Can I get the CPU temperature and fan speed from the command line in OS X? Is there a command I can run from the command line in OS X to get the current CPU temperature and/or the fan speed(s)?

To be more specific, I'd like to be able to get the same info available in the iStat widget under the Fans and Temps tabs on the command line.

I'd like to be able to find these values at the command line so it could be scripted and plugged into a monitoring setup on my Mac - I have a data-nerd desire to collect and graph these values (and other stats) on my Macbook over time.

On Linux, it seems like this would be possible by reading a pseudo-file under the /proc directory, but I'm not sure how to do the equivalent on OS X (if it exists).

The iStats ruby gem lets you see the CPU temperature via the command-line.
Installation
$ gem install iStats
Usage
$ istats all


How to Convert a Webex ARF File on OSX (a Mac) My company is in the habit of adopting Windows-centric solutions.  The latest is Webex for hosting and recording meetings.  Webex records the meeting and makes the file available for download in the form of their proprietary ARF format. Predictably, their own player supports converting to MP4 only in the Windows version of the player, and not in the Mac version of the player.  So the question I have for this community is:

How do I convert an ARF file to an MP4 using a Mac?

Update:  Things I have tried:

Applications:

-- IdealShare VideoGo claims to convert ARF files on a Mac but this is not true. I downloaded their free trial and was told that ARF is not a valid media type.

-- Aiseesoft will come up in google searches as an option but their software is also PC only for purposes of converting ARF.

nbr2mp4 does not work on a Mac. You will get an error about not being able to open a display.

Webex has a Mac version of their player on their player website available for download:

https://welcome.webex.com/client/T31L/mac/intel/webexnbrplayer_intel.dmg

The software will install, but (IMO) it doesn't create an application link in Finder or in Launch Pad.  I personally don't have any WebEx recordings I can use to test, but you can launch the player manually.  It's located in the user's library folder under:

~/Library/Application Support/WebEx Folder/500

I was able to launch the player by using Terminal and typing:

$ open ~/Library/Application Support/WebEx Folder/500/Network\ Recording\ Player.app

You could also open that folder in Finder and create an alias to put on your Desktop/Applications folder.

Convert the Audio

The kicker here is your are going to need another app to "grab" the audio.  You can use Audio Hijack or Soundflower.  You can also do it via hardware (less than $30) which will also give you a high quality USB audio interface that you can use for other purposes (I personally use this method for my iMac interface to my Bose Wave Radio).


My NTFS formatted external Toshiba drive is unreadable since update to Yosemite OS X 10.10.1 My portable external Toshiba hard drive is now unreadable on my MacBook Pro early 2008 aluminum computer. Since updating to Yosemite OS X 10.10.1, I cannot recover my files stored as Time Machine backups on my external drive. In the finder, it cannot be see under devices, however in Disk Utility, it is visible. The mounted partition is not viewable, however. My own native hard drive is 200 GB while the external hd is 500 GB. There's no creating a 500 GB image on my hard drive, in other words. I've tried the latest versions of Paragon NTFS and Tuxera NTFS with no avail.

How am I to recover my files, most importantly my Time Machine backups, from my external drive?

MacBook

Connect your HDD to Windows computer and check&fix it (it is under properties of that drive).

After that reformat the drive to HFS+ if you want to use it with Time Machine.
NTFS is not supported filesystem for Time Machine why did you started to use it in the first place?


How do I make my BeaconOSX iBeacon signal detection more accurate? Here's my setup:

iMac with BeaconOSX
iPhone with Proximitask

I am successfully broadcasting a signal and am getting notifications as I come and go to my office.  However, the reminders are getting triggered well outside of the building and sometimes rapidly & repeatedly triggering when I'm 5 rooms away just sitting in the conference room.

BeaconOSX has 3 values I can adjust (other than the UUID):

major (5)
minor (5000)
measured pwr (currently set at -10)

The initial value of measured pwr was -59, and that's when it was triggering things on my phone from outside the building.  Increasing that value to -10 seems to have helped somewhat.  Today's reminders went off just outside my section of the building, but I'd like it to me as accurate as when I step inside my office.

I've read that beacons need to be calibrated, but with just BeaconOSX and Proximitask, I don't think I know how to do that.  I also read that increasing measured pwr increases the signal strength, making distance estimation more accurate.  Is reducing that value also a valid way of preventing the triggerings from happening outside my office?  Is there software I can use for calibration?

We launched an iBeacon, nfc, proximity App called HelloLocal (http://www.hellolocal.me) that we're implementing into shopping centers, cities and various other locations.

One of the biggest challenges for us when implementing dense arrangements of beacons has been the balancing of signal strength, especially when we have multiple beacons within and area.

There are a few things I would suggest doing:

Look at using an App that helps calibrate your beacon. Our tech team have one that they have used but I can't recall the name. Let me know if you are interested in this and I'll chase it up. We have our own CMS sitting off the back of our App that we're now able to control / tweak the signal strength within the CMS so we're not using a calibrator anymore. This makes things much easier :)
Use your major and minor settings. This isn't ideal as one of the great features of beacons is being able to do different things (i.e. load different content) at the various settings. I'd personally prefer not to be set to one.
Wrap the beacon in silver foil (aluminium foil for baking etc). This can soften the beacon signal strength.

Hope this info helps!

Brent


Manually setting backup points - alternatives to Time Machine Time Machine automatically takes backups every hour of the last day, every day of the last month, etcetera.

I just finished setting up a new Mavericks installation, and turned it on.

It took one snapshot. 22 gigs. But then one hour later it took another one. Another 22 gigs.

What a waste of space! I didn't even touch my computer in between these two backups(even though my MacBook does seem to have doodled half a gig into existence).

This is horrible! All it is doing is copying my entire filesystem into a folder on my harddrive.  I can do that myself!  And then I can do it at sensible junctures.

For example, let's say I'm going to evaluate a dozen text editors, some of which I need to compile from the command line, involving homebrew, Mac Ports, filling my file system with nonsense that very possibly isn't going to get removed cleanly.

So I would first backup, try all the competitors out, then revert and install the winner, and take another backup.

As far as I can see, I can just create a folder on my external hard drive and drag drop my filesystem into it.  Then I should be able to, from within disk utility, "restore from Time Machine backup" and just select the folder.

This has the added bonus that I can create sensible folder names for my various backups.

Can anyone confirm, can I do this? Is there a better way?

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync

Because of the way TimeMachine has saved the data, you don't actually have two copies.  It just seems that each backup is a full set of files (which it is; but, in the background there is some nifty unix filesystem "trickery" going on).

If you go to the enclosing folder (π's MacBook Air) or the top-level of the hard drive itself, you should see around 22GB used there, and not 44GB.

(Edit)
As for dragging/dropping, unless you do it as the root user, some files will not be copied into your destination folder, due to permission issues.  And, copying large amounts of data via Finder can strain your CPU and your patience.

Rsync is a better alternative than drag/drop.  And, if your goal is to set a bookmark for your file system to revert to after experimenting with text editors and what-not, it might actually be better than Time Machine.  Time Machine is good for recovering accidentally deleted files; but, if you want to return the computer to a previous state, you would have to "restore" the complete old Applications/ folder, just to "remove" the new files added there that you don't want anymore.  Rsync would make that a little more amenable.


How to create a shortcut for a command in Terminal that I can have in my Dock? I'm trying to find out if there is a way of creating a shortcut to the following terminal command - so that I can have it on my Dock (Big Sur)
ssh aide199@192.16.1.15

In Automator, create a new Application.
In that application, add an action "Run AppleScript"
For the content of that AppleScript,
tell application "Terminal"
        activate
        do script "ssh aide199@192.16.1.15"
    end tell

Save the application, then in the Finder, drag the new application to the Dock


Mountain Lion upgrade for organizations How does an organization upgrade to Mountain Lion?  Is it possible to create a generic Apple ID and purchase multiple copies from the Mac App Store?  Are there any other available methods?  Once one Mac is upgraded, can a DVD be created and used to upgrade the rest?  How many license are needed?  Individual upgrades seem to be good for 5 installs, however I suspect that does not hold true for organizations.

The general advice is that Apple has sales channels (within the retail stores as well as without) to assist organizations understand the various programs and licensing terms. Additionally, organizations typically get tools to assist with license management, support and deployment.

If you don't have a sales contact yet, you could start with this somewhat dated, but very nice white paper on the issues for deploying OS X in a large scale setting:

http://www.apple.com/education/docs/Apple-SolutionsSystemMgmt.pdf

There are more up-to-date presentations for the App Store, but I haven't seen them published on the web.


How do I execute a bash script that requires root privileges? I have this script lines from my ISP:

sudo bash
echo "plugin L2TP.ppp">>/etc/ppp/options
echo "l2tpnoipsec">>/etc/ppp/options

It works if I paste line by line into Terminal.
I want to create a *.command file and run it by double-clicking. But all I get is password prompting and then empty bash window. The resulting "options" file is empty.

I tried this:

#!/bin/bash

echo "plugin L2TP.ppp">>/etc/ppp/options
echo "l2tpnoipsec">>/etc/ppp/options

I get:

  /etc/ppp/options: Permission denied

I think I need to use some command to get root privileges from inside bash.

Take the script that you created:

#!/bin/bash

echo "plugin L2TP.ppp">>/etc/ppp/options
echo "l2tpnoipsec">>/etc/ppp/options

Save it in your home directory, or a 'scripts' directory inside your home directory, as l2tp.sh. Allow it to be executed(write this command in Terminal):

chmod 700 ~/path/to/l2tp.sh

To execute the file using sudo (root privileges):

Method #1. In Terminal type:

$ sudo ~/path/to/l2tp.sh

Method #2. Create a file run_l2tp.command with this contents:

sudo ~/path/to/l2tp.sh

Allow it to be executed:

chmod u+x run_l2tp.command

When you double-click run_l2tp.command and enter the password the l2tp.sh file will be executed with root privileges.

Some notes:

On UNIX like systems, ~ is short for "my home directory".
Chmod 700 will make the file executable only by you. For more information: see this Wikipedia page.
typing 'sudo' before a command will execute the program using root privileges. Be careful when doing this, bad things can happen if you're not sure what you're doing.
Obviously you can omit the /path/to if you saved this script directly in your home directory.


