MacBook Air attempting to shutdown after a couple of seconds of inactivity I have a a MacBook Air that works fine except popping up a shutdown dialog if left untouched for a couple of seconds (seems to be a consistent duration around 3 seconds or so). Hitting Cancel or Esc prevents the shutdown.

If I keep fidgeting around with the keyboard or trackpad, there's no shutdown attempt. I can even place something on the Fn key to keep the OS from shutting down.

It seems like some inactivity timeout etc. gone awry.

When taken to the Genius Bar for initial assessment, the guy there said it was probably the power button needing a replacement. But, I don't think this is the case, as the power button is functioning normally: I can still press it to explicitly initiate a sleep/shutdown.

There's a chance this was triggered by water damage. There was a recent water spill incident to which I acted quickly by turning off the machine + turning it upside down + not using it for a long while + keeping it in a box with rice to absorb any leftover humidity. But even if this is a water damage, I can't imagine a damage that manifests itself with this very narrow malfunction of wanting to shutdown on a short period of in activity. Absolutely nothing else seems to be wrong with the machine.

Any pointers? Any things I can try to (a) diagnose the root cause fix or workaround the problem?

I have the same issue with my Macbook Air after a very small amount of coffee hit the keyboard. Apple store wanted to gut for $800+. It was less then a year old and I was dropping another $800 into it. What has worked for me for the last 6 months, I pressed the eject button down and wedged a toothpick to hold it down, than cut off the excess. Everything works perfectly and since I don't use a external drive that key was unused. I also found it was the only key that didn't interfere with other functions. I would love to find a programmer who could write a script that when the key is pressed once it's on and pressed again it's off. That would be the perfect fix without spending hundreds of dollars. Any script writers??? :)


Spotlight doesn't find the contents of at least one file Goal - find a clever way to discover what Spotlight has (or hasn't indexed).

I have an xls spreadsheet that has the names and emails addresses of people who attended a recent course of mine. In the past few weeks I need to search precisely which course someone attended. The person had a unique last name and so I just put the name into spotlight. Nothing found. A few minutes of digging manually confirmed the person had attended the course I expected.

Related discoveries

none of the contents of that file is indexed by Spotlight - tested by searching other names
older xls files in the same folder are correctly indexed
Searching on the filename finds the file so the file itself is found by spotlight
Copy the column of names to a temp spreadsheet, save them and search - file find
Rebuilding the index from scratch warmed my CPU but didn't change anything
I've checked the simple spotlight preferences - xls spreadsheets aren't ignored

Since I don't know why its getting missed I'm concerned that other files might not get indexed properly as well.

I would suspect a corrupt file. It may be just damaged enough to stop Spotlight reading it properly.

If you select the file in the Finder and hit the space bar does it open in Quick Look? If it doesn't then it is broken.

Try opening it in Excel and copying and pasting everything into a new file.


Apple TV lag and connecting to Time Capsule I have a 3rd gen Apple TV that I connect to my Mac, but I have issues with Airplay Display, namely that videos I try to stream from my Mac lag terribly.

I recently obtained a Time Capsule which I use as a router, but I would like to know if I can somehow connect it to my Apple TV, i.e. play videos stored on the Time Capsule hard disk.

I was also told that connecting my Apple TV to Time Capsule would improve the streaming speed and resolve the lag problem.

Hardwiring the apple tv to the TC does refuce the lag cr wifi, but won't change any download lag.

Have mine hardwired and no issues...


When sharing calendars on iCloud, how do I show other people that I'm occupied, but not why? Now that I will be able to share iCal calendars (e.g. on iCloud, MobileMe), for events that are marked as private is there a way to make other people only see that I am occupied at a certain time but not why? Can I somehow make an event private?

If this still will not be possible, what is the current workaround for this? How could I set up this scenario?

The availability picker on Lion (when it even works) only shows the binary status with your busy times blocked.

The CalDAV request to show busy times just shows that you are busy, not why.

If you don't share private events (or keep that secure with a password to subscribe), your event details are as secure as anything on a web server with controls before you can retrieve the data. (not perfect security, but not wide open to anyone)


What is the typical CPU utilization of idle iMac? I am new to macOS. I recently purchased a 2019 iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5 inch).

               .OMMMMo           OS: macOS 10.15.1 19B88 x86_64
               OMMM0,            Host: iMac19,2
     .;loddo:' loolloddol;.      Kernel: 19.0.0
   cKMMMMMMMMMMNWMMMMMMMMMM0:    Uptime: 18 mins
 .KMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWd.    Packages: 28 (brew)
 XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMX.      Shell: bash 3.2.57
;MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM:       Resolution: 2048x1152
:MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM:       DE: Aqua
.MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMX.      WM: Quartz Compositor
 kMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWd.    WM Theme: Blue (Dark)
 .XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMk   Terminal: Apple_Terminal
  .XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMK.   Terminal Font: SFMono-Regular
    kMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMd     CPU: Intel i3-8100 (4) @ 3.60GHz
     ;KMMMMMMMWXXWMMMMMMMk.      GPU: Radeon Pro 555X
       .cooc,.    .,coo:.        Memory: 4009MiB / 8192MiB

I have noticed that the Acivity Monitor reports the CPU utilization at around 75% -- even when I have all programs closed. About 65% reports as "System" usage, 10% "User", and 25% "Idle".

When I sort the processes by "% CPU" the kernal_task process is using the vast majority of the CPU (~250%).

Is this typical, or is it something to be concerned about?

Edit: added screenshot of Activity Monitor

Edit 2: added screenshot of Activity Monitor and output from ps -al command after booting into Safe Mode (see below)

A new Mac may use a considerable amount of resources building the database for Spotlight. This may take several hours. but on a new machine, without a lot on it, maybe as low as 30 minutes.  If you see a lot of resources being used I'd be concerned. My older iMac is currently just sitting here doing nothing but I have 7 web pages open. Activity monitor says the System is being used 6% of the time, user uses about 20% of the time and its ldle the remaining 74% of the time. Is this consistent with what you are seeing?  These values are given on the CPU page to the right of the CPU Load plot.

Even when you are doing nothing, many processes are running in the background as you can tell by the amount of processes listed when you use activity monitor.


Managing macOS application windows like Ubuntu Unity I'm a relatively new to using macOS for work and using macOS windows management (Mission Control?) turns out to be extremely annoying. I'm using Sierra OS. Here are some things that I would like to understand:

I like to work on two desktops and have some windows belonging to 1st desktop and some to 2nd desktop (think Unity). When I create a second desktop I would logically think that I can move one of existing windows to it, but right-clicking on the app in "dock" only shows: All desktops, This Desktop, None. Using the ^1, ^2 shortcuts brings the window to selected desktop but then shows it on the other desktop where it came from as well. Maximizing the window and restoring the size back to original will bring it back to original desktop as well, which seems to be a bug?

What is a good way to assign windows to desktops if there is any in mac?
Is there a software that can override this annoying functionality? Another windows management package?
Why does any maximized window appear on the very right side even it belongs to the most left desktop? Any way to stop this?

I already tried looking for answers on the web, but haven't found any good solution, only mirriad of useless articles.

Youtube video

I'll take your points in order:

You can assign entire applications to desktops, but I don't know of any tool that can assign specific windows to desktops, at least out of the box. Maybe you could whip something up with Hammerspoon and Lua scripting.
I've never actually used Hammerspoon, I've just heard about it. If you decide to go this route, good luck!
That's not actually how you move windows between desktops. That dock menu is for the entire application, not the specific window. (Windows actually don't even have window management menus at all!) To do this, grab the title bar and press ⌃← / ⌃→ or do a 3- or 4-finger trackpad swipe, or hold the window at the edge of the screen for a moment. You can also move windows between desktops with "Mission Control", a combination of Expo and Scale. You get to that with ⌃↑ or a 3- or 4-finger trackpad swipe up.
It sounds like you're talking about fullscreen, not maximizing; it seems to just work that way. Unlike in Unity, though, the window no longer belongs to any desktop -- it's in its own space, all by itself. You can drag it between any of the other spaces, of course, if you want it over by the left again.

If you want to maximize your window instead of fullscreening it, ⌥ (option)-click the green(by default) title bar button. Note that in some apps, like Pages, this will expand the window to fit the content instead!


From where do the encodings supported by Terminal come? If one goes into the Preferences of Terminal.app, there is an "Encodings" tab.  From where does this list come?  How can one add further encodings?

At the bottom of the encodings menu you should see "Customize List".  Select that and it will give you the full list of 100 or so available.  Is what you need not on that?

A reference for Apple's Text Encoding Converter, which probably provides this function, is at

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Carbon/reference/Text_Encodin_sion_Manager/Text_Encodin_sion_Manager.pdf

iconv includes ucs-2 in case that is of any use:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man3/iconv_open.3.html


What do each of the files do inside of an iPhoto Library? Inside my iPhoto library, there are many files and directories.

