My iPad has a Bad battery-is that possible? I had my iPad on airplane mode while traveling across country.  I went to turn it on and got a extremely low battery icon.  Plugged it in to wall all day and then found it to be warm and damp inside the back cover and still with the extremely low battery.  Now getting no response to wake up or reset.  Do you think my battery has gone bad?

It certainly is possible. Since your symptoms do match those of a defective battery, you should probably take it into an Apple Store to get it replaced for free (if it's under warranty), otherwise it'll cost some money, but not as much as a new iPad. It may just be a software bug, but the Apple Store should be able to help you.

Also, battery issues can be tested automatically online at:

https://www.apple.com/support/ipad/repair/

Choose battery and enter your contact information and you will get emailed/messaged a test diagnostic. Once the diagnostic is run, you can chat/talk directly with Apple to see if it's something they can repair and whether you'll pay for the repair or if Apple will pay for it.


External monitor has wrong resolution I have a 23' external monitor (through VGA) which always worked at 1440x900 and looked amazing. Today after I unplugged it, it still says it's working at 1440x900 but it's actual resolution is bigger.

I've tried unplugging, rebooting, Detect Displays, change res. and change back but no dice. Any clues on what might be happening?

Thanks!

Try resetting the PRAM and see what happens.


Install deleted Keynote app in MAC I uninstalled Keynote app from Applications, since I am unable to update it because of the error

I empty trash and try to reinstall it again. I am getting the same error. And its still showing UPDATE option, not GET option.
I am getting this problem with this version of mac(v10.12.5), previous versions I updated successfully with my appleid.
Any help on this..

I am successful in reinstalling Keynote by following these steps,

Move Keynote app from Applications to Trash.
Empty trash.

its still shows UPDATE option, not GET option for Keynote in Appstore.

Power OFF and ON the MAC.
Appstore shows GET option for Keynote now.

It works fine even for Numbers, Pages. Please edit this post, if any feasible solution available.


Dock icons colors are messed up This happens sometimes and all i can do to fix it is reboot.
Any idea why this happens?

I'd be tempted to go for the 'fix it even if it's not broken' approach...

Fix permissions, check & if necessary repair disk, using Disk Utility
Reset Home folder permissions & ACLs using OnyX  - Maintenance tab/permissions, tick the box at the top then Execute.
Update to 10.10.5 using the 10.10.5 combo update, not the delta from App Store


How to send unknown callers directly to voicemail on iPhone (while allowing text and know callers through) I get about 20 robocalls a day, and I'm trying to figure out how to prevent unknown numbers from ringing my phone.

Some ideas:

Have a silent ring and assign that to all non-contact callers.  There is currently no way to mass assign a ring (to my knowledge), so this would be very labor intensive.
Use a Google voice number and let it do all the redirects.
Use Do Not Disturb but let text and notifications through from apps I want to use.

Has anyone found a good way to do dodge robocalls?

Thus far, an app called WideProtect seems to do what I want.  It allows you to block numbers per area code while still white-listing numbers in your contacts.  It's a bit annoying as

You can't just block out +1 (xxx)-xxx-xxxx, but most spam calls come from just a few area codes for me

You have to go into the app and have it re-whitelist every time you add or remove contacts.  A bit annoying, but I've received 20 robo-calls in a day, so probably worth the hassle.

Blocking just my area code dropped my daily robo-call count from 20 or more to 2-3.  Slowly adding area codes as I get robo-calls from them.  Was able to put my ringer back on.
PS: WideProtect can only block 40 million phone numbers.  This sounds like a lot, but when I'm trying to block every number except ones in my contact list it runs out of space fast.  Still happy with the product, but won't block everything out of the box.
NOTE: Apple has added "Silence Unkown Calls" which makes this moot


High Sierra won't install: for the boot disk it says: "This disk cannot be used to start your computer" I have a macbook pro late 2012, single stock SSD, Sierra installed with latest updates.  I am trying to install High Sierra.

When I go to select the disk to install on (the current, normal boot volume), the installer refuses, with the error: "This disk cannot be used to start your computer"

Disk Utility First Aid can find nothing wrong.  The computer boots normally just fine with Sierra.

Volume name : Macintosh HD
Volume type : Logical Volume
BSD device node : disk1
Mount point : /
File system : Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)
Connection : PCI
Device tree path : IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/PEG2@1,2/SSD0@0/PRT0@0/PMP@0
Writable : Yes
Is case-sensitive : No
File system UUID : 308F1BD9-CF92-335C-B437-D47C941E7D76
CoreStorage UUID : 0E3E3C70-5FE7-484E-826B-828CDA8F3471
Parent CoreStorage LVG UUID : 13CB696B-1760-4072-A883-0ED19EFBEBF1
Volume capacity : 374,756,999,168
Available space (Purgeable + Free) : 168,884,392,284
Purgeable space : 9,433,788,764
Free space : 159,450,603,520
Used space : 205,872,606,884
File count : 1,735,041
Owners enabled : Yes
Is encrypted : Yes
System Integrity Protection supported : Yes
Can be verified : Yes
Can be repaired : No
Bootable : Yes
Journaled : Yes
Disk number : 1
Media name : Macintosh HD
Media type : Generic
Ejectable : No
Solid state : Yes
S.M.A.R.T. status : Not Supported
Parent disks : disk0s1

You must turn off filevault before install HS...


Can I remove the clip of the iPod nano 6G? Is there a (non-brute-force) way to remove the clip-part of the iPod nano 6G? I find, I don't use it and it add clunkiness. Also it's a bit scratched since it's the only part not protected by a silicone wrapper.

It's very tricky.
You have to disassemble the whole iPod nano as the guide for clip removal on iFixit shows.
This is a picture taken from the second last step:


How to preserve DHCP server settings when migrating from Lion Server to Mountain Lion Server? I understand that DHCP server features will be "removed" from OS X Server with Mountain Lion and that there will be no way to manage these using the only remaining app for managing server features (Server).

However, I also gather that it is possible to not only preserve DHCP server settings, but continue to manage them under Mountain Lion Server, if one is careful to follow certain steps. But it's not entirely clear exactly what those steps are, and I don't want to undertake an upgrade at the risk of loosing (even for a second) critical settings and functionality (my entire network has static IP addresses assigned by Lion Server).

How can I ensure that I do not loose my DHCP server settings, and can continue to manage them, through an upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion Server? In particular, what are the steps to save my existing settings in Lion and have them used throughout the upgrade process to Mountain Lion?

The situation is actually simpler than some references make it seem. As Apple states:

  If you enabled DHCP (only) in Server Admin in Lion Server, your configuration will be preserved when you upgrade or migrate to OS X Server (Mountain Lion).

Moreover, the Server app now provides a (very limited, but sufficient) user interface for controlling DHCP.


Which settings in System Preferences are global for all users? Some things in System Preferences obviously apply to only one user:

Desktop Picture
Appearance accent colour and highlight colour
Dock size

While others obviously apply to all users:

Startup Disk
FileVault full disk encryption
Show fast user switching menu

For people who are not very experienced with macOS (and even some experienced users!) is there any way to tell whether a given setting will apply to all users or just the current user, other than constantly tweaking settings and switching between user accounts? Is there a reference somewhere?

I'm motivated to understand this better because I often find myself setting up new Macs for people, and I find myself wondering which settings are useful to apply in System Preferences while not logged in as the eventual end user.

One simple (but not 100% reliable) way to tell is to log in as a "standard" user (non-administrator), and see what settings you can change without first clicking a padlock and authenticating as an admin. Very few system-wide settings can be changed by standard users, so if you can change it this way, it's almost certainly per-user.

You can run essentially the same test as an admin by going to the Security & Privacy preferences, clicking the padlock & authenticating, clicking the "Advanced" button, and selecting "Require an administrator password to access system-wide preferences". Then dismiss the Advanced dialog, and click the padlock again to re-lock the system-wide settings.

There are a few exceptions and special cases. Switching between network "locations", for instance: locations are system-wide, and it takes admin rights to create/modify them, but once they're defined standard users can switch between them.

Joining a Wi-Fi network is similar. Any user can join a network, check the "Remember this network" checkbox, and it'll be added to the system-wide Preferred Networks list (and its password will be copied into the System keychain, so the Mac can connect no matter who's logged in). Well, unless the Wi-Fi network uses "Enterprise" (802.1X) authentication; in that case, you're authenticating to the network as a particular user (rather than with a general shared password), so macOS assumes it should be per-user on the Mac as well.

Note that it's normal for a single preference pane to have a mix of system-wide and per-user settings. Go into the Security & Privacy preference pane, and under the General tab it'll have the controls to change your password and require your password after sleeping / screen saver available, and all the others dimmed. Those are per-user, the dimmed ones are system-wide policies.

An even more extreme example of this is iCloud. Most iCloud services are per-user (i.e. each user on the Mac connects to their iCloud account and uses its data/services), but Find My Mac is a computer-wide feature (it's tracking the Mac, not a particular user on it), and can only be turned on for one user's iCloud account at a time.

Oh, and I should mention software installation: any user can install apps via Apple's App Store, but once installed they're available system-wide. For non-App-Store software, it depends on the specific program, but generally it'll either require admin rights to install or be per-user only (e.g. it might create a personal Applications folder under the user's home and install there instead of the regular system-wide Applications folder).


Screenshot shortcut not working I tried to take a screenshot using command shift 4.
The picture will appear on the desktop for a second and then disappear.
How do I fix this?
I've tried restart and it didn't work.
I'm running High Sierra 10.13.3

You can use the Terminal command defaults read on the .plist file which stores the screen capture settings to check the location and the graphic format of the screenshot file type:

defaults read com.apple.screencapture
{
    type = jpg;
}

The output above is the default setting for macOS. If another location appears in the output, that's where the screenshots are going.

If you want to reset the destination back to your Desktop, execute this Terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Users/[yourusername]/Desktop

Want to change the file type from JPEG to PDF?

