What methods exist for reading out content to hear correct pronunciation? I would like to be able to have selected content from ebooks and webpages read out to me so that I may hear the correct pronunciation of words and sentences.

What accessibility options exist to help me do this using existing apps like Safari and Kindle or iBooks, and do 3rd party apps exist that are specifically written to narrate selected text or contents?

Several built in tools exist to assist with this sort of thing, but many of them are intended to help people with limited vision etc, whereas I understand that you want to hear particular words etc possibly as a learning tool.  You can still configure certain settings to help you do this.

In Settings > General > Accessibility you can use Voiceover to read out all screen interaction, allowing you to also perform a quick 3 finger down swipe across text to have it narrated to you.  There are various options for altering the lnaguages and dialects, the voice pitch and quality etc, but it does all tend to compromise using your device for anything else unless you are of limited vision etc.

In the same area, there is also Speak Selection; this is far more subtle, allowing you to select any text via the usual cut/copy/paste techniques, to which the option to Speak the selection is added, and you can configure various options as per the screenshot below.

This latter method is ideal for speaking snippets of text because it is a system tool, and will allow for the technique to work in any app in which you can select text.  The downside is that it is intended to be an accessibility tool for visually impaired people, and the pronunciation of the text is still very much "computer speak", resulting in some words being pronounced oddly or even incorrectly as all the narration is being synthesized  rather than using a base of real natural language to form words.

In the same text menu, you also have the Define, allowing you to pull up a dictionary definition of the word.  I've never been able to make any sense of the pronunciation hints in dictionaries that appear next to names, but if you can, then here it is to see (You can also change dictionaries if appropriate, you should be prompted to download one if you don't already have one)

As for 3rd party apps, I don't know of any that are available which have the specific purpose of reading aloud content with a primary purpose of pronunciation, this sort of tihng often requires large and complex databases containing snippets of genuine voice recordings which can be cut together to read aloud text with a far more natural sound that many of the simpler synthesized techniques as per above.


Can a Parallels VM be salvaged from a recovered .hds file (200gb file)? The computer got hosed & we lost the .pvm file, then the Time Machine Backup drive was involved in a car crash!
I know the .pvm file is a package with multiple files inside, but I've looked thru the recovered data & can't find a .pvm file.

I see multiple .hds files, but no .pvm file.

I am using Parallels 7 & trying to re-create the .pvm file on an external drive but am not having much luck. Changed the name of the file to **.hdd, attached with Parallels, but the VM complains that the Hard Drive is not there.  Possibly I am not understanding the basic contents needed for a viable .pvm package?

Is what I'm trying to do even possible?

The original problem with the Time Machine drive was "stiction", they put the drive into a  clean room to fix that, and as they were reading the data from the drive one of the heads failed.  Needless to say, the data recovery took 2 weeks, but I think we finally have all the data (in the form of raw files) from the Time Machine Backup drive now.

It's possible that just the partition table got trashed somehow, use TestDisk to re-write the partition table:

  TestDisk is powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software: certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.

Attach the virtual drive to another VM and use TestDisk from there.

This Parallel's support article describes the process, Unmountable boot volume BSOD when you start Windows virtual machine.


How can I get Siri integration with Remember the Milk to add items for a particular date? I've set up Siri integration with Remember the Milk on my iPhone 5s (I'm on iOS 8, but I used the iOS 7 instructions, as they haven't been updated yet). The connectivity seems to work fine: when I say, "Remind me to go to the drycleaners", "Go the the drycleaners" is added to my RTM list. However, when I say "Remind me to Go the the drycleaners today", the item ends up on my RTM list without a date. I also don't see any visual confirmation on my iPhone screen that it's attempting to add a date.

Am I saying the wrong thing to Siri?

The word 'today' doesn't register with Siri and reminders.  Reading through the documentation on Apple's support site I found this:

  If you enter “breakfast” or “morning,” Reminders sets a 9 a.m. notification.
  If you enter “lunch “ or “noon,” Reminders sets a 12 p.m. notification.
  If you enter “dinner” or “night,” Reminders sets an 8 p.m. notification.
  If you enter a day, but don’t enter a time, Reminders sets a 12 p.m. notification.
  If you enter a time, but don’t enter a day, Reminders sets a notification for today.

It doesn't mention Siri, yet after some testing the rules seem close to the same for Siri input, although the times don't match.

Solutions:

Give Siri a time without a date.

  "Remind me to go to the dry cleaners at 5pm"

Give Siri a duration

  "Remind me to go to the dry cleaners in 2 hours"

Use "evening" and Siri will set the reminder for 6pm

  "Remind me to go to the dry cleaners this evening"

Use "tonight". Siri will set the reminder for 7pm

  "Remind me to go to the dry cleaners tonight"

Use "noon" and Siri will set the reminder for 12pm

  "Remind me to go to the dry cleaners at noon"

Use "morning" and Siri will set the reminder for 7am

  "Remind me to go to the dry cleaners in the morning"

Last note, if you are past the time that the word represents Siri gets confused.    Asking "this evening" after 6pm will cause Siri to ask you when you'd like to be reminded.


iPhone Jailbreak Experts - Accessing the email storage? Is this possible? I have emails stored on my iPhone that are no longer accessible anywhere else, and I'd like to copy them out. I could forward them through a different account, but there are hundreds, so I'm looking for a shortcut.

I'm more than happy using the command line and playing with SQLite DBs that I know Apple use for some things on there, I just don't have much experience with the file structure on the iPhone.

Unfortunately, emails are not backed up by iTunes/iCloud, so you'll need to go deep into the filesystem (you need to be jailbroken).

Assuming you are, then these are the steps you need to follow:

1) SSH into var/root/library/Mail
2) The mail database is contained inside a file called EnvelopeData. There is no .sqlite extension, but it is an SQLite database
3) Open the SQLite database using a program like MesaSQLite
4) Extract

I haven't personally tested this, but it should work.


How to search for emails sent by a specific person in iOS Mail I used to be able to search for emails sent by "Jack Tan" by using the FROM toolbar in the mailbox

After iOS 7 update, it seems the From, All, Subject, and To toolbar has disappeared. It now looks like this when i attempt to search (red bar to indicate the toolbar is gone)

This has not allowed me to search for a specific sender in my Mail. When I attempt to search in my Mail for (e.g. "Jack Tan"), the results will be emails whose content contains "Jack Tan".

I want to be able to search for emails sent by "Jack Tan"

Unfortunately Apple has removed this in iOS7.
Please also check out this thread about the issue you described.

If you really need this function right away you have to check for 3rd party apps.

Edit:Some people claim typing; from:  will result in the search you like, but it does not work for me.


iPhone alarm without vibration? I have using an iPhone 5 upgraded to iOS 7. Is it possible to turn off vibrations for alarms? I am currently using a song as alarm sound, the vibration is annoying.

It doesn't seem so.

A workaround would be to turn off vibrations when on silent (Settings > Sounds), and have it set to silent (either by the button or a Do Not Disturb).

Maybe another app would do the trick.


Bootcamp windows drivers downloading stuck This is my fourth download, Net speed 12MBPS and everytime its stuck at this place. How can fix this.

I am running Mountain Lion on 128GB SSD, 8GB Ram with Mid 2010 model.

Try getting your drivers from here: Bootcamp Drivers (Apple.com) Tell me if it works better here! Apples servers hang up a lot and I am not sure why. It may also help to try downloading while using ethernet rather than wireless just in case it is your router/AP.


MacOS Mojave 10.14.6 does not support multiple keyboard collaboration OS: Mojave 10.14.6

Laptop: MacPro 2017

Problem:
Looks like I can't use two keyboards to execute the same command collaboratively. E.g: For typing command + space, it perfectly works if I execute this shortcut only on one keyboard. However, if I press command at one keyboard, and space at another, the laptop can only recognize the space.

Keyboard combinations I've tried:

Apple a1314 + Mac built-in keyboard
Apple a1644 (with wire and when it's wireless) + Mac built-in keyboard
Apple a1314 + Apple a1644

None of them can work with each other.

Any solution to the problem? Thanks!

OK problem solved. After installing Karabiner (originally to solve the caps lock delay), I found I can work on two keyboards at the same time. The version I installed was 11.6.0.


