Is there a good way to control VLC media player on my MacBook from an iOS 5 iPhone? I see a free application in the App Store but the reviews say it doesn't work.

I have a Snow Leopard MacBook that I hook up to my TV to watch videos sometimes. To control the video and volume, it'd be nice if I could do this from my iPhone. How could this setup be done?

Something like VLC Amigo (free) or VLC remote for iPhone would probably work!


How to take a full page screenshot in Mac OS Safari? I'm looking for a Safari Extension that can take full page screenshots. I am aware there are various extensions, but haven't found any that would take full page images.

No plugins or anything needed - latest Safari (7, not sure from which version this works) can save to PDF. File -> Export as PDF... and you get entire page, images and all. And it's a lovely hi-res PDF.


Theres a drastic color change in my screen. (it's a drastic change in the rectangle) It stays and it goes. Sometimes I have to push lightly down on the screen to get rid of it. I tried to take a screenshot of it but it seems as if the glitch/ whatever it is, is internal.

What can I do to try and fix this error??

Pressure on the display that changes the display contents indicates physical failure of the delicate connectors where the glass meets the metal wires running to the controller.

I would have an Apple certified tech let you know if it’s safe and get a quote to fix it. Unless there’s damage elsewhere internally, that sort of failure doesn’t damage other parts or represent a shock / fire risk vast majority of the time so you could opt to not repair it if you don’t feel the cost or time out of service matter to you.

This likely won’t get better or fix itself, though.


Why do I have to install CLT when Xcode is installed? On a fresh Mavericks, I installed Xcode via the App store (accepted license agreement and enabled developer mode). After that, Command Line Tools (CLT) are found (checked via xcode-select -p). Installing Homebrew as explained on their webpage (ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)") will result in the request to install the CLT. Why do I have to install them? I thought they are installed together with Xcode.

You have to install them because, starting with version 4.3, Xcode is released as a sandboxed, single app bundle.

Before that, Xcode was distributed as an installer called Install Xcode.app. The installer had access to the whole filesystem and created a /Developer directory, where frameworks and additional tools where placed, and installed the command line tools in /usr/bin.

This is no longer the case. Apple chose to make XCode a standard Mac App Store app that installs in /Applications and requires user intervention to install any additional components outside the bundle container.


Can you still track it's location after it has been wiped/erased? Can anyone clarify the process when a phone is wiped?

Let's assume that my phone gets stolen, and the thief being unable to unlock it chooses to wipe the device via a system restore in iTunes.  Since the phone is (was) logged into my iCloud account, the thief will be unable to activate it, which should make it worthless to sell, right?

So, assuming a stolen phone gets restored, during subsequent setup it requires a WIFI connection prior to then logging in to the iCloud account it is locked to, so it should be contactable.  At this point, will the phone be still trackable by my icloud account using find my iphone service after being restored, even though it is not technically logged into any iCloud account? Will the custom message still be displayed to whoever has the phone?

No, an iOS device is no longer associated with an iCloud account after it has been restored.

In iOS7, there is a new feature called Activation Lock[1] which prevents devices from being restored once they are associated with an account unless the correct password is used to disable the lock.

[1]http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5818

After being erased, either by you via find my phone, or buy the 'new owner' via a DFU forced restore, tracking is no longer available.

If the phone is put into DFU mode then iTunes will restore the phone.  However during activation, it will still require the original apple ID to activate, so the phone is useless, apart from selling for spare parts.


How to install mod_pagespeed on Apache Server on Mac? I'm trying to install mod_pagespeed for Apache server, but I can find instructions only for Linux. Is there any tutorial or description on how to do it on Mac?

mod_pagespeedis currently not supported. However, you can build it from source. Google is describing here how you can do that.

Instead of using apt-get you can install brew. Brew is a lightweight package manager for OS X and can be obtained at their official homepage.

I'd recommend to install a Linux distro on a VM and then installing mod_pagespeed as this is way easier, plus you get more support probably.


MacBook Air doesn't power on with the power-on button MacBook Air doesn't power on with the power-on button. But when I remove battery connection and put back it works. As long as it is in sleep mode it works. But when I switch OFF it doesn't power on and needs the battery connection to be reconnected.

Have you tried resetting the SMC (System Management Controller)?

With charger plugged in, hold Shift-Control-Option on the left side of the keyboard, then press the Power.

  The LED on MagSafe power adapters might change states or temporarily turn off when you reset the SMC.

  Indicators that your SMC might need to be reset

  The computer fans run at high speed, though the computer is not experiencing heavy usage and is properly ventilated.
  The keyboard backlight behaves incorrectly on Mac computers that have this feature.
  The status indicator light (SIL) behaves incorrectly on Mac computers that have this feature.
  Battery indicator lights, if present, behave incorrectly on Mac notebooks that have a non-removable battery.
  The display backlight doesn't respond correctly to ambient light changes on Mac computers that have this feature.
  The computer doesn't respond to the power button when pressed.
  A Mac notebook computer doesn't respond properly when you close or open the lid.
  The computer sleeps or shuts down unexpectedly.
  The battery doesn't charge properly.
  The MagSafe power adapter LED doesn't indicate the correct activity.
  The computer is performing unusually slowly, though it isn't experiencing abnormally high CPU utilization.
  Application icons may bounce in the Dock for an extended amount of time when opened.
  Applications may not function correctly, or they may stop responding after being opened.
  A computer that supports target display mode does not switch into or out of target display mode as expected, or it switches into or out of target display mode at unexpected times.
  The illumination around the I/O ports on a Mac Pro (Late 2013) does not activate when you move the computer.

Source: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201295


How can I make a PDF document smaller? Here's my problem, I have a PDF document 583KB, and I want to make it under 500KB so I can upload it. What should I do?

Open the PDF in Preview.
Go to File → Save As… (⌥⇧⌘S)
Select Reduce File Size as the Quartz Filter

Apple recommends this method in the KB article Mac OS X 10.6: Compressing a PDF file.


New file on my Macbook Pro with odd custom permissions. Have I been hacked? So today I was looking for something on my MacBook Pro and saw folder called library with the custom permissions.
It seems like it has to permissions, systems (read, write) and everyone no access.
I expanded the permissions so that I could view it. However it seems to have an empty folder inside. The empty folder has the same permissions.
The folder is located in my iCloud > Documents folder and is called Library and the folder inside of it is also Logs.
Additionally I can see that the file was created two days ago.
Moreover, I have all sharing services turned off in my Systems Preferences > Sharing.
There is currently no user profile under the name of systems in System Preferences > Users & Groups.
Why do I have a new file with custom permissions ? Have I been hacked? Is there something I can check to see if there is something wrong going on?
(Also got an email recently saying someone tried to reset a BestBuy password but that my be irrelevant for this)

/Library is where system files are kept - configurations for applications, etc. Generally, unless something is broken, you wouldn't need to access /Library for anything. Your main location for your files - the ones you need to access is actually /Users. Hence, permissions for System Only are right for /Library
I would likewise not be concerned about something that says "Logs" on it. Logging is a useful tool for diagnostics - or to put it another way - to work out what is going on or where something may have gone wrong.


iPhone scam message - did not open picture but pressed preview I have made a mistake tonight. I received a picture message, saying "free picture message - click to open'. I did not click the link in the message, but I did click "preview". Nothing happened on my phone afterwards and I didn't get taken to any websites (or Safari).

I Googled the phone number that sent me the message afterwards and realised the message was from spammers. I am asking if anybody knows what it means to "preview" the message on an iPhone - has it downloaded it to your phone?

Any help would be gratefully received - thank you.

If you see it on your screen, it has been downloaded (would be difficult to show something which has not been downloaded). It doesn't matter whether you just preview something or open it in an app, technically there is no real difference.

The question behind the question probably is "should I worry?". Nobody can say for sure without much more information about the specific content, but most probably "no, not all all".


How to change touch bar icons for iTunes / Music app? Several Apps have the option in [View -> Customise Touch Bar] to change the available icons on the specific App section of the Touch bar.

Unfortunately I can't find the option on all apps, including Itunes / music app. Is the option a bit more hidden here or is it simply not there?

There doesn’t seem to be a way to customize the Touch Bar for iTunes/Music. Not all apps support customization.

Apple:

  In many apps, like Finder, Mail, and Safari, you can customize the Touch Bar.
  Choose View > Customize Touch Bar. The customization window appears on your display, allowing you to choose your favorite items

Note how they say “many” instead of “all” and don’t mention iTunes. Also notice the specific instructions given for customizing the Touch Bar - implying that an app made directly by Apple wouldn’t have a roundabout way of configuring the customization.


Prevent photoanalysisd from spinning up fans At times I hear my MacBook (Mid-2015, 15" retina) get loud, fans whirring. It becomes pretty hot to touch.
I check Activity Monitor: photoanalysisd is using near 100% CPU.
What is "photoanalysisd" and why is it using 77% of my CPU? says that it's due to changes in Photos.app... I have never used Photos.app. None of the answers on that question help me.
I just Force Quit photoanalysisd now whenever this happens, and haven't noticed any problems.
But it's frustrating when this happens.
How do I stop photoanalysisd from hogging CPU?
I'm running macOS Catalina 10.15.4

Go to AppleID > iCloud and disable Photos.
Go run Photos app and verify there are no libraries, delete all images or delete the library so when you relaunch Photos is asks to create a library.
Repeat these steps for every user on your Mac in Accounts
Restart the Mac.

At that point you might need look into logs to see what’s triggering the daemon to do work or run a sysdiagnose on the process. Also, Photos can have many libraries, so you might need to switch libraries to locate the system library or other ones. Photo analysis can run on any library - not just the one you expect when you launch the app.


Does QuickTime automatically record stereo audio into mono? I connect Zoom h4n Pro to my Mac via USB as audio interface. I then record audios with QuickTime.
The input of h4n is stereo; the right & left inputs are not exactly the same. But it seems that QuickTime automatically mixes the left & right channels; as a result, the generated audio file has same volumes from left and right.
Could anyone confirm me that it is true?

