Is FileVault distinct from Finder's "Encrypt ..." command? I'm confused by the variety of methods for encrypting drives in Mountain Lion. There are at least four methods,

FileVault in System Preferences;
Finder's "Encrypt..." command;
Disk Utility's "Erase" command, specifying an "Encrypted" format; and
Disk Utility's "New Image" command, specifying an "Encrypted" format;

but it's not clear to me what the differences among them are.

I understand that the first two allow for in-place encryption, but I'm not clear on the differences among products of these different methods. Specifically,

Is the encryption the same for each?
Is (1) just a version of (2), applied to the boot volume?
Why does the password entry dialog for a volume created with (4) differ from the dialog for the others?
Why is the format for disk images created using (4) not "encrypted" (though it is at least a familiar Mac OS format), while mounted encrypted drives created with (3) are (though the format is an unfamiliar "Logical Partition")?

Filevault's use the XTS-AES 128 encryption. As Finder's contextual menu encryptation option and the Erase with the Encrypted format use Filevault's system, the encryption is the same.

Disk Utility's, in the other hand, when creating an new image, lets you choose between a 128 or 256 bits AES Encryption.

These two methods are, therefore, different. The latter just creates a folder which requires a password to be opened, while Filevault is a lot more complex.

And for the Logical Partition, here is explained in detail.

  How Does FileVault 2 Work?
  Compared to the bare file system, or even FileVault 1, FileVault 2 seems like magic. How does it work? The first thing to know is that Apple has included a Logical Volume Manager (LVM) with OS X Lion. This is what FileVault 2 gets to ride on top of. ￼

  Physical media still exists—we really can’t get away from that, as the data need to be stored somewhere. CoreStorage doesn’t really care what the media is, though: traditional spinning-plater drives, SSD, USB storage or even a disk image. Represented above in green, we have three volumes that reside on some physical disks. These three volumes are converted into CoreStorage volumes and imported into a Logical Volume Group (LVG). This sets up a “pool” of storage. Volumes can be added to and removed from the pool after creation. A LVG is represented with a UUID. This LVG is then brought into a Logical Volume Family (LVF). An LVF maintains properties about the volumes in a LVG and presents these Logical Volumes (LV) to the system. CoreStorage creates new device nodes for each LV. As shown in the visualization above, the LVs, in blue, have a device node (disk1, disk2, disk3). The ‘key’ icon associated with the LVF shows that encryption is one of the properties maintained about the LVG. This is the layer at which the encryption key resides.

  When you “Turn On FileVault…”, one of the steps converts your disk to a CoreStorage volume. Of course, when you “Turn On FileVault…”, only your boot disk is encrypted. Naturally, this fits Apple’s 99% case and is the right fit for the bulk of Mac users on the planet. That said, FileVault cannot and will not encrypt any other drives you may have attached to your system. That’s up to you.


Macbook Pro Fan fullspeed, no temperature and keyboard backlight I've got a Macbook Pro 2008 15" 4,1 with OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 and the latest Firmware and both fans run the whole time at fullspeed. My research brings up, that it's probably the temperature Sensor, because every Software I use to get Information about the temperature it says 0 degrees. For Example iStats says 0 degrees and 0 fans found. The keyboard backlight doesn't work either. (altough it's enabled in preferences). All in all this sounds like a problem where SMC reset would help. Unfortunatelly I have no Battery (it blew up), so I did the reset without the battery part (cant tell if it makes a difference)

Apple Hardware Test couldn't find any problems on my System (both tests). The RAM has been upgraded a while back, but all ribbon cables are correctly connected.

Does anybody know how I can solve this problem? The CPU load is constantly pretty low and the MacBook is pretty cold at all.

Log Files
a lot of smc errors:
http://pastebin.com/egYkGMrz

Interesting part:

Sep 13 21:18:09 Dominiks-MBP kernel[0]: WARNING - ACPI_SMC_CtrlLoop::initCPUCtrlLoop - no sub-config match for MacBookPro4,1 with 8 p-states, using default stepper instead

SMC Reset

To your minor question: I do not think the absence of the battery should affect the SMC reset. Source: I have successfully done this with an older mac with no battery and corrected fan problems.

Key Observations

Since it is not obvious what your problem is, I will cover some bases starting with some key observations:

You did not mention resetting the NVRAM/PRAM which I also did when fixing my fan issue. Have you also reset the PRAM/NVRAM? That would one of the two immediate troubleshooting steps I would do with something that looks like a firmware issue. (I believe you hold down the key for 3 chimes btw… not sure if it tells you that on the site.)
Since your diagnostics do not appear to be reading your CPU temperature accurately (it should definitely not be 0C (34 degrees F). I would try again with a different diagnostic, and/or repair permissions using diskutil, run with sudo to ensure the program is able to access the requisite files to generate real output.

Troubleshooting

Some possibilities and thoughts to facilitate further troubleshooting:

While in diskutil I would check that your drive is in good health. HDD's only operate for 5-10 years. My 08 pro has a dead drive… it may be working hard to keep it at a low temp so it doesn't lock up? Physical wear on the drive can also generate heat.

I would check out your system diagnostics to see if anything is hogging resources. Assuming your hardware isn't screwed up and it's not firmware, I would check to make sure the kernel isn't panicked or some weird unrecognized process isn't interfering with your system.

I note that without an intermediary battery your computer may not be getting a completely regular power source… what comes out of your wall may be lower or higher voltage than expected. Sometimes that generates heat and causes fans to go insane. Sometimes that can "zap" files. You may wish to reinstall your OS without deleting your files and configurations, to make sure everything is in good order.

You may also wish to get your hands on a battery to see if that makes a difference. These cannot be too expensive nowadays… someone may have one laying around. The fact that yours once exploded also… you may be able to get one from Apple even if you're not covered. They really don't get a lot out of keeping and warehousing old parts (why applecare is a good money maker for them) and like happy campers and I think that battery was recalled no? You may have been entitled to a new one years ago anyway.

You may also have already tried this but checking the logs at /var/log/system.logs (hard to parse) may provide a big picture view of what's going on with the fans even if it's not entirely understandable or easy to get through… sometimes the error messages are verbose and incredibly precise. Hit or miss. It will be FULL of entries that don't matter, but may tell you quite clearly what's going on if you just do a find for like "fan" "heat" "power" "voltage."

Finally (albeit obviously) you may want to make sure you don't have a ton of crud clogging up your fans or blocking. Cleaning a computer directly or with air can easily mess things up… but yeah… this may be necessary. If a sensor cannot get a read on heat or a fan is covered in gunk it may run the fans at full just to get normal cooling in order (first case) or because it's designed to be cautious about the heat issue (second case).


Is it possible to run Android on iOS? Ok so I was thinking, Can you run Android on a iOS device? I did some research and Android could run on ARM (Most apps would not work) but how come no one has tried to run it. Whats holding them back?

Many reasons

You cannot create another file system
No firmware exists for this
It would void your warranty
Android device developers spend a lot of time developing their hardware and software to work together, just like iOS.
The amount of effort required (boot ROM firmware  modifications, bricked devices, etc) makes it much easier just to buy an Android if you really want one.


Page up/down with smooth scrolling? When scrolling a page up or down using fn ↑ and fn ↓ in a text editor, the editor jumps immediately to the next page. This is confusing when reading structured documents such as source code (programming). Is there a way to get OS X to smoothly scroll down one page, as if I would have used the trackpad?

Smooth scrolling is dependent on the application. TextEdit does offer smooth scrolling when paging through a long document. BBEdit 11 does not.

Apple's developer WWDC 2013 talk below is aimed at helping developers to achieve this:

  Optimizing Drawing and Scrolling on OS X

  Creating a responsive app requires fast drawing and smooth scrolling. Discover techniques to optimize drawing, find out best practices for handling layers, and learn how to combine those techniques with new features to achieve smooth scrolling.

If possible, provide feedback to the editor's developer that you value this behaviour.


Space with Hiragana Input For whatever reason Memrise requires you to input a space character in some Japanese answers (I'm very much a beginner, so this may not be as weird as I think). However when I have my input set to Hiragana with Romaji typing method, pressing space converts what I've already typed into Kanji even though I have Live Conversion disabled (I think that's what it's doing, they're not Kanji I recognize but I don't know what else they might be). Obviously this is very annoying as I keep getting answers wrong when all I'm missing is a space or I'll have random Kanji in the middle of what I'm typing.

It turns out that holding shift while pressing space will input a normal space character if you have the Shift key action set to Enter Romaji mode.


Update Multiple Keychain entries Is there a way to run an automator script to update multiple keychain entries at once?  I have a client that is part of an AD and when they update their pw it doesn't update the keychain.  I am looking for a way to update multiple entries at once.

Thanks

The CLI for keychains is security.

It lets you do many things such as setting passwords:

security add-generic-password [-a account] [-s service] [-w password] [options...] [-A|-T appPath] [keychain]

Read the man page for more info or do security help.


Apple Watch auto workout detection fails to detect local walks Apple Watch has a feature that detects workouts, including walks, and offers to record them. This feature works reliably for me anywhere but near home, where it never works (not for years). Is there a setting I missed that is required to enable this feature for local walks?

As you have already linked, you can only enable and disable the option. All the magic of the detection is behind closed doors.
In my experience, especially for walks, it detects them best when your pulse raises.
My watch has a high detection rate for walks going uphill - simply because my pulse increases significantly.
Otherwise we could make guesses which kind of detection mechanism are run in the background. Maybe, as you stated, it is less likely to detect a workout when you're near your home. You could try deleting your home in Significant Locations - see here.


Can't connect to VPN via iOS I have set up a Mac OS X 10.8 server running the VPN service. From my Macs I can connect to the VPN server without any problems, but the iOS devices are all unable to connect.

