Is OS X doing some work after moving .app to trash? I had Spotify installed and was annoyed by the "SpotifyWebHelper" process. So after some research I came up with the information, that it is managed by a background daemon. To disable that, I had to remove a daemon file in some folder outside the .app bundle.

So I gave it a try and simply uninstalled Spotify by dragging the app to the trash. And actually the process stopped as well.

So to me, that implies, OS X is somehow configured to not only trash the .app folder, but to do some cleaning operations as well.

Am I right and are the official sources?

OS X doesn't contain an build-in automatic uninstaller. So it doesn't do "some" work.

AFAIR one exception is (OS X) Server.app. If you move or trash the app all services will be stopped. Even then all accompanying files and folders won't be uninstalled or deleted.

Often apps are self-containing: all files and folders necessary to run the app are in the app.bundle itself. After trashing the app the only remaining files are preferences, cache files and sometime application support files all residing in your or the system's Library folder.

Some apps coming as an Installer.pkg are installed with the Apple Installer.app. Other apps are using a custom installer. Some of them also contain an uninstaller which usually removes all installed files.

A small number of apps come with an somehow "automatic" uninstaller e.g. MagicPrefs: after deleting/trashing the Prefpane file the app uninstalls itself.

Spotify probably installs a launch agent or launch daemon which relies on a file in the Spotify app bundle. After deleting Spotify, the agent/daemon misses its target - the "SpotifyWebHelper" - and as a result the process won't be started. The plist (and some other Spotify related files) is/are probably still there and you have to remove them manually to "clean" your system.

After installing Spotify it indeed installs a launch agent com.spotify.webhelper.plist in ~/Library/LaunchAgents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.spotify.webhelper</string>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <dict>
    <key>NetworkState</key>
    <true/>
    </dict>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/Users/user_name/Library/Application Support/Spotify/SpotifyWebHelper</string>
    <key>SpotifyPath</key>
    <string>/Applications/Spotify.app</string></dict>
</plist>

The executable /Users/user_name/Library/Application Support/Spotify/SpotifyWebHelper relies on the existence of /Applications/Spotify.app. After deleting Spotify.app it won't start.

To remove all remains after deleting Spotify remove the launch agent in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/, the folder Spotify in ~/Library/Application Support/, two prefs files in ~/Library/Preferences/ and several folders in ~/Library/Caches/


How can I check a video file has an alpha channel? I have a bunch of video files (FLV and MOV), some with alpha channels and some without.

How can I efficiently know the ones that have an alpha channel?

Exiftool should report all clips with alpha channels as 32 bit:

exiftool -bitdepth /path/to/your/movie.mov

You can of course specify wildcards when calling exiftool:

exiftool -bitdepth *.mov

Media Inspector may do this as well if you prefer a GUI app.


How can one determine which user deleted a shared file on OS X Mountain Lion Server My girlfriend is a lab technician at a small pharmaceutical startup. She created a very important Excel file and placed it in a shared folder on a server that the "IT" guy set up. The server runs Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8.2).

Last week, this important file went missing from this particular folder. There were several other files in this folder, but they didn't go missing.

She has since been able to recover the file from Time Machine, but wants to know how that file went missing. She assures me that no one in her department is careless enough to delete the file, but perhaps a higher-up with access to the shared file either accidentally moved/deleted the file (or did so deliberately due to the file's contents).

The issue here, is that due to a power struggle within the company, she suspects that someone may have attempted to sabotage (delete or move) this critical file which had data that could move the company forward faster in a particular direction than certain saboteurs would like.

The "IT" guys doesn't know much about server logs, etc. And I'm not a Mac expert. My question is this:

Is there a way to find out who deleted or moved this critical file? Are there file change logs located somewhere on the server that could "prove" this action?

Yes - by default, file deletions are logged along with many other important file sharing events.

Install the Server app on any Mac (or log into the server to run the app there or inspect the log file locally).

Select logs on the left, select AFP Access Log on the bottom and search for the word Delete. Once you've found the file deletion you care about, note the IP address and timestamp. Then search backwards in this log to see what user logged in using that IP immediately prior to that delete event.

You might also seek professional help if you want a forensic analysis rather than performing it yourself. Anyone that can look at the logs can change the logs and how you use this knowledge is more of a social problem than a technical problem. There should be Time Machine or better backups of the server shares, so you should be able to trivially determine the times files are deleted there as well with tools like Backup Loupe and hopefully you find that someone was careless rather than deliberate. Either way, OS X server has sufficient logging to determine a file access oddity if it came from a user that connected to the share as opposed to logging in directly to the server and deleting the file. That event would need additional auditing and logging, but I would start with analyzing the AFP access log since that's normally how files are accessed from a server.


iCloud Contacts web interface on Windows - How to copy an address? I maintain my contact list on an iPad/iPhone and use iCloud's web interface on my desktop PC.

I cannot find any way to copy any data that is also a link, such as a person's address or email, from the iCloud web interface.  The usual Alt-hilight to bypass link-following does not highlight, and right-clicking does not provide any "copy" option.

Is there a way to highlight and copy information from the iCloud web interface when that information is also a link?

After some experimentation in different browsers I have come to the conclusion that on Firefox, the alt-click-drag action to select link text while suppressing link-follow seems to require finer mouse-cursor placement.  Start just outside the bounding box and nothing gets selected; start too far in and one character doesn't get selected.

But at least you CAN select the text.  It goes into the clipboard with each field followed by a newline, but that's a minor issue.  There really should be a "copy to clipboard" button.


Are there any replacement keyboard apps? I'm coming from android which offers tons of keyboards and options. iOS seems like it has no customization to keyboards. Are there apps that offer a different layout or that edit the existing keyboard? I like being able to see the key I will get when I long press a key, etc.

Sorry, but currently, no. Jailbreaking is your only bet (I'd advise against this, though).

In terms of what you want, it sounds like you are describing something that iOS already does. When holding down on the keys, it "magnifies" the key that you are holding so you can see what you are typing. I should mention though that holding down on certain keys will show you options of the same letter with the accents on top. Ex: Holding down the "E" key will give you options such as "E", "È", "É", and "Ę".

Here is an example of the action described above, but with a different option


Iphone advice for plan involving only texting and calling I want to get an iphone for my daughter but I dont want her on internet all the time, what can I do so that she only has texting and calling?

Use the built-in restrictions on the iPhone and disallow to Installing apps as well as Safari. (see this document from Apple.

If you wait for iOS 10 which is due this fall you'll then be able to actually remove most apps which might help out even more.


Why does Cards insist on charging an international price when both addressees are in the US? Although I reside in Austin, TX, I'm currently in Europe and wanted to send my father in New York a birthday card. As soon as I enter his address in Cards, the price changes to $4.99! Even though both the sender's and recipient's address are in the USA, Cards (via Location Services) probably wants to send the card from France, which is absurd!

Isn't there a workaround for this? Would disabling location services and waiting 24 hours work?

The problem was this: under Settings > General > International > Region Format, I had selected France because that's where I currently am. Why this influences the price when the combination of addresses should be the sole determining factor is beyond me. Once I had set the region format back to "United States," I was able to purchase a card for $2.99.


Brand new MBP waking/heating issue I have a 2 day old Macbook Pro, quad core i7, Yosemite. I closed the lid this morning with the power supply plugged in and iTunes, iTerm, and Safari idling. I opened the lid tonight and the screen and back of the computer were warm and it wouldn't wake from whatever 'power saving' state it was in. I had to hold down the power button for about 15 seconds before it restored. Any idea what this could be? I am very anxious about this behavior given Macbook Pro's reputation and price tag and the age of this computer. Thanks.

One thing for sure: it shouldn't act like that.

Beside that it'll be hard to say what was going on -  seems like it was overheating (was the fan running?) and didn't want to start working before cooling at least a bit.

There might be a lot of reasons for that, but keep a close eye on your machine behaviour - should it happened again - definitely get it serviced since it's a brand new machine.


Locating the iBooks folder in iCloud Drive (on Windows) I need to get the iBooks that are saved in iCloud Drive, using Windows, in a folder path and / or command line solution.
This is a spin-off from Locating the iBooks folder in iCloud Drive which only has answers for Apple macOS command line (macOS bash), while I need this for Windows.

Summing up the answer in advance: the folder simply might not exist on Windows.
And the workaround in advance:
If I cannot locate the folder, the only solution is via extraction from the iTunes backup, see:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62434692/iphone-move-in-one-go-all-pdfs-generated-from-safari-page-prints-which-i-fr/62701384#62701384

I found a description that explains the equivalent Windows and Mac folders at https://deciphertools.com/blog/how-to-backup-ibooks-pdfs/.

Where are My iBooks PDFs Stored on my Computer?

On Windows, the iBooks PDF files copied to your iTunes by doing
Transfer Purchases are stored in your computer user's account folder,
alongside your iTunes music. Here's how to find your iBooks PDFs on
your Windows computer: Go into your user account's Music folder. (On
Windows 10, this would show up under This PC -> Music.) Open the
folders iTunes -> iTunes Media -> Books. You should see your PDFs in
this folder.

On Mac, the iBooks PDFs copied by doing Transfer Purchases are tucked
away in data for the iBooks Mac App. Here's how to find your iBooks
PDFs on your Mac: Open Finder, and select the "Go" menu at the top of
the screen. Hold the Option key (or Shift + Option on latest Sierra
builds), and select the "Library" menu option from the Go menu. (On
OSX Lion and above, Library will only appear with the Option key
held.) From Library, navigate to Containers ->
com.apple.BKAgentService -> Data -> Documents -> iBooks -> Books. You
should see your PDFs in this folder.

Then there comes an explanation of how to use iBooks for iCloud, but only on Mac:

First, we need to make sure you've got iBooks turned on for your
iCloud drive documents on your Mac.

From the Apple menu at the top of the screen, select System Preferences.
Select iCloud in System Preferences.
Next to iCloud Drive, press the "Options..." button.
Ensure the iBooks checkbox is checked.

