Disabling password in recovery mode, is default password restored when re-enabling? I need to fix an issue with my friends mac, but I do not know his pass, and don't want to have to make up a new one, can I disable it in recovery mode or single user mode, then re-enable it after I've sorted the issue and logged into his account, and have his default pass' restored?

You can reset the password via Recovery Mode or Single User Mode, but you would need to know the original password in order to change it back.

Another important issues comes to mind if they're using FileVault. You will not be able to access their information by changing their password (and you'll likely break other things trying).

Other options would include:

Making a secondary account (if the issue isn't specific to that user account)
Repairing the issue via Target Disk Mode (if the issue is fixable that way, and they aren't using FileVault)
Obtaining the password, or having them change it to a temporary password they can share with you

Note: If they aren't running FileVault, and you end up changing their password, you'll be prompted to wipe out their Keychain on every boot (which means they lose everything, or you continuously see Keychain errors).

The third option, i.e. obtaining a correct password, is best, and standard practice for repair shops.


Unspecified Error when Trying to Install macOS High Sierra I have a Mac Mini (Late 2012) and a MacBook. About a week ago, I suspected that my Mini had been infected. So disconnected the Time Machine to preserve my backups, switched to the MacBook and when I had the time, downloaded the installer and tried to install High Sierra.

I created an external bootable media by downloading the installer on my MacBook, plugged in an external HDD and ran sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MacInstall

I got to the screen with the utilities, started Disk Utility and erased my Macintosh HD and replaced it with APFS.  But of course, it's not a solid state drive, so that failed. I erased the disk again, and reformatted it as HPFS, journaled.

This time, I get 'an error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again'.

I have downloaded the installer a second time, and tried again. Same result. I checked the date and it is correct. I even tried resetting the NVRAM. No luck. At this point, I have a Mac sitting here like a brick, that I can't use.

Can someone recommand how to get round this?

The most likely error is that the disk isn't partitioned correctly. If you have a bootable installer or can connect it in target disk mode - try erasing the entire physical volume again.

In the image above - you want the top item selected and not the volume under the physical drive. I like to click erase and then not make any changes from the defaults - leave the name Untitled or whatever the default name is - not Macintosh HD.

Then when the installer runs, you might need to look at the install log (press command 3 and command L when the install starts) or we'll need to chase down where or if your installer is saved to disk after the install aborted.

In some newer hardware - you need to be connected to the internet with no firewalls so the installer can go get the components for the hardware - perhaps that step is failing and the install log would likely show that.

Here is Apple's full steps on the erase - so choose it over my steps above if mine fail you.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904


OWC aftermarket 1TB disk missing in Mac Pro after erase process; not found in diskutil, startup list, or install-to list I am selling a Mac Pro Late 2013. In anticipation of the sale, I erased the disk. The disk is a 1TB built-in SSD from OWC (Aura). After I erased the disk (there were 2 partitions, I erased both including the 'data' disk which is probably why this happened). I assumed after erasing, I would just be able to boot into recovery mode and re-install the OS. Problem is after getting into internet recovery mode, the disk is completely missing.

Diskutil list shows the boot disk but the 1tb drive is nowhere to be seen:

and no CoreStorage disks found.

Any ideas what to do appreciated.

I was able to see the disks once I used Option-⌘-R as opposed to ⌘-R. It seems that the disk for whatever reason was not showing when recovery attempted to install straight into Mojave. Using Option-⌘-R started the OS install with Catalina and from there the disks were visible and installation could proceed.


Facetime says connecting forever after buying a third iphone on the same account I hope this is the right place to ask this, we have a iphone 4s and a iphone 5c. My dad recently bought another iPhone 5s, and now all 3 are on 1 apple ID. I shifted my mom's and sister's phone to another apple ID, to give dad exclusive access to his ID, however, when I try to facetime with any of the other phones, it says 'connecting' forever. I tried the advice here, but to no avail.

Would appreciate any advice, should we just take it to the apple store?

Nono.no need to the Apple store. You should make sure both you devices is up to date, I mean 7.1.2 as for now. Because the protocol of Facetime changes very often, sometimes old system can't get through.
Maybe you should turn off and on your facetime after the software update .


Stop application from coming on top I'm doing some web development testing which requires me to run a script which generates a virtual browser window. Whilst the script is running, the script interacts with the browser window several times a second. Every time something happens on the browser window, it comes to the foreground, covering any other windows I have open at the time. This makes it pretty much impossible to do anything else whilst the script is running. Does anyone know of a way to tell the operating system not to bring a specific application to the front?
[I'm on a MacBook Air, and am using Chrome for testing websites. So my question is: is there a way to get Chrome not to cover other applications, even when something new happens to it?]

For some situations running Chrome in headless mode may be a workaround. In this mode, you don't see the Chrome window at all. See
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/04/headless-chrome for details


How to switch input language with good old Cmd + Space in Sierra? It turns out that in macOS Sierra (10.12) by default you can switch between languages with Ctrl + Space while previously it was Cmd + Space which is faster to click because you can easily do it with just thumb.

My question is - is it possible to switch back to the Cmd + Space?

From what I see now it's not doable

⌘+␣ and ⌘+⌥+␣ are now used to "Show Spotlight Search" and "Show Finder search window" respectively.  You will have to change those shortcuts before you can change these.  Click on spotlight in the left pane, double click on the shortcut and key in your new combination to change it.

Here's proof that it can be done.

For the basic Apple instructions, see this help article.


Swap two columns/rows in Numbers I would like to move column 3 in numbers in between columns 1 and 2. In other words, I would like to swap columns 2 and 3. This is possible in Microsoft Excel.

I realize this is possible in Numbers by creating a dummy column and copying/pasting, but this doesn't seem like the "proper" way to swap two columns. Additionally, this creates problems if there are other columns/rows which reference these rows which are being swapped.

Is there a way to swap rows/columns in Numbers while maintaining these references?

Your question has already an answer here.

Additionally this can also be done by clicking on the column/row number one time (it should be highlighted), then long-click it until the column/row begins to float. Now you should move and reorder without deleteting references.


The graphics card on my old MacBook Pro broke. How do I transfer my files if I cannot see anything? I have a 2017 MacBook Pro and the graphics card broke leaving me unable to see anything. Everything else still works. I hadn’t backed anything up because I’m an idiot and now I don’t know how or if it’s possible to transfer my files over to the new MacBook. Any help is greatly appreciated:)

Your best option is to boot the old mac into Target Disk Mode, which turns the whole thing into an external drive for the new Mac.
Connect the two together using a Thunderbolt 3 cable (it may need to be a "Thunderbolt 3 cable", rather than just a USB C one).
Then boot the old Mac while holding down T.
You can then run Migration Assistant, which will copy everything over for you.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchlp1443/mac
Without wishing to be too schoolmastery, once you've retrieved all your files, I hope this will encourage you to backup your files in future!


Lync sends clipped text I use Lync in Mac OS El Capitan. I installed Lync 14.2.1. When I send some text to somebody, he gets this text as clipped. tail of chars are clipped. it is impossible to read "y" or "g". because they don't have tails. I tried to various font and font size but no change. how can I fix this ?

I have the same issue with Lync 14.2.1 (150923) and El Capitan (10.11.2 (15C50)). It occurs only when sending messages to Lync for Windows (I'm not sure which version but one compatible with both Office 2010 and 2013). Mac to Mac messages look fine. The symptom is with line spacing (the vertical distance between lines of text) that causes text to be clipped and difficult to read.

I have done extensive testing to try to find the solution, by changing font sizes on both the sending side (Mac) and receiving side (Windows) to no avail. When I log in to my account on Lync 2010 (4.0.7577.4484) for Windows 7 through a Windows 7 VM, my messages look fine to recipients.

To conclude, Win-to-Win and Mac-to-Mac are fine, but Mac-to-Win is not, regardless of the font or font size selected on both ends.


How can .wav files be created on an iPhone or iPad? How can .wav files be created on an iPhone or iPad? I want to customize the sounds that Outlook for Windows plays when certain events occur and it would be nice if I could make .wav files on a mobile device and transfer them back afterwards.

Twisted Wave

This looks like a solid piece of audio editing software. It uses the internal microphone on your iPad to record audio and can export to .wav or many other formats.


How many resources does an empty OSX desktop take? By desktop, I mean creating extra desktops that you can flip to for extra screen real estate, not separate monitors. They used to call it spaces.

I like to have a couple ready in case I need them, but most of the time I don't. Wondering what the penalty is for having empty ones running.

Quick unscientific testing says: not enough to be significant.

I increased the number of desktops from 1 to 16 (which is apparently the maximum), and kept an eye on the memory usage of WindowServer – it went up a few MB. CPU seemed unaffected too. Definitely neglegible on any modern hardware, and far outweighed by the resource usage of programs like Firefox, which is in the hundreds of MBs.

If you enjoy the extra space, by all means go for it.


iPad, iphone linking and usage If I had an iPhone only on my iTunes account, could I use someone else's iPad to download an app to my iphone? If I used the app on their iPad, would it show that my iPhone downloaded and used the app?

Any app belongs to the Apple ID that purchased it.
You cannot transfer it to another account.

You could download it to another device only by logging in with the Apple ID that made the original purchase.

You do this by going to Settings ➔ iTunes & App Store then tap on Apple ID, then tap Sign Out (of whoever is signed in) Then sign in with your Apple ID.

Everything you've bought with that Apple ID (music, movies, apps) can be downloaded to that device.

If you used someone else's device to purchase an app using your own credentials, it would still be available for later download to your phone - though it would, of course, still be on the other person's device unless you deleted it afterwards. You can't remotely delete content from a device.

You can install apps on up to five iOS devices concurrently.

It goes without saying that letting someone else know your Apple ID login details could be potentially very unsafe.


Kali Linux on Macbook I have a question about kali linux on an Apple Macbook Pro running in Parallels.
 After giving the command sudo airmon-ng in terminal, it shows no interface.

Does anybody know what to do or is it not possible to successfully use kali linux in a virtual machine on a Mac?

airmon-ng is a part of Aircrack-ng and if you want to use the Aircrack-ng software suite in a VM you'll need to provide your own USB Wi-Fi Network Adapter attached directly to the VM since Parallels, VMware Fusion and VirtualBox, only provide a wired Ethernet adapter to the VM.


