Edit text file in a folder owned by a different user on macOS? I have system admin password How can I access and edit a text file found in a folder owned by another user?

I am in the original user account setup for this macOS Mojave installation, and have the system admin password. So I perform su or sudo as needed.

I do not want to change the permissions on the containing folder nor the text file. So this Question does not apply.

I just want to:

Open the text file, preferably in TextEdit.app.
Edit the text.
Save the file.

Bonus: Be able to navigate the folder hierarchy and see file listings using the Finder or via cd/ls command-line tools in the console (Terminal.app).

I tried sudo cd /path/to/protected_folder, and entered admin password as prompted, without error. But then ls shows me my starting directory rather than the /path/to/protected_folder folder contents.

I tried sudo open /path/to/protected_folder which does bring the Finder to the front, but with the protected folder showing and selected, but not opened.

If you know the path to the file that you want to edit, you can use:

sudo -e /path/to/file/name/here.txt

and it will allow you to edit it with your $EDITOR of choice.

If you want to use the Open dialog box, you might think this will work:

sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit

But that fails with an error:

"Illegal instruction: 4"

However, BBEdit will work:

sudo /Applications/BBEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/BBEdit

And you can use BBEdit for free.

Oh, and both methods keep the original ownership of the file and permissions intact.


Why a Win 7 usb installer made using Boot Camp, is not working? I'm running Lion on an old MacBook, MacBook 2.1 Mid 2007. I want to install Windows 7.

  I have an iso for Win 7 and create the partition and a usb installer
  with Boot Camp but when the machine restarts to install Win 7
  apparently refuses to boot from the usb and then shows a non bootable
  device message.

My CD/DVD drive is dead and I've tested the iso with virtual-box and it boots.

Windows 7 has to include Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Next, older Macs install Windows to use a BIOS boot method. Mac computers can not BIOS boot from flash drives.

If you have a working optical (DVD) drive, then you should use the drive to install Windows. If your optical drive is broken or missing, the you can still install Windows, but the procedure is fairly complicated. See Installing Windows 7 or 10 Pro 64 bit without DVD or Flash Drive for the procedure.

Some really old 64 bit Macs can not install 64 bit Windows without first modifying the Windows ISO file to remove the EFI boot method. This only applies when using the optical drive.

Officially, your Mac can only run 32 bit version of Windows. This is also true for my 2007 iMac, but I was able to run 64 bit Windows 7 anyway. So if you have 64 bit Windows, then the only way to know would be to try installing.

The Boot Camp Support Software 4.0.4033 for your Mac can be found at this link. Newer versions of the Boot Camp Support Software (Windows Support Software) will not contain the correct drivers for your Mac.

If you have problems installing the Boot Camp Support Software 4.0.4033, then read the instructions given here.

Just so you know, older Macs can usually run Windows 10. The oldest Mac I have running Windows 10 is a 2007 iMac. If you want to try the current version of Windows 10, the you can download the ISO file from this site. You do not need a license to install, but to continue to use Windows 10 you will eventually have to buy a license.


How to script a global keyboard shortcut in MacOS I want to configure a global keyboard shortcut in MacOS using a script.

Specifically, I want to set the "Move focus to next window" to ⌘⇧§ (since I have a Swedish keyboard and the default ⌘⇧` has a tendency to insert backquotes all over the place)

So I want the setting to end up like this

I have tried this command

defaults write -g NSUserKeyEquivalents '{ "Move focus to next window"="@§"; }'

Inspired by this and this instruction. But it does not work.

Well, if you want to set the "Move focus to next window" to ⌘ ⇧ § you'll obviously also need two modifiers along with the § key. (Your screenshot is contradictory to this, though.)

Your script has to contain an additional "$" here: '{"Move focus to next window"="@$§";}'.
Maybe this will work?


Sticky note saved but cannot be found I saved a Sticky Note before closing it, in the default save location which seems to be MacIntoshHD/User. Now I can't find it, although I haven't deleted it. I don't remember the filename I used, but I know from other sources that it should be an RTF file. Any idea where it is?

I have seen this and this.

Assuming that you're talking about the native Stickies app that's part of macOS, all notes are saved in the StickiesDatabase file. This file is located within the user's Library folder, usually located in Macintosh HD/Users/yourusername/Library.

If you can't see the Library folder, then follow these steps:

Click on the Finder icon in your Dock (usually the very first icon)
In the Finder window that appears, click on your username in the Sidebar (see note at end if it's not listed)
Now go to View > Show View Options (or press commandJ)
Now tick the Checkbox next to the Show Library Folder option (it's the bottom checkbox - see screenshot below)

Now your Library folder will be visible

NOTE: If your username is not visible in the Sidebar, then go to Finder > Preferences, select the Sidebar tab and then select the checkbox next to your username at the bottom of the Favourites list.

Finally, if by "saved a Sticky Note* you mean you exported it, then by default it'd be saved in your user's home folder unless you navigated to another location when you saved it. In this case, do a search using either Spotlight or Finder's commandF option for the filename you saved it as.

Alternatively, if you don't recall the filename, you can search by the date (or date range) you last saved/opened/modified the file, the contents of the file (assuming you remember some of it), and even by the kind of file (by default Stickies will save as a plain text file).


Is it possible to create a service using only the shell and bypassing automator altogether? Using automator is somewhat of a tedious task. Using the shell in the Terminal is much easier all around. Even using the "Run Shell Script" action inside automator is not the same as using the actual shell in the Terminal. A script that works normally in the Terminal may break in Automator. Then editing requires opening Automator again (I have a habit of quitting the program assuming everything will work) and waiting on everything to load. So I thought, why am I even using this program? But then when I start thinking about creating a service, I realized that I have no idea how to go about it without the slow and clunky Automator application. Is this even possible?

Having read through the Services Implementation Guide I'm going to have to say no to using only a shell script.  If you do not want to use Automator then you'll have to create a Service using Xcode and unless you can perform that level of programming, then Automator, as slow and clunky as it may be, is looking pretty good.

Just for the heck of it, I took what I learned from reading the Services Implementation Guide and was able to manually wrap the shell script in an application bundle with an appropriate Info.plist file that did make an entry on the Services menu in Finder as I coded in the .plist file. However, that's were things stopped as there was no mechanism within to pass what was selected in Finder to the shell script, masquerading as a Service in this case, like what the Automator Service takes care of automatically without one having to resort to Xcode.

In closing... Automator, as slow and clunky as it may be, is the easiest way to create a Service for the non-programmer average everyday user of OS X.


How can I restart from an Apple script without warnings? I wrote this Apple Script to bless my Windows partition and boot to Windows only once:

do shell script "/usr/sbin/bless --device /dev/disk0s3 --setBoot --legacy --nextonly " with administrator privileges
tell application "System Events"
    restart
end tell
tell me to quit

However, each time I use this script to get to Windows, and then come back to OS X, it gives me the dialog that says my computer restarted because of a problem.

What is the correct "clean" or "official" way to restart with an Apple Script so that I don't get these warnings?

Instead of telling System Events to restart, tell Finder.

tell application "Finder"
    restart
end tell


spaces and dual monitor: separate setup for each monitor? I have two monitors and I would like to handle the virtual spaces separately on each. I.e. changing the space on one monitor shouldn't change the space on the other. (I wonder why this isn't even the default because it seems to me like it makes more sense.)

Is there any way to do this?

It's not the exact answer you were looking for in the Mac OS but it is an alternative.

You can try TotalSpaces at http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/

It's been the only thing close to what you are looking for.


MacBook Pro 15" mid 2015 retina randomly freezing, trying to pinpoint the issue (not sleep related) My MacBook Pro (15-inch, Retina, Mid 2015, fresh install of latest Catalina) freezes randomly. It requires a hard shutdown (power button for > 5 secs) and then it takes a while to turn on. The MacBook had the logic board, display and lid replaced 18 months ago, has only internal graphics and the SSD is still original.

When it started

At least 6-8 months ago
Frequency seems to increase slowly but is still quite random
Just had 2 weeks crash free right now followed by crashes every other day - Last summer it crashed once a week at most

When it freezes

Randomly, but most of the cases within 2 minutes of waking up after sleeping overnight (sometimes after shorter sleeps)
Sometimes freezes few minutes after restarting from a previous crash
Most likely not related to the apps that are open or currently focused
Also froze running or booting into Diagnostic mode
Even if I'm not doing anything, just leaving it idle

Frozen behavior

Display on (external display too, both HDMI and MDP), content of the screen visible, won't go to sleep or turn off by itself
Trackpad, mouse and keyboard not responding (tried also bluetooth and usb)
Playback shuts down or loops a short sequence (not sure now)
Both on AC (multiple chargers) and on battery

Shutting down frozen state

Power button >5 secs is always successful

Turning on after crash

Usually not possible to turn back on immediately
Combination of long power button presses takes usually succeeds after a while
AC or battery no difference
Sometimes it takes longer (or a few minutes break) before it turns on
After the power button is pressed the fans start spinning slowly but the display is dead and the laptop does not boot
To turn off the fans a >5secs power button press is required
Repeating this process a few minutes leads to a successful startup
I vaguely remember that once or twice a funny icon appeared instead of the Apple boot logo (most likely the first or second from https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204156), turning off for an hour and turning on fixed it

Other observations

Bluetooth

Bluetooth sometimes reported as unavailable (strikethrough BT icon in menu bar), but didn't happen at all last few months
BT headphones playback skips every few minutes (the headphones play well with my phone, but it still can be them, I do not have other BT headphones to verify)

Things I've tried

Disk Utility First Aid

Shows no errors

Diagnostic mode

When I run it after a crash it may freeze too (although quite rarely) - with progress bar, on the language selection screen, anywhere really
When the diagnostic mode successfully runs it shows no errors

NVRAM/SMC reset

They seem to help fix the issue for a few days
When the crashing/freezing starts again it is more likely to happen quite soon again

File Vault

Turning off File Vault didn't help. Currently on a APFS Case Sensitive filesystem.

