Problem re-assembling front cover clips on an iMac 5,1 I had to pull my iMac apart in order to extract a CD from the drive.  I have it all back together now except for getting the front cover on.  I am being defeated by the clips at the top inside of the cover.

I have looked online and all I can find are instructions on how to disassemble my iMac (which includes shoving a credit card up the airflow slot at the back of the iMac in order to release the clips).  The only advice I have seen about re-assembling is basically

  follow the disassembly steps in reverse order

But this isn't working for me for these clips.  Is there some secret/trick to clicking these clips into place when re-assembling an iMac 5,1

Replacing the Front Bezel (17-inch)

Position the front bezel near the top edge of the unit and connect the two camera board connectors.
Make sure the black EMI shielding along the top of the LCD panel is not in the way of the locking mechanisms when you lower the front bezel onto the computer. Use a black stick to press (re-stick) the EMI shielding along the top of the panel.

Wrap the cables with kapton tape then tuck the cables neatly into the channel on the rear housing.

Make sure the memory ejector levers are in the closed position (as shown) before lowering the front bezel over the ejectors.

Continue to lower the font bezel down and press the top corners of the front bezel to connect the latches. Note: Check that the latches are connected by lifting the front bezel at each corner.
Replace the four bezel screws along the bottom of the computer.
Replace the access door and tighten the two captive screws.
Install any removed DIMMS after the unit is fully assembled. Important: Memory DIMMs must be installed by hand. Do not use the memory ejector levers to install memory.

Replacing the Front Bezel (20-inch)

Make sure the black EMI shielding along the top of the LCD panel is not in the way of the locking mechanisms when you lower the front bezel onto the computer. Use a black stick to press (re-stick) the EMI shielding along the top of the panel.

Connect the camera and microphone cables (on the camera board) to the cables sticking out of the top of the computer.

Tuck the cables neatly into the channel on the rear housing.

Press the memory ejector levers into the closed position.
Continue to lower the font bezel down and press the top corners of the front bezel to connect the latches. Note: Check that the latches are connected by lifting the front bezel at each corner.
Replace the four bezel mounting screws along the bottom of the computer.
Replace the access door; tighten the two captive screws.

References

Service Source, iMac (17-inch Late 2006), 29 October 2007, Apple Inc., pp. 31-32
Service Source, iMac (20-inch Late 2006), 13 December 2007, Apple Inc., pp. 27-28


rEFInd does not show macOS boot icon I have a MacBook Pro 15" late 2015, on whom I created two partitions on the main SSD, on one there is the macOS, and on the other I installed Linux Mint. As boot manager I installed rEFInd.

Yesterday I accidentally reinitialized the disk on which Linux was installed, and when I restarted the Mac, in the rEFInd boot menu there was no more the icon to load macOS, but only the one for Linux. Selecting that one, it loads into the Minimal Grub Bash, from which I don't know how to proceed.
I'm also unable to boot into safe mode at start, I assume because it loads rEFInd before macOS operating system is loaded.

What could I do to load macOS again, or get in a macOS shell from where I could probably remove the rEFInd solving the problem and being able to boot to macOS?

I actually need only to take some important data from the disk, moving it for example to an external drive, after that I can also restore the Mac Book. So if there is any way, like hardware, to get to the data on the disk I would appreciate a lot your help.

If you are in the internet recovery mode, make sure you are connected directly to your internet router via an ethernet cable.

What you could do is hold the following key combinations first.
Shift-Option-Command-R, this will bring you to install the MacOS on your Mac HD.

But you could first refresh NVRAM before resetting your system:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063


How can I manually replace the addressBook files on my iPhone? I upgraded from iOS 4 to iOS 5 and after it installed, I realized my contacts and apps were no longer there. I'm not too concerned about retrieving my apps, but I would really like to retrieve my contact list.

I looked at the files from my last sync and used the iPhone Backup Extractor tool to get all of the files from my sync. There I found my 'AddressBook.sqlitedb' and 'AddressBookImages.sqlitedb' files. I jail broke the iPhone and installed iFile so I can get at the files on the iPhone. When I try to edit the current 'AddressBook.sqlitedb' file with the contents of the old one, it doesn't seem to affect the contact list.

How can I retrieve my old Contact List?

The best way is to syncronize with your computer's address book.

Did you not do a backup before upgrading?  Either way, when you tell your phone to sync your address book, it will get the contacts out of your outlook or Apple address book.


How can I start a new text on my iphone message app? I can't seem to find a way to start a new text thread on my Iphone, does anyone know how to do that without deleting the entire contact, and then re-entering it?

I'm assuming you mean just starting a new message thread...Choose the icon in the upper right corner. It has what looks like a pencil drawing on paper. If you are referring to starting a new thread with a person with whom you already have a thread, you cannot have two active threads with the same person.


What will cause spaces to rearrange in Lion? I'm having a hard time figuring out what constitutes as "recent use" in Lion that will cause spaces to rearrange(I have the "automatically rearrange spaces based on recent use" box checked).  I use both the Option + Number keyboard shortcut and the four finger swipe to navigate between my spaces, but I can't figure out what causes them to auto rearrange.

Here is an example:

I've got 3 spaces.
In Space 1 let's say I've got Safari and Mail open, Space 2 is iTunes, and let's say TextEdit is open in space 3.  The spaces are currently in order 1-3.
I start in space 1, then I use the keyboard shortcut to go directly to space 3. I do a few things in text edit and then want to navigate back to space 1.  Any way that I choose to navigate back to space 1 will not cause the spaces to reorder, they stay in the order they begun in.

I've tried every form of navigating between and using apps in different spaces to get the spaces to reorder, but I can't cause it to happen.  However every once in a while It happens automatically, and I can't figure out what actually caused that reordering to occur, it always seems a bit random.  Based on the setting name, I would assume that if I were in Space 1, and then used an app in Space 3 it would rearrange the spaces so that Space 3 was in the 2nd spot, since it was used more recently than Space 2.  Am I misunderstanding this?

Has anyone been able to pinpoint what causes the spaces in Lion to rearrange?  I'd love to be able to make more sense of this.

From my observations, when you alt-tab or click on an app icon on the dock, the clicked app will automatically be on the second space. This only happens only if the app is in another space that's not in the second one (if it's in the second one then the arrangement won't change).

Control-arrow key and Mission control navigation won't change the arrangement either.


Xcode cannot run using the selected device? I am developing my first ever iOS mobile app. I am using OS X Lion 10.7.5 with Xcode 4.6 for development. I completed my app and now want to test on a device. When I am trying to connect iPad Air with iOS 7.1 for testing, Xcode is giving an error:

  Xcode cannot run using the selected device. No provisioned iOS devices are available with a compatible iOS version. Connect an iOS device with a recent enough version of iOS to run your application or choose an iOS simulator as the destination.

I googled and came to decision that I need to use Xcode 5 if I want to test device with iOS 6.1 and above but I cannot install Xcode 5 as it requires OS X 10.8.4 and above. I decided to upgrade my OS from Lion to Mavericks.

Just wanted to know if I do so will it create any problems in my already developed app? I don't have time to take a backup with Time Machine.

This doesn't seem to be a problem with your version of Xcode/iOS/OS X, but rather that you have not provisioned your device. You need to add your provisioning profile to the device to allow you to test apps on it. Newer versions of Xcode will do this for you, but you can still do it with older versions yourself in the Member Center.


Can I install or update Mac App Store apps through a command line using terminal? Is there an official way provided by Apple or a workaround so that I can install or update Mac App Store apps through Terminal?

Until recently, the answer was no but there are open source efforts to replicate the Mac App Store in a command-line based tool:

https://github.com/mas-cli/mas

To install:

brew install mas

Once it's in, you could update all the apps that are available with:

mas upgrade

If you don't like this tool, you could also use MDM tools to package an already downloaded application and distribute it internally. Examples are Casper Suite, sftp, rsync, etc... and side load these apps. You do need to use the GUI or the mas tool to get the first copy of the application, however. So, if you already have the app, you can file share it over, but you can't get the App updated or installed solely from the terminal.

In a nutshell - you would set up an MDM server (there are now open source options) like:

https://github.com/project-imas/mdm-server

Then you would make your own App Store app that's amenable to command line updates. For that munki is a nice open-source choice:

https://www.munki.org

From there you could package the app updates and server them side loaded or use the InstallApplication MDM command to trigger an app install or update. Do note, that if you are pulling the app or the update from Apple's servers - you still need the user to enter their Apple ID and password in the prompt that OS X provides for the update. This does bypass opening the App Store app so it's a partial win, I suppose.

http://enterprisemac.bruienne.com/2015/11/17/installing-os-x-pkgs-using-an-mdm-service/

At present, the command line can only list software updates that come through the App Store the same as the previous Software Update server was used to download system updates and updates to apps that came on physical media. Terminal is not able to update apps that were bought electronically through the Mac App Store. Only some Apple apps are included in the updates using the softwareupdate command.


Getting a text file with the url of open tabs I got used to this routine my idle times:

Open hacker news, SE, other sources on my iphone.
Open interesting links as new tabs.
Read for a while.
Leave tab to remind myself to save it somewhere.

The obvious conclusion is that I found myself hitting the 500 tabs limit pretty easily. The last time I opened them manually in my macbook through iCloud, and then used a nice script to save all links with their name and url in a text file for future parsing.

I'm getting close back again (488 at the time of writing), and I'm wondering if there's anything I can do with the shortcut app that can save me at least the manual opening of 500 tabs.

Disclaimer: I know I should use pocket or Instapaper or whatever, but what I need is a solution for the already opened tabs, not for the future.

You can do this with AppleScript and iCloud Tabs (synchronizes your Tabs between your iOS device and your Mac).  The following code with parse through all of the tabs in all of your Safari windows and write an HTML link for each one on a new line.

