Way to Group MMS on iPhone4s and NOT have everyone see each other's replies? If I add all iPhone users to a Group MMS, then they can all see each other's responses (found out the hard way).

Is there a way to send out a mass text (like "Happy New Year!") and not have everyone see each other's response?

I know that this isn't a problem for non iPhone users...

When sending group message to iPhone users, you don't actually send an MMS or SMS, you send an iMessage (sent messages will be in blue bubbles instead of green ones). When sending iMessage to more than one person, you create a group chat, and everybody will be able to see all the conversation.

To actually send an MMS/SMS, you can disable iMessage in the Settings before sending the group message, then re-enable it later.


Dual WiFi network cards route outgoing traffic to specific cards Let's say I have two wireless networks I can connect to, alpha and beta.

In this scenario the alpha wifi gives me access to a specific intranet and specific sites I need to access, and blocks specific sites. For example http://someblockedsite.com.

The beta connection however does not have access to the intranet but does allow access to the blocked sites.

The case now is that I'm switching back and forth between the two connections, and it's really a pain point, it's slow and confusing.

I'm on a Macbook Pro, and I've been thinking about purchasing an external WiFi dongle with which I would be able to connect to one network with my Macbook WiFi card and the other with the external dongle. Ideally I would be able to use something like the hosts file to modify the outgoing traffic on my machine so that when I access one domain http://onlyalpha.com it will use the alpha connection and when I access the http://onlybeta.com site it will use the beta connection.

Is something like this possible?

This would probably be a lot of work for people that don’t set up networks for a living, but let’s assume you have a good reason and propose a solution.

You would need to serve two networks so that each AirPort connects to a different network segment so each could have different routing or different DNS. All the setup would be on the network side and you wouldn’t really need to do anything other than set up DHCP on each wireless adapter and possibly set up a hosts file over-ride or tunnel traffic to onlybeta.com through a server / gateway on the network for the beta wireless card.


Keyboard Shortcut to focus on these windows I've been working without a mouse for several days and almost everything has been fairly easy to manage with keyboard shortcuts.  There are two exceptions:

I'm unable to find a keyboard shortcut that moves the focus to either of these windows.
(EDIT I am on macOS Mojava)
I've tried:

Cmd-Tab
Control-Tab from Finder
Shortcat
^F6 (floating window)

How can I focus (close/dismiss) these windows using only the keyboard?

I don't know any shortcut, but there is a workaround how you can use keyboard only to focus it. You may enable mouse keys - press 5 times Alt key and then use keyboard to move the cursor.
Alternatively you may install some third party tool to control the mouse. My recommendation goes to Karabiner Elements, because I use it for bunch of other useful staff. Once you install it you should  add Mouse Keys Mode.
There is also https://github.com/h2ero/XEasyMotion   but I haven't used it personally.


Viber messenger not working on my ad-hoc wireless network I have an iPhone 5 (iOS 6.1.1) and I installed Viber messenger (version 2.2.2.86) which enables you to make phone calls over the internet. The messenger works perfectly when I use a wireless router to connect to the internet (which I don't have at home) but when I connect to my Windows XP ad-hoc network, I can't make phone calls. the call is dropped after 3 to 4 seconds and I can't receive calls either. This only happens on my ad-hoc network.

The computer connects to the internet through 3G modem
I tried updating to the latest version of Viber (2.3.1) from apple but no good
My friend has an older iPhone (probably 3G or 4) and he has the same exact version of Viber. When he tries to use my ad-hoc network, it works and he can call and receive calls.
I can't use my 3G sim card directly on my iPhone, I have to go through the ad-hoc network.

What could be the problem and solution to this dilemma?

Because your friends iDevice works, it may make this consideration useless. http://www.viberfaq.com/why-cant-i-use-viber-on-some-wi-fi-networks/ suggests that these ports are required for Viber to work.

TCP: 5242 and 4244
UDP: 5243 and 7985 (9785) (7985 is the port specified on the Viber) troubleshooter

However, the symptoms of having closed ports would be no connection to Viber. Maybe there is an application taking these ports on your Windows Machine intermittently.


What do the "Other" and "Developer" options in Spotlight index? In Spotlight, you can set what types of items you want to be indexed and searchable.  Most of the options are fairly straightforward: "Contacts" searches your contacts, "Images" for images, and so on.  However, there are two options that I don't understand: "Other" and "Developer".

The Search Results panel is rather fine grained.  Why is there, what I'm guessing to be, a catch all option with "Other" and what does it catch?  Similarly, what does the "Developer" option index?

I looked in the "Spotlight preferences" page of the "Mac Help", but from what I can tell, it doesn't detail it.  In fact the "Narrow the scope of your searches" topic details everything but those two options under the "Search by the type of items" section:

Type of item        Keyword
-----------------------------------------
Apps                kind:application
                    kind:applications
                    kind:app

Contacts            kind:contact
                    kind:contacts

Folders             kind:folder
                    kind:folders

Email               kind:email
                    kind:emails
                    kind:mail message
                    kind:mail messages

Calendar events     kind:event
                    kind:events

Reminders           kind:reminder
                    kind:reminders

Images              kind:image
                    kind:images

Movies              kind:movie
                    kind:movies

Music               kind:music

Audio               kind:audio

PDF                 kind:pdf
                    kind:pdfs

Preferences         kind:system preferences
                    kind:preferences

Bookmarks           kind:bookmark
                    kind:bookmarks

Fonts               kind:font
                    kind:fonts

Presentations       kind:presentation
                    kind:presentations

This is sort of a half answer, half response containing observations and guesses in response to bmike's comment.

It looks like the "Developer" option is for files that macOS considers to be development related files.  For example, I searched for .h, .html and .m files and they were listed under the "Development" category:

"Other" must be for anything that macOS can't make a good guess at.  For example, I searched for .json files and actual .json files showed up under "Developer".  However, files that had unknown or missing extensions showed up under "Other":

I'm still not sure of the complete criteria that macOS uses to discern what files fall into what category.  Additionally, it looks like Spotlight won't even try to display a preview of files in the "Other" category even if they are textual.


How to mirror secondary display to a TV? I have had a dual-screen setup (27'' iMac + 27'' thunderbolt display) for a while now; having recently acquired a MDP->HDMI adapter I'm struggling with mirroring the secondary display onto my TV.

The screenshot above shows an arrangement where the desktop is extended across all three screens. Now, if I select "Mirror Displays" then I get all of the displays mirrored i.e. same image on my iMac, thunderbolt display and the TV, which is not what I'm after.

Is there some obvious setting I'm missing? Can this be accomplished without third-party software?

Hold down your option key and drag the TV onto the secondary display.


Mac mini (Mid 2011) randomly reboots, but not while I'm using it Very strange issue here. My Mid '11 Mac Mini (on OS X El Cap, 10.11.6) is randomly rebooting during the day and (mostly) at night when not in use. I will be up in the middle of the night getting some water and hear the Apple chime. Worth noting, I have never seen it reboot while I am using it.

I've searched for anything that says "kernel" in the Console program in OS X, but all I see are "PM kernel: Sandbox" items...are those related? Any help here much appreciated. Thank you!

[EDIT] After running the command syslog | grep -i "shutdown cause"from Terminal, I get 271 instances of the unexpected reboot over the past 5 days, all with cause of -128

Oct 28 11:02:59 localhost kernel[0] <Notice>: Previous shutdown cause: -128
Oct 28 11:37:54 localhost kernel[0] <Notice>: Previous shutdown cause: -128
Oct 28 12:07:55 localhost kernel[0] <Notice>: Previous shutdown cause: -128
Oct 28 12:35:52 localhost kernel[0] <Notice>: Previous shutdown cause: -128
Oct 28 13:56:05 localhost kernel[0] <Notice>: Previous shutdown cause: -128
Oct 28 15:52:22 localhost kernel[0] <Notice>: Previous shutdown cause: -128
Oct 28 16:03:45 localhost kernel[0] <Notice>: Previous shutdown cause: -128
Oct 28 16:26:52 localhost kernel[0] <Notice>: Previous shutdown cause: -128

This repeats many, many times with entries throughout each day.  Click here to see the full log

This ended up being a software issue. A clean install of the OS fixed the issue. I could not get the recovery partition to boot, so I had to use another Mac to create a bootable USB installer for macOS (downloaded from the App Store).

Worth noting, I was able to put all my apps and settings back into place via Migration Assistant, BUT only after booting into macOS (not on first boot during setup where it prompts for Migration Assistant - it failed there for some reason).


Can someone point me to resources to reverse engineer ancient Mac software? I have an ancient program called "Digital Radar" (surveillance software) by Connectix.  Connectix developed the original little ball webcam, and was later bought by Logitech.  I've tried all of their venues of support, but have been told "We're sorry, but this product is no longer being developed.  Thank you for contacting Logitech."

I have numerous videos recorded with this software that I wanted to convert, but can't determine the codec, or any other information about the files.  Even "Treasured" was of no help.

While new to programing, I thought if it were possible to crack open the code to at least just find what video formats they were using, that I could get my files into a modern format.

This app broke with the advent of MacOS 9, so I'm looking for an old-timer who knows how to handle something from an 8.6 code base.

I know, it's a long-shot, but any Classic app pros have any ideas of how to revive these vids?

"ResEdit" was the basic utility to inspect/edit resources such as images, video, and sound in Mac OS applications and games. It runs in Mac OS or Classic environments and can be downloaded from http://www.mac.org/utilities/resedit/

"ResFork" runs on OS X 10.2 and provides similar functionality to ResEdit.

Using ResEdit or ResFork you should be able to find the codec identifier. You can then usually work from the codec identifier to a video converter. Perhaps focusing on converters from the same timeframe as the application you are working with.