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type pdf

Other file type qualifiers are tiff, png, and gif.

To effect the defaults write changes on your current user session, you must execute this command when you are done:

killall SystemUIServer

Info gleaned from LifeWire.


Why can't I browse the internet with Safari, but Chrome is working? I can't browse to any website using Safari; yet, Google Chrome and Firefox are working fine. The Mac App Store also reports that it cannot connect.

I am running OSX 10.7.2 on a 2011 MacBook Pro.

As we have found the solution using Comments, here's the formal response.
Whenever you experience issues with Safari, App Store, iTunes and any other service that uses the "same" WebKit, but seem to see no problem in Google Chrome or Firefox, it's good to check if you have your Proxies configuration clear. Since sometimes Chrome (and Firefox) override these settings (for their own multi platform stuff), they may work while the formers fail.
This is easily checked by opening Safari -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Proxies (Change Settings).
Make sure Autodiscover is not checked. It should probably look all empty like this:

note/off-topic: the Use PASV FTP is usually a good idea if you are behind a router/modem/NAT like Airport Extreme or AirportExpress (or any other to be honest), since FTP was not designed to be used behind these "hacks". In any case, if you don't know what it is, you can safely ignore it, but if you have FTP problems every now and then (or FTP is slow as hell), check that and try again.
The local ignores for proxies was added by the Operating System, but it's usually a good idea to have your local stuff ignore the proxy. ;)


Why are there so many copies of my Downloads directory in ~/Library? I was recently playing around with the command line utility fzf, when I discovered that direct copies of my downloads directory exist several times across the data in the apps after ~/Library/Containers. Is this intended behavior? If not, what can I do not make sure this doesn't happen and doesn't waste space. On top of this, why are all these arbitrary apps allowed access to all my personal data? This sincerely  worries me.

Thanks to all.

P.S. if there is any extra information you need, please feel free to ask.

EDIT: with more investigation, it appears it is not just my Downloads directory, but everything superseding my home directory; this makes the issue 10 times more important.

EDIT 2: after looking at it some more, it seems as if Desktop and Downloads are there as Symlinks, but why are all these apps allowed to access this data?

The purpose of ~/Library/Containers is to provide what amount to virtualized home directories for sandboxed applications. When a sandboxed application "asks for" the user's home directory (via NSHomeDirectory), it is given the path to its container directory. These features do not allow sandboxed apps to access the data in these directories, nor do they occupy (more than a trivial amount of) additional storage. (In fact, to the former point, this feature is designed to restrict apps' access to your data; to the latter, the "duplicate folders" are just symbolic links, which function as references back to the actual directories they represent.)

An application that is sandboxed may only read from and write to locations that are subdirectories of its own container. The symlinked folders in each Container (e.g., Downloads and Documents) are not accessible by default to sandboxed apps. Sandboxed apps can only access external file system locations if explicitly granted access to them through an NSOpenPanel or NSSavePanel (one of the pop-up dialogs that asks you to select a file to open or a location to which to save a file) via the Powerbox API (this is the model used by document-based applications—for instance, this lets you save and open documents that you edit with a sandboxed text editor in your Documents folder). In fact, apps that don't use App Sandbox (and thus don't have a container directory) can access virtually any file within your home directory (although there will be some further restrictions implemented in macOS Mojave), whereas those that do use App Sandbox (i.e., those that are given a container) cannot. Also, it's worth noting that all apps on the Mac App Store are required to use App Sandbox.

In summary: yes, those "replicated home folders" are supposed to be there—that is intended behavior; no, they are not consuming any meaningfully significant amount of extra disk space; and the feature that causes these folders to appear is actually preventing these apps from accessing your personal data, not enabling them to.

Further reading:

Another Ask Different thread about ~/Library/Containers
Apple's developer documentation about app sandboxing and pseudo-home directories


Ghost partition, Windows BSOD Today I was trying to set up Windows on my MacBook Pro (15", Late 2011) over BootCamp.

I used the modified Info.plist-trick to create a bootable Windows 8 USB-drive and create a Bootcamp partition. After this was done, I tried to install Windows, but I ran into the problem of Windows not accepting the pre-made partition, so I deleted it and rebooted once again into the Windows installer to install it.

Everything went fine, but in the last bit of the installation process, it aborted - telling me that it couldn't change my boot configuration.

After this, it froze, so I held the power button down until it restarted. I couldn't boot from the newly created (hard drive) "EFI boot" section, so I booted the Recovery and tried to delete the two new partitions (the windows and the "Microsoft reserved" one). But it wouldn't let me delete the ~130MB partition named disk0s4. Even from Internet recovery, I couldn't get rid of it.

Next thing I did was try to run the Windows installer again, but from this point on, the installer would crash in a BSOD, almost instantly restarting my PC shortly after. I thought it had to be the disk0s4-partition that is causing all of this, so I made another effort deleting it - and I made it using the disk utility on my OS X. Having only one partition left, I tried rebooting, only to see that the "EFI boot" was still there. (note: this is not by USB-Drive, it has a hard-drive icon whereas the USB drive has a USB one)

I don't really know what to do from here to fix all this. I have no idea where this "EFI boot" is coming from (there is only one partition and a lot of unallocated space on my HD) and why my Windows installer is crashing.

I hope somebody can help me despite my long (but detailed) question.

Edit:
fdisk output:

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  976773167] <Unknown ID>
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

gpt output:

      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  486812704      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  487222344    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  488491880  488281255
  976773135         32         Sec GPT table
  976773167          1         Sec GPT header

diskutil output:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            249.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

Seems like there is a hidden partition...

Chasing Ghosts

You have successfully removed all windows partitions from your disk, but you have not yet removed all files added during your attempt to install windows. What is left are files in your EFI partition. The ghost is being caused by the file efi/boot/bootx64.efi stored in the EFI partition.

Open a Terminal window and enter the following command.

sudo diskutil mount /dev/disk0s1

From a Finder window, open the EFI disk. Next open the EFI folder.
Remove the Boot and Microsoft folders.
When finished, enter the command below.

diskutil unmount /dev/disk0s1

Choosing an Installation Method

Generally the "modified Info.plist-trick" is just that. It is a trick. As far as I know, you can put the Windows installation files on the USB flash drive, but can not boot from this drive to install Windows. Generally, only the 2012 and newer models can boot the Windows installer from a USB port. If you succeeded, then your model must be the exception.

If you have an internal working optical drive, then this the preferred method to install Windows. If you need to buy a DVD, you are better off with a RW DVD. It will take longer to burn, but it is reusable. It is not sufficient to just burn the iso file to a DVD. You must burn the image stored in the iso file to the DVD.

There are two methods for installing operation systems on Macs. The first is the legacy BIOS/MBR method and the second is the EFI/GPT method. It is my understanding that the 2011 models are suppose to install Windows using the legacy BIOS/MBR method. From your post, I assume you were trying the EFI/GPT method.

You can choose which partition or media to boot from by holding down the alt/option key at startup. If a Windows installation DVD is in the Macs optical drive, you will get a DVD icon labeled "Windows". You can select this to install Windows using the BIOS/MBR method. There also may be a DVD icon labeled something like "EFI". You probably do not want to select this icon, since this will install using the EFI/GPT method.

A word of caution. If you using the BIOS/MBR method for Windows, you can not use any Windows software to change the disk partitioning. This must only be done from OS X. However, you can use Windows to format a partition.


Can't answer my phone call with yosemite Whenever a phone call comes in I can answer it on my iPad but not on my macbook(2008) running yosemite.

I also can't call my contacts from my contact list.

Any thoughts on this?

Handoff only works with fairly recent Macs that support Bluetooth 4.0.

You can check whether Handoff is supported in About this Mac -> System Report...

My 2011 Macbook Pro doesn't have Bluetooth 4.0, so no Handoff for me either.


iPhone App Store Stuck My App Store on iPhone (iPhone 4S with iOS 5.1) is stuck, I already contacted the support from apple. But maybe there is someone here with a similar experience.

Whenever I open the App Store, it looks like the apps keep loading.
Here is a screenshot:

After 30 minutes, it still looks the same.
It can't be a connection error since Safari is running smoothly.

I've tried to reset my iPhone to factory settings three times, but it still looks the same.

I would try disabling your cell phone connection (Settings > enable Airplane Mode), then enabling Wi-Fi, and connecting to another Wi-Fi hotspot (you could even try a public one such as a local coffee shop or an Apple store). Perhaps there is some kind of filtering going on with your Internet connection.

If you have a 3G plan, you could (and probably should) do the opposite too:

Set Airplane Mode to off (so that it uses your 3G connection)
Turn Wi-Fi off
Try accessing the App Store.


Can Admin Accounts See the Contents of Other Admin Accounts? If I make an admin account on my Mac (running macOS Sierra) for my friend, will they be able to see the contents of my account (also admin) (Documents, Photos, Trash, etc.) or are they walled off between admin-to-admin accounts?

Without further changes an admin can't read the content of the default folders of another admin - except the Public folder. Any custom file or folder (e.g. a dev folder in the user folder) can be read though - provided the default umask (022) hasn't been modified previously.

Any admin can either reset the password of another admin or change the permissions of the other admin's folders with sudo chmod ... though and he/she will be able to access those "protected" files and folders then.

Adding an additional admin makes your files vulnerable to him/her eventually.


What is an iPhone 4,1? I have developed an iOS app, and I am using a service called TestFlight to distribute the application to some beta testers.

Here is an image of the service:

What is an iPhone4,1?