How do I install Intel's ifortran and MKLs on Mac OS X? I need to install Intel's ifortran and Math Kernel Libraries (MKL) on OS X 10.7 Lion, available (for non-commercial use) here. Has anyone experience in doing so? Or should I rather setup a virtual Linux instead?

The non commercial tools all appear to be for Linux ony so you will need to use the VM.

Although TBB is available for OS X.


Attempting to play video on iOS 7 shows play button with line through When I try to watch video in my browser I get a play button with a line through it and it doesn't work. I have tried Safari, Chrome, and Mercury. They all give me the play button with a line through it. When I use my old iPhone with iOS 6 I have no issues. This seems to be an iOS 7 issue.

Well, on an adult website I've been on, i just refreshed the page or went back a page, went back to the same video and it played again. It only gives me that when I turn my phone off and its on the video player. Tried the same thing with my old 4g IPod. Just go back a page and reclick the video., Only if we're on teh same website....


Trouble adding a printer with lpadmin I'm trying to add a printer through the Terminal using lpadmin, and it absolutely refuses to work. The printer adds just fine, everything looks perfect from what I can see, but any attempt to print results in a "Printer did not respond" error.

Here's the line I'm using to add the printer:

lpadmin -p _1BIT_16x09 -D 1BIT_16x09 -L "Export" -o printer-is-shared=false -E -v lpd://10.96.99.60/1BIT_16X09 -P ~/PPDs/_1BIT_16x09.ppd

The reason the -p name has a _ in front of it is because if I add it normally, it adds this, I'm assuming because the name starts with a number. I have crafted it to create the printer to appear exactly the same way within the cups web interface and the /etc/cups/printers.conf file.

If I add the printer using the above command (which doesn't work), this is what I get in printers.conf:

<Printer _1BIT_16x09>
UUID urn:uuid:13a13ddb-3110-37b0-7aab-96bae9e30955
Info 1BIT_16x09
Location Export
MakeModel Agfa ApogeeX
DeviceURI lpd://10.96.99.60/1BIT_16X09
State Stopped
StateMessage The printer did not respond.
StateTime 1464903468
ConfigTime 1464903399
Reason paused
Type 8450124
Accepting Yes
Shared No
JobSheets none none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
OpPolicy default
ErrorPolicy stop-printer
</Printer>

If I add it normally through the GUI (which does work), this is what I get:

<Printer _1BIT_16x09>
UUID urn:uuid:c5565ce1-256d-3d66-4fb8-74fde3242cc5
Info 1BIT_16x09
Location Export
MakeModel Agfa ApogeeX
DeviceURI lpd://10.96.99.60/1BIT_16X09
State Idle
StateTime 1464904755
ConfigTime 1464904755
Type 8450124
Accepting Yes
Shared No
JobSheets none none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
OpPolicy default
ErrorPolicy stop-printer
</Printer>

As far as I can tell, aside from the UUID they are identical, but one works and the other doesn't. It's driving me bonkers. Any ideas?

The problem, embarrassingly enough, turned out to be an uppercase letter in the lpadmin command I was using.


How to make remove free space and make APFS container take it up I am on 11.1 Big Sur beta.
I have a partition with no disk identifier called (free space)
I would like to remove this, and then make the APFS container take up the free space.
Here is a screenshot of my GPT and Disks

This answer was tested using Big Sur (macOS 11.0.1).

Boot to Big Sur.

Close all applications. Open the Terminal application.

You can create a new APFS container.  An example is given below. Assume the output from diskutil list is as follows.

The command to enter would be as follows.
diskutil addpartition disk0s1 apfs NewAPFS 0

Clone (replicate) your existing Big Sur installation to the new APFS container. An example is given below. Assume the output from diskutil list is as follows.

The command to enter would be as follows.
sudo asr --source /dev/disk1s5s1 --target /dev/disk2 --erase

An alternative to the asr command would be to use the Carbon Copy Cloner.

Restart the Mac and hold down the option key until the Mac Startup Manager icons appear. Hold down the control key while selecting the Big Sur that is not shown as the current default.

An alternative would be to select the startup disk from macOS Recovery.

Remove the original. An example is given below. Assume the output from diskutil list is as follows.

The command to enter would be as follows.
diskutil apfs deletecontainer disk2

Reclaim the free space. An example is given below. Assume the output from diskutil list is as follows.

The command to enter would be as follows.
diskutil apfs resizecontainer disk1 0

The final result is given below.


How to view a photo marked up in iOS on my laptop ? (.AAE file) I've taken a couple of photos on my iPhone 5s running iOS 10 and annotated them using the built-in markup feature.

The photos look fine when viewed on the iPhone but when I transferred them to my laptop (MacBook Pro 15-inch, Mid 2012, running 10.10.5) via the Image Capture utility it imported all of the photos, but they where not marked up, instead for each photo I got an accompanying .AAE file, which I presume is the markup overlay.

How can I get the photo to save as a JPEG with the markup already overlaid ?

iOS overlays the markup as saved in the .AAE file. Whenever you see the photo the markups will be overlaid.

Solution 1

When you send the photo to your MacBook Pro using AirDrop, a new image (the original image and the markup) will be generated on-the-fly and sent to your Mac with all markups intact.

For this to work you need a "MacBook Pro (Late 2008) or later, excluding the MacBook Pro (17-inch, Late 2008)". See Apple.com.

Solution 2

If you are not able to use AirDrop with your Mac, you may create a Shared Photo album with iOS' Photo.app. As soon as the shared image appears in the new album you can save it to your camera roll with all markups applied. Please note that the resolution of these photos will be reduced to fit 2048 px x 2048 px.

Solution 3

Use Photos.app on your Mac. If both the image file and the .AAE file are in the same folder they both get imported. You will see all markups applied in Photos.app.

To export an image with these markups applied just drag it to your Desktop or any other folder.


Is there a better way to manage Text Messages? Looking at the space distribution of my phone, I see that Messages account for 7 GB.

There are a lot of photos and videos that have been sent over the years and I am assuming that locating and deleting them would free up some space.

However, scrolling to the top and tapping Load Earlier Messages is really tedious, not to mention that it becomes ridiculously slow after the 20th tap or so.

Is there a better way to deal with getting rid of some text messages?

If you are jailbroken, you can use iCleaner:

Source: http://www.iclarified.com/images/news/37323/160771/160771.jpg

  Message attachments: it deletes files sent and received via iMessage or MMS. The “smart” setting only deletes files that do not show up in any message, while “on” deletes all attachments (messages with attachments will show a blank icon).

Source: http://www.funkyspacemonkey.com/icleaner-ultimate-ios-device-cleaning-app


Camera+ DV high res pictures? I bought the Camera+ app for my iPodTouch yesterday because it was on sale and because I thought that it could be used to get images with as high a resolution as when using the video feature of the device.

Is this possible, or have I been sorely mis-informed and thus ripped off another 99 cents for an app? :)

I noticed there's a setting under Quality that says that setting it to Optimized which reads: "Photos are saved with a maximum size of 1200x1200 for faster sharing and saving" which is what made me wonder...

P.S. Please tag this with "resolution" and Camera+ as well. Thanks!

Warning: high geekery follows.

When the UIPhotoPicker control (which manages still/video capture from the camera as well as selection of images from the image library) returns a camera image to the app that launched it, the image is at native resolution of the camera, which is Very Very Big. 5 megapixels at 2592 x 1936.

An image object takes up space in the app's memory allocation, obviously. The amount it takes up is 4 bytes per pixel (r, g, b, and alpha). So an image at full resolution takes up 2592 x 1936 x 4 pixels: almost 20 megabytes. On a device that starts to complain if you take up (on the latest, beefiest version of the hardware) more than 30 or 40 mb.

So the solution to that that most developers employ is to immediately scale the image down to something manageable, memory-wise, pretty much immediately on capture. An app that promised full resolution images would need to do nearly nothing else. It was only in the last couple versions of the hardware that we didn't have to dump a whole bunch of stuff from memory before going for a camera image.


Xcode installed but not recognized on App Store i installed xcode directly from a dmg that i downloaded from developer site at apple, now on the app store shows up as it were not installed,(it shows install button)

How i can tell to the app store that is already installed?

You can't make the App Store recognize an Xcode installed from a dmg. Besides that, the dmg distribution method is not used by Apple any longer so you most probably got an old Xcode version anyway.

New versions of Xcode are only distributed via the App Store. Just download/install the most current version of Xcode from the App Store again (it's free anyway)


Using a font that came with a Mac App Store app in other apps I'm sort of generally curious about this, since pre-Mac App Store apps one could simply open the font file from within the app's package contents and install it through Font Book to allow use outside that particular app.

When I use Add Fonts from within Font Book to add the fonts, I get the following 2 "serious errors":

  Corrupt font name
  - Font basic parsability
  - System Validation

Now, is this something I'm just not supposed to be doing? As in, am I breaking a rule here? I'm not using these fonts for publication or commercial use - I just want them available throughout the system.

In the case of iA Writer, they licensed a commercial font called Nitti Light for use in their application and their application only. That's why you cannot copy it into FontBook and use it elsewhere. Try Cousine from Google Fonts for a free font that is quite similar.


macOS Mojave on iMac won't boot into safe mode My iMac (late 2015, 8/1TBSSD) has run happily for more than a year on High Sierra, and I just now upgraded the OS to Mojave. Now, the machine won't boot into safe mode or into Recovery. When I hold down the appropriate keys before or at the startup chimes, the regular boot ensues. Booting is brisk and correct. No firmware password is set. The keyboard is a wired Apple keyboard A1243; in use it gives no indication of fault with any of its keys.

In all other respects, the Mac operates as it should. I updated my MacBook Air (mid-2013, 4/512SSD) at the same time using the same Mojave installer, and the Air behaves as it should.

What's gone awry here, and how might I return the iMac to its correct functioning?

I am relieved (and embarrassed) to report that the fault was a poor USB connection between the wired keyboard and the iMac USB port. A little unplugging and re-plugging solved everything. The iMac now boots correctly, in whatever mode I select.

The keyboard connection was only faulty in the computer's un-booted state. When booted, the computer accepted keyboard input from every key, including the various function keys.