If you don't have a machine that can run a Mac Classic environment, then the emulator "SheepShaver" will be useful as a debug/reverse engineer environment. SheepShaver can be downloaded from: http://sheepshaver.cebix.net/


bash: Searching with ls Is there a bash command that can be used as Spotlight or an option with ls that only prints files containing certain text? I want to be able to open Terminal and type something ls -SOMEOPTION filename and find all the files that have filename in their name, and this option could be used with -R and it would work as a replacement for Spotlight.

find . -type f -name "*filename*" -exec grep -il 'mywordinthefile' {} \;

find search for file recursively in a directory.
First parameters is the directory you want to look in. Here it's . so the current directory. You could use ~/Documents for example or any other directories.
-type f- option is to only return files, not directories.
-name option takes a pattern to find specifics filenames.
grep is used here to find the word/pattern you want in the files found by find.


How can I get my iTunes rented movie onto another computer? My father has rented a move on iTunes, but on his old computer (which can't cope and crashes when he tries to play it). He's now on a newer computer, and logged into iTunes with the same account, but we can't find the rented movie.

I can confirm that the following works:

I downloaded a movie on my pc-laptop
I moved it via my network share, added it to the library on my macbook
It was visible as rented there but could not be watched (authorized to another computer)
Then I unauthorized the computer I downloaded it on and it worked on my macbook


External monitor moves windows when coming out of sleep (2012 rMBP) I recently purchased a Dell P2715Q for the express purpose of using as the primary display for my 2012 rMBP running 10.10.3 when "docked" at home.  I have the laptop in a vertical holder that holds it in the closed position.  The monitor is connected to the rMBP using a mini display->display port cable, provided by Dell.  In case it matters, max res from the laptop is 2560x1440 (my older rMBP apparently can't handle the full 4k res the monitor can do...whatever).  My rMBP was the top-of-the-line when I bought it, so it has the NVIDIA GT 650M 1gb.

The problem I am having is that all of the windows get shoved into the upper-left corner ever time I wake the laptop from sleep/screensaver.  I am guessing that OS is reverting back to the screen res of the build-in monitor, which has a higher res but smaller desktop real estate, when everything goes to sleep.  This is getting annoying as I typically work with many windows open and placed in particular areas.  How can I tell OS X to stop moving my windows around?

It may be actually worth resetting the NVRAM and SMC (in that order) to see if this resolves your issues. Before doing so, unplug all external devices (including monitors, keyboard, etc).

Resetting NVRAM on your model MacBook Pro

Your Mac use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM) to store a whole range of settings. Here’s how to reset this:

Shut down your Mac. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionPR keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime for the second time.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Now proceed to reset the SMC.

Resetting the SMC on your model MacBook Pro

The System Management Controller (SMC) impacts a whole range of power management functions. Here's how to reset this:

Shut down your computer
Disconnect the MagSafe plug (power cable) from the computer
Remove the battery
Press the power button for 5 seconds and release
Put the battery back in
Reconnect the MagSafe cord (or power cable)
Turn your computer back on with the power button


iPhone 6 new folders for mp3 files How do I create sub-directories for my files, pictures and mp3 files?  New to iOS and this does not seem like a user friendly OS.  There is zero interaction with Windows or Android.

Take a look here. I use Documents (by Readdle) that works fine and it's free.

You can get files from your computer, sync with Dropbox, iCloud, other cloud services and any source you can imagine. You can also download files from the Web using built-in browser. Organize the files into folders for your convenience using the brand new file manager.
You can manage different file formats and also read and modify PDFs. You can also create folders, according to the different contents.

Obviously, you will never have Android performance (system specs are very different) but I think this app can be a good compromise.

You can easily download the app for your iPhone following this link.


How suppress "Open in app" banner in Safari on iPhone? When I view some photos at a web site in Safari on my iPhone 6 under iOS 11, I get a banner on top suggesting I open the photo in the Google Photos app (as you can see below):

For reasons not worth going into, I don't want to use the Google Photos app for this, I want to use Safari, but without the "Open in the Google Photos app" banner. How can I do that?

It is currently not possible for end users to hide the app banner if the website chooses to show it. If the website does not provide the ability to hide the banner then you cannot hide it after the fact.

If your device is jailbroken, you can install NoAppBanners from https://repo.auxiliumdev.com/.


applescript trim number from variable Is it possible to trim a number to only keep the last 3 numbers ?

For exemple a phone number save in the variable, and I would like to keep the last 3 digit.

Kind regards

Here's one way. We set a variable called "the_phone_number" to some value, then pick off the last three characters. You can probably tell by inspection that it would be easy to modify this script to get the last four, or last two, or whatever.

set the_phone_number to "424-354-3548"
set the_last_three to characters -3 thru -1 of the_phone_number as string


Running Unsupported Applications Natively How do I run a bash file such that the application that open appears to be native?

For example I am running an old version of iMovie HD in Yosemite.

I would like to open the application as if it was native with an appropriate icon.

First step is to create an AppleScript application containing an empty file.

Next edit the applet.icns and the file to the appropriate name.

Add an app.sh file to MacOs.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

exec "/Applications/iMovie HD.app/Contents/MacOS/iMovie HD"

Edit Info.plist to contain the following.

<key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
<string>app.sh</string>


How to automatically run apps in iphone? I want to open the YouTube app on my iPhone 7 at 8 am every day and open the first video in the list. How can I accomplish this?

Using the example in your question, if you're wanting this to happen automatically without some sort of user intervention, then I doubt this is going to be possible. This is because of security restrictions in place to protect your privacy, data, etc. For example, being able to open the YouTube app would require the iPhone being unlocked, so it's not something that can be set to just happen at 8am every day with or without you.

If you're talking about a way to quickly do this sort of thing with a single tap of a button, then you may want to check out Apple's Workflow app.

It does take a bit of exploring and getting used to, but once you create a workflow it can be launched from the Today Widget or even be exported as a standalone app on your home screen, amongst other options.

I don't think the exact example you give in your question would be possible, at least not yet, but Apple is working very hard on increasing the functionality of both Siri and Workflow to incorporate better integration within and between apps. It's a case of 'watch this space'.

But, even with the current version, I've seen people achieve some pretty cool workflows, so it may be possible to do what you want if you find the right app. By this I mean that there's a Workflow Action Extension that allows workflows to be run from other apps - so if you could find an alarm app that uses this extension I suppose in theory you could use that to trigger your workflow automatically because it'd be an alarm going off.

Finally, if the example you gave in your question is actually all you're wanting to achieve, there are many 3rd party alarm apps that play YouTube videos at the allocated time. You could check to see if any of these will play whatever video is first on the YouTube list.


Submitting job to launchd gives error "no plist returned", "nothing found to load" I'm writing my first launchd plist. When I try to load it with the following command:

$ launchctl load com.Test01.plist
  launchctl: no plist was returned for: com.Test01.plist nothing found to load

The plist is supposed to execute a shell command which writes the date to a file. The plist file follows. It is in ~/Library/LaunchdAgents.

The hardware is a MacBook Air 11 running OS X 10.8.4
Thanks for any comments.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Aple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>label</key>
    <string>com.Test01</string>

    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
            <string>/Users/cae/scripts/testcron.sh</string>
    </array>

    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>

    <key>Nice</key>
    <integer>1</integer>

    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>60</integer>

    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/Users/cae/tmp/Test01.err</string>

    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/Users/cae/tmp/Test01.out</string>
</dict>
</plist>

That error is usually shown when there is a syntax error when checking with plist command.

In this case:

label should be Label,
and:

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Aple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN">

should be:

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">


Bandwidth limiting in Yosemite I get disconnected from the internet whenever the speed reaches 2.5 Mbps

Is there any app to limit the internet speed below that. I am not talking per application based.

Using MacBook Pro (mid 2013) Yosemite

You can use Network Link Conditioner.

You will want to ignore the testing settings. Make a Custom Profile and set to have no packets dropped and no delay. Start with uplink and downlink at 2.45 Mbps each and see if you need lower limits to prevent disconnects.

It is a free download in Xcode (go to Xcode → Open Developer Tool → More Developer Tools… and download the Hardware IO Tools for Xcode).


I need to compress a PDF to 5 mb (at most, but best exactly) Is there any way to compress a PDF (with the preview / iOS default software) to a certain size in mb (in my case as close as possible under or equal 5 mb)? The actual size right now is (6 scanned pages) 8.8 mb.

If i just use the "normal way" (meaning: finder, export using quarz-filter, compress pdf) i get a far too small and therefore unreadable PDF.

Anyone knowing a good work around?

Thanks for help!

Download those filters:
https://github.com/joshcarr/Apple-Quartz-Filters/archive/master.zip
Copy them in your mac or user Library ( /Library or /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library) In a Folder named "Filters" (create if doesn't exist).
Open Preview and export as a PDF.
Try some of new filter since when you reach the right weight for your pdf.


Can't find Microsoft One note in iPad's appstore I have iPad MM172LL/A, OS version 11.12 (15B202). I would like to install Microsoft One Note.
When I got to app store on the iPad and search for Microsoft One Note, it's not showing up. What's going on?

What’s going on is your iPad doesn’t meet the minimum version, so the listing is likely suppressed. It also could be a country region restriction, but that’s harder for others to test for you. The simple reason is you didn’t purchase an older version of the app to re-download that and/or the developer removed the old version entirely.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-onenote/id410395246


Restoring CCC or TimeCapsule from MacBookPro (2017) to new (2018) I had a MacBook Pro 2017 stolen.  Luckily I have 2 backups:

Time capsule (day old)
Carbon Copy Cloner USB hard drive (30 days old)

MacBook Pro 2017 was running Sierra (or High Sierra?) now I forgot
MacBook Pro 2018 came with Mojave

This is what I've tried so far:

When the brand new MacBook prompted me to restore from Time Capsule, I accepted.   It connected and ran the whole night restoring files.  When I came to it in the morning it said it was finished but there wasn't a single file that was successfully restored.  No users, no apps, nothing, just as if I got it fresh from the factory.   Just like if I never ran the restore in the first place.   But I saw it run, I was waiting for it the whole night.
I switched to CCC next.   First I had to fight with allowing booting from external devices (because of the T2 chip).  I got that sorted out by going to command-R and allowing it.
Next, even though it now let me boot external drives,  I would get the "no-go" icon (circle with a line through it).  I figured out that it was probably due to another incompatibility.**  So I booted the USB drive on my mac mini and successfully upgraded it to Mojave there.
After this I was able to boot into Mojave on both Mac Mini and the new MacBook Pro.  (All my files were there too)... so close....
I thought the final step would be as easy as blowing away /dev/disk1 (reformat) and then cloning from USB to /dev/disk1 using CCC.   I even gave CC extra permissions it asked for (for contacts and calendars or something like that).  It said it completed successfully but during boot (from internal SSD now with USB disconnected), it would go about 75% at the apple logo before showing "no-go" icon.... ARGHH!!!! ... WHY?  It only works through USB
Next I tried using disk utility to clone USB to internal HD but it completed with error "RPC version wrong"

I'm out of ideas.   Why is this so hard?   Is it the damn T2 chip fighting me a each step?  Am I just doing all this wrong?  What's going on?