-rw-r--r--@  1 kevin  staff   3.9M Jul 10 21:10 AlbumData.xml
drwxr-xr-x   2 kevin  staff    68B Dec 23  2013 Attachments
drwxr-xr-x   2 kevin  staff    68B Dec 23  2013 Auto Import
drwxr-xr-x  21 kevin  staff   714B Jul 10 21:10 Database
-rw-r--r--@  1 kevin  staff   324B Dec 23  2013 Info.plist
drwxr-xr-x   3 kevin  staff   102B Jan  9  2014 Masters
drwxr-xr-x   3 kevin  staff   102B Jan  9  2014 Previews
-rw-r--r--@  1 kevin  staff   341B Dec 23  2013 ProjectDBVersion.plist
-rw-r--r--@  1 kevin  staff   576K Jul 10 21:10 Projects.db
drwxr-xr-x   4 kevin  staff   136B Jan  9  2014 Thumbnails
drwxr-xr-x   4 kevin  staff   136B Jul 10 21:10 iLifeShared
-rw-r--r--@  1 kevin  staff     1B Jul 10 21:10 iPhotoLock.data
drwxr-xr-x@ 55 kevin  staff   1.8K Jul  7 10:00 iPod Photo Cache

Inside the Database folder:

drwxr-xr-x  801 kevin  staff    27K Jul 10 21:10 Albums
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 kevin  staff    18B Dec 23  2013 BigBlobs.apdb -> apdb/BigBlobs.apdb
-rw-r--r--@   1 kevin  staff   2.4K Jul 10 21:10 DataModelVersion.plist
drwxr-xr-x    6 kevin  staff   204B Dec 23  2013 Faces
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 kevin  staff    13B Dec 23  2013 Faces.db -> apdb/Faces.db
drwxr-xr-x  800 kevin  staff    27K Jul 10 21:10 Folders
drwxr-xr-x    3 kevin  staff   102B Dec 23  2013 History
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 kevin  staff    17B Dec 23  2013 History.apdb -> apdb/History.apdb
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 kevin  staff    22B Dec 23  2013 ImageProxies.apdb -> apdb/ImageProxies.apdb
-rw-r--r--@   1 kevin  staff   1.5K May 21 18:22 Keywords.plist
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 kevin  staff    17B Dec 23  2013 Library.apdb -> apdb/Library.apdb
drwxr-xr-x    2 kevin  staff    68B Dec 23  2013 Places
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 kevin  staff    20B Dec 23  2013 Properties.apdb -> apdb/Properties.apdb
-rw-r--r--@   1 kevin  staff    42B Mar 15 20:31 SpanCache.plist
drwxr-xr-x    2 kevin  staff    68B Dec 23  2013 Vaults
drwxr-xr-x    3 kevin  staff   102B Jan  9  2014 Versions
drwxr-xr-x    3 kevin  staff   102B May 21 18:21 Volumes
drwxr-xr-x    9 kevin  staff   306B Jul 10 21:10 apdb
-rw-r--r--@   1 kevin  staff   304B Jul 10 21:10 tmSync.plist

What parts of iPhoto are these files and directories responsible for?

Basically, all the files like xml, db and such help different softwares like iPhoto, iMovies etc gain information about your photos.

Excerpted from Fat Cat Software: iPhoto Library Internals help page:

  AlbumData.xml

  This file is written out by iPhoto as a way for other applications
  (such as iMovie and iDVD) to be able to easily access the contents of
  your iPhoto library. You can read in more detail about this file here.

  AlbumData2.xml

  This file is only created by iPhoto 8. It is a smaller version of the
  AlbumData.xml file that only contains information for the library's
  albums and events, and none of the actual photos. This file is faster
  to read for programs that only need to get the list of albums and
  events in the library.

  Attachments

  This folder is used by iPhoto 9 as a temporary holding place for
  photos that are being sent using iPhoto's built-in email features.

  Auto Import

  This folder is created by iPhoto 7 and later. There does not seem to
  be any mention of this folder in iPhoto's documentation, but if you
  put some photos into it, then quit and reopen iPhoto, it will
  automatically import those photos into the iPhoto library and then
  delete them from the Auto Import folder. There is also an "auto
  import" Applescript command which does not appear to do anything when
  called. It's not clear if this was a planned feature for iPhoto 7 that
  ended up getting pulled out (but not completely, apparently), and it
  doesn't seem to be very useful for anything, especially since that
  folder is buried inside a package now, but that's what it does if
  anyone is curious.

  Backup

  If a library has been upgraded from an earlier version of iPhoto to
  iPhoto 9, a copy of the original database files from the library are
  stored in this folder before performing the upgrade.

  Caches

  Only present in iPhoto 8 or later, this folder contains additional
  data for the iPhoto library. Unlike some other Caches folders that can
  be safe to delete, this one is not, so don't go deleting it in an
  attempt to clear up disk space.

  com.apple.iPhoto.plist

  This file is actually not written out by iPhoto itself, but rather by
  iPhoto Library Manager. It is a copy of the preferences file that is
  associated with this library. When you switch between different iPhoto
  libraries, iPhoto Library Manager will swap out this preference file
  for the existing preferences before opening the library up.

  Contents/PkgInfo

  This is part of the new package structure in iPhoto 7 that gives the
  package a type and creator code so that the Finder knows what
  application the package belongs to.

  face.db, face_blob.db

  Contains the data for faces identified by the face recognition feature
  added in iPhoto 8.

  iLifeShared

  Starting in iPhoto 9, the AlbumData2.xml file is now stored within
  this folder rather than at the root level of the library package.

  Info.plist

  iPhoto 9 added this file, containing basic version information about
  the library

  iPhoto.ipspot

  This file is written out by iPhoto and read in by Spotlight in order
  to index the information about the photos in your photo library. You
  must have iPhoto 5.0.2 or later for this file to be present.

  iPhotoLock.data

  This file is used by iPhoto to help prevent more than one copy of
  iPhoto from accessing the library at one time.

  iPod Photo Cache

  This folder is created by iTunes if you choose to sync your iPhoto
  library with a photo capable iPod. It contains cached information
  about the last time the photos were synced and help speed up the
  syncing process, allowing iTunes to tell which photos have changed
  since the last sync and only update those ones. You can delete it if
  you want to clear up space, but iTunes will have to create it all over
  again the next time you sync your iPod's photos.

  Library.data, Dir.data (iPhoto 2), Library.iPhoto, iPhoto.db (iPhoto 4, & 5), Library.iPhoto6 (iPhoto 6 & 7), iPhotoMain.db, iPhotoAux.db
  (iPhoto 8), Database (iPhoto 9)

  These files/folders serve as the central database where iPhoto stores
  your library information. All your event, album, and photo metadata is
  stored in these files.

  Data, Originals, and Modified

  iPhoto 6 organizes its photos fairly differently that previous
  versions. Imported photos will initially be stored inside the
  "Originals" folder. Within that folder, photos are organized into
  subfolders based on the roll that they are in, so each roll gets its
  own folder. Those rolls are then sorted by date (2006, 2005, etc.) and
  put into dated folders accordingly. So, if you had a photo in a roll
  named "Vacation" and dated February 24, 2004, to find that photo, go
  into the "Originals" folder, then into "2004", then into the folder
  named "Vacation". When you edit a photo in iPhoto, the original stays
  where it is, and the edited photo is placed in the "Modified" folder,
  which has the same per-roll organization scheme within it as the
  "Originals" folder does. The "Data" folder contains all the scaled
  down thumbnail version of photos in your library. If you upgrade to
  iPhoto 6 from a previous version, iPhoto will rearrange all your
  photos from the old scheme into the new scheme. After upgrading, you
  may still see one or more leftover folders named "2004" and such.
  These folders should no longer contain any files being used by iPhoto
  6, and can be disposed of safely.

  Thumbnails, Masters, and Previews

  iPhoto 9 organizes photos in much the same way as iPhoto 6-8, but uses
  the folder names Thumbnails, Masters, and Previews instead of Data,
  Originals, and Modified

  Metadata Backup

  Created by iPhoto 8, containing backup copies of the metadata for your
  photos, events, albums, and other library content. This information
  can be used by iPhoto to recover a library whose main database has
  been corrupted.

  ProjectDBVersion.plist, Projects.db, Projects.db-journal, SharingActivity.db

  These additional data files exist only in iPhoto 9 and contain
  information relating to "keepsake" items such as books and slideshows,
  and information for albums published on MobileMe, Flickr, or Facebook.

  ThemeCache

  A cache file used by iPhoto to store theme data used to make books,
  calendars, and cards

  Thumb32Segment.data, Thumb64Segment.data, ThumbJPGSegment.data

  In order to improve performance, when you add photos to your library,
  iPhoto creates small "thumbnail" versions of your photos and caches
  them in these files. In iPhoto 5 and earlier, these files are instead
  called Thumb32.data, Thumb64.data, and ThumbJPG.data.

Note that there are some small and some large differences in the folder structure depending on what version of iPhoto you're using.


Concise, compact list of all 'defaults' currently configured and their values? I am wondering what (if any) way there is to get a concise list of all defaults currently configured on a system?

This post suggests that they are configured by application, which I get, and it has some good suggestions about how to get a list, for instance:

defaults read

will produce a decent list of configurations, but it's a bit cumbersome. As well, I'm not sure that's what I'm looking for, or if it's just a bunch of reference information. I couldn't find some corresponding defaults in there that I know I set.

Anyhow, say hypothetically you only care about out of the box defaults that would be on most systems, is there a way to produce a list of them and their corresponding values?

So after poking around in bash builtins, I came across the defaults command again and decided to look at it's help file.

defaults read

will output all the defaults, but this is just an output of them all with no formatting and no indication as to what domain or default it belongs to.

defaults domains

will output all the default domains so I decided that I could recreate the defaults read with extra output and formatting, so as a test I ran this:

for i in `defaults domains | tr ',' '\n'`; do echo "********* READING DEFAULT DOMAIN $i **********"; echo; defaults read $i; done

Which will do the following:

run defaults domains, then format it so each domain is on a single line, then run through each line and run defaults read against it while adding the READING DEFAULT DOMAIN text to output before dumping the default to output. Obviously it could use some more formatting, etc, but at least this is a way of separating each domain and adding custom formatting. From there You could go and dig into each section and see how best to format them.

I'll play with it some more and see if I can come up with a decent report that doesn't look like total crud.


Can't delete .plist files from Trash I have a program which, when deleting any app, also deletes the extra files and junk as well; including .plist files. Normally this works great though, this time around I've had a few files which won't allow me to empty the trash.

I get the following when I click on "Empty Trash":

  The operation can’t be completed because the item
  “com.justinmind.prototyperfree.plist” is in use.

  The operation can’t be completed because the item
  “com.marketcircle.Billings3.plist” is in use.

  The operation can’t be completed because the item
  “com.opendns.osx.DNSCrypt-Menubar.plist” is in use.

  The operation can’t be completed because the item
  “hewgill.com.Stack-Exchange-Notifier.plist” is in use.

I tried the following without success:

launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.justinmind.prototyperfree.plist and launchctl unload /Users/myname/.Trash/com.justinmind.prototyperfree.plist

Not sure how to stop these things so I can empty the trash. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

OS X 10.9 (13A603)

When you have problems to empty the trash, rm -rf ~/.Trash/* in the terminal does the job for you.

Edit :

You have to keep in mind that there might be multiple .Trash directories.
For example on a USB stick or a external Drive, OSX will create another .Trash at the root of the drive. So you might need to use  rm -rf /Volumes/DriveName/.Trash.*


Spotify sync to same location? I have multiple user accounts from one computer, running Yosemite.

