Weird errors in system.log while trying to run .kext First, I don't know if this is the correct place to put this question. Would Serverfault or Stackoverflow be better?

I was running through a tutorial on making Mac Kernel Extensions. I loaded it, and when I did tail -1 /var/log/system.log, it didn't tell me "Hello World!", it said...

parentalcontrolsd[374]: -[ActivityTracker appDidLaunchOrBecomeFront:launched:] [1844:wolfram] -- Got an error when saving MOC: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=134030 UserInfo=0x36ba10 "An error occurred while saving."

A few things... What does this mean? And am I looking at the right log file? I can pick out that it's the parentalcontrolsd telling me that the ActivityTracker found that some app launched for the user wolfram. Any help?

Here is my code...

#include <libkern/libkern.h>
#include <mach/mach_types.h>

kern_return_t MyKextStart(kmod_info_t *ki, void *d)
{
printf("Hello, World!\n");
return KERN_SUCCESS;
}

kern_return_t MyKextStop(kmod_info_t *ki, void *d)
{
printf("Goodbye, World!\n");
return KERN_SUCCESS;
}

extern kern_return_t _start(kmod_info_t *ki, void *data);
extern kern_return_t _stop(kmod_info_t *ki, void *data);

KMOD_EXPLICIT_DECL(edu.nerd.kext.MyKext, "1.0.0d1", _start, _stop)
__private_extern__ kmod_start_func_t *_realmain = MyKextStart;
__private_extern__ kmod_stop_func_t *_antimain = MyKextStop;
__private_extern__ int _kext_apple_cc = __APPLE_CC__;

Your debug output will be in kernel.log, not system.log. Further, the terminal command kextstat | grep 'MyKext' will tell you whether your kext is loaded.


Repair options of a (really) Broken HFS+ "Invalid extent entry" volume? I have an un-mountable external 2TB harddisk, formattet HFS+, one "usable" partition, containing a set of my backups. It won't show in Finder, it won't repair in disk utility, it won't repair on the commandline:
$ diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk2s2
Started file system verification on disk2s2 zuhauseBackup
Verifying file system
Volume is already unmounted
Performing fsck_hfs -fn -x /dev/rdisk2s2
Journal needs to be replayed but volume is read-only
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Invalid extent entry
The volume   could not be verified completely
File system check exit code is 8
Restoring the original state found as unmounted
Error: -69845: File system verify or repair failed
Underlying error: 8

$ diskutil list /dev/disk2
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS NameNotShown            2.0 TB     disk2s2
$

(The above NameNotShown is, in reality, shown correctly).
Linux hfsplus-fsck also give the same error as the macOS tools (it appears to be exactly the same tool):
$ sudo fsck_hfs /dev/rdisk2s2
** /dev/rdisk2s2
   Executing fsck_hfs (version hfs-522.100.5).
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
   Invalid extent entry
(4, 0)
** The volume   could not be verified completely.
$

Mounting it to a Linux PC I can see some files in the Backup-Directories, yet most "important" directories only show up as files of size 0.
The above Invalid extent entry seems to be the culprit. Any ideas how to get around this and possibly fix my volume, hopefully at least recover the files?

Though it still cannot handle APFS, the single best 'fixit' app for HFS+ has always been DiskWarrior. idk whether they do a free trial.
Failing that, you're into 'file scavenger' apps, which are going to be poor on a drive full of hardlinks.


Canon imageclass MF4420w printer cant work with mac osx 10.8 There seems to be no legit drivers available for the Canon MF4420w imageclass printers which dont seem to work.

That happens with Canon but also with HP printers as far i know

Your printer is not from this world! :)

What I mean by that it is not supported on USA sites.

But the good news is it is supported on Asian sites.

So go here and get your driver.

http://support-asia.canon-asia.com/P/search?model=imageCLASS+MF4420w&menu=download&filter=0&tagname=g_os


Can I track my workout and listen to music with Apple Watch Series 2 without having to carry my iPhone? I do not have any experience with the Apple Watch, currently I am just using an iPhone. Before I buy an Apple Watch I would like to verify my question.

I know I need to pair it with an iPhone. But from what I have gathered, the new Apple Watch Series 2 is much more independent then the previous version.

Tracking should be possible with the GPS module.
Pairing a bluetooth headphone is possible.
Playing music without iPhone is also possible.

Am I right? Or are there any limitations I have missed?

You are correct on all three counts.

The Workout app will work without your iPhone, at least. Third-party apps might need to be updated to be completely independent. Strava, for instance, won't start without an active iPhone connection, but Runkeeper will.

Both the first generation WATCH and Series 2 support syncing of a single playlist up to either 2GB or 250 songs.


How to decide on a new Hard drive for macbook pro I have been using my Macbook Pro for about 5 years, it was the first model with the Intel chip. The 100GB hard drive is starting to go and I'm ready to replace it. I went over to Cnet to see what looks good. Oops. There are about 2,000 products to choose from, and I don't even know how to determine compatibility with my laptop.
What are the steps I should follow to narrow in on a new hard drive?
This machine does a lot of heavy lifting: audio, video, and image processing, etc.
My goals are to increase storage to 250GB minimum (pref. 500+), improve performance, extend my Macbook's life by at least 18 months, spend less than 400$, and easy home install (youtube videos look do-able). I can spend more if there's a good reason to; just wanted to make the question specific.

Follow-up: Is it a given that I should upgrade memory at the same time? (Currently at 2GB SDRAM)

I would head on over to a Mac Specific reseller like OWC MacSales, RamJet or   where a company has figured which models are the best to sell based on your specific model.

http://www.ramjet.com/sata.asp

You will see that you have many choices for well under your budget. Also you are spared the SSD/HD decision since your size/price constraint means the quality SSD are not priced in your range.

When you buy from someone that has done the work, they will support you and help you should you run into issues. Get a few options and make the call if you want to buy from someone that will also answer your questions or if you are comfortable buying a community part and ensuring the firmware works, etc...

Since RAM is so easy to swap, you really don't need to include it in the HD exchange other than your budget may be fixed. It's hard to give advice on that front, since your budget is yours and not something that transfers to an internet forum where this question and answer might apply to anyone. Without knowing your specific model and how much RAM is in use routinely based on your apps, it's not possible to advise what the most cost effective combination might be.


Good Thunderbolt network cards for Mac? I need another network card for my Macbook Air because of virtual OS which cannot use same network card as Yosemite.
My friend says that he has Thunderbolt network card which he can use to connect to two internet through two OSes: one default and one virtual.
I would like to get the similar tools.

Which are options to get second network card for Macbook air or similar Mac?

If you'd like to add wired network (Ethernet) ports to your MacBook Air you have the following options:

A single or dual Thunderbolt network adapter. Apple makes one, the MD463ZM, but only with a single network port. There are third party adapters that provided more than one port - for example the Sonnet Twin 10G. There are also Thunderbolt docks that contain single Ethernet ports (for example from Sonnet, Belkin, CalDigit, etc).
One or more USB ethernet adapters.

Note - as the MacBook Air only has a single Thunderbolt port, if you use that port for an Ethernet adapter you cannot use an external display at the same time. One way to work around that is by using one of the Thunderbolt docks described above.

The most cost effective route is probably to get a single port Thunderbolt adapter and a USB 3.0 Ethernet adapter. If you'd like to use an external display at the same time as the two Ethernet ports, get a Thunderbolt dock instead of a Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter.


Finder does not show Path Bar and Status Bar, what to do? I have OS X Lion and when I open a finder window everything seems OK.
But I can't see the Path Bar nor the Status bar.

When I activate one of the bars with View->Show Status Bar or View->Show Path Bar the Finder window gets bigger in height ( growing downwards ), nothing else happens.

Anyone have an idea what I can do to see the Bars?

(The Bars are working in other applications like Safari, ⌘+/ and it pops up)

Is it just this you are looking for? Finder > View > Show Path Bar?

Also here: http://macs.about.com/od/usingyourmac/qt/findertip1.htm


Syncing iCal with Outlook2011 No matter what I do, I can't get new items that I add to Outlook 2011 calendar to actually show up in iCal. Is this a bug? Does anyone have a fix for this?

To set up iCal calendars, open iCal > select iCal menu > Preferences > Accounts > "+" below account list, then add your email account used in MS Outlook. As long as it is a IMAP email account, this should enable the calendar in iCal. It also should sync automatically.


Why am I getting virus alert after clean formatting MacBook Pro 2014? I recently clean formatted, erased everything on the hard drive of, my MacBook Pro 2014 and installed OS X El Capitan.

I also installed Sophos Aniti-Virus, but Sophos is detecting Android Apperhand virus in my clean installed Mac.

The alert is showing everytime my MacBook Pro logs in. Later it vanished from the Sophos Quarantine Manager!

I have attached the snapshot below.

The virus was in a folder in googledrive.

So after formatting and not installing google drive the virus warning doesnt show.

I deleted the folder from google drive so it no longer shows the virus even after installing google drive


How to fix iTunes wrong song time? My mp3 in iTunes shows a time of about 20 minutes, when it really have about 5 minutes. The VLC Player and the Windows Media Player shows the correct time for the same file, what's wrong with my iTunes?

The incorrect time is most likely due to an error introduced by the encoding software. You can repair the problem by using the Convert to AAC feature in iTunes.

In iTunes 11 this feature can be found under the Create New Version → option of the File menu.


macOS: Is there a way to show an image constantly on screen (like a watermark)? I'm looking for a very simple way to add a watermark to my screen which should be shown whatever I'm doing, is it during a Zoom call, or is it when giving a presentation, or similar (I don't necessarily need it to show during fullscreen mode).
The reason is that I want to record my screen using QuickTime Player, and the watermark should be on the video. I know that there are many post-production tools that offer adding watermarks, but I don't want to do any post-production, I want to have everything on screen while recording already.
(I also know that there are screen recorders which offer placing a watermark to the end result. I'd rather also avoid using another screen recording software, but if I don't find any other way to do it, then I'm open to a simple, non-pricy alternative to QuickTime Player.)

You can accomplish this with OBS Studio. It allows to combine images, video sources etc into one stream and provides a virtual camera which can then be used as the video source in Zoom.


iPhone recent calls list reappears after clear Today I've cleared my recent calls list about 6 times, and it keeps coming back. What gives?

it's a bug. not only Facetime on iPhone but iMac also. Apple have no solution!