If it is referring to a normal iPhone 4, I suppose it wouldn't include the ,1 there. So what is this? Perhaps some model number?

iPhone4,1 = iPhone 4s

Full list:

╔═══════════════╦═══════════╗
║ iPhone        ║ iPhone1,1 ║
║ iPhone 3G     ║ iPhone1,2 ║
║ iPhone 3Gs    ║ iPhone2,1 ║
║ iPhone 4      ║ iPhone3,1 ║
║ iPhone 4s     ║ iPhone4,1 ║
║ iPhone 5 GSM  ║ iPhone5,1 ║
║ iPhone 5 CDMA ║ iPhone5,2 ║
║ iPhone 5c     ║ iPhone5,3 ║
║ iPhone 5s     ║ iPhone6,1 ║
║ iPhone 6      ║ iPhone7,2 ║
║ iPhone 6 Plus ║ iPhone7,1 ║
╚═══════════════╩═══════════╝


Finder Menu Services No Longer Working In Pre-Yosemite, I had some finder menu services (i.e. Right-Click, see 'Services' in menu, hover over, and you'd see Services created in Automator) that I made. As a developer, these were very handy as I'd often have to rename a large amount of files to some criteria (i.e. removing/replacing/adding text). I can make services fine now, and even get them to work within Automator (dragging and dropping the file(s) into Automator). However, if I right-click the file(s), hover over 'Service' and select my service, it never runs. In fact, if I check Activity Monitor, I see 'Automator Runner' just hanging there (one for each time I try). I have tried restarting and logging out and in. This doesn't fix it.

Note: I am running OS X Yosemite.

Open and re-save your services in Automator.

This will update them to work with Yosemite, and also warn you of any incompatibilities with the actions you're using in the services.

As a side note, this definitely should be something you're notified about when trying to run an old service, but at least you don't need to re-create new duplicate services.


Problem with iPhone LCD after repair I have repaired an iPhone with a 3GS glass. Then I realized it was for an iPhone 3G. So, after replacing it again with a proper 3G glass the LCD just went black! What have I done wrong?

I had the same problem before, when I replaced a cracked iPhone screen for a friend. When a 3GS digitalizer gets in contact with an iPhone 3G LCD they send the wrong signals to the motherboard(through ribbon cable 3) and then the graphic part of the motherboard brokes. So you will probably have to replace the whole motherboard, be more careful when buying new glass next time, check the modelnumber first!


Can I put a 7200 RPM hard drive in my MacBook Pro? I have a 2009 15" unibody MacBook Pro. It came with a 250GB, 5400 RPM hard drive. Will a 7200 RPM drive make it overheat?

I have read somewhere that putting a 7200 RPM hard drive in the MacBook Pro will make it shake and vibrate. Is this true?

Is there a certain brand that is better for the system?

And finally, is there anything else that I need to worry about?

No, no, no and no.

Have fun with the 7200 rpm drive of your choice. Mac drive mounting hardware is excellent and the drive screws are standard sized. Unless you get a drive with exotic firmware or physically too large to fit, there will be no issues relating to design. Only a faulty drive (or failing Mac) will cause issues.

Simple physics means a 7200 RPM drive has to generate more heat than a 5400 RPM drive, but in practice, this is well within a normal Mac's ability to cool - even when you never let the drive spin down - something else like CPU load will be needed to get the internal fan to spin up.


2010 Macbook pro makes intermitten beeping sound It seems like every time I press a button or scroll on the touchpad I can hear little beeping noises coming from the hard drive area.

How can I know what this noise is and whether it's a problem?

Put a stethoscope next to where the hard drive is inside the case. It's highly likely you're hearing the servos and motors from the drive responding at the same time as you  interact with the system.


FileVault encryption slow when idle: opposite expected I have been encrypting a number of external disk using FileVault and have noticed puzzling behavior.  The disks are external USB 3.0 disks.

When the process starts, I can see that the disk access proceeds at a reasonably snappy speed of ~35 MB/s using Activity Monitor.

If the computer is not touched for a while, the disk speed drops to a paltry ~5 MB/sec and will stay that way.  As soon as I touch the mouse or press a key, it jumps back to the ~35 MB/sec speed and will stay that way until it goes idle again.

I would have expected just the opposite behavior.  Keeping the disk accesses low while the user is active provides a snappy UI experience.  Once the user is inactive, full bore access would seem to be the thing to do.  Can anyone explain this behavior?

An example is shown here.  Active disk while interacting with the computer, then slow disk after no interaction.  As soon as the mouse was wiggled, the speed went back up.

There could be several reasons for this type of behaviour.

If you're on a battery-powered laptop, it might be that the system was designed to optimize run time on the battery. It could be that the 5 MB/sec mode is more power efficient than the 35 MB/sec mode.

Another reason could be that the encryption process needs good quality random numbers. It is often seen (across vendors, products and operating systems) that good quality random numbers require some form of user input or other external input to the system. Thus when the system is completely idle, the source of random numbers is slow (or runs out) - while just wiggling the mouse around can make the process much faster. It's not fully clear to me which part of the FileVault process you're working with, but I think you should be over the phase where random number generation is needed.


Mac Pro 10.7 - aftermarket dvd drive hangs on restart Drive works fine, but on restart or after a required restart from app installation - the OS looks for CD in drive. Mac will not get to the login screen. It hangs and i can see a green light on dvd drive flashes every couple of seconds. If i shutdown, then start up - no issues. Drive is LG GH22LP21 - Mac Pro 10.7.5 2x2.66 Xenon

Master / Slave?

This is in the top bay?  And nothing is in the bottom?  There is probably a jumper to choose Master or Slave for the drive.  If it is the only one, it should be Master.


iPhone 8 on iPhone 6 analytics I have a strange issue where I have iPhone 8 on my iPhone 6 analytics.
Listed in analytics as:
AppVariant: 1:iPhone8,2:13.

I have an iPhone 6.

The 'brand/marketing name' & the model designation number don't ever match.
The iPhone 6S's model designation is 8,1 [regular 6S] or 8,2 [6S Plus]
You can see a list of all models, including marketing names & model designations at Everymac's iPhone Specs page
They actually went out of sync with the second ever iPhone released. It was called the 3G, even though it was only the 'version 2' & carried the designation 2,1, because of its new 3G phone capability, rather than the previous GSM. After that came the iPhone 4… even though it was the 3rd gen not 4th, & they've been out of sync ever since.
They did briefly re-sync for the iPhone X, but the next year's XS threw that out again.


Setting Safari SSL/TLS Cipher Suites Does anyone know how to set the priority order of SSL/TLS cipher suites on Safari for Mac OSX (10.7 ideally, but any version would be helpful). Can't seem to find any documentation on that point.

Unfortunately, AFAIK, this setting does not exist. (It doesn't exist in another WebKit browser, either: Google Chrome. You can do this in Firefox, though, using 'about:config'.)

About hard-coded cipher priorities/support for the SSL/TLS handshake:

I tested that Safari does not support 40-bit RC4 encryption with an MD5 hash. This means that it does not support some products that are required by US export law to use low (<64-bit) encryption.

See also:

http://www.carbonwind.net/blog/post/A-quick-look-over-some-browsers-and-their-SSLTLS-implementations.aspx

"Initially, in SSL/TLS negotiations, TLS with RSA and weak 128-bit RC4 keys are offered first and second in the cipher order. Worse, ECC (Elliptical Curve Cryptography), AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), and 256-bit keys are never offered as potential cipher choices; further, MD5 is offered first and more frequently than SHA-1, when it should be the other way around."

By Roger A. Grimes, Infoworld    Feb 1, 2009 1:19 pm

http://www.pcworld.com/article/158706/how_secure_is_safari.html


How to quickly screenshot all apps in all screens & folders? I have an iPhone 6 running iOS 11.  I need to wipe it out and reinstall iOS like it's a new iPhone (not restoring from a backup).

When I've done this in the past, I've taken screenshots of all my screens so I'd know where I had each app & folder laid-out (I spent a lot of time laying-out the apps just the way I like them).  After I wiped the iPhone I'd go download all the apps again and lay them out in their folders just like they were before, referencing the old screenshots.   I have 4 screens of folders and apps so it's not a trivial exercise.  As you can imagine, this took a lot of time.

I'm trying to find a better, faster way to capture where I have every folder, their contents (multiple pages), and every app placed throughout all my screens.

I don't want to jailbreak just to get this ability.  Is anyone aware of an app that can do this?   I'll even accept a way to connect the iPhone to my MBP and run a script or something on the Mac to get the screenshots.  In fact, I'll even take a text representation of the screen/folder/app hierarchy, if necessary.

This is a bit of a stretch but might work.

I have heard that if you plug your iPhone into your Mac and start Quicktime Player there is an option (possibly under the file menu) to capture what is appearing on the screen of the phone.

If that does (still?) work then doing that would allow you to go through the whole iPhone's UI as fast as you like recording everything as you go in one Quicktime movie that you can save on your Mac and pause as needed as a reference to how it was set up before.

Note I haven't tried this myself but it sounds like it should work...


Music deleted from my iPhone 4 So I have the iTunes app on my iPhone 4 and I used it to purchase songs onto my phone. I went to my music app a while back a deleted some songs I didn't want anymore ( i just went to the song swiped my finger across the screen and the delete button apeared) but now I want them again and I don't know how get them back on my phone with out debuting them?

If you bought it on the same Apple ID, then the iTunes on your computer should see that you purchased those songs already. Therefore, you should be able to simply sync music back to iPhone.
Perhaps I'm not understanding your question though. So I'll cover both sides.
Transferring Music from iPhone to Computer
If you purchased songs and you bought them on the same Apple ID, you can simply transfer purchases back onto your iPhone. See the picture below.
Just go to File => Devices => Transfer Purchases

Transferring Music from Computer to iPhone
First of all, you can see what content you purchased (make sure you sign in to the iTunes store first). Take a look at the picture below. You should see it under the Quick Links section:

However, to automatically transfer these purchases from the computer to the iPhone, you need to follow these instructions:
On the iPhone Side:
You need to use Automatic Downloads. Make sure it's on by following the directions in the picture below.

On the Computer Side:
Make sure that iTunes has the preference that is mentioned in this picture enabled.