How can I tell what is triggering Bluetooth in use icon on my menubar I have enabled the Bluetooth menu bar item in System Preferences.  Now, whenever a device is trying to talk to my Mac (or vice versa, I suppose) I will see the Bluetooth icon with 3-dots through it.

Question:

How can I tell what device is triggering this activity?

Now, whenever a device is trying to talk to my Mac (or vice versa, I suppose) I will see the Bluetooth icon with 3-dots through it.

That's not what it means.

The icon means that Bluetooth is enabled and at least one device is connected.

From the Apple Support Document, Using a Bluetooth mouse, keyboard or trackpad with your Mac:

If you want to see what device is connected, just open the Bluetooth drop down menu.  Whatever is in bold is what's connected.


Can I see my CPU and memory usage meters in the menu bar? I'd like to be able to view my cpu and memory usage in real time.  Not as a desktop widget or window application, but as a widget in the menu bar.  Is this possible?

I use MenuMeters for this functionality, and have a hard time living without it.  How do other people know when their web browser is finally done downloading a page, or YouTube stalled out, or iPhoto still working, or ...?

MenuMeters is freeware, but well worth the donation.

The original author has stopped maintaining MenuMeters, but someone new has taken over for El Capitan.


Can the iPod touch work without a battery? If you were to remove the battery from an iPod touch, and then connect it to a computer, would you still be able to play music on it?

Probably not - In general, iPod & iPhone devices won't be usable when connected to a computer because they are trying to sync with the computer.

Instead, try getting an external speaker dock of some sort and drop the iPod into that. It's designed to power the iPod while playing.

I'm certain that this will work in the case of a dead battery. In the case of the battery actually being removed, there's a small chance that the iPod's on-board electronics will not work correctly, even if externally powered. This isn't likely, but it's possible that without a battery, the charging circuit will cause something else to go wrong. Again, not likely, but not impossible.

If you have a device with a dead battery, and you don't want to replace the battery, just leave it in there, drop it in a dock and play on.


How to check if file is in use? I have c++ application and I need to know if one file is in use by anyone. I'm ok with running any shell command, but I don't want to run lsof command for this purpose, since I think I can't safely assume that lsof will be available on all OS, or can I safely assume that?

You can assume that lsof ships on all macOS and you can also check the existence of that command before you call it, logging a nice friendly error message and or log message as you see fit if you want to code defensively.

You could also ask on a code-focused site what API exist to check for file existence if you want to go into specific C++ code (which would be off topic here), but from your question assuming you can call any command line tool, your overall design is fine to execute in a C++ program on macOS.


Downloaded items with Chrome always have incomplete icons Whenever I download something with Google Chrome, all icons on the desktop has the unfinished icon.

It does it with all files types.

Is there a way to fix this issue?!

I found if you Get Info (⌘I) the file then close the Get Info window without doing anything it will magically complete. Then to force an icon put the file into a new folder.


What does this mean? "When purchased, this movie will not be available from iTunes in the Cloud" In the iTunes Store, specifically in regards to movies, what does this mean? "When purchased, this movie will not be available from iTunes in the Cloud"

I'm seeing it on the individual movie page for the new Indiana Jones bundle

Can the movie only be downloaded once?

Can I download the 720p version now, and then download the 1080p version later?

I don't really care about streaming from the cloud; I have a Mac mini setup as an iTunes "server", I'm just concerned that I'd only be able to download one version, one time.

Yes, some studios only allow a movie to be downloaded once, so you see this message. I'd wait until you're able to download the 1080p version.


How can I force iPhone to resync contacts from server? I sync email, contacts and calendar to my company's Exchange server. This morning all of my contacts are gone from my iPhone (iPhone 4, iOS 4.2.1). Facts that further explain:

My contacts were good last night
I haven't synched to my computer, updated any apps or changed any settings since then
I'm getting email and my calendar entries are all good.
I see all my contacts when I log into the web mail interface to the Exchange server

Is there a way to tell the iPhone to wise up and realize that it has screwed up its contacts?

Maybe you've already tried this but I'll suggest it anyway.
Check Groups

Open Contacts
Tap the arrow in the upper-left corner labelled Groups if it exists.
Ensure you have selected the right group of contacts.

Try Re-Sync
If you need to re-sync because the above did not work you could try this:

Open the Settings app
Open Accounts & Passwords (or the Mail section on older iOS).
Select the account causing problems. (Usually called Exchange.)
Turn Contacts off and tap ‘Delete From My iPhone’ when prompted.
Turn Contacts back on and tap ‘Sync’ when prompted.


small button on the left-hand side of MacBook pro I found a small circle button on the left-hand side of my MacBook Pro (late 2011)
If I push that button, 8 green lights are turn on and then off.
What is this button?

It's a way to check the battery charge level without having to wake the computer (or even turn it on). If it lights up in all green, then the battery is fully charged.

The newer models actually don't have that feature, but they also get 30 days of standby time now, so they probably figured it wasn't necessary anymore.


Why does McAfee Endpoint Protection keep auto installing? I want to know how I can permanent uninstall McAfee Endpoint Protection. I've used the uninstall command found here, and it works. It uninstalls the software. But after some time it will auto install itself again. Is there somehow a way I can prevent that from happening?

More than likely, you are on a corporate owned/controlled computer and they have installed the ePO (ePolicy Orchestrator) agent deployed on your machine.  This is a mangagement tool that allows your organization to ensure that end point security is installed and updated.  Additionally, it will reinstall the software if it happens to be uninstalled.

It's working as it should.

From McAfee's web page:

  The McAfee Agent is the distributed component of McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (McAfee ePO). It downloads and enforces policies, and executes client-side tasks such as deployment and updating. The Agent also uploads events and provides additional data regarding each system’s status. It must be installed on each system in your network that you wish to manage. The agent collects and sends event information at intervals to the McAfee ePO server. It also installs and updates the endpoint products, and applies your endpoint policies. Systems cannot be managed by McAfee ePO unless the McAfee Agent is installed.

(Emphasis mine).

Unless you have rights to remove the ePO agent, you won't be able to uninstall the software.  Even if you were able to uninstall the software or boot from a different drive to which you had rights, the ePO server would, after a predetermined amount of time, alert the admins that your machine is no longer checking in at which point they would find out what/how you circumvented the security.


How to speed up old iPad 2 (maybe replace iOS?) My old iPad 2 is unusably slow, even just to browse the internet (such as by using Google Chrome). It's nearly a piece of trash at this point.

I've tried a complete factory reset multiple times.

If I'm willing to do pretty much anything to this iPad at this point (jailbreak, roll back to previous iOS, or install a different operating system entirely, etc), what can I do so that I can browse websites easily and quickly?

I'd love to use the latest version of Google Chrome or Firefox if possible, but at this point I don't even really care, and I don't care what OS I use either.

P.S. The back of my iPad says A1395 16 GB, which means it's the "iPad 2 (Wi-Fi)" from 2011 according to Apple. It's running iOS 9.1.

The only practical thing that might help is if your battery is failing - putting in a new one might pep up the processor.

The actual browser is going to be hard to make faster and jailbreaking and running another OS is going to be likely far less optimized than iOS 9 is already for that architecture.

Your main help for browsing websites quickly would be to select websites that don't use javascript much or block that from running and consume text / html / light css.


How can I speed up my new (but slow) 2017 iMac? I have a mid-2017 iMac that we purchased in September to replace our ageing mid-2010 iMac. The thing is this iMac feels slower than our old iMac. My husband and kids complain all the time too, so it’s not just me.

New iMac Specs:

Mid-2017 iMac
Retina 4K 21.5 inch
3.0GHz quad-core Intel i5 CPU
AMD Radeon Pro 555 with 2GB Memory
1TB Hard Drive
8GB RAM
macOS Sierra 10.12.6

Old iMac Specs:

Mid-2010 iMac
21.5 inch
3.06GHz dual-core Intel i3 CPU
ATI Radeon HD 4670 with 256MB Memory
500GB Hard Drive
8GB RAM
Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.6

Obviously the new iMac has equal or better specs all round, so why does it feel so slooow?! Seems to take ages to boot, run apps, etc.

I know I can’t upgrade the hard drive or RAM now, and I can’t run El Capitan, but is there anything else I can do? Reinstall Sierra? Maybe upgrade to High Sierra? Something else?

Why does it feel so slow?

Your iMac has a 1TB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive and this is what’s causing the bottleneck. Your mid-2010 iMac would have had a 7200rpm Hard Drive. To fix this you really need to address this bottleneck.

The 'easiest' solution

Since your iMac has two Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports that support speeds up to 40 Gbps (via Thunderbolt) and 10 Gbps (via USB 3.1 Gen 2), the easiest solution is to use an external SSD that’s connected via one of these ports and to install macOS on that and use that drive as your main boot volume. However, you need to ensure that:

it’s definitely an external SSD (and not just a hard drive)
it supports either Thunderbolt or USB-C (i.e. USB 3.1) as its interface

Both of the above are critical if you’re wanting to improve speed. However, you’ll probably find Thunderbolt models are too expensive, so opt for USB-C / USB 3.1. Do not get confused by USB 3 - this is not the same as USB 3.1. And remember, it needs to connect to one of the two Thunderbolt ports (not one of the USB ports).

Some examples of the types of external drives I mean are:

Samsung T5
SanDisk Extreme 510
G-Technology G-DRIVE mobile SSD

Once you have the drive you want, you will need to install macOS onto it and migrate your data.

NOTES:

You don’t necessarily need to buy a 1TB model (although this would be ideal). The main thing is that you have enough space for your macOS installation and all your apps.
Once set up and running okay, you can use the internal hard drive as storage. If you opt for a 500GB external SSD instead of a 1TB one, you may want to consider having your Photos and/or iTunes libraries stored on your internal hard drive instead. Maybe also your iOS backups.
To install macOS you will need to reformat the drive so that it’s formatted as a OS X Extended (Journaled) drive and that its 'scheme' is GUID Partition Map.
While this iMac is not officially upgradable after purchase, it can actually be done. I upgraded the same model before Christmas so that it had an internal SSD for storage and a lot more RAM. However, I’m guessing this isn’t something you’d want to tackle (I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re very comfortable with the idea of doing it), but if you are I’m more than happy to chat to you about it.

