Chrome and Safari keeps hanging after upgrading to macOS High Sierra Since upgrading to High Sierra, both Chrome and Safari have been hanging randomly following startup. The rainbow pinwheel would appear every few seconds and I'd have to force quit/re-open those applications. However, the same problem keeps recurring no matter how many times I restart.

The only potential solution that I've come across is from https://setapp.com/how-to/fix-macos-high-sierra-problems:

  GETTING THE RAINBOW WHEEL EVERY FEW SECONDS AFTER UPGRADE

  Check console.app and if you’re getting errors from sandboxd and hidd
  (IOKit), your problem is a third party software. It’s probably because
  it wasn’t supported by the new APFS file system. It tries to
  repeatedly update causing your Mac laptop to be stuck in an endless
  loop. To fix this issue, just find and remove this app and everything
  will be fine.

Following these instructions I found that there was a reoccurring error with hidd, however, I am unable to make sense of the message. Could someone kindly explain what it means?

Otherwise, has anyone had a similar issue with Chrome/Safari? Would greatly appreciate any suggestions on how to fix it. Thanks!

Frustrating to say the least.  try this: http://scaleup.us/2017/11/09/high-sierra-slow-chromefirefox-issues/

It appears to be an issue with the WindowServer running when running your display in scaled mode.  After setting the resolution for my displays to "Default for display" chrome and firefox issues disappeared.
Granted, the resolution is shit, waste of my 4k displays but, I'll take that over the freezing nonsense.


Delete downloaded files in Firefox and Safari I have a Mac Pro with Firefox and Safari as browsers.
I have tried several methods to delete individual downloaded files while in both browsers. How can I delete downloaded files?

It depends where you are saving the downloaded files. By default, they are saved in ~/Downloads (the Downloads folder in your home folder). This folder is a stack on your Dock (unless you've removed it) and files can be deleted from there.


Control Mac Remotely From Multiple Different Networks using only Apple Software My girlfriend often needs assistance with her Mac, and I am not always around to help her. We are most often using our home WPA2 Personal Wi-Fi, but oftentimes one or both of us are connected to our college's WPA2 Enterprise Wi-Fi.

What is the best way to completely control her Mac from a different network? I have tried LogMeIn but found it rather bloated and full of features I never used.

I am also a bit of an Apple software nut, and accomplishing this task using only Apple software is preferred. Optimally, I would like to be able to simply hit Command + K and connect to a VNC server, not having to install anything, but I'm not exactly well-versed in that process; is it even possible?

In order to control another Mac you'll need to go to 'Apple Menu -> System Preferences...' on the Mac you want to control and enable 'Remote Management'.

In the 'Allow access for' section of 'Remote Mangement' you can leave the default selection of 'All Users', which will allow any account on the controlled Mac to be used to login for remote management or you can select 'Only these users' and define specific accounts that can be used.

Click 'Options...' to define what remote management actions are allowed. You'll probably only need to select 'Observe' and 'Control'.

If you're both on the same network then you can do a Command + K from the controller Mac and type vnc://mygirlfriendsmac or vnc://ipaddress to connect to the Mac you want to control.

Regarding the issue with controlling a Mac on a different network, this is where things can get complicated since there are a lot of variables depending on what network the Mac you want to control is on. This is one possible solution:

First, you'll need to know if port 5900 is open on the network the Mac to be controlled is on. A lot of firewalls block this port. (You can do a VNC tunnel on port 80, but that's probably beyond the scope of this question.)

If port 5900 is open then you'll need to know the publicly accessible IP address of the Mac to be controlled. One way to do this is to use http://DynDNS.com.

This is how DynDNS works:

You can signup for a free account that allows you to create a DNS entry that you define (ie- mygirlfriendsmac.dyndns-ip.com). You'll then need to install the DynDNS app on the Mac you want to control. This app will send the public IP address to DynDNS every few minutes so that you'll be able to do a Command-K on your Mac and connect to the DNS entry you defined (mygirlfriendsmac.dyndns-ip.com) and you can be assured it will be mapped to the current IP address of the Mac you want to control.


Booting into single user mode by default I want to force myself to use the command line interface of OS X. How can I make my Macbook Air boot into single user mode by default?

Open Terminal.app and enter:

sudo nvram boot-args="-s"

In the future your Mac will always boot to single user mode until you remove (sudo nvram -d boot-args or sudo nvram boot-args="") or replace the boot-args.

Other boot-args directly modifying the boot mode:

sudo nvram boot-args="-v": verbose
sudo nvram boot-args="-x": safe mode


Which sides of an iPad does Apple Pencil 2 attach to? I have tried to deduce this from comparing product images online, but did not yet find a definitive answer to this:

Will the Apple Pencil 2 magnetically attach to (and charge at)

only the portrait-mode, right-hand side (where the volume buttons are located),
both of the "long" sides, or
also the "short" sides of an iPad?

Furthermore, is it correct that the orientation of the pencil when attached (to whatever sides support it) does not matter for charging?

Source:

The Pencil can be attached to the right side of the iPad Pro 11' or 12.9 (3rd gen).  Because there's no common left or right side, due to the lack of a Home button, either side will work.

The Pencil will magnetically attach to the center-right side of either long edge.  It will only attach to the iPad so that it lays alongside the iPad directly, not with part of it sticking past the iPad Pro edge (as in the picture, below).

*Update: Updated, based on comments, to indicate that Pencil charging is on the right-side only.


Retina dsiplay support on Intellj Idea for Java /JavaScript development I have seen this question on retina display issues while working with Eclipse on Macbook . I have a latest personal Intellij Idea License and would like to know your views of retina display support for Intellij Idea 12? I am planning to buy an 11 inch Macbook Air and main purpose is normal net surfing + Java development on Intellij Idea . Are there any gotchas that I should take into consideration before buying?

P.S: I am not an Apple user and hence would like to make sure that I get inputs from experienced people before I make this investment.

IntelliJ Idea 12 is a perfectly well behaved 64bit retina enabled application on Mountain Lion.

I use IntelliJ, day in, day out on Windows PCs for Enterprise Java Dev, because it's the best there is. IMHO On the Mac it's even better.


Hard drive is failing, iMac is freezing? So this is my third hard drive that I installed on my intel Mac OS X desktop (made in 2007), and I installed Western Digital Black Caviar (which is supposed to last 3 yrs, I believe). But the hard drive is already failing: I hear tapping noises, occasionally, the hard drive clicks just once, and there's been some freezing lately (for example, when waking up my Mac from sleep mode, it freezes on black screen and finally turns on after 15 seconds). Sometimes, Safari freezes, sometimes, I get a scrambled screen with Safari open, etc. Do you have any idea why this is all happening? This Western Digital drive was installed barely two weeks ago, and now it's failing? Maybe the hard drive is not the problem?

Failing hard drives tend to cause freezing on your computer, as it takes longer for your Mac to read system files.  If you think your HD is failing (as it sounds), it should still be under warranty, so you should be able to get it replaced.  You can check your drive status in Disk Utility: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=DiskUtility/10.5/en/duh1896.html but this check is not always 100% accurate.


How to edit the Finder context menu when no file or folder is clicked I want to create shortcuts like "Copy path of current folder" and "Open terminal in current folder" in the screenshotted context menu. I know how achieve this with Services and Automator but only for when a file or folder is right-clicked. How do I do it when a blank area is right-clicked?

You asked, "How do I do it when a blank area is right-clicked?", well sans the content of the default context menu, I believe something has to be selected to be acted upon otherwise you'll always just get the default context menu. That said though, you could create an Automator Service that receives no input in Finder and assign it a keyboard shortcut. Then using AppleScript, you would code it to do what you want based on the target property of the front window of Finder.

The following two example AppleScript code segments can be used in a Run AppleScript action in an Automator Service to which a keyboard shortcut can be assigned or as an AppleScript Application created in Script Editor and the app dragged and dropped onto the Toolbar in Finder.

This example copies to the clipboard the POSIX path of the current folder of the front Finder window:

try
    tell application "Finder"
        set the clipboard to text items 1 thru -2 of POSIX path of (target of front window as string) as string
    end tell
end try

This example opens Terminal to the current folder of the front Finder window:

try
    tell application "Finder"
        set theTargetPath to text items 1 thru -2 of POSIX path of (target of front window as string) as string
    end tell
    tell application "Terminal"
        do script "pushd " & theTargetPath & "; clear"
        activate
    end tell
end try

That said though, the only other thing I can think of would be to use Xcode and create a Service or App Extension to do what you're asking, if it's even doable.

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and, sans the try statement as an error handler, does not include any other error handling as may be appropriate/needed/wanted, the onus is upon the user to add any appropriate error handling for any example code presented.


Finder freezes when showing images quicklook preview On OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 (14F27), when I want to see the preview of an image (JPG or PNG, but I suppose it will be the same with other formats) the wait spinner appears and the Finder becomes freezed, I have to relaunch it via "Force Quit Applications".

I already tried these things:

Delete all the plist related with Finder and Quicklook I've found inside ~/Library/Preferences.
On terminal qlmanage -r and qlmanage -r cache, but in both cases I had to ^C to abort because after half an hour nothing happened.
Hard disk permissions repair.
A general clean using CleanMyMac 3.

I don't know what more could I do besides reinstalling :( Do you know what could be the problem?

Thank you so much.

UPDATE

I tried the @Tetsujin solution but stills the same. Anyway, I'm seeing this in the system console.

I would remove all your Quicklook plugins, then return them half at a time to eliminate the culprit.

They can be in 3 different places, /Library/Quicklook/ /System/Library/Quicklook/ & ~/Library/Quicklook/

The fastest way to eliminate is by halves.
Remove half [remember where they came from]
Test.
If fixed, remove that [clean] half & replace with half of the rest [the currently suspected 'dirty' half].
If not fixed, remove half of your half - to new folders.
This way you  always know which is your 'clean' & 'dirty' half each time.
Test.
Repeat until you have found the culprit.

If the culprit is an Apple plugin, trash it & re-apply the current combo updater for your OS - 10.10.5 at https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1832?


Move external HD to a new drive, but have Time Machine think it's the same? I have two external drives, one for data and one for Time Machine backups. Time Machine backs up both my internal HD and my external HD. My external HD is dying, so I bought a new one and plan to migrate the data over.