Disable "X New Notifications" Every time I get a notification, say for my music player when a track is changed, I get that notification in the top right (standard notification center) immediately followed by "X new notifications". It happens so quickly that I don't even get a chance to see the original notification. Is there a way to mark these as read, or better yet, disable these rollup notifications?

Its hard for me to test, but I believe if you set the alert type to banners, and then un-tick the show in notification center then it shouldn't show the count.

Open System Preferences > Notifications
Select the desired app from the list
Select 'Banners' as the alert style
Un-tick the option Show in Notificaion Center: X Recent Items


How do I configure Time Machine to backup my Macs to iCloud? I have the 2 TB iCloud storage plan and back up my iPhones and iPads there. How do I configure Time Machine to do the same with my MacBook Pro's and Mac Mini's?

You cannot officially back up a Mac to iCloud at this time.

If you want to write a program that does this, you could utilize CloudKit. This would be beyond the scope of a single Stack Overflow question, so I'll just link to the CloudKit documentation here:

https://developer.apple.com/icloud/cloudkit/


Sending push notification to iPhone via AppleScript Is there any combination of iPhone and/or Mac apps that I can use to send a push notification to my iPhone?

For example, let's say I want to create a service (invoked via (Application Name) > Services) which sends the highlighted text on my Mac to my iPhone as a push notification message.

I think a combination of Growl (OS X notifier) and Prowl (an iPhone app that forwards Push Notifcations from Growl) with your AppleScript interacting with Growl directly would be the way to go for this.


Unaccessible folder in Trash Whenever I try emptying my Trash, the progress bar freezes at a specific point.
I narrowed down the problem to a folder containing a mercurial repository:

localhost:~ dennis$ cd .Trash/Mercurial.1/xardias_cfg/.hg/store/
localhost:store dennis$ ls -la

The last command does not do anything. It just blocks and does not return to the shell.
Removing the folder has the same problem. Trying to send CTRL-C to the process does not do help either.

Disk verification in the disk utility does not show any errors.

Does anyone have an idea what might be wrong or any directions how I can find out?

Thanks a lot!
Dennis

PS: It might be worth mentioning that the drive is a 240GB Kingston SSD drive.

Try running this command:

sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*

It will prompt you for administrator credentials. This should force the removal of all files in the trash. Good luck!

If this doesn't work, try booting into Single User mode and doing the following:

Run unmount -uw /
Run rm -rfv /Users/~/.Trash/* (but replace ~ with your username). Note: I added the verbose switch so you'll be able to see what it gets stuck on if it still gets stuck.
If it still gets stuck, notate the file that it hangs on and report back.


MacOS bluetooth audio drops out whenever the audio stream goes silent I'm using a Bluetooth speaker in Mojave, and I noticed that every time the video I watch is silent for a second there's an audible click as if the audio stream is being shut off, and when the sound starts again there's another click after which the speaker actually produces sound again. Much too late, of course, which means that when people start talking in videos they get the first syllables cut off. This also means that short and sudden system alert sounds go completely unnoticed since they've finished playing by the time the audio is capable of playing again. Needless to say, it's a big problem.

The whole thing reminds me of those threshold volume levels in video conferences, where you're put on mute until you actually speak so as to not introduce needless noise.

Some details

The problem is with my Macbook Air (2012) — The speaker works fine with the same test video when played from another device, and the problem is reproducible with two different BT speakers.
The choppiness is not random. This happens as soon as the system goes silent. If the audio is continuous, e.g. music, then there are no gaps (except initially when starting playback, of course).
It happens regardless of which app is used for playback. I have tested it in browsers and in native media players.
It is not resolved by turning off and on Bluetooth (using the menubar icon).
It is not resolved by rebooting the system.
It occurs regardless of whether the power cord is plugged in or not.
Did I mention that it's not random? That means it occurs at the same times in the test videos, which means that it's not RF interference. But I shut off wi-fi anyway just to be able to say: turning off wi-fi makes no difference.
MacOS 10.14.1

Is this a known problem? Is there any way to fix it?

Video samples have been prepared but will have to wait since I wrongly assumed they could be hosted just like images.

Video samples

The first video is of the problem. The second is of what it should sound like, using the built in Macbook speakers.

What it sounds like

What it's supposed to sound like

I'm confident at this point that it is the speaker's fault. Buggy design.

Why it worked with one audio source device and not the Macbook I don't know, but it's been reproduced with another audio source since then.

I can't explain how I reproduced it with two different Bluetooth speaker models though. That has not happened since. The two speaker models are by the same brand but can't even play nice with eachother and coexist (selecting one of them connects to the other) so I'm just going to write the whole problem off as cheap hardware/firmware design.


Is it possible to have more than one remote Mac open in Remote Desktop at a time? Is it possible to have more than one remote Mac open in Apple's Remote Desktop software at a time ?

Some tasks take a while on some computers so I'd like to be able to dip in and out of multiple machines whilst its working. Is that possible?

Yes, but you have to select the machines one at a time and click the "control" button.


Stop Apple Notes in iPad auto creating unnecessary hyperlink on handwritten text This is happening sometimes when I start drawing on ipad notes

It’s not possible to disable content recognition in Notes when drawing, only for typed text:

How to turn off hyperlinks in Notes in iOS so you don't accidentally click them?


How to create Automator workflow to paste in authentication code within a GUI app? I currently have created an automator workflow (in Catalina) that will paste in a two-step authentication code by a keyboard shortcut within the Cyberduck app. However, I am wondering how to possibly create a workflow that can automatically paste the code in via the shortcut whenever a certain pop-up comes up. For example, in Cyberduck we have:

I am wondering how automator can generally be used here. I have seen something that might adhere to what I want, displayed as "text" in the automator workflow options:

but would like to know if this is the right path. Thanks!

I have a solution that may work for you.  This approach will not require the use of Automator or keyboard shortcuts for pasting text into password fields. In Script Editor.app, paste this following AppleScript code into a new document and save it as a .scpt file.  I named my version Cyber_Test.scpt. For this following approach to work correctly, you will need to go into Script Editor Preferences/ General/ and select the option to "Show Script menu in menu bar".

Next, open Cyberduck.app and while it is front most, click on the Script menu in menu bar/ Open Scripts Folder/ Open Cyberduck Scripts Folder. Finder.app will then reveal and open that folder.  That is where you will need to put your version of the "Cyber_Test.scpt" file you previously created and saved.

Because of all those previous steps, now anytime Cyberduck.app is running and front most, you can simply run your "Cyber_Test.scpt" by selecting it in the Script menu in menu bar.

set authenticationText to "verification_code"
set cyberDuckIsRunning to application "Cyberduck" is running

if cyberDuckIsRunning then activate application "Cyberduck"

repeat while cyberDuckIsRunning
    tell application "System Events" to tell application process "Cyberduck"
        try
            if exists of text field 1 of sheet 1 of window 1 then
                set value of text field 1 of sheet 1 of window 1 to authenticationText
                delay .1
                click button "Continue" of sheet 1 of window 1
            end if
        end try
    end tell
    delay 0.1
    set cyberDuckIsRunning to application "Cyberduck" is running
end repeat

I was not able to produce the same verification code window as the one in your image but I was able to provoke a similar window to insert a password or verification code of sorts. Because of this, the code in my example may not work for you. If this is the case, you could follow my solution here  https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/315091/210407          About using Automator and Watch Me Do, to identify the name of Windows and other UI elements, which can then be inserted into your code.

Basically, this script will continue to run, continually checking if the verification code window exists and if it does, will insert the text (which you will define in the authenticationText variable. Then after that, it will click the "Continue" button.  Then it will continue monitoring for that verification window again etc., only while Cyberduck.app is running.  When Cyberduck.app is no longer running,  the "Cyber_Test.scpt" will also stop running.

Some people will tell you that it would be more resource efficient to create a stay open application with an idle handler... And inserting some variation of the code within the idle handler. Generally I would agree with that but for purposes of this task, the amount of code running in the repeat loop is so minimal that I don't think it makes much of a difference. On another note, if it were an application file… you would need to deal with the hassle of adding the app in your security preferences… to the list of applications allowed to control your computer. Then anytime you make changes to the code and re-save it, you will need to go back and re-add it in your Security Preferences again. With .scpt files being run from the script menu in the menu bar, I believe only System Events.app and Script Editor.app need to be added to your Security Preferences (one time only)


What setup to use with in a famliy with 2 (or 3) Persons? I get all confused about all these different IDs I have and need to use the iOS devices/iTunes. I want to use our devices in the family the best way.

We are three people:

me -- currently the only one with a real Apple-ID
my wife -- currently without an Apple-ID, but with her own email
and my infant which does not have nor need her own ID at all, I think :-)

The devices we have are:

1 iPhone for myself, ("A" = phone husband)

1 PC+iTunes, which syncs my iPhone ("PC-A" = PC/iTunes husband)

1 iPhone for my wife ("B" = phone wife)

1 PC+iTunes, which syncs hers ("PC-B")

1 iPod Touch 1G for my infant, which she just starts to appreciate ("C")

I probably sync/fill this device with my PC+iTunes, too, for the time being.

Of course I want to use the Apps and Music to by available on all devices. And as far as I understand this is allowed by apple, as long as its up to 5 devices, which its is. I was able to do this at least while I gave my old phone to my wife while both devices were connected to the same Apple-ID -- but I don't think this how it is meant to be set-up, right?

Very important is that both iPhones are able to use their respective iMessage accounts, so I can recieve mine (and only mine), she hers (and only hers), and we can send iMessages to each other. During upgrading to iOS7 I managed to mess this up and we got all iMessages of each other ;-(. This is where I got confuded with iCloud-Account, iMessage-Adresses and Apple-ID, I think.

Not as much important would be to share a Todo-List and/or Calendar over the phones, so we can put items and appointments into our own calendar, which then appears on the others phone.