How to batch forward messages from Mail.app I get mail forwarded to my OS X Mail from an Outlook account at work. I use my Mac to reply to messages directly from Mail.app and now I want to forward all my sent mails from Mail to my Outlook account for filing.

Is there any way to do this that's easier than individually forwarding all the messages manually? I want to keep all the messages separate.

You can set Rules in Mail.app preferences to take actions on emails. What should work is a rule configured like this:

You would just need to fill in the to: field with the account that should be receiving all email.

Another option is to forward mail from the source. If the source is iCloud, you can Forward all messages automatically. If you use Gmail, Gmail can do it too.


Using TimeMachine backups after changing (short) username on OS X? I changed my (short) username on OS X Mountain Lion using the instructions mentioned here.

I am guessing that would sort of invalidate all the TimeMachine backups I had till now. Is there a way to fix that?

The tmutil inheritbackup command in Terminal will let you inherit a backup from a different disk or computer. However, I doubt that it will inherit files from a different user account. In other words, it might give you access to the backup, but not to the files in the account with a different name. It's worth trying though.


Prevent shutting down iPhone when passcode lock is on If my iPhone is stolen and the thief shut the phone down, I wouldn't be able to locate it anymore.

Is it possible to disable the possibility to shut down the phone when a passcode lock is set up?

This is currently exactly how the iPhone is designed. I agree with your issue.

My answer was about to be: "Perhaps if you Jailbroke your iPhone you could install some modification software that would prevent someone from shutting it down when locked". However, there's naturally yet another level of indirection.

One of the things that you will never be able to prevent, is the device being put into DFU mode. A phone is put into DFU mode by holding down both the Sleep and Home buttons for 10 seconds, then let go of only the Sleep button (continue holding the Home button) until the phone wakes with it's "connect to iTunes" notice.

DFU mode is one of the few pure hardware modes. After putting a phone into DFU mode, it cannot be used until restored against an instance of iTunes. Which also means that the data will invariably be lost because it will be wiped upon restore of new phone setup.

A few notes:

No computer is completely secure when physical access is allowed by an unauthorized user. No amount of BIOS passwords, login passwords, or anything extended authentication will be unable to be overcome. Physical access is total access.

What I'm saying is that you should spend less of your time attempting to thwart theft, and instead set up a mechanism for safeguarding your data.

Sync regularly, configure your iPhone to wipe itself after 10 failed pin attempts, set up Find My iPhone so you can issue a Remote Wipe command.

Note that I'm not saying not to not bother mitigating theft. Getting a K-Lock if you're in a display position, a secure case so it's harder to lift from your pockets (or don't put it in your pants pocket) are all worthwhile steps to take.


Does LED Cinema Display work with non Mac systems? Not sure if this question if more appropriate in this Mac site or a non Mac site, but:

Can the current (as possibly soon to be updated) Apple 27 inch LED Cinema Display be used with non Mac systems such as those running Windows or Linux? What would it take to make it happen?

Thanks.

You can use the current version with other hardware, but it isn't trivial.

The LED Cinema Display connects to Macs using a Mini DisplayPort, which isn't popular on non-Apple hardware. However, you can get a converter like this one that lets you use the monitor with an HDMI connection. So, if the other machine has an HDMI out you could use that. I'm sure you can also find converters to use with VGA or DVI outputs.

The next version of the display will (almost certainly) use ThunderBolt instead of Mini DisplayPort. The physical connector is the same, but the data that travels over the cable is very different. These converters may or may not work with ThunderBolt; we'll have to wait for the product to come out and for someone to test.


How can I create a bootable USB drive for Ubuntu from OS X? I've decided to switch from OS X to Ubuntu. I'm following the documentation on Ubuntu's site for creating a bootable USD Drive.

I converted the ISO to IMG. I ran diskutil list. I inserted my flash drive and ran diskutil list again. My drive is assigned to /dev/disk1. I ran diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1. Then I executed sudo dd if=/ubuntu-13.10-desktop-amd64.dmg of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m. Then I ran diskutil eject /dev/disk1. Then I restarted, held the alt/option key. The Boot Manager came up, but my flash drive wasn't coming up as an option.

I tried this again just now and it said "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." I've never had an issue with this drive before. I restarted anyway, just to see if it worked and I'm still only getting my main hard drive as an option in Boot Manager.

Where do I go from here?

I have tested what follows on two different MacBook Pros:

13-inch, Mid 2010 (2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 320M 256MB)
13-inch, Late 2011 (2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 3000 512MB)

Overview

Create Bootable USB Drive using Startup Disk Creator in Ubuntu itself.
Note: I use Ubuntu daily as a Tomcat Web Server and Java Development environment, and I do so in a Virtual Machine. I understand this is not the most ideal arrangement for someone wishing to create a bootable USB disk to boot a Mac to, but it works, and has proven reliable for me. If you are bent on using Ubuntu natively and want to test it first, a VM is one way to do it, and booting to USB is another. For the full-on experience, installing Ubuntu to your hard-drive (after taking the appropriate measures to back up your harddrive, etc... <disclaimer>I take no responsibility for lost data, etc... </disclaimer>)
There are minor nuances to each of these scenarios:

VM leverages the host OS Networking, so there are no issues with Broadcom drivers
VM will have issues with x/y coordinates of the display (0,0 being the upper left hand corner, for example), meaning hot-corners in Ubuntu will not work properly (for things like auto-hiding the launcher bar)
USB Boot will support your graphics card (most likely) and x/y coordinates will be mapped properly.
USB Boot will not have native WiFi support, so you will have to download Broadcom drivers using a wired connection

This is true whether or not you are booting from USB or have Ubuntu installed onto your hard drive

Instructions

I use VMWare Fusion to create my VM's, which is a paid application, though there is a free trial. However, VirtualBox is free to download and use and from what I understand, works quite well also.

That said, I created a Bootable USB Stick using Startup Disk Creator in my Ubuntu 13.10 VM, so I will explain here the steps:

Install Ubuntu 13.10 in Virtual Machine.

If this does not quell your curiosity as to whether or not to run Ubuntu natively, then proceed...

Download the Ubuntu 13.10 Mac image from here

NOTE: There are 3 links to Ubuntu 13.10 for Desktop. You want to make sure to download the last one... labeled "64-bit Mac (AMD64) desktop image"

Insert a blank USB Key into the Mac, and if given a choice of which system to connect it to (VMWare Fusion recognizes this, and asks what to connect it to, Mac or your VM) choose the VM.

This should mount the USB in the VM as a drive (Eg., it should have a mount point in /media)

Open Startup Disk Creator in Ubuntu and choose the target device as the USB drive, and the source as the Ubuntu 13.10 ISO image you downloaded.

Accept the defaults, and click on "Make Startup Disk"
Close out all open applications (including VMs)
Shutdown your Mac.
Insert USB drive into Mac if it is not already
Press Power button to turn on the Mac, and immediately press and hold the Option key.
You should be presented with 2 or 3 boot options.

Mac OS Startup Disk
Mac OS Repair Partition *may not be present
EFI Boot (this should have an Orange USB Drive icon)

Choose the EFI Boot.

NOTE: If you use an Mac with NVidia graphics, you will see a scrambled Boot animation (The Ubuntu logo with the pulsing orange dots). This is due to the fact that Ubuntu defaults to the Open Source drivers for NVidia hardware, and they are not loaded yet. If you choose to install natively, you may want to try the proprietary binary drivers provided by NVidia.

The USB drive you see referenced in that screen shot has Ubuntu 13.10 on it and Boots successfully on the two systems mentioned above.


How can I export text substitutions from Lion for import into Mountain Lion I am trying to migrate to a brand new install of Mountain Lion. I am trying to migrate select data from my old Lion install. Does anybody know where the text replacement definitions in System Preferences > Language & Text > Text lie? I would like to migrate them to my Mountain Lion install.

Thanks to Sacrilicious identifying the actual file/key where the data is stored, I figured out how to copy the whole thing with a few Terminal commands.

Make sure you don't have System Preferences open while doing this, or it may not work!

