Screen won’t lock after upgrading to Catalina I recently upgraded my 2018 Mac mini to macOS Catalina 10.15.6, and I’ve noticed that whenever I turn my monitors off and leave my computer, it never actually locks itself after the 10 minutes when it’s left alone. Is there any way to fix this? I can manually lock the screen and make it go to sleep but that’s kind of a pain to do every time I want to leave my computer.

Check the battery settings in the Energy Saver. You should be able to see a dial to change the time needed for your Mac to sleep. The defaults for these have been known to change from time to time, so you may be able to put it back to what it was originally.
Incidentally, locking your computer by leaving it unattended for 10 minutes is not a good security practice. If you want a quick way to lock it, see here for sleeping and here for locking. This is a habit that is worth picking up.


Automatically hide sidebar in preview I recently upgraded to El Capitan.
Whenever I open an pdf file of more than 1 pages, Preview opens the sidebar. Is there a way to permanently disable it?

I was able to get this to work on 10.11.1 by adding a new key to the Preview.app plist.

  PVPDFSuppressSidebarOnOpening

You can use the defaults write command to do this in Terminal.

cd ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences/

defaults write com.apple.Preview PVPDFSuppressSidebarOnOpening true


X11 periodically losing focus I have a very annoying issue with the X11 app on OS X when using it to run things remotely over SSH. Every now and then (it's pretty regular, I'd say about each 1-2 minutes), the app I'm in loses focus, and the keyboard doesn't get sent to it anymore. However, X11 is still the foreground app.

Any ideas on what could be causing this and/or how to debug this?

ssh: wrong culprit

I have this loss of focus on a variable frequency on XQuartz
without any ssh command.

On the other hand I found a heavy relationship between this XQuartz loss of focus and the launch of:

Google Software Update (com.google.Keystone.Agent)

Analysis of this bug

2 tools help during this investigation:

watch activations Python script →

[...]
2014-07-22 17:06:04.622 Python[95279:1307] activated Google Software Update (com.google.Keystone.Agent)
2014-07-22 17:06:08.410 Python[95279:1307] activated loginwindow (com.apple.loginwindow)
[...]

lastcomm | head -10 immediatly after the event →

[...]
diskmanage -S      root     __         0.00 secs Tue Jul 22 17:06 (0:00:18.03)
GoogleSoft -S      root     __         0.11 secs Tue Jul 22 17:06 (0:00:30.03)
[...]


First-time iCloud backup of my iPhone took 26 hours The first time my iPhone backed up with iCloud, it took 26 hours. It seems like a really long time but I do have a lot of video. How long should this take?

Honestly it depends on what you consider to be a LOT of videos.  Truthfully a 64 GB Phone filled on a standard Wifi home network should not take more than 10-15 hours at most.  Truth is the easiest way to see what is going on is go to www.icloud.com and check out your icloud space available.

The other thing to take into account is that you only get 5GB Free. You might have run out of space on iCloud and you didnt get the notifications.


Kernel panic on shutdown and restart When shutting down my Mac, it takes 1-3 minutes to shutdown. The screen goes black for a few seconds, then the kernel panic message appears. I'm using a 2017 27-inch iMac, with macOS Big Sur 11.1. This did not happen immediately after upgrading to 11.1.
Edit This issue does not occur when booting in Safe Mode and shutting down from login screen without logging in.
Edit 2: This issue also does not occur with a new user account. Kexts are loaded in the user account, meaning the kernel panic does not occur from the kexts.
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff800d2bf016):  initproc exited -- exit reason namespace 2 subcode 0x4 description: none

uuid info:
 0x1156f8000    uuid = <dea51514-b4e8-3368-979b-89d0f8397abc>
 0x10e9c5000    uuid = <6083e0d1-1507-3c83-a7f9-269261462d97>

Thread 3 crashed

RAX: 0x00007fff2018cc2a, RBX: 0x000070000c1039b0, RCX: 0x00007fff201a498d, RDX: 0x0000000000000002
RSP: 0x000070000c103998, RBP: 0x000070000c1039a0, RSI: 0x0000000000000390, RDI: 0x00007f9859e05600
R8:  0x00000000004f4005, R9:  0x0000000000000001, R10: 0x0000000000000000, R11: 0xfffffffffffffe30
R12: 0x00007f9859c058f0, R13: 0x0000000000000001, R14: 0x0000000000000001, R15: 0x000070000c103aa0
RFL: 0x0000000000010207, RIP: 0x00007fff2019e347, CS:  0x000000000000002b, SS:  0x0000000000000023

Thread 0: 0xffffff86bcbf9bf0
    0x00007fff202ea622
    0x00007fff2017f51b
    0x0000000000000000

Thread 1: 0xffffff86bcbf7120
    0x00007fff20307a7a
    0x00007fff2016e7c7
    0x00007fff201745fe
    0x00007fff201750cb
    0x00007fff2017ec5d
    0x00007fff20316499
    0x00007fff20315467
    0x0000000000000000

Thread 2: 0xffffff86c1b4f120
    0x00007fff202e6586
    0x00007fff2018c1fc
    0x00007fff2017b84c
    0x00007fff2017b4ac
    0x000000010e9f8ea4
    0x000000010e9d2051
    0x000000010e9d1e36
    0x00007fff2016e7c7
    0x00007fff2017b605
    0x000000010e9d154f
    0x00007fff2016e7c7
    0x00007fff20171195
    0x00007fff20181550
    0x00007fff201744a7
    0x00007fff201750cb
    0x00007fff2017ec5d
    0x00007fff20316499
    0x00007fff20315467
    0x0000000000000000

Thread 3: 0xffffff86c1b51bf0
    0x00007fff2019e347
    0x00007fff2018b404
    0x00007fff2017eae0
    0x00007fff20316499
    0x00007fff20315467
    0x0000000000000000

Thread 4: 0xffffff86c1b535a0
    0x00007fff202e653e
    0x00007fff20315467
    0x0000000000000000

Thread 5: 0xffffff86bca54480
    0x00007fff202eb856
    0x00007fff2023ebf1
    0x000000010e9f9875
    0x000000010e9f9385
    0x00007fff2017b1d5
    0x00007fff2016e7c7
    0x00007fff201745fe
    0x00007fff201750cb
    0x00007fff2017ec5d
    0x00007fff20316499
    0x00007fff20315467
    0x0000000000000000

Mac OS version:
20C69

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 20.2.0: Wed Dec  2 20:39:59 PST 2020; root:xnu-7195.60.75~1/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: 82E2050C-5936-3D24-AD3B-EC4EC5C09E11
System model name: iMac18,3 (Mac-BE088AF8C5EB4FA2)
System shutdown begun: YES
Panic diags file available: YES (0x0)

Kernel extensions:
$ kextstat | grep -v apple
Executing: /usr/bin/kmutil showloaded
No variant specified, falling back to release
Index Refs Address            Size       Wired      Name (Version) UUID <Linked Against>
  171    0 0xffffff7fa24fb000 0x40000    0x40000    com.paragon-software.filesystems.ntfs (65.5.15) 4727E0E8-9579-3CC5-A6BC-2A38E5B28B1D <8 6 5 1>
  180    3 0xffffff7fa232d000 0xb2000    0xb2000    org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv (6.1.16) DAF044F0-5043-3B8E-8758-5A462567BDAA <8 6 5 3 1>
  183    0 0xffffff7fa240a000 0x5000     0x5000     org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB (6.1.16) CA33FA52-5933-3F0E-9B40-8B1ECF4D6A36 <182 180 64 8 6 5 3 1>
  184    0 0xffffff7fa2405000 0x4000     0x4000     org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetFlt (6.1.16) C93EAF6A-676F-3370-BAE2-BDFD2BF16582 <180 8 6 5 3 1>
  185    0 0xffffff7fa23ff000 0x2000     0x2000     org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetAdp (6.1.16) 76200407-D2F0-3D84-BCCF-7EEA18F16654 <180 6 5 1>

I've managed to fix this by disabling the Hack font and some LaunchDaemons. Not sure which one of the two.


Remove custom dns server setting via command line So I typically run the following to set a custom DNS server when I am on WiFi:

networksetup -setdnsservers Wi-Fi <desired-dns-server-here>

However, I would like to know how to unset custom DNS servers and revert to DHCP provided DNS. This article from 2015 says that running networksetup -setdnsservers Wi-Fi should do this, but on macOS 10.15 that results in ** Error: The amount of parameters was not correct.

Any ideas how this can be done?

Here's a one liner and the thread where I learned this a while back:

sudo networksetup -setdnsservers Wi-Fi "Empty"

After using `networksetup -setdnsservers Wi-Fi "8.8.8.8" "8.8.4.4"` how do I clear them?


How can I speed up Mouse Keys? I have been exploring the OS X accessibility option to control the mouse from your keyboard (as described here) and I am curious if there is a way to make it go faster.

KeyRemap4Mac is a nice program that has a large number of various configurations which allow you to modify the function of your keyboard, including the ability to speed up you mouse navigation via the keyboard!

Look in look in Mouse Keys section.


Grayed out "Redirect" option in OSX Mail.app Running recent Mavericks (10.9.5)

I am wondering why I can only sometimes redirect messages, as opposed to forwarding, as in principle being offered via "Message > Redirect".

Sometimes this works, sometimes not, i.e., "Message > Redirect" is a grayed out option.

Ts there a somewhere documented pattern for this behaviour?

Redirect is disabled for Exchange accounts (last §), presumably because the sender address is enforced by the Exchange server (to prevent spoofing).


Issue with deleting a Mac account through system preferences I have a desktop mac with multiple users and I would like to erase just one user from the computer but when I open system preferences and click on the accounts area, the minus sign to delete the account is grey and cannot be clicked. I checked all the other users on the computer and they are the same way. Everything is unlocked and I have the administrator password so I shouldn't have any problems but I am unable to click the delete key. Is there another way to delete a user account without damaging the computer or any other accounts?

In order to add/delete accounts you have to unlock first:

which will prompt you for an Administrator account/password. Once entered successfully you can select and delete any user not currently logged in.


Is it safe to remove /vm/swapfile0? I found a file of size 1 GB in /vm/swapfile0, that has not been accessed in a long time, according to last access date value in ls -l.

My assumption is, that this file is left over from an older macOS version. The last access was probably before I upgraded to 10.12. Can I safely remove it?

I also found some files of size 1 GB in /private/var/vm. These have recent access times; both sleepimage and swapfile1 today and swapfile0 two weeks in the past. I think these are in active use.

