Detach a tab in a fullscreen window in Chrome Is there a way to detach a tab in a fullscreen Chrome window? I find no way. When I need to do this, I have to un-maximize the window, drag to detach the tab, and then restore the window in fullscreen again. This is burdensome.

I'd been idly wondering about this for a month or two as well. The answer is no, but there is an extension that can enable a keyboard shortcut that does the same thing. Here's a link to the Google Product Forums topic that helped me, too. I haven't tested this extension myself, but the user who posted on Google Forums did.


iPhone backlight blinks on then goes out. What are my options? This morning I woke up to find my iPhone dark. If I pressed the home button to turn on the screen, the backlight would flash on briefly and then die. I've turned it on and off, done a hard reboot (home+lock), and I'm in the process of trying a restore.

Has anyone ever seen a similar issue?

The phone was purchased last June with a contract from ATT from an Apple store. If I take the phone in, will they fix it or replace it?

What should I do next?

You should take your phone in. They will fix it if they can and it's cheaper for them than giving you a new.

If you try to fix it yourself they can put the blame on you, so don't touch the hardware.


Picture in Picture for quicktime? I can't seem to find Picture-in-Picture (PiP) in QuickTime 10.4.

Is macOS Sierra's new PiP feature only for Safari?

QuickTime has had this feature for a while now, well before Sierra.

Open a video with QuickTime Player.
View > Float on Top.
Right-click or Control-click on the QuickTime Player icon in the Dock.
Options > Assign To: All Desktops. (This is available for any app.)


iPhone remote apps - “Apple TV Remote” vs ... something else? I use the “Apple TV Remote” app to control my Apple TV 4K (A1842). From Settings I can see that I have version 2.2 (344.28) of the app (it’s called merely “Remote” in there, but the info screen confirms it is “Apple TV Remote”).
I can access the app in three different ways:

Via its icon in the Control Center (this is my normal method)
By telling Siri to ”Open Apple TV Remote”
By tapping the app’s icon (labelled “Remote”) on my iPhone

HOWEVER: the main screen I get using method 1 looks different from what I get with the other two methods. They look like the following, with method 1 producing the first view and methods 2 and 3 producing the second view:

It almost looks like the first method is running a different app from the other two methods.
However, if I go to Settings>Control Center and see what remote app is in there, I find that it is called Apple TV Remote.
So, what’s going on? When I go into Control Center and tap on what Settings claims is Apple TV Remote, why do I get something different from what I get if I tell Siri to open Apple TV Remote (or if I simply find the Remote app and choose it).
Thanks!

They are different "apps".  The one in Control Center is not even a full-fledged app.  You can't switch to it, or close it, like regular apps.  I think I end up using the one from the Control Center more, since it's easy to launch, and I think that's the one that integrates better with Apple Watch (I can use my watch to control the ATV, if I start the remote on my phone first).
Notice the multiple uses of the word "think".  This is not an obvious design choice by Apple.  The Control Center icon should just call a single full app, just like if you click on the Camera, Alarm, etc, in the Control Center.


F20-F24 keys do not respond, but are mapped OS X Yosemite, 10.10.3, MacBook Pro mid-2012.

I am building a keyboard, and have mapped onto it all F1-F24 keys using tmk's firmware. F1-F19 all respond (I'm using Karabiner's EventViewer utility to detect keypresses), but F20-F24 do not. I know the keys work physically, but OS X doesn't recognize them.

Is it even possible to use F20-F24 on OS X, or are there other keys unused by OS X that will work (I want to use them as macro keys)?

Here is the guessing answer, but makes sense, so probably possibly true.
What's peculiar about F21-F24 keys on MacOS?


screencapture -l not working: illegal option I've wrongly opened the same question on StackOverflow. I hope to find a better explaination here.

I've seen in many pages (for example here: How do I find the windowid to pass to screencapture -l?) that you have to use the command: screencapture -l in order to capture a single window given its ID.

However when I try to enter screencapture -l into the terminal I get this error:

screencapture: illegal option -- l

I've checked a reference and actually I can't see -l as a possible attribute for screencapture: http://guides.macrumors.com/screencapture

How do you explain this? How can I solve this?

The -l option requires an argument for the ID of the window:

$ screencapture -l
screencapture: illegal option -- l
usage: screencapture [-icMPmwsWxSCUtoa] [files]
  -c         force screen capture to go to the clipboard
  -C         capture the cursor as well as the screen. only in non-interactive modes
  -d         display errors to the user graphically
  -i         capture screen interactively, by selection or window
               control key - causes screen shot to go to clipboard
               space key   - toggle between mouse selection and
                             window selection modes
               escape key  - cancels interactive screen shot
  -m         only capture the main monitor, undefined if -i is set
  -M         screen capture output will go to a new Mail message
  -o         in window capture mode, do not capture the shadow of the window
  -P         screen capture output will open in Preview
  -s         only allow mouse selection mode
  -S         in window capture mode, capture the screen not the window
  -t<format> image format to create, default is png (other options include pdf, jpg, tiff and other formats)
  -T<seconds> Take the picture after a delay of <seconds>, default is 5
  -w         only allow window selection mode
  -W         start interaction in window selection mode
  -x         do not play sounds
  -a         do not include windows attached to selected windows
  -r         do not add dpi meta data to image
  -l<windowid> capture this windowsid
  -R<x,y,w,h> capture screen rect
  files   where to save the screen capture, 1 file per screen
$ screencapture -l $(osascript -e 'tell app "Safari" to id of window 1') test.png
$

Or if you have an older version of OS X, screencapture might not include the -l option. At least in 10.8 the -l option is only shown in the help message and not on the man page.

osascript -e 'tell app "Appname" to id of window 1' doesn't work with all applications, but see these questions for other ways to find the IDs of windows:

How do I find the windowid of Google Chrome to pass to screencapture
How do I find the windowid to pass to screencapture -l?


How to diagnose long start up My Macbook Pro (OSX 10.8.2) is taking a long time to settle down after booting. I am guessing there are some background processes/apps that are taking a while to start and hogging resources. What is the best way to diagnose this issue? Is there a tool that'll watch the processes as they startup upon booting up? I know about Activity Monitor, but because the system is so bogged down I can't open it until after things settle.

Have you tried disconnecting peripherals? I have a 30-60s delay before login items are opened, but it's removed if I unplug my Huawei USB modem.

Is there anything interesting in system.log (or the default view in Console)?

You could first try disabling login items in System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items. After that, try disabling launchd plists by just moving them away from {~,}/Library/Launch{Agents,Daemons}/, or kernel extensions by moving them away from /System/Library/Extensions/. You can use Consultant's Canary to print a list of other components that were not preinstalled.


How do I set an empty search domain on Airport/Time Capsule My ISP supplies their own search domain via DHCP, which I don't want being passed on to my own devices. However, if you leave the field for 'search domain' empty on an Airpot/Time Capsule it will revert to the ISP default once the text box loses focus. Is it possible to override the value to empty?

On the AirPort or TimeCapsule that is acting as DHCP and/or NAT, placing a period “.” in the Domain Name field will push a null domain name search to its DHCP clients…

It does this by making yer DHCP clients’ treat hostnames as fully qualified…  That will not disable domain name searches on the DHCP clients if they are configured to use search domains…

BUT, it will eliminate having yer ISP’s domain name appended as an additional domain name search…  With the added benefit of slightly faster DNS resolutions eliminating parent and child domain searches…


OSX and DHCP, forcing the local system to release a DHCP address We have a heterogenous network that has many Apple products within it.

Recently, we had an issue with a duplicate IP that appeared to be interfering with someone's work.  Simple enough, right?  Not on OS X, apparently.

After digging around the Internet and a phone call with Apple Support, who suggested it was our routers (!!), I'm hoping someone here may have a deeper understanding of what's going on here.

I released the address from our internal Linux/ISC DHCPD server manually (it was deleted, server restarted).

I found and XML file generated at /var/db/dhcpclient/leases/en2-1,18:af:61:b7:7d:0 (for whichever device/MAC). Removing this file had no effect. OS X still insists on renewing the address it has had. Our default lease is 24 hours.

Rebooting the Mac after the above had no effect.  ipconfig, unplump/plumb the interface had no effect.

This leads me to believe that OS X is storing this information in some obscure database that I'm unaware of.   As for the documentation, well it basically sucks and didn't tell me much of anything.

Does anyone know how to force the Mac to forget about it's DHCP acquired IP address, completely, and request a new address from the server?

Thanks in advance.

I find that changing the value of DHCP Client ID will sometimes generate a new DHCP address when rebooting the Mac and/or router will not.


Is it safe to remove APFS containers? I have upgraded my Mac to High Sierra. So I was just looking at the features when I saw APFS container in Disk Utility. I googled it and found out that it is used for multiple logical drives but I thought I don't require it so is it safe to delete the containers?

PS. I would also like to know the other features of APFS containers.

Output of diskutil apfs list:

APFS Container (1 found)
|
+-< Container disk1 2EE47F12-9699-433D-AECF-167CB27FDDF0
    ====================================================
    APFS Container Reference:     disk1
    Capacity Ceiling (Size):      121123069952 B (121.1 GB)
    Capacity In Use By Volumes:   39590055936 B (39.6 GB) (32.7% used)
    Capacity Available:           81533014016 B (81.5 GB) (67.3% free)
    |
    +-< Physical Store disk0s2 7E9192B8-7976-4CBF-AE7C-C7B9D5E49F65
    |   -----------------------------------------------------------
    |   APFS Physical Store Disk:   disk0s2
    |   Size:                       121123069952 B (121.1 GB)
    |
    +-> Volume disk1s1 578EF44C-A052-3F3F-BBE4-B254D82C57F2
    |   ---------------------------------------------------
    |   APFS Volume Disk (Role):   disk1s1 (No specific role)
    |   Name:                      Macintosh HD (Case-insensitive)
    |   Mount Point:               /
    |   Capacity Consumed:         37848293376 B (37.8 GB)
    |   Encrypted:                 No
    |
    +-> Volume disk1s2 2DC1D14B-7E91-4F17-83CE-40E5435303FE
    |   ---------------------------------------------------
    |   APFS Volume Disk (Role):   disk1s2 (Preboot)
    |   Name:                      Preboot (Case-insensitive)
    |   Mount Point:               Not Mounted
    |   Capacity Consumed:         21651456 B (21.7 MB)
    |   Encrypted:                 No
    |
    +-> Volume disk1s3 3C4A7A25-7E07-48EC-B942-4DA9007D1538
    |   ---------------------------------------------------
    |   APFS Volume Disk (Role):   disk1s3 (Recovery)
    |   Name:                      Recovery (Case-insensitive)
    |   Mount Point:               Not Mounted
    |   Capacity Consumed:         519995392 B (520.0 MB)
    |   Encrypted:                 No
    |
    +-> Volume disk1s4 57093D4B-CDF1-4286-BC5C-6ED2DB620DD1
        ---------------------------------------------------
        APFS Volume Disk (Role):   disk1s4 (VM)
        Name:                      VM (Case-insensitive)
        Mount Point:               /private/var/vm
        Capacity Consumed:         1073762304 B (1.1 GB)
        Encrypted:                 No

TL;DR: To do a perfect clean wipe and reinstall in APFS now you need the terminal in recovery in addition to Disk Utility. It has to do with the container which is the new base volume scheme in APFS.