** I simiplified this step a lot because the following details are not important (I hope).  In reality it was much more strange than the summary I wrote. The very first time after I successfully allowed booting from external drive, I was able to boot from the USB drive, but it popped up with a window saying that my OS was incompatible and that I should click next to upgrade to Mojave.  I didn't do it right in that moment because I didn't want to corrupt my one and only CCC backup on that USB drive.  So instead I shut the whole thing down and took a backup of my USB by doing dd on Linux.  From that moment on I was working with the clone.   To my shock, the next time I tried booting both of my USB drives went straight into the "no-go" icon .. I wasn't prompted to do the upgrade to Mojave as I have been prompted before.  Somehow that Mojave upgrade offer was a one shot deal.   That's what gave me the idea to boot up on my Mac Mini, upgrade to Mojave inside there and then carry on.  That worked (for a while) if you keep reading on.

Use “Migration Assistant” instead of attempting a direct restore. This mitigates hardware change issues, T2 issues, minor OS difference issues, some software licensing issues, and a few other potential issues.


Install SublimeHighlight plugin on Sublime Text 3 I'm trying to copy my code from Sublime Text 3 into my Word document in RTF format with colors in tact by using this plugin:

https://github.com/n1k0/SublimeHighlight

The instructions say:

  Sublime Text 3 users: a python3 branch is also available. Just git
  checkout python3 from the root of your package installation to use in
  in ST3. If you upgrade from a previous ST2 installation or encounter
  problems with the package, please proceed as detailed below:

  Remove the package, if installed, using Package Control.
  Add a repository: https://github.com/n1k0/SublimeHighlight/tree/python3
  Install SublimeHighlight with Package Control. It should pull the correct branch from Github.
  Restart Sublime Text 3

Well...I'm a noob when it comes to all the stuff it's describing. I went to /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/MacOS and ran git checkout python3 but got fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git. I think I need to install git? Or Python3? I'm not sure exactly where to start or even if this git stuff is worth Googling, as I'm not even sure if I'm running the command in the correct directory or even if the plugin indeed is compatible with MacOS (even though their screenshots of using the plugin on Sublime Text 2 are in MacOS on the GitHub ReadMe...)

I would greatly appreciate some guidance

I found the answer in another post:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/39432069/3511695

  Install Package Control inside sublime text 3. If you don't know how, follow this link here
  Open the Sublime Command Pallette by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+P on Windows and ⌘⇧P on Mac
  Type "Add Repository", and press enter or return

  Then paste this link
  https://github.com/n1k0/SublimeHighlight/tree/python3 [and press
  enter]

  Press CTRL+SHIFT+P on Windows and ⌘⇧P on Mac again and type "Install package" and press enter or return
  Type "Sublime highlight" and press enter to install the plugin
  Restart your Sublime


Is it possible to sync Google Chrome bookmarks with Safari? Is it possible to sync Google Chrome bookmarks with Safari?

Use Xmarks worked OK for me except for Firefox where it duplicated the book marks each time I used it.

Althougn now in Mavericks or because of a later version of Firefox it works


Using Voiceover at login screen I wish for my pupil to be able to login using VoiceOver. There are three user accounts and VoiceOver doesn't read them. We have used System Preferences to use VoiceOver at login and changed to username / password for input. We can't tab between the two and can't hear VoiceOver for caps lock.

With no concrete details or info whether you’ve gone through troubleshooting and can reproduce this after a reboot, here are some triage steps.

Check the voiceover guide to you know which key shortcuts can start the speech: https://help.apple.com/voiceover/info/guide/10.12/#/vo2755
Restart the Mac and go through the basic steps once you are logged in to a new test account - https://help.apple.com/voiceover/info/guide/
Once you’re sure voiceover is working in the new test account log out to the home screen and retest.


How well does Google Docs work on the iPad? How well does Google Docs work on the iPad via Safari?

Google Docs has full view and edit functionality on the iPad (see here and here). To be honest though, it's kind of like trying to chop down a tree with a plastic spoon. It feels quite clumsy, it's fairly slow and it's not something you'd want to be a regular part of your work flow.

  You're unable to select text, which means no copy or pasting. If you double-tap at the end of a sentence to get a period, you won't be rewarded with that particular mobile shortcut. There is no shift key; if you capitalize a word, all the text will be capitalized until you toggle the button off. Backspacing is equally slow, especially if you need to edit a large area of text.  Tuaw

There are Apps like GoDocs that claim to make the experience better, but I haven't tried them myself.

If you don't have an iPad (and I'm presuming you haven't because you're asking this question!) you can get your Mac or PC to pretend to be an iPad in Safari and try it out yourself. Fire up Safari's preferences and tick the show develop menu under the Advanced Tab:

Then use the Develop Menu in your Menu Bar to set your User Agent to Mobile Safari 3.2.2 - iPad. Your browser will act just like it was an iPad, which lets you experience with Google Docs or any other sites you're curious about.


Poor WiFi Performance on iPhone When migrating to a new router I remarked my iPhone (7Plus) had lousy TX performance compared to the other 80211.ac Apple devices connected to the same wireless SSID as revealed in below screenshot:

Since it was a new router, I figured maybe there was some inconsistent configuration going on somewhere. Reviewed everything; all good.

Comparative analysis: what's different about this iPhone than the other devices that are working correctly?!?!?

I remarked my iPhone was right next to the router. So I moved it about 4 feet away (in same room). Still terrible TX performance on just this one device. Other than proximity (which I just checked) which can affect wireless performance, why was this iPhone non-performant?!?!?

Nothing to do with the router in the end. The source of the fault was a Layer 1 issue with the iPhone itself (D'Oh!): the case was absolutely CRUSHING TX performance as the screenshot after case was removed from the iPhone shows:

Performance skyrocketed immediately after removing the phone's case.
I always figured there would some degree of a hit from using a phone case on signal performance, but I was absolutely stunned at actually how much there was.
Anyhoo, hope this helps others improve crap performance due to these snazzy phone cases we all love so much ;-)-
The offending case (wood with some sort of rubberized material lining it) is pictured below at Dan's request:


How to view pid of process listening on port using netstat on macOS? For *nix we can use
  netstat -anp

specifically the -p option. This is not supported on macOS. I also tried -b and -o which do not work. So how is this done on macOS?

Try using the -v option for verbose output. That will give, well, verbose results so you can filter a bit with -p  and then maybe pipe to grep for your port number. Something like this to find the process using TCP protocol on port 80:
netstat -anv -p tcp | grep "*.80"
Here's a helpful resource with other options: https://www.btaz.com/mac-os-x/find-the-process-listening-to-port-on-mac-os-x/


Sync custom App Shortcuts via iCloud I know that with Mavericks and iOS 7, iCloud syncs text shortcuts automatically across devices. Does iCloud also sync custom Application specific Shortcuts across Macs?

Application specific shortcuts:

No, App Shortcuts are not synced over iCloud.

The shortcuts are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist, so if you want to sync them you are free to symlink this through Mobile Documents, however that file contains many preferences outside of just your app shortcuts.


Is it possible to run Mountain Lion on older hardware by using a virtualization solution? I'm wondering if anyone has gotten Mountain Lion to run on any hardware in virtualization (VMware Fusion, Parallels, VirtualBox or other...). If so, it would be interesting to know how well (if at all) attempting to run the 10.8 OS on Mac hardware that normally wouldn't allow an installation of the OS.

Has anyone taken a Mountain Lion VM and run it on older hardware?

10.7.x or 10.8 (Build 12A269) in VirtualBox

There's an answer under How can I install Mac OS X Lion in VirtualBox, or any other type of virtual machine?.

I guess, a .vdi of Mountain Lion produced in that way will be usable with at least some Macs that might not otherwise run the OS.

Example

Physical machine:

MacBookPro5,2 with 8 GB memory
VirtualBox 4.2.0 Beta 1.

In the VirtualBoxVM:

Build 12A269 of OS X 10.8
without FileVault 2
with Core Storage encryption of something other than the startup volume
dynamic_pager disabled:

Alongside an answer to Why would I disable swap file in Mac OS X?, note that without swap files, Activity Monitor measures both:

virtual memory size
page ins.


Which application changed Mac OS X [Option]+[D] keybinding When I press Option+D key in OS X, the current application loses focus. And if I press it again, the current window gets focus back.

How do I know which application bind that or how to avoid it. I checked the shortcuts in System Preferences and there isn't anything like Option+D keybinding.

System version:

ProductName:  Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.11.4
BuildVersion:   15E65

This annoys me so much.

create a new user and login as that new user to see whether it works normally.

In my case, it works normally. Then check login items of the current user: Preferences > Users & Groups > Login items. Then remove unuseful items and relogin, remember to uncheck reopen windows when relogin.

Then, everything works normally. Thanks Nunzy in #MacOSX channel!

Thank you so much!!!


How do you communicate to a Modbus device within an iPhone application? I would like to be able to develop an iPhone application that can communicate with Modbus devices, but I'm not sure how to proceed. Has anyone had experience with this or are there existing libraries out there for this purpose?

The big question is how you intend to physically connect to the modbus interface. If you are bridging to it via wifi or ethernet then the bridge will almost certainly have a command set specific to that bridge, and you would use that. If you have a serial bridge you want to connect directly to the iPhone you need to sign up for the Made for iPhone and sign some extra NDAs at which point Apple will give you the details necessary to interface with the USB port, then you build an adapter that has a USB-serial bridge and pump serial commands over it.