Complete OS upgrade and reinstall

Happens on both Mojave and Catalina
A fresh installation with minimum apps (few work apps, nothing fancy) does not help

System logs

They show nothing interesting, but I will try to look for events around BOOT_TIME for few more crashes if a pattern appears.
I have turned on showing seconds on the menu bar clock to pinpoint exact time of the crash and then went through all logs available in console after a crash. There were no records for 10 seconds around the time the display froze.

Turning off Bluetooth

No help. Crashed.

Swap SSD

A new OWC Aura SSD freezes too.

Things I'd like to try

Swap battery

I'm eligible for a free battery exchange so that's an affordable next step

Turn of Wifi remove Wifi board

Not sure if I can remove the wifi board and boot the OS though.
Currently I have the wifi switched off and waiting for another crash.

Different logic board

Not sure where I can easily borrow one for testing purposes though.

Any other suggestions or questions please?

Thanks a lot for any input! Much appreciated you made it this far.

I know this is an old topic but I have been having the same issue and was finally able to find a solution after trying quite a few different things. For me, turning off Hardware Acceleration within my browser (Chrome) has completely eliminated the freezing. It had ramped up to happening almost every day, but since turning off Hardware Acceleration I haven't had a single crash in 2 weeks.

I hope you have been able to resolve this problem for yourself already, and if not, I hope this trick works for you too!


iPhone case material for best heat dissipation? What case material for iPhone is most effective at dissipating heat. With my current case, my iPhone 11 often feels hot at the bottom of the screen but cools down when I take the case off, so I am confident that the case causes some heat to linger around. I was wondering which material will be best at dissipating heat and if you have any recommendations? TPU, rubber, plastic, metal, silicone, etc?

This is not a shopping recommendation question, rather a material specific question.

You can simply take a physics data book and lookup various materials to see how conductive they are.

Of the ones you list, metal is going to be the most efficient. For example in computers, heat sinks are often made of aluminium.

Note that there usually other properties to take into account when buying a phone case. For example it's hard to find transparent and very flexible metal (i.e. something that will allow you to bend the case slightly to allow you to put in the phone, but won't permanently deform the case).

In some cases those properties can mean that the phone won't be usable for you. For example, I know that you can buy cases with backs made of brushed steel. They are good at heat dissipation, they're flexible for you to put the phone into them easily - but the problem is they also block cell reception and WiFi signals.


Intermittently cant connect to VPN from Laptop, but always works from iPhone Ive got a few VPNs setup to different LANs, these are all IPSEC over LT2P connections and i manage them by OSX's built in VPN client inside system preferences > network.

Sometimes the VPNs will work fine, but sometimes i notice that i can not connect to any of my VPNs, and i get an error as per the below screenshot. Becuase they work fine sometimes, but wont connect other times i dont think its anything to do with credentials. Ive also noticed that none of the 6 VPNs i have will work, so it seems like its something to do with my laptop rather than the VPNs themselves.

Whats strange is that the VPNs themselves seem to be working fine, as if i connect to them on my iPhone running iOS12 they will connect.

Any ideas why my laptop running OSX 10.11 wouldnt work ?

Why don't you upgrade to the latest version.
Did you try turning off your wifi on Mac and turning it on again? After that try connecting one by one. You will find which one is causing the issue. Try killing them as well.
Try restarting your machine if 1 and 2 don't work.
Worst case, remove all the configurations, add one by one and observe over a period of time.


Configure Airport to routers DMZ IP I have a router connected to the Internet. I have connected my Airport Extreme to this router. I know this is receiving the message (Double NAT).

Since I want to receive all traffic on my Airport, I want to connect to the router's DMZ.

In which field do I enter the routers DMZ on my Airport Utility?

Apple uses the wording "Default Host" for a DMZ.

Open AirPort Utility
Select the AirPort
Click Edit
Click the Network tab
Network Options
Click "Enable default host at"
enter the local IP you wish to use and done.

I hope you have the same version and same options visible as I do...


how do I enable the root user from the Directory Utility? How do I enable the root account?  I don't see any options related the system user.  Do I enter the server as "localhost"?

What do I select here?

System Software Overview:

  System Version:   OS X 10.10.2 (14C1510)
  Kernel Version:   Darwin 14.1.0
  Boot Volume:  Mac OSx
  Boot Mode:    Normal
  Computer Name:    A MacBook Pro
  User Name:    thufir (thufir)
  Secure Virtual Memory:    Enabled
  Time since boot:  1:03

Hardware Overview:

  Model Name:   MacBook Pro
  Model Identifier: MacBookPro9,1
  Processor Name:   Intel Core i7
  Processor Speed:  2.3 GHz
  Number of Processors: 1
  Total Number of Cores:    4
  L2 Cache (per Core):  256 KB
  L3 Cache: 6 MB
  Memory:   4 GB
  Boot ROM Version: MBP91.00D3.B08
  SMC Version (system): 2.1f175
  Serial Number (system):   C02HH5JQDV33
  Hardware UUID:    FBB1FF0A-6EAC-5423-9E8F-405B181EF5F3
  Sudden Motion Sensor:
  State:    Enabled

You don't need to put anything in there if you're working locally, just click 'Open Directory Utility' [which you did, based on your second pic]

Then…
Edit menu - Enable root user [only available once you unlock Directory Utility, which it looks like you did]

...I would wonder why you need root unlocked - you really don't need it in OS X, you can sudo anyway


Exchange Calendar import Being a freelance designer I have a shared iCloud calendar with my wife so she knows what to expect from my work week. I also have an exchange account cause of my Microsoft work but my wife can't see this. Is there any way to import my exchange calendar info to my iCloud calendar so my wife can be kept up to date?

If this solution existed I would have been very pleased. Unfortunately I've been searching for this option a lot and the answer is no.

I'm currently using a work-around in which I've logged in with my Exchange account on the iPad at home and only checked the option to display the calendar of that particular Exchange account. (This also works for an iPhone or iPod Touch)

The calendar is now visible to everyone with access to the iDevice, and you can open and combine them in view. So you can see everything together even when it comes from multiple accounts.

I hope this is a possible solution which can work for you, as there is no easy way to copy or sync your calendar (yet).


Apple IPhone 5c does not allow incoming or outgoing calls My IPhone doesn't allow incoming or outgoing phone calls. Starts to dial then just goes back to the contacts screen  I can receive messages and send messages BUT only to people with an Apple device. Please help.

A couple of things to try:

Try forcing it off (hold power button and home button down for
10+ seconds) and back on.
Try removing and reseating the SIM.
Make a test call to customer service (611 in the US).
If none of the above work, you can reset network settings (Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings).

This is what any tech support (Apple Store, carrier) would have you do first.


Use 15" install DVD with 12" PowerBook I recently bought a 12" PowerBook G4 on eBay. I'd like to reinstall OS X to have a clean setup, but I can't find any original install discs online.

However, I found this one which says it's for 15" and 17" PowerBooks. Does that really matter? Could I use these disks with the 12" PowerBook?

Generally as long as you use an OS X build later than the one that came with the machine you should be good to go. In your case, it looks like all the 12 inch G4s can run 10.3, so most likely any retail 10.4 version should be fine.

For maximum safety, I'd go for 10.4.3 or later, as it seems that the last packaged version for a 12 inch G4 was 10.4.2 (build 8E90A), according to MacTracker.


Can't bind cmd+\ to "Move focus to next window", but I can bind it to other actions... why? I just reinstalled OSX 10.8, and I've encountered an incredibly odd behaviour: binding cmd+\ to "Move focus to next window" doesn't work (if I hit it, I get the "pop" error sound). However, binding it to other actions works, and binding other combinations to that action also works.

This makes no sense to me.

I would rather keep using this shortcut, as I'm quite used to it and I hit it often.

Does someone have any clue?

P.S. in case it might help: this did work in my previous 10.8 install.

Update: doesn't work in 10.10 either: I don't get the "pop" error sound anymore, but it just does nothing.

For what it is worth, I am able to bind ⌘+\ to Move Focus to Active or Next Window in Mavericks, and it works fine for switching between Finder windows.

(It doesn't help your situation except to indicate that this might be a bug...)

If you are trying to use it in another application besides the Finder, does the standard ⌘+` work?

I have the Full Keyboard Access option below that set to text boxes only:

EDIT: Reassigning ⌘+\ to "Move focus to next window" also works fine for me.

You are probably onto something with the backslash causing the problem, since defaults write -globalDomain NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add "Move focus to next window" '@\' gives an error Could not parse: "@\".  Try single-quoting it. and trying to escape it with a backslash results in a strange dictionary assignment:

$ defaults read -globalDomain NSUserKeyEquivalents
{
    "Move focus to next window" = "@\\\\";
}


Where do Adobe AIR applications cache video files? I have various players that play videos from websites, I want to know where those videos are cached.
Because it's AIR, I suppose it's caching in a particular place, but I can't find it.

In Mac OS X, all applications store theire cache files in one place:

  /Users/yourusername/Library/Caches

There you can find the Adobe caches, and Adobe Air cache files.


Use a single shortcut to activate an app (might running in other spaces) in the current space Background: I have two spaces, one is for work and one is for entertaining. They are for different purposes, and it is a common situation where the same app is running in both spaces (for example, a web browser app can have 2 different windows, one is related to work and one to Internet browsing, and they are distributed in different spaces).

What I want to achieve: I like the ability to activate an app quickly by using a single shortcut (by using Keyboard maestro, or Karabiner, or BetterTouchTool, or whatever app you would recommend to me). This single shortcut can achieve several things in different situations:

When the app is not running in any of the space, then the obvious thing is to launch it in the current space
When the app is running and have window(s) open in the other space –

2.1. But there is no window open in the current space – then open a new window of this app

2.2. And there is already existing window(s) open in the current space – then resume the existing window(s)

Do you know how can I achieve this effect? I have tried many ways with the aforementioned OS assistant apps, but because they can only tell whether the specific app is running and is at the front (even if it is only running and at the front in the other space), but cannot tell if there is a window open or not in the current space, so I cannot achieve 2.1 and 2.2 both at the same time using a single shortcut.

If I activate the app (similar to clicking on the dock icon but with a shortcut) with window(s) running in the other space, then only 2.2 can be achieved not 2.1. In fact, nothing would happen in the case of 2.1, no popping out any window or switching to the other space or anything, because the system assume that the app is running and it already has its focus on it, while in fact the running window is on the other space so the current space cannot see a thing. You always have to follow with a next move, for example, command + N to create a new window, or just switch to the other space to check whether there is a window open, and it's overall a very jarring experience.

