually? I am considering using an alias for locate, as I find really inconvenient to have to run updatedb so often on mac.

Do you have any ideas or workarounds for this?

If you want locate to update more frequently, you have to modify the /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist file.

Specifically, you want to find the <key>StartCalendarInterval</key> section and modify it to your specifications.  By default, locate is configured to update at 3:15am every Saturday (Sunday being the first day staring with 0).

<key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
        <dict>
                <key>Hour</key>
                <integer>3</integer>
                <key>Minute</key>
                <integer>15</integer>
                <key>Weekday</key>
                <integer>6</integer>
        </dict>

This works like cron, so you can specify an asterisk if you want, for example to run it every day.  Just change the 6 to and * and it will run at 3:15 every day.

An easier way to do this if you want to have it run at a set interval, for example, every 3 hours, you can use the StartInterval <integer> directive.  So, for your task to run every three hours insert the following directive into the plist file:

<key StartInterval</key>
   <integer>108000</integer>

The integer is the number of seconds.  So, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour and so forth.

Don't forget to remove the StartCalendarInterval directive.

Last, but definitely not least...make a backup copy of your .plist file before modifying it.  This way, if you hose things up, you have a good config to fall back on.

Note:  In order to make these changes work under OS X El Capitan, you need to disable OS X's System Integrity Protection (SIP).  You can ONLY do that by using csrutil in system Recovery Mode.

Boot Mac in System Recovery by holding Command+R.

Using Terminal, enter csrutil disable

You should see the following:
Successfully disabled System Integrity Protection.  Please restart machine for changes to take effect.

Reboot.

locate should now update per your schedule.

Disclaimer:  This is not a recommended procedure.  While this answer technically does address the question, it doesn't cover the "Why is this necessary to alter the updatedb schedule?" question.


Permissions for file transfer over target disk mode I have a 2015 iMac that no longer boots. I want to recover the ~1 TB of data on it and transfer to a brand-new iMac. (Through a comedy of errors, my Time Machine drive isn't available.)

I can connect the two machines via Target Disk mode with a Thunderbolt cable/Thunderbolt 2-to-3 adapter. I tried Migration Assistant, and it recognized the old drive and offered to transfer, but I let it run all weekend and it didn't get off the first step ("Looking for applications and documents to transfer ... "). I tried a few variants, such as only migrating one user account and only migrating Settings (as a test) and all of them hang on the first step.

I can look at the Target Disk on the network and see the user accounts with the appropriate amounts of data on them, but I don't have access to the files because it doesn't have permissions.

How can I give the Target Disk the appropriate permissions? Can I enter the password somewhere?

A possible complication is that the old iMac login was via a network user account. I know the various passwords, but I'm not clear on whether the old iMac, now no longer able to access the network, will know them.

My overall question is how to recover the data from the old iMac; if there's a simpler way than connecting via Target Disk mode, entering the appropriate permissions, and copying files to the new machine, that would be welcome too.

I did an almost identical recovery a couple days ago. Heres my answer:

DON'T USE MACOS BUILT IN TRANSFER METHODS

I have found them extremely unreliable, difficult to debug, and unable to resume on failure.

Instead, use rsync!

Connect via Target Disk Mode. Make sure to ignore permissions on the drive.

The following command will recovery everything and preserve metadata including dates, etc.  It works extremely well, is able to resume on failure, and shows progress.

/**
  *
  *  /path/to/source - Path to the disk you want to recovery (or a folder on it if you only want specific things)
  *  /path/to/destination - Path to disk you want the items to be copied to
  *
  */

 rsync -avP /path/to/source /path/to/destination

It will take a while to count files but you will see it counting.

To continue - https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/67539/how-to-rsync-only-new-files


How to map Caps Lock as a second Control Key on a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000? I've got a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, with the latest IntelliType drivers installed. There is an option to swap a Caps Lock and a Control key in the Microsoft Keyboard preferences pane, but no way to use Caps Lock as a second Control key.

Changing the Modifier Keys in System Preferences > Keyboard helps, but resets after the restart. Reset happens only when Microsoft Keyboard Helper is launched. These settings were always saved after the restart with another third-party keyboard I've been using before.

Using ControllerMate helps, but it's slow, buggy and, obviously, a huge overkill for my needs.

KeyRemap4MacBook and PCKeyboardHack are not working. I guess Microsoft Keyboard driver overrules them.

Repairing permissions does not help either.

Two months went past, and a "legitimate" solution is nowhere to be seen. Fortunately, there is a simpler and a more radical way to solve this, and all related issues — getting rid of the crappy Microsoft drivers completely. Caps Lock, and other modifier key mappings, are easily changed in the "Keyboard" preferences. Play/Pause, Volume and Mute keys are working perfectly.
All of the other media keys, and the "Zoom" slider are predictably dead, but I've never used them anyway. The "Application" or "Menu key" is mapped to ⌘ with KeyRemap4MacBook.


How can right click in Finder without using the trackpad or a mouse? My goal is to select a file in Finder and get to the "open with" menu without having to leave the keyboard.

You can use Ctrl+F2 to move the focus to the menu bar and then use the arrows to go to the Open With menu item.


Is there a way to take a screenshot gif (screenvideo) of an iPhone interaction? I'd like to take a motion-recording of an interaction on an iOS device while it's plugged into a computer. (To report a bug or demonstrate a feature, without making a shakycam video with another device, i.e. my friggin' iPad )

Does Xcode or a similar tool support this?

If you use a Mac, you can connect your device to the computer and use Quicktime to capture the screen as a video. After selecting 'New Movie Recording' your device will be offered as a source.

https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/record-iphone-screen-quicktime/


Broadcast Message from root@ I'm running Lion (10.7.1) and the other day I started getting these Broadcast Message notices in my Terminal.  I've google'd the crap out of it and the few threads i've found where someone actually offered a way to fix it haven't solved my problem.  I'm at a loss as to how to fix this and I use the Terminal daily and it is very annoying.

