Add commandline app shortcut How do I run the app: ~/ngrok by typing ngrok?

I want to add a shortcut to the ~/ngrok location so that I don't need to know the place where it is when I run the app.

Commands in *nix terminals are stored in various directories throughout the filesystem. The PATH variable is a series of colon (:) sperated directories that are searched in order to find a desire command. When a command is called, the PATH variable is read, and all the paths is contains are checked for the command in question.
You have 2 ways to make your program run without specifying location: either add it to a directory that's already to your PATH variable, or add its containing folder to the PATH variable.
You can read your current PATH variable by running:
echo $PATH
And you can edit your PATH variable by following a guide such as this one
P.S. I REALLY strongly discourage keeping files directly within ~/


Tilde character is default to superscript version. How to restore default behaviour? I've inherited a previously used and configured MacBook Pro with Mojave (10.14.1) installed on it. I'm trying to navigate the system using the terminal but the tilde character ('~') doesn't work! Instead, what I believe to be a superscript ('˜') version of the tilde appears when I hit shift + '`'. What could be causing this, and how can I get back the default, expected behaviour ?

After going through all the keyboard settings, it turns out that there is a difference between 'US' and 'US International PC'. The bizarre tilde behaviour was part of the 'US International PC' keyboard configuration.


possible malware called FISE in Accessibility (Privacy & Security) I checked my Mac's security and privacy and noticed this entry FISE. When I click Show in Finder nothing happens. I've googled around and found no mention of it at all outside of spammy sites.

Before I unchecked this software it had "control my computer" access. I recently upgraded to Mojave, so it's possible this is an old program (this is on a 2012 Mac) which I had previously granted accessibility access to. However I don't recall doing so.

I did find one reputable mention of FISE, in a technical paper from 2010. I don't know if that is it. Given what the "control my computer" permission enables I'm pretty concerned that its a form of mal/spyware.

Has anyone else has ever seen this program FISE on their mac?

EDIT - including screenshot of the FISE

^ as mentioned when I click Show in Finder nothing happens

I found the same thing on my Mac and it seems it's and Android File Transfer app bundled with Wacom driver software for some reason https://www.reddit.com/r/wacom/comments/7m7pib/wacom_without_bloatware/


Creating a Lion USB Drive from the Lion installer? I have bought Lion on the AppStore and burned an installation DVD from the DMG file (and subsequently lost the DMG file).

Since DVDs are a bit clumsy and not available on all systems, I want to buy a 4 GB USB Stick and turn it into a Fresh Lion Installation DVD.

I found some questions about how to create a Recovery USB Drive, but I don't want recovery, I want a fresh install, like the Lion USB Drive on the Apple Store.

Is there a way to do that from the 10.6 DVD and the Lion download?

Simply re-download Lion from the Mac App Store and then use Disk Utility to restore the DMG file to a USB stick.


Visual MySQL compare tool for Mac Is there any Mac app that can visually compare data like SQLyog's Visual Data Compare?

One where you can literally select the rows to copy over and which not?

Any recommendations appreciated. :)

Toad for Mac has data and schema compare features. You can download for free in the link provided.

UPDATE: In the latest version (1.2.1), does not have data and schema compare features.


Syncing non-Amazon purchased eBooks between Kindle, iPad, and iPhone I have an Amazon Kindle Keyboard, an iPhone, and an iPad.

I have purchased a load of eBooks from the publisher, O'Reilly, and have downloaded them on to the Kindle via USB.

I note these do not show up in my Kindle account on the Amazon website, and nor do they show up on my iPhone's or iPad's Kindle apps.

Is it possible to put non-Amazon eBook purchases into my Kindle account so they show up on all my devices?

You can do this depending on the file type. Install Amazon's Send to Kindle for Mac. It's a free app that lets you send your personal documents to your Kindle devices and Kindle iOS reading apps from your Mac.

You can send using drag and drop, or from the Finder, or from other Mac apps via the "Send to Kindle" option in the Print menu. You can also choose which devices and apps you want to send to.

The documents you send must be one of these file types:

Microsoft Word (.DOC, .DOCX)
PDF (.PDF)
TXT (.TXT)
RTF (.RTF)
JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG)
GIF (.GIF)
PNG (.PNG)
BMP (.BMP)
MOBI (.MOBI - used for eBooks)

If your file doesn't meet these requirements, you can always use a tool like Calibre to convert it to a compatible type.

When uploading .MOBI eBooks these need to be DRM free.

There's more info on using the app on Amazon's site.


How do I move files to external HD via Terminal? I am trying to move a couple of folders from my Desktop to an external Hard Drive as Finder is not working.

When I type command mount, I get the HD listed, but when I try to use command ls or cp I get No such file or directory.

Any idea why? And what could be the remedy?

The full command I'm trying to use is cp ~/Desktop/*.jpg ~/Volumes/1 where 1 is the name of the external HD.

I'm on a Mac Pro running macOS Sierra.

Based on your question it appears the problem you're having is related to the use of ~ in the external drive file path in the terminal commands you're trying to use.

Basically, the tilde symbol (~) in macOS command line usage refers to your home directory, e.g /Users/Veronique.

So, if you're trying to run a command such as: cp ~/Desktop/*.jpg ~/Volumes/1 this won't work because it's looking in the wrong place for the drive named 1. Instead, the command you need to use would be:

cp ~/Desktop/*.jpg /Volumes/1

Remember also that if your external drive name has a space in it, then you need to factor this into your command. For example, let's say you're trying to copy a file called ATM.jpg from your user Desktop folder to an external drive called Backup Drive, then your command would be:

cp ~/Desktop/ATM.jpg /Volumes/Backup\ Drive

Note the use of the backslash and space to denote the space in the external drive name.


How do I give accessibility permission to my AppleScript and System Events in Mavericks? I've got this old AppleScript that uses a mouseclick function:

activate application "Safari"
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Safari"
        click at {424, 699}
    end tell
end tell

It no longer works, probably due to a change in how the accessibility permissions works in Mavericks. You need to give permissions on an app by app basis. Unfortunately, SystemEvents.app is not in the list of apps to give permissions. How can I make it appear? Is there another solution that does not depend on downloading utilities from third-parties?

This is the error message I get:

error "System Events got an error: Can’t make {424, 699} into type list." number -1700 from {424, 699} to list

Your problem is independent of the accessibility permission.

Replace your click line with something like click window 1 and it will ask you to allow or deny access to the accessibility features.

There is a problem with click at and I don't know what it is.

Edit : My conclusion after some tests : click at is broken.
The release note of AppleScript updated with the release of Mavericks does not state some kind of removal of this feature. Some that might be a bug.

I submitted a bug report to Apple.

Edit : The issue has been fixed on Yosemite, click at works well again !


What will happen with my applications and data if I upgrade to El Capitan GM? I have lots of apps and data on my Mac so I just want to know if I install El Capitan, do I need to backup all data and apps or will my Mac retain the data and apps after updating it from app store?

Copying all my data to external hard drive requires a lot of time so it will save my time.

I'd always go for safety over a bit of time-saving, every single time.

Though 99 times out of 100 you'll have no issues upgrading the OS, there's always that one time something unexpected happens.

There's also the chance you don't like it, don't think it does something you've been used to being a certain way, or isn't compatible with an important app you need.

In any of those cases, not having a backup could spell disaster, or at least major discomfort.

Personally, I always have a current Time Machine backup before updating, & I remove that Time Machine drive & replace it with another just before I actually hit the update button; I also clone the boot drive first, so I can quickly revert.

You might think that is overkill, but I've never lost any data yet.
Last time I did it was just last week - when I updated to the El Capitan GM & didn't like it at all ;-)


How to tell a macmini to stop booting to Windows from a macbook pro? I need to be able to control a mac mini without a screen and I think using screensharing would be enough. I've enabled screensharing, setup a manual IP address and I have an ethernet cable.

The problem is I don't have display to use on the mac mini and I currently borrowed a keyboard and a firewire cable to setup screensharing:

booted mac mini in target mode (wish there was a way to do it without the keyboard)
booted the macbook holding the alt key and choosing the firewire drive

The problem is the mac mini has a bootcamp partition setup to which it boots by default. I googled a bit and tried the System Preferences > Startup Disk option then the /etc/fstab route but no joy: the mac mini still boots to Windows.

How can I get the macmini to simply boot to it's osx all the time (given that I have to change the settings on a macbook with a firewire cable) ?

The system stores the boot choice in NVRAM, so you might reset it by powering off and then holding command-option-p-r while you hear the start chimes repeat 2 or 3 times.  At that point, it should choose the first bootable system on the internal drive. IF that doesn't work, you could post the filesystem layout - but a corrupt NVRAM settings file would explain why your choice of Startup Disk wasn't respected.


SIP preventing deletion of /opt/local Ran into the same problem tonight as this question from SO that wasn't fully answered.

I'm trying to uninstall an old installation of MacPorts, and run into SIP:

mybox:~ me$ sudo rm -rf /opt/local
rm: /opt/local/var/macports/home/Library/Preferences: Operation not permitted
rm: /opt/local/var/macports/home/Library: Operation not permitted
rm: /opt/local/var/macports/home: Operation not permitted
rm: /opt/local/var/macports: Directory not empty
rm: /opt/local/var: Directory not empty
rm: /opt/local: Directory not empty

According to the original question, the answer seems to involve SIP… but why has SIP decided to protect this (empty) directory?

EDIT: Here's the results of ls -a in the directory:

./ ../

And here's the results of ls -leOd /opt/local/var/macports/home/Library/Preferences:

drwxrwxrwx  2 root  wheel  - 64 Nov  8 19:45 /opt/local/var/macports/home/Library/Preferences/

.

EDIT 2018-11-12:

Here's the results of ls -laeO@ /opt/local/var/macports/home

drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  - 96 Nov  8 19:42 ./
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root  wheel  - 96 Nov  8 19:45 ../
    com.apple.FinderInfo    32
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  - 96 Nov  8 19:42 Library/

EDIT 2018-11-13:

Here's the results of xattr -l /opt/local/var/macports

com.apple.FinderInfo:
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |........@.......|
00000010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000020

The directory is SIP-protected because it is the home directory for a macports user, presumably created as part of the MacPorts installation process.

