Set Chrome to open PDF rather than download them I'm a student and I'm constantly hoping up PDFs for homework. I often end up downloading multiple files after clicking on a link each time I start working. Is there any way to set Chrome to only open PDFs and not download them?

THanks

FYI This answer is outdated and no longer relevant:
Go to chrome://extensions in the address bar, then find and enable Chromium PDF Viewer.
This will tell Chrome to use its built-in PDF viewer instead of downloading. After this is enabled, to download PDFs, just press command+S.


How to modify the CSS of the Google Hangouts extension window in Chrome (e.g. TamperMonkey) I'm trying to remove the SMS badge from the avatar icon in my Google Hangouts conversation list. I can open the Developer Tools and make the change in the DOM, but I want an automated way to do it.

I have TamperMonkey installed, and I have a CSS declaration that works (.Dkouue {display:none}), but I can't get it to apply no matter which @match declarations I try.

Try a different extension. On Chrome, using the Stylish extension did not work for me. However, Osprey amd Stylus (with the exact same code) did. (The latter two are in fact just forks of Stylish — created because of privacy concerns related to Stylish now being part of an analytics company — but somehow they work whereas the original does not.)

The code I used for the style is the same as yours:

.Dkouue {
    display: none;
}


MAC OS Mojave: Why do the icon texts display unnormally (squeeze and crowd)? After I upgrade my MacBook Pro from 10.8 to 10.14, I found the icon texts display unnormally. They are too crowd. Anybody have any solution towards this problem?

There are likely a few things going on here. Firstly is that Apple's new default font is San Fransisco in Mojave (OS X 10.14.x) and I believe in 10.8 was Lucida Grande. So some of the text crowding you see could be caused by a different font with it's different kerning, etc.

It is also possible, and judging from the screencaps you posted that some of your desktop/folder defaults were changed or reset when you did the upgrade.

If you go to your desktop and select "Show view options" from the "View" menu a window will pop up allowing you to change a lot of the items that will effect what you see on your desktop. You can do the same in a Finder window but I'm sticking with the Desktop here for sake of simplicity.

The things you may want to fiddle with are the grid spacing and the text size.

The grid spacing will move icons closer together and farther apart. So if you have long-ish file names Finder will squish the text when the icons are closer together.

The text size will also affect how Finder shows file/folder names. Bigger fonts will cause the Finder to try and fit longer file names in smaller spaces (grid spacing) and squish the words/letters together. The trade-off here is that smaller font sizes can be harder to read.

In your particular case I would increase the grid spacing and decrease the font size substantially and then see if things are looking better.


How can I fix Firefox's jagged scrolling on Lion? I noticed that scrolling in Firefox on Lion is not very pleasant experience.

Is there a way to optimize it for better performance?

I tried smooth scrolling setting - but it didn't do anything.

Go to configuration by type about:config in address bar and press enter key then enter scroll in filter box, now you can change all scroll options.


Simple scanning to PDF In OS X Mountain Lion, is there an easy and fast way to scan to PDF, with multiple pages per PDF?

I know this can be achieved with Image Capture, but in my opinion that is just a terrible application. For my purpose (quickly scanning handouts), it is very slow and painful. (Overview scan, then select the part of the page I want, even though I always want the full page, restart it every time I want a new PDF, etc.) It seems to me that it was designed mostly for scanning things like photos, as it really does a terrible job for documents.

I'm open to using a 3rd party app - for example, Linux has the remarkably good and simple Simple Scan app, which would be perfect for my purpose.

I use Image Capture for exactly that purpose

The overview scan can be avoided by setting Image Capture to always scan the full page (A4 or Letter) and to not do object detection
If you scan multiple documents they get written into distinct PDF files (which actually just get numbered)

For more specific needs there's also the option to create an Automator Workflow for Image Capture.


How to convert a chain into a number In Apple Numbers I want a cell to have 4x8x7 (or 4*8*7) to show the detail of the volume, and in another cell I want that volume calculated 4*8*7=224 based on the first cell. But it doesn't consider the first cell as an operation. Which formula can help ?

You could use the string concatenation operator '&' and make a formula like this:

=B2&" X "&B3&" X "&B4
which would display "4 X 8 X 7"

then have another formula that actually calculates the function:

=B2*B3*B4
which would display "224"

http://i.imgur.com/9ggakhc.png


What is causing this sound on my Mac? For several weeks now, my friend’s MacBook has been plagued by this sound, randomly occurring while running: http://c.abr.vg/321r2Q3Y2W0J

We’ve never been able to reproduce it, and it has persisted on her machine across Archive & Installs, and a clean reinstall (10.8.2) and migration via Migration Assistant (System Library and ‘Other Files’ deselected). We only even have a recording of it because I had her run QuickTime and record everything she was doing (audio only) until she caught it.

Now, the sound has manifested itself onto my Mac mini. I was previously blaming the hardware on her machine, but now I’m certain that there is an egregious software issue.

Both of our machines share little to no software. I’m a developer; she’s a human. ;)

What could be causing this?

I don't recognise it immediately, but can perhaps suggest tools to help you find it.

As for identifying the file, the closest I could find in a short time on my computer was /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Resources/No Mail.aiff but I think yours has a longer tone on the front. But perhaps you can find it yourself...

I'm assuming it's a file on your hard drive, somewhere... most applications store sound effects in .m4a or .aiff files. So my theory is you can find it by brute force... here's a command that'll find audio files, print their name and play them.

# find / -name "*.m4a" -or -name "*.aiff" -exec echo "Playing {}" \; -exec afplay "{}" \;

Note that this particular command plays all *.m4a and *.aiff files, so you might need to extend it with -or -name "*.mp3" or similar for other file types (e.g. .wav, not sure really what else to try!)

The two -exec arguments first print the file name, and then play the file. So you should see the name of each file appear, and then hear it played. Ctrl+C stops it if you find your match (and you can use afplay if necessary to re-play the last few if you're not sure which it was).

If you have lots of music on the computer as well, you may need to exclude your iTunes library or similar:

# find / -not -path "*/iTunes/*" \( -name "*.m4a" -or -name "*.aiff" \) -exec echo "Playing {}" \; -exec afplay "{}" \;

This excludes any files if their path includes a directory called iTunes (you can modify this to match your iTunes library folder).

That of course only tells you what the file was, not necessarily what was running it... if it's in the Resources directory within an Application package, or another helpful path, it might be clear that it's from some specific Application.

If not you could then try

# sudo opensnoop -f <filename>

and leave that running until you hear the sound effect. That should then show you what process played it...

Good luck!

(Incidentally, if you or your friend have housemates like mine, you'll probably find out its someone messing with you, SSHing into the computer and running afplay <sound> on a regular basis... or maybe they put it in the crontab...)


Restore functionality of Escape key in Finder (Mavericks) It's always been possible to remove focus from all selected files in Finder by pressing the ⎋ Escape key. It would appear that this is no longer possible in OS X Mavericks. I navigate the Finder entirely via keyboard and using ⎋ Escape is something I do quite frequently.

I've looked at nearly every preference pane I could think of as well as the contents of com.apple.finder.plist, com.apple.systempreferences.plist, and com.apple.universalaccess.plist, but no luck so far (or I'm just not seeing it).

Any ideas?

Right shortcut is: CmdOpt-A

In System Preferences > Keyboard > App Shortcut
you can create your custom shortcut, only for Finder if you want (You must use at least combination of cmd or option or maiusc + another key).


Secure erase drive in Single User Mode My 2007 Macbook Pro has suffered from a failure of its GPU and will now only boot in Single User mode.

I want to sell it on eBay for spares, but obviously I don't want a hard drive with live data on it ending up on eBay.

I know you can destroy a drive's contents with a secure erase in Disk Utility, but as I said, I can't boot into any mode that requires graphics because the GPU is dead.

How do I secure erase the machine's drive in Single User mode?

Normally from the command line, you would use the diskutil command with the zeroDisk, randomDisk or secureErase options to securely wipe a disk. However, I would imagine this doesn't work on the disk you've just booted from. So I suspect you'll either have to find another Mac and connect yours in target disk mode via a Firewire cable, or physically remove the drive and connect it to another Mac using a disk caddy, to wipe it the way you wish.


Does Apple take apps off the store if they crash a lot I have at least a few iOS apps that tend to crash a lot from the most simple and easy to reproduce functions of the app. I'm curious if any devs have had experience with this, and have found that their apps are eventually removed due to this. I mean, Apple gets tons of crash reports all the time, and surely they'd notice their mistake fairly quickly, and pull the app from the store, right? The question is: Will Apple eventually remove an app that has been crashing on a large number of user's devices, even if it passed review?

I've a couple of simple apps in the Mac App Store. When uploading them, Apple thoroughly test the app, from the functionality of the application itself, to whether or not the app quits when the last window open is closed. The same approval process applies to iOS application loading, though I haven't experienced it personally.

The applications that aren't working for you now would have worked when they were released. The most usual issue would be an iOS update crippling the app's functionality, for reasons known to the developer.


Is there any more way to squeeze out some performance out of my mid 2009 Macbook Pro 13"? I still like my mid 2009 13" Macbook Pro. It's solid and running quite well. However, since Yosemite things are getting really laggy and slow, so I guess that my hardware is getting a bit old. Although I swapped the old HDD to a 3rd party SSD and upgraded to 8 GB of RAM, I still see lots of lag and slowness especially when my 27" Cinema Display is hooked up via mini display port. Is there anything else I can do, in terms of hardware upgrade, to increase performance or is this just the end of the road for my baby?

I found out that there is no more way to upgrade in terms of hardware since the last option would be a new CPU which cannot be replaced in the Macbook. Overclocking the CPU is no option either for safety reasons.

