Mac OS Finder - Read File Folder Order/Positions (Arrange By) thru Command Line In the Finder , Arrange -> None provides the ability to specify a custom sort for the files within a folder.

Is there any way to read this info from the command line?  A Mac OS utility equivalent to ls with the ability to get the sort data.

I realize that because of the graphical nature of the Finder folder, this info will be x,y screen coordinates

Ideally I could use this utility to build a shell script or command that returns a sorted list of files (kinda like ls -R and variants)

You can obtain this information using AppleScript, which is, of course, something you can execute from the command line using osascript.

Each Finder item has an AppleScript property called position that stores the {x, y}position of the item within its parent window (there’s another property called bounds that stores the coordinates that define the bounding rectangle of the item).

    tell application "Finder" to get the position of every file in folder "My Folder"
        --> {{40, 199}, {230, 43}, {40, 43}, {40, 121}, {40, 277}, {230, 121}, {267, 184}, {230, 277}, {420, 43}}

(Can you spot the item I moved off its grid-aligned position ?)

From the command line, you might implement it like this:

    osascript -e "tell app \"finder\" to get position of items in folder posix file \"$PWD\""

which, for the same folder as above, returns

    40, 199, 230, 43, 40, 43, 40, 121, 40, 277, 230, 121, 267, 184, 230, 277, 420, 43

For a specific file:

    osascript -e "tell app \"finder\" to get position of file \"Self Portrait I.jpg\" in folder posix file \"$PWD\""
        --> 230, 43


iPhoto treats two identical video cameras in totally different ways I own two Canon Vixia HF G20 video cameras.  The two cameras are, as far as I can tell, configured in completely identical ways.  And yet for some reason when I connect them to my Mac to import video, completely different things happen:

When I connect one of the cameras, iPhoto launches automatically, the camera appears under "Devices" in the iPhoto sidebar, and I have the option to import video directly into my iPhoto library.
When I connect the other camera, iPhoto does not launch automatically. If I launch it manually, the camera does not appear under "Devices", and there does not seem to be any way to get iPhoto to recognize that the camera is connected, or to import video from it.  Instead I have to navigate to the AVCHD file in the Finder, open video clips using Quicktime Player, and then use Quicktime Player to Save the clips to my hard drive.  (This method works on the other camera, too, of course.)

Since I am able to save video from both cameras to my HD, this difference in behavior is not mission-critical, but it is annoying and mysterious.  I am not sure if the difference has to do with a setting in iPhoto, or on the camera itself, or what.  Can anybody explain to me why these two cameras -- same model, same configuration (AFAIK) -- are handled by the OS so differently?

Edited to add:
User tubedogg asked:

  When it's connected, go to Apple menu > About > System Report button. What does the USB bus report for the port where it is plugged in?

So here is what shows up for Camera 1 (the one that is recognized by iPhoto and Image Capture):

    Video Camera:

  Product ID:   0x326e
  Vendor ID:    0x04a9  (Canon Inc.)
  Version:  0.01
  Serial Number:    [redacted]
  Speed:    Up to 480 Mb/sec
  Manufacturer: CANON Inc.
  Location ID:  0x1d110000 / 7
  Current Available (mA):   500
  Current Required (mA):    100
  Capacity: 31.44 GB (31,439,454,208 bytes)
  Removable Media:  Yes
  Detachable Drive: Yes
  BSD Name: disk4
  Partition Map Type:   MBR (Master Boot Record)
  S.M.A.R.T. status:    Not Supported
  Volumes:
CANON:
  Capacity: 31.44 GB (31,435,259,904 bytes)
  Available:    31.42 GB (31,421,562,880 bytes)
  Writable: No
  File System:  MS-DOS FAT32
  BSD Name: disk4s1
  Mount Point:  /Volumes/CANON
  Content:  Windows_FAT_32
  Volume UUID:  31F58768-8479-3FC8-8CA0-405944EBAC64

and here is what shows up for Camera 2 (the one that is not recognized by iPhoto or Image Capture):

Video Camera:

  Product ID:   0x326e
  Vendor ID:    0x04a9  (Canon Inc.)
  Version:  0.01
  Serial Number:    [redacted]
  Speed:    Up to 480 Mb/sec
  Manufacturer: CANON Inc.
  Location ID:  0x1a120000 / 4
  Current Available (mA):   500
  Current Required (mA):    100
  Capacity: 31.44 GB (31,439,454,208 bytes)
  Removable Media:  Yes
  Detachable Drive: Yes
  BSD Name: disk4
  Partition Map Type:   MBR (Master Boot Record)
  S.M.A.R.T. status:    Not Supported
  Volumes:
CANON:
  Capacity: 31.44 GB (31,435,259,904 bytes)
  Available:    31.42 GB (31,423,430,656 bytes)
  Writable: No
  File System:  MS-DOS FAT32
  BSD Name: disk4s1
  Mount Point:  /Volumes/CANON
  Content:  Windows_FAT_32
  Volume UUID:  F1025F17-85DA-3580-845F-054D9A32D2A6

As you can see, the results are pretty much identical.

Edited again: Mystery solved!  I will post it as an answer below, for the benefit of anybody who ever has this (or a similar) problem.

Mystery solved!  Behold the following two screenshots.  The first is from Camera 1:

and the second from Camera 2:

See the difference?  One of the cameras had a DCIM folder as a top-level directory (created, I can only assume, when I used that camera once to take a still photo) and the other did not.  Apparently the presence of that folder is what caused the OS to recognize it as a "device".
I just used Camera 2 to take a single photo, then connected it to my Mac.  It now has a DCIM folder, and iPhoto launched immediately.  That appears to have been it.


Can I configure my Macbook to unmount all external drives when I close the lid? I have a new 13" Macbook Pro running Mavericks. This computer is connected to an external USB drive which I use for my Time Machine backups and for external storage Time Machine backups occur a few times per day and the drive is largely inactive for most of the day.

When I am rushing to a meeting, to the server room or I'm heading home at the end of the day, I would like to do the following:

Close the lid on my Macbook, quickly.
Have the Mac automatically unmount all external drives, as quickly as possible, and forcibly if required. I'm willing to wait a few seconds for the all of lights to turn off.

Is there a way to get the computer to automatically unmount all external drives as soon as I close the lid on my Mac?

Currently if I forget to unmount the external drives, my Mac chastises me later with the error "The disk was not ejected properly. If possible, always eject a disk before unplugging it or turning it off."

I know it is best practice to always unmount a disk cleanly before removing the disk interface, but I'm looking for an automated solution. I am not very concerned if one Time Machine backup image is interrupted or corrupted, as one of the next subsequent backups will work and I very rarely ever need to restore from backup. Since the filesystem is a journaling filesystem, the journal transparently takes care of many other filesystem corruption errors.

There are a number of apps that can run scripts on sleep:

SleepWatcher — simple yet effective.
Scenario — can also run scripts at other times such as after wake.
ControlPlane — more customisable, lets you run scripts after many different events.

A bash script such as the following will unmount all specified disks:

VOLUMES="/Volumes/drive1 /Volumes/drive2 /Volumes/drive3"
for volume in $VOLUMES ; do [ -d $volume ] && umount -f $volume done

To unmount all volumes except /:

umount -A

or more cleanly…

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to eject (every disk whose ejectable is true)'


"Go Home" Siri Similar Shortcuts? Are there similar shorcuts to navigating to locations that you have saved.  I noticed "Go Home" works if you have home programmed into contacts but nothing else.  School used to work not anymore.

Similar android question https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/172333/ok-google-go-to-blank

This article has a nice list showing the voice shortcuts of Apple Maps with Siri: http://www.imore.com/how-use-siri-get-directions-maps-iphone-and-ipad


Printing warning: “hpPostScriptPDE.plugin” will damage your computer Network Printer: HP LaserJet Pro MFP M125ra
After updating to latest Catalina MacOS / MacOS BigSur 11.0.1,
when I try printing i received warning:

“hpPostScriptPDE.plugin” will damage your computer.

I had the same problem after updating to Catalina 10.15.7 on my older Mac Mini. To fix the printing warning (and allow printing) I first deleted the HP drivers and then installed new ones. My HP Color LaserJet 2025 wasn’t one of the options with the new drivers but the OS selected Laserjet CP2020 and it seems to work fine. If nothing comes up that looks close to your printer, you could try “generic laser printer”.
You can download the uninstaller at HPs site:
https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06960563
I found the new drivers on Apple’s site:
https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1888?locale=en_US
My Mac is too old to install Big Sur and My wifes’s doesn’t have enough space so I can’t test it with Big Sur.
I don’t think it is a problem with HPs certificates as Allan said since the same printer works fine on my laptop running 10.6.8.


Will Time Capsule work on a college dorm's WiFi network? My daughter is headed off to college. I'd like to send her off with a Time Capsule so she can wirelessly backup her MacBook automatically.

My concern is that Time Capsule will not work properly on her dorm's WiFi network, which she clearly won't have access to from a management perspective.

I know she can connect her MacBook to Time Capsule via ethernet but that is effectively a manual backup and I know that my kids (and many others) won't do that every night.

Does anyone have any more information on this or know how this could work?

She could probably tie the time capsule into a ethernet line in her dorm (I assume there is a wired option) and then set the time capsule to be on bridge mode (where it doesn't issue a new IP adress but rather passes the one issued by the school's DHCP).

She could then use her Time Capsule (which is also a wifi router) to have her own private wifi locked down for her dorm, this is what I do in my house as Telus doesn't offer DSL modems as a standalone.


How can I tell Mobile Safari to stop remembering to never remember my password? I've changed my mind about having Safari/iCloud Keychain never remember my password for a given website. I'd like to remove that setting and store the password, but I can't find any ability to delete/change it anywhere. I've already gone into Settings->Safari->Passwords & Autofill -> Saved Passwords, and the website in question does not show up in the list with a 'never' entry to delete.

How can I make Safari forget to keep forgetting this login info?

Manually enter your username and password. Tap "Passwords" right above your keyboard. Tap "Save This Password." It still won't autofill when you first load the page, but now you can tap in the username field and hit "Autofill Password." There seems to be no way to actually reset the "Never for this site" setting. Sounds like a job for http://apple.com/feedback.


