Log into the iOS YouTube app (iOS 4.2.1) OR Export favorites some other way? I am upgrading an iPhone 3G (iOS 4.2.1) to an iPhone 5c (iOS 7). Unfortunately, the iPhone 3G's YouTube app (the old Apple-made app) was never logged into a YouTube account, and now seems not so be able to authenticate, so I can export the app-only list of video Favorites.

So, my question is, is there any way I can currently log in to YouTube with this app, or save that, export a list of favorites?

I have searched, and found in several places the suggestion that two-factor authentication be enabled on the Google account, and create an application-specific password to log in with the old YouTube app. However, we tried this method, and it did not work in our case. The old Apple-written YouTube app rejects this password combo.

open youtube on computer log in copy link and mail to a friend  open mail on iphone  go to sent open the one you mailed open link. then on bottom of screen hit foward button then save to screen   new app my youtube


Any quizPack format spec? I'm a Windows software developer interested in reading the .quizPack file format. It is designed for Apple iQuiz software, and contains text quizzes for iPod. The text file format, unpacked from quizPack, "trivia.txt" is fully documented here. But how to unpack these files?

I cannot find any specification of this format on Apple website or elsewhere.

Here is a downloadable example of quizPack file.

This format can be created, for example, by iQuizMaker software. iTunes can read these files and export them to iPod as "unpacked" quizzes.

Okay, I dug into this and found that you have a couple of misconceptions, but it now all makes a little sense.

The page How to Install an iQuiz Package? says:

Shared iPod Quiz (iQuiz) games on iquizshare.com come in three formats:

  Flat file format (e.g. history_albert.txt).
  Zipped package, which contains readme, trivia.txt, and maybe some customized artworks in .tga format.
  QuizPack format, which is created using Aspyr Media iquizmaker software.

That third format? It's created by Aspyr software and read by Aspyr software—and nothing else. It's not an Apple format at all.

If you have a .quizpack file and you want to read what's in it, here are the steps:

Go to iquizmaker.com and download the free iQuiz Maker software (available for both Mac and Windows).
Install iQuiz Maker.
Launch iQuiz Maker, choose File > Import, and then open your .quizpack file.
Doing this creates the file (and any necessary folders) ~/Music/iTunes/iPod Games/iQuiz 1.0/<quiz name>/trivia.txt (Mac) or ~\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iPod Games\iQuiz 1.0\<quiz name>\trivia.txt (Windows).
Quit iQuiz Maker, as you've got what you want.

You can't do these steps in reverse to turn a trivia.txt file into a .quizpack file, but given that the .quizpack file is fairly useless, there's no reason you'd ever need to.

Old version:

Can you give an example of what kind of file you have, and what you mean by "unpack"?

The article you linked to says that:

  The text-based data files you create are not compiled or put into any unreadable form.

and

  Tip: If you're curious and you've enabled disk access, you'll find your games in /Volumes/(name-of-your-iPod)/iPod_Control/GameData_RO. One of the folders in that directory—possibly 11002—contains the iQuiz game. In that folder, look under UserTrivia/Packs to discover your user-installed game sets.


Is it possible to use a touchscreen monitor on a Mac Mini? How would I go about interacting with my late 2012 Mac Mini via a touchscreen?

Yes - they connect over USB like a mouse and over whatever display method you want to push the video.

Since the OS isn’t touch based, you basically emulate the mouse and it’s not going to change the OS how it behaves.


How to disable Photos.app launching every time a device is connected Every time you connect a device Photos.app opens and you have to disable it for every device one by one.

How do you disable this for all devices you connect?

You can use following command to

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.ImageCapture disableHotPlug -bool YES

Source


Testing a MacBook Pro's RAM upgrade What are the best possible RAM tests that can be run on a MacBook Pro (Early 2011 running Mountain Lion) after upgrading RAM from 4 GB to 16 GB?

I see there a quite a few tools out there and the Apple CD hardware test itself.

I figured I'd ask here hoping to get a much more educated, experienced and consolidated answer.

As someone who has to test RAM every day (Apple Certified Macintosh Technician for 2.5 years), I've found that the best RAM testing utility hands down is Memtest.

It's really easy to use too!  First, copy it to /usr/bin then boot to single-user mode.  Next, type in mount -uw / to mount your internal drive (for logging purposes) and finally type in memtest all -L 3 to start the Memtest suite.

If you want to perform more loops, change the 3 to a number you desire (e.g. memtest all -L 5), I reckon 3 to 5 loops is the best because it gives the RAM time to heat up (intermittent RAM failures can be heat related).

edit: Just wanted to add that Apple Hardware Test is useless, so never use it for testing hardware, especially RAM.


Cannot Erase a 64Gb exFat SD Card with Disk Utility | OS Mojave I've got a microSD card in an SD adaptor that I accidentally left in during the Bootcamp installation and now it is formatted as exFat rather than Fat-32. I tried erasing it and changing the format, but it says:

I looked at a couple pages on here and typed in some console commands but they didn't do anything so I'm writing my own question. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Also, here is the info:

EDIT: I think I found out why it won't erase - there is a windows NTFS format inside the disk, named disk2s1.

SD cards frequently have a read-only switch. Perhaps this is on.


3 finger swipe gesture while on guest user account Firstly, I have the latest OS X installed (10.11.2) and when I log in to the Mac with my administration account everything regarding the trackpad gestures works smoothly.

What impresses me is that  when I create a guest user account, then I cannot resize any window with the 3 finger swipe gesture (yes, I have checked the settings). However, if I press hard the trackpad and swipe, then it works.

Does anyone have a similar problem?

I have already tried SMC/PRAM reset and deleting/disabling the account but the problem persists.

UPDATE: This problem occurs no matter the type of account I create (i.e. even if I create an extra administration account).

Thank you @thanasissdr for answering your own question:

To enable 3-finger swipe on any account, go to System Preferences > Accessibility.
On the right, choose Mouse & Trackpad.
Click "Trackpad Options..."
Check "Enable dragging" and select "three finger drag" from the drop-down list.

Here's the Apple discussion that answers this question.


Turning Off Messages App Vibration While in a Conversation I really don't need my phone to buzz every time I get a text message, so I've done my best to turn off all of the vibrations associated with the Messages app. I have done the following:

In Settings>Sounds>Text Tone I have set Vibration to None.
In Settings>Notification Center>Messages>Alert Sound I have set Vibration to None

After setting both these settings, It's almost working exactly how I want it except for the one most annoying problem of all:

When I have the Messages app running and in the foreground and am in a conversation with someone, if that person replies to the conversation, my phone vibrates. If another person texts me and I do not have their conversation currently open, it does not vibrate!

This is literally the only time a text message will cause my phone to vibrate and it's the main reason that I wanted to turn off all text message vibrations in the first place! Why would I want it to vibrate when I'm currently looking at the conversation as the text comes in?

Does anyone know what combination of settings I can set to achieve what I'm trying for? I just don't want any text message or iMessage to ever vibrate my phone.

I've read both this question and this question which seem related but out of date.

You can make the LED flash instead of Vibrate when you have notifications.

Go to Settings > General > Accessibility and scroll down to 'Hearing' where 'LED Flash for Alerts' resides.


Is it possible to buy an iPhone from Apple without a plan? I'm really interested in purchasing an iPhone, but I'm usually in a Wi-Fi area, so I don't see a reason to waste money on a plan I don't need. Is there any way I can buy an iPhone through Apple without signing up for a service plan?

You can buy a contract-free iPhone directly from Apple. Just click on "Or get an iPhone unlocked and contract-free":


How can I know on which device I get Apple verification code? I have one Mac, two iPhones, and 2 iPads. There are 4 Apple accounts used on those devices, with some of them switching to each other. It is also common that on some device the system and App Store account used are different.
Now, it is very common that whenever I log in to my Apple account on a device, the popup shows up, forcing me to type in 6-digits code that is sent to another device(s). But I'm not sure which device I got the code on.
It seems that all of them happen. The code is sent to:

The device that logged in to either the same system or the App Store account
The device that logged in to the same system account
The device that logged in to the same App Store account
The device that does not log in to the same account (neither system nor App Store)
No device gets the code but the popup still forces me to type in code

Also there is even a case where the device got the code when I tried to login from one device but doesn't from another...
So on what rule is the verification code sent?
In all of these accounts I already lost my phone number, so it is not possible to get the code via SMS.

Apple ID verification codes will appear on all devices logged into the same primary iCloud account.
On an iOS device, go to Settings → your name and tap on a device in the list. If the device says

This device is trusted and can receive Apple ID verification codes.

then you can expect this device to show the code when you need to log in on another device. All devices which show this message will receive the Apple ID verification code.
Devices only logged into the same account for iTunes & App Stores, iMessage and/or FaceTime will not receive Apple ID verification codes.


Force OS X Finder to always show dimensions of images in sidebar OS X Finder does sometimes, but not always, show the dimensions of an image selected in Finder, in the sidebar. Why? Is there a way to force it to always show the dimensions? It seems very arbitrary when it decides to show and not to show.

Note: this folder is on a local drive - the default Macintosh HD.

You might need to re-index the directories on your system by doing the following:

Go to Apple > System Preferences > Spotlight and chose the Privacy tab.
Drag a directory (or an entire volume) into the list, and confirm the action
Remove the directory (or volume) from the list via - it, which will trigger a re-index of the directory or volume.

Source


On macOS Sierra Airplay is always "Looking for Apple TV" Just upgraded to macOS 10.12.1 Sierra and the mirroring display options keeps oscillating between: "Looking for Apple TV" and "Off".

In preferences i have turned AirPlay Off. But it keeps looking for AppleTV.
As recommended in an earlier discussion i tried:

sudo chmod 000 /System/Library/CoreServices/AirPlayUIAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/AirPlayUIAgent

but it gave an error:

chmod: Unable to change file mode on AirPlayUIAgent: Operation not permitted

It looks like Sierra always wants to keep connecting to Apple TV - big nuisance. Any other ideas to turn this auto feature off?

