macOS Sierra / Numbers 4.0: Problem with saving on a Synology via AFP I updated my Mac to 10.12 Sierra and updated Pages, Numbers and Keynote afterwards to the latest versions.

So far so good, everything running normal.

But unfortunately saving a Numbers file via AFP on a local Synology NAS (DS1815+, latest DSM) caused the application to crash and kicked all connections to shared folders.

Saving on the local HDD is no problem at all.

Then I tried to figure out whether thats a single problem with AFP and killed the AFP file service on the NAS to only start the SMB2 service.

No problem to save on the NAS via SMB.

I tried to save a numbers document on the NAS via AFP from another Mac. This time with an older version of numbers (3.6.2) but on a freshly updated macOS Sierra and it causes the same crash of numbers and all connections to the NAS.

Therefore:
It seems to be a problem with macOS Sierra and the AFP server of the current Synology DSM (6.0.2-8451 Update 1).

Is anyone experiencing the same issues?
Does anyone have a suggestion for a workaround?

Thanks a lot.

Edit:

I think it might be a problem with the versioning of the applications which use file versioning. Someone described the same behavior with Preview while saving a JPG image. And I could reproduce the same crash with my Macs.

I found this thread while looking for a resolution to a problem with my ReadyNAS device.  The root cause appears to be that Apple removed the AFP protocol from macOS Sierra, at least according to comments on Apple's discussion boards.  SMB still works, but AFP has either been removed, or at least deprecated.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/30684682


What is the "Spray Like" icon in the new MacBook Pro Touch Bar? There is an icon that looks like a spray can on the right side of the Touch Bar (4th-5th button from the right?)

Does anyone know what it is for?

(Sorry I couldn't find an image of it on the web)

It seems to be linked to the simulator in Xcode.

When pressed this expands into some debugging shortcuts as shown in this screenshot:

You can also see this icon on 9to5 macs article about the touchbar.
9to5mac link


How do I remove or disable Adobe Registration request and kill Adobe IPC, Adobecloud I found this on the registration, but where and how to put this into:

#!/bin/sh

# Determine OS version
osvers=$(sw_vers -productVersion | awk -F. '{print $2}')
sw_vers=$(sw_vers -productVersion)

# Checks first to see if the Mac is running 10.7.0 or higher.
# If so, the script checks the system default user template
# for the presence of the Library/Preferences directory.
#
# If the directory is not found, it is created and then the
# iCloud pop-up settings are set to be disabled.

if [[ ${osvers} -ge 7 ]]; then

 for USER_TEMPLATE in "/System/Library/User Template"/*
  do
    defaults write "${USER_TEMPLATE}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant DidSeeCloudSetup -bool TRUE
    defaults write "${USER_TEMPLATE}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant GestureMovieSeen none
    defaults write "${USER_TEMPLATE}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant LastSeenCloudProductVersion "${sw_vers}"
  done

 # Checks first to see if the Mac is running 10.7.0 or higher.
 # If so, the script checks the existing user folders in /Users
 # for the presence of the Library/Preferences directory.
 #
 # If the directory is not found, it is created and then the
 # iCloud pop-up settings are set to be disabled.

 for USER_HOME in /Users/*
  do
    USER_UID=`basename "${USER_HOME}"`
    if [ ! "${USER_UID}" = "Shared" ]
    then
      if [ ! -d "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences ]
      then
        mkdir -p "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences
        chown "${USER_UID}" "${USER_HOME}"/Library
        chown "${USER_UID}" "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences
      fi
      if [ -d "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences ]
      then
        defaults write "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant DidSeeCloudSetup -bool TRUE
        defaults write "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant GestureMovieSeen none
        defaults write "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant LastSeenCloudProductVersion "${sw_vers}"
        chown "${USER_UID}" "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant.plist
      fi
    fi
  done
fi

Also I found this, but I copied that in my terminal and nothing happened. What do I need to do excatly?

this is a terminal alias/command I use that prevents any Adobe stuff running in the background:

  alias nothankyouadobe="sudo -H killall ACCFinderSync \"Core Sync\" AdobeCRDaemon \"Adobe Creative\" AdobeIPCBroker node \"Adobe Desktop Service\" \"Adobe Crash Reporter\";sudo -H rm -rf \"/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist\" \"/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist\" \"/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.adobe.*.plist\""

If you put that in your ~/.bash_profile you can then simply type nothankyouadobe or call that from Alfred or any other sort of script.

I made an updated version of the script that also removes the associated launchd services and uses the pluginkit utility to disable the Core Sync Finder Extension, as explained in this answer but programmatically
#!/bin/bash

# ask root password
sudo echo -n

echo "Deactivating Core Sync Finder extension"
pluginkit -e ignore -i com.adobe.accmac.ACCFinderSync
# uncomment to completely remove the extension
# pluginkit -r "/Applications/Utilities/Adobe Sync/CoreSync/Core Sync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ACCFinderSync.appex"

echo "Removing plist files"
sudo rm -f /Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.*.plist
sudo rm -f /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.adobe.*.plist
rm -f ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.*.plist

for SERVICE in $(launchctl list | grep "com.adobe" | cut -f3)
do
    echo "Removing service ${SERVICE}"
    launchctl remove $SERVICE
done

PROCESSES=(
"ACCFinderSync"
"CoreSync"
"Creative Cloud Helper"
"Core Sync Helper"
"AdobeCRDaemon"
"Adobe Creative"
"AdobeIPCBroker"
"Adobe Desktop Service"
"Adobe Crash Reporter"
)

for p in "${PROCESSES[@]}"
do
    echo "Killing process ${p}"
    sudo -H killall "${p}" 2> /dev/null
done

You can save this script into a file called "adobye" for exemple, and execute chmod +x adobye && mv adobye /usr/local/bin, to turn it into a globally available command. You can then simply type adobye in terminal whenever you want to remove adobe processes


LG UltraFine 5K firmware update I have an LG Ultrafine 5K (27MD5KA-B) monitor. I finally wanted to fix the volume issue and just found out that there should be a firmware update that is supposed to be installed through the LG Screen Manager software.

I've installed LG Screen Manager and it says that my monitor is up to date with version 3.01.,1.11, 5234,3.00

From what I've gathered, there should be at least version 3.04,1.13,5237,3.04,0.1e

I've also tried to find a firmware file to manually download, but all links I could find are dead, e.g.:

http://lmu.lge.com/ExternalService/lgscreenmanager/mac/FW/27MD5KA_MP3/MODEL_27MD5KA_SV3.04_CV1.13_HV5237_NV3.04_AV0.1e_20170705.zip

http://lmu.lge.com/ExternalService/lgscreenmanager/mac/FW/27MD5KA_MP3/FWLatestVersion.txt

The monitor is from January 2017, so it is one of the earliest models that also suffered from the shielding issues (which has been fixed). It's attached to a 2016 MacBook Pro 15" Touchbar, still running MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6

I would appreciate any hints on how to update the firmware or links to the firmware file.

Update: I've just poked around LG Screen Manager with Charles Proxy and realized that it tries to fetch FWLatestVersion.txt link above.

After about four weeks I got a reply from LG support with a firmware file attached.

Here is some information about the file:

Filename:
MODEL_27MD5KA_SV3.04_CV1.13_HV5237_NV3.04_AV0.1e_20170705.zip
Filesize: 304347 bytes
MD5: b03322ad668849ee5112ce24159c5c93

It's an encrypted ZIP file that can be opened with LG Screen Manager. With that file, I've successfully updated my monitor to version (3.04,1.13, 5237,3.04,0.1e).


Cannot upgrade mac mini I have a Mac Mini, running OS X 10.7.5, and I try to upgrade it, but I cannot for some reason (in short - I want to install the new XCode and code in Swift).

When I click the "Free upgrade" button nothing happens (pic below). I have triple checked Little Snitch that nothing is blocking the App store or something similar, but found nothing.

Any suggestions.

Look up your model here.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/index-macmini.html

Then, scroll down to the section marked "Maximum MacOS:", it's towards the bottom on the right.

One of my Mac Minis is the early 2009 Core2Duo model, which is the oldest Mini which supports Yosemite.  If you have a model which is older than 2009, it will only support Lion (Core2Duo), Snow Leopard (CoreDuo/CoreSolo), or Leopard (PowerPC).


Unable to create a smart folder based on Samsung camera model Here is the info of a typical photo, captured by a Samsung andriod phone, in my Photo library:

I tried the following condition in a new smart folder to show Samsung photo exclusively.

But it yields zero photo!

I have created similar smart folder before and they work. Here is an example:

Why smart folder fails for 'Samsung'? How can I fix it?

There are EXIF tags for both Camera Manufacturer and camera Model.

The example on wikipedia shows:

| Tag          | Value       |
|:-------------|------------:|
| Manufacturer |       CASIO |
| Model        |     QV-4000 |

It appears that the Photos Get Info panel is concatenating these two tags. But only the Camera Model is available for Smart Album filtering.

If you change your smart album to search for your camera model, SM-G950F, it should find the photos.

There does not appear to be a way to filter via the camera manufacturer, samsung.

I can confirm your findings with my FUJIFILM X100T.


Use SSD partition on Mac Mini Fusion Drive through Windows Bootcamp I've been checking through so many questions here, a lot of forum posts, and I can't get a clear answer to what it is I think I want to do.

I bought the fusion drive because well...SSD...I added a bootcamp installation of Windows 10 - which created a partition on the HDD (as far as I can tell based on what I've read so far) - I followed standard Bootcamp procedure.

Anyways, I want to make use of the SSD on my Windows side as well - but I'm not sure how to go about doing this. I don't want to run Windows on the SSD itself, just certain applications like wamp, and my dropbox sync folder. I think it will provide some great performance for wamp and my php development needs.

This is what I've found when looking at Disk Management in Windows:

As can be seen there, Disk 0 is the HDD and Disk 1 is the SSD. Looking above you'll see the Windows partition, (BOOTCAMP (C:).

Also, the SSD, Capacity, 112.68GB, Used, 112.68GB - so...either Mac OS hasn't loaded anything into the SSD as yet, or perhaps Windows just can't read it? I don't know. The Mac Mini is brand new, and I didn't do that much prior to installing Windows.

Would it cause any problems if I partitioned the SSD and formatted one partition as NTFS so that I could make use of it on my Windows side of things as well?

This must sound very stupid - but I'm not very familiar with all of this stuff...

Any advice would be appreciated. Keep in mind, I need to use Mac as well as Windows.