However, upgrading Mac OS from Yosemite to El Capitan has greatly increased performance, so I guess I'm good for now.


How to tell if iTunes in the mini player mode from applescript Is there a way to tell if iTunes is in mini player mode from applescript?

Using Mac OS X 10.8.4 Mountain lion.

You can do something like that :

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "iTunes"
        if title of window 1 is "MiniPlayer" then
            -- If mini player
        else if title of window 1 is not "MiniPlayer" then
            -- if big player
        end if
    end tell
end tell


iMessage prompt on iMac start up Every time I turn my iMac desktop on, I'm prompted to sign into iMessage. That wasn't a big deal at first, but it's become a huge annoyance because I can't just click X to get rid of it, I have to go through 3 pages of prompts asking for a password, etc. Have tried to figure this out on my own, but I have been unsuccessful.

Launch iMessage, check Account info in Prefs.
Sign out & back in again.
Reboot.

If you don't want iMessage on the desktop, then deactivate it with the first checkbox.


Removing multiple desktops at once in mission control I tried switching desktops, but the animation was frozen and rendered the system unusable for about a minute or so... I realized I currently have 179 desktops open somehow in mission control which is probably slowing it down... Is there an easy way to close them all at once with having to individually click x on all of them?

In the end I was able to hold option and click all the X's in about a minute or so, pretty hard to do with a trackpad but easy enough with a mouse.


How many backups are kept in iCloud and for how long? I am looking into iCloud backups of iPad.

How many backups are kept in iCloud ? For how long ?

How Many/how long would appear to be a bit vague - possibly until you run out of space, but you can choose which backup to restore to from the ones on offer…

From How to restore an iCloud backup that’s older than the most recent one

  First, check out this article on how to restore an iCloud backup to an iPad (too much to précis here) —and yes, the process is the same on the iPhone or iPod Touch as it is on an iPad.
  When you reach step six, your iPhone will ask you to choose an iCloud backup to restore—either the most recent one, or an earlier backup. Each of your older iCloud backups will be stamped with dates and times, so pick a backup that’s dated just before the time you accidentally deleted that one contact from your address book. (Note: If you have multiple iPads and iPhones synced to the same iCloud account, make sure to pick the right backup for your particular device.)
  Once you tap the blue “Restore” button, the iCloud backup restoration process will begin—and remember, it could take several hours, depending on how many apps, photos, music, and other media you had loaded on your iPhone. For more details, be sure to read this entire iCloud backup how-to. same link as above


How do I access my apache web-server (running locally) from Windows 7 running on Parallels? I'm running Windows 7 from within Parallels running on MacOS X Lion. I've also setup a local apache server; I can access this server from MacOS X via any browser. I've configured this using a combination of /etc/hosts and configuring the vhosts file: typing in http://epwbst into my browser brings me to the expected website on the MacOS X side. Doing this on the Windows side doesn't do the right thing. I am able to access any other web resource.

I suspect that I need to reconfigure the DNS on the Windows side to look to the MacOS X side first. How do I do this?

First ensure you have set the type of your VM network as "Shared Network" (in Parallels open the VM Configure window > Hardware > Network). Don't know if it works with another network type.

From Parallels: browser test your OS X localhost:

  Parallels creates a little DHCP network for your virtual machines, and the OS X machine itself is at the gateway IP.   Go into Parallels > Preferences > Advanced > Network and the gateway is most likely the Start Address with a 0, 1 or 2 in front of it.  For example, my Start Address is 10.211.55.1 and in Internet Explorer I type http://10.211.55.2 to hit the webserver I have running on OS X at http://localhost:80.

So, go to your guest OS (Windows) and edit the hosts file (on Windows it's located at C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) to enter this Parallels gateway IP (in my case 10.211.55.2) and name of the VirtualHost you've configured in Apache:

10.211.55.2 myvirtualhostname.localhost
10.211.55.2 myvirtualhostname2.localhost

This does the trick as that IP address is going to be maintained by Parallels and will not change as you change your location.

Now you can access to myvirtualhostname.localhost (or whatever your VirtualHost is named on Apache) from guest's browser.


Why on Apple TV 4K, using Siri with "Move forward by 2 minutes" moved the movie back to near the beginning? When I was watching the movie at 00:50:00 (about 50 minutes into the movie), and I said to Siri on the Apple TV 4K, "Move forward by 2 minutes", it moved the movie to 00:02:00 (near the beginning of the movie), but if I was at 00:50:00 and I said, "Move backward by 2 minutes", it moved to 00:48:00?

I found that I could solve the problem by saying "Skip forward by 2 minutes", but why didn't the word "Move" work?

Report the spoken phrase, expected outcome, actual outcome, and what Siri transcribed on screen, using Apple’s feedback form.

Siri has a lot of quirks like that where the outcome doesn’t match what you could reasonably expect. This comes down to Siri’s natural language processing simply needing refining.

I use Siri heavily on Apple Watch, and I used to encounter similar issues, but they got fixed within days or weeks after I reported them.

One example would be: “At 9 a.m., remind me to do X.” Occasionally, Siri understands, “Add 9 a.m., remind me to do X.” Yet for the longest time she would go ahead and create a reminder with no due date, even though she clearly understood the time part of my request. A few days after I reported this issue, Siri started correctly tacking on a due date even when she understands “add” instead of “at.”


Finding and Renaming Mislabeled Duplicates I inadvertently formatted a Time Machine backup external hard drive.  I was able to recover many of the files, but not the names of those files.

All of the recovered files have generic names like "file01010101.doc", which is not helpful.  In order to know which files are duplicates, I need to compare the recovered files the originals I have on my machine, and have them renamed accordingly.  Then, any files that still have a generic name must be unique and not a duplicate.

Question:  How do I do this automatically?  Is there a program, bash script, or Automator action that can do duplicate file finding and renaming?  There's almost 500,000 files, so doing this manually is not practical.

In this situation, renaming files is not the way to go!

As you stated in the OP, "There's almost 500,000 files, so doing this manually is not practical.", and as mention in my comment to the OP "I'd recommend checking out Gemini 2 which you can download a copy for free and run it to see what it finds. If you like the results you can consider purchasing it."... But I really didn't clarify why I mentioned an app that detects and deletes duplicates.

1. Make a new and current Time Machine backup of the e.g. Macintosh HD.
2. Use e.g., Gemini 2 to delete all duplicates from the recovered files.

What, delete all the duplicates!? ... Yes, with a current Time Machine backup of the e.g., Macintosh HD, why do you need to keep any duplicates!? You don't, as you'd already have properly named duplicates, and modified copies as applicable, of the files on the Macintosh HD on the Time Machine backup. Therefore, does it really make sense to waste time to rename any duplicates of the recovered files? I say No!

Now the files that remain in the recovered files are unique and you can decide from there how you want to proceed. You'll certainly have a much smaller number of files to decide whether or not you want to keep them, but it will not be an easy task to rename them to a meaningful name, as they are after all unique and do not have a meaningful name.

The files that do remain from the recovered files could be broken down into two groups, OS/Apps and User Data, the latter of which has more importance than the former. It should be relatively easy to create the two groups and get rid of the OS/Apps group as most of those files will be older than the current OS and of no real value. The User Data files, some may be files you've deleted from the Macintosh HD over time and the others may be modified copies of the deleted files and  modified copies of the current files prior to the mishap. These are the ones you'll want to retain to search through as needed.

The most important thing in this situation is to have a current Time Machine backup of the e.g. Macintosh HD, and isolating unique User Data files within the recovered files, and is really the only point of sifting through the recovered files! Not messing around wasting time renaming files you already have on both the e.g. Macintosh HD and the Time Machine backup.

Note that I am a licensed user of the Gemini 2 app, but have no other affiliation with the developer MacPaw.


Can't open email attachments sent from Windows Why does a PDF attachment on an email from a PC end up as a file named winmail.dat when it arrives on my MacBook Pro?

The sender is using the proprietary email client Microsoft Outlook.  The entire message is sent in a proprietary format to preserve Rich Text Formatting, according to Microsoft.

A Google search for Winmail.dat will reveal several work arounds to deal with these kinds of files.  The simplest, but most annoying, is to ask the sender to resend the email in plain text format.  This will prevent the attachments from being bundled into the winmail.dat file.

From Microsoft:

  The data in a winmail.dat file is not usable. To resolve this issue, ask the sender to re-send the message in plain text format.


External monitor VGA detected sometimes yes, sometimes no I have this MacBook Pro with OS X El Capitan, and I'm using a LG 20M35 (19", 1600x900) as external monitor. This one has a VGA connection, so I bought a Belkin VGA to Thunderbolt adapter.

At first, it detected the monitor as a generic display of 13.9" and 1024x768. Looking for a solution, one week ago, I installed Display Maestro 2 without any different result.

Yesterday I tried to install a second external monitor using the HDMI port. I couldn't make it work, but for some reason, something that I did trying different things, the first external monitor (that I didn't disconnected from the MacBook) was detected as expected! I could see the first one as LG 20M35 monitor with its right resolution (1600x900).

Anyway, today, the monitor is detected as a generic display again. I tried everything to make OS X detected the monitor as an LG 20M35 but I couldn't. Could you help me please?

Well, it seems the solution was pretty simple. I have a power strip with 6 sockets, and each socket has its own power switch. If I fire up the external monitor before the MacBook, the monitor is detected as expected.


Finding eBooks (.epub) via content on my Mac I have a lot of eBooks on my Mac. But whereas I can find any PDF on my Mac by searching their content, this doesn't work with Spotlight when applied to .epub files.
(The only clumsy way of doing this is putting all the eBooks onto google drive. But the results are frustrating. the eBooks are treated somehow like "Package Contents" and only the pertaining page of the book, not the book are found.)

