How do I restore the default certificate settings in Snow Leopard? After the DigiNotar certificate debacle, I tried to remove their certificate from my Keychain. However, I think I deleted the wrong one. I am not sure which one it was, but trying to go to https://github.com in Chrome shows me a Error 202 (net::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID).

Whoops. How can I restore the default certificates into my keychain?

You want the two files ending in *.keychain found in /System/Library/Keychains (note that they may differ depending on your region, I'm not sure if things change depending on your geo-location).

Unfortunately, there is no way to roll back unless you have a Time Machine backup, or the install files from the OS (then you can extract them using something like Pacifist).

Alternatively, you can run Keychain First Aid from the Keychain Access menu and hope it fixes things but those likely will only deal with errors or anomalies in your user's keychain, not the system's.

ATTENTION: For those in a similar position, these are all the files located under /System/Library/Keychains from a default installation of Snow Leopard 10.6.8 (in North America).


Denied file read access on file I own and have full r/w permissions on I received an email with a plain text attachment (named 'noname') via Gmail and downloaded it using Chrome from gmail.com. It's a recurring automated report. Everyday I get the file , download it, open it, read it, and enjoy my life. Some days like today I get the file, download it and TextEdit on OS X won't let me open it.

TextEdit reports "The document "noname.txt" could not be opened. You don't have permissions."

A Get Info in Finder shows permissions:

  ram (Me) Read & Write
  Staff Read only
  Everyone Read only

From a terminal I can do whatever I want to it (read, write, rename...). An ls -l shows:
  -rw-r--r--@   1 ram  staff

An ls -le shows the same (i.e, no ACLs shown).

What gives?

From debugging a different problem (which showed up as deny file-read-data in the Console, see the other answer), it seems that sandboxd prevents sandboxed applications from reading quarantined data, so I think you'd need to remove the attribute with:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/file

(see for instance https://superuser.com/a/28394/46794). You'd need to prefix the command with sudo if the file didn't belong to your user, but according to your info it does.

The other user reported that using a non-sandboxed application fixed the problem, and this would confirm that sandboxing is at fault.

An aside: When ls reports extended attributes with @ next to the permission field, you don't need ls -le file, but instead ls -l@ file.


When I save a document, can I enter the location with path input? When I save a document in any editing program, it pops up a save window where I can choose the desired save location by clicking folder names.

Instead of mouse-clicks, I like to input the path name directly using keyboards. For example,

when I want to save a document in the folder of \Users\myusername\Dropbox\myfoldername, I want to actually type it.
In the current working directory, I want to create a sub-directory and save it. In such a case, I want to actually type something like subfoldername\filename.ext, instead of create a new folder and then save.

Is it possible?

Basically, just start typing the path you want to use in the Save As: field. The Go to Folder dialog will appear when you type / or ~ and let you type your path. Type your path and press return. You can include the filename at the end of the path and it will update the name automatically.
You can also access the Go to Folder dialog manually using  ⌘-⇧-G.

You can't create a new folder by typing the path, but you can use a keyboard shortcut to create the folder. Use Go to Folder to get as deep as you can into existing folders, then type ⌘-⇧-N. Type the name of the folder and press enter.

The field with the filename will selected, so you can just type your name and press return.

This question has inspired a post on the Ask Different Blog that contains the answer, as well as other tips for working with open/save dialogs.


macvim shortcut ( and in general) In my quest to understand how to indent & unindent on MacVim using elegant shortcuts that are built-in... I couldn't figure how.

The following links explain that > < keys will be handy, but none work on my keyboard, hence I wanted to clarify if these keys are something other than visible on the physical macbook, but no explanations are found.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2332340/indenting-a-bunch-of-lines-in-vim
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/235839/indent-multiple-lines-quickly-in-vi

Please can someone give me more guidance?

You have to hold the shift key then double-press either > or < to indent/unindent.


How can I use a command to delete all files in Downloads whose dates added are greater than 1 year? I am using a Mac. How can I use a command to delete all files in ~/Downloads whose dates added are greater than 1 year?

It's a relatively simple command to delete files within a directory greater than one year.  For instance, the following command executed in Terminal

find ~/Downloads/ -type f -mtime +365 -exec rm {} \;

will delete all files in the ~/Downloads directory older than one year.

find is the command that searches for "stuff"
-type f tells find what to look for, in this case files
-mtime +365 tells find that the modified time should be greater than 365 days
-exec rm {} passes (executes) each "found" item to the command rm

What I like to do is test it out by excluding the -exec rm {} \; portion and make sure I am getting the correct results.  Once I am certain, I just add it in to complete the remove.

One Caveat!!  These files are not added to your "Trash."  The command  bypasses the Trash and are immediately deleted, so use with caution.

A Safer Way...

(Thanks to user lucasoldaini in the comments below)

If you want to move your files to the "Trash", simply replace the -exec rm {} \; portion to -exec mv {} ~/.Trash \;

They will remain in your Trash until the next time you empty it.

You can get more information on each command by viewing their man pages:

man find
man exec


Kernel panic during sleep mode 4 days ago my 2017 MacBook Pro started exhibiting a strange behaviour. Basically when it's in sleep mode, it crashes and when I open it I have to boot it again and the report shows a kernel panic, that is almost always identical, that says something like

Fatal error occurred. CSTS=0xffffffff
. FW Revision=CXS4JA0Q\n"@/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/IONVMeFamily/IONVMeFamily-356.30.6/IONVMeController.cpp:5275

I haven't installed anything new in these days, I resetted the NVRAM, the RMC, I did diagnostic and first aid on the SSD, the problem is still there. Maybe it is also worth noting that the very first time that it happened there was also a flashing box with a question mark, but this happened only the first time.

Right now I have installed an app, Insomnia X, that prevents the laptop to go in sleep mode when I close the lid, but I would like to solve this problem.

I'm hesitant to visit the Apple Store to check the hardware as I cannot go until the end of the month.

Is there a way to know if this is software or hardware in the mean time?

Try booting the MacBook Pro into Recovery or Internet Recovery mode (hold down cmd-R when booting for Recovery mode, or option-cmd-R for Internet Recovery mode).

Now you have booted in a "known good" configuration of software which is unaffected by any changed you may have made to the normal operating system on the Mac.

If sleep mode works fine here without kernel panics - you'll know that you have a software related problem.


VIPs in Mail haven't worked since the first El Capitan public beta All of my email accounts seem to be working just fine, and in the main inboxes, emails from VIPs are marked with stars next to the senders' names as usual. The issue is that all of the VIP-specific mailboxes show up as having 0 messages, even the big "VIPs" one (the one that contains mail from all VIPs). Un-starring and re-starring the contacts doesn't fix anything. I can still search for the messages by the contact and find everything, it just doesn't show up in their VIP mailbox in the sidebar.

Another helpful observation: Turns out VIPs work fine on my two rarely-used email accounts (Verizon and iCloud) that aren't Gmail. I knew OS X didn't like Gmail, but I've never seen this before.

This has been going on for as long as I can remember on El Cap, from the first public beta all the way to the newly-released 10.11.1 public beta. How do I fix it?

I just got this to work after an annoying 2 months!

Select a single VIP Mailbox
Go to View then Sort By then select All Mailboxes
Go to the main VIP Mailbox and all should appear.

If that works you can then try changing the sort to go back to Inbox only.


How do I upgrade a mac mini from OSX 10.4.11 to 10.6.8 I have an old 2007 mac mini that I am using as a media/music hub, and I'd like to be able to sync it with my iphone. But to do that I need to upgrade its old itunes (v8), but to do that I need to upgrade 2 steps from OS 10.4.11 to OS 10.6.8.
How do I do this?
thanks!

I believe your mac mini supports 10.6 snow leopard. So all you have to do is buy the snow leopard install disc like from amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Mac-version-10-6-3-Snow-Leopard/dp/B001AMHWP8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358911973&sr=8-1&keywords=snowleopard), then plug the disc in and do the upgrade.


How to change the current directory in a file/open requester [file-picker] by clicking an open Finder window below? Years ago I've seen a great UX solution on a Mac:

in a program, say, a text editor, I choose File/Open menu,
the file open dialog comes up, with a default directory, e.g. Desktop,
I click on a Finder window, or the desktop itself, and the open dialog directory changes to the clicked window.

I found it pretty useful, because the user opens directories in Finder because he or she actually works with them, and it's trivial that he or she will open/save stuff in one of these directories.

Is there such extension out there, or my false memory is kidding with me?

I can imagine this to be the UX solution you've seen:

Favorite folders in the Finder sidebar

Show the sidebar. Choose View > Show Sidebar. (If Show Sidebar is dimmed, choose View > Show Toolbar.)
Add a folder: Hold down the Command (⌘) key, then drag the item to the Favorites section.

If you don’t see the Favorites section, go to Finder > Preferences > Sidebar, then select at least one item in the section.

Is this the solution you were looking for?

Original answer

To navigate to a folder in the "file/open dialog" that is already open in Finder.app do this:

(I assume that both the Finder window and the "file/open dialog" are visible on the same screen/space)

Click and hold the folder icon of the folder you want to go to and…
Drag the icon into the "file/open dialog" and release the mouse.
Done.


how transfer videos from within an App to the mac? I would like to know, if their is a way to transfer videos from Coursera-App on the ipad to the mac (without re-download them from the internet)?

I tried to connect the ipad through iTunes, to see if i can get the content of the app, but it seemed that I cannot get to the media inside the apps.

You can use an app such as iExplorer to copy the files over USB from the app's container.
iTunes File Sharing only works if the app in question supports this.


Is this energy usage for safari normal? I was checking my activity monitor for Safari, and I see this number as its average energy usage. Is it normal?

It is not normal according to the "Avg Energy Impact" column. It is awkward to have more than 10,000 value for the "Avg Energy Impact" column, especially from Safari. Please contact Apple Support if you see this consistently.
You should consider the "Energy Impact" column as it shows the real-time energy usage.
The "Avg Energy Impact" column shows the average energy impact for the past 8 hours or since the Mac started up, whichever is shorter.

For more info : Apple Documentation - Activity Monitor


What is the recommended way to flag a contact as being deceased in the Contacts app on Lion or Mountain Lion? Death is a sad fact of life and over the years some of my old contacts have died.  I still wish to keep a record of their details, birthday, day they died, notes, spouse, kids etc in my Contacts and am looking for a recommended way to flag those records to indicate that the person is dead. I am interested to know how other people have dealt with this.

I've had the same "need." I guess we all do sooner or later. Here's what I did.