I'm having the same issue (Scarlett i2i USB hardware):
Can't get QuickTime to record in stereo
I confirmed that Audacity records in stereo - even at the same time as QuickTime records in mono.
I called Apple and they were pretty clueless. It's possible (and painful) to detach the audio track from the QuickTime movie and attach the Audacity track instead - iMovie can be cajoled to do it reluctantly. I haven't found a better solution yet.


How to have different colors in each Terminal window Can I do this?

OMG, I looked for hours, and every article I find tells me how to colorize the output of ls. Or colorize my prompt. I really really really don't want that.

I want to colorize the text. The default text in the terminal window.

I know I can do this from Terminal Preferences. But that applies to EVERY terminal window that's open, which I don't want.

As the subject says, I'd like to have three different terminal windows with three different default colors for text in them. How can I do that?

In Windows cmd.exe, I could run a command from the prompt: color 0xA 0xG (something like that) and it would re-colorize the basic text and background. rather that pointy-clicky inspector themes menus and all that... can I do something like this from the MacOS Terminal prompt?

I may not be understanding the question fully, since you change the color settings per-tab/window contrary to your question, but here is how to do what I think you want.

Go to Terminal menu > Preferences.
Click on the Settings tab.
Click on the gear icon at the bottom left and choose Duplicate Settings.
Enter a name for your settings.

Make any changes you want to font colors.
Repeat steps 3 through 6 until you have as many sets of colors as you want.
Close the Preferences window.
Open as many tabs as you want (3, it sounds like).
Right-click on the first and choose Inspect Tab.

Select your desired Settings pre-set from the list. (The ones you created will be down towards the bottom.)
Close the Inspector window.
Repeat steps 9 through 11 until you have customized each tab.

That should be it. If you want Terminal to always open like this, with these three tabs and their associated color settings:

Go to Window menu > Save Windows as Group.
Enter a name.
Click Save.
Go to Terminal menu > Preferences.
Click on the Startup tab.
Next to "On startup, open:" choose the radio button for "Window group:" and select the name of the group you created in step 2.


Unable to block contact on iMessage for Mac OS 10.14.2 I am unable to block a contact on my mac's iMessage app (Mac OS 10.14.2).

I go to preferences > imessage > blocked > + , and then a drop down of my contacts appears. I select the name from the list but then the list just disappears and nothing is added to the blocked list. (And yes they are still able to contact me).

Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong?

As a workaround, you can add a phone number as blocked in the FaceTime app on macOS, and it will also register as blocked in Messages (at least it worked for me, and I had the same issue on 10.14.3).


Impact of Spotlight search information removal on Keynote presentation OS X Spotlight search information was removed.
What does this mean for my Keynote presentation made in iWork '09?

Nothing. The file's contents won't be modified by the deletion of the Spotlight index. It's still in the location that you saved it to.


Possible to disable custom Javascript keybindings in Safari? I have a couple of decades experience using Emacs, so the Emacs-like keybindings for text editing on Mac OS X are very nice.  Unfortunately, some websites (ahem) choose to override these with Javascript.  For example, one of them makes controlB insert the text **strong text**, rather than going back one character.

Is there any way to make Safari ignore Javascript keybindings that try to remap the standard OS X keybindings?

Here is Rob W's script from meta, updated to only block cntrl-* and fixed so that it works with NinjaKit which is a safari extension for running user scripts.

NinjaKit:
https://github.com/os0x/NinjaKit

Script:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Cya WMD shortcuts
// @namespace      Rob W
// @version        1.0
// @include          http://apple.stackexchange.com/*
// @include          http://stackoverflow.com/*
// @include          http://superuser.com/*
// @include          http://meta.superuser.com/*
// @include          http://serverfault.com/*
// @include          http://meta.serverfault.com/*
// @include          http://askubuntu.com/*
// @include          http://meta.askubuntu.com/*
// @include          http://*.stackexchange.com/*
// @include          http://answers.onstartups.com/*
// @include          http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/*
// @include          http://stackapps.com/*
// @run-at         document-end
// @grant          none
// ==/UserScript==
(function () {
    var p = document.getElementById('wmd-input');
    console.log("wmd-input:" + p);
    if (p) {
        p = p.parentNode;

        function ignore(e) {
            if (e.ctrlKey) {
                e.stopPropagation();
            }
        }
        p.addEventListener('keydown', ignore, true);
        p.addEventListener('keypress', ignore, true);
        p.addEventListener('keyup', ignore, true);
    }
})();


Can I delete the system and application files on old MBP 2009 hard drive and still access the files in users? I have an old MBP hard drive that has my old photos and documents stored on it. I have put it in a case and can connect it to my new MBP but it runs quite slowly presumably as it's so old. If I deleted the system files and applications so I theoretically use it as an external hard drive to access photos, music, documents etc on my new MBP would it speed up and still work?

I wouldn't put much faith in an 11-year-old drive, long-term. I certainly wouldn't put the only copy of any data on it.
That said, so long as you never expect to boot from it again*, then the old System files are just waste space, deleting them would be harmless.
It wouldn't, however, give you any speed increase, merely more free space.
Old 'spinny rust' hard drives are maybe 20 times slower than a modern SSD - even assuming a fast drive for its age, full SATA III support & a full-spec USB3 enclosure.
*Not that a drive from a 2009 Mac would have an OS that the current Mac could boot from, even if it was completely up to date before you removed it from the old Mac


Using a apple tv box as a second monitor to your osx machine I've heard that you can use as ipad as a second monitor to you macbook by using software like iDisplay.

Is it possible to use apple TV in a similar capacity?

If so then:
a. Which software do I use?
b. What types of appleTvs will allow that?

Thanks.

This functionality is due in the fall with the next OS X version.  You'll have to wait a few more months.


softwareupdated running at 100% CPU roughly every hour (Yosemite) Roughly every hour, my MBP gets very hot, my fans go crazy, everything slows down, and when I look in Activity Monitor it tells me that softwareupdated is running at 100% CPU. It lasts about 2-3 minutes each time and then disappears.

I am running Yosemite 10.10.5 on an early 2011 MBP. I shut down every night and reboot in the morning.

What I have tried:

I have done all of the updates available in the App Store.
I have unchecked every box in the App Store settings regarding checking for updates (in fact, I have just unchecked every box).
I have disabled check for updates in iTunes settings.
I have force-quit softwareupdated in Activity Monitor. It comes back straight away to finish whatever mystery task it is performing.

Having looked at similar questions, this problem seems unusual. Most report that softwareupdated runs constantly at high CPU, instead of coming and going. The recommended trick to deal with this is to reboot, however that does nothing for my problem.

I am not computer literate enough to know how to determine precisely what app is launching this (or even if it is an app launching it). The only things I generally have running are Terminal, MATLAB 2016b, Safari, and iTunes. Sometimes Mail.

It's driving me mad; I am sure it can't be good for it to suddenly get so hot, so regularly. Moreover, I am worried that the only way to get it to stop is to upgrade to Sierra, but my MBP is pretty old and I am concerned about slow-down.

My questions:

How can I find out why it is running?
Are there any other apps, like iTunes, that have independent update checking?
Is it possible that my settings regarding checking for updates are being overridden?

EDIT: I should perhaps say, this has been an ongoing problem for quite some time now. It is not something that has suddenly started - I am just using my Mac more than usual at the moment, and hence it is now becoming a real problem.

Hmm.  Try opening up terminal, and at the prompt, enter the command:

  $ softwareupdate -l && sudo softwareupdate -i -a

That will tell the system to show you which updates need to be done, then run software update and install all of the updates it found.  See if it gives you any error messages; it may ask you to reboot right away, in which case do that.  Run the same command again after the reboot and see if it still finds updates to install or if nothing shows up.  If nothing shows up then it completed all the updates, and the problem hopefully goes away.  If not, let us know.


Automatically launch Safari with a certain URL the first time the Mac wakes/boots up in a day? Is it possible to make my Mac automatically open a website on Safari the very first time it is woken up just once in a day?

So for example, I come to work at 8:30 and wake up / boot up my Mac and Safari automatically opens up on a certain URL.

But then I go for lunch and turn it off / make it sleep and come back an hour later and this time nothing happens. And maybe i have a meeting and come back later and still nothing happens.

Until the next day this process repeats (only opening Safari the very first time)

Sorry, i'm not sure how to even google for this.

I thought maybe "Automator" could do something like this but i think it requires me to manually click on it.

Edit: I've opened a bounty on this same question at SuperUser: Automatically Launch safari with a certain url the first time the mac wakes/boots up in a day? if anyone is interested.

I'm running macOS Sierra (Version 10.12.1) and Safari (Version 10.0.1).

You can use Automator for this.

Open Automator
Choose type: Calendar Alarm
Drop action 'Get Specified URLs' in
Drop action 'New Safari Documents' in
Save Automator action
Give the Calendar alarm a name
The Calendar app will open now
Edit the Calendar event - repeat every day at 08:30


Mac Pro early2008 El Cap. LOGIC BOARD compatibility w/ later models I just found this site today and it looks sweet! I believe I need to replace the logic board in my unit. Would a board from a 2009 or newer work on my 2008 Mac pro currently with 2x Intel quad 2.8ghz (part 661-4449)? I would like to know in order to expand on the availability of used parts out there and possibly score a faster processor.

No. The machines are totally different as soon as you take the side off, visually & electronically.

The top ⅓ is visually similar, though the 08 uses PATA connections in the optical bay, the 09 has SATAII.

As for the rest, these are just the visible highlights...

The 08 mounts the CPUs directly to the motherboard, 'sideways' like a standard PC, with separate removable RAM daughterboards onto which individual sticks are installed.
At the front is a large dual fan assembly.

08 pics EveryMac & OWC

The 2009 has an entirely different structure - both the CPUs & RAM are on a removable daughterboard, the huge front fan assembly has been replaced by a single fan & a nice PCI card release, far improved over the 08's 'fiddle around underneath like a PC' structure.

09 pic OWC

OWC's picture also hints at (well, advertises;-) one more thing about the 09.
It can reasonably simply be upgraded to 2012 5,1 firmware & will take dual 6-core Westmere's rather than the original Nehalems.
It can also be updated to Sierra 10.12 once the firmware has been upgraded.

