Problem setting terminal window bounds with AppleScript Problem trying to solve

I use multiple terminal windows to develop web applications.  I'll have a terminal open for vim, a terminal open for git and a terminal open for basic file/directory commands.  The terminal application doesn't remember window settings so whenever I quit the terminal or have to restart I must manually resize and position my terminal windows.  I would like to automate this process using AppleScript.

1 window, big, fills up left half of screen (vim)
2 windows, smaller, stacked on top of one another, filling up other half of screen

My attempted solution

tell application "Terminal"

    activate
    set the bounds of the front window to {5, 0, 1000, 950}
    do script "clear" -- opens up the second window
    set the bounds of the front window to {1105, 0, 400, 500}
    -- haven't gotten to third window yet

end tell

The problem

The second window, the one being created by do script "clear", is being positioned oddly.  The left, top and height are all behaving as expected.  However, the window is set to it's minimum width, regardless of the value passed in the width parameter.  It could be 1000 and it's still set to minimum.  I've search high and low on Google, SO, Super User and Ask Different with no luck.

Any advice on what I'm doing wrong or what could be causing this issue with the weird width on the window created by do script "clear"?

Disclaimer

I'm an AppleScript beginner.  The syntax is unlike anything I've ever worked with (PHP, VBA, JavaScript) and I'm almost positive this is not the best, or even correct, way to be doing what I want to do.  However, I don't know AppleScript enough to really tell, other than gut feeling.

The window bounds are a list of coordinates {left, top, right, bottom}. You probably intended "400" to be the width, but it's the position of the right edge of the window and 400 is to the left of 1105, so you get a minimum width window. Change 400 to 1105 plus the desired width, e.g., 1505.

But before you pursue this further, Terminal has a better solution for this: Window Groups. If you set up a group of windows and save them as a Window Group, each time you open that group it will create windows with the same layout and appearance.

  Window > Save Windows as Group…

You can even tell Terminal to open a selected window group at startup:

  Terminal > Preferences > Startup > On startup, open: > Window group:

(As a shortcut, when creating a window group there's a checkbox for making it the startup group.)

To automatically run particular commands in those windows, you can create custom settings profiles and specify the command with

  Terminal > Preferences > Settings > [profile] > Shell > Startup > Run command:

then create each window with the appropriate profile.

Going further, in Mac OS X Lion 10.7 you can have window groups automatically restore commands without creating custom profiles, by creating the terminals using

  Shell > New Command

instead of running the command inside the terminal shell. When creating the window group, you can check "Restore all commands". (By default, it will restore a small set of "safe" commands, but you must explicitly tell it if you want it to re-run all commands when opening the group.)

Moreover, Lion Terminal supports Resume and will automatically restore all your windows each time you open Terminal. It will even restore "safe" commands for terminals created with New Command.


Can I delete /Library/Updates on EI Capitan I'm trying reduce my drive space requirement. I discovered /Library/Updates is taking up a lot of space.

After a quick Google, I found /Library/Updates is used to store system updates file which have not been applied.

So is it safe to clean up /Library/Updates?

Theoretically, there should only be updates in that folder until you actually run the updates, then they should be cleared - so my first suggestion would be to check the App Store app & run any pending updates from there, reboot, then recheck the folder.

Anything left over at that point ought to be safe to delete, though I would retain the index.plist PPDVersions.plist & ProductMetadata.plist files, if present, unless you are having general updating issues, as I suspect they are designed to accurately track the update state.


What can I do to unbrick my MacBook Pro after a software update? I applied the software update from 2015-03-10 on my 2009 MacBook Pro running Yosemite. Upon reboot, I get a grey screen with a circle and a slash through it. So far, I have tried:

Rebooting
Rebooting while holding down Command-Alt-P-R
Rebooting while holding down Shift (safe mode)
Rebooting while holding down Command-S. Same thing happens with the addition of the message, "Still waiting for root device"

Is there anything else I can do before re-installing? If I do re-install, any suggested procedure? The last physical install disk I have is likely a few versions outdated.

There are several other options your can try. First try rebooting/powering up and after your hear the chime press and hold the option/alt key. This will take you to the UEFI boot loader where you will be presented with all the boot options OS X recognizes. If you can, select the hard drive that contains your OS X installation.

Should the boot loader not launch or launch and then present you with no options reboot and then try pressing and holding command + r after the chime. This will either boot off of your recovery partition or attempt to boot your system from internet recovery. If it's the latter it will take some time so be patient.

Once you are loaded into recovery mode launch disk utility from the tools dropdown. Select the first entry for your hard drive in the side bar and then click "Repair Disk".

This will attempt to repair any errors with your partition map. Reboot and then hopefully all will now be functioning correctly.


How to code an AppleScript to do a mouse click on a menu bar item? I have an awesome Pomodoro application, but there are no keyboard shortcuts to start and pause it. I've been trying to code an AppleScript for the past hour, reading the AppleScript reference and searching online, but I'm getting nowhere.

What I want to do is have an AppleScript (it will be launched from an app called BetterTouchTool) click on coordinates on the menu bar, (the Pomodoro app runs in the background and I have all the coordinates needed), a cursor-back needed for the second cursor back (to get back to the initial cursor position), click a second time on the 'Start/Pause' dropdown item (from coordinates), and then do a second cursor-back to have the cursor back to its original position.

EDIT: the application is a timer application (in the menu bar) with a dropdown menu that has as the first item either 'Start', 'Pause' or 'Resume'—which is what I want to be able to click via a keyboard-assigned AppleScript.

EDIT2: got this far:

tell application "System Events"
    click (click at {1447, 10})
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Pomodoro Timer"
    click (click at {1456, 37})
end tell

But don't know how to code the cursor back, and I get this error:

  System Events got an error: Can’t get menu bar item "00:58" of menu
  bar 2 of application process "Pomodoro Timer".

Could someone please help me out?

There's a scripting addition called "AppleScript Toolbox" (it's an osax). Get it at https://astoolbox.wordpress.com/

With that, you can simply write:

AST click at {10, 20}

That clicks into the menu bar, for instance, and opens the Apple menu.

If you want to preserve the original cursor position first, use this:

set origPos to AST mouse point location

And to restore it use:

AST set mouse point location origPos


Incorrect amount of free space on 2009 Macbook Recently, I've been noticing that my 2009 Macbook's storage has been plummeting. Despite cleaning my computer up, nothing seems to be working. I went to the apple store and we ran tests (which I already did) and tried re-repairing disk utility and so forth. (Which I'd already done) & (When I originally used disk utility it would work, now it doesn't work at all) Just says invalid block count and "repairs" it. But, I promise you I don't have 30gb left on my computer, especially when it said I have 84 gb. The day before.

I've had problems before with inaccurate free disk space (even when accounting for Time Machine's Local Snapshots). Usually though I can fix the problem by verifying the disk in disk utility, which then shows Invalid volume free block count and orphaned blocks errors, which I could then repair in recovery mode, but now disk utility repeatedly insists the volume is OK. Which I don't understand at all. All the space seems to be going to "other" even with Daisy Disk I don't know where to start.

I'm trying to install a new version of Maverick to see if this does anything, but the only option the guy from the apple store told me was to wipe my whole computer, and then drag everything back (not using time machine because that may still have the bug on it)

Ultimately, I'm not sure what to do. Should I clear it and then add everything back. I have a giant pain-in-the-rear iTunes library, my office and photoshop are not necessarily kosher either. So all in all, I'm just nervous. Especially because this free space is disappearing quicker than I imagined!

You appear to have a heavily-used computer with a 5-year-old drive. I would be more surprised if it didn't have issues.

Two things you can try:

Step 1. Clone your drive to an external drive using something like Carbon Copy Cloner. Do NOT use block copy mode or Disk Utility, that copies the problems as well.

Step 2. Boot from something else, like the clone, reformat your internal drive and clone back (you can use block copy this time).

If that doesn't solve the issues, your drive has hardware problems. Replace it with an SSD and your issues will go away, plus you will get a huge speed increase.


Use Apple Watch LTE data for hotspot I'm paying $10/month for LTE data for my Apple Watch series 4 on Verizon. That gives me 15GB of hotspot data on it and unlimited data for use from the watch.

However, my usage always shows 0 bytes. I'm always out of hotspot data so I would love to slurp that 15GB on my laptop, but I can't find any method of using my Apple Watch as a hotspot. For that matter, it looks like as long as my iPhone is around, I never actually use the LTE data on my watch, or it's such a tiny amount of data that it never reaches .01 GB.

How can I make use of my LTE data plan on my Apple Watch?

TLDR - Could Apple do this with a quick update - of course it’s technically possible. Will Apple do so? I prefer the odds a snowball survives in December in Australia, but who knows what new hardware will allow or if software in the future is allowed to spend watch battery on this feature.

On a technical level, with the current iOS/iPadOS/watchOS throttling background data connections at 30 seconds in general when it used to be 10 minutes, there is no way you’ll be able to fit that much data through the watch hardware. My opinion is the carriers are borderline cruel to even offer that much “watch data” in my opinion let alone charge you $120 per year plus fees for that premium data. It would be a triumph to exhaust that data cap with the hardware and software going into 2020.

You are correct that if the watch is on WiFi - it will tunnel all data over that and if that doesn’t work, then the watch will talk to your iPhone over bluetooth to avoid running the LTE on the watch.

WatchOS will only consume cellular as the last resort and certainly the tethering code is disabled on watchOS as well to save power and allow it to run as described above.

If cost savings is your desire, consider dropping LTE on the watch and seeing if you an manage without it and fund more phone data.


Full Wi-fi/ethernet signal but no internet I'm really hoping someone here can help me, as I'm getting pretty frustrated with my macbook now.
I have a late 2011 model 15" macbook pro running OSX 10.9.5 that refuses to connect to Internet on my home network. I have the same problem whether it's WiFi or through ethernet cable, I have full signal but not getting online. Every other device connects fine; android phones and tablets,xbox one, iPhone and other macbooks, all online and browsing the net.
I have had no problems connecting to other networks with my macbook pro before and I just tried at a friend's house to check, with no problems.
A little something, that may be a clue to someone: when I open network diagnostic tool, my macbook pro connects for something that seems like a microsecond and it tells me I'm connected to Internet and everything seems fine.
My IP is 192.168.0.5 subnet mask 255.255.255.0 and IPv6 is set to automatic. None of the options are checked under the proxies tab.
Now I've tried the following, in different order and a number of times, to no avail:

Renewing/turning off&on/inputting manually DHCP.
Restarting/resetting the router and the macbook.
Turning WiFi on/off.
Remove & add services (WiFi & ethernet).
Checked and copied all network settings from another macbook pro that's connected and online on my network.
Ran network diagnostic and assistant tools
Duplicated/removed/added location
Removed the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration folder.
Removed network password from keychain.