One side question though: sleepimage has a size of 1 GB, although I have 4 GB RAM installed. How is that possible? Other threads on the topic of sleepimage suggested that the size would match that of the RAM installed in my Mac.

Boot up in Recovery mode and use the Terminal to remove the swapfile0 file. That is fully safe to do.


Do I need to renew the Institutional Recovery Key certificate with FileVault We plan to roll out FileVault via Apple's own MDM (Server.app). I already have some test-computers enrolled.

When I look at the certificate used for the Institutional Recovery Key, it expires in March 2019. It's a self signed certificate (created like this).

Do I need to renew this certificate? I can't find any info on this.

I advise you to test this by setting a test Mac and then starting it with a date set to April the 1st of 2019 (just after your certificate expiration date).
Of course, for this test to work you will need to deactivate any automatic time synchronization:

System Preferences... > Date & Time

turn off:

Set Date & Time automatically


Delete favourites and history I have an iPad using Safari as a browser.

As you can see I have a very long list of History and/Favorites in the left hand column. There are hundreds of duplicates. I can get rid of the 1 at a time but I've already deleted several hundred.

Is there any way to delete them all at once?

Or find a way to stop duplicating them.

If you have a Mac, and you are using iCloud, I would recommend that you use the bookmark manager in macOS Safari to delete these. You should be able to select a vast amount of bookmarks using a shift + click.


Cannot Delete Mailboxes in Mail.app macOS 10.14.6, Mail.app v. 12.4 (3445.104.11), 2015 iMac. The software is up-to-date.

I was looking for a possibly-deleted email, and searched several Time Machine backups. I found one possibility, and restored it. It turned out not to be what I sought, so I deleted it.

Now, however, I'm left with extra mailboxes in Mail.app:

You can see them here as "com.apple.Mail Backup" and "Recovered Messages." "Recovered messages" is empty, and I cannot delete either mailbox. Similar mailboxes in the past (when I've used TM to recover emails) were easily deleted.

I have rebuilt them both (Mail > Mailbox > Rebuild), which only makes the single I email I thought might be my target reappear in the "Recovered Messages" email folder.

I've also restarted the computer, both normally and into safe mode. These had no effect either.

I used the Mac's Finder search, and found three files named "com.apple.mail - note the difference that the word "mail" is not capitalized, as it is in these mysterious mailboxes.  These files are all located on a mounted bootable backup disk which is updated nightly using ChronoSynch. The file path displayed in the Finder window says these files are located at the root level of the bootable disk in a folder named "private." Opening the bootable disk reveals no folder named "private."

I'm mystified. Can anyone explain what's going on here? How can I get rid
of these folders?

EDIT: I moved the "Recovered Messages" mailbox up to the top of the mailbox list, then quit and restarted mail, selected the moved mailbox, then used the "Delete Mailbox" command at Mail > Mailbox > Delete Mailbox. The mailbox disappeared. Perhaps moving it had something to do with the success, or perhaps thinking so is a post facto fallacy. The other mailbox remains.

I had the exact same problem with a mailbox restored via Time Machine.

What worked for me was quitting Mail.app, deleting the mailbox from ~/Library/Mail/V6/long-string/, opening Mail.app, and deleting the offending mailbox one more time.


What is the ATC service advertised in Bonjour? While browsing for services in my local network with Bonjour, I notice that my MacBook Pro provides the _atc._tcp. service. However I couldn't find a description for such a service from the canonical list of macOS services nor inside the DNS-SD registry.

The question is, what is that service? How to use it?

The _atc._tcp. service is/was the Shared iTunes Library service.

I'm out and about at the moment, but when I get a chance I will update this answer with some sort of link/source to back this up.

[EDIT]

I haven't yet had a chance to have a thorough look for a source, although I did do a quick Google search and found a reference to the _atc._tcp. service at this MacRumors discussion. In it you'll see the 10th comment (by priitv8) states:

  For comparison, I've included a screenshot from my Shared iTunes Library service (_atc._tcp.).

Also, it occurred to me that you may want to download Bonjour Browser and see if that sheds any more light on this for you. It's an old app but works well (although I haven't used it in macOS Sierra - not sure what you're using).

As an aside, the list of Bonjour service types used in Mac OS X you linked to is not an exhaustive list. It was only a list of common Bonjour service types used in Mac OS X and hasn't been updated since July 2004.


How to fix when connecting to any server results in "Connecting to '...'" window that will leave up all day? Along with myself, a couple other people in my office are having the same issue as I. Below, I will go through all the steps I've taken thus far (it's been a long time) and the results if I have them/can remember them.

Issue: When connecting to any server (smb, vnc, doesn't matter) the connection never initializes. It stays at the "Connecting to '...'" window. I can leave it up all day and it won't complete nor will it error out.

Current workaround: Create a new profile on the computer, and either User Switch or Migrate to that user.

Troubleshooting steps taken:

Ping. I can ping all and any servers fine. It returns with reasonable times, and resolves the host fine. If it's a webserver, I can go to it from any browser no problem.
Log. I can't find anything relating to when I first attempt connection, or anything during the duration of the attempt. Checked all logs that seemed relevant, and got nothing.
Netstat. Routing tables match the new user account fine.
sysctl.conf. Added the following:

net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0
net.inet.tcp.mssdflt=1440
net.inet.tcp.sendspace=250000
net.inet.tcp.recvspace=250000

Rebooted, still nothing.
Reset PRAM. Nope.
Reset SMC. Nope.
Connect to server on new account, then try to access it on the broken one. Drops connection to the server and dissapears from finder.
Delete Finder.plist. Didn't help.
Disable local firewall. Nope.
Connect using static IP and DNS name. Nope.

I've probably tried more along the way, but have forgotten.

Try this:
rm ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist

It's an invisible preference


Not able to update from 10.8.5 to OS X Mavericks I'm currently trying to update my mid 2009 Macbook Pro to Mac OS X Mavericks. I've downloaded the file from App Store several times the but every time when the Install progress reaches about "1 second left" a message pops up saying that the download might be corrupt or that the program can't be verified.

I already tried the following things:

Check HDD (also at boot with Cmd + R)
Check that apps are compatible to work with Mavericks
Checked HDD size (about 40 GB left)
Downloaded from different internet accesses
Made all offered updates mentioned in App Store

My drive is FileVault encrypted.

It's enough to drive one to despair.

Try changing the date to current date in terminal. You can follow Jonathan Mohar's advice.


Corsair Vengeance 2100 on OS X I just purchased the Crosair Vengeance 2100 headset to use with Steam on OS X (Mountain Lion) and to use with Skype.

I can get the headset to be detected by OS X and set it up as a sound device but after a few minutes the audio and mic cut out with the only way to reset it is to pull the USB adapter out and put it back in (and then go reset the output devices in OS X).

Has anyone been able to get it to properly work on OS X?

Thanks.

Are you using it wireless or plugged in?

If you are wireless, I'll bet they're low on charge. If you look where the cord connects, it's likely blinking or solid red (which means you need to charge them).

As for the adapter, you don't need to keep un-plugging to reset them. On the left ear, you press the button for a few seconds. This will re-sync the headset to your USB adapter. If it correctly sync'ed, the blinking blue light on the adapter will stop blinking on stay solid.


Applescript: Ask user for list of numbers and open new tabs with those numbers as URLs I am looking to make an Applescript that will take a list of numbers inputted by the user like (copy and pasted just like this):

25082945

25463469

03146331

36584524

23461461

Then, in a browser, open a new tab or each number with the number as the URL.

This is how far I have gotten:

display dialog "Please Enter IDs" with icon caution default answer ""
set id_list to text returned of result

tell application "Google Chrome"
    make new tab at end of tabs of window 1 with properties {URL:id_list}
end tell

I am guessing that I need to filter the input into a list but I heard that Applescript does not register formatting so the line breaks are not registered. Then for each item in the id_list, open new tab, set url as that number.

If you're copying and pasting a list, as in what's shown in your question, as in lines of text that have the (hidden) newline character at the end of each line, you can use the following:

display dialog "Please Enter IDs" with icon caution default answer ""
set id_list to text returned of result

if id_list is not "" then
    set i to 1
    repeat (count paragraphs in id_list) times
        tell application "Google Chrome"
            make new tab at end of tabs of window 1 with properties {URL:(paragraph i of id_list)}
        end tell
        set i to i + 1
    end repeat
end if

Here's the Event Log in AppleScript Editor after running the AppleScript code above:

tell application "AppleScript Editor"
    display dialog "Please Enter IDs" with icon caution default answer ""
        --> {text returned:"25082945
25463469
03146331
36584524
23461461", button returned:"OK"}
end tell
tell application "Google Chrome"
    make new tab at end of every tab of window 1 with properties {URL:"25082945"}
        --> tab id 8 of window id 1
    make new tab at end of every tab of window 1 with properties {URL:"25463469"}
        --> tab id 11 of window id 1
    make new tab at end of every tab of window 1 with properties {URL:"03146331"}
        --> tab id 14 of window id 1
    make new tab at end of every tab of window 1 with properties {URL:"36584524"}
        --> tab id 17 of window id 1
    make new tab at end of every tab of window 1 with properties {URL:"23461461"}
        --> tab id 20 of window id 1
end tell


How to Transfer PDF from iPad to PC/Mac When I bought an iPad 3 They have given me few pdf files. Actually They are eBook which I prefer. PDF files are shown in the Books section of the ITunes program.

How to Transfer those PDFs from my Pad to PC/Mac ?

Three options

use iTunes to sync. To do this, connect your iOS device to your Mac and launch iTunes. Locate your device from the list that appears on the left column. Now select the tab named "Books". Make sure the sync button is checked. Since Preview is installed by default on iMacs, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac Mini, after syncing your PDFs will be accessible from Preview. Benefits of using iTunes to sync is you can manage what PDFs appear on your device (and how much space they take).
use email. Launch iBooks app on your iOS device and make sure you select the bookshelf view (where your PDFs are displayed on a "shelf"). That means, open the file you want to share. At the top you will see 3 buttons(left to right):  Library, Index and Share button. Touch the share button (looks like a folder with an arrow coming out) and then Email. Type in your email address and touch Send when done. Note: some email providers impose limits on attachments so you may have to email PDFs a few at a time.
use Dropbox (Dropbox account required). Sign up for a new account at Dropbox.com, then download the free Dropbox app onto your iOS device. Follow the helpful instruction to upload your photos. Note that these PDFs will be available/synced to all Dropbox client apps that log in using your username and password.


Move Keynote presentation from Mac to iPad/iPhone I am building presentations in the current version of Keynote on macOS Sierra. How do I move them to my iPad or iPhone for review and playback?