I forgot to mention that the memory isn't compatible either.
The 08 takes DDR2 [expensive these days]
The 08 takes DDR3 [much cheaper]

Also, & you really can't tell without sitting two side by side, the drive sleds are different sizes. To move a drive from an 08 to an 09 you must use the correct sled or the pins don't match up to the motherboard when you slide them in.

The 08's still a good machine for its age, but the 09 upgraded to [actually higher than originally purchasable] 2012 spec is still quite the beast.

I have one of each, 08 & upgraded 09. Both going strong.

Purely my own opinion, but I'd be tempted to trade up the 08 to an 09 - you can get them very easily on eBay etc, fully upgraded & ready to go. [Mine is a dual 6-core 3.46GHz, 64GB RAM, cost £1600, UKP. I added a decent graphics card & still had change from 2 grand.]


What Lion maintenance utility should I use? Im a huge fan of AppleJack, but I realize it doesn't currently support Lion.  What is an lion supported equivalent?

Im looking for a one-stop shop for all my Mac cleaning needs!

Bonus marks for software that can be deployed an managed remotely (on the same LAN)..

Thanks in advance!

Dev

Onyx
I don't know AppleJack, therefore I don't know if this program is sufficient for your needs. Onyx is a free tool for general system maintenance.

You can automize tasks which you do frequently.

Verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, to run misc. tasks of system maintenance

Delete caches, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome, and more.


Ransomeware v Time machine and iCloud Can time machine or iCloud backups overcome ransomeware encryption of your hard drive?

Well, if your Time Machine or iCloud backup was done before some ransomeware encrypted your hard drive, and assuming that the ransomeware didn't also encrypt your backup, then yes, you can restore from backup once you got rid of the ransomeware (probably by restoring your Mac from scratch).


Does the iphone podcasts app sync my subscriptions with my itunes subscriptions? I just downloaded ios6 and the latest version of podcasts app.  when i look at all of my podcasts, subscriptions is turned off.

Is there anyway to keep my subscriptions in sync between itunes on my computer and iphone podcasts app?

I don't believe the subscriptions are synced, just the files. I imagine the reason for this is that if subscriptions synced, your Mac and iOS device would both download all new episodes, rather than having one copy that gets synced between them.


How to access iCloud email to unlock because of a lost passcode My kid forgot her passcode. We realize that to get it she will lose all data I've followed direction on other site but it always tells me to it will send an email and to follow instructions. Duh I can't open the iPad to read the email. Have tried setting up a secondary iCloud account on my iPad after the fact but that won't work either it seems she didn't fill in personal info for that option. Help!

The support team should be able to help you in this case:

https://getsupport.apple.com/


Hundreds of filepaths reference to one genuie file I have one file,to which hundreds of filepaths reference to.

In [96]: len(paths_list)
Out[96]: 191
In [97]: paths_list
Out[97]:
['~/Desktop/Dev/sample.txt',
 '~/Library/Containers/com.apple.CloudPhotosConfiguration/Data/Desktop/Dev/sample.txt',
 '~/Library/Containers/com.apple.PressAndHold/Data/Desktop/Dev/sample.txt',
 '~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iCal.CalendarNC/Data/Desktop/Dev/sample.txt',
 '~/Library/Containers/com.apple.languageassetd/Data/Desktop/Dev/sample.txt',
 '~/Library/Containers/com.apple.photos.VideoConversionService/Data/Desktop/Dev/sample.txt',
 '~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iCal/Data/Desktop/Dev/sample.txt',
 '~/Library/Containers/com.apple.share.Video.upload-Youku/Data/Desktop/Dev/sample.txt',
 '~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Desktop/Dev/sample.txt',
 '~/Library/Containers/com.apple.PassKit.PaymentAuthorizationUIExtension/Data/Desktop/Dev/sample.txt',
 ...]

They are of the same file.

What's the mechanism behind it?

There happens to be symbolic links which puts your ~\Desktop folder in each Data folder. So if you execute the command shown below, the output will contain many printed lines. Most of these lines will show a path through a Data/Desktop symbolic link. Note, the -L option causes the find command to follow symbolic links.

find  -L  ~  -name  sample.txt  -print

If you execute the command given below, the same output will be produced, minus the lines showing a path through a Data/Desktop symbolic link.

find  ~  -name  sample.txt  -print

The output from the above command should contain at least the following line.

/Users/YourUsername/Desktop/Dev/sample.txt

A symbolic link is just a file containing a character string. Each directory entry for such files contains a flag indicating the file is a symbolic link. The character string stored in a symbolic link file can be printed by executing the readlink command. For example, you could enter the following command, on your computer.

readlink  ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.CloudPhotosConfiguration/Data/Desktop

This would produce the following output.

../../../../Desktop

So when symbolic links are being followered and the file name

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.CloudPhotosConfiguration/Data/Desktop/Dev/sample.txt

is encountered, the Desktop string gets replaced by the string ../../../../Desktop to produce

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.CloudPhotosConfiguration/Data/../../../../Desktop/Dev/sample.txt

which is equivalent to the

~/Desktop/Dev/sample.txt

file name.


What process is in charge of the background image on Mac OS? I have a problem that occurs seemingly randomly on my Macbook Pro, 13" 2010, running 10.7.  The background on the secondary screen (which is actually the laptop screen itself, the primary screen is a Cinema Display) will go gray.  I can still use the screen, it shows everything but the background image.  I can even drag desktop icons to that screen.  Changing the wallpaper does nothing.

Most of the users in this discussion seem to be having a similar issue.

I tried "killAll Finder" to see if I could get it to reset itself (it will fix itself after reboot).  Apparently, that process is not in charge of the background image, because the background stays while the desktop itself (file icons on the desktop) disappears while Finder is restarting.

So, is there a process I can try restarting that will reset the wallpaper state?

The Dock process is responsible for Launchpad, Mission Control, the Dock and the Desktop Background.


Can you figure out if your friend is sharing their location from their iPhone or MacBook? Can you figure if your friend is sharing their location from their iPhone or  MacBook ?

No. Apple lets people choose which device feeds the location for them. Apple lets them choose to share that location with you but not the name or type of system that feeds the geo location.

You get to see that location and not which device they chose to feed the location data. I'm not aware of any Mac client to input from iCloud find my friends, so you can be pretty sure they're not sharing from their Mac due to system design and not due to Apple letting you know what your friend chose. They could use a watch, iPad, iPod or iPhone currently in iCloud Find My Friends app.


Replacing El Capitan with Mavericks I'm trying to install Mavericks from a bootable USB.
I'm using this guide; http://macpaw.com/how-to/clean-install-os-x-mavericks-on-my-mac

I delete El Capitan in disk utility, but there is no 'Install OS X', merely 'Reinstall OS X', which asks me to reinstall El Capitan.

Where is the option to roll back to previous operating systems?

EDIT: This is on an early 2015 model Apple Air.

You have not written what your MAC, ie, it is unclear whether the installation it is possible Mavericks.

Minimum Supported Operating System for your computer can be viewed using
Mactracker or MachineProfile

Additionally:

  Back in February, Apple's Worldwide Developer Certificate, designed to
  verify third-party apps and services, expired, requiring Apple to
  issue a new certificate for developers to use. OS X installation files
  downloaded from the Mac App Store before February 14, 2016 and stored
  on a computer or USB drive are no longer functional. This includes
  installation files for OS X El Capitan and older versions of OS X like
  Mavericks and Mountain Lion. Users who keep OS X installers on hand or
  have created USB install disks in case of emergencies should replace
  their files with new versions by re-downloading them through the Mac
  App Store using purchased history.

  Users who can't replace an expired certificate can still use older
  installers by changing the dates on their machines.

  In the OS X Installer, choose Utilities > Terminal.
  Enter date 0201010116 and press Return.
  Quit Terminal and continue the install.

OS X Installers Downloaded Prior to February 14 No Longer Work After Certificate Update


Sync keyboard shortcuts for ipad with iCloud I have some useful text expander shortcuts on my MacBook Pro and I would like to get them synced with the shortcuts on my ipad. That way I don't have to maintain the same shortcut list in 2 places. Does anyone know how to do do this? I also know that there are text expander apps for ipad, but is any of them importing the shortcuts from iCloud?

I made it work by Going to Settings > iCloud and selecting to sync Documents & data


Bluetooth connection, JBL Flip3 to Mac Pro I've read all the advise posted to connecting JBL Flip speaker to Mac Pro.
I'm not sure if this covers the new JBL Flip 3. Holding down the power button does not provide an alternating blue red light. The power button light stays white and Mac Pro does not detect the Flip 3. Any suggestions?

Also turned off all other BLT devises. Still no luck.

Try long-press on the bluetooth button on the Flip 3. That should make it discoverable in the Bluetooth preferences in the Mac.


Yosemite does not like emptying the trash I am on Yosemite (10.10.1) and I noticed the annoying habit of not wanting to empty the trash -- it keeps whining that The operation can’t be completed because the item “whatever” is in use.  This is starting to piss me off - I can go to .Trash and remove stuff by hand, but is going on?   Once a file is not in use and has been binned, why can't the OS recognise it's not actually linked to any application?  This problem has come up whether the app used for that kind of file is still open or not btw.

To find out what file(s) in your Trash are in use, and by whom:

lsof +D ~/.Trash

The command name in the first column will be truncated. If it's truncated so much that you cannot identify the process, the second column contains the pid (Process ID), which you can cross-reference in Activity Monitor. Or get additional info using ps -p pid.

Note:

It has been suggested that the command:

sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash

may be useful here. This is not the case!

If a file is in use (which is the scenario the question is about), it cannot be removed! Not even by root.

The suggested command may be useful if:

You are in an admin account (or in sudoers, which I discourage as a security weakness), and
The only reason you cannot remove the file is that its permissions deny deletion.

In general there are three reasons why you might not be able to empty the trash, and each reason has its own cure.

If the file (or folder) is locked, you can either unlock it or hold down the option key while emptying the trash.
If permissions do not allow you to remove the file, you can either change the permissions to allow it, or use sudo to override the file's permissions.
If the file is in use, your only recourse is to find the process that is using the file and make it stop using it. In the simplest case, trying again after a short wait is all it takes. It may be necessary to force quit the app, and the purpose of the lsof command is to determine which app needs to be quit. However, even root cannot remove a file that is in use.

