Is there a way to get on-screen pop-up notifications for new e-mails in Mail on the iPad 2? I know there is a similar question, but it seems that on-screen alerts are supposed to be built into the Notifications Settings and that using a third-party app should not be necessary. Even though I have alerts selected (the three options are none, banner, and alerts) in Settings > Notifications > Mail, they do not show up. Any thoughts on why?

In addition to the Alert Style options which you mention setting, you also need to turn ON Notification Center for those alerts to appear in Notification Center, and also set View in Lock Screen to ON, to see them when your screen is locked.

Otherwise you will only see them when you are using the phone at the time that they come in, and if you already have Mail open, then they won't appear at all.


How can I get my Macbook Pro with Yosemite OS and Parallels Desktop 10 to run a Windows only application? My goal is to run a Windows application on my Macbook Pro.  I installed Parallels 10 on top of Yosemite and loaded a Windows 7 Ultimate image from an ISO.  This appeared to be successful, but upon restarting the machine I find I cannot do anything in Parallels.

To be more specific about what I mean by "I cannot do anything":

When I click the Parallels icon the menu bar appears at the top of the screen with the following apparent menus: File; Edit; Window; Help.  None are clickable.
Clicking the Parallels icon gives me a menu.  I selected "Parallels Desktop Help".  I get no response.
From the Parallels icon menu, clicking "Show All Windows", I get a dark blue screen, with a single large central graphic labeled "Windows 7.pvm".  Clicking it or anywhere else on this screen takes me back to the Yosemite desktop.
There is a folder next to the Parallels icon, labeled "Windows 7 Applications".  Expanding it shows the Start Menu options I might expect to see in Windows, but there is no effect from clicking any of the applications or folders (other than expanding further unusable links).  The one exception is the "Open in Finder" command which lets me explore these same unusable options through the Finder interface.  The result of trying to open any of these applications is the same as clicking the Parallels Desktop icon: I get an unusable Parallels Desktop menu bar at the top of the screen.  There is nothing along the top-right of the screen that appears to be related to Parallels, Windows or any such options.

I haven't been able to find citation of this issue anywhere, but my intuition is that I'm just doing something simple in a way that is fundamentally wrong... but I don't know what that is.

How can I get my Macbook Pro with Yosemite OS and Parallels Desktop 10 to run a Windows only application?

I run Parallels in the environment you describe and that is not how Parallels behaves for me.  I believe your installation or configuration is corrupt / invalid somehow and you will definitely need to contact Parallels support and / or start over with your Mac OS / Parallels installation.  Personally I recommend contacting Parallels support.

For myself, all Parallels drop down menus appear and work fine.  I am able to switch from Coherence mode to Full Screen mode, etc. easily without issue, and of course launch Windows only applications just fine.

So far as I can see, there is no answer to your question other than to reach out to Parallels support and / or start with a fresh installation.  Once setup Parallels works great by the way.  Good luck!


Offline music not showing up after iOS 9.2 upgrade After upgrading my iPhone to iOS 9.2 today, the songs in the Apple Music library don't show up as saved offline. Playlists show as offline.

I went to Settings->General->Storage and the Music app is using the same amount of storage as before (i.e. the music's still on the phone). But when I click on 'Music' in Storage, the Settings app freezes and doesn't recover even after minutes.

What are my options?

(I can of course redownload the library, but several gigabytes of my storage is already gone)

My wife had a very similar problem, ever since upgrading to 9.0. I had to do the following in 9.2 to resolve her issues:

Backup her iPhone.
Wipe and restart her iPhone.
Reload from her backup.
Turn OFF iCloud Music.
Turn ON iCloud Music, selecting "Merge" when warned about deleting or merging the current content on her iPhone.

She can now see and download any content in her library, and make anything she wants available for offline listening.


Quicktime (and other related apple software) not reproducing some avi files Well, basically the problem is that Quicktime and keynote are not reproducing some AVI files.

The first thing I noted was that some AVI files didn't had a screenshot of the video in the thumbnail. After this, when trying to reproduce the video, a blackscreen appeared in quicktime. But, as you can notice in the screenshot, the time bar and the time stamp were "moving" (the video is being played, but a black screen in shown):

Of course, I can reproduce the video with some other program like VLC:

I can also reproduce the video if i convert the AVI file to an MP4 file (which of course, also shows the thumbnail):

Up to this moment, this was not a problem, as I could reporduce the videos in VLC if Quicktime didn't worked.

But now I noticed that, this AVI files cannot be inserted in Keynotes files either:

Which is a problem. Of course, this didn't happened before, and that's why I'm asking you if somebody had the same problem and how you fixed it.

I'm running Sierra 10.12.1. I'm not sure if a software update caused this problem, probably it was. I installed Perian but I had no luck with it.

Thank you for your time, hope you can help me.

Unfortunately this has a simple answer. Quicktime will not play any type of video file, some types it just fails on.

You used to be able to buy the MPEG-2 Codec from Apple as an add-on for Quicktime to allow you to play more kinds of video files but I don't believe they sell it any more.

You have already found the solution to playback though: VLC.

Flip4Mac used to be a Microsoft solution for playback of WMV video files but they don't support it anymore. Instead Telestream has the software, which you can purchase on their website.

And any video that Quicktime chokes on will likely also fail on any Apple apps like Keynote. You will have to convert it to another format before inserting it into a keynote presentation.

And if your wallet is feeling a little skinny these days FFMPEG is an open source video converter and iFFmpeg is a Mac front end for it.


If I buy Mountain Lion can I downgrade to Lion? Without purchasing it? I don't have a Lion license and I'm currently running Mac OS X 10.6.6 (Snow Leopard).

If I buy Mountain Lion, can I downgrade to Lion?

If you buy Mountain Lion, your computer downloads an installer for Mountain Lion from the app store. If you were somehow able to buy a copy of Lion later on (which Apple does not seem to be selling in the App store), you could install it on your computer ("downgrade to Lion"), but buying Mountain Lion does not get you access to such an installer.


Is there an updated version of the iPad's checklist app which allows sub items i have never seen any of the stock apps say they have an update and i kinda think the checklist app on the ipad is lacking cause it does not allow an item to have sub items which, when all checked, the parent items is checked, here's are some of examples of what i mean by sub items

common shopping list example:

  you have 2 items in a list, Cake and Topping, Cake would list all the stuff you need to buy to make the cake's base while topping would include the icing and what kind of decorations you need to buy

My Example 1: series marathon list

  I have 1 item called .Hack which would have sub items that list all the games and anime for that series, the .Hack item should not be checked unless i have checked every sub item of it

My Example 2: System Component purchases List

  i have an item called Epitpah which in it has the following

  4 items named "HDMI Switch"
  12 items named "HDMI Cable"
  2 items named "AV -> HDMI Converter"
  1 item named "Wii -> HDMI adaptor"
  an item named "Level 1 Setup" which contains the following

  an item named "HDMI Switch Connected"

  an item named "Level 2 Setup" which contains the following

  an item named "Level 2 connected to point 1-1"

  an item named "Alcaid Connected to point 2-1 via AV -> HDMI Converter"

  an item named "Ryoko Connected to point 2-2 via AV -> HDMI Converter"

now i'm wondering if there's an updated version of the checklist app for the ipad that apple has put up as a separate app of if there is a third party app that works like an upgraded version of the checklist app

OmniOutliner does this sort of thing, and more, but I don't believe the stock apps on the device even come close to accommodating sub-items. The Reminders' app is very limited in functionality, and it is the closest thing to a stock app that handles lists.


Input validation, expect error on null input I expect the code to display an error and then ask the question again when the user enters no text
set tname to ""
repeat while tname is equal to ""
    set tname to text returned of (display dialog ¬
        "Hello" buttons {"next"} ¬
        default button 1 default answer "")
end repeat
if tname is equal to "" then display dialog "error"

The line
if tname is equal to "" then display dialog "error"

is never reached while tname is empty. You need to put it inside the loop.


Is is possible to format an Applescript dialog? I am writing an AppleScript and I'd like to be able to format text in a display dialog box. For instance, I want part of the text to be bold or italic. How can I do this?

Barring using Cocoa dialogs and integrating them into your script (way out of the scope of this question – and of my expertise, too), you can’t. AppleScript’s display dialog does not allow for typographic formatting (and neither does the only script friendly alternative to AppleScript’s inbuilt abilities, Carsten Blüm’s Pashua).

If all you need is for the first (supposedly most important) part of the text to be emphasized, you can use display alert instead of display dialog

display alert "this is the important part" message "… and this is not"

which will give you this:


macOS Sierra boot problem related to Apple SD Card reader driver EDIT: It seems that upgrading to macOS 10.12.4 solved this issue. I had not have time to send the laptop to repair, as others did (and it fixed the issue for them). So far, restarting or shutdown / starting the OS no longer hangs the Filevault pre-boot screen.

--- ORIGINAL POST ---

After upgrading to El Capitan, and then to Sierra, I found a strange behaviour:

A - if I restart the os, it takes more time than usual, then I get into the boot screen with the input devices (keyboard, trackpad) responding from time to time (i.e. they work for 2 seconds, then they stop working for 10, then the cycle repeats itself);
B - during "A", I if I:

B1 - move the cursor to the "restart" button and press it, or force a shutdown - start by pressing the physical button, I get the os restarted in no time, and everything seems fine; BUT if I restart the os, I return to "A";
B2 - patiently try to type my password and enter the os, the mac starts normal;

Meanwhile, I was also experience SD Card problems - they wouldn't read at all or appear in Disk Utility; I now found out that if I do procedure B1 the SD Card reader seems not to work, but if I do procedure B2 it works ok.

I was almost sending the mac for hardware repair, but seems like there may be some problem with the SD Card reader drivers? I need to do some more testing, but meanwhile, has someone experienced this, or can give me some insight on how to debug this issue?

Using macbook Pro retina 2015 with macOS Sierra.

Thanks for you help.