I do not want to co-author simultaneously. The iOS 11 devices are for read-only use. Authoring happens only on the Mac.

iCloud Drive

If your iOS devices are using iOS 11 or above, then the easiest option is to just save the Keynote presentations to your iCloud Drive. Your iOS device will be able to access them from the Files app and launch Keynote to view them. Likewise, you can launch Keynote first and then browse to your iCloud Drive to access them.

iTunes

Another option if your device is running iOS 10 or earlier, is to just use iTunes on your Mac to transfer your presentations. This option may also be quicker if you have large presentations or lots of them, as the transfer happens via USB cable rather than the internet.

To transfer via iTunes, follow these steps:

Launch iTunes on your Mac
Connect your iPhone/iPad to your Mac via USB cable
After a short while you'll see an icon appear that represents your iOS device - this should appear to the right of the drop-down menu (near top left of the iTunes window)
Click on the icon to view your device's summary screen
In the left-hand pane of your iTunes window you'll see various options for your device (e.g. Summary, Music, Movies, and so on)
Click on the File Sharing option (it should be the last one)
Now you'll see the File Sharing screen appear on the right-hand side of your iTunes window. This screen will list all the iOS apps that support file sharing.
Click on the Keynote app
On the right you'll now see a list of Keynote documents saved within this app on your device (assuming you already have some)
If you scroll down to the bottom you'll see an Add... button at bottom-right
Click on this button and use the window that appears to navigate to and select your Keynote presentations
Click on the Add... button
Now your Keynote presentations are transferred to the device
When finished, click on Done button

Now when you open Keynote on your iOS device and select the Browse option, you'll see the presentations listed there.

Note: This method is also available in iOS 11.


How to open quickly – in a browser – a Wikipedia URL from Dictionary or from the 'Look Up in Dictionary' service dialogue? Example

Either:

in Dictionary, I am at the Wikipedia page for something; or
in a Services-capable web browser such as Safari I select a phrase, then use the contextual menu to Look Up "…" (and that thing is found in Wikipedia).

Aim

Open the Wikipedia URL in the web browser. Ideally in a new tab or new window.

In the past, I could do so quickly – without multiple steps.

In Mountain Lion now, I can't do so. I doubt that the feature/routine is lost … more likely forgotten by me (I have used Mountain Lion for a few months, but I can't recall when I last used the Wikipedia routine outlined above).

Question

How can I open quickly – in a web browser – a Wikipedia URL from Dictionary or from the Look Up "…" dialogue?

In Dictionary.app at the foot of the page there's an option:

View web page.

This is not the routine that I recall.

Also the URL is not what's required – example: I want http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parity_bit but Dictionary links to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parity_bit …


iPhone backup data overwritten by mistake I was updating my iPhone to iOS 7 and in the process I took a backup of my phone. After installing iOS 7 on my iPhone, I connected it to iTunes and instead of pressing Restore from backup, I pressed Backup and iTunes saved the backup of my restored iPhone, overwriting my original backup data.

The newer backup I have now is of my blank restored iPhone and I don't have a backup in iCloud either. Is there a way of retrieving the backup that I did before updating my software?

With iTunes backups, there is only one backup (the latest) maintained per device at any point in time. Since you have overwritten the older backup with a new one from the fresh install, it's possible to recover only if you have a copy of the backup folder made before the install through the built-in Time Machine backup system on OS X (if you have a Mac) or any other solution.

Here are the iTunes backup folder locations on different operating systems:
OS X - ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
Windows (XP, Vista and 7) -  %APPDATA%\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

Since you do not have iCloud backups, you're completely out of luck if you didn't have backups of the iTunes backups. If you do back up your computer, simply restore the folder where iTunes stores iOS backups (after making sure you have a current backup for other devices if needed) and you can restore your iPhone from an older backup.

For more information, see these answers to similar questions - they provide details as well as recommendations for the future:
Restoring an OLD iPhone backup
Recover iPad Safari bookmarks overwritten by iCloud


How to change the location where iTunes stores backups of iPhones? When I sync my iPhone 4 with my iTunes, the latter starts to make a backup before doing the actual sync.  This backup often takes a lot of time to make, which is very annoying.  What is even worse (imo) is that the backup is stored on my C-partition (where my WinXP Pro sp3 is installed and running).  I consider a backup being data, and I wish to store data in a different location than the one used for my operating system.

Searching the web, I found many people who were mad at the waste of time the mandatory backup caused, and I even learnt how to prevent the backup process from starting while syncing.  I could not, however, find any information for how to re-direct the location of backups made by iTunes, so I could choose a different partition than the default one.

Could anyone in this forum advise how to accomplish this?

Thanks for any help.

Wilbour

For Mac OS X, I had to use this guide: http://osxdaily.com/2011/03/05/how-to-move-the-iphoneipad-itunes-backup-folder-to-an-external-hard-drive/ and create a symbolic link to move the Backup folder, but it worked great.

The main thing is to move the Backup folder to an external drive/partition that has more space and then create a symbolic link like so:

ln -s /Volumes/YourExternalDrive/Backup/ ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

Then execute a Backup by syncing via iTunes to try it out.


How to install iTunes 10.7 on OS X 10.5.8 I have OS X 10.5.8 on a 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mac, and I need to install iTunes 10.7 but it won't let me. I need to connect my iPad 4 and iPod nano to iTunes but it won't allow me unless I can upgrade to iTunes 10.7.

Does anyone have had the same problem but managed to overcome it?

iTunes 10.7 requires OS X 10.6.8 or later:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1576?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US


Can't install ctorrent with brew Please help me with this issue. I followed the instruction here to download ctorrent with:
brew install ctorrent

but it turned out errors like this:

Error: No available formula with the name "ctorrent"
==> Searching for a previously deleted formula (in the last month)...
Warning: homebrew/core is shallow clone. To get complete history run:
  git -C "$(brew --repo homebrew/core)" fetch --unshallow

Error: No previously deleted formula found.
==> Searching for similarly named formulae...
Error: No similarly named formulae found.
==> Searching taps...
==> Searching taps on GitHub...
Error: No formulae found in taps

I sought for the workaround but haven't found out yet. Below is my system information:

ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.13.6
BuildVersion:   17G10021
Homebrew 2.2.13

The said formula is no longer available to install via Homebrew. You'd need to download and install it from the project homepage here:

Enhanced CTorrent


Shortcut to move point to beginning / end of current line I use the Apple Wireless Keyboard - French

The shortcut Fn+Left arrow (resp. Fn+Right arrow) goes to the beginning (resp. end) of the buffer. The shortcuts cmd+Left arrow or cmd+Right arrow do not seem to have any effect.

Does anyone know how to set a shortcut to go to the beginning / end of current line?

You can use Emacs set of shortcuts:

Beginning of the line ⌃ CTRL+A
End of the line ⌃ CTRL+E


Why doesn't El Capitan Spotlight search in custom dictionary? Since I upgraded to El Capitan, Spotlight has refused to look up for definitions in my custom dictionary (built by me). Instead, it sticks itself with Apple's default English-English dictionary.

Note that the custom dictionary:

is already at the top of the dictionary list;
still works just fine with Dictionary.app and Quick Lookup (three-finger touch).

Does anyone know why and have a solution or workaround to this problem?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Well, I managed to almost get it working by going to /Library/Dictionaries and rename Oxford Dictionary of English into something else. Then Spotlight started showing the results from dicts in Dictionary.app.

However, this is a rather kludgy solution for me because:

You have to Press Cmd+L in order to view translation, and there is no way to move 'Definition' up in Spotlight order
After I restarted my Mac, my Spotlight started to display result from another built-in dict, Oxford Thesaurus.

I guess, you could just remove all dictionaries that you do not use.
Anyhow, maybe it could be of some help for you.


How to prevent all applications in a specific folder from launching on macOS? How to prevent all applications in a specific folder from launching on macOS? With a .mobileconfig file? Or a script?

Use the following configuration profile. It will block all apps within the users home folder from launching without an admin password.  This can be changed to a different path if needed.

Save the following to a file with the extension .mobileconfig
Double Click on the file and install it in System Preferences
Celebrate

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>PayloadIdentifier</key>
    <string>com.company.macos.blockapps</string>
    <key>PayloadRemovalDisallowed</key>
    <true/>
    <key>PayloadScope</key>
    <string>System</string>
    <key>PayloadType</key>
    <string>Configuration</string>
    <key>PayloadUUID</key>
    <string>9c24d6b3-6233-4a08-a48d-9068f4f76cf0</string>
    <key>PayloadOrganization</key>
    <string>Company Name</string>
    <key>PayloadVersion</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
    <key>PayloadDisplayName</key>
    <string>Block Apps In User Folder</string>
    <key>PayloadContent</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>PayloadType</key>
            <string>com.apple.applicationaccess.new</string>
            <key>PayloadVersion</key>
            <integer>1</integer>
            <key>PayloadIdentifier</key>
            <string>MCXToProfile.9c24d6b3-6233-4a08-a48d-9068f4f76cf0.alacarte.customsettings.2476221c-1870-4f3e-8c52-52386029c4cf</string>
            <key>PayloadEnabled</key>
            <true/>
            <key>PayloadUUID</key>
            <string>2476221c-1870-4f3e-8c52-52386029c4cf</string>
            <key>PayloadDisplayName</key>
            <string>Blocks all apps in the ~/ directory./string>
            <key>familyControlsEnabled</key>
            <true/>
            <key>pathBlackList</key>
            <array>
                <string>~/</string>
            </array>
        </dict>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Source: https://gist.github.com/rtrouton/1475fc5785b1af9cfbf4080a2eb6696f#file-application_block-mobileconfig


Does Windows 2008 Server run acceptably on a Mac Mini with Bootcamp? Does anyone have experience installing and running Windows 2008 Server on a Mac Mini (which has either Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server installed), with Bootcamp?

I have an old Dell PC with Windows 2008 server which acts as my domain controller, Exchange server for a small home-office network. It's due for an upgrade as the hardware is so old (and noisy!). I like the idea of having a nice compact, quiet Mac Mini, but want to make sure it can carry out the same duties if I use Win2008 with bootcamp?

I bootcamped windows server 2008 R2 on a mac mini that had OSX lion on it and installed the drivers for windows 7 and it works fine. I am now testing to virtualise OSX lion on virtual box in Windows server 2008 R2.


Replacing Touch ID/Home button on an iPhone 7 My iPhone 7 Touch ID broke after submerging it underwater because of swimming with friends, but I just want to ask if possible, can the Touch ID (or Home button) be returned to life if I bring it to the Apple Service Center?