The best solution is to first remove that user account, following the instructions in this accepted answer to another AppleSE question. You may also wish to remove the corresponding macports group that also exists.

Specifically, the following commands will remove the user and group:

sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -delete "/Users/macports"
sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -delete "/Groups/macports"

The MacPorts website uninstall page mentions deleting the user and group but does not note that it is necessary due to SIP-protection to do this before deleting the folders. I think they also have an error in the syntax of their dscl command.

Once you have done that, you should be able to sudo rm -rf /opt/local successfully.

Significant credit for this answer is due to @GordonDavisson for providing 90% of the solution in comments, some months ago.


Sidecar not working between MBP 15' 2019 and iPad Pro 9.7' I just updated both my ipad to IpadOS and my MBP to Catalina and I'm trying to setup sidecar.

I made sure that:

both are on the same wifi network
I'm logged in with the same iCloud account on both
Bluetooth is on

I don't have the AirPlay icon in the menu bar nor can I see the iPad in System Preferences > Sidecar.

What else can I try to make it work?

Did you try to plug the iPad on the MBP ?
It should work with Bluetooth connection, but just to try...
Wifi network does not have an influence on Sidecar.


I can't update my iPhone 4 v7.1.2 (11d257) I tried updating apps and it directed to enter password for a different Apple ID which is not mine. Please what should I do.

Go to Settings -> iTunes Store & App Store, and click on the apple account (first thing on the list)

Then click Sign out and reboot

Go back to Settings -> iTunes Store & App Store and enter login + password for your account


How are default search criteria in Finder set Unless I change it every time, the search criteria in finder are set like this by default:

Is there a way to change it? Most of the things I usually search for are not like the ones filtered in.

I have seen this question. The difference here is I want to eliminate the search criteria completely.

As long as SIP is disabled in your machine, you should be able to edit /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/default_smart.plist to change the default search criteria.

Try this:

Make your desired default search in Finder and then save it like you would normally save your search.
Go to the saved searches folder (unless you saved it somewhere else) ~/Library/Saved Searches/

In newer OS versions the Library folder inside the user folder should be hidden, so just use the Go to Folder method in the top menu in Finder Go > Go to folder... and paste the path there.

Open your .savedSearch file with TextEdit.app
Copy & Paste all the contents of that file to that default_smart.plist file: /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/default_smart.plist

You can locate this file with the Go to folder... method as well.
You may want to make sure you got a copy of that original default_smart.plist beforehand...

Then test out the search.


How are videos in 23.97 frames per second shown How does the Mac deal with video content played back at a rate that does not neatly fit into 60 fps screen refresh?

I have never noticed 23.97 content looking wrong to my eyes, so is this a solved issue?

24fps videos on a 30fps display (closer to 23.976fps on 29.97fps) divides out into 4/5. Conversion of film frame rate to display/TV frame rate is known as Telecine. NTSC video uses 2:3 Pulldown as the method for displaying 24fps on a 30fps device. 2 of the 5 frames in each pulldown cycle are interlaced.

You can do the same math with 23.976fps/24fps on a 59.94fps/60fps display: 23.976/59.94 = 2/5. While I don't know the exact pulldown method for this frame rate, the concept is essentially the same.

While each individual frame is available as a still, your mac handles the pulldown and frame interlacing on the fly.

(This is why 120fps and 144fps displays are great - 24fps divides into 120fps and 144fps evenly, so the video shows each video frame for 5 and 6 display frames, respectively. No interlacing artifacts.)


How to trace who sent email from yahoo account; family member hacked email account A user's iPad shows a message sent but the user did reply or respond to the email received, and did not send a reply back to sender.

The user believes that someone accessed their Yahoo mail account, sent a reply, and signed sent message from the user's iPad.

Can this be traced to find out who sent and accessed the user's Yahoo account? The user believes it was another family member, but would like to have visual proof.

What steps can I take?

There are no steps you can take because you don't have access to the server logs at Yahoo!  If this is a legal matter, you might be able to obtain a search warrant for the mail server logs if law enforcement is involved.  This would only prove where the connection was established from, which may or may not be useful.

In the meantime, have the owner of the Yahoo! account change their password to something stronger and ensure they don't leave their iPad or any other device logged in where somebody else can access it.


Unable to merge partitions or reinstall OSX I have 1 SSD disc in MacBook Pro mid 2009 with 2 partitions and I would like to make a clean installation.

So.. using Disc Utility I have erased both partitions (OS X Extended - Journaled). So far so good. Now I wanted to merge both partitions and when I do that I get "Operation failed.. Couldn't unmount disk". When I click done I see both partitions are unmounted.

When I try to merge partitions again I get instant error "The volume Macintosh HDD 1 is not journaled. To enable journaling click Enable journaling in the File menu". I did that but no luck. Still the same error.

So I gave up merging partitions and tried to install OS X. But no luck.. there is no partition to select during the installation process. Only the recovery partition is visible.

I tried to unmount discs from terminal using diskutil but none of partitions can be unmounted.

Please help me! Thank you.

You've probably booted the recovery system from the recovery partition of the partition you're trying to merge/delete, so the recovery partition is getting in the way of repartitioning.

How I'd handle this situation depends on whether you've got another Mac and an appropriate macOS installer app handy.

Assuming this is your only Mac, as a safety net, I'd install macOS to an external drive of some kind. A spare USB HDD, or a large enough flash drive (USB stick, SD card, etc.) will do the trick - 32GB is plenty, 16GB is in theory enough too but I'm not sure the installer will allow it. Then I'd boot from that external OS instance and download the macOS installer app from the App Store, or check that the external OS has a working recovery environment. Wipe the internal drive - if Disk Utility won't cooperate, use the command line equivalent: diskutil erase (after checking the disk number, e.g. disk0, using diskutil list).

The macOS installer should now make the freshly erased internal SSD available as an install target.

If you've got another Mac and an appropriate cable handy, the easiest solution is probably creating a macOS installer flash drive using the other Mac and then booting that installer on your MBP. You can then erase the disk using either Disk Utility or diskutil from the installer environment's Terminal, and select the freshly erased disk in the installer.


Is there a way to create a small-caps character style in Pages 6? Cross-post from discussions.apple.com.

As the title says: I have a paragraph style for the main body of my document. Within a paragraph, there are some words that need to be in small caps. From my playing around, it seems as if "small caps" can be an attribute of a paragraph style but not a character style—and of course, if I set some words to a different paragraph style the entire paragraph changes, which is not what I want.

I want this to be in a character style so I can quickly enter into it with a function-key shortcut. I am aware that I can set small-caps on and off by clicking into a menu.

Does anyone have a suggestion as to what I'm doing wrong or what I can do to make this character style possible?

To create a new style, you need to have some text with ONLY that style selected: if in the style inspector the "Characters Styles" dropdown menu shows "multiple styles" or "none" or the name of an existing style WITHOUT a trailing '*', the "new style" button will be grayed out.


Numbers floating sheets In Numbers, how can I get the spreadsheet to remain stationary on the page? I have tried to double tap thinking that would display and anchor the sheet but it doesn't work.

In your question, you mention:

  double tap

So is it safe to say you are referring to Numbers on iOS?  If so, to lock a table or element do the following:

Tap the Format icon (Paint brush)
Tap the Arrange tab.
There you will see a Lock.  This will lock the element from moving and prevent editing.

To edit again or move, unlock in the same manner.

Hope this helps!


How can I remove the Finder icon from my Dock? I've started using Forklift as a Finder replacement, so I don't need Finder in my Dock. In fact, I would much rather have Forklift be the farthest left icon so I don't accidentally click on Finder.

The usual method of dragging the app out of the Dock doesn't work, and neither does command-dragging. The contextual menu doesn't allow you to remove the icon.

Is there some way to, on Lion, remove the Finder from the Dock?
Perhaps there's a database or plist file I can change?

There is no easy way to do this, but there is a little hack :)

Navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/
Backup DockMenus.plist
Open DockMenus.plist in your favorite text editor with root access
Find section finder-running and add new sub-section

<dict>
    <key>command</key>
    <integer>1004</integer>
    <key>name</key>
    <string>REMOVE_FROM_DOCK</string>
</dict>

or just Download my version of DockMenus.plist
In plist editor file should look like this:

Open Terminal and run killall Dock.
Right click on Finder icon in Dock - Bingo!

p.s After Dock restart (manual relaunch or mac reboot) you need manually remove Finder icon from Dock


When you remove a device from find my iPhone, does it's automatically restore? I dropped my iPhone and the screen is completely unusable. I got a deductable for a new one and the instructions said to turn off find my iPhone for my original device, so I did from my computer. However, the next instructions were to restore it to factory settings, but since I turned off find my iPhone I can't restore it now. Help?

You can still restore an iOS device even if it has a broken screen. Connect it to iTunes over USB and click Restore iPhone. Because you have disabled Find my iPhone, iTunes will let you restore the device.


How can I change default settings for HP Laserjet Pro 100 Color MFP 175? I've already created a new Preset configuration, but I cannot set it as the new default settings.

Anyone has any clues on achieving this?

What happens if you set the default settings from the browser going to the address http://localhost:631?

For example, I go to http://localhost:631/printers/Canon_MX310_series and from there clicking on administration I can choose: Set Default Options. Those set there usually get respected.


Make an iPhone appear as different model? Is it possible to have a jailbroken iPhone trick an app into thinking you have a different device than the one you're on (e.g., a 3G passing as a 3GS)?

Palm did this with the Pre: the device, like all devices, told iTunes it was an iPod and allowed only the syncing of non-DRM content over the USB connection. As to how the iPhone sorts out what it is to tell iTunes could either be hard-coded or come from a plist file somewhere in the OS.

Either way, this forum is really not the place the find the answer to that question(nor do I think SO is either). You probably should head over to one of the myriad iPhone jailbreak forum. Searching "iPhone jailbreak forum" in Google brings up a whole host of them.