The checkbox "iBooks" does not exist in my iCloud > iCloud Drive settings. This could mean that it is simply not possible to sync iBooks with iCloud on Windows, as @MatthewBarclay commented above. This is also plausible, because my iBooks are backed up, and Apple does only one thing of the both, either sync or backup. And then, to answer the question, there simply is no such folder.
I have also tried opening it in terminal, as it could be hidden like the answer stated at Locating the iBooks folder in iCloud Drive, and I could not find it:
C:\Users\USER\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media>dir /a
does not have it, showing both hidden and unhidden items with /a (for /a see https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001039.htm).
Perhaps my sync settings are corrupt or wrong. Because I marked iBooks to be included in iCloud, but they are in my iTunes backup instead (proven), and they can only be in the backup OR in the iCloud (not in both, thus, they seem to be ONLY in the backup), if I am not mistaken. Settings > scroll down to Books > iCloud Drive is switched on, that cannot be the issue, following https://www.topmobiletech.com/how-to-sync-ibooks-to-all-your-ios-devices/.
I will not test this anymore, please test yourself and set a different answer which I will accept in case you find more.
If I cannot locate the folder, the only solution is via extraction from the iTunes backup, see:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62434692/iphone-move-in-one-go-all-pdfs-generated-from-safari-page-prints-which-i-fr/62701384#62701384


How do I know what to restore from system files? I gave my old MacBook Pro to my partner. Before doing so I deleted myself as the User, created her as User, deleted all of my docs & iPhoto Library. Unfortunately, the computer still thinks I am the User. For example, it tries to access MY iCloud content & asks for MY Apple ID. I've decided to replace the hard drive with a larger capacity one. I use Backblaze for backing up the laptop. If I do a clean install of Mountain Lion & then restore only docs & iPhoto Library from the backup, will that solve the double identity problem?

The erase (or the clean install of the OS) will ensure that only the new user is created. From that point, you can keep track of which files you restore in the unlikely case you feel things have become mixed again - but it's hard to see if you only restored a iPhoto library folder and files in documents how any user identity would be changed on the OS level.


Text Message Forwarding code not showing up My Mac Mini, running El Capitan, and my iPhone 6 Plus are both on the same WiFi network, however when I select the Mac Mini in the Text Message Forwarding settings, it does not send a code to my Mac Mini.

If Messages is not running on my Mac Mini, then selecting the Mac Mini in the Text Message Forwarding settings on my iPhone will start the program, but no code. I have signed out and back in to iCloud on both devices, and I have rebooted both devices. Nothing seems to work.

In fact, everything was working as it should until around the time I updated to El Capitan.

How can I troubleshoot SMS handoff from a cell phone to OS X?

Handoff works over bluetooth primarily, so you don't really need WiFi connectivity. Start by toggling the bluetooth on both devices and see if other handoff / airdrop operations work. That will rule out interference and other issues on the basic connectivity.

You do need to be signed in to the exact same iCloud account on both devices, so checking the clocks of both and signing out and in can often verify iCloud account is operational on both sides.


What is needed to mirror both an iPad and a late-2016 MacBook Pro to an HDTV (non-concurrently)? I want to be able to mirror an iPad Air and a late-2016 MacBook Pro to an HDTV. Not simultaneously, just one at a time. I know I could just get both the lightning to digital av adapter and the usb-c (thunderbolt 3) to digital av adapter, but is there a way to do it where I wouldnt need both? Like maybe a female usb-c to male lightning adapter (but it would need to be able to pass both video and audio).

If it helps reduce the amount of stuff I'd need to purchase, I already have HDMI to HDMI, HDMI to mini HDMI, and HDMI to mini DP (thunderbolt 2).

Do you happen to have an Apple TV?

If so, that would be how I'd do it, using Airplay.

If not, then any Apple TV (2nd generation and above) supports Airplay and you already have the cable (i.e. HDMI to HDMI) that you need to connect it to your HDTV.

The advantage of this is that you also get all the benefits of having the Apple TV as well, not to mention the fact you won't have your iPad or MBP tethered with a cable (or cables) to your HDTV (i.e. the mirroring happens via WiFi and you're able to have the iPad or MBP anywhere you want while mirroring).

If your question is about connecting these devices to any HDTV that you may need to connect to (i.e. not a single one at your home, but to various models in various locations) or you do not want/need an Apple TV, then I'm not aware of a single solution that will pass both video and audio from both devices, but perhaps someone else will have a solution.

[EDIT]

Just checked and Apple are selling refurbished 3rd generation Apple TVs for $59. At that price, it'd be hard to warrant spending the money on cables and/or adaptors, unless you intend to carry them with you in your travels.

You can also buy brand new Apple TV 3 units from places like Target who still have them in stock (since they've been superseded).


iPhone and iPad don't play audio for certain videos Here's the metadata from a video file that does not work on iPad and iPhone. Does anything about the audio stick out at you?

avprobe version 0.8.17-4:0.8.17-0ubuntu0.12.04.1, Copyright (c) 2007-2014 the Libav developers
  built on Mar 16 2015 13:26:50 with gcc 4.6.3
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'Introduction.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
    encoder         : Lavf54.2.100
  Duration: 00:07:54.14, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1148 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264 (High), yuv420p, 1280x720 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 924 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 30k tbn, 59.94 tbc
    Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 216 kb/s

Not at all - nothing in that metadata looks like it would be problematic.

MP3 support is quite good
h264 is one of the preferred codecs for iOS since quite some time.

You may have to check the correctness of the file or transcode it or get a more thorough error confpdition if ones like this fail to play on iOS.


Disabling brief low-res PDF rendering on page transitions in Preview.app I like the built-in Preview.app, but when giving presentations (in particular, when using multiple PDF pages for animated page components such as with LaTeX-beamer) I am annoyed by the brief low-resolution rendering on every page transition.  After about one second, I am getting the desired rendering, but on every keypress, I am first getting an immediate, blocky pre-rendering.

Edit: Here's a QuickTime screencast if the above is difficult to understand

In other programs, I find options such as "pre-render next page [in presentation mode]" or "prefer quality over speed [when rendering PDFs]", but not in the Preview.app preferences.

Is there a hidden way to configure this, or any other solution?

This seems to be a limitation in the underlying MacOS-wide pdf rendering library. I vaguely remember that this problem was introduced by Apple with some PDFkit rewrite (was it in 10.12?).  Before it was working just fine.  You can report this to Apple (and probably nothing will happen) here.

Exactly the same behaviour can also be observed with skim and it curiously also does not have such an option. As skim is open source you might suggest this improvement here.  Maybe the developers will tell you exactly which limitation it is.

Finally, as I'm also annoyed by this and I did not want to install any Adobe products I found that Firefox can render pdfs just fine. If you open your pdf in Firefox and go to presentation mode with ⌥⌘p. This gives me the desired result.  A functional presentation view with no rendering blur on page transition.


Snow Leopard *private* folder? I am running 2 OS flavors on my 2010 Macpro, 10.6.8 Snow Leopard on one startup drive and the latest Yosemite on another.

The Snow Leo drive contains a folder "private" that looked like it was 25GB but once opened and listing subfolders, dropped to under 2GB. What is the purpose of this folder? It doesn't seem to exist on the Yosemite drive at all. The drive is an SSD and anything I can do to keep it smaller would be great. This is the view of the whole drive -

The folder is named private but it's visible, and at the top level of the drive folder system.

All the files and folders within private are needed to run the Operating System and it exists in every version of OS X. The folder private has lost its hidden attribute.


Can I upgrade to OSX 10.9 and format my HD along the way? I want to upgrade from ML to Mavericks but I want to erase and format my HD to a single partition along the way. Is this possible?

Yes you can use disk utility to reformat the Macintosh HD partition during the installation of Mavericks, however if you want to create a new partition using disk utility the you will have to create a Mavericks install USB so you can boot from there.

You can't create a Partition when booted from the same drive hence the need to boot from a USB installer.

Creating a USB installer is as follows, Format the USB thumb drive as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and name the USB thumb drive Untitled

Download Mavericks from the Mac App Store,

Copy and paste this command into terminal,

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app —nointeraction


Checking Certificates Meet Apple Requirements is there a command or UI I can use to test certificates or diagnose why they aren't valid?

A while back Apple changed the requirements for TLS certificates, and announced dates from when those changes would take effect. For example not accepting certificates that last longer than 865 days, requiring extended attributes, etc.

If I use such a certificate, Chrome/Safari don't tell me why it isn't considered invalid if it's an Apple enforced reason such as the ones above.

It'd be great to have a go-to debugging step that'll tell me if a certificate is or isn't good that includes the Apple restrictions.

Clarification: I'm not interested in generating certificates or how to code them. I just want to know how to test if a given certificate is valid on a MacOS system using the terminal or some other OS UI

So it turns out there is an OS level tool, security

For example, I can test if a certificate ca.crt is valid like this:

security verify-cert -c ca.crt

Here's what a valid certificate will look like:

❯ security verify-cert -c ca.crt
...certificate verification successful.

And here's a certificate with a 10 year expiration that violates Apples rules, but is otherwise valid according to OpenSSH:

❯ security verify-cert -c ca.crt
Cert Verify Result: CSSMERR_TP_NOT_TRUSTED


Can my MacBook use F2-5300CL5S RAM from my HP laptop? I have a MacBook with PC2-5300S memory in it. I have an HP laptop with F2-5300CL5S in it. I'd like to take my 2GB modules from my HP and move them into the MacBook. Are these memory modules compatible? Can anything go wrong from using them?

Apparently they are compatible. I just tried it and the machine is zipping along now. It seems that the difference between the modules is latency and caching, which are close enough that the RAM will still work just fine.


Is iTunes Match supposed to slow my phone down so much? Ever since I enabled iTunes Match, I feel like Music.app on my phone has become somewhat unreliable, and cumbersome at best.

When polling for the full list of artists or albums (much less songs), it sometimes takes a full 15-20 seconds of frozen, iPhone-lockup that I don't experience anywhere else. Once I give the list enough time to load, it's more or less good, albeit with noticeable stuttering while scrolling, or lag. Occasionally the whole app will appear frozen and crash. Switching between album and artist view is unfortunately an exercise in patience. This is the only thing that's slow on my otherwise fantastic 16GB iPhone 4, and if there's something I'm missing that could fix the problem I'd be glad to hear it.

