Windows has MS Word. What does Mac have as a word processor? Microsoft has MS Word as a word processor for Windows.

What does Apple have for macOS? I'd like same feature rich application MS Word offers.

Unless I’m missing something, Microsoft Word is also available for macOS. For more information, visit Welcome to the new Office for Mac!.

If you’re looking for Apple's main word processor then Pages has most of the commonly used features of MS Word. It's free from the Mac App Store. For more information on Pages generally, visit Create and collaborate on documents that are beautiful beyond words.

A couple of other options are OpenOffice and LibreOffice (both free). There's also NeoOffice (which does have a small cost but offers a number of improvements over OpenOffice and LibreOffice).

As an aside, if you’re interested in a bit of history, Microsoft Word was originally available for the Mac before it was available for Windows. More specifically, it was available for Mac in 1985, four years prior to the release of the Windows version in 1989.

If your boss or professor (or other person grading your work) uses Word, then using Word yourself can help avoid grief from possible compatibility issues that can arise when other apps export to Word format.


Will macOS High Sierra support my iMac's 500 GB SATA internal physical drive? macOS High Sierra will be released on 29.6

But, I have one issue Apple is introducing a new file system (Apple File System) which is for (Mac with all‑flash internal storage). Now as much as I know that I have a traditional Hard Drive the rotating one, so will macOS High Sierra covert my hard drive to the latest Apple File System

Yes, while APFS is optimized for SSDs you can still use it for HDDs as well.

Installing macOS High Sierra on a HDD installation of macOS Sierra won't prompt you to convert it to APFS, though.

See this quote from Apple.com:

  Can I use Apple File System with my existing hard disk drive?

  Yes. Apple File System is optimized for Flash/SSD storage, but can
  also be used with traditional hard disk drives (HDD) and external,
  direct-attached storage.


I need to make my partitions into a single one after a failed bootcamp, how do i do this? I am a complete novice when it comes to macs. I recently tried to use bootcamp to run windows 10 and partition part of my hard drive. I used the bootcamp assistant and I followed all of the steps but when It came to the formatting bit whilst installing windows somehow it went tits up. Now I can't re-do bootcamp because of all of these partitions. i have tried disk utility but to no avail the '-' is always greyed out and I can't resize them using the partition pie chart. I have trawled the internet for days now trying to figure out a way to put them all back into a single partition to retry the whole bootcamp procedure. Its a 2015 27" 5k mac. It is is literally driving me insane.

I did go into diskutil in terminal but I couldn't workout how to copy and paste the text from that into here!!!

Any help would be appreciated massively.

I was able to resolve this by booting through internet recovery command+option+r and run disk utility. I was able to delete 3 partitions and after reboot i was now able to run bootcamp assistant once again.


How to ensure that Mac in network always remains connected to local Mac? I have a Mac on my LAN which we use it as server.

From other Macs, we have to always connect it via  Go -> Connect To Server.
Is there a way by which I can have my Mac server always visible rather than connecting it manually via Go > Connect to Server?

Please let me know.

Alternatively you can drag the items to your desktop to create Alias' that when you click will prompt for usernames and passwords.

Users can choose to remember the password in their keychain and they won't be asked for it again.

I use this solution for my server at home, dragged all the Alias' into a folder, put that folder in my Home Directory and then dragged it to the right side of the dock, I not have a nice stack full of the server shares I use regularly.


How do I use `log stream` to search ALL existent logs on macOS for strings? I need to search all logs on macOS Mojave for "some string".  I was told that the way to do this was to execute:

sudo log stream --source --start'1999-99-99 23:59' | egrep -i "some regex string"

However this isn't doing the trick.  What's the appropriate way to do this?

No support for --start

The usage guidances for log stream give no indications that a --start argument is supported, I wonder if they were talking about log show instead.

log stream usage

$ log stream --source --start
log: unrecognized option `--start'
usage: log stream [options]
   or: log stream [options] --process <pid> | <process>

description:
    Stream events from the system or a given process.

options:
    --color <mode>                  Control color output (valid: auto, always, none)
    --level default | info | debug  Include events at, and below, the given level
    --predicate <predicate>         Filter events using the given predicate
    --process <pid> | <process>     Stream events from the specified process
    --source                        Annotate output with source file and line-number
    --style <style>                 Output format (valid: syslog, json, compact)
    --timeout <num>[m|h|d]          Terminate streaming after timeout has elapsed
    --type activity | log | trace   Limit streaming to a given event type
    --mach-continuous-time          Print mach continuous time timestamps rather than walltime

predicate usage:
    Filter predicates follow the NSPredicate format described at:
    https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/Predicates/AdditionalChapters/Introduction.html

    For predicate field/type details, see `log help predicates`.

Using log show

log show has a --start switch which you can use as follows:

$ log show --source --start '2019-01-01' | egrep -i "some regex string"

NOTE: This can be a very expensive command to run since it'll be going through all the logs on your system from that --start time, but will return all the matches to your egrep.

Streaming logs

The use of log show will stop once it encounters the end of the logs. If you truly want to analyze/filter the stream of logs as they occur then you'll want to use log stream like this:

$ log stream --source | grep -iE "some regex string"

-or-

$ log stream --source --predicate 'processImagePath contains "some bit of text"'

References

How to filter logs via processImagePath?
log man page


iPod Nano wake screen sometimes shows music instead of Clock I've recently purchased a band from Lunatik to use my iPod Nano as a watch.

To do this, I've gone into Settings > Date and Time > Time on Wake and put this ON.

At first, this worked as expected, showing me the watch face when I hit the 'on' button.
But after I've played some music on the Nano, now it sometimes shows me the music application (even though it's not playing) instead of the Clock.

I've checked and the setting 'Time on Wake' is still on.

Anyone know how I can avoid this behaviour and always get the Clock when I hit the 'on' button?

Might as well answer this.

I've found out that it depends on what screen you had active before the iPod goes to sleep. If it goes to sleep with the Music screen, that apparently gets priority over the clock on waking (even if you have checked the 'time on wake' setting).

A workaround I've found is navigating to any Settings screen before putting the iPod to sleep. Upon waking up, he'll 'default' back to the Clock then... Apparently the Music screen has a higher 'priority' than the Settings screen, go figure.


iMac forgets brightness When I set my brightness on a 27'' iMac (2011) next time it boots up, it's dimmed. I switched off the ambient sensor, so this shouldn't be the problem. The connected Cinema Display remembers the brightness correctly.

Had anyone the same problem and found a solution?

I have heard a few people complain of brightness resetting on reboot. Traditionally brightness settings are stored in the PRAM, which you can reset via ⌘⌥PR on booting. I would be interested to see if it gets "stuck" on a brightness setting that you do not wish to have after resetting the PRAM.


How can I stream to Airplay and Bluetooth simultaneously? I have an iMac with airport express and I also have a logitech bluetooth speaker adapter.

Seemingly I cannot play through both at the same time.

I have even tried going to the MIDI settings and creating an 'aggregate' audio device but it just flips back after a few seconds of it being selected (to a working method)

EDIT: Snow Leopard 10.6.8

The app Airfoil allow multiple output synchronization (you can download a 10.6 version here (Airfoil for Mac 3).


macOS resolution can't scale up I'm running macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 on VMware on Windows 10 Pro 1803 build 17134.1.

My screen's resolution is 3840x2160 (4K) and I want the macOS to be in resolution 3840x2009.
However. it seems impossible, due to a strange behavior in which when I go to System Preferences → Displays and either click "Default for display" or choose from the resolutions list "3840x2009" - the resolution is changed for like 1 second, and then returning to resolution 1920x1005.
Note: I just reinstalled VMware Tools.

Thanks for the help!

You can go Setting -> Display -> Display scaling and turn off check mark "Automatic adjust user interface size in the virtual machine". It works!


Problems with Google Calendars and iCal in Lion I'm not sure WHY it is so hard to get calendar syncing to work right, but it does seem to be one of the problems of our age. I thought maybe finally with iCal 5 syncing with google calendars would finally just work, but no luck.

Main issue:

Everytime I delete an event, I get the message "There was an error saving ical data. iCal encountered a critical error while saving to the database, and recent changes may be lost. More information may be available in the console."

Console tells me:

iCal: CoreData: warning: An NSManagedObjectContext delegate overrode fault handling behavior to silently substitute nil/0 for all property values for the object with ID '0x7fd8fc768b90 ' instead of throwing as recommended.

This despite the fact I can't actually display my delegate calendars in iCal (they show up in the delegates tab, but I can't click the checkbox to show any of them), so the event I am trying to delete is in the "Main" calendar.

If I delete from the google side, it disappears no problems.

--

TLDR: gcal and ical won't play nice after Lion upgrade. Trouble deleting some events. Trouble adding any delegate calendars.

BusyCal is the best answer I can give you if you only want to sync calendars to Google.

I would also highly recommend SpanningSync which will also sync your Contacts in a much better and more reliable manner than Address Book will.

  (I have no affiliation with either company, and am a paying customer/user of both. I use/love BusyCal for my calendar, but I sync with MobileMe not gCal… I use SpanningSync to sync my contacts to Gmail. I have written reviews for both Spanning Sync and BusyCal.)


"Unable to download the software from the server at this time error" when installing printer I keep getting the following message (see image below) when trying to install a shared printer, I first got this error a month ago and have been trying every couple of days since, but i guess the error is permanent rather than a glitch.

Any ideas how i could resolve this ?

Normally your Apple would automatically download the supported printer drivers with system software.

Run a Software update (Click on Apple icon top left) on you computer to get a update.

OR-->

Download the driver from here:

http://www.techspot.com/drivers/driver/file/information/16150/

  Apple delivers third-pary software for scanners and printers via
  Software Update. Simply connect the printer or scanner to the Mac. If
  software is needed and available, OS X will automatically download and
  install it.

  This article is a comprehensive list of currently supported printer
  and scanner models and associated software provided by third-party
  vendors as of 28 June 2012.

  Important: Run Software Update before connecting to a printer or
  scanner. This will update the Mac's database on the latest supported
  printer and scanner models.