Let me know if you have any questions or would like to chat about doing an internal upgrade.

Case study

Today (24 Jan 2018) I installed macOS Sierra 10.12.6 on an external SSD (specifically a 500GB Samsung T5) and did some comparison tests to try and provide an indicative idea of the type of speed improvements you could expect.

The tests were performed on the same model iMac as yours (i.e. mid-2017 Retina 4k iMac with 8GB RAM, a 3.0 GHz quad-core i5 CPU and a 5400rpm SATA hard drive). Obviously, your results will vary depending on the software/login items/fonts/kernel extensions you have installed.

Below are the results of my testing.

Test 1: Boot up time (to Login Window):

  Original boot up time: 1m 23s

  New boot up time: 0m 35s

Test 2: Login time (to full Desktop):

  Original login time: 1m 15s

  New login time: 0m 9s

Test 3: Launch MS Excel:

  Original load time: 0m 8s

  New load time: 0m 3s

Test 4: Launch MS PowerPoint:

  Original load time: 0m 6s

  New load time: 0m 3s

Test 5:Launch MS Word:

  Original load time: 0m 14s

  New load time: 0m 4s

Test 6: Launch Photos app with a 380 GB Photos library:

  Original load time: 1m 23s

  New load time: 0m 39s

Testing notes:

1. macOS and all apps were installed on the external SSD.

2. All tests performed three times and the results averaged.

3. Each time tests were run, they were run after a fresh reboot.

4. For Test 6, although the Photos app was installed on the external SSD, the 380GB Photos library was stored on the internal 5400rpm SATA hard drive.


External hard drive encryption using Disk Utility I'm looking to encrypt an new external hard drive via disk utility (Mac OS Extended | Journaled Encrypted) as shown on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvfrIyS1K04&frags=pl%2Cwn.

Will this drive only be able to be read on Max OS? If i need to access files through a Windows system am I out of luck?

You are out of luck accessing it on a Windows machine. The macOS Extended Journaled format is unreadable by Windows.

You can share the drive by formatting with FAT32, however, as detailed in this PCWorld web page.


Flickering/Blinking MacBook Pro 2015 (While Static) Got this problem, can someone help? If external display plugged in - all ok, no blinking. Also, after waking from sleep - doesn't turn on display. Flickering only when nothing moves on the display.

I've got a video of the problem here.

UPD: Wipe and reinstall OS didn't helped.

The first things I'd try are to reset both the NVRAM and SMC in that order. Before following the steps below, ensure you have no external hardware connected (so, unplug your external display) and make sure you use the built-in keyboard.

Reset the NVRAM

Older Macs had what's called Parameter RAM (PRAM), newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). Here’s how to reset the NVRAM on your particular MBP:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Reset the SMC

To reset the SMC on your particular MBP, follow these steps:

Shut down your computer
Keep the power cable plugged in.
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

After resetting both the NVRAM and SMC, use your computer to determine if the issue still persists.


Shell set environment variables for command I want to run a program in Terminal and set its environment variables. According to my research one can do this using:

VARIABLE="value" VARIABLE2="value2" run_program

Now I'd like to set a variety of variables using a configuration file. Indeed, I could inject variables into the active shell using:

. program_variables.config

I then can use echo $VARIABLE in the terminal.

Anyway, when I now run

. program_variables.config run_program

I cannot access the variables within the program. I also tried separating the two parts with ; and &&.

After thinking about what's happening there I had the following ideas:

cat program_variables.config | xargs run_program
cat program_variables.config | tr -d '\n' run_program

and a few more.

I didn't write the called program myself so I cannot change the behavior how variables are read.

Any ideas how I output the file as if I would have written its content in the shell myself?

The variables are set only in the current scope, to make them visible in a program that is called or after a source (e.g. . file) you need to export them.

Thus program_variables.config should be

export VARIABLE="value"
export VARIABLE2="value2"

Then just run the executable,

This can all be in one script to run the executable

#!/bin/sh
export VARIABLE="value"
export VARIABLE2="value2"
run_program

Save this file and make it executable.
Then just use the name os this file as the program


Remote Bonjour Connection I currently use a code editor called Coda.

It uses Bonjour to offer collaborative code editing over a local network.

I am going to be travelling for the next two months and need to occasionally screen share with a colleague. My internet connection will change day to day, theirs will be relconstant.

What is the best way to use bonjour remotely, do I need something like ShareTool?

If you don't have a VPN or something similar then you're not going to be able to use Bonjour. The multicast packets won't get passed from your colleague's network on to the internet (otherwise you'd see everyone in the world using Coda!). You need a VPN, possibly ShareTool (although I haven't tried it) or a local machine you can remote access.


Applescript, quit app if other app is quit I have a (very basic) apple script that I use as a trigger to start and hijack Plex, using Audio Hijack Pro.

tell application "Audio Hijack Pro"
start hijacking session named "Plex"
end tell
tell application "Plex"
    activate
end tell

Where the last three lines just ensure Plex is in the foreground.

Here is where my question comes in. If possible, I would like to extend my script a little; it should keep running while Hijack Audio Pro is hijacking Plex, and quit Hijack Audio Pro if Plex is quit. Does anyone know how to achieve this?

I've only dabbled in Applescript, but would you be able to create a second script that is basically reversed? In English it would look like:

tell Plex to quit
then
tell Audio Hijack Pro to quit


Can I use PC3L RAM on my 2010 MBP? I tried googling but didn't get any adequate results.

I have a 13 inch MacBook Pro mid-2010 and would like to upgrade the RAM. I have a ram module which says this on the front:

  8GB 2Rx8 PC3L-12800S-11-13-F3

and the company is SK Hynix.

On Apple's support page it states that PC3 RAM is needed. However, I'm wondering if my PC3L RAM would work. My current RAM is 4 GB and if I used this I could potentially increase it to 10 GB.

I ask because sometimes Apple's support pages don't give you the whole answer. For example, it is possible to have up to 16 GB of ram on my Mac model, but the Apple site says only 8 GB is possible. So I'm wondering whether my PC3L RAM could be used as well.

P.S. I don't want my Mac to explode or anything

I doubt that it will work. It depends on whether the 8GB 2Rx8 PC3L-12800S-11-13-F3 also works in 1.5 V mode (instead of 1.35 V - PC3L means PC3 Low voltage).

If 1.5 V are allowed you will find a similar question and answers here: Can I use DDR3 1600MHz RAM in a Mac instead of 1067MHz?

In the comments you will find the hint to keep one of the slower modules mounted  - then it may work if your MBP isn't too picky. I don't recommend the approach though.


How to launch an iOS Simulator with Safari open using a single command? I am looking for a solution to launch the iOS Simulator from command line with Safari launched by default. Launching the simulator from command line is easy. So is the launching of Safari. But I want (rather need) to do this in a single command line statement which will be executed from some third party tool. Is there a possible way to do this?

I have Xcode 6.0 installed with me on OS X version 10.9.4. For now, I am starting the simulator using xcrun instruments -w "iPhone 6 (8.1 Simulator)"

But I am not able to figure out if we can pass extra arguments to this statement so that it launches Safari as well.

You can open a webpage in safari using :

xcrun simctl openurl <Device UDID> http://www.google.com

You can determine the Device UDID by running xcrun simctl list

Just run both command using the && operator.

xcrun instruments -w "iPhone 6 (8.1 Simulator)" && xcrun simctl openurl <Device UDID> http://www.google.com


Single User mode (10.13.6) write locked with SIP disabled In the light of unbricking my 2011 MBPro due to the known dGPU failure, I am following LangLangC's (great!) response/guide in GPU problem - Boot Hangs on Grey Screen; combined with some other threads I found regarding the extra challenges that come with High Sierra.

I was able to disable SIP, so that works (checked via csrutil status: S.I.P. status: disabled (Apple Internal)).

However when I try /sbin/mount -uw /  it responds "disk2s1: device is write locked", so impossible to mkdir ... to start moving the kext.

Most Q's and A's I found about this issue are about getting SIP disabled, which apparently worked for me?
Where is the mistake and how can it be solved?

EDIT:
Being in single-user-mode my command line started with sh-3.2, now it is localhost: root# and saying HID: legacy shim 2. Which after Googling happens most with Hackintoshs, strange (even after resetting PRAM again). Any help or thought is appreciated.

I can say that the problem was indeed with SIP.

  status: disabled (Apple Internal)
  should apparently have been status: disabled without (Apple Internal).

Unfortunately, I only got so far by retrying several times and mixing up the order of some steps up to step 7, and can not with certainty say what has fixed it.

Now moving on to Part 2.


Problems with time machine backup Why, when my hdd has only 160 gb of files  on it does my time machine say it is backing up over 250 gb?

Time Machine only makes an estimate of how much it thinks will backup. That estimate can be wrong by a factor of 2 in many cases when there's nothing wrong at all.

Why does Time Machine's backup size not equal the size of my hard drive?
Why is Time Machine over-stating the amount of data that needs to be backed up?

If you get into trouble, you can always exclude the system files (which you will reinstall anyway from OS install, not from Time Machine) and exclude other files if you want to exclude some large folders to speed a backup of the rest of the files.

On OS X, what files are excluded by rule from a Time Machine backup?


Mac OS X Lion Installation Issues With Bootcamped Windows 8 Installation I'm trying to install Windows 8 on my Mac (10.7.5) but I'm running into some big issues. First I'll explain what I already did.

Created a partition with the Boot camp assistant (151 GB)
Installed an ISO on my external hard drive.
Rebooted my Mac holding the ⌥option key so I could choose a start drive disk
Selected EFI BOOT
Entered my serial number and continued.

And here does the trouble begins:

Now a see a list of drivers and my partition but I can't select my Drive 0 Partition 4: Bootcamp

These are the errors I get:

  "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an
  MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to
  GPT disks.

  Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. Windows must be
  installed to a partition formatted as NTFS.

  Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may
  not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is
  enabled in the computer's BIOS menu"

I already tried to run this command(s)

diskpart
select disk 0                      (assuming 0 is the disk where you created the bootcamp partition)
select partition 4                 (assuming 4 is your bootcamp partition)
format fs=NTFS label="Windows 8"   (I didn’t use QUICK)
exit
exit

specs: https://gist.github.com/Nathansakoetoe/a733fea6abdc20d47764

Note: Drive 1 is my external hard disk.

Superuser has answer to this.

Basically Bootcamp assistant converted the disk from a legal GPT disk into a hybrid MBR disk, which OS X sees as GPT and Windows sees as MBR. The solution in this case is to clear the hybrid MBR data. Check the link to look how to do it.


How do I hit Scroll Lock on my keyboard in Windows? Somehow, I appear to have Scroll Lock on, which 99% of the time is irrelevant, with the 1% of the time being in Microsoft Excel.  As the keyboard on my MBP (Model 9,2) doesn't acknowledge the existence of this key (or a couple others I often want to use, e.g. Pause, Insert); how can I un-Scroll Lock my keyboard?

Use Fn + Shift + F12 to emulate Scroll Lock.

Alternatively, Windows 7's On-Screen Keyboard program (search in Start Menu, or find it under Programs, Accessories, then Ease of Access) has a ScrLk key which you can click to toggle.


How do I know what changes a programe wants to make? We've all gotten the popup dialog box that says "[Some App] wants to make changes, type your password to allow this", but is there a way to get more information about what those changes are?  It's always from an app I "trust", but I'd still like to know more about what it's doing that it needs my password for.  Seems an aweful lot like Windows Vista's uber-useful security popups.

You can use sudo opensnoop -n ProcessName to see what files have been opened by a process, but only after they've been accessed of course. You could also use fseventer to display modified files in a tree view.

The dialogs are shown by installers because they need root permissions to modify /Applications/ or other folders that aren't owned by the user. You can press ⌘I to see what files would be copied by an installer.


Apparently I’m calling random numbers but there's nothing in the call log For the last few weeks I’ve had random calls from people saying that I called them, but there is nothing in my call log. I'm running the latest iOS.

Any suggestions as to what is happening here, and should I be alarmed enough to restore my phone?

These calls are not likely coming from your phone.  Rather, some robo caller is likely spoofing the caller ID using your number.  The FCC website says

  What can you do if your number is being spoofed?

  If you get calls from people saying your number is showing up on their
  caller ID, it's likely that your number has been spoofed. We suggest
  first that you do not answer any calls from unknown numbers, but if
  you do, explain that your telephone number is being spoofed and that
  you did not actually make any calls. You can also place a message on
  your voicemail letting callers know that your number is being spoofed.
  Usually scammers switch numbers frequently. It is likely that within
  hours they will no longer be using your number.


Can I safely uninstall Adobe Bridge CS5/CS6? If so, how? It's packaged into every Adobe CS install I've ever done, and I never use it (directly?) so it's a waste of space for me. Can I kill it? (Will it cause any harm?) What's the best way to trash it?

Just head to the application and drag the application icon to the trash.

That will uninstall it, there is no harm to the rest of Creative Suite. (I have done this with every install of CS)


Alternative to Preview app to search for text in multiple documents at the same time I need to search for texts in several PDF at the same time. Preview does the job: I select the files in the Finder and open them together in Preview. Then, searching for some text happens simultaneously in all the PDF: great! But is very unstable. When searching, it often crashes.

Is there an alternative to Preview with the same feature?

My system is 10.11.6 and Preview is 8.1

Use Spotlight.

  Spotlight is a system-wide desktop search feature of Apple's macOS and
  iOS operating systems. Spotlight is a selection-based search system,
  which creates an index of all items and files on the system. It is
  designed to allow the user to quickly locate a wide variety of items
  on the computer, including documents, pictures, music, applications,
  and System Preferences. In addition, specific words in documents and
  in web pages in a web browser's history or bookmarks can be searched.
  It also allows the user to narrow down searches with creation dates,
  modification dates, sizes, types and other attributes.

With Spotlight you can do advanced searches and filter for example on file extensions like .pdf.


Is there a way to prevent downloads of purchased items to iTunes? Is there a way to indicate that I do not want a given item to ever be downloaded to iTunes, but prefer to have it remain in the cloud?

For example, if I purchase a TV show or movie, iTunes assumes I want it downloaded to my machine, and will attempt to do so several times, even when I cancel the download and delete it from the downloads list. In general, after several tries, iTunes seems to finally give up, but it's hardly a convenient process convincing it to do so. This the issue repeats (automatically) with purchased TV series.

Open iTunes
Click iTunes Store
Go to the iTunes Store Home
On the right column is the text "Purchased" with a little bubble that says (new). Click "Purchased"
Find the show that you don't want.
Click it and then a window should pop up containing the show
There should be an (X) next to the show. Click That
iTunes will ask you whether you want to make the show hidden. You do.
Repeat for all other shows.


Any way to get the displays menu in the menubar? Running OS X El Capitan (late 2013 iMac). Unfortunately it looks like the "show displays in menu bar" option was removed from System Preferences. Is it possible to get the menu back?

PS - opening the Displays.menu file (/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Volume.menu) adds the menu back, but as soon as I click on it, it disappears.

Also, if it's of any relevance, I've got HiDPI mode enabled (but not active). 99% sure it doesn't matter, disabling HiDPI mode didn't affect the issue.

You could use a third-party utility named Display Menu. It's available in the App Store for free. I've been using it for quite a while and it has work just fine.

By the way, when I open /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Displays.menu it puts the same menu as the [] Show mirroring options in the menu bar when available check box in System Preferences > Displays > Display, does when checked, but does check the box.


Dual boot Linux and Lion on FileVault 2 disk I have Mac OS X Lion installed on FileVault partition. On the same disk I've installed GNU/Linux. When I boot my MacBook I can only boot Lion.

How to boot Linux?

In case you need here is more details about my setup.

MacBook Pro 13" (8,1) - MC724LL/A (2.7 GHz)

Partition setup:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *160.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         139.5 GB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                 Linux Swap                         509.6 MB   disk0s4
   5:       Microsoft Basic Data                         18.5 GB    disk0s5
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS SSD                    *139.1 GB   disk1
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         999.9 GB   disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk2s3
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS HDD                    *999.7 GB   disk3

Microsoft Basic Data is in fact Linux Ext4 root partition, no idea why on diskutil listing looks like that.

Installing rEFInd and following the included instructions does work for me using OS X 10.8 with FileVault2 and Debian GNU/Linux using grub-efi.

In short: Use a protective MBR and install rEFInd to the efi system partition (esp) (use rEFInd's install.sh --esp). Rename the refind folder on the esp to BOOT and rename the efi file aswell to allow faster loading of rEFInd.

In Debian mount the esp, create a subdirectory debian in /efi/EFI, load the efivars kernel module and install grub-efi.

Make sure you read also the general instruction on that page regarding installation.


Problem sharing via email in Photos app on Mac As of yesterday, I can't send a photo from Photos app on my Mac via email (through the 'share' feature). I've been sharing this way all week and now, nothing. No message, it just doesn't do anything. Help?

For me, (with the same problem), the issue was that Apple Mail was not the default mail client (Thunderbird was).

Mail > Preferences > General

Changed "default email reader" to Mail.app and Presto!  email appeared in the share menu.


Resetting a black menubar to white? When I run Hulu Desktop (and certain other programs), they turn the menubar dark (and turn on auto-hide), but they don't put it back to normal when they are done.

Is there a way of resetting the menubar to white (and turning off auto-hide) without having to log out and log back in?

In case anyone has this problem and doesn't have Nocture, you should be able to fix it by running the following Terminal command:

killall SystemUIServer

This restarts the process responsible for drawing the menu bar. It should fix almost all menu bar-related problems.


macOS Sierra 10.12 Printing Error Just upgraded 2012 mac mini to macOS Sierra 10.12.  Now when I try to print to a Canon MF-4500, I get an error message (filter failed).  I tried resetting the printing system and re-added the networked MF-4500 but I got same error message.

Canon say that they are working on a fix. In the meantime, converting to a TIFF, removing the alpha channel and printing that works. (Just checked and it works fine for me MP640.)


Is there a way to find the timestamp of a photo in an iPhone4, without syncing with a computer? Is there any way of figuring out when a photo on my iPhone4 has been taken, without first importing the photo to a Mac or PC?

Since the available photo options within iOS are limited, I don't think it's possible without any 3th party software.

King Camera is such an app. It shows some meta data about every photo you took with the app.


Can I put a MBP (2012)'s hard drive into a Lenovo laptop and continue using MacOS? My 15inch 2012MBP has just died. The screen is gone and I want to keep using my old settings but I dont have money to buy a new MB right now. So I'm just wondering what happen if I put my old Apple Hard drive into another laptop that is not a mac. Do I risk losing data or will the OS not load at all?
Please help!
Thanks!

It will simply not load at all.
Any non-Apple computer will not even recognise the hard drive's format type without extra software installed.

It is theoretically possible to get a non-Apple computer to boot to macOS/OS X, but it is against Apple's licensing agreement to do so & is consequently off-topic on all of Stack Exchange.
It's also not a trivial task & not guaranteed to work.


Buy macbook pro 17 from amazon vs apple? I'm about to purchase the new macbook pro 17 from amazon.  $134 less than from Apple and no tax means almost $400 is saved...  amazon only has the base model without any upgrades, but that's what I wanted anyway.

Any reason to spend the extra money and go with Apple directly?  Is there a better place to buy?

I recommend buying an official Apple.com refurb - you'll likely save more than from Amazon and they often have very current models.  The machine will be indistinguishable from new, aside from the packaging and comes with a full warranty.

Put the savings towards buying cheaper Applecare from Amazon :)

You can follow stock availability here: http://refurb-tracker.com


Can't download macOS High Sierra once again I've macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 (17G8023) installed. The icon of the app, "Installation of macOS High Sierra" is available in /Application:

ls -al /Applications | grep macOS
drwxr-xr-x@   4 root   wheel    136  8 июн  2018 Установка macOS High Sierra.appdownload

("Установка" means "Installation" in my localized OS X version)

The app start should download installer according to my expectation. But it doesn't. On the other hand "Installation of macOS High Sierra" is not included in the list of my purchased application in App Store. I can see previous versions in this list (OS X El Capitan, OS X Yosemite etc.), but not macOS High Sierra and macOS Sierra.