-- Set up the initial HTML document
set output to "<!DOCTYPE html>
" & "
" & "
" & "  <meta charset=\"utf-8\">
" & " <title>Safari Tab URLs</title>
" & "
" & "
"

tell application "Safari"

    -- Count the number of Windows
    set numWindows to number of windows

    repeat with w from 1 to numWindows

        --Count the number of Tabs
        set numTabs to number of tabs in window w

        repeat with t from 1 to numTabs

            -- Set the Tab Name and URL values
            set tabName to name of tab t of window w
            set tabURL to URL of tab t of window w

            -- Create the Tab link and write the code
            set output to output & "    " & tabName & "" & linefeed as string
        end repeat
    end repeat
end tell

-- Close out the HTML document
set output to output & "
" & "
"

-- Write the entire HTML document to TextEdit

tell application "TextEdit"
    activate
    make new document
    set the text of the front document to output
end tell


Solarized dark + Zsh for terminal looks off In some cases, I can't use iTerm2 and have to use the default terminal. The text is extremely hard to read, especially the black text on dark blue background. Is there a reason it's not the same as the iTerm2 Solarized theme? Is there a way to fix this? I imported the theme from the same themes file: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized

There is not a good way to fix this. As it states in the documentation

iTerm2 has better color fidelity than the built in Terminal, so your
themes will look better.

That being said, you can edit the color of the prompt via the terminal preferences.
Hope this helps!


How to syncing iPad with iTunes? I bought some songs on iTunes with my iPad and want to transfer those songs onto my iTunes on my computer.

If I sync my iPad with the iTunes account on my computer, it will just erase whatever on the iPad now and import what is in the iTunes library on my computer.

How can I get these newly bought songs in my computer's iTunes account?

You have two main options.

The first is to use iTunes Match (iCloud). Open Settings on your iPad, then tap Music, and turn on iTunes Match; then follow the prompts. The one caveat is it costs $25 per year.

The second option is to sync it to your computer.

Open iTunes, select the Store menu, and choose Authorize Computer.
Follow the prompts, and login with the same Apple ID that you used to purchase the music.
Plug your iPad into your computer using the USB cable that came with your iPad.
When the prompt comes up to Erase or Sync, or Transfer Purchases, select Transfer Purchases.

Side note: Choosing the "Erase and Sync" option will erase any music, apps, or similar purchased content from your device, and replace it with whatever music, apps, etc. you have in your iTunes library. (It is possible to re-download those purchases, so all is not lost in that event). That is obviously undesirable so you must authorize your computer before transferring purchases.

You may find this Apple article helpful as well.


Unable to Locate or update LocateDB Mac OS El Capitain, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave! Over the past few operating systems I've been noticing a trend, especially after Apple screwed around with the real and fake "root" user in El Capitan. Most especially, using the locate command. Whenever I try to update using the conventional:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist

Which is prescribed by Apple when the locate command fails.
I've managed to use mdfind but prefer locate because I'm looking for files in the ENTIRE system and I don't care about keywords inside of files like MDFind echos, see here for more evidence of locate working better for this task than mdfind MDfind vs Locate. Thanks everyone, I will continue tinkering for now.

After quite a bit of tinkering and waiting to delete my question prior to posting an uneducated question, I found an old OSXDaily article that suggests another way to update the Locate DB. The command suggested is: sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb And searching for that command rather than the com.apple.locate.plist setup in launchd, I found this lovely article about changing the database update frequency. I however, took a somewhat different approach to updating the database, simply by adding a line to my daily crontab:

env EDITOR=nano sudo crontab -e

0 12 * * * sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb.

ctrl+x y [ENTER]

Thanks, I hope this helps someone going through the same annoying crap.


Stop Chrome from switching to dedicated GPU Is there a way to prevent Chrome from switching to dedicated GPU?
But just Chrome. Not the gfxCardStatus way.

rMBP (late 2013)

I was having an issue with gfxCardStatus not being able to switch to the Integrated Intel GPU because of a Google Chrome Helper task. My mid-2010 Macbook Pro has a bad discrete GPU so of course that is pretty inconvenient. This worked for me:

Go to chrome://settings and set the Use hardware acceleration when available option to off:

Put this in the omnibar to find this setting easily:

chrome://settings/?search=hardware


Installing RAM - 27 inch late 2013 iMac My iMac is running slow and I am hoping to get a few more years out of it. I figure I have two options:

add memory
replace my current hard drive with one that is solid state.

So I am tackling the memory option first.  My iMac has four memory slots with two in use.  The two in use each have an 8GB module.  What can I add in the empty slots?  4GB or 8GB modules?  Also, can someone provide a link to a company so this newbie can purchase the correct modules?  For example:

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Single-PC3-12800-Unbuffered-204-Pin/dp/B006YG8X9Y?th=1

I'd suggest you look at your RAM usage in Activity Monitor first. 16 Gb is plenty for most tasks. If you're seeing low memory pressure (Green on the graph), then you might be better off with the SSD first.

Here's an example of very low RAM usage: tiny amount of Green; no Swap, no Compressed memory. If you've been running for a long time, you can expect some swap.

Here's a similar setup using 8Gb of RAM, which is coping, but could benefit from more RAM:

Pressure is still green, but higher. It's not Yellow or Red, though; but it's having to compress some memory to cope.

Don't forget that MacOS tries to use as much memory as possible, so simply using lots of RAM is not an indicator that you need more.

An SSD will be a much more noticeable improvement, with app launches, document loading and other disk-related activities all being orders of magnitude faster.


How do I change the settings of the sounds in iOS 6? As you see. I have accidentally pressed something that change my iOS sound. When I try to volume up or down my sounds. It says sound effects. If I watch a video. It does not say anything. Is it in the iOS or did press anything? If I did, please help me.

Try going to Settings > Sounds and setting 'Change with Buttons' to Off.


How to set up OS X Server Mail to auto-configure Mac Mail IMAP clients? Our Thunderbird mail clients successfully pick up their IMAP settings for their accounts on (Mountain Lion) OS X Server automatically. They just supply their email addresses and Open Directory passwords at mail account setup and Thunderbird does the rest for the client user.

At autoconfig.myexample.com we simply supply a small XML file containing IMAP and SMTP server names and which connection protocols are offered.

Mac Mail does not use this convention though. So the question is: how does the Mac Mail client do autoconfigure - if at all?

I see many discussion threads concerning Mac Mail "autodetect"ing MS Exchange account settings but none answering the question re Mac Mail to IMAP accounts on OS X Server.

If Mac Mail can make it easy for Exchange users I assume that it can also make it easy to get their mail from OS X Server? But how?

I did a little digging and found out a little of what OSX tries to do to auto-configure an email account.

In system preferences when adding a mail account, OSX makes a POST to https://mac-services.apple.com/iconfig/dconf the post parameters are:

domain: EMAIL_DOMAIN_THE_USER_ENTERED.com
version: 1
capabilities: MACOSX

For a service like gmail the following is returned:

<domain>
  <name>gmail.com</name>
  <description>Gmail</description>
  <service>
    <hostname>imap.gmail.com</hostname>
    <port>993</port>
    <protocol>IMAP</protocol>
    <ssl/>
    <requires>MACOSX</requires>
    <authentication>PLAIN</authentication>
  </service>
  <service>
    <hostname>smtp.gmail.com</hostname>
    <port>587</port>
    <protocol>SMTP</protocol>
    <ssl/>
    <requires>MACOSX</requires>
    <authentication>PLAIN</authentication>
    <usernameIncludesDomain/>
  </service>
</domain>

Unfortunately, for my domain I receive the following response:

<domain>
  <name>EMAIL_DOMAIN_THE_USER_ENTERED.com</name>
  <unknown/>
</domain>

As far as I can tell after an unknown response OSX gives up and requires a user to enter the details manually. Capturing network packets I see no attempt by OSX to fallback to using SRV DNS records, or the Exchange Autodiscover.xml mechanism.

If I get a chance I will open a support ticket with apple to see how one gets added to their mac-services list.


Mac seems to ignore the result of local DNS for local hosts I have a server (running Ubuntu 16.04) on my local network, which amongst other things, runs DMSmasq. My local domain is njj.chickenkiller.com.

Running on my Mac, if you query the DNS, it returns the LAN address of various machines on my network. E.g.:

beethoven:~ nick$ dig serv2.njj.chickenkiller.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> serv2.njj.chickenkiller.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 36867
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;serv2.njj.chickenkiller.com.   IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
serv2.njj.chickenkiller.com. 0  IN  A   192.168.2.4

;; Query time: 82 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.2.4#53(192.168.2.4)
;; WHEN: Fri Aug 11 14:22:39 2017
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 61

and in this example, my Mac can correctly resolve, using the default DNS, the address of serv2 on my LAN.

However, when I use other commands (e.g. ping) sometimes they correctly resolve:

beethoven:~ nick$ ping serv2.njj.chickenkiller.com
PING serv2.njj.chickenkiller.com (192.168.2.4): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.2.4: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.832 ms

other times, my Mac seems to ignore the result from the local DNS (which is the only name server it is configured to use) and somehow manages to use the WAN address (that you would get if you queried an other DNS):

beethoven:lib nick$ ping serv2
PING njj.chickenkiller.com (90.255.91.177): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 90.255.91.177: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=2.140 ms

As far as I can tell, the local DNS server works correctly -- it always returns the LAN address (192.168.2.4) and never returns the WAN address (90.255.91.177). I also have both Windows 7 and Linux machine running on the network when I use the ping command (or any other command) they always use the LAN address (192.168.2.4), so I assume that this is something specific to macOS.

Why is this important to me? The router I have from my ISP discards packets from the LAN attempting to access machines using the WAN address. This means that commands accessing other machines on the network fail. eg:

beethoven:lib nick$ ssh serv2
ssh: connect to host serv2 port 22: Connection refused

I am using macOS 10.12.6

Any suggestions as to how I should configure my Mac so it only uses the configured DNS to resolve hosts would be gratefully received.

EDIT:
Whats my search domain?: On the network setting page the DNS server is shown as 192.168.2.4 and the search domain is shown as njj.chickenkiller.com

EDIT 2: Output of commands:

beethoven:bin nick$ networksetup -listallnetworkservices
An asterisk (*) denotes that a network service is disabled.
Wi-Fi
*Bluetooth PAN
*Thunderbolt Bridge
beethoven:bin nick$ networksetup -getsearchdomains  Wi-Fi
There aren't any Search Domains set on Wi-Fi.