Keyboard shortcut for switching to an open full-screen preview window If I have a document open in full-screen mode in Preview, and other documents open in windowed mode, I can switch FROM the full-screen window to other applications with CMD+TAB, and I can cycle the other windows with CMD+` , but how can I, with the keyboard, switch back to the fullscreen window?

If the option to switch to a space with open windows for an application is checked in the Mission Control preferences and the application has no other windows, you can just select it from the application switcher or Spotlight.

Control-left, control-right, and control-numbers should change spaces by default; the shortcuts can be changed in the keyboard preferences.

Related questions:

Is there a keyboard shortcut to jump directly to a particular full screen app in Lion?
Switch between full-screen windows of the same application in Lion
shortcuts - Assign a key to switch to fullscreen instance of MacVim
Shortcut To Full Screen App In Lion


Time Machine: Include files and folders from another drive Is there a way to include folders and files to a Time Machine backup, say, because they are on another drive?

I am using Yosemite version 10.10.2.

If you set up Time Machine the first time, it automatically excludes any external drives including the Time Machine drive itself.

If you want to have certain drives included, just remove them from the exclusion list inside System Preferences > Time Machine > Options and they are backed up the next time Time Machine runs.

For more information, check out Apple's official support document: Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac


I am unable to download an audio book that I bought from iTunes to my iPhone 5 I am unable to download an audio book that I bought from iTunes to my iPhone 5. It appears on my phone only in the shared folder when I'm connected to iTunes. When I exit iTunes the book disappears.

I think audiobooks get somehow special treatment, so that can not be re-downloaded them (even if accidentally deleted).
You have to copy it from iTunes over to your iPhone.


2 instances of Xcode installed? I originally installed Xcode via Apple's developer website (not through the App Store). Later on, I installed Xcode via the App Store.

Now in Launchpad, I have two icons for each of these apps: Xcode, Instruments, Dashcode, and Quartz Composer. None of the icons have an "X" button to remove them from Launchpad.

Questions:

Does this mean that I have 2 versions of Xcode installed?
If not, how can I verify that I only have one version installed?
How can I know which file each Launchpad icon is referencing?
If it's purely a cosmetic thing, how would I get rid of the second set of icons? (And does it matter which set I get rid of?)

Update:

I see that the /Developer folder contains an Applications folder, but it also contains SDKs, Documentation, Platforms, etc.

My /Applications folder contains the folder Developer. Inside of /Applications/Developer, there are 4 aliases which link to the /Developer folder. For example, the Xcode alias (/Applications/Developer/Xcode) links to /Developer/Applications/Xcode.app.

If you have the latest Xcode (4.3.2 at time of writing) it should be in /Applications/Xcode. You may have an older Xcode in /Developer. /Developer is now no longer used by Xcode. You should remove it using the provided script if you don't need the old version any more. Execute

sudo /Xcode4/Library/uninstall-devtools --mode=all

and authenticate. When that script completes you can remove the /Developer folder entirely but you should allow Xcode's script to take care of its somewhat "fragile" installation first.

New Xcode lives in /Applications and is much more like a conventional Mac OS X app these days. Lots more information about putting it in the dock, finding other developer apps, command line tools etc. in this other answer of mine.


Account for upgrade is different to account in phone settings My father-in-law had forgot his Apple ID on his iPhone. He had his friend enter his details to download some apps on to his phone. He's since reset his password and set his phone back to his own account (both the iTunes and iCloud are using his email address). The issue is, when he goes to upgrade some apps it's asking for the password for his friend's email account? How can we resolve this?

NRaf,

Chances are the friend downloaded those apps under his/her Apple ID. Thats why it's prompting that Apple ID username/password.

Simply delete those apps and reinstall them under your Dads account and everything will be fine.

If these are Apps that your friend has paid for but your dad has not and thats why the friend downloaded them to his device so your dad wouldn't have to pay for them, then thats a different issue. look into family sharing and see whats going on there from both parties.


Is 4GB of RAM enough for a new Retina MBP? Today I have a new rMBP (bottom of the range latest MBP with 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD) coming and I've just found out that annoyingly they have an upgraded model out just £100 more than I paid, with 8GB of RAM and a 200MHz upgrade to the processor (which the latter I'm not bothered about). This is an upgrade to my 2012 Macbook Air 128GB, also 4GB, which I used for Xcode, Terminal, VIM, browsing the internet (same for the rMBA). I always look at my RAM to find that it's usually nearly full, but I don't have any issues what so ever (no slow downs, no crashes, no panics), and it never changes. I don't multi-task (I don't need to). The prime reason for buying a rMBA was for the Retina screen -- I could have got a MBA for the same price.

I would like to use this for 2-4 years.

My question is whether to get the RAM upgrade or not.

No it is not enough to have 4GB, since it is minimum you can have and you will always run at max of it.

Mavericks will do the best to manage the space, but there is a limit what it can do.

Big RAM users (aside of the OS) are the web browsers.

It is all dependent what is your activity, apps you use. As said Mavericks will do great job in working your RAM to keep it to a workable levels, but adding RAM can only help.

Here is an example from my MBA with 4GB.

And the top 10 totaling 1.5GB  (as you can see I do not run RAM heavy apps but do get over 4GB.

Yes, do the RAM upgrade, it is worth the money.


How to remove unremovable network drive login item? When I reboot my MacBook Pro (11.3 now, but it's been happening for years) the reboot pauses for about a minute, after which it tells me there was a problem connecting to a certain defunct network drive. It doesn't exist and never will.

The usual advice is to locate the offending entry in Login Items and remove it. I wish I could. Below you'll see a screenshot of my Login Items, with what I presume to be the offender. It cannot be selected (the checkbox is disabled) so it cannot be removed.
You can also see I'm an Admin and the padlock is unlocked. Holding shift during login didn't help at all. How can I get rid of this?

I had an entire answer prepped, then realised this has changed in recent macOSes
Since High Sierra, the entire structure has been moved into what I can only call an unfathomable file.
~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.backgroundtaskmanagementagent/backgrounditems.btm
I cannot make head or tail of it, however, if you throw it away it will clean your entire Login Items List.
I discovered this at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8086931?answerId=32423169022#32423169022
There's a utility called Knock Knock which is very good for looking at these, but it doesn't contain any mechanism for changing them other than finding the reference in Finder. It also doesn't seem to find volumes to be mounted.
There's another app, Lingon which can show the list, including volumes, but again doesn't seem to want to modify it in any way [though that could be my unfamiliarity with the app]
So, I'd go for discarding the backgrounditems.btm file [keep a copy just in case], then recreating your Login Items manually.

This is how it used to work before High Sierra, just for historical reference.
The Login  Items list is store in a file in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist This es simply a text file, so you can open it in TextEdit, or for a nicer presentation, perhaps easier to follow, something like BBEdit - free version is fine.
Just to be safe, Opt/drag a copy to the desktop, in case anything goes wrong.
Each item in there is contained between opening & closing delineators, with each separate login item between <dict> and </dict> tags, like html or many other text/xml file types.
So, in theory, you should be able to find the item in the file & delete it entirely, from the opening to the closing tag.
Like this for an example item. Note exactly where the selection is to & from, so once deleted the file doesn't break the tags at all…

Once deleted, save the file & reboot.


How do people use Tags in Finder? I've searched online; I have found lots of information around HOW to assign/remove tags, but very little around how people USE them. (that in itself might be the sign that not many people actually use them? :)

The best I could find is that some people use them for categorising work; e.g. "Final", "Research", "Draft", etc.

However, although this is a very legitimate way of using them, I feel that still doesn't use tags to their full extent - namely, the ability to have more than one tags attached to the same file. In the example above, a file is either 'draft' or 'final'. You can achieve the same result using nested folders, although that is different visually.

How do you use them? Or alternatively, can you suggest a link/site/blog that explains how they use them?

I can't say that I love the tagging system, so I have very limited use of them: but I've used tags in two ways:

1. For final version documents
Since I often have several versions of the same file on storage, I have one tag named "final". So it facilitates spotlight searches like "quote client tag:final". This is the only use I've been able to stick to constantly, since I often find myself searching for the final version of a document.

2. For document types
Since I use my folder hierarchy to separate different projects, I use tags for document content types. For instance, named tags "Proposal", "Specs", "Guide", etc. This offered the small benefit of allowing shorter file names (intended to avoid names like Proposal_CustomerName_ProjectName.ext. I wasn't able to stick to this tagging style, since longer names seemed still seemed efficient, even if they're not pretty.

I rarely browse files in finder, mostly I search through spotlight. So the only real benefit I see in tags is being able to type "tag:abcdf" in spotlight. With this approach, since everyone organizes in a different way, I guess the key question is:

Is there a criteria that you often find yourself wishing you could use in searches, and which doesn't really fit in your file naming styles or folder hierarchy?


Different results of running the same AppleScript The script is:

tell application "DEVONthink Pro"
    activate
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "DEVONthink Pro Office"
        tell menu bar 1
            tell menu bar item "Data"
                tell menu "Data"
                    tell menu item "Open With"
                        tell menu "Open With"
                            click menu item "Preview (default)"
                        end tell
                    end tell
                end tell
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

If run direct from the AppleScript Editor, it would work as expected, i.e. open the selected file with Preview. But if run from DEVONthink itself, it would do nothing except pause the application for some seconds.

Why is this happening? How to get it work as expected?

The problem may be quite simply that your compiled applescript is not privileged to access DEVONthink-Pro's menus - but ScriptEditor is ...

Have a look into:   System-Preferences-app / Security & Privacy / Privacy
... and select "Accessibility" in the list on your left.

Now you can add your compiled app to the "privileged list" on the right side.


Prevent Adium logout when locking screen on OSX 10.8.2 Since upgrading to OSX 10.8.2 from 10.6.x I find that when I lock the screen Adium logs out. Upon unlocking screen Adium logs back in.

It used to just set to away when screen locked and I have pushover scripts that rely on this.

How can I get it to behave the way it did before I upgraded?

