How to pull ID3 tags from online database(s) for specific albums? My late wife had a HUGE collection of Vinyl and more than a few CDs.  I had some of each myself.

Now I'm retired and traveling, so I'm putting them all in iTunes.  The CDs mostly imported with all the proper tags.   Vinyl copied from a USB turntable to MP3 files did not, because iTunes only checks Gracenotes when importing CDs.  Audio CDs made from the ripped files occasionally matched but usually didn't.

Tidy up iTunes library? and items linked from it gave me several suggestions for tools to try.  None of them worked.  They couldn't even match files imported from legal commercial CDs that iTunes had already correctly matched.  This is, I imagine, since most "fingerprinting" algorithms depend more on the way the tracks are assembled than the actual music in each file.  (Yet I remember, some time ago, advertisements for apps/services that allegedly allowed a smart phone to identify a song from the audio picked up by the microphone.)

In almost all of my cases, however, I already know which album it is, so what I would really like is a tool that will let me tell it a group of files and some sort of ID or URI of the album in Discogs/CDDB/Gracenotes/MusicBrainz/etc. and have it add or correct all the tags (so I don't have to type them all in one at a time.

Bonus if it can also download cover art.  And run on MacOS.

the beets cli utility can query musicBrainz to get the id3 tags for your library.  Install beets from homebrew and run beets. Give beets a hint as to what you think the album is.

brew install beets
cd ~/elton/GBYBR
beets import Goodbye Yellowbrick

Choose [A]ccept [M]ore or A[B]ort when beets tells you what it's about to tag your files as.

source: https://media.readthedocs.org/pdf/beets/latest/beets.pdf

details: https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guides/tagger.html

If you would rather write the tags yourself I like

id3tag

link: Is there a good command-line ID3 tool for OS X?


Fast e-mail client for OS X? I'm currently using Thunderbird for my e-mail needs on OS X. I manage 4 different e-mail accounts, one of which receives a lot of e-mail per day.

As the messages pile up, I notice that Thunderbird is getting more sluggish. Is there an alternative that handles large volumes of e-mail efficiently?

Nobody's mentioned Apple Mail. I love it, particularly the Lion version.


Why did my desktop background changed and why pictures were opened, if I did nothing to do so? This is what happened:

My desktop background changed 3 times at different times.

The change picture (every x time) option is disabled and I have always had it in that way.

When I selected a picture to be open, two more pictures were opened too.

I perfectly remember that I only choose one picture to be open. As a matter of fact, this event had never happened to me in my life. Also, think about this, what a "coincidence" that the same day that pictures are opened without requesting is the same day that my desktop background changes too.

  There must be a reason because things don't happen just like that.

NOTES.

All the time when this happened, my mac didn't have connection to internet.
Every once in a while I see a message on the upper RHS (in the corner of the screen) telling me that I should update something related to the system but I always click on later and then the message vanishes.
User Allan said that I am not hacked, then what could possibly have happened?

Please tell me.

I think there must be a reason because things don't happen just like that.

Do you have the same image selected for all Spaces? that would be the simplest explanation, that you don't.

Test by pressing F4 [or FnF4 depending on how your machine prefs are set]. This should zoom all the windows out so you can see them all, but also present a set of you current Spaces at the top of the screen.

If you mouse over those, they will expand to small pictures & unless an app is covering the entire Space, you will be able to see the desktop background for that Space too…

For example…

All my Spaces are set to the same image, but it's not compulsory.


With Microsoft RDP client, how do I mark a particular server certificate as trusted? I am using Microsoft's RDC client on Mac OS X, to connect to a Windows server.  I am connecting to a RDC server that uses a self-signed certificate to identify itself.  As a consequence, when I connect, my RDC client gives me a warning dialog like this:

I can click "Connect" to continue, but then I have no security against man-in-the-middle attack, because "Connect" instructs my client to ignore the server cert.  I want to continue to connect, but in a way that is secure.

Another option is to go to the Microsoft RDC client's preferences pane:

and switch to "Always connect, even if authentication fails".  This way, I'm never shown the warning again: it's as if I automatically clicked "Connect" every time.  However, again, this is not secure: it skips authenticating the server, and thus is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

I want to be secure.  Therefore, neither of the two approaches above is satisfactory.

Conceptually, the obvious path forward is to somehow gain access to the server's self-signed certificate, and then ask the RDC client to treat it as trusted and never warn me about that certificate again.  This would be secure (like SSH).  However, I can't figure out how to get my RDC client to do that.

How do I arrange for this server's certificate to be treated as trusted (despite the fact that it is self-signed), and have the system never warn me about connections that use that particular certificate, but still provide security (e.g., warn me if the certificate changes)?

I looked into this a bit, and in my case the issue was on the RDP Server side.  The certificate it was using was actually a self-signed, automatically generated one that was not signed by my local CA's root certificate.  It thus didn't matter where I put the root cert, I always got the pop-up saying "The Certificate is not trusted..."

I installed the root cert from my local CA in the System keychain and set it to Always Trust, then on the Windows Server side, using Administrative Tools -> Remote Desktop Services -> Remote Desktop Session Host configuration, I updated the certificate assigned to the RDP-Tcp connection.   Right-click RDP-Tcp Connection, choose Properties.  On the General tab, see at the bottom there's a link labelled "Auto-generated"

(see an image of the pane here: http://www.windowsecurity.com/img/upl/image0021281709633474.jpg)

That's the self-signed certificate.  Clicking Select lets you choose any other certificate already on the machine.  Once that change was made, the prompt was gone from the client side on the next login.

Hope this helps (though it really only helps if you have admin access on the Windows side...)


Concatenating Lots of Small MP3 Files I have lots of MP3 files that make 1 book. But they're all only about 5 minutes long. Is there an easy way to concatenate all of these that runs in OS X 10.7 (Lion)?

For audiobooks, I prefer AudioBook Builder, which takes a bunch of mp3 files and merges them into the audiobook format instead. Advantages of this format is chaptering and the ability to remember where you left off listening.


Can Mid 2010 Apple Macbook Pro 15" NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor be Upgraded? Can a NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR3 memory on 2.4GHz and 2.53GHz configurations; or 512MB of GDDR3 memory on 2.66GHz configuration on a mid 2010 macbook pro be upgraded?

The GPU is soldered to the logic board, and is therefore not replaceable.

You may want to explore external graphic cards. eGPU.


Photoshop elements 11 I am comparing prices of Photoshop Elements 11 for our new iMac. Some of the ads say 4 gb space needed for download. Others are less money but only need 1.5 gb. Are there different versions of elements 11 out there? Why the big diff in space needed?

Never heard of different version of PSE.

Although, Adobe says 4GB of disk space needed. The 1.5 Gig you might saw seems to correspond to the size of the installer.


What is disabling internet sharing on my macbook? I bought my computer from my school, where they had multiple locks and disabled functions. When I bought it they were suppose to delete all these locks, but I guess they didn't – now I am unable to activate my internet sharing like described in this post.

I can mess with the options, but I cannot click on for internet sharing.

Can someone walk me through the process of deleting this from my system so I can turn on my internet sharing?

One possibility why you are unable to enable internet sharing is your school may have used  a Profile Manager (http://help.apple.com/profilemanager/mac/2.1/#apd0E2214C6-50F0-48C9-A482-74CEA1D77A9F) to apply settings and preferences to your Mac. The benefit is settings (such as WiFi network access, software licenses, etc) present in your Mac allows you to use your Mac in school without having to remember to the settings. Disadvantage is you may have to ask your school for help in enabling internet sharing. Whether the school agrees will depend on its policy for accessing school resources even though the Mac is yours (as you stated, bought by you).


Apple TV Black screen (OS X Yosemite ) I have MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014) and also a third generation Apple TV. Lately, especially after 10.10.3 update for OS X Yosemite, I am having mirroring issues.

I have checked all the links, forums etc on google and still no luck.

The problem is basically, my ipad 2/iphone 5 can successfully mirror to Apple TV, but when I try to mirror my MBP, it only shows black screen with audio..

I cannot control the apple tv settings from my menu bar on MBP either. It does not let me choose whether to extend my desktop or mirror built-in display.

On web, I read forums with similar questions but they are generally left unanswered or did not work for me.

Thanks in advance xxx

In cases where something appears to work, but it is not following your commands:

Logging as different user and try again, to check if your profile/permissions needs repairs.
Open Disk Utility located in your utility folder, and use the Repair Permissions.


MacBook Pro Late 2011 replace headphone 3.5 mm jack due to headphone's head stuck inside jack The headphone's tip has got stuck inside the 3.55 mm jack of my MacBook Pro late 2011 13 inch model. I've tried several ways to pry the head out, including using adhesive on a tip of a stick to get it out, but in vain.

Is there a way I can completely replace the 3.5 mm headphone jack socket/port?

I took it to an iStore, and the personnel there said that I'll have to replace the entire motherboard amounting to under 1000 US dollars.

The audio output shows as "Digital Out" and the audio icon is greyed out, I can't use headphones and the internal speakers don't work either.

I'm left with a MacBook Pro that's mute.

Any workarounds?

You could use a USB output device, like a Griffin iMic. You can set the audio output in the Sound preferences panel to go to the iMic, then attach any speaker or Mic to that.


How to downgrade from iOS 6 to iOS 5.1.1? I made a huge mistake of upgrading to iOS 6 today. I hate the release and I want OUT. When I try to downgrade by restoring to IPSW for 5.1.1 it tells me that the device isn't eligible for the build. What do I have to do to make iTunes accept this IPSW file and run the install?

You can read how to downgrade to iOS 5.1.1 on my blog : http://antonpug.com/blog

I just read this blog post and it looks like it's possible to downgrade but only if you do it quickly. Soon there will be no turning back.

Also, it's device dependent, as explained in this post

It worked for me to restore an old back up.


Changing read permissions on /private/etc recursively I was trying to make my /private/etc folder and all its contents world-readable. 'Permission denied' messages from a number of internal files and folders were a recurrent theme whenever I did a find operation on that folder. But chmod -R seems to have failed here. Can someone please explain why I get this error message and what I should do to fix it? I'm on OS X 10.8.3.