Or, I can always open a new window of the app in the current space using shortcut, but in that case only 2.1 can be achieved not 2.2. It's very useful to resume the existing window(s) where you have already been working on in the current space.

Hopefully I have made my conundrum clear enough. It would be much easier for me to navigate the whole OS if I can find a way to work this out, so thank you for any input!

I only have a partial answer that solves following question: How to assign a single shortcut to activate an app?

This solution will:

start the app when it is not running
when it is running, bring it to the foreground, meaning that the focus will be set to this app.

This can be achieved without a third party application.

Open Automator and select Quick Action (might be called Service in version of macOS earlier than Mojave)
In the new workflow, search for the action Launch application by searching for it in the name searchbox.
Double tap Launch application, which will be added to workflow pane.
Select your application from the dropdown list. By default only applications in /Applications will be selected, so choose other... if needed.
Save the workflow. Name it something sensible like Open MyApp.
Open System Preferences > Keyboard. Click the Shortcuts tab and select Services from the left hand pane.
Under General in the right hand pane, you will find your freshly created workflow. Assign a keyboard shortcut there.

Hope this helps.

Tested on Catalina 10.15.4.


Connect Macbook Pro to TV wirelessly I am currently using an HDMI adapter (and a cable for audio) to connect my Macbook Pro (2009) to my HD TV (no smart TV) and I use a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Is it possible to achieve the same result wirelessly? Note that I'm not looking for something like Apple TV. I want to see my desktop on the TV, possibly with audio as well.

Believe me you are looking for something like Apple TV and Apple computer made in or after 2011 with Mountain Lion installed. It's called Airplay Mirroring.

Or alternatively you can achive something similar with this app


Why does my WLAN stop working when I plug in my HDTV? I'm facing a strange problem where my WLAN suddenly stops working the moment I plug in my HDTV into my MacBook 13" (mid-2010) using an HDMI to DisplayPort adapter.

Any idea why this is happening?

Bit of a shot in the dark but have you tried a different cable?  Maybe the one you're using is damaged and is shorting something somewhere which is affecting the wireless antenna.  It is definitely a weird problem by the sounds of it but you could try a couple of tests by first using a different cable, then using a different TV with each cable and see if they all produce the same result.  If they do then it might be worth getting Apple to take a look at your DisplayPort socket if you're under warranty or a good repair shop.  I've seen weird things happen to computers with dodgy USB cables so there's a chance it's something like that.


Which cities have "flyover" in iOS 6 Maps? Is there a list of which cities have 3D flyover data that is actually 3D and not an attempt to map a satellite image on false perspective? If not, could we crowd source this in a wiki-type answer?

Australia

Australia

Sydney

Europe

Denmark

Copenhagen

France

Lyon

Germany

Berlin
Munich

Ireland

Dublin

Italy

Milan
Rome

Spain

Barcelona
Madrid

United Kingdom

London
Birmingham
Manchester

North America

Canada

Montreal
Toronto
Vancouver

United States

Apple HQ in Cupertino
Arlington, TX
Atlanta
Austin
Boston
Chicago
Dallas
Denver
Fort Worth
Houston
Las Vegas
Long Beach
Los Angeles
Memphis
Miami
New Orleans
New York
Oakland
Philadelphia
Phoenix
Portland
Sacramento
San Francisco
San Jose
Seattle
Bellevue, WA
Everett, WA
Kent, WA
Tacoma, WA

The initial 11 cities at the time of iOS 6 announcement (June, 2012) were identified by
Cult of Mac.


How do I get EyeTV to work on my 2007 iMac? I'm running a 2007 24" iMac, and recently installed OS X Lion.  I am trying to use the EyeTV software for my Elgato TV tuner.  When I run the program, Console logs messages of the form:

automountd[14168]: parse_entry: bad key in map auto_home: EyeTV Archive

and the program crashes.  I have a vague understanding of what autofs is, but I have no idea why it is being invoked.  I looked up Apple's autofs source code and it seems that "EyeTV Archive" is being passed in as a key to something, somewhere (like I said, I know know much about autofs).  Can somebody help, please?

My best guess is that you have an unmounted volume set in the EyeTV settings under Recording / "EyeTV Archive" Location.


Upgrading Mavericks --> Sierra I just tried to upgrade my OS from Mavericks to Sierra.
The app store shows that I have installed Sierra (see pic), but "about this mac" and the command line both say I still have 10.9.5 (Mavericks).

Am I missing a step?  Or is this a bug and how do I solve it?

This is a slightly confusing Apple UI-fail.

Since Allan is partly or basically correct:

  You downloaded it. You didn't install it. To install it, you need to
  go to you Applications folder and launch it. – Allan Oct 31 '16 at 1:01

Seeing that the confusion persists:

  Can you be more specific? What is the name of the thing I need to
  launch? It does say installed (look at the pic). What does that mean?
  – user2429920 Oct 31 '16 at 4:04

Your picture displays "installed" for Sierra, alright.
You need to combine Allan's comment with the contents of this comment:

  The name of the app is "Install macOS Sierra.app" or
  something along those lines – NoahL Oct 31 '16 at 4:16

That means: Your AppStore application has successfully installed the "Install macOS Sierra.app". That info is pictured in the banner you posted: you downloaded the installer completely and the installer is therefore marked as installed.

To actually install that new system as the system running your machine ("upgrade to Sierra") you indeed need to open the newly installed "Install macOS Sierra.app" in your Applications-folder. That will then guide you through the actual install after which your system will boot into Sierra.


Is there a 64-bit version of Google Chrome for Mavericks? Is there a 64-bit version of Google Chrome for OS X Mavericks?

I need to run NetBeans and it requires Java 7 Update 10 at least.

Since v39, Chrome is 64-bit.

At the time of writing, there is no 64-bit version of Google Chrome for Mac.

You should be able to run your Java content in Safari for now, since Safari is 64-bit and can run Java 7.


Word:mac 2011 preserve table formatting on copy-paste In Microsoft Word 2010 for Windows, I can duplicate a table simply by clicking its handle at the top-left (which selects the entire table), copying it and pasting it. When I do that in Word:mac, the table and contents is duplicated without any of the table formatting. This kinda sucks because the original table has a number of merged cells and all sorts of formatting going on. I'm basically using the source table as a template.

I just updated Office:mac 2011 to SP2.

Go to:

Word → Preferences → Edit → Settings  (under cut and paste options use smart cut and paste)
Remove the check mark on "Adjust table formatting and alignment on paste".

Now try copy-paste of a table. It works.


Attempting to dual-boot Windows on late 2011 Mac but the partition number is greater than 4 I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do here.

For some background knowledge, my late 2011 Mac does "not have UEFI firmware and the ability to boot Windows installers from USB flash drives until the 2012 model year."

Therefore I am following the guide here: Boot camp install of Windows 7 issue, no bootable devices

Essentially, I'm transferring a Virtual Machine to a hard drive partition, in this case a fresh Windows installation. I failed to install Windows 8.1 the first time because I ended up running the wrong bootcamp drivers, which resulted in blacking the screens out (Graphics drivers probably failed). I decided to remove the partition my merging it back with my original El Capitan partition.

In the guide, it mentions:

If your partition number is greater than 4, then you can not install Windows on this partition. (Technically, this may not be
    true, but it is beyond the scope of this answer to explain how to do
    so.)

Unfortunately, that is the exact problem I have; how do I get my partition to be a number less than 5?

Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thank you.

For your model Mac, OS X maintains two different disk partition tables. First is has the name "Master Boot Record Partition Table" or the abbreviated name MBR table. The second is called the  "Global Unique Identifier Partition Table" or the abbreviated name GPT. The MBR table can only have 4 entries, where as, the
GPT can have 120 entries. When OS X makes an entry in the MBR table, the entry is also duplicated in the GPT. Furthermore, these duplicates are stored in both tables using the same index. For example, if an entry is duplicated and one of the pair is the 3rd entry in the GPT, then the other will be found as the 3rd entry in the MBR table. This means any GPT entry with an index greater than 4 should never appear in the MBR table.

While OS X is aware of both the MBR table and the GPT, the same is not true for Windows. For you model Mac, Windows will never look at the GPT. It only sees the MBR table. If you used OS X to create the Boot Camp partition with an index of 5, then this partition will not appear in the MBR table. Therefore, Windows will not be able to find this partition during the installation process.

It is possible to make the 5th entry in GPT be paired with one of the last 3 entries in the MBR table. This requires either a third party tool or a great deal of manually editing of the MBR table using the OS X command line tools. Ron Smith offers a third party tool called gdisk which can make this kind of change to the MBR table. Basically, you first select the r option to enter the  "recovery & transformation" menu. Next, you select to h option to create a hybrid MBR. At this point, you can enter the indices of the GPT partitions you what to appear in the MBR table. Finally, you select the w command to write the changes to the MBR table on your drive.

If you wish confirm if the use of gdisk would help install Windows on your Mac, then edit your question and add the output from the following commands.

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0

These commands will not change your Mac. They may ask for your login password. This is normal. The GUID's produced are all published in the public domain. A list of these GUIDs can be found here.


How do I restore default perl in macOS Mojave? Is there a way to restore default perl5 and cpan modules in Mojave without rebuilding the OS?

Standard binaries are protected by SIP and can‘t easily be removed nor replaced. Booting into recovery and reinstalling macOS only is the easiest way to solve this. You may need to manually reinstall any user-installed CPAN modules again afterwards.


Allow applications downloaded from anywhere in macOS Sierra In previous versions of the OS in the security pane, you are provided an option of:

But in this version there is no option anywhere:

Is there a way that I can turn on anywhere? (via Terminal maybe?)

Apple have removed this function on macOS Sierra, but you can re-enable it running this in terminal:
sudo spctl --master-disable

Additionally, as Jack points out:

Granted this is a little overkill, but it does the job reliably. It can be re-enabled immediately after launching the application with
sudo spctl --master-enable


Microsoft Word on MacBook Pro: Tab problems While working on an existing document (a simple three-column Word table), the document has stuck on the "Table Layout" tab. When I try to open another tab eg Home, or Document Elements, the toolbar sort of bounces up and down and stays stuck on "table layout". I've tried closing down Word and re-opening it. No luck. I tried shutting down my computer and restarting it. No luck. Any other ideas?