Sync picasa with iPhoto Is there any way to sync my iPhoto photos with picasa? It would be great if it works in the same way that the facebook integration works.

You can sync the photos in iPhoto to picassa (on your mac) with this tool http://code.google.com/p/phoshare/

You can sync the photos in iPhoto to picassa web albums with this tool
http://picasa.google.com/mac_tools.html


Best webcam to use with Skype and a Mac mini? My users are requesting that we set up a conference room Mac mini (2009) for videochats using Skype.

Since iSights are no longer reliably available (and I'm not going to give up my personal one), has anyone tried any 3rd-party webcams to use under OS X, such as any of Logitech's?  Any other brands you'd recommend?

Most modern USB webcams support a generic interface called UVC (Universal Video Class). OSX supports most UVC drivers out-of-the-box (true for me in Snow Leopard) so sometimes there aren't even any third-party drivers to install. (In fact, most third-party webcam "drivers" only install useless add-ons that bloat your system.)

Logitech is very good at providing compliant UVC devices, so they're a good starting point.

I have a Logitech C525, and it works great at 720p with its built-in microphone, using both Skype and Facetime. No additional drivers required.. plug-and-play!

Older webcams that do not support UVC will require drivers of course. Furthermore, super-new UVC devices may require an extension that OSX doesn't yet handle, obviously drivers are inevitable.

If you want a list of UVC-supported devices, see the Linux UVC page. (Yes, I know Linux != OSX, but this list can be used as a starting point of other brands you can try.)


Why don't I have to install programs? I've just started using a Mac for iOS development, coming from two decades of Windows use, and I'm astonished and confounded to find that there's no installation process for Mac programs....you just download them, open the DMG, copy the file over, and presto.

This confuses me to no end.

Can someone explain on a technical level what the difference is? How could it conceivably not be necessary to perform an installation process?

And if such a thing is possible, why don't all OSes work that way?

Us Mac users ask the same question the other way: Why do you need an (un)installer for everything in Windows?

The majority of Mac programs are complete bundles - all their resources are in the Application's folder (right click on App icon -> Show Package Contents). So they will run from anywhere, there's a system variable that tells the code where it is. Often, an application can be run directly from the downloaded DMG and even from a remote server. Bit of a performance hit but it will work. User settings are in the user's library, there are also system routines to handle the mechanics.

Macs have no central registry that requires setup (or maintenance) so nothing needs to go there either.

If you are developing Mac applications you should try very hard to not need an installer - only if you are installing shared libraries or shell-level services. In general, it's possible to do without.

Since you are heading towards iOS programming I would suggest just not worrying about it. iOS rules will tell you where to save what, and it is NOT negotiable. Preferences go here, user data goes there. You will use the supplied APIs. Comply. Obey.


Is there any way to make games smoother on Macbook Pro 13'? I currently have Macbook pro 13' and I am trying to games like Samurai vs Zombie and Contract Killer 2. Both of these are not highend games with not so detailed textures. Yet they get stuck after every click.

Is there some way to do away with this ?

Turn down all detail in the game (turn it up incrementally later).

Close all running apps, except for the game(s). This includes your email client, web browser, etc. Check your "Login Items" under System Preferences. Ensure you don't have any background tasks that are consuming CPU cycles and/or system memory.

If you have minimal system memory (RAM), it would be a good idea to upgrade since RAM is so affordable now. You can never have enough RAM. I would recommend at least 8GB.

Activity Monitor will also show the CPU load on your system when it's sitting idle. It will show apps that might be running unbeknownst to you.


iCloud photo sharing limit reached -- new photo app I'm running the 10.3 beta on my iMac, using the new photos app.  I imported about 1,300 pics I took over the weekend (live performance) and want to share them online with some people.

First thing I did was create three new albums, one for each of the performances, on my computer.  So far, so good.

Then I used right click to share each album online via iCloud photo sharing.

Now, I'm getting notifications from Photos every 10 seconds or so with the above message. See image below.  It says activity will resume at 11:14 pm.

What gives? I have space on my iCloud account, space I'm paying $10/month for, and I have plenty of available drive space there.  So why aren't the photos uploading, and is there a way to override this strange sharing limit?

There are multiple absolute and rate limits on iCloud photos. See this article for details:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202299

Currently, if I had to guess, you hit one of the 24 hour limits and need do nothing but wait for the time to pass:

Maximum combined number of photos and videos from all contributors per shared album, per hour: 1000
Maximum combined number of photos and videos from all contributors per shared album, per day: 10,000

However, if you continue to have issues or are getting multiple notifications like your screen shot indicates, there could be a fault in the waiting loop code and you'll want to reach out to AppleCare to have engineering look at your account in particular. That isn't quick, but in the end usually works well if you are patient.


MacBook Pro Retina 2015 heating up I have MacBook Pro 13' Retina 2015. When I connect the charger the magnet connector heats up, but when charging is complete and the green light comes on everything is normal with no heat.

Also, when I am using the Mac whether on battery or while on charge, the area above the fans heat up too - especially when using Google Chrome. Other times it wont heat up.

I've had similar issues. A laptop stand seemed to help.


Mac & DNS - Setting up the nameserver So, I am have been on a quest lately to secure laptops used by children & help with a small school computer lab.

They are split between Macs & Ubuntu (Linux).

One of my first rules was to leverage a restricted DNS provider to prevent (well, minimize) the chance of the kids visiting porn. It worked great on Ubuntu as I just ran this command on all computers:

echo "nameserver 185.228.168.168" > /etc/resolv.conf ; chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

This forces the 185.228.168.168 nameserver (used by cleanbrowsing ) and sets the file as immutable, so nobody can change it.

Easy to automate and applies across all wifi networks. However, on the Mac, it does not work. It seems that they stopped using the resolv.conf file and you have to go through the UI to set it. However, the problem is that anyone can change it and you have to configure it PER WIFI network.

Q: Does anyone know a way to force a name server across all Wi-Fi networks on the Mac? Preferably through the terminal, so I can SSH into all of them and configure? If we can set it as immutable, so kids can't change, it would be ideal.

Appreciate the help!

*I know that I can do do that via the router DHCP/DNS and force to all computers, but due to some other technical challenges, I can't do it from there.

sudo networksetup -setdnsservers Ethernet 185.228.168.168
sudo networksetup -setdnsservers Wi-Fi 185.228.168.168

The Ethernet/Wi-Fi bit is the name of the network connection in the Network control panel.

You'll need sudo rights, as this has to be run as by and admin, and needs them to interactively enter a password if you leave that out.

But, you can easily script the above to run remotely.

From the man page (Sierra):

  -setdnsservers networkservice dns1 [dns2] [...]

  Use this command to specify the IP addresses of servers you want
  the specified  to use to resolve domain names. You can list
  any number of servers (replace dns1, dns2, and so on with the IP addresses of
  domain name servers). If you want to clear all DNS entries for the specified
  network service, type "empty" in place of the DNS server names.


I added my username to /etc/sudoers but using sudo still asks for password I entered my username in the sudoers file, but when using sudo in scritps, it still asks for the password.

This is my sudoers file:

~: ls -al /etc/sudoers
-r--r-----  1 root  wheel  1297 Aug 14 11:44 /etc/sudoers

Contents:

...
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL
petruza ALL=(ALL) ALL

(http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=F38RxeYP)
(I also tried with %petruza but didn't work either)

I have a script to start XAMPP, but it asks for the password anyway:

sudo /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/xampp start

Please realize that disabling the password prompt for sudo is a huge security concern.

However, it is possible. Instead of what you already have, add this to your /etc/sudoers file:

petruza ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

Here is some more reading on this topic.


iMac hard drive failed completely, My 2011 vintage iMac hard drive failed completely and local Apple techs say they cannot retrieve any data. I recall that I had files automatically being backed up to iCloud but do not know how to retrieve them from there.

The easiest way to check if you have anything in iCloud is to log into icloud.com. Here you can see the contents of iCloud Drive as well as what photos have been loaded into the Photo Stream or Photo Library. You will also see notes, contacts, etc if you use those apps.

However, 'backup' may be over stating matters: Time Machine is the Mac's built in backup solution, however it won't backup to iCloud or iCloud drive.

You of course can store files on iCloud drive, and often your Documents and Desktop folders are configured to be in iCloud drive by default.  You may also have configured Photos to backup to iCloud Photo Library, though this is reasonably rarer than doing it for the iPhone. If you pay for iCloud, you likely are using it for these items. If you do not pay for iCloud, I suspect you have very little (5GB only) stored in iCloud.

Once you get MacOS back on your Mac, you can log in with iCloud and all the content in iCloud will sync back to your restored Mac.

Good luck


How can I get iTunes to use a library on an external HD? I've configured iTunes to use a library on an external drive by going to Preferences > Advanced and setting the "iTunes media folder location". It was working fine for months.

Then last night I didn't have the external HD with me and I needed to do something with iTunes so I temporarily pointed it to the default media folder location.

However, now I can't get iTunes to go back to the external HD.

I set it in the preferences, but when I launch iTunes none of the songs, movies, or playlists from the external drive are present.

So iTunes is configured to use the media folder on the external HD, and looking at that filesystem I see that my stuff is in there, but I can't get to it.

I tried restarting the machine.

Mac OS 10.7.5.

iTunes 10.

Hold down option when clicking on the iTunes icon and browse to the media library on the external.  It will set this as the new default, which is what you did when creating a new library "temporarily".


What iOS apps read health records from Apple Health? Apple's website says that "third-party apps can request access to your health records" but I can't find any apps in the app store that read them. Are there any apps that read health records (e.g., allergies, medications, or immunizations, lab results, etc.)?

Here's an app that appears to match: ClinicQ by Health Here.
The fourth screenshot on the AppStore claims:

CliniQ can import your allergies, medical conditions, procedures and medications from Apple Health

In the process, I found how to add an institution as a data source (Apple Health can pull records from a compatible portal) although this is not yet enabled in Australia, probably because currently only US, UK and Canada have participating sources.
I also learned the difference between Health Records and the older Clinical Documents.
Finding apps that DO NOT access Health Records was quite easy.  For Aussies, the Healthi app can connect to MyHealthRecord records, but doesn't integrate with Apple's Health app.
Around launch time (2018), A tale of two hospitals mentions Johns Hopkins and Penn Medicine as early adopters.  The same article mentions 'EMR vendors such as EPIC, Cerner, Athenahealth, Meditech and AllScripts'... these are potential sources for more examples of apps that DO use the Health Records.