Some theories I had: I'm willing to bet there are some hour-long radio shows that got tagged as "Music"-type media, and thus synced up to iTunes Match. Could a handful of long mp3s slow down the service? My library is over 100GB, is this just to be expected with an iTunes Match library of this size? I would assume that regardless of the size of the data library, the information that must be stored locally on the phone to accommodate (album lists + miniature thumbnails) must not be very much.

How could I begin to troubleshoot this?

The size of your iTunes Match is a possible cause for your slowdown in the Music.

Since you cannot have your entire library cached to your device, your device is probably trying to download all of the meta-data, and cover art thumbnails.  I only have around 12GB of music in my iTunes Match library, and I notice some sluggishness whenever things are added or I setup a new device.

Another cause of slowdown is actually the amount of images in the view.  Unfortunately, it is common for the device to become less responsive when there are a large number of images in a single, scrollable view.


How to connect an iMac 2011 to an HDMI laptop? I have a 2011 iMac with one Thunderbolt 1 port and one FireWire port. Is there a way to use one of those ports to connect the iMac to an HDMI laptop so that it can be used as an external display? Unfortunately this model of iMac does not have Mini DisplayPort.

Mactracker (backed up by Apple's specs here) indicates that the Thunderbolt port is also a video output:

Thunderbolt:    1 - Thunderbolt 1 (up to 10 Gbps)
Display:    Thunderbolt digital video output (Support for up to two Thunderbolt displays)

You should be able to use a MDP to HDMI adapter like this one from Belkin.

In our testing at my workplace, the Belkin adapters are the most robust.


Macbook Pro mid-2012 restarts after entering password Macbook Pro mid-2012 restarts after entering password and gives an error after restart

I'm unable to use any other boot command like Command + R etc as it leads to a screen with a lock and I've forgotten firmware password. I've even tried the trick to swap/remove rams and reset nvram 3 times, but nothing works.

How can I start my macbook?

Without the firmware password you will need to take your machine to an Apple Store or official Service Provider, along with proof of ownership.

Ref: Apple KB: How to set a firmware password on your Mac

The old 'remove the RAM' or 'reset NVRAM' tricks etc only work with older PowerPC Macs, not Intel.


Connect 2 external Monitors with Belkin's Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD I need a little help here,

I have attached my MacBook Air Mid 2013, to an Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD.
On the product page it says that one can connect two monitors. The only condition is that one needs to be an Thunderbolt display. So far so good.

I attached one monitor with HDMI to the dock and another using the mini display port (which is compatible to Thunderbolt).
Unfortunately just the one with Mini-DP is working. If I disconnect the Mini-DP Monitor HDMI starts working.

Is there any advice why this is not working?

AND

Is there any option to make it work?

OSX 10.9.4 @ MacBook Air Mid 2013
Mini-DP Monitor: 2560x1080
HDMI-Monitor: 1920x1080

ref: EveryMac

*Although Apple only reports that this model can support a single external display up to 2560x1600, Intel reports that this model can simultaneously support two external displays up to 2560x1600 "daisy chained" via Thunderbolt.

From Belkin's page on the Thunderbolt™ 2 Express Dock HD …

  "Note about dual displays: At least one display has to be Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 2 technology-ready. For displays that are not Thunderbolt technology-ready, the Thunderbolt port is backwards compatible with Mini DisplayPort. The dock supports either HDMI or Mini DisplayPort, but not both. The dock supports only one display at 4K cinema resolution."


Mac OS asking for password too early/often I have a 2008 aluminum Macbook running Snow Leopard, and I have set it to ask for my account's password after 4 hours inactivity. However, it sometimes asks for it much earlier, after just a few minutes of inactivity. This also happens when waking the Mac up from (a short) sleep, but when that happens, the screen usually stays completely dark: I know it's actually asking for my password because if I enter it, the screen "unlocks" and starts working normally; if I press Esc instead, the computer stops again (and works normally if I wake it up again).

This appears to be a random behavior that I cannot reproduce at will. It happens quite often after a stop, but only rarely otherwise (i.e. without sleeping).

Does anybody have a clue about what could be going on?

Go to System Preferences > Security and Privacy > General and disable Require Password.


Why does everything on my Desktop show up on all my desktops? I have multiple desktops defined, which I use for different projects. How come everything I save to my Desktop when I'm working in, say,  Desktop 1 shows up on all my desktops?

Maybe I don't properly understand Desktops.

What you are referring to are called Spaces in macOS lingo.

While Spaces are named as numbered desktop as Desktop 1, Desktop 2 etc. they are essentially all the same, except giving you are a means of organizing app windows.

Each Space gets access to the same Desktop and hence shows the files available in it.

If you choose to use external display(s), the Desktop is not shown on the Spaces of the non-primary displays.


Export/Import Sublime Text 3 Configuration Across Two different Apple Computers I would like to export my configurations for Sublime Text 3 from one Apple Computer to another.
Can I just copy the application in the /Applications/ directory from one computer to another?
Or do I need to install each package one-by-one on the new computer?
Any help would be appreciated!

Your question is a bit unclear the way it is worded, so hopefully I got the gist of it.

If you already have a license for Sublime text (or it is share/freeware), then yes all you have to do is copy it from one Mac to another. You can do this with thumb drives, over the network or just download a fresh copy from the developer's web site.

You are not "creating" an app, you are just copying it.

If you check the developer's web site it should indicate what version(s) of macOS the app you have is compatible with. You may need to know what version you have (Sublime Text menu > About Sublime Text) as often different versions are compatible with only some versions of macOS.


WhatsApp won't download on iPhone 7 My new iPhone 7 was accidentally wiped by our IT dept. I have managed to restore everything except WhatsApp, which is just showing a cloud with down arrow. I have deleted it from my iCloud drive and rebooted the phone but still no joy. HELP!

I think Your problem description is not clear.
As I can possibly imagine, the downloading process is stuck.
First of all, make sure that Your Wi-Fi or Network is connected, then make sure that You have deleted stuck WhatsApp from Your iPhone home screen. Then open AppStore app and download new WhatsApp app. It should work.


Extremely poor bulk file copy speeds on AFP shares in Yosemite Some hardware background: I manage a 3D graphics lab of about a dozen iMac clients running 10.10.5 and a Mini running Server 10.10.2 (Server.app v4.0.3 / build 14S350). The Mini is in a Sonnet xMac enclosure, which connects it via Thunderbolt to an Areca ARC-1883X SAS RAID controller and a SmallTree P2E10G-1-T 10Gb Ethernet card. The Areca manages two 40TB SAS RAIDs and the SmallTree card connects the Mini via Cat6a to a NetGear ProSafe XS708E 10GbE switch. The iMacs are all wired over 1GbE Cat6 to an HP 1810-48G switch, which is in turn connected over a 6Gb trunk to the NetGear switch.

My artists have been running into an issue with bulk file copies between directories of the AFP share on the Mini that they work out of. They frequently render sequences of hundreds or thousands of images, and after these images get rendered to their output folder they then have to be copied to a second directory for our compositors to work with. The copy operation absolutely CRAWLS. One example, from a half hour ago: 861 .exr files, totaling about 350MB, took about 3 hours before we killed it at ~75% and instead did it from the server's desktop via screen sharing in about 30 seconds (But our artists do this dozens of times a day and of course can't be given access to screen share with the server, so this is not a solution). They don't always hang like that, but we run into such a case at least once every day and all bulk copies go way slower than they should. This only happens with large groups of files: We can copy a single 300MB file between directories pretty much instantaneously.

I've done some tests, and this appears to be a Yosemite client issue more than anything. I run Mountain Lion on my own laptop and did some tests, in 10.8 and 10.10, on wifi and wired ethernet, and in both local and network profiles since our artists sign into network accounts. Some limited results for 300 .exr files totaling 133MB:

10.8 / Wifi / Local profile: 300 items copy in 53 sec

10.8 / Wired / Local profile: 300 items copy in 47 sec

10.10 / Wired / Local profile: 300 items copy in 223 sec

10.10 / Wired / Network profile: 300 items copy in 263 sec

Network accounts are slightly slower, but the big egregious difference seems to be 10.8 client vs 10.10 client. Again, the problem is with long lists of files and not with single monolithic files. Our straight up ethernet speeds to the server are fantastic: In both 10.8 and 10.10 Blackmagic Speed Test I get 110MB/sec+ read and write to the server, and only slightly slower on Wireless N wifi. This only becomes an issue when we need to copy long lists of files, which we need to do many times a day.

ANY help to figure out what's going wrong here would be much appreciated! This is driving us absolutely insane at this point and is killing productivity. Happy to post any requested logs or attempt any suggested system tweaks. Thank you!

Here's how I would attack the issue. It's not an answer, but hopefully we can crowd source ideas until you can report success or at least a way to measure things.

Set up a test case client with no third party apps running at log in. Reboot that client and mount the network share. Run sudo sysdiagnose Finder before you start a copy.
Start a tcp trace on the network adapter you will copy the file. If you aren't connecting over en0 - use System Information to see the BSD name of the network connection.
Once the trace is started, start the copy of the file in question.
After 3 minutes (or less if the transfer is done sooner), press Control+C to end the capture
Run a second sudo sysdiagnose Finder after the network capture

With this slow of a transfer speed, something seriously amiss is happening in the network stack, but without looking at the client logs, it's going to be hard to know for sure what's halting the operation. You might also run a sysdiagnose on the server side once at about the same time as you do on the client side to eliminate a slow server as the issue. It seems you have plenty of horsepower for the storage to move rapidly, but getting server side logs will help too:

sudo sysdiagnose
sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/serverdiagnose

The trace is:

sudo tcpdump -i en0 -s 0 -B 524288 -w ~/Desktop/AFPslow.pcap


iPad VGA output for the iPod app? I'm trying to get an iPad to play a video playlist through the VGA output cable. The only way I know of to play a video playlist is through the iPod app. The problem, is that the iPod  app doesn't output the video through the VGA cable.

