My SSD seems slow, could it be the link speed? I just replaced my old HD from a late-2009 iMac with a new Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB.
It was installed by an official Apple repair store but I am worried because it seems slower than my new macboook pro (also with SSD)
I tested with Blackmagic Disk Test and it:

Writes 253 MB/s
Reads 268 Mb/s

Official specs say it should:

Write 520 MB/s
Read 500 Mb/s

And it seems from reviews they get numbers close to official ones.

I checked my SATA Chipset in the iMac and it says: "Link Speed: 3 Gigabit".

Does this mean that 3000 Mb/s (Megabits) are 375 MB/s (Megabytes) and it cannot transfer faster (even though the SSD is faster)?

I would make sure that TRIM is enabled. Without TRIM, SSDs will run slower. I use Trim Enabler to turn on TRIM on my Samsung SSDs.

https://www.cindori.org/software/trimenabler/

Nowadays it can enable TRIM without disabling kext signing.

https://www.cindori.org/safely-enable-trim-on-yosemite-and-el-capitan/


Recovering data off of a dead hard drive My hard drive died in my macbook and it no longer will start up. It will not mount in an external enclosure but disk utility is still reading that the hard drive is there, and I tried to repair disk and I am getting this error: (Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.) So my question is how do I backup my files if the hard drive won't mount? The only way that I have been able to see the hard drive is through disk utility. I just want to be clear that I am using mac os x snow leapard.

You could try following this hint from Macworld. It makes use of the Terminal (0$) to execute the UNIX command dd to copy everything bit-by-bit from your harddrive to another location.

1. Determine UNIX id. of dead drive

If you decide to use this method you would first have to determine what the UNIX identifier of the attached disk is. Open up Terminal (Applications --> Utilities) and type the following:

  diskutil list

This will give you a list of all connected drives and their partitions and it should look like shown here.

Probably your boot drive is under /dev/disk0 and the drive in the external enclosure is under /dev/disk1. This could be different, look this up by finding the name of the dead partition in the list. Let's assume for the rest of this answer that the dead drive is under /dev/disk1

Now if you can not find the name of the dead drive in that list, diskutil can not find your drive and the Macworld hint will not work for you. If you see it in the list, move on to the next step.

2. Define destination

This method copies the whole disk byte-by-byte. If it encounters an error it will skip it and write zeros to the destination (read the hint for full details). So, the destination should have enough hard drive space to accomodate the whole hard drive you're recovering. So if you've got a 320GB hard drive, you'll need 320GB of destination space. If you have 320GB to spare on your bootdrive proceed to step 3. Otherwise get another external drive with at least 320GB of space and then proceed to step 3.

3. Copy

The command given in the hint is:

  dd bs=512 if=/dev/rXX# of=/some_dir/foo.dmg conv=noerror,sync

You should replace /dev/rXX# with /dev/rdisk1 (according to our earlier assumption) and /some_dir/foo.dmg differs depending on your destination. If you choose your bootdrive you could change that line to: /Users/**yourusernamehere**/Desktop/recover.dmg

If you choose an external disk you should write /Volumes/**Volumenamehere** instead of /some_dir/foo.dmg

To summarise, your Terminal command would look as follows if you choose your boot drive as destination:

  dd bs=512 if=/dev/rdisk1 of=/Users/yourusernamehere/Desktop/recover.dmg conv=noerror,sync

Or if you choose an external disk:

  dd bs=512 if=/dev/rdisk1 of=/Volumes/Volumenamehere conv=noerror,sync

Good luck


Can I get notifications for specific emails sent to my Gmail account on iOS? I'm trying to find a way to receive notifications on my iPhone when certain people email me to my gmail account.

I don't want to use SMS. Is it possible to configure iMessage to receive emails?

Either set up your Gmail account using Mail or try the Google's official Gmail client. Both use iOS's built in notification system. SMS and iMessage are entirely different protocols and do not support IMAP or POP3 (the protocols used for Mail).

As for parsing the notifications for only certain emails, I'm not sure that's at all possible if you'd still like to receive notifications for other emails too.


Safari randomly and periodically loses cookies It's been a while now that I'm facing this issue. From time to time, and on some websites, I have to either:

Accept again the cookies, and/or
Login again.

I'm using macOS 10.14.4 and Safari 12.1. It's quite annoying. Any suggestion?

It could be of because reasons mainly,

Any unwanted extension that is supposed to behave this way
Some software running in background to clear caches for freeing up space
Browsing in Incognito Mode


How do I permanently disable Notification Center in Mavericks? In Mountain Lion I was able to permanently disable Notification Center, with no apparent side effects:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist
killall NotificationCenter

However, the Mavericks upgrade process restored Notification Center in all its irritating glory. Is there are reason that the upgrade reverted my disabling of Notification Center?

Can I disable Notification Center in Mavericks using the same procedure, without side effects?

If you start Terminal, enter

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui KeepAlive -bool False

and restart, this did the trick for me in Mavericks.


More than 120 GB Hidden space in Mojave My mac is eating up all free space and I have no clue where it's coming from.  I have used tools like DaisyDisk or OmniDiskSweeper to find any folder/files which might be taking this space, but there are none. Only DaisyDisk is able to see there is 120GB of Hidden space but since I'm using the free trail I'm unable to see what that is.

Here is what I've done so far:

Disable TimeMachine
Delete local snapshots
Checked for mobile backups
Checked for hibernate file
Re-index spotlight
Find big files/folder with tools like DaisyDisk
Check for errors with first aid in disk utility

All without luck. I've read similar topics on this and tried all what I could find. When I delete an additional 10GB, it' usually eats it up within 1 or 2 days.

You seem to be using the Mac App Store version of DaisyDisk. Download the stand-alone version (https://daisydiskapp.com/downloads/DaisyDisk.zip), it has more features. Then use the "Scan as Administrator" command to reveal the hidden space. Also before scanning make sure you grant DaisyDisk "full disk access", if you're on Mojave or Catalina. To do this, go to DaisyDisk Preferences > Full Disk Access tab and proceed with drag-and-dropping as instructed there.


How can I change the black text in my terminal? I have changed the color in my profile, but some text is still black. How can I make all black text inverted, or any color that's visible? I'm including screenshot of my preferences and the issue. The second terminal screenshot is the result of highlighting, to illustrate the problem.

In the second screen shot, it looks like you're looking at man builtin and the Command column, the first column, is in bold text and not visible. Looking at the Bold Text color shows it being rather dark, as dark as the Background Color & Effects in the first screen shot. So, change the Bold Text color to the same color as the Text color or just a shade darker then the Text color.


AirPlay via AppleTV stutters on retina MacBook Pro but not iPhone 4 I recently got a retina Macbook Pro and I am loving it except for one thing. When I go to System Preferences > Sound > Output and select AirPlay while playing audio, the sound will often just stop or stutter for a period of time from less than a second to 6 or 7 seconds. The music is not just pausing because I can see on iTunes, Spotify, or YouTube that the audio continues to play. Yet on my iPhone 4 when using AirPlay, it never stutters or pauses.

What gives?

I tried switching the wireless channel on my router without luck.

I saw the chatter over on the official Apple forums last week and there has been some success on Retina MBP owners with the workaround here (and listed below)

Go to System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Uncheck 'Automatic Graphics Switching'

This will of course switch 100% to the Nvidia chipset which will be a larger battery drain.

The issue, according to those users, is that the integrated graphics on the Retina MBP is the root cause and more than likely to be as a result of immature drivers from Intel since they also report that there is no issue under Bootcamp.


How to send email from OS X command line Dozens of tutorials followed and nothing works.

msmtp doesn't work ("TLS certificate verification failed: unable to get local issuer certificate" (cert installed)

postfix doesn't work (no way to specify from address)

aws ses doesn't work (unverified email (that's verified))

mutt and mailx tried every combination with the above.

Comcast and Gmail services tried with the above...

Assuming a bone clean install of El Capitan with Homebrew. Blue sky, spare no expense (I'll buy a service that actually works at this point.)

I need to send an email from the command line.

Sendemail works great with Gmail and all other SMTP servers I have ever tried:

brew update
brew install sendemail
man sendemail

Edit: Thanks for the edit/link/clarification, @patrick.

I also wanted to clarify that I have always used sendemail flawlessly on Debian-based systems, but encountered TLS error after upgrading from OS X Mountain Lion to Mavericks when Mavericks was first released.  I don't recall if I even tried to uninstall/re-install from a "Mavericks bottle", but I believe the problem actually had to do with Google updating their accepted handshake protocols or whatnot around this time.

The fix was easily-found by Googling and involved editing a line in the sendemail config to [I believe] remove a reference to SSL and replace it with TLS 1.1 (or something of the sort).

I'm sure sendemail itself has been upgraded since then to account for this, because I believe I have used it successfully since then on both OS X Yosemite and El Capitan with Gmail without having to make any weird modifications to the configuration.

It truly is a great program, and I cannot give it enough praises.  If any of you are familiar with blat for Windows, sendemail is like that, except much more powerful and very easy to use.


Mac App Store Search Autocompletion I recognized something strange:
On my MacBook Pro (Mid 2008, Mavericks) I get suggestions when searching in the Mac App Store.
But on my MacBook Air (Late 2010, Mavericks) I don't get them.

Try resetting the Mac App Store.

Enable the debug menu and restart the Mac App Store.

defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true

Choose the Reset Application option and restart the Mac App Store.


SSD upgrade for mid 2012 MBP I recently started getting performance issues with my MBP while running apps like Xcode and Eclipse. A quick diagnostic of the system showed that it thrashed over 458k times.

Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000b   095   095   062    Pre-fail  Always       -       458757

I just ordered a SSD to replace the HDD, will this help solve the problem, and also how do I get OSX back onto the computer if I replace the HDD and the new SSD is empty?

Put it in an external caddy, USB etc, then use something like Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate it.

It will then be bootable when you swap.


Is there a way to copy mp3 files directly over to an ipod from the command line? Can you copy mp3 files directly to an attached ipod from the command line and have them show up on the ipod for listening?

Not unless you use custom firmware (Rockbox, iPod Linux for older models). The iPod depends on a database file for playing files and if you just copy the files over they will not be in said database and subsequently the iPod will not be able to play them.