EDIT: I did a clean install (completely formatted and partitioned the HD using a bootable USB stick with macOS Sierra on it). But it was for no avail, the problem persists.

I had the exact same issue. 2015 MacBook Pro 13", AppleCare.

It took three attempts for the Apple service agent to resolve the issue, over the space of one month.

The first time, they replaced the main logic board.

The second time, they replaced the whole top case, including trackpad and battery.

It was only after I found this post and brought it to their attention (including the fact that the SD card reader was showing as a fault when I ran system diagnostics) that on the third attempt they replaced the I/O board which contains the SD card reader and thankfully it worked.


How can I toggle Automatic Graphics Switching using terminal? I have a 15" MacBook Pro from May 2019 with a Radeon Pro 555X 4 GB graphics card. I would like to change the Automatic Graphics Switching setting with a terminal command.

The command sudo pmset -a gpuswitch n will set the graphics switching, with the following values for n:

2 is integrated gpu both on cable and battery
1 is dedicated gpu only with power connected; integrated gpu on battery power
0 is dedicated gpu on both ac and battery

pmset -g will show you the current configuration.


Rotating wallpapers of varying sizes I have several desktop backgrounds that I would like to rotate between, but one of them is vertically oriented. If I leave the backgrounds set to "Fill Screen," it chops off the top and the bottom of the vertical wallpaper, and that's not okay.

I'd like to know if there is a way to tell individual wallpapers to "Fit to Screen" while having others "Fill Screen," "Center," and et cetera.

Thanks!

No you can't, but you could edit the vertically oriented wallpaper to match the aspect ratio of your monitor.


Change login password if already logged in I'm trying to reset my forgotten login password. Most of the other questions I've seen are about not even being able to login. However I setup "start without login" so I can get into the System Preferences etc. I just can't update my PW since I can't remember my old one. Is there anything I can do (other than what I'd do if I couldn't even login)?

Click in the password box and see if it pops-up with your email address. if it does select it and see if that works.  Your password is often safed with your user name which is often your email address.


Can an 2009 iMac have an odd total amount of RAM? I have an iMac 20-inch early 2009 model. There is 2 GB of RAM (2 x 1 GB sticks).

Can I upgrade the amount of memory to 3 GB, replacing just one of the two RAM sticks?

You can but it's recommended to use matched pairs as you'll get more of a performance boost due to the way the Intel side of things handles dual-channel memory. However, more RAM generally trumps less RAM so it's probably worth it to get that extra Gb of memory.


iTunes University: Items Not Available from U.C. Berkeley I have been listening to Professor John R. Searle's course lectures from U.C. Berkeley through iTunes University. Having finished one year's curricula, I wanted to listen another set, but, when I clicked on the link was greeted with:

macOS Sierra 10.12.3
iTunes 12.5.5.5

Looking for an explanation on Apple's Discussion forums and other Apple support sites I found little pertinent to iTunes U. - most dealing with folks uploading their own podcasts.

Is this something on my end with my apple account? (I haven't left the U.S. in ... 20 years?)

...something on Apple's end?

...something on U.C. Berkeley's end? (Maybe they only want the first years worth of lectures available in the U.S.? ...that seems weird).

Also, I get this message:

...when I click on the "get" button.

FWIW, I get an "Error - Playback Failed" on my iPhone4S (iOS9.3.5):

Is this normal? Do I just wait and keep trying? Contacting Apple via email seems likely to result in nothing but a form mail. I am nowhere near a "genius bar" and don't have Apple Care. S.O.L.?

Interesting. Turns out this is neither an issue on my end nor on Apple's.
I will post the pertinents, even if they are off-topic, because it is pretty "WTaF?"
From: http://www.weeklystandard.com/berkeley-goes-offline/article/2007201

A few years ago, an adjunct professor and disability-rights activist named Stacy Nowak went to take a look at a college course offered online by the University of California, Berkeley. ...
Since 2012, UC Berkeley (among many other schools) has offered video and audio recordings of many of its courses to the general public, via YouTube and iTunes U. The Seussian acronym is MOOCs, for massive open online courses. Over the years Berkeley's catalogue of MOOCs has grown to more than 40,000 hours of high-end pedagogy. There are introductory courses in economics, European history, statistics, physics, geography, and pretty much everything else. More advanced courses range from "Scientific Approaches to Consciousness" and "Game Theory" to "The Planets" and "Philosophy of Language," this last taught by John Searle, the country's, and maybe the world's, greatest living philosopher. ...
After Nowak notified the National Association of the Deaf of her frustration with Berkeley's MOOCs, NAD went straight to the white-hot center of the American grievance industry, the federal government's Department of Justice. The organization filed a complaint with DoJ on behalf of Nowak and a Gallaudet colleague as "aggrieved individuals." The government lawyers got to work. ...
The easiest course, administrators concluded, was simply to pull all the MOOCs from the Internet, so that disabled members of the general public will no longer have to be subjected to such discriminatory offenses—and, also, so that the federal government won't sue UC Berkeley. ...

Fortunately per: https://lbry.io/news/20000-illegal-college-lectures-rescued

Today, the University of California at Berkeley has deleted 20,000 college lectures from its YouTube channel. Berkeley removed the videos because of a lawsuit brought by two students from another university under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
We copied all 20,000 and are making them permanently available for free via LBRY.

Maybe iTunes U will pick them up, but I doubt it.


Why do I get a 'connection to the outgoing server "smtp.gmail.com" failed' message in iOS Mail? Today I noticed I have 3 emails stuck in my Outbox, and when I try to re-send one, I see:

If I press Settings, then select "SMTP  Gmail SMTP Server", and "Gmail SMTP Server" (under PRIMARY SERVER--it is the only one shown as "On"), I see:

I can't edit anything here.

Has Gmail changed the way their SMTP authentication works? How do I fix this?

I occasionally get a call from a client of mine complaining about this.  I don't know of an actual fix (or what the actual problem is) but I usually recommend doing these in order:

Quit Mail fully: double-tap the home button, swipe up on Mail
Normal restart: press and hold power until you get the option to shut off, wait 30s for it to shut off, press and hold power until
the Apple logo shows up again.
Try again and if it fails, forced restart: press and hold power AND the home button until it shuts off - keep holding until the
apple logo shows up again
Remove and re-add the gmail account.


Defective bluetooth in MBPr? I have had a MacBook Pro (Retina, Early 2015) since October 2015.  Recently, I started feeling that the Bluetooth hardware might be defective.  It started a few months ago where I started being bombarded by Bluetooth pairing requests from different kinds of devices (even though the bluetooth settings say that my device should not be discoverable).

I did a clean install when I first started to encounter the symptoms.  I tried to follow different workarounds and fixes.  I found one which included modifying the bluetooth plist file but none of them seemed to be effective.  What's driving me crazy is that other people who have Macs in my office do not face the same issue!

More recently, I started getting a "Bluetooth unavailable" message from time to time. My Bluetooth headphones also keep breaking up constantly while they are connected to the MBPr.

I think there might be a hardware issue with my laptop.  Any thoughts?

I would install a clean os to the internal drive or an external drive. Since you have so many pairing requests, you should be able to rule out software issues quickly and for free or very low cost.

Then you would seek hardware repair or service.


Why does my iMessage say I'm sending from my email instead of my phone number? I have an iPhone 4. I just updated my phone to the most recent iOS (7.03). My iMessage won't let me send from my phone number, and people are receiving my messages from my email. The phone number is there but is grey and won't let me select it. Why is it disabled? How do I fix this?

Assuming you did not change any other settings after the upgrade (like Restrictions), your iMessage may need to be reactivated. When you look at Settings > Messages, you would also see that it displays the message "Waiting for activation...".

There are several ways to get it activated, and sometimes it may take a few tries since Apple's servers may not respond in a timely fashion.

Turn off iMessage on Settings > Messages.
Turn off your iPhone (hold the power button until the slide to power off prompt appears and slide to power it off).
Turn on your iPhone after a minute or two.
Make sure you're connected to WiFi (usually more reliable than Cellular).
Go to Settings > Messages and turn it on. Accept the prompt for the warning that carrier fees may apply for the activation SMS.

If the above does not work, you can also follow the steps from iOS: Troubleshooting FaceTime and iMessage activation (edited steps below):

  If you see "Waiting for Activation" when trying to activate your phone number with iMessage or FaceTime on iPhone

  To resolve this issue:

  Ensure that you have an active Internet connection. You can complete activation using Wi-Fi or a cellular data connection.
  Ensure that your iPhone is set to the correct time zone: tap Settings > General > Date & Time.
  Note: If Set Automatically is on but the incorrect time zone appears, turn Set Automatically off and choose the correct time zone, date, and time.
  Verify that you can send SMS messages. You need a valid SMS messaging plan to activate FaceTime and iMessage.

  If "Waiting for Activation" still appears after you perform these steps, turn FaceTime and iMessage off and on in Settings > Messages and Settings > FaceTime. You may need to wait up to 24 hours to complete activation. Most attempts will take less than an hour, but some attempts may take up to 24 hours. If your issue isn't resolved after 24 hours, please contact Apple for assistance. If you've recently performed a remote wipe on your iPhone, wait 24 hours from the time you performed the remote wipe, and then turn iMessage off then back on.


Finder hiding specific file by name At some time my MBA 10.8 Finder decided (or was it me) to hide certain files from me.

Here is the example (I have few other files like it)

  ..  The Water Horse.flv

Originally those files are downloaded from the web in Firefox using the add- on called Ant.com.

I can still see the files in VLC player, or in the OminDiskSweeper.

I can also see the files using the show hidden files in Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE && killall Finder

It used to be not so, but something changed, or I changed without knowing.

My investigation showed it has to do with the beginning of the file name (..  ) that is no longer striped by the download program.

If I remove the beginning of the file name it goes back to normal, but unfortunately the files are named like that originally on the web site.

