System preferences crashes when press accounts I'm trying to help someone else with their computer, every time I try to access the "Accounts" settings in system preferences, system preferences hangs and then crashes, any idea what's up? The computer is a Macbook 2.4Gz Core Duo, and all the software is up to date.

-Thanks

Edit: This is what comes up in console.

2/18/11 9:25:24 PM  System Preferences[201] NSConcreteMutableAttributedString initWithString:: nil value
2/18/11 9:25:24 PM  System Preferences[201] NSConcreteMutableAttributedString initWithString:: nil value
2/18/11 9:26:37 PM  System Preferences[201] [NSPrefPaneBundle instantiatePrefPaneObject] (/System/Library/PreferencePanes/Accounts.prefPane): should only be called once

You might get better answers if you provide more information such as when this started happening.  For example, did you add a new account recently?  Install any applications recently?

Normally, when weird stuff happens on OS X such as crashes, repairing permissions can be a good place to start.  Try opening Disk Utility and select your computers Hard Drive on the left hand side, then click 'Repair Permissions'.  This will take a few minutes and may solve your problem.  Try a restart after the repair before you go back into Accounts.

Have you tried this under a different user account?  I've come across instances of people having this only occur on one account.  You could create a new account and restore documents etc from a backup.


Grey login screen after enabling encryption After turning on encryption with FileVault on my MacBook Air with Mountain Lion my login screen went gray. Is there a way to go back to the default one?

The grey one

The default one

Nope, you can’t. When FileVault is enabled, the disk needs to be decrypted on every boot. As the computer can’t access files on the disk, It generates a simple login screen so that you can enter your password and decrypt the disk. This UI is hardcoded into the firmware of your computer, and can’t be changed.
Source: https://discussions.apple.com/message/15823532#15823532

When your Mac first starts up, EFI-boot takes over to decide what to do. It either

continues to bring up the system to the typical OSX login screen, which is managed by OSX's system preferences, or

it starts a special EFI pre-boot where it displays the FV2 unlock screen with the icons of designated OSX accounts approved to unlock the disk. Once you log on, the EFI unlock sequence carries forth your credentials, performing a single signon.


Guest Account as Thief Trap in case of losing MacBook One week ago my MBPro has been stolen, and unfortunately no "Where's My Mac" like's helped.

My idea for securing my next MacBook is to create Password-free/guest-like account in case of another bad luck.

When thief will open the lid, he will log in, and maybe some installed software will take picture from front camera? Maybe some keylogger will help? Maybe some sneaky Prey-like software in background?
What do You think?
How to find my Mac even if my someone will reinstall the OSX?

There is some literature out there for you (e.g.here or here). Basically there is different means of protection.

Locating the device (Find my Mac)
Surveillance apps (also have a look at the OS X Back to my mac, which reportedly freed some Macs from their thieves)
Data security / encryption (e.g. Filevault2 encryption, Firmware password)
Physical protection (e.g. Kensington lock)

Watch out when using Filevault2 for Full Disk Encryption. This will make your data safe but will maybe not lure the thief into reveling his / her location, since only a limited version of OS X is booted.

Setting a firmware password will prevent others to boot different disks.

But watch out. These features (filevault and firmware password) require more care with backups, etc. The risk that you lock yourself out is significantly higher.


Using the same iTunes library with two different versions of iTunes I would like to use my iTunes library on two different computers, whose OS versions are different and would like to know to which extent it is possible to use the same iTunes library on two different versions of iTunes.

More precisely, here is my situation :

On my Mac #1, the OS is 10.6.8 with iTunes 10.6 (40)
On my Max #2, the OS is 10.5.8 with iTunes 10.6.3 (25)

Currently, I am able to use both iTunes with the same library.

I would like to know if I can install on Mac #1 the last version of iTunes (namely, iTunes 11) and still be able to open/play/edit my music on Mac #2.

Sharing a physical library between iTunes instances won't work due to various reasons (e.g. incompatible library formats, conflicting access) but you won't need to do that. Home Sharing in included iTunes for exactly this reason and allows you to access the library of Mac #1 from Mac #2 (or vice versa, depending on where your library is actually stored).

There are actually two options here:

Open iTunes Preferences on the Mac were the library is stored, go to Sharing and make your library available to the local network. You should now see the library in the sidebar of the other Mac
Create an Apple ID if you don't have one already and use it to enable Home Sharing via File > Devices > "Turn On Home Sharing" on all involved computers. The benefit of this approach is that it also works with iOS devices and Apple TV. For details see Understanding home sharing and Setting up Home Sharing on your computer.


Shortcut go to folder containing the file opened in TextEdit I know that I could right click on the window title to have the folder path but the question is specifically to use a keyboard shortcut.

Maybe is there a way through the creation of an Automator service? Or AppleScript?

Any suggestions are accepted thanks :)

The solution was to use an AppleScript!

Here the code to insert in Automator (during the creation of a new service)

tell application "TextEdit"
    tell front document
        set apath to (its path) as text
        tell application "Finder" to open item (apath as POSIX file)'s container's container window
    end tell
end tell

tell application "Finder"
    activate
end tell

return

Automator window will look like this:


HD scan in Mountain Lion I suspect a faulty drive. Anything that could perform a hardware scan (bad sectors?) built into Mountain Lion or available for free off the 'net?

You can try Disk Utility. Click Verify Disk to see if the disk is faulty.

My last HD failed after a year of use. The past month has made the computer really slow. Most HD manufacturer gives out a replacement if it fails within 3 years though.


VLC is dropping frames/stuttering when trying to play 1080p@60FPS video on rMBP w. 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 When I try to play a video with 1920x1080 pixels and 60fps, in H.264 format using VLC player. It cannot keep up with this work and frequently drops frames (in other words, it's not playing it "smoothly").

OS X's QuickTime player seems to be free from this problem, but it's not a solution, since it's limited to a small subset of formats (can't handle 10-bit or 4:2:2 colorspaces, or MKV container, etc.)

Is there a way to fix that problem (without upgrading to macOS Sierra), or I should look for another video player if VLC's performance is not good enough?

The computer is a Retina MacBook Pro with a 2.3 GHz i7 processor and a NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB dedicated GPU, and OS X version is 10.11.6. I'm not sure how to check if secondary GPU is being really used for heavy lifting instead of Intel one when playing videos.

VLC says it's up to date:

  VLC 2.2.4 is currently the newest version available

Finally I solved this problem by switching to MPV for playing videos, which is also superior to VLC in many other ways.


Merging keyboard shortcuts How could I create a new keyboard shortcut to merge other shortcuts?
In particular I would like to merge ⌘ CommandC, ⌘ CommandF, ⌘ CommandV  (Copy, Find and Paste) - would be useful for instance for Safari.

(a quick way could be automator, but I don't have much experience...maybe this post could help?)

A good example would be the use selection for find
 (⌘ CommandE) feature that exists in preview.

Thanks for your help.

I have found a funny way to do this with Karabiner installed.

Add this to your private.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
    <item>
        <name>Command sequence</name>
    <item>
        <name>Option-R</name>
        <identifier>remap.option_r2command.cfv</identifier>
        <autogen>
        __KeyToKey__
        KeyCode::OPTION_R,
        Option::KEYTOKEY_BEFORE_KEYDOWN, KeyCode::C, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L, KeyCode::VK_WAIT_100MS,
        Option::KEYTOKEY_BEFORE_KEYDOWN, KeyCode::F, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L, KeyCode::VK_WAIT_100MS,
        Option::KEYTOKEY_BEFORE_KEYDOWN, KeyCode::V, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L, KeyCode::VK_WAIT_100MS,
        </autogen>
    </item>
    </item>
</root>

Then enable it in Change Key > command sequence > Option-R

A single key press on the right option key will evoke the cascade of command-C/F/V shortcuts.

This doesn't work in Sierra (because Karabiner still isn't Sierra compatible) and depending on the responsiveness of your app you may have to adjust VK_WAIT_100MS  to higher values like VK_WAIT_300MS. You can alternatively use other usually rarely used keys like shift_r. A shortcut like alt_r/opt_rX should also work.

If you want to use alt_r/opt_rX as "shortcut" private.xml should look like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
</item>
    <item>
    <name>Command sequences</name>
    <item>
        <name>Option_R-X to Command-C/F/V</name>
        <identifier>remap.option_r-x2command.cfv</identifier>
        <autogen>
        __KeyToKey__
        KeyCode::X, ModifierFlag::OPTION_R,
        Option::KEYTOKEY_BEFORE_KEYDOWN, KeyCode::C, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L, KeyCode::VK_WAIT_100MS,
        Option::KEYTOKEY_BEFORE_KEYDOWN, KeyCode::F, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L, KeyCode::VK_WAIT_100MS,
        Option::KEYTOKEY_BEFORE_KEYDOWN, KeyCode::V, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L, KeyCode::VK_WAIT_100MS,
        </autogen>
    </item>
    </item>
</root>


Transferring purchases to different store I made some purchases on the Egyptian store, now i'm on the US store and the items that i purchased is no longer available unless i switched back to the Egyptian store. Is there a way that I can use different stores but still can download the same items that I purchased in different stores ?

Transfers cannot be made from one Apple ID to another Apple ID. Although you can switch the store region preference for your Apple ID to select different regions and download the region specific applications. Use this guide to change the region/store.


My Macbook Pro M1 suddenly isn't showing the correct resolutions anymore I've installed Steam, Parallels and OBS on my Macbook Pro M1, OSX Big Sur 11.3.1. I was doing a live, and also used SwitchResX for a moment. Then, after rebooting it, the resolution was suddenly messed up. On Settings > Displays, the resolutions listed are:
1600x100
1920x1200
1024x640
1280x800

In that order, which makes no sense. Notice the image below, where the largest resolution listed is 1280x800, while the "default" is 1920x1800:

Which isn't even the right ratio.
In an attempt to solve the issue, I've reinstalled the OS, but nothing changed.

How can I troubleshoot this issue?

I've solved the issue. Seems like SwitchResX for some reason messed up with the system resolutions. I've updated to the latest beta version of SwitchResX (4.11.1a4), opened SwitchResX Preferences and then, on the menu at the top of the OSX screen, clicked "Display > Restory factory settings". Then after a reboot it was back to normal. Geez

"Restore factory settings" is greyed out now, but it wasn't before. Clicking on it and rebooting solved the issue.