Besides ServersMan, any apps that can turn iPhone into an web/app server? I have read from  Has anyone ever tried to use an iPhone as web server?, there is an app called ServersMan  that can turn Phone into an web server. But it is not available in my local app store. Do you have suggestions of alternatives for turning iPhone into an web/app server?

Hopefully, it can provide tunneling-like function so that it can be used in 3G network.

ServersMan is not a web server It's a pseudo server. It merely lets you access files in its Local Storage over a WiFi network. If you want a full-fledged web server running on your iPhone, you're going to have to install Apache, and you'll most definitely have to be JailBroken. It's not as simple as you'd hope.


How do I keep from activating facetime while on a call When making a call my cheek hits the screen and turns on facetime etc.

How do I stop this?

Modern touchscreen phones have a proximity sensor, that emits IR light and measures the bounce back from nearby objects (if any). It's meant to detect your phone's proximity to your face. Perhaps you have a malfunctioning proximity sensor that's never detecting your face.

Does your screen go black when you cover the top (from the top of the display and up) with a finger?


Why is /Application/Utilies "empty" in macOS Catalina from Terminal but not Finder? Intent: I'm just curious as to what's going on under the hood that explains the behavior I'm seeing. (Detailed technical answers upvoted.)

I noticed that if I use Finder and open /Applications, I see a folder called Utilities (as we have for all pre-Catalina operating systems); opening that shows the usual cadre of utility applications.

However, if I open Terminal and try to list those same files, they do not appear:

$ ls -la@  /Applications/Utilities

My question: What's really going on, and how is this possible?

macOS Catalina v10.15 (build 19A602)

My own experiments before asking publicly:

My first thought was to double check the path -- and right clicking the open Utilities window's icon in Finder showed the machine's name, the hard disk's name, then Applications, and Utilities.

Typing $ ls -la@ into the command line and dragging the window's icon to Terminal injected the very same path; running the command (obviously) gave the same results.

So then I started looking to see if there was any new super-extended attributes or something? xattr showed nothing sneaky tucked away.

Now suspecting this something new with APFS, I started researching and found three surprises:

There's now a thing called a "firm" link, that is neither hard nor soft, that end users can't create, and it seems to be some magic about user-level mount points. Currently, I haven't found much detail on what they really are, what problem they solve, and whether or not I should actually care. Although the engineer in me would love to know what's going on.
Doing a man synthetic.conf brings up a very interesting man page, and make me want to go look at /etc/synthetic.conf, which doesn't exist.
The discovery of a /Systems/Applications directory.  That looks new.

Curiosity caused me to try the following, which got me the filename results I expected:

$ ls /System/Applications/Utilities

So, I'm left wondering:

What was the driving need to move things under /System?
What is this witchcraft, if not hard links, making /Application exist?
Why is Finder showing content (apparently) from one place that's really under another?
Is my ~/Application directory subject to such wizardy? (Is there something else I ought to be wary of?)

I'm not used to the case where a graphical shell shows files in a directory that the raw command-line talking to the file system doesn't ...the reverse, sure.

Why would I be doing this?

I was trying to automate making a list of applications I have installed, just as I used to do for prior versions of OS X (here's the old way):

$ ls ~/Applications /Applications /Applications/Utilities | fgrep .app | sed -e 's/.app//' | sort -if

And the new (ignoring special cases of certain subdirectories):

$ ls ~/Applications  /System/Applications /System/Applications/Utilities | fgrep .app | sed -e 's/.app//' | sort -if

I don't know that anyone who knows the technical details of them can share them, because they are not known outside of Apple. But here's my attempt at some replies.

  What was the driving need to move things under /System?

Presumably it was part of Apple's desire to put some of the core system in the "read only" partition which is also new in Catalina.

  What is this witchcraft, if not hard links, making /Application exist?

I believe what you are seeing are "firm links" but you are correct that Apple has not released much information about firm links.

  Why is Finder showing content (apparently) from one place that's really under another?

Presumably because Apple knows people are used to finding them there, and thought it would be better to make them appear where people are used to finding them rather than putting them somewhere else.

  Is my ~/Application directory subject to such wizardy? (Is there something else I ought to be wary of?)

No. The only reason Apple is doing this is because of the read-only partition, which doesn't apply to your ~/Applications/ folder.


Is there a way to validate that an apple update is legitimate? I have reason to suspect that somebody may have had unauthorized access to my computer. I've just reset my copy of OS X from the recovery partition. Afterwards, I was prompted twice to update my OS via the App Store. One of these I may have selected through a notification; the second I selected through the App Store. I'm now on 10.13.6.

Is there a way now to make sure both of these updates were legitimately provided by Apple?

Relatedly, if somebody wanted to install malware of some kind into the recovery partition of my MacBook, is there any way either to scan and remove that or to replace that portion of the hard drive with a legitimate version of the partition?

On other software updates (and for not having any doubt about the legit of them) sudo through terminal.

To install all available software updates, instead use the command sudo softwareupdate -i -a. The -a switch simply instructs the command to install all updates. Again, you’ll need to enter your admin password when prompted.

There’s no traditional progress bar, but you will see updated text entries in the Terminal window as each step is completed, letting you know both when certain updates have been downloaded and when the entire installation process is complete.

If you installed software updates that require a reboot, you’ll see a final message instructing you to restart your Mac. You can do this via the normal macOS interface, but since we’re already using UNIX commands in Terminal, you can also type sudo shutdown -r now, which instructs shutdown command to restart the Mac (“-r”) immediately (“now”).


Unknown terminal 'xterm-256color' Keep getting a message in Terminal saying

tput: unknown terminal "xterm-256color"

This message typically appears when running homebrew, and while I can swear it's popped up on other places, I can't precisely remember. echo $TERM outputs xterm-256color. I'm not the best at diagnosing Terminal problems, so any help is greatly appreciated.

(I know this may be an issue when SSHing to remote servers that don't support xterm-256color, but in this case I'm just concerned about my actual system.)

Nevermind, answered my own question. Stackoverflow had a post that I missed that described how the /usr/share/terminfo folder can get corrupted. Downloaded a replacement from that post, and the error message went away.


Play/Pause option for iTunes instead of global media for TouchBar I have always liked my play/pause button to always affect my iTunes music and never any other application.

Since before macOS High Sierra, the media keys on the function bar always used to control iTunes. This was great as it allowed me to have full control over my music. that is, play music; find a YouTube video, pause music, start YouTube video. That YouTube video would then end then I would be able to play my music again.

Now since High Sierra, that doesn't happen. If I have a YouTube video up, it controls that instead of my music. This means that I have to open up iTunes, then click the play button and go back to Safari. I fixed this by using BetterTouchTool to reprogram the function buttons to bring back the pre High Sierra functionality.

Today, with the TouchBar, I am back with the same issue. Yes, I can use BetterTouchTool but now that requires two clicks. One to activate the BTT controller strips and another to press the play/pause button.

Is it posible to have a global button in the TouchBar controls strip that controls iTunes only?

I am 5 reputation short of being able to make this a comment, but I think it's enough of a solution that I can post it as an answer.

I do not have better touch tool or a menu bar (I do have keyboard maestro and I know you could probably do it using that).

However, what you can do is either script the menu item or send a keystroke to iTunes using applescript. You can then run it out of automator (and assign it a keyboard shortcut) or BTT or somehow just activate it using your touch bar.

According to this reddit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/8okzvg/macos_mojava_supports_automator_workflows_on_the/) mojava will add automators to the touch bar.

Either way, here's a script:

tell application "System Events"
    tell application "iTunes" to activate
    key code 49
    set visible of process "iTunes" to false
end tell

It's not perfect, but it gets the job done.


Internal (Apple SSD) hard drive problem I'm having terrible issues with my Mac since I tried to restore the entire system from a Time Machine backup, which ended up showing a "an error occurred while adding a recovery system to the destination disk" message. I restarted and held cmd+R and Internet Recovery started downloading (instead of booting to the recovery partition). After the download, the menu of OS X utilities appeared and I selected Disk Utility and then I erased the Macintosh HD.

Tried to restore from Time Machine again but the problem persists. I even tried to reinstall OS X: after downloading OS X Mavericks, I got "an error occurred while preparing installation".

Here you can see the results of diskutil cs list and diskutil list commands:

[

As you can see, I have no CoreStorage Logical Volume Groups and I don't see the Recovery HD partition in disk0.

I do believe OS X Base System is the name of the mounted Recovery Partition image.

I would suggest completely erasing every last partition on your drive (except Recovery), recreating a Macintosh HD partition, and reinstalling OS X onto the newly partitioned Macintosh HD.

As for restoring your data, you can use Migration Assistant (/Applications/Utilities/Migration Assistant.app) to restore data from the Time Machine backup after you get a working system, or better, use the "Enter Time Machine" functionality from the TM menubar dropdown.


Time Machine snapshots become dataless Why are my Time Machine local snapshots appearing "healthy" in the Terminal window and then a few hours later, the same snapshots are suffixed with "dataless". Then, no more snapshots are added. I just migrated to Mojave on my MacBook Air, in case that adds anything useful. Thanks.

In my case, I discovered that Dataless Snapshots might appear when TimeMachine is set off/on (automatic unticked/ticked), as it appears that after a few “new” Snapshots are taken, the oldest Snapshots prior to turning off/on TM become dataless.


Need help to install mac os x I have hp mini 210-2080nr booted windows 8 i have retail os x 10.6.3 copy please help to install it.I want to install it using only windows.

On a Windows machine I assume you expect to virtualize OSX. With that assumption the answer is this:

You cannot legally virtualize Snow Leopard 10.6+ you can virtualize Lion 10.7+ though.

This forum post vaguely details the issues with Apple and OSX Snow Leopard and virtualization.

Furthermore, if you dont care about legality, this may or may not invalidate your license of SnowLeopard but works in Virtual Box


High Sierra 10.13.4 Mission Control Hot Corners Broken I have a 27" iMac Retina (Late 2015, 3.2GHz i5, 24GB, Radeon R9) with HDMI secondary screen on a Thunderbolt/HDMI adapter.  I use Mission Control to put 4 workspaces on the main monitor, and switch back and forth using control-arrow keystrokes.  This still works, but screen hot corners to view Mission Control, Desktop, etc. do not work any more.  Also, I use auto-hide for the task bar, and moving the mouse to the bottom of the screen no longer pulls up the task bar -- as of today, I have to click at the bottom.

