Macbook air yosemite update I was updating my macbook air to Yosemite. When I almost finished the update, my battery died. I've charged my laptop, but it won't turn on again. The screen just stays black. What should I do?

During Installation Yosemite also installs a Recovery partition on your disk.

You might be lucky and it has finished that job before the lights went out.

You could try to call it up by restarting while holding cmd + r

If that did not work, you will need a external Yosemite.

Using a USB stick with bootable Yosemite you can reinstall it on your Hard Disk.

How to get it?

From another Mac, from a friend, from Apple Store...


I want all visited links to have the same color It seems like there should be a simple way for all links that I have clicked on to be highlighted in some way or have a color that stands out. I have not been able to find a universal way to do this on a Macbook Air.

I am currently using Mac OS 10.11.6 El Capitan, and the Safari and Chrome browsers.

Thanks for any help.

In Safari you can create a custom style sheet and import it in Safari:

E.g. in Terminal enter:

echo 'a:visited { color: red !important; }' >> ~/Library/Safari/link.css

Then open Safari > Preferences > Advanced > Style Sheet > Other... and choose the links.css.

In older Chrome versions you can modify the file ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/User\ StyleSheets/Custom.css (usually a 0 Bytes file) and add the same line:

echo 'a:visited { color: red !important; }' >> ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/User\ StyleSheets/Custom.css

The support for custom stylesheets has been removed in newer Chrome versions. Here I recommend an extension: Stylist.


facetime with same apple id and on different devices I will be setting up one apple id to use for all the apps for all my three kids on their three ipads, will they be able to facetime each other using the same apple ids?  Or do I have to create different ids for them in order to facetime each other?  Thank you.

You can use the same apple id.  Just add unique special email addresses to your apple id.
This link explains it nicely.  http://ipad.about.com/od/iPad_Guide/ss/How-To-Use-FaceTime-On-The-iPad_2.htm

Do you want to place calls between two iDevices using the same Apple ID? By default, all devices connected to the same Apple ID utilize the primary email address associated with that Apple ID. This emails they'll all ring if a FaceTime call is placed to that email address. It also means you can't place a class between two devices, just as you can't use one home phone to place a call to your house and answer it with another phone. But luckily, Apple has provided a rather easy workaround for placing FaceTime calls on the same Apple ID.
To place a FaceTime call between two of your Apple devices, you will simply need to add a new email address to one of the devices. This will allow FaceTime to differentiate between the two and place a call to a specific device.


Spotlight is slow in Catalina This isn't your standard "spotlight is slow" post due to things taking 5 seconds to react. The clue that something is strange is that on Terminal, if I type "mdfind name-of-file" it works in <1 second. If I use Spotlight, it takes 5 seconds. This is using the name of the file, without the extension. I tried it on both images and text files.

So, this isn't an indexing questioning, because obviously the index works on the command line. This isn't a "Spotlight Suggestions" question, because I tried turning that off, as well as location services.

The only thing I can think of is that Spotlight is slow in organizing and presenting the data that mdfind provides. But how do I make it faster?

Short Answer:

This is a known issue with users complaining about Spotlight AFTER moving to Catalina. So was working correctly PRE-Catalina, WASN'T working correctly POST-Catalina upgrade.  Apple Software Engineers made some material change to the operation of Spotlight in Catalina which introduced the fault, which must be resolved by those same engineers by way of a future patch.

Longer Answer:

Unlike mdfind which directly queries the metadata store, a query made in Spotlight is proxied through the "Spotlight Engine" which appears to be the corespotlightd I see in Activity Monitor.

Indeed, Spotlight does things mdfind doesn't, such as calculations and searching on the web- which means Spotlight can have a dependency on your Internet connection!  mdfind only queries the local metadata store directly and returns the results through stdin.

You're far from the only one suffering from slow performance in Spotlight.  Loads of Catalina users are screaming for Apple to fix the problem. First complaint reported 15 Oct 2019 (week after Catalina release) and most recent complaint in link is 08 Jan 2020. The link reveals users complaining of high CPU (amongst other things) when using Spotlight which strongly indicates a bug in the process(es) responsible for proxying the query & returning results.

Therefore, the Spotlight performance issue appears to be a fault software engineers at Apple will ultimately have to resolve.  This analysis is bolstered by the observation of these users who noted the fault was first observed after the Catalina upgrade.

Diagnostics

I'm not suffering this issue on my Macbook (2018 w/ 32GB RAM & 4TB Storage),  but offer some useful tips for investigating it by those who are.  This is not to say you'll be able to resolve the fault, but at least understand where/how things are breaking and (hopefully) tell Apple!:

Disable Internet Searches & Location Services in Spotlight to unhook the Internet dependency which could be affecting speed when testing:
Use Activity Monitor Diagnostics to analyze Spotlight process corespotlightd:

The following granular diagnostic output is produced: PLEASE NOTE: The file md_stores.txt is just where my cursor was resting when I took the screenshot. Review all the diagnostic files.

Repeat process for and process Spotlight and review output for clues...

If you find how it's broken, TELL APPLE!! ;-)


Two pane file manager for Mountain Lion? I recently moved from Linux to Mac, and am missing a two pane file manager.
I was thinking about along the lines of midnight commander, krusader (Linux) or total commander (Windows).

I installed midnight commander and am using it, but a GUI file manager would sometimes be handy.

Any suggestions for Open Source alternatives?

Forklift is nice, has support for FTP + SFTP + Amazon S3 + WEBDav. A bit pricey, but I got it on sale and there were a few discounts again after that so maybe worth a wait.

Screenshot of Forklift http://shrani.si/f/F/wu/3VAuwxPt/screen-shot-2013-06-27-a.png

You have mentioned Krusader (and wish to use open source software), it can be run on Mac via MacPorts. After installing MacPorts use:

sudo port install krusader

I doubt it will look good, but It should work. It supported Aqua look years ago, so no X11 was needed, but I have no idea how it stands now.


I cannot add a Web page into my Dashboard I want to store a website in my Dashboard, but the option to do so appears greyed out.

How do I open the website in Dashboard?

Apparently Dashboard is turned off in your system. Go to System Preferences → Mission Control and enable Dashboard by selecting either As Space or As Overlay corresponding to Dashboard.

The Open in Dashboard... option is unavailable in File menu in Safari if the Dashboard is turned off.


Apple Mail not saving Smart Mailboxes I'm having some trouble with Apple Mail 6.3 (1503) and Smart Mailboxes under 10.8.3. When I create Smart Mailboxes they work just as one would expect them to. When I quit Mail and re-open it, they're gone as if I would have never created them. I found a similar issue with an earlier version of Mac OS X where deleting the SmartMailboxesSomething.plist in ~/Library/Mail/ fixed the problem. This does not seem to apply for OS X's current version anymore.

I filed a bug about this: http://openradar.appspot.com/13700673

This happens on both my MacBook Air and my iMac. Both are running OS X's latest version.

Anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks!
— Flo

I filed a radar (rdar://13700673) with Apple and after a few mails back and forth they figured out how to solve the problem:

chmod -a 'everyone deny write,delete,append,writeattr,writeextattr,chown' ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~mail/Data/MailData/* ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~mail/Data/MailData/Signatures/*

Looks like I had some permission issues on that files.


What could be the cause of these erratic and extremely high ping times between two MacBooks over wifi? I have two laptops on my network: a Mid-2015 Macbook Pro Retina running 10.10.5 and an Early 2014 Macbook Air running 10.9.5.

When I ping one from the other over the same wifi network, I get very erratic ping times (here, from 12ms to more than half a second):

$ ping -c 10 192.168.1.242
PING 192.168.1.242 (192.168.1.242): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.242: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=178.376 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.242: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=96.402 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.242: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=12.666 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.242: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=361.196 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.242: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=152.410 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.242: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=68.434 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.242: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=190.384 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.242: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=517.559 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.242: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=124.860 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.242: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=41.685 ms

--- 192.168.11.242 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 12.666/174.397/517.559/147.290 ms

There's no real difference between which MacBook does the pinging.

However, I get much more reasonable results if I ping a Windows desktop that's connected to the network via wired Ethernet from one of the wifi-connected Macs:

$ ping -c 10 192.168.1.10
PING 192.168.1.10 (192.168.1.10): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=0 ttl=128 time=3.774 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=4.554 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=4.093 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=3 ttl=128 time=2.852 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=4 ttl=128 time=4.095 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=5 ttl=128 time=4.100 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=6 ttl=128 time=4.099 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=7 ttl=128 time=7.130 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=8 ttl=128 time=3.147 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=9 ttl=128 time=3.924 ms

--- 192.168.1.10 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 2.852/4.177/7.130/1.092 ms

What's going on here between the Macs and how can I fix it?

Update: here are the ping results from the Windows machine (wired ethernet) to one of the Macbooks (wifi).  It shows that the problem is directional, the erratically high ping times only occur when the Mac on Wifi is the target of the pings, not when it's the source.

C:\>ping -n 10 192.168.1.248

Pinging 192.168.1.248 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.248: bytes=32 time=240ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.248: bytes=32 time=160ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.248: bytes=32 time=81ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.248: bytes=32 time=305ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.248: bytes=32 time=227ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.248: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.248: bytes=32 time=65ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.248: bytes=32 time=295ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.248: bytes=32 time=216ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.248: bytes=32 time=135ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.248:
    Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 305ms, Average = 172ms

It's wifi - there may be nothing to "fix" if you have lots of other people using wifi, especially on the same channel as you.  Wifi is a shared resource.  Cabled connections are not (and always better if you have a choice).

Are you in a house or apartment?  How many of your neighbors are using wifi?  Are you using channel 1, 6 or 11 on 2GHz?  More importantly are your neighbors also using the same channel?  Do NOT use anything other than 1, 6 or 11 on 2GHz bands - all the other channels will overlap with 1 and 6 or 6 and 11.  5GHz channels do not overlap in the same way so it's less of a deal with 5GHz.

A quick way to see who is around you and what channels they are using is to use an app like http://www.netspotapp.com to do a quick survey and see what is going on around you.

The more use of wifi around you, the more the ping times are going to vary.  If you don't have neighbors close by, how many other devices do you have on wifi?  It all adds up...


Is there a way to unlock a password protected iPad? A friend's father died a couple of weeks ago. He usually used the same numeric password on all devices. But not on his iPad. I can't even reproduce the password via the fingerprints. The lock time is already at 60 minutes. Is there some kind of an exploit or process at Apple which can help us to retrieve the information from the iDevice or is a full reset the only way to use it?

PS
This isn't a question about morals or ethics. The friend has reasons to try to recover the data. The loss of her father left a million questions open and she thinks there might be answers in his personal data.
I appreciate any answer, but please, don't judge over a fate or a question, before you are sure what the reasons may be.

I'm not sure a general answer can be given with the lack of details in this specific case, but like any data recovery situation, it pays to stop and get some professional help to at least understand your options.

How valuable is the data? Give an order of magnitude guess. $10, $100, $1000, $10,000, or more? The solutions for each involve different timescales and tools.
STOP trying to guess the passcode - it could have a 10 guess and the iPad erases itself trigger set. The trigger could even be less than 10 incorrect guesses. Your next attempt to unlock it could be your last chance to save the contents.
What else is available? In almost all cases, a computer exists that will unlock each iOS device - so rather than trying to guess the passcode - see if you can locate that computer instead.

Here are support articles that should help anyone in this situation:

iOS: Understanding passcodes  - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4113
iOS: Forgotten passcode or device disabled after entering wrong passcode  - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1212
iCloud: Find My iPhone overview - http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2696

Once you realize that time is on your side and that the system is designed to not be compromised by someone that finds the device, your chance of success will increase with the added care you bring to the task. That design notwithstanding, there are often circumstances when a passcode gets forgotten or not handed to the device's current owner and you have a few avenues to get the passcode reset or bypassed without erasing the device's contents whether you try to crack the PIN with a tool or work around the security by locating the computer that can unlock the device for you.


How do I see the dock in a fullscreen window in OS X? I'm running Mac OS X Mavericks and I have several apps set up to use fullscreen mode.  There's no dock at the bottom of the screen, and it doesn't appear either when I scroll to the bottom of the screen like it normally does in non-fullscreen mode.

How can I reveal the dock when in fullscreen mode?

It appears that the trick is to move the cursor to the bottom of screen like I normally would, but KEEP MY FINGER ON THE TRACKPAD when I get there.  If you take your finger off of the trackpad, the dock won't appear, but if you keep it there then it will.

(There are other reports that moving the cursor to the bottom of the screen and then repeating the same action again can make the dock appear, but I had inconsistent results with that technique.)


SSH address from terminal I live on campus and use a university secured 802.1x wifi network. The first question I have is, what's the difference between the IP address I can see from ifconfig and the address that is show as username@wireless1x-blah-blah-blah@university.edu? Since they both change does DHCP assign me both of them? Also is there a way to find this second, ssh usable address from the terminal? I can't seem to find a way to figure out how to make this ssh address static, so at least I'd like create a cronjob that copies and pastes it to a txt file on my cloud drive.

Image of the address I'm talking about just for clarification:

If anyone knows how to make this static without router access on a 802.1x network that'd be super helpful also.

It's the PTR record (reverse DNS) corresponding to the IP address which your computer was assigned via DHCP. It changes each time your computer gets a new address from DHCP and you can't make it static.

The problem here is not in the settings on your computer, but on all the other computers connected to the campus network (i.e. computers try to connect to your computer). These machines ask the DNS server (which they also know from the campus DHCP) for the IP address of wireless1x-blah-blah-blah@university.edu and the DNS server returns the corresponding IP address.

You'd need to make a DHCP reservation to get the same IP address always, but this only administrators can do.

You can check it with command-line:

dig +short -x <your_ip_address>

or if you know your interface name (en0 in the below example) automatically:

dig +short -x `ipconfig getifaddr en0`


Cmd+R not working, 5 min startup time I have a 10.6.8, all of a sudden takes 5 min to start up. I can't get into the utilities, as I hold cmd and R with no effect. No time machine on this computer.
There are 700 Mb free on the hard disk. I changed the keyboard with a wired one as it wouldn't see the wireless anymore. The mouse pointer stalls then jumps to the edge of the screen.Different mouse doing the same. Once started, all apps running smooth.
Appreciate your help.

OS X 10.6.8 does not have a recovery partition. First backup all your user data before preceding. Try starting the computer in safe mode: Shut down the computer and wait 10 seconds; Press the power button and press the Shift key. This will perform a file consistency check and disable other functions on your computer. Open Disk Utility and check the S.M.A.R.T status. It seems as if your hard drive is failing.


How can I prevent Mac terminal ssh from disconnecting when the screen is automatically turned off? I frequently use ssh on my MacBook to connect to other servers and run long-running commands there. When I do this, I leave the lid open to let it run, but then if I don't go to make coffee or something, it automatically turns the screen off, and this also causes the ssh to disconnect.

I tried to find how to prevent this automatically in the Terminal settings and in power saving settings, and couldn't find anything relevant. To prevent this disconnection I play a video silently, and this doesn't let power saving turn the screen off, but this is weird and lame to begin with, and if I forget to do this, then my session is lost. Is there anything better and more automatic?

As mentioned by Jakuje in the comments above, I strongly recommend using screen (or tmux) for long running commands or sessions that you would want to resume if disconnected for any reason.

Another approach would be to install mosh (https://mosh.org/) to make the connection. You can use it just like SSH and but it has support for intermittent connectivity (e.g., your laptop going to sleep) so that you can resume the connection without interruption from a user perspective.

However, I suspect your problem is not necessarily from the screen turning off, but from the SSH session timing out due to an idle connection.  You can edit your ~/.ssh/config file and add in an entry similar to the following

host your.remote.host
     ServerAliveInterval 180

which will cause your client to send a packet to the server every 180 seconds if it doesn't receive a packet from the server.


How do I capture the log output from Airport Utility? I'm using Airport Utility 5.6.1 on Mavericks (installed from links here). I'm trying to figure out how the Advanced > Syslog Destination Address setting works...

What kind of value is that field anticipating? just an IP address of some machine running OSX? a full URL to...what?
Has anyone reading this ever used that setting before?
Is there a better way to access full debug logs for the Airport Extreme or Time Capsule?
Does Airport Utility 6 offer any log access? I'm not seeing anything...

You're probably way over this, by now, but I just set up log capture from my 5th gen Airport Extreme to my Mac Mini (running Mavericks), so I'll chime in for posterity.

Syslog Destination Address does expect an IP address. The computer at the end of that ip address has to be configured to be a log server (and OSX can be configured for this... see below).
I've only just started forwarding the logs, but I've looked at the logs before.
AFAIK, apart from more directly viewing/exporting a recent sample of the logs through the "Logs & Statistics" button on the advanced tab, there isn't another way to access them.
Apple removed log access (along with many other useful feature) from the Airport Utility 6 because...I dunno...they're hateful succubi seeking to relieve everyone of both money and control. You'll have to stick with 5.6.1 as long as you can.

Configuring OSX (Mavericks) to record the logs

As for configuring my Mavericks Mini to be a log server, I followed the instructions here (which I think is the same blog post that @drevicko mentioned, only in a different location).

To briefly summarize, you need to add the following to the Sockets section of /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist :

<key>NetworkListener</key>
<dict>
    <key>SockServiceName</key>
    <string>syslog</string>
    <key>SockType</key>
    <string>dgram</string>
</dict>

Editing the file requires that you convert it from binary to text and then back to binary once you are done.  The blog post has instructions to do this using plutil -convert

After the changes have been made, you need to restart the syslogd Daemon (instructions also in the blog post):

$ sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist
$ sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist

Notes

When you configure the airport to send logs to a particular IP in your network, you should keep in mind that it may very well be a dynamic IP. In my case, the Airport could (and would) one day decide that my Mac Mini should be 10.0.1.5 instead of 10.0.1.2. Fortunately, you can create a DHCP reservation, in the Airport, to always give a particular machine a particular address.
Once set up to receive the airport logs, you can view them using the console application on OSX. They'll be mixed in with everything else (in the "All Messages" view), but you can find them all in the "system.log" section.


Did Mavericks change the Mac's color profiles? I just updated to Mavericks and noticed that the Skype icon in my dock is a deeper blue than it was before, and it looks like there's more contrast in general. Did the new version of OS X modify the color profiles?

I do web design work, so color accuracy is pretty important for me. I got used to the old colors, so this change might be problematic for me.

Did OS X change the color profiles? Is there a way to turn them back?

Looking at the standard profiles included with Mac OS X suggests two profiles have changed:

Generic Gray Gamma 2.2 Profile.icc
Generic Gray Profile.icc

Profile md5 Signatures

The profiles were compared using a simple file content check using md5:

cd /System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles
md5 *

OS X 10.8

MD5 (AdobeRGB1998.icc) = dea88382d899d5f6e573b432473ae138
MD5 (Generic CMYK Profile.icc) = 25352f2fbfee39fe64c943b6fb0c8c4e
MD5 (Generic Gray Gamma 2.2 Profile.icc) = ad1250d8b778217110effe8e3423a9fb
MD5 (Generic Gray Profile.icc) = 38b0f5b73c0e2eb5beca4d8deef9cde9
MD5 (Generic Lab Profile.icc) = f7d68a979692ff32180a87a4b6837a70
MD5 (Generic RGB Profile.icc) = 0d258bad36b64cebfb9e6826c3ed5037
MD5 (Generic XYZ Profile.icc) = aad1e8dbdf81721d9e983f0b0ffcb046
MD5 (sRGB Profile.icc) = 1d3fda2edb4a89ab60a23c5f7c7d81dd

OS X 10.9

MD5 (AdobeRGB1998.icc) = dea88382d899d5f6e573b432473ae138
MD5 (Generic CMYK Profile.icc) = 25352f2fbfee39fe64c943b6fb0c8c4e
MD5 (Generic Gray Gamma 2.2 Profile.icc) = 242a41879c1d88202a6863d14fa729b2
MD5 (Generic Gray Profile.icc) = 475ffd27e43ca94bd4bf997990076e0a
MD5 (Generic Lab Profile.icc) = f7d68a979692ff32180a87a4b6837a70
MD5 (Generic RGB Profile.icc) = 0d258bad36b64cebfb9e6826c3ed5037
MD5 (Generic XYZ Profile.icc) = aad1e8dbdf81721d9e983f0b0ffcb046
MD5 (sRGB Profile.icc) = 1d3fda2edb4a89ab60a23c5f7c7d81dd

ColorSync Utility

You can use the included ColorSync Utility to examine the ColorSync profile in use by your displays.

Applications > Utilities > ColorSync Utility.app

Using this utility you can compare profiles with your last OS X 10.8 back-up and, optionally, restore any custom profiles you created. Restore easy access to prior profile by placing them within the /Library/ColorSync/Profiles folder.


Sierra showing incorrect monitor in Display Preferences I just bought a monitor, a 24-inches AOC U2477PWQ, 4K resolution. I attached it to my 2012 MacBook Air running the latest version of Sierra, and macOS thinks it's a 30-inches AOC U2477WM, 1080p.

How come macOS thinks it's a different monitor? Is it just because they share the same driver (weird)?

I'm using HDMI with a MiniDisplay to HDMI adapter.

EDIT: I'd like to run at the native resolution, possibly enabling retina, or at least the biggest resolution that the MBA mid-2012 can handle, which should be around 2,500something.

To answer your questions about running a 4K display with a Mid 2012 MacBook Air 11"/13":

Unfortunately the 2012 MBA isn't technically able to do so.

The 2012 MBA has an Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU which supports only up to 2560x1600 px via its Thunderbolt port directly. Attaching another video adapter (like HDMI) may reduce the maximum possible resolution.

Depending on the external display it may choose a lower resolution if if the source (your MBA) is not capable of driving the display's native resolution. It appears that your MBA reduces the resolution to 1920x1080 px when you connect it to the display's HDMI port.

If possible use a miniDisplayport to Displayport cable to connect your computer to the display. You may be able to use a resolution of 2560x1600 px.


Where are Safari 6.0 passwords saved? Prior to version 6.0 Safari had no features for managing passwords distinct from the system wide support provided by Keychain:

but Safari 6.0 adds a new tab in its Preferences dialog for saving and managing passwords for websites:

Does this change correspond to a change in locations for storing or rules for managing the security of passwords? Are Safari passwords still stored securely in the Keychain or are they in a new, separate store?

Where are Safari 6.0 passwords saved?

The passwords are still saved in the Keychain, and not a separate 'new' location. Safari 6 just includes a new front end for accessing them directly without having to go to the Keychain Access application.


What's the "@"mark at the file description? I installed princexml for Mac. With ls -alF, I have -rwxr-xr-x@ 1 prosseek  admin  14190120 Jun  8 16:11 prince*. What's the meaning of @ in -rwxr-xr-x@?

And when I tried to execute the binary, I got ./prince: Operation not permitted error message. Does this have anything with @?

It means that the file has extended attributes. To see these attributes, run xattr -l file, to see the extended attributes of a particular file, or ls -l@ to see the extended attributes of all files in a particular directory.

See the man page for xattr as well.


Custom vibrate pattern for an arbitrary app I've just discovered the iOS 7 feature of being able to change the vibrate patterns for various different types of alert.

The one app I really, really want to have a custom vibrate pattern is "Yurekuru". This app gives warnings of imminent earthquakes in Japan, so an alert from this app requires my immediate attention. My phone is almost always on silent, and if I mistake an earthquake warning for an incoming email and ignore it, that's bad.

Unfortunately, if I go into Settings and then Sounds, there are options for things like "tweet" and "Facebook post", but nothing related to this app. There is also nothing related to this app in top-level settings menu.

Is it possible to give a custom vibrate pattern (or sound for that matter) to any app of my choice? Or is this something I would have to suggest to the app's developers?

Unfortunately you can only set Native apps (provided via Apple) which were on your iOS on the first install.

Some examples:

Incoming call (does not work for skype or other external apps)
New email (only works from the mail.app)
Text messages
Tweet
Facebook

Since iOS6 it has Twitter and Facebook built-in, and that's why there two are visible there for example.

Developers have no access to this preference and cannot build anything (yet) to support customization of vibrate patterns.


ZSH issue with colorized prompt and double slash, i.e "//" appearing when I am into root I am faced to a problem of appearing slash / appearing double slash into PS1 when I am located on root / .

I explain more precisely, I have in .zshrc :

setopt PROMPT_SUBST
slash_color () { dirs | awk -F "/" ' {for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) {printf "\033[38;5;75m"$i"\033[38;5;206m" "/"}} '; }
PS1='%F{13}|%F{green}%n@%F{cyan}%m%F{13}|%f%T%F{13}|$(slash_color)%F{13}|%F{7} '

The goal was to colorize each slash of the current PATH.

This way, when I go to a deeper directory, I get :

But a problem remains when I do : $ cd /, I get the following result, i.e a double slash representing the  current path and I don't know to handle this to have only a single path :

If someone could help me to get only one slash when I am located on root, i.e / ?

How to make path prompt easier to read by color-coding each `/` (forward slash)?

Change the for loop from

for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) \
 printf blue $i pink "/"; \
printf "\n"

to

for (i=1; i<NF; i++) \
 printf blue $i pink "/"; \
printf blue $NF pink; \
printf "\n"

notice the change in <= → <
Take care of semi-colons.

or use some help from searching to get an if else condition for which the pseudocode (not correct bash syntax) is:

for all i<=NF:
 if (i<NF):
   printf blue $i pink "/" ;
 else:
   printf blue $i pink ;
printf "\n";


iOS Mail uses wrong return address tl;dr: I have several email addresses on the same Mail account, iOS defaults to the wrong one as the sender, and I can't figure out how to change that.

Full version:

I set up my email accounts on my Mac. In Mac OS X Mail's Accounts prefs, it's possible to list several email addresses for an account in a comma-delimited list. I do this, and it works well on the Mac. In the Composing prefs in Mail, I set Send new messages from to my primary email address, and that's the one that gets used by default.

On iOS, Mail uses a different email address in the From and Reply-To headers. (It's an address I only use for email to/from Yahoo groups). I haven't been able to find anything like Mac OS X Mail's Send new messages from setting, so I don't know how I can change this. As a result, email from iOS defaults to having a return address that I really don't want it to have. I only get the preferred address if I remember to change it, every single time.

Deleting the address isn't an option-- I do actually use it, sometimes.

iOS Mail app doesn't function like you are hoping it will unfortunately. The best suggestion I have is to add this mail account twice in iOS Settings, once using each email address you prefer it to have.


How to get rid of "Finish Setting Up Your iPhone" badge? I upgraded to ios 11.2.

There is now a red badge under Settings on "Finish Setting Up Your iPhone.

Under Settings>Finish Setting Up Your iPhone there are two apparent options:

Back, and
Set Up Apple Pay

How do I decline Apple's invitation to manage my financial transactions and mine them for data?

After restoring my iPhone from a backup using iTunes, I was already signed into iCloud with my Apple ID. Yet I had this "Finish Setting Up Your iPhone" message and badge on the Settings app, which was super annoying. Whenever I tried to "finish" the setup, the set up would never finish because I was already signed in!

To resolve this (make sure you have a backup of your data before proceeding!), do the following:

Settings > Your Name > Sign out

Enter your password (this will turn off Find My iPhone which is ok)
You will be asked what info your want to keep on device. I didn't keep anything because I backed up my phone before this using iTunes.

Settings > Finish Setting Up Your iPhone

Follow the process, sign in with your Apple ID and password and finish all the steps.

Now everything works and there is no more red notification icon on the settings app on the home screen!


How do I rename app icons on my iPad home screen? How do I rename the apps on my home screen?

I have tried putting the app icons in edit mode ("wiggle mode") but I cannot find a way to rename them.

iOS doesn't have that functionality.  Names of application icons are provided by the application.  You can only name folders.


App Store buttons in the ios7 world: still shiny? It appears the Apple App Store badge and images are still shiny. I assumed the reflections would go away after ios7 was formally released.

Has Apple announced if and when the buttons would change? I expect they would communicate on this since it's a very common marketing material that is substantially out of date with the new design.

No change has been pre-announced (and that would be a surprise).

Furthermore, Apple's marketing guidelines have not changed the design of the badge and buttons in conjunction with iOS 7's release.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/marketing/guidelines/


What Bluetooth profiles are available for headphone connections on iPhone and iPad? Getting good sound quality on Bluetooth headset seems to depend far more on the Bluetooth profiles used on a connection than the quality of the headset itself.
AAC is quoted in many articles as "the profile you need for Apple devices", and although I found helpful information about finding out the Bluetooth profile used on a given connection, there seems to be no reliable information whether or not AAC really is the only available high-quality audio profile on Apple's mobile OSs.
So, which Bluetooth profiles are available for headphone (stereo audio from device to headphone only) and headset (stereo audio from device to headset, likely mono audio from headset to device, simultaneously) use when used with iOS and iPadOS 14?

Isn't AAC a codec, not a BT profile?
Seems AAC is nested in A2DP - ref. Wikipedia
From the Apple documentation
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT204387
"Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP 1.3)
This profile works with iPhone 5s and later, iPad Air and later, and iPod touch (6th generation) and later."
The technical specs for A2DP are available at bluetooth.org - https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/archived-specifications/ --
A2DP v. 1.3 here
There's an interesting section in this article about Apple's M1 proprietary BT chip... https://www.howtogeek.com/338750/whats-the-difference-between-bluetooth-a2dp-and-aptx/
Also, maybe take a look at Apple Accessory Device Guideline Specs document here

specifically "33. Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP)"

Apple's proprietary-environment business model means they're probably keeping some info close to their chest so they can BEAT(s) out the competition (pun intended).


How can I sort PDF by date in Adobe Acrobat on iOS? How can I sort PDF by date in Adobe Acrobat on iOS? By default the order is lexicographical:

Clicking on "recent" sort the documents by descending date of last opening:


How can you schedule messages on an iPhone? I am looking for an app that lets me schedule messages to have them sent at a specific time? I do not mind paying as I know this is not something offered for free, but the ones I have tried so far (Delayed and Scheduled) have not been working at all.

I am looking for something that does more then just send a reminder to send the message.

While there is no native option to have the message sent at a scheduled time, I have been using an app Called Auto Sender for the past month or so, and have been finding it works very well.

How it works is by storing the message on their server, and then sending the message from a generated number at the scheduled time. While it is not possible to have the message automatically sent from your number due to restrictions placed by apple, this method works well if you don't mind it coming from a different number. It also automatically includes your number at the end of the message, so the recipient knows who sent it. It also offers a signature that will appear at the end of the message, which allows you to enter your name in if you would like.

For the past month or so all my messages have been sent exactly on time! While there is a cost associated with each message due to them storing it on their servers, I find it cheaper then any other iOS alternative.


What does the error "iTunes could not restore the iPod 'NAME' because the backup could not be saved on the computer." mean? My iPod was acting up (the clock was going out of sync, it often became unresponsive to touch) so before contacting Apple I decided to try a Backup & Restore.

I plugged in my iPod and pressed "Backup iPod".  It did it fine, it seemed, and let me know when it was done.  Then I clicked "Restore" and after a few of the normal errors (11 and 14) I force-restored it using the Home & Power buttons.

When it was finally restored I selected "Restore from Backup" and picked my latest Backup.  That's where the problem starts... it keeps reaching 2/3 of the way done and then this error appears:
"iTunes could not restore the iPod 'NAME' because the backup could not be saved on the computer."

The problem occurs with all of my backups, and persists after a computer restart and after trying a different USB port (just in case.)

I looked around at several forums and found no one with a similar problem.  The error seems to usually appear for other people when the backup is actually being created, not when the iPod is being restored to a backup like it does in this case.

I hope this was enough information.  Thanks to any help you guys might be able to give :)

Cheers!
- Lindsay

I hopefully have a solution to this issue. I also had this problem, and I believe it's because you have insuffient disk space and iTunes being a large program requires so much disk space to be available in order to perform these tasks.

Therefore, iTunes will bring up the error after reaching 2/3 of the way and then the error appears: "iTunes could not restore the iPod/iphone 'NAME' because the backup could not be saved on the computer." The backup you did is there because you're obviously selecting it when "restoring from backup". So free up some disk space and redo the "restore from backup" and it should complete the process without any errors.


What advertising network is this? I encounter this type of pop-up ad often when using an app on iOS. What advertising network is serving this advert? (Or how would I determine this in general when the ad cycles to another app)

Depending on how terminal savvy you are.. you might look into sleuthing around using lsof and netstat.

This will only work with a jailbroken iOS device. Install the packages network-cmds and lsof using Cydia.

Close all your other applications, except for the one generating the ad. Then, open a Terminal, run one of these commands and look through the list. Simply use the process of elimination to figure out which IP address it is talking to. (IE: if you know you are running Spotify for music, you could rule out any active connections that are going to a website with "spotify" in the hostname.) After narrowing it down, if you are left with a set of IP addresses instead of hostnames, you could try running the remaining ones through an IP address lookup webpage.

Here are the commands. I've supplied a little bit of sample output from my mac to show you what I get. These are the same commands in the packages above for iOS, so you should get equivalent output. Be warned, you will get a lot of output, so be prepared to scroll.

[MacBook-Pro:~] jonathan% lsof -i

COMMAND    PID              USER   FD   TYPE             DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
UserEvent  228 jonathan    6u  IPv4 <MAC>      0t0  UDP *:*
Mail       240 jonathan   34u  IPv4 <MAC>      0t0  TCP 192.168.1.124:49590->17.158.8.25:imaps (ESTABLISHED)
Mail       240 jonathan   37u  IPv4 <MAC>      0t0  TCP 192.168.1.124:49533->17.158.8.25:imaps (ESTABLISHED)

OR try

[MacBook-Pro:~] jonathan % sudo netstat
Active Internet connections
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q  Local Address          Foreign Address        (state)
tcp4       0      0  192.168.1.124.50428    cache.google.com.https ESTABLISHED
tcp4       0      0  192.168.1.124.50427    cache.google.com.https ESTABLISHED

Where 192.168.1.124 will be your local IP address instead of what is shown above.


Is there a way to insert the current date in Notes? In iOS8, is there an easy way to insert the current date (or current date/time) in Notes?

[Late Post - posting in case it helps anyone else]

On iPhone (iOS 11+), the "Insert Date Keyboard" provides an easy way to insert the current date in Notes or any other app. If you want to include the current Time in Notes as well, the date format (under advanced settings) would be something like: "yyyy/MM/dd hh:mm"

Note: The app costs a dollar

( Disclaimer: I helped work on this )


Decompressing .sit file I have recently downloaded a .sit archive file.

Is there a way to decompress it at the command line?

The Unarchiver

Includes a commandline tool. Can unpack some SIT files. I think I have experienced problems with a few SIT files though.


In OS X, is it better to put apps in /Applications or in ~/Applications? I've noticed that pkg installers and obviously apps installed from the App Store) put apps in the /Applications file, yet Steam usually puts them in ~/Applications. Both work, and both are writable by the user, but are there circumstances under which one should be done over the other?
I am the only user of this computer, and shared folders aside, I've disabled guest access.

(this is coming from a Linux user, so having a root folder be writable seems wrong, unless my permissions are wrong from the start)

What no-one seems to have pointed out so far is that /Applications are usable by everybody & ~/Applications are only for that user.

Some installers will ask if you want to install for this user or for everybody. That's how it can differentiate.

That will be one of the reasons Steam installs to there, as it's a per user license.

Apple's app licensing, though 'per ID' doesn't prevent all a machine's users from accessing apps purchased under another user account, so everything else usually goes in /Applications by default.

Of course, if you're the machine's sole user, the distinction becomes moot.


Which iPhoto folders are least useful to save space? I'm cleaning up my iPhoto folders since I am short on HD space. Looking inside iPhoto, I see four folders that consume a lot of space: Masters, Modified, Originals, Previews. Which of these are must keep and which can be deleted or recreated?

For example, I did do some editing but I would rather have the original since I can reproduce it.

PS: I do use an app called PhotoSweeper to help me clean up my iPhoto library. I used it to remove duplications and photos that look alike.

Before any of these, I would check your iPhoto's trashcan. Most people don't realize that the iPhoto trashcan is completely separate from the systemwide trashcan. Depending on how many photos you take, this can sometimes amounts to GB of space quite easily. I would otherwise leave those individual folders alone, as iPhoto uses those to generate the pictures that are in your iPhoto library. Depending on which folder you target (such as originals), you may end up with a bunch of question marks in your iPhoto library where images used to be. The best way to get rid of pictures is to manage them from within the iPhoto application itself.


Unable to allocate the free space to main volume I've been trying to allocate the left unallocated free space after uninstalling the ubuntu. As there are no options available in disk utility to do that now.

The unshaded part is unallocated.
I tried to workaround using terminal commands but I am getting an error that I am not able to understand.
I ran the command

diskutil coreStorage resizeStack FCF7976D-78ED-4CE9-8029-C6557CB601C5 429.9G JHFS+ Mac 480G

and got

The Core Storage Logical Volume UUID is FCF7976D-78ED-4CE9-8029-C6557CB601C5
Started CoreStorage operation
Checking prerequisites for resizing Logical-Physical volume stack
Error: -69722: You can't perform this resize unless it has a booter (target  partition is probably too small)

What is this error and how to get around it to get back my free space of hard drive?

Link for the commands. http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/08/05/undocumented-corestorage-commands/
You can also refer to apple's man page on diskutil

Edit1 :

~ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            429.9 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:        Bios Boot Partition                         1.0 MB     disk0s4
   5:                 Linux Swap                         4.1 GB     disk0s5
   6:           Linux Filesystem                         65.3 GB    disk0s6

/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            Macintosh HD           +429.5 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 FCF7976D-78ED-4CE9-8029-C6557CB601C5
                                 Unencrypted

~ sudo gpt show disk0
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         MBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  839592368      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  840002008    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  841271544       1800
  841273344       2048      4  GPT part - 21686148-6449-6E6F-744E-656564454649
  841275392    7999488      5  GPT part - 0657FD6D-A4AB-43C4-84E5-0933C84B4F4F
  849274880  127496192      6  GPT part - 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4
  976771072       2063
  976773135         32         Sec GPT table
  976773167          1         Sec GPT header

The command diskutil cs resizeStack ... requires some unallocated disk space at the end of a Logical Volume Group and the Recovery HD (index 2 & 3) to be able to expand it. You only have 1800 blocks à 512 Bytes (~2 MB) of it.

After installing and uninstalling Ubuntu you still have an abandoned BIOS Boot partition (probably GRUB) (index 4), a swap partition (index 5) and a main Linux partition (index 6) at the tail of your disk.

Before resizing the CS stack (which often fails with such an expelled Linux dual-boot environment), you have to delete the three Linux partitions (and change the MBR to the default pMBR).

Backup your internal drive
Detach any external drive
Boot to Internet Recovery Mode
Open Terminal in the menubar Utilities -> Terminal
Get an overview (especially the gpt command is important!). Below I assume the internal disk has the disk identifier disk0 and the Logical Volume residing in disk0s2 has the disk identifier disk2. Please use the disk identifiers you found in your environment:

diskutil list
gpt -r show disk0

Unmount first the Logical VOlume and then the internal disk:

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

Delete the MBR:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0 bs=512 count=1

Destroy the GUID partition table and create a new one (this also creates a fresh pMBR):

gpt destroy disk0
gpt create -f disk0

Rebuild all previous GUID partitions:

gpt add -i 1 -b 40 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B disk0
gpt add -i 3 -b 840002008 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0
gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 839592368 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

If you get a resource busy error after one of the steps, just unmount disk0 again with

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0

Check the disk with diskutil verifyDisk disk0 afterwards.

Enter diskutil cs list and check if all four CoreStorage containers appear: a Logical Volume Group, a Physical Volume and Logical Volume Family and a Logical Volume.

With the UUID of the Logical Volume mount the LV:

Example:

    +-> Logical Volume FCF7976D-78ED-4CE9-8029-C6557CB601C5
        ---------------------------------------------------
        Disk:                  disk17
        Status:                Online

Then use:

diskutil mount FCF7976D-78ED-4CE9-8029-C6557CB601C5

Then after getting the disk identifier of the mounted LV with diskutil list verify the volume:

diskutil verifyVolume disk17 #probably it's disk17, disk16 or disk18

Then try to resize the stack with:

diskutil cs resizeStack FCF7976D-78ED-4CE9-8029-C6557CB601C5 499g

If you get an error (partition is too small) use a slightly smaller value (e.g. 498500m)

The above resizeStack command may fail, due to a CS LVG "corruption". This is no corruption of your data but probably a corruption/misconfiguration of some CS meta data. Then you have to wipe your disk and restore your current (Time Machine) backup.


Game freezing every 10 seconds I'm not sure if this qualifies as a legit question here, but I don't know where else to ask.

I have installed the Call of Duty 2 MAC version on my iMac. My system capabilities (RAM, processor, video) are way above the recommended requirements, so I would have expected the game to run smooth.

However, in-game, doesn't matter if I am in the main menu or playing, it keeps freezing for about 2 seconds, every 10 seconds or so. I have set the quality settings to maximum and minimum, and it's the same.

Clearly it has nothing to do with in-game quality settings, as it does this even while in the main menu.

Any idea what the problem might be? I suspect my computer (1.5 years old iMac, 2.7GHz i5, 8GB@1600MHz DDR3, GeForce GT 640M 512MB) has a problem... it does boot slower than when I bought it... and overall it's not as fast.

My guess is that it doesn't use multi core as I have the same problem.
iMac 2011, 27″, 3.4 GHz i7, 6970M 2 GB, 12 GB RAM, 120 GB SSD.


One USB-port on MacBook Pro late 2011 doesn't work. I have a problem with one of my USB-ports on my Macbook. I can plug in my charger for my Jaybird X3 headphones and charge them, but I can't charge my iPhone for example. And no data from the iPhone is getting transfered to the computer. I've dropped it with an usb-device connected, and that's when it stopped working correctly. Is there any way to bend some connector back or something like that?

So, the first thing that different devices will tax the USB port differently. The Jaybird headphones likely requires less wattage than the iPhone to charge which is why the damaged port works for some devices but not others.

Given that you are not getting full power output and data transfer is not working it sounds like the connectors on the inside of the port are bad (as you alluded to in your question).

You did not state a year for your MacBook Pro but on pretty much all modern models the USB ports contacts reside embedded in a bit of plastic, and the actual connectors are soldered directly onto the main board. If you had skills with soldering etc you might be able to take the machine apart and fix the port, but this would void any warranty you may have.

My recommendation would be to take it into the Apple Store and have them take a look at it. I would guess you will need a new logic board. Apple will give you a price and you can decide from there if you want to:

Have Apple fix it
Take to a 3rd party to fix (cheaper but not Apple parts)
Try and fix it yourself
Buy a new machine
Live with the issue and just use the other ports

Hope this helps!


Is there any way to suppress the "incompatible accessory" warning on the iPhone? Every time I connect my iPhone to the dock in my vehicle, the following warning message is displayed:

After dismissing the warning dialog, everything appears to works fine. Is there any way to suppress this dialog from being displayed every time I connect my iPhone to the dock?

(Enabling Airplane Mode does seem to do the trick, but that's not a realistic solution as I don't want to lose voice/data functionality when docking the iPhone.)

Gotta be jailbroken AFAIK. There's a package called Popup Blocker that suppresses alerts. This is probably the best option.

I recommend Spirit for jailbreaking 3.1.2 or 3.1.3. It's super easy and works well for everyday (non-hacker) use.


Someone else's phone automatically shows up in my iTunes Someone else had updated their iPhone on my computer in the past, and now every time I open iTunes, it automatically shows their phone in the Device column and not my own (when neither their phone nor my phone is plugged into the computer). How can I stop this from happening? How can I make my friend's phone disappear from my iTunes completely? I have already wiped iTunes off my computer, and reinstalled it, but this problem still occurs.


Do iPhones use active scanning to find Wi-Fi networks when Ask to Join Networks is off? I'm looking into security holes in my daily life, and I ran across an article that says that most devices broadcast their MAC address continuously. I'm wondering if that applies to iPhones (and other iDevices) as well. I would expect them to use active scanning when Ask to Join Networks is on, or if you are actually in the Wi-Fi Settings (though I don't know that that is the case), but what about normally? Is my iPhone broadcasting its identity everywhere it goes as long as the Wi-Fi is on?

Since iOS8 the MAC is randomised while scanning for wi-fi networks. I believe that has since been adopted by most devices.

The REAL MAC is only used after connection to a network.


Finding the directory an application uses for temporary files Is there procedure or tool that can be used to find the directory in which an application stores its temporary files?

My cloud backup service reports how many files remain to be backed up. This number increases by an order of magnitude whenever I open a particular application, and decreases when I close the application. Methinks these are temp files. To prevent my backup from wasting its time indexing and uploading them, I want to exclude that application's temporary file directory. I just need to figure out where it is. Rather than rooting around in the file system like an animal, I'd prefer to use a thoughtful tool or procedure to watch where the system (or the application) is putting these temp files.

There are a few tools you can use to monitor file accesses but the two I'd recommend are (with their manual page descriptions):

opensnoop - snoop file opens as they occur. Uses DTrace.
lsof - list open files

Both are shipped with Mac OS and should do what you need. You'll need to run opensnoop in a terminal session before you start your cloud backup (it only displays changes after it's started) but lsof can display detail about all currently open files.


How do I play an album starting from nth song in iTunes I'm new to iTunes and trying to make sense of it's difficult UI. Let's say I have Bob Dylan Essential's, and I want to play it starting from 2nd song of disc 2. I double click this song in my library but, instead of playing all songs starting from this one, iTunes shuffles the entire album into the Play Next section. I've takes a screenshot with the result:

How do I play all songs in order, starting from a particular one?

Sometimes it's just a case of persuading iTunes to actually Stop rather than Pause

When you first launch iTunes it is Stopped - the top menu doesn't contain any current song info. If at that point you hit Play, it will actually start from just the first song in the list & continue on down the page [assuming you don't have shuffle enabled, of course].
If you double-click any track instead, then it will do the same, from that track - which is what you want...so...

To make it actually Stop, whilst it's playing, hold  Alt ⌥  & click the Pause button II
You might also notice the rewind button changes to a kind of 'orbiting' icon - that's to start Genius based on the current track - but not relevant to this issue.

Once stopped, it ought to return to 'normal' behaviour.

If it doesn't, an alternative is to enable, then disable shuffle. That should also revert to linear play mode.


I want to remove an entry in my $PATH I'm running OS 10.8. When I

echo $PATH

my terminal outputs

/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/usr/texbin:/Users/austinzuffi/Development/Android/adt-bundle-max-x86_64/sdk/tools

and i want to remove or at least edit

/Users/austinzuffi/Development/Android/adt-bundle-max-x86_64/sdk/tools

I can't find out where that string is entered. My /etc/paths shows

/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin
/usr/local/bin

I'm assuming there's a file such as .bashrc that adds the entry upon login. I just can't find out which file is doing it. If you know which files might append my path environment variable, please let me know so I can check!

Also, if eclipse is modifying the system variable, let me know. I'm assuming eclipse doesn't have that power however I'm new to it.

Thanks guys
-Austin

Look in ~/.profile, ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, /etc/bashrc for a line of the following form:

export PATH=$PATH:/Users/austinzuffi/Development/Android/adt-bundle-max-x86_64/sdk/tools

Also look to see if any of those files contain a line starting with either source or . (which is short for source). If they do then look in the sourced files too.

A quicker way might be to use grep. Open a terminal and, from your home directory run

grep -r "/Users/austinzuffi/Development/Android/adt-bundle-max-x86_64/sdk/tools" .


Can malware move from Windows to Mac I recently got a Mac, and am transferring files from my old Windows laptop which had kept freezing with very high hard-drive activity, and may or may not be infected with malware. I'm wondering if there's a chance of my Mac being infected by malware from photos, documents, videos and music transferred from a Windows machine?

If so, which antivirus would you recommend me to get on my Mac? Are Sophos and Avira any good?

This answer reflects the situation at the time it was written (beginning of 2013) and may be different today. Please don't assume that it is still correct for current malware implementations

The short answer is "No, your Mac should not get infected".

The a bit longer answer is "it depends". You should be fine with photos, videos and music, but there might a very small risk with documents (depending on the format) and anything html-related (which might access a malware server or something). But given the current state of malware on OS X I wouldn't worry too much.


TrueCrypt and OSX Fuse I installed OSX Fuse via Brew, as installing it via official installer causes brew doctor to go all crazy. Mavericks, 10.9.1

I followed the instructions after the installation:

brew install osxfuse
==> Downloading https://downloads.sf.net/project/machomebrew/Bottles/osxfuse-2.6.2.mavericks.bottle.tar.gz
Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/osxfuse-2.6.2.mavericks.bottle.tar.gz
==> Pouring osxfuse-2.6.2.mavericks.bottle.tar.gz
==> Caveats
If upgrading from a previous version of osxfuse, the previous kernel extension
will need to be unloaded before installing the new version. First, check that
no FUSE-based file systems are running:

  mount -t osxfusefs

Unmount all FUSE file systems and then unload the kernel extension:

  sudo kextunload -b com.github.osxfuse.filesystems.osxfusefs

The new osxfuse file system bundle needs to be installed by the root user:

  sudo /bin/cp -RfX /usr/local/Cellar/osxfuse/2.6.2/Library/Filesystems/osxfusefs.fs /Library/Filesystems
  sudo chmod +s /Library/Filesystems/osxfusefs.fs/Support/load_osxfusefs
==> Summary
  /usr/local/Cellar/osxfuse/2.6.2: 84 files, 5.0M

Now, when I try to lunch TrueCrypt, I still get an error:

/Applications/TrueCrypt.app/Contents/MacOS/TrueCrypt
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/libfuse.2.dylib
  Referenced from: /Applications/TrueCrypt.app/Contents/MacOS/TrueCrypt
  Reason: image not found
fish: Job 1, '/Applications/TrueCrypt.app/Contents/MacOS/TrueCrypt ' terminated by signal SIGTRAP (Trace or breakpoint trap)

My research indicates I need MacFuse compatibility layer with my OSXFuse install. How do I get that with brew?

I run into this type of problem frequently. I use a strict umask (0077) in my shell.  Usually, when brew is done installing, the dynamic libraries will have the same restrictive mask and the software I just installed doesn't work as a different user. Check the permissions on /usr/local/lib/libfuse.2.dylib. It might be accessible only by the brewer, which could explain why TrueCrypt can't find it.

Since HomeBrew symlinks everything, you may have to change the permissions on the symlink itself, and the file to which it is pointing. For the symlink, use the -h option:

chmod -h a+rX /usr/local/lib/libfuse.2.dylib

While you're at it, check to see if other files have the same problems.

Finally, sudo inherits the umask of the sudo-er. If umask is the culprit here, you might want to also check the permissions for the file-system bundle that you copied as an admin. If those are a problem, use

sudo chmod -R a+rX /Library/Filesystems/osxfusefs.fs

Hope this helps.


Notes iCloud sync fail Yosemite and IOS8 Notes appear not to be syncing reliably. There are other questions but appear to be about older versions.

No two of iCloud, IOS and Mac seem to be fully in sync. (iCloud and IoS do appear to be in sync now) Setup is in ssytem preferences all except Back to My Mac and keychain are ticked on in the iCloud pane Mail, Calendars and Safari all sync.

Later on a retry iCloud web notes page just hangs this was after iPhones and web seemed to sync better (i.e. a iPhone test note got to the web) - get does not respond message and hit button to report to Apple. Only the notes pane is affected all others seem OK. Note this freeze happened after I wrote this - when I wrote this it seemed to react but just did not have up to date from iPhone or Mac

All my old notes seem to be OK. Probably sync by wire under iTunes before iOS8

My email seems to sync correctly

iCloud shows all notes over a year old in its list (but then shows ion screen the one I just typed in on my IPhone)

iPhone and Mac seems to be in sync for up to last Monday (Note as Monday 22nd now it looks odd for iPhone to show  Monday for notes update on 15th Dec)

How do I force a sync

How do I debug this - what logs etc

It's a bit difficult to diagnose this with the info you've given but from experience I've found that you are able to reliably "force an sync" with any sort of iCloud data by going to System Preferences and signing out + signing back in (it'll warn you about removing iCloud data from the device, etc.)

As said in the previous answer, make sure you are syncing your notes with iCloud and not with a) another provider (Google, Exchange) or b) not syncing at all (i.e., storing locally). Verify this on the iPhone in Settings > Notes > Accounts or on the Mac with System Preferences > Internet Accounts.

The best way to see what is actually being stored in iCloud is at its web app like you've been doing.


Do Macbooks with protective cases fit into the BookArc Desktop Stand? I have a 15" Macbook Pro in a Speck protective case.

Will this fit into a Twelve South BookArc Desktop Stand for Notebooks comfortably? The protective case adds a little to the body of the Macbook, my concern is that it won't fit.

It works great with the Speck case, just go up an insert size and you're good. Check this out for some pictures of a similar setup: http://www.runaroundtech.com/2011/03/25/review-bookarc/


Customise speech assistant OSX's speech assistant must be the most underrated feature of any product ever.

The complexity of speech recognition algorithms is colossal. I have been tracking their progress for years, as I have injuries from using the computer and depend upon speech recognition.

What is more, the recognition accuracy seems to be at least as good as Dragon/Nuance, without the appalling buggy front-end. I don't even require a custom microphone any longer. The MacBook's inbuilt microphone seems to be enough.

So I cannot say I am not grateful.

However, some things still drive me up the wall. If I say 'on' it will usually interpret 'en'. Which isn't even in the English language. And if I say 'script', it inserts 'prescription'. Which makes me want to punch something. If I want to say 'prescription' I will say 'prescription'.

Is there some way to disable these idiot presumptions? Some kind of "post translation" scripting I could do? Some way of intercepting the translated text and modifying it before it reaches the target app?

Many times, alternative words are available, as shown by a blue underline. Right-clicking the word and selecting the alternative word will 'train' the system over time to better understand what you are saying. Also make sure that Enhanced Dictation is enabled in System Preferences.


Block emails from specific sender only in Mac OS mail program I have an email account registered on my Macbook and on two more devices. Is it possible to block / not download all emails from a specific sender just on my device but not touch the server email account settings, so the sender can still send to the two other devices?

I think your best option would be to set a rule so that if the sender is this than archive message, I wouldn't recommend deleting the message as (depending on your mail server's settings) it may delete the message also on your other devices.

Hope this helps,

Tiferrei


How do I use iMessage when my number is disconnected? Recently canceled cell service for iPhone 3GS (iOS 6) but have still been using it to iMessage. Today I got a message from someone I didn't know apparently AT&T reassigned my phone number to someone else and both my phone and hers were receiving the messages. How do I have others iMessage me to my email address instead of phone number?

Go to the deregister page at:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203042

You can also change the send as "caller ID" portion for sending new messages in the Settings App -> Messages -> Send & Receive -> Start new conversations from:

You might have some old conversations that end since you are now using your email for iMessage so send a new message to your friends if they won't know to try your email instead of your SMS going forward.


How to make the colors of the Mac more dull/faded? For more than a year I've had my phone in black & white mode and I find it greatly helps reduce the stimulating effect of using the phone, and makes me naturally use the phone less (and it's more calming etc). I feel way more productive!

On the desktop I can't go completely black and white (which is available in the Accessibility settings) because I do have lots of apps that rely on color, however;

Is there a way in MacOS (via an ICC color profile, ColorSync app etc) to somehow change the color of my Mac monitor (either built-in display or thunderbolt display) to be "faded"/"dull" - almost geryscale but with a hint of color?

When I run the Display Calibration or Go into Accessibility settings I seem to only be able to change the hue, but what I'm looking for is to have a nice and bright setup that is just less colorful (so literally greyscale with faded/hint of color).

Anyone know how one might be able to do that?

Go to System Preferences -> Displays and click on the Color tab. You should see several different profiles on the left.  Select one you don't expect to use and select it and then select Open Profile on the right. I don't know what all the numbers mean but you could try trial and error to maybe get a color profile more to your liking.


Late-2007 Mac Mini (A1176) Unsoldered Mystery Connector on Interconnect Board I'm just wondering if anyone has ever done a thorough probe/exploration of the interconnect board in late-2007 Mac Minis. I'm specifically curious about the 14 unsoldered pads on the back of the board (J27 if the silk screen is to be believed?), to the left of the audio ribbon cable connector.

There's so much extra capability locked away in the chipset, I'm just wondering if there's something extra there that would be accessible with a little soldering. 14 pins is a strange number, but it looks like it's designed for a ribbon cable connector like the audio one.

There were rumors early in the mini's life that there was (at some point) supposed to be a built-in iPod Dock on the top. They were even supposed to have gotten far enough in the design that they left the headers for the USB and FireWire connections on the board. Those may be them. (Here's a The Register article on the subject.)

To my knowledge, nobody's proven or disproven this rumor. If you, in your explorations, find an answer, do post it here!


Rules for Spotlight search (on osx 10.8) I absolutely do not understand the rules that Spotlight (osx 10.8) uses to search my files. If I enter the query sbml and select filename from the dropdown menu, these are the results that come up:

BIOMD0000000051_SBML-L2V4.xml
runImmdeath_noSBML.py
runp53_noSBML.py
SBMLParser.py

but if I chose the query libsbml instead, this is the only result I get:

libsbml-5.6.0-libxml2-macosx-lion.dmg

Now, I wouldn't expect the first four answers to come up on the second search, but why does a search for sbml not turn up libsbml-5.6.0-libxml2-macosx-lion.dmg? Clearly, sbml doesn't have to be the first 4 letters in the filename, nor the last 4 before the extension. So what is the deal?

I rans a few tests in 10.8.2. My empirical results show that spotlight returns results for partial matches when the start of the name matches, but not any part of the name. I have not found a way to change this.

I have another challenge with multiple word searches. My empirical experience is that a filename search containing multiple words (separated by spaces) yields results only if the search words are contiguous in the filename. For example:

Given some files with these names:
xxx rules and roles yyy.zzz
aaa roles and rules bbb.ccc

a search for {roles} or {rules} will find both files
(note: the braces are included here for clarity; they are not part of the search string)
a search for {rules and roles} will find the first file only;
a search for {roles and rules} will find the second file only;
a search for {roles rules} or {rules roles} will find nothing;

I find this last behaviour frustrating, as I don't want to have to remember the word order in my filenames. And one-word searches get too many hits.

Anyone with answers for this?


Provisioning profile expiring soon dialog won't dismiss I recently hit this weird bug in iOS 4.3.3 on iPad. When it was locked, the "Team Provisioning Profile is expiring in N days" popup popped up and I wasn't able to dismiss it by hitting the two buttons of the popup itself. The only way I could regain access to the device was to restore it. Now I upgraded to 4.3.4 and hopefully the bug should be gone, but I didn't find anything like that in the changelog of the upgrade.

The device's log didn't show anything unusual, and I couldn't even turn the iPad off and on again because said popup is modal and you need to slide to confirm poweroff.

Did anybody hit the same misbehaviour? I couldn't find anything relevant on the Internet.

I just had the same thing - iPad2 running 4.3.3. It renders the iPad completely unusable.

I was able to make it go away by deleting the offending profile from the device using Organizer (part of Xcode on Mac), then doing a reset (holding down sleep/wake button and home button for 10 seconds).

The iPad rebooted and everything was fine, no restore required. If you're using Windows you might be able to delete the profile using Apple's iPhone Configuration Utility: DL1466


How to set a specific email address in Automator, from a variable? I can collect a variable (email address) from the clipboard. How do I set it to the recipient in Mail with Automator?

Unfortunately, the New Mail Message action only uses variables in the Subject text field, so instead you would need to use something like another Run AppleScript action to create your new message.

Something like:

on run {input, parameters}

          set theFile to item 1 of input

          set theRecipient to item 2 of input

          tell application "Mail"

    set theMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {visible:true, subject:"My Subject"}

    tell content of theMessage

      make new attachment with properties {file name:theFile} at after last paragraph

    end tell

    tell theMessage

      make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:theRecipient}

    end tell

          end tell

end run


How can I export an MS Outlook .pst file to Apple Mail? I want to export an MS Outlook .pst file to Apple Mail. How can I do this?

Do it via an IMAP server, which you can install on the Mac. I used dovecot, created an account on it, added that account to Outlook and just moved it all over. Then in Mail, I created the same account, and copied everything over.

I prefer this method because it completely preserves all the properties of each message, including attachments. Exporting and importing through another method (including Thunderbird) doesn't preserve everything properly.


How to cancel a macOS upgrade? (point release 10.12.x) I was told to upgrade my Xcode 9 to 9.1 but when I tried it in App Store it says

  Xcode can’t be installed on “Macintosh HD” because macOS version 10.12.6 or later is required.

But that is not the problem, my OS is macOS 10.12.5 Sierra, I decided to click the Update button of Software Update  in App Store but when my computer is about to restart, I cancelled it when it prompts to close Terminal.

Why I cancelled it? It's because I remembered my Supervisor saying not to upgrade our OS. What should I do to cancel the update which is only waiting for my computer to restart? Me and my colleague has the same macOS but he doesn't have any problem upgrading Xcode. Please help!

P.S.
Hey guys I figured out there's really nothing to worry about because when I shut down my computer, there's a prompt saying wether I Shut Down or Install Updates and Shut Down. I chose Shut Down and that solves the problem. And also relating to the Xcode Upgrade problem, the answer is in the comment.

try deleting the .dmg file installer, maybe here  ~/Library/Application Support/AppStore but I'm not sure of the position.. also you can make a search of .dmg and order by date


Why does new file created by touch have GID wheel? I have an account on macOS 10.13.2 (High Sierra) where groups returns this:

staff everyone localaccounts com.apple.sharepoint.group.2
_lpoperator com.apple.sharepoint.group.1

Yet when I touch a new file I see wheel, which is not in the list, as GID:

$ touch /var/tmp/hello
$ ls -l /var/tmp/hello
-rw-r--r--  1 account  wheel  0 Dec 24 18:36 /var/tmp/hello

What is going in here? (If this were, say, Debian I would have expected the new file to be owned by account:account instead of account:wheel).

/var/tmp has the sticky bit set:

pse@Mithos:~$ ll -d /var/tmp
drwxrwxrwt  5 root  wheel  170 Dec 24 16:17 /var/tmp/

so any files created in there inherit the group of the directory.

From man sticky:

  A directory whose `sticky bit' is set becomes an append-only directory, or, more accurately, a
       directory in which the deletion of files is restricted.  A file in a sticky directory may only be
       removed or renamed by a user if the user has write permission for the directory and the user is
       the owner of the file, the owner of the directory, or the super-user.  This feature is usefully
       applied to directories such as /tmp which must be publicly writable but should deny users the
       license to arbitrarily delete or rename each others' files.

  Any user may create a sticky directory.  See chmod(1) for details about modifying file modes.


Opening a selected folder path in OS X El Capitan 10.11.2? At work we have a file server to share files and in the past I have been able to open the folder path in finder by highlighting the path a coworker provides and then pressing cmd+option+ctrl+o. At some point, this shortcut stopped working and it seems like it happened right around the time I updated to El Capitan. Does anyone know if this shortcut has changed or how I can re-enable it if it somehow got disabled?

Example path: /Volumes/clients/someclient/project/

command shift g when a finder window is open


How can I get Outlook to stop asking for a Keychain login if I don't want to use keychain? I don't want to use keychain for my passwords so I have not added any passwords to keychain.  This means that every time Outlook checks for mail it creates a popup window asking for my keychain password.  I have seen this question but this seems to require that I use keychain for password management.

Is there a way to get Outlook (actually everything) to stop looking for my keychain password?

I am using OS X 10.5.8

Keychain as you may be aware by now is the main system OSX uses to store your passwords. Anything you ask to be stored is sent to the keychain. Therefore if you choose not to save any passwords you will be asked to enter the password in every time it is required, which is what the keychain is designed to do.

If you do not want to save passwords to the keychain, then no you cannot get around the keychain pop up question.


How to view the To-Do-Bar in Outlook for Mac? I am new to Apple and I have Outlook 2016 installed in my Mac. I am unable to see the To-Do-Bar which I use in Outlook for Windows.

How do I view the To-Do-Bar in Outlook for Mac?

I suppose this is documented by the choice of words:

Outlook for PC - Use and customize the To-Do bar

That view isn't present on Outlook 2016 version 16.13 or less for macOS.

You'll need to run on windows or try the webmail app. If you search "to do bar" in the help for Outlook - you'll find you can't even put things in to the ribbon yet and there's a link to request it on some web site.

In the mean time, you'll likely need to open a couple main windows and look over your tasks and calendar.


Setting .plist path to user Library I have created a OS X launch agent that is installed per user. It is listening socket and automatically launched when socket connection arrives. On my .plist I have

    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
<string>~/Library/Containers/com.mycompany.myproduct/myproduct.app/Contents/MacOS/myproduct</string>
    </array>

When connecting to my launch agent socket I get a message in console saying my launch agent is not found. When changing .plist ProgramArguments to

<string>/Users/myusername/Library/Containers/com.mycompany.myproduct/myproduct.app/Contents/MacOS/myproduct</string>

Launch agent is loaded correctly. So it looks like I need to modify .plist for each user during launch agent installation. How can I do this automatically or easily? Is there a standard way for this? Or should I do something totally differently here to achieve what I want?

Use EnableGlobbing:

<key>EnableGlobbing</key>
<true/>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>~/Library/Containers/com.mycompany.myproduct/myproduct.app/Contents/MacOS/myproduct</string>
</array>

It works with ProgramArguments but not with Program.


"T" key came out of keyboard - need advice My "T" key came out of it's spot on my late 13 inch 2013 retina macbook pro., the key and the mechanism attached to it. No apple stores in the country so I'm on my own. I tried putting it back in it's place but it keeps coming out.

Now the question is: could there be a possibility where the clips underneath (not the plastic mechanism) could've been bent/damaged and that's why it's not being seated properly? Has anyone heard of such a thing?

Hi Ronald I'm Kali :) have you tries turning your computer completely off and pressing it as hard as you can well, not as hard as you can but put force on it...and you should hear a "pop" when it pops back into place. Please let me  know if this helps you :)


How to create automatic launchd job that sets the Ruby version to use I’d like to run a ruby script automatically once or twice a day on my MacBook running OS X Yosemite.

Problem is that I currently have three versions of Ruby on my system including 1.8.7 and 2.2.1, neither of which the script will run with. So I say rvm use system which switches to a different version, though I don’t know how to find out which one (as rvm current just replies “system”). And then I can run the script happily.

However, when I create this little script:

#!/bin/bash
rvm use system
/Users/jonathan/Library/Scripts/slogger/slogger

It won’t run from the shell, saying:

  RVM is not a function, selecting rubies with 'rvm use ...' will not work.
  You need to change your terminal emulator preferences to allow login shell.
  Sometimes it is required to use /bin/bash --login as the command.

I know how to create and set basic launchd jobs; but I don’t know how to set the ruby version for the created process if I can’t include it in a script in this way. I’m sure it must be possible, though…

This is untested (as I don’t use rvm), but there should be two simple ways to fix this.

Source rvm in your script (which you likely do anyway in your .profile, or .bashrc, or equivalent):

#!/bin/bash
[[ -s "${HOME}/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "${HOME}/.rvm/scripts/rvm"
rvm use system
/Users/jonathan/Library/Scripts/slogger/slogger

That new line is a shorter way of saying

if [[ -s "${HOME}/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]]; then
  source "${HOME}/.rvm/scripts/rvm"
fi

-s is used to return “True if FILE exists and has a size greater than zero”.
And you’ll probably laugh as to how easy it was to fix, simply do what the message says and use /bin/bash --login, like so:

#!/bin/bash --login
rvm use system
/Users/jonathan/Library/Scripts/slogger/slogger


Any way to make weather widget stick to its place? I have four weather widgets on my dashboard at the moment. The problem I'm finding is that when I arrange them one way - every now and then some of them move down by 20-100 px approximately.
I think it has to do with the weather graphic that is being loaded (i.e. sun, snow, rain, etc.). Sometimes they're taller than expected by the widget and it repositions itself which messes with my arrangement.
Question
Is there a way to make weather widgets stick to the place I position it at?
Does anybody know how to stop the rearrangement of the weather widgets?
Arranged:

Displaced:

The reason the weather widgets jump around is because the icon pictures of the current weather stick out above the widget itself. For example, the clouds or rain images. When the weather changes, the images change, and since they stick out different amounts, they move around to accommodate the change.

This is fixable but results in a tiny bit of chopping-off of the top of the widget image. Worth it in my opinion, you can hardly notice the chop-off.

Edit the file:

/Library/Widgets/Weather.wdgt/Weather.js

On line 359, change:

maxOffset = entry.voffset > maxOffset ? entry.voffset : maxOffset;

To:

maxOffset = 0;

It may be a different line number - 359 is correct for Snow Leopard. You should search the file for the correct one.

You need to redo this when you update OSX.


Accidently deleted Boot partition so I had installed Bootcamp and felt the need of getting more space. So I created a free partition inside mac and went on to delete it in Windows.

Well, turned out that after I deleted a partition that was around 200mb big, the mac partition wouldnt show up as a viable booting option when trying to boot while holding alt. Only the windows partition would show up.

My mac osx partition with all my data is still on my hard drive. I tried looking up resolutions on the internet, but most answers are from older versions of os x and suggest reinstalling.

As I am not an expert on this topic I have included some screenshots of my partitions. My guess is, that I accidently deleted the boot partition. Any help on how to recover this issue is appreciated :) Preferable I wouldnt want to reinstall.

I know that there are other threads talking about the same issue, but since I really have no knowledge about this topic whatsoever I am not sure if I am really experiencing the same issue as f.x. this thread:
Accidently deleted some small sized partitions when installing Windows. OSX Partition wont boot

I would follow the guide described in this thread if someone could confirm that its the same issue.

Usually the main macOS partition (disk0s2) is followed by a Recovery HD which is required as second boot stage for particular macOS partitions.

The recovery partition has a standard size of 1269536 512-blocks (or 158692 4096-blocks on 4k disks) and the partition type 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC. If your attempt to resize/delete macOS partitions from inside Windows (BTW that's a big

)

didn't screw the partition map somehow or erase/overwrite former blocks of the Recovery HD it should be recoverable by simply adding its probable partition map entry.

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode
Open in the menubar > Utilities > Terminal
get some details:

diskutil list #below I assume the disk identifier of the internal disk is disk0
gpt -r show disk0

Unmount disk0:

diskutil umountDisk disk0

add the recovery partition:

gpt add -i 4 -b 54478096 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

verify disk and recovery partition:

diskutil list #get the disk identifier of the "new" 650.0 MB partition
diskutil verifyDisk disk0
diskutil verifyVolume disk0sX #use the disk identifier of the "new" 650.0 MB partition (probably disk0s3 or disk0s4)

If you get:

  The volume Recovery HD appears to be OK
  Finished file system verification on disk0sX Recovery HD

from the last command everything is OK and your Mac should boot properly.

Otherwise you have to restore the Recovery HD from scratch or copy it from a Mac with the same system version.


Is there a Recovery Key for encrypted external drives? When you encrypt your startup disk with FileVault, macOS gives you a recovery key. Does macOS also create one for external drives? If not, would it be possible to make it create one?

The short answer is no.
When you use FileVault, you are encrypting the entire boot volume, not just a single volume or folder.
If you're looking for something where you can encrypt a removable volume (i.e. USB drive), take a look at VeraCrypt where it allows you to have both password and keyfile authentication.  It's also cross platform which is definitely a plus.


Time Machine on a local drive, then make that drive a network drive (via Server.app) on a different computer I have two macs running OS X 10.10.3. One has Server.app installed, is connected to the internet via ethernet, and also has a 2 TB disk attached via USB, with two partitions - "Backup" and "Storage". My other mac is a laptop used for schoolwork.

Using the Time Machine feature of Server.app, I was able to use the standard Time Machine interface to begin backing up my local mac onto the "Backup" volume on the server mac over the network.

However, I discovered that it takes 7 minutes to copy a 1 GB file over AFP, so backing up 300 GB on my local mac would take at least 35 hours.

So, I'm trying to figure out a way in which I could do the initial 300GB backup onto "Backup" over USB, and then connect that external hard drive to the server mac and continue doing backups over the network. That way, the incremental network backups would be much smaller than 300GB and could be done in a reasonable time period, e.g. overnight.

Any suggestions? I read the man page for tmutil but I'm not very comfortable with it just yet.

This MacSales article covers how to do this very well:

http://blog.macsales.com/18406-speed-time-machine-past-88mph-over-your-local-network

Essentially, you start with a fresh Time Machine backup. Start it on Wifi, then stop it, as it begins to backup files. This basically establishes the Time Machine archive. Then you attach your hard drive (or laptop) to the wired network, and resume backup. Once you have the initial backup done over the much faster wired network, subsequent backups will be much faster, as the are much smaller.

You establish the initial Backup over wifi because Time Machine does things differently over wifi vs directly connected.

In any case, best of luck to you: I have never managed to get Time Machine to work reliably over wifi, and especially if you tend allow your Mac to go to sleep during a Time Machine backup (shut the lid for example)


OneDrive on mac doesn show all shared folders with me On the website my account looks like this. There are 2 people sharing with me some files:

but after I have installed one drive on mac, I can see the following files:

A whole frolder from the second user is missing, and the second file (tereny.xlsm) from the first user is missed. Why?

On the website and on onedrive on mac, I am logged in as the same outlook account.

Only folders you have ‘can edit’ permission show in OneDrive desktop client.

You only have ‘can view’ permission to the missing folder, so that's why it's not shown.

Add and sync shared folders to OneDrive


Late-2013 rMBP able to install & boot Win8 using EFI? I've previously installed Win7 (and then upgraded to 8) via Bootcamp, but I've been looking around some forums recently regarding running Win8 natively.

I now have the impression that the latest-gen rMBP will install and boot Win8 using EFI as if it were a native OS. In other words, off an EFI partition and without BIOS emulation.

Can anyone verify this?

I read on a forum (the post was made several weeks previous and the user didn't respond when I posted this question) where a user reported that Bootcamp had installed Win8 on an EFI partition and that the bootup was so much faster.

I can confirm that if Win8 is installed from an ISO (rather than a Win7 upgrade) then it will be installed on a boot-using-EFI partition.


Is it possible to disable single function keys? I know through System Preferences I can disable all the function keys. However, I really only need two of the function keys to have different functions. Rather than having to always press 'fn', is there a way to disable just these function keys?

FunctionFlip

FunctionFlip can 'flip' certain function keys instead of changing all keys.

  FunctionFlip individually controls your MacBook or MacBook Pro's function keys, turning special keys back to regular F-keys, or vice-versa.

  FunctionFlip's purpose is simply to disable the special features — rewind, play, mute, etc. — on the function keys. For example, if you "flip" F7, F8, and F9, those keys — only those keys — will revert back to normal F keys. Press the fn key with the special key to get the special function back. That is, the "special" and "normal" functions are flipped.


I get an error message when unlocking an APFS FileVault volume with an Institutional Recovery Key I'm testing an MDM solution (with an in house Server.app MDM instance), which enforces FileVault. It's setup with both an Institutional Recovery Key (IRK) and a Personal Recovery Key (PRK). The last one is also saved to MDM.

Basically, we generated a keychain like this, exported the certificate from the keychain, and added it to an MDM profile (we're using Server.app's MDM).

It's working great. When I do a diskutil apfs listCryptoUsers diskNxM, I get all the users I expect, including an user of type Institutional Recovery User and one with type Institutional Recovery External Key. Resetting password via Open Directory works fine. Unlocking the drive with the PRK works fine.

And now I'm testing to unlock the volume with the said IRK.
I booted via Recovery (cmd+R), and when I execute diskutil apfs unlockVolume /dev/diskNsM -recoveryKeyChain /Volumes/RecoveryDrive/FileVaultMaster.keychain (the keychain is unlocked, and the drive is correct), I get this error:

Error unlocking APFS Volume: The external-to-APFS security system's credential-unwrap
operation failed (-69534)

I checked unlocking the keychain using a different password, and that failed directly. Someone here suggested to remove the certificate from the keychain. This didn't work either. I double checked the volume was APFS. It was.

Any idea's (besides creating a new FileVault Master keychain and do the whole process one more time)?

The thing I forgot to mention was I didn't generate the Keychain myself. I started off with a keychain with a certificate and private key that I could unlock, and an MDM profile with the exported certificate.

Because I couldn't find another solution, I created a new Keychain. I used this Apple Support Document. I didn't remove the private key, because I deploy it by exporting the certificate, and distributing it via MDM.

However, I did use the "Use the private key to unlock a user's startup disk" procedure from this document to unlock the volume and it worked!

So this is not an actual answer to the asked question, but certainly a solution. I double checked the computer encrypted with the old keychain certificate with this procedure, but got the same error message. So probably there was something wrong with the keychain and/or certificate...


Is there currently any way to vote on what music you play? iTunes used to have a "party shuffle"/"iTunes DJ" feature that allowed users to vote on what was played, but as far as I know it was yanked a long time ago and nothing else replaced it.  Is there currently any way to do the same sort of thing?  (By "currently" I mean using current software, whether from Apple or a third party, not by digging up ancient software.)

It would be fine if involves connecting to iTunes from other computers or from iOS devices, or whether it involves an Apple TV as the central point of control, where devices or computers connect to the Apple TV.

All I want is some way to allow input from multiple people in an office to determine what gets played and what gets skipped.  (It doesn't even need to be, strictly speaking, a "voting" metaphor that is used.  It could be  that anyone can veto specific songs, or the most popular go first, or whatever.)

If voting is not relevant, and money is not an issue, you can set up a Spotify Collaborative Playlist.
It allows you to invite any Spotify user to edit your playlist.

Other than that, searching for "playlist voting app" returns a great amount of apps that do different versions of what you are looking for, but I haven't tried any of them.

https://outloud.dj/ seems particularly promising:

  At your next party, everybody controls the music.
  Mash your Spotify and iTunes playlists with those of your friends and build the ultimate playlist.
  Add any song through Spotify, even if you don't have an account.
  Project your playlist onto your TV with the push of a button.
  The app is free and no sign-ins and set-ups required.


iOS 8.1 Settings "Handoff & Suggested Apps" doesn't exist I am having difficulty getting Handoff and Continuity working correctly. Devices are iPhone 4S (iOS 8.1) and Mac Mini 2013 (Yosemite 10.10 14A389). Here is what I have done/confirmed:

Both devices are logged into the same iCloud account
Both devices are connected to the same WiFi Network
Both devices have bluetooth enabled
OSX > System Preferences > General > "Allow Handoff" is checked

My problem is that on the iPhone, Settings > General > Handoff & Suggested Apps does not exist as an option in the list.

I have deleted Bluetooth preferences on OS X as suggested on this answer.

Anyone know why this option is not presenting itself?

Handoff is not supported on an iPhone 4S as described in this article:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6337


How can I backup MacBook before the battery runs out? I would like to backup my MacBook (early 2016 model with 256 GB storage), but while backing up the storage, the battery would run out before completing the backup.

The MacBook has only one port (USB Type-C). I backup it to my USB 3.0 HDD via Type-C converter by Apple. But since it only has one port, I could not back it up while recharging the batter on the laptop.

I already deleted and/or moved some files to a cloud storage, but still it has about 200GB to back up, and the backup couldn't finish before the battery runs out.

Is there any workaround on this problem?

This adapter will help you. Also useful for other use cases.

The USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter lets you connect your USB-C or Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) enabled Mac to an HDMI display, while also connecting a standard USB device and a USB-C charging cable.

Or this one:
HyperDrive USB Type-C Hub with 4K HDMI Support

Matching colours. Turns a single USB Type-C port into 4 ports (HDMI, 2 x USB 3.0, USB Type-C with Power Delivery)