That behavior is determined by the settings in the Status pane of Adium preferences.  Specifically, it's determined by the "When Screen Saver is activated, set:" preference.  Check to make sure that's not set to "Offline".


Living / Linked Copy of File without Alias Is it possible to have a linked copy of a file that updates whenever the original is saved?

This is mainly for use with Google Drive and SVN, where I need a file to exist in two locations, but not be aliases.

Use a hard link with ln in Terminal. A hard link points to the file inode rather than the file location as with a symlink.

$ touch foo.txt
$ echo "this is foo" > foo.txt
$ ln foo.txt hardlink
$ cat hardlink
this is foo
$ mkdir bar
$ mv foo.txt bar
$ cat hardlink
this is foo

More on symbolic links vs hard links: https://askubuntu.com/q/108771/562767


Is it safe to eject my timemachine backup whilst its decrypting? I encrypted my Time Machine backup (A Western Digital 2tb external drive) then realised that Airport wont mount the backup over wifi, so am currently decrypting the drive (via Disk Utility).

I found the command:

diskutil cs list

which shows me the progress of the operation (it took a while to register at the under the the menu-bar icon).

Here's a snippet from the output:

    Sequence:               13
    Encryption Status:      Unlocked
    Encryption Type:        None
    Encryption Context:     Present
    Conversion Status:      Converting
    Has Encrypted Extents:  Yes
    Conversion Direction:   backward

Encrypting the backup took about 24 hours, and the time machine icon currently shows 'Decryptig Backup Disk (28%)'.

My question is: can I eject the drive without losing the backup?  Will the decryption continue when I mount the drive again?

TIA, Tim

I had to leave, so took a punt and ejected my drive. Timemachine took up where it left off when I remounted the drive, no problems!


Make vim read the vimrc from ~/.vim/vimrc This may not be the best place to ask this question but I'm having trouble getting vim to read my vimrc file. If I have it in the home directory as ~/.vimrc then it ready just fine but if I move it ~/.vim/vimrc so that I can take advantage of plugins and a few other things, it no longer reads the vimrc. I can't remember what I was supposed to do to make it read the correct vimrc.

I created a symlink.

ln -s ~/.vim/vimrc ~/.vimrc

Works like a charm.


Is it a bad idea to purchase older Apple routers? I am thinking of purchasing an older Airport Extreme (A1143 model) as they are considerably cheaper than buying a new one.

Are there any serious issues with an older model as far as performance is concerned?  I am not looking for anything cutting edge, mostly just internet browsing and video (netflix) streaming.  I notice that the A1142 model is "Single 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz" rather than the newer models which are "Simultaneous 2.4 GHz and 5 GH".... what sort of difference does this make.
Are there any features available in the newer model which are not available for older models?  I have an Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, 2 Macs, use AirPlay.  Will any of these have limited functionality on an older model?
Are the older models still supported as far as firmware updates go?  Do they continue to be supported by the latest versions of OSx?

I bought a second hand Airport Extreme (A1354) about a year ago for less than 50% of the price of a new one so my suggestion would be to do some good shopping around as they come up from time to time.

When I was looking for one, the minimum I was considering was the 3rd Generation (A1301) as it supported Dual Band. I would not personally buy anything older than this.

The model you are looking at supports Single 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz which means you can run either in 2.4 or 5 GHz mode, not both together. 2.4 GHz is the most commonly used wifi protocol (b/g/n) and means that the 13 channels available are very busy. 5 GHz (also n) is newer and less busy but not all devices support it. You don't mention which models of the iPhone, iPad, Macs etc you have but be aware that only the more recent devices support 5 GHz (iPhone 5 does). The newer devices support running both at once and communication is seamless between the devices.

The 4th generation (my model) also support the final version of N so I connect at up to 450 mbps which is great for transferring files. My Apple TV (3rd Gen) works great in a wireless configuration - mainly streaming data from my iMac (2011 - wireless) or Mac Pro (2008 - wired).

Apple has also spent a lot of time improving the antenna strength in the later models which really helps if you have a house with thick walls.

You can see a nice breakdown of what features are support by which model on Wikipedia. If you look further up the article there is a summary of what the improvements were in each model.

I received an update for my model within the last month, not bad for a product first produced in 2009 (I can't comment on older models as I don't have any).


Bootcamp Mojave and Windows 10 now all Mac OS startup keys don't work Just installed Bootcamp on a late 2013 iMac 27". It was running a fully updated Mojave OS before running Bootcamp Assistant. Installed Windows 10 image from Microsoft download. After installing Windows all worked fine and did all its updates. But now, none of the Mac startup keyboard commands work. I can't launch startup manager or recovery mode. It just goes straight to Windows. If I use the Bootcamp windows control panel to choose start up only Windows appears in the list. If I choose Advanced Startup Options in Windows I choose a USB or drive but it just boots straight back into Windows 10.

I've tried every shortcut on this page (on a USB keyboard) https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255

Even the PRAM reset shortcuts don't work. Is it the UEFI? How do I reset this?

Any ideas?

It sounds like you updated the firmware on the video card. The drive selection screen and other startup keystrokes work from the original EFI. This likely happened when updating W10. You may have accidentally also updated a video driver that included a VC firmware update. Been there, done that. Getting the card re-flashed to the Apple VC EFI is likely to be difficult and/or expensive. This is especially true since this is an iMac. The video card is integrated into the logic board. My solution won't work for you, unfortunately.

Perhaps an Authorized Service Provider can flash it. If you're not sure where to go, try Apple first. Call (800-275-2273) or go to the support site and when you get through all the repair prompts, it will show a map of the services near you. Perhaps the Genius Bar can flash it, too. Don't let 2013 deter you from calling. They may be able to help on the phone (doubt it), but they can at least help you find a place to get it done.

If you have not been able to start the Mac OS, as a Hail Mary, try holding 'x' during startup to see if you can get the MacOS to start (which you may have already). Or use Target Disk Mode to remove the Windows partition. When the Mac can't find an OS on the selected startup disk, it looks for a new one and it may startup from the Mac OS. Then you can use Sys Prefs to change your startup disk back to the Mac OS.

However, if you no longer have a Mac OS (deleted partition maybe?), then it will start in Internet Recovery. If you have a Time Machine backup, you can restore the your original Mac OS and content using your backup. Otherwise, you will have to reinstall the OS.

Let me say this. My experience with the issue (update Windows, flash card, no startup keystrokes) does not fit your scenario exactly so I could be totally wrong. If you don't have a backup and have data to retrieve, try Target Disk Mode before making any changes. You can save important data (assuming it still on the hard drive) to an external hard drive.

Good luck.


How can I fix my built in Mac Screen Sharing App? Screen sharing through the app has been shoddy at best for me since updating.  I thought I had it figured out and now its not working this week.  My device on the same network is a linux machine and connecting to it from ssh works fine (always has).  But for whatever reason the screen sharing functionality is Broken.  I’ve tried to connect to server using vnc://x.x.x.x  or smb://x.x.x.x as well as without the slashes.

I’ve tried to connect using the Screen sharing app as well.  There is a weird 3rd option that sees my computer but it NEVER works to connect to it.

So Far I’ve tried to restart the machines and this:

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/if-your-screen-sharing-stops-working-read-this.441030/

Summary says:

Launch the Activity Monitor program.
In the Process Name list, look for "NetAuthAgent". It may show as "Not Responding".
Select NetAuthAgent, and then click Quit Process (the red stop sign button at the top of the Activity Monitor window). Then, click Force Quit.

Your Screen Sharing should now work.

But that is from 2008 so I know there’s no way that they didn’t fix that by now.

Bottom Line: How can I fix screen sharing to this other device, for Good?

On your Linux computer you will need a to run a VNC server of some sort.

There may be one already installed that you need to start. How to do this depends on the Linux distro you have. Try man vncserver at the command line on the Linux box and see what you get.

VNC is a screen sharing protocol and SMB is a file sharing protocol so you can't get screen sharing using SMB.


Macbook Air - i5 vs i7 I am buying a Macbook Air and would like to know about the difference between the i5 and the i7 option. The i7 is only 100mhz faster and has 1mb of extra cache on the CPU. Does that small difference make a big difference to performance? Or is it so small that its not really worth the AU$100 extra?

AnandTech did a report comparing the two options and came to the conclusion that there isn't really a noticeable difference.  Just 7-12% improvement on certain benchmark tests.

Below are the figures they got for reference.


A more efficient way to manage photos/videos between computer and iPhone How can I manage photos on my iPhone 4S such that I can sync the photos to my computer, leave them on my computer and yet selectively remove photos from and leave photos on my iPhone? Simply said, What options exist for heavy duty (12 GB photo library to start with room to grow) and more efficient way to manage photos and videos between my computer and an iPhone.

I am asking this because recently, my iPhone is complaining to me that I have no more storage space. I have a lot of photos and videos shot on my iPhone and I usually leave them on my iPhone. I back up my precious photos and videos via the back-up feature in iTunes and that's all. But iTunes doesn't allow me to view the photos that it has backed up and removing any image from my iPhone is going to do the same to the back-up copy. I have depleted the storage space, I need to clear some of the photos from my iPhone.

I could back up the photos by copying them from the iPhone icon under My Computer. However, this method gets confusing in the long run, especially when I am selectively removing photos over time and putting them back.

So I'm starting to ask myself if everyone else does it this way (the confusing method). What is a way to manage photos and videos more efficiently between my computer and iPhone, such that my computer is the main library of all the photos and videos -- that's deleting items from iPhone when sync'ed with computer does not remove the copy on my computer and new items on my iPhone gets transferred to the computer?

The leading solution of using a Cloud service may be too expensive. It would be great if I could transfer between just an external hard drive and my iPhone.

When importing new photos and videos from my iPhone, I always click to delete them on my iPhone, so the master copy moves to the iPhoto library.
The only photos & vides I keep on my iPhone are those I explicitely synch to it: I use a smart album of last 12 (or whatever) months plus whatever hand picked photos and albums I want.

This works of course because I use a Mac. Since you tagged your question "Windows" and you speak of "My Computer" icons, I suppose you're on a PC and this answer will not be very useful to you. But I am still posting it in hope that it maybe inspires you to find a solution that works for you.