Solutions for typing backslash on MacOS with Japanese keyboard in specific app This is an obscure issue so I don't expect anyone to know a solution specific to my app. Rather I'm wondering if maybe there is some OS level option I can set.

In any case, a Japanese keyboard does not have a backslash character. Back in the 80s the yen character occupied the same codepoint as the yen ¥ symbol so you'd just type that instead. Now of course with unicode both symbols exist and the yen key inserts ¥ by default.

Apple's Japanese IME  has an option to insert backslash instead of yen

And so does Google's Japanese IME

And this works everywhere except my text editing program. I've reported the issue but of course it could take them a while to fix it. As a short term solution they suggested recording a macro in the app that inserts a backslash and assigning it to the yen key which worked for editing text. Unfortunately it doesn't work for various dialogs in the app like the search and replace form where I type regular expressions and need to enter backslash often.

In the meantime I wondering is there some other creative solution I can do at an OS level?

You could make a custom keyboard that uses another key for backslash, with

http://scripts.sil.org/ukelele


How can I permit SSH connection terminal programs to access Camera? I'm connecting to my macOS 10.15.1 device over SSH via PuTTY on a Windows computer to run a terminal program, imagesnap, that attempts to use the MacBook's camera.

When I ran the program locally on command-line on a Terminal the first time I got a permission pop-up that allowed me to give Terminal access to Camera in the Security & Privacy settings.

When I run the same program on command-line via an SSH connection the program aborts without successfully taking a photo, and I receive no permission request for Camera access.

When I look at the section Camera in the Security & Privacy settings after trying to run the program using SSH there are no entries besides Terminal, which was already given access. Terminal is shown marked as having Camera access, so it and SSH programs are separate considerations for Security & Privacy.

How do I give my SSH connection programs Camera access?

You can access the list of permissions in System Preferences => Security & Privacy. Select the Privacy tab and then choose Camera in the list on the left. You can then checkmark the apps on the right that you want to have access to the camera.

If you have previously denied access to a program, it should appear here where you can checkmark it to allow access again.

As you're running a command line program from within the Terminal, it is Terminal.app that appears in the list on the right - and this is the program that needs to be checkmarked.

UPDATE: After your edit I realize that your problem is specifically when run via SSH, and not in general via the command line. In that case try prefixing your command with the "open" command.

For example like this:

open -a /Path/To/imagesnap /Path/To/imagesnap


Is there a keyboard shortcut to close the edit window in Calendar (and retain changes)? In Calendar 6 (mountain lion) when I use command E to bring up an edit window after I make changes I haven't been able to find a keyboard short cut to close that window and keep whatever info I've entered or changed.

I've searched quite a bit on this question. I've seen using Esc suggested, but that cancels the info/changes. I think that may have worked for older versions of (iCal).

As far as I'm aware, there is no single keyboard shortcut to do this.  What you can do is this; after completing your edit, hit "Command E" followed by the space bar.  Command E will collapse the edit window and the space bar will dismiss the info box while preserving your edits.


Why does me.com always redirect to Find My iPhone? I changed my Apple ID, and I have to confirm my old mail @me.com to my new id. But the https://www.me.com/mail/ will always redirect to "find my phone" (maybe some issue with my last iPod touch that was stolen).

Now, how can I access my mail in me.com to confirm for my new ID? Or, why it's redirecting?

It's likely that you migrated your MobileMe email to iCloud and you can only log into http://me.com to access the few things that remain. So, try getting your mail at https://www.icloud.com/

If you didn't migrate things, you may have to open a support ticket with Apple to have them look at your account. You can always try logging into the same URL from a new computer or clear cookies, caches in the browser in case it's something that isn't clean on the client side, but in all likelihood, the problem is on the server end and the application on the web server believes you don't have mail any more for your logged in account.


How can I use Jabber with OTR on IOS? I would like to use Jabber with OTR Encoding on my iPad. Which clients are supporting this?

Apps already tried:

ChatSecure doesn't seem to work with XMPP.
IM+ Pro is not recommended.
Trillian has no OTR support.

ChatSecure works now:

Just enter Username and password and leave the other settings default:

In chat you can activate OTR at the top right corner


Can I have Screen Sharing use something like ssh-keygen, so I don't have to type my password every time? I can use ssh-keygen to set up accounts on my two Macs so when I type "ssh me@my-other-mac" from here, it doesn't need me to type my password again every time I connect.

Is there a way to set up Screen Sharing similarly?

No, I don't think so. Screen sharing uses VNC which is a different protocol than SSH. SSH allows you to use keys which is the mechanism where you can not use typed passwords.


Two Photo Streams, one iPhoto library My wife and I share the same iPhoto library, which exists on a mounted disk image with each of our user accounts pointing to this same shared library.

We each have iPhones and I wondered whether our respective photo-streams that seemed to work reasonably well on our individual logins could be 'automated' to copy from these streams into the main, shared library?

Essentially, is there any way for two photo-streams from two users to end up in this shared iPhoto library?

To solve the problem you state, Dropbox would allow you to upload all the photos from two devices to one account (or two accounts) and then set up folder actions on a Mac to combine, import and delete the photos from the dropbox storage.

There isn't any "mix these two" photostreams function in iPhoto or Aperture and the web interface doesn't have any functionality to match that as well.

There is a way to push photos (manually) to a shared photo stream, and then both of you would see the same content in that stream, but it's designed for one person to push - not for several to collaborate and publish together.

The pragmatic solution is to set a calendar reminder once a month for both of you to export the pictures. I let iPhoto automatically import all pictures from my Photo Stream and it conveniently makes a November 2012 Photo Stream event and I export those original photos to my archive drive that sits on a shelf other than when it's time to archive. Rather than archiving (or perhaps in addition to), you would then do the steps needed to export and import the batch of photos into the library you chose to contain both pictures.

This both isn't automatic and also means that photos will be potentially duplicated if the library holding the merged content is different than the library that received the stream from iCloud.


Can I re-download the Songs of Innocence download I once had without an Apple Music subscription? I used to have the U2, Songs of Innocence album on my phone, that was a free download from Apple in 2014. (This was slightly controversial at the time.)

I can't see it on my iPhone X, running 13.3 in Apple Music App under music or purchases. Nor can I see it in the iTunes app under downloads or purchases on my phone.

The instructions on Apple's website, from the linked help page, indicate that having Apple Music enabled is a pre-requisite for downloading it. I don't have Apple Music enabled.

This came out prior to Apple Music. I don't understand why it would be associated with it.

In addition, I can see the Songs of Innocence Album on my phone using iMazing under Music, looking as if it needs to be downloaded from the Cloud.

My question is: Can I re-download the Songs of Innocence download I once had without an Apple Music subscription?

You can download it without an Apple Music subscription, provided you had an iPhone at the release time in 2014 and still have the same Apple account.

For this this was:

Music App -> Library -> Artists -> U2 -> Songs of Innocence -> Download.


Windows VM does not start in VMware Fusion after cloning old Mac to new hardware I had an old Mac with Sierra installed. Its screen got bad and I bought a new one with Sierra.

After cloning my old device into new hardware, my Windows VM in VMware Fusion is not working. It mentions " <user folder>/<directory for Windows VM files>/.Windows 7 x64-disk1.vmdk cannot be opened or some dependent files can not be opened". It also says something like disk power on failed.

After deleting "<user folder>/<directory for Windows VM files>/Windows 7 x64-disk1.vmdk.lck" the VM started working.


Different lock passwords Is there an anyway I can have two different passwords for when the computer is locked (after being in standby) and for the main User password?

I prefer to have a more complicated password for my user and settings but when I for example close my computer for a short while I would like to have to enter a more simple password. Is this possible in some way?

You can create two accounts. One with administrator rights, and the other one without.

There's no other way around as an User can only have one password (like... everywhere).

You just have to be aware that the standard-user cannot access the administrator files. But you can set it up so you can read the standard folders as administrator. So you don't have to switch between users if you like a file which has been placed on the other account.


OS X 10.9: Deleting Keyboard Input Sources This is really similar to:
How to remove or disable a default keyboard layout?
However, I am new here and have no ability to comment or make remarks towards this to voice further problems.

In OS X 10.9, I need to remove input sources in System Preferences > Language and Region > Keyboard Preferences > Input Source.

To be clear, I want these gone completely; if I were to click the add button then I want there to be nothing but the basic English layout available.

**Edit:
The solution can be as dangerous as editing near-/root-level files in the OS as long as there's a possible solutions

If no possible solution can be found can anyone recommend third-party software or a way to lock system preferences?**

If others got here searching for how to disable all input sources except a custom keyboard layout, you can edit the com.apple.HIToolbox plist:

Change the current input source to your custom keyboard layout.
Open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist (in 10.9) or ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox.*.plist (in 10.8 and earlier). You can convert the plist to XML with plutil -convert xml1.
Remove the input source or input sources you want to disable from the AppleEnabledInputSources dictionary. If there is an AppleDefaultAsciiInputSource key, remove it.
Restart.


Is there a way to disable the auto-recognition of addresses in Safari? Whenever I click on a full address in a text box in Safari, it is auto-recognized and pops up a map, like in the following screenshot:

Is there any way to disable this?  This does not happen in Chrome.

It seems like it's most text fields: google.be, yahoo.com, apple.com, even the text field in the w3schools example.

My system info is as follows:

OS X El Capitan 10.11.1 (The laptop originally shipped with Yosemite)
Safari 9.0.1
The only extension in Safari is Lastpass (password manager).  I've tried disabling Lastpass and the popup still comes up.

This is almost definitely caused by a setting in your system preferences:

Maybe you have the new trackpad (or a macbook) in which case this part of the system preferences might look a little different, i know trackpads/laptops with 3d touch probably have some variation in regards to the appearance of the trackpad preferences, but it must be a setting thats analogous to the setting near the top left in the above picture, 'look up & data detectors'.

To me this would suggest one of 3 things:

You're accidentally clicking the "shortcut" you assigned to 'look up' when you're intending to hit the shortcut assigned to 'click'
Your trackpad is defective/worn-out and thats why its doing this.
You have 'look up' and 'click' assigned to the same shortcut. (which doesn't seem to be possible on my computer)
You've been 'clicking' everything using 'look up' (not sure thats possible either).