Force Sidecar to use usb connection macOS Catalina has a feature where you can use your iPad as a secondary display for your Mac. I have a Macbook Pro 2016 and a 10.5 inch iPad Pro 2017. Both are officially supported for the latest versions of macOS and iPadOS and support Sidecar.

I installed the latest version of iPadOS and macOS and tried using Sidecar and it kinda works but it's extremely laggy and blurry and almost unusable and if I turn wifi off in my mac it disconnects and complains about wifi being turned off.

As far as I know this feature can work with wired connections as well and I tried connecting iPad to Macbook using a (Lightning -> USB A) to USB C adapter and also also tried using a USB 3 hub connected directly to the laptop using USB C and it still does not work.

Is there any way I could force Sidecar to work over a wired connection?

I struggled with the same problem and just now finally solved it. The issue was for me that I didn't earlier "Trusted my iPad" on my mac, and "Trusted my Mac" on my iPad.
Here's a how to:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202778

After doing this, it finally connects via cable and is hopyfully less buggy. x'3


What will occur if the .DocumentRevisions-V100 folder is deleted? This post concerns the folder located at the following file path:

/.DocumentRevisions-V100

I right-clicked this folder in Finder.app and selected Get Info. After several minutes of waiting, the "Size" field still stated, "Calculating size."

So, I ran the following command in Terminal.app to get this folder's file size:

sudo du -sh /.DocumentRevisions-V100

This informed me that this folder takes up 70 GB on my rMBP.

After searching online, I learned that this folder is said to contain automatic back-up versions of files. However, I do not know how this works, exactly. My understanding is that once a window is closed or an application is Quit, then one can no longer click Undo to revert to previously saved states.

So, my first question is, how does one actually access these file back-ups? For example, when I pull up an old .rtf file in TextEdit.app, I see no option to "Revert to a previously saved version of this document."

In my view, 70 GB is a significant amount of space. I would like to clear up this space on my Macintosh HD. I recognize that one should delete system files with caution. Is it okay to delete this "DocumentRevisions-V100" folder?

What exactly will happen if this folder is gone? I do not see its purpose or value.

OS X El Capitan, version 10.11.6.

Just because one cannot see something's purpose or value doesn't mean there isn't one!

If you delete the /.DocumentRevisions-V100 directory it will break the Document Revisions feature in OS X until you reboot. At which point the /.DocumentRevisions-V100 directory is recreated.

Somewhere along the way the Document Revisions feature changed, i.e. it's not the same in OS X 10.11 as it is in OS X 10.8, e.g. in OS X 10.8 in TextEdit I can click the down arrow to the right of the filename in the title bar of the document and select Browse All Versions..., and it opens the Time Machine interface when I can view the various versions of the document that are stored within the /.DocumentRevisions-V100 directory. This is not the case in OS X 10.11. I'm not sure when this feature changed to have less importance then it used to have in e.g. OS X 10.8.

In OS X 10.11, if you delete the /.DocumentRevisions-V100 directory, without rebooting, and create a new document in TextEdit and save it, then reopen and edit it, then click the close button... you'll get the a dialog box, "Do you want to save the changes made to the document You can revert to undo the changes since you last opened the document." and if you click the Revert Changes button, it errors out with "The operation couldn’t be completed. No such file or directory" until you reboot.

Note: This assumes you have Ask to keep changes when closing documents checked in General under System Preferences.

If you want to clean up what's in the /.DocumentRevisions-V100 directory, then close all applications except for Terminal, and use the following command:

sudo rm -rf /.DocumentRevisions-V100

Then reboot.

NOTE: Make sure you have a proper Time Machine Backup and be very careful using the above command, make sure it is properly formed and there is no space between / and .DocumentRevisions-V100! You have been warned!

It would actually be more safe to do it in two steps, e.g.:

cd /
sudo rm -rf .DocumentRevisions-V100


Drafts Folder in Mail.app contains messages which have been sent From time to time my Drafts folder contains an autosaved message that I haven't sent which is nice because I can pick up where I left off creating a new message, but lately most of the messages are messages that I did send.

I then have to go and check that the message did in-fact get sent before I can delete the draft.

This mailbox is unified from 3 IMAP accounts, one being a gmail account. I haven't seen a pattern (e.g. the zombie drafts always being from one account).

Has anyone else fixed this issue, or at least seen it?

Gmail accounts are specifically subject to this issue.

In this Apple Support Communities post, there is a good discussion of why this occurs and how to reduce or stop it. To quote a particular response:

  Mail creates a temporary draft each time you compose a message. If you
  send the message while the IMAP account syncs, the draft doesn't get
  deleted and gets stored in gmail's draft folder.

  If you want to stop this, uncheck to store drafts on the server. It will put the draft
  folder back under the gmail folder and create a local draft folder for
  gmail. If you need to complete a draft on another device, simply move
  it to the IMAP draft folder.

I can verify from experience that this issue occurs in Mountain Lion as well.


Browsing in Finder is extremely slow while fine in Terminal I did Repair Disk Permissions, reindexing files for Spotlight, and remove cache folders but it's still broken. It takes 30 seconds to several minutes to files to show up in local, not remote, folders.

Also tried to boot in Safe Mode but it was the same there.

I've used this MacBook Air for 10 months and it wasn't a problem for the first 9.5 months. I can't figure out since when it's been broken and what's caused the problem.

I'm using MacBook Air (mid 2011) and OS X 10.8.2.

Do I need to reinstall the OS? I have Time Machine backups and I've heard that you can restore from Time Machine backups after reinstalling the OS, but what if that also restores the problem back?

I found it. It was automounted NFS shares that makes Finder unstable (even for local folders). I used hard,intr mount options so the disconnect dialog was not showing up. Now I use crankd in PyMacAdmin so that they are only mounted when I'm in my home network.


How does iOS AppStore handle multiple version targeting different version of iOS? Let's say I have an app with two versions that target different versions of iOS:

Version 1.0: Deployment target iOS 5
Version 2.0: Deployment target iOS 8

My understanding is that when a user goes to the AppStore to download the app, this is the version they will get:

iOS 5: Version 1.0
iOS 6: Version 1.0
iOS 7: Version 1.0
iOS 8: Version 2.0

First, is this true?  Is it true that both versions will be offered in the AppStore?  And users will be given the opportunity to download the best version for their version of iOS?

Second, if someone is already running Version 1.0 and has an iOS version less than iOS 8, then they will not get notified about a new version and will not be able to download the new version (unless they upgrade to iOS 8)?

I think when you upload an application, App Store save the version of the app, for example - Version 1.0 for iOS 7. And when you update the app to 2.0( for example ), and this version is for iOS 8, the user that use iOS 7 ( like iPhone 4 ) it will get a message like this


Moving Sim Card from One iPhone to Another I am looking to buy an iPhone 4 from the secondary market. I currently have an iPhone 3GS. Can I just replace the sim on the new iphone with my current sim? Or is there something else that I need to do?

If you want to make your SIM into a compatible iPhone 4 Micro-SIM, you'll need a micro sim cutter. Look these up on ebay in your area. They're as cheap as chips and save you a ton of bother.

Look for DIY ways of making pre-iPhone 4 SIMs into iPhone 4 Micro-SIMs on YouTube. There's video instruction for how to do it yourself


Need advice on connecting Macbook Air to HP all-in-one box (Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 4, I think) My daughter has a non-most-recent Macbook Air with what I thought was originally a mini-DP output but it turns out to be a Thunderbolt (probably v2 since the Mac is only a couple of years old). This particular model seems to have {audio out, USB-A, power} on the left, {SD (I think), USB-A, Thunderbolt 2} on the right (both listed front to back).
We want to use one of our existing monitors hooked up to another of our systems, without having to remove and re-insert cables all the time.
This monitor is fed via HDMI from a HP Thunderbolt dock (HSN-IX02) which only has a Thunderbolt/USB-C input, but many other outputs (HDMI, DP, etc). The monitor has HDMI, DVI and DSUB inputs of which the first two are in use.
I very foolishly bought a mini-DP-to-DP cable, thinking that would work just be plugging the Mac mini-DP output into the dock DP output, not realising at the time that:

the latter was an output rather than an input; and
the Mac output wasn't even a mini-DP :-)

So I think what I need is a cable with male Thunderbolt 2 at the Mac end and female Thunderbolt/USB-C at the dock end (the dock has a hard-wired input cable with male Thunderbolt/USB-C).
My concern is that all the cables I look at seem to assume the Thunderbolt/USB-C is at the Mac end (which is true for more recent models) and I don't want to blow more money on the wrong cable. In any case, the Thunderbolt/USB-C end for these cables is male and I need female.
So I guess my question is: will such a cable work from Thunderbolt-2 at the MAC to Thunderbolt/USB-C at the other end? I assume I will also need to purchase a female-female gender-bender to connect at the dock end as it's the wrong gender.
A secondary question is: what are my other options, if any, for external displays on this Mac? There appears to be no other output ports and I'd rather not have to buy another monitor since we have no place to put it.

First: Your Macs Thunderbolt 2 (TB2) port can act like a mini-DP port, so any cable that is mini-DP to something that can be connected to your monitor will work. However, connecting your TB2 MacBook to that docking station will most likely not work and may be expensive.
You mentioned there is a free VGA port on your monitor, so I would get a miniDP to VGA cable. Inexpensive and should serve your needs. However, as Gilby has pointed out in the comments this will usually limit your resolution to 1920x1200.


Find files created by program Is there an app out there that lets you see what files were created by a program? Basically I need to figure out where a lock file for a Java program is.

Try Activity Monitor. Left-click on the Java app > Information > Open Files and Ports.

You get list of all opened files for this application.


What happened to Shared Links in Safari 11.0 Apparently "Shared Links" no longer works in Safari 11.0 - see e.g. http://www.openradar.me/33142258 though I only saw this today for the first time when Apple pulled a Microsoft and auto-updated Safari (apparently, anyway).  See this picture for how it looks now - there should be three tabs on the far left.

Any notions on what happened here?  I assume there is a plist I can search through to at least see whether it just lost all my RSS feeds, that would be helpful, though if someone has a hack that would be better.

