Issue with iMessage on Mac Lately my iMessage behave very funcky. I signed in and sign back out, I still didn't see messages from my iPhone. Even after wait a few days.
I decided to remove iMessage using App Cleaner.
Now when I lauch, I keep seeing

I've also tried
to search for “imessage” in App Store, but I see nothing.

Is there a way to quickly fix this?
I just need my iMessage on my Mac to work again.

iMessage isn’t a “separate” or 3rd party application; it’s built into macOS.

You will have to reinstall macOS on top of your existing macOS installation to fix it as that will replace anything that you’ve removed.

Start from recovery by booting your Mac with the OptionR key combo held.  That will boot you into a recovery version of macOS.  Select only to “Reinstall macOS” on the existing disk that there.  Don’t wipe it, partition the disk or anything.  Simply install  macOS as you normally would.

After you get macOS fixed, go back into iMessage and add back your iCloud account (remove it first if necessary).  This will force iCloud to sync your iPhone’s and Mac’s messages once again.

In the future, if you lose the ability to sync messages, your first thing you should try is to log out of iCloud and log back in.  Removing and reinstalling software is usually very low in the list of things to do to solve problems.


Is there a widget for Mac OS X dashboard that has bigger sticky notes? Is there a widget for Mac OS X dashboard to write down notes?

N.B. What I use now are yellow small sticky notes (I'm using 8 on several spots on the scren).

I really love them, but sometimes it would be useful to enlarge them and make them bigger rather than put several of them into one.

I'm using SimpleNote on my Mac and iPhone for pretty much all my note-taking. It automatically syncs notes between computers/devices, so might not be for you if you only want local notes. I find it's really convenient for accessing my notes everywhere, though.

It doesn't look like big sticky notes, instead you get a list view of your notes with a preview, from which you can open the entire note. I find it really pretty, but it might not be the aestethic you're after.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I use the DashNote widget on my Macs. There are other options as well, but they mainly come as stand-alone programs.


iPhone 5 won't show iOS11 update I'm trying to update my iPhone 5 from iOS 10.3.3 to iOS 11. But when I try to find the update, my phone tells me

I tried iTunes too and it's behaving the same way. It's like I do have the latest version of iOS but I know it's not true.

I tried turning my phone off and on but no joy.

I haven't done a full restore yet because I'm trying to avoid that.  I have backed up my phone on my computer using iTunes, though.

Any troubleshooting suggestions?

Only the iPhone 5S model and newer can be updated to iOS 11. The 5 cannot run iOS 11.


How do I connect a VGA input to my Mac? I am not talking about connecting a VGA monitor to a Mac. I'm referring to plugging in a VGA output in to my Mac. I want the VGA to show up as a video device, so that I can run a projector's feed through UStream.

What hardware is needed to digitize a VGA input in real time to send for broadcast?

I use a product from http://xlr8.com/ to give me a video input on my mac, then use a VGA-to-TV adapter to stream powerpoint over ustream.  Video is really choppy and crappy looking, but for simple non-moving slides, it's OK for ustream.


Blink / fade out to where the text-cursor is - Effect? I just installed an application (MousePosé)(which many of you will love) to show me where my mousecursor is, after pressing a shortcut,

However: very often when I'm programming, especially after CMD-Tab, I can't remember/see where my text-cursor is.

Does there exists an application that fades out the screen, until at the point of where the text-cursor is, like MousePose does with the mouse cursor?

In fact, it's like an Lightbox effect, where your whole screen gets fade-out and only the thing that matters (your text-cursor) shows in perfect glory, with no dimmed light.

Just like this, but when with the text-cursor, instead of the mouse-cursor

Thanks!

I don't know of a program that works system-wide, but if you use the terminal moderately, iterm2 has this feature. Pressing Command-/ once will show the cursor with some screen fade, and pressing and holding it will white out everything on screen but the cursor.

Alternatively, not the same as fading, but there might be a way to have your text editor highlight vertical and horizontal columns. (Here's a plugin for sublime).


Lost magnification under Mountain Lion I am missing one nice feature after moving to Mountain Lion. I was able on Lion to press control and  drag with two fingers to magnify an area of the screen, which is particularly helpful when working with image editors that lack this function.

Was this merely a key binding that was removed, or has the feature itself been abandoned?

The feature is still present and you might be able to set it up again as follows according to this Apple Support page:

  For example, if you have a trackpad and used the default settings,
  zoom in by holding down the Control (^) key while you drag two fingers
  up on the trackpad. Zoom out by holding down the Control key while you
  drag two fingers down on the trackpad.

Check System Preferences => Accessibility => Zoom (under Seeing) to make sure that you have Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom enabled.


I've lost everything on my iphone4, how do I put my library back? Syncing doesn't work First my phone said "No wi-fi" so I reset everything on the phone, the phone now has nothing on it & asked me to set it up again. I opted for 'restore from back-up' instead of 'new phone', now it is instructing me to connect into itunes but it syncs all the songs & stops & the phone still instructs me to connect to itunes - I'm going around in circles. I don't know how to get my phone back to how it was. can anyone help please. I don't have Ninety something dollars to call apple for help.

Are you connecting your phone to the mac / pc you're usually syncing it too? Because it would need the backup file which is created everytime you sync it.

If so, you should try this instructional guide. It has screenshots and should be easy to follow. If this does not work write what's happened.

http://ipod.about.com/od/iphonetroubleshooting/ss/restore-iphone.htm


iMac loses WiFi connectivity, doesn't show it In the past few days, my 2011-model iMac with Yosemite 10.10.2 has started dropping wireless connection, yet it doesn't seem to be aware.

I'll be using the computer, and notice a sudden loss of internet connection. The WiFi status indicator on the toolbar hasn't changed, holding option while clicking shows that it thinks it's fully connected, shows the signal strength info I would expect, says the internet is "reachable", etc.

However, pinging any domain/IP fails, and even pinging the router itself fails. Turning off the iMac WiFi and back on works - but only lasts until the next disconnect.

As far as I can tell, it's not the router. I have a PC, other Macs, and iPad/iPhone devices and they have no trouble.

I can't say for sure, but this didn't begin until after our area experienced a power outage and my iMac was cut off from power.

A week ago I installed a new Linksys WRT AC1900 router because I needed to solve signal strength and other issues with my last router. For the first several days I had no trouble.

I have two questions:

Does anyone know what might even cause this?
How can I better debug the issue?

Update:

Here's a picture of the alt+click of the wifi menu when I notice the internet has suddenly dropped:

And here's a picture of the same menu after I've reconnected and have internet access:

While unreachable, I also cannot ping the router itself:

PING 172.168.1.1 (172.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1

And the same ping while the connection is back:

PING 172.168.1.1 (172.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 172.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=1.224 ms
64 bytes from 172.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.064 ms
64 bytes from 172.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.959 ms
64 bytes from 172.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.940 ms

This little script will tell you when you are not connected to the Internet. If you want to Ping (and monitor) your router instead, change the Google.com to your Router address.

It will not solve your no connection problem that can have many other reasons. Like flaky connection to the router, like crowded channel, like a limitation by the IP provider on number of connections, and so on.

To help you solve that we need much more information on your set up and connection numbers.

repeat
    try
        do shell script "ping -c 5 google.com"
    on error
        display dialog "You are not connected to the internet"
    end try
end repeat

As for debugging, hold the alt key and click on your WiFi icon and select the Open Wireless diagnostics (at the bottom). Now you will have access to 2 tools to do some debugging.


IMac freezing intermittently--every few minutes. How can I fix this? A couple of days ago, I was browsing, and downloading something from Usenet, when my iMac all of a sudden froze up, grinding to an unbearable slowness.  After trying to tolerate what was happening for 5 minutes, hoping it would pass, I finally gave up, and restarted the computer manually.  To my horror, for about a day, I was plagued with the interminable locked up gray Apple startup screen, but thankfully the next morning, left it on from a  restart to find later that the computer had managed to boot up to a login screen, everything seemingly fixed.

That was background.  Now I have a different problem: My iMac is subjecting me to intermittent freezing episodes; I will be writing, or browsing in peace for a few minutes, before everything locks up, save for perhaps only the cursor.   When the hanging is finished, the computer then resumes the missed operations (typing, etc.) in a hurry, as if one were watching a fast-forwarded video.   Each hanging episode lasts from anywhere from 5 seconds to upwards of a minute; moreover, the system pops a window telling me that I don't have enough disk space for memory, though Finder consistently tells me I have upwards of 30GB worth of space (on a 250 GB HD).   There's also another curiosity: When I tried using Software Update to update everything — trying to fix this problem — upon Restart it told it couldn't install a recent Security Update because "the source media [you?] are installing from is damaged."

What's my causing my problems? How can I fix them? Unlike a previous related question, I don't think this has anything to do with Youtube or my browser; closing near every window, including Chrome, has no solved the problem, or mitigated it in any way.   I was also wondering could it perhaps do with something I downloaded -- could Trojans somehow associated with the movie I was downloading have anything to do with this problem?  I'd really appreciate some help on this; this freezing has rendered a significant part of my workflow virtually unusable, and I don't consider myself very computer savvy.

It's very unlikely you downloaded something or broke everything with one download. Also - with at least 4 things not working well - please protect your pictures, emails just in case it's a hardware failure.

When only one thing is broken - it's often worthwhile to poke, learn, understand what broke and look for a fix of that one issue.

For any group of three or more problems, there's one solution that always works (and often saves a lot of time):

Back up anything you can't afford to loose and get someone who is a bit tech savvy to verify you have a workable backup that you can restore if needed.
Erase the mac and install just a clean system from the media that came with the mac.

This will quickly let you know if the hardware has failed. It will also solve nearly all software issues. Once you have surfed the web, made sure it is reliable, then you can run updates, restore your personal files and get on knowing it was just some corruption of the software.