The console displays the following message while trying to connect an iPhone:

9/8/13 11:02:51.704 AM racoon[313]: Connecting.
9/8/13 11:02:51.704 AM racoon[313]: IPSec Phase1 started (Initiated by peer).
9/8/13 11:02:51.706 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Responder, Main-Mode message 1).
9/8/13 11:02:51.706 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Responder, Main-Mode message 2).
9/8/13 11:02:51.771 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: receive success. (Responder, Main-Mode message 3).
9/8/13 11:02:51.809 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Responder, Main-Mode message 4).
9/8/13 11:02:51.852 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: receive failed. (Responder, Main-Mode Message 5).
9/8/13 11:02:54.570 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Phase1 Retransmit).
9/8/13 11:02:54.692 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: receive failed. (Responder, Main-Mode Message 5).
9/8/13 11:02:54.854 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: receive failed. (Responder, Main-Mode Message 5).
9/8/13 11:02:57.572 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Phase1 Retransmit).
9/8/13 11:02:57.661 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: receive failed. (Responder, Main-Mode Message 5).
9/8/13 11:02:57.857 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: receive failed. (Responder, Main-Mode Message 5).
9/8/13 11:03:00.575 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Phase1 Retransmit).
9/8/13 11:03:00.645 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: receive failed. (Responder, Main-Mode Message 5).
9/8/13 11:03:00.859 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: receive failed. (Responder, Main-Mode Message 5).
9/8/13 11:03:11.282 AM com.apple.time[373]: Interval maximum value is 946100000 seconds (specified value: 9223372036854775807).
9/8/13 11:03:12.586 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Phase1 Retransmit).
9/8/13 11:03:12.611 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: receive failed. (Responder, Main-Mode Message 5).
9/8/13 11:03:12.861 AM racoon[313]: IKE Packet: receive failed. (Responder, Main-Mode Message 5).

iOS shows the following error message:
"The L2TP-VPN server did not respond. Try reconnecting. If the problem continues, verify your settings and contact your Administrator."

Why am I unable to connect an iPhone to the VPN server while a Mac doesn't have any problems connecting?

I finally figured it out:

My shared secret was too complex, I configured a new one that's slightly shorter and has no special characters and now iOS is able to establish a VPN connection.

It turned out iOS can't handle shared secret of more than 32 characters.


Can't download iTunes I wish to download iTunes to my MS Windows (Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit) computer. So I surf to http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ and discover a "Download iTunes" header. Beneath it is

I fill in the options, click "Download Now", and a dialog box opens asking me whether to download the file or to cancel. I choose to download it (and where to save it to), even as the browser surfs to a confirmation ("Now that you’ve downloaded iTunes") page. The dialog box closes, and nothing gets downloaded. The browser's "Downloads" window does not show that any attempt to download a file from Apple had been made.

What gives? I mean, what's going on here? Why can't I download iTunes?
Does anyone have a solution, or at least a workaround, please?

I've tried this also from https://: also no dice. I'm doing this on Firefox 21.0, both in usual and in "Private Browsing" modes.

Apple doesn't have a downloads page to directly download iTunes - and the link typically goes to a content delivery network.

In june, you could temporarily try downloading from https://secure-appldnld.apple.com/iTunes11/091-6059.20130605.205Rf/iTunesSetup.exe but this URL will likely change or fail in the near future. In September, the link is now https://secure-appldnld.apple.com/iTunes11/041-8597.20130918.PmmEw/iTunesSetup.exe so you can see trying to pass around direct links is not a good general solution.

The best thing to do in this case is check that you don't have any DNS blockers or other web site plug in that attempt to control / restrict downloads and try refreshing that page (or try in another browser).

Apple support might also be a good place to open a ticket, since they usually support people looking to use iTunes or Apple ID for free since you can't spend money with them without these accounts and tools.

Other things to try:

Change your network (have a friend download the file from a different router / internet connection) and share it over Dropbox or other means - this would fix DNS issues or other network effects.
Change your browser - if Chrome or Firefox have add-ons, blockers, etc. - try disabling all browser scripts and extensions or even another browser like Opera or Lynx or Safari
Change your computer - downloading from another computer might show the problem is with DNS settings or something else specific to your PC.


Are there any tweaks for Lion's autocorrect? I've found that Lion's autocorrect handles technical terminology abysmally.  Are there any configuration tweaks that adjust its behavior around words that might represent technical terms?

For specific terms you find are getting "corrected" often, you could add them to the text substitution list as substitutes of themselves. That should work as a sort of whitelist to stop them from being autocorrected improperly.

Open up the Language & Text panel in System Preferences, and on the Text tab, click the + to add a new substitution. Enter the word you want whitelisted into both fields.


How can I use Applescript or any other utility to send a daily text message to my bank? I have searched and I find a lot of results for specific methods of sending an iMessage with Applescript, but they all seem to contain extraneous code for specific needs that I don't need. I'm wondering how I can schedule automated text messages based on a repeating time. For instance: text my wife every morning at 9am, or text my bank every morning at 5am.

So the specific help I need is (I think):

how do I send an iMessage with Applescript,
and how do I schedule an Applescript to repeat daily or weekly etc. at a given time?

I found an answer to this via google. This Applescript will send the iMessage:

tell application "Messages"
          send "Text of Message" to buddy "+61mobilenumber" of service "E:*icloud email address*"
end tell

I saved that as an app, then set a recurring iCal event that will open the app at the time I set every day. Voila! Beautiful.


Can I use apps other than Photos with Apple’s SD-card reader? I have an iPhone 7 and I’m considering buying the Lightning SD Card reader that Apple makes. Is it possible to access the SD card’s files using apps other than Photos—for example, Dropbox?

(My specific use case is that I’m going to be traveling and I want to back up my photos to my phone. I’d like to back them up somewhere online, too, but I don’t use Apple’s photo-syncing offerings and I’d prefer not to turn them on just for this situation.)

Apple's camera-connection hardware only interfaces with the Photos app, unfortunately. However, you should be able to transfer the photos from the photos app to Dropbox or a similar app after the import using the "send to" feature (I know it works with OneDrive and Google Drive).


How do I enable Time Machine local snapshots on an iMac? I have an iMac with a Fusion drive running High Sierra. Time Machine is enabled and backs up to an external disc.

Time Machine takes daily local snapshots so that you can go back to a specific day, even if you don't plug in your backup disc every day.

Unfortunately, this feature is enabled only on laptops, as the aforelinked page says.

How do I tell Time Machine to enable it on my iMac? I plug in my external disc only once a fortnight to backup, but I'd still like to go back to a particular day's snapshot, say if I overwrote a file.

It seems that local snapshots are enabled automatically in High Sierra.

The text in the red box translates to "local snapshots, as long as disk space is available".

I didn't find something from Appe on this, but this blogpost comes to the same conclusion.


Any Way to Retrieve iPhoto pics from Time Machine deleted backups? I'm feeling a little tearful here.  I accidentally neglected to back up properly and Time Machine deleted older backups that contained all my sons photos from infancy.  Is there any at all to recover these?  Thank you so much.

I'm sorry to say that I don't believe there is a way to get those photos back. The way Time Machine works is, it will make backups of the current state of your computer, and continue doing so until space on the backup hard drive runs out. At that point, once your backup hard drive no longer has space, it begins to delete backups (oldest first) to make room for new ones.

When deleting something from a hard drive, if you immediately stop using that drive, there's some hope of getting it back since no other files have been written over where the old files were. But if Time Machine deleted old backups to make room for new ones, my guess is that they're unfortunately gone.

Time Machine SHOULD have asked you, at some point, if you were OK with it deleting old backups to make room for new ones. If you declined, it would simply stop backing up your computer until you freed up some room on the drive. If you accepted, you gave Time Machine free reign over the hard drive (which is what most people do).


Showing current directory in Terminal's title, using tcsh I'd like the title bar of Terminal to always show the directory I'm in.  I don't want it shown in the prompt.  I found some magic trick code online, and have this in my .tcshrc:

set prompt = "%B%m:%n %?====>%b "
alias cwdcmd 'echo -ne "\033]0;$cwd\007"'

It sort of works except for two things: 1) the cwd isn't shown in the title bar, and 2) the cwd along with some gibberish is printed at the command line.  I figured maybe the quoting wasn't right, or some other syntax issue, but experimenting didn't lead to improvement.

For reasons unspecified, I must use tcsh not bash. The latter, I can get working fine.

This is the prompt I use in tcsh.  It sets the window title to the full path (which as Chris Page answered, gains extra functionality in Lion).  The prompt itself is essentially [$HOST:$PWD] $USER% using tcsh % syntax.

set prompt = '%{\e]2;%~\a%}%S[%m:%c3] %n%#%s '


How to clone a damaged HD? Been through a bit of the suggested answers, nothing has been suggested that I haven't tried (unsuccesfully, as of yet), so I turn to the group for answers.

I have a 2.5" HD from an MacBook 2011-vintage. It was that computer's boot drive, and in fact will mount, and boot, a 1,1 Mac Tower that I've got it in.  It's running 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). The drive has physical damage (bad sectors), and performs poorly to not at all during finder operations (eg, copy).  I've tried to recover the data on the drive (iPhoto/iTunes stuff, text docs, things that aren't backed up) using Data Rescue 3, to no avail so far - it sees the drive, but just hangs and becomes non-responsive.  Prosoft's suggestion is to clone the drive and recover from the clone. Sounds good, but...

I've now got the drive on another MacPro system, in an eSATA dock, and am attempting to clone it to a fresh internal drive. I tried using the Terminal command dd, as was suggested in another post here, but after an overnight run nothing seemed to be happening. Currently, I'm attempting to clone it using Disk Utility's "Restore" tab...but it seems that nothing is happening beyond the "Setup" phase.

If specifying "dd", using the correct arguments to create nulls to fill bad sectors, makes a bit-by-bit clone...then why isn't it working?

Your best bet when hardware is failing is Data Rescue and not any tool that tries to rebuild/minimize/rewrite errors.

You will need a second drive of equal capacity and time to let the software take several passes at reading the data to get the best results. But, unless you have a budget of $300 to $3000 and want to send the drive off for professional help - you can't do better than Data Rescue in my estimation and experience.