I tried searching iFixit, but it says that the Touch ID on an iPhone 7 cannot be fixed once and for all because theres some kind of one-to-one binding between the device and the Touch ID. I'm not sure, but if the Touch ID cannot be retrieved anymore, I'm thinking that if the clickable Touch ID in iPhone 6s can be used as a replacement for the Home button in iPhone 7. Will it work?

can the Touch ID (or Home button) be returned to life if I bring it to the Apple Service Center?

Yes, you can take your iPhone to any Apple authorised service centre to get the Touch ID/Home button replaced.

  Touch ID on an iPhone 7 cannot be fixed once and for all because theres some kind of one-to-one binding between the device and the Touch ID.

Touch ID is bound to the secure enclave built into iPhone (a security chip). Thus, if the Home button with integrated Touch ID (iPhone 5s and later) in an iPhone is replaced by an un-authorized/3rd party service provider, the Touch ID doesn't function. This is by design and is meant for keeping the security of data on your iPhone intact.

  I'm thinking that if the clickable Touch ID in iPhone 6s can be used as a replacement for the Home button in iPhone 7. Will it work?

No, you cannot use an iPhone 6s Touch ID/Home button with an iPhone 7. They are vastly different both in technology and working mechanism. (Home button in an iPhone 7 doesn't mechanically press, but instead give feedback via heptics.)


Erased disc incorrectly now I have "Apple ssd ap0128J Media" instead of Macintosh HD and broken software I was preparing my laptop for a sell and booted into recovery mode. I then went into disk utility, selected my Macintosh HD and erased it. When I rebooted I got stuck on a screen with a "prohibited" sign and couldn't do anything.

I restarted my mac holding down cmd + r and got to a screen with spinning globe where I had to select my network. It then proceeded into recovery mode after a while where I now have

Apple ssd ap0128J Media and osx disks as opposed to common Macintosh HD.
I clicked on apple ssd disc and proceeded to erase it. Selected name as Macintosh HD, type as mac os extended journaled and guid partition map.

I now have Apple ssd ap0128J Media and underneath it (nested) Macintosh HD.

I'm not sure about where I should go from here to re-install osx correctly? Any advice would be appreciated.

When you choose to Reinstall macOS you should be offered a list of disks for the installation to take place on. This is where you should see "Macintosh HD" which you're seeing in Disk Utility (as a partition). Do you see this option?


Is is possible to re-purchase an app for which I requested a refund? Yes, it sounds strange. I purchased an app that didn't initially work and I requested a refund which was promptly processed by Apple. Then I couldn't find a better app for my needs and figured out some workarounds for the initial app. Now I still have the app installed on my phone and the honest thing to do is repurchase it. How can I do that?

It's not possible. Once an app is refunded, you cannot re-purchase it, for all eternity. I've spent about 2h with various levels of Apple support without success.

Also, it's worth mentioning that you cannot get updates for a refunded app (makes sense).


Eek! My Photos app says it's going to delete a huge bunch of my images in 28 days! I have a MacBook Air and just updated to macOS Sierra, which automatically installed the "Photos" app to replace my old "iPhotos" app. As I scrolled through the "Photos" app sidebar I checked to see that all of my photos were there in the "Photos" folder (at the top of the sidebar). Then I scrolled down to the "Recently deleted" folder and to my horror saw a huge number of my images shown under the advisory that these photos would be permanently deleted in 28 days! They are  photos that I didn't delete from iPhotos or Photos, and I don't want them deleted.
I looked again at the "Photos" folder and saw that those same photos — the ones destined for deletion in 28 days — were also showing up in the "Photos" folders. I don't need two copies of them but I am wondering if they are safe if I see them in the "Photos" folder?

Now I did keep copies of my images both in my old iPhotos app and in another photo app (called My Pictures), and I did recently delete a large number of them from my "My Pictures" file to get more disk space, but I didn't delete the duplicates of those same photos from my iPhoto files. Is it possible that the photos I now see as listed for deletion (under Recently Deleted) are those duplicate photos I deleted from my My Pictures folder?

When you "delete" an image in Photos, what really happens is that the photo gets moved to the Recently Deleted folder, and only after 30 days is it then actually deleted. Photos in the Recently Deleted folder do not show up in other areas of the Photos app, so if the only images there are also showing up in the "Photos" section, they must be duplicates that you deleted.

If you want to delete photos now, you can either click "Delete All" in the top right corner, or select the photos you want to delete and the button will change to "Delete" and only remove those that you selected.

If there are photos there that are not duplicates that you want to delete, you can select those and click "Recover" in the top right, and they will be moved to "Photos".


Any way to view Microsoft Publisher files in Mac OS X I'm trying to view a MS Publisher file without running a Windows virtual machine. Any way to do that? It's ok if it doesn't render 100% accurately.

Another vote for Crossover/Wine. Not sure how well Publisher runs personally, but I know that the rest of Office 2003 (if that's the version that you're using) works perfectly (and that's using the free version they gave out a couple of years ago, I imagine it's only gotten better since).


Use launchd to start VMware's VM on VNC connection I have a VM (VMware Fusion) with enabled VNC access. I want to be able to access it from the network. Unfortunately, VMware requires VM to be running to be able to accept VNC connections and vmware-vmx is the process that listens on VNC port.

My idea was to have launchd job that will run desired VM when something comes to the port.
I've ended up with the following launchd job:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.kulakov.vm.development</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/vmw</string>
        <string> </string>
    </array>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/Users/kentzo/Desktop/com.kulakov.vm.development.log</string>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/Users/kentzo/Desktop/com.kulakov.vm.development.log</string>
    <key>Sockets</key>
    <dict>
        <key>NetworkListener</key>
        <dict>
            <key>SockServiceName</key>
            <string>5906</string>
            <key>SockType</key>
            <string>stream</string>
        </dict>
    </dict>
    <key>Debug</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

/usr/local/bin/vmw:

#!/bin/bash
/Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmrun -T fusion start "$1" nogui

The problem is that launchd listens on the port and I have to stop this before I can run VM. The only way to stop it to listen on the port I've found so far is to unload the job. Unfortunately it also stops the job itself and prevents VM from launching.

Is it possible to somehow tell launchd to stop listening on a port within the daemon?

Your problem here is that if launchd is going to listen on the VNC port, well, then it's going to get the traffic on the VNC port.  The approved ways for a daemon program to deal with this are either to expect the network traffic on StdIn and StdOut or to collect a list of file descriptors from launchd and use one of those for the network communication.  Otherwise the client is going to create a connection and then see the connection closed by launchd while it starts up the daemon.

I suggest you have launchd listen on another port and spawn a simple program that just pipes input to /dev/null while also launching the VM.  So then to start the VM you telnet to this special port.

Or, you know, the easy thing to do is just always have the VM running. :-)


How do I start TextEditor from the command line? I work a lot at the command line in a Terminal and would like to start a text editor on a certain file. I'm from Linux Land and normally use kwrite or gedit from a bash shell.  Trying to find the Mac equivalent, as a guess, tried

user> textedit somefile.txt

and

user> texteditor somefile.txt

and

user> TextEditor somefile.txt

and other variations.  I can't seem to find the proper name of the text editor app. (No, vi isn't to my liking.)  Oddly, the guy at an Apple store didn't know this.

Here are some possible answers, all using the 'open' command-line utility.

The -a option means "open the file argument with the named application":

open -a TextEdit file.txt

The -e option means "open the file argument with the TextEdit application":

open -e file.txt

The -t option means "open the file with the default application for editing text files, as determined via LaunchServices". By default, this will be /Applications/TextEdit.app; however, it's possible for this setting to get overridden:

open -t file.txt

Finally, any file that's of the "text" type will get opened by the application bound to the text type if you just say open file.txt. You can use the "file" command to reveal what the operating system thinks the file type is: file file.txt. So, for example, if you renamed "file.txt" to just "textfile" then open textfile would still open it in the default text-file editing application, as long as file textfile still thought that "textfile" was actually a text file.

A short 'help' file on open can be found by running

open --help

Or you can read the whole manual with

man open


What frame rate is used by iPhone in "30fps" mode? I know in the Settings app, it says 30 fps.  But after importing the video files to a computer, QuickTime 7 and X both identify it as 29.98 [sic].  MediaInfo calls it as 29.97.  DaVinci Resolve calls it 30.00.  Which is correct, and is it drop-frame or non-drop?

30 frames per second is based on NTSC broadcasting standards that go all the way back to the invention of television.  All recording equipment conforms to this spec even though we don't use analog anymore.

NTSC actually runs at 29.975 frames per second, so both your apps are technically correct.  We just say "30fps" because it's easier to say and write than 29.975.


Will my macbook pro come back to life with a new graphics card? I have a MacBook Pro Mid 2010 and it has a problem that it turns off or restarts randomly.

It all started when it began reacting slowly and then it went off when I opened a photo.

A technician told me it was because a manufacturer's fault that the graphics card stopped working.

Q: Where I can get a compatible graphics card with any specifications needed to find repair parts that suit my model?

Graphics cards on MacBook (and PowerBook / iBook) machines are soldered to the logic boards. You'll likely find a replacement logic board for less than the tools / skills needed to repair things.

If you're into microelectronics repair - you might see about reflowing the GPU and testing - it really depends on the failure profiles for your specific model. Apple normally charges $300 to repair all parts in a Mac portable that fails - so give the manufacturer a chance to repair things. 2010 might be vintage so you'll need to find parts on the open market in all likelihood now that it's 2017.


How to use Sublime Text with the built-in Apple spellchecker Question in title. Is it possible at all with Sublime Text 3?
Now I can download different spellcheck packages or use the built-in ST spellchecker. However, I would like to use the Mac OS spellchecker as it does a great job in auto-correction and auto-detection of language.

I'm on the last Mountain Lion with Sublime Text 3.

Edit:
I found a plug-in that interfaces with the Apple Spellchecker. It's called CheckBounce. Unfortunately it's broken with the current version of Sublime Text. So any alternatives are still welcome.

Old post, but by now a plugin exists that interfaces with OS X's built-in spell checker.
See
https://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11692.
Haven't tried it myself yet, but will now!


Parallels Desktop 12 - Disable Time Sync Is there any way to disable the time sync on Parallels Desktop 12 ? Whenever I resume my VM - certain tools I have running see the time change and immediately kick into high gear to update themselves and I'd like to prevent that.

In the VM configuration, go to Options → More Options and set Time to Do not sync.


Macbook Pro doesn't recognize password until reset For some reason my OSX El Capitain Macbook Pro has started to not accept my password until I hold down the power button and restart it. Then it accepts the password just fine.