Don't feel bad getting help from someone (even paid) if your savvy is for things other than a computer. A good tech can erase and install Mac OS X in 10 to 30 minutes. A good tech might take 4 hours to 4 days to pick apart all the things that could be wrong and tell you what happened. With multiple issues, it's hard to tell what was the root cause and what was just a subsequent failure.

It's often so much easier and efficient to just clean up the mess, start fresh, and keep an eye for any sign of the problems recurring. You will then have better data on the problem. You will also have a backup of your important files.

Since your computer can't tell if it has enough memory to run, (or is truly out of space) you can't really trust itself to fix itself which is why I jumped right to backup / restore for anyone on a situation as you describe. Also, if you were to determine exactly what broke, and did the fixes right, if it freezes or doesn't complete your fix - you will still be in the same badly working situation.

Best of luck - some good people have made answers with great advice here as to what could be wrong. I wanted to weigh in with a different sort of advice since no-one (you included) had mentioned protecting your data files.


Send Wake-On-Lan packets from Mac to Nas for TimeMachine backups I have a NAS box that is "Wake On Lan" enabled. I'm struggling to find a way for to utilise this with my TimeMachine backups from my Mac (Mountain Lion).

My intention is that may Mac will wake the sleeping Nas when TimeMachine backups are scheduled.

Has anybody got any experience of sending magic packets from a mac to a nas? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Noel

I resolves this by the using an answer from this question that links to this blog post, and incorporating this Wake UP NAS applescript into the automator app (Changing the MAC and local broadcast IP address to suit)

Wake Up Nas Script:

do shell script "python -c \"
import socket
data = '\\xff'*6+'\\x00\\x13\\xd4\\xdc\\xf2\\x80'*16
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
s.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_BROADCAST, 1)
s.sendto(data, ('192.168.1.255', 80))\""

The automator app is as follows:

pause 10 seconds
run the above WakeUpNas script
pause 4 mins (let the nas start up if needs be)
Get Specified Servers (add the servers that you want to wake)
Connect to Servers

Then adding the above App to the startup items to reconnect to drive when the Mac restarts.

By following the blog post you can also call the app when the computer wakes from sleep by installing Sleepwatcher and a little extra work.


Distribute iOS app to customers without enterprise account At our company we are developing apps (Android and iOS) for use by other companies. The app (or the right to use the app) is sold together with the server solution (app works with a custom server at that companies' headquarters, that would only work on their network - or VPN) and also a desktop solution that uses the same server. Basically a complete software and hardware solution for use by that company. Payment is made for the whole package, together with maintenance, so selling the app in the store is not a solution.

Is there any way to distribute the app to the customer without them having an enterprise account? (we think it would be difficult to convince clients to pay 300$/year extra just for an app). The simplest solution would be to publish the app on the App Store for free, as it would be useless without the custom server and credentials, could it pass the approval process? Or is there any other solution?

This would definitely work as a (free or paid) app on the App Store. Just make sure you have a demo account which Apple can use during the review process (there's a section in iTunes Connect where you can specify credentials for them). You might let the app connect to a different (test) server if somebody logs in with username info@apple.com.


Power Mac G4 doesn't start anymore I have an old Power Mac G4 here that stopped working recently. It just doesn't start anymore when pressing the power button, not even a light or anything. It just doesn't react to the power button at all.

I have an old Power Mac G4 Digital Audio here that doesn't start anymore. The suspicion fell immediately on the power supply, as that had failed before and was already exchanged once. This time we bought an adapter that allows the use of a standard ATX power supply, but that didn't work as well. Nothing at all happens when pressing the power button, not even the fan of the new power supply starts.

I tried a PMU reset in a few variants, with or without removing the battery. This changed nothing. I also checked the battery itself, and it only provides around 3V, not 3.6V as it should.

Can the battery alone cause this problem? I would expect battery problems to occur later, and not stop the computer completely from starting.
Are there any ways to circumvent the power button and give the signal to start up the computer directly?
Any other ideas on what the exact problem could be, or how I could troubleshoot this further?

Battery alone? Eh, probably not. There should be at least some signs of life if the battery were dead - I would expect the power supply to come on, at least.
Circumvent button? Yep. Often, Apple engineers will leave little debug buttons or contacts on the motherboard that allow you to power it up. They might be buttons, or they could be two little contacts you have to bridge with a screwdriver.

  Note: To do that, you would have to have the machine connected to power and open. Don't touch anything inside the machine while connected to power. That shouldn't need explaining, but anyway...

Other ideas? Fried MB. Seriously. I had an iMac G5 (and I think and iMac G4 too) die of a fried motherboard, and it had the exact same symptoms. Before it died, there were some, uh, weird graphics problems. Like the volume control overlay coming up black and not going away. Stuff like that.


Keep R running while screen is off in Big Sur (11.0.1) I've just switched from Windows/Linux to a Macbook Pro, and am having trouble with sleep/screen off. My work involves running very long (multiple day) processes in R, so I need to be able to leave things running for a long time with the screen off, so as not to waste energy. At the moment it seems that if the screen goes to sleep, all processes are paused. Is there a way to get the linux/windows behaviour where the screen can time out but everything keeps running?
(Other similar questions I've found all refer to previous versions of MacOS and/or desktop versions, the system preferences seem to be completely different.)

The fastest way to always stop sleep is the built-in Terminal command caffeinate which will let you set various options on preventing sleep.
Another way is to disable sleep when plugged into battery under Settings, which is likely the easiest method as it has a visual indicator by way of the charger.
The Amphetamine app is yet another method, and it has a friendlier UI compared to Terminal as well as extra options.
By default all apps sleep when the display is off unless the app specifically requests otherwise.


Help me un-clutter the first page of apps on Launchpad I have grown very fond of a sparse first page of apps on iOS and want to hack, reverse-engineer, and/or fake out Launchpad to get a clean first page of apps.

Here is a picture from iOS that is analagous to what I want to accomplish:

I don't need a text overlay at the top (bars, ATT, time, etc...) or the row of icons at the bottom - I just want space on the first screen, followed by subsequent pages that can be totally full (or ideally also have flexible space). I don't need precise control such as a gap between say pages and numbers, but that would be really neat to emulate a layout exactly as pictured (three apps at the top, four at the bottom).

If it's not possible to hack in a true  into the Launchpad database, can anyone show how to make "dummy invisible apps" that I could one by one drag to displace the apps I don't want on page one?

To summarize...

As in iOS, you can organize your Launchpad icons as you please using drag-and-drop. You can reorder apps, move them from one page to another, and even put them in iOS-like folders. Note that Launchpad folders are entirely independent from the /Applications hierarchy: creating a folder in Launchpad won't create a folder in /Applications, for example.

Your problem seems to be related to the fact that you've got so many apps. Again like iOS, there seems to be a maximum on the number of pages of apps Launchpad can handle. If you really need all 400+ apps on your Launchpad, there's not much you can do other than reorganize everything into folders to free up some slots. But I doubt you need instant access to everything Adobe has ever installed on your computer, so you have a few more options to clean out your Launchpad:

Delete apps entirely. There's probably a few apps on your computer that are just sitting there, never to be used; you can free up space on your Launchpad and on your hard drive by getting rid of them.

Apps from the App Store can be uninstalled directly from Launchpad by holding option/alt and clicking on the black X over the app's icon.
Any app can be deleted by dragging it from the Finder to the Trash.
Alternately, you can use something like AppZapper to delete an app along with any hidden auxiliary files.

Move apps out of Launchpad's sight. Launchpad looks for apps in /Applications, /Developer, and ~/Applications. If you like those folders to be as pristine as your Launchpad, you can move your extraneous applications to a different folder. Launchpad will lose track of them as of the next reboot.
Just remove the Launchpad icons. Finally, Andreas Ganske has developed a preference pane which modifies the Launchpad database to show or hide whatever applications you want.

If you just want a clean Launchpad, option three is probably your best and easiest answer. Options one and two are there if you like to keep your /Applications folder clean, too: useless apps might as well be deleted, and your CS4 uninstallers could probably be moved somewhere a little more out of the way until you need them.

Finally, you hint at having problems with having Launchpad duplicates. As I mentioned in an answer to this question, this may be a problem of actually having more than one copy of the same app installed.

Hope this helps clear up some of your upgrade troubles!


Reformatting MacBookPro6,2 I have a macbook pro 6,2 and don't have the recovery discs as I am traveling abroad and left my discs at home. Is there any way to reformat my hard drive and get it to factory (or near factory) settings without the discs?

Does my computer have a recovery partition and can I use that to reformat?

All Lion and later (10.7) OS X should have a recovery HD by default.

If you haven't changed your configuration, it likely does still have the recovery partition.  Find out by holding Option while booting. Now, the recovery HD only has disk formatting tools and terminal and the ability to connect to the App Store to re-download the installer. It doesn't actually save the installer to the drive.

Barring that, I would download the Mac OS from the App Store and put it on a thumb drive for a reinstall.


Repair Disk - Start up disk options I had a power failure and upon rebooting noticed that the OS drive needed to be repaired (Disk Utilities). I am running Snow Leopard and don't have the CD to start up from in order to perform the fix.

Are there any other options for running the repair utils on the startup disk?

One option would be to clone your startup drive to an external disk using something like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. Then you can use System Preferences->Startup Disk to select that external drive as the boot drive.

Once you've rebooted and are running the system off the external drive you can use Disk Utility to run the repair. After you're done, re-select the internal drive as the Startup Disk and reboot.


Changing placeholder texts in Pages using AppleScript I've got a Pages document "test" with a text box which has the text "Footnotes" in it. This text is marked as a placeholder text.