I've tried other things too, but can't remember what else right now.

Response from ifconfig en1:

en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        ether 28:cf:da:e6:95:0a
        inet6 fe80::2acf:daff:fee6:950a%en1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5
        inet 192.168.0.5 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255
        nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
        media: autoselect
        status: active

I'm praying that someone out there has the magic words or the 2-click solution for me, but I would be grateful for a long thorough guidelines to solve it too! <3

Regards Trond

Here is a step-by-step guide for you:

Temporarily disable any Firewall/Internet Security solution/packet filter on your Mac (like LittleSnitch/Hands Off!/Kaspersky Internet Security etc.)
Connect to the administrative interface of your router with a working Mac.
Make a note of the internal interface (probably 192.168.0.1 in your case)
If your router uses MAC-filters to control access, check that the Mac in question isn't blacklisted or is whitelisted if you use whitelists. To get the MAC-address of a Wi-fi interface, open System Preferences -> Network -> Choose "Wi-fi" -> Advanced -> Hardware -> MAC Address on the Mac without internet access.
On the Mac without internet access disable all interfaces in the network preferences pane except the Wi-fi interface by choosing the interface and clicking on the little gear -> "Make Service Inactive". You might have to unlock the lock in the left bottom corner first.
Choose the Wi-fi interface and click 'Advanced'
Choose the TCP/IP settings, choose to configure IPv4 manually and enter the proper IP-address, netmask and gateway address (enter the IP-address found in step 2 as gateway address). In your example  this should be any address not already in use in the range of 192.168.0.2-192.168.0.254 as IP-address, 255.255.255.0 as netmask and 192.168.0.1 as gareway.
Choose the DNS tab next to the TCP-IP settings.
Enter 8.8.8.8 as DNS server. This DNS server is a public one from Google.
Save/apply the settings
Open Terminal.app
Flush any existing routes by entering route -n flush several times.
Flush DNS cache with dscacheutil -flushcache;sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder. You have to enter your admin password to complete the task. This works with Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) only. If another OS X is installed use the appropriate command.
Now ping the gateway address and the DNS server with ping -c 5 192.168.0.1 and ping -c 5 8.8.8.8. The command sends 5 pings to the specified address. To stop pinging - if you didn't include the -c  option - just enter ctrlC.
If you get a successful answer, quit Terminal. If you didn't get an answer, enter ifconfig en1 and re-check the proper settings of your Wi-fi interface. en1 should be your Wi-fi interface.
Return to the network preferences and reenable all other interfaces. Check that the Wi-fi interface is on top of the list. To reorder the list click on the little gear -> "Set Service Order..." and rearrange the interfaces.
Now open a browser of your choice and try to connect to an arbitrary site.
If you have internet access now, you may replace the Google DNS server with DNS-servers of your ISP or simply add them.

This guide didn't solve the problem.

After some very deep investigations (kudos also to John Keates) we found out that a misconfigured dnscrypt/dnscrypt-proxy was the culprit.


Magic Mouse is frequently losing its connection to MacBook Pro My Magic Mouse is intermittently losing its connection to my MacBook Pro.

First the mouse becomes unresponsive and a few seconds later, a picture of the mouse appears on the screen wit the words "Connection Lost." Then about 10 seconds later, the connections is "magically" re-established, without any action on my part.

Any ideas on what this could be due to and how I can stop this? I have changed the batteries and they are brand new. My software is also up-to-date unless there is a special bluetooth update that I have to go get somewhere.

Batteries are loose

Apple designed the Magic Mouse battery compartment according to the official specification for AA batteries. Unfortunately, while Apple engineers were quite precise, the manufacturers of batteries are not. In practice, batteries vary in size, just enough to be problematic in the Magic Mouse.

Given that the batteries are hanging inside the mouse with only the tension of the terminal receptacles to keep them in place, incorrectly sized batteries can easily be pulled by gravity, falling down ever so slightly, just enough to lose contact with the electrical pads.

Wiggling the mouse is enough to re-establish contact between battery and the pads. For a while, until they fall again. Thus the annoying disconnect-reconnect-disconnect-reconnect loop.

Piece of thin cardboard

The solution is to use scissors to cut a piece of thin paper cardboard the size of the batteries. Lay this piece over the batteries before engaging the metal cover on the bottom of the mouse. The cardboard should touch only the batteries, but not the surrounding compartment of the mouse. Your goal is to get the metal door to push the paper up against the sides of the batteries, just snug enough to prevent the batteries from falling downward.

I have found the perfect thickness of cardboard to be the box enclosing a 12-pack of soda cans. A business card might do. You need about a millimeter. Thicker than sheets of paper. Card stock might do it, but may not be thick enough.


Restoring iPhone as a new iPhone but backing up contacts I have an iCloud account, but I am backing up via iTunes.

I want to restore my iPhone because of the "other" files taking up a really huge portion of my phone's memory (2 GB and I have only 16 GB of storage).

I just want to back up my contacts. I've checked my iCloud account online and my contacts are there. Can I recover the contacts back to my phone after restoring to a new iPhone too?

Yes, as long as your contacts are synced with iCloud, you can reset your phone without losing them. If you can see them on iCloud.com, they are synced.

First make sure you have a current iCloud backup of your phone before resetting. You can backup manually by going to "Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Back up Now".

Second, make sure your contacts are being synced "Settings > iCloud > Contacts" button turned ON (green showing).

Now, after you reset your phone (Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings), you can set-up the phone as a "new phone" (i.e. not from your iCloud backup). Add your iCloud account and turn on Contacts syncing (switch button to green). Your contacts will then be downloaded from iCloud onto your fresh iPhone installation.


Workspaces not switching automatically Despite the fact that I have told mission control under 10.8 to spaces when switching applications(to the key window), it does not appear to work.  In fact the only time spaces works is when I tell it to switch using keyboard shortcuts. This started happening only once I unchecked show dashboard as space.

The following symptoms also occur:
-Checking "show dashboard as space" does not re-enable dashboard
-Dragging windows to the side of the screen does not cause spaces to switch
-Keyboard shortcuts for mission control do not invoke mission control.

Mac OS 10.8

I've seen this intermittently for a few releases now. I fix it by restarting the "Dock" process (which handles Spaces/MissionControl) using this Terminal command:

killall Dock

I don't know how to do that via the regular GUI, sorry. And before you run that command, do killall -s Dock to see the processes which will get killed. If only the one "Dock" process is listed then you're good to go.  Hope this helps!


Can anyone recommend an app for creating flowcharts and diagrams? I'm seeking a Mac app for creating basic flowcharts and similar diagrams.

Google has been no help; I've followed dozens of links to apps that either don't exist anymore, I can't find any real reviews of, or that won't run on OS X 10.6.6.

What I'd really like:

A simple and clean interface
Basic shapes
Automated connectors that stay linked as you move shapes around
Inexpensive, preferably under $30 but definitely under $50

What I'm not looking for:

Hundreds of shapes
Default styles that have shadows and textures and such that I have to keep removing
Dozens of amazing features that allow you to automatically map databases and draw UML diagrams from code and such (I'm looking at you, Visio) that I have to constantly navigate around to make a few basic diagrams
A mind-mapping app with all the features such a thing entails, one that happens to also let you make basic diagrams
A full-fledged drawing app where, once again, I have to maneuver around a whole bunch of features and options to get to the basic functions I need.  (I have Illustrator, I love Illustrator, but it's crap for basic flowcharts and other simple diagrams.)

I wouldn't actually use it for flowcharts, but rather basic similar diagrams to show data flow between apps, information flow in a company or other places, that kind of thing.

I recently found out that the drawing portion of Google Docs actually does a pretty good job with the types of diagrams I need to create, but the UI is pretty poor and it obviously requires a constant net connection.

For free online diagramming there's diagrams.net, which I am a developer on. It supports the automatic connection and dragging of components you're looking for. Also, it's free (and open source), which meets your under $30 requirement.
There is also a Desktop version available.


Is it possible to burn a DVD out of the Lion app store install? Is it possible to burn a DVD out of the Lion app store install?

Yes!

After you purchase and download Lion from the App Store, the "Install" screen will appear:

Before you click Continue, open your Applications folder and look for the icon labelled Install Mac OS X Lion:

If you missed this chance (and the App is deleted from your system), you can always re-download the package using the App Store app. Even if it shows Lion Installed, you can hold the option key pressed, then press the button to re-download the Lion installer app.

Right-click (or Ctrl+Click) on this and choose Show Package Contents. Navigate to Contents > SharedSupport and look for InstallESD.dmg.

Use Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder) to burn InstallESD.dmg to a DVD. Drag the InstallESD.dmg file to the Disk Utility window, select it, then choose Burn... from the Images menu.

A dialog appears allowing you to burn it to a DVD. The name of the DVD doesn't really matter, but I named mine Mac OS X Lion.


App icons semi missing on MBPTB 2016 I'm trying to figure out why sometimes my icons don't display properly on my Late 2016 MBP with TouchBar.

It happened back when I was on Sierra and now on High Sierra as well.

It seems that they only revert to the default app icon in the dock, but most of the time the app icon really does show up in mission control.

Any ideas as to why this might be happening are much appreciated.

Thanks!

This issue is caused by the League of Legend updater.

The bug has been reported few months ago in Riot forums, but they do not seem to care about it.

  Any time I download an update, it causes other applications on my Mac to have their icons go missing (most notable in the dock area). This has been happening on both High Sierra and Sierra before it for a long time.

However, you'll see on the forum that somebody posted a temporary fix which consists in running a shell script after each game update.