Yes, you'll mess stuff up if you partition it. The fusion drive creates a partition on each drive, which is put together to create the fusion drive. Windows cannot read HFS, so it assumes the disk is empty. Just leave your Windows partition on the HD, and everything should work fine.


How to delete my account on icloud.com? In my case, I do not want to use iCloud anymore. So I don't want to sync notes, calendar, pics across my Apple devices, and access them through the web (i.e., icloud.com).

So, how I can close/delete my entire iCloud account, associated with my Apple ID? I just want to use my AppleID for the App store.

You can't remove iCloud from your Apple ID. The best you can do is clear information from it and not enable the iCloud services on your devices.


Outlook 2011: Re-mapping keyboard shortcuts? At work I'm using Outlook 2011 and OSX 10.10. I just sent yet another incomplete email accidentally with the shortcut CMD + right enter. Is there any way to disable this shortcut? Googling around shows adding keyboard shortcuts into OSX itself but not Outlook. Thanks!

You can't disable it, but you can re-map the shortcut so you're far less likely to hit it.

Open System Preferences, go to Keyboard > Shortcuts (tab)> App Shortcuts (Left field). Click the "+", select "Microsoft Outlook" from the "Application:" list, change "Menu Title:" to "Send," and change the shortcut to something you aren't likely to hit accidentally, such as Shift + CMD + Option + G," or similar.

Close and re-open Outlook. Enjoy not accidentally sending unfinished eMail!


What is the iMessage character limit? Referring to iMessages, not SMS. Pasting text ~20,800 characters long gives an error that the message is too long on my Mac. What's the limit?

(This answer doesn't apply to the latest version of Messages in 10.12 which appears capable of sending VERY large messages)

TL;DR; In 10.10.5 the limit is 18996 but you can't paste in a block that large.

This isn't the answer you want but it's the answer you should listen to:

iMessage isn't designed for sending huge long messages. Write an email instead.

But if you really want an answer the max characters is 18996 but the catch is that iMessage on OSX (10.10.5) won't let you paste in a single block of text that big. Try breaking up and pasting in smaller 1000 character chunks if you must use this platform to send large amounts of text.


Is it possible to first enter a command and then choose "run in Terminal" in Quicksilver? Is it possible to first enter a command and then choose "run in Terminal" in Quicksilver?

Is there another way of doing it other than Quicksilver (though I would prefer Quicksilver)?

First, you'll need to install the Terminal Plugin.

Run any command from Quicksilver? Just enter text mode (by pressing .), enter your command and choose either the "Run Text Command in Terminal" action (opens a new terminal window and runs the command) or the "Run Command in Shell" action (runs the command in the background and returns the results to Quicksilver)
Run a script? Just browse to the script and choose the "Run" or "Run in Terminal [...]" actions.


How to add a self-signed root CA and always trust it from CLI on OSX I succeeded importing a root CA to the keychain with

sudo security add-trusted-cert -d -r trustRoot -k "/Library/Keychains/System.keychain" CA.crt

But it's marked as Use System Defaults, like

How can I mark it as Always Trust from CLI?

It seems that the only way to modify the trust settings via the security command is by the trust-settings-import option.  The xml file output by security trust-settings-export would be a good place to start; but, it looks a little tricky.


How to take a full length screenshot of the iPhone Messages app? How can we do a "full page" (full length, from first message to the last message) screenshot?

For example, this should be the resulting image:

It's just one unified image, not multiple screenshots.

Is there a way to do this easily?

(Taking multiple screenshots and merging them together with Photoshop like what we have above is not a real solution.)

Stich It! is the App you're looking for I believe.


Keyboard shortcuts for switching Spaces? I have a laptop and a desktop both running 10.11.1; on the laptop I found a way to set up Spaces so that CTRL-1 would take me immediately to screen 1 and similarly for all the other screens.  I rely on that convenience.  But on my desktop I am still stuck with this stupid Mission Control 2-step procedure.  I KNOW it's possible, but I have been unable to reproduce this convenience on the desktop.  Can anyone remind me how it's done?

You can enable this feature in the "Keyboard" preference pane.

Open System Preferences (e.g., from the Apple menu)
Click on the "Keyboard" preference pane
Go to the "Shortcuts" tab
Choose "Mission Control" from the menu on the left
Look in the box on the right for "Switch to Desktop 1"
Enable the feature by "checking" the check box
Be sure that the keyboard shortcut is "^1" ("^" means Control)

If you only have one desktop right now, then you will only see "Switch to Desktop 1", but by placing a checkmark in the box, the feature will be enabled as you add new desktops.


2x 4gig + 1x8gig Or 4x 4gig/2x 8 Gig sticks So recently some people in the office have been complaining there macs are intently slow.
Now I dont know much about macs but because im one of 2 devs on staff I ofcourse Know all there is to know about IT.
My manager says its a Network/Server issue but I cant see how a server can cause Adobe/General Mac operations to slow.
The only common ground on all of these macs are that as the title mentions they all have the following memory setup:
2x 4gig sticks and 1 8gig Stick
From my windows experience although this works its a bad practice.
I further Believe its this as my Computer is the only one in the office with 2x 8gig sticks and I have 0 Issues with my machine Doing way more intense tasks then any of the designers when I run simulated mobile devices in the few hundreds.
Anyone Can confirm that it is better to use the same Sticks in pairs A.k.a Getting everyones Ram switched so They pair 4's and 8's instead of mix matching?

Yes, always avoid mix ‘n match...
4 * 4 or 2 * 8 is much better.


How do I delete empty rows in excel but not empty cells in rows with information in them? I am working with a large excel spreadsheet and I need to delete all the rows that are completely blank.

I do not want to delete rows or cells with any information in any of the columns.

Thanks in advance

If you only want to delete rows that are completely empty, the easiest way I've found is to use a filter.  Highlight all of the columns that you want to include and then click the filter button.  Uncheck "select all", and then scroll to the very bottom and click to check the box for blanks.  This will show only your blank rows.  Highlight all and right-click a row and select delete.  This deleted all your blank rows.  Now turn off the filter and viola, no blank rows!


Is there a fix for the Bluetooth issues in OS X 10.10? After updating my iMac (late 2013) to OS X 10.10.3, my cursor has begun to move very sluggishly and erratically. In addition, my Apple Wireless Keyboard and Magic Mouse both randomly drop their connection entirely, often taking minutes to reconnect. The keyboard will also occasionally send repeated keystrokes to the computer, continuing until I physically turn it off. I have tried to restart the computer (many times), reset the SMC and NVRAM, boot into Safe Mode, and turn Bluetooth, WiFi, and the peripherals on and off, all to no avail. Several times the machine would boot without any lag, only to begin lagging when I opened Messages or Safari. There is no Bluetooth interference, as none of my other nearby devices experience any Bluetooth issues. I have also noticed that USB peripherals work perfectly, without any lag.

Are there any potential workarounds I haven't tried? Or will I simply have to cope until Apple pushes another release?

Update: These issues, to a lesser extent, are still present in OS X 10.10.4.

If you boot into safe mode, does the erratic behavior persist? (i.e. use the Mac in that mode for hours if possible as opposed to using it to rebuild some system caches and then reboot back into normal boot state)
If you make a new user account, does the erratic behavior persist?
Can you reproduce the keyboard issues in recovery HD and/or single user mode?

Those are the first things I'd test to see if a workaround is possible. Also, get a sudo sysdiagnose every time the OS is laggy - those logs will help if you need to open a bug report with Apple. I've not heard of (nor experienced first hand) problems, but it's also soon in the release cycle.


What does the layered HDR icon mean in my photos? I have the iPhone Xs and I’m interested in the Smart HDR feature. I note that it is enabled by default. However, only a handful of the photos that I have taken over the past week or two have the HDR icon. If I disable Smart HDR and take a photo before and after manually activating HDR I don’t get the icon overplayed on the resulting photo. It definitely looks like the HDR is working but I just don’t understand what the icon means.

Older iPhones would put the 'HDR' overlay only on pictures that used HDR.

The iPhone XS/XS Max has some form of Smart HDR on at all times (when turned on in Settings).  You will only see the HDR overlay for times when the system had to use extreme or excessive HDR to the photo.

If you have Auto HDR turned on then be assured that it's apply Smart HDR to your pictures.


Apple USB to Ethernet failed to work I bought a USB to Ethernet adapter from Apple, and I downloaded a lot things this afternoon. After dinner, both my retina MacBook Pro and the adapter felt very hot, so I unplugged it. Now the MacBook Pro seems to be frozen and I have to hold the power button for several second to force shut it down. And later that day, the adapter refused to work.

Here is the log in my /var/log/system.log:

Oct 25 21:38:08 localhost kernel[0]: AppleUSBEthernet: Ethernet address 20:9a:dd:41:24:89
Oct 25 21:38:10 localhost kernel[0]: AppleUSBEthernet::doReenumerateDevice - Link down, Device 4f764100
Oct 25 21:38:10 localhost kernel[0]: ifnet_detach_final: Waiting for IO references on en2 interface to be released

Any idea? Is my adapter or the kext is broken?

This can be fixed adding/removing the device from the Network System Preference Pane.


Running two external 4k displays over thunderbolt to HDMI MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013) I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013).

Can I use two 3840 x 2160 external monitors over Thunderbolt 2 to HDMI connections if the laptop is in closed-display mode?

I would be perfectly happy with 30Hz refresh rate.

Yes you can for the MacBook Pro (Retina, Late 2013) and later

If you use a 60Hz Multi Stream Transport display with the MacBook Pro with AMD Radeon R9 M370X graphics card only one additional Thunderbolt display is supported.