(Yes, I have attempted to use other free RSS readers, but they don't integrate as well with ordinary web browsing as this by a long shot.)

You can find a plist of your feeds at ~/Library/Safari/WebFeedSources.plist. Use this command to get a list in a human-readable format:

plutil -p ~/Library/Safari/WebFeedSources.plist

It is annoying that the Shared Links feature was removed in Safari 11 -- Apple seems to add/remove RSS support every few years...


Mid 2010 Macbook Pro goes into an unresponsive hibernate state for unpredictable amounts of time When my macbook is in standby, and the battery dies it sometimes goes into an unresponsive state in which (after charging) it won't turn on. The power button has no effect, even in combination with any key, such as T for target disk mode. The machine will stay in this state anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks and then spontaneously boot and resume from a hibernation state. (grey screen and loading bar) One one occasion, about 2.5 weeks had passed and the machine spontaneously woke up while it was being disassembled and scrapped for parts. Also, on at least three occasions, the computer just crashed (instant black screen) and the power button didn't turn it back on for a few days.

I'm running Mavericks 0.9.1 (13B42)
The special diagnostics self test (boot while holding d) does not report any errors.

If anyone has ideas of what to check, please share. Thank you!

The problem was solved by doing an SMC reset. press Shift-control-option-powerbutton when the machine is off and plugged in. The indicator on the magsafe adapter will flash from orange to green and back to orange.


How do I completely wipe macbook? I was going to sell this macbook, so I needed to wipe it, however it doesn't seem like the recovery mode method will do everything, since I have 2 other partitions and I can't figure out how to merge them all to 1 partition with just mac os on it

To repartition your hard drive (under macOS Sierra)

Open Disk Utility.
Select physical drive (most top level), not any of the partitions you have.
Click Partition button in the top row of buttons.
Select first of your two other partitions and press - button. This shall remove selected partition.
Repeat for the second of your other two partitions.
Select your first partition (where macOS is installed).
Drag resize control (press ⌘ for it to appear) or enter size manually to use all available space and press Apply.

Then follow these steps to prepare your Mac for sale.

What to do before selling or giving away your Mac

When preparing to sell or give away your Mac, you may want to erase some or all files from its hard drive. But first determine whether you should back up your computer and disable certain features and services. These steps show the recommended sequence of actions:

Deauthorize your computer from iTunes, if applicable.
Back up your data using Time Machine or other backup methods.
If you use Find My Mac or other iCloud features on this Mac, complete these steps:

Back up your iCloud content.
Choose Apple Menu () > System Preferences, then click iCloud.
Deselect the Find My Mac checkbox.
Sign out of iCloud. When you sign out of iCloud, you're asked whether you want to remove iCloud data from your Mac. Removing iCloud data in this way makes sure that the data isn't also removed from any of your other devices that are using the same iCloud account.

Sign out of iMessage:

In the Messages app, choose Preferences > Accounts.
Select your iMessage account, then click Sign Out.

Reformat your hard drive and reinstall macOS.
After you reformat your hard drive and reinstall OS X, the computer restarts to a Welcome screen and asks you to choose a country or region. If you want to leave the Mac in an out-of-box state, don't continue with the setup of your system. Instead, press Command-Q to shut down the Mac. When the new owner turns on the Mac, the Setup Assistant will guide them through the setup process.


Macbook can't resolve any domain names I have a 13" Macbook running Snow Leopard 10.6.6 which is unable to go to any URL on either my office or hotel networks.

I have no proxy or firewall enabled on the computer - and have connected to both networks in the past without issue.

If I ping google.com, it responds with 'cannot resolve google.com, unknown host' - however if I ping the IP it responds fine. I can also visit the IP in my browser and it goes to the page successfully.

I have rebooted, flushed my cache in several ways, tried to use Google's DNS (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) all to no avail.

Any advice would be super!

I think it has to do with Bonjour (mDNSResponder). Check out this page.

Run the following command in a Terminal:

ps aux | grep mDNS

This should tell you whether or not /usr/sbin/mDNSResponder is running. If it is not, run the following command to launch it:

sudo /usr/sbin/mDNSResponder


Client torrent for broadcatching I would like to drop Vuze that I've been running for many years now on my G4 Mac mini in favor of a more lightweight torrent client.

These two features are mandatory:

Watched folder
RSS scanner for automatic downloads

Any recommendation?

I use Automatic (I use 1.x version, which was free, I see there’s version 2.x which is a paid update and I didn’t know about. My 1.x works ok), Transmission for the download (it monitors the files that Automatic downloads from a RSS feed I’ve created using ShowRSS (free).


Copying Subscribed Calendar from iPhone to Mac I have a subscribed calendar on my iPhone. If I look in the Settings under Mail, Contacts, Calendars, under Subscribed Calendars, I see the subscribed calendar.

If I go into the subscribed calendar on my iPhone I see:

Account (On)
Server: mobile.server.com/ical.php?uniq_uuid
User Name:
Password:
Use SSL (On)
Remove Alarms (Off)

On my Mac, I go to the Calendar application, and select Calendar->Add Account, and then select "Add CalDAV Account...". There are three modes, Automatic, Manual, and Advanced. In the Manual mode, I see:

Account Type: Manual
User Name:
Password:
Server:

If I go into "Advanced", I see:

Account Type: Advanced
User Name:
Password:
Server Address:
Server Path:
Port:         Use SSL (checkbox)
Use Kerberos v5 for authentication (checkbox)

I have the information I need to enter from my iPhone, but I can't save it on my Mac unless there's a User Name, but there isn't one in the iPhone account information.

How can I enter this information from my iPhone to my Mac? My Mac is running Mavericks and the iPhone is running iOS 7.0.

If it really is a subscribed calendar (i.e. a URL to an .ics file) you should try the following:

In Calendar.app on your Mac, choose File > New Calendar Subscription and enter the URL from your iPhone.


Which cellular carriers worldwide allow FaceTime calls over 3G/4G Networks? Do any carriers allow for FaceTime video and/or voice calls to pass over normal data channels directly from an iOS device? If not, what alternatives exist short of jail breaking or other gray solutions that would run afoul of the current policies of the cellular carriers? (for example WiFi devices that in turn use 3G / 4G for their connectivity)

Standard, Apple doesn't allow you to make FaceTime calls on a 3G network. And however 4G is often faster then WiFi, the LTE network isn't supported either.

There are however some ways you can enable FaceTime over 3G using Cydia (so jailbreak) or you can use your personal hotspot feature (jailbreak too) to enable this.

UPDATE:
I've tested the method of Redmondpie (with iFile) and with a Belgium Provider (Proximus) it works like a charm!


Prevent Pages from breaking web link at slash I want to put a web link, right-justified, in the header of a page. There is room for the entire link to easily fit, but Pages keeps breaking it at one of the slashes.

Pages does:

            site.com/subdirectory/
                         page.html

What I want is:

   site.com/subdirectory/page.html

How can I force the link to display on one line?

I fixed it by:

Clicking on the link; pressing escape at the resulting window; then pressing the left arrow to move to the beginning of the link...
In the Format pane, under Text, on the Layout tab, changing the Indent values to zero.

The Indent values were defaulting to 0.5 in for 'First' and 'Left'. Changing the 'First' value was enough to move the text correctly.


Which temperature element is causing MacBook to stop? I have a MacBook 12 Early 2016.

When I'm using it outside and it is hot, it warns me about stopping because the temperature is too high. And then it stops.

I'm using a tool to see the temperature of different elements of the MacBook but I would like to know what is the element that makes this warning : I don't think it is the CPU because sometimes it is hotter without any warning.

Is it the battery temperature or cpu proximity ? is there an official explanation ?

Thanks

No. Apple doesn’t publish firmware code and you’d have to reverse engineer several components including the on die cpu sensors, the discrete sensors, probably sensors on storage and possibly dozens of sensors within the battery cells.

Since the MacBook have no blowers, on a practical level, you can prop it up on a stand and ensure airflow is good and optionally ensure cool air surrounds the device to reduce internal temperatures. The whole case is a heat sink and radiator, so you can dramatically cool it with an elevated stand and/or cool airflow.

If you have any coverings or cases on your Mac - absolutely remove them since a thin gap of air between the metal and plastic is a great insulator just like a blanket would be.

Outside in the sun or even with shade, you can have several additional problems:

sunlight on the black screen will overheat it dramatically and light on the rest of the case is less than ideal.
getting cool air will be hard or impossible


Dropped frames during playback of 4k/2160p video on Mac mini 2014 I have a Mac Mini late 2014 2.6Ghz Intel Iris 1TB 5400rpm HDD 8GB RAM model. So far it has been great, does everything I need, no issues with performance. I use it more as a media center than a pc. It's currently hooked up to a 32" 1080p LED TV through HDMI.

I'm buying a 4K TV in some time, and just curious I decided to download some 2160p videos, they were very choppy, CPU usage went up to 400% with 20+ threads. It just wasn't working right. RAM usage was around 1.5 GB.

I've tried using VLC and IINA. Currently running on High Sierra.

So my question is if I should try upgrading the HDD to an SSD, as some people suggested me to make it faster?
Should I be using the Thunderbolt port instead?

Or is it just time to upgrade my Mac, which I don't really want to right now tbh.

Thank you very much for any suggestions you can give me.

Edit - Problem seems to only occur when I'm using HEVC/H265 videos in 4K, not H264.

The issue is that the the HEVC/H.265 standard is very new, and while there is software support, there hasn't been an update to the Mac mini in a very long time, so there is absolutely no possibility that this has a hardware codec. However H.264 has been around for a long time and there will almost certainly be a hardware codec for this on every device since at least 2010 I would imagine.

Effectively the only way to decode H.265 videos would be for a software codec to use the CPU, and possibly the very limited GPU power in this machine to process this and that is why your computer will be struggling to playback H.265 and not H.264.

There some more details about supported hardware on Apple's website here.

Also worth remembering is that 4K support on most older Mac hardware is limited, and while your 2014 machine supports it, there will be no HDR, and only 30Hz / fps screen resolution on this, further details on Apple's website here.