I want to change this text using AppleScript. This is what I've got so far:

tell application "Pages"
    activate
    tell document "test"
        tell current page
            set thistext to every text item whose object text contains "Footnotes"
            tell thistext
                tell its object text
                    set every word to mytext
                end tell
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

Running this will result in the following error:

  error "Can’t get object text of {text item 1 of page 1 of document id \"EB865803-005B-4C5D-A740-398B41B767F5\" of application \"Pages\"}." number -1728 from «class pDTx» of {«class shtx» 1 of «class cPag» 1 of document id "EB865803-005B-4C5D-A740-398B41B767F5"}

The script editor also marks the following lines:

tell its object text
     set every word to mytext
end tell

Any ideas? The goal is to fill the placeholder text on that page with a custom footnote.

set … to every … sets the variable to a list. That means thistext is a list, so you can't perform operations meant for the items in the to the list itself. You need a loop:

repeat with thistext in (every text item whose object text contains "Footnotes")
    …
end repeat

The full script is:

tell application "Pages"
    activate
    tell document "test"
        tell current page
            repeat with thistext in (every text item whose object text contains "Footnotes")
                tell thistext
                    tell its object text
                        set every word to mytext
                    end tell
                end tell
            end repeat
        end tell
    end tell
end tell


Is there any way to globally or -- at least persistently -- kill OnSwipe for iPad browsing? So, web browsing on the iPad has its quirks and drawbacks, but the one that stands head and shoulders above all others for me is the abomination that is OnSwipe, and especially its incarnation as a WordPress theme. (Thanks so much WP for flipping that global default switch earlier this year.)

While it is notionally possible for a visitor to disable this on a case-by-case basis (assuming that the theme's broken assumptions about window geometry even allow you to reach the relevant link), the cookie setting or whatever seems pretty transient, especially when running in a nested browser window in something like the Twitter app, and before you know it the wretched thing pops back, jiggling and gurning and generally making sites unusable.

WordPress are apparently content with this situation, and OnSwipe themselves just brag about how they're going to supplant apps for everyone. (These people are allowed to vote and drive cars.)

If this were a desktop problem, there would probably be Safari extensions and Firebug scripts aplenty to solve it, but none of that is possible in iOS as far as I can see. So: is there any way to rid oneself of this curse or do we just have to live with great chunks of the web having been wilfully broken without so much as a by-your-leave?

I asked OnSwipe for a solution as a global cookie on assets.onswipe.com could be used to do the trick.
Sadly they are unwilling to help in any way.


iPhone 5 does not work while charging My iPhone 5 does not respond to swipes and gestures on the touch screen, while charging.
The buttons work fine.

What is this issue, I have on 2 iPhone 5 devices - so not only one.

Rebooting does not work and hardware reset neither.

Update:

I do not have this issue via the computer (but this is a different cable as well).
I did check this in my car, which is a Pioneer radio with USB in the front. The iPhone works without trouble in there.
At my home, the iPhone does not respond as described above. It's 100% an original charger and cable, but it might be broken as stated by KrisReynolds. Also, this house is built in 1970 by my Grandfather and the wiring sometimes is pretty poor. This might be the cause too.

Update 2: The bounty and the accepted answer are both great - couldn't decide so I split the accept and the bounty between them.

The problem is the electrostatic current/charge/grounding while using Charger.

First make sure you do use the original Charger.

If your iPhone is in a leather case, remove it.

If you have a protective case, or if you are using a plastic sheet or film on the display, try removing them and testing the device without it.

Update:

I missed the point of you having 2 other devices doing the same.

In that case it could be the electric wiring in your place. Try plugging in in a another place (coffee shop). You might have what it is called High Frequency Harmonics (dirty electricity) in you home caused by number of different sources.


VIP Alert Notification Is there a way to set up VIP Alert Notifications to allow the sound even when my iPhone is on silent? I want to be able to receive notification of VIP emails during the night, but do not want the bother of a notification from someone calling/texting me.

As of iOS 11, you can only allow phone calls from specific contacts through a global silent mode (Do Not Disturb).

This is defined under Settings → Do Not Disturb → Allow Calls From.

There is no exception list for Emails or Messages yet, even though this feature has been requested for years.


How to disable the lost network connection warning on OSX I'd like to permanently disable the warning dialog that shows when my Macbook loses connection to a network drive.  Is this possible in OSX Mavericks?

From this article: http://whatsamknows.tumblr.com/post/37368603810/get-rid-of-server-connections-interrupted

The following steps should sort you out:

Click on the spotlight icon (magnifying glass) in the upper right of your screen
Type in ‘terminal’
Click the ‘Terminal’ icon (black with white border) under
applications
Type in the following command and hit enter:
sudo mv /System/Library/LoginPlugins/FSDisconnect.loginPlugin /System
It will prompt you for your user password. Type it and hit enter again
Reboot


OSX 10.9 Mavericks VirtualBox unable to use Bridged Networking Since upgrading to OSX 10.9 Mavericks VirtualBox machines that have a Bridged Network have been unable to start.

Installing VirtualBox again solves the problem temporarily, but this does not survive a reboot (or in my case kicking the power supply cable out!).

Has anyone come up with a permanent solution for this, or at least one that does not involve a fresh install?

I've found a temporary solution.  It appears that on reboot not all the kernel extensions are loaded correctly.  However a restart of the VirtualBox startup item seems to resolve this and I can then start the machines.

sudo  /Library/StartupItems/VirtualBox/VirtualBox restart

Is the line that works for me, sometimes I have to run it twice.


Unable to prevent APFS partition from mounting automatically in Mojave (10.14.5) I'm trying to prevent macOS from asking me the FileVault password for 2 APFS partitions on boot. I don't want them to be mounted at all.

APFS container:

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +121.1 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume macOS                   43.2 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 121.3 MB   disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                1.0 GB     disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume Shared                  7.7 GB     disk1s5
   6:                APFS Volume macOS Beta - Data       21.7 GB    disk1s6
   7:                APFS Volume macOS Beta              10.0 GB    disk1s7

Partition 1:

   Device Identifier:         disk1s6
   Device Node:               /dev/disk1s6
   Whole:                     No
   Part of Whole:             disk1

   Volume Name:               macOS Beta - Data
   Mounted:                   No

   Partition Type:            41504653-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   File System Personality:   APFS
   Type (Bundle):             apfs
   Name (User Visible):       APFS
   Owners:                    Disabled

   OS Can Be Installed:       No
   Booter Disk:               disk1s2
   Recovery Disk:             disk1s3
   Media Type:                Generic
   Protocol:                  PCI
   SMART Status:              Verified
   Volume UUID:               C6C28412-1505-4F19-8056-369FAE57B0CF
   Disk / Partition UUID:     C6C28412-1505-4F19-8056-369FAE57B0CF

   Disk Size:                 121.1 GB (121123069952 Bytes) (exactly 236568496 512-Byte-Units)
   Device Block Size:         4096 Bytes

   Volume Total Space:        0 B (0 Bytes) (exactly 0 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:         0 B (0 Bytes) (exactly 0 512-Byte-Units)

   Read-Only Media:           No
   Read-Only Volume:          Not applicable (not mounted)

   Device Location:           Internal
   Removable Media:           Fixed

   Solid State:               Yes
   Hardware AES Support:      No

Partition 2:

   Device Identifier:         disk1s7
   Device Node:               /dev/disk1s7
   Whole:                     No
   Part of Whole:             disk1

   Volume Name:               macOS Beta
   Mounted:                   No

   Partition Type:            41504653-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   File System Personality:   APFS
   Type (Bundle):             apfs
   Name (User Visible):       APFS
   Owners:                    Disabled

   OS Can Be Installed:       No
   Booter Disk:               disk1s2
   Recovery Disk:             disk1s3
   Media Type:                Generic
   Protocol:                  PCI
   SMART Status:              Verified
   Volume UUID:               55930D94-2CF3-481B-B845-FEAB3C492F23
   Disk / Partition UUID:     55930D94-2CF3-481B-B845-FEAB3C492F23

   Disk Size:                 121.1 GB (121123069952 Bytes) (exactly 236568496 512-Byte-Units)
   Device Block Size:         4096 Bytes

   Volume Total Space:        0 B (0 Bytes) (exactly 0 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:         0 B (0 Bytes) (exactly 0 512-Byte-Units)

   Read-Only Media:           No
   Read-Only Volume:          Not applicable (not mounted)

   Device Location:           Internal
   Removable Media:           Fixed

   Solid State:               Yes
   Hardware AES Support:      No

Current /etc/fstab which doesn't work:

UUID=55930D94-2CF3-481B-B845-FEAB3C492F23 none apfs rw,noauto
UUID=C6C28412-1505-4F19-8056-369FAE57B0CF none apfs rw,noauto

What am I doing wrong? Is it because of a mistake I made or is /etc/fstab no longer supported? What's /etc/fstab.hd for?

Operating System: macOS Mojave 10.14.5
Hardware: MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015)

"Educated" guess:

In your case FileVault unlocking is managed by the preboot APFS volume (disk1s2).

Your specific APFS container configuration implies that preboot manages booting to macOS 10.14.5 as well as macOS 10.15 beta.

At this boot stage disk1s1's /etc/fstab is probably not yet involved and thus entries won't work.

If you really want to disable disk1s6/disk1s7, you probably have to rename one of the two folders with UUID names (one for macOS 10.14.5 and the other for macOS 10.15 beta) in preboot. The folder names correspond with the APFS boot volume UUIDs you get with diskutil ap list.

You have to rename the one which is identical with the UUID of macOS 10.15 beta's boot volume.

Not tested - absolutely not recommended!

BTW: I tried to find some kernel flag to add to /Volumes/Preboot/[UUID]/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist to prevent FV unlocking but failed.