Is it possible to somehow move the data to the new HD and still have Time Machine think that the new HD is the old one, since the data is the same? I usually just use Finder to move files from the old HD to new one (and then remove the old HD and rename the new one to use the same name), but from what I understand that wouldn't copy over the Time Machine data, however.

Instead of using the finder to copy your files - use a program like 'carbon copy cloner' or 'super duper'.

This will get you the closest to the two drives being exactly the same.

However, I should warn you that when I did this myself, I could not get Time Machine to treat the new drive as if it were the old drive. It insisted on keeping a backup of it as if it were a new drive. (however, in my case this was the OS internal drive and not an external data drive)

In the end I decided that it was OK that Time Machine didn't know it was the same drive, as I now had two copies of the data (before time machine even backed up) from the original flaky drive, and the new drive.

I just had time machine back up the drive as if it were brand new. I haven't had any regrets about it.

Hope this helps.


How can I get my iPad to automatically connect to my iPhone's hotspot? I have a Wi-Fi iPad. Every time I turn it on, I want it to automatically connect to my phone’s Internet.

Right now what I have to do is go into settings, then Wi-Fi, then select my phone. Is there a way to automatically have it connect?

To get that feature, you need to "Set up Instant Hotspot" which is part of Apple's Continuity feature.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht204681#hotspot

  Use Instant Hotspot with any Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch that
  meets the Continuity system requirements. It works when your
  devices are near each other and set up as follows:

  Your iPhone or iPad (Wi-Fi + Cellular) has an activated carrier plan    providing Personal Hotspot service.
  Each device is signed in to iCloud with the same Apple ID.
  Each device has Bluetooth turned on.
  Each device has Wi-Fi turned on.


How do I configure my browsers not to save passwords for specific websites? There are certain web sites whose passwords I don't want saved, for security reasons. I want to type them in manually whenever needed.

How do I configure Safari, Chrome and Firefox on Mavericks to not save passwords for these web sites, and not to ask me?

I don't want my browsers to ask me whether to remember the password for these web sites, because I can (and have) selected Yes without thinking, say when I'm in a hurry.

Since you have multiple questions here, I would attempt to answer one of them:

In case of Firefox:

Open the permissions manager

in the address bar type following about:permissions and hit enter

In the new window select the web site to work on and choose the settings.

To further customize a specific web site (fine tune) click on the small Icon in front of that website address. In the new pop up window you can highly customize what that web site can and can not do.


Into Finder, when clicking on a color tag, loading unfinishing and finally no folders displayed as expected I have a bad experience with color tag into Finder. Indeed, when I click on red color tag, I expect the displaying immediately of the directories that I have associated to this red color tag (2 directories actually).
Here below an example of the issue : the french word "Chargement" means "Loading".

As you can see, I am waiting for this loading and once this message has disappeared, nothing else appears, none of the directories associated to the color tag red.
If someone could explain me the origin of this issue and how to solve it, this would be fine to tell it.

I had this exact issue recently and these steps solved it for me.
First try to rebuild the spotlight database:

Open System Preferences and select Spotlight
Select Privacy
Drag your HDD icon from the desktop to this pane
Wait a second and then remove it.

This should rebuild the spotlight database on that drive.
If that fails you can do it manually using the command line in Terminal.
This command will do a system wide Spotlight reindex:
sudo mdutil -E /
This is a more extensive rebuild as it removes a possibly corrupt index database:

mdutil -i off /
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V200
mdutil -i on /
mdutil -E /

There are many websites and forums that explain how to do this.
https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/rebuild-spotlight-search-index-on-mac/


Search file system for a similar image Can anybody recommend a macOS application to search for images similar to a single candidate?

I can find plenty of duplicate finders which search folders for duplicate or nearly duplicate images, but I can’t find one which searches a folder for images matching a particular one.

There is a product called Deep that allows you to search by color pallette.

  Deep calculates the range of colors used in each of your images by analyzing the pixels and calculating the most popular colors. This is what makes the palettes in Deep powerful, you can find images that have similar colors, which is great when you are looking for the perfect picture to go on your web site. In fact, just drag any image on to Deep and it will find and rank all the images on your computer that are similar.

There is even a YouTube video demoing its usage so you can get an idea of how it works prior to downloading, installing, and purchasing.


Snow Leopard Server in Fusion VM: installation keeps failing I’m trying to install Snow Leopard Server 10.6.3, which I just purchased from Apple (so it’s not tied to any hardware), into a VMWare Fusion 5.x VM, and the install keeps failing.

At first I was getting “ERROR_DOWNLOAD_FAILED” as the reason, so I disabled the network adapter for the VM to see what happened.  At that point, it failed with the even more helpful “support files could not be installed”.  That’s it; it didn’t bother to tell me which support files, just that they couldn’t be installed.  When I tried again, it went back to “ERROR_DOWNLOAD_FAILED”.  I turned the network adapter back on, and failed the same way.

I’m using the default install options, which should require a little under 12GB, and the VM’s HD has 43GB available.  The machine I’m running the VM on is a MacBook Pro (i7) running OS X 10.8.

Any insights are appreciated!

EDIT: see my answer below for the resolution, which required two steps.

I found a link that might help: https://communities.vmware.com/thread/457351

You have Server, so that should be OK, try ripping it into a disk image (if you haven't already done so) and see if it will work with that instead.

I only have personal experience with Parallels, so I can't try it myself.


If I factory reset my iPhone would it mess up my SIM contract? I have an iPhone 6 and would like to know if I could factory reset my phone and still be able to use all my data, minutes, and texts as soon as I set the phone up again?

Typically a reset does not affect your contract, because the iPhone's state is independent of the SIM contract. Although it is best to verify that with your SIM provider, you should not need to worry about the contract falling apart because it is bound to the physical card itself.

Let me explain:
That means that while a factory reset of the iPhone may sound like every piece of information linking back to you is permanently deleted, some data like the Serial Number, MAC address etc. is still unique to the device (hence doesn't change upon reset).

As logical links such as those created by the software (iOS) are prone to change, physical ones such as the unique identification mentioned above don't. If, and yes, only if the provider of the contract linked the SIM to your iPhone, it would most certainly be linked to the unique codes such as your iPhone's serial number - for greater accuracy.

The iPhone (or any phone for that matter) does not track your usage, the network provider does.


Should my MacBook Pro be creaking? After keeping my MacBook Pro open for an hour or so, it will creak loudly when I close it. Is this normal? If not, what should I do about it? It's a late 2011 MacBook Pro 13".

This is not normal. I had a very similar problem with a unibody Aluminium MacBook (they only sold them for a short time in 2008. This is nearly the exact same case as the MBP that you have, except your Pro did actually have minor updates to help alleviate the problems we had in our MacBook.

The problem would only appear after the machine had warmed up for a little bit. The hinge would make a creaking noise when closing, and as it got worse, when opening. It also would stay hinged just slightly open (not waking from sleep) when being carried in a laptop bag.

This was due to an issue in the hinge on the keyboard part. Apple replaced two screens for us. The problem would fix it self for a month or two, but them come back. They finally redid the entire top half of the machine, and it worked great for 9 months.

2 months out of warranty, it happened again. Due to having over 3 repair attempts (there were actually 4), Apple instead offered us a replacement machine. We were told at that time that there were quite a few reports of this problem, and they had been addressed in the latest rev of the MBP. Since the unibody MB was no longer available, they upgraded us to the base 13" MacBook Pro. Im assuming that while it mostly had been fixed through minor updates, there may be one with a similar problem now and then.

The problem is related to the hinge design, and I have only seen it affect 13" models. I would highly recommend taking it to the Apple store and having it replaced. They will not replace the whole top part on the first try, only the display.


Drag and drop only going one folder deep in Finder I have a Mac Mini late 2012 running MacOS Catalina (10.15.4). I have a weird issue with drag and drop in Finder. When I drag a file/folder into a new folder to move it there, it does not let me hold down the mouse and navigate through the subfolders. I can drag and drop "one folder deep", but Finder does not open the folder that I drag on top of.

For example:

In this case, I could drag the "Database" folder into the "System Admin" folder" (Whoops that name lol) but not into the "Linux" subfolder inside "System Admin". Finder will only let me drag "Database" one folder deep. It will not open the "System Admin" folder and show me the subfolders where I could then drag on into "Linux".

I'm not exactly sure long this has been like this, since I usually use other methods than drag and drop to get stuff done, but I think that it has been like this since I upgraded from High Sierra to Mojave.
I am using the Magic Mouse 2 if that helps. I have been using is ever since I got this mac though, back when drag and drop still worked fully. And if I use other mice the problem is still there.

Any help is welcome!

So what worked for me was to turn on Spring-loading delay in System Preferences > Accessibility > Pointer Control.

I have no idea why it would not work without this, but it works fine now. Well, almost fine. I still do not get the little green plus sign when dragging files to a new location, but I am able to drag through into subfolders.


How can you listen to Youtube videos on iOS, while the phone sleeps? I'd like to listen to Youtube videos without the video, while the phone sleeps, just like we usually listen to music.

Is there an app that will play the audio of a Youtube video, but behave like the music app and continue playing when the user presses the power button to put the phone in to sleep mode?

Step 1. Launch Safari, the default iOS web browser.

Step 2. Search for YouTube in the address bar / search box, or simply type youtube.com and search for a video that you want to listen to.
How to listen to YouTube in the background in iOS 7

Step 3. Let the video begin to play - wait until any advert has finished and the actual video is playing.

Step 4. Press your device's home button to return to the home screen. The music will stop. But, swipe up from the bottom to display Control Center. Tap the play button to continue playing the audio from the YouTube video.
In later versions of iOS, you may have to swipe between tabs in the Control Center to see the playback controls.
Play YouTube in background iOS 7 - Control Center

Step 5. You can now launch another app, such as Messages or Mail and keep listening while using that app. Some games (those which allow you to keep listening to your own music) will still be usable without cutting off the audio from the YouTube video.
If you want to browse the web, you'll need to use a different web browser from the one which is playing the YouTube video, since switching tabs will cause playback to stop. If you don't have another browser installed, try Google Chrome, Firefox or Opera.