For your information, I upgraded my 2017 MBP to High Sierra since beta 9, and decided to clean wipe and reinstall immediately afterwards (makes me feel better reassured with all the APFS conversion). I checked the output

diskutil apfs list

both before and after, and realized how my recovery volume inside the new APFS container has grown in size from ~500 MB to 1.1 GB.

Not letting that go, I did another clean install when the GM candidate arrived and sure enough the recovery has grown by another ~500 MB to 1.6GB. Not that this is likely going to happen to you but disk space is still disk space - Macintosh HD actually shrinks even under the shared volume scheme. With the arithmetic progression I'm pretty sure the recovery volume is not being overwritten but rather added upon every clean install.

After some time figuring how some of the things now work in APFS I found the caveat. When I wipe my disk through Disk Utility within recovery I can only wipe the Macintosh HD volume that sits within the

Container disk1

but not the container or the disk itself like we've been doing pre-APFS. Even when you show all volumes in Disk Utility you'll get an error message if you do that. So the other 3 volumes (Preboot, Recovery, VM) are untouched - I was just doing a somewhat "unclean wipe".

The workaround is, with APFS now we have to open up terminal under utilities in recovery, then do

diskutil apfs deleteContainer disk0s2

assuming your container is linked there. Now it will create a single empty volume named "Untitled" under your physical disk media as shown in Disk Utility.

We're not done yet - you have to go to that disk, e.g. "APPLE SSD...", then click erase in APFS format named Macintosh HD (or any name you wish), in order to set up the correct APFS container structure ready for you to install the OS back in place. The other 3 volumes sharing the container will not be there yet, but fear not, they will be automatically created when you install the OS.


If Macbook has been wiped, will "find my iPhone" still work? Possible Duplicate:
  Why does a MacBook Pro keep dialing in it’s location through Find My Mac after a clean install?

My MacBook was stolen last week, and I have just realized that I had set up iCloud and "find my iPhone".

It is currently showing up as off-line. I do not know whether it will connect if the thief has already wiped the system. I've set up to get an email alert if it connects.

If my MacBook has been wiped by a thief will the "find my iPhone" app still work to locate that hardware?

If the computer has been wiped by the thief, Find my [Mac] may not work for it, and it will likely continue to show offline. There is nothing that can be done at that point in tracking the computer.

As pointed out by @Gerry (thanks Gerry), if you wipe your Mac out using Find my [Mac], it may still show up, unlike iOS devices. This is because a Find My [Mac] token is written to NVRAM (persistant memory on Intel Macs), and unless they go in and disable the feature themselves in OSX System Preferences - something they would probably do - you will continue to be able to track the device.

Email notifications do work very well, and it is entirely possible the thief is just waiting for awhile before booting up the computer. Hopefully, he will start it up, and connect to the internet, and allow you to get enough information together to get the police involved.

Most of the time, though, the more tech savvy thieves will wipe the computer immediately, and disable Find my [Mac] which makes it impossible to track the computer.


Safari showing border of transparent PNG A website I work on has a partly transparent png image overlying parts of the website. The image is resized to 100% of the browser window width. In all other browsers the transparent parts behave normal – but safari shows a thin outline whee the image should be transparent.

I hope the screenshot makes the problem clear:

Now I'm wondering if this is this a bug – or a feature? And of course I would like to get rid of that zigzag line – so any suggestions and pointers are welcome. Thank you!

EDIT:

Yes, I checked if the image has a grey line – but it does not.
Also this problem anly appeared after I updated Safari to 11.0.2.
And when modifying the img's width in dev tools first to the actual width (7000px) and then back to 100% the grey line disappears.
Here is a link to the website where the problem appears.

I just faced the same issue and stumbled upon this question.

For me, the image showed a thin, medium-dark, shadowy border at the edge between the non-transparent and the transparent part of the image.
The issue was only visible in Safari.

For me, the solution was to simple add transform: translateZ(0px) to the image. This changes the rendering of the image in a way that prevents the border.

However, you might want to restrict this fix to Safari since it causes the image to be rendered pixelated in Chrome.


List all tags in Terminal in Mavericks? Is it feasible to list all tags already defined in OS X in Terminal?

I know there are some third-party applications that list all tags, but I just want to use Terminal to find all tags, since I use this tool to work with tags in Terminal (but unfortunately the tool doesn't provide to list tags for an entire system - it just lists for a single or multiple files selected arbitrarily).

Thanks.

You can also use tag:

tag -tgf \*|grep '^    '|cut -c5-|sort -u

tag -f \* finds all files with tags, -t includes tag names in the output, and -g prints each tag on a separate line.


update OSX Yosemite & cksum mismatch After OSX Update -> Yosemite:
No option to login and run the system.

Via Firewire (T) and Diskutils && Diskwarrior:
"Unvalid Disk-Label @ 499239710720: cksum mismatch"

Diskwarrior: no option to rebuild
Diskutills: Unvalid Disk-Label @ 499239710720: cksum mismatch

What could I do to reboot and rerun the machine? How to fix this problem?

You might have invalid Yosemite Installer package.

Try the Command+Option+R during boot to recover it from Internet.

To check the flie run following in the Terminal

shasum /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg

The result should be:

eebf02a20ac27665a966957eec6f5e6fe3228a19  /Applications/Install OS X Yosemite.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg

Do this before running the Install.


Is it possible to access past iOS logs? I know that you can get live logs from XCode, LemonJar, or cfgutil, but these are all in real time.  Is there any way to access logs from before the phone was plugged into the computer?

Thanks!

You can redirect all logs to a file so that you can see it when needed. So you can resolve any issues come in future.

From https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18756592/how-to-get-old-console-log


Does the OS X app "Day One" support MathJax I'd like to keep a professional journal of my thoughts. I have my eye on the app Day One. One reason for this is that it's based on Multimarkdown, which often means it includes support for equations in LaTeX. However, I don't know if this particular Markdown feature is supported in the Day One app.

If anyone has the app, you could test this for me by typing something like

$$ \int x\,dx = \frac{1}{2}x^2 + C $$

and seeing if it comes out as a nice-looking equation.

(It is possible that "MathJax" might have to be enabled in some kind of preferences menu for this to work.) I looked for a demo version of the app, and since it's paid I wonder if someone has experience and if not, I can self-answer this once I get an email back from their customer support staff.

Does Day One have a way to typeset equations whether it's MathJax integration or another way?

Day One 1.10.2 does not appear to support MathJax. I entered the following:

$a$
$$a$$
\(a\)
\[a\]
a^2

This was rendered as…

I have looked through the Preferences, and whilst there is an Appearance tab, it provides no settings relevant to this. I've been unable to find any mention of LaTeX or MathJax in the menus or help.dayoneapp.com.


How to repair Raid 0 Via Terminal I have 2 @ 4TB drives in an 8tb Raid 0 stripe enclosure that has become corrupted.  I have tried to repair the volume via, disk utility, terminal and single user mode with no luck. All 3rd party software seem to only offer recovering as an option.  I am hoping there is still some way I can repair this drive.  Please let me know.

The message I receive is as follows:

Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Incorrect number of thread records
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Invalid volume directory count
(It should be 423 instead of 420)
Invalid volume file count
(It should be 14859 instead of 11142)
Checking extended attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
The volume EU8TB could not be repaired after 3 attempts
File system check exit code is 8
Restoring the original state found as unmounted
Error: -69845: File system verify or repair failed
Underlying error: 8: Exec format error

I took a screen shot of orphaned files being fixed under single user mode.

First - take a backup of your file system. Even though it is already corrupted, it is possible to further corrupt it by trying to fix it. Make sure you have a copy before this.

Then I would suggest simply trying multiple times to check and fix the file system in single-user mode. It sounds counterintuitive, but really you sometimes need to do this multiple times to clear all errors.

You would run a check like this:

fsck -fy

Note that even though you're "repairing" the file system, it is really just fixing data structures to be internally consistent. You might (and probably will) loose data and files in the process.

As you have a RAID-0 drive, there's no redundancy in the RAID that can help you rebuild the drives while keeping all your data intact. If the data on the drive is important enough for you that you won't be happy if you loose it, then you shouldn't run RAID-0 - but rather a RAID-level with redundancy. And always create backups!


Sync music from iPod classic to iTunes? My Father's iPod (classic) has all of his music arranged and named perfectly.

However, his iTunes is not in sync with his iPod, as his computer hard drive was damaged, and all of his iTunes data lost. Because of this, we have not been able to back up the iPod, and if it is damaged, he will have to rename thousands of songs again.

Is there a way to sync the music from his iPod to his iTunes, or any other possible way to backup the iPod data?

Not officially.  Syncing is intended to go in one direction:  from iTunes to iPod.

That said, there are some third-party apps that will permit this.

https://tunesgo.wondershare.com/music-transfer/transfer-music-from-ipod-touch-to-computer.html

Good discussion on Apple Support:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3991


"Run First Aid from Recovery" while in Recovery I have a late-2013 Retina Macbook Pro running Sierra 10.12.5 with a myriad of issues that I've been trying to work out. Today's problem: First Aid says there are problems with the partition map that might prevent booting, and to fix them, I need to run First Aid from Recovery. Easy enough.