The takeaway is that the problem "I cannot empty the trash" does not have a one-size-fits-all solution. When you are told that something is in use, do not waste time trying to apply a fix that doesn't fit that situation.

I have also seen it suggested that Secure Empty Trash may be helpful. Again, this is not the case! Secure Empty Trash will overwrite the sectors on disk that the file's data was stored in, but only after the file is successfully deleted. If you can't delete the file, for whatever reason, it won't be deleted or overwritten. If the file is hard-linked, deleting it only deletes one of its links. As long as other links remain, the underlying inode is not deleted and the file's disk space is not overwritten.


Install app on iOS without using iTunes With the release of iTunes 12.7, Apple removed the ability to install apps on a connected iOS device by removing the App Store from iTunes.

I tried installing an older version of iTunes which still has the App Store, iTunes 12.6.3. However, when trying to log in, I need to authorize the computer, but when trying to sign in it gives me an error saying This action could not be completed. Try again. If I choose not to authorize the computer, it threatens to delete literally all of the apps on my device.

Is there another, better way to install an app on my iPhone?

Depending on your setup, you have two options.

OPTION 1 - Use iTunes 12.6.3 instead. Refer to this answer for more details!
OPTION 2 - Use Apple Configurator 2. Download and install Apple Configurator.

Since you're saying that iTunes 12.6.3 isn't working for you, than give Apple Configurator 2 a go. Apple Configurator 2 provides much more advanced features in terms of managing your iOS devices.


New Macbook Pro 2017 won't boot from USB drive I have a new Macbook Pro 2017 (No touch bar) that will not boot from an external USB-C SSD drive. I cloned a 2012 Macbook air using Carbon Copy Cloner onto the drive and I have confirmed that the drive will boot from the MB Air. The Air has the newest version of Sierra. (10.12.5)

I have a 2016 Macbook Pro w/Touch bar and it will also boot to that machine.

I have tried to bless the drive in recovery mode (That did not work)

I would like to clone the Air -> new MB Pro 2017

For a long term solution, I would like to be able to make bootable backups of the new machine.

EDIT: I was able to clone the new OS on the new Macbook 2017 and it will boot to that.

There are hardware specific builds of the OS that sometimes will run on one computer and not on another (due to drivers that are needed for certain models, etc). So this means that your MB Air setup will likely not work to boot the new MBP.

See here for some info:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204319

For this reason, you want to transfer over your data using the Migration Assistant (you can do this between computers, or using a Time Machine backup).


Default list of Quicklook Plugins for a fresh LION install? What QL plugins "should be" in /System/Library/Quicklook/? This is an easy one for you all. I simply need people to list what Quicklook plugins they have installed in /System/Library/QuickLook.

I ask because I have a QL plugin named: Icon.qlgenerator in my system's quicklook folder and I do not think it should be there. Even a google search of "Icon.qlgenerator" turned up only a couple hits and they were no help.

All in all: I need members to 1) help me out and simply list which QL plugins they have in their system/library/quicklook folder (everyone should have the same.)
2) If Icon.qlgenerator is not supposed to be there, does anyone have any idea where this could have come from? Did previous versions of OS X's /System/Library/QuickLook directory contain Icon.qlgenerator?

Maybe I am freaking out and it should be there but if that was the case I think google would have found me some better info. Google Search for "Icon.qlgenerator"

Thanks, we'll go from here. If it's not supposed to be there I will drop some more questions about determining what uses this ql plugin etc...

File in question: /System/Library/QuickLook - Modification date: 4/12/12, Creation date: 4/12/12, last used: 4/12/12... version 3.2

I have Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4, and that file is present. The file is copyrighted by Apple ("3.2, Copyright Apple Inc. 2007-2011").

Looking at the content of its info.plist file, I see that its purpose is generating a preview for files with a content type UTI equal to com.apple.iconset, which (as far as I remember) is the type of files containing a set of icons.

The computer I am using is a Mac Mini middle 2011. I don't actually remember if It came with Mac OS X 10.7 already installed, or it came with Mac OS X 10.6, and then I installed Mac OS X 10.7. I have also installed Xcode.
Probably that can explain why some computers don't have that plugin, and some computers have it. It could also be the difference is caused from installed software, or an update of the operating system.

I would not say the plugin should not be there. It is not a file created from malware, or viruses to cause any issue with your computer.


How to audio out to iPad Pro when connected to HDMI? I have 3rd generation iPad pro. I use USB-C to HDMI adapter to connect my iPad to an external monitor with speaker.

The speaker on the monitor is so bad..I would love to use iPad speaker instead.

I've looked up everywhere, but it looks like there is no way to disable audio out to HDMI.

Is there a way to turn off HDMI audio out?

Unfortunately not. As far as iOS is concerned, HDMI works at the device level, and responds according to the EDID of the display device - if the display announces via its EDID it handles audio as well, then the iPad will switch audio over to the display device, in accordance with HDCP and the HDMI spec.


No more multi-language detection autocorrect in mac os x 10.7.5? I've updated to Mac OS X 10.7.5 and now the autocorrect no longer works as beautifully as it used to. Prior to update, whether I was in mail, safari, wherever, it detected the language & suggested the appropriate correction…now it is only detecting one language (the first on my list in settings) and doesn't detect when I'm using the second language on my list in system preferences.

Can I revert back to the previous software versions b/c this is really frustrating?!?!

…or does anyone know how to fix this??

You should find the setting in your System Preferences.

Select Automatic by language or your choice.


What does the Flashback malware do? There was a question about removing the Flashback malware from your OS X machine, but I'm still not clear on what it does. What exactly does the Flashback malware do once it is installed on your Mac?

From Wikipedia:

  The Trojan [FlashBack] targets a Java vulnerability on Mac OS X. The system is
  infected after the user is redirected to a compromised bogus site,
  where JavaScript code causes an applet containing an exploit to load.
  An executable file is saved on the local machine, which is used to
  download and run malicious code from a remote location. The malware
  also switches between various servers for optimised load balancing.
  Each bot is given a unique ID that is sent to the control server.. The
  trojan, however, will only infect the user visiting the infected web
  page, meaning other users on the computer are not infected unless
  their user accounts have been infected separately, this is due to the
  UNIX security system.

For a lengthier, more technical description, read this F-Secure article.


Maximum external monitors supported by A1418? I have an A1418, Late 2012 version and I'm having trouble locking down an answer to how many external monitors it can support. Right now I have the iMac and two external monitors via the two Thunderbolts. The monitors are non-Apple, non-Thunderbolt.

Is there any way I can add an additional two monitors? Can the A1418 support a total of 4 external monitors? Some sites say yes, others say no. What say you?

Two external displays with a resolution of 2560x1600

Resolution comes from the specifications.
Number of displays comes from this KB Article


Apple Watch Series 3 ski tracking Apple Watch Series 3 was announced to have ski tracking possibility. But I cannot find any information on the web if it already possible. Can anyone that has Apple Watch confirm, that you can now track skiing activity, and if so, what exactly can you track? Does it offer similar capabilities as Slopes or Trace apps?

There's still no ski tracking capabilities in any of the Apple Watch series.

But, all the data inputs needed are there. Barometer, motion tracking, heart rate tracking, location via GPS and cell tower trilateration, etc...

After the initial announcement, Apple referenced that this feature would be available toward the end of 2017, probably before winter.

The HomePod IPSW leak a few months ago provided some indication that Apple would add this feature to Workouts.  This screen grab shows there's references to skiing workouts already built into the firmware.

For now, you can use the myriad of different ski tracking apps out there.


Launchd based daemon exit with abnormal code 1, without crash log I've seen many questions that relate to specific daemons/applications that exit on this same exit code (=1). All scenarios seems unique and unconnected.

I created a daemon of my own, and also got the same sudden exit with exit code 1. If i could't only realize the meaning of this error code...

unfortunately, there's no crash log with backtraces i can look into, so i deduce it's a planned process termination...
is there any documentation which describe abnormal code per index ?

perhaps it's  connected with my plist. I've added 2 keys that might be relevant : KeepAlive and RunAtLoad.

thanks,

Ok, I've just realize that i left exit(1) in my code. this was part of non deamon leftovers, and that what caused the abnormal exit.


Set Gmail as default mail handler for Mail PDF print option for Snow Leopard I handle most of my email through Gmail's web interface either in Firefox or Chrome.

Often I would like to print -> PDf -> mail pdf to a customer.  However the Mail PDF option in the print panel opens up a Mail.app compose window.

Instead I would like this to open a compose panel in whatever browser currently has a copy of Gmail running.

At present I can print directly to PDF, then in Gmail compose, attach, comment, send, then delete the PDF.

An alternative not quite as good solution from my perspective would be for Mail to track the contacts from Gmail so that a few characters would auto complete.  But that solution also eludes me.

The only way that I know how to accomplish this is to use Mailplane which is a commercial Mac app for using Gmail's web interface.

It has its own "Mail PDF with Mailplane" service which comes as part of the app:

There's no way that I know of to automate the process of attaching a PDF (or any other file) to Gmail through a web browser. You're going to need a Mac app for that. That either means setting up an email client such as Mail.app (which means duplicating contacts, etc) or Mailplane (which will let you use your existing contacts).


Click-lock Alternative? I was wondering if there was an alternative to click-lock for mac? I can't use drag lock because of limited hand movement. I need something where I can move the cursor to where I want to drag, hold down the left or right mouse button for a number of seconds, be able to release, and then it will be in infinite drag until I click again to release the drag (similar to how click-lock is on Windows). I tried to use btt, but to no avail. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

There is a built-in equivalent for trackpads, called dragging, which you find in System Preferences > Accessibility > Trackpad Options:

In case this is not sufficient for you or you need to use a mouse, have a look at the answers to this question. Currently the following third-party apps are being mentioned:

Hammerspoon (free) is a popular choice for gestures and automation. It offers a feature called "Grab Scroll".
Karabiner (free) a similar and popular tool.
Smooze (commercial)
Smart Scroll (commercial)

Better Touch Tool (commercial) is my personal favourite as it allows so much more, such as another Windows-inspired feature, called window snapping, etc. The procedure here would be as follows:

Open BTT preferences
Select Input device, i.e. Mouse
Select Trigger. The one you mention (i.e. long press) currently seems not to be available. (I suggest you make a feature request on their forum. The developer is usually very open to such requests.) Instead you could do e.g. middle-click.
Select action. Go to Window Resize & Move > Start/Stop Moving or search.