There is an old trick I learned on a help desk well over 10 years ago which USUALLY still works.

In the problematic document, turn on paragraph marks. It's in the ribbon under "Paragraph." or Press COMMAND-* (Mac) or CTRL-* (PC) [EG SHIFT COMMAND/CTRL 8].

Select All in the document. Use the edit menu or click in the document and COMMAND-A (Mac) or CTRL-A (PC).

Scroll to the bottom of the document and locate the very LAST paragraph mark at the very end of the document.

Press the shift key and click just to the LEFT of the last paragraph mark, thus de-selecting it.

Now everything in the document is selected EXCEPT the last paragraph mark.

Release the shift key, and tap COMMAND-C (Mac) or CTRL-C (PC).
Create a new empty Word Document.

Click in the document and paste what you just copied from the old, problematic, document into the new one. Save the new document under a different name and see if your formatting/behavior issues have gone away.

When I learned that trick I was told that MS Word stores document formatting in the last paragraph marker. Regardless of whether that is true or not it will often fix problematic MS Word documents.


What is the difference between APFS Local Snapshots and Time Machine Snapshots? I have an external disk always backing up my system, since Time Machine was launched.

Not the same disk all these years.

Catalina introduce this thing called APFS local snapshot that wastes disk space by creating backups on the main disk.

Also Catalina now split macOS into 2 partitions: Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data.

Here is my problem:

I have Time Machine backing up the main disk to USB disk.
I have local snapshots being created on the main disk.

First question: macOS has these 2 partitions, Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data, I type tmutil listlocalsnapshots / and I see this

com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-03-18-114726.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-03-18-134519.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-03-18-144256.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-03-18-154141.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-03-18-164459.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-03-19-022806.local

These are snapshots that contain data from both Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data, right?

Second question: I am having this other error explained on another question of mine.

That local snapshot I mention, from 3 days ago, doesn't appear today when I listed the local snapshots. Probably they have been alreay erased.

Third question: these snapshots mentioned by fsck_apfs and Disk Utility.app are those APFS local snapshots, right?

Fourth question: When I open the Time Machine application and it shows a list of all backups Time Machine has by date, what backups am I seeing there, the ones on the external disk or these local snapshots.

Fifth question: What is the relation between these local snapshots and the backup being made to external disk?

Sixth question: If the local snapshots and the backups being made to external disks are independent, how do I rollback the disk to a previous local snapshot?

Thanks, please answer these six questions.

Both are backup utilities and both offer you the ability to recover after a "catastrophic" event, but like tools in your tool box, your box wrench and your socket wrench both essentially have the same function, but have their preferred application depending on the scenario.

APFS snapshots are a point-in-time snapshot of your APFS file system.  Your initial TM backup may be a point in time snapshot, but subsequently, it's an ongoing differential backup - only backing up what has changed.

APFS snapshots are only done on drives that have the APFS file system. Time Machine will back up any supported drive, APFS or not.

APFS are not so automatic.  Yes, they are done automatically prior to an update being applied and you can script them using launchd or cron, but they're generally something that gets done only before a major system change.  Time Machine on the other hand, by its very nature not only runs on schedule, but runs continuously to ensure data protection.

APFS snapshots are stored to the local APFS drive.  This means that you need to have ample space to take a snapshot.  TM doesn't care how full your drive is to take a backup as long as you have a target drive big enough to back it up.

Since APFS snapshots are only stored on disks with the APFS filesystem, when you run out of space, earlier snapshots are automatically deleted.  While this is also the behavior for TM, you can easily add to your backup space by swapping out another external back up drive.

TL;DR
APFS snapshots should not be used as a method of backup because they are only point-in-time snapshots of your system.  This is useful if you are about to do an update or make a change and things go sideways and you need the ability to return to a known working state.
Time Machine offers true back up capabilities because it offers more than a point-in-time backup, but an ongoing differential backup where it gives you granular control of what you back up and restore regardless of filesystem.


Sort order tiebreaker for "Album by Artist" If there are two tracks in an album made of various homemade MP3 files (rather than an imported CD or downloaded) that have the same "album by artist" value, what is the tiebreaker value that controls how iTunes orders those tracks?

I even deleted the files, removed all the ID3 tags, renamed the files with a "00 - " prefix to try and force the order, but still they display in a random order in the Albums view. In the Songs view when sorting by name they are correct, but when sorting by "Album by Artist" they appear to be sorted randomly, and the order is consistent with that in the Albums view.

Can anyone help? If I can just find the field that controls it I'll edit each track in iTunes to have "01" to "14" in that field to force it.

Many thanks in advance.

You need to set the Track Number tag for each file. That's the only way iTunes determines track order. If there is no track number, it defaults to either alphabetical, or to the order in which the tracks were added. (I've seen both, and don't understand why it chooses one or the other.)


How can I tell the address of the remote server an app communicates to? I have installed an iPhone app from the AppStore that takes a phone number and searches an online database then returns a name that belongs to the entered phone number (and vice versa).

Is there a way for me to know what is the back-end server this app is talking to? (a hostname, or an IP address)?

This only applies to macOS and not to iOS:

You could use Wireshark or lsof which is already included in macOS.

With lsof you can type lsof -i | grep -E "(LISTEN|ESTABLISHED)" into your terminal and it will show you all connections that are actively communicating.

Edit: You could use a custom DNS like pihole to see which domains are requested by the app.


Add Static ARP Entry at Boot I'm new to Mac OS X.
On Linux I'd:

append to /etc/rc.local
arp -i eth0 -s 192.168.1.1 00:00:00:00:00:00

I've figured out how to do it in Terminal:

sudo arp -s 192.168.1.1 00:00:00:00:00:00

But I'd like this to happen automatically preferably at boot.
Also do I need to specify an interface when using arp?

I read some other SE answers that mentioned launchd, but I have no idea what that is.

I struggled a lot with Matthieu's solution since it caused two problems on my Mac OS X 10.9.2:

Jobs in the LaunchAgents folder are executed using the current user. However arp needs to be executed using root.
The arp-command is executed too early, when the network is not up. But the network is needed by the arp-command.

The first problem can be solved by storing the .plist file in LaunchDaemons instead of LaunchAgents. This will ensure that the command is executed as root.

The second problem is a bit tricky. Since launchd does not handle dependencies, we have to write our own shell script which first waits until the network is up an then execute the arp command. (See here)

So here is my solution:
First create/open the plist file using a text-editor:

sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/local.arpentries.plist

Then paste the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>local.arpentries</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/arpentries</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <false/>
</dict>
</plist>

Set owner etc.:

sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/local.arpentries.plist
sudo chmod 0644 /Library/LaunchDaemons/local.arpentries.plist

Now create/open the shell script using a text editor

sudo nano /usr/local/bin/arpentries

Paste the following:

#!/bin/bash

# max number of retries
retries=10

# include Startup commons
. /etc/rc.common

# wait for network to become available
CheckForNetwork

while [ "$NETWORKUP" != "-YES-" ]
do
        retries=$((retries - 1))
        if [ $retries -le 0 ] ; then
                exit 1
        fi
        sleep 2
        NETWORKUP=
        CheckForNetwork
done

# set the static arp entries
arp -s 192.168.1.111 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

exit 0

And the rights:

sudo chmod 0744 /usr/local/bin/arpentries


Can Not Transfer Voice Memos I can't seem to manage to transfer voice memos from my iPhone. I've read that all I should do is to check the "Include voice memos" box in iTunes Music Sync Settings:

Of course, I've synced, re-synced, connected, re-connected, backed-up, re-backed-up my device several times, however, I don't have any "Voice memos" playlist appearing in my iTunes library:

The main reason I want to do this is because Voice Memos seem to be using a lot of space on my device:

I've also read about transferring each individual memo using Air Drop which is great, but not when you have 50+ memos :(

Anyway, got any ideas, maybe I'm doing something wrong?

My set-up is: iPhone 5s with iOS 8.3 & MacBook Pro with OS X 10.10.3 & iTunes 12.1.2.27.

I'm assuming you are attributing the 5.93GB to voice memos? That would be about 75 hours of memos. (They use about 2MB per minute.)

"Other" in iTunes is a large catch-all that includes things like mail caches, Safari browsing data, iTunes streaming caches, and more. The best way to identify how much space is being used is on the device itself - Settings app > General > Usage.

As far as the Voice Memos not syncing, check on your hard drive under <your username>/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Voice Memos and make sure they aren't actually there (and just the playlist is missing). If they are not, uncheck the Sync Voice Memos setting, apply your changes, then reboot your phone (hold Home + Sleep until the Apple logo appears) and your Mac, then re-enable the setting.


Cannot reinstall macOS on corrupted drive The other day I accidentally messed up updating my iMac from 2010 and have seemed to uninstall macOS.
I have successfully made a usb boot drive for Sierra (the os it was on prior to this problem), but when I open Utilities in recovery mode and click install macOS, I get a “The operation couldn’t be completed. Permission denied” error.
I would try and go into internet recovery mode but unfortunately that feature doesn’t work on Macs this old. I would also try to just reformat my hard drive but I need all the data on it. What can I do?

This question is one we get often. If your Mac can’t boot itself to internet recovery, you need to bring a bootable external OS to your Mac to fix it.
Your Mac could run in target mode and you download the installer from another Mac or use another Mac or person to make you a new installer.
Apple documents these steps very well. All you have to do is choose what OS you want to reinstall over your existing to see if the data is still intact or if you just want to erase and set up new.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204267

You will have to know how to examine the install logs or make a second installer. Either your drive is broken and needs erase and repair or your installer is broken. Hard to tell without hands on and experience. It’s easy to repeat the install with a known good installer. Then the chances both installers fail is low and you’ll know your Mac needs extra steps and attention.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210905 (has steps to repair a disk)
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904 (has steps to erase the disk and reinstall)


Prioritize network usage by app? I have one folder of old videos backing up via an uploader app (odrive), but it's 200 GB so it will take a few days.