$ sudo chmod -R a+r /private/etc
sudo: /private/etc/sudoers is mode 0444, should be 0440
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting

In fact any read operation in the directory seems to fail:

$sudo stat /private/etc/raddb/sql/sqlite
sudo: /private/etc/sudoers is mode 0444, should be 0440
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting

Changing the permissions on /private/etc/sudoers is definitely a no-no. The sudo command will fail to work if that file's permissions are not 0440 as you are noticing. This is a security measure -- the command distrusts any permission setting that is less restrictive than 0440 as it allows for potential tampering with sudo permissions on the box.

Normally you'd boot in to single user mode to fix this problem. This lets you log in with elevated privledges so you can do a:

chmod 440 /private/etc/sudoers

and get your sudo command back.

But I found this article that had an alternative that doesn't require a reboot and works if your account has Administrator level access. I haven't tried it, but it seems sound.

Open a Finder window a hit Shift-Command-G to get the "Go To" dialog. Enter /private/etc in the dialog and hit the Go button.

Find the sudoers file in the Finder window, select it and press Command-I to open the information window for the file and change the permissions on the file so they match:

Close the information window and you should be back in business.

All this being said: I would strongly encourage you to rethink changing the permissions of everything under /private/etc to be world readable. This poses a serious security risk (as seen from the way sudo locks you out when you make /private/etc/sudoers world readable) to your machine. Maybe there's another Ask Different question here that'll help you solve a problem you think you're solving by making these unsafe changes?


Where can I find the latest java update for Mac OS systems prior to 10.6? I have a couple of old Macs that run old versions of Mac OSX and I want to protect them from the recent Flashback malware.
Has Apple produced a java update for systems Prior to 10.6 (snow leopard)?
Can I get such an update anywhere else?

Link:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4297?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
This link seems to say the latest update is only for OSX 10.6
I think there is an update for Lion (10.7) as well, what about leopard (10.5) or Tiger (10.4)?

The Java updates for OS X come from Apple, not Oracle (that "owns" Java and provides downloads for Windows and Linux). In general, Apple doesn't seem to support OS X versions prior to 10.6 (that's something like an unofficial policy, they seem to support the latest 2 versions only), so in general you can't get official Apple updates for anything, including Java, for 10.5 and below. There were ideas about some open source substitutes for Java, but I am not sure what happened to them. Given the recent Java issues, Apple may decide to create and distribute Java update for 10.5, but I won't bet on that.


Does the iPhone 4 still vibrate in your ear if you receive a text message during a call? With iOS 5 upon us, does the iPhone 4 still vibrate in your ear if you receive a text message (or any kind of notification) during a call?

Haven't tried with text messages, but with Whatsapp and emails it does, unfortunately :(

So to answer the second part of your question, yes notifications vibrates during call.


What is the process name of Time Machine timeline What is the process name of Time Machine timeline?

I would like to write a script that looks up when it is running so that I can  disable my windows manager (Kwm) when I enter the timeline.

To view process,  in Terminal:top -o cpuTop will list all your current processes and organizing by CPU load makes it a breeze to find the desired PID


Sharing large library of Photos and Videos (currently in iPhoto) in different macs at home currently I have iPhoto on my mac (mountain lion). the library is more than 350 GB (and growing fast). It is only on my computer, but my wife wants to have acces to the pictures too, not only photostream. She has an older mac book (white) running lion.

My idea was to centralize the library (NAS) and solve 3 problems at the same time (space on my laptop, and acces to more than 1 user, and backup of the photos (currently on my time machine)). As far as I know, it is not possible to store the iPhoto library on a NAS... So, what alternatives are there? I know picasa, they have a light app for mac, but aren't there any other alternatives? I don't want to split the library.

I currently use faces and places... and I would like to keep this features. I also like to share pics with my friends via photostream, but this can easily be replaced with other services.

Thanks

Have you tried to use something like AeroFS to sync the folder with the iphoto library across the two computers? You will probably still want to avoid making edits at the same time but at least you will have access to the library on two computers.


How to disable Spotlight and mds_stores on Mac OS Catalina EDIT: I appear to have a temporary fix using mdutil - see the end of the post - but I am not sure if it is a permanent fix, so I am still interested in answers.

I have an iMac running Mac OS 10.15.4 (Catalina). My problem is that every few minutes, /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Versions/A/Support/mds_stores starts up, and keeps going until my hard drive is full, and then seems to give up and give me my disk space back. (I believe it is not a "disk" now, but I will stick with the terminology). Not only does it make my disk full at unpredictable times, it also uses a lot of memory.

mds_stores appears to be the indexing program used by Spotlight; I am happy to disable both. I never use Spotlight.

I have followed the suggestions at https://www.technipages.com/macos-sierra-enable-disable-spotlight , i.e. disable System Integrity Protection, run

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

and then re-enable System Integrity Protection. But it does not work. It does not appear to have disabled Spotlight (I can still see a magnifying glass icon in the top right corner of my status bar) and it certainly does not stop my real problem: mds_stores running and filling up my disk.

I have also seen it suggested that I remove the index files via:

sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100/*

However on this version of Mac OS (10.15.4, Catalina), there is no directory /.Spotlight-V100

20-Apr-20,15:26:46 ~> sudo ls -a /
Password:
.           .VolumeIcon.icns    .vol            System          bin         etc         private         usr
..          .file           Applications        Users           cores           home            sbin            var
.DS_Store       .fseventsd      Library         Volumes         dev         opt         tmp

I have also see the suggestion (at http://itechinspector.com/mds_stores-process-consuming-high-cpu-usage.html and also at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8658455 ) to run sudo mdutil -a -i off . When I originally posted this was not working, but when I tried later in the day it did work:

20-Apr-20,21:35:27 ~> sudo mdutil -a -i off
Password:
/:
2020-04-20 21:35:40.665 mdutil[8406:156351] mdutil disabling Spotlight: / -> kMDConfigSearchLevelFSSearchOnly
    Indexing disabled.
/System/Volumes/Data:
2020-04-20 21:35:40.778 mdutil[8406:156351] mdutil disabling Spotlight: /System/Volumes/Data -> kMDConfigSearchLevelFSSearchOnly
    Indexing disabled.

[It also gave me back a ton of disk space. I was sitting at 27 Gi free, which mds_stores would gradually gobble up. After running the above command, I suddenly have 55 Gi free; so I got back 28 Gi, more than 10% of my disk!]

So I appear to have a temporary fix, which I assume will go away next time I reboot. Does anyone know if that (or something else) disables Spotlight and mds_stores, permanently, for Catalina? (Because it looks like it might work a little differently to earlier Mac OS versions).

In my experience, a failing disk and/or a disk filesystem that’s damaged or failing is the cause for most spotlight processes that run too long. Also, metadata importers that are added by programs like Office and others run to index their files and can cause issues.

Before you disable this entirely, have you opened the spotlight settings and added each user home folder to the privacy? This cleans all records of those user files from the database. Then you would restart the machine and perhaps boot to recovery HD and run Disk Utility to repair the disk.

Sometimes a clean install is all that’s needed - https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/66690/5472

Clearly, spotlight needs to take one pass over all the data, but then it should quit. As you say, if you don’t need it, adding the folders you wish to not have indexed is the easy way to let the system index things it needs, but ignore your user files, database files and other things that might cause temporary or permanent resource usage. I could see some high transaction data based never getting indexed if they don’t tell spotlight to not index files.

Preventing Spotlight from Indexing Files & Folders?


iPhone 11 plays random music without prompting, what's going on? My wife's iPhone 11 running iOS 13.3.1 seems to randomly start playing stuff from the music app. We don't have Pandora or anything like it on there. The music seems to play in random situations; I haven't been able to isolate what's going on. We restarted, turned off the handoff in settings, I turned off bluetooth. Whether headphones are connected doesn't seem to matter.

I looked up the phenomenon on the 'net and found some vague answers, but there's simply not a lot of helpful information. Anyone else see anything like this?

I would suspect one of two things:

(a) you're accidentially triggering "Hey Siri"

or

(b) you have a hardware problem with the digitizer (i.e. the touch sensitive part of the display).

You can try disabling "Hey Siri" by opening Settings > Siri & Search and then turning off "Listen for 'Hey Siri'".

If you have a hardware problem with the touch input, it will probably need to go in for repair. If you some times in various apps or even on the main home screen experience that "something" moves or taps by itself, this would indicate a touch problem.


Magic Trackpad stuck battery I have a Magic Trackpad that sat unused in a work drawer for a few months. Like a total noob, I neglected to remove the batteries.

I recently reconfigured my workspace and decided to start using trackpad once more, but to my horror, the batteries had corroded and the one furthest in, is very very stuck.

I have tried a long neck, thin screwdriver to try and pry away some of the corrosion around the edge, and lot of banging/ knocking/ cursing, but the battery is still in place.

I welcome any suggestions on how I can remove the other battery and hopefully resurrect this trackpad into working order. I open to suggested chemicals/ power tools etc.

Many thanks in advance community!

So the gel containing battery acid has leaked out and dried up.

You need to make it muddy again to be able to remove it, since dry removal is not possible.

There are multiple methods to do that described here. (Vinegar, Lemon juice, and others).

Example:

Mix water and baking soda into a thick paste. Start with about a teaspoon of baking soda and add water a few drops at a time until it can be mixed into a thick paste.

Apply the baking soda paste generously to any corroded areas using cotton swabs. Allow the paste to sit for 15 minutes.

Use a slightly moistened toothbrush to gently agitate the paste. Rinse the toothbrush often, and continue until the majority of the paste has been scrubbed away. In hard to reach spaces use q-tip to deliver the paste.

Needless to say, use gloves!


My Books app in my ipad pro deletes/disappears my pdfs. I am on IOS 12.2 and it is was updated a couple weeks back without issue What did happen is that I was reading one of the PDFs and the next time I opened it, the Book app was frozen.  So, I shut off the ipad.  When I turned it back on, I realized that I went from 130 PDFs to 4 losing nearly everything.  Luckily, about 105 of the PDFs were on my iphone.  So, I quickly bought more iCloud storage and transferred that there and then those PDFs were now back to my ipad, but I did lose 25 or so documents.  I would really like to get these back and I do not know which ones I lost.