Can I copy (myself) an app purchased through the Mac App Store to another of my licensed computers? I have some applications purchased through the Mac App Store, and I have two Macs.

Presently, if I buy an application on my Mac mini, I just go and launch the App Store on my MacBook Air, and then download the application again from "Purchases".  And vice-versa if I bought on the Air first.  Similarly, I apply updates for each computer separately. I expect this is how most people do it.

However, this practice consumes bandwidth. For small applications, it isn't a problem.  But what about big ones?  Say, the new Xcode, or a large game?

What I'm getting at:

Is it legal and is there a way to copy an application, myself, from one of my licensed computers to another of my licensed computers?  By "licensed", I mean both of my Macs access the Mac App Store with the same iTunes account, and therefore have access to the same apps, anyway.  I'm looking at reducing Internet bandwidth consumed, not circumvent license restrictions.

Might a simple file copy of the application folder work?  Or, is something like this not supported and I just need to accept that buying apps this way will necessarily consume N * download size worth of bandwidth for each purchase and update?

Consider, with iOS devices this isn't an issue, as long as you update one device, sync to iTunes, and then sync the other devices to iTunes– they'll get the updates without re-downloading.  How to do something like this for Macs?

Yes

You can simply copy the application to your Applications folder, and then login to the Mac Application Store with the same username and password. This will validate the application and allow you to run it without needing to download it again.

The only time this will become a legal issue is if you are copying it to someone else's computer, however, they will not get updates for the application unless they log in as you, or otherwise, unless they also have a purchased copy of the application.

You can also read my answer here for a more detailed explanation of Application installs on the Mac and the Mac App Store.


A better alternative for source code file browsing than finder+quicklook? I'm not an IDE user and I spend a lot of time going back and forth between finder windows opening files in quicklook just to look at a thing here and there. This gets awkward fast, specially as QL loses the spot I was reading at, and the file browser is not as attuned to this usage as that of an IDE file browser. Also, the QLStephen source code preview stops working from time to time.

I'm wondering, is there any lightweight alternative to browsing source files like this?A finder replacement, a terminal utility, or something like those old school image file browsers ala ACDSee but for text?

I'd be happy if the column view of the finder showed me a full pane scrollable preview of the text so I didn't have to open QL, but other desirable features would be the ability to set a project folder with a file tree in the sidebar, bookmarking folders/files, search across project folder, and dreaming big, the possibility to go to function definition.
Been thinking to write something like it myself but I just keep thinking something like it must exist somewhere.

BBEdit is able to have multiple documents open at one time and then there is a left side sidebar you can easily change between documents. In the menu bar go to VIEW > Show Sidebar. It appears to keep your highlights and scrolling of each document. You can use BBEdit for free without paying for it as well but it will ask for you to pay for the first couple weeks. BBEdit has markers, grep find/replace, and multi-file search as well. Sounds like a lot of what you want.


Mac with 2 monitors. How to change screens? My mac is connected to 2 displays. Mac is in the center, one display is in the left and one in the right.

Sometimes it happens that when I disconnect and connect my mac from displays, display 1 becomes 3 and 3 becomes 1.
If I change their location inside Display section in System Preferences location becomes correct but all icons from display 1 stays on display 3. The same for display 3 whose icons are on 1.
Is it possible to fix this without relocation of physical monitors?

One thing you could try is resetting the NVRAM of your Mac to see if that resolves this.

You don't specify the model of your Mac, so below are some generic steps that will work to reset the NVRAM on all Mac models:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then immediately press the commandoptionpr keys.
Keep these keys pressed down for at least 20 seconds!
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).


Why are all of my windows tiny when I plug in an external monitor? I have a mirrored display setup with a 17" MacBook Pro and an Apple LED Cinema display.  When I plug in the monitor, sometimes the mirroring does not kick in properly and some items are half on-screen.

Opening and closing the lid gives it a kick in the pants and fixes it, but some application windows are collapsed to almost nothing (see screenshot) and I have to resize them all.  Kind of a PITA since this happens every morning.  Is there a fix?

(I also think this is responsible for my VirtualBox issue)

Screenshot:

I don't have the correct solution, but I use the Moom app from the App Store configured with some shortcuts to maximize, shrink and or move my windows around.

So in my case it only takes around .5 seconds for me to resize the screen.


Boot MacBook Pro into non OS X operating system from external harddisk I have a MacBook Pro and an external HDD with Ubuntu, I can use this HDD to boot other machines into Ubuntu but no amount of pressing option would make my MacBook Pro think that the drive is bootable.

Is there a setting or an option that I have missed?

The problem is that “other machines” (namely PC computers) use BIOS and Macintosh computers use EFI. Rather than boring you with the details, let’s just say that in order for your “EFI” to find your Ubuntu partition, you have to perform some magic.

The instructions for doing that are everywhere, (for example: here). I believe that you need to install rEFIt in order to have an “EFI” compatible bootloader.

TL;DR version: A Mac won’t boot directly into another operating system’s boot (GRUB/LILO/WINLOADER/ETC), you need an “EFI” compatible loader (enter rEFIt).

I hope this points you into the right direction.


Can't mount Windows Boot Camp & USB on a MacBook OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 I have a MacBook Pro (Late 2011) 13 inch running OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 and I wanted to mount Windows 8 professional via Boot Camp with USB drive.

I've already watched a ton of tutorials and read a whole heck of stuff, but I see only one difference in my problem so far. I have a 16 GB usb drive, a Windows ISO file and all the rest of the stuff required.

But the only thing that I meet so far is that when everybody else I've seen doing this open Boot Camp Assistant, they have three choices right away. Yet, what I have is only 2 choice variants and my Boot Camp Assistant for some reason lacks the "Create a Windows 7 or later install disk" choice button.

How can I mount Windows in this case, or what am I supposed to do?

MacBook Pro (Late 2011) = MacBookPro8,1

According to MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2011) - Technical Specifications this has a 8x slot-loading SuperDrive.

You should use your DVD drive to install Windows.

According to the Info.plist for the Boot Camp Assistant, your model is one of the "PreUSB Boot Supported Models". The usually means if you create a USB flash drive installer by any method, you will not be able to boot from it.

You also have a one of the "PreUEFI Models". This means you should install using using a BIOS/MBR boot method.

In the event, you can not install using a DVD, you can try using Virtual Box. The instructions are given here. This will install Windows to your internal disk without the use of a DVD.


I have disabled SIP, I have read/write permissions with terminal, but not with Finder. What causes this? System: macOS Catalina 10.15.2

Background: I've been a *nix user for many years. I use a remote Linux server where the root directory is used (i.e. there are folders where users can r/w such as /data and /analyses ), and I've used macOS in the same way until now. I got a new MacBook from my workplace this year. I administer the machine, so I am able to change anything that root can.

In the interest of continuing to use the file organization system on our remote server, I have disabled SIP and I'm mounting / with read/write on each boot (similarly to how it is done here). I can work in the /data and /analyses folders using the Terminal with no issues, but when it comes to using Finder, this is not the case. Creating and deleting folders and files is not possible with Finder. This is not the case with other GUI apps (for example, I'm able to use a text editor such as Sublime to edit plain text files in these folders, or create and save new ones into the directory of my choosing).

Issue: When I use Finder to move or modify these files (for example, dragging a file to Trash) I get a warning message: "file" can't be modified or deleted because it's required by macOS. I can delete or modify these files with other apps, including Terminal, but for convenience sake I'd like some help finding a solution to this issue with Finder (for example, is there something I could change w/r/t Finder's permissions, or with the permissions set by macOS for the directories I'm working in).

What I've already tried: changing the file and folder permissions/ownership with chmod and chown, with no effect on Finder's behavior

p.s. Unless you are certain it will directly help to solve this issue with Finder, thank you in advance for leaving out any lectures about why I should re-enable SIP, I've already heard them all. :)

I use a remote Linux server where the root directory is used (i.e. there are folders where users can r/w such as /data and /analyses )... In the interest of continuing to use the file organization system on our remote server, I have disabled SIP and I'm mounting / with read/write on each boot

This is not a good strategy and should be avoided.

The first and most important thing to realize is that macOS ≠ Linux.  What Linux lets you "get away with" is not always a best practice for system administration.  When we reduce  everything down, what you're essentially asking is about placement of two folders and the root directory is actually not the best place for them, thus the issues you're running into.

Disabling SIP, you remove one of the key protections that make macOS one of the safest operating systems on the market today.  Doing so to get around the security architecture so that you can create folders/mount volumes that reside in the root directory is counterproductive.  Instead of fighting against the OS, it's best to work with it.

Is /dev protected by SIP?
Other than user error, what types of attacks would SIP prevent?
How to repair macOS permissions after running “sudo chown -R _www /”? (A cautionary tale)

  Unless you are certain it will directly help to solve this issue with Finder...

It's not an issue with Finder.  SIP's been around a long time; since El Capitan (10.11) was released in 2015. This is not anything new.  However, the new APFS container structure of having two volumes, one writable and one not (with - Data appended to the volume name) is new.  While some of the security changes Apple has implemented causes more headaches than necessary, this isn't one of them.

This is actually something that system admins should be doing - hardening the system and limiting what and where the user can write to by   "containerizing" (sandboxing) the directories/volumes with appropriate read/write/execute permissions.

Mount user accessible directories in the proper location

Again, the root directory is not really an appropriate place for shared data whether it be macOS or Linux.  Whether these directories are local to the Mac (the Mac is the network share), or you're mounting them from a remote file server, they should be placed in a protected volume like in /Users/Shared or mounted in /Volumes.  The reasoning behind this is that you can set the "parent" rights and apply it to all of the child folders whereas if you were to modify the rights of something in the root directory, you could potentially apply the wrong permissions across the whole system.

Even my Synology NAS (Linux based) doesn't allow me to create shares on the root folder.  It forces me to mount them in a sub volume with permissions I (with root access) cannot modify.