EDIT 3: dnsmasq.conf (from ubuntu 16.04 host, "serv2")

# Use google open DNS name servers (avoids the risk of a router attack)
server=/#/8.8.8.8
server=/#/8.8.4.4

# Do not use /etc/hosts, but serve hostnames from /etc/hosts.dnsmasq
no-hosts
addn-hosts=/etc/hosts.dnsmasq
local-ttl=105

# expand unqualified hostnames to suffix njj.chickenkiller.com
expand-hosts
domain=njj.chickenkiller.com

# turn on dhcp (limit leases to 12hours so updates dont need a restart)
dhcp-range=192.168.2.10,192.168.2.99,12h

# and redirect all gateway requests through router
dhcp-option=option:router,192.168.2.1

# and offer a time server
dhcp-option=option:ntp-server,192.168.2.4

# and we are the *only* dns server
dhcp-option=option:dns-server,192.168.2.4

This has been driving me mad for ages, anyway, I think that I have stumbled on the solution.

The way I had set up my dynamic DNS was that serv2.njj.chickenkiller.com was an alias for njj.chickenkiller.com(probably not the best way of doing this, but it meant that serv2 handled all the requests for njj.chickenkiller.com.

So when you query the server:

beethoven:~ nick$ host serv2
serv2.njj.chickenkiller.com has address 192.168.2.4
serv2.njj.chickenkiller.com is an alias for njj.chickenkiller.com.

So what I think is happening is that mDNSresponder was clever enough to cache njj.chickenkiller.com as an alias (and I assume that this doesn't happen on windows and linux), so when it did a subsequent DNS lookup for serv2, it tried to save time by sending a query for njj.chickenkiller.com (not serv2...), which it has cached as the alias. My local DNS server didn't recognize njj.chickenkiller.com as part of the local domain and responded by giving the external IP address.

To solve this I added njj.chickenkiller.com as an alias for serv2 in the hosts file used by dnsmasq:

# Fixed IP machines
192.168.2.1 gateway
192.168.2.2 wifi1
192.168.2.3 wifi2
192.168.2.4 serv2   njj.chickenkiller.com


Terminal prompt 'saving' certain commands on up-arrow I added a little bit of shell scripting to my prompt for fun. It alternates the colors of prompt items randomly. I did it purely because a gray screen gets boring after awhile. The following is my prompt in .bash-profile:

function next_hue
{
    color1=$((31 + (++color % 7)))   # set 31 to 30 for dark on light
    color1=$((31 + (++color % 7)))
    PS1="\n\e[0:${color}m[\W]\n\e[0:${color}m[\u]-> $reset" # set 1 to 0 for     dark on light
}

This alternates the color of my prompt. Yay!

The problem is that sometimes the shell will get "stuck." For instance, the shell is usually like this:

directory
[username]->

If I have recently run the docker run command, and I up-arrow into the history, `docker run gets stuck and I end up with this:

directory
[username]->docker run

If I add a new command it stacks on docker run:

directory
[username]->docker runcd /some/path

I have to use ctrl-c or some other such option, and I can't use the docker-run command again unless I type it all out. WHat could be causing this error? I have looked over my prompt quite a bit and I think it is okay, but it was confusing to figure out in the first place.

You're not escaping the non-printing characters in your prompt. See this article, and use "\[" and "\]" around the colors, something like this (untested) for example...

PS1="\n\e[0:\[${color}\]m[\W]\n\e[0:\[${color}\]m[\u]-> $reset"

You may need to tweek that. Like I said, this is untested so I may have inserted a "\]" in the middle of a colour code. For my prompt I do the escaping when I initialise the colour variables:

PS1_FG="\[$(tput setaf 223)\]"  # Prompt foreground colour (223 = pale orange/brown)

For what it's worth, I can highly recommend using tput when you're dealing with control codes. It makes your scripts more portable, and (IMHO) is easier to read.


Mouse Wheel Emulation on Mac I've recently moved into an office that has standardized on Apple computers and have run into something that I have used with Linux that I know is going to drive me nuts on the Mac. I use a Logitech MarbleMouse, a trackball that does not have a mouse wheel. On Linux, there is a configuration option (EmulateWheel and EmulateWheelButton in evdev) that let's you press a button and have mouse/trackball motion act like a scroll wheel.  Is there anything equivalent on Mac?

You can use KeyRemap4MacBook.

Scroll by moving the pointer while holding the secondary button:

<autogen>__PointingRelativeToScroll__ PointingButton::RIGHT</autogen>

Scroll by moving the  the pointer while holding F1:

<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F1, KeyCode::VK_MODIFIER_EXTRA1</autogen>
<autogen>__PointingRelativeToScroll__ PointingButton::NONE, ModifierFlag::EXTRA1</autogen>

Scroll with F1 and F2:

<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F1, KeyCode::VK_MOUSEKEY_SCROLL_UP</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F2, KeyCode::VK_MOUSEKEY_SCROLL_DOWN</autogen>

Scroll by moving the pointer while holding the primary and secondary buttons:

<autogen>__SimultaneousKeyPresses__ PointingButton::LEFT, PointingButton::RIGHT,
KeyCode::VK_CONFIG_SYNC_KEYDOWNUP_notsave_pointing_relative_to_scroll</autogen>

See the source for the key code values and predefined settings.


Cannot ping localhost I have setup a new MacBook Pro retina, things were going well but now I cannot access localhost.

$ ping localhost
ping: cannot resolve localhost: Unknown host

My /etc/hosts file is fine, or at least untouched.

I have tried flushing the DNS cache, and dig localhost spits out

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> localhost
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 50562
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;localhost.         IN  A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
.           1551    IN  SOA a.root-servers.net. nstld.verisign-grs.com. 2013030800 1800 900 604800 86400

;; Query time: 31 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Fri Mar  8 14:53:09 2013
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 102

I am at a loss what to try next!
I have even run OnyX to clean all cache etc...

Maybe your host file got mangled. Open a terminal, and read your hosts file:

vim /private/etc/hosts

This should contain a line that maps localhost to 127.0.0.1:

127.0.0.1   localhost

It could be this file does not exist at all, or the line I gave above is not present. To be able to edit it you need to be superuser, i.e.:

sudo vim /private/etc/hosts

or you can use any other editor besides vim.


Do either iPhoto or Aperture allow me to keep my photo files in a quite "normal" directory structure? I would like to switch from picasa to iphoto or aperture.  However, I have heard (and googled) that, to some degree, these programs don't keep your photos as normal photo files in your drive's directory structure, but, rather, store them in an odd, specific kind of bundle. And, so for instance, if that bundle gets corrupted, the whole pile gets lost. Also, if I want to just go and grab one JPG file as a regular file, it's perhaps hard to go get it.  So,
(1) Am I wrong -- does either or both of those store photos in a way that is virtually the same as "regular old directories" I can dig into?
(2) If your answer involves me making specific configurations in the program, are there downsides to choosing that "non-standard" configuration?
(3) any quick word on the difference between iPhoto and Aperture with regards to the files directory question?

HUGE THANKS for any thoughts --

This exact thing stopped me from using Aperture and Lightroom for some time as that's all I could see it doing, but a bit of research showed that thankfully this was not the only way!

Above, you can see the options for where to store the photos you're importing. You can put them into the library (default), leave them alone, move them to the Pictures folder or one if it's sub folders. The final option lets you choose where they go. I actually put them into a Google Drive folder which syncs automatically.

Now under that, there's the option to Move Files or Copy Files. Quite self explanatory, but it will either move the files to the location you've specified (so there's only one copy of the file) or copy them (there will be two copies of the file, one in the old location and one in the new).

Finally, the last drop down allows you to choose how the files are then organised. Plenty of options as you can see.


How to enter single user mode when rEFIt is installed? When I pressed Command S and tried to enter Single User Mode, my MacBook Air goto the rEFIt shell.

If I click the Apple icon in rEFIt screen, and then press Command S, Mac OS X simple goes straight into the logon screen.

How can I enter Single User Mode when rEFIt is installed?

"When you have rEFIt installed and you apply the shortcut to boot in single user mode (⌘+S), you actually land in the EFI shell.
In order to avoid that, boot as usual.
Then choose the Apple icon and press F2.
You will be presented with a series of alternate options to boot Mac OS X (e.g. single user mode, verbose mode, etc.)"

http://tateric.blogspot.com/2010/11/boot-in-single-user-mode-despite-refit.html

Note: After selecting the Apple icon with the cursor, do not press Enter. Right there, on the rEFIt screen, you hit F2. That will bring you to the alternate options, including "Boot Mac OS X in single user mode."


Import Chrome bookmarks to Safari under iOS I just wanted to know if it is possible to import Chrome bookmarks into Safari on iOS?

I’m using Safari on my iPhone but I am using Chrome for work. And now I just want to have all my bookmarks Chrome also in Safari, without using my computer to export the bookmarks and then manually import it on my Mac.

It is currently not possible to do this without a computer.


I updated my iPhone to iOS 10.0.2 & got an email saying my AppleID was used Was this from the update? Or was I hacked?

The thing is...I checked the current devices logged in and it was only my iphone with the same divide ID and same operating system. It also said the time that my AppleID was used was from my memory around the same time as the update.

So it seems like no one else has hacked into my AppleID.

Is it normal to trigger that kind of alert after doing a normal update?

No, you weren't hacked.

This is perfectly normal depending on the settings of your device at the time of the update.


How can I mount a drive with Truecrypt through a script based on its UUID? I keep an external drive on my desk at work that I used as an off-site (ie not at home) backup. Because it could easily get taken I have a partition on it encrypted with TrueCrypt. I've got a script to mount this encrypted partition then do a backup via rsync then un-mount. It looks like:

truecypt /dev/rdisk1s2  /Volumes/untitled
rsync -myRsyncOptions /Users/me /Volumes/untitled/me
truecypt -d   /Volumes/untitled

It works well, so long as my drive is seen as /dev/rdisk1s2. If not the script breaks. The trouble is that I need to point Truecrypt to the correct device file in order to mount the volume correctly. Sometimes the device file will change. Once the first line in the script works the rest of the script works.

Is there anyway I can use UUID or otherwise to ensure that my encrypted partition always gets the same device file attached to it so Truecrypt can mount it successfully? I've seen a few examples of using UUIDs in the /etc/fstab file but I don't think they apply in this case. Thanks!