I tried all kinds of remedies I found on the web - including one that worked after an IOS update that zapped my PDFs a couple months back (no IOS update this time):

http://blog.irarott.com/blog/2018/01/17/restoring-missing-pdfs-in-ibooks/

There have been a few other ideas tossed around, like deleting the Books app and reinstalling it - that failed too.

Oh - and today my 105 documents became 95.

Very trumping irritating!

I am pretty bearish on a solution as many people appear to have this problem and have posted about it with some solutions that worked for them, but none of which worke for me on this cut.

Not sure why such a monumental bug is so difficult for Apple to handle.

PS:  Another thing worth mentioning is that when I re-downloaded one of the missing PDFs (Actually, the one that was frozen), the document ended up in the correct folder in my collection and when I opened it, it was on the page I was last looking at - so Book still has some kind of memory of the PDF - I just hope that it can eventually make all the missing PDFs - reappear.  It is very scary to me that I cannot trust the Book app - or even iCloud - after all, the 105 documents that became 95 today were theoretically on iCloud!

I've had the same problem. One of my friends gave me a slew of books in ePub and PDF format. Most of them are crap, but a few I really hoped to read. The only thing that has saved me is that I have iCloud backups of my iPad Pro.

I've also been able to recover a few by syncing with my Mac, then opening Books and going to Collections->PDFs. Then I had to manually get them back onto my iPad Pro.

Whoa! Suddenly they all are there. I re-authenticated on my Mac (entered my iCloud password) and everything popped up.

I don't know if we have the same issue, but it just might work for you too. Try logging out of and back into iCloud!


Shuffling Songs from Multiple Playlists on iPhone I'd like to play songs from multiple playlists on my iPhone and iCloud. I use iTunes Match which clearly introduces some limitations.

The closest I've come is to create a Smart Playlist, with the rules stating to include songs from specified other playlists.

However, since iCloud does not sync smart playlists that reference other playlists, it does not make it to my iPhone. I can only listen to it from iTunes on my Mac.

Is there any other route to achieving this, without manually sweeping the songs whenever I make a change to one of the referenced playlists?

Since I got the Tumbleweed badge for this, I'll respond with what I did.

Cleared all the star ratings from my entire music library.
In each of my "genre" playlists, assigned every song a rating of 5-stars
Created a smart playlist that includes every song with 5 stars. This playlist will sync over iCloud to my iDevices for listening.
Created a second smart playlist that lists every song in my "genre" playlists that doesn't have 5 stars. This playlist is for maintenance and is only available on my Mac.

This works as long as I do the following:

Continue adding songs that I like to my "genre" playlists.
Every once in a while, check the second smart playlist, and give a 5-star rating to any songs in it. It will then be empty, and the songs will automatically be added to my listening playlist.


What causes the strange lines in Chrome on a Macbook Pro? From time to time I get strange colorful lines on my screen in Chrome. It only effects certain websites. I tried disabling "Hardware acceleration" in the settings but that didn't seem to help. What is the cause?
Here is a Facebook screen

And a Stackexchange screen. Note it only affects the top bar.

If it was only happening in Chrome, I would have suggested uninstalling and reinstalling Chrome. I would have also suggested that you use Safari and see if you get the same issues.
Not sure how the PRAM would affect this 1 program and not others. If you set any kinds of flags in Chrome(link works in chrome only) then I would hit the Reset All on the flags page and restart the browser.


How does Bluetooth improve location accuracy? I noticed that iOS 7 on my iPad now says this in the Bluetooth pane of the preferences if Bluetooth is turned off: "Location accuracy and nearby services are improved when Bluetooth is turned on."

How does Bluetooth improve location accuracy? I know that Wifi improves accuracy because Apple has various Wifi networks mapped out, but how could Bluetooth help?

iOS 7 introduced support for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) iBeacons. These are small Bluetooth devices that can be placed to indicate a very specific location and the system respond in some way when they are detected. Enter a shop and an app for the shop showing you the latest offers might be one way for this to be leveraged. This would be different from usual geolocation APIs which become inaccurate when you are inside large structures (offices, malls etc.) as they cannot get a GPS fix, and WiFi coverage tends to be meshed with repeater stations


Xcode 6, Yosemite and iOS device with iOS6 I'm testing the app that is built using latest iOS8 SDK, but deployment target is set to iOS6 (it still has to run on iPod Touch 4th gen). I know that there is no iOS6 simulator available on Yosemite, but I'm trying to deploy it via old USB 30-pin cable on the physical device.

Seems like I'm always getting "valid provisioning profile for this executable is not found" error message, even though that profile is correct (which I'm 99% sure).

Should such configuration work and I just need to make sure profile is ok, or is it unsupported combination?

Well, looks like it was a problem in the profile. I was able to successfully deployed app to the old iPod Touch in this configuration.


Can I remove the lines in the Notes.app and change the line spacing? The only reason I use the Notes.app and not Stickies.app is iCloud sync.

I enjoy the customization (colors, fonts, minimized view) and minimalism (plain background, thin borders) of Stickies over the skeuomorphismic approach which generally requires much more space on the desktop.

How can I safely remove the background lines and change the line spacing in Notes.app?

I tried searching for keys for hidden preferences with strings /Applications/Notes.app/Contents/MacOS/Notes | grep, but didn't find anything.

There's no graphics for the grid lines, because they're just solid lines and their height depends on the font size. You can almost get rid of the grid lines by replacing paper.png with a solid color, but there's a light gradient drawn over it.

I also tried adding shortcuts for orderFrontSpacingPanel: and setLineHeightMultiplier: in DefaultKeyBinding.dict, but they didn't have any effect.


How can I preserve indentation in Notes.app on OS X? Suppose I've got a text formatted like this:

To do:
    To buy:
        milk

I would like the Notes app to keep the indentation level as I enter a new line:

To do:
    To buy:
        milk
        sugar

How ever it jumps to the beginning of the next line:

To do:
    To buy:
        milk
sugar

Can I do anything about it? (Except using lists/bullet points?)

One solution is to write all your list items, one under the other, neglecting any indentation level. Then, you can select all the items you want to be on the same level, and press cmd+]. This will allow you to increase the indentation level.
As far as I know, auto-indentation applies just for bulled/dashed lists.


how can I put a macron over the letter "m" in MS Word? I'm running MS Word 16.16.5 on macOS Mojave 10.14.1. I can't figure out how to put a macron over the letter "m". I can create with vowels but not consonants with the ABC-Extended.

Any suggestions?

Type m and then ⌥ Option⇧ Shift A.  You may need to change the font to get it to look good.


What's the horizontal sync and vertical refresh values for the June 2012 MBP 13" display? Got the June 2012 13" base MBP, and wondering if anyone knew (or how to find out) the horizontal sync and vertical refresh values for this display?

I'm trying to set up the correct resolution for the Linux Mint partition, and I've found with other installations (on other hardware) that having the incorrect hsync and vert refresh values will prevent the OS from listing all the available resolution options.

I rang and asked Apple Support but they weren't able to assist in this matter, but suggested that there might be a command to query the hardware directly.

edit: I tried the command listed at this question but it seemed to produce no output, and returned immediately.

I was able to get these values by booting into the Linux partition (which somehow managed to get the correct resolution by itself!) and using the following cmd in terminal (requires super):

get-edid | parse-edid

I was expecting a range of values, e.g. 60.0 - 75.0, but got the exact values - vfreq 60.223Hz and hfreq 50.949Hz.

This should be available via a live-CD/usb too.


Cant buy new, download or update existing purchased free apps from cloud via iTunes 12.3.0.4? For more than 48 hours, my computer has not been able to download apps - purchase or download updates. I see no error messages, but in the background there are no downloads at all?

My account seems OK as I can download on my iPad & iPhone with iOS 9.0.2

Why is iTunes 12.3.0.4 on Windows 8.1/PC not allowing me to buy & download free apps or update/ download existing purchases from cloud?

The help article has several options - these are the ones you can check:

Set the date/time on your PC to match an internet time server
Check anti-virus / firewall software on the PC
Sign out of the app store on iTunes and then sign back in

Barring that, you might need to get at the debug or error logs for the App Store - http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/ or AppleCare can help. Maybe someone else can edit in where the logs are on a PC.


sync all contacts between devices Ok, I got an iPhone & iPad, only I use two different libraries on iTunes.
I got Google installed on both devices (plus desktop).
But for some reasons only part of my contacts are on the iPhone, while
all of them are on my iPad.
What the simplest way to sync (and merge if necessary) these between devices?
iCloud, Google (chrome/calendar/gmail), bluetooth, other app?

You can use the CardDAV protocol to sync your contacts. Here is an explanation how you can use it: Syncing contacts

There is also the possibility to use Google as an Exchange account. You should be able to find the instructions on the interwebs (I fear, if I post a link it will be in german language)

If you also enable the Google account also on your Addressbook application, merging them should be easy (depending on the application). In most cases, you just have to drag and drop the contacts to the corresponding Google folder.


Is there any way to access the console logs on an iOS 8 device without installing Xcode? Prior to iOS 8, I accessed console logs on iOS 8 devices using iPhone Configuration Utility. That no longer works.
Is there any other way to access these logs without installing a program as large as XCode?

Yes. Apple Configurator 2 has a command line tool that can tail and/or dump the console logs and do some other nice operations like pair, enumerate connected devices, etc...

cfgutil syslog

That's the official Apple way and it's much smaller a download than Xcode. Both are free but cfgutil is much more powerful and can do things like remove apps, erase, pair, and even run scripts when you attach and detach iOS devices to your Mac.

To make cfgutil available at the command line, open Configurator 2, and choose Configurator 2 -> Install Automation Tools ... from the menu.

You could also look at homebrew and install libimobiledevice - that is open source and free as well and seems to be kept updated fairly well over time.

brew install libimobiledevice


AT&T Apple IPhone IOS 4 I would like to know how to block a specific phone number from calling or texting my phone. How do I do this on my phone?

Technically, you can not block calls on your iPhone. If you want to block a caller, you have to contact your carrier.