Anyhow, is there a (simple) way to find eBooks by content?

Here's an open source plugin you can use to do what you're asking.

https://github.com/jaketmp/ePub-quicklook

Simply follow the installation instructions on their page and according to the description, it will then index it for use with Spotlight. There's also a plugin for Quick Look support on the same page. To download a tested version, go to "Releases" and get the latest version.

At the time of writing this, that is version 1.7.


Finding the true status of launchd jobs launchctl list

launchctl bstree

These show which jobs are active, dormant or inactive, allegedly.  I have never seen an inactive job personally. Even ones that I have tried to inactivate show as 'D'

Now, in /var/db/launchd.db there are textfiles that show, per user, which jobs are actually disabled, lamentably, the old -w switch was deprecated, and the Disabled  key in the plist is only a default. I don't know why they would do such a thing, there seems to be no way to say definitively

"Service X is off."

It seems that running as root I should be able to ask what is on, and what is off. What am I doing wrong?

EDIT: What I was doing wrong was ignoring

/var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd/overrides.plist

Which is the definitive place apparently for the current state of a daemon.

Handily, this means that the default will be in the plist files in /System/Launch*
/Library/Launch*
~/Library/Launch*
and one can just blow away ( errrm copy and move ) that directory and reboot to a default set.  This worked for me recently.

The launchd GUI LaunchControl will give you a list of services along with their respective status. You can see if a job has been disabled by looking at the check box next to the job name. A colored check box indicates that the Disabled key has been overridden: a red checkbox stands for a permanently disabled job, a green one for a permanently enabled job.


iPhoto Library Picker OK I have been upgrading and moving things around between computers for years and in that time I have managed to have a lot of duplicates in the iPhoto Picker:

I have consolidated the libraries down to three but the iPhoto Library Picker (hold OPTION when launching iPhoto) is filled with a bunch of old cruft that I would dearly love to remove. Problem is I can't find where this list is kept.

It does not seem to be in any of the iPhoto preferences in my home or system folder nor in Application Support either.

Any ideas where this data is stored?

Locate iPhoto in your Applications folder. Control + Click on the iPhoto application and "show package contents". The file you seek is there.


Can't use CMD+V Shortcut to copy paste into certain apps, but right click menu works fine In iMessage, the Mail app and Slack, if I copy an image to clipboard, then use Cmd+V to paste it into an active iMessage conversation, nothing happens. However, in apps like Discord or Firefox, this works fine.

However, if I click Edit -> Paste or right click the message box and click paste, it appears. It's really frustrating to have Cmd+V not work. Does anyone know why? It's always been this way, since I bought this Macbook earlier this year, refurbished.

MBP 13 inch using MacOS Mojave

With help from @user3052786 , I've found the issue.

The reason why many (but not all) apps were failing to paste with the shortcut (but Edit menu -> Paste or Right click -> Paste worked fine) is because I previously followed the following tutorial on how to make my clipboard content attempt to match the output document's text style on paste.

https://havecamerawilltravel.com/photographer/set-paste-match-style-default-mac-osx/

I did this because I was using OneNote for Mac and pasting a lot of content between different documents for note-taking.

The fix: Simply remove the 'CMD+V -> Paste and Match Style' mapping from Keyboard shortcuts in MacOS Settings, as shown in reverse by the tutorial.


Unbootable mac and need to recover data Today i deleted from disk utility a linux partition (dual boot) on my macbook and i get an failure. Then i restarted but it won't boot..
I don't know what I have to do..
I don't have any recent backup but i need to recover some data from the SSD and I don't know how to do this.. Please help me

EDIT: I need to recover files from MacOS partition, I don’t care anymore of Linux partition

You may need to visit a data recovery center and have them inspect the hard drive and see if they can find and copy any data from the Linux partition if it hasn't been formatted.


Plain text agenda formatting recognition by Siri I will be hosting a small conference and want to send an email to participants containing a full agenda as plain text or in form of a short pdf as an attachment.
I wanted to format it that way that Siri would recognize every individual event on the list and suggest adding it to the calendar.
Unfortunately, I cannot find any description for formatting.
Usually, I do it in that way:

Start date/time - End date/time  | Event 1 Title | Event 1 Speaker | Event 1 Location | Event 1 Description
Start date/time - End date/time  | Event 2 Title | Event 2 Speaker | Event 2 Location | Event 2 Description

but in that case, Siri is only recognizing starting date and leaves the rest empty (same case for pdf).
Does anybody know where can I find text formatting schemas for Siri to fully recognize events and allow adding them to the calendar?

I do not really understand why Siri should be involved?
First create a new calendar (click on the “File” menu, select “New Calendar” and then “iCloud”). You can name it to whatever you feel like and share it by clicking share icon to the right of the calendar’s name. You can even make it a public calendar, which means anyone can subscribe to a read-only version of your calendar.
Second define all events in this calendar. (For future changes make sure to have syncing of calendars to iCloud activated).
In the edit screen of the calendar you can directly add people with whom you want to share it.
Apple provides more info here.


Error 'USBDeviceOpen failed' only with my user account when using PowerMate USB Controller. OK with fresh account I have a PowerMate USB controller from Griffin: it works, but using my normal user account I can't control the light settings. With a fresh new account, everything works as expected. How can I find what cause the trouble?

I can interact with it, turn it, press it, and it reacts as expected.
But I can't control the light settings: the light is always on, even if I set it to pulsing mode. It doesn't blink when it should.

Each time I do an action that should change the light state (assigning the Default Set to the PowerMate unit, or changing the default light state in the settings), I get this error in the console:

  19/03/11 17:39:42 PowerMate[441]  PowerMate Device location: 26410000 service: 0000b69b USBDeviceOpen failed: e00002c5

Sometimes, I get multiple entries of the same error (up to 14 times). Except for this error and the following error at launch of the app, there is nothing helpful.

  Path (null) given to -[NSWorkspace iconForFile:] is not a full path.

I'm running Lion 10.7.1 (problem was similar on Snow Leopard).

Here is what I have done so far to troubleshoot:

Make sure the application PowerMate.app is not running
Un-plug the USB PowerMate device and every other USB devices (except for my keyboard)
Remove everything created by the application PowerMate.app with:

.

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.griffintechnology.PowerMate.plist;
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.griffintechnology.PowerMate;
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/PowerMate;

Repair the authorization with Disk Utility.app
Reboot.
Apply the latest combo update (MacOSXUpdCombo10.6.6.dmg)
Reboot
Launch the latest version of the PowerMate.app application (version 3.0 - 3012).
Then plug-in the USB PowerMate device.

Anything else you suggest to find the difference between my account and a new one?

Known Differences That Matter between the accounts:

Similarities between the accounts:

Both accounts are admin of the machine.
They are members of the same group.

Output of the id command:
 my normal account (the one with the issue):
uid=501(mylogin) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),401(com.apple.access_screensharing),102(com.apple.access_ssh),204(_developer),100(_lpoperator),98(_lpadmin),81(_appserveradm),80(admin),79(_appserverusr),61(localaccounts),12(everyone),402(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1)

the fresh new test account (the one where it works):
uid=502(test2) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),401(com.apple.access_screensharing),204(_developer),100(_lpoperator),98(_lpadmin),81(_appserveradm),80(admin),79(_appserverusr),61(localaccounts),12(everyone),402(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1)

I am in contact with Griffin support. They are very nice, but so far we haven't been able to find the reason of the issue.

Update: Apparently, the error code e00002c5 means "exclusive access and device already open".
Any idea how to figure what process has access to a USB Device?

This sounds like something is broken with the device node for the usb device. You an compare the settings with something like this:

figure out what the device node is. The last step will output the device name following a > (and some other junk you can ignore.) You'll need that device name in step 2. It would be best to do this test on the temp user that works, just after a fresh reboot.

ls -1 /dev/ > /tmp/before  (note, that's "dash one")
plug the device in
ls -1 /dev/ > /tmp/after
diff /tmp/before /tmp/after

compare the device permissions between the two.

login as yourself
ls -el /dev/devicename > /tmp/broken  (note, that's "dash e ell" this time)
login as the temp user
ls -el /dev/devicename > /tmp/working

This last bit will create two files that look something like this:

crw-rw-rw-  1 root    wheel      11,   1 Mar 26 16:20 cu.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync

The first bit (crw-rw-rw-) is a textual representation of the mode bits... it's possible a difference there is the cause.

The next bit that might be the problem is the user (root) and group (wheel), either of which could be causing the problem.

I'm assuming it's being dynamically created (incorrectly) when the device is inserted. Another possibility is that the device node is persistent, but wrong. If both of those files MATCH, then show us what they are and we can probably figure out what the device should be set to.


Permission denied adding SSH key to .ssh/config I am trying to add SSH key to ~/.ssh/config using echo "IdentityFile ~/.ssh/my-ssh-key" >> ~/.ssh/config

It is showing me error -bash: /Users/gaurav/.ssh/config: Permission denied

What i am doing wrong?

Permission to folders

total 64
-rw-r--r--  1 root    staff    85 Apr 15 12:59 config
-rw-------  1 gaurav  staff  1766 Jan  4 23:11 github_rsa
-rw-r--r--@ 1 gaurav  staff   404 Mar 20 09:50 github_rsa.pub
-r--------  1 gaurav  staff  1766 Mar 20 10:05 google-sb-server
-rw-r--r--  1 gaurav  staff   388 Mar 20 10:05 google-sb-server.pub
-rw-------  1 gaurav  staff  3247 Jan  5 10:37 id_rsa
-rw-r--r--  1 gaurav  staff   726 Jan  5 10:37 id_rsa.pub
-rw-r--r--  1 gaurav  staff  2230 Mar 20 12:45 known_hosts

The config file in ~/.ssh/ has the wrong owner/permissions. It's owned by root.