The USB connections had been in place for about a year, since I bought the computer. Apparently prudence dictates that these connections be periodically unplugged and reconnected.


Disable automatic "remind me on a day" in Reminders? I use Reminders simply as a set of todo lists.

Today I created a reminder to "buy a shirt, size 14-1/2 32/33", and Reminders added a due date of "2016-01-14 12:00" (not sure how it calculated that exactly).

This addition of unwanted reminder dates commonly happens with other inputs, too (though I don't have another example before me at present).

Is there an app pref I could set through Terminal to disable this feature?

Mac OS X El Capitan (10.11.4)

14-1/2is interpreted as a date, and tries to help you out. (2016-01-14)
There's no way to change this behavior in Reminders.app.


Unable to run Postgres after Installation on OSX - El Capitan I just used homebrew to install my postgres, and I am unable to start it after attempting to start it with the suggested command from postgres/brew.

Can someone please advise?

First, I would advise running brew doctor to make sure your homebrew installation is still intact.  It will instruct you on changes that need to be made after your upgrade.

If you are still having trouble and have database backups or nothing critical that you believe could get broken, I believe an easy fix would be to run something like

brew uninstall postgres && brew install postgres

By default, homebrew recognizes your OS version, and will reinstall from a "bottle" specifically-intended for El Capitan, which should fix your particular issue.

You could also try brew upgrade postgres (or whatever the equivalent command is).


How does the iPhone Upgrade Program work? I'm really not sure whether this is really on-topic, but here goes...

How does the iPhone Upgrade Program work?

I understand the information on the Apple site - I pay them monthly, no interest, with a small upfront payment & after a year I can get a new phone. My contract, however, runs for 20 months.

Right.

So, I'm paying say 50 bucks/quid/shekels for 20 months, yet I get a new phone after 12 months.

Where does that leave me?

I continue to pay off my existing contract, another 8 months at 50 'currencies'?
...and I also have to start paying for my new phone, so I'm now stumping up 100 'currencies' per month to have the new one & an old one I no longer need?

Or...

they take back the old phone & let me off the last 8 months & I just pay a new deal of 50 'currencies' for the new one, with a 20-month contract unless I repeat the same after another year?

or is there a

?

Option 2 in your question is the correct one. In the "Getting the latest iPhone has never been easier" section of the upgrade program site you posted it says you have to pay 11 monthly payments (you might as well think of it as 12 months because the upfront payment is in essence your first month). So when you have paid the monthly installment 11 times, you have 2 options:

Turn in the phone for an upgrade while restarting both timers (the 11 monthly payments + 1st down payment and the 20 month full contract).
Continue paying for the phone until the 20 month contract is done and the phone is 100% yours.

The important thing here is that you are never paying for your old phone once you upgrade it.


Cannot take photos, message pops up that says "Not enough storage space" I am trying to take a picture and my iPhone 4s says there is not enough storage space and to go to settings.

I went into setting and into iCloud and deleted the prior backpack to free up space and I now I have 5.0 GB.  I also deleted all my rash in my emails, and photos I had via text, and I also deleted all photos from the camera roll.  It still says not enough room.

This isn't referring to storage on iCloud but on your device itself.

Go to Settings > General > Usage
Under Storage (which is above iCloud) you will get a list of all the apps by size. If there is one you don't use you can delete it to get space to take a picture. If you don't see a list of apps, your phone is probably processing through and you will see a spinning indicator until it finishes:


Changing system passwords without changing user password Is it possible to change the passwords for ssh, vnc, sudo et.c. without changing the password I use to log in?
If so, how can I do it?

(Mac with Sierra)

No - there is no system password, just one password for each and every user you define in the system.

The first user is an administrator, and they get sudo permissions out of the box. You can add passwords and users behind the scenes, in front of the scenes and have multiple user/password combinations so that you can issue one for remote use if that suits your needs and hide that user from the GUI.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203998 - sudo dscl . create /Users/hiddenuser IsHidden 1

VNC is the oddball, you can change that out of the box to have a "system" password but that's less secure than using an account password unless you don't need to know who is connecting remotely. You could also do the "easy" thing and make these passwords all the same and easy to type. Not the most secure, but it's your choice if you want that to get started.


Do all Safari 5 Extensions work on windows / mac? I wold like to download some safari extensions, but I'm not sure if I should be looking for ones specifically written to run in Windows. Should I be looking for platform specific extensions?

Yes, all Safari extensions run equally on Windows and Mac OS, so you do not need to look for platform-specific versions. All Safari extensions (that use the official extension API) are required to be written in pure Javascript, so they will work on all platforms.


Does Skype running in the background use more battery life than other background running iPhone apps? I have noticed that I can receive skype calls and messages on my iPhone for a while now. Does Skype simply stay sign-ed in until I restart my iPhone and does it use the same amount of battery as other apps with notifications WHEN running in the background.

i.e. if I have Facebook with notifications and Skype with notifications running in the background, do these apps/notifications use the same amount of battery?

Apple limits what can run in the background to ensure battery life is not dramatically reduced. Skype will be constrained to the same restrictions that all other App Store apps must follow.

Given this, it is fair to assume Skype uses no more than any other Internet telephony app running in the background on your iPhone.

Fraser Speirs's article may be helpful in better understanding how background processes work on your iPhone.


Adding airport extreme to existing network breaks wifi I have gone through a two step change to my network and the last step seams to have made it nearly unuseful.
Step 0:
My network looked like this and have been working for years:
Internet coming in to the house to an edge router that handles firewall and dhcp. It’s connected to an airport time capsule with two ethernet cables going to different floors in the house. At the end of the first ethernet cable there was an old airport express and at the second an airport extreme.
Fiber —> edge router lite —> AirPort Time Capsule (802.11ac)
(eth0) —> AirPort Extreme (802.11n)
(eth1) —> AirPort Express (802.11g)

Step 1:
I replaced the AirPort Extreme (802.11n) with a newer AirPort Extreme (802.11ac) and removed the airport express. This worked well. I installed the new extreme by resting it and using my iPhone to basically taping next, next, next in the setup process. It’s in bridge mode and creates a new network with the same name (I have automatic on both 2,4 and 5 ghz). I ran this setup for about a week and had no issues except sometimes I had a weaker wifi signal at the spots were the express was located before.
Fiber —> edge router lite —> AirPort Time Capsule (802.11ac)
(eth0) —> AirPort Extreme (802.11ac)
(eth1) —> nothing

Step 2:
I then added another AirPort Extreme (802.11ac) and my network now looks like this:
Fiber —> edge router lite —> AirPort Time Capsule (802.11ac)
(eth0) —> AirPort Extreme (802.11ac)
(eth1) —> AirPort Extreme (802.11ac)

I setup the new airport extreme the same way as the one before using my iPhone. But now several of my devices have both issues with getting a wifi signal and when they claim to be connected to the network apps can’t connect. This is for a wide range of apps like safari and social media apps.
I have tried a few different things:

I have switched places between the new airports but the error still
remains
When unplugging either of the new airports the wifi works great
I have read the different guides at apple (for example
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202056) and youtube
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYEAO9aurxg)
I have checked that the channels don’t overlap with something close
to my house

When both airport extremes are on the network my wifi just won’t work reliably. Can anyone help me work this out? Thank you.

After spending a lot of time trying to solve this issue with no success, I unplugged everything and went away for summer holiday. Came back a few weeks later and plugged everything back again and now it works.
Yeah, it has worked for over a month.


iOS reading list doesn't work offline When I add some webpage to my reading list (like Medium articles, I'm not able to read them if I'm offline: I have a error telling my phone is not connected to Internet.

According to the documentation, pages in the reading list should be accessible offline (I checked Settings > Safari > Reading List > Automatically Save Offline).

Is it a bug?

Adding something to your reading list

On your desired webpage, click the share icon in the top-right

When opening something from your reading list make sure you open it at the side not in the search bar.

From this Apple Discussion:

  Once you add something to your reading list you do not access it from the URL box.  You access it from the open book icon just to the right of the URL in the upper right corner of your screen.


Dock Dual Thunderbolt 2 Laptops with dual hdmi out / dual screen sharing? I have a 2013 Macbook pro and a 2015 Macbook air. The pro has a busted screen but works fine otherwise, it has two Thunderbolt 2 jacks. The air is fully functional, it has one Thunderbolt 2 jack.
I like to make electronic music. I have some stuff on one Mac and some on the other. I have two displays I want to use. One is a older LG flatron with hdmi input, the other is a 4k uhd smart tv. I also own a 2tb time capsule.
In my head I'm thinking of a setup with the pro kinda always docked, maybe closed if possible, and always using the two displays, and a Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad controlling it or both, then I could just add the Air to the docking station whenever I wanted to and share files, monitors. I was thinking I could use one for like VST and plug ins and the other for my DAW host software. That way I could get the most computing power possible. Not sure if that's possible.
For a minute I was looking into DANTE or AVB but then that wouldn't solve my dual display needs.
I thought there has to be a dock that I can hook up both laptops to via Thunderbolt 2 and share data at high speed, with 2 hdmi outputs that I can also share between the computers. But so far I'm not finding anything. All I can find are dual monitor switches for mini display or Thunderbolt 3 / USB 3.1 docks with dual display but no dual hdmi. (I don't need to power the screens with hdmi).
So, I'm needing some help! I would like the added ports that a dock offers, I would like to quickly file share from laptop to laptop, and i would like to be able to, if possible, share dual external screens for editing and etc.
Does anyone know how i can accomplish this?
Any help is greatly appreciated!