Using same Spotify username, I'd like to sync songs offline and cache in the same path. To achieve this, I tried aliasing /Users/Shared/Library/Cache/com.spotify.client to each user's ~/Library/Cache/com.spotify.client.

I noticed, however, even after one user finishes syncing, Spotify still attempts to download the songs.

What can I do to use Spotify client's cached data from the same location, so that I don't have to duplicate files for each user?

Note:
/Users/Shared/Libarary/Cache/com.spotify.client's permission is 770 and all users attempting to access this folder is associated with the owner group to this folder (recursively).

I've done something similar using apps in the one partition on the other. I erased the /Applications folder on one partition and symlinked the master /Applications folder in the other to the root of the partition it was erased from.

So, you could delete the com.spotify.client in all the users but one which will be the master, and then do something like this in terminal.

ln -s /Users/<master>/Library/Cache/com.spotify.client /Users/<nonmaster/Library/Cache/com.spotify.client

Not positive this will work, but assuming the permissions are correct, it might.


Wired Keyboard not working properly In Chrome I often toggle between open tabs using Ctrl + tab to go forward, and Ctrl + Shift + tab to go backwards.

For some reason, I can't get the reverse navigation working (using Shift) when using this keyboard. It does work if I use the key combos directly from my laptop's keyboard, however. It's also not working in Messages, to go between conversations.

My Apple wired keyboard (full size with number pad) is plugged into my 30 inch Cinema display, but to be honest, it still doesn't work if I plug directly in to my laptop.

Any ideas?

Update: On both my internal laptop and wired keyboard, I've remapped the Caps Lock key to be the Control key, and vice versa. If I restore defaults, the tab cycling is fixed. If I set the Caps Lock key back to being the Control key, and try to cycle backwards, it breaks. Just confirmed the same is true in Safari. And, no matter how I modify the keys of the internal keyboard, cycling is perfect.

If the Shift key works in normal context, and if the same combo doesn't work in say Safari, then I'd think the keyboard hardware has an issue, or the keyboard combination is mapped to another function in Keyboard Shortcuts.

I mapped the combo to Show Launchpad and experienced the exact same issue.  Shift works, Ctrl + tab works, but because I mapped the combo elsewhere it was no longer available to apps to use, and Ctrl + Shift + tab failed in Chrome and Safari.

If that is not the case, then its remotely possible that the keyboard is faulty, but since I would expect other combinations to fail if it were faulty, you haven't mentioned any and I assume that none are.


Unable to remove Windows Boot Camp partition About a year ago, I installed Windows 10 via Boot Camp, which I now want to remove, but it doesn't seem to be done causing issues... When I go into the Boot Camp Assistant, I get this message:

My Disk Utility looks like this:

diskutil list gives me:

/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         912.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data Windows                 78.8 GB    disk0s3
   4:           Windows Recovery                         480.2 MB   disk0s4

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +912.4 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            474.7 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 20.5 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                517.8 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk1s4

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *8.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data Seagate 02              8.0 TB     disk2s2

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *8.0 TB     disk3
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data Seagate 01              8.0 TB     disk3s2

What's the safest way to completely remove the partition/Windows? I'm just scared of messing something up. Thanks in advance!

The proper commands, to remove Windows and add the free space back to macOS, are given below. The commands should work unless there is a problem with APFS.

sudo  diskutil  eraseVolume  free  none  disk0s4
sudo  diskutil  eraseVolume  free  none  disk0s3
sudo  diskutil  apfs  resizeContainer  disk0s2  0

The next sequence of commands removes any Windows boot code that may exist in the hidden EFI partition.

diskutil  mount  disk0s1
cd  /Volumes/EFI
rm  -fr  EFI/Windows
rm  -fr  EFI/Boot
cd  /
diskutil  unmount  disk0s1


Stop holiday/christmas/spoken word from playing in iTunes DJ? Whilst I like Herb Albert and his Marijuana Brass Band dropping a christmas phat one, I don't appreciate it when it's July

How can I prevent them from appearing in the playlist?

Make a playlist that includes all your Christmas songs.  Then in all your other playlists, explicitly exclude the Christmas playlist. The DJ can pull from a playlist that isn't the "holiday" mix.


Should I expect battery life on an iPhone 4S to be significantly worse than on a 3GS? I just upgraded from a 3GS to a 4s and my battery life is dramatically worse. I wasn't expecting it to be the same (though I was hoping that it might even be better), but I'm seeing a big difference. Since I have the same settings as I did previously, I don't think the problem has to do with any configuration differences (for example, I have email set to check manually on both). I was even running on iOS 5 on the 3GS, so I can't really point to that either. Siri is one software bit which is 4s only, but I can't imagine that is the culprit as I don't think it would always be running.

I've restarted the phone to make sure that no out of control process is running in the background.

So is the iPhone 4s just that much worse for battery life or do I have questionable hardware? Is there any easy way to troubleshoot (can Xcode be used to measure usage)?

It's anecdotal, but John Gruber (of Daring Fireball) who tends to get a lot of feedback from Apple users, suggested on Twitter that it's a problem for some non-zero percentage of users:

    And my iPhone 4S's battery lasts HALF a day, where the 4's battery lasted 1,5 days

  @JMoVS I know you're not alone, that other 4S users are seeing short battery life, but that's not normal. Mine lasts as long or longer.

So it sounds like you may have got a dud. If your battery life is substantially worse than a 3GS, it may be worthwhile asking to have your unit swapped for a fresh one.


Changing accent behaviour to match iOS In iOS an accent can be added after the character where it is intended. In OSX it is the opposite, it must be entered before. This means that if I forget to add it, I must delete the character, add the accent and then retype the character.

This makes fixing errors in OSX cumbersome and slow. Is there any way to change the behaviour of OSX to match that of iOS?

Many thanks.

EDIT: It is Greek I am trying to type so I've included Greek as the Input Source. I am also using Snow Leopard, in case this makes a difference...

One way is to make a custom keyboard layout using

http://scripts.sil.org/ukelele

Another option might be to use system preferences/language & text/text/symbol and text substitution to set up substitutions for the input of the base character plus ' generating the accented character.  But I no longer have 10.6 and can't remember if this feature is present there.


How to show fullscreen get info? Once I press some key,OS X shows partition get info in fullscreen in big icon in black background,I don't know how to do it again.

http://osxdaily.com/2012/09/06/8-tricks-mac-os-x-full-screen-slideshow/
Select a picture or group of images from the desktop, then use the following:

Option+Spacebar to launch image(s) into the full-screen slideshow mode
Spacebar to pause/play the image slideshow
Left Arrow to go back, Right Arrow to go forward
Gesture with two-fingers left to go forward, two-finger gesture right to go back
Option to view smaller images at actual size
Click “Index Sheet” to view thumbnails of all images in the slideshow
Click “Add to iPhoto” to import the image into iPhoto
Hold Control key and use a two-fingered back or forward swipe in to zoom into the photo
Escape to exit


How to pause Xcode update? In the App menu, I can see that it is updating. However, in the App Store updates page, it is not showing. The update is ~3GB, and I don’t have the bandwidth to spare. How can I pause/stop it?

I faced the same issue and what I did was the following:

Go to Finder -> Applications
Movde Xcode.app to trash. (This will alert you if you want to cancel update).
Agree to cancel update from alert.
Go to Trash -> Xcode.app, right click and click on "Put Back"
Re-start using Xcode and continue with your work.

If you do not wish to hamper your work while you wait for XCode to update and you are in a slow internet connection, go to https://developer.apple.com/download/more/ and download latest version of xcode dmg (close to 6 GB) after you login in your apple developer account.


Assigned a password to my home wifi, cannot connect to it on my macbook So. Assigned the password to my network. First time it worked great. But  then, I had to resset the router. After that, I went and assigned the password again, but this time, when I try to connect to the network, it won't even ask for the password and won't connect at all!

Does anyone know what the hell is the problem?

(Using macbook air, running osx lion)

Also, tried resetting the router countless times. Did absolutely nothing.

Also, iphone connects and works with the router just fine.

You have to do the Unlock first (click on the lock icon and type your password), on the Network screen before going to Advanced tab, once in advanced click on the network and hit (-) sign.


iOS: Distribute beta apps without UDID My team is developing an iOS app, which is still on the Beta phase.

When we show the app to potential partners, we use testflight to share the app with them. Alas, testflight requires the user's UDID which is obtainable only through iTunes on a Mac, which is cumbersome. We would like to be able to email users with app invites using their email address only.

Can we use the iOS Developer Enterprise Program to let potential partners try the app using their email address only, without UDIDs involved?

TestFlight do not require UDIDs any more. You can distribute apps with TestFlight without having the UDIDs of all those test devices. Just invite the testers by providing their email addresses. They will be able to join you. You need an Apple developer account (99 USD per year) to use TestFlight.

And yes, with Developer Enterprise Program (299 USD per year), you can also distribute enterprise apps. You can distribute such apps to the users directly by just providing the Email address, and have them installed on the devices without any limits. Enterprise account does not require UDIDs. Know more about TestFlight, Developer Enterprise account and other options at Enterprise App Distribution - Hexnode blogs


Password dialog appears when SSH private key permissions are set to 0600 I installed my SSH private key in ~/.ssh/id_rsa and set its permissions to 0600.  When I connect to an SSH server which uses my private key in Terminal.app via ssh, a dialog pops up and asks me to enter my password to access the id_rsa file:

I see the same dialog when I connect to an FTP server with the Interarchy GUI client.

Update: I see this dialog every time I connect regardless of whether I check "Remember password in my keychain".  It appears two more times if the OK button is clicked regardless of what is entered in the password field.

When I relax these permissions to, say, 0640, I no longer see a dialog asking me for my password but ssh aborts with the following error:

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@         WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE!          @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Permissions 0640 for '/Users/myusername/.ssh/id_rsa' are too open.
It is recommended that your private key files are NOT accessible by others.
This private key will be ignored.
bad permissions: ignore key: /Users/myusername/.ssh/id_rsa

I find the password dialog extremely annoying and I am sure there must be some way to avoid having to dismiss this dialog SSH needs to access the id_rsa file.

Note: I am running Mac OS X 10.6.8.

First, run ssh-add -K and check whether this fixes your problem.