Good iPad piano software? I have a third generation iPad ("the New iPad"). I am looking for software I can use to make a piano keyboard appear on my iPad such that when I press the keys, they play notes and sound like a piano. I'd like to be able to use it to plunk out a tune when trying to compose music away from home, and to let my children practice their beginning piano lessons when we're visiting relatives but they don't want to forget what they've learned.

I am looking for the following features:

good responsiveness (no noticeable lag between touching the keys and hearing the notes)
no ads
ideally in the $1 - $10 price range (lower is better unless the program is particularly great, but I'm willing to pay for quality)
doesn't take up too much memory (sorry, GarageBand -- 800MB is too much space to part with on a 16GB iPad)
key size comes close to that of a real piano
reasonable number of keys (perhaps a way to shift octaves if necessary to expand range)
no crazy gimmicks (notes arranged like a piano, not in a spiral or pulsing different colors or other weirdness)

Can anyone recommend software that works well for a use case like this?

Apple's Garageband for iPad is $4.99 and looks like it should fit the bill pretty well. It also has a whole bunch of other instruments and functionality that may or may not be useful for you.

I haven't used either, but Virtuoso Piano (Free) and Pianist Pro ($4.99) look like good bets, based on a quick search and the ratings. Pianist Pro was featured in an iPad commercial, which is probably a pretty good endorsement on its own.


Is my computer being controlled? I recently encountered a person on Skype that I don't know. I've heard about people being able to access your computer remotely. How can I tell if my computer has been compromised?

Applications like Little Snitch can be very useful for figuring out if your computer has been compromised, as they can detect incoming and outgoing connection attempts.

I would say that most likely the appearance of an unexpected person on Skype is just due to a spammer or scammer adding people at random from a list of names or email addresses. It's also possible that it's a case of mistaken identity, where the person on the other end is trying to contact someone with a similar name. Be wary of social engineering attempts, and do not open any links or attachments from this person!

If the person is bothering you or you're just weirded out, you can block the individual by right-clicking their contact portrait and choosing "Block (name)...".


How to get the URL for a public album in Photos that has been marked as public website I am running Photos 4.0 on macOS 10.14.6
I have enabled shared albums (System Preferences -> iCloud -> Photos options -> Shared Albums)

I have created a public album and added photos to it

I have clicked the checkbox to make it public website
How do I found out what the URL is for the public website? I think Photos is supposed to change the text "allow anyone to view this shared album on iCloud.com" to "anyone can view this album at ...some-url...". That does not happen for me.

Also, when I invite people to the album, they do NOT get an invitiation email (yes, I checked the junk folder). Instead, a question mark appears next to the e-mail address in the "invite people..." list in Photos.
Also, anything related to shared albums is extremely slow; for example adding just 3 normal size photos to a shared album is stuck forever (I waited hours):

After about 48 hours of waiting (connected to the Internet), the URL suddenly appeared:


MacBook Air slow after waking from sleep The backlight on my MacBook Air broke about a week ago and it fixed by Apple by them replacing the logic board.  Since I've got it back I've had a couple of issues.  Firstly, the machine wouldn't work unless plugged in and the battery wasn't available, I sorted this through resetting the NVRAM and PRAM and that's now working fine.

Secondly, when I wake the computer from sleep it is very slow and the fans come on very loud as well, things like moving the cursor across the screen and jittery and not fluid, likewise opening applications takes forever.  I did manage to open Activity Monitor, I got a CPU system load as 87% and a kernel_task as 310.8% CPU.

Any ideas as to what may be causing it? Or is a fresh install the best option and see if that solves the issues?

Thanks!

Starting in Safe mode should eliminate 3d party applications causing that.

Resetting the SMC should resolve remaining issues with Battery, power ect.

Running Apple Hardware test (twice) to verify no issues there (since the logic board was replaced). Look for RAM issues.

Finally a Console log could tell you who is doing what.


Deleted my Photos.app accidentally I accidentally deleted my Photos.app from /Applications dir. I looked up the internet but couldn't find a way to get it back.

Where do I download it from?

Update

I held down Option key and clicked on the Photos.app and it asked me to create new Photos Library file. So my original question wasn't correct!

How did you delete Photos.app. It's an required macOS app. It's like if you try to delete System Preferences.

Maybe you didn't see the app. Try to search it with Spotlight.


How can I get .zshrc to run in its entirety every time I open zsh Here is the entirety of my .zshrc.

alias ll='ls -l'
export HOME='/Users/rcorty/Dropbox'

This file is at /Users/myname/.zshrc.

When I start iTerm2, I check whether the home directory was reset by entering ls ~ and I recognize the files in my Dropbox -- success!  Then I enter ll and I am met with zsh: command not found: ll.

Weird.  Then I run source /Users/myname/.zshrc.  Now I do the same two checks and they both succeed (HOME is Dropbox and ll is ls -l.

I'm rather novice with shells in general and zsh in particular.  From my reading of the zsh documentation, it seems like .zshrc should essentially be "sourced" each time I start a shell.

Where have I gone wrong?

Okay, it's working now.  /Users/myname/.zshrc is:

export HOME='/Users/rcorty/Dropbox'

and /Users/myname/Dropbox/.zshrc is:

alias ll='ls -l'


App store is completely blank on MacOS catalina The macOS app store completely hangs after opening i've googled for a while but nothing works

If you open the utilities folder, open terminal.
Type AssetCacheLocatorUtil and look over the output. There will be a lot. Check the IP address and for any errors.
Then, you might make a brand new user account and check that.
Lastly, the machine needs to be on a network with time server to set the clock and access Apple servers. If you have firewall, slow network, blocked network, this program can get stuck and unable to render any information.


Wi-fi doesn't work on my iPhone 4 If I do not have a SIM Card installed in my iPhone 4, will it still connect to the internet?

I have tried to connect via WiFi, it says that it is loading, yet doesn't connect.
I don't know if it has anything to do with the SIM Card because every time I try, it does not work and the message 'NO SIM CARD' shows up.

Absolutely. I personally still own an iPhone 4 and am using it to access the internet without the SIM card installed. The notification bar shows No Sim, which but this does not impact the device's WiFi.

The Common Fix: Resetting Network Settings
I would like you to try: Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings

Which should clear up any issues by resettings the Network gear to their default settings. It has shown to be a common solution in the past. You will need to reconnect to your WiFi access point once the iPhone has restarted. Please report back with the status afterward.


Where can I test a path? I have tto check a path like "volume1:FTPRoot:StenRoot:Stnp00:A12:B38:f000031913". Is there an easy place where I can paste this to unsure me that this path is valid ?

PS / I can follow it manually, but I want to automate this...

Shift + Command + G (Go To Folder) can help you. This article has other handy keyboard shortcuts in the Finder. Hope this helps.


What is the biggest disk that can be used in place of the optical drive in an early 2011 15 inch MacBook Pro? The limitation in a 15inch early 2011 mbp is that the hdd should have a height of 9.5mm and that the SATA port only works reliably with drives that connect at SATA 2 speeds (3G bits/sec)

To use a hdd in the optical drive you have to use an adapter, of course. The height is easy to verify.

I'm looking for the drive with the most storage space that will work reliably in this case.

There are reports that the 1.5TB hdd by HGST works in this case. Are there any other drives that work?

I added an SSD to my Macbook back in 2012, and did a write-up about it here: http://blog.omgmog.net/post/upgrading-my-macbook-pro/

Most 2.5" drives should do, the dimensions of these drives is pretty much standardised.

If you're putting a HDD fitted using an adapter in the old optical drive bay, it won't have the shock detection that the lone HDD bay has. Choosing SSD in the optical bay is better from a shock management aspect.


How do I copy a TimeMachine backup to an encrypted disk? I want to replace my current TimeMachine backup disk with a new disk, but I also want to copy the existing contents to the new disk after encrypting the new disk.

How can I best do that? Are there any pitfalls waiting for me?

Apple has some instructions in this KB. There are some restrictions - Apple suggests that you'll need to format the new drive as Mac OS Extended with a GUID partition.

Short summary:

  Drag the folder "Backups.backupdb" on the current backup drive to the
  root level of the new backup drive.

Follow the other instructions in the KB, and you'll be able to use your new drive as the TimeMachine drive.


unable to move files from external usb disk I have 10.9.4 with a usb external (2tb) disk, formatted with Macos Journalled format. The drive is also a time-machine destination.

I am:

unable to cmd-drag files to move them to another disk (they copy)
unable to select multiple files and create a new folder from the selection
unable to mkdir on the drive

TimsMacBookAir:~ tim$ cd /Volumes/2TB/
TimsMacBookAir:2TB tim$ mkdir test
mkdir: test: Permission denied

I'm guessing there's permission errors. Here's the ls -l on /Volumes

TimsMacBookAir:Volumes tim$ ls -l
total 72
drwxrwxr-x   37 tim   staff   1326  7 Jul 10:19 1TB
drwxrwxr-x  319 root  wheel  10914  7 Jul 10:51 2TB
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  admin      1  1 Jul 14:20 Macintosh HD -> /

I'm guessing that since the drive is owned by "root" and group "wheel" that is the issue. What does it mean? Can I just chown -R tim:staff it without stuffing anything up (e.g. my Time Machine backups)?

This might be a silly question but are you sure that the drive is mounted read-write.

From memory, if you type in "mount" in a Terminal it should tell you if the drive is mounted read-only as one of the properties in brackets after the drive. Or you could right-click the drive in the Finder and choose Get Info from the context menu and check "Sharing & Permissions" at the bottom of the Info window. I think it'll tell you there if the drive is mounted read-only.


How to delete audio input option in system preferences macOS I've got a problem:
Since I am using my new Elgato Thunderbolt 3 Pro dock, the macOS dictation won't work anymore. It seems like macOS won't use the internal microphone for dictation. I changed the audio input to the internal microphone (and that one is working!). I can use Siri and record audio, but I cannot use dictation.
I am running macOS 11.1.
Any ideas?

I've found a solution:
Go to System preferences → Accessibility → Voice Control.
There you can choose the desired audio input. Setting it for voice control sets it for dictation as well.
You do not have to turn on voice control.


Mac OSX Lion: Reverse scroll on only mouse Possible Duplicate:
  How can I set a different scrolling direction for mouse and trackpad in Lion?