Change the owner to gaurav with:

sudo chown gaurav:staff ~/.ssh/config

enter your password and it will work (if you are a sudoer).


Dual monitor: losing focus on terminal app when using cmd+tab Webdeveloper here. This is the situation:

I have two sceens,

on screen one there is a terminal window running my webserver
on screen two there is a terminal window where I type my commands and there is a text editor (atom).

I want to cmd+tab between the terminal and editor on screen two. But when I do, and I cmd+tab from the editor to the terminal, the focus is suddenly on the terminal on screen one (and thereby accidentally typing all kind of stuff in the server output)

So, is there a way to make a window of an app the 'main' window? (the terminal on screen two in this case) So that when you cmd+tab to the application the focus will be on this 'main' window?

In System Preferences > Displays > Arrangement, I already moved the white taskbar to screen two. This does not solve the problem

I cant recall I had this problem before. Is this new functionality in Catalina?

You can press CMD` to switch between windows of the same application.

This doesn't fix the root cause of the focus issue, but does allow you to select the correct Terminal window via the keyboard.


Hide Parallels's VM icon from the dock Parallels includes a mode called Coherence, where software from the guest OS is launched as if it were a native macOS app. This means their windows are rendered separately, each occupying an icon in the dock. Apart from those, Coherence always displays a dock icon for the VM itself. My use-case is that I'm running the VM for only one program, which I display in Coherence 1 so not to have it rendered with a title bar on top 2. I'd now like to remove the VM icon, as I can do without its functions (shutdown guest OS, open cmd, etc).

Here are the things I've tried:

I've tried the info.plist method best described here, as applied to the info.plist of the VM icon (⌘+click its icon to reach its location). Didn't work.
I've used Dock Dodger. Didn't work. Presumably because it seems to do exactly the same as the above's method.
I've used Ghost Tile. Worked. And here's the problem - the reliance on it. The app is essentially free, but needing it in the first place goes against maintaining a minimal setup, and most importantly it's a fragile solution as the app is prone to disappearance down the years (as it happened with Dock Dodger, which is now distributed via an assortment of non-official hosts).

I've also asked in the Parallels forum. Their response is understandable in that the feature would seemingly break functionality for common users. However, it actually shouldn't affect much at all in the right hands, as you can still control the hidden VM from the terminal, or the main Parallels icon.

I'd like to see a solution that is more future-proof and universal (the info.plist method seems not to work for a lot of apps). After all, Ghost Tile is doing something right, and as far as i can tell, it hasn't been documented openly in the many threads active about hiding dock icons.

It's pretty ridiculous that this slipped both me and Parallels's support to the point that I went through all the effort above, but there it is - if you go to Parallels's preferences, this setting is under General > Virtual Machine icon. Select none.

I believe my question has implications extraneous to this particular case, but since the submission is under the Parallels's title and confers much specificity to the case, I'll close it as it is.


Animated GIF images are slow on iOS Animated GIF images seem incredibly slow since iOS 4.3ish. Prior to that, animated GIFs worked just fine and had the same speed as on a computer. I don't mean loading the GIF, but the speed of the animation. They are the same on the iPhone 3GS and iPad 2, so it's probably not hardware based. However, they work fine in the Simulator. I suspect the libraries were changed at some point. Can anyone confirm this, and/or provide a remedy. Animated GIFs hosted at senorgif.com are the main culprits.

EDIT: iOS 6 seems to have fixed the issue; probably a memory allocation related, since each frame used to get slower and slower :P

I visited the link provided, and I was unable to recreate this issue. The speed of the animations seems perfectly fine on iPhone 4S. If you have had this problem on numerous devices, I kindly suggested reporting it to Apple as a potential bug. More than likely, if it hasn't already been reported, an engineer will get back to you with a request and instructions on how to submit more information regarding the matter to them.

To submit a bug report to apple, visit http://bugreport.apple.com.

I would also like to suggest downloading Google Chrome for iOS or Opera Browser for iOS and visiting the same website(s). See if the animations are just as slow there. This will give you a bit more detail to submit to Apple with your bug report. If the issue is only in Mobile Safari, that will help them track the problem down much faster. If it exists in all browsers on the device, they will know that they need to look a bit deeper into iOS itself. Either way, I'm afraid I can't offer a quick fix for the issue as it seems to be a rather rare occurrence.

Good luck and happy LOLing!


Japanese MacBook Stop Switching to Japanese Language I own a Japanese version MacBook Pro, that of course has the Japanese keyboard with the particular keys (around the space bar) that are used to switch between the various forms of Japanese (and English) language input. This is running OSX Lion FYI.

My problem is that the machine sometimes seems to switch into Japanese input mode even when no one has touched the input mode switching keys. This is issue also happens on my wife's MacBook running OSX Snow Leopard and a friend's iBook running Leopard, all of these being Japanese model machines.

Does anyone know of a way to force the OS to ONLY switch the input language when someone actually chooses it from the actual pull down menu?

Perhaps all three of us are hitting the input keys by mistake (i highly doubt that though). If that is the case then it is a design flaw.

Any input (non-Japanese :) would be greatly appreciated.

Could it be that you are accidentally hitting the input source switching shortcuts? If so, you can disable them in the System Preferences.

Also, if you find that the input language changes when you switch apps, this is actually normal behavior. By choosing “Use the same one in all documents” in the input source options, you can greatly decrease the chances of this happening. (With the exception of a few apps that seem to ignore/override this setting. Very annoying.)

If you've experienced this problem only when using Japanese keyboards, then I guess there is a different cause. I use US keyboards, but this unintended switching happens to me too. Mostly when switching to Adobe apps.


Get Alert on low disk space Is it on MacOS possible to get notified by eMail if the space on a disk gets low.

Here is a script that will do what you need.  Let me know if you need a hand configuring it (although the article goes into detail about configuring it to check at intervals etc)

http://www.macmanager.com.au/software/low_space_script.html


How do I switch my Apple ID email to a previously used rescue email? I originally had my current email address set as a rescue email, and my old email as the original Apple ID.

When I deleted my current email address off the rescue email list, I was unable to set it as my Apple ID address.

How would I be able to set my current email as my Apple ID?

You are getting an error message because your primary email cannot be the same as your rescue email. You have to first change your rescue email.

I just went through this. A source of confusion is that the instructions are not clear, and the option to change your rescue email is not easy to find.

Go to manage Apple ID (https://appleid.apple.com/account/manage), and in the left navigation to password and security.   You need to enter answers to your security questions before you can go through. If you forgot the answers, there's a link to send security questions reset information to your rescue email.

Once you have entered the answers to the security questions, you can change your rescue email - you'll have to enter one different from the main email, and you'll have to validate.

Once this done, you can set your current email as your primary email, and then set it as your appleID.

Update:  It was mentioned below, but worth adding it here to save headaches. Turn off Find my phone in all devices that are signed in to icloud.  Otherwise,  you won't be able to sign out, as your device will be signed to an account (used id) that does not exist.   Suggest making a backup first and then signing off from iCloud.  Make the ID change once all devices are signed off.

If you forget to do that, you will either have to restore the device, or will have at a later time to change your id back to the old email, log off the device, and then change it back to the new one.


Can macOS change the @ symbol to be located with the "Q" key? I want the @ symbol to be on the "Q" key.

I need to switch between Linux and Mac daily. I don't want to think about which keyboard is under my fingers.

My ThinkPad keyboard is connected via USB to the MacBook. It works fine, except that the @ symbol is at the "L" key and not on the "Q".

I could not find a way to change the configuration of the Mac to match my needs.

How to solve this?

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources and make sure this is set to "German Standard" and not "German".

If this does not do the trick, or if you do not have the choice of German Standard, then it is pretty easy to make a custom layout to put this character anywhere you like with the app Ukelele.


What is creating a file with the name "1" in my user folder after I delete it repeatedly? In my user folder is a file with the name "1". When I open it in a text editor like Xcode, there is one line of text that reads:

button returned:OK

If I delete that file, it gets recreated after some time. My OS is 10.6.8

What is that file?

It's impossible (given the information in your question) to know what is making the file, but you can set a trap for it and see what process is writing to that file and hopefully which one re-creates it if you catch that moment in the filesystem logging.

You'll need to know a few things about the terminal to use the tool fs_usage and filter the results to match the exact path of the file.

On my machine, my home folder is named mike, so you can adjust the |grep /Users/mike/1 command to match your user folder's name:

Open the terminal app and type pwd and press return. Then type the sudo command - this invokes the command as the super user (root) since it's tapping into the very lowest level of the system and bypasses the protections that all users have. If you don't like terminal commands, look into a tool like fseventer to see if you can determine what is creating that file.

mac:~ mike$ pwd
/Users/mike
mac:~ mike$ sudo fs_usage | grep /Users/mike/1
12:48:19  stat64            /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000076 W touch
12:48:19  open              /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000206 W touch
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000119   mds
12:48:19  lstat64           /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000012   mdworker
12:48:19  stat64            /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000004   mdworker
12:48:19  lstat64           /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000002   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000041   mdworker
12:48:19  open              /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000025   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000012   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000078   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1/.DS_Store                                                          0.000006   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1/.DS_Store                                                          0.000003   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1/.DS_Store                                                          0.000004   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1/.DS_Store                                                          0.000003   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000024   mds
12:48:20  lstat64           /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000028   fseventsd
^C

You see I typed control-C to exit the tool since fs_usage will wait forever, dumping the usage of all files until you tell it to quit.

