Safari favorites disappeared on my iMac I have an iMac running High Sierra and Safari version 12.1.2. I have saved a selection of sites to Favorites. There were about 60 sites in the group. Just now something changed and when I select 'show favorites' the window has only 12 sites showing.  Where have all my favorites gone?

I've quit safari and restarted. I've restarted my computer. Neither worked.

I can't tell you where all your favourites have gone, but since you have a Time Machine backup from three weeks ago, your best bet is probably to recover them from there (as I'm guessing you haven't added a lot to your bookmarks in the past three weeks).

The file you're needing to replace is your Bookmarks.plist file. This is located in your user's Library folder. The full path is typically: Macintosh HD ▸ Users ▸ username ▸ Library ▸ Safari ▸ Bookmarks.plist

If your user's Library folder isn't visible, follow these steps to open it:

Go to Finder
Press and hold the option key while you click on the Go menu
Select Library
You can let go of the option key now
Within the Library folder open the Safari folder
Now you'll see the Bookmarks.plist file that you need to recover from your Time Machine backup

Since following the above steps has resulted in the same outcome, it's time to check whether some of your Safari settings have changed. To do this:

Go to Safari > Preferences...
Make sure you're on the General tab (first icon along top)
Now check the options for each of the following settings:

Favorites Shows:
Top Sites Shows:

Exit Preferences
Now click on the Bookmarks menu
Double check that the Show Frequently Visited in Favorites option (second from top) is ticked

Now test again to see if this returns the previous behaviour?


Error Message Says FileZilla Will Damage My Computer After updating to Catalina, when I start FileZilla, I get the error message "filezilla will damage your computer. you should move it to the bin”. I had installed FileZilla from the App Store, and not directoy from the Filezilla Website.
I found a few discussions on this topic - also mentioning FileZilla explicitly - on the net, usually in combination with an advertisement for some "mal cleaner software" (for example here). Before the upgrade, I had used FileZilla frequently, and did not notice any problem.
Is this a false alarm by the Gatekeeper, or should I suspect that this app indeed is infected and remove it?

I recommend binning the app in this case. Get a new copy or different tool.
The FileZilla downloads and updates now contain PUP - potentially unwanted program (or PUS if software makes more sense than program). The line between malware, adware and privacy stealing information is blurred and when a package has these modifications you will sometimes be prompted with a warning. Even when the owner of a tool decides to monetize their tool, Apple is generally flagging that change with a signing error so people know a common tool isn’t what it was in the past.
This warning can be as simple as the application is modified and what was signed isn’t what is running anymore.
Many people have repackaged this app, so be sure you do the work to get a clean copy or perhaps delete it and redownload. I love Mountain Duck and cyberduck for this if you find the zilla hassle too great to get it reinstalled.

https://medium.com/web-design-web-developer-magazine/how-to-safely-download-and-cleanly-install-filezilla-ftp-software-with-no-additional-junk-10b27a2d270d
https://cyberduck.io/
https://mountainduck.io/


How do I have my iPhone rotate the homescreen? The iPad has the cool feature of being able to rotate the home screen (screens) with apps on them, I was wondering if this is possible for the iPhone's as well?  If so, how do I do this.  My iPhone is Jailbroken so using a Cydia or equilvalent app is possible.  I'm also looking to auto rotate the lock screeen as well.


One email address has two Internet Accounts I somehow have multiple accounts for the same email address - they both receive messages sent to that address but one (the POP) has hundreds of emails in the Inbox and Sent, going back years and the other (the IMAP) has four in, going back a week, and none out.

In Mail>Preferences>Accounts they both appear, one with a grey IMAP beneath it and one with a grey POP.

In Settings>Internet Accounts they also both appear, this time with a grey Mail and a grey Notes beneath them.

Is there any reason why I should want this setup, and what is the best way to rationalise it (which I would like to do by removing the POP, but without losing emails)?

You don't have two email accounts.  You just have two email protocols set up.

From Wikipedia:

  Virtually all modern e-mail clients and servers support IMAP. IMAP and
  the earlier POP3 (Post Office Protocol) are the two most prevalent
  standard protocols for email retrieval, with many webmail service
  providers such as Gmail, Outlook.com and Yahoo! Mail also providing
  support for either IMAP or POP3.

The major differences between POP and IMAP is that POP supports the "download and delete" methodology and IMAP "synchronizes" its content between the server and client thus allowing you to have multiple email clients updated.

With the setup you have, the POP protocol negates any advantage you would have gained with IMAP since it downloads and deletes the message meaning there is no longer anything for IMAP to sync.

So, which one to use?

If you want sync'd emails across devices, keep IMAP.  If you have only one device and you want to save your emails locally, use POP.

You can remove your POP email protocol by deleting it, but if you want to save your messages, you can create a "Saved Message Folder" under the IMAP account and move everything from POP there.  Once copied over, delete the POP account.


Data recovery on Lion with a disk that disk utilities cannot mount? I ran iDefrag last night because my MBP was running sooooo slow. I barely ever use it and it has 300 GB of free space. I used to use OnyX to optimise the disks on Snow Leopard but I didn't see that option in Lion. I let iDefrag run and went to sleep. This morning I woke up to the Do Not Enter sign and the spinning thing below it. I made sure I left it plugged in so I don't understand what happened.

I booted into recovery and tried to run the disk utility but the repair failed. I tried to reinstall Lion but the drive can not be mounted. I'm currently downloading Lion onto a USB Drive, but now I'm thinking 16 GB won't be large enough to migrate my data like this guide shows: http://www.thomasverbeek.com/blog/?p=183

Am I even going about this correctly? I don't even know if the drive will be mountable once it's done downloading. I just don't want to lose the files on my desktop.

Reinstalling Lion won't necessarily save your data. It sounds very likely your hard drive was failing (disk access substantially slower than normal can be a symptom of failed reads and/or the drive attempting to recover), and it died during the defrag.

The USB drive is only used to install Lion (just like a DVD), not to transfer any of your existing data.

Your next step should be seeing if you can mount the drive on someone else's computer, either via Target Disk Mode, or taking the drive out and putting it in an external enclosure. However if the recovery mode can't mouth the drive, chances are another computer can't either.

It's hard to say for sure without more information, but at this point it's likely your best bet for recovering your data is having good backups. Failing that, there are data recovery services, but they can be extremely expensive.


Trackpad interaction without touching it since spilling water I am using MacBook Pro with OS X 10.9.2.

2 days back some water was spilled(more like sprinkled) on the keyboard area of macbook and I immediately cleaned it. After that my macbook cursor behaves strangely. It acts like some one else is playing with the trackpad.

Below are my observations

In TextEdit if I leave it untouched, it selects a line of text and gets deleted. And some times if the text edit is not maximized, the focus moved out and brings back the window which is maximized. And also the cursor suddenly jumps to somewhere else while I am writing.
In VLC it continuously toggles between full screen and windowed mode. It automatically right clicks and opens the context menu.

Please help find the root cause and a solution please.

The basic working of a trackpad is when a charged object such as a the human finger interacts with it. In case of a water spill, I assume you have wiped and cleaned it but still some amount of moisture has managed to slip into the trackpad and when it gets charged it starts interacting with it. I would suggest to take it to a repair shop, or if you still want to test it you can connect the external trackpad and check as that should work fine.


how to execute mkdir in /home/ directory I want to create a directory 'administrator' in my /home/ directory but it won't allow me as it alway returns the error Operation not supported. Any ideas?

Roberts-MacBook-Pro:home robert$ pwd
/home
Roberts-MacBook-Pro:home robert$ sudo mkdir administrator
mkdir: administrator: Operation not supported

/home is used as a mount point for the automounter (see /etc/auto_master and /etc/auto_home), you can't create your own directories in there.

If you are looking for a place to store common administrator stuff shared between different administrators, create a directory in either /Users/(any admin account) or /usr/local/share and make it accessible to all members of the admin group.


TextEdit not responding after zooming in Recently, i noticed TextEdit on macos bigsur(M1 chip) taking more than 3GB ram and is not responding after I try zooming in.
Even though my .txt wasn't very big(just 4KB, barely 50 lines of text). Anyone experiencing the same, please respond? Is that a bug ?
The ram consumption is increasing exponentially unless I force quit the app. Its working absolutely fine if I don't zoom into it.
Edit : It happens with any text file with TextEdit which is a bit large, e.g more than 50-60 lines. For .txt files with lesser content, its not happening.

Excuse me for not providing the answer. I just want to confirm that the issue is really happening.
Today, I had a meeting with my client. I noted important content in TextEditor and I haven't saved it yet. After the meeting, I did several zoom-in and zoom-out. And suddenly, TextEditor became not responding and it has been eating more and more RAM (current is 23.14 GB).
I would thank you a lot if anyone tells me how can I restore/save the currently opening content. If I force killing the process, I think everything will be lost.
Oh my god, Apple. Please don't do this to me! :'(


Windows installation through bootcamp and SSD error I have a Macbook Pro 2017, and I've been trying to install Windows 10 on it for quite a while through Bootcamp, but I was advised to purchase an SSD (Samsung T7 500 GB). However, that also did not solve my issue. Every time I try to install Windows, the first time the Mac boots from the external startup disk, I am faced with a BSOD error saying 'your computer ran into an error, please restart'. I have tried multiple Windows 10 ISO's 1909, 1809, 1607, and the current version 20H2 available on Microsoft (30th October 2020). I also reset PRAM before every installation.
To install Windows, I followed this 9to5Mac tutorial, as well as the accepted answer to this question.
Can someone PLEASE HELP ME :(((

At time mark 11:49 in the 9to5Mac video the author is about to turn off the virtual machine. However, before turning off, a command needs to be entered to copy the drivers from the $WinPEDriver$ folder to the drivers store on the USB drive. This can be accomplished by executing the following steps.

Note: You an enlarge an image by either clicking on the image or opening in a new window.

From the Start Menu, open a Command Prompt window by selecting Run as administrator, as shown below.

When the popup windows shown below appears, click on the Yes button.