While that's happening I need to upload a small (50MB) video which I need to send to a client for review (in a different folder) – NOW! – via another app (CloudApp).

So now the big backup is holding up my need-it-now upload.

Is there any way to have the 2nd app take over priority and/or "throttle" the first app until it's done uploading?

Implementing quality of service on the network client/endpoint is generally a waste of time and therefore (I presume) no one has made that sort of software for OS X.

There isn't an easy way to go in and fiddle with things without tearing down the transfers that are in progress and I can probably infer that you can't resume either transfer easily or you would have simply paused the first to see if it helped the second already.

A more viable option going forward is to use a network protocol that lets you pause one and resume a partial transfer for the long acting transfers.

transmit.app allows you to pause transfers
rsync effectively allows you to resume transfers since it can pick up a partial transfer in the middle of a large file when it gets interrupted.


What makes a MacBook much thicker or thinner? Apple's official website says the height of a MacBook could be from "0.35 to 1.31 cm". This is a wide range, more than double thickness.

I'm buying a new customized MacBook. When is it 0.35 cm thick and when is it 1.31 cm, for example when increasing storage or changing CPU?

The case is tapered.

It's thicker at the back than the front.

Pic from Apple Store - Macbook


How to Use Keyboard Shortcut ⌘; when ; doesn't exist as a single key? The ⌘+; (command + semicolon) hides all guides in Adobe Illustrator. The problem is that I'm using a Swiss keyboard layout. The semicolon for me is located on the comma (,) key and I type a semicolon with Shift+, (shift + comma). However, neither ⌘+, (command + comma) nor ⌘+Shift
+, (command + shift + comma) seems to trigger the actual keyboard shortcut. I am aware that I can change system specific keyboard shortcuts within the keyboard settings of Mac OS but this doesn't work in Illustrator and, unfortunately, there's no keyboard shortcut setting in Illustrator either.

Is there any general way how I can access a keyboard shortcut if one of the keys is not accessible by a single key press?

On an English keyboard, it's the key to the right of L. Sometimes the position is mapped, rather than the actual character. Maybe worth a shot, though I can't test here.

BTW, Adobe uses its own key-mapper - towards the bottom of the Edit Menu on Photoshop [I don't use Illustrator] - so you could check &/or change it in there...


How to quickly reduce video file size of iPad and iPhone videos I discovered that the majority of the space, taken up by photo library is due to videos I have made with my iPhone and iPad. While I like preserving some of these video in original format for HQ viewing, I don't mind loosing some quality for others. Is there a quick way for doing so or do I need to import each separate video into a video-editing program and then export it again with the appropriate settings?

I would use Handbrake which is a free encode/recode program.  You can batch files up, and choose various presets or your own choice of everything from resolution/bit rate/frames per second etc to decrease (you can never increase, obviously) the quality and therefore file sizes for your videos.  My top tip would be to simply reduce resolution but keeping the smaller size dividable by the larger size, so if your videos are in iPhone 4 640x960 then try 320x480 for optimal conversion.

Many many other encoders are available, but most are paid solutions, and none are as fully featured in my opinion as Handbrake is.  Speed depends on your CPU as it is all done in software, but recent versions of the software have included support for either Intel Quick Sync (If you have a Sandy Bridge or above Core iX CPU) and also OpenCL for using your GPU as extra processing resources - however I have never tested these, so I can't say how fast they may or may not be, or even if you have access to them.

Certainly for small phone videos even just using non hardware accelerated encoding you should see it take no more than 1/4 to 1/2 of the normal playtime of the file to convert, and likely a lot less than that.


Will Winebottler work with licences? I have a windows program that I have a licence on, and I downloaded that program onto my macbook. It works fine, but it doesn't include the full version functions. I have to deactivate and transfer the licence onto my mac in order for the full version to work, but I'm not sure whether Winebottler will work with licenses.

It's very expensive, so I don't want to risk losing it if transferring it doesn't work. Does Winebottler support licenses?

Generally Winebottler can handle licenses, but it works simulating the Windows API, so you have to fine tuning some components and DLL if something is implemented using non common Windows API / DLL, which it means that sometime license verification is implemented with esoteric business logic and may require some particular DLL which doesn't run well with the emulator.

In conclusion, I think that you have a good rate of success because your program is also running as limited edition, and I don't think that it could be a problem to have a test, at least it doesn't works and you can always uninstall it and recover your license key.

As far as I know usually licenses are provided per user or per machine. If you uninstall the software from your emulator you still have you license ready for another installation, maybe using virtualization software like VirtualBox or a Windows dedicated partition baked with BootCamp.


Is "/private" just an ordinary directory or does it have special properties The nominal links
 /etc --> /private/etc,
 /tmp --> /private/tmp and
 /var --> /private/var
are all straightforward and I understand they are there because of a legacy need that has passed. Nothing magical about them.

However, I just saw these install instructions for an Apache/httpd module which recommend using /private/libexec instead of /usr/libexec. That directory doesn't exist but I can create it via sudo. So, I am wondering if /private has some special properties such that /private/libexec is merged with /usr/libexec?

There is no magic at works here, this will just create a user-writable directory to store the module in. You can‘t copy it into /usr/libexec/apache2 as this is protected by SIP.

Using /private like this seems kind of odd though. I would probably create /usr/local/libexec/apache2 and install the module there. You just need to be careful to adapt all references to it as well.


How to make older iPhone and iPad with < iOS 8 enter two factor verification code? I have some older iPhone and iPad (iPhone 5S and iPad Mini) with iOS 8. When I charged it and powered it up again, and search for app in the App Store, it will ask me to verify the account in my other apple device.

Sure, my iPhone 6 Plus and Macbook both popped up the "Allow or not" and verification code popups, but in the older device, there is no way to type the code in.

If I don't create yet another iTunes account (and want to use the existing iTunes account), and not to be forced into upgrading to the newest iOS, how can I possibly make it work?

This stumped me for several attempts, until I carefully re-read the pop-up window with the verification code (I didn't take a screenshot, I'm going from memory):

enter the verification code after the password INTO THE PASSWORD field (my CAPS)

So, there is no separate box or window for the verification code. You have to type both the password and code into the same box as one long string.

This worked for me in iOS 5.1

Looks like a way to retro-fit 2-factor into iOS5 without having to release an update.


What does an icon that looks like a pair of connected chain links next to a wireless network name mean? When I click on the WiFi symbol in the menu bar on my Mac I get a list of wireless networks, most of them with little lock icons next to them. But some of them show what looks like a pair of chain links instead (see image below). What does this mean? That these networks are personal hotspots?

It's a personal hotspot created by an iOS device to share the cellular data connection that the phone has over Wi-Fi.


How do I write to the device Console log from the command line? How do I write to the log for my "Device" in the Console app from the command line. I've tried

syslog -s -k Facility com.apple.console \
             Level Alert \
             Sender SomeSender \
             Message "some message"

and

syslog -s -l error "message to send"

but don't see anything.

Apple has a new logging system so the old tail and syslog commands are deprecated. To start down the new unified log path, open two windows the first will just stream the logs (and they will fly by quickly normally)

log stream

Then to emit a log:

logger -p user.error "my new alert"

More good links:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/os/logging
https://eclecticlight.co/2017/10/10/inside-the-macos-log-logd-and-the-files-that-it-manages/
http://krypted.com/mac-os-x/logs-logging-logger-oh/


"Start Screensaver" hotcorner no longer works under El Capitan beta After upgrading to one of the beta El Capitan builds, I can no longer use the "start screensaver" hotcorner. Other hotcorners still work, so it's not an issue with an application grabbing mouse input and blocking hotcorners from being detected (for example, I can configure the display to turn off and that works fine) and the screensaver itself works, too.

This is on El Capitan public build 15B17c, and has persisted through the few beta builds. Moving the mouse to the corner assigned to "start screensaver" simply has no effect. I've tried disabling and enabling the option, rebooting, checking disk permissions, etc. to no avail. Any other suggestions?

What worked for me:

1) Change the hot corner action to something different. It should work.

2) Restart your Mac

3) Change the hot corner back to the original action.

I just checked that the action keeps working after a restart.

I'm on MBP 15'' Retina Mid-2014 with El Capitan.


macOS Sierra Apple Watch Unlock - persistant iCloud Sign in required dialog I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) that I just reinstalled macOS Sierra 10.12.3 and now I am trying to use my Watch to unlock.

I had this working before in the past before the reinstallation.  Also, I have it working on another older MacBook Pro. (Post 2013)

I get the following dialog:

  Your Apple Watch must be signed into iCloud to allow it to unlock your Mac.
  You can sign in using the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.

After trying the following steps, I still get the dialog.

Verified that the Apple Watch is indeed signed in on the proper Apple ID
Verified that macOS is signed in on the same Apple ID
Rebooted the Apple Watch and unlocked it (See this answer)
Verified that all components are on the same WiFi network and Bluetooth is enabled

I have not unpaired the watch then paired again.  Hoping not to have to go to that extreme.

Question: How can I get past the dialog?  What am I missing here?

  Hardware:

  MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) running macOS Sierra 10.12.3
  iPhone 7 iOS 10.2.1
  Apple Watch 1st generation watchOS 3.1.3

I had the same problem: In settings I was definitely logged into iCloud, but the Apple Watch unlock setting still claimed I wasn't.

I stumbled on the following weird solution:

I happened to start FaceTime on Mac, and noticed that I wasn't logged into it. I logged in.

When I then opened the Security settings again, the Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac was checked!


Disable OS X Server's shutdown prompt? I've just installed OS X Server. Whenever I try to shut it down (as a local interactive user), I keep seeing a prompt that requires me to enter an admin's name and password before proceeding with the shutdown:

Shutting down may cause other users logged into this computer to lose unsaved changes.

I keep seeing this dialog even though there is nobody else connected to the machine.

Question is, how can I disable this dialog? I mean, let anybody who is logged in locally to shutdown the machine without entering an administrator password (or even without entering their own password?) I see this is not a security issue since with physical access, they can just press the power button.

