Shared Apple ID- want to create new one I share an Apple ID with my mother...I know it’s not ideal but at the time it was easiest until she learned how to use the phone, plus we live in different states so I can manage the account.

Anyway we now want to get her a separate Apple ID but I need to know if when we do this if it will make her lose all the stuff on her phone.

How do I get to her current back up if I change and then use her new Apple ID.

Create a new Apple ID then add her to your account as a family member with the Family Sharing option. Any apps purchased under the original account will remain available (and paid for) in the new account. She would lose some things (account backups, for example, but her device would start backing up to iCloud on its own storage rather than using your free allotment). If you set the account up for her, you can still manage it as you'd know the login info.


How to update to ios 14 How do i restore my phone from the beta version back to the original ios 14 version. Fyi. The profile and management option isn’t in my phone anymore for some reason

You can’t downgrade iOS and keep your content and settings and applications. You would need to connect it to a Mac with Finder or PC with iTunes and restore it which erases everything.


Automatic shutdown hindered by sleep mode I have an iMac (late 2009 model) running Yosemite. Recently, I have set up automatic shutdown in the Energy Saver settings under System Preferences. However, if my computer goes into sleep mode before the automatic shutdown - which I have scheduled to happen after twenty minutes of inactivity - my computer will not shutdown automatically at the scheduled time.

The question: is there a way to make my iMac shutdown at the scheduled time even when it is in sleep mode, or is there no way to circumvent this and I'm better off with manual shutdowns or disabling sleep mode?

You can use a third party tool like Power Manager to automate reliable shut downs.

By default, events will wake a sleeping Mac before being performed. Typically your Mac will be woken 15 – 30 seconds before the scheduled shut down begins. Ultimately, the wake up is performed by OS X's IOPMQueue which you can see and edit through the pmset tool.

I am the engineer behind Power Manager, so do ask if you need more details.


Keyboard shortcuts for dynamic menu items (Keynote) I often find myself creating Keynote presentations with lots of extra slides.  I then go through and skip a bunch for a particular class.

To make this slide choice easier, I added a keyboard shortcut for the "Skip Slide" and "Don't Skip Slide" menu commands.  Unfortunately, they don't work consistently.  In fact, it only seems that one at a time will work, which I think is a function of the fact that the menu item changes based on whether the selected slide is set to be skipped or not.

If a slide is selected that is hidden, the "Slide" menu will show "Don't Hide Slide."  If I look at the menu by clicking "Slide," then the "Don't Hide Slide" keyboard shortcut will work.  But, then if I select a slide is that is not hidden, the "Hide Slide" keyboard shortcut won't work.  I can get it to work by opening the "Slide" menu (where I can verify that it shows "Hide Slide" and my keyboard shortcut).  But, after that, the "Don't Hide Slide" keyboard shortcut stops working.

My question then: How do I get to use a keyboard shortcut for a menu item that is not in the menu at a particular time?

This doesn't solve the general case problem of how to assign a keyboard shortcut for any dynamic menu item, but it does solve the specific problem of having a keyboard shortcut to hide or display slides in Keynote.

We can work around the shortcut problem because Keynote is AppleScriptable.

Create a new service in Automator.

The service takes no input in Keynote.app.

The service has a single action: Do AppleScript. The script (in all its one-line beauty) is:

tell application "Keynote" to tell current slide of the front slideshow to set skipped to not skipped

Save the service as "ToggleSkipped".

Use the Keyboard Shortcuts tab within the Keyboard pane of System Preferences to bind the service to an unused keystroke.


How to buy a gift card from a German store for a Russian store? Links from here redirect me to my iTunes where I can buy gift cards but there show a note "Redeemable in German store only". The same story if searching for the answer on apple.com/ru/... .

Gift cards can only be redeemed in the same country/region that it was purchased. You can't redeem gift cards outside the country or region.

According to this Apple Support page:

  If you're trying to redeem an App Store & iTunes Gift Card or Apple
  Music Gift Card that was purchased in a different country or region,
  make sure that you're redeeming it in the iTunes Store for the same
  country or region. You can't redeem cards outside of the country or
  region of purchase.


After upgrading to Lion interface alignment seems to break, any ideas? After upgrading after Lion (circa 3 months ago) more and more interfaces seems to just break. It's easiest if see it yourselves!

Anyone know how to fix this issue?

First, do a Safe Boot. This, among other things, clears the Mac OS X font caches. There are also several third-party GUI tools for clearing the font caches, and there is a command-line command for doing this in the Terminal; can somebody else please provide the details?

Second, this may be a long shot, but have you used TinkerTool or a similar utility to change system font default point sizes? If so, try setting everything back to its default.

TinkerTool has many other wonderful capabilities, but its font point size settings are not practical simply because Mac OS X has never reacted well to changes in the font point size in the user interface.

Have a look at the screen shot below. It shows the TinkerTool interface set to the proper default system settings for all fonts. You can use this to confirm that everything is set to the correct default.


Creating keyboard shortcuts for Terminal Just to ensure that what I am saying is getting clearly across, I am not referring to things like iCanHazShortcut that allows you to execute a command anywhere through a keyboard shortcut.

I wanted to know if there is a way to have keyboard shortcuts that run a command in the current Terminal tab. I am fine with using 3rd-party applications.

No need of 3rd-party apps.

You can go to the Preferences Tab(Menu -> Terminal -> Preferences or ⌘,), then go to Profiles -> Keyboard.
There you can create shortcuts. Enter your command and end with an enter.

For example, if you want to run ls each time you press F1, select F1 in the Key tab, and press "ls <enter>", which appears like ls\015.

I didn't find a way to bind characters though, but using all these keys should be enough.


FaceTime - How to direct communication to specific devices? I have an iPhone and a MacBook. My wife the same. Is it possible (and how) to specify which devices should be called?

For example, when one of us travels, we want to be contacted on the phone, from the computer, and when the other travels, the reverse.

I suppose we can turn it on and off on the various devices, just wondering if there was another way. (What happens when you forget?).

Thanks

When you Facetime, the caller chooses either your phone number or the email address associated with your Apple ID. If it chooses the email address, it will ring both your computer, and your iPhone (as well as any other devices you have logged in with that Apple ID such as an iPad), and you may answer on either device. If the caller chooses your phone number, then just your phone will ring. In this case, the caller could use this to choose which device to ring you on.

As I'm sure you are already are aware, the device must be connected to wifi in order for it to ring (I believe there are cellular company outside the US that allow Facetime over the air as well), otherwise it will just ring and ring on the caller side without ever ringing you.


MInimize all windows except active I'm aware of all the hide all / minimize all shortcuts (cmd + alt + h/m) and am looking into something more sophisticated: I want to minimize all windows except active one – like the Shake function in windows 7 (Minimize Windows using shake)

I work with lots of chrome windows and I have to focus on one of them

Can this shake be customized to minimize all except the one with focus?

Select Hide Others from the active application menu, or use shortcut alt ⌥+cmd ⌘+H


Play button on earphones opens iTunes Pressing the play button on earphones opens up iTunes. Is there a way I can prevent this from happening without installing any third party programs? I would preferably want to control Spotify with my earphones.

Not if there's nothing currently playing. Play controls will try to resume the last thing you played that is still running and in memory. If the OS can't find anything to resume, it will default to iTunes.

All media applications are equal; but, iTunes is more equal.


What desktop software (for Mac OS) is there similar to Zite? Zite is an awesome iPad app that offers a personalized magazine from web sources (an amazing variety of public RSS feeds from conventional news to popular blogs). You start by giving it some keywords that characterize your interests. Then, every time you read an item, you can indicate whether you like it or not, and it will learn your tastes and give you more suitable content.

I love it, but I don't have my iPad anymore. What similar applications exist for the Mac desktop, or as a web app?

You may have found something by now (if so please share), but I just discovered Prismatic, which is similar to Zite, but on the web, and mobile. http://getprismatic.com/.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/prismatic-perfect-desktop-alternative-flipboard-zite/


Finder not searching files in ~/Library and /Library I am using a Macbook Air with macOS High Sierra.

When I install a third party application and later delete it, I have to remove files stored by it in Application Support, Preferences etc. in ~/Library. I have to manually look up and delete files containing the name of the third party app (eg. com.EaseUsMobiMover installed by MobiMover).

Why doesn't Finder show these files when I search for them? And how do I make Finder search for all files containing the name of the app like com.abc for the app "abc"?

You have to include "System Files" in your criteria to search places like the user Library.

To do so, open a search window in Finder cmdF, click on "Kind" and select "Other" and scroll down to "System Files".  Tick the box under "In Menu" for easier access in the future by including it in the search menu.
(You can also specify hidden files here, with the "File invisible" attribute)

You can also save those search criteria and add them to the Finder sidebar for quick access.

If the above does not yield the desired results, a rebuild of the Spotlight index might be required.


iPhone not appearing as a device in iTunes, making wireless sync impossible I'm not sure when this issue started, but at some point in the past I was able to wirelessly sync my phone to my computer through iTunes.

The two things that I have changed recently are updating to Mavericks, updating to iOS7 and then getting a new iPhone. While I know I have never been able to wirelessly sync my 5s, I can't remember if my 4s was able to or not.

Now the only time I see my phone appear in iTunes is when I plug it into the computer.

I asked a guy at the genius bar, but he couldn't figure it out, though he wasn't familiar with the ability to sync wirelessly and had to ask around to figure out how it was supposed to happen.

Has anyone had this issue and solved it?

Further Notes:

I have "Sync with this iPhone over Wi-Fi" checked when I have the phone plugged in.

When the phone isn't plugged into the computer, but is plugged into a power source, and is on the same Wifi network as the computer, the phone does not appear as a device in iTunes.

Current version numbers:

iTunes 11.1.5 (5)

OSX 10.9.2

iOS 7.0.6

The iOS 7.1 update has fixed this issue.


How do I install Mac OS X El Capitan on my other iMac? I'm relatively new to Mac and I cannot for the life of me figure out why it is so complicated to download an OS installer, create a bootable disk and use it on another machine.