Is there possible to disable reverse scroll only on the mouse, and not when using the touch on my macbook.

You could install a third party mouse prefpane or driver that lets you configure your mouse(s); USB Overdrive is one.


What formats does Quick Look for iOS support for presenting 3D information? I want to present some 3D models to my clients via email. I don't know what apps they have installed and I can't have then install any apps, most of them have a strict app policy.

What 3D formats does Preview for iOS support?

You probably should look at what is listed here: QLPreviewController
Clipped from the developer site:

A Quick Look preview controller can display previews for the following items:

iWork documents

Microsoft Office documents (Office ‘97 and newer)

Rich Text Format (RTF) documents

PDF files

Images

Text files whose uniform type identifier (UTI) conforms to the
public.text type (see Uniform Type Identifiers Reference)

Comma-separated value (csv) files

As far as I know, the only format that could embed 3D information in the format is the PDF file. But does QLPreviewController render it? I do not know.
Maybe an alternative for you would be to make a WebGL website that you link your customers to?


Disable FN keys in Mac Lion Prior to Lion, I can go to Keyboard and there is a nice little checkbox, then I can get my F1-F12 key back.

How do I do this in Lion ?

System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard


Dynamic titles in iMovie I'm working with iMovie 11 and try to show a text list with ten rows. The viewer should be able to read all text, so the list is displayed for 20 seconds. As you can think, that will be very boring. Therefore y tried to show the list dynamicly, line per line (the previous lines will be kept, the new one will be added). The viewer can read the text and also knows how fast he should read to get the whole information.

My solution is now, to create ten titles and arrange them one after one. The first title page will contain line 1, the second page lines 1 and 2, the third page lines 1 to 3 etc. Every page will be displayed for two seconds and after this time the next page will be placed on top.

That will be much of work (i have numbers of text lists to show in this film). Does anybody knows a better way to solve this issue?


"Running Applications Only" Dock mode Stuck! Recently I have stumbled upon a trick that will allow you to view only your running applications within the dock. The Terminal command was:

defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool TRUE

This would hide all of the "pinned" apps that were on the dock, and only show the active/running apps.

When I found out I was ecstatic, but slightly cautious (due to the fact that it may not be reversible).

I changed TRUE to FALSE and saw that it could easily be changed.

Now, for some reason, the Dock won't change back. I've tried running the command as root, rebooting, restarting the Dock, restarting the Finder, restoring TEMP files, closing and opening all running applications, and more.

Any help?

Thanks to Thecafremo who just answered my question!
(Unfortunately, I cannot mark a comment as an answer.

  Have you tried deleting that exact file? Preferences' System File are restored automatically (with default values) if not found. - Thecafremo


Is the black Apple cloth that comes with the MacBook Pro ok for cleaning iPhone and Mac screens? I use it regularly to clean my rmbp screen, and I've noticed a small scratch on the black panel few days ago, I thought it might be because I've used tap water or it was there and I didn't notice it.

Now I used it to clean a second hand iPhone. I bought before putting a protective guard on, and after I cleaned it I noticed small scratches and I don't know if they were there or not (the seller had it for about 3 years, so it could have had scratches and I didn't see them because the screen wasn't clean).

Is the cloth microfiber and is it ok to use it to clean screens?

It should be fine.. I would suggest washing it as there may be small dust particles on it, which could potentially be causing those screen scratches.


How does finder figure this directory is 6MB? The directory says it's 6 MB, but there's about 10 160-byte files.

Because your directory may contain hidden files. OS X uses hidden files (prefixed with a . dot when using ls -la) to store meta information on the folder (position and sorting of the icons for example). To have a precise breakup of your directory size use

du -h /Users/azz0r/Sites/Personal/php-rest-api

in Terminal. You can limit the depth of displayed files with the -d DEPTH option.

To see the hidden files recursively from a directory use the ls -laR command.

To show hidden file directly in the finder, you could also follow this post Show hidden files Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion.


Whatsapp asks for too much free space during backup I have an iPhone 6s, fully updated. Starting from 20 December, whatsapp complains that there is not enough space on the iphone to do a backup to icloud. Before this date, everything worked fine and I don't remember doing anything particular around that time.

The backup dimension is 2.37 Gb with 878 Mb of videos. Currently I have 8.2 Gb of free space on my phone (and 40 Gb on iCloud), but whatsapp complains that I should "free 512 MB of space on the phone to do chat backup".

So, I have two questions:

1 - Why does the backup require any additional space at all? The 2.37Gb are already stored locally inside the whatsapp app; why would I need any additional space for the icloud backup?

2 - Why does it require so much more space? Is there something wrong?

It's a bug. I have the same issue:

Total Whatsapp data on my iPhone =  7GB

Free space on iPhone             = 38GB

Whatsapp complains that i have to free another 1,88GB to be able to make a backup of the chats to iCloud...


What is this odd Excel file doing here? Recently, I was working on an Excel file when the program closed unexpectedly; luckily, my work was mostly saved by the recovery feature of Excel. However, Excel created a file on my desktop, titled "FD4C0910" that cannot be compressed, deleted, or moved. Upon attempting to "Get Info" (both with the keyboard shortcut, ⌘+I, and by right clicking and selecting "Get Info"), nothing happens. Double clicking the file, or even highlighting and pressing ⌘+O, does nothing. Here is an image of the phenomenon:

(This is the message that appears upon attempting to delete the file.)

Can anyone explain what this is and how to get rid of it?

This is a known bug in Office for Mac 2011.  The icons represent temporary files that have been deleted.  (Probably before they were deleted they were invisible.) You cannot Get Info on the files or find the files via Terminal because they do not exists; the bug is that the Finder is still showing them.  If you force-quit the Finder it will restart and the file icons will be gone.

The best workaround to keep them from coming back seems to be to move files off the desktop and into a folder before opening them.


Problem with Terminal after changed permission to /usr/bin I was trying to install rake and rspec using ruby gems.  I changed read permissions on /usr/bin

Now my terminal window looks like this:

login(388,0x7fff73cd5310) malloc: * error for object 0x7fdb79c05290: pointer being freed was not allocated
* set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

[Process completed]

Given that you changed the read permissions on /usr/bin recursively, trying to restore the proper permissions through Terminal will not work - too many items in there have unique permissions. The best plan of action to remedy this I have is as follows.

Open Disk Utility and run Repair Permissions on your disk. This may restore the proper permissions on the files in /usr/bin.
Reboot into Recovery mode (hold the R key down during boot) and run Disk Utility there  attempting the same Repair Permissions.
If you have a Time Machine backup, restore your system from a time prior to making the permissions change. This would be accessed through Recovery mode.

Takeaway from this is never change permissions recursively on a directory unless you specifically know what you're doing.


Synchronize iBooks across multiple Macs running Mavericks I'm wondering if it's possible to keep iBooks in Sync between various computers (running Mac OS X mavericks) under the same iCloud account. I set up my iBooks but synchronization only happens between a single Mac and devices running iOS 7. What's the point of using iBooks, if when I'm not in my laptop, I want to read the book on my iMac, but iBooks doesn't get synced across Macs...Did I miss anything?

Thanks for any hints, answers, such as using File sharing with Dropbox, Team Drive, etc. to try to synchronize the iBooks database and Data Contents. I only tried the Books folder from  ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data but it didn't work.

You might have the wrong idea (in Apple's eyes) about syncing through iBooks. You will not be able to have content magically appear on your second Mac, if the book is not purchased through the iBooks Store. Syncing does not work iTunes Match-like.

For non-iBookstore files, like MobileRead epubs, you will need to transfer the same epubs you imported onto iBooks on machine 1 to machine 2 and import them again. I hope you still have copies of these files -- because as far as I can tell, iBooks splits up epubs you import into it, and you cannot get them back out as an epub again. (I would love to be wrong about this.)

The good news is: Once you have imported these files, syncing between Macs works for notes, reading positions and highlights, as long as you have enabled "Sync bookmarks, highlights and notes across devices" in iBooks preferences. Again: iBooks will only sync said bookmarks, highlights and notes, NOT the books themselves. You will also need to have logged in with the same Apple ID on both devices.

Needless to say, you should also make sure to run the latest version of iBooks (currently 1.0.1).

This might be the only advantage of (and reason for) not being able to change metadata in iBooks -- at least the software knows which files are identical...


Is it possible to boot from an encrypted external hard drive? If I have an external hard drive with a bootable cloned backup (via SuperDuper) - if I encrypt it with the Finder will I still be able to boot from it if necessary?

Are there any solutions to enable my backup to be both encrypted and also bootable? I currently use FileVault 2 to encrypt my main SSD, and if I try booting from that (i.e. just booting up my computer) it asks for my password. If I try to boot from a bootable external disk (which happens to be encrypted) will it just ask for the disk password on boot [that is, after I select that as the boot disk], similarly to how I would be asked to enter a password to unlock the SSD encrypted with FileVault 2?

It should work, but if you use SuperDuper! a workaround is necessary:

I backed up my main system volume (hereinafter referred to as "System") to the unencrypted! backup volume (hereinafter referred to as "SystemBackup"). After rebooting to SystemBackup i tried to encrypt the volume SystemBackup, which wasn't successful, because the Recovery HD on the backup disk is missing. SuperDuper! only creates a copy of the system volume.

To get around this you first have to install a working system on the backup disk or use another way to create a Recovery HD volume on the backup disk and then erase the main backup volume again.
Backup your main system volume to the backup volume.
Boot to your (bootable) backup volume SystemBackup
Enable File Vault 2 in the system preferences.
Reboot to SystemBackup like advised and continue encrypting.
After encryption has finished boot to your main volume again
Now backup your main volume as usual using SuperDuper!

In my second/third attempt i used CarbonCopyCloner. In contrary to SuperDuper! CCC creates a backup, which usually includes the Recovery HD:

Backup your main system volume to the unencrypted! backup volume. You might have to initiate the backup of the Recovery HD manually. In my first attempt it was backed up automatically and in a second attempt i had to initiate it manually.
Boot to your (bootable) backup volume SystemBackup
Enable File Vault 2 in the system preferences.
Reboot to SystemBackup like advised and continue encrypting.
After encryption has finished boot to your main volume again.
Now backup your main volume as usual using CarbonCopyCloner.