I also tried to find "Installation of macOS High Sierra" using App Store's search.

Both macOS High Sierra and macOS Sierra are absent in the results. Could you please advise how to download macOS High Sierra installation application?

You can use the link available on the Apple Support document, How to upgrade to macOS High Sierra to download the installer for macOS High Sierra 10.13.6.

  4. Download macOS High Sierra

    For the strongest security and latest features, find out whether you can upgrade to macOS Mojave, the latest version of the Mac operating system.

  If you still need macOS High Sierra, use this App Store link: Get macOS High Sierra.

The installer is downloaded in /Applications directory and is typically around 6GB in size. If needed, delete the installer currently present in /Applications directory.


Java application won't force quit, prevents shutdown I think there might be an issue on El Capitan with Java applications force quitting, because I've seen multiple people talk about similar problems to this with no actual solutions presented.

I've been writing applications in eclipse, and one application of mine occasionally has an issue where the program ends, yet the java icon stays in the dock.

I can right-click the icon and tell it to Force Quit, but this has no effect. If I open the force quit window with command-option-escape, the application shows up, but again, force quitting does nothing. The application does not show up in Activity Monitor, so I can't end the process.

Shut-down is impossible while this application remains open. I have to force shutdown and reboot in order to get rid of this program.

I can run "killall Dock" from Terminal, which makes the application disappear from the dock... BUT, the application still shows up in the force quit window, and it still cannot be force quit from there. Furthermore, a terminal-looking window labeled "java" appears after running this command. This new application cannot be force quit through right-click, does NOT show up in the force quit window, and doesn't show up in Activity Monitor either. Shutting down normally is still impossible.

I've seen various other topics where people had this issue with certain java programs under El Capitan, but most had very little detail, and none had a true fix to the issue.

Does anyone know why this happens? How to prevent it from happening in my programs? How to truly force quit applications like these?

You should be able to use Terminal to kill the process, if you know it's name with the following commands.

Find the process identifier (PID). Substitute [your process here] with the name of your process.

ps -e | grep "[your process here]"
The PID will be on the left most column. Here is example output:

7642 ttys001    0:00.00 grep
Now type, into terminal, substituting [PID] for your process' PID

kill -9 [PID]
Re-run step 2. If the process is no longer there, you've successfully killed it.

Brief explanation of steps:

ps gives information of running processes. In this case, we used grep to filter out the specific process we were looking for.
The format of ps's columns is PID/TTY/TIME/CMD. The field we are interested in is PID.
kill -9 sends the undeniable SIGKILL signal to the process specified in PID. This signal cannot be ignored by any process and is hence promptly terminated, no ifs or buts.
As mentioned above, ps gives information of running processes. If your process is no longer in ps's output, it's no longer running.

I would recommend fixing that weird exit bug of yours.

killall Dock only kills the Dock process, which forces an update of programs running. This may make your application disappear from the dock, but the app may still be running in the background.

Personally, I don't have any problems with Java apps in El Capitan. I'm no Java expert so I probably shouldn't suggest any reasons for this unexpected behavior. Have you tried filing a bug report?


'stdio.h' file not found, but I have this file at /usr/include/stdio.h When I compile a package, I got the following error:

$ make
clang -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -Wpointer-arith -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wendif-labels -Wmissing-format-attribute -Wformat-security -fno-strict-aliasing -fwrapv -Wno-unused-command-line-argument -O2  -I/usr/local/include/scws  -I. -I./ -I/usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/11.3/include/server -I/usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/11.3/include/internal -I/usr/local/Cellar/icu4c/64.2/include -isysroot /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk -I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include -I/usr/local/opt/readline/include -I/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk/usr/include/libxml2   -c -o zhparser.o zhparser.c
clang: warning: no such sysroot directory: '/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk' [-Wmissing-sysroot]
In file included from zhparser.c:10:
In file included from /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/11.3/include/server/postgres.h:46:
/usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/11.3/include/server/c.h:59:10: fatal error: 'stdio.h' file not found
#include <stdio.h>
         ^~~~~~~~~
1 error generated.

When I search this error online, all the online problems are not having header files at /usr/include/. But when I check the directory, it has many header files

$ ls -l /usr/include/stdio.h
-r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  16319 Jan 22  2018 /usr/include/stdio.h

$ ls -l /usr/include/ | wc -l
     266

So, what can I do in my case?

Thanks a lot.

Edited: I updated the error output. I just found out it had a warning too: clang: warning: no such sysroot directory: '/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk', But I have MacOSX10.13.sdk instead because I am running MacOSX10.13. I have no ideas why it's looking for 10.14 sdk and not sure if this is the root cause or not.

The root cause of the error message is from the warning message:

  clang: warning: no such sysroot directory: '/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk'

By checking SDKs directory:

$ cd /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/
$ ls
MacOSX.sdk/      MacOSX10.13.sdk

So, to workaround the problem, it's either re-install xcode suggested by @Mark or create a symbolic link like the following:

$ sudo ln -s MacOSX.sdk/ MacOSX10.14.sdk


Deleting apple imessages So I did this thing. I sent this imessage and but the guy on the other end didnt have wifi I guess. It didnt say "sending" at the top and it didnt say delivered. So I turned on Airplane Mode, sent the imsg as a text and after it failed to deliver I held down on it, selected more then clicked delete. And now I'm paranoid and wondering whether or not he actually got the text. Can anyone help?

Once you send an iMessage, if it is completely sent, it will be held indefinitely by Apple (not sure how long indefinitely is) until it is received by the other party. There are occasions where you won't get a "received" notice - if, for example, they have receipts turned off, or if they went out of range after receiving the message (happens on the subway here in NYC, where there is cell service for 300 feet, then nothing until the next station). Even then, it will sometimes send a receipt when it reconnects, but it's not perfect.

With SMS, it seems to vary by carrier. I've had messages that I know were sent but never received, and there aren't receive receipts for SMS. So YMMV with SMS.

The only time you really know 100% for sure is when you get the received receipt from iMessage. I'm not sure if this helps with your worries.


Trapped in iPhone 4 and WhatsApp, need help to escape I have an iPhone 4 with WhatsApp messenger installed. The iPhone doesn't update anymore, works deadly slow, and does not have any free space.  WhatsApp also does not update anymore, because newer WhatsApp versions require newer version of iOS, which in turn will require me to get a new iPhone.

My WhatsApp conversations contain information that I cannot afford to lose, that's why I cannot just drop this iPhone.

Recent versions of WhatsApp allow synchronizing conversation history via iCloud, but my version is too old and lacks this feature.

I was able to save photo and video files from WhatsApp conversations into iPhone, and then download them to PC via USB cable, but now I cannot do this because iPhone has zero free space, and I cannot free it (this is subject for another question).  Also, this approach does not work for text messages.

Situation becomes worse with each passing day, because as long as I cannot migrate WhatsApp to another smartphone, I keep receiving important information on this iPhone where it become trapped.

Any help would be appreciated.

You could use iTunes to create a backup of your iPhone 4. The backup will contain the data files from WhatsApp. You can use a program such as iPhoneBackupViewer to view/export your WhatsApp messages:

http://www.imactools.com/iphonebackupviewer/

Another more "down to earth" solution would be simply to use another camera phone to take pictures of each of the WhatsApp messages you would like to save.


Anti-virus comparison for Mac OS X This is not a "I use OS X, do I need Anti-Virus?" question.

I am looking at comparison and user opinion of existing AV products.
I know I can avoid most (if not all) threats by being careful on the sites I visit, and the emails I download. But I need an anti-virus, for a variety of reasons - mostly to prevent my Mac as a carrier for viruses. (Many friends' USB drives turn out to be infected).

I was looking for the "Best" of the anti virus software out there.

I am looking prominently at anti-virus. "Internet Security" and the like are not important, and would try to avoid them if it would save money or not make my mac slower.

By "Best" I mean the best combination of detect-rate (or whatever that is called) and performance.
I don't intend to run it always in the background. Maybe I would do a onetime scan of my system and hard drives, and then it would be mostly on a need basis, especially on USB drives/portable hard disks of friends.
So primary objective: High Detect rate

I have used Norton Antivirus for Mac and Virus Barrier (got this with one of those software bundles sometime before, not the latest version) and had problems with both. Both sometimes hog my CPU, and somehow "lock" my USB drives preventing me from Ejecting it (I had to force eject them or just pull them off from the port) (thought off late Norton seemed a little better)

Ok, thats a long one. But my question is simple: What anti-virus do you recommend for the Mac?

Thanks.

ClamXav

It is open source and low resource consumption, but is not free.

There is also a free command line version available in brew, fink, and macports under clamav (less ugly).  There is some minor configuration, but there are decent guides on the ClamAV site and here, for example.


Where can I remove a desktop in Mission Control? In Mission Control, I can add a desktop by pushing the button on the top right.

How do I remove a desktop?

Or where in my system preferences do I look to do this?

Enter Mission Control and press Option. A close button will appear in the top left corner of the miniature views of the desktops:

Simply press the close button to delete the desktop. Notice that you can't delete Desktop 1.


How do I reinstall macOS to my Mac after formatting the main drive accidentally? I recently installed Windows to my Mac and I have just formatted my hard drive on windows mistakenly while I was making a new hard drive partition on Windows. Now I cannot boot to macOS anymore.

How do I reinstall macOS to my Mac?

It isn't clear if you have one or two hard drives in your machine. Nevertheless, the only thing that comes to mind, if you can't access another Mac to make a bootable USB drive, is boot from Internet Recovery, and reinstall OSX.

To enter this mode Internet Boot Recovery, do the following:

In the Apple menu, choose Restart or power on your Mac.
As the computer restarts, hold down the cmd/⌘+opt/⌥+R combination immediately upon hearing the startup chime. Hold the keys until the animated globe appears on the screen.

From there follow the instructions and reinstall the original OS your Mac was delivered with. Then update to the latest macOS.


Why does my Mac's list of "Open with" applications start listing the apps twice and sometimes three times? When I right-click on a file on my Mac OS desktop and then in the contextual menu, I move to the "Open with...", the list of potential applications to "open with" has applications listed multiple times, sometimes three or four times, right next to each other!