Some phones enable call rejection but, alas, the iPhone is not one that does. Note that call rejection means the call still reaches your phone, but software in the phone prevents notification of the call from reaching you. Call blocking means that the call never reaches your phone, it is cut off by the carrier and never routed to your phone.

However, if you want to make it a little bit easier to ignore the offending caller, you could set up a contact for the caller's number, set the ringtone to a silent ringtone, vibration to Nothing, the text tone to None and the text vibration to Nothing. You'll still see notifications when the caller tries to reach you, but this is the best that you can do without contacting your carrier.


Backup Photos using Google Photo Desktop Uploader I am a user of Photos for OSX, after upgrading from iPhoto.  I am trying to use Google's photo service to backup my library from my Mac Mini.  I have installed the Google Desktop Uploader application from the photos.google.com site.

The application does not seem to allow me to select my Photos library in the preferences as it is grayed out.  If I select the "Pictures" parent folder, the application does not find my photos and they are not uploaded.

My Photos library resides on the internal drive in my mini, and is about 131GB in size.

I wasn't sure if this was possible, but I'm please to report that it is, and I'm going to use it myself. The trick is to understand that Photos Library.photoslibrary is a Package File that Google Photos Backup doesn't know how to see inside. However, Finder does. So, right click on Photos Library.photoslibrary (normally inside your Pictures folder) and select Show Package Contents. All of your pictures are inside of Masters, organized by date added (however note that any edits you made in Apple Photos are not included; these are the original images).

Now, run Google Photos Backup and click Add to select the folder. Drag the Masters folder into the File Dialog:

Now click Choose, and you've succeeded in getting the Google Photos Backup to look inside the Apple Photo package. You may want to unclick the other watched folders, since Apple Photo should already be importing all images.

I just figured this out, so I'll update if I find any downsides. Since Google Photos is completely free for the High Quality images (as opposed to Original resolution), it will be interesting to compare the two services.


How can I downgrade apps from the Cydia Store? Is it possible to downgrade apps you have upgraded in the Cydia Store? (Jailbroken) If so how would you do it?

The only way (as far as I know having experience with Cydia repos) is to find a respiratory with the older version as when you push an update to Cydia you take out the original.

I'm sure if you run a quick google search for the version of whichever Cydia app (.deb) you are looking for you'll be able to find it.


Finder crashes constantly On an iMac 10,1 running Mac OS X 10.6.8, Finder crashes on every startup.

Safe Boot does not work around the problem.

When I log in normally, the Finder Crashed error messages always steal focus. I can barely access anything else, but I created a new user, and it still does it for that new user. I also disabled all startup items, this does not help.

The crash reports – example at http://pastebin.com/HfJH9gHH – seem very cryptic. As per a conversation in Root Access, the following file does exist (found in single user mode):

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Backup.framework/Versions/A/Backup

I tried Disk Utility from a USB drive (I created based on the 10.6.3 image), and Repaired Disk Permissions, and Verify Disk shows no errors.

What can I try next?

Extracts from the report at http://pastebin.com/HfJH9gHH (the full report is too long to paste here):

Process:         Finder [767]
Path:            /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder
Identifier:      Finder
Version:         ??? (???)
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [121]

Date/Time:       2013-05-04 11:45:05.442 -0700
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549)
Report Version:  6

Interval Since Last Report:          -18769895 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:           319926
Per-App Interval Since Last Report:  -1661176241 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   319929
Anonymous UUID:                      1B8A0C6A-8AFD-4016-88FA-E8A1EB1F61C0

Exception Type:  EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread:  0

Dyld Error Message:
  Symbol not found: _kBackupBrowseOtherDisks
  Referenced from: /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder
  Expected in: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Backup.framework/Versions/A/Backup
 in /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder

…

Model: iMac10,1, BootROM IM101.00CC.B00, 2 processors, Intel Core 2 Duo, 3.06 GHz, 4 GB, SMC 1.52f9
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400, NVIDIA GeForce 9400, PCI, 256 MB
Memory Module: global_name
AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x168C, 0x8F), Atheros 9280: 2.1.14.6
Bluetooth: Version 2.4.5f3, 2 service, 19 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: AirPort, AirPort, en1
Serial ATA Device: Hitachi HDT721050SLA360, 465.76 GB
Serial ATA Device: HL-DT-ST DVDRW  GA11N
USB Device: Built-in iSight, 0x05ac  (Apple Inc.), 0x8502, 0x24400000 / 2
USB Device: Internal Memory Card Reader, 0x05ac  (Apple Inc.), 0x8403, 0x26500000 / 3
USB Device: DT 100 G2, 0x0930  (Toshiba Corporation), 0x6545, 0x26200000 / 2
USB Device: Hub, 0x0409  (NEC Corporation), 0x55ab, 0x06400000 / 3
USB Device: Microsoft 5-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM), 0x045e  (Microsoft Corporation), 0x0039, 0x06420000 / 5
USB Device: M2452, 0x05ac  (Apple Inc.), 0x0201, 0x06410000 / 4
USB Device: BRCM2046 Hub, 0x0a5c  (Broadcom Corp.), 0x4500, 0x06100000 / 2
USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller, 0x05ac  (Apple Inc.), 0x8215, 0x06110000 / 6
USB Device: IR Receiver, 0x05ac  (Apple Inc.), 0x8242, 0x04500000 / 2

Observations

The file is found, but a symbol is not found.

I sought information after the discussion in Ask Different Chat but found nothing conclusive. As the operating system misbehaviour is extraordinarily bad – both (a) for a new user and (b) in safe mode – I suspect a corrupt installation.

As you also found a problem with archive and install without Apple's DVD, I wonder whether something troublesome has been done with 10.6.8 files that are hardware-specific and not good for the iMac10,1.

Advice

Reinstall the operating system.

You don't have a DVD for installation, but your customer might obtain a replacement disc from Apple; or you or your customer can purchase the missing disc.

Prior to reinstallation

Backup to separate media.

Disk Utility can check the HFS Plus file system structure of a volume, but not media, so you might like to verify media before backup and installation.


How to create a white background to a jpg/png? I have a jpg of some logo, but its background is not completely white, more like light-greyish, whereas I would like it to be perfectly white.

I know how to select the background and also know how to turn that background to transparent, but not how turn that background to white.

If it can't be done with Preview, I also have iPhoto. I don't know how to do it there either.

NB: If the thing needs to be converted to a png in the process, that's fine.

I don't know how to do that with Preview.app or iPhoto, but for this purpose you could use an online photo editor. First hit on google here is http://pixlr.com/editor/ - and it does the trick.

(upload the image and you can make it white in several ways, e.g. by pressing B or G after you have set the main color to white, though there wil be more intelligent ways)


Two Clash of Clans accounts on one device I have been playing on two clash of clans accounts on one device for a long time but just recently i cannot switch from my lvl17 to my lvl75. The switch villages option is not popping up for me and I don't know why. Can anyone help me get my main account back?

I just developed this problem this afternoon, too.  I have 4 Clash of Clans accounts and I freely toggle between them on my various i0s devices: two ipads and an iPhone 5s.  That's worked like a charm for two years now.  I just keep logging in and out with different Gamecenter logins to load and play each village.

But as of today, I log into GameCenter, load CoC and it appears to work and says "Welcome Back, so-and-so", but then the popup to CONFIRM and load the village I just logged into never comes up.  My screen is stuck on one village and I can't get off it no matter which account I log into Gamecenter.  All of the devices now show just one of the four account game screens and the Gamecenter logins have no effect beyond the welcome back message.  The problem isn't just on one device, but all of them.  It seems to be tied to one of the 4 accounts.

I sure hope there's a way to fix this (like Gamecenter getting their crap together) considering I've been playing Clash of Clans for over 2 years now and my villages are highly developed.


Drag open Excel or Word file into Mail as an attachment Say I have an Excel file open and a new Mail message open. If I want to attach the Excel file to the email, my usual approach is to locate the file in Finder, and drag the file icon into the Mail message.
Is there a way to drag an open Excel file into the Mail message without having to navigate to Finder?

There are alternvative way(s). One of them being open Spotlight (⌘ + Space), enter first letters of file name and drag it from the results list to email.
If you haven't started to write e-mail then 'Share' inside Excel can be used. There are two possible approaches (1) click on icon in right-upper labeled 'Share' > click 'Send a Copy' > change 'Send as' if needed (default Excel Workbook, alternative is PDF) and click 'Email as Attachment' (or on icon next to it which allows to send copy to other apps), or, (2) from menubar select File > Share > Send Workbook (or Send PDF). In both cases it creates new e-mail with current file attached.


how to disable birthday reminders in iOS and still view them in the calendar app? Birthday reminders are nice but not if they keep popping up each day for every contact that has a birthday filled in.
I don't need a popup birthday reminder. Especially not for every contact that has a birthday. I don't want to edit all contacts that I do or don't want to be notified about. Seeing them in the calendar app will be enough for me.

For this reason I decided to just turn the birthday notifications off.

One way of doing this is to disable calendar notifications. But that sucks... now all calendar notifications are turned off...

An other option would be to disable calendar birthday events but somehow I still get the annoying reminders popping up each day. ( And with me some others according to some forms I've read ) And this also disables viewing them in the calendar app.

Then I read this:

  Go to Settings/Mail, Contacts, Calendars then Calendars section: Default Alert Times/Birthdays. Switch it to None.

I will know by tomorrow if the 'trick' above worked but since I didn't find any q/a how to disable all birthday reminders easily I posted this here in hope to find a good answer that will fix this problem once and for all. Maybe I found an answer but if you could confirm it that would be great!

Originaly asked the question for iOS 6, but this still is a valid question for later iOS versions ( v10 at the moment of editing )

Yes. This should work. As you are aware, when you (or the Facebook contact) inputs their birthday into the contact, iOS creates a new calendar called "Birthdays". On both iOS and OSX you have control over the notifications that you receive for each birthday that is on that calendar.

Like you said you could can go and turn of the notifications which should prevent notifications from actually appearing. Note, however that the birthdays should still show in Notification Center.

You can also disable the Birthday calendar on your iOS device altogether by opening the Calendar.app, tapping "Calendars" in the upper left corner, and scrolling down to and tapping on "Birthdays". You will see the check mark next to it disappear and the birthdays will no longer show in your calendar.