Even after completely deleting my main disk (File Vault volume & Recovery HD) to simulate a disk failure, i have been able to boot to my system backup volume.

Don't encrypt the backup volume in the Finder (e.g. control-click on the the volume) before or after backing up your main volume!

An important note from the CCC knowledge base:
Mac firmware cannot "see" FileVault-protected volumes larger than 2.2 TB when the disk is attached via USB. If attaching the disk to your Mac via Firewire or Thunderbolt is not an option, create a 2TB partition at the beginning of the external disk to work around this limitation.


Can someone on my network access my Aperture app and how do I prevent it? I am on a network at an office I am visiting.  I opened my Aperture app and plugged in my camera to import some photos.  When I hit import the tab opened showing my camera and another computer on the same network.  Is someone else accessing my Aperture and how can I prevent that?

You can see them because they have file sharing or some other service turned on. Unless you have turned on some sharing options (like file sharing, remote login, Remote Management, etc…) they can't see your computer on the network. If you have turned on some sharing options then they can see your computer, but probably can't access anything outside of your "/Users//Public" folder on it.


Lightweight Mavericks installation What should I do to aggressively lower the memory usage of my Mavericks installation ?

The only things I need to run are XCode and Firefox, everything else can go out the window; I'm not opening any app and yet I already feel the system's slowness, which is understandable because it runs with only 2,5GB of RAM but unfortunately I can't upgrade right now, so what should I disable and where ?

Go to Activity Monitor's Memory tab and sort the list of processes by Memory. You'll have a complete list of your biggest RAM hogs, complete with the ability to select and quit them right from Activity Monitor.

Also, Memory Diag is a great app for freeing up RAM. Just click on its menu bar icon, click the big Optimize button (provided you're not at critical RAM usage), and watch the RAM free up!

Also, I highly recommend Safari instead of Firefox. Safari shows you the individual websites in Activity Monitor, so you can just quit the most RAM-hungry sites.
(EDIT: It shows you the actual URLs in Yosemite. In Mavericks, you'll see several Safari Web Content processes, but you can hover over them to see the URLs.)


Is it possible to compile and run an Xcode project on a jailbroken device without a paid developer certificate? Both for kicks and for budgetary reasons, I'd like to take a package that would normally require a developer account and build an app to run on a jailbroken iOS device.

I have a 5th gen iPod Touch, jailbroken using evasi0n, running iOS 6.1.

I am using Xcode 4.6 with OS X (10.8.2) Lion.

The following instructional steps to accomplish this purpose are taken from:
http://iphonedevwiki.net/index.php/Xcode

My findings and actions are provided under each step.

1. Create a self-signed code-signing certificate with the name “iPhone Developer” on the “login” (default) keychain using Keychain Access.

I took screenshots as I followed the above instruction.
I left most fields blank or at their default value.

2. Open /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Info.plist (4.2 or below: /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Info.plist). You may need root permission.

I'm using Xcode 4.6, so I opened the former .plist file.

3. Replace all occurrences of XCiPhoneOSCodeSignContext by XCCodeSignContext. There are three of them (XCode Version 3.2.4+).

I made three modifications as the screenshots indicate.

4. Save the file and restart Xcode.

Saved the file.

5. Make sure you have ldid on your Mac. Place a copy somewhere e.g. in /usr/local/bin.

I downloaded ldid from http://code.google.com/p/networkpx/downloads/detail?name=ldid
I put it in /usr/local/bin.

6. Create the a Python script ldid3.py right next to the ldid program. Make it executable. Fill it with:

#!/usr/bin/env python

from sys import argv
from subprocess import check_call
from os.path import basename, dirname, splitext, join
from tempfile import NamedTemporaryFile

app = argv[-1]
ldid_path = join(dirname(__file__), 'ldid')
obj_path = join(app, splitext(basename(app))[0])

if '-gta' not in argv:
    check_call([ldid_path, '-S', obj_path])
else:
    with NamedTemporaryFile('w+b', 0) as f:
        f.write("""
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>get-task-allow</key>
    <true/>
  </dict>
</plist>
        """)
        check_call([ldid_path, '-S' + f.name, obj_path])

I created a new plain text file and copy-pasted the above code into it.
I saved this file as ldid3.py and stored it in the /usr/local/bin directory.
In terminal, ran chmod 777 /usr/local/bin/ldid3.py.

7. Open iPhoneCodeSign.xcspec. This file can be found in [For Xcode 4.6: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Specifications/iPhoneCodeSign.xcspec]:

8. Change the entry in the file from calling codesign to ldid3.py.

As per instruction official instruction, converted the spec file to plain text by typing in console: sudo plutil -convert xml1 /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Specifications/iPhoneCodeSign.xcspec
I opened the file with TextEdit.
Replaced <key>CommandLine</key><string>/usr/bin/codesign</string> with <key>CommandLine</key><string>/usr/local/bin/ldid3.py</string>.

9. Save the file and restart Xcode.

I saved the file and quit TextEdit.

10. Create a file /var/mobile/tdmtanf on the device, to enable Apple's "TDMTANF bypass" in installd (warning: doing so will also put you in a sandboxed GameCenter).

I create an empty text file in Windows, named it tdmtanf, SSH'd into my iPod, uploaded it to /var/mobile/, and reboot my iPod.

Now that all that is over with...

I open my existing Xcode project and hit Run. It works in the iOS Simulator without any problems.

I make sure that Code Signing is set to use the certificate set up in step 1.

I build the app (Project > Build). A success message follows.

I grab my app folder TicTacToe.app from /Libary/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/TicTacToe-cjgzmoxtflyegtfypsbxbuiuwxns/Build/Products/Debug-iphoneos/ and transfer it to my Windows machine to install onto my iPod.

In an attempt to install the app to my iPod, I drag TicTacToe.app onto the applications section of iPhone Configuration Utility, but I received this error message saying that my app "is not a valid mobile application."

I have also tried manually installing the app using iFunbox and the AppCake app found in Cydia. Both fail.

As a point of interest, because as I've Googled around, I've noticed many people mention the importance of this: I do have AppSync installed. (Sorry for the huge screenshot. If I should take it down, please let me know!)

Conclusion

So despite following the instructions closely, several times, my app is not recognized by iPhone Configuration Utility as a valid app. I cannot install the app manually using programs like iFunbox, or Cydia apps like AppCake.

I suspect the app is indeed invalid, but having followed the instructions carefully, I'm not sure why.

Can anyone tell me why my app is not valid, and what I can do to fix this, besides coughing up money that is?


Kernel panic after using Android Emulator for Mac OS X Lion I experienced a kernel panic.

When I run Android emulator on a MacBook, iMac, or Mac mini, I sometimes get a grey screen for unexpected shut down and instructions to press and hold the power button to restart the Mac.
After I upgraded to OS X Lion, only this grey screen came; it was working fine when I had Snow Leopard.
When I update software, the issue disappears for week or month but then it starts happening again.

Do I need to do something special to prevent these unexpected shut downs?

Should I downgrade it to Snow Leopard?

Or is it coming because I'd upgraded the same Lion install on 3 Macs? I've read somewhere that we can use OS X Lion on only five Macs.

It appears to be, as you suspected, the Android emulator that is causing the issue.  Some users have filed an issue on Google Code.  If you scroll down past all of the "Me Too's," you'll actually find useful information; there appears to be a workaround involving /Applications/Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/eclipse.ini for some.

  I increased the heap space used by Eclipse, and haven't experienced this problem since.

  In eclipse.ini I used the following values:

--launcher.XXMaxPermSize256m

-Xms256m

-Xmx1024m

The same issue has a duplicate. In this thread, they mentioned a slightly different method where they added -vmargs between --launcher.XXMaxPermSize256m and -Xms256m

And I assume you've installed Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager, as this is a requirement for  the Android Emulator.  However, in the comments, people note that it doesn't work with Mountain Lion and they had to disable it for Android Emulator to work.

For your question about the number of installs Lion from the App Store will give you, this is directly from Apple's EULA (emphasis added):

  (i) to download, install, use and run for personal, non-commercial
  use, one (1) copy of the Apple  Software directly on each
  Apple-branded computer running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Mac OS X  Snow
  Leopard Server (“Mac Computer”) that you own or control;

So, assuming that this is for personal, non-commercial use, Apple lets you install Lion as many times as you like on the Macs that you own or control.


Batch convert text to audio files, retaining file names I have a folder with hundreds of text files. I'd like to batch convert them to audio files but make sure each audio file retains the file name of the text file From which it was created.

I am newer to Mac, so this is proving difficult.

You didn't specify an audio format but try the following in terminal in the directory containing your text files.

for f in *.txt;do say -f "$f" -o "${f%txt}aif";done

See this answer on superuser for other solutions.


Facetime call history & Facebook message history Do FaceTime calls show up on my phone bill???  Is there a way for me to find out if someone on my shared account is making and/or receiving FaceTime calls and, if so, to/from whom?  Basically, what I'm asking is if there is any way for me to find out if my husband is using FaceTime to talk to another woman?  Without actually taking his phone and snooping or using an app like FONEPAW?  What about messages sent thru Facebook?  Can those be accessed without his phone?

FaceTime calls do not show-up as 'FaceTime' on your phone bill.  It's simply a data transfer so it will be lumped-in with all other data transfers on your bill, you don't know what type of data it was, either.

FaceTime calls (audio and video) all go thru Apple's servers so they have a record of the calls.   Also, the iPhone stores the FaceTime history in a local database.  You can search this site for examples of software and techniques to get access to that database and look at it.  They all require you to jailbreak the iPhone so you'd need access to it for an extended period of time.

For Facebook, I believe you can search the history as long as it hasn't been deleted.  Here's an article on how to so that.  It's a few years old but I believe it's still technically correct.


Why does restoring iPad not restore e-mail? Best way to fix? iPad Air 2 was stolen.

Six days later, iPad Pro arrived as replacement.

iTunes restore from local backup.  Makes me pick a new security code instead of restoring that.

Also, I open mail and NONE of the accounts I had before are there, but there are three (only) messages in a generic inbox from two of those accounts.  And they are three weeks old; lots of messages came in since.

Why is this, and is there an easy fix?

I am assuming you made a non-encrypted Backup on iTunes, since you had to make a new code.