According to the official Apple documentation here, one must:

  El Capitan downloads as a disk image. On a Mac that is compatible with
  El Capitan, open the disk image and run the installer within, named
  InstallMacOSX.pkg. It installs an app named Install OS X El Capitan
  into your Applications folder. You will create the bootable installer
  from this app, not from the disk image or .pkg installer.

I downloaded the 6 GB file.
But when I run the installer, I get a message saying

  This version of OS X 10.11 cannot be installed on this computer.

But I am not trying to install it on this computer! I want to install it on a different computer!

How do I just get the OS image so I can create the bootable drive to use in the other machine?

I really appreciate your advice!

Given that you have the IntallMacOSX.pkg file you need to extract the app -so, you want this answer: How can I open a .pkg file manually?

You can then extract the "Install OS X El Capitan.app" application into your Applications directory and proceed with the steps as outlined by Apple.


Signed application cannot be opened once downloaded - ("unidentified developer") error I have developed an application for OS X. As changes to this application are pushed to my code repository, a build server (Jenkins) automatically detects those changes and kicks off a build process. As part of that build process, I sign the generated binaries with a certificate I have received from Apple. Once that process completes, I am able to verify that the application has been properly signed by running:

$ codesign -v ./MyApp.app

Here is the strange part: If I download those binaries directly from Jenkins and copy them over to a Mac, I can run them without issue. However, if I host those binaries on a web server and download them via HTTPS, I receive the "can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer" error and am unable to proceed.

Can anyone shed some light on what might be happening here?

When you downloaded apps with Safari an extended property is set on the file to mark is as quarantined. Another extended property is set to save the URL you've downloaded the file from.

Depending on your security settings you will be prompted the first time trying to start the downloaded application. You will be informed that you have downloaded the program, the URL and - depending on your settings - be allowed to bypass the prompt and run the program.

You can remove the attribute manually to allow you to script these downloads. Run the following command in Terminal.app:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine path/to/file/filename


How can I transfer pictures from a Macbook Pro to an iPad I don't own? My parents would like to have a copy of most of the photos that are stored within iPhoto.

I can't find the files on the hard drive, and don't know the best way to transfer them to an iPad that isn't mine.  (There is no iCloud account in common between the devices)

What is the best way to send iPhoto images to an iPad?

Not perfect for so many images, but the simplest known solution would be the cross copy tool. I created this Open Source project to target the ongoing hassle of inter-device file transfer:

Download and install the App called cross copy (or open http://www.cross-copy.net if you prefer the web app)
Enter the same code word on both devices (the more unique the merrier security)
start uploading files --- they will instantly appear on the other side

To be honest, the App should (and could) be extended to make multi file upload possible -- otherwise transfering a whole collection of images is much to cumbersome.


Is it possible to be always connected to a VPN without prompting for a UN/PW? Is it possible to install some configuration profile on an iOS Device that will always have the user connected to a VPN without having them input his/her username/password each time one tries to connect?

In other words, our current setup has users connecting to a VPN via the "Settings" App on the iPad (using IPSec).  With this setup, our users are prompted for his/her password each time he/she tries to connect to the VPN.

We are trying to avoid prompting for a UN/PW and having our users go to the Settings app in the first place, so is there any way to force a VPN connection, and therefore always stay connected via the iPhone Configuration Utility?

You can configure the VPN setting on your ipad, iphone or ipod touch to save the User Name and Password for VPN. I don't know of a way to have it constantly connect the VPN whenever the is a connection. Given the time it takes to establish a VPN handshake, it would be kind of frustrating to wake the device then not be able to connect to any internet/network related Apps for 15+ seconds while it connects to the VPN.

Choose Settings > General > Network > VPN > then choose the VPN Configuration. Fill in in the username a password section and then you can just turn the VPN on when you need it and not have to fill out the User Name and Password.

more info:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1424

Alternative you could look at something like Apple's Mobile Access server, to give you that secured VPN like connection all the time without the hassle of starting a VPN connection:

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/mobile-access.html


How do I know if a time machine backup is running? Due to APFS having a mind of its own and filling the hard disk with unwanted snapshots, I made a cron to run tmutil deletelocalsnapshots xxx. Later I found out that running this command while a backup is in progress will stop the backup. How can I know if a time machine backup is in progress to avoid running the command? The man page for tmutil doesn't list any status command.

Right now I'm doing the following in the script, since now backups mount at /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/:

ls -d /Volumes/Time* 2>/dev/null|grep Machin >/dev/null

if [[ $? != 0 ]]; then
     # run here tmutil snapshot deletion commands
fi

However, this doesn't seem to be very precise. The volume may be mounted some minutes later after a backup has started, and also stopping a backup leaves that mounted volume for a while. Finally, the name of the mounted volume might change in the future, making the check useless.

The canonical way to check status of time machine is to use the utility and check status or for newer os check the current phase only:

 tmutil status
 tmutil currentphase

Now, you have to process the text since it reports exit 0 when running and when it's not running since the status returned - not that there's a correct status.

I would use:

tmutil status | grep "Running = 0;"

That returns 0 if the system is not currently running and 1 if you are backing up. However, back up on High Sierra implies a non-snapshot event. The snapshots literally are to external drives which literally are not APFS. Only the internal SSD gets APFS treatment and the local snapshots are not something that "run" as so much as "just exist" and the "running" if anything is the thinning process - not the backing up process.

The thinning process calls backupd-helper which doesn't have a command line tool to check when done but you can time that running by issuing a blocking call like:

 tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1000000000

Above has enough zeros to thin one giga byte - add two zeros to ask for 100 GB back.

I do want to correct (or at least challenge lightly) the concept of too many snapshots. APFS is a copy on write filesystem and the only examples of this being bad seem highly contrived or non-default configurations. The files that are around are already written to disk. The system just is "lazy" about cleaning them up and doesn't expend any processing time until it knows the a) system is relatively idle b) storage is relatively idle and not yet running low on free space.

Apple is clearly still in flux with how many snapshots to keep mounted, how to set the cleanup thresholds, how many intervals to keep in situations where the external drive is not connected and the local snapshots exist.

You can dig deeper with:

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1
tmutil deletelocalsnapshots YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS

Again, I've yet to see a place where I needed to thin or delete snapshots out of the automatic process on local volumes. The delete can be handy when you want to purge a large backup from an external drive. The real lever we used to have was to use Time Machine exclusions to omit the backup of large files that had tiny changes. It remains to be seen how APFS reacts to these files - my guess is you may be able to placethose type of files on a different APFS volume and thin aggressively and periodically or continue to watch the backup exclusions to see if that saves you allocated space without slowing down the copy on write performance and storage benefits.


how to open fiddler saz files on mac or online? a friend sent me a fiddler record for me to watch.

I have mac and the file he has sent is X.saz

I could install fiddler on mac. How can i open these files to watch?

TextWrangler is a free piece of text editing software that is capable of opening these files.
http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

You can also unpack them by changing the extension to .zip and unzipping normally.
http://fiddler.wikidot.com/saz-files


Which folder does 'iTunes Media folder' refer to? I changed the setting of my iTunes Media folder, temporarily, and now wish to switch it back again. I have many, many music files stored in the following location:

/Volumes/SAMSUNG/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/{band-name}/{album}/{song-title}.m4a

When setting the preference "iTunes Media folder location", what value should I choose? Is it "/Volumes/SAMSUNG/iTunes" or "/Volumes/SAMSUNG/iTunes/iTunes Media"?

Additionally, when I set this, what else do I need to do to ensure iTunes recognises it - i.e. all my music appears. Choosing either location appears to do nothing, which is partly why this is so confusing - there's no indication if I've chosen the 'correct' folder or not.

You would have to set it too

/Volumes/SAMSUNG/iTunes/iTunes Media

And iTunes will follow through all the Albums and artist.

Sorry my mistake, thought you could still see your library. That setting only tells iTunes what folder to use to store/organize your files and it would rediscover them if they still were shown in the library.

Because of the change, iTunes has likely lost track of where your files are. The best way to re-add them is to simply drag and drop all the files into iTunes.

Do you have it set so iTunes organizes your music? If you do only then will this setting really matter for music. Otherwise it just uses the location it was imported from.

If you want to check if it works, try playing a song and see it if can find it.

Or right click on a song and select 'Open Folder Location' (Something along those lines, it is 'Open in Finder' on Mac). This should take you to the location of the song, if it doesn't then it hasn't been set properly.

While not necessary, close and open iTunes to ensure it is updates the library.


Play Music from iTunes in Terminal Is there a way to play music from iTunes with a Terminal command? I've tried to do this with the afplay command, but the music won't play because of a locked mp4 music file.

You can use AppleScript to play Music via iTunes.

osascript -e 'tell application "iTunes" to play playlist "My Favorites"'


Windows 10 runs extremely slowly in Parallels 10 I'm running Parallels 10 on a 2014 MacBook Pro with OS X El Capitan (10.11.6). I have five virtual machines set up for various versions of Windows (7, 8, and 10).

For some reason, my Windows 10 VM runs extremely slowly – it boots, but then everything grinds to a halt (the Mac overall, not just the VM). Often, the only way out is to force shutdown and reboot.

The VM itself is a completely clean copy straight from Microsoft (indeed, I can never get it to run fast enough to actually do anything with it). My four other VMs all run perfectly fine, obviously on the same hardware, and I have all five configured identically.

I know that Parallels 11 advertises that it's ready for Windows 10, implying that previous versions aren't – but my Parallels 10 installation does list Windows 10 as an option in the VM configuration. So it would seem it's supported.

Is there anything I can do to fix this, or is the solution just to upgrade to Parallels 11 (even though in theory my current setup should work)?

I've had a better experience with Parallels 11 than I did with 10 so you might be worth considering an upgrade to improve the experienced.


Launch Daemon .plist missing. How to get it back? My system is working fine (iMac running Mountain Lion), except that when I try to import video to iMovie using the built-in iSight camera I see a message "no camera connected". iSight works fine in Skype, photobooth, etc.