Card menu > Add Field > Dates. Then select the Date field drop down in the contact and select custom.

You can also change the general new contact template in the same Cart menu.

I hope this helps.


New iTunes App installation After updating my iTunes to the new 12.2.0.145 I can no longer manage the apps on my iPhone 6+ from iTunes.  The apps show up and there is the install/uninstall buttons beside them, but they are grayed out and unavailable.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this?

Did you update to iOS 8.4 yet?
If not, now would be the time.

In iTunes - sync; backup; update.

If you're already on 8.4, then sync; backup; restore.


Sometimes key "B" doesn't work on my preinstalled keyboard Although I have seen discussions on this topic before here and I tried all those options told by everyone, yet the problem persists with me.

So here is the thing->-

Its been 3 weeks since I bought a new macbook pro and when I start using it, sometimes keys like B, G, - stopped working eventually and after that I have to press long enough. Sometimes I pressed very hard and then after 4-5 seconds it started responding. But this is not a one-time behaviour. The occurrance of this is 4 times out of 10.

The text to speech service and mouse keys options are disabled already.
Even I posted on apple discussions
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5098212

Please help.

Back up your data and take it to the Genius Bar. Since it's less than a month old, it will certainly still have the warranty, so they will either fix or replace for nothing.


MBP retina 2015 with usb 3 to ethernet and active wifi sharing fails at iMessage So here's the thing. My iMessage on the MBP is simply not working, when I use my MBP the way I want to. What way is that? Since it has no Ethernet connector, I bought a USB 3 to Ethernet box, that does its job nicely. iMessage does work with it. I have no WiFi in my office, so to keep costly traffic away from my iPhone I setup the MVP to share its internet connection via WiFi. From this moment on, iMessage will no longer work. And I know why, but I don't know how to fix it. Reason for the why is that iMessage (as opposed to every single other application on my MBP) explicitly takes en0 as the networking device to send and receive data. But en0 is the local WiFi, my Ethernet device is en3. The local WiFi is just a bridge for my iPhone, not "the internet". But iMessage is to dumb to get that. It is smart enough to know not to use en0 when WiFi is turned off or not connected though, and then will use en3 readily. So the question is:

How can I convince iMessage to always use en3?

Open System Preferences > Network, click the tiny gear at the bottom of your services panel next to the + and - buttons, and select "Set Service Order". Drag your ethernet service (en3) to the top (or at least above en0/Wi-Fi) to send all outgoing network traffic through en3.


TexMaker, permanent changing of the path I just update my MacBook with the last OS, El Capitan. I follow all the suggestions (link-1 and link-2) in order to make TexMaker work in a proper way, but when I relaunch the application all the changes in the paths are back as the origin so I always have to specify /Library/Tex/texbin instead of /usr/texbin. How I can make this changes permanent?

There is a different setting in the terminal or system settings where I should specify the right path?

I edit the settings opening the program as administrator.


iPhone 5s shows low battery symbol with lightning bolt when plugged in I have an iPhone 5s, purchased in ~2013. The battery is original and has never been replaced. I have had charging problems with it recently - I needed to wiggle the cable to get it to charge. I thought it was a bad cable.

A couple of days ago, I let the phone discharge and turn off to calibrate the battery. I let it sit until today, when I tried to charge it. When I plugged it in, all it did was flash the low battery symbol with the lightning bolt and lightning cable (not the solid low battery symbol).

I did blow into the lightning port to clean it out. The cable fits snugly, and the pins on the inside of the port are clean. There's no lint or anything in the port. I've tried a couple different cables and chargers (I tried a Linux computer, a MacBook Pro, a wall adapter, and three different cables), and they all do the same thing. iTunes did not detect the phone on the MacBook Pro.

The symbol reappears for a few seconds whenever the phone is disconnected, so I know the phone detects that it's plugged in. I did get the solid low battery symbol to appear once, but unfortunately, I unplugged it because I wanted to use a wall charger.

I will need the phone in less than a week, so any help would be greatly appreciated. Here are some photos:

Note: I cross-posted this question on the official Apple community to (hopefully) get more answers.

The problem you're having is that the battery has most likely died and a battery replacement is in order.

An iPhone 5s battery is rated at having a life expectancy of 500 cycles. It's not uncommon for batteries to exceed or fall short of this number; it's just an estimation of how long it can last. In your case, though, the battery would have had a much longer than average life and, unfortunately, your attempt to calibrate the battery may have been the nail in its coffin.

The only thing to try (if you haven't already) is leaving it plugged in for a while to see if the battery starts getting a charge. You should know after about an hour (maybe earlier) if that's going to work.

Otherwise it really is the time for a new battery (or a new phone). Fortunately, if you want to have a go at replacing the battery yourself, this isn't too difficult for an iPhone 5s. See How to replace the battery in your iPhone 5s for more info.

However, most people would opt to have it replaced professionally or to upgrade their phone when it's this old as you don't know what other components may fail in the not-too-distant future.


Internal hard disk won't wipe, can't reinstall OS because not enough disk space My MacBook Pro 2017 (running Big Sur) is not booting. Instead, it is showing me a flashing folder with a question mark.
When I boot from an external ssd, I can see my data from my internal ssd, but I can't delete something from it.
When I'm in recovery mode, I can't reinstall the os because I don't have enough space, and in disk utility, and when I'm trying to erase my disk, it says: "A writeable disk is required (-69772)".
What can I do to erase my disk and reinstall the os ?

If you don't want retrieve your personal datas (I suppose they are saved) you can erase the entire disk and after reinstall Mac Os X. I suppose you have an usb key or an apple installer for install your Mac os system.
I refer to this : https://imgur.com/C5yYVeT
The command in the terminal is :
diskutil erasedisk apfs "Alex HD" gpt disk0

This will reinitialise the 128 Go SSD with an APFS Volume named Alex HD


I made a backup of my iPad Pro using iTunes. Can I restore that backup onto another iPad? I made a backup of my iPad Pro using iTunes. The backup is on my PC not on iCloud.

The iPad broke a few days later, so I went to a store to make the AppleCare valid, we formatted it on the store.

Will I be able to restore my old backup into the new iPad?

Edit:

As IconDaemon pointed out it's possible and normal to restore from backup, it was reassuring to know that I could restore my backup many days before getting the replacement

Here is a screenshot of the restore screen

Yes you can restore the backup to your new iPad. I've restored my iPad backups many times when I went from model to model, starting from the iPad1 all the way to the iPad 6th gen. Note: I don't use Windows iTunes, but I think the function is the same.


Files Renamed in Finder not Reflected in iTunes? I just did a batch rename in Finder (using AppleScript), however the filenames in iTunes remain unchanged.

I tried restarting iTunes and that did not help.

I also tried iTunes >>> File >>> Library >>> Organize Library, but it happens to be grayed out, as I had already recently done this (prior to renaming the said files).

Any clue how to get these files renamed in Finder to show up in iTunes without manually doing so? It's too large a number to do manually.

Many thanks

Unfortunately, updating the files in Finder will not update the files in iTunes. This is because iTunes uses a file called iTunes Library.itl as a database of all your media.

You can however use the automator actions "Get Specified iTunes Items" and "Set Info of iTunes Songs" to automat the process of updating the metadata. There are some other good Automator actions in there too.


Which database is music app on ios 8.4 querying for artist pictures? I wonder, which database apple uses for artist pictures in the music app on iOS 8.4 and how missing pictures for certain artists can be added?

Pretty sure it's something internal, but then again, that would make things even more complicated to add missing artist pictures.

I think the data comes from CDDB, or at least it used to, back in the day. You can edit (only add?) album art in iTunes by dragging image files onto the album art display. I don't know of any way to do it with only iOS.


How do I get iWork / iMovie / Garage Band free of charge? Everything that I have read says that iWorks/ iMovie etc should be free for Mac users after 1 September 2013.

I already bought Pages but want Numbers and iMovie. My MacBook Pro with retina is early 2015 and I am being charged.

Why is this please?

You probably purchased your MacBook Pro used, in which case the “free” downloads were redeemed to the original owner’s Apple ID. This would explain why you still had to pay for those apps.

Fortunately, starting April 18, 2017, Apple has made iMovie, GarageBand, Pages, Numbers and Keynote free for everybody. This should take care of what was a very common source of confusion among customers.

  Previously, all of these apps were provided for free to customers who purchased a new Mac or iOS device, but now that purchase is not required to get the software.

Here are the direct App Store links:

Pages for macOS / iOS
Numbers macOS / iOS
Keynote for macOS / iOS
iMovie for macOS / iOS
GarageBand for macOS / iOS

(Note: You sometimes need to provide a credit card or gift card balance to set up an Apple ID for Store use, even for “free” downloads.)

If you recently purchased those apps, you may be able to receive a refund by contacting Apple Support.


Adding third display to a MacBookPro via Thunderbolt port ? I have a Mid 2012 13" MacBook Pro (MD102B/A). It has 1x Mini Display / Thunderbolt Port and 2x USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports.

At my desk I need a bigger setup, so I connect the MacBook Pro to a 24" monitor using a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter.

I wish to add a second 24" monitor to my setup, so that I have 2x external monitors plus my 13" MacBook Pro screen all in the use at once. I want to use each monitor as a separate extended display, not as mirrored displays.

I have done this in the past about 4 years ago when connecting a Mac mini to 3 screens and I have used the HDMI out, Thunderbolt out, plus a USB to HDMI adapter, but the USB to HDMI adaptor made the 3rd screen quite laggy.

Is there a more up to date way to do this using a Thunderbolt splitter or hub? I have found a few online including a Belkin one and a couple made by StarTech but wondered if they where going to work with the MacBook Pro. I don't believe my MacBook Pro has the most up to date Thunderbolt, although it does have 1 GB of dedicated GPU.

You can daisy-chain 2 Apple Thunderbolt Displays. If the first is an Apple Thunderbolt Display, you might be able to do MiniDisplay Port to HDMI off that display to a third-party HDMI monitor.


How to use internet on a Wi-Fi only iPad in a residence with no Wi-Fi? I want to speak on Skype on my Wi-Fi-only iPad Air iOS 7 from my residence. However, the people tending the residence don't want to install Wi-Fi. There are only ethernet cables. Here's what I've considered:

Getting ethernet directly on my iPad (as explained here)
This is not practical, because ethernet cables are in public rooms at my residence. If I spoke on Skype there, I would disturb everyone else in the room.

Sharing my phone's data plan to my iPad
This would probably get expensive way too fast.