Step 6. You can listen to YouTube with the screen off, too. Press the sleep/wake button to turn your device off and the audio from Safari will stop. Now press it again and tap the play button on the lock screen to restart the audio. Now when you turn off your iPhone or iPad, the audio will keep playing.


Disable trackpad feedback? Don't want any tactile/haptic feedback when clicking Can I completely disable the haptic feedback from my 2015 MacBook Pro with Retina's trackpad?

I want to click without any kind of vibration/feedback.

Ideally it should feel like (as I imagine it would were this disabled) pressing onto a solid bit of metal. I.e. the case surrounding the trackpad.

I have a 12" Macbook (2015) and a Macbook Pro (2017), both running MacOS 10.13.6. The 12" gives me the option for "Silent Clicking" in Trackpad Preferences. The MBP, however, does not give me this option (and I wish it did). So, while it does seem to be capable of being switched off, there does seem to be some hardware-specific aspect to it. Silent mode is nice... wish they all did it.


Backup files from recovery utility My Mac seems to have given up.  I have my important data backed up, but I have a few gigs of movies and music that I wasn't backing up.   I can boot into the recovery utility and launch a terminal, and can ls /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/joe/Documents and see my data, but how can I launch finder (or anything else) to grab these files?

There are a few methods to accomplish this:

If you have another Mac accessible, boot the dying Mac into Target Disk Mode. Plug it into the other Mac via Thunderbolt or Firewire. You should see your dying Mac show up as an external hard drive. Drag and drop what is needed.
Get an external hard drive at least the size of your Mac's internal drive. Plug it in and boot into Recovery Mode. Open Disk Utility. You should see the external drive and boot volume. Use Disk Utility to Restore one volume to the other. This will destroy any existing data on the external hard drive.
If you can't reformat an external hard drive but have a bit of space available to move the select files you need, you can boot into Recovery Mode and use Terminal to move the files over that you need. Use the cp UNIX command to do this. For example, to move all of your Documents to an external hard drive named "External" you would use the following command:

cp -r "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/joe/Documents/" "/Volumes/External/"


Migrating from Time Machine without Migration Assistant I want to change my mid-2010 iMac with the latest iMac of my parents. Because we both use Time Machine, well, the easiest way would be to restore both of them from the backups.
However, there is a bug in Lion that causes my mac to hang just before completing the file transfer. Is it possible to just drag all contents of the backup to Macintosh HD without problems or are there any workarounds?
Thanks in advance!

You can drag documents, but you have to reinstall your applications, setting up again mail accounts, etc.


How do I use 'security set-keychain-settings' to prevent locking? The command line tool security set-keychain-settings provides options for

locking when the system sleeps (-l) and
locking after a timeout (-u)

but does not seem to provide any options for reversing these settings?

How to I use  security set-keychain-settings to disable these options?

If you run security set-keychain-settings without anything else it will turn off both "Lock when sleeping" and "Lock after  minutes of inactivity" for the 'login' Keychain. It will also set the default number of minutes back to 5.

From there you can turn on whatever settings you want.


How to get current input language of the input source I use a third-party input source on Mac. This is the case I encounter:

I input some English characters when I want to input Chinese so I have to delete the characters entered just now. Then switch to Chinese and type again.
If I know what is the current input language, so I can switch the input language first.
The input source can't display current input language but I have press Shift to switch between Chinese and English to see whether the current language is what I want.
After some research, I find this repo bitbar. This repo can display some script output at the menubar. So I want some script to get the current input language of the input source.
I also find this question, however this question is different from mine. It just find the input source name, not the input language.

After Googling for a long time, I didn't find a way to do this. Any one can help me? Thank you so much.

One possible work-around is to configure the input source so that Caps Lock is used to switch to English.  Then you can tell the IM is in that state by the green light on the keyboard (if it has one for capslock).


Parallels Desktop Minimum Hard Disk Space to allocate? My current hard disk drive 256GB is already not enough for me. Therefore, I wish to reduce the allocation of my Parallels Desktop.

I did the "Reclaim" to get 11GB back, but PD still occupies 63.6GB. My Windows is just like an "emergency Window environment", which does not necessarily take up so large space. Can I further reduce the space occupied by PD?

The reclaim button now is grey and unclickable, indicating that I cannot further claim more space back for Mac.

If you check the space each VM actually takes it is dynamic. For example Windows might say 64GB of space remain, but in reality the size of the image it is in is actually a lot smaller. See here:

As you can see it only takes up 34GB rather than 64GB. A way to reduce space would be to uninstall applications or features you do not need within windows. I have done this with my Windows 8 VM.


What would I lose if I needed to reinstall from a Time Machine backup? Is there a list somewhere of the areas of the hard drive that aren't backed up by Time Machine? And does reinstalling from Time Machine install everything from the backup or just parts of it?

I like to tweak things a lot, like customizing the system Apache server and installing stuff into /usr/local (Max Howell's Homebrew, for instance), so I'd like to double check what areas I might lose if I needed to reinstall from a Time Machine backup (whole disk image backups seem a bit overboard for my tastes).

Things which they were not restored and they were crucial, was:

MySQL Databases
VMWare Fusion virtual machines

The default backup exclusion list, can be found in:

/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist

Do not forget to check your excluding folders on the prefs as well ;)


Can I update Mail.app to fix persistent crashing? I was using Mail.app v4.6 on my iMac and was happy with it until I upgraded to OS X 10.6.8. Now Mail.app crashes my computer whenever I open the application, which is often as it is the default mail application.

Can I install a newer version of Mail.app without losing all of my saved emails, contacts, etc.? If so, how?

Should I delete the whole thing and install a fresh version of Mail.app that I can run in OS X 10.6.8?

My iMac has a 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 3 GB of memory. Late 2006 model.

The version of Mail.app available to you to is pinned to the version of OS X you're running as it is considered a core application that is bundled, shipped and installed with the operating system.

If you want a new version of Mail.app you'll need update OS X. Your iMac, assuming it's the Late 2006 model I think it is based on what you wrote, should be able to run OS X 10.7.x Lion. Upgrading to Lion is a fairly painless activity though you should be certain to follow best-practices and make a backup of your system before you do the upgrade. The upgrade tools will maintain all your Mail.app settings and you won't lose email, contacts or any other such thing like that.

Alternatively you can look for a third party mail application that's compatible with OS X 10.6.8 and try running one of those. Honestly, I can't recall any that were 10.6.8 compatible off the top of my head though.

A third option is to try and figure out what's keeping Mail.app from running on your machine. The best place to start is by looking in Console.app -- run Console.app and then start Mail.app and look at the error messages that are printed in the Console. They might shed some light on what's going wrong. Or they might form the basis of a new question here on Ask Different to figure out what's going wrong!


Accidentally denied access to keychain for a program I need (Mac, obviously) So I have been doing IT support for a long time, for Windows and dabbled in Linux, and while I've had to do the odd thing with Mac, it's usually pretty basic and now I'm stuck. I've got my wife's older mac (10.13) here for testing purposes for an Electron app developed by the company I work for. I updated the program, and then it prompted for the computer password for access to the keychain (because it saves the UN and PW there), which was input and it was ok until I had to restart the app.  When I relaunched it, it prompted again and I accidentally hit Deny. Now when I try to log back into the app, it just spins and spins, no prompt, no error, nothing.
I have completely uninstalled and reinstalled the app naively thinking that might help. I deleted the entry in the keychain, but it doesn't prompt again. I tried adding it back to the keychain manually knowing it wouldn't help, and it didn't. The things I can find online mostly explain how to reset your keychain, but that absolutely cannot be right, because I denied one app, can it?  That seems like a very scorched earth approach.
TIA

I had already deleted the entry thinking that would reset it.  I tried manually adding it back in with the same name.  I'll try it when I get the chance, but that's not going to be the same is it?


Trying to format USB (using Linux/fdisk) so it shows up on my Mac I have a USB drive that I can see/access/modify/etc in Linux/Ubuntu but it doesn't show up on my Mac OSX.

I did sudo fdisk /dev/sdb (where my USB is) and then g to create a new GPT partition table, n to make a new partition, used all default settings, then w to save and exit.

Then I did sudo mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sdb1 to format the partition with a FAT32 filesystem.

I ejected the USB and put it in my Mac and it doesn't show up / get detected.

What did I miss?

If you are using MAC

Open Disk Utility from Lauchpad
Select Your USB Disk Form top left corner

-Select Partition Option

-Crate choose 1 Partition fill Name, and Format details

-Then Click  apply

-Wait till it  the details
-Then select Disk Partition and Erase It.

After completing these steps you can access your USB drive on MAC,
Hope this will help you.


why my phone is slow and stop working suddenly? I have moved to Malaysia recently. unfortunately my iphone 5s is working slow even sometimes when I press home button the screen stays black ( looks like switched off ) and I have to keep pressing home and lock button for couple minutes to get my phone back. or for example when I want to get out of an apps my phone freezed and stays like that for 10 seconds.
the available storage is 3.4GB and IOS version is 8.3.
Thanks guys

This likely has to do with your carrier settings. Have you gone to settings > general > about to check for a carrier update?

If you don't see "new carrier settings available" after visiting general, plug your iPhone into iTunes, and manually check for carrier settings.

The next thing would be to go to general > reset and reset your network settings.

If that does not work, back up your phone to iTunes and preform a full restore. This takes a while, but should eliminate most if not all stubborn freeze/slowdown issues.

If it does not, go to settings > general > reset and reset all settings. You won't lose data, but will have to set up your preferences again.


OSX Mountain Lion - Remove shadows from Uncover Gesture I have a quick question. When utilizing the uncover window gesture (IE. move 3 fingers apart) to reveal the desktop there is a shadow which boarders the screen.

I would like to know is there a way I can remove this shadow from appearing with an app or a script?

Personally without the shadow I believe the desktop provides a more elegant appearance.

The purpose of the shadows is to show that you are temporarily pushing the content to the edges to "clear some space" over your desktop, presumably where you will then copy or rename a file or perform some other short action with one of your Desktop items.  It's existence signifies that you have plenty of windows open and ready to return to their previous on screen location at a gesture.