In the Command Prompt window, enter the following command, as shown in the image below. The external USB drive letter in the video was F. If your external USB drive has been assigned a different letter, then make the appropriate substitutions when entering the command shown below.
dism /Image:F:\ /Add-Driver /Driver:F:\WindowsSupport\$WinPEDriver$ /Recurse /ForceUnsigned

Note: Some drivers are not meant to be installed this way. If such a driver is encountered, then you may see a warning message. You can ignore these messages.

When the dism command is finished, you can enter the exit command to close the Command Prompt window.

Proceed with the instructions given in the video.


How can I get Siri to set my Nanoleaf light back to adaptive lighting? I have a Nanoleaf lightbulb that I can control via Siri using my HomePod mini.  The Nanoleaf supports Homekit Adaptive Lighting, which I've configured as you see in this iMore article.  So far so good.
If I say, "Hey Siri, set the Nanoleaf to blue!" it will turn the lightbulb blue.
If I say, "Hey Siri, set the Nanoleaf to Adaptive Lighting!" it says, "Hmmm, that's not a supported feature."  Obviously this is not a key word for Siri.
What's the voice command to set it back to Adaptive Lighting?

Siri doesn't know how to do this (as of iOS 14.4, because the site you linked to is for iOS).  You need to first create a Scene that sets the light to adaptive lighting.  Then you can tell Siri to execute that Scene.
These directions work on any device that has the Home app.

From the Home app, tap the + icon (top right) and select Add Scene.
Select Custom.
Name the scene to use the phrase you want to use to turn on adaptive lighting.  I used "Turn on adaptive lighting".
Tap Add Accessories.
Select the light(s) to control (in your case, it will be your Nanoleaf bulb).  Tap Done when finished.
Under Accessories you'll see the Nanoleaf bulb.  Long-press the device to show the color configuration screen.  Tap the adaptive lighting icon which is the first icon on the top row, left.  Set the brightness as desired.
Tap the X to close the screen.

Now, you just have to give Siri the name of the scene and it will work.


Take screenshot of screenshot with AppleScript I want to open an image on the desktop with the 'Quick Look', then screenshot it, and then open the new screenshot to take another one of it.  In resume, I want to know how to screenshot an image that has just been screenshoted, endlessly. How can I do it on AppleScript?

I know it sounds kind of weird, but its for artistic purposes. The resultant image is a feedback of the image itself being screenshoted. Also, it is important that the image is being opened as 'quick look' because it displays the top bar with the date and time of the screenshot, so the feedback is clear. Thank you so much.

(This image is a reference I made myself with this intention. Is exactly what I'm trying to automate]1]1

//The script I've accomplished by now is:

tell application "Finder"
    do shell script "qlmanage - p /cm.jpg"
    set dFolder to "~/Desktop/screencapture/"

    do shell script ("mkdir -p " & dFolder)

    set i to 0
    repeat 960 times
        set tTime to do shell script "date +%H%M%S"
        do shell script ("screencapture " & dFolder & "frame-" & i & ".png")
        delay 5
        set i to i + 1
    end repeat
end tell

// I still don't know how to make it work related to a specific image, and then related to each new screenshot.

As with any script that tries to control the UI, this script is brittle and relies on sufficient delays to give the Quick Look window time to form and the image to be painted.  Although the script does check for the window's existence, it cannot check to make sure that the contents of the window has been painted, so I have had variable results in testing, including some good successes:

tell application "Finder"
    if selection = {} then return
    try
        make new folder with properties {name:"Infinity"}
    end try
    set sourcefile to duplicate item 1 of (get selection) to folder "Infinity"
    select the sourcefile
    activate
end tell

repeat with i from 1 to 50
    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke space
        set _W to (a reference to window "Quick Look" of process "Finder")
        repeat until _W exists
            delay 0.5
        end repeat

        delay 1 -- Give time for window to paint

        set [x, y] to _W's position
        set [w, h] to _W's size

        set my text item delimiters to ","
        set R to {x, y, w, h} as text
    end tell

    set my text item delimiters to {".", ":"}
    set filename to "screen shot " & ((current date) as «class isot» as string) & ".jpg"
    set filename to text items of filename as text

    do shell script "screencapture -R " & R & " -t jpg ~/Desktop/Infinity/" & ¬
        (quoted form of the filename)

    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke space
        repeat until not (_W exists)
            delay 0.5
        end repeat
    end tell

    tell application "Finder" to select file filename in folder "Infinity"
end repeat

You must ensure the necessary accessibility privileges are granted for this script to run.

Note: This script was written and tested using AppleScript version: 2.7  System version: 10.13.6


Use media keys on Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 for Spotify Recently I installed the Microsoft Intellitype drivers for OSX so that I could use my keyboard more naturally (e.g., media keys, etc.).  However, this seems to have broken some functionality.

Prior to installing these drivers, I could at least use the play/pause button to control Spotify (the goal was to also gain access to the forward/back keys to skip tracks).  Now, however, any media key will automatically attempt to open up iTunes, regardless if Spotify is active or not.

Is there a fix or remedy for this, or should I uninstall the Intellitype drivers?

Edit: I suppose this is fairly similar to this unanswered question.

You can create AppleScript's that do things such as play/pause, next track, previous track and then using the Microsoft keyboard pref panel set the key settings for the media keys to use command "Open Item" and then choose the apple script that corresponds with the media key you wish to use.

Here is a link to what the apple scripts should look like.
http://www.jack.sh/2011/07/21/spotify-applescripts-0-5-2/

Honestly, I simply opened Automator, create new application, added action "run appleScript" and for the area where the script goes, added:

tell application "Spotify" to playpause

Next, I assigned that application to the play/pause media key.

For next track and previous track the script should just be

tell application "Spotify" to next track

or

tell application "Spotify" to previous track


How do I ping6 a link local address on OSX? On linux I see all connected IPv6 addresses to my wlan adapter with

ping6 ff02::1%wlan0 | head

but how can I achieve this on OSX?

On OSX the wifi device has another name, usually "en1", so this works on OSX:

ping6 ff02::1%en1 | head

you find out the name with

ifconfig

and look for a device that has an IP in a line precieding "inet" with an IP that is within your network


Safe shutdown from Kisok mode I plan to deploy a kiosk with no keyboard and mouse. Can anyone think of a way to allow safe shutdown? I think the power button will put up a user prompt that requires a keyboard or mouse. The only thing I could think of was a usb enter key. This is silly so I'm asking for help.

Found an answer here with applescript

on idle
set i to 0

tell application "System Events"

    -- Get a count of all the windows belonging to the process
    set numberOfWindows to count windows of process "loginwindow"

    -- Check each window for a "Shut Down" button....
    repeat numberOfWindows times
        set i to i + 1

        -- ....and shut down if found
        if exists button "Shut Down" of window i of process "loginwindow" then
            click button "Shut Down" of window i of process "loginwindow"
        end if
    end repeat
end tell

-- How often the script checks for the window (in seconds). Change it as you see fit.
return 7
end idle

Haven't tested it yet, but it sounds reasonable.

edit
Option 2
Super simple (assuming no open applications will prompt for user interaction first)

tell app "System Events" to shut down

Option 3 (variation on option 1)

tell application "System Events" to set the visible of every process to true

set white_list to {"Finder"}
set white_list to {"Shutdown"}

try
  tell application "Finder"
      set process_list to the name of every process whose visible is true
    end tell
    repeat with i fron 1 to (number of items in process_list)
      set this_process to item i of the process_list
      if this_process is not in white_list then
        tell application this_process
          quit
        end tell
        end if
    end repeat
on error
    tell application "finder"
    shutdown
    end tell
end try
delay 2
tell application "Finder"
  shut down
end tell


Where did the free space for my deleted ExFAT partition go? I had these partitions on an external hard drive:

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Android                 63.9 GB    disk2s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS RiptideHUP              968.0 GB   disk2s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data RiptideF                967.8 GB   disk2s4

My aim was to delete disk2s2 and then resize disk2s3 to occupy the leftover space by deleting disk2s2.
I deleted disk2s2 using this command:

diskutil  erasevolume  "Free Space"  ""  /dev/disk2s2

Now, to resize the volume, I used:

diskutil  resizevolume  /dev/disk2s3  R

However, I got this error:

Started partitioning on disk2s3 RiptideHUP Error: -69743: The new size
must be different than the existing size

Can someone help me and tell me where I went wrong?

NOTE: Using diskutil list now shows:

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS RiptideHUP              968.0 GB   disk2s3
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data RiptideF                967.8 GB   disk2s4

The command diskutil  resizevolume  /dev/disk2s3  R requires the free space to reside after disk2s3. The command diskutil  erasevolume  "Free Space"  ""  /dev/disk2s2 created free space before disk2s3. There is no or very little free space between disk2s3 and disk2s4. This is why you received the error message.


Limit automatic updates to software and applications only, but not OSX I manage several Macs, and from a security point of view i would like to make sure they where always up to date with the latest patches for their version of OSX.

I understand there is an inbuilt tool in the "mac app store" application to do this.

My concern is that the auto update tool would auto update these machines to the latest version of OSX. eg. Sierra. Because we have to run some mission critical software on a few machines we can not upgrade past Yosemite at the moment so i wouldn't want the auto update to upgrade OSX. Is it possible to get the auto update to upgrade applications and patches, but not OSX itself ?

It will not automatically update to Sierra.  It will alert you, and will download in the background (one of the "features" they copied from Windows 10) but you have to click on the "Install" button to install it.

I am running El Capitan with everything set to Auto Update and not once has it tried to install Sierra.  However, the way I got around it was that I downloaded it to make a USB Installer and left it in place.

That said, you can turn off the background downloading of automatic updates.  In System Preferences --> App Store:

You also have the option to install app updates and OS X updates, but it will download items in the background.


iPad volume keeps rising all by itself I've searched in settings and tried turning my iPad off, but nothing has helped.

It's so freaking annoying I am scared I will get in trouble.

I am not sure what kind of iPad mine is (apparently there are iPad Airs and numbered ones like iPhones but I think it is an older version then those).
My iPad is about 4 years and a few months old.