Here's a quick and dirty guide to specify the mount point based on the UUID. It works in Linux and since OS X respects fstab, it should work there too: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-finding-using-uuids-to-update-fstab/

Note: You might have to modify it a bit as some of the entries specified are not used in OS X. Give it a shot.

Additionally, I'm wondering if you could just change up your script to pull the device name instead of the mount point, that is, use the device name (e.g., /Volumes/YourDrive instead of /dev/rdisk1s2) as that never changes (unless you rename the drive).


iOS 6.0.1 thinks all calendar events are invitations Ever since installing iOS 6.0.1, it appears that all my Google Calendar events appear as invitations. Is this happening to anyone else? Is there any way for me to fix this?

The only events that don't appear as invitations are the ones in my main calendar; I've got three calendars, one for personal, one for work, and one for other, and only those in personal are fine. The events in the other two calendars appear as invitations in my Calendar app on my iPod Touch.

This appears to be an issue when Google is set up as a Microsoft Exchange account type (Google Sync) rather than the normal Gmail account in the Settings app. You can check that this is the case for you by opening the Settings app, going to the Mail, Contacts, Calendars section, and tapping on your Google account. If you see Exchange at the top of the page - rather than Gmail - then this applies to you.

It seems that in fixing an Exchange bug Apple broke Google's Microsoft Exchange implementation.

It also seems only to be a problem with secondary accounts.

As a temporary measure – until either Apple or Google have fixed this problem – you could open the Settings app, go to the Mail, Contacts, Calendars page, and Add Account... of type Gmail. You only have to turn on Calendars for this account, as the rest of the Microsoft Exchange implementation seems to be working. Then go to your original Microsoft Exchange account and turn off Calendars. You will be warned that all your Exchange ActiveSync calendars will be removed from your phone; choose to delete them. Finally, you might want to adjust the Default Calendar in the Calendars section of the Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings page

A few caveats with using a Gmail type account for calendars:

Google event invitations will no longer work
Syncing for calendars is now pull, rather than push; i.e. changing an event on another device will not be reflected immediately in your iOS calendars

Also, beware that events you have declined will not appear in iOS, and you may have accidentally declined events while getting frustrated at the iOS 6.0.1 calendar problem. These you will need to fix in the Gmail Web Client.


Missing disk space after failed bootcamp partition So a bootcamp installation failed and now I'm out 400gb of space on my drive. I have looked and found solutions but unfortunately I don't have the sufficient know-how to apply them to my situations.

I checked the drive with "First aid" in Disk utility and everything came back with no errors.

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)
10.13.6 High Sierra

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            121.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            2.0 TB     disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3

/dev/disk2 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           +1.7 TB     disk2
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2, disk1s2
                                 FE896926-6556-4167-9727-6AE772587267
                                 Unencrypted Fusion Drive

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 5B113CF5-AF4E-437D-86BA-94CC9773F3C8
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         2120528027648 B (2.1 TB)
    Free Space:   458921852928 B (458.9 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 5C572DA8-7561-4DF2-8CC2-F6BB9092B444
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     120988852224 B (121.0 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume B439E586-F1C5-4163-84B1-F8C7A95543CF
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     1999539175424 B (2.0 TB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 5F980324-88C8-402D-849C-F43C14D00DD8
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Type:         None
        |
        +-> Logical Volume FE896926-6556-4167-9727-6AE772587267
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk2
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          1654999875584 B (1.7 TB)
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS
            LVG Type:              Fusion, Sparse

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank-you

Sorted with:

diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk0

In recovery mode


Can't print on OS X Lion via shared printer connected to Windows Vista. Fix? As the title states I am not able to print from my Mac to a shared printer that is hooked up to my Windows PC running Windows Vista. I am currently running OS X Lion 10.7 on a Mac Mini. My Mac is able to find and add the printer on my network to its list of printers. However when it comes to printing a document the status of the print job becomes: "On Hold (Authentication Required)" regardless if I correctly enter the correct credentials of the PC which the printer is connected to.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? How do I fix it?

Notes: Printer is a Cannon MP210 and I have the most recent drivers for it.

IN my situation the error was caused by a changed password. In the keychain the old password was registered and used during printing.

I solved to problem as follow:

Open the KeyChain Access App (Applications -> Utilities -> Key Chain Access)
Search for your printer name
Open the key chain entry found
Change the password


How can I re-enable the (display) sleep shortcut on macOS Sierra? After upgrading to macOS Sierra the sleep keyboard shortcut doesn't work anymore. How do I re-enable it?

[Edit] I was using (cmd+opt+eject) before, apparently it's (ctrl+shift+eject) after the upgrade. Others might have different experiences, but the shortcuts have definitely been reset.

Things definitely have changed:

⌥⌘⏏ (Cmd-Option-Eject) to put your machine to sleep no longer works in Sierra.

Supposedly, ⌃⏏ (Ctrl-Eject) has taken its place, but it doesn't work on my late-2012 iMac.

At least according to the documentation, that is the only change - compare below.

Sadly, you cannot bring the old shortcut back (at all?), because defining keyboard shortcuts in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts doesn't allow you define shortcuts involving ⏏ (Eject), and, in fact, even shortcuts that are permissible do not seem to put the machine to sleep (flickers briefly, but stays awake).

Sleep-related shortcuts as of macOS Sierra:

Source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236

Sleep-related shortcuts as of OS X El Capitan:

Source (link effectively dead, redirects to the Sierra page): http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343


Mac iTunes requests update, but App store says no updates available Recently I got a iPhone 5 with iOS 9.3 installed.  On connecting it to my computer iTunes said that I needed at least iTunes 12.2.2.  I had 12.0 at the time.  Mac Running Yosemite.

I clicked download, and App Store launched, and said I had no updates available.

Went through this loop several times.

Called Apple.

Spent an hour on the phone, while the very personable agent walked me through the direct link (support.apple.com/kb/dl1814) Clicking the download button there got me to another page.  Clicking download there got me a "Thanks you for downloading..." but the download didn't begin.

I repeated this step with chrome, firefox and safari.  No joy.

Booted into safe mode.  Didn't help.

Went to two other computers, my wife's where I don't have a login, and my laptop, which runs snow leopard.r  No joy from either of those.

We left the ticket unresolved.

Since the apple advisor was able to perform the download at his end, but I was not able to at my end, my suspicion was that there was a problem with Apple's content distribution network.

This morning I tried again.  No joy.

On a hunch I tried logging in on a spare admin account.  No problem. connected to  the apple support site, and downloaded the update. Worked like a charm.

At this point it's not clear what happened, but with odd behaviour it does bring up one additional possibility to try:

Attempt the update as a different user.


Opening and Editing CorelDraw Files on MacOS Sierra I am wondering if anyone knows a reliable way to open CorelDraw files on MacOS Sierra. Apparently, CorelDraw software didn't provide MacOS support for nearly 15 years.

I have tried the free Inkscape, but it didn't work for me. The file would open, but the content was not displayed properly. I am open to other suggestions in form of software.

Perhaps there is a way to reliably convert the files to another format for which there is free alternative for MacOS that can be used to view the contents of the file.

You can check out this free option: CDRViewer. It will allow you to open/view CorelDraw files.

For more advanced functionality, the same developers offer PrintLab Studio 3.

You can also visit the developer's direct website at: http://blue-tail.com

NOTE: I have no affiliation whatsoever with the developer or this product.

[EDIT]

Just thought I should add that Adobe Illustrator has always been capable of opening CorelDraw files. I mention this in case you already have access to Illustrator and didn't realise it supported this.


Skype microphone does not work on my iPad I have ensured that the access to the microphone is allowed or turned on in the privacy settings. The mic works fine on other apps, i.e. FaceTime. So that rules out hardware failure. I have also tried reinstalling the app. Any other suggestions?

Try to reboot the iPad (hold the sleep button until the red slider appears, slide the red slider and once the screen is blank press the sleep button again). This has worked for me.


How would I architecture Direct Attached Storage? This is a sequel question to a previous one.

I would like to set up a home networking solution with Direct Attached Storage.

"Direct Attached Storage" seems to suggest that I would run cables (Ethernet, presumably) from two Macs to some kind of medium.

What is that medium? In particular, are we talking here specifically about SATA RAID rather than RAID? IIUC the former requires running not Ethernet cables but SATA cables (can these be 30-40 ft long?), where the latter requires attaching via USB to an Airport Extreme or similar.
Is a third Mac needed to act as a server?
Is macOS server needed?
What is the name of the software that you would run to actually "serve"?

DAS means you connect one or multiple external hard discs locally (e.g. by USB or SATA)

1) Then, you share them from this computer. What you need are standard external USB drives and a working home network.

2) You can share them using any Mac that is "always on" when the others are on

3) no, standard Mac OS will do

4) OSX. System preferences->Share->File Sharing

To connect, in the Finder select "Connect to Server..." under the Go menu.


Seemingly Irreversible Custom Keyboard Shortcut I have a late 2010 Apple MacBook (If that matters) and when I had OS X Snow Leopard installed, I created a keyboard shortcut that I seemingly can no longer reverse.  After upgrading to OS X Lion and now OS X Mountain Lion the shortcut is still carried over.

The keyboard shortcut is: whenever I click the 'fn' key, it will 'show desktop.'

I have searched all of the 'Keyboard' section of System Preferences to see if I can deactivate anything there.

I do remember that when I made the shortcut originally on Snow Leopard, it could be changed back.

I remember when I had OS X Lion, I wanted to change it, but I couldn't figure out how (like now)

I have tried the 'restore defualt' option in System Preferences > Keyboard, but that didn't work.

If anyone knows how to fix this or even has some sort of guidance to help me try and fix it, it would be greatly appreciated as this is becoming an increasingly inconvenient and frustrating problem.

A similar question entitled "Fn key shows the desktop on my Mac" was posted in July 2012 on Superuser, and maybe of help.

https://superuser.com/questions/455603/fn-key-shows-the-desktop-on-my-mac

(If my answer is more appropriate as a comment, please convert it to one)


Use one modifier key as multiple modifier keys? I'm working on the key remapping on OS X. I don't always use Caps Lock, but I want to utilize this key to be: Command+Alt+Control, how is that going to be possible?

As @fartheraway says, Karabiner can help, but you'll also want Seil.