If not:

Removed the rsa_id.pub file and regenerated a new one (must be in ~/.ssh/):

ssh-keygen -y -f id_rsa > id_rsa.pub

Ensured permissions were set to 600 for both id_rsa and id_rsa.pub (must be in ~/.ssh/):

chmod 600 id_rsa*

Ran the following command:

ssh-add -K

After doing this, I was no longer prompted to give my private key password. This appears to actually put the private key password in the correct keychain location for OS X to use.


Keyboard shortcut for switching between open windows Possible Duplicate:
  Best app to switch between all open windows (alternatives to Witch)

On Windows and Linux one can switch between open windows by pressing Alt+Tab. On the Mac pressing Cmd+Tab only lets one switch between windows of different applications. In order to switch between windows of the same application one has to press Cmd+` instead.
Is it possible to disable that behavior, and use Cmd+Tab to switch between all windows regardless of whether they belong to the same application?

Witch is the way to go. I used it everyday for many years and it never let me down. The support is great and reactive. In addition, it has many option, so you can configure it to your desires and then forget it isn't part of OS X.


Import Keynote Animation to iMovie I have a Keynote file with a lot of animations on the slides. I wish to record myself giving a presentation while playing the slides in full screen as a movie.

Is there a way to export Keynote animations to a video format so that I can combine my audio recording with these animations in iMovie?

Found the answer:

Go to Play -> Record Slideshow.
Go to File -> Export To -> QuickTime -> Slideshow Recording.


Is there an app to ping IP's periodically to check latency? I'm sure I came across a really nice app that would ping a list of sites or IP addresses every x mins/hours and send alerts when it could not ping.

But I can't find the app back, anyone know of any good ones?

How about a web service that will do this for you?

Check out host-tracker.com.  It will ping an IP address (or http-get or traceroute) for you from a collection of sensor sites.  It looks like it will email you error notifications.

I haven't used the site, so can't speak to how well it works.


MBPR 13" Late 2013. Two identical SSDs (different revs.) - one boots, one doesn't? I have a new MacBook Pro 13" Retina (Late 2013) which works flawlessly. It has a factory installed 512 GB SSD, which also works flawlessly. Then I bought basically the same type of 512 GB SSD, 2nd hand but new, which I intended to install in another MacBook Pro Retina Late 2013.

The seller told me it is compatible with the MBP Retina Late 2013, but when installed, the known to be good MBPR doesn't boot. Not from that SSD, not from an attached USD HDD which has two perfectly bootable Mavericks partitions. When pressing the alt-Key on booting, I can however see two partitions on that SSD (Mac OS X 10.8.4 and a Recovery Partition), yet it is not booting at all, thus also doesn't allow me to inspect or treat this SSD with Disk Utility or other tools.

All I get is the grey screen with the striked through circle sign (see attached image). I've tried both, PRAM reset and SMC reset, no change.

Here comes the interesting part: Although both SSD look absolut identical, they have slightly different model and part numbers (see attached image).

Working, factory installed SSD: Model MZ-JPUS512T/0A6. Part No. 665-1805D

Non-booting, 2nd hand SSD: Model MZ-JPUS512T/0A2. Part No. 665-1805A

Any ideas what’s going on here and how to solve this?

Stupid me! A fellow over at Apple Discussions pointed me into the right correction: Mac OS X 10.9.1 just doesn't equal Mac OS X 10.9.1.

The Mac OS X 10.9.1 on the external USB HDD had been installed using a different, older MacBook, thus just wasn't compatible with this MBPR. Back in the bad old days of Mac OS X Install DVDs, I was aware of the fact that there where different versions of the OS X Installer testing against the Mac ID to make sure that bundled versions gets only installed on those Macs which the DVD came with. And the DVD where clearly labeled in that sense.

Now in the days of Internet download and installation from USB sticks, SSD and HDD, one completely forget about this. On the other hand, with Mavericks being free, I don’t understand the need for such limitations, and not at least the recovery partition allows booting any Mac which supports Mavericks.

When you boot with the alt-Key pressed and you see at least one partition with Mac OS X 10.9.1, one just doesn’t understand why the heck the Mac doesn’t boot. Now I do. Apple would be well advised to simply add a short info line, like „This version of Mac OS X is missing components to boot this Mac. Please re-install from the AppStore using this computer“. It would take out A LOT of guesswork.

Anyhow… I booted the MBPR using the working SSD, installed Mavericks from the AppStore on the external USB HDD, switched the SSDs, booted from the external USD HDD’s now bootable 10.9.1 Recovery Partition, wiped the suspicious non-booting SSD and installed Mavericks. No further problems. Another option would be to simply boot into Internet Recovery Mode by pressing CMD-alt-R when powering up.


How to boot into Sierra USB installer without Startup Manager? I'm trying to reinstall Mac OS on a late 2009 21.5 inch iMac. The previous owner tried to install ubuntu on it but failed to get it to work properly so I'm trying to install Mac OS Sierra from a USB stick. I know the USB works because I can boot from it on my Macbook Pro. The problem is that I can't figure out how to get the iMac to boot from the stick. Whenever I try to get into startup manager all I get is an all white screen and a mouse curser. I can get into Ubuntu safe mode and grub but I'm not sure what I can do from there to make the mac boot from USB.

I'm assuming that holding down the option key when starting up does not show the boot drive selector displaying at least your internal drive. If this is the case then there is another bootloader getting in the way.

Your next step should be to reset the NVRAM. You can find instructions here.


Show custom image in Mac OS Mojave Dashboard I really like the Dashboard overlay in Mac OS Mojave. Can I add a widget to show an jpg image in the dashboard?

Thank you for reading.

You can open an image in Safari (even from your disk, by drag'n'drop) and click on File->Open in Dashboard....

Check the result and if it's not satisfying, resize the image and redo the operation.


How do I change iOS settings to "not" sync notes over the air with iCloud I first unchecked "notes" in settings, iCloud.  That didn't change anything so eventually I deleted the iCloud account altogether.  That didn't change anything.  How do I set my phone to sync notes with Outlook on my PC and disable syncing notes over the air with iCloud?

If you are being returned the following iTunes message (see screenshot below). Make sure to only have a single notes account called "On My iphone". You can access your iPhone notes account by opening the Notes app on your iPhone and tapping on "Accounts".

You can bring all of your iCloud notes to your "On My iPhone" account as per these directions: How to transfer iCloud notes to "On My iPhone" account


Connect to a server without opening Finder windows for each mounted volume When I connect to my server and mount all its volumes, new Finder windows open for each volume. This is new behavior in Lion (10.7), it just connected silently in SnowLeopard (10.6).

How can I connect in Lion without new Finder windows opening up?

I don't know how to test it, but would any of these change the behavior?

defaults write com.apple.finder OpenWindowForNewRemovableDisk -bool false
defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages auto-open-ro-root -bool false
defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages auto-open-rw-root -bool false
osascript -e 'quit app "Finder"'


MacBook boots up with less than one frame per second This is what booting my MacBook looks like: Macbook booting very slowly (youtube)

I tried a PRAM reset, which was successful (it reseted the speaker volume and now plays the startup sound, which it didn't before), but that didn't fix the issue.

This is an early 2013 15'' Retina Mac, and I'm running El Capitan.

I really need this device, so any help would be appreciated!

Try also the SMC reset, doing it 2 or 3 times does not hurt:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295


How does Apple fix the sleep-wake button issue on the iPhone 5? What do Apple technicians actually change when they take the iPhone 5 for repairing the sleep-wake button issue? Do they just replace the outer button or something else too?

What parts are actually replaced with new ones?

I replaced this myself and it's very tedious and time consuming.   There is a ribbon cable in the phone that connects all of the exterior buttons/switches to the motherboard.  Usually the physical button you see from the exterior of the phone is not the problem, it's either the tiny button that button presses (attached to the end of the ribbon cable) or something with the wires themselves within the ribbon cable.

In case you're curious, here are instructions for how to do it yourself and what the inside looks like but I'd advise against doing it yourself unless you have experience with this sort of thing, a lot of time to kill, the phone is already out of warranty, and you could go without use of the device you're repairing.

The $5 cable I bought on Amazon worked for a few months but started to fail itself.  I'd recommend paying to have Apple do it.


Apple Watch no longer displays heart rate after watchOS update Yesterday I updated my Apple Watch to watchOS 5.2.1 and ever since my Heart Rate complication has stopped displaying my heart rate on the watch face. I can still tap it and measure my heart rate, but it’s not displayed on the watch face.

Is this a new 'feature' of watchOS? If not, how do I fix it?

1. The first thing to do is make sure that Background App Refresh is still enabled, and if so, enabled for Heart Rate.

To do this:

On your iPhone open the Watch app
Swipe up and tap on General
Tap on Background App Refresh
Make sure Background App Refresh is enabled at top of screen
Swipe up to check that the Heart Rate option is enabled

2. If Background App Refresh was already enabled, or if enabling it still didn’t do the trick, then double-check you haven’t got Power Saving Mode enabled.

To do this:

On your Apple Watch open the Settings app
Swipe up and tap on General
Swipe up and tap on Workout
Swipe up and ensure that Power Saving Mode is disabled

3. Finally, if this doesn’t resolve it, fully reboot your Apple Watch.

To do this:

Press and hold both the crown and side button until you see the Apple logo appear on screen
Wait for your watch to reboot
Check your heart rate complication is displaying your heart rate


Fullscreen a running application from the terminal I'm trying to pull a prank on a friend. I have a shell script that continuously cats a C source code file so make it look like the terminal is "hacking" something. The next thing I would like to do is have the script make the terminal full screen.

Is there anyway in the default terminal app to make a window full screen based off of a PID or some other identifier?

Use applescript to send the ⌘⌃F shortcut:

tell application "Terminal"
    activate
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "F" using {command down, control down}
end tell

You can use the osascript command to execute applescripts.


Does exists some console utility for keyboard layout switching in Mac OS X? For example, there is xkb-switch on Linux. Is there some analog in Mac OS X? I googled but found nothing. Yes I know about AppleScript but it doesn't fit to my purposes.

Ok. I wrote it myself.
If you need one see code of utility here (https://github.com/myshov/xkbswitch-macosx) if you want in bin directory there is already compiled version.