Broadcast Message from root@Gregg-Bolingers-iMac.local
        (no tty) at 18:31 CST...

Feb 21 18:31:14 Gregg-Bolingers-iMac kernel[0]:

Looking at my system.log the only thing I get when this happens is:

Feb 21 18:31:55: --- last message repeated 22898 times ---
Feb 21 18:31:54 Gregg-Bolingers-iMac kernel[0]:

The command Ingmar Hupp provided removes all access to your 'wall' program. This 'write all' program will send a message to all users logged into the system at one point.

I am assuming no one else has access to your machine, so perhaps there is a program you use that makes an errant (or perhaps malicious) call to /usr/bin/wall?

By changing the permissions of /usr/bin/wall to 0, no internal or external source should be able to read, write or execute the program.

Hope this explanation helps!

One more thought: Have you updated your OS to the most recent version? I have come across other instances of this where users traced the issue back to a security update released by Apple.


Late 2013 RMBP switches to SCO(very poor quality) codec when using earbuds microphone It switches back to AAC once I pick the internal microphone as an input.
Does this mean that the bluetooth version is too old to handle both audio input and output with the earbuds? If so, can a bluetooth 5.0 replacement for the network card be purchased somewhere?
Based on the system report, my current bluetooth is 4.0 (0x6).
The earbuds are Samsung Galaxy Buds+
They work nicely on my iPhone X.

None of this will work.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds+ require Bluetooth 5.0
The 2013 MacBook Pro's AirPort adapter Bluetooth is 4.0 and was a nice, industry standard PCIe slot so you could swap it out for another
The next Mac with Bluetooth 5.0 is the 2018.  Unfortunately, it doesn't use the old "tried and true" Broadcom chipset - it uses a proprietary Apple/USI (Universal Scientific Industrial) Bluetooth module.  So, the question becomes, even if you could source a BT 5.0 module from a different vendor - where are you getting the drivers?

What bugs be about Apple is this need to be so rediciliously proprietary that upgrade-ablity concept has been literally thrown out the window.  Like you asked...

If so, can a Bluetooth 5.0 replacement for the network card be purchased somewhere?

The answer should be yes.  You should be able to get a PCIe WiFi/BT card from a different manufacturer like Dell or HP (or even Apple themselves) and upgrade it for additional features.  However, Apple immediately puts a stop to that by tweaking the AirPort card's firmware so that only its drivers will work.
If the 2018 MacBook Pro had continued to use the PCIe slots instead of soldering to the board, you could have theoretically swapped out the AirPort cards from one to the next and still have all the native Apple drivers.  Unfortunately, you can't.
Your solutions are limited:

Get BT 4.0 headset/earbuds specifically for you Mac
Upgrade your Mac
Try an external BT dongle (not recommended)

Apple has traditionally not played nicely with more than one BT dongle attached so I would avoid.  You can try - it won't break anything (physically) but macOS probably won't appreciate having two BT devices and you could break some functionality.


How to make bootable El Capitan installer in Mojave? One of my friends who don't have a fast Internet connection asked me if I could install El Capitan (which is the highest version of OS X that his iMac supports) and I said sure.

Today I went to App Store to install El Capitan, just for it to download so that I can make a bootable USB for him, and couldn't find it in App Store.

Then after a bit of searching I've found this link and it opened in App Store:

However, when I click the get button, it redirects me to Software Update in my System Preferences and says that it's not available:

Previously, clicking Get button just downloaded an installer into my Applications folder where I could easily create a bootable USB.

How can I make bootable El Capitan installer USB in Mojave?

This would be painful.

Download High Sierra. See How can I download an older version of OS X/macOS?
Copy High Sierra to a flash drive. See How to create a bootable installer for macOS
Install High Sierra to a new volume in your APFS container. Here I assume you have enough free space.
Goto the App Store while logged into High Sierra. Download El Capitan. Here I assume you have previously downloaded El Capitan.
Copy El Capitan to a flash drive. See How to create a bootable installer for macOS
Remove the High Sierra volume from your APFS container. See Remove macOS from a APFS container?

Another alternative would be to install High Sierra in a virtual machine. This would avoid the need to remove the High Sierra files from your APFS container volumes. Installing in the virtual machine application does require modifying your current macOS (Mojave). While removing the High Sierra virtual machine would be fairly easy, removing the virtual machine application would probably not be a good idea. So, once you install a virtual machine application, you will probably not want to uninstall.

Personally, I have only run Snow Leopard and Yosemite in VirtualBox virtual machines. Other virtual machine applications are VMware Fusion and Parallels. User @user3439894 has posted in a comment a preference for VMware Fusion which was used to run High Sierra.

If you choose to use a virtual machine and are having problems setting up, you may want to post a new question.


Shortcut to switch windows, bringing the newly active window to the top "Command-Tab" switches between browser (or other) windows, but leaves the newly active window underneath, where you can't see it. What good is that?

This such an essential, minute-to-minute maneuver that there MUST be a shortcut that switches to another window and brings it to the top (as PCs do). Isn't there such a shortcut?

I think this question has been asked before, but I've never seen a straightforward solution. I'd like to make sure that the answer really is "You can't do that."

⌘ + TAB switches between applications. It brings up last active window of selected application.

Application can have many windows open (or no open window at all). To navigate between application windows:

first navigate to desired application using ⌘ + TAB
without releasing ⌘ use Up or Down arrow on keyboard to see all open windows of selected application.
Use Up/Down/Left/Right arrows to navigate between windows.
reaching desired window press Enter to bring it in front