Using the System Preferences > Keyboard: click on the Modifier Keys... button and map the Caps Lock to "No Action"
Using Seil, map the Caps Lock to something like function key 19 (f19) by using keycode 80.
Using Karabiner, go to "Misc & Uninstall" and under "Custom Setting" click on the "Open private.xml" button
List item
Open the private.xml file with a text editor and add the following inside the <root> tags:

<item>
  <name>Change f19 (Caps Lock) to Command-Control-Option-Shift</name>
  <identifier>private.f19_to_command_control_option_shift</identifier>

  <autogen>
    __KeyToKey__
    KeyCode::F19,
    KeyCode::OPTION_L, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L | ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L,
  </autogen>
</item>

(Drop any of the modifiers that you don't want and then save the changes to the private.xml file.)
Back in Karabiner, click on the "Change Key" tab
Click on the "Reload XML" button
Then enable (click on the checkbox) next to the "Change f19..." that appears at the top of the list.


Why is "tomorrow" displayed as the "Date Modified"? This is a bizarre situation-on my MacBook Pro (2017, High Sierra 10.13.5), when I opened a folder on the Finder, the Date Modified column for the files in a folder displays "Tomorrow at 2:34AM" and Date Created as "Today at 10:35PM" (see the image)--What could have caused this? I am hoping this is not a sign of my laptop malfunctioning or having been hacked. Any insight is appreciated!

I get that all the time when I download a file from Europe when the time zone differences are not corrected. Dates can be set far in the past and far in the future with simple commands like touch and the finder just reports the metadata / date stored in the files in question.

No real mystery or worry unless you are in some way trusting a file’s date for processing or record keeping. In that case, you’ll need to audit for the correct times and catch things that show up with non-sensical dates or dates off from the current time by some deviation you set.


My iphone always restarts by itself My iPhone often restarts automatically. It happens when I charge for long time and sometimes, it happens when I'm talking on phone .

The best thing to do is to first try a backup and restore as new as detailed in

  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4137

A lot of the time a device restarting multiple times can be caused by a software issue, and frankly getting all your data on the computer is always a  a good idea.

This will also make sure you are updated to the most recent version in case you are working with old software.
If it doesn't work it is probably time to get a new one or go for a repair.


How can I revert the appearance of the close, minimize and zoom buttons with iTunes 10? The new vertical layout is causing me all sorts of grief - is there any way to revert this back to the normal horizontal orientation of the close, minimize and zoom buttons of every other Mac OS X window?

Do this on Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -int -1


What ways can I purchase a newspaper subscription for viewing on an iPad? I understand there's a Newsstand app. I am wondering, however, if I were to purchase a newspaper subscription through the Nook or Kindle systems, will I be able to read them in the standard iPad (iPad 3, iOS 6) apps for each publisher?

One reason for concern is that years ago, I found that some things I'd purchased on the Nook -- public domain books at least -- we're invisible to the Nook Windows app. ( Newspaper edition purchases may too have been unreachable).

For the Kindle system, if one looks carefully under the product description such as you would find under this list, http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Newspapers/b?ie=UTF8&node=165389011,  one can see a link for "Available on these devices". This link will tell you if an Amazon subscription for that newspaper can be read on "Free Kindle Reading Apps",  or exclusively on "Kindle e-readers".

In order to have the freedom to read on multiple devices (which seems to be the intent of your question, but forgive if I assume too much), you'd want to choose a newspaper available on "Free Kindle Reading Apps".


How do I maximize window after I've minimize them? I'm a new Mac user and I regularly minimize windows using the Command + M shortcut. Is there a keyboard shortcut to restore these windows?

beside Asmus Solution you can use cmd+tab to find your minimize software's windows after you go on select windows hold option and release all the key.


iPhone headset mic button not working The little button that sits on the microphone of my iPhone headset stopped working.

Normally, pressing the button will pause a song, go to the next song if you double-click it, and go to the previous song if you triple-click it.

Now the button doesn't do any of these things, but the headphones and mic are working fine.

I discovered that the contact was not flush with the top of the iPhone but was a little bit above. When I looked inside the headphone jack with a flashlight it looked somewhat strange at the bottom. I straightened out a paperclip and managed to fish up a small lump of pocket lint that had probably been forming in there for half a year or so. Just wanted to deliver this as a tip for anyone who runs into the same problem, before you send your headphones back to Apple as broken as so many people seem to have done.


Can I delete the .dmg files on my Mac once I install the app? I have recently noticed that my 8-year-old MacBook is slow when loading webpages, and I started going through my files to get rid of old stuff. After a while, I came across a file called "discord.dmg". I think this was the file used to install Discord on my computer, but now I am wondering if I can delete the .dmg without getting rid of the application.

Yes.
You can safely delete .dmg files.
A disk image file (.dmg) is simply an easy, portable structure to transfer an app to you without falling afoul of any internet 'oddities' such as compression, splitting etc. So long as the .dmg arrives intact [& it is self-checking in this regard] then you can be sure it arrived "as sent" & can copy it to your Applications folder. Once you have done that, the .dmg itself is no longer required & can just be deleted.
The only two reasons to keep them would be for:

archival purposes - just in case the original becomes unavailable for any reason & you might one day need to reinstall on a new Mac (if you have it backed up to Time Machine you can delete it sooner of course).
Incomplete installation - some people run apps out of a DMG and don’t install the app drag and drop. In this case, put the dmg in the trash but don’t empty it. Reboot and if you can run the app, it’s safe to empty the trash.


Magsafe adapter not "fitting" in to MacBook Pro I have a Mid-2009 MacBook Pro, and all was well before the weekend. Now when I try to fit in the MagSafe charger to the macbook, I am unable to fit it in correctly (but as you can see, it is charging):

When I tried to see what was in the macbook side of the adapter, I see some small balls:

These are not stationary but are sticking to the magnet there. Tiny little balls like this:

The plug looks like this:

Now, I am worried whether the magsafe power adapter has somehow started "disintegrating" (touch wood) or are these some kind of debris I collected somewhere. All was fine on friday and I travelled with my macbook pro over the weekend. I did not use the charger, neither did I travel to some industrial area to collect metallic debris.

Long story short: should I remove these balls and forget all these, or is it something bigger to worry...

You might want to check your power adapter's plug as to whether the debris stems from there. If the plug is all right, I'd just remove the debris and not worry any more about it.


Is it possible to get the text log for Disk Utility First Aid check? Does/can the standard Disk Utility in OS X (El Capitan) log the "First Aid" disk check results in text file?

Copy paste does not work on this control and to record the whole log I had to take 22 screenshots.

Or maybe there is a CLI counterpart to this check?

The CLI counterpart would be diskutil repairVolume /Volumes/MyPassport.


How to modify existing podcast information? I'm a podcaster and I already submitted a podcast. However, I want to change the "Podcast Website" link under the Links section.

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/insight-for-living-canada/id407284701

How do I do that? Do I login somewhere where I can manage all the podcasts I submitted?

You do this by changing the <link> tag in your podcast's RSS feed. iTunes will automatically pick up the change the next time it scans your feed.

The specifics of how to do this change depending on your podcast host, so if you need help your best bet is to contact their support folks.


Mac Mini Server... Can I wipe it clean and use non-server edition? As the title says. I have a Mac Mini server--I bought it because I liked the lack of a optical drive. I don't really care to use the software, and now having to spend an additional $50 on Lion's "Server" add-on is meh.

Can I wipe the machine clean and install a fresh 10.7, non-server edition?

Yes.  I am currently using a late 2009 Mac mini Server with both Snow Leopard and Lion (non-server editions).


Any DynDNS client for current iOS for usage with nsupdate.info? This is my first question here and my first experience with iOS. As a long-time Windows and Linux user, I have been asked to install a client (updater) for the dynamic DNS service nsupdate.info on a phone with iOS (current version).
I have researched the situation and came across RealDNS and some others, but none of them seems to be intended to work with nsupdate.info.
On Windows, it is the same, but I solved the problem there just by writing a script which performs the updates and which is triggered by the task scheduler on a regular basis.
But unfortunately, I don't have Apple's development tools, and I have no clue whether I could run a script on iOS at all, so I can't develop something myself. Plus, I have no knowledge of how to develop software for iOS (including scripts).
Could somebody help me out there? As a last resort, I could look into the list of providers RealDNS supports, and use one of these services. However, I'd like to know of other options (if any) before I do this.

nsupdate.info should work with any dyndns2-compatible client

You usually need it so your router (or other dyndns2-compatible client) can update a hostname, so you don't need to know or find out your current IP address

You also can do quite a lot of scripting with the Shortcuts app (https://support.apple.com/guide/shortcuts/welcome/ios) which is part of iOS (you may need to download it from the Store in case you removed it in the past). There are actions to call any URL and to process JSON results.


Does Catalina device sync log what it's doing? Before Catalina, iTunes device sync showed a high-level idea of what it was doing to my ipod, ipad, or iphone. Now sync only seems to show a progress circle in Finder. Is there any more information available?

EDIT: Catalina 10.15.4 seems to have added simple progress messages to the Finder sync window, and less informative messages to the Music app. However the answer(s) here may still be useful.

The heavy lifting seems to be handled by AMPDevicesAgent (AMP = Apple Media Player?). It logs some information to the system, which is available via Terminal with the log show and log stream commands.

This log show will show the past hour of activity.

    log show \
        --info \
        --last 1h \
        --signpost \
        --style compact \
        --predicate 'senderImagePath contains[cd] "AMPDevicesAgent"'

This log stream will show activity as it happens.

        log stream \
        --info \
        --signpost \
        --style compact \
        --predicate 'senderImagePath contains[cd] "AMPDevicesAgent"'

I like to wrap these up in bash functions, so autocomplete will see them.

function ampdevicesagent-log-show() {
    log show \
        --info \
        --last 1h \
        --signpost \
        --style compact \
        --predicate 'senderImagePath contains[cd] "AMPDevicesAgent"'
}

function ampdevicesagent-log-stream() {
    log stream \
        --info \
        --signpost \
        --style compact \
        --predicate 'senderImagePath contains[cd] "AMPDevicesAgent"'
}

The output is noisy and ugly, but includes some useful information. For example I can see dataclass Photo, so AMPDevicesAgent is working on my photos.