The solution to this, documented here, is to trash com.apple.mio.VDCAssistant.plist at the path /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ and it's supposed to rebuild after a restart. But when I navigate to this path, the relevant file is just not there. Restart doesn't affect it, neither does logging in with a different user account. Repairing disk permissions doesn't help. I found a file named com.apple.cmio.VDCAssistant.plist at that location but only in a Time Machine backup - it's not present on my current system.

My main question is: does the absence of com.apple.mio.VDCAssistant.plist indicate a deeper problem that ought to be fixed? If not, I can live with not being able to import video directly to iMovie directly from the camera.

If it does indicate a deeper problem, I guess it's time to reinstall the OS. If that's the case, can I restore the system from a time machine backup or will this just reintroduce the original problem?

Thanks for reading - I'd really appreciate any input.

Update: Reinstalled the OS and the 'cmio' file is now there, though doesn't rebuild when moved. iSight still not recognised. The iSight issue must be a bug confined to older versions of iMovie, even though they're still supported by Mountain Lion. I'll use QuickTime to import the footage.


Restore from Time Machine after installing Bootcamp Can I setup Time Machine to backup my Mac and then install Bootcamp?
Then after installing Bootcamp, can I go back to that restore point so Bootcamp will be gone?

No, Bootcamp will create a fysical partition on your Macintosh HD. If you restore your Mac  with TimeMachine, the software will only detect your Mac-partition and restore it's data. It will leave your Bootcamp partition in tact.

If you want to get rid of the Bootcamp partition, just run the Bootcamp assistant again and it will allow you to delete the Windows partition with one mouseclick.


Why does a Java based app in OS X have 2 different user interface designs? I quote 2 images from Google.

Look at the tabs. They are totally different. I have just finished migrated to OS X. I always believe that OS X provides a uniform user interface to make their apps more elegant. Additionally, How to turn app's UI in the second image to look like that in the first image?

The same Java code (mostly) runs on all OS/architectures. It has several different  APIs to draw forms/windows. Some of these APIs e.g. Swing allow you to change look and feel between emulating different widget sets. So a program can be written so that it allows the user to change the look and feel.

The look and feel that is supplied includes OSX (as in the top screenshot) and Windows(several forms) or Motif or GTK. The way to set this in Swing and for more information see this Oracle document Note that even the OSX Look and feel does not full match Apple's guidelines e.g. positioning of the menu in the window and not at the top of the display.

Like any Windowing system you can always write programs that behave and look different to the expected standard. It happens that for OSX most developers stick to Apple's guidelines, but even using Apple's supplied APIs you can have a different feel between Carbon(originally Mac OS <= 9) and Cocoa programs(originally NeXT). The AppStore allows Apple to have a bit more control but I do not know if meeting display guidelines is actually checked.


Customizing the shell prompt causes some quirks I have customized the shell prompt with the following code in my ~/.bash_profile, but there is one quirk left I can't seem to fix:

export PS1="\u:\[\e[32;1;32m\W\e[m\] \$ "

(code is also on github)

This works well, including for long commands. But if I page through the command history with the arrow keys, the prompt will sometimes get a bit "weird". Sometimes it will include a partial command in the prompt or other times the space after the $ will be disappear. Is there something missing from the code above that I should tweak?

Thanks!

You didn't close the brackets for the first escape, and add the escape for the second

export PS1="\u:\[\e[32;1;32m\]\W\[\e[m\] \$ "
#---------------------------^^--^^


Recover external hard drive after dd command I'm trying to be calm... and will try to explain this as best I can.
I was trying to use the dd command to burn an iso image to a 16GB MicroSD for my RaspberryPi. I had my 2TB USB hard drive also connected on the other USB-C slot and by accident, I completely wrote over the 2TB drive of important files instead of the 16GB MicroSD!
The command I executed was:
sudo dd bs=4m if=PlexMediaPlayer-1.3.4.699-1d4f6da1.RPi2-arm.img of=/dev/disk2
Where /dev/disk2 was the 2TB external USB drive. The output of the command was:

137+0 records in
137+0 records out
574619648 bytes transferred in 19.313496 secs (29752234 bytes/sec)

The drive now has the contents of what was originally in the .img file intended for the 16GB MicroSD. Everything else is gone from the 2TB external USB Drive.
My whole life is in that 2TB hard drive, including the photos of my kids since they were small, etc. I can't imagine what else was lying in that drive.
I'd really appreciate any help anyone can provide. :-(

First step: create a bit for bit copy of the destroyed drive using the dreaded dd command which took down your drive in the first place. Make sure you disable Time Machine and any other background application which wants to write on your disk (Spotlight aka mds is another one).

Second step: start trying to pull data off the copy (don't use the original except as read only until you've recovered your data).

I used to use Prosoft's Data Rescue 2 & 3 but the new version requires an internet connection (for no good reason). I can't recommend it on principle. Cleverfiles's Disk Drill at least lets you preview your data before you pay. You could try Lazesoft Mac Data Recovery which is donationware. If Lazesoft gets your files back, you should donate (generous programmers deserve to be rewarded). Some of flash drive manufacturers included file recovery utilities, SanDisk RescuePro program has worked for me but maintaining a licensed copy is such a hassle I don't think I have one now.

If the first data recovery program fails you, you can try some others. Even if the data recovery programs destroy your backup, you can always do another bit to bit clone to try with other programs.

Single step version:

I've just noticed that even free Disk Drill includes a workflow with built-in byte-to-byte copy to DMG routine which would be easier to implement and get you off the command line right now.

  Just proceed with "Backup / Backup into DMG-image". The unique aspect of the byte-to-byte backups is the fact they actually store the contents of data sectors that were marked as empty, not occupied by data. Yes, you get it right, the sectors where your lost data can still reside. Once the backup disk image is created, you may start your hard drive recovery from the image instead of the real hardware. This will ensure the final failure will not occur while Deep Scanning, more data stays safe and potentially recoverable.

As others pointed out, keeping backups is really, really important as everyone makes mistakes and bits fry every once in a while.

Good luck getting your important personal archives and photos back!


send non-delivery notification I am fairly sure MobileMe (and possibly Mail.App) had a feature which allowed you to send a non-delivery notification for an email. This is possibly the best way to battle spam, however I can not find this feature anywhere now. Has it been removed or is it hidden somewhere else?

This page suggests that the feature exists in Mail under Lion. The feature, however, does not appear to exist, either as a toolbar option, nor as a Message menu command, nor as a context menu command, nor as an item in the Help file for Mail. The aforelinked document says "Lion" in its title, but refers to Mail 4.0; the Mail program under Lion is Mail 5.1.

This may or may not have anything to do with Apple's acknowledgement that bounce does not always dissuade spammers.


Movies sometime lag on my 15" MacBook Pro (2011) I've been having this problem for a long while and I've been looking around for a solution. And I found a very similar question explaining my very same issue. I edited it so I can give you all more details. Unfortunately, I don't know how that's going to work. So I decided to post it again in a new question hoping for your help.

I have a new 15" MacBook Pro with the highest specifications, running Lion version 10.7.2. However, when I watch movies they sometimes lag on my computer: frozen screen (for 3-4 s) with lots of broken cubes and with the audio track still playing). What could be possibly wrong with my computer?

For example, today I watched the Fast Five Blu-ray movie (which is almost 50 GB) with the VLC media player and suddenly it started lagging on some episodes (especially on intense action ones with lots of special effects). Moreover, it lags not only on Blu-ray movies but also on movie files ripped from standard definition DVDs and other formats as well.

I play all those movies with the power plugged in from downloaded files, not from optical DVDs. Even Stanford University lectures from iTunes sometimes lag for me.

UPDATE: I was in the Genius bar several times, reinstalled Lion on my own and also in the Apple Store.

After the fresh install I tried to test videos. I watched House, M.D. season 8 episode 2 (395.9 MB) yesterday, and it started lagging all over again. I do not really know what to do. Is this a bug in VLC, iTunes, and other media players, or it is something wrong with my hardware? (They actually tested my Mac in the Genius bar with their cable plugged in but did not find any problems.)

I've also tried using different software like Movist and Miro but I still have the same problem. It almost always happens on intense scenes but when I rewind it and play that same scene over and over it works eventually! So I don't think the problem is from the movie file itself. I noticed a few things though:

It happens with YouTube videos as well, regardless of the browser used.
It NEVER happens with I connect my computer to an external screen via HDMI cable.

I had an issue playing HD videos on my older computer and it's the main reason I bought this MacBook Pro. So you can see why this issue is very frustrating to me.

I had this same problem and had already installed perian as suggested above. This seems to be a frequent problem, I've had read the explanation but it's a long time ago so don't ask me anymore what the cause is.
I fixed it with 'Niceplayer' this player can preform a pre buffer. So if you load in a large mkv file for example with nice player you'll see a small white line going across let the loading complete (goes fairly quick) and press play. No more lag :) at least for me.. Hope it'll help you too...


Why does the App Store think Xcode 4.2 is installed? I'm trying to upgrade Xcode from 4.1 to 4.2.
However App Store thinks that it's already up to date, which it is not.

I am a registered Mac and iOS developer. I don't think 4.2 is under NDA.

How can I fix this?

Delete the XCode installer in /Applications, restart App Store. Now you will have an "Install" button for XCode. Download the installer and run it.


iPhones in business: How to set restrictions on devices provided to employees I was recently able to use an iPhone supplied by a tech startup to one of its affiliates. The phone had limited apps, several disabled settings, and no icon for the App Store among its restrictions. The device Restrictions feature in Settings was set to Off (it was not being used). The iPhone was essentially set up to serve as a tool for affiliates to use in their work and nothing more.

How can a company that wants to provide employees or affiliates with iPhones strictly for limited business work set similar restrictions as those set by the startup? Are there specific tools available to make this happen short of compromising the device's security settings?

Related: As part of your answer, please feel free to comment on similarities and differences to Android devices if you have a broad knowledge of this topic.

Apple Configurator can be used to configure devices in various ways including restricting apps, features and connectivity.