How to sync podcasts from iPod Classic to iTunes on other PC? I have a new Windows PC and copying the settings and iTunes folders from the old machine did not work.
I want to have the downloaded podcast episodes and the subscriptions that I have on my iPod Classic on the new PC.
Can I somehow sync them from the iPod to iTunes?

Found a tedious solution on the Internet:
Add all downloaded episodes to the new iTunes by copying the iTunes library and then select from the File menu "Add files to library". Go into each podcast's folder and select all files to add them to iTunes. Then iTunes will create the podcast with all these episodes, but you then have to subscribe to it again using the context menu on each podcast, so that it will be updated by iTunes.


Slowdown and lost windows when connecting/disconnecting external monitor When I connect my external monitor, my 2017 MacBook Pro (OS 10.15) will freeze or have severe slowdown for more than a minute. When disconnecting, I often lose windows that I can't recover through any known means except reconnecting to the monitor. Is there a way to reduce the slowdown and have it properly move external windows back to the built-in display?
The monitor is an older SyncMaster using a USB-C -> DVI connector.

In the Display settings, under the "Arrangement" tab, I had previously dragged the menubar to the external monitor. This had some benefits, such as causing the Application Switcher to appear on the external monitor, which is the one I was usually looking at. However, moving the menubar back to the built-in monitor eliminated the problems I was having. There is now no slowdown when connecting, and when disconnecting windows reallocate themselves between monitors as expected.


Why Does Photos Not Display All Pictures in Library? macOS 10.12.6, Photos 2.0, running on a mid-2010 Macbook Pro.

I updated my Macbook Pro to Photos when Photos was introduced, and it has worked well for me. Two days ago, however, Photos began to misbehave by not showing pictures in the Photos Library which had been taken after August 2015. Until this occurrence, these pictures had displayed correctly. The Mac's OS is up to date. I repaired the Photos library, and restored the Photos library from a Time Machine backup, and restarted in Safe Mode. Photos continues to not display these pictures. My pictures are managed locally only; iCloud is not involved.

I have a second Mac, a Macbook Air I use for travel. For a consistent user environment, the Air runs the same software as the Macbook Pro. Photos on the Air correctly displays the entire library of photos, including those taken after mid-2015. I copied the Photos Library from the Air (~/Pictures), and replaced the Macbook Pro's Photos library with the Air's file. With the Air's library installed, the Macbook Pro's Photos continues to truncate and doesn't display pictures from after mid-2015. I repaired this Library (launch Photos while holding command and option) but Photos' misbehavior on the Macbook Pro continued. Both computers' Photos are Photos 2.0, build 3161.4.140.

What else might I try? Is there a cache to empty or a preferences file to trash?

Solved. Photos was set to read a different Photos library, not the complete one I’d copied from the Macbook Air. Launching Photos while holding the Option key brought up the “Select Library” dialog. I reset the selection to the correct complete Library, and the entire suite of pictures immediately appeared.


My mac bookpro screen hangs and freeze after restarting it displays black screen I bought macbook pro-13 inches last year September, since last 15 days I'm facing difficulties regarding to booting issues and also some times suddenly the display hangs no controls, keys, trackpad not working the display just hanged.

After restarting the device by long pressing power button and power on it after some time some times it shows some black lines appearing on screen after 30 seconds they disappear and turn into black screen sounding 3 beeps.

Last week I've consulted authorized dealer for service they just formatted my system and told me there is no problem regarding to hard-disk drive, RAM and logic board. But I'm facing this problem daily...Please tell the exact reason, and what should i do to it work properly.

The 3 beep sounds indicate problem with your EFI.

EFI is located on your disk in a hidden partition and is mainly responsible for booting and other key functions.

It is possible you do have a disk error (even if the "authorized dealer") did not find anything. I would suggest you use the Disk Utility and check your disk again and while at it repair the permissions.

Check your version.

How to repair EFI: Find your EXACT model here.

http://support.apple.com/downloads/#macnotebooks


Does the Preview app have a freehand pen/pencil tool? The Preview app has markup / annotate tools like rectangle, oval, line, text, speech bubble, thought bubble.  Is there a pen or pencil tool that lets you draw lines in a freehand way?

(I'm using Preview version 7.0 (826.4) in OS X Mavericks 10.9.5)

Yes, Preview in OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) has a freehand tool.  Access it within Preview from the "Markup Toolbar" icon of the .JPG or .PDF file you have open.

When you click on that icon, the Markup toolbar appears, and the freehand "sketch" tool is the 3rd icon from the left, in blue in the image below.

and it offers a smoothing option as well as a freehand mode.


FileVault 2 encrypted disks with my home directory on a different drive I have multiple volumes on my mac and I just enabled encryption on the other drives. My home folder is stored on one of those drives. Now I can't login because it can't see my home directory, but if I login with my admin account it unlocks the drives and then I can login.

How do I add those passwords to my login keychain, so they can find my home directory?

I could decrypt my home directory, but that kind of defeats the purpose of having it encrypted. And my home directory is too big to fit on my boot disk.

When logged in as your admin user, you can use Keychain Access.app and just move (or copy) the keychain item containing the password for the encrypted volume to the System keychain.  This makes the password available at boot time. I've got a similar setup, and it worked like this for me.


prevent resizing with option key Hardware: Macbook Pro 2017 (15")

OS: MacBook Mojave 10.14.6

While using iTerm, I noticed, I could not use alt/option commands with direction keys as I would on my Macbook Pro 2015. This prevents me from navigating around certain CLI utilities. Instead, my iTerm window gets resized as shown below using option+left and option+right. I noticed this is how all application windows behave and not just iTerm. How may I stop this behavior?

Aside: Another weird thing I've noticed on this newer macbook is that cmd + left and cmd + right do not work as Home and End buttons anymore. I now have to use ctrl + a and ctrl + e.

Since this is not standard macOS functionality, neither default nor optional, this is either functionality added by you (or someone acting as administrator) or a third-party app.

You can check what third-party apps have system-wide access to window manipulation in System Preferences → Security & Privacy → Privacy → Accessibility. One by one, try disabling suspect apps and attempting the shortcut again.

When you've narrowed down the specific app, you can either disable the app or research the possibility of changing/disabling the offending shortcut.


Can I put Newsstand into a folder? In iOS5 (and later) my newsstand icon will not go into a folder on either my iPod touch, or my iPad2. Anyone have any suggestions on how to move this application?

Looks like there is a way after all (even if it's most probably a bug because it renders Newsstand useless):

From The Coding Massacre:

Take two apps and go to create a folder
The second the apps are in the folder and it’s doing the folder creation animation, drag Newsstand into the folder
As long as you’re quick enough Newsstand will go into the folder

If you open Newsstand while it’s in a folder your springboard will crash.


iTunes store purchased media items: usability in another country? An Apple account with a Canadian billing address and payment method is used to buy movies on the Canadian iTunes store. Will an Apple TV 4k located physically in another country (say, Vietnam) be able to stream these movies if it is logged in with this same account? (The account's payment and address remain Canadian.)

welcome to AskDifferent. I can't tell you if it works in your specific combination. Normally Apple does not restrict content via Geolocation blocking. I'm able to download and watch all Content (Music, Movies, TV-Shows and also Apps) in Germany and USA. I have an austrian Store Account.

Does this example of mine help you?


deleted private/var folder I have done a foolish thing. I deleted private/var folder due to malware I was after. I immediately felt that strange things are beginning to happen so I pressed cmd+Z to reverse action. The computer frezzed so I shut it and rerun it. Now I cant relaunch it, because it shuts down while it is loading into my user account.

So I went to single user mode and and tried to copy the var folder from .Trashes to private folder. The problem is that .Trashes seem to be empty. Meaning that cmd-Z worked, which would mean that var folder is back in place. But the computer doesnt start. Does ls command dosnt show files in trash? What seems to be the problem?

Also, if this doesnt work, I am gonna have to copy important files to external disc from Single user mode. What is the path to external harddrive?

EDIT > private/var does indeed have content. I am now getting confused. Did the system put some content in there for me?

If you assume a malware infection, by all means reinstall the OS by rebooting into the Recovery Partition with Cmd-R and reinstall from there. This should not affect your existing users (or their files).

See OS X: About OS X Recovery for details about the procedure.


Dictionary is showing strange characters when "US English (IPA)" is selected I was using the Dictionary application, and I have noticed it was showing the pronunciation using strange characters.

I checked the preferences, and they were set to use the American IPA characters.

Out of curiosity, I changed the option to "US English (Diacritical)"; I then re-typed the same word, and I have got this:

It seems that it uses diacritical characters when it should use IPA, and vice versa. Something changed in the last twenty-four hours, as it was working fine, the last time I used it.

I think the problem is one of the preference files used by the Dictionary application. Which file should I restore, to get back the Dictionary application working as it is supposed to do?
Could it be another problem? Which one could be causing this?

I also see |"br{k@t| when viewing bracket with US English IPA on a local Snow Leopard installation.

But, it is not a problem displaying the IPA characters themselves. Other words that shared those mis-transcribed vowel sounds are displayed correctly:

bracket |"br{k@t|
brackish |ˈbrækɪʃ|
bran |bræn|
kit |kɪt|

My guess it that there is just an error in the US English IPA transcription for bracket.


Apple Private Email Relay address - can I use it to request password reset? Recently I have used an Apple Private Email Relay address to sign up with an app in order to hide my own email address. Everything went well and I purchased the subscription.
Now I want to use the service on the other platforms as well. But in the web interface they are missing Sign In with Apple.
Since I know my Apple Private Email Relay address I can still sign in with this email, but I need to reset the password to do so.
I already requested password reset for the email address. But how could I access to the private relay email address's inbox.?
The mail has not been received by my default email address associated with my AppleID.

Can I request password reset with an Apple Private Email Relay address?

How can I view emails sent to Apple Private Email Relay addresses?

Are mails sent to the Apple Private Email Relay address rerouted to the email address associated with the AppleID?

Yes, in general you can request a password reset using the Apple private relay address. There is a small caveat in that the sender of the the password reset mail must authenticate their emails by registering their outbound email domains and using the Sender Policy Framework (SPF). This is a requirement for app developers / companies that wish to use the private email relay service that comes with "Sign in with Apple".

The emails sent to the private relay email address are forwarded on to your real email address and are received just like any other mail.