So I tried the revers process by adding the dot in front and it tells me I should not do that. How do I tell my OS to show those files in Finder with that name or how do I strip the beginning of the file name during or after download process, or am I stuck with the show all hidden files.

Is there a way to change the name of the file before or during or after download, so I do not have to use Terminal each time to unhide all files then hide again.

Any file or folder that begins with '.' is going to be hidden in the Finder. That has always been true, back to the days of NeXTStep.

If what you are trying to do is automatically rename files that begin with a '.' to not begin with a '.' that can easily be accomplished with a shell script. Save the following as /usr/local/bin/rename-dot-files.sh:

#!/bin/zsh -f

DIR="$HOME/Downloads/"

cd "$DIR"

ls -1Ad \.* | egrep -v '.DS_Store|.localized' | while read line
do

        NEWNAME=$(echo "$line" | sed 's#^\.##g')

        /bin/mv -vn "$line" "$NEWNAME"

done

exit 0

That script will look in $HOME/Downloads/ for any files that start with a . (excluding .DS_Store and .localized which you do not want to rename) and will rename it to the same name, without the '.' as long as there is no other file/folder with that same name.

To do this automatically you will need to create a launchd plist that will automatically launch any time the directory changes:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Disabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.tjluoma.rename-dot-files</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/usr/local/bin/rename-dot-files.sh</string>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>WatchPaths</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Users/luomat/Downloads/</string>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Obviously you'll want to change the path from /Users/luomat/ to whatever your $HOME is.

Save that plist to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.tjluoma.rename-dot-files.plist and then load it as:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.tjluoma.rename-dot-files.plist

The script will run whenever the ~/Downloads/ is changed, which includes any files being added or removed, but it automatically limits itself to files which begin with '.'


Mac Automator/Word 2016 macro: Trying to make workflow/macro that removes highlights from bullet points in Word 2016 for Mac THE PROBLEM
I am working in Microsoft Word 2016 for Mac on a very large bullet-point outline in which I frequently need to highlight text. If I highlight all the text on a bullet point, word automatically highlights the bullet point as well. This is because Word by default makes its bullet points take on the styles of their associated text, including highlights. This default behavior has always somewhat irked me because I find the resulting highlighting of bullet points distracting and sloppy.

PREVIOUS MANUAL FIXES
Previously, I have manually fixed the issue. For example, I sometimes would highlight only part of the associated text, then highlighting the rest of text (partially fixing the issue ex ante--but not allowing me to highlight all the text I wanted to at once). Other times, I would fix the issue ex post: I would highlight all the associated text, resulting in the bullet point becoming highlighted, but would then delete the bullet point, bring my text into line with the previous unhighlighted bullet point, and then click "enter" to create a new unhighlighted bullet point (this worked because the text associated with the previous bullet point was not completely highlighted).

THE NEED FOR AUTOMATION
Now, however, I am dealing with a very long document and repetitively manually fixing the issue would be far too inefficient. Thus, I am now looking for a solution that fixes/prevents the bullet point highlighting without me having to make arduous individual changes each time I highlight all the text associated with a bullet point.

My hope is that I could create either an Automator workflow or Microsoft Word 2016 (for Mac) macro that, upon activation, would either: (i) highlight only the associated text of a bullet point--leaving the bullet point unhighlighted--or (ii) automatically remove the highlighting of a highlighted bullet point while leaving the associated text highlighted. With regard to option (ii), I would be happy with a workflow/macro that either (a) removed highlighting from an individual bullet point or (b) removed highlighting from all bullet points in a given document--though the latter is probably preferable. Does anyone have any ideas as to whether any of these options are feasible, and, if so, which would be easiest to implement?

I figured out how to do it with a Word macro (VBA). The below will highlight only the text (and not the bullet point) of the paragraph/associated text where the cursor is. You can keybind the macro to make this pretty fast. However, this is not the fastest fix because it doesn't allow you to highlight en masse, but it certainly is way faster than doing it manually.

Hope this can help someone who runs into the same problem that I had!

Sub Highlighter_Macro()
'
' Highlighter_Macro Macro
'
'
    Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdLine
    Selection.MoveUp Unit:=wdParagraph, Count:=1
    Selection.MoveDown Unit:=wdParagraph, Count:=1, Extend:=wdExtend
    Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=3, Extend:=wdExtend
    Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdTurquoise
    Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdTurquoise
    Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdLine
    Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=3, Extend:=wdExtend
    Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdTurquoise
    Selection.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdTurquoise
    Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdLine
End Sub


Run an AppleScript daily with launchd I'm trying to run an AppleScript which ejects all drives (from the excellent answer by Monomeeth here) daily at 8 am using launchd. After some searching, I decided the best way to do this was by using launchd. However, I'm running into an error.

The .plist which I have in my user LaunchAgents directory is as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>local.SkeletonBow.EjectAllDrivesAt8</string>
  <key>Program</key>
  <string>/usr/bin/osascript</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/usr/local/etc/Daily\ Scripts/Eject\ All.scpt</string>
  </array>
  <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
  <dict>
      <key>Hour</key>
      <integer>08</integer>
      <key>Minute</key>
      <integer>00</integer>
  </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

The AppleScript in question, Eject All.scpt, runs fine when I run it with osascript Eject\ All.scpt in my zsh shell.

According to this site, I should "load the job" into launchctl. I did this by running, according to their instructions, the following:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/local.SkeletonBow.EjectAllDrivesAt8.plist

And then tried to test it by running

launchctl start local.SkeletonBow.EjectAllDrivesAt8.plist

However, this particular action causes a cross to be shown in the Terminal, implying that something wrong has happened. I'm guessing that it's due to the syntax in my .plist file.

One shouldn't include the .plist extension when starting a launchtl process directly. Your command should read, instead, launchctl start local.SkeletonBow.EjectAllDrivesAt8

Also, the launchctl man pages indicate one shouldn't use leading zeroes when setting Calendar start time. The content should be <integer>8</integer> and <integer>0</integer> for the Hour and Minute keys.

Keep in mind, too, that when using CalendarInterval (as opposed to an elapsed-time Interval) to set a launch time for a process, that if the machine should unexpectedly be asleep at 8:00AM and therefore be unable to initiate the process, it will initiate the process upon awakening. That does not happen when the time setting is interval based.


Set tag color of image in Preview with hotkey/keyboard shortcut I'd like to be able to add a tag color to an image I'm viewing in Preview with a hotkey / keyboard shortcut.

I found something for Finder: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6511743?start=0&tstart=0 but I can't replicate it with Preview.

My use case is that I'd like to open ~1000 images in Preview when I come back from a photoshoot, view each one fullscreen, and have the option to easily tag each image with a color while I view it. So, I'm scrolling through, I see an image I want to mark, CMD+R (or whatever), and its given a red tag, which I can easily find later in Finder. It seems like a pretty simple request, but I haven't found anyway to do this.

From the MacOS Documentation on this feature:

  Tag an open file: Hold the pointer to the right of the document title,
  click the arrow, click in the Tags field, then enter a new tag, or
  choose one from the list.


Uploading Time Machine backups.backupdb to cloud service? I'd like to store some of my time machine backups on AWS Glacier Deep Archive so I can have an off-site backup in addition to my external hard drive.
However, I know that time machine uses hard links to save on storage space. Is there some way I can upload my time machine backups to Amazon Glacier (or any other cloud service) while still using the same amount of space?
Ideally, I'd be able to download only part of the time machine backup at a time (e.g. one version when I need it), but if not, some way to create a backup of the entire backups.backupdb would also suffice.

You will not be able to backup/copy all or part of your Time Machine (TM) backup to the cloud in a form that would allow recovery from the cloud to recreate a TM 'backup'.
But, I have a few suggestions on how to proceed.
For an 'archive' (a point-in-time copy which will remain untouched for a long time) you can copy folders from your Mac to a cloud service like an AWS bucket.  The folders you copy could be directly from your active documents, photos, etc. or could be from a chosen TM date.  If you should need to recover files/folders from this archive you would just copy them back to your computer (TM would not be involved).
In my view a better way to proceed is to use a cloud backup service which will maintain a daily (or more frequent) backup of your files maintaining versions of files from all times in the past in a storage efficient way - just like TM.
You should not expect a cloud backup to provide complete system restoration. Rather to recover documents, photos, etc. in the event of a disaster which might just be mistaken deletion of a single file all the way up to complete loss of your computer system and its external disks.
I suggest you explore Backblaze and Arq.
Backblaze is frequently recommended though I have reservations regarding its failure to backup some file metadata.  It provides both a backup application and cloud storage in a single plan.  It is intended to be be simple to use and by default does backups of nearly everything.
Arq (my favourite) is most commonly used as a backup application with whatever storage you choose to use - e.g. AWS, Google, etc.  I use Arq with cloud storage from both OneDrive (part of Microsoft Office subscription) and Backblaze's B2, though is unnecessary to use 2 storage providers.  Arq is similar to Time Machine in that it does scheduled backups and thins old backups to one a day and then to once a week. Compared with Backblaze it requires a little more configuration.
Please note that cloud backup does not replace the need for Time Machine (or some other local backup).


My iphone 5's language in settings is set in english but it types in Chinese in Messages, google etc? I just bought a refurbushed Iphone5. The language in settings is in English but when I type a text, on google or type on facebook etc it's in Mandarin/Chinese? Can anyone solve this problem! My head is wrecked haha! Thank you (谢谢)

From Apple's support article: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202178

Change the language
If more than one language is on, you can change the language while typing.
Follow these steps:

Tap  to choose the next language on your keyboard. The chosen language appears on the Space bar.
Touch and hold  to display a menu of enabled keyboards. Drag to choose a new keyboard.

In iOS 6 and later, the language of the keyboard determines the language of the dictionary, if one is available for the language.


Change file association in terminal? Is there a method for associating file types with applications via terminal? I thought ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.launchservices.plist might do it, and I also have seen: Why is a command line change to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist not effective immediately? but I can't seem to get it working.