Payloads can be configured in these profiles that customise the device in various ways, such as pre-configuring certain settings or restricting functionality.

These profiles are by default able to be removed at any time, however they can be set to only allow removal with authorisation, or never.

These .mobileconfig files can be installed on a device simply by downloading them through Safari, or can be installed over USB to the device.


How Do I Create A VirtualBox VM From An Existing macOS Mojave APFS Volume? I saw a related post but the instructions were specific to VMware Fusion, which I am not using.

With Carbon Copy Cloner, I created a bootable backup of the existing macOS Mojave installation that I want to turn into a VM.

Do I need to include The Container when I convert that clone into an iso or cdr?

Yesterday, I made a macOS Mojave VM directly from the macOS Mojave Installer using the instructions and tools here: AlexanderWillner/runMacOSinVirtualBox

The post about doing this with VMware suggests adding the iso/cdr clone of the boot drive you want to virtualize to an existing Mojave VM. Would this work in VirtualBox, given that VirtualBox still doesn't technically support booting from APFS drives?

I'm not particularly familiar with VirtualBox and I don't want to purchase VMware or Parallels. What will be the simplest way to convert my existing macOS Mojave APFS installation into a VirtualBox VM?

I suggest you use the free Parallels Lite found in the app store.  You have to pay to run Windows!  Running macOS is free.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/parallels-desktop-lite/id1085114709?mt=12

Virtual box doesn't support macOS that well.


Is there a tool that allows for changing the time in a GPS file? I have a GPS tracked stored in a GPX file. Now I'm looking for a tool that allows me to set the start time of the track and the duration, and the tool should automatically evenly distribute the appropriate timestamps for all my recorded points in the track.

The tool should be free and run on OSX.

I'm certain that tool does not exist. That being said, you can open the .gpx file in TextWrangler (free) and view the time stamps and edit them. They are in the XML format:

<time>2013-03-21T18:04:36Z</time>

I dont see why you couldn't import them into an excel spreadsheet and alter the times with an algoritm that would add a specific quantity to each. But I wouldn't know how to do that.


Which carriers support iOS 10's voicemail transcription? I'm curious because I don't see any text under my voicemails when I tap on them, but I've seen videos of that being what you do, and I've read that it doesn't require any activation. I don't see why it would be limited to the iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, or the iPhone SE (I have an iPhone 6). I've narrowed it down to my carrier (AT&T).

Is there a place where I can see if my carrier supports voicemail transcription?

Thanks in advance!

Voicemail transcription (beta) is available on iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and iPhone SE with Siri language set to English (United States or Canada).


Installing a Lion Vm within Mountain Lion I have a few issues with Mountain Lion that mean I need to have occasional access to a Lion installation.  I have bootable clones of my old Lion install before I upgraded, but sometimes I only need to run a single application and rebooting from another disk is a pain, so I would like to be able to fire up an instance of Lion as a virtual machine.

The Lion license allows for VM installs (up to 2 I think), so there should be no issue from a licensing perspective, but I don't know how to go about actually doing it.

I have access to Parallels 7 (although I have never used it, got it as part of a software bundle recently), and I would happily use VirtualBox if that's the easiest way.  I have seen a few tips for creating ones within VMWARE, but I don't have access to this software.

So, starting from a point of having access to the Lion download, having the installer image within that download extracted onto a USB stick, and also have a bootable copy of a working Lion image, what is the simplest way to get a clean minimal Lion install working within either Parallels or VirtualBox on Mountain Lion?

OK, having had a good play the following options are possible with Parallels:

From the Recovery Partition on your machine, however this only works from the current one, not any other attached ones, so if you are booted into ML, you can only use the ML recovery partition - so no go for Lion
From original Media, in this case an official USB stick as it was not available on DVD, I didn't have one, so no good for me (note that hand made ones will not work, neither will if you created a bootable partition
From a Disk Image file.  As with option 2. above, creating a bootable DVD/USB Stick/partition on an drive etc will not work if you have extracted the image file to create one.  You need the actual DMG file.  If you have the original App Store download, the easiest way to get this is is to rick click and Show Package Contents, then find the InstallESD.dmg file and make a copy of it.

Using the file from method 3. will allow you to use the new VM Wizard to create the Lion VM


iPhone 4s getting hot I two days ago got a second hand iPhone 4s.
I notice that when I start using it, it becomes hot on top right side (if you look from front) and on left top side (if you look from back) near back camera and side steel too.

It becomes hot and battery also drops quickly like 9-10% in 12-14 mints.

I resetted the network settings too but it didn't solved the problem... :(

Please tell what should I do. I have no SIM card in it!! I'm using without SIM. I just turn on the Wi-Fi for some seconds then this happens.

Hot while using the phone is almost always a short. You might have it serviced if you think it's a fire risk.

Hot while charging can be a bad charger or a bad battery or a short, so you've got the easier problem to troubleshoot / repair.

Also - the age of these devices mean that the majority will be failing in one way or another whether the batteries need to be replaced or other issues like corrosion or just failure of another component has caused it to be out of design spec.


Is there a way to power down an AirPort Time Capsule gracefully? There is no obvious way to power down an AirPort Time Capsule in a graceful way. Naturally, you typically won't be powering the thing on and off on a regular basis, but I'm surprised there doesn't seem to be a way to do it given that the device has a storage component that might be damaged by a sudden shutdown.

Is there a way to power down an AirPort Time capsule gracefully?

According to Apple (from the Time Capsule manual)

Using Your AirPort Time Capsule Safely

The only way to shut off power completely to your AirPort Time
Capsule is to disconnect it from the power source.

If you want to go above and beyond, you can be sure that all users all logged off, and not performing a backup through the Airport Utility, but this is not necessary...


Is my screen being shared?! With whom? For the last few days I've been getting a message on my lock screen

  Unlocking with Apple Watch is not available while your screen is being shared

A tad worrisome but I sort of disregarded and chalked it up to maybe a go2meeting screenshare not properly telling the os it's done or my some bug related to my secondary monitor being attached.

But I got it this morning after a full restart and without my secondary monitor attached. Now I'm kinda worried! Is my screen being shared with someone?! How would I even know?!

note that screen sharing is off:

There may be a less drastic explanation for this. I had the exact same issue and found that this happens after using slack for calls where I share my screen. So just restart slack after your call has ended. Haven't tested it with other screen sharing software yet.

Some ones to watch are the obvious, Zoom, BlueJeans, Microsoft Teams, Google, as well as all manner of remote support apps that don't necessarily use Apple's Screen Sharing controls in system preferences.


How to stop iOS "update from beta" notifications? How can I stop receiving notifications telling me to update from the iOS 11 beta? I don’t have enough storage to update and I really don’t want to completely reset my phone either.

Having been bothered by similar notifications, I found that the best way to suppress these was to simply turn off Automatic Updates - which are typically enabled by default.

Go to Settings
Go to iTunes & App Stores
Toggle Automatic Downloads to Off.

Background
I would suspect any Beta updates to be no good fit for long-term use as they are often a little buggy and intended for temporary use/evaluation only. Then there is the whole security side of things (which I won't get into now). If you are after a little more reading, try this article which explains how to suppress updates in greater detail - I wouldn't be surprised if beta versions aren't handled a little more forcefully than the regular iOS releases.

Resetting your iOS device may be the best option yet. If it is applicable to your situation, go for it.

Let me know how you get on, what worked, what didn't? I'd be interested to follow up with you on this.


Set up Gmail to work properly with Apple Mail I often can't find my sent mail in my Gmail account viewed on my Mac in Apple Mail. I did not set up these folders, but I have both a "Sent Mail" folder indented under a "Gmail" folder and a "Sent Messages (gmail [accountname])" folder in my Gmail account in Apple Mail. Sometimes a sent messages shows up in neither of those, but I can find it by searching for it.
Some incoming messages do not appear in my Inbox, but are in a box I did not set up labeled "Important."

How do I set the Gmail settings and filters to avoid these two problems?

Besides Google's "official" guide to configure GMail with a desktop client (see Wheat Williams' answer) I think this guide is pretty good and helpful:

http://www.macworld.com/article/157846/2011/03/mailgmail.html

It' a detailed step-by-step guide an features several screenshots.

Regarding the sent messages (your first point):

  "Select the [Gmail] -> Sent Mail subfolder and choose Mailbox -> Use This Mailbox For -> Sent"


Can I connect an iPad to a monitor with with an Apple Digital AV Adapter converted to DVI? I need to connect my 3rd-generation iPad to an older monitor. I already own an Apple Digital AV Adapter. Other than the need to purchase an HDMI to DVI cable is there anything preventing me from hooking my iPad up this way?

I went ahead and ordered an HDMI to DVI adapter cable from Amazon. Using this cable and the most recent Apple Digital AV Adapter I was able to mirror my iPad on my old monitor.


NAS Streaming Performance I recently bought a NAS drive (WD Personal Cloud) and it seems great - for everything but streaming video, it is very quick. However, when playing video files (480 and 720p) despite there being no other network traffic, VLC still occasionally pauses for about two seconds, then continues to play.

This happens about every ten minutes, and I was wondering if there is a) a better app, b) a way to tell VLC to cache ahead of time or c) something I'm doing wrong.

I'm on a Wireless N network, zero other traffic - I was thinking it might potentially be the mac doing other internet related stuff in the background, but that's just an idea.

Thanks!

I have since found a solution for this and would like to share:

VLC (and most other video apps) have a network caching feature. By default its set at 1/100th of a second or so - using the images below you can increase it.

The trade-off is that you have to wait a few seconds when skipping or loading a film.

1 - http://img.iamp.me/i5bN (click show all, bottom left)

2 - http://img.iamp.me/65qz


How do I make iTunes 'forget' a device in Mavericks? Before Mavericks it seems it was easy to make iTunes forget a device as per this question: Can you make iTunes forget a device?

However according to this Apple support article Sync Services doesn't exist anymore in Mavericks

  Note: OS X Mavericks does not use Sync Services. Instead, Mavericks supports sharing your information using several network-based and cloud-based solutions. If you want to sync your information across multiple devices and computers, you should use one or more of these methods. These include iCloud, CardDAV servers, CalDAV servers, or servers that use the Exchange ActiveSync protocol.