Everything had been working fine until a recent High Sierra update (maybe 1-2 updates ago?).  When problems first started, I deleted ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist and restarted Dock a few times, and eventually got things working again.

Today, none of that has helped: hot corners doesn't work, auto-hide taskbar only works with a mouse click, and I can't click and move windows after I use a keyboard shortcut to show the Mission Control overview.  (I can select a window in the overview and it gets popped to the top of the stack, but I can't click-and-drag windows any more.)

It looks like there's something wrong with the mouse (a Razer connected by USB), but an old generic USB mouse doesn't work any differently.  So perhaps the problem is in mouse / UI handling?

I also have a couple of MacBook Pros which have all the same updates (I think) but the magic trackpad shortcuts to show Mission Control haven't had any problems, and I think Bluetooth mice attached to them are working OK (have to check to be 100% sure).

I have had some other trouble with some user input on the iMac: I use VMWare virtual machines, and both Win10 and Linux guests sometimes miss key-up events, so I either get control/alt/shift stuck down, or I get keys repeating (or both).  Clicking the affected key a couple of times usually fixes this.  I also use VMWare and Parallels on the MBPs with no problems.

Are there any known problems with UI on iMac on recent High Sierra?  Any workarounds?

Apple Support was willing to help me troubleshoot, even though I don't have a current support contract.  We tried several things, and eventually determined that a desktop/window manager add-on called Magnet was messing up the UI events.  (I had tried just turning off the add-on, but that didn't work.)  It was some other troubleshooting step, including:

Reset NVRAM (shutdown, power up with Opt+Cmd+P+R)
Safe-mode Boot (Restart, hold Shift during boot)
Create new admin user, log in (this helps distinguish a system problem from a particular user's preferences problem)
Disable startup items

Resetting NVRAM didn't help, but safe mode worked.  (However, safe mode turns off all graphics acceleration, so it's really slow on a Retina machine.)

The new user didn't show the problem, so it was clearly something in my preferences / profile.

Finally, turning off Magnet auto-start and rebooting cleared up the problem in my user account.  I was subsequently able to turn Magnet on again, and it's working OK now.  So I suspect it was a stray preference that conflicted with an OSX upgrade, which got cleared out by the rebooting and other troubleshooting steps.

I'm extremely grateful to Apple Support for the help!


"Still waiting for root device" on a macbook pro mid 2009 with osx 10.11.6 Recently got myself a macbook and wanted to put linux on it.

So I got myself a copy of ubuntu and refind and then:

Installed refind in osx recovery mode and shut down.
Booted up, selected my ubuntu usb from the menu, waited a bit, made a 60g partition by reducing the main partition and installed ubuntu to the 60g partition.
Booted ubuntu fine, did a few updates and after that was all done, rebooted back into osx.

But now, I'm given a stop sign after a few seconds. So I checked what was happening with verbose mode and it's saying "Still waiting for root device" with that message being repeated every 10 seconds or so.

From what I've read online, this message is a bit vague so I'm asking here so see if anyone would know how to properly find out whats wrong. If you want anymore information, ask. I'll gladly provide it

Partition Information

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3

Partition table scan:
  MBR: hybrid
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): v

No problems found. 13 free sectors (6.5 KiB) available in 2
segments, the largest of which is 7 (3.5 KiB) in size.

Command (? for help): r

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): o

Disk size is 537234768 sectors (256.2 GiB)
MBR disk identifier: 0x00000000
MBR partitions:

Number  Boot  Start Sector   End Sector   Status      Code
   1                     1       409639   primary     0xEE
   2      *         409640    410011647   primary     0xAF
   3             535965192    537234727   primary     0xAF
   4             410011648    535965191   primary     0x83

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 537234768 sectors, 256.2 GiB
Model: Crucial_CT275MX3
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 749BC76B-79A9-4FD1-8D24-6148246ED175
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 537234734
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 13 sectors (6.5 KiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
   2          409640       410011647   195.3 GiB   AF00  Macintosh HD
   3       535965192       537234727   619.9 MiB   AB00  Recovery HD
   4       410011648       535965191   60.1 GiB    8300

If you want to reinstall you can use dmg2iso to convert dmg on Linux - see this Ask Ubuntu question.

Your partition table looks almost OK.  The only thing is that it doesn't have 128MB free space between partitions.  See Booting from GPT by the author of rEFInd.

  The biggest caveat seems to be following Apple's recommendations for partition sizing and placement. The need for 128 MiB of unpartitioned space after each OS X partition is particularly important; without that space, the OS X installer will refuse to install or upgrade on the partition.

It might let you install to your existing partition but if not you can keep your Linux system by manually resizing partition tables using gdisk ensuring you keep the 128MiB unallocated space as described in the gdisk walkthrough.

For example to shrink partition 2 using gdisk (you will likely lose data in partition 2 as partition will be smaller than current filesystem)

delete it (d2)
create a new one stopping 129MiB before your Linux partition  (n)

Command (? for help): n
Partition number (2-128, default 2): 2
First sector (34-490234718, default = 409640) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: 409640
Last sector (409640-410011647, default = 410011647) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: -129M
Current type is 'Linux filesystem'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = 8300): AF00
Changed type of partition to 'Apple HFS/HFS+'

Sort partitions (s)
Recreate hybrid member - go to Recovery menu (r) and make hybrid MBR (h)

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): h

WARNING! Hybrid MBRs are flaky and dangerous! If you decide not to use one,
just hit the Enter key at the below prompt and your MBR partition table will
be untouched.

Type from one to three GPT partition numbers, separated by spaces, to be
added to the hybrid MBR, in sequence: 2 3 4
Place EFI GPT (0xEE) partition first in MBR (good for GRUB)? (Y/N): Y

Creating entry for GPT partition #2 (MBR partition #2)
Enter an MBR hex code (default AF): AF
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): Y

Creating entry for GPT partition #3 (MBR partition #3)
Enter an MBR hex code (default 83): 83
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): N

Creating entry for GPT partition #4 (MBR partition #4)
Enter an MBR hex code (default AF): AF
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): N

Write changes and exit w

A similar procedure would be required for recovery partition (or you could just delete it).

Alternatively you can delete all partitions, install macOS then make space for Linux using Disk Utility from within macOS.


MacBook Pro display suddenly has a very faint warm/pink tint I have a MacBook Pro Touch 2017. A few days ago, I noticed that the display seems to have started to have a very faint warm/reddish tint, but I can tell the difference nonetheless. The greys aren't "cool grey" anymore, but more like "red grey", and the whites are sort of "faint pink-white".

I really started noticing this because once after startup of macOS, the display was first "cool/bright" (what I would describe as normal), but perhaps 30 seconds after entry to the OS/Desktop, the whole screen switched to the red tint. This "alteration" doesn't happen every time starting the computer, but quite regularly. When comparing the display to that of a MacBook Pro 2013, it is clearly bluer/cooler in its display.

Note that the displays aren't calibrated beyond the factory calibration and default profiles. The issue occurs regardless of any external displays being connected. This is not related to True Tone, Night Shift or anything like that.

Old answer, provided as background
I handed in my computer with the problem to an authorized service partner. At first they didn't recognize the error, but after some further convincing from my part they claim to have spoken with Apple about it.
The authorized service partner claimed that the problem with warm hue is a software bug introduced in one of most recent versions of MacOS High Sierra (spring 2018), and it afflicts various Mac models. They claim that Apple is aware of the problem, and a fix will applied in an upcoming MacOS patch.
Edit, May 2021
As of MacOS Big Sur 11.2.3 (2021-05-04), Apple haven't applied a fix, as the problem persists.
Upon multiple further contacts with Apple, it has become clear that Apple's support are not aware of this issue. They have asked for video evidence when the issue occurs. I would encourage users who experience this issue to contact Apple and send video evidence to get the issue noted.
Since Apple isn't recognizing this issue, I have unmarked my answer as a solution.


applescript: determine the date of last Sunday I need to take today's date and work backwards to Sunday and get that date.  so, for instance today is Monday, December 16.  I need to know that the previous Sunday was December 15.

I've tried several different approaches

set theDate to ((current date) - 1)
repeat until (weekday of theDate) = Sunday
    set theDate to theDate - 1 * days
end repeat

but have not had any luck.

The following example AppleScript code works for me in macOS High Sierra and will return the date string of the previous Sunday:

set now to (current date)

if weekday of now is Monday then
    return date string of (now - 86400)
else if weekday of now is Tuesday then
    return date string of (now - 86400 * 2)
else if weekday of now is Wednesday then
    return date string of (now - 86400 * 3)
else if weekday of now is Thursday then
    return date string of (now - 86400 * 4)
else if weekday of now is Friday then
    return date string of (now - 86400 * 5)
else if weekday of now is Saturday then
    return date string of (now - 86400 * 6)
else if weekday of now is Sunday then
    return date string of (now - 86400 * 7)
end if


Is there a reason why OS X Mavericks Server is running Postgresql? I recently installed OS X Mavericks Server on my computer to use for Xcode continuous integration. I now see that the postgresql database is running via the Activity Monitor, and some investigation shows that it was started by Server.app, which is running Python, which started Postgres. I know that postgres is small and doesn't take up much resources, but I am just curious: Is there a reason why Server.app is running the database? I don't see a postgres service to turn on or off (which to be honest would be a great service to run via the server app).

From the OS X Server Advanced Administration manual, under the section on Postgres backups:

  The Server app on OS X Mavericks supports three separate database clusters:

  Calendar and Contacts
  Profile Manager
  Wiki and Xcode server


Which size is the smallest HD that I can use to install Snow leopard? I had problems with my iMac (20" 2009 Intel and 4GB RAM) as I was updating the OS from OSX 10.5 to 10.6. It told me that I can't update in my main hard drive, so to don't format it, and my main hard drive had problems and I want to save information from it as I didn't do any backup. I had the originals Snow Leopard install CDs and I was thinking to install OSX 10.6 in a 32GB thumb-drive if that is enough storage space.