Data Rescue has professional support and many bells and settings to tell it to really try to access the data by hook or crook, so a call into them would be my next step as you indicated it's not working with your settings.


Increase VRAM on Mac mini Late 2012 I would like to increase the VRAM in my Mac mini Late 2012. I read on a couple of websites that upgrading the RAM will increase the VRAM. However, I upgraded from 4 GB of RAM to 16 GB which did not affect the VRAM, which is still at 1536 MB.

Is there a way to increase the VRAM?

You can indeed increase the amount of VRAM in certain Apple models.  In fact, you have already done that for 1 or 2 times.

2012 Mac Mini 4GB allocated 768MB to VRAM in it's original release state.
Upgrading the RAM back in 2012 to 8GB would have given you 1024MB.
Keeping the RAM at 4GB but upgrading to OSX 10.9 would also resulted in 1024MB.
Following your claim that you have 1536MB available this might be the result of either OSX 10.9.3 or because of the 2nd 8GB.  I don't know.
I probably still have a 2012 Mac Mini somewhere in the cupboard and will test this soon.
2013/2014 MBA and MBPr models came with 1024MB out of the box.
This was also increased to 1536MB after installing OSX 10.9.3

There might be more models that have received a free VRAM upgrade in the past but I have no direct records of these.


MBP 2010 15" won't boot without disconnecting power and battery My MBP 2010 will only power-up if I disconnect power and battery, and then only connect power. When I shut it down, it'll only power up again if I remove the power first for >10 seconds.

I've tried an SMC Reset, a PRAM Reset, but nothing works unless I disconnect everything for >10 seconds.

It seems especially odd as even though it starts up the first time, it won't start up a second time without the complete power disconnect. Note, if i reboot, it restarts fine.

The battery is charging correctly, and I get the appropriate green/orange lights on the MagSafe.

For now I've left the battery disconnected, so at least I can work around this.

Any ideas?

Not sure what is going on, but, I've found that even though the machine looks like it is shutdown, I have to hold the power-button for 10 secs for force turn it off. After I've done that it starts up fine.


Turn a cloned macOS partition into a unique copy for use with iCloud When copying a bootable partition using the dd command or similar means, the copy runs fine but will use the same IDs as the original. This leads to problems when using Apple cloud services such as iCloud and Messages with both the copy and the original.

I remember seeing instructions on how to change these IDs, I believe by modifying some plist file(s) inside the /System folder, but can't find them any more.

Could someone post the solutition here or point to an existing answer?

Note: Cloning a partition using Disk Utility's Restore operation would avoid this issue.

It appears deleting the files NetworkInterfaces.plist and preferences.plist from /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/, then rebooting, would do the trick - iCloud needs to be set up from scratch again.

But that's a bit of an overkill, as it removes some other valid configurations (network setup, VPN connections etc.) as well.


Stop Safari window closing when only pinned tabs are left Love that Safari 9 has pinned tabs, it was the last piece that enabled me to switch from Chrome. However, I often close all tabs except the pinned tabs. However, unless I make one of the pinned tabs active and then close the other tabs it closes the whole window, pinned tabs and all.

For example, let's say I have one pinned tab and one not. If the unpinned tab is active and I hit command+w the whole window closes. But if I make the pinned tab active and then click the close button on the unpinned tab, the window stays open. Any way to keep the window open as long as there are any tabs open, pinned or otherwise?

If you watch the File menu, you can see ⌘W changes depending on the number of open tabs. If there are multiple, it's "Close Tab", if there is one (not counting the pinned), it's "Close Window".

There is a workaround! You can overwrite ⌘W to always execute "Close Tab".

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts

Add a Shortcut for the application "Safari", menu item "Close Tab", shortcut ⌘w.

If you're not using English in Safari, lookup the exact name of the menu item for closing a tab. In the Dutch version of Safari, the menu item is called "Sluit tabblad".


What hard drive is used for the 500 GB Macbook Pro option from Apple? I'm looking to replace my Macbook Pro 13" hard drive. I tried upgrading to a Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB, but returned the drive because it caused the palm rest to vibrate when pressed (I installed correctly; the problem disappeared when I swapped back the stock drive).

What drive is used by Apple as the 500 GB option (for both the 7200 and 5400 RPM) when ordering from their store (I figure this should be a good option)? Anyone else have experience with any large notebook drives that don't cause vibration or noise issues? Performance is a second to not having a computer that irritates my senses to no end.

I have been using a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB in my June 2009 MBP without any problems. I have tried the Seagate 7200 rpm 2.5" 500 GB as well, but that did warm up and vibrate more than I liked, so moved it to my Mac Mini at home, where it behaves OK.


How to backup data from one external drive to another (one-way) I have a 5TB external disk (WD My Book), which I use as my main hard drive. It is always connected via USB to my Mac. I've just bought another 5TB external disk (Seagate backup plus portable), where I always would like to have a 1-1 copy of the whole date from the first disk.

I am looking for an application or a simple way, which does this:

Everytime I stick the 2. usb drive to my Mac, it should cleverly checks the files which are removed, or added to the first drive, and makes the same changes on the second one. It can of course remove all files, and copy all files from the first drive, but since I have multiple TB data, it will not be efficient. And most of the time, I will have not so many changes anyway.

Thanks in advance!

I've just bought another 5TB external disk (Seagate backup plus portable), where I always would like to have a 1-1 copy of the whole date from the first disk.

It’s not a sound strategy to back up a backup.

I write about this in much more detail in another related answer, but to summarize here, you should have distinct backup jobs, not copies of existing backups.

Having an “identical copy” of a drive is good for redundancy and the correct tool for that job would be a product that implements RAID where the drives are mirrored.  Manually (meaning non-RAID) syncing drives falls short of being a good backup solution because if there are issues with the original backup (i.e. file corruption), the same issue is replicated to the other drive making the backup useless.

Syncing is a tool best used when you need to have files accessible in/from different locations and are typically not being simultaneously accessed (changed).

What you should do with your current setup is continue to use the MyBook for your daily backup and then create a new backup job that does a differential (only what has changed) backup when you plug in the Seagate.


Does the camera on the iPhone 6 protrude from the back? When the iPhone 6 was announced last week, I read that the camera would protrude from the back of the phone, instead of being completely flush with the back like on all previous iPhones.  Is this true?

On the Apple web site, you can see the following image showing side views of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and neither one shows a protruding camera.

Actually according to this photo from Apple web site it is protruding (if you want to call it that way)

Due to the perspective- view, it does not show on your pics.


El Capitan update 10.11.1 stuck at installing update in app store When installing the update for El capitan it got stuck at installing in app store. It has said "Installing - less then a minute" in several hours.

Can I somehow restart or redo the install/update?

You mean you are still in App Store; you haven't actually launched the Install OS X El Capitan file yet [or it hasn't auto-launched]?

If the installer isn't yet running, you're safe to cancel it.

My App Store download errored at the last second & when I clicked the Update button again it suddenly realised everything was in fact fine.
Check if you have the installer app in your Applications folder. If you do, then it actually downloaded OK & you ought to be able to double-click it to continue.

As always on a major update, make sure your backup is up to date; & as a double safety-net, remove or disconnect your Time Machine drive until you are happy all went well with the update.


Must we use ssh-agent nowadays? In the past, I never had to use ssh-agent and everything worked fine.
But I noticed, on GitHub, it is asking people to use ssh-agent, even if we don't use it, it seemed fine.  So I just ignore that lengthy part usually for the ssh-agent and ssh-add.
But for a few days I was able to log onto Bluehost, but yesterday day I added a new pair of public and private key to my MacBook Air M1, and now the log in that used to work becomes:
Received disconnect from 162.241.123.123 port 22:2: Too many authentication failures for mike123
Disconnected from 162.241.123.123 port 22

without even asking for a password. But it was strange why when it let me log in, it asked me for password, when I thought the whole idea of ssh is not requiring password.
But today, it does not even ask me for password but spit out the message above.
However, my MacBook Pro was able to log in, even though it is asking for a password.
The Bluehost tech support was saying, I should paste my private key to their Bluehost SSH panel.  But I thought we should never give out our private key.
So must we use ssh-agent now?  What might be the issue of "Too many authentication failures for _____" and how is it solved?
P.S. Aftermath: I did follow the steps in the Github docs above and used ssh-agent and ssh-add, and created the file ~/.ssh/config.  The fact that ssh-keygen did not create ~/.ssh/config might suggest ~/.ssh/config is not a usual practice, but after I did the above steps, then I was able to be asked a password and be able to log in again to Bluehost. Why it still is asking for a password, I am not sure, but at least it is letting me log in.

No, there's no requirement (new or old) to use ssh-agent.
And no, the whole idea of ssh is not that it won't require a password. One of the ideas behind ssh is that it provides an encryption connection between the server and the client.
Determining whether the server and the client are the "right ones" (i.e. the ones you want to allow talking together) can be done through many means. One of them is simply requiring the client to enter a username and a password. If you do not supply a username, the currently logged in user's username will be used instead.
Another way of authenticating yourself to the server is using keys. The tech support agent that stated that you should paste your private key was wrong. Never give out your private key!
Instead you want to paste the public part of the key to the server's interface. This way you can login using the key instead of a username and password.
In order to ensure that others do not misuse your key, it is common practice to protect the key itself with a passphrase (i.e. not username/password, but a "long password"). If you do that, you can either enter the passphrase every time you want to login, or you can use a program like ssh-agent so that you only have to enter the passphrase once when logging in to your computer, and then the key would be ready to use without further passphrases whenever you need to login.
The guide you have followed instructed you to create a config file. You're right that the config file is as such not required, but I won't say that it is not usual practice to have one. The reason why they ask you to create one when following the guide is to have the special instruction "UseKeychain" set. This makes it so that the passphrase protecting the key is stored in your macOS Keychain.
The practical benefit is that now you won't even have to enter the passphrase when you login to your computer. When you login to your computer like normal, that usually unlocks your Keychain as well - including your passphrase.
The fact that you're still asked for a password when logging in seems to indicate that your keys setup is not used. Make sure it is actually the password that you need to enter (and not the passphrase) - if so, that is usually because you haven't properly pasted the public part of the key to their SSH panel.