What is the new trick in Mavericks to make iTunes forget a device?

It is not possible in Mavericks
At least 10.9.3 and down. Recently Apple brought back Sync Services in 10.9.3 however the resetsync.pl script is not in the Sync Services framework folder. Seeing how Apple brought back Sync Services without the script it seems unlikely that the script and reset functionality will return.


Liquid damaged Macbook -- doesn't power up after submerging logicboard in surgical spirit/rubbing alcohol I've bought my late 2016 Macbook Pro with Touchbar in February, spilled some juice on it.

Anyway, the machine seemed to function pretty well even so, only the Touchbar was randomly going black. Since the warranty was already voided, I opened it up myself, took pretty much everything out, wiped the components with some rubbing alcohol, then assembled everything back. At this point, the fans were very loud and the battery was alternating between 0% and 50%. None of this was happening BEFORE I disassembled the Macbook.

A few days ago I tried submerging the logicboard in rubbing alcohol (70% isopropylic alcohol, 30% distilled water + blue colouring) for about 48 hours, occasionally brushing it with a clean tootbrush to help lodge some of the orange bits that got stuck. I reassembled it, and now it won't power on at all! I'm not 100% sure I assembled it back correctly. I most likely did, but not being an Apple/Macbook expert...

Does anyone have any idea at all about what might be causing it not to power up? Did the rubbing alcohol damaged the logicboard more than it was already damaged?

Would it help if I wiped/submerged the logicboard in 99% isopropylic alcohol in an ultrasonic bath? I think buying an ultrasonic cleaner will be cheaper than paying $1.200 at Apple.

Any insight would be helpful. Btw, this is my very first (and last) Macbook.

Thanks!
Best regards!

From my experience, your Mac is done.

Only in very rare cases some survive a liquid spill, but that depends on many factors like the amount of liquid.

As far as I know cleaning will not bring it back the damage is already done. It was powered-up when it happened and you know what liquid does to electronics.

Pretty sure your keyboard also suffered irreparable damage, since the liquid had to pass true it.

For future consideration I recommend preventive action.

this or similar $10 device can save you $1,000

I have no affiliation with this company.

As a last resort you can try to put in in a Fridge (yes fridge) that should draw out any moisture (Fridge does that).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=18&v=nrXDRvode24


Delete a failed bootcamp partition MacBook Pro I just tried to install windows with Boot Camp on my Macbook Pro running macOS Sierra. Just when Boot Camp wanted to split my Mac's hard drive into partitions, I stopped it, leaving some useless space taken up on my hard drive.

Now, I don't know how to delete that bootcamp space (about 40 GB); the bootcamp partition does not even appear in Disk Utility.

How can I delete this partition and free up its storage space?

I recall a few years back I had difficulty removing a boot camp partition with the boot camp utility.  I wound up using disk utility to remove the boot camp partition and resize my Macintosh hard drive back to its initial state.

Select the book camp partition in the pie chart and then just hit the minus button beneath

After that I just wound up using the Boot Camp utility again to start the whole process over of creating a new partition for Boot Camp


Does Background App Refresh affect notifications? I get notifications from apps like Snapchat or Facebook Messenger. Does turning off Refresh affect these notifications?

Background App Refresh allows apps to download information in the background under certain conditions.

Apple says:

  After you switch to a different app, some apps run for a short period of time before they're set to a suspended state. Apps that are in a suspended state aren’t actively in use, open, or taking up system resources. With Background App Refresh, suspended apps can check for updates and new content.

Notifications are pushed from the server to your device at the time of an event (new email, message, whatever) and are unrelated to Background App Refresh.


Is it worth to bother with iPhone 4 when developing a new application? I'm currently working on an iOS application which almost started from scratch (And I did also as I didn't work on iOS before that).
My question is : Now that we have iOS8 that is to replace iOS7 and iPhone6 should I bother make my display compatible with iPhone 4 ?

I've try to look for statistics on the web but I wasn't very lucky and couldn't find any numbers to help me take a decision... What is really frustrating is that some of the very useful library don't work on iOS8 (or at least not like they're supposed to...) But work like charme on iOS7.

If anyone has some knowledge to share... More than welcome !

Thanks

You're going to run into trouble if you try to make your application code device-specific. The correct way to approach a software release is to target OS-compatibility. That means that if you're going to go for a minimum of iOS 7, you need to ensure that your software is compatible with all the devices that are able to run that iOS version. Anything else opens you up to a whole world of hurt. App Store does NOT define system requirements by device model.


Sorting documents in Lion I recently discovered that on Mac OS 10.7 (aka Lion) my documents on my NAS are arranged in the order "Z, Y, X, W, V, etc...". So how do I specifically change this setting of the arranging order? The bars on top (in 10.6) are now gone...

You need to change the view properties of the Finder window. Here's how to do it using Menu commands.

View the Finder Window as a List (View > As List).
Set "Arrange By" to None. (View > Arrange By > None).

You should now see the Finder window property headers and then you can click on Name to sort ascending or descending.


How to create sum in Numbers up to a specific row? I have column which contains prices for my work. The last row of that column should contain the total. Currently I have to adjust the SUM() calculation every time I add or remove a row.
Can I somehow magically sum up to the row the SUM() formula is contained in?

You can do this using header and footer rows. These automatically adjust the formulas contained within them based on the number of rows above.

Make sure you have the footer row enabled:

In the footer cell, enter =SUM↩.
Select the column by clicking the relevant header cell or column reference.

The formula will automatically adjust from now on.

An animation for further explanation:


How to manually trigger background image change? I have set the wallpaper to change every hour and have enabled it to cycle them in a random order. Sometimes the background image changes to an image that was set just few rounds ago and I'd like to rechange it to something else.

How to trigger the background change manually? So that next random image in the folder is chosen and the crossfade effect is played.

I'd love to hear a command line solution, and would rather not install third party software (although, if you have something to share, don't let me to hold you back — someone might find it useful).

I have found this MacWorld post showing an AppleScript that you can execute to force that.

I have my desktop images set to change every 30 minutes in random order. Sometimes the desktop will display an image that displayed earlier in the day, and I wanted a way to 'advance' the image easily. The following AppleScript will cause the desktop image to change, in whatever order you have set, each time it is run:

And this is the script:
property theSwitch : 0
if theSwitch = 0 then
  tell application "System Events"
    tell current desktop
      set change interval to 1801.0
    end tell
  end tell
  set theSwitch to 1
else
  tell application "System Events"
    tell current desktop
      set change interval to 1800.0
    end tell
  end tell
  set theSwitch to 0
end if

Please check the link and the comments for more similar or complete alternatives.
Note: I have not tested this.
UPDATE I'm sorry to hear that it didn't work for you, yet it does for me on Snow Leopard with the following script:
tell application "System Events"
    tell current desktop
        set initInterval to get change interval -- get the currrent display interval
        set change interval to -1 -- force a change to happen right now
        set change interval to initInterval -- change it back to the original display interval
    end tell
end tell

WARNING
This assumes that you have
[X] "change picture ever x timesteps"
[X] Random Order
The above works for me. I ran it from the AppleScript Editor several times to make sure it was working and it indeed does change the Wallpaper.


Is it possible to show subtitles in an embedded movie in Keynote? I have an embedded movie in a Keynote presentation that I’ll be giving to a set of people who don’t have english as a first language. I looked for the option to turn on subtitles but with no luck. Is this functionality missing?

I’m using Keynote 8.3 (the current version at time of writing) if that makes any difference.

The easiest solution for you would probably to burn-in the subtitles (e.g. render the subtitle into the video). This can be done with a multitude of applications like Handbrake, FFmpeg, FCP X etc.

While it is generally possible to show embedded movie subtitles (e.g. subtitle tracks in the movie file) in Keynote, this is not usable for presentations. While the subtitles are shown in the editing view, they are hidden in the presentation view.

Anyway, to show embedded subtitle tracks in editing view:

Open any movie w/ subtitles in QT Player (e.g. your movie added to Keynote), enable the wanted subtitle track in QT Player.

The subtitle setting from QT player carries over to Keynote (for some reason only Apple knows).

Mojave 10.14.4, Keynote 9.0.1

EDIT:

Fixed in Keynote 9.0.2!

Update notes from Keynote in the Mac App Store:

  This update addresses an issue that caused closed captions for videos
  to fail to play during a slideshow.

Tested, works, subs show in the slideshow now.
Same technique as before (enable subs track in QT player).


Virus Scan Windows 8 Bootcamp Partition from OS X? Is there any software I can use to scan a bootcamp partition on OSX for viruses from OS X?

I prefer to run the scan from OS X because:

Typically Windows anti-virus solutions are more like full suites that
require an installation. I do not wish to install anything like that
because it would incur a performance penalty.
As I understand it, running the scan from outside the OS you're
scanning means that anything potentially malicious on the OS won't
interfere with the scan.

I suppose I could use a bootdisk of some kind but that is difficult because some bootdisks are not compatible with macbooks.

So I figure if OSX is already hosting/aware of the Windows partition I should be able to easily scan it from OSX right?

Two problems:

I am not sure of any good Mac solution that will have the coverage of Windows viruses that Windows tools such as Security Essentials do. ClamAV may have pretty good signatures, but I can't vouch for whether it does or does not have a comparable scan and fix ability to a commercial product. Mac virus scan programs may be better, but again, they would probably have more focus on Mac viruses.
By default, NTFS partitions are not writable on Mac OS X. You therefore could detect, but not fix or remove, viruses from your Windows partition. The only way around this is to purchase a commercial product such as Paragon NTFS, or go through some interesting challenges to get open-source drivers to mount the partition read-write.

If you use Microsoft's offline version of Security essentials (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/what-is-windows-defender-offline) and your Mac is reasonably new, you should be able to make a bootable USB drive that will work - just insert it and hold down Option as you power on your Mac.