I was having the same issue. It started occurring when my external speaker tried automatically connecting to the device. Turning off bluetooth entirely solved the problem for me.


Why does my macOS always swap while sleeping? Firstly, I had disabled swapping and hibernatemode is set to 0

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

(macOS SIP was disabled when executing the commands above)

Secondly, I use fs_usage to monitor fs usage log when sleep

sudo fs_usage -w >fsusage.log

sleep time is about 8 hours.

What I'm looking for is that the Mac will sleep, and just sleep, doing nothing. But I got a 135M fsusage.log file, and when I analyzed the log file, I got some weird results.

Here is the analysis result:

The Mac always awake in certain periods of time.
The system doesn't swapping when normal use, but swapping when sleep.

The most written CALL

PgOut[ST1P] : 3726 (MB)

The PgOut[ST1P] CALL  write to the files:

/dev/disk1  /private/var/vm/swapfile0 : 2443 (MB)
/dev/disk1  /private/var/vm/swapfile1 : 1282 (MB)

PgOut size by timestamp:

05:55 : 1316 (MB)
06:56 : 1004 (MB)
07:12 : 143 (MB)
08:45 : 620 (MB)
08:46 : 25 (MB)
08:50 : 452 (MB)
08:51 : 163 (MB)

Sleep time is from 01:06 to 08:51

My MBP information:
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017)
macOS version: 10.12.6
memory size: 16GB

csrutil enable will cause swapping mode reopen.

edit /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist file to disable it;

then restart the SIP mode.
Disable standby, autopoweroff, ttyskeepawake, tcpkeepalive in pmset:

pmset -a standby 0
pmset -a autopoweroff 0
pmset -a ttyskeepawake 0
pmset -a tcpkeepalive 0


The iPhone home button is sometimes unresponsive. How can I fix it? I've noticed that my iPhone 4's home button does not work very well. Sometimes I have to press it multiple times, or press it very hard to get it to register a click. Sometimes it will detect a double-click even though I only press it once.

After several clicks, the button seems to loosen up and work fine for a while.  But the next time I take it out of my pocket, it will be flaky again.

The obvious solution is to take it in to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store and ask for repair/replacement. But there are a couple of problems with that:

The Apple Store is 90 minutes away, so I'd rather not make the trip unless I'm pretty sure I'll get a resolution.
Due to the "loosening" effect described above, I'm concerned that it will appear to be working just fine when I show it to the Genius.

So, does anyone else have experience with this problem? Did you get it fixed at the Apple Store, and if so, did it seem to be a common problem? Is there any way to fix it other than by taking it to the Apple Store?

Take it to the Apple Store. Tell them exactly what is going on and that it's a real problem for you. Even if they can't recreate the problem there in store, they will replace the device. I had a similar issue with my iPad. I took it in and explained everything and even though they couldn't replicate it they replaced it.

If anything, they will help you get a resolution. I've never gone into an Apple store with a problem only to have them tell me "Sorry, nothing we can do."


Moving music between iTunes librares I want to create a separate library for Christmas music that is not on my main iTunes library. The plan is to wipe my iPod of regular music and replace it with Christmas music just for the season, then wipe it again and return to normal music. Any ideas?

You can easily create a second iTunes library when you launch iTunes by holding Option (on a Mac) or Shift (on Windows). This allows you to specify a file name and location for the new library which you can populate with whatever media you like. When you want to switch back to your regular library, just hold down the appropriate key again when relaunching iTunes and select the original library file.


Is there a way to simulate a numeric keypad on apple wireless keyboard in OSX? I'm tempted to get an Apple Wireless Keyboard but the lack of a number pad is a concern. I'm interested whether there is some form of software you can use where for example you hold some control keys down and you can use a set of keys like the following as a substitute numeric keypad:

7890
uiop
jkl;
m ./

Macworld explained the procedure for a unibody MacBook, but I imagine the procedure is similar for an Apple wireless keyboard:

In order to bring the MacBook’s number pad functions back from the dead you need do nothing more than install [Edit: software is now called Karabiner-Elements] and restart your Mac. If you’re running Snow Leopard you don’t have to remap anything or even open the Preference Pane. Just hold down Fn plus the letters you mentioned and your laptop will cheerfully produce numbers as did your old one.

Link to Karabiner-Elements
Despite the name, this app will also work happily with non-MacBooks, or even non-Apple keyboards. I haven’t used it specifically to simulate a numeric keypad on an Apple wireless keyboard, but I have used it for other things and it generally works well.
It’s also well-maintained: the developer has been releasing regular bug fixes and new versions for OS X releases since late 2006.


How does Time Machine behave when the backup drive becomes full? Let's say I have a particular folder, that has never changed, in the first backup, eg my MP3 music collection from 2009. (I know my important files should be saved elsewhere, but it's just an example).

In one scenario, I deleted the folder, and in another, the folder is still in my home folder.

I dont understand what this means: The oldest backup are deleted when your disk becomes full.

Does it means that when there is not any space left on the drive, Time Machine will start deleting my music ?

Obviously if there is no more space left and Time Machine wants to backup new files, it has to delete something. But what exactly does it delete ?

Roughly speaking, Time Machine deletes files in the same order you do. (The roughly speaking part has to do with it deleting hourly backups even when there are older daily backups, and daily even when there are older weekly backups.)

For example, suppose you create a file in January and delete it in July, and TM is backing up all this time. TM will first see and back up the file in January. From then until you delete the file in July, every time TM does a backup it notices that you have the file but it's already backed up, so it doesn't copy it again. It does, however, put it into every single one of those snapshots. How it does that without copying the file again is fascinating but not important here. The point is, the file is in every one of those snapshots, and won't be deleted until all of them are. Unless you're micro-managine TM, that won't happen until the disk is so full that TM has had to delete everything thru July.

Another way to say it: Even though it copied the file only once, it saw it many times, and won't delete it as long as it remembers any of those sightings.

More precise rules:

Time Machine does not backup any file it has never seen. (Duh!) If you create a file and immediately delete it, before TM takes its next snapshot, it doesn't get backed up. This can be summarized as If you don't keep it, neither does TM.

Time Machine defines an hourly backup as any snapshot that is not the first snapshot of its day. It deletes it when it is 24 hours old, or when you've used "Backup now" to force 24 newer hourly backups after it. If you create a file, keep it around until TM takes at least one snapshot (let's call it an hour) but delete it later that same day (or at least before the first snapshot of the following day), TM will keep it for 24 hours. This can be summarized as If you keep it for an hour, TM keeps it for 24 hours.

Time Machine defines a daily backup as the first snapshot of a day that is not also the first day of the week. TM will keep it for a month. This can be summarized as If you keep it for a day, TM keeps it for a month.

Time Machine defines a weekly backup as the first snapshot of the week. Rather than get into a religious war about when a week begins, TM defers the decision of whether a snapshot is a daily or a weekly backup until the snapshot is at least a month old. Until then, it doesn't matter, because it'll keep it either way. When a snapshot becomes more than a month old, if there is another snapshot less than 7 days prior, then the newer one is a daily backup, and gets deleted. Otherwise it's a weekly backup and gets retained. This can be summarized as If you keep it for a week, TM keeps it until the disk is full.

By the above rules, your initial backup is therefore on the first day of its week, no matter what day that is. Successive "weeks" will be at least 7 days long, and may be longer if you don't let TM make regular backups.

TM is in effect watching what you do with the file to see how aggressively it should preserve it. The longer you keep it before deleting it, the longer TM keeps it before deleting it. Your actions give TM guidance how to put your files into one of four classes: files you deleted before TM saw them, files you deleted before the next day's first snapshot, files you deleted before the next week's first snapshot, and files you kept across a weekend. These groups have successively longer retention periods, matching the fact that they contain files you kept for successively longer times before deleting them.

In each group, TM backs up the files in the same order you created them, and deletes them in the same order you deleted them.

TM never deletes your only snapshot. If it has deleted all but one snapshot to make room, and still does not have enough, it will abort the backup. It's better to have an old backup than none at all. This can be summarized as If you never delete it, neither will TM.


How to add user to a group on command line? With Linux/Unix, I can use useradd -G developers vivek to add vivek to the developer group. How can I do the same thing with Mac OS X?

Then, how do I check if vivek is in developers group?

To add a user to a group:

dseditgroup -o edit -a vivek -t user developers

(Note: you can also do this with dscl as in @hobs' answer, but you really should both add the user's short name to the GroupMembership list, and also add the user's GeneratedUID to the GroupMembers list.  dseditgroup does both with a single operation.)

To check membership:

dseditgroup -o checkmember -m vivek developers

Or:

dsmemberutil checkmembership -U vivek -G developers

To remove a user from a group:

dseditgroup -o edit -d vivek -t user developers

(Again, you can do this with dscl, but need to remove the user from both GroupMembership and GroupMembers.  dseditgroup does both.)


where is keychains of my lost user account I lost my user in Mountain Lion and I forced to create a new user account.
I access to my previous user's folders now.
How can I find my previous keychains? I need to recover them and add into my new keychains.

Regards

The login keychain is in /Users/username/Library/Keychains/login.keychain. If the Library folder is hidden, you can select it with shift-command-G.

You can import the keychain to the current account by just opening it.


How to force MS SharePoint URLs to open in Safari when Chrome is set as default browser? I like using Chrome on Mac and it is my default browser.  However, Microsoft SharePoint and Chrome don't work well together.

I am wondering if there is a place where I can specify domains to auto open in Safari? Or better yet, have an option on right click menu of URLs to open in Safari?

Any ideas how to achieve this?

This worked for me!

Open Automator (usually found in your Applications folder)

Go to File > New (or just press commandN to create a new item

Choose "Service" (it's the one that looks like a cog)

Select options based on the picture below
Note: To get the "Run Shell Script" part, just drag that option from the list on the left pane.