Yes, mails sent to the private relay email address is "rerouted" to the address associated with the AppleID (one of the verified email addresses).

You can read the full details on how this works from Apple here:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sign_in_with_apple/sign_in_with_apple_js/communicating_using_the_private_email_relay_service


iCloud is giving me empty PDF files I can't download a PDF from iCloud that someone is sharing with me.

I get an email from the person with a link to iCloud.
The link opens in my browser. It says 'downloading should soon begin', although nothing happens.
I see in my Downloads folder the file name in question - but they have the format myfile.pdf, myfile (1).pdf, myfile (2).pdf, and myfile.pdf.part.
I try to open myfile.pdf and an error appears saying "This file is empty."

What am I doing wrong?

I've had this happen to me when the PDF itself was corrupt. Just plain "weird" behavior including what you've just described - the download beginning, nothing happening, the actual file eventually showing up and being unopenable.

Some things to try, in no particular order:

Check the file size - it's possible you really did download a 0 byte PDF. What shows up under Size when you hit Get Info on the downloaded file? If it is 0, try downloading the link from another machine on another network (on your phone or another computer, perhaps). If that doesn't work, the problem is likely on the sender's side.
If the file is a substantial size (around a meg or more), the problem might be on the sender's end. Something you could try if you suspect the file is getting mangled, is to have whoever created this file compress it in a ZIP/DMG and send you that file.
Try downloading an alternative PDF reader like the official Adobe Reader and see if that can open it. Perhaps there's something strange about this file that Preview doesn't like.
Another way to confirm if the file is completely corrupt or not is to open up Terminal, navigate to your download folder (cd ~/Downloads), and then run the file command on one of the downloads. (file myfile.pdf). This checks the bits in the file that tell your computer what it is. If it's a real PDF, you should see something like:

myfile.pdf: PDF document, version 1.6

But if you see:

myfile.pdf: data

the file is indeed unreadable. If you see anything else, the output will give you a hint as to what you need to open it.


File sharing broken after installing Security Update 2017-001 I've spent all day so far trying to resolve this. File sharing just doesn't work any more!

I am now fairly certain that installing Security Update 2017-001 for macOS High Sierra to fix the “root” vulnerability problem (see: https://www.imore.com/macos-has-root-bug), is the cause of my file sharing problem! C'mon Apple, where's your quality control!

Does anyone know how I can fix this?

Apple has already issued a quick fix to this. Follow these steps:

Launch the Terminal app (usually found in the Utilities folder within your Applications folder)
Copy the following command and paste it into Terminal:

sudo /usr/libexec/configureLocalKDC

Press enter
Enter your Admin password (Note: You won’t actually see the cursor move as you enter your password)
Press enter

For more info: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208317


Correct Sierra 10.12.5 file paths to Spotlight and SpotlightNetHelper files to be blocked with Little Snitch? The article belowmentions using LittleSnitch for blocking Spotlight and SpotlightNetHelper:

Spotlight makes repeated http requests

It includes two screenshots. The first image shows two separate paths, which are dived by an arrow, to the correct files to block while the second image shows one path.

What are the correct paths to use for Sierra 10.12.5 as these apparently can't be found via searches:

I was able to find the first path on the first window:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app/Contents/MacOS/Spotlight

The second path is cut off on the first window and can't be determined.

The path listed in the second can be found until the point I get to the "A" folder, but the last bit "/Support/SpotlightNetHelper.App" can't be navigated to.

In macOS Sierra, SpotlightNetHelper was removed and the standard WebKit networking is used instead, located at /System/Library/Frameworks/WebKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.WebKit.Networking.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.WebKit.Networking.

There are various apps and processes which use this for networking, so you can't simply block it entirely without affecting those too. However you can set up a specific rule to prevent it connecting to Apple's services for Spotlight, which would prevent Spotlight using it to talk out, as shown in the first screenshot where the rule is ‘Spotlight via com.apple.WebKit.Networking’.


Mapping does not work with some characters in KeyRemap4Macbook I want to map Option+Dot and Option+Comma to word-by-word movement in KeyRemap4Macbook. Option+Dot works but Option+Comma does not. Also using any other character such as W, V etc. instead of Comma does not work. They simply put the symbols normally mapped in keylayout file.

Here are the mapping items:

<item>
    <name>word movement right</name>
    <identifier>private.wordright</identifier>
    <autogen>
        --KeyToKey--
        KeyCode::COMMA,ModifierFlag::OPTION_L,
        KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT,ModifierFlag::OPTION_L
    </autogen>
</item>
<item>
    <name>word movement by option + dot</name>
    <identifier>private.wordmovement</identifier>
    <autogen>
        --KeyToKey--
        KeyCode::DOT,ModifierFlag::OPTION_L,
        KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT,ModifierFlag::OPTION_L
    </autogen>
</item>

I found the cause of the problem. I have Turkish keyboard layout installed. The place of character comma corresponds to the place of character B in Turkish keyboard layout. The KeyCode definitions requires the character in the US keyboard layout.


How to ensure Slack runs safely in sandbox? For work I use my personal laptop and I am required to run Slack to keep in contact with coworkers however it occurs to me that this could potentially be used as an invasive surveillance tool unless it is forced to run in a sandbox.

For instance what if it  were allowed to scan my file system, including any attached USB thumb drives, and what if it  were allowed to take screenshots? What if there is a built-in keylogger? I need to make sure that this software is not being used for improper purposes. We all know how power can be abused, and how even a little bit of power over people can  tempt a weak person to do  bad things.

IIRC I downloaded it using the Mac App Store.

Questions:

Does anyone know how I  can  determine  what the default  sandbox setting  of this app is?

If the app is bypassing the sandboxing mechanism how do I nevertheless enforce sandboxing?

Has anyone here managed to  detect open files (using lsof on the command line) that Slack was accessing, that might indicate suspicious activity?

Slack is a well-known chatting tool and I am yet to hear it does any surveillance. Also, every single Mac app which is submitted into App Store after June 1 of 2012 must have sandboxing implemented or it won't be approved.

Additionally, no app is able to access your computer outside of its limits unless you give it your root password (Slack does not ask for it).

If you still don't feel safe, open Monitor application in Utilities, select Slack app in the list, press (i) button on the toolbar and select "open files and ports" tab. No file will go away.

All the above means that Slack already runs in the Sandbox. In theory (and I stress on "theory") sandbox can be bypassed, but I highly doubt such a serious company would do it first, and second - such app is very unlikely to be on the AppStore.


How do I log into another user's OS from my network OS using terminal? To preface this: I'm sure this has been asked but I don't know exactly what I'm searching for or what terms to use, so I am going to ask here by explaining my situation.

I am logged onto a network OS on a host machine (10.9) and I need to view and edit files on the Macintosh HD that is on this actual host machine. The reason why I need to do this is the user's machine is kernel panicking because of a Trend Micro kext in his OS. Whenever I try to go into the user library on Macintosh HD to delete the plists as well, I get "Permission Denied" even when using sudo. I do have the username and password of the user that I'm trying to edit so my question is: How do I log in, through terminal, as that user to edit things inside that users Library folder?

Hopefully this makes sense -- if not let me know and I can try to clarify further.

Edit: To further explain myself and why I'm going about it this way is simply because I'm curious. If I boot into safe mode it works just fine as it doesn't load the kext. I'm just wondering how this would be done.

Let's say that the user you are trying to become is 'newuser', we'll use the 'su' command (switch user) like so as follows...

Start the terminal and enter:

sudo su - newuser

When prompted enter YOUR password (not newuser's password)

When done you should be logged in to a terminal window as that user.


if "Speak" was used, following Select All, in iOS notes, is that audio stored anywhere on iPhone or in iCloud? iOS 12 Notes App
when using iOS Notes app, i will frequently Select All, then use the Speak contextual menu tab to hear it read back.  Twice, i have had a subsequent action (like tapping spacebar in onscreen keyboard) delete the text.
  If connected to iCloud, is the "history" of the document available on Mac linked to same account, or do revisions reside only on the device where Note was created?  Lacking both Save, and Undo history, makes data in a Notes file ridiculously fragile!

I don’t think there’s a global undo buffer for iOS notes like there is for macOS notes with versions of documents being stored like TextEdit.

There is a “deleted notes” section you can reference from the notes web app, but it’s not like Time Machine for going to an earlier version.

I think you might need to change how you listen. Is it possible to speak from an insert point and not speak from a selection? That might lessen the chance of losing data you can’t restore.


Cannot ping IPv4 address, but IPv6 ping works I have a Macbook and an Android device (Oneplus phone) on same network and the Macbook connects via USB LAN (or Wi-Fi), Android device via Wi-Fi. I detected the following anomaly:

I can ping the Oneplus from the Mac:

64 bytes from 192.168.1.127: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=30.433 ms
--- 192.168.1.127 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss

I can ping the router from the Oneplus
However I cannot ping the IPv4 address of the Mac
I took a look at the traffic in Wireshark and I got the "host unreachable" message to the ICMP requests
I also started to host a simple HTTP server, but it seems the Mac does not response to the TCP SYN segments, because I could see RTO flagged segments (Retransmission Timeout). (3-Way handshake never completed)
Fan fact, recently my ISP started issuing IPv6 addresses and I tried to ping the Mac from the Oneplus:

--- 2001:*:*:*:*:*:*:7e50 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3005ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 6.737/33.397/108.664/43.467 ms

It was working as the above log shows.

Mac's firewall is disabled and there is no firewall rule applied in the router. I removed all network interface under the System Preferences / Network menu and added them again.

I also selected the Link-local only option at the System Preferences / Network / interface / Advanced / TCP/IP / IPv6 Configuration tab. Unfortunately none of them worked.

My question is why did IPv6 ping work and IPv4 not? Could be the problem the recently introduced IPv6 addresses?

[Edit]

I created a Hotspot with my iPhone and connected with both of the Mac and the Oneplus. This Hotspot does not have any IPv6 configuration, but I experienced the same issue.