Will airdropping FCPX to another computer work? Will Final Cut Pro X work if I airdrop it from one mac to another, and the macs use two different Apple IDs (through just airdropping the .app file, not other files). If only airdropping the .app is not enough, what other files do I need to airdrop?

No, copying software licensed to one AppleID does not work on another computer without that AppleID.

Your purchase is subject to Apple's terms and conditions, which may vary by region.


What does "is not recognized as an internal or external command" error mean? I have spun up a VM of OS X since my main user is not an admin and I need to do things that require admin access.

My end goal is to install the Xcode command line tools into a VirtualBox VM I created with OS X 10.11. Is there a way to do this?

I tried to run xcode-select --install, but I got this error:

'xcode-select' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or script file

But I get the same error (with the command name different) when I ran the whoami, scp, and clear commands. I get an error No current directory specified when I run the ls, and cd commands.

What can I do to narrow down the cause of these terminal errors inside my VM?

I would spin up a second VM taking careful note of the version of the installer you used to build it up (or document from where you got the VM image). For example, the Install OS X El Capitan installer dated October 12, 2015 installs build 15B41a of the OS.

After the first boot, document which command-line tools are broken. You don't need to sign in to the app store or install Xcode to run xcode-select --install as that should be bundled with the core OS.

As I commented, massive amounts of breakage is present if the following commands don't run:

ls
whoami

You can run the type command to make sure you at least have a viable set of these commands:

mac:~ me$ type ls
ls is /bin/ls
mac:~ me$ type xcode-select
xcode-select is /usr/bin/xcode-select
mac:~ me$ file `which ls`
/bin/ls: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64


Office 365: Outlook — limit sync to 30 days I have just installed MS Outlook for Mac and am trying to prevent it from downloading my entire inbox with emails dating back to 2008.

I have an IMAP Gmail account and only want Outlook to sync emails from the 30 most recent days. This is quite easy to achieve in Thunderbird but I can't see anything for this for Outlook?

As of Outlook 16.23 (February 2019), such a feature to limit the email downloaded by date does not appear to exist. There's a feature request on Outlook's UserVoice forum for this functionality.

For an IMAP account, under the account's Advanced settings, you can configure Outlook to only download headers.

There is nothing similar for Exchange accounts.


How to completely remove iMovie and avoid updates For the past few days OS X is showing me updates for iMovie and it started downloading it. I changed my mind about iMovie and so deleted the application. But still it is trying to update iMovie and started downloading it again. How do I let AppStore know I don't need the update and don't show me future updates for iMove?

If you hold ALT/OPTION, the Appstore (on the purchases tab) gives you an option to cancel the download (assuming it is incomplete).

Depending on the version of OS X you have additional steps may be required to remove the application support files (in /Library/Application Support/).

Appcleaner can be used as well, it does a good job of finding the dependencies; but to enable the removal of system and default applications you need to change the Appcleaner preferences.

I've never needed these options, so proceed with caution.

There is a debug menu in the Appstore that has several more advanced options for controlling the application. Resetting the application may help in this case.

Another option, but that it is ideal is to let the update run (possibly reinstall it first) and then uninstall it again.


OS X : Terminal command to turn ON/OFF SSH server I know how to turn on SSH server from System preferences :-

(System preferences ->  Sharing -> Remote Login )

Now I am looking for a terminal command for the same.

By knowing it I can use the command in my Python Script (for project work).

You can stop the ssh service by typing the following:

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

To start it again, use this:

$ sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist


How to do IP masquerading on MacOS (10.14+)? I am looking for the equivalent Macos command to the linux:

sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o en0 -j MASQUERADE

I notice there are some very very old solutions using the ancient ipfw firewall, but pfctl has taken over and it has a completely different command system!

I believe under pf you are required to edit the pf.conf file for NAT. The OpenBSD PF page has some more information on the syntax.

Murus is a frontend for pf configuration if you're happy using a GUI rather than CLI.

The linux/unix or networking stack exchange sites might be helpful places to ask about pf if the OpenBSD page doesn't cover your question.


Automator services run with 0.5 second delay There is a 0.5 second delay between triggering a service (via the Services menu or a shortcut) and the service actually performing the actions. For some workflows that I run via a shortcut, this delay is pretty annoying.

Is there a way to get my AppleScript and shell scripts executed (almost) instantly via a shortcut?

This question has been asked before but it has no answers: Running services with keyboard shortcuts has a 0.5 second delay

Update: My solution.

Well, I decided to give FastScripts a shot, since I've heard positive things about it in the past. Guess what? Scripts run instantly now. It's a wonderful app all-around. If you're even slightly bothered by the delays I'd highly recommend it. Keyboard Maestro is probably great as well but FastScripts seemed more like the light-weight app that I was looking for.


Can MacOS scale 3200x1800 monitor? I'm thinking about buying this but i'm wondering if MacOS can properly scale this for a crisp image. For example my 2018 15 inch macbook pro scales its build in monitor so it looks like "1680x1050" so all the text looks nice and crisp. Wondering if it can do the same with this monitor.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08GYBHYNR/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

MacOS can scale any monitor. It scales best to integer numbers: by default 2x scaling, so a 3200 x 1800 would scale best to half that, 1600 x 900.


How do you add a custom social profile in Contacts on macOS? How do you add a custom social profile in Contacts on macOS? On iOS, you can add a custom social profile:

However, on macOS I only see this:

Also, I organised my contacts on iOS. For most contacts, I have one card in iCloud and one in Exchange and in the iCloud one I have a lot of custom social profiles. I linked them but they weren't linked on macOS so I linked them, but the label was called "profile". On iOS, the label was changed to "Social profile".

This was all working when I linked contacts using iOS.

While tedious and a little annoying, you can export the contact card, edit it manually in a text editor, and then import it back into contacts.
Select on the contact you want to change, then go to File → Export → Export vCard…. Open the vcf file in a text editor such as TextEdit.
You’ll see a file that looks something like this:
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
PRODID:-//Apple Inc.//Mac OS X 10.15.6//EN
N:Last;First;;;
FN:First Last
END:VCARD

To add a custom social profile, add this before END:VCARD, replacing Service with the social profile service (e.g. Twitter) and username with the contact's username:
X-SOCIALPROFILE;type=Service:x-apple:username

To use special characters, such as : or ;, in the service, put it in quotation marks ("). (To use a " use ^" and use ^^ for ^.) However, these will not display correctly and show up as “profile” in the Contacts app.
To use special characters in the username (including spaces), use the URL encoding.
For example, if you want to add the username “first_last123” for the service “Foo bar”, and the username “with space” for the service “Special:characters"^”, the file may look like this:
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
PRODID:-//Apple Inc.//Mac OS X 10.15.6//EN
N:Last;First;;;
FN:First Last
X-SOCIALPROFILE;type=Foo Bar:x-apple:first_last123
X-SOCIALPROFILE;type="Special:characters^"^^":x-apple:with%20space
END:VCARD

You can now import this VCF file into Contacts.

Alternatively, you could use AppleScript:
tell application "Contacts"
  -- theContact is a contact
  make new social profile at theContact with properties {service name:"Service", user name:"Username"}
  save
end tell

Here's a script you could run to add a custom social profile to the selected contact:
tell application "Contacts"
    set selectedContacts to selection
    if (count selectedContacts) is not 1 then
        display alert "Please select 1 contact to modify."
        return
    end if
    set theService to (display dialog "Service?" default answer "")'s text returned
    set theUsername to (display dialog "Username?" default answer "")'s text returned
    make new social profile at selectedContacts's first item with properties {service name:theService, user name:theUsername}
    save
end tell


WhatsApp web without camera Is it possible to load WhatsApp web without camera?. My front and back camera are broken and I am not able to load WhatsApp web without it.
Anyone knows if it is possible to load it without the camera?

You cannot, you need to scan with WhatsApp. When you scan the QR code you get a session ID. WhatsApp send that ID to their server to enable a session in your browser.


How to disable apps from auto launch if I have already disabled them? When I turn my Mac on, Messages, Mail and Creative Cloud are opened automatically on the main screen. It looks like this:

It eally annoys!

I have checked my login items and there are not such apps.

How I can disable them? I would like to open my laptop and see clean screen.

EDIT

Screenshot from bach

EDIT: Having re-read the question, my original answer may not be necessary. By default, when you log in, OS X opens all the windows you had open when you logged out. If you don't want it to do this, then uncheck the option "reopen windows when logging back in" that appears when you log out:

This should give you an empty desktop when you log back in. If not, then it's back to my original answer (below).

Some apps unfortunately don't respect that option, and create Launch Agents (processes that run at login) or sometimes Launch Daemons (which run at boot) to manage their lifecycle.

Such apps often do have a preference buried somewhere to change their login behaviour, so double-check that first, as that's always the safest solution.

If there isn't a preference, you can see what Launch Agents are running by going to your terminal and running:

launchctl list

If you want to see which Adobe-related agents are running, pipe the output to grep with something like:

launchctl list | grep -i adobe

If you see anything there, then it's likely that Adobe is using this mechanism. So what to do about it?

Have a look in the following folders to find files with the same names that you saw in the output of the launchctl command... in your case, probably called com.adobe.<something>.

~/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/LaunchDaemons
/System/Library/LaunchAgents
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons

Once you've found them, try renaming rather than deleting them (e.g. by adding ".ignore" to the end of their filenames). Then reboot to see if that's had the desired effect. If it has, you're good to go... but watch out for other side-effects in case the Launch Agent has more than one function, and be prepared to go through the process again whenever you receive a software update.

If it hasn't worked, restore their original filenames to avoid any undesired side-effects, and keep digging...


Copying iOS autocorrect custom dictionary among devices Is it possible to create a file of autocorrect entries for iOS devices and deploy it to all my company iPads (8 of them right now)? There are about 150 autocorrect entries that we'd like to setup on all the iPads.  Ideally, we would find a way to manage them centrally.

We tried textexpander on the iPads (love it for the Mac - its indespensible), but on the iPads its actually slow. The keyboard lag led to riots among my staff.

Do you actually want an autocorrect for a misspelling or a keyboard shortcut for an abbreviation?

If you sync the iPads with the same computer they should have all the same keyboard shortcuts. i.e. "omw" becomes "On my way!" (without the quotes).