I have a Sony Vaio laptop, but the fan makes a lot of noise, and Skype conversations are impossible.
Currently, whenever I want to speak on Skype, I have to go to a group study room at the university's library. This means that I have to cope with the library's tight opening hours and a very small room that renders poor audio to whomever I speak with.
How can I get some internet on my iPad Air in a private room of my residence with no Wi-Fi or ethernet connection?

Just buy a cheap router, connect it to one of the ethernet cables in your room, and enable wi-fi.


Create custom Terminal shortcuts I'm working a lot with SSH connections to servers, by for example forwarding localports or just establishing SSH connection to manage some servers.

For this I would like to be able to create some terminal shortcuts for example:

connect ssh server1
-->should run command: ssh xyx@xy
connect ssh server2 forward
-->should run command: ssh -NC user@xy -L 9999:localhost:3306

Is there a way to specify custom terminal commands?

Simply add aliases in ~/.bash_profile:

If the file .bash_profile doesn't exist:

touch ~/.bash_profile

Then add aliases with nano ~/.bash_profile. Examples:

alias ssh01='ssh xyx@xy'
alias ssh02='ssh -NC user@xy -L 9999:localhost:3306'

Then source the file or restart Terminal.app:

source ~/.bash_profile

Entering ssh01 in the shell will then execute ssh xyx@xy or ssh02 the second command.

The alias (i.e. ssh01) mustn't be another valid command in your path (e.g ssh-add)


Tried installing Windows 10 on Macbook Pro; bootcamp seemed to work but I can't access windows Quick info:

Mid-2015 Macbook Pro 15"
Running OSX El Capitan
Tried installing Windows 10 Home

I first tried installing Windows 10 using the iso file that can be downloaded from the Microsoft website. Bootcamp didn't recognize the iso, so I borrowed an external DVD drive to make an iso that way. BC managed to recognize this and seemed to go through the installation process just fine. The laptop then automatically restarted without any sort of warning and failed to boot into the setup screen I was expecting, and when I restarted the laptop to try to manually start Windows, I didn't see the BC partition that had been made as an option.

I went back into OSX and checked disk utility to see if a partition was even made, and sure enough I saw one there. The only issue is that it looked like this (note the memory capacity, available, and used).:

I thought that was pretty weird, so I clicked on the Mac partition and back to the BC partition, and it changed but still seemed weird (see memory capacity, available, and used).

I'm completely at a loss as to what happened and how I can fix it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Looks like you still haven't finished the installation of Win 10.

Run Disk Utility and Merge Back the BootCamp Partition to Macintosh HD.
After that finishes, try to use BootCamp to install Win 10 again, then follow the steps for using an NTFS partition.


On Apple Mail I get an error message "the attachments are still being loaded" - any fix? I recently "upgraded" to OS X Sierra. All seemed OK, but I recently tried sending an attachment (from the desktop) with an email and got this:

No matter how long I wait (and for a 114kb attachment how long should it be? ) it never resolves.

The only thing I have done that is a bit different is turning off iCloud (I don't want to entrust my documents to third party, and need my computer to work WITHOUT an internet connection now and then, sorry Apple) but I wasn't sure if that was the reason for this. A quick online search got me a rather unhelpful tech support thread. I am hoping there is some quick-and-dirty way to fix this bug. The only reason I went to OSX Sierra was a piece of software that said I had to "upgrade" to use it. (Turbotax, as it happens, and no I am not entrusting anything of mine to their online service either).

Any ideas out there? The thought of wading through tech support will only raise my blood pressure.

ETA: Reboot seems to have solved it, but I'd still be curious if there's a cause.

The Photos library repair tool resolved the problem for me. Hold down the Option and Command buttons while opening Photos, then select the repair option.


Dropbox syncing RTF-editor for iPad with color markup possibilities I'm looking for an app for iPad in which you can:

Sync with dropbox
Save and edit RTF-files
Color markup text (in addition to making text bold, change fontsize, et cetera)

I think you're looking for something like Textastic, which can sync with Dropbox, FTP, SFTP, etc and does code highlighting for code & markup and has a customizable keyboard area.


Is it documented exactly which i7 is in the mac mini late 2012? They have announced a number of different CPU options for the late 2012 mac mini.  I'm interested in the 2.6 Ghz Quad-Core i7.  Should I assume that's the i7-3720QM processor? Is there an official document that I missed that details this.

There's no public Apple document that has this info. But, with a little bit of info from Intels' CPU specs site, you can assume that's the one.

There are sites which show you that info also (to see if your assumption was good):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mini#Specifications_3

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/index-macmini.html

According to the EveryMac site, the 2012 Mac Mini use the following chips:

2.5 GHz Core i5 (I5-3210M)
2.3 GHz Core i7 (I7-3615QM)
2.6 GHz Core i7 (I7-3720QM)


Does my MacBook Pro have an expiry date? While dismantling my 2011 MacBook Pro, I found that the bottom case place has an etching:

What does it all mean? In particular, one part of it appears to be a date in the future. Is it, and if so what happens on that day?

That's not likely an expiry date, as much as an end of cycle for manufacturing. The date April 24, 2012 bears no significance to the Macbook Pro. The 2011 Macbook Pro was the second last edition of the Macbook Pro line and was released in October 2011, as June 2012 saw the release of the Macbook Pro Retina line and the final Macbook Pro. If you were to open up a 2012 MBP, you would likely see a different date listed on the 604-2751-C part. Given the lead times to manufacture, it would make sense that there was no further production of the Macbook Pro bottom plate past that date.


Free viewer for Excel files other than OpenOffice Other than OpenOffice, can you suggest a light free viewer for Excel files?

Isn't Quick Look enough?

You could also try to upload them on Google Docs.


My iPod Touch won't play some of my files I've been having trouble with my iPod Touch. I mostly use it for listening to podcasts, however not only will some of the files not play, some aren't even accessible. Where files should be, there is simply an icon with a silver musical note on a white background.

If it's working now, it sounds like a software bug. I'd go ahead and update it iOS 6.1.6, the latest version that the 4th Gen iPod Touch supports.


Installing Xcode via command line I am a Linux user and have never used OSX before. Someone asked me for help with installing some software on an OSX "Lion" server. I asked him to give me an SSH shell, assuming that would be sufficient. However things are more tricky than I thought.

I wanted to install homebrew, but it didn't install because there was no cc on the system. After some google, I suppose I need to install Xcode. I just downloaded xcode 4.5 from the apple developer site, and mounted it on the system. It contains a dir Xcode.app with a bunch of stuff in it. How do I go from here?

Can I install Xcode without physical access to the machine? All I really want is get homebrew running at this point.

You might be better off just installing the standalone Developer Command Line Tools (which includes gcc and other standard developer toolchain items). You can get it from Apple's Developer Downloads (which requires a free developer account). Unfortunately there's no direct link, but just search for command line tools and you'll find it (note that there are different downloads for Lion and Mountain Lion).

The download is a DMG. Mount that, and you'll find a .mpkg file, which you can install via the command line: sudo installer -pkg "Command Line Tools.mpkg" -target /.


Any idea what the "Calibration Assistant.app" useful for? It's not the normal display calibrator and it looks like to be used with hardware calibrators. I can adjust gamma and color toning/temperature.

The App is located here (OS X 10.11):
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AmbientDisplay.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Calibration Assistant.app

It's designed for projectors/beamers (depending on the version of English used). It's not as correct as the one for normal displays, and designed for rather rough calibration of large uneven screens.


Parallels 12 - Hypervisor: Parallels or Apple? The new version 12 of Parallels Desktop For Mac has a new configuration option. In the configuration panel > Hardware > CPU & Memory > Advanced Settings > Hypervisor is a popup menu for:

Hypervisor

Parallels
Apple

Which one do I should I be using when running macOS Sierra as the guest OS?

What exactly is the difference, the pros-and-cons of each?

The Parallels app Help has no mention of this new setting.

This post in Parallels Forum clearly states to use Parallels Hypervisor:

Hi, Apple hypervisor comes short of the following matters comparing to the Parallels hypervisor:

Performance: slower on VM startup and shutdown

Stability: may crash more frequently

Functionality loss: no PMU, nested virtualization, thermal monitoring, energy profiling

Parallels Hypervisor is the best one.

By PaulChris@Parallels, a Parallels Support person.


Migration Assistant between two Macs: Yosemite and El Capitan Is it possible to run Migration Assistant between two Macs with different versions of the OS X (Yosemite and El Capitan)? In my case, I'm looking to transfer some user accounts and apps from old Mac running Yosemite to a new one running El Capitan.

Yes. Quite possible.

The only difficulty would be if one of the users on each machine is 'the same person'.
It will not merge accounts, it will make new accounts for each migrated user.


OS X Yosemite & Time Machine: identity of the backup disk has changed From time to time (I did not yet figure out a systematic way to reproduce the error) I get an error message when a new Time Machine backup begins: it says that the identity of my Time Machine backup disk has changed (see also this article from the Apple website). I recently made a clean OS X Yosemite install. I also noticed that my Computer name changes automatically from the name I gave it in the first place, MyName, to MyName (2). I am not 100% sure but I think the number in brackets increase with every such error occurring. Is anyone having similar problems? If so, what is the reason, can I avoid it?
I am using a 3 TB Time Capsule (current model) to backup my HDD.
The following are the (I hope) relevant error messages from the console (I think you can see that the name of my computer has changed and the sparse bundle needed was renamed appropriately):

20.10.14 07:23:59,664 com.apple.backupd[14231]: User continued after being warned of changed destination volume identity
20.10.14 07:23:59,676 com.apple.backupd[14231]: Error (-43): Getting volume ref for volume at path /Volumes/Phil-1
20.10.14 07:23:59,678 com.apple.backupd[14231]: Backup failed because the network destination disk was ejected or disconnected unexpectedly!
20.10.14 07:23:59,685 com.apple.backupd[14231]: Backup failed with error 26: The connection to the server was interrupted.
20.10.14 07:24:50,391 com.apple.backupd[14231]: Starting manual backup
20.10.14 07:24:50,392 com.apple.backupd[14231]: Attempting to mount network destination URL:
afp://Phil;AUTH=SRP@Phils%20TC._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Phil
20.10.14 07:25:13,042 com.apple.backupd[14231]: Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/Phil-1 using URL:
afp://Phil;AUTH=SRP@Phils%20TC._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Phil
20.10.14 07:25:27,239 com.apple.backupd[14231]: Renaming /Volumes/Phil-1/Phils MBP.sparsebundle to /Volumes/Phil-1/Phils MBP
(2).sparsebundle
20.10.14 07:26:03,934 com.apple.backupd[14231]: Disk image /Volumes/Phil-1/Phils MBP (2).sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time
Machine-Backups
20.10.14 07:26:05,647 com.apple.backupd[14231]: Backing up to /dev/disk4s2: /Volumes/Time Machine-Backups/Backups.backupdb
20.10.14 07:26:48,008 com.apple.backupd[14231]: Will copy (47,28 GB) from Macintosh HD
20.10.14 07:26:48,012 com.apple.backupd[14231]: Found 93019 files (49,19 GB) needing backup
20.10.14 07:26:48,021 com.apple.backupd[14231]: 61,52 GB required (including padding), 2,64 TB available

There seems to be an issue with Yosemite renaming the computer local host by adding (#) after the computer name. There are other reports of this happening in a thread on MacRumors Forum and I believe a few people have blamed this as a cause of time machine backup failures. I've tried a few of the suggestions in the thread but so far none have worked. I've stopped using time machine for now and reverted to an old bash rsync script.