What is the smallest size external HD or FlashDrive that would allow me to install OSX 10.6? I'm hoping to avoid having to purchase a full 500GB external HD.

Snow Leopard requires about 5 GB of space to install itself and will run with not much more space than that total in most cases.

Installing on a low capacity flash drive (USB storage) is possible, but very slow since the chips there are optimized for low power and react far, far slower than even a basic, bargain basement spindle hard drive.


command line error "no volume specified" Can't understand why I get this response when running this bless command, can someone please explain or suggest how to fix. Note: the volume syntax/path was copied exactly from the output after dragging location from the volume root folder into the Terminal window:

Last login: Thu Jan 10 10:27:52 on ttys000
xxxx:~ xxxx$ su - xxxxx
Password:
xxxx:~ xxxx$ sudo bless --file /Volumes/ML2/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
Password:
No volume specified
xxxx:~ xxxxx$

The bless command has be deprecated. Basically, the command is not compatible with APFS. Other replacements are:

The systemsetup command. Use options -setstartupdisk, -getstartupdisk and liststartupdisks.
The Mac Startup Manager. Basically hold down the option key at startup. To make an OS the default, hold down the control key before selecting.
The Startup Disk pane in the System Preferences application.
The third party rEFInd Boot Manager. This can be installed without disabling SIP.

However, I you still want to use the bless command, then syntax is shown below.

sudo bless --device /dev/disk0sX --setBoot

Where positive integer X can be found by entering the command given below.

mount | grep "/Volumes/ML2 "

I tested this command by boot to Yosemite on a 2007 iMac. I used the bless command to select El Capitan as the default operating system to boot.

  Note: Yosemite does not use System Integrity Protection (SIP)

If selecting a BIOS booting Windows (or other) operating system, be sure to include the following option.

--legacy

Below is the result when trying to use the bless command from High Sierra with SIP enabled. The machine is a 2011 iMac.

Marlin:~ davidanderson$ sudo bless --device /dev/disk0s6 --setboot
Could not set boot device property: 0xe00002bc

Below is the result when trying to use the bless command from El Capitan with SIP enabled. The machine is a 2007 iMac.

Steelhead:~ davidanderson$ sudo bless --device /dev/disk0s5 --setboot
Could not set boot device property: 0xe00002bc


Can I boot my recovered SSD as a Mac OS X installation I recovered an SSD from an old, upgraded 2008 Macbook Pro with a broken keyboard in order to recover the data from it.

Initially I was planning to put it in my other Mac Pro and simply copy the data as if it was another drive, but then another idea came to my mind. What if I could boot that SSD from my Mac Pro?

I don't know if it's possible to set the SSD as a boot drive and start a MBP installation on another machine.

Otherwise I though it could be possible to save the drive as an ISO image and boot is using a virtualization software on my other Mac. Is this even possible? (AFAIK virtualization from another Mac is permitted and legal).

It depends on the system installed on the SSD. If the Mac Pro is capable of booting with it and it fits physically, then I see no problem why it shouldn't work.

MacPro1,1 - 2,1: max system version: 10.7.5
MacPro3,1 - 6,1: max system version: latest
all MacBookPros 2008 (4,1 and 5,1) can run the latest system

Usually all necessary drivers for any Mac (which can run the system) are included in a standard system install.

There is only one exception: systems for new Macs with absolutely new hardware usually contain new drivers though the minor system version number is equal to the general current one. The build number is different though. The newly released Mac can't start from the general system release valid for all other Macs.


How can I restrict only iPad to be connectable to USB port of Mac? I would like to allow iPads to be connected to Mac for provisioning of applications on the devices, but would also like to prohibit any other device from being connected to USB port for security reasons. Would you please let me know what is the mechanism to be adopted to achieve this?

There are two basic solutions for restricting access to computer ports -- software-based, and hardware-based.

A software-based solution would probably be best in your case, but it might not be cheap.  There are security software packages available to block access to devices that are not on a "whitelist" that you establish.  One commercial example is Endpoint Protector.

Hardware-based solutions involve physically blocking access to certain ports.  The "meathead" way to do this is using epoxy.  People have done this, but it is generally not recommended as it is completely irreversible.  You would glue an iPad adapter cable into one port, then fill the other ports with a putty (to prevent epoxy from getting inside the computer where you don't want it) and glue over them.

There are a few USB port "locks" on the market that physically block USB ports -- for example, Kensington USB Port Lock ($15).  But you'd still have to epoxy an iPad adapter cable to your computer to allow iOS devices to connect while preventing access to other devices.


Why is my Mac Mini not Turbo Boosting? I have a late 2014 Mac Mini, with the i7 option, 3 Ghz turbo boosting to 3.5 Ghz according to Apple. To give the system some work to do I am running a ray trace:

$ time povray --benchmark +WT1

This should max out one core with some intense floating point calculation. But when I check as it runs:

$ sysctl hw.cpufrequency
hw.cpufrequency: 3000000000

Why isn't Turbo Boost kicking in? The machine is otherwise idle apart from the Safari window in which I am typing this now, this is the scenario as I understand it that Turbo Boost was designed for?

Just for interest, this machine completes this benchmark in 13m25s and our iMac 3.2Ghz i5 completes in 12m58s - I'm not seeing that paying the premium for i7 was worth it :-(

Update: Well having done some more research, I am getting some boost, according to the Intel Power Gadget:

But I still can't match a 3.2 Ghz i5.

When you run the command sysctl hw.cpufrequency you are getting a constant that was given to the OS at startup.    If you want to get the CPU frequency "on-the-fly" you will need to poll the CPU.  That's what the Intel Power Gadget is doing.

As for why you are not seeing a performance increase with your specific application, it could be from any number of factors including whether or not the application is optimized to work on this particular architecture.

Disclaimer:  Personally, I don't know much about ray tracing software, but from the little bit that I did read up on. I don't see why the calculations for the creation of the trace wouldn't be done on the GPU and not offloaded from the CPU.  This makes me wonder if this is not what's happening here

My suggestion here is to use something that is consistent across all platforms like Geekbench

Finally, Intel has this disclaimer about the Turbo Boost technology...

and...

So, as you stated it appears that your CPU is "boosting" but as to why it's not getting up to the full 3.5 could depend on any/all of these factors that Intel noted.


Can grep highlight matching text without hiding file content? I frequently use grep's context command line options (-A, -B, and -C), but occasionally I want to view the whole file with matching expressions highlighted. To accomplish this currently I simply specify -C 999999999, but this seems silly.

Is there an option within OS X's bundled grep that will allow me to easily take advantage of grep's matching and colorizing features, without hiding any file content?

I don't think there is any simple option in grep but this seems to work fine. From https://stackoverflow.com/a/981831

grep --color -E "pattern|$" file

The |$ at the end of the regular expression makes grep find pattern OR end of lines. It can't highlight those though, so just the pattern gets colored.


Issue installing "JetDrive 720" SSD to MBP late 2012 Retina I have a Retina macbook Pro late 2012 running OS X High Sierra version 10.13.4. I have decided to upgrade my SSD because 120GB is not enough, therefore, I bought a JetDrive 720 SSD (240GB) from Amazon to perform a DIY upgrade.

It should be pretty straight forward but I am having the following error when I try to clone the original drive into the new drive.

I have followed the instructions from the manufacturer but it simply isn't working. Instructions: Transcend JetDrive 720 Manual

I suspect that the issue is with APFS.

The solution was to download Carbon Copy Cloner software because apparently Disk Utility and APFS created a bug after High Sierra update. Just connect your JetDrive or any other drive, follow the prompts and press "clone". That should work for everybody.


My trackpad is collapsing in the front. Is it possible to reseat it? I have a mid-2011 MacBook Pro that I've used exclusively as a desktop. My righthand uses a wireless trackpad while my lefthand uses the built-in trackpad (in between are two large monitors).

About 2 weeks ago, clicking on the built in trackpad felt weird. And, I had to press harder. I am pretty sure, it went from "fine" to "not so fine" somewhat quickly. I ignored this issue until now.

I just looked closely at the trackpad and am so surprised. The front/right corner is very collapsed, but still works (indeed, that is where I always click). The front / left is not collapsed, but it is not very responsive and feels weird. I have to press hard.

Is trackpad collapse a common point of failure in old macbooks?
Is it possible to reseat the trackpad?
Is reseating the trackpad something Apple would for me (I'd be willing to pay for it)?

I had this same thing happen to my 2009 Macbook a few years ago. I was outside of the warranty and AppleCare. Amazingly, I think I found the original YouTube video I used to fix it HERE. I recall parts being around $50 to do it myself. Also of note is THIS thread on MacRumors. It seems to indicate that, back in 2011, Apple may have fixed the trackpad for $100-200. When I had issues with my trackpad, it was because my wrist was laying on it when I typed and I damaged the trackpad. If you read THIS article in the Apple Support Communities, some people reported trackpad issues with battery swelling. Some people have reported getting the swollen battery replaced by Apple for free. It may be wise to take it to Apple and have them give you a diagnosis and a price quote before fixing it yourself like I did. I think I just got lucky that it was just the trackpad.


There is an issue with the time in my macbook air My laptop displays the time correctly in the menu bar, but when it records an activity, like the creation of a file, a sent message in iMessage, a reminder, it always shows the time as 7pm with whatever minutes are accurate. So if I send an iMessage at 3:22pm it would appear as sent at 7:22pm. And if I make a folder at 10:00am it appears as created at 7:00pm.This is driving me crazy. How can I solve this?

Have you tried resetting the PRAM?

  Shut down your Mac. Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command
  (⌘), Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down
  simultaneously in step 4. Turn on the computer. Press and hold the
  Command-Option-P-R keys before the gray screen appears. Hold the keys
  down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for
  the second time. Release the keys.

If this doesn't help, your PRAM battery may need to be replaced. Not a huge deal.