Simple text editor that supports highlighting and font colours I'm looking for a standalone (or web) application that allows for very simple text editing, but also allows for personal annotation of the text by changing script colour and highlighting. Most text editors for developers doesn't allow for the above features, and Word/Pages is much too cumbersome. I'll be using it for some coding but it's primary use will be for DNA analysis (hence the annotation).

Does such an app exist?

TextEdit is part of Mac OS X. You can find it in the Applications folder.


Automate arranging files into folders based on beginning of file name? Looking to quickly arrange a whole load (talking about multiple thousands) of files into subfolders, and the files come in sets of three (left audio, right audio, video) separate files. Not experienced in terminal really but messed around in Automator before.

Example:

00015_A01.mxf
00015_A02.mxf
00015.mxf
00016_A01.mxf
00016_A02.mxf
00016.mxf

I want to automate it so that Finder looks for files with matching first characters, and puts them in a sub folder (preferably with the name of that file but I’ve managed a workaround for that.)

So the result would be:

[00015] (folder)
00015_A01.mxf
00015_A02.mxf
00015.mxf

[00016] (folder)
00016_A01.mxf
00016_A02.mxf
00016.mxf

Any ideas? I checked around on here but the answers were a bit over my head...

for i in {10..99}
do
    mkdir 000$i
    mv 000$i* 000$i
done

for i in {100..999}
do
    mkdir 00$i
    mv 00$i* 00$i
done

for i in {1000..9999}
do
    mkdir 0$i
    mv 0$i* 0$i
done

This bash script should work for 10-9999 directories.


How can I show only an .htaccess file in the Finder? I'm a web developer. I really need to use .htaccess file.
How can make Finder show only the .htaccess file and not all the file prefixed with .?

I am running OS X Lion.

To my best knowledge, you cannot selectively display dot files in Finder. However, if you just need a way to easily open them via Finder, you could create a symlink to the file in its directory, omitting the dot in the name, i.e.:

open Terminal, cd into your folder;
ln -s $PWD/.htaccess $PWD/htaccess.

You can then open the file by double-clicking the newly created link, select an editor in the link’s context menu etc. However, if you want to copy, up- or download your .htaccess file, you are stuck with Terminal, full display of all dot files, or temporarily renaming the file (to _htaccess, say).


How do I turn on Up Next on TV in tvOS 13's dock? I don’t like the new preview feature in tvOS 13. I want my Up Next view back for the TV app in the dock. How do I turn it back on?

tvOS 13.3 adds an option to change the mode on the shelf of the TV app. Go to Settings > App Settings > TV and click on Top Shelf to change it to “Up Next”.


Time Machine Backup accidentally unplugged, can't repair I accidentally removed my Time Machine backup without ejecting. It didn't show up in Finder after I plugged it back in and Disk Utility cannot repair it. Disk Utility recommends reformatting the disk, but I want to make sure I'm doing it right. I don't really care about restoring the files because they are just old backups of my stuff (I only need a backup that works!)

In Disk Utility, I have a listing called "750.12 GB WD My Passport" and under that, I have a partition called "My Passport". I tried to Erase the "My Passport" partition, but Disk Utility couldn't find it. So now do I try to erase everything under the 750.12 GB WD My Passport option?

I'm pretty confident that the drive is not dying because it happened after I removed it without ejecting.

Yes. Reformat and partition the HD. When you unplugged the drive, you severely damaged the directory information on the 'My Passport' partition, rendering it unusable. If there is nothing of value on the drive, this is your best bet. In addition, make sure to reformat with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) selected.


How do I fix iTunes could not copy unknown error (-5000)? I got this error trying to sync from my Macbook Pro (OSX Yosemite, 10.10.5) to my iPhone SE:

  iTunes could not copy "The Song Remains the Same" to the iPhone "Dan's Phone" because an unknown error occurred (-5000).

Oddly, the problem didn't occur with my previous iPhone 5s.  How do I fix it?

The solution was simple - it was a permissions problem.  On the Mac, here are the steps I took to fix:

Note the song that fails, on my case it was a Zeppelin song.
Using the terminal, cd to the directory containing the song
Run ls -la and note the owner/permissions of the file that fails, in my case it was an alternate username I was using at one point, let's say that username is paulhewson, and your real username is hewson
Run sudo find . -user paulhewson from the top level music directory (~/Music), this shows all the music that is owned by this alternate user
This command will change the owner to your normal username: sudo find . -user paulhewson -exec chown hewson {} +

I suspect this error could result from any sort of permission problem, in some cases maybe read-only or locked files, in which case you'd want to chmod or unlock the files.  If there are multiple types of permission problems, you may need to repeat this process a few times.  Might be easier to chmod/chown everything in music, but I tried to avoid that so I didn't cause other issues.

Credit to this question for help with the find command to change ownership:
Change owner for all files owned by x


Replace hard drive whilst saving installed software I want to replace hard drive on my 2012 MacBook Pro. I have all the data backed up, but the only thing I want is to keep all my installed software, mainly music software like native instruments, waves, ableton etc. I have no idea where the serial numbers are.

Is there any way I can copy my current system onto a new hard drive without reinstalling everything?

I'd say you'd need to clone it.

Clones survive with all pre-registered software still intact. I've been doing this for years across several Macs precisely for this reason.

I'd recommend Carbon Copy Cloner [just because it's the one I'm used to] which is capable of cloning to any drive large enough to fit all the data on; it will be bootable & it will offer to make a new Recovery Partition as part of the process.

On a single-drive laptop, you'd need to be able to get the new drive into an external enclosure before starting. You can also test the new clone is bootable from the external before committing to the final disk swap.


Script to acknowledge if task already done then update text file/list I plan to have a script run that will update our Macs with new Adobe licensing package/installer but I don't want it to run if the task has ran before.

I'd like to see a script that can check for a local file (ex. /Library/adobecc2018.txt) which would get placed at this location after re-serialization has been completed once. If the adobecc2018.txt file is not there the full script will run. If the adobecc2018.txt is there I want to the script to end and not go any further.

Also, I will have another .txt file sitting on a network share and I'd love to see the file get populated with the name of the computer once the script runs so we have a list of computers that we can look at to see which computers have been fixed and which have not.

I found the script I worked on last year but we didn't use it. So the first part of my question is answered but still need to figure out how to add text into a .txt. So example: /share/adobeupdate.txt

I'd like to see something like this:

ComputerName-Date
ComputerName2-Date
ComputerName3-Date
ComputerName4-Date
ComputerName5-Date
etc.

#!/bin/bash

echo "Adobe Update Script"

####
#### If file /Library/Scripts/adobecc2018.txt DOES exist then exit
####
if [[ -f "/Library/adobecc2018.txt" ]] ; then
    echo '2018/19 Adobe Serialization Fix Already Applied - No more actions required'
    exit
fi

####
#### If file /Library/Scripts/adobecc2018.txt does NOT exist continue script
####
if [ ! -e "/Library/adobecc2018.txt" ]; then
    echo 'Adobe is using the OLD serial number - Now applying new 2018/19 Adobe Serialization'
#   touch /Volumes/shares/macscripts/adobecc2018_serialization_fix.command
    sudo touch /Library/adobecc2018.txt
    echo 'Adobe 2018/19 Serialization Completed'
fi

# Script End

exit 0

According to your comment, then you would add this line in the condition that "serialize"'s the file if it doesn't exist.

printf '%s - %s\n' "$(scutil --get ComputerName)" "$(date)" >> /share/adobeupdate.txt


Can I have color ls output automatically if my TERM is "xterm-256color"? Can I have automatic color output for ls if my TERM environment variable is set to xterm-256color?

If you are using bash, you could add export CLICOLOR="YES" to your ~/.bashrc.


Sync iOS5 reminders between people using iCloud How can Reminders in iOS5 be shared between two iCloud accounts?  In other words, how can two users send or post to other users a Reminder?

The other user (@Paul) is incorrect! Create a list that you want to share using your iCloud account. On your Mac, click "Reminders" to the side of the calendar view in iCal. Right-click on the calendar you want to share, then click "Share Reminder List..." On the menu that appears, select "Only the people you invite" and click Ok.

Easy and effective!


Apple Xserve (Early 2009): Has anyone installed PCIe SSD in PCI-E slot? I am reconfiguring a working Apple Xserve (Early 2009) [Xserve3,1][model A1279][MB449LL/A] which does not currently have an SSD installed, neither the factory 128GB SATA, nor any aftermarket.  I'm planning to replace the standard 3-drive SATA Drive Interconnect Backplane with the Apple Xserve RAID Card.  The fans howl something fierce, so I plan to replace the Fan Array.  I also plan to replace the single processor Logic Board with the dual processor Logic Board.

It seems to me that performance would be better, and overhead lower if I install a current generation PCIe SSD in the PCI-E Riser Card (ie, PCIe “backplane”), rather than install an Apple circa-2009 SATA SSD (which connects through the Front Panel Board).

Has anyone successfully installed a PCIe SSD in an Xserve PCI-E Riser Card?

I'm running a 2009 Xserve on a Plextor M6e 256GB (PX-AG256M6e) and it works great. I also just installed 10.11.6 on a Samsung SM951, AHCI version (PN MZHPV256HDGL). As far as I can tell, it must be the AHCI version and not the NVMe version to work. I put it on a StarTech PEX4M2E1 M.2 PCIe adapter. Both of these put the original SSD to shame in terms of performance.


How to change the Languages value shown under the Information section for my app in App Store? I have implemented an iOS application and published in App Store as well. In my iTunes account, I have specifically mentioned that my primary language is Swedish.

In my test device I set my region as India and Language as Hindi. Also I have changed my region for India in my Apple account. But when I load the App Store application, searched and view my application, under Information category, Languages value display as "English".

How that is possible and how can I change it to Swedish (Svenska) language?

You should use Xcode's localisation functionality to provide languages for your app.

  The list of languages displayed in the store under Languages is set in the app build.

Displaying on the Store in More Than One Language (Optional) - iTunes Connect Developer Guide

If you don't use Xcode's localisation, you'll have to set the languages manually by adding them to the CFBundleLocalizations array in your Info.plist.

  CFBundleLocalizations (Array - iOS, macOS) identifies the localizations handled manually by your app. If your executable is unbundled or does not use the existing bundle localization mechanism, you can include this key to specify the localizations your app does handle.