  To recap on the previous comment I made, this shell script seems to do the job, for the time being.
  I'm not going to note down how to run it since if you don't know, you probably shouldn't be running scripts from the internet.


How to disassociate AppleID from an old iPhone? I have given my grandson my old iPhone, but all the messages sent to my current one are still being received by that phone as well, even though it's a different number.

How can I prevent my iPhone to do so?

Here is the correct answer for you. It is currently the highest-voted answer to a very similar question which was asked previously.

Go into Settings > Messages and halfway down choose Send and Receive. Tap your AppleID on the top of the page, then choose Sign Out.

If you really are giving away your phone there are several other places you ought to sign out from as well:

Settings > FaceTime
Settings > iCloud
Settings > iTunes and App Store

If you'd prefer to reset the phone to its factory defaults, wiping all your data, apps, music, etcetera, then use Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content And Settings. Then the phone will be brand new like you just bought it from the shop.


How safe is it to use Apple's wireless keyboard? Apple's Magic Keyboard is a bluetooth device which means that the hacker can potentially intercept the signal and decrypt messages or say get control over the input.

Question: Is Magic Keyboard secure enough? What does Apple do in order to make it secure?

It’s actually quite safe to use Bluetooth keyboards.
Since 2009 on, bluetooth keyboards have encrypted all traffic end to end with the exception of service discovery.  In other words, only the advertising packets that basically say “I’m a keyboard” or “I’m a trackpad or mouse” are unencrypted.  Everything else, including the authentication is encrypted.
How does macOS Sierra securely pair with Bluetooth keyboards without a code?
Entering a key or a passcode is not part of the security mechanism; its a form of Simple Secure Pairing or SSP.  The passkey is just a way to identify devices to be paired.  It’s definitely not a way to prevent MITM attacks.
So, is Bluetooth safe?
It’s more accurate to say “it’s safe enough for US Government standards.

Bluetooth adheres to U.S. federal security regulations, ensuring that all Bluetooth devices are capable of meeting and exceeding strict government security standards.

NIST Compliant: The National Institute of Technology develops security standards and guidelines for federal agencies to protect their information and information systems.

FIPS Approved: These Federal Information Processing Standards are developed by NIST in accordance with the Federal Information Security Management ACT (FISMA).

Further reading:
NIST Special Publication 800-121 Revision 2N Guide to Bluetooth Security


iPhone 6s stuck in DFU mode after downgrading I'm trying to downgrade from iOS 11 beta 2 back to iOS 10.3.2. I've downloaded the .ipsw from iOS 10.3.2 file from ipsw.me. After that, I've put my iPhone in DFU mode and plugged into my Mac (Sierra 10.12.5). iTunes detected the phone in DFU mode, so then I choose the restore option holding option key and selected the .ipsw file downloaded. The iTunes pass through all process of restoring the phone, but right after it ends, the iPhone restart and go back to the DFU mode. I've tried to download the 10.3.1 ipsw version but the same problem occurred. I've no idea how to proceed.

The short answer is to reinstall iOS 11 - the longer discussion and answer are covered here.

iPhone 7 Plus stuck in recovery mode and can't restore/update even in DFU

It appears either iPhones can't go back at all or they can't go back today with the current version of iOS 10, iOS 11 and/or current version of iTunes. The iPad Air 2 is the only device I've tried to revert back to 10 - that succeeded.

Past that, I could speculate that it's likely this is firmware and/or secure enclave related but I haven't done the engineering work (or seen another release their analysis) yet. For now, I would urge everyone to not install any of APple's current betas on a device they cannot devote to testing and breakage until the presumed fall release. That includes macOS conversion to APFS, iOS, watchOS and tvOS. Apple announced massive changes to these builds and what worked to go back in the past might either not be tested, not functional or intentionally not allowed.


Specifying $MANPATH after installing coreutils doesn't affect the man page displayed I installed the GNU core utilities via brew install coreutils. I also added PATH=$(brew --prefix coreutils)/libexec/gnubin:$PATH
 to the beginning of ~/.bash_profile (and it's auto-sourced in ~/.bashrc) as to enable accessing these utilities with their default names, ant not prepended with g.

I also want access to the man pages of these utilities, so I added MANPATH="/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnuman:${MANPATH-/usr/share/man}" to ~/.bash_profile as the second line. Unfortunately, when I type man ls for example, I still get the BSD man page, instead of the Gnu one. How do I fix this?

OK, so after researching about $MANPATH with regards to Linux\UNIX, I came across the idea of adding export MANPATH right after defining it in ~/.bash_profile. This solves the problem as required, i.e. giving me access to man pages for coreutils, and only then to their BSD versions, if no GNU version exists.


What are TTComp archive data files and how can i decrypt them? I am searching for the iOS system-roots keychain. I found a file (certsTable.data) in /System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/, it could be, but i can't open it because if i unextract it with ttdecomp i get a data file which contains only apparently random data, in the unextracted state strings find some human readable stings like ")Starfield Class 2 Certification Authority" in the same folder there was a certsIndex.data file

Take a look at OTATrustUtilities, which is Apple's implementation of extracting data from the system keychain. Specifically the InitializeAnchorTable function looks at extracting the data from those two files. The certsIndex.data file is a Database Index file that contains an array which can be read using NSData, this contains a list of sha1 hashes and offsets. These offsets correspond to the start of the certificate data found in the certsTable.data file, so you can start reading from the offset to the end of the certificate. It is worth noting that an application which accesses these private files will not be accepted onto the AppStore and this should only really be used for personal use or jailbreak development.


How do I set the Camera Roll to send the actual size (rather than small size) via email? I usually use Android, but my girlfriend landed me with the above task to solve, and I have found no way to solve it myself.

When we go to Camera Roll and select single or multiple images, we used to get an interface allowing us to select the size of the selected images, including the phrase "Actual Size".

As stated, that interface has disappeared, and all the photos selected are default sent as tiny 130Kb photos. How do I reset the phone to again allow my girlfriend to send Actual Size photos? I have already restarted the phone, but that didn't change anything.

The dialog box that allows you to choose a size appears after you compose the email and hit send.


Can I connect mini DisplayPort to DVI-D to VGA? I have a mid-2010 15" MacBook Pro. I have purchased a mini DisplayPort to DVI-D adapter onto which I have connected a DVI-D to VGA (D-Sub) adapter which then connects into my new monitor. The Displays screen seems to recognised the monitor, but the monitor says "No Signal Detected". Is it valid to connect mini DisplayPort -> DVI-D -> VGA?

No. DVI-D only carries digital signals. Most (if not all) DVI -> VGA converters use the analog signal DVI-I carries. A mini DisplayPort to DVI connector will only pass on digital signals (as you correctly identified by referring to it as a DVI-D signal), so your DVI to VGA adapter is left out in the cold. You need to get a mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter.

The reason the computer sees the display is that one of your adapters is identifying itself as a display.


How can I see in iTunes how much time is left in audio books and podcasts? When listening to audio books and podcasts iTunes and iPods/iPhones remember the last position.

How can I see this piece of information in iTunes without playing the podcast? (It is displayed on my iPhone as "xx minutes left" in the list of podcasts.)

In iTunes, when a podcast is playing, you can click the top bar where it says how long the podcast is. Clicking that will change the total time into the time remaining.


How to send an email to everyone in the address book? How can I easily send a BCC to everyone in my address book on OS X?

I need to send everyone my new email address.

Easy - use MailChimp or some other bulk mailing service to get around all the reasons (spam) that mail clients (spam) and mail services make this (spam) hard to accomplish.

You also might set a vacation auto-reply on the old address and ensure that people get a timely reminder when they email the old.


How to turn off my speakers when no sound is being played? I just bought a wattmeter and realized that my speakers are using 15 Watts on idle.

Is there a way to detect that no sound is being currently played in order to turn off my speakers ?

The system sounds are currently being played by my monitor through HDMI, and the audio output of my Macbook Pro is connected to my speakers through a jack cable. Applications that are likely to play sound are: VLC, iTunes, Chrome.

I didn't want to formulate this question as a XY problem, so I'll just enumerate a few ideas that came to my mind to solve this. I'm open to any kind of solution, high or low level.

Turning off the speakers will most likely be done with a relay controlled with an Arduino.

I don't see any obvious way to detect if sound is being played programmatically, but I would be interested to know if this is possible. Maybe there is a system call that I could use to estimate the current audio level ?

The launching of the screen saver is more or less a good indication that it's time to turn off the speakers. It's probably possible to create a Quartz Composer composition that would be used as a screen saver, and also turn off the speakers when it's starting, but Quartz Composer seems to be dying slowly. Who knows if it will still exist in the next OS X release ?

Also, a totally external hardware solution would be great, maybe some kind of circuit that would detect if sound is currently being played, and activate or deactivate a relay accordingly.

The speakers are these ones:

http://www.amazon.fr/CREATIVE-I-Trigue-L3450-Enceintes-2-1/dp/B0000CD7I8

Here are the specs (in French):

Puissance (Totale) Nominale de Sortie: 48 Watts
Puissance Max de Sortie du Système Audio: 100 Watts
Détails du système haut-parleur: 1 x Caisson de basses 30 Watts, 2 x Haut-parleurs satellite 9 Watts

My cheap Chinese wattmeter reads 11.8 W when idle; the same Chinese wattmeter gives me plausible measures with everything that I have measured so far (from a charging 12W iPad charger to a running 2300W boiler).

You describe the problem as having 11.8 watt on the speakers while there is no sound coming from them.
Try using Mute, to make sure no sound output is send to the speakers.

You also say you have 2 sound outputs one to the monitor via HDMI for the system sounds on external monitor the other to your external speakers true the headphone jack.

That is possible but requires special settings in the System Audio or 3D party audio application.

It is not possible to have 11.8 watt (as measured by your wattmeter) of audio power going to speakers without them making any noise, unless the speakers audio amplifier is junk.

It is possible that your speakers draw power because they have defective audio amplifier. I suggest looking in to it or returning the product.


Create extra dock item that runs a bash script I currently have the Terminal in my dock. I'd like to have another Terminal shortcut in the dock but with this one it will run a bash script which will do some stuff specific to that shortcut.
No, I cannot use .bash_profile since the original Terminal short cut will source that too.
This is pretty trivial to do in Windows, is it trivial on a Mac also?