I also created a Hotspot with my Mac to eliminate the router from the circle and I connected to it with the Oneplus. Like every time, I could not ping the Mac, despite the Oneplus gets IP address via DHCP from the Mac. (So there was network traffic)

I had a similar issue and got a positive response when using IPv6 (ping6) but not IPv4 (ping). I also had the symptoms described in the question Why will my Mac only load Google and Facebook?.
This problem started to appear after disconnecting from the VPN. So, after terminating the VPN service, networking began to work fine again.
sudo killall -9 vpnagentd ciscod


ssh-add every time I want to use SSH to login to my remote server I have SSH keys installed on OSX Mavericks installed at ~/.ssh/

Everytime I want to SSH to a server from Terminal, I need to do the following:

eval `ssh-agent -s`
ssh-add ~/.ssh/example_rsa

If I open a new Terminal window, and try typing ssh-add ~/.ssh/example_rsa it just fails. I need to use the eval 'ssh-agent -s' step every single time first, then I can add with ssh-add and then use that to SSH to my required destination.

Prior, when I had OS X Mountain Lion I did not have to do this more than once. I just added the SSH keys, and away I went.

When programs like GitHub do their magic, it always works, using it's own SSH keys. It also works if I use Git from the Terminal. Only when I want to SSH to a server using that specific key.

Granted, it does have a password on it.

This is the privileges on the folders:

700 ~/.ssh
600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
600 ~/.ssh/example_rsa
644 ~/.ssh/example_rsa.pub

If any light could be shed on this, I would be extremely grateful. A number of my keys that I generated have got the passwords on them, and it's a pain to keep finding their respective passwords and type it in every time I want to SSH with them.

I use the exact same keys from CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu - all have no problems once I've added them once. Never need to do it again. Only since I moved to Mavericks (clean install).

I know it does not answer your question directly, but have you tried using a config file to map you keys to servers?

in .ssh create a file called config
In the file put your server entries and map the key

Host server1
HostName  10.10.10.1
User myUser
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

then you can just run ssh server1


Prevent mobile data being turned off Does anyone know how to prevent mobile data being turned off on an iPhone 6 and iPhone 7. I want to ensure my daughters data is not able to be turned off at any time.

their other parent turns off the data when they are in their care therefore not allowing me to speak to my daughter even though I bought the phone.

I want to find a way to stop them being able to turn off the mobile data

Go to Settings > General > Restrictions

If you have setup Restrictions, enter your Restrictions passcode.

If you have not set it up yet, enter a password (twice) and enable Restrictions.

Make sure you will never forget this passcode; it is required even when resetting the phone. If you forget it, not only will you be disallowed from entering the Restrictions section, you will also not be able to reset your iPhone.

On Restrictions page, go down to the “Allow Changes” section and click on “Mobile Data”.

Set “Mobile Data” to “Don’t Allow Changes”.

Leave the “Data Plan” to “Allow Changes”.

Open control center once and close it.

For iOS 12 here are the instructions


How to disable AirPlay service on playing video from iPhone I don’t know what button I tapped, when I play video, it's just showing The video is playing on the TV using AirPlay screen.

I don’t find anyway to disable that in settings. I am using an iPhone XS Max.

You may have unknowingly played the video on an AirPlay compatible smart TV present in your network from your iPhone. You can change the playback to your iPhone or stop it.

Open Control Centre (swipe down from top right), locate and tap on the playback controls and select iPhone instead of your TV.

Refer to this Apple Support article on using AirPlay on your iPhone.

How to AirPlay video and mirror your device's screen - AirPlay video from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch


Is my Bluetooth Connection to Magic Track Pad Encrypted? I know bluetooth supports encryption, but is it in use?  How do I know?

The help in the Bluetooth preference pane gives some vague answers:

  For extra security, you can stipulate that only trusted devices be allowed to connect to your Mac, and 128-bit over-the-air encryption is also available.

But I don't see any options like what they just said.

Nothing on the Apple Store's product description for the Magic Trackpad says anything about encryption.  Same for Amazon.  Same for the Apple Support pages.

Maybe it's encrypted and Apple thinks that's just obvious, so they don't waste time telling you it is, but I'm looking for evidence.

All bluetooth connections to Mac OS X are lightly encrypted by default as part of the pairing process. Unless someone is bringing an intentional effort (e.g. technical knowledge and specialized hardware) to bear, your keyboard and data connections are more secure than a good WiFi network. Cracking encrypted bluetooth is not easy unless you can access the computer or capture the pairing session data.

Apple's Bluetooth keyboard, for example, has a pretty complex passphrase that is unique to each device. The trackpad, magic mouse and keyboard all use the same Broadcom bluetooth chip as well.

To paraphrase, the level of protection depends on the length and uniqueness of your device's passphrase, and how often you change it (which only happens when you re-pair a keyboard, for instance, not sure if it even changes then for the trackpad).

For details see how secure is Bluetooth encryption? (though beware, it's from 2004); also Which wireless keyboard is most secure? has some interesting reading, but doesn't really focus on BT security.


How to minimize all other panels except the one I want to keep open? My requirement is to be able to drag a folder from my desktop to my Terminal app. To do this, I must minimize all other panels except the Terminal.

The beginning status:

The result:

So, if I minimize the panels one by one, it can be very time consuming. Is there a quicker way to achieve this?

With the active application, at the bottom of the application menu itself, you should have a number of options you can use, namely: Hide Application Name; Hide Others; and, Show All.

On an English keyboard you can use the following shortcuts:

commandH to Hide Application Name
optioncommandH to Hide Others

I'm not sure if it will be the same for you.

Regardless, using the example in your question, the simplest workflow to achieve what you want would be:

Open Terminal (to make Terminal the active app)
In the menu bar go to Terminal > Hide Others (to hide everything else, including the Finder's open windows)
Drag folder over to Terminal

By doing the first two steps you're basically making the Desktop visible, which is where your folder is, while also keeping the Terminal app open.

Of course, you should also be able to do the first two via keyboard shortcuts of some kind.

NOTE: - Once you're done, you can make all the Finder windows visible again simply by returning to the Finder. This works because you didn't actually minimise the windows to begin with.


How do I move an app entirely from an iPod to an iPhone I have a game I wanted to play on a different device, my new iPhone, but it isn't that new and I already have too much stuff on it to even reset it.

How do I move that app? And remember, no resetting.

You can download the app again from the App Store under the Updates tab > Purchased and searching for its name.

Your data/progress in the app will not transfer unless:

It uses iCloud for data storage and you are signed in to iCloud with the same Apple ID on both devices, or it uses a developer-specific way of syncing to a cloud service
You backup the iPod, reset the iPhone to factory settings and restore the backup

Otherwise, your progress in the game will be lost. There is no way to transfer data for a single app between devices.


Boot on USB from a previous version of OSX I own a mid-2013 Macbook Air running Mavericks and wish to boot on a USB stick containing a bootable version of DiskWarrior. The problem is DiskWarrior wasn't updated for quite some time and, though the application version works just fine in Mavericks, the bootable version is old and is based on OSX 10.6.7.

My usb disk is detected correctly as a startup disk inside Mavericks, and I can even see it as an option when I press ALT during startup. The problem is selecting this disk just show the Apple logo and the actual boot from the usb never takes place. I recall reading someday about how OSX would prevent you from booting from older version of the system. Is this what's happening here? Is there anyway around this? Do I absolutely have to find an older mac that would allow me to boot from OSX 10.6.7?

You can't boot a version of OS X older than the version of OS X that shipped with the machine. This is because older versions of OS X do not contain the drivers required to support the newer hardware that it had no knowledge of at the time of development. The boot sequence will freeze on the Apple logo or blue screen and you will not be able to boot.


Jammed lock screen button My IPhone 4S recently glitched and the notification screen is stuck disabling me from using it at all. I can't shut it off as my lock-screen button is jammed and cannot be used. I'm just wondering if there is anyway I can easily unjam it?

Like Alan said, go to a repair shop or an Apple store and ask tell them what is wrong. I wouldn't take it apart yourself as you may damage it, unless you have experience with repairing stuff. To my knowledge, there really isn't an 'easy' way to fix it. If you want to try it yourself, here is a tutorial: http://www.imore.com/how-diy-repair-stuck-or-broken-iphone-4s-power-button


Disable Safari plugin without (re)moving the file I've been Flash-free in Safari (5.0.3, my primary browser) for a while now, using Chrome with its bundled Flash Player whenever I have to.

I'm also developing a little bit in Flash for school, and have ended up using the Flash Debug Player, since it's really convenient to use trace for debugging.

I tried just putting the Debug Player inside my Google Chrome.app, similar to how the existing Flash Player is located, but Chrome refused to detect this, so I had to put it in /Library/Internet Plug-ins, and now Safari detects it too.

Is there any way I can get Safari to ignore this plugin, or something that makes sure Chrome can find it, and not Safari?

Maybe just use the clicktoflash extension (also available from Safari Extensions Gallery)?


Xcode Build Error: No account for team "S23Q9DM44M" Xcode builds a barcode reader app without error for the simulator, however, the build for an iPhone XR returns errors:

ERROR MESSAGE

No account for team "S23Q9DM44M". Add a new account in the Accounts preference pane or verify that your accounts have valid credentials. (in target 'BarcodeScanner')

QUESTIONS

What is "team S23Q9DM44M"?

What exactly is the problem?  Explanations or a narrative explaining the problem, which is geared for an undergraduate that has taken a C++ course is sought.

First error message:  Is "S23Q9DM44M" a string that needs to be hunted down in the file and replaced?  What would it be replaced with?

Any suggestions for the second error are also appreciated.

UPDATES

I do NOT want to distribute my App to others
I DO want to run the App on my iPhones / iPad
I did not pay the $99 developer membership

When you're building an app to run on an iPhone, it needs to be code signed. Signing is tied to your Apple developer account, so you must be logged in to that account in Xcode in order to sign the app-- even if you're not going to use the app store. You can't build the app and deploy it to an iPhone without signing. The simulator doesn't need signing, which is why it works there.

S23Q9DM44M is a team ID. It might be a team you belong to, or it might be another team (if you got this project from someone else). Xcode is telling you that it doesn't currently have access to this team, so it can't sign the app.

You need to:

Go to Xcode preferences, in the "accounts" section, and log in to your Apple developer account. If you don't have an account, you need to create one first. You can do this at https://developer.apple.com/programs/. It's free if you're not going to use the app store.
Go to this project's "signing and capabilities" settings. In the "team" section, make sure the correct developer team is selected. This might just be your name, or it might be a company or group that you work with. Then, check the provisioning profile setting. It might say "Xcode managed profile", in which case you're set. If it shows a pop-up menu, use it to select a provisioning profile.