Trouble identifying "Tombstone exists for queued item; deleting." in ipad logs Playing around with my apple device logs and getting interested in identifying different events.  Many I seem to be able to figure out with a google search and a bit of reading.  However, this one is eluding me.  This is only a small snippet of these events.  The log was compiling at a decent pace, when these particular lines began to appear in a much more rapid manner.

-The device is not jailbroken, running out of the box ios
-No apps running at time of log
-I do not use Icloud

 Jan 17 22:40:03 A-iPad suggestd(CoreSuggestionsInternals)[388] <Notice>: Tombstone exists for queued item; deleting.
 Jan 17 22:40:03 A-iPad suggestd(CoreSuggestionsInternals)[388] <Notice>: Tombstone exists for queued item; deleting.
 Jan 17 22:40:03 A-iPad suggestd(CoreSuggestionsInternals)[388] <Notice>: Tombstone exists for queued item; deleting.
 Jan 17 22:40:03 A-iPad suggestd(CoreSuggestionsInternals)[388] <Notice>: Tombstone exists for queued item; deleting.
 Jan 17 22:40:03 A-iPad suggestd(CoreSuggestionsInternals)[388] <Notice>: Tombstone exists for queued item; deleting.
 Jan 17 22:40:03 A-iPad suggestd(CoreSuggestionsInternals)[388] <Notice>: Tombstone exists for queued item; deleting.
 Jan 17 22:40:03 A-iPad suggestd(CoreSuggestionsInternals)[388] <Notice>: Tombstone exists for queued item; deleting.
 Jan 17 22:40:03 A-iPad suggestd(CoreSuggestionsInternals)[388] <Notice>: Tombstone exists for queued item; deleting.```