How to export Text replacements from the Keyboard System Preference from shell? There are a few users here that use the same replacement text between several machines. We'd like to be able to sync up the replacement table between the systems.

Right now the manual way of doing this consists of selecting all items from System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Text entries on the table below this tab and then drag them out to Finder. Here's the table I'm talking about:

This creates a plist that can then be shared and dragged back onto this table for importation.

I suspect that there's a way to manually capture the plist or a portion of this configuration wherever it exists and then simply set up a sync script that keeps us all in sync every day.

EDIT: For what it's worth, I did a little digging and found that these values are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist. If you look you'll see these stored in the NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems key.

I found that you can pull out these keys with the following command:
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print :NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems" ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist

So now it's going to be a matter of storing these and reinserting them into another system's plist key.

Any ideas on how to do this manually from the shell so as to be able to automate?

There is an unofficial command line tool, which does exactly what you want, its called shortcuts.
As mentioned on GitHub, you can install it via homebrew

brew install rodionovd/taps/shortcuts

and then list your current replacements via

shortcuts read

and add new ones via

shortcuts import <input.plist>
shortcuts create <shortcut> <new phrase>
shortcuts update <shortcut> <phrase>
shortcuts delete <shortcut>

for details, see the documentation.


Reliable 3rd-party source for downloading softwares for Macbook? I am a new MacBook user. I am thinking about http://www.filehippo.com/mac for downloading DMGs. Does it have any security/virus issue? If there are other sources then please let me know.

The most reliable place for downloads for Mac is the App Store.

It is already installed on your Mac (just click on the top left Apple icon)

Also, you do not have to go to http://www.filehippo.com/mac to get Firefox or Chrome.

If not available at App Store, I usually go directly to the Developer web site to get the download.


Set auto-lock on macOS after couple of minutes of inactivity that cannot be changed by the user I am somewhat new to macOS and am wondering if it's possible to set auto-lock on macOS after a couple of minutes of inactivity that cannot be changed by the regular user.
Should I then prep the MacBook as an administrator and other users as regular user? So that whenever they want to change it, they will need the administrators password?

I am adding one more option:
From System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General tab,  click on Advanced... from where you can set up the inactivity timer as you want and enable administrator option. Any other standard user can't access other system-wide preferences setup too. So I guess this option will easier for you.


Find all incomplete songs in iTunes library Some of the tracks in my iTunes library which I have downloaded from the iTunes Store are incomplete.  I understand the recommended solution to this problem to delete and re-download the track.

This advice is only useful if I know which tracks are incomplete, and I often don't find out until I try to play them.  Is there a way to detect which tracks are incomplete in one's library?

Why doesn't iTunes use checksums to make sure the tracks are complete?

To detect incompleteness iTunes would need something to compare the track to. Unfortunately this is not available therefore you really are out of luck here and have to download each song individually once you find it by listening.


Is there a native QR Code reader on iPhone? I was given an iPhone for Christmas and want to know how I can scan QR codes? My Google searches all point to articles or reviews about apps you can install, but some of these don’t even exist anymore. Some of my Google searches took me here where’s there’s questions and answers about installing QR code apps, but these all seem dated to me.

Can I do this natively? Or do I really need to install an app for this?

I just want to be able to scan the QR code and have my iPhone automatically open the web page, play the video, or whatever it is the code is set up to do.

You don’t actually specify whether your iPhone was brand new, or just new to you, but if you’re running iOS 11 you can just open the Camera app and point it at a QR code. It will automatically recognise it for what it is and present you with a notification you can tap on to complete the action.

For example, using your camera to scan a QR code will prompt you to open a website, make a phone call, add a contact, launch a video, make a payment, etc.

Below are some screenshots showing examples of the prompts you can get:

By tapping the prompt iOS will open the appropriate app and perform the related action.

NOTE: If the iPhone you got for Christmas is not a new iPhone and it's running an older version of iOS, then you’ll need to install a QR reader app (of which there are many) or, if the iPhone supports it, you can upgrade to iOS 11.


Icon source graphics? I need to create a "document" icon for an application on the mac, and I need a source "blank page" image to use for it. Is Apple OK with using their own blank page icon as the backing for your icon? If not, is there a free equivalent somewhere I can use?

Apple encourages you to use the system standard images that ship as part of Xcode.

You can see this clearly in section 2.E. of the Xcode 4.2 License agreement.

  E. Use of System Provided Images. The system provided images, as
  defined in Apple's Human Interface Guidelines for the Mac OS and the
  iPhone OS, that are created and owned by Apple ("System Provided
  Images") are licensed to you solely for the purpose of developing Mac
  and iPhone applications respectively using the Developer Software.

I am not a lawyer, and there are further restrictions, but it is good form to stick with the provided templates unless you have a good reason and the time/skills/money to invent your own.


Can one MacBook charge another over USB-C? When two 2016 MacBook Pros are connected over USB-C, can they transmit power?  Could an adapter look like a phone from one side but like a charger from the other, so that it would convince one MacBook to power another?

How does the 2016 MacBook Pro know to draw power when connected to a charger, but to provide power when connected to a phone?  I see that wattage is negotiated when they are first connected, but is who-charges-who also negotiated??

Yes you can. I finally figured out how.

Use a dongle and hook them up like this:

power supply > usb-c cable > mbp > usb-c cable > usb-c multi-port dongle > mbp2

I've tested it with the UpTab displayport with power delivery adapter and with the Apple multiport adapter (A1621).

In my experience, 15w is enough to power and charge the 15" mbp.
Here are discharge rates I've observed on my laptop:

Idle w/min screen brightness: 4.25w
Idle w/max screen brightness: 7.7w
Chrome open, no tabs, max brightness: 8.6w
Chrome open, 2 gmail tabs, 1 pandora tab, max volume: 16.5w
Chrome open, playing 1 YouTube video, min brightness: 9.4w
Chrome open, playing Spotify, min brightness: 6.05w
iTunes open (Chrome closed), playing song, min brightness: 6.1w

The second mpb will only receive 15w from the first. An app like coconut battery can help you see how quickly your laptop is charging.

Using this method, you can even trick your laptop into thinking that it is charging itself. (And then you could upload that video on YouTube, claiming to discover infinite energy, and profit on the ad revenue)

The OEM power supply for the 2016 15" mbp has 3 output modes:

4.3A @ 20.2v = 86w
3A @ 9v = 27w
2.4A @ 5.2V = 12.48w

So even the OEM power supply will occasionally supply only 12.48w to the mpb.

Update:
After playing around with this more, the above method will work if you want to charge 2 identical devices. But if you have a 15"mbp and a 13"mbp, it seems like the larger device always supplies power to the smaller device. I don't have one available currently to verify exact charging watts. Charging a 15"mpb from 0% to 100% battery takes about 8 hours at 15w. This assumes that the laptop is off or is sleeping. In a pinch, I've worked 8 hours with my 15"mbp plugged into my 18w usb-c phone charger. I was able to maintain the battery's charge during light to medium load. The move to usb-c for power has been awesome. You could conceivably charge your laptop with the 5w iPhone charger, but it would take about 15 hours to fully charge while shut down (assuming a 75wH battery and 5w charge rate and no inefficiencies due to charging), I'll have to test this out tonight to verify that it works.


Time Machine backup keeps restarting over and over again I have been trying to backup about 30GB of data for an entire week now. The hard drive hasn't been disconnected for a week.

What happens is it will "prepare" the backup for a few hours and then copy maybe 500MB and then randomly restart back at "preparing" again. There is an inProgress file inside backups.backupdb where I can see that it has restarted 35 times.

I have turned off throttling through this Terminal command

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

which made it go slightly faster, but it still keeps restarting.

Could this be a sign of coming hard drive failure, or is it a time machine bug?

Here is a few log messages when the backup cancels:

2018-01-24 17:23:52.269569+0100  localhost backupd[2082]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Failed to unmount disk mounted at '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Macbook Pro 15/2018-01-24-164749/MacHD', error: {
    Action = Unmount;
    Target = "file:///Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Macbook%20Pro%2015/2018-01-24-164749/MacHD";
}
2018-01-24 17:23:52.269970+0100  localhost backupd[2082]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Failed to unmount snapshot: com.apple.TimeMachine.2018-01-24-164749 source: MacHD
2018-01-24 17:23:53.322938+0100  localhost backupd[2082]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogInfo] Backup canceled.

This problem appears to have been caused by either lack of free space, Spotlight, or both.

First I had to free up space so that I had at least 30GB free. Then boot in to recovery mode (+R on start), open the Terminal and disable SIP (System Integrity Protection) through this command:

csrutil disable

Then I disabled Spotlight through this command:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

After doing this I was able to finish my backup.


No Response to iMac keyboard or trackpad (wired or usb) Problem: mid2011 iMac Mavericks was operating perfectly.  Logged off, powered down.  Next morning, powered up; system boots normally to login screen.  No response to keyboard or trackpad...trackpad light blinks trying to link but will not.

Attempted: Tried usb keyboard no change.  Tried all usb ports no change.
Plugged keyboard into macbook...works normally; wireless keyboard and trackpad too.
Removed batteries from kybd and trackpad; powered up iMac with nothing plugged into ANY port. System boots to login screen but does NOT prompt "No Keyboard or Mouse Found" as it should.
HELP!

Try resenting your SMC (system management controller)

Do this: Remove the iMac from the AC main power (shut it down first) by removing the plug from the outlet. Let it set that way for 15 minutes. Plug it back in and restart.


Can I Mount a Hard Drive in Mac Pro Tower as Read Only? I'm trying to recover data from a failed external Fantom RAID Drive enclosure by plugging the drives into a Mac Pro tower, but I'm concerned that OS X might write to the disks and jeopardize the RAID structure.

I believe that the disks are RAID 0, but I am not sure. Also, I am pretty sure that the problem is with the RAID enclosure and not the drives themselves.

How can I mount the drives as read-only to avoid any corruption?

I use a program called Disk Arbitrator. Its used to block auto-mounts when you connect devices and can also be used to auto mount drives in read-only instead of read.