Is there any way to get it to output correctly? Or is there another way to play the video playlist?

I would just look in the app store for a video playback app that supports VGA output. Lots of them do now.

You don't need to jailbreak your phone.

Here is an app called "StreamToMe" that supports playback of your videos over 3G and Wi-Fi and has VGA output.

StreamToMe: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/streamtome/id325327899?mt=8#


How to permanently delete pictures from all devices in Apple ecosystem? So I've done incredibly silly things with a friend of mine over the past couple of years and there are a ton of pictures and videos where I look bad.

I want to get rid of all those compromising photos and videos which would immediately destroy me in the eyes of anyone.

I can sit down with him and ask him to go through everything on his phone together and delete whatever I deem horrendous.  I know nothing about iCloud and backups and whatnot.  I want a guarantee that everything will be deleted (after also deleting the contents of the "recently deleted" album) - from all backups and clouds and devices.

Is there any way for me to be certain of that?

He  owns many iPhones and uses at least 2 at any time. He also has Macs and an Apple Watch. He is also paying for iCloud. I also own an iPhone but he is the true Apple power user and he can play me any way he wants to. He has some of my passwords too.

The answer to your question in the title is one thing, but then there's the question within your post:

  Is there any way for me to be certain of that?

For all practical purposes that question can really only be answered as a no. To be clear, you can never be 100% certain.

However, the closest you can get (without him losing all his other data*) is to arrange a get together with him at his home (without any indication as to why) and then be there with him as he:

On his Mac

logs into his Mac and shows you the photos in the Photos app and, while doing so, make a note of some of the filenames of those photos and videos and then sit there as he deletes all of the items you want deleted
shows you his Photos app preferences by going to Photos > Preferences and pay particular attention as to what, if anything, is enabled in terms of iCloud and then disable these
goes into Finder and empties the Trash (or Bin, depending on version of macOS)
also in Finder, get him to press the command + shift + . keys at the same time so that hidden files are visible and then use commandF to search his Mac for the filenames you made note of at Step 1 to see if any had been saved elsewhere and, if so, get him to go to those locations and delete them all before emptying the Trash again
shows you what other user accounts he has on his Mac (this is done by going to Apple > System Preferences > Users & Groups) and, if he has other accounts, getting him to:

log into each of them and show you what is in the Photos app (if anything) and repeat the first four steps above

On his iPhones/iPads

deletes the photos from all his iPhones, iPads etc (including the Recently Deleted album afterwards), and making sure you check any albums he has created (incl. Shared Albums) and checking what, if anything, is in the Hidden album (located at the very bottom of the Albums page just above Recently Deleted
Opens the Setting app on each of his iPhones and taps on his name at top so you can:

see the iCloud email account listed under his name and make a note of these
tap on the iCloud icon and then on the Photos option to see what options are enabled and disable anything that may be a concern (Note: Photo Stream only uploads photos from the last 30 days, so if you haven't done anything in that period you need not be worried about this option)

Back on his Mac

goes back to his Mac and uses Safari (or another web browser) to go to icloud.com to log into each of the iCloud accounts you made note of at Step 7 and:

tapping on Photos to check what photos, if any, are stored there that you need him to delete
tapping on iCloud Drive to check what files, if any, are stored there that you need him to delete

shows you his Time Machine settings at Apple > System Preferences > Time Machine and look to see if a backup has ever been made (e.g. does it list a drive and show the dates of his oldest and latest backups). If he has been using Time Machine, make a note of any drive names listed and get him to

disable Time Machine
use Disk Utility to erase his Time Machine backup drives

shows you his macOS version by going to Apple > About This Mac. If:

it shows macOS Catalina, skip to Step 11
otherwise, get him to open up iTunes and then go to iTunes > Preferences > Devices and delete any backups that are listed and to repeat this for each user account on his Mac

get him to connect his iPhone to his Mac and then:

open up a Finder window and select his iPhone from the list of devices listed in the Sidebar
select the General tab to make the Backups section visible
click on Manage Backups and then proceed to delete any iPhone backups on his computer
repeat these steps for each device and user account on his Mac

IMPORTANT

There are a lot of things to consider, so it's highly likely that I will have missed something in the steps above
Assuming your friend will agree to doing all of the above (and that's a big assumption), this is still no guarantee that all of these photos/videos will be gone. There is no way for you to  verify that he has never made copies of them on other devices (e.g. USB sticks, Dropbox, etc) or even within other apps on his iPhone, Mac, etc.
There is also no guarantee that he will not try to use data recovery software to recover items from his external drives.

* That is, it is not realistic to expect him to take more extreme measures to give you this certainty as it would involve him losing all his data


Is there no way to display an o with a macron (ō) in the Gill Sans supplied with OSX / iOS? I’d like to use the character ‘ō’ in an app we’re building, and in its accompanying promotional website. We’re using Gill Sans for the interface font, but it seems to lack this character in the regular weight (it’s there in light). Am I missing something?

I just checked the font, and it's correct, that character is not there in Gill Sans, Gill Sans Bold, Gill Sans Italic, or Gill Sans Light Italic.  In fact, I've been checking out Monotype who made the font files, and they don't have that character in most of their versions of the typeface either.  Monotype does offer a Gill Sans Cyrillic Volume which you could license, if Gill Sans and the o with a macron are both essential to your app.

From Monotype's site, here's a sample of Gill Sans Cyrillic Regular:


Why does my MBP Retina Mid 2012 show Intel HD 4000 when it came with an Nvidia GT 650M? When I click the Apple logo in the top left -> About This Mac -> more info... I see:

  Graphics Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024 MB

But I bought it with nVidia GT 650m graphics. So I click the Displays tab and again it shows Intel HD Graphics 4000. So I then go back to the Overview tab and click System Report... -> Graphics/Displays. Intel HD Graphics 4000 is highlighted, but below it I finally see the NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M!

Is my system using Intel HD Graphics 4000 instead of the more powerful GT 650M graphics? The machine has been amazing, but Unreal Engine 4 is a bit slow.

As long as you have set "Automatic Graphics Switching" in
System Preferences > Energy Saver
discreet graphics get automatically switched on when you need it.
(via)

If you are interested there are applications that let you easily force the switch such as gfxCardStatus


Can a MacBook Pro13-inc, 2.9GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7 use CL9 memory reliably? Looking for a memory upgrade for a macbook pro 13-inc, 2.9GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7, The Apple specifications call for CL11 RAM.

The question is if it will work fine with a CL9 memory so I can take advantage of benchmark improvements like this?

Personally, I wouldn't risk buying anything that is not explicitly supported. You may run into problems in the long term if the memory modules draw too much power or are too fast/slow.

You may want to check corsair.com/en-us/…, a 2x8GB memory module pack with 11-11-11-30 CAS timing (that is, CL=11, as Apple recommends). Corsair states that their "memory kits are tested at Apple Developer Compatibility Labs and work with most MacBook® Pro, iMac®, and Mac mini systems shipped in 2011 and newer."

Since you mention in a comment that you plan on installing 16 GB while Apple only officially supports 8 GB: I bought 16 GB for my MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011) and it works like a charm, although Apple's documentation states the maximum installable memory is 8 GB.

Since my Mac has a non supported configuration, if I go to a Genius Appointment in an Apple Store I consequently replace my non-stardard modules with the original ones.

To summarize:

Stick to Apple's specs (speed, type, voltage, format, etc).
If other people confirm that more than the supported amount of RAM works, it is definitely worth a try. It will either work or fail, but it won't burn your computer's motherboard of anything. See this question at superuser for some opinions on this topic.

(Disclamer: I'm in no way affiliated to Corsair.)


Time Machine stopped backing up my Photos Library two years ago I recently had to restore a Mojave Mac Mini from Time Machine.  It all seems to go well until I discovered that the Photos Library was gone.  After looking through the TM backup, I see the last time it was backed up was 2018.  I did nothing I can imagine to exclude it. It's un-backed-up state is confirmed on a second off-site backup started in Feb of this year; the file simply does not exist.
There are no TM exclusion rules that would have prevented the file from being backed up.

I suppose I'm out of luck on a recent version of the file, but why would this have happened?  Unless I'm missing something, this brings into question whether TM is a viable tool for backups.
Update
I decided to take my lumps and restore the old library.  17 GB of data is better than none.  I did check the next time TM ran and it happily backed up the library!  Note that I did not change any settings.
This gives me great pause in relying on Time Machine for backups.  It archives many of the files on my disk, but if it misses even one, that is always going to be the one that you need.
Also of note, this is the only machine I administer that I don't use a belt-and-suspenders approach to backups.  All my other machines have at least one TM backup plus a bootable backup with Carbon Copy Cloner.  I just ran out of CCC licenses for this machine.

Time machine constantly takes snapshots of each file, this simply is a lot of data, and being conservative is important for the sake of the consumer's end. Harddrive reads and writes are expensive! Especially when it is the eventual cause for a harddrive to fail and a critical system backup is therefore lost on the consumer's end.
Apple offers ~/Pictures/Photos Library to be backed up to iCloud by default, and is cutting a corner for saving your backup. Time Machine also doesn't backup many large system files that apple deems a "defaulted" file from macOS and easily reclaimed from remote apple servers.
Unrelated side-note: You can argue 5GB of free iCloud Storage isn't enough for even the Photos library alone, and you're right. But its incentive for you to pay for their service.


Unable to map \UA using DefaultKeyBinding.dict I am using a german Windows keyboard and want to map the key with <>| on it to actually really write these symbols. Currently it writes

<>| without modifier:        ^
<>| with option key:         „
<>| with command or control: nothing

Using the app Key codesI figured out that <>| has a unicode of 0xA, so I tried these mappings in my DefaultKeyBinding.dict:

"\UA" = ("insertText:", "<");  // forgot what this becomes
"$\UA" = ("insertText:", ">"); // becomes ° instead of <
"~\UA" = ("insertText:", "|"); // becomes „ instead of |

I commented right next to it what's the result after of course logging out and logging in again. Other key mappings work fine, I even disabled them during testing to make sure there are no conflicts.

Can anyone help me with this? What am I doing wrong? Is there any way to debug this?