Why does my MacBook Pro say "Not charging" when plugged in? I have the latest 2011 Macbook Pro. Sometimes I notice that even when I'm plugged in, the battery status says "Not charging" even when I unplug it and the battery is at 35%.

This mainly seems to happen if my laptop is under load. I had some flash thing going and I could hear the fan. Once I closed flash it started charging again. This can be very annoying if I want to unplug and take my laptop somewhere.

Why isn't my MBP charging?

Some obvious causes:

Need to wait 30 to 60 seconds for the SMC to read the battery and decide what to do
check for pencil lead/debris on the mac end of the magsafe
check for pins stuck down on the magsafe cord end of things
The SMC needs to be reset on the Mac
The battery, all adapter or charging circuitry itself is faulty or detecting something that causes a pause and the mac might need service. (This is exactly what your mac will do if it needs an 85 watt adapter but you've somehow gotten your "friend's" 65 watt adapter - if your adapter isn't putting out enough power, the mac can only run and not support the CPU/GPU load as well as the charging circuitry. Similarly, if the battery is drawing more than designed, the mac will prefer to run than charge and tells you this in the not charging message.)

Due to the way batteries work, they can be out of tolerance / spec at only a specific portion of the entire voltage range. The sensors will correctly detect “good battery” until you reach that one point where the voltage drops too fast and shows aging or a problem with the cells.

Do a calibration run at your earliest convenience if your battery doesn’t continuously self regulate and calibrate. Next, think about a visit to the genius bar or other Apple Support / service desk if the problem continues. Take your wall adapter with you when you go as it can be checked with the mac together.


Looking for VNC client solutions that work reliably on a Mac running OS X 10.9.5 I have a number of FreeBSD servers, and I'd like to put VNC server software on them, then access them from a Mac running OS X 10.9.5.

I really don't want to have to access them from a virtual windows machine running on the MAC :-(

A web search for "mac vnc client" produces zero useful hits. (I don't want remote access to the mac.)

My memory is that Apple had a built in client with a non-obvious name, perhaps "screen", which they "fixed" a few releases ago to only work if the VNC server was itself from Apple, running on a Mac. Perhaps they have since unfixed it.

I once used "chicken of the vnc", which was flaky on whatever OS X release I had 2 years ago. I also used another non-apple client from that Mac, which was flaky in different ways. (The built in app was unusable.)

IIRC, I was using "Tightvnc" or "Realvnc" on my servers at that time, which had worked fine with the first random windows-based VNC client I tried.

All I've heard about so far are

"screen sharing app" from apple, possibly pre-installed on the mac,
name and location unknown
a client from realvnc that runs in the chrome browser (ugh!)

When referring to OS X releases, please use release numbers in your answers, not just names of cats - or else link to a page that translates the cat names to release numbers. I don't have Apple's release code names memorized.

[Update, after first answer received: alternativeto.net is a great source for finding software of this type. I now have tigervnc running on one server and on the Mac client. No flakiness so far, but the Mac client for tigervnc seems unwilling to let me connect to multiple servers at the same time, and Mac's GUI interface seems unwilling to let me launch multiple copies of the client program. So still looking for alternatives, but making progress.

Still trying to figure out how to invoke the client built into OSX - it's not at the path I found on the net, /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications  Looks like I need to know the right invocation to feed to Finder, which doesn't have anything like a button labelled 'screen sharing'. I did find a menu item labelled "connect to server", but that just gives me connection failures, perhaps because it's defaulting a URI type of afp:// which probably has nothing to do with vnc - or perhaps because the tool is unrelated to vnc.]

The built-in VNC client with OS X works just great with most VNC servers I've tried on FreeBSD.  I've mostly been using TigerVNC from ports (seems to be the fastest with OS X's VNC client), and the only issue I have is when I restart the VNC server while connected to it.  The OS X VNC client will reconnect (great!) but it sizes the window oddly, and I can't resize it.  Since scaling is turned on, this usually results in a small screen that cannot be read.  Just restart the VNC client (or close the window and open a new connection, if you've got multiple connections open), and it's all OK again.

Since I have xterms open all the time on my mac, I generally do it like so:

open vnc://<host>:<port>

where <port> is the TCP port on which the server is running.

E.g. if it's :1, you'd use 5901 as <port>.  You can even install the avahi port, and set up a service, so the VNC session shows up in Finder (although there's a Finder preference to change to make them show up since OS X 10.8, IIRC), just like a Mac that has "screen sharing" enabled (i.e. it's running a VNC server).


Keep iPad and iPhone apps separate I have an iPhone 4s. It is the 16g model.
I just purchased an iPad mini 64g.

Here is my question: I want to use some apps exclusively on my iPad as my poor iPhone just can't handle all the data. How do I do that?  So far, when I buy apps, they appear on my phone which is already at full capacity.
Thank you!

On your phone, navigate to Settings > iTunes and App Store and turn off the switch for automatic downloads for apps.  This will stop the auto download, but if you have purchased the app on one device you can still download it on the second device if you want to, it just won't happen automatically.

As is typically the case there are two lines of text following that section of the settings that read "Automatically download new purchases (including free) made on other devices."  So that is specifically what you are turning off.


Can I replace the logic board in a 17" 2009 MacBook Pro with one from a 15" 2009 MacBook Pro? I've got a working 15" Mid 2009 MacBook Pro. I've found the same model MacBook Pro, but with a 17" LCD.

Can I replace from the 17" MacBook Pro with the logic board from my 15" MacBook Pro in order to get a larger screen size?

As far as I understand your question, you say that you have found a 17" 2009 MacBook Pro that has a working LCD panel, but not a working system. You already have a working 15" 2009 MacBook Pro, and you want to know if you can transfer the system board from the 15" MacBook Pro and connect it to the 17" LCD in order to get a working system with a larger screen size.

The answer is unfortunately no, that won't work. The 15" and 17" logic boards are vastly different, and will not support each other's displays.


Opening links on Mac Chrome app in Incognito Mode Is there a way to open a certain link with Chrome app Incognito Mode using the Terminal app on my Mac? (I want to input the link in the command as well).

To open a certain link with Google Chrome, use this command in terminal:

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome 'http://example.com' --incognito

Simply edit http://example.com to any other URL you want to use.


How do I remove the "Open With"context menu items caused by VMware Fusion? I would like to clean up the massive amount of junk in my contextual menu. I have VM Fusion 5 installed and it is one of the main culprits, showing multiple entries of Windows Apps within my context menu of the Mac OX.

Example of 'junk' in my context menu for a txt file = Notepad listed 5 times, Textpad listed # times, Visual Studio listed 6-7 times, and more .

I found an article explaining what to do for a previous version of Fusion, Remove VMware Fusion and Parallels "Open With" Context Menus. I have searched and I cannot see what resembles the previous option "Open your Mac files and web links using Windows applications".

If anyone can help I would appreciate it.

The following line in the terminal worked:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

I just don't want items returning because of Fusion.

Thank you.

In VMWare Fusion:

go to Virtual Machine->Settings,
select Default Applications,
Uncheck Open your Mac files and web links using Windows applications
Repeat this for all virtual machines
Reboot your Mac

Now the Open With options for apps in your virtual machines should be gone. Personally as I don't like my VMs to creep into the guest OS I keep all checkboxes here unchecked.


How to run sshd on port 500 in High Sierra? They changed things in later versions of macOS so that you can't just edit etc/ssh/sshd_config like you would in Linux.  What do I type into the shell to run sshd on port 500 instead of 22?

To modify the ssh port, you have to edit the ssh launch daemon of the ssh server host:

disable SIP
open ssh.plist:

sudo nano /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist

modify the <key>Sockets</key> (example port here: 10022) from

    ...
    <key>Sockets</key>
    <dict>
            <key>Listeners</key>
            <dict>
                    <key>SockServiceName</key>
                    <string>ssh</string>
                    <key>Bonjour</key>
                    <array>
                            <string>ssh</string>
                            <string>sftp-ssh</string>
                    </array>
            </dict>
    </dict>
    ...

to

    ...
    <key>Sockets</key>
    <dict>
            <key>Listeners</key>
            <dict>
                    <key>SockServiceName</key>
                    <string>10022</string>
                    <key>Bonjour</key>
                    <array>
                            <string>10022</string>
                            <string>10022</string>
                    </array>
            </dict>
    </dict>
    ...

unload and load the daemon

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist

test the ssh daemon
enable SIP

An alternative, less intrusive approach is to create a second ssh launch daemon in /Library/LaunchDaemons/:

copy the ssh.plist

sudo cp /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh2.plist

modify the ssh2.plist:

sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh2.plist

change the key Label to

<key>Label</key>
<string>com.openssh.sshd2</string>

change the key <key>Sockets</key> as described earlier
disable SSH in the System Preferences > Sharing > Remote Login
load the launch daemon:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh2.plist

with strict key checking enabled in the ssh config file on a ssh client host you may have to remove the ssh server from the known_hosts file of this remote host.
access the ssh server with ssh user@IP -p <port>


How do I block callers from leaving voicemails? A scammer has been harassing me for several days, being rude and making fraudulent claims. How can I stop them from calling me?

In your Phone app → Recents, tap the ⓘ next to the phone number you wish to block, then tap Block this Call at the very bottom.

You can also tap the ⓘ next to an undesirable voicemail message under Phone → Voicemail.

Blocked callers can still leave you voicemails, but they will go straight into a separate Blocked Messages voice mailbox without raising a notification or ringtone. You’ll never have to listen to them.

You may also try downloading some call-filtering apps from the App Store. Free ones include Whoscall, Truecaller, and Hiya. They use Apple’s CallKit to proactively block known spammers and scammers. I am not affiliated with any of those apps.