You can use 4K displays and Ultra HD TVs at the following resolutions and refresh rates via the built-in HDMI port of your Mac:

3840 x 2160 at 30Hz
4096 x 2160 at 24Hz (mirroring is not supported at this resolution)

Check out this page from Apple  https://support.apple.com/kb/sp690?locale=en_GB

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT206587


How to disable "ignore ownership" option on an external volume on Mac OS X El Capitan? I'm using a MacBook Pro 13'' mid-2012 running Mac OS X El Capitan (10.11.6).
My problem is similar to https://serverfault.com/a/402216/616473.
I use rsync to create backups from my internal drive to an external USB drive.
In order to save disk space, I would like the backups to be incremental. For that, I use rsync with the --link-dest option. It should result with rsync not transferring the unchanged previously backed up files. Instead, rsync should create hard links to those files.
rsync -arv --link-dest=/Volumes/EXTERNAL-HDD/backup-1/ /folder-to-backup/ /Volumes/EXTERNAL-HDD/backup-2/

For example, the files that have been backed up during Backup 1, and that have not changed since then, should not be transferred during Backup 2. Instead, in the folder backup-2/ should be hard links to those previously transferred files.
But rsync doesn't work properly in my case and it is not hard-linking the files (and is copying it twice). The reason for this problem is that rsync is not getting the real UID of the files : https://terminalapp.net/backups-rsync-and-link-dest-not-working/ because of the "ignore ownership" option that is enabled by default on Mac OS X.
So I would like to disable this "ignore ownership" option for the external drive. After some googling, I understand that there are two different ways : via the Finder (there should be a checkbox in the "Get Info" section of the drive) or via the Terminal (Change "ignore ownership on this volume" from the command line for Mac OS X volume).
I can't find the checkbox.
I tried to that :
sudo diskutil enableOwnership disk2s1

with disk2s1 being my external drive.
But I got the following error : Error enountered enabling user/group ownership: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-69860)
So, how the hell can I just turn off this ignore ownership for my specific external drive ?
Thank you for your answers

From comments, your disk is formatted as FAT32, which is incapable of holding unix or even Windows permissions.

It is also very dubious in its hardlink capability. You can force them, but file repair tools are likely to break them.
By far the best format for Mac backups is GUID/HFS+ not MBR/FAT32.
You will need to Erase (not Partition) the entire disk to change it to GUID/HFS+ (macOS Extended, Journaled; GUID Partition Map in Disk Utility) so you will either need to abandon your first effort or back it up somewhere - but note it will not have correct perms already, so I'd suggest starting over.


How do I make sure that OS X Mavericks is successfully installed? How do I know if OS X Mavericks was installed successfully? In the App Store, will the button next to the OS X Mavericks app be shown as "Installed" after the completion of installation?

Click the  in the top left of your screen and select "About This Mac". If it says "Version 10.9.x" then you have successfully upgraded to Mavericks!

The installer app should have removed itself, but if it didn't you can go ahead and delete it manually.

And in the App Store it should show you a "Download" button instead of a greyed out "Installed" button. This is so you can download it again to reinstall OS X or install on another Mac. The App Store is not the place to check what version of OS X is installed, only to download apps and new versions of OS X.


How do i get full capacity from Fusion drive on vmWare ESXi 6.0 Mac Mini 7,1 I managed to install the free vmWare ESXi 6.0 hypervisor on a Mac Mini 7,1. It's running rather nicely from a USB memory.

The mini has a 2TB Fusion drive. My problem is that i can only get the 106 GB SSD drive to show for datastorage, not the remaining spinning platter capacity. Going to Configuration -> Storage -> Add storage will not discover any more disk (as won't connecting a USB3 HDD to the mac, but that doesn't quite surprise me).

What should i do to get all the disk capacity to use?

The ESXi 6.0.0 update 2 solves this problem. The Fusion disk is recognised as two separate disks (which they in fact are). With that, i now have two datastores, one on the SSD and another one on the HDD.

What i usually do is install the guests on small virtual disks on the SSD datastore and give them a larger chunk on the HDD datastore. I've also successfully used Linux LVM to extend partitions on the SSD to "continue" to the HDD, but that's for another StackExchange question.


Hibernate MacBook on 10-ish % power instead of 0/1% when running on battery? Yeah, I know my battery is probably hosed, but every time I reach 5%, my MacBook shuts down, as it expects the battery to be able to run down to 1% before hibernating.

However I would like it to hibernate and not shutdown, when I run out of power, so is it possible to make my MacBook hibernate at like 5-10%?

My MacBook is over 2 years old and I'm not going to buy a new battery. The battery only lasts 1-2 hours.

I have tried calibrating the battery, resetting the SMC etc., without any noticeable effect.

http://www.jinx.de/SmartSleep.html will let you control it via GUI. The app is $6 on his website or $4 on the Mac App Store.

  (Note: I have no idea how this app ever got approved for the Mac App Store, but it appears that Apple is stone-walling the developer on approving a Lion-compatible update. This seems to be Apple's passive-aggressive way of getting apps out of the Mac App Store after they were approved: they don't want to upset people by yanking the app, so they just won't approve an update and eventually it either breaks and the developer pulls the app because they are getting so many support requests, or people just stop buying it. When the sandboxing rules hit in November, we may see apps start disappearing from the Mac App Store. All of which is to say that if I was going to buy this app, I'd buy it through his website even though it's $2 more. There's a demo available, although the "request a trial" button didn't work for me, I assume it's a temporary glitch that the developer can fix. It also appears that Mac App Store customers can download the version from his website and use that, so if those $2 are really important to you, I guess you could try that.)

If you'd rather spend time than money, http://tidbits.com/article/9115 has a script that might help.


How to set time zone to UTC? I prefer my time zone to be UTC.  While I could simply choose my location as Reykjavik, Iceland, for which the official time is UTC, I would much rather have a way to use UTC without changing my location setting that way.  Is this possible?  I'm on Lion if that matters.

Your location and time zone settings are linked. You have to choose a location to change your time zone. This doesn’t affect your location in your documents or Autofill, as those use the data from your Contact Card.


Want to clean up contacts Years ago I thought I was going to be smart and import 6000 contacts to my database. Several mail systems and mail clients later, I would now like to clean this up down to about the 800-1000 that I actually need.

I can identify the ones to delete because they have an address, but no phone or email.
I am using google apps for business, mail & address book.

I thought if I could just get everything in to a mail client that sorts contacts better, I could sort and manually delete. That would synch accross systems and voila - clean. Problem is I need to look for address with no email or phone number associated in a certain zip code.

I made and archive of my contacts. What I am trying to avoid is exporting all, cleaning in excel, then deleting everything and re-importing all.

Tried thunderbird. no go. tried entourage, but it is not importing all my contacts.

You could use Automator to filter the contacts according to that criteria. I haven't actually tried it, and I'm including a screenshot with some of the conditions I'd use just for reference. But still, this might help.


Screen resolution 4k vs remote desktop resolution (Microsoft Remote Desktop) First, very sorry for my English. I do not write often in English...

I just upgrade from an old iMac 2011 to the new iMac 4k 2017. I am quite pleased with it, but something's bothering me.

I have to work in remote desktop on another computer, a Dell Optiplex 3040, Windows 10, in another city. The resolution is not very good (probably because of my own 4K resolution). I tried a few tricks - downgrade my screen resolution with SwitchResX, but it just affect my own screen badly. I tried to adjust the resolution inside of the app (Remote Desktop by Microsoft), but no luck.

My question is : if i use an second monitor (not 4k), and display the screen of the MRD on it, could it address the situation ? Could the resolution on the external monitor would look like what I had on my old iMac ?

You can dedicate a secondary display to a remote desktop connection by setting Resolution to Native in the Edit window for a saved connection, and selecting Start session in full screen. You might also want to uncheck Use all monitors. If the resolution of the secondary display is suitable for your Windows 10 system, this is likely to work well. When full screen is selected, the session will open on the display containing the primary Microsoft Remote Desktop window.

You might be able to improve the appearance of a remote desktop on your primary display by using scaling (there is a Scaling item in the Window menu). The Scale content checkbox in the Edit allows you to change the default value for that. You might find that text is too small if you shrink the window too much, depending on how the Windows 10 system is configured.


how do I get my iPhone contacts onto my new MacBook Pro, so that I can send iMessages from my computer, instead of my phone? I just bought another MacBook Pro and I want to send and receive text messages from my mac instead of my iPhone. How do I get my MacBook Pro to sync with my iPhone as it used to on my old MacBook?

You will need to use the same iCloud device on both, and allow Messages in the cloud on both devices. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Tap your name at the top > iCloud. Make sure, both Contacts and Messages are enabled.

Then go back to iMessage on the Mac and go through the configuration there. You may need to open iMessage preferences, then go to the iMessage tab and check most of the boxes there.


Set Mac to use Wifi for Internet, Ethernet for local file transfer Is there a way to make my Mac always choose Wifi for Internet browsing, and Ethernet for local network browsing and file-sharing?

My Wifi Internet download speeds are approaching 100Mbps, but when I'm connected via Ethernet, I only get 15Mpbs.

However, when transferring files via Wifi it is the complete opposite. A 1GB file might take a few minutes, whereas over Ethernet, it's done in a fraction of that time.

I know I can't make my Ethernet connect to my Internet faster because of the hardware limitations of my house. But I guess I could try and work out why my Wifi file transfer is so slow.

But for sake of Stack Exchange, my only questions is as stated in the first sentence.

There are tools like Marco Polo that can change such settings based on location, but you will need to actually change your location, or have some other automated way to trigger this change. While there are some sophisticated servers and network hardware that can access multiple TCP/IP connections, and route different classes of network traffic to different ports, your Mac isn't one of them. So, I really don't think there is anything in the software you can configure to have your Mac send some traffic over Ethernet and others over Wifi: its all or nothing.

I too prefer to use Ethernet for file transfers, whereas Wifi is fine for nearly all other uses. The easiest way to achieve what you want is to simply plug in the Ethernet cable when you want Ethernet, unplug when you do not.

For this to work properly, you simply need to inform your Mac to prefer Ethernet over Wifi. You do this by System Preferences> Network. Click the 'gear' icon at the bottom of the Network list, then choose "Set Service Order". You want to drag the Ethernet service to the TOP of the list, with Wifi below it. This way, the Mac will connect to Ethernet when it is available, even over an active Wifi connection.


Forward events / notifications to other phone I would like to forward my iPhone notifications or alerts to an Android phone.

Is there a way/app to do this?

I think an App called "pushbullet" can probably do what you want.

Pushbullet by Pushbullet
https://appsto.re/us/02ptW.i

Quick video of setup and demonstration: https://youtu.be/BVpUbJFLRvs


Running 3 External monitors from a Macbook Pro Retina 13" Mid 2014 I currently own a Macbook pro (Retina 13",mid 2014)
2.6GHz Intel Core i5
8GB 1600 Mhz DDR3
Intel Iris 1536 mb

3 x 22" Samsung Monitors. 2 of them running through Thunderbolt to DVI-D adapter.

The 3 monitor i have tried using both a DVI-D to HDMI convertor and USB to DVI convertor.

But i just can't get the 3rd monitor to run.  Any thoughts?? Is my specs not enough to run all the monitors?