So I boot into Recovery and run First Aid and get the same message: run First Aid from Recovery, even though I'm already in Recovery. I get the same message in Internet Recovery and when running Disk Utility off an external macOS installer USB. How can I get First Aid to run in Recovery?

I think it means restart from Internet recovery. Because the disk containing the recovery partition you are running disk first aid from needs repair. So reboot while holding commandR. Give your ethernet or wifi password if needed.

This just happened to me.

edit to fix key sequence.


How can I generate specific text from collection of fonts? I have text (3 words) that I want to test by generating this text from a collection of fonts ? do you know any way to automate this?

You can do it with this script:

 (*
 Create Font Sample.scpt

Modified by b.leopard on macosxhints.com to include a dialog

This script creates a font sample of the selected fonts in FontBook.app

Copyright Â© Apple Computer, Inc.

 You may incorporate this Apple sample code into your program(s) without
 restriction.  This Apple sample code has been provided "AS IS" and the
 responsibility for its operation is yours.  You are not permitted to
 redistribute this Apple sample code as "Apple sample code" after having
 made changes.  If you're going to redistribute the code, we require
 that you make it clear that the code was descended from Apple sample
 code, but that you've made changes.

 Modifications made at 2007-04-26     Please contact me in case of further enhancements: b.schreyer@erco.com

*)

set fontSize to 16

repeat

        set sampleString to "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy cat."
    display dialog "Create font sample of all selected fonts in FontBook.app?"      & ¬
         return & return & "Enter sample text:" default answer sampleString ¬
         buttons {"Cancel", "open FontBook", "OK"} default button 3
     set {buttonReturned, sampleString} to ¬
            {button returned of the result, text returned of the result}
     if buttonReturned is "Cancel" then
         error number -128 -- quit
     else if buttonReturned is "open FontBook" then -- open FontBook.app and quit
         tell application "Font Book" to activate
         error number -128 -- quit
     else -- sample text
         if the sampleString is not "" then
             set sampleString to sampleString & " â€“ "

             set fontSize to text returned of (display dialog "What font size " & ¬
                 "should be used in the sample?" default answer fontSize) as number
            exit repeat
         end if
    end if

end repeat

 tell application "Font Book"

     tell application "System Events"
         set wasTextEditRunning to (name of processes) contains "TextEdit"
     end tell

     --    tell application TextEditApp to activate

      set selectedFamilies to selected font families
      set selectedTypefaces to selection

     set numFamilies to count selectedFamilies
     set numFaces to count selectedTypefaces

          tell application "TextEdit"
        if wasTextEditRunning then
             make new document at the end of documents of it
         end if
         tell the front document
             set paragraph 1 to "Font Samples - " & ¬
                  numFamilies & " families   " & ¬
                  numFaces & " typefaces" & return & return & return
             set size to 18
        end tell
     end tell

     --    asuuming that items in selection are sorted in font family.

     set paraIndex to 3

     repeat while selectedTypefaces is not {}
          set thisFace to first item of selectedTypefaces
          set familyName to family name of thisFace
          set selectedTypefaces to the rest of selectedTypefaces
          set postScriptNames to {PostScript name of thisFace}

          repeat while selectedTypefaces is not {}
              set anotherFace to first item of selectedTypefaces
            if family name of anotherFace is familyName then
                set the end of postScriptNames to PostScript name of anotherFace
                set selectedTypefaces to the rest of selectedTypefaces
             else
                exit repeat
             end if
        end repeat

        tell the front document of application "TextEdit"
            tell paragraph paraIndex
                set font to "LucidaGrande"
                set size to 12
                set characters to familyName & return & return
                set the color of every word to ¬
                {32867, 32867, 32867} -- 50% gray
             end tell
             set paraIndex to paraIndex + 1

             repeat with psName in postScriptNames
                 set success to true
                 try
                tell paragraph paraIndex
                    set font to psName
                    set size to fontSize
                    set characters to tab & sampleString & ¬
                        psName & return & return
                end tell
            on error
                set success to false
            end try
            if success then
                set paraIndex to paraIndex + 1
            end if
        end repeat
        set paragraph paraIndex to return & return
        set paraIndex to paraIndex + 1
    end tell

end repeat
tell application "TextEdit" to activate
end tell

This will return something like this:

And the final result:


How can I locate unused drivers (kext files) on my mac which I see exist using kextstat command? I've been receiving crazy kernel panics for years, and I've resolved to get rid of them once and for all.

I was recommended to remove all the 3rd party drivers that appear in the reports as they could easily be the culprits for the panic - one of those was the remote controller app by iospirit. I reoved the app as recommended by the devs, but I still see the drivers in the report, even though they're not supposed to exist any more on my machine!

This is what I see using textstat for the iospirit leftovers which I have not been able to locate:

kextstat | grep iospirit
  103    0 0xffffff7f8100d000 0x2000     0x2000     com.iospirit.CandelairIRBaseDriver (1) C2DBE90A-C38C-3012-8CEB-DF98F742553F
  164    1 0xffffff7f81010000 0x2c000    0x2c000    com.iospirit.driver.rbiokithelper (1.33) 6A3D7305-1A0D-38C4-A832-D84B69F0C492
  178    0 0xffffff7f83886000 0x2000     0x2000     com.iospirit.driver.AppleIRController (4001) DAF6B9AF-DF84-3081-9426-3B4FEDD14D09

Any idea how I can find those iospirit driver guys?

Performing a simple search for iospirit on "This Mac" finds nothing :(

Thank you!

You can search for the bundle id with kextfind.

kextfind -case-insensitive -bundle-id -substring 'com.iospirit.' -print

The above should print a list of the kernel extensions (kexts) you've mentioned, including their paths.

Usually kexts are found in...
/System/Library/Extensions/
/Library/Extensions/
...or within Application packages and /Library/Application Support/.

There is also StagedExtensions, since the introduction of "User-Approved Kernel Extension Loading", where they can also be found in e.g.
/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Extensions/

StackOverflow has a relevant question and answers about "StagedExtensions", including removal here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46535279/what-is-library-stagedextensions-for-and-how-to-remove-extensions

For more information on user-approved extension loading and their locations (mentioned above) see also this archived Tech Note from Apple about "User-Approved Kernel Extension Loading"


Is Apple's Mail.app more secure over using webmail? I have heard that webmail services (even the one with E2EE) are prone to JavaScript based attacks, while native apps like Mail.app in macOS are secure against such attacks.

Is this true? Is it better to use Mail.app than using webmail?

In practice no Mail.app is not more secure.

The reason being that most mail providers also provide a webmail service e.g. Gmail, iCloud, Outlook.

So you have the risks of webmail as well as possibly other from Apple Mail. the attacks against Apple Mail are different.

Re Javascript attacks I use webmail and don't allow download of images and use web blockers to stop various Javascript from running. Mail.app will run Javascript (the message pane is in effect a web browser)

Now if you could find a mail provider that does not provide webmail access then there might be something in the original premise. However there will be other security issues and so you can't say one is more secure than the other.

In all cases turn javascript off if you can if you are worried about security. There is a good case for using text based mail user agents like pine, mutt, even emacs, however the mail might not be as friendly and as easy to use.

Remember security is relative. Nothing is 100% secure. You just have to choose how secure you need it to me. A CIA operative will have different needs to a normal member of the public.


How can I use AirPlay to watch on the television, but audio through my headphones? I have been using Netflix (for example) on my phone with headphones, but then I realized I would have a better experience watching it on the TV, but keep the audio on the phone.

Is there any way to project a video (only) onto the Apple TV, and keep the audio on my iPad/iPhone/Mac?

... I'll contrast this with OS X, where I'm able to airplay and switch between headphones and TV speakers just by plugging in headphones.

In addition there is this Midi control panel where I can configure outputs:

This cannot be done natively from an iOS device as there are no output settings built in to the iOS platform that allow the splitting of the audio from the video while streaming a file. With the use of extra hardware and/or 3rd party software though what you're trying to accomplish can technically be done in a round-about way, just not the exact way you're describing, where your headphones would be connected to your phone.

This link has some options (some fairly cheap) that you could explore though:
Use Headphones with Apple TV.

I did notice you mentioned owning a Mac though. One option not mentioned in that article (because it's not Apple TV related) would be to just use your Mac connected to your tv, using a long HDMI cable and a 'Mini display port to HDMI adapter' ($10 on Amazon). That way you could sit with your Mac beside you and your headphones plugged into it, although you would have that HDMI cable strung across the room while in use that you would have to be careful of. (And you would have to remember to select your headphones from 'System Preferences > Sound > Output' likely every time you go to use it this way.)


Cleaner for Xcode needs permission clean files The app in the App Store called "Cleaner for Xcode" displays the following warning message after trying to "clean". I understand it has to do with permissions, but not sure how to fix it. I'm also not sure how to get any support for this app nor contact the developer.

The error is:
"Need ~/Library/Developer permission to analyze and clean Xcode files"

I assume this means I need to give the app permissions to edit the Developer folder, but not sure how to do that.

You don't really need a separate app for cleaning Xcode files. I frequently do it manually, when the build logs are old, irrelevant. You can navigate to that ~/Library/Developer folder and remove what you don't like. Be careful not to remove UserData or you'll lose your preferences. I remove simulators because I don't need them.

Reduce size of the Xcode application

I also set the iOS DeviceSupport folder as locked after cleaning it up, since it eats 2.5 GB for nothing.

How to stop Xcode downloading iOS support package of my iPhone?


Apple Configurator V1.4 was working this morning, now quits immediately upon start I have a new Mac Mini, OS X 10.8.5 (12F45), just set up this morning.  Downloaded Apple Configurator 1.4 (351).  It worked fine up until about an hour ago, when it started quitting as soon as I start it.  The error message reads, "Apple Configurator quit unexpectedly".

I have rebooted the Mac, deleted and reinstalled the AC, but neither action made any difference.  Seems to be quitting due to an uncaught exception.  Any ideas how to work around this?  Or do I just wait a few days and see if this is magically fixed?  (I.e., a new version is released.)

Delete the Apple Configurator preference file and try running the app again.

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.configurator.plist

Delete the Apple Configurator file containers and try running the app again.

sudo find /private/var/folders -name com.apple.configurator -delete

These files should not contain any important information regarding your devices and/or settings in Apple Configurator. Both the preferences .plist and the containers didn't contain anything important, and after making a backup I ran the above commands on my machine - it didn't cause any problems. All my settings remained in the app.