Any ideas what might be going on/how to prevent that from happening? It's kind of annoying to have to restart the computer constantly...

Start in Safe Mode (holding shift key). When fully started (takes some time), restart normally.
If that is not enough do the old Mac witchcraft, SMC and Pram reset.


Assistive Access when script is launched by agent Problem
Applescript run by osascript is not allowed Assistive Access when launched by agent (~/Library/LaunchAgents). Although it works when run from Applescript editor or commandline directly (using osascript).
Situation
The applescript performs several GUI tasks for batch printing and is run twice daily. Therefore it needs permission to access Assistive Devices and is launched by an agent.
The script runs as expected when launched from:

Applescript Editor
osascript commandline (non-sudo)

When launched by Agent it returns:
/location/of/my.scpt: execution error: System Events got an error: osascript does not have access to assistive devices. (-25211)

(Message translated from Dutch by me.)
This led me to believe the issue is with osascript, but like I stated above, it works fine when entered directly from command-line using:
osascript /location/of/my.scpt.
Also, based on these two posts I edited the /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db SQLite database and when I check the 'access' table it shows:
$ sudo sqlite3 /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db "SELECT * FROM access"
Password:
kTCCServiceAccessibility|com.logitech.gaming|0|1|0|??

kTCCServiceAccessibility|com.valvesoftware.steam|0|1|0|??

kTCCServiceAccessibility|com.blizzard.starcraft2|0|0|1|
kTCCServiceAccessibility|com.apple.AccessibilityInspector|0|1|0|??

kTCCServiceAccessibility|com.apple.ScriptEditor2|0|1|0|??

kTCCServiceAccessibility|com.apple.Terminal|0|1|0|??

kTCCServiceAccessibility|/usr/bin/osascript|1|1|1|
kTCCServiceAccessibility|com.my.label|0|1|1|
kTCCServiceAccessibility|/osascript|1|0|1|

As you can see osascript is allowed access and I also added my agent's .plist for good measure.
Possible Cause?
The only thing I can think of is that, for some reason, the script is run by a 'different user' when launched by an Agent and therefore has different assistive devices allowed? Seems unlikely, however, as the TCC.db does not seem to be user-specific and the agent is located in ~/Library/LaunchAgents.
Help, anyone?

A simple fix is to save the script as a text file instead.

At the top of the script add the osascript shebang

#!/usr/bin/osascript

example:

#!/usr/bin/osascript
say "hello"
tell application "Safari" to activate
tell application "System Events"

    delay 2
    keystroke "p" using command down
    tell application process "Safari"

        tell application "System Events"
            tell process "Safari"
                click menu button "PDF" of sheet 1 of window 1
                delay 1

                click menu item "Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder" of menu of menu button "PDF" of sheet 1 of window 1
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell

end tell

The in the save dialog choose Text as the file format.
The file will be saved as plain text but with the .applescript extension.

In terminal make the save script text file executable.

I used:

chmod +x /Users/UserName/Scripts/newTest1.applescript

In the command arguments of the LaunchAgent just add the path to the file.

Do not add the osascript command to the arguments. You do not need it.

The saved script text file will act like an executable shell script.

When you first load or run the LaunchAgents you will get a prompt to set the  Assistive Access in System Preferences. If you already have System preferences open you will not but the Script text file will be added to the list.

You now just have to check its check box to allow it.

I would reload the LaunchAgent so it picks up straight away.

I have double checked this with the script above and all works as expected.


How can I make files I drag to the desktop stay where I put them? In Mountain Lion, when I drag a file to the desktop, it's automatically moved to a neat grid in the upper left of the desktop.

But I want it to stay in the spot to which I dragged it (usually because it's one I can see, so I can drag it to another window).

I thought it might be the "sort by" setting, but it's set to "none", so that's not it.

Thanks to those suggesting I change "sort by", but it's already on "none".  Here's what's weirder:  the files sometimes snap to a neat grid, and sometimes appear near (but not exactly where) I dragged them, with no other changes (I literally tested a few in row from the same program).   It's really bizarre since in the answer below, i cannot reproduct this and I'm trying to confirm (for others) that it was fixed by an OS update. The issue may be related to external displays being attached on systems running 10.8.2 and earlier.


try to run 'exiftool' from applescript but get 'command not found' this is my first attempt to run a shell script, namely 'exiftool', from applescript:

    set cmd to "exiftool -" & tag & "='" & myName & "' " & myFile
    do shell script cmd

cmd looks like this:exiftool -Artist='myName' myFile.jpg
and works perfectly when directly inserted in Terminal.
exiftool was installed by the standard installer!

What did i miss?

Run

which exiftool

or

type exiftool

and use that path instead of exiftool in the script.

For e.g. if I was using git in Automator, I'd do this.

/usr/bin/git pull

Modify this for exiftool usage.


Alternative way to add Apps to LaunchPad I noticed that its possible to add custom apps to the launchpad by dragging apps to the launchpad on the dock. However I removed it from dock, but still want to add an application without dragging it all the way to the dock. Is there a right click option or something similar that allows such feature ?

Platform : rMBP Mountain Lion V 10.8

Any suggestions please ? I Do not want to use 3rd party apps.

--

I have yet to find an alternative method, can someone please help

Take a look at Launchpad Cleaner.  Its a nice app for managing LaunchPad. They have a free and $5.00 version.


Dictation and Emoji not working I am using OS X El Captain 10.11.6 (French edition).

For unknown reason, the function Start Dictation (Démarrer la dictée) et Emojis and Symbols (Emoji et Symboles) don't work anymore.

I followed the recommandation in this question:  Dictation just stopped working. But, nothing works.

I have just updated to 10.11.6. But, it's not better.

What can I do? How to reset the settings?

NOTE:

The microphone work (the bars are moving in de Preferences panel).
When I choose Start Dictation (or fn fn) nothing appends (no microphone picture).
When I choose Emojis and Symbols nothing appends too.

I encountered this problem, it was fixed in a later macOS update.


2016 12" MacBook won't turn on So, I had my 12 inch MacBook plugged into an external monitor (with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse) and was working on it normally, when suddenly everything became really slow and unresponsive, after waiting for a while for Force Quit to work and with nothing happening I decided to force shut-down the machine.

When it was starting up it asked me for a password after entering it the login screen froze after waiting for 5 min I force shutdown this as well.

But now the machine just won't turn on at all. What can I do?

I resolved the issue by doing an SMC reset.


Debug iOS Application using distribution certificate I have Xcode setup with distribution certificate, when i run the application, It gets installed in the device but halts the connection in Xcode and throws an error.

The issue is, the application crashes for some reason after running in device, to get to know reason behind the crash we need access to log, and since  Xcode stops the connection post installation, we cannot collect the log.

My question is, Is it normal that the Xcode disconnect upon install if we are using distribution profile? Or is it something else that is causing this issue.

PS: Our development and testing team works remotely, the development team develops the copy with development profile which is working very good, and the testing team test it using distribution profile.

It's completely normal. Distribution certificates are not meant for development, and XCode won't let you debug that application, that's why it gets disconnected from the app.

To see the logs in the device, if the application is still being executed, you can use one log viewer, like http://lemonjar.com/iosconsole/


How to create an applescript for multiple dd terminal commands in sequence (for multiple USB Drives duplication) I need to create an apple script to perform DD Commands in sequence, to replicate the same .img file to multiple USB flash drives

The context: the computer is connected to a powered USB hub with 7 usb flash drives connected and unmounted by diskutil. No other USB devices or disk are connected to the computer (so the USB Sticks will be assign a disk1 - disk7 resource mapping)

The steps

a file named  "source.img" will be prepared and put on the desktop (say an .img of a bootable OS)
terminal must be asked to change directory to the desktop
with administrative privileges (the password can be inserted into the script, or asked once to the user) it must be asked to perform:

"sudo dd if=source.img of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m"

the script must wait until the operation is concluded, then ask the terminal to perform another DD, to disk2 this time:

"sudo dd if=source.img of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m"

and again, wait until the operation is concluded, and then ask:

"sudo dd if=source.img of=/dev/rdisk3 bs=1m"

and so on with rdisk4, rdisk5, rdisk6, rdisk7.

at the end of the disk7 operation , the script can shut down the terminal and send a finder message to the user (or an audio notification) that the USB Duplication process to the 7 flash drives is concluded.

It's a way to create a "USB duplicator on the cheap" for bootable images to be put on multiple sticks, I need it for a school project to my students.

Anybody can help ? I am a zero with Applescript. And this thing will be useful for many.

Thank you !
Alberto

You can do this with a bash script.

#!/bin/bash

SOURCE="/Users/username/Desktop/source.img"

dd if=$SOURCE of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m
dd if=$SOURCE of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1m
dd if=$SOURCE of=/dev/rdisk3 bs=1m
dd if=$SOURCE of=/dev/rdisk4 bs=1m
dd if=$SOURCE of=/dev/rdisk5 bs=1m
dd if=$SOURCE of=/dev/rdisk6 bs=1m
dd if=$SOURCE of=/dev/rdisk7 bs=1m

osascript -e 'display notification "Drives complete" with title "Complete!"'

Make the file executable (once):

chmod +x ~/Desktop/script.sh

Run it with administrative privileges:

sudo ~/Desktop/script.sh


Sending Pictures from iPhone - Orientation is Wrong I have an iPhone 4. I take a picture, send it to a friend, and regardless of how I sent the photo...the size I send, the orientation of the camera when I shoot the photo... most of my photos arrive to the friend's email upside down or sideways.

Any clues from you folks?

UPDATE:

This appears to actually be a bug in iOS5. Here is a thread I discovered with others having the same issue. I particularly like this guys solution and would love to see Apple implement something similar:

  What I think Apple should do is add a camera settings feature to the settings tab that allows for two new options. Option one would be "camera frame orientation always up". This would mean that no matter how you hold the camera, up is always up on the photo or video. Option two would be "camera frame orientation fixed". A sub option here would allow the user to select either portrait or landscape (with home button on the right) as the default "up" orientation. That would allow those rare two or three people in the universe who really do want to take upside down or sideways photos to do so. The "always up" option would allow the rest of us to take photos without having to worry that they will come out jacked up. In any case, I sure hope Apple is reading its support blogs...seems like there are enough of us out there who are having this photo issue to merit a fix in a not-too-distant future iOS update.

The iPhone takes photos in whatever the orientation of the sensor is then uses EXIF data to instruct proper rotation.

Your friend's e-mail is ignoring (or stripping) the EXIF data. There's no way to fix it on your side.


Unstable Wi-Fi connection on MacBook Air (Early 2015) My father's MacBook Air (Early 2015) has some strange Wi-Fi issues that he says he's been experiencing ever since he got it.