A dock built to accommodate two hosts will be rare to non-existent.  One reason is few people will want such a thing, and companies build devices for sale that they believe will bring a return on their investment, and another is that how such a dock should behave will be difficult to define, which makes the required investment in building such a dock quite high.
What you are likely going to have to do is build the dock you are looking for from more basic components.  Perhaps a dock for each laptop and a KVM switch to flip the displays between the two computers.
There are software solutions that mimic the function of a hardware KVM, and these may be attractive for you on cost and/or convenience grounds.
Sharing data at high bandwidth will be rather trivial with a Thunderbolt cable between the two.  A quick check of the specs on the two laptops tells me that driving what I assume to be two 4K displays may be too much for either computer to handle on it's own.  To do this might mean driving one display from each laptop or adding an external GPU.  Swapping the eGPU between computers is not likely to be trivial, you may have to pick which computer is driving the screens or have a separate eGPU for each computer.
You may not need a dock, or perhaps not need any additional hardware.  What you need to do is define your goals more clearly and create your two computer system to match.
Here's one idea.  The MacBook Pro can be "permanently docked" and have the two displays connected.  The Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and any other user input devices, also connected to the MacBook Pro.  When you need to add in the MacBook Air then it would be connected to the MacBook Pro by a Thunderbolt cable.  The Thunderbolt cable will provide a high bandwidth network between the two computers.  Using a screen sharing program between the two computers you will be able to control the MacBook Air from the MacBook Pro.
How the screen sharing (effectively a virtual/software KVM switch) works with the MacBook Air will depend on the specific software used and it's intended behavior.  To have the MacBook Air "see" the two screens on the MacBook Pro will likely require "dummy displays" to work.  These "dummy displays" are video port dongles that will hang off the MacBook Air which will look like an attached display to the computer but have no real screen.
Sharing two high resolution screens will take a lot of bandwidth, even by Thunderbolt standards.  Sharing data over this same network connection will take even more bandwidth.  Spreading this out by using WiFi or some other networking connection will help in resolving what I anticipate to be a bandwidth bottleneck.  Using a hardware KVM instead of a software KVM will mean not relying on a network to move the data for two 4K screens but dual 4K display KVM switches will not be cheap.
Buying the docks, KVM switches (hardware or software), and cables to make this work might end up being a considerable investment.  So much of an investment that it may make more sense to just buy a new computer to replace the two you have.


Switching from Ubuntu to OS X and I'm lost Situation

I got tired of some bugs/annoyments in Ubuntu(=some programs coming along with it). For example after using compiz for a few days I found bugs that were
distracting my work flow pretty bad (e.g. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/933776).

What I also hate is what I call "monitor lottery", it starts when you plug in an external video-output to your machine. Sometimes you win, and most times you don't.

I needed fresh air and Windows was not an option. I just don't like .bat, cmd.exe, C:\, and those windowsy things.

So I bought 13" Macbook Air.
Someday I probably will test how to code an app for my iPad, so being in Apple-camp helps.

I'm trying to use the Macbook as my main working/coding laptop, because it is light and has better resolution than my current laptop(Thinkpad X220).

Problem

Maybe I'm not used to OS X's philosophy or something. I don't understand the window manager's behavior.
I don't fully understand the behavior of the bottom dock.

I'm quite lost.

Questions

Workspace = single virtual desktop

Window management

When pressing Cmd-Tab and the app switcher pops up:

I have 5 terminal windows open, and would want to bring one of them in front. Is it possible that Cmd-Tab would be window-switcher instead of app-switcher. I know I can switch to app's next window with a shortcut, but I would want to have all the windows in the switcher, regardless of what the app is.
When switching to a minimized app, workspace will be switched where the window should be, but the window stays minimized. Why? I would want it to be shown(unminimized?).
In my Ubuntu machine, I move window's position by pressing Alt, holding left mouse and dragging it from anywhere on the window. Also resizing works by holding right mouse button instead of left. Any solution to emulate this behavior?
I usually use windows in maximized mode. For example when I'm editing text, I do not want to see any distractions(like a browser window). To my mind, maximized means that a window takes all available space on the screen but does not cover the system's toolbars etc. But when I press the green (+) button, the window is streched vertically and the width stays the same. The weirdest thing is, that some of the windows strech only vertically, but some of them strech both vertically and horizontally. I want the maximize button to take all the available space. Is it possible?

Shortcuts

In my web browser, I have always closed tabs with middle click. Also if I want to open a link to a new tab, I press middle click. How can I do that? I often browse news etc with one hand on the touchpad, so pressing Cmd while clicking isn't that good. Touching or tapping(not pressing the whole thing down with force to hear a click sound) touchpad with three fingers would be the best shortcut.
I want the following global shortcuts. The apps should open in the current workspace.

Ctrl - < : New terminal window opens
Ctrl - Alt - b : New terminal window opens and it executes a command: 'ssh bla bla bla'
Alt - m : Maximize/Restores the earlier size of currently focused window.
Ctrl - Alt - c : Browser opens
Ctrl - Alt - s : Text editor opens

Is there any program that would allow this?

Apps/Other stuff

Terminal

Pressing Alt-2 normally produces '@'. But in terminal, it does not produce that character but instead it starts a mode which says '(arg: 2)' on the left.
Not directly related to terminal, but is it possible to setup SSH so that the connection would not drop when lid is closed or internet disconnects? Any experiences of MOSH http://mosh.mit.edu/?

With my Ubuntu laptop, I edited files in a remote SSH server via STFP. Are there any good SFTP clients which could just mount the remote folder, like in Ubuntu it does.

Welcome to OS X. It can be a great aid to your workflow, and make you more productive. You should be able to adjust pretty quickly after the initial learning curve. Please be advised that there are some small things you'll have to change in your workflow, as OS X is after all a completely different OS. But over time, you'll grow to enjoy it. I'll address your specific concerns.

Dock Behaviour

The Dock has several sections. Assuming you kept your dock on the bottom, the left side contains pinned and currently running apps. This is actually similar to Unity. You can enable a "dot" under running applications by right-clicking an empty space in the Dock and clicking Dock Preferences from the context menu, and selecting Show indicator lights for open applications.

After the divider, which can be clicked and dragged to resize the dock, there are your stacks. Stacks are previews to commonly-accessed folders, and you can drag any folder into this spot. You can preview the contents of stacks in several ways, right-click it to view the stack's options.

To the right of the stacks are the minimised windows or documents. OS X typically dedicates windows to documents, so the terms (especially in the old days) were considered pretty interchangeable.

Window Management

This was one of the biggest pain points when I switched, and now I really enjoy it.

Viewing Application Windows

You can quickly switch between open windows of the same app by pressing Cmd+`.

As you Cmd + Tab, you notice that you're tabbing through apps and not their individual windows. Note that you can activate an app (i.e. un-minimise or un-hide windows by holding down alt (option in the US).

If you want to see what windows an application has, you can either:

Press the Down arrow while the Cmd + Tab selector box is over the app.
Right-click the app's dock icon and select "Show All Windows".
If you are in the app, swipe three or four fingers down on your trackpad (configured by  click the Apple on the top left, opening System Preferences, opening Trackpad, navigating to the More Gestures tab, and selecting to activate App Exposé with three or four fingers.).
Swipe three or four fingers down on its dock icon.

Any of those options (there might be more) will take you to App Exposé, this will show all the open windows in the center of the screen, and any minimised or hidden windows as thumbnails.

Switching to a minimised window in a different workspaces

This behaviour is app-dependent. Using a Finder window, the behaviour is as you wish. i.e.  the window un-minimises itself, and the workspace is switched. Make sure to click the minimised window and not the app icon.

You might want to make certain apps available on all your workspaces. To do this, right-click the app's dock icon, and select its behaviour under the Options > Assign To section. The app needs to support this feature.

Moving and Resizing

Windows can be moved using only the chrome (the grey area above the app's actual content). Most of the chrome is on the top of the window, but certain apps such as Finder have bottom chrome that can be used to move the window around.

OS X does not recognise right-click drags. It just doesn't. The only real way to resize windows is by dragging from any edge using the left mouse button.

Using BetterTouchTool

If you want, you can download the excellent BetterTouchTool. Under Preferences, Advanced, Action Settings, Window Moving & Resizing, you can choose to move the window under the mouse by simply holding down a key (e.g. the alt (opt) key.

You can use BTT to change certain behaviours to just the way you want them. It's extremely powerful. You can also assign custom gestures to do almost anything, in any app (or globally).

BetterTouchTool's advanced settings.

Maximising and Zooming

OS X does not use the green "+" button  to represent "maximise". That's the "zoom" button. The idea is that the app expands itself to occupy as much space as it needs. Unfortunately, the behaviour is extremely inconsistent, especially with third party apps.

More and more apps are beginning to support the FullScreen mode, which was a feature introduced in OS X 10.7 (Lion) . This button, if an app has it, will dedicate an entire space to the application. It will be accessible from Mission Control.

I'll give you two options, both involving third-party apps:

BetterTouchTool has an option to enable Windows-style snapping. So when you drag a window to the top of the screen, it will expand to fill the screen.

Another option is to use RightZoom, which claims to change the functionality of the green zoom button to mimic a maximise button. It's free, but I haven't yet tried it.

Shortcuts

You can create a ton of shortcuts in OS X, even to specific menu-items from System Preferences. I'll address your specific concerns here.

Middle click to open and close tabs

I long ago solved this with BetterTouchTool. All you need to do is assign a shortcut like below, and it will be mapped to a three-finger click on your touchpad. You can choose  anything else (e.g. three-finger tap if you prefer).

Middle click allow you to open a link in a new tab.

Safari does not support the closing of tabs using middle-click. You either need to click the little "x" that appears over the tab, or press Cmd+W.

Google Chrome supports middle click for both closing tabs.

Global Shortcuts

BetterTouchTool can make quick work of assigning some global shortcuts. I don't think you'll be able to replicate the Ctrl + Alt + B (opens a text box, then executes the command in a terminal).

Cmd + M will minimise a window, no need for BTT for this.

Etc

Apologies, but I can't answer your MOSH question

Alt-2 in Terminal

On my laptop, Alt + 2 produces the euro symbol, so it's keyboard-dependent. If you want the "@" symbol, it's normally found by pressing Shift + 2.

SFTP

I normally use CyberDuck for all my FTP needs. However, a quick web search  turned up this: How to mount SFTP shares in Lion.


How to mark as read e-mails from a certain person in mail app There is e-mail group that I'm a part of. I don't want to quit the group, because occasionally something interesting gets posted. However, I get a large volume of e-mails that are not interesting. Is there a way to mark these e-mails as read in mail app automatically? Just to be clear, I want to keep everything else unread unless I read them. I just want the e-mails from this specific group to be marked as read.