However, this doesn't necessarily mean it will be the same for you. You can check the contents of the containers by running the following command (I've also included my output so you can compare if you wish):

sudo find /private/var/folders -name com.apple.configurator | xargs tree
/private/var/folders/hh/41_x4gjd5sl_fmdsmglz94xw0000gn/C/com.apple.configurator
├── com.apple.scriptmanager.le.cache
└── mds
    ├── mds.lock
    ├── mdsDirectory.db
    └── mdsObject.db
/private/var/folders/hh/41_x4gjd5sl_fmdsmglz94xw0000gn/T/com.apple.configurator
└── TemporaryItems
    └── (A\ Document\ Being\ Saved\ By\ Apple\ Configurator)
3 directories, 4 files

As per this Apple KB article, the Apple Configurator's actual data is stored in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.configurator. If, once you have followed the instructions above, the app still does not work, backup this folder and delete it. If the app works after you do this, and you need your data back, restore this folder from your most recent backup.


How to turn off autoplay for watch later playlist in Youtube App for iOS YouTube has built the annoying "feature" of autoplay within the Watch Later playlist into its recent iOS update. Is there any way to turn it off?

I love falling asleep to a video that I pick from my Watch Later and I don't want it to keep playing and playing more and more videos long after I'm asleep when all I want is to see that one video I picked.

One trick.

Click share button. Choose "message" option to get a link. Open safari and paste the link. Then. Enter. Now the youtube app pops again. And no more hassle. Play only one vid.


Battery percentage on iPod touch 5G iOS 8 How do I get the battery percentage on the top right of my screen please help I tried many other things but didn't work

The iPod Touch does not allow you to view battery percentage. Only the iPhone and iPad.

"You can see what percent the battery is at on your iPhone or iPad, but not your iPod touch." -- http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201102


Shared menu missing from finder sidebar Since upgrading to High Sierra the 'Shared' menu (back to my mac, connected servers, bonjour computers) has disappeared from my Finder sidebar. Selecting/de-selecting in preferences makes no difference. Favorites, Devices and Tags all work as expected.

Thanks.

osx 10.13.3 (17D47)

After upgrading to High Sierra, I had the same issue, coupled with SMB hanging without connecting to remote servers.

The SMB issue was solved by changing the SMB version to v2 in the /etc/nsmb.conf configuration file and rebooting the Mac as recommended in this post on SMB share deadlock. After the reboot with the new /etc/nsmb.conf, shared devices were again correctly listed in the sidebar, so I surmise both issues are linked.

The /etc/nsmb.conf file I use is:

$ cat /etc/nsmb.conf
streams=yes
soft=yes
signing_required=no
protocol_vers_map=2
file_ids_off=yes


What's the best way to sell my iPhone 3G in the UK? The same as this question ( http://gadgets.stackexchange.com/questions/9/what-do-i-need-to-do-to-sell-my-iphone-3gs ) except with the UK in mind.

I have a 16GB iPhone 3G and have recently upgraded (we don't need to argue if it's an upgrade :p) to the iPhone 4. What's the recommended way to sell it in the UK? It has one small crack on the back near the vibration switch so it probably doesn't count as near new (depending on your definition of near).

The lowest hassle way is probably via one of these "phone recycling" sites.  eg:

Mazuma Mobile (offering £172 or £189.20 in Argos
vouchers currently)
Envirophone (offering £160 currently)
FoneBank (offering £161 currently)

It might not be the best deal on offer, but it's easy.  I sold an old (though much cheaper) handset via Mazuma recently with no problems.


What are the afconvert settings for the iTunes Plus AAC encoding setting? The challenge

I would like to convert a large collection of WAV files to AAC using the "iTunes Plus" setting in iTunes. iTunes describes this setting as:

  128 kbps (mono) / 256 kbps (stereo), 44.100 kHz, VBR, optimized for MMX/SSE2.

I would like to automate this import process.

Trial and error

The afconvert command line tool can convert between audio file formats. I've tried a few settings and the closest I could get is:

afconvert -v -d aac -b 256000 -f m4af -q 127 -s 2 --soundcheck-generate input.wav output.m4a

So: be verbose (-v), use the AAC data format (-d aac), encode at 256 kbps (-b 256000), store in the Apple MPEG-4 Audio file format (-f m4af), use the highest quality (-q 127), use VBR constrained (-s 2) and add SoundCheck data to the file.

I've also created an m4a file using the iTunes Plus setting.

The m4a file created by afconvert is about the same size as the iTunes file; just 65536 bytes smaller.

Results

Using the afinfo tool, I compared the file generated by iTunes to the file generated by afconvert. There are two differences in the afinfo output:

The file generated by iTunes has an audio data file offset of 131072, the one by afconvert 65536. This explains the difference in file size
Somehow the file generated by iTunes has different sound check values than the one converted by afconvert:

iTunes file:

sc ave perceived power coeff             343 407
sc max perceived power coeff             6873 8940
sc peak amplitude msec                   154389 194861
sc max perceived power msec              194025 194025
sc peak amplitude                        31129 30928

afconvert file:

sc ave perceived power coeff             341 388
sc max perceived power coeff             6087 4157
sc peak amplitude msec                   212509 152323
sc max perceived power msec              215481 185017
sc peak amplitude                        31024 29857

Especially the sc peak amplitude msec and sc max perceived power msec values differ quite a lot. These are the exact same input files, what could cause this difference?

Question

Is there a way to get results even closer to the "iTunes Plus" setting?

I had the exact same obsession, and ended up creating a FLAC-to-iTunes importer that decodes FLAC files to WAV and imports them into iTunes using iTunes' own encoder: https://github.com/cbguder/FLAC2iTunes

It should be easy enough to modify FLAC2iTunes to support direct WAV input.

As for the soundcheck values, I compared iTunes, XLD and afconvert by encoding WAV files to AAC and decoding them back to WAV and comparing the decoded audio data. I also compared afinfo outputs for the encoded files. While the souncheck values are different for each file, the decoded WAVs are exactly the same, so even if you use XLD or afconvert, the chances are the resulting files will sound exactly the same.

For afconvert, I used the parameters suggested by Apple in the "Mastered for iTunes" guide, with an intermediate CAF file:

afconvert source.wav intermediate.caf -d 0 -f caff --soundcheck-generate
afconvert intermediate.caf -d aac -f m4af -u pgcm 2 --soundcheck-read -b 256000 -q 127 -s 2 final.m4a

For XLD, I used these settings:

Format: MPEG-4 AAC
Mode: VBR (Constrained)
Encoder Quality: Max
Sample Rate: Auto
Target bitrate: 256 kbps
Add gapless information for iTunes: checked
Write accurate bitrate information: checked


What causes eDSPermissionError when running dscl? I'm running Mac OS X 10.14.1 revision 18B75

I created a user using dscl and set its home directory to a wrong path with this command:

sudo dscl . -create /Users/theusername NFSHomeDirectory /the/wrong/path

Now I want to fix this.
I tried these commands:

sudo dscl . -changei /Users/theusername NFSHomeDirectory 1 /the/right/path

and

sudo dscl . -change /Users/theusername NFSHomeDirectory /the/wrong/path /the/right/path

but in both cases I get this:

<main> attribute status: eDSPermissionError
<dscl_cmd> DS Error: -14120 (eDSPermissionError)

Why am I getting a permission error even if I'm running as root?
How can I fix the wrong path?

Its a good question. I honestly have no idea. Does Apple still support using NFS home directories?

The only thing I can think of is to mention that using sudo is not the same as executing a command with uid=0, gid=0. Necessarily. Anymore.

And this is particularly applicable within the context of Directory Services, I think (?),  because that's where you Enable Root User these days. So I might try enabling root in Directory Utility, and trying with a proper su root?


Restoring a jailbroken iPhone I'm trying to restore a iPhone 3g I got that was jailbroken. I plugged it into itunes and hit restore and received the error 1015 that it could not be restored. I've tried using the tinyumbrella solution I believe I did it correctly but it did not work. Anyone have any suggestions?

You need to put it in DFU mode before restoring...

This can be done by:

Open iTunes and connect the iPhone to your Mac or PC.
Press and hold the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button at the same time. After
exactly 10 seconds release the Sleep/Wake button. Continue holding
the home button until you iTunes pops up a message telling you that
it has detected an iPhone in recovery mode.
The iPhone screen will remain black.

NOTE***: It may take a few attempts to get your iPhone into DFU mode. Generally, I hold down both buttons then release the Home button just before I think the Apple logo would appear. If you are still holding both buttons down and you see the Apple logo you are holding them down for too long!


Change the order of email accounts in iOS I'm curious if there is a way to re-order email accounts in Mail on iOS without re-setting all the accounts up (I haven't tested re-creating all the accounts). I know someone that has a ton of email accounts on his iPhone, and he would like to re-order them - ones he uses most at the top, with the other further down the list.

Any ideas?

Since iOS 6, you can re-order mail accounts in the Mail app by pressing Edit at the Mailboxes screen, and dragging to rearrange.

They should have had this option from the start.


How to prevent the "-1" suffix in network drive paths? Sometimes network volumes get a -1 suffix on their path. As I have scripts that rely on this path they can't work.

For example an afp share at afp://nas/Team is shown Team in Finder, but its real path is /Volumes/Team-1

I have seen this happen when there is already a volume with the given name and the OS needs to create a new name to mount the volume as you can't have a duplicate name -- thus the suffix.

The first thing to do is, make sure that you don't have any other volumes with the same name. If you do, perhaps you can rename one or only use one at a time.

I've also seen some applications that use a path for an external volume will create a folder under /Volumes/ if the volume has been disconnected and the path doesn't exist. This causes the suffix the next time the volume is reconnected. To fix this you will need to disconnect the volume, remove the extraneous folder, and then reconnect the volume. It should mount without the suffix.


OS X El Capitan Installer.app has crippled my Mac Mini Mac Mini (Mid-2011), 16GB SSD, 16GB RAM, El Capitan (v10.11.6)

The Mac ran fine until I upgraded to Sierra. The latest Mac OS conflicted with most of the specialized apps I use every day, So I immediately returned to El Capitan.