This was also referenced immediately after the above
```MobileSafari(CoreMotion)[326] <Notice>: {"msg":"CLGyroBiasEstimatorClientRemote::unregisterWithGyroBiasEstimatorPrivate", "event":"activity", "client":"0x111b2e550"}```

See: Tombstone (data store).

In brief, a tombstone is a token in a distributed data storage system that gets put in place when a record is deleted. It's needed for synchronizing different stores on the distributed system. For example, if record 'A' is deleted on one store, when the system tries to sync it may see another copy of record 'A' on a different store, and it won't know that the record was deleted from the first. It might unwittingly sync record 'A' back to the first store, effectively undeleting it. The tombstone tells the system that record 'A' was deleted on the first store, so that the system can sync that deletion to the other stores appropriately.


Do multimedia messages sent with iMessage impact data? When I send a pictures from my iPhone (which has a SMS/MMS plan), does it impact data if I'm on a 4G network, and send it through iMessage?

Similarly, if I disable iMessage, then send an MMS over 4G, would it still use some data?

iMessage is pure data usage, so yes it will affect your data.

MMS use depends on your carrier, but most charge a fixed fee per message, so it may be worth finding out the costs for this.

In the UK at least, there are many high data and unlimited data tariffs, so it's far better to replace all SMS and MMS with iMessage (or alternatives such as WhatsApp) where possible.


What does "FileVault: No (Encrypted at rest)" mean? I have a new MacBook Air 2020 running Catalina 10.15.6 and I'm asking about the encryption on the internal SSD. When I run diskutil apfs list it shows that both the "Macintosh HD" and "Macintosh HD - Data" volumes have the following:
FileVault:                 No (Encrypted at rest)
What does this mean? If these drives are already encrypted at rest, should I, or do I need to, turn on Filevault to protect the data on them in case my MacBook is stolen?

It means that the SSD is encrypted by the built-in T2 chip. On newer Macs encryption is always enabled and handled by the T2 chip.
This means that the disk is encrypted when at rest, essentially meaning when the computer is powered off and/or the disk drive is removed from the computer. However as soon as someone turns on the computer, the T2 will supply the necessary key and make the drive contents available.
You will most probably want to enable FileVault. This ensures that your drive cannot be decrypted simply by powering on the computer, but will require your secret password.


Preview- move to Trash When opening multiple .jpg files (or other format) I can use the "Move to Trash" on all but the last one standing?

Here is a example of two images, and if I select one then the Move to Trash works.

However if I select all or have only one image showing the Move to Trash is disabled?

My challenge is that I open a group of screen shots and then review and delete.

Let say I have 50 screen shots and I open 10 of them to work with. The names are

Screen Shot 2015-01-19 at 9.14.42 PM
Screen Shot 2015-01-19 at 9.14.17 PM

and so on.

Obviously I can not remember the specific name once I close the Preview and now have to find and delete a specific one, since now it is a part of larger group with very "similar" names.

Is there a way to use the Move to Trash on all images including the last one standing.

You can move those files directly to the Trash.

Select them in Preview
Drag them above the Trash in the Dock
Wait for ~2 seconds
Finder window will appear and you can drop those files.

However you won't be able to empty the Trash without closing the Preview window first (the file is still in use).


Needs Office for Mac 2011 Outlook Spotlight? I have deactivated Spotlight, because the mdb process used a lot of memory and I use Spotlight not really often :-) Today I searched some emails in Outlook (Office for Mac 2011) and the mails could not be found, but they are there (I can see them!). Is this only by accident or does Outlook use the Spotlight index?

As you suspected, Outlook for Mac does use Spotlight's index files (as do many other apps, such as Alfred). If you've got Spotlight disabled, search in Outlook isn't going to work either.

Spotlight shouldn't take up any memory really at all if it's not indexing and/or updating indexes.


How do I change the email address that iCal alerts are sent to? When I set up email alerts in iCal, a popup list allows me to choose one of my email addresses, but there is no way to enter a custom email address. How do I change the email address that iCal sends notifications to?

The simplest solution would be to add the address to which you want alarms sent to your Address Book entry. Beyond that, I don't have an elegant workaround, but you could, for example, run a script that could contain a variable to send alerts to multiple recipients.

I sympathize in that it's annoying that your Address Book entry is forced to contain a mix of public and private information used for various, and differing, purposes. This is one of Apple's many decisions that (I assume) works for the majority of the user population, but bites the outliers in various ways.


How do I tell if my Mac supports Mini Toslink? Apparently on many modern macs the 3.5mm headphone audio jack supports Mini Toslink.

How can I tell whether my mac supports it, whether it supports surround sound (4 speaker or better), and whether the microphone input acts as a mini toslink input?

Do the following:

Open "About This Mac"
Open "More Info..." (skip this step on macOS Sierra)
Open "System Report..."
From the left pane choose Hardware > Audio
Check if Optical Digital Audio Output is present


The trackpad doesn't work when starting Windows 7 bootcamp I installed Windows 7 (bootcamp) on my MacBook but it doesn't work. Do I have to install special drivers?

Any help is appreciated.

Please check out TrackPad++. It's free with an option to donate.

I've used this in the past, when I had bootcamp with Windows 7 - you can set gestures like you can in Mac OS X.


Signing an App that includes Java fails I try to sign an app-bundle that includes the Java Runtime Environment 8 (JRE).

From command line I run this command:

codesign -s "Developer ID Application: My Company" /Development/MyApp.app

I get this output:

MyApp.app: code object is not signed at all
In subcomponent: /Development/MyApp.app/Contents/PlugIns/jre8/Contents/Home/jre/COPYRIGHT

The result is that the App-bundle doesn't get signed as expected.

How do I fix this?

code signing

The friendly manual on code signing says to sign the sub-component first, then try again with your app itself:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/technotes/tn2206/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40007919-CH1-TNTAG305

codesign says my code is unsigned when I try to sign it.

Make sure all nested code is already signed and its signature is valid. Xcode will take care of this for you if you let it handle your code signing tasks.

It goes on to say let Xcode handle all the signing, which may or may not be helpful since you are already choosing to sign things from the command line.

--deep

To sign all nested code in one go, add the --deep argument to codesign:

codesign --deep -s "Developer ID Application: My Company" /Development/MyApp.app

shell script

Another way of doing the same is to create a shell script that checks the signature state of the nested code, and signs if it is missing. This way you may get more control on what you are signing within the bundle.

Example:

A bash-script called sign-unsigned.sh that checks one entry in the bundle and signs it if it is not already signed could be done like this:

#!/bin/bash
if codesign --verify $1 ; then
   exit;
else
   codesign --sign "$2" $1;
fi

Put the sign-unsigned.sh in /Development and do this on the command line:

cd /Development/MyApp.app/
find . -exec ../sign-unsigned.sh {} "Developer ID Application: My Company" \;
codesign --sign "Developer ID Application: My Company" ../MyApp.app


Make an external monitor from broken MacBook Pro I have an early 2011 MacBookPro 13" with a dead motherboard.

I would like to detach the screen and use it as an external monitor.

Has anyone ever done that? Does anyone have information about pins on the video connector which goes from the display to the motherboard?
Any information is welcome :)

Thanks.

I couldn't find anything about that specific mac, but the instructions for doing so are all the same:
Instructables, old laptop screen monitor conversion
 I hope this helps you creating your monitor.


When did I reset the data counter on my iPhone? Is it possible to see some detailed statistics about data usage on an iPhone (iOS 8)? In the System Preferences I can only see that I have consumed 8 GB data and 23 h of calling, but I can't see when these numbers was reset last time, average usage per month and similar details that would be useful now when I consider changing plan.

If you mean the usage on the mobile network, it is shown in Settings -> Mobile network, all the way down, scroll down to see when it's been reset.


what is the difference between UDID & advertising identifier? When advertising identifier is used does the App functionality will change? Will the App functions properly when the iPad/iPhone is resetted.

UDID, which stands for Unique Device Identifier, is an alphanumeric string associated to Apple's iOS running Devices. Due to it's potential for abuse and privacy issues, Apple replaced it with the Advertising Identifier which is a:

  non-permanent, non-personal, device identifier, that advertising networks will use to give you more control over advertisers’ ability to use tracking methods. If you choose to limit ad tracking, advertising networks using the Advertising Identifier may no longer gather information to serve you targeted ads.

This AdID is used for advertising purposes and does not changes the functionality of the App in any way. It can even be disabled. Reseting it, though, may mean that you'll be receiving less accurate ads.

With iOS 6.1 a button was added to reset the Advertising Identifier, so that future requests will return a different value.


Keyboard shortcut to sleep a Mac I am looking for a quick way to sleep without closing the lid, or using the mouse.

If it matters, I have Lion version OS and a MacBook Air.

If others do have a keyboard with an eject key, you can just press Command ⌘+Option ⌥+Eject ⏏.

Other shortcuts:

Control ^+Shift ⇧+Eject ⏏ - Put displays to sleep
Command ⌘+Control ^+Eject ⏏ - Restart
Command ⌘+Control ^+Option ⌥+Eject ⏏ - Shut down

If others like the OP have a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro with a power key in place of an eject key, substituting the power key for eject should work in Mountain Lion and later versions of OS X, but not in Lion.

Since Mavericks, another option is to just press the power button or power key. It now puts a Mac to sleep instead of showing a dialog with different options.

If you don't have a keyboard with an eject or power key, you can use a private.xml like this with KeyRemap4MacBook:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>test</name>
    <identifier>test</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::S, VK_CONTROL, VK_OPTION, VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_CONSUMERKEY_EJECT, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L | ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L</autogen>
 </item>
</root>

Or create a workflow like this in Alfred:


Some Contacts not showing up but are still stored in iPhone 4 I noticed today that several of my recent contacts are not in my contacts. However, I have been texting them and their info shows up when I go to contact from a text message or recent call.

When I am in my address book and go to groups only All Contacts is an option, and that's where they are not. How do I get them all back into my contact list?

Had a similar problem after doing a restore on my iPhone 4.  I just tried something that seemed to work.  Went to contacts and selected groups.  Selected Hide All Contacts and immediately selected Show All Contacts again.  The missing contacts re-appeared along with duplicate entries for the one's I recreated.


Time Machine backup drive doesn't have enough room to back up to My MacBook Pro has a 1 TB drive with 750 GB used. I keep receiving a message from Time Machine saying I don't have enough room to backup and to remove files. The Time Machine disk is 1 TB as well and I'm at a loss to see what to do.

Time Machine stores multiple versions of file which change over time so if the backup drive has the same size as the source drive this situation does happen after some time (it also may happen if the backup drive is bigger but much more seldomly). At this point you have two options

swap your backup drive for a bigger one and start a new backup on that
accept the fact that older versions of your backup will get deleted by Time Machine


Abort OS X download initiated through App Store? I started an OS X Yosemite download. I did not want to download it or install it; rather I just wanted it to show up under purchases so I could install it in the future after Apple removes it from the App Store. It will avoid problems like Where can I get a copy of Mavericks after Yosemite has been released?

The Pause button is not available (its greyed out), so I can't pause or stop the download.

How do I abort the download now that the "purchase" has been made?

You could just go to the Applications folder on your Mac, and find the App that is downloading, and delete it from there.  Once you do this, it should pop up a box asking you if you want to cancel the download.  Just select yes and cancel it.

I've done this before and it worked fine.  Usually, I just let it fully download, then uninstall/remove the App with an App called Clean My Mac, or App Zapper.  Both are great apps for uninstalling/removing Apps and other stuff from you Mac completely/fully.

Hope this helps :)

-James


Is there an easy way to save a contact for a phone number in the text of an SMS (iphone 4s IOS7) I want to use the number that's in the body of the message, NOT the senders's number.

IOS clearly recognises this as a phone number as it highlights it and gives me the option to dial it, but nothing else. Best I've come up with so far is to dial it, hang up quickly then add the contact from the recent calls list. Is there a graceful solution I'm missing, this sort of thing used to be so easy on an old dumb phone.

Since you're running iOS 7, all you can do is copy it and manually add it to a new contact.

Update to iOS 9.2 and you will get the option to do exactly what you described in your post. Don't worry, even your iPhone 4s should run iOS 9 fine and updating may even make it faster.


Is there an application for creating an text inventory of media files and/or applications For insurance purposes, I would like to keep a list of the following:

All of the movie files on my Mac
All of the music files on my Mac
All of the applications on my Mac

The lists needs to be updated regularly, and stored in the cloud (not iCloud). Being able to save the list files to a dropbox folder would be just fine. It should also be able to index network locations.

These files are from multiple sources, so I can not rely on the 'Purchased' functionality on iTunes (for example).

Is anyone aware of an application that can do this? I could not find much on Google.

I would say the best way to do this would be some sort of script that searches your drive on a scheduled basis, and dumps the results into a text file for you.

Something like:

sudo find / -name "*.avi" -o -name "*.mp4" -o -name "*.m4v" -o -name "*.mp3" > ~/Dropbox/results.txt

The -o switch is the find equivalent of logical OR, so the above is searching the whole of your computer for any files (or directories) that have the extensions .avi, .mp4, .m4v, or .mp3