The Apple KB article About backups for iOS devices states:

  From your Mac or PC, you can make a backup of your device in iTunes. Syncing your device with your computer isn't the same as making a backup. An iTunes backup includes nearly all of your device's data and settings. An iTunes backup doesn't include:

  Content from the iTunes and App Stores, or PDFs downloaded directly to iBooks (You can back up this content using Transfer Purchases in iTunes.)
  Content synced from iTunes, like imported MP3s or CDs, videos, books, and photos
  Photos already stored in the cloud, like My Photo Stream, and iCloud Photo Library
  Touch ID settings
  Apple Pay information and settings
  Activity, Health, and Keychain data (To back up this content, you'll need to use Encrypted Backup in iTunes.)

I marked the points you are probably concerned about (your personal executive summary) :)
I am sorry to say you have to add them again from my perspective.


Will running games like hayday or clash of clans in the background for a very long time consume battery? I noticed that I often open 4 games at once. Hay day, clash of clans, infinity blade, and boom beach.

I wonder if I should terminate those apps when I no longer use it?

If i keep it on will it consume battery>

In iOS if an app does not do background processing it does not take up battery. Games should not be doing background processing.

When you get low on memory iOS will send a signal to all apps so that they can reduce their memory usage and some will free memory. If there is still not enough memory for the current app iOS will terminate other apps.

Thus iOS will terminate apps for you - you do not need to terminate them manually and there is no benefit in doing so.

So leave the apps alone..

Of course if an app is badly written and does background things then terminating might be needed but this is unusual and the developer has to do this deliberately so I thin k games should definitely be OK - there are some apps that look at your location which do misbehave but hames don't need this.


Can I use the LG Ultrafine 5K display with a PC? I remember the controversy around the 27" Apple Thunderbolt display: it doesn't work with a PC. Despite the fact that Thunderbolt encapsulates DisplayPort, you cannot use it with a DisplayPort connection - which is even more confusing considering Thunderbolt 1 and 2 use Mini-DisplayPort physical connectors.

The new LG Ultrafine 5K display looks very attractive - at least as far as the published specs are concerned (I'm not a fan of the 'chin' on the top of the monitor). I see that it only connects using USB-C connectors and according to Apple's published information: it uses Thunderbolt 3 over USB-C to deliver a 5K video stream by using both DP1.2 channels at once.

...but does this work with a PC? And if so, to what extent?

My current workstation has a Broadwell-E X99 motherboard which has an ASUS Thunderbolt 3 add-in card which "works" by having me connect a DisplayPort cable from my GPU's output back into the Thunderbolt card, which then combines it with the PCI-Express channels. My GPU is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 which supports DisplayPort 1.4 - I note that only DisplayPort 1.3 is necessary for uncompressed 5K at 60Hz in 24-bit color mode - but Thunderbolt 3 only supports DisplayPort 1.2 - and I can't see any other Thunderbolt add-in cards that accept two DisplayPort inputs (for dual-channel DisplayPort)

Can the LG Ultrafine 5K monitor be used with a PC - in any capacity?
Can the LG Ultrafine 5K monitor be used with a PC - in 5K 60Hz mode using a computer with DisplayPort 1.4 ports?
Is there also enough bandwidth to run it in 5K/60Hz mode with a Gigabit (or even 10GigE?) adapter also plugged into the monitor?
As an aside, does the monitor support multiple inputs? What if I attach another Thunderbolt 3 video source to another of the USB-C ports on the monitor?

The compatibility of these monitors with a PC and/or Windows is unclear. Even the FAQs page has a couple of related questions, but these are yet to be answered.
However, I wouldn't recommend buying this with the intention of using it with your setup unless you get a definitive answer from either Apple or LG.
In the meantime I refer you to this info:

At this point you may have noticed that all of these specs are the same as Apple's iMacs. LG Display makes the IPS displays in the iMacs, so it's very likely if not certain that these are the same panels. Given that these monitors are targeted at users of the new MacBook Pro, it's also very likely that they do not have any sort of sRGB fallback mode, as such an option is unnecessary on macOS where there is end to end color management in any AppKit app and even in most apps that don't use AppKit. This is important to keep in mind for anyone interested in buying these for a Windows computer. The state of color management on Windows means that in nearly every application you'll be stuck with oversaturated colors and no workaround, so I wouldn't recommend it even if it can work.
While I'm on the topic of Windows support, I will say that from a
technical perspective, the displays should work with a Windows
computer. However, product listings for the monitor specify that you
need a Mac with USB-C for the 4K model, and a Mac with Thunderbolt 3
for the 5K model. This limits the 4K model to Apple's MacBook, and the
new MacBook Pros, with the 5K model only working on the latter. This
also ties back to the integration with macOS. Most monitors use
physical buttons for controlling brightness and volume, but the LG
UltraFine displays use the integrated controls that macOS provides,
meaning that it can respond to the volume and brightness keys on Mac
keyboards. It doesn't look like the monitors have any buttons to fall
back on, so this may be another situation where Windows users should
be wary, and it definitely explains why the monitors are being
marketed specifically for their integration with macOS.

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10798/lg-introduces-new-4k-and-5k-ultrafine-monitors


Can I get sound out of both iMac and attached Thunderbolt Display? I have a dual monitor setup (iMac + Thunderbolt Display). The System Preferences > Sound > Output setup only allows me to choose between one or the other monitor. This causes the sound to come only from left or right side.

Any way to get both monitors to play audio simultaneously?

Yes, it's possible.

By creating an aggregate device, you can combine the audio interfaces of the dual Apple LED Cinema Displays into a single speaker.

Here's an overview of the process:

Open /Applications/Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup
Click + to add a new Multiple Output Device
Select one or more Display Audio devices
Adjust the volume slider for each Apple LED Cinema Display
Right click on the new "Multi-Output Device" and select "Use this device for sound output" and "Play alerts and sound effects through this device".

There is one caveat to this setup — you can't adjust the volume using either the keyboard shortcut or the speaker icon, as it appears disabled in the OS X Menu Bar†. you can Option + Click to toggle between audio output devices though.

Sunflower is an open source third-party app that will give you the volume control back, but since it's a kernel extension you should understand the implications before installing it.

Another software to use that isn't a kernel extension and can perfectly overcome the obstacle of not having control over your volume buttons is by using Sound Control. It actually gives you back your volume control buttons on your keyboard. Plus it has a 14 day free trial.


How to block "Twitter’s Promoted Tweets" on iOS How could I block "Twitter’s Promoted Tweets"? I use the official iOS client. I also use the official OS X client, but so far didn't notice on OS X "Promoted Tweets".

Is the solution to switch to other iOS client? Which one without ads?

Twitter is injecting the promoted tweets into the stream. It's only a matter of time until they lean on every third-party app provider to stop filtering out the promoted tweets as this is how they're going to pay for the service.

In the short-term you can use a different client but in the long term all signs point to you being forced to see promoted tweets promoted tweets or leave Twitter.

Even in fall of 2013, most major third party twitter apps aren't showing promoted tweets. I use twitterrific and don't see promoted content in my streams.


Is there an iOS timelapse app that saves frames to camera roll? I'm looking for an app that will save individual frames to the camera roll as it goes, at something like a 1-5 second interval. I'm having trouble finding any apps that don't expect you to use them to make the final video; I'd rather do that at home on the computer where I can use the images along with the ones off the SLR.

The pro version of Joby's camera app "GorillaCam Pro" will do this.


Synology NAS offer both AFP and SMB2, Mavericks always choose AFP I have to keep AFP running for my TimeMachine backups, but would like my file shares to use SMB2 because it is much faster (better than double write speed in my tests).

Is there a way to make Mavericks use smb2 for file shares first?

UPDATE:
The NAS shows up in my shared drive list in finder, from there the shares are clicked on and auto mounted. When SMB2 only is turned on the drives auto mount as SMB2, when AFP is also turned on the drives only auto mount as AFP.

When you access a file share, you could try using CMD + k in Finder (Connect to server), and then type the address as a CIFS or SMB path - ie.
cifs://my.server/SomeFileShare or smb://my.server/SomeFileShare
Disclaimer: I don't have Mavericks, and no access to my Mac right now. And I'm not even certain that Finder doesn't somehow jump on AFP anyhow.
Edit:
Ok, I can understand that you don't like to do the clicky-clicky every time.
Here's a description of how to set your OSX account preferences to do the SMB mount for you at login: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/21600/mount-a-windows-share-in-os-x-and-have-it-reconnect-at-login/
-and here's a slightly more technical recipe for making OSX automatically mount the SMB shares when needed by editing the fstab: https://superuser.com/questions/336665/how-to-automount-smb-shared-network-drives-in-mac-os-x-lion
Regarding priority, Apple says (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5884) that in Mavericks SMB is the default protocol, and if not available, it will fall back to using AFP. This seems contrary to your experience, which makes me think that maybe you upgraded from Mountain Lion, and somehow the (hidden) setting of file protocol prioroty didn't get changed according to spec.
The link also says how to force a specific protocol:

To connect to a file server directly, use the Connect To Server feature of the Finder. Select Go > Connect To, and enter a URL, IP address or DNS name.
You can attempt to force a specific connection protocol (such as SMB or AFP) by using a valid URL. As long as the server you are connecting to allows the protocol you specify, the URL should work.
smb://ServerName/ShareName
afp://DOMAIN;User@ServerName/ShareName

Same disclaimer as above - I am only on 10.8, so everything might have changed in Mavericks.


What does the "arrow" icon shown in the iPhone status bar indicate? The icon shows an arrow like symbol pointing towards upper right. It appears towards the left of the battery indicator in iPhone.

What does this mean?

This icon represents Location Services. The icon isn't generally shown all the time. The appearance of this icon indicates that some iOS app/service has recently accessed your current location.

The appearance of the icon can be configured by going to Settings app → Privacy → Location Services → System Services on your iPhone and toggling the switch shown in front of Status Bar Icon item.

Your iPhone may use not just GPS, but a combination of various technologies such as Bluetooth, crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspots, location determined by cellular towards, and other GPS like technologies such, GLONASS, Galileo, and QZSS to determine the current location.

Also, as shown above the Status Bar Icon item, the icon itself could be styled in different form to convey different information.