An easy solution to this is to simply disable any "mouse shortcut" for 'look up'. You can still access look up by right clicking.

For anyone who just wants to see whats happening with their own eyes (I know I was pretty curious):

if anyone on a mac highlights all of

  30 rockefeller plaza new york ny

(or any address) and right clicks it, then selects

  Look Up "30 rockefeller plaza new..."

then they'll see the same pop up.


Safari will spontaneously visit URL while I type On my old MacBook Air and even on my brand new Retina MacBook Pro (which was set up as a new computer), if I open a new tab and quickly start typing a URL or search in the bar, Safari will sometimes truncate whatever it is I was typing and act as if I had pressed Return.

I believe this has something to do with the search suggestions/seek time for bookmarks but it happens stochastically so I can't determine the root cause.

This happens if you:

have enabled Google as your default search engine
have enabled Google Instant within your Google search settings

I have this same situation occur on my Chrome.


Finder search does not find all relevant documents MacOS 10.6.8 I'm having problems with the search in Finder windows in MacOS X 10.6.8.

If I'm typing a search keyword in the textbox in a finder window and search for "file name" or "content", I get no or only a few results, although there should be much more results.

Is this a bug in OS X?

e.g. if I activate the search for "file name" and type "a" in the text box, I get 8 results.
When I search for "b" instead, I get 61 results, and 60 of them have an "a" in the file name!

Is this a known bug?
Is there a solution?

Edit: I've tried to

rebuild the spotlight index with sudo mdutil -E _PathOfPartition_
repaired permissions on the startup drive

... but no change - Finder/Spotlight does not list files as results, although they exist and match the search criteria.

On my system, typing successive letters always shrinks the results menu.  Have you tried rebuilding your Spotlight index?  Open terminal in an admin account and type:

sudo mdutil -i on "/Volumes/YourHardDiskNameHere"

, authenticate with your password, and go get a coffee.

Edit:
Another way to accomplish this is to open Spotlight preferences to the privacy tab and drag your HDD icon from finder onto the "Prevent spotlight..." list.  Close preferences (may not be necessary - ?). Open it again to the same tab and use the +/- buttons to delete the disk.  Re-indexing should start.


How does Eclipse work on new Retina MacBook Pros? I'm thinking about buying the new MacBook Pro. I will use it mostly to write code when I'm not at home and I've read that non-native apps look horrible due to the resolution. I was wondering if someone has tried using Eclipse or Zend Studio and if they work well.

To enable a retina rendered Eclipse

From: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=382972

Here's the workaround:

Do "Show package contents" on the Eclipse.app.  Edit Contents/Info.plist using your favorite text editor.  Just
above

</dict>
</plist>

Place this:

<key>NSHighResolutionCapable</key>
<true/>

Then, make a copy of the app so that OSX will notice the change.
Now, the info window will not show "Open in Low Resolution" as checked.  Launch
Eclipse and enjoy your new retina awesomeness.


How to mark an item as Unread in Safari Reading List? Sometimes I want to keep an item in the Unread section of the Safari 5.1.3 Reading List after I have read the item. The All section is too cluttered to use as a place to quickly find items. I realize I am trying to use the RL beyond what it was intended to be used for. Nonetheless, is there a way to mark an item in the Safari RL?

As you've suggested, the Reading List has fairly limited functionality. While you can't mark a page unread directly from the All list, a simple solution is to open the page and add it to the Reading List again.


Sharing folders on iCloud with non-iCloud users Catalina I have a folder on my iCloud and in the beginning I shared it with edit rights to anyone who has the link, then it asked them to have an iCloud account, so then I thought may be because I set it as editable. So then I set it as view only and shared the link but still they needed an account which to me it feels inconvenient or I thought may be I did something wrong.

Is there a way which I don't know how to do it?

Like for example on DropBox or Google Drive it will ask them to have an account if they want to edit but to view or download they can do this without the need of signing up and creating an account on DropBox or Google Drive.

Sharing participants must have an iCloud account.

  Participants need an Apple ID to view or edit files in a shared folder. If you invite someone without an Apple ID, they'll be prompted to create an Apple ID.

Source:  Apple Support Document Share folders with iCloud Drive under the heading, Learn more about folder sharing


Use BibTeX with Apple Pages to generate references and a bibliography I want to use BibTeX with Apple Pages for creating references to my .bib bibliography and also insert the bibliography into a Pages document. I would like to use .bst style sheets to format the bibliography.

I'm currently working with BibDesk but could change to JabRef.

Depending on your current Pages version, download CiteInPages from here...

http://jhh.med.virginia.edu/main/CiteInPages

I was able to get this to work in Pages 5.5 using CiteInPages5. It works with BibDesk. It takes a bit to install and configure it, but its a great little package. Apple really should change the name of the Pages app though. Its way too difficult to google any support for it.

EDIT: Hopefully you see this because I don't have the reputation to comment. But I guess I misunderstood your question. Its been a while since I've used CiteInPages, but I was able to get the formatting I wanted by creating a custom template. I was able to do this with some guidance from the BibDesk community mailing list. Here's a rudimentary template for the CSE style that I created.

<$publications>
<$pubType=article?>
<$authors><$lastName/> <$firstNames><$firstLetter/></$firstNames><?$authors>, </$authors>. <$fields.Year/>. <$fields.Title.stringByRemovingCurlyBraces.stringByAppendingFullStopAndSpaceIfNotEmpty/><$fields.Journal.stringByRemovingTeX/>. <$fields.Volume?><$fields.Volume/><$fields.Number.parenthesizedStringIfNotEmpty/>:</$fields.Volume?><$fields.Pages.stringByConvertingDoubleHyphenToEndash/>. http://dx.doi.org/<$fields.Doi/>
</$pubType?>
<$pubType=book?>
<$authors><$lastName/> <$firstNames><$firstLetter/></$firstNames><?$authors>, </$authors>. <$fields.Year/>. <$fields.Title.stringByRemovingCurlyBraces.stringByAppendingFullStopAndSpaceIfNotEmpty/><$fields.Edition.stringByRemovingTeX/> Edition. <$fields.Address.stringByRemovingTeX/>: <$fields.Publisher.stringByRemovingTeX/>. http://dx.doi.org/<$fields.Doi/>
</$pubType?>
<$pubType=incollection?>
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simple timestamp for SMS on iPhone I am thinking this is an easy question, because I know how to do it in iChat for the computer.

But for an iPhone, SMS messages are shown as a speech bubble in a conversation with someone. Aside from the timestamp banner that appears before a message that is a long time after previous messages in an SMS conversation, how can I get a timestamp (or the time sent) of an SMS message?

if your iPhone is jailbroken you can download this tweak (xMessages
) for free from the cydia store


Restore closed tabs with no back up (iOS) I accidentally closed all my windows in safari and wondering if there is any way to reopen them? Some of them had been open for days so I don't know if I can find correct ones from History. No back up.

If your device is running iOS 8, you can access a list of the last 5 tabs you closed. This can be accomplished by:

Open Safari
Press the Tabs button in the lower-right corner of Safari
Press and hold the + symbol for a new tab
Wait for "Recently Closed Tabs" window to pop up. Access from there.

If the tabs do not appear in that list, you will have to navigate through the history to retrieve them. Note that if you use private browsing, no recently closed tabs (nor history, for that matter) will appear.


Skype stuck on "Signing in" window After upgrading OSX to Yosemite and Skype to 7.7 (335), Skype gets stuck on "Signing in..." when starting.

It does sign in, as Contacts > Add Contact forces the main window to open, but "Signing in..." never goes away.

Already tried, but didn't work:

Signing out, quitting ("Signing in..." stays even when signed out), then signing back in.
Everything on the Skype support page for Why can't I sign in to Skype for Mac OS X?.
Removing ~/Library/Application Support/Skype.
Reinstalling Skype

I'm using my Microsoft ID to sign in.

Any clues?

Following the @Buscar advice I used nettop in terminal to monitor Skype connections.

After quitting Skype, I see 3 connections still there about 20 seconds after quitting. Two of them use port 443 (status LastAck and FinWait1), the other is on a high port (12k+), status FinWait1. Last one to go away is to blu403-m.hotmail.com:443 with status FinWait1.

The following procedure seems to have solved the problem:

Sign out from Skype
Quit Skype and wait until all connections listed in nettop are cleared
Open Skype
Choose "Sign in with a different account" from the Microsoft ID login screen.
Try to sign in with Skype Name (but fail, since I can't do that anymore after I linked my Skype account to my MS account).
Go back and sign in with my Microsoft ID.

The "Signing in..." window was displayed for a few seconds, then the home window opened normally. Problem solved. I'm guessing steps 4-6 solved the issue, but I have no idea why.


Can I show a 24-Hour clock on my Mac's Lock Screen? I just got a MacBook Pro, and different from my iMac is that I'll be using the lock-screen much more on this one.

I noticed that in the upper right corner of the lock screen, the time is shown, but it is in 12-hour mode with AM/PM indicators.

I guess this is some remnant of the machine having been configured to use english language as the main language (I'm a developer, I don't want to have to fight with badly worded Norwegian translations of error messages on google).

I have configured my main user to have normal Norwegian formats for everything, but I guess that on the lock (and possibly on the logon screen as well?) screen, there is some kind of global system-wide configuration in use.

So, can I:

Configure the lock screen (or the system wide configuration) to use 24-hour clock?
Remove the clock altogether?

Since at the login window (and the lock screen) your user is not logged in, you´ll have to edit the global preferences:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences AppleLocale en_GB

and:

sudo defaults write /var/root/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences AppleLocale en_GB

and then do a reboot. This fixed it for me (and I hope, Apple fixes that sooner or later). :-)


Change terminal color for each tab I work on a lot of tabs in terminal at a given time. Sometimes, I get tabs mixed up and accidently run commands on tabs I am not supposed to.

To simplify this, I wish to write some script, that on each new tab creation, comes with a random background color (not the text background, the window background), so that I can easily identify the tabs I was working with.

Any suggestions ?

The built-in default "Solid Colors" profile randomly selects a background color for each new terminal.