Note: The key I am talking about can be seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_keyboard_layout#/media/File:KB_Germany.svg It is the key over the left windows key.

Update:
I think I found one part of the issue: I confused unicode code and key code. MacOS expects the unicode code, I gave the key code. The problem I have is that the Key Codes app gives no unicode code for the key with <>| on it, only a key code (0xA -> \UA in DefaultKeyBinding.dict)

Update2:
found the solution, see my answer below.

An easy alternative is to make a custom layout with Ukelele.  See if this one does what you need.


iPhone photos still stuck on "Restoring from iCloud" I'm on the second day of processing and it still shows under all my photos "Restoring from iCloud". Should it also show at the iCloud backup that its restoring?  Thinking about resetting my phone and do the back up or maybe I should just wait.

I have about 13k items altogether with pictures and videos. I think nothing is happening because the blue progress bar is not moving. I do notice when I unplug the power it will ask if I'd like to resume for an hour without power.

When syncing data from iCloud, you should remember that iOS syncs large data only when on Wi-Fi and charging. Please try the following:

Sign out from iCloud, then sign back in.
Put your device charging overnight with a good Wi-Fi connection.

Be patient and keep in mind that download speed also depends on your Wi-Fi. If it's slow, downloading will take longer.


Replacement for obselete OpenDNS Umbrella App on iPhone I have been a Prosumer OpenDNS Umbrella customer for years, but their App isn't being upgraded to 64-bit, so it won't work with iOS 11. It provides Umbrella's protections and also allows filtering by category of all internet traffic to/from an iPhone. This has saved me multiple times when I've mistyped web addresses and it reassures me that my child won't as likely stumble across inappropriate content.

Is there another similar product to OpenDNS's prosumer Umbrella for iPhones? I've searched online and keep coming across OpenDNS Umbrella or simple VPNs that don't have the same filtering capabilities or that go overboard (in my opinion) requiring jailbreaking the iPhone so that it can "spy" on all of your users' iPhone activity for you.

Simply blocking adult content in Safari is possible (as suggested here, go to Settings->General->Restrictions->Allowed Content->Limit Adult Content. But that only automatically blocks one category and doesn't necessarily block malicious sites and so many other features I like about OpenDNS Umbrella.

I'm not a company, so I don't think I can use Cisco's other VPN commercial products to do the same thing. And if I could, it would cost a minimum of $380/year for a minimum of 10 users. Prosumer OpenDNS Umbrella has been only $20/year per user who can put it on up to 3 mobile devices.

cross posted on Software Recommendations

I’m using DNS Override and it is working well.

With it, you can choose one DNS provider for all WiFi networks your phone connects to as well as for cellular data. It is supposed to be compatible with services that allow you to block web content by category.


Cannot label two mobile numbers as mobile on one contact I try to label two cell/mobile numbers on one contact but the second will not accept the "Mobile" label and shows "Home".  Hence there is no message bubble to send message from second mobile number.  How can I fix this?

Works well for me. The first time I put in the second number, it made it into a "Home" number, but when I edited the contract again and changed it to "Mobile" again, then it works just like it's supposed to.

What version if iOS are you running? I'm running iOS 8.4 (I need to update to 8.4.1) on my iPhone 5S. The only thing that I can think of is a bug in the version of iOS that you're running.


window hidden behind menu the top of my photoshop is hidden under my mac menu and I can't seem to get it back to normal

shift/click/drag from the left-hand edge, which you can see, & the entire window will resize from all sides.

You can then drag it back into view.


What does "Lost Mode Pending" mean? In Find My iPhone, once setting the parameters to enable Lost Mode, the screen displays the status as Lost Mode Pending.

Pending? Why is it pending?
Outside of the Lost Mode feature, I don't otherwise have a lock on my phone.

How long will it be pending? Will the person with my phone be able to read my incoming texts while it continues to pend?

It will remain pending until it connects to the Internet.

It is recommended to change your Apple ID and other affected passwords, although if connected to Internet, the device should enforce the Lost Mode and protect your content.

If the person who has your phone has prevented it to connect prior to you having set up the Lost Mode information present on your iPhone is visible to them until it connects.

It will be forever pending if it is put on recovery mode before being connected to Internet, but it won't be usable because of Activation Lock. In this case your data will be erased.


Is there any way to disable the iPhone 5's passcode functionality while connected to Xcode? It don't know if a solution exists or not but I couldn't find anything on Google or Ask Different, so here goes:

I have an iPhone 5 with iOS 6 and when developing and testing I always have to enter a passcode to test my applications. Is there any way to make sure I dont enter the passcode every time when it's connected to Xcode 4.5.

I know that I can disable it during development, etc... but that defeats the purpose of phone security if you need to rush out quickly for work, etc...

It would be great if anyone has the solution for this so it just works!

No, there's no way to disable the passcode lock solely when you're connected to your system and using Xcode.

  I know i can disable it during development etc... but it defeats the
  purpose of phone security when you need to rush out quickly for work
  etc.....

As much as it defeats the purpose of security to disable the passcode, having functionality to selectively disable it when using Xcode would be an even bigger security issue.


How long should Lion take to set up Spotlight? I updated my Mac from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to Lion. Everything went well. The computer restarted when the OS setup finished. Now, Spotlight setup has been running for more than two hours. Is something wrong? In the meantime, I can't open the App Store or Software Update.

First off - Spotlight works incrementally as you write any data to the drive. This processing has filters and pattern detectors that extract information from files and store those "nuggets" in a database structure that allows spotlight to find things.

Lion changed the filters, so your old database is now out of date. The entire hard drive has now to pass through the changed filters one time. The first pass could be done in about the same time as the install took if you have nothing on the mac.

It's hard to know what type of files you have - as spotlight will take a lot longer to index a 5 MB text file than it will a 5 MB music file. Using the mac will slow down the updating, so many people turn off spotlight after an upgrade and let it do the entire drive scan over night or when you are away from the Mac so it can just do that one task without slowing you down.

I would say most macs that can run Lion should be done indexing in 12 hours unless there are problems. Those problems usually have messages in the console log (/var/log/system.log) - but it's probably just something you need to wait out.


Apple iPhone calendar My iPhone 5C dumped information already set from calendar and won't save new events to the calendar. I am able to enter the event information but when I tap on "add" the information is not saved to that calendar date.

it was working fine then all of a sudden pre-entered events are missing and new events are not saved when "add" is tapped.

It looks like an issue with your default iPhone calendar account. How many calendars do you have on your iPhone? I'd suggest that you go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and under the "Calendars" section, see what calendar account exactly is set as Default.

The account set as default will be the place where all newly-created events will be saved to.


IPhone 6s battery usage for restart Last night, not having a means to charge an IPhone 6s I turned it off. The battery level indicator at that point said the remaining charge was 21%. Restarting the phone in the morning, the battery level indicator said 11%. Does turning off and starting it several hours later normally require 10% of battery?

EDIT: the phone was completely powered off. Hold down the right-side button and slide to power off. It was in that state for at 10 hours. I wouldn't expect any power usage in such a state.

One user's experience can differ from another for a range of factors (e.g. the age of your iPhone 6s battery, the number of charge cycles it's had, etc), so what is normal for you may not be normal for someone else.

An iPhone will typically use some percentage of battery over night, but how much will depend on whether it's fully shut down or just in Airplane Mode (your question doesn't really specify). If it's only in Airplane Mode, then the iPhone is not actually switched off and a number of sensors etc are still fully operational and therefore require some power.

Also, it's not clear from your question what you mean by several hours, but I think a 10% discharge over 6-8hrs is not uncommon.

You can find a lot more info by reading what Apple has to say about it's batteries.


Conflicting libpng.16.16.dylib On my mac book (OS X 10.12.4) I have two libpng.16.16.dylib: one in /opt/X11/bin, for which otool reports

/opt/X11/lib/libpng16.16.dylib:
    /opt/X11/lib/libpng16.16.dylib (compatibility version 43.0.0, current version 43.0.0)
    /usr/lib/libz.1.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.2.5)
    /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1226.10.1)

and another in Users/me/anaconda/lib with anaconda's python installation, for which otool reports

/Users/me/anaconda/lib/libpng16.16.dylib:
    @rpath/libpng16.16.dylib (compatibility version 44.0.0, current version 44.0.0)
    /usr/lib/libz.1.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.2.5)
    /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1197.1.1)

In my start-up script, I set DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH to include /opt/X11/lib.

Now, when I want to import matplotlib from ipython3 (of the anaconda distribution), I get an error

ImportError: dlopen(/Users/walter1/anaconda/lib/python3.6/site-packages/matplotlib/_png.cpython-36m-darwin.so, 2): Library not loaded: @rpath/libpng16.16.dylib
  Referenced from: /Users/walter1/anaconda/lib/python3.6/site-packages/matplotlib/_png.cpython-36m-darwin.so
  Reason: Incompatible library version: _png.cpython-36m-darwin.so requires version 44.0.0 or later, but libpng16.16.dylib provides version 43.0.0

So it appears that dlopen tries /opt/X11/lib/libpng.16.16.dylib rather than the one under anaconda.

Is there a way to avoid this w/o changing DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH? I cannot remember why I set DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH like this, but what would the effect be of omitting /opt/X11/lib from it?

I can think of some ways.

Backup your /opt/X11/lib/libpng.16.16.dylib. And replace the file with either symlink to the file under anaconda or directly paste the file.
I think the environment variables can have multiple paths, like $PATH variable. I found that the path you have in front has the precedence over the ones that are written behind it. For example, if your path is /usr1/:/usr2/ then it should check the usr1 directory first and see if the required file exists, before moving to the second one. So you could possibly put your anaconda path in front of the /opt/X11/lib/libpng.16.16.dylib.
I believe symlinking the file is the best way. I have experienced that kind of things before, I just had to add a symlink and it's fixed.

This answer might explain your last question.


Deleted (but not cleared) voicemails not visible on iPhone 5 Background:
I have an iPhone 5, iOS 8.3, carrier Verizon, and I currently can't get voicemails because my saved voicemails are filling all the available space.