Save the service

Now the Service name will show up when you right click on a link, giving you the option to open URLs in safari.


Any suggestions for a password manager app? I currently have MiniKeePass on my iPhone and although it does the basic job of storing passwords, I don't have the ability to create random passwords from the app itself and sync the changes to Dropbox.

I'm looking for a subscription-free iOS app that had a clean, modern and beautifully designed UI.

Any suggestions?

I use 1Password which is available for macOS (AppStore or directly from AgileBits), iOS, Windows and Android and offers both requirements you've listed (random passwords and Dropbox syncing).


How can I move reminders from one list to another by Applescript? I have an use case where I want to move certain reminders I created using Siri from the default list to another. Programmatically, via an AppleScript script, which runs on a Mac.

tell application "Reminders"
    set output to ""
    set inBoxList to "Erinnerungen"
    set newList to "Ausgaben"
    show list newList -- this works
    if (count of (reminders in list inBoxList whose completed is false)) > 0 then
        set todoList to reminders in list inBoxList whose completed is false
        repeat with itemNum from 1 to (count of (reminders in list inBoxList whose completed is false))
            set reminderObj to item itemNum of todoList
            set nameObj to name of reminderObj
            set idText to id of reminderObj
            if (nameObj contains "€" or nameObj contains " Euro ") then
                set output to output & "• " & nameObj
                set completed of reminderObj to "no"
                set container of reminderObj to list "Ausgaben" -- this doesn't
            end if
        end repeat
    end if
    return output
end tell

It's the following line that doesn't work:

set container of reminderObj to list "Ausgaben" -- this doesn't

I've tried variations like

set newList to list "Ausgaben"
set container of reminderObj to newList

but I always get an error that boils down that I can't set the container because it's not f the correct type list.

You can't change the container, because this property is read only --> container (list, r/o) : r/o means read only

But you can use the move command

tell application "Reminders"
    set output to ""
    set newList to list "Ausgaben"
    show newList
    repeat with thisReminder in (get reminders in list "Erinnerungen" whose completed is false)
        set nameObj to name of thisReminder
        if (nameObj contains "€" or nameObj contains " Euro ") then
            set output to output & "• " & nameObj
            move thisReminder to newList
        end if
    end repeat
    return output
end tell


File launches in Launchctl with PID - Status 1 I have a Python program that writes to the /etc/hosts file. It works correctly manually entered using the sudo command. I want it to open automatically. I can load it into sudo launchctl but it returns PID - Status 1.

How do I fix this?

PID - Status 1 means that the process doesn't have enough privileges to access some files (presumably /etc/hosts). To be able to execute script as root, you need to move the loader to /Library/LaunchDaemons or /System/Library/LaunchDaemons

(processes in /Library/LaunchAgents/ or ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ are run as current user so they don't have root rights).


How can I resize a partition on OSX 10.10.5 I have a Mac with OS X 10.10.5 on a HD which had 4 partitions.

Using Disk Utility I deleted one of the 4, intending to slightly grow the 3rd (containing the OS), leaving space for a new partition to install El Capitan.

This has been my practice up to now when a new version comes out.

I booted to another HD and deleted the partition, but it then proceeded to resize the 3rd partition YoodenVranx to use all the free space.

There seems to be no way to change the Partition Layout, or resize the partition.

I rebooted and used diskutil to list the current state.

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Fenchurch               80.0 GB    disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS BxxxxxData              70.0 GB    disk0s3
   4:          Apple_CoreStorage                         349.0 GB   disk0s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s5
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS YoodenVranx            *348.6 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s4

To get some additional un-allocated disk space on disk0 to create a new partition you have to shrink your CoreStorage Volume Group and all subsequent CoreStorage items.

To resize the CoreStorage Volume Group in your case you have to use the Terminal booted to an external boot drive.

Preparation:

Backup your data.
Detach any external drive (especially your external Time Machine backup drive) except your external boot drive.
Boot from your external drive or a bootable installer thumb drive (Mavericks or Yosemite)/a thumb drive containing a full system (Mavericks or Yosemite).

or

Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.
The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot to a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an apple/akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Modify CoreStorage stack:

Open Disk Utility and check your disks for errors. Repair them and quit Disk Utility.
Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal

First you should get an overview of your disks and the partition layout:

Enter diskutil list:

Example listing:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Fenchurch               80.0 GB    disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS BxxxxxData              70.0 GB    disk0s3
   4:          Apple_CoreStorage                         349.0 GB   disk0s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s5
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *100.1 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS BlinkenDonx              99.9 GB    disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS YoodenVranx            *348.6 GB   disk2
                         Logical Volume on disk0s4

with disk0: your internal disk, disk1: a fictional external boot drive with 100 GB containing your boot volume (BlinkenDonx) and disk2: your CoreStorage Volume Group YoodenVranx residing in disk0s4.
Enter diskutil cs list

Example listing:

  CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group A629E051-D7B0-4B8C-A803-074F62704636
    =========================================================
    Name:         YoodenVranx
    Status:       Online
    Size:         349046696192 B (349.0 GB)
    Free Space:   16777216 B (16.8 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 90C09FC0-4215-4871-901B-70E2C9C7D464
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     349046696192 B (349.0 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family F6962E38-50E4-4458-BFE6-CF2E179352F5
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume BD36C73D-860D-4DC6-B125-AD624F448B88
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk2
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          348696696192 B (348.6 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            Yes (no decryption required)
            LV Name:               YoodenVranx
            Volume Name:           YoodenVranx
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

Now resize the CoreStorage volume with

diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID size

with LVUUID: UUID of the logical volume and size: the final size of your CoreStorage volume.
Examples:

diskutil cs resizeStack BD36C73D-860D-4DC6-B125-AD624F448B88 300g

to shrink it to 300 GB

diskutil cs resizeStack BD36C73D-860D-4DC6-B125-AD624F448B88 295400m

to shrink it to 295.4 GB

Your Recovery HD should be moved automatically.
To add an additional partition for your future El Capitan volume enter first:

sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0

to get an overview

Example listing:

gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=500119476736; sectorsize=512; blocks=976757816
gpt show: /dev/disk0: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 976757815
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  156250000      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  156659640  136718750      3  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  293378390  544921872      4  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  838300262    1269536      5  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  839569798  137187985
  976757783         32         Sec GPT table
  976757815          1         Sec GPT header

with i=1: EFI 2: Fenchurch 3: BxxxxxData 4: Apple_CoreStorage 5: Recovery HD and about 70.2 GB free space (assuming you shrunk your CoreSorage volume to ~279 GB in the previous step to be able to create a new 70 GB volume).
To create a new volume with gpt you have to unmount all mounted volumes on disk0 (first the CoreStorage volume, which has its own disk identifier disk2 but resides on disk0, then all other mounted volumes on disk0)

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk2
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0

Now add a new JHFS+ volume with gpt:

sudo gpt add -b StartBlock -i IndexNumber -s SizeOfVolume -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

StartBlock is the number of the first block in the unallocated space and NumberOfBlocks is the number of free blocks or smaller. NumberOfBlocks has to be dividable through 8!

For the example above that's:

sudo gpt add -b 839569798 -i 6 -s 137187984 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

Enter exit and quit Terminal.
Open Disk Utility and erase your newly created partition disk0s6 (Journaled HFS+) and rename it.
Then check your shrunk CoreStorage volume for errors.
Quit Disk Utility.
Reboot to your main volume.


Customize Lock Screen to show Sleep button or allow BTT shortcuts to work in Lock Screen Use case: I am logged in, at one point I locked the machine, and the Lock Screen is being displayed, prompting for a password.

MacOS catalina - 10.15.3

I am looking for a way to Sleep the machine without having to put the password to unlock. Via shortcut while in the Lock Screen, or via adding a button/menu item in the Lock Screen.

I couldn't find any way to customize the lock screen in MacOS.

I tried setting up shortcuts with Better touch tool - the shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl+Cmd+Options+) work fine while the machine is unlocked, but do not work in the lock screen.
I also tried setting up trackpad shortcuts which don’t work on lock screen
Finally I also tried creating a MacOS "normal" shortcut (Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcut > All Apps, menu item = "Sleep"), which also works fine while logged in + unlocked but does not work in the lock screen

Why I want this: I setup the machine to not sleep while AC power is ON, this is my preferred setting while in the office. On occasion, say at the end of the day, I still want the machine to enter sleep mode. Often, I find the machine in Lock Screen mode.

Limitations of macOS

macOS's Lock Screen is not customisable.

Third Party Tools

Third party tools, such as Power Manager, can be used to customise your Mac's energy saving settings and schedule.

Disclaimer: I work on Power Manager, so feel free to ask technical questions about how it can be used.


What is this dollar sign ($) icon in my Menu Bar? It just appeared this most recent time I opened my mac and I don't remember installing anything with this logo. It doesn't show any options for me to do anything when I click on it either. Have I been hacked?

This is because you are using an expired trial version of iStat Menu Status. The app will display a dollar sign icon instead of the system stats icon.


Is it possible to NetBoot into Windows? I have a MacBook Air (2013) and I would like to run (that is, boot into) Windows without creating a partition for it. I also want to keep it mobile within an office area, so I would prefer not to use an external HD or flash drive.

Is it possible to use NetBoot to boot into Windows via WiFi?

There are two questions here: can you netboot anything via WiFi, and can you netboot windows?

Historically netbooting over WiFi has been problematic. This may have been fixed in recent models (my newest computer isn't). If you can netboot via WiFi you can boot anything that is netbootable.

Now for netbooting windows. Pre-EFI windows probably won't work unless you use weird tricks like using bootcamp to load a linux boot loader off another partition and use it to load ipxe from disk to load older operating systems from the network, but this makes wifi even more difficult. Netbooting WindowsPE works well but reboots at around 70 hours, Other versions of windows may be possible to net boot with iscsi but I have not tried.