If you removed it, then it would look no different from a normal desktop with all apps minimised, or say a fresh desktop space within Mission Control, and how then would you be able to distinguish between the 2?

Obviously the above isn't necessarily an answer to your question (my answer would be "There is no supported method of doing this nor am I aware of any defaults write style .plist edit that would hack it), but perhaps understanding the purpose of them more will enable you to put up with them better.


External sound card, stereo sound to all speakers I have an external sound card, it's SWEEX 7.1. If I plugged in, it shows at Audio MIDI setup and I can choose number of speakers, so I choose 6 speakers, because I have 5 + 1 speakers connected in my sweex sound card. I tested it by clicking to every speaker in midi setup and all speakers work correctly, which is fine, but...

What if I want to play stereo sound through all speakers? If I play some music from youtube for example, I can hear only two speakers.

So I've done some googling and found something called JackPilot, which allows me to do what I want, but you have to start JackPilot server first and after that set routing for every application separately.

I am looking for a some unified solution which will work after reboot without additional configurations. I guess Mac OS X does not provide such a feature out of the box, but I would be happy if something would exist, e.g. some 3rd party application.

Aggregate Device

You can setup an Aggregate Device (Audio Midi Setup > Create Aggregate Device), which allows the ability to combine multiple devices of the same model, or to combine multiple inputs and outputs for apps that don't support separate input and output devices. This Apple guide shows how it works and is surprisingly quite easy to setup.

SoundFlower

Another way to route audio to multiple channels and outputs (up to 64) is with the free app/plug-in Soundflower. You can download a ready-to-use version, or compile the source code yourself if you have the desire to specifically modify the application. Soundflower is really excellent for many things — what is up to you.


How do people hack iPhone games so easily? I have seen high scores of 999,999  on Flappy Bird as well as many other impossible high scores on games such as Temple Run, etc., on iPhone and iPad.

How do people hack these games so easily when they cannot see the source code?  It seems like they know the source code of the game, which makes them able to manipulate the game file so easily.  I don't understand how this happens given that the Apple iPhone is sandboxed, unlike Android.

iOS applications store their data in files that are available from a computer in two easily-accessible ways:

Inside an iTunes backup
Via a MobileDevice-framework-based tool such as iExplorer

In my experience, game save data is stored in a fairly ordinary property list file that is manipulable via the plutil tool.  The data can be restored and replaced without any code knowledge.  From there it's a simple matter of how much the app trusts its save data.

For an example of how this can be used not just for high scores, but to cheat at a game, see the Nimble Quest iOS Trainer, which is itself MobileDevice-framework-based.

(The MobileDevice framework is an Apple private framework created for iOS device access, which has been reverse-engineered to enable the creation of iOS device tools not available from Apple.)


Uninstaller that tracks installed files and removes them later On windows I've used various utilities that actively track which files are added during a software install, and I'm sure there must be a good one for os x.  Itrash (http://www.osxbytes.com/) is typical of the 'searching' type of app, which just looks through the system for similarly named files in the cache folders etc.

The closest I've found is Yank (http://www.matterform.com/mac_software/uninstaller/index.html) which does claim to do it, but hasn't been updated since 2009 so trusting something with low level file system monitoring without updates isn't ideal.

Any suggestions?

Not exactly what you are after but  Apple development tools like dtrace can track all file usage, googling for examples gave this blog which has scripts to record what files are used by which processes.

Also you should be able to get a find command using a -B argument.

Also note that not all files will be written at instal - User specific files e.g. ~/Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Application Support (or their sandbox equivalents) can't be written until the first run of the program and not the install. Also what happens if two users have run this do you want to remove both sets of files?


Detect Terminal Color "Theme" from Command Line When one uses the terminal inspector, one can change many properties of the terminal, such as background color, text color, and selection color.

How can I detect what these properties have been set to from the command line?

Is there some cache or file within
"/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/Resources" that holds this information?

Thank you.

Terminal Preferences are stored in the com.apple.Terminal.plist file (/Users/$USER/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist) and while it can be read using the defaults command, nonetheless much of it may not be discernible.

Copy and paste the following command into a Terminal and then press Enter:

defaults read com.apple.Terminal


Adding Tabs to text boxes within a webpage? Is there a way to type a tab space to text within a webpage?
(without copy pasting a tab)

The normal behaviour of the tab key in an internet browser is cycling between input fields, buttons links etc but now with online document edotors (like Google Docs), how can a user add a tab to a document?

Normally option-tab would do that, but it doesn't work in web views. As a workaround, you could create ~/Library/KeyBindings/ and save a property list like this as DefaultKeyBinding.dict.

{
    "~t" = insertTabIgnoringFieldEditor:; /* option-t */
}


iPhone mail fecthing time < 15 minutes Is it possible to set iPhone mail fecthing time < 15 minutes under iOS 5?

The current configuration only allows 15 minutes data pushing, but I need to react to my mail fast. Is there a way to get around this or an application that could help this?

Set Push to ON (under settings->Mail, Contacts, Calendar->Fetch New Data). You can even select push or pull for each single mail account under Advanced.


How to find physical location of an application by name? I can open Terminal and execute open -a "iPhone Simulator" and as long as the application is installed, it will launch. Is there a similar command that will return the path to the application instead of launching it?

If you type this:

  find /Applications -name "Safari"

you will find the Safari.app for example. I do not have iPhone Simulator, thus I cannot test that one.

If you type

  mdfind "Safari"

you will find all records containing Safari (or iPhone Simulator).

Note: safari is not the best option to search for as it is a native program


Do I need to allow free space as an over provision on MacBook Pro's built-in SSD? I have a 2017 15" MacBook Pro with a built-in 1TB SSD.

As I understand, with SSDs, the best practice is to leave a portion of them free as an "over provision".

Do I need to do this with the built-in SSD in the MacBook Pro? or has Apple already accounted for this in giving me 1TB of space? e.g. There is actually something like 1.1TB of space, but the firmware keeps that additional 0.1TB free as an over provision.

No.
Over-provisioning is transparent to the user, and done at the factory. SSDs normally have more size than can actually be used. Over-provisioning is not something that the user needs to do.

Having said that, SSDs still need to maintain spare space within the volume, in order to have some space to accommodate working files. Between 10 and 15% is usually recommended. Some say as much as 25%.


Is it possible to mount SharePoint as a volume in 10.6? Background

My office uses:

Microsoft SharePoint to store and version our documents
Microsoft Office, with Microsoft Document Connection to connect to the SharePoint site.

Question 1

Can Finder connect to a SharePoint server?

Question 2

Can MacFUSE be extended to mount a SharePoint path as a volume in Mac OS X?

System-managed WebDAV connections to SharePoint

Yes, connections are possible. For a volume mounted in this way, the file system type is:

webdav

I use Finder — in Snow Leopard and in two other versions of the system — with SharePoint.

To connect

In the Connect to Server window of Finder, use the same URL as you would use in Microsoft Document Connection.

An underlying problem with the Microsoft service

Information about the characters that you cannot use in sites, folders, and files in SharePoint

  … cannot start a file name with the period character. …

Apps with compatibility issues

A shortlist:

Microsoft Office Excel, PowerPoint and Word 2011 (Service Pack 2) — all attempts to save will fail, expect to see error messages that are misleading
Apple Finder — some attempts to copy or move to SharePoint may fail.

My answer to Ask Different question Why are dot underscore ._ files created, and how can I avoid them? notes:

requirements of Microsoft Office 2011, when used with a file system such as webdav, are not met by SharePoint.

When SharePoint does not recognise that a user of PowerPoint or Word with webdav has opened a file, there's risk of dataloss — two or more users overwriting each other's work, with no warning before or after the loss. I can't reproduce this problem when NeoOffice is used to open such files.

Excel with webdav seems to always open .xlsx spreadsheets read-only. I can't reproduce this problem when NeoOffice is used to open such files.

(Side note: without file system type webdav, Microsoft Document Connection 14.2.0 (120402) causes dataloss without warning, of extended attributes such as Spotlight comments.)

More about Finder

With webdav, for files and folders that are already on the SharePoint server:

Finder seems to be a first class app for renaming, moving or removing items.

Apps that are more compatible

Another shortlist:

where Microsoft Office applications fail, NeoOffice and LibreOffice succeed.

Input/output errors affecting files saved in Microsoft formats

If an attempt to open an Office Open XML file (.docx, .pptx, .xlsx etc.) fails with an input/output error:

use Microsoft Document Connection to initiate an edit
save a trivial change to the file, close the window of the app that you used for edition
if necessary, quit the app that you used for edition.

Those two or three steps seem to resolve, or work around, the error.

(If I discover the exact cause of those types of input/output error, I'll either add to this answer or link to a question elsewhere. Early indications are that they occur only after a Microsoft Office app has failed to save with webdav.)


Target Display Mode from a 2016 MacBook to a 2011 27" iMac My Google-fu has failed me. Is it at all possible to use Target Display Mode to connect a 12-inch MacBook (early 2016) to a 27-inch iMac (Mid 2011)?

Thanks for helping.

It's not possible to use Target Display Mode to connect a MacBook (Early 2016) to a 27" iMac (2011)

For the Mid-2011 through Mid-2014 iMacs, you need a Thunderbolt cable and Thunderbolt isn't available on the Early 2016 MacBooks

From the Thunderbolt Support Page

  A Mac notebook or desktop with a Mini DisplayPort or Thunderbolt port.

From the MacBook (Early 2016) Tech Specs Page:

USB-C port with support for:

Charging
USB 3.1 Gen 1 (up to 5 Gbps)
Native DisplayPort 1.2 video output
VGA output using USB-C VGA Multiport Adapter (sold separately)
HDMI video output using USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter (sold separately)

Thunderbolt is not supported on this USB-C port.


My apps are using 3.7GB of storage on my iPad, how can I check which app is using what amount? Is there a breakdown that can be viewed somewhere?

On iTunes itself, on the App section of your Library (top section in the left side navigation bar) you can see how big Apps are by switching to List view (iTunes menu bar -> View -> As List).


How can I bookmark the left page of a PDF in Preview? In Preview, Command-D will allow you to bookmark the current page of the PDF for later reference.  However, when viewing the PDF in two-up mode (Command-3), it will always bookmark the right-hand page.  How can I bookmark the left-hand page for those times when it's that page precisely that I want to bookmark?