AT&T also offers AT&T Call Protect for its own customers, also on the App Store. Other carriers have their own offerings as well.


Why does the iPad use nearest-neighbour scaling rather than Retina scaling for iPhone apps When Apple announced the iPad, one of the features was the possibility of running iPhone apps, optionally scaling to 2x size with blurry results.

Fast forward to the announcement of the iPhone 4 and Retina display. The iPhone 4 uses the same apps as the legacy iPhone, only scaling images that don't have a higher resolution available. For everything else, the final render is as crispy as an app designed for the Retina display would be.

Both piece of hardware need to do exactly the same thing: scale up an app designed for the lower resolution legacy iPhones to twice its size. However the scheme used by the iPad ends up with blurry text and buttons, while the iPhone4 keeps everything crispy. Why didn't Apple change the scaling code to the same one used by the iPhone 4 with iOS 4?

There are two strong reasons, one of which I got from an Apple engineer and the other of which has been implied by a few Apple employees but not stated outright.

The first reason is that the iPad 1 simply doesn't have enough RAM to do the emulation while rendering the Retina graphics, particularly while animating them. This come directly from someone who was involved, so I'm as certain as I can be that it's true. Of course this is a deal-killer, making the next reason unnecessary except for the fact that the iPad 2, which has double the RAM, still doesn't use the Retina graphics.

The second reason is that the poor quality of iPhone app graphics on the iPad encourages developers to build universal apps or to additionally build an iPad version of the iPhone app. These universal/iPad apps make the iPad much more appealing to consumers and sells more iPads. It's particularly important for apps that use standard Cocoa Touch controls where the double-sized text, double-sized picker controls (the spinners), etc. actually look pretty bad and aren't terribly usable (in the UI/UX sense), and the 1X/2X button is kind of a hack. If iPhone graphics looked nearly as good on the iPad there'd be much less incentive to build the other apps, especially if there was little competition for yours.

I suspect that if Apple/Steve Jobs felt the iPad would have sold well if it only ran new apps built especially for it then there wouldn't be a compatibility mode at all. Instead they were able to launch the iPad saying that there are a couple of hundred thousand iPhone apps that would run on it in addition to the few thousand iPad/universal apps available.

It is possible to build an iPhone-specific app that substitutes Retina graphics if you do it "by hand," overriding the OS's default rendering. Matt Rix's excellent non-universal iPhone puzzle games Trainyard and Trainyard Express look and play great on the iPad for this reason. It just takes a bit of extra work.


Download macOS Installer.dmg file Apple yesterday released macOS Sierra for public. The update weighs ~5 GB. I have two Macs with me: one is my personal, the other my office has given. Instead of downloading the installer twice (10 GB), It would be great to download the copy and once use it to upgrade multiple devices (iMacs/Mac minis).

I have tried to find the dmg file but I haven't been able to find it, instead I was redirected to the App Store. Any help would be appreciated.

Download on the first machine.
When complete, the Installer will auto-launch.
Quit it.

The Installer is in /Applications/ and has the name Install macOS Sierra. [BTW it's not a .dmg, but an .app file]

Copy it to a safe place; after install it will be auto-deleted from Applications.

The copy can then be used on any other machine. Drop into the Applications folder on that machine & launch.


"USB device drawing too much power" error on startup with no devices connected Since upgrading to Lion, I get this error every time I start up:

I've read the answers suggested here, but they seem to indicate that it's the presence of a second device that's causing the problem. The only USB device I have plugged in to my laptop is an external keyboard. I'm not sure how that's using too much power, but it's disabled my other USB ports.

Is there any way to fix this?

It could be a corrupt USB kernel extension.  I'd try booting to Safe Mode:

Turn off your Mac.
Turn it back on and before you see the Apple logo on your screen, press and hold the Shift key until the Apple logo appears.
A progress bar should appear below the Apple logo - during this time your Mac is performing a directory check and loads only necessary Apple kernel extensions (among other small things).

A feature of Safe Mode is that it reloads the kernel extensions from scratch, instead of from a cache file.  It could be that during the Lion upgrade a kernel extension was damaged and has been cached afterwards.

Try the Safe Mode boot and see how it goes.

Good Luck!


How do i disable messenger on the iMac but not my MacBook/iPhone I have an iPhone and MacBook that are my own and an iMac that I share with my fiancé. I have it set up currently so that my text messages come to my phone and both computers.

As this can be annoying when she is using the home computer and I am not (getting my random texts), how do I disable Messages on the iMac but not my MacBook/iPhone?

Assuming you mean the Messages app, all you need to do is sign out of it on the iMac.

To do this:

Launch the Messages app on the iMac
Go to Messages menu > Preferences
Select the Accounts icon
Click on your account (in the left-hand column)
Click on the Sign Out button (on the right-hand side)

When you exit the Messages app it will no longer receive your messages.


Is it possible to customize multi-touch gestures on an iPad? The iPad has multi-touch gestures:

Is it possible to customize these gestures? If so, how?

Not out of the box - the closest you could get some gestures is to jailbreak and install Activator which allows you to e.g. customize pinch and spread actions, slide from left/right/bottom/top of screen and then assign and action e.g. launch an app, lock the screen etc.


Outlook 2016 Mac change order of accounts Is there any way to change the order that multiple accounts are shown in the left (folders) pane of Outlook 2016 Mac's main window?  Or do I have to delete the topmost account and add it again to move it lower in the list?

Here's more info about why I want to do this:

I'm a new user of Outlook Mac 2016. I added two mail accounts (work and personal) and I want to keep them visually separate in Outlook. So I unchecked the "Group similar folders, such as Inboxes, from different accounts". But now my personal email account (that I added first to Outlook) is on top and my work account is on the bottom.

I'd like to reverse this order because I spend more time on work email and want to keep it on top.

In the PC version of Outlook I can just drag one account above another. But that doesn't work on the Mac version. Is there another way to reorder the accounts in the Mac version?

I know I can just delete and re-add my personal account, but I was hoping to avoid having to wait hours for it to sync years of email.

I wanted to know the same thing.  I searched and couldn't find an answer.  I finally figured it out myself.  You can change the "default" account and it will go to the top.  Go to Tools, Account and then select the account you want to be the default.  Click the gear at the bottom and select "Set as default."

Then, the remaining accounts will be put in alphabetical order.  You may need to exit Outlook and reopen it to see the new order.

This works better than deleting the top account - letting the items shuffle and then adding the other accounts below since the sort order doesn't always follow the order of addition to the app. Especially if you have delegate accounts you're adding.


Unable to access certain sites in mac I have just moved from a Windows laptop to a macbook air and I am facing an issue that certain web-sites are not loading in my mac - both Safari and Chrome browsers. In chrome I am getting the error as ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED and in Safari it shows as Server is not responding

Again reiterating, its only for a few sites I am getting this message and others are working fine. Any idea what I need to check?

P.S - On initial googling I have added both the browsers to the firewall exception list.
Also please note that I am completely new to a mac and so need explicit instructions to follow (sorry for that - but till now I havent used anything else except Windows!!)

Let me know if I need to provide any other info!

This post from the Apple Support Communities might help: Link

Things to try according to this post:

Settings/Networks/Advanced/Proxys, Discover new proxys
Check the ignored domains for blocked domains
Safari/Preferences/Advanced - enable the Develop menu, then empty caches
Safari/History/Show History - delete all history items
Restart your router (obvious one, but often works well)

One other thing to try:
 - Change the DNS server to Google: 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4


Whats in an icloud backup I have an old icloud backup and I'd like to see whats in it. I'm worried that if I backup my current phone to icloud - restore it from the old backup (to see what it contains) - and then finally restore it from the current backup - maybe I will lose something. Is everything on my phone backed up (assuming I have all the toggles on)?

Provided that you have made a backup of the data you want to keep via iTunes or iCloud it is safe to restore your phone from an old backup and later restore it to its present state from the backup you had made.
I would suggest using iTunes just because it seems more convenient to me and so as to you would feel safer about your data- an iTunes backup holds all the information necessary to restore your phone to its state at a set point in time.


Apply rules to messages in mailbox I created some rules in Mail 6.6 application.

Now, I want to apply these rules on my existing mails in mailbox, not just to the inbox, that is going to my mailbox after creation of the rules.

How can I achieve this?

To apply the rules to existing messages, just select the mailbox and use "Apply Rules" from the "Message" menu. Or use the shortcut ⌥+⌘+L


SMS forwarded to email just shows up in SMS again? I have a SMS thread with text and photos.  Want to forward the thread to my email.  So I do the following:

tap and hold on message, then get popup at bottom for COPY, SAVE, MORE...
Click MORE... choose items to forward,
click forward arrow and
field opens to enter email address.
enter address and touch blue up arrow to send

Then message appears on my iPhone as an SMS again, not into my email.  I have tried 3 email address and they keep appearing in my SMS.

How do I get it to go to my real email?

The forward button will only forward to SMS.

Alternatively, you can copy the messages and paste them into a new me


Why can't my friend text me on my iPad mini 2 from her phone which is not and iPhone? I cannot receive nor send texts to my friend on her phone, which is not an iPhone. The error message is "This phone number is not registered with iMessage".

iPad can only send and receive iMessages. If your friend don't have any device from Apple (iPod, iPad, Mac, iPhone), he can't send you a message through iMessage. Use another chat service.
(Like Messenger from Facebook or WhatsApp)


Fast image preview in macOS context menu (right click) There was a cool app on windows, I believe it was called FastPreview - when you right click an image, you will get the small image preview right in the context menu.

I find this very convenient. Is there anything like that on mac?

Edit

I forgot to mention that I don't use Finder that much, but an alternative file manager. For that reason, I am asking this.

On Mac it's called Quicklook & is much more powerful than just a quick jpg preview, it can also preview text, pdfs, spreadsheets, audio, movies & even much more specialist data types - anything there's a plugin for.

There are two simple ways...