Core Foundation Keys - Information Property List Key Reference


If I pause an App Store update, and shut off my Mac, will it resume upon startup? So I'm looking to get the new El Capitan update. Problem is, my internet connection is slow and I'll probably have to download it over 2 days. If I pause the download, shut off my Mac, and start it back up again, will the download resume, or will it have to start from scratch again?

So I got the message "An error occurred" when it was nearly done. I gave up, shut my Mac down later that day, started it back up, tried the download again and it resumed from where it failed


Revert Filetype Association I occasionally work with iTunes Music Store packages. These packages have a .itmsp extension. Like .app, .itmsp is essentially a container directory. .itmsp folders contain XML and media files.

The latest Xcode and/or Mac OS X update (Xcode 4.6.1 on Mac OS 10.8.3) has hijacked the filetype association for directories with the .itmsp extension. Previously they were treated like normal folders -- no double-click required to see inside. Now, I have to double-click them to interact with them. When I do, a program called Application Loader tries to open them. In order to see inside I have to right-click and select "Show Package Contents". I'm dealing with thousands of these files at any given time, so that won't work.

I've tried changing or removing the filetype association using Get Info and RCDefaultApp. Neither works. Removing the filetype association simply turns .itmsp directories into blank files. So does deleting Application Loader.app entirely. In either case I still can't browse the contents without right-clicking.

The previously accepted answer worked a treat for a while: lsregister -u /Applications/Contents/Applications/Application\ Loader.app/ It's stopped working since I updated Xcode and/or Mac OS X. If you have Xcode installed, you should be able to test this yourself by naming a directory foo.itmsp.

How can I make it so .itmsp files are treated as folders once again?

The problem: .itmsp folders are shown as files

The Finder treats .itmsp folders as packages, that is, as if they were a single file. For example, in column view, anything contained within the .itmsp folder is invisible, only the document icon is shown:

The Finder considers a directory to be a package if any of the following conditions is true (from the Bundle Programming Guide):

The directory has a known filename extension: .app, .bundle, .framework, .plugin, .kext, and so on (as defined in /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Info.plist. This is a binary plist, open it with Xcode: open -a Xcode Info.plist).
The directory has an extension that some other application claims represents a package type (look for com.apple.package in the output of mdls -name kMDItemContentTypeTree <foldername> to find out.)
The directory has its package bit set (if GetFileInfo -ab <foldername> returns 1, it is set.)

Case 2. applies to .itmsp folders: Application Loader.app exports type com.apple.itunes-producer.itmsp and sets it to conform to com.apple.package:

$ mkdir foo.itmsp
$ mdls -name kMDItemContentTypeTree foo.itmsp/
kMDItemContentTypeTree = (
    "com.apple.itunes-producer.itmsp",
    "com.apple.package",
    (...)
)
$ grep -B 5 -A 8 com.apple.package /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/Application\ Loader.app/Contents/Info.plist
    <key>UTExportedTypeDeclarations</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>UTTypeConformsTo</key>
            <array>
                <string>com.apple.package</string>
                <string>public.composite-content</string>
            </array>
            <key>UTTypeDescription</key>
            <string>iTunes Package</string>
            <key>UTTypeIconFile</key>
            <string>ITMSP.icns</string>
            <key>UTTypeIdentifier</key>
            <string>com.apple.itunes-producer.itmsp</string>

A solution: re-declare type com.apple.itunes-producer.itmsp

A solution would be to re-declare type com.apple.itunes-producer.itmsp and extension itmsp as a folder and force Launch Services to use the modified type declaration.

  Important note:

  Although it reliably solves the OP's problem, the proposed solution, when applied to other packages, doesn't display them as folders.

  I've found out that the proposed solution seems to work only with file types declared by applications located in an non standard application path.

  This is the case with Application Loader.app, which is located in /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/.

  If you are interested in a partial solution check the end of this answer.

To have .itmsp folders be displayed as folders by the Finder follow the next steps:

Open Automator in the Applications folder and select Application:

Select Utilities in the Library list, select Run Shell Script and drag it to the pane on the right:

Replace the default script contents with exit 0:

Save the application as itmspOpener:

Close Automator.
Select itmspOpener.app and show its contents:

Locate Contents>Info.plist and open it with your favorite editor:

Replace these sections in Info.plist:

<key>CFBundleDocumentTypes</key>
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>CFBundleTypeExtensions</key>
        <array>
            <string>itmsp</string>
        </array>
        <key>CFBundleTypeName</key>
            <string>itmsp folder</string>
        <key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
            <string>Viewer</string>
        <key>CFBundleTypeIconFile</key>
            <string>folder</string>
        <key>LSTypeIsPackage</key>
            <false/>
        <key>LSHandlerRank</key>
            <string>Owner</string>
    </dict>
</array>
(...)
<key>UTExportedTypeDeclarations</key>
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>UTTypeConformsTo</key>
        <array>
            <string>kUTTypeDirectory</string>
        </array>
        <key>UTTypeDescription</key>
        <string>itmsp folder</string>
        <key>UTTypeIconFile</key>
        <string>folder.icns</string>
        <key>UTTypeIdentifier</key>
        <string>com.apple.itunes-producer.itmsp</string>
        <key>UTTypeTagSpecification</key>
        <dict>
            <key>public.filename-extension</key>
            <string>itmsp</string>
        </dict>
    </dict>
</array>

  Note:
  Why kUTTypeDirectory instead of public.directory in UTExportedTypeDeclarations? From Apple's documentation: Important: When using system-defined UTIs in your code, you should use the constants defined in UTCoreTypes.h in the Launch Services framework when available, rather than the actual UTI strings. For example, pass kUTTypeApplication rather than “com.apple.application”. “System-Declared Uniform Type Identifiers ” lists these constants in addition to the UTI strings.

Associate a .itmsp file to itmspOpener and press the button Change All...:

Reset the Launch Services database:

$ lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

(on OS X 10.8 lsregister is located in /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/.)
Create a .itmsp folder and list its properties:

$ mkdir foo3.itmsp
$ mdls -name kMDItemContentTypeTree foo3.itmsp/
kMDItemContentTypeTree = (
    "public.folder",
    "public.directory",
    "public.item"
)

Because the Launch Services database was reset, now the Finder shows .itmsp folders as folders.
Open itmspOpener.app to load its plist file and register com.apple.itunes-producer.itmsp:

$ open ~/Desktop/itmspOpener.app

Start Application Loader.app:

$ open '/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/Application Loader.app'

Folder foo3.itmsp should still be displayed as a folder.
Check the folder properties again:

$ mdls -name kMDItemContentTypeTree foo3.itmsp/
kMDItemContentTypeTree = (
    "public.directory",
    "public.item",
    "public.content"
)

com.apple.package wasn't added to the folder's metadata attributes, that's why the Finder still displays .itmsp folders as folders!

Automated solution: displaying .itmsp folders as folders after login

To display .itmsp folders as folders after login:

Create itmspOpener.app and modify its Info.plist as described above.
Create /usr/local/bin/itmspTypeLoader with this contents (the variable itmspOpener points to the location where itmspOpener.app resides, change  as necessary):

#!/bin/bash

itmspOpener="/Users/jaume/Applications/itmspOpener.app/"

echo "$(date): Starting" > /tmp/itmspTypeLoader.log
sleep 15
echo "$(date): Deleting Launch Services database" >> /tmp/itmspTypeLoader.log
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user >> /tmp/itmspTypeLoader.log
sleep 15
echo "$(date): Starting $itmspOpener" >> /tmp/itmspTypeLoader.log
open $itmspOpener >> /tmp/itmspTypeLoader.log
sleep 1
echo "$(date): Starting Application Loader.app" >> /tmp/itmspTypeLoader.log
open "/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/Application Loader.app/"

# Wait until process "Application Loader.app" exists
while [ $(ps -ef|grep -v grep|grep -c "Application Loader") -ne 1 ]; do
    sleep 1
    echo "$(date): Waiting" >> /tmp/itmspTypeLoader.log
done
# Send TERM signal
kill -TERM $(ps -ef|grep "Application Loader"|grep -v grep|awk "{print \$2}")
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "$(date): Application Loader killed" >> /tmp/itmspTypeLoader.log
else
    echo "$(date): Application Loader could not be killed" >> /tmp/itmspTypeLoader.log
fi
echo "$(date): Exiting" >> /tmp/itmspTypeLoader.log

Both sleep 15 before and after running lsregister are of utmost importance. If you don't see the desired result, try different delays.
Create /usr/local/bin/itmspTypeLoaderLauncher with this contents:

#!/bin/bash

# $1 returns the short name of the user who is logging in
su - $1 -c /usr/local/bin/itmspTypeLoader &

Set both scripts executable:

$ sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/itmspTypeLoader /usr/local/bin/itmspTypeLoaderLauncher

Set /usr/local/bin/itmspTypeLoaderLauncher as login hook:

$ sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /usr/local/bin/itmspTypeLoaderLauncher

Reboot for changes to take effect. After logging in you should see this:

and lsregister -dump should reveal that itmspOpener.app's UTExportedTypeDeclarations takes precedence over Application Loader.app's:

$ lsregister -dump | less
bundle  id:            24748
        path:          /Users/jaume/Desktop/itmspOpener.app/
        name:          itmspOpener
        (...)
        flags:         apple-internal  relative-icon-path  ui-element  has-min-sys-version-by-arch  hi-res-capable  user-can-change-hi-res-mode
        item flags:    container  package  application  extension-hidden  native-app  scriptable  services  x86_64
        (...)
        --------------------------------------------------------
        type    id:            33796
                uti:           com.apple.itunes-producer.itmsp
                description:   itmsp folder
                flags:         exported  active  apple-internal  trusted
                icon:          Contents/Resources/folder.icns
                conforms to:   kuttypedirectory
                tags:          .itmsp
        --------------------------------------------------------
        (...)
bundle  id:            24600
        path:          /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/Application Loader.app/
        name:          Application Loader
        (...)
        flags:         apple-internal  relative-icon-path  hi-res-capable  user-can-change-hi-res-mode
        item flags:    container  package  application  extension-hidden  native-app  i386  x86_64
        (...)
        --------------------------------------------------------
        type    id:            33832
                uti:           com.apple.itunes-producer.itmsp
                description:   iTunes Package
                flags:         exported  inactive  apple-internal  trusted
                icon:          Contents/Resources/ITMSP.icns
                conforms to:   com.apple.package, public.composite-content
                tags:          .itmsp
        --------------------------------------------------------

Do you see the inactive flag set in Application Loader.app's type export? We defeated Application Loader.