A really simple solution is to open the terminal and type:

rsync -avu ~/ /Volumes/backup_disk/backup_folder

replacing 'backup_disk' with the name of your external hard drive and 'backup_folder' with the name of the backup folder i.e.: 'yosemite_backup'. The three flags -avu mean: archive (a) copy the home directory recursively into sub folders, verbose (v) print to the terminal window everything you are copying (feel free to leave this out) and update (u) will only overwrite files that are newer than the archived file (useful after the initial main backup). This solution isn't as hands off as time machine but at least it's a simple way to back up vital information in Documents and Pictures/Videos.

Edit: 2014/10/28 - I've had success with the following procedure:

Go to Macintosh HD > Library > Preferences > SystemConfiguration and delete the following files:

com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
NetworkInterfaces.plist
preferences.plist

Then remove the numeric iteration (#) from the computer name (or rename altogether) in System Preferences > Sharing and reboot. The plist files will be recreated after reboot. So far this has fixed the computer name issue with Yosemite on my machine and time machine seems to be back on track.

Note: This fix seems to be inconsistent with users and may not fix the naming issue after all.

Edit 2: 2014/11/11 - The above seems to have worked for about 2 weeks but the renaming issue is now back.


Create a symbolic link to desktop and documents folder in iCloud Drive Is it possible to use iCloud drive like Dropbox? What I want to do is create a symbolic link to Desktop, Documents and perhaps my Downloads folder in iCloud Drive, similar to how I'd do it in Dropbox. I don't want to use the 'Desktop and Documents' setting in iCloud. It does some weird stuff with my Desktop and Documents folder locally.

Apple has a built-in setting to do basically exactly what you want. It's not technically a symlink, but it accomplishes the same functionality. It also gracefully handles different desktops on different machines. And it all works as expected in the Files app on iOS:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206985


Current passing through me from Macbook to iMac? I recently bought a UPS for my iMac and it runs just fine.

However, sometimes I also run a MacBook Pro nearby and when I have my hand in contact with the MacBook and reach across to touch the aluminium keyboard attached to my iMac I can feel electricity running through my finger!

It doesn't happen when the MacBook is running on battery power, only when it's connected to the mains. It also doesn't happen when the UPS isn't connected.

The MacBook Pro is plugged into a standard wall outlet, the iMac is plugged into a UPS and that's in a similar wall outlet (not the same one).

I'm not very electrically minded, so am puzzled as I'd like to plug the MacBook into the mains again! Does anyone have any ideas as to why it's happening and how I can fix the problem?

Usually, ground loop current is experienced on portables where often no ground wire is connected - just the neutral and live (or hot) wires.

If you are using a grounded plug and feel ground loop current you should either have the outlet serviced or the computer serviced.

It's normal (and safe) for ground loop current to exist and feel lightly tingly on Macs with magsafe connectors and only DC power going in to them. It's harder to be sure an iMac or other device that has 110/220 AC power directly into the case, so I would rather be too cautious and have you get an electrician to look at the outlet if your Mac works properly on other outlets or a technician to look at the Mac if it leaks current no matter which receptacle you plug it in to.

You might be able to find a grounding issue and solve this yourself, but if you have any doubts as to safety, I'd rather you chose to get expert help rather than trust our guesses based on how things should work.

See:

Is grounding important?
Electricity coming through screws, USB, and headphone jack on 2009 MacBook
How can I avoid my MacBook Pro giving me minor shocks?
Is it bad that my MacBook Air is passing me electricity?

And note that all the MacBook questions are low risk situations where any iMac one would be a little more danger (potentially).


Change volume of airport using the master keys, not itunes volume slider My roommate recently bought an airport express, and I love it.  Minus the fact that when I'm blasting music and someone wants to talk to me, I need to open iTunes and either lower the volume or pause the song.

I am so used to usng the f11 f12 keys that this is driving me insane!

I read somewhere about sizzling keys and how it can help me assign a different shortcut to control iTunes volume.  Is there a different, or better, fix?

I would love to be able to use f10-12, and not the iTunes volume.

Note:  I am on a Macbook Pro 2012 with standard keyboard, so currently, f10 is mute, f11 lower, f12 raise volume.  They work fine when I'm not using airport.

SOLUTION
github.com/alberti42/iTunes-Volume-Control

This created assigned cmd - volume key to iTunes so I can control the iTunes volume with very little effort!

This might do what you wanted, however I did not test it my self.

https://github.com/alberti42/iTunes-Volume-Control


Is there any way to access display settings from the menu bar in Mavericks? I used to always have an icon, but now it's gone unless mirroring is available :-(

You can download the Display Menu app from the App Store

I use it all the time. Best of all - it is free!


I want iPhone 5s to always ring..even when head is left active Is there any way to make the phone ring when the headset is left on? My husband will take the earpiece out of his ear but leave it active. When a call comes in it rings in the earpiece and not through the phone. He hates the lag time it takes for the earpiece to connect if turned off but it also hurts to leave it in his ear. If the phone would just always ring, it wouldn't matter where the earpiece was.

I don't think that this is possible. If one has a Bluetooth headset connected with his iPhone, all audio will be played through the headset, not the iPhone. You can keep the devices paired and disconnected and that will save a lot of time when you switch to and from bluetooth headsets.

Since the software won't do what you hoped, an option would be to look into using a more comfortable or faster Bluetooth accessory or even choosing portable speakers as they often work well. Also, you might see if your phone supports Bluetooth LE (4.0) as the latency to connect drops from 100ms to 6 ms (which is how long the hardware takes to recognize a reconnect to a known device - as opposed to re-pairing two devices for the first time) to reduce the time it takes to transfer to the newer headsets.

Another option would be to get something like the Apple Watch so that you get notified of calls and alerts without needing to hear any sound and/or having the sound very close to your ears no matter what the iPhone has connected to it.


iCloud in OS X Implementation - which protocol does it use? In Mountain Lion, iCloud is "integrated" in every program. So when i open or save a document i have an iCloud option available.

  But where are the documents? Are they local and get syned every now
  and then, or is it WebDAV or just http?

The documents load very fast, and there seems to be no delay.

iCloud documents are cached locally in ~/Library/Mobile Documents (~ represents your home folder).

They're synchronized via HTTPS (even when the application is closed) and the files (some of them, at least), are stored on Amazon S3.

When opening, editing and saving a TextEdit document from iCloud, these requests are made :

POST request to https://p**-ubiquity.icloud.com/ub/*********/rwsync/********…
POST request to https://p**-content.icloud.com/*********/authorizePut
PUT request to Amazon S3
POST request to https://p**-content.icloud.com/*********/putComplete
POST request to https://p**-ubiquity.icloud.com/ub/*********/rwsync/********…
POST request to https://p**-ubiquity.icloud.com/ub/*********/rosync/********…


Driving a 4K display at 60Hz with rMBP I've been Googling so much my eyes hurt.

I have a 2014 rMBP.

I want to use it with a 4K display or UHD TV at 60Hz that's at least 30" big.

From my research, this means either using something with a DisplayPort input, or with HDMI 2.0.

The MBP only has HDMI 1.4 (I think) and is thus limited to 30Hz.

There are no >28" 4K monitors for less than $3,000.

But what if I used one of these DP-to-HDMI2 adapters? Would that make it possible to use a UHD TV with HDMI2 like this one?

Has anyone tried this kind of set up? Are there any decent 4K TVs/monitors for less than $1,500?

Your question has two parts: whether an rMBP can drive a 4K display, and whether any exist within your price range.

Apple's support site lists compatibility between their laptops and 4K displays.

If your Retina Macbook Pro is one of the 15" models, it can drive 60Hz MST displays at 60Hz through the thunderbolt port.

If it is a 13" model, it cannot - you are limited to 30hz regardless of output.

If your laptop does support it, the Asus PQ321Q is a 32" monitor that accepts a 60Hz image via MST. It is $2000.

There are also numerous 28" models that support 60Hz over DisplayPort 1.2. One example would be the $500 Samsung U28D590D.


Quickly save Screenshot in MacOS Mojave with keyboard Shortcut In MacOS Mojave, when I take a screenshot with CMD + SHIFT + 4 (so this isn't a normal screen shot, it's a screenshot of a little part of my screen), it takes several seconds before it's saved. Actually, the OS allows me to click on my screenshot and edit it for instance.

But what if I want it to be immediatly saved after I took the screenshot with a shortcut Keyboard ? (This feature changed in MacOS Mojave, before this version of MacOS, the screenshot was indeed imemediatly saved).

This question explains how to permanently remove the waiting, but what if I want to remove it on particular moment and not always ?

Didn't realise that keyboard shortcut was asked. Jump right to the last para.

You can look at the screenshot in the bottom right corner of the screen. If you think that the SS was taken fine, you can swipe right on it with two fingers(like in Safari) and it will be saved at that moment.

You can edit it(or maybe not) by clicking on it and then done and share etc will be there.

You can also drag and drop it if supported by places you want to use the SS at so immediately.

The question you linked didn't mention "remember selection" in options of cmd+shift+5. So if you uncheck it and the said shortcut, instant saving!


Mac OS X file system and tagging question I recently (w/in the last year) have began integrating file tagging and use of meta-data heavily into my digital organizational system, on my MacBook Pro (running OS X Lion 10.7.2). To facilitate this, I've used the software "Fresh", which is a tagging software, which I use in conjunction with Leap (both made by Ironic software).