It seems to happen when I am watching YouTube in a browser (not on an app).

What else can I try to resolve this problem?

According to this apple support discussion:

  I understand that the volume controls on your iPhone are not working
  properly, and I'm happy to help. You can follow these instructions,
  and contact Apple Support if you still need assistance.

  If the volume buttons, Ring/Silent switch, or Side Switch doesn't work
  On an iPhone, the volume buttons and Ring/Silent switch are on the
  left side of the device. The buttons on other iPhone models are
  similar. On an iPad, the volume buttons and Side Switch are on the
  right side of the device. If any of these buttons or switches don't
  work, follow these steps. After each step, see if you still need help:
  Unlock your device. Some buttons don't work from the Lock screen.
  Check for debris or dirt around the button or switch and clean with a
  soft cloth. Remove all protective films and cases that might interfere
  with the button or switch.


Can't resize partition My Disk Utility is showing me some Weird Stuff.

My current startup partition is showing as 155 GB, with (I was shocked to discover) 344 GB of unpartitioned free space:

I can try to resize the first partition by removing the "Free space" section, then hit "Apply", but then I get this error:

Actually, if I try this a few times, I get variously different errors.  Sometimes it even says it succeeds, but the partition size doesn't seem to have changed.

When I retry this same sequence after booting from my recovery partition, basically the same result happens, except that now I have two "Free space" partitions, both showing 344 GB, in addition to the 155 GB startup partition.

What's going on here, and how can I take advantage of my full 500 GB disk?  Or do I not actually have a 500 GB disk??

Here's the Disk Utility info for the physical disk - notice that it says it's 500 GB, but the 155 GB partition takes up the whole blue bar:

I'm using High Sierra 10.13.6, on a Late 2011 MacBook Pro 13".

WELL, HOLY CRAP.

I did some digging around in the manual pages for the diskutil command-line utility.  My volume was a CoreStorage Logical Volume, so I got some info on it:

$ diskutil cs list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group C8C10399-E3E0-4B52-A9EE-2F15AE56E992
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         155701956608 B (155.7 GB)
    Free Space:   18960384 B (19.0 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 297002AD-AB9E-47CC-B31B-5B7C21BE0F7A
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     155701956608 B (155.7 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family F134B1FE-CEC6-49F3-86E9-DF67D8530FF5
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Type:         None
        |
        +-> Logical Volume F85FD6EB-0CF7-400E-960B-22572D96B498
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk1
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          155330674688 B (155.3 GB)
            Revertible:            Yes (no decryption required)
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

Then I held my breath and ran a resizeStack command, which makes everything very easy:

$ diskutil cs resizeStack F85FD6EB-0CF7-400E-960B-22572D96B498 0
The Core Storage Logical Volume UUID is F85FD6EB-0CF7-400E-960B-22572D96B498
Started CoreStorage operation
Checking prerequisites for resizing Logical-Physical volume stack
Growing Logical-Physical volume stack
Verifying file system
Volume could not be unmounted
Using live mode
Performing fsck_hfs -fn -l -x /dev/rdisk1
Performing live verification
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK
File system check exit code is 0
Restoring the original state found as mounted
Growing Core Storage Physical Volume from 155,701,956,608 to 499,248,103,424 bytes
Copying booter
Growing disk partition
Modifying partition map
Growing Core Storage data structures
Resizing Core Storage Physical Volume structures
Resized Core Storage Physical Volume to 499,248,103,424 bytes
Growing Logical Volume
Resizing Core Storage Logical Volume structures
Resized Core Storage Logical Volume to 498,876,821,504 bytes
Growing file system
Finished CoreStorage operation

Didn't even need sudo!  Which is kind of strange!

Anyway, after this, my disk is now in fact a 500 GB disk:

This is like those dreams where you discover extra rooms in your house that you didn't know you had.


How to get BSD FTP and Telnet back in 10.13 (High Sierra)? There are some real problems with not having ftp and telnet present in 10.13 now as per Apple's dictate.

Has anyone found a solid way to bring BSD ftp and telnet back to macOS vs using inetutils?

Apple's Telnet and FTP programs are back in High Sierra thanks to this homebrew pull request (by yours truly). Both the client and server of each one are back, and these are Apple's original versions of these programs.

inetutils unfortunately exhibits some bugs on High Sierra so this will be a better solution and should make everyone happy.

To install ALL the formulas in that PR, run this at the command line:

brew install tnftp tnftpd telnet telnetd

Of course you can install each of these separately as well:

# TNFTP client & server (formerly known as LukeMFTP, presumably due to being developed by Luke Mewburn
# and has been the default FTP for default FTP client included with NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD,
# Darwin (macOS), and MidnightBSD):
brew install tnftp
brew install tnftpd

# Telnet client & server:
brew install telnet
brew install telnetd


What have more performance, a virtualized Boot Camp partion or a virtual hard drive? I need to virtualize some Windows applications (I will use Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion). I have to options:

To install Windows in a partition using Boot Camp and virtualize this
partition from Mac OS.
To create a virtual hard drive, install
Windows in it, and virtualize it from Mac OS.

I know that if I proceed with the first option, I will be able to boot into Windows if I want, and the changes made will be bidirectional.

But, my question is: What method offers more performance, virtualize a Boot Camp partion or virtualize a virtual hard drive? I don't think, I will need to natively boot Windows. So, that is not an advantage for me.

EDIT: Ok, I did some tests and I can tell you a virtual hard drive feels way faster than a bootcamp partition. So if you really don't care about natively booting Windows, create a virtual hard drive. Besides speed, you will gain the very handy suspend and wake from suspend capability.

As I state above and based on my own tests, running Windows in a virtual hard drive is faster than doing it from the Boot Camp partition.


AppleScript To Manipulate VLC I want to do a script, that it can launch VLC player, and in VLC player "Open a file", then
"Select a folder", then click on "add" then "play" it. I think that Automator can't do this. But Applescript seems legit, right?

How to build an easy script, that I can save as an application then setup it to the startup folder?

Path : the folder in question /Users/server_raagc/Copy

(I tried automator, then applescript, then terminal with a .plist then another automator combined with an applescript saved as application, all of this in a different way times 36.

My code :

set workflowpath to "/Users/server_raagc/Desktop/FINAAAAAL - copie.workflow"
set qtdworkflowpath to quoted form of (POSIX path of workflowpath)
set command to "/usr/bin/automator " & qtdworkflowpath
set output to do shell script command

Always an error. Or here trying to code another one. Same thing.

 activate application "VLC"
 tell application "System Events"
keystroke "O" using command down
 end tell
 tell application "System Events" to tell process "VLC"
click button "Parcourir..." of window 1 of window 2
 end tell

The automator Test:
Maybe becauce one is an "Watch Me do"?

This AppleScript will open the specified folder in VLC and begin to play the contents:

tell application "VLC"
  OpenURL "file:///Users/grgarside/Desktop/test/"
  play
end tell


Selectively installing MS Office 2011 components I've searched here and all over support.microsoft.com without success to find the answer to the following question:

I am looking to purchase Office 2011 from either Amazon or directly from MS.  With either the downloadable or disc version of Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac (e.g., Home and Student edition), can I selectively install only Word and Excel?  I do not want/need Outlook, PowerPoint, Messenger, or Remote Desktop (all of which are included with all editions of Office for Mac according to the descriptions).  I know this is possible with the Windows version of the same, but I wanted to verify for the Mac version as I've never used it.

Furthermore, I don't want to enter my admin password to install Office (the implication is that with the password it isn't an isolated installation as a .DMG, for example, but that it is installing components throughout the system).  I do not want any extraneous MS processes, applications, or components running on my laptop (Macbook Pro Retina 2012, running Mavericks). Does the installation require an admin password?

You can customize the Office installation, but I do not recall if that includes the ability to not install specific applications or not. Look for the "Customize..." button in the installer.

The installer does require your admin password because it writes to specific system folders (as appropriate) which require administrator access. There is no avoiding that.

However, there is good news: Office for Mac does not store your password, and will not install any background processes that would slow down your computer. Despite its reputation and many people's inherent dislike of anything Microsoft, Office for Mac is a relatively good "citizen" of the Mac community.


Macbook Pro Late 2011 15" Inc I currently have a Macbook Pro late 2011 15 inch which is running Mac OS X 10.7.5 which is a little outdated for my preference. When I run a software update there it says there is no software update available and when I open my Appstore it crashes so I can not download the update for El Capitan. Does this version of the Macbook not support later versions of OS X? How can I get around this issue and download El Capitan?

Here's the requirements for upgrading to El Capitan.  Do you meet all the requirements, especially the free space?


Cannot change region of Apple ID without credit card details I have an iPhone 6s Plus. I want to change the country and region but I'm being asked to enter my credit card details, with no other option.

What should I do? Is there an option without entering credit details and changing the store to US?

This Apple support article explains that a valid payment method is always required when changing regions.

  When you change the country or region of an existing Apple ID, you must provide a payment method and update your billing options. If you want to remove your payment method after you change the country or region, you can change your payment information to None.

You may be able to set up a new Apple ID for a different region without entering credit card information, but any apps purchased (whether free or not) with that Apple ID would require that Apple ID be signed in to get updates.

To create a new account without a payment method, go to the App Store, iBooks Store or iTunes Store on your device. Tap Get on any free item and follow the steps for setting up a new account. When prompted for a payment method, None should be on the list. If it's not, you must enter a payment method.


Is there a way to remove App from iTunes Connect? Accidentally I used wrong naming convention for my Bundle ID in my App, and I want to delete that App from iTunes Connect, is it somehow possible? I already removed from developer.apple.com > Identifier > App IDs that certain Bundle ID. What else I can do?

App is still in Prepare for Submission state.

There is no way to do it. To delete an app, this must be approved first.

  Apps that have not been approved yet can't be deleted.