The acid test: .itmsp folders still displayed as such after iTunes update

I recently updated Xcode:

and can confirm that .itmsp folders were shown as folders during the update:

and afterwards:

A partial solution: The package will show contents when double clicked

As commented previously, the procedure detailed above won't work with arbitrary folders that are displayed as packages by the Finder.

However, if you just want to be able to double-click a package to open it, there is a way to do it with one bash script and Automator:

The script creates a hidden, temporary folder inside the package, reveals it in the Finder (thus revealing the package as a folder) and then deletes the temporary folder.

  Note:

  The script could instead create a hidden, temporary file. However, I prefer to create a folder because rmdir only
  deletes empty folders, while rm deletes any file, so if, for some
  reason. the script wreaks havoc, only empty folders will be deleted,
  which is probably not as bad as if files were deleted.

Automator bundles the script into an application that will be associated with the package files.

These are the steps to create such an application. I'll use .itmsp files as a package type example in the explanation below:

Open Automator in the Applications folder and select Application:

Select Utilities in the Library list, select Run Shell Script and drag it to the pane on the right:

Set Pass input to as arguments:

Replace the default script contents with this:

for f in "$@"; do
    # If not dealing with a directory, exit
    if [ ! -d "$f" ]; then exit; fi
    # Create a temporary directory inside the itmsp "file"
    tmpdir="$f/.itmspOpener$$"
    if mkdir $tmpdir; then
        # Reveal in Finder
        open -R $tmpdir
        # Delete temporary file
        rmdir $tmpdir
    fi
done

Save the application as itmspOpener:

Close Automator.

Now you have an application that can open .itmsp files as folders if associated with it.

There's a cosmetic problem: as it stands, associated files will have the standard white document icon:

Let's fix this, too:

Make sure Automator is closed.
Select itmspOpener and show its contents:

Locate Contents>Info.plist and open it with your favorite editor:

Replace the value for this key in the CFBundleDocumentTypes array:

<key>CFBundleTypeName</key>
<string>itmsp folder</string>

and add this key:

<key>CFBundleTypeIconFile</key>
<string>folder</string>

Now, the section looks like this:

Switch to the Finder, select a folder, press ⌘I, select the folder icon in the left top corner and copy it with ⌘C:

Open Preview and select File>New from Clipboard. Save the file as folder.icns:

Copy folder.icns to itmspOpener/Contents/Resources:

Associate a .itmsp file to itmspOpener and press the button Change All...:

The icon of .itmsp files should change to a folder, or at least I thought so: unfortunately, this wasn't the case. So I moved the application itmspOpener to another location (I created a temporary folder on my Desktop, moved it there and back to my Desktop). That refreshed the icon information in the Finder:

Now double click a .itmsp file and watch it open as a folder:


Applescript to change desktop image on all monitors? I have the following code to change the desktop image of my Macbook

tell application "System Events"
tell current desktop
set picture to "/Library/Desktop Pictures/Beach.jpg"
end tell
end tell

How do change all desktops - I have a second monitor.

The previous answers look great, but I wanted to share a way I found to do this with much less code.

tell application "System Events"
    tell every desktop
        set picture to "path/to/picture.png"
    end tell
end tell

You could even condense it to one line:

tell application "System Events" to tell every desktop to set picture to "path/to/picture.png"


Why does my iPhone 4S go blank due to over heating? My iPhone 4S is just 2 weeks old and since the last week it enters this weird mode where the screen goes blank and I can't access the phone, but if someone tries to call me, it rings, proving that the phone isn't turned off.

The store guy said that it's happening because Im using the phone too much which is causing the phone to overheat and go on a sleep mode.

My phone goes on this wierd sleep mode atleast twice in a day! Even during the night!  What can I do?

The store guy is telling you crap, there is no such thing as a sleep mode that would exhibit the symptoms you describe.  Demand an exchange.


How to return to camera when looking at Albums? I've noticed that in iOS 8 (I think in 7 too), you can't seem to get back to the camera to take another picture, when looking at albums/photos.

For example:

Launch camera
Tap small photo icon in lower left corner to view latest photos taken
Tap All Photos in upper left
Now you can't get back to camera to take another photo

The only way to return seems to be to click Home to return to the home screen, then launch the camera app again.  Is this so?  Is there no simpler way to just get back into the camera mode you were just in?

You are correct. This is because it is switching from the Camera app to the Photos app. People have been a little annoyed with this for a long time, but I suppose the separation is logical.

To get back to the camera you can either:

Double tap the home button and swipe from right to left and then tap the camera app, or
Swipe up from the bottom of the screen and tap the camera icon in the Control Center.


No option on App Store to update High Sierra to Mojave Well, I have MacBook Air (early 2014) with High Sierra 10.13.6 OS and there is no option in AppStore to update to Mojave. I tried downloading directly from App Store and it stoped after every 500-800 MB, although it resumed from where it was stopped. but, after 100% download nothing happened, it didn't ask me to restart neither any error. So, is there any problem or is it not compatible with my machine.?

Based on your post, your MacBook should be compatible with the Mojave update.

Once the App Store app finishes downloading and installing you should see a installer in the Launchpad (it should automatically open, otherwise try double clicking on it to manually start the installer).

If this doesn't work out you might want to look at making a bootable USB installer, and proceed with the installation after booting from the USB stick. See here (Apple Support Documentation)


"Where is FinderSyncAPIExtension?" (Google Drive) For the last week or so I have been periodically getting this dialog popping up, shown below. It would seem from googling around that this is related to Google Drive.

I have tried the recommendations on Apple Support Communities, specifically I have used the Browse button on the popup and selected FinderSyncAPIExtension by going to the finder and opening Google Drive > Show Package Contents > Contents and dragging FinderSyncAPIExtension.appex into the Browse window. That did not resolve the problem. I have also tried deleting Google Drive and installing it fresh from Google.

Currently, after I get this popup (and cancel it), GDrive stops syncing and I have to quit it and start it again to get it to start syncing again.

I located the Google Drive app (/Applications) and clicked that. GDrive then continued to sync without errors. I'm not sure if this is the correct solution, I only tried it once (just 2 minutes ago) but so far so good.


How to install ruby gems without sudo I want to install a Ruby Gem to my computer, but since I don't have an administrator account I can't use sudo. How do I install a Gem without sudo, and what (if any) privileges do I loose? This is in reference to this question I asked on Stack Overflow.

Update:

I installed RVM, but I got these two errors:

WARNING: your RVM loading script `/etc/profile.d/rvm.sh` is deprecated
and causes you to have `umask g+w` set in your shell,
run `rvm get head --auto-dotfiles` again to fix your scripts.

And

WARNING: You have '~/.profile' file, you might want to load it,
to do that add the following line to '/Users/CalebKleveter/.bash_profile':

  source ~/.profile

I ran rvm get head --auto-dotfiles, but I got the same errors again. Any suggestions on what to do? And what does the second error message want me to do?

Update 2:

I tried gem install cocoapods and I got the error in my other post, then I tried rvm gem install cocoapods and I got "Please note that rvm gem ... was removed, try gem install cocoapods or rvm all do gem install cocoapods instead. ( see: 'rvm usage' )" so I tried rvm all do gem install cocoapods and it just started a new command prompt, that is what is supposed to happen, right?

RVM:

From the rvm.io homepage, I used: \curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable . This worked fine for me, no admin permissions needed.


Is there a way to wrap any website as an iOS app? I'd like to take a mobile website and add it to the home screen of iOS, but when I touch it, it would open in its own app, NOT in the Safari app. Is there a service that would let me do this or a way I could manually do it myself, sort of like Fluid App?

If you are looking to make your own app using web technologies, there are some options. Look into Cordova and PhoneGap. There are similar alternatives for making apps for desktop operating systems as well.

While they may be easier to develop depending on your existing skill set, they may not feel as fluid as native apps. While some developers do a great job making HTML5-based native apps or even hybrids, often times they feel non-native to the user.

If you have an existing mobile-friendly website that you want to package into a native app, you can probably make a basic app with a UIWebView that merely displays the website. This will almost definitely feel like a website to the end user.


Is it still possible to run Safari 6 in 32bit on MacOS 10.8? I tried the ways i know:

Get Info - 32bit Mode - Start ==> runs in 64 bit
arch -i386 /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOs/Safari ==> results in error

is it still somehow possible to run Safari in 32bit ? I need it in order to work with ManyCam which can only operate in 32bit.

No, Lion abandoned 32-bit application mode.


Desktop icon for drobo changes I have a Drobo which is attached to my MacBook Pro via USB. When I boot into OSX Lion (and Snow Leopard before it) I would get a Drobo icon on the desktop. The icon looks like a shiny rendered picture of a Drobo with the funky blue and green lights.

After a little while the icon changes to a generic USB drive icon with a time machine logo on it. Is there any way to make it stay as a drobo icon, despite being a Time Machine backup volume?

There is an easy fix, but it's not so elegant. You can change the default icon used for time machine disks to the icon used for your drobo disk. This can be done by swapping out the system's time machine volume icon located in:

/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemIcons.bundle/Contents/Resources

Note: this will only be an elegant solution if the Drobo is the only time machine disk you use for that machine. Be sure to back up the original Time Machine icon just incase you want it back in the future.


Copying files from a damaged Mac – Finder or CCC? I have a Mac which can't boot up (it sees the prohibitory sign when it's turned on). I am going to do a clean reinstall of macOS on it. I want to keep the data somewhere, of course, so I don't lose all my files.

Since the Mac is damaged, do I need to make a clone of the drive (using Carbon Copy Cloner) or will a simply copy and paste of the drive to the target drive from the Finder do? I don't need the copied data to form a bootable drive, as it is damaged anyway. I just want to keep the personal files and folders intact, and perhaps the applications as well so I know what I had installed on the drive.

P.S. I'd rather not use CCC or any external programs if that's possible. I'm running macOS off a USB drive and it's incredibly slow, so third-party software is merely a hindrance.

Using disk Utility’s restore function, you can clone a drive. It is a built in app in the utilities folder inside of the applications folder.