That shortcut I created on my iPhone but I am typing now on my Mac Pro and it expanded to the full phrase as I typed it.

I use this one all the time "mcx" becomes "Mac OSX".

Look at the "System Preferences > Keyboard > Text" tab for shortcuts on your computer. If you create them on the desktop computer they should sync to your iOS device(s) and vice versa.

Check this link here if you want to try to copy the actual file:
Where is the text expansion file located with OS X?

Happy Wednesday!


mds and mds_stores constantly consuming cpu mds and mds_stores are constant CPU consumers even when I think nothing should have changed on the hard drive.
Activity Monitor:

I have a circa 2009 Macbook Pro with lots of software installed over the years. Dropbox and Crashplan are active background processes among many others.
I have included many locations in the privacy settings of Spotlight to exclude from its index:

USB drive
Crashplan folder
/Library/Caches
/Users/me/Library/Caches

Still, mds and mds_stores are constant consumers of CPU hovering around 10-12% each. My fan keeps running due to the heat.
Any ideas as to what it could be due and how I can troubleshoot?

As you know, the mds and mds_stores are Spotlight activities.

The reason why your Spotlight is so active could be a number of things; it could be you have an app or multiple apps constantly changing some folder contents.

First let's check whether Spotlight is the cause of the fans running so much. To test this, run the following in your terminal:

sudo mdutil -a -i off

this turns off indexing of files, and should result in a clear slow down of the fans if mds and/or mds_stores are to blame.

To turn indexing back on, run

sudo mdutil -a -i on

After this you could run the complete re-indexing of your hard drive (be aware this could be an over night job), it will delete your Spotlight data base forcing it to start over.

sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100/*

The next and final step would be to add others to your (do not scan), privacy settings.


Why does my iPhone not play music or audio through my car's stereo? My friend's iPhone plays music, YouTube, etc just fine through my car's stereo using the USB cable. But my iPhone won't. I have reset and restored my phone. Even after I got a new iPhone it still doesn't play. Why would that be?

Download a song through iTunes. That is all I had to do. Apparently my car's stereo won't play any audio from any app unless I have at least one song in my iTunes library. I listen to everything through streaming services like Spotify so I didn't think I needed a song in my iTunes library.


How to backup data for Shazam app from iPhone 3GS NOTE : I just want to backup only the data associated with Shazam app, not the full iPhone backup.

Apple recently swapped my iPhone 3GS due to some issues on the speaker, but I am having issues with 3G and WiFi after the swap. When I go and visited the Genius Bar, he suggested to restore the iPhone and set it up as a New iPhone, and not to restore via a backup copy of iPhone.

But the real problem is all the existing data is lost when I do this. So I want to take a backup of Shazam app and when I setup new iPhone, I can put this data back into the app.

How can I do this ?

I think there is no way to achieve this without jailbreaking the device.

I've just checked the Apple developer tools, but they only allow you to get the content of apps that you developed yourself, not apps downloaded from the AppStore. And even with these you can only backup, but not restore :-(

I'm pretty sure it's possible on a jailbroken phone, but I have no expertise in that field, so I can't tell how.


ITunes backups - how's the UID generated? I'm struggling with an issue with an encrypted backup (see Apple Backup encrypted format specs? I need to decrypt part of a backup (for which I have the key) that iTunes won't restore and How to verify that an iTunes backup is valid? if you want the details) and I'm trying to understand how things got so messed up.

For that I'd need to understand how are the backup UIDs created. Are they "hardware" based? I don't think so as if expect to have a lot of "iPhone Backup" keys in Keychain as I've been "evolving" my devices over time...

So where do they come from?

EDIT: To make clearer what I mean, when I say UID I'm referring to the number that's in the folder where the backup is stored.

The location of the backups is on:

Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/{UID}

Windows Vista and Windows 7: \Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\{UID}

And the UID itself is a long string of hexadecimal characters like:

59cf77659e76a55e206192c325f732xxxxxxxxxx (last 10 digits removed in case it's some "magic" number)

Thanks a lot!

Given the length of the UID, I suspect the value is a cryptographic hash value. Hashes are often used to avoid collisions and can be recreated if the original input is known.

SHA1 is 40 characters when hex encoded.

We can rule out an OS X uuid and Window's GUID as the lengths are too short. Additionally values returned by uuid on the same hardware include identical segments – unlike a hash.


Two Clash of Clan accounts under one Game Center account I have a problem that I am worried about with my Clash of Clans game. I originally started playing the game on my iPad. I was not able to play it while I was out because my iPad did not have an internet connection. So I downloaded the game on my iPhone 5 so I could play it everywhere and started a new base. At the time, I did not know that they were on the same Game Center account. Now every time I get onto my phone, it asks if I would like to load my TH 7 village, but my progress on this base will be lost. Well my base on my iPhone is a lot higher then the one on my iPad now. If I have to lose one account, I am OK with losing the one on my iPad lvl 47 rather than my lvl 70 on my iPhone. Can someone explain to me what I need to do to save my lvl 70 account?

I am OK right now but when i get a new phone I will lose it because it is not linked to a Game Center account anymore. How can I ditch the level 47 village and keep the level 70 village?

Long story short: I have Clash of Clans on my iPhone and on my iPad. Both have different villages. Started my village on the iPad first. Both are under the same Game Center account. Everytime I get onto my phone it ask if i want to load my TH 7 King Tom village. I always say no because it is not high lvl like on my phone. Is there a way to keep both villages and put one under a different game center or can I delete the low level one and just leave the high level one? Just dont want to lose my lvl 70 village is all because I have put so much money into it.

Thanks

How open are you to creating a new Game Center account?

If yes, then follow the steps below:

Steps are taken from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4314?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Open the Game Center app
Tap on your email/username and click sign out
Tap on the Create a new account button
Follow the steps on the screen
Sign in to your new GC account and open Clash of Clans
Congrats! Your village should be linked to the new GC account. To test it out, sign in to another device with Clash of Clans and tap on OK/Confirm

If no, well..... * shrug *. IDK what to do.


Bluetooth slow to turn on after iOS10 update I've had my iPhone 6s from new since they came out last year, and recently updated to iOS10 (currently running 10.1.1). Prior to this, whenever I enabled Bluetooth on my iPhone, it was instantaneous: turn it on, boom, it was enabled.

However, since the iOS10 update, it can now take up to a full 20-30 seconds between pressing the button and for Bluetooth to be enabled (with the little icon showing in the top right). At first I thought it was broken, but now I'm used to the long delay and it irks me.

I've tried rebooting the phone, which appeared to have fixed it, but it was just a bit faster in enabling Bluetooth the first time I tried it afterwards; all subsequent attempts were as painfully slow as before (and I'm not convinced that first time wasn't just a coincidence).

Is there any particular reason for this with the latest iOS update? And/or is there anything I can do to fix it?

Update

This isn't a fix fix (which is why I'm reluctant to post it as an answer), but: when turning on Bluetooth via the control pane (flicking upward from the bottom of your iPhone screen), don't immediately dismiss the screen. If you keep it open for just a couple of seconds, usually Bluetooth turns on much more quickly. I've found that if I don't do this, Bluetooth might not come on for 20-30 seconds, and if I then open the control pane subsequently, the Bluetooth icon is highlighted... and then appears to turn itself off again.

Update #2

As of iOS 10.3x this no longer appears to be an issue on any of my iOS devices.

I'm having this issue as well. I went to Apple, they replaced my iPhone 6S due to both the bluetooth coming up with an error in diagnostics, as well as the battery issue thats plaguing 6S users. However, I am still having the same problem. I am convinced its software related and waiting for the new iOS patch. A bit concerned that the hardware diagnostics at the Genius Bar found a Bluetooth error as well, hopefully the software isn't damaging the hardware.


Does iOS support IPsec IKEv2? Does iOS support IPsec IKEv2?

If not, is there any way to get IPsec IKEv2 working on iOS?

I do not believe the built-in Apple VPN client supports IKEv2 on either the Mac or iOS devices. This is because certainly on the Mac - including Mavericks 10.9.1, and I believe also iOS the VPN client is based on the open-source Racoon software which does not support IKEv2.

There is a Racoon2 see http://www.racoon2.wide.ad.jp/w/ which does support IKEv2 but that is not what Apple include.

Cisco AnyConnect client for iOS and Mac does support IKEv2.


Spotlight preferences ignored I have set Spotlight preferences to show System Preferences first, and not show Webpages:

and yet these seem to be ignored:

Specifically:

the "top hit" is never a System Preference. (Although the first result after it always is, if relevant.)
web searches are always included.

Is there a way to fix this? I'm using a recently updated Mavericks.

After a bit of investigation, I realise this was mostly a misunderstanding:

reordering the categories doesn't affect what gets chosen as "top hit"
the "web searches" are not "web pages". Web searches are always shown.

So: Spotlight preferences are taken into account, they just don't affect those two things.


How to get rid of firewall asking when developing a program? When you develop a program you compile a web server as an executable server.
When you run it the firewall would ask "Do you want the application 'server' to accept incoming network connections?".
You click yes. Then you do some changes and recompile the program, and the firewall would ask again (I suppose because it's detect that the executable has been changed).
How to get rid of that question? I don't want to disable firewall, I only want to disable it for this specific program.

Code Signing
Your binary needs to be code signed with codesign.
The permission to accept incoming network connections is associated with the meta-data and signature of the binary, not the specific binary. The intent is to allow users to upgrade their software without discarding all their previous security settings.


Transfer Photos From Mac to iPhone How could I transfer photos from a Mac to an iPhone? I don't want to use iCloud Photo Library or Photo Stream. I think there is some way to do it using iTunes.

I would like it if the photos were stored on the iPhone so that they would be available offline through the Photos app on the iPhone. Is there any way to do this?

I have been using iMazing (on the Mac) and FileApp (on the iPhone) which make it very simple, and you can just drag and drop your files back and forth.


Is it possible to get the 'next meeting 'complication on top of the time-lapse watch face? I was using the Utility face on my Apple watch and love the ability to tap the bottom and see my meetings.

The time-lapse faces are compelling, but I'm really missing the calendar complication.

I'd like to combine them.

My question is: Is it possible to get the 'next meeting 'complication on top of the time-lapse watch face?

No. Watch OS 2.0 doesn't include a kit to make changes like that. You could get Xcode and make your own complication, but even registered developers don't get to make custom watch faces yet.