It works by setting the background image to a folder of images, each of which is a solid color. To choose different colors (or patterns, etc.) you can place a collection of images in a folder and set a profile to use the folder in

  Preferences > Profiles > [profile] > Text > Background > Image:

Another feature of profiles is that if you create a new terminal with Shell > New Command or New Remote Connection it will look for a profile with a matching name and select that profile. It will look for a match of the entire command string, a partial match of the command name and arguments starting from the left, and it will also try to interpret the profile name as a regular expression.

This means you can name a profile “ssh” to have it selected for any ssh command, or “ssh hostname” for ssh commands whose first argument matches hostname, for example.


How to edit many lines at once in TextMate? I am testing my first Chromebook and its Caret editor.
I would like to have the feature called "editing many lines at once" by holding CMD and clicking appropriate lines, like in sublime but much faster, here thread about it.

How can you have Sublime-like editing of many lines at once in TextMate?

You've answered your own question; to edit multiple lines at once in TextMate, you Command-click the places you want to edit. Is that not working for you for some reason?


CPU Intensive task on Big Sur is really fast for 5 minutes, then really slow I'm running the compilation of a large program on Mac Os Big Sur on an M1 Mac Mini. I'm using cmake, ninja, with parallelism of 7 (there is 8 cores). It goes really really fast for the first five minutes, then really really slow. What is happening ? I don't hear any fan, and the small flow of air out of the computer does not seem warm at all. Any thing I can do ?

We can dig deeper to understand what’s consuming the time, but let me preface this by saying that this may be normal behavior. I’ve seen plenty of cases where a compilation or linking phase takes a long time with large or complex projects.
Given that you’re not seeing thermal pressure and CPU utilization goes down to 10% during the slow phase, however, I’m inclined to suspect that your build is getting serialized behind a blocked process.
We can start to understand what process(es) is/are blocked by taking a stackshot during build:

Run the following Terminal command to enable kernel symbolication: $ sudo nvram boot-args="keepsyms=1"
Reboot your machine and don’t open any apps except for Terminal.
Start your build and wait until you’ve entered the slow phase.
Run the following command, making sure you’re only running it during the window of time that the build is slow: $ sudo spindump -reveal -noProcessingWhileSampling
After waiting for 10 seconds to collect a sample and another minute or two to symbolicate and format, you’ll get a file in /tmp/spindump.txt that contains a stackshot of every process.
Upload the file to PasteBin or some equivalent place.

That will be the most direct way to begin root-causing. Also, just to rule out memory pressure, does your system “feel” sluggish to you during the build? (I suspect not, but you should run top in another Terminal window while you’re building anyway and monitor your swapouts to see if they’re growing.)
Without knowing any of the details of the code or its build process, a crude guess would be that it’s waiting on a resource (e.g. a network server that’s slow to resolve, or an indirect filesystem lookup on a slow partition/disk). If you feel like experimenting, try disabling all of your network interfaces, unmounting every partition, and disconnecting every device.


Connecting Macbook Air to HPw1907 external screen I have recently brought a HPw1907 external screen for my mac but having trouble connecting it. I have connected a VGA cable but as soon as I turn it on, the monitor goes straight to sleep. When I open the display setting, I don't have the 'gather windows' or 'arrangement' setting unless I choose 'apple tv' in the drop down menu but that detects our Apple TV rather than the screen.

Any tips?

Since the the MacBook Air does not have VGA plug I would say

... your Thunderbolt to VGA converter is not the proper one.

That would be also the reason why it does not correctly detect the HP monitor.

Try the Thunderbolt to DVI adapter instead.


Time Machine: What files and folders are affected when excluding System Files and Applications? When you put System Files and Applications in the exclusion list, it is not clear what specific files and folders are being concerned.

Is it just the /Applications and /System folders?

Are /private or /opt also excluded? How about /Library?

According to Apple

  OS X system files include the System folder and the apps that come with your Mac, such as Safari, Mail, Messages, iTunes, Dashboard, and others.

I'd also like to see a complete list. Based on my own testing (on 10.11.1) I can confirm that /opt is not included and that not everything in /Applications is excluded.


What apps can view crash reports on iOS? It's cumbersome to sync with iTunes to get a crash report. I'm looking for an app that can view and copy/paste or email crash reports from any other app on my iPhone. I want to see the full stack trace from the crash.

Is there an app for that?

Since iOS 5, you can do this straight from the Settings App. It's located at Settings > General > About > Diagnostics & Usage > Diagnostics & Usage Data.


Why does Powerpoint for Mac not preserve filenames with a slash (/)? I am designing lectures in Powerpoint (the latest released version this year) for a class I'm teaching soon, and created filenames based on the date that I will give them:

But if I open 9/22.pptx (or any one of the other files) in Powerpoint, it does not preserve the filename:

(See that the 9/ part was removed.)

Is there a reason for this? If I open the presentation in Keynote (the latest version), the name is preserved:

From Microsoft's Known Issues with PowerPoint 2011:

  Some characters cannot be used in file and folder names in PowerPoint
  for Mac 2011

  IMPORTANT   This issue is fixed in Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 1.
  Click Downloads to download Service Pack 1 or the latest update.

  Characters, including <"> and |, are allowed in file names in
  PowerPoint 2008 and earlier versions, but they must be removed from a
  file name before it can be opened in PowerPoint 2011.

Check your version of PowerPoint for updates to see if this addresses or fixes the issue.

Otherwise, change the filename to include a character that is allowed such as "-". (e.g.: 9-22)


How to customize Touch Bar on the Macbook Pro 13" when Mathematica is on Whenever I use Wolfram Mathematica, the Touch Bar on my Macbook Pro has a "New Document" button. My question is, how do I make sure I don't have that button when I open Mathematica?
It is annoying, as every time I reach to hit the esc key, sometimes the "New Document" button gets tapped, resulting in a new document popping up.
Thanks for any advice you have!

You have two options:

If the app supports it, you can go in View > Customise Touch Bar (more info here provided by Apple)
You can install BetterTouchTool, which is very powerful, and has (among other things) the ability to fully customise the TouchBar per app, globally, add scripts or anything really (other alternatives here)


mds error "No store registered for scope" for nonexistent volume My system log is flooded with error messages like the following:

mds: (Error) Server: No store registered for scope "/Volumes/Storage"

The volume in the error was in use on a previous machine before I migrated to my current machine. Several have suggested adding and removing that volume in the Spotlight Privacy settings, but that volume no longer exists. Is there an mds configuration file somewhere that I can edit so that mds no longer looks for that volume?

I use Alfred, a utility similar to Quicksilver. I had previously configured it to search /Volumes/Storage for apps, but never told it to stop trying to index that volume once I migrated to the new machine.

I removed the /Volumes/Storage entry from Alfred's list of directories to index, and now the console messages have stopped.


Deleted apps on my iPhone stays in iTunes When I delete an app inside iTunes from the iTunes Library, it will also get deleted from my iPhone, the next time I sync. The same with if I download a new app, it will be transfered to the iPhone.

When I install an app on my iPhone it will also be imported to the iTune library, however when I delete an app on my iPhone, it doesn't get deleted from iTunes automatically?

Why? And how can I change this?

Allow me to answer this by providing a counter-example.

I own two iOS devices; An iPhone 4 and an iPad (original). I use slightly different application sets on them. For example I don't have a notification app called Prowl on my iPad because it's intended use is to get my attention anywhere I am. And the iPhone is always by my side or at least in very close proximity.

And of course, there are iPad only apps such as the iWork series until recently. Even then, I only have the iWork apps on my iPad because working on something like that on an iPhone is admittedly kind of terrible.

So, when managing my apps, if deleting an app on device deleted it in iTunes, the other device would lose the app on next sync. This is not a good thing for me.

When you delete an app in iTunes, it unchecks it from the sync list. This way you continue to receive updates for it via iTunes, and if you ever want the app back, it's a simple operation to check the box.

I do believe @Hand-E-Food's example of a paid app is a good example. While we know that you can re-download any app not in your library you already paid for, not having to jump through the "Yes I do want to re-download this app I purchased" hoops is handy.

If you deleted an app because of crashes or general instability, than you can watch iTunes and wait for it to update, and then update it and see if it's better.

Why is best answered by Apple themselves, as it was obviously a design consideration that I'm not sure anyone else here will have the answer too.

But unfortunately I don't believe you can change it. The easiest way to change it would be to delete apps only via iTunes, and not on your iPhone directly.


MacBookPro 2015 not booting from a copy of the disk of my old MacBookPro mid 2012 I have a MacBookPro 13'' mid 2012, 2.9 GHz, which I have given to my partner, as I bought a second-hand MacBook Pro 2015 (beginning of 2015, 3.1 Ghz Intel core i7)

Before giving the MBP mid 2012 to my partner, I have made a copy of its  hard disk (with OS Sierra), to an external SSD. Then I formatted the MBP mid 2012, made a fresh install and then upgraded it to Mojave. I have booted the MBP mid 2012 from the external SSD (restarting and pressing alt/option) and worked with it without problems. I have booted again the MBP Mid 2012 fro the external SSD (the external SSD has OS Sierra) even after having formatted the laptop and having installed Mojave in it.

Few days later I have finally received my "new" MBP 13'' Retina (beginning of 2015, 3.1 Ghz Intel core i7). It comes with OS 10.11.6 EL Capitán.
I tried to boot from the external SSD (which has Sierra) in which I have copied the HD of my old MBP mid 2012 and... I does not boot. I just get the Mac sound at the beginning, but then the screen stays black. No symbol of "prohibited", nothing. Just black screen.

I presume that the system which is installed in the SSD does not recognize the hardware and wants to boot with the hardware it was installed previously (the hardware of the MBP Mid 2012...)

Any idea about how I can solve this? I have an entire series of applications in the SSD that I need to use.

Something: I am not a Mac expert, therefore I am possibly not able to understand too technical explanations.

Thank you very much in advance.

Emiliano

First perhaps boot in verbose mode to see what is causing it not to boot. If it is hardware incompatibility like missing driver (which can happen if the install has continuously been upgraded and so not managed to get the drivers for other Macs) then the following non-destructive steps (assuming you don't care about what is currently on the 2015's internal SSD) should fix it:

On the 2012 Mac download Sierra and make a bootable installer
on at least an 8GB USB drive.
Boot the 2015 using the installer USB
and use Disk Utility (from the menu bar) to clone the external SSD on to the internal
SSD (be very careful to get this direction correct).
Disconnect the external SSD to keep it safe.
Quit Disk Utility and run the Sierra installer over the top of the current un-bootable installation.