See other months on Apple Watch Calendar? How can I see months other than the present one on an Apple Watch in the built-in Calendar app?

I don't believe you can. However, as others have suggested in the comments, there are third party apps you can use that will do the job. I suggest using Sunrise Calendar. You can integrate it with your iCloud and Google calendars (and I believe some other calendars), and it has a day-by-day view on the Apple Watch that works nicely (not your typical calendar view, but it works, showing every day of that month and other months). If you want to see the days in the next month, just keep on scrolling down and tapping "Load more" until you are at the desired month. You can't see each entire month, but this way, you can at the very least see every single day of many months in the future, including the days on which you have no events, which is the feature I'm assuming you're looking for.

UPDATE: Over time, I've found a few other apps that may help, though there are none that show you the entire year, month by month, at a glance.

Week Agenda:
You can easily view each day of multiple months with this app, but you'll have to tap on arrow keys to scroll through all of the days.

Add Event:
Though to create reminders/alerts and repeating events, you'd need to buy an in app purchase, this app will let you add calendar events to the default calendar on your phone for free. This is not what you were looking for, but it may prove helpful given that your question was in regards to calendars.

I have seen plenty of apps that replicate the functionality of the original Calendar app that comes natively with the watch, but they only show one month at a time.

If you're willing to deviate from apps that are meant for calendaring, another solution would be to use something like Exhibition, which allows you to view selected photos on the watch. If you have a square photo of the desired month(s) on a calendar, you could always put them on the app and view them on your watch that way.

UPDATE 2: Now that Sunrise has been discontinued, another alternative you can look into is Coyomi. The little calendar app has all the functionality you were looking for when you first asked this question: it displays calendars for the upcoming months on your Apple Watch or your iPhone's Today View.


batch rename pdf files by content I have a big pile of pdf's and I would like to batch rename them by content. (They are all searchable). And I'd like to do so using command line interface.

They are all payslips so they have a constant form, and I'd like to rename by date.

Currently they are named: payslip100 .. payslip308

The string for renaming would be the date component in
Payment Date:   15/4/2016

I have installed pdfgrep using home-brew and am searching using
pdfgrep -HC 15 "Payment Date:" paySlip.pdf

which returns paySlip.pdf:Payment Date:   8/7/2016

I have attached my final working code in a reply.

After some efforts I have come to a useful result !!
sed syntax is quite confusing and I am quite happy to exist in a state where it works without knowing quite why.

#!/bin/bash
for file in *.pdf
do
    # return file name and date in form "Payment Date:   8/7/2016"
    date=$(pdfgrep -C 15 "Payment Date:" "$file")
    echo $date

    # now replace / with - to make naming file easier
    date2=$(echo "$date" | sed 's,/,-,g')
    echo $date2

    # use date string to rename : YYYY-mm-payslip-dd-mm-YYYY.pdf
    new=$(echo "$date2" | sed 's,\Payment Date:\ *\(.*\)-\(.*\)-\(.*\),\3-\2-\payslip-\1-\2-\3.pdf,')
    echo mv "$file" "$new"
done

I used pdfgrep which was installed using homebrew (found on another answer I can't find right now).

I needed to change "/" for file name.
Using the forward slash as sed syntax is not necessary, and can be replaced by other characters. Hence using "," instead of "/"
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17379293/replace-forward-slash-with-double-backslash-enclosed-in-double-quotes

I found there were variable spaces in $date which necessitated the ..Payment Date:\ *\...

I added year and month to start of file name for organising purposes.


How do I make the folders and files wrap on Finder in Mac OSX? The two screenshot below show what I mean. This is a window maximized:

This is the same window but at half the screen width:

Now, you can clearly see that the folders and files are not all showing when Finder is half the width of the screen. The remaining folders and files are still to the right of the screen and if you expand Finder to your right, you can see them.

I don't really like this behaviour. In Windows Explorer, if you have files and folders displayed along the full width of the screen, when you shrink Windows Explorer to half the width of the screen, the folders and file rearrange themselves so everything is still visible on screen.

How can I get the same effect on Mac?

Right click in the window [not over an icon]

To one-time reorganise -
Clean Up By > [any choice]
To permanently reorganise [live updating] -
Arrange By >[anything except None]


Different values for du and du -h On the command line, du seems to return twice the numeric value returned by du -h.

Apparently, du -h resembles the actual file size, so what's the plain du value representing?

-h "Human-readable" output.  Use unit suffixes: Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte and Petabyte.

If -h is not given, the sizes are given in 512-byte blocks.


Is Mac Pro Airport Extreme simultaneous dual-band? Can the Airport Extreme in a Mac Pro be used to create a network that is simultaneously dual-band such as the Airport Extreme base station?

The Mac Pro is a 5,1 with the AirPort Extreme  (0x14E4, 0x8E) card in it using the
Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.131.36.1) firmware.

I’m 90% (I leave that 10% just in case) ;), that the Wi-Fi card that ships with a Mac Pro’s is not capable of sharing the ethernet connection (that connects to Internet) over the Wi-Fi in dual band mode. The reason for this is that the very same Airport Express is not able to do that (and it’s a dedicated piece of hardware). You can infer that from two things:

It’s not mentioned in Apple’s website that the Airport Express (or Mac Pro) have simultaneous dual band, which would be required for what you want.
It is mentioned that (and I quote): “Speed and range will be less if an 802.11a/b/g product joins the network”. That means, that although they can use either 2.4Ghz or 5.0Ghz, they cannot use both at the same time, and when a slower 2.4 device (using a/b/g) joins, the antenna must switch to that speed, because they only have one antenna.

The Airport Base Station (Airport Extreme), on the other hand, mentions that in the very front page: “AirPort Extreme operates in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands simultaneously and offers even better performance and range.”. Seeing is believing ;)

So the answer to your question is: No, the Airport Extreme card on a Mac Pro (or any other Wi-Fi Mac Computer for the matter) as of November 2010, is not capable of using a Wi-Fi connection in simultaneous dual-band; not for sharing, not as a client either.


Iphone 4 won't update past a 7.1.2 I have a IPhone 4  model number A1349 an it won't update past a 7.1.2 it says my software is up to date but I know the latest software is at the least a 8.4.
Why is that?

The latest iOS version supported by iPhone 4 is 7.1.2. There is no official way to install iOS 8 or newer on older iDevices.

You can find a compatability list on Wikipedia.


how would I set the default web browser for the root user How do I change the default browser for root in OS X 10.8.3

Do I need to enable the root user first?

Launch this from the terminal:

sudo -u root /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome

It will ask you whether you want to set Google Chrome as your default browser. I assume the same technique works for Firefox and most browsers.

I had the same problem when running Skype as root and it fixed my problem (it opens links in Chrome instead of Safari now).


Can you remap keys to only be used while using VMware? I've just started using VMware, and I am admittedly a novice Mac user. Anyways, I installed Windows 7 on my iMac, and I've been playing this little indie game that requires the use of the insert and home keys. My keyboard doesn't have those keys available.

Is there a way to remap keys so that they are only remapped within Windows? If not, what is my best option?

The answer to the question is yes, you can.

VMware Fusion (from v2) provides this built-in to the application (and incidentally Parallels provides almost identical functionality)

Under VMware Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse you can turn on/off the mapping of keys to other functions.

This document over on VMware's document repository itemises how.

This video over on Vimeo shows how it works in practice (the video shows it working in Fusion 2, but the functionality hasn't changed drastically since).


Changing my administrator user's username has removed privileges I've taken over my wife's Mac mini running osx high sierra.
I was in a rush and went into system preferences, clicked on the current user (advanced options), which was named 'user', which was also the administrator, and changed the name to 'grant'. This didn't end up changing the username. I then tried to create another administrator user called 'grant'.

I logged out. When I logged back in the only user available to log in with was 'user'. When I opened user preferences I see that 'user' is no longer an administrator.

I now have no way of accessing an administrator. When I try move files into the applications folder it asks for admin username and password. I've tried every combination of 'user' and 'grant' and nothing works.

Any help getting me access to an admin user will be appreciated.

Here is the screen where I try remove the file in single user mode

If it's not already, make sure your Mac mini has an up-to-date backup.

Then follow these steps:

Shut down your Mac mini
Power up your Mac mini and immediately press and hold the command + S keys
Keep the keys down until you see text on the screen
Now enter the following command:

/sbin/fsck -fy

and press enter
Next enter the following command:

/sbin/mount -uw /

and press enter
Now enter the following command:

rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

and press enter
Finally, enter the reboot command

and press enter

Your Mac mini should reboot and you can log in normally, after which point the Setup Assistant will launch. Now you need to create a new admin user. Don't worry, your other user accounts should be intact.  NOTE: You should choose a new user name for this admin account.

Once you're back up and running you can go to Apple > System Preferences > Users & Groups and select the Allow user to administer this computer checkbox for the 'grant' user.


Cannot Connect to the App Store I have an App Store update indicated on my App store icon, but when I click on it to go to the App store I get the message >Cannot Connect to App Store

There are two places you need to check, both under "Settings": "Mobile" and "App Store." Under "Mobile", find Use mobile data for: and scroll down until you find App Store. Make sure the switch is toggled to green. Next, go back to Settings and scroll down until you see "iTunes & App Store." Click on that and make sure "Use mobile data" is toggled to green.

If you are in the US or another region, "Mobile" may be labelled "Cellular" and "Use mobile data" may be "Use cellular data"

Here are two screen shots to help direct you:

And this:


Screen Sharing without Username and Password login When I connect to a Mac with Screen Sharing enabled, I get a screen which asks for the Mac's username and password which I need to type in before I can see the actual desktop.

Is there any way to stop this so I do not need to login?

Thanks

If you have identical accounts with the same credentials set up on both Macs, and you are currently logged in as that account, I do not believe that it will prompt you at all when you connect to the other Mac.