Sending Control+Alt+  to terminal in iTerm2 When I press Control + Command + i I would like iTerm2 to send the shortcut as C-M-i (i.e. ctrl+alt+i) to my terminal.
I have
How can I do that?
I have tried with the following with no luck:

Any thoughts on how to get this to work?
Update:
I read the following here:

To have iTerm2 send "C-M-Space" to the terminal:
1) Open: Preferences > Profiles > some session you wish to edit > Keys.
2) Add a new key binding by pressing the "+" button.
3) Select the "Keyboard Shortcut" field, and press ctrl + option + space.
4) Select "Send Hex Code" in the "Action" list.
5) Type "0x1b 0x00" to the field below the list.
6) Click OK and close the preferences window.

I wonder if I can follow the same approach for my problem. How do I find out which Hex Code I need to send for Control+Command+i?
Update 2
After reading this thread, I installed Key Codes and found the following info for Control + Command + i. What specifically am I supposed to enter as a hex codein iTerm2 for this to work?

I finally sorted out the various issues to come up with a solution.  The problem seems to be that if the Control key is part of the keyboard shortcut  then no other modifier keys that are also pressed will change the code that is sent by that keypress.  If Control + i produces the ^i (tab) character then adding more modifiers to the shortcut will still produce the same ^i code, at least when using iTerm2.  This may be occurring at the OSX level or perhaps at the Unix level where a termcap table handles the translation of "terminal keys" to "output codes." It can be observed with iTerm2 by using "cat -v" or "vis -o" to see the output being generated and is also seen when using Key Codes (without iTerm2 running) which makes OSX the more likely culprit. That conclusion is supported by noting that the general user is not able to redefine certain keyboard shortcuts (without difficulty) that are reserved for basic OSX functions (such as Command-Tab for program switching).

It is possible to programmatically differentiate any set of modifiers pressed with a character key but those modifier flags are accessible programmatically within OSX and by a totally unique set of codes for every different set of keys pressed. To witness this, use Key Codes and while holding the Control key and pressing a character key and then doing the same while pressing additional modifier keys at the same time, note that it is always the same character code that is produced. Yet Key Codes has access to the various keys being held and is able to display them to us in the "modifier" field that it reveals. And, if iTerm2 could only see the standard codes produced from various key presses and not also see the modifier flags then iTerm2 itself wouldn’t be able to define the range of shortcut keys that it is actually able to define.  On the other hand, after identifying each set differently modified keys in a unique manner, iTerm2 appears to pass it’s generated codes to OSX where they are handled in the same way as if they’d been keyed on a keyboard, resulting in identical output for groups distinguishable keystrokes.  So, for example, iTerm2 may pass the unique Control + Alt + i determined code(s) out for the use of tmux but OSX takes them and tosses out a few details before delivery, making the code appear to be just ^i when it finally arrives for tmux to handle. The shortcut binding in tmux expects to receive the code we thought we were sending but along the way OSX has removed the information about the Alt (Meta) key, the same as it would do if the keyboard shortcut had been typed on a keyboard.

The solution is to find a key combination that won’t be used for something else and that can be transmitted without being changed to another key combination that you do want to use. That’s where Key Codes is useful since it let's you test many key  combinations and find what the key presses are translated to be "unique enough."  Here’s the process I used to make it work for me:

Goal: Running tmux in iTerm2, I want to be able to press Command-Control-i and have tmux execute the "select-pane -U"command.

Choose an esoteric key press that you won’t be using. Consider a multi-key sequence with the tmux escape character followed by another unusual key press making it much less likely to be needed.  I’m choosing to send the standard tmux escape character (0x02 = ^b) followed by the ansi code sequence for F1 (0x1b 0x4f 0x50).  Good keys to look at are the less used characters generated on a Mac by holding down Alt (Option) and Shift with another character key.
Within iTerm2 open Preferences and define the Command+Control+i shortcut in either the global key shortcuts or as a keyboard shortcut for a specific profile.

Press the + button to add a new shortcut.
Click in the Keyboard Shortcut field and hold down the Command and Control keys while you press the "i" key.
Use the mouse to select "Send Hex Code" in the Action drop-down. (Trying to use Tab to leave the Shortcut field will change the value for the shortcut.)
Type the string "0x02 0x1b 0x4f 0x50" (without the quotes and assuming that you are using the default tmux escape character, ^b = 0x02).
Press the OK button to commit your shortcut. Close Preferences.

Within iTerm2, invoke a tmux session and define the key binding for the codes iTerm2 will send.

Invoke tmux as you normally would.
In the tmux window type the command: "tmux bind-key F1 select-pane -U" (without the quotes.)

Test it by splitting your tmux window into several appropriate panes and try using Command+Control+i to move through panes vertically. If successful, you'll probably want to record your key-binding with the start-up bindings invoked by tmux on startup.

This method worked fine for me and should work well unless you have somehow used all the possible keyboard combinations for other uses.  Methods like this one combined with practice and experience guessing the inner workings of a system should can help work around situations like this one that may feel foreign and overwhelming. Some parts of the above explanation are reasonable guesses as to what is occurring or that may assign blame to the wrong process but I hope that it’s helpful as a guide to how problems like this can be approached with less than a complete understanding of the whole system.


Notification Center stuck over ¾ of the screen, so can't power off My notifications are blocking it ¾ of the way and it really sucks. I thought it might have had something to do with the really laggy server I was on in Minecraft, but apparently not, because I saw the other question.

Is there any way to turn an iPod touch off without needing the slide to power off?

iPod touch 5th generation

You can try this method:

Hold the power button and the home button simulatenously.
Keep them pressed until the display turns off. Release both buttons immediately.

It may be tricky to pull this off as the iPod touch will reboot if you hold the buttons too long.


Open all iCloud tabs from iPhone on Mac TLDR; Is there a way to simultaneously open all iCloud tabs saved on iPhone, on a Mac?

I use my iPhone for browsing and as a means of "read it later" I just leave the open tabs there with the purpose of opening them all later on my Mac. Is there a way to open them all (much like Chrome allows in the "Tabs from other devices" in History page)?

Assuming you don't require them to open literally simultaneously, but simply rapidly, this is quite doable.

First, add the iCloud Tabs icon () to your Safari toolbar, if it isn't there already. To do this, right-click the toolbar, select "Customize Toolbar…", and drag the icon to where you want it.

Once the icon is in your toolbar, click it. A list of tabs open on your other devices will appear. To quickly open lots or all of these pages in Safari, simply hold down the command key (⌘) while you click each site you want to open.

Command-clicking a link, bookmark, or other reference to a page will, by default, open it in a background tab. If you find, when you command-click one of the items in the list, that it opens in the foreground and closes the iCloud Tabs menu, either shift-command-click, or deselect "When a new tab or window opens, make it active" in Safari's tab preferences (Safari > Preferences… > Tabs).

Edit: The third-party tool CloudyTabs is a menu bar application which includes the ability to open all your iCloud tabs at once. (h/t Matt Sephton for finding it!)


Some icons appear twice in the Sidebar I have two MacBooks and a Mac Mini that are synchronized through Mobile Me. All times they synchronize to Mobile Me, the MacBooks (which runs Mac OS X Lion) keep showing some icons two times, in the sidebar of the Finder; this doesn't happen to the Mac Mini, which runs Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

What can I do to avoid this, apart avoiding that the MacBooks running Mac OSX Lion synchronize with Mobile Me?

The reason is because the applications are slightly different for each version of the OS so they are in effect 2 applications. Until you upgrade your mac mini I would recommend turning off syncing of just the dock.


How do i import photos from a Lumia phone to El Capitan's Photos app? I plug my phone into my mac as I would with an iPhone, and indeed Photos says that it can find the device, however it doesn't show any photo thumbnails or give you any options to import the photos. Any suggestions?

You can use this soft :

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/mobile/support/product/nokia-photo-transfer-for-mac/

  Use this software to transfer photos and videos between your Nokia
  Lumia phone with Windows Phone 8 and your Mac computer or laptop with
  Mac OS

After that you can import your photos (stored on your computer) by using Photos.

Photos -> File -> Import ...


What is the purpose of an AAE file? First, some background:

For those of you who edit photos using Apple software, you may have encountered AAE sidecar files, which are generated automatically by the Photos app (for iOS or macOS) when you export an edited image. These sidecars contain the data representing the edits made to the original image, such as crops or recoloring. Following an export, these AAE sidecar files will usually be located in the same directory as the original, exported image/JPEG file.

Theoretically, edits made to an image using the Photos app (on iOS or macOS) are "non-destructive," meaning that you can always revert to the original image anytime after editing.

Now, the problem:

For the life of me, I cannot understand if these AAE files are actually good for anything once they exist. If you try to import an original image file and its AAE into the Photos app, you only see the original image. The edits don't seem to transfer.

Likewise, advice from Apple and user forums regarding the transfer of edited photos suggest that you use iMessage, AirDrop, or other methods to copy the edited image itself to the new destination. This process, however, defeats the idea of non-destructive edits since it will prevent you from ever reverting to the original image.

Finally, the question:

Does the AAE sidecar file serve any purpose? If so, what does it actually offer a user or program once it exists? Can we do anything with it?

According to several sources this feature was introduced with the launch of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite (now macOS Yosemite).

The AAE file format is proprietary, which usually means that only Apple, and Apple-approved, software can interpret the contents. Some cross platform apps that can take advantage of the AAE format are Lightroom and Photoshop. However the file appears to be a regular XML file.

A sample file for a slow motion video would look like this: https://pastebin.com/raw/1r8416rm

The data tag is encoded with base64 and, when decoded, contains a property list (.plist) formatted file that looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/CYPVcTO.jpg

Simply put, an AAE file contains information that specific apps can use to apply effects to photos and videos based on edits that a user makes in the iOS Photos app.


how can I write on my screen using terminal? How can I write on my computer screen or open an application like notes and write on it from Terminal??

I can open up notes or any other app/document.

Terminal is a CLI, or Command Line Interface, and notes and other text editor apps that you are familiar with are part of the GUI family, Graphical User Interface. The GUI is most likely the type of interface you interact with every day.