Once you've set the trap, just wait for the screen to show the entries similar to mine where I used the touch command to create the file ~/1


If I delete the sound library from GarageBand on my Mac, can I reinstall it later for free? I have a MacBook Air and it doesn't have very much storage so I want to delete the sound library from garage band (not the whole app, just the sound library). if I do this, will I be able to reinstall it later for free, or will I have to pay?

You can download it from App Store here

It is free, but you will have to use your App Store ID to get it.

More Info from Apple


Voice/vocals are really hard to hear on my iPod I have an iPod Touch (4gen), and I listen to a lot of vocal music and spoken-word audio.

Sometime in the past week or so, voice became really hard to hear.  When I play music, it sounds like it's been turned into an instrumental.  When I play spoken voice, it sounds like the Peanuts teacher.

If I turn up the volume to the max, I can hear the voices fine, but then the low-frequency music is overwhelming, so that's not an option.

Is there some equalizer setting (I didn't think the iPod Touch had these but I could be wrong) that I could have screwed up to make this happen?

UPDATE:

I'm suspecting a hardware issue.  I've not mistreated it, but I've found that with some headphones, if I rotate the plug in just the right way, the vocals come back just fine.  I'm not sure how an audio jack can be plugged in and receive non-vocal sound but not vocal sound, but that's what it sounds like.  I'll take it by an Apple Store and see if they can do anything.  The audio jack is certainly the weakest part of the iPod these days, so it's not entirely surprising that it's the first thing to go.

There is in fact an equalizer setting on the iPod touch.  Go to Settings -> Music -> EQ to get a list of all of the different equalizer settings.  The best choices for you are probably "Off", "Spoken Word," or "Vocal Booster."  If your problem continues, feel free to leave me a comment.


Make macOS look like a Linux desktop I have been developing under GNU/Linux systems for the last 10 years. Unfortunately my company is going to move developers to macOS systems soon.

Although for most of the part I should be ok (after all, people use programs, not Operative Systems), there are a couple of problems that I need to solve, most of them around having a desktop similar to the one in Linux Mint (Cinnamom), but actually anything looking like gnome2 would do.

Is it possible to install a Linux-like desktop in macOS (or maybe configure macOS to look like a Linux desktop). Essentially I am looking for a simple bottom bar with a couple of links to main applications and a list of opened windows (see image).

Is this possible?

I have searched for this, and what I tend to find is the opposite process, how to make Linux desktops look like macOS desktops...

Have a look at ubar. It gives you similar style task-bar.

But if you really want to get benefit from macOS, check out these great tools: Launchbar, iStatmenus

For discovering other useful utilities, checkout Macupdate


I want to download Xcode that I deleted again. But when I open App Store and search for Xcode the download button is grey When I downloaded it before I did it through App Store but now that doesn't work because of that the button is grey. Have tried to download Xcode through developer.apple but there it says that I don't have enough storage which I clearly do because I got 16 GB free. HELP

16 GB might be enough to download Xcode, but it might not be enough to install Xcode.

Xcode is delivered as compressed .dmg or .pkg file (I can't remember quite which) and it would be uncompressed upon installation.

16 GB is not a lot of space to run macOS in general.

If you need more space, you might use an app such as OmniDiskSweeper to see if there's anything taking up unexpected space.


Proper save format for preview for editable pictures Suppose you edit a picture in Preview and added new elements such as text. In what format should you save the file if you want to resume editing the added elements, like changing the font of the text for example?

I dont think such a portable editable document can be made in preview. It will export in these formats.

I don't know about HEIC and OpenEXR, but none of the others would allow such modifications AFAIK, if done from Preview.


How do I view my cookies in Safari 7 Web Inspector? I've got the developer menu enabled, and am looking at the Web Inspector, but the instructions I've been able to find for viewing cookies in Safari 6 don't seem to apply in Safari 7.

How do I view my cookies in the Safari 7 Web Inspector?

Open the inspector with either
* right clic > Inspect element
* Menu > Develop > Show Page Ressources

Then select the cookie line in the left menu that appeared on the bottom of your Safari Page.


Compatibility of iPad Air with Peripherals I'm very in the interested in the iPad Air. I would like it to be my hub computer. I would like to have the functionality of a laptop or desktop with the advantages of mobility - touch-screen, portability, connectivity.

There is some talk of a computer which combines the functionality of the Macbook (the Apple notebook-name??) and an iPad, a convertible. But that possibility is a year to a year and a half away, if at all, of course.

I've been delving into the possibilities of use of the iPad Air with peripherals and am having some success, and some mixed results.

Use of an external hard drive seems to be a real possibility both from Apple and third-party makers also (the Voyager Air external hard drive-www.corsair.com/external hard drives by Seagate/I believe Apple's product is Time Capsule). But not only do I want storage, I want to work with apps and programs on the external hard drive, due to the limited space of the Apple iPad Air.

I want to have the full range of the use of some of the important peripherals. I've found an external hard drive, Mobilelite Wireless (www.kingston.com), which stores nothing, but has USB 2 port, USB 3 being preferable, of course, SD/SDHC/ SDXC slot, and an adapter for micro SD cards.

In my reading, I've come across some things that allude to apps, Apple apps, which enabled, or helped an external device to function with the iPad Air.

Apps can't be stored on an external drive1. In fact, not much outside of media can be stored externally, especially without jailbreaking.

With jailbreaking, you can mount the external drive as a volume with iFile, which lets you store files on there. However, many apps crash when attempting to access files stored outside a sandbox by means of symlinking due to security restrictions.

Basically, it's nowhere as simple as external drives with OS X. You won't be able to do much with an external drive, and even less if you don't jailbreak.

The iPad Camera Connection kit with its SD card reader and USB port was not designed for storing files from the iPad — it was designed to import media from a camera. There are specially-designed drives for iOS devices, but they're for storing media, not apps or app data.

1 Well, jailbreaking lets you move the app and move it back, but it can't be run from the external drive, and moving it will probably break the permissions (and springboard).


Maps on iPhone gives me completely wrong distance estimates Let's say I look up "Coffee Shops". It gives me a list of coffee shops around and their distances. But when I choose a coffee shop and press on it, it gives me a completely different distance.
For example, one of the coffee shops in the initial list Maps shows me is supposedly at a distance of 700m. However when I "click" on that coffee shop, it then shows a distance of 2km (almost 3 times more).
Why is this happening?

This is just a speculation and based on observation, but it seems that Maps will use the last place the iPhone "checked in" as point where it thinks you are to calculate distances.
When you click/tap on the specific entry, it then gets the actual GPS coordinates to then draw the map/calculate directions.
The way I solved the issue was to search for my place of interest in Bing (yeah, the Bing App) because it gets the actual GPS coordinates, runs the search, and then hands off to Apple Maps.


Previewing my HTML in Safari Using TextWrangler. I've begin to construct a simple website with TextWrangler, and I have a question. In the online tutorial I'm following, the guy previews his website in Chrome. However, he is using Notepad++. Is there any way I can preview my code in Safari using TextWrangler? Thank you!

If it's a single page you can just open it in Safari with Cmd-O.

If it's more elaborate, store it to ~/Sites, enable Web Sharing in the Sharing Preferences and point Safari to http://localhost/~YOUR-USER-NAME/WHATEVER-YOU-CALLED-IT.html


What exactly is meant by PPM002, PPM003, PPM004? My Macbook Pro's Apple Diagnostics currently reports PPM002, PPM003 and PPM004 error codes, which are associated with the on-board memory.
Apple's page on this topic is not illuminating.
Is there a technician's or engineering manual somewhere that documents these?

Apple doesn’t share technical documents like that outside being a certified repair tech. In the end, if the RAM is soldered to the board, it means call for a repair but I understand wanting to see high quality repair manuals, they are awesome for learning how things work and how they break.
I don’t know of any place that broke NDA and shared the manuals covering this - so you probably would get an answer indirectly by engaging  Apple support. Based on what they fix, you may be able to learn what was wrong, but most repairs do whole board swaps and don’t go into sub component repair.


Default country settings in OS X 10.9.1 I have a very annoying problem with my Mac. My default country is somehow set to the Netherlands. Whenever I open Google with Safari or another Web browser, I get redirected to google.nl. I also cannot use my Spotify account anymore because it says that I need to be in my home country. How can I change that? I already tried using System Preferences -> Language & Region, but that does't work.

Google and Spotify are most likely showing you Netherlands information because they are associating your IP address to a location in the Netherlands.

This isn't a setting that is controlled from your browser, but is a component of your internet connection that services use for various reasons to personalize the experience to the user, without knowing much (yet) about the user themselves.

For example, if I VPN (tunnel my internet connection to make it look like I'm from a server physically located elsewhere) from the US to the UK, Google automatically directs me to the UK Google page, and I can watch Al Jazerra English and BBC. (both unavailable-ish in the US) Similarly, those services think you are physically in the Netherlands, and they behave accordingly; Google directs you to it's .nl service, and Spotify likely doesn't have streaming agreements in the country, so it cannot legally service those in the Netherlands.

Now, you don't mention where you are physically, so it is possible that you are not physically in the Netherlands, but whatever service Google and Spotify use to associate an IP with a general location says that you are, likely because (some time in the past) that IP address was associated with a location in the Netherlands. If that's the case ... you may need to contact your ISP to see if they have a remedy for this kind of problem.


FileVault2 command line commands in Mojave? I've been reading about using the fdsetup command to manage FileVault2 from the command line. But I can't find it in Mojave (or High Sierra for that matter).

Is there a command line interface to FileVault2?