Calling AppleScript routine using osascript Given the following AppleScript code
on myHandler()
    display dialog ("I'm your Handler!")
end myHandler

How do I call myHandler from osascript (using Terminal), plain without parameters, but also with?

Found a workaround. Not clean, but it works. In my case with Python:
import subprocess

with open("script.scpt") as applescript:
    subprocess.run(["/usr/bin/osascript", "-e", f"{applescript.read()}\nmyHandler()"])````


Yosemite - remapping Russian layout Is there a way to remap keys in foreign layout by modifying existing layout or creating your own?

Yosemite (as well as Mavericks before that) has "Russian-PC" and "Russian" layout, both missing "ё" letter. PC layout normally would map it to '`' key, to the left from 1.

Here is a custom Russian PC layout you can download which has the ë where you expect it, even though you are using an ANSI keyboard instead of an ISO one.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46870715/k/RussianPC2.keylayout


How can I get iTunes to use iTunes Store Album Art? Some of my music in iTunes won't get Album Art via "Get Album Art".  (These might be tracks from physical CDs, or that I've purchased a long time ago from other MP3 stores.)  I'd like to use the iTunes Store's Album Art whenever possible, because when it exists, it's usually a better quality image than from those from web searches.

What do I have to do to my tracks to get the iTunes Album Art?  What properties of a track does iTunes use when matching Album Art?

What I usually do in this situation is look up the album in the iTunes Store.

If it’s not available in the iTunes Store, I get the album art from some other source.
If it is available in the iTunes Store but “Get Album Art” doesn’t seem to do anything, there’s probably a mismatch in the meta data somewhere. Compare the Artist, Album Artist, and Album fields and make sure the fields in your local copy match those from the iTunes Store. Then try again.

This should take care of it in most cases. If that still doesn’t work, try adding a space after the album title and/or the artist name.


I cannot find an app I had an app on my ipad a while ago. I cant remember the name of it, but I can explain it.

It starts with thousands of moving specs. You can change the amount of dots, the thickness, color etc.. you can also made them move in different ways by the placement of your fingers.

Does anybody know what I'm talking about and can you help me out?

Go to the App Store app, then Purchased tab and select Not in this iPad.

This is a list of apps that you used on that iPad and is not installed nowadays. That list should list your program.


Is there a Windows VNC app that can ask a Mac user (via apple id) to share their screen? On macOS UserA can ask UserB to share their screen simply by entering UserB's Apple ID into a "New Connection" window in the macOS Screen Sharing app. Then, by some magic, Apple delivers the request to UserB as an alert on UserB's Macs, anywhere in the world:
| UserA would like to view your screen.  [Accept] [Decline] [Block User]
Is there a Windows screen sharing app that UserA can use to make a connection in this way?
“Why do I ask?”, you ask.

Why VNC? I already have to trust Apple because I run their OS, so for security it doesn’t make sense to hand over screen sharing on the server to a third party server-side app (including man-in-the-middle-attack opportunities for keyboard and mouse scraping). Apple provides VNC server software in macOS.
Why not use an open port for VNC (via password-protected login). An open port is an invitation to get pounded with connection attempts 24x7. Any person/bot with a stolen username/password pair can get in at any time, 24x7.
Why do I want the Apple ID trick? I want a human to have to be there at the server to approve each connection request. Also the trick works without an open port on my server. An Apple server does that for me by fielding connection requests.

Actually, letting any app on a non-Apple OS act as a VNC client is a bad idea for security reasons (See #1), so it seems the only good solution is to allow connections only from Apple's VNC app, running on macOS. And it seems clear that a client app that can do the Apple ID trick is not going to exist on any non-Apple OS (or on iCloud.com in a browser).
So my question is moot.

Must it be VNC?  Must the connection use the AppleID to point to the desired computer?  If so then not likely.  I expect that Apple guards dearly how their servers work in getting an AppleID to point to a specific computer screen.  There's other screen sharing systems besides VNC, some of which have a similar means to request a screen sharing session by entering some unique identifier for that person.  It's not likely to be their AppleID except by coincidence that the person uses the same name for their AppleID as they use for their ID on this other system.
Since you specified VNC in the question I suspect that you are aware that the macOS screen sharing system is using the VNC protocol, and that with a VNC client on Windows one can establish a screen sharing session to a macOS computer.  Apple extended the VNC protocol to make this request by AppleID work so smoothly.  Replicating that will not be easy.
The use of an AppleID to connect to another person's computer works because Apple's servers are a central point of contact for the client and server to meet for establishing this connection.  Getting something like that will mean finding or creating a similar central point of contact.
There are dynamic domain name services that can allow an ID to follow a person or computer as the IP address changes.  Changes in the IP address can be from either the ISP moving it randomly as ISPs like to do for non-commercial users, or because people move their computer from a home network to a cellular hotspot when away from home.  This will not always be sufficient as there can be firewalls or something that can block a VNC connection.  These may be intentionally created blocks for security reasons, or merely coincidental to how a part of the network is configured.  Clearing such hurdles may not be trivial.
Both people using a VPN client to some central network can allow for the Windows VNC client to find the Mac VNC server by use of an unchanging ID no matter where either computer might be.  The network could be one a business or university uses for people to work or study at home.  Such networks might even allow for an ID for the Mac computer to not be some pseudorandom sequence of letters.  Setting up one's own network with VPN access is not likely to be trivial, and can run into the same shifting IP address problems if there's no commercial grade internet connection.  Using some commercial VPN service may or may not make establishing a VNC session any easier as their business model might not have peer to peer connections in mind.
Using an AppleID on Windows is not likely to work since Apple isn't in the business of making Windows easier to use.  Some alternative like a dynamic domain name or a VPN might get real close to offering a means to create a kind of user ID to enter as an address for a VNC client to use.  The many options on this and how each would be set up would provide enough material for a good sized book or a semester long course at a university.  Hopefully I gave some ideas on where to start looking for a solution.


Command line argument to "find" and "grep" data inside "xattr -l" atrributes? I have a file that an application has set extended attributes for.
$ xattr -l /Volumes/Educating\ Rita\ \(1983\)/Educating\ Rita\ \(1983\).1.eng.srt
net.filebot.filename: 3_English.srt
net.filebot.metadata: {"@type":"Movie","year":1983,"imdbId":85478,"tmdbId":38291,"language":"en","id":38291,"name":"Educating Rita","aliasNames":[]}

I have tried a few different ways to get the value of @type inside the attribute but haven't found a way to search multiple files and grep for and return those values.
xattr -l /Volumes/Educating\ Rita\ \(1983\)/Educating\ Rita\ \(1983\).1.eng.srt | grep @type
net.filebot.metadata: {"@type":"Movie","year":1983,"imdbId":85478,"tmdbId":38291,"language":"en","id":38291,"name":"Educating Rita","aliasNames":[]}

I want to find every .srt file and grep for the value of @type. In the above results the command would return "Movie".
$ find . -iname "*.srt" | while read -r file; do `xattr -l "$file" | grep  "Type" >> /Users/john/Desktop/filebotmeta1.txt` ; done

That gives me a text document with this content:
net.filebot.metadata: {"@type":"Movie","year":1983,"imdbId":85478,"tmdbId":38291,"language":"en","id":38291,"name":"Educating Rita","aliasNames":[]}

But I want to return @type and it's value not the entire contents of the attribute.

I am not sure getxattr or listxattr apply to the command line. They seem to be for internal use only.
I imagine this involves outputting to a .tmp file and then grepping the contents of the file? Or, is there a one line argument I can use to print results in Terminal?
The contents look like json format.

If you could be sure the file were JSON format, there might be a better way to do this, but you'd probably need to know something of the structure of the JSON records.
However, if I understand your question correctly, I think you can get what you want with grep if you use the -o or --only-matching option (see man grep for details)
# create a string 'STRINGX' to test a regex
% STRINGX='net.filebot.metadata: {"@type":"Movie","year":1983,"imdbId":85478,"tmdbId":38291,"language":"en","id":38291,"name":"Educating Rita","aliasNames":[]}'

# try a regex that includes '"@type": plus an alphanumeric string that follows
% echo $STRINGX | grep -o '\"@type\":\"[a-zA-Z0-9]*\"'

# which yields this as output:
"@type":"Movie"

# to print only the value of @type, one option is to use sed:
% echo $STRINGX | grep -o '\"@type\":\"[a-zA-Z0-9]*\"' | sed 's/^.\{8\}//'
"Movie"

So - pipe your xattr -l output to the grep command as shown above.
You may be able to do a better job on the regex as I don't know if there are any rules that define characteristics such as maximum length, or presence of special characters, etc.
Let us know how this works, or if you have questions & we'll try to answer.


Internal layout of the iPad3 If you hold an iPad3 vertically, portrait, with the Apple logo right way up, which end is at the top?  the batteries or the main board?

As you can see from one of iFixit's repair guides, in portrait orientation with the home button at the bottom, the logic board is on the left side of the iPad, with the battery on the right.


Print with blank first page? I frequently have to print a 3-page document.  Wanting to save paper, I print it 2-to-a-page, double-sided.  So I end up with the front having "1 | 2", and the back having "3 |  ".

It'd be more convenient if the front had " | 1", and the back had "2 | 3".  Is there a way to have Mac OS X printing insert a blank page at the start when printing?

Hmmm probably not the way you want it. You don't mention what are you trying to print (Word? Pages? TextEdit?), If you use Pages, for example,  you could create a template that inserts a page break in the 1st page (at the beginning), so your real 1st page would be the 2nd page. Then use that template as your "blank document".

I know, simple solution but works ;)

UPDATE Since you need to usually add a blank page to a PDF, you can use preview for that. Position yourself in the first page and do an:

Edit -> Insert Blank Page


How can I add standard users to the print managers group? I'm sysadmin for a small company; my users are on 10.6.8 (iMacs) and do not have admin rights for various reasons.  The only times this is annoying is when a print job jams or otherwise does not go through, and the user can handle the issue, but I have to come by and type admin credentials to "Resume" the printer.

Is there an easy enough way to grant standard users rights to the Print Managers/Admin group?