Can I use an iPad Air (iPad 5) screen protector on my iPad Air 2 (iPad 6) I received an iPad Air 2 recently and am trying to order a screen protector for it. Can I use an iPad Air 1st Generation screen protecter? Are the width and height the same on both generations?

Yes, they are the same width and height. You can check the measurements on Apple's website. They're the same aside from the depth which has nothing to do with the screen protector.

          iPad Air 2              iPad Air
Height    9.4 inches (240 mm)     9.4 inches (240 mm)
Width     6.6 inches (169.5 mm)   6.6 inches (169.5 mm)
Depth     0.24 inch (6.1 mm)      0.29 inch (7.5 mm)


Excel 2011 crashes when printing certain worksheets Excel 2011 (for Mac) consistently crashes on certain .xlsx files, at the moment I want to print it (either directly to the printer or to PDF). With Excel 2016 (both Windows and Mac), it works fine.

The only thing I know, the Excel is created by a colleague who uses Excel for Windows.

The Excel-worksheet probably contains an embedded OLE object. Within Excel you can check this by right clicking each "image". When the context-menu's last option is Format object, you found it.

To fix it, choose the option Save as image and choose a location and name. Then delete the object, and insert the previously saved image.

There is also another way to check for embedded objects. An .xlsx file is actually also a .zip file. You can rename the extension so you can unzip it (or use unzip filename.xlsx -d directory_to_unzip_to on the command line).

When the newly created folder contains a folder xl/embeddings, and this folder contains at least one file, the excel contains an embedded object.


Backing Up OS X Server to Local Time Machine Server Folder I've setup Time Machine Backup services on Mavericks Server. I want to backup the backup server itself using Time Machine, but to the folder that I setup "Time Machine Backups" where all the other backups are being stored, instead of backing up to the root drive.

The only option I have when I select a disk using the server's Time Machine configuration is the drive itself, and not the "Time Machine Backups" folder I see from remote machines.

Is what I'm trying to do possible?

No, you cannot. Backing up to a local volume (what you're having the server do) uses a slightly different backup format than a network backup (what your server is allowing clients to do). With a local volume backup, the backups are stored inside a folder named Backups.backupdb which is at the root of the backup volume (not in a subfolder). With a network backup, the backup is stored inside a disk image, and the Backups.backupdb folder is at the root of the volume inside that. Because the network backup is wrapped in a disk image, that image can be almost anywhere (volume root, folder, subfolder, whatever); but this flexibility does not exist for a local volume backup.


No speaker sound in ios7 on iPhone 4s Recently I received a refurbished iPhone 4s running ios 7.  The speaker sound does not work in some applications.  For example videos from the Photos app play no sound.  However, the ringtone works.  Keyboard sounds do not work.  The music app does not emit sound either.

I have tried power cycling, updating applications, calling the phone and restoring from backup.

Calling the phone seemed to help as audio returned, but then the same problem resumed about a day later.

EDIT 1: This problem is intermittent.  For example when unlocking the first two keys make sound but the third and fourth do not.  It does not always fail in this pattern.  One moment the sound may be working on youtube, and go silent the next.  There does not seem to be any pattern to the failures.

What can be done to fix this?

i had exactly the same issue. Cleaned the charging socket + the earphone entrance.  Voila!  it was working again


Can iTunes now play HD music files in high definition? A record company is offering free downloads of high-definition music. I downloaded several music files encoded at 24 bit, 192 kHz ALAC. To my surprise, iTunes 12.0.1.26 on  10.10.1 Yosemite imported the track and played it successfully! And it lists that high-resolution information in the file information.

I had thought that iTunes could not play high definition files. I understood it to be limited to 16 bit, 44.1 kHz files. And so I had thought that special software is required to play anything higher than that.

So my question is: When iTunes is playing such files, is it actually playing them at full resolution, or is it down-converting them? (Or whatever the technical term would be for storing or playing the files at something less than full resolution.) I can't tell by ear because I don't have my computer hooked up to good speakers.

iTunes uses the same technologies as QuickTime for playback.

According to this document circa 2005, QuickTime is capable of playing 24-bit , 192kHz audio files. I think it's safe to say that iTunes is fully capable of playing these files.

However, you're probably limited by the hardware in your Mac. If you open the "Audio MIDI Setup" app, you'll probably find that your Mac is limited to audio output at 96kHz.

So, if you want to listen to these files in full 192kHz, you'll need to use a dedicated external USB DAC, and bypass your Mac's internal audio hardware. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Further reading: http://www.head-fi.org/t/671361/how-to-get-24-bit-192khz-files-from-my-macbook-pro-to-play-through-the-dac-of-the-fiio-e17


How do I permanently show my dashboard on a separate monitor? I work in multi monitor setup.

I have some important information available in the dashboard and want it to be always visible on one of the monitor.

Is there a way (w/ external software or not) to do so?

There isn't a built in function to do this. You have to look for an external tool, but i think there will be no such tool, though.


How can I discover Windows hosts to add a printer I have a Windows print server on the network. I am trying to one of the printers on this server to a Mac with the latest OSX. I can ping the Windows PC, but when I go to the Windows tab in the add printers window, the PC doesn't show up.

Is there any way to make OSX discover all hosts on the network? I've tried the following command as suggested in a similar question on Super-User:

arp -a

But to no avail. Any thoughts?

I know this is not a real answer but I have been using Macs in (mostly) PC environments and I find the best way to print to it is by setting up a printer using it's IP address.

I rarely have any success printing thru a Windows print queue, and unless there is a rule that you HAVE to print thru the Windows server save yourself the hassle and just print directly.


Enumerating messages in Outlook's Drafts folder generates an error I would like to enumerate the messages in Outlook's 'Drafts' folder.

When I run this script:

tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
  set theMessages to every message in the drafts
  --returns 1
  display dialog of (count of theMessages)
  repeat with theMessage in theMessages
    display dialog of the class of theMessage    -- displays 'inm'
    display dialog of the subject of theMessage  -- error here
  end repeat

end tell

I get an error that reads Microsoft Outlook got an error: Can’t make subject of outgoing message id 15002 into type string..

It seems like theMessage is the ID of the message, even though its class is 'inm' (guessing that this means inbox message).

If I cast theMessage to a Message:

display dialog of the subject of (theMessage as message)

I get a different error: Can’t make «class inm » id 15492 of application "Microsoft Outlook" into type message.

What am I not understanding?

The correct syntax:

display dialog of the (subject of theMessage as text)


Unable to open CSV file I have a reasonably sized CSV file (40 Megabytes). I know that some apps won't work with certain encodings, and that they will throw error if the encoding isn't ASCII. But its alarming that even TextEdit.app is unable to open this file.

First I tried Numbers.app. I made sure this isn't a Launch Services error, because I opened the file within the app. It wouldn't load. The progress bar always gets stuck half way. When I open this CSV file with TextEdit.app, it wouldn't load either. Not even Google Sheets. The file is just 40 Megabytes and has only ASCII characters. Running file command in Terminal.app returns the following message:

file.csv: ASCII text, with very long lines.

I am able to open the file using Visual Studio Code but not in TextEdit.app. How can I fix it? I cleaned the file for any \r characters.

Update: Running wc -l file.csv command returns 176831. My system is a 2016 MacBookPro with 16 GB RAM.

It is quite common for GUI programs to be unable to handle large text files. Although 40MB doesn't sound like large regarding todays standards, but that might bloat up to a lot more in memory depending on how the application is written. And GUI applications often aren't the most efficient ones.

You might want to split up the text file in multiple smaller ones using the terminal. First, check if you can open the file using less filename.csv in the Terminal, and if the characters read fine. If not, the file might be corrupted, and that might be the issue.

For the acutal splitting, try using something like this on the terminal:

#!/bin/bash
N=10000 # Number of lines per file
i=1
j=0
filename="hugefile.csv"
extension=.csv
while [ $i -le $(wc -l $filename|awk '{print $1}') ]
do
    newfilename="$(basename $filename $extension)$j$extension"
    echo $newfilename: $i
    sed -n $i,$((i+$N))p $filename > $newfilename
    j=$((j+1)); i=$((i+$N))
done

Copy and paste that into a plain text document (e.g. TextEdit in plain text mode or nano on the Terminal) and name it split.sh or something similiar. Customize the paramters N and filename as needed, e.g. enter the desired count of numbers per file in N=... and the filename of your sourcefile as filename="...". This will generate the neccessary amount of files in your current directory to cover all the lines of the source files in smaller files of N lines each. The files will have a number appended, e.g. hugefile0.txt to hugefile9.txt or something like that.

Now you should be able to open each of these files in your desired application. It's often desirable to work with smaller portions of one large file than with the whole file at once. You could even open the resulting CSV files in Numbers one after another and copy the lines from each file into one large Numbers document. That way the importer probably won't hang on such a large file.

In case you get any errors regarding sed or awk, that's because Mac sed and awk are different than the regular sed or awk. In that case, you might need to install regular sed and awk from something like macports or homebrew.


Mount network volume as local drive for data recovery Is it possible to mount a network volume so it's seen by OS X and data recovery tools as a local drive? Or are there any data recovery tools on OS X that work with network volumes? I'm using OS X 10.8.2 and the device I'm trying to recover is a FreeNAS 8.0 volume attached via AFP with no ZFS snap shots. Also, the volume spans 2 * 3TB drives, and ~5 TB were lost due to an rm -rf command in a malicious script.

Even if you could do this, the network indirection means the tool cannot read raw data and will almost surely not yield the results you would hope for. The data that was deleted exists only on unallocated blocks - not exposed through the NAS device and then sent over a network protocol showing the live state of the filesystem after the rm had done it's damage.

If you're serious about the data recovery, you'll stop using that volume (disconnect all clients) and call a professional data recovery firm that knows how to reconstruct various RAID situations by imaging each drive directly and then reconstructing things. A call or support ticket to the storage vendor is usual, but in this case, I don't see any "file recovery" info on the FreeNAS web site.

Knowing exactly the version of NAS controller will help you get a good quote on how much the recovery effort will cost. In most cases, their tools and knowledge coupled with drives that don't have failures and need a clean room resuscitation will reduce the cost of recovery to the time and tools needed for an expert to reverse the file deletion.

They will also be able to query you to see if you perhaps have overwritten all the data and perhaps want a quote before you commit to recovery.


Link aggregate "bondmode" spontaneously changes I've setup a link aggregate of the two ethernet ports on my macpro6,1 (via System Preferences > Network > Manage Virtual Interfaces > New Link Aggregate).

Due to the way my other devices are setup, I need to set the "bondmode" of my device to "static":

$ sudo ifconfig bond0 bondmode static

The problem so far is that, for no reason that I can discern and triggered by nothing I can identify in the logs, the bondmode reverts back to "lacp", and all of my connections drop.

I can trigger this myself via networksetup -createbond xxx to create an extra (broken) bond. So perhaps changes to the network setup in general reset it to LACP?

Is there something I can do to stop whatever process is causing the bondmode to change, or somehow achieve this another way? My end goal is to get some sort of round-robin style pattern for sending packets to spead a single connection across both ethernet cables to my server, as LACP results in all packets from a given connection going through a single link.

I have not found a true solution, but I have created a band-aid at https://github.com/mikeboers/bondwatch.

It watches for the bond to report being up, but inactive, and then simply calls ifconfig $bondname bondmode static to reset it.

I've been using it for nearly the full two weeks since I asked the question, and it has been working great.


unable to install Google's Droid Sans Mono font I've downloaded Droid Sans, Droid Serif, and Droid Sans Mono fonts from google.com/fonts and the first two have installed just fine.

OS X 10.9.5. I'm extracting the font file from the download ZIP file, double-clicking the TTF file, then clicking "Install".

Unfortunately, I can't get Droid Sans Mono to install; it looks like some message boxes pop up very quickly, but I can't read what they say. When I validate the font file, it looks okay, but installation doesn't do anything.

Using the Console app, the following messages appeared during the time I try to install the font:

4/20/15 1:36:22.068 PM taskgated[19]: binary have embedded signature that validated /System/Library/Frameworks/Quartz.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/QuickLookUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/QuickLookUIHelper.app[24856]
4/20/15 1:36:22.105 PM QuickLookUIHelper[24856]: LSExceptions [0x7fe5f0707e30] loaded
4/20/15 1:36:22.112 PM Finder[1250]: LSExceptions [0x6180002b4640] loaded
4/20/15 1:36:22.125 PM lsboxd[1281]: Connection from pid 24856

Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

I was able to install it from fontsquirrel on my mac osx version 10.13.3. Try it out


Any other way to move cursor to the end of line, instead of + Cmd + → is not finger-friendly for me. So I wonder any other way without the 4-arrow-key to do the same, any one will be appreciated.

System: MacOS X El Capitan Version 10.11.6

Usage: move the cursor in any form on the web like Google Search, when text is visually selected, I want to move the cursor to the end of the line to append something.

I do be a little picky because I just learned Vim recently. Thanks all reply!

I am using Ctrl+e to move to the last letter and Ctrl+a to move to the first letter.

Remember that Emacs commands, work also in the Terminal.