On your old install, run /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -x -c "Print NSUserReplacementItems" ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist > backup.plist

This saves the substitutions to the backup.plist file in whatever directory you ran that command from (by default, your home directory).

Copy that backup.plist file to your new install (I recommend your home directory for simplicity).
On the new install, run /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Delete NSUserReplacementItems" ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist, then run /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Add NSUserReplacementItems array" ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist

This wipes the default substitution list and creates a new blank one.

Again on the new install, run /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Merge /PATH-TO-BACKUP/backup.plist NSUserReplacementItems" ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist, first replacing the /PATH-TO-BACKUP/backup.plist part with the actual path to wherever you saved the backup file.

That should do it. Open System Preferences to double check, but you should have an identical copy of your text substitutions on your new install.


Can't Access Move.mil on MacBook I am currently trying to connect to move.mil and safari won't let me use it because it is not receiving "valid" certificates from it, how do I bypass this because I used to use this site all the time on my windows computer but now I can't on my MacBook

The certificate issue is not your fault and there’s nothing to bypass. They need to resolve the issue.

DPS is experiencing intermittent outages that may prevent access or limit functions.  The program is aware of the issue and actively troubleshooting.  This notice will be removed once the issue is resolved.


Cannot enter Time Machine on rescued drive from dead Time Capsule I am on Sierra (10.12.2) and my 2TB time capsule just died. I took out the drive and to my surprise was able to mount it via USB through a SATA docking station. I was thinking I could just continue (at least temporarily) to use it as my Time Machine drive, but I am having an impossible time getting Time Machine to recognise the drive. I always get an error saying "Can't connect to a current Time Machine backup disk"

I can see the backups and can select the disk to be my time machine disk, but Time Machine does not recognise the backups.

However, I can open the sparsebundle with diskimagemounter and browse the backups, so everything seems to be in order.

But I cannot figure out how to get Time Machine to recognise this drive and continue backing up where I left off. Any ideas?

As noted in some comments, I would not rely completely on that disk since it was part of a failed system.

However, since it seems like the time machine files are stored inside a disk image, it should be possible to use Disk Utility to restore that image to a new empty harddisk, as long as it is at least the same size (like 2 TB in your case). When that is done, I would expect the new disk to be recognizable for Time Machine as as a backup disk, and continue your backups from there.

First, connect a new, blank hard disk. Open Disk Utility and make sure the new disk appears in the Disk Utility Window. Now drag the icon of the disk image from your old backup drive that contains the Time Machine partition (named 'mac' in your first screenshot) into the left sidebar of the Disk Utility Window. Then you are able to restore that disk image onto the new blank disk. The new disk will now contain the complete filesystem of the disk image and should be recognizable for Time Machine.

Be aware though, if the file system is corrupted on your old disk, it would mean that continuing backing up on top of that file system would continue to be corrupted, and therefore you are at risk of having an unusable or incomplete backup, even after several incremental backups.


System Preferences hangs when trying to open Display settings with an external monitor connected I've searched all over for this, with no luck. So here goes:

My 2012 MacBook Pro has always played nice with my old Samsung monitor, connected with a Mini DisplayPort > VGA adapter plugged in to the Thunderbolt port. The Samsung monitor is rotated 270 degrees, and OS X has never had a problem with it.

For the last few months, System Preferences has hung every time I try to open Display preferences. The monitor still functions normally, and this hasn't been a problem.

Now I want to rearrange my monitor setup. The vertical monitor is now to the left of my laptop, but it behaves like it's to the right - because I can't change it, because Display settings hang.

I can open the settings perfectly fine when the display isn't connected - but that's fairly useless, as the arrangement tab doesn't show up.

I've tried clearing the settings with this command:

~ » defaults -currentHost delete com.apple.windowserver
2015-01-17 11:41:12.766 defaults[946:7994]
Domain (com.apple.windowserver) not found.
Defaults have not been changed.

Upon a reboot, the problem remains.

Any ideas?

So I figured this out, kind of.

I cloned and built https://github.com/CdLbB/fb-rotate, and flipped the external monitor around a couple times with it. Suddenly everything works, even after a reboot.

The only thing I can think of is that a config file somewhere got corrupted, and this utility rewrote it and fixed it.

Either way, it works now!


How to prevent OSX Yosemite from launching old app for ":news" URL in browser I want to open a newsgroup url (eg. "news:comp.lang.python") in a browser, but my OS/X Yosemite (10.10.5) system insists on opening an old mailing application that is located inside one of my (external) backup disk.  I would like to change what it opens; ie. replace it with some mail software that is able to handle newsgroups.

It seems to be related to OS/X and not the browser because the behaviour is the same across the 3 browsers I tried it on (Safari, Firefox, Chrome).

Where does OS/X control the association done at the browser level?

Simplest method is probably to install RCDefaultApp - freeware, old but still works well.
It installs as a Control Panel, from which you can define it in the Internet tab...

I don't have a specific Newsreader installed, so mine just says 'other' at the moment.


Disk Utility won't Unmount HD for formatting I have two internal drives in my 27" iMac (10.8.5). An SSD system disk and a 1TB SATA drive.

The HDD has been acting up recently, very slow performance, bad behavior etc. Tech Tool Pro and Disk Utility don't seem to be able to fix the drive, so I decided to wipe the data by a reformat and writing zeros to the entire drive.

Everytime I try and format, it tells me that the drive cannot be unmounted. I have rebooted a few times, and spent days running everything from TechTool Pro on it and it won't go.

$ diskutil list disk2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Everest                 4.0 TB     disk2s2

$ diskutil repairVolume /dev/disk2s2
Started file system repair on disk2s2 Everest
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required
Error: -69673: Unable to unmount volume for repair

$ diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ Everest /dev/disk2
Started erase on disk2
Unmounting disk
Error: -69888: Couldn't unmount disk

Any thoughts on how to get it to unmount and reformatted? Is there a way in Terminal to do this instead?

You can force unmount a drive by running the following Terminal command:

diskutil unmountDisk force /Volumes/VOLUMENAME

Replace VOLUMENAME with the name of a volume on the disk you are trying to unmount.

Following this, attempt to Erase/Partition the drive again in Disk Utility. Using the above command can interrupt file read/writes, which can cause file corruption. However, since you are erasing the drive anyway, this doesn't really matter in your situation.


Mail.app won't start This is really weird.  Sometime later than July this year, Mail.app would go "not responding" as soon as launched, never opening any window.

system.log shows a lot of errors, but the very first is

Sep 15 19:55:02 Adminadabs-MacBook-Pro Mail[7758]: AllSignatures.plist: Syncing with cloud -- merging; local data, no cloud data not reachable, error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=260 "The file “ubiquitous_AllSignatures.plist” couldn’t be opened because there is no such file." UserInfo={NSURL=file:///Users/wgroleau/Library/Mobile%20Documents/com~apple~mail/Data/V3/MailData/Signatures/ubiquitous_AllSignatures.plist, NSFilePath=/Users/wgroleau/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~mail/Data/V3/MailData/Signatures/ubiquitous_AllSignatures.plist, NSUnderlyingError=0x7ffa81dd8de0 {Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=2 "No such file or directory"}}

The first thing noticed in that message is a mention of "cloud" but not "iCloud."  Just in case they're the same, I note that in system Prefs for iCloud, Mail is NOT checked, nor is Keychain.

Next is that some file associated with signatures is missing.  That file is so deep in the file system, I couldn't have deleted it by accident.  But in going through backups, I find two more oddities:

First, that though Mail quit recently, that Signatures directory is missing from ALL backups.  Time Machine prefs have no exclusions.

Second, that my earliest backup is the beginning of this year, when I'm sure I have been using this drive a lot longer and it is only 39% full.

What other than Mail would delete the entire signatures directory and/or prevent its backup?  If it were done by a function within Mail, I would not expect Mail to be disabled by it.

How can this be fixed with no backup available?  Could I copy someone else's signatures and then edit them back to mine?

UPDATE: The admin account and a non-admin account on the machine also have no signature directory, and Mail runs fine for them.  SO, I conclude that the directory was created when I created the first signature, and some other plist is telling Mail it needs to open those signatures.  Where would that plist be?