You can have files in the Dock, but they have to be the other side of the 'dividing line' from apps.
So a shell script file, with suffix .command, or .tool, could be in the Dock and would launch on a click.
There are other places to have scripts readily accessible in the Mac workspace, of course, such as the Scripts menulet.


Why does Automatic Graphics Switching keep re-enabling itself without my involvement? I disable Automatic graphics switching under Energy Saver, as it significantly slows my Macbook Pro (10.15.5). Yet this checkbox keeps getting re-enabled when I have not touched it!
How can I prevent that? Or failing that, how can I disable this from the command line? (I'll write a script to run every ten minutes.)
,

Use this script to turn off the Energy Saver Automatic graphic switching option.

Save it on your Macbook, e.g., as noautosaver.
Make it executable with chmod a+x noautosaver.
Add the script in System Preferences > Login Items.

It is the same code as in the linked question, but always turns the value Off rather than toggling the value.
 #!/usr/bin/osascript

 if running of application "System Preferences" then
     try
         quit application "System Preferences"
     on error
         do shell script "killall 'System Preferences'"
     end try
 end if

 repeat while running of application "System Preferences" is true
     delay 0.1
 end repeat

 tell application "System Preferences"
     reveal pane id "com.apple.preference.energysaver"
     repeat until exists window "Energy Saver"
         delay 0.1
     end repeat
 end tell

 tell application "System Events" to tell ¬
     group 1 of window "Energy Saver" of application process "System Preferences"
     repeat until exists checkbox "Automatic graphics switching"
         delay 0.1
     end repeat

     set cbAGS to (value of checkbox "Automatic graphics switching") as boolean
     if cbAGS then
        click checkbox "Automatic graphics switching"
     end if
     set  cbAGS to (value of checkbox "Automatic graphics switching") as boolean
 end tell

 quit application "System Preferences"

 if cbAGS then
     return "   Automatic Graphics Switching is: ON"
 else
     return "   Automatic Graphics Switching is: OFF"
 end if


Set Mac mini to be constantly on and logged in I've got a Mac mini that I would like to run headless; leaving plugged in to network and power only.

I want to leave the Mac mini on to:

Run Dropbox constantly, so that I have the local copy backed up to the Mac mini.
Run a cloud backup service so that my Dropbox data is backed up again.

The hurdles I see with doing so are:

If there is a power cut, I want to make sure that the machine reboots and logs back in so that tasks 1. & 2. above can run. This can be partially achieved by powering the Mac mini via a UPS, although if the power cut was long enough the UPS would also fail.
Knowing if the systems fail, so that I can fix them. I wouldn't want the systems to fail and me not know for 6 months.

Are there some specific settings I should be looking at in macOS to enable me to leave it running constantly carrying out tasks 1. & 2. above?

There are a few built-in settings in macOS and a 3rd party app that you should be looking at:

Under System Preferences → Energy Saver → Power Adapter, enable Restart after power failure.
Turn on automatic login by going to System Preferences → Users & Groups → Login Options → Automatic Login and select your preferred user account.
You may also wish to install and run a helper app that can prevent your Mac mini from sleeping automatically. I'd recommend installing KeepingYouAwake.

Enabling number 1. above will ensure that your computer boots automatically after a power failure. This will ensure that the computer boots automatically after the power is restored.

Number 2. will automatically log into your preferred user account after a restart, thus requiring no user intervention to start things up.

Number 3. will ensure your computer never goes to sleep mode. You can configure the app to startup automatically upon system start.

Doing above three should ideally take care of your requirement. You have to make sure that no unauthorized personnel is able to access your computer physically.


MBPr with El Capitan freezes at or right after login Here's the problem: my colleague has a MacBook Pro Retina with El Capitan installed and he's been having issues with regular freezes lately. Everything has worked fine under Mavericks for well over a year, then it was upgraded to El Capitan, worked mostly fine for some time and then started to hang up regularly.

Freezes happen on/during either of the following:

the boot screen
the login screen (most often)
within seconds after logging in

Freezes do not happen in either single user or safe mode.

As stated above, the machine hangs most often at the login screen. I start typing the password and bang, after a few characters it just stops responding - I cannot type anything on the keyboard or move the pointer with the touchpad. Keyboard backlight is on permanently and doesn't turn off.

After booting into safe mode in /var/log/system.log I've found lots of entries like this:

WindowServer[168]: GPU Driver appears to be hung (over 5 continuous seconds of unreadiness)
--- last message repeated 817 times ---

The problem is reproducible on all users. Since we have a Time Machine backup and I could experiment freely, I've tried reinstalling El Capitan (keeping user files). No change. Then I wiped the system drive and did a fresh installation of El Capitan, created a user during the initial setup and crashed into the same problem, before even restoring the backup.

Hardware test (accessible by holding S during boot) was run twice and did not yield any results.

The disk was encrypted with FileVault before my wiping it clean. Now it's unencrypted and the problem persists, so this doesn't seem to be of relevance.

My questions here are:

What could be a possible cause of such problems?
Is there any known solution to these?
Is it possible to download Mavericks from a reliable source and installing it over El Capitan? That's the last OS X version known to work well on this machine.
What can I do to debug the causes?

Any suggestions not contained in the questions are also welcome.

So it's two months later and I'm a little bit wiser and would like to summarise what I've already posted in the comments and expand on that little.

What my colleague forgot to tell me was that the computer had been freezing from time to time even when running Mavericks; he only mentioned freezing after upgrading to El Capitan, which led me to believe that software was probably to blame. It turned out that after upgrading the freezes started to happen more often.

The laptop was sent to a repair shop and the technician from there told me he discovered traces of liquid at the inside of the cover. Not enough to damage the humidity indicators which are placed inside Apple products but he said there were clear marks so the computer probably had something spilled on it - too little to wreck it immediately but too much not to have an impact on sensitive electronic parts.

Answering my own questions:

The MacBook was submitted to a repair shop where a technician diagnosed the problem as some kind of motherboard failure but he was unable to pinpoint which element was responsible for the issue. Since he wasn't sure which part he should target for replacement he suggested replacing the whole motherboard.
No known solutions to the problem came into evidence.
I was able to download Mavericks from AppStore by finding it in purchase history, as suggested by Tetsujin (thanks!). However, it turned out that software was not responsible here -- after installing Mavericks the computer hung just as willingly as it did under El Capitan.
There wasn't much more to be done before submitting the laptop to a repair shop beyond what I had done and described in the OP.

So if you're experiencing similar problems, it's likely to be a hardware failure, in which case you won't be able to easily diagnose it on your own and you're bound to visit a repair shop.


New macpro needs to connect with thunderbolt Getting new macpro. Have RAID external drive. I am unsure of the name of the connector but suspect it is thunderbolt not 3.
I want to buy the correct connector so the data on the drive is available.
Please point me in the right direction.

Thanks!

Welcome to the forums!

The picture makes it out to look like it could be be both USB-C as thunderbolt would be square.

Here is a link where you can read on apple’s thunderbolt 3 and at the bottom of the article are easy to compare images of what many apple device adapters female ends look like. Go take a look on the site rather than uploading another clear image.


Issue with audio for slideshow with Photos I have a problem when adding music to a slideshow in photos. When I add a piece of music and check the 'fit to music' the timing is never right and I'm left with about a minute of silence at the end of the slideshow.

Alternatively if I try and vary the time of the slideshow manually, it won't let me and resets itself to default time.

Both of these issues mean that I cannot get a piece of music to fit in time with a slideshow, which is proving highly frustrating.

I'm using a new MacBook OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 (14F27)

I'm not able to reproduce what you are saying. The duration in the top right under export seems responsive. I add the song I want, notice how long it plays and the slide show duration updates.

My guess is you have more than one song queued in the top right under selected music, but it's hard to know without poking around your project.

 The above is from Version 1.1 (330.21.0)


Is there a Fortran compiler/emulator for iOS? Has anyone come across a Fortran 77 emulator or compiler for iOS devices?

It can be accomplished using the Dragonegg plugin for GCC (frontend), a generic LLVM installation (backend), and the Apple linker.  I have been able to successfully build and run a 64-bit Fortran application on iOS 8.1 built on Mac OS X 10.10 using GCC 4.8 and LLVM 3.5.  The process is not very straightforward and requires a number of hacks and some scripting, but the high-level steps are:

Install GCC 4.8 from HPC for Mac OS X into /usr/local
Install Clang/LLVM 3.5 from llvm.org into /usr/local
Download the Dragonegg source code from the LLVM website
Build dragonegg.so and install it to /usr/local/lib/gcc/x86_64-apple-darwin12.5.0/4.8.1/plugin
Download GCC 4.8.1 sources
Build libgfortran for arm64 using a combination of Apple clang for C/C++, Dragonegg for Fortran, and some wrapper scripts to piece together the compilers
Install libgfortran.dylib and libgfortran.3.dylib to /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS8.1.sdk/usr/lib
Install libgfortran.3.dylib on the iPhone under /usr/local/lib

Now if you got this far, compile a Fortran source file into an iOS binary using:

gfortran -O3 -fplugin=dragonegg -fplugin-arg-dragonegg-llvm-codegen-optimize=3 -fplugin-arg-dragonegg-emit-ir -S -o main.s main.f
llc -mtriple arm64-apple-darwin -filetype=obj -o main.o main.s
ld -arch arm64 -syslibroot /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS8.1.sdk -lSystem -lgfortran main.o -o main

Precompiled binaries for Dragonegg and libgfortran can be found here: http://download.zeroepoch.com/gfortran-ios/gfortran-ios.tar.bz2

UPDATE: The precompiled binaries archive now contains fat libraries (armv7s, arm64) and some bug fixes to the wrapper scripts.


How to import Apple Mail archive files in Outlook 2013? I need to import Apple Mail archived files in Outlook 2013 on Windows, but every time I open the import wizard and reach the file selection step, I cannot select the archived file. It doesn't even show in the dialog box.

I don't know what the issue is. Is it the file size issue as the archive file is large (about 7 GB) or there is any other fault?

Apple mail archive are in .mbox format which is not a supported Outlook format in windows. You cannot import this file, that's why.

You might want to look for a .mbox to .pst converter.