Update: I tried the Github project you linked to. Besides the above, you also need to change the bundle ID for the app. Your question doesn't mention any bundle ID issues but that's because you had something else to fix first.

The bundle ID of iOS apps must be unique since it's how iOS identifies the app. Apple checks the bundle ID when compiling and tries to register it with your developer account. If someone else is using the ID then you need to change it. This is also found in the "signing and capabilities" page in Xcode. The ID can be anything unique but the normal format is a reverse domain name-style ID. For example your domain were apple.stackexchange.com then you might use com.stackexchange.apple.barcodescanner.


How do I show the "Up Next" queue on the iOS 11 Podcasts app? In iOS 11, the Podcast app got a radical UI overhaul. I have figured out how to add podcasts to my queue of upcoming podcasts by selecting a podcast and choosing to "Play Next" or "Play Later".

How can I view this "Up Next" queue so that I can reorder it or delete things from it?

If it matters, I am interested in the app on an iPhone SE.

The iPhone SE doesn't have 3D Touch so there is definitely a different step for you. If you go to the Now Playing screen, swipe up and you'll see the Up Next section. To add next podcasts, you'll need to tap on the menu button from the episodes detail view and then select Play Next. That should now show on your up next screen on Now Playing.

http://www.iphonehacks.com/2017/09/how-to-use-ios-11-podcasts-app-iphone-ipad.html

https://support.apple.com/en-ph/HT201859


Button "Use as Defaults" are missing in View Options panel (Mountain Lion) I'm a very new user of Apple and Mac OS - coming straight from Windows so please bear with me if my question is a bit foolished.
I'm looking for a way to set my View Option as a default property applying for all folders on my system. I've google this and every answer I'm getting points that I need to press the button "Use as Defaults" in the View Options windows.
Unfortuneately and strangely I do not have that button. I press CMD+J and I've the option to set all my View properties but no button.
I've attached a screenshot of my View Option panel and hopefully it shows it correctly, I couldn't quite figure how to make a screenshot either :-)
Cheers

Here is the simple reason:

You are in this view and it does not have the Default, it is already default.

Switch to list view to set the defaults for it.


How do I right-click in iOS Safari to access website specific functionality? More and more desktop websites these days use javascript to offer specific website functionality which is available when you right-click on something. Often the developers create something that looks like a menu, but could be anything.

If I'm browsing desktop websites on iOS Safari (mainly iPad, but sometimes iPhone), how do I perform a right-click to display this functionality?

For a simple example, visit https://swisnl.github.io/jQuery-contextMenu/demo.html and try to display the menu under the box which states "right click me". On a desktop it's pretty obvious, but I cannot work out how to trigger it on an iPhone or iPad.

I've tried tapping and holding but this either brings up the browser menu or the text selection tool. I've also tried double-tapping but that tends to zoom the page in and out.

Side note: If you do a Google search for this, you'll find many posts from people assuming that you want to right-click to access functionality that desktop browsers typically offer (such as back, forwards, reload, save as, view page source and inspect element). This is not the functionality I'm interested in accessing.

Since the original iPhone, mobile safari and iOS in general has multitouch and there is no concept of a single pointer. There can be up to 11 different point interactions that change in time, so the core problem is that web sites not designed for touch fail to deliver a good experience.

There is no hover if you don’t have one pointer - so all the hover to show details falls flat
There is no control / right shift / option / mofifier click to map to a pointer that doesn’t exist - so your use case simply fails to exist.

Some things do translate well:

Mouse down event can be processed when multitouch shows a tap (finger down and no large movement)
Mouse up event can be processed when multitouch shows a finger up (no more contact in the region of the initial touch or tracked moving touch)
Multiple finger touch can sometimes map as option click.

Sorry to say there simply isn’t a mouse or pointer on iOS, but that’s kind of the summary.


How to get the actual PDF icon rather than the stock one I understand that with most apps etc. you can simply press CMD + I to get the Get Info and then from there you can simply select the icon and copy and paste it into another file so that the icons match. However, I have noticed that with files such as PDFs, Images etc, you are unable to get the actual image for the PDF like the one below:

But instead, when you try and copy the icon from Get Info, you simply get given the stock "PDF" icon like below:

My question is: is there a way to get the specific PDF icon for a specific document and copy it across to another PDF even if the contents is not the same?

Thank you in advance for any help,

Kind regards, Rocco

Here is the two ways to apply an icon to a file.

  Note: To get a better view of any image shown below, click on the image or open the image in a new window.

Start with the Get Info windows for a PDF file and PNG file, as shown below.

To copy the current icon from the PNG file to the PDF file, click on the PNG file icon, as shown below.

Drag the icon and drop on the current icon for the PDF file, as shown below.

The result is shown below.

To change the PDF icon to be the preview image of the PNG file, create an image of what is shown in the Get Info window. To do this, use the Grab application to capture the selected part of the screen containing the preview. This will create the Grab window shown below. Look for the windows titled Untitled 2 - Edited.

To make this image the icon for the  PDF file, click on the image, as shown below.

Drag the image and drop on the current icon for the PDF file, as shown below.

The result is shown below.


Are iPhone screenshots geo-tagged? When I take a picture using my iPhone's camera, it attaches the current location to the image in the metadata. Does it also do this for screenshots that I take?

According to macosxhints iPhone screenshots have no EXIF data, so no geolocation data would be saved. Not sure if this is still the case on the iPhone 4.

  Screenshots are saved as PNG files on the original iPhone and the iPhone 3GS (the two models I had access to) and have no EXIF records. The only other metadata fields available are filename, file size, and modified, and imported dates.


E319: Sorry, the command is not available in this version on macvim While trying to prepare macvim environment to work with clang-format I did:

$ vim ~/.vimrc

map <C-K> :pyf /usr/local/Cellar/clang-format/2018-04-24/share/clang/clang-format.py<cr>
imap <C-K> <c-o>:pyf /usr/local/Cellar/clang-format/2018-04-24/share/clang/clang-format.py<cr>

It worked for vim (on the terminal) but not for macvim, in which, when I hit C-k then I get:

E319: Sorry, the command is not available in this version

There seems to exist approaches to solve this on linux

https://askubuntu.com/questions/284957/vi-getting-multiple-sorry-the-command-is-not-available-in-this-version-af

How to solve this on macOS?

Note: https://github.com/rhysd/vim-clang-format helps by providing :ClangFormat.

It may be because you do not have the correct clang-format.py file downloaded. If vim is compiled using python3 then you need a different file because it is in python2. I downloaded a new python file and changed the key mapping recommended by in the clang python file to the following in my .vimrc:

    map <C-I> :py3file <path-to-this-file>/clang-format.py<cr>
    imap <C-I> <c-o>:py3file <path-to-this-file>/clang-format.py<cr>

This solved the E319 problem I was getting.


My Mac Book Pro switch between charge and not charge when running a long program When I am running a very long program (e.g. A long python script) and when I plug in the charger, my laptop will switch between charging and not charging very frequently. However, if I stop that script, my laptop will charge normally when it is plugged in.
Does anyone know what might be causing this and how to fix it?

There's actually nothing you need to fix - it is intended behavior.
Consider that your laptop at idle is consuming (fictious numbers) 10W of power. You plugin a 61W power adapter, and it starts charging the battery at a rate up to 51W. I.e. this means that the power from the power adapter is used to power the computer primarily, and secondly to charge the battery.
Now you run a very power hungry program on your computer, and the computer starts to use 65W of power. Now all the power from the power adapter is used to power the computer, and the battery is also discharged slowly. This means that the status on the display will change from "charging" to "not charging".
Your Python script most probably does different things at different times - some that take a lot of power and some that take less power. As a result, you'll see that some times the battery is being charged, and at other times it is not being chargd.


Keyboard not working in some apps in Catailna 10.15.7 while working in others The recent Catalina Update 10.15.7 on my Mac Mini 2018 has caused a lot of frustration. First, the now famous accountsd eating my CPU. Now I have a different annoying problem. Often, while typing in an app the keyboard (Apple Magic Keyboard) stops working in that app only. If I close the app and restart, it works again. It has so far affected the following apps

VS Code
Spotlight search
Chrome
Safari
Finder

When the keyboard stops working e.g. in VS Code, I can still use it in Chrome and all other apps. Its so frustrating since it happens about every 5 minutes while coding. It even happened to Chrome while typing this question.
One interesting observation is that when it happens to an app, I can still move the cursor with arrows, as well as copy text. But I cannot change the text, as in, writing.

The only solution I found was to create an alternative user account on my mac. I am using that account now, and the problem does not exist there.


Some windows in OS X Lion do not move to foreground when taking focus I have two windows open (so far I think this has only happened when at least one of the windows is a Finder window, though I'm not sure if that fact is essential to the problem), and I click the one in the background. The previously-focused window changes shade to show that it has lost focus and the now-in-focus window also changes shade to show that it has gained focus, but no matter how many times I click it, it doesn't come to the foreground. I have to try cycling between the windows in order to successfully move-to-background the out-of-focus window and move-to-foreground the in-focus one. Why would this happen? I've never seen such behavior in older versions of OS X and don't think it's a Lion "feature" either.

EDIT: Screenshot attached showing behavior in 10.8

I've noticed this in versions of OS X as far back as Panther. It seems to happen more often with apps that use heavily tweaked windows (like Microsoft Office, Adobe apps, or Java apps, particularly Eclipse).

It's just a bug in the app. File a report with the vendor if you want and maybe they'll be able to fix it.


Email sent from my iCloud email has started going to everyone’s Junk I have a username@me.com email address that I've had since around 2011. All of a sudden, about two weeks ago, I've stopped getting replies from people.

Turns out that my emails—including responses to an already-ongoing thread—are ending up in people’s SPAM and Junk folders.

Why is this happening and how can I stop it? It's a huge problem.

There's nothing you can do, except use a different email address.

What happened, most likely, is that some nitwit spammed from his/her me.com address (or spoofed it), and one of the commonly used spam blacklists added the entire domain. The other people will need to catch this and add your email to their personal whitelist, the details of which will depend entirely on their email provider and/or email software (depending on which one's actually doing the filtering).