The basic idea behind what I'm doing is that I stop worrying about where I store things and I start religiously tagging everything and I then just find anything I need using search and tags. It has made a HUGE difference in my productivity and I've cutdown on occurrences of duplicate versions of files...etc. As part of the Leap/Fresh software system, you can mark a file as "managed" after you've tagged it and it then "files" it in a set of hierarchical folder that is organized by Year>Month>Day (e.g. "~Filed Documents/2011/12/2" would be the directory for any files I "filed" today). Here is my question:

At a core operating system level, would my system/search functions operate more efficiently if I dumped all my files into a central directory and then only had to search within that folder for tags (i.e. remove the hierarchical folder system)? I've searched online extensively and I've not been able to come up with a definitive answer. Thanks in-advance!

No, I don't think so.  Spotlight indexes files in order for quick searching.  Once indexed, a file is very quick to find, the part that takes time is the actual indexing.  I suppose you could argue that the act of moving a file might cause it to be re-indexed (now that it's in a new location), but I don't know enough about how Spotlight works to be sure.  Either way, the difference you would notice would be minimal.  Once the initial indexing is done, the time spent adjusting the indexes is not big.


iOS app for simultaneous reading and listening to a (audio) book I'd like to read books in a foreign language while listening to its Audiobook version. Is there an app that can do that?

Notes:

This is what Amazon calls Immersive Reading. It's available on their Kindle Fire tablets.
A plus would be if I could tap a word to see its translation.
It does not so much matter what books are available. I'm happy as long as there are some Public Domain books.

If I got that correctly I think Audible Whispersync (an Amazon product) does that.


Restore Permissions to external HDD To read/write NTFS (Windows-formatted) external HDDs on my Mac, I have installed FUSE for OS X (version 3.2.0) and NTFS-3G (version 2015.3.14, installed with homebrew and the instructions from NTFS-3G). I have selected the 'MacFUSE compatibility layer' because it is required by veraCrypt (from https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/).

Copying to/from the Mac to the NTFS HDDs works as expected. However, I can no longer use the Disk Utility's "First Aid" utilities (to correct permissions, to correct errors when the HDDs get incorrectly dismounted). The disk utility options are now 'greyed out' for my HDDs. These options are still available for my internal SSD and for my SD card, so the disk utility is not 'broken'. The HDDs are also fine: they work correctly and I can still fix them on Windows. The problem (the only one I can see so far) is that I can no longer fix my external HDDs with the Mac's disk utility.

I'm currently on OSX Yosemite. Here is the diagnosis from the Disk Utility:

    Name :  PatrickA
    Type :  Partition

    Disk Identifier :   disk2s1
    Mount Point :   /Volumes/PatrickA
    File System :   Windows NT File System (NTFS)
    Connection Bus :    USB
    Device Tree :   IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/XHC1@14
    Writable :  Yes
    Universal Unique Identifier :   54D2798C-E724-4810-B621-F1358C19DC48
    Capacity :  1 TB (1,000,169,537,536 Bytes)
    Free Space :    245.04 GB (245,044,764,672 Bytes)
    Used :  755.12 GB (755,124,768,768 Bytes)
    Number of Files :   130,742
    Number of Folders :     0
    Owners Enabled :    Yes
    Can Turn Owners Off :   No
    Can Repair Permissions :    No
    Can Be Verified :   No
    Can Be Repaired :   No
    Can Be Formatted :  No
    Bootable :  No
    Supports Journaling :   No
    Journaled :     No
    Disk Number :   2
    Partition Number :  1

As you can see above, my HDDs (all of them) can no longer be verified or repaired. I was always able to do that before reinstalling FUSE and NTFS-3G. The above diagnosis is identical for all 12 of my HDDs.

I tried to reset permissions, but was denied:

vsdbutil -a /Volumes/PatrickA
vsdbutil: no valid volume UUID found on '/Volumes/PatrickA': permissions are disabled.

I read somewhere that hfs.util can regenerate a UUID, but that didn't work.

diskutil info /Volumes/PatrickA | grep "Device Identifier"
Device Identifier:        disk3s1
/System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/hfs.util -s disk3s1

Any suggestions? Thanks!

UPDATE I came across suggestions on how to use the diskutil from the command line. Here is the error message I get:

diskutil verifyvolume /Volumes/PatrickA/
Error starting file system verification for disk2s1 PatrickA: Invalid request (-69886)

I have also not been able to get smartctl to do anything useful with the volume:

smartctl -c /Volumes/PatrickA
smartctl 6.4 2015-06-04 r4109 [x86_64-apple-darwin14.3.0] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-15, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
Smartctl open device: /Volumes/PatrickA failed:

I came across a suggestion that a third party driver is needed to diagnose external drives on a Mac OS X (I do not know if this is generally true). The SAT SMART driver (available at https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver) extends the standard driver behaviour by providing access to drive SMART data. I was successful in changing the SMART status of my HDD to "Verified." But this does not appear to have helped much as the errors reported above still appear.

The community NTFS-3G driver in conjunction with Disk Utility doesn't allow you to repair the file system of an NTFS-formatted volume nor its permissions.

The file system repair feature is only available in the commercial Tuxera NTFS for Mac edition (based on the NTFS-3G driver) - either by using Disk Utility or Tuxera Disk Manager.

In the default configuration the files and folders of the mounted NTFS volume are owned by the effective user and group of the mounting process - the common settings are 777. This means all OS X users have full access to the volume or: Permissions are ignored!

At least in Linux using the community driver this can be overridden by modifying the mount options and user mappings (also: Advanced ownership and permissions). I don't know if this also works in OS X. The commercial Tuxera NTFS for Mac doesn't mention anything like this in its manual.


Customize the Boot Camp Drive Icon in Lion A while ago, I remember having customized the Boot Camp drive icon with a pretty simple hack.

It was on Mac OS X Tiger.
And it was that hack.

Now I'm running Lion. Windows 7 is comfy on his Boot Camp partition, and i'm willing to get some candy finish for my Mac OS' desktop icons.

The problem is: I can't find any way to do it in Lion. Google has been of no help. The hack above isn't working anymore. (It wasn't working in leopard or snow leopard neither, as far as I remember)

Magical solution needed, anyone has a clue about it?

Does OS X Lion discard completely the use of non-writable drive icons?

Will Candybar work for you? It allows you to change icons, but I'm not sure about drive icons. Lemme know if it works for you.

Ok, according to this article, you can:

Paste your icon (in the Get Info window) onto a USB thumb drive formatted as FAT32.
The name of the drive doesn't matter.
Launch Windows through Boot Camp, Parallels Desktop, or VMware Fusion.
Open the thumb drive in Windows.
Select Folder Options… from the Tools menu, and set it to show invisible files.
Copy the two files .VolumeIcon.icns and ._[cr]File, where [cr] is a carriage return, to the NTFS drive.

According to the article, that'll work.


What is the easiest way to have Apple's Mail send an email at a specific time/date? Something in Mail itself?  AppleScript?  Automator?
I am using OS X 10.7.3.

The easiest is to simply set the time in iCal and set the alert to email the details.

If that's not exactly what you want, you could have iCal launch an Apple Script to send a specific draft, but there isn't a built-in feature to handle everything from email.

I suppose you could use the scheduled wake event to wake a sleeping mac and have things ready to go, but this seems more likely to backfire and send it earlier if something else wakes up your mac or you open mail and have an internet connection before the appointed time to send arrives.


What's a good, actively-developed status-bar-hosted mail client? I currently use Notify, but it has gone out from under active development and there are a few bugs in Lion. Is there something that does an identical or nearly identical thing, but hasn't been abandoned? Free would be preferable.

Sparrow is $10 on the MAS and does have a status-bar only option.


Why do messages I send display to receiver as an email address and not a phone number? My goal is when I message someone for first time it always displays my phone number.  How can I control this from my iphone5s?

The setting for this is in Settings > Messages > Send & Recieve. From there you can scroll down to the "start new conversations from" header and choose your phone number.


Change Default Table Style when opening a CSV file Background

I often open a CSV file on Numbers, and then I see the table of which style is 'Basic'.

I want to use another style (e.g. 'Gray'), but it's annoying to change the style every time I open a file.

Question

Can I change the default table style which Numbers uses when a file is opened?

I'm not aware of the possibility of changing the default, but a useful workflow is:

set up the doc with the exactly the styles you need,
'Save as template' to the template chooser,
open Numbers
new doc with your new template
drag the CSV onto the table

Actually pretty quick to execute (after initial template configuration) and very flexible (allows different styles for different purposes). In combination Launchbar (etc), this is pretty seamless and doesn't involve any messing about with positioning windows, etc.


Unable to click on the menubar Recently I edited a *.plist file of an App in order to hide it from the Dock. Everything works but I can't click on the menubar anymore when the App is selected..! Any help?

This is what I did

previously:

<key>LSUIElement</key>
<false/>

after:

<key>LSUIElement</key>
<true/>

this is what I get: "resource envelope is obsolete (custom omit rules)" what does it mean?

When you set "LSUIElement" to true, it makes the application in question a semi GUI-less application.  While calling up the application in this state, it still shows up windows, but it does neither show its Dock icon nor its menu bar.

As to alternatives: The only real alternative is to have the application support this on its own (e.g. inside its own GUI).

Keep in mind that enabling "LSUIElement" (a.k.a. setting it to true) is not telling the application to hide its Dock icon, but rather tells the Dock not to show the application's icon while it is running.  Also GUI-wise there are two main processes running for the user: Finder and the Dock.  The first is merely an application on its own and will allow you to browse and alter the files on your computer and the latter besides showing and controlling the Dock icons controls the menu bar itself (not the menu items of each application, mind you) as well as the Dashboard and Launchpad among others. You can see its effect when running Terminal and type in "killall Dock".  It will effectively restart Dock and its depending items.