To help you out this might help you:
Trial MBOX Converter


iOS devices [non-jailbreak] anti-theft apps better than Find My iPhone Is there a super anti-theft on App Store , which excludes apps from Cydia (a.k.a jail-break apps) that is better than Find My iPhone ?

This super anti-theft must do What Find My iPhone can and have the following when I turn on "Lost Mode" on this app:

the theft has no ideas that he is being watched
take photos using front/back camera every x minutes and send photos to my email
disable iOS Devices turn off manually unless the devices are out of battery or are destroyed

Bonus: 1 time paid out rather than month-to-month subscription

Apps on the App Store must obey the App Store guidelines and stay within their sandbox.

  2.5 Apps that use non-public APIs will be rejected
  2.6 Apps that read or write data outside its designated container area will be rejected

Apps aren't able to disable an iOS device's power off functionality as this is fundamental to the device and is not able to be manipulated by an app on the device restricted to the code that is downloaded with the app:

  2.8 Apps that install or launch other executable code will be rejected

Furthermore, doing things such as taking photos in the background is not permitted per the App Store guidelines:

  2.16 Multitasking Apps may only use background services for their intended purposes: VoIP, audio playback, location, task completion, local notifications, etc.

Therefore, such an app will not be found on the App Store.


How downgrade macOS to previous versions safely? I working on macOS Mojave 10.14.5

I am new to macOS and I don't know much about installing different versions. I can't dare to uninstall the current as I am afraid to lose my file and installed packages.

how can I safely downgrade to 10.11 or 10.10?

Updates: info about my MacBook:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013)

The reason why I want this is that I want to install wifi USB adapter but it seems that it's only compatible with os 10.11 or below that. Having this wireless adapter working is so much important to me though.

Adapter details:
EDUP 802.11n USB Wireless
Model : EP-N8553

There is no downgrade option available which let's you 'go back to a previous macOS version'. Most Mac Apps automatically convert your Photo, Mail or iTunes files to a newer database version. So you won't be able to import Mails out-of-the-box from Mail (Mojave) into Mail (El Capitan).

You will need to backup your data, first
Erase your disk or volume using Disk Utility
Reinstall from macOS Recovery or USB drive.
Move back your data from backup

There's no need to reinstall your system due to USB adapter issues. It rather sounds like a incompatilbity issue. Your USB adapter is too old. Try using your USB adapter on another friends, collegues computer for further testing.

The only guaranteed step is to erase the system, reinstall a clean OS and only migrate / import data that was backed up to the lower version of the OS or older. You generally can load an older backup on a newer system, you generally cannot load a newer backup level on an older system.


Make a custom keyboard layout the system default — even for the login screen Can I make a custom keyboard layout (one that wasn’t included with OS X by default) the system default — even for the login screen?

This works on OSX 10.9 Mavericks, with a keyboard layout that I created with Ukulele. Assuming that you have the layout already installed in your system, log into your account and make your custom keyboard layout active.

Open a terminal and run the following command:

cp /Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist /tmp/

If you intend to use a text editor (e.g., TextWrangler) to make this change instead of XCode (which has a specialized graphical plist editor), also run:

plutil -convert xml1 /tmp/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist

Now, open /tmp/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist in the text editor or in XCode.

Throughout the file you will find several mentions of a KeyboardLayout ID key followed by an integer and KeyboardLayout Name followed by a string. Change these strings to the name of your custom keyboard layout and the id integers to the ID of your layout (the easiest way to find the right values is to compare with your user settings found in the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist.

Also the value of the key AppleCurrentKeyboardLayoutInputSourceID must be changed accordingly (probably to something like org.unknown.keylayout.NameOfYourLayout). Again you can find this value in your local preference file.

Once these changes are done, save the file and go back to the terminal. To play it safe, you can create a copy of the original com.apple.HIToolbox.plist file, just in case you made an error and need to roll back. For instance, to save a copy in your Documents folder:

sudo cp /Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist ~/Documents

Then install your change with the following:

sudo sh -c 'cat /tmp/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist > /Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist'

(It isn't necessary to convert your file back out of text form with plutil if you did so earlier.)

Exit the terminal, and restart the computer (logout is not sufficient: the file will not be reread). After restart, you should have your keyboard layout in the login screen.

NOTE: it's possible that it would have been enough to copy the file com.apple.HIToolbox.plist from ~/Library/Preferences/ to /Library/Preferences/, however in my case it has more entries, so I decided to play it safe and just modify the existing file.


Run an AppleScript by using a keyboard shortcut I need to run an AppleScript using a keyboard shortcut. How can I do that?

I think about

Save AppleScript in textual format.
Use Keyboard Maestro to launch 'osascript' to run the script when the matching keyboard shortcut is called.

What do you think? Is there better way to go?

A program like Keyboard Maestro can do exactly as you said, but instead of saving the AppleScript as just regular text you can save it as a script (.scpt) and just pass the path to osascript.

A program that I've used off and on that is designed to do this specifically is Red Sweater Software's FastScripts. It's free for up to 10 keyboard shortcuts. Otherwise I've just used LaunchBar (while others would recommend other app launchers)


What is causing launchd to burn my CPU? I'm running Yosemite, a clean install.

launchd continuously runs at 100% CPU. Since the Yosemite upgrade I can't change the log level with 'sudo launchctl log level debug'

Checking top or Activity Monitor I can see that launchd itself is using the CPU heavily, not a process which it's spawning off. It has the highest cpu time on the box, 3 times that of kernel task, and vastly higher than Plex which is genuinely CPU heavy - video transcoding, and it supports a lot of clients in the house running frequently.

Nothing significant in the logs that I can see: the most frequent message:

  11/6/14 10:06:38.748 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]:
  (com.apple.imfoundation.IMRemoteURLConnectionAgent) The
  _DirtyJetsamMemoryLimit key is not available on this platform.

That's only about 3-6 times per hour.

I did a quick check through all the launchd daemons to find any error codes.

alex@smiley:~|⇒  launchctl list | grep -v "\t0\t"
PID Status  Label
28122   -15 com.apple.Finder
alex@smiley:~|⇒  sudo launchctl list | grep -v "\t0\t"
PID Status  Label
219 -43 com.apple.watchdogd
21134   -15 com.apple.security.syspolicy

Interestingly the -43 code on Watchdogd doesn't match the output of launchctl list:

alex@smiley:~|⇒  sudo launchctl list com.apple.watchdogd
{
    "StandardOutPath" = "/var/log/watchdogd/log";
    "LimitLoadToSessionType" = "System";
    "StandardErrorPath" = "/var/log/watchdogd/log";
    "Label" = "com.apple.watchdogd";
    "TimeOut" = 30;
    "OnDemand" = false;
    "LastExitStatus" = 171;
    "PID" = 219;
    "Program" = "/usr/libexec/watchdogd";
    "ProgramArguments" = (
        "/usr/libexec/watchdogd";
    );
};

In any case, I'm not sure if they're symptomatic, or just a red-herring.

How can I find out what's making launchd DOS my computer?

There is an app called LaunchControl which provides a very nice interface for creating/checking/modifying/disabling launch daemons and agents.  It's much easier than looking in 5 different folders for startup items.  (I'm not affiliated with them in any way.)

I would go through and disable each one at a time until your problem disappears.

http://www.soma-zone.com/LaunchControl/


Can users/enterprises download and resign IPA within Apple ToS? I have an app in the Apple App Store, and am curious whether Apple ToS permits end-users and enterprises to download my (or any) app and redistribute them using enterprise certificates (e.g. MDM) or ad-hoc Apple developer distribution?

I haven't been able to find any direct information regarding Apples stance on the matter.

As far as I know, tools exists that can change the bundle id and then using a custom provisioning profile resigning and distribution is possible outside of the Apple App Store.

(Also asked on SO: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39971753/can-users-enterprises-download-and-resign-ipa-within-apple-tos)

It depends of the EULA you give to the user in iTunes connect. Apple has a standard default Eula you can override it if you want.

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/iTunesConnect_Guide/Appendices/Properties.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40011225-CH26-SW13


Applescript - Lock Finder selection I found scripts that lock a file w/ a specific path but none that lets me "lock the selected item/s in the Finder".
Could sb give me a hand with this?
Much appreciated.

The following example AppleScript code will set the locked property of selected items in Finder to true:
tell application "Finder"
    repeat with thisItem in (get selection)
        set locked of thisItem to true
    end repeat
end tell

 NOTE: The filesystem of the container has to support the locked property of the selected items.  As an example, an ExFAT volume does not support the locked property on folders but it does for files. Whereas on a HFS+ or APFS volume it supports it for both files and folders.


Create a service using Automator to compile .tex file in Mac I'm using Mac OS X 10.9.3, TeXLive-2013 and Scrivener to write my papers.

I'd like to use Apple's Automator in order to create a service (available from the Finder's right-click menu over a file) called "Compile TeX file" that runs a simple command using the selected file as an input.

Example:

Inside a folder (/Volumes/Data/TeX_docs/) I've an exemple.tex file created by Scrivener that is ready for compiling with LaTeX.
I'd like to right click this file and from the Finder's Service menu choose the option "Compile TeX file"
Once chosen, this service will execute the command latexmk -pdf -bibtex exemple.tex and so compile the .tex file inside the same folder, creating a .pdf file (This Terminal command is working perfectly right now, so the need to automate this action!)
After compiling the .tex file, a dialog box appears and asks if I want to delete all the temporary files with a Yes or No option. If Yes is chosen, it deletes all TeX temp files (.aux,.bbl,.bcf,.fdb_latexmk,.fls,.log,.out,.run.xml) and keep only the original exemple.tex and the new exemple.pdf file. Otherwise, it does nothing more and I have all the files in the end!