2019-11-08 10:01:21.112 I  AMPDevicesAgent[8032:4b63e] [com.apple.AMPDevicesAgent:device] airtraffic> sending FileComplete for device id 24E310219F9516D1, asset identifier "04B3983D-75F1-4252-8CEC-FE87D05B1046", dataclass Photo (716), path "<private>"
2019-11-08 10:01:21.118 I  AMPDevicesAgent[8032:4b63e] [com.apple.AMPDevicesAgent:device] stats> totalDiskBytes = 255989469184, freeDiskBytes = 74330591232 (reservedDiskBytes = 460324864)
2019-11-08 10:01:21.969 I  AMPDevicesAgent[8032:4b63e] [com.apple.AMPDevicesAgent:device] airtraffic> sending FileComplete for device id 24E310219F9516D1, asset identifier "64FCE71F-0B7F-48C8-9F6F-E938D61C08EB", dataclass Photo (717), path "<private>"
2019-11-08 10:01:21.990 I  AMPDevicesAgent[8032:4b63e] [com.apple.AMPDevicesAgent:device] stats> totalDiskBytes = 255989469184, freeDiskBytes = 74329260032 (reservedDiskBytes = 460324864)
2019-11-08 10:01:25.199 I  AMPDevicesAgent[8032:4b63e] [com.apple.AMPDevicesAgent:device] airtraffic> sending FileComplete for device id 24E310219F9516D1, asset identifier "CD7C8B0A-85F1-4D16-8777-0F490976D366", dataclass Photo (718), path "<private>"

There's also some potentially useful information about totals:

2019-11-08 10:05:57.930 I  AMPDevicesAgent[8032:1b65c] [com.apple.AMPDevicesAgent:device] totals> totalAudioTracks = 2000, totalAudioBytes = 19275661312 (17.95 GB)
2019-11-08 10:05:57.930 I  AMPDevicesAgent[8032:1b65c] [com.apple.AMPDevicesAgent:device] totals> totalVideoTracks = 44, totalVideoBytes = 9366544384 (8.72 GB)
2019-11-08 10:05:57.930 I  AMPDevicesAgent[8032:1b65c] [com.apple.AMPDevicesAgent:device] totals> totalGames = 0, totalGameBytes = 0 (0.00 GB)
2019-11-08 10:05:57.930 I  AMPDevicesAgent[8032:1b65c] [com.apple.AMPDevicesAgent:device] totals> totalApplications = 49, totalApplicationBytes = 4917116928 (4.58 GB)
2019-11-08 10:05:57.930 I  AMPDevicesAgent[8032:1b65c] [com.apple.AMPDevicesAgent:device] totals> totalPhotos = 656, totalPhotoBytes = 3300793216 (3.07 GB)
2019-11-08 10:05:57.930 I  AMPDevicesAgent[8032:1b65c] [com.apple.AMPDevicesAgent:device] totals> otherDiskBytes = 0 (0.00 GB)

However totalPhotos = 656 doesn't seem to line up with dataclass Photo (718).


Install an older version of MacOS onto an external drive without USB installer? I want to install Mojave onto an external drive, using a Mac that has Catalina as its current OS. The Mac is old enough to run Mojave.

A specific form of this question has been asked before, to which the answer is "create a USB installer disk".

I'm wondering if it might be possible without this workaround. Firstly, it requires the purchase of a USB stick. Catalina now requires just slightly more than 8GB, so I need a 16 GB stick at least. Admittedly, these are cheap and plentiful.

But I already have loads of 8GB sticks and the alternative to buying another bit of hardware is to sacrifice a 500 GB USB drive, which I already have, to become an installer medium.

However, creating an installer disk involves the createinstallmedia command line tool inside the MacOS installer app bundle. There are also several other tools, including: startosinstall, which yields the following info:

Usage: startosinstall

Arguments
--license, prints the user license agreement only.
--agreetolicense, agree to the license you printed with --license.
--rebootdelay, how long to delay the reboot at the end of preparing. This delay is in seconds and has a maximum of 300 (5 minutes).
--pidtosignal, Specify a PID to which to send SIGUSR1 upon completion of the prepare phase. To bypass "rebootdelay" send SIGUSR1 back to startosinstall.
--installpackage, the path of a package (built with productbuild(1)) to install after the OS installation is complete; this option can be specified multiple times.
--eraseinstall, (Requires APFS) Erase all volumes and install to a new one. Optionally specify the name of the new volume with --newvolumename.
--newvolumename, the name of the volume to be created with --eraseinstall.
--preservecontainer, preserves other volumes in your APFS container when using --eraseinstall.
--usage, prints this message.

.

It seems that there is a --volume flag to set the target drive, but it is only available when the OS has SIP disabled.

I tried disabling SIP and running startosinstall --volume <my external>, but the process just sat there, and Console was filled with messages about a binary not being signed correctly.

I suspect further investigation of this aspect of the tool may be required. I'm still hopeful that there's a way of doing this via the command line.

So I thought I'd put this information up here, even if it's just to get a confirmatory "No; duplicate", because the benefits to the community of getting a method would be large.

You don't need a USB stick, you can create a small partition on any existing drive & createinstallmedia to that, then select it with an alt-boot.

One thing you do not seem to be able to do is install a new OS to any other disk whilst there is a fully-bootable OS disk already present, it wants to 'update' the existing OS even if it's exactly the same OS.
You have to remove any current OS disk first, then it will ask you which to install to.

[Source of info - just spent the afternoon messing at this myself.]


How to prevent OSX from allocating as much virtual memory as there is space available on the hard drive? I recently had data loss because the hard drive was completely used up by virtual memory and some programs couldn’t handle zero free space on the hard drive. How can I prevent this from happening (besides always keeping a few GB as a buffer)?

I can propose you one way to do that, although it is not complete.

You can set memory limit per process using launchctl limit (see the man page). However this is per process not system wide.

In real life, few processes are consuming vast amount of memory. Therefore, I would advise you to look at Activity Monitor output and see which are the process consuming the most. Count the ones that are using more than 20% of your RAM. How many such processes do you have? Let's assume n and assume that you have m GB of RAM. How much maximum swap space do you want to use? Let's assume s GB of swap.

I would do the following calculation: (m + s - 1) / n = <max memory per process in GB>

Convert the GB into B: <max memory per process in GB> * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 = <max mem per proc in B>

Now try this limit and see if it works (note, this setting will be lost after a reboot, so it is "safe" to perform):

sudo launchctl limit rss <max mem per proc in B> <max mem per proc in B + 1073741824>

If you are happy with this choice, then you can save them, so they are permanent. Edit the file /etc/launchd.conf and add:

limit rss <max mem per proc in B> <max mem per proc in B + 1073741824>


How do I fix my iPhone 4? I am currently having problems with my iPhone. So it froze last night and went completely black. so I left it for a while, hoping it would un-freeze. then all of a sudden it turned off and I tried to turn it back on and no luck. So, I took the battery out (as the back was already coming off) and put it back in. And the only thing its doing now is the apple is coming up every time I put in on charge. I left it on charge over night and all day today but nothing has happened. What is the reason for this and how can I fix this?

Plug the device onto a PC and try restoring it with iTunes. If that doesn't work I suggest taking it to an offical Apple(the damaged back and the battery coming off most probably is causing issues).


Homebrew - I cannot install from source. Command clang requires CLT I have installed XCode 12 from my MBP. Then I cleaned old Command Line Tools. After that I downloaded CLT 12 from Apple website and installed it fine.
Now The issue is I cannot build anything from source with brew. It keeps throwing at me the dialog below. I have tried
sudo xcode-select -r - No success
sudo xcode-select --install I get error message (rightfully so) xcode-select: error: command line tools are already installed, use "Software Update" to install updates
I have tried anything I could but I still get the same dialog.
The commands:
sudo xcode-select -pshows /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer
which clang shows /usr/bin/clang
and brew config
HOMEBREW_VERSION: 2.5.2
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: cd4a3c0588abb82d916bc8558f4c157e951d449d
Last commit: 3 days ago
Core tap ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core
Core tap HEAD: 63a79e6180f8015f815cd99f148a2cc9c923032f
Core tap last commit: 26 minutes ago
Core tap branch: master
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /usr/local
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 8
Homebrew Ruby: 2.6.3 => /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.6/usr/bin/ruby
CPU: octa-core 64-bit haswell
Clang: 12.0 build 1200
Git: 2.24.3 => /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/git
Curl: 7.64.1 => /usr/bin/curl
Java: 14.0.1
macOS: 11.0-x86_64
CLT: 12.0.0.0.1.1599194153
Xcode: 12.0

Sample Command for testing the issue is brew install wxmac --HEAD and the dialog I get is this

I have run out of ideas and would appreciate any help!

I had kept my Copy of Xcode 12 Beta 5 and did extract and dragged to Applications folder. Then I ran sudo xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode-beta.app/Contents/Developer and all is well.
Seems like Xcode 12 GM is not working well with macOS 11.0 Beta 7


Why does location service turn itself off? I have an iOS application that has been marked as needing background service (Location Updates). When the app is in the foreground, I see the location arrow in the top status bar. However if I double-click the home button to send my app to background, the location service turns itself off and my app no longer receives location updates.

The same happens with Google Maps and Apple Maps apps.

I am running iOS 7 on iPhone 4S.

How do I ensure that my app receives location updates when running in the background?

Not sure if this is new to iOS7 but the "Background App Refresh" setting under

Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh

needs to be on for the specific application to receive background location updates.

Hope this helps.


Is there a way to have AppleScript output displayed in the menubar? Before reading further:
I know about butler and similar programs.  I am looking for a BUILT-IN way to do this without a third party app.

Anyway, I wrote an AppleScript that runs a shell command.  I want to display that output in the menubar at the top... without Butler how can I do this?

As a generality, without a third party program, such as Growl, there is no built in way to do this.

However, you could write a script or other program such as one I found here that provides the menulet service for you.  I'm sure that Growl integration would be much easier to accomplish.


Where is the Agenda view for Calendar in iOS 7? I can't find the agenda for the new iOS 7 calendar.  Has it been removed?  If not, how can I view it?

The iOS 7 agenda hasn't been removed, but it's not as intuitively easy to find.