That should add in all the necessary drivers for the new Macs and it should work again. It's perfectly fine to reinstall macOS it won't delete any applications or data. Good luck!


Transfering iPhone4 pics to iPad2? there
I know there's many ways to transfer multiple pictures from an iPhone to an iPad,but i want to transfer them using only the iPhone and iPad, without a PC or Mac. I was wondering if there was an app that would allow me to do this on the go.
Hope you nice guys can help me,ths!

It is called iCloud and is released next Month.


How To Make files in `/usr/local` Writable For Homebrew? I've been trying to get homebrew working nicely, but it appears everything inside /usr/local isn't writable, and everything falls over.

It keeps telling me to recursively chown /usr/local, and I tried that. Operation denied, so I sudo'd it. It seemed to work, but with an eerie silence that I hear is considered polite in Unix. Unfortunately, any succeeding attempts at brew update meet with the same cacophony of errors.

I reran the command with -v and it looks the operation is not permitted for anything inside.

As much as the answer is probably "learn UNIX" I'm just trying to comply with some job requirements here for a tutorial on Ruby, so that's a few steps above where I'm currently at.

brew doctor:

Warning: /usr/local/Frameworks isn't writable.

This can happen if you "sudo make install" software that isn't managed by
by Homebrew. If a formula tries to write a file to this directory, the
install will fail during the link step.

You should probably `chown` /usr/local/Frameworks
Warning: /usr/local/Cellar isn't writable.
You should `chown` /usr/local/Cellar
Warning: /usr/local/etc isn't writable.

This can happen if you "sudo make install" software that isn't managed by
by Homebrew. If a formula tries to write a file to this directory, the
install will fail during the link step.

You should probably `chown` /usr/local/etc
Warning: /usr/local/include isn't writable.

This can happen if you "sudo make install" software that isn't managed by
by Homebrew. If a formula tries to write a file to this directory, the
install will fail during the link step.

You should probably `chown` /usr/local/include
Warning: /usr/local/lib isn't writable.

This can happen if you "sudo make install" software that isn't managed by
by Homebrew. If a formula tries to write a file to this directory, the
install will fail during the link step.

You should probably `chown` /usr/local/lib
Warning: /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig isn't writable.

This can happen if you "sudo make install" software that isn't managed by
by Homebrew. If a formula tries to write a file to this directory, the
install will fail during the link step.

You should probably `chown` /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
Warning: /usr/local/opt isn't writable.
You should `chown` /usr/local/opt
Warning: /usr/local/share isn't writable.

This can happen if you "sudo make install" software that isn't managed by
by Homebrew. If a formula tries to write a file to this directory, the
install will fail during the link step.

You should probably `chown` /usr/local/share
Warning: Some directories in /usr/local/share/man aren't writable.
This can happen if you "sudo make install" software that isn't managed
by Homebrew. If a brew tries to add locale information to one of these
directories, then the install will fail during the link step.
You should probably `chown` them:

    /usr/local/share/man
    /usr/local/share/man/man1
    /usr/local/share/man/man3
    /usr/local/share/man/man5
    /usr/local/share/man/man7
    /usr/local/share/man/man8
Warning: /usr/local/var isn't writable.

This can happen if you "sudo make install" software that isn't managed by
by Homebrew. If a formula tries to write a file to this directory, the
install will fail during the link step.

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

This should be solved changing the perms on that directory in the following way:

$ cd /usr/local
$ sudo chown -R <your-username>:<your-group-name> *

If you don't know your group, just type id -g.


Straight double quotes on Bluetooth keyboard I purchased a Bluetooth keyboard yesterday for my MacBook Pro Late 2013 (macOS Mojave 10.14.6) and I am having problems with this (") character. I cannot find it on the keyboard.

Is there a chance to remap another key to type that? Or maybe add some combinations like fn + <?

Which key does what depends on the Input Source you are using (not your hardware). These are activated  in System Preferences/Keyboard/Input Sources.  To see the current mappıng, use Keyboard Viewer.

Your keyboard is Turkish Qwerty PC.  If you make that your Input Source in System Preferences, then double quote ıs on Control i as you mentıoned.  (Using Control for special characters is very unusual on a Mac, normally it would only be Option and Option plus Shift).

If you want to change that, it is quite easy to make a custom layout using Ukelele.  I can help if you are having problems with it.


Restore a single Mt Lion app Somehow, I don't know how or when, I deleted preview.app. Everything else is fine. What's the easiest way to get it back?

Copy it from a backup or another Mac.
Download an OS X installer from App Store, and use Pacifist to copy the application bundle.

Wait until 10.9 is released.
Download an OS X installer from App Store and install it on a virtual machine with VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop, or VirtualBox.
Do an upgrade install of OS X from the recovery partition.


Logical HDMI display reconnection I have a Mac mini server with Yosemite, and I plugged a VGA Display using a VGA/HDMI adapter.

The issue is, when I shut down or restart the server, the display is not recognized, then I need to go to unplug and plug again, and server now recognizes the display.

I need to know how to make a logical "reconnection" for the adapter.

For example on Windows I use a devcom application to enable or disable the devices.

I was reading that the possible solution is using a kextunload command on terminal.

I don't know which kextfile I need to "unload" for the HDMI adapter.

On terminal:

/System/Library/Extensions/

kextunload exampleflile.kext

kextload examplefile.kext

Anybody have an idea about my issue? Another way to solve it?

Thanks in advance

Greetings from Mexico.

You most likely need an active HDMI to VGA adapter.  There is a bunch of signaling conversion that goes on with an adapter, especially when it goes from digital (HDMI) to analog (VGA).  An active adapter will reformat the signals so it's a true VGA signal rather than just supply the correct pin outs.

Take a look at this answer, Passive vs. Active adapters - I talk about the difference and why it's important.


Will it damage my iPad if I use an iPhone charger to charge it? I have the opposite issue of this question: Is it OK to charge my iPhone with my iPad charger?

I want to use my iPhone charger (plugged directly into main electricity) to charge my iPad. I've noticed that the charger gets quite warm when charging the iPad (not iPhone).

Is it unsafe to charge the iPad via the iPhone 5W charger?

No

I mix and match my chargers often, the only disadvantage is that the iPhone charger charges slower according to a lot of sources, but I have yet to experience it. I still have an iPhone 3G charger I use as a spare at work to charge my iPad on occasion.

Interestingly I have never noticed my chargers getting hot either, but will admit I have never actively looked.

Looking at the Charging Tips here the reason for the slower charge is that the iPhone charger is 5W compared to 10W for the iPad, based on wattage alone, I can't see how you would damage the iPad, I would suspect using a higher wattage might however.


Is there a problem with Thunderbolt to HDMI in Lion? After upgrading to Lion on my recently purchased Macbook Pro 13" base model I'm having trouble connecting to an HDLCD TV.  My TV is connected to a receiver.  Sometimes when I connect I get 5.1 sound to play through my speakers.  Sometimes it's 2.1 sound. And other times no sound can be played.  Even just getting the laptop to display to the TV is hit or miss.

Is this a known issue?  Any suggestions on how to get things to work consistently?

UPDATE:  It appears that connecting the laptop to the TV is not problematic if there is nothing playing at the time the connection is made.  I get anomalous results if I make a connection while playing something.

The best chance of success (and Lion doesn't seem to affect this either way) is to have the cord connected when the TV is turned on. This lets the mac and the TV negotiate the formats that the TV supports. Sometimes hot plugging it, even though it's supposed to work causes interference (snow) or worse on the TV until you make the connection again.


How to disable and reenable Thunderbolt 3 port in Mac OS Catalina? So all of a sudden my MacBook went really slow, I contacted apple support tried everything they said, resetting nvram e.t.c, wiped out my entire disk and reinstalled the macOS, but the problem still not solved.
After analysing the activity monitor I found that kernel task was taking 20-90% of the cpu most of the time on the higher side(70-90%) so I researched on internet found that it is the broken port or broken sound card that is causing this issue, and there were some people (or a person) saying that disabling the port will fix this.
Note: I am pretty much certain that my upper left port is not functioning well, sometimes it works and sometimes I have rotate the charging pin and insert it again to make it work, so it's not sound card or any other component that's causing the issue but the port.
So long story short, I want to disable my port.
macOS Catalina 10.15.6, MacBook Pro 13 inch with two thunderbolt 3 ports, 2017

So long story short, I want to disable my port.

Technically, you can't.
The Thunderbolt ports really cannot be disabled because they are used for functions outside the operating system like charging.  So, even if you completely uninstall macOS the ports will continue to function, accepting and negotiating a charge.
The most you can hope to do is disable them from the OS, however, that's an all or nothing proposition.  The kexts are for all of the ports; not for each port.

I am pretty much certain that my upper left port is not functioning well, sometimes it works and sometimes I have rotate the charging pin and insert it again to make it work,

Have you tested the cable?  The port is reversible so you shouldn't need to "rotate the charging pin;" there's actually two of them - one on each "side" of the cable (Vbus).  If it is the port, why disable it?  Why not just not use it or better yet, take it in to have the port replaced?  There are board level repair outfits that specialize in this type of repair.

Now, if you are getting CPU spikes then it is possible there's a short between one of the power pins and a data bin (i.e. Vbus and TX1/RX1).  If these spikes occur while a cable is plugged in, again, try changing the cable.  If they occur regardless, then the problem is your port and it must be fixed.  If it's a physical problem, you either have to physically disable it (cut the connectors so it's no longer usable) or if you're going to go that far, just fix the port.


Does apple notify you when a certificate is going to expire? Do apple notify the developer or email when a push notification is going to expired?

Yes, at 30 days, 10 days and 1 day prior to expiration date, you will receive the following email:


How do you "select-all" in Apple Calendar (iCal)? I use my calendar like a scheduled to-do list.  I sometimes want to shift all today's events down by 15 minutes.  Select All is grayed out in the Edit menu, and it's tedious to click on every event while holding shift.
How do you select all events on a particular day?  If there isn't a way, is there a workaround?