The command you want is: fdesetup

From its manual page:

  fdesetup(8)                    BSD System Manager's Manual

  NAME
          fdesetup -- FileVault configuration tool

  SYNOPSIS
          fdesetup verb [options]

  DESCRIPTION
          fdesetup is used to enable or disable FileVault, to list, add, or remove
       enabled FileVault users, and to obtain status about the current state of
       FileVault. Most commands require root access and need to be authenticated
       with either a FileVault password, a personal recovery key (if enabled),
       and in some cases the private key from the installed institutional recov-
       ery key.  Some status related commands can be run from a non-root session.


Preview: reorder pages in pdf increased file size? I have scanned 58 pages into a PDF. The file size of this orginal pdf was 8 MB. Unfortunately the page order was a little messed up when I scanned so I used Preview to reordered some of the pages by simply dragging the pages around in the thumbnails bar. After doing this and saving the pdf the size had increased to 23 MB! What happened? And how do I reduce the file size?

I tried the reduce file size quarts filter but it reduced the resolution which made the pdf unusable.

I see no reason for the file size to increase from just reordering existing pages, is there?

I found out that it has to do, in my case, with embedding Types.
after combinig them with preview or (I use a lot of chapters) the free tool PDF Merger Free (or in your case, reordering), it seems they swallow the whole fontbiblio (well, guess not, only feels like), so I drop them on the app PdfCompress (https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/8823/pdfcompress), in which preferences I choosed, without touching the compression Size (just in the middle), as fonts base 14, or none (this is risky, don't do it without checking your whole Dok afterward, makes funny things if the fonts aren't standard).
Hope this helps...


Is Java UDP communication broken on macOS? I've been trying to figure out why a Java program that uses UDP communication on Windows works 100% fine but seems to regularly drop packets on a macOS build of the JVM (8.x).

I saw another thread on StackExchange that was never really answered, but it appears that one of the people noticed a similar issue on OSX there as well.

I don't have the standard firewall enabled in preferences nor do I believe I have any special network settings which would interrupt UDP datagrams. As well, if I run the same program on a Windows 7 VM via VirtualBox on the same hardware, the program works just fine.

Any ideas of what to look for or if this is a known issue?

UPDATE 2018-11-24: More details. I'm running Java 1.8.0_92-b14 from Oracle on a MacPro3,1 and macOS 10.13.6. The program I'm running is ADTPro 2.0.2 as an ethernet server trying to communicate with an old Apple //e that has an Uthernet II running the other side of ADTPro. It is software to transfer disk images to/from the machines.

The problem is that transfers often timeout and abort and it appears that packets are getting lost and the code isn't sophisticated enough to error correct and resend/retry. Looking at the source code, it appears everything is in UDP which definitely raises suspicions. According to the maintainer on GitHub, the fact that it is using UDP is historical and nobody has done the work to convert it to TCP. Given that the software works just fine talking to a Windows machine with the same software and Java versions, I'm guessing it is something with macOS or the OSX Java build and asking if anyone knows how to determine for sure or otherwise. Does that help?

No - UDP isn't fundamentally broken on macOS (or any of the other AppleOS)

The definition of UDP is unicast data packets and due to the send and forget nature of the casting, delivery of these is sometimes jokingly called unreliable data packets.

As a troubleshooting step, my first triage step would be to establish that the switch and router are actually delivering the packets to the macOS interface. Wireshark or a management tool on your network would be excellent tools to record these packets to see if they are being delivered.

I wouldn't worry about people saying TCP is more or less reliable than UDP since UDP has many technical advantages for streaming performance and you are on the correct path focusing on a specific java application that consumes data on a specific Mac in your network. Lots of your details are good, but it's kind of like detailing the pressure in the tires and the color of the paint when you actually need to know if the driver took a right down your street.

Are you able to run Wireshark and verify the packets or get access to the network logs to verify the sender and also you might need to do a little research on UDP and ask a follow on question if this actually is more about networking.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5970383/difference-between-tcp-and-udp


Move equation of plot on graph in Pages This one has been irking me for quite a while. I've made a few plots in a Pages graph (as well as their R^2 values). It is especially useful to move the equations around, especially when there are multiple plots on the same graph.

I have tried everything that comes to my mind, such as clicking multiple times or dragging in strange ways, but it seems as though I can not move the equations on the graph at all. They remain on the top left corner. When I try clicking on them and dragging, the graph is moved instead of the equations.

Is it possible to move these equations around? The only other way I'm seeing it copying and pasting these equations into textboxes, but that likely would be a huge headache in terms of layouts as well as updating the graphs' data (and thus their trend line equations).

Here is a video of the issue I am describing.

Unfortunately this is a regression with the current version of Pages at the time of writing. It's not possible to move the equations in Pages 7.0.

Documents created with previous versions of Pages will preserve the equation position. If you still have the previous version of Pages, you can copy-paste the graph into the older version, move the equations and paste it back into the newer version.


'07 MacBook Pro -- OS X will not accept disk 2 during a fresh reinstallation My 2007 MacBook Pro is in need of a fresh OS X reinstall.  Initially, I wanted to Erase and install everything eg,. Snow Leopard, Leopard, and the original OS X, however I am now sorry for trying because Disk 2 of my original copies will not load, but rather is continually ejected. When I attempt to boot, 'Installer' will ask that I insert 'Disk 2' to continue the installation, however will merely try without success before repeating this process over.

On my iPad, after searching the Internet for solutions to my dilemma, the only way I found to boot my MacBook is to press the 'alt/option' key with the 'power button' simultaneously until I arrive to my desktop, and at that point all appears normal, however, this is such a bother.  Aside from buying a new MacBook, are there any suggestions I might consider?

Try the following:

Mac OS X 10.4: Repeatedly asked to insert Install DVD Disc 2 during installation

But why start on such an early OS?


Sync apps preferences between multiple Macs I tend to keep all my stuff in Dropbox. Now that I bought a second Mac, I thought that keeping also my applications preferences in Dropbox would have been a good idea.

I managed to sync some of the Application Support folders (I just want the more important apps to be in sync) by simply linking the shared folder on Dropbox to the link on the Macs:

ln -s ~/Dropbox/SharedPrefs/AnApp ~/Library/Application Support/AnApp

this way I ensure that every, say, Sublime Text 2 build I create on one Mac will be synched on the other Mac.

But I'm having troubles in synching actual .plist files. I did the exact same thing as above (the example is for iTerm 2):

mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist ~/Dropbox/SharedPrefs/
ln -s ~/Dropbox/SharedPrefs/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist ~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist

So now I have the actual physical .plist file on Dropbox, and a placeholder link on the Mac.

But this doesn't seem to work: when I quit and re-open iTerm (or whatever application), it isn't able to use the symlink to access the preferences on Dropbox.

What should I do?

I'll appreciate every advice on how to keep application preferences synched between two Macs; I'm using the cmd-line just because I'm used to it but also a GUI utility is ok.
Also, an utility which doesn't sync only the Application Support folder, but also the .plists and other shared stuff would be great!

Open preferences and check the box marked "Load preferences from a customer folder or URL""

You can browse to your Dropbox folder and the click "Save Settings to Folder"


Restore address book I am running 10.7.2 and had my Address Book synced to the iCloud.  I inadvertently deleted all of my contacts from my iPhone (synced with iCloud) and now my address book is empty.

I've attempted to restore all of the files in ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book but when I do I can see the cards briefly (for about 1 second) and then they disappear from Address Book.

I also backed up my Address Book (prior to deletion), but opening this file yields the same results.

Any suggestions?

I was attempting to work out a bug with iTunes.  iTunes was refusing to put my contacts on my new iPod.  And no groups were showing in iTunes.

One thing led to another, and I found myself looking at a blank address book.  You can imagine my consternation when my iPhone contacts got smoked before I could shut down a sync.

I could import from my backups, but, like the original poster, the contacts would appear for about a second before disappearing again.

Shutting down the contacts iCloud sync and then logging out of iCloud worked.  I was then able to import either one of my two backups without issue.


Steps to ensuring data integrity / security of Mac mini prior to sale? I've got some Mac minis ranging from 2011 models to 2014 models, which I wish to sell. My concern is with the integrity / security of the data on them.

I don't have a large external HD / server to dump all the data onto, so my plan was to take out and keep the HDDs from each Mac mini, and put in a brand new SSD prior to sale.

Other than doing the above, is there any steps I should taken to ensure integrity / security of the data? E.g. will anything be saved to the RAM or CPU / GPU or other components?

RAM is volatile, meaning it loses its data when powered off.

The same for the other components, and they don't really 'store' data, and it's likely to be in a form that doesn't lend itself to useful 'human' level data.

If you're wiping or replacing the storage device with a new/clean volume, then that won't contain any info associated with your AppleID. However, you'll need to remove the Mac from your ID's list of known (and therefore trusted) devices.

All the serial number records are tied at Apple - and Apple is designed to let a new owner “claim” that serial number but not snitch on who had it last. There’s never any reason for Apple to disclose who had gear other than a legal proceeding - they just register the gear to the new owner and that’s who “owns” that serial for now.

You could just perform a Secure Erase on the disks, though at their age that might be the final straw.


Weird storage declaration from my computer With no good reason I had a look at my computer's storage going on the apple and About this Mac. Here is the display:

The pink bar doesn't make much sense. It obviously does not represent the 80.67GB of free storage. Two sections correspond to pink; "Photos" and "Backups". I obviously don't have 140.76TB of backups. And probably not on this computer that has only 320GB of storage.

What is going on here?

I would ignore it. That graph is particularly unreliable and it's unclear sometimes, even when it's showing storage that is possible within the computer, what exactly it is counting. If you want a better overview of your storage, use something like DaisyDisk.


Possible interaction between `brew doctor` and Java I was doing some cleaning earlier with brew doctor and deleted a file from /usr/local/lib with a .dylib extension. Now, whenever I log into a new shell, I get this error:

Error: Could not find or load main class global

Googling points toward this being a Java error, but only when trying to run a Java program - never when simply logging into a shell. I've reinstalled Java, but to no avail.