Thanks

It looks like your computer can only drive up to two external displays (officially, at least). https://support.apple.com/kb/SP703?locale=en_US


How does google maps know that I've taken pictures? Yesterday I've visited a restaurant. The restaurant had a beautiful garden and colorful plants. So I took several pictures there. Today, Google Maps sent me a notification and offered me to share those pictures as I've taken for that restaurant.

How does Google Maps know that I've taken pictures there? Does the app regularly check(while the app is running) my pictures and their location without my knowledge? If so, then Google Maps can also upload those pictures to somewhere without even asking me? So if I allow access to my photos for an app, does that mean the app can access my photos without showing a "BROWSE" or something like that and upload to somewhere? I though iOS API needs photos to be picked by user to be shared by an app. Otherwise any app that has proper access permissions can access to all of my photos and then may upload all of them to cloud, whithout my knowledge, right?

Edit: Ok, I'm having hard time to explain myself. I know if Google Maps has access permissions to photos, then it can access photos. That's not the issue here. The problem is that: My phone is locked and sitting on the table. Then I get a notification from Google Maps, asking to share the photos I've taken yesterday at the restaurant I've visited! Not only that, when I click the notification, Google Maps opens up with a view with already selected photos which all taken at the specified location. This is only possible if I opened the Google Maps app, after taking photos, which I did for getting back to home. The problem is, when I open the Google Maps or any other app that has access permission to photos, does this mean all those app can access all of my photos, any time(if app is running in foreground)? I thought apps need to call some iOS APIs to show me the thumbnails, then only the photos I've checked will be delivered to app. That is, I thought apps can only access the photos I've picked from the thumbnail view and the thumbnail view is mandatory and handled by iOS, just like passcode and touchID(apps can't read users' fingerprint or passcode, it's all handled by iOS).

As evident from the screenshot of the Google Maps settings, you've granted the app access to all your photos. So there is nothing which stops Maps from searching geolocations of photos recently taken and make appropriate recommendations.
Also, this thread here suggests that

Google Maps suggest automatically to upload photos to places you visited.
This option could be modified here:
Open Google Maps then go to menu > settings > notifications > your contributions > adding your photos, see suggestions for photos to post (DISABLE THIS BOTTON).

Those who have this or geolocation disabled mayn't see the photos access prompt or access settings..
The best I can speculate is: App has geolocation or location history turned on. When you agree to share/upload photos for improving the service, it asks for photos access and it's granted. Now whenever you return from some place to a previously significant place, photos can be checked against for location for recommendations.
As per the comment:

[E]ven if I disable the see suggestions for photos to post option, Google Maps still can access my photos and upload them to anywhere, without showing me a window to pick photos, right?

Would need to see the photos API for that. Till now, what is think is that, it's a native iOS interface to display photos.


Is there a way to hibernate macbook then switch to windows? I have installed Windows7 by bootcamp on my Macbook, however, every time when I want to switch to Windows, I have to reboot the machine completely. That means I cannot keep my current workspace when next time I switch back to OSX.

If you use the Mac's hibernate function by the terminal, you don't even have the chance to choose which system to boot from, it immediately wakes up OSX. Sometimes, that's really a pain.

Back to the days of Windows, we used the hibernate function to switch between systems without losing your current workspace. Is there an alternative way to achieve it on Mac?

PS:
I can not use a virtual machine solution, because it has some hardware disadvantages. Such as the development of Kinect can't work through VM environment.

OS X does not natively hibernate like Windows.

For maximum effectiveness, apply both of these methods:

Install rEFIt.
Start Terminal
Run /efi/refit/enable.sh
Put the Mac to deep sleep.
When you power up the Mac, the efi menu will appear and you are able to select to boot OS X or Bootcamp.

But, since you have Mac hardware, you should be able to VM OSX.

Secondly, you can try pmset.  You can change it with sudo pmset -a hibernationmode 25.

The pmset man page also recommends using 25 instead of 1.

0000 1000 (bit 3) encourages the dynamic pager to page out inactive pages
prior to hibernation, for a smaller memory footprint.

0001 0000 (bit 4) encourages the dynamic pager to page out more
aggressively prior to hibernation, for a smaller memory footprint.

We do not recommend modifying hibernation settings. Any changes you make
are not supported. If you choose to do so anyway, we recommend using one
of these three set- tings. For your sake and mine, please don't use
anything other 0, 3, or 25.

[...]

hibernatemode = 25 (binary 0001 1001) is only settable via pmset. The
system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and
will remove power to memory. The system will restore from disk image. If
you want "hibernation" - slower sleeps, slower wakes, and better battery
life, you should use this setting.


Disk not mounting after enabling TRIM I enabled the TRIM for my SSD on my MacbookPro using Chameleon SSD, and now the Mac doesn't boot any longer. I have tried to follow guides to reverse the TRIM but none of them actually work because my disk appears to be not mounted and does not appear in /Volumes/

When I open the Disk utility, the disk is greyed. If I try to mount it, I get an error : Try repairing the disk. And of course, when I run a repair, it fails too.

Sadly I have no recent backup (of course, would be too easy).

How can I mount this volume and reverse the TRIM enable?

Don't panic! I hope you haven't done irreparable damage with the disk utilities and partitioning, which has nothing to do with the problem. The fix is actually very simple.

The grey screen is caused by the non-signed kernel driver for the SSD. Mac OS X won't allow it to load by default, thus you can't access the boot disk.

This can happen if you don't turn off the kernel signing check, or if it gets turned on, which it often does during a system update.

If you are using Trim Enabler, this article describes how to recover. A similar procedure should work for anything that turned on trim.

I'm using a Crucial SSD too, with trim enabled. I forgot to turn Trim off before a system update, and had to recover using the instructions on the linked page (successfully).

Basically it overrides the kernel signing check once again, so you can boot your Mac like before.

https://www.cindori.org/trim-enabler-and-yosemite/

Once I was back in, I used the trimforce command to prevent the problem in the future ;-) Trimforce is new in Yosemite, I believe.


How do I turn off Airpod notifications on MacOS Big Sur? As of Big Sur, everytime I open or unlock my Mac or walk over to it from being somewher else I get this notification

I don't need it, dismissing it is a distraction and waiting for it to disappear is an obstruction to getting work done.
How and turn it off so I never get notifications about my Airpods?

Go to System Preferences → Bluetooth and for your AirPods choose Options and set ‘Connect to This Mac’ to ‘When Last Connected to This Mac’.


POSIX path returns strange path? I was writing some AppleScript code when I came to the following result :

tell application "QuickTime Player"
set paths to file of document of windows
get paths
repeat with theItem in paths
    display dialog POSIX path of theItem
end repeat
end tell

Basically it get the path of movies open in a QuickTimeX window.

The AppleScript path is OK : Macintosh HD:Users:MyUser:Downloads:aMovie#.mp4

But in one posix output I got :  ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Downloads/aMovie2.mp4

Any idea why this (and what ~/Library/Containers/ actually is ?), since the AppleScript was ok ? In the path above Downloads is a link to ~/Downloads.

Edit : ~/Library/Containers seems to be used for sandboxing (sandboxing on dev.apple.com).  But why do I have 2 differents POSIX path for the same AppleScript paths ?

The sandbox container directories contain symlinks to files the application is allowed read and write access to. For example ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Downloads/ is a symlink to ~/Downloads/.

You'll get the sandboxed directory path when you open the file and QuickTime is already open and the "normal" path when you open the file and QuickTime is not already open yet.


my iphone5 is shutting down and has no power to turn on what do i do? I've had my iPhone 5 for a year now but ever since iv had it it always had battery problems, i tried to replace it with a new battery but it would work for a day and the power off. Now when i try to charge it it doesn't light or display anything even charging over night doesn't put the phone on, does anyone know what i can do?

first thing I would do is restore it back to factory one more time.  If that doesn't work, call apple and tell them, they may give you a credit, and lastly try to trade it in and get the iPhone 6 when it comes out, or if you can't wait till then, try to trade it in now.  As far as fixing the issue,it sounds like you may just have a lemon. You could tell them at an Apple store that they said this would fix it, and it isn't working, they should have given you a new phone instead of trying to replace the battery.  But next time you get a phone that's a dud, or any electronic, request a replacement, say its no good.


MAC hanged when submitting app I've submitted my first app to Apple and waiting for approval. My MAC was hanged while I was submitting. I needed to restart MAC. After restarting, the state of app on iTunes connect was 'Waiting For Review'. I am not sure whether binary was uploaded correctly or not. Will Apple Review Team contact me in case binary was not uploaded properly? If yes, how much time it usually takes?

Waiting for Review is the status after Waiting for Upload, this means your binary should have been uploaded correctly.

However, to be certain - why wouldn't you revoke it and upload it again?
Else you have to wait and maybe get a result that the binary is corrupted and you have to wait the usually pretty long period again.


What's the best way to move from an HDD to an SSD on a Mac Pro? I've read many SSD postings and web sites but not gotten help on a particular scenario.

I have a 2009 Mac Pro with a single 400 GB HDD installed.

I want to add a 128 GB SSD for faster booting and performance. I can definitely fit that part of my existing HDD unto the smaller SSD. The question is how to install and configure.

Clearly I cannot do a Carbon Copy or similar operation. I guess I would want to install Lion onto the new SSD keeping the old HDD as a second drive.

-- After I install the new SSD, how do I get Lion installed and booting from it?

-- And, then, how do I disentangle whatever parts of Lion on the 'old' HDD so I can delete them?

Any guidance, threads, hints would be really appreciated!

Thanks,

Pito

You can definitely do it. But you either can't use your home folder to store your data for the most part, or you have to figure out how to do some kind of voodoo.

What I did is not supported by Apple, but it works just fine. And you can take it in for repair under warranty no problem. So there's nothing to stop you from doing it.

I got the information I needed here:

http://www.ransom-note-typography.com/index.php/SSD_and_Your_Home_Directory

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/05/14/tuaw-tip-moving-your-home-folder-to-another-disk-or-moving-it/

Basically the idea is you copy your user folder to a big conventional drive. Then you install Lion on a new SSD and create a user account with the same name. I named the big drive "Users" and then put the Home folders in its root.

Go to Users& Groups in System Preferences. Right click on the account. Choose advanced options. For the Home directory field, there's a "Choose" button on the right. Click it and navigate to the copy of the account on the new User drive, and select it. Reboot. You will now be using the user account on the conventional drive. Your Desktop, Pictures, Music, Downloads, Documents, etc. folders are now on the big drive, but it's just like it's on the boot drive.

A big benefit here is that you can format your boot drive and reconnect it to the User drive, and not touch your files at all. And you can clone the User drive and it won't contain your system files. (Or your Applications which remain on the boot drive.)