I guess I'm looking for a way to imitate what the GUI does when someone uses it to change association types, it seems to work instantly there...

You can edit ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist (~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist on Catalina) in a text editor after converting it to XML:
plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist
# Catalina:
plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist -o output.xml

Then add entries like this to the LSHandlers array:
<dict>
  <key>LSHandlerContentType</key>
  <string>com.adobe.pdf</string>
  <key>LSHandlerRoleAll</key>
  <string>net.sourceforge.skim-app.skim</string>
</dict>
<dict>
  <key>LSHandlerContentTag</key>
  <string>mkv</string>
  <key>LSHandlerContentTagClass</key>
  <string>public.filename-extension</string>
  <key>LSHandlerRoleAll</key>
  <string>org.videolan.vlc</string>
</dict>

You can use mdls to see the UTIs of file types and something like osascript -e 'id of app "AppName"' to see the bundle identifiers of applications.
You can apply changes to com.apple.LaunchServices.plist by restarting. Logging out and back in isn't enough.

NOTE: duti is no longer in active development and has been labeled by its maintainers as "unsupported". The project hasn't seen any major progress since 2012 aside from configuration updates. It has moved from Sourceforge to Github. This answer has been updated to include the new links.

I also use duti though. I have saved a file like this (with about 100 lines) as ~/.duti:
org.gnu.Emacs public.plain-text all # .txt, .text, plain text files without an extension
org.gnu.Emacs public.unix-executable all # executable scripts
com.SequentialX.Sequential .jpg all
org.videolan.vlc .mkv all

I have a launchd agent that runs duti ~/.duti automatically when ~/.duti is changed.
You can normally use filename extensions (like .jpg) instead of a UTIs (like public.jpg) to specify file types. duti converts the extensions to UTIs that also apply to other extensions (like .jpeg). For some extensions like .mkv and .tex, the UTI depends on what application registered the extension first.
The latest version of duti only includes source code, but 1.5.0 also includes an installer.


Help merging free space partition with Macintosh HD partition I installed and then un-installed Ubuntu 16.04 on my Macbook Air (OS X El Capitan 10.11.6). I had split the hard drive into 2 partitions - Macintosh partition of 60.6 GB and now I have a free space partition of 59.6 GB. I'm unable to merge these 2 partitions. I have included some screenshots below:

Output from diskutil list:

Output from diskutil cs list:

Output from sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0:

I'd greatly appreciate any help.

Thanks,

Sophia

Before issuing the command to merge the free space, you will need to fix an error in the GUID Partition Table (GPT). The "Recovery HD" labeled partition with the identifier disk0s3 has a GUID of 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC. The correct value should be 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC.

One way, to correct this error, would be to boot from OS X Internet Recovery and enter the following commands in a Terminal application window.

diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 3 /dev/disk0
diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk0
gpt add -i 3 -b 119050312 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

  Note: The three keys you need to hold down to start "OS X Internet Recovery" are OptionCommand ⌘R.

Once the above commands have been entered, you can restart the computer back to El Capitan.

The Terminal application command to merge the free space is given below.

diskutil  resizevolume  /dev/disk0s2  R

This command will move /dev/disk0s3 to the bottom of disk0 while resizing /dev/disk0s2 to maximum size.


iTunes unable to backup data before iOS upgrade After uploading iOS 5 to my iPhone, there was a message from iTunes saying that, during the procedure, iTunes was unable to backup my data. So nothing got restored and I lost a great number of photos and other stuff with no further explanation. Is there anything that can be done?

I had a similar error on my iPhone 4 iOS 5 upgrade.  But mine specifically said if I proceed despite the error, all content would be lost.  Did you proceed past this error?

Check your iTunes Edit > Preferences > Devices and see if you have more than 1 backup listed.  Mine has 2, my current backup and my last iOS 4 backup.


iPod is not Charging When I connect my iPod shuffle to my computer it is not pulling up the profile that I can put music on normally it will pull up but it not pulling it up for me, and it won't charge it.
Another thing is I put Youtube music on the iPod shuffle and when I put is in my speaker that I have it works but when I put in headphones it doesn't work.
Can someone help me figure out why it's not working

Start with force restarting your iPod Shuffle.  If that doesn't work there are three things you need to check:

The USB port is functional.  Try another device (any device is fine).  If it works, then you know your USB port is working.  If it's not, then you'll either need to use a different port (if available) or another computer

Check the cable.  The USB cable may be damaged and no longer allows for communication between the iPod and the USB port.  If possible, borrow one from a friend (preferred method), or you may have to purchase another one.

Verify that the Shuffle works.  If you can't get it to work (i.e. play music) then you definatley have a problem with the iPod.  If it will not communicate on the USB port, it's likely that the iPod USB interface has died.  It's unfortunate, but it does happen.


Keynote record slideshow with external mic I've looked for hours on how to record a slideshow with an external USB microphone but I didn't find anything.

Is it possible to change the audio input in Keynote to an external mic?

Keynote uses the system sound input device, set in System Preferences → Sound → Input. Choose your preferred connected input device from this list, then start the recording in Keynote.


absolute path to directory accessed by right click 'Show Package Contents' In OS X Mountain Lion when you right click on an *.app icon you get an option to 'Show Package Contents' leading you into 'Contents' directory.

I'm having trouble figuring out the absolute path to the 'Contents' directory for a given *.app

Thanks for Help!

Any .app is just a folder so if an application is in

 /Applications/Safari.app

the Contents directory is

/Applications/Safari.app/Contents

You can also get the path by Cmd-clicking on the folder name at the top of the Finder window.


Can't Log In, Removed applesetupdone to try as new admin but need it back So, it's a multilayered problem.

My bluetooth keyboard (logicool - no USB) stopped working or connecting. I tried disconnecting/connecting and then decided to just reset my Macbook just in case. When back on the log-in screen, I remembered why I had the bluetooth keyboard (which isn't working/has been disconnected): some keys don't work. The same keys I need for the password and for my appleID/pass.

So, i tried following this article's advice
https://www.lifewire.com/create-new-admin-account-for-login-issues-2259976

and again came across the issue of needing to type things with keys that don't work. So, I'd like to reverse what I did with the lifewire article - so that it boots normally again, and not asking me to setup an admin account.

So my question is about how do I reverse that? Any tips? And any way to launch the on-screen keyboard on the login screen?

From single-user mode (boot with cmd-s on T1 or earlier), run the following to mount the disk read-write, create the AppleSetupDone file with the correct permissions, then reboot.

/sbin/mount -uw /
touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
chmod 400 /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
reboot

With T2, single-user mode is accessed with cmd-R + Terminal, so you'll need to mount the internal disk at /Volumes/diskname and prefix the touch/chmod commands with the path to your disk.


How do I change the clip length with the iMovie 2011 trailer presets? I'm trying to prepare a trailer with nice presets incoming in iMovie 2011...
Can I change the storyboard or alter clip length? If so, how?

Yes, you can do this.  I'd recommend using the storyboard shot list to get as much of the trailer done as you want following the recommended settings/lengths.

Then, when you are ready to take more control, use the File->Convert to Project menu option.  This will transition the Project settings to the normal iMovie project version and you can change clip durations using the "Clip Adjustments" popup.  You can also drag more event footage into the project/change or add transitions, etc. just as you would a normal project.


What is the best way to limit the time of use of iPad 4? I have iPad 4 with iOS 8.2. Also, I have a child. I want to set some time limit (per day) of use of iPad for my child.

Also, I want to have some profiles or something like that. Other words, I want to have time limit on Profile 1, but I don't want time limitation on other profiles, which have to protect by password.

Sorry but iPads (and iPhones) aren't intended to be used as multi-user devices. At least not like you mean with different profiles like you would find in Windows devices or recent version of Android.

The closest thing on iOS devices is Guided Access, where you can lock the device to a particular application and specify time limits. You need to enable it in "Settings > General > Accessibility > Guided Access" choosing a password and turning on the Accessibility shortcut which allows you to bring up the Guided Access feature by triple clicking the Home button. Then you open the app you want to lock the device to, triple-click the Home button and it will allow you to specify time limits, and allow you to enable or disable certain parts of the device. Then click Start.

You can read more about Guided Access on Apple's website here.

There are other third party applications that promise to offer similar features, you might want to investigate them. Of the ones I looked at none stood out and the reviews didn't inspire confidence.


Error "The Apple ID has not yet been used in iTunes Store" I have an iPhone 4. I have created the Apple ID. Now when I try to download anything from the App Store and I log in with my ID and password, I see the message "this ID has not been yet used". What should I do? I have no more knowledge about these procedures.

Download the latest version of iTunes for your Mac or PC. Install it and log in with your Apple ID. If it presents the terms and conditions for Apple ID, accept them and follow the instructions on the screen.

If you are asked for credit card information, and you don't want to provide it (maybe you will only be getting free apps), you will have to register for a new Apple ID, this time creating it directly in iTunes. That is, the iTunes program on your computer, not on the phone.

Note! Do not use a web browser to navigate to https://appleid.apple.com and create your Apple ID. You must create it inside iTunes, and you must click on one of the free items (like a free song). Sadly, that's the only workaround in case you don't want to provide credit card information.

These two web resources might be helpful.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5366
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2534

Excerpt:

  If you haven't created your Apple ID, follow these steps to create an
  Apple ID and store account at the same time, without adding a payment
  method.


How to stop screen from dimming when watching video? After a while being inactive with the mouse or keyboard, the macbook will dim my screen to save battery. I know I can expand the delay before it will dim in the system preferences, but are there any way of automatically disable it when watching video?

It's quite annoying having to touch the mouse every few minutes when watching a movie...

You could use a software like Caffeine to easily achieve your need :

Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Right-click (or ⌘-click) the icon to show the menu.