You can grant users partial admin rights (printers only) by making them members of the _lpadmin group.  This is a hidden system group, so it doesn't appear in the Accounts preference pane; you have to grant membership from the command line (as a real admin).  You can do this for an individual user:

sudo dseditgroup -o edit -a fred _lpadmin

or just add everyone:

sudo dseditgroup -o edit -t group -a everyone _lpadmin

BTW, membership in _lpadmin grants both the ability to manage queues, and also configure printer settings; if you just want to grant queue management (e.g. resuming queues), I believe you can do that by adding people to _lpoperator instead.


How to skip Safari's "Do you want to allow this page to open X" dialog? I'm pretty sure I haven't changed any setting or installed anything other than software updates, but today I've started getting this dialog when I clicked a magnet link:

How do I get rid of this dialog? I've clicked okay once, but then I've clicked another magnet link and got the same dialog again. Why did it suddenly start and how do I get rid of Safari constantly asking about it?

I'm on macOS 10.12.2/Safari 10.0.2

If the application you want to use is already running (or is in the dock), you can drag and drop the magnet link onto the application's dock icon to avoid the dialog.

There's also a discussion on the Transmission forum on this. The dialog that appears when clicking on such a link seems to be a Safari security feature that currently can't be disabled.


Mac: back up to cloud storage or iPod I need to hand back my current MacBook Pro, and setup up a new one. What I want is to save my all user-specific data and, maybe, all the programs installed (not necessary).

I believe it is possible, having an external HDD, setup a Time Machine to back up all my system to it. Yet I see this to be not the best solution: I don't have much time left with my current MacBook + I would like to lower my expenses as much as possible, solving this problem.

So my question is: is it possible to order, for instance, a non-expensive external dropbox-like storage and setup of Time Machine to use it? MIf not... I have a 80 Gb iPod Classic – are there any known cases of backing up the system to IPods?

If you can have both machines for a period of time you can use Migration Assistant to copy your user directory directly from one Mac to the other.

While an iPod can be used as an external disk practically speaking it's an expensive and somewhat delicate mechanism for doing so – iPods get very warm when used as data drives for extended periods. External hard disks are (by most metrics) cheap these days, and will generally be more reliable than the micro hard drive in the iPod.   My first choice for backing up to an external drive is SuperDuper!

I don't know your definition of expensive but for offsite "cloud" storage, I recommend CrashPlan. You can pay for their cloud storage–50 bucks/computer/year for home use–or use the software for free to back up to local drives or drives connected to an offsite computer.

Time Machine has its uses, and is definitely "better than nothing", but I use it for recovery of individual files and prefer these other solutions for transferring data to a new computer.


Word file compatibility between mac and pc I'm thinking of buying a mac but I am a bit worried about how mac will handle word files from a windows machine. I have a number of word files in both .doc and .docx format.

Does anyone know if there might be any problems opening these kind of files and, equally important, preserve the formatting and styles on a mac?

I will be using Microsoft word on the mac.

Does anyone know if there might be any problems opening these kind of files?

You won't have any problems. With the pre-installed Pages app on Mac, you can easily open any .docx and .doc files. They will be converted to .pages documents that can't be opened on Windows PCs, but you can easily export any documents from Pages as .docx files that can be opened on PCs.

An easier solution is to use the web-based Google Drive (née Google Docs) that will let you natively open .docx, sync them to your Google account on all your computers, and edit them from anywhere, including your Mac. Or, if you'd prefer the Microsoft-based approach, you can download the Office suite onto your Mac, which works just how it does on PCs.

  Can I preserve the formatting and styles on a mac?

I've had no problems preserving format and styling of a .docx document on Mac, using Pages or Google Drive. You will have no problems with a modern program like the ones I've suggested above.

tl;dr: You can totally use Pages, Google Drive, or Word on your Mac to open, edit, and export documents without losing any formatting.


Send emails automatically to a list of contacts with specific attachment I have the task of sending a standard email to a list of people. The hard part is that each email has a specific foto attached. My list is like this:

John Snow, john@winterfell.com, johnSnow.jpg
Aria Stark, aria@winterfell.com, ariaStark.jpg

And my email looks like this:

Dear <name> <surname>,
bla bla bla. Find attachment <fileName>

thanks

<attachment>

The list contains 150 people. How can I program or send this email? Is there an app or a script for doing this? or any online service?

For your reference: I know a bit of php, python, JS and shell scripting, maybe that helps.

THANKS!

PD. I asked at madmimi.com, but they can't attach specific files depending on the contact. All emails would have the same attachment, which I don't want.

You may want to play with standard MacOS X tool - Automator.
Not a big expert myself :), but I know it helps in exactly this type of tasks.
Here are couple of useful basic tutorials on Automator:

http://www.macosxautomation.com/automator/learn.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z56PBanBSx4


Automatically put maximized window to first workspace is there any way to automatically put maximized window to first workspace instead of last? I'd rather use it that way.

I presume you mean fullscreen?

Maximising will fill the current Space. Fullscreen will always go to the right of all existing Spaces. There's no way to change that.

Personally, I never use fullscreen because of that behaviour [amongst others]
Fullscreen apps cannot be on numbered, instantly-recallable Spaces, which just breaks any chance of having a sensible workflow.

Have a look at What is an efficient way for developers / power users to use OSX window management and Spaces on a single screen? for an alternative working method.


Error with App Store Update on iPhone 6 and iPad Pro I have never heard of or installed this Numbo Call Blocker app, but my Update screen wants to update it anyway. It fails when it tries. I searched on the App store and did not find it. It looks suspicious to me.
Is there a way I can delete it from the update list?

search your device for ‘call” and you should see it.   the version you have will not appear in a search for ‘numbo’.

i don’t know a way to ‘go to’ an app in the iOS finder but hunt in the usual way looking for the icon.  the app is simply called ‘call blocker’.   it’s there, when you find it just dispose of it in then usual way,  a long press on the icon and then tap the ‘x’ that appears when it starts to wiggle.

cw


Is there a way to configure OSX to auto mount and SMB share without entering a user and password into the configuration file? I've found instructions on how to auto mount an SMB share, but they either involve adding the share to the login items (I'm using a laptop and that gives me an error when I'm not in the same network as the SMB share), or adding my login and password into the fstab or auto_master file (if I change my password, as I should, I have to go reconfiguring the system).

My user and password are stored in the keychain, and I only want the system to mount the share when I'm in the same network. I'm lazy and I want this to happen automatically. Is it possible?

Yes, it is possible, but you'll either need an non-lazy friend or put in the work yourself in order to set it up.

First thing I thought of was creating a shell script that monitors your networks connection details and executes the appropriate autologin and automount commands when it sees that you are connecting to the right network.

So, to answer your original question, yes it is possible.


Strange font behavior with external monitors on MacBook I have noticed some strange behavior when using an external monitor with my MacBook and DejaVu Sans Mono (or Panic Sans) with Terminal.app and TextMate.

If I launch these programs prior to plugging in an external monitor, when I plug in the monitor, the fonts appear like so.

However, if I plug in the monitor first, and then open the application, the fonts are displayed like this.

Is there some way to ensure that the bolder, clearer version is always displayed, regardless of when I plug in an external monitor?

Note: I have noticed this behavior on many different monitors, connected via both DVI and VGA.

Thank you.

~Arun

The problem has to do with LCD font smoothing.
This Mac OS X Hints tip describes how to fix the problem:

In Snow Leopard, you can only choose between Automatic and Standard CRT. Since few people use CRTs these days, most users now have only one option: Automatic. The problem with the Automatic option is that OS X incorrectly detects many third party LCD monitors as CRTs, and consequently, disables LCD font smoothing.
You can force OS X to use LCD font smoothing on all displays with this Terminal command:
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2
The number 2 here corresponds to Medium - Best for Flat Panel. You may also use 1 for light smoothing, and 3 for strong smoothing, as per the original OS X font smoothing options.

You might have to re-login (maybe even restart) for this to take effect.


The archive "Xcode_9_beta_4.xip" is damaged and can't be expanded My other apps work great. Downloaded directly from the Apple Developer site.

Tried to restore the 'Anywhere' permission in Security already. Restarted already. Downloaded again already.

Any other ideas?

I just kept deleting and downloading again, and finally it worked. Not the best experience. I think it was the 4th or 5th time.


Shrinking a Core Storage volume without the booter partition I have a 14 TB external drive containing a single 14 TB HFS+ encrypted partition (besides EFI). I cannot resize this partition to add a new one. When I tried using either Disk Utility or diskutil, it says

You can’t perform this resize unless it has a booter (target partition is probably too small)

Essentially I am having the same issue as described in this question: Can't resize partition: "You can't perform this resize unless it has a booter"
However, the answer to that question does not work for my scenario because there is no unallocated space after the single partition and I cannot manually add the booter using gdisk or gpt because of that.
My question is,

is there other ways to shrink this partition, besides moving everything out and reformatting it. Or,
how do I add in the required booter partition (so that I can resize normally using Disk Utility)?

Note that this is a Core Storage volume because it is encrypted.

I had the idea of forcibly creating a new GPT table where there is enough space for the booter, but I haven't done that because I don't know how that would affect the existing partition.
I also tried using diskutil cs resizeVolume, which will resize the inner Logical Volume, and then I could add another Logical Volume after it. The problem is that these two volumes will then share the same encryption key AFAIK, which is not desirable.

FYI, here are all the things that have happened that put me in this situation:

This is a brand new 14 TB hard drive. I originally formatted it into two partitions: one 10TB and one 4TB. Both were HFS+ journaled encrypted (so they were Core Storage volumes).

Later, I attempted to resize them into 12TB/2TB using Disk Utility, which failed miserably.

After this, the second 4TB partition could not be found, and the first one could not be mounted. This was reported by diskutil cs info about the first partition (originally 10TB):
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 69E42F2B-A2E4-41EC-93A9-4D62C0C9082B
|   =========================================================
|   Name:         -none-
|   Status:       Initializing
|   Size:         0 B (0 B)
|   Free Space:   -none-
|   |
|   +-< Physical Volume 4BBFE85D-06C3-4285-98D9-D6D30E3E4031
|       ----------------------------------------------------
|       Index:    0
|       Disk:     disk2s2
|       Status:   Failed
|       Size:     14000175669248 B (14.0 TB)

However, I managed to completely recover the first partition (filesystem intact and fsck passed), by destroying and recreating the GPT table, in which the first partition occupies the entire disk — that is, the end of the partition is now right before the secondary GPT. Now the GPT looks like this:
      start         size  index  contents
          0            1         PMBR
          1            1         Pri GPT header
          2           32         Pri GPT table
         34            6
         40       409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  27344355255      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
27344764895           32         Sec GPT table
27344764927            1         Sec GPT header

And now I cannot resize the 14TB partition.