TL;DR

You're going against the current here; work with the OS and not against it.  If you're finding that you need to disable all of the protections that the system came with, you're likely not following an industry best practice.  Don't try to force macOS and Finder to behave a certain way because you can "do it in Linux;" follow it's lead and you'll have a secure, available, and most importantly a reliable system that your users can depend on.


Will an internal optical drive from a non-Apple manufacturer be fully functional in a MBP 13" Mid 2009? I have had a faulty internal superdrive (Apple calls their optical drives superdrives) for the longest time in my MBP 13" Mid 2009. I want to replace it, but in my area it's pretty hard to come across a superdrive, be it new or used. I considered an external optical drive but quickly dismissed it, as it would be a pain to carry around and from what I've heard MPB's don't allow using external optical drives for recovering from CDs.

The next step was to check for any obvious signs of incompatibility. I looked at my MBP's optical drive, and sure enough, on first glance it looked like a standard laptop optical drive. The MBP Mid 2009 is decently upgradeable, with us being able to replace the shipped battery and the HDD. Unless there are some special requirements I am unaware of, I feel this is possible.

Another query I have is: Even if the optical drive works for general CD reading, will it work for recovery? Or will it act like the aforementioned external optical drives?

Please note: I have already put an optical drive caddy for an SSD earlier, and I didn't quite like it because it added extra bulk to the Mac. In the end I took the SSD out of the drive caddy and replaced the old HDD with the SSD. I removed the caddy too. It made the Mac much lighter. And yes, I have put in the faulty optical drive to check the weight and I find it quite a bit lighter.

A SATA drive is a SATA drive.  The fact that you were able to put in a SATA optical bay caddy for an SSD is evidence that an aftermarket SATA drive works.

Looking at the SATA connector of the "SuperDrive" you will notice that it's the exact same SATA data and power connector of pretty much any other SATA drive

So, the trick here is finding a SATA optical drive that has the SATA connector in the same location.

There is no reason for a different CD/DVD drive won't work for recovery.  As long as it can read/write, you can use it.  You can boot from CD/DVD by holding down C while booting.  After all, the MacBook Air requires you to use an external (USB) drive if you want to do recovery.

Speaking of recovery, if weight is an issue, why not get a USB flash drive.  You can get a 128GB USB Flash for around $30 and is great for backup/recovery.

Personally speaking I haven't used a genuine Apple Super Drive in years - I either use  external hard drives or USB flash drives.  On the rare occasion I need a CD/DVD drive, I have a Plextor USB CD/DVD RW drive which works perfectly.


Stuck at OS X Utilities while clean installing Yosemite I decided to do a clean Yosemite install on my Macbook Pro 13 inch Mid-2012 . So I made a boot able USB from terminal. Then I booted from it and went into disk utility and erased my current Disk which was Macintosh HD. Then I closed disk utility and clicked install OS X. As soon as I double clicked it the continue button grayed out and nothing is happening. I can move around the cursor which means it hasn't hung. I rebooted to the boot able USB and again clicked it and again the button grayed out. I have been waiting now for about 10 to 15 minutes and nothing has happened yet. What should I do?

This is where I am stuck.

This sounds like the install you created is faulty somehow, possibly either a bad file copy or a bad flash drive.

Things to try, in order:

Rebuild the install drive using the same method you used before, but on a new drive.
Use the built-in recovery options (hold cmd R) to do the install. Then, upgrade to the latest version of OS X. By upgrading to the newer OSX, your recovery partition will be set to do a clean upgrade of El Capitan if you have to do it again.
If that doesn't work (say your recovery partition is trashed), there's the Internet Recovery option, which will actually reinstall the OS your mac shipped with.


how to completely uninstall AirBeam TV? I installed AirBeam TV for streaming to a non-Apple TV device.

I have now uninstalled it but somehow the audio driver is still installed when I check the sound setting. It is annoying that very often I have to go and change the setting to 'Internal Speaker' as it keeps defaulting back to AirBeam TV.

Is there a way I can manually delete this. Note that to Audio Driver for this streaming app was downloaded separately and I just clicked to run it. It has somehow installed into a directory which I do not know how to navigate.

From https://www.airbeam.tv/faqwd/how-can-i-uninstall-the-airbeamtv-audio-driver-2/

First, find out what driver version(s) you have installed. Go to
System Preferences -> Sound -> select the Output tab. Look at the list
of the sound output devices.
If you see “AirBeamTV Audio”, you have
the audio driver version 2. To uninstall it, you need to delete
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/AirBeamTVAudio.driver
Detailed instructions:

Open Finder
Use the menu “Go” -> “Go to folder…” (or press Shift + Command + G)
Copy the following path: /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL
Click “Go”
Delete “AirBeamTVAudio.driver”. You will need to enter the administrator password because this is a system location
Reboot your computer. After the reboot the driver will disappear in the system sound preferences

If you see “AirBeamTV”, you still have the audio driver version 1. To
uninstall it, you need to delete /Library/Extensions/AirBeamTV.kext
Detailed instructions:

Open Finder
Use the menu “Go” -> “Go to folder…” (or press Shift + Command + G)
Copy the following path: /Library/Extensions
Click “Go”
Delete “AirBeamTV.kext”. You will need to enter the administrator password because this is a system location
Reboot your computer. After the reboot the driver will disappear in the system sound preferences


What can I do to stop Touch Bar overflowing to bottom of screen? My system:

MacBook Pro (15inch 2016)
Sierra 10.12.5.

has suddenly started exhibiting some unusual behaviour.
The only thing that I've done lately in the settings was in relation to Accessibility and Zoom.
I can't see how that has made the Touch Bar overflow into the bottom of the screen as well. Like so:

Does anyone know what I need to do to undo this?
Thanks.

Found the answer here:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT207258
I think there must be a Mac bug.
I had never used Switch Control. It was off. But by switching it on then toggling the Switch Bar on and off via the Switch Control Home Panel > System I managed to finally disable the annoying thing.


How do I make Outlook download images automatically/by default Outlook currently puts a banner at the top of my emails asking me for permission to download images.

How do I make it download this automatically and not ask me?

Outlook Mail Settings

Go to Preferences... ⌘+, in Outlook
Select Reading under Email
The Security settings allow you change "Automatically download pictures from the Internet:"

In all messages
In messages from my contacts
Never

The default is never, that is why the 'banner' appears.  Change it to one of the other options based on your preferred usage.


Stop my phone from messaging "Good morning" and "Good afternoon" and "You have a new memory" to me I'm not the target Apple user and use my iPhone in a limited way. I also have a hard time understanding when computers do things I didn't tell them to do (that's just me, again not the target Apple user).
Why would Photos suddenly decide to say "Good afternoon" to me? (see also Photos - "You have a new memory")
I don't remember typing Search, but this search screen suddenly appeared when I wasn't looking. Could its sudden appearance be related to the "Good afternoon" message?
How can I stop things like "Good afternoon" and "You have a new memory" from appearing, so I can at least have the illusion that I'm in control of my device :-)
(iPhone 6, upgraded from ancient to iOS 12.4.5 somewhat recently)

“Good Afternoon” is an example of “Siri Suggestions” and they can be turned off in Settings under “Siri & Search”.
The feature’s goal is to surface content/actions that it thinks will be useful to you in that moment.
Possibly this will get more useful over time, given that your previous OS may have not been recording how you use your phone.

—-
To turn off notifications about suggested Memories in Photos, visit Settings - Notifications - Photos - Memories:


How do I set up a Mac as a NIS client? I'd like to load some automounter maps from NIS.  I don't need to set up authentication, I just want to enable NIS as a data source, and hook it up the automounter.

$ cd etc
$ grep + /etc/auto_master
+auto_master  # Use directory service
$ ypcat -k auto_master
No such map auto_master. Reason: Request arguments bad
$ ypwhich
can't clntudp_create: Can't communicate with ypbind

P.S.  I would like to create a new NIS tag, but I can't yet.

I found this:  still trying it:
https://superuser.com/questions/163807/setting-up-nis-nfs-on-mac-os-10-6

Not sure if I need to reboot after using DirectoryUtility.app

I just set the domain name once as root (using sudo) and launchd has launched ypbind for me ever since. The man pages for yp and ypbind might come in handy.

Is /etc/defaultdomain set? You could issue a ypbind -ypset to see if any servers are responding but it's better to have a list of masters and slaves laid out in /private/var/yp/binding/DOMAINNAME.ypservers


Is kill -15 the same as File -> Quit? I want to quit a process but without force quitting it. Is that possible from the terminal?

kill acts on Unix level, the targeted process is free to ignore any signal besides kill -9. And depending on the internal structure of the process you are looking at, kill -15 will not be the same as 'File->Quit'.

As an alternative you could do something like osascript -e 'tell application "Safari" to quit'.


How can I change the default delay time before automatic shutdown? I don’t want to change the default delay time before shutting down all the time, but on occasion I want it to be 10 seconds and still show the dialog.

The only documentation I could find was for scheduled shutdown, which is not useful in my case unless someone can show automation to get the current time and schedule it for now plus 10 seconds.

Is this doable with a tool or script to replicate the warning dialog and 10 second timer?

There are a couple of workarounds for this, one of which I discovered by accident some time ago - though it doesn't give you 10 seconds, it's almost instantaneous.

If you set a shortcut key for "Shut Down…" the Apple Menu will add another option, "Shut Down" [without the ellipsis]. This one doesn't present that dialog at all, it just shuts down.

The same applies to Restart…

You can achieve the same by holding  Opt ⌥  whilst the Apple menu is open. All the options that would normally present an "Are You Sure?" dialog will be actioned without it - you see the ellipsis disappear with  Opt ⌥  held.


Can't restore from TM backup in recovery mode I think I did very bad thing .. After restarting the mac and entering recovery mode and selecting Disk Utility I did erase "Apple SSD SM0256F Media" hard drive with all its partitions including Macintosh HD then I did erase Macintosh HD again with giving it a name instead of "untitled", now I don't have any operating system, after that I select restore from TM backup and I select last backup and it start erasing Macintosh HD then I get an error

  an error occurred while adding a recovery system to the destination
  disk

I did verify the disk and repair it , i got no problem all disk partitions are ok .