I do not know how to do that with Bookmarks, but I use a work around till Apple does something.

Instead of bookmarks I use Highlights and Notes (alt+cmd+4)

Then I place a Note on appropriate page (left or right) or anywhere.

The advantage is I can make comments in the note.

Example:


Should I erase Website data in settings? I'm trying to track down why my battery is running down so quickly on my iPhone 6s. Is it okay to erase Safari Website Data?

It is perfectly safe to delete Website Data, although that is unlikely to solve your battery life issues. Website Data only include things such as cookies and webpage caches.

If anything, your phone will have to work a little harder to redownload images, log you back in to websites, etc. the first time you visit each site after wiping Website Data.


iPhone to iTunes application transfer Usually people used to download application on iTunes & then install it on their iPhone using iTuens sync.
Currently, I have an iPhone that I bought from my friend.
He had purchased many applications on iPhone.
When I connected the phone to my iTunes, it asked to transfer or don't transfer. When I choose, transfer - It transfered all the items.
Even though it was not from same account of itunes.
I have different iTunes account & purchased application was from different itunes account even though it could transfer - my question is why - iTunes allows doing this ?

Ok. One more problem that I faced is as follows.

When I was in wifi range, I directly downloaded an application ( using same account which I have on my itunes ).
Next when I connected iPhone to iTunes, it didn't transferred anything & I lost my downloaded application.

Did any-one faced this issue ? If yes,
What did you do to resolve this issue ?

Thanks in Advance for sharing your great Knowledge.
Sugar.

1)your friends itunes account was probably registered on your phone when you synced with the computer.

2) you can only be synced with one itunes account at a time. your problem might be that your synced with your friends account so any app that you download with your account wont be able to sync any apps unless you change it to sync with your account(which will delete all apps not purchased with your account.)


Why is my Mac using so much memory? When I got my Mac Mini with 4GB RAM I thought it would be enough, since on my Windows machines I never hit past 3GB – but I was wrong. So I ordered 16GB of RAM, but one of the sticks was bad, so I have 8GB in one channel and 2GB in the other, totalling to 10GB RAM.

Normally this is more than enough to have a virtual machine open, whilst playing games and doing some heavy work at the same time. Today I finished recording a video and started to encode it on ScreenFlow when I realised it said it would take an hour! It normally takes a few minutes, so I opened up Activity Monitor and saw all of my RAM was being used!

I never saw that before – I only had ScreenFlow open by itself. After looking at the processes, I noticed there was nothing major hogging up the RAM, so what gives?

It's the first time this has happened! I saw a page out since putting the new RAM in as well. Why is everything so slow? This is my first Mac, so I hope I don't have to fiddle around with something like a registry or anything. I am willing to answer any questions and do any tests.

Dont worry about the inactive part, this doesnt mean that your mac
  will run slow, macintosh keeps these inactive(as IDLE) where when
  programs needed*-(the ones that you've been using)-* then accessing
  them would be faster since they are still in a way or another in
  memory regardless of swapping being in process.

  And if your scared of the inactive blue color eating the pie chart
  displayed, then open your terminal and type: "purge" to clear your
  inactive space.


Office 2016 activation issue after migration to a new computer After migrating to a new computer when trying to active Office 2016 I'm getting the following error message:

  Another account from the same organization is already signed in. To
  switch accounts, please go to Applications/Utilities/Keychain access,
  clear all entries including the 'Office' keyword, and then restart the
  app.

I tried following the steps here https://medium.com/@wangyidan621/microsoft-office-activation-and-keychain-removal-19664b1e7e77 but it didn't solve the issue.

What ended up working was going to https://portal.office.com/account/ then Install Status, deactivating the license, and then signing in and activating the application (e.g. Word) again.


How do I permanently disable the scrollbar? I set the Show Scroll Bars setting to "Automatically based on Mouse or Trackpad", but it constantly appears.

I do not want the scroll bar to automatically appear, or appear when scrolling. I want it to never appear. OS X provides the "Always" option, but I'm looking for a "Never" option.

How do I permanently disable the scrollbar?

I found this application that claims to do what you asked for.

The LionScrollbars


Redirect Local Port through bridge to Internet Shared static IP I have my cable modem (10.0.0.1) to my iMac (10.0.0.36), and my iMac (10.0.0.36) with a (bridge100 192.168.2.1) Internet Shared IP to my debian machine (192.168.2.34), and all of that is working perfectly. I would now like to forward port 80 from the internet through the bridge on my iMac to my debian machine...

10.0.0.1:80 <-> 10.0.0.36:8080 <-> 192.168.2.1:8080 <-> 192.168.2.34:80

I found the following link, which lead me to

rdr on bridge100 inet proto tcp from any to 10.0.0.36 port = 8080 -> 192.168.2.34 port 80

However, it's not working... Now in the link they are going to localhost, and I found this link which says i may need something like

pass out route-to (bridge100 192.168.2.1) from any to 10.0.0.36

But I have not been able to get pfctl to parse the above line correctly

Any ideas on how I can forward from 10.0.0.36:80 <-> 192.168.2.1 <-> 192.168.2.34:80 ?

Edit: The cable modem/router is a TG852G from Xfinity...

Edit: pfdump

                                        r     scrub-anchor "com.apple/*" all fragment reassemble
                                        r     anchor "com.apple/*" all
                                        r     anchor "usr.home/*" all
                                        n     nat-anchor "com.apple/*" all
                                        n     rdr-anchor "com.apple/*" all
                                        A       com.apple
                                        A       com.apple.internet-sharing
                                        A       usr.home
com.apple                               r     anchor "200.AirDrop/*" all
com.apple                               r     anchor "250.ApplicationFirewall/*" all
com.apple                               A       com.apple/200.AirDrop
com.apple                               A       com.apple/250.ApplicationFirewall
com.apple/200.AirDrop                   A       com.apple/200.AirDrop/Bonjour
com.apple/200.AirDrop/Bonjour           r     pass in on p2p0 inet6 proto udp from any to any port = 5353 keep state
com.apple/200.AirDrop/Bonjour           r     pass out on p2p0 proto tcp all flags any keep state
com.apple.internet-sharing              r     scrub-anchor "base_v4" all fragment reassemble
com.apple.internet-sharing              r     anchor "base_v4" all
com.apple.internet-sharing              n     nat-anchor "base_v4" all
com.apple.internet-sharing              n     rdr-anchor "base_v4" all
com.apple.internet-sharing              A       com.apple.internet-sharing/base_v4
com.apple.internet-sharing/base_v4      r     scrub on en1 all no-df fragment reassemble
com.apple.internet-sharing/base_v4      r     scrub on bridge100 all no-df max-mss 1460 fragment reassemble
com.apple.internet-sharing/base_v4      r     scrub on bridge100 proto esp all no-df fragment reassemble
com.apple.internet-sharing/base_v4      r     pass on en1 all flags any keep state
com.apple.internet-sharing/base_v4      r     pass on en1 proto esp all no state
com.apple.internet-sharing/base_v4      r     pass on bridge100 all flags any keep state rtable 7
com.apple.internet-sharing/base_v4      n     nat on en1 inet from 192.168.2.0/24 to any -> (en1:0) extfilter ei
com.apple.internet-sharing/base_v4      n     no nat on bridge100 inet from 192.168.2.1 to 192.168.2.0/24
com.apple.internet-sharing/base_v4      n     rdr on bridge100 inet proto tcp from 192.168.2.0/24 to any port = 21 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8021
usr.home                                r     anchor "SSH" all
usr.home                                A       usr.home/SSH
usr.home/SSH                            n     rdr on en1 inet proto tcp from any to 10.0.0.36 port = 8080 -> 192.168.2.34 port 80

The proper command to redirect http traffic in your case is:

echo "rdr on $ext inet proto tcp from any to 10.0.0.36 port = 80 -> 192.168.2.34 port 80" | sudo pfctl -a com.apple/HTTP -f -

With $ext: the interface of the iMac connected to the router/modem (probably either en0 or en1). A redirect is done on the incoming interface and traffic! Therefore rdr on bridge100 ... doesn't make any sense here: you don't expect HTTP traffic with the destination 192.168.2.34 from the bridge100 to the network behind the very same bridge100.

The above command uses the temporary sub-anchor com.apple/HTTP and after a reboot it will be gone.

If you want to enable it permanently, create a separate anchor as outlined in this answer: pfctl - howto add an anchor and make it active / load it or here: Port Forwarding on Mac Pro with macOS Sierra.

A pass out route-to ... is only required if you want to redirect outgoing traffic from the iMac.

In theory an additional static route is required on the (TG852G) router/modem:

route to 192.168.2.0/24 via 10.0.0.36

Here (different router though) it worked without it.

Double-NAT solutions are generally not recommended in SOHO environments and I suggest to attach the Debian Linux server directly to one of the Ethernet ports of the router/modem or an interconnected switch.


How To Let My MBP know that a USB is bootable? I have got Unetbootin and have put the files onto my drive which is properly formatted as MS-DOS(FAT) and GUID. I have several folders and files: [BOOT], boot, casper, dists, EFI, install, isolinux, md5sum.txt, pics, pool, preseed, README.deskdefines. When I go in Startup Disk in System Preferences, or press option in startup, it doesn't show the drive, when I go in Disk Utility, click on the drive, then info, the table shows Bootable: no. I do not know why this is happening, as I followed the legitimate steps. I would like still to install Ubuntu on my MacBook Pro 2018, thank you.

First of all, unetbootin or any other ubuntu usb flasher wont "break" your usb. If your usb is givving you an error when plugged into mac os saying"unrecognized drive",  then this is GOOD! Mac os cannot read a linux filesystem by default. It definitely cant read an ext4 filesystem. The only linux filesystems mac os can read are ext2 and maybe ext3, but even then, that is with the use of external software like Fuse. The linux filesystem is not native to Mac OS, therefore, the os cannot read the disk. However, the linux filesystem CAN be read by intel hardware (which all apple macs use now). Therefore, your mac will be able to read the flashed ubuntu usb and boot the ubuntu installer by you either holding the alt/option key on boot, or if that doesnt work, by installing refind boot manager and using that as a bootloader to boot your usb. If you are trying to dual boot mac and ubuntu, you will most likely need to download & install refind anyway, as that is how you should be selecting which os you want to use at boot. Lastly, because linux is not recognized by Mac OS, it is doubtful that there is a way to get your ubuntu partition (or usb for that matter) to show up in the system preferences boot profile. Once again, to boot your ubuntu partition you must hold the proper start up keys for disk selection at boot, or install refind.