How do you put a variable in the middle of a pathway? (AppleScript) I am trying to write code that deletes files from a specified location and empties into the trash. If I use the direct string it works but when I try to add a variable it does not. Could someone help show me what I'm doing wrong?
When I tried to look up the error code number at the bottom, it didn't give me much insight.
Valid
tell application "Finder"
        delete (every item of folder "Macintosh HD:Users:sme0219:Pictures:Camera" whose name contains ".png")
end tell

Invalid
tell application "System Events"
    set userName to name of current user
    set compName to name of startup disk
end tell

tell application "Finder"
    delete (every item of folder compName & ":Users:" & userName & ":Pictures:Camera" whose name contains ".png")
end tell

Error Report

error "Can’t get {folder "Applications" of startup disk of application "Finder", folder "Library" of startup disk of application "Finder", folder "System" of startup disk of application "Finder", folder "Users" of startup disk of application "Finder", ":Users:", "sme0219", ":Pictures:Camera"} whose name contains ".png"." number -1728

You need to put parentheses around:
compName & ":Users:" & userName & ":Pictures:Camera"

Example:
(compName & ":Users:" & userName & ":Pictures:Camera")

This concatenates everything within the parentheses as the full path, otherwise Finder just sees:
delete (every item of folder compName & ":Users:" & userName & ":Pictures:Camera" whose name contains ".png")

As:
get every item of folder "Macintosh HD"

Not the entire path.
So, this works:
tell application "System Events"
    set userName to name of current user
    set compName to name of startup disk
end tell

tell application "Finder"
    delete (files of folder (compName & ":Users:" & userName & ":Pictures:Camera") whose name contains ".png")
end tell

Instead of relying on System Events to get that information, you can use the path to (folder) convention to ascertain its path, e.g.:
set targetFolder to (path to pictures folder from user domain) & "Camera" as string

tell application "Finder"
    delete (files of folder targetFolder whose name contains ".png")
end tell

Please take a moment to read the linked document as I believe you'll find it quite informative.
Also note that since you stated code that deletes files in the OP and your code had the potential to delete a folder having a .png extension that every item  has bee changes to files with the exception of the line after "otherwise Finder just sees:" in this answer as that line is part of explaining what the issue is that you are having.


What are the shutter speed and ISO ranges for the iPhone 4S camera? Despite some googling, I can't find any information on the hardware limits of the camera in the iPhone 4S. What ISO and shutter speeds are possible from the still camera?

I know the exposure is programmed and you can't choose ISO or shutter speed, but I'm looking to at least know what the ranges the phone is capable. I have a lot of iPhone 4 images and can scrape the minimum / maximum values from EXIF data, but lack this resource for the iPhone 4S.

What ranges are possible with the iPhone 4S hardware? I'm most interested in the shutter speeds, but anything will help since at f/2.4 the two are linked to exposure in an understandable manner.

You can scrape that information off photos on flickr taken with an iPhone 4S:

http://www.flickr.com/cameras/apple/iphone_4s/

Here are a few examples of extremes.  The dark end seems to show a max ISO of 800 and max shutter of 1/15, which several dark photos agreed with, and none of the ten I looked at went further, so here are two examples:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/funinthegym/6328079422/in/photostream/
0.067 sec (1/15)
800

http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewthecoolguy/6534661585/in/photostream/
0.067 sec (1/15)
800

Looking at very bright photographs, I saw a few claiming very high shutter speeds (1/9259 and 1/2600) but none of them matched the same exif format for the shutter speed field as the rest of the iPhone 4S photos I reviewed, suggesting that these fields were modified in post processing.  The lowest shutter speed I saw that matched the format of the other 4S exif files was 1/1842, and the lowest ISO was 64:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/67660035@N04/7110241863/in/photostream/
0.001 sec (1/1842)
64

http://www.flickr.com/photos/xiahou/6298147263/in/photostream/
0.001 sec (1/1842)
64

This should answer your question for highest and lowest ISO, and highest and lowest shutter speed.  Keep in mind I only sampled a few dozen photos on flickr, it's possible I missed the ends of the ranges.

A random sampling from the "interesting" section, showing the mid range of shutter speed and ISO combinations:

Shutter speed
ISO

0.008 sec (1/122)
64

0.05 sec (1/20)
200

0.008 sec (1/120)
100

0.002 sec (1/550)
64

0.025 sec (1/40)
64

0.002 sec (1/464)
64

0.004 sec (1/242)
64

0.042 sec (1/24)
64

0.059 sec (1/17)
800

0.067 sec (1/15)
640

0.006 sec (1/170)
64

0.067 sec (1/15)
640


On a mac, how can I force-close a window of an app (NOT the app itself)? I'm looking for a keyboard shortcut to close a window of an app, skipping the "Would you like to save" pester dialog, while leaving the app, itself, and other windows, still open.

If there's no way to do that, is there a keyboard shortcut for hitting a certain button in a window/dialog?  In Windows, this would typically be ALT+[first letter of the button text].

To press a button in a dialog using a keyboard shortcut, press Command, followed by the first letter of the action you wish to trigger. The exception to this rule is if the action you wish to activate will delete a file or changes thereto, in which case the shortcut is Command-delete.

To force-close a window, you'd need to automate the correct series of key presses using AppleScript or something similar. The first key combination would likely be Command-W (though not even this is entirely universal). However, the dialog shortcuts vary by application—older versions of Microsoft Word don't comply with the Command-delete behavior (they use Command-D), while Automator's save sheets can often only be closed through mouse input. You would have to tailor this behavior to the specific applications in which you're interested. Such an AppleScript might look something like this (though be warned, triggering Command-delete without knowing the context is an easy way to accidentally delete files and large swathes of text):

tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "w" using {command down} -- Command-W
    delay 0.5 -- Wait for the dialog to appear
    key code 51 using {command down} -- Command-delete
end tell

To tie an AppleScript to a keyboard shortcut:

Open Automator (Applications > Utilities > Automator) and create a new Service (optionally, configure it just to run in the applications you want).
Add a "Run AppleScript" block in which you write your AppleScript.
Open System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts.
Create a new shortcut, where the "Menu Title" is the title you gave your Service (again, you can tie this shortcut just to the applications to which your Service applies). The keyboard shortcut you enter here is the one you can use to trigger your "force close" behavior.

You could create multiple services, each one with the same keyboard shortcut but in different applications, corresponding to the unique behavior of each.


Faster Press and Hold Character Picker Does anyone know how to make the character picker appear more quickly?

I use it enough now in my German language studies that it has become second nature for the critical marks and much faster than using the alt+keypress shortcuts.

Only problem is that it's so second nature that sometimes it doesn't pop up quickly enough so I end up typing the character and the number shortcut sometimes (IE u2 instead of ü). Anyone know how to make it appear with less delay? Ideally, I'd love if I could just hold the character and press the number but it appears that OSX insists on waiting for the menu to pop up.

The "Character Accent Menu" settings can be adjusted under:

System preferences -> Keyboard -> Delay Until Repeat

If you reduce this time, it's the fastest way to insert any accents in my experience. Setting the initial key repeat rate is the same as setting the time for the character accent menu to appear. With this solution, there is no need to change to international keyboards etc (see the other answers). see here.

If you set it to the minimum value, the delay will be 15 ms, which should be quite fast. However, there seems to be an actual delay of about 300 ms until the menu appears (maybe displaying the menu takes a while? Don't know).

There's people using scripts to set the delay from 15 to 1 ms, but I'm not sure whether this helps: see here: github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.macos, the relevant parameter is InitialKeyRepeat


How to grant a Mac app permission to read the whole filesystem I bought this app called Xee from the Mac app store. It can open files perfectly fine but when I try to browse through a folder from within the Xee app, it has to request permission. (See the screenshot below.) I have to do this for every folder the first time I browse it.

I assume that this is a limitation imposed by the app store. Is there any way to circumvent this and grant an app (installed on my machine) permission to view any directory, or even to do anything at all that it wants?

The app is sandboxed. This means the application has been code signed with a set of entitlements. These entitlements are being enforced by Mac OS X. Apple's developer documentation on sandboxing provides more detail.

You can view Xee's sandbox entitlements using the following Terminal.app command:

codesign --display --entitlements - /Applications/Xee.app

Ole Begemann's article, Checking Code Signing and Sandboxing Status in Code, explains more.

Resign or Strip Entitlements

To remove the entitlements, you need to re-code sign the application without entitlements - using codesign - or entirely strip the code signing from the application.

Ask Xee's Developers

Modifying a Mac application is not recommended. Ask Xee's developers for help on how to work around this behaviour; only they have the appropriate knowledge to solve this problem.

Xee's developers do appear to be aware of the issue:

  (Note that the App Store version is sandboxed, while the non-App Store trial and full versions are not sandboxed. If you prefer the safety of the OS X sandbox, you should get the App Store version. However, the sandboxed version needs to ask you for permission for certain operations, and if you find this annoying, you should get the non-App Store version.)

Tell Apple

Consider providing feedback to Apple about this limitation and how it limits your workflow. Customer feedback will help shape what Mac App Store apps can and can not do in the future. For now, apps bought through the Apple Mac App Store are limited.


Is there an iOS / OS X to-do app that can manage multiple people's To-dos? There is no lack of to-do apps designed at least somewhat around Getting Things Done - just see the answers to this question, for example. I'm a user of Things on iOS and have heard a lot about OmniFocus, but I've never gotten a good recommendation for an app that can manage to-dos for more than one person.

My wife and I are looking to adopt a GTD-inspired workflow for a variety of personal projects, some shared, some individual, and it would be ideal to manage these projects side-by-side.

Short of us each running our own instance of a given app on our separate devices, and including iOS / OS X synching among my requirements, do any of the flagship GTD to-do apps offer the concept of projects and to-dos that belong to a specific person of several?

There are several, even though some of them may not be as native to OS X and iOS as Things or Omnifocus.

Asana, Trello and Flow are good examples. They offer nice web apps to be used through a web browser, and native iOS apps. Both offer the GTDesque approach, and allow assigning tasks to individuals.

Another alternative, which does offer an OS X app, is Producteev.


Removing Mathias' dotfiles settings Just installed Mathias' dotfiles but I didn't like some features of it. Especially executing ./.osx command. For example it's changing dock icons' sizes, removing TimeMachine icons (i'm using it frequently), changing locale settings etc.

How can I revert all settings to default ones, remove all dotfiles settings.

After this I'll for the dotfiles project and make my own dotfiles based on Mathias' project.

There is no simple command to revert everything to default.

Depending on the number of installed apps besides Apple's own standard apps, it's probably faster to reinstall OS X or restore a backup.

.osx alone modifies about 200 settings - assuming one mod per 4 lines.

Next time better use a hypervisor like VMware or Virtual Box, set up your preferred OS X in a VM and test dotfiles using the snapshot feature.


Can I migrate power mac g5 settings and apps to a power book g4? I would like to know because I am planning on purchasing a power book g4.

Yes your settings are transferable and will be transferred using Apple's Migration Assistant, Apps too and as the G5 and G4 are both Power PC apps your apps should transfer over as well.