That being said, you cannot open and run a GUI app in a CLI. If you open up myapp.app from Terminal, it will open it up as a GUI. For example, you can't open up Safari in terminal, do a google search from the command line, and then watch a video. However, there are a few CLI text editors that would be similar to notes already installed on your computer. My favorite is vi.

Open your terminal, and type vi after the prompt. A new interface should appear with a description of vi. I'll post a link to all the commands in vi at the end of my post, but I'll go over a few of the essential ideas.

No mouse. It's 100% a CLI, meaning you can't use the mouse for anything. Instead, use the arrow keys.
With that in mind, when you enter vi you are in command mode. We'll talk more about that in a second. To add text, you have to enter insert  mode, which is done by typing i+return. Now you are in insert mode and you can type whatever you want.
Command mode: When you are done typing, you're going to want to save your file most likely. To do this, you must enter command mode. Press the escape key. Then type:
:wq filename+return. This saves a new file called filename. Keep in mind it saves to the current directory you are in. To fully exit and save, type :wq

You can even change the standard output to make it viewable in the GUI:

    filename > filename.txt

Then, you can open filename.txt in textedit, or any other GUI text editor.

One last cool feature of vi, is it lets you edit current ASCII files anywhere on your computer. Just type vi filename in the prompt.

Here is a link to a basic list of vi commands


why isn't my environment variable visible from the command line? I'm trying to run the james smtp server on Lion.  When I do this ...

sudo JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home ./james-2.3.2/bin/run.sh

... it works fine.

However, I'd like to make JAVA_HOME an environment variable so it is visible to other applications too.

I edited ~/.bash_profile to look like this ...

export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/home

... and the variable appears to be visible from the command line like so ...

$ echo $JAVA_HOME
/Library/Java/home

But when I run james again like this, I get a warning about JAVA_HOME ...

$ sudo ./james-2.3.2/bin/run.sh
ERROR: JAVA_HOME not found in your environment.

Please, set the JAVA_HOME variable in your environment to match the
location of the Java Virtual Machine you want to use.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?  Why can't the command to run james see the JAVA_HOME environment variable?

Any info is greatly appreciated, thanks!

Rob

The issue is that you are not running in your environment so any changes to ~/.bash_profile will have no effect on the command. It will be visible to other processes

sudo runs as another user - in this case root as you have not provided a -u username parameter. Thus you need to change the root environment to make JAVA_HOME visible to the run.sh command


Mark Safari tabs with different colors? Is there an extension or a plugin that allows for marking different tabs with colors ?
I want to be able to group together a bunch of tabs that are relevant under one color using Safari.

Unfortunately the range of extensions available for Safari is pretty limited, and no one has written such an extension at this point.

Also having written an extension or two for myself in the past, there is no way to access the tabs and colour them in any way, so it would not be possible.

It may be worth looking at another browser such as Google Chrome, or Firefox.


What can *.itc files contain when not PNG or JPG? Yesterday I was a bit curious what iTunes .itc (by default in ~/Music/iTunes/Album Artwork) files were.
After a bit of research, I made a script to convert .itc to images (JPG & PNG).
For 1913 itc files : I get 467 png & 636 jpg files.
I was wondering what the other itc could be. Any idea ?

Well thanks @beroe for the link.

After some digging I wrote a little documentation of .itc files.

.itc files are actually wrapper of images that are either PNG, JPG or ARGB raw files. .itc files can hold multiple images with different size. Most of the time there are 3 images of (128*128, 256*256 & 400*400).

I wrote a little bash script that convert all .itc files into jpg or png and puts them in ~/Music/iTunes/Album Artwork/Images.


Cakebrew says "Error: Calling 'brew search' with no arguments to output formulae is disabled!" I am a new macOS user. I just did a fresh install on an A1398 MacBook Pro and upgraded to Big Sur. As I am used to package managers, I decided to investigate Homebrew and Cakebrew to go along with it. I was able to install Homebrew, with no warnings or errors. Then, I installed Cakebrew with the brew command.
Upon launching Cakebrew, the "All Formulae" list reports the following error:

Error: Calling 'brew search' with no arguments to output formulae is disabled! Use 'brew formulae' instead.

The same error occurs if I execute brew search on the command-line.

Your error is from the brew command, and Cakebrew is just reporting it. You can see the error if, in Terminal, you do: brew search.  I suspect that your Cakebrew has not kept up with changes to the brew command.
The version of Cakebrew installed via HomeBrew is version 1.2.5. I have always used that from Cakebrew web site. From there you will get version 1.2.7.  Try that.  The "All Formulae" list works for me.
Edit: The question was also asked here github. The recommendation is to update to version 1.3.  This fixes the issue.


Dock shows on only one screen on OS X Mavericks I understood that every display would behave independently on OS X Mavericks, and that it would get its own bar (top of the screen) and dock.

However, the dock shows only on the main screen, and not on the other screen, is it normal?

If you're using a stacked display configuration, as in main monitor with the secondary above, then the dock does not appear on the second display. If it can or does, I'd like to know because this is how I run my setup.

If you have them oriented right to left, then the dock will appear. In my limited experience, only one image of the dock appears at a time on whichever monitor you activate it on. You have to play with it, as the cursor motion seems to need to be elongated or dramatic or whatever. Not a big thing, just different.

It's there by default, trust me. HTH.


Using the Apple Wireless Keyboard with an iPad with PC/Mac-like keyboard commands I have jailbroken iPad 2 (iOS5.1.1) and an Apple wireless Bluetooth keyboard that I use for typing on the iPad. Although the keyboard is a joy to use, I can't use it for much else other than typing documents and creating notes.

I'd like to be able to use some kind of keyboard shortcuts to move around/switch between apps, use shortcuts like Cmd + K or Ctrl + K in the browser and so on.

Is this somehow possible? And if so how?

BeeKeyboard is a tweak available via Cydia that adds the ability to create custom keyboard shortcuts. I'm not sure if it can do app-switching shortcuts, but you can install a plugin called BeeSafari to add some browser shortcuts.


Time Machine Backing Up Large Amounts of Data Each Time I've got 2 time machine drives. I have one at home that gets used on the weekend and another that gets backed up to during the week.  I recently replaced the one at my office.  The only thing that is weird is that it's backing up 3-4GB of data each hour. It goes super quick, so it doesn't feel like its actually backing up that much data, though. I've ran disk utility on the disk and it doesn't find anything. Any thoughts? Is it just something weird or is there a problem with the drive?

On Lion you can use tmutil to compare Time Machine backups:

sudo tmutil compare                      # compare computer to latest backup
sudo tmutil listbackups                  # list available backups
sudo tmutil compare <backup1> <backup2>  # compare two backups from backup list

This should give you a good idea about where the volume is coming from.


How to "require an answer" in a dialog in AppleScript? If one inserts an "Ask for Text" action into their workflow in Automator, they will be presented with the option to "Require an answer" of the user:

If the user fails to provide an answer, the user cannot press the "OK" button. The computer will beep at the user if the "OK" button is pressed while the answer field is empty.

Is there a way to replicate this exact behavior in AppleScript?

Yes, it can be accomplished like this:

repeat
  set myAnswer to the text returned of (display dialog "Your question goes here." default answer "")
  if myAnswer is "" then
    beep
  else
    exit repeat
  end if
end repeat

Please let me know if this works for you.

Second version that tells the user what the error is:

repeat
  set myAnswer to the text returned of (display dialog "Your question goes here." default answer "")
  if myAnswer is "" then
    beep
    display alert "Please enter your answer to continue."
  else
    exit repeat
  end if
end repeat


Mac Outlook 15.11 2015 "connection to the server failed or was dropped" (Error # -3253) In Outlook 15.11 2015 on Mavericks, I am constantly getting a "connection to the server failed or was dropped (Error # -3253)" for my pop accounts when I send/receive. I can send mail, but not receive it. I use GoDaddy as a hosting service. I have tried deleting the account, as well as the profile under profile manager. Has anyone else encountered this issue? If so, do you have a solution? I see on the MS forums where this is an issue, but I don't see a resolution.

I had this problem, too, and about the same time Safari started acting up by not loading pages. I found that the problem was the Avast Anti-Virus Software that I had installed on my machine. Once it was removed, the problem was solved: no more Safari issues and no more Outlook issues, specifically Error -3253.


How can I prevent the iCloud dialog from showing up for new users? On 10.7.2, whenever a new account is created, and the person logs in for the first time, they see the iCloud system pref pane.

Is there a way to prevent this from showing up?

From a Terminal window:

  sudo defaults write /System/Library/User\Template/Non_localized/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant DidSeeCloudSetup -bool TRUE

Source


External hard drive deep freezing Macs A quite nice problem:
I have an external USB 2.0 harddrive (Lacie Starck with 512GB) which was working fine during the last years. But now everytime I connect it to a Mac 3 seconds later a total crash of the system follows and the Mac needs to reboot.

I tried with OS 10.10, 10.9 and 10.6 on three different devices. All systems crashed, so it's not my Mac.

I removed the harddrive from it's case and put it into a new external case. Still crashing, so it's not the controller.

If I start the Mac into Recovery Mode and plug in the external harddrive there is again an immediate crash.

The disk itself still produces a good spinning sound but it's a killer-disk now... Problem is: I don't have any other PC with Linux or Windows and I want to get some files from the disk. Any suggestions?

I had this same issue, when I backup a Laptop from OSX to my External HD.  Months later, I was taking the backup HD, and cloning it's content to a Sparse file via SuperDuper.  However, randomly the process would die and the HD would act like it locked up.

For me the solution was to stop Spotlight from Scanning the HD.  This allowed me to utilize SuperDuper again, to take the image from the HD, move it to a Sparse image, which I could then backup on a NAS or offside disaster recovery, freeing the HD for other jobs.  I included the steps from an [article that helped me] to avoid future dead links.

Exclude Specific Items from Spotlight Indexing

  This is by far the simplest way to universally exclude something from
  Spotlight searches and it works in all versions of Mac OS X

System Preferences from the  Apple menu and choose the “Spotlight” preference panel
Click on the “Privacy” tab
Drag & drop folders or drives to exclude from the Spotlight index, or click the “+” plus icon in the corner to manually select hard drives or directories

Result:

  Spotlight will now NOT scan your HD, thus it won't hit that corrupted
  file or OSX unfriendly file.