I've found several articles about how to delete voicemails, such as the following:
http://www.igeeksblog.com/how-to-delete-all-voicemail-messages-on-iphone-in-ios-8/
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/ios-8-actually-delete-voicemails-iphone/

I've deleted the old voicemails, but I still cannot get new voicemails, so the deleted old ones are clearly still stored in a delete queue (as I've read they are supposed to be). The problem, though, is that I am apparently supposed to see a link to these deleted messages at the bottom of the Voicemail list.
It's not there -- there's just the short list of voicemails I saved, and then blank space.

Now I'm stumped, since all the resources I've found just assume the deleted messages will be accessible in this way.

Question:
Are there any relevant settings I could change to make the deleted messages queue visible (or would a Reset All Settings possibly do the trick)?

Is there any other way to get to the messages and delete them (perhaps I should just contact Verizon)?

I solved my problem by resetting the network settings from Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings (this course of action is actually recommended in the igeeksblog post I linked, but for the circumstance where Clear All is disabled rather than for the particular circumstance my phone was in). After this, I was able to call my phone and successfully leave a voicemail. I also tested out deleting a new voicemail, and it went into a Deleted Messages queue that is now visible at the bottom of my Voicemail Tab, as usual.


How do I correct errors in album/work/song/track in Gracenote after the CD is already imported into iTunes? While a CD is importing, I can select tracks, Get Info, edit, and Submit CD Track Names... (which apparently submits many of the other fields).

But if there are too many errors to get before the import finishes, what then?  I don't find the submit on any other menu or screen except the import, which doesn't exist when not importing.

Aha!  If I turn off the eject after import option (which the latest update turned off without asking me!), then the import window stays there and I can continue to edit and submit.

Or, I can say No to the import, do my editing, submit corrections, then Import.

Third option, re-insert the CD, make corrections, submit, re-import (it will ask me whether I want to replace the previously imported files).

(Unfortunately, it won't let me edit some tags, but that's another question.)


How can I select all files of a type in a non-Finder, application window? The Applescript below looks at the front open finder window, finds the file type of a file that is selected, and then highlights all files of that file type. I.e., if a finder window has a mix of .jpg, .png and .webp files, the script finds the one file that is selected (such as a .jpg) and then selects all .jpg files.

try
    tell application "Finder" to set the source_folder ¬
        to (folder of the front window) as alias
on error -- no open folder windows
    --set the source_folder to path to desktop folder as alias
    --problem is a window can be open but out of focus
    beep
end try

tell application "Finder"
    set selectionList to {} & selection as list
    set selectedCount to count items in selectionList

    if selectedCount > 0 then
        set nameExtension to name extension of item 1 in selectionList
        select (every item where name extension ¬
            is nameExtension) of (folder source_folder)
    end if
end tell

How would I modify this so it works with an application like the FTP client Transmit? Transmit is Applescript aware and appears in the Applescript Dictionary.

Of course, simply changing tell application "Finder" to tell application "Transmit" doesn't work, since source_folder throws an error as it's looking for a finder window and not an application window.

Here is the scripting definition file for the latest version of Transmit, downloaded today from the Panic homepage.

  Transmit.app AppleScript Terminology

Conclusion: Having read through the terminology and running a few brief tests in Script Editor to pass the time in an Apple Store, I highly suspect it is not possible to use AppleScript to select files in a Transmit file browser.

Justification: Most notably, there is no command that is called select, or with a name indicative of a similar function. Also lacking is any property belong to any element or class object that sounds like selected or selection.

There is a class of object belonging to a file browser called a selected browser item. This, as you may be able to guess, is an object reference to the currently selected file(s) in the file browser. Therefore, it is possible to retrieve a list of files currently selected:

tell application id "com.panic.Transmit"
    tell the front document
        if not (exists) then return null
        tell the current tab
            tell the local browser
                get the name of every selected browser item
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

Any attempts to set the selected browser items either collectively or individually by index was unsuccessful.
 Invoking the make command to create a new selected browser item also failed.

Sorry that this might not be the answer you were hoping for.


Cannot remove part of $PATH I trying to fix any problem I have in brew doctor, so I see:

Warning: Some directories in your path end in a slash.
Directories in your path should not end in a slash. This can break other
doctor checks. The following directories should be edited:
    /usr/local/Cellar/node/5.0.0/bin/

I look into ~/.profile, ~/.bash_profile, /etc/paths – and don't see this path.

There is no files in /etc/paths.d/ folder that contains this string.

So where this $PATH part from?

From your question it sounds like the problem is a directory ending in a /. And it sounds like Homebrew is telling you the directory causing the error is /usr/local/Cellar/node/5.0.0/bin/. If this is the case then you simply need to remove the trailing / from this directory.

But it also sounds like you are saying you don't see this problem directory in your $PATH. Running echo $PATH will show you which directories are in your PATH. If your PATH contains a lot of directories as mine does, this can be a little hard to read. So maybe you are just overlooking it?

In any case, here is a simple script to show you all the directories in your PATH; 1 per line.

#!/bin/bash

# save IFS to a variable
old_IFS=${IFS$' \t\n'}

#set IFS to a colon
IFS=':'

for item in ${PATH[@]}
do
    echo $item
done

# set IFS back to the default setting
IFS=$old_IFS

Or if you prefer copy and paste directly in your terminal:

old_IFS=${IFS-$' \t\n'}; IFS=':'; for item in ${PATH[@]}; do echo $item; done; IFS=$old_IFS

Or an even simpler way as pointed out by fd0 in the comments:

tr -s ':' '\n' <<<"$PATH"

This also has the added advantage of not needing to mess around with IFS.

Using any of the above scripts, if you find a line ending in a / then you've found the culprit.


Create a line separation for finder in the dock? (osx 10.10) I was wondering if it would be possible to create a line separator for the finder app, just like the one found next to the trash can?

The only behaviour difference that I'd like is for the line to display to the right of the finder app, not left.

I've done a lot of googling with no luck, I can only find a command to create transparent seperations:

Using:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{ "tile-type" = "spacer-tile"; }'
killall Dock

Is anyone aware of how to do this?

I've created a binary release for a project called Vertical Bar that lets you add as many vertical bars as you want to the macOS dock.

Project here:
https://github.com/afallon02/VerticalBar


Reduce file size of pdf text file scanned with app I had scanned 11 sites of a document in black and white and exports it as an pdf file. With two different known apps I got a file size of about 8MB. I tried different solutions with ColorSync filter or ghostScript commands but the pdf size does not shrink noticeable.

With scans from a printer I got pdf files with about 10 percent of that size without loss of quality. Does anyone knows how to reduce a large pdf file?

You can use sites like Compress FDF (https://smallpdf.com/compress-pdf), PDF Compressor (https://pdfcompressor.com/), or Compress PDF online (https://www.ilovepdf.com/compress_pdf). Remember, google is always there for you.


Songs missing on iOS 8 after sync So, a radical edit, since I'm still having issues, and it's NOT the upgrade process, it's just the sync process.

Anyways, when I sync my phone to iTunes, a lot of my song files disappear from my phone.  The songs appear to be on the phone, the playlist has items, even album artwork. It seems all the metadata is still there.  Just the actual songs are missing. Trying to play most anything just fails with a missing song icon on the device as it quickly skips most files in the playlist. Files from iTunes itself do have the files deleted from the device, but then these are streamable files, so I actually get to play something as they stream from iTunes. The iTunes bought files still show up as not on the device though.

Another, probably related, oddity is the total unreliability of the free space indicator in iTunes.  I can delete playlists from the sync, and free space goes down. I have the same rough group of playlists selected for sync, and free space varies by as much as +/- 4Gb.

So, most playlists lose all songs from device, and only streamable songs (read: bought from iTunes) get played.  Individual Manually Added Songs are lost as well.  To fix this, besides the turning on and off of music sync, on and off of playlists to sync, I tried a device restore, and it helped on the one sync, now the files are gone again.  The upgrade to 8.0.2 didn't do much (thought helped battery life a bit).

5s + 8.0.2, Mavericks + iTunes 11.4

I had this problem and was able to resolve it by following the clues here:
http://robservatory.com/a-nasty-little-itunesios-bug-may-be-causing-media-sync-issues/

Apparently it's a bug triggered by duplicates in the iTunes Library.  In my case, I had a couple of duplicates that I wasn't aware of from several years ago.

I used the "Dupin" utility to find the duplicates.  I eliminated the extra copies.  I then turned off "Sync Music" in iTunes and did a sync.  There was still some remnant music, so I went into Settings on the iPhone, then General > Usage > Manage Storage > Music.  Click Edit and delete All Songs.  The Settings app will probably crash but the music will be gone finally.  Verify this in the Music app.  Then turn on "Sync Music" in iTunes and resync.


Installation of Yosemite stalled as hdd locked Today I was installing yosemite on my macbookpro 2013. 15inch. everything went smoothly till after restarting for further installation it states unable to install as hdd is locked. it then goes to disk utility. How should I continue when hdd is locked. the worse thing is i did not do any backup. please help

Regards
Herman.

In Disk Utility click on the drive and click on "Enable Journaling" and it should fix the locked drive.


Does iCloud Photos support CR2/DNG raw? I imported a folder of photos in Canon CR2 and DNG raw format into Photos.app. They show up fine locally in the app (I can edit them), but they don't upload to iCloud. Ordinary JPG files in the same folder upload successfully. The RAW images were shot without corresponding JPGs, ie the CR2 and DNG images are the only copy.
Are CR2/DNG unsupported by iCloud, or is there something wrong with my setup?

I think it's working, I think it's still uploading them but the progress bar in Photos.app is missing. I looked at the total number of items visible at https://www.icloud.com/photos and the number is gradually going up. They're slower to appear on iPhone but I do see some RAW photos there, based on a random check.
The progress bar is now working and the "Uploading 445 items" counter is slowly going up instead of down, so it looks like it's slow to decide what it needs to upload. There's now only 6324 large RAW files left to upload.


Multiple word documents in dock I have had Microsoft Word installed on my mac for years, and it used to be that I could see a list of opened documents just by right-clicking the word icon in the dock. But some time ago, it seems that this functionality disappeared.