Activity monitor shows that two "Installer/Installer.app" items are always running and are they major users of all of my available memory. Consequently, all my others apps become unresponsive.  I run Disk Utility, and the Installer.app show up there as .dmg files; but I cannot erase, delete, or unmount them. None of my 3rd party app can remove the installers.

My Mac Mini, which should be running super-fast (as it used to), now runs dreadfully and disgustingly slow. I a truly upset with Apple for this kind of garbage. To get their help: $$$.

Double click the process in activity monitor and look for the Open Files tab.  This should give you an idea where the process is coming from

Try to force-quit the process in activity monitor.

Then try to delete the dmg files (make sure they are unmounted, right-click > unmount on the dmg).


Prevent & disable iPhone iOS 9.2 from forced/ pushed auto downloading updates? Prevent & disable iPhone iOS 9.2 from auto downloading updates?

iPhone 5 iOS 9.2 -

Today morning found it had auto downloaded 9.2.1 update - Around 200-400 MB.

I have a data cap with ISP so I dont want this happening on Apple's control.

How can I prevent & disable this?

I found these older articles but does not seem to have worked/ stopped the download.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7256669?tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7250272?tstart=0

The closest I came was preventing all my iOS devices from reaching the update server. This envolves configuring your internet router in order to do so.

Configure your router to block the following domain: mesu.apple.com

Doing so will still allow your iDevice to talk to the Apple Store, allowing you to download/update iOS Apps.

Some routers (like mine) only allow me to block 'web sites' not domains. Luckily, that is all we need to do. Blocking https://mesu.apple.com also does the trick.

I would say blocking the whole domain is a cleaner solution if possible however.


Time Machine wants 4.50 PB to backup 266.14GB I'm currently unable to backup via Time Machine, as backups fail with the following error message:

"Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "Time Machine"". "The backup disk needs 4.50 PB for the backup but only 337.69 GB are available. Select a larger backup disk or make the backup smaller by excluding files."

If I go into Time Machine Options, the estimated size of a full backup is 266.14GB. The source volume is only 500GB.

Things I've tried already:

running Disk Utility First Aid on both the boot volume (the one to be backed up) and the Time Machine disk
restarting the Mac
checked the Time Machine disk is included in the "Exclude the items from backups". It is.

Does anyone know why Time Machine might be massively over-estimating the size required to complete a backup?

4.50 PB is 4,500 Terrabytes, right?!

Edits:

I'm using macOS 10.14.3 (up to date as of the time of writing)
the boot volume is APFS (Encrypted)
the Time Machine Volume is Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)

Edit 2019-02-28

I have now discovered the following file which shows as 4.5PB:

ls -l ~/.android/avd/Nexus_5_API_26.avd/cache.img.qcow2
-rw-r--r--  1 notmyrealusername  staff  4503601804345344  7 Feb 14:34 /Users/notmyrealusername/.android/avd/Nexus_5_API_26.avd/cache.img.qcow2```