Secure erase ssd with Snow leopard (10.6.8) I want to return my crucial mx300 to amazon, but first I have to secure erase all data on it. I don't have any particularly sensitive files, I'm worried mainly about passwords. Unfortunately I have snow leopard (10.6.8) installed on it, so it won't be possible to use FileVault. Searching in the answers to similar questions I found this method which could be handy in my case:

"I found a workaround. Restart the computer and hold option to enter the setup screen. Go into disk utility and select the drive. Erase the drive using "Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted). Make a password for the encryption, it doesn't matter what it is because you won't need it. Hit "Erase". Now select the volume and the "Erase Free Space" and "Security Options" buttons should no longer be grayed out. Click and select your level of security and off you go. I presume "Erase Free Space" and "Security Options" should do the same thing because you just erased the drive so all space is considered free. This worked for me so let me know if it helps."

Will it be enough? Do you know other methods I can use?

Thank you

Apple removed the secure erase from SSD since they do not work like HDD where you can command a secure erase. THe best you can do is fill the drive up with some other data and reduce the portion of the memory cells that still contain unerased and original data.

THe NAND controller in SSD is the only way to ensure all cells are properly sanitized, so you would need a manufacturer specific utility to force all of the cells to be over-written with whatever data the manufacturer recommends.

Depending on why you are erasing, you would spend the time to get a custom tool or just copy new data on the drive or choose to physically destroy the SSD to prevent any recovery of the data.

Going forward, the only way to secure data on an SSD is to encrypt the data before it is written and then destroy the cryptographic key that can decrypt the data. No erasure of the data is needed, just key destruction.

In your case, you might just load Rick Ashley videos from YouTube and then change any passwords you really cannot afford to lose to some unique value so that in the remote chance a hacker gets your SSD and recovers data - they would only get to accounts you can fix later.


macOS Catalina 10.15.4 - MacBook Pro Retina, mid 2015 - dual screen bug Since updating to Catalina two months ago I have had this problem: My MacBook Pro HDMI output is attached to a NEC monitor. Every time I log in on my standard account the monitors are mirrored and Catalina only recognizes the MBP screen. There is no way to turn off mirroring or select the second screen-it doesn't show in system preferences, which only detects the MBP retina screen.

****About this Mac****
  Chipset Model:    Intel Iris Pro
  Type: GPU
  Bus:  Built-In
  VRAM (Dynamic, Max):  1536 MB
  Vendor:   Intel
  Device ID:    0x0d26
  Revision ID:  0x0008
  Metal:    Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily1 v4
  Displays:
Color LCD:
  Display Type: Built-In Retina LCD
  Resolution:   2880 x 1800 Retina
  Framebuffer Depth:    24-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Mirror:   Off
  Online:   Yes
  Automatically Adjust Brightness:  No
  Connection Type:  Internal
**P221W:NEC Monitor ---**
  Resolution:   1680 x 1050 (Widescreen Super eXtended Graphics Array Plus)
  UI Looks like:    1680 x 1050 @ 60 Hz
  Framebuffer Depth:    24-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Display Serial Number:    07104621NA
  Main Display: Yes
  Mirror:   Off
  Online:   Yes
  Rotation: Supported
  Automatically Adjust Brightness:  No

The problem didn't exist before the Catalina upgrade.

Besides trying the normal stuff like Resetting NVRAM and SMC, you might want to double check your Energy Saver settings and make sure "Automatic graphics switching" is enabled.

If you still have trouble, check under the About This Mac--> System Report--> Graphics/Displays. Then take a picture of that and send it over. I'm curious if your MacBook Pro is having trouble with the AMD Radeon card or the drivers that support it.


How can I assign "middle click" to a button on my mouse? How can I assign "middle click" to a button on my mouse?

I am not seeing it in Preferences > Mouse, and every google search just returns results about how to set it up with Apple's Magic mouse.

I am not using an Apple mouse. Specifically I am using this logitech mouse.

Install the Logitech Control Centre System Preference Pane

You het a new Preference Pane "Logitech Control Center"
You will get show attached Logitech Mice etc. Choose the one you want and then you will get a screen to assign buttons to actions


How to write a text in Terminal using AppleScript? How can I insert a text into Terminal.app using AppleScript?
I don't mean to execute it (press Enter). Only to insert it.
My current script almost works:

tell application "Terminal"
    activate
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "TextToInsert" using {}
end tell

The trouble is when this is executed by a hot key, e.g. CMD-T, and then the pressed CMD interferes with the keystrokes and changes the desired behavior.

I need either to tell the keystroke command to ignore any modifier keys or to use other command to write the text there. I think write should do it but have no idea how.

You can try something like, first copying the text to your clipboard, that you want inserted into Terminal, then have the AppleScript code paste the clipboard into Terminal.

tell application "Terminal"
    activate
    tell application "System Events"
        tell application process "Terminal"
            set frontmost to true
            repeat while not frontmost
                delay 0.1
            end repeat
        end tell
        keystroke "v" using {command down}
    end tell
end tell

If you have all of your Terminal windows set to open in tabs rather than separate windows, this following AppleScript code should account for any of the situations as mentioned by @user3439894 in his comment to your post.

tell application "Terminal"
    activate
    repeat until frontmost
        delay 0.5
    end repeat
    set windowCount to count of window
    if windowCount is not 0 then
        tell its front window
            set isMinimized to miniaturized
        end tell
    end if

    if windowCount is 0 then
        tell application "System Events" to tell application process "Terminal"
            set frontmost to true
            repeat while not frontmost
                delay 0.1
            end repeat
            keystroke "n" using {command down}
            delay 1
            keystroke "v" using {command down}
        end tell
    else
        activate
        repeat until frontmost
            delay 0.5
        end repeat
        delay 0.1
        if ((processes of selected tab of front window) is {} or isMinimized) then
            tell application "System Events" to tell application process "Terminal"
                set frontmost to true
                repeat while not frontmost
                    delay 0.1
                end repeat
                keystroke "n" using {command down}
                delay 1
                keystroke "v" using {command down}
            end tell
        else
            tell application "System Events" to tell application process "Terminal"
                set frontmost to true
                repeat while not frontmost
                    delay 0.1
                end repeat
                delay 0.5
                keystroke "v" using {command down}
            end tell
        end if
    end if
end tell


How do I find out more information about a pending software update? On my MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017) with macOS 10.15.4 (19E287), I am shown a software update that I cannot seem to install and that I want to know more about.

How can I find out more information about such a pending software update and eventually install it?

Here is a GIF animation for further context: https://imgur.com/nm6YwY8

From the provided result, the Security update "061-90745" is an update still trying to be installed for Mojave!

Clear the old update with defaults delete com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate LatestMajorOSSeenByUserBundleIdentifier && softwareupdate --list

It removes the old incompatible string then refreshes the list from Apple

Congrats on the move to Catalina!


Hide Shared Network Drive in Finder Is there any way to hide a shared network drive in Finder? I don't want to hide all shared drives, just one. I am using an NAS server for backup purposes and I don't want users to be able see or eject the drive in Finder. I know how to hide mounted network shares with chflags, but I want to hide the drive too.

The only way I found so far is to map the share manually to /Volumes/.hiddensharename.


Can I change my kernel security level? When I run sysctl kern.securelevel on my Mac, it gives me a value of 0.

I'd like to increase the kernel security level on my computer. I want it to give me a 1.

Can I do that?

Found the answer in a related question.

Change it temporarily until next reboot

sudo sysctl kern.securelevel=1

Change it for future startup

sudo vi /etc/sysctl.conf

Once in vi editor, press i to enter insert mode, then type kern.securelevel=1. Next press enter, then :, then type wq and press enter one last time.


How to create a Siri Shortcut that prompts to select a Reminders list that can be reused as a variable I want to edit a Siri Shortcut I found which adds numerous items in a loop to the default iOS Reminders list.  My idea is to prompt the user to select a Reminders list first and then use that list in the loop that adds the items to that specific list.

I see that in the "Add to list" thingie, I can have it "ask every time" to select the list, and that works, but that asks for each item being added, which is too repetitive and laborious.

I cannot figure out how to create a list variable which has the user's reminders lists in it so I can prompt them to make a selection from that list and then save that selection in a variable to be used in the "Add to list" thingie.

I tried "Show reminders list" and selected "ask every time", but there's no way to save their selection in a variable to use later in "Add to list".

This is a very hacky solution with annoying drawbacks.  I hope someone else comes up with something better.

The only way I found to set a variable to a user-selected list from the Reminders app is to add a dummy reminder that allows the user to set the list (and alert), from which you can extract the list (and alert) and store them for re-use into variables.  Then you just immediately delete the new dummy reminder.

The steps are:

Static text with the (unique) value "Dummy reminder"
Add New Reminder (Reminder: "your selected items", List: Ask Each Time, Alert: Ask Each Time)
Set variable "Selected reminders list" to (List from #2).  To do this, you have to tap the "List" and set "Get" to "List"
Set variable "Dummy reminder" to select magic variable: \New Reminder\
Set variable "The alert" to select magic variable: \Dummy Reminder\ and change "Get" to "Has Alarms"
Remove (select magic variable) \Dummy Reminder\

Then you can use these variables however you want:

Selected reminders list
The alert

The drawbacks:

While I entered a variable name "your selected items" to try and suggest that something will happen with the text you're running this shortcut on, the prompt to set the list and the alert is not very intuitive.  It reads "Add \your selected items\ to \default reminders list\ with \No Alert\".  You have to tap your default reminders list name in the text of the prompt to change it (as you do for the alert).
The user gets a non-specific warning that a reminder will be deleted and that it can't be undone, but they have no idea what it is.  It states "Remove 1 Reminder? This is a permanent action. Are you sure you want to remove this item? \Cancel\ \Remove\".
If the user doesn't tap or taps "No Alert" but doesn't enter a time (even though a grayed out default time is displayed), they will get an error that states "The alert time provided was invalid. Please check for spelling errors and ensure you provide a time of day."