Easiest way for two people to switch an iPhone 4 and 4s I have an iPhone 4 and my wife has a 4s.  We want to trade phones.  Once we get Verizon to reassign the phone numbers,  what's the easiest way to migrate the apps, settings and data between phones?  BTW, the 4 syncs with iTunes on windows 7 and the 4s is paired with a OSX Lion machine.

Connect both phones to their current respective computers
Open iTunes and perform a backup on both phones
Swap the phones to the opposite computers.
Once swapped, click on the Restore button in iTunes, then click
Don't Back Up.
When iTunes finishes the restoring process, set up your 'new' phone
from a backup, making sure to click on your old phone's latest
backup (the one you just completed.)

This should restore the new phone to your old phone's last condition.


I want to sync my previously never synced iPhone to a Mac. Is there a risk of data loss? I want to sync my previously never synced iPhone (filled with 2 years of pics & music) to my mother's Mac. Is there any risk of data loss?
It has never been linked to a computer. I have many pictures & videos of my baby & don't want to lose them!

Yes - there always is a risk of data loss even though the software (iTunes and iOS) are designed to let you make a backup and transfer all data before it erases anything.

Best to go online / call apple or visit a store and research how to prevent an automatic sync for your version of iTunes and the steps to back up / transfer that content before you start.

Without knowing your iOS version and iTunes version it's hard to be more specific. It should go fine, but best to be prepared beforehand.


How do I easily delete characters in a TextEdit document which I did not type? I have typed a 2 page document using Apple's TextEdit on a Mid 2007 iMac running OS X Yosemite 10.10.5. After closing in RTF format and later reopening, I saw many characters (backslashes, etc.) that I didn't type in.

How do I correct that easily (Help section didn't help)?

It sounds like you perhaps opened the doc as plain text instead of rtf.  I think you can set it to open as rtf in the Text Edit Preferences.


Is there an easy way to resize screenshot in macOS markup editor? When you take a screenshot by pressing Command + Shift + 4, a preview pops up on bottom right. If you click it a program opens up, which I believe is called markup editor. Now in this program you can do most things. However, I've not been able to find a way to resize the screenshot.

How do I find an easy way to resize the screenshot? I am running macOS Catalina.

The markup editor doesn't have a control to resize screenshot. Instead you can skip clicking on the screenshot and let it get saved (which is by default on Desktop). Once it is saved, you can open it in Preview.app and use the Adjust Size... command under the Tools menu to resize it.


Wireless 802.11ac and New MacBook Air Just bought the new MacBook Air, 13" and the new AirPort Extreme Base Station. I am curious as to how I get the max connection? Option + Click on my WiFi shows I am connected only using "n" and on the 2.4Ghz frequency. Why would it not be on "ac" and 5Ghz?

Operating at 5GHz means that (in the margin - there are other factors) 802.11ac will penetrate walls, ceilings, floors less well than 802.11n at 2.4GHz.

The AirPort Utility allows you to setup a separate Network Name for the 5GHz frequency (Wireless Tab / Click Wireless Options). This means that you can explicitly select whether to connect a device via n/2.4GHz or ac/5GHz.

If you do this you can use /System/Library/CoreServices/Wireless Diagnostics  (via Option+Click on WiFi) described here: How to troubleshoot 802.11ac bandwidth problems (note don't continue with the default assistant - select Utilities from the Window menu) to examine the relative performance of ac/n from different locations.

In my case I observed that with clear line of sight ac reported a Tx Rate of 867 Mbps compared to 145 Mbps for n. In contrast, several rooms away ac dropped off to the extent that n had better performance.

Reverting the changes above (so both 2.4GHz and 5GHz have the same network name) and repeating the tests, saw the connection automatically switch from ac to n as signal dropped off.

In contrast, I've not (yet) seen an automatic switch from n to ac at a location where powering Wifi off/on gets (and holds) the ac connection.

While less than perfect in terms of "just doing the right thing", this is perhaps understandable - triggering a switch when quality drops below some threshold rather than continuously looking for a "better" connection when what you've got (albeit n rather than ac) is rated as "excellent". Of course this is an OS X behaviour ... perhaps Mavericks will address it?


Intel QuickSync on OSX Are there any Encoder on OSX that takes advantage of Intel QuickSync? Its Hardware Accelerated H.264 Encoder built into Intel CPU.

Obviously Apple has been using it themselves for AirPlay. But from What i remembered ( 2013 ) Intel never had an SDK on OSX, and Apple never opened up an API. Is this still the case?

Using Apple Compressor, it's automatic, depending on your machine & settings.

Hardware acceleration is enabled automatically within Compressor. If your system has the right set of chips, and you select the right compression setting, hardware encoding kicks in.

Hardware encoding is available on all shipping Macs that use an i5 or i7, Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processor; except the new Mac Pro.
Hardware encoding is applied to QuickTime and MPEG-4 compression that uses the H.264 codec; but not to Blu-ray Disc compression.
Hardware encoding cannot be used for multi-pass encoding. In fact, turning on multi-pass encoding turns off hardware encoding.

Source & for further analysis : Compressor 4.1: Hardware Acceleration


Grey bar appearing over full screen apps on external monitor This happens in VLC, iTerm, Chrome, maybe others where a grey-ish bar appears where the menu bar would normally be and if I mouse over it the menu bar appears. In Chrome this sometimes appears when I have created a new window on my main screen, make it fullscreen, and move it to the second display, but if I exit full screen and re-enter full screen it works, but not for VLC or iTerm. Any ideas on how to fix this?

The third chrome image is what it looks like when it's working correctly (and the mouse is hovering to shown the menu bar).

If you don't care about it, you could remove the second menu bar in the settings. It should fix the problem.

http://www.mactrast.com/2013/10/disable-second-menu-bar-os-x-mavericks/


MacBook Pro Suddenly Goes to Sleep and Will Not Wake Up I have 15-inch, Mid 2010 MacBook Pro running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5.

It will occasionally (every other day) without warning go to sleep. I can see the sleep indicator on, but otherwise it is completely unresponsive to the keyboard or mouse pad. Pressing cap locks will not even show the green light.

I have noticed this happening

During boot up (so it is not a hot battery issue).
Rendering a PDF
Ejecting an external disk

These symptoms will happen when the laptop is powered by the battery or from the wall outlet.

Ultimately, I have to press the power button for several seconds in order to do a hard reboot.

Are there any suggestions on how to diagnose and remedy issue?

Edit per request from Graham:

Time stamp                Domain                Message                                                                     Duration    Delay
==========                ======                =======                                                                     ========    =====
UUID: DC..
1/5/14 5:50:53 PM MST    sleep                  Clamshell Sleep: Using BATT (Charge:94%)                                    12544 secs
1/5/14 9:19:57 PM MST    wake                   Wake due to EC LID0: Using AC (Charge:100%)                                 1153 secs
1/5/14 9:19:57 PM MST    hibernatestats         hibmode=3 standbydelay=0                                                                wr=21014 ms
Sleep/Wakes since boot:14   Dark Wake Count in this sleep cycle:0

Time stamp                Domain                Message                                                                     Duration    Delay
==========                ======                =======                                                                     ========    =====
UUID: B6..
1/5/14 9:39:10 PM MST    sleep                  Clamshell Sleep: Using AC (Charge:100%)                                     2502 secs
1/5/14 10:20:52 PM MST   wake                   Wake due to EC LID0 EHC2: Using BATT (Charge:99%)
1/5/14 10:20:52 PM MST   hibernatestats         hibmode=3 standbydelay=0                                                                wr=18980 ms
Sleep/Wakes since boot:15   Dark Wake Count in this sleep cycle:0

Time stamp                Domain                Message                                                                     Duration    Delay
==========                ======                =======                                                                     ========    =====
UUID: 9A..
1/8/14 11:01:05 PM MST   sleep                  Clamshell Sleep: Using BATT (Charge:96%)                                    32820 secs
1/9/14 8:08:05 AM MST    wake                   Wake due to EC LID0: Using BATT (Charge:90%)
Sleep/Wakes since boot:1   Dark Wake Count in this sleep cycle:0

Time stamp                Domain                Message                                                                     Duration    Delay
==========                ======                =======                                                                     ========    =====
UUID: 49...
1/9/14 9:51:08 PM MST    sleep                  Clamshell Sleep: Using BATT (Charge:95%)                                    9838 secs
1/10/14 12:35:06 AM MST  wake                   Wake due to EC LID0: Using BATT (Charge:93%)

I had the same issue.. I updated to 10.9.3 and this solved my issue


Screen Brightness keeps automatically adjusting to 100% I have a late 2011 Mac book Pro, which I have kept in mint condition. Recently, my brightness has kept adjusting itself to full 100% brightness on the display, and keeps adjusting itself every few minutes even if it's still at 100% brightness. I have tried un-checking the automatically adjust brightness option and I still haven't been able to stop this from happening. Please help!!!!

Since you have already un-checked the "Auto-adjust Brightness" option in the display settings, try resetting the System Management Controller (SMC). This may resolve the issues related to power management. Follow these guidelines to reset the SMC. One of the indicators that your SMC might need to be reset:

  The display backlight doesn't respond correctly to ambient light
  changes on Mac computers that have this feature.


Bulk decrypt multiple PDF files I have received a selection of PDF files (about 40) that are all encrypted with the same password. I'd rather not have them be encrypted because it's annoying to enter the password every time and I already have full disk encryption anyways.

How can I decrypt all of these PDF files without having to manually open and re-save each and every file? I looked in Automator but I only found an option to Encrypt PDF, not Decrypt.