(Disk Arbitrator is the green icon, far left)

From my understanding it hops in before the system can mount the drive, and instead mounts as read-only. Probably not as good as using a hardware block, but in most cases its sufficient (and I rely on it for similar purposes)


Reset license key for MS Mac Office 2011 I need to enter a new MS Office for Mac license key.
How can I reset my old one?

From this forum post:

  Ditch /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensing.plist. Start any Office application. Reregister/reactivate.

Hope it helps.


Can I hope to learn iOS development on my mid 2009 MBP? 13 Inch MBP Mid 2009

2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo

4 GB RAM

GeForce 9400M 256 MB

250GB HDD

I just installed El Capitan on in and it's crawling. I plan on upgrading the ram to 8 GB and slapping an SSD in it but even after that is it realistic for me to do light iOS Dev on it? Should I bite the bullet and buy a new laptop?

Definitely. I have the exact same configuration MacBook Pro, except I added some RAM to it (8 GB total) and installed an SSD. It may not do things at lightning speed, but the configuration is more than enough to work on Xcode. I've been learning it in for the past 2 months, so I know firsthand.


Safari opening similar tab on 2nd iPad? Whenever I open a new tab in Safari on one of my iPads, it automatically opens the same tab on another iPad. How do I stop this?

Tab sharing through Safari is controlled by the "Safari" option in your iCloud syncing settings, so you have two different options if you want to keep this from happening:

Remove the iCloud account from one of the devices so that it is no longer aware of what's occurring on the other device.
Turn the feature off. On the iPad go to Settings > Click your account at the top of the app > iCloud > flip the "Safari" option to inactive. (If you're on an older version of iOS this will instead be in Settings > iCloud further down the page > Safari option)

You might also be talking about the Handoff functionality, which displays the app icon for the app that is active on another device, and if you tap on that icon, it opens with whatever you were doing on the other device. To turn that off go to Settings > General > Handoff and flip the switch so that it is inactive.


AppleScript: Display alert or restart when application terminates/crashes? I rely on Dropbox for syncing work files between two computes that are powered on 24/7. For some reason, Dropbox terminates (crashes or quits) after long periods of time, with no explanation. I just find later that the application is no longer running.

Is there a way I can get notified (e.g. via a popup) when a certain application terminates?

I'm thinking there might be a way for AppleScript to do this, but I'm unsure where to begin.

Quite easily with an Applescript:

 repeat
    tell application "System Events"
        if name of every process does not contain "Dropbox" then display alert "Dropbox has crashed!"
    end tell
    delay 5
end repeat

You could replace "display alert" with tell application 'Dropbox' to launch ..to have it automatically restart if you desire.

Paste this into Script Editor. save it, and then you could add the script to your user's startup items for future use. The timing there may be a bit tricky though if the script starts before Dropbox - adding a delay 10 or something before the first repeat would solve this.

For future use, anything involving System Events is a great place to look for solutions to these kinds of meta-system-wide tasks.


Can't Enable Filevault because Recovery Partition Missing I'm trying to enable FileVault for my home directory on my Macbook, but every time I try it tells me it can't because the Recovery Partition is missing.

however, if I drop to a terminal and run "diskutil list", I do see the "Apple_Boot Recovery HD" partition of 650Mb, and I can boot into it at launch.

I have reFIND setup on this mac, to dual boot it with Ubuntu 12.10.  Any idea how to get past this ?

You will want to recreate the recovery partition following any of the answers here.

How to recreate Lion Recovery HD partition?
How can I create or recreate a Lion recovery partition?

That ensures the installer will throw an error if you have an issue with the partition map (or better it might fix that issue for you). Since FileVault 2 takes over the whole drive, you might also be out of luck to convert the drive with the other partitions present. Worst case, you could remove the partitions that aren't standard and run the conversion. Just like the BootCamp assistant cannot carve space out when FileVault is enabled, the graphical tools might not allow coexistence of non HFS+ partitions or volumes.


ITunes not showing iPad apps After latest iTunes (11.0) upgrade there is no sidebar where devices are supposed to appear. How do I rearrange the apps on my iPad2 via iTunes now?

if you look at the top right you'll see iPad when it is plugged in.  click on that - then it will take you to the page you want.

You can also go to the View menu and select "Show Sidebar" and you'll have all the same choices on the left that you had in previous versions of iTunes, if you prefer that interface.


How do I find my iOS device's RAM? Is there a way to find how much RAM is installed in my iOS device?

There are a number of free apps that will provide more information about your device’s internals. Lirium Device Info is one of the better ones.

From the top-left menu, open This Device → System for details about your device’s RAM. For instance an iPhone 7+ has 3 GB of RAM:

Note: I am not affiliated with this app or its developer.


How do I open the javascript console in Safari 6? I just got a new Mac and it comes with Safari 6 installed. I've opened up the Safari 6 web inspector tools and now I can't find some of the tools I used before in Safari 5.

In Safari 5 you can press esc and have the console pop up and type in javascript. In Safari 6 I can't find it.

Open Safari and choose Safari > Preferences > Advanced. Then select the checkbox 'Show Develop menu' in menu bar.

Choose Develop > Show Error Console.


If I turn iMessage off, will I receive those messages when I turn it back on? I am currently wanting to turn iMessage off, for unsaid reasons, but I want to read the messages people send me. They don't have iPhones, so iMessage is the best bet.

You need to turn off iMessage on all the devices that have it on. If you have iMessage enabled on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, turning one off will not disable iMessage entirely.

For example, if you enable iMessage on iPhone and Mac, but only turn off the one on iPhone, People can still send iMessage your phone number or email linked to your iMessage account on Mac.

Answering your question, the message will appear on the devices that has iMessage but not on the one you’ve disabled, however, if you turn off iMessage on all devices, then your friends will send you a normal text message.


bash file to detect chrome installation I need to create a bash file that executes google chrome (if installed) with some flags and an input file. Does someone know how to detect chrome installation and path via a bash file?

This will check if Chrome is installed in the default location, then open a file at a path with arguments you have set.

CHROMEPATH="/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
if [ -x "$CHROMEPATH" ]; then
    "$CHROMEPATH" file:///path/to/file --yourargs
fi


Can't find SUMIF in my Numbers functions. Could someone tell me where to find it? For the first time I am working with Numbers rather than Mac Exel, which I was running on my old G4. I now have a 2012 MacBook Pro with Mavericks, and the one function I use more than any other is SUMIF. However, this does not appear in my menu of choices. Can I add it?

To get to SUMIF you need to call up the function browser. To do that go to the cell where you want the result to appear and hit the '=' key and it will appear as a popup


Is Mac OS X's Compress a "standard" zip? When I submit my research papers to an online review system, I prefer to upload all files (manuscript, figures, etc) by a single zip file, so that the review system can unzip the file. Otherwise, I have to upload many files one by one; time-consuming.

However, if I create a zip file using the Mac OS X's native Compress functionality, the review system tells it may be a corrupt file. Every time I try, it does same.

Instead if I use zip command in Terminal to create a zip file, it is fine.

What kind of zip technology does Compress use? Anything non-standard? Do you see any potential reasons for the fails?

As its man page states,

  The compress utility reduces the size of files using adaptive Lempel-Ziv coding.

In contrast, the zip command (also present in Mac OS X, at least in Mountain Lion) uses a different algorithm. If a publisher is expecting a zip-compressed file, a file compressed with compress is something different, and will not work for this.


running macOS UI based Application as root I'd like to open a specific macOS application which require root privileges (uid=0 or gid=0) in order to access specific files. However, when trying to run with sudo directly I get the following error:

sudo /Applications/myApp.app/Contents/MacOS/myApp
Illegal instruction: 4

and if running it indirectly using open it gets the uid of current user and not root.

any ideas who to do it ?

Security Risk

macOS is not designed to have general applications run as the root user. This would be viewed as a security risk by Apple's engineers.

XPC Services

Running a graphical application, and all the frameworks that requires, as root is not advisable. The surface area for security problems and mistakes is huge.

AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges is now deprecated. Instead, Apple promote XPC Services as a way dividing up sections of applications that require higher privileges.


How can I trace the macOS network stack? In safari, and several other products, I get a network timeout where I have to reload the page, even though I have a full / working Wifi connection.

This is a sporadic issue.

The problem seems to occur after I installed Cisco's security product "OpenDNS Umbrella".  Removing OpenDNS Umbrella seems to fix the problem.

I would like to get a better understanding of the network layers in macOS so I can create an appropriate trace/diagnostic for review.

What are the "layers" of software that are available for extension and modification in macOS?  (I'm from a Windows Mindset and understand MSFT's well-documented network API, packet filters, and what extensions are available etc).
How can I create a trace of network activity at the aforementioned layers? For example, I want to see not just DNS traces, but any internal firewall that could be affecting me?  (macOS has a built-in firewall that might be giving me trouble.)

I did briefly install "Little Snitch" firewall program, but I then uninstalled it.  I'm not sure if this is relevant, but it does manage connections via an API I'm not aware of.

Try to install Wireshark.  Maybe monitoring the actual network activity will give you a clue (it will probably show an outgoing packet or connection that isn't answered).


How can I set notations for different instruments in Logic? I'm trying to set up a score in Logic for multiple parts, and the horns are each in their own key signature (trumpet, saxophone, trombone) which isn't necessarily the key that the piano is recorded in. How can I get the Logic file to play back the sampled instruments with the correct notes, but have the sheet music generated display the notes as they would need to be transcribed for the live musicians? I've played around with global key signature changes and that's not helping.

You will have better luck if you post your question at the Apple Support Communities discussion forum for Logic Studio.

https://discussions.apple.com/community/professional_applications/logic_studio

For instance, see this post: "How do you set up Logic Pro 9 for transposing instruments?"

I would also suggest that if you are serious about working with sheet music and arranging parts for orchestral ensembles, that you look into creating your scores in the Sibelius or Finale dedicated music notation programs. Logic's sheet music capabilities are quite limited by comparison. Sibelius and Finale both have excellent capabilities for playing back your sheet music score with virtual instrument libraries. After your score is complete, you can move to Logic for recording audio if that is required.