Why does this happen?
How do I fix it?
how do I stop it from re-occurring?

See this snapshot of the contextual menu showing the doubling up:

Now I have Mountain Lion on a 13" MacBook Pro, but this problem existed before I upgraded to Mountain Lion.

This happens because the LaunchServices database gets corrupted.

To fix on Mountain Lion:

Open Terminal.app in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder.
run /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
Restart

This command has changed over the years, but I just recently ran the above to fix the same issue on Mountain Lion. This hint on Mac OS X Hints covers the command for other Mac OS versions over the years.

If you don't like using the command line, the free tool Onyx also has an option under Maintenance -> Rebuild -> launchservices will work too.

As for how to stop it, I really haven't ever seen a way. I am not sure what actually causes it to corrupt other than I know it is very actively used.


Installing Google Maps without an Apple ID? Is it possible to install Google Maps without an Apple ID?

No, Apple requires that–for apps on iOS from the App Store–you register for an Apple ID. This is by design, so you must create an Apple ID if you wish to download any app.


How can I install IOS3 to my old iPhone3G? Time ago I've changed my old iPhone 3G to my actual iPhone.

I've thought that could be a good idea to recover this old iphone, install an old IOS system (IOS3 worked perfect for this device) and give it to my mother, since she only wants to use it as a "dumphone" and a good camera photo.

How can I remove all actual information of the iPhone3G and then install IOS3?

Disclaimer:

I'm not and advanced user. I've read in this site and in google information about Cydia, redsn0w, jailbreak... but the truth is that I've barely understood how they work.

The erase operation is easy.

settings app, general, reset, erase all content and settings

Breaking Apple's software update mechanism to put an older iOS on the device is going to cost time to gain expertise and even if you invested hours learning how jail breaking works, you might not be able to revert the OS. Running a jailbreak on more current OS and hardware is easier, but still something quite technical. Going that far back is less likely to succeed if reading the how-to isn't giving you a clear picture how to start to jailbreak your device in question.

I would do the easy and get her a wiped device on the OS that iTunes will support rather than needing to keep jail breaking it if the user chooses to update things.


Is there a keyboard shortcut for playing a song next in iTunes DJ? I would like a quicker method of queuing up my songs in iTunes DJ. Right clicking and selecting the option is too slow.

You didn't mention what keyboard, but on the Apple keyboard:

F7 - restart current song

F8 - pause/play

F9 - skip forward

Note that you need to have the box unchecked in OSX that says use function keys as normal. In the event you use your function keys for something, I've also successfully created trigger hotkey combos in Quicksilver. You can also probably just remap them in keyboard preferences.


Force Preview to use freehand mode by default How to I make Preview use freehand mode by default while I'm drawing? It seems to want to smooth everything everytime.

By default the drawing engine in Preview can't be changed (in El Capitan or earlier) as it's a vector base drawing system. So it will always have some level of smoothing applied to it based on the algorithm Apple is using.

You can however turn off some of the smoothing for documents that store the drawing in vector format like PDF, but this will have a minimal effect at best for most drawings.

If you want to try turning off the vector smoothing under Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

Go into the Preview -> Preferences... and choose the third tab PDF.

Un-checkmark Smooth text and line art.

Beyond that there isn't a way to turn off the math that drives the drawing tool in Preview.


Font Family/Display Issue in Safari 12 on macOS Mojave I just upgraded to macOS Mojave a few days ago and I have noticed an issue with the fonts displayed in Safari for sites/themes that I have created on Tumblr.

It appears that Safari reverted back to the default of Times New Roman and I'm not sure why; this is only an issue in Safari. The fonts are correct when viewing the site(s) in FF and Chrome. It is also only happening on desktop; the view on my iPhone and iPad are showing the correct font.

EX: http://romanoffsbite.tumblr.com

The font I used on this site is Calibri and it was displaying correctly until I upgraded to Mojave; now, it's loading in Times New Roman and I cannot figure out why or how to fix it.

I have searched for this issue the last day or so and all I have been able to find is the solution to the fonts showing as thin and blurry in Mojave, but there hasn't been anything, that I could find, that applied to incorrect font(s) displaying.

(the solution for the thin and blurry fonts did work)

SPECIFICS

OS: macOS Mojave 10.14
Safari: 12.0
Font Not Displaying: Calibri (normal, bold, italic)
Website Example: http://romanoffsbite.tumblr.com

Again, any help with this would be amazing! I'm not sure where else to go from here, so I have come to all of you smart folks :)

Thank You!
Nicole

Easy fix:

Open Safari Preferences
Go to tab "Websites"
Under General on the left side click "Content Blockers"
Then turn OFF content blocker for the website you are browsing.

This fixed the issue for me.


Is there an GTalk application for the iPad 2? Is there an application that will allow me to do video talk using Google Talk from my iPad 2?


New MacBook Pro Retina, bad battery? I just purchased a brand-new MacBook Pro, Retina (15" screen). The "Hello" pamphlet in the box starts out:

Your battery is charged and ready to go, so you can start using your Mac right out of the box.

However, the battery was completely drained. It charged up fairly quickly (I didn't time that, however) and the device functions fine.

I used it off and on for a total of around 40-45 minutes this morning -- usual web surfing with maybe 2-3 minutes of video, max. This took the power level down from about 94% to 75%. Then I closed the lid to see how the battery would hold up while the device slept. After 8 hours away at my office, I came back to find it at 70% (down from 75%).

Question Should the lack of charge out of the box be reason enough to return this thing? And is the draw-down on power I described indicative of the normal, expected battery performance?

Best is to use Apple tools already on your Mac to check your battery.

Open Activity in utility folder- and look under the the Energy tab.

Next, open About this Mac- More- sys report:

Look for battery information there.

It should show something like:

Fully charged capacity (>6500 mah), --that is a good indicator how "old" is the battery, the older they get the lower is the Fully Charged capacity number.
Look at the charge cycles (<5)- a good indicator how many times the battery was charged, with normal life been 1000 Cycles (or 3-5 years)


Paint.NET for Mac for pixel by pixel art creationg Does anyone know any Mac alternative that has the exact features that Paint.NET has when it comes to creating pixel art, and free?

With Paint.NET I'm able to select whatever pixels in the grid to drag them, or change their colors all at once, or delete them, or to give the mirror/reflect (horizontally/vertically) effect.

Though it is more of a Photoshop clone by its number of features, have you considered The Gimp? I don't know if it is going to fit your exact requirement, but it does have an excessive number of features including a magnified editing mode and color substitution.

Otherwise, have you tried Paint.NET via Wine? It seems that only the v3.5.x version might get somewhere, but with limitations.


How can I avoid my MacBook Pro giving me minor shocks? The aluminum Macbook Pro gives a mild shock when connected to a wall socket and charging. It only happens when I'm, for example, not wearing shoes or slippers and my feet are resting on the ground (i.e. by body is acting as a conductor).
I contacted apple and I was told to perform the following steps:

Shutdown

hold ⇧+ctrl+⌥+power for 10 seconds

wait 30 seconds then hold ⇧+ctrl+⌥+R+power (Let the Mac reboot three times with that apple tone, then let go. The Mac reboots again.)

This did not fix the problem and I was not told what these steps were supposed to do. They have asked me to purchase a three pin version of the adapter and see if that fixes my
problem.
My last MacBook Pro was giving pretty severe jolts towards end of life. Hence a bit concerned.
Question

Has anyone here experienced such a problem?

Is anyone aware of what the above sequence of steps supposed to do?

Also, will this damage the Macbook in some way?

The solution for me was to use the adapter with a three pin extension cord.
Then your notebook is grounded, and no more charges stay on the cover that shock you. :-).
About steps 1-3
In steps 1 and 2, you reset the System Management Controller (SMC Reset) on a Mac that has a battery, which you should not remove on your own. The SMC manages hardware conditions related to temperatures and power consumption. You may also be interested in the question: When should I reset the SMC on a Mac?.
I'm not aware of the shortcut you performed in step 3.


2018 MacBook Pro (w/ Touch Bar): Are all 4 thunderbolt/USB-C ports capable of supporting a monitor? I have a fairly new 2018 13" Macbook Pro w/ touchbar. Only the two USB-C ports which are closest to the corners seem to support an external monitor. Is this expected behavior?

To clarify, there are 4 total USB-C ports (2 on the left and 2 on the right). The two which work at the closest to the "esc" key and the fingerprint sensor.

According to Apple's specifications on this MacBook Pro all four ports support video:

 Charging and Expansion

 Four Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports with support for:

 Charging
 DisplayPort
 Thunderbolt (up to 40 Gbps)
 USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gbps)

If two of the ports are not supporting video you could look at the cabling (try another cable, etc.) and monitor compatibility (Thunderbolt 3?). Failing that take it to an Apple store and have them test it.


Restart Apache causes applications to react really weird I have macOS High Sierra running on my Mac, and it has worked fine until now. But today I experienced something very weird. I was trying to restart Apache (a web development server), and then my apps started reacting very weird. For example, I had Activity Monitor open, and then suddenly it crashed and when I tried to open it again, it either says "Activity Monitor is not open anymore." or just doesn't respond. And when I try to use Command Tab to switch to another app, it just gives me the sound that tells me that you cannot do that, and the same with Command Q and Command W. Not many of my apps are willing to open when I try to open them. After a while my keyboard even doesn't react when I type!

If I restart my computer, it is working fine in the start but when I try to restart Apache, it does all that crab again.

UPDATE: If I have an app that is not responding, lets say the Terminal, and I go to the menu bar and click Terminal > Quit Terminal, then suddenly the menu bar disappears.

What can I do to fix my computer?

I found a somewhat working solution.

I am using Homebrew's httpd package, so I found out that I could just reinstall it:

When it begins to do that weird stuff, restart the computer.
Then reinstall httpd with brew reinstall httpd
You're good!

EDIT:

I later found out that it was an issue with the MySQL server that was not running/having a problem.


Completely delete an app and the app's cache from iPad I've got an app on my iPad Mini that has a weird bug; the app in question is Trello and whenever I try to write a new card it changes the columns to display sideways and half off the screen.