ANOTHER UPDATE: I scanned the directory and found that the last file mod date in ~/Library/Mail was 3 Aug.  I restored a 1 Aug from Time Machine and launched Mail.  The convert to new version dialog appeared.  When it "Imported 1005 of 1005 messages … Time remaining: About a minute," the beachball appeared.  Still there twenty minutes later and the Dock icon is "not responding"

I mentioned that Mail was not checked in iCloud, but later, it was checked.  I'm supposing something restored from backup did that.

I turned it off again, and mail worked!

But .... why did it not work before the restore when that was turned off?

And why should having it ON break Mail?


Can I create a fusion drive with an HDD that already has a boot camp partition? I'm planning to replace the optical drive in my MacBook Pro 9,1 (mid-2012, non-retina) with an SSD and make the two internal drives into a fusion drive, and I know that creating a boot camp partition on a Mac without an optical drive can be a challenge. So I want to create my boot camp partition before I create my fusion drive.

I couldn't find an answer to this in my googling. I know that you can create a Boot Camp partition if you already have a fusion drive.

Can I create a fusion drive using an HDD that already has a boot camp partition on it?

From my hands-on experience, I'd have to say, "negative".

I've created a couple of fusion drives on a 2008 Mac Pro from devices with preexisting partitions. Building the fusion in Core Storage destroyed all partitions on the media.


Macbook Air Early-2015 Service Recommended Warning I have a Macbook Air Early-2015 model since 2017.
Like 4 or 5 months ago, I updated from High Sierra to Mojave. Initially there was no problem. But after a few weeks my Macbook started to shutdown suddenly at about %15 (in changes time to time, sometimes it can be 5%). And when it is closed, I couldn't open it without connecting charge cable.
Because of the quarantine I stuck at home and using it while charger is connected, even it has 100% charge, but not for too long like 1 month or so. But I don't think that's the reason.
Anyway. I controlled battery health with coconutBattery and it was about 80-85%, I can't remember clearly, maybe even more, but I'm sure it was not less. Then I did a research and found SMC & NVRAM reset. I did those resets and calibrate the battery by charging to 100% and draining until it shuts down itself.
The sudden shutdown problem seemed to be solved, but after a few days the Service Recommended warning started to appear. And when I checked with coconutBattery, it said 55% battery health. Still same value with small changes. I mean, how this can be possible? The cycle count is not even close to its limit, it just have 350 cycle. I have friends who has same computer for more than 5 years and more than 800 cycle without changing the battery and their batteries' health are much better than mine.
It seemed like a software problem to me. Before try formatting or downgrading to High Sierra I just wanted to ask you. Thus I won't waste my time by backing up and formatting if it won't make a difference.
Now I have to charge it like every 4-5 hours. And I realized that sometimes the battery percentage is going up. Like, I am looking the percentage and it shows 65% and I am going back to my work, write something in Word etc. 5 minutes later when I check that again, it shows 66%. That's odd.
I don't want to buy a new battery, I can't spend that much money right now.
I apologize for the long text, I just wanted to explain everything :)
Thanks in advance.

Have you contacted Apple to get a quote on the battery? They can run diagnostics remotely and send a box. It’s worth the time in case they want to service the battery due to a service program at no cost to you. Once they ask for service, it could be a short time till it stops working entirely. Or you could run on wall power at slower speeds until you want to replace or repair it.


Upgrade iOS 10 beta to iOS 10 final/public release I have participated in the iOS 10 Beta in the summer and I have downloaded the recent release candidate version a few days ago (10.0.1 - 14A403)

How do I go about upgrading it to the final iOS 10?

You can just do a normal software update from Settings > General > Software Update.  The release version will overwrite the beta version. See Apple's Beta software FAQ's* (https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/faq):

  To get a shipping release of iOS on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you can simply install the final version of the software you are testing when it appears in Software Update.

Apple's technical note about iOS beta software* (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203282) documents the process for upgrading from the beta to final release of iOS:

  Download the final version of iOS

  If you have an iOS beta version and want to download the final version, follow these steps:

  Connect your device to iTunes.
  While your device is connected, force it to restart. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons at the same time. Don't release when you see the Apple logo. Keep holding until you see the Recovery Mode screen.
  When asked, choose Update to download and install the latest non-beta version of iOS.

  An update install won't affect your content or settings.

*URLs left intentionally, do not edit to remove.


iPhone Photos app adds random people to the people album When I take photos of a crowded place, I often get random strangers in the shot, facing in my direction. The iPhone Photos app then adds these strangers to the People album.

How can I remove these strangers? The only solution I’ve found was to hide the photo, but that hides it from Moments, which I don't want.

I'm using an iPhone 6, iOS 10.3.3.

In the People album (where all the faces are shown), choose the Select button at the top-right, then select the people to remove and choose Remove in the bottom-left.


How to disable calling back from notification when iPhone is locked? When the phone is locked and I get a missed call I can just swipe it and it will call without requiring the passcode. How can I disable this function so that I need to enter the passcode?

It is not possible, but will be soon.
As of right now, there is no toggle that can disable returning missed calls from the lockscreen, however, in iOS 11 (which will be publicly released in Fall 2017), you can disable this feature by toggling the switch in Settings > TouchID & Passcode > Return missed calls


Mail.app crashes, after Exchange server rebuild Our Exchange server was rebuilt following a hardware failure and this has resulted in the mailbox ID changing. Mail.app doesn't like this, and crashes as soon as it tries to check for new messages:

Process:               Mail [1174]
Path:                  /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail
Identifier:            com.apple.mail
Version:               8.2 (2102)
Build Info:            Mail-2102000000000000~1
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           Mail [1174]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2015-07-14 08:59:48.324 +0100
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.10.4 (14E46)
Report Version:        11
Anonymous UUID:        4F6F2F84-F869-25C2-1C87-B1246982BFD7

Time Awake Since Boot: 2200 seconds

Crashed Thread:        2  Dispatch queue: MFEWSAccountRequestResponseQueue :: NSOperation 0x600000697340 (QOS: UTILITY)

Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'Root Folder Id changed from AAMkADA5M2EyZWFiLWY1ZTctNDJlMS05MzQ1LTkyMDBkNTY2ZWEyMQAuAAAAAAA87sBtlAlTTJOPv8b7pvr6AQAUpHXDFMbMR5FSnLwG4BOUAAAAiMo7AAA= to AAMkADM0MjZkNGU4LTcwZGUtNDZhYi1hNjg4LTk0MGI5NWM4NzU3MgAuAAAAAAAcQlpkIwGwSb0hc5q+A04eAQB+EaxIvJoGTJt2RsDw05zJAAAAlpk5AAA=: once an account is created, the root folder id shouldn't change on the server'
abort() called
terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException

What's my best course of action? I have tried removing the 'Envelope' index files and rebuilding but with the same result. I don't want to completely wipe everything unless I absolutely have to, as I don't want to lose my local cache of messages (especially as they are no longer available on the server).

Buscar has the gist correct, though I would add a step: backup your ~/Library/Mail folder (OPTION-Drag it to the desktop) then delete the account.

One that is done add it back. If your old mail has vanished when the new account has been established just import the backed up mailboxes sitting on the Desktop.


iTunes 12.2 blank tab, in the song section Just updated to iTunes 12.2 and noticed that there is a blank column I would like to delete:

Is this possible to do? Thanks for the help.

Right click on the top bar where it's not blank, and see what columns you have turned on - it's going to be one of these:

Actually on looking again, I think this is a duplicate of your Track number column. What happens if you toggle it off and back on?

If that doesn't work, try hitting the blank one and clicking "Auto Size Column", the label may then appear.


Unhide purchases doesn't work In iTunes 12.2.2.25 running on Windows 7, I see my hidden music purchases on the account page. But when I press 'unhide' button nothing happens. How can I unhide it? Can I back to old iTunes versions?

UPD. It's the iTunes bug. Call iTunesStore support to resolve the problem, it will take some minutes.

If the hidden purchase are on a compilation/various artists album, this is unfortunately a known bug.


Whiter screen on MacBook Pro 2014 I have a MacBook Pro 15 inch, 2014 model, with 2 GPUs: Intel and NVIDIA 750M.