if I run `file` on this file:

```file ~/.android/avd/Nexus_5_API_26.avd/cache.img.qcow2
/Users/notmyrealusername/.android/avd/Nexus_5_API_26.avd/cache.img.qcow2: QEMU QCOW Image (v3), has backing file (path cache.img), 69206016 bytes

And yet the SSD holding the file is only 500GB

df -h
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity  iused               ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1s1   466Gi  241Gi  221Gi    53%  3704178 9223372036851071629    0%   /

How is this possible?

I'm going to take a wild swing at it being either bad local backups or a corrupted TM drive - or both - as I've had nothing but trouble with both ever since APFS was introduced. Mojave has been better than either of the Sierras, but still it happens occasionally [across two different Mac Pros running 2 different OSes, both with a permanently mounted internal TM drive.]

I can usually force backups to start to behave by clearing down 'stuck' local backups from Terminal but frequently I've had to use DiskWarrior to also fix the Time Machine drive itself. Hopefully your TM drive is still HFS+, as DiskWarrior can't fix APFS yet.

To clear down local backups, open terminal & type

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /

That will give you a list, similar to

com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-02-10-163737
com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-02-10-174021
com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-02-10-183659
com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-02-10-193738

For some unknown reason it just seems to hang onto way more of these than seems sensible, though it should clean them up itself.

You can clean these up forcibly using

tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1000000000000 1

[this is an overkill number, designed to clean every last one of them, aggressively; otherwise you just seem to have to do it over again]

List snapshots again, as above & you ought to end up with just one. If that ends in (dataless) then try a reboot & see if it goes away on its own.  If not, you should be able to clear it manually using the date/timestamp, for example

tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2019-02-10-163737

If you find one with an am or pm timestamp, see APFS/High Sierra - tmutil deletelocalsnapshots will not delete snapshots - Error parsing argument

Once you done the tidying up, then let Time Machine try one more run. If it fails you may need to repeat the above. I'd be almost certain, though, that you will have to run DiskWarrior over the Time Machine drive & let it repair it. I have never found any other utility that can fix drive corruption like this.  Disk Utility won't do it.

Note: I have no affiliation with DiskWarrior; merely a satisfied customer. It does seem to be able to fix things nothing else can touch, though I have no clue how it actually achieves this.


Cannot launch system with no battery icon I use a 2017 12" MacBook. It suddenly shut out due to lack of battery. Then I recharged it still does not start with the no battery icon.

The battery should be 100% as I plugged it for a day and prior to yesterday it worked without any problems.

How can I start it again? Is this hardware issue? Or does bringing to Apple Store is the only option here?

Plug in the MacBook charger and try to start it.

If it doesn't start, it's recommended to get it inspected at an Apple Store or by an authorized technician.


How to create single-click/-keystroke shortcut to start recording on Mac OS? I want to record landline calls at my desk with one-click or similar. For example, say I get a work call that I want to record, I just hit one key on my Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard or one button on my multi-button Logitech mouse and the Mac (Mac Mini running El Cap/OS 10.11) just starts recording. No steps, just one button or keystroke, regardless of what application is open or running.

I currently have a landline phone recorder adapter, which outputs a standard 3.5mm jack. I have an Olympus digital recorder, which works fine. But I want to remove the Olympus from the system and just record directly to my Mac's hard drive using something like Quicktime to record the audio calls. Now I have plugged the adapter's 3.5mm output into the Line In input on the back of my Mac Mini. It records in Quicktime and Audacity fine, but I want it to open either audio app and start recording with one-click, etc.

How do I do that? Keyboard Maestro the best way? Anything cheaper or free? Thanks.

I wrote two scripts for you to do this in QuickTime Player:

Script to start recording:

tell application "QuickTime Player"
    activate
    start (new audio recording)
end tell

Script to end recording:

Edit (21/12/2018): this script uses UI scripting, which is not recommended, but seems the best option for now. If you have a better solution, that addresses the issues that are stated in the comments, please edit this answer.

tell application "QuickTime Player"
    activate
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "QuickTime Player"
        tell window 1
            click (first button where its accessibility description = "stop recording")
        end tell
        click menu item "Save…" of menu "File" of menu bar 1
    end tell
end tell

After the second script a dialog will open, which asks you to enter a file name and save location.

To make this work, you have to copy both scripts and paste them into two separate files in Script Editor (default installed on your Mac). Save the files and follow this guide to assign shortcuts to them.

Update 21/12/2018: I updated the start script with user3439894's suggestion. I kept the stop script the same, because his stop script suggestion doesn't seem to work. (A window with 'Finishing Recording' appears, but keeps loading)


find doesn't search within subdirectories I'm using find . -name '*~' to find files that end with ~ but it only shows files that are not in the subdirectories. When I use find . -name "#*" it shows all files including the ones that are in the subdirectories.

If the subdirectory is a symbolic link, find will not follow it by default. Try:

find -L . -name '*~'

See this document for more.


Mail attachement problem I have a problem with mail application.

Using it from OS X when I send mail including an attachment like image, pdf or any oder document and if my recipient reads the mail on windows devices, they do not see the text of my mail and a signature, but instead the whole text and signature of the email all are processed as an attachment.

LIKE THIS...

MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015), iOS 9.1, OS X Yosemite version 10.10.5

You can try Universal Mailer Plugin to Apple Mail.
It has options to keep signature text formatting as well as how to treat images in the message.


Packaging a self-made service with dependancies — possible? So I wrote a small service (a couple of services, really) which basically lets a user capture its screen (full screen or an area) and then make edits if necessary and then it uploads it directly to imgur and gives the user a direct image link.

I wrote it for myself but people at my workplace got interested and asked me to install it for them. Since my service has a couple of dependancies I basically had to borrow their Macbooks for like 15 minutes to install everything.

I wonder if it's possible to somehow pack everything so that I can hand it to other people who want to use it.

What my app consists of and what it requires:

A package from brew called imgur-screenshot (also available directly from github afaik)
A number of automator services that I wrote
A free image editor — Skitch
A config file for imgur-screenshot placed in ~/.config/imgur-screnshot/
Doing a couple of quick tweaks in system settings like assigning hotkeys to these automator services

I wonder just how much of these things I can bundle together and send as an archive or something to people who're not developers so that can do the installation in a couple of clicks. Also, how should I handle putting the config file into a hidden folder?

Wrote a bash scripted that bundled and installed everything in the end.


Unexplainable usage of Internet I am a domestic internet user on my Mac through a cable modem with a wifi router provided by a very large cable TV & broadband provider. I have a 7 Mbps connectivity with a download limit of 25GB.  I have been using this for the last 18 months and my usage used to be below 12 GB per month.  The last two months I have been getting huge bills from the ISP claiming that my usage has gone above 40 to 50 GB. There is no change in the usage pattern or even the software deployed in the last many months but the billed usage currently is unexplainable. The router does not have wifi range out side my home where one Mac and two iPhones are only used. The internet usage on the iPhone is also limited to some emails and simple browsing which we have been doing for 18 months.

Now, sometimes the usage statistics from the tool provided by the ISP shows 700 to 800 MB usage in 20 to 30 minutes even when all my systems are idle.

How is it possible for me to plug this hole?

The easiest (and cheapest) way is to check the data usage through Activity Monitor. Just type in the name in Spotlight to launch it, and navigate to the Network tab. You can sort by bytes sent/received, though I think you'll have to keep it running to get historical data by app (otherwise shows only total data sent/received).

For a complete solution, where you would get prompts for all apps trying to access the internet, and the ability to create filters etc., you can check out Little Snitch 3 (https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html).


The application "XYZ" can't be opened! I am running macOS version 10.14.4 (18E226) on a MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports.)

Frequently, at least twice a week, I get this error while opening any application:

  The application "XYZ" can't be opened.

This happens with every application, even with default applications like Calculator! When this happens, no app will start. But, the already running applications continue to run. Even with Google Chrome, I can use the existing tabs but new tabs will not work.

I thought of attaching a screenshot, but the screenshot tool also didn't work.

Everything comes back to normal once I restart my mac.

This is so annoying and interrupts with my work. What could be the reason? How to fix this?

Edit:
Got the logs

May 12 20:26:40 MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.calculator.11368): Could not spawn trampoline /usr/libexec/xpcproxy: 35: Resource temporarily unavailable
May 12 20:26:40 MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.calculator.11368): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
May 12 20:26:40 MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.calculator.11368): Deferred spawn of service failed: 35: Resource temporarily unavailable

Since, screenshot tool didn't start, took a photo.

I faced the same problem here, and after investigating, I realized the problem was due to the number of processes my mac was running.

In my case, a cronjob was triggering multiple httpd threads (more than a hundred).

You can:

open activity monitor and kill those processes;
check your crontab -e and look for suspicious jobs


Safari Web Inspector stops logging network activity I'm using Safari 10.0.1 on Sierra 10.12.1.

At some point, usually after ~5 minutes or about 100 requests, the web inspector stops logging network requests under the Network tab.

Same thing happens with the Timelines tab.

I've had this problem since Safari 9 on El Cap.

Any pointers on how to solve this?

This sounds like a bug. Please file a bug report with a test case/URL and steps to reproduce at https://www.webkit.org/new-inspector-bug and we will take a look at it!


What is the best way to set up Gmail on IPad? I just got an iPad and want to know, what is the best way to set up Gmail on the iPad? As far as I can tell there are three methods to set up the account:

As a Gmail account
As an Exchange account
"manually" (I.e. you enter in all the information on the servers yourself).

According to this website, manual setup allows you to store your drafts on the server, but exchange allows for push. Can someone please explain the differences between the options and the best way to set up Gmail?

Setting up via Exchange is my preferred iOS Gmail setup. In earlier iOS versions (I think 3.0) you were limited to one Exchange account. So in my case, that was reserved for my work email. But once that limitation was lifted, I switched Gmail to Exchange and have been quite happy with it.

You get push email, which is the main benefit, but you also get push contact/calendar updates. Depending on if you use Google calendar as your main calendar, push calendar updates and invites can be a huge help to managing one's day.

If you decide you don't need push while using Exchange (or ActiveSync, which is the specific mobile protocol used by Exchange and Google), disabling push is quick and simple. Setting up via ActiveSync also saves a few steps in that you don't have to link your calendar and contacts manually.  So I say go for Exchange, even if you don't use push. But it's not a huge deal either way, and as it's so easy to add/remove accounts on iOS, if you pick one and don't like how it works out, you can always switch to the other with minimal effort.


How can I get Wikipedia embedded audio and video to play back in Safari? What is required to get the embedded Ogg Vorbis/Theora media on Wikipedia to play back natively in Safari, assuming a clean, up-to-date OS X install?

The Wikipedia page for Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 can be used as an example. In Chrome, this page renders the following infobox:

In Safari, this same excerpt renders as following:

Wikipedia is not directly using the HTML5 audio tag (which it should be) and is not supporting media in Safari at this time (likely due to it's lack of popularity) so It's recommended to use Chrome (which is basically safari that Google improved upon) or Firefox.

example page:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Libre_music

document.querySelectorAll('audio').length
0

The "compatibility" layer (mw.PopUpMediaTransform) they are trying to use makes the audio tag after you click play but in safari it tries some java applet that breaks.


Import 720p to iMovie without clipping? I have some videos that were recorded at 720p which I'd like to edit in iMovie. They're saved as MP4s. When I import one and view it in the media browser, it looks fine. As soon as I add one to a movie project, the aspect ratio changes to... something else. The video gets trimmed at the top and bottom, and people's heads get cut off in some shots. How can I add these videos to a project and keep the entire frame? Ideally I'd have a movie project that matched the resolution of the clips. If not, can it be letterboxed to at least not lose any of the existing content?

I'm using iMovie 10.1.8. Thanks.

I'm not looking to crop, I'm basically looking to prevent unwanted cropping. In case there's any confusion, here are a couple of screen shots. The goal is to end up with a movie where nobody's head and feet get cropped out.

If I play the clip from the media browser, it might look like this:

If I add this clip to the movie, the same shot looks like this:

In the crop settings you should be able to select an automatic crop option or resize the video by grabbing and moving the edge of the video.


Compare new (Mar 2011) 15" Macbook Pros I'm interested in purchasing the 15" model of the latest generation (Mar 2011) of Macbook Pros. They list two variants that differ $400 in price. As far as I can tell, these are the only differences between them.