Transferring and Deleting Apps


Some files in Time Machine are being locked I run Mountain Lion 10.8.4 on a Mac Mini 2012. Over the past year or so (dating back to my older iMac mid-2010, after which I transferred the data to my current Mac Mini), I've noticed that most of my files in Time Machine are getting locked. The files on my Mac are not locked, but the backed-up versions of the files are locked. The icons have a padlock icon on them. This is NOT due to the "auto-lock documents" feature, since this no longer exists in Mountain Lion.

For instance, my Firefox profile is a good example. Here are two screenshots:

Screenshot of my Firefox profile. Everything looks fine.
The same profile, except the latest Time Machine backup.

These locks appear in every single backup I have, up until the oldest one. I ran "Repair disk" on Time Machine, which took about 30 minutes, and then made another backup, and this time the newest backup did not have any locks—but all the older backups still had locks. I found this a bit strange, because why would a backup I made AFTER running "Repair disk" be fixed, but the older ones remained unaffected?

Anyway, I hoped that this would fix the problem, but every time I do this, a few weeks later, the problem re-occurs.

So, is there anything more permanent that I can do?

I just tried "Reset Home Folder Permissions and ACLs" and it looks like it might be helping. I ran this for about 30 minutes, canceled it because it took too long, backed up Time Machine again, and noticed that Time Machine backed up some files that I did not touch. Turns out that these files were the same ones being locked in backups, and in the latest backup, they were no longer locked.

So perhaps I was having permission problems with the files that were getting locked? I don't know if this "fix" will resolve this permanently, or just for now, but it certaily seems to be related.


macOS/iOS devices reconnect automatically to airplay/bluetooth device disturbing intended audio stream I have a wireless airplay/bluetooth speaker and a number of macOS and iOS devices. I am facing one issue that drives me crazy.

Let's say I watch a movie from one MacBook using AirPlay to connect to the speaker. After few minutes some of the other devices connects i.e. to play notification (usually I cannot even hear it) and the intended audio stream stops being played - I need to switch back and forth to other device to revert original audio stream being played on the speaker.

It would be insane to disconnect all the other devices from this device each time. Also the reality is that due to i.e. pure network or device being suspended for some time it will reconnect again disturbing the intended video stream all over again. And since most of the devices are also paired to same device via bluetooth (to be able to use it while being out of WiFi coverage) the problem is actually doubled.

Ideally I would see one of either being able to disable autoconnect to wireless speaker or being able to detect the device is already in use and prevent to connect only then. One more could be that maybe the loudspeaker device is not just broadcasting its presence but also if it's ready to accept default/spontaneous  connection - not sure if there is such thing in the protocol.

Update: There is a kind of workaround for a bluetooth (less important) part of the question which disables auto reconnect to any audio device
Prevent auto-pairing for certain devices (Bluetooth) by:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist DontPageAudioDevices 1

It may sound like a simple solution, and it may not be what you're looking for, but it is the easiest to accomplish: turn off Bluetooth on the devices you don't want to connect.

Personally, I don't like leaving BT on and running on my devices when it is not in use. A quick swipe on the Control Center and the On/Off toggle is right there.


iMac screen doesn't turn on if no keyboard present I have a spare 2007 iMac which I'm using to display photos in my house.  The iMac is set to boot & shutdown automatically at scheduled times, and display photos from my library using the screensaver.

Everything works well except that the iMac won't turn the display on at boot time without a keyboard connected.  I can force the display on by connecting remotely, after which it remains on (I had to use sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteManagement RestoreMachineState -bool NO to stop the display turning back off after the Remote Desktop session disconnects).

How do I force the display to come on at boot or login time (don't mind which) without needing a keyboard connected?  I suspect something from pmset (e.g. pmset displaysleep 0) would do the trick but nothing so far.

Running caffeinate -u after booting should do the trick.

This simulates a user activity which wakes up the display if it is asleep.


How can avoid to open the apps that I was using on my last session when I start the Mac? Since I update my Mac to Catalina version, every time that I will start it, it opens the apps that I was using last time before to shutdown it.
On Mojave version Mac asks me if I prefer to launch the apps on next session, but Catalina didn't ask me and it opens always the apps.
Do you know how can I configure the mac to not open them?

Maybe ticking this option can help (System Preferences -> General):


We can't create /var folder There is /private/var folder, but we can't create /var folder!
Why?

I'm using OS X El Capitan 10.11.5.

You can't create it because, /var is a symlink to /private/var.

> ls -lha /var
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root  wheel    11B Jan 13  2016 /var -> private/var


Share calendar with non iOS user How does one share their calendar with a non-Iphone/ios user? I've tried everything and it seems that all your downloads and accesses keep you chasing in circles.

If you have an iPhone and you use the calendar on it then you can easily put it in Apple's cloud, iCloud, and from there it is easily shared.

First, on your phone go to "Settings" and select iCloud. Make sure Calendars is is flicked across to green and your Calendar is in the cloud.

Now in a web browser go to iCloud.com and click on "Calendar". This will show you all the calendars you have in the cloud. See my example below :-

Now if you click on the pie slice to the right of the name it brings up a sharing dialog.

If the other person also has an iCloud account then you can share your calendar to them privately and allow them to edit it. Otherwise a public, read only share can be given to anyone who can read a calendar in CalDAV format. You can see the incredibly long address in the screen shot. It's so long it is best to email it to someone straight from the dialog. Click on the "Email Link..." link and you can be sure the right address is sent.


Audio is deactivated after each reboot on Yosemite After clean installing Yosemite and rebooting my MacBook Pro, audio seems to be deactivated, although the sound is active and I can use it. But I can't change the volume. The icon in the menu bar is grayed out:

If I run

sudo killall coreaudiod

in the terminal, it is activated and I can use it as usual again.

What could cause the problem and how can I fix it?


Lifespan of 2011 iMac I have a 27" 2011 (i7 3.4ghz 24GB RAM) iMac that I just replaced the drives (1 SSD and 1HDD) in 2 years ago. It runs pretty well now, but is just starting to slow down (and pales in comparison to my 2017 MBP). I'm considering dumping about $400 into it to add an SSD (and run both in RAID0), max out the RAM an replace the thermal sensor. I'm wondering if anyone has done any similar upgrades on a machine with close specs (specifically the age)? If so, did you get the boost in performance you were hoping for or is it just asking too much from a motherboard that old?

**EDIT/UPDATE**
there are some awesome answers/comments/info here - thanks everyone... much appreciated. My main goal is to have 2 high-performing machines. Like i said, I have a 2017 MBP that is great and this iMac is still pretty good for my purposes (no gaming or 3d animation). But once this iMac starts having trouble opening big Photoshop files while I have a bunch of files open elsewhere or performing operations in Illustrator on complex drawings (which I'm just starting to see the beginnings of), it's no longer "high performing".
I really like the idea of the Mac Mini, but I can't justify the $800-$1000 expense. I could sell the iMac for probably around $500-$600 (and would have no problem justifying the $200-$400 expense), but then I'd either have to buy another large monitor or live with just 2 24-inchers... which would make me sad, I think.
I am convinced that putting the $400 into the iMac is not the best idea. So thanks for helping me get there.
Decisions. Decisions. Gotta mull it over a bit more.

Given you’ve already done the work once, you will be the best to know.

SSD - always a great investment, plus they are almost always fungible - you can put them in newer gear with little to no degradation on speed if they still have life.
RAM - low risk upgrade as well. Especially if you don’t need to max it. Add it only when your benchmarks prove you need it - it’s almost always cheaper to delay buying and only buy when your time to fix the software causing RAM to blow up is worth more to you than the cost of more RAM.

That being said - the $800 Mac Mini will run circles around your 2011 iMac performance-wise. Especially if your software stack can transition to 64 bit speed and run in Catalina. Some old software, when migrated to new Mac hardware simply can not run. New outclasses substantially in every other way including power efficiency, GPU, storage, CPU, memory, expansion.
So for me, the tie breaker is the display - if you love and need it, upgrade or sell to buy a newer but used 27” iMac for value. Also, I have a hunch, a lot of people will want to sell their perfectly good iMacs very soon. This includes Apple if you have cash for new and want to make a deal when the line eventually refreshes. Apple will put machines on the refurbished / clearance rack starting immediately when a new model releases and then again when they claw back all the unsold stock from distributors and retail stores globally. With this bump, I wouldn’t wait and I’d shop to price what you need before next Monday and then have your card ready to buy if you get a short-sale opportunity.
With a Mac this old - there will be a very compelling reason to choose to upgrade, decide trade up to slightly less old or “break the bank” for the latest CPU with a T2 chip. Investing in newer everything can be a great value even if you don’t go new at the $400 range.


Anker Charger 45W for Macbook Pro 15 inch 2017 I have one curious question. Currently, I'm using the Anker Powerport+ 5 ports usb-c to charge my Macbook pro 2017 15 inches. The power delivery in the system report is 45W . Is it safe for the long run if I continue using this, the apple charger is quite big for travel.

Thanks

Yes, it will be safe.

When using lower capacity chargers the risk is primarily to the charger, not to your MacBook Pro. However, it's mainly only quite low capacity chargers (e.g. those used for some smartphones, etc) that are going to be at risk.

In the case of the Anker PowerPort+ 5 Ports USB-C, it's actually a 60W USB wall charger and is specifically designed to charge devices such as your MacBook. According to their product description page, it is designed to charge the MacBook at a full 29W speed-almost twice as fast as a standard USB-C charge (note that by standard they're not referring to Apple's MBP chargers).

What you will find in comparison to your Apple charger is that it will charge the battery slower. How much slower will depend on a number of variables, such as whether your computer is sleeping/shutdown or whether it's actively being used. And, if it is being used, it will depend on what you're doing. If you're doing CPU intensive tasks (e.g. video editing, playing graphics intensive games, etc) then it will charge slower again.

However, in a nutshell, your MBP battery will be totally fine.

Finally, you may be interested in reading up on what Apple says about it's batteries. And you may find coconutBattery useful. It provides a whole heap of information that you'll find useful, and from memory includes both Discharging with and Charging with measurements in watts!

NOTE: I am not affiliated with coconutBattery in any way.