Alternatively, you can do something similar using the "Find Reminders" method, but the prompt is even less clear/intuitive.


iPad mini must be plugged in to turn on even if battery is fully charged When I press the button to turn on the iPad mini it is asking to be plugged in despite the fact the battery is fully charged. Once plugged in for a few seconds I can remove the plug and the iPad mini will boot up fine.

iOS 8.3

Sometimes it helps to do a soft reset:
hold the Power button and the Home button at the same time, keep holding, the unit will switch off, keep holding, then when you see the white apple logo let go and let the ipad start up normally.
Try again.


How to set a reminder and alarm at the same time How can I set a reminder to send me a notification at the same time the first ou a specific alarm goes of?

What I am trying to do is, I have to take a medicine everyday in the morning, but I wake up at a different time everyday. So I wanted to have a notification "Take the Med" when I wake up.

Any ideas on how to achieve this?

You can setup an alarm in the clock app and add a custom label to it.

You can also setup a scheduled task in the Reminders app which can be repeated. It can be setup that if you leave a location without checking the box that the reminder is complete you will get a notification. It can also be setup with an alarm for a specific time.


Accessing the Terminal on a 2008 MacBook Pro, when booting in single-user mode I am booting my 2008 MacBook Pro into single-user mode and attempting to access the Terminal by using the key combination Command + s during startup. But it doesn't appear to be working. Pressing Command + Shift + s takes me to the login screen.

I am attempting to access the Terminal by following the instructions mentioned in this tutorial.

How do I get access to the Terminal? I have a dual boot system with both macOS and Windows installed.

When booting into single-user mode, continue holding the Command + s key combination until you see white text scrolling on the screen.

Once the text stops scrolling, a prompt is presented where you can enter commands. If the prompt doesn't appear after the text has stopped scrolling, try pressing Enter key.


How secure is Activation Lock on iOS 7 (and later)? Apple showed this new feature in iOS 7 called Activation Lock, that if you enable "Find My iPhone" on a device that is lost or stolen, a person that finds/gets the iPhone will not be able to wipe it or reset it. I'm curious whether the lock is designed to prevent these avenues to defeat the lock:

Can they completely drain the battery and leave the phone in that state for a couple of months and then try it?
Or, can they use any third-party software that can access iPhone from outside the iTunes and wipe it that way?
Or, can they simply "jailbreak" it and forget about this Activation Lock?

By what methods can this lock be defeated or bypassed?

Any method to restore a device, bypassing iTunes restrictions either by using DFU/Recovery or by not using iTunes, would still require that the device go through the setup process. It is during this process that the device is connected to Wi-Fi and verified with Apple servers. This checks the database of Find my iPhone devices, making sure that the device is not listed. If the device is linked to an Apple ID, with Find my iPhone enabled, then the device will show the Activation Lock screen, and the Apple ID of the account with Find my iPhone enabled on the device will need to be entered.

Completely draining the battery would not fix this, since the Apple ID and Find my iPhone state is stored on Apple servers and retrieved during setup, not from the device itself.

Theoretically yes, 3rd-party software could gain access to a device and restore it, however as mentioned earlier the Find my iPhone state is stored on Apple's servers, so this would be of no benefit, and would not be different to restoring using iTunes when the device is in Recovery mode.

Even though a jailbreak has now been released for iOS 7, a device with a currently active Activation Lock can't be jailbroken.


Notification center widget Two of the iPhone's default apps, Weather and Stocks, create little widgets in the Notification Center. They aren't exactly notifications, can display graphics (weather) or animations (stock ticker), and don't disappear after being tapped.

I have not seen any other apps that do this. Do any other apps use widgets like this? Or is this exclusive to Apple's apps?

3rd party widget development is not currently supported by the standard iOS SDK (as of iOS 6). You can not find any other apps to show a widget similar in use to weather and stocks in the notification center.

You could jailbreak the device to run custom widgets, however.
The jailbreak community has created many widgets.


How to link gcc? gcc-7.1.0 already installed, it's just not linked I download the gcc, use brew install gcc
but it said the gcc did not linked.
how to link the gcc? or what should I do?

When you install gcc with :

brew install gcc

it should be automatically linked. But, if for some reasons, it's not. You can link it manually with :

brew link gcc

The command :

brew link --help

gives also some valuable information :

brew ln, link [--overwrite] [--dry-run] [--force] formula:
    Symlink all of formula's installed files into the Homebrew prefix. This
    is done automatically when you install formulae but can be useful for DIY
    installations.

    If --overwrite is passed, Homebrew will delete files which already exist in
    the prefix while linking.

    If --dry-run or -n is passed, Homebrew will list all files which would
    be linked or which would be deleted by brew link --overwrite, but will not
    actually link or delete any files.

    If --force (or -f) is passed, Homebrew will allow keg-only formulae to be linked.


How do you sort columns left to right in MS Excel for mac? I have a table, and I'm trying to sort by the column headers, so that the alphabetically first column is to the left, etc. I've seen various instructions, and I've tried, but when I'm in the sort options, and select "left to right", and then "OK", it doesn't seem to change anything, and then I go back into options, it's back to up-down...

Is this a known bug? or am I missing something?

To rearrange columns alphanumerically by their names, assuming the column names are in row 1, do this:

Select all cells of the table. (Click and drag from top left cell to bottom right cell.)
Click the thin arrow button next to the 'Sort' button and choose Custom sort….
In the Sort dialog box, click Options…, and in the pop-up, choose to Sort Columns.
Back in the main dialog box, un-check 'My list has headers'.
in Row: select Row 1; in Sort On: select Values; and in Order: select A–Z.
Click OK to execute.

(based on Excel 2011)


2015 MBP (Thunderbolt 2) output to Thunderbolt 3 Dock I have a 2015 MBP (Thunderbolt 2), and I want to output to a new Thunderbolt 3 docking station. The new dock is connected to 2 monitors.
Seems like what I need is a male to male Thunderbolt2 to Thunderbolt3 cable. But, from googling around, doesn't seem like such a cable exists.
I see USB C to Mini DP male to male. But that's used for new laptops (USB C) to drive older displays (Mini DP).
I also see that Apple provides a Thunderbolt 3 to 2 dongle.
https://www.apple.com/us_smb_83039/shop/product/MMEL2AM/A/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-to-thunderbolt-2-adapter
Thunderbolt 3 is male, Thunderbolt 2 is female. So I guess I could connect a Thunderbolt 2 cable from may MBP to the dongle. But even then, I'm not sure if that would work. Also, I'm not sure if it'd be driving 1 display or 2.
Can anyone help?
Thanks

Get a proper Thunderbolt 2 dock.
The problem that you’re going to have is that Thunderbolt 2 does not provide all of the bandwidth and capabilities necessary to support what’s on the Thunderbolt 3 dock.
Using a USB-C dock with older MacBook Pros
Those Thunderbolt 2 to thunderbolt 3 adapters are great for when you’re using a single use items like an Ethernet port or a Firewire adapter. Thunderbolt 3 has double the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 2 -  40Gb/s versus 20Gb/s. You simply will not be able to support everything that the newer dock supports.
What’s also important to keep in mind is that the Thunderbolt 2 uses an active cable where as Thunderbolt 3 does not. So right off the bat trying to connect this dock to your older MacBook Pro will likely not work.


All photos are gone after updating my iPhone to iOS 5 After installation of iOS 5, once it was done restoring my settings, apps, etc I got an error message -19. All apps restored successfully. But I don't see the photos. I tried to revert to iOS 4.3.3 again but I got stuck again with error -10.

At this point, I just want my photos back. After that I can update the iPhone to the latest version. Is there a way to restore the photos from the iPhone's file system? I tried accessing the phone's contents using Ubuntu, there I got error message 15.

According to Apple, iTunes should automatically backup your photos and videos:

  Backed-up information includes purchased music, TV shows, apps, and books*; photos and video in the Camera Roll; ...

However, the format of the backup doesn't make it easy to access those photos. Therefore, you can use a program such as iPhone Backup Extractor which should make it a lot easier to recover data from the backup, including photos. I haven't tried the app, so I can't personally recommend it, but it did get good reviews on CNET.


With "Optimise iPhone Storage" mode, is it possible to tell iPhone to keep some photos/videos always locally available? I have "iCloud Photo Library" enabled, and "Optimise iPhone Storage" selected (because there's not enough space locally for all photos and videos).

With these settings, is there a way to tell iPhone to keep certain photos or videos always available locally? What now happens when I don't have access to internet is that I can't play videos at all (ones that have already been uploaded to iCloud).

Especially when travelling where roaming is prohibitively expensive and most of the time I'm without internet, it would be very useful to be able to select some files to be available offline.

One thing I tried is favouriting a video, but that doesn't affect this. As soon as you're offline, you can't view even a second of your videos.

When using Optimize Storage, iCloud Photo Library does not have a feature to select photos to permanently store on device. If you’d like to send feedback to Apple, you can use www.apple.com/feedback

Personally, I’ve worked around with this limitation a few times by viewing photos I want ahead of time. Granted this won’t work for all situations. However, it worked for me when I wanted to show my grandmother in law my wedding photos. I know these steps work with up to at least 100 photos.

  Tap the select button in the Photos App.
  Select photos you would like to view offline.
  Tap share and choose an option such as Mail.
  Wait for the “prepare” overlay to complete.
  Cancel the share.

While this works, it’s not a permanent download. If your device begins to run low on space, your selected images may be replaced with small thumbnails.

There maybe other methods to share photos to another app that will permanently store photos on the device. I’ve not looked into this though.


Is there a way to force Google Chrome to open in full screen? When I'm working just on my MacBook Pro,I like to keep as many apps as I can in Lion's full-screen mode.  One of these apps is Google Chrome.  However, Chrome doesn't remember that I want it to appear full screen after I quit it.  It always opens up in "windowed" mode.  Is there a way to force it to start in full screen?

Thanks.

I was having the same problem BUT i think i found out how to make google chrome always open full screen. go to the wrench on the right hand side of the task bar when you have chrome open. go to settings, under the on start up section click "continue where i left off." BAM google chrome should now open full screen... well it does for me anyways. hope this helps.