My computer: MacBook Pro mid 2014

And this is a list of all partitions from terminal :

Any help please?

On a 2012 MacBookPro the network boot image is Mavericks and that results in the messages reported by the OP when attempting a restore. Rather than performing a full install as suggested above, all that's needed is to create a High Sierra bootable USB as per https://support.apple.com/en-gb/ht201372, boot from the USB, and immediately select "Restore from a Time Machine Backup". The restore from a High Sierra boot works, whereas the Mavericks one does not.


Can I deauthorize all computers on iTunes, without being on an authorized computer? I'm having issues installing apps on my new iPhone, because I am not authorized on my computer.
In the last 8 years I've been changing computers and reset the OS a lot. I didn't think of a limit with authorized PCs on iTunes.

Now I can't authorize my current system, because I do not have access to the "authorized" computers (i.e. the old OS I formatted).

How can I remove all the authorizations at once? I know I can only do that on an authorized machine (which I won't ever have access again).
Do I need to ask Apple directly for support?

I solved it myself.

For reference here's the steps I followed.

On the iTunes menu open Store->View Account, then in Account Summary click "Deauthorize all computer/devices/whatever.." (I'm translating in english the steps)

I wasn't able to do this on the menu with Store->Remove Authorization, because it was asking me to be authorized first to do it (and I already had 5 authorized computers).


Delete Mails in Mac Mail without Trash How can I delete an email in Mac Mail instantly without moving it to the trash? I don't want to look at the spam crap twice :-)

UPDATE: I want to do this because I have some very old mails in my trash I don't want to delete at the moment (or decide what to do with). So I cannot delete my whole trash. But to avoid the trash becoming bigger and bigger I want to delete spam etc. without moving to trash...

You can delete emails and bypass the trash using

⌥ Option + ⌫ Backspace

(Successfully tested with OS X 10.9 (Mavericks). Could work with older versions, too.)

If you want to delete emails that are already in trash it is enough to hit ⌫ Backspace to delete them permanently. If you are accustomed to also press the ⌘ Command, like deleting a file in Finder, you can do so. But basically, backspace is enough.


How can I connect a bluetooth mouse without using the cursor (chicken and egg problem) My bluetooth mouse batteries died, and when I replaced them, the mouse didn't reconnect. Now how can I get OS X to discover and connect my mouse without having a mouse to open the mouse dialogue?

You can open the Mouse System Preferences by using Spotlight search.

Press ⌘-Space to open Spotlight. Type "mouse" to find the Mouse System Preferences and press Enter.
When the Mouse Preferences are opened, make sure the mouse is on and wait for it to be discovered. The "Connect" button should be blue, so you can press Enter to connect to it, and you're done.


App Store shows notification but no updates available App Store shows notification but no updates available.

Tried closing the App and also restarting phone but no luck.

This happens occasionally, it just happened to me.  Restart your iPhone, that usually fixes it.

If not:

Log out of App Store
Restart iPhone by holding down power & home buttons
Log back in to App Store

If those don't work, download a free app.  That will often reset the counter.


How can I type a backtick on an Estonian keyboard? I am actually using the sweidsh keyboard with an estonian layout, so the backtick key itself produces ' and while holding Shift, it produces –.

Is there maybe a way to create a global keyboard shortcut?

Looking through the keybindings in the Estonian keyboard layout that ships with Mac OS X, it appears (amazingly) that the backtick character (`) cannot be produced with any of the unmodified keys, nor with any combination of option, shift, or control, despite the fact that most of the option-character key combinations are left unmapped on this layout. There are many ways to modify it to produce this key combination.

You could create a modified Estonian layout using Ukelele, you could use a program like Keyboard Remap for Macbook, or even TextExpander.


How to provide a default value to the "Ask For Text" automator function? I'm working on an Automator app that receives folders. So far it looks like this:

Set Value of Variable (var1)
Ask For Text (default answer set to "00000 Sample Job Name")
Set Value of Variable (var2)
execute bash script

Right now one issue that is bothering me is that when I run the app, the dialog that appears for "Ask for text" does not offer "00000 Sample Job Name" as the default, but rather the file path that was passed to the app and assigned to var1.
Why the heck would that be?
Automator 2.5, Mac OS X 10.10.5

Enable "Ignore this action's input" for the "Ask for Text" action to retain the default value you have specified.


iOS App Store download data Does anyone know if there is public data App downloads from the iOS App Store?

Not so much how many downloads has a particular app had, but data like:

how many apps have zero downoads.
how many apps have a hundred downloads.
how many app have a thousand downloads.
what's the download numbers over time for apps on average.

That kinda thing.

There is no publicly available data on the actual iTunes App Store download counts (except for occasional special events such as the 25 billionth app download contest, and a few individual developer reports).  The exact app download numbers are considered confidential information between Apple and each developer (perhaps because an individual's earnings could be so deduced).  Each developer has access only to the counts for their own apps.

That said, a few developers do report some of their download numbers; and there are various estimations of the download distribution curve based on this evidence: for instance this blog post, and this academic paper, both from 2011, which may or may not be accurate.  (Disclosure, the blog post is mine.)

As for part #4 of your question, the "on average" answer may not be relavant, as the app download distribution may be so skewed that almost no app has a download count that is anywhere close to the mean average, but mostly a lot more or a lot less.  For instance, whatever the big mean average number is, there are some reports that most apps get downloaded less than once per day.


CPU speed of the Macbook Pro Retina downclocked I've a MacBook Pro 15" late 2013. For a long time I have encoded videos with handbrake and the CPU was very hot for hours. The clock speed was about 2.8GHz (I have the 2.3GHz model) and the temperature was over 95°C. In one of the last updates of High Sierra I think there was some modification such that now the CPU speed while encoding a video is about 1.8GHz and the temperature is always lower than 80°C. What can I do? I've lost about the 35% of the power of my mac....

MacBooks do indeed tend to have some issues with their thermals. What I'd try to do in your case would be downloading an App to control your fan speed like Macs fan control. It's free, you don't have to buy the paid (donate) version. You can set your fans to spin up higher than the stock values Apple implements.

Just for testing, you could set the fan to 100% at a CPU temperature of over 70°C and see if it does make a difference in performance.

I also do have a MacBook that's 5 years old now and while I don't do rendering or video conversion like you do on it, I had very high temps aswell just compiling code or browsing some heavy webpages with loads of JS. What I did was open up the laptop and replace the thermal paste. The stock paste that was applied was very badly (see this example from a MacBook Pro 2015). Sadly this seems to be fairly common and while these CPUs do sustain temperatures under 100°C pretty well, the OS often throttles it instead of running the fans on maximum.

Using TG Pro (just a personal preference, the tool linked above does the same thing) and reapplying my thermal paste I went from 60°C in idle to around 38°C and from 90-95°C to 80-85°C under heavy load.

That being said, the computer does get pretty noisy on maximum fan speed and reapplying thermal paste is not something everyone should just try. But the former should be worth a try.


How can I burn an OS X Lion install DVD once the installer has been auto-deleted? I've just installed OS X Lion on my iMac, and I want to make an installation DVD, so that I can reinstall without having to first install Snow Leopard.

The way to create the DVD is answered elsewhere, but it seems that the installer gets auto deleted after the installation of Lion completes.

It looks like I'll have to re-download the 4Gb Lion installer again, but when I try to download it again via the App store, I'm told a newer version already exists, and I'll have to move it to the trash first.

I've double checked, and there isn't another version of the installer present.

How can I now create the install disk?

You can re-download Lion even though it has already been installed by holding down the option key before clicking Purchased.

Do not release the key until after the option to Install appears alongside OS X Lion.

The workaround may be more reliable if something other than Purchased is in foreground before alt/option-clicking Purchased.

Burn the installer to disc, then delete it when you're done with it.


Can I use two Airport Express routers to extend an Airport Extreme network? I have an airport extreme as my main WIFI router and I have an Airport Express downstairs which is set to extend the network and it works flawlessly. I recently also got a second Airport Express to extend the Airport Extreme network at my top floor and it always tells me it cannot join the network with the exact same settings as the other Airport Express. At the location where the upstairs Airport Express is set up, the network signal strength is good.

My question is: Is it even possible to extend an Airport Extreme network twice with two different Airport Express routers, or is this not supported?

The error I get is the following.

I recently was able to do this successfully, adding a 2nd Airport Express with a wifi-only connection to an existing network which had RS232 lines to a modern Airport Extreme and an Airport Express. I'm using the latest Mac OS. What I found most effective after plugging the new unit it was to restart the Mac (Mac Mini circa 2012) several times so that it would, eventually, recognize the new Express hardware. I did set the TCP/IP Configure IPv6 to link-local only but I do not know if that made any difference. Once everything was working I changed back to Configure iPv6 automatically.


Why do I have to use sudo although I'm already a member of wheel? I like to edit files in my /Library/WebServer/Documents without having to run sudo all the time.

So I simply added my username abbood to the wheel group using this command:

sudo dseditgroup -o edit -a abbood -t user wheel

i verified that abbood is a member of wheel like so:

$ members wheel
abbood
root

If I run ls -l on my files in that directory.. the user is root and the group is wheel.

However as abbood I'm still required to sudo everytime I want to edit a file.. how come? how do I avoid that?

Answering based on system defaults (because of lack of the information in the question):

[~]# ls -ld /Library/WebServer/Documents
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  170 Feb 21  2016 /Library/WebServer/Documents/

[~]# ls -l /Library/WebServer/Documents
total 72
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   3726 Feb 21  2016 PoweredByMacOSX.gif
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  31958 Feb 21  2016 PoweredByMacOSXLarge.gif
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     45 Jun 12  2007 index.html.en

Members of group wheel do not have write permissions to the /Library/WebServer/Documents directory nor the files inside.

Hence adding any account to the group wheel will not allow this account to write files in/to the above directory.