I cannot use command + a in the "day" section. But, if you want to select specific events, hold down command and click on the events you want to copy or do whatever.


Reset locked iPhone 5 without updating My friend gave me her old iPhone 5 (iOS 10.3.2) which she can't remember the passcode to and I need to factory reset it from iTunes. I have tried doing this by putting the phone into recovery mode and trying to restore it but iTunes wants to update the phone to iOS 10.3.3. Because I have a poor internet each time I try to restore and update, downloading iOS 10.3.3 fails.

Is there a way to restore it without using my internet?

Cheers,

Afraid not, but I feel your struggle. My internet is about as terrible as it gets (14kb/s). However, I was able to download the IPSW using my PS3's Internet browser which seems to get 700kb/s and it took slightly over one hour. You might not have a PS3 but this is what worked for me.

Or likewise, you could try downloading the IPSW on a public library computer from a 3rd party website or even a friend's computer. Whatever the case, good luck.


Xcode will open tiny window but not IDE? Sometimes I quit Xcode with only a tiny window I was editing something else in. Now whenever I open my project again it will open the window but not the IDE. Is there any way to physically open the IDE so I can work on my project again?

Xcode will usually do this if this style of window is the last to be closed. If this is the case the your window looks like this:

Then it can be fixed simply by doing the following:

And finally select what side bars you want to be visible:


Can I stream video from iPhone to VLC? Is there a solution/app available that will allow me to take video from iPhone/iPad camera and live-stream it to a VLC player running somewhere else in my WiFi network?

Searching around for iPhone RTP/RTSP encoders isn't coming up with much.

You could try the Airplay functionality for iPhone ( though I'm not sure if it is available on all iPhone devices, but it is on the 4S ).
Then try and find an Airplay plugin for VLC.

It's already possible for Windows Media Player so VLC can probably do it too ( and be better at it, because you know, it's VLC ).

I haven't tested it myself, but it's probably worth trying out.


Keychain passwords suggestions that I can't remember, how do I log in from a different pc I hope that I put it right, that you guys understand.

Everywhere I read that Keychain can suggest strong passwords and remember them so I don't have to remember them. Works wonderful.

The thing is, I am scared to do so, because; what will happen if I have to enter one of these sites from a different computer.

Say that I let Keychain come up with a great, strong password for twitter.
Next time I log on to twitter from an unknown computer, can I still log in with my old password? Or do I actually have to remember the password that Keychain came up with?

The logic thing would be that it actually changes that password, so when I need to enter that website from a different computer, I will still have to use that hard to remember password. Which means I need to keep an extra passwords list somewhere accessible.

I've been looking all over, but I can't seem to find it, so I figured, I'd ask you people.

Can you help me out?

While Keychain Access and the iCloud Keychain is specific to the Mac and iOS, there are other applications such as 1Password and LastPass which have various syncing options (Windows, iOS, Android, Linux, and even web-based) so you would never be without access to your passwords.


How can I fix my system lagging due to problems with Firefox plugin-container process (IOGraphicsAccelerator, too many contexts) I was running a google meet call in Firefox and had a few other tabs open, including a gitlab one with an embedded video (which might have been part of the cause of this) when I noticed considerable lagging in the responsiveness of windows, not just firefox. I found the following conspicuous messages in the console app:
IOGraphicsAccelerator::newUserClient(): process plugin-container (PID 1934) has too many contexts (510) + queues (0) + device (171) + shared (171) created. Possibly leaking?

It also affects opening browser tabs in e.g. Safari and general system responsiveness.
I couldn't find much on this kind of error message other than the plugin-container process seems to belong to Firefox.
This is a Macbook Pro with macOS Catalina 10.15.7.

Restarting Firefox solved that issue for me, I no longer observe said messages in the console app and the system behaves as usual.


How to properly downgrade from Catalina to Mojave with no internal free space left? Today I upgraded my Macbook Pro to Catalina, but after realising that I can't get files from my Samsung SSD and can't to few other features, I try to downgrade to Mojave again.

The downgrade method I read was through a Time Machine, but after an hour of recovering my stuff, there was an error window that says "An Error Occurred Restoring from Backup".

After that I tried to reinstall my macOS, but I can't do it anymore, because I have no space left on my Macintosh HD (only 300 MB free space, before all of this there were a 50 GB of free space).

What should I do? What is the best way to get back to my files? To delete everything on Macintosh HD via Disk Utility and then try to get back all of the stuff from Migration Assistant, or is there any better ways to do this?

Assuming your backup is good, use Disk Utility to wipe the disk from within Recovery mode, install Catalina clean (again from within Recovery) then use the Migration Assistant to restore everything. This should warn you if you're going to end up with a space problem and allow you to exclude certain items from the restore.


How can I turn off a frozen iPhone? My iPhone 5 is frozen. I cannot turn it off and
when I try to restore it wont let me because it says I need to turn off Find My iPhone.

The first thing that you can try is doing a hard shutdown by holding both the power button and the home button for at least ten seconds. If your device still does not turn on or respond, you can try putting it into DFU Mode (recovery mode). To do this, start by plugging your device into your computer with the USB cable. Then hold the power button for around 5 seconds. While you are still holding the power button, press and hold the home button for an additional 10 seconds. At this time, release the power button but keep holding the home button for around 15 seconds. At this point, iTunes should recognize your phone as a device in recovery mode. To exit recovery mode, hold the power button and the home buttons until the device begins booting.


How does Disk Utility wipe the disk it's executing on? Maybe I am misunderstanding the functionality as a whole but how does Disk Utility wipe the disk it's executing on? For example, if you were to erase yourself there would still be a hand left.

Disk Utility won't erase the partition from which your Mac boots.

Don't be confused by your ability to erase the boot "drive" while in Recovery mode. You are actually booting off a different partition on the same drive, one that is hidden, and this allows you to erase the boot partition.


How do I boot from a Windows USB with a Mac? I'm trying to get my Mac to boot from a USB flash drive. I know the drive works and is bootable, because it works with my friend's Windows PC.

Specifically, I was running Windows 7 on my Mac to create the bootable disk, which has Windows Defender Offline on it. I have had the same issue trying to use the Ultimate Boot CD on a USB, various Live USBs for Linux, etc.

So, what do I have to do to get my Mac to recognize and boot from another OS on a USB flash drive?

Or maybe a better question, if there isn't a simple answer, would be what does Bootcamp do to allow booting from a Windows install DVD or to allow Windows, once installed, to boot?

EDIT: I was able to sort of get results using the bless command in Terminal. Specifically, I used

sudo bless -mount "/Volumes/WDO_Media32/" -legacy -setBoot -nextonly

and then did a restart. Boot was slower, but then I was presented with the normal log-in screen. The log in screen, though, was much slower than usual, as if something else was happening in the background. So, I seem to be effecting something with that command, but I still can't boot from my Windows bootable USB drive.

Boot Camp has to emulate a BIOS system, as Windows requires this to run.  Apple uses something called the bless tool in order to instruct EFI (which Macs are based on) to activate this BIOS system.

However, if I recall correctly, emulation of BIOS is not supported on Mac for any device that is not attached via a SATA connection (ie. internal drive, DVD drive).  So, I believe that you cannot boot from your USB key.

If you want, you could install an alternative bootloader on your Mac that would allow you to do this.  See this post for more info.


Cursed black box following cursor, on multiple Macs This is a bit of an odd one for me, I'm hoping someone here might have some advice. We have a couple mac users in the office, and a few of them have been reporting this box has been appearing sporadically. Any advice?

This is on a MBP 11,5, I've checked most of the accessibility settings, mouse settings, tried a different mouse, the issue still persists.

EDIT: Still no luck, I haven't had a lot of time to troubleshoot but after messing with pretty much every accessibility setting I'm fairly convinced its not that, going to try a new monitor in a desperate attempt.

EDIT 2: I haven't been able to find a solution to this issue, any help at all is greatly appreciated!

I have yosemite, and i found a setting that does what you're describing but does not look quite like yours, for me it creates a box AROUND the mouse.
So hopefully you dont have yosemite and thats why. Anyways you can find the setting in:

System preferences -> Accesibility -> Zoom -> More Options

Then when you're here you should uncheck 'Show preview rectangle when zoomed out'. If its not checked, check and uncheck it for good measure.
Found here


Purchasing an iMac: when is the entry-level model insufficient? We're looking at iMacs for my girlfriend, and I was wondering: would the entry-level model be sufficient?

When looking at Windows desktops, I tend to suggest a model a few levels above an entry-level desktop. This usually means the PC can be used longer and it will feel like a fast desktop for a while longer.

Is the same true for an iMac? When is the basic model insufficient? Naturally, this is not a $300 PC, so I would think that even the basic model is a very capable machine. However, for only a few hundred dollars above the entry-level model, CPU speeds are doubled, among other improvements.

Again, this is for my girlfriend, and she really only uses it for internet, the occasional movie and listening to music.

It depends on what you / your girlfriend wants to do with the iMac. If it is really just used for internet and occasionally watching a movie and listening to music, then an 'entry level' iMac offers more than enough performance. IMHO even an iPad would provide enough performance…

We actually use our 5+yr old iMac (Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.66GHz) as a media hub and it works just fine. It's connected to the TV and has a couple of external hard drives connected to it. And when it got a bit slow a couple of years ago we just added some memory, both RAM and HD, and that really helped a lot. Now it's basically never

Also all other apps like Photoshop etc. still work fine on that machine, but since we now have some faster machines in the house, the iMac is basically just used as a media hub.


Is there any free solution to convert a SWF video to an iPhone/iPad compatible format? I tried several programs to convert a SWF file to a video format and so far none of them seems to work.

4media Converter
Video xConverter
Pinguin
ffmpegx
Easy WMV

I expect a video in any format that I could play in iOS, like .MOV, .AVI and other. Any ideas?

Because the video is buried inside a full SWF file you won't be able to convert it -- it's much like if you had a Mac app that happens to play a built-in video: you're effectively trying to convert the app to a video, two very different kinds of things.