Delete album from Photos.app I have a Macbook Pro running Yosemite, but no iPad or iPhone.
Photos.app transferred the entire contents of my iPhoto libraries, but I cannot see how to delete an unwanted event.  Although I am using Photos.app, and iPhoto has now gone, the events are still referred to as iPhoto Events.

It is my belief that the lack of "iPhoto" as an app anywhere on my system means that I am running wholly on "Photos" despite the events being referred to as iPhoto Events.

Am I correct in this belief?

Photos doesn't use Events. Though it imports old ones from iPhoto, it considers them now to be Albums &  won't create new Events of its own.

To delete one, enable the sidebar - View menu or  Cmd ⌘   Opt ⌥   S
Right click the 'event' & select Delete Album.

This does not delete the photos in it, just the 'container' event.

Installing Photos shouldn't necessarily delete iPhoto. I still have both on my machines, though I did download Photos specifically, as opposed to it being delivered as part of an update. Maybe that changes the behaviour, I'm not sure.


Mac as wi-fi hotspot: how many devices can connect? Is there a theoretical or practical limit to the number of devices that can be connected to a Macbook Pro sharing its internet connection as a wi-fi hotspot?

On OSX Yosemite (beta 10.10.3), on MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012), today (2015-04-28), I've connected 15 different devices (Android, iOS, Win, OSX) via WiFi hotspot (sharing internet via Ethernet), and reported very low decline in internet bandwith with each new device connected.


Resizing a 100GB Recovery HD Partition Some time ago, I used BootCamp to set up a partition for Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro (13" late 2014 if it matters) so I could dual-boot. I have since removed the partition using BootCamp, but still can't reclaim the disk space.

The new Disk Utility doesn't show the partition (I'm using the 10.11 Public Beta, but have also checked in the Recovery partition which is still using the old Yosemite Disk Utility).

However, the diskutil Terminal command shows this:

cwatson@ragnarok:~$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            398.6 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             101.5 GB   disk0s3

It seems the resize has screwed up somewhere, and made the Recover HD over 100GB.

cwatson@ragnarok:~$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0
Password:
      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  778422104      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  778831744  198273280      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  977105024          3
  977105027         32         Sec GPT table
  977105059          1         Sec GPT header

Is there any way of (safely) resizing this back down to something sensible, so I can reclaim the space?

If it hadn't been 10.11 Public Beta (2) on the main volume, I would have advised to boot to Internet Recovery Mode (IRM) (altcmdR) or a bootable thumb drive (BTD), just delete the 3rd partition with gpt remove -i 3 /dev/disk0 and fully expand the main partition with Disk Utility. After rebooting to the main volume I would have reinstalled the latest OS X (Yosemite 10.10.4 as of this writing) which recreates the Recovery HD while preserving all non-Apple apps and user-created data.

Instead you have to dd the Recovery HD from a second Mac running Yosemite. Copy the resulting file to the first Mac. Then boot Mac1 to IRM/BTD, delete the 3rd partition with gpt, reboot to IRM/BTD, resize the main volume with diskutil resizeVolume /dev/disk0s2 size, create a 3rd partition with:

 gpt add -b first_freeblock -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

and finally dd the previously made copy of Recovery HD (Mac2) back to /dev/dis0s3.

To get size in diskutil ... size you have to do some math considering that the last blocks of a Yosemite drive containing the Recovery HD usually look like this:

....                      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
975503592    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
976773128          7
976773135         32         Sec GPT table
976773167          1         Sec GPT header

Recheck this with sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0 on Mac2.
The example here is a 500.1 GiB (976773168 blocks à 512 B) disk.

Accordingly "size" has to be smaller than or the same size as (total blocks - 409640 - 1269576 blocks). The second term is block0 - block409639 containing PMBR, the primary GPT header and table and the EFI partition. The third term is the size of the Recovery HD and the secondary GPT header and table. Please consider that block counting starts with 0: block 0 is the the first block or block 975503592 is the 975503593rd block.

If you are to lazy to do the math, you may first create the third partition and dd the Recovery HD file and then - after a restart - expand the main volume using Disk Utility.

A second more risky method (not risky regarding your data on the main volume but I'm not sure if it is successful) is just moving the partition borders of disk0s3. This method presumes that no files of the old Recovery HD were moved "physically" on disk0s3 after deleting the Boot Camp partition with the Boot Camp assistant.

Boot to IRM/BTD and enter in Terminal:

gpt remove -i 3 /dev/disk0

and reboot to IRM/BTD. Then add a third partition with the following command (already adapted to the size of your disk!):

gpt add -b 975835488 -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

and reboot to IRM/BTD. Open Disk Utility and verify/repair the hard drive (and not the main volume!). Then enlarge the main volume to max size and verify /repair the main volume. Finally try to boot to Recovery Mode (cmdR).


Repair shop suggests to solder new graphics chip onto a used graphics card Recently, my 27" iMac Mid-2011 had a graphics card failure (an AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5).

Even though the computer now is vintage-classed, I still want to repair it. Unfortunately, Apple-authorized service partners are not allowed to service vintage-classed computers, so I had to turn it in to an unauthorized service shop.

The service technician claims to have found a used ATI HD 6970M 1GB from some secondary market supplier online. Since the card is used, he recommends that the supplier solders a new non-used ATI chip of the same type onto the graphics card board.

I have never heard of this procedure before and I am unsure if this is a recommendable idea. My concerns are are mainly if this is:

(A) At all recommendable to cushion against chip failures of a used card.
(B) If there are any safety concerns (e.g. electricity risks) due to doing this.

(The cost of the soldering operation is not a major concern although it has bearing, he says the soldering of the new chip will be $35 USD, added to the price of the used card which sells for $520 USD).

Speaking from experiences in the repair community: Its unlikely that its actually a new unused chip. A lot of sellers try to find working chips and clean them and brand them as new. (Some even going as far as lasering in a new date code to make them look like they came from a recent batch, even though the chip has not been produced for a while).

Even if the graphics chip would be new it has the same design faults in there that made it die in the first place. That combined with being unsure about the practices, heat settings and how the chip was stored makes it very uncertain for how long it will last.

My advice: If the store is willing to do this for less then $80 you might want to give it a try (while also saving up for a new device), higher then that and I personally wouldn't risk it.

To answer your second question, there aren't many safety concerns. If a graphics chip shorts out the system will just disable power. I would say the electrical risk is close to none and not more then it has always been


Why is my MacBook Air faster than my iMac? I'm wondering why my MacBook Air (13 inch, early 2015) is so much faster than my iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, Late 2015)?

The MacBook Air is configured with a 1.6 Ghz dual-core i5, 4 GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 6000 and a 128 GB SSD.

The iMac is configured with a 3.1 Ghz quad-core i5, 8 GB RAM, Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200 and a 1 TB SATA hard drive.

I run similar programs on both, some of which you would think would slow down the laptop, yet the laptop always seems to outperform the iMac. The iMac has been incredibly slow lately with Safari being especially painful at times. I thought maybe it was b/c some of my programs probably require a better machine than I have but then those same programs perform great/much faster on the laptop (which I'm sure does not have the min. specs for them).

The iMac is incredibly slow especially with opening just about everything from Mail, Photoshop to Safari (yet Firefox opens right up). The heavier program I run on both my machines is called Archicad v. 23. Archicad is much faster to open on the laptop.

I'm adding a link to some screenshots from the laptop and iMac to compare and screenshots of the current Activity Monitor from the iMac which I just restarted (it would only let me upload two images here so I added the link instead).

https://ibb.co/album/fMBk6F

UPDATE 3/14: These screenshots here are from the iMac - not sure which are best to post i.e. CPU or Memory, etc. it only allows two images. Also should point out the iMac can run a little better once everything has been loaded and it's been sitting for an hour or two...but the start of programs and getting it running at normal speed after a restart takes a long time.

One main difference between the two computers is that your MacBook Air has an SSD - a solid state drive - for data storage, whereas the iMac has an ordinary hard drive. SSDs are typically an order of magnitude faster than hard drives, so if your usage of the computer involves a lot of disk usage, that could explain the perceived speed difference.

Another difference is the processor. Here the iMac has the advantage with a CPU that potentially is up to about 3 times faster than the CPU in the MacBook Air. However, if your specific usage of the computer does not involve a lot of heavy CPU usage, or your programs are not written to take advantage of multiple CPU cores, then that advantage could possible be minor.

Even considering these differences between the two computers, you shouldn't have a "painfully slow" experience on the iMac. If it was quick, and now is painfully slow, it doesn't sound like the hardware is just insufficient for the task. It sounds more like a software problem or possible a hardware defect.

I would suggest testing the software hypothesis by installing macOS on an external USB drive and see if that improves performance - or if you have no problem rolling your computer back to an earlier date, then by restoring an earlier Time Machine backup from before you've experienced the slow downs.

In terms of a hardware defect, you could suspect something like a cooling problem. If that were the case, you would probably hear increased fan noise, and/or you would see kernel_task as having a high CPU percentage in Activity Monitor, which the screenshots does not show. Therefore it doesn't seem that a hardware problem is likely just now. You could check your logs (using Console.app) to see if you have any error messages about your disk drive - timeouts here could give massive slow downs throughout the system.


OS X Mavericks Guest Mode with Filevault → Safari flickers + crashes Did anyone tried out the Guest Account feature in Mac OS X Mavericks with Filevault2 = on?

I did and
- Safari flickers (like with wrong graphic driver) → https://discussions.apple.com/message/23784151#23784151
- Safari / the complete system crashs and freezes on several websites.
Summary it's not usable! :(

Does anyone have similar issues?
Who does know a solution or has an idea to get the bug?
Thank you!

The Guest account only appears on the FileVault 2 pre-boot login screen if iCloud's Find My Mac is enabled. It's essentially a way to encourage someone to get online from that laptop without having to unlock the encryption. Once online, the laptop phones home to the Find My Mac service immediately with its current IP and location information.