Add .gsheets to Spotlight under spreadsheets Currently if I'm searching for something and it happens to be a Google spreadsheet it shows up under other. Is there any way to have .gsheets show up under spreadsheets?

The reason that Google spreadsheets aren't classified by Spotlight as spreadsheets is that information is missing from the Info.plist file within the Google Drive application.

For example, in the Info.plist file within the Numbers application bundle Apple define their "numbers" document with the Document Content Type UTIs of com.apple.iwork.numbers.numbers. Then further down in the same plist that UTI is then further defined as "Conforms to" amongst other things public.spreadsheet. And this is why Spotlight classifies Numbers document as "Spreadsheets".

However in the Info.plist for Google Drive there is no Document Content Type UTIs for gsheet files at all, and therefore no "Conforms to" either. So Spotlight just treats it as "Other".

This is something that Google should really fix, and it should be relatively simple for them to do so.

In the meantime there is a possible (albeit slightly hacky) potential fix outlined towards the end of this answer to a question on superuser.com: OSX: assign extension to content kind


Automatically move files into correct folder on server I often need to move files from one location on a server into a set of hierarchical folders.

The filenames are usually 7 digits long - sometimes with some extra characters at the end.

The folders are set up as nested sets for each digit - 3 deep. So, a file named '6753687a.eps' for example would need be filed in the '675' folder, which is in the '67' folder, which is in the '6' folder, which is in the 'Images' folder at the root of the volume. There is no '6753' folder.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to drop groups of files into a folder or a droplet or something, and have the files automatically moved into their correct folders.

Does anyone know of a way to do this?

Automator Droplet

You can do this with an Automator workflow and a script (I'm using Python, but it could be done with Bash, Applescript or anything else really).

Open up Automator, and choose Application type.
Add a Run Shell Script action to the workflow.
In the Run Shell Script action, set the Shell option to /usr/bin/python, and Pass input: to as arguments.
Set the script text to the script as shown below. Be sure to change the destination path to your desired destination.
Save the application to your desired location.

Script

import sys
import os
import subprocess

destinationPath = '/Users/rob/Desktop/test'

for f in sys.argv[1:]:
    name = os.path.basename(f)
    newdir = os.path.join(destinationPath, name[:1], name[:2], name[:3])
    print newdir

    if not os.path.exists(newdir):
        os.makedirs(newdir)

    subprocess.call(['mv', f, os.path.join(newdir,name)])
#eof

Important: Change the destinationPath = line to the path you want (i.e. the folder that contains your numbered folders). Make sure to retain the single quotes around the path.

Usage

Just drag and drop the files you want onto the application file you saved, and they'll be moved accordingly. If the proper folders don't exist already, they will be created.


How to let Xcode build apps and use playgrounds when parental control is enabled I would like to know how to let Xcode build apps and use playgrounds when parental control is enabled.
In fact app restriction is enabled, but even if Xcode is authorised it asks for authorisation every time when trying to build an app, and using playgrounds is simply impossible because it won't stop prompting for the authorisation even if it has been given.

Any ideas ?

EDIT : Now starting a bounty, don't hesitate to ask for details in the comments if you need them :)

From my testing, I have found that if the "Limit Applications" check box in Parental Controls is turned off, but Xcode and the other applications that you want enabled are turned on in the "Allowed Apps" list, Xcode will only ask for authentication a few times:

On the first run of Xcode
On the first attempt at running an app created with Xcode
On the first attempt at running a playground

Even though it sounds weird to turn off Limit Applications, it seems like if the parental controls are set this way, Xcode will not repeatedly ask for authentication.


iMac System Preferences When I click the apple symbol and select System Preferences it takes me an iCloud page.

I want to view the settings on my printer.  Why is this happening and how can I correct it.

This has been happening to me recently and I believe it is Apple reminding you (over and over and over and over....) to set up two factor authentication in iCloud. On my Mac (High Sierra 10.13.4) it eventually stopped asking me.

But to get to System Preferences and out of the iCloud Pref pane click on the button that looks like a grid of dots, as below.


Multiple logitech keyboards with different keymaps? I have this at work -- http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/wireless-solar-keyboard-k750-mac

and this at home -- http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/k750-keyboard?crid=26&section=features

Every time I switch between the two work-zones I have to remap my keyboards via Settings > Keyboard > Modifier Keys (basically I have to switch the windows and alt keys on the windows one)

Is there a way to avoid this annoyance, or at least reduce it to a simple click switch?

It's especially difficult I think because of the fact that they use the same type of wireless USB receiver.

You can use KeyRemap4MacBook to add settings for specific devices. EventViewer.app shows the vendor and product IDs.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <devicevendordef>
    <vendorname>HEWLETT_PACKARD</vendorname>
    <vendorid>0x03f0</vendorid>
  </devicevendordef>
  <deviceproductdef>
    <productname>MY_HP_KEYBOARD</productname>
    <productid>0x0224</productid>
  </deviceproductdef>
  <item>
    <name>test</name>
    <identifier>private.test</identifier>
    <device_only>DeviceVendor::HEWLETT_PACKARD, DeviceProduct::MY_HP_KEYBOARD</device_only>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::OPTION_L, KeyCode::COMMAND_L</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::OPTION_R, KeyCode::COMMAND_R</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::COMMAND_L, KeyCode::OPTION_L</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::COMMAND_R, KeyCode::OPTION_R</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

See the source for the key code values and predefined settings.


error code 4960 when saving a .plist I'm trying to create a .plist file in textwrangler, something I've never done before. I'm using these instructions which tells me to:

  Save code as com.rTask.plist file under path ~/Library/LaunchAgents.

So I follow those directions and it gives me the 4960 error. Here are two screenshots to give a visiual:

I've done a pretty extensive Google search and still haven't been able to fix it. Can anyone help?

You are trying to create a launch agent with:

the wrong extension (plis)
in the wrong folder (/Library/LaunchAgents/ (suggested by the visible plists: java oracle/microsoft? updater, google keystone and teamviewer))
with the wrong app (TextWrangler)

TextWrangler isn't compatible with macOS 10.13. Download BBEdit or another compatible editor and try it again ;-)!


Locking an iPhone if button is broken? My friend's iPhone's sleep/wake button no longer works. Is there any way to turn off the screen besides setting up auto-lock and waiting a few minutes?

It appears that if you go into Settings > General > Accessibility and enable Assistive Touch, a new transparent button appears on your iPhone. This button can be accessed all the time. It is overlayed over anything appearing on your phone. If you tap it, and then tap Device, one of the options is Lock Screen.

Instead of having the icon always be visible, you can go to the Triple-click Home setting under the Accessibility page and choose AssistiveTouch. This way you can easily show or hide the button with a triple-click of the home button!


Make spring loaded folders open in front? Is it possible to make spring loaded folders open in front of the active window? Just recently they have been opening behind the window I'm dragging into and that makes navigation difficult.

Ideally I'd just like the folder to expand (in list view) but that doesn't seem to be an option when I'm traversing to different locations (links from the Favourites bar).

Nevermind, I should have been in column view, not list view. Someone changed it and I thought list was what I was using.


Karaoke-style lyrics in iTunes I would like to have iTunes display the lyrics while playing and auto-scroll to synchronize with the audio.  I am willing to add ID3 tags or XML or some other such thing to lyrics to support the sync, but I am not aware of a format/syntax to do so.

“Cover Version” will display the lyrics (and any embedded codes) but no auto-scroll (and it is unsupported since Yosemite and iTunes 12.6.1)

Get Lyrical and LessLyrics sound useful, but I would really like to do it in a visualizer in iTunes on both iPad and MacOS.  And neither (nor "Get Lyrica") is in the app store.

As I was typing this, a couple of possible duplicates appeared in the "similar questions" list, but just as I was about to click one, both links disappeared!

Looks like LrcShow may do the trick. There are full usage requirements and instructions on that page, but it seems that it supports live lyric display for lyrics with bracketed timecodes before each word (.kra), before each line (.lrc), or a static display for lyrics with no timecodes (.txt).


Command Line FTP Client Confused By Tilde? I noticed this really weird behaviour in the macOS command line ftp client...

get index.html ~/Desktop/index.html

fails if there exists no 'index.html' on the Desktop with the error

ftp: Can't access `~/Desktop/index.html': No such file or directory

but

get index.html /Users/fweth/Desktop/index.html

succeeds!  Afterwards, I can also use the first command to update the local file.  Can anyone explain this to me?

What you are seeing is expected behavior.
The tilde (~) is a part of the shell's standard syntax that is synonymous with the user's home directory.

Tilde expansion is the process of converting these abbreviations to
the directory names that they stand for.

When you are in FTP, you are not using your shell (bash, csh, zsh, etc.), rather you are using the FTP client and it has no idea what the tilde means and thusly, it cannot expand it out.
~ and HOME are the same thing.  If you execute the command
$ echo ~ $HOME

You should get your home directory output twice.  (The $ is for variable expansion)
/Users/fweth /Users/fweth

Trivia
The convention of using the tilde (~) derives from the Lear Siegler ADM-3A terminal that had a keyboard shortcut for the the users' HOME on the same key as the tilde.


Why does Find My Mac require a Recovery partition? Just for my curiosity and knowledge, about Find My Mac, one of the condition is to have a local OS X Recovery Partition installed.

Why?

Find My Mac requires a recovery partition as it is this partition which is used to control the FMM status outside of the OS. For instance, Find My Mac can retain the ability to control the Mac even if OS X is removed and Windows is installed (for example).


Why is Google Chrome trying to run netbiosd attempting to connect to 192.168.2.255? I usually don't use Google Chrome, because on my MacBook I'm addicted to Safari.

Today when I launched Chrome, it ran netbiosd to connect to the local IP: 192.168.2.255. The local IP does not exist on the network and my local subnet is different than it is attempting to connect. I use a software called LuLu to detect outgoing calls. It is a packet filter similar to Little Snitch.

So where did it come from? What is netbiosd process?

Netbios searches for local services like shared files and printers. What device is at 192.168.2.255 and did you enable chrome to try to print or open files?