To see your agenda:

In the month view, tap on any date to bring it to hourly view, then tap the icon (bullets with lines next to the search icon) this will allow you to toggle back and forth between hourly and agenda list view.


Partition Type: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF no backup trying to delete a disk partition, the disks utility has given an error and now the Macintosh HD volume was not in APFS.

But of course, being different, does not match anything with mine. It also seemed to me that the information would not be lost, since it is still in the partition this is badly done

I attach a photo.

I fixit this problem following this guide

OS volume shows as type 'FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF'

Thx all!


Any way to use ssh to recover a Mac from spinning beach ball of death On Linux, I can get to a ssh or Ctrl-Alt-F1 console and type in a command to restart the window manager.

Is there any equivalent for Mac Mountain Lion?

I tried ssh'ing to a frozen Mac, and I could kill individual processes, but I could not unstuck the machine. Running the command sudo reboot killed my ssh ability, but did not restart the machine.

To reply to your question: no there isn't such a function accessible
at the window manager level.
It is a good suggestion to forward to Apple MacOS X feedback

Is your Mac still up?

Try:

ping IP_of_my_mac

Can you access it with ssh?

Can you provide us a copy of the output of a:

top -o cpu

and:

tail -20 /var/log/system.log

If the problem appears once more, could you try to kill the loginwindow
like this:
    connect on your mad Mac with ssh

/usr/bin/sudo /bin/kill `ps ax | grep '[/]loginwindow' | awk '{print $1}'`

This uggly command:

ps ax | grep '[/]loginwindow' | awk '{print $1}'

is a trick to give you the process ID of the loginwindow process with no
risk to kill the wrong guy.
I'm not sure this will be enough to force a total free and reset of the GPU.
Please tell me if this doesn't work so I could remove a useless and dangerous workaround.


New MacBook Pro Retina Hard Drive Type I'm looking to buy a 15" Retina MacBook Pro, I'm looking at the website Models and they seem to be pretty inflexible (for instance the 2.3 GHz model you are locked into a 256 GB HD).

So I know this is a little preemptive, but I want to know how the hard drive is configured. For instance, on my current MacBook Pro I swapped out the standard hard drive for a 480 GB SSD. If the new thinner model has a standard SSD I will buy the 2.3 GHz model and add larger hard drive. My worry is it will use a proprietary hard drive like those found in the Air in which case I would be forced to buy the 2.6 GHz model just to get the larger storage I suppose.

Does anyone have any info on this?

The flash modules and controller of the SSD are blades (think naked SSD). They are not up to 3rd party configuration (at this time), but according to bmike, they are not soldered onto the main board and are actually discrete components.

However, there is no information as to what kind of proprietary (if any) configuration the blades come in, or whether they require an additional proprietary onboard controller (this may be likely given Apple's tendency to create speciality hardware for their line-up). So it most likely isn't the case that one could just crack open an existing SSD and use the blades within. A manufacturer would have to specifically design a unit for the new notebook. This isn't unlikely, but price will be the determining factor as it will be a speciality component.

It is also not clear at this time if Apple will make the components upgradeable, which is also a distinct possibility given how quickly SSDs are saturating the market place.

At best, it's a tentative "maybe."

You can read more about the new machine here: http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/design/


Is there a cheap and easy means to evaluate iPhone chargers and cables? Is there an app for iPhone and iPad that will indicate charge voltage and current?  Is this information available to the user already by some means I am not aware of?  And without jailbreaking or some other hack?
The problem is that there's a number of third party Lightning cables and USB chargers that may not do exactly what they claim on the box and it would be great to be able to verify the claims.  Or there's the possibility that the box is long gone and there's a need to identify the capability of a cable or charger quickly.  It would be nice to get some idea on what a cable or charger can do without setting up some lengthy and involved timing of how long it takes to do a recharge.  It would also be nice to get some voltage and current data without some inline USB ammeter and voltmeter, as such meters can be easily misplaced when they are needed while an iPhone is always in my reach.
I found I can get some limited information about cables and chargers with my MacBook.  I can connect a cable between my iPhone and MacBook and see what System Information reports as voltage and current being supplied to the iPhone.  Because every USB port on an Apple computer is limited to 5 volts at 3 amps there's only three outcomes it tests.  Plug in cable and System Information shows data and power connection, this means cable has power and data connection.  Plug in cable, System Information shows nothing as if the cable is not connected, but iPhone is charging, means the cable has a power connection but no data connection.  Plug in cable, System Information shows nothing, and iPhone is not charging, means the cable is just broken.  I guess there is a fourth option.  Plug in cable and it starts a fire, then everybody dies, and people are sad.
I can do something similar with USB power bricks.  I can use a known good USB-C cable and plug USB power bricks into my MacBook and see what System Information reports about it.  Like with the cable test this gives little more than a pass/fail.  A MacBook doesn't "speak" USB-BC and so any such USB power brick will just show as providing 5 watts even if it is capable of more.  With USB-PD power supplies it will show the power supplied but not the voltage.  In many cases the power supplied indicates the voltage supplied.  12 watts or less means 5 volts.  More than 45 watts means 20 volts.  Other than that there can be some ambiguity on what the power supply is doing.
Searching the internet for an iPhone app that does what I'm looking for has proven difficult, perhaps as I don't know the right search terms.  That is assuming an app that provides the functions I'm looking for exists.
An app for macOS, or some other OS for a laptop with USB-C, might be helpful.  Such an app will not be much help in identifying USB-BC power supplies and cables but if there is something that can show what a USB-PD power supply is saying can be helpful.  The goal is to identify cables and power supplies in order to see how they will act with iPhones and other Apple devices with Lightning ports.  Something that can tell me what a USB-PD power supply can do is at least halfway to my goal.

The only thing I have found that consistently works is a USB-C power meter, such as this one from Satechi:
https://satechi.net/products/usb-c-power-meter?variant=31043692041
I have tested many combinations of chargers, adapters, etc. and this will give the correct information. I found that some combinations of chargers and adapters work differently with for example a MacBook Pro and an iPad Pro - so getting the reading off a MacBook Pro might not reflect what actually happens with an iPad for example. This has happened to me even though the iPad Pro on paper should support that same voltage/ampere - and probably does - but for some reason having an adapter in between the charger and the iPad Pro makes for a different scenario.


Apple software update was stuck at downloading now its stuck at cancelling I got a notification to update the itunes v12.2.1.Initially had lots of download going on so the download was slow.Later after completing the  windows downloads the itunes update is simpply stuck at one place it doesn't resume the download.

When I start another download it starts downloading very fast but when I see the same for itunes the update doesn't resume it is stuck at 51.70MB

A few while later as it was still stuck on that 51.70 I clicked the Stop but now even the cancelling is stuck.

Although I can simply open the task manager and closed it but why exactly did the software update didn't resume when it had the free bandwidth for updating

For my situation, none of these solutions worked for Windows 10. I resolved it by going to the iTunes site, download and run the full iTunes install, rather than just the update.


AppleScript to Show Album in Library? I'm trying to create a macro to manipulate some music (iTunes) tracks. One thing that I see is available without a menu/keyboard shortcut is the Show Album in Library command.

Does anyone know how to emulate this function (available only via mouse click) with AppleScript?

Hmm - not sure if this answers the spirit of the question. I'll leave it for now, trash it if it becomes clear it isn't relevant.

You can do it using the regular 'Application/Menu Title' shortcut structure - it doesn't have to be in a top menu for the system to be able to find it correctly.

System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts.
Click the + button.
Select iTunes in the drop-menu
Type the exact menu name - "Show Album in Library"
Add a hot-key.
Click Add.

 It's already showing in the window because I'd already added it to test, before deciding to do the snapshot


between iOS 6.1.4 and iOS 8.2, what is the difference and which one is better? I am using an iPhone 5 with the iOS 6.1.4 and usually it will get notifications to update the iOS. What are major differences between these two and WHAT ARE BENEFITS OF RETAINING THE 6.1.4 AND THE BENEFITS OF UPDATING TO 8.2? My dad is using the same phone as me however, he is experiencing battery shutdowns quite often and he using iOS 8.2 I would like to know whether retaining my iOS without updating is good? or is it better for me to update to 8.2? I would like to listen to good experience and knowledge before I proceed further.

In short, it is impossible to run most modern applications under iOS 6. So, yes, updating to iOS 8 is long overdue.


OS X menu bar missing after application crash The entire menu bar (the white one, that holds the Apple menu, etc) has vanished on my iMac. In this instance, I think it went away when VLC crashed, but it's happened in other situations as well.

Any open windows still respond, but I can't right-click on the desktop or launch anything from the dock.  The dock is still there, and I can click on icons to restore minimized windows, but clicking on something that isn't running, won't run that program.  System-level shortcuts like Command ⌘-Tab and Control ⌃-F2 don't do anything, but I can still hit the Exposé key F3.

If I reboot, everything is fine, but of course it can happen again when something goes wrong.  If this were a Linux box, I'd restart the X server.  If it were a Windows machine, it would be like explorer.exe crashed, and I'd have to kill and restart that.  Is there any analogous fix that doesn't involve waiting for the whole machine to reboot?

You might try force quitting Dock with killall Dock. It should be reopened automatically by launchd. The Dock process seems to be responsible for many general UI features like Mission Control and the application switcher.

You can usually just log out and back in instead of restarting the OS. sudo killall loginwindow would be even faster than that, but it only seems to quit some processes.


FN key to program X keys I have a problem. I have a MacBook Pro and a Xkeys 80. Xkeys basically records shortcut keys like a macro. But it is not sensing the push of the FN key. I use a program called controller mate to program the Xkeys and they are of no real help on the issue. I was wondering if anyone has any ideas how to go about putting the FN key on a different key or the unicode so that I can get the Xkeys to grab it as a key press. I know this sounds weird and I understand in my head what I am saying just not how to describe it. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

It probably won't help, but you could try using a private.xml like this with KeyRemap4MacBook:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>test</name>
    <identifier>test</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F1, KeyCode::FN</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

See the source for the key code values and predefined settings.


Is there an Automator action to create Keynote presentation from text file? I need to import a text file (consisting of subtitles) into a Keynote presentation. I need to turn each subtitle into a single slide, interspersed with blank (black) slides. I'd like to create an Automator action in order to do this.