It, of course, would be easy to turn them back on temporarily in the future if you wanted to look up someone's birthday.


Mac mini bluetooth or multitouch failures after hibernating I recently purchased a Mac mini and have begun having a problem with bluetooth. I've made a bunch of changes to the system all at once, so some of the information I'll provide is probably not relevant.

I am currently running 10.8.5 (12F45) off of a new second hard drive that I installed (a Crucial M500 SSD). I have an Apple Extended Keyboard with an iMate ADB/USB adapter and a Magic Trackpad as my input devices. I had used this Magic Trackpad and keyboard with a MacBook Pro (running Lion) for about two years without any problems.

The problem that I have encountered is that occasionally (not every time), when I wake the computer from hibernation (which it automatically enters after a brief period of sleep overnight), bluetooth is malfunctioning in a strange way. Bluetooth is indicated as on in System Preferences and in the menubar, but cannot be turned off. The trackpad is not indicated as connected. Here's the strange part: the trackpad still partially works. I just used it to wake the computer (not the power button). I can move the cursor around the screen and click on things if I press on the trackpad, but none of the gestures work – scrolling, swiping, zooming, etc. and I can't tap to click. When I go to the Trackpad preference pane, it thinks no trackpad is connected, and when I go to the Bluetooth preferences, the name of the bluetooth module shows as:

Here's what I've tried so far:

checked software update to make sure all updates are installed
unpaired trackpad from MacBook Pro
unpaired and repaired trackpad to Mac mini
reset NVRAM and SMC
killing blued process

None of these has had a lasting effect; killing blued never worked.

One of the things I've noticed is that when I wake the computer and this condition occurs, I see the following two messages in the Console:

kernel[0]: [AppleMultitouchDevice::willTerminate] entered
kernel[0]: [AppleMultitouchDevice::stop] entered

Whereas normally when I wake the computer, I get these two messages:

kernel[0]: [AppleMultitouchHIDEventDriver::start] entered
kernel[0]: [AppleMultitouchDevice::start] entered

I'm kind of at my diagnostic wits-end. I'm willing to try a fresh install of Mountain Lion, but I'd kind of like to know why this problem is happening so that I'm confident a reinstall will be a permanent fix. Thanks in advance for the suggestions.

As it turns out, the problem was one with either the iMate ADB/USB adapter or the Apple Extended Keyboard (AEK). Since the AEK requires an ADB/USB adapter, and I don't have another one around, I can't determine which component was the cause. Either way, since I replaced the AEK with an Apple USB Keyboard, the problem has not returned.


ifconfig error showing invalid errors for ifconfig en0 | grep ether Whenever I run ifconfig en0 | grep ether it gives me "ifconfig: invalid arguments".

Later I found out that there is something wrong with my ifconfig command and it's not the original one. The man page of ifconfig says GNU inetutils 1.9.3-dirty at the end.

How do I get back the original one?

You probably installed inetutils 1.9.3 with a package manager like brew or MacPorts.

Besides GNU versions of various tools (telnet, rsh etc.) it also installs a GNU version of ifconfig.

To distinguish the GNU tools from macOS tools with the same names they are usually linked from the install dir (installed with brew this is: /usr/local/opt/inetutils/gnubin) to a directory in the standard PATH prefixed with a g (e.g. ifconfig > gifconfig or ftp > gftp).

If you add this install dir to your PATH variable in a way that gives preference over the standard paths, the GNU tools will be executed instead of the original ones.

Check your PATH variable: echo $PATH. You will likely see something like:

/usr/local/opt/inetutils/gnubin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:...

Now edit the file which determines your PATH variable (probably either ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile) and remove the gnubin path.

Example: nano ./bash_profile

...
export PATH="/usr/local/opt/inetutils/gnubin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH"
...

Change this to:

...
export PATH="/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH"
...

Then close the Terminal window or relaunch Terminal.app. This will "reenable" the standard versions of the commands. The GNU tools are still available by entering a command prefixed with a g (e.g. gifconfig or gftp).


The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition. Windows 10 and Mojave iMac Fusion Drive The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition.

The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows.

I had installed Windows 10 via bootcamp in my mac. Current version is 10.14.2

I received a strange blue screen error and repaired windows. After the repair the boot camp assistant and tools was not installed so its just a copy of windows without boot camp assistance. I would like to erase that volume and try again but boot camp assistant will not erase the drive.

This is the output of diskutil list

And here is the output of diskutil cs list

Can anyone please help me, I would follow the advice already provided on this site concerning this issue, but my fusion drive issue is just a little different.

This is a very common question. Again, here is the commands you need to enter in a Terminal application window.

The next two commands will remove the unlabeled "Window Recovery" disk1s4 partition and the "Microsoft Basic Data" disk1s3 partition labeled BOOTCAMP

sudo diskutil eraseVolume free none disk1s4
sudo diskutil eraseVolume free none disk1s3

The next command return the free space back to the disk1s2 APFS container partition.

sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk1s2 0


How to add a subtitle file while playing a video using Quick Time Player? I have some questions regarding Quick Time Player in macOS.

Which type of subtitle files are supported by Quick Time Player.

How to add a downloaded subtitle for a particular video in Quick Time Player ?

In VLC, there is a VLSub plugin to download subtitles automatically from Internet using VLC.
Is there any plugin or option to do the same in Quick Time Player ?

QT Player 7+ on Mac still supports .QT.TXT and .QT.SMIL caption files,
For more info, visit CaptionSync.
There is no straight forward way to add, but you can use third party apps like Subler which helps you to attach it directly to the file and it's very fast.
Just download the zip, extract it and launch it.
After launching the app, then follow these steps :

Open the app.
Go to File menu.
Select movie file of your choice.
Click on Open Button.
Drag your .srt file.
Click on Save.

Note: I did it for mp4 file.
I haven't seen any plugin so far for QT Player similar to VLSub.


My Macbook Pro WiFi is getting slower unless I reboot So I have that new Macbook Pro 15 inch with the Nvidia GPU for 6 months or so, and recently I experienced WiFi slowdown after I let my Macbook on for hours (with putting it to sleep by closing the screen) my WiFi gets waaaay slower. It's not my internet since when I test it with another computer, everything's normal. And when I reboot my Macbook, it also get back to normal download speed.

It just happened one day like 5 days ago when I was trying to do a Twitch stream. Maybe it's something I have installed ? I don't think it comes from OpenBroadcaster ? Or from JackAudio or Soundflower (two packages that simulates virtual sound playback so I can stream what my Macbook outputs, I did uninstall the second but I really don't know how to uninstall JackAudio) ?

I only address uninstalling Jack Audio.

You can uninstall Jack by looking here: http://www.jackosx.com/Documentation.pdf

Uninstalling Jack OS X
To uninstall Jack OS X, double click the “Uninstall JackOSX” file located in the Jack
folder, in your main Applications folder. A Terminal window will be displayed, and it will
prompt you for your Mac’s Administrator password. Type it, press Return, and all
components of Jack OS X will be removed from your system. Please note that when
typing your password into the Terminal window, it will not seem as though your
password is being acknowledged; this is not the case – just keep typing and press
Return, and it will work.
If you’d like to uninstall a previous version of Jack OS X, this is done automatically for
you when installing the new version.


Exchange Account on iPhone Without Unlock Pin My work exchange account forces me to use an unlock/passcode on my iphone. Is there any way to disable this?

Read this thread for suggestions for things that you do - but be aware that if your employer has a policy that you shall have a passcode on your phone while connecting to their Exchange server, that it could involve written warnings and possible termination of employment if you are seen to be in contravention of the company's security policies.

Options are:

Delete the Exchange mail account on the phone
Buy a beer for your friendly IT dude where you work (always stay friendly with these guys!), and get him to add you as an exclusion to the passcode requirement
Use a passcode

You should probably always use a passcode anyway, as without one your phone is worth a lot more to a thief (think of all that lovely personal data on there!). If you have an iPhone 5s just set up Touch ID and it's even better.


Same shortcuts across input sources OS X by default supports emacs key bindings, for example Ctrl+A to go to the beginning of the line, My problem is when I switch to a different language these Ctrl key bindings stop working.

Is it possible to either modify the keyboard layout to send English letters when the key is pressed with Ctrl. Or add new binding to OS X that accept the Ctrl binding with the correspoding letters in the other input source. Or is there a third choice?

I tried modifying some non-Latin layouts that came with Ukelele, but couldn't get shortcuts like control+A to work with them. I haven't found a way to get them to work with my custom keyboard layout either, but I'm probably just missing something...

Another option would be to create ~/Library/KeyBindings/ save a property list like this as DefaultKeyBinding.dict:

{
    "^ф" = moveToBeginningOfParagraph:; // ctrl-a on the Russian layout
    "^щ" = (insertNewlineIgnoringFieldEditor:, moveBackward:); // ctrl-o on the Russian layout
    // ...
}

Some of the default control key actions, copied from lri.me/keybindings:

"^p" = moveUp:;
"^n" = moveDown:;
"^b" = moveBackward:;
"^f" = moveForward:;
"^h" = deleteBackward:;
"^d" = deleteForward:;
"^a" = moveToBeginningOfParagraph:;
"^e" = moveToEndOfParagraph:;
"^k" = deleteToEndOfParagraph:;
"^l" = centerSelectionInVisibleArea:;
"^v" = pageDown:;
"^t" = transpose:;
"^y" = yank:;
"^o" = (insertNewlineIgnoringFieldEditor:, moveBackward:);
"^P" = moveUpAndModifySelection:;
"^N" = moveDownAndModifySelection:;
"^B" = moveBackwardAndModifySelection:;
"^F" = moveForwardAndModifySelection:;
"^A" = moveToBeginningOfParagraphAndModifySelection:;
"^E" = moveToEndOfParagraphAndModifySelection:;
"^V" = pageDownAndModifySelection:;
"~^b" = moveWordBackward:;
"~^f" = moveWordForward:;
"~^B" = moveWordBackwardAndModifySelection:;
"~^F" = moveWordForwardAndModifySelection:;


can I make a facetime call while blocking my number can we talk if someone calls me without identifying their number but I still accept the facetime call

No - FaceTime is peer to peer and exposes either your phone number or AppleID / email to the caller.