In Safari "Export to PDF" looks different then "Print as PDF" - Why is this? In Safari (I'm using 7.0.2) if you browse to a website and select A) file>export to PDF you will get a different looking PDF then if you go to B) file>print>PDF>save as pdf

B) Looks like its using the CSS media query for print, but A) only looks like its using some of this information then applying more styles of its own. Does anyone know wheres these extra styles are coming from and how they can be overwritten or ignored by the page being exported?

Well, I know this is an older question, but I came upon it and thought I would answer...

There are two things that can be different here -- one, as is noted in the question, is the special set of styles used for printing. This is set up on the website you are looking at, and is not something you have control over. The second are the print options. I think by default printing of background images and colors is turned off, and it is possible to make other settings too. These are controlled through the print dialogue.

The automatic print stylesheet is a a pet peeve of mine. I've always thought a better solution was to offer a button to let visitors choose to format the page for print, rather than doing it without their control. I always want to default to giving users more control rather than taking it away.

I would assume that if you set up a special user stylesheet to be applied to all pages in the Safari preferences (normally done for folks with needs for special display characteristics such as high contrast or extra large type), those styles would be applied when printing as well. I haven't tried that out, though.

TLDR: if the website has their CSS set up to serve special styles when printing, there isn't much you can do about it. While you do have control over some elements of printing, such as printing of background colors and images through the print dialogue.


Can I test my iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 apps on an iPad mini retina I'm new to the iOS world. I'm developing iOS apps but I have no device for testing, so finally I have decided to buy a device, but I'm confused which device to buy.

I want to test my app for both iPhone and iPad, so I decided to purchase iPad mini with retina.

Can I test my iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 retina apps and graphics on the iPad mini with retina?

Yes, you can run iPhone apps on a retina iPad mini but you cannot test anything that may rely on the hardware features that exist in the iPhone but not the iPad - namely the GPS. If you buy an iPad Mini with Cellular, I think you'd be all set.


Homebrew - Upgrading software in /usr/bin My OS X comes with a version of Git installed in /usr/bin. However, this version is older than the official stable one. I would like to upgrade it.

Can I use Homebrew to upgrade this version? Or would Homebrew install Git in a separate location (and if I do so, how can I ensure that the new version is actually used)?

Don't replace, modify or rename the system tools in /usr/bin. There are a number of reasons why this is a bad thing, and you can search for the specific reasons, but to be simple, don't edit the system versions.

Homebrew knows this, and that's why it stores the tools in /usr/local/bin. This version is used instead of the system version since Homebrew requests that its directory be before the system path in the $PATH variable.

Run brew doctor and you'll probably get a message like this:

  Warning: /usr/bin occurs before /usr/local/bin This means that system-provided programs will be used instead of those provided by Homebrew. The following tools exist at both paths:

easy_install
easy_install-2.6

  Consider amending your PATH so that /usr/local/bin is ahead of /usr/bin in your PATH.

To fix this, either add this to your profile:

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

…or add /usr/local/bin to the top of /etc/paths, such as:

/usr/local/bin
/usr/local/sbin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin


Remove folders in ~/Library/Mobile Documents There are some folders in ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ (like XXXXXX~com~companyname~appname) which seems to be left by apps I already removed from all my devices. However, if I delete those folders, they restored back almost immediately. They are not visible in Finder or in iCloud management in System Preferences. How to get rid of them?

Those should be the same apps listed under System Settings/iCloud/Manage... (button down right next to the bar), so you can delete them there.


Can I add a "space" to my Dock to separate apps into groups? I have a 27" iMac running High Sierra. I also have a Windows 10 virtual machine.

I have a number of Windows apps running throughout the day and they appear in my Mac’s dock, even when I’m in High Sierra and not in Windows. This is okay as it makes it very easy to switch between Mac apps and Windows apps.

But what I would like is to keep them grouped separately in some way on my dock so it’s easy at a glance for me to see I’m clicking on the Windows version of an app and not the Mac version as often the icons are the same or very similar.

Is this possible to achieve?

Yes you can! Follow these steps:

Within Finder launch the Terminal app (by default it’s in the Utilities folder within your Applications folder)
Copy and paste the following command into Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'

Press enter
Rstart the Dock by entering the killall Dock command into Terminal and pressing enter

Now you’ll see a space in your Dock. You can click and drag this around as you would any icon!

Keep in mind that any time you launch an app (be it within macOS or your Windows VM), you’ll get a new icon at the right end of your Dock (unless it’s been permanently added to your Dock previously). So if you’re wanting to group your Windows app icons together you’re going to need to create a second space so that one is to the left and the other to the right of your Windows apps. In this way it’ll be a distinct group, separated also from icons at the rightmost end of your Dock.

Of course, even with this approach, the next time you open a new Windows app you’ll have to drag it within that group and also choose to keep it in your Dock (assuming that’s what you’re wanting to do).

Additional configuration options

Since originally posting this answer I've discovered that the spacer tile can be configured in terms of size and location. So, at Step 2 of my instructions above, you actually have the following options:

Large space

The original command at Step 2 of my answer (see below) creates a large space in your Dock.

    defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'

Small space

Instead of the original command, you can add small within the command to create a smaller space in your Dock (see below):

    defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="small-spacer-tile";}'

Documents space (as opposed to an Applications space)

Both of the commands above create a space in your Dock where your Application icons appear. However, you can change the command so that the space appears where the Document icons are. To do this, use the key persistent-others instead of persistent-apps in the command you're going to use.

For example, to create a small space on your Dock within your Document icons you would use the following command:

    defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="small-spacer-tile";}'

NOTE: Regardless of the command you use, it still needs to be followed with the killall Dock command to take effect.


How to transfer a large video (> 2 GB) from iPhone to a PC? I have installed iTunes on my PC.
However, when I click Photos → Sync Photos,
it says

  You can choose which photos from your computer are copied to your iPhone.
  It seems that it copies photos from the computer to the iPhone, but not the other way around.

Question:
How do I transfer a large video (> 2 GB) from an iPhone to a PC?

You can use the program iExplorer. It is free, and you can download it to view files on your iDevice. Simply plug in your phone, open iExplorer, and then on the sidebar, select Photos -> Recorded Videos.


Apples use of Lightning connector in MFi Program I am thinking of an accessory as below:

Let's assume accessory has battery in it to do certain function, now to charge the battery can we use same iPhone charger lightning port and draw the power from that port?

Basically there will be simultaneous charging of accessory battery and iPhone’s battery. Do apple have any restriction on that kind of accessory?

Please note, the accessory is not a Power Bank.

There is no clause in the MFi Program's Term's and Conditions that specifically deny or allow a said accessory concept. Only demarcation Apple does is whether an accessory type is or is not part of the MFi Program.

For e.g. accessories that connect to the Lightening port are a part of MFi Program. On the other hand, accessories that only use standard Bluetooth profile or Bluetooth Low Energy, non-electronic cases etc. are not part of MFi Program.

I recommend you go through the MFi FAQ's before proceeding.

The FAQ's specifically answers some questions which may be relevant in your case. Quoting them below:

  Can you review my product concept and advise if I need to join the MFi Program?

  If you intend to develop an electronic accessory which will connect to iPhone, iPad or iPod using proprietary technology, your company must join the MFi Program. Apple is unable to provide feedback regarding a product concept prior to joining the MFi Program.

  Is there a program fee for participation in the MFi Program?

  There is no program fee at this time. However, all program applicants must purchase and complete a company identity verification through a secure, third party Web-site.


Empty Trash Item in Use I recently upgraded my 2012 MacMini to Catalina. It was a bit of a nightmare as the internal drive wasn’t formatted to APFS. I imaged the drive and did a Time Machine backup then booted from the imaged drive, formatted the internal to APFS. Ran the Catalina installer file from the imaged drive and installed it on the internal drive. I then transferred all the data from the TM backup. It all seemed to work fine and I’m up and running.

The only issue is that It moved/copied a couple extra versions of user folders. I went in and cleaned/deleted them from the Users & Groups Sys Pref. When I go to empty the trash, it says the following for apparently 5 items that won’t delete.

  The operation can’t be completed because the item “Data” is in use.
  The operation can’t be completed because the item “com.apple.mail” is in use.
  The operation can’t be completed because the item “Containers” is in use.
  The operation can’t be completed because the item “Library” is in use.
  The operation can’t be completed because the item “acct name” is in use.

(account name redacted)

I have tried rebooting the computer several times and tried the force empty all to no avail. Any help would be appreciated!!

I got a similar problem. My locked files were located in the trash bin of my Time Machine disk.

In the end, I forced the deletion by using the rm command.

Open your Trash window to actually see the locked files.
Open a terminal session to type the following (have your password ready)

sudo rm -R [drag and drop the locked files here]

Type your password when asked to do so.

Source:
https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/how-empty-trash-on-mac-3682422/

On a side note, I found something interesting: I noticed that the folder I wanted to remove showed as "Username's Macbook" in the Finder window, but in the terminal, it was like "Username/1/2/4/s Macbook".

Too bad I didn't write it down. So I wonder if there was something wrong with the character encoding.


why iphone "text to speech" english is much clearer than french? after config in “Settings>General>Accessibility>Speak”, i could select a paragraph of text then could let iphone "speek" it out. But I found that French text are spoken much vaguely, on the contrary, English are much more clearly read out. Is there a way to improve French text speek effect?


Mountain Lion printer not found on bonjour, can't install by IP My networked HP6310 suddenly stopped working today from my MBPro running Mountain Lion. Other laptops in the house (MB running Snow Leopard, MBP running Lion) can still print. I can connect via USB and print, so I don't believe it's the driver. I deleted the networked printer, intending to reinstall, but found that the printer is not found by Bonjour. I can access the printer on the web using the IP address, but not by using the address HP4xxxxx.local. I tried adding the printer by IP, but got this:

Suggestions on how to resolve?

I have a solution, although I'm unable to say why it works, or if I've lost something else in the process. A search on Bonjour/Actiontec/wireless yielded (http://yabfog.com/blog/2012/09/14/making-fios-actiontec-router-and-apple-bonjour-services-play-together) with the suggestion to disable IGMP proxy on the Actiontec router. No issues since I made the change.


how do i select alternate email address attached to AppleID show outbound FaceTime? I use appleid@myowndoma.in but attached an address with my name.  FaceTime seems to allow selection of the other address but my brother complains about seeing literal appleid@ address

If I understand your situation correctly, you should be able to go to:

Settings > Facetime

...and go down to "Caller ID." This will give you the option of choosing which email address or phone number to display.

EDIT: On an iPhone with iOS 10, that is!


My Mac keeps playing a sound every now and then After I updated to OS X Yosemite, I have noticed that I keep hearing a sort of 'chime' sound every now and then, randomly. I don't know what it is, and it seems to happen often when I'm watching YouTube.

Please help if you have any idea why this is happening, and how I can fix it – It's very annoying!

If someone comes here with the same problem: for me it was the Calendar app. I disabled notifications for the calendar in the notification pref because I am using Fantastical for that. It must have been desperately trying to show me an event and beeped because of that. My solution was also to disable audio notifications and voila, the basso beep disappeared.


Home Sharing over VPN I have a working home sharing environment (i.e., when I am physically in my home network it's working fine).

My Modem has the possibility to easily set up a VPN network (L2TP). It works flawlessly and I can connect with both my OS X and iOS devices. I get an internal IP address and I can access local resources.

But home sharing does not seem to work over VPN. Any solution?

It is not EXACTLY an answer to your question but might be helpful anyways. I am using a program called Slink. It forwards all Bonjour-traffic over ssh. This makes it really easy to connect to my home-network. You get a list of services like Plex, iTunes, filesharing, screensharing, printers, and so on. You can also easily browse the web (via firefox) over this connection as well. You don't get to send all traffic through Slink like a normal VPN thou.
I have used a number of VPN-solutions, but this made everything much easier. Hope it helps. It is not free, but well wotrh the money in my opinion.


How to know the duration of battery usage in one session? I would like to know how long was my battery running since it's last charge. There is a built-in time-remaining counter but I would like a time-used counter.

Starting with Mavericks (OS X 10.9), this is available in Activity Monitor. Open Activity Monitor from the /Applications/Utilities folder, and go to the Energy tab. The center pane of the statistics at the bottom of the window includes the amount of time since you last unplugged the charger, which appears shortly after you switch to battery power.