I finally took the time to look at it and there is indeed something strange going on. The Wi-Fi seems to work pretty well, except that it intermittently seems to become slow for a few seconds. This makes streaming video and general browsing really annoying.

I've run a ping google.com for a few minutes and plotted the ping time on an excel graph. And we can definitely see that it hikes 10-fold every few seconds.

I can confirm it's not coming from our router. This doesn't happen on all the other devices that are connected to it.

Things I have tried:

Everything in this thread
Resetting our router
Disabling everything (Bluetooth, Airdrop, etc)

There is one thing I noticed, is that it seems that the laptop's battery has swollen a bit. I'm not 100% sure about this as I don't have another MacBook Air 2015 to compare with.

It feels like a hardware issue, as it's been like this since the beginning (according to my dad). I guess part of my question is "How do I get Apple to take us seriously and do something?" ... I can already imagine Apple telling us that we have to contact our ISP, or that we need to try restarting the computer. Thing is, I have already tried all of that stuff.

Or maybe somebody has an idea what the problem could be?

It is most likely your battery pushing on other components in the computer. This can loosen connections or cause the wifi transceiver to be partially blocked or even bent. The first step you should take is getting the battery replaced (because swollen batteries can be unstable sometimes anyways) and see if that fixes the problem. If it doesn't there may be permeant hardware damage.


6000RPM all the time with no activity - restart helped I'm on Mountain Lion and for two days my fan RPM was 6000 and the temperature was 92C. I decided to restart and now it's 3300 RPM at 68C.

How come? Is this some kind of bug? I remember having problems with high RPM a month or so ago but it was also very hot outside... the problem somehow went away but now it reappeared... since it's also hot outside now I thought that's how it is - but no - there is something wrong and it looks like it's not the dust or hardware problem.. something in the OS is strange.. any ideas?

UPDATE: it's 5500 RPM again - I hate it! :( It was great during the entire day - around 3500 and now for no apparent reason it's 4500-5500... Again no activity on the CPU.. the temperature shows 65C so no idea why the RPM has to be that high.

UPDATE2: back to 3500 RPM all by itself - no restart... Are these fluctuations normal? That's just how it is? I know that being at 6000 RPM constantly was not normal, but what about these spikes to 5000 and back for no apparent reason?

Sounds like the symptoms of a runaway process using a lot of CPU. Sometimes there are also valid reasons. If it reoccurs your best course of action is to open the Activity Monitor, and look for something using a lot of CPU time and try to determine if there is a valid reason for this (an example might be you have added lots of little files that are being indexed by mds (the indexer daemon for Spotlight)


Set Spotify as the source for song titles instead of iTunes A lot of applications say something to the effect of "get the current song title from iTunes for your status", so is there any way to have those pull from Spotify instead of iTunes?

I'm willing to jump through a few hoops, and I'm a software developer so I don't mind some hacks, but I would love to be able to have those apps pull from my Spotify playlist instead of iTunes (who even downloads music anymore? Savages! :p )

What application are you interested in exactly?

One workaround could be to make Spotify scrobble to Last.fm (in preferences), and then get the song title from Last.fm. Iirc, there is a plugin for Adium that does this. Caveat: there'll be some delay in the updates when using this method.


Looking for a "null" Sound Input to securely disable the microphone on a MacBook Pro I want to be able to somewhat securely disable sound input via software.

Setting the sound input volume level to 0 obviously isn't a great solution and I don't care to plug in a USB device or mic plug.

I can't find any way to system-wide disable the microphone, so I was thinking there must be a software driver that can be registered as a Sound Input Device that doesn't actually do anything.

Check out SoundFlower

https://rogueamoeba.com/freebies/soundflower/

This virtual / software sound device allows sound to be passed from one application to another (so it of course includes virtual output and input devices).

You could achieve your goal by setting the input to soundflower, but making sure nothing it outputting to soundflower... this means soundflower's input would 'hear' nothing!


Cover flow doesn't update after I delete a file I have a folder with images. I'm viewing it in cover flow mode. After I delete an item, the preview stays the same and no longer reflects the currently highlighted item. Is this a bug, is there a quick way to force a refresh?

This is a bug, at least in Mavericks. I've filed a bug report with Apple. You can refresh the coverflow view by changing the sort order, e.g. change from ascending name to descending and back again.


Desktop displaying the titles of my minimized windows I am using a MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite, v 10.10.1

Just recently I have started seeing the titles of my minimized windows listed on my desktop.  The problem is the text bleeds through to other opened windows where I am trying to work.  The titles are not links and I can't select them in any way or move them around.

I have looked on the System Preferences and can't find anything that relates.  Assume I did some kind of keyboard shortcut.

Any help would be appreciated.

The title should only appear when you hover your mouse over a minimized window. There is no setting to change this.

Try running these two commands in Terminal:

killall -KILL Finder
killall -KILL Dock

This will cause the Finder and Dock to relaunch, which often fixes graphical anomalies.

(Also suggest updating to 10.10.3 to ensure you are benefitting from any bugs fixed in the last two updates.)


How can I use my Apple bluetooth keyboard for keyboard navigation on my iPad? I'm using an Apple bluetooth keyboard with my iPad. Even in Safari, arrow keys, Cmd-arrow for forward and back, Cmd-D for bookmark, etc do not work.  The only useful keyboard navigation is Return, Tab and Shift-Tab.

Are there perhaps some jailbroken apps that provide some sort of keyboard navigation shim?  Perhaps through GUI macros?

I am sorry to say that I am unaware of any apps (jailbroken or otherwise) that add keyboard navigation to the iPad.

According to GigaOm, the following shortcuts do work:

⌘C Copy selected text
⌘X Cut selected text
⌘V Paste
⌘Z Undo
⌘shiftZ Redo
⌘↑ Go to top of document
⌘↓ Go to bottom of document
⌘← Go to start of line
⌘→ Go to end of line
⌘⌫ Delete to end of line
⌥⌫ Delete previous word
F1 Make screen dimmer
F2 Make screen brighter
F7 Skip back one song
F8 Play or Pause Music
F9 Skip forward one song
F10 Mute Volume
F11 Decrease Volume
F12 Increase Volume
⏏ Show or hide onscreen keyboard


How can I copy and paste multiple texts? I would like to copy several different texts/things at the same time and paste them in any order.

Does anyone know any good Mac OS X software or plugin that can handle multiple copy/paste?

Check this: http://jumpcut.sourceforge.net/

Cited from the above:

  Jumpcut is an application that provides "clipboard buffering" — that
  is, access to text that you've cut or copied, even if you've
  subsequently cut or copied something else. The goal of Jumpcut's
  interface is to provide quick, natural, intuitive access to your
  clipboard's history.


Is it okay to stack an Airport Extreme on top of a Mac mini? Is it ok to place an AirPort Extreme base station on top of a Mac mini, or could this cause problems (like overheating or interference) with either device?

As depicted, they do fit together pretty well...

Stacking is not recommended. According to the Mac Mini user guide it is not recommended to place anything on a top of a Mac Mini, since its can interfere with the Mac Mini's Antennas for Wifi, Bluetooth and optical drive operation. Additionally, since that area kind of gets hot on my Mac Mini Late 2009, its probably not a good idea to cover it, since the Mini would be adding heat directly to the bottom of the Airport Base Station as well, and it does not have fans to keep it cool.

As noted in Mac Mini Late 2009 User Guide

  Important:  Don’t place anything on top of your Mac mini. Objects placed on top may interfere with the optical drive or the AirPort or Bluetooth®
   wireless signal.

In your case a stacking solution (pictured below) might be the safest way to save space and keep your hardware on the safe side to the written letter in the book. But if your careful and things are not interfering and things are not getting too hot, stacking might be OK, contact Apple to be certain.

Also consider moving your Airport Extreme to another location, it might help avoid sources of wireless interference at your desk, eg monitor, computer, speakers, cell phones, etc. You might be able to mount the Airport Extreme behind your desk or to a nearby wall behind your desk to get it out of the way and reduce the need to stack things.


Is there a script I can use to download the Mojave installer without being signed in to the App Store? Is there a way to script and download the Mojave installer without signing in to the App Store?

Something other than opening or clicking a url that points to the installer on the Mac App Store would be ideal.

There is a very well documented open source script that reads the software update catalogs and parses them for the major macOS installer components, prompts you which build and version to download and will then commence to download each portion to your filesystem and then build an installer application or image based on the options you choose.

https://github.com/munki/macadmin-scripts

The python script named installinstallmacos.py has this description:

A tool to download the parts for an Install macOS app from Apple's
softwareupdate servers and install a functioning Install macOS app onto an
empty disk image

This tool is updated for macOS 10.15 Catalina.


Why can't I mount a Samsung SSD 850 EVO? I just bought a Samsung ATA III SSD drive, the Samsung 850 EVO.  I installed it in an external enclosure that I know works with an ATA II drive, but I don't see the new drive in Disk Utility.  Thinking the drive was DOA, I exchanged it for a  new one.  This second one just arrived and I have the same problem.  This is all on modern hardware (MacPro Tube, MacBook Pro Retina).

I can tell from reading the forums that others have gotten this drive to work, but what are the chances I would get two DOA drives?!? Pretty remote, I think.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

jclarkv

I have the exact same problem and to the best I can tell, it's the chipset used in the OWC Mercury Elite Pro minis. Very disappointing.

My 500GB 840 EVO works fine in these enclosures, but I've bought and returned two 850 EVOs thinking they were DOA. Suspicious after the second one, I spoke with Samsung support on 5/12/15. The rep immediately acknowledged my problem, said the Pro series does not have this problem, and that they're working on a firmware update to fix the 850 EVOs for use in external enclosures. He had no idea when that update would come though. I called back today (7/29/15) for an update, rep was mildly rude, said there will never be an update, and that our only option was Samsung's new USB3 external drives (which are 850 EVOs internally).

OWC support (7/29/15) says they do not test Samsung SSDs in any of their enclosures. Their own Mercury SSDs will work, but are not tested above the 480GB capacity.

In short, try a different enclosure.


Why is cp command 4 times slower than copying in Finder in OS X 10.6? I accidentally stumbled upon this issue:

Copying a 119 MB zip file took 4 times longer in Terminal (cp) than in Finder!

I copied a file of 119 MB size in Terminal with  time cp file.zip file2.zip and it took about 20 seconds.

As this seemed quite slow to me, I went to the Finder, selected the same file and hit Cmd-D (duplicate) and it took less than 5 seconds to create the copy, that is only 25% of the time it took with cp!