You can of course accept the call, and they will know someone has that account. And by virtue of answering, you have confirmed the contact they dialed has someone looking at the device and signed in.


How can I turn off Siri's joke responses? I'm using Siri to set short timers, many times in a row: "Set timer for 45 seconds." This is on an iPhone 7 Plus running iOS 10.3.2 (14F89).

It works great, but each time Siri confirms the timer she adds a humorous quip from a short list:

"Just remember, a watched iPhone never boils."
"The suspense is killing me."
"I see you shiver with antici... pation."
"Roger that. T-minus 45 seconds."

I assume these comments are intended to make Siri seem more human but obviously they have the opposite effect, especially as they are repeated ad nauseam. They're annoying and unprofessional.

I don't want to silence Siri completely; I want verbal confirmation that the timer was set. Ideally "timer set for 45 seconds", or even just "timer set".

Is there any way to turn off Siri's funny comments? I want this primarily for the timer, but I'd be fine with turning chatty mode off globally too.

Things I've tried that don't work:

Changing language from English (US) to English (UK, Australia, etc.) Different accent, same jokes.
Saying "Cut the jokes" after a joke. Siri says sorry, but jokes don't stop.

You can't.

Due to the design of Siri, you cannot change the way she behaves. This behavior is all run off of apple servers and is the same for every person.

Siri is able to learn behaviors but that is limited to repeated behaviors like opening an app and the way you speak.

So no,  because of the way that Siri was written, you cannot disable her "jokes". Sorry about that.

EDIT:
Source: myself after listening and reading up on Apple's privacy info, and the Internet's many forum posts complaining about this topic.

Also, from more reading, I found out that people have varying amounts of times that this happens to them. Generally, people who don't mind it (like me) don't really notice it. People who are bothered by it appear to notice it more often, so it becomes more of a problem.

You can provide feedback about this to apple via apple.com/feedback


How often does Apple.com update their refurbished stock? How often does Apple.com update their refurbished stock? Is there a schedule, is it based upon product availability, or a combination of the two?

Apparently there's no schedule, it is all based upon product availability.As soon as the product has passed all the Refurbishing steps, it's posted. What's certain is that products don't last long, so keen buyers are suggested to check every day, or even every hour.


Apple Watch - Airplane Mode I did not set Airplane Mode on my Apple Watch.  I did silence my iPhone, but when I activated sound again, Airplane Mode is on my Apple Watch.  I cannot get it off.  It is not activated on either my iPhone or Watch app.

Airplane mode on Apple Watch, by default, mirrors the setting on your iPhone. When you disable Airplane mode on  your iPhone, it can not be mirrored to Apple Watch, because the radios on the watch are turned off. You need to disable Airplane mode on Apple Watch manually by using the interface on the Apple Watch.

You can disable the automatic mirroring of Airplane mode the following ways:

iPhone

Go to the "Apple Watch" app
"My Watch"
"General"
"Airplane Mode"
Make sure the "Mirror iPhone" switch is turned off.

Apple Watch -

Go to the "Settings" app
"Airplane Mode".
Make sure the "Airplane Mode" switch is turned off.


iPod lyrics hiding things in  ... workaround? I bought a CD, ripped it and copied it to my iPod Touch.  Then I found the lyrics on the internet, confirmed that they're the same as in the album booklet, and pasted them into the lyrics section in iTunes.

Everything's great, except for one track.  It's a collaboration, and in the lyrics, before each section, it says who's doing that part by putting their name in <>.  For one artist, it looked fine, but for the other, the line was blank!

What gives?  And what workaround is there to make both artists names appear?

After a bit of experimentation, I found a workaround.  The artist whose name wasn't appearing has a name that starts with an ASCII character.  It looks like iOS is trying to be clever, and ignoring anything that looks like it might be an HTML tag, even if it really isn't!

One simple workaround is to put a zero-width space (you can copy/paste one from that article) right after the <.  Your iPod will no longer assume it's HTML, and it will display just fine!


Can MacBook Pro with Retina display (13", Late 2012) output above 1080p to 4k tv? I have a late 2012, 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. Apparently it has Intel HD Graphics 4000. I just bought a Seiki 50" 4k TV and would like to connect it to my laptop with as high a resolution as possible. I'm a programmer so I want the screen real-estate, don't care if the refresh rate is only 30 hz.

The Seiki TV comes with an HDMI cable, but when I plug that in, I only get 1080p (with 60hz).

This [1] person was able to get better resolution, but he has a 15 inch and a different graphics card.

I used this laptop with a different 27 inch monitor (one of the korean monitors on ebay) and was able to get 2560xforgot. If I remember correctly, I connected to the 27 using using DisplayPort, rather than HDMI.

If my laptop can't do more than 1080 output to the 4k monitor, I'm willing to upgrade my laptop. I'd like to stay at 13" rather than upgrade to a 15". Are there 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display which can output 4k to my tv? Do I have to get the latest or is there an older model which will do what I want?

[1] How can my mid-2012 MacBook Pro Retina 15 run a 4K panel at 30Hz over HDMI?

What's officially "supported" and what's possible don't match. I have a late-2012 rMBP and got 4K out of it at 30Hz.

I took a screenshot as proof:

Just a normal mini-displayport<->displayport cable was used.

More details in my answer here: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/147765/39878

or on this blog post: http://www.mattburns.co.uk/blog/2014/09/30/running-the-4k-aoc-u2868pqu-and-intel-hd4000-graphics/


Applescript dialog, Bash alias/function I'm trying to create a short alias for creating System dialogs from the Terminal. I tried to create a Bash function (since an alias didn't seem to take arguments) and add it to my .bash_profile, but it's failing me.

My latest attempt is:

dialog() {
    DIALOGVAR='tell app "system events" to display dialog "'$@'"'
    CMD="osascript -e 'tell app \"system events\" to activate' -e '$DIALOGVAR'"
    $CMD
}

But when I execute it via the Terminal, I get

0:1: syntax error: A unknown token can’t go here. (-2740)

Even though echo'ing the CMD variable gives me a properly formatted command:

osascript -e 'tell app "system events" to activate' -e 'tell app "system events" to display dialog "foo bar"'

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, perhaps there's an easier way to achieve this. All I'm trying to do is to create an easy to execute command that displays dialogs.

EDIT: Alternative attempt didn't lead to anything either. This one works for arguments without spaces, but fails for multiple arguments.

sysdialog() {
    osascript -e "tell app \"system events\" to activate" -e "tell app \"system events\" to display dialog \"$@\""
}

You can use the run handler to pass arguments:

dialog() {
    osascript -e 'on run args
    try
    tell app "SystemUIServer" to display dialog (item 1 of args)
    end
    activate app (path to frontmost application as text)
    end' "$1"
}

If you want to call it like dialog a b (instead of dialog 'a b'), change $1 to $*.

System Events quits automatically when it is not used, and there is a small delay when it is opened, so telling it to display the dialog would sometimes be slower.

Without the try block there would be an error if the user presses a cancel button. Without activate the previously focused window wouldn't get focus back when the dialog is closed.

You can use something like this to display text dialogs:

answer=$(osascript -e 'try
tell app "SystemUIServer"
set answer to text returned of (display dialog "" default answer "")
end
end
activate app (path to frontmost application as text)
answer' | tr '\r' ' ')
[ -z "$answer" ] && exit


How to dual boot Ubuntu and macOS without rEFInd? I'm trying to install Ubuntu on my MacBook Air 2019 with Catalina 10.15.6. However, my MacBook has the secure boot feature which doesn't allow rEFInd to work at all and I'm not feeling comfortable to disable secure boot.
Is there any way to dual boot without rEFInd?

If you employ all the security offered by the T2 chip, then you can not boot Ubuntu. Also, you can not boot the Ubuntu Live USB flash drive to install Ubuntu. So with secure boot enabled, you can not install Ubuntu.
If you lower the security, then you can install and boot with or without using rEFInd. Installing Ubuntu to the internal drive of the newest Macs may not yet be possible.
With rEFInd, the following happens:

The firmware boots rEFInd.
The user chooses Ubuntu from the rEFInd menu.
rEFInd instructs the firmware to boot Grub.
The firmware boots GRUB from the EFI partition.
Grub boots Ubuntu from a linux formatted partition.

Without rEFInd, the following happens:

The user holds down the option key at startup until the firmware boots to the Mac Startup Manager.
The user chooses Ubuntu from the Startup Manager. (By default, the label is EFI Boot.)
The shim boot loader is booted from the EFI partition by the firmware.
The shim boot loader boots Grub from the EFI partition. Ubuntu is also made the default operating system to boot.
Grub boots Ubuntu from a linux formatted partition.

There is also option with rEFInd to do a Grubless boot of Ubuntu. In this case, the following happens.

The firmware boots rEFInd.
A driver is installed by rEFInd that allows the firmware (and thus rEFInd) to read linux formatted partitions.
The user chooses Ubuntu from the rEFInd menu.
rEFInd instructs the firmware to boot Ubuntu from a linux formatted partition.
The firmware boots Ubuntu.

There are other scenarios for booting Ubuntu. The three given are fairly common.


cal command - start monday I was wondering - is there a way to make 'cal' (a terminal program) start the week on monday?

Usually it can be done with the -m flag, but this does not have any effect on the Mac. AFAIK, for freebsd you need deskutils, but I could not find any equivalent on the mac, even in homebrew.

Is there a switch or alternate source for a cal tool that allows weekday start changes?

GNU cal has a --starting-day option:

$ brew install gcal
$ alias cal='gcal --starting-day=1'
$ cal

      June 2013
 Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
                 1  2
  3  4  5  6  7  8  9
 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

ncal also starts weeks on mondays by default:

$ ncal
    June 2013
Mo     3 10 17 24
Tu     4 11 18 25
We     5 12 19 26
Th     6 13 20 27
Fr     7 14 21 28
Sa  1  8 15 22 29
Su  2  9 16 23 30


Remove admin account A colleague of mine just got his new MacBook Pro and he ran through the set-up process. But as it turns out, he got the wrong MacBook Pro, so now, he needs to completely erase the already present data and account...