Using the "Rules" feature of Mail in Yosemite, you can make it so emails from a certain address are automatically marked as read by following these steps:

Open Preferences (CMD + , or Preferences in the Mail Menu)
Navigate to the Rules Tab (furthest to the right)
"Add Rule"
Condition: "From" "is equal to" "(email goes here)"
Action: "Mark as Read"


Is there a way to get a list of all currently running program's window titles with AppleScript? I'm looking to write a script which outputs a list of all the window titles of all the currently running programs. Is there any way to do this with AppleScript? I tried running the following code:

tell application "System Events"
    repeat with theProcess in (every process)
        if background only of theProcess is false then
            say (name of theProcess) as string
        end if
    end repeat
end tell

I put it in a file called lawl.scpt and then ran the following in the Terminal:

$ osascirpt lawl.scpt

However, it just pauses for a few seconds, then exits without outputting anything.

I'm looking to write a script which outputs a list of all the window titles of all the currently running programs.

The easy, one-liner method of achieving this in AppleScript is:

    tell application "System Events" to get the name of every window of ¬
        (every process whose background only is false)

Annoyingly, this returns a nested lists, which you'll either have to loop through in a repeat with block, or flatten the nest into a simple list (which isn't too hard).

Running AppleScript from the command line has the advantage that the returned data are in text format, which can be manipulated quite easily.  You can even make use of the command line from within AppleScript to get the benefits of each:

    do shell script "osascript -e \" ¬
        set text item delimiters to tab
        tell app \\\"system events\\\" to get name of every window of ¬
            (every process whose background only is false)
        return the result as text \" | egrep -oi -e '[^\t]+'"

    return paragraphs of result

which returns a nice, straight forward, text list of window titles.

Finally, here's a formal AppleScript to get the job done properly, in a way that allows you to retain the ability to reference the window object if you need to get other properties or manipuoate it:

    use application "System Events"

    property R : {WindowTitle:missing value, AttachedToProcess:missing value}

    set WindowList to {}

    set P to a reference to (every process whose background only is false)

    repeat with proc in P
        set [proc] to proc
        set W to (a reference to every window of proc)

        repeat with _w in W
            set [_w] to _w

            copy R to end of WindowList
            tell last item of WindowList
                set its WindowTitle to title of _w
                set its AttachedToProcess to name of proc
            end tell
        end repeat
    end repeat

    return WindowList

The resulting list is a list of records that have the structure of property R.  Each record represents a single window, which contains the window's title and the name of the process it belongs to, e.g. {WindowTitle:"Downloads", AttachedToProcess:"Finder"}.  This way, it's easy to do things with the window, such as:

    set TheWindow to item 2 of WindowList --> {WindowTitle:"...", AttachedToProcess:"..."}

    tell process named (TheWindow's ProcName) to ¬
        tell window named (TheWindow's WindowTitle) to ¬
            set [focused, position, size] to [true, {0, 0}, {400, 777}]


Reusing iMac Fusion Drive as external drive The logic board of my iMac 27" Retina broke and I find it impossible to get a new one in the country where I'm living in.

I wonder if it's possible to access the data in the Fusion hard drive,
 connecting both SSD+HDD as external drives in another Mac OSX system.

Some people say it's impossible, some very few others say it can be done. I wonder if you can give me some advice before I go and buy this super expensive SATA-to-USB Apple adapter.

Best regards!

you can put the old fusion drive in a usb enclosure then you should be able to boot to it by pressing the Option key when the boot chime rings. you can also use the drive in the enclosure to setup a new Mac. Using Migration Assistant you can import your entire old file system just as if you were using a Time Machine backup. The question of what to do with the drive AFTER you successfully accomplished moving your old file/apps/etc to the new Mac. All of a sudden you've got a 1.12TB or bigger drive on your hands. On Disk Utility it will show up as Fusion Drive and having the Core system with 2 partitions. I'm not sure if you can actually format the Fustion Drive as one unit and use the entire thing for whatever you wanted, like storing all your media files to be streamed from anywhere in the house.


Is it a good idea to reinstall OS X to attempt to fix some minor issues? I am having a couple of problems with my Mac (wifi doesn't connect automatically, and audio jack doesn't work unless I restart).

Having failed at fixing them for a while, I am wondering if reinstalling the OS (Mavericks) might help in such a scenario and should be given a try? (Obviously, I want to reinstall while keeping all my data, settings, apps etc intact.)

Yes, a variety of strange software problems can be fixed by reinstalling OS X. Providing the installer detects an existing install (which will only not happen if the disk can't boot) your files and settings will be preserved. If you've made any changes to the system such as modifying a keyboard layout or changing the boot logo, you will need to back these up as they will be wiped.


Random contacts not syncing with Google I have my iphone set up to sync contacts with Google. It works fine, for the most part. However, there are some contact cards that are not synced. I can find no rhyme or reason to why these are not synced yet others are.

Any ideas?

Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and check if your Google account is set as the default for contacts:

For local contacts (not on Google) an option would be to export them from your phone, send them to yourself via mail, and import them to your Google account, as it appears that you cannot change a contact from one group / account to another directly on iOS.


macOS Sierra language switch HUD On a previous Mac I could switch languages and see a gray box in the middle of the screen that shows which language is selected. This is in addition to the small icon in the top bar.

With the new MacBook Pro and macOS Sierra this language feedback does not show. How to enable it?

It does not work when using the "Select next source ..." shortcut, when changing it to use the "Select the previous ..." shortcut it does appear!


How to delete another machine's time machine backup? I've used my Time Machine drive to back up my main machine, and also a friend's mac. Her machine is now being backed up on another Time Machine drive, and she'd like me to delete her backup.

I'm familiar with the (perhaps obscure) way to delete a particular time machine backup, or how to delete all backups of a particular file, but I have no idea how to delete another machine's backup.

If I had access to her machine, I'd plug in the drive and delete the entire backup of her drives using time machine on her computer. Whether or not it is reasonable to have to do this is irrelevant, I guess, because that machine isn't available to me. :)

Please nobody suggest I drag her backup to the trash. I did that once and the trash never finished emptying.

Any ideas?

You can use the tmutil tool to delete backups one by one.

sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/drive_name/Backups.backupdb/mac_name/YYYY-MM-DD-hhmmss

If you are sure you have selected the correct name, you can delete all backups from that one Mac by not passing in the time and letting it delete the entire folder:

sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/drive_name/Backups.backupdb/mac_name

The sudo command needs your password (and it won't echo to the screen, so just type it and pause to be sure you're dating the correct files before pressing enter).


Is there a docking station product that allows iPad 3 to access internet via an Ethernet connection instead of wireless? I have an iPad 3 which I love but sometimes the Wi-Fi cuts out whilst listening to the radio.  I would like to plug in the iPad to a cradle or docking station which itself has an Ethernet port and so can draw internet directly.

Does anyone know of such a product?
I guess it needs a mini operating system instead of being just an electrical plug

Please don't answer with Bluetooth or other wireless technologies, one problem I have is use in the kitchen and when microwave is working there is a definite drop off in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capability.  I really need a wired solution.

In the end I bought an Apple TV.  I solved signal problems in my kitchen by using a Internet over electric mains solution.


What do the checkboxes that appear when editing the card for "Me" do? When I edit my address card in OS X (10.7) Address Book, checkboxes appear next to all of the entries. What are these checkboxes for?

It's for selective sharing of details when exporting a contact card, as this Finer Things in Mac post suggests. It allows you to keep the unchecked items more private by omitting them from the sharing aspect of Address Book (soon to be Contacts) on OS X.

  Lion’s Address Book allows you to select which details to share with others when exporting your contact card. As long as you have told Address Book which card is yours using the Card > Make This My Card option, editing your card will display a checkbox to the right of each detail you’ve entered. Deselect a checkbox, and that detail will be excluded when you drag your card out of Address Book or click the Share button at the bottom.


iTunes 12 doesn't show the correct number of photos to be synced and doesn't sync all photos I have iTunes 12.2 on a mac book pro with Yosemite, I use Photos app now instead of iPhotos after importing all of its events into iPhoto, plus I recently added around a few thousand pics and videos to the Photos app, the All Photos option in Photos app shows 4372 photos, whereas in iTunes when I select "copy photos from Photos" and "All photos and albums" options under the "Photos" tab it shows 3858 photos as the total number to be synced, where the hell those 500 photos have gone ?

I searched for a solution but couldn't find any, I also checked out this question: Why is iTunes only syncing some of the pictures (seemingly randomly) in each Aperture Event to my iPad? but couldn't also help me ..

any help would be highly appreciated ...

I think that the 4,372 photos are all of your photos, as opposed to just photos to be synced. In other words, around 500 photos of those photos have already been synced to your iPad.


Magsafe2 not charging after repaired the wire My adapter cable was frayed(close to the adapter side), sometimes it wouldn't charge. So I was trying to fix it. I didn't buy a new cable for replacement, instead I cut the original one and soldered on the circuit board.

But after I repaired it, I connected both sides of the adapter to my MacBook Air and to the power socket see if it worked. I saw the indicator lights up and then turns off immediately. After few times plugged and unplugged, I twice got a successful charge connection; the indicator turned green and then turns orange but it won't last longer than 5 minutes.   After a while the indicator will turn off again. These two charges got my MacBook 13% power.

I measured the the T connector positive pins(Pin2/4); sometimes I got 0.8V, sometimes it showed 0.5v, I also measured the backside of circuit with multi-meter(yellow and red circle); the voltage showed was 110VDC. I think this adapter probably still working just don't know where I did it wrong.

Please give me some advice on what to do next to get this working.

03/26
Thanks for you guys reply.
I was trying to measure voltage by the pin in the green circle, I got 55VDC, but suddenly there was a spark and then the voltage here were all gone, so I checked from the top and saw 3 SMD resistors next to this chip(green circle) were burned...

I am thinking to replace them because it still recognizable.
But except that, I don't see any blown capacitor that might cause no charging.
Would someone please share some advice?

You’re getting the wrong voltage.  You should be seeing 3V not .5V.  Once connected to the Mac, it will sense the 3V then “request” the full 18V.

What you measured was the incoming power of the mains so you “know” that it’s getting AC in. The problem lots on the DC side of things (after the rectifier) where something has gone bad.