You'd need to be Hermès and work directly with Apple to get that done on iOS 9 and watch OS 2.


Camera Roll/DCIM sorting This is a question that keeps coming up as I try to merge my older Rolls and the current Camera Roll on iOS11.

What I've done:

-Prepared old Camera Rolls for import (EXIF fixes for dates, setting Date Created/Modified to the same dates).

-Merged new CR with names adjusted to avoid conflicts

-Copied to DCIM

-Nuked Photos.sqlite db

As expected, Moments picks up the correct date (as it should), but Camera Roll is weird.

It appears that files are sorted by date, but ONLY per each folder. E.g. photos in 100-111APPLE show up sorted by dates taken by each folder, but overall in the camera roll they are not. Is there a reason sorting is applied per folder?

Also, for some reason 109APPLE appeared at the very end of the camera roll - why could that be?

I was going through the Photos db (wow it got much messier since iOS 6), and couldn't deduce the sort order in the Camera Roll. Previously, the general belief was it is sorted by Date Created or Date Added, but when I sort the db by these parameters, photo order is different from what I see in the roll.

To make matters worse, not all (per-folder) sorting appears to be correct, as I have at least 2 photos from Jan12 that follow Apr12, and these 2 photos go from 17Jan12 to 16Jan12. I've tried sorting the folder in Explorer by pretty much all the attributes Windows gives me, and could not replicate this order. So my question is, what is going on? What is the primary key used for sorting the db in iOS 11?

P.S. I am aware I can manually run an sql query to copy ZDATECREATED to ZDATEADDED, but I want to understand, what is going on in the first place. Also not sure how manual sql edits would impact future exports to iCloud Photo Library.
TLDR: iOS Camera Roll sorting is weird - by what attribute is it sorted? When I sort the sql table by ZDATEADDED it is not the same order as on device, however if I run a manual query to set ZDATEADDED to ZDATECREATED, it seems to sort by the updated Date Added/Date Created timestamp, making it look like ZDATEADDED is indeed the primary sort key.    Where does iOS even get Date Added (not from file/EXIF?), and how do I import photos into the camera roll preserving/setting the correct Date Added?

Thanks for any help.

Right, the way iOS generates ZDATEADDED appears to be dependent on indexing order, and hence naming (correct me if I am wrong).
So if you want the Camera Roll to be ordered correctly by EXIF/file data, you'd need to bulk rename pre-sorted files in order, and then import.
Thank you iOS Photos.app for being such a delight


Can't move files to a folder in Finder Did clean install of Yosemite. In Finder I can't move files to a folder. I must authenticate almost all move operations. After entering password the file is not moved, but copied instead. Apple is not much help. I have been told I have created an encrypted volume and have to bring in computer. I don't buy it. Another consultant said I need to turn off FileVault and unencrypt volume, but FileVault is already off. Anybody familiar with this problem?

Clarks-Mac-Pro:~ clarkland$ ls -leO
total 0
drwx------+  5 clarkland  staff  -       170 Apr 15 09:05 Desktop
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------+  6 clarkland  staff  -       204 Feb 28 18:32 Documents
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------+ 11 clarkland  staff  -       374 Apr  8 02:51 Downloads
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@ 16 clarkland  staff  -       544 Apr 15 09:05 Dropbox
drwx------@ 53 clarkland  staff  hidden 1802 Mar  5 05:07 Library
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------+  7 clarkland  staff  -       238 Mar  2 13:58 Movies
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------+  4 clarkland  staff  -       136 Feb  8 18:31 Music
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------+  9 clarkland  staff  -       306 Mar  2 13:58 Pictures
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwxr-xr-x+  5 clarkland  staff  -       170 Nov 26 16:24 Public
 0: group:everyone deny delete

Created a new administrative user (Fairy Princess), as suggested. It has the same problem.

Clarks-Mac-Pro:~ fairyprincess$ ls -leO
total 0
drwx------+  3 fairyprincess  staff  -  102 Apr 15 09:52 Desktop
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------+  3 fairyprincess  staff  -  102 Apr 15 09:52 Documents
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------+  3 fairyprincess  staff  -  102 Apr 15 09:52 Downloads
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------+ 41 fairyprincess  staff  - 1394 Apr 15 09:59 Library
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------+  3 fairyprincess  staff  -  102 Apr 15 09:52 Movies
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------+  3 fairyprincess  staff  -  102 Apr 15 09:52 Music
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------+  3 fairyprincess  staff  -  102 Apr 15 09:52 Pictures
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwxr-xr-x+  5 fairyprincess  staff  -  170 Apr 15 09:52 Public

Much ado about nothing. Here is the solution. Open Info box for the Partition. Go down to Sharing and Permissions. Unlock with password. Add entry for the administrative account you are in - uh oh - it is set to read only. Change to read and write. Problem solved. Everyone I talked to, including Apple, who wanted me to bring the computer in to the store, led me to believe this was some weird problem due to installation, so I never bothered to check for the OBVIOUS.


Automator choose finder folder and run shell script I've got a simple shell script that I would like to incorporate into an automator workflow. I just need to double click the application , pick a finder folder and run the command. At the moment it is running in my default user directory. I've found how to do this as a service, but I'd like it to work as an application.
How can I get to run in the chosen folder? Optionally a drag and drop onto the application would be nice as well.

You can simply pass the selected folder to the shell script by selecting "as argument" from the "pass input:" dropdown-menu and then adding "$@" at the point in your script where you want the folder path to be used.

To use drag&drop, just remove the "ask for finder items" action and let the "run shell script" receive the input from "application can receive files and folders as input".


Set default mail client without adding mail account I'm on OSX el capitan (10.11.6).

I use outlook to access my email and would like outlook to be the default mail application. All the instructions I find online suggest that I should open mail and choose "Mail -> Preferences" to set the default mail app. Unfortunately Preferences is greyed out until an account is added. I don't have another account that I want to add to my mac.

How can I set the default mail client to Outlook without adding an account to the mail client?

I finally found something easy that worked, the SetDefaultMailApp from Microsoft:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/troubleshoot/outlook-for-mac/useful-tools#setdefaultmailapp


How to get Mavericks 10.9.1 to remember external keyboard modifier keys When I upgraded to Mavericks I discovered that my external keyboard modifier keys (for multiple wireless keyboards) were no longer mapped as they had been before. I was able to fix this by going in to System Preferences > Keyboards > Modifier Keys

However, every time I disconnect and reconnect the keyboard(s) I need to go back in and manually change the settings which always revert to the internal Apple Keyboard settings. Is there any way to save my preferences so that I won't need to do this every time?

It sounds like the settings aren't getting saved properly. Try running Disk Utility and Fix Permissions on your startup volume. I usually run this a couple of times and reboot when I'm done when I start having problems like this.

If that fails check the system logs in Console.app while making these changes to see if  System Preferences.app is writing any error messages when changing this setting or quitting.

I remap the caps lock key to control and I've never had this problem when switching keyboards, which is something I do every day.

Good Luck.


Can't change OS X Maps to use km instead of miles When I'm using the directions in the Maps application in Mavericks the distance is in miles instead of in km.

The "Measurement units" i set to "Metric" under "Advanced..." in Language & Region preferences.

I have toggled the setting multiple times and tried both relogging and rebooting to no avail.

Is there another way to change the unit to km instead of miles?

If you want to change the system to use metric units, you have to select a region (locale), which uses only metric units.
Apple is not very good when it comes to internationalization. Especially the many small nationalities suffer from this attitude. It feels like American culture is walking all over you.

Go to System Preferences / Language & Region / Select a region which definitely uses the metric system. Maps should finally work.


OS X wont show desktop I have upgraded to El Capitan, but I was having this problem for a while, where the desktop background doesn’t display. The folders have white letters, and the background is white, and this makes everything difficult to read. The background image doesn't change immediately, I have to log out, and log back in. I can see it has changed, on the login screen, and after I have logged in. But at some point, the screen turns white, and thus the problem.

I have turned off all the start up applications, and the problem remains.

I have looked for view options in Finder, but I cannot figure out why the desktop remains white.

I have tried the normal ways of changing desktop background, but it doesn’t work. Alternatively, I can not see it, because something is blocking it? That is a guess.

Inverting colours in the accessibility menu doesn't help, as inverted colours mean I'm looking at black on black instead of white on white.

I created a new user. The new user doesn’t have this problem, their desktop is visible.

I deleted ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist which seemed to help momentarily, but the the problem began again. in that time, I noticed an app called "DeskShade" that was running, and said wtf is that? So I did sudo rm -rf DeskShade.app/  I rebooted, and my desktop is back. It's been good for about 30 minutes, hopefully removing this app is the solution.


iPhoto 9.5.1 deleting photos and library! iPhoto 9.5.1 recently just deleted my photos. Was there an auto upgrade? it happened overnight so I was not on the computer. I cannot find all those photos in iPhoto/Library under User. Any suggestions? It seems that Time Machine does not back up iPhoto in Mavericks, so I've been reading. I cannot find the iPhoto file anywhere in Time Machine.

Where are those photos that were suddenly gone MIA?

OK. Please follow those steps :
Open IPhoto 9.5.1 while pressing the "alt" key. Select "New". Name it Iphoto Library 2 for exemple. Press Enter, let IPhoto open.

Now, go into your Pictures folder. Find the IPhoto Library. Click right onto it, choose "Show packets".

Find the "Masters" Folder. Drag it with your mouse and drop it inside the IPhoto's window. The bloody app should now import all your photos.

Quit IPhoto. You can now delete the old IPhoto Library and rename your new IPhoto Library 2 into IPhoto Library.


Can my Macbook Pro run Starcraft Legacy of the Void? The days of gaming are long a distant memory. I haven't touched games since 12 years of age. These days, my notebook is used for computational and mathematical modelling.

That said, I do enjoy an occasional gaming session during the holidays.

Here's the spec of my notebook:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)
2.7 GHz Intel Core i5
8 GB 1867 MHz DDR3
Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 MB

Can it run SC Legacy of the Void?

Yes. Purchase it here. Google is your friend, 2pionfour.

Disclosure: no financial stake in Blizzard Entertainment.