I'd use a third-party utility named qpdf that can be compiled from source, or installed via Homebrew, i.e.:

brew install qpdf

Then change directory to where the encrypted PDF files are, assuming they are in a directory by themselves, and use the following compound command, e.g.:

for f in *.[pP][dD][fF]; do qpdf --decrypt --password=password "${f}" "${f%.*}-decrypted.${f##*.}"; done


Reassign shortcut with variable in it I made a shortcut with Automator to open a file with VS Code in Finder. But I can't assign it to the desired keyboard shortcut (command + option + c) because it is already taken by 'Copy "filename" as Pathname' shortcut. I can't reassign in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> App Shortcuts because it has a variable name in it.

Automator script to open VSCode

Here is how I used the control + command + c keys in Keyboard Maestro.  It's a paid app with a free trial period.  Frankly, I didn't have much luck defining apple's keyboard short cuts. It was all confusing to me.

Start up Keyboard Maestro
https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/

Keyboard Maestro does come with an assist to help you create your first action.  It's a little confusing at first to figure out what button to click when. They do have a forum.

click on the plus icon to create a new action

pick what key you want to be the hotkey.  ( not shown )

add a new action. request to see the list of actions

create new action.

Pick your action.

Resulting page.


Senior Apple Customer Service Contact Required I’ve currently got an issue with Apple that issue being that I’m attempting to recover purchases that I’ve paid money to Apple for an Apple ID that I’ve forgotten the password to.

Unfortunately I cannot reset the password as I’ve got an outdated (and since removed) two step verification setup on the account, and I cannot locate the required recovery key to reset it.

All other reset options were taken away by Apple when two step verification is enabled. I’ve had several phone calls and online chats with Apple advisors, Senior advisors and iTunes Support and I keep getting told one of three things “sorry we need password verification to access the account” or “purchases can not be transferred to another Apple ID” or it’s an Apple “privacy” policy.

Whilst I reluctantly accept that I’m locked out and cannot regain access my account I do not accept that I have to readily forfeit everything that I’ve paid good money for to Apple for.

Apple unfortunately haven’t thought through the account recovery process for accounts with two step enabled properly and have in my opinion dropped the ball.

The only assistance I’ve received is an email from iTunes Support with a feedback link, I’ve chosen not to use this as it is exactly what is says “feedback” and Apple advise on the feedback page that they will not respond to individual comments. I actually want my case to be looked into and I want my primary Apple ID credited with everything I’ve paid for and I require a written response.

I previously asked an Apple advisor for a senior point of contact/department where I can take up my grievance and the only contact that they could give me was a surface mail address in another country, this is totally unacceptable especially for a technology company.

I’ve also been told by an Apple Senior Advisor that they can’t due to the way in which their system is engineered see an Apple ID’s details/history without an account holders password.

I’m located in Australia and I’m looking for contact details for an Apple Department that is capable of accessing Apple ID’s and seeing its history without a password being needed and has the authority to credit an account. Law enforcement agencies seem to get what they want without to much trouble and they don’t have passwords this according to the public disclosures on Apples Privacy webpage.

Apologies for rambling on, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Apple makes it easy to request legal access to things you can’t get when you can’t reset the password via normal channels.

https://www.apple.com/legal/more-resources/

If you’re not a lawyer or part of the government, you probably won’t get much help there. Same trying to get Apple support to disclose information or rescue an account if you can’t just follow the instructions for forgotten passwords / lock out.

Apple surely has their people trained and they know full well what you want and they are saying no. If you’ve been through 3 people, you’re not going to get a better audience by stalking / brow beating someone in my experience. Apple said no to the US FBI for unlocking phones and accounts, so they’re likely not going to cave with someone that’s not able to unlock purchases on their account.


ID cards in Wallet app On the iOS 12 page on the Apple website, it says that you can add ID cards, however, in the app, I see no option to do this. I am running the latest iOS 12. How do I add an ID card?

The specific feature is support for student IDs and will be available to students in participating universities. As of now three universities Duke University, the University of Alabama, and the University of Oklahoma have it available. Johns Hopkins, Santa Clara and Temple Universities will bring the capability by the end of this school year.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/10/apple-adds-support-for-contactless-student-id-cards-in-wallet/

Instructions on how to use this feature if you are a student at one of the universities that has it available can be found here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208965


Will Time Machine work effectively with a WD MyCloud NAS device? I recently purchased a Western Digital MyCloud NAS device. I'm wondering if there would be a problem with using it for backups with Time Machine on a Mac mini (late 2012) running OS X 10.9.5. Is there anything I should know?

I've had the same issues as Evert. I have now given up and pulled the plug on my WD My Cloud. Although I have seen that some people are getting on okay with it, most of what I have read concurs with my own finding. It is no good as a time machine back up. It is terribly slow. My last successful back up, which added approx 250gb to my already backed up 1.25tb took 7 days. Prior to the verification messages now encountered I would wait a day or two to get passed the 'Preparing data' message. I can no longer even access the wd my drive as a timemachine and it no longer recognises the info, even though the amount of space on the WD cloud drive indicates the backed up info is still on there.
I am converting back to a usb external hard drive.
I would recommend buying anything rather than the WD MyCloud if using it with a MAC.


Running a script with administrator privileges from a standard client terminal I have the strong feeling I'm trying to reinvent the wheel, but I did spend some time without finding an existing solution.

I have an already working shell script with several sudos.
Its first target was admin users, so everything was ok.
But now I'm hitting a roadblock for standard users.
Sudo won't work, and as I must run this script on any machine any time, editing sudoers is not an option.

How can I rewrite this script so that it asks for admin user and password once, and then uses this credentials to run as many su as needed? What I'm particularly trying to do is feed password to one-line su but, security risk aside, I've never been able to use something as 'echo  | su ...', as seen on forums.

Thanks

Generally speaking, you write the script as if an admin will be executing it and you check to see if the user has root privileges to run it. In all of my bash scripts where the script needs root privileges, I have the following code snipit that validates if the user has the correct privileges:

# Validates that user is root; exits if not
echo "Checking Root Privileges"
if [ $(id -u) -ne 0 ]
  then exit 1;
  else echo "User is root";
fi

Basically, all it's doing is checking the UID is 0 for the currently logged in user.  You can try it on the command line:

$ id -u                # My login
503

$ sudo id -u           # Root privileges
0

Running the script....

There are a couple of ways you can run the script from a login account that doesn't have admin privileges:

add them to the sudoers file or add them to the wheel group
add them to a group (besides wheel) that has sudo privileges
run the script remotely via ssh with admin credentials
run the script as a launchd plist as a Launch Daemon (runs as root)


Wrong number text that resulted in Maybe? I got a text from a wrong number saying "This is Adam...off tomorrow". Why did my phone say Maybe: Adam?

iOS can detect when someone you don't have in your contacts says "My name is..." or "This is..." and will automatically show that name in the contact information as "Maybe [name]"


Upgrading to Sierra on MacBook Pro opened macOS Utilities? I'm not a expert by any means and am stuck with upgrading my MacBook Pro to Sierra. I checked all the sys reqs before I went ahead and made a full back up - all looked good to go.

I downloaded Sierra from the App Store and followed the on-screen steps to set the upgrade in motion. Never had an issue updating OS so I went and made dinner and came back a bit later to find what appears to be the start up screen with the macOS Utilities window open asking me if I want to restore a Time Machine back up, reinstall macOS, get help online, or use the disk utility. So I'm not sure if there were any error messages during the process.

I can't find any reference to this happening online - perhaps because it's super basic and everyone else knows what to do!

I don't want to make it a bigger mess or do anything unnecessary like restore from back up if this is just a failed upgrade that if I restart all will be as if I hadn't tried to upgrade. I now have a sneaking suspicion that my existing operating sys might not have been the one able to go straight to Sierra. Would that have triggered an specific error message? Otherwise I have seen some reference to permissions being the issue - could that be the case?
Can I fix this myself? Or should just take it into an Apple store and pay for support?

It seems like your Mac is booted into the Recovery partition. Shut it down and try to boot it normally - it may not have upgraded at all. Then try the install again. If you have updates for your question, edit your question to add them and then comment on this answer so I notice.

To answer a few of the other questions you had:

I would expect an error message to stick around, so you probably didn't miss one.
I doubt permissions would be an issue as you didn't see an error message.
If upgrading to Sierra was not supported, you probably wouldn't have been able to start the install.
You can almost certainly fix this yourself! Also, the Apple Store may not charge you for this, so it could certainly be worth stopping by.


ReFit background image? Is there a way I can set a background image in ReFit boot loader?
I'd like to use my 1280X800 desktop wallpaper, is that possible?

No. There is no option to change the background to an image, but you can set the color of the background to anything you like.

This involves changing the 'banner' image (rEFIt logo by default). The background color will be set to the color of the top-left part of the banner image.

Changing your banner image involves changing the rEFIt configuration file. Instructions for this can be found at http://refit.sourceforge.net/doc/c3s3_config.html. Hope this helps.


How did a photo magically appear in the iphone contacts? I am not wise to the ways of apple.  I've had an iphone for about 6 months, and this is the first time I noticed this occurring.

I created a new contact by directly entering it into  the Contacts app on the phone.
A little while later, I saw that this new contact has a photo attached to it.

I did not specify that photo. It appears to be the correct photo.

Where did it come from?

I have the phone configured to sync with a GMail Contacts list, from work.
Is that where it comes from?

If someone else entered my name into their contacts list, would they get my picture?  How would I set it up so that they do?

thanks.

Did you enable iOS 6's Facebook Integration? It will grab updated contact information and pictures from anyone in your contacts you have on Facebook if you enable the Contacts syncing.


Do I need Parallels Pro to run Visual Studio? I'm considering installing Parallels to use Visual Studio for my personal use. Can I use the standard $80 version of Parallels? Or do I really need to commit to $100 a year for the Pro version?

In general, the pro version offers support for larger memory and more cpu cores. The said VS plugin offers cross-platform debugging and testing, as well as many other automation and command-line support for it.

This doesn't, however restrict that you're able to install VS on the virtual machine.