Instead you'll need to extract the video. You can use a task-specific extrator, and since you asked for a free way to do it, I suggest the Flaex app. There are a couple of other paid extractors for the Mac including Flash Decompiler and SWF Decompiler. I don't have first-hand experience with any of the extractors so I can't specifically recommend one.

The other possible not-free way to extract the video is by opening the swf file with the full Adobe Flash Pro, or have someone do it for you. Note that Adobe provides a fully-functional 30-day trial, so at least in the short-term it's a free option as well.


Smart Playlist in iTunes for songs that contain lyrics I’m looking for a way to create a Smart Playlist in iTunes that contains only songs without lyrics.
Or to be more specific, I want to be able to create a Smart Playlist of songs that I haven’t put through Get Lyrical and then run it though the app so that it gets lyrics for the songs that I don’t already have lyrics for.
I’m using iTunes 10.6.3 (25) on a mid 2010 MacBook running Mountain Lion.

You can't do this with a smart playlist as Apple doesn't expose the lyric field there.

You can create an Applescript that creates a playlist. You'd then have to rerun the script to update the playlist. A track has a playlist field so you'd just check that.

Here's one example of such a script

tell application "iTunes"

    if exists playlist "No Lyrics" then
        delete playlist "No Lyrics"
    end if

    make new playlist with properties {name:"No Lyrics"}

   duplicate (every track of playlist 1 whose lyrics is equal to "") to playlist "No Lyrics"

end tell


How to create a terminal use only account in MacOSX? I want to create a user(say, hera) that can only be used in terminal. That is this user does not appear in the Mac welcome screen. This user can be su - hera by other users.

Can I do this and how?

I echo the comments above. I'm not sure why you would want to bother hiding the user, why not just have a single admin account, making everyone else "standard" accounts and use sudo in the CLI (Command Line Interface - "Terminal.app") if you need to.

Anyway, here is the Apple tech article on creating hidden users and/or just hiding users from the login window:

  Set the Login window to display name and password fields

  In the Users & Groups preferences pane (Accounts pane in Mac OS X v10.6 and earlier), click Login Options, then select "Display login window as: Name and password".

  With this enabled, no user accounts are listed in the Login window.

  If changing the Login Window to only display the name and password fields does not meet your needs, then you can use the following steps in this article to hide a user account.

  Add users to the HiddenUsersList (advanced)

  With Mac OS X v10.4 and later you can hide users from the Login window by adding them to the HiddenUsersList array in the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist file. The following command will hide the users "mei" and "anne" from the Login window:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add mei anne

  Note: These users will still appear in the Accounts (Mac OS X v10.6 and earlier) or Users & Groups (OS X Lion) pane in System Preferences.

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5017


Is the iOS image saved by iTunes for restoring the same for all iPhone models? If you restore an iPhone 6 with iTunes, iTunes will first download the iOS image and then it will restore the iPhone.
I wonder if this same iOS image will be good for a different iPhone model, such as an iPhone 5 or would it need to download a specific image for iPhone 5?.

Each individual model requires its own restore file, known as an IPSW [iPhone software] file.

That also applies even to slightly different versions of the same model,. such as the US SIM & non-SIM versions of the same phone.

You can see them listed at sites such as https://ipsw.me - which is just a list of redirects to the actual Apple downloads.

If you have a poor connection, or need the exact same download for more than one iPhone on more than one computer, you can get them via these links, then manually drop into place. They live in ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates


Google Chrome could not connect to localhost I am using OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.4.  I tried the steps in Installing Apache, PHP, and MySQL on Mac OS X to setup my dev environment, but I am not able to open the virtualhost I created – or localhost for that matter.

cURL gives me this error:

  curl: (7) couldn't connect to host

For those who are interested, here's my httpd-vhosts.conf file,

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/Users/AnkurKaushal/Documents/workspace/dev"
    ServerName ankur.local
    ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/ankur.local-error_log"
    CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/ankur.local-access_log" common

    <Directory "/Users/AnkurKaushal/Documents/workspace/dev">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow, deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

and my /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1       localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost
fe80::1%lo0     localhost
127.0.0.1       ankur.local

What might I be missing here?

Just do sudo apachectl -t, that will help you fixing any issue your having with Apache configuration.

In that case, it was just a simple space in httpd-vhosts.conf file that was causing the issue.


Mail: keyboard shortcut to move email to trash? I'm on macOS Mojave, Mail is version 12.4.

Problem

I've just realized that cmd + delete is deleting (ie irretrievably removing from my machine and server) my emails instead of moving them to the trash. I want my emails to go to the trash so I can recover them later if needed. I would like to change the behavior of that keyboard shortcut, but I doubt that's possible on macOS so I'd settle for adding a new shortcut. However, I can't figure out how to do that.

What I've tried

I've tried changing the mailbox behavior, which is what others have suggested, but there doesn't seem to be an option (see screenshot below). I'm using MailFence if that's important.

I've tried adding a keyboard shortcut specific to Mail (see screenshot below), but it isn't doing what I want. Note that I have tried to name the shortcut 'Move to Trash', 'Move to trash', and 'Move to Trash Foo' where 'Foo' is the mailbox description and when I use the menu to move a message into trash I select Message -> Move to -> Trash -> Foo

Actually, you don't need to go to all this effort. The default command+delete keyboard shortcut will do exactly what you want, so long as you've set your Mail preferences that way.

In summary, you need to:

Go to Mail > Preferences
Select the Accounts tab
Select the account (or email address) from the left pane
In the right pane, select the Mailbox Behaviours tab
At the bottom, tick the checkbox for Move deleted messages to the Bin mailbox
While at it, ensure that the other settings on this tab for erasing deleted messages are what you want

Now when using the command+delete keyboard shortcut to delete emails they will be moved to the Bin mailbox for the Account in question.


Ports in the TimeCapsule In a few days I'm going to buy my first Mac (an iMac) as well as a Time Capsule. Looking at the specs of that product, I've seen that it has a WAN port and 3 Ethernet Ports.
I suppose that the WAN port is to connect the TimeCapsule with the Internet. At home, I get Internet trough a Ethernet wire (it's not an ADSL connection).
My question is: will I be able to connect the Ethernet wire into the WAN port in order to share my Internet connection wirelessly over the house?

Thank you so much!!

Yes, that is the port you'll use. If you use one of the other ports, Internet access will sometimes work but the device will think it won't.

Use the WAN port for your apartment's inbound Internet (whether an Ethernet cable or from an ADSL or cable modem), and the other three ports for outbound to your local machines that aren't on wireless.


My app is not in ranking in App Store for added keywords I launched my app on the App Store a couple days ago. It is not showing in the ranking for the added keywords.

Is there a reason for that?

My app name contains to do list words.

App Store rankings for apps under various categories is based on algorithms employed in the Apple's servers. How the ranking process works is not public knowledge.

So, there is no definitive answer as to why your app is not there in the ranking (maybe there's a minimum threshold to compete for ranking).

Additionally, why or how Apple does something doesn't fall under the purview of what's discussed on this site. It is generally considered off-topic. Please have a look at these links:

http://meta.apple.stackexchange.com/questions/2508/why-were-not-customer-support-for-company-x-or-product-y
https://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic
https://apple.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask


Problem connecting my MacBook Pro to a Vizio Monitor The HDMI port on my MacBook Pro doesn't seem to be functioning normally.

When I plug it into the TV, the screen temporarily turns black as if it is connecting to the TV, However, it only shows part of my computer desk top.  I can see the background and the top row of information.  Nothing else is up there...no mouse, no folders, nothing along the bottom. What is the reason for this? It was just working fine a short time ago.

It is most likely that your TV is showing a secondary screen view, where little other than the background shows by default.

Try Settings>Displays>Arrangement, then check 'Mirror Displays'. This will duplicate what is on your laptop screen onto the computer. Uncheck it, and you now have two displays, with the relationship between them shown in the graphic within the 'Arrangement' tab.

The reason you see only the background, and 'top row' is that is how OSX displays the secondary display. The Dock is not visible, and there are no folders there...because you have not put any there.

Try this: attach your TV, then drag a window onto the TV. You need to drag to the left or right of your laptop screen, but you should see the window show on the TV.


Airpods Bluetooth interference when cycling I use Airpods with the iPhone SE and I also wear an Apple Watch.  The Airpods work extremely well at home, in the office, or whenever I'm just walking.  When I'm cycling to work, however, I often get interference in the Bluetooth connection, leading to stuttering music playback.

Subjectively it feels as if this is more frequent at large intersections with lots of traffic and never happens in the park.

What could be the source of the interference?

I imagine that there are many very strong WiFi hotspots in the area, but then I don't really have problems if I'm walking through the city. It seems to be connected to cycling.

Bluetooth operates in the 2.4GHz band.  There are a number of other things that operate in this band:

WiFi
Wireless cameras
Wireless IoT devices
Bluetooth locating beacons
Cordless phones
Microwaves (though I’m fairly certain there’s not a lot of Hot Pocket preparation happening at traffic intersections)

Aside from the increased Bluetooth bandwidth congestion you’re likely to experience in crowded areas, you are also suseptible to bandwidth crowding from all the other potential sources of interference.

From personal experience, when riding the subway in NYC, I found that my Bluetooth headset would occasionally become “static-y” especially around rush hour and clear when the train was empty.  A wired headset cured the issue.


How do I set a specific system setting using a script or a profile? System Preferences/Networks/WiFi/Require authorisation to turn wifi on/off I'm hoping someone can help. I work for a college, I manage about 80 Macs and we've had a problem recently where students are turning WiFi on or off on the Macs that they're logging on to. This is bad for the hard-wired Macs as they haven't been provisioned on our managed Wireless system so it either slows down their network connection or kills it entirely and it's bad for the mobile Macs as they loose their connection to the network and they start whinging that they can't get on the internet.

I found the following setting in System preferences which looks like it will solve my problem:

Does anyone know how to set this setting programmatically, using a script or a profile or whatever?

I've found the plist which contains the setting, it is /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist. However, the setting itself is buried quite deeply in the file and my attempts to toggle it using defaults write and plistbuddy have ended in horrible failure. I've also tried creating a custom profile using Profile Manager but that hasn't worked either.

All of the Macs are running Mavericks.