Is there an explanation for it - might this be systematic?

Used Hard-/Software

MacBook 13" white (2007)
OS X 10.6.8
Internal hard disk WDC WD10JPVT-00A1YT0

it really seems to be a cache issue: I tried the opposite order with another file and copied it first in Finder and then in Terminal, and in this case also the second copying was much faster.

Since I have a much newer system, I couldn't accurately test with a 119 MB file as it took less than a second to copy in Terminal.  So I created several much larger files, up to 2 GB, using dd and /dev/random as the source and made duplicates.  I then rebooted and then did timed copies of each of the sets, one in Terminal and the other in Finder.  This way, there was nothing in the disk cache/memory during the subsequent copy operations in each app for each set.

The timings were near identical, so near as to be the same for this test purpose.  I say near identical as in Terminal I used the time command and in Finder I used the second hand of the clock. So in your case, the file definitely was still in memory when the second copy operation was performed.


iMac won't boot off of Mavericks USB when downgrading from Yosemite I made the biggest mistake of my adult life and installed Yosemite without backing up my HDD. Fortunately, I do have most of my actual files and programs saved to my external HDD, but that leads to another problem.

I use a lot of 3rd party apps to make music, and they are not compatible with 10.10 i.e. Pro Tools etc. I formatted my HDD in an attempt to start over but it keeps reinstalling Yosemite from the Internet.

I've made several USB boot drives but when they go to load up it just gives me "international no" sign (see image below).

Can someone please help me as my work/life is tied in to my studio. Oh also my external HDD is now all of a sudden read-only NTFS instead of Mac read/write enabled.

The Booting from USB issue

Ok, so first off. I don't know how you made the bootable USB, but for the sake of consistency in my answer I will give you a method to use:

Download Mavericks for the App store. (I checked, it is still there for downloading)
Plug in the USB drive you want to boot from (has to be 8GB or more)
Then from the Terminal app run this command:

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app

It takes a while to complete so go make yourself some coffee and let Mac OS do it's thing.

NB Notes:

Replace MyVolume with the name of your USB drive.
If you have already downloaded Mavericks and backed it up somewhere, you can just copy it back into the Applications folder. It has to be called Install OS X Mavericks.app.

Taken from Creating a bootable OS X installer in OS X Mavericks.

If you boot your Mac, immediately hold down the ALT key and select the USB as the boot device. This should boot into the Mavericks installer. From there you can run DiskUtilities and partition you OS hard disk and install Mavericks.

The NTFS issue

It sounds like you might have had a 3rd party app like Paragon installed. Mac does not natively allow writing to NTFS.


Are there any advantages to partitioning a SSD on a Mac? I have a Macbook Air with 128GB SSD. It's used to be a best practice to put the OS on a separate partition from data.

Does that make any sense? What are the advantages to partitioning an SSD?

There are no compelling advantages to partitioning the main SSD/HDD for a single OS install under OS X.

Regardless of SSD vs. HDD, it really only makes sense if you need to re-install your OS frequently (which you shouldn't need to do with OS X), and want to be able to keep your data around while wiping your OS partition. There's no performance benefit to be had, and it requires more tinkering to get things set up (symlinking User directories, etc.).

One of the reasons to partition in the past was to improve speeds for some files by taking advantage of the physical location of the data (transfer speeds are higher on the outside of a disk platter). With SSDs, physical location doesn't have an effect on performance, and modern OSes can optimize for best disk performance on HDDs automatically, so there is not much gain to be had from micro managing storage allocation as in the past.

Unless you have a very specific reason for not doing so, just use one partition and enjoy your Mac.


My wireless network connection gets lost frequently (OS X 10.10.2) I have long periods of time with no working internet because my 802.11 wlan connection gets lost frequently. This only occurs on my Mac. It runs OS X 10.10.2.

When showing the desktop after starting up the computer, the wifi symbol in the superbar shows the network searching for a wlan connection. Very often, every other startup or so, it won't find the connection to my wifi network. Turning the machine off, plugging the power cable for 20 seconds, plugging the cable back in, wait another 5 seconds and turning it back on usually helps.

I don't have any connection issues with the Windows PC or the iPad, it's just the Mac. Checking the web shows some talk about wireless lan driver issues with Macs (Update from 10.10 to 10.10.1 and then to 10.10.2) with nothing really having changed for my Mac.

I've called Apple service, they have a set of procedures they apply, but that doesn't fix the issue permamently.

I tried plugging in another wlan adapter (actually two different ones) and use it instead of the onboard device, but OS X didn't seem to recognize the devices.

I'm somewhat at my wit's end about the issue.

I have struggled with my own connection dropping intermittently (more often, just becoming very slow/weak for periods of time).  The problem for me seems to be that I chose a spot in my house that has poor Wifi signal, perhaps due to the configuration of walls, the configuration of metal in my house construction, and so on.  If I move my computer a meter or two to the left, the problems go away.

Also, the problems are much worse for a Mac laptop whose lid is closed.  The antenna is located in the hinge, and with the lid closed, the antenna's ability to receive signal is reduced by half.

I don't know exactly why wireless signal strength changes over time, causing intermittent problems.  Could be the use of electronic appliances in my house or someone else's.  Could even be solar radiation changing when clouds go by.  Best thing to do is get your router and computer jointly located so that the signal strength is generally strong - then fluctuations won't cause you to get accidentally dropped.

To check out your wireless signal strength and see how it varies when you move your machine around the house, follow this link:

http://letstalk-tech.com/how-to-access-the-wifi-scanner-in-mac-os-x-yosemite/


What's a good replacement for MenuMeters on the newest macOS? https://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/ says it does not support the newest version of macOS any more.

What's a good replacement?

The best replacement for MenuMeters is: MenuMeters!

It's a port to OS X El Capitan 10.11 and later of our beloved utility MenuMeters by Alex Harper, at http://ragingmenace.com. As he has not yet released the port to OS X 10.11 El Capitan, I made a minimal modification to the source code he has kindly made public so that it runs fine.
Confirmed to run OK on El Capitan 10.11, Sierra 10.12 and High Sierra 10.13.

Take note that currently the above port is somewhat lacking in releasing a new build. To get all the latest updates and features you have to build the binary yourself.
Or: go to another fork at emcrisostomo/MenuMeters which includes the latest fixes and has an installer DMG.
Or: go to yet another fork at axet/MenuMeters which adds new features on top.


What features in iOS 7 make a difference? Share your experiences on exploring iOS 7 with us..

Whether you found hidden or little-known feature of iOS 7 or can explain how a big feature makes a difference, we're looking for objective reports of how the new OS affects your workflow.

Also provide details on how to achieve that feature, and if possible, include a relevant image too (hold Home and Lock for a screenshot on your iOS device).

Please post one tip per answer. Please also check to see if your answer has already been posted - duplicate answers will be deleted in favour of the original answer on any given topic. To search answers for this question use inquestion:101382 (or inquestion:this, directly from the question page) in addition to your search terms in the search box in the upper right hand corner of this page.

Within Messages.app, you can (finally!) check on the exact time every message was sent and received by swiping message bubbles to the left.

source: http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/18/4741412/the-best-hidden-features-in-ios-7


El Capitan get current desktop name from bash I am trying to write a bash script that needs some identifier of the current active desktop (I want my emacs-clients to connect to different servers depending on the active desktop). I have searched around and I can't seem to find a command that will get this information. Does such a thing exist?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "active desktop", but the command "system_profiler" can generate a vast amount of information about your computer. Between it's various settings and text filtering, you should be able to pluck out almost anything need to know.


iOS 10 disable erase all data after 8 failed attempts I was looking trough settings since I've upgraded to iOS 10 and noticed that settings to disable erasing all data after 8 failed passcode is greyed out on enable setting and I cannot disable it or click it. Same with removing passcode I cannot disable it as well.
My wife keeps entering passcode to lock off my phone to stop me using it sometimes (more attention to her)  or friends do the same just to annoy for having an iPhone (apple haters) so I don't want this feature but I cannot disable.
 Tried googling it but all I find is how to enable ... I simply cannot click it to disable..

This may be caused by having an Exchange server configured in Mail (which can override some security settings).

All you have to do is go to your mail accounts and delete the exchange email and you can switch it back off

I strongly assume this is it, and its MS way of hijacking what you should have full control over. (Exchange server admins can force security settings on devices if the user wants to use that account on their device.)


How to restore iPhone contacts lost after an app crash? After a crash/reboot I lost all contacts on my iPhone.

I have an iTunes backup, but it is several months old. The iPhone was set to sync with my Windows Contacts list, but it also appears to not have been modified for several months. iCloud wasn't ever enabled.

How can I get (most of) my contacts back onto my phone?

A normal iTunes restores all data types at once, which means loosing all non-contacts data I added since the last backup.

I tried an iPhone recovery tool without any success already (Wondershare Dr.Fone; it has many clones, published across several pseudo-"how-to" sites: Asoftech iPhone Data Recovery; Recovery-Android: "Restore iPhone from Backup" and "Restore iPhone from Backup"; iPhone-iPad Recovery). The tool found no contacts at all, although correctly displayed deleted items of all other types available on iPhone.

Is it possible to either pull contacts only from iTunes backup file and restore those, or just sync my existing (although possibly out of date) contacts from Windows? Are there other tools which have chances to recover directly from iPhone storage, even if Dr.Fone failed? Any other ideas?

I found how to make iTunes restore only contacts, while preserving the rest intact:

run iTunes before connecting iPhone
disable auto-syncing in preferences: Edit > Preferences > Devices > Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically should be switched On
connect iPhone to PC. In iTunes:
on the Sidebar, select your iPhone (press Ctrl-S if Sidebar is hidden)
on the top central menu (Summary | Info | Apps | Music | ...), click Info
scroll the page to bottom, there's Advanced section
switch on: Replace information on this phone > Contacts
click Apply in the bottom right of iTunes window (or right click on iPhone and choose Sync)

These steps wipe the local contact store on iPhone (leaving cloud contact sync alone, if applicable) and injects all the contacts stored in the PC-side data source that iTunes has selected (from Windows Contacts in my case; Outlook on Windows / Contacts on Mac in other setups) and pushes those contacts to the device. It does not load contacts from an iOS backup.


Can you stop websites from opening apps? I have a situation where I would like to use both the app and website of a particular service.  However, when I search via safari, firefox or chrome, the website or link just opens up the app instead of the website.

Is there a way to stop these from opening apps?

** for whatever reason, the website has information and data that the app does not show, hence why I want to view the site.

The link you click on is called a Universal Link and it allows the web developer to create a link that opens the associated app automatically, even if not installed.