Last Monday I turned it on and I noticed that the screen is white as you can see in the picture.

I don't know what is the problem with it. I tried some solutions that I found on the web like resetting the NVRAM & SMC without result. I tried also to deactivate the dedicated GPU using gfxCardStatus but also no result.

The problem is that when I keep the Mac turned on for some time (>2 hours) the screen goes back to normal without white edges.

When I turn it off and keep it turned off for a while, then turn it on again it becomes white again and I must wait >2 hours so I can see my screen without this whiting effect.

Can you suggest a solution? We have no Apple Store or Apple repair in my country.

I tried to use my Mac HDMI but it's not working too. It was working before I got this problem. The mini DisplayPort to VGA is still working.

According to this Apple discussion:

  The problem is that the expose window is stuck. In order to force a
  refresh take these steps:

  launch terminal
  type killall Dock


Downloading 32 bit iOS Apps for 32 bit iPhones after iOS 11 is released I have a 32-bit iPhone.  I understand that 32 bit iPhones will no longer be supported by iOS 11.

Will I be able to download and buy 32 bit apps from the store for iPhones running 32-bit iOS versions (ie iOS 10.x) after iOS 11 is released?

In other words, is Apple removing 32bit apps from the store completely or just removing them for iOS 11 devices?

While Apple is moving to 64-bit apps on the App Store, that doesn't mean they're 64-bit only apps. In fact any new apps published since 1 February 2015 has had to support 64-bit. This is also the case for any updates to existing apps (i.e. they also must be 64-bit compatible).

In other words, any 32-bit only apps submitted to Apple will be rejected, but if that same app also supports 64-bit, then it'll be available for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of iOS etc.

In summary, any app that:

is only 32-bit is on borrowed time
is only 64-bit is fine
that supports both 32-bit and 64-bit will be fine


How to force a sync update between Gmail contacts and iPhone with iOS 9? I am successfully synchronizing my iPhone contacts with my GMail account.

When adding a new contact in my GMail account, the new contact takes a few hours to sync to the device. This is cumbersome, because often I add a contact on GMail and wish to call that contact from my iPhone.

Is there a way to force an iPhone contact sync update with my GMail account, so that new contacts will be immediately updated on the iPhone?

[update 2016-09-02] in iOS 9.3.5 you can simply pull down in the Contacts list to force a sync.

If this doesn't appear to work, make sure the problem is with syncing and not with the data iOS "sees" in the Google contacts by testing on a separate contact. For example, I had a problem (while on iOS 10.2) where the phone number wouldn't sync because it was in a wrong field of the Google contact.

In earlier iOS versions there used to be a sync button in the upper-left corner of Contacts app, now it seems to be gone (though some claim it can reappear under certain circumstances). There also used to be a way to force sync by pulling down in the Contacts app -> Groups view, but it doesn't work for me (and others) in iOS 9.1 either. This discussions.apple.com thread is useful to see the evolution of this feature.

Luckily, there's another thread with a collection of weird workarounds to force a sync without toggling contacts sync off/on or restarting the device. The following two ways worked for me to force syncing with Google contacts on iOS 9.1:

Going to Settings -> iCloud (which incidentally triggers Google sync(?!)), then switching to Contacts.
Going to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Gmail -> Account -> tap in any field (Name, Email or Description) but don't make any changes -> Done, switch to Contacts.


OS X Lion multiple Spaces annoyance I like to set my desktops a certain way for work.

I noticed that when I command-tab around my Spaces, it seems to switch around the order of desktops when I access with ctrl+arrow.

This is really annoying. For example I set my two terminal and coding/debugger screens to be adjacent, then I alt-tab to my email and all of a sudden the email screen is sitting between my two work screens.


Can I build a VM and use the image on a MacBook? We are going to have over a hundred MacBooks in our school. We would like to create a master image with all our base settings and applications so that it can be installed on every new MacBook that comes in.

We use Cisco Meraki to send out settings to them right now, and that will stay.

We also intend to use Bittorrent Sync to add new Applications to the MacBooks as and when. It is just a 'Gold Master' image that we want to create and keep updated.

Can a VM be created (with Parallels, VirtualBox, other?) and be exported and installed onto the MacBooks? We use the restore feature from Disk Utility to install images usually, just this time we want a usable VM to keep updated.

Thanks

I would suggest the Profile Management option that is included in OS X Server.

It has all of the described above features and it is really easy to operate with.

Take a look at https://www.apple.com/ca/osx/server/ it's $22.99 CAD.


VIM in Terminal using Solarized Theme I am trying to use the Solarized color scheme with VIM in Terminal on Mac OS X 10.8.5 Mountain Lion. However, the colors look washed out. They are lighter/paler than they should be. In MacVIM, the colors show up perfectly, but I prefer using VIM via the Terminal.

Here's a screenshot of what the colors should look like followed by a screenshot of what the colors actually look like in Terminal.

I have already tried all the suggestions from here: Is it possible to disable Terminal's automatic tweaking of colors in Lion?

Has anyone found any other solutions to fix the colors in VIM in Terminal mode?

In Solarized Dark.terminal and Solarized Light.terminal, the 2*8 ANSI colors are specified in the sRGB color space, which seems to be identical with Device RGB at least on my iMac. The text, bold text, selection, cursor, and background colors are untagged, or shown as Generic RGB in the color picker. Terminal doesn't convert either of them to the color space used by your display.

You can specify the colors using your display's color space manually. For each color:

Click the color well, memorize the HSB or RGB values, and change the profile to the profile used by your display.

Insert the values you memorized, which should be the same as the values shown in the table in http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized.

In Solarized Dark.terminal:

The background color is base02 (black)
The text color is base0 (brblue)
The color for bold text is base1 (brcyan)
The cursor color is base01 (brgreen)
The selection color is base2 (white)

On my iMac the background and foreground colors in Solarized Dark.terminal were initially too bright, but the color space used by my iMac is fairly close to sRGB, so most of the ANSI colors were not that far off.


Opening Chrome icon flashes up then disappears A friend has just downloaded and installed Chrome for Mac OS (current version 51).

When they click to open Chrome the icon appears briefly in the dock, then disappears and Chrome closes.

The behavior is replicated if you try to launch Chrome form the command line using

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome

They get an error

Failed to create /Users/NAME/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/SingletonLock

If they run with sudo they are able to start Chrome.

sudo /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome

How can we fix this? We've tried reinstalling Chrome and the problem persists.

We fixed this by deleting the lock file in ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/SingletonLock and everything else in the profile running

rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome

Seems related to the Chrome is not opening on the Google Chrome Help forum.


Neighbor's Airplay device is sometimes visible in Airplay menu I need help understanding why I'm sometimes able to see my neighbor's Airplay-enabled device (a smart TV or Apple TV, I don't know) when wireless and (I think) Bluetooth is enabled on my Macbook Pro and Airplay is "looking for TV".  If I regularly click the Airplay icon in the menu bar, I might see this device about 1 out of 40 times or so.  If I leave the menu open when this device is listed, it will disappear in a few seconds.
If I try to connect to this device, the system says that the wireless signal is too weak.
I'm definitely on my wireless network.  The signal strength of my neighbor's WiFi is 3 out of 4 "bars", so I can at least see that their network is available, but it has a lock icon and I've never tried to connect to it.
I'm 100% certain that this device is not on my wireless network.
Basically, I want to understand why I see my neighbor's Airplay device from the list of devices I can connect to.

Airplay devices can be discovered in two ways:
The most obvious is using Bonjour on the local network, you're connected to. It is basically a kind of broadcast DNS lookup that allows devices on the same local network to find each other.
The not-so-obvious method, which is what you're experiencing, is through peer-to-peer Airplay. This works by devices discovery through low-energy Bluetooth. If you choose to connect to such a device, the devices communicate through Bluetooth to setup a direct device-to-device WiFi connection. This type of connection does not use your local access point / router or your internet connection - it is direct communication between the two units.
It is fully possible that the signal conditions are so that you can discover the device through Bluetooth, but it is not possible to get a good enough signal to establish the device-to-device WiFi link.