The only possible way that these methods won't work or your bootable USB won't be bootable, is if you are using the following outdated hardware:

PowerPC based Mac
a much older 64 bit mac with a 32bit efi (such as the 2006 core 2 duo models)
An older mac that is 32bit using a 32bit efi.

It is highly doubftful that you are using of these types of macs as they are almost 20 years old. Therefore, if you are not able to boot your ubuntu install disk, it tells me that you are doing something wrong, as opposed to the USB stick being "Broken".


Shut down Mac Server when APC 1400 battery is nearly empty I'm running OS X Server on a Mac Mini. I'm powering the server via an APC 1400 (one of the older, beige ones). It has a serial connector, so I assume it could possibly interface with the Mac Mini via a serial to USB adapter.

Is it possible to power down the OS X Server when the UPS batter is nearly depleted with my setup? Do I need to install APC software to get this to work? Will a serial to USB adapter do the job?

Or is my APC backup unit too ancient to work with my Mac Mini in this scenario?

You don't need any software on the Mac for most APC units. The OS detects them when plugged into USB in my experience and the energy saver preference pane has exactly the control you seek:

You can see the connection is USB and the firmware details on the device.


What does loving a playlist (not a song/album) do? In iTunes (in Windows), it is possible to right-click a music playlist and select "Love". What does this do? What effect does it have? (Thankfully, it doesn't mark all the tracks in the playlist as Loved.)

Source

The For You section of Apple Music, in the Music app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, in iTunes on your Mac or PC, or in the Apple Music app on your Android phone, is where you'll find suggestions from our experts who know and love music. Our recommendations are influenced by:

The music that you listen to from the Apple Music catalog.
What you tell us you love or dislike.
The genre and artist choices that you made when you first joined Apple Music.

Tell us what you love or dislike

When you listen to songs and albums, you can let us know if you love or dislike something. We use this information to give you better suggestions.

On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch: While listening to a song, tap the player at the bottom of the screen to open the Now Playing screen. Tap , then choose Love or Dislike.

Update your choices

When you first join Apple Music on your iOS device or computer or your Android phone, we ask you to choose genres and artists that you like. At any time, you can change these initial choices.

On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Open the Music app and tap For You.
In the upper-right corner, tap Apple Music profile icon  or your photo.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and tap View Account, then tap Choose Artists For You.
If you want to reset your choices completely, tap Reset. If you want to change or add to the choices you made previously, follow the instructions to like, love, and remove genres and artists based on how important they are to you. You can also search for specific artists and genres.
When you're done making changes, tap Done.

On your Mac or PC

Open iTunes.
If you’re not signed in, sign in with your Apple ID.
From the menu bar at the top of your computer screen or at the top of the iTunes window, choose Account > Choose Artists For You.
If you want to reset your choices completely, click Reset. If you want to change or add to the choices you made previously, follow the instructions to like, love, and remove genres and artists based on how important they are to you. You can also search for specific artists and genres.
When you're done making changes, click Done.


Macbook pro 2018 with Mojave overheating when connected to external monitor I'm on a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) with Mojave 10.14.1. When I connect MBP to a external displays (either via HDMI or via Thunderbolt 2 adapters), the temperature raises sensibly (i.e., CPU temperature lies constantly over 90°) and fans start running fast (i.e., more than 50%) frequently, even if I am doing very simple tasks (e.g., writing in Word with a couple of Chrome tabs open with stackoverflow).

I'm not sure that the problem started with Mojave or if it isn't actually related to the OS version.

I'm wondering if there is a way to limit this annoying overheating as well as fans activity, while using external monitors.

The higher power GPU in some MacBooks Pro puts out a lot more wattage than the low power GPU.

The reason it gets so hot when hooked up to a monitor, even when you’re just running Word or Safari, is because the display outputs are hardwired to the dedicated GPU - if you’re using an external monitor, the dedicated GPU (graphic card) is in use regardless of how demanding the workload is. This puts more stress on the cooling system, resulting in higher-than-average temperatures ;)
Thats the reason. I tried all my 6 Macbook Pro's and all does the same behavior. Switching to the dedicated graphic card and you can't just use the integrated iris.


How to stop xampp mysql server? I just installed xampp on my mac os x. When I tried start mysql it displays a message that mysql is already running on this computer. In order to start mysql stop first mysql. I tried following ways to stop it but neither of them works.

mysqladmin version
sudo /usr/local/mysql/mysql.server stop //mysql.server command not found
mysqladmin -u root -p password shutdown //restarts the server but not shutdown

when i use which mysql command it shows this path

/usr/local/bin/mysql

and when I issue ps aux | grep mysqld command I get following output

zafarsaleem    85209   0.0  0.3  2699804  13204   ??  S     7:51AM   0:00.88        /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysqld --basedir=/Applications/MAMP/Library --datadir=/Applications/MAMP/db/mysql --plugin-dir=/Applications/MAMP/Library/lib/plugin --lower-case-table-names=0 --log-error=/Applications/MAMP/logs/mysql_error_log.err --pid-file=/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.pid --socket=/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock --port=8889
zafarsaleem    85093   0.0  0.0  2435488    924   ??  S     7:51AM   0:00.03 /bin/sh /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysqld_safe --port=8889 --socket=/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock --lower_case_table_names=0 --pid-file=/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.pid --log-error=/Applications/MAMP/logs/mysql_error_log
zafarsaleem    86693   0.0  0.0  2425480    180 s004  R+    8:30AM   0:00.00 grep mysqld
zafarsaleem    86507   0.0  0.3  2678756  11364   ??  S     8:07AM   0:00.63 /usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.5.20/bin/mysqld --basedir=/usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.5.20 --datadir=/usr/local/var/mysql --plugin-dir=/usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.5.20/lib/plugin --max-allowed-packet=32M --log-error=/usr/local/var/mysql/Zafars-MacBook-Pro-2.local.err --pid-file=/usr/local/var/mysql/Zafars-MacBook-Pro-2.local.pid
zafarsaleem    86447   0.0  0.0  2435488    920   ??  S     8:07AM   0:00.02 /bin/sh /usr/local/bin/mysqld_safe --max_allowed_packet=32M

How can I resolve this issue?

UPDATE

When I issue this command launchctl list then I do see mysqld in the list as follows

com.apple.AddressBook.SourceSync
-           0      com.apple.AddressBook.abd
1201    -   homebrew.mxcl.mysql                    <--
443         -   homebrew.mxcl.mongodb
-           0   com.google.keystone.user.agent
-           0   com.adobe.ARM.df0ab5bbe6f698196fcc21e3c1e66dcb758bd911f4d637272d9d8109
-           0   com.adobe.AAM.Scheduler-1.0
45          -   0x7fd1bba073e0.anonymous.loginwindow
-           1   com.apple.launchctl.Aqua
1261    -    0x7fd1bba0c6e0.anonymous.mysqld        <--
 212    -   0x7fd1ba5206d0.anonymous.launchd
 230    -   0x7fd1ba5203d0.anonymous.Terminal

Secondly when I tried to issue below command as mentioned by @PunjCoder

sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql.plist
OUTPUT for above is:
launchctl: Couldn't stat("/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql.plist"): No    such file or directory
nothing found to unload

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql.plist
OUTPUT for above is:
launchctl: Couldn't stat("/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql.plist"): No such file or directory
nothing found to unload

So what can I do to stop them and how? I am very new to mac os x so don't really know how to resolve this issue. Please help...

Your MYSQL instance that is running is here /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysqld (the MAMP one) and here /usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.5.20/bin/mysqld (the one installed using Brew).

Try:

/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysqladmin shutdown
/usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.5.20/bin/mysqladmin shutdown

Then start the one you want to start. You also would want to check Library/LaunchDaemons/ for any launch scripts and use something like

sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql.plist

Update: Please list the output of following commands:
    ls /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ | grep mysql
    ls /Library/LaunchDaemons/ | grep mysql
    ls ~/Library/LaunchDaemons/ | grep mysql


Install Lion on new SSD on MBP 2009 I have a MBP mid-2009 and I'm running Snow Leopard on 500gb HDD (original mac HDD died).
I'm thinkng about getting a 240Gb SSD and doing a fresh Lion install.

What are the correct steps to get it going? Note that I don't need to move my old data and would prefer a "clean" Lion and not an upgrade.

As per Patrick's answer (above).

However, for all those people that would like to carry across all of their data and apps AFTER doing a clean Lion install, you could do the following :

take a snapshot of your existing drive using either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper.
make sure your external drive that contains your "snapshot" is plugged in and then reboot your mac
during the boot process, hold the alt/option key down when you hear the "bong" noise ..
select the external drive and confirm that you can boot using the external drive's "snapshot", in case you need to get back to a working boot situation.
at this point (while you are still booted from your external drive), you can now fire up "Disk Utility" and delete and then re-create a blank partition on your internal drive.
now re-boot and use the bootable USB Lion drive (as per Patrick's link in Patrick's answer, above).
Run through the install of a clean Lion OSX installation.
Once rebooted into a clean Lion install, now plug in your external drive that contains your "snapshot" of your Snow Leopard (or Leopard, or Tiger) that you made at step 1.
run the Lion "Migration Assistant", and tick what user accounts, and data and applications you want to carry across to your clean Lion install.
Enjoy a clean Lion OSX installation with all of your mouse preferences, desktop backgrounds, applications, and user data carried across.