You could even transfer your settings (but not your Apps) to a modern Intel-based Mac.


outlook for mac - wrong date on the sent items I have a problem using outlook for mac 2011, after I imported my emails, the sent items shows wrong date, When i open the message, it shows the right date, how can I fix it? i want to show the right date when i view the message and I open the message. tried to repair the identity but it didn't worked

thank you

Follow the steps mentioned below :

Create a new identity to remove database issues
Check your folder’s arrangement and system settings

To create a new user, the predefined path is :

Go to System Preferences --> Create a New User in Accounts.

Then Switch to the New User by logging out/in or you can try user Switching option.

If you still face this issue then problem exists into folders i.e. associated with Outlook Mac backup file.


How to secure my mail in iOS? Can you please advise what is the best application for email encryption using iPhones and iPads?

It depends on the level of security you are looking for. For PGP, some options, as explained in this article, are iPGMail and oPenGP. If you are looking for a simpler option, in which you don't want to rely on the PGP web of trust, then you can use S/MIME in the stock mail app with little effort. The linked article explains the easiest way to do this on iOS.


How to selectively restore save game data from old iphone backup? Here's the dilemma: My nephew decided to start a new game on GTA vice city which wiped out my hard worked progress. I have the progress in an old backup from a year ago. However, I would like to not lose the data I have from other apps.

What I have: iPhone5 iOS 9.3.1

What I have tried: iExplorer and iPhoneBackupBrowser

Story of my attempts: I have found the GTA data in iExplorer and have saved to my desktop. However, the app doesn't have iTunes file sharing enabled so I cannot replace the existing files in the "documents" for the app from the backup. I have also tried to downgrade the iPhone to iOS 8.3 but as the ipsw is unsigned, I cannot downgrade.

So:
What is the best way to achieve this? I could restore the phone from the old backup and then backup only the GTA app to iCloud, the restore the phone from the recent backup and then sync with the cloud. However, I feel that it will simply wipe out all other apps and only restore the one selected app. Is that correct? What other options do I have? Could I merge the backups somehow? Could I do this via iTunes sync where the data of the correct GTA savegame is synced and replaces the unwanted data?

Could I swap the files in the iTunes backup folder with the relevant files from the historical iTunes backup folder and then restore the modified backup to the phone?

Any pointers in the right direction will help.

I found the answer with iMazing https://imazing.com .

What I did was copy the entire iTunes backup folder from my USB drive to the iTunes backup folder in my machine.
Then I ran the iMazing App and went to the iOS App (app has to be installed) in the connected phone.
Then I right clicked the iOS App and select extract.
At this point, I selected extract from current backup (which would be the historical backup containing the app data I want to restore) and saved the extract file to my desktop.
Once done, I select "manage apps > restore" from the bottom of the screen and select the file I just extracted.
Phone restarted after restore and it was all restored perfectly!

If you get stuck, they are very responsive on twitter, which is where I got help to do this.


Why does the system always show 200 MB occupied by Photo, but my iPhone has zero photos? I am using an iPhone 5s 16 GB. iOS is updated to 8.4. I have no photos in my gallery. But the system always shows that 200 MB are used in Photo.

What's the reason for this mismatch?

Try this.
1. Go to Settings > General > Date & Time

Untoggle "Set Automatically"
Manually set the date a year or two in the past
Open "Photos"
Select "Albums"
If, like me, you had already cleared out everything from the Camera Roll and "Recently Deleted" folder, you'll smile to see that your "Recently Deleted" folder now has thousands of images back. Those are your phantom photos
Open it, "Select" and start deleting
Return to "Date & Time" and fix your clock
Now, go back into Settings > General > Usage > Storage > Manage Storage. You'll notice your Photo & Camera is empty if you deleted everything


Can Pages 5 (a.k.a. Pages '13) import Pages '08 documents? I have quite a few documents created using Pages '08, both in document and page layout mode. I see a fair amount of information about importing from Pages '09 into Pages 5 (the most recent version as of this writing), but haven't found any mention about Pages '08. So can it import from this version? If so, are there any additional caveats I should be aware of?

According to Ars Technica's iWork '13 review, Pages '13 can't open '08 documents.

  The iWork '13 apps on the Mac can open iWork '09 files but not iWork '08 files.

If you still have a copy of Pages '09 you could save the documents in '09 format and then use '13 to save them in '13 format.


sudo disable trimforce doesn't work Since upgrading to High Sierra my boot time slowed down considerably (from ~10 seconds to 90 seconds). Googling this problem suggests disabling Trim might work as a solution, which you do via the sudo trimforce disable command, but it doesn't actually seem to disable Trim.

After running sudo trimforce disable and pressing y twice, my Mac automatically reboots but after rebooting, system_profiler SPSerialATADataType | grep 'TRIM' or System Information->SATA/SATA Express still shows TRIM Support: Yes

I also tried to disable System Integrity Protection before disabling Trim, and that doesn't seem to work either.

Anyone got any ideas?

Other users have also reported the same issue. TRIM may not actually be disabled on macOS even if forced. In my testing on a 3rd-party SSD, I could never disable TRIM on High Sierra.

On another note, it might be possible to improve your boot performance by following a guide I posted back when I was having similar issues.

The gist of it is that re-blessing the boot partition, and resetting SMC+NVRAM may improve boot performance. To re-bless, simply go to System Preferences > Startup Disk, select the desired boot partition, and restart from there.


What is the Mac equivalent of Windows' Power Plans' Maximum Processor State? One of my favorite features in Windows is the built-in Power Plans. I can change how much energy my computer uses - whether I want it to drain power like there's no tomorrow and get incredible performance or whether I want it to run like a turtle and use 1% CPU at the max and barely use any power, or anything in between.

My favorite feature of Power Plans is that I can limit CPU usage. I can make it 30% - or 72% - or 94 percent.

On a Mac, I notice that there are no Power Plans. There is this, but that doesn't do it.

What can I use to limit CPU usage by the entire system (not just one process) on a Mac?

OS X has SpeedStep built in, but as you have noticed you have no/little control over it.

Coolbook is a program that works on pre-Lion versions of OS X but is still not working correctly under Lion?  It is also limited to Core Duo and Core 2 Duo processors.


QuickLook permission denied I've never try to fix it but my quicklook doesn't work on some file like .c, .java, .json ect.. I think it begin (about 2 or 3 months ago) when I tried to install plugin for quicklook find on this page https://github.com/sindresorhus/quick-look-plugins .

I tried to fix it using the multiple solution I found on the internet like run qlmanage -r, qlmanage -r cache, deleting the .qlgenerator files but nothing work.

Then I found we can run qlmanage in debug, I did it and I found that I've got a permission problem, here is what I get when I run qlmanage -p test.java :

Testing Quick Look preview with files:
    test.java
go4it:9: permission denied: /usr/local/opt/highlight/bin
go4it:9: permission denied: /usr/local/opt/highlight/bin
2018-04-28 12:42:23.426 qlmanage[1527:35098] QLColorCode: colorize.sh failed with exit code 101.  Command was ('/Users/yohannmbp/Library/QuickLook/QLColorCode.qlgenerator/Contents/Resources/colorize.sh' '/Users/yohannmbp/Library/QuickLook/QLColorCode.qlgenerator/Contents/Resources' '/Users/yohannmbp/Desktop/test.java' 0).
go4it:5: permission denied: /usr/local/opt/highlight/bin
go4it:5: permission denied: /usr/local/opt/highlight/bin
2018-04-28 12:42:23.466 qlmanage[1527:35098] QLColorCode: colorize.sh failed with exit code 101.  Command was ('/Users/yohannmbp/Library/QuickLook/QLColorCode.qlgenerator/Contents/Resources/colorize.sh' '/Users/yohannmbp/Library/QuickLook/QLColorCode.qlgenerator/Contents/Resources' '/Users/yohannmbp/Desktop/test.java' 1).
2018-04-28 12:42:23.497 qlmanage[1527:35098] *** CFMessagePort: bootstrap_register(): failed 1100 (0x44c) 'Permission denied', port = 0xae0b, name = 'com.apple.coredrag'
See /usr/include/servers/bootstrap_defs.h for the error codes.
2018-04-28 12:42:23.549 qlmanage[1527:35098] *** CFMessagePort: bootstrap_register(): failed 1100 (0x44c) 'Permission denied', port = 0x7f23, name = 'com.apple.tsm.portname'
See /usr/include/servers/bootstrap_defs.h for the error codes.

And here is the quicklook I got :

And there is the exact same permission error on other kind of file.
Any idea how I could fix it ?

EDIT : I tried to remove all plugin and when there isn't the QLColorCode plugin I can QL the .java file but without color.

My configuration :

macOS High Sierra 10.13.4
MacBook Pro 2016 Touch Bar

It's not clear whether this is a recent change in behaviour, or whether you've had this issue for a while. However, QLColorCode hasn't been updated in a long time and my understanding is that it's started to show signs of its age in recent times, with issues such as conflicting with other QuickLook plugins.

For example, with QLColorCode installed the QLStephen.qlgenerator is not showing text for various text files (instead just showing the typical preview info).

However, some additional things that may be worth trying include:

moving the plugin to a new location, rebooting your MBP, moving the plugin back again, and then rebooting again (or use the qlmanage -r command)
uninstalling the plugin (by dragging it into trash), rebooting, reinstalling it from scratch, rebooting again (or use the qlmanage -r command)
boot your MBP into Safe Mode and then exit by restarting normally
trying the qlmanage -r cache command multiple times

If none of the above suggestions work, then you could try this alternative instead: QLColorCode-extra.

Note: I am not affiliated in any way with QLColorCode-extra.


Apple Watch Screenshot not saving on iPhone I recently purchased a Series 4 Apple Watch yesterday, but I cannot seem to get the screenshot feature to work. The steps I have taken are:

Enable screenshots through the watch app on my iPhone
Restart watch
Restart phone
Screenshot by pressing the digital crown and side button

When I try to take a screenshot, both the watch and my phone vibrate, but the photos do not appear in the photos app on my phone.

My iPhone OS is iOS 12.3.1 and my Watch OS is 5.1.3 (needs to be updated)

Oddly enough, just waiting has resolved this issue for me.

It seems to have fixed itself.