What could be the source of this error?

You deleted a file from your /usr/local, which is referenced by programs that are installed with brew. You'll most likely have to go through the reinstallation process to get that .dylib back if you can't find it and replace it on your own.


Can I use my girlfriends phone number on my iPad My girlfriend and I both have iPhones and we both want to use my apple id but have separate numbers. I just bought her an iPad and it only has my phone number under iMessage. Can I add hers to my apple id or the iPad?

Not really except for one special case..

One Apple ID can have two phone numbers, but one phone number cannot be linked with two Apple ID.

If she didn't care to have iMessage work at all, you could sign in to her iPhone with your Apple ID and messages to both numbers would then come to your Apple ID until she decided to start using her number with another Apple ID.


How to backup Bootcamp partition via Time Machine? I just started using Time Machine for backup of my late 2009 MBP.

So far it's backing up only OS X partition and ignoring Bootcamp partition.
I also see the point Time Machine completely ignores NTFS and FAT32 partitions.

Looking for solution/ hack to include Bootcamp partition also included in my Time Machine backups.

This may well be too late to be helpful, but it is quite possible to back up a Boot Camp volume via Time Machine. (And the previous answerer clearly didn't even understand the question, since he appears to be talking about writing backups to an NTFS drive.)

In fact, it's really easy. Rename the 'BOOTCAMP' volume to anything other than 'BOOTCAMP' and Time Machine will recognize it as a back-up-able drive. Then go to the Time Machine preference panel and click on 'Options...'  You should now be able to select your NTFS volume and remove it from the exclusion list. Next time you run a backup, it will back up the NTFS drive.

HOWEVER: It may not be possible to restore a bootable NTFS drive from a Time Machine backup, due to permissions issues, metadata, etc. (Restoring would involve installing NTFS-3g or otherwise mounting an NTFS volume as read/write, and then restoring files to that, too, so remember there's an extra step.) Given that, though, it's a good way of saving your data files on Windows, if you have enough room on your backup drive.

If I have time, I may try a full restore from my backup to my boot camp partition. If I do, I'll record the results here.

EDIT: This may only work with 10.6, and/or may only work if you have MacFUSE and NTFS-3G installed.

EDIT: As far as I can tell, this has not worked correctly since 10.7. I have not yet tested it with 10.9, but in both 10.7 and 10.8 the boot camp partition is not backed up no matter what it is named.


Is it possible to update free apps from another account? By what I've already read, I know that if you have purchased an app in the Mac App Store with the account X, then you can update it only by logging into X. Now the question that arises is: What if the downloaded app is free, does the same rule apply or not?

Yes, the same principle applies. For Apple, it is a purchased product, though in one case the price was $0.
So it's not transferable from account to account. As a developer, I know one normal case that is: the app is free for one day. Then the app turns paid. If a user could transfer to another account, then it would be a problem for the dev since it may be transferred to anyone.


Numbers uninstall reinstall Lately Numbers has been quitting unexpectedly on my MacBook Air and all the pre-installed templates are gone. Also it quits when working on formulas.

I'm thinking I could store documents in the cloud and uninstall and reinstall.

Is this possible? Will Apple charge me for a new Numbers App?

Numbers is free from the app store, so reinstalling should not be a problem.


Has Mountain Lion changed file sharing setup or permissions? Recently I installed Mountain Lion (I had Snow Leopard), I used to share files with a PC enabling the file sharing and use Filezilla in the PC to download and upload files.

Now with Mountain Lion for some reason I can't connect to the Mac computer. Nothing changed; I'm using the same credentials. This is exactly what I did: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-set-up-file-sharing-from-mountain-lion.html

Is there some kind of new security policy or something similar in Mountain Lion?

The FTP server in Mountain Lion is still there, just not part of the GUI. You can re-enable it using the following in Terminal:

sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

To disable, do unload instead of load.

*The FTP root directory is your Users home folder.


Site-specific User-Agent Safari Is there a way to set a site-specific user-agent for Safari? A website for school says it needs Firefox 3.x, but I have found that Safari 5 works fine. The problem is that every time I tried to log in, it warned me that my browser may not work. I set the default user agent to Firefox 3.6, and it worked fine. Now, big sites like Google and Pandora won't allow me to use certain services. (In Gmail, it just goes back to HTML. In Pandora, it blocks the whole site.) I don't want to use a different browser just for one website, and use another for everything else. I also don't want to manually change the user-agent every time I try to go to another page. Is there a way to do it automatically?

Here’s a two-year-old topic on Quora asking the same question. No answer yet.

This leads me to believe there is a way to do what you want. Always changing the UA string using the menu is annoying, but at least it works.

The Opera web browser has a feature that does what you want. But of course, if you have to install a separate browser anyway, you may just as well install Firefox 3.6 and use that to access the site you’re talking about.


How do I update/delete this app? I have an app that looks like it tries to continuously install. It's been like that for weeks. I have free space, like 2GB. When I long press the icon, and try to delete it, it pops up a dialog asking me if I want to delete, but it doesn't delete. I can't even delete it from iTunes. It doesn't have an X on the icon like other apps do. I tried to click Update for the app and sync, but it doesn't work and the icon is still like that. When I just try to launch the app, it does nothing.

iPhone 5, iOS 9.2.1, Windows 8.1, iTunes 12.3.3.17

Go to Settings - General - Storage & iCloud Usage - Storage: Manage Storage. You can also delete apps from here.


New Web Inspector for Safari? If you visit this page, it seems there's a new version of Web Inspector for Safari. (screenshot)

How can I access that?

That appears to be describing Safari as it will exist in the upcoming release of OS X Mavericks. So there are two straightforward ways to get the new Web Inspector:

Become a member of the Mac Developer Program and install the Mavericks Developer Preview
Wait until Mavericks is released to the public and upgrade to it


iPhone app submission process I've submitted my first app on the 20th November but the status is still "Waiting for review", has anyone had longer than this or similar waiting times?

The approval process varies and there’s no exact number. The factor that determines this is the number of apps in the approval queue. I don’t remember where I read that 95% of the apps where approved within 14 days. I believe this came in a “message” in the dev accounts. But it was more than a year ago.

You can see more information in your Developer Account by going to the approval page. (You need a paid account to access that).

I haven’t submitted an iPhone App but in my near experience, it’s around two weeks.


Can I create a shortcut to type a short sequence of characters? Is there a way to create a keyboard shortcut that would input a short defined sequence of characters into whatever text field is currently active?

Is it maybe possible to achieve this with AppleScript or Automator?

You can do it from the substitutions list in System Prefs > Keyboard > Text, as in the example below.

The brackets are there in the example purely to make it file to the top [otherwise it gets mixed in with all my personal ones & I'd have to blur them all out]

Just hit the + button at the bottom, type to enter your trigger, then double click in the result field & type your desired output string. If you copy/paste into the output string, you can include carriage returns, for a full postal address etc, but you can't insert them manually.

Once setup, as soon as you hit the spacebar after a trigger keyword, it will auto-replace. Toggling 'correct spelling automatically' will change whether it suggests it to you before you've finished typing or not - as soon as it's recognised the correct replacement, space will trigger it, if 'auto' is on.

To avoid triggers which would otherwise be possibly confusing I always use ncsomething, historically because my originals used to be stored on NoteCards, but also now because I know of no word in English that starts with nc. So ncemail generates my email address, ncmobile for my phone number etc etc...

I've found over the years that using a distinct word is easier to remember than a very short abbreviation, unless it's one you use a lot.

As a bonus, you can also use it for spelling mistakes that aren't usually picked up by the normal spell-checker…
For example I frequently type pice instead of piece; for some reason spellcheck never picks that up so now it's in my substitutions list.
iCould is also one that gets past the checker, so I have one to fix that too, back to iCloud

Any changes you make to the substitutions list are 'live' immediately, you don't even need to close the window.


OS X Mail: What circumstances are there were Mail rules could be delayed or not invoked I have some rules set up in OS X mail to forward important messages (by containing a particular string in the subject) as MMS text to my phone.

Obviously when the machine is off, internet is down, or Mail isn't running, the rules will not work, but I want to be certain I am considering all other circumstances where rules might not be forwarded.

Will OS X Mail forward messages when the computer is asleep, and are there other factors or situations I need to consider?

Running OS X High Sierra.

macOS mail app only runs rules when it’s fully powered up (not just power-nap checking mail) and connected to the internet. You would need a server side rule processing provider like Outlook / Exchange / O365 to have rules trigger when your local mail client isn’t running to have a robust mail rule engine to work 24x7.


Need to re-enroll 200-250 iPads worldwide, help? Due to a bug with postgresql when updating Server.app to 3.2.2 I now have to re-enroll almost 250 iPads worldwide manually. These are all supervised and "enrolled" with the old server setup.

Traveling around the world to 200+ locations with a Mac is not an option, so the best solution seems to be to open Safari on each device, go to the server / mydevices page and enroll them manually. Is this even possible with an already enrolled and supervised device? Most of these devices are not online, and it'll be fairly random as to when they're enrolled to the server and they'll probably be disconnected shortly afterwards, so what I really need is some way of predefining which group these devices belong to as they all have a different app that needs to be installed. I do not have the list of serial numbers to know which belongs to which group, but the name of the device should tell me which group it should go into.

So… What I need is either:
1. Being able to make a placeholder for each device based only on the name of the device (is this possible?)
2. Being able to filter a device into a group automatically on enrollment based on the name (name contains string)
3. Putting a device into a group based on the user account that was used to enroll it with

I'm pretty confident that option 2 is not possible, not sure if there's a way to do option 1, but what about option 3?