(note, this does not make your clean Lion install "dirty", since all of your old APE hacks etc are NOT carried across via "migration assistant").


i tried reseting all of my data on my ipod touch to unjailbreak now stuck black screen after apple logo ok so today i wanted to reset my jailbroken ipod touch 2g because it was having some issues. i went into settings, general, something like reset, then something like reset all data and content. after i pushed that it did the regular loading bar thingy and when it restart, i got the apple logo then a black screen. no loading circle of death, just a sad lightish blue black screen. now, before that, my ipod just went to recovery mode, so i thought, why not rejailbreak it, so i did that and thats how i got it working again. then the whole reset stuff and now this. i have tried just about everything, dfu mode, recovery mode, ipsw restores on both itunes and redsn0w, and when i do that, in redsn0w, when you think things are going good, it brings up a loding bar and does nothing. itunes dows the same. please help. alll ideas are appreciated. thankyou
daniel

Hold both buttons down until iPod-touch resets. Plug it into computer via USB. Follow the instruction in iTunes. Easy once you follow the instruction on iTunes.


Change default fullscreen new window behavior I keep many apps open full-screen to maximize screen real estate on my laptop. If I have some full-screen app open and create a new window, I more often than not want that window to not go fullscreen. Yet the current behavior is that a new window will open as a tab of the current window.

Is it possible to make new windows actually create new windows on an existing Desktop, not fullscreen spaces, or new tabs of existing windows? If this is not possible in general, this mostly applies, in my case, to Terminal, so I would appreciate specific fixes as well.

I have a similar use case. The workaround that I follow is to swipe back to any of the Desktop, right click on the Dock icon of the app in question and select New Window command. It involves taking a bit of a trouble to switch Space and not being able to use keyboard shortcut but serves the purpose.

The new, standalone window is created on the Desktop and it doesn't automatically go full-screen. The Space switching is required as the Dock doesn't appear in full-screen mode.

Switch to any of the open Desktop.

Right click on Dock icon to select New window command.


Does Apple Music store original ripped music in cloud? I had a long talk with a guy from apple costumer help because of the notorious recent problems with Itunes/Apple Music. By the way he told me that if I have a big collection of music on my mac containing amongst other thing ripped music in a better quality then the usual 256 of Apple this would now, as part of Apple Music be stored in the cloud in its original (better!) quality. So when I have a second Mac with the same Apple ID I wouldn't need to copy anything from Itunes to this second Mac. To simply start a new Itunes folder on the second Mac would synchronize EVERYTHING. So after the necessary time my itunes on the second Mac would look exactly like the Itunes on my first. Is that really so? I couldn't find anything about that on Apple's description of Apple Music (and by the way, I don't have Itunes Match, but that's probably besides the point).

Actually, according to this Apple Music support page, lossless formats will NOT be preserved in the cloud:

"Songs encoded in ALAC, WAV, or AIFF formats will be transcoded to a separate temporary AAC 256 Kbps file locally, before they're uploaded to iCloud."

Meanwhile, the Apple Music product description states that they "compare every track in your collection to the Apple Music library to see if we have a copy. If we do, you can automatically listen to it straight from the cloud," which suggests that higher quality files do not, in fact, replace Apple's default in-cloud counterparts.

Sorry to dash your dreams. Maybe you could disguise the metadata on each of your files with slightly-off album names to prevent Apple from recognizing them, then use a higher quality file other than the formats mentioned above, which would be converted to AAC. Alternatively, Google Play's default bitrate is 320 kbps, and its uploading service is currently free.


Error in applescript "Invalid index" I have an automator workflow which works fine except for a part of it - applescript.

This is how the workflow goes -

Run applescript (this part works fine) -

on run {input, parameters}

    tell application "Mail" to set theMessageText to content of (get first message of inbox)
    set x to text ((offset of "9" in theMessageText) + 2) thru ((offset of " " in theMessageText) - 1) of theMessageText
end run

Set value for variable (The name of the variable is 'number')

Get value for variable (I have made sure that this receives no direct input from previous actions. I am calling the variable 'number' here and I have duplicated this process 2 more times to call 2 more variables)

Run Applescript (This is the code I have problem with) -

on run {input, parameters}
    set cat to first item of input
    set x to second item of input
    set o to third item of input
    tell application "Contacts"
        set thePerson to make new person with properties {first name:"Testing", last name:"Auto"}
        make new phone at end of phones of thePerson with properties {label:"Main", value:x}
        repeat with z from 1 to o
            set a to item z of cat
            add thePerson to group a
        end repeat
        save
    end tell
end run

The error shown here is "Syntax Error - Can’t get item 2. Invalid index".

The point of the workflow is to get some contact details from an email and add them as a contact in address book (This isn't the full workflow as it is a fairly big one. I have shown only the relevant actions).

I would be grateful for any help.

The values you set before are not given via the inputparameter. As long as you run your Automator Workflow as an Automator Workflow and not as an Application or Service, you can access your formerly set variables using the following:

tell application "Automator"
    set cat to value of variable "NameOfFirstVariable" of front workflow
    set x to value of variable "NameOfSecondVariable" of front workflow
    set o to value of variable "NameOfThirdVariable" of front workflow
end tell

inside your "Run Applescript" action.

Greetings, Michael / Hamburg


System Files iMovie 10 & 8.0.6 Garage Band 10 & 5.1 I am trying to remove some clutter from my HardDrive.

I notice that I have both iMovie 10 and iMover ver8.0.6 installed.
Similarly I have Garageband 10 and Garageband 5.1 installed.

I would like to remove the plists, folders and anything that is specific to the old versions without deleting something that is also used by the newer versions.

Can anyone list for me all the files and folders that are necessary to run
just iMovie 10?

and a list of the system files and folders necessary for just Garageband 10?

Thanks.

So I did the test with iMovie 10

It shows following files associated with it:

Since Apple changed iMovie & Garageband significantly, it does not automatically uninstall the older version because there are still some people who want to stick with the older one. If you tried and liked the new one, you can simply put the older version in trash.


How do I find a specific bug on Apple's Bug Reporter? Apple's Bug Reporter site sometimes provides numbers of related or duplicate bugs, but I see no way to locate the referred-to bug, and the search feature only searches bugs that I've submitted.

How do I find a specific bug, not submitted by me, (e.g., using the bug number) on Apple's Bug Reporter?

Apple's bug database is private, and as you see, you are only able to review the bugs that you submit. This has been the subject of much debate in the Apple developer community.

Open Radar is an attempt to shed light on bugs that participating developers file. It uses the same ID numbers as the real Bug Reporter system, so if the bug referred to is in Open Radar, you should be able to find it by its ID.


How is Adobe Update Notifier auto launched on Mac OS X? It seems the Adobe Update Notifier sometime autolaunches on startup, however I cannot find where it's launched from. I've checked in Lingon as well as my login startup items but it's not there.

Any idea where else it could be? The full process is:

  /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Application Manager/UWA/AAM Updates Notifier.app/Contents/MacOS/AAM Updates Notifier -psn_0_127007

The updater is registered with the system service launchd. Instructions to completely disable this can be found on The real way to disable Adobe Updater from your Mac OS X:

Open a Terminal window and type the following commands:

cd ~/Library/LaunchAgents
launchctl remove `basename com.adobe.ARM.* .plist`
launchctl remove `basename com.adobe.AAM.* .plist`
launchctl remove com.adobe.ARM.Scheduler-1.0
launchctl remove com.adobe.AAM.Scheduler-1.0
rm com.adobe.ARM.*
rm com.adobe.AAM.*

Note that depending on your version of Adobe programs, some of the above lines may generate errors. That's fine.

If the above does not disable it, you may need to remove it at a system level. You'd use the same commands as above, but with two additions/changes:

sudo -s
[type your administrator password when prompted]
cd /Library/LaunchAgents
launchctl remove `basename com.adobe.ARM.* .plist`
launchctl remove `basename com.adobe.AAM.* .plist`
launchctl remove com.adobe.ARM.Scheduler-1.0
launchctl remove com.adobe.AAM.Scheduler-1.0
rm com.adobe.ARM.*
rm com.adobe.AAM.*
exit


Unable to open a UDP port with nc On ubuntu, I can open a UDP port:

nc -lu 5555

Then in another terminal window, send a message:

echo "hello" | nc -u localhost 5555

The message is received at the listener side, as expected.

However this doesn't appear to work on MacOS (10.14.5).  The listener invocation starts and blocks as expected, and the port appears to be open, according to lsof:

nc      22583 thisuser   3u  IPv4 0x7af131578e7df639      0t0      UDP *:5555

The sending side completes with no error, but the message doesn't appear to be received at the listener side.

If instead I use a TCP listener and connection, everything works as expected.  However, when the TCP listener is first opened, there is a popup to the effect of "Allow application nc to open port?"  (I forget the exact message - it is not given again).

So I suspect somehow the OS has a security hook into new listeners; asks for permission with TCP, but for some reason neglects to ask permission with UDP and implicitly denies.

How can I get this to work?

I hooked up tcpdump to see if the sender side is in fact sending datagrams:

$ sudo tcpdump -i lo0 udp port 5555
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on lo0, link-type NULL (BSD loopback), capture size 262144 bytes
13:53:29.964728 IP6 localhost.49781 > localhost.personal-agent: UDP, length 6

Datagrams are sent, but apparently as IPv6 packets.  If I force IPv4 operation, then everything works as expected:

$ nc -l -u 5555 &
[1] 25911
$ echo "Hello" | nc -4 -u localhost 5555
Hello

This leaves the question why does nc -lu open an IPv4 port by default whereas nc -u uses IPv6 by default, but my immediate issue is now fixed.


Windows 10 EFI on MacPro 4,1 -> 5,1 I'm attempting an EFI install of Windows 10 on a 2009 (4,1) Mac Pro firmware upgraded to 5,1. I'm running High Sierra, and installing Windows 10 on a second partition on the same disk. I have no problem installing Windows 10 via bootcamp (which defaults to legacy mode). In this case, the Windows Bootcamp Drivers (v. 5261) install perfectly and Windows boots normally (i.e., when holding ALT during bootup, I can select a partition labeled "Windows." I am also able to boot directly back and forth b/w Windows and Mac using Bootcamp Control Panel in Windows 10 / "Startup Disk" in High Sierra).

The problem is that I cannot seem to properly install Windows 10 in EFI mode. In order to install using the EFI option on the Win10 Install DVD (or a USB installation), I first have to create a partition (using Bootcamp Assistant or Disk Utility) and then reset my MBR to "Protected" wth Gdisk. I can then perform an EFI installation of Windows 10, but when I run BootCamp's drivers (I've tried BootCamp 5.1 v. 5261, as well as 6.1 and 4.0), Windows crashes with a black screen and then turns off.