What IDs and Accounts do we need?

and what device should be connected to which accounts?
What accounts should be the same on which devices, if any?

I am correct that I can legally access the Apps/Music family-wide, right?

If the phones are connected to different Apple-IDs and synced with different iTunes', how can I use acquired Apps/Music on both?

You need to understand that an Apple ID is not (or may not be) the same as an iCloud Account, which is not (or may not be) the same as an iTunes Store Account. An Apple ID is the credential set you use for accessing various services by Apple. Once you have an Apple ID, you can associate it with different services from Apple.

Anyone can create an Apple ID by visiting My Apple ID. Once you have an Apple ID (or more), you can choose how you would wish to use it.

For your case, you need three Apple IDs to keep things simple:

One Apple ID shared between all the members of your family for content purchases from the iTunes and App Stores
One individual Apple ID for your wife for iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime
One individual Apple ID for you for iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime

Here's how you would use these Apple IDs on the devices and PCs:

iTunes Store Purchases - In the case of a family (and specifically for you), you would have one Apple ID whose credentials are known by all family members so that all content purchased from the iTunes and App Stores can be shared across all devices.

You configure this on your iPhone, your wife's iPhone and your infant's iPod Touch under Settings > iTunes & App Stores menu option.
You configure this in iTunes on your PC as well as on your wife's PC from the Store > Sign In... menu option.

iCloud Services - In almost every case, this would be an individual Apple ID so that Find My iPhone, Mail, Calendar, Reminders, etc., are segregated by user.

You configure your Apple ID on your iPhone under Settings > iCloud.
Your wife would configure her Apple ID on her iPhone under Settings > iCloud.
You do not configure this in iTunes on the PCs. However, if you use the iCloud Control Panel for Windows, you can configure it there.
You do not configure this for your infant at this point in time.

iMessage - In almost every case, this would be an individual Apple ID so that each person receives and manages messages intended for that person.

You configure your Apple ID on your iPhone under Settings > Messages.
Your wife would configure her Apple ID on her iPhone under Settings > Messages.
You do not configure this anywhere on your PCs.
You do not configure this for your infant at this point in time.

FaceTime - To avoid confusion, this would be an individual Apple ID for each person.

You configure your Apple ID on your iPhone under Settings > FaceTime.
Your wife would configure her Apple ID on her iPhone under Settings > FaceTime.
You do not configure this anywhere on your PCs.
You do not configure this for your infant at this point in time.

On content sharing between devices, you can use an account with up to 10 devices. Here's what iLounge says based on Apple's policy about "More than five family devices sharing a single iTunes account":

  Actually, the limit of five devices per iTunes Store account only applies to authorizations for computers using iTunes. Apple actually allows you to have up to ten devices authorized in total for features such as iTunes Match and re-downloading previous purchases from iTunes in the Cloud, up to five of which can be computers running iTunes. So in other words, you could have anywhere from 10 iOS devices and no computers up to five computers and five iOS devices or any combination in between. You can view the number of devices that have been authorized for these features by going into your iTunes Store account information from within iTunes and choosing the Manage Devices option.

To share calendars, see iCloud: Share a calendar with others.
To share reminders, see iCloud: Share a reminder list.


iPhone & iPad almost instantly forgetting networks I'm having an issue with both my iPhone and iPad - both on iOS 6.1.2 (actually not sure if it's that on iPad, latest iOS regardless).

I connect to my WPA2 enabled Wifi network at home (tried WPA also) and it requests the password. I enter the password and can browse as normal connected to the Wifi network. If the phone or iPad sleeps however, I have no Wifi connectivity upon waking. I need to go into settings, select the Wifi network again and once more reenter a password for it. Essentially it seems as though the network settings have no persistence.

I have tried resetting "all settings" back to default.
I have tried resetting "network settings".
I had no issue previous to upgrading to iOS6.
I have tried changing encryption methods on the router.

Modem is a Netgear DGN2000.

I'm not sure anyone will be able to offer many suggestions, as really since the iPhone and iPad is so restrictive in what you can do with it, by nature it's hard to trouble shoot effectively.

There are issues with iOS6 and some Netgear products.

This is taken from http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/21865 which is directly linked to the products page on the Netgear site.

  There have been widespread reports of wireless connection and speed
  problems with devices using Apple's newly-released iOS 6 connecting to
  NETGEAR products. The problems that you are experiencing may be due to
  a recent upgrade of the Apple iOS 6.  While the nature and extent of
  the iOS 6 and Wi-Fi connectivity issues are unknown, NETGEAR will do
  our best to continue to monitor the updates from Apple and continue to
  work with our customers to ensure that we can help provide support and
  work-arounds (when possible) to get your devices connect properly.

There are several other pages and forums linked from there, I don't have enough time (or a way to test) which of these actually fixes the issue.

If you find one of these resolves your problem, please post the solution back here for others.


How do I pair apple wireless keyboard with windows 10 My apple wireless keyboard has stopped pairing with Windows 10. Now when I try to pair through settings, I'm asked to enter a passcode for the keyboard rather than being supplied a passcode to pair the device. I'm unable to type anything using the keyboard. Entering four zeros using the laptop keyboard does not work. I've tried un-installing bluetooth drivers and reinstalling. This doesn't help. Any advice?

After trying 15 times in vain, here is the method that worked for me (source)

Go to "Add Bluetooth or other device"
Find the wireless keyboard and double click on it.
When prompted for a pin, enter anything on the screen, I used "123123". I dont know what else will work.
NOW IS THE IMPORTANT PART.
HIT 'Connect' on your screen and IMMEDIATELY enter '123123' + ENTER/RETURN on the wireless apple keyboard, and you should be paired.
If you have issues, turn off Bluetooth and restart the wireless
keyboard and repeat the process.


How to download the .mov for later viewing? I would like to download the keynote speech on

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1103pijanbdvaaj/event/index.html

so that when Apple remove the video later, I can still watch it later...
but there seems to be no easy way, except if I buy the Pro version of QuickTime?

some meta file shows these addresses, but the first one will save as a 1k file to show the second address, and the second one can't be saved because it is rstp:// not http://:

http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/mar/1103pijanbdvaaj/1103pijnpfvrbfvijbavojh_hd_ref.mov

rtsp://a2047.v1414b.c1414.g.vq.akamaistream.net/5/2047/1414/1_h264_1000/1a1a1ae757c733980368e14fbe3297c529980f7de958b91d4bac1778e546afdd40af1c4b7cb0e115/1103pijnpfvrbfvijbavojh_1_hd.mov

Someone mentioned using Ubuntu Linux's Movie player to download it but it seems there is no save option?

Usually, Apple put it's keynotes in iTunes Podcasts, where you can download them.

Look for Apple Keynote and download the ones you want.

Just note that there might be delay, often less than a week, before they released the latest keynote.


I can't sync my music to my new iPhone I'm trying to move my music from my old iPhone 5 (purchased in the US) to my new iPhone 5s (purchased in Canada). My music is backed up to my iCloud account and basically when I got the new phone I added my Apple account so everything (apps, notes, texts, emails, photos, vids, etc.) and transferred everything except for my music. I've been carrying both phones so I can listen to music but that's really cumbersome.

For whatever reason whenever I tried synching my new phone to my iTunes the playlist names are there but there are no files. When I checked which devices were backed up on my iTunes, it just lists my new iPhone. The files are there in my iTunes library, but I just can't get them to transfer.

If it makes a difference, under settings, and music, there is no option under the library heading on either iPhone to turn on iCloud music library. Moreover, the the little iPhone icon in iTunes that usually pops up when you plug it into your laptop doesn't appear. This is the iTunes icon you click on that lets you access things on your iPhone.

What do I do?

Go to Settings > Music. Is "Show Apple Music" switched to "on?"

You cannot have Apple Music enabled and sync your music library. It will only make those songs in your library available via the cloud.

You must choose, for your device, if you want to have Apple Music (which has a paid subscription fee of $9.99 after a trial period) -or- sync your music library.

You can, however, download songs individually onto your device for offline use.


Messages.app AppleScript handler Override 10 second script timeout I have a working Messages.app Applescript handler.  Most of the handlers are empty, except the "on message received" handler.  This handler runs a shell script which responds with outputs that are expected to be sent as responses to the message sender.

The issue: My Script takes between 6 and 12 seconds.  In the cases it takes over 10 seconds, Messages appears to have a default Applescript handler timeout of 10 seconds.  After 10 seconds a popup is delivered and Messages becomes unusable until the "Wait" button is pressed.  Upon pressing the button, the handler finishes, and all is well.

Possible Solutions:

Ideal: Disable/Change the Applescript messages timeout.
Make handler script pass enough information to respond to the same message into the script running under nohup or $ [script] & then have the script launch it's own Applescript to respond.
make Applescript try to click "Wait" button in messages before responding (not sure if this would work).

Thank you for any help!

Unfortunately Apple hasn't made this easy on us. They have provided no way to change this timeout and sometimes it's the script itself taking too long to run (because Messages.app is terrible at running scripts). I run a rather extensive applescript handler myself, and I interact with Messages.app through AppleScripts run by other processes. Sometimes things freak out and I'm not around to fix it. The workaround I've come up with is to check for a window with the "Wait" button and to click it. Sometimes though, my scripts run right after another and I end up with possibly dozens of windows like the screenshot you pasted. In my case, it is easier to force Messages to quit and then re-open it. I wrote a small AppleScript that does exactly this. You can compile it as an application with "stay open after run handler" selected and it will always make sure Messages is working and open without error windows. You can find it here: https://github.com/davidnewhall/IndigoAppleScripts/blob/master/Restart_Messages.applescript

The other option you could (easily) develop is to run your script in the background and respond once the data is available; that's probably a better approach. You can run osascript from the command line (or a script) to run an AppleScript. There are plenty of examples in my github repo of how to send messages externally.

Good luck!