In column view a preview will always show to the right of the selected item. [This is a pref, accessed by hitting  Cmd ⌘   J  from any open Finder window, but defaults to on]
The size of the preview is dependant on the column width.

Alternatively, from any view, just tap the Spacebar - the preview will pop out at full size [or to fit screen]. You can resize by dragging a corner, same as any window.
This usually has an 'Open With' choice at the top to go straight to the default app for that file type [circled in red].
You can change the currently viewed item by changing your selection. You don't need to be able to see behind the preview for this, you can step around using the arrow keys.
Pressing Spacebar a second time clears Quicklook.

Quicklook is also available from some other apps, such as Mail, for viewing attachments that don't auto-inline, like text files, or if the view is too small, for instance a pdf.


Which 15 inch macbook with USB has the highest repair score? I'm doing research into MacBooks and would like to pick the one which is easiest/cheapest to repair. Can someone point me to a list which has some metrics like "repair score" or reliability? I know lists like these exist for iPads and some of the latest ones receive horrible grades, like 0 for repair score. I read about keyboard issues and high costs of repair for the newest 2016-17 models as well.

Which pre USB-C MacBooks have the highest repair score?

Ideally I'm looking for information on how easy it is to replace faulty components, like memory or keyboard (apparently I need to replace the entire board on MacBook Air to change memory and entire upper body to replace keyboard, or send it to specialized repair shop)

I would like to have one with traditional USB ports, as I want to use it for traveling abroad, where new USB-C? devices are still very rare, and genuine Apple stores are few and far between.

iFixit.com has an entire blog about repairability scores:

Laptop Repairability Scores

It's sorted by score from highest (easiest) to lowest (most difficult) or by release date (most recent first).  It includes all makes and models, not just Apple, so if you're looking for an Apple centric list, you'll need to extract the data manually.

IMO, this is an exercise in futility.  Why?

MacBook Airs from 2012 have not only soldered in RAM, but the drives are proprietary making them expensive.  These are the only ones that currently (as of this writing) have SSDs that technically can be upgraded.
MacBook Pros from 2013 on have soldered in RAM and proprietary SSDs as well
2015 MacBook Pros are the only ones with a removable SSD and without the problematic butterfly keyboard
After 2016, you're getting the butterfly keyboard, soldered in RAM and SSD and USB-C

So, if you want high repairability and no USB-C, you're looking at a 2012 model which makes it 6+ years old (soon to be obsolete).  Every manufacturer is going USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 so it's much more economical to just bite the bullet and get a dongle.


How to usb tether a wifi network using iphone I have installed windows 10 on my Mac and the Wi---Fi is interfering with the Bluetooth so I've turned off the Wi-Fi on the Mac.

My iPhone is connected to the Wi-Fi so I want to usb-tether the Wi-Fi to my mac through my iPhone.

But I have noticed that usb-tether is using cellular connection instead of Wi-Fi which costs me money.

Is there a way to usb-tether a Wi-Fi network instead of cellular network?

Android happily do this. After all it is common sense to tether the gateway.

The personal hotspot feature uses the cellular data connection. It's currently not possible to share the Wi-Fi connection from your iPhone without jailbreaking.

If your iPhone is jailbroken you can use Bridge Mode with MyWi.


Restore parts of time machine backup I currently have a MacBook Pro that I'm using at work, but it has now become so slow that I wish to do a reinstall of the OS. It has a recovery partition that offers such a reinstall. I do not want all the content back onto my computer after the reinstall, but I want to keep my time machine backup in case I forgot some important files.

Is there an option so that I some time in the future could be able to get files from an old TM backup?

Time Machine won't delete old backups until it thinks it needs more space to store a new backup. However, you do not get a warning before the deletion happens - only after the deletion deed is done, does the warning pop up.

You could trust this in the short term, however starting a backup of a cleanly reinstalled Mac is one way to have the system estimate it needs 100% of the side of the drive to start the next backup.

I would not connect that drive to the restored Mac until you can turn off Time Machine and then copy using Finder one of the old backup intervals you wish to save. You could just set the old drive on the shelf or get a new drive to store the "long term" snapshot.

Basically, you don't get notified before the deletion happens, so if you want to keep files, you need to take action now if you are not 100% certain that there is enough space to prevent automatic deletion.


Safari videos always go full-screen by themselves Since I updated to 10.12.4, whenever I go to a website playing video (tested on YouTube, Vimeo and others), Safari 10.1 takes a few seconds to start the video and then plays it in fullscreen, whether I want it to be fullscreen or not.

This only happens in my main user account, not in my second test user account. I already tested disabling all extensions and launching Safari with shift, but so far, no luck.

Any ideas why that happens? Is there a way to reset Safari or something (without losing my iCloud bookmarks)? I'd like to avoid having to create a new user account and move everything over.

STOP YOUTUBE, ETC. VIDEOS FROM OPENING FULL SCREEN

Note:

If you don’t see DEBUG as an option on the Safari menu at the top of the screen, first enable it as indicated in the next set of instructions below ("HOW TO HIDE OR UNHIDE DEBUG ON THE SAFARI MENU"), then return to these instructions to complete the process.

If DEBUG already appears as an option on the Safari menu, simply do as follows:

In Safari, click the DEBUG option at the top of the screen in the Safari menu.
Click MEDIA FLAGS.
Uncheck DISALLOW INLINE VIDEO.
Now the videos should play as normal without opening full screen in the future.

HOW TO HIDE OR UNHIDE DEBUG ON THE SAFARI MENU

To Enable Safari's Debug Menu:

Launch Terminal, by clicking Finder (on the Dock), then clicking APPLICATIONS, then clicking UTILITIES, then clicking TERMINAL.
Enter the following command line into Terminal by copying it and pasting it (triple click on it to select the entire line):

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1

Press the RETURN key.
Launch (or close then relaunch) Safari, and you will notice the new Debug option appears in the Safari menu at the top of the screen.

To Re-Hide Safari’s Debug Menu:

If for any reason you ever want to re-hide DEBUG on the Safari menu, follow the same procedure but with the following command for Terminal instead.
Launch Terminal, by clicking Finder (on the Dock), then clicking APPLICATIONS, then clicking UTILITIES, then clicking TERMINAL.
Enter the following command line into Terminal by copying it and pasting it (triple-click on it to select the entire line):

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 0

Press the RETURN key.
Launch (or close then relaunch) Safari, and you will notice the Debug option has disappeared from the Safari menu at the top of the screen.


How can I upload a directory structure from a PC to iCloud without first copying it to my iCloud drive? I have a directory structure of about 12GB on a network drive that I'd like to copy to my iCloud storage. I don't want to copy the 12GB from the network drive to my local iCloud drive folder just so it can be copied from there to iCloud.

Other cloud storage services (e.g., Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox) support a browser upload interface that makes it possible to drag folders to be copied into cloud storage onto the browser, but I can't find an equivalent kind of functionality for iCloud. Is there some way for me to directly copy my data from its current location on a network drive into iCloud?

I'm running 64-bit Windows 7 Professional.

As of macOS Sierra 10.12.5 (and the equivalent iCloud for Windows), iCloud Drive does not offer a facility for selective-sync of files between your local storage and the cloud.

Therefore, anything you upload to iCloud Drive using the web interface would then make its way back down to your local storage on any machine logged in to iCloud.

iCloud Drive doesn’t appear to be the archival storage solution you’re looking for. It’s a full-syncing service.


Erase signatures from the Mac OS Catalina V10.15 Preview app forever I've been using the Preview App to generate my passwords and to be able to sign virtually. But now what I want to do is to erase them completely, so that nobody can access them.
For example, if I sell my Mac in a hurry, or if someone accesses my Mac, I want to make it impossible to access those signatures.
I don't mean to press the X (cross) that appears after generating the signature; because I think that by pressing that, that signature must be saved somewhere. I don't know. What I'm saying is to eliminate it in a more strict way, forever.

Is it possible to do this? How?

Signatures are stored in a property list file at the following path:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.signatures.plist

You can remove this file and empty your trash to be sure they're gone. Any security/assurance you need beyond this will require advanced techniques or a complete wipe of your hard drive.


Universal path in Terminal I'm writing an AppleScript that will allow me to copy the Time Machine folder from an external drive and paste it onto the user's desktop of their Mac. The reason I'm doing this is because when a time machine backup isn't working as it should, we have to manually move it. Well, I'd like to make this process easier for people and just create a script to do it.

tl;dr problem:
How do I make a variable location?

Ex: /Volumes/Time\ Machine/Backups.backupdb///Users

The X and Y are going to be different for everyone's Mac. People have different names for their macs and Hard Drives. How could I make a universal location? Thanks!

You can get the machine name with scutil --get ComputerName and the name of the boot volume with

basename "`find -x /Volumes/ -type l`"

Note that both of these may well return a string containing spaces. So you want to do this

COMPUTER="`scutil --get ComputerName`"
VOLUME="`basename \"\`find -x /Volumes/ -type l\`\""

then

TIMEPATH="/Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/$COMPUTER/$VOLUME/Users"


Basic OS X folders - folder structure regarding users I am logged in as user "vlado" on my MacBook running El Capitan. If I go and type whoami in Terminal, it says vlado too. So this is fine. But in my folder structure in hd/Users/vlado/Applications I don't see my Applications, which I can otherwise see through Finder. I have my applications no problem and I run them no problem, but the folder structure is confusing me. Shouldn't the applications go into my user's (vlado's) folder structure and not to hd/Applications?

Just a quick answer....

Items in the Applications are system wide, not per user.  You can deny Users access to particular applications, but in general they are available to everyone.

The User folder holds items that are specific to each user and only available to each user individually and the superuser (root).

Macworld has a good article that goes into this further

Also, OS X Daily had a nice summary table of the folder structure which should be helpful:


GIF super slow on Quick Look Mountain Lion got animated GIF support for Quick Look, but the animations show as slowmotion. It renders very slow even if the GIF has a fast frame rate. Is there any way to improve this or replace the Quick Look functionality with something that works better?