Long story short, the Safari-Only Mode is not really meant for everyday use. It's meant to be a trap for thieves.


df with APFS: still working? Since switching to APFS I noticed that df delivers strange results.

For example:

$ df -h /
Filesystem     Size   Used  Avail Capacity iused               ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1s1  466Gi  401Gi   62Gi    87% 3165852 9223372036851609955    0%   /

It seems that I have only 62GB free (disk at 87%)

"About this Mac" gives a completely different picture

With 177 GB free.

Which is more reliable? Is df still working on AFPS?

I don't think this is a question of "reliability", it is simply that the two programs display different things. "Free space" sounds simple, but in reality it is quite complex - different people, different systems, etc. all consider "free space" to be different things.

For example "free space" could mean "how much of the disk space is not currently used for any meaningful data", or it could mean "how much more data can I store here" or something completely different.

The "About this Mac" tries to take the latter approach. If I add more things to this disk, how much can I really add. Technically it involves the calculation taking into account things that are temporary in nature. Often the largest differences here comes from local TimeMachine snapshots (they're created on the source volume, not the backup disk). These are temporary and will be removed automatically.

In contrast, df takes a very "technical" approach and shows the "raw" file system information according to how much of the disk space isn't used for anything meaningful. I.e. even for example temporary TimeMachine snapshots are included in "used" as they're actually storing useful data.


The account does not exist in bugreport.apple.com I am about to file a bug, but I can not login...

When I open the url https://bugreport.apple.com, It asks me to login. OK, I tried my three different AppleIDs, and all of them give me the same error message: The account does not exist.. This is very awesome.

I CAN use the three AppleIDs to login icloud.com without any problems. So what can I do to login bugreport?

You have to create a developer account which will be accessible with your actual account (AppleID):
Apple Developer web


Is a MacBook 12" dual monitor setup possible? I would like to use dual/two monitors with my macbook 12" (2016).

Is the device feasible of connecting, for example, to two LG UltraFine 4K Display monitors? What kind of cables/connectors do I need?

As per https://support.apple.com/kb/SP712?viewlocale=en_US, I regret to inform you of this:

  Graphics and Video Support

  Intel HD Graphics 5300

  Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 3840 by 2160 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors

  Display

  Retina display

  12-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology
  2304-by-1440 resolution at 226 pixels per inch with support for
  millions of colors 16:10 aspect ratio Supported scaled resolutions:

  1440 by 900
  1280 by 800
  1024 by 640


Is it possible to interrupt installation procedure at power on My friend is bringing back a new Macbook Air from abroad to the UK for me. New rules have been put in place

  to power up electronic devices in hand luggage as part of new security measures introduced at UK airports

so it's possible that my friend will have to charge the laptop and then power it on at the security gates. The first power on will (possibly) start the install procedure - I don't know, I haven't run an install on a Macbook for a few years - and I'd like to know if it will be a problem for the friend or the laptop to do a quick power on and then close down the laptop?

Any help or insight with this would be much appreciated.

Yes it is.

If you quit the installer when it starts, it will shut down the computer, and next time it starts up it will run the installer from the start again.


Is there a way to simulate shake on iPhone? I am NOT talking about the simulator. I was wondering if I could simulate a shake on my actual iphone (by plugging it into computer and connected to xcode).

Is there a way to do this?

Open System Preferences
Go to General > Accessibility > Assistive Touch
Turn assistive touch on
Then, an icon that looks like:

Will pop up somewhere on you screen. Tap it. Then:

Tap device
Tap more
and finally tap shake

Hope that helps!


Are Lightning headphones only working with iPhone 7 or also with older devices? With iPhone 7 Apple introduced headphones connected with Lightning Connector.

Are these headphones also compatible with older iPhones? Are there any limitations by using it with older devices? Which iOS version is needed for this feature?

For example I am currently using an iPhone 6 Plus with iOS 10.2. Will it work?

According to the Apple product page, any device with a Lightning port and iOS 10 is compatible.


Does Canon PIXMA MP560 work on Catalina? According to some posts in Canon's forum, the PIXMA MP560 printer/scanner isn't supported on Mac OS Catalina. But it hasn't been officially supported since 10.11, and it still works on 10.14.6.
Anyone have experience trying it on Catalina? Does it work with Apple's built-in drivers?

There's been a lot of question regarding these Canon Pixma MFPs of late.  The driver was probably a 32 bit driver which is why it worked up to 10.14.x (Mojave).  Typically, printer drivers will work with newer versions of an OS if the print system hasn't changed significantly.
From a Windows side of things, we had Windows XP printer drivers in Windows 7/8 machines without issue.  Likewise, we had Windows 7 drivers that worked flawlessly in Windows 10.  And here on the Mac side of things, there are lots of discontinued printers that has compatible drivers (I have an HP CP2025dn that works flawlessly).
Unfortunately, these consumer based MFPs can be difficult to support.  On the OpenPrinting site  this particular printer is listed as a "Paperweight."  This means that there's not even a generic driver that you can get that will support it.
However, what you can do is if you can get it working on an older Mac or a Raspberry Pi running Linux where it is supported, you can share it over the network and print to that print server and let it render the job instead of connecting directly.


How to make the "Page Down" key on the keyboard move only half the distance as usual I'm a computer programmer and use Xcode so I am constantly scrolling up and down. Often times I would like to move the page down but not as much as the "Page Down" keyboard key moves it. I would like to move it half the distance as it usual moves. I feel like I have experimented with every combination of "Page Down" with shift, option, control, command, and fn. Also, I used all those controls with the down arrow keys with no success.

Maybe I missed something? Is this even possible? I use a program called Dragon Dictation that accepts AppleScript so if somebody knows how to code this so I can use it in Dragon Dictation it would be very helpful.

SOLUTION:

Dragon Dictation is no longer supported. I'm using Apple's built-in dictation.

I created the AppleScript code in Script Editor:

tell application "System Events"
    key code 125
    key code 125
    key code 125
    key code 125
end tell

Then from Accessibility > Dictation > Dictation Commands, I create a word and in the "Perform" drop down box select Run Workload, and select the AppleScript file using the code above that was created in Script Editor.

As answered in the question linked to by klanomath's comment, ControllerMate can be used to set up keybindings that simulate scrolling an arbitrary amount.

However, this approach has limitations:

The ControllerMate approach does not take into account the height of the window being scrolled; it advances a fixed distance on its virtual scroll wheel. So this workaround only works well if all the windows you wish to scroll are always the same height.
The default behavior of Page Up & Page Down, as well as Home and End, cannot be overridden in Chrome, at least. It only works if you add a modifier key. Being able to override existing single-key behavior is very desirable, since the whole point of this is to optimize something that is done very frequently.

(Oops! I placed a bounty on this question worth 100 reputation points, not realizing that the points would be "escrowed" and that since I'm not a frequent user of apple.stackexchange.com, I would then not have enough reputation points to comment. Otherwise I might have just commented after klanomath. I'm not attempting to win my own bounty by answering... Hoping someone else can come up with an approach that overcomes the limitations mentioned above.)


Verbose Boot after crashed program on Macbook Pro I had recently installed Google Drive on my Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 but it kept crashing my computer to the point where it would not start.

I deleted Google Drive in Single User Mode, and  am still getting blue screen or the grey screen with the turning wheel, I suspect from all the forced restarts.

I have tried resetting the pram, smc, repaired the drive in disc utility and reinstalled Snow Leopard from the disc. Should I try resetting in verbose mode?

This is a known issue with Snow Leopard and Google Drive. I've seen this many times before and deleting Google Drive completely from the Macbook usually fixes it without issue. When you reinstalled Snow Leopard did you do a clean install or was it truly just a reinstall. If you really got rid of Google Drive and it's not booting sounds like something may have happened to the hard drive. I would try a clean restore of Snow Leopard before taking any hardware action. :)


MacBook Air wifi issues I bought a brand new MacBook Air from the apple store in Sydney last week, but no matter where I go to connect to a wifi source, it never connects. Wherever I try an exclamation mark shows up and I don't know why this is. I've tried a few things in the system preferences but still unsure. Can someone please help me??

I wrote an extensive post on MacBook Air wifi issues:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/70605/34078

It's not exactly your symptoms, but a good start.

Take a look at the wifi equipment you are trying to attach to. If you can't still get a connection after reading my previous post, take the MBA back to the Apple store and see if you can connect there. If you connect, the issue probably sits with your wifi router. If you cannot connect, it's the laptop.


User account unresponsive I have an account that's unresponsive. When I login with this non-admin user, everything hangs. Even Dock won't show up. Just the spinning beach ball.

Back-story:

This is occurs every couple of weeks. I reinstall OS X ontop and everything back to normal for a while. I even blew away and reformatted entire HD, followed by installation of very few applications (Office  2016, BackBlaze, HandyPrint, NPM, Node, and a few other developer tools). All software is legit and purchased through official channels.
I am on El Capitan 10.11.1 at this point (this problem persisted throughout upgrades from Yosemite)
There are no hardware issues found by AHT utility test. No bad sectors on HD.
I just blew away everything in users's Library/Launch* (there were only two items (com.office...plist and com.google...plist)
I blew away user Preferences
Admin account works fine.
I have gone though this cycle about 5 times so far - works for 3 weeks, then problem comes back. I find nothing interesting in Console log, top, or opensnoop.

How do I diagnose this problem? I have a working admin account that I can use to look at all the files from the affected user, and make any modifications necessary for debugging purposes.

I ended up burning that user.

There was definitely something something in ~/Library that caused this. I fiddled a bit with deleting more stuff out of ~/Library but didn't narrow down exactly to which setting/app caused it. Finally when ~/Library was half empty, the user started to work. I moved ~/Documents, Downloads, Desktop over to a new account, burned the afflicted and renamed new user back to old name. At least now I know where to start digging next time it occurs.