How to forget Time Machine password from keychain When attaching a Time Machine, I am asked if I want to remember the password in the keychain. If I do that, how can I "forget" the password?

Launch Keychain Access, unlock your keychain, and then delete the entry you don't need. This will cause the keychain to forget that entry.


3G Speed on Verizon 4 vs 4S I need to outfit some of my field staff with iPhones. They will primarily be used as hot spots. On Verizon, is there any appreciable gain in OTA network speed between the 4 and 4S? I know the AT&T version is faster, however I need to stay on Verizon.

Since you appear to only want the gains to be for tethering, then I would say no, the 4S would not be worth the money for you.

The higher capacity of the 4S antennae's HSDPA is not supported on CDMA, you would need a supporting GSM carrier to take advantage of this. So no, you will not see a difference in network speed itself.

HOWEVER! Much of the sense of speed is in the phone hardware itself. Your phone needs to render the data it receives in browsers and apps. So you would still likely see performance gains that may appear to be network related, but are not, from upgrading to 4S.

Caveat: Might as well wait for the new iPhone model this year if you're going to be throwing down any money for handset upgrades.


Can't open files after upgrading to Mavericks After upgrading from ML to Mavericks (MB Air, 13", 256GB, 2011) I can't open any file or folder from the standard Open menu from any app (except MS Office -2011). But, I can search for a file (and open it) if it has a label. All the files/folders are greyed out so can't select them, as it can be seen in the attached screen capture (from Preview.app).

If I try to save a file, the only place I can do that is in the default folder: if I try to change the folder (navigating through the Save box) I can't save it any more.

What I've done (nothing worked!):

repairing permissions
delete and create a new user (keeping the user folder in /Users)
updated to 10.9.1

It is worth to point out that this only happens in my user account: after discovering this situation I created a second admin user and everything works fine within it!

Maybe you could start by moving ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist (where ~ is you're home folder) to the desktop and restart the Finder by typing sudo killall Finder into terminal. If it works with another user, it may be something in you're Library folder that is causing the problem. I would also check you're startup items under System Preferences:Users:Login Items. Another thing that could help is check you're logs in the Console Application and see if it is reporting anything unusual there.


How do you paste syntax highlighted code into Keynote '13? I give a lot of code heavy presentations with Keynote. Syntax highlighting makes these readable.

In the past I've used web based syntax highlighting tools, and then pasted the easier-to-read code into my presentation.

When I upgraded to iWork '13, which includes Keynote 6.1, pasting content strips the font style and color.

For example, if I take this colorful code from GitHub and paste it into Keynote it removes all the formatting as shown here:

Is there a way to get syntax highlighted code into these presentations?

The 'short' answer
... is that different apps copy formatted text to the clipboard in different ways, and different apps support pasting from different formats. Typically you'll get some kind of 'plain text' format, as well as maybe HTML or RTF formatted text in the clipboard, and it's up to the pasting app to choose which it likes best.
Keynote 6.1 definitely supports some kind(s) of formatted text pasting, as I can get this to work with Safari. But it doesn't seem to work with Firefox or Chrome (at the time of writing). From a bit of testing, it seems the Apple apps all play nicely together (no surprise there), and a few others will copy/paste to/from the Apple apps too (including Microsoft Office products). Unfortunately when you copy from Chrome, you only get plain text & HTML-formatted text copied to the clipboard, so it would appear Apple's iWork apps don't support pasting HTML formatted text.
So if copy/paste doesn't include formatting, you can either:

Try a different browser to copy from, such as Safari; or
Find an intermediate app to paste into (which 'speaks' both HTML formatting and can re-copy into a format Keynote/etc understand), such as Apple's own TextEdit.app

Surprisingly, Apple's own TextEdit.app will happily paste formatted text from Chrome, and it can be re-copied to the clipboard and pasted with formatting into Keynote/Pages/etc.
Depending on your point of view, this may seem a limitation (or fault) in Chrome/Firefox or in Pages/Keynote/etc, but in the end they simply don't speak the same formatting languages (at present).
I'd encourage anyone experiencing this to send feedback to the developers on both 'sides' in the hope of getting this fixed—either with Chrome/Firefox supporting RTF/RTFD copying (or whatever is most standard/appropriate beyond HTML), or by Apple's iWork apps supporting the pasting of HTML content.

More than you want to know about copying to the clipboard
When you copy some text to the clipboard, depending on the application, it may get copied in a few formats. You can see these using Apple's Clipboard Viewer application (requires building in Xcode).
For example, copying from Google Chrome, the clipboard gets populated with four separate copies of the information I copied—two plain text (public.utf8-plain-text, NSStringPboardType), and two HTML formatted (public.html, Apple HTML pasteboard type).
Copying from other apps gives various combinations of format types, with some other common ones being 'TEXT' (CorePastboardFlavorType), com.apple.traditional-mac-plain-text, Apple PDF pasteboard type, Apple PICT pasteboard type, public.rtf, NeXT Rich Text Format v1.0 pasteboard type, NeXT RTFD pasteboard type, com.apple.flat-rtfd, com.apple.iWork.TSPNativeData, com.adobe.pdf, com.adobe.indesign-import-ustl, and so on...
As you can see there are a variety of plain text formats (with various encodings like UTF8/UTF16), RTF types, PDF and Adobe types, image types. There's also a bunch of metadata types that describe the application that copied the data (e.g. com.apple.iWork.TSPNativeMetadata), or the features of the copied text (e.g. com.apple.iWork.TSPDescription), and what appear to be separated text and style data (ustl and TEXT as CorePasteboardFlavorTypes, and their com.adobe.indesign-import- equivalents).
I don't know any way of seeing which format types are supported by which applications for pasting, but using the Clipboard Viewer you can quickly see which format types are generated on copying.


Why does my computer freeze when I unplug my headphones? Whenever I plug in or unplug my headphones into my computer, it freezes for about 10 seconds before it is able to do anything which is rather annoying.  This didn't use to happen though, would anyone know the cause of this or how to fix it?

I faced a similar problem. I had a bluetooth headset and a wired one. Whenever I disconnected my wired one, sometimes the mac tried to connect to the bluetooth headset, and when it was switched off/out of range, the system would hang for sometime.

could be something similar. Can you give the list of speakers/headphones configured on your mac and their order (a screenshot would be convinient)


Accidentally emptied a Note, which was then automatically deleted I accidentally emptied the content of one of my Notes by selecting all and then pressing on the "return" key - removing everything.
I then quickly exited from my, now empty, Note, which my iPhone 8 automatically deleted.
And since this was an iCloud synced note it promptly synced it over to my Mac and deleted it from there.
So since technically I didn't delete it I can't find it in my "Recently Deleted Files". And checking my backup data on my iPhone there doesn't seem to be an option for Notes.

I'm sorry to say this but I think your note is permanently deleted.
Here's why:
Deleting text in a note is like deleting text in a Word-document. When you delete all text in a Word-document, you can still undo (using CMD+Z) while the document is open. If you closed the document, the undo history gets deleted. And I thinks iOS Notes works this way. Try to create a new Note, add some text, go back, exit the app (by swiping up) and open it again. Can you undo(shake the device) to remove text? No. Undo history is gone.


How to stop multiple iDevices from sharing iCloud-sync'ed information? Wife just got a iPad mini, we already have an iPad and an iPhone. Now all 3 are linked together -- they share Contacts, Notes, Reminders, etc.  We want to unlink all of them.

I know there has got to be an easy way but just can't figure it out.

Do we need all different AppleIDs or different accounts? And if so how we do that and then assign/change the different devices to the different IDs?

I believe the best way to accommodate lush you goal is by doing the following:

Delete account from Settings > iCloud
When asked to keep on iPad or delete, choose whether you would like that same information saved but be able to edit it without it affecting other device's information.
Choose set up a free Apple ID and proceed through the setup

The pros of this scenario:

Having the other devices using the new Apple ID to receive their own free 5 GB of iCloud storage
You will still be able to use the other Apple ID for iTunes and App Stores
Edit the content from the old iCloud account without those iCloud devices being affected from the changes
Utilize the iPhone cellular calls with iPad and other features of iCloud which are functionally made to be segregated between people

The cons:

Another email / password combination to remember.

Other information:

You can still share photos between accounts using iCloud photo sharing
Check the Apple ID used in Settings > Messages and Settings > FaceTime to ensure the proper Apple ID is being used, otherwise all devices could be sharing text messages and phone calls.
Additionally, you can setup Family Sharing in order to keep using apps, music and other media already payed for, and paying for future purchases with the same credit card.


Cannot reformat or unmount external that was used for Time Machine Trying to reformat a drive that was used for an employee's Time Machine and Data storage. It is a partitioned drive. Disk Utility failed to unmount the Data partition and reported the TM partition was OK, but I can't eject either without issues:
See attached. I've tried:
sudo diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ Reformat /dev/disk2
...which resulted in an error -69888: Couldn't unmount disk.
Also tried:
sudo diskutil unmount force /dev/disk2
...which resulted in an error that it was already unmounted or "has a partitioning scheme so use 'disk util unmountDisk' instead"
However:
sudo diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
...resulted in "Unmount of disk2 failed: at least one volume could not be unmounted."
When I try to reboot, the desktop icons disappear, the reboot never finishes and I end up forcing a shutdown via the power button. I've done all of the above several times.
Any ideas for untrashing this 2TB Seagate drive? Using a MacBook Pro with High Sierra. (Drive originally formatted/used on an High Sierra Mac.) Also tried an iMac which refused to mount it.

what @salocor meant was as below:

Select "Show All Device" from the view tab
Select the drive that you'd like to erase
Select Erase - MacOS Journaled with GUID Partition
Try and see if it works.


How to style notifications in Mountain Lion? Growl notifications can be styled using css.

Has anyone made any inroads on styling the notifications in Notification Center in Mountain Lion?