No Ethernet on MacBook Pro Have had MAcBook for about 4 yrs., this is first time I can recall using ethernet, and computer doesn't see it.

SD card reader quit working some time ago but USB is okay.

Ran diagnostic getting 4MEM/9/40000000 0:0x7f1c1390 error.

Under the list of network interfaces on the left that you have in the screenshot, press the + (plus) icon. For Interface, select Ethernet. Press Create. Does that work?


How do I get osascript to parse backslashes and run this command in a new Terminal window? Here's a command that works fine when I paste it into the Mac Terminal window:

echo -n -e \\033]0\;My Custom Window Title Here\\007 ; ping www.google.com

In particular, it sets the Terminal's title to include the string "My Custom Window Title Here", then starts pinging www.google.com.

Now what I want to do is have the above command run in a separate Terminal window instead, so I enter this:

osascript -e 'tell app "Terminal" to do shell script "echo -n -e \\033]0\;My Custom Window Title Here\\007 ; ping www.google.com"'

… but all I get is this error:

dyld: DYLD_ environment variables being ignored because main executable
(/usr/bin/osascript) is code signed with entitlements 59:60: syntax error: Expected “"” but found unknown token. (-2741)

If I get rid of the backslashes, osascript will run the command, but then of course the custom window title doesn't get set.

Is there some way I can get my bash command through osascript's parser intact, so that I can have my ping command execute in its own window AND with a customized window title?

Because it's going through another layer of interpretation, you need to escape the escapes -- essentially, you need to double the backslashes:

osascript -e 'tell app "Terminal" to do script "echo -n -e \\\\033]0\\;My Custom Window Title Here\\\\007 ; ping www.google.com"'


Why is my ipod shouting everything at me? I must have triggered some bizarre mode and I don't know what it is or how to turn it off.

I can't get it to happen predictably-- whenever I try to make it talk, it won't. But whenever I try to just put on a song and listen, it starts saying the name of the song and artist, then reading off the names of random playlists even though I'm not using a playlist; I always just pick out of Artists. And it does it repeatedly, it won't %^@#ing stop. It's infuriating. I'm trying to listen to a song and it just keeps telling me the name of the song.

Is it broken??

It's the newest nano.

Just google Speakhints and figure out how to turn it the hell off.


How to figure out what's causing a jailbroken iPhone to crash? My iPhone 4 runs iOS 5.0.1 and is jailbroken. It has recently become unstable: it often crashes and restarts in safe mode. Then, in safe mode, I can choose to restart and it will often go right back into safe mode again. Clearly, some little cog has come loose inside.

I haven't found a definitive action that always causes a crash. They occur sporadically, but they occur most often when I am trying to purchase or upgrade an item in the App Store.

How can I discover what causes the crashes?

Is there a more elegant way to determine it than going into Cydia's list of installed packages and uninstalling the topmost one; then wait and see if it's stable now; otherwise uninstall the now-topmost package? This would probably work out eventually but it's certainly neither fun nor efficient.

No, I don't keep a list of which package was installed at what date. That would make it easier to roll back a month at a time.

Permanently reverting to a non-jailbroken device is not an option for me. The Cydia tweaks are way too convenient.

The first thing that I would do is to check in the iPhones Diagnostics reports. In Preferences go to General>About>Diagnostics & Usage. There might be information about your crash there. Your other option is to install Crash Reporter and syslogd from Cydia. You would be able to get some information about crashes there. If you're having trouble even getting to Cydia, try disabling MobileSubstrate, those plugins tend to cause a lot of crashes on jailbroken devices.


Brand New MacBook Pro Retina Glitches I noticed a lot of people have a similar problem like me. Strange glitches in some programs on some controls. They appear totally random. The image shows only one program. It also appears in Safari, iMessage, XCode, Ecliplse. I've absolutely no Idea what could be the reason. Also Apple support doesn't have an answer yet. They told me to observe the problem.

It's the new MacBook Pro Retina 16 GB RAM and 2,6 GHz Model. 1 Week old. Mountain Lion 10.8.2

Edit
Some People write that their issue came from a Ram upgrade. And the Ram clock speed was wrong. Here not possible, unopened Laptop.

Edit 2
Still observing the problem. Apple told me to use an other "Admin" account (They told me it's important to be an admin account) on the machine. No glitches yet. I'll update the question after some days using the second account.

Did you migrate an account from an old machine? It doesn't look like a hardware problem, but it could be corrupt preferences. Bad video cards will corrupt the whole screen, not have it confined to a single window like your screen shot shows.

Try moving the preferences for Messages.app from your ~/Library/Preferences folder to the desktop. You will have to re-configure messages, but you can always put your old prefs file back.  If that works then you probably have a corrupt Messages prefs file. Try that for each app to see if it helps.


Tab completion in terminal with alias I'm running a zsh terminal under Yosemite and have defined a simple alias to place files in Yoink:

$ alias yoink='open -a Yoink'
$ yoink my-file-to-yoink.txt

This works great but for some unknown reason the tab completion to specify
the file does not work after yoink. It simple says -- no matches found --.

Is there a way I can use tab completing in combination with this alias?

Thanks.

ps: Not sure if it's related, but I'm using zprezto.

Did you tried zsh-completions?

$ brew info zsh-completions
zsh-completions: stable 0.12.0, HEAD
https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-completions
Not installed
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/zsh-completions.rb
==> Caveats
To activate these completions, add the following to your .zshrc:

  fpath=(/usr/local/share/zsh-completions $fpath)

You may also need to force rebuild `zcompdump`:

  rm -f ~/.zcompdump; compinit

Additionally, if you receive "zsh compinit: insecure directories" warnings when attempting
to load these completions, you may need to run this:

  chmod go-w /usr/local/share


Change over-the-air sync settings in iPad My iPad is constantly popping out storage almost full message. When I link my iPad to iTunes on my PC I could see in my summary the bar for Others is the biggest culprit.

When I click on the Info button, it states that bookmarks are being synced with my iPad over the air from iCloud. How do I change the over-the-air settings in my iPad? What do I need to do to fix this problem?

Over-the-air settings are set on the device. Open Settings and browse to the setting you wish to change, then change it. The settings can't be changed in iTunes.

For example, to prevent Safari bookmarks syncing, open Settings → iCloud and disable Safari.


Is "Delete Duplicate" offered by iTunes Match different from simple deletion? After enabling iTunes Match, songs that are recognized as duplicates are marked with an icon:

Clicking on this icon brings up a dialog offering to delete the duplicate:

Does "Delete Duplicate" do anything different from simply deleting the file in the usual way? In particular, since this approach does not support deletion of multiple files, can one simply select all files marked as duplicates and delete them to achive the same effect as clicking on these icons one by one?

Careful.  There seem to be issues as to what iTunes selects as a Duplicate. If you delete any files - make sure that you search the song first. You may be being asked to delete a higher quality version or your DRM-free version.

Don't delete any until they issue an update or more reviewers have spoken!!!


Terminal : needs full path to execute a command Let's suppose i have an application in /Applications/MacPorts/KDE4/myapp.app/Contents/MacOS/myapp.

When i use cd to reach the directory 'MacOS' and then issue the command myapp it says command not found.

But when i issue the command with the full path like /Applications/MacPorts/KDE4/myapp.app/Contents/MacOS/myapp it works.

I had the same problem with mysql inside xampp.

Why is that?

bash in Terminal uses the content of $PATH to look for executables. Usually . (for the current directory) is not part of $PATH (primarily for security reasons), to run commands in the current directory type ./myapp.


Finding minimized apps through terminal I would like to know how to find what apps are minimized in the dock but through the terminal?

The idea is to make a script that pauses minimized apps in order to reduce memory usage but the first step is to get a list of these.

Is there any way to determine what apps are minimized?

You would probably need to use AppleScript to discern the status of apps' windows being minimised or not, although you can run this AppleScript from the command line by using the command osascript:

osascript <<OSA
    use application "System Events"

    set _P to a reference to (every process where the ¬
        value of attribute "AXMinimized" of ¬
        every window contains true)

    set _Q to a reference to (every process where the ¬
        value of attribute "AXMinimized" of ¬
        every window contains true and the ¬
        value of attribute "AXMinimized" of ¬
        every window does not contain false)

    -- every app that has at least one minimised window
    name of _P

    -- every app that has all windows minimised
    # name of _Q
OSA

As you can see, I've defined two variables, _P and _Q, that both contains apps with minimised windows, but discriminate differently based on whether every window of the app or just some of the windows of the app are minimised.

I've commented out the last line of AppleScript, name of _Q by putting a # at the start.  This means the script will ignore this line, allowing it to return the value of the line above it, which is name of _P.  If you remove the #, the script will return the value of name of _Q.


Ipad/ Iphone/ mac email I configured gmail account on my IPad , Iphone and Mac. Many a times, some mails get missed in one of the system either ipad, iphone or mac. WHy????

What is the solution for that?

I find configuring GMail over exchange (Google Sync) works really well.

That's all I can recommend!


Why does creating a new account and making it an administrator require system restart? Why does creating a new account and making it an administrator require system restart in macOS?

I do the following:

login to macOS (El Capitan) as admin1
open Users & Groups Preferences
add a new user admin2 using + button
check Allow user to administer this computer

OS responds with:

  You must restart the computer for your changes to admin2’s administrator settings to take effect.

The question is: why?

If I restart OS and login again as admin1 what has changed compared to the state before restart? admin2 was a just-created user and there were no processes nor other active settings that depended on it.

This only applies when changing the administrator status of an account after creation. When creating a new account as an administrator, the message is not shown. The OS doesn't keep track of whether or not the account has been logged in before, so changing the account type of an existing account asks you to restart in order for it to take effect.


How can I turn my iPhone into a tv remote control? Which software/hardware can turn my iPhone into a decent remote control for my TV?

(Are there any reviews out there that compare the options?)

You'll need an IR dongle (the iPhone doesn't natively have any IR capabilities). Google for iPhone IR remote and you'll see several options.