My original intention is to use the living room's iMac as an Xcode build server, primarily to run unit tests. The machine starts and automatically logs in to a non-privileged account to make it convenient for people to use it to play videos and such. It would be nice to have this machine run unit tests as well, and it's really not critical if a build/run gets canceled mid-way because the machine is shutting down.

Server version: 4.1 (14S1092)
OS X: 10.10.3 (14D136)

One possible way could be by using a terminal command:

shutdown -h now

This immediately kills all processes and shuts your system down in a fairly nice manner.

As a normal user you could initiate this by

sudo shutdown -h now

But the problem with password prompt remains, this time in the terminal.

Having a closer look to the sudo configuration file /etc/sudoers I found:

...
# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Uncomment to allow people in group wheel to run all commands
# %wheel        ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Same thing without a password
# %wheel        ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
...

Check whether your account is already in the wheel or admin group by issueing groups in the terminal. If that is the case, just uncomment the line with %wheel NOPASSWD or by adding NOPASSWD at the proper position of the admin line above (the wheel line shows you how to do this). For instance:

tatooine-3:~ mallert$ groups
staff com.apple.sharepoint.group.2 everyone localaccounts _appserverusr
admin _appserveradm _lpadmin _appstore _lpoperator _developer
com.apple.access_screensharing com.apple.access_ssh com.apple.sharepoint.group.1

Here my user is already in the admin group, therefore I would just add NOPASSWD in the sudoers line like this:

%admin  ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD ALL

Now you should be able to fire up a

sudo shutdown -h now

without being asked for a password. To finalize my solution you could create an app with automator which executes this sudo shutdown -k now command as a bash script.

If you want to reboot the server instead, use

sudo shutdown -r now


How to invoke character selection instead instead of key repeat? In most Mac applications I can hold down a key on the keyboard and get a popup to select the special character I need, such as the French accented vowels etc.

Unfortunately when I hold down a key in OpenOffice, it seems to repeat the key.

Is there a way to have OpenOffice offer me the normal MacOs special key selection?  If not, what is the way to get all the special characters from a qwerty keyboard?

I found the following dialog, but the dialog is blocking.   I.e., when I bring it up, I cannot type anything in the OO window.  So I can just leave it up and click on the proper character when I need it.

I am using OpenOffice: AOO417m1(Build:9800)  -  Rev. 46059c9192
2019-09-05 10:18:25 (Thu, 05 Sep 2019) - Darwin x86_64
on macOS Catalina Version 10.15.3 (19D76)

In the meantime I found the following very obscure non-obvious key combinations which seem to work, even though the graphic itself is also confusing.

Pressing Option (or Alt) e followed e gives the é,  Alt-i e gives ê, and Alt-` e gives è.   I really wonder who came up with these.

In case you are unable to somehow enable the feature you are looking for inside OpenOffice, you can use macOS's Character Viewer or the combining characters (diacritical marks), which you can get with dead keys, to get accented characters. A regular (keyboard) key that gives a combining character when pressed along with a modifier key such as the Alt ⌥ or Shift ⇧ key is called a dead key.

The keyboard shortcut for the Character Viewer (Kntrl ⌃+Command ⌘+Space ␣) does not seem to work inside OpenOffice's macOS version but,  when enabled, you can access it by clicking on the Input menu to the right of the menu bar at the top of your screen. You can enable the viewer via System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Show Keyboard & Emoji Viewers.

To get an accented character using a combining character instead, first put down a combining character such as ` ' " ~ ^ and, quickly after that, the letter to be modified. For example, putting down the combining character ~ and the character a right after that would give you ã. You may have to press the Alt ⌥ or Shift ⇧ key along with one of the regular keys on your keyboard designated as a dead key to get a certain combining character depending on how your keyboard is configured.

The dead key yielding a certain combining character may be different than the key or key combination you press for a similar-looking punctuation mark. Because dead keys differ among different keyboard configurations (US and non-US QWERTY), you might either use the Keyboard Viewer or do some trial and error, i.e. press the Alt ⌥ or Shift ⇧ key and each one of the regular keys on your keyboard at the same time, to discover all the key combinations with the dead keys on your keyboard.

To find the key combinations through the Keyboard Viewer rather than trial&error, you should first enable the Keyboard Viewer via System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Show Keyboard & Emoji Viewers (same sequence as the Character Viewer). Then open the Keyboard Viewer from the Input menu to the right of the menu bar at the top of your screen (similar to the Character Viewer again). Once the Keyboard Viewer is opened, press and hold the Alt ⌥ or Shift ⇧ key and the dead keys are keys highlighted in orange. To utilize a designated key as a dead key in OpenOffice and elsewhere, you need to press the dead key along with whichever key (Alt ⌥ or Shift ⇧) you used to expose it in the Keyboard Viewer.


Repeated verification code popup when I use the app "Music" with WiFi on I have an iPhone 6 with iOS 10.3.3 and I am experiencing a strange situation. Whenever I listen to my own music, through the Music app, and the WiFi is on, I have a verification code popup from a remote server.
I am almost sure about the reason: the device is trying - through the Internet connection - to update the mp3 tags (artists, covers, etc...) of my collection. I suspect this because:

The request arrives from Milan (Italy), a city at almost 100 KM from my position and in which Apple servers could reside.
If I turn WiFi off, those requests stop appearing.
If I turn the traffic data on, with the option "Use traffic data to update music tags" (I hope to having translated it almost correctly because I don't have the English language activated), the requests appear again; otherwise, if I uncheck that option, they do not appear.

By the way, it should not happen. The device should update the collection in a silent way, with no two-factor authentication requests from an official server (whenever I close one of them, the next one appears after some seconds). This is quite annoying. Plus, it seems that there's no way to deactivate tags updating when the WiFi is on.

If someone could shed some light it would be great. Thanks.

For clarification:

Translation: Your Apple ID is being used for access to a device near Milan, Lombardy

EDIT: Thinking about that more after posting it, I have the feeling that the server in Milan (which should be an official Apple server that updates data on my device) is not "certified" in a certain way, so the iPhone asks for verifying it in a first place. Don't know if it makes sense, It's my first Apple device and I do not know certain logic very well.

I can't say with absolute certainly but the best guess would be that, so long as these requests/confirmations always appear within a few seconds/minutes of you activating the function, that it's simply not accurately logging your location.

I live in London & most times these requests appear to come from an area within 5 miles of where I live.
However, when I visit my relatives in Tenerife, all requests of this type appear to originate in Madrid, some 2000km away.
I've simply got used to the idea that this always happens.


How to use SSH keys and disable password authentication I'm trying to access a Mac remotely (I do have physical access to this Mac) through SSH from a Linux client computer. My goal is to access this Mac from outside the network. Port forwarding is set up on the router. From my client computer I'm able to ssh user@ip for the public IP and I am able to get into the Mac, so port forwarding is working.

Now I want to set up SSH keys. I've generated SSH keys on my client computer but I wanted to get the SSH Daemon on the Mac setup first. I edited /etc/ssh_config and set PasswordAuthentication no. I restarted SSH with these commands: sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist, then sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist. When I try to SSH in from the client again, it still asks for my password.

I took a look at this post and from the answer I added UsePAM no to the config file and restarted the service with launchctl again. I'm still being prompted for a password.

I also tried the solution here. I'm still being prompted for a password.

How do I set up my ssh_config to so that it doesn't ask for the password and only accepts SSH keys? Am I not restarting the daemon properly? Is there another step I am missing?

I was editing the wrong configuration file! Instead of /etc/ssh_config, I edited private/etc/sshd_config. I think this probably would have also worked if I edited /etc/sshd_config as per the updated answer from @GhostLyrics, but I didn't test that yet so I can't say for sure. After that, I restarted the service with sudo launchctl stop com.openssh.sshd and then sudo launchctl start com.openssh.sshd and I was able to get my desired behavior. Here is the resource where I found the pertinent information: https://superuser.com/questions/364304/how-do-i-configure-ssh-on-os-x

Here are the config options I changed:

PermitRootLogin no
PasswordAuthentication no
PermitEmptyPasswords no
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no

After that I was successfully able to generate SSH keys on my client computer, moved the public key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the Mac and set permissions for that file to 644.

It is important to note that those permissions are for my public key. My private key permissions are set to 600 on my client computer. This is really important if you have both your public and private key in your ~/.ssh folder and there are multiple users on the system. If your private key permissions are set to 644 then any user could read your private key and impersonate you. Also, the permissions for the ~/.ssh folder should be 700.


How can I start the mds process Revised Question

I am getting errors that mds cannot be started:

9/18/12 9:04:45.262 AM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.apple.metadata.mds[4720]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault: 11

Crash Report: PasteBin

Original Question

I ran cd /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
sudo launchctl load -w com.apple.metadata.mds.plist which returned com.apple.metadata.mds: Already loaded but when I go to my Activity Monitor and change my filter to All Processes and search for mds I don't see anything, is there a way to force mds to start?

I've tried everything on these sites:

https://superuser.com/questions/420068/spotlight-refuses-to-be-enabled-on-lion
http://osxdaily.com/2007/02/15/spotlight-wont-work-fix-a-broken-spotlight-menu-with-these-troubleshooting-tips/

My guess is that it's launching, then crashing or erroring out in some form. Try sudo launchctl list com.apple.metadata.mds, and look at the PID (id of currently running process, probably 0 since it's not running) and LastExitStatus (which would be 0 if it exited successfully, but may be something else in this case). Also, look at /var/log/system.log (with either Console.app or 'tail') and see if it holds any clues. Also, look in /Library/Logs/CrashReporter for any relevant reports.

As for possible causes: if the logs don't tell you where the problem is, my first guess would be a broken mdimporter plug-in; I'd remove everything (temporarily) from /Library/Spotlight and ~/Library/Spotlight. Also, check /System/Library/Spotlight, and make sure these are the only mdimporters there:

Application Archives Audio Automator Bookmarks Chat CoreMedia Font Image MIDI Mail Notes PDF PS QuartzComposer RichText SystemPrefs iCal iPhoto iPhoto8 vCard

Another possible cause is a badly corrupted spotlight database. If removing suspect mdimporters doesn't get it started, try dismounting everything but the startup volume (& if that solves it, remount them one at a time and see which kills it). If that doesn't do it, try removing the existing spotlight database with sudo mv /.Spotlight-V100 /.Spotlight-V100-disabled (I'm not certain how thoroughly sudo mdutil -E / wipes out the old DB, but renaming it should force a full rebuild).