These voltages are listed on Pinoutguide.com and on Wikipedia (6.86V for MagSafe and 3V for MagSafe 2)

What’s wrong specifically?  You could have a blown capacitor, resistor or even an IC. You would need the schematics to see which line is sending the 3V and then make the diagnosis and repair. My thoughts are that something shorted with the damaged wire before you embarked on the repair.

It’s probably safer and cheaper to just replace charger and be done with it.


When trying to install Windows 10 on 2011 iMac keep getting error 0x8007000D windows cannot open the required file D:\sources\install.wim I am following the guide here How to install Windows 10 into a 2011 iMac without using the Boot Camp Assistant, an optical (DVD) drive or third party tools? and everything appears to work until I actually install Windows 10. From the guide mentioned, it seems you boot into the Windows 10 setup that you loaded to your Bootcamp Partition. Then, you type in the command that points to your USB flash drive to initiate the setup.

Right after I type the command, I get the error. It says "0x8007000D windows cannot open the required file D:\sources\install.wim make sure all the files required for installation are available..." I have tried several things to fix this problem. First off, the USB and the Bootcamp partition are ExFat, so they won't have the 4gb limit. I have used older versions of the Windows ISO on the flash drive, but every time I start the setup I get the same error. I have even tried using the Windows Media Creation tool to make a USB drive, and copied the BootCamp5 contents over to it, but when I try to load the AutoUnattended file, nothing happens, not even a new setup window. Any help would be greatly Appreciated.

Also, when I tried just running the setup from the ISO that was on the BOOTCAMP partition (instead of pointing it to the flashdrive), it gave me the same error. Is there a problem with ExFat?

My machine is a mid 2011 21.5 inch iMac running macOS High Sierra.

EDIT: Like I should've done from the start, I downloaded the exact build of Windows 10 that the tutorial used, 1703 from https://tb.rg-adguard.net/ I repeated the steps again and this time, the setup window emerged. So that is a nice workaround. But I would still like to know why the newer build didn't work even when I had ExFat formatted drives.

How to Use the Command Line Interface (CLI) to Install a BIOS Booting Windows 10

Part 1: Build the Installation Flash Drive

  Note: The version of macOS is High Sierra 10.13.6.

Use the Disk Utility application to erase a 16 GB or larger flash drive. Choose the parameters shown in the image below.

Download latest 64 bit Windows 10 from Microsoft. In my case, this was the file named Win10_1909_Engish-x64.iso.
User Finder to mount Windows 10 ISO and copy the files to WINSTALL. When finished unmount the ISO. Below is what appeared on my WINSTALL volume.

From the Safari menu bar, select Develop → User Agent → Microsoft Edge. Click on this link, then download gdisk. When finished, select Develop → User Agent → Default (Automatically Chosen) from the Safari menu bar

  Note: If Develop does not appear on the Safari menu bar, then check off “Show Develop menu in menu bar” in Safari Preferences. To reach the check box, select Safari → Preferences… from the Safari menu bar, then select the Advanced tab.

From the gdisk download, copy the file gdisk64.exe to WINSTALL.  Below is what appeared on my WINSTALL volume.

Download the latest Window Support Software (Boot Camp Support Software) for your Mac from Install Windows 7 on your Mac using Boot Camp. Or you can try using the Boot Camp Assistant to download the software.
Copy Windows Support Software to WINSTALL. Below is what appeared on my WINSTALL volume. The files came from the website Boot Camp Support Software 5.1.5621.

Part 2: Create Space for Windows 10

Use the Disk Utility or the diskutil command to create an ExFAT partition for Windows 10.

When finished, the output from diskutil list appeared as shown below.

Part 3: Install Windows 10

EFI boot from the flash drive.
When you see the windows shown below, press the shift+F10 key combination to open a Command Prompt window.

Enter the command echo list volume | diskpart to list the volumes. Below is an image of my results. If you get different drive letter mappings, then make the appropriate substitutions.

Hybrid partition the internal drive. The commands for my configuration are given below.

  Note: The gdisk version is 1.0.5.

d:gdisk64 0:
r
h
2 3 4
y
af
n
ab
n
07
y
w
y

Once again, enter the command echo list volume | diskpart to list the volumes. Below is an image of my results. If you get different drive letter mappings, then make the appropriate substitutions.

Use the command given below to format BOOTCAMP. When asked for the current volume label, enter BOOTCAMP.

format c: /fs:ntfs /v:BOOTCAMP /q

Copy the Windows 10 files to the internal drive. If desired, substitute "Windows 10 Home" in the command given below.

dism /apply-image /imagefile:d:\sources\install.wim /name:"Windows 10 Pro" /applydir:c:\ /checkintegrity

Install the boot data and files for a BIOS boot.

bcdboot c:\windows /l en-us /s c: /f bios

bootsect /nt60 c: /mbr

Close the Command Prompt window by entering the command given below.

exit

When the image below appears, click on the red X, then the Yes button. The Mac should reboot to macOS.

From the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences, select Windows and restart the Mac. Windows should finish installing. Below is an image of the Startup Disk pane after selecting Windows.

Install the Windows Support Software. Basically, try running the setup Application in the BootCamp folder on the WINSTALL flash drive. If the software will not install, then open a Administrator Command Prompt window and enter the command BootCamp.msi in the \BootCamp\Drivers\Apple folder on the WINSTALL flash drive.
Use the Apple Software Update application to install all updates from Apple.

Additional References

DISM Image Management Command-Line Options
DISM Driver Servicing (.inf) Command-Line Options
BCDBoot Command-Line Options
BIOS/MBR-based hard drive partitions
UEFI/GPT-based hard drive partitions
Dual Boot Win 7 on MBR with Win 10 on GPT
How to install Windows 10 into a 2011 iMac without using the Boot Camp Assistant, an optical (DVD) drive or third party tools?


Pen drive does not show on mac on attaching but show error on removal? My problem is that when I attach my pen drive to any of the ports on my Mac, it won't show up on my Mac, but when I remove the pen drive, it shows the error, "The disk was not ejected properly. If possible, always eject a disk before unplugging."

This means the Mac detects the pen drive on removal, but not on attaching.

Can anybody tell me how I can fix this problem?

If the drive is appearing in Disk Utility and shows up as being mounted, try this:
In the Finder, go to the Finder menu, then Finder Preferences, then General and be sure "external disks" is checked under "Show these items on the desktop". Then on the Sidebar screen and be sure "external disks" is checked under "Show these items in the sidebar."

This should make the drive appear.


Should I write app reviews to Mac App Store in English or in my native language? While browsing the apps in Mac App Store I can see the majority of the reviews are posted by users with Finnish sounding names. Some of the reviews are written in English and some in Finnish.

I have set the App Store's language as Finnish. Does App Store show only reviews from users that have set the same language? Should I write my reviews in English or in Finnish, ie. in my native language?

Confusingly enough, the most of the GUI elements in App Store are in English, with some Finnish exceptions — this may be the reason there are so many reviews written in English by Finns.

App Store is divided by countries it is available in and each country's App Store is a separate entity. For an end-user (me, you, anyone who buys apps basically) there is no cross-over between them. If you're from Finland you're most likely using Finnish App Store (possibly with interface in English).

Only users of the same store will see the reviews posted in it. Reviews are not shared between individual (country) stores so it is perfectly fine for reviews to be in country's native language.


iPad Pro stuck on iOS 13.7 Ive got a gen1 iPad Pro with iPadOS 13.7 on it. But when I go to General and Software update, it tells me there’s no update available. Is this correct? Shouldnt I be getting iOS 14?

The first generation iPad Pro definitely supports iPadOS 14.
Ensure that you have a working internet connection, and try Settings > General > Software Update again.
If that doesn't work, try shutting down the iPad and power it on again - and try Software Update again.
If that still doesn't work, check if you have a beta software profile installed on the iPad (if you have previously been testing beta versions of iPadOS).
If everything fails, you could restore the iPadOS software to the iPad from a computer.


Is there a way to click windows fileshare links in macos? My company (like many others) primarily uses Windows computers and as such has a lot of Windows-based fileshares. We have also standardized which fileshares map to which lettered drives on those PCs, so everyone has the same "F" drive.

I know that I can use the "connect to server" functionality using the smb: protocol to connect to them. However, a lot of our intranet websites and emails have links that just point to "F:/docs/some/files". When I am using my mac I can't click on those links because Macos doesn't know how to handle them.

Is there some way to configure Macos, or some app I can install, which will automatically handle those links and map them to the appropriate smb: path?

There is a wonderful free tool called WinShortcutter for Mac that allows you to do exactly what you're wanting.

Winshortcutter can be found here: http://winshortcutter.com/

After installing, you can change a setting in the Mac services screen to allow this as a right click option as well.


Understanding how safe boot fixed a boot problem Background

My friend asked me to look at her early 2011 Mac Mini with OS X 10.8.3. She said that:

she installed software updates
she couldn't remember which updates were installed
when the Mac restarted, it hung at the Apple logo with the spinning gear wheel.

I used Disk Utility to check permissions and the disk. Both checks found a few errors,  all of which were repaired. This did not help; after I rebooted, it hung at the same screen.

Several resets of the PRAM did not help.

Successes

A safe boot succeeded, the desktop appeared. I re-checked permissions and the disk; no errors.

Then a normal boot succeeded – this surprised me.

Question

Can anyone guess what was wrong and what was fixed?

Since it's not my Mac, and I don't know how it's really used, I can't guess.

I see Apple article HT1564, Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?, I'd like to understand more.

I assume that at least one of the updates required a restart.

As Disk Utility found problems with the file system, it's possible that:

some such problems existed before your friend attempted to install updates; and/or
some such problems arose from a forced shut down or forced restart during a problematic installation (before an automated restart), or force whilst awaiting progress following an automated restart (impatience with the spin).

No mention of force from you or your friend, so let's assume that:

HFS Plus file system problems were present but unknown before installation
those problems caused an apparently successful installation to have a problematic end result.

In the 2013-05-06 edition of Apple's article:

  A Safe Boot deletes the dynamic loader shared cache at (/var/db/dyld/). A cache with issues may cause a blue screen on startup, particularly after a Software Update. Restarting normally recreates this cache.

Not only blue screens.

Alternative symptoms might include hangs of the type seen by you and your friend – the asynchronous progress indicator with the Apple logo.