How can he completely erase all the data including the admin account? He already tried to boot from the recovery disk and to boot with Command-R. But all he gets is the new set-up assistant. He wants the MacBook Pro in its original state, so that when you open it you see the initial setup steps, and not the account he just created.

He could format THEN REINSTALL the OS and power off before the initial setup.

Also there is a way to force setup assistant to run without reinstalling the system (some unix knowledge required and yes, this works in Lion):

Boot to single user mode

mount -uw
rm -rf /Library/Preferences/
rm -rf /Users/username
rm /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/username.plist
rm -rf /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
exit

(Note: replace username with whatever account short name you’ve created)


USB device accidentally ejects with the slightest disturbance This is extremely annoying. 2009 MacBook Pro running OSX 10.7.5. I have an external hard drive connected via USB for Time Machine purposes. This device, and anything else connected via USB, frequently accidentally ejects with the slightest disturbance such as when I brush against the USB cable. It's very extremely annoying. The trouble doesn't come up as often with devices without a cable like flash drives, but sometimes it happens. It happens very frequently with devices connected via a cable. What is going on?

You either have a bad USB cable or a bad USB jack (either on external devices or Mac). I would start by replacing the USB cable on the external hard drive. If that does not work then your USB jack will most likely need to be looked at by an Apple repair center.


afp over wireless lan extremely slow I’m connecting from one MacBook Pro (10.6.5) (let’s call it “1”) to another (10.4.11) “2” via WLAN and afp and both are connected to the WLAN via WPA2.

The router is showing me theoretical connection speeds of 104 MBit/s for “1” and 54 MBit/s for “2”. However, when I’m trying to transfer files (doesn’t matter whether I use drag & drop in Finder or cp in the terminal), it takes eternities: 70 seconds for a 2.1 MB file (~ 250 KBit/s if I didn’t make a mistake). The network activity monitor looks like this during the transfer:

 (There’s no other significant network activity going on.)

Clearly, this is off by several orders of magnitude. Does somebody have a clue what could cause this?

Other network traffic works normal on both MacBooks. As far as I know, I have made no special configurations.

Radio interference? How many other wifi spots are nearby? How many are using the same channel as you? Does this only happen with AFP or does it happen with other protocols as well (e.g., HTTP, CIFS, etc)? Are you using A/B/G/N?

What's the memory usage look like on both systems? Is one (or both) maxed out? The traffic seems very bursty. This could indicate that one or both sides can't buffer the stream properly (i.e., not enough free memory).

Do you have the same problems when configured to use an Ad Hoc network? If not then the problem is your WAP.


Apple Watch notifications going to watch or phone intelligently My watch and phone work really well together, if I'm wearing my watch then notifications pop up there first and don't show on my phone. When I take my watch off or when I'm using my phone the notifications appear on my phone.

However on my girlfriends watch the notifications pop up first on her phone, then on her watch a couple of second later, no matter the 'state' of either device. I can't find any setting mismatches. Is there a setting somewhere which causes the behaviour I'm getting?

This depends on the general behaviour of the apple watch. Make sure your apple watch is on your wrist before testing this.

Notification distribution is depend on you are wearing it or not.


iPhone lock screen/multitasking bar audio controls don't work From time to time (in fact very often) my iPhone will stop displaying the lock screen "now playing" info, and subsequently the controls won't be there.

I can still start the music app playing something, but I can't pause or skip tracks.

The same thing can be seen if I try to use the multitasking audio controls (swipe "left" on the multitasking bar). The play/pause button won't stop audio playback. Can't skip.

Same problem with the headset remote buttons. Can often start audio playing (although what it'll play is random). Can not stop/pause, can not skip.

I've not been able to reproduce this reliably, but it happens often. The phone is in this state more than it isn't. A restart resolves this most times.

How to fix?

Possible Causes:

Mobile substrate add ons on a jailbroken device
Corrupt event handling events
Loss of data with streaming services
Accessory interference
Airplay
Older version of iTunes

Several things to try:

If you are jailbroken try booting into safe mode (SBSettings Feature).
If problem is with data streaming app then try the iPod app.
If accessories are connected, disconnect them.
If the problem persists, restore to the latest version of iOS and update iTunes.


How to retrieve emails from iCloud account that is full I recently received an email from Apple letting me know that because my iCloud storage was full I could not back up my devices and would not be able to send or receive mail. I did the usual deleting of unnecessary backups of emails, apps, and devices. I also purchased more storage.

This morning, I received my receipt for the new storage and a bunch of emails sent today. But I need the emails from yesterday and whenever they decided to shut down the account. How do I retrieve all the emails that I hope are in limbo somewhere?  Note: I sent an email from another account to see if I'd get an "undeliverable" message and nothing.

This happened to me too. I spoke with Apple support on the phone and because my email was an iCloud email, they said there is most likely no way I would receive the emails I missed while my storage was full. The people sending the emails most likely received a bounce message indicating the mail was not delivered.


What triggers the message "your screen is being observed" on the login screen I noticed that macOS (Big Sur) is often telling me on my login screen that "your screen is being observed".

I'm assuming that this is due to the fact that I allowed some apps top record my screen, but that explanation doesn't quite make sense because

the message does not always appear (but the permissions are obviously always on)
the message states that my screen "is being observed", implying that this is happening right now. But none of the apps that have permission is actually recording.

So if permitting at least one app to record the screen is a necessary condition for the message to appear, it is definitely not a sufficient condition.
My question: what (other) condition(s) must me met for the message to appear?
Bonus question: How can you check which app is "observing" the screen?

I was able to confirm that OBS Studio does trigger the message even when it is not recording anything. I assume that this is occurs when there is at least one Display Capture Device configured in OBS so that OBS is indeed constantly "observing" the screen.
I did not check whether yet other conditions must be met (e.g. that the source must somehow be active in the current scene). Neither did I check whether the same is true for a Window Capture Device or perhaps even a Browser source, but I guess in many cases pointing to OBS will be enough of an explanation.
I would assume that other apps might trigger the message in similar ways as OBS but I'll leave it to others to identify those apps in separate answers.


How to change bluetooth frequency for magic mouse 2 Sometimes my Magic Mouse does not work when Wi-Fi is on!
When I turn Wi-Fi off, I can move it again!
MacBook freezes frequently and it really drives me crazy! I guess it isrelated to the Wi-Fi, because when I turn Wi-Fi off, MacBook works better.

MacBook 2019 - Mojave 10.14.6

I read this question about Logitech mouse.  But I use magic mouse 2, not other brands.

I read this Apple Discussions article. My modem frequency is 2.4 GHz too. and unfortunately, it supports  only this frequency.

Can I change Bluetooth frequency from 2.4 GHz to something else?

The short answer is no.

The 2.4 GHz frequency is what bluetooth uses so you would need to move to a place with less interference, turn off the conflicting devices to keep using Bluetooth reliably.

There are other frequencies mice, but Apple doesn’t make them. Look at Microsoft or Logitech if you don’t know where to start with mice that have a USB receiver and use other radio frequencies.

  Bluetooth devices intended for use in short-range personal area networks operate from 2.4 to 2.4835 GHz. To reduce interference with other protocols that use the 2.45 GHz band, the Bluetooth protocol divides the band into 80 channels (numbered from 0 to 79, each 1 MHz wide) and changes channels up to 1600 times per second

So, if you have interference bad enough that BlueTooth can’t accomodate or negotiate a channel, something is really wrong. I would focus on software updates, resetting devices, turning off WiFi for 30 minutes to be sure you really have an interference problem


Is there a BOOTP query tool that exists for macOS? I would like to query a BOOTP server as a specific MAC address to test the response. What tools exists for macOS?
Something like this? https://www.weird-solutions.com/enterprise-solutions/bootp-turbo

If you just want to see if a BOOTP machine responds to a particular MAC address, just use a virtuall machine with a manually configured MAC address

In VirtualBox:


How to switch focus to the app based on its PID from CLI? I've started using Firefox with multiple profiles, however sometimes I'm lost and I can't find the right window.

For example given I've the process with PID 1234 such as:

$ ps wuax | grep -w Foo
kenorb           1234  /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -P Foo

how can I switch the current focus to it based on its PID?

Here is an example AppleScript code snippet that will bring the windows of the unix id (PID) for process showing Foo in its command to the front:

set thisUnixID to (do shell script "ps wx | awk '/[F]oo/{print $1}'") as integer

tell application "System Events"
    set frontmost of every process whose unix id is thisUnixID to true
end tell

Note that this example code can be reworked to ask for a profile name and go from there and can be done either as an AppleScript application or a bash script depending on your requirements.

Also note that the square braces around the first character of "Foo" are there so it only returns the PID for the appropriate target, not e.g. the PID of awk looking for "Foo" without the square braces.

Here is the slighty modified version which finds the Firefox window with specific profile name:

#!/usr/bin/env osascript
set PID to (do shell script "pgrep -f -- 'firefox -P Foo'") as integer

tell application "System Events"
  set frontmost of every process whose unix id is PID to true
end tell


Broken Git installation on my Mac. How do I fix it? I've had git running on my MacBook Pro (macOS High Sierra 10.13.6) for ages. I recently uninstalled Xcode because I never use it, but that seems to have broken Git and I can't figure out how to fix it.

If I open a terminal window and type git --version, I get the following error:

xcrun: error: active developer path ("/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer") does not exist
Use `sudo xcode-select --switch path/to/Xcode.app` to specify the Xcode that you wish to use for command line developer tools, or use `xcode-select --install` to install the standalone command line developer tools.
See `man xcode-select` for more details.

If I then try Xcode-select --install, I get:

xcode-select: error: command line tools are already installed, use "Software Update" to install updates

Software Update shows no updates are available. I tried to reinstall Xcode from the App Store, but I'm getting:

Xcode can’t be installed on “Macintosh HD” because macOS version 10.14.3 or later is required.

I can't upgrade my macOS version because it says no updates are available!

I tried installing git from the downloadable package, but that made no difference (it seemed to install ok, but I don't know where it installed and it's still looking for the old version). Then tried Homebrew, which again seemed to work but made no difference, so I uninstalled it.