This is not the optimal solution, but it's working for now. Here is the Automator window:

The first shell script compiles the .tex file using the sequence pdflatex - biber - pdflatex and contains the following code:

for f in "$@"
do
    file_ext=${f##*.}
    if [ "$file_ext" = "tex" ]
    then
        foldername=$(dirname "$f")
        export foldername
        filename=$(basename "$f")
        filesimple=${filename%.tex*}
        cd $foldername
        /usr/local/texlive/2013/bin/x86_64-darwin/pdflatex "$filename"
        /usr/local/texlive/2013/bin/x86_64-darwin/biber "$filesimple"
        /usr/local/texlive/2013/bin/x86_64-darwin/pdflatex "$filename"
    else
        echo $f n\'est pas un fichier TeX
    fi
done

The second shell script deletes all temp files and opens the .pdf file. It contains the following code:

for f in "$@"
do
    file_ext=${f##*.}
    if [ "$file_ext" = "tex" ]
    then
        foldername=$(dirname "$f")
        filename=$(basename "$f")
        filesimple=${filename%.tex*}
        cd $foldername
        rm $filesimple.aux
        rm $filesimple.bbl
        rm $filesimple.bcf
        rm $filesimple.blg
        rm $filesimple.log
        rm $filesimple.run.xml
        open $filesimple.pdf
    else
        echo $f n\'est pas un fichier TeX
    fi
done

I'm still waiting for a better solution using the latexmk command!


macOS 10.14.3 runs incredibly slow on my iMac I updated to macOS Mojave 10.14.3 on a 27" iMac with 16 GB memory, and it is running super slow. It can take upto a minute to see the login screen, Preview is super slow. New folders are slow. Any help?

macOS Mojave 10.14.2 ran fine on the same machine. How do I resolve?

As on now, macOS Mojave 10.14.4 is the latest stable release. Consider updating your iMac and see if that fixes the performance issues.

What you are observing may be due to performance optimization related issues.


Open Images in Preview doesn't work in Automator (How to use Automator task to open screenshots in Preview automatically) I've read another post that seemed to address how to use Automator to open screenshots automatically. (Automator task to open screenshots in Preview automatically) I've followed the steps exactly, but the last step still doesn't work (opening the screenshot in Preview)

So, I'm stuck.  I really want the easiest solution to get Preview to open after I take an Interactive or Full Screenshot.  I thought this may be it but...

After playing with it a little bit I couldn't get the process to work as listed in your screenshot, either. Here's a flow which works - in fact, it took the screenshot below. Note that you need to set this up as a service in order to assign it a keyboard shortcut. (Create a new Automator workflow and select Service as the document type.) Otherwise, if you save it as an app, you have to run the app every time you want to take a screenshot.

Once you have saved your workflow as a service, go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and select Services on the left-hand side, then scroll down on the right to find your service and set a keyboard shortcut.


Incredibly slow and laggy Macbook Pro, every click lags Suddenly this morning my macbook pro became extremely slow and laggy. Just performing trivial tasks such as right-clicking, marking an icon, opening activity monitor, scrolling a web page, changing the active window, orchanging safari tabs will leave the mac in a frozen state for 20-40 seconds. I'm typing this post half-blind, as what I type only shows some 10 seconds later.

Some specs:

macOS Sierra 10.12.1
MacBook Pro, 13", Mid 2012
2.9 GHz Intel Core i7
8GB RAM 1600 MHz DDR3

In Activity Monitor, strangely, most active processes are listed with a 0.0% CPU usage. Why would that be?

I have also reset the SCM and PRAM, with no apparent improvements. The hardware diagnostics said nothing was wrong. Disk Utility repair said everything seems to be okay with the volume. Attached are some screen shots of activity monitor. I could post some console output as well, but I don't know what is relevant.

I really have no idea of what is going on. The computer has never lagged like this. Recently, about a month ago, a certified Apple repair shop replaced the logic board, but that should not affect this, right? I am currently backup up my data, preparing for a clean install of the OS, but copying files is taking a very long time. I will report back when that is done. Does anyone have any idea of why this might happen?

I have no reputation to comment, so I will give my answer:

While it's hard to believe, the logic board thing in the Apple Store may have something to do with your lag. If I was you, I'd definitively go on the Apple Store that made the process and ask for some re-check. However, as you said it's been some time, the problem should not appear now, but when you first turned it on. I'd still go on the Apple Store.
Do you have secondary disks, like  a Bootcamp one for Windows? I'd check them, maybe repair them.
Run MalwareBytes for macOS: https://malwarebytes.com/mac-download/
Erasing your Mac to the originals seems like the best option if the answer is not viruses or disk bugs. I'd go for this one after going to the Apple Store


Form autocomplete on iPhone/iPad Generall Safari automatically prompts to save form data like Username, Password.. But on some pages, it never asks for the same.

How can we force it to ask for saving form data on any website?

Safari uses the form's fields name to detect if they can be autocompleted.  Unfortunately, some sites use names that are not recognized by the browser, which in that case does not fill them.

This is not a safari issue, but more a website issue, and I think there is no workaround on the iPhone.

But there may be a workaround : I use 1password on both my mac and iPhone, and it is more "tolerant" than Safari for detecting fields.

The advantage is that, when I sync my iPhone app with the one on the mac, I can then use the iPhone app to autologin within Safari mobile. But it is a workaround, as I must save the form's content on the mac before being able to use it on the phone, and the detection is still not perfect.


How can I get full information from Console in macOS Sierra? When I run Console, a lot of messages have the text <private> instead of details, even though my account is an Admin user account.  Here is an example for an application I'm writing and trying to debug:

default 17:12:50.191150 -0700   CommCenter  #I CSIAppInfo.ApplicationActivationObserver: handleLSNotitifcation_sync: Application launched: <private>
default 17:12:50.311671 -0700   CommCenter  #I CSIAppInfo.ApplicationActivationObserver: handleLSNotitifcation_sync: Application exited: <private>

How can I make this stop happening, and get full information about processes?

sudo log config --mode "private_data:on"

Show private messages in Console.app for Sierra


Can't install an app in macOS High Sierra because of incorrect password I'm using a Mac for the first time. I've been installing apps that I normally use. Everything was going smooth until an app asked me to enter my password.

The computer came with an already existing user named Owner and no password (it's a refurbished MacBook from 2010). I've been trying to install this app for half an hour but neither owner, Owner, or the name I use in my Apple account seem to work.

Any suggestions?

Apparently your system doesn't have an Admin account. You can create one anew. An easy way to do this is to re-run the Setup Assistant. Follow the below mentioned steps:

Start by shutting down your Mac. If you are not able to shut down normally, simply press and hold the power button to turn it off.
Now, you need to start your Mac in a special mode called Single User mode. To start your Mac in Single User mode, simply press the power button to start, and press and hold the Command + S keys.
Let your Mac complete whatever it is doing (for e.g. displaying scrolling lines of text). Once done, you'll be shown a command prompt of the form

:/ root#
Now, you'll need to manually mount the startup drive. To do so, type the following command line and press Enter:

/sbin/mount -uw /
Now, we'll delete a system file. This will make the Mac re-run the Setup Assistant. Type the following at the command line and press Enter:

rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
Now you need to reboot your computer normally. To do so, type the following and press Enter:

reboot
Now, let the Mac start normally. It will now start the Setup Assistant. Use it to create a new Admin account.

Once you have a new Admin account, you'll be able to perform administrative tasks and move files from the Standard account to the new admin account. You can also convert the Standard account to admin, and get rid of the freshly created admin account.


How to force empty Trash if it has system files? The question title may seem a duplicate, but this case of mine is unique. This happened because of this problem, which I was able to answer/solve. https://superuser.com/questions/1447825/will-re-installing-mojave-through-internet-recovery-delete-data

And now the system files of the Previous Content, from the previous installed OS cannot be deleted. It seems the MacOS sees these files as legitimate system files, while in fact, they're not.

I'm using Mojave now btw.

Try the following:

Open the Trash, click on it in the Dock.
Open Terminal and type the following command, followed by a space:

 sudo rm -rf

Now drag and drop the target folder from the Trash onto the Terminal window.
Press Enter and type in your (Admin) password and press Enter.

If that doesn't remove the target folder, then make note of its pathname, writing it down on a piece of paper.

Reboot the Mac to the Recovery HD, pressing ⌘R, and holding it, as the computer starts up after having shut it down.
Once the macOS Utilities window appears, select Terminal from the Utilities menu.
In Terminal type the following command:

 rm -rf /path/to/target/folder

Example:

rm -rf /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/johndoe/.Trash/Previous\ Content/Devices

Note: Because this is being done from the Recovery HD, you need to add e.g. /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD to the pathname you wrote down earlier.

NOTE: Make sure you type the fully qualified pathname correctly as once you press Enter, that's it, it's gone and cannot be recovered!

Then type reboot and press Enter.

See: About macOS Recovery


MacBook Air (mid 2011) running OS X 10.7.2 won't stay asleep I'm running OS X 10.7.2 on a MacBook Air (mid-2011). The computer seems to be waking itself up from sleep. If I go from the black apple in the menu bar and set it to sleep, it wakes up in about 10 seconds. If I let the computer sleep from being idle, then it wakes itself up within four minutes.

Here's what the console output looks like after waking up:

10/13/11 3:07:56.000 PM kernel: Wake reason: EHC2
10/13/11 3:07:56.000 PM kernel: The USB device HubDevice (Port 1 of Hub at 0xfa000000) may have caused a wake by issuing a remote wakeup (2)
10/13/11 3:07:56.000 PM kernel: Previous Sleep Cause: 5
10/13/11 3:07:56.000 PM kernel: The USB device Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad (Port 2 of Hub at 0xfa100000) may have caused a wake by issuing a remote wakeup (3)
10/13/11 3:07:56.000 PM kernel: HID tickle 140 ms
10/13/11 3:07:56.000 PM kernel: AppleUSBMultitouchDriver::checkStatus - received Status Packet, Payload 2: device was reinitialized
10/13/11 3:07:57.000 PM kernel: Sound assertion "0 == fAudioEngineArray" failed in AppleHDADriver at line 3047 goto Exit

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to fix this?