How can I limit the number of results returned by an expensive filter expression in AppleScript? In my Apple Notes automation on macOS Big Sur, I’d like to load any 5 notes whose name contains a substring. For example, if I know that I actually have 5 notes that match the query, I can write something like this:
tell application "Notes"
  set matches to id of (notes 1 thru 5 in default account whose name contains "a")
end tell

This runs relatively fast (< 1 second on my account with thousands of notes), because it terminates as soon as it finds those 5 matches and doesn’t look any further. For comparison, a query without such "1 thru 5" clause (or a count query) times out before it even returns any results, which is understandable. However, my problem is that if there aren’t enough (i.e., fewer than 5) matches, the query will error without returning any results:

Notes got an error: Can’t get notes 1 thru 5 of default account whose name contains "a". Invalid index.

Thus, my question is whether there’s a way for me to get "at most 5 results" in a single query?

Thus, my question is whether there’s a way for me to get "at most 5 results" in a single query?

No, it cannot be done in a single query.
If you want to loop through a given count downwards then the following example AppleScript code is how I'd do it:
set maxNumber to 5
set searchString to "a"

set matches to missing value
repeat with i from maxNumber to 1 by -1
    if matches is equal to missing value then
        try
            tell application "Notes"
                set matches to id of ¬
                    (notes 1 thru i in default account ¬
                        whose name contains searchString)
            end tell
        end try
        if matches is not equal to missing value then exit repeat
    end if
end repeat

return matches


Automator action to run python script on series of files fails in Catalina Major edit
I've just discovered that the Automator workflow I'm having problems with works perfectly if I run it by pressing 'play' in the Automator window, and it seemingly only fails when I save it as a Quick Action and try and run it by clicking the button in the Preview pane.
Original post
I have an Automator action that iterates through a list of files selected in the Finder, running a python script on each of them in turn. The workflow receives a list of files or folders in the Finder, and then consists of a single 'Run Shell Script' block with 'Pass input: as arguments'.
for f in "$@"
do
    /path/to/python_distro /path/to/script.py "$f"
done

In Catalina, this fails with an error:
The action “Run Shell Script” encountered an error: “path/to/python_distro: can't open file '/path/to/script.py': [Errno 1] Operation not permitted
How can I get Catalina to permit this? I've already tried adding Automator to the list of apps that are allowed Full Disk Access, and restarted Automator and killall Finder'd, but that did not fix my problem.

Running python scripts in shell scripts seems to work for me. Does the script have executable flags set?

Also, is there any reason you're using a shell script to pass the arguments to the python script, and not just embedding the python script in the Action?

You can set the 'Shell' drop-down value to /usr/bin/python, to use the bundled system python; or you can just use #!/usr/bin/env python at the start of your script.

Automator will even help you out by offering:

import sys

for f in sys.argv[1:]:
    print f

to get your arguments into your script.


Do I need drivers to use a full-sized Apple keyboard with my MacBook Pro? I have a 2009 MacBook Pro and just purchased a wired Apple Keyboard with numeric keypad. I really wanted dedicated navigation keys, and it is working great in Eclipse after a bit of configuration. I also wanted proper mappings for Word given how non-standard it feels, and this works well out of the box. I've set up the extra function keys to swap between Spaces - all working fine.

However, in other apps like FireFox, the home and end keys are not working.

Do I need special drivers for the keyboard? I've checked the support site and found nothing relating to my keyboard.

Mac OS X home and end keys do not function the same way as they do on other systems.

  On Mac, the Home and End keys go to the top and bottom of a document, instead of to the beginning or end of a line.

Check out this Lifehacker article which shows how to remap the functionality of the home and end keys to make them perform like they do on other systems.


Very slow OS responsiveness, excessive console error messages (1 per second) I have a Mac Mini OSX Mountain Lion (now Mavericks) with 8GB of ram. I am a software developer and don't run extremely intensive applications concurrently on the system or anything that should be TOO memory intensive...

A few weeks ago I had an issue with the App Store doing an update of XCode. It took so long to simply click a button or even open the apple menu to restart. I once waited over 45 min for the Apple menu in the top left to open in order to shut down the computer properly...

Anyways, I finally narrowed down the problem to only occurring when the App Store was open, and it was trying to install the update for XCode. I waited days to see if it would finally finish, but the bar never moved... I finally just deleted XCode off of my computer completely and re-installed. This seemed to speed up everything again, and I was back to normal.

Yesterday I encountered some similar issues with the App Store, but a simple restart helped correct the issue.

Over the past few days I have noticed a major decline in performance and responsiveness.. Again I am not doing anything that should cause these slowdowns. It also takes a seemingly long time for the computer to go from off, to logged in and functional. I checked the Activity Monitor and everything seemed to be within normal limits, no odd readings, and the vast majority of my memory was not in use.

Today I decided that I would take a deeper look into the system to try and see if I could find any reasons for the issues. I opened the Console and I have potentially found a clue. I am getting the error mDNSResponder[42]: ERROR: send_all(34) wrote -1 of 4 errno 32 (Broken pipe) at the rate of exactly 1 per second, every second. It never stops.

Could this be a problem? Has anyone ever seen this before? Any known resolutions?

If I can't figure out how to speed this up, I am considering a complete re-install of the OS to get a fresh start.. How would I go about doing that? I don't have an install disk...

Problem was a bad hard drive, which should've been obvious, because it was slow getting things INTO memory, but CPU and RAM were nowhere near maxed out. Thank for the help everyone.


How can I charge my iPhone without waking up my MacBook Pro? I have a MacBook Pro (10.7.3) and an iPhone 4 (5.1). When I'm trying to conserve outlets, I charge my iPhone at night by plugging it directly into my computer.

If my computer is asleep with the lid closed, when I plug in the iPhone, the computer briefly wakes up, and it takes a few moments before it starts charging. (If the computer is already awake, the charging is instantaneous.) But my computer takes a while to go back to sleep because it saves the contents of RAM (safe sleep).

How can I plug the iPhone it in to charge, without waking up the computer? (And why does this happen in the first place?)

(I've already set up my computer so that iTunes and iPhoto don't launch when I plug in my phone — but this doesn't seem to be enough.)

It has to do with connection activity on the USB data lines in a usb cable. For example, I have a Matias Tune Blocker connected to my Mac Pro. When I have the switch set to sync my iPhone, aka its acting as a regular USB data cable for for a USB device, the Mac Pro will wake from sleep as soon as the iPhone is connected.

However when I have the switch on the Tune Blocker set to charge only, eg only the USB power pins are enabled, the Mac Pro will not wake from sleep when the iPhone, etc is connected to the cable. So a solution to keep your mac a sleep when connecting your iPhone would be something like a Tune Blocker, or making a modified USB extension cable that cuts the Data wires for the device plugged into that extension cable.


Facebook is forcing use of its new messenger app, which is only supported on iOS7? I'm running iOS 6.* on an IPhone 3Gs.

I noticed that Facebook was talking about redacting support for messaging inside the Facebook app...

This slightly bothered me, considering I am Quite happy using SMS for instant messaging, and Facebook for less frequent chat.

Regardless of how I feel, I now see that they are "Forcing" users over to their secondary Messenger application... which seems to be quite the ignorant move on their part-

When I went to the appstore to download the new messenger application... I found out that it was only supported in iOS7...

Will we really no longer be able to send and receive messages using Facebook on anything but the latest model phones?

Seeing as how they are doing the same on Android, and Seeing as how I wasn't offered to use a version of Facebook Messenger that was supported by iOS 6.*...

They can't really be considering dropping all support for any "older" model phone, can they? that is more than just stupid, it's plain cynical.

The tech enthusiast in me wants to believe their is a work around for this, or something I have simply over looked. but the conspiracy theorist in me wants to scream out about how this feels like they are trying to coerce mobile device owners to upgrade their phones.

It just doesn't feel fair, or even logical, that iOS 6.* should not support a basic messaging application.. especially one from a Company such as Facebook. they certainly have the wherewithal to support development of multiple versions of an applications.

are they really so out of touch that they could not possibly fork their app in the development repository, and build a release supporting the ios 6.* API/SDK?

in short (and minus the rant), does anybody else have this concern? does anybody know how to work around this issue? does anybody actually know how to contact Facebook in order to complain?

The mobile site will still allow you to send/receive messages in Safari and other browsers. It may also be that the version of the app you are using is so old that they cannot prevent the messenging functionality from working; you'll have to wait to see about that or dig up user comments on the topic from Europe, which was pushed into this model in the spring.

Considering that the public's response to this news has been almost uniformly negative, I think it's reasonable to suspect that this policy change may be reversed after the numbers are crunched and usage declines become obvious. The primary point of splitting the apps is to increase revenue by doubling the ads the users are forced to see; if people stop using the original app and refuse to download the messenger app, this plan backfires.


How do I put my device in supervised mode from Windows/Linux? I'd like to configure an always-on VPN on my iPhone and as always Apple's absurdity gets in the way. Specifically, they require to put the device in supervised mode, which requires Apple Configurator running on a Mac. I don't have any and I do not plan to buy one in the near future.

I've searched around and it seems like some MDM services allow provisioning of the devices from Windows, which means the supervision process of Apple Configurator has been reverse-engineered.

Now, I'd like to know if there's other Windows or Linux software that allow switching devices into supervised mode, or at the very least some documentation about the process so I can write my own code to do it.

Since you mentioned GroundControl in your link, I would like to make it clear that GroundControl is not an MDM. It is kind of an alternative for Apple configurator. You can supervise many devices at once and also it can be done from a Windows device but physical connection is required.
Another way to supervise device is by Apple Device Enrollment Program (DEP). Any device which is purchased directly from Apple or from an authorised re-seller can be supervised through DEP. DEP is the only available option for wireless supervision. DEP requires enrollment in an MDM solution. The MDM will assist in additional device management operations. To know more please check out Device Enrollment Program and iOS supervised mode.


How do I disable Lion's Resume feature? Some of my software will be loaded at login, but I don't want it to be loaded as-it-was when I closed it. How can I disable this feature?

To turn off Lion's Resume feature just go to System Preferences > General and uncheck "Restore Windows when quitting and re-opening apps".

Once rebooted, won't do it again.


QuickTime does not see EpocCam after updating to Big Sur After updating to macOS Big Sur my webcam iOS app (EpocCam Pro) no longer connects to QuickTime and other recording software on Mac.
The iOS app was able to connect to the EpocCam service via USB, but EpocCam is no longer listed as a video source in QuickTime.
Before the OS update, I was able to establish the connection. Other users seem to have the same problem, but the developer of the app claims that it is working.
Can this be further investigated?
Specs:

Mac OS: Big Sur 11.0.1 (20B29)
EpocCam driver: 2.3
EpocCam app:
2020.5

In Big Sur certain applications (including QuickTime Player) block virtual webcams like EpocCam.
See here: EpocCam help page