AppleScript How to return first n elements of item in list I have never written anything in AppleScript but I recently got a MBP and started playing around with it just to tweak the touchbar. In a downloaded preset I saw this line:

set theArray to every text item of theString

I assume that this line appends the entire string (every single character element) to the array.

How I can choose to append only a fixed n number of characters from that string/item, say maybe the first 10 characters of that string?

Here's an example:

set theString to "Ask Different"
set theArray to text items 1 thru 10 of theString

  Result:
    {"A", "s", "k", " ", "D", "i", "f", "f", "e", "r"}

Since you are new to AppleScript, I encourage you to take the time to read though: AppleScript Language Guide

Just so you know, AppleScript does not have object designated with the name array, it uses list instead. It's a minor technicality however, since you're just starting to learn, its best you know what it's called within the AppleScript Language.

So, instead of using the variable theArray, I'd choose to name it theList, or more specifically I'd add an additional qualifier. For example, theCharList, or whatever is appropriate so as I read through the code I write, I readily know what the variable is for.


Is it a bug that the Health App in the iOS11 upgrade 'forgets' your last place in the app? On iOS 10 - I could regularly enter the health app to enter my weight each day. Each day the weight graph would come up when I opened the app and I could enter my data with a single tap.

On iOS 11 - the health app 'forgets' that I was last at the weight graph, and when you open it goes to the health app home screen. This means two more taps to get to the weight graph, which I didn't have to do on iOS10.

Is there a way to fix this? It seems to be a feature regression.

My question is: Is it a bug that the Health App in the iOS11 upgrade 'forgets' your last place in the app?

here (iOS 11.0.2), when I reopen Health it opens in the last used window.


How to filter logs via processImagePath? Given the following log entries (which I run in other Terminal to compare my filter):

$ log stream --level debug | grep -w Google
Activity    0x80000000003a7a20   75676  Google Chrome Helper: (CoreFoundation) Loading Preferences From System CFPrefsD For Search List
Debug       0x0                  75676  Google Chrome Helper: (CoreFoundation) [com.apple.CFBundle.resources] Resource lookup at <private>
Debug       0x0                  11599  Google Chrome: (Security) [com.apple.securityd.handleobj] create 0x7fd130d2677a for 0x7fd130d262e0

Note: Removed datetime column for above example for better visibility.

Now I'd like to filter log based on the Google keyword to display log entries from Google Chrome Helper, Google Chrome and Chromium processes.

However the following command doesn't display these entries:

$ log stream --level debug --predicate 'processImagePath contains Google'
Filtering the log data using "processImagePath CONTAINS Google"
Timestamp                       Thread     Type        Activity             PID

I'm following the man log docs page logic as per this example:

$ log show --predicate 'processImagePath endswith "hidd" and senderImagePath contains[cd] "IOKit"' --info

Timestamp                       Thread     Type        Activity     PID
2016-06-10 13:54:34.593220-0700 0x250      Info        0x0          113    hidd: (IOKit) [com.apple.iohid.default] Loaded 6 HID plugins

What I'm doing wrong? Why processImagePath contains Google filter isn't working?

As per Apple support response, string constants must be quoted within the predicate expression.

So the command should have syntax like:

log stream --level debug --predicate 'processImagePath contains "Google"'

See: Creating a Predicate Using a Format String at Apple Programming Guide.


Ran codesign -fs - /Applications/Utilities/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant.app how do I reverse it? I ran codesign -fs - /Applications/Utilities/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant.app as per a post here  and now I cannot launch Bootcamp Assistant at all. Is there a terminal command I can run to reverse this?

There is no undo; permanent changes are made. The only way to resolve this situation would be to replace Boot Camp Assistant with a known-good copy. A simple way to do that is to reinstall OS X using Recovery Mode.


How do I install an application from a .dmg disk image? I've downloaded Firefox and it's now sitting on my desktop as Firefox.dmg. When I double click on Firefox.dmg it opens up a window with Firefox in it so I can use it - does this mean the application has been installed?

Community Wiki'd the question because I think it's a worthwhile question to have on the site for pointing people to, it's not exactly intuitive to do and not a question I think I deserve any rep from.

Applications that are distributed on disk images (.dmg files) are designed to be installed using drag and drop. You can safely drag and drop the application from the virtual drive into your Applications folder and use it from your Applications folder. After copying it to your Applications folder it's safe to eject the virtual drive and delete the disk image file.

Nearly all applications will work just fine running off that virtual hard drive as they store their content in your user folder (eg. browsers, mail applications, etc.). It will however stop you from running application updates as the disk image is read only.


Looking for a free system monitoring tool I'm looking for a system monitoring tool, preferably a free one. I don't care if it's an actual app or sits in my terminal.

Activity Monitor doesn't give me all the information I want at once.

iStat Menus definitely seems like a slick option, but that costs $. I use iTerm2/zsh/oh-my-zsh; I haven't been able to find any sort of plugin for that, which is disappointing.

There are two that come to mind immediately (since you mentioned iStats Menu).

1) MenuMeters is a free CPU, memory, disk, and network monitoring tools for Mac OS X. It can run in the menu bar just as iStats Menu does.

2) atMonitor offers a better alternative to Apple's own "Activity Monitor" and combines the best of the features of many other existing monitoring utilities. It also adds an extensive list of unique features of its own. In addition to the standard CPU, Disk and Network info, atMonitor allows interaction with processes, setting up triggers, logging, purging RAM and much more. atMonitor can be displayed...

As a standalone floating window...

As a menu bar...

Of the two, atMonitor is the one I prefer, but, as always, YMMV.


What is the difference between 'Capacity' and '%iused' when running the 'df' command in the terminal When I run the df command I'm getting different values for capacity and %iused. What is the difference between them?

The first Used/Available/Capacity is the obvious "How much of my 1 TB drive is full?" measure. The second tracks internal storage structure called an inode or index node.

On traditional UNIX filesystems, there were a fixed number of inodes which are used to track files and directory entries (metadata and filesystem implementation data). When you ran out of inodes, you couldn't use the filesystem whether it was full or not. The df tool needed to report both resources that could fill so you could plan and maintain the filesystems.

OS X uses HFS+ which will make more inodes from any free space and can't run out of them, but they are still reported since as inode use grows, the storage is slightly less efficient and can be slower than if the filesystem were still in the original allocation of inodes.

Basically, you can just focus on Capacity/Used/Available and ignore inodes unless you are deep in filesystem implementation details.


Unable to setup Command + Shift shortcut on Mavericks I want to change Input Sources shortcuts

Shift + Option - Select the previous input source
Shift + Control - Select next source in input menu

This one is not working for me http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=646280 but if i put Shift + Option + (any not_action key) or Shift + Control + (any not_action key) than it works, but it is not what i need.

I read that mac not allowed only action keys as shortcuts, but I believe that somehow it could be done. Is there anyone could help?

You can use KeyRemap4MacBook to for example map option-shift to option-F19 and control-shift to control-F19:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>test</name>
    <identifier>test</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyOverlaidModifier__ KeyCode::SHIFT_L, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::SHIFT_L, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L, KeyCode::F19, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyOverlaidModifier__ KeyCode::SHIFT_R, ModifierFlag::OPTION_R | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_R | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::SHIFT_R, ModifierFlag::OPTION_R, KeyCode::F19, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyOverlaidModifier__ KeyCode::SHIFT_L, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::SHIFT_L, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L, KeyCode::F19, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyOverlaidModifier__ KeyCode::SHIFT_R, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_R | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_R | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::SHIFT_R, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_R, KeyCode::F19, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Then change the shortcuts for switching input sources to option-F19 and control-F19.


How do I determine what is locking up my machine? My MBP is suddenly locking up to the point that only a power down will fix it. Neither command+alt+esc or command+alt+shift+esc do anything. It started by getting some nice screens in multiple languages that told me I had to power down. That happened about four times, now I don't even get those screens it just seems to lock up. I used to get crash reports to send to Apple, the details of which were nebulous but I don't get those anymore either. I am looking at the log but see nothing. Am I missing something?

That message means that there is a kernel panic. This may happen if you connect new hardware to your computer. For possible reasons/fixes, see this article from the Apple website. Here is a section from the "Troubleshooting" section...

Was the computer starting up, shutting down, or performing a
particular task when the recurring kernel panic happened?
Is the kernel panic intermittent, or does it happen every time you do
a certain thing?
Does it occur only when a certain external device is connected, or
a device is connected to a certain port?

Reading through that article should give you a general idea what is happening and possible ways to fix it.


Is there any way to seamlessly translate a mail inside Mail.app? Having recently moved to Germany, I receive tons of German emails.

My current workflow is definitely not efficient: Copy mail contents, goto translate.google.com, paste content..

The ideal solution would be: just trigger a shortcut and have the contents of the email translated into the predefined language you've set.

Would that be possible?

Here is an applescript I just put together that is working for me (10.9)

You can place it in the Applescript menu and run it on the selected Emails.

The script will:

Try and grab the select emails in Mail.
Send a Request to google translate
Convert the resulting HTML to plain text
Display a temporary text file with the translation.

You can set the original language to auto or one of the languages in the languages_code list. And also set the result language from the list.

There is no reason you should not be able to create a service using this script. But I will leave that to you. Just note that for the device to work you will need to right click/crtl +click in a message's body for the service menu to show up. Or use the Services menu.

#http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=31218
#http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=39742
#The above links are the starting points of this script which both attempt to translate text. But are broken or do not return the full text.