The output is more complicated when I have the network on, but I suspect that's unrelated to the actual problem. Here's an example with my ethernet adapter plugged in:

10/13/11 2:33:16.507 PM Console:  Marker - Oct 13, 2011 2:33:16 PM
10/13/11 2:36:54.000 PM kernel: Ethernet [AppleUSBEthernet]: Link down on en2
10/13/11 2:36:54.000 PM kernel: AppleUSBEthernet::disable - Link down, Device eb86000
10/13/11 2:36:55.245 PM configd: setting hostname to "..."
10/13/11 2:36:55.247 PM configd: network configuration changed.
10/13/11 2:36:58.000 PM kernel: Wake reason: EHC2
10/13/11 2:36:58.000 PM kernel: The USB device HubDevice (Port 1 of Hub at 0xfa000000) may have caused a wake by issuing a remote wakeup (2)
10/13/11 2:36:58.000 PM kernel: Previous Sleep Cause: 5
10/13/11 2:36:58.000 PM kernel: The USB device Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad (Port 2 of Hub at 0xfa100000) may have caused a wake by issuing a remote wakeup (3)
10/13/11 2:36:58.000 PM kernel: HID tickle 141 ms
10/13/11 2:36:58.000 PM kernel: AppleUSBMultitouchDriver::checkStatus - received Status Packet, Payload 2: device was reinitialized
10/13/11 2:36:58.000 PM kernel: Sound assertion "0 == fAudioEngineArray" failed in AppleHDADriver at line 3047 goto Exit
10/13/11 2:37:01.000 PM kernel: Ethernet [AppleUSBEthernet]: Link up on en2, 100-Megabit, Full-duplex, No flow-control, Port 2, Debug [3100,782d,05e1,41e1,0001,0306]
10/13/11 2:37:02.698 PM ntpd: bind(26) AF_INET6 fe80::2a37:37ff:fe00:e2cd%4#123 flags 0x11 failed: Can't assign requested address
10/13/11 2:37:02.698 PM ntpd: unable to create socket on en2 (23) for fe80::2a37:37ff:fe00:e2cd#123
10/13/11 2:37:02.720 PM rpcsvchost: sandbox_init: com.apple.msrpc.netlogon.sb succeeded
10/13/11 2:37:03.055 PM configd: network configuration changed.
10/13/11 2:37:03.065 PM configd: setting hostname to "..."
10/13/11 2:37:08.070 PM com.apple.launchd: (com.apple.smb.preferences) Throttling respawn: Will start in 5 seconds

Any thoughts would be really appreciated.

Thanks!

The logs say that it's waking from a usb. If you unplug all USB the problem should be fixed.

Also look here to make sure that the option is NOT selected :


Using Apple Script to Manage Sound Output Selection I am brand new here and I have an additional clarification or need additional help for an issue from this thread - Applescript: "can't get tab group 1 of window" (El Capitan)

In my preference pane, in addition to Headphones and Digital out, I also have 2 apple monitors and would like the option of selecting one of them as out put (namely the first one in the list).

Basically I need help with adjust his solution to be able to select the third row or first monitor as sound output.  Or a way to accomplish this without knowing how to edit AppleScript for a different setup.

With a little experimentation on Arthur Hammer's script I discovered that the lines set deviceselected to "xyz" appear to be just visual feedback whilst in Script Editor & don't seem to be part of the actual functionality.

The actual switching appears to be just between 2 chosen lines in the Control Panel; so, if you just need to switch between any 2 outputs, then you can just use the row numbers.

In this example I've lifted them out to be variables, so you don't need to delve in the script to change the required lines…

As you have more than 2 outputs, the first time you switch it will not necessarily go from/to the correct device, but will after that.
For example, if you wanted to switch between outputs 3 & 4, yet 2 was currently selected, the first change would be from "not 3" as opposed to "is 3" [hope you understand that convoluted explanation]

(*
Applescript to toggle between two sound outputs by Line number, ¬
as they appear in the Sound Control Panel. Based on code by ¬
Arthur Hammer http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/209434/85275
*)

set outputA to 3 --change this to the actual 'line number' of your first desired output
set outputB to 4 --change this to the actual 'line number' of your second desired output
--the rest of the script will use these vales as a switch

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.sound"
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "System Preferences"
        repeat until exists tab group 1 of window "Sound"
        end repeat
        tell tab group 1 of window "Sound"
            click radio button "Output"
            if (selected of row outputA of table 1 of scroll area 1) then
                set selected of row outputB of table 1 of scroll area 1 to true
            else
                set selected of row outputA of table 1 of scroll area 1 to true
            end if
        end tell
    end tell
end tell
--tell application "System Preferences" to quit
--remove the comment '--' tag above to make the control panel quit afterwards, leave for testing.

Maybe a little pictorial clarification - using the above script with outputA = 3 & outputB = 4, I can now switch between Digital Out & TonePort UX2.

One more note - the line numbers do not have to be consecutive, I could just as easily switch between Internal Speakers & TonePort by using lines 1 & 4.


How to save a website as an app on OS X How do I export a website to an app in safari? There is this feature in iOS 7 called 'save to home screen', I'm looking for something similar on OS X.

The only way I've ever seen this done on OS X is via the Fluid app. Fluid is just a WebKit wrapper around a specific URL and without the browser navigation tidbits in the windowing. It presents the website as an "app" but it's still running in a browser window, albeit one with fewer decorations.

  Fluid lets you create a Real Mac App (or "Fluid App") out of any website or web application, effectively turning your favorite web apps into OS X desktop apps.

It's free to use but for $4.99 you can get some features that make it a little cooler. Most importantly you can get per-instance cookie stores so you don't cross-pollute your apps.

I used to use it for Fogbugz and it was alright. Not great, but decent. And I used to get all kinds of questions about the Fogbugz icon in my dock from my colleagues. It's still possible to click away from the main app in the Fluid-ized version of it, leaving you on an unintended web page with not a lot of nav options to get back to the main app. That was probably my biggest gripe with it.


nvram -p shows "LocationServicesEnabled %01" ... does that mean I have a GPS? What does LocationServicesEnabled mean on a MacBookPro Retina?

Location services do not mean your computer has GPS capabilities but that it is using information that individuals provide, also google or other mapping servicing discover information from wifi broadcasts. Below is Apples take,

Your approximate location is determined using information from local Wi-Fi networks, and is collected by Location Services in a manner that doesn’t personally identify you.

If you allow third-party applications or websites to use your current location, you are subject to their terms and privacy policy and practices. You should review the application’s or website’s terms, privacy policy and practices to understand how they use your location and other information.  Information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which can be found at www.apple.com/privacy.

My take,
This can be fairly accurate as long as no one moves their wifi modem. For an example if an entire neighborhood moved two hundred miles away and did not change any settings (and were not remapped) ones computer would think it was in the original location.


Updating to macOS Catalina gets stuck, when trying to update from OS X Mavericks I'm trying to update a MacBook Air from early 2014 that runs OS X Mavericks (desktop) to the latest macOS (Catalina). I downloaded the installer for macOS Catalina from the App Store and when going through it, it gets stuck at the following screen:

I click 'Install' and the color of that arrow icon turns from black to the grey you can see in the picture above. Then nothing happens. I waited for several hours (thinking it might be slow), but nothing ever happens.

I also restarted the machine several times and attempted this installation again and again, but I can't seem to get any further.

Any ideas of what else to try? I would prefer to keep the data that I have on the machine, so just updating the operating system, not doing a clean install. I did make a backup with TimeMachine before attempting to update.

The jump from Mavericks to Catalina may be too much of a leap. Try first upgrading to High Sierra. The website How to upgrade to macOS High Sierra has a link you can use to download the High Sierra upgrade. I suggest this because the installation of High Sierra will also upgrade the firmware to recognize and boot from APFS containers. While this is not a requirement for High Sierra, it is for Catalina.


Why is my Magic TrackPad losing functionality after Fast User Switching several times? Basically, after using Fast User Switching to go back and forth between my wife's login and my own, we begin to experience loss of capactive touch functions on the Magic TrackPad. This occurred on both Snow Leopard and now Lion. A little more detail is in my post here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/15712385#15712385

Okay, may have found something, posted to my other thread on this topic: https://discussions.apple.com/message/15963083#15963083

Okay, some potentially good news:

Under System Preferences > Bluetooth > Advanced > option to Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer

This is turned on by default and is apparently a per-user setting, not a global setting, which is where the conflict begins, from what I can tell.

My guess is that, when turned on for all users, like it is by default, when the computer goes to sleep, the bluetooth signal gets screwy, probably stepping over itself, to listen for incoming requests for both users for both keyboard and trackpad. And/or, when a user wakes the computer by pressing one of these devices, the signal tries to relaunch the Bluetooth stack for both users for both devices immediately, again probably stepping over itself, setting up a chain of events that will cause Bluetooth connectivity to fail altogether after a few sleep/wake and/or Fast User Switching cycles.

So, for a couple days now I've been running with this option turned off for one user and on for the other user. So, depending on which user is currently logged into the console, you may have to wake the computer by way of the power button or the keyboard/trackpad. The good news, though, is that it would typically foul up after no more than a day, and it's gone a couple of days thus far without issue.


Open safari pdf link in acrobat reader,not in ibooks Using an IPAD - (ios-10)
I have Acrobat Reader on my Ipad
I get emailed alink to a PDF - on a microsoft OneDrive account
Or I get a email link to a PDF
Or - I am on some web site that offers a PDF link

I click on the PDF link - and it opens in Safari, and/or I can ask to open it in IBOOK

I need to instead open the link in Acrobat directly some how.
I need to save the pdf locally

I need to mark up the PDF - so that means I would like to use Acrobat Reader instead - but - there is no "share with acrobat reader" - there is no "Open in Acrobat Reader" -

As a trivial example - this link:

http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/sn74ls00.pdf

I want to (a) save the PDF locally - becuase I do not always have internet access where I am using the ipad.

I want to (b) make this available in Adobe Acrobat (becuase I can mark the pdf up) and save the PDF locally.

Key words here are: The PDF file is Saved locally, Opened Locally, and marked up using Acrobat

What I have tried:

THIS does not work: How to open PDF files stored in iBooks on iPad in Adobe Reader

WHY? The PDFS are huge - and for various reasons I am forbidden to email them, and I am not suppose to store them in icloud, dropbox, etc.

This says it cannot be done from ibooks (wow that seems really stupid)

(I would have a link here to an example, but stack exchange does not allow more then 2 links)

THIS does not work: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1615234

While some files are in OneDrive - I do not have a ONEDRIVE account, I'm sent a link to the file and - the one-drive app assumes is MY onedrive account ... it is not - I am given a link to the PDF

Other places suggest there is a way to "open in acrobat" by clicking the SHARE icon - acrobat does not show up in the lists, nor do i know how to add acrobat to the list of things I can share with

If I open the link in Safari, I can click "Copy to IBOOK" - but I cannot copy to acrobat - how do I do that?