How to copy iTunes Library from one user profile to another? On my Windows Vista, I use iTunes to synchronize songs, apps, movies and books (items) with my iPod Touch. The iTunes media folder location is C:\Users\thomas\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media which does not have any items in it. All the items in iTunes have their actual data reside in an external hard drive that always has the same drive letters when connected to my PC and I connect it with my PC only while synchronization with the iPod Touch.

Anyway, there are a lot of items added to iTunes and now I have to create a new user profile since my old one got corrupted.

When I create a new user profile and open iTunes, iTunes will not have any items added to it. How do I get all of the items added to iTunes in my old profile to the new one?

I know one way would be to drag-drop all the items from the external hard drive back to iTunes in the new profile. But is there a saner way, that is, to copy some configuration files from the old profile’s X location to the new profile’s X location? Or perhaps, an option in iTunes that will let me do this.

The easist way would be to copy the files in "C:\Users\thomas\Music\iTunes" to the same folder in your new user account.  This should link everything back to the external drive.  The files are:

.iTunes Preferences.plist
iTunes Library Extras.itdb
iTunes Library Genius.itdb
iTunes Library.itl
iTunes Music Library.xml


Is there a way to disable WiFi auto-connect on iPhone? Is there a way to disable automatically connecting to a known WiFi network on an iPhone?

Say that your work/school has a monitored WiFi network. You only want to connect to it when you plan on downloading a large file, so you don't want to connect to it automatically. But you also don't want to re-enter your credentials every time you want to connect.

Is there a way to tell your iPhone to forget an network until you want to re-connect?

At this time, there is no way to do this.  Your only options are to have it always on or always off.

I suggest letting Apple know you want this feature by providing them feedback here.


Can I install 10.6 on a macbook 4,1 using a USB optical drive The superdrive in my late 2008 4,1 macbook has passed on but I need to upgrade the HDD with a larger one meaning a reinstall of 10.6 snow leopard.

Can I use an external optical drive to do this on such an old macbook or will I need to replace the internal?

If I can what key do I need to hold down at boot to access the USB optical drive.

Alternatively is there some way I can make a bootable USB, preferably without having to upgrade to Lion.

Thanks.

Yes, you can.

Holding Option on boot, will show you all the bootable possibilities.

Making a bootable USB is as easy as making a clean installation. Format the USB with the correct Mac Os X format, and then install as usual. Here is a step-by-step guide, with lots of useful tips.


What are the requirements to charge a Macbook Air? I have a 2017 13 inch MacBook Air, and I also have a big power bank. I am wondering, if it would be possible to charge my MacBook Air using that power bank. The power bank only has an output of 5V/2.4A. I am also wondering, how would you be able to find out the requirements for any Macbook device?

Thanks!

Apple publishes technical specifications for its products and are available at its website.

Have a look at: MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017) - Technical Specifications

Under Battery and Power2 it shows:

45W MagSafe 2 Power Adapter with cable management; MagSafe 2 power port

As your power bank only has an output of 5V/2.4A, which would be 12 watts, it's little more the 1/4 the output of the 45W MagSafe 2 Power Adapter that comes with the MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017). It will charge it, but it will be very slow compared to using the 45W MagSafe 2 Power Adapter that comes with the MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017).

Personally, I'd use the 45W MagSafe 2 Power Adapter that comes with the MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017), not your power bank.


Do All of the Macbook Pros Have That GPU-Kernel Panic Issue? Recently I upgraded my mid-2010 MacBook Pro from Snow Leopard to Yosemite. Everything seemed to be working just fine, and then, a few hours later, the kernel panics started.

Thankfully, I was able to find the solution here:

Question about GPU Panic on Mid 2010 MacBookPro6,2

Now I am thinking about upgrading that MacBook Pro to a newer model, but I just saw somebody on here talking about having a similar issue with their 2016 MacBook Pro, hence my question.

So newer MacBook Pros have the same problem?

AFAIK there have been no widespread reports of kernel panics due to GPU related issues on 2017 MacBook Pro 15", and I doubt there are any. There's always some quantity that have hardware issues, but nothing outside of the norm. According to Apple, the issues with the 2016 version were software related and patched in 10.12.2.

With that said, the norm doesn't seem to have a brilliant track record; for whatever reason, GPU failure seems to be medicore across their products. Here's a short list that I know of:

All 2011 MacBook Pros
Mid 2012 and Early 2013 15" MacBook Pros
2011 27" iMac
Late 2013 Mac Pro

That said, if any widespread issues are present, they probably won't begin to show up in wide numbers until some time this year. Widespread reports of GPU failure in the 2011 MacBook Pro didn't really garner support until 2013 with Apple doing nothing centralized until 2015.

Though, Apple (generally) is known for good support, and I wouldn't worry too much about this.


Where are my photos in this 60GB iPhoto Library folder? HELP!!

59.4GB "iPhoto Library" folder only contains a few folders (see attached screen shots), none of which seem to contain any original photos or even any image files?

The "Versions" folder was my best bet but it doesn't actually contain any images. None of these folders do.

Can't seem to find any information through Google on whether my photos are somewhere within this supposed Database folder and the folders within it. Not sure why it is 60GB if it doesn't contain any hefty files, just a bunch of system files or whatever.

Any help would be appreciated! Thank you.

if you go to ~/Users/'yourusername'/Pictures there should be a file(s) with Photo.Library in name. If you right click on this file and select 'Show Package Contents' you can find your photos. There may be several folders. Many of mine were in 'Master' folder.


How to replace images in iPhoto with higher quality versions? I use Aperture for photo editing and processing, but prefer iPhoto for keeping a gallery of my pictures. For a long time, I used the built-in tools in iPhoto to "Import from Aperture Library". What I didn't know was that this only imports the preview image, which is at a quarter resolution and badly compressed. I now have a couple of years worth of albums with lots of metadata but crappy image quality. I'd like to replace the images with higher-quality versions from Aperture, without losing all of the metadata (tags, descriptions, faces, etc). What's the easiest way to do this?

Related question: is it possible to access/change the image data in iPhoto with AppleScript? I can write a script to match images and replace them, if there's a mechanism to do that.

Here's how I eventually solved this problem. It took a few steps, and requires some scripting and command line hackery, but it did the trick.

Export the pictures you want to update from Aperture to a folder, say ~/Pictures/Updates
Open the album in iPhoto
Use this AppleScript to get a list of filenames for the master images

set output_filename to "/Users/user/Pictures/album.txt"

tell application "iPhoto"
    set pics to photos in current album
    do shell script "echo \"# Current album contents\" > " & output_filename
    repeat with pic in pics
        set picpath to image path of pic
        do shell script "echo " & picpath & " >> " & output_filename
    end repeat
end tell

Using any text editor, save the script below to update_pics.sh and mark it executable (chmod 755 update_pics.sh on the command line)

#! /bin/bash
# a quick script to parse in a series of filenames, and update them

input_folder="$1"
backup_folder="$2"

if [ "$#" -ne 2 ]; then
        echo "Usage: $0 [folder with new images] [folder for backups]"
        exit 0
fi

if [ ! -d "$input_folder" ]; then
        echo "Can't read input follder $input_folder"
        exit -1
fi

if [ ! -d "$backup_folder" ]; then
        mkdir -p "$backup_folder"
fi

if [ ! -d "$backup_folder" -o ! -w "$backup_folder" ]; then
        echo "Can't write to backup folder $backup_folder"
        exit -1
fi

while read line; do

        # skip empty lines or comments
        [ -z "$line" -o "${line:0:1}" = "#" ] && continue

        if [ -f "$line" ]; then
                filename=`basename "$line"`
                input_file="$input_folder/$filename"
                cp "$line" "$backup_folder"
                if [ -f "$input_file" ]; then
                        echo "Replacing $filename"
                        cp "$input_file" "$line"
                else
                        echo "Could not find input file $input_file"
                fi
        else
                echo "$line does not exist"
        fi
done

To use the script, give it the location of the updated pictures, a folder to put backups (I'm paranoid of losing data) and then pipe in the file generated before. For example:

update_pics.sh Updates/ Backups/ < album.txt

If you haven't already, close iPhoto. Then restart it while holding down Option and Command. That should give you a dialog to rebuild the iPhoto. You should only need to rebuild the thumbnails, though you may want to rebuild everything else. More info on rebuilding the iPhoto Library from Apple

iPhoto will probably take a long time to rebuild the thumbnails, since it will redo all of them. You have a number of albums to do, it's probably best to update the pictures first, album-by-album, and then rebuild the library. That's what I did, and it worked pretty well.


If I move files to a new disk will Time Machine do a full backup? I have a MacMini running 10.12.3 with an internal SSD hosting 2 large iPhoto libraries. I'm going to move 1 of the libraries to a new external SSD (attached to the same MacMini).

What will Time Machine make of this?

I guess it will treat the moved library on the new external SSD as new and make a full backup? And the backup size for the original internal SSD will shrink given that 1 of the libraries is no longer there?

Reason for asking is I'm wondering whether the first TM run after this library shuffle will be much larger and so will delete a lot of old backups to make space (I've not got much spare space on the backup disk).

(It would be nice if TM recognised that it's the same bunch of files - just in different places. But that's probably asking too much!)

Thanks for any support.

Timemachine identifies backups by the disk's UUID. Therefore, the answer is yes. TM will make a new backup of your files and delete old backups if there is not enough space to hold both copies.

You could delete the previous backup of your iPhoto library and then simply do a new backup. However, you will lose your backup history.

I did something similar a few years ago and I remember that I was able to point TM to the new directory and, therefore, avoid a redundant backup of these files. Unfortunately, I am not entirely sure how I achieved that. This article should get you started with the tmutil utility, which may have the capability to do that.

A final note as you seem to care about your data. You should not rely on one single Timemachine backup. Especially, if you are going to experiment with sudo and tmutil. After some bad experiences, I maintain two rotating TimeMachine backup disk plus a irregular full copy on a third disk.


How can I remap enter key on MacOS big sur? my enter key broke and doesn't work, can I rebind the Enter key to work with RSHIFT instead of enter?