I don't want to have to go around to 80 Macs and set this by hand so any hints or the solution would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Ian

See Toggle Ability to turn wifi off which shows how to do so from the command line using a script:

#!/bin/sh

# Get "Wi-Fi" or "Airport" based on your OS
wservice=`/usr/sbin/networksetup -listallnetworkservices | grep -Ei '(Wi-Fi|AirPort)'`

# Get port (usually en1)
whwport=`/usr/sbin/networksetup -listallhardwareports | awk "/$wservice/,/Ethernet Address/" | awk 'NR==2' | cut -d " " -f 2`

# Set preferences
/usr/libexec/airportd "$whwport" prefs DisconnectOnLogout=Yes JoinMode=Automatic JoinModeFallback=DoNothing RememberRecentNetworks=No RequireAdminIBSS=Yes RequireAdminNetworkChange=No RequireAdminPowerToggle=Yes

This question had been answered  previously, see Enable Admin Authorization to Change wireless Networks, also on jamfnation. Seems to be a common question for school IT admins.

I found these answers being curious about what you found by using the key from the preferences.plist file (RequireAdminPowerToggle) and using Google search.


Total screen freeze in El Capitan, but audio keeps playing Lately I've been having lots of issues with my Mac randomly freezing. As in, multiple times per week. These are the symptoms:

My screen freezes completely. The picture stays on screen and my computer doesn't respond to mouse or keyboard input.
If I have audio playing in the background, sometimes it will keep playing.
The Force Quit hotkey doesn't seem to do anything.
The only way out I've found so far is to force my computer off by holding Power.

How do I diagnose and fix the underlying issue?

Additional info

MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015)
4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
27.34 GB free disk space (SSD)
Running apps when I notice this: Safari, Mail (there are others, but I'm not sure if they're running every time it happens so I didn't include them)
Activity Monitor screenshot: I can't, because I never know when the system is about to freeze up

As advised in the comments, I've disabled 'Allow WebGL' for now and I'll continue monitoring the situation.

If you still have another device around, you might try to SSH into your machine, as apparently only the GUI process is frozen. You'll be able to safely reboot your Mac using sudo reboot now.
Another hint on this is that the shutdown dialog still shows up if you press the shutdown button for 2-3 seconds.
This might also be a hint to the solution - it should suffice to restart the corresponding process, even though I don't know which one that is. Maybe someone with a little more expertise on the OS might be able to help here.


Cannot set permissions on Parallels volume I have Parallels Desktop 9 running on Mac OSX 10.9.4.
Whenever I try to [sudo] chmod +x a file on the Parallels volume it doesn't do anything.
I have to copy the file to a local folder for this to work.
I suspect this is related to how the Parallels volume is mounted.

Is there a way to get chmod to work on the Parallels volume?

Typically when you mount an NTFS volume in OS X (or Linux for that matter) the permissions are determined at the time the volume is mounted. You'll probably find that all files within your volume are set with identical "-rw-rw-rw-" permissions and all folders are set with identical "drwxrwxrwx" permissions.

Some software for mounting NTFS volumes will allow you to change the these volume wide permissions with arguments to the mount command. For example, with OSXFUSE you can set umask, fmask and dmask arguments when you mount an NTFS volume that will allow you to specify the permissions you want to see. However if there is documentation on how to do this with Parallels Mounter I'm unable to find it.


List all purgeable files in macOS Sierra I disabled macOS Sierra storage optimizations and the Storage tab in About this Mac still shows over 70 GB as purgeable space. Is there a utility to display which files are considered as purgeable?

Two utilities that show and optimise purgable space are DaisyDisk and CleanMyMac X.  My experience is that these utilities will clear 20-30% of the space that it reports as purgable.


Moving data from Mid-2010 iMac to Late 2015 iMac I just ordered a new 27" Late 2015 iMac. I'll be moving my data from a 27" mid-2010 iMac. What's the recommended medium for the migration?

I know how to use Migration Assistant, but the old iMac has Firewire (no Thunderbolt) and the new iMac has Thunderbolt (no FireWire).

Is an Ethernet cable my best bet? It'll be faster than wireless, but I suspect still pretty slow.

Wired ethernet (gigabit on both ends) will be every bit as fast as Firewire to Thunderbolt and without the cost of the adapter.

Depending on how noisy your Wireless environment is, you might have a limiting factor in the speed of the old iMac hard drive that's lower than WiFi throughput, but wired ethernet is so much more reliable, I'd do that if you can.

If you decide to try a wireless set up, use the fast new Mac to create a WiFi network and join the old iMac so that all the radio speed is dedicated to the transfer if you wanted to go that way with more than 10 GB of files to transfer (presumably).


Do not switch to same app on attached (external screen) my problem might be pretty straightforward, but yet, I can't get its roots.

I have MacPro laptop and attached external monitor to it. I'm not doing screen mirroring and I have 3 workspaces.
So when I switch workspaces on mac -- my external screen persists.

the question is: say I have google chrome opened on my laptop and another window on my external monitor. Than, say, I switch to other application on my external monitor (Sublime editor) -> I have Sublime on external + google chrome on laptop. Than I switch to other application on laptop. But When I switch back to GoogleChrome on laptop -> Sublime on external monitor is also switched to Google Chrome. I don't want this behavior. I want applications to be switched separately on laptop and external monitor, and not to be synced as it happens now. is it possible?

It sounds like you're breaking the Spaces paradigm by having one app over two Spaces. If you do that, behaviour will be at best unpredictable.

You could possibly mitigate this by unchecking System Prefs > Mission Control > "When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application" [but this is untested as I don't use "Displays have separate Spaces".]


Can dual boot Mac access files between two OS installs I have a High Sierra Mac, I was thinking about doing a dual boot setup with Mojave or Catalina.

Will I be able to copy files between two installations via Finder?

Or another way to ask, when I am running the newer OS, will I be able to access files on the older OS in Finder without copying them to an external drive first?  Vice versa?

What I found by installing Catalina in a new partition on the High Sierra disk is that:

When logged in to Catalina, the High Sierra disk appears as a drive in Finder.

When logged in to High Sierra, the Catalina disk can be available but Finder will ask for a Catalina User Name and Password to access it.


Viewing Composite Document File V2 Documents Every now and then I receive attachments from Windows users that show up as "Picture (Device independent Bitmap)" and - when I run "file" on the command line, they are identified as "Composite Document File V2 Document".

I guess they are screenshots - what would be the best way to view them on a Mac?

Thanks.

Based on the output from file I'd suggest that you try unoconv to convert it to something your system can open.


Can't update apps from Apple Configurator 2 (apps are already up to date) I attach an iPhone running iOS 12.2 to a mac running macOS 10.14.4 (Mojave) with 33 apps pending updates (as seen from App Store in the update tab in the iPhone). I choose the device, then "update" in Apple Configurator 2 (v. 2.9). Then I get the message "No updates are available. The installed iOS and apps are already up to date." and no apps get updated.

Is there a way to make Apple Configurator 2 recognize the pending updates?

I had this problem recently in macOS 10.15 (Catalina) with an iPhone 11 Pro Max.
The App Store app on the iPhone showed 19 updates available via a red badge on the app icon as well as inside of the app. Meanwhile, the Apple Configurator app on the Mac claimed no updates were available.

Restarting the iPhone didn't change anything as far as I could tell.
But after restarting the Mac and launching Apple Configurator again, it now showed 34 updates available, which still doesn't match what is shown on the iPhone, but I guess it's better than zero!

Clicking the Update button in Configurator resulted in the apps being downloaded and updated. By the time the update process finished, 32 updates were downloaded, and I received an "unknown error" on the last two.
Apple Configurator's handling of app updates seems to be quite buggy.


How do I use my macbook pro as a monitor for my HDMI device? I have the following items:

Macbook Pro Retina OS 10.13.4
HDMI cable
Brand new Raspberry Pi Model 3B+

I do not possess a HDMI monitor which I could use for my raspberry pi, thus I would like to use my macbook pro for that function.
My raspberry pi is brand new, and has never been configured before nor connected to the internet.

How do I go about using my macbook pro as a monitor with a HDMI connection, so that I can set-up my raspberry pi?

I won't say it is going to be impossible to ever use your MacBook Pro as a display for your Raspberry Pi, but I will say it will be impossible to use it as a monitor for a Raspberry Pi that's never been set up before.

Basically there is no hardware way of making the MBP display available to another device. You can use software to do this, but then you would need to have software compatible with whatever operating system you were going to install on the Raspberry Pi. That in itself is feasible enough, but you won't be able to set things up without a display to begin with.

If you have no available display to use, then my recommendation would be to buy a cheap used display from a garage sale or somewhere and use that to set up the Raspberry Pi. In the end it'll save you a lot of time and frustration. Only a few months ago I picked up an old 22" HDMI display for $5 from a garage sale and it's worked perfectly ever since.


Create "virtual" display for use with remote desktop I frequently use Remote Desktop to access my home iMac from my university campus (using a 13" MacBook with resolution 1280x800). The iMac has two displays, the built in 27" 2560x1440 display and an external 1920x1080 display. There are three issues:

Scaling down the resolution makes everything small, or I have to do awkward/annoying panning. I typically only view the 1920x1080 display over Remote Desktop, but even then it's sub-optimal.
Large displays require high bandwidth. This isn't an issue if I'm at a proper WiFi network such as my university campus, but occasionally I also use my phone's tethering connection.
Everything I do over Remote Desktop can be seen in person on the real displays.

Proposed solution: Somehow create a "virtual" display that's 1280x800.

It's the same resolution as my MacBook's screen, so it won't have to scale.
It's smaller, and will therefore use less bandwidth.
It won't be a physical display, so it won't be visible in person.

Now, is there any way to produce such a "virtual display"?

You could use the Session Select feature of Apple Screen Sharing service.
It allows you to log in into a "virtual" user session without showing anything on physical screen.
To do so you should:

create second user account and log him in "physically",
connect using Screen Sharing to your iMac with your PRIMARY user credentials,
Screen Sharing will provide you with 2 choices: "Share" screen with current physical user or "Log In" in a "virtual" session,
select "Log In" and here you are: you have a "virtual" screen not visible to current physical user.
You can now change screen resolution to match your MacBook's screen.