Can Lion's Mail.app unsubscribe from Gmail IMAP folders? I want to try out the new Mail.app but I can't seem to find a way to unsubscribe from certain IMAP folders using my Gmail account. If I right-click on any folder and select "Get Account Info", and click on the Subscription List tab, the list refreshes but no folders appear.

I do not want to use Gmail's server-side label hiding/message count limiting because I want other machines to be able to download all of my email for backup purposes.

Is there an alternative way to limit the folders that Mail.app downloads, or to limit the number of messages per folder that are downloaded (as is possible on iOS)?

Did folder subscriptions work in Snow Leopard, or is this just a long-standing incompatibility between Gmail and Mail.app?

One of the ways to do this is in the gmail settings. Now that Advanced IMAP controls graduated from labs, there's nothing extra to install. Go into the web interface for Gmail and go into settings. Go into the Labels tab and you should have a listing of all your labels with some options. On the far right side is a tick box that says "Show in IMAP" If this is off then Mail shouldn't be able to get at that folder.


iTerm2 save window/tabs on exit? I tried to save a window arrangement but when I open iTerm it opens two windows:

one with my saved arrangement
one with no arrangements

How can I make iTerm2 remember my Window/tabs layout?

This was answered on superuser by another user and the solution worked for me.

Turn off prefs>general>open default window arrangement, and turn off system prefs>general>close windows when quitting an application.


Best macOS for 13 inch MacBook Pro mid 2012 What is the best macOS for MacBook Pro 13 inch mid 2012. macOS Catalina is running very slow.

Your question is based on the premise that it is the OS that is causing the slowness. That needs testing, first of all.
If Apple says an OS will run on that Mac, that means it should run fine. (Indeed, one of the reasons they cut off older Macs is because the new OS doesn't run well.)
If you still have the original hard drive, then that's the likeliest cause of slowness, and it should be replaced by an SSD -- to improve reliability, if nothing else. (If you've already done that, then make sure the SSD has at least 20% free space.)
Not enough RAM could also be a factor (combined with swapping onto slow storage media). If you haven't already maxed it to 16 GB, do so.
Or it could be that the slowness is caused by software: things you've installed, possibly for a previous OS, that now don't play well on Catalina. Test booting into Safe Boot Mode (hold down shift at boot), or running in a brand new user account that doesn't have all the Login Items and Launch Agents of your existing account.
The 'best' OS is the one that lets you run the apps that you need, while supporting your hardware. Your MBP won't run Big Sur, so you're already falling into 'legacy' territory. As time marches on, you'll increasingly have to stay on older versions of apps and not keep up with the newest and shiniest.


Is there a way to fix these scratches on my MacBook Pro's screen? I have the Mid-2010 13" MacBook Pro. Sadly, the Keyboard Keys have caused some scratches in the screen, which is annoying as hell. (Yes, I know, I should use the white buffer sheet that came with it)

Is there a way to fix these scratches? Or so I need a really expensive replacement screen cover?

I'm surprised no else one has said it yet:
This is a nearly brand-new MacBook Pro still covered by warranty.
There is absolutely no reason that your keyboard keys should damage the display like that.  This is a design flaw that has existed in their laptops at least as far back as the PowerBook G4.  The keys should not touch the screen when the lid is closed under any circumstances, but they invariably do.
I have to clean my screen every few days to get rid of the keyboard imprints, but luckily have taken no damage to the screen (probably only because I use the awesome Moshi keyboard cover, which also saved my MBP from a hot tea disaster).
Take it to Apple and make them fix it under warranty!


Monitor network connectivity issues having a ton of issues with my new ISP. Does anyone know of an app that sits in the tray and tests connectivity to various websites every ~10 seconds and provides a report on connectivity and perf issues? Thanks!

There’s not an App, but there’s a tool (one of my favorites) that does this exact thing - iPerf3.
Normally, you’d run iPerf3 on two different nodes to evaluate network performance; one as a server and the other as the client, but in your scenario, you need to check performance to the Internet (nodes you don’t control).  iPerf has a solution for that too:  iPerf Public Servers
For an example of an iPerf in action, see  What dowload speeds is the Apple USB Ethernet Adapter capable of?
You can use these public servers to measure/monitor Internet performance.  What you’ll need to do is run iPerf periodically (10 seconds may to too short an interval) and at the end of the command append a file redirect to send the output to a file.  For example:
iperf3 -c IP <Address/Hostname> >> filename.txt

The >> filename.txt will create a file called “filename.txt” if it doesn’t exist and the double greater than sign will append the output to the file and not overwrite it.  Use a single > to overwite the file.
You could use cron (deprecated) or use launchd to run the command periodically.  10 seconds is much to short an interval; maybe every few minutes or so would be better.
The best part about this tool is that it’s free (as in beer). Period. No trial, no lite version with an upgrade to pro, etc.


iPad mini 3 update iOS 8.3 I have an iPad mini 3 running iOS 8.3. I'm about to upgrade the OS abut I'm wondering what I will lose. I imagine I'll have to download email and messages again, but apps? Photos? Will safari lose my passwords? Just wondering how much after care this is going to require?

Thanks!

You should not lose anything when you update iOS.

Just the be on the safe side backup your iPad.

Note: If your updating to iOS 11, 32-bit apps are not supported and will not open on iOS 11.


How do I further diagnose TCP connectivity (timeout) problems? (ICMP, DNS work fine) I have two Macs behind a cable modem/WAP. One works fine. The other is able to ping servers but is unable to telnet to them. For instance pinging what.org works fine but I get operation timed out errors when I wget what.org or telnet what.org 80. And nmap what.org -Pn says host is up but all ports are filtered. I'm pretty sure this is a problem with the computer, not with the modem/router. Also, strangely some of my Chrome tabs can still reload, duplicate, and function, like google, Gcal and Gmail, but other's can't, and all new domains fail with Error 118 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT): The operation times out.. Skype chat and dropbox work. How can I further diagnose this problem?

First step: check that Mac n°2 is connected with the network interface you think it should (i.e. Ethernet and not AirPort or anything else).

If you are using the famous Automatic network configuration you are never sure on which interface your computer is talking or replying.
For example, your Mac n°2 might well be plugged toward the Internet through your neighbour Wi-Fi connection.


organising apps by multiple levels of folders possible? I like the idea of putting our apps in "folders" , but is there anyway we can furthur put those "folders" into "folders" ?

Not at this time. You cannot make a folder within a folder in iOS.


Why do iPhone App Store ratings and reviews seem to get processed so slowly? I'm trying to figure out what's going on with Apple's ratings/reviews system on the App Store. I've had issues with my own app (ratings/reviews not showing) now I see a major app with similar issues...

The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2011 free app was released just 2 days ago (Feb 14). It now has 29 ratings and 9 reviews (one review is mine posted from night of 2/15). But this has got to be a well downloaded app right? I'm talking 1000's probably just in the first day, so where are the other reviews/ratings?

Does anyone know if:

1) Apple has humans approve all ratings/reviews before letting them show?

2) Apple has an algorithm for passing/rejecting ratings/reviews?

3) What is the exact time delay between posting a review/rating and it appearing on the App Store?

Also-> Have you had any experience with a review or rating not showing in the App Store ever or only after a long delay?

Ratings appear very quickly, and do not appear to require approval (can't imagine that they would). The reality is that almost no one rates the apps they download, and since "rate on delete" was eliminated with iOS 4, even fewer ratings will appear. (The removal of "rate on delete," where the OS asked you to immediately rate an app when you deleted it, is generally a good thing, since someone deleting it is much more likely to dislike an app than someone keeping it, which resulted in significantly skewed ratings).

Reviews sometimes appear very quickly -- within minutes of submission -- and sometimes take up to a day to appear. Last year there were some significant abuses of the review system that became public, including mass reviews submitted by marketing companies (through individual accounts set up for that purpose), so it's likely that Apple changed their policies at that point. From what I can tell, if an account has a long history of ratings across multiple developers, reviews can appear very quickly, but there seems to be a delay for new accounts or those with few reviews, which may well be approved by humans.

However, as Phillip wrote, the actual process is entirely unknown, and Apple intentionally keeps it that way.

Personally, its never taken more than a few hours before my reviews appeared, and it's usually within minutes.

Edited to add

Just wrote another review and noticed that below the entry area it says,

  If a review is deemed inappropriate, it will not be posted to the App Store.

which implies potential review, and after the review is entered it says,

  Your review has been successfully submitted. Please note that it may be reviewed and will not appear in the store immediately.

The "it may be reviewed" at least partially supports my "depends on your account" theory.


Time Capsule isn't being found by AirPort Utility I have a MacBook Air (mid 2011) running OS 10.7.5. Last month I bought a new Time Capsule, and I would like to reformat/erase my old Time Capsule (about 5 years old) and give it to a friend. But right now, AirPort Utility cannot even find the old Time Capsule.

We wanted to test whether the old Time Capsule would work at all with my friend's ISP and Windows PC. We got them to talk to each other, but then we probably typed in something injudicious (an IP address, I think). Afterwards, we couldn't talk to the old Time Capsule with the PC, and now I can't talk to it with my MacBook either. When I use it directly as my wireless router, AirPort Utility no longer finds it - no Time Capsule icon at all, just a spinning wheel and a message saying it can't find anything but it will keep looking. (I never succeeded at locating the old Time Capsule when my new one was providing the wireless, even before we made things worse).

So the primary question is: what can I do to obtain any kind of access to my old Time Capsule - just enough to reformat it and start over? (There's no data on it that I need to care about.) Or can it be reformatted with some magic button press or paper clip insert on its own?

The Airport Express, Airport Extreme and Time Capsule units have a reset button located on the back that will restore the unit to factory default settings. See http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT3728 This will allow you to reconfigure the unit.


google chrome get's a "Do you really want to start" prompt, but it's installed I have a mac pro with the latest mac os x, I have google chrome installed since 23 oct 2010 and still everyday when I open it mac os x ask me "Do you really want to open this software, it was downloaded from the internet 23 oct 2010" which is really annoying since it's my preferred browser.

I'm sorry that the message is in swedish but it's my fathers computer.