High Sierra very slow Finder update I have recently formatted my MacBook Pro and installed High Sierra (v10.13.6). Ever since, although I do not have many apps installed, finder changes are shown very lately..

For example: I take screenshots With keyboard shortcuts, they appear on desktop after some MINUTES..
Or: I delete 100-150 files, they are still shown on finder window for some time, some of them without thumbnails..

Does somebody have the same problem?

Finder relaunch fixes everything. But I have to relaunch Finder after every change..

Here is a screenshot of finder after I deleted some files. See the last column where "the kind of file" is shown. The removed files are still shown, but without any kind:

There seems to be a problem with Finder's external sync (described in the thread on MacRumors).

This slowness was linked to 3rd party file sync applications (Google Drive, Syncovery, SugarSync, etc). There is no simple solution so far.

There is also a related Apple Communities' thread.


Can I change the resize zones on windows in Yosemite? It feels like the "hit zone" for the resize handle on windows in Yosemite is about 4 pixels wide. Meaning when I want to resize something I end up hunting around for it for 3 or 4 seconds every time. Is there a way to change this activation zone? I'd rather not have to install a tool to fix it.

Here's a GIF showing the border for resizing a window. It's not that small, but I don't think there's a way to change it.


Software Upgrade causes language change in Login screen and shutdown popup window I am running MacOS 10.13.6. I upgrade Security Update 2018-003, Command line Tools (macOS High Sierra version 10.13) for Xcode, Safari to the latest version one day ago. The weird thing is even if the system still shows English in most parts, but the Login Screen and shutdown popup window display Chinese now. I checked System Preferences > Language & Region > I have only English listed in Prefered languages (The region is China because I am currently in China). Can anyone please let me know how to change login screen and shutdown popup window back to show English? Thanks a lot.

I found the solution. In terminal, execute the following command

sudo languagesetup

choose English in the command prompt and then logout and login again or reboot. The language in Login Screen will become English.


Can I access 10.6 Server network/mobile accounts on a Lion client machine? I have a Mac Pro running 10.6.8 Server and a MacBook Pro (Mid 2010) running Lion 10.7.2. I would like to configure a mobile account for my wife to use. The idea is that she'll be able to access her user account locally on the server using Fast User Switching, but be able to log into the same account on my MacBook Pro and have the home folder sync through a mobile account.

I was able to do this when my Mac Pro had Lion Server on it, but I downgraded to Snow Leopard Server because Lion Server caused a lot of issues and dropped several key features from Snow Leopard Server.

Right now, I have her account configured to Create Mobile Account at Login. I am able to log into the account locally, but if I attempt to log into the account from the MacBook Pro, it says "Unable to log into account at this time".

I have the user account's home directory on a separate drive. The correct directory is set in Workgroup Manager, and the Users directory is set as an automounting share in Server Admin>AFP. The user I'm trying to log into has Read/Write access to the Users directory and the home folder, as well as ownership of the home folder.

The MacBook Pro is joined to the OD server through System Preferences>User Accounts>Login Options>Network Account Server. The MacBook Pro is also added as a computer and is in a computer group in Workgroup Manager.

Is there something I'm missing to configure this mobile account to be able to log in?

It should work.  When the user tries to login, do you see any errors in the system.log or secure.log?

Have you tried to completely delete the account from the local computer, unbind it from the server, rebind, restart and try to login again? (of course backup first)


iOS 6.1.3 delete update to iOS 9.3 I'm upgrading my mum's iPad from iOS 6.1.3 to 9.3 and it is coming up with a verification error. The obvious solution is to redownload the update and update from there.

There is however one issue, I can't find the update in Settings. All guides say to go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud usage > Manage storage

however I just have:

Settings > General > Usage

and then a list of apps (none of which are iOS 9.3 or even add up the the total data usage) and below that settings for managing iCloud.

So my question is what is the procedure to delete the update on the ipad.

I'm not totally sure what you're trying to do, but it sounds to me like you're trying to upgrade an iPad over-the-air. This should work, but transcending multiple operating system versions on your way up can cause problems. And could you be out of storage space?

Since this method isn't working, you should try the other method (scroll down after opening that link), which is updating the iPad via iTunes.

Plug the iPad into a Mac with iTunes installed.
Make the devices trust each other (accept trust if prompted)
Ensure the iPad is backed up to either iCloud or iTunes.
When the prompt is displayed on the Mac ("Would you like to update the software on this iPad") choose Download and Install to start the update.

Let the iPad update, and you'll be good to go.


Do apps running on iOS 10 take up more storage space than on iOS 12? On my iPhone 6s Plus running iOS 10, the Clash Royale game app takes up 800 MB of space, but on my iPad mini 2 running iOS 12, it takes up only 190 MB.

The Clash Royale account on my iPhone is the same as on the iPad, so it has the same data in both, and I usually play it more on the iPad than on the iPhone. How come it takes more storage on my iPhone? Is it because my phone is running iOS 10?

Okay, so there might be a couple of reasons for this:

If your iPhone is below iOS 10.3, this difference may stem from the different file system format (Apple moved to APFS starting in iOS 10.3). This optimizes your app code size since APFS optimizes storage out of the box. See Here, Apple's Filesystem Documentation
Otherwise, it might simply because of the difference in handing the iPad and iPhone cases by the developer. There might be a multitude of reasons ranging from internal app data caching, internal testing to A/B testing of features.


Can I safely remove a broken recovery partition? Can I remove the broken recovery partition?

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS iMac HD                 4.0 TB     disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot                         577.3 MB   disk0s3

And

$ diskutil verifyVolume disk0s3
Error starting file system verification for disk0s3: Unrecognized file system (-69846)

I am running Mavericks, original installation was Snow Leopard, on an iMac mid 2010.

Answer my own question since it was straightforward.

Did this

$ diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ Blank /dev/disk0s3

Now disk utility says

Partitionstabelle für „ST4000DX001-1CE168 Media“ überprüfen
Voraussetzungen überprüfen
Die Partitionsliste überprüfen
Nach einer EFI-Systempartition suchen
Die Größe der EFI-Systempartition überprüfen
Das Dateisystem der EFI-Systempartition überprüfen
Alle Loader-Speicherplätze von HFS-Datenpartitionen überprüfen
Das Volume „iMac HD“ auf „disk0s2“ hat 0 Byte nachfolgenden Loader-Speicherplatz und benötigt 134217728 Byte.
Bei der Partitionstabelle sind Probleme aufgetreten, die den Startvorgang möglicherweise verhindern.
Fehler: Die Partitionstabelle muss repariert werden, da eine Datenpartition Speicherplatz für den Loader benötigt.

So I repaired the whole disk with disk utility which fixed the missing space for the loader.

I am now going to create a new recovery partition.


Transfer custom ringtones to iPhone using a computer running Linux I received an iPhone 7 from my employer. I am traditionally an Android user and have never used iPhone before. I have Linux running on my PCs at home.

How can transfer ringtones from PC to iPhone easily? I have read scattered posts about this, but most people seem to be doing this via Windows or macOS. I am using Linux Mint. I have Audacity installed on my Linux computer, and I am quite comfortable working with audio files.

Getting ringtones onto an iPhone is one of those things that's never been as easy as you'd expect.

Might be because Apple never thought it was important. Might be because Apple also sells ringtones in the iTunes store. Whatever the reason, fact is, there aren't a lot of ways to do it.

I don't know of any Linux way of getting them on the iPhone directly.

I believe that the iOS app GarageBand is the only app on the iPhone capable of adding a custom ringtone. Therefore, if you can get your ringtone from your Linux machine onto your iPhone (perhaps by emailing it to yourself and then using the "Share" feature on the iPhone to send it to GarageBand, that might work.

GarageBand is a very large app, but it's free, so worth checking out, I'd say.


Why is chrome rendering web pages so bad? Since updating to the latest version, chrome is rendering pages completely wrong. Browsing the web I haven't found people with the same problem. I'm attaching a screenshot for people to better understand what I mean (I attached a GDocs one since it is one of the worst cases). The chrome I'm using is 29.0.1547.57 installed on OSX 10.8.4.

Try disabling all extensions, then quit and restart. If the problem does not occur, reenable extensions one at a time until you discover which one causes the issue. At that point you can report the report the issue to the developer of the extension.