2.0 GHz i7 processor ($1800 version) vs 2.2 GHz i7 processor ($2200 version)
500 GB hard drive ($1800 version) vs 750 GB hard drive ($2200 version)
6490M (with 256MB GDDR5) graphics card ($1800 version) vs 6750M (with 1GB GDDR5) graphics card ($2200 version)

Option #2 doesn't make a huge difference to me, so my question is this: for what types of applications will the difference processors have an observable effect in performance? For which types of applications will the different graphics cards have an observable effect in performance?

This question is so subjective because there is nothing specific being asked. Let me break it down for you.

How much does the move from 2.0 GHZ to 2.2 GHZ improve performance?
200 MHz is the obvious answer here. Improve performance, depends, chances are you probably won't notice any difference in that aspect.

How about the different graphics cards?

Obvious difference being the 768MB difference in memory in the cards. Subjective because who knows what your use is going to be, i can tell you for browsing/email/office type products you'll never see the difference.

Are these improvements limited to certain types of applications?

What certain type of applications? Once again how can you answer this if you don't give anybody a specific area/application that you plan on using.

What do I need to keep in mind when comparing these specs?

Keep in mind in terms of what? Obviously you know the cost difference and some of the numerical differences, but what is it that you are actually asking here?

Sorry if this comes off harsh, but it's too vague and subjective right now to give you any type of concrete answer.


Is it possible to color a table cell from the OS X color picker in Pages 5.1? See picture. Only cell border and not the cell fill has the option to pick a color from the OS X color picker. Is there any workaround?

What you have to do is choose a colour from the selection and then you will see a colour selector icon next to it, click it and the standard colour picker will appear..

odd I know!


iCloud settings on Mac book shows that Dropbox is storing its file inside iCloud when that isn't actually happening I was running through my settings when i stumbled upon this. I'm curious what is actually stored inside iCloud (by Dropbox), because the files inside Dropbox are obviously not (my Dropbox folder is much bigger than iCloud capacity)

]1

Definitely it's not the data you put on dropbox cloud. I think this old answer hints about your question. I know what time machine back up is but I think this service might later be included in iCloud backups too.

As for iOS, ios backup
details explain what it stores.


How can I synchronize my two Mac Computers? I have a Macbook and an iMac, generally I work on my Macbook, but sometimes I need that information on my iMac. My OS is Mac OSX Snow Leopard.

If you are just looking to sync your files and document, give dropbox a try.


Skip first terminal beep and to display ambiguous filename expansions Pressing TAB in the terminal (and in fact some surprise places in OS X's GUI!) either completes the only filename with the prefix provided to the immediate left of TAB, and when there are several such names (or no such names!) the terminal simply beeps. In the latter case, pressing TAB again either beeps again (because there are no such names at all), or displays a list of the choices.

It seems as though this behaviour introduces ambiguity whereas it seems like the entire point is to prevent ambiguity. I would like to remove the beep that happens when many files with the same prefix exist. It just seems like extra effort and it makes me feel like I did something wrong until I realize that I haven't.

How do I change the behaviour of terminal's TAB completion, specifically to only beep if no such file exist and show possibilities otherwise?

You need to put this line inside ~/.inputrc file:

set show-all-if-ambiguous on

After this You'll get all posssibilities after first ⇥ TAB.


Problems with resetting and old MBP "An error occurred during installation..." I'm trying to factory reset an old MBP, not sure how old but somewhere between 2009-2012. Weird things happen when I try to reset it though. I have tried twice and I get this error after download of the image is done, in other words, when the installation is about to start.

I have deleted and repartitioned the HDD, and there are no other partitions except "disk2" - and a partition under it called "Mac OS X Base System Image". I have tried correcting the date in terminal, as it was a couple of hours off. This didn't work. The authentication in the beginning of the download goes through just fine. I have tried searcing for similar issues, but people seem to get errors before the download starts, which the date-fix ultimately corrected.

Tldr; Download of OSX-image finishes, weird error occurs when installation is about to start, then exits, undoing everything.

Any suggestions on what to do next?

The text reads: "An Error occurred while preparing the installation.  Try running this application again."

I solved it by creating a bootable USB from another Mac with Sierra on it. The MBP works like a charm now!


Mavericks on MacBook early 2008 I have recently installed Mavericks on my MacBook early 2008 (which doesn't support mavericks) but I have two problems. The first problem is that I can't change the brightness of the screen. When I try to change the brightness it doesn't change. The second problem is that the speakers don't work. I have tried a lot of things but nothing works. Is there someone who know what is should do?

impossible.
the max for that macbook is Lion 10.7.5


No sound when iOS screen off and using Google Maps navigation? I'm using latest versions of iOS and Google Maps on an iPhone 7, and when I turn the screen off, I do not hear turn-by-turn directions when using the navigation feature of Google Maps. Yet, according to the "Battery saving tips" of the Google Maps app documentation, I should still hear the sounds.

I verified this by turning off the screen (pushing power button) a few seconds before the next turn navigation came up. Then verified it was working by leaving the screen on for the next turn. The phone is not connected to any bluetooth devices either.

Also, the Google Maps settings all seem to indicate that sounds are all enabled properly (volume icon on map is set to "unmuted"; under navigation settings, all relevant-looking settings are enabled; etc.).

Any ideas why this would not be working for me? I've yet to try a restart of phone nor have I tried a reset of phone. (Will eventually try those if no other suggestions come up.)

Update: I also just tried re-navigating to new location; I turned screen off in the middle of the, "okay navigation all set" message. Then, the "you're on the fastest route" message played while screen off, but then all the directions no longer play, so issue still happening.

Update 2: I disabled bluetooth and restarted the phone, and the problem still exists. The voice directions also do not play when I have a different app in focus.  I'll try a fresh install of Google Maps at some point soon.

There is a setting in it somewhere to allows notifications when in standby.


CLI unable to access files on external disk I have an external disk onto which I backed up my macOS 10.13 laptop, and now I want to pull some of the files off to use on my newer macOS 10.15 laptop.
I can both see and open (read/write) the files I want via the Finder.  But I cannot see them nor open them via the command line.  Permissions look right, according to Finder, i.e. my macOS 10.15 user owns the files and has read/write permissions.
What's preventing the CLI from accessing these files?
Image below shows very bottom of Finder window overlapping terminal window running Bash.  Note how Finder displays filename and modify date, but file is invisible to Bash.  Next image shows Finder Info for that file.

Apple sandbox privacy now applies to the terminal app as well as specific binaries in some cases.
As a developer, you can script for this.
Even Apple tools need to be granted access and you have to approve it with a click.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210595
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/controlling-app-access-to-files-secddd1d86a6/web

Until you grant permission to look at the disk, the permissions will show incorrectly.


Gmail in iPhone: How to delete on swipe? On iphone 3GS I have iOS version 4.1 running. The thing is when I swipe a mail in my Gmail account on iPhone, it always displays the Archive button. So, to delete some mail in my inbox I always have to open the mail, use the Move to button to move it to Trash.

In Yahoo email account and other accounts however, it displays a Delete button on swiping on a mail.

How can I set Gmail to show Delete button on swiping?

Regards

Go to the iPhone Home screen.
Open Settings.
Select Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
Open the desired Gmail account under Accounts.
Make sure Archive Messages is OFF.

To make swiping archive mail (and remove it from the current folder, but keep it under "All Mail"), make sure Archive Messages is ON.

Just an addition for iOS6: there is an alternative for swiping:
When Archive Messages is OFF, the Archive button turns into a trash can.
When Archive Messages is ON you can press and hold the archive button in the right-hand corner to delete the message.


Mac Chrome virus that inverts colours? I dunno if this is a virus or not (if it is it doesn't seem to be doing much), but when I open Chrome, for HTML elements with the input tag, I've been getting messed up colours. It's not a biggie, but I wanted to check it's not a virus and see if anyone has had the same symptoms before?

I've come across bugs like these that ended up being intended or unintended side effects of Chrome extensions or flags. Try disabling these first to make sure it's not one of these.

To disable extensions:

Go to chrome://extensions/.
Uncheck Enabled for each enabled extension.
Reload the buggy pages.

To disable flags (developer options):

Go to chrome://flags/.
Click Reset all to default on the right.
Click Relaunch now at the bottom of the page.

Disable these one by one until the problem goes away, so that you can not only fix the problem bug but also figure out what caused it in the first place.


IP Masquerading Mac OS X I am trying to figure out how to use this command with mac os x

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth2 -j MASQUERADE

The only thing I have found that seems like it might work is

ipfw add m all from me to 0.0.0.0/0

but I get: ipfw: invalid action m\n'

Does anybody know how I could translate the iptable code to mac compatible code?

If you are just trying to share your internet connection, you can do this from System Preferences > Sharing > Internet Sharing

If that's not why you posted this and you still do it manually(see Eir Nym's post). Don't forget to:

    sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1


Internet Accounts - Login Issue with Google and iCloud Google account issue

I cannot login with my Google account on El Capitan (OS X 10.11.1). It accepts my mail, password and 2FA verification code too (Google Authenticator).

After pressing the last Enter, the login window turns grey and nothing happens (no feedback, no spinning wheel etc.)

I've left it for an hour without doing anything else, but still the same.

iCloud issue

The other account I am having issues with is iCloud. iCloud is signed in (my Clear to-do list which uses iCloud for sync is syncing as usual.

However, when I go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts > iCloud, opens for a few seconds than locks itself.

After entering my password it unlocks for a second, than "locks" again (the checkboxes become gray and unchangeable).

I'm also unable to change AirDrop to Contacts Only from Everybody. Previously AirDrop had the No One status and when I tried to change it asked for my iCloud password, but didn't change after entering.

Facebook and Twitter accounts are both logged in with no problem on my Mac. Furthermore, I can access both my Google and iCloud account through web browser.

I'm certainly no expert on iCloud, but I recently had some luck by using the code (as opposed to the password) from my mobile device. You might try that. While it may not fix it, it may give you a more helpful error. That is what happened for me.


How do I escape the git commit window from OS X terminal? I am just learning git and the terminal and I wanted to make a test commit but I cannot seem to be able to escape the text editor window to save the commit

It looks like you're inside the vi editor. Typing :wq and pressing enter should do it, i.e. save the commit message and exit.

: enters the command mode, w is for "write" (save) and q is for "quit".

You may need to hit escape before :wq to exit the insert mode (vi is a mode based editor).

If you want to exit without saving hit escape, :q! and enter.

git opens your default editor so you can edit the commit message. You can change the default editor, even to graphical text editors (such as Sublime Text). See here for example.


MacBook Pro (5,5) restarts when powering microcontrollers My Macbook Pro (13-inch, mid 2009, Intel Core 2 Duo) has an odd problem with the USB ports. Occasionally, when plugging in, removing or restarting a microcontroller such as the Arudino or Teensy, the computer abruptly turns off and restarts. Afterwards, the computer displays a gray screen that says "Your computer restarted because of a problem... etc."

I'm not quite sure if this is related to a problem with my computer, an issue with the microcontrollers drawing too much current or my battery. I know that microcontrollers are sometimes forced to restart if they are asked to source too much current. eg. powering a servo. However, I would expect that a laptop would be able to source enough current to a bare microcontroller to avoid being shut off.

I also should mention that my battery condition is "replace now". I can still use it for ~30 minutes without the power cord, and as far as my memory goes, my computer was always plugged in when this problem occurs.

I read that one problem might be that my PCU might need to be reset. I believe that I reset it using the "SCOP" keyboard shortcut on start-up but the computer gives no indication of this.

A USB port can only typically source 2.5 watts (5 volts at .5 amps).  If you are only programming the microcontroller, you should be OK, but if there are any other things the port would be powering (MOSFETs, LEDs, Servos, motors, ... ), and it exceeded the 2.5 watts, you would typically get the "USB Low Power" alert, and not a catastrophic shutdown.

My guess as to what is happening is one of a couple things.

1) The USB port on the MBP is damaged, which can be check by seeing if the problem exists on all other USB ports, or just this one.

2) Verify that all your wiring is correct on the Arduino board.  When a microprocessor is reset, it's typical for a pin to be pulled low to initiate the reset.  If the board is improperly wired or setup, when the reset happens, one of the USB data lines could be getting 5v applied to it, or the 5v line could be pulled to ground.

3) Electrostatic Discharge could also be causing these problems.  I've had microprocessors (connected via USB programmer) reset when touching the metal on my MBP after walking around the office.  You may want to consider some ESD mats and bracelets.


Textedit crashed and lost a previously saved file I have a file I created and edited with textedit.  I saved the file many many times.  Textedit crashed and I rebooted and the file it entirely gone.

What happened?
Is there a way to recover it?

A bit more background on the problem and my machine:
I have a macbook air; it's 2.5 years old and has OSX 10.9.5.