Most effective way to backup contacts from iPhone to plain .csv - format I got a corrupted iPhone 5 with latest iOS 10.2

Before I will start over from scratch I would like to backup all my contacts and notes.

I would prefer to store them to .csv format, because they are corrupted. The plain text format re-usable in Excel offers me the most possibilities in unifying my contacts from different sources and to correct them if necessary.

For the notes backup .txt would be most appropriate to me.

Which trustable tool should I use, preferably free, but if not available I would pay for it.

If your contacts are stored in iCloud, use this method:

Go to iCloud.com and log in with your Apple ID
Click the Contacts web app
Highlight all contacts (click the first contact entry, scroll to the
bottom of your list, hold the 'shift' key and click the last contact
entry)
Click the 'Settings' icon in the bottom left hand corner of the page
Select 'Export vCard'

The vCard should now be in your '~/Downloads' folder (if you haven't changed the filepath for new downloads from your web browser settings)

If you own a Mac (and it appears all of the contacts from your iPhone are also accounted for on your Mac) use this method:

Launch the Contacts application
Highlight/click a contact
Select all ('Edit > Select All' or press 'command + A'
Click 'File > Export vCard' and save it somewhere safe

Now you will just need to find a conversion tool to convert the vCard (*.vcf file) to a *.csv file. There are many free online options such as this one but I cannot attest to whether or not the online tools are secure (as in, I don't know if they store your file on their servers somewhere after the conversion process and if they can access the information for your contacts).

A safer option would to go with an actual application that doesn't send the information to any website servers to convert it. If you have a Mac I found one on the App Store that looks promising called vCard Editor for $5.49CAD but I personally have never used it to know how well it works.

As for backing up the Notes, you're not going to like the answer. Just remember - don't shoot the messenger!

There isn't a way to backup all of your Notes at once from an iPhone or iCloud.com. (What was Apple thinking?!) The 'Apple approved' method of backing up your Notes is to either email or text (SMS) each individual Note to yourself from your device. Yes, I'm being serious. This is even the method they walk you through if you call Apple Support for assistance.

Fortunately if you have a Mac and all of your iPhone notes appear to be accounted for on your Mac as well, there is a work around (although it will not be in *.txt format). On your Mac you can copy the '~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/' folder to someplace safe in case you ever want/need to restore all of your notes at once.

Note: The copy/backup of that folder that you make doesn't update as you add new notes or delete some, so if you ever do need to restore that file you need to copy/backup all of your new notes first otherwise they'll get 'over-written' (for lack of better terms) upon restoration of that folder.


Mac hard drive almost full; diagnostic apps do not explain why 157gb of my 159gb mac is showing as used.  In the storage area 145gb of this is showing as other.  What can this be?
I have just downloaded whatsize app to understand and whilst the 157gb is showing as used on hard drive when you click into the detail within whatsize it does not add up to anywhere near this.  About 20gb is broken down in the detail.  Would really appreciate some help as I'm at a loss I have not been able to use my mac properly for months now and when I took it to a computer repair shop they tried an omnisweeper but this made no difference.

Is this a MacBook? I ran into something similar and it turned out to be the local Time Machine snapshots. This was a new feature in OS X 10.7 Lion. Some programs show that space as used and some don't. Finder doesn't show that space as used but Disk Utility does.

Make sure to run WhatSize in "As Admin" mode to get an accurate representation of your disk usage. This isn't available in the App Store version. In that mode it will show you the local Time Machine snapshots.

Here is more information about local snapshots.


What is gs-loc.apple.com? I have little snitch installed and every time I resume my macbook pro gs-loc.apple.com on port 443 wants to connect. I'm thinking it's to find your location so that iCloud can display it. the exec is called locationd. I pretty sure that my guess is right. I just wanted to see what the community thought.

Yep, it’s Location Services. The location is updated on a regular interval, or when an app requests it.

I worked it out while using Little Snitch, just like you. As there was a loc in the domain name, I figured it would be Location Services.

To confirm, I turned off Location Services, and sure enough, locationd shut down and no connections to gs-loc were made. To confirm again, I blocked gs-loc, and Location Services stopped working.

From: discussions.apple.com

  Locationd is a daemon that provides location services for OS X's "Core Location". This uses skyhook technology to figure out your mac's location (using WiFi). It's the same system used by the iPod Touch, and is also used by the iPhone (The iPhone also uses cell tower triangulation and GPS)


Sending email from iCloud with a different Reply-to field I want to use iCloud's email service (me.com) as the ultimate destination for my incoming mail, as well as the repository of all my Sent mail.  And when people reply to my email, I want it to be sent to myname@pobox.com.  (In other words, I want my pobox.com address to be my "official" address -- the only one anyone sees in their contact lists or their emailer's auto-complete suggestion list: anything else merely promotes confusion!)

In order for my outgoing mail to be copied to my iCloud SENT folder, I need to send it via iCloud's SMTP server.  But there does not appear to be a way to configure OSX Mail (or iOS Mail) to send mail via smtp.mail.me.com but include a Reply-to of myname@pobox.com.

Is there a way to send mail out through iCloud while specifying my
own preferred Reply-to address?
Or, barring that, is there a workaround that will allow me to specify
my preferred Reply-to address while keeping my SENT mail in
iCloud?

I don't know if this works for iCloud account but it works for regular email accounts, try the following.

Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and then choose the iCloud mail account. If there is account information showing the Address as xxxx@me.com simply edit the field to be something like xxxx@me.com,myname@pobox.com

When you send an email tap on the Cc/Bcc,From: field, then click on the From: field. You should be presented with a listing of email address to choose.


Mac OSX - Install Failed The hard drive went on my late 2008 MacBook Pro so I replaced it. I tried installing 10.8 from a bootable USB which failed so I went back to the origional system disks.

When I tried to install OSX from the origional system disks ( 10.6 ) I get the following error:

  The installer has encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.

I'm somewhat out of warranty now so taking it back to Apple sadly isn't an option.

Side Note: I was unable to format the new hard disk using disk utility from the 10.6 or 10.8 installers so I connected it to another mac via a USB cradle to format (went fine). The Hard Drive is brand new and shows up as SMART verified.

The Genius Bar will reinstall your OS and/or diagnose any potential hardware problems at no charge regardless of warranty status.  The only time they will require a fee is if your Mac is indeed out of warranty and requires a hardware repair, at which time you would need to pay in order to have the repair performed.

If visiting an Apple store is an option for you then by all means don't let your warranty status stop you from visiting.  They should be able to install 10.6 since it came with your Mac and/or 10.8 if you can show proof of purchase for it.

For the actual question, you can view the log file while performing the installation under either File > View Log or View > Log, I don't have an install in progress at the moment to reference.  One of those should show you the log from the installation which would hopefully give you a reference as to what part of the installation failed.


What happens when 2 clients modify the same iCloud synced Note? Does the Notes app handle sync concurrency issues gracefully, or does it only decide to keep one version of a note if 2 clients modify the same note?

For example:

Turn on airplane-mode on an iPad
Modify a note on the iPad
Turn on airplane-mode on an iPhone
Modify the same note on the iPhone
Turn off airplane-mode on both devices

Which version of the note is retained? Or does it store data from both modifications?

An iCloud-synced document is implemented with the NSDocument class. The full guide to this class including details on conflict resolution is the Document-Based App Programming Guide for Mac. Briefly, conflict resolution is attempted automatically. If the most recent document is not clear (the most recent, based on modification date is favoured) then the Versions user interface is involved and the user must select the correct document to resolve the conflict.


How can I set hourly reminder in Mac? If possible how to set my customised voice? How can I set hourly reminder in Mac ? If possible how to set my customised voice?

Open Date and Time Preferences.

Move to the Clock tab, and check Announce the time.

To customize the voice, click Customize Voice.

Choose one on the list, or click Customize for a larger list.


xemacs: Bad CPU type in executable OK.  So I worked around this error:

/sw/bin/xemacs: Bad CPU type in executable.

but I don't understand why what I did worked and am curious.  All I did was replace /sw with what should have been an identical copy.

A little background...  I've had this copy of xemacs since around 2000.  I love it and it's all configured just right.  Building xemacs from scratch was something I used to do way back when, but it was always such a pain that I tarred up /sw (probably originally installed using Fink) and have copied it from computer to computer since forever ago. I did this recently back in Jan '14 onto my brand new iMac running Mavericks and everything works fine.  Even more recently, I upgraded from 10.7 to 10.9 on my MacBook Pro at home.  I just installed xquartz and when I went to run my copy of xemacs, I got the bad CPU error.

I couldn't understand why I was having trouble since my newer iMac at work could run it no problem.  After struggling with it for awhile, I tried simply tarring & copying /sw from the work iMac to my older laptop, and all of a sudden, it worked!

But /sw SHOULD be identical in every case here.  They both originated from the same copy of /sw that I've been using since ~2000.  Why would a fresh copy of /sw make any difference?  Here's some pastes from the command line:

% /sw/bin/xemacs &
/sw/bin/xemacs: Bad CPU type in executable.
% sudo mv /sw /sw-old
% sudo mv /Users/robleach/Downloads/sw /
% /sw/bin/xemacs &
%

Home Laptop:

% uname -a
Darwin #### 13.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 13.3.0: Tue Jun  3 21:27:35 PDT 2014; root:xnu-2422.110.17~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

Work iMac:

% uname -a
Darwin #### 13.4.0 Darwin Kernel Version 13.4.0: Sun Aug 17 19:50:11 PDT 2014; root:xnu-2422.115.4~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

Did the update from 10.7 to 10.9 muck around with what was in /sw?  Why did the new identical copy make it work?  From what I've read about this error, it seems like xemacs shouldn't even work at all since 10.7 - but it does!  I use it all the time at work.

Running file on both executables will show you how the actual executable was compiled:

file /sw/bin/emacs

This will tell you why you're having issues running the file between different systems.

Obviously, with incompatible CPU types you'll face the error you're getting.

Rosetta was available for 10.6, but not from 10.7 onwards. Could you have been using it somehow on an older machine?