Time difference between Apple Health on iphone XR and Schwinn Trainer app I have a Schwinn recumbent exercise bike that uses blue tooth to update the Schwinn Trainer app on my iphone XR.  The Schwinn trainer app automatically updates Apple Health.  My problem is, that when I look at Apple Health, it shows the time of my exercise with the time an hour later than I actually rode the bike.  That causes the exercise to show up on the next day in the Lose-It app if I complete my exercise after 11:00 PM.  The time on my exercise bike, the Schwinn Trainer app and my iphone are all in sync.  Does Apple Health have it's own time zone setting?

Apple Health does not have it's own time zone setting. It will respect the time zone provided by the app saving the workout. If you go to Health > Workouts > Show All Data and open the workout, there will be a Time Zone entry. My time zones currently show "Eastern Standard Time" for workouts completed yesterday.
Yours should show whatever timezone you're currently in. If they don't, then they're being saved by Schwinn incorrectly. If the right time zone is shown, then compare the time listed with the time you expect.


How to identify the cause of a restart on MacBook Air via Console app in OS X Yosemite Recently my MacBook Air restarted in the middle of the night and cost me some data.

I understand there is a support page that tells me the possible causes, but they don't include a way to find the cause.

Is there a way I can identify the cause of a reboot via the Console app?

Using the console

Open Console app (by default located in Macintosh HD ▸ Applications ▸ Utilities)
Select the system.log file in the left pane
Conduct a search for Shutdown Cause
View the filtered output

See Yosemite example below:

NOTE: For more context, you may want to search for Shutdown only to see some of the other log entries and not just the Shutdown cause.


How do I set environment variables on OS X? I have always difficulties setting the Environment variables in OS X like JAVA_HOME, M2_HOME or PATH. How to set these on OS X Mavericks?

I did some research but the answers I've found didn't really help me yet:

export JAVA_HOME=/... (But it seems that the changes are temporary, just for one terminal session.)
setenv JAVA_HOME=/... (But command not found.)
Open .profile and write the variables inside to make the changes permanent- (.profile does not exist).
Open .bash_profile and write the variables inside to make the changes permanent- (.bash_profile does not exist).
vi ~/.bash_profile (Quite a challenge for somebody who doesn't know vi.)
Creating your own enrivonment.plist file.

Can somebody please walk me through the steps to get that to work on OS X Mavericks, assuming no Unix knowhow?

I have a .profile in my home directory; it contains many export … statements for environment variables.

You can create such a file by opening a Terminal and issuing the command touch .profile
Close Terminal.

Then you should open that file in a plain-text editor (TextWrangler for example). You can also use nano .profile in a Terminal window (current directory should be your home), which is much easier than vi. Insert lines such as export JAVA_HOME=… . Save, exit nano if you used that and quit a running Terminal.

Open Terminal and issue the command env to see all environment variables. Check that the ones you defined have the value you assigned to them. You should be good to go now. But don't forget that environment variables defined in .profile are not passed to GUI applications.


How should I fix my Homebrew installation after upgrading OS X? Context

My employer gave me a MacBook Pro for development work; however, most of the development work I do in my research group is for Linux platforms, and for a host of policy reasons, I can't install virtualization software on this laptop. Homebrew looks like a good way in which to install these tools, especially because it looks very hackable (since it uses Ruby; MacPorts does not look hackable, because it uses Tcl). However, Homebrew relies on system libraries, and for security reasons, my employer may (and from what I hear, frequently will) upgrade my system at any time. I've heard that OS X upgrades will break Homebrew. (See, for instance, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7779300/how-should-i-upgrade-xcode-after-upgrading-to-os-x-lion).

Question

How would I go about fixing my Homebrew install after an OS X upgrade? I am fine with deleting it and starting from scratch again, as long as I can do so in an automated way. (For instance, using Puppet plus a Homebrew provider to script a configuration that will automatically build upon running a shell script.) I've been Googling everywhere and can't seem to find any answers to this question.

brew update

Updates the Homebrew installation. If there are any errors, they should be reported by brew doctor. Try fixing them else, you could use the uninstall script as follows:

#!/bin/sh
# Just copy and paste the lines below (all at once, it won't work line by line!)
# MAKE SURE YOU ARE HAPPY WITH WHAT IT DOES FIRST! THERE IS NO WARRANTY!

function abort {
  echo "$1"
  exit 1
}

set -e

/usr/bin/which -s git || abort "brew install git first!"
test -d /usr/local/.git || abort "brew update first!"

cd `brew --prefix`
git checkout master
git ls-files -z | pbcopy
rm -rf Cellar
bin/brew prune
pbpaste | xargs -0 rm
rm -r Library/Homebrew Library/Aliases Library/Formula Library/Contributions
test -d Library/LinkedKegs && rm -r Library/LinkedKegs
rmdir -p bin Library share/man/man1 2> /dev/null
rm -rf .git
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew
rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/Homebrew
rm -rf /Library/Caches/Homebrew

And install homebrew again. Am pretty sure all this is configurable using puppet.


Issue with LCD screen colors after Mac was dropped I have gotten an issue with my Mac LCD display, after the Mac was dropped. 100% white colors become pink and 100% black colors become green. I don't want to get it fixed, because that would be very expensive. I have instead managed to calibrate the white color, to a bit off-white, so that it is not pink. But how can I change the black color, so that it is just a tad grayish?

The color changes indicates the possibility of a loose, flat-band cable connection between the LCD display and the mainboard.

That DIY does not cost anything (but it is not easy to do) and might help in your case to make sure the cable connection is firm on both sides.

Go to ifixit and find your Macs instructions (or similar model) if not available.

If it is not the cable, you have 2 choices:

Replace the screen your self to save money.
Use the ColorSync app in the Utility folder and modify the colors profiles there.


Vim, MacVim, and Unicode Unicode characters appear in regular old vim in the terminal (iTerm), but not MacVim. Is there a way to get MacVim to handle Unicode characters appropriately. If it helps, I installed them using homebrew.

I grabbed these lines from the Vim Wiki:

if has("multi_byte")
  if &termencoding == ""
    let &termencoding = &encoding
  endif
  set encoding=utf-8
  setglobal fileencoding=utf-8
  "setglobal bomb
  set fileencodings=ucs-bom,utf-8,latin1
endif

If you mean that Unicode characters don't render correctly try disable the "Use Core Text renderer" option in the "Preferences… → Advanced" menu and restart MacVim. (source 1, source 2)

I have a similar problem, in which emoji charachters are rendered to big, but as of yet I don't know how to fix it.


Boot Camp / macOS Mojave / 3 TB Fusion drive If I replace the current 3 TB hard drive with a compatible SSD drive, will this fix the issue with being able to load and run boot camp on my 2012 iMac?

If you see the alert 'Installation cannot proceed with Boot Camp configured'

Bootcamp isn't dependent on the type of drive that you use.

What matters is it's hardware compatability with the Windows version you want to run.


Don't sync certain password with iCloud Is there any way to specify that a certain password should not be synced to iCloud?

Use case:

  I am allowed to have internet only on one mac address. So I use it on my laptop, but the password is synced to iCloud and so iPad also joins the network (which it cannot use as there is mac protection). Can I restrict that password to be available only on the Mac?

So if you look in the Keychain Access, there is a "Keychain" column, and initially your password ends up in both System and iCloud keychains. You should delete the iCloud entry, this will remove the password form the other devices, but the one with System will stay and will be used by your machine


Encrypt existing unencrypted Time Capsule backup Since Mountain Lion Time Capsule can now backup to encrypted sparsebundles. This is great and easy to setup for new backup locations, just select 'encrypt backups'. However, I have backups for around a year now that I want to keep. If I go through the setup, I can only erase the current (unencrypted) backup and start over, or keep using the current (unencrypted) backup. So how can I work around this issue and encrypt my existing backups?

The only solution I can offer is to use Disk Utility to create an encrypted sparsebundle, then copy the contents of the existing backup disk into the sparsebundle. This is essentially what Time Machine does.

Then, select a new backup disk in Time Machine and select the sparsebundle. If all works according to plan, Time Machine will ask for your password and begin using the new sparsebundle.


Recreating iTunes .itl database from .xml file without itunes copying songs? I have a Library.xml file, and want have its contents in iTunes.  If I follow the recommended "File -> Library -> Import Playlist" option for this, it tries to copy all my songs into the iTunes Media folder, probably because my Library.xml file references all its songs on a networked drive.

Turns out that the one step I was forgetting was to reset the iTunes settings after removing my .itl database and library .xml files so that iTunes did not "organize your library" and "copy songs to itunes media folder after adding to library".


App Store using old information after manual XCode upgrade I'm running Yosemite on a late 2011 MacBook Pro.  I did this to upgrade XCode from a downloaded DMG after the App Store repeatedly stalled.

Now XCode is upgraded but the App Store still shows the same version of XCode as available for upgrade.  And there is one further update (a camera raw package) available.  But neither of them will actually update.  App Store stalls repeatedly.

How do I un-hose the App Store?  I'm ideally looking for some command that will cause App Store to reset itself to a clean state, recognize that the latest XCode is installed, and successfully download and update the camera raw and future packages.

Try resetting the Mac App Store.

Enable the debug menu and restart the Mac App Store.

defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true

Choose the Reset Application option and restart the Mac App Store.


Can I attach an Mac mini to a VGA monitor using an HDMI/VGA adapter? Can I attach the Mac mini to a VGA monitor using an HDMI/VGA adapter?

I have a new Mac mini I'm trying to attach to an old monitor that has VGA and DVI inputs. I have VGA cable and HDMI/VGA adapter and everything seems to connect fine, but the monitor doesn't see any input. The Mac mini works attached to TV using HDMI, but the TV also doesn't see VGA input if I try VGA (and HDMI/VGA adapter).

If this won't work, what will?

ADDITIONS: On further investigation it seems that I may need to use thunderbolt port to connect to VGA. I am having trouble finding thunderbolt to VGA adapter and would like to confirm that mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter is compatible.

Also, thanks to user3439894 for edits/improvements.

Does the adapter work with other devices? If not, then your adapter is likely broken. You should be able to attach an HDMI to VGA adapter to your Mac. Video adapters aren't computer/software specific. Side note, it would be a better idea to convert HDMI to DVI instead of VGA since HDMI and DVI are both digital, meaning they will output higher quality video, whereas VGA is analog, and will output lower quality video.


Word cannot be opened in Yosemite I have updated to Yosemite on my MacBook Pro, and suddenly i cannot open Word.