I need to extend the range of an Airport Extreme? I bought an Airport Extreme and need to extend it's reach. I currently own a TimeCapsule.  I believe the TimeCapsule also has the wifi creating capabilities of the Airport Extreme.  Can I hook up my TimeCapsule to my modem and use my Extreme as an extender? If not, can I buy an Airport Express to do this?

You can use your extreme to extend your TC.  See the Apple doc here. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4259


How to adjust the color of the folders in Finder in Yosemite? After upgrading to Yosemite, the color of the folders in Finder changes from a nice soothing blue to some brighter blue that has much higher contrast.

I am curious that is there any way to change that back? Like creating some user defined css file.

There is a dark mode for the system wide menu, is there a dark mode for the Finder?

Panic (panic.com) had a utility called CandyBar that let you change most of the default icons on MacOS.

Actually this was taken over by the Icon Factory (iconfactory.com)

It may still work but look at their site first. They admit it won't change dock idons, so don't even try that. If it does work on Yosemite you can change the default icons for a variety of things. Meaning if you change the default icon any newly created icons inherit the custom appearance.

Barring that you can copy an icon file that you like:

--get info on the folder
--click on the icon
--copy (CMD-C)

Then repeat that, replacing step three with "Paste (CMD-V)" on any icon you want to change. Only problem here is that it only changes one folder icon. So you gotta do that for every folder icon you don't like. On the up side it is fully supported by Apple and works a treat.


How can I make iTunes start again after disabling it? Since iTunes tries to steal my 'Play' button on my keyboard, I disabled it a few months ago. I now wish to buy a movie from the iTunes Store, which means I have to re-enable iTunes.

Problem is: I can't remember what I did to disable it. Currently, after disabling it, starting iTunes shows the icon bouncing but then doesn't launch any windows. Reinstalling iTunes doesn't help. On the command line, I get the following output:

open /Applications/iTunes.app
2015-03-14 21:03:43.082 open[67755:13439350] Metadata.framework [Error]: void _MDItemMarkAsUsedForPath(CFStringRef): was called with a NULL path

How can I make iTunes start again?

Figured this one out myself:

Re-disabled iTunes via Play Button ITunes Patch
This (while still stopping iTunes from eating the play button) now makes iTunes launch normally again.


Made DIY fusion drive.... now recovery partition won't boot diskutil list shows what I am fairly certain is the correct layout. The recovery partition is "outside" the core storage logical volume group on the rotational disk:

% diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         119.7 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         749.3 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *865.3 GB   disk2

If I mount it, I see:

% ls /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/
System          com.apple.boot.P    com.apple.recovery.boot

% df -h /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/
Filesystem     Size   Used  Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1s3  620Mi  500Mi  120Mi    81%  127917 30773   81%   /Volumes/Recovery HD

So clearly something's there. Yet, if I hold down option, all I see are the two copies of the fusion drive (does anyone know why home made fusion drives do that and Apple's don't?).

I attempted to

bless -folder /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/System/Library/CoreServices -bootefi /usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi

but that didn't do anything.

I can't help but think that the recovery partition is mostly there and just needs a small "kick" to make it work. I certainly don't think it's worth reinstalling Mountain Lion and restoring from time machine to fix this.

The output of diskutil cs list was requested:

% diskutil cs list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 748D74CE-EBC8-4A7F-985F-239E699255CF
    =========================================================
    Name:         FusionDrive
    Status:       Online
    Size:         868986765312 B (869.0 GB)
    Free Space:   0 B (0 B)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 2CC32F7C-2358-484C-A885-5757E9AF6CFC
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     749296615424 B (749.3 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 4C8685E8-30DA-41FA-A37D-3BD6E83F9240
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     119690149888 B (119.7 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 6A089C96-ACEF-4B36-BF56-7E56C42B1294
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume CD4DEF37-AAA0-4F74-AD1B-A7DE08E3D4CE
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:               disk2
            Status:             Online
            Size (Total):       865261846528 B (865.3 GB)
            Size (Converted):   -none-
            Revertible:         No
            LV Name:            Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:        Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:       Apple_HFS

Note that the fusion drive itself seems to be working fine. The only difference I can tell in using it between it and a real Apple one is that in the option menu, I see two copies of "Macintosh HD" (both will boot it up). And, of course per this question, no Recovery HD.

Well, I was able to "solve" this in a round-about way.

I used the recovery disk assistant with my MacBook Air to make a recovery SD card. With that plugged into my mini, I was able to successfully boot into it and the disk utility there was able to comprehend my fusion drive.

That done, I then checked and saw that the recovery partition on the SD card was the same size as the recovery partition that wasn't working right, so I did a dd from the SD card overwriting the recovery partition.

The result: my option menu now offers the choice of the fusion drive (booting normally) or the recovery partition, and both work.

What I think may have been going on is that core storage seems to want to turn the recovery partition into a 'boot helper' on encrypted volumes. Perhaps it was trying to do the same thing on this machine, despite the fact that there was a separate boot partition intended to serve that purpose.

I'm not going to mark this as "solved," however, because I think there has to have been a better way.


Mac Os Catalina Huge Ping Whenever I log in into my account on my 5K 27" 2017 iMac, my whole network starts to have a huge ping to internet, but locally everything is fine. When I ping google, I get over 2000 ms on every device. And It happens only on my user account. I tried to use other cable or use wifi, but every time It's the same. It started a week ago. I have Mac Os Catalina installed.

Apart from Enabling QOS on your network, I think you’ve shown that your internet egress/ingress can’t accommodate the amount of traffic your Mac asks for. One large source of traffic could be iCloud data being cached locally:

How to know what nsurlsessiond is downloading

You can dig into everything the Mac is doing by opening Activity Monitor - select network and look at the received and sent packet counts and volume. Over 30 to 300 seconds, you should have a good idea if you can or care to quit programs that are asking for more data than the router can accommodate.

Also - check with your ISP / router support team. There are quality of service and other items that can prevent buffer bloat and allow ping/ICMP traffic to not be impacted by large downloads. You don’t have to change anything on the Mac to keep ping times exactly where you wish - just most people and routers will let any one device take all the network - first come, first serve. You could change that on the network side.


Turn off mac at a specific time to force bedtimes I recently turned on a script on my PC to turn off my windows machine at a specific time. It runs as Admin, and I went as far as to make warning pop ups half an hour before hand. It was was easy as you can make scheduled tasks on windows...

However, I write this at 1:30 am. I am sitting watching youtube videos of things I don't care about on my macbook pro. I will be exhausted tomorrow.

How can I do the same for my mac?

I want to turn off the computer, as an admin so it cannot be stopped or delayed. I want to be able to set it to go off every few minutes, even if that means creating multiple routines. I'm thinking it should be a bash script.. but I am surely not the first sleepy programmer that has this need.

macOS provides scheduled shutdown through Energy Saver.

  Use the Schedule feature of Energy Saver preferences to set a time for your Mac to automatically start up, wake, sleep, restart, or shut down.

Unfortunately this only allows for one shut down time rather than multiple.

  From the Apple () menu, choose System Preferences, then click Energy Saver.
  Click the Schedule button, then use the checkboxes and pop-up menus to choose when to start up, wake, sleep, restart, or shut down.

https://support.apple.com/HT201988


Where are my phone's apps stored on my Mac? A long time ago, when iTunes backed up my iPhone to my Mac, I could then search my Mac and find all the individual app files inside a subfolder of the "iTunes" folder in my "Music" folder.

But that was then and this is 2019 and I can't see anywhere that these individual files are accessible.

Can they still be found, and if so, where?

Apple doesn’t delete the files out of the iTunes library so if you had old apps they are where they were. Going forward, no apps get saved so there is no new place, just the old one waiting for bit rot to set in or for you to delete your no longer used files.


Is it possible to enable a Firefox addon using a terminal command on the mac? Is it possible to enable and possibly even configure a Firefox addon using terminal?
Every now and then I need to temporarily disable an addon.  I often then forget to re-enable it but it is really important I keep it running as often as possible.  I thought that if I can enable the addon through a terminal command then I can run that command on a timer somehow.
(please be kind, I'm still new to the mac!)

What you need to do is create a new Firefox profile.
That profile will be completely different from the default profile that you normally use including the add-ons that are installed.
Command line Mac Command Line Options:
Symlink the Firefox binary (optional)
The Firefox binary is located in /Applications/Firefox.app/Conents/MacOS so I suggest making a symlink to it so you can launch Firefox from anywhere and you don’t have to type out the full path each time.
% sudo ln -s /Aplications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

For the rest of the examples below, I will assume that the binary is symlinked.  If you chose not to, you’ll need to type out the full path.
Launch Firefox Profile Manager
The ProfileManager launches Firefox with a Profile selection box in the GUI allowing you to choose which profile you’d like to use
% firefox -ProfileManager

Create a Profile
This is the quick command to create a profile in the default location which will be in the ~Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles  directory.
% firefox CreateProfile <profile name>

To create a profile in a specific directory, you need to specify either the absolute or relative path
% firefox CreateProfile “profile_name profile_dir”

Launch Firefox specifying a profile
This command will launch Firefox with a specific profile
% firefox -P “<profile_name>“

Use this command if you have Firefox already running and want to have a new instance with a different profile
% firefox -new-instance -P “<profile_name>”


Is it really true that the iPhone doesn't have turn-by-turn navigation? I'm looking into getting a new Verizon smartphone. I like many things about the iPhone, but I'm concerned that I'll have to give up a feature I really like about my current phone--turn-by-turn navigation. According to this skattertech chart, the iPhone lacks this feature. Is there really not an "app for that"? (And if not, why? The phone has GPS, so what gives?)