#This script will attampt to translate the text from the selected emails to your chosen language

property languages_code : {Afrikaans:"af", Albanian:"sq", Arabic:"ar", Belarusian:"be", Bulgarian:"bg", Catalan:"ca", Chinese:"zh-CN", Croatian:"hr", Czech:"cs", Danish:"da", Dutch:"nl", English:"en", Estonian:"et", Filipino:"tl", Finnish:"fi", French:"fr", Galician:"gl", German:"de", Greek:"el", Hebrew:"iw", Hindi:"hi", Hungarian:"hu", Icelandic:"is", Indonesian:"id", Irish:"ga", Italian:"it", Japanese:"ja", Korean:"ko", Latvian:"lv", Lithuanian:"lt", Macedonian:"mk", Malay:"ms", Maltese:"mt", Norwegian:"no", Persian:"fa", Polish:"pl", Portuguese:"pt", Romanian:"ro", Russian:"ru", Serbian:"sr", Slovak:"sk", Slovenian:"sl", Spanish:"es", Swahili:"sw", Swedish:"sv", Thai:"th", Turkish:"tr", Ukrainian:"uk", Vietnamese:"vi", Welsh:"cy", Yiddish:"yi"}

#Curl stuff
property agent : "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_2; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Safari/531.21.10"
property charset : "UTF-8"
property header : "Charset:" & space & charset
property theURL : "https://translate.google.com/?" #This must be https

#used to delimit the html
property snipOpen : "TRANSLATED_TEXT="
property snipClose : ";INPUT_TOOL_PATH"

#You can either set a start language or leave it at auto.
property startLang : "auto"
#set a result language
property resultLang : English of languages_code

#Ask Mail to get and process selected emails
tell application "Mail"
    set theMessages to (get selection)
    repeat with i from 1 to number of items in theMessages
        set this_item to item i of theMessages

        set thisSender to sender of this_item
        set thisSubject to subject of this_item
        set thisText to content of this_item as string
        my translate(thisSender, thisSubject, thisText)
    end repeat
end tell

(*************** SUBROUTINES *****************)
#Translate the message text and display them in a temp text file
on translate(thisSender, thisSubject, thisText)

    if thisText is not "" then
        #replace all spaces with "%20" for the URL to use without error
        set escapedText to findReplace(thisText, space, "%20")

        #send request  to google and get the returned HTML
        set TranslatedText to do shell script "/usr/bin/curl" & space & ¬
            "-A" & space & quoted form of agent & space & ¬
            "-H" & space & quoted form of header & space & ¬
            "-d" & space & quoted form of ("&ie=" & charset & "&oe=" & charset & "&langpair=" & startLang & "|" & resultLang & "&text=" & escapedText) & space & quoted form of theURL

        try
            #Use delimiters to split the text to just get the actual result part
            set txt to Split(TranslatedText, snipOpen)'s item 2
            set txt to Split(txt, snipClose)'s item 1

            set displayText to ¬
                "Sender: " & thisSender & "
" & ¬
                "Subject: " & thisSubject & "
" & "
" & ¬
                txt
            #Use  Textutil to strip any other rich text or HTML code out and convert to plain text. Then open in a text document
            do shell script "echo  " & quoted form of displayText & "|textutil -format html -convert txt -stdin -stdout | open -f"
        on error errTxt number errNum
            display dialog errTxt with title "Error# " & errNum buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} default button 2 with icon 0 giving up after 0
        end try

    end if
end translate

on Split(txt, del)
    set {otid, AppleScript's text item delimiters} to {AppleScript's text item delimiters, del}
    set txt to text items of txt
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to otid
    return txt
end Split

on findReplace(theString, search_string, replacement_string)
    if theString contains search_string then
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to search_string
        set text_item_list to text items of theString
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to replacement_string
        set theString to text_item_list as text
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
    end if
    return theString
end findReplace


How to create a custom readable symlink out of a sandboxed container? How do I create a readable symlink from within a ~/Library/Containers/.../Data/ app folder to a file outside?

It seems that due to the macOS sandboxing mechanism, this doesn't work out of the box. That is, I can create a symlink fine, but the app I use won't be allowed to read the symlinked file.

Notes:

My intent is to customize the setup of my own machine. I'm not an app developer.
Editing the file Container.plist within ~/Library/Containers/.../ might help. So far, I've not had success yet.
Personal use case: being able to open an app from two different user accounts on the same machine and share the same app-database.

Unlikely to be Possible

I suspect that if this were possible with a symlink, Apple would consider it a serious security flaw.

That said, see Why is the symlink I created inside an application container to allow for external storage not working? for possible solutions.

Sandboxed applications can only read the contents their containers, some global locations, and the locations explicitly granted to them by the user – via the Powerbox mechanism.

See Powerbox and File System Access Outside of Your Container:

  Your sandboxed app can access file system locations outside of its container in the following three ways:

  At the specific direction of the user
  By using entitlements for specific file-system locations (described in > - Entitlements and System Resource Access)
  When the file system location is in certain directories that are world readable

Given the list above, you may be able to extend the entitlements for the application to include your specific location and then resign the application.

Bypass the Problem

Alternatively, consider stripping the application of its sandboxing entitlement. You could try ad-hoc resigning the application and omit the entitlements entirely.


Safari High Avg Energy Impact Under the Energy Monitor, it always shows high Average Energy Impact (1000+) for Safari. Is this normal? I have attached the screenshots. Although I formatted the entire disk and reinstalled the OS, the problem has not been fixed. What is the reason for this issue, and is it possible to fix it?

No plugin/extension is installed. It happens even if Safari is only displaying Google.

My environment:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)
Processor: 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3
Safari 8.0.7

Thank you!

I'd simply ignore it. Energy Impact is just an arbitrary number showing how much energy an app is consuming (each instant and on average).

Activity Monitor is simply telling you that the app which uses the most energy is Safari.

To make sure that Safari is not eating up on CPU, you can check the CPU usage over time, for example using a tool like 'uptime' from the command line (simply launch the Terminal an type uptime), this will tell you the uptime of the system and the load average over the past 1, 5 and 15 minutes, this number should be close to (or less than) 1 on Yosemite. A load average constantly above 2 (or more) could indicate some process sucking up on CPU, which can found using Activity Monitor.


MySQL does not start on startup In the System Preferences panel, I have the MySQL there.

I chose it to start up every time my Mac starts up, however this doesn't work, I have restarted MySQL many times, but it will not start up at all - which I require to start up manually.

How can I fix this?

There should also be logs in /usr/local/mysql/data. You'll have to "sudo su" from a Terminal session in order to see that directory. Check for any errors being reported in a filed named like this: "Your-computer-name.local.err"

Report back whatever you see that doesn't make sense.

You can also check out the startup script to make sure there are no errors. Find that here: /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM/MYSQLCOM


Can I convert blog entries to wiki articles for Leopard-to-Lion migration? We are migrating our Leopard server to Lion. We were using Group wikis and blogs in such a way that I didn't make much of a distinction, so it came as a shock to realize that Lion Server doesn't support group blogs. Hence, we need to convert the blog entries to wiki articles, which is fine. But, what is the least painful way to go about that?

While not a direct, 1-to-1 migration, I found this link which may be of help to at least export the data to CSV. Good luck


MacBook Pro will only charge if using a 3rd party adapter after battery replacement I’m  having a bit of a weird situation. After running a program that really seemed to overheat my computer, a few days after my charger stopped charging my 13” Late 2012 Retina MacBook Pro.
It was really old and had some inner wire visible so I figured it was the charger and decided to change it. Without doing a ton of research, i just ordered the best reviewed adapter on Amazon.  When I plugged it in, it didn't turn on but eventually did a SWC and it began charging, however the LED turned green and but the battery seemed to be dead. If it was unplugged the computer would die.
Thinking I needed a battery replacement and having originally thought that Apple no longer supported 2012 because of vintage, I ordered a 3rd party battery from Puredick as well as one from NewerTech at OWC.
I replaced the battery and had some issues with it working and read about the dangers of using a 3rd party adapter. I ordered a new OEM 65W adapter through Apple,  however once I got the battery working, the OEM adapter wouldn't charge. The third party adapter continues to charge it regularly.
I realized it was an 85W adapter so thinking maybe the battery needed a higher wattage, I ordered a second 85W adapter through Apple and that also, did not charge. The behavior was the same for both 3rd party batteries as I tried swapping them out thinking they might be the cause of the issue.
Everything else runs normally except for the fact that the OEM adapters will not charge the Mac while the 3rd party charger will. I'd like to avoid using the 3rd party and I’m worried that this might be a sign of something else wrong With my Mac or that continued use of my 3rd party adapter will exacerbate the problem.
How can I solve this weird problem of genuine chargers not charging, but 3rd party chargers will?

If you have two genuine Apple MagSafe chargers and neither with charge/power you MacBook Pro, but a knockoff charger will, there’s an issue with your MacBook.  More than likely, it’s the DC-In board.
How it works.
In the genuine charger, there’s a chip in the MagSafe connector (not the “brick” but the magnetic part with the green/amber LED) that identifies the charger to your Mac.  If the wattage advertised is greater than or equal to what’s required, it’ll charge.  If not, it won’t and if your computer is on, will even notify you that the wrong charger is attatched.
The way it charges is that the circuitry in the DC-In board detects power from the adapter from the presence of current on the one wire charging circuit.
So, if it’s charging with the knock-offs but not the OEMs, it’s bypassing the wattage check and just “dumping” power into the DC-In board.  You don’t want this, because this is how things get fried.  Why aren’t the knock offs using the identifying chip?  Most likely cost.
The fix is simple: you need a new DC-In board.  See this related answer for more details.  It’s also called an I/O board because some models have I/O ports on it; this one doesn’t. Note: it’s possible that there may be damage to the charging circuitry on the logic board, but without putting hands on, it’s impossible to know.
A few clarifications

The 2012 13” MacBook Pro models require the 60W power adapter
Keep/use the 85W charger as it’s perfectly safe to use a charger with a higher wattage rating than what’s required
Your battery is not really related to charger wattage.  The only thing that will happen is your charging speeds will differ.  The wattage requirement is based on both charging and compute requirements (what it takes to drive the computer).
Only use genuine Apple chargers with your Mac.  Cheap knock offs can end up costing you more!
The last Mac with the MagSafe adapter was the 2017 MacBook Air which was discontinued in 2019.  The chargers will be around for a while longer.  See Apple’s Vintage and obsolete product page for a list of currently supported products.