I've tried to get around this by just deleting the app and re-installing it from the app store, but when I do that it has the same bug (I've tried the app on other iPad minis and it works fine) so I'm guessing some of the settings / content of the app are cached on the iPad - is that correct?

If so is there a way to delete an app and its cached content / data at the same time?

App settings aren't cached between installations. Either there's a bug in your app's settings, which it pulls from their API's through their website, or perhaps they have iCloud settings stored.

In the first case you should contact Trello about it or try removing and then re-adding the buggy content through the web version. If the latter is the case, go to Settings, iCloud, Storage, Manage Storage and find Trello. Then press Edit and Delete All.


eMac stuck - won't boot, won't eject disc I was upgrading from Jaguar 10.2.4 to Tiger 10.4.8 on my creaky old eMac.

Inserted the Install disk. When it restarted, I got the chime and Apple logo, then it aborted and a bunch of (to me) gibberish:  "no debugger configured ... Latest stack backtrace...  Proceeding back via exception chain... Kernel version... Panic: we are hanging here..."

Tried several times, but always stops and same message.

Don't have a Mac keyboard so no keyboard eject.  F12 does not eject disc. At this point I would be content to just stick with Panther but it's stuck in limbo.

I don't know if it's still like that but you could try to keep the mouse button pressed while booting: it used to force a disc eject.


How to install an app on iPhone from a second machine? I actually took many hours this morning to find out how to do it, but I want to see alternatives to it.

I got my iPhone in sync with my iTunes at home, my first machine. I could "just" bring the app folder/file back home and sync through that. It works just fine.

The question here is on alternatives to that. Jailbreak or not, how could we do it on a second machine?

edit: I mean to install an actual file like application.app or application.ipa just like they are on the Mobile Applications folder or on iPhone's own /Applications one.

For most users, the headache free method is preserving the iTunes folder in its entirety and bringing it over to the other computer. You would then sign into the account you obtain the app with on that computer, and authorize it.

If you're simply without the first computer and want to get the app back, then you would simply re-download from the App Store for free (assuming it hasn't been removed).


Apple software upgrade crashes (heap corruption in msiexec.exe) on windows 10 bootcamp I have a mid-2012 15" retina Macbook Pro, and I've been using bootcamp with windows 7/8/8.1 for years without any drama. I've installed/wiped/re-installed bootcamp dozens of times, so I'm quite comfortable with the process.

Recently I made the stupid mistake of upgrading to Windows 10 and everything has gone to hell. Even more stupidly, I upgraded to windows 10 before updating my Apple Drivers. (My OSX is up-to-date yosemite).

My problems:

After windows 10 finished installing, hardly anything works in windows. No advanced trackpad facilities etc. and most critically, no wifi to download the required drivers!
In windows, I connected to the internet via ethernet (luckily USB ethernet worked) to run Apple Software Update. But to my dismay after downloading the 1.2GB download, it starts to install, but then freezes for ages, and then crashes with a message "This application has caused an error. close or debug". I tried about 5 times, same thing every time.
In OSX, I tried to download the Apple Support Software via Bootcamp Assistant onto a USB drive. BUT no matter what USB drive I try (I've tried 1x64GB stick, 1x32GB stick, and 1x32 CF card), I get the error "you need at least 6GB, you have only 4.75GB). And these are freshly FAT formatted, single partition, MBR drives. I can't even download the drivers on OSX!

I know I was supposed to update my apple drivers before upgrading to windows 10. But I forgot, and that was a mistake, but surely there's a solution now which doesn't involve wiping the whole partition and re-installing windows from scratch? (or chucking the laptop in the bin).

UPDATE:
I just tried again and it crashed again. This time I chose to 'debug' in VS2015. I can see the msg "Unhandled exception at 0x00007FF9CA54DFAC (ntdll.dll) in msiexec.exe: 0xC0000374: A heap has been corrupted (parameters: 0x00007FF9CA5A22B0)."

You can download straight on your internal disk. In Bootcamp assistant choose Action, then Download Windows Support Software.


Open-Xchange internet bookmark appeared on Homescreen After I had installed iOS 7 in September, an icon appeared on my home screen for "Open-Xchange". When I open it, it just goes to the Open Xchange website. It won't let me delete it (no cross appears to delete like other installed apps). I've tried plugging my iPhone into iTunes and deleting it using the app manager but that doesn't work either. It doesn't appear on the installed apps list (I'm assuming because it's just technically an internet bookmark). I have a picture of it here (it's on a separate screen because that's where I keep it):

Thanks for any help :)

Found out the reason. I had a profile installed for an email account (that uses open-xchange servers) which was adding a Web Clip to the homepage. I disabled that Profile, and added the servers for the email account manually. Icon disappeared and problem solved! :)


Old safari on Yosemite Is it possible to get Safari 5.1 running on Yosemite next to Safari 8?

(For testing web pages)

No, but you can install an older version of OS X in a virtual machine to use Safari there.


Stops snippets syncing between iPhone and Mac A new feature in Mavericks in snippets. I use snippets on my iPhone and these are syncing to my Mac. How can I stop the snippets syncing to my Mac?

The snippets sync through iCloud. The simplest solution is to just log out of iCloud, or disable iCloud's Documents & Data service in System Preferences, but it might not be ideal if you want to sync other iCloud data.


Apple macOS Big Sur / Apple Music / Bluetooth / Amazon Echo Here's my setup: MacOS running Apple Music. Echo Dot connected by wire to an amplifier / speaker. Echo is bluetooth connected to MacOS (as confirmed on Mac UI as well as when I say "Alexa Connect" and it says "Already connected to Mac".
Now, on Mac, the echo shows up as connected to Bluetooth, but it doesn’t show up as a sound/speaker option in preferences. It also doesn’t show up on the list of available output options on Apple Music. I’ve scoured the internet and found various answers which don’t work.
Question: Can I play music out of my Apple Music to play on the Alexa -- from the Mac? Or is the only choice to use voice commands or the Alexa app on an iOS device? Am I missing something?

If your echo is connected to your Mac you should be able to go System Preferences - Sound and one of the options should be Echo to play your music from your echo speakers. If you don't see Echo, go to Bluetooth under System Preferences and look for Echo. Beside this is a connect button.  Click on this and then go to Sound under System Prefs.


Access to Medical ID I read about Medical ID in the Health app on my iPhone 5S, and have created one.

The app talks about "tapping Emergency" when locked to access.

Where is this "Emergency"?

Is there any way of entering details from my Mac.
I already have these in text files, and don't want to retype.

You can access the Emergency functionality by:

Wake your phone (press the power or home buttons)
Slide to unlock
On the unlock (keypad) screen, tap the "Emergency" button at the bottom left of the screen

The Emergency button should yield another keypad with the button labeled "Medical ID" in the bottom left.


iMac (without network connection) had a date in the year 2000 after rebooting I was having problems with USB devices, so I rebooted my iMac (late 2009 model running OS X 10.7.5). Before rebooting, I turned off wifi. When I logged in again, System Preferences showed the date set to the year 2000. I use the "set date and time automatically" feature, so once I re-enabled wifi, the correct date was set automatically. But shouldn't my iMac retain the date and time? Does this indicate a problem with my machine?

This kind of behaviour may happen when the button cell battery is empty.

This kind of curious because it should not happen on a machine that ain't so old.


How to use the secondary mac's keyboard when using Target Display Mode I basically want to be able to connect my MacBook to my stationary Mac and  use the keyboard and mouse on the MacBook. Is this possible? Ideally using standard software.

That's exactly what Target Display Mode does. The only caveats are that "stationary Mac" must be an iMac that supports Target Display Mode, and you must have a keyboard connected to the iMac to turn Target Display Mode on and off.

Follow these steps to start using your iMac as a display:

Make sure both computers are turned on.

Connect the Mini DisplayPort or Thunderbolt cable between the two computers.

Press Command-F2 on the keyboard of the iMac that you want to use as a display.

After you press Command-F2, your iMac displays the desktop from the connected Mac.


Check whether a MacBook is new or not I have bought a new MacBook Pro 13, 2015.

How can I check whether it is a new or used one? I don't mean optical checks. Maybe some kind of system values, etc.

The only thing I can think of that cannot be tricked by an Erase and Install of the OS is the cycle count on the battery, provided it's the original battery. Essentially this number tells you how many times the battery has been depleted and recharged.

Cycle count of the battery:
Click the Apple menu and then 'About this Mac > System Report... > Hardware > Power' and look for "Cycle Count" under 'Battery Information > Health Information'

The lower the number the better. Now there is a chance that the reseller you bought it off of replaced the battery, but it's highly unlikely. It's a lot of work to remove and reinstall a battery in these models (see the full 34 steps here) so unless the battery is faulty or nearing the end of its life cycle, it just wouldn't make sense to replace it.

You could also call Apple Support and ask if the serial number of that machine has been previously registered under a name other than yours. They cannot tell you the previous name or any other information on the account if it has been registered before (due to privacy laws), but I don't see why they couldn't just let you know if the machine has already been registered with them in the past.


Swap Batteries MacBook Pro & MacBook Unibody My MacBook's (late 2008, unibody, 13") battery has just become very bad. I also have a MacBook Pro (mid 2012, 15") which has a still-ok battery. Now, since I take my MacBook (the old one) everywhere I would like it to have a good battery life.

Can I swap the batteries of the two Macs? I saw that the battery of my old MacBook has 45Wh and the newer one has 77.5Wh, is that going to be a problem?

Will you even be able to fit the 15" MacBook Pro's battery into the 13" MacBook?
Messing with power like this only result in broken things.

I highly recommend to get a new battery from Apple if it's still available. Or perhaps from a reliable third party.


How to keep application data when synchronizing iPhone with new iTunes? I want to enable app-synchronization between the iPhone and iTunes on a new computer.
I already transferred the apps from the iPhone to iTunes but when checking the box for synchronizing apps, iTunes still displays the warning message that the phone apps will be replaced by the iTunes apps.
The last time I did this, I still had all my apps but the in-app purchases got lost as well as any saved progress in my games.
This meant that I had to re-download the maps of my navigation app (skobbler). I'd like to avoid this as my monthly data volume is currently very limited.