The thing is that the built-in Maps app uses Google Maps for the maps, and the Google Maps license doesn't allow a third-party to implement voice navigation using it.

So, Apple's Maps isn't allowed to implement voice navigation, but any other GPS software provider can offer the feature along with their own maps.

Here is a nice review of some of the GPS software available for the iPhone: http://www.macworld.com/article/156720/2011/01/gps.html

Also, that situation could change, since Apple purchased a maps company a few years ago.


All Desktops swiping brings the app front When an app is selected as all desktops while switching from one desktop to another even though another app is in front of this app, it automaticly brings the app front then puts it to behind again. To prevent this I always have to hide the app before changing desktops. Is there a general setting which will prevent this?

While swiping left to right from behind of xcode to front of chrome then goes behind of chrome.

As long as another app that is set to None or This Desktop in the Desktop you are swiping from is the Active Window, and you did not make the app set for All Desktops active during the session on the previous desktop, then the Window that tracks to the All Desktops will remain in the background without coming forward and then going back.

This behavior only happens when the All Desktops App is the Active Window when you swipe to the new desktop. I assume the reason for it is that the OS X designers felt that swiping and hiding the open windows on the new Desktop could cause confusion, so they added this animation to emphasize that the Active App from the previous desktop is deprioritized and that there are open Apps on the new Desktop.


How to sort by size of output by du -sh ~/* | sort -r I use this command to find the disk usage:
du -sh ~/* | sort -r

But it messes up with with the K, M, and G suffixes added by du -h.
956M    /Users/shinokada/Docker
9.2G    /Users/shinokada/RustProjects
856M    /Users/shinokada/Bitbucket
8.2M    /Users/shinokada/Desktop
708M    /Users/shinokada/Medium-articles
596K    /Users/shinokada/Movies
480M    /Users/shinokada/Sites
415M    /Users/shinokada/MyProjects
4.1M    /Users/shinokada/jupyter-work
4.0M    /Users/shinokada/powerlevel9k
4.0K    /Users/shinokada/sys_info_page.html
4.0K    /Users/shinokada/requirements.txt
4.0K    /Users/shinokada/package-lock.json
4.0K    /Users/shinokada/mypath.txt
4.0K    /Users/shinokada/cecilieo
4.0K    /Users/shinokada/bin
258M    /Users/shinokada/Github
256M    /Users/shinokada/Calibre Library
228K    /Users/shinokada/LaTeX
2.7G    /Users/shinokada/nltk_data
2.2G    /Users/shinokada/Projects
2.1G    /Users/shinokada/DataScience
170M    /Users/shinokada/Applications
157M    /Users/shinokada/Pictures
1.8G    /Users/shinokada/virtualenvs
...

How can I put them in order?
I used -m and -k flag but it still sort by number not size.

This worked.
du -sh ~/* | sort -rh

sort has -h flag:
-h, --human-numeric-sort, --sort=human-numeric
             Sort by numerical value, but take into account the SI suffix, if present.
...


sudo chown "Operation not permitted" - how to resolve permissions to allow chown by admin or root users? As sanity check I was sudo chowning some folders due to having run some commands previously that generated some root owned files in my $HOME. I ended seeing an error in this process that got me curious:

  chown: Library/Caches/com.mailplaneapp.Mailplane3/my@domain.tld/Downloads/151623a0c45f2b4_0.1.pdf: Operation not permitted

ls -l@ Library/Caches/com.mailplaneapp.Mailplane3/my@domain.tld/Downloads/151623a0c45f2b4_0.1.pdf doesn't reveal anything overly remarkable in this regard:

-rw-r--r--@ 1 USERNAME  staff  335080 Aug 17  2018 Library/Caches/com.mailplaneapp.Mailplane3/my@domain.tld/Downloads/151623a0c45f2b4_0.1.pdf
    com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms       284

I noticed this same thing from other files in this folder. Is there something I can do to strip whatever permissions might be preventing an admin / root user from modifying ownership via chown?

Try either or both of these commands:

sudo chflags noschg '/path/to/file.ext'

sudo chflags nouchg '/path/to/file.ext'


Why does my iPhone 4 get so hot during charging? My iPhone 4 gets hot as the battery is charged. To compound the issue, I think I bought a cheap case that traps heat, which in turn makes the phone even hotter -- you can feel the heat if you hold it in your hand while it is charging. When you stop charging it, the excess heat goes away.

My question is: does this damage the hardware? Also, to reduce the heat, I put the phone on the floor (which is cooler) and I found that the device was not as hot as before (previously I had put the phone to charge on a wooden table). I am unsure as to whether my measure helps in elongating the battery life and protecting the electronic components.

FYI, iPhone 4 does have heat sensors and if it gets dangerously hot it will show a black screen with a yellow warning sign and shut down. It's perfectly reasonable to be concerned and take the measures you have to increase heat dissipation, but batteries warming on charging is quite normal. I wouldn't worry unless the iPhone displays an overheating warning consistently.


New iPhone 8 restore not showing sms messages My new iPhone 8 is not showing sms messages after a restore using itunes.

Created a backup of old iPhone 3G (ios 4.1) and restored it to new iPhone 8 (ios 11). Notes, contacts and calendar have all transferred over fine but not my sms messages. Every time I open the messages app its blank.

If I open the sqlite db on the backup it shows all the messages, the file size is 3mb. But if I look under general-> iPhone storage-> messages its 12kb

If I use ibackup viewer I can also see all the messages in the backup fine.

Is there anything I can do to view my old sms messages on the new phone or transfer the messages to it?

Edit:

What I've tried:
Backup old phone, restore it to new one, no sms messages display on new phone.
Opened sqlite db, can see all the sms messages fine.
Looked at all the posts on here, googled for 6 hours tying things but nothing will transfer them over, or I just cant see them.
Reset all the settings.

What I cant get is the sms messages to display in the new iPhone

I have encountered the same situation that some of my photos and messages were not restored successfully. But now, all my files on old iPhone 5S have been moved to my new iPhone 8. It just takes me 5 minutes to transfer about 2000 photos. Maybe you can also get solution here: transfer all files to new iPhone


Get battery health via Apple Configurator I have 250 iPod touch, where I have to get the status of the battery health. Is there a way to get this via the Apple Configurator for multiple devices at once?

Based on this article and others on JAMF Nation:
https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/feature-requests/6836/info-on-battery-quality

It doesn't appear possible to do this through Mobile Device Management (MDM) which is how you would need to do this if it were possible as you would need a server somewhere that the device could report back to.

As Apple Configurator only creates provisioning profile for managing device settings, but doesn't actually have a server side element I don't see how it would be possible to get this information back, so I would suggest the answer is no not with Apple Configurator, and also no not with the currently provided APIs for MDM.


Unable to install macOS Catalina with bootable USB without macOS recovery partition I had deleted the macOS and macOS recovery partitions many months ago to increase the capacity for the Bootcamp Windows. Now I want to reinstall macOS via a bootable USB, but on booting into it, it gets stuck in the spinning globe screen forever.
My internet speed is pretty fast, I get no issues on other devices though.
I tried unallocating some space out of the Bootcamp partition for internet recovery to install, but to no avail. Because of this, I am not able to go to recovery and enable boot from external disk.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

You will surely get this to work once your download completes from Apple servers. Things are busy with iOS 14 release,  it if you can’t get this over several hours, take your Mac to a new network.
Internet recovery needs you to connect to some main servers - unfiltered access with no firewalls which can be problematic in some countries and some networks.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210060

Or have someone make you an installer if you trust them.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

The only other option is hardware repair if your device doesn’t erase when you correctly follow arch of the erase install steps.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904


Is it possible that my new iPod touch is a used one? I've purchased a new iPod touch 4G last week through a 3rd party reseller. I saw the packaging is still good in white plastic around the acrylic box. The seller assured me that the product is new and still in sealed condition.

Then, he unsealed the box to open it and picked the unit to another room (he said that he wanted to activate it first). 5 minutes later, I received the unit again and noticed that the iOS was 5.1.1 (I thought it was supposed to be 5.0.1 considering it was released in 2011)

Then I went home to register the iPod in my ASP (with the SN of course). However, after I put in the serial number, this came up :

According to our records, this serial number is registered to another Apple ID. If you have more than one Apple ID, log in to My Support Profile with that Apple ID to see your other registered products. Not sure if you have another Apple ID?

As I was about to contact Apple with telephone support, this came up :

1. Valid purchase date

2. Telephone technical support : Expired

3. Repairs and Service Coverage : Active, 2 August 2013

4. Elgible for Apple Protection Plan

Yep, the telephone support had expired and the warranty was less than 365 days. I went back to that guy for an explanation but he said that I'd better bring this matter to the Authorized Service Provider. Before I went there, I did noticed that the iPod touch often freeze after "slide to unlock" and I had to hard-reset it to get it back working. Then, it's battery capacity was awfully weak; I used it for music then it got 20% warning in just 2 hours from full charge.

So I did go the Authorized Service Provider, but the guy at the ASP laughed at me because I've received a quite non-functional product which was not supposed to be sold to customer just by looking at the serial number and the part number (ZP). Honestly, I don't even know where was ZP region located ? (My iPod touch 3rd Gen was a ZA actually). Those guys also said that Apple won't be held responsible for such thing.

Hence, I don't know where should I bring this matter, since both sides (reseller and ASP) are dead-end. I wanted to ask guys here if there were really such thing as "not supposed to be sold" iPod touch. Or if there's someone else have the same problem as I did.

I can only think of one thing, probably this iPod was a display unit, then somehow, the seller cleaned the box and the unit then resealed it again to make it looked new. I don't even know if it's possible to reseal an iPod packaging.

I don't know where else to ask, so I hope that I might find something here.