Prevent saved home screen icons opening a browser without address bar? I browse using Safari on my iPad.
I find an interesting web page.
I save a link to the page via “Add to Home screen”.
Nice icon, all seems well.

Later, I “click” the icon.
The page opens in the browser, but it does not have the address bar, the other tabs and the standard buttons.
This is very annoying ...

How do I stop this behaviour, either when saving the link or when opening the link?

The idea of "Add to Home screen" is to create an app-like experience for web apps, so this will not give a full browswer.

But there is an alternative: Use the Shortcuts app with an "Open URL" action and add the shortcut to your home screen.

Launch the Shortcuts app
Select "Create Shortcut"
Select "Add Action"
Select "Web", scroll down to the Safari section and select "Open URLs"
Tap on the "URL" placeholder and write your URL instead

Tap on the three dots on top right, assign a name and select "Add to Home Screen"


Apple Update server names - iOS devices & tvOS devices For a few years now, our Net Admin has blocked WiFi access to Apple servers which provide updates to iOS devices. We do this to minimize traffic to our users' devices when new updates are released, (we prefer they use their own home networks,) and more importantly, to keep our carted iPad fleet from updating until we have tested updates against installed apps, etc.

At one point, our AppleTVs were also blocked from tvOS updates through the same method, but with tvOS 13 and Apple TV4s, it seems as if new servers are in use which are not blocked and the ATV4s are being updated. We use our ATVs for AirPlay Conference Room display mode with PIN only. I realize now that I can turn off automatic updating, but it doesn't help at the moment.

This is a roadblock for us because after the update is done, the ATV requires clicking a Continue button on a What's New screen with a remote. Until this button is pressed, AirPlay Conference Room mode is unavailable: the ATV does not appear in the list of AirPlay devices on a macOS or iOS device. From early experiences with missing (stolen) ATV  remotes, we do not provide a remote in any ATV location. This means I must go around to every ATV4 (and we have many of them) just to click a button to make it useful.

Can anybody please either let me know what the new tvOS Update server addresses might be, or point me in the right direction? I've done a fair amount of searching, but have found nothing definitive.

Additional information 12/11/2019:

Even though I manually disabled auto-update on the ATV4s, with the release of 13.3 yesterday, the ATV4 pops up a notice that an update is available, necessitating yet another remote button click to make the device useable.

The need to find the tvOS update server is now even more crucial than ever.

I would recommend three steps.

Set up two caching servers per 1,000 devices you have on your network. Any recent Mac can run caching server, just needs a cheap external hard drive to store 250 GB or more of data. We use 2 TB drives as they are super cheap.
Have your network team allow outbound traffic to all of 17.0.0.0 network. - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210060
Profit

The caching servers ensure you only download one copy of each app, each update and no longer can have any sort of overload or denial of service when many devices all arrive and check for App Store or other downloads.

With the latest OS you will literally be breaking how the security works if you can't check for notarized apps and revoked certificates that have malicious software. Also, just not patching your devices is a risk. I would reach out to Apple for help, any workplace with a few devices qualifies for assistance from a local Apple store or direct from a corporate team to help with this.

Content caching needs to reach out to lcdn-registration.apple.com

Today that points at st11p01su-lcdnreg.isu.apple.com.akadns.net which has address 17.164.1.29

There are about 19 other names in the KB above for all updates to run.


If I install an older, deprecated Java runtime, will that mess up applications that use the current Java version? I own a really old version of Photoshop. After I upgraded to El Capitan when I attempt to launch Photoshop I get a dialog saying...

  To open "Adobe Photoshop CS5.1.app" you need to install the legacy Java SE 6 runtime.

This is my current system Java version that came with the OS -->

java -showversion
java version "1.8.0_65"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_65-b17)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.65-b01, mixed mode)

I downloaded the old, deprecated Java 6 DMG, but I haven't installed it yet.

My question is, will it replace the Apple's distributed Java?

And if so, is that likely to break applications that are expecting an up-to-date Java version?

Or will it just make the older JRE available as an alternative for applications that need it?

So long as you've downloaded the Java 6 installer from Apple it will work without affecting your current Java installation.


MySQL fails to start at restart after Yosemite update I have MySQL installed. When I had the previous version, it used to start after boot automatically. This is not the case after I updated to Yosemite. In System Preferences there is an icon for MySQL and "Automatically Start MySQL Server on Startup" is checked. I tried unchecking - restart - check - restart still the same..

Everytime I boot the computer I will need to start it manually. Any fix?

MySQL by default tries to use StartupItems.  That won't work with Yosemite.

I made a launchd control that is still compatible with the MySQL preferencepane.

Details here -
https://github.com/MacMiniVault/Mac-Scripts/blob/master/mmvMySQL/mmvmysql-Yosemite.md


Is the macOS recovery also upgraded when i run mac upgrades? I upgraded my Macbook Pro that had Mojave (MACBOOK PRO (RETINA, 15-INCH, MID 2014))to Catalina Beta and this completely broke my Mobile Development using Flutter. There are numerous issues with version 10.15 that i just want to go back to Mojave.

I want to completely downgrade to Mojave (i don't mind starting from Mavericks, then upgrading to Mojave, source)

If I go to the recovery menu and wipe the hard drive, then try recovery, which version will be installed? The original Mavericks that came with the macbook or the current Catalina beta i upgraded to recently. Is the recovery software also upgraded during upgrades? I don't have any backups as such don't intend to restore anything.

When you restore a Mac from Internet Recovery it restores the OS version that came with the Mac when it shipped. So if your Mac came with Mavericks than it will reinstall Mavericks. From there you can then reinstall Mojave right over top of the new Mavericks installation.

It will not install beta OS versions as there must be an OS in place with the necessary macOSPublicBetaAccessUtility installed.

As for the recovery partition OS version, I am unsure of what happens to that during major macOS upgrades. I would think that it would not change as Internet Recovery works even with the recovery partition deleted. Which tells me that Internet Recovery is (at least mostly) built into the firmware of your Mac.

Correcting During an OS upgrade recovery is upgraded as well so you will get the latest (non beta) version of macOS. Thanks to @Tetsujin and the OP.

Going back a revision or two and then upgrading from there works perfectly well, it just takes longer. For that reason I always make a bootable USB installer of the last two versions of macOS and keep them in a drawer for eventualities such as these. 8GB flash drives are cheap and it takes little time to create a bootable macOS installer. Perhaps something to consider for the future.


Launching certain programs on startup in their own fullscreen space When I login I want a blank desktop in my first space, sublime text in my second space, chrome in my third, and terminal in my fourth space like so:

Go to you second desktop
Right click the Sublime Text icon on your dock
Go to Options > Open at Login
Right click the Sublime icon again
Go to Options > Assign to: This Desktop

Do the same for every app you want to open at login on the appropriate desktop.


Locating AppleCare UK's New Live Online Chat Support? Apparently AppleCare UK has been revamped to include a brand new live online chat support system, where you can chat in a text box with a member of technical support.

How do I locate this ?

Apple's UK Support page now has a Get Started button which will start a selection process to narrow down the required support's area.

After a couple of steps (choosing the product and topic) you'll be prompted to choose between different support options, among which you'll find the Chat button will be visible when there are people on staff to answer questions in near real time.


why can't i watch this .avi file on my mac (mountain lion)? I have an .AVI file that I got from a windows machine and i am trying to run it on my mac and i get this error.

The Tell me more button doesn't really give me any useful info.

Any suggestions on how to be able to view this from my macbook.

OS X doesn't have codecs for AVI files built-in, so you'll either need a plugin to allow QuickTime to play the files directly, or use a different media player that can handle those file types.

For plugins, Perian has been the go to choice. However it is no longer supported or developed — at the moment it still works well, but as OS X changes, that may no longer be the case.

For third party players, VLC is pretty robust and will play virtually anything you can find. It has the benefit of ongoing development, but the interface is not always the best (the preferences in particular are pretty convoluted). You can also look at MplayerX. There are other options (Movist and Niceplayer come to mind), but none seem to have been updated in the past year or more.


Bootcamp & Tested Disks My bootcamp doesn't work, at the windows set up page I get "windows cannot locate the disk and partition specified in the unattended answer..." which I think is due to the weird nested disks I have

How can I clean up the way that the disk is formatted? I don't want this pointless nested disks
*MacBook Pro 2016 Big Sur

as many people have said, a lot of people were missing their EFI partition so if you do diskutil list in your terminal and you don't have an EFI partition then that's where you went wrong

what was wrong with mine was that I had TWO EFI partitions, so I had to get rid of the extra pointless one and it worked


How do I sync my Google calendar with my iPhone? So I have set up my calendar on Google. I am trying to get it to sync those changes to my calendar application on my iPhone 4S. I currently have under "Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars" the following accounts:

iCloud (Contacts, Calendars and 5 more..)
Exchange (Mail, Calendars, Reminders)
Gmail (Calendars, Notes)

Fetch New Data is set to Push/Every 15 minutes. What am I not doing right? Thanks!

A quick search led me to this step-by-step guide to sync Google Calendar with iPhone.

http://support.google.com/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740


How to resolve netbios names with osx Hi I'm new to osx and trying to resolve the netbios name of a windows machine. When I try to ping it I get the error cannot resolve hostname. When I use the command smbutil lookup %hostname% it will resolve.

When I ping the ip directly it works fine and this was working on a previous mac which I had to return and replace with my new one. I am able to resolve it from another windows machine on my network.

Essentially I just want to be able to ping my windows machine. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

As you mentioned, smbutil lookup will resolve the name to an IP address:

$ smbutil lookup qx-2000
Got response from 10.0.1.21
IP address of qx-2000: 10.0.1.21

We can extract the IP address from this output:

$ smbutil lookup qx-2000 2>&1 | tail -n 1 | cut -d : -f 2
 10.0.1.21

Then we can use that in our argument to ping:

$ ping $(smbutil lookup qx-2000 2>&1 | tail -n 1 | cut -d : -f 2)
PING 10.0.1.21 (10.0.1.21): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.1.21: icmp_seq=0 ttl=128 time=4.823 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.21: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=7.373 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.21: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=4.820 ms
...