Try Karabiner
https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/
Although it says it's compatible with M1 macs, I dont know if it's ARM native or runs through Rosetta2. Any app that runs through Rosetta 2 thrashes the SSD with lots of writes (at least 4x more than M! native apps) Too much writing to your SSD can lead to senility of the SSD. The only solution to this is to avoid running non native apps through Rosetta2 (which makes  memory resident apps like Google chrome a problem)


Copy local file to vpn finder I am connected to a remote server with VPN. I want to copy and paste one file to that server. When I am trying to drag and drop, it doesnt let me do that. I am new to this and this is really frustrating.

Check that you've got permission to write to the remote share.


Is this display problem of my MacBook Air a GPU issue? I have a 2019  MacBook Air and sometimes, this problem happens when I try to open the laptop; it glitches. I think this happens because I restored the Mac and deleted all my old files last week.
But this really only happened a few times in the past week and  only happend twice. I don’t know if I have to fix it or if it’s covered under warranty.

Artifacts on the screen like that are typically graphics chip issues (logic board).   However, there is the possibility that it could be related to the OS.  There are a few diagnostic things you can try:

Boot in Safe Mode
Install macOS onto a USB drive and boot from that (32GB or 64GB flash disk is fine.  Make sure it’s USB 3 or it will be slow
Erase the drive and do a clean install of macOS

This is roughly the order you should try things out to see if you can fix or narrow down the cause of the problem.  You can always take it in for service and I encourage you to do so especially if under warranty.


Navigate through application that have windows shortcut cmd+tab navigates through all open applications.
Some Apps can have no windows at all e.g. firefox, finder.
Is there a shortcut for navigating through only applications that have at least one window?

The closest built-in option in OS X is to launch Expose which shows all open windows, then hit the tab key to cycle through all open apps.  It will still select those with no open windows, but is a quick alternative nonetheless.


Can I use Karabiner to disable built in keyboard during start up The D key on my built-in keyboard (MacBook Pro) is stuck and it keeps looping into self diagnostic when I boot up. I would like to disable the keyboard during computer startup and go straight to the external keyboard but have not found a way to do this.

If I install Karabiner on my MacBook Pro and disable in Karabiner settings the built in keyboard, after I turn off the MacBook Pro and start it up again with the external keyboard plugged in, would the built in keyboard function during the start up or would it be disabled?

If not is there another way to disable the builtin keyboard during startup?

No, Karabiner won't help here, because it first has to be started to disable the internal keyboard.

You have not elaborated on why the key is stuck, but maybe you can fix it?
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+To+Fix+Sticky+Keyboard+Keys+on+a+MacBook/37709 shows you how to remove a key cover from the keyboard. There are also videos out there.
Also Apple has a guide you might want to check: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205662


How to stop Mail from forwarding all emails from one Gmail to another I have 2 Gmail accounts. When I tried adding one of them to the Mail app, something really annoying happened. The other Gmail account keeps receiving forwarded emails from this account. All emails in this added account were being forwarded there and I did not know how to stop that. I checked the Forwarding and POP/IMAP settings in both Gmails but there's no forwarding configured. I disabled POP, too. I tried disconnecting the two Gmail accounts in Google's setting, but problem still not solved. I don't understand, by now this account should know nothing about the other, but when I add it to the Mail app, the crazy forwarding started again.

Just to be clear, I only added one of the two Gmails to the Mail app, so the Mail app should not know anything about the other account. Then the wrong must be in Google's side, but I disconnected them and checked every setting, still have no clue why they still are linked somehow. I did nothing strange before, just having this two Gmail accounts and trying to add one to the Mail app, so I guess it shouldn't be a rare problem. But there seemed to be no relevant solutions when I googled. Could someone help me with this? Does anyone have a similar problem?

I had the same problem and once I unchecked (in the email I was receiving the forwards into) that I could send from the other email as an alias the problem stopped and the forwarding ceased.


How to restore MacBook Pro to factory settings? Prohibited sign on boot Because I am selling my old MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2011) and, for this reason, restore it to the factory settings. I have followed the steps for this. First the discs were erased which only partially succeeded. In the next step "reinstall macOS" I now get a gray screen and I can't get out (even after I turned off the laptop).

How can I proceed from here?

These links may help:

1) https://mackeeper.com/blog/post/473-step-by-step-guide-to-reset-mac-to-factory-settings/

2) https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/reset-mac-3494564/

3) https://macpaw.com/how-to/factory-reset-mac


Cannot get 60 Hz on MBPr 13" 2018 I connect my Macbook Pro 13" 2018 with Mojave 10.14.5 to the external display Fujitsu P27-8 TS UHD via adapter Dell DA301. All the components of this chain are capabale of 4k@60Hz. However, I can only get 30 Hz, both on HDMI and DisplayPort cables.

I can only get 60 Hz, if I low the resolution down to 1280x720!

I tried to use cscreen, which did not give me anything, and SwitchResX, which is not easy to use at all.
Both of these solutions did not work for me.

Does anybody have success forcing 60 Hz on Macbook Pro 13" 2018 with Mojave?
Thanks!

The problem is your Dell DA300 adapter (I assume you mean this one, as the DA301 does not exist). This adapter requires DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 in order to drive 4k at 60 Hz, otherwise it drops down to 30 Hz. This is detailed in the manual for the DA300.

The MacBook Pro 13" 2018 does not have hardware support for DisplayPort 1.4, but only provided DisplayPort 1.2. Only the 15" model has hardware support for that. Similarly you monitor only supports DisplayPort 1.2.

The monitor however does have support for HDMI 2.0, which is the minimum version necessary to support 4k at 60 Hz. Sadly, HDMI 2.0 is not supported on USB-C. As this adapter is USB-C, it won't be able to input a HDMI 2.0 signal. Had it been a Thunderbolt 3 adapter, that would have been a possibility - but it is not.

You might notice that the adapter is advertised as HDMI 2.0. The way this works is that the adapter takes in the DisplayPort signal over USB-C and converts that to HDMI 2.0 itself. Obviously as we've just established that the DisplayPort signal in this case does not support 4k @ 60 Hz, then neither will it support that when converted into HDMI.

In order to achieve 4k at 60 Hz, you can just use an ordinary cable (i.e. not an adapter) from the Thunderbolt 3 port on the MacBook Pro to the DisplayPort port on the monitor.


Running OverWatch On my Mac, would the over-heating kill this machine? OverWatch is game that is run-able under boot-camp.

While running the game, my MBP 2015 generates lots of fan noise and the keyboard becomes much over-heated.

would this over-heating kill my machine at a faster pace than ordinary operation?

THX

Of course the wear on your machine is higher when operated at higher temperatures. But the MBPs have a carefully designed cooling system that should keep temperatures within safe limits.

If the CPU or GPU actually do overheat, they will throttle and you will observe performance decrease. It certainly won't hurt to provide some additional airflow, e.g. by putting the MBP onto a stand like one of these so that air can flow underneath or even using a fan.


Installing macOS High Sierra on Mac Pro 2009 with a firmware upgrade requires a firmware update - is it safe? I have a 2009 Mac Pro, which has been upgraded to a MacPro5,1. It's currently running macOS Sierra. I was going to upgrade it High Sierra, but the High Sierra installer said it needs to first update the firmware and asked me to proceed in doing that.

I'm nervous to allow this to happen since the firmware was already upgraded from a MacPro4,1 to a MacPro5,1.

Also, I'm running a flash NVIDIA GTX 980, which has the boot support. I'm afraid this might cause problems as well.

Are there any known issues or conflicts with my configuration or similar configuration when upgrading to High Sierra?

I was able to perform the firmware upgrade with no problems. The MacPro upgraded the firmware after I held the power button until it flashed, then prompted me to install High Sierra after. It rebooted a few times in-between.


When will podcasts be automatically deleted in iTunes? I've heard that downloaded podcasts that are visited would be automatically deleted after some time. But I'm not sure about when or which condition does this occur.

When will the downloaded podcast episodes be automatically deleted if not saved? How to control this event?

You can set this for each podcast subscription. Click on the Gear icon at the top of a podcast list to bring up the Podcast Settings dialog.

The 'Limit Episodes' choice gives you a number of ways to set how many podcasts are retained, including no limit.


How do I change the "primary group" for an existing user? My current primary group (the gid I see listed by id) is me, rather than staff. I'd like to change it to staff, without changing anything else about my user account. How do I change the "primary group" (PrimaryGroupID) for my account?

One way to change your group is through the MacOS System Preferences panel. Open it, and then open the Users & Groups panel. Unlock the lock icon in the bottom-left so that you can enter your password and make changes.

Once the panel is unlocked, you can right-click (or option-click) on the user you want to change and select Advanced Options from the popup-menu. The advanced options panel will let you specify your default group.

To change the primary group from the command line, first get the ID number of the group and then set the primary group id to that value:

Get a list of groups. You may want to pipe this through less.

# dscacheutil -q group

Change user "scott"'s primary id to 20:

# dscl . -create /Users/scott PrimaryGroupID 20

This solution is from Richard York's blog post on dscl
Original link dead Oct 15 - now archived


3rd Gen iPad photostream I just bought an iPad for my mother and now I would like to turn on Photostream so she can see them.

Is there a setting I can change to make this possible?

In Settings, login to iCloud (under the iCloud tab) and there you will get the option for Photo stream.

You can also go to the Photos tab in Settings and enable Photostream there. If you haven't logged into your iCloud account yet, the switch either won't be there or will prompt for login information.

If you are talking about sharing Journals in iPhoto through iCloud, start by creating a Journal, then tap the Share icon in the upper right corner, tap iCloud and follow the prompts.


DoNotTrack Safari extension by Abine I'm desperate to uninstall the DoNotTrackMe extension from Abine.com. The cure is worse than the disease in this case. I've used the "Uninstall" button in the Extensions pane in Safari, and it supposedly removes it, but even then sites such as Yahoo news and Asana won't work properly until I reinstall their extension and click on the DoNotTrackMe button.

I've looked in the Library folder to see if I can find any sneaky additions, but I don't see anything in Preferences or Application Support or the Safari folder that would indicate that Abine is doing anything more than installing the extension. Help?

They have changed your Proxy settings.

Proxy is a way to connect to Internet true a specific gate (server).

Doing that the Track Me is hidden from others since they now do not know who you are.

To fix that Open the Proxy settings in Safari and unchecked anything in the pop up window.

Then Reset the Safari.