Change the sleep icon in login window (loginwindow.app) I would like to change the sleep icon in the login window. I've found loginwindow.app (/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app) and replaced Sleep.tiff with the desired image with identical file dpi and size wise (yes that is the superhot logo). I then ran sudo killall loginwindow, thinking that I would relaunch the app and it would use the new icon. Instead, it logged me out and didn't use the new icon. Is there any way to replace this icon?  ^when it logged me out

I believe that this can be changed in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/LoginUIKit.framework/Versions/Current/Frameworks/LoginUICore.framework/Resources/, I’ll post if it works when I change it there

I got the correct location from here


Podcast App not downloading episodes to IPhone for about the last week my podcast app on my iPhone 6+ has been preparing to download episodes but not downloading. Ian on iOS 8.3

This is serious I need to listen to Hansel minutes and history of revolutions!

I have tried shutdown app, clear download, logging out of iTunes etc.

Any suggestions

I had the same problem. I restarted the phone, cancelled the pending downloads and then started the downloads again and it seems to be working. Feel like I'm working with a Microsoft product :(


Can't update boot security on new Macbook Pro I am trying to boot from an external device and it is asking for an administrator password. The machine is new and didn't have a password so I created an admin password and it still won't allow me to update the security settings for startup disks.

I have cloned my old MacBook (2016 MacBook Pro 13") and I am trying to restore on to my new MacBook Pro (2018)

I was able to move past this by creating another account (called admin) then switching between my account and the admin account. Once I did this I was able to open the dialog box and move forward.


Cannot open Java Preferences I don't know what the problem is. I recently went to Lion (Developer Preview) and restored a fresh new copy of 10.6. I later updated everything and then tried to open Java. It keeps giving me this error.

Cannot open Java Preferences 10.6
No compatible version of Java 1.5+ is available

I've tried reinstalling the update, but it doesn't do anything.

:P, solved it. I just plugged my 10.6 restore disk in and ran the setup. I then updated the software, and voila, I fixed it.


TextEdit paragraph numbering - number on paragraph break NOT on line break I need to number my paragraphs but still be able to have un-numbered line breaks inside the paragraph; putting in a soft return (command-return) should work but doesn't; when I re-number the paragraphs through the List Bullets/Numbers menu, it always numbers the line breaks as well as the paragraph breaks.

Has anyone found a work around for this?

I've been using Macs since 1984, and command+return has never produced a line break. The correct combination for a line break is option+return.


Can I use GPL-licensed source in my iOS app? I'm going to use some GPL-covered code in my app. Firstly, I'm not sure if GPL is compatible with Apple's App Store, i.e. whether apps entirely covered by GPL can be published through App Store.

Second, iOS does not allow 3rd party dynamic libraries, which means, to my understanding, you can't legally combine GPL and non-GPL code in one iOS app.

So what are my options if I want to use some GPL code in my app?

As this is a legal question you have to ask a lawyer about this, any answer on the internet (including this) is not reliable

However The Free Software Foundation (which write the GPL) have written this blog about GPL v2 and the App Store http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement

This includes

  That's the problem in a nutshell: Apple's Terms of Service impose restrictive limits on use and distribution for any software distributed through the App Store, and the GPL doesn't allow that.


Can I use Cisco Meraki, or similar, to deploy Mac App Store Apps? Cisco Meraki is fantastic, it blows the features of Apple's Profile Manager out of the water. One thing I would very much like to be able to do however is to push Volume Purchased Mac Apps to all our devices via Meraki, or something similar.

Is this possible? We have iOS VPP set up perfectly to the point where apps can be one click installed - can this be done with OS X?

Yes you can. The process is the same as pushing VPP apps to an iOS device. You can look at this KB article from Meraki to see how it would work.


How to show the macOS menu bar on fullscreen mode When you maximise apps to fullscreen on Mac OS Sierra, the menu bar is hidden. This is expected, because it's full screen, but if you're using an app with tabs (like Visual Studio Code), the menu bar often drops down when you're trying to switch tabs. This can be infuriating.

Google Chrome doesn't have this issue because the developers have cleverly coded the app to move the tab bar down when the menu bar appears. Unfortunately this option isn't available in Firefox or Visual Studio Code.

I've been trying to find a way to permanently show the menu bar when apps are fullscreened as a workaround.

I don't know if this is considered full screen but if I click on green button in top left corner of app while holding down option key, the app screen will maximize but leave apple menu visible.


When exporting from Keynote to Html, some animations (flip and orbital) don't work I'm using Keynote 09 (version 5.1.1) and the latest Safari. Is there a way to make the "flip" and "orbital" show up in the html slides? (During the export process they were changed to "dissolve").

Most 'advanced' animations don't work in the exported HTML presentations from Keynote '09. This is a known limitation of the software and does not appear to be a bug1 since the animations are replaced with the Dissolve animation.

Keynote 6 has much better HTML export using iCloud with support for most of the animations in the latest browsers. If you need such animations, consider updating to Keynote 6 or use Keynote for iCloud.

  Choose beautifully designed slide transitions ranging from smooth fades to elaborate animations so engaging you may forget you’re working in your browser.

1 I'm sure I remember reading somewhere a list of animations which weren't supported in HTML exports from Keynote '09, but I can't find it now.


Is it OK to install one Office 2019 license on both Mac and Windows? I have purchased a standalone version of Office 2019 for my Mac. So far so good. I also have a spare Windows 10 notebook and would like to occasionally run Office apps on it (not at the same time as my Office 2019 Mac version).

Does the license key allow such an installation scenario?

No.

According to Microsoft's Office product page, it is a one time purchase for 1 Mac or PC

This means that you can only install it on 1 machine - either a Mac or a PC, but not both.

There's also an excellent comparison chart showing what's covered between the 2019 standalone version and the O365 subscriptions.  As for number of devices, only the O365 subscriptions allow for multiple device installations.


Show "Open in Background" Menu with a Long Press? On older iOS devices, if you pressed and held a link in Safari, it would pop up a menu with options like "Copy Link," "Open in Background," etc. On my current phone, doing this causes a preview window to open up and only shows these options if I swipe upward.

I'm not a huge fan of this new system - it doesn't let me see what the URL of the link I'm clicking is and it makes it harder to open a ton of links for later perusal.

Is there any way to disable this preview window and just show the menu of options?

This new menu is "Peek and Pop," which is activated by 3D touch. It works by measuring how much pressure you put on the screen when you touch it.

You can disable it or change the sensitivity in Settings > General > Accessibility > 3D Touch:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205056


Can I install apps bought on the Mac App Store on multiple computers? If I buy an app on through the Mac App Store, can I install it on both of my Macs?

I use the same iTunes account on both of them.

Yes. Just run the App Store app on the second Mac and go to the Purchases tab. You'll see a list of the apps you've already purchased, with an Install button next to each one - click the button to install on the second Mac.


How to use CapsLock as modifier key without consuming Alt+Shift keybinding? I want to use CapsLock as a modifier key to type symbols like ({\})= using the alphabetical keys in the keyboard.

For example:

CapsLock+a is mapped to =
CapsLock+k is mapped to \

To do this, I mapped CapsLock to Option+Shift using Keyremap4Macbook following the instructions in "A Useful Capslock Key".

<item>
    <name>F19 to F19</name>
    <appendix>(F19 (capslock) to (shift+opt))</appendix>
    <identifier>private.f192f19_escape</identifier>
    <not>VIRTUALMACHINE</not>
    <autogen>
        --KeyOverlaidModifier--
        KeyCode::F19,
        KeyCode::OPTION_L,
        ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L,
    </autogen>
</item>

Note that, before that I mapped CapsLock to key code 80 in PcKeyboardHack which is key code of F19.

Then I mapped key combinations of CapsLock + alphabetical characters to symbols such as =\})( using Ukelele.

So far, everything works properly except that there is a side effect of this setup: I cannot use Alt+Shift modifier for any other key binding. This is pretty restrictive compromise.

I tried mapping CapsLock to more complex key bindings such as Ctrl+Shift+Alt or Cmd+Shift+Alt or Ctrl+Cmd+Shift+Alt. But these didn't work well because then mapping CapsLock+alphabetical keys in Ukelele changes the alphabetical keys too. For example, assume that Ctrl+Shift+Alt+a is mapped to =. Then a alone is mapped to = as well.

I wonder if this problem can be solved somehow? I think there might be two alternative paths to look for solution:

Creating a new custom modifier key for CapsLock without consuming existing modifier keys such as Alt+Shift.
Preventing the mapping of Ctrl+Shift+Alt+a to change the a key all together.

Are these solutions possible to implement?

Got this all from more recent Brett Terpstra posts, so full credit to him.

Using Karabiner Elements and BetterTouchTool, you can create a "Hyper" key mapped to control-option-shift-command (which probably won't be used by any apps as a default modifier). Then you can use BetterTouchTool to maps Cap Locks + "a" to type "=". Typing "a" by itself still gets the letter "a". You can also set it up that tapping Cap Locks alone functions as the escape key or even as standard Caps Lock.

Rather than reposting Brett's code here, I'll link to the post: A Hyper Key with Karabiner Elements, full instructions.

Some screenshots to help guide you along:

After adding Brett's code to karabiner.json, the Complex Modifications pane will look like so. No need to do anything else here.

In BetterTouchTool, switch to the Keyboard pane, add a shortcut, type Caps Lock + character, then choose "Insert/Type/Paste Custom Text" as the Trigger Predefined Action.

In the Insert/Type/Paste Custom Text sheet, type the character(s) you want and choose "Insert Text by Typing".


Any stock means of inserting a period by pressing the spacebar twice? I've grown to really appreciate the ability to press space twice on my iOS devices and have a period manually inserted without having to switch keyboards.

Though I realize the need isn't quite there on actual keyboards since the key is accessible at all times, I'm curious: Is there any way to get the same behavior using baked-in functionality on Mac OS X?

This is assuming the most recent version of Mountain Lion is installed.

Try this:

Go to System Preferences / Language & Text / Text
Add a new rule where "  " (double space) is replaced with ". " (period space).
Make sure you've got Symbol and Text Substitution enabled, and this new rule checked, too.

It appears not to work everywhere, though.