Also, I do not find that a normal restart recreates that cache. To see whether the cache was recreated, at your friend's Mac in Terminal you might run the following command – be prepared for your friend to enter her administrative password at an on-screen prompt:

sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -verify

If the output indicates that a file does not exist, then there may be:

a problem with Apple's documentation (inconsistent with normal behaviour of the software); and/or
a problem with the software (abnormal behaviour).

If the command completes with no visible output, there's no problem (the file exists and is verified).

Reference

update_dyld_shared_cache(1) Mac OS X Manual Page


Spotlight Search displays "Indexing..." forever macOS 10.12.6

Spotlight Search, when I start to type, it changes from a single-line text field to the real-time search results.

In the left, between the bar and the "Top Hits" search results, it says "Indexing..." and displays a full horizontal bar.

This never advances (it looks full), and it never finishes.

The search results are not correct since this started happening.

I was suffering from the Safari 12 -> Spotlight Search display disappears while typing problem, and I've turned off the Safari indexing already.

When you say "never", how long? Indexing can take hours on a large mechanical hard drive. This is usually required after an OS update.

You can restart and rebuild the Spotlight index, which may help. Either use the Terminal command:

sudo mdutil -E /

(You'll then have to enter your admin password. If you've never done this before, you'll see a short warning about being careful.)

Or go to System Preferences > Spotlight, and in the Privacy tab, drag the system volume to the list of exclusions. Then remove it.

Hanging Spotlight indexes may also be a sign of a failing hard drive, so it's also worth checking that your system volume is functioning correctly.


Delete incompatible ScreenFlow version from MacOS Sierra I logged into my iCloud account from a fresh install of macOS Sierra.
I had a very old version of ScreenFlow (from 2011) under Purchases in the App Store.
Installing it worked.
When I try to open it (from the App Store or from Spotlight), it says it's incompatible and offers me to search for a newer version.

Now how do I remove this old installed version? The App Store only shows me an "Open" button under Purchases, but I can't click on the icon to take me to a details page with an option to uninstall it.

It's harmless to just leave it there, but besides taking up a little disk space for nothing, it pollutes the Spotlight search index and just makes me feel my computer a little "dirty".

Removing ScreenFlow from Your Computer

To uninstall ScreenFlow, simply move the ScreenFlow application to the trash. (The ScreenFlow license is stored separately, so you do not need to re-activate your license if you reinstall ScreenFlow.)
To completely remove ScreenFlow from your computer, move the following files to your trash:

/Applications/ScreenFlow
/System/Library/Extensions/TelestreamAudio.kext
/Library/Preferences/net.telestream.screenflow.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.vara.screenflow.LSSharedFileList.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.vara.screenflow.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.vara.screenflowhelper.plist
~/Library/Preferences/net.telestream.screenflowapp.LSSharedFileList.plist
~/Library/Preferences/net.telestream.screenflowapp.plist
~/Library/Preferences/net.telestream.screenflowhelper.plist


OS slows down when I connect external monitor I'm currently using a Mid-2015 MacBook pro and running Catalina's latest build on it. Although for quite a long time anytime I connect the MacBook to an external display it seriously slows down. when I check the usage via activity monitor I'll notice a huge spike in activities even if I'm not doing anything on the system

I've tried so many things like mission control, Pram reset e.t.c

Kernel task exists to slow things down when the system gets hot. Have you ruled out a temperature rise when running more pixels adds GPU and CPU load? Especially if you run closed clamshell mode.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207359
Why is kernel_task using so much CPU?
What exactly does kernel_task do?
rMBP kernel_task spikes when connecting more than one external monitor

I would expect your Catalina activity monitor to show a GPU tab but maybe that’s only on some hardware. I also would be sure you’re running the latest EFI and firmware and reinstall the OS from recovery on top of your system. Check system information and build which are circled in red.


Every restart/boot, kernel panic occurs Every time I restart my iMac (or just boot it up) I see this:

But after I restart again it works fine again.
I'm using MacOSX El Capitan.

I've tried to replace MacOSX with Windows but I decided I wanted MacOSX back again so I did a disk wipe and I reinstalled MacOSX.

Now this happens every restart/bootup.

If you’re seeing repeated kernel panics, try the following things until they go away.

Do a safe boot:

Restart your Mac and hold down the Shift key until you see the gray Apple logo. Doing so temporarily disables some software that could cause problems and runs some cleanup processes. If the kernel panic doesn’t recur, restart again normally.

Update your firmware:

Software Update may also tell you about available updates for your Mac. If so, be sure to install them. You can also check for any firmware updates applicable to your Mac model at http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1237.

Check your disk:

Make sure your startup disk has at least 10GB of free space; if it doesn’t, delete some files to make room. Next, to find and fix any disk errors, run Disk Utility, select your startup disk, and click Repair Disk. The easiest way to do this, if you’re running OS X 10.7 or later, is to restart and then immediately press and hold Command+ R to enter OS X Recovery.

And at last,
Unfortunately, the easiest way to solve it is to reinstall OS X over your existing system, and if that doesn’t work, erase the disk and reinstall everything from scratch.

A year ago, updating firmware and Safe boot helped me to fix it on macOS. You can give a try.


Deleting iPhone pics using my Mac? How do I delete iPhone photographs using my Mac? I have tried using Image Capture and it didn't work.

A possible solution to the problem in your question is the following.

After the import procedure in the application Photos you can select the option of delete photo from the device (iPhone in your case) immediately after the importing procedure.


Where is addressbook:// stored I wrote an applescript that finds a person in my contact list.

tell application "Contacts"
    set thePeople to first person whose first name is equal to "John" and last name is equal to "Doe"
end tell

tell application "Finder"
    set theURL to "addressbook://" & id of item 1 of thePeople
    open location (theURL)
end tell

The addressbook:// will open the person in the Contacts app.  But I installed the Cobook app and it opens now instead of the Contacts app.

Where is the information stored that says open Cobook with addressbook:// and is possible to have two entries so that both Cobook and Contacts open?

The file is the LauchServices plist file. It is at
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist

You can edit it manually, or is you plan to do this a lot, I'd suggest looking at RCDefaultApp which gives a preference pane for editing.


Can I recover a deleted video from the iPhone 4S camera roll? So I blundered this morning. Had a cute video of my daughter on Easter, then I accidentally deleted when I was trying to show people (its amazing how a simple finger swipe can cause so much damage!).

Sadly, I didn't not do any sync to iTunes after this files was created, so no luck on that kind of backup.

So now I'm looking some type of file recovery software for an iPhone 4S. I've tried Tenorshare, Wunderphone, and a few others that have popped up on my Google searches (I'm really grateful for virtual machines for testing these out!).

These have not done me any good. Any ideas on what may be out there?

If it is jailbroken and you have OpenSSH installed, you might be able to pipe a whole disk image to your computer, on which you will be able to try standard HFS+ file recovery software.

If you don't meet the above requirements, keep in mind all disk activity - especially that involved in the jailbreaking process, but even that which could have happened in the meantime by normal use, has the very potential of contributing to the overwriting of the affected files.


How do I remove Wondershare Video Converter from MacBook Air Mountain Lion? I have changed my mind about this app but when I try to remove it by dragging it to the trash and then try to empty the trash I get a message that the trash can not be emptied because the program is running. How do I stop it running so I can trash it?

Reboot, then move it to Trash.
Open Activity Monitor, find it in the list, then quit it, and drag it to Trash.


How can I repeat a video at slow playback speed? Is there any way to repeat a video while it's playing in slow motion?

I tried using both QuickTime and VLC. I don't see a way to control the playback speed in QuickTime, and the problem with VLC is that when the video replays, it loses the playback speed setting.

You can do this with QuickTime 7. Grab a copy off the Mac OS X Install DVD.

Go Window-> AV Controls and change the playback speed. (Or something with a similar name)
Then View-> Loop for repeating.


My 2017 iMac has always been slow, why? New iMac Specs:

Mid-2017 iMac
Retina 4K 21.5 inch
3.0GHz quad-core Intel i5 CPU
AMD Radeon Pro 555 with 2GB Memory
1TB Hard Drive
8GB RAM

macOS Catalina 10.15.2

It keeps hanging, lagging or freezing with the rainbow cursor for 1 or 2 seconds. Sometimes, even YouTube and Apple Music stops playing for the same time.

It's slow in everything, not just loading/writing on hard disk. I have tried a fresh installation of macOS with no results.

The memory is always empty and 70% of CPU stays in idle. I see no peak in usage on Activity Monitor. The hard disk is not full either. It's just strange. Has this been happening to anybody?

It has been like this forever. Having had a MacBook, I have never really used this machine except for now that I am home all the time.

Here is the report generated by EtreCheck: https://pastebin.com/4hbaLGte

It was indeed a Hard Disk issue. I have bought a Crucial SSD from Amazon and a USB 3.0 to SATA III connector. Since then, I have been using this configuration with the macOS being installed on the external SSD. I get r/w speeds of 480 MBps. The Mac runs magnificently. Nothing to complain.


How do I know my mac turns off because of overheating? My Macbook Pro (Yosemite)  early 2011 sometimes unexpectedly turns off when running heavy tasks on battery power. Is there a way to confirm this is because of overheating?
Here's a part of system.log from the moment of shutdown. What other logs can I read?

Feb 24 08:22:56 macs-MacBook-Pro.local Skype[281]: Failed to get
contents of directory "/Users/mac/Library/Logs/Skype". The file
“Skype” couldn’t be opened because there is no such file. Feb 24
08:24:47 macs-MacBook-Pro systemstatsd[583]: assertion failed: 14C109:
systemstatsd + 4269 [A886B71F-3A31-3324-9B30-5143FDF4ECCB]: 0xb Feb 24
08:24:47 macs-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]
(com.apple.systemstatsd[583]): Service exited with abnormal code: 1
Feb 24 08:54:10 localhost bootlog[0]: BOOT_TIME 1424764450 0

It would not do that until:

First the fans go at full speed for few minutes. You would hear that.

If that does not keep the temperature from climbing, it would cut down the CPU power. You would feel that in computer becoming sluggish (slow).

Normally the above is sufficient to prevent overheating.

If all that has failed it would not just shut down, it will try to shut down correctly.