How does my brand new iPhone have steps activity recorded on it (in the Health app) from a month ago? I just received a brand new iPhone from Apple.com. It booted up to a fresh "welcome" state, as expected. I did not do any kind of data transfer/import; I set it up as new. And I configured it with a brand new Apple ID / iCloud account not linked anywhere else.
And yet... it has 197 steps on it from a day in June, registered in 3 chunks at 3 different times that day (around 3AM, 5AM and 12PM California time -- it was shipped from California). Tapping on these steps shows additional metadata that verifies that the steps were indeed registered on this device, not synced from anywhere.
It also has one flight of stairs climbed from the same day in June.
How is this possible? Does the device register steps before it's been set up, and it was turned on multiple times in a day (including in the middle of the night) during some test/QA phase? Surely all new iPhone buyers are not receiving devices with ghost steps on them?
I considered that perhaps it had registered some steps I made while setting it up and before the correct date/time had a chance to sync. But that wouldn't explain the preexisting steps coming in 3 chunks at 3 different times of day that are many hours apart.
Could this indicate that perhaps the device is not as "new" as promised?

This sound like a case of a product return - a customer who purchased it and returned it.
Now, you state that you purchased it as “Brand New” so Apple, of all entities, shouldn’t be repackaging returned items and selling them as new.   Actually, they can.
Specifically, from that post, there’s an FTC opinion giving guidance on usage of the term “New Product.”   Basically, they can take a previously opened product that may have even been turned on but  generally unused and in new condition, repackage it as new so long as there is a conspicuous process behind how they do this.
It’s entirely possible someone bought this iPhone, tried it out (maybe for this specific feature) didn’t like it and returned it. Apple did a simple factory reset not realizing there was data stored, and repackaged it as new.  Obviously, one got though the process that shouldn’t.   Is it a major problem and fraud on Apple’s part?  No. The process must be conspicuous, not perfect.
Simply contact Apple, tell them that it appears the product is used when it should be be new and you want a replacement.  They’ll accommodates you.


Exchange Delegate Mailbox in Mail.app Currently I am running Yosemite, I am trying to ascertain if it's possible to add a delegate mailbox to the mail.app. As of yet I have been unable to do so. Unfortunately I cannot have this particular mailbox as another account as it doesn't have the ability to be logged into.

Thanks,

Brendan

I do believe that Mail.app does not have the ability to log into a shared (group) mailbox as I do not believe it understands the things that Microsoft did (very strange and awful things...) to IMAP to get the functionality that they wanted in Outlook.

For that you will need a copy of Outlook for the Mac, it may be available in the App store. not sure if it is free or not...


iPad Air 2 has shut me out This is a replacement unit, replacing one that I dropped. I have been in the process of transferring my apps to the new iPad. I had finished yesterday and it was working just fine and then it seemed like it just stopped working. When I try to turn it on, I just get a black screen. I can access Siri and Siri answers verbally.  I know my user name and my password, which is coded number and fingerprint access, however I can't bring up a screen to enter it.
Do you have any suggestions?
It is fully charged and I can turn the power on. Unfortunately the only reason I know it's on is that I can contact Siri but the screen is still black.

Definitely try a hard reset! I had the same issue with my iPhone - it worked fine - music was playing, the Mute Button would vibrate when I switched it to mute - but it had the slightly annoying fail that the screen was just black. A hard reset did the trick!


How do I get rid of this Danish iWeb homepage? Whenever I reboot my Mac (formerly 2009 13" MBP, recently migrated to a 2015 13" MBP) my Google Chrome homepage shows the following Danish iWeb help page. I no longer have iWeb installed, but I imagine it's followed me onto my new MBP via the Migration Assistant.

I've verified that my home page is setup correctly in chrome and if I close the Chrome window and re-open it my home page will be correct, so this problem only occurs once per boot.

Here's the window that I'm talking about:

I've never had my Mac set to Danish, but this Mac has gone through several family members and several OSX updates through the years.

As both @IconDaemon and another user suggested, I noticed the MBP was just opening Chrome without the user asking it, it was on boot. This led to the "Login Items" prefpane under User Accounts which looked like this:

How did she get that 24538.html there... Once it was removed (via the minus sign), problem solved. I had no idea you could set a web page to open on login...

We cleaned up a bunch of these items after testing the removal of just the html file. Removing just the html file worked.


Which Airport to use for primary WiFi router, Express or Extreme? I've been using an AirPort Express 802.11n as my wifi router. I wanted to extend my network to another part of my house and someone recently gave me an Airport Extreme 802.11n. It was easy to set up, extending the Express signal, and it seems to be working.

However it got me wondering if I have it backwards: should the Extreme be the primary base station with the connection to my cable modem?

Also, while I am here, can I use the Airport Extreme 802.11n with Time Machine? There are conflicting reports online.

(I know this is old tech but I am on a tight budget and these hand-me-downs still work well enough for me)

If it works for you there's no need to change. I thought I'd read someone else say that you can't use the ethernet ports to extend from the wireless network on an airport extreme if it's in client mode but I gather you're only using it for wifi and it sounds like it's already working.

You can use 802.11n AE with time machine, from my experience I wouldn't recommend it though. The initial backup was expected to take ~20hrs and it kept restarting. In the end I plugged the HDD into my mac once a week to do a backup instead.


My iPod Touch 2nd generation is dead My iPod touch does not respond since yesterday. I cannot see anything on the screen and the buttons don't do anything, no backlighting either. The problem started when I wanted to plug my iPod into the wall to charge it (it was almost empty). When I plugged in my iPod, the screen went out and I have had no response since. I think the battery is broken, but I am not sure. How can I fix this? Or should I contact Apple?

It sounds like there a good possibility of it being a hardware issue, in which case you should contact Apple.

If you haven't already, about the only thing to do, is plug it into your computer for about 15 minutes. Sometimes it takes awhile, if the battery is completely dead, to get the charge started. But, I'm pretty confident that won't work, considering it had life before you plugged it in. It would be something to try if you wanted to take the time.


How to propagate Wi-Fi packets to other interfaces on a router I have two computers connected to an ethernet/wifi dlink router:

Laptop: Connected via Wi-Fi

Desktop: Connected via ethernet

My understanding is that the desktop computer will never see any packets exchanged via Wi-Fi between the laptop and the router which means, I suppose, that the desktop computer cannot sniff any FTP passwords that I use to connect using the laptop (without SSL)

Is it possible to set up the router to send copies of Wi-Fi packets to the ethernet interface?

It highly depends on the (SOHO-) router and its internals if sniffing is possible. Usually Wi-Fi and ethernet ports are separated and you can't sniff Wi-Fi with an external ethernet device. Even if your router contains several ethernet interfaces and all of them are attached to an internal switch, packet capturing of the other ethernet ports is impossible.

Some routers contain an internal sniffer though. My router (AVM Fritz!Box 7490) provides a sniffing feature for diagnosis:

After choosing one or several of the different interfaces and hitting one or several start buttons I get a full capture in Wireshark format.

Your D'link router may contain a similar feature. Or a free firmware with this feature exists for your router.

A second option is a Wi-Fi sniffer attached to the desktop computer.


What's the difference between `/private/var/db/receiptss/` and `/var/db/receipts/`? I'm uninstalling Microsoft Office 2011 from a rather new MacBook running 10.8.4, and Microsoft's website says to delete (among others) all files beginning with com.microsoft located in /private/var/db/receipts/.

I've read that in general it's inadvisable to delete such files (.bom's and .plist's) from your receipts folder willy-nilly, since it could affect other software or the OS. But since I'm not running any other Microsoft software on this machine, and since Microsoft recommends deleting them, I suppose it's safe in this case.

However, I found what appear to be duplicates of those files (same names, permissions, sizes, etc.) located in /var/db/receipts/, which Microsoft's site doesn't mention. I'm wondering if it's safe to delete (or even move) these as well, and I'd be curious to know the purpose of these two different directories.

For reference, the files Microsoft says to delete (abridged list, there are 76 in total):

$ ls -l /private/var/db/receipts/ | grep "microsoft"
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     53798 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.mau.all.autoupdate.pkg.2.3.3.bom
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel       395 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.mau.all.autoupdate.pkg.2.3.3.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel    159800 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.merp.all.errorreporting.pkg.2.2.8.bom
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel       405 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.merp.all.errorreporting.pkg.2.2.8.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     35959 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.office.all.clipart_search9.pkg.14.2.0.bom
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel       423 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.office.all.clipart_search9.pkg.14.2.0.plist
...
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     38552 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.office.en.word_wizards.pkg.14.2.0.bom
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel       415 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.office.en.word_wizards.pkg.14.2.0.plist

The files they didn't mention (again, there are 76 total):

$ ls -l /var/db/receipts/ | grep "microsoft"
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     53798 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.mau.all.autoupdate.pkg.2.3.3.bom
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel       395 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.mau.all.autoupdate.pkg.2.3.3.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel    159800 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.merp.all.errorreporting.pkg.2.2.8.bom
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel       405 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.merp.all.errorreporting.pkg.2.2.8.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     35959 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.office.all.clipart_search9.pkg.14.2.0.bom
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel       423 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.office.all.clipart_search9.pkg.14.2.0.plist
...
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     38552 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.office.en.word_wizards.pkg.14.2.0.bom
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel       415 Sep 10 21:54 com.microsoft.office.en.word_wizards.pkg.14.2.0.plist

And I stumbled across another unmentioned location, which I wonder about (what it is and is it safe to remove it?):

$ ls -l /private/tmp/ | grep "Microsoft"
drwxrwxrwx  3 root             wheel  102 Apr  2  2012 Microsoft

$ ls -l /private/tmp/Microsoft/
total 8
-rwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel  6 Apr  2  2012 launch

Please let me know what you think. Thanks!

The files are not duplicates, but, linked.