Is there an App or Extension that allows for per-window zoom/magnification? As the title says, is there a Mac app (Mountain Lion) that will allow me to specify a fixed zoom/magnification amount for a specific window, in a specific app?

I use a particular application (Reason from Propellerhead Software) that does not support any zoom levels for its windows.  One window in particular has lots and lots of tiny little detailed text and buttons in it (the Rack) that is often just way too hard to read, even on a 21" monitor set to 1024x768 resolution.

I would like to zoom this one window, and only this window, to maybe 125% or so of its current size.  I can do this with the built-in Accessibility zoom feature, but then of course that "magnifying glass" focus area follows my mouse cursor all over the place.  I would like ONLY that window to be displayed in the zoom area, if possible.

Just to be clear, this is not about maximizing the window to the screen, but magnifying the visible contents of the window (primarily to make fonts larger).

What you ask isn't possible.

There are apps that will zoom a portion of the screen - I use the loupe in Xscope for this purpose and it does a very nice job of magnifying the area around the cursor, but it's not able to grab an entire window and zoom it in place.

The OS takes the content that the application draws and maps that onto the space where the window exists, so you would need to fundamentally alter the screen rendering on OS X to force an app that hadn't considered zoom levels to zoom only itself.

Unless you really like Xscope, my guess is you'll get in the habit of zooming the entire screen or possible find another software package to replace the one that won't zoom.

The other workaround would be to run that program in a virtual machine and force it to be full screen zoomed in that one OS and keep the rest of your programs running outside the VM. That would accomplish exactly what you ask at some level of time commitment to virtualize the OS and get that set up.


Color issues when waking up MBA connected to Apple Thunderbolt Display I haven't got the faintest idea what is causing this issue, but hopefully somebody here has experienced it before.

When I haven't used my computer for a while I decide to wake it up from sleep by pressing a random button on my external keyboard. I have it set up so that the MBA itself is closed, i.e. the Thunderbolt Display is the only screen I am using.

The computer always wakes up immediately and most of the times it works just as expected, but sometimes the color of the display is shifted to a quite prominent purplish tone. When this happens I open and close the lid of the laptop, which immediately solves the problem, but I'm curious as to why the problem exists in the first place.

It started happening a few weeks ago and I have been using the MBA with the TB display since summer 2012.

Thank you in advance.

EDIT: Just took a screenshot which after opening and closing the lid doesn't show any discoloration, which leads me to believe this is a hardware issue. Added a picture showing how it looks.

Contrary to my belief this is most probably a software issue since I cannot reproduce the problem after updating to the most recent version (10.9.2) of OSX.


Resizing dual boot partitions in Yosemite I have a dual boot Macbook Air with Yosemite and Ubuntu. I would like more space on my Ubuntu partition and need to therefore reduce the size of the Mac partition. I assume this will cause some damage to my Mac HD but I'm completely fine with that. The question however is; how in the world can we do this properly? The terminal diskutil gives me a very reasonable overview of the size of the complete HD and the partitions. iPartition for some reason spits out the unexplainable 85 gb as a current size and Macintosh's pride GUI the Disk Utility also is a bit out in the blue when it comes to what is actually on the total hard drive and how this is partitioned:

Also, adding the values of the independent disks doesn't total the space on the top disk. (Macintosh HD (91.4 gb) + disk0s4 (29.1 gb) is more than the selected disk's (also) 91.4 gb). In Maverick, partitioning with the Disk Utility used to be a dream, but now everything is locked and no button can be clicked anymore. I really need more space on my ubuntu partition, so what am I to do?

EDIT:

The terminal output reads the following:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         91.4 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data                         29.1 GB    disk0s4
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *91.0 GB    disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 4F26F5C3-8D94-419F-AFF1-B652E9DCDEF4
                                 Unencrypted

And

$ diskutil cs list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 08436957-C5CD-4DC6-B9FA-05B51A3EEFC8
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         91387686912 B (91.4 GB)
    Free Space:   35364864 B (35.4 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume FFC67A8D-65A8-415E-A594-D7A6BED71844
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     91387686912 B (91.4 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 56C0E988-502B-43D5-90DD-EFBE58143896
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 4F26F5C3-8D94-419F-AFF1-B652E9DCDEF4
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk1
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          90999996416 B (91.0 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

There are at least two approaches to solve your problem:
One is potentially destructive, vastly undocumented and i don't know if it works (1) and the other one is  for sure destructive (2).

So please backup your Mac OS X and your Ubuntu partition if necessary.

Requirements: USB thumb drive with a full working Mac OS X and iPartition installed or a Linux Live USB with gparted.

It's also useful to have a second computer with internet access and the stackexchange credentials to check back if you run into severe problems.

(1) risk of destruction  (this may render your systems unusable):

Your Mac OS X partition (Macintosh HD) visible on the desktop is equivalent to the Logical Volume 4F26F5C3-8D94-419F-AFF1-B652E9DCDEF4. You may shrink it down to the 82.68 GB which will render your OS X almost unusable because it needs some free space. You may disable the sleepimage and gain the amount of your RAM size as additional free space though.

Restart into Internet Recovery Mode by pressing cmdR
or your bootable Mavericks Thumb Drive with iPartition installed.
start Terminal from the menubar/utilities
enter following command at the Terminal prompt:

  diskutil cs list
  Copy the Logical Volume (LV) alphanumeric UUID of your CoreStorage volume. The LVUUID should be the fourth listed. In the above example the alphanumeric is:
  4F26F5C3-8D94-419F-AFF1-B652E9DCDEF4.
  Run the following command:

  diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID

According to the number found above it would be:

  diskutil cs resizeStack 4F26F5C3-8D94-419F-AFF1-B652E9DCDEF4 88g

This will hopefully shrink your CoreStorage volume to 88 GB (skip to step 9 if this doesn't work)
If necessary reboot into your thumb drive and start iPartition. Alternatively you may use a Linux Live USB with gparted.
Try to move the volume Recovery HD to the end of the now shrinked Macintosh HD  (skip to step 9 if this doesn't work)
Expand your Ubuntu partition

(2) total destruction (this will delete all partitions on your disk)

Disconnect all external hard drives
Restart into Internet Recovery Mode by pressing Command+R
(alternatively you may use a Mavericks or Mountain Lion Install Thumb Drive)
start Terminal from the menubar/utilities
enter following command at the Terminal prompt:

  diskutil cs list
  Copy the Logical Volume Group (LVG) alphanumeric UUID of your CoreStorage volume. The LVG UUID should be the first listed. In the above example the alphanumeric is:
  08436957-C5CD-4DC6-B9FA-05B51A3EEFC8.
  Run the following command:

  diskutil cs delete LVGUUID

According to the number found above it would be:

  diskutil cs delete 08436957-C5CD-4DC6-B9FA-05B51A3EEFC8

This will delete your CoreStorage volume and probably your Recovery HD and reformat it as a simple HFS+ volume.
Quit Terminal
In the now opening window choose Disk Utility erase all leftover partitions and format/partition/rename the internal drive. Choose 1 Partition, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and GUID partition table (available with the option button). Quit Disk Utility.
Now choose 'Reinstall Mac OS X'
The originally shipped OS X will be downloaded and installed or the one provided with the aforementioned OS X Install Thumb Drive.
Set up your Mac
Download and install Mavericks/Yosemite from the App Store if necessary
Install Ubuntu (in a larger partition now)


Downgrade to Lion from Mountain Lion OS One of my friend bought his MacBook Pro with preinstalled Mac OS X Lion (10.7.2). Afterwards, he installed the Mountain Lion (10.8) developer preview in it.

He wants to downgrade the OS to Lion (10.7). One option I see is using the Lion recovery suggested at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718.

But, he had not purchased Lion before as it was preinstalled on his MacBook Pro. Does he need to purchase Lion now from the App Store while in the recovery mode OR if he doesn't have to buy it, will he get it free?

That's why they say not to install the Developers Preview on your daily machine (as only OS...)

Nevertheless, not having the a Lion disk isn't a obstacle. You should do fine with a decent backup and Lion Recovery Disk Assistance.
If you follow these 7 easy steps, your friend will have his Lion back in no-time.


Restoring iPhone contacts from backup immediately undoes itself By accident, I deleted most of my contacts on my iPhone. They were also on another device, and were deleted from that one as well when they were deleted off of the iPhone. I restored the iPhone from a backup and they appeared for a minute…then disappeared again. I tried to restore it from the backup again and the same thing happened.

How can I fix this?

It is possible that, after restore, you are syncing your iPhone with some source where the contacts have been deleted as well. If so, you will need to stop syncing and/or restore the contacts in that place as well.


How to convert synced photo folders to camera roll folders? I currently sync ~3000 photos from my PC onto my iPhone 3GS. These photos are split into folders on my PC and these folders show up in the Photos app on my iPhone. However, these photos don't show up under the "Camera Roll".

The iCloud Backups page states that iCloud backs up "Photos and video in the Camera Roll".

http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/apps-books-backup.html

I would like to make sure that all my photos get included in an iCloud backup - Is there any way to convert my synced folders so that all the pictures show up in my Camera Roll and the folders show up as regular Photo folders which I can add/delete on my iPhone?

If not, is it possible to get my existing sync'd photos included in iCloud backups?

There is no supported way to do that, for two reasons:  the backup would grow huge, rapidly consuming iCloud space, and non-camera-roll photos are resized to display well on the iPhone while taking minimum space. As such, they're not the "original" photos any more. Backing them up would be a false sense of security.

The best solution is to back up the PC.  The My Pictures folder will get backed up with the rest of your PC data, and you'll have copies of the original, non-resizd images should disaster strike.