The last option is for the users to log in to the MDM server interface after enrolling the device, and placing it in the right group. But as far as I can tell that means they'll get FULL access to all devices enrolled into the server, and the ability to change and remove groups. Is there any way to give them access to their own devices and groups without having access to them all?

Considering updating the server to Yosemite at the same time since I have to start from scratch either way.

EDIT: Oh heck… Can I even re-enroll these when they're supervised?

You can only have 1 MDM profile installed at a time, so it will not allow you to re-enroll the devices if they are already enrolled (even if the original server is now defunct)

I cannot recall if you can remove the MDM profile from a supervised device, but I believe that you can.

The easiest way would be to probably send a link that can be opened in safari to re-enroll the devices as you mentioned above. You can always take the profile and host it at a different URI so no user account is needed, therefore you wouldn't need to worry about access at all.

Hope this helps a little.

Mike


Is the Force Touch Trackpad on MacBook Pro supposed to be 'nudged' with a mechanical clicking sound? Yesterday I received a brand new MacBook Pro Touch Mid-2017 with Touchbar, which was built-to-order.

Before even passing through the setup screens, I noticed that the Force Touch Trackpad gives away a mechanical thud/clicking sound at each press. At every press, the Trackpad is nudged down/slightly lowered, and this is what creates the mechanical sound. The same thing happens regardless of where on the Force Trackpad's area I press.

I was under the impression that Trackpad are supposed to be non-movable and completely static, and that any tactile and audio feedback is purely from the haptic engine and speakers. I am entirely sure that the sound is mechanical and coming from the Trackpad, not the speakers.

Is this a manufacturing problem?

Here is a video of the sound (the nudge is very slight so it may not be visible in the video): https://youtu.be/gyIG8gAn6B0

The video quality is such that the nudge is not really visible. But yes, the intention is that the trackpad should not physically move in normal circumstances.

The clicking sound on the video however sounds pretty much like it should. The sound is generated by the computer - it is not mechanical.

You could consider taking the computer to a store and comparing the sound with another MacBook Pro.


Markdown + Latex for iOS Simple question: Is there any markdown editor for iOS which supports inline Latex commands (and preview)?

The short answer is "no", I've been looking myself.

TexWriter is a decent LaTex editor and preview but I don't know of a MarkDown one with inline LaTex.

Further, you might want to check out Brett Terpstra's page devoted to iOS editors for a great list of editors and keep an eye out for any that add "LaTex" as an extra feature.


Is it possible to rotate images in Preview in degrees other than 90? I want to rotate an image in preview but I only need to move it a few degrees.  Is this possible?  Or can you only rotate 90 degrees?

If you're not averse to using the command line, you can use the sips command to rotate images. For example…

sips -r 23 --padColor FFFFFF image.jpg

…will rotate image.jpg 23 degrees clockwise and "fill in" the empty space with white. (If you rotate PNGs, the alpha channel should be retained.)

Worth reading the man page for sips as it can do other useful stuff.


Remove GRUB from macOS Catalina So I installed Ubuntu on an external disk via my MacBook Pro 2016 with a USB flash. Now whenever I try installing another Linux distro such as Pop_OS I see the GRUB loader complaining about a bunch of stuff and I also had to change my booting disk to my macOS Catalina so I understand that GRUB is the main loader rather than the default macOS one. Is there a way for me to completely remove GRUB without having to reinstall macOS?

With Ubuntu, GRUB files are stored in the EFI/BOOT and EFI/ubuntu folders in the hidden EFI partition. Apply the following steps to remove the GRUB files.

Enter the following command to determine the identifier for the hidden EFI partition on the external drive.
diskutil list

For this example, I will assume the identifier is disk2s1. In the following steps, make the appropriate substitutions.

To mount the volume stored in the EFI partition, enter the following command.
sudo diskutil mount disk2s1

Note the volume name given in the output of this command. For this example, I will assume the volume name is EFI. In the following steps, make the appropriate substitutions.

Use the Finder application to view the folders in the EFI folder of the EFI volume (device). See image below.

Move the folders BOOT and ubuntu to the trash.

Empty the trash.

Enter the following command to unmount the EFI volume (device).
diskutil unmount disk2s1


Can I reset my privacy settings on OS X Mountain Lion like I can on iOS 6? iOS allows me to reset my location settings, causing apps to have to ask me again if they can use my location information. iOS 6 allows me to reset all location and privacy settings globally as well:

Can I do the same with OS X Mountain Lion's Privacy tab in Security & Privacy? I can't seem to find any option to reset these settings (not even in the Advanced menu).

You can't reset your settings to the defaults/empty, but you can remove specific apps from access to your location information, Twitter account, Facebook account, etc., as it sounds like you've already seen in the Security & Privacy pane of System Preferences.

You can uncheck individual apps with access to remove their access to your contacts, Twitter, or Facebook accounts; in the case of your Facebook and Twitter accounts, you can remove them from your computer altogether from the Mail, Contacts, and Calendars pane. This will essentially revert your settings to the way they were when you got Mountain Lion, since many of these features did not exist prior to OS X 10.8.


How do I get image "FILES" off my iPhone with Photos? Until recently (2/2015) when I plugged in my iphone to my mac the Image Capture app would auto launch. I could then select all the images and drag them to a folder in the finder.

In 3/2015 apple replaced Image Capture with Photos. How do I get my files out of Photos? I have ZERO interest in using Photos to organize my images. I just want the raw .jpg, .mp4 files from my camera.

The first thing I tried was selecting them in Photos and picking Export but that DOES NOT GIVE ME THE ORIGINAL IMAGE FILES. Instead if writes new files. They all have the time stamp of the moment they were exported out of Photos, not the original time stamp of when they were taken like I used to get out of Image Capture.

How do I get my raw image files out of my iPhone now?

I found that Image Capture is still available and I can set it to be the default to launch when I plugin in my iphone as well.

To do that run Image Capture (click the search icon in the top right of the menu bar and type Image Capture.

Then in the bottom left there is the option for what should happen when your phone is connected.


Opening Google/YouTube URLs in Chrome by default when Safari is default browser Safari is my default browser, and I like it that way. But I want to open Google URLs (Google Docs, YouTube, etc.) in Chrome by default, e.g., when I click on a link in Mail. Is there a system-level way to set the default browser for a sub-set of domains?

As of macOS Sierra there is no way to do this without a a little proxy program which you set as the default browser. This proxy program then dispatches the URL according to some settings and URL rules to the desired browser application.

Building on tron_jones's comment, I know of three available proxy programs you can use:

LinCastor - Free: Doesn't seem to be currently maintained
Choosy - Commercial: Very slick. Easy to setup. Great UI
brosel - Open Source: Very lightweight. Setup only for people who are comfortable with the command line. (My own little contribution to this field...)

You would need one rule for the general case selecting Safari by default and a second rule for Youtube URLs which chooses Chrome. Specific setup depends on the tool you are using.


Power source event trigger Late 2014 Mac mini running Sierra connected to an APC BackUPS Pro 900. No special software has been installed to support the UPS.

At the moment I run pmset every minute to determine the power source, and trigger actions based on the results.

However, a dialog window pops up as soon as the Mac switches to backup power. I'm wondering if there is any way I can trigger based on anything else, given that macOS seems to be able to do so.

Yes, using third party tools, like Power Manager, you can trigger scripts based on your UPS state.

Thirty party tools can monitor the UPS state through the IOKit and receive callbacks on state changes; thus avoiding polling.

If you are comfortable with shell script or AppleScript, Power Manager provides hooks for scripting your UPS in these languages.

I wrote Power Manager, so feel free to ask technical questions.


mapping external keyboard keys to mac keys Is there a software, command or way to know what keys from an external non apple keyboard are being mapped to which mac keys?
And also is there a way to remap the shortcut keys of my keyboard: back, forward, home, search & mail?
The play and volume keys on my keyboard do work as expected, but the other keys don't seem to de anything.

PS: I have this one:

ControllerMate does this. At work I use the Microsoft Natural ergonomic keyboard and a Logitech mouse. ControllerMate has hardware profiles for both, and I have many of the MS-specific keys remapped to other functions.

Like yours, my keyboard also has an otherwise useless Mail button. With Controllermate open, if I press the Mail button while viewing the Microsoft keyboard profile, the list of available key sequences automatically jumps to the one it just received. You can then program that key to do whatever you like, even when ControllerMate isn't open.


Cannot Find Browsing history in IOS7 On previous versions of iOS, I knew how to get a list of sites previously visited.   I need to get URL of site i browsed about 3 weeks ago.

Anybody know if this is missing form IOS7 or if it is hidden in the user interface somewhere.   For the record I do not have "Do Not Track" enabled, but that should not make a difference as that is request to servers not internal Safari setting.

Click the bookmarks Button:

               You will then need to click the Parent Folder button:

             Until you come to the beginning of the Bookmarks list.

               There you should see the history.


Can you talk on the iPhone and use Siri with Monster beats headphones? I want a set of Beats by Dre headphones and have seen that they come with a control on the cord. Does this have a Mic? and can it be used with Siri in the same way the official Apple ones can?

I have looked at online reviews etc, but little is mentioned with iPhone voice compatibility.

Yes.
The Monster Beats cables are fully compatible with Apple hardware. They have a mic to support voice actions and Siri. They also have all the hardware buttons for playing music and making phone calls.
I happen to own the Beats Solo headphones.  This is what the packaging says:

"Made for iPod", "Made for iPhone" and "Made for iPad" mean that an
electronic accessory has been designed to connect specifically to
iPod, iPhone or iPad, respectively, and has been certified by the
developer to meet Apple performance standards.
(also see MiF logo on Apple's website)

These minimum standards would include voice and button actions using the headset.