This could be harmless or it could be code running that you don’t want to.

The process is a helper, Apple installed it, it’s running code that google likely was told by you to run.


Does the AV Multiport adapter charge big MacBook Pros? I have a 16 inch MacBook Pro (2019) and if I connect the charging cable through the USB-C AV Multiport adapter (USB-A, HDMI, power), my MacBook Pro won't charge.
Is this expected behaviour? The product page does not say anything.

Turns out that you can see in About This Mac > System Report > Power
If the power cable is connected to the MacBook Pro directly:
AC Charger Information:

  Connected:    Yes
  ID:   0x7002
  Wattage (W):  94
  Name: 96W USB-C Power Adapter
  Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
  Charging: Yes

and if it's connected through the Multiport adapter:
AC Charger Information:

  Connected:    Yes
  ID:   0x7002
  Wattage (W):  55
  Name: 96W USB-C Power Adapter
  Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
  Charging: No

So if it's looped through the adapter it's only getting 55W which is not enough for the big laptop to charge.


Split mpeg-4 movies by the chapter I have often a tedious job where I need to split movies by the chapter. (The videos have multiple audio tracks & subtitles and have defined chapters)

I can do this in Quicktime, but it's a very manual process !!
Therefore I'm looking for a way / app / .... that takes my video and splits it in multiple videos for each chapter. Simple split, no transcoding or anything. (It would be an added bonus if it was possible to alter the id3 meta data in 1 go as well)
Again, I can do this - sorta - with Quicktime, but I want a more productive way.

Thanks for any feedback !!  let me know if you need more info.
D

Movie Splitter

You can split your .mp4 movie without transcoding using Movie Splitter – which I wrote for my own needs.

There is a demo you can download and try.

Splitting and Trimming Custom Sections

Movies can be automatically split by embedded chapter markers, halved into two, or quartered into four. Version 1.4 added the options to let you select custom ranges to be extracted – by scrubbing or through keyboard input for fine grained control.


Disable special function keys on Apple Wireless Keyboard when connected to iPad I'm currently using an Apple Wireless Keyboard connected via Bluetooth to my iPad. However, I have the habit of accidentally placing the keyboard in my backpack, where the function keys get accidentally depressed. Sometimes, it hits the ▶ || key, which will cause my iPad to start playing music. Is there anyway to disable the function keys without turning off the entire keyboard?

To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to manage the function keys connected to an iPad. Your better options would be to shut off bluetooth when you stop using your iPad (which is better for battery life too!), or shut off the keyboard itself.


Quickest way to change "Output Device" while html5 video is playing? While playing html5 I am unable to reliably change the Output Device:

changing the Output Device while the html5 is playing never works.
pausing the html5 playback, and changing the Output Device setting never works.
waiting until the html5 finishes, then changing the Output Device sometimes works.

Once I start playing an html5 file, the only sure fire way to change the OutputDevice is:

pause the html5 player;
launch iTunes or QuickTime and start playing something;
change the Output Device;
stop playing video / music on iTunes or QuickTime;
un-pause the html5 player.
the sound for the html5 player is now coming out of the correct Output Device setting.

So, what is the quickest way to change the Output Device while an html5 video is playing?

[using OSX v10.11 with Chrome v47.0]

To change the audio output for a HTML5 video you should use its sinkId property https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLMediaElement/sinkId and set it to MediaDeviceInfo.deviceid values returned from MediaDevices.enumeratedDevices().


In itunes (for windows) can you set podcast location on disk to a different location? In itunes (latest for for windows) can you set podcast download location on disk to a different location that just the media folder set in preferences?

Unfortunately, not really.  While you can specify the location of the entire iTunes Library folder (in Preferences, to to Advanced, and change the iTunes Media location), you can't set a different directory for specific types of media, such as podcasts.


How to always show file sync status icons in Backup and Sync from Google on Mac? Update 2018-03: Originally reported for Google Drive app, still have this problem in new Backup and Sync app.

Intermittently these Finder icons disappear and the context menus stop working:

(This is the feature where it integrates with the Finder to show green checkmarks on synced files, and supports a control-click context menu with "View with Google Drive" and "Share using Google Drive".)
The only way I have found to bring them back:

Click on the Backup and Sync menubar icon > ... icon > Preferences > Settings > Show file sync status icons and right click menu.
Turn that off
Click OK.
Quit Backup and Sync
Launch Backup and Sync again
Go back to the same screen and turn it on again.

Is there any way to keep them around permanently?

Update 2018-12: I have enabled Backup and Sync by Google in the new Extensions screen in the Preferences app, and it still doesn't work.

I recently came across this issue are well, where green checkmarks appeared on the bottom right corner of folders and files on my desktop.

I found that this issue was due to my google drive, indicating which files have been uploaded and which ones havent. To get rid of the checkmarks, I did the following:

Click on the google drive icon (cloud with an upwards arrow) on the top menu bar
Select the three dots in the upper righthand corner
Select preferences in the dropdown menu which opened a new window
In the window, selected settings in the left side menu
Deselect "Show fille sync status icons and right click menu"

Do step 5 ( one to two Times )
100% it will work

This solved the issue for me and hopefully it can help you out.


How do I view and pull off videos from my iCloud? A while back, when I moved to a new town and didn't have my hard drive with me, I was running out of room on my Mac (I collect a lot of movies and television series), so I moved a television series that I didn't watch all that often into my iCloud (or so I thought).  I deleted it from my Macbook library, but only because iTunes gave me the impression (via warning alerts) that despite me deleting them, they would still be stored in iCloud.  Three months later, after cleaning out my Mac, I want to watch the stored series again, but now I have no idea how to access my iCloud storage or how to pull files out of it.  I've tried looking for answers online, but I keep getting very vague information regarding mostly how to use iCloud rather than how to access it.  Can someone please help me.  Please be as detailed as possible.  Thank you.

You can download your purchased series again via iTunes. Open the iTunes Store and go to the "Purchased" section, select the content type and then click the cloud icon next to the item you want to download.

See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2519
(keyword: iTunes in the cloud)


Preview says "The file couldn't be saved" for a pdf document Note this is different from the similar question Preview fails to save pdf forms because that other question is about pdf *forms but this is one is just a normal pdf.

I am using Preview for the first time on Catalina - but am a veteran on earlier platforms. I am unable to save an updated PDF

This is a PDF that I added some textboxes and a Tools|Annotations|Signature.

Any ideas?

Once you annotate a regular PDF doc, Preview will prevent you from directly saving the file.

You will have to remove the annotations or, as you already found, do a Print -> Save to PDF.


Can't open app in macOS Sierra I've recently downloaded an app. I can confirm it worked in OS X El Capitan, but it doesn't open anymore in macOS. When opening the app, I basically get a pop-up saying that the app is not supported with my version of macOS. I can confirm it is not a PowerPC application. I tried opening the app via Terminal. When trying that, I get the following result.

; exit;
objc[674]: Objective-C garbage collection is no longer supported.
Abort trap: 6
logout
Saving session...
...copying shared history...
...saving history...truncating history files...
...completed.
Deleting expired sessions...none found.

Is it still possible to open the app using another method? If not, could someone explain me why?

I'm afraid the garbage collection feature of Objective-C was deprecated back in 10.8 in favor of Automatic Reference Counting or ARC. Now with the release of Sierra, this feature appears to be officially obsolete. Most likely this means the feature was completely removed from the Objective-C runtime, so there is no way to continue to run old applications that depend on this feature.

The application will need to be updated to the new ARC system to work on the newest versions of OS X. Alternately I suppose you could run it in a VM with an older OS X version.


If I delete my WhatsApp data, will my data disappears from my iCloud backup, too? I want to delete the WhatsApp data from my iPhone in order to make some free space. But If I will do it, at the next backup, will my old backup disappear too?

Neither the iOS iCloud backup nor the WhatsApp iCloud backup are versioned, so yes: once you delete WhatsApp chats the next backup run will have them disappear from the backup as well.


Podcasts play in Reverse Order I regularly listen to Podcasts from a radio station. These normally consist of a number of segments, which I download as individuals.

On my old iPod (iOS6) these played in Music in order.
On my iPhone5S (iOS8) they play in Podcasts in reverse order (last played first), regardless of the order I download them. If I select the 1st (usually the last unplayed in the list), it does not automatically continue with the list, although if I play the last it does, but the segments are in reverse order.

Is there any way of making iPhone5S (iOS8) behave like iPod (iOS6)?
(There is a similar 3 year old question - I hoped Apple would have fixed this bug by now.)

When you select the podcast, click on the description by the icon (at the top of the page above the Unplayed/Feed heading with an arrow that takes you to another page) and it'll give you some settings. These settings allow you to set the order in which they play.


Can magnets harm an iPad? My kids were playing with some cool magnetic rocks and left them sitting on top of our iPad. This provoked some non-trivial discussion in our family as to whether this was a bad thing.

I grew up in the era of magnetic floppy diskettes, where sitting a magnet on one could cause you to lose important data. But the iPad, as far as I can tell, doesn't have any magnetic storage. It clearly does have magnet sensors, as that's how the Smart Cover turns it off and on, and I'd hate for magnetic rocks to desensitize said sensors, but I'm also thinking that it seems unlikely that magnets will cause data loss.

What are the risks, if any, of leaving medium-strength magnets (not weak, but not any kind of industrial super-magnet), sitting on top of an iPad? Assume that the screen is covered, so I'm not worried about scratching the glass.

You should be fine. As you note, there are magnets (which are actually fairly strong for their size) in the iPad and Smart Cover. There are no magnetic components aside from the Smart Cover attachment points and the unlock sensor—there's a magnetometer for the compass, but it doesn't use a magnet.

Furthermore, the whole magnets damaging hard drives thing is a bit of a myth. You can wipe them with magnets, but it takes a very powerful one, pretty much nothing you'd have in your home.


Reset SMC with absent removable battery Normally, the procedure for resetting the SMC on a MacBook includes first removing the battery if it is removable. I often use my Mac without its battery to avoid overcharging during long periods of plugged-in use. Could I still reset the SMC by skipping the battery removal step and just unplugging the MagSafe adapter and holding the power button for 5 ~ 10 seconds?