At the top level of the hard drive, /var is linked to /private/var; and, /tmp to /private/tmp

So, /var/anydirectory would also show up as /private/var/anydirectory.  Deleting one will also delete the other.


More Email Account cost more battery? I have around 15 email accounts, if i setup all that's 15 emails in iPhone with IMAP method.

Will it cost more battery than i just only setup 1 email account?

Yes, it will take more charge than setting up just one account, but that amount will be very negligible, about 1 to 2 minutes a day. On the other hand, it might have a not-so-negligible impact on your data usage.


Hide webloc extension I know that I can hide all extensions but how do I hide just one, say webloc? I don't want to hide each the extension of each file individually.

The only thing I could find, suggested by Benjamin Schollnick, here., is this:

  find -x /path/to/folder -name *.webloc -exec chflags hidden {} +

It will hide the extension for existing files, therefore, you will need to run it again for newly created files.

Althought in the original question its said for Leopard, I guess it will work for Lion too.


Can I use my computer's network connection on my Ipod? I know it's possible to tether iphones to use their internet connection on the computer, but can it be used the other way? I want to use the computer's network connection on my Ipod Touch through the usb cable. Is it possible? Thank you!

Not exactly but you can use the computer's ethernet internet connection via Wifi to the iPhone.

In that case just go to System Preferences > Sharing, then

Select Internet Sharing
Select Ethernet in the field Share your connection from
Flag Wi-Fi in the field To computers using
Go to Wi-Fi Options... and select a network SSID and a security password
Click OK
Flag Internet sharing

If you are using a pc with windows you can follow the instructions reported here. Basically:

Go to Network Connections in your Control Panel by going to Start > Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center and then click Change adapter settings on the menu on the left.
Right-click your Internet connection that you want to share (e.g., Local Area Connection) and click Properties.
Click the Sharing tab.
Check the "Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection" option.


Fixing my refresh rate I hope this is the right place to post this question.
I'm getting crazy since 2 days trying to enable 60hz on my external display.

I bought a new LG Ultrafine 4k display as suggested by apple to have a kind of retina resolution on my external monitor and yes, it is awesome, it looks like my MacBook Pro.

I have a new MacBook Pro 2018 with retina display and it is running on macOS Mojave 10.14.3 (I did not updated it, I received it with this OS).

The BIG issue is that my display is capped at 30hz and I don't know how to unlock it back to 60hz.

Reading on Google so far I tried:

To install a patch: no success;
To install SwitchResX: it doesn't have a 4k version at 60hz, all custom resolution I created are invalid, so, no success;
Tried to follow a guide to install Lilu + WhateverGreen kexts but it doesn't exist a guide that realy explain how to install it, and how to let it work. People assume everyone speak their language. Running an App called Clover Configurator but I don't know what should I do with it.

Please, can you help me to let it work? What should I do? Thanks.

It seems to me that Apple has the refresh rate locked at 30Hz for that type of resolution:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206587

  The following Mac models support resolutions and refresh rates of up to 1080p at 60Hz, and 3840 x 2160 at 30Hz, over HDMI 1.4b when using the Apple USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter with macOS Sierra 10.12 or later:

iMac (2017 and later)
iMac Pro (2017)
MacBook (2015 and later)
MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2018)
MacBook Pro (2016 and later)

Looking a bit further down on that link, it seems you can try to get it to 60hz by using the right cable and adapter:

  The computers listed above also support 60Hz refresh rate over HDMI when used with a supported HDMI 2.0 display, HDMI Premium Certified cable, and a compatible third-party USB-C to HDMI 2.0 adapter.


Regain control of an Apple Account I have an older Apple account i haven't used for a few years, I know the email (And have access to the email address) its linked to and i know the password.

However when i go to the apple account management page (https://appleid.apple.com/#!&page=signin) and tried to sign in, it asks for answers to my security questions which I know longer know the answers to. I tried to go to https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid but... it asks me for the answer to my security questions... when i select i need to change my security questions.

How can I go about regain control over this app?

First thing - think twice before trying to brute force guess passwords. If this is due to a developer program requirement, and especially if you continue to pay for that - start with developer support.

It's OK that you forgot the passwords and ask what method you can take to validate it's really you regaining control of the account.

https://developer.apple.com/support/

If you're locked out, you might need to make careful notes of what you click at:

https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid

Be very clear what step you can't get past and be patient with the people helping. They are there to prevent someone wishing to take over your developer account so you might need to write a certified letter, get something notarized, take several weeks to get them to help.

When you're ready to admit you can't get in - phone support might be your last avenue to get someone to point you to any alternate unlock methods or deliver the news that Apple will not help you break into the account. If that’s the ultimate situation you would have to walk away from it since you can't verify you produced the answers they asked back when you initially secured the account.

https://developer.apple.com/contact/phone/


Want menu and dock to remain visible when youtube fullscreen and Mission control is NOT set to Displays have seperate Spaces I found a lot of people wanting to hide the dock and I need the reverse, I'm a developer and like to watch youtube (I use chrome) on one of my multiple monitors while I work on the other two monitors (I have three total).  And I frequently use windows that need to span multiple monitors which means I HAVE to have the Mission Control option turned off for "Displays have separate Spaces".  The problem is when disabling "Displays have separate Spaces" and entering fullscreen youtube the dock and menu are hidden, this makes continuing to work much harder.

So to be clear, I'm looking for:

Dock and menu stay on the screen while youtube is fullscreen on monitor #1
While still keeping the ability to open a single window that can span across monitor #2 and #3.

Someone please save me!  Even if I have to purchase and app that addresses this for me!

Didn't want to write like 4 comments so here's an answer.

Finally things are starting to make sense. The word fullscreen mixed with Displays have separate spaces option deceived me and kept me in a headspace I couldn't get out off. I was thinking of the OS X fullscreen... We can pretty much forget everything I've said so far.

It is definitely super weird that for you, it is acting the way most people want it to work... and there is seemingly no way to make it work the way it works for you... Yet, here we are.

Since I super don't have a fix for that issue. I'm going to try and offer a workaround.

Workaround:

Like I suggested before, maybe the simplest solution would be a chrome extension. I'd actually maybe recommend Floating Player. Basically opens the video in current page in its own window with only the title bar of the gui remaining.

Then if you resize it to fill  the whole screen (maximize it), you should be good to go.

Maximizing a window

Since OS X Yosemite, clicking the green ball on the top left puts the application window in Fullscreen mode. You don't want that. To actually just maximize a window, you need to hold down Opt/Alt when clicking it. Or double click the title bar. This unfortunately is a bit of a mixed bag... Some applications, including Chrome, maximizes the window by making it full height, but not full width. So maybe don't use that either.

The best way to maximize a window or manage window position and size is to use third party applications. I'd recommend you try out Moom. It's definitely one of the best ones out there, if not the best one. If you don't want to pay anything, I'd say the next best free window manager app is probably Spectacle.


How to recover an iPod Classic that won't turn on and doesn't appear as a drive? A friend of mine asked for help with an iPod Classic that isn't working.

It is an 80GB iPod Classic, model A1238, that doesn't give any signs of still being alive. It won't beep or light the screen, doesn't matters what I try.

I have tried to reset it (turn the hold switch on/off and then hold the middle and menu button) but it did nothing, and so I couldn't put it in disk mode either.

Right now I'm trying to charge it from a power adapter, but I don't expect it to help.
I had already tried to charge it from a PC, and from a MacBook Pro.

Anything else I could try, before sending it to repair?

Here's something that worked for me:

Put the iPod into a ziploc bag and seal it tightly.
Put it in the freezer overnight.
Take it out in the morning.

I thought that it was just an urban myth, but as the iPod was apparently dead, why not try it? I was (pleasantly!) shocked to see it start up again the next morning.


Will changing my Apple ID affect any apps that I have purchased? I want to change my Apple ID, simply just because I don't want to use that name or that email address anymore.  Will it affect any apps that I have purchased in the past with that old Apple ID? If I have deleted one of those apps that I purchased, will I have to repurchase that app again with the new Apple ID?

If you have an Apple ID that ends with mac.com or me.com then you probably can't, otherwise this FAQ covers how to change your Apple ID.

Go to http://appleid.apple.com/
Click "Manager your Account"
Login to your account
Click on the "Name, ID, and Email Address" option on the left
Next to Apple ID click the Edit button and fill out your new details.

Purchases are bound to your account, so short of deleting your account you should be fine. (In fact you can still access old purchases by logging into the relevant store with your old account according to the FAQ about Apple ID


Problem with two-finger swipes on my magic mouse. Is there any form of fix? Recently, I've migrated from a strict Windows to a OSX environment.  I'm using the Magic Mouse as my pointing device and so far I've been satisfied.

The only problem that I am having is that I can not get my mouse to consistently recognize my two-finger swipes to swap between my full screen apps.  It does work but only occasionally.  Specifically, I have to swipe about 30 times before the screen will actually switch to the other application.  Also, I know that the mouse is partially picking up my gesture because the window will begin to barely transition, but I usually can't get the screen to shift any more than a couple inches on my 27" display.

This is unusable.

Are there any gesture sensitivity settings that I may be able to tweak, buried in some form of an initialization of configuration file?  Or, am I stuck and I'll have to simply avoid using this gesture?  I think this functionality would be very useful.  For now, however, it's not an option.

Try this little utility: http://www.magicprefs.com/

It allows you to override mouse gestures, map them to your own actions, etc.
It also has a graphical view to show you what you're doing, which can be very useful in figuring out what you're doing wrong.


Force Chrome to use OS X notifications? I'd like to find a way to use OS X native notifications instead of the Chrome notifications.

I have read something about using a Growl extension and then redirect Growl to OS X Notifications Center using Hiss app, but I never used Growl and for what I've read seems like it was used only on old versions of OS X.

Is there any way?

Yes you can with this experimental feature.
Open chrome://flags/#enable-native-notifications to enable the feature, then restart Chrome.