Look in the Console for kernel[0]: Previous Shutdown Cause: ?

You could look in to Activity Monitor to see what is happening while under stress.

There is also a app called Istat that displays lots of parameters.


How to fix font issue on gimp with x11 or macbook pro I just installed gimp 2.60 in my macbook pro but my gimp appears in Nepalese font instead of English. How to solve it ?

GIMP automatically detects and uses the system language.

In the unlikely event that language detection fails, or if you just want to use a different language, you may do so:

Apple Mac OS X

From System Preferences, click on the International icon.

In the Language tab, the desired language should be the first in the list.

recent builds of GIMP may offer a language selection in the preferences


Limit 3G traffic on Jailbroken iPad Is there any software for doing this?

There are indeed apps used to help you monitor and control your data usage over 3G. A quick Google search found this option: Data Usage for iPhone.


iCloud problem: "iCloud storage is full" message I need help for this iCloud problem: I had no available space left, (of my 50GB plan) so, to keep using iCloud, I deleted some files. After that, instead fixing the problem, the system keep saying that "iCloud storage is full", or "there is no available space left on iCloud". I tried to deleted more files, also my iPhone backup of ~7GB, but iCloud seems not to detect I have done free space, and keep saying that there is no more storage. Has anyone had this issue? Does anyone know how to solve this?
Thank you and sorry for my English mistakes because it's not my first language.

Apple now has a web interface to view and manage (some of) your storage.

https://www.icloud.com/#settings

I would go there and verify that the web interface matches the iOS device. If so, then you can go to the photo library and purge the Recently Deleted or work through the options given here:

https://help.apple.com/icloud/#/mm93f1a9aac0

From your screen shot, you might need to download documents from iCloud Drive, but worst case, you will have followed the latest cleanup steps if you need to reach out to iCloud support to have them look at the code that checks free space and validate it against the lower numbers you are being shown on your Mac.

Apple also provides free support for accounts like AppleID and iCloud so you can get personalized help from:

https://support.apple.com/


How to stop iOS Mail from automatically downloading attachments? I would like to know how to stop Mail app on iOS 9.3.5 from automatically downloading the mail attachments. It is taking a lot of space on my iPhone.

Most attachments in emails are actually remote images. You can stop iOS Mail from downloading remote images as follows:

Go to Settings
Tap on Mail
Under the Messages heading, toggle Load Remote Images off

In terms of stopping other attachments (e.g. MS Word documents etc), there is no such option to prevent downloading these. However, the way it should work is as follows:

When your iPhone is connected to the internet via a cellular network, any email attachments over a certain size will not download automatically.
Instead, for these attachments you would have to manually select them in the body of the email to download them.
When your iPhone is connected to the internet via Wi-Fi, all email attachments will download automatically.

As far as I'm aware there is no way to stop this, although there may be 3rd party email apps that give you this option.

If you're sure that emails are taking up a lot of space on your iPhone, you may need to rethink how regularly you delete older emails. You can also filter emails by attachment and then delete the oldest ones to free up space. Another option is to set up a Mailbox for emails with attachments so it's easier for you to manually manage them.


How can I verify a Lion FileVault recovery key? I have a volume that is encrypted with OS X Lion's full-disk FileVault. When I enabled FileVault I was given a recovery key, which I wrote down. I'd like to verify that the recovery key that I wrote down is correct before I store it somewhere safe.

How can I verify that a FileVault recovery key is correct?

This is much easier to do beginning in Mavericks. The fdesetup command was expanded to support recovery key changes and verification.

$ sudo fdesetup validaterecovery
Password:
Enter the current recovery key:
true

This will prompt you for the key, which should be entered in all caps with the hyphens.

true means you entered a valid recovery key.


Can I use normal headphones in the iPhone 5S jack? I want to use my normal audio headphones with the iPhone to get a better quality of music in my 5S.

Explain whether it would not affect the phone in any case, if I am using the 3-metal-part audio headphones.

The headphone jack on the iPhone 5s can be used by any set of headphones with a standard 3.5mm jack. It will not damage or affect either the headphones or phone in any way.

The only difference is that some headphones have buttons that use resistance between the signal and ground wire in the headphone cable control the phone. That's what your Apple Earbuds are doing. Not having this on the headphones is perfectly OK.

Of course if you have a look around you can find excellent headphones that do have the buttons. I have two different pairs of headphones with good sound, a microphone and phone controls.


Russian keyboard vanishes each time my Mac is started I'm using El Capitan on my Mac Mini now but it started when I used Yosemite. I need both English and Russian keyboard layouts on my Mac. However at some point I started finding Russian layout missing once Mac is launched, so I have to go to the settings and add Russian again every time my Mac starts. Did anybody encounter a keyboard vanishing from the system constantly? What makes it dissapear every time Mac is shut down? Ayn ideas how to fix that?

Go to System Preferences -> Language & Region.
Set English as Preferred language. Unfortunately, your macOS becomes English, but it's the only way that solved this problem on my Sierra 10.12.5.


Why does battery die during sleep mode? I'm running MacOSX 10.5.8 on a MacBook Pro.

I was working on my computer last night. I finished work, closed the lid and expected the computer to go to sleep. I assume this is the Apple Safe Sleep mode. My battery was about 70% charged.

Tonight, I open up my laptop and discover that the computer refuses to start and battery has been completely discharged. When I plug the computer in again, all information from my previous session was lost. It's as if the computer shut down completely.

What's happening here? Shouldn't the computer go to sleep and save all information to disk? When I wake the computer up from sleep mode, shouldn't it restore all information from my previous session?

This only happens about 5% of the time that I close the lid. Usually, this works as I expected.

Update to answer @zneak's question:

This is the hardware model, according to About this Mac: More Info...: Hardware.

Model Name:       MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:   MacBookPro3,1

What happened could’ve been because of different reasons. Certain old Macbook Pros had troubles with sleeping (hence why zneak wants to know about the model).

However I believe that your computer woke up (wake on lan? hung process?) during the night and it burned through your battery. What are your Energy Settings?

Also, get some sort of CPU meter like MenuMeters or iStats Menu (€) and make sure your CPU/Cores are not 100%, that indicates a process that’s using all your CPU power (and a lot of energy!)


Whatsapp backup issue on iCloud with iOS 12.2 I've been using this iCloud account for 3 years and now it is having issues with the WhatsApp backup. If I try to do a manual backup in WhatsApp settings, it sticks on preparing or either goes to max 5%. When I try daily auto backups, it says the data is backed up but in the iCloud storage management, it shows as the screenshot attached below. Only 106.1 MB of 5 GB is used in iCloud but the items below show that the WhatsApp backup on the iCloud is taking a space of 1.8 GB.
Also if I sign in with another iCloud ID the WhatsApp backup will work fine with that and show total space used along with the space WhatsApp backup is using.

How can I make it work as expected?

Go to WhatsApp - Settings - Chats - Backup, and see how much space Whatsapp is trying to upload (you can choose to not include videos to reduce most of the size)

Now, there are 2 Whatsapp backup switches to handle, they are both on by default, hence, by default, WhatsApp is an odd and inconvenient outlier since (compared to iCloud Photo library) it literally duplicates the space required if both switches are on, let me explain:

1st switch: iPhone Settings app > Tap your name in the top > iCloud > scroll down to see the switch (this switch creates a live backup that allows for an independent backup, meaning you don't need to restore your whole iphone to restore this backup, you can delete Whatsapp Only and said backup will be detected when you reinstall Whatsapp). You get to pick your frequency

2nd switch: iPhone Settings app > Tap your name in the top > iCloud > Manage Storage > click "Backcup" green icon row > Click your device > here you have a list of your TOTAL apps, each might save a tiny bit of settings info for each app (not the app itself), this is a packaged backup that also saves your downloaded app list (no matter if you switch off every app). So, Here you see WhatsApp too (2nd switch) <- if on, Whatsapp backup will take 2x space of your total iCloud space. As I understand, this backup can only be accessed if you restore the whole iPhone (whole package see).

Post-context: for years, I've turned off the 2nd switch with no problems. But ever since iOS 13, background activity is a mess for Whatsapp, and even though I have more than enough space, auto-daily Whatsapp backup is not happening. I now have the question if I can invert the switches, and still be able to access WhatsApp backup by only deleting and reinstalling the whatsapp app, not the whole iPhone. This question arises since the packaged backup (2nd switch) for the rest of the apps (including WhatsApp) works flawlessly, daily, perfectly fine.

TIP:: It doesn't matter if you have iCloud Photo library on on both sections, Apple is smart about this and only backcups once (only takes space one time), that's why I say WhatsApp is an inconvenient-odd outlier when it comes to both switches management.

With all this, maybe your backup is stuck since you have a 2.5Gb Whatsapp backup to be uploaded, which (if both switches on) requires 5Gb of free space. <- but in my case, not even having the double free space does the trick, auto-backup is not happening.


Wrong working directory, if bash script is opened via double-click I wrote a bash script in order to directly start eclipse from different workplace locations. Each workplace contains the script, after running it, eclipse is started with the respective workspace set.

#!/bin/bash

# relative path
#ECLIPSE_DIR='../../'
ECLIPSE_DIR='/Users/mike/Development/java/'
ECLIPSE="${ECLIPSE_DIR}eclipse/eclipse.app"

AUTHOR='mike'

# current directory is workspace
WORKSPACE=`pwd`
echo "WORKSPACE = $WORKSPACE"

# start eclipse from current directory
#open -n $ECLIPSE --args -data $WORKSPACE -vmargs -Duser.name='$AUTHOR'

The script is working, when I run it from the terminal. But when I double-click it, it uses the home directory as working directory and thus starts eclipse not from the directory that contains the script.

Apparently scripts are executed from ~/., which is the cause for my trouble. What can I do to fix this? Or how can I change my script to get the desired behavior?

If your script is stored at ~/workspaces/myproject/launch.sh and you want to be in that directory when you run, change to that directory, you can get the directory where the script is saved with this one liner:

DIR=$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )

So the first few lines of your script become:

#!/bin/bash
DIR=$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )
cd "${DIR}"
...the rest of your script...

This will put you in the directory where the script is stored no matter how your run the script.

If you want to learn more about detecting the location on disk of a script at execute time see this excellent StackOverflow answer.