I think the way to do this is to filter paragraphs ending in two line breaks, but I don't know how to do it.

Importing text into multiple Keynote slides directly

I finally found out how you can import text paragraphs directly into multiple Keynote slides. Here's a quick proof of concept that works with iWork '08 Keynote at least:

Open Keynote, select Black template or use your own subtitling template (the title component is what will hold the text on each slide)
Select View > Outline to show the presentation outline on the left
Click on the small icon of the first screen in the outline list
Paste in text -- each paragraph will go into the title of a new slide

Note that the selected slide's title will be replaced with the first pasted paragraph
All formatting (e.g. italics) seem to be lost at this stage, unfortunately

Select all slides in the outline list (cmd+A)
Select Format > Reapply master to slide to fix the font and text color of pasted text to the ones defined in the template

You can also use Edit > Paste and match style when pasting in text to avoid the last steps of fixing the font and color.

So Keynote does have some basic import text into multiple slides functionality.

To preserve the formatting (italics etc) you can still go the paste into Powerpoint, save and open PPT into Keynote route.

Original response: Subtitling with slideware works OK

I have done movie subtitling before with Powerpoint. Something similar probably will work with Keynote or you can use Powerpoint and import that into Keynote for better visual quality.

By experimenting I found out that importing RTF files into Powerpoint mapped each paragraph to one slide. All italics and formatting was preserved, too.

Thus I made a RTF files out of the subtitle text documents (using some editor that allowed finding and replacing paragraph marks etc) and imported the RTF into Powerpoint that had a template with just a few white lines of text at the bottom of the screen.

Before anyone asks: This can be really useful for movies that are only shown once or twice at a festival: Show the text somewhere using a video projector and someone times the subtitle slides by hand. Cheap and works well.

Other notes:

I found that adding the blank slide between each subtitle text slide really helped (i.e. two paragraph marks between subtitles):

To advance to the next text, quickly press -> -> producing a slight flicker that made people notice the text change.
Hide text for a while? -> ... wait and -> to show the next text item. Very flexible.

If you show the text over the movie image, you want to make a mask (think cardboard and duct tape ;-) for the video projector so that the edges of the video projector display area will be blurred -- otherwise they will be visible.
I would guess that some work by hand will be necessary to make the best results, as the source material is never uniform enough to automate completely.

Mac note: If you want to automate things that are not covered by Automator workflows, you can automate almost anything on a Mac with QuicKeys or other macro tools, even UNIX shell scripts or perl and the "osascript" command to integrate with AppleScript and GUI Applications...

Please let us know what solution you find that works with Keynote. Thanks.

Microsoft Office HOWTO (Added later)

I just tried this again with Mac Office 2004's Word and Powerpoint. Seemed to work OK still. Probably works with all Office versions.

What I did was:

Wrote some paragraphs of text in Word.
Saved the document as RTF (File > Save as > Format: RTF)
In Powerpoint, selected File > Open > the RTF text file. Sorry, earlier I remembered that I used some import command, it was open instead.
Powerpoint asked me if I wanted to open it with Powerpoint or Word, chose Powerpoint
The text was placed on multiple slides, one paragraph on each slide in as the slide title
Save in Powerpoint and open the PPT file in Keynote, should import OK
If you use suitable format for the slide(s) or suitable slide masters (white bold text on black and positioning) it should be good to go...

I think this process is pretty simple and could be automated with e.g. QuicKeys or AppleScript.


Is there an application to emulate I'm in a different location? I'm trying to test an iPhone application and I need to simulate I'm in a different location. I was wondering if there is an application out there in the market that let's me write some longitude and latitude so my app can read that location instead of the actual GPS in the phone.

I don't have access to the code or an iPhone emulator, so I need to test this from the device itself.

Any possible way to do this?

There's no way to do this in the App Store. Unfortunately, you'll need to use Xcode and the iPhone Simulator to do this. This Stack Overflow answer describes how to do this.

Edit: Yes, it is possible using a Cydia program, called LocationHolic.


How to completely remove homebrew? I am seeking for the equivalent of

rvm implode

In the Ruby rvm world rvm implode completely uninstalls everything ruby related installed via rvm, including rvm too.

Is there anything similar for homebrew? Or do I have to remove each package, then remove /usr/local/Cellar and look around for any other remains that have not been dealt with automatically?

Use this script to uninstall homebrew completely. It's safer to run each command separately, especially the cd `brew --prefix` to check if it suceeds.
From the homebrew FAQ:

How do I uninstall Homebrew?
If you installed to /usr/local then you can use the script in this gist to uninstall — it will only remove Homebrew and the stuff Homebrew installed leaving anything else in /usr/local alone.
Provided you haven’t put anything else in Homebrew’s prefix (brew --prefix), you can generally just rm -rf that directory. This is because Homebrew won’t touch files outside its prefix.


Windows Network Path in Mac I am a newbie at this and I have some issues with a certain network address. The format, in Windows was \folder\folder\folder\file.ext . My Question is, how can I access it using my macbook? Thank you for help

In Windows a UNC (network path) looks like this:

\\SERVER\share\path\more_path\file.ext

The same network path would look like this on the Mac:

smb://SERVER/share/path/more_path/file.ext


Trouble setting Sublime Text as default editor for entering Git commit message I am learning git command-line. I wish to set Sublime Text as the default editor for entering commit message, when I run the git commit command from Terminal.

But when trying to do so, I am running into the following error:

  error: There was a problem with the editor ''/Applications/Sublime Text 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl' -n -w'.
  Please supply the message using either -m or -F option.

What could be going wrong? How do I resolve the error message, and set things such that Sublime Text opens automatically for entering commit message when running git commit command from Terminal.

Start by making sure you have Sublime Text for macOS installed on your computer. You can install it using either of the following:

Download it from the official website from the download page.
If you use Homebrew, you can install it via Homebrew Cask by running the following command-line in Terminal.app in macOS:

brew cask install sublime-text

Once you have the app installed, it should be available under /Applications directory on your Mac. (Assuming that in case 1, you have copied the Sublime Text.app bundle into the /Applications folder as instructed).

Once installed, this should be the path of the Sublime Text.app bundle and the editors executable file respectively:

App bundle: /Applications/Sublime Text.app
Executable: /Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/MacOS/Sublime Text

Now, we'll use the executable's path above to set it as the editor for git command to use for writing commit message. Run the following command to do so:

git config --global core.editor "/Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/MacOS/Sublime\ Text"

Notice how we have:

Specified the path for the executable and not the app bundle.
Included the path into double-quotes
Backslash-escaped the space characters present in the path.

Once done you'd be set. Now make sure that the editor is not running, go to the Terminal, change to the directory containing your repository, stage some changes, and run the commit command. Sublime Text should be opened for you to enter the commit message. Write your commit message, save the file (you can use keyboard shortcut Command + S), and quit the editor. Your commit should get recorded.

Now that was about how to configure and use the desired editor. Whether it's a recommended approach or not is a matter of personal preference. Most folks prefer using a command-line editor which makes the overall workflow much simpler as everything gets done then and there without leaving the Terminal.

You may want to refer to this excellent post to learn in detail:

Using TextEdit as your git editor

If you have installed Sublime Text in an alternate location (such as in ~/Applications, i.e. a folder in your Home directory), you'd have to change to use the appropriate path.


How could I message a dumb phone and an iPad at the same time I have an iPhone and my friend has a regular old dumb phone and an iPad.  At school, she has no cell service, but she does have wifi on her iPad.  Everywhere else she has her phone, but doesn't carry her iPad, so I have no idea which device to message.

Is there an app or service I could use that would message both at once and keep the conversation intact on all of our devices?

You can send a text message to multiple recipients at once with the built-in Messages app. Just send a message to both her cellphone's number and her iPad's email address.


Force removing items from Trash I deleted a user folder from Macintosh HD/Users that was inactive. It is now in the Trash and when I attempt to empty trash or delete immediately I am unable.

I used Terminal to navigate to:

cd ~/.Trash

then attempted the following three options:

rm -R name_of_folder
rm -rf name_of_folder
sudo rm -rf name_of_folder

None of these worked. Getting errors such as "not an empty directory" or "file is in use."

When I show invisible files in Finder using Shift + Command + . I can see that the user folder I deleted has an invisible "Library" folder inside with various subfolders inside of that.

I do not believe any of these files or folders are being used by the system as they are currently in the trash and no longer in the "Users" folder on my Macintosh HD.

How do I remove these files?

(I am running macOS Catalina public beta 8)

Welcome to Ask Different. This is something I encounter a lot. You should try these tricks from the finder. You can open the trash and ctrl-click the file you want to delete and select delete immediately. You can also try holdind down the option key while emptying trash.  These methods were recommended by this reference, I don't know the corresponding terminal command if there is one.


How do I temporarily relocate my Time Machine backup files I have a 1TB WD My Passport external hard drive that I've been using for Time Machine backups. I recently had an issue with it where I can't save to it anymore because it was corrupted. The way to fix it is to reformat the drive completely so I'm trying to copy everything on the drive over to my cloud (BitCasa or Dropbox), reformat the drive and then move everything back.

I have my Music folder on the hard drive and I've been able to move that successfully. When I try to move the Time Machine backups it says:

The volume is the wrong format for a backup.

I know that hard drives have to be 'formatted' to the Mac in order to be used for Time Machine backups but is there a way to just move the backup files around so I can get them off the hard drive. Thanks for your help!

If your drive is corrupted in any way you probably don't want to use it for backup purposes any more, unless the data is not of great value to you.

Apple does not allow an easy transfer from drive to drive regarding backups. I think this is due to the way TimeMachine works (As stated in this apple discussion thread)

Now how to do it anyways ? I would simply use command line power. If you're the admin of the computer, you can simply open Terminal and do something along this:

sudo -s
rsync -avhW --progress < Drag and drop external Hard Drive here >< Drag and Drop DropBox folder here >

or

mv < Drag and Drop backup folder here >< Drag and Drop DropBox folder here, ending with a "/">

sudo -s puts you in the super-admin position, so you have full access to the system

rsync will sync the content and you can stop and continue at any time.
mv will move the whole thing at once.

You should be able to drag and drop any folder within the backup to any folder on you internal/other external drive. Only the "Machine.backup" folder is protected.