I don't know what to try next! I don't really know what I'm doing with macOS and I'm a bit concerned I'll break stuff if I fiddle too much. Can anyone help?

To debug this, start by executing:

type -a git

and

echo $PATH

In OP's case, running the above commands gave the following output respectively:

git is /usr/bin/git
git is /usr/local/bin/git

and

/usr/local/opt/php@7.0/sbin
/usr/local/opt/php@7.0/bin
/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php7.1.8/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin
/usr/local/bin
/usr/local/autoconf
/opt/X11/bin
/usr/local/share/dotnet
~/.dotnet/tools
/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/Commands
/Applications/Xamarin Workbooks.app/Contents/SharedSupport/path-bin
/Applications/Android Studio.app/Contents/plugins/flutter/bin

(in the above output is formatted for readability by replacing : with newline)

Now, run the following commands (using absolute path) to check if git package is actually installed:

/usr/bin/git --version

and

/usr/local/bin/git --version

The above gave the following output, respectively:

active developer path does not exist

and

git version 2.21.0

This indicates that Homebrew installed copy is still present in the system. However, Xcode/system installed copy (which should take precedence due to $PATH variable configuration) wasn't accessible because developer path couldn't be found.

To resolve the issue and to use the Xcode/system installed copy of git, run:

xcode-select --reset

This will resolve the error.

To use the latest version of Git, install the same via Homebrew by running:

brew install git

and set the PATH variable so that /usr/local/bin takes precedence over /usr/bin.


iOS Download .doc file from URL (in Safari) One of our software suppliers normally make .doc 's downloadable via the browser (desktops). Now I'm trying to download the .doc file in Safari on iOS 9 but it just prints the document. How can I save it to my iPad and open it in the official Word app from microsoft?

Thanks in advance,

If you go to a URL that ends in .doc, it should display the document. If you then tap the screen, an option to "Open In..." should appear in the upper left. Select "Copy to Word" from the available apps.


homebrew: how to tell if a formula is binary How do I tell if a particular formula will be installed as binary of from source?

Is there a brew command for this?

You could use brew edit ${formula_name}. That will open an editor with the formula contents. If there is a reference to a "bottle", then installing it with default settings will use that.
However, if you add an option, then homebrew will compile the software for you.


itunes software upgrade not syncing music I made the mistake of upgrading itunes software and when I plugged in my iphone 4 it erased all of my music. I have since tried to resync but it is stuck on the 2nd song copy and I cant seem to figure out why? All of my songs are still on my computer and on a separate hard drive but I dont understand why it wont sync?

This clearly isn't how an iTunes upgrade is supposed to go. There are quite different strategies for fixing sync issues depending on whether you have a Mac or a PC, so the best I can offer is to work from the script and perhaps ask another question if you have a problem with a specific step.

iOS: Syncing with iTunes (KB HT1386)

Also, the problem could be entirely on the iTunes end - so it's a bit of a game to eliminate things one by one. You might take your phone to another computer (now that it's presumably erased) and get a good iCloud backup and test syncing there. This will let you focus on either the iPhone or the computer.


How to print one Numbers row per page, formatted nicely I have a Numbers spreadsheet consisting of data that I would like to print.

However, I would like to have each row of the table printed out on its own separate page. Moreover, each row contains a lot of data items, including one that is a few paragraphs of text - it doesn't make sense to print it in a single row. Instead I want to print out each row as a separately formatted table.

So for example, if the first row of my table looked like this

then I would like to print it something more like this:

including using conditional formatting to colour the cells, if at all possible.

Is there any way to do this. I.e. to create a new table from each row of a table, and then print them all out, one per page. My table has about 100 rows, so doing each one by hand isn't really feasible.

If this can't be done in Numbers, is there another easy way to do it on a Mac?

One way to accomplish this just using Numbers

The key to this solution is the combination of the INDEX(MATCH()) formulas.  Here is an excellent article on the use of this combination of functions.

Create 2 sheets

one sheet for data
one sheet for printing

In the Data sheet, add a basic table to hold the data.  A header row is useful for reading the formulas as they are added:

In the Print sheet, create a table or tables (one can get creative here, any number of tables or cells to format the printing in any way wished) for a print format.  The cells do not need to be in the same table together as each contains an individual reference to the data table.  The example in the screenshot below uses two tables.

Back on the Data sheet, create table with one or two cells for selecting the record to print:

Now, back in the Print sheet, use the following formulas to display the desired data:

  INDEX(Animal,MATCH(Print Index::B1,Index))
  Where Animal is the column containing the animal name, MATCH looks at the single data selector cell matching the corresponding number in the Index column and then returns the Animal.

  INDEX(Legs,MATCH(Print Index::$B$1,$Index))
  Returns the Legs data.

  INDEX(Head,MATCH(Print Index::$B$1,$Index))
  Returns the Head data.

  INDEX(Feathers,MATCH(Print Index::$B$1,$Index))
  Returns the Feathers data.

  INDEX(Size,MATCH(Print Index::$B$1,$Index))
  Returns the Size data.

Even when other data is inserted into the table, the proper value is displayed.  This is unlike VLOOKUP() which has to have the column number returned.  When a new column is inserted, VLOOKUP breaks where INDEX(MATCH()) does not.

Add the conditional formatting as desired to the cells in the Print sheet's table(s).

Back in the Data sheet, select the number corresponding to the animal desired to print.

Select the Print sheet then print as normally. command+P

AppleScript could be used to automate the process of selecting the index number, then printing the Print sheet.

This is a clean and easy way to maintain/update/change the print view without having to reinvent the entire data schema.

Demo:


Prevent facetime from asking for password in Mavericks Some time ago I've updated to OSX Mavericks. Since then each time after the system starts I get a prompt to enter Facetime password. How to disable this?

Found the solution:

Open FaceTime,
Open "FaceTime" menu,
Choose "Turn FaceTime off" option.


Configure Memory (Photos) titles to have a specific date format (M-D-Y or Y-M-D) Is it possible to change the way Photos is naming the memories?
Basically, it is quite stupid to name it using Day-Month-Year order, since an export of the memories using the option "Create subfolder with the name of the memory" will export the pictures in a folder that cannot be sorted by date later on...

Let's say I have multiple memories of 2018 on the 1st day of each month, then the generated folder will be sorted as follows:

1 April 2018
1 March 2018
1 September 2018
2 January 2018
2 April 2018

That's pretty annoying, isn't it?

Thanks for the help.

if you open the folder in Finder it can be made to list the date created. Open a finder window and click on the button that looks like a gear with the word action under it. The last entry is 'Show View Options'. You can click on this and you'll get a new pane where you can select what columns to display in a finder window. Be sure to select Date Created. You can then sort the files by date created and separate them however you see fit.


Which keys are the symbols ⌃ and ⌥? Can anyone say which keys represent the 2 symbols in the Run menu item from the screenshot?

⌃ ctrl
⌥ alt/option

These two keys appear next to ⌘ cmd in the bottom left corner of your keyboard.


iPhone auto-power-off after power disconnection I have an old iPhone 4s that I use as a music player in the car.  It is plugged into a cigar-lighter socket that is only powered when the ignition is on.  The phone's battery life is not particularly good anymore, so after turning off the ignition, the phone, if left as is (powered on), will deplete its battery in a few hours.  Next time I get into the car and turn it on, the phone will be completely dead and have to charge for 10-20 minutes before I can power it up and start playing music.

However, if I remember to power off the phone when I turn off the car, the phone battery will generally be good until the next time I turn on the car.  When I turn it on, the phone will start receiving power again and automatically turn on.

Instead of having to remember to manually turn off the phone when I turn off the car, is there some way I can have the phone automatically power off when it is no longer receiving power?  Ideally it would wait for 10-20 minutes before powering off (if I stop for gas or something), but immediate power-off would be OK too.

I have looked for settings and apps that could possibly do this, but so far haven't found anything.

FWIW I do also have a cigar-lighter socket that is always on, regardless of ignition state.  I could possibly plug the phone in there instead, but I got wary of that - last winter my car battery was a bit weak and I left the phone plugged in like this for perhaps 3 or 4 days without starting the car, and it ran the car battery right down.  I have a new car battery now, but I'd still rather avoid having this continuous drain on it.

Without jailbreaking, this is not possible as Apple does not provide a feature for this, and apps can't control the system in this manner.

If the device is jailbroken, you can use an Activator action to Power Down on Disconnect.


How to delete old and stuck local time machine snapshot from one year ago I have an old and stuck local time machine snapshot or directory (probably from Mac OS 10.14/Mojave/2018) that seems impossible to delete (now on Mac OS 10.15/Catalina/2019).
The directory is empty (0 kB) and located here:
/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Jons Mac/2019-09-19-223308

But it does not show up if I run:
% tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
Snapshots for volume group containing disk /:
com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-08-03-161551.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-08-03-162946.local

If I try to delete the directory, I get a error message that the directory is a read only file system:
% rm -rf /com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Jons\ Mac/2019-09-19-223308
rm: /com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Jons Mac/2019-09-19-223308/Macintosh HD: Read-only file system
rm: /com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Jons Mac/2019-09-19-223308: Read-only file system

Same happens if I try to delete the old local snapshot root directory.
% rm -rf /com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots
rm: /com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Jons Mac/2019-09-19-223308/Macintosh HD: Read-only file system
rm: /com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Jons Mac/2019-09-19-223308: Read-only file system
rm: /com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Jons Mac: Read-only file system
rm: /com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb: Read-only file system
rm: /com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots: Read-only file system

This also happens if I disable SIP.
Does someone have an idea how I get can rid of this directory?

It is not possible to delete those orphaned Time Machine snapshots from the regular user space. You need to follow this steps to delete the folders:

Turn on your Mac and immediately press and hold keys Command (⌘) and R. Need help? (see About macOS Recovery)

Once you are in recovery mode, open from the menu Utilities > Terminal.

In terminal you need to switch to your regular main HD. e.g. cd /Volumes/Mactintosh HD/.

Check if folder com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots contains the orphaned snapshots. (if not you need to go back to /Volumes and find the right volume.

Go back to the HD folder from step 3.

Delete the folder rm -rf com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots