Unable to delete songs from iTunes Match - they always come back I'm so lost here. I imported an audio book from CD into my iTunes library. The genre was wrong on one of the 5 CDs ("Spoken & Audio") instead of "Audio Book". So I changed it.
iTunes Match did its job, uploaded the titles and messed everything up. I ended up with all the titles being duplicated, one per genre.
In the end I just wanted to get rid of the files. I deleted the titles from iTunes 11 and checked in Findes that they are gone for good. I was also ask if I wanted to delete the titles in iCloud too. I agreed.
Then iTunes Match updated itself and everything was back. I retried - same issue. The titles come back with an iCloud icon.

How the heck can I get rid of the titles and restart?

Its a pain, but you want to toggle iTunes Match and delete them again.

In iTunes:

Click the Store menu and select "Turn Off iTunes Match"
Click the Store menu and select "Turn On iTunes Match"
Delete Songs


Can IPhone 4 share WIFI over WIFI? I'm going to location where my 3G will be pretty expensive. Can I connect my iPhone 4 to WIFI in hotel and share it for my laptop thru WIFI as well? That way I could save some money to not have to buy 2 x WIFI from HOTEL.

No. The iPhone can either act as a client or an Access Point, not both simultaneously.

If the WiFi access isn't registered against the device's MAC address then you should be able to use the login on either the iPhone or Laptop (but probably not at the same time).

If it is MAC address based registration then you could register with your iPhone and then change your Laptop's MAC address to match the iPhone's MAC address so that you only have to buy one WiFi access card.


Does macOS install updates when you reboot if not explicitly allowed to? On Windows, when updates are available, you are not allowed to reboot your computer without installing them which takes quite a long time.

On my Mac, a normal update is available.
If I reboot normally with this button will updates automatically be installed?

On Mac OS X High Sierra you have the choice what to do with updates.

From just checking automatically (or not) to full Install for the OS and applications.

On Mojave the menu looks different but does the same (you choose).


Attempted to install Catalina in Target Disk Mode.... bricked my mac? Ok so I may have bricked one of my MacBook Airs.

I am writing this post from the MB that's working. I have another one with a dead display. I connected them by Thunderbolt and mounted the broken one as a disk onto the working one using Target Disk mode. Then I used the disk utility to reformat the drive as APFS, Guid Partition. Then I tried to install Catalina but it says "You may not install to this volume because it's a Mac in target disk mode" (see screenshot.)

Have I created an irrecoverable situation?

The only solution I can imagine is to remove the HDD from the bum Mac, put it into the working Mac, install Catalina that way, then put the drive back. Both Macs are out of warranty so it's whatever... but I'm wondering there's a less messy way to get myself out of this hairy situation?

What many people fail to take into account when they install a new version of macOS on a Mac, is that the process does not simply involve copying files to the Mac's internal hard drive, but also a firmware upgrade to make the firmware/EFI support booting from the new OS. This is why you get the message you get: if you boot a Mac in target mode and attempt to install a new version of macOS onto it, the Mac you install into would not boot (if you had managed), because it would never have had the firmware necessary to boot installed.

For instance, when installing High Sierra on a Mac, the firmware necessary for the boot loader to recognise and boot from an APFS volume and disk structure must be installed, since HS was the first version of macOS to be able to boot from an AFPS volume. Similarly, when installing Catalina, the firmware necessary for the boot loader to parse the new two-volume read-only / read-write setup must be installed on the Mac that will boot the installed OS

So in short, the only viable way to be able to install (some versions of) macOS on a Mac, is to actually boot that Mac one way or another and install the version of macOS from the it, from the Mac that will run what you install.

In your case, if the only problem is a broken display, a viable solution is to boot the Mac with an external keyboard, mouse and display plugged in, while connected to a power adapter, since that should put the Mac in clamshell mode and fully operational. If you have already wiped the internal disk, put the working Mac into target mode and boot the broken Mac from the OS installed on the working Mac, plugged in via thunderbolt or Firwire (depending on connectivity options).


How can I access an expanded directory listing when saving a new document? When I save a new document, I can only choose the default save location or recently used locations, but sometimes I want to save in an existing directory I haven't visited recently. How can I expand the choices in the dialog box so I can select from any one of my existing directories?

I guess you have this savebox :

Just click on the arrow on the right.

The dialog will then expand to allow you to choose any destination.


Why doesn't giving kids more time work? So my child ran out of their alloted time on the computer today, so I went and gave them 4 more hours.  This is the parental controls where you select how much time to add, and you add your own (administrator) user name and password.

However, a couple hours later I was surprised to see that my child had logged out, because it had told them they were out of time.   But then somehow even though they had logged out, the main login window still showed them logged in, so I reboot the computer.

However this evening I was going to give them 15 minutes of time to print something, but after I enter my credentials, it no sooner has logged them in, then the window does the 3 dimensional "user switching" by itself, and now they are at the login window, and it is telling them they can log in again tomorrow.  I try to add 15 minutes again, and it does the same thing.  So I try 30 minutes, and they are logged in for about a minute and it logs them out again.

Why can't I give my kid more time on the computer?  They weren't trying to login during bedtime hours, they had only exceeded their weekend limit of 2 hours.

It does the same for me, too, sometimes. Generally it solves itself. If it does not, try giving them the rest of the day and see if that logs them out.

Also, rebooting will log them out, for sure.


Unicode subscript characters do not display None of my apps including Chrome, TextEdit, and MacVim can display the unicode character subscript t shown here -> ₜ

Example text:

graph Gₓ at time Uₜ

The subscript x displays fine but not the subscript t.

How do I fix this?

MacBookPro11,2
OS 10.11.6

Have you checked in Character Viewer that you actually have a font installed which contains this character?  It displays for me here.  My Character Viewer says the 3rd party font Symbola is the only one I have with it.  Why more fonts don't have it I don't know.  (U+209C)


Is there way to know when last logged in and out? Is it possible to know when I last time logged in and out?

I would prefer to access this information from Terminal, but a GUI tool is also okay.

In the Terminal application, type last and voilà, there is your answer!


Apple Photos Shared Albums on OS X are not updating I created a new shared album on one computer. I can see that album on my iOS devices, but not on my other computer (all of them are on the same iCloud account). Quitting and restarting Apple Photos doesn't help. How do I get Apple Photos to see the updates?

Quit Apple Photos. Now run Activity Monitor, look for Photos Agent, and kill it by selecting and clicking the X at the top left.

Now, start Apple Photos again. This will restart Photos Agent, and after a minute, you should see your updated shared albums.


How can I hide the Terminal split pane scroll bar? Edit: I realised that this wasn't Terminal specific and found the answer.

This toolbar/scrollbar appeared permanently all of a sudden for some reason, and I'd like to hide it, but can't find an option to do so?

As you've probably figured, I'm not used to using a mouse and realised that's what's causing the problem.


Taking care of the hard drive in my MacBook? Is it bad for my MacBook if I simply close the lid and pack it up? Will this impact the hard drive?

What about using it in a moving vehicle, like a car?

Assuming your computer has a magnetic drive (and not a SSD), when you close the lid, it will take a few seconds for the computer to write some things to the hard-drive; even if it looks fast, it really takes a few secs of “background activity”. It could be 1 sec, but it’s there.

So as a general rule, it’s always good to gently close the lid (hitting the lid with the keyboard can cause damage to the screen and the hard-drive if it’s too strong), and give the computer a couple of seconds to process the sleep state. Once you’re sure that the box is sleeping, you can pack it up and carry it, always remembering that the Hard-Drive is a mechanical device and as such, it’s very fragile (compared to other pieces). This doesn’t mean that you have to treat your box as if it were Murano glass, but mechanical drives and hits are not friends. With that said, I’ve seen laptops fall from 1 meter (tables) to the floor and work for years without a hard drive failure, and on the other hand, small hits against a table (by raising the laptop 1 cm and letting it fall onto a table) rendered hard drives inoperative.

So as you can see the drives tend to be more fragile than not, even when you can never be sure.

I remember about 10 years ago, we were on vacations and for some reason, one of the guys found a box of Sugus candies and we started a fight. Note: They hit really hard and I have pictures of a candy tatooed in my back in red. All in all, one of these candies bounced and hit a guy’s laptop while he was creating a playlist in WinAmp (yeah, we were that old). The computer crashed (Windows XP) and the hard drive never worked again.

The candy story was just a way to illustrate that you can never be sure about hard drives.

Regarding a car: unless you’re going to go to the Camel Trophy, there shouldn’t be a problem. Remember, vibrations and hits may hurt your hard drive, keep it as quiet as possible.

they guy whose laptop broke still hates us.

I have an old macbook that I carry everywhere, on and off and I drop in bed, I move it, I put things on top of it (books, etc). and it still works…


Transfer files from computer to iphone without using iTunes Is there any way I can transfer files(songs) from my computer to my iPhone without using iTunes?

Read 3 Ways to Transfer MP3 to iPod with or without iTunes.

tldr :

on Mac or Windows: SyncPod. But ...

  This product currently is incompatible with Mac OS X Lion 10.7 or iOS 5.

on Linux or Windows : MediaMonkey

  Any version of MediaMonkey 4 can sync with any iPod, iPad, or iPhone
  (including the iPhone 5) via the following addon:
  http://www.mediamonkey.com/addons/browse/item/device-plugin-for-itunes/


Updating iPhone with Jailbreak? I'm currently waiting for iOS 7.1, so I jail broke my phone to test out some features until then.

What happens after I try to update to the new iOS ? Will I lose all pictures/data that I've created after my recent backup ? Or will I retain them and just lose the jail break ?

If you do an OTA update on the device, you'll 'break' many things and the device probably won't boot.
If you do an update through iTunes, it may boot, but the jailbreak will be broken and the filesystem may be a bit messed-up.

Basically, don't update your device.

Instead, you need to wipe and restore your device.

Make a backup of your device in iTunes (I don't trust iCloud backup with jailbroken devices).
Restore your device using iTunes.
Restore your backup to the device using iTunes.

The backup will contain many preference files for various Cydia tweaks, but they're fine to leave since the actual tweaks won't be there (it's not jailbroken any more).

You should end up with a non-jailbroken device with all your content excluding content for tweaks.


How do I disable sending or receiving "effects" in iOS 10.1 Messages? For reasons past comprehension, the new iOS 10 Messages app allows applying "effects" to messages. It used to be possible to disable the ability to generate or receive these abominations by choosing

  Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion

but since 10.1, this now appears to be impossible.

How do I disable sending or receiving "effects" in iOS 10.1 Messages?

Apple added a new setting to disable playing message effects.  Go to Settings -> Accessibility -> Reduce Motion and turn off Auto-play Message Effects.


osascript -e command for displaying a text in status bar? Doc has reference to how to display a notification alert but not sure if there is an option to display a message in status bar that can be updated like a price ticker.

There is not a way to use AppleScript to put something in the menu bar, as far as I can tell, and I looked for a long time.

There are two apps that will put stuff into the menu bar, based on scripts of various kinds:

BitBar
TextBar

BitBar made a big splash a few years ago, but it's pretty much dead now.

TextBar is less well-known, but it's a much better app, in my opinion, and the developer is very responsive. You can find examples on GitHub of the types of things you can do with it.


What is the Preboot Folder? Could someone tell what is the Preboot folder in /Volumes and may I delete it?

$ ls -l /Volumes/
total 0
0 lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   1 Oct 20 12:13 Macintosh HD -> /
0 drwxr-xr-x+ 3 root  wheel  96 Sep 26 11:25 Preboot

UPD: Here is the files list inside Preboot folder.

The Preboot volume is a new system partition that manages boot, the partition is created during the update to macOS High Sierra to support booting to an APFS volume(The one named Macintosh HD).
APFS is a new filesystem created by Apple, and it makes a lot of changes(link to Wikipedia article about APFS), and one of them is the addition of the Preboot volume, which is required to boot APFS, so if you delete it, you can't boot!


Bootcamp: The startup disk does not have enough space to be partitioned When clicking continue on the first Boot Camp screen,  I am presented with a dialog that displays:

  The startup disk does not have enough space to be partitioned.
  You must have at least 39 GB of free space available.

This is despite "About this Mac" reporting 271GB of free space:

And "Disk Utility" reporting 268GB of free space:

Searching online I found this reddit thread which suggested it was the result of Time Machine which i recently enabled and suggests to run sudo tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 999999999999 which I did, it ran sucessfully, and I restarted, yet to no avail.

What is the solution to this instance of Apple's poor engineering?

Running macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 (17E202)

Okay, the solution is that I did not disable Time Machine and remove all backup drives first. Doing that solved the issue. So the full solution is:

Disable "Backup Up Automatically" in Time Machine System Preferences, and remove all backup drives, such that it looks like this:

Then run sudo tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 999999999999

And try again. Optionally restart the computer and try again.


Time Capsule - Home made - OpenWrt router with usb disk acting as airport wireless device I want to remove the need of connecting my Time Machine USB disk directly to my MacBook. I don't need any other functionality which Apple Time Capsule offers.

Is it possible to use my router with a connected USB disk (already working with Time Machine) and installed OpenWRT as network Time Capsule?
Can I use a Samba share as Time Capsule disk?

HFS+ will get you nowhere since Linux cannot write it reliably. I don't know how to configure your OpenWRT hardware exactly but here is my solution used on both x86 Ubuntu and Raspberry Pi (I think the latter is close enough to an router - at least a smartphone)

You need some packages to make AFP and mDNS/DNS-SD work:

apt-get install avahi-daemon netatalk

Now configure your netatalk to share the volume on your Linux box. The filesystem does not make any difference, I used ext4 as it is close enough to modern HFS+ systems. (On my RPi, the only way to access files on it is to use either SSH or AFP, I uninstalled Samba)
At this point, you can hack your mac to force it to use your Linux box as Time Capsule, or you can find a real Time Capsule (or OS X Server) and replicate all its extra DNS-SD records using Avahi.


What is the best RDP/VNC client for the new iPad that makes use of the retina display? I am looking for a remote desktop client to connect to both my Mac and PC. I would prefer not to install any software on the remote computers and just take advantage of the built-in protocols. What are some of the best remote desktop apps that you have tried?

Screens by edovia supports retina resolution on the iPad from day one for the iPad and works well on iPod touch, iPad and iPhone for quite some time.

Here are pictures showing the same desktop in retina and then non-retina iPad screen captures.

Retina:

Non-Retina:

Oddly, when you zoom in to the maximum zoom level (and you will likely need to expand these pictures if you are not viewing them on a retina display or they get down sampled to render on this site), the non retina iPad anti-aliases text a bit better than the retina iPad where you can really see the anti aliasing. This is similar to scanning print magazines where a lower resolution is often better for digitizing the "human perception" and not the "reality" of halftone screen details in process color printing.


PDF from Windows shows up fine on screen in Preview but prints as question marks in boxes Similar - yet puzzlingly different from this question:

This PDF displays with question marks instead of letters

My case shows up fine on the screen, but prints with question marks in boxes (as seen, evidently on screen, in the question linked to.) Even the usually effective trick of saving to (another) pdf from the print dialog and then printing that looks fine on screen and still prints question-marks in boxes...

My guess is there's an issue with the character encoding in the document. Unless you're up to playing with OCR (optical character recognition), try the following:

Open the document in Preview.
"Export" the PDF as a PDF from Preview (crazy, I know). Do this from the Preview menu instead the print dialog.
Print the exported PDF.


AddPrinter.app hangs on Yosemite I want to add a network printer on my MBP13R mid-2013. I open the dialog box Add printer (Addprinter.app). I begin to fill the form for IP adress of my printer (by typing the hostname). I only type a few letters and the window hangs.

The only way to stop it is to use kill -9 PID command in Terminal (using ps aux|grep -i print for obtaining the PID of AddPrinter.app).

After this I obtain the following lines in Console:

02/02/2015 16:32:57,316 com.apple.preference.printfax.remoteservice[3869]: __agent_connection_block_invoke_2: Connection error - Connection interrupted
02/02/2015 21:03:04,973 com.apple.preference.printfax.remoteservice[15832]: remote view marshal proxy failed to forward event to remote due to Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4097 "Impossible de communiquer avec un utilitaire." (connection from pid 15827) UserInfo=0x600000477fc0 {NSDebugDescription=connection from pid 15827}
timestamp: 21:03:04.972 Monday 02 February 2015
process/thread/queue: com.apple.preference.printfax.remoteservice (15832) / 0x10e495000 / com.apple.NSXPCConnection.user.15827
code: line 1217 of /SourceCache/ViewBridge/ViewBridge-103/NSViewServiceMarshal.m in __59-[NSViewServiceMarshal remoteViewMarshal:withErrorHandler:]_block_invoke
#communications_failure

02/02/2015 21:03:05,026 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.preference.printfax.remoteservice[15832]) Service exited due to signal: Killed: 9

Do you have any idea for solving this trouble?

Details:

Network: wire connection (thunderbolt adapter) with DHCP
Yosemite 10.10.2

SOLUTION: the firewall app HandsOff blocked DNS requests even if I desactivated it. I uninstalled it and now it works fine.


Automator turning well-aligned PDF documents upside-down, flipped -- unreadable in OSX? I have PDFs that are readable. When I combine the PDFs, the pages go randomly up-side-down and left-and-right. I have fixed this issue manually in Preview app but I would like to get the pages as they are originally in their documents. How can I get the PDFs right-combined i.e. readable?

It must be how you have the PDFs that you want to combine. I have this exact same workflow as an app and it works great and perfectly. However if you have several PDFs that are not all the same orientation then it will do what is happening.

I don't see any other way of doing it other then manually opening up each one in Preview and using Command L or R to change the right orientation.

Phil


Calendar wiped out on iPad 4th Generation I have an iPad (4th Generation) I just went to check my calendar and everything is gone. I don't have cloud back up because I don't have a recent enough Windows OS on my PC.

I just noticed that all the info seems to have been transferred to my iPhone. Is there a way to get it back to my iPad?

Just out of curiosity, what accounts are listed in Settings > Mail, Contacts and Calendars? Check this on both devices. Do any of the accounts have Calendar turned in?

If both devices are running iOS 5 or later (which your iPad definitely is), you can simply sign into iCloud and let the information sync across.


Preview 10.1 in macOS Mojave does not capture signature with camera I recently bought a MacBook Air and I am not being able to capture a signature in a white sheet of paper with camera, as it was possible in previous machines and mac OS versions.
Does someone have a hint on how to solve this?

When you select the camera on the Preview.app, It should open the camera up. You need keep some distance between the FaceTime camera and the white paper only then Preview.app will pick it up. If it's kept too close, the signature will not be picked up.


keyboard shortcut to open a minimised window? If I use Mail and double click a message to open that message in a new window, then minimise the main mail window, then switch to a different app, what keyboard shortcut(s) can I use to bring back to main mail window, leaving the message window open?

⌘ + Tab until you find the Mail application
Before releasing ⌘, hold down the ⌥ Option button


Automatically move all files from within a folder to external SSD, When external SSD is connected I have a GoPro 4 which ends up creating very large high quality videos, when connected through USB the Gopro importer app automatically copies the files to a subfolder named by todays date in /users/apple/Pictures/GoPro . Once the files are copied from the GoPro to the /Pictures/GoPro/DATE_Subfolder they are deleted from the GoPro automatically.

These files fill up my macbook hard drive fast so i have brought a external SSD to house all my video files as well as Final Cut Pro X.

What I would like is a script which auto runs on connection of the external SSD, to move the contents of /Pictures/GoPro to /Volumes/Ext_SSD/GoPro then delete the original files from /Pictures/GoPro

Is this possible? I have had a mess around with Automator and can get files to move then delete when the SSD is already connected, but if files are put in the folder when the SSD is disconnected it will not be moved over when the SSD is finally connected again.

You can do this using a launch Agent or Daemon.  If you just want this to work for a certain user you would put the below plist in the users launchAgent folder located at

~/Library/LaunchAgents/

Otherwise set it system wide by using a launchDaemon and putting the below plist in the folder located at

/Library/LaunchDaemons/

The below launch plist uses the key "StartOnMount" (any drive being mounted) and watches the file path /Volumes/.  Anytime you put in a external drive and it gets mounted to the /Volumes/ folder it will trigger your script or automator file.  Just change the path in the below to the location of your script.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>Backup To External</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/Path/To/Your/backupScript.sh</string>
    <key>StartOnMount</key>
    <true/>
    <key>WatchPaths</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Volumes/</string>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

More information from MacTech  Pay attention to recipe 7


Upgrade from 10.9.5 to 10.10.* without App Store I can't open the App Store, and I can't open software update. I've tried all the troubleshooting advice I can find online, but none of it solved my problem, so I figured an OS update was overdue. I'm hoping that will fix it.

I can't seem to update without the app store, though!
I ran sudo softwareupdate --install —all and restarted (sudo shutdown -r now), but "About this Mac" still tells me I'm on 10.9.5. (Again, clicking the "Software Update" button tries to launch software update, but fails.)
Now, when I run sudo softwareupdate —list it says, "No new software available."

Is there anything else I can try before I have to take it to the Mac store?

Get someone to download the installer from the App Store - just download it, don't install.

Apple documents how to create a bootable installer - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372 using any USB drive or even an SD card should your Mac have that slot.

Plug that device in to your Mac.
Remember to hold down the option key when your Mac starts up.
Select the device.

One last thing, make sure you check your backup before installing. Time Machine is best. The upgrade isn't designed to have problems, but you never know.


Quick Look won't play sound of .avi files When I want to use Quick Look to quickly check if an .avi file is corrupt, or if the quality is alright, it does not play the sound anymore.

Is there a way to enhance Quick Look with "proper" divx capabilities, to prevent mishaps like this?

On a related note: I would enjoy .mkv-support, too, if anyone has an idea how to integrate that.

EDIT:
jmlumpkin got it right, Perian solved the problem. I can now quickcheck .avi files again, properly.

Thank you for the quick answer, I would upvote, but it says I need 15 rep first :/

Quick Look won't let you do this. Mainly because the core audio/video stuff behind quicktime doesn't support it.

The easiest way to do this would honestly be to use VLC. This supports both file types you mention.

The other way is to check out Perian, which gives you a bunch of extra codecs.

Personally, I would try the VLC way first. You won't be able to view these items with quickview or preview.app, but VLC handles pretty much any file type I have ever thrown at it.


Completely uninstall, remove, delete any reference to Coda 2 by Panic! How do I completely remove Coda 2 by Panic!? I love the app, and have been using it for years, however I did a fresh install on a new mac, and had it all set up, then I went to add some plugins and it screwed it up somehow. None of my preferences are stored, none of my ssl's are stored. I can't reconfigure the app, cause when I go into the preferences every time it crashes as soon as I close the pane out.

All in all I know the app works well, but it seems theres a glicth in it somewhere that can only possibly be resolved by completely removing it.

I have dragged it from the application folder to the trash..
I removed the Coda 2 folder from Users/username/Library/Application\ Support/Coda\ 2/

and I reinstalled it, problem here is same issues occur again, I didn't install any plugins so its just the app. Now I know there is also something storing more data somewhere. Since the install didn't show the app in its default state which is large buttons at the top, and I noticed going into the preference pane that there was some non default options checked as well. So the two things I did to remove it didn't completely remove it.

And since Apple appears to think that no one will ever uninstall anything and thusly doesn't have a method tried and true to uninstall anything I am at a loss. Any ideas how I can remove everything to this app, and get it essentially reset to as if it was never installed before so when I install it again thats the state I get?

My guess is you probably just need to nuke your user preferences.

Open terminal and past this command (make a backup of the Mac if you don't trust this):

defaults delete com.panic.coda2

You can also make a brand new user on the Mac and try opening coda there to double check it's not some other file somewhere or it it's really something out of your user home folder.

Isolating an issue by using another user account


HTTPS Not working on Macbook Pro I'm having a weird issue on my Macbook Pro (OSX 10.7 Lion) where ANY site on ANY browser doesn't function if it is using HTTPS. For example, http://google.com will appear, but https://google.com will say 'Not Available'. It doesn't matter what browser I'm using (I've used Safari, Chrome and Firefox). I've encountered the issue on many different wifi networks.

I've tried adding a new 'Location' in my Network settings which didn't work. I've disabled the Mac Firewall, reset Wifi, disabled all Proxy checkboxes in the Wifi Settings. It's very strange and freaking me out a bit. Any help?

Had this recently when my time and date was reset. Try setting them again.


Finder slow after wake up from standby mode I have 4 or 5 Network shares in my Favorites bar in the Finder. Any time the Macbook wakes up from Standby, the Finder takes forever to show up.
If I remove the Network shares from the Favorites bar, the delay goes away completely.
I absolutely need those network shares because I use them several times daily.
Is there any way I could keep my network shares and have Finder load faster?
Please help.

The delay occurs because Finder is remounting each share, (I would guess sequentially, not concurrently, but I'm not sure about that,) and that always takes a few seconds per share, if not more, depending on the server and network conditions.

I think you will be happier if once the shares are mounted you make Dock items for them instead, and not use the sidebar.

NOTE: even if you use the Dock method, shares already mounted when the Mac is put to sleep will need to be remounted once the Mac wakes up. You might want to dismount the shares manually before putting them to sleep, or purchase the app Jettison from the Mac App Store.


iOS 7 - Twitter notification issue This has been getting me down, and I'm out of ideas.

On my main twitter account, for one person I follow (@IndieGala), every single tweet is sent as a notification.
After a quick bit of reading, I found two different methods to stop the tweets showing up, and I disabled it. A few hours later, they were showing up again.
So I repeatedly disabled them for a couple of weeks, and it didn't ever stick.

I then uninstalled and reinstalled the app, and that seemed to fix it. For about 15 hours, then once again the tweets started showing up.
If I go into settings and tweet notifications, the account is there. I disable it in that menu, and it vanishes. When the notification inevitably shows, it's back in the list as If I had never removed it.

I don't want to disable notifications entirely, and there is an account who's tweets I do want pushed so I don't want to disable that entirely either.

Has anyone had something similar to this? It's literally driving me to the edge of insanity.

Thanks

You need to go to Twitter.com in to your account and change some stuff there.

Mute a single Account

If you click on "More" in the twitter timeline there is the "Mute", to stop seen someones tweets.

If you want to be radical then Disable applications access for all:


iMac late 2015 running Mac os 10.15.4: Connection Logging file is to big to delete iMac late 2015 running Mac os 10.15.4: Connection Logging file is to big to delete - not enough storage available. It is 53GB. Available storage is 43GB. I have moved as much user data as possible to external drives. How do I get round this?

If all you want is to delete the file you can open a terminal window by launching Applications -> Utilities -> terminal , typing rm into the terminal followed by a single space, then drag the file into the terminal window (it should copy the name & full path into terminal) and finally hitting enter.

That location looks like it could possibly require admin privileges to modify files. This would be for a good reason: don't modify any files unless you're completely certain that it's safe to do so. If you do run into access issues, it's possible to proceed by typing sudo followed by a space, followed by the line you would have generated in the previous paragraph. Proceed with caution and make sure you have an up to date backup before trying this method.


Forcefully disconnect GPS unit from kernel Google chrome keeps giving out my location to websites. Disabling Location Services does not help. I may have to physically disconnect the GPS unit, but before I void AppleCare I would like to attempt doing it by software.

Now, as mentioned above disabling Location Services does not help, but I do believe I can prevent the kernel from accessing the GPS unit.

How do I do this?

Hardware Overview:

  Model Name:             MacBook Pro
  Model Identifier:       MacBookPro11,5
  Processor Name:         Intel Core i7
  Processor Speed:        2.5 GHz
  Number of Processors:   1
  Total Number of Cores:  4
  L2 Cache (per Core):    256 KB
  L3 Cache:               6 MB
  Memory:                 16 GB
  Boot ROM Version:       MBP114.0172.B09
  SMC Version (system):   2.30f2
  Serial Number (system): Nope
  Hardware UUID:          47CB9895-6003-5C8C-A4E7-82815470B4EB

Your laptop does not have a GPS receiver so there is nothing to disconnect (phones do have a GPS chip).

Your location is determined by a couple of methods:

a database of wifi access points. Those locations are in turn determined when a device with GPS accesses the same wifi. This can be accurate down to the building.
geolocating your IP address. Usually accurate to the neighbourhood level, occasionally down to the building.

You can block the first one by turning off location services and/or changing your wifi access point (meaning you buy a brand new one, and then never use it with a phone).

You cannot block the second one. The website needs your IP address in order to reply to you, and if it has your IP address it can get your location.

Try a VPN service. Your IP will then be Somewhere Else. This will break searches like "Find  near here".


Look Me Up By Email problem Does anybody have anything in the "Look Me Up By Email" tab? I'm trying to understand how to remove an item from "Look Me Up By Email". This app was uninstalled a long time ago and it's still showing on my Mac.
I also did a clean install of macOS Catalina. I don't know what more I can do. It's a bug or maybe I have a virus on my Mac (MacBook Air early 2015, macOS Catalina 10.15.1)?

I received a letter from MarginNote, but there's nothing useful here!

This is just a residue in the look-me-up list.The app does not have
access to refreshing the list when it is uninstalled on your devices.
We do have forwarded this issue to Apple’s dev team about this issue
and hopefully, it could be fixed eventually. A couple of words about
this if what you are actually concerned about is your privacy
protection. The feature is added in MarginNote 2 given that app
supports sharing an exported notebook to a fellow MarginNote user so
that some sort of teamwork can be achieved. It serves only this
purpose and no more than that. Plus, ticking it off in the list is
already an effective measure to turn it off for good. To sum up, it is
a left-over option that can be turned off and will not affect your
(un)using of your macOS device.
Regards, MarginNote Support Team

The GUI is located in the Apple ID > iCloud >  Options -> Look Me Up By Email window.

Mine is blank:

So why is mine blank and your filled? Because Apps that use iCloud can offer this service to other iCloud users so that they can find you.

As discussed here and here and here and here, one way to remove the app is to delete it.  It may be that some apps give you the ability to turn it on or off, but it's really an app thing.

EDIT:

If the MarginNote application is not installed and you are still seeing this GUI, try this:

Open Terminal.
Type: find $HOME -name '*MarginNote*' -ls
Post the output.

If that doesn't work, then try this:

Install on a new machine (or in a VM), just so we know everything is clean.
Log in but do not add your Apple ID.  You should not see anything in the "look me up by email" GUI.
Log into iCloud but disable every service. If you see things in the GUI, then it's somewhere in your iCloud count that you can't reach.
Sync just the iCloud drive. If it appears, then there is a file in your iCloud drive that has this information. Go into Terminal and list all of the files with the "find $HOME -name 'MarginNote'


iPhone 4s blank screen despite working speaker and vibration The screen of my iPhone 4s has gone blank and does not turn on, even by use of a charger. However, it does make noise and vibrate, and sometimes I can hear Siri if I ask her a question, but it takes a while for her to respond. Sometimes, I can also hear my FaceTime calls going off, but I can not answer them. My on/off button does not work, so I will not be able to hold down the on/off button and the home button. Whenever I try to plug my phone in, it makes the noise that it usually makes when I plug it in, but nothing happens. When I was last on it, which was a few hours ago, it was fine and then I turned it off and I have not got it to work since. Also, when I didn't have it plugged in, it got really hot and other times it was cooled off. When I tell Siri to make FaceTime calls, she tells me that she is, but nothing happens. This has never happened to me before, and I would like to know if it has happened to anyone else, or if they have heard about it happening to someone before. Is there any causes as to why this could happen and is there a way that I can help make sure that's this does not happen again? I would like to not have to get a new phone, so does anyone have any suggestions on what I could use to get my phone back to normal? A friend of mine suggested to leave it on the charger for a while, but it did not work and my phone heated up. I hope you guys can help me. :)

It ever happened to my iPhone 5 twice. All I did was left my iPhone until the battery drained off. Then I charged my phone the next day (or when you think the battery is drained already). It worked well afterwards. If it doesn't work for you, you should take to Apple repair shop. Hope it can work for you!


Can I use keywords in Safari as Google Chrome? The main reason because I use Google Chrome on my Mac is its keyword feature that I can use as shortcut while I'm searching for something.

This is an example of my main keywords: http://i.imgur.com/dORgCC0.png

This is an example of keyword feature in action: http://gfycat.com/IlliterateBiodegradableGreatargus

Is there a way to do the same on Safari?

KeySearch sounds like what you want. From the website:

It uses short keywords to allow you to search any site you want, right from the toolbar.
...
Just right-click on any search box and choose "Create keyword for this search." Type in a keyword and KeySearch takes care of the rest.

(I have not used it.)


What is "usernoted" and why is it eating my CPU? For the past couple of weeks, a process identified as usernoted appeared to "take over" my machine after a few hours of use, eating over 99% of available CPU.

Force quitting the process doesn't help; only a system restart puts usernoted to sleep for a while.

What is this process and how do I get it under control?

I am running OS X 10.10.5 (build 14F1021).

Usernoted is a process that is responsible for notifications on OS X.

The instructions from this post solved usernoted sitting at 100% CPU on my Mac, even though they were intended to only fix stuck Notification settings:

Open the Library folder in your Home folder.
In the Library folder, open the Application Support folder.
Locate the folder named NotificationCenter. Drag this folder to the desktop.
Next, open the Terminal application.
Copy and paste each line of these commands into the Terminal window, in order. Press return after each line:

cd `getconf DARWIN_USER_DIR`
rm -rf com.apple.notificationcenter
killall usernoted; killall NotificationCenter

Close the Terminal app.
Restart your computer.

For me, the problem started after I had upgraded from Yosemite to El Capitan: usernoted was constantly sitting at 100% CPU and nothing I tried (force-quitting usernoted, checking if Growl or Bark are installed, booting into safe mode, SMC reset, running all the maintenance and cleaning scripts in Onynx, etc.) seemed to help until I tried the steps listed above.


Updated phone now texts are mixed My father updated his iPhone software to iOS 6. Now his wife is recieving his text messages. We tried going to settings and turning off iMessage but that just stopped his phone from getting some of the messages.

How can I fix this problem.  Note: they share the same Apple ID.

Without knowing more details, I cannot know this for certain, but it seems likely that your father's wife is receiving iMessages sent to him, but not SMS text messages. This is the designed behavior – iMessages are delivered to an Apple ID, and if they share an Apple ID, iMessages will go to both of them. The solution is for them to not share an Apple ID.

That said, one can set up a different Apple ID for Messages but keep the same Apple ID for the App store, iTunes, etc. This would alloow them to share purchases, but keep their messages separate from each other.

You can also go into Settings > Messages > Send & Receive and un-check mark the email address that is associated with both of their phones (and Apple IDs). There is a good chance that will also fix your problem.


Why "Too many open files" error is occurred while opening a webpage with polipo installed on OS X 10.11.4? I have installed polipo-1.1.1 caching proxy on my OS X 10.11.4 with homebrew:
brew install polipo --with-large-chunks

Sometimes opening URLs (this page for example) is failed with this error message:
504 Connect to apple.stackexchange.com:80 failed: Too many open files

The following error occurred while trying to access https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/114514/can-the-default-permissions-on-dev-disk-be-changed:

504 Connect to apple.stackexchange.com:80 failed: Too many open files

Generated Sun, 22 May 2016 12:36:56 IRDT by Polipo on Hamids-MacBook-Pro.local:8123.

I have set up ~/.polipo file as configuration file with socksParentProxy and socksProxyType parameters only.
The value of ulimit -n is 4864.
In /usr/local/var/cache/polipo I have 510 folders and total size of this folders is 297 MB.
Total number of files that are open with polipo with this command is 219:
lsof -p $(pgrep polipo) | wc -l

Why this error is occurred and how can I prevent that?
Is there any configurations that I missed to set up?

This is a quick fix answer. If you know which configurations caused this problem please post your answer

I didn't find out why this error occurs, but I solve the problem every time this error appears by running this command:

$ brew services restart polipo
Stopping `polipo`... (might take a while)
==> Successfully stopped `polipo` (label: homebrew.mxcl.polipo)
==> Successfully started `polipo` (label: homebrew.mxcl.polipo)

After restarting polipo instance, that error disappears.

NOTE: This command should be executed OUT of a tmux session. In a tmux session it will not work:

$ brew services restart polipo
~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.polipo.plist: Operation not permitted
==> Successfully started `polipo` (label: homebrew.mxcl.polipo)

If you are running such a session, detach the session with control+b (or any prefix key combination you set) and then press d. Now run that command.

THE BEST ALTERNATIVE: I used reattach-to-user-namespace to restart polipo service directly from tmux session:

$ brew install reattach-to-user-namespace

then brew services will work.

UPDATE: I found that my local polipo cache size is enough large:

$ du -d0 -h /usr/local/var/cache/polipo
13.8G    /usr/local/var/cache/polipo

There is a "purge" function that is explained here:

  The behavior of the -x flag is controlled by three configuration variables. The variable diskCacheUnlinkTime specifies the time during which an on-disk entry should remain unused before it is eligible for removal; it defaults to 32 days.

So I stopped polipo daemon with brew services:

$ brew services stop polipo
$ polipo -x
$ brew services start polipo

Now the size of local cache is reduced:

$ du -d0 -h /usr/local/var/cache/polipo
2.1G    /usr/local/var/cache/polipo

And it seems that the error is gone.


iPad: export Keynote project to video Setup.

I'm running the most recent version of Keynote (as of April 3rd, 2014) on an iPad Air, WiFi-only version @ 16GBs.

Task/issue.

I would like to export the project/slideshow to a video file (to then be able transfer the movie to my desktop PC running windows).

Thoughts.

Is there any way to do this? I was thinking there must be a way to do it by using iMovie on iOS as a proxy somehow, but couldn't find any resources on the matter.

Keynote for iOS does not support this. Apparently Apple does not provide any mechanism for screen-recording (video) within iOS 7, and will not permit any third-party app that enables this. There have been some apps that can do screen recording on iOS 7, but they require jailbreaking the device, and are not authorized by Apple through the App Store.

The only way that I know to achieve this is by one of the following:

1) move your Keynote document that you created on iOS to Keynote on Mac OS X, which has a video export feature

2) If you have a Windows PC, you can use Reflector for Windows, which enables live video and audio recording of a "screen share" of what is playing on your iOS device. You establish a connection between your iOS device and your Windows computer, enable "Record" in Reflector, and then play back your Keynote document in full screen on your iOS device. You then have a video on your Windows computer that you can further edit.


Laptop shuts down instead of going to sleep when lid closed EDIT: Updating to Catalina 10.15.6 seems to have resolved the issue, at least so far.  Only had it installed for one evening so I'm not 100% ready to say the issues are resolved

I have a Macbook Pro 16 inch with Catalina installed.  It's recently started exhibiting the following behaviour when I try to put it to sleep:

When running on battery or standalone AC it sleeps as normal when the lid is closed or when I select sleep from the menu
When connected to an OWC dock it sleeps only if the lid is open when I select sleep from the menu
When I'm connected to the dock with the lid closed the computer shuts down instead of going to sleep when I select sleep from the menu
If I put the computer to sleep when it's docked and then close the lid, it won't wake up until I open the lid

Has anyone else encountered this?  How do you fix it?

The problem seems to have been some kind of issue in OSX 10.15.5.  Upgrading to 10.15.6 appears to have resolved the issue.


Recovering files from SSD and SSD life? I use a shared MacBook Pro with Catalina; I've done some basic research into deleting files but worry deleting too often will shorten the life of the drive (this is for a machine bought in April 2020).
In general, how easy is it to recover a file from an SSD as compared to a HDD, especially if you want to ensure something is permanently deleted with little chance of recovery (more sensitive files like medical etc. that you've copied elsewhere).
I've only ever used Mac minis as Mac computers before now so aren't quite familiar with this.
I did try Edenwaith's Permanent Eraser but is this overkill?
If anyone can guide me on this I'd appreciate it.

You don't need to worry about either the security of the deleted file(s) nor the life of the SSD.

In general, how easy is it to recover a file from an SSD as compared to a HDD,

It's virtually impossible.
When you "delete" a file on an SSD, it tags the blocks as unused and depending on the scheme that it uses (DRAT or RZAT) when the block is subsequently read, it will either return zeros or it will return random data (garbage).  Tagging it as "unused" means the drive will recycle it for the next set of writes rather than writing over it to erase and then writing again with actual data.

Can the data on an MacBook Pro SSD be recovered after formatting using Disk Utility
How to get the "securely erase" function of Disk Utility on El Capitan & Sierra

In the second linked post, it talks about how the command srm (secure delete) is no longer available in macOS.  It's because it's no longer necessary.  It's virtually impossible to retrieve data once it's deleted from an SSD and if you enable encryption (File Vault), it's gone forever.
Unlike a traditional HDD, when you delete a file, it doesn't overwrite the file either.  Instead, it deletes the pointer to the file.  Since the data wasn't overwritten, it was easy to recover.
You will outlive your SSD
The short answer here is that you simply cannot write enough data in your lifetime to worry about wearing out an SSD.  You are more likely to outstrip it's capacity or for it to fail due to a component failure before it wears out.
Limited Read and Writes on MacBook Air SSD
Using Intel's SSD life span calculator as a basis for the calculation, you'd have to take and save 24,0000 digital images per day for the rest of your life to wear out an SSD.
TL;DR

You don't overwrite data when you delete on an SSD so wear isn't a concern.
Retrieving the data from a deleted block on an SSD is next to impossible because of the way data is retrieved
You can't write enough data to  your SSD that wear would become an actual issue to deal with.


Where does MacBook save Sierra OS update files for Mac, not iPhone? I downloaded an update today and had to click "install later." Now, not sure where that update is. Where does MacBook save Sierra OS update files?


Really strange behavior creating a directory on SMB NAS share I am setting up a Synology DS918+ for backing up a new iMac Pro with an Drobo 5D3 attached to it.

I was working on backing up my Photos library from the Drobo using ChronoSync. ChronoSync was aborting with an error and after some debugging I can see what is happening, but its weird and I was hoping someone could help explain it.

To verify this is the issue I created a new SMB3 share on the Synology called Test and mounted it. Creating files and directories works as expected unless I create a directory named AUx.

$ ls -a
.       ..      .DS_Store
$ mkdir AUx
$ ls AUx
ls: AUx: No such file or directory
$ mkdir AUx
mkdir: AUx: File exists
$ ls -a
.       ..      .DS_Store   AHY9U3~9

Does anyone know what's going on?

I was having this issue, and I'm so glad that I'm not alone! I solved it by mounting the drive using AFP instead of SMB, and that meant that I could see files called AUX again. (For various reasons, renaming the directory was not an option.)


Large .bash_profile increasing time for terminal to do things. Able to fix? I've got an almost 100 line .bash_profile which does things like check the git branch and colour certain text. This makes things like even starting a new line significantly slower compared to the instant speed of having an empty profile.

Is there any way around this or is it just because of the extra functionality that the profile has which is adding overhead? Why is it being so slow?

After testing it on another machine (on a Fedora distro, was using Mac), it doesn't have this issue at all. The Fedora machine is instant as expected, while the Mac has a noticeable delay when starting a new line, cd'ing into something etc.

Here is the profile: https://pastebin.com/UKWPPqKf

# .bashrc

# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
    . /etc/bashrc
fi

# User specific environment
if ! [[ "$PATH" =~ "$HOME/.local/bin:$HOME/bin:" ]]
then
    PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi
export PATH

# Uncomment the following line if you don't like systemctl's auto-paging feature:
# export SYSTEMD_PAGER=

# User specific aliases and functions

#THIS MUST BE AT THE END OF THE FILE FOR SDKMAN TO WORK!!!
export SDKMAN_DIR="/home/USRNAME/.sdkman"
[[ -s "/home/USRNAME/.sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh" ]] && source "/home/USRNAME/.sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh"

#Aliases
if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
    source ~/.bash_aliases
fi

# get current branch in git repo
function parse_git_branch() {
    BRANCH=`git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/\1/'`
    if [ ! "${BRANCH}" == "" ]
    then
        STAT=`parse_git_dirty`
        echo "[${BRANCH}${STAT}]"
    else
        echo ""
    fi
}
# get current branch in git repo
function parse_git_branch() {
    BRANCH=`git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/\1/'`
    if [ ! "${BRANCH}" == "" ]
    then
        STAT=`parse_git_dirty`
        echo "[${BRANCH}${STAT}]"
    else
        echo ""
    fi
}

# get current status of git repo
function parse_git_dirty {
    status=`git status 2>&1 | tee`
    dirty=`echo -n "${status}" 2> /dev/null | grep "modified:" &> /dev/null; echo "$?"`
    untracked=`echo -n "${status}" 2> /dev/null | grep "Untracked files" &> /dev/null; echo "$?"`
    ahead=`echo -n "${status}" 2> /dev/null | grep "Your branch is ahead of" &> /dev/null; echo "$?"`
    newfile=`echo -n "${status}" 2> /dev/null | grep "new file:" &> /dev/null; echo "$?"`
    renamed=`echo -n "${status}" 2> /dev/null | grep "renamed:" &> /dev/null; echo "$?"`
    deleted=`echo -n "${status}" 2> /dev/null | grep "deleted:" &> /dev/null; echo "$?"`
    bits=''
    if [ "${renamed}" == "0" ]; then
        bits=">${bits}"
    fi
    if [ "${ahead}" == "0" ]; then
        bits="*${bits}"
    fi
    if [ "${newfile}" == "0" ]; then
        bits="+${bits}"
    fi
    if [ "${untracked}" == "0" ]; then
        bits="?${bits}"
    fi
    if [ "${deleted}" == "0" ]; then
        bits="x${bits}"
    fi
    if [ "${dirty}" == "0" ]; then
        bits="!${bits}"
    fi
    if [ ! "${bits}" == "" ]; then
        echo " ${bits}"
    else
        echo ""
    fi
}

export PS1="\[$(tput bold)\]\u@\h:\[$(tput sgr0)\]\[\033[38;5;39m\]\w\[$(tput sgr0)\]\[$(tput sgr0)\]\[\033[38;5;15m\] \[$(tput sgr0)\]\[\033[38;5;11m\]\[$(tput bold)\]\`parse_git_branch\`\[\e[m\] \[$(tput sgr0)\]"

If you type set -x into the terminal, it will print every command it executes from that point on, so to find the culprit, type set -x and hit return, then - paying attention to the lines scrolling by on the screen - watch for whatever command takes a long time to run.

The number of + characters at the beginning of each line tell you how deeply nested the command is. If you scroll up a bit, you can find the "parent" command.

The commands you see when you hit return are all triggered by the last line of your bashrc, where you set the contents of the variable PS1. Every time you hit return, the contents of that variable are executed and the result is shown as the "prompt" (the bit before the cursor, e.g. something like user@box ~ $).

To get out of this mode, you can type set +x or just close that terminal window/tab (see What does set -x do?).

PS: I would hazard a guess that your git status commands are slowing down the prompt. If you install both git and bash-completion from Homebrew, you can use __git_ps1 to do this and get rid of all the git related functions from your bashrc. As an example, this is what it looks like on my machine:

if [[ -f /usr/local/etc/bash_completion ]]; then
    . /usr/local/etc/bash_completion
fi

GIT_PS1_SHOWDIRTYSTATE=1
GIT_PS1_SHOWUPSTREAM="auto"
GIT_PS1_SHOWUNTRACKEDFILES=1

PS1='\w \$ '
if type __git_ps1 &>/dev/null; then
    PS1='\w$(__git_ps1 | sed -e "s/=)$/)/") \$ '
fi


Can I make certain menus always show ⌥option + click results? Specifically in reference to the Volume menu item in the menu bar;

As I am frequently changing audio input/output settings, and never using the slider that the normal volume menu click shows (I always only use the keyboard incremental volume keys for a few reasons), I'd like to make the volume menu more useful to me by automatically always showing the menu that appears when you ⌥option + click it.

And for obvious reasons I don't just want every system-wide click to be rebound to ⌥option + click, just the menu bar items if possible.

This sounds like a too-specific problem to have a solution, but thanks in advance if anyone could help.

I don't know if there's a way to do exactly that, but if you can't be bothered to use the option key when clicking (maybe you're holding an instrument with the other hand or something?) then a keyboard shortcut to an AppleScript to change audio devices is probably even better.

Here's another question that addresses this approach, and if it's not quite what you're looking for, there are plenty of other people out there talking about this as well.


Bonjour networked printer with Time Capsule in bridge mode I have a 5th generation Airport Time Capsule as my primary router, and a 4th generation Airport Time Capsule in bridge mode, connected via cat5. When I connect my printer (a Brother HL-3040CN) to the 4th gen via USB, it's visible on the network and works fine. When I connect it by cat5 to one of the 4th gen's LAN ports, however, even though it seems to appear in the Bonjour list, from the 5th gen WiFi network I get "the printer is not responding". (This is after deleting it in the Printers and Scanners control panel and re-adding it as a new printer.)

Also suspicious is that when I try to ping the Bonjour address, brn001ba94e93ac.local, I get an IP address in the 192.168 range, even though the rest of my LAN is 10.0.

So I guess my questions are:

is this a configuration that should work?
why is the printer showing up as a Bonjour device if I can't connect to it?
why is the Bonjour address mapped to an IP on a nonexistent subnet?

Edited to add: Ping and traceroute both fail, and iNet Network Scanner shows it under "Bonjour browser" but not under "Network scanner".

I'm not positive this answer will work, but these are the first things I'd try.

To answer your questions:

1) Yes, that configuration should work.

2) You can see it because it is a Bonjour device - just because you can't connect to it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

3) Check the settings on the printer. You can either do this on the screen of the printer (assuming it has one) or by opening a web browser and typing the internal IP address into the address bar. Make sure that the printer is configured to get its IP address using DHCP and is not self (manually) assigned.


Switch GPU based on power source Is there a way to use a high performance GPU when my MBP is connected to AC power and use automatic switching when it's on battery? I have latest OSX and Mid 2012 MacBook Pro if that matters.

I do not recall if gfxCardStatus allows you to adjust the usage of the card on different power systems or not but worth investigating.


Keyboard's brightness controll buttons are disabled My MacBook Pro doesn't adjust the brightness when I hit the brightness controls on my keyboard (F5/F6). I've tried turning off automatic brightness to no avail. How do I use the function printed on the function keys?

According to OS X Daily, it's because your light sensor is detecting that you are in too bright of an environment to use the backlit keyboard. Try moving to a darker area, or covering your light sensor to see if it then lets you turn it on.


How to restore default system files? Does anyone have the default SArtFile.bin (path: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/SArtFile.bin) for Mavericks 10.9.5?

I was tinkering around with the file listed above but forgot to  back it up.
Does anyone know how I can restore the file to its original form so I can undo my changes, or how to restore default system files?

This is a specific case of the general restore process:

How can I get back a system file after deleting it from my Mac?

Basically you have three places where you can get the original system files (except backups):

Recovery HD
Combo update installer
the (Mac) OS X installer

The Recovery HD is a basic OS X system only and just contains a subset of the files of the full system. Some files may even be outdated or different compared to the files of the full system. To mount the Recovery HD enter diskutil mount Recovery\ HD in Terminal. To get access to the system files mount BaseSystem.dmg:

hdiutil mount /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg

To copy a file enter:

sudo cp /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Base\ System/path/to/file /path/to/file

in your example:

sudo cp /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/SArtFile.bin /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/SArtFile.bin

The Combo update installer may contain the file in question. Like the Recovery HD it only contains a subset of files of the full OS X system. To extract and install the original file, download Pacifist and open the installer package. Search for the file in question and install it. You need admin privileges to do that.

If the file isn't available in the Recovery HD or the Combo installer you have to download the newest OS X installer (in your case Install OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)). The approach is similar to the Combo updater method. Right-click Install OS X Mavericks -> Show Contents, navigate to /Contents/SharedSupport and mount the InstallESD.dmg. Open the folder Packages in the mounted image and then the file OSInstall.mpkg with Pacifist. Search for the file in question and install it. You need admin privileges to do that.

In your case you are lucky because the file SArtFile.bin can be found in the Recovery HD. So use the method outlined above to recover the file.


Are password-protected notes encrypted? I can't find anything about encryption on Apple's sites, but are password-protected notes using E2E encryption?

Secure Notes are encrypted with Triple DES, and are kept in the device keychain.


Does iCloud Backup of iOS Devices have snapshot history? I have always used my Mac/iTunes to back up iOS devices.

One benefit I see is that my Mac Time Machine solution will backup the contents of the computer, including the iOS backups – I imagine that as creating something similar a to snapshot history of the iOS devices (assuming one can navigate to earlier Time Machine snapshots, and extract & restore the iOS backups therein).

Recently, Apple seems to have improved its iCloud Backup solution. Does Apple provide snapshot histories of iOS backups, or only the latest backup image?

First you enable iCloud and all the services that you want to backup (for most it's all the checkboxes). During the night the iPhones makes an iCloud backup for that day.

So if you were to restore the iPhone, in setup process you could either choose to setup as new, backup from Mac or backup from the iCloud. If you choose iCloud, you would get everything back included all apps that would automatically download and network settings for example.

Here is the tricky part. While by default most people choose the iCloud backup to get their latests backup and that works for almost everyone, you can also set the iPhone as new, get back your iCloud data (contacts, messages, photos) but discard network settings and other settings that don't get included in the regular iCloud saves. When you do this on create a secondary backup that's available to choose when you will setup a new phone next time, so in a sense it's a snapshot.
As to why you would need that, that's another questions and I for sure wouldn't rely on this method.

Here is an image of how it looks like when you have multiple iCloud backups to choose from on restore. Note also that you can delete other backups from previous phone from settings > iCloud > backups.


Apple TV 4K: Samba share videos I am planning to visit a relative that has an ATV-4K and plan to bring wedding videos for everyone to view.  What file formats can the ATV play from a SAMBA share?  If you have had success please state this in your reply: thank you

You'll need to install a third-party app like VLC or Plex to play off a Samba/SMB share. I believe VLC can read directly off a Samba share, but Plex might need you to mount the share on a computer and install Plex Server on that computer.

You can then play just about any modern video file thru those apps.

If you are limited to the built-in apps, you'll need to put your movies in MP4 format, with an AAC audio track as the first track (AC-3 surround sound can be included after the AAC track).  (I might be wrong about this for ATV 4K, maybe it supports other formats than the previous 2 ATV's.)  Then, you'll still need a computer running iTunes, load your videos into iTunes, then turn on Home Sharing in iTunes and on the ATV.


Why do I have an extra hard drive? When I go to "About this Mac" it shows I have 1 500GB hard drive, but when I use diskutil list it shows I have 2 500GB. Can someone explain this please?

My USB drive says its encrypted in diskutil which is correct, but my main drive that has Mac OS on it should also be encrypted (that's the way I set it up when install Mac OS), but it doesn't say it in diskutil and it says "encrtpted" for the USB. How can I tell if my hard drive is encrypted or not?

You are seeing the listing for both the logical volume and the physical disk on which that logical volume resides - note the Apple_APFS container disk1 matches the APFS container scheme Identifier disk1 - lines 6, 7, & 10 of your output from diskutil.

Suggest you look in the GUI version of disk util to get a sense of physical disk and logical volume - I think that will make it clearer for you:

hope this helps mate.


Every time I restart the computer the link for Atom stops working I use the Atom editor and I like to open it from the command line. For that purpose I execute the following line:

ln -s /Applications/Atom.app/Contents/Resources/app/atom.sh /usr/local/bin/atom

The problem is that if I restart the computer, the link stops working, so I have to delete the file

rm /usr/local/bin/atom

and execute the first line to create the link again. I don't understand why this happens.

I tried it myself and it worked perfectly, even after a reboot. Do you have multiple disks/partitions in you set up?

Anyway, to settle things once and for all, I suggest you to follow the steps pointed out here. Below is a copy&paste.

With the Atom editor open, in the menu bar:

Click Atom >> Install Shell Commands

You should expect to see:

You do not need to restart the terminal.

If this solution didn't work, my last suggestion is to create an alias in your ~/.bash_profile. To do this, simply open ~/.bash_profile with a text editor and add somewhere the line:

alias atom='open -a Atom'

This should do the trick.

EDIT

I noticed that after a reboot, you must start Atom at least once before the atom command works - otherwise it won't be recognized as a command. I didn't notice it before because, while testing if the ln -s ... solution worked, I already opened Atom once. I honestly don't have a clue why this happens, but the last suggestion about adding an alias definitely solves this issue.


Playout video from iTunes 12 to external monitor I want to be able to play my own videos out of iTunes 12 to an external monitor (HDMI)
and keep the iTunes interface on my laptop screen.

Play the video in fullscreen mode, and active mission control click ^ + ↑, drag the fullscreen playing video to the external display. Another way, you can play the video via Quicktime player


Shift key on mac keyboard only works with some keys Ok so this is weird.

I thought my mac's keyboard had developed a broken key, but after some testing it's only broken when interacting with some other keys.

The left shift key doesn't work with a handful of other keys, see the following output with the shift key depressed:

qwertyuopASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM

Also note the lack of an i in that output. That key works, but when the shift key is depressed it doesn't output anything.

It doesn't appear to be a software issue, as it's exactly the same on both my imac and when hooked up to my macbook.

Ghost in the machine?

Given the problem appears on two Macs, this suggests a hardware fault. If the keyboard is not too old, take it to an Apple Store. They may be able to replace it for you.

The strange behaviour you are seeing could be because a circuit is damaged and causing ghosting. Microsoft's article on ghosting explains more:

  What causes ghosting?

  Typically, ghosting is the result of one or more of following three limitations: the hardware can't read the given key combination, the software on the computer doesn't support multiple simultaneous keys, or the communication protocol between the hardware and software limits the maximum number of simultaneous keys reported. The next section discusses in more detail the hardware design of typical keyboards that limits the number of keys that can be read at the same time.


itunes software update ignore isn't working I have OSX 10.5.6 and iTunes 10.4.1 on my laptop. I turned off the software update for iTunes, but every time I click on a song, I get a notification that says

  iTunes requires Safari 4.0.3 or later to be installed to use the
  iTunes Store with iTunes. Use Software Update to download and install
  the latest version of Safari.

I'm not trying to use the iTunes store, so I'm not sure why this is popping up. I'd prefer not to update Safari because I never use that browser. Suggestions?

Since iTunes uses web kit and html to work in the store, you might actually need it for the software to function.

If the app still works for your needs, you can safely ignore the message, but if you don't use that browser, why not just update it and let iTunes be happy?


How to completely turn off spell check in macOS Big Sur Spelling autocorrect and checking seem to have changed in Big Sur.
I have disabled Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Check spelling while typing, I unchecked System Preferences > Keyboard > Text > Correct spelling automatically, and yet I still get text underlined, for example, in Messages:

Am I missing another setting somewhere or is this a bug? In previous versions I could disable this easily.
Background: I use multiple languages and although in theory macOS can tell the difference, spell-check/autocorrect is not working too well with weird languages like Hungarian.

It seems to be limited to the Messages app (so likely a bug) and after a few times of quitting and restarting (interestingly one restart was not enough) it too seems to finally have learned the lesson.
So my recommendation to others with similar issue:

Set the settings as you prefer
Don't forget about System Prefs / Keyboard / Text / Correct spelling automatically -  this is either new in Big Sur (not sure) or it was toggled on again after update
Patiently restart your apps a few times (or perhaps a full system restart) and this should resolve the issue


My app was rejected citing 11.3 (In-app purchase) I created an app that lets users store items in the app. There is an amazon button next to each item. When the user clicks the amazon button, the app finds the item on amazon and, if found, opens the amazon page for the item WITH-IN the app.

Apple rejected the app citing 11.3 in-app purchase reasons.

would it help if the amazon page for the item opened in safari and not with-in the app?

Read through the other points of the App Store Review Guidelines under Section 11. Purchasing and currencies. One more that stands out for your situation is this:

  11.13 Apps that link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the App, such as a "buy" button that goes to a web site to purchase a digital book, will be rejected

So while you could provide a link that will open in Safari (instead of opening the page in-app), if that purchase will be used in your app in some way, it's likely to get rejected by citing this clause.

Also keep in mind that any interpretation here or elsewhere of single line policy statements to provide a clear "yes" or "no" to questions may not be final. It's Apple's interpretation that actually matters.


External Monitor is detected but displays black screen on MBP 15" 2017 I have a 15" LTN156HL01 Lcd display which I turned into an external monitor by using a controller board.
Here's the thing:

It works perfectly on my PS4.
It works perfectly with my brother's MacBook Air.
It even works when connected to my Canon 80D.

But when connected to my MBP 15" the backlight of the external monitor lights up but the image is totally black.
However my Mac detects the screen... even if I change resolution, the problem persists.

Then one day I tried to reboot the MBP in safe-mode and when restarted properly... Hurrah! the screen was actually working super fine.
But when I unplugged it and replugged it... here we are again.. black screen.

With these test, I realized that the monitor works, the controller board works fine and that it can be used with my MBP 15". The problem is not with the hardware, it has to be related with software or OS.
If not, I cannot explain why it worked that time...
What can it be? How can I solve it?

Thank you in advance!

While I'm not sure what you mean by a controller board (is it a video card or a dock?), Here's a few tips to try.

Test the cable against other cables and inputs. I recently had a mini display cable go bad when it wasn't that old.

Consider connecting the cable directly to the monitor if you are passing it through other devices (IF Thunderbolt > External HD > Monitor, INSTEAD Thunderbolt > Monitor).

You could try resetting the NVRAM which would help your mac relearn your monitor. (Command Option P R after a cold 'Shutdown'). Google this for your specific OS.

Typically, I find a black screen when the resolution of the mac is set too high for the monitor or the refresh rate is incorrect. Match what you know what your graphic card can handle to the limitation of the monitor. If the mac's display setting are vauge, there is a utility called SwitchResX that might be helpful. You can specify the resolution of your monitor and customize it with resolutions, color profiles and shortcuts. It's free to try with some nagware or feature limitations.


Visited and unvisited Google search results have identical styles in Safari 12.1 In Safari 12.1.1 for macOS (or perhaps since version 12.0), I've lost the ability to see which of Google's results I've already clicked on. The links corresponding to visited sites aren't colored differently from unvisited ones.

I have clicked on several links in the search results above, but as you can see, I am unable to determine which ones I've visited.

The distinction is visible in Chrome 74.0 as well as in Firefox 67.0.

What am I missing?

Update

This is observed by others as well, judging by Google suggesting the string "google safari visited links not changing color 2019" when typing the first few words, and by the posts on discussions.apple.com.

maP1E bluE's solution works. If your "Show Develop menu in menu bar" is already checked, but your Develop menu's entries are disabled, including those under "Experimental Features", try to uncheck then check "Show Develop menu in menu bar" and/or to open a "New Private Window", from where you may be able to uncheck then check the "Swap Processes on Cross Site Navigation" entry.

Update 2

The solution doesn't last. This is simply a bug in Safari 12.1.

On Safari Menu Bar, select Preferences > Advanced > Show Develop menu in Menu Bar, then Develop > Experimental Features, unselect Swap Processes on Cross-Site Navigation.


How to merge back the encrypted folder back to main drive Have one encrypted folder and have erased the content of it. But not getting any option to merge the space back to the main partition.

 This comes after we enter the password or rather mount the encrypted drive.

As we can see that the Disk Image is of 10GB. I want this space to merge with other drive: Macintosh.

You've created a disk image, which is basically just a file. You haven't partitioned your Macintosh disk, as can be seen if you select Macintosh in Disk Utility.

To remove the disk image, unmount the disk image using the Eject button next to Disk Image, then delete the file using Finder. This will reclaim the space on your Macintosh drive in the same way deleting any other file will.


How to add characters to the press and hold character picker in OS X Lion? In OS X Lion, there is a very useful feature for people like me who need to write in multiple languages, which pops up a small menu of additional characters when you hold down a letter.

For instance, when I hold down the letter E, I get:

This is great when I'm writing in French for example. However right now I need to write something in Czech; however, the Czech letter ě (looks like the 3rd letter in the popup with the accent flipped) does not appear in the popup.

Is there a way to tell OS X to include Czech or other additional characters in those popups?

Note: I do not want to use the Czech keyboard layout; I found switching layouts for each language is somewhat unpractical.

The characters included in the popovers are defined in property lists inside the /System/Library/Input\ Methods/PressAndHold.app/ bundle.

I was able to change à to y by editing /System/Library/Input\ Methods/PressAndHold.app/Contents/Resources/Keyboard-en.plist and logging out and back in.

(note the escape in "Input Method" if you're copy pasting)

<key>Roman-Accent-a</key>
<dict>
    <key>Direction</key>
    <string>right</string>
    <key>Keycaps</key>
    <string>a y á â ä æ ã å ā</string>
    <key>Strings</key>
    <string>a y á â ä æ ã å ā</string>
</dict>


Mac wakes on scheduled power event that recreates itself every day At 2:14 every morning, my Mac wakes. Looking at the logs, I see it's a scheduled event, but nothing shows up in System Preferences > Power. When I go to terminal, and run pmset -g sched, I see

Scheduled power events:
[0]  wake at 03/31/13 02:14:00

Only one, for the next event. I can delete it through pmset, and it won't wake that night (morning). The next day, there's a new event. So for instance, after that one went, now I see

Scheduled power events:
 [0]  wake at 04/01/13 02:14:00

I've locked the Power Management preferences, I've even set the com.apple.AutoWake.plist file to remove all write access through chmod, and the next day... a new entry appears.

Taking Lauri's suggestion, I ran opensnoop on the Autowake.plist, and at 2:15, this happened, inserting that power event:

2013 Apr  4 02:15:00     0     20 powerd         4 /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist
2013 Apr  4 02:15:00     0     20 powerd         5 /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist
2013 Apr  4 02:15:00    89  15241 mdworker       4 /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist

I didn't see anything in /Library/LaunchDaemons/ or /Library/LaunchAgents/ that seemed relevant. Execsnoop returned

2013 Apr  4 02:15:00    89  15241  14058 mdworker
2013 Apr  5 02:15:00    89  24165  19851 mdworker

What the heck is going on, and how do I stop this from happening? Or what's the next step to troubleshoot this? Thanks.

Vitals: it's a Mac Mini, 10.8.3, but it's done this for ages (including when migrated from a previous Mac Mini via Time Machine).

Run syslog |grep -i "Wake reason" from the terminal.

Reference this article: http://osxdaily.com/2010/07/17/why-mac-wakes-from-sleep/


How to install High Sierra on a second partition on a MacBook which already runs Mojave? I am running macOS 10.14 Mojave on a MacBook Pro with a single APFS volume. For testing I would like to intall macOS 10.13 High Sierra on a second volume / partition to be able to switch between the two versions.

I found a lot of tutorials how how to add Mojave when using High Sierra. However, the other way round (adding the older High Sierra to the newer Mojave) seems to be not that easy.

Luckily I still have a the old High Sierra installer file, so this problem is already solved. However, when trying to run the installer I only get a waring, that this file is too old to run on the current os (Mojave). So I cannot even start the installation.

Any idea how to solve this?

There is a simple solution.

Using Disk Utility create a second Partition for the High Sierra:

Probably your disk is in APFS, so simply use "+ Volume" button at the top left of Disk Utility app, give new Volume a name (for example "Test HD").

  If there is a need to install OS that can't be installed on APFS (for example Sierra and earlier) use "Partition" button to create separate HFS+ Volume.

Then, create a USB flash installation disk of High Sierra using terminal:

  USB disk needs to be formatted with a GUID partition table (GPT). Use Disk Utility to erase the USB disk and choose GPT for the partition scheme.

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

Where

/Applications/ - path to the Installation of High Sierra
Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app - Name of the distributive
Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia - Command for installation
--volume /Volumes/MyVolume - USB flash drive path

Information from Apple:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

Now install High Sierra:

Turn off your Mac. Hold down option and turn on Mac. Choose your USB Installation Media (it will have High Sierra Icon). Follow the instructions.
Choose High Sierra Volume ("Test HD"), that you previously created in the 1st step and finish installation of High Sierra.

Switch between systems using option on startup.


Are there any global key combinations suitable or specifically reserved on OS X for user assignment? I'm trying to identify an appropriate global hotkey to set in iTerm2's preferences for showing/hiding it:

I'd like to avoid any conflicts with other applications' hotkeys or other future use. Are there any blocks of key combinations reserved for user assignment in OS X, or groups of key combinations which aren't generally used, which would be particularly suitable?

Here are Apple's official OS X Human Interface Guidelines for Keyboard Shortcuts.

The document appears to be a current, authoritative, and complete guide to assigning keyboard shortcuts. It covers both the conceptual basis for using particular modifier keys, as well as the nitty-gritty of exactly which keys and which combinations are reserved system-wide, or likely to be reserved in the future.

Here's second Apple page showing a complete summary of existing keyboard shortcuts.


Google Chrome closing tabs instead of quiting application When I click the close button on Google Chrome, it closes all tabs instead of exiting and remembering the open tabs on next launch. Any way to fix this ?

I expect the X button to close the app.
I can only do that if I select quit (from menu or by keyboard shortcut).

That is the way most apps behave on Mac OS X.

The red x button in the corner of the screen closes the window, while choosing Quit from the menu or clicking Command+Q will close the app.

There is no way to "fix this" because that is the way the app is meant to behave.


iMac running OS X 10.2.8 doesn't get an IP address on Wi-Fi I just bought an old iMac (model identifier PowerMac6,1) running Mac OS X 10.2.8. Everything is working great except the internet connection. There is an Airport option for connecting to WiFi, so I'm assuming the iMac has the hardware/software capabilities required.

I can successfully connect to my AT&T U-verse WiFi (I select the network, put in my password, the Airport icon shows the signal strength, etc.) but I'm not connected to the internet. Every time I try to load a webpage, Safari alerts that the server can't be found. All my other devices are able to connect to my WiFi with no problems.

Is my iMac just too outdated to be able to fully connect to an AT&T U-verse WiFi connection? If not, how can I successfully connect?

UPDATE

Okay, when I go to System Preferences > Network on the old iMac, the TCP/IP tab is selected. Along with the following options:

Configure: Using DHCP
IP Address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (self-assigned)
Subnet Mask: xxx.xxx.x.x
Router: --
DHCP Client ID (optional): --
AirPort ID: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
DNS Servers (optional): xxx.xxx.x.xxx
Search Domains (optional): gateway.2wire.net

UPDATE

Connection info:

There were no devices in the MAC Filtering list

If the iMac is indeed limited to WEP security, an alternative would be to use a 'wireless gaming adapter' such as this one. Originally marketed to Xbox 360 users who did not want to buy the official wireless adapter, these devices handle the wireless connection (using stronger WPA/WPA2 security) and provide an ethernet connection to the iMac.


How can I configure custom repeat intervals for Reminders? I would like to configure an alert for a recurring reminder in Reminders.app on Mountain Lion. Currently the only options I have for repeating the alert are "Every Day", "Every Week", "Every 2 Weeks", "Every Month" and "Every Year".

Is there a way to get more fine-grained control on the repeat schedule? For example I'd like to be reminded for something on Mon-Tue-Thu-Fri? The only way I found to accomplish that is creating 4 seperate reminders with a weekly interval, which I want to avoid.

This bugs me too. It isn't possible to do in Reminders, but you can achieve the same thing by creating a repeating event in Calendar, which has a "custom..." item in the Repeat menu:

Then you can specify exactly when to repeat the event:

It seems like an oversight that Reminders doesn't have the same feature (it would be just as useful), especially since the event/reminder detail UI is the same...


Can I see all locations that a DMG file install files to? I wonder if there is a way to sort of "unroll" a dmg file and reveal which directories it will install files to?

A DMG (Disk Image) file is like a zip file.
It's compressed and has a check built-in to check if the integrity of the app is intact.
Once you open a DMG file, in most cases, you just have to drag/drop the application into you Applications folder and that's it.
If you want to see the full content of that application, go to
Applications folder
Right click on an app
Select 'Show the ... content'
In the 'Contents' directory, you'll see all dirs and files that came with your app.
I don't know if that's the answer your are looking for?


Icloud Uploading Stuck. Does anyone know why it actually does this? The attached image is what's currently displayed if I click on the wheel in Finder. Is it related to 'bird' and if so how?

But does anyone know what causes this to happen?

OK. Thanks to another post, I'm on the trail of the culprits.

robert@zeus brctl-dump % brctl monitor com.apple.CloudDocs|grep %
 o /com~apple~CloudDocs/Downloads/badaboombb_ot/fontinfo.txt ↑ 2 KB (1834) 95.0%
 o /com~apple~CloudDocs/Downloads/backissuesbb_ot/fontinfo.txt ↑ 2 KB (1834) 95.0%
 o /com~apple~CloudDocs/Downloads/Afans Live Filters - for Designer 1.6.zip ↑ 92 KB (91525) 95.0%

And so on for a maybe hundred files in my case. All files show the little UP arrow, indicting that uploading is still taking place, and the percentage left at the end of the file info. All of them 95%
SO it seems to be getting stuck at 95%?
Also, some of the files listed no longer exist. I've long since deleted them, yet here they are still in the upload list. What to do.

I found this useful info in another post here. View amount of time left when uploading files to iCloud

======== Progress of sorts ========

In all this - Photos is syncing perfectly. Anything from any of my devices, iPhone and iPad is syncing perfectly. It's just this Mac that seems to be stuck.

Doing a 'log show | grep Cloud streams a LOT of information about what's happening. And this looks interesting, and there is a lot of it repeating. Does this indicate something is Stuck and throttling iCloud?

2020-01-22 13:18:20.328917+0000 0x459b     Error       0x807e               469    14   bird: (CloudDocsDaemon) [com.apple.clouddocs:default] [ERROR] Failed to remove sync root bit [22: Invalid argument]
2020-01-22 13:18:20.329095+0000 0x459b     Error       0x807f               469    14   bird: (CloudDocsDaemon) [com.apple.clouddocs:default] [ERROR] Failed to remove sync root bit [22: Invalid argument]
2020-01-22 13:18:20.329174+0000 0x459b     Error       0xbc20               469    14   bird: (CloudDocsDaemon) [com.apple.clouddocs:default] [ERROR] renameat(-1, '<private>', 21, '<private>', 4) failed after trying to fix permissions [17: File exists]
2020-01-22 13:18:20.329313+0000 0x459b     Error       0xbc21               469    14   bird: (CloudDocsDaemon) [com.apple.clouddocs:default] [ERROR] -[BRCStageRegistry moveFromStage:toPath:fileName:error:]: (passed to caller) error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=17 UserInfo={NSDescription=<private>}
2020-01-22 13:18:20.329422+0000 0x459b     Fault       0xbc22               469    14   bird: (CloudDocsDaemon) [com.apple.clouddocs:default] [CRIT] UNREACHABLE: Failed to move from fault stage to live Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=17 UserInfo={NSDescription=<private>}

First, have you tried the suggestions in this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251061918

I have tried all the things that Apple support pages suggest, such as force-quitting Finder, rebooting, rebooting into Safe Mode, all to no avail.

If those don't work, I suggest you contact Apple Support directly on this one. I am working with them on what I believe is an identical issue of iCloud files not syncing from my Mac (macOS Catalina) to iCloud since the last few days.

Go to https://support.apple.com/icloud and scroll to the bottom and click on the "Get support" link and choose "Update, Backup, and Restore".

I have spent perhaps 3 hours with 3 different support people as the issue gets escalated to the support engineers.

I don't know about you, but some files do sync up and back just fine, like those associated in iCloud Drive with certain applications (eg, Drafts, MindNode). I can create a text file at the top level of iCloud Drive and it syncs. But not for folder that I create manually.

I have gone through a macOS Catalina re-install (via Recovery Mode) and that did not solve my problem. I am now awaiting the support engineers to review diagnostics information from my computer. When I have a definitive answer, I will report back on what hopefully solves my issue.

I had wanted to comment on your post, rather than answer it, but I don't have sufficient reputation points to do that.

Cheers, David


No keyboard menu in Catalina I often have to type "weird" characters so I turned on the keyboard menu in macOS. Since upgrading to Catalina, it has disappeared and I cannot get it back.

In Settings->Keyboard->Keyboard I have "Show keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar" turned on.

In Settings->Keyboard->Input Sources I have "Show input menu in menu bar" turned on.

There is no menu item. Force quit of Finder and reboot did nothing.

Any suggestions?

I have also run into this problem, so far with no solution. There is however a workaround, from the question linked in the comments, which helps.

cmd-ctrl-space (⌘^␣) will bring up a quick emoji picker. There is an icon at the top right (circled in red) that will switch you to the system character viewer.

Once you have switched to the character viewer, you can navigate and insert characters as you normally would, just as if you had opened it from the input sources menu. Happily, once you have switched from the emoji picker to the character viewer the system will remember this choice, so the next time you hit ⌘^␣ you will get the full character viewer instead of the emoji picker.

It doesn't address the missing input sources menu, but for the specific task of adding non-standard characters I find it to actually be faster.

If you happen to know the code points you can also enable the 'Unicode hex input' input source. You can't switch the via the input sources menu, but you can use ctrl-space (^␣) to switch between enabled input sources. With the unicode hex input source enabled, opt-xxxx where xxxx is the code point number will insert a character.


macOS Notes app: zooming in on sketches made w/ iPad Pro I created a sketch in a note (Apple's Notes app, synchronized with iCloud) using 10.5" iPad Pro running 11.0.3. When I open this note on my macbook pro running 10.13, the sketch is tiny and there are no options to zoom in (zooming with cmd+shift+. does not affect the size of the sketch).

How does one zoom on a sketch so it appears the same size/sharpness as on iPad?

You should be able to double-click on your drawing which opens it in a new note window. In this new window you can scale image or just zoom in.


What is the best method of syncing photos from iPhone to (windows) desktop? My parents use windows and iPhone, and I have to run tech support for them.
The windows photo import tool fails, because the photo's arn't really on the device, and apple lies to windows saying that they are available for import, so it fails halfway.
If I install iCloud for windows, will it sync photos to the laptop via photostream? or will it continue to delete photos after 1000 photos?
If photostream isn't enabled, will it start randomly deleting photos older then 1000 days that my parents take, without them understanding what is happening? or will it give some sort of warning / clean up prompt?
Or is this likely something they are already familiar with as (mildly tech illiterate) users.

My issue ended up being driver related, what tipped me off was that the iPhone wasn't browseable in 'This PC' with DCIM available, so the photo app must have been using some alternate method of transferring the files.
Downloading the official drivers to make the iPhone show up as a removeable storage media device, allowed Windows Photo's to transfer all of the files successfully.
The files didn't seem to be packaged with iTunes as explained in https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204095
So I ended up installing iTunes normally, checking for the drivers and not finding them, installing iTunes from the windows store, then following the instructions to update the driver in device manager.


Is it possible to update macOS without Apple ID? I don't really like an idea of using an Apple ID and want to refrain from it. Is there a way to update macOS without registering into the Mac App Store?

Yes, there are three ways to update macOS without using an Apple ID. Most important thing to remember is that a user only needs the Mac App Store to download the installer, which downloads the update to the machine.

You can also download the installer from the Web by visiting this link on Apple Support website. Then copy the installer to the Applications folder. Double click on the application and you will be able to install the update.


How to disable Gatekeeper alerts on opening text files synced with Dropbox? I use WriteRoom to create and edit text files on the Mac (10.8.2). I keep these files in my DropBox (v1.6.14) folder so that they're synced to the cloud and can be edited on my iOS devices and other computers.

I had Gatekeeper set to allow applications downloaded from the App Store and identified developers:

And when I tried to open text files in my DropBox folder with WriteRoom, I got this Gatekeeper alert (which doesn't seem appropriate for the type of file it is):

I found this annoying, so I set Gatekeeper to allow apps from 'anywhere'. But then I get this message on trying to open these files:

I don't really mind how Gatekeeper is set but I would really like to disable these annoying warning messages. Does anyone know why they keep appearing and how they can be stopped?

Thanks for reading.

man spctl

That is good to know, although you can just do:

xattr -d YourFile.txt

This removes the quarantine attribute on files.

With spctl you can add WriteRoom to list of apps that can run. From

man spctl

EXAMPLES
 To check whether Mail.app is allowed to run on the local system:
       spctl -a /Applications/Mail.app

 To allow Frobozz.app to run on the local system:
       spctl --add --label "My Stuff" /Applications/Mail.app

 To forbid all code obtained from the Mac App Store from running:
       spctl --disable --label "Mac App Store"