OS X Mavericks, somehow, solves this issue.


Can my iPad and iPhone share iTunes, but have different game centers? Trying to merge I have an iPad tied to my work email for everything. I have an iPhone tied to my personal email. My work email is about to go away, but I'm keeping the iPad. I have a number of games in use on the iPad and don't want to, for example, reset Candy Crush from level 2057 back to 1.

Is it possible to keep the iPad Game Center, even if I switch the overall device to use the personal email? Is there a password tied to Game Center that I better reset so I remember it before I change the device email? I don't think the iPhone has any worthwhile Game Center content, so if I have to abandon it I don't care.

Can you give me a precise sequence of steps to follow to ensure that the Game Center on the iPad survives, while changing all other identities on the iPad to the iPhone ID? Note that I don't think either device has any paid content in iTunes if that simplifies anything (iPad maybe one app, but nothing expensive).

Yes! Just go to Settings - GameCenter and you can sign in using the applicable Apple ID you want to use for that service.

You can use a different Apple ID for each individual Apple service (iTunes/App Store, iCloud, iMessage, FaceTime, GameCenter)–you just need to go to their settings page and sign in with the one you want.

Do keep in mind that some games use iCloud to store their game data, which may affect your plan.


Revert an account's "full name" back to the original I don't think this is a "short name" question. I changed my "full name" to include my last name, but I'd like to revert back to just my first name. When I try to change the full name entry under "accounts" back to "Richard" I can't, with the warning "Name is not available."

What gives? Is there a way to revert to my original short name? This is strictly cosmetic, right? The only place I see my full name is the right side of the menu bar (my short name has never changed from "richard"). Thanks!

The problem is that your short name is already richard, so your Users’ folder looks like /Users/richard.

If you want, you could change your short name (provided you’re in Leopard or Snow Leopard) or, not known to a lot of people is that you can create Aliases.

For example if your name is Robert De Niro Of The Great Canyon (wow!), and your account is robertdeniroofthegreatcanyon, you can create an alias to “robert”, to simplify.

To do that, in the Advanced Options screen, click the plus (+) button under Aliases and then type your desired account alias. (Do not make any other changes.) click OK and restart (just in case any service may be crazy).

This is easy and safe, but it doesn’t actually change your short name at all, nor your home folder among other things.

If you want to change your short user name, you have two different approaches. A less “intrusive” method (#1) and a full change (#2):

Option #1: Change your short name, don’t change your home folder’s name.

You basically change your account’s name, but you leave your filesystem alone. Everything will work with your new name, but the files will be under the “old name”’s folder.

This works fairly well, except that sometimes, programs insist on storing settings based upon your short username, which could lead to some issues with those programs.

Here’s how to do it:

Disable Automatic Login and FileVault if you have them (for the account you want to rename). You can later reactivate these.
Logoff completely from the account and login with another account (create one if you have to, you can remove it later).
ctrl + click on your account name, select advanced options.
In the “Account Name” field, delete your username and type the new one. Make sure the “home directory” stays the same as it was before, don’t change it.
Click ok. Restart. Login using your new short name.

Option #2 Change both short name and home folder

Bear in mind that this, like the previous solution, has problems with some settings in certain programs/services that may use your /Users/old_name). You’ll have to check the settings for each and fix it (possibly reconfigure it). After you save the new settings for the programs, things should work ok.

Warning: Time machine will go coo coo if you change your home folder and will have to backup every file again, because it tracks files using their paths.

Disable Automatic Login and FileVault if you have them (for the account you want to rename). You can later reactivate these.
Logoff completely from the account and login with another account (create one if you have to, you can remove it later).
ctrl + click on your account name, select advanced options.
Like with option #1, change the name of your Account Name.
Change the Home Directory from /Users/old to /Users/new, where new is the short username you typed in step # 4.
Click OK and close all this, open a Terminal (/Application/Utilities/Terminal.app)
Type the following command, all on one line, and then press Return; when prompted, provide the password of the admin account you’re currently using, and then press Return again:

sudo mv /Users/old /Users/new

(these are the names from step 4 and 5).

restart!

Why all this trouble and where is the answer to your question?

So after all this, if you want to have robert in your “login menu” I believe you should simply tell it to show the short name and leave the rest of the settings alone:

In any case, if you REALLY want to have both “richard”, you’ll probably have to rename your shortname first.


Can't sign into Flickr on iOS 7 My Flickr account credentials do not work in the Settings app on my iPad mini retina with iOS 7. Every time I enter my Yahoo username and password I get the following message:

 "Could not communicate with the server."

I have enabled two-factor authentication on this account.

I attempted to use my password, temporary access code, and even generated an application-specific password in my Yahoo account. All methods fail to sign in.

I just had exactly the same problem and tried contacting support. Finally the only thing that let me login was turning off two-step authentication completely.


Accountsd using lots of CPU constantly This dreaded issue started at some time after upgrade to OS X (Yosemite) 10.10.3. accountsd uses about 60% CPU constantly, making the laptop hot and noisy.

I'm not using iCloud at all.

Killing it doesn't help, because it starts again quickly.

Probably related question, but it's about iOS: iPhone: What is `accountsd` and why is it using 80% CPU?

You could try using the Console application to see if accountsd has recorded any errors. Just open Console and enter "accountsd" in the search filter in the top-right corner of the window.

accountsd doesn't just deal with iCloud accounts. It appears to handle all of the accounts listed in the "Internet Accounts" pane of System Preferences. You could try disabling them all, then enabling them one by one to see which one is causing the issue.


Why can't I insert MathType Equation on Pages 2013? As you can see, I can't insert MathType Equation on Pages 2013, why? Is this not a built in feature?

This support question from the Apple Support Community might help.

  Install MathType (here)
  Open MathType
  Open Pages

Maybe Apple is fixing this in the future.


How tag emails in Apple Mail? My goal?
To tag emails in OS X.

What I succeeded into?
I use the Find command in /Users/MyMacAccount/Library/Mail/V3/ with a significative word contained in the email I am looking for, then I tag the email.

Note:
After this I can easily find all tagged emails with the find command in Apple Mail. I think this tip could please a lot of users.

How could it be done better?
To right click on the email and directly locate it in the Finder.

Note:
In past OS X (I am under 10.11.x El Capitan) it was possible to locate an email by command clicking on his title bar. A menu appeared with the actual path on the hard drive. It seems Apple disabled this so we can only see account's name.

What could I do instead?
To use the colored flags in Apple Mail… Frankly, who remembers why he or she colored one email in orange or purple ?

In the past, there was MailTags paid plugin, but it seem it wasn't updated for a long time.

I thought I could easily almost find recent emails if I sorted the V3 folder by Date but this is a slow process to be accomplished by the Finder.

Any better idea ?
Thank you.

This is work around, but it works for me, and it travels through all MacOS versions from I guess Mountain Lion (not sure when, made it long time ago). Not sure if it is still relevant, but since I found question without answer in search for the same, decided to contribute.
Here what I did: with automator create new service for Mail app, "Get Selected mail message". In code I have put:

on run {input, parameters}
  set theSource to {}
  tell application "Mail"
    repeat with msg in input
      set t_myFolder to POSIX path of (account directory of account of mailbox of msg as rich text)
      set len to length of t_myFolder
      set myFolder to rich text 1 thru (len - 1) of t_myFolder
      set messageId to (get id of msg as rich text)
      set myfile to (do shell script "find " & quoted form of myFolder & " -name \"" & messageId & "*.emlx\"") as rich text
      try
        set myalias to (POSIX file myfile) as alias
        if myalias is not missing value then
          tell application "Finder"
            activate
            reveal myalias
          end tell
        end if
      on error
        set debugInfo to "messageID: " & messageId & "
        myFolder: " & myFolder & "
" & "myFile: " & myfile
        display alert "Error ocured. Some Debug info bellow:
        " & debugInfo
        return
      end try
    end repeat
  end tell
end run

What it does - is finds mail message file in Finder and selects it. Then you can add tags to that particular file. After only thing remains is to assign a shortcut in the services (under keyboard).

Choose Service receives selected, "files or folders" in "Mail.app" when creating your Automator Service.

Regards
Justas


How can I log Messages out of a Google Talk account in High Sierra? High Sierra removes Google Talk support for Messages. That's not really Apple's fault, as Google is migrating all Google Talk functionality to Hangouts and doesn't allow third-party clients to connect to Hangouts. But after upgrading from Sierra on a machine that was logged in to a Google Talk account, Messages is still connected to that account and receives messages but can't send them. How can I log Messages out of this account which is now useless? It doesn't show in the Accounts tab of the Messages preferences.

This might help https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/107120.

I would do the different steps and then start from scratch. Or... you might try checking what each file in those directories do and see if yo can delete the account manually.

If you try the each file method, it appears that the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.Jabber.plist contains the Google Accounts. If you see your account delete it and relaunch Messages.

Important: Please backup your files before doing something that might harm your OS. ALWAYS. I've learned this the hard way. It's always easier to copy back files than to have to fix something from scratch.


How can I bind a multitouch gesture to open a file with a particular application? I am running Mac OS X Lion. What I want is a way to open an HTML file with a particular application based on my action.

For example, the default application is Safari, so it will always open in Safari if double clicked. However, I want to add another gesture, (such as tapping on middle top of the trackpad) while the file has been selected (highlighted), such that it will open in TextWrangler.

Is it possible? I am also using BetterTouchTool.

You can run an AppleScript file using BetterTouchTool, but I don't know how you get the selected file. Here's the script:

tell app "<your application here>" to open file <file here>

That will work as long as there's an application to open and a file to open. The problem is getting the selected file...


iOS Remote.app URL Scheme I've discovered that Apple's Remote.app on iOS has a URL scheme. Opening remote:// opens the app. Does anyone know of any other ways to, say, open a certain playlist/shared library via this URL scheme? Or is it just for opening the app?