High Sierra performance problems - efilogin-helper taking a lot of CPU I have a stock 2015 15" MacBook Pro, i7 / 16GB / 512GB, still runs on High Sierra because I am contemplating to do a full clean install instead of an upgrade. Performance has been deteriorating to a point I can no longer be an active participant in video conferences. I'm trying to find out what is the cause of the slowdown and I'm mainly using Activity Monitor as a guide to what is taking a lot of CPU capacity. I think I figured out that including my Projects folder in iCloud wasn't a good idea as JavaScript applications easily install tens of thousands of files through dependency managers. I'm trying to fix that in another Question.

The only thing that stands out as really odd besides to filesystem and indexation related daemons is efilogin-helper hoovering around 50%-100% all of the time. The only hints I find on Google are about the wallpaper which I've reset to solid blue, so my system doesn't use that anymore.

I would like to not only have a practical solution to efilogin-helper taking a lot of CPU but also maybe understand a bit more about troubleshooting these kind of problems.

So I turned off iCloud and it stopped. It's a pity iCloud can't really handle lots of file changes in a performant way so I don't have a final solution for this yet (semi real-time backups of my working folder).


How do I uninstall FaceTime for macOS? I would like to completely uninstall FaceTime for macOS.

Dragging and dropping the icon into the Trash gives me this error message:

  “FaceTime” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by
  macOS.

Running this command:

$ sudo rm -rf FaceTime.app/

Gives me a series of:

  Operation not permitted

Is there any way to uninstall FaceTime?

You do not need to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP).

To delete the FaceTime app, do the following:

Backup FaceTime.app via Time Machine or making a Zip archive.

For the Zip archive, right-click it and select: Compress "FaceTime"

Shutdown your Mac.
Boot to Recovery Mode. Press ⌘R when starting your Mac.
Open Terminal from the Utilities menu.
Run the following compound command adjusting Macintosh HD as necessary if you've modified the default name of the primary startup volume:

rm -r "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications/FaceTime.app"; reboot

After rebooting from Recovery Mode, if you still have the FaceTime icon on the Dock, right-click it and select: Options > Remove from Dock

Note that while this does remove the FaceTime.app, it may/will reappear when macOS is updated/upgraded and will need to be deleted again.

If after having done this and you want to restore the FaceTime app, then restore it using Time Machine, if you backed it up in that manner, or if you created the Zip archive, it would have been created in the /Applications folder, if you moved it elsewhere, move it back and then do the following:

Shutdown your Mac.
Boot to Recovery Mode. Press ⌘R when starting your Mac.
Open Terminal from the Utilities menu.
Run the following compound command adjusting Macintosh HD as necessary if you've modified the default name of the primary startup volume:

cd "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications"; ../usr/bin/unzip FaceTime.zip; reboot


Remove applications from Software Update I have two applications showing up in Software Update that I didn't install, don't exist anywhere on any volume attached to my computer (and never have), and I would like to remove them. When I click on the "Update" button an Apple ID I've never heard of shows up (a different ID for each application). I'd install the apps just so I can delete them, but both cost money that I'd rather not spend.

This question never really got a useful answer, and I couldn't find anything else relevant on Ask Different. I rebuilt the Launch Services database but no dice.

My only guess is that some applications I have, which were obtained through a friend ;), were originally installed using these Apple IDs or are otherwise associated with them, and that info is being read by Software Update. Is there some centralized place I could edit to remove these entries? I would rather not grep -r "random_letters@mail.ru" /Applications if I don't have to, as it's over 32GB, but if that's the only way I'll bite the bullet and do it. I was rather hoping there'd be a .plist somewhere I could edit real quick...

Somebody asked about it on Apple Discussion Groups here. The answer is:

For the software update you would like to hide - make sure the full description of the update is shown - click "More..." if needed to show the full description

Right click on the update window.  Select "Hide update"

This will hide the update and it will not show in the App Store Updates Window or counted on the dock icon.

To restore - select "Show all software updates.." which is now shown in the App store "Store" menu.  Then "Reload Page" from the Store menu.


Spotlight borked after macOS Sierra update Config: Late-2013 rMBP running 10.12 (16A323)

Issue: Spotlight appears to be mostly non-functional since upgrading to Sierra. I originally noticed it when searches failed to bring up anything in Mail, and Spotlight itself will only surface results from Dictionary.

What I've Tried:

Add my primary HDD to the Privacy exclusion list in Spotlight preferences (this resulted in a weird (null) error). The idea is adding, then removing will force a reindex.
Run mdutil -sv / to find out what's up, resulting in "Error: unexpected indexing state. kMDConfigSearchLevelTransitioning".
Run sudo mdutil -E / to delete and rebuild the index, resulting in "Error: Index is already changing state. Please try again in a moment."
Run
sudo su
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
rm -R ./Spotlight-V100/
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
mdutil -E /
this all works, and I get a brief pause after the last command before it spits out "Indexing enabled." Subsequent attempts at running mdutil -sv / spits out the aforementioned error as cited in #2 above.

Activity Monitor is showing that mds and several mdworker processes are churning most of the CPU cycles (and the fan is fairly vocal), which would imply that it's in the process of reindexing - yet the two ways I'm aware of confirming indexing behavior is not indicating that's the case:

mdutil -sv / is returning that error.
Doing a Spotlight search for anything (or "indexing" specifically) does not show any indexing progress bar.

So… is Spotlight either:

A. Actually indexing, despite both known ways of confirmation indicating it isn't? And, if so, citation(s) on that being the case / when can I expect it to be showing that it is indexing?

B. Actually borked? And, if so, any other ways I can try to resolve absent nuking the partition, doing a fresh install, and restoring from Time Machine?

Thanks in advance!

Did you reboot after #4 above? I think that should work... If not this may help:

sudo touch /.metadata-never-index

Reboot...

sudo rm /.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist
sudo rm /.metadata-never-index

And reboot again. You can try this for every volume.

See also: http://www.filetypehelp.com/purpose-files-metadataneverindex-file-extension/


"Unable to load nib file: MainMenu" I have a Mac with Yosemite (don't remember the exact version)

I used CleanMyMac today, but it broke something; after using it, I can't open most Apple applications (I can't open App Store, Mail.app, Safari, System Information; it's not working).

Opening the console, I found that the problem seems to be

  24/01/15 17:35:36,253 Mail[468]: Unable to load nib file: MainMenu, exiting
  24/01/15
  17:35:36,255 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.mail.7700[468]) Service exited with abnormal code: 1

This happens with almost all Apple applications.

All other apps work fine; Chrome, iTunes, Finder, etc.

I need to find a solution that does not involve bringing the computer to the Apple store; I have a lot of exams in these days and I need my Mac to study.

Just to let you know, I solved the problem by reinstalling the operating system.

This can't be done directly from the app store (because it was not working)

Instead restart the mac and when the grey screen comes press Cmd + R; then connect to the internet and reinstall it.

I did a backup of my data beforehand but fortunately I didn't need it as all my files were in place.


Applications in ~/Applications not shown in Applications folder in dock I just noticed that brew cask install symlinks to ~/Applications. This works fine, but the application item in my dock does not show apps from that folder. Is it supposed to work this way? I expected to have an aggregated view of /Applications and ~/Applications in my dock.

Each item in the dock is a single folder.

OS X does not have merged folder views except in Finder where there are Smart folders

However you could create a smart folder in Finder of Kind is Application and drag that to the Dock


How can I synchronize the shell view and Finder view of a directory? Using the shell, I opened a tar file that was full of db dumps that were compressed with bzip2. For each dump file, I (1) unzipped, (2) loaded, (3) deleted.

From the shell, the directory where I worked looks perfect. Using Finder, the directory view has frozen on what the directory looked like immediately after I untarred. None of the changes caused by ~/WorkArea/bzip2 -d *dmp.bz2 or ~/WorkArea/rm *dmp are reflected. Also, mysteriously a directory titled Disk1 is now viewable in Finder. That directory was never viewable in the shell.

Trying to move or delete any file with Finder in that directory gives a
The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -1407).

How can Finder get synchronized with the work I did in the shell?