It gives this info:

Process:               Microsoft Word [594]
Path:                  /Users/USER/Desktop/Microsoft Word.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Word
Identifier:            com.microsoft.Word
Version:               ???
Build Info:            Unknown-141106~0
Code Type:             X86 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           Microsoft Word [594]
User ID:               502

Date/Time:             2015-04-06 17:03:11.663 +0200
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.10.2 (14C1514)
Report Version:        11
Anonymous UUID:        5E349E81-3EE5-D375-6DA9-20CEBE23AAF4

Time Awake Since Boot: 1500 seconds

Crashed Thread:        0

Exception Type:        EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
dyld: launch, loading dependent libraries

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: @rpath/mbukernel.framework/Versions/14/mbukernel
  Referenced from: /Users/USER/Desktop/Microsoft Word.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Word
  Reason: image not found

Binary Images:
0x8fe5c000 - 0x8fe8fe03  dyld (353.2.1) <06B1254D-9BB9-327C-BA15-8F18FFF97586> /usr/lib/dyld

Model: MacBookPro7,1, BootROM MBP71.0039.B0E, 2 processors, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.4 GHz, 4 GB, SMC 1.62f7
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 320M, NVIDIA GeForce 320M, PCI, 256 MB
Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x802C, 0x384A53463235363634485A2D314731443120
Memory Module: BANK 1/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x802C, 0x384A53463235363634485A2D314731443120
AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x8D), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.100.24)
Bluetooth: Version 4.3.2f6 15235, 3 services, 19 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: AirPort, AirPort, en1
Serial ATA Device: TOSHIBA MK2555GSXF, 250,06 GB
Serial ATA Device: MATSHITADVD-R   UJ-898
USB Device: Built-in iSight
USB Device: Internal Memory Card Reader
USB Device: USB Receiver
USB Device: BRCM2046 Hub
USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller
USB Device: Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
USB Device: IR Receiver
Thunderbolt Bus:

I can for some reason open Powerpoint... any ideas?

From what you posted up it looks like you have the program installed on your desktop, is that correct? Is Powerpoint located in the same place as Word? This could be causing some issues as Yosemite would have reset some of the permission settings on your desktop during the upgrade.


After installing Phyton3.6 , Terminal won't see it. Why? After installing Phyton 3.6 , I can't get Terminal to find it . I am trying to learn Phyton and very new at this. Please help with details instructions. Thanks

This is what I get:

Last login: Fri Dec 22 08:24:04 on console
Carmens-MacBook-Pro:~ Clp$ phyton
-bash: phyton: command not found
Carmens-MacBook-Pro:~ Clp$ phyton3 --version
-bash: phyton3: command not found
Carmens-MacBook-Pro:~ Clp$

The software is called python not phyton. For Python 3, run python3.


Open same Finder window in different spaces i was asking if someone knows a way to:

open a desktop folder
switch space
open the same folder without being brought back to the old space

Is there a way to do it?

Yes!
Simply right click on the finder icon on the dock, go to "Options" and then select "All Desktops". And voila! You have the same Finder window open anywhere and everywhere you need it!


Change to QuickTime player in Mavericks? It appears Apple has changed the QuickTime player in Mavericks.
You can no longer extract music from a video.
Previously you could run a video and when you saved, it gave you an option for audio only. This seems to have disappeared.
Anyone have a solution?

The option to export the audio only has been moved to File → Export → Audio Only…


Is there a hotkey to Search Wikipedia for "x"? This is a question about keyboard shortcuts. I think it's quite cool that you can put a word into the spotlight and one of the options is to search Wikipedia for it, but to get that functionality takes a lot of typing or mouse movement. Is there a fast way to do it?

Example: CMD-Space opens the spotlight, I type tidal basin. About 30 files, most irrelevant appear, and at the bottom is the wikipedia search. I can use the mouse to click on it, or I can hit ctrl-n many times to get there and then return. Is there a faster way to do this?

In the default setup for Spotlight, Search Wikipedia is the second to last option, Spotlight Preferences being the last option. You could invoke Spotlight, press Fn + -> (or End if you have a full size keyboard with that key) then up and Enter.

Very little hand pivoting is necessary to accomplish this.


Prevent Bonjour Announcements Over OpenVPN We have an OpenVPN server at work, which I use frequently to access private work resources. When I do, the "Shared" listed in Finder populates with all the automatically announced servers/resources at work, but the reverse is also true. My local resources appear to anyone at work, and/or on the VPN as well.

Ideally, I would like to prevent my announcements from going over the VPN link, but would like to have the shares physically at work available to me while on the VPN. If the only method is to disable Bonjour (temporarily), I'll be fine with that, but is there a way to make it only one-sided?

And of course the master question: How do I accomplish this, at all, in the first place.

How about blocking udp traffic on port 5353?


How do I sync Safari's Reading List between multiple Macs and an iPhone? I would like for Reading List to automatically sync between an iMac, MacBook Air, and an iPhone 4S.  The Macs are both running Lion 10.7.2 and the iPhone is running iOS 5.0.  All three devices are signed into the same iCloud account and have 'Bookmarks' checked.  It appears that some syncing has occurred at some point between them, but it hasn't seemed to be working lately.

Sometimes this can be caused by temporary issues with your account or the connection to the iCloud servers. Waiting it out isn't a bad strategy if you don't want to go for official support or when restarting the affected devices is not effective at clearing up the issue.

For ongoing issues, you might reach out to iCloud support to ensure it's not an issue with your setup or account.


Re-install OS X on an iMac from 2011 My company bought an iMac for an employee.  After 6 years, that employee is no longer with us, so I am trying to re-install the OS.  I have done this with Windows and Ubuntu many times.

Here's the problem:  I restarted the computer per some YouTube video, holding Command+R.  This worked and I got into some admin help screen.

I clicked "Re-install OS X" which required me to connect to the internet (ok, fine).  Then I had to sign in with some Apple ID (ok, fine).  But then I kept getting an error message that "this account hasn't been used in the app store" or some kind of thing.  After a while of reading advice, I found out I had to install iTunes on my own computer, then update the billing info.

I repeated the install process.  That worked to get past the "this account hasn't been used in the app store" error.  Then a new error that there was some connection issue with the App Store for my Apple ID (ok, fine--that happens).  An hour later, it seemed to be able to connect.

A new error:  "This item is not available right now.  Please try again later."  After another forever of reading, I found out that I was supposed to set up iCloud for some reason, and this would fix the error.  It did.

I re-do the installation process for the 34293rd time and some random error I can't remember.  So I close the Re-Install OS X application and open the "Help?" one.  It says, "Hey--just re-format the disk and install."  So, I did that and now there's a blank disk, and the OS still won't install because that is "unavailable" for some reason.

I have all the original items: keyboard, mouse, OS Installation Disk, Application Installation Disk, some papers, and the original box.  There is an Apple Store 45 minutes away and this iMac is 27" so I really, really don't want to spend hours doing that.

For the love of God, what am I supposed to do to re-install the OS?

P.S.  I have tried booting from the install disk, the HDD (before it was formatted), and using recovery by booting with Command+R.

Update

So, I tried the suggestions in the (at the moment) only answer here.  They were actually pretty helpful and got me through some errors.  Nonetheless, there were another half dozen issues (eliding quite a few hours here):

At some point it stopped letting me boot into the firmware screen (seemingly randomly).
At that time, each time it powered on it defaulted to "Reinstalling over the Internet".  I let that run its course for a while --twice-- and the conclusion of that was the message, "The system cannot be restored over the internet" (or equivalent, I don't recall the exact wording at the moment). There was no apparent ability to log in with my Apple ID or anything, so that was that =)
I managed to boot from the original installation DVD.  After running through the installation process there, the conclusion was: "OS X cannot be installed on this device."
I called a friend who uses only Macs for many years and he gave me some tips.
I tried a few utilities to create a bootable USB drive, but I couldn't get the iMac to recognize the USB drive as bootable (though Disk Utility did recognize it exists on 3 out of 4 boot attempts).

Conclusion

In the end, I created an Ubuntu live cd (v16.04x64).  It took maybe 3-4 minutes to burn the DVD, booted and installed in about 5 minutes and looks & feels great on the nice screen and beautiful hardware.  C'est la vie.

Side note:  In the Linux paradigm, the OS doesn't follow the user or the machine.  Just install it whenever, wherever.

This isn't really an answer right now, it's a selection of possibilities which need testing &/or confirmation they've been tried & failed.

While there was still an old OS on the machine,  Cmd ⌘   R   should have run Recovery which would give you the opportunity to re-install the current OS, providing you could supply the Apple ID credentials initially used to 'purchase' the OS on that machine. Otherwise you would get the 'not available right now' issue.

This is where the paradigm differs from MS Windows. With Windows the OS belongs to the machine & you have to ring MS to move it to another, but not to reinstall on the same machine. With Apple the OS [& many apps work this way too] is owned by the person & can be freely moved or re-used, but not transferred to another owner.

Assuming the machine has at some point in the past had the necessary firmware update [that machine was first released  right on the cusp of this technology] then if either the Recovery partition fails [or has been erased] or you hit  Cmd ⌘   Opt ⌥   R  at boot, then it will go into Internet Recovery mode rather than local.
This will allow you, without any Apple ID sign in, to download & install the OS that was first shipped with the machine - in this case 10.6.6.
From there it would be a two-step process to update to Sierra, as you would first need to instal El Capitan.

A third alternative is to boot from the original CD/DVD - hold  C  at the boot chimes which will launch an older version of the setup process.

Your last alternative, as you suspected, is to take it to an Apple Store, who will do it for you.


install an older version of xcode on mac lion 10.7 I want to install xcode on vmware image mac os x lion 10.7 ..
I went to app store but it won't let me download because it's the latest version which not compatible with lion 10.7 ..
I don't have an developer account ..
So, is there any way to install an old xcode ?

You should be able to login to Downloads for Apple Developers with your Apple ID. From there, search for "Xcode 4." You should see "Xcode 4.6.3" at the top of the list. It includes the iOS 6.1 SDK and OS X 10.8 SDK. This is the last version of Xcode supported by OS X Lion (10.7.x) and was released on June 13, 2013.


How to get a document to display its contents in quick look Is there a way to associate a file type (*.md from Github) in a such a way that its contents are 'visible' with OS X's quick look?

I've associated the extension (*.md) with TextMate, but this doesn't have the desired effect.

Other text files (e.g. *.rb) work with quick look as expected.