Phone AppleCare, they will have more details on the original purchase date, location and registration details. Then take this information to the reseller and demand your money back if it was sold as new. If they are an Apple Authorised Resealer consider reporting them to Apple for not following the correct sales procedures.

In future I would suggest buying directly from Apple wherever possible.


How to install an OSX application from source I'm trying to install this application from source.

http://sveinbjorn.org/platypus

It's not installed the same as the usual way in Linux. I got the source and built in in X-Code.

Now how do I install it into my system?

Well...you could just download the compiled version. Then unzip it and move it to your applications folder.

But if you want to compile it yourself, that's fine, too. Once you built in in XCode, the built product will be in the Development folder (or the Deployment folder, depending on which build configuration you chose). Be sure to build the correct target. To build the Platyups.app, you want the Platypus target.

Once you built the app, you can run it from right there. Or move it to your applications folder.


How do I exclude a song from iTunes Match I have a number of audio files in iTunes that I do NOT want iTunes match to match. I do not want iTunes match to find the files and upload them to the cloud.

Essentially I want to tag some files in iTunes to make them ineligible. How do I do that?

I don't think you can do this with a single library, iTunes match will check everything in your library, under the 25,000 track limit, to try and match.

One possible alternative would be a separate iTunes library for the files you don't want to match.

This separate library could also contain the actual files that have been matched by the other library as well but not be enabled for iTunes match itself.

You could then use this 'super' library as the main one running the iTunes match library occasionally just to keep iTunes match up to date.

How to run multiple libraries


Deleted com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist in Mavericks, how to get it back? I already had trouble with DNS not resolving for all apps except Chrome, in my troubleshooting I for some reason deleted com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist
Deleting this file did not help in any way..
Could someone post the text to 10.9 com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist? I understand I will have to change permissions etc on the file.

Here is the contents of my /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist from OS X 10.9.1:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.apple.mDNSResponder</string>
    <key>OnDemand</key>
    <false/>
    <key>InitGroups</key>
    <false/>
    <key>UserName</key>
    <string>_mdnsresponder</string>
    <key>GroupName</key>
    <string>_mdnsresponder</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/sbin/mDNSResponder</string>
    </array>
    <key>MachServices</key>
    <dict>
        <key>com.apple.mDNSResponder</key>
        <true/>
               <key>com.apple.mDNSResponder.dnsproxy</key>
               <true/>
    </dict>
    <key>Sockets</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Listeners</key>
        <dict>
            <key>SockFamily</key>
            <string>Unix</string>
            <key>SockPathName</key>
            <string>/var/run/mDNSResponder</string>
            <key>SockPathMode</key>
            <integer>438</integer>
        </dict>
    </dict>
    <key>EnableTransactions</key>
    <true/>
    <key>BeginTransactionAtShutdown</key>
    <true/>
    <key>POSIXSpawnType</key>
    <string>Interactive</string>
</dict>
</plist>

It'd probably be worth running a permissions repair after restoring the file.


Why is my daughter's iPhone continuing to charge purchases to my account? I gave my iPhone 4 to my daughter and she keeps charging to my Apple account. She signs in with her own Apple ID, but I keep getting charged for apps she is buying.

Go to app store, then at the bottom of the Featured page you will see the Apple ID which is used in it. She might still be using yours.

Signing with her Apple ID to iCloud is not related to the store. Your account might still be there.


External monitor stopped working after 10.9.2 update I've been using a Dell U2713H display for about a year with a mini-display port to display port cable.

However, after installing the 10.9.2 update, the monitor is going into sleep mode when connected to the MacBook Pro (as it doesn't think it's getting a signal), even though the laptop thinks it's correctly connected. (If I turn the monitor off, the menu bar, etc. revert to the MBP screen.)

About the only related Mavericks default I've changed is to disable the "Displays have seperate Spaces" option within Mission Control, although I've tried re-enabling this and logging off/on again to no avail.

I've also tried:

Forcing the system to use the dedicated GPU rather than the on-board chipset.
Resetting the NVRAM and the SMC, neither of which appear to have made any difference.
Re-installing the 10.9.2 update
Creating a new user account to see if there was a user specific problem
Booting in safe mode to ensure no 3rd party apps were affecting things
Forcing a re-detect
Deleting the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist file (getting desperate here)
Clamshell mode
Using the EDID override approach (As per: http://embdev.net/topic/284710)

After looking into this more deeply, System Information states that the monitor is a TV and I wonder if that could be related to the problem.

My Mac is a 15" MacBook Pro Mid 2010 model.

I've just managed to workaround the problem by disabling DisplayPort 1.2 within the Dell OSD.

To do this, you might need to use a bit of a workaround, which is to get the monitor to bring up the input select and then hold down the green tick for ~8 seconds when the (mini-)DisplayPort option is selected. This will bring up a new menu that enables you to enable/disable DisplayPort 1.2 mode. (Green tick to enable/red to disable, etc.)

Whilst I suspect this is just a temporary fix, it at least means that I can use the monitor until Apple fix their seemingly problematic 10.9.2 release.

UPDATE

As an minor update, my bug report has been closed as a duplicate and due to the nature of Apple's "closed" bug tracking system I've no means of viewing the other ticket. However, at least this is a known issue that will presumably be addressed in a successive release.


.app bundle displaying low resolution Tkinter window I asked this question already on stackoverflow but since I didn't got yet an answer and this may be Mac specific I'm asking here again:

I'm using Pyinstaller to package a Python app into a Mac App. This is working fine. Recently I have added a GUI window using Tkinter to check for updates, start/stop the app, etc.

There's something strange happening which I don't understand. After running successfully PyInstaller and creating a onefile standing app I get the following outcome after running ls -al:

-rwxr-xr-x   1 karold  staff  62756614  8 lis 11:08 mac
drwxr-xr-x   3 karold  staff       102  8 lis 11:09 mac.app

Here's the outcome while running the mac file (upper image) and the mac.app (lower image):

Notice the difference in the window resolution, although the mac.app package contains exactly the same mac program ...

Is there something I'm missing to get the same solution in both cases?

Found the answer by carefully reading the docs.

I was missing High Resolution retina settings in the app part of my spec file, as mentioned in the above mentioned docs:

For example, when you use PyQt5, you can set NSHighResolutionCapable to True to let your app also work in retina screen

Once I added the info_plist parameter as provided below the problem was gone:)

app = BUNDLE(exe,
     name='myscript.app',
     icon=None,
     bundle_identifier=None
     info_plist={
        'NSHighResolutionCapable': 'True'
        },
     )


Can’t find .plist files I can’t find the .plist file for TextEdit, Preview. I’ve looked into /Library/Preferences, ~/Library/Preferences, and ~/Library/Containers. I have tried opening the app and changing the preferences and still it doesn’t create them.

I run the following command in Terminal to find it:

mdfind -name (osascript -e 'id of app "Preview"').plist -onlyin ~/Library/Preferences -onlyin /Library/Preferences -onlyin ~/Library/Containers/

I also looked myself and they weren’t there. Any reason this is happening? Odd this is I can still read the defaults with defaults read -app Preview in the Terminal. So where is that coming from, is there another place it’s stored at.

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.plist

and

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.TextEdit/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist

~/Library/Containers does not seem to be indexed, at least on my system, so mdfind didn't find them. That said, I have a copy of my system on another hard drive, which IS fully indexed, and it listed some files there that started me poking around in that folder on my OS drive.


macOS Sierra keeps running out of application memory Every time I turn my Mac on, after a while the app memory just runs out.

These are just from 10min apart, after working for a while. I need help figuring what those Installers are and why the kernel_task is taking so much memory. Those Google Chrome Helpers also look extremely unnecessary.

The only thing that 'solves' this is restarting the computer. How can I get rid of this cycle?

Chrome is probably launching when macOS starts, and tabs from your previous session and reopening, so you're instantly running out of memory.

Try the Chrome plugin, The Great Suspender. Also try running Dr. Cleaner continuously in the background.


Ran Repair Disk on Boot Camp partition and Windows won't boot Unfortunately I accidentaly hit the REPAIR DISK while my Windows 7 bootcamp partition was selected. Since I have Tuxera NTFS, the button wasn't grey out and I thought at the moment I was repairing the OSX partition. Yes, dumb as hell and now I have to pay for being careless.

So the repair disk ran for roughly 2 minutes until I realize it was the Windows 7 partition. So I cancelled it. Tried to boot on Windows seven and all I have is the blinking underscore for a few moments, then instant restart. Everytime.

So here's what Ive done so far to try to fix it:

Reset SMS/PRAM
Disable Tuxera/Unmount Windows partition
Run Windows Repair disk and go through Startup Repair, Chkdsk /f C:, bootrec stuff (rebuild bcd shows 0 installations), system restore to previous point (cant finish due to errors and shows "Unkown" at the top the window).

None worked.

Disk list on OSX shows me this (I have no idea if that is right or not):

How can I fix that partition? I still have access to the Windows files with Tuxera, so maybe I could manually replace the damaged files? Or maybe a terminal command could fix it?

Open to any suggestions (besides clean install obviously).

A bit late, but maybe others still look at this.

First Aid may have messed up the partitions information. There are two separate places where the partitions are registered:

In the first sector, the MBR - this one need to identify the Windows partition plus the GUID partition range.
In the GUID table, which usually starts at sector 1, up to 63.

It is possible that First Aid reset the MBR to only list the GUID partition range (i.e. the entire disk). In that case you need to re-add the Windows partition (even if both overlap).

I've written some procedures for this here: http://blog.tempel.org/search/label/BootCamp and here: http://www.tempel.org/WindowsWithoutBootCampAssistant

You could also try to see if Boot Runner (https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/boot-runner/) helps fixing your partition and Windows boot records.