I often use my Mac without its battery to avoid overcharging during
  long periods of plugged-in use.

(Why is this even a thing?)  The SMC that you are attempting to reset manages the flow of current to/from the battery to ensure that it's not overcharged.  There's dedicated charging circuitry specifically for the task of safely charging your battery.

Additionally, all modern battery packs have over/under charge protection circuitry built into them.  So, removing your battery "during extended period of plugged-in use" is completely unnecessary and you risk damaging things if your battery is the non-removable type (those connectors weren't designed for repeated connects/disconnects).

To answer your question...

  Could I still reset the SMC by skipping the battery removal step and
  just unplugging the MagSafe adapter and holding the power button for 5
  ~ 10 seconds?

If your battery is removable - this would be a moot point given that you're supposed to remove it.  Reset the SMC and plug the battery back in.
If your battery is non-removable, plug the battery back in and reset the SMC. Leave the battery plugged in.

There are reasons to reset the SMC and this shouldn't be done in the course of "normal maintenance."  Too many times folks react to common errors with "I need to reset the SMC/NVRAM) - this is hardly the case.  Please see Apple's support page:  Reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac for more information on Indicators that the SMC might need to be reset.


Are there any physical differences between regional versions of the iPhone 4s? I'm in the market for an iPhone 4S to replace my older iPhone and iPod. If I took a Christmas holiday in America, the cost of a US phone is substantially less than a UK phone at current exchange rates.

However, there's a possibility that there's physical differences between the UK model and the US version that would make the US version impractical in the UK.  I know that the range of bands used for cellular comms in the UK differs somewhat from in the US.

So, is the iPhone 4S built to only a single design that can handle the differing frequencies used throughout Apple's main markets, meaning that a SIM-free one will work anywhere regardless of where it was bought?  Or is each model tailored to a particular region's cellular specifications, making a US bought iPhone all but useless in the UK?

The iPhone 4S is the same in every country. The only notable change is the default language configured on the device. And firmware/software locks for carrier or country locked phones.

The important difference is that apparently the unlocked iPhone 4S in the US will not be supposed to work on CDMA networks (rumor) for undisclosed reasons. It is probably due to the primitive way CDMA phones are activated by CDMA carriers.

Obviously the packaging changes (depending on the region). Also the power brick is different depending on the country for example in Europe except British territories the power plug uses Type C plugs while UK uses Type B and the US have Type A plugs.

All the iPhone 4S will "supposedly" have she same internals and the same firmwares. There are no other differences while the iPhone 4 has different firmwares for CDMA and GSM as there have been no variants for the iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS models which were the same across the globe.

BUT beware of the term unlocked. It doesn't mean the phone is not SIM-locked. In some countries (I have in mind the case of the iPhone 3G in Canada) unlocked can mean not locked for the country carriers. Which means it is regionally SIM-locked, if you try to use it with any of the countries' carriers it will work, but if you try to use it with a SIM from another country or an international SIM, it will be locked.


How to get 4 channel audio from a MacMini? I would like to know if/how is possible to get 4 channel audio from a Mac Mini.

My speakers do have two jacks for from/back and currently I can use one one of them.

It seams that putting the second jack into the line in doesn't work (some Windows audio boards do let you configure the purpose of the jack socket.

Is there any solution or should I get used to stereo?

Your Mac Mini has optical audio-out, which supports multiple channels.

Apple has cleverly put a little optical transmitter inside the headphone jack (many Macs have this, not just the Mini). To turn it into something useful, you have to use a little adapter (like this one to get a Toslink signal.

From there, it gets interesting.
You say that your speakers have to jacks. I assume you mean two analog 3.5mm (headphone) jacks.

Unless your speakers have a digital or optical input, you'll need to get a receiver that can do the digital-> analog conversion. Something like this should work (there are tons of options, this is just the first one I found).
The key is to look for something with digital/optical in, and 4+ channel preamp out.

Another option: The Mac Mini has HDMI out. You can find a receiver that has HDMI input (like the one above), and 4+ channel preamp out.


How do I browse /tmp in Finder? I can use the command line to :-

cd /tmp
ls -al

What is the equivalent to do so in finder?
I can't seems find a way to browse to that folder using finder,
(my intention is to view images which I created in /tmp)

Or is there any image browser tools can do the same?

You can use the menu Go -> Go to folder and enter the path of the folder you wish to see in the resulting dialog.

You can also use the keyboard shortcut Shift + Cmd + G to summon the dialog.


How font sizes at iPhone 6/6+ compare to earlier iPhones? How font size is different in iPhone 6 / 6 Plus as compared to earlier iPhones (e.g. 5S)--given both the different screen size and DPI?

Did the perceived* font sizes in system interfaces and built-in apps grow proportionally with screen size?

[*] Perceived--i.e. as measured in milimeters/inches, not in pixels.
What are Apple's guidelines for app developers in terms of font sizes for 6/6+ as compared to earlier iPhones? How strictly are they enforced via app moderation (or any other means)? Should all apps effectively demonstrate the same font size for similar UI elements, or they are allowed to decide on the size individually? Should DisplayZoom and Dynamic Type be strictly supported by every app developer?

The reason I'm asking is that with iPhone 4 I struggle with a small font in most of the apps I use--so curious whether it will change if I switch to iPhone 6/+.

Above all, text must be legible. If users can’t read the words in your app, it doesn’t matter how beautiful the typography is. When you adopt Dynamic Type in your app, you get:

Automatic adjustments to letter spacing and line height for every font size
The ability to specify different text styles for semantically distinct blocks of text, such as Body, Footnote, or Headline
Text that responds appropriately to changes the user makes to text-size settings (including accessibility text sizes)

Make sure all styles of a custom font are legible at different sizes. One way to do this is to emulate some of the ways iOS displays font styles at different text sizes. For example:

Text should never be smaller than 11 points, even when the user chooses the extra-small text size. For comparison, the body style uses a font size of 17 points at the large size, which is the default text-size setting.
In general, font size and leading values differ by one point per text-size setting. Exceptions to this are the two caption styles, which use the same font size, leading, and tracking at the extra-small, small, and medium settings.
At the smallest three text sizes, tracking values are relatively large; at the largest three text sizes, tracking values are relatively tight.
The headline and body styles use the same font size. To distinguish it from the body style, the headline style uses a heavier weight.
Text in a navigation controller uses the same font size that body style text uses for the large setting (specifically, 17 points).
Text always uses either regular or medium weight; it doesn’t use light or bold.

iOS Human Interface Guidelines: Color and Typography


iMessages split between different devices. I have a bunch of Apple products. iPad, iMac, iPhone etc. And lately I've been noticing that some of my iMessages show up on one device and not the other.

For example: when my parents text me, I will be out and about. And when I get back home to my iMac, I will see that there were several texts that I didn't receive on my phone but they are on my iMac and iPad or vice versa.

I have feeling this has something to do with what the address the iMessage clients are using on each device. How to figure out what the problem is?

In Settings -> Messages -> Send & Receive, check which addresses/numbers under You can be reached by iMessage at are checked and that the same ones are checked on all your devices. If there are differences that can explain what you're seeing as depending on which address the sender is using will then determine which device(s) you'll receive it on.

Remember that you don't necessarily know how the sender is choosing to contact you.  Are they starting a fresh conversation and choosing from one of your iMessage registered addresses?  Are they replying to one of your messages which may have been started by a different contact address etc?  It can get really confusing, but the key is to go through all your devices and ensure that they are listening to and sending from the most appropriate address.


Hotkey for automator service without giving permissions to all applications I have created an automator workflow; then I have created a keyboard shortcut in the Keyboard Settings to run this as a Quick Action on a keypress.

All of this works. But the workflow seems to run in the security context of the application which was active when I pressed the hotkey.

The activity inside the service has nothing to do with the current application (it takes a screenshot and then does something with it); it doesn't access the "current" application in any way.

It needs to access the System Events, and thus security kicks in. I then have to enable access to those features for any application which happened to be in the foreground when I hit the hotkey.

Is it possible to avoid this - i.e. run my service in a context of its own?

EDIT for clarification: The workflow clicks menus of applications, and sends keystrokes.

... take a screenshot ...
... startup GIMP ...

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "GIMP-2.10"

...
        click menu item "From Clipboard" of menu 1 of menu item "Create" of menu 1 of menu bar item "File" of menu bar 1

...
        keystroke " "
...

As an example, say I press the hotkey while Emacs is in front. I then get a security prompt asking me to allow some security aspects for Emacs. I neither want do give Emacs any permissions, nor do I want to repeat this for any other application which might be in focus when I take a screenshot later.

I had the same issue. What worked for me:

1: Saving the automator workflow as an application (File > Convert To > Application. Save > File Format = Application).

2: Then creating a separate Automator Quick Action with the sole purpose of launching the application created in 1 (File > New > Quick Action. Save normally as a workflow.).

The application containing the target workflow (1) will then need to be given Accessibility permissions via the usual (Security and Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility) and the key shortcut should be bound to the workflow (2) as you described.

This successfully bypasses the security settings of the currently active application by running the workflow in a self-contained app (with its own Accessibility preferences) negating the need for multiple permissions.


Lots of weird stuff happening today So I'll just list the symptoms I've experienced in the last few hours, so far I can't seem to find a pattern, suffice to say the macbook is virtually unusable for my purposes. It's a 2010 Macbook white:

Can't open Chrome
Refuses to remember wifi password each time I reconnect
Mail.app thinks it's offline
Time keeps resetting to 12:00am
Turns off randomly

I'm leaning towards blaming the battery, given the power loss and time resetting, however shouldn't there be a watch battery keeping time? Also I don't think I could explain the other issues blaming the battery. I suppose it's possible multiple things broke all at once. Thought I'd ask however and see if this isn't a known issue.

Thanks for any advice.

Turns out it was the battery. Got it tested for free at the Genius Bar, and they did the replacement for the cost of the battery.