Does anyone know why? And is there a way to make it work again?

This continues to work for me, as long as Word is currently running - 2011 or 2016 editions.


How can i run same application between two macs? I work in a small office where we share same jobs. We need to purchase another Mac desktop and somehow connect the 2 so we can both use the same program at the same time and it will update automatically (basically real time). Example: quickbooks multi user, multiple accounts: we can both be working in quickbooks in different accounts and they sync together. Hope i am make sense. Thanks

Each application needs to be designed for sharing.  You need to check on each application's ability to share.

Robert


How much RAM is recommended to be assigned to a virtual machine in VirtualBox? I have installed Ubuntu in VirtualBox under OS X on a MacBook Pro.

The laptop has 16 GB RAM, and I assigned about 11 GB to Ubuntu, because I thought that most work would be done in Ubuntu anyway.

But some said that I have to give OS X sufficient RAM, to maintain Host regular operations.

Is 5 GB too little for OS X?

I noticed that when the guest Ubuntu is running, waking up of OS X from sleep can take 30 secs or so. If OS X can have more RAM, will it wake up sooner?

My best practice is to think about how to get the best use of your RAM and not make configuration decisions that lock down memory and instead monitor for problems on each OS and then make small adjustments.

On the Mac - open Activity monitor and watch the memory pressure. I would try to keep things in Green. If you are in the orange, that's ok, but you might want to try changing the reservations (less RAM to ubuntu guest or quit apps on either OS that take most active memory). In the red, you will be swapping and slowing down the response times.

So - you have 16 GB of RAM and one OS X running the hardware with Ubuntu running in Virtual Box. Virtual box makes a file or files to act as the storage for Ubuntu but OS X is handling all the actual reads/writes.

Second - both Ubuntu and OS X use virtual memory so that you could allocate 1 GB of Ram to the guest OS and it will use a swap file to make more memory as needed.

To initially monitor things, I would open terminal on both the host and guest and run something like vm_stat 5 - pay attention initially to only two numbers - the free and the swap out. Also pay attention to the memory pressure on OS X.

Over time, you can shift to logging things more slowly with vm_stat 60 / vmstat 60 or even time stamp the usage.

Since free memory is a waste on both OS X and Ubuntu - you will want to allocate all the RAM to OS X so it can cache all the file input and output for both OS X and virtual box. Allocating too much memory on ubuntu will make the OS X starved for RAM to cache the guest OS. Add memory to the guest OS when the applications you run there start to swap out to disk.

Here are some links to get started on tuning and learning:

slow speed of Ubuntu 12.04 in VirtualBox
Isn't Inactive memory a waste of resources?
What scale or measure does Mavericks' and Yosemite's "memory pressure" adhere to?


How to build last version of Ruby for jailbroken iOS? I jailbrake my iPad and want to run Ruby in the console. I installed OpenSSH & Ruby from Saurik. But it is too old (1.9.2) & buggy.

I would like to compile and install the latest version of Ruby on my iPad. Help me, how to do this?

If you have OpenSSH, you may want to connect via SSH to a Unix based computer and run a full version of Ruby. For Mac there is MacRuby, for Linux just install Ruby via your package manager.


Does anybody know how long installing El Capitan onto a USB 2 pendrive from another USB 2 pendrive takes on a MacBook Air? I'm trying to resucitate a discarded 2013 11″ MacBook Air with no internal drive and hence no OS.

The Apple Store Genius bar tested it and found the only problems to be the missing drive and broken display backlight.

Since I don't know if it's worth spending money on I'm doing an OS install to test it. We got Safari working with Wi-Fi from the installer so we know it does run.

But I only had USB 2.0 pen drives. We have the OS installer on an 8 gig one and we are installing to a 16 gig one.

The progress bar moved very slowly and the estimated "time remaining" was hilariously wrong. The progress bar eventually reached 100% and the time estimation went away but the USB activity light is still flickering with activity.

I know USB 2.0 is very slow, especially for writing and especially for a large amount of data. The install has been going for about 43½ hours so far with no error messages but also no other clues as to whether it's still going OK apart from the USB activity light.

I know this is an unusual situation and there are faster ways to do it but require spending money before knowing how well the machine will work.

Does anybody know or can find information from somebody who's done this before about how long it ought to take?

I've never done this before, but from the looks of it, the speeds will be limited by how fast your thumbdrives go.

If I remember correctly, an El Capitan install is around 8-10 GB in size, so the 16 GB one you're installing to should be sufficient.

USB 2.0 in reality can IO data at around 30-40 MB/s (although this depends on the make and model of your pendrive).

Using these factors we can calculate that an installation can take up to 6 hours for copying alone, not factoring the CPU overhead in installation.

Although 72 hours is a bit of a stretch, as long as your USBs remain flashing I would be fairly certain the system is doing something and not worry about it halting.


Can I suppress the Setup Assistant When Creating New Users on macOS? I wanted to create a new user using Terminal and managed to do so by finding answers on StackExchange, but I was not able to figure out how to skip the setup assistant that comes up when you login to your newly created account.

I wanted to do this via command line as well if possible.

Does anyone know a way to skip setup assistant?

EDIT - (Screenshots)
There are 6 steps but i included two only. The rest are, turn on siri, setup touch id, choose theme (dark, light), true tone display.

This solved the problem that i was having:

Created a new user following all the normal steps. After creating the new user copied user's com.apple.SetupAssistant.plist (from ~/Library/Preferences/), and then just re-used that file for each newly created user. This allowed me to immediately login without the need to go through the assistant.

Thank you @bmike for your help!


How do I reset ios simulator in the given image back to original even after any number of rotations? Basically how to reset it back to normal rotated simulator which has to be reset to normal. If it is in normal state then it turns left or right after my code gets called. How do i write an applescript to always reset it.
Below is my code for rotating it:
tell application "System Events"
      if menu bar item "Hardware" of menu bar 1 of application process "Simulator" exists then
        click menu item "Rotate Left" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Hardware" of menu bar 1 of application process "Simulator"
      else
        click menu item "Rotate Left" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Device" of menu bar 1 of application process "Simulator"
      end if
    end tell

On my system, using Script Editor, the following example AppleScript code works for me to reorient the Simulator window in the normal view:
tell application "Simulator" to activate

tell application "System Events" to ¬
    click menu item "Portrait" of ¬
        menu 1 of ¬
        menu item "Orientation" of ¬
        menu 1 of ¬
        menu bar item "Device" of ¬
        menu bar 1 of ¬
        application process "Simulator"


MacBook Pro battery life tanking even after battery replacement? I've been having some issues with battery life on my MacBook Pro (15", Mid 2010).  I thought I had tracked it down when I found out that the battery was near the end of its life (only holding 60% of its maximum charge) and replaced it with a new one and reset the SMC.

However, the battery still drains at an incredibly fast rate, draining in 90 minutes or less with no applications running. The new battery is at 98% of design capacity (6760mAh) and has 7 loadcycles on it, so it doesn't seem to be the culprit.

The one thing that is a possibility is I've noticed some weird behavior from Notification Center—it seems to jump up to 100%+ CPU usage for spurts of time, which I could definitely see as a battery drain (which is a question in itself: why the heck would it be doing that?)

Does anyone have any other suggestions as to what could be causing battery drain?

If something is using that much CPU it will definitely eat your battery. I'm not completely sure what is causing it but you might wan to download the latest update to your OS (10.9.1 or something of the sort) and re-install it. If it keeps happening you might need to reinstall OS X. I hate re-installing an operating system if at all necessary but I'm not sure what is causing the CPU spike.


Is my magsave power adaptor dead? Last night, I heard a spark noise while my mac power adaptor was connected, and the charger stopped charging my machine. There was no light on the connector. I should also say that the cable attaching to the adaptor was torn. So after reading instructions for dismantling the charger, I cracked it open and cut the cable before the plastic  piece inside the charger. Then, I tested if the AC charger was having any output DC voltage with a multimeter. But it did not detect any. Now, do I have to assume that the unit is dead or is there some fuse which needs to be replaced?

There is a fuse in the charger, but replacing fuse is not recommended.

And this is not the only surge protection unit. I recommend to test with another working charger and your mac and if your mac works well with another charger, then get another Apple charger.


Are there third-party mechanical keyboards that strictly have the Apple layout? Are there third-party keyboards that have the Apple layout?

I found this question but it is not my one.

I mean, "STRICTLY", Mac layout. The sizes of keys, the paddings between keys, no Num Lock, have Fn, no numbers' area... everything is equal to the Mac keyboards, including MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and Apple Wireless Keyboard (but not the USB one).

---- Amendment #1 ----

Sorry for missing this important part. What I'm seeking are mechanical ones. I searched "mechanical keyboard Mac layout" and found the question mentioned above but failed in noticing that question was not only talking about mechanical keyboards.

If you want "clicky" mechanical keyswitches, you should look at the Matias Tactile Pro, for US$150. It is a modern version modeled on Apple's long-discontinued mechanical-keyswitch keyboard that was sold in the 1990s, the Apple Extended Keyboard, which was before the days of USB.

The keyboard layout of the current generation of MacBooks and MacBook Airs is probably not 100% identical to that of the Matias Tactile Pro, but I believe this is as close as you are going to get.

Note that you can remap any functions of Function keys in Mac OS X in software, if anything doesn't match up to your liking.

Matias also makes a Mini Tactile Pro that saves space by doing away with the numeric keypad.

Das Keyboard Model S Professional for Mac, at US$133, is also highly rated, although the key layout in the numeric keypad and certain other keys is slightly different that what Apple uses today.


install libsoup on macbook pro I have a shell script from a open source project, when I run it in terminal, I get the following error:

./configure: line 17678: syntax error near unexpected token `soup,'
./configure: line 17678: `  PKG_CHECK_MODULES(soup, libsoup-2.4)'

I googled on ineternet, someone encountered a similar problem, he suggested to install libsoup development package which might fix this problem. Then, I found the libsoup link.

But I am not sure how to install libsoup on my MacBook ? Anyone could help me?