Is there a way to synchronize without losing the application data?

The last time I did this, I still had all my apps but the in-app purchases got lost as well as any saved progress in my games.

To avoid this occasion, you have to save the app data manually. You can do it with any iOS file manager on PC (with i-FunBox for example).

There's one more way to backup the application data: the DataDeposit app from Cydia store uploads all the data of an application to Dropbox and is able to restore it automatically (jailbreak is required).


configure multiple networks with static and dhcp ip addresses At work I'd like to be able to use a static ip over wifi for development purposes. At home however, since I'm on a different network I don't want to use a static ip, but dhcp. On OSX 10.8, how can I configure this in a way that I don't have to manually change over each time I switch networks?

Configure separate network Locations.

On the Network pane in System Preferences, use the Location pop-up
menu to create a new location name.
Press the + (plus) button to create a new location.
Click the Done button.
Click the Apply button in the Network pane.

You can now configure and select separate network locations via the drop down in the Network pane.


How to completely remove Nix package manager? I installed Nix package manager, and now I would like to remove it completely.

How can I do it?

I asked myself the same question and searched the file system for Nix-related files. That's what I found:

# as user, remove:
rm -r ~/.nix-channels ~/.nix-defexpr ~/.nix-profile
# as root (sudo), remove:
sudo rm -r /nix
# edit the file ~/.profile and remove the line containing "added by Nix installer"

Not sure if I missed some files or directories. Also, I did not remove it myself, so be careful (and backup your data!) when removing stuff with sudo.


Mac turns off randomly and has lines on screen For some reason my iMac keeps turning off around 5 to 10 minutes into boot.

Also just recently it turns on but has shaded lines going down the screen. I have not installed any weird programs and i have not used it in around 3 months.

Any ideas on what the issue is, i don't have any other information about the issue besides whats happening when i use it.
 The image i'm showing you was found on google but this looks exactly like mine does.

The model of my imac is the late 2011 model.

On first guess, based on the description of the symptoms, I would say that you are having an issue with your graphics card.

The best way is to run Apple Diagnostics or Apple Hardware Test. Hold D while booting from a powered off state.  Run the diagnostics and post your results and I will update my answer.

First update based on the comments:  I found this video on YouTube that details this exact problem and it's related to the graphics card.  Now, one word of advice: don't do the fix shown in the video.

While the diagnosis is correct, that fix is pure nonsense.  I have had much better results getting the board repaired by a shop that specializes in that type of fix (from eBay - I have used the one in Dana Point, CA with great results and for the record, I am not affiliated with them).

Normally I would say to replace it, but the prices are ridiculous - sometime over $700 for the graphics card.


iPhone 4S Auto-Correct Is there any way that I can get auto-correct on my iPhone 4S to stop changing the word "Yo" to "To?" I have tried adding a keyboard shortcut for "Yo" as well as adding Spanish to my International Keyboards, but its still happening.

Unfortunately, Apple hasn't relegated any control of auto-correct functions to the user (natively), and it isn't possible to add or remove words that it auto-corrects - other then using the shortcuts like you mentioned, which don't work for everything.


Any way to reboot a iDevice that is connected to a USB port via terminal (Mac terminal)? So, I am making a program to reboot iDevices (if there power buttons are broken), is there any way to induce the iDevice to reboot via the Mac shell?

idevicediagnostics is a Linux tool which can help here. It is also available for macOS according to these instructions.

Once installed you can use

idevicediagnostics restart

to restart your device.

To Restart the iOS devices connected more than one devices by

idevicediagnostics -u udidnumber restart


Is the 30 inch apple cinema display supposed to feel hot to the touch after an hour? I recently bought a 30 inch cinema display and a OEM 150 watt power adapter and hooked it up to my MacPro 3,1.  Both the power supply and the display are very hot to the touch.  Is that normal ?

The clue is in the wattage rating of the power supply: 150W. Yes, those displays do create a lot of heat. They are hot 'to the touch', so that the heat can dissipate through the exterior surfaces.


Quicker network with dual ethernet? I have a Mac Mini running 10.9.3 with two ethernet connections (1 ethernet/1 thunderbolt ethernet) going to a netgear 5 port switch. That switch has one cable going to an 8 port switch which connects to my AirPort Extreme.

I created a link aggregation with the two ethernet connections on the Mac and Activity Monitor is reporting 4.5-4.9 MB/s receiving data.

However, before I added the thunderbolt the best I could get is 1.4MB/s.

I have a bit of understanding on networks, but this stumped me. How am I getting more than double the download speed?

Just because I'm tied to one switch with dual NICs, the rest of the path is a single cable.

The files being downloaded are from the same server on the Internet.

In all likelihood, the variation in speed you're seeing is happening due to congestion on your connection to the internet, not because of your home network setup. Even the Early 2005 Mac Minis could theoretically manage speeds of 12.5 MB/s, with a real-world throughput somewhere around 10 MB/s. The first Intel-based Mac Minis could handle 10x that.

Unless you notice the speed reliably changes based on whether or not you are connected over Thunderbolt, I'd assume the speed is actually varying because either the server you are downloading from is overloaded, or your internet connection is. If you're located in America, consider that at the hour you posted this, most people are going to bed, freeing up bandwidth for you to use.


Diagnosing Unrecognized Hard drives I have a macbook pro 13 late 2011. My setup: i have a HDD in the main bay for my files, and a SSD in the optibay with the OS on. The other day i received the message randomly out of the blue which states along the lines of "External drive was unsafely removed" (this was concerning the main bay drive). Ever since i havent been able to see my file drive.

I have tried removing the drive and reseating with along with the SATA cable to the logic board. I have also tried the HDD on a different machine and the same mac in a enclosure, both didnt recognize the drive. I have also tried perfectly good tested drives in the main bay and they weren't recognized either.

Because my other drive in the optibay is working, im thinking the logic board is ok, but potentially have a dodgy cable and HDD in the main bay?

Can anyone help me narrow down the issue? Or is the next step to try replace the sata hd cable to the logic board, and try a different hard drive.

Thanks for your time.

You said that the drive doesn't work with other Macs or in an external enclosure, so the problem is unlikely to be a dodgy cable on your MacBook Pro. If the drive doesn't work with any computer, it's most likely dead.

At lot of OEM drives have 3-year warranties from the drive manufacturer. Your drive may still be under warranty so I would contact the company and do a warranty claim.

Also, definitely get a known working drive and see if it works with your MBPro.


How to reset Spotlight cache/index? I uninstalled Parallels Desktop, so I don't have a Windows VM any more. However when I type we into Spotlight, the Windows Weather app comes first, and if I press it, it says Parallels Desktop is not installed anymore.

How do I clean the cache or re-build the index?  (I am not sure what this operation is called)?

NOTE: I would like to avoid having to use sudo.

To see where an item in Spotlight is located, press ⌘↩ (cmd-return) to reveal the item in Finder. That error isn't something I'd expect if the item had actually been removed.

You can reindex your disk by adding the disk to System Preferences → Spotlight → Privacy (which will delete the index), then removing it from the list.

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201716


How to disable Cmd-Option-number shortcuts to navigate to websites? On Safari, if I open a page with a URL and navigate to another page, Cmd-Option-8 navigates back and Cmd-Option-9 navigates forward, which is also the behavior in Finder.

But with a brand new tab and when the page does not have a previous or next page, Cmd-Option-8 opens Twitter and Cmd-Option-9 opens Linkedin.

How can I disable the shortcuts to these pre-defined websites?

By default (on my Mojave installation, at least), Cmd+Option+# triggers Safari to load the #th Favorite Bookmark. E.g. if you View > Show Favorites Bar, you will see that Twitter and LinkedIn are the 8th and 9th bookmarks. I would show the favorites bar and remove what you do not use.


Apple Music: separate logins & preferences per family member I have a very old Apple ID (that was set up before you used email addresses) that I use for all my family's iTunes purchases. I enter that in iTunes logins on all our iPhones, Macs and the Apple TV.

My wife and I each have .mac addresses that we use as Apple IDs for use with iCloud, which we separately enter on our own iPhones and Macs.

With Family Sharing enabled, is there a way for both of us to log into Apple Music with our iCloud/individual Apple IDs and maintain separate profiles that are based on our own individual music tastes, maintain separate "followings" etc? Or does it have to be based on our common iTunes-related Apple ID? So far it appears I'm forced to log into Apple Music with the latter and everything has to be lumped together, but it's confusing and I may be missing something.

I've contacted Apple Support about this, but I keep getting stock support answers that don't address my question.

I don't know if it's intended functionality, but it appears to be working the way I want now. Here's what I did.

Logged out of both iTunes and iCloud on my devices and started over.
Logged into iTunes account on both our iPhones and Macs with old Apple ID we use for all purchases. Logged into iCloud on our iPhones and Macs with our own .mac accounts.
I enabled Family Sharing using my iCloud/.mac address and invited my wife using her iCloud/.mac address.
I logged into Apple Music with the Apple ID associated with purchases. My wife logged into Apple Music with her iCloud/.mac address used for Family Sharing.

Once logged in, we both were able to pick our music types and artists. It looks like we were both pre-set to follow an identical list of many, if not all (245 artists) from music we've bought in iTunes over the years. But, while there were a few glitches I noticed the first couple of times I opened the app, Apple Music on my iPhone and Mac appear to be retaining all my preferences after following & unfollowing some artists, and vice versa on my wife's iPhone and Mac.

In the end, it seems relatively straightforward, but it didn't work at all the first couple of times through (which may have simply been launch day weirdness) and I couldn't find any official support info that outlined if this was possible. Hope this helps someone else.


Can't download apps on my iPhone So I have an iPhone 4s and it has the new updates, but the apps stopped working. When I clicked on the app it flashed on the screen but then went back to home screen. I deleted the apps and tried to download them again but when I click the download button it goes to the square in a circle for one or two seconds then goes back to the download logo. I don't want to reset my phone but I don't know what to do. Other than that, my phone is perfect and it's not slow and never freezes.

It's because iPhone 4 can't be updated to the latest iOS while most of apps require later iOS than the latest iOS iPhone 4 can be updated. You shouldn't have updated the apps before updating the iOS.