If it's not clear, ask questions and I'll try to clarify.


Keyboard shortcut: shift+tab in chrome does wrong thing I'm a new mac user really (really) struggling to learn the mac keyboard shortcuts.  One that is just killing me right now is navigating forms in Chrome.

Say I hit Tab to go to the next element in a form.  When i hit Shift+Tab to try to return to that element, instead of going back up the form, Chrome navigates to the previous tab.

How do I fix this?  My strong preference is for Shift-Tab to simply reverse-navigate the form - that is pretty standard behavior..

As a workaround, or just to check whether the problem is with Google Chrome or something else, install this extension.

To configure it to go to the last input, type in Shift + Tab in Shortcut Key and as the Action, click Browser Action > Inner Page Action > Focus on the previous input element.

You could also try Reset Browser Settings and then try going back in a form in Incognito Mode - ⌘+Shift+N


How can I copy the drivers provided by Apple when installing Bootcamp on an external drive? I am the owner of a MacBook Pro 2018 and I want to install Bootcamp on an external drive.
I've been following a guide I found on the internet here, and I managed to create a bootable drive, but couldn't include the required drivers on it for continuing with the installation. I can't use neither the MacBook Keyboard/Touchpad or wireless keyboard/mouse, and I don't have any USB ones.
Someone called David Anderson (I think he's on here) commented on that guide that it'd be recommended to use the dism command as follows:
Dism /image:<path_to_image_directory> /add-driver /driver:<folder_containing_INF> /recurse /forceunsigned

The thing is that I don't understand how to do it, it sounds too abstract for me.
Could anyone shed some light on this?

The dism command you are referring to was originally posted as part of this answer. Colin William posted 2 responses which explain how and when to use a Windows laptop to execute the command.
I originally posted that the dism command should be executed while running in the virtual machine. However, after reading Colin William's posts, I decided for this answer to build on his experience and post how to use the dism command after shutting down the virtual machine. The steps are given below.

Julius Pargac's procedure calls for copying the Window Support Software to a MS-DOS (FAT) formatted 4 GB or larger flash drive. Instead, use a ExFAT formatted 16 GB or larger flash drive. Additionally, copy all the files from the Windows 10 ISO to this flash drive. The result should appear similar to what is shown below.

Proceed with Julius Pargac's procedure until after you have closed VirtualBox. This is immediately after you have manually shutdown the virtual machine.

Eject and unplug the external drive where windows is installed. Plug in the flash drive. Restart the Mac and immediately hold down the option key until the Mac Startup Manager icons appear. Select the external drive icon labeled EFI Boot.

The first window to appear should be similar to the one shown below.

Proceed as one would for a GUI installation of Windows. When a window similar to the one shown below appears, press the shift+F10 key combination.

The result should be the appearance of the Command Prompt window shown below.

Plug in the external drive where Windows is installed.

Enter the command given below. This will list the volumes.
echo list volume | diskpart

From the output, determine the drive letters for the flash drive and the external drive where Windows is installed. I found letter C: for the flash drive and letter D: for the external drive where Windows is installed. If you have different drive letters, then make the appropriate substitutions when entering the command given below. This command copies the Windows Support Software drivers to the Windows 10 drivers store.
dism /image:d:\ /add-driver /driver:c:\$WinPEDriver$ /recurse /forceunsigned

Note: If a driver meant to be installed after Windows has finished installing, then an error message will be displayed. You can ignore such messages.

When finished, close the Command Prompt window and the Activate Windows window. If prompted, select the Yes button. The Mac should reboot to macOS.

After booting to macOS, eject and remove the flash drive. Proceed from where you left off in Julius Pargac's procedure.

I do not have a MacBook Pro with a T2 chip to test the above steps. If you have problems, then post a comment and/or update your question.


Change Permissions on macOS USB Device I need to find out how to set the permissions of a USB flash drive at the device (not filesystem) level.  In other words, I need to grant the user read/write access to a USB device identified by diskutil which is /dev/diskX where X is some integer.

For example, I insert a USB flash drive and according to diskutil it's identifier is /dev/disk5.  If I check the permissions of it:

$ ls /dev/disk5*
brw-r-----  1 root  operator    1,  15 May 15 08:35 /dev/disk5
brw-r-----  1 root  operator    1,  16 May 15 08:35 /dev/disk5s1
brw-r-----  1 root  operator    1,  17 May 15 08:35 /dev/disk5s2

It has root:operator ownership and rw access limited to root and r access to operators only (this is why you must issue commands that modify the device as sudo).

What I need to do is give rw access to the operator as well and it's not as simple as just chmod 660 /dev/disk5.  The moment you unplug the device and plug it back in, it loses the permissions.

Why do I need to do this?

I need to boot a USB flash drive in VirtualBox.  To do so, I need to be able to create a "raw" disk image as a passthrough to the actual USB device.  The problem is, to do this, I must issue the command via sudo which then changes the user I am executing VBoxManage which causes a number of errors since root has an environment completely different than the logged in user.

This can be accomplished in FreeBSD (I am sure Linux as well via a different method) by modifying the devfs.rules file and adding in a line like:

add path 'da*' mode 0660 group operator

Which essentially gives rw access to any USB storage device (USB storage is identified by FreeBSD as /dev/da0, /dev/da1, etc.)

How do I do this on macOS?

I was never able to find a way to get direct access to the raw device, however, VirtualBox has a "raw disk access" feature that allowed me to get around this problem.

The way this works is a VMDK drive is created that is actually mapped to a physical volume.  This acts as a passthrough so that VB can access a physical device.

VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "</path/to/file>.vmdk" -rawdisk /dev/disk#

For example, if I had a physical USB device with an OS installer I could create a VMDK which I could attach to a VM.

Example:

Assume a USB installer with macOS/FreeBSD/Linux/Windows.  To attach that physical USB to a VM (assuming /dev/disk3 is the USB device),

Insert and unmount (not eject) the device.

diskutil unmount /dev/disk3

Create the VMDK

sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "USB_OS_Installer.vmdk" -rawdisk /dev/disk3

Take ownership of the VMDK (it was created as root via sudo; replace "user" with your username and leave the group "staff" as is)

sudo chown user:staff USB_OS_Installer.vmdk

Attach the VMDK to the VM in VirtualBox's GUI.

You now have access to a physical boot media device through your VM.


macOS app review process: Touch Bar functionality in metadata I have a macOS app that get bug fixed. But the latest Apple review process drives me a bit insane. They always tell me that my app's metadata indicates Touch Bar functionality which my app do not have.

So my App have no Touch Bar functions, also it do not use any NSTouchBar methods. I actually never build any Touch bar app – so is there a capability or something that I could have possibly activated and what Apple now indicates there "should" be Touch Bar integration but there is none?

I asked them where my metadata is indicating Touch Bar functionality but they only redirects me to the App Store Connect Developer Help. Which do not help me. Even when I search for Touch Bar there is no match.

So I have no idea what Apple want from me. I wrote them now that they maybe misread the description. I am using a Status Bar Menu in my App – maybe they had read "Touch Bar" instead of "Status Bar"...

Or am I missing something that I have possibly accidentally activated?

This is the response from Apple:

  Your app does not achieve the core functionality described in your
  app’s metadata.

  Specifically, your app’s metadata is still indicating that your app is
  using touchBar functionality.

  The user is provided the option to select this functionality within
  the app. Only after attempting to use this functionality is the user
  told that it is not available without an additional install. It will
  be necessary to remove this functionality from the app.

At this stage, I'd advise you to submit a technical support incident. As a paid member of the Apple Developer Program, you are eligible for 2 technical support incidents in a year. It involves getting access to an engineer from Apple's development team and basically get code level assistance.

Requesting Technical Support

  A Technical Support Incident (TSI) is a request for code-level support for Apple frameworks, APIs, and tools, and is available to members of the Apple Developer Program, Apple Developer Enterprise Program, and MFi Program. Submit a TSI if you cannot fix a bug, have trouble implementing a specific technology, or have other questions about your code. Your incident will be assigned to a Developer Technical Support engineer who can help troubleshoot your code or investigate possible workarounds to fast-track your development. Support is provided in English via email, typically within three business days.

You can have an engineer look through the issue and advise you in what may be possibly causing trouble getting your app approved.


Possible to disable internal SSD on Macbook Air? Is it possible to temporarily disable the SSD on a Macbook Air?

I want to install XP on an external USB drive to work with my Late 2010 Macbook Air.  This technique requires detaching your hard disk in order to make the image.  That's obviously a problem since my disk is soldered onto my motherboard.. but on the same token I imagine there's a way to disable it (what if there was an actual malfunction?  perhaps it just renders the unit useless but I'd hope not).

I have a MBP I can do this on, but XP will surely NOT like to be transferred from one machine to another..

The SSD is not soldered to the motherboard, it just has a new, unique connector. You can get in there and detach it. Check iFixit for instructions, and beware that such may void your warranty.

And if the Pro is recent enough, it may indeed work to install on there and transfer to the Air.


How can I get quicklook to ignore network volumes? How can I modify com.apple.qtkitserver.sb to ignore a certain network volume?
For example, I don't want quicklook to build previews of graphic assets that are on a server. When I access a netatalk share with hundreds of jpg's in a folder, fs_usage shows a ton of transactions like this:

09:43:15.675208  getattrlist                            /Applications/Preview.app                                                                                0.000007   Finder.2001210
09:43:15.675276  getattrlist                            /Volumes/server/path/file.jpg                  0.000010   Finder.2001210
09:43:15.675735  open              F=38       (R_____)  /Volumes/server/path/file.jpg >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>    0.000458 W Finder.2001210
09:43:15.675738  fstat64           F=38                                                                                0.000002   Finder.2001210
09:43:15.675745  pread             F=38   B=0x24       O=0x00000000                                                                                0.000003   Finder.2001210
09:43:15.675748  pread             F=38   B=0x62       O=0x00030235                                                                                0.000002   Finder.2001210
09:43:15.676384  close             F=38                                                                                0.000634 W Finder.2001210

Which I am guessing is quicklook building thumbnails and previews of the files contained therein. This is slowing finder down to a crawl until the transactions complete.

I tried adding the rule:

(deny file-read
      (subpath "/Volumes/Volumename"))

That did not seem to have any effect.

It is not quicklook that is trying to generate previews on its own, it is Finder that triggers it when you access that (and any other) folder on any mounted drive.