And FYI - I have hit the share button, and acrobat is not on the top half of the list, and it is not on the bottom half of the list and I have no way, and do not know how to add acrobat to the list of apps

==========

Using my PC - and ITunes or other app - to download/move/transfer/sync the PDF file defeats the entire idea here...

Also - I don't always have the PC with me when I need to do this.

Updating to IOS-11 - fixes the problem - adobe now appears in the “Open in Adobe” as a selection.


10.13 to Big Sur - HDD APFS System volume and HFS+ User Space I want to install either 10.15 or Big Sur on a small APFS partiton on an internal 1 TB HDD in a Mac Mini. I've clean installed OSX and many other OSses before and am quite comfortable installing OSes.
I'm on an older OS X version and some updated applications I use are now 10.15 or higher.  There's only one OSX install on the drive and I don't want to dual-boot the system.
Since one APFS partition is now mandatory for the System Partition, I would like to meet the mandatory requirement. I don't see why the rest of the system cannot have one or more discrete HFS+ partitions for user data and applications.

Late 2014 Mac Mini, I've replaced the OEM HDD with another HDD with spinny platters and size of 1 TB.
The main reason I'm avoiding APFS is there's reports of high fragmentation on traditional HDDs. SSD fragmentation isn’t an issue like HDD and my concern is eventual slow down.
There's also been reports of major bugs, loss of utilities Apple and 3rd party.
I played around with 10.14 and 10.15 with one APFS only partition and didn't like it. I'd tolerate it only as one smaller system-only APFS partition.
Also APFS Copy-on-Write issues are not clearly documented

I don't think this was adequately tested and other OSes still allow older file systems to be used on install. Its beyond me HFS+ would be removed from the installer outright.
HDD Volume
Partition1  > OSX System Volume  > 60 GB (I think Big Sur installer says 20 GB is minimum)
Parttition2 >  HFS+
Partition 3 >   HFS+
Would the above Partition layout work?

No, what you describe is not at all workable by my definition. I think you can go all in with APFS and use an attached external HDD and Time Machine to limit your performance impact. If at such time you eventually have a slow system, you can reset that fragmentation by an erase install. This assumes no utility will get upgraded to help you with optimization, you’ll still have an out with Apple only tools.

Big Sur makes design assumptions that the user data is on APFS so you may regret forcing it to accommodate HFS+ storage both in the steps needed to set it up and the performance of the system in the end.
If you don’t trust APFS, don’t run Big Sur except for in virtualization as a guest OS is my recommendation - stick with older OS and tools you trust.
Detailing all the “bugs” and debunking them would make a wonderful masters thesis to set this up and document how it performs, but even as a hobby, I couldn’t imagine learning enough from this to make it worth the hassle. But, that’s just my take - I might be totally wrong on your skill level and benefits from attempting this. There are wizards here that do things with partitions and non-standards setups / hard partitions that make my hair stand on end with delight and awe. You might be one of those awesome people or connect with them here.
TLDR; what you propose is technically possible - go forth and do it and report back. The definition of “workable” is flexible enough for experiments like this to be worth doing if you are motivated enough.
All pigs can fly, most people are unwilling to supply enough thrust.


Unable to restore applications after hard drive replacement My iMac 27" went in for hard drive replacement but now I can't seem to get anything to restore. I've put Snow Leopard back onto the drive but then apps are missing and the second install disc that contains apps just ejects when I insert it.

Could this be because because I'm downloading more up to date software than what Snow Leopard can accept? Should I upload software updates directly after installing Snow Leopard or should I install a new OS first? I paid for Lion ages ago so I could put that on.

When you say "cant get anything to restore", do you mean

you're having difficulty getting your data back onto your new drive?
You are having problems reinstalling software (either from the original install media or DMGs) you had before the drive swap?
Software from a TimeMachine backup is not running after you try and manually restore it back?

Now that you have Snow Leopard installed, is this the same version of OS X you ran previously? If you did run 10.6, what update version did you run? 10.6.8? 10.6.7? Or, since you had paid for Lion "ages ago", was your iMac running 10.7?

Your best bet is upgrading to and/or installing the version of OS X your iMac ran prior to the drive replacement. If this was Lion, you'll need to update to 10.6.8 first, then you can redownload Lion.

Once you have your OS back to parity, you should have an easier time reinstalling your software.

One other point to consider: if you are downloading current install files for the software you ran, you might not be finding the same version you ran. Newer versions of some programs may require Lion or later to run.

Good luck!


Remove rogue app from menu bar I have a rogue item on my menu bar from a terrible piece of printer/scanner software. I long ago removed the app, but the button for the app remains in the menu bar.

Is there any central way for me to remove an item from the menu bar? Any plist I can hack? command line trick, etc?

It's the one to the left of the Facebook icon:

(I tried holding Command and dragging it away, but it doesn't seem to respect that convention.)

This is likely a status item, not a menu extra. (Not being able to move it around or remove it by holding ⌘ and dragging is the way to find out.)

In Activity Monitor (in /Applications/Utilities), set the pop-up menu to "My Processes" and look for anything that sounds related to the scanner vendor. Also, check ~/Library/LaunchAgents for a file that mentions the vendor in its name. Lastly, check System Preferences → Accounts → (your account) → Login Items.


Is there an iPhone app available that lets me track data usage on a per-app basis? I want to see which apps on my iPhone are using the most mobile data. I know I can do this in Settings > Mobile Data, but the list I get there is cluttered and in alphabetical order. I want a list of apps that I can re-order, so the apps using the most data are at the top of the list. Is there an app that does this? My Data Manager doesn't seem to (although it is great for other things).

Since version 4.3.0 of "My Data Manager" (see screenshot) that app does not track usage based on which app that use the data. According to the version description it was due to a change in the App Store guidelines.
If "My Data Manager" had to remove the feature I assume that all other apps also have to remove it.

If I remember correctly it was something about not showing other developers apps in your own app, but I could be wrong.


What's behind the "hairdryer" fix for broken iPhone 4s WiFI? So for all of the iPhone 4Ses that got the grayed out WiFi problem after upgrading to iOS 7, the only fix that seems to actually work is basically heating up the iPhone up (till about the point it gives a heat warning), then chilling it, and then restarting it. (I've seen this solution in various places, such as this Apple Discussions thread).

But what exactly is happening? Is there still a physically damaged WiFi chip in these devices that the software has been tricked into using? Or is it a weird work around that tricks defective software into working properly?

I have tried this fix and it does work although it wasnt permanent.
The only thing I can think it is doing is re setting the base temps of the motherboard and chip, much like a PC. In other words the software might be looking for the difference between the motherboard and the chip temp.
If they have set this too low for the 4S then obviously it would show it is overheating even if it isnt.
By heating up the motherboard and the already hot chip (which wont heat up further as much) you are re setting the parameters and so it works for a while or permanently. I'll try further.


How can I sync the new "people" (face recognition) metadata across devices in Photos (iOS 10 and MacOS Sierra)? The new Photos updates for iOS 10 and MacOS Sierra includes a much more powerful and integrated approach to organizing photos by who's in them.  It's built around powerful, on-device facial recognition.

But once it does its automated thing (finding the faces it thinks are the same person), there's still a lot of manual merging and labeling to be done if you have a lot of photos and are as obsessive about organization as I am.

For example, if you have, say... three thousand photos of your daughter, Photos will find almost all of them, but may guess they're 5 or 6 different people.  So you have to merge the buckets that all are one person, assign them a name (so you can search by it), etc.

But unlike other changes (edits, deletions, organization into albums, etc.), manual changes to "people" data don't seem to sync at all by default.

Is there really no way to do this?  It seems bizarre that one of the flagship features Apple's touting in this Photos update doesn't play at all with what was Photos primary selling point over iPhoto - everything synced on all your devices.

Before High Sierra release (and the corresponding iOS annual release) this metadata did not sync. Now that data does sync.
Macworld speculates on the reason behind it:

It’s not clear yet whether [facial recognition data will ever sync] because Apple’s push at its recent [2016] Worldwide Developers Conference was for local analysis of private information that’s never uploaded to the cloud.

I haven't watched it myself, but apparently Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi stated on John Gruber's The Talk Show that it will not happen, that the features are device-specific and will not be synced via iCloud.
Edit: The help file for Photos in macOS Sierra was updated with this:

Note: People identified in the People album are not synced across devices.


Safari Remove Custom Elements I would like to remove custom HTML elements from websites - mainly ad banners or it could be anything. It looks like this functionality is not allowed with the latest ad blockers in the extension gallery (please correct me if I am wrong). So far I have tried Ghostery Lite, Adblock, Ka-Block, UBlock, 1Block, etc.

I am curious if this could be done with a custom extension that I only use locally:

keep a list of unwanted HTML elements per site
remove elements on site visit

Before I spend hours on this, is this doable?

Mac OS X: 10.15.5
Safari: 13.1.1

Adguard for Mac avoids the restrictions placed on browser extensions. It intercepts http(s) connections from all apps (not just Safari) and applies its blocking rules.

As well as using blocklists linked to Adguard, you can create your own. So invent your own rules - limited only by your imagination!

And if you need a little help there is an active forum which includes a section for Custom Filters.


Change Bundle ID when "upgrading" to an organization from individual dev account? I created an app 2 years ago and have the bundle ID with my name in the ID (com.joshXXXX.YYYYY). I did not have a business at the time and I read it was okay to use my name. Fast forward to today I have a small team and feel the need to change my individual account to an organization. I would like to also set my Bundle ID as it should be for good practice (com.companyname.xxxxx).

Could this change be done with the account change to an organization or do I have to make a whole new app with a new Bundle ID?

The answer is somewhere in between actually.

If you setup a new organization account while keeping your individual dev account, you can transfer the app from one account to the other. In this process it is possible for you to choose a new bundle-ID for the app as an update of the app.

However, the end-users devices will treat it as a "new app", which means that it will require them to update the app and the app will have "forgotten" any stored credentials in Keychain, and if you have any kind of sharing with other apps you have made, that group membership will be broken.