I followed David Anderson's advice and discovered that the partition (as described by GPT) is 3584 bytes (7 LBA blocks) larger than the Core Storage Physical Volume. Using this information, I did manage to shrink the volume to add a second partition.
The process is, however, quite scary: it involves a kernel panic, then some more cryptic, unhelpful, unfixable diskutil errors, and then yet some more frightening failures.
And so let this be an anti-answer:

if you are dealing with an Apple-designed filesystem (such as HFS and APFS),
and you don't have professional knowledge of the inner workings of them,
and you find your volume in an inconsistent state — it should be considered inconsistent as soon as Disk Utility starts complaining —
and yet the volume is somehow still usable (you can see your files and such):

Then, for the love of your data and your well-being, instead of trying to fix the problem by meddling with the volume header or partition table (like I did),
Just move everything out and reformat.

I eventually lost no data. Here is my process. I hope that people more knowledgeable than me could point out all the mistakes I made.
Note: 1 block is 512 bytes.

(First, I made a copy of the first 512 bytes of the partition, which contains the Volume Header, using dd).

Using the gpt command, I learned that my second GPT partition (the main partition) has a size of 27344355255 blocks; following this specification of Core Storage (which is the abstraction layer that allows HFS encryption), I examined the partition volume header and learned that the Core Storage Physical Volume only occupies 27344355248 blocks. This means there was an extra space of 7 blocks.

I then decided to free these 7 blocks by recreating the GPT table (using the gpt command), also marking the type of the new partition as Apple Boot.

I attempted to create an HFS+ volume on the new partition using diskutil. This is not possible because an HFS+ volume requires a minimum of 512 KB.

With the unformatted Apple Boot partition, I made the risky move of asking Disk Utility to resize the 14 TB partition. This time, Disk Utility did not complain about missing booters. However, before the resizing had finished, a kernel panic struck.

After restarting, diskutil reported that the original 14 TB partition is now 12 TB, still intact. The 7-block Apple Boot partition now occupied the remaining 2 TB free space, still unformatted.

Then, I modified the GPT table again, this time adding a 262144-block Apple Boot partition after the now 12 TB partition, and another Core Storage partition taking up the remaining space.

At this point, both the 12 TB and 2 TB partition is showing up in Disk Utility. Upon reformatting the 2 TB partition as a JHFS+ encrypted volume (so that it too has a booter), both partitions can be resized freely using Disk Utility with no errors.

The only caveat was that using First Aid (diskutil verifyVolume) on the 12 TB volume now persistently reported the error "Incorrect size for volume" (right after it says the volume "appears to be OK", too). This could not be fixed using any diskutil command. But despite the error, the two volumes can still be resized and normally mounted.

At this point, it would seem that my original question has been solved, to a large extent.

This is what the partition scheme now looked like:
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *14.0 TB    disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage - Main Partition -      12.0 TB    disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk2s3
   4:          Apple_CoreStorage Time Machine            2.0 TB     disk2s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk2s5

(The rest of this is me not knowing what I am doing.)

After this, I came up with the hypothesis that the "Incorrect volume size" error that Disk Utility kept complaining about was about the Logical Volume, and not the Physical Volume.

Core Storage has many abstraction layers, the order of which is Physical Volume → Logical Volume Group → Logical Volume Family → Logical Volume.
If I am understanding it correctly, PV is the closest to the GPT partition, LVF is where FileVault encryption occurs, and LV is the volume that users can see.

To test this out, I deleted the 2 TB partition via Disk Utility. There was no issue. The hard drive now contained EFI, the 14 TB partition, and the 134.2 MB booter.

I attempted to use diskutil cs resizeVolume to resize only the Logical Volume back to 12 TB, and not the Physical Volume. The resizing could not proceed because of the "Incorrect volume size" error. (The same went for diskutil cs resizeStack).

Then I had the horrible idea to revert not only the GPT table, but also the Core Storage volume header, to the state when this question was posted.

This is in the hope that diskutil verifyVolume will then auto-adjust the volume size, and then I can start over the process, but resize the Logical Volume first.
I made a backup of the current volume header, then dd rewrote the first 512 bytes of the volume using the backup .img file I made of the header at the start of this answer.
After I did that, the 14 TB volume once again was unmountable. All diskutil operations would fail at this point.

I attempted to revert this change by writing the 512-byte volume header back. Then, another kernel panic occurred.

This time, things got much more serious. For the next few hours, every time I connected the hard drive to my laptop, macOS immediately kernel panicked — whether it was in normal mode, Recovery, Safe Mode, or Single User Mode.

I tried booting into Ubuntu from USB, and examine and manipulate the Volume Header from there, to no avail.

I almost lost hope, when I remembered that, back when the partition first failed, I ran dd through the first few GBs of the partition and saved it as an image, which was since deleted. I recovered it using Disk Drill, and after painfully comparing hex dumps, I decided to copy the first 62500 blocks (32 MB) of the image file back to the partition.

My idea was that this would cause macOS to recognize the volume in the same way that it recognized the original 14 TB volume when it first failed, and then if I redo the steps I described in the question (recreating the GPT table), I could get the volume back a second time, and I thought that the worst that could happen is I would lose all file changes since the partition first failed.

Shockingly, not only did this recover the partition, but all the files that were on the hard drive before I broke the partition the second time are still there.

Now I am in the process of backing up everything so that I can start the hard drive fresh.

To reiterate: when in the slightest doubt, backup!


bonjour/mdns repeater? I would like to put my wifi network and my wired network (in a small office) on separate vlans to cut down on broadcasts/multicasts on the wifi.
(right now it's all in one big vlan, and it's getting out of hand.)

One problem that's come up is that wireless devices cannot see the Bonjour announcements of wired devices if they are on different VLANs.  eg. a wired printer, or apple tv for airplay...

It seems potentially possible to setup a mdns/bonjour repeater that sits on both networks and let's some announcements flow back and forth..

Has anyone attempted this sort of setup?

Ideally I would filter/whitelist which devices would be echo'd to both networks...

If you have a Linux/BSD computer connected to both the networks, you can use the mDNS responder Avahi to reflect the bonjour traffic between the two networks.

The relevant Avahi configuration (avahi-daemon.conf) is a section like this:

[reflector]
enable-reflector=yes

Here's another relevant SE thread with answers:

What, exactly, is required to make Airplay work across VLANs?

I have successfully used Avahi on my Soekris router (running FreeBSD) for several years to solve this problem.


Can I transfer videos from iTunes to an iPad not associated with it? I've got some (non-DRM) videos in iTunes that I'd like to transfer to my wife's iPad. She bought the iPad and set it up without ever connecting it to a computer, so it's never been synched with iTunes anywhere.

When I plug the iPad into my laptop, I'm asked if I want to register. When I click Register Later, I see this:

I'm concerned that selecting Set up as a new iPad will wipe out my wife's settings and / or content. Can I select that option safely, or is there some other way of getting my videos onto her iPad?

Update: I should note that I can't simply drag video files to the iPad in the iTunes sidebar. The iPad shows up like this:

Right clicking on the iPad in the sidebar produces only two options: "Eject iPad" or "Restore from backup". No option to Transfer Purchases, though the iPad and Mac are both configured to use the same Apple ID for the iTunes Store.

I assume I should be looking for the iPad to show up, as an iPhone does, with a list of media types underneath it so that I can view / drag things to its library.

I've also confirmed I can't drag video downloaded from the iTunes Store, either, so it's probably not a format conflict.

New set up will wipe out everything.

You can plug iPad into her iTunes and mark the option "Manually manage music and videos", save (sync), then plug again on your computer.

If you are careful when cross connecting, you can prevent cross-syncing the same information from two computers for this iPad, but still have each computer take care of part of the sync "situation".

other option is:
Copy the videos to her iTunes, then add them to her iPad from there.

Last option:
- Backup all the app data, videos, music and even pdf files with third party software (TouchCopy, iExplorer, PhoneToMac or any other you like). Do not backup system files.
- Set up the iPad.
- Copy everything back using the same third party software.


How to resolve permissions errors on OS X Lion after Homebrew install I just upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion and am trying to get Homebrew installed. However after the installation, I run brew doctor per the installation instructions, and see a series of errors indicating that /usr/local directories aren't writable. For example:

Error: /usr/local/share isn't writable.
This can happen if you "sudo make install" software that isn't managed
by Homebrew.

If a brew tries to write a file to this directory, the install will
fail during the link step.

You should probably `chown` /usr/local/share

I get these for a bunch of directories:

You should probably `chown` /usr/local/include

You should probably `chown` /usr/local/share

You should probably `chown` /usr/local/share/man

I can't figure out why this error is coming up, as it appears that I am part of the Unix group that has write permissions to these directories:

Mini:~ felciano$ ls -ld /usr/local/share
drwxrwxr-x  4 root  admin  136 May 13 15:53 /usr/local/share
Mini:~ felciano$ whoami
felciano
Mini:~ felciano$ dscl . -read /Groups/admin GroupMembership
GroupMembership: root felciano
Mini:~ felciano$

What am I missing?

EDIT: The problem is now fixed in Homebrew:

https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commit/8aa4f9dd3bbd885350776171d3d9403d381e1a59

If you still experience the problem, update Homebrew like this:

brew update

If you want to know what the problem was, I have kept my original answer below.

Ignore the permisson issue for now

I am experiencing the exact same problem and in my opinion the problem is in brew doctor rather than in your and my installation.

I think you should ignore the issue rather than changing the ownership of /usr/local. Alternatively, you could fix your local brew doctor script until a fix is released. See below.

I don't consider it correct to make /usr/local owned by a specific user. I have more than one admin user on this machine. You should leave /usr/local owned by root:admin as owner and group.