Notification center, like most Apple standard features doesn't provide much in the way of customizable appearance. Even app developers don't have any control over the appearance of the notifications. The most you can do is choose between the Banner and Alert styles in Notificantion preferences:

If you need more styling options, you'll have to keep using Growl where you can.


iTunes notifications I'd like to have a notification displayed in the dock every time a new song is played. Unfortunately, this doesn't exist as an option in the program preferences, but there are ways to do it, see this article for example.

However, for some reason this doesn't work for me. Can you guess why? I'm using a MacBook Pro with iTunes 10.6.1 running on Mac OS X 10.6.8.

This tweak is for OSX 10.7 only.

For something equivalent in OSX 10.6, you might want to give a try with 3rd party notifiers. The ones that come in mind right now are:

Growl (my personal favorite)
Sizzling Keys

There surely are more notification apps out there, Google is your friend!


Does mac OS install process erase flashdrive data DURING the install? It's well-documented that creating an install drive erases the target medium, but what about later, during the install process ?

i.e. can I create a bootable flash installer, and then add files to it, knowing that a later use of the flash for an installation will not erase those files ?

In my experience you can indeed put files on a flash drive that you made to boot and install macOS. The install process only reads from the flash drive. So your utilities should be safe.


My iPhone 6 has a problem charging My iPhone 6 has a problem charging it will charge then not charge then it will repeat it. When it gets to 100% and it get taken off the charger then a few minutes it will die.

What do I need to do to fix it?

If you can connect your battery to a Mac, get the app CoconutBattery and run it with your iphone connected to the Mac. It will tell you if iPhone battery is charging properly. I used it with my iPhone 6 and it correctly identified that battery was faulty and not charging properly. I took my phone in for a new battery.


How to add a shortcut to an individual iBook file to the iPad home screen? I'm currently in the process of creating an iBook for use within my company. Some of the people who will be using it aren't particularly tech-savvy, so I want to make it as easy as possible for them to access the iBook directly from the home screen of their iPads. I don't want them to have to worry about navigating into the iBooks app at all. Is there any way to save the individual iBook file directly to the home screen?

Host your epub somewhere, preferable direct link to open the epub itself. Eg. https://epub-samples.googlecode.com/files/mymedia_lite-20130621.epub
From the address bar, select the Share icon and add it to Home Screen, rename it to your epub name.

When they open the URL, they'll see options to open epub in supported app, with Open in iBooks on the right button.

The first time they open the epub, it'll be imported to iBooks, open them in iBooks. After that, choosing the same option will open the same epub, preventing duplicate.


Screen saver no longer asks for a password I'm using a MacBook Air 13" mid 2012 with Yosemite 10.10.3, it rebooted itself this morning without a reason and since then the screen saver is no longer asking for a password on unlock.

This is a great security flaw but I can't find a solution, I've tried modifying the security option by unchecking and checking everything again but it just does not work.

Anyone had this issue and know how to fix it? I use the device for work so it must always ask for a password before unlocking.

I've tried using backups and it did not solve the issues, after 3 reboots the problem disappeared without changing anything at all.

I don't know the reason or why it fixed itself with just several reboots, but seems a good solution.

I hope someone will discover the cause and a proper solution.


How to unmute headphones by default when plugged into MacBook Pro? Each time the mac is turned on, and the headphones are plugged in, they are muted by default on my MacBook Pro. I need to unmute them every time in System Preference-> Sound -> Output. I have thus two questions:

1) Do you know any way to automatically unmute the headphones when plugged into the mac ? A terminal command or any other manipulation ?

2) Is the behavior of my Mac normal ?

Thanks for your help !

1)
You can use a third-party app like Keyboard Maestro or EventScripts to trigger a volume setting script whenever you plug your headphone.

For exemple, with EventScript:

Click on Open Folder from EventScripts menu in order to open the scripts folder.
Add the script you want to be triggered, in your case something like do shell script "osascript -e 'set volume 1'" (note that set volume function works from 0 to 7, 0 being mute and 7 maximum volume).
Click on Choose Script from EventScripts menu and select the script to be used.
Add the event Headphone connected.

See my own setup as exemple to quit or launch Boom whenever my headphone or my bluetooth device is found:

2) I don't think this behavior is normal, your Mac should remenber the last volume setup you had with headphone... You should try to reset the PRAM setting, it may work :
shutdown your Mac and restart it while pressing and holding option +  command ⌘  + P + R


Switching "primary" imac in Target Display Mode I work in an office with a bunch of old iMacs sitting around. I thought I'd get clever and strap a few together to make a couple extra workstations. The goal has been to pair a 27" mid 2010 with a 21.5" mid 2010, using the 27" as the primary machine since it has much better specs. Both machines have mini DisplayPort, rather than thunderbolt, and are connected with mini DisplayPort cables.

The problem I'm running into is in pairing the machines, the 21.5" imac becomes primary machine and I can't seem to reverse this using Target Display Mode. I can toggle between the machines running separately, or the smaller one acting as the primary.

Is there something I'm missing? How do I switch them?

The FAQ for target display mode is pretty clear on the requirements.

You get to bring in external video if it matches exactly the requirements. Display Port isn't the same as Thunderbolt, so perhaps that's the issue. You also need the master iMac to be able to drive all connected displays.

If you can't use the hardware directly, consider software to merge the screens such as AirDisplay or Screen Recycler.


Solid coloured wallpaper for Home Screen on my iPhone I had a wallpaper on my iPhone (running iOS 12), which I had to change (because details were incorrect). So far so good, but I made the mistake of changing both.

How can I get a plain background on the Home Screen without any distracting graphics?

I seem to be able to select a Black background, but nothing else from the default wallpaper set. I am sure there were more options on older iOS versions.

I'm assuming you are selecting from the official backgrounds that are under Settings > Wallpaper > Choose a New Wallpaper menu. There used to be more plain backgrounds available, but Apple keeps removing the older ones after each iOS update. If you want to access older iOS wallpapers, check out this gallery (there are some plain backgrounds under iOS 7):

iOS Wallpapers

In case you want to set your own wallpaper, simply save the image to your gallery, tap the share icon on the bottom left, and select the Use as Wallpaper option.


Safari search suggestions reopen after search is completed This is a really annoying bug I've been experiencing since a while.

Enter a query in the search bar in Safari.
A drop-down list of suggestions appear.
I hit enter to perform the search, the respective Google page is loaded.
The drop-down suggestions are opened a second time. (The search field is still highlighted, which is the case for all four possible search engines.)

It only occurs if

Safari is in full screen mode and
Google or DuckDuckGo are set as search engine.

I'm on macOS Sierra 10.12.1 and Safari 10.0.1 but as I said, the problem has been here a while (at least a year).

Can anybody reproduce this? Is there a possible fix?

EDIT I thought I figured it out, but I tested with DuckDuckGo and it does not redirect you to a different domain. Yet the problem still occurs on that site. So the mystery continues. The first workaround might still work for you if you are using Google. The second workaround should work in any case.

I am able to reproduce this bug and have a few workarounds.

The reason this bug hasn't been fixed yet might be that it not always occurs when in full screen, you have to be in a different country than the U.S.A. too. It seems that the redirection to a different country domain causes this behaviour. I assume all the Safari developers reside in the U.S.A., so they never experience this behaviour.

Now for the workarounds:

Option 1

If you are using Google, visit google.com/ncr. This sets a cookie preventing redirection to a local Google site. The bug will disappear until you clear your cookies. There should be similar options for other search engines.

If you want it to disappear permanently or if you want to keep using your local site, we have:

Option 2

Add the AnySearch extension to Safari and configure it to use your search engine of choice. The bug does not seem to occur when using this extension.

I filed a detailed bug report with Apple btw. Hope it gets fixed in the near future.


Finder thinks item exists after it's already been deleted (Samba) First, I copied foo.7z to my SMB share (zfs zpool, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Samba 4.7.6) through finder. Over SSH, I moved it elsewhere on the server. I tried copying a different foo.7z again to the same location as the old one, but finder says:

"The operation can’t be completed because an item with the name “foo.7z” already exists."

This is not true, as the file isn't there anymore after I moved it.

Here's my smb.conf on the ubuntu server:

[global]
mangled names = no
dos charset = CP850
access based share enum = yes
unix extensions = no
fruit:aapl = yes
fruit:model = MacPro
unix charset = UTF-8
fruit:resource = xattr
workgroup = WORKGROUP
server string = %h server (Samba, Ubuntu)
dns proxy = no
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 1000
syslog = 0
panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d
server role = standalone server
passdb backend = tdbsam
obey pam restrictions = yes
unix password sync = yes
passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u
passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* .
pam password change = yes
map to guest = bad user
usershare allow guests = yes

[SMB Share]
 comment = SMB Share
 path = /tank
 browseable = yes
 read only = no
 guest ok = no
 ea support = yes
 vfs objects = catia fruit streams_xattr
 map archive = no
 spotlight = yes
 readdir_attr:aapl_rsize = yes
 readdir_attr:aapl_finder_info = yes
 readdir_attr:aapl_max_access = yes

Using High Sierra 10.13.6.

Finder caches file/folder metadata from SMB shares. Try if disabling the directory caching helps according to the last paragraph in:

Adjust SMB browsing behavior in macOS High Sierra 10.13 and later

  Disable directory caching

  Your Mac caches file and folder metadata temporarily in local memory. This improves browsing speeds, especially on high-latency networks. Systems with more memory installed can cache more file information.

  If you'd like to disable directory caching so that macOS re-downloads the full contents of the folders and metadata every time you browse an SMB share, you can create or edit /etc/nsmb.conf. See the nsmb.conf man page for more information on how to edit this file.

  If your system doesn't already have an /etc/nsmb.conf file, use the following Terminal commands. Note that you must be logged in as an administrator with sudoer privileges to set this file:

  echo "[default]" | sudo tee -a /etc/nsmb.conf

  echo "dir_cache_off=yes" | sudo tee -a /etc/nsmb.conf

Unmount/remount SMB shares afterwards.