When in the folder, open Finder / View / Show View Options (shortcut Cmd+J), deselect Show Icon Preview and click Use as Defaults. That information is stored in the .DS_Store file in each folder.


Why my 2009 macbook pro is faster than my 2017 retina iMac? A couple of years ago I bought a used macbook pro from a friend of mine, I knew it was a good deal cause the mbp was modified and had very good response and performance, the specs of this mbp are the following (although its in spanish you will get it):

I love this macbook, firstly cause its 15 inch and I prefer big laptops, secondly cause the performance its good, from a normal web and email browsing session, up to a large xcode programming workspace or a whole 30 min final cut pro video edition.

In the other hand I recently bought a band new 21.5 inch iMac which also seemed like a good deal, my logic in that moment was that if my 2009 second-hand mbp (2.8 GHz core duo) had excellent performance, a 2014 retina iMac (3GHz Intel core i5) would be up to three times faster than my laptop. iMac specs:

This iMac its always laggy and opening any app takes soooo much time. It constantly freezes and I cant think about having more than 3 apps at the same time, that would be useless.

I dont know exactly what customization the MBP had, guess it was a RAM and video card upgrade next to the 250GB SSD.

My question is, whats the problem with the iMac and what can I do to achieve the same (or better) performance that the mbp?

The SSD is the main difference?

Yes, the SSD is the main difference.

Your iMac has a 1TB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive and this is what’s causing the bottleneck. The MacBook Pro, on the other hand, has a solid state drive that is multiple times faster. So, while the iMac may actually process things faster, loading apps and reading/writing data will be a lot slower. And, if it needs to use hard drive space when it needs more RAM, this will also significantly slow things down.

Achieving the same/better performance

Since your iMac has two Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports that support speeds up to 40 Gbps (via Thunderbolt) and 10 Gbps (via USB 3.1 Gen 2), the easiest solution is to use an external SSD that’s connected via one of these ports and to install macOS instead. You would then use that drive as your main boot volume.

However, you would need to ensure that:

it’s definitely an external SSD (and not just a hard drive)
it supports either Thunderbolt or USB-C (i.e. USB 3.1) as its interface

Both of the above are critical if you’re wanting to improve speed. Thunderbolt models are still quite expensive, but you'll find USB-C / USB 3.1 models at reasonable prices.

NOTE:  Do not get confused by USB 3 - this is not the same as USB 3.1. And remember, it needs to connect to one of the two Thunderbolt ports (not one of the USB ports).

Some examples of the types of external drives I mean are:

Samsung T5
SanDisk Extreme 510
G-Technology G-DRIVE mobile SSD

Once you have the drive you want, you will need to install macOS onto it and migrate your data.


2019 MacBook Air still sucks down battery when sleep Apples website says my 2019 MacBook Air has 30 day standby time and runs 12 hours on battery. My 2015 MacBook air (my first mac) actually got around 12 hours battery while using node, chrome, and sublime text (my usual tools at the time). I use to brag about it all the time and wouldn't plug it in until i was down to 5% battery. My 2015 model doesn't run as long as it did in 2015-2017 so i purchased a new one a month ago.

After a month of getting settled in with the 2019 mac I realize either the battery performance is lower quality, OS is sucking more resources in the background or my tools (node, chrome, and vs-code) are sucking more power. I only get about 6-7 hours of actual working time on average with my new mac which is only 1-2 hours longer than my old 2015 gets now even with true tone disabled. Both are running Mojave. What is the problem?

Also, over the last 8 days, my 2019 MacBook air has been on battery 7 days and 10 hours but only awake and working for 5 hours and the battery is at 9%. "enable power nap while on battery" is disabled as well as true tone. Excessive power consumption when the system is sleep was never a problem on my 2015 MacBook Air but it's a problem out of the box on my 2019 MacBook Air. Are there any new strategies for resolving this on newer macs? Do the old tricks apply to new macs?

A while back Apple introduced something called "Power Nap."

Basically your Mac will still do some background tasks while asleep. I am guessing that this might be what is going on.

Go to

System Preferences > Energy Saver

and look for "Enable Power Nap while on battery power."

I would guess that it is checked, un-check it and see if that helps.

Also there is a good shareware app out there called Coconut Battery that will give you some detailed info on battery health and usage, you may want to look into that as well.


Spontaneous and unwanted iTunes "reorganization" I was using a Mac Book Pro OSX 10.6.8 and had burned a lot of my CDs onto it.  I had never bought anything from the iTunes store.  When opening iTunes one day I saw everything had changed - playlists had disappeared and I when I went to Finder the bulk of my music was bundled under "Unknown Album". As I have the music on my iPod I continued using that; since I never buy songs from the iTunes store I just left it.

Now I have a new Mac Book Pro OSX 10.8.5. I used an external HDD and Time Machine to back up the old Mac Book and still have the back-up that predates the problem.

My question(s)

Can I transfer my tunes on the iPod to the new Mac Book (none of them are from the iTunes store)?
Is there any other way of fixing the problem?
Is there an alternative to iTunes that allows me to burn my CDs onto the Mac Book, organize them into playlists etc and copy to my iPod?

For what you asked first, here is what you get first:
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/35334/detune

DeTune is an App that helps you get Songs from your iPod.

For everything else regarding Organization:
Open iTunes and hit CMD+,

You should see the Settings, if not go to The Menu and click iTunes -> Preferences.

Here is all I know after I struggled with iTunes (a lot):

You can specify Import Settings on the first page of the iTunes Settings page.
At the Bottom you can also say that you want to download the names of the tracks.

Regarding the Organization :

iTunes handles the media the way you specify it in the Advanced Tab inside the preferences.

So you should check on that via going to preferences -> Advanced.

You should see the place where all the media is stored.
Also you should see checkboxes for the automatic management and the option to copy the media inside the iTunes Media Folder.

If you want make iTunes do the work, check both.

And well, that is basically all you can do to achieve what you want.

To better organize your media with iPhones/iPods there is no way around iTunes. It's simply the only App that can handle your device completely.

If you want to organize your media professionally, tag them manually or via great tools like Picard (from MusicBrainz), Metadatics, Tagger or something else. Organize it in Folder you like inside your Music Folder and don't let iTunes organize them. Then (if tagged correctly) drop them into iTunes.

To be sure you added the files, maybe add a Finder Tag to remember yourself in the future.


Auto-Refresh Page for Google Chrome on iPad Is there an extension I can download on an iPad to auto-refresh a Google Chrome page?

Chrome for iPad doesn't have extensions, but you can accomplish what you're looking for (in Chrome or Safari) using a bookmarklet.

I tested Evan Culver's and it works beautifully:

javascript: timeout=prompt("Set timeout [s]"); current=location.href; if(timeout>0) setTimeout('reload()',1000*timeout); else location.replace(current); function reload(){ setTimeout('reload()',1000*timeout); fr4me='<frameset cols=\'*\'>\n<frame src=\''+current+'\'/>'; fr4me+='</frameset>'; with(document){write(fr4me);void(close())};}

How to install it on Chrome:

On your iPad, copy the above line of in its entirety (starting with javascriptand ending with the final })
In Chrome, create a new bookmark (of any page) by tapping the star icon in the location bar. Next, immediately tap the Edit button in the note that will appear at the bottom of the screen, which will let you edit the new bookmark and turn it into a bookmarklet.
Set the name of the bookmark to "Auto Refresh"
Delete the whole URL and paste the code above in its place. Tap Done to finish creating your bookmarklet.

To use it:

Visit a page you want to refresh
Tap the location bar and type "Auto Refresh". Select the bookmarklet from the drop down options
Choose your refresh interval (in seconds)

Note: this particular bookmarklet doesn't have an option to stop auto-refresh; to do that, just reload the page manually.


What is the best/fastest way to rip and convert a Blu-ray Disc on an iMac? I've recently switched (back) from Windows 10 to macOS running on an iMac 27-inch Retina late 2015. While I still used my Windows 10 laptop, I used a program called DVDFab to rip my collection of Blu-ray movies into a format suitable for Plex and Emby. The process took about 45 minutes per disc and used the GPU part of the Intel i7 processor in my laptop to speed things up.

Now that I am on a Mac, I can't seem to find a program (or set of programs) that allows me to rip Blu-ray movies with the same, or better, speed. Most articles seem to suggest a combination of MakeMKV for ripping and Handbrake for converting. However, this takes about 45 minutes for ripping and 2 hours for converting, as none of these programs seems to make use of GPU acceleration. I have also downloaded a few commercial packages to see if they make use of acceleration, but I have yet to find a program that both can read directly from a Blue-ray disc and do the transcoding to give me a suitably small mp4 file.

Can you recommend a solution other than sticking with Windows 10 and DVDFab?

So I found a solution, just not a short or elegant one:

Install bootcamp on the iMac
Install Windows 10
Install dvdfab.

At first dvdfab did not want to work with the GPU (AMD Radeon). Turns out that the graphic drivers bundled with bootcamp were too old, but there is no update from Apple. http://bootcampdrivers.com has newer driver packages for the mac / AMD GPU.

I had to follow a long set of instructions to install it, including booting the Windows machine into Safe mode. In the end, everything works as it should, and Blu-ray conversion time is now around 40 minutes!

As converting Blu-ray movies is not something I do everyday, I can live with this solution.


Raid set add member: com.apple.StorageKit error 118 I have a failed RAID set, and am trying to add a replacement drive.  Every time I try to repair, add member, or add spare, it fails immediately with com.apple.StorageKit error 118.  Does anyone know what this error means?  Any suggestions on how to resolve?

I know this is quite late to answer but I came across the same error today while trying to add a new member to a failed RAID1 volume.
The issue is, Disk Utility doesn't tell you the whole story.
Running the same operation through the terminal will give you the correct error message when executing diskutil appleRAID add member diskX /Volumes/RaidVolumeName:
Error: -69797: The RAID set cannot be modified because it is currently rebuilding
To avoid getting this error, you need to disable autorebuild on the RAID disk:
diskutil appleRAID update AutoRebuild 0 diskX (diskX is the virtual raid disk)
Then reboot.
After you reboot, it won't be rebuilding anymore and you can add the member, either via Terminal, or Disk Utility.
HTH others.


Why do I get "no volume available" when using an iPhone 4s in a dock? I am suspecting it may be the "Griffin TuneFlex 9865" that I am docking the phone with. Yet the the dock is designed to just provide charging power and to hold the device, there is no line out on the dock. That I could see. But every time I plug in the iPhone into the dock to charge, and then plug in the head phone jack going to a line in on the car, there is no sound.