My investigation

Like for you I have a /usr/local that is perfectly writable by my user which is also a member of the admin group:

$ ls -ld /usr/local/
drwxrwxr-x  14 root  admin  476 22 Jun 23:33 /usr/local/
$ whoami
mgd
$ dscl . -read /Groups/admin GroupMembership
GroupMembership: root mgd rgd

Let's test that the dir is really writable:

$ ls -l /usr/local/newfile
ls: /usr/local/newfile: No such file or directory
$ touch /usr/local/newfile
$ ls -l /usr/local/newfile
-rw-r--r--  1 mgd  admin  0 23 Jun 14:52 /usr/local/newfile

Further investigation into the brew doctorcode led my to the conclusion that the use of the ruby function Pathname.writable? is causing the problem. Consider this interactive Ruby session:

$ irb
>> require 'pathname'
=> true
>> Pathname('/usr/local').writable?
=> false

Function Pathname.writable? says /usr/local is not writable even though we know it is.

Using Pathname.writable_real? instead gives the correct result – it says that the dir is writable:

>> Pathname('/usr/local').writable_real?
=> true

This should be fixed in /usr/local/Library/Homebrew/cmd/doctor.rb. You can fix it in your own installation while waiting for a fix.

The difference between the two functions are (according to the Ruby docs here and here):

writable?(file_name) → true or false: Returns true if the named file is writable by the effective user id of this process.

writable_real?(file_name) → true or false: Returns true if the named file is writable by the real user id of this process.


Run Minecraft Server using OSX Lion Server? Is it possible to run a Minecraft server using an OSX Lion server? I know that this is a very basic question.

Yes. You don't even need to have the Sever edition of Lion. Here is how:

   Download minecraft_server.jar from the Minecraft website
   Open terminal and paste the command listed below (there should be a space after -jar
Drag the minecraft_server.jar into the Terminal window and type nogui. Then hit enter. Your server should start up.

Read this article on the Minecraft Wiki for more information.

java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar


Chrome continues running even when Mac should be is asleep I have the latest version of Chrome running on my Mac. I've noticed that even when I close the old intending to put my computer to sleep, Chrome continues running. I know this is the case because I have a Google Voice extension installed. It makes a "ding" noise when I receive a text and that noise comes out of my Mac even when it's supposed to be sleeping.

How do I make Chrome go to sleep along with my Mac? It's sucking the battery dry!

sure you dont have sleep turned off in power options might be on for battery use but not battery


How to identify extensions blocked by Gatekeeper In macOS High Sierra, System Prefs > Security, it says "Some system software was blocked from loading.  I see a list there of three developers, and I don't recognize all of them.  I'm guessing these are kext files in /L/E or /S/L/E, but how can I identify exactly which kext corresponds to each developer name?  I tried grep -rn "Intel Corporation Apps" /System/Library/Extensions but that doesn't find it.

EDIT:  Adding to this question because it was never fully answered and I have now encountered another stubborn kext I can't remove in Mojave.  It appears in Disabled Software but not in System Preferences security pane.

I have grepped /L/E and /S/L/E and /Library/StagedExtensions and the only result I find is in /System/Library/Extensions/AppleKextExcludeList.kext/Contents/Info.plist

kextutil can't find it so where else can I look?:

# kextutil -b cn.com.bwstor.filesystems.enfs
Can't find extension with identifier cn.com.bwstor.filesystems.enfs

I figured it out.  In System Information > Software > Disabled Software, it shows a list of these extensions with their bundle identifier.  In my case, that was enough info to understand what the app is, but to locate the actual kext file requires more digging.  Example:

grep -r "com.aladdin.kext.aksfridge" /Library/Extensions finds nothing.

grep -r "com.aladdin.kext.aksfridge" /Library/Application Support found it.

I'm not sure if there is a documented list of locations that are allowed to load kexts, but you could grep the whole hard drive for the bundle ID and that would surely find it.


How to refuse DHCP Server to change my hostname? I was not able to refuse changing my hostname by DHCP Server on Mac Book.
None of these solutions below worked for me:

How can I stop Mac OS X overriding my hostname when I receive a DHCP request on Snow Leopard?
Mac refusing to change hostname
Computer name keeps changing (deleting files)

After deleting the files as suggested from the Apple engineer it retrieved a new hostname and a new ip. But it wasn't a static hostname. Creating the file /etc/hostconfig doesn't work neither.

I mean come on, that's a well known feature and it should work. Poorly it doesn't for now. I'm sure there must be a solution for this.

As the server we are using a Mac Mini with built-in DNS and DHCP. My Mac Book's system is macOS Sierra 10.12.3

Edit: From the 3rd link, the Apple engineer suggested to delete the following three files in /Libray/Preferences/SystemConfiguration:

com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
NetworkInterfaces.plist
preferences.plist

It took a LOT of Googling and digging to get this, but I finally found a solution that works. DHCP overrides the LocalHostName system property, but not the HostName property. By default the HostName is not set in macOS Sierra, so you can set it as well as LocalHostName and ComputerName using scutil:

sudo scutil --set HostName yourcomputername
sudo scutil --set LocalHostName yourcomputername
sudo scutil --set ComputerName "Your Computer name"

The HostName property appears to be permanent. LocalHostName can still be overridden, but it won't override HostName once it's set.


where is the tooltip gone for misspelled words in ios 10 update: I have check spelling on under settings for both keyboards.

Please try and not misunderstand this question. I'm NOT talking about the white background word suggestions white typing.

I believe before iOS 10 if a word had a red squiggly if you tapped it you would get a black tooltip with a suggestion.

Can this be somehow turned on again? I don't see anything on the web even mentioning it, it's like noone noticed it! (The black tooltip does show up still but only in the case you type a word and hit backspace.)

I can add screenshots if you guys need it.

Like I've mentioned in the comment to the first answer, I have check spelling on.

The feature you're talking about is called spell check, and is different to the automatic spelling correction that occurs when you type.

It still exists in iOS 10.

To make sure that it is enabled:

Settings > General > Keyboard > Slide "Check Spelling to on"

If it is already enabled, I would recommend disabling it, restarting, re-enabling it and then restarting again to be sure.

Lastly, make sure you are using the default Apple keyboard by going

Settings > General > Keyboard  > Keyboards > Ensure "English UK" or "S" is checked.


Remotely working on iMac, but with screen darkened I have my main iMac in my kids room (little house, alas) and often I have to work late at night; I'd like to connect from my MacBook to the iMac keeping the screen black, as in sleep mode. Is there any sort of magic to achieve this? What if I plug a Mini DisplayPort cable? Will it exclude the monitor?
Thanks,
Guido

You might be overlooking a simpler solution: throw a sheet/blanket/whatever over the display before you walk out of the room.


'Cannot connect to App Store' on mobile network When I try accessing the App Store when I'm not connected to a wireless network, it shows 'Cannot connect to App Store'; I've already re-applied the settings for mobile data, but that didn't help. The weird thing is that it seems to be downloading update info (this morning I downloaded all the updates via wifi, and right now it shows me two new ones although I haven't been connected to wifi for a few hours).

Any ideas on how to fix this?

[iPhone 5s, iOS 9.2 beta]

Try logout and login into iTunes & App Store on you phone.


Set up smart mailbox to hold all messages to AND from a particular person I want a smart mailbox that will display all the emails sent to me by a particular person as well as all the emails I've sent them.

I assumed that setting the rules to be

Contains messages that match ANY of the following;
From Is Equal To Person
Any Recipient Is Equal To Person

but all I get is messages from Person.

This doesn't do the trick so what am I missing? Shouldn't it return any emails sent from Person and any emails wherein Person is a recipient?

For both rules, change this portion:

Is Equal To

to this:

Contains

Utilizing Is Equal To requires an exact match against whatever you trying to match. Depending on how Mail is looking at a recipient's address, it may include brackets around it and/or include the person's name, in addition to the actual email address. These strings wouldn't match just the email address, obviously. Using Contains instead allows it to match the string you know should be there - the email address - no matter what Mail is actually matching against.


Does plugging in headphones to iphone Deactivate the internal mic of iphone? While you are talking on the iphone, if you plug in your headphones (with NO mic), does the iphone internal mic become inactive and you can't talk into it until you take out the headphones? Or does the mic remain active?

The Internal mic will only disable if headphones with a supported mic are attached to the phone. I would attach an apple link explaining this...but one only exists for Mac!


Still shows 1GB of photos in usage after deleting all I deleted every single photo from my iPhone (after backing up on computer), including both camera roll and photostream (I disabled photostream afterwards). For some reason it's still showing 1GB of "camera roll" in settings -> general -> usage -> photos. When I connect it to iTunes, it shows something weird like "189mb" of photos. Anyone know what's causing this and how to fix it? Even if there are still photos in some apps shouldn't these be in the "documents and data" category not photos?

Assuming you have IOS 8.x...

Go to Photos -> Albums -> recently deleted.
Tap on Select (upper right) then "Delete All" lower left. That should do it. My experience is that the space used will take a while to update to reflect the removed images.


Can OSX mail auto-search & complete a mail address? In Outlook there is this highly useful feature to automatically search and complete a mail address in the recipient field (To:) with CTRL+K. Even if you never mailed with someone before, it will search for your input in any global address books you're syncing with (like your company's account). When there is only one match, it auto-prefills it, so it saves the hassle of looking someone up, copying their address and only after that pasting it in your mail window

Can OSX mail automatically search and complete a mail address you've never mailed with before, but which is in one of the address books you're syncing with?

Yes, Mail App could auto-fill the email address according to your Contacts even though you've mailed with before. Certainly, you can search the whole Contacts by your self.


Can I automaticly CC emails to an email address in Mail.app? Are there any email clients for Mac OSX (10.6.7) which can automaticly CC an email ID (without writing the CC email field)?

Update 1 - I want to give an email ID to all the team members. I am using a shared hosting for my site where I am going to create all the email ID's. I will configure these ID's in default Mail.app. Now whenever my team send emails to clients I want it to CC to my email ID automatically.

If you switch your team over to Google apps, the Gmail web client lets you automatically cc or bcc every email, this is how I automated emails.


why does the which command output the same path twice? Why does this command have this output?

$which -a python
/usr/local/bin/python
/usr/local/bin/python
/usr/bin/python

Specifically, why is "/usr/local/bin/python" listed twice?

The "/usr/local/bin" directory only occurs once in my PATH.

I've only noticed this happening for homebrew installed software thus far.

I'm not certain exactly which version of the which command I am using.
But I think it comes from Apple.

$which -a which
/usr/bin/which

which searches your PATH variable for instances of the program. With a -a option it lists all instances of the program's path. Your PATH variable has two instances of /usr/local/bin, that is why you see the program path listed twice.