Therefore it would be possible for your use case.


macOS Yosemite->High Sierra update not sticking I need to download exam software for my computer, but the software does not support Yosemite, my current OS.  Preposterously, this $100 software costs $50 to "redownload", so I need to be absolutely sure it will work on this computer before trying it out.

I went to the App Store, checked "Updates", confirmed that macOS High Sierra was in the roster, and clicked the button to commence the update.  My computer shut down, I saw the expected loading bar, my computer restarted, everything looks fine.

I check "About This Mac" and it still says OS X Yosemite 10.10.5.  www.whatsmyos.com says I still have OS X 10.10.5.
Typing "sw_vers" into the terminal prints out "ProductVersion:  10.10.5".

I check the App Store, and under "Updates Installed in the Last 30 Days" there is a row that clearly reads "macOS High Sierra" and "Installed May 6, 2019".  The top of the page reads "No Updates are Available" so I can't attempt to update the OS again.

What's going on here?

"What's going on here?," Indeed.

I can't guess, it could be a damaged disk or disk structure, permissions issue, yadda yadda yadda...

But there are a few things you can try. Note these suggestions are going to be kind of generic due to the nature of the problem and because you didn't include your Mac model in the question. It would be best if you added that to your original question.

Boot into Recovery Mode ⌘ CommandR when restarting your Mac. When you have a menu bar available start disk utility, select your drive and click on First Aid. If the drive shows clean when First Aid has completed you can quit and reboot normally. If it shows problems (fixed) then re-run First Aid until you get no errors. If it is unable to fix, add the error messages to your original question.

Now, look in your Applications folder for an app called "Install Mac OS High Sierra" or something like that. Once you have verified you have the app I would use the freeware installer creator DiskMaker X a blank 8GB USB key and make a bootable High Sierra install key.

Once you have that, insert it in any USB port and reboot your Mac holding the ⌥ Option key. Select the installer USB key when the boot disk selector appears and let the Mac boot from that. It will take a little longer than usual.

Follow the prompts to install High Sierra. Important to note you should NOT use Disk Utility to reformat/repartition your drive, just install right over top of what is already there. An upgrade install.

Report back on those results.

Note if that fails you may need to back up your Mac and use the installer to reformat the boot drive and then install High Sierra and restore from your backup.


What's /System/Volumes/Data? New mac user here (Linux background). I'm running macOS Catalina (Beta5). I've noticed there are 5 volumes in my main disk container.
One is mounted at /, that I understand, it's the system, another is /System/Volumes/Data, which I tough it would be the Linux /home, but it's not, so what it it?

Also what are the other two unmounted volumes? One might be the recovery one, but the other? Thanks!

Catalina introduces a new file system layout. Where Mojave and earlier had one filesystem that combines the system and user data, Catalina has a read-only system volume and a read-write user volume interleaved on a folder by folder basis using firmlinks.
The easy way to move forward is just save your additional files to /usr/local and other traditional places where Apple expects user modifications to their default system to be saved.

Check out What's New in Apple File Systems from #WWDC19
PDF summary of the above video presentation

Some of the implementation is quite normal for Unix/Linux like sparse files not being allocated and copy on write and cloning of an entire file system / snapshots. Other items like Firmlinks that act as “wormholes” between two containers / filesystems to present an unified file tree, System Integrity Protection and APFS specific features are quite new still to everyone.
You can see this better with df or diskutil apfs list command line tools than the Disk Utility view.


GitHub-Style Collaborative iTunes Backup? Alright, here's a funny question. I'm a DJ, and I use iTunes locally on my MacBook Air for my music. I also have my backup hard drive, to which I have copied my iTunes library to as the master storage. This backup of the iTunes folder is separate from the Time Machine Backups on the same disk.

I'd like to have just a select number of songs available on my machine (with it's wonderful, adorable 256GB SSD and all) and the entirety of my library on the external drive. When I get new music, I want to be able to add it to the iTunes library on the master disk so that everything is up to date. The reason for this is so that my fellow DJ can access that hard-drive with her own MacBook Pro to pull from the pool of music, and add to it with her own purchases.

Now, I realize that iTunes allows me to download songs I have previously purchased to my machine. This means I can pull purchases my assistant has made onto my local machine (and vice versa), and then also save them onto the master storage.

My real question is this: is there a way to succinctly sync the iTunes folder Time-Machine-style outside of the typical Time Machine backup location? I suppose it would work a bit like GitHub: there would be a central "repo" which all of the master changes are synced, and my assistant and I can pull what we need from it and add new songs to it, keeping the master storage up to date with every song we own.

The cumbersome way to do this would be to manually drag all of the new purchases into the iTunes Media folder when we buy them. There must be an easier way to do this! We want one big master library that we can easily sync to and pull from. Any cool way to do this?

(P.S. I am a programmer, so any sort of geeky or programmatic way to do this is heartily invited!)

Sounds like you want to do the following:

Have your itunes music stored to an external hard drive on download
Have a subset of the music locally on your laptop
Have a centralized repo, where your fellow DJ(s) can access the music

There are a few problems with a simple rsync between your external drive and their drives:

m4a rights managed files won't play on your friend's laptop without you granting their laptop access
as files are played, some meta data on the files are updated to reflect plays, likes, etc.

Having said that, you can work around the issues if you are willing to forego some of the meta information and if you are ok with authenticating your friends' laptop to use your music.

Dedicated Mac Mini or Mac Laptop or Windows machine running iTunes, with the full library downloaded and shared via the normal Apple Airplay/Network share
Your laptop and your DJ friends' laptops can then view/browse/stream the music from the central box. Meta information preserved as well as no need to move a hard drive around, all music available from one central place.
You may need to authenticate your friends itunes to be able to play your rights managed music.

The external hard drive route is basically the same, except that you basically rsync from your mac mini/archive box to an external drive. Requirement to auth a DJ friend's laptop still applies.

For your laptop which has a subset, you would just choose the songs you want from your library and import them locally into your instance of iTunes.

Re: Github style, probably not the best, since leveraging git would result in massive storage magnification anytime the play counter is updated/etc. Since the files are binary, diffs can't be stored.


Mac, dragging items into desktop folders keeps on opening a finder window immediately I'm not sure why I'm suddenly having this problem since I haven't changed any of my finder preferences. Say I drag an image from the browser to a folder on my desktop, it opens up a finder window for that folder immediately. I know if you hover over a folder for a few seconds the finder window for that folder would pop up but now it just does that as soon as I drop something into the folder, no hovering over it. The delay is set to medium with spring loaded folders checked as usual but I don't understand what's changing its behavior. Hope that makes sense, thank you in advance for the assistance.

This issue seems to correspond to the most recent update for Chrome. No fixes yet, but you may want to track the following discussion on the Chrome forum:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/chrome/report-a-problem-and-get-troubleshooting-help/mac/ZO-96WmY6Co

Edit: Seems like there is a fix now: Uploading to Chrome Version 31.0.1650.8 beta makes this annoying behavior go away. You can upgrade to the beta version here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/beta.html


Using the command line to show the physical and logical size of a folder contents? Background

I can use Finder to view the physical size (bytes) and logical size (on disk). This works for

files, folders (contents), but not volumes:

Alternatively

I can use mdls to get the same metadata information, but that only works for files:

$ mdls Screen\ Shot\ 2018-01-25\ at\ 16.21.06.png
_kMDItemDisplayNameWithExtensions  = "Screen Shot 2018-01-25 at 16.21.06.png"
kMDItemAlternateNames              = (
    "Screen Shot 2018-01-25 at 16.21.06.png"
)
...
kMDItemLogicalSize                 = 54319
kMDItemOrientation                 = 1
kMDItemPhysicalSize                = 57344
...
kMDItemUseCount                    = 1
kMDItemUsedDates                   = (
    "2018-01-25 00:00:00 +0000"
)

Bad luck

I've tried df and du but neither display both physical & logical sizes.

Finally, the question!

Is there a command line method to output the physical and logical file size of a folder (contents) and/or a volume (contents)?

You can use AppleScript to tell Finder to get the ‘size’ or ‘physical size’:

tell application "Finder" to ¬
    get (physical size of folder (POSIX file "/Applications" as alias)) ¬
        / (1000 ^ 3) ¬
        & " GB" as text

This can be ran in command line using osascript:

$ osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to get (physical size of folder (POSIX file "/Applications" as alias)) / (1000 ^ 3) & " GB" as text'
49.212469248 GB
$ osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to get (size of folder (POSIX file "/Applications" as alias)) / (1000 ^ 3) & " GB" as text'
55.858548673 GB


Repeated logging in console On macOS Sierra I am seeing the following logged every 3 seconds.

logd[67]: _handle_cache_delete_with_urgency(0x7f939281eb80, 3, 0)
logd[67]: _volume_contains_cached_data(is /private/var/db/diagnostics/ in /) - YES
logd[67]: 186377856 bytes of purgeable space from log files
logd[67]: _purge_uuidtext only runs at urgency 0 (3)
logd[67]: 0 bytes of purgeable space from uuidtext files

I rebooted into Recovery mode (Command-R during boot) and ran Disk Utility First Aid, with no change in behaviour.

With each run of First Aid I received the following in the Disk Utility list of messages:

resizing core storage logical volume structures ...
resized core storage logical volume ...
growing file system

Which seems odd that each run of First Aid would cause a change to the core storage system.

I'm concerned all of these messages in the log suggests I may have a disk error. Can I safely ignore these? Is my disk failing, or is this normal to have my log files flooded with messages every 3 seconds?

It turns out iStat Menus was the culprit. Upgrading to the latest version resolved the issue.


How to set Mail.app to ask what is the sending address on new mail I have 10 email addresses (ranging from POP, IMAP, and Exchange) setup in my Mail.app. There are 2 addresses I use primarily. But only one can be labeled Default. Therefore, when "inbox" is selected, and a new email is created, it is automatically sending from Default.