When opening the Pandora app after doing the above it shows "no volume available" where the volume slider should be. If your in the "Music" app the volume slider is gone.

Any idea why this is happening? Does my iPhone think the dock is a line out source?

My workaround has been to unplug and then replug the headphone jack, and then all is well and it works fine, until I remove the iPhone from the car, then repeat.

Is there a way to make it work right the first time I plug in the mini jack on the iPhone and have sound?

Yet the the dock is designed to just provide charging power and to hold the device, there is no line out on the dock.

This is incorrect. The description for this device on Amazon (sorry, I couldn't find any information on it that wasn't on a for-sale site) has this feature listed:

Built-in, 0.125-inch stereo line-out audio jack lets you attach an audio cable directly to your stereo, or run the included cassette adapter into your stereo's tape cassette player

Apparently the device does have an line out on it some place. And this is why your headphone and volume controls are disabled when you dock your phone in it.


App icon duplicated with a 'grayish' overlay on iPhone 6 with iOS 8 I've had this iPhone 6 for a week now. Today my WhatsApp duplicated itself with a 'grayish' overlay on it. I can move it around, but when tapping it nothing happens. How does this happen and how can I get rid of this?

I guess it might have happened after an update, it's the second time this has happened. First time it happened a different app duplicated itself just like this. I've been searching the Internet, but could not find any explanation/solution.  Here's a screenshot of it:

This happens sometimes when an app installation or update fails and SpringBoard still shows the icon from cache.

To fix it, try any of the following:

Sometimes, holding down on any icon to start edit mode, then tapping the × to delete the placeholder will work fine.
Reboot—this clears SpringBoard cache.
If your device is jailbroken, run uicache as mobile, then respring.


caldav stopped syncing - how to fix without losing entries? My family uses caldav in their iPhones to keep a shared calendar (yahoo) in sync with everyone.  One phone, used to add a lot of calendar entries, has stopped syncing. I tried simply reentering the PW to see if that would jump start it, but it is still "stuck".  With no diagnostic information available, I don't have a clue why.

If I "delete" this shared calendar, I will lose calendar entries added to the phone but not yet at the server.  Any suggestions?  Is there an easy way to select all calendar entries for a calendar and perhaps move them to the "local" calendar, Then I can delete the shared calendar, add it again, then move those new entries back to the shared calendar?

I wish there were some way to diagnose and fix this, I just don't think Apple has ever provided any tools for that.

Sorry i dont have enough rep to comment instead. However, if you feel lucky and really really need your calendar events, i would try this:

Backup the iPhone using iTunes to your computer, make sure its a Unencrypted backup.
Navigate to ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup/
Look for the folder updated recently.
Copy that folder to the desktop.
Start quicklooking through some files from the copy on the desktop, you will find some events (one file is one resource, like contact, calendar event, photo etc)
Sort out the events you need, import them to Calendar again by double-clicking on the event (try one first, make sure you have a backup of your calendar as well)

Best of luck, its a tedious job.


Displaced Xcode text on file new project As you can see from the image. the text is displaced. The app is running normal and no indication of any damage.
It is not affecting the functionality, but it is very annoying.
How can i fix it ?

Xcode 7 is not supported in macOS Sierra. You should use the Xcode 8 beta from developer.apple.com.


USB Keyboard on MAC: \ and < characters inverted I have a strange behaviour with an USB keyoboard connected to a MacBook Pro laptop.
Mac OS X version: macOS Sierra 10.12.2 (16C67)

In the laptop the keys are correct, but with the external keyboard the \| keys is inverted with the <> key

How can I solve this issue?
hanks.

This can be caused when the OS mis-identifies the keyboard. To get that back, clear the preference that saves which device is which layout.

How to reset the mac keyboard

I made as described in the post:

Delete the file /Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist
Disconnect the keyboard
Reconnect the keyboard
Restart the os

After doing these steps, the keyboard had to be recognized again, and it fixes the issue.

The correct keyboard for Italian is ISO (Eur).


What is this white 'No items selected' popup box in save/open dialogs? On a Mac running Lion, in the Save As dialog boxes for seemingly all applications, there's a white popup box that appears and disappears on pressing the space bar. I notice it a lot as I use a graphics tablet with one of the pen buttons set to pan / scroll the page, which in adobe creative suite applications on a Mac, maps to the space bar everywhere in the application including OS dialogs - so I often trigger it by accident when trying to scroll through directories when saving files.

Here's an image of it:

It took a while to figure out it was the space bar that was bringing it up (since I wasn't ever actually pressing the space bar...). Its close 'x' button seems not to work, so until I figured out (just now, actually) that it was the space bar that toggled it, I couldn't get rid of it most times it unexpectedly popped up. Dragging files into it doesn't seem to do anything, which discounts my theory that it's some kind of collector for overwriting multiple files at once. Nor does clicking on files or folders to select them. What is it and what is it for?

I figured out the answer while confirming a few behaviours of the mystery white box while writing the question. I'm posting and answering the question anyway since none of my searches turned up anything.

So it seems it's the File Preview box: if you hit space in the 'Open Files' dialog with a file selected, a similar box gives you an enlarged preview of whatever file is selected.

In the 'Save As' dialog, however, you can't select files (clicking just copies the file name), so it will always come up as 'No items selected' any time it comes up. While you can select folders in the Save As dialog, it doesn't attempt to preview them and continues simply saying that nothing is selected.

Here's a screen grab of it functioning by previewing the screen grab of itself not functioning:

Seems like it can never show anything other than 'No items selected' in the Save As dialog.


Has anyone figured out a keyboard shortcut to globally strikethrough selected text in any OS X app? We have ⌘B to bold, ⌘I to italicise, ⌘U to underline, but we don't (as far as I can tell) have a shortcut to strikethrough selected text in any OS X rich editor.

I added a keyboard shortcut into System Preferences, but that way doesn't work very consistently. I also tried using TextExpander, but it doesn't support rich text formatting.

Has anyone come up with a way to do this?

Hey I just came across this question because today I just started to use Stickies as a To-Do list for things I need to finish over the day and I also wanted to have that feature that you strikethrough items or text you are done with…

I think an easy workaround for this is that you have lets say 3 items, then you go to mark your first item with the strikethrough from the Fonts panel and then select that all the item and go to Font > Copy Style (Opt+Cmd+C) and then because it is copied in the Stickies app, after, anytime you use the shortcut Opt+Cmd+V (Paste Style) over a selected item it will paste the strikethrough style anytime later on the app, even if you have any other copied item in your clipboard.


Restart AFP service in High Sierra I would like to restart the AFP service but I'm not sure how to do it anymore. In previous versions of OS X I would run serveradmin stop afp and serveradmin start afp, but serveradmin is no longer available in High Sierra.

serveradmin is still available in macOS High Sierra. Server.app has to be installed though and launched at least once to start its set-up.

host:~ $user: which serveradmin
/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/serveradmin

host:~ $user: sudo serveradmin fullstatus afp
afp:state = "STOPPED"
afp:readWriteSettingsVersion = 1
afp:logging = "NO"
afp:servicePortsRestrictionInfo = _empty_array
afp:startedTime = ""
afp:guestAccess = "NO"
afp:logPaths:errorLog = "/Library/Logs/AppleFileService/AppleFileServiceError.log"
afp:logPaths:accessLog = "/Library/Logs/AppleFileService/AppleFileServiceAccess.log"
afp:failoverState = "NIFailoverNotConfigured"
afp:servicePortsAreRestricted = "NO"
afp:setStateVersion = 2
afp:currentConnections = 0

AFP won't work with shared APFS volumes!


Where does DoodleCam save photos I have download an app called DoodleCam. But I can't see where it saves the photos I take, It only shows me the videos I record.

Try looking in the built-in "Photos" app (with the flower icon).


Finder sidebar flashing text and high CPU load since El Capitan After update to OS X 10.11 I started having these bugs:

Finder sidebar text flashing
Video
Very high CPU load:

I have Macbook Pro Retina 13" Mid 2014

I reset NVRAM.

I deleted com.apple.finder.plist, it didn't help.

Also I did this: link, no longer flashes.

For your high CPU load, let's dig into the system.

What does the Memory Pressure graph look like when CPU idle is less than 50% (if your idle is higher than 50%, no system issue is likely - focus on App tuning when that's the case)
What is the ambient temperature and CPU temperature when the kernel_task is more than 100% CPU for one thread?
Open Terminal when you have high CPU load and run vm_stat 60 - collect 10 minutes of data and look at the columns below
Open terminal and run iostat 60 for about 10 minutes - Control+C to quit both the "stat" commands.

To load my Mac, I downloaded 10 apps from the Mac App store - some large ones like iMovie and Garage Band and some small ones like iWork and such.

mac:~ me$ iostat 60
        disk0       cpu     load average
KB/t tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
59.40   6  0.32  17 10 72  6.56 3.63 3.67
21.80 1171 24.92  38 52 10  6.96 4.25 3.89
40.43 879 34.71  35 37 28  7.45 5.18 4.29
15.55 1313 19.94  31 27 42  4.64 4.83 4.22
18.94 1434 26.52  35 29 36  3.98 4.64 4.19
41.36 611 24.67  27 21 52  3.72 4.38 4.12
21.38 913 19.07  27 21 52  2.75 4.00 3.99
20.91 638 13.03  10 12 78  2.78 3.80 3.91
21.68  36  0.77   3  2 95  2.93 3.64 3.84
20.44  29  0.59   5  2 93  1.99 3.28 3.70
22.15  22  0.47   8  2 91  2.08 3.08 3.59

You can see here the the load averages are CPU intensive, but the IO went down as my software updates all stopped writing to disk.

mac:~ me$ vm_stat 60
Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes)
    free   active   specul inactive throttle    wired  prgable   faults     copy    0fill reactive   purged file-backed anonymous cmprssed cmprssor  dcomprs   comprs  pageins  pageout  swapins swapouts
  595910   279890    45280   279751        0   492724    37678  278656K  2546038  189649K  1824146  1002019      281435    323486  1818476   403174 19561912 35034707 16848168   287811 28125307 40507111
  504689   443792   201139   474742        0   436928    70152  2732782   189565   424938        0     2000      676091    443582   278992    35188    24217        0   135660        0    57626    32072
  288052   470450   348036   498497        0   431105    76523  2060375   294486   433689        4        0      849080    467903   264481    60629    11211        0    28139        0   115989    48218
  502987   516349    70119   515432        0   425924    89544  1099406    51694   219782        6        0      579472    522428   257944    66005     3466        0    44239        0     5781        0
  507406   531812   141516   425286        0   424196    94416   591951    17077   130465        6        0      562119    536495   256845    66504     1073        0    89051        0      630        0
  291194   490232   280286   553763        0   421515    64940   351719    53197   123817        0        0      832785    491496   238005    59444     3744        0   176346        0      300        0
    3514   453966   451770   744198        0   390220    28598   197808     7292   121072       66    45608     1195232    454702   232836    52649     5065       48   181145      511     2681      256
   93402   452291   348713   757438        0   391651    27230   341329     5557    48781       11       10     1104234    454208   232446    52981      382        0    87528        1      384        0
   68118   472252   352168   759063        0   392179    27230   134456     2001    68625        0        0     1110375    473108   231810    52997      636        0     4232        0       60        0
   74742   462223   354622   758990        0   393270    25344    52168      525    39814        0        0     1112806    463029   230636    52859      230        0      198        0        0        0

Similarly, not all the vm_stat numbers are meaningful. The most important is faults and that shows how busy the memory system is. Next is free, if it's too low (less than 100) for other than one interval, then you are constantly paging in and out pieces of data. That will show in the last 4 columns: ** pageins  pageout  swappins swapouts** The few out operations in my sample show this re-balance, but a constant flow of them indicates you can tune your system or software for better speed.