Does it matter if I take a photo from within Instagram or import into Instagram? I've begun using Instagram more and more on my iPhone 4S. And typically, I take a photo using the standard Photo app, and then import the photo and process it within the Instagram app.

But I'm wondering if there's any reason that I should be taking photos from within the app. In particular, does photo source affect resolution?

Often, 3rd party apps that can be used as a camera offer different levels of resolution in which they capture the image. Since Instagram is a widely used, and up-to-date app, I would expect they support the highest resolution offered on your device (disclaimer: I don't use Instagram so I can't check with that app).

As long as you have the resolution setting (if available) set as high as possible then you should notice no difference between the built-in camera app and Instagram - you should not lose image quality during import either.

Otherwise it comes back to personal preference. If you take the images with the built-in camera app, then your photos are automatically in Camera Roll and can be easily saved onto a computer. Camera app is also easy to open from the lock screen.


macOS partition startup Volume type FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF I have encountered a nearly identical issue to the one in this question (and this too: Data Not Backed Up, Partition Type: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF), but my hard drive's main partition is formatted in APFS. When I tried correcting the GUID error as shown in the answer, after reaching the step in which the following command: gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 372637568 -t APFS /disk0 had to be entered, it returned an error: usage: gpt add [-b lba] [-i index] [-s lba] [-t uuid] device ....

I cannot boot into macOS, my computer is in internet recovery environment. What's the uuid of the new APFS format? I cannot seem to find it anywhere in the web, and my computer isn't detecting the type of the main macOS partition.
My computer's model: MacBook Pro late 2013.
My data is not backed up and I would really love to recover it.
Update:  gpt -r show disk0:

Update:
I created a MacOS High Sierra Installation disk, and rebooted to it. The new disk utility does not recognize the disk0s2 partition at all, and diskutil list included the size of the main osx partition in GUID_partition_scheme part of the disk. Would it be possible (and how) to recover the data of the deleted partition (s2) if I reinstalled macOS on an existing unused partition (the Linux partition disk0s4)?

The proper GUID of APFS partitions is 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC.

The default pMBR was replaced with an old-style MBR, probably by the Linux installation!

Your boot system (in Internet Recovery Mode) seems pretty old. Any disk or partition verification executed with diskutil may yield some bogus result. In no case try to repair anything with diskutil!

To get your APFS partition back remove partition disk0s2 and restore it with the proper type:

Open in the menubar > Utilities > Terminal
get some details:

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

Unmount disk0:

diskutil umountDisk disk0

remove and restore the 2nd partition:

gpt remove -i 2 disk0
diskutil umountDisk disk0
gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 372637568 -t 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

verify disk and partition:

diskutil list
diskutil verifyDisk disk0
diskutil verifyVolume disk0s2

Your Mac should be able to boot despite the MBR.

If you want (or have) to restore the pMBR because the MBR is stubborn/blocks the modification of the partition table do the following:

get all disk details:

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

replace the GUID partition table:

diskutil umountDisk disk0
gpt destroy disk0
gpt create -f disk0

re-add all previous partitions visible in the last gpt -r show disk0 output:

gpt add -i 1 -b 40 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B disk0
gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 372637568 -t 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0
gpt add -i 3 -b 373047208 -s 262144 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0
gpt add -i 4 ...
gpt add -i 5 ...

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

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0

Finally verify disk and partitions:

diskutil list
diskutil verifyDisk disk0
diskutil verifyVolume disk0s1
diskutil verifyVolume disk0s2
diskutil verifyVolume disk0s3
#disk0s4 & disk0s5 can't be verified with the default macOS tools because the latter is a Linux swap and the former a Linux partition, probably with ext4


I run launchd and I get an error that says "invalid property list" When I run launchctl to load/start the plist with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.web_blocker</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Applications/Python 3.6</string>
        <string>/Users/michaelcunningham/Desktop/website_blocker.py</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>60</integer>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
</dict>
</plist>

I get the error "invalid property list". How can I resolve this issue?

Your plist is missing at least the line <true/> (or <false/>) after the line <key>RunAtLoad</key>.

The line <string>/Applications/Python 3.6</string> is useless because this is just a folder but no app/binary. Your Python script may work nevertheless, provided the shebang is set properly.


How to prevent OSX Mail PDF export to split sentences (horizontally) at the end of the page? When I export an email to a .pdf file in Mac OSX 10.9.5 it often splits sentences horizontally:

This also happens with images. Is there a way to prevent this (e.g. to push the last sentence to the next page)?

This is still an issue with Mail.app 8.2 in OSX 10.10.4.

The only solution I have found so far is to save the email as a rich text document, then open the text document in TextEdit and save as PDF.


Use only external Monitor on MacBook Pro When in my office, I want to disable the internal display of my 16" MBP 2019 since it's disturbing and uses extra resources.

The Windows solution would be pretty simple: WIN + P > external display only

I cannot figure out how to do the same on MacOS

Not a fix is

Just turning down the brightness

it keeps turning back on
the monitor is still used and everything is rendered on two resolutions
even though it's very dark, you can still see the contents

Closing the lid

I want to be able to use trackpad, touch-id, keyboard, touchbar

Using a magnet

couldn't figure where to place the magnets

I already wasted hours trying to find a solution and it seems to be such a trivial problem to solve ...

At the risk of being publicly wrong, this isn't something that's easy. macOS just wants you to close the clamshell to put off the screen. I understand you understand and reject this solution, but it's the only practical one we know of today.

I believe that people that used to do that at work with space for two large displays now may work from home and we'll see lots of changes as a result of common pain points, but there will need to be a change in the operating system to make this easy.

The closest you could get is using bluetooth / usb keyboard and trackpad but you'll lose the physical trackpad / physical Touch ID and the task bar when you close the lid.


AppleTV Remote Controlling iTunes on Laptop Last night when I was testing another question I have open here, I was using the AppleTV remote and noticed that it was affecting iTunes running on my laptop.  Basically what was happening is that I was trying to navigate through the on-screen menu on the AppleTV, but instead the input was affecting playback in iTunes.  Note, though I do have AirPlay enabled, iTunes was not streaming to the AppleTV at the time.

Is this expected behavior, and if so, what must I do to prevent it?

This is because they both use similar technology. You need to pair the remote with the device you wish to use it on if you have multiple devices.

You can do this on the Apple TV by:

going to Settings
General
Remotes
Pair Remote

More info is available in the Setup Guide as well.

If you want to pair it with the Mac, you can do the following steps (From an Apple KB):

Log in on your Mac as an Admin user.
Get very close to your Mac (about 3 or 4 inches away).
Point the remote at the infrared sensor on the front of your Mac.
Press and hold the Menu and Next/Fast-forward buttons simultaneously on the remote for 5 seconds.
Your Apple Remote is now paired with your computer. You should see a chain-link style lock appear in the center of your screen for a moment.

If you never want the Mac to be controled with the remote, then you can:

Go to System Preferences
Go to Security
Select  "Disable remote control infrared receiver"


Tools to compress and encrypt files I want to compress several files and encrypt them with a password if possible.

Are there any build-in tools in Mac OS that provide such functionality?
If not, can you recommend me a (freeware) alternative?
I'd also be happy with a terminal command.

Yes, you can do this using the built-in Disk Images of Mac OS X. A disk image (or DMG file) is a file which, when opened, presents itself as a removable Mac OS X volume, similar to a removable hard drive. Many OS X applications are deployed on disk images. If you encrypt your home directory using FileVault, you're creating a spare bundle disk image.
You can create OS X disk images which are compressed and/or encrypted.  However, if you create a compressed DMG, it will be read-only, so that may or may not work for you.
To create a new, empty encrypted disk image in OS X:

Open Disk Utility, which is under the "utilities" folder of the "Applications" folder.

From the File menu choose New > Blank Disk Image...

In the dialog that appears, you can specify where to save the disk image, the name of the volume, and choose the type of encryption:

Make sure to choose either "128-bit AES encryption (recommended)" or "256-bit AES encryption (more secure)" from the "Encryption" menu. Also, be sure to set a size for the disk image.

If you create a sparse bundle (newer, and may be more reliable) or a spare image (older, can become corrupted easily if it's open and your computer is shut down improperly) then the image file will start small and will grow as you add files to it, up to a maximum size you specify.

If you create a "read/write disk image", then the image file will start at the maximum size specified in the dialog box.

After you save the disk image file, you'll be prompted for a password and verification. Once completed, you'll have a new volume on your desktop and in the "Computer" view where you can begin dropping files!

To create a compressed, read-only image, you can do one of two things:

Follow the same steps above, however instead of New > Blank Disk Image..., choose New > Disk Image From Folder.... This will first ask you to select a folder full of files. From there, it will present a similar dialog to the one above, but will not prompt for a volume name or size; it will use the name of the folder and the size will be automatically calculated. Be sure to choose to make a compressed image and don't forget the encryption

Alternatively, if you have created a blank image and filled it with files, you can convert that image to a compressed image. This is a handy way to back up your encrypted files. Keep the master read/write uncompressed image as your day-to-day workspace, and periodically convert it to a read-only compressed image which you can back up to an external device. To do this, choose Images > Convert... within Disk Utility. Select the DMG file, and then you'll see the same screen as above.

Protip: if you drag and drop a folder onto Disk Utility's dock icon it will automatically offer to create a disk image out of that folder.
Protip #2: If you create an encrypted disk image out of an unencrypted folder and you want to delete the original, unencrypted files, remember to use secure erase otherwise you risk leaving confidential information on your hard drive.


Activating screen saver from AppleScript in Mountain Lion I had a script that I used to use to activate my screen saver, and it no longer works in Mountain Lion.

It was a shell script that called an AppleScript script:

#!/bin/bash
osascript /Users/lorin/scripts/lockscreen.scpt

This is what the lockscreen.scpt file looks like:

tell application "ScreenSaverEngine"
        activate
end tell

If I bring up lockscreen.scpt in the AppleScript Editor, I get the "Choose Application" dialog popping up asking "Where is ScreenSaverEngine?"

Anybody know the Mountain Lion-y way to activate the screen saver?

That is a nice way of starting a random screen saver.
If, however, you'd simply like to start the active screen saver, you can use this in Mountain Lion:

tell application "System Events"
    start current screen saver
end tell