Using macport (see the link for download & installation) :

sudo port install libsoup


Master volume control for multiple audio output OSX Few of the third party apps like soundflower and boom used to provide a master volume control for multiple audio output on OSX (aka combining USB audio output and 3.5mm output etc). None of the mentioned apps work anymore, say soundflower app cannot be loaded and boom 2 has a volume control but will not change the volume of multiple output devices. Is there someway on 10.11 to control the master volume of multiple audio output?

AudioMate gives you control over individual devices on menubar but it cannot change a master volume control for multiple audio output. Soundflower has one flaw that all your device must have the same output or it will not run - for example all of them set to 48K Hz 2ch-16bit. If you have a 4ch USB and a 2ch 3.5cm you will need to change your 4ch USB to 2ch, likewise on bit rate and frequency.


What do the Terminal menu item icons under Window mean? Where is terminal app window menu symbology documented as I can't find out what the icons to the left of the existing terminals open under the Window menu mean.

I understand the check mark is the current window in the foreground, but what does the dot mean?

A diamond (♦) means the window is minimized (as user3439894 said in their answer). But a dot (•) means the window is "dirty" — that is, it can't be closed without potentially losing something. An app will typically ask for confirmation before closing a dirty window.

These conventions apply across macOS's UI, not just Terminal.

For Terminal, dirty means that there's a program running in the shell, other than the ones listed as safe in Preferences > Profiles pane > Shell tab > Ask before closing.


How to reset safari 9.0.3 In older versions there was an option to reset safari

But in 9.0.3 I am not seeing this option

What are the alternatives?
How can I reset safari 9.0.3?

Safari can also be reset from the command line.

Open a Terminal window and type the following or to be safe launch finder and navigate to the following locations and manually delete or move these

mv ~/Library/Safari ~/Desktop/Safari-`date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/Apple\ -\ Safari\ -\ Safari\ Extensions\ Gallery;
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.LSSharedFileList.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.RSS.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist;

This should give you a fresh Safari with the menu item option to reset Safari again.


"which" command doesn't work / path of Safari? Why can’t I locate programs like Chrome or Safari or FireFox with the which command line tool?

pasocon:~ ThisUser$ which python
/anaconda3/bin/python
pasocon:~ ThisUser$ which firefox
pasocon:~ ThisUser$ which Safari
pasocon:~ ThisUser$ which chrome
pasocon:~ ThisUser$

This is what I get with the which command. It is not giving me the path for many applications. Am I making a mistake here or is this potentially an issue to be fixed?

Alternatively, I was just looking for the path of Safari (so that you can open Safari by directing to this path in a configuration file). I am sure this is basic knowledge but I've somehow failed to find it.

which searches for binaries in the $PATH, a.k.a. command-line tools. User applications are not such tools and not available in the command line.

While Safari.app is an application, the Safari binary is not usually added to the $PATH because it is not a command line tool — if you just run Safari in Terminal your shell will inform you that the command cannot be found.

To find the path to an application, you can use lsregister, which is a tool for adding and querying the Launch Services database, used by macOS in part to find applications.

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/\
  Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/\
  Versions/A/Support/lsregister

You can -dump the database and filter with grep.

/System/L*/Fr*/CoreSe*/V*/A/F*/L*/V*/A/S*/lsregister -dump |
  grep -ie "path:.*safari"

    path:          /Applications/Safari.app

This will return every instance of Safari registered with Launch Services, which will include backups. If you just want to open Safari, you shouldn't be dealing with getting paths and handling it yourself; instead, get macOS to do that for you: open -a Safari.


Deleted files from Macintosh HD still take up space I just deleted about 50GB of files from my Mac's onboard storage, however it only resulted in the removal of about 8GB.

What happened and how can I fix this?

It's called local snapshots which works as a backup, if you are low in space the OS will automatically delete the stuff.


Are the files given permission with chmod +x saved somewhere? I am currently following one python3 course at the time. For easy execution, they suggest running the following code:

chmod +x pythonFileName.py

Doing so, made it possible to run the file using: ./pythonFileName.py and this is of course much easier then navigation the entire folder structure to find my scripts.

I am wondering, are these files copied to any hidden folder? How does this command even work? I mean how does he know the right path? If I delete the script do I need to run another code? Delete the copied file from a hidden folder?

chmod +x /path/to/file sets the execute permission on the file itself. It doesn't maintain a separate list of permissions for standard read/write/execute, just sets that to the file.

  Are these files copied to any hidden folder?

No, the file remains where it is. The permission is set to the file in place.

  How does this command even work?

POSIX file permissions include read/write/execute permissions. Running +x adds the execute permission to all, -x removes it.

  How does he know the right path?

You provide the path to the command when you run it. /path/to/file is the path you provided when you run the command.

  If I delete the script do I need to run another code?

You can delete the file as usual, with rm or using Finder, without needing to run anything else. If you create a new file (regardless of the name) you will need to chmod +x /path/to/file to give it the execute permission again.

  Delete the copied file from a hidden folder?

There's no copying taking place when you run chmod so there's nothing else to delete.


2007 iMac Blurred Screen of Death I'm running OS X 10.10.1 on a 2007 iMac (Intel based) I have tried to boot into the recovery HD, but it just continues with the boot as if I have never pressed cmd-r. When it does finally boot; it goes to a screen with the spinning beach-ball of death and a blurred background. I have reinstalled the RAM twice, and have reset the NVRAM and PRAM.

Any help or suggestions are appreciated!

The Hard Drive Failed... Went to apple and they told me :(


mac pro G5 boot issue- Leopard and Yellow Dog 6.2 installed Heres a killer. My Mac Pro g5 was running Leopard, fully updated, quite fine. But, since Im an idiot tinkerer who loves linux as mich as Mac, I decided to stupidly install YDL. Now, it ran flawlessly for a few months, until I packed the machine away while I moved house. Now, YDL boots quite fine... but MacOS refuse to move anywhere past the Apple Logo. I get no spinning Wheel, just the bitten apple on a grey screen and the machine sitsthere...
So far, I reseated ram, reset NVRAM, reset PRAM, theres no password on OF, I even used the button thing on the motherboard to reset. Nothing. The drive is fine and readable... YDL And Leopard are installed on the same drive, differentpartitions. No keypress combination works since Yaboot is installed- I can only use alt to select a boot device ()this displays the YDL and Leopard disks, but when I choose the Leopard disk, I get the grey screen.

Unfortunately, I do not have access to a Leopard install fisk and have absolutely no hope of getting one.
I also have no internet access on the machine.

If ANYONE can point me in the right direction, Ill be eternally grateful!!

Txs in advance,
Brendan

Problem solved! So, I decided that, since Im desperate, Im gonna do what I have to. I deleted the partition with Yellowdog on it, then messed with the firmware a lot. I managed to find a way to get it to boot straight to MacOS... and then used Cmd-S to boot into single usermode and surprise surprise, AppleJack rescued my machine in 4 passes.

Incidentally, after I managed to get the machine sorted, some kind soul sent me a Leopard Install Disk. Retail.

Nice!


CommCenter (from CoreTelephony.framework) is eating 600+ MB of my RAM, why do I even need it? I do not have a MacBook laptop running OS X 10.11.3.
As far as I understand, CoreTelephony.framework is about cellular networks, so it might be useful on phones, for example. But the laptop obviously doesn't have any relevant hardware.
I see CommCenter (parent process: launchd (1)) in Activity Monitor and it's said to consume 600+ MB of RAM. That's too much for something useless.
How can I get rid of it? And why does it show up there? (Can it be a sign of some malware and stuff?)
Update:
After killing that process manually, I don't see anything bad happening.

I believe this has to do with Messages/FaceTime when sending or receiving calls or text messages from associated phone numbers over the internet. I can see this process making network requests to Verizon servers, which supports this theory, as my phone number is Verizon's.


Make alias take icon of the .app it points to I have a blah.app, and on desktop there is an alias to this app
I went to blah.app/Contents/Resources and replace the icon with my icon, same name
I went to blah.app/ and created a new folder next to the blah.app/Contents folder, this made the blah.app icon update to show mine however the icon of the alias file on desktop did not change.

Any ideas on why this is so? I know I can drag the icon over this alias file, but im trying to figure out whats going on here, why isn't taking my icon? :(

Thanks!

As noted in my comment from earlier, you can make an alias of the alias and it will acquire the icon from the original source... for some reason.

The following example is with folders... so it's not the exact situation in the question, but I think it illustrates the point:


Where does MacOS store old versions of Preview edited images? If you open an image in Preview and View->Show Markup Toolbar and then add some markup.Then close Preview you'll see the file has been edited

If I then double click the picture, which relaunches Preview there's a File->Revert To option

And if I choose "Browse All Versions" a UX like this appears

Where are these revisions stored? And while I'm thinking about it, is there a user friendly way to delete the revisions or do I just have to manually dig into the file system? I found this which has a section about deleting revisions but doesn't actually specify how to delete revisions.

Where are these stored?

There is a folder at the root level of the disk marked /.DocumentRevisions-V100, which stores the data for versioning of documents. This is owned by root and not in a user-friendly format, so is best left alone.

File formats that use Apple's CoreData APIs (e.g. Pages) create revisions using their own Undo list, so the data is preserved in the file as a series of undo instructions.

It's possible that some versioning is done on APFS volumes in a similar way to localsnapshots.

How can I delete them?

Select File > Revert To > Browse All Versions.
Once you're in the "Time Machine" interface, move the pointer to the top of the screen to recover the menubar.
Now, under File > Revert To, you will now have the option to Delete the selected version, or with ALT held down, Delete All Versions.


USB Keyboard's number pad doesn't work while using vim I have a usb keyboard that has a numberpad.

When I use the number pad in most situations, it works as expected (IE when I click the bottom 3 buttons, I get 123 in this web form).

However, when using vim (in a terminal window), in edit mode, if I type 123, I get:

s
r
q

I did not have this problem while I was using synergy to share the keyboard I had plugged into my linux desktop.  (Edited - formatting)

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6613968#

Terminal -> Preferences -> Profile -> Advanced -> uncheck "Allow VT100 application keypad mode"