Additionally, when I perform an EFI installation, I cannot boot into Windows XP from High Sierra using "Startup Disk." Although "Windows" appears in the last of startup options, if I reboot from "Startup Disk" I get a black screen with a flashing DOS cursor. With a legacy installation, I don't experience this issue.

I believe that Windows 10 EFI is not properly detecting my video card (an Apple NVIDIA GeForce GT 120). In Legacy mode, the bootcamp drivers properly register it as a GT 120, but in EFI mode, Windows recognizes it as a GeForce 9500 GT. With an EFI install, the only way I can boot fully is to first disable the Display Adapter in Safe Mode. Any attempt to install a video card driver (with Bootcamp or using NVIDIA's drivers) causes windows to crash and go into a boot loop until I disable the video card. Normal workarounds (like running BootCamp.msi from an elevated command prompt, or editing the launch conditions for BootCamp.msi using orca) let me complete installing Bootcamp in EFI, but I still have to disable the Display Adapter in safe mode, and I still cannot boot into Win10 from OS X (using "startup disk").

I've tried editing Bootcamp's Info.plist (to enable Windows 10, USB, and edit the 'PreUEFI' section) but this doesn't make a difference. I've also tried using WinClone to convert a (working) Legacy Mode windows installation into an EFI installation and I get the exact same errors (a bootloop until I disable the display adapter in safe mode).

I would keep the Legacy Mode installation and forget about the EFI installation - but my goal is to create additional partitions so that I can eventually triple-boot macOS/Windows/Ubuntu (which I cannot do with a Legacy Mode installation, which limits me to 4 partitions per disk). I would also like to avoid using alternative boot managers (like reFInd) and stick with the Apple Boot Manager instead.

If anyone had any insights, I'd really appreciate any help in getting my EFI installation to work (or, alternatively, adding partitions to a legacy installation).

Thanks!

Apple did not supply EFI mode Window drivers for your Mac. Therefore, there is no point pursuing an EFI install of Windows. In the later versions of macOS (including High Sierra), the Boot Camp Assistant can be used to download the Windows Support Software for 64 bit installs of Windows on your Mac. At the time of this writing, this download should be the same as downloading Boot Camp Support Software 5.1.5621.

Editing Bootcamp's Info.plist as solution is a myth. What you end up with is a installer for a different Mac. In other words, the installer usually will not even boot on the Mac used to create it.

Triple booting from your primary internal disk is not only possible, but has been documented at Ask Different, Super User and Ask Ubuntu. Of course, you have not specified which operating systems you wish include in your desired triple boot. For your Mac, the best course is to boot any Windows operating systems in legacy BIOS mode and all others in EFI mode.

The rEFInd boot manager is useful tool, but is usually not required to boot an operating system on newer Mac computers. The Apple Boot Manager usually is capable of booting any Mac compatible operating system, provided the operating system is installed in a way compatible with the Apple Boot Manager. For some operating systems, this may require you to modify some boot files' location and name after installation. On the other hand, rEFInd can often be used to avoid these types of modifications.

While GPT disks can have more than 4 partitions, the legacy mode BIOS booting of Windows allows only 4 partitions to be visible to Windows. Although, making more than 4 partitions visible to Windows is theoretically possible, I do not know of anyone every trying to do so. Also, there is no requirement that the first 4 GPT partitions be the ones visible to Windows.

I can provide the current disk configuration from a 2007 iMac as an example of a Mac computer with more than two operating systems installed. Below is the output from diskutil list.

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data Shark                   202.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data Shark2                  202.0 GB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data SHARK3                  50.0 GB    disk0s4
   5:                  Apple_HFS Steelhead               245.1 GB   disk0s5
   6:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s6
   7:                  Apple_HFS Ubuntu                  199.2 MB   disk0s7
   8:                 Linux Swap                         4.3 GB     disk0s8
   9:           Linux Filesystem                         93.9 GB    disk0s9
  10:                  Apple_HFS Steelhead2              198.9 GB   disk0s10
  11:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s11
  12:                        EFI REFIND                  134.2 MB   disk0s12

This Mac has the following bootable partitions which can be selected from the Startup Manager.

Shark which has a BIOS bootable version of 64 bit Windows 10 installed. Windows is aware of the EFI partition by can not access the partition. Windows does have access to the Shark (NTFS), Shark2 (NTFS) and SHARK3 (FAT32) partitions. Note: Occasionally, I have had a dual legacy BIOS boot of Windows using both Stark and Shark2, but currently this is not the case.
Steelhead which has Yosemite installed.
Recovery HD (immediately after Steelhead) which is the Yosemite recovery partition.
Ubuntu which has rEFInd installed. The boot manager rEFInd is configured to silently boot the Ubuntu operation system. This is an older version of Ubuntu which requires either a modification of the installation or the use of rEFInd in order to boot on Mac computers. I believe the current version of Ubuntu no longer requires any modifications or the use of rEFInd.
Steelhead2 which has El Capitan installed.
Recovery HD (immediately after Steelhead2) which is the El Capitan recovery partition.
REFIND which has rEFInd installed. This version of rEFInd is configure to allow the selection of the same boot options as the Startup Manager (which the exception of itself).


Keychain Issue - Yosemite Apologies for the vague title - I couldn't really think of any other way to sum up my problem.

I've been trying all day to work my own way around this issue but I've ultimately hit a brick wall so could do with some help. It's rather complicated so I'll explain from the beginning but try to give only the important details.

So some time ago I bought a 2012 MacBook Pro second hand, which came with a blank password. On the login screen it would just show up with apple I would just press enter to log in. I was not aware of the existence of an Admin account or password.

Today I was trying to restore my iPod when it asked me for my password, it wouldn't accept the blank password when I pressed enter. I wondered if it could have wanted an admin password but it was asking for the password for my user account 'Apple'. I also wondered if it could be possible that there was a password but that it was set not to ask me for it, which didn't seem to be the case in settings.

I concluded that probably the blank password was confusing the system in some way but that either way if I could change the password or create one if there was none that either way it should work out.

After some research I used Disk Utility to reset the password for the user account. I discovered an Admin account on the drop down so I reset the password for that as well, thinking that if the first didn't work then that should do the trick.

When I rebooted there was a slight difference on the login screen; rather than just having the 'Apple' account there, there was also 'More' next to it. Clicking on more brought up username and password fields, which did not work with 'Admin' and the admin password that I had set.

I logged into my account fine, however the Keychain password of course no longer matched. I tried to change the Keychain password using a blank password field (which I presume it must have been, to match with the previously blank user login password) and with my new login password, but neither worked. I also tried changing my user password back to a blank one but that also failed.

I don't necessarily need to gain access to the keychain as most if not all the data is stored in Chrome anyway. I realised this just now while writing but I will continue the question as it may be helpful for others in the future.

I would also just be interested to know why all these issues came up, if a blank password can cause such problems it seems like a bit of a design floor. It also dawned on me that most of the passwords listed I haven't been on since owning this laptop, so does it just download the data from chrome? What's the point in that?
If I just log into chrome anyway and it does the work for me then I have no need for this Keychain encryption. If anything it's just one more place (albeit a much more secure one it seems) from where my data could be compromised.

I would also be interested to know why I am unable to log into this Admin account.

The "admin" account you set a password for was "System Administrator (root)". You'll either need to type "System Administrator", or "root" as the user name. This "super user" account is part of the operating system, and can do whatever it wants - including things that have extremely negative consequences. I recommend disabling it. See OS X Mountain Lion: Enable and disable the root user[1] for how.

If you want to fix the keychain and can't figure out what password it uses, open Keychain Access and click the "Reset my default keychain" button on the General tab of Preferences. If a problem with "Local Items" occurs after rebooting, see this article.

As for the use of empty passwords, that is probably on purpose. You can't start a new user with no password anymore, and you can't unlock Security and Privacy system preferences without a password.

And finally, Chrome doesn't have a keychain to make use of on other operating systems, so if it can't use the user account's keychain it makes sense to me that it'll fall back on its own internal storage.

[1] It has been the same method for a long time, you can ignore the "Mountain Lion" in the title.


How to access a website despite a certificate error? I am moving a web server to a new infrastructure. Before switching the DNS records I would like to check if the new configuration is working. I modified /private/etc/hosts/ with the IP addresses (IPv4 and IPv6) of the new server and after flushing the DNS cache everything is working.

But as the certificate doesn't match, Safari, Firefox, Opera and Chrome give me an error which I can't seem to ignore. Is there a workaround for this?

For Google Chrome the following flag exists to circumvent certificate errors and continue browsing:

Close Google Chrome
Open Terminal and enter:

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --ignore-certificate-errors &> /dev/null &

If the app resides somewhere else than in /Applications/ apply the path to Google Chrome respectively.

Launching Google Chrome like this is rather meant for dev purposes than for normal browsing since the security of the https-connection(s) is flawed.


Can't perform a factory reset on AirPods Max According to Apple's instruction factory reset is performed by pressing and holding both NC button and Digital Crown until the indicator light flashes amber and then white. However, in my case the light only flashes amber and nothing happens next. I tried holding buttons a little bit longer but the white flash never happened.
Headphones are around 90% charged, so it's not a battery issue. Tried in/out of case and with/without power cable, nothing worked.
Any ideas?

Just brought them to the local authorized service to get a replacement.


python script to create a desktop icon Right now I'am using npm start to open a desktop app (i.e nodejs server) which uses electron framework.
So when ever I want to open that desktop app I have to open the terminal, go the application directory and use command "npm start" to open the nodejs server i.e desktop app.

I want to write a python scrip to create a desktop app, and when ever I double click that desktop icon, it should internally uses 'npm start' command to open that desktop app.

Can any one please help me, and my application directory is as:
/Desktop/Electron/charityapp.

Open Terminal
cd ~/Desktop
echo '#!/bin/sh' > run-my-app
echo 'cd ~/Desktop/Electron/charityapp' >> run-my-app
echo 'npm start' >> run-my-app
chmod +x run-my-app

Then just double-click on the icon on the Desktop