You can install QLMarkdown plugin for Finder:

https://github.com/toland/qlmarkdown#installation

  QLMarkdown is a simple QuickLook generator for Markdown files. It
  renders a preview of the selected Markdown file using Discount


No internet even when connected to the WiFi or 4G (iPhone) I have been having an Internet-related problem on my iPhone 5S for a while now.

It started out with seemingly random Internet disconnection even when there is a perfectly good cellular (4G) or WiFi signal shown on my device. For instance, no emails or messages (like Whatsapp or iMessage) are being pushed to my device, or when I try to search something on the mobile browser, it shows that there is no Internet.

One thing I noticed is that when I do a search on a mobile browser, it seems to load for a long time (more than 10 seconds), only to return a 'No Internet' message.

The only resolve to this matter is to restart my device. I would get connected to Internet with no problems whatsoever (until I encounter the problem again).

I tried doing a reset of network settings, and also a reset of the entire settings. I even went on to do a restore as new (without restoring from a backup). This did not eradicate the problem.

I have already had several appointments at the Apple Genius Bar because of this problem. They didn't seem to know the cause of the problem, nor to resolve it; I got the device exchanged in the end. However the new device I obtained started having this problem as well.

Maybe this is another bug that iOS 8 has? I never had this problem before updating to iOS 8.

Thank you for reading and I hope that somebody has an answer to my problem.

The 1st thing to do when you are facing a network misbehaviour is to deal with one way of connection at a time.
This is what the genius at the bar should have told you first.

Practically focus on your mobile Internet conectivity first:

turn off Bluetooth;
turn off Wi-Fi.

Test your mobile Internet connectivity in different places.

Then conclude: your problem is on the mobile network side or not.

If your mobile phone network is OK

then analyse your Wi-Fi in the same way:

turn off Bluetooth;
turn off mobile phone network (Mobile Data).

Test your Wi-Fi connectivity in different places.

Then conclude: your problem is on the Wi-Fi network side or not.


Is there a limit on remembered Wi-Fi networks? Is there a limit to the number of Wi-Fi networks I can save on my iPhone?

I travel a lot for work and want to save the Wi-Fi networks from all of those locations (over 100), so it automatically connects when I'm there.

No, there is no limit to the number of WI-Fi networks your computer can remember unless your computer runs out of memory because it has to remember too many networks. ;)


Magic keyboard problems when connected to iMac When using my bluetooth Apple keyboard about 3 letters won't recognize on my iMac Desktop. When I type "K" for example I get nothing.

I know it's not the keyboard because I've connected it to my phone and all the numbers and letters work fine, it's only when I connect it to my computer that I have the problem.

When testing with a random keyboard all characters work just fine on my computer.

What else can I try to troubleshoot this?

I figured it out I had Mousekeys"Turned On" Feature activated.


Kensington lock for iPhone I'm going to a conference where there be a booth for my company to showcase our product. I'm bringing an iPhone which will be part of the product demonstration.

Now is there any product out there that can help secure the device from theft? I'm not sure where to buy those cables attached to phones at BestBuy and I'd like to be able to remove the cable once the show is over.

Any suggestions?

Thanks so much!

Targus makes a line of security locks for iPhones and iPods:

Targus Desktop Security Lock for iPod® (ASP06US)
Targus Mobile Security Lock for iPod® (ASP07US)


How to delete Command Line Tools while keeping Xcode? I recently purchased a new Mac and I am currently in the process of setting it up as a development machine.

Before installing Xcode I went ahead and installed:

Sublime Text
Sublime Merge

While setting up Sublime Merge I was prompted to install the Xcode Command Line Tools (Macintosh HD -> Library -> Developer -> Command Line Tools).

I went ahead and did that, and was able to successfully set up my repos on Sublime Merge.

I then installed Xcode which comes bundled with the Command Line Tools in its own package (Applications -> Xcode -> Contents -> Developer).

Right after installing Xcode I saw that in Software Update I had an update to the Command Line Tools and so I performed that.

I'm striving for a clean set up and was wondering whether or not I now have redundant copies of the Command Line Tools, if so, how do I (or do I even need to) get rid of the old tools safely?

Xcode.app provides a set of command line tools. Standalone 'Xcode Command Line Tools' provides another set. You can switch between them (see xcode-select --help).

git, gcc and many commands in /usr/bin/ is actually a jumper to the real executable of selected CLT.

Standalone CLT is almost unnecessary if you have Xcode.app installed. You can simply trash /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools to remove it.

In my case it installed these pkg (pkgutil --pkgs before and after installation)

com.apple.pkg.DevSDK_macOS1013_Public
com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables
com.apple.pkg.DevSDK
com.apple.pkg.CLTools_SDK_macOSSDK
com.apple.pkg.macOS_SDK_headers_for_macOS_10.14
com.apple.pkg.DevSDK_OSX109
com.apple.pkg.CLTools_SDK_macOS1013
com.apple.pkg.CLTools_SDK_macOS1014
com.apple.pkg.DevSDK_OSX1012
com.apple.pkg.DevSDK_OSX1011
com.apple.pkg.DevSDK_OSX1010

You can use pkgutil --files <pkg_name> to see installed files. They are either in /tmp or /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools.

However,

brew sometimes requires you to install standalone CLT even you have Xcode.app installed, namely python. They say some bottles (pre-built) are linked against the standalone CLT.
brew also requires standalone CLT when I want to build something on non-current system (Mojave after Catalina released).

Of course, you can take the risk and edit the brew formula or brew itself to avoid that.

brew edit python

  # setuptools remembers the build flags python is built with and uses them to
  # build packages later. Xcode-only systems need different flags.
  pour_bottle? do
    reason <<~EOS
      The bottle needs the Apple Command Line Tools to be installed.
        You can install them, if desired, with:
          xcode-select --install
    EOS
    satisfy { MacOS::CLT.installed? } # comment this out
  end

/usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/os/mac/xcode.rb:

      def needs_clt_installed?
        return false # <- add this
        return false if latest_sdk_version?

        without_clt?
      end


Is it possible to X forward from a mac? We have some Mac Pro workstations, and a number of people with Linux and windows laptops would like to be able to run GUI programs from those workstations remotely, ideally with X11 forwarding.

I know you can use Xquartz to get windows from a remote Linux machine, but is it possible to do it the other way around? That is, is it possible to use X forwarding to get windows from a remote Macintosh machine? If so, how?

When I tried that a while back the app would open on the Mac instead of the Linux machine. Then I remember reading a while back:

  X forwarding only works for X Windows System-based applications. To do remote work on an OS X system, it’s better to use Apple Remote Desktop. With Remote Desktop, you log into the remote GUI and do all your work remotely rather than pulling the app and visualizing it on your own desktop with your X server.

Source: Apple OS X: Install X Window System XQuartz For SSH X11 Forwarding On a Mavericks or Yosemite


chmod using 100% CPU resources Since upgrading to High Sierra (now at 10.13.6) on my Mac Pro 2012, I experience regular episodes where the process chmod eats up ~100% on all 12 cores.
It happens about 15 seconds after logging in and lasts for about a minute. It then happens again later while I'm working. Of course, the computer is quite unresponsive while it lasts.
In Activity Monitor I can see 12 instances of chmod using up each core.

I haven't been able to find anything with Google regarding this issue.

Can anyone help - any ideas?

System:
Mac Pro 5,1
48 GB RAM
2 x 3,06 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon
MacOS 10.13.6

EDIT: Having repeated boot/login while looking in Activity Monitor each time the number of chmod processes vary from 6 to 12, and other processes are (of course) also using CPU. I may have overestimated chmod usage by about 30%, the rest of CPU resources being used by the remaining processes - sorry about that. The problem remains, though.

EDIT: This is the list of entries from launchctl list that do not begin with com.apple:

620 0   com.adobe.PDApp.AAMUpdatesNotifier.5964.3198F160-6F8E-4D56-84B0-E905086713D0
628 0   com.company.BackgroundScheduler.9044
-   0   com.rogueamoeba.loopbackd
593 0   de.rme-audio.RMEfirefaceUSBAgent
616 0   com.leapmotion.Leap-Motion.5968
-   0   label.9ZTHPRB4MV.com.soundradix.TTLWrapperAgent
668 0   com.avid.ApplicationManagerHelper.5960
603 0   com.acapelagroup.InfovoxiVoxUpdater
604 0   com.avid.applicationmanager
-   0   com.openssh.ssh-agent
-   0   label.9ZTHPRB4MV.com.soundradix.TTLWrapperAgent.SL
622 0   com.rogueamoeba.ScheduleHelper.9032
-   78  com.paragon-software.ExtFS.fsnotifyagent
595 0   de.rme-audio.firefaceAgent
598 0   com.code42.menubar
623 0   com.native-instruments.NIHostIntegrationAgent.5976
629 0   com.abyssoft.teleport.5972
-   0   com.adobe.AAM.Scheduler-1.0
-   0   com.oracle.java.Java-Updater
-   0   com.iconfactory.iPulse.5996
-   0   com.paragon.updater
601 0   com.spotify.webhelper
615 0   jp.plentycom.boa.SteerMouse.9028
583 0   com.prosofteng.DGMonitor
-   0   com.Arturia.ArturiaSoftwareCenterAgent
-   0   com.google.keystone.user.agent
-   0   com.leapmotion.Leap-Motion

I found the solution: Using lsof in Terminal located in the utility folder, I could see that chmod was accessing an Avid cache in ~/Library/Caches which I simply deleted. Now chmod doesn't run anymore.


How do I link/call an actual shell script saved within an Applescript app? What's the correct syntax in the Applescript below to make this app run by double clicking on it rather than how it runs now by just running the Applescript in the AS script editor?

The Shell script is located at:

ToggleHidden.app/Contents/Resources/Scripts/toggle.sh

And it is set to execute by all.   (I did chmod a+x toggle.sh)

Applescript

set bottomRoot to (path to me) as alias

 tell application "System Events"
 set myPath to (POSIX path of container of bottomRoot)

end tell

set scriptPath to quoted form of (myPath & "/toggle.sh")

do shell script scriptPath

Shell script

#!/bin/sh

STATUS=`defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles

if [ $STATUS == TRUE ];

then

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE

else

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

fi

killall Finder

sleep .5

open .

Try:

set myPath to POSIX path of ((path to me as text) & "Contents:Resources:Scripts:toggle.sh")