Make the default location for all save and open actions Google Drive File Stream Using macOS Mojave or High Sierra, is there a way to change the default file location for all save and open actions to Google Drive File Stream?

On Windows I would change it in the registry to g:\users\%username%. What is the equivalent on macOS? We are working with HIPAA data and I need to redirect all file activity away from the local computer onto the encrypted, shared platform.

By default, there is no way to do this in Mac OS.

However, you can do it with Default Folder X, an app which is specifically designed to set default open and save folders. (Hence the name.)

It is a great app from a long, long, long-time Mac developer. Highly recommended. Comes with a free 30-day trial.


Can i track my friend's iphone with the help of any app on iphone? Can i track my friend's iphone with the help of any app on iphone? Is it really possible? He always tells a lie about location.

I tried many apps on App Store but they all are fake.

Try installing Google Latitude on the phone?


Can I move applications and other data to a JetDrive 128 GB for MacBook Air I'm planning to get a 128 GB Transcend JetDrive SD card to supplement the storage on my MacBook Air that's 128 GB.

I just wanted to know once I get it can I copy the applications installed to the SD card? Also what all other data should be transferred?

Major chunks of my data are iPhoto library (8 GB) and iTunes music (26 GB).

I've been using SD cards more and more just as you mention and I think you'll be ticked with the benefits of having double the storage.

Here are the tools I use to get the data I need on relative speeds so I can choose what should be stored on the drive and what shouldn't go there.

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
DaisyDisk

The Daisy Disk tool is really stellar for quickly seeing which chunks of data are big enough to be worth your time to handle. In my case, the first chunks I will move to the card are:

20 GB of logic files from /Library/Application\ Support/Logic to the card
40 GB of Photos Library if the automatic compression algorithms don't shrink the files on my local storage enough for my tastes.
Less seldom used Virtual Box and VMWare virtual machine storage drive files

I also use BlackMagic disk tester to check how the speed of both drives is actually so that I can keep the things I don't care about being slow on the slower SD card (or pay more for a faster SD card).

OS X would run fine with your entire user folder on the SD card, but make sure you have a second admin account on the boot volume if you go that drastic route.

As far as opening files - most applications will run just fine if you use Finder aliases or command line sym links to point to the storage card once you move files off the boot volume.

Also, if you are bugged by HiddenStorage in your setting, download the full version of DaisyDisk - it runs for free if you have bought the app on the MAS and adds two critical features for me: scanning as an administrator and collecting files to then delete them

Be sure your Time Machine backup is backing up both the boot volume and the SD card before you delete things, but I've had no issues running OS X like this from 10.7 Lion through the betas of 10.11 El Capitan.

Some apps are cranky, so I would leave all system files where they are and worry about things that are 10 GB or more in size rather than trying to micro manage dozens of small relations that don't yield significant storage savings on the boot drive.

In your case, you can use iTunes to locate the iTunes storage on the external SD card and moving the iPhotos Library is trivial as well. Move it from Finder and then open the new file. Delete the original file once you're sure things work and/or you have a solid back up.


How to access data in iPhone backup file directly I have just gotten rid of my iPhone 5 but did a full  backup of picture and such beforehand. I do not plan on getting another iPhone. Is there a way i can get my content back? I have the backup file location but the files are not what i expected them to be.

I recommend iPhone / iPod Touch Backup Extractor (for Mac) and iPhone Backup Extractor (for Windows).

  Recover lost iPhone calendar events, contacts, photos, videos, SMS messages, notes, location data and app data from iTunes backup files.


Enlarge Mac OSX disk How can I enlarge my start up partition? I cannot drag the MAC OSX box (see below)

The following seems to be the solution. I haven't tried it myself though.

Copied from here:

Go into Disk Utility and click on your main hard-drive that say either 256 GB, 517 GB, or 728GB.
Up the top, Click Partition.
Then down the bottom of Disk Utility, Click the + sign.
Now, select the new startup disk by clicking on it and then name it "Macintosh HD (Lion Installed)" or you can name it what ever you want.
Now size the new startup disk to the size you wanted your other startup disk with Lion installed on it to be and click apply.
After the process is done, Restart your mac and while it is starting up, hold down options.
You will see a grey screen for a second, but don't worry, it is normal.
Now, all your startup disks that you have will appear on the screen. Click Recovery HD.
You will see a grey screen for a second, but don't worry, it is normal.
Now, you will see the option to go into disk utility. Click on it and then click to continue.
When disk utility opens, click on your new startup disk on the left side of disk utility, now click on restore, now you will see 2 rectangular boxes that say source and destination.
Drag your startup disk that has Lion installed into the source box, then drag the new startup disk that you made 3 minutes ago into the destination box and click restore.
Once the progress is done, you can delete the old startup disk that had Lion install on it by going into your main startup disk that says 256 GB, 517 GB, or 728 GB and then clicking on Partition and then selecting that particular startup disk and then hitting delete on your keyboard.
(Last Step) Now, you are ready to restart you mac by clicking on the apple sign in the top left corner of the screen and clicking startup disk, now you will get the option of choosing which startup disk to startup your computer with. You just choose "Macintosh HD (Lion Installed)" or whatever your new startup disk is called and then click Restart.

Your Computer will now restart. Now all of your files that were on your old startup disk with Lion installed will be on on this brand new fresh startup disk on your beautiful Mac.


Xcode free space requirement I am trying to update Xcode to 8.0. My OS is 10.11.6 El Capitan. However I am getting:

  We could not complete your update
  There is not enough disk space available to install the product.

I have got 14.22 GB free space. How much do I need?

UPDATE: I do not know the exact figure, though I did manage to update with 17.21 GB free space later on.

You'll need about 20GB free to do the install when you consider the space needed for holding/swapping files with the .dmg during the install process.
I saw this in the Apple developer forums:

Have a look at About This Mac → Storage tab.  You might see a purple
segment labeled "Backups."  That's the local Time Machine cache, and
it doesn't show up in the Finder's free space display because it can
theoretically be purged if that space is needed.

Update Sept 18, 2020: Since this answer was written, Xcode free space requirements have been increasing.  As of Xcode 12, I needed at least 49GB of space to complete the installation.


Why did Screen Sharing suddenly stop working (10.6.8)? I have a Mac Mini 10.6.8 for which I've used Screen Sharing frequently. This is NOT a headless Mac. A monitor is attached, it is on and it works fine.

Sometime this week I connected as I always do (Finder -> Connect to Server -> vnc://targetmac.mydomain.edu) only to be greeted with a black screen.

Sitting next to the Mini I can verify from my laptop (10.6.8) that screen sharing works. I can type commands on my laptop and they are executed on the Mini. This is simply a display issue. I know that Screen Sharing is turned on, that I have permissions to connect and that it works. I'm just blind.

Interestingly, my laptop's trackpad movements are NOT transmitted to the Mini. Only keystrokes.

I've tried setting the Screen Sharing app on the Mini to run in 32-bit mode (per this Tidbits article). Tried setting the Screen Sharing on my laptop to 32-bit mode. No dice.

I've tried toggling adaptive quality and full quality. I've tried toggling the Screen Sharing service itself. No dice.

I can connect to an identical Mini (bought the same day, running same OS) from my laptop, so I'm pretty sure this isn't my machine. I've verified that someone using another mac has the same results, so it seems unlikely to be something in my preferences related to this particular Mini.

What the heck?

Could this be some weird video card issue that only affects VNC? Seems unlikely. The most obvious explanation is that the bug mentioned in the Tidbits article was reintroduced, but I'd expect to see other machines similarly affected.

Edit: Ahhh, interesting ... ssh only partly works. I can shell in, use cd and ls ... but if I ps the session hangs once the output fills my laptop's terminal window. Similarly, if I attempt to vi a new file, it hangs after vi clears my laptop's terminal window. This may be a subtle networking thing after all.

The last edit was the primary clue ... it was not a VNC-only issue, but a intermittent network issue.

We had a small 5-port hub in the room to support three machines off of the one network drop. Once we removed the hub and plugged the machine directly into the drop all was good. The hub had been there, trouble-free, for more than 3 years.

Once again I am reminded to ask myself more questions. An obvious question would have been: Does the target Mini have good connection to the network, outside of VNC/SSH? Is it dropping packets to reliable servers?


What can I do to keep AirPlay from buffering while playing movie from iPad 2? I downloaded a one hour HD TV show to my iPad 2 from the iTunes store and then set up the iPad 2 for AirPlay over the Apple TV. Many times it froze while buffering. What is causing this and how can I avoid this problem?

The iPad 2 is one of the slowest CPU/GPU that can run iOS 7 and your HD content might be causing the iPad itself to not be able to encode the mirror video. The 7.1 update seems to be better optimized for my older iPhones, so you might retest after updating to the latest OS as well.

You could free up some load by being sure Airplay isn't in mirror mode and is just sending the stream to the AirPlay receiver instead of the screen and the receiver simultaneously.

Additionally, you can try playing SD content (or recording content from the camera and then playing that) to see if it's related to the length of the clip or the encoding. It still could be network congestion, but you might be correct in your diagnosis of the network as performing well enough to stream HD (especially if the Apple TV can stream HD itself and also uses WiFi.)