Logging for SSHD when started from Launchd with `-d` option? I'm working on OS X 10.8.5, fully patched. I have an updated OpenSSH server installed in /usr/local/sbin listening on port 1522. Connection attempts result in ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host. sudo grep 'sshd' /var/log/* 2>/dev/null at the server is returning almost nothing, so I'm trying to gather more information at the server on the cause.

According to man sshd(8), -d is debug mode and it sends verbose debug output to standard error. I added -d to ProgramArguments in the plist, but the plist also sets StandardErrorPath to /dev/null. So I'm guessing the debugging information is being discarded.

I checked launchctl(1) man page, but I don't see what I should do to modify StandardErrorPath so that its logged somewhere. The man page does not even discussed the name/value pair.

How should I change the configuration so the debug logging is logged somewhere, and I know where that "somewhere" is?

$ cat /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh-7.1.plist
<?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>Disabled</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.openssh.sshd-v7.1</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/usr/local/sbin/sshd</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>-i -d</string>
    </array>
    <key>Sockets</key>
    <dict>
            <key>Listeners</key>
            <dict>
                    <key>SockServiceName</key>
                    <string>1522</string>
            </dict>
    </dict>
    <key>inetdCompatibility</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Wait</key>
        <false/>
    </dict>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/dev/null</string>
    <key>SHAuthorizationRight</key>
    <string>system.preferences</string>
</dict>
</plist>

To add the -d argument to sshd, it should be added as a new element to the     array:

<string>-d</string>

The section should look like:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>-i</string>
        <string>-d</string>
    </array>

Instead of editing the plist files directly, you can use /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy (-h to show help).
There is a utility script ssh-util.rb that can turn logging on/off. It is part of the OpenSSH-189 package found at: opensource.apple.com.

Link to ssh-util.rb

Here are the required commands to run (as produced from the ruby script):

/usr/bin/ruby ./ssh-util.rb -l on -v --debug --dryrun

or manually:

sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "add :ProgramArguments:2 string '-ddd'" /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
sudo touch /var/run/com.openssh.sshd-asl-enabled

When finished debugging,, you'll need to run either:

/usr/bin/ruby ./ssh-util.rb -l off -v --debug --dryrun

or manually:

sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Delete :ProgramArguments:2" /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
sudo rm -f /var/run/com.openssh.sshd-asl-enabled

Notes on OS X Logging


How to change layout in OS X like shift=English, ctrl=Russian? How to change layout in OS X like Shift=English, Ctrl=Russian?

Like in Punto Switcher in Windows or Xneur in Linux?

If you want to change the keyboard layout easily first of all go to

System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Input Sources

and select the layouts you want to use.

Then, at the bottom of the window, you must check the option "Show input menu in menu bar". Now a little flag with the layout-country will appear in the menu bar and you can easily switch layout from that.

See screenshots attached

As instead, if you're more comfortable with keyboard switch, select the layouts as I suggested before in Keyboard Preferences and then do cmd+space: a little transparent window will appear at the center of the screen and by pressing (again) space you can move all the way up & down, selecting the layout you prefer.


Can I get a Windows XP-like application taskbar in OS X? Apologies for cross-posting in SE, but maybe I'll get a better response on an Apple/OS X specific forum!

I'm looking for a Windows XP-like taskbar application switcher in OS X. I'm not looking for anything icon-based like HyperDock and others, or anything that involves gestures like Expose. I want a simple bar at the bottom of the screen that I can click on buttons (not icons) to switch applications.

Also - answers like "just run Windows" are not appreciated ;)

There was Fantastik, but it's no longer in development.


OS X software for copying from Windows File Shares I am migrating from Windows as my desktop operating system, but will still need to interact with Windows file servers.

Is there any OS X software to help with copying files from file servers.  I am specifically looking for an analogue of Robocopy that will copy files from a directory on a Windows file server, and retry any files that fail.

I'm happy using either a GUI or command line.

You could use the SAMBA protocol (or Apple's implementation of it), to connect to a Windows Share.

Either open Finder and choose "Go" -> "Connect to Server" in the menu bar.

Now connect to your share(s) using the SMB:// as protocol definition. If activated it will ask you for authentication afterwards. Then the share will be mounted like any other mount point.

Or you could use the terminal to mount the file system using the

mount_smbf

command.

After you've mounted the Windows Share you should be able to use any command line tool or GUI software do to your copying. Instead of robocopy you could use rsync for example (which is built in and pretty powerful).

One note: Just remember that saving files directly from within apps on a share could cause some troubles if they are using Apples's Versions feature, which is not supported by FAT or NTFS file systems.


With brew, how do I only list packages that were built from source (not poured from bottle)? Is there a way to list only the packages that were built from source? I want to check what options they were built with, and since that's the main reason I install packages by building from source most of the time, this would be useful.

I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to write a script to list all packages and filter out the ones poured from bottle, but I'm wondering if a simpler way exists.

I could just brew info and go through all of them to check, but when the output is really long, it isn't that trivial to do this.

I believe that Cakebrew lets you do that, but I can't confirm this


How could one make an automator script to restore all hidden windows quickly? The question is pretty self explanatory: How can one make an Automator script to restore all hidden windows at the same time?

This AppleScript should restore all hidden windows.

The first action unhides any hidden programs. The second action restarts the Dock, which has the effect of un-minimizing any windows minimized to the Dock.

tell application "System Events"
    set the visible of every process to true
    do shell script "killall -HUP Dock"
end tell

If you particularly want an Automator workflow, give it one action: Run AppleScript, and assign this AppleScript.


Swp memory no longer being used Macbook Pro Mid 2015 Does anyone know why my macbook pro 15in mid 2015 is no longer using swap memory. I can tell via htop in terminal.

That is the HTOP of my machine. swp is saying 0k/0k. Not sure what to make of it or how to fix it. Just the other day Swp was being used and was around 1GB full with a few more left open.

Any ideas?

The default macOS setup has a dynamic swap size. This means that even though htop displays "0K/0K" it doesn't mean that the total swap capacity is 0, or that swap is disabled. It just means that right now, there's no need for swapping (and that is a good thing).

If later memory usage means that swapping is necessary, the operating system automatically increases swap capacity. This is ofcourse limited by the amount of free disk space on your computer.


Open Safari in a new window from Dock? Is there a way I can open Safari in a new window directly from dock ? For example, CMD + Safari on dock reveals the application in Finder. Is there another key combination that can open a new window ?

You can't use the Safari icon to directly open a new window (unless you right-click etc, which is boring), but you can create an Apple Script that always opens a new Safari window, assign a fancy icon to this script and place it on the Dock beside the Safari icon. This way you can always choose between the focus on already opened windows (clicking on Safari icon) or create a new window (clicking on the "New Safari Window" icon).

Open Apple Script Editor, make a new document and paste this code:

tell application "Safari"
  make new document
  activate
end tell

Go to File menu, then Export...
Give a name like "Safari - New Window", set a place to save like the "Applications" folder, choose "Application" for File Format and then check Run-Only. Save it.

With Finder, open the location where you just saved this new app. Right-click (or Ctrl+click) the application and go to Get Info menu. Now, download this icon, drag it onto the little "Apple Script" icon on the top left corner of the "Get Info" window already opened to assign the new icon to your app.

Finally, drag the application "Safari - New Window" to the Dock and drop it beside Safari. \o/


Mailbox app: Load images? I am liking the app because it shows gmail conversations in a space efficient format, and its email search actually works.

Also the ability to keep lists of stuff inside of my email is pretty cool.

But it doesn't load images in emails. What's up with that?

Is there an option to enable it? Isn't this a basic feature?

Please don't say "performance reasons". The pictures should load asynchronously after all the text in the email loads.

This appears to work in the updated version I am running now.


Is it possible to force a apple wireless keyboard to disconnect, from the keyboard? I have a single keyboard that is paired to multiple iOS devices.   Once it's actively connected to one of them, it seems the only way to get it to be willing to connect with another is to turn off bluetooth on the current device.   Is there a magic key chord or something that will kick the current device off so a new one can connect?

No, I do not believe the Apple Keyboard has a hotkey to do multi-device switching, but Logitech does have a couple with switching capability. Logitech Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard (K480) and the Easy Switch Keyboard (K811).


Usign iMac as a Display for MacBook Pro I did some research on this and they were saying Press Command+F2
So did I !  But here are the issues I saw with this method:

The youtube video that was previously running on iMac continued to run, I could hear its vocie but no picture. I want iMac programs to stop running if possible.

The Mouse and Keyboard on the iMac stopped working and I had to use MacBook's Mouse and keyborad which is ridiculous!

What I want to achieve:

iMac turn into Display for MacBook Pro.
Be able to use iMac mouse and Keyboard.

What I have:

Thunderbolt Cable to connect to MacBook and iMac
iMac model: These new thin 27" ones.
Macbook model: 15" retinal display ones.

Basically when I am at home and want to work on my work laptop- which is this MacBookPro one - I want to be able to connect it to my iMac and use that as display.

Ok got it working:

turn off both devices.
connect them with thunderbolt cable
turn on MacBookPro AND keep holding the "T" key on its keyboard. You will see it will go to a disk mode with some thunderbolt icon showing on its screen.
Turn on your iMac AND keep holding the OPTION key on its keyboard. You will see it will show you some hard disks on the display. Pick the one that is for the MacBookPro.
Done! Now Nothing from iMac is running in the background, iMac's peripherals are working for MacBookPro AND EVEN better: you are using CPU Power and RAM of your iMac to run MacBookPro.

NOTE: to turn off, don't just unplug the thunderbolt cable, first shut down the computer, then unplug the cable.


What do I need to do to be able to use keyboard combinations, instead of Touch Bar clicks? I am blind user and I must use a program which is an accessible with Voiceover, the Apple screen reader. That’s why I need a way to press keys instead of learning to click something which I don’t see.

On a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, how do I use keyboard combinations, instead of Touch Bar clicks?

Keyboard shortcuts can be found in System preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts. You can set any shortcuts to any keyboard combinations you'd like. The default for voiceover is Command + F5, which can be changed.

The Touch Bar can also be set to only display the Function Keys, instead of app specific context keys. While you won't be able to feel the position of them, they will remain there when any app is open, acting like a standard keyboard rather than the Touch Bar.