Try executing from the Terminal the following command:

sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/

(it might ask you for your password, that's ok)

This basically clears the quarantine flag in the metadata for the file (this is not a flag in the file itself so it doesn't get carried away when you move or copy the file to another machine)


Uninstalling R and R Studio from the mac How to delete R from the mac. Currently, Tidyverse package no longer works and thus I have to reinstall the R. But, I am not able to fully delete the programme as it keeps creeping back. What to do to completely uninstall R and R Studio from the mac.
I can’t locate a script to remove all the things these packages installed nor able to find support from the R community.
Is this documented anywhere?

From https://cran.r-project.org/bin/macosx/RMacOSX-FAQ.html:

1.3 How can R for Mac OS X be obtained and installed?
[...]
Further details, including uninstallation and building R from the sources, are in the ‘R Installation and Administration Manual’.

Said manual is at https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-admin.html.


Is cellular phone functionality in an iPad theoretically possible? Is it theoretically possible that with the existing hardware in a cellular iPad model that software for the device could enable it to become a large iPhone (make phone calls + send receive texts through cellular system)?  or is there a hardware limitation that would prevent this.  For this question, assume a GSM carrier (i.e. T-mobile) and an iPad Air with cellular

Yes, it is theoretically possible. For example, the first iPad Air in the cellular version has the same baseband modem IC chip that the iPhone 5 has.

However please note that it is not possible for a third party app to in any way "activate" or "reconfigure" the voice capabilities through that chip. Only Apple could, theoretically, add cellular voice capability to the iPad. In my opinion, that is not likely to happen at all.

You can add voice capability to the iPad using methods other than a cellular carrier - for example via traditional VoIP or cloud services such as Skype and similar.


Receiving text alerts on Macbook but not iPhone I have an iPhone 7. I only recently synced it to the Messages app on my computer. At first, I received text alerts on both devices, but now, when I have the computer open (not the computer's Messages app, just the computer) and get a new text, I get an alert on my computer but my phone doesn't light up. If I check my phone's lock screen, I can see that I got a new text, I just can't get my phone to alert me. When I close the computer, however, I receive alerts just fine.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is it normal or is there something I can do to fix it? Do Not Disturb and message forwarding are disabled.

This is normal.  Messages notices you were sent the alert on your Mac so it doesn't alert again for the same message on your iPhone.

You mentioned that when you do get Messages alerts on your iPhone when your computer is locked or has the lid closed.  Messages is designed to not 'over alert' you when it believes you've already seen the alert.


WhatsApp videos are not viewable in iPhone 6s I got a video in WhatsApp from someone with an Android phone. When I open the video I  can hear the the audio, but nothing is visible; it's just a blank screen with audio from the recording.

I forwarded the same video to my friend who has an  iPhone 7 and he is able to view (and hear) the video.

Does anyone know what the problem is and how to fix?  I am using an iPhone 6s.

Try the free VLC video app, it's available for iOS.


View hidden folders on MacOS Mojave? cmd+shift+. does not work Since I'm not really great with using the terminal, I would like to see hidden folders on my Mac through the regular user interface. However, I cannot show my hidden folders. I tried things I found on the internet but they did not work for me. I tried

cmd+shift+dot - nothing happens

settings > Keyboard > turning on and off "Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys"

settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Restore Defaults

terminal.app > defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles ["yes"/"YES"/" "] source

at the folder I want to view the hidden contents of, I pressed Alt while clicking Go. after the "Library" folder showed up in "Go," I clicked it and saw many folders in Library, but still didn't see any folders with . in front. source

My main goal is to copy and paste into a .gitignore file that is stored in a specific folder on my desktop. I am having troubles doing it through the terminal so I thought this would be easier but it is apparently not. :)
Question: How can I fix this issue and allow myself to see hidden folders on my Mac?
I don't have a strong background in this stuff and am not trained in computer science/tech stuff.
I have macOS Mojave.

There are two types of hidden items (files or folders) on macOS:

Those which start with . whose hidden bit it set by default.
Those with no starting ., but chflags set to hidden. Run man chflags to see more info.

I clicked it and saw many folders in Library, but still didn't see any folders with . in front

Those folders are of the second type.

However, I cannot show my hidden folders.

Let's see if there's a problem with hidden files itself. In Terminal, run :
cd ~/Downloads
mkdir test_hidden && cd test_hidden
touch empty
touch .empty_h
open .

In this folder that opens, do you see files (dis)appearing if you toggle command+shift+. ?
Update: Restarting and running killall Finder helped.
For the .gitignore file, use ls -a command to list all items in a directory. If there is a .gitignore file there, you can run
open .gitgignore

to open it with default text editor. Or nano .gitignore. Or specify a text editor:

Can I open files in TextEdit from the Terminal in Mac OS X?


When Time Machine says it's 'Verifying Backup...' what is it actually doing? I have a third-party NAS drive (Western Digital MyBook World II) which I used for time machine backups in Snow Leopard.  I've upgraded to Lion and the first backup has spent over an hour 'Verifying Backup...', what is OS X actually doing here and if I choose to skip verification what are the consequences?  It seems to be stuck on 69%...

If it's your first backup in Lion, you need to leave the computer awake and connected to the Time Machine volume and let it do its thing, perhaps overnight. Once it makes an initial backup it has to construct an elaborate index database so that the Time Machine restore functions can work correctly. If you interrupt or cancel the process, it will have to start over from the beginning again at some other time, and this will indeed take up time and system resources. I have heard complaints from others that the initial backup, verifying, indexing, etc. takes a great deal of time in Lion, but you need to allot the  time necessary to let the system do its thing in order that it work correctly.


iOS 8.3 Ignoring Inline CSS I have an HTML email signature with Outlook.com where I can only use inline CSS. I'm styling the telephone number to lose the iOS blue underline link but want to retain the "tap to phone" functionality
This line is the troublesome part;

Tel: 01234 567 890

iOS will respect the colour declaration but will completely ignore the text decoration declaration and continue to underline.

Any ideas why would be appreciated.

"Smart" formatting (for lack of a better phrase) is added after the page is rendered and is not affected by CSS. Short of disabling the functionality completely, as shown in the other answer, you cannot affect it.

The reason the color works is because the colored text is part of the page being rendered - you are declaring during rendering that it should be black. The underline is not added until after the page is rendered, so you cannot affect it.


Is possible to use a Micro SIM in iPhone 3GS? I want to use my old iPhone 3GS, but don't want to pay another plan for the occasional use.

You'd need an adapter like this one to make it fit, but it should work.


How can I temporarily run a resource intensive process without overheating my CPU? I have a 2015 Macbook Pro with 2.5 GHz, 16GB.

I'm trying to run someone's deep learning python script on my macbook. The program has to take in training data and process it. It maxes out my CPU. I ran the fans on max speed and it got part way through the process but because my CPU cores were hitting 90 degrees I had to quit the script early.

make sure you have smc installed so you can adjust your fans...also, make sure your fans are clear of dust/debris...dust can create a real problem. you can also do new thermal paste but it may void your warranty...and thats only really necessary if youve got a constant, major overheating issue


Apple watch still paired to an iPhone I no longer have I used to have an iPhone from work and my Apple watch was paired to it.
Now that I've bought a new iPhone and given back my old iPhone I am unable to pair my apple watch to the new phone.

My Apple watch says: "wrong code, go to Apple Watch app and..."
There is no chance to enter the code manually.

But in the App I can only start to pair a new device, but the watch is still paired.

What steps do I have to do?

My Apple Watch is from series one and I don't know the software version nor how to determine it.

One thing you can do, assuming you're not worried about losing the data on your Apple Watch, is to erase all content and settings on the watch itself. However, if you have no access to a backup, then you'll be setting the watch up from scratch as a new watch.

If you want to proceed, the process is as follows:

Launch the Settings app on your Apple Watch
Tap on General
Swipe up and tap on the Reset button
Tap on Erase All Content and Settings
Tap on Erase All

Once complete, your watch will be back to factory settings. You can now go through the process of pairing it with your new iPhone.

NOTES:

In your situation this is unlikely, but if you're prompted to restore from a watch backup, then select the latest backup you have.
Since you're not likely to have an iPhone backup, you’ll just have to set up your Apple Watch as new.

[UPDATE]

Since you've clarified in the comments that you can't actually even touch your Apple Watch screen without getting prompted about a wrong code, try these steps instead:

Put the Apple Watch on its charger with the power on (so that it's charging) and keep it on charge for all of the following steps!
Press and hold the side button (not the Crown) until you see the Power Off slider
Press hard on the Power Off slider for about a second and then remove your finger
Tap on Erase All Content and Settings
Tap on Erase All

Once complete, your watch will be back to factory settings. You can now go through the process of pairing it with your new iPhone.


How to fix / Reset App Store app on Mac OSX - El Capitan Newly upgraded to Latest released OS X - El Capitan (10.11.5). Now when I open App Store app, the spinning wheel to right of < > buttons on upper left side continues to spin with no content visible below on any tab button. Originally, I saw that 1-update was available. I read an earlier note to use Activity Monitor and kill processes related to App Store. Saw 2 that had long process times (storeassetd, storedownloadd). Plus now see App Store Web Content in "(not responding state). How do I fix this???

Go to Finder and press ⌘ + Shift + G;
Locate ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.appstore and delete com.apple.appstore which are cache files;
Then press again those commands and go /private/var/folders, open each folder and each subfolder until you find com.apple.appstore and delete this folder;
Restart your Mac.


Shortcut for toggling hidden files in Finder with AZERTY layout There's a shortcut for toggling the hidden files in Finder that works on QWERTY layouts: SHIFT + CMD + '.'

However, on my AZERTY layout (Belgian more specifically) this doesn't work. If I switch to a QWERTY layout, the shortcut works, so you'l be able to test it if you switch to a AZERTY layout. Anybody any idea? I'm on High Sierra.

In Finder use this combination: shift+cmd+fn+.


Use Shift+F12 in an application I am using an application which has a shortcut that uses Shift + F12. But when I do that on my mac, it goes to the dashboard. Which is very irritating. How can I quickly bypass that feature and send the shortcut to the app?

Go to System Preferences → Mission Control and change the Show Dashboard shortcut to something else.