  When a user is browsing your website in Safari and they tap a universal link to a URL in the same domain as the current webpage, iOS respects the user’s most likely intent and opens the link in Safari. If the user taps a universal link to a URL in a different domain, iOS opens the link in your app.

What this means is if you’re already on the Reddit site for example, if you click a link, it won’t launch the app.  However, if you click on a link from somewhere else, like a web search, it will launch the app.   This is the default behavior in iOS 9 and up.

While the documentation references Safari, Chrome and Firefox both respect the universal links.

You can “bypass” this In Safari on a per site basis by long pressing the link then selecting “Open in Safari”. Every link after that will open in Safari.  You can reset it by long pressing the link again and selecting “open in app”.

Because Chrome and Firefox respect the link, once you set it in Safari, the other browsers will follow suit.


How can I do the equivalent of a Unix find / -print [under user permissions] under Mountain Lion? I am doing, or trying to do, a 'find /' which I would like to recursively list every file the user has permission to access under the volume "Macintosh HD" and nothing else.

I am presently filtering out the output of the find to exclude files under Backups.backupdb. This is a partial solution at best because the system is bogging under attempts to access flaky NSF mounts.

Is there a shell command that I can use that will stay on "Macintosh HD", recursively list file paths, and leave other volumes alone?

find can do this itself as per Apple's man page. You ned the -x option to

  Prevent find from descending into directories that have a device number different than that of
               the file from which the descent began.


Connecting Dell U2715H to 13" MacBook Pro (mid 2012) I'm new to this area and slightly baffled. I've just bought a Dell Ultrasharp U2715H display to connect to my 13 inch mid 2012 MBP. I just need it as a bigger monitor for word docs and web sites. I might later upgrade to the latest 13 inch MBP but for now I've no idea how to set up the monitor.

I've bought a mini displayport male to HDMI female 4kx2k adapter to use with an HDMI cable but it's not working very well (nothing usable). My MBP is running OS X El Capitan version 10.11.6 and the graphics card looks to be Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536MD. I've 4GB of memory installed.

I've hunted around and tried to google a route through this but I'm not technical enough. I just want the cheapest, easiest way to get this monitor up and running.

How can I connect my 13" MacBook Pro (mid 2012) to my Dell U2715H display?

Try using an HDMI to HDMI cable (or other) to check that the combination cable you are using isn't broken in some way.

I have a new (mid-2017) MacBook Pro 13" with touchbar and found that certain combinations just don't work when I connect to the same version Dell monitor. For example I bought a USB C to HDMI cable link here, and it will not work. I'm not technical either but believe it or not, there are different USB C settings! The website now says their new cable doesn't work with MacBook 2017 models, after I informed them. They said that they will now produce one that will.

Therefore, if changing the cable  (borrow one from a friend for an hour) doesn't cure your problem then you may be experiencing similar issues to mine.

Additionally, you now have information to avoid my mistake if you buy a new MBP and use your Dell monitor :-)

Hope this helps.


How to switch off sharing of history between iTerm2 tabs when setopt command not found I am experiencing the same problem as in this question: The history is shared between my iTerm2 terminal tabs: how can I switch that off?. As the user describes, my history is shared between different tabs and windows in iTerm2, which is very annoying.

I cannot use the solution suggested to the linked question, as I cannot use the setopt command:

-bash: setopt: command not found

I am using iTerm2 Build 3.0.12 on OS X El Capitan, 10.11.6 and GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin15) and tmux 2.3.
When I start only tmux, I am also getting the following error message:

tmux
-bash: iterm2_preexec_invoke_cmd: command not found

Deleting my iTerm2 profile/User Settings and starting with a "fresh", non-customized iTerm2 didn't help.

Does one of you maybe have an idea what I could try?
Thanks!

Edit:

Here is the output of shopt -p | grep histappend:

$ shopt -p | grep histappend
shopt -u histappend

and echo $PROMPT_COMMAND

$ echo $PROMPT_COMMAND
history -a; history -c; history -r; date | xargs echo -n >>~/.bash_history_workingdir; echo -n ' - ' >>~/.bash_history_workingdir; pwd | xargs echo -n >>~/.bash_history_workingdir; echo -n ' - ' >>~/.bash_history_workingdir; tail -n 1 /Users/tabea/.bash_eternal_history >>~/.bash_history_workingdir; iterm2_preexec_invoke_cmd

My output for $PROMPT_COMMAND looks so long, since I changed the default behaviour of the history command, in order to keep an "eternal" bash history (based on this answer). I never suspected that this could cause the weird shared-history-in-iTerm-behaviour, since I have had this in my ~/.bashrc already before the problem started.

The relevant part of my ~/.bashrc looks like this:

##########################################################
# Eternal bash history.
# ---------------------
# Undocumented feature which sets the size to "unlimited".
# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9457233/unlimited-bash-history
export HISTFILESIZE=
export HISTSIZE=
export HISTTIMEFORMAT="[%F %T] "
# Change the file location because certain bash sessions truncate .bash_history file upon close.
# http://superuser.com/questions/575479/bash-history-truncated-to-500-lines-on-each-login
export HISTFILE=~/.bash_eternal_history
# Force prompt to write history after every command.
# http://superuser.com/questions/20900/bash-history-loss

export CUSTOM_HISTFILE="~/.bash_history_workingdir" #path of the new history file
export PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a; history -c; history -r; date | xargs echo -n >>$CUSTOM_HISTFILE; echo -n ' - ' >>$CUSTOM_HISTFILE; pwd | xargs echo -n >>$CUSTOM_HISTFILE; echo -n ' - ' >>$CUSTOM_HISTFILE; tail -n 1 $HISTFILE >>$CUSTOM_HISTFILE; $PROMPT_COMMAND"

It's the history -a part of PROMPT_COMMAND in your .bashrc - that's appending to the history file every time a prompt is displayed, whatever tab you're using. A quick fix would be to remove this, so that each tab's session only writes to .bash_history when the session ends (e.g. when the tab is closed).

I like this behaviour (immediate appends to .bash_history), and I suspect you may too! A better solution may be to maintain separate histories for each session/tab - one of the answers to this question describes how to achieve that. You could retain immediate appends, but to separate files - one for each session. You would still be able to search your entire bash history with a command like grep "foo" ~/.bash_hist*. (I've not personally tried this: I use one history file for all sessions, since my normal workflow tends to be in one tab or through screen, and I archive my /bash_history periodically into a separate file, as described in this article - which is well worth reading, even if it doesn't address your issue).


stop an open Terminal from blocking overnight macOS update When macOS tells me an update is pending and I choose to do that overnight, I often still have a few Terminal windows open when I leave for the day.  The next morning, macOS says that it politely declined to close those windows, and thus not try to update.  So my workday starts with twenty minutes of waiting for the update to run.

How can I tell macOS to kill Terminal and anything else that might prevent the update from running?

Catalina 10.15.4, if it matters.  In Preferences > Software Update > Advanced, all the checkboxes are checked.

The easy way to do this is to change settings and allow terminal to exit.

Look for Ask before closing in Profiles under the Shell tab.

select  Never

I prefer to list the processes I am willing to have killed without a dialog.  I should probably add bash and zsh to my list now that they are mixing use and not always default for me.  Another take on this list for older OS is here.


How can I mass organize more than 40 apps on my iPhone? So I had to format my phone recently and redownloaded all my apps. Unfortunately now I have to reorder more than 40 apps on my phone! iTunes used to have a feature that can allow us to edit and organize apps on the iPhone, which have been removed with the recent update.

Is there any other way I can easily reorder and organize my app list?

To the best of my knowledge, no. However Apple still has the last version of iTunes with App Management still available for download, here.

You can download and replace your current (newer version) with this one, though you may (not sure, though I would...) have to delete your newer version before installing this.


Yosemite updates and prompts I am very new to using Macbook Pro, and was recommmend finding on the new Yosemite system that there are far too many prompts and synched uppdates etc.
Does anyone know how I can do a general disabling of them?
For example, I would like to remove the prompt like auto refill, when I am filling in forms for payments or I get email and facebook uppdates when I am in other apps.

Open System Preferences and choose Notifications. From there you can silence the ones you don’t want.


Automator app with a menubar icon I've created an application with Automator.

I want to have a new icon in the menubar like this:

Which starts the app when I click on it.

Is it possible? (without using Xcode)

PS: I don't want a menubar launcher.

An Alternative is to use the Applescript.app Script menu.

Shown selected here in the menu bar

This menu is normally for easy access to Applescript scripts and will list and run them from the menu.

But a quick test shows that that it can also run Automator workflows.

To get the menu you need to open Applescript Editor.app which can be found in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder:
/Applications/Utilities/AppleScript Editor.app

Once open go to it Preferences and under the General Tab check:

"Show Script menu in menu bar"

You may want to uncheck "Show Computer Scripts"

You can now quit Applescript.app and the Applescript menu should be in the Menu Bar.

Now you select the Applescript Menu and it will have a sub menu "Open Scripts folder" to take you to the folder where you can place your workflows.

Select the "Open Script folders" and then it's sub menu "Open Users Scripts folder menu to take you to the folder where you can place your workflows.

A Finder window will open into the Users Scripts folder.  You can now place your .workflow file inside it.

The Applescript Menu is dynamic. So Each time you select it it scans its folders to see what is in them and populates the menu accordingly.

Your .workflow files should show up there. The Menu name will be the name of the file.

Selecting the Menu for your workflow will run it.


Mail applescript stopped working on Yosemite This script stopped working in Yosemite. Any suggestion would be much appreciated.

tell application "Mail"
try

    set _msgs_to_move to (a reference to (every message of mailbox "INBOX" of every account whose flagged status is false and was replied to is true))
    set _msg_list to contents of _msgs_to_move
    if (_msg_list's length > 0) then
        move _msgs_to_move to mailbox "messaggi letti"
    end if
    -- End update for 10.7.0
end try
end tell

I get the following error:

  get every message of mailbox "INBOX" of every account whose flagged
  status = false and was replied to = true
  --> error number -1728 from
  mailbox "INBOX" of every account

Thank you!

Michele

Thanks to  Buscar comment I solved it:

tell application "Mail"
set accountlist to the name of every account
try
    repeat with n from 1 to (the number of items in accountlist)
        set _msgs_to_move to (a reference to (every message of mailbox "INBOX" of the account (item n of accountlist) whose flagged status is false and was replied to is true))
        set _msg_list to contents of _msgs_to_move
        if (_msg_list's length > 0) then
            move _msgs_to_move to mailbox "messaggi letti"
        end if
    end repeat
end try
end tell