Does mdfind allow wildcard searches on filename? I'm trying to figure out how to perform wildcard searches for filenames with mdfind on OsX? I tried: mdfind -name "*.pdf" but it didn't work.

EDIT: I want to be able to find names like "test*.pdf"

This should work:

mdfind "kMDItemDisplayName == test*.pdf"

Enclose the pattern in single quotes and add 'c' to match case-insensitively:

mdfind "kMDItemDisplayName == 'test*.pdf'c"

Here is a list of available attributes. You can combine multiple attribute/value pairs with &&.


How to remove preinstalled Apache and PHP from Mac OS Sierra I have been trying to figure out how to completely remove preinstalled Apache and PHP from my macbook pro ... The reason is that I am using the homebrew version of both Apache and PHP. The current version of PHP that I am using is PHP 7 as you can see in the screenshot below

but when I use php -v in the terminal it shows me PHP version 5.6 .. see screenshot below.

I am trying to find the preinstalled PHP but can't seem to find it ... Can you guys help me out and point me to the right direction ? Thank You.

Removing system macOS binaries is not a good idea, they will be reinstalled during a next system upgrade and they could be needed by some system scripts.

To enable the homebrew php from the command line, read the output of brew info php70:

  If you wish to swap the PHP you use on the command line, you should add the following to ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, ~/.profile or your shell's equivalent configuration file:
    export PATH="$(brew --prefix homebrew/php/php70)/bin:$PATH"

If you have installed php 7.2, check the output of brew info php72.


Photo browsing and viewing application Can anyone recommend a good photo browsing application.

I have hundreds of photos in well organized folders categorized by year and location where they were taken on my mac but I want a way to actually look at them that fast and simple.

Any ideas?  I am happy to buy an app from the app store.

I use Picasa from Google for that.

It is not intrusive (will leave your photos in place), and it will not make duplicates (saves space on your disk).

It also comes with Google web space (so you can upload/download) and easy share with others.

Here is what they say about them self:

  Picasa does not store the photos on your computer.

  When you open Picasa, it simply looks at the folders on your computer
  and displays the photos it finds. It displays the file types that you
  tell it to find, in the folders that you tell it to search.

  Your original photos are always preserved.

  When using editing tools in Picasa, your original files are never
  touched. The photo edits you make are only viewable in Picasa until
  you decide to save your changes. Even then, Picasa creates a new
  version of the photo with your edits applied, leaving the original
  file totally preserved.


Making all application windows stay fullscreen on relaunch I usually have 4+ fullscreen windows open whenever I use Xcode 4. When I quit Xcode, and reopen it, only one or two of the windows open as fullscreen, and the rest all open in a single desktop as normal windows. (I think the behavior is the same with Chrome and probably other apps to.)

Is there anyway to fix this?

I haven't tried this yet, but did a quick search and there is a free add-on called Maximizer available.

It may not be build into Lion yet (as far as I know) but this will get you close for what you want :-)

http://chpwn.com/apps/maximizer.html


Why is my Macbook Pro 2011 video garbled after sleep? Occasionally when I open my new (April 2011) Macbook Pro I'm greeted by an unusable system with a garbled display.  Most often I have to force a reboot (hold down power button for 10+ seconds), but occasionally it will fix itself if I close the lid and re-open it.

What is the problem, or what should I look at to find the problem?
Are there other things I could try to wake this laptop from this state?
I can't reliably reproduce the problem, so it doesn't seem that taking it to the genius bar is going to yield useful results, but tell me if I'm making a bad assumption here and I should take it back.

System info:

MacBookPro8,3
ATI Radeon HD 6750M
Intel HD Graphics 3000
If anything else is relevant, let me know and I'll post it.  It's a standard 17" MBP, though I've added memory (notably this problem did occur prior to adding memory as well)

It was bad memory.  I had upgraded to 8GB, but at some point suspected the memory for some other problem, so put the original Apple 4GB back in.  Both problems went away (tested for 3 months) so I ditched the 8GB and got 16GB of higher quality memory that more closely matched the timing specifications of the original Apple memory.

So far, after two months, I haven't seen this or the other issue yet.  So in this case it was bad (or wrong) memory.


Is there a way to make paste as text only the default action in Office 2016? I hardly ever want to paste with formatting when copying into Word 2016 or Excel 2016 (seriously, who wants fonts when copying into a spreadsheet?).  Is there a way to set the default paste to paste text only when I hit Cmd+V?

In a roundabout fashion yes, mostly...

In MS Office their version of "Paste as plain text" is called "Paste and Match Style and uses the macOS system defaults (OptionCommandShiftV) for paste as plain text for that function.

Now if you don't want to have to do that four finger salute just to paste (essentially) plain text, you can change the menu shortcuts in any application via the Keyboard Preference pane.

Click on System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts
Click the + button and from the Application menu select (for example) Microsoft Word.
Enter the menu title that you want to change. noting that the menu that you want to assign or reassign it's keyboard shortcut much match exactly what the menu says down to the capitalization.
Click in the Keyboard Shortcut field and tap the keyboard shortcut you want to assign to that menu option, then click Add
Repeat for any other keyboard shortcuts you want to add/change in any other applications you want to change them for.

In this example I reassigned "Paste" to OptionCommandShift V. And "Paste and match Formatting" to CommandV.

I didn't do this for all applications as I don't want to chance messing up the behavior of other applications that you can copy/paste with.

NOTE that this is not really "paste plain text" but will give you at least some of that functionality with very little pain.

To really get paste plain text in an MS Office application you would likely need something that could capture a regular paste command and then select the plain text icon from the formatting menu that pops up at the insertion point after you paste. There may be a macro program out there that can do that but I am unaware of any specific ones with that functionality.


Is a "2 GHz Intel Core Duo" really the same as a "2 GHz Intel Core ***2*** Duo" I'm trying to get Sling TV set up on an older iMac.  It has

10.6 (the minimum required OS),
2.5 GB RAM (~2.5 times the required memory), and
a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.

However, the Sling TV web site claims you need a "2 GHz Intel Core Duo".  I wasn't aware that there was such a thing, but Googling for the difference between them turned up nothing apparently useful, and even Googling for "2 GHz Intel Core Duo" turned up very little—most results refer to the 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.  HOWEVER there is a page from Intel which mentions "2 GHz Intel Core Duo".  Is this a different CPU, or just another way of referring to the 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo?

If they are different CPUs, can I assume the Core 2 came later, and therefore I have a newer CPU than Sling requires?

Yes, the Core 2 Duo and Core Duo are different and the Core 2 Duo came later so your iMac should support any software that requires at least a Core Duo.

You can tell because the Early 2006 MacBook Pro used the Core Duo while every MacBook Pro after that until 2010 used a Core 2 Duo. This isn't definitive in proving that the Core 2 came after the Core, but Apple's not going to continually downgrade the processor in its top-of-the-line laptop year after year, plus the "2" usually denotes a successor anyway.


Trace file reads and writes on os x? I have something running that is syncing two directories. I want to turn it off but cannot figure out what it is. El Capitan, if that matters.

Can someone provide a command or tool that will reliably show the pid (and ideally the command) for every file read and write operation?

I assume this is possible with something dtrace-based but have not been able to figure it out.

(Login items are empty for the relevant user.  Crontab is empty for both the relevant user and root.)

Thank you for your help.

You are looking for the fs_usage command, which will show any file-related activity either on the whole system or by file.

For starters, do

sudo fs_usage

From man fs_usage

  NAME

  fs_usage -- report system calls and page faults related to filesystem activity in real-time

  SYNOPSIS

fs_usage [-e] [-w] [-f mode] [-b] [-t seconds] [-R rawfile [-S start_time] [-E
         end_time]] [pid | cmd [pid | cmd] ...]

  DESCRIPTION

  The fs_usage utility presents an ongoing display of system call usage information per-
       taining to filesystem activity.  It requires root privileges due to the kernel tracing
       facility it uses to operate.  By default, the activity monitored includes all system
       processes except the running fs_usage process, Terminal, telnetd, sshd, rlogind, tcsh,
       csh and sh.  These defaults can be overridden such that output is limited to include or
       exclude a list of processes specified by the user.


Time Machine not backing up Suddenly T.M. posted 'delayed' when backing up to an external 250 gb drive. I have deleted perhaps 10 old back-ups but freed up space does not show on T.M. Shows 47 gb of space out of of total 214 gb. How can I get this freed up space to occur? Running OS 10.6.8. 2.33 ghz Core 2 duo.  Thanks for any assistance.

The time machine shouldn't care about free space as it will just remove the oldest backups to make space. Mine was stopping mid backup a bunch so I had to hit skip backup then boot down with the drive still connected and back up again then hit back up now and it worked.


Mac logged me out and can’t get back in My Mac logged me out and it forces me to login with the Guest account, which for some unknown reason is password protected and I can’t login! I tried restarting it but the issue persists!

Before that happened, it seems like I was logged out from my iCloud account! So I filled in my password and while I was waiting to login, the Mac froze! I restarted it and you know the rest...

What can I do now?

EDIT: I’m now pretty sure that my main account is deleted! I tried resetting my password from terminal in the recovery mode... when prompted to select the account, there was just an empty list!

The various options to recover control are quite straightforward to enumerate, and you might have one you think is best to start with:

Boot to recovery and reset the password of one or several admin accounts. (Also, you can use Terminal app in recovery to look if your /User folder is intact before deciding what to do.) - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314
Make a new admin account, then look / repair / backup / reinstate other accounts. - New MacBook had user accounts already; I deleted admin and can't get back in
Bring another OS to the Mac and backup / fix / diagnose. - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202796
Reinstall the OS and see if migration repairs the account - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904
Wipe the Mac and load a backup (easy if you know TimeMachine is ready to go) - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

Which you choose is mostly up to your skill level and if you know you have a backup - it takes about 10 minutes of time to erase / install then you wait, then it’s 5 minutes to start the restore, and then you wait until it’s done.

The other options can take far less time once you know the steps, but for some take a bit of learning in terminal and could end up with data loss if you don’t just back things up first.