Is there ANY way to set Mail.app to ask me which email address I want to send from if it is a newly created email (and not a reply to an email I've received, in reply situations I have no issue)?

Once I hit send, it should then ask me from what address to send from.

The easiest way (at least the one I know of) is simply selecting the mailbox on the left you want to send from, and then click the new mail icon.
It will put as send-address the mailbox you selected on the left.

You can always use the dropdown afterwards if you want it to be another address, but that's the easiest way.
To make it more convenient, set the boxes as top 2 and you can easily select one of both.


How can I stop spaces from switching automatically? I will often use Spaces on Mac OS X 10.5 to switch to another space when a program is busy / unresponsive. Very often, without warning or apparent reason, Spaces will switch back to the first space without my requesting it to do so. Why does it do this and how can i stop it? How can I make spaces only switch in response to my requests?

Stop Spaces from switching spaces due to an app coming to the foreground:

defaults write com.apple.Dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool NO && killall Dock

Or via the GUI: System Prefs > Spaces and then uncheck the checkbox at the bottom: "When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application"

Stop (slow down) Spaces from switching spaces if your mouse presses against the edge of the desktop:

defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-edge-delay -float 60 && killall Dock


Which versions of Adobe Creative Suite will work with Mavericks? I own Adobe CS4, which works perfectly with Mountain Lion. I would like to upgrade to Mavericks, but I'm not sure if CS4 is still supported. Thus my question:

Which versions of Adobe Creative Suite will work with Mavericks?

From this Adobe help page:

  Adobe and Apple have worked closely together to test Adobe® Creative Cloud applications and Adobe Creative Suite 6 applications for reliability, performance and user experience when installed on Intel® based systems running Mac OS X Mavericks. (v10.9). All Adobe CC and CS6 products are compatible, but a few products require updates to the latest builds to work properly. Adobe Photoshop® CS5, CS4 and CS3 were also tested with Mac OS X Mavericks and there are currently no major issues known.


Incompatible Software for next OSX? I understand the move past Snow Leopard meant losing Rosetta, and compatibility with any PPC apps.

Since there are some apps that can't be replaced (for example, old years of TurboTax that I might need to reference) I have a drive to boot Snow Leopard, and one for Yosemite. I was considering the jump to El Capitan, when I saw the question Is VMware Fusion 5.0.5 compatible with OS X El Capitan? which got me wondering the question -

  Before installing a next generation OS, is there any way to find, in
  advance, which apps I have that would be orphaned by the move?

Edit, the answer below from Jean Valjean was what I needed. One app concerning me appeared as follows:

It might be tedious to search many apps, but at least this gives me a chance to view the top ones that will cause me grief.

RoaringApps has an incredibly thorough chart of apps and the various OS versions (OS X, iOS, and Windows!) that they're compatible with.
For reference, a green circle means an app works fine, a yellow circle means it works with some problems, a red circle means it doesn't work, a gray circle means there's conflicting data, and a blue circle means there's no data.
Re your complaint about searching many apps: They're working on a Mac app that'll scan your computer and give you compatibility reports for every app you've got.


YouTube video thumbnails not getting loaded On YouTube webpage, instead of the video thumbnail images, I see only a blue box with a question mark in it. Any video on YouTube does not seems to work either. Can anyone help me? I am not able to find a proper way to solve this error.

Last action performed before encountering the issue: Installing Unity 2018.3 (it is working fine)

I have a mid 2010 13" MacBook Pro running macOS High Sierra 10.13.6

I had a similar issue with the icons thumbnails that shows a blue box with a question mark in it. I'm running a Mac Pro mid-2010 running High Sierra.

I finally got it to work after setting the DNS setting to Google DNS.
Apple > System Preferences > Network > Advanced > DNS Tab
And add Google's DNS servers
Click the plus (+) button below DNS Servers table and insert
8.8.8.8
and
8.8.4.4

Click okay and close Safari/Chrome and hopefully it'll be fixed.


don't need iCloud storage any longer I have a phone now that has more storage, how do I remove what I have stored in iCloud storage?  I don't need to continue paying monthly

If you want to remove all photos, documents, data or disable iCloud library for your account.  Proceed like follow:

On iOS10:
Go to Settings > [your_name] > iCloud > Storage > Manage Storage from there you can disable, delete everything you want.

For iCloud Photo library, you'll have 30 days to download everything stored there.

Update:
To download your photos and videos on your iOS device, go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Photos and select Download and Keep Originals. On your Mac, open Photos, choose Photos > Preferences, then select Download Originals to this Mac.
You can also select the photos and videos that you want to download from iCloud.com.

Further informations can be found here.


Add permanent subtitles to a videoclip I would like to add permanent subtitles to a videoclip. I don't want to use .srt files or similar formats, I'd like to attach the text I want to the movie.

Is there a program that can do this easily on the mac?

Here is a detailed manual how to use handbrake to add subtitles.


MacBook Air CPU core PECI temperature I have a question about my MacBook Air CPU temperature. I've read a lot of similar questions but there's something I can't understand in my experience.

I'm doing some tests because I'm trying to figure out whether my computer would endure a live streaming of 12 hours (it's a school music project). When I run Wirecast the first time CPU core PECI temperature (which I monitor with iStat menus app) gets really high (80°-99°), then I get scared and I tried to stream at a lower video resolution and it seems it works... I mean, fan runs at a very low speed or doesn't run at all and the CPU (if I don't touch anything and leave the computer streaming only) gets a reasonable percentage of about 50%. But there's something strange... the temperature "CPU core PECI" it's still about 80°C-95°C! but if I open up the iStat menus menu the only red-written temperature is "camera proximity" with 64°C.

Does anyone of you know what's going on? Do you think it's dangerous for my computer to make this live streaming?

Here are some things to keep in mind for your streaming event.

If the CPU gets too hot, the MacBook will throttle and reduce clock speed. That could result in dropped frames. Most of the time you will hardly notice the difference.
iStat Menu has a utility to override fan speeds. In your case I would consider cranking up the fan to full speed during the streaming event, unless the noise is an issue.
During the event put something underneath your MacBook so air can circulate below it. That doesn't do miracles but results in 1-2 degrees less and therefore less risk of throttling / dropped frames.

Macs have pretty sophisticated cooling design and CPU temperature is not the only aspect taken into account for controlling fan speed. I would suggest you do another dry run for 2-3 hours. If you don't have issues during that time 12 hours should work as well.


Using VPN configuration which require 'tap' kernel extension on Mac OS Big Sur? I use an institutional VPN service by connecting using tunnelblick and the supplied configuration file. Apparently, the configuration file requires tunnelblick to load the "tap" kernel extension which is no longer allowed by macOS Big Sur. The tunnelblick developers have posted that this issue cannot be fixed: https://tunnelblick.net/cBigSur.html. They suggest disabling SIP to use such configs but even that might not be supported in the future. Is there any other client equivalent to tunnelblick that can be used? Is there any other workaround to make this work?
This is the other linked article: https://tunnelblick.net/cTunTapConnections.html

Viscosity supports TAP on Big Sur.
It costs money though (but it's not that expensive). Hopefully Tunnelblick will go ahead and add it one of these days since Viscosity proved it can be done.


Finder not displaying a folder icon. How do I get it back? In the screenshot above, my Real Estate folder on the right (a dropbox folder) isn't showing the littel blue folder icon. It isn't affecting anything functionally yet it just drives me crazy every time I see it. Is there a way to get it to show?

I found some useful info on this Apple support discussion:

  First verify from Finder>View>Show View Option>Show icon Preview

  If that is check, toggle it off and on.

  If no success

  Open to the Preferences folder of  your home directory, or from  Finder>Go>Go to Folder, copy &  paste: ~/Library/Preferences/
  com.apple.finder.plist
  Delete the com.apple.finder.plist
  From the Finder icon on the  Dock, hold the control option key  and click the Finder icon>select
  Relaunch.

If that doesn’t work try updating our Dropbox.

I found someone with a similar problem online:

  I contacted support via chat, and they helped me understand that the dropbox version was outdated. now updated and it's working. thanks!

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Installation-and-desktop-app/MacOs-High-Sierra-10-13-6-after-update-icons-missing-in-finder/m-p/319945#M58452


How do I force Spotlight to index new folders? When I create new folders, Spotlight does not see them. When does Spotlight index new folders? Or better yet, can I force Spotlight to index new folders?

From Apple Support: How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac

  Choose Apple menu () > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.
  Click the Privacy tab.
  Drag the folder or disk that you want to index again to the list of locations that Spotlight is prevented from searching. Or click the Add (+) button and select the folder or disk to add.
  To add an item to the Privacy tab, you must have ownership permissions for that item. To learn about permissions, choose Help from the Finder menu bar, then search for “permissions.”
  From the same list of locations, select the folder or disk that you just added. Then click the Remove (–) button to remove it from the list.
  Quit System Preferences. Spotlight will reindex the contents of the folder or disk.

Note: Apple Support Document Update: Published Date: Nov 14, 2016 See edit history of this answer to see a previous version of this information.

Note: Dropbox specific information as an addendum to the Apple Support directions.

The above directions are the written ones from Apple Support however with an object like Dropbox on the Sidebar in Finder do not drag and drop it from there, instead either add it to the Privacy tab using the plus ("+") button or drag and drop it from your Home folder.  Then remove it using the minus ("-") button.

If Dropbox was removed from the Sidebar in it can be dragged back from one's Home folder.


How to move movie files from iMovie library to Photos library I have imported my movie files to the iMovie library (imovielibrary) but want them moved to the Photos library (photoslibrary).

What is the easiest most efficient way to do this without reimporting the from the original source?

Find the Imovie Library

In finder navigate to the Imovie Library file. It should be in this directory Users/NAME/Movies/iMovie Library. Right click the  and select Show Package Contents.

Find the right event

There you'll find a directory for each event. Each event directory contains a folder called original media. Those files can be dragged into Photos.