You can use URL Schemes to not only open an app but you can use it to open a playlist. example


Modify Expose button on my macbook for another shortcut? The F3 button on my rMBP has a figure which shows 3 rectangles, pressing the button without the FN key initiates the Expose function. I want to modify that key for another function. However I cannot directly modify it via preferences because pressing that button does not register as a specific keyboard shortcut.

You could also change it to a normal F-key with FunctionFlip.

If anyone else is looking for a way to change it with KeyRemap4MacBook, just create a private.xml like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
<item>
<name>test</name>
<identifier>test</identifier>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::EXPOSE_ALL, KeyCode::F19</autogen>
</item>
</root>

The keycode constants are defined in src/bridge/generator/keycode/data. The test folder has a checkbox.xml with all the predefined mappings.


Recovering OS X partition: wrong boundaries calculated, can't mount disk0s2 I followed the strategy of Klanomath (see link) in order to recover my lost OSX (el Capitan) partition (MBR overwritten by bootcamp Windows). In this procedure you have to find the right boundaries of your partition. But when I got my boundaries and created my partition, disk0s2 did not want to mount. This means the boundaries are not good.

This is my situation at the moment:

CJs-MacBook-Pro:~ root# gpt -r show /dev/disk0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  495406233      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  495815873    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  497085409  302914591
  800000000  100000000      4  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  900000000    1269536      5  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  901269536   75503599
  976773135         32         Sec GPT table
  976773167          1         Sec GPT header
CJs-MacBook-Pro:~ root# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         253.6 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot                         650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS TempSystem              51.2 GB    disk0s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s5
CJs-MacBook-Pro:~ root#

The borders I found:

1st HFSJ:  249128179712/512 = block 486578476
2nd HFSJ:  253857728000/512 = block 495815875

Do you have any suggestions?

The solution here is more or less the same as outlined in the answer to this question. The solution there is a stopgap solution because the asking person neither had a thumb drive nor an external disk or a second Mac. You have to have a system drive with a full OS X to install additional apps like wxHexEditor to inspect the raw data on the drive. So the only practicable way there was an OS X install on the corrupted drive with the risk to overwrite the old "lost" partitions.

If you have a second boot device like an external disk or a thumb drive install a newer full OS X (not just a bootable installer thumb drive!). Additionally install wxHexEditor. Enable the root user, log in as root.

Now open wxHexEditor and determine the boundaries of the "lost" Recovery HD. Overwriting the original GUID partition table and replacing it by an MBR with Windows' Disk Management usually doesn't touch the content of your disk. The old data structures are still on the disk and can be found by searching for special strings and files' content.

The asking person gave the following information: the Windows partition had a size of 100 GB. This facilitates the search because the first ~390 GB (of the 500 GB disk) can be skipped since the Windows partition is created at the end of a disk.

The Recovery HD partition has the following content:

  0-1. block:        0x00s
    2. block:        the string "HFSJ" in the first 16 Bytes
    8. block:        0xFFs (probably an allocation file)
11-13. block:        0xFFs (probably a second allocation file)

If you have found these blocks you can easily determine the start block of the Recovery HD as described in the linked answer. Since all other partitions (EFI and the main OS X volume - assuming that only one main volume exists) are determined by the first block of the Recovery HD the math can be done.

The final solution was:

gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 779781456 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 780191096 -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

After verifying the volumes with:

diskutil verifyVolume disk0s2
diskutil verifyVolume disk0s3

and removing temporary partitions the main volume was finally expanded to span the whole disk with:

diskutil cs resizeStack lvUUID 0g


Checking for malware and verifying a program is not a malware I've tried to install Panda3D sdk, but I've received an error, saying the application isn't made by a known developer so I can't install it due to my security settings. I understand this precaution is made by Apple against malware. However I still want to install Panda3d, how can I be sure it isn't a malware or has malware in it?

Checking for malware is a complex thing. Something that might be a dangerous operation for a program to make (like deleting the entire contents of your hard drive), might be an unintended action (making the program malware), or it might be a feature of the program and exactly what you meant to do.

The way OS X generally decides if something is "unsafe" is by checking for a code signing certificate. Code signing certificates themselves don't guarantee that a program isn't malware. What they do is provide traceability back to the original developer that build the program, and verifies their identity through third parties. This is generally the same process used for certificate validation on websites.

That said, OS X still doesn't know if this is malware or not. It just knows that it can verify the program was built by someone who has verified their identity with a third party. Not have that verification only means the person who built it didn't have a certificate. It might still be someone you trust but the system can't tell.

Malware detection systems generally check code for copies of malicious code fragments that have been identified before. They will often also check to see if the code will do something it knows is dangerous (like deleting your entire hard drive, or accessing files it knows it shouldn't), but these things are still difficult to define.

The easiest way to avoid running malicious code is to use a virus scanner (I personally don't have one to suggest for OS X), but the best way is to do your own due diligence and only run code that comes from a trusted source. Be thorough about reading the address of any links you download software from and make sure they point the the website you think it should. Sometimes a software distributor will publish a hash (MD5 or SHA1/SHA2) of the file, which you can use the verify that the file you've downloaded is an exact match to that which was published.

In most cases, you will need to assess how much effort you need to take to verify that code is safe, which usually depends on how much is on the line. Are you running this code on your personal computer, or a hospital computer with patient records on it? Is this a computer you use for fun, or is the operating a nuclear power plant? These are things to consider when deciding how much effort you're willing to go to in order to stay safe from malware.


How do I preserve leading zeroes in Mac Excel? I'm using Excel (v 14.4.4) on my Mac (10.9.5).  I have opened a CSV file and I wish to save it to an .xls format (Excel 97-2004 Workbook).  I have a column that has 6 digit numbers, some of which begin with a leading zero.  When I save my CSV to XLS, the cells with leading zeroes lose these leading zeroes.  How do I keep them there?

From the Home tab, select the cells you wish to format, and from the format drop-down under Number select Custom. Or, right-click and choose Format Cells, or hit Cmd-1.

This will pop-up a dialog window with the various formatting options.

Again, make sure you're on Custom.

In the Type box type in: 000000

Click Ok.

Alternatively - change the formatting type to text. This will keep whatever you type in the box.


Macbook unexpectedly shuts down programs when I close the lid OSX 10.14.6, late 2013 13" macbook pro.

I keep a lot of tabs open on my laptop, and lately I've started noticing that I can't find tabs that I thought were open. Turns out that when I close the macbook's lid, it will sometimes close whatever tab or window is active at the time (equivalent to cmd+w, I think). If, for example, it's an unsaved Word document, when I open the laptop again I'll see the "do you want to save your work" dialogue; if I had Chrome or Safari open in the foreground, it'll just close whatever tab was open.

This doesn't seem to always happen, making it frustratingly difficult to debug.

Any idea what could cause this behavior?

Interesting. One setting I would check to see if it's enabled is if it's set to log you out after a certain amount of time. You can do this by going to the system preferences, then security & privacy, then click the advanced button on the lower right corner and the option will be shown.


Remove username from terminal title I want to be able to retitle my terminal windows.  I've found many examples on the web, but no matter what I do, the string is always prefixed by my username.  I want to remove that; how do I do so?

I'm using Yosemite.

Screenshot:

Your username is coming up in the Terminal title, because when you launch Terminal it is starting off in your home directory as the current "working directory."

There are two ways to do this:

1)  Yosemite and earlier

a)  You can create an AppleScript that launches Terminal and sets it Window title

tell application "Terminal"
   activate
   set custom title to "This is my Custom Title"
end tell

b)  You can set it using bash's PROMPT_COMMAND variable in .bashrc.  For instance, you can add the line PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;This is my custom title for ${HOSTNAME}: ${PWD}\007"'

Every time you open terminal, it will set that as your window title (assuming you are running bash, of course)

There's more info on using this method from this post:  https://superuser.com/questions/79972/set-the-title-of-the-terminal-window-to-the-current-directory

2) In El Capitan forward:

You can turn it off by deslecting the "Display Working Directory" option in Terminal preferences.

The change is immediate, you don't need to relaunch Terminal; your username will no longer show on the title of the window


How to make Mail use standard signature separator? I am using many signatures under Mail.
I noticed that unlike many professionnal E-mail programs Mail
doesn't automatically include the standard E-mail signature separator.

The command:

defaults read com.apple.mail | egrep '(--|sep|sig)'

didn't let me a lot of hope.

Is there any way to configure Mail so that it will automatically include the standard separator -- \n with any signature ?

You need to manually add the sig-dashes, --\n, to the top of your signatures within Mail.app:

Mail (menu) > Preferences > Signatures

It may be possible to automate the changing of signatures, see How to change/customize mail signature in Mountain Lion? for details of Mail's signature file format.


Terminal: Path to Network Drive in Applescript I am trying copy a file up to a network drive in AppleScript.

Normally I would do..

do script "mv ~/Desktop/file.txt ~/Folder/file.txt"

What is the correct path to a network drive?  I normally connect with finder by doing:

tell application "Finder"
    open location "smb://user:password@netDrive/MyShare"
end tell

How do I do:

do script "mv ~/Desktop/file.txt smb://user:password@netDrive/MyShare/Folder/file.txt"

The correct syntax would be smb://[<user>@]<workgroup>[:<port>][/]

To answer your second question:

do shell script "mv ~/Desktop/file.txt smb://user:password@netDrive/MyShare/Folder/file.txt"


Program will not move to second monitor I am a student using a program to do practice questions.

The program is set up to run like the actual test program in that it will take up the whole screen and block other applications. I have a lot of studying to do and would like to help my eyes out by opening it on the bigger monitor I have connected through VGA but I cannot drag it over nor get it to open there first.

If possible I want to avoid mirroring. Is there a way I can arange which monitor is the primary or something similar?

You should be able to accomplish this by dragging the menubar to the bigger monitor in System Preferences > Displays > Arrangement. My guess is that the app will display it's main content on the monitor with the menubar assigned to it.

I worked on software that did this many years ago and this would have worked for that program.