It has recently had another issue which I haven't been able to diagnose:
The hard drive is frequently filling up after a few hours or days without a reboot, and no new downloads of more than a few MBs.  After I reboot, some, but not all, of the space is recovered.
Since I began having that issue, I've deleted 10+ GB of data over the course of a few weeks, and yet my hard-drive has less space available than it used to.

The crash happened when I had recently received a warning about my start-up disk being full and had only ~200MB remaining available space, according to Finder.

Have you tried looking at File > Open Recent menu item in TextEdit?

Next you can use spotlight to search for the file name or any word in the document. Lastly, look for time machine either local or  external backups.


MacBook won't boot on Yosemite after force power off Macbook suddenly froze while I was using Google Chrome so I waited for 15 minutes hoping it would un-freeze. After 15 minutes, I decided to force the power off by pressing and holding the Power button. When I tried to turn it on again, I heard the chime, but the screen remained white, and the hard drive started making clicking noises.

Model identifier: MacBook6,1
OS X 10.10 Yosemite

Hard drive clicking/clunking/scraping noises (other than the usual sounds of an HDD in operation) are nearly always a bad thing and it's best to assume it's terminal.

If it is your hard disk (or if you've ever erased/replaced the disk) you won't be able to access the hardware test, in which case you will need to start your MacBook with the Applications Install disc that was supplied with your computer.


Problem with kernel_task It's about 3 days that I can't do anything with my macbook air because the kernel_task is eating up the CPU. So I found this but the command csrutil disable/enable doesn't work on the terminal (El Capitan) and I found out that some models doesn't know this command but I couldn't find how else I can disable SIP (system integrity protection).
So the questions is that how can I solve this problem with kernel task?

So after resetting SMC, rebooting safe mode and every other solutions that is suggested on different forums, changing the battery solved the problem!!! By the way, the battery was changed last year and it didnt need repair!!!


Does the iPad Mini have a connectivity kit? (Need to transfer photos) From what I've read, in order to connect my iPad mini to my iPhone 5, I need (1) a lightning to 30 pin adapter, and (2) an iPad Cammera Connection Kit, which has a 30pin to USB adapter. This is a bit cumbersome, so is there just a connection kit for the iPad Mini?

Note: I know that there are solutions such as iCloud and Dropbox, but those are limited in capacity, so I am looking to transfer photos to my iPad as another form of redundancy

Yes, ipad mini has connectivity kit, since I have mine when I bought it but the truth is, I haven't been able to use it yet since I bought this last year!

And one more thing about transferring photos, I think it's better to use Dropbox, I guess your photos would not be too much to occupy even the 100GB capacity, which I am now using. I have iphone4s and ipad mini and I just sync everything to Dropbox, it's much easier, no hassle and simply a lot of storage capacity than my phone. :-)


Cursorcerer, change delay from terminal I use Cursorcerer to hide my pointer, and find that I cannot turn it off completely unless I set the delay to 0 sec; otherwise it pops up when I change app &c. On the other hand, if I need it, I also need it to change the setting in the præference pane. Can the delay be changed from terminal?

From Terminal, you should be able to do

defaults write com.doomlaser.cursorcerer idleHide -float 0

and then

killall Cursorcerer
~/Library/PreferencePanes/Cursorcerer\ 2.prefpane/Contents/Resources/Cursorcerer.app/Contents/MacOS/Cursorcerer &

to quit and relaunch the Cursorcerer daemon with the updated pref


Mouse cursor skipping when moving My mouse cursor seems to be skipping around. Could this be a virus?

USB Mouse, Macbook Intel Core Duo 2

It is unlikely this is due to a virus, as there are far more obvious explanations.

Whatever type of mouse, you should first attempt to clean it when movements skip. Dirt might be interfering the laser or other sensors. You can use a slightly damp cloth for cleaning it. A mild detergent could help for greasy dirt accumulations.

If you are using a laser mouse, it might have difficulties tracking movement due to the type of surface you are using it on. This is especially common on glass or other homogeneous surfaces with very little texture. Using a mousepad should improve your experience in those cases.

If all else fails, maybe your mouse is up for replacement.


Unhide hidden app purchases on iOS 14.2 I have hidden a number of app purchases, and I would now like to unhide them. If you go to the App Store (iOS 14.2), tap your profile picture and go to account settings, you can click "Hidden Purchases" to see a list. The text below the link even says "Unhide purchases that you have previously hidden."
If you go to this list, however, you can only download those purchase. Searching claims you should be able to swipe to the left to unhide them, but the app does not respond to any form of swiping on those icons (both iPad and iPhone).
Is there any way to unhide certain purchases?

You are correct.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201322

You can't unhide an app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, but you can redownload an app. You don't have to buy the app again.


Can a keyboard shortcut force TextEdit windows to close and discard all changes? Is there any way I could configure TextEdit to close the window (through keyboard shortcut) without asking me if I want to save an unsaved file?

Can be another script/program configure globally when triggered with a certain shortcut or just a script for TextEdit.

The reason for doing it is that I have a lot of temporary notes in TextEdit's window and I want to close them as fast as possible.

tell application "TextEdit" to close (windows where name of its document is "Untitled") saving no would close the "Untitled" document without saving it, tell application "TextEdit" to close every document saving no would do the same for all open documents.
You could close the current window with tell application (path to frontmost application as text) to close window 1 saving no. It would close all tabs in some applications that use tabs though.
It's easier to just press ⌘W⌫ in my opinion. You can disable the animation for showing the sheets with defaults write -g NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.001.


Typing umlauts and accented characters without the one second delay One of the things I dislike most with the iPhone is its sized-down keyboard with only 10 keys in a row.
This may fine for English, but leaves not enough room for umlauts or accented letters.

The official way to input umlauts is to hold down the key and wait
until the umlauts and accented letters pop up, but this is way too slow.
For numbers and symbols there is the tap-slide-release trick,
but for umlauts this doesn't work.

Is there a way to type these letters faster?

I don't know a direct solution to your question: Reduced delay. If your iPhone is jailbroken you might be able to find the preference file that sets the delay and reduce it.

One work around could be to not deal with the accents at all and have the iPhone insert them for you, as autocorrected words. You can now type full speed.

To add custom words to the dictionary:

Add the Japanese Ten Key keyboard: Settings > General > Keyboards > International Keyboards > Add New Keyboard > Japanese Ten Key.
Add words: Settings > General > Keyboards > Edit User Dictionary.
Have the Word be what you want to type w/o accennts, and the Yomi be the accented work.

For example, I added Word=fooxx and Yomi=föoxx, I then went to the Notepad and using the English keyboard I typed "fooxx", and the iPhone suggested föoxx. When I did this example without the "xx" it did not work, perhaps because foo is already in my dictionary.

Alternatively, if you iPhone is jailbroken you could try using Xpandr


How to disable Skype click to call in Safari? When I mouse over a phone number in Safari, it is now a link which tries to call via Skype. I can't see any option within Skype or Safari to disable this. How do I do this?

I'm using latest versions: Safari 8.0.3 and Skype 7.5.

Edit: There is no extension in my Safari for this:

Go to FaceTime -> preferences. There, change "default calling method" to FaceTime. (it might be called a little different, I use a different language)


Automator SCRIPT NEED: Select part of name file, find file with containing name, then copy this in item in another folder I have 3 folder:

JPG folder: contains my modified JPG files, the name of file is (examples): DSC02996 20181027 201438 (LR).jpg

RAW folder: contains my RAW files, the name of file is (examples): DSC02996.RAW

DESTINATION folder: i want to copy here my RAW file.

I need a script that looks for the beginning of the name in the JPG folder, then looks for the file in the RAW folder and copies the result to the DESTINATION folder.

It's possible?

Thanks in advance.
Guido

Open Automator, create a new Service and mount your workflow like this:

Save it and name as CopyRaw or something you like.

Shell Script:

awk '{print $1}' <<< "${1##*/}"

Usage:

Righ click the file you want and click on your service CopyRaw.


migrating local USB to AirportExtreme USB for Time Machine I've got Time Machine backing up to a local USB hard drive (i.e. I plug it directly into my Macbook Pro). I now want to use this hard drive as the Time Machine drive hooked up to my AirportExtreme. Will doing so require reformatting the HD? Or will it be a simple plug-and-play

I have done this before and all I had to do was connect the HDD to the AirportExtreme and point Time Machine to the new location.

I would recommend copying the backups from the drive to another drive if you can before doing so, there are some instances where Time Machine will reject the backups and then you will need to format the drive.


Can I use iTunes Wi-Fi Sync to sync podcast positions? It seems that iTunes Wi-Fi Sync only kicks in automatically (when plugged in) if there is new content, but not modified content. If I listen to a podcast on my Mac, the time remaining in the podcast is not synced with my iPhone. I have to go into Settings and manually perform a sync for this to happen.

Is there any way to have this happen automatically, or should I rely on a third-party tool such as Seamless?

If you plug your device into power, a sync should occur no matter what. Between that and manually triggering a sync (whether from the device or iTunes), I've had no problems with podcast location syncing.


Unknown calendar available only when adding a New Event (Sierra) This has to do with Calendar.app on Sierra (10.12.6).

In the left sidebar, I can see 6 calendars under "On My Mac." I understand why these calendars are here and I need to keep all of them.

However, when I add a new event to the calendar by double clicking on a day's square, I can click on the box that chooses which calendar should receive the new event. In the popup menu, I see another calendar listed under "On My Mac" that is a (seemingly) random 10-digit number.

I would like to know how to delete this mystery calendar.

I can add events to this calendar, but it never shows up in the lefthand sidebar. I've checked the accounts that pipe into my Calendar.app (Exchange, Google) and don't see this mystery calendar anywhere.

Thanks!

This is bit complicated but the only way I know it.

Open ~/Library/Calendars

Leave it open.

Open Calendar > Preferences and set your weird numbers calendar as default.

Now add New event to it.

Go back to the ~/Library/Calendars and look which files (by date/time has changed. That is the one to delete.

Do not forget to change the Default back to your choosing.


Siri Windows API: Make Windows PC print a document via voice command to Siri HomePod I have a Apple ecosystem in my apartment along with a Windows PC.

I am wondering whether Apple offers making a Windows PC on my WiFi network controllable by my Siri enabled HomePod?

If I could make my PC a HomeKit device, for example, I should in theory, be able to teach Siri to carry out predefined Actions on my Windows PC (for example, printing a page to my printer from my Windows pc)

"Hey Siri, print the page I am browsing on my PC".

Has Apple provided an API for this kind of thing? Or not (yet)? Does anyone know of any other non-Apple ways to do this?  (e.g., something similar to this).

Workflow on iOS allows you to perform web service calls and send commands over SSH. The Siri shortcuts functionality coming in iOS 12 appears to be based at least partially on Workflow’s technology (Apple aqui-hired the developers.)

As to whether all of Workflow’s functionality will appear in Siri Shortcuts at some point, I have no information either way.

Even if it does, it would be up to you to provide some sort of endpoint/plumbing on the Windows side to actually pull this off. You’d be fully on your own.


Trim Video and Overwrite Original I often need to trim videos and simply want to overwrite the original file.

Using QuickTime Player I need to

open and trim the video
save the video to a new file (unfortunately it does not show the folder the original video is in)
find the new file and move it back to the original folder

Is there a quicker way to do this? Like on the iPhone where I can just select overwrite original.

You can drag the original into the save dialog to have it put you in the appropriate folder, and with the same file name as the file you dragged. Then you can just save and overwrite.


Delete items on the contextual menu (right click) In this case, I only need help with the contextual menu which appears when you right click on a folder in Finder.

I would like to delete this two items:

Burn "folder" to disc... and
Labels. All the labels box with all the eight colors and the x.

I don't use any of them and they only quit me some space.

Is it possible to achieve that?

It is possible to remove some items from The Finder's context menu in the Keyboard preference pane, it is not however possible to remove the specific ones you have asked about, at least as far as I can tell.  If you would like to try and remove some of the other items, go to System Preferences --> Keyboard and select the keyboard shortcuts tab.  Select "Services" from the list on the left hand side and then scroll down to the "Files & Folders" heading on the left hand side.  From here you can select which items to keep and which to remove.  As  I said, there is no option to remove "Burn" or "Labels" but at this point I don't think that is possible.  I'll certainly keep searching for you though.


Use the column order in Finder List view for all folders In my list view, I keep only four columns: Name, Date Modified, Size, Kind

By default, Kind is the last column. With a mouse/trackpad, I can finely rearrange its position where I like it: in the second column. The final result is: Name, Kind, Date Modified, Size.

When I change folder though, the ‘Kind’ column comes back to the fourth position. Is there a way of keeping a default arrangement for columns in Finder List View?

View → Show View Options (⌘J) and choose Use as Defaults. This uses the settings of your current Finder window as the defaults in the future.

For folders you've opened in the past, they will continue to open with the settings they had last. Each folder's settings are stored in a .DS_Store file in the folder. Remove the file from the folder and Finder will use the defaults next time (and recreate the .DS_Store file with the new settings).