This is a known quirk with Finder; it's supposed to refresh automatically, but sometime it's won't.  Unlike Windows, there is no refresh button nor can you press F5 to refresh the window.

There are more details and workarounds to this in the article Refreshing Finder Windows in Mac OS X.  However, I find that the easiest thing is to just go up one directory and then back.

If you use Keyboard Maestro, you could create a "refresh keystroke" of sorts by mapping a key combo to something like Command Shift A  and then Command [ which will take to you the Applications Folder then back to where you were.


Multiple apple account on the same mac wait 90 days to download? So I have a US itunes account and a German one, because the US gets stuff earlier. The German one is my main account and I use that for the mac app store and for the apps on iTunes but I mainly use the US one for movies and TV shows.

I recently bought a movie from the German account, and when I tried to stream it on the mac, it told me that this computer is already associated with an Apple ID and after switching I have to wait 90 days.

So if my understanding is correct, if I opt to use my German account to download or stream the movie I just bought, I cannot access my stuff on the US account for the next 90 days, atleast not on this particular mac?

Was this always like that? I remember being able to switch back and fourth without a problem.

it all has to de with media rights. some things that are available in 1 country do not necessarily have to be available in another country


Difference between saving and exporting I have read several questions (here and elsewhere) that look for applications that can save in a format instead of export in a format.  What is the difference between saving in a format, and exporting in a format?  Is it just that there is an additional dialog box, or does an exported file in some way behave differently?  Is this a style over substance issue?

I have no problem with people wanting things the WAY they want them, I just want to understand if there is a fundamental difference in the function of an exported over the function of a saved file.

Examples:  Pages exports in formats that Open Office saves in.  Pixelmator exports in formats that PhotoShop saves in (so I've been told).

AS @lhf comments export/import implies that there is some information lost during one of the processes so that you can't export and then import and get exactly the same document back.

Save usually writes the file in the format that is native to the application or in the same format as the file was opened in.

Some applications e.g. Microsoft Office will not use export as much as this but use save as to allow conversion of the format of the document and possibly lose some information e.g. Excel can save as .csv. (I don't have MS Office here and can't remember if they have an export on the file menu). The do have an import that adds the selected document to the current one so another meaning.

The examples you give are both that the file file format is native to an application ( Open Office and PhotoShop) and the other applications' export converts their own format to these on export.


Completions for bash 4 never finish loading I've installed bash 4 and bash-completions@2 with Homebrew following all kinds of guides I found online. However, when I open a new terminal it just hangs. By placing some echos in my .bash_profile it seems to be hanging on loading the completions.

My .bash_profile:

# Import all files
for DOTFILE in ~/.{aliases,env,functions,path,prompt,extra}
do
    [ -r "$DOTFILE" ] && [ -f "$DOTFILE" ] && source "$DOTFILE"
done

unset DOTFILE;

echo $BASH_VERSION
printf "Loading bash completions..."
if [ -f /usr/local/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ]; then
    . /usr/local/share/bash-completion/bash_completion
fi
printf "done!"

if [ -f "$(brew --prefix)/opt/bash-git-prompt/share/gitprompt.sh" ]; then
    GIT_PROMPT_THEME=Default
    source "$(brew --prefix)/opt/bash-git-prompt/share/gitprompt.sh"
fi

(the DOTFILE stuff is loading my dotfiles)

When I open a new terminal with the above .bash_profile I get this output:

Last login: Fri Jun 23 10:43:12 on ttys001
4.4.12(1)-release
Loading bash completions...

Running brew doctor doesn't say anything about bash completions.

What can I do to get this working?

UPDATE
There were a bunch of rustc processes taking up a lot of CPU. Most likely related.

It turns out the problem was with rustc. Upgrading the package with brew upgrade rust fixed it.

My current Rust version is now 1.18.0.


What is trying to launch 'java' on my Mac OS X Mountain Lion Possible Duplicate:
  Is there a way to determine what application wants Java installed?

I recently installed OSX Mountain Lion and as you know, the default install removes any java VM, offering you to install it if something needs it.

After login in, something does try to launch 'java' and brings up the "To open 'java' you need to install Java SE 6 runtime. Would you like to install one now?".

Problem is, I have no idea what is trying to launch java and would like, instead of installing it again, to find out whether I need this or not.

I looked in my login items, removed all of them. Looked into "Macintosh HD/Startup Items" and temporarily removed stuff there too. To no avail.

Now I'm not discounting user error when trying to diagnose this but I'l love to know if there is an easy way to find out what process is trying to launch 'java'.

Also check ~/Library/LaunchAgents, /Library/LaunchAgents, /Library/StartupItems, /System/Library/LaunchAgents, /System/Library/LaunchDaemons, to get a more complete picture of what might be running/starting up on boot and login.

Dunno about you, but my installation came default with some com.apple.java.* plist files.  I am running Mountain Lion.


Why opening application with shortcut doesn't behave the same as opening it from the dock I want to open an application (Zotero) with a shortcut in the same way it opens when I click on it in the dock. When I open it from the dock the application recalls the previous changes (window size, position etc.), but if I open it with a shortcut it gets reset to a default each time I use the shortcut.

I have tried both Automator (Launch Application) and Keyboard Maestro (I have tried both "Activate a Specific Application" and "Open Application").

Most puzzling, if I try the run (Automator) or try (KB) function, the application opens as if clicked in the dock. Could someone explain to me what is happening?

Thank you! I have received another solution which works as expected (as if the app was opened from the dock): I have created an AppleScript with activate application "Zotero". I still don't understand why the Launch Application behaves differently.


Force constant refreshing of WINE window I'm trying to run Imperialism 2 on Crossover (WINE), in virtual desktop mode. The game nearly works except that the screen doesn't update.

What I mean by this is that the WINE window is initially black. If I then drag another window on top of it, and drag it away again, the window now displays a picture of the game at this point. If I then click on things within the game, nothing happens visually, until I again drag another window on top of the WINE one.

So what seems to be happening is that the WINE window doesn't realise it needs to keep on updating what it's showing. Only when its contents are obscured and then revealed again does it notice that it has to redraw. This is fairly frustrating: the game is running fine, the graphics are being drawn correctly, but they're just not being displayed.

Is there any way to keep on sending a "redraw message" to a window to force these redraws to happen? Imp 2 is a turn-based game, so if the redraws happened only a few times a second, that would be fine.

I've found a completely horrendous but workable way of fixing my problem. First, download and install Afloat, which lets you set windows as global translucent non-clickable overlays.

Then, create a HTML file whose background switches between pure white and almost pure white 20 times a second. Something like this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
    <title>Strobe Light</title>
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
      <!--
      var c = 0;

      function strobe() {
        document.bgColor = c ? '#fefefe' : '#ffffff';
        c = (c + 1) % 2;
      }

      function startStrobe() {
        setInterval(strobe, 50);
      }
      -->
    </script>
  </head>
  <body onload="startStrobe();">
  </body>
</html>

Finally, open this file in Safari, resize the window to fill the screen as much as possible, and use Afloat to set the window as a global near-transparent non-clickable overlay. The result? The whole screen (including the WINE window) is forced to update every 50 ms.

Is this completely horrible? Yes. But it works.


Why does iOS require passcode after reboot? Why does iOS require a passcode (not Touch ID or Face ID) after reboot? Is passcode more secure?

Short Answer

It has to do with how the security subsystem in iOS works.

Long Answer

User's biometric data is securely stored in a mathematical form in special hardware called Secure Enclave on iOS device. This data is not readable and never leaves the device. The Touch ID/Face ID subsystem do not have access to it.

When the device is locked, the Data Protection keys which are held in Secure Enclave are wrapped with a key that's given to the Touch ID or Face ID subsystem inside the Secure Enclave. When an unlock is attempted, if the device detects a successful match, it provides the key for unwrapping the Data Protection keys, and the device is unlocked.

But, when the device restarts, the keys required for Touch ID or Face ID to unlock the device are lost; they're discarded by the Secure Enclave.

Hence the device passcode is required to authentication the user.

To get a better sense of the iOS security design, you can refer to the iOS Security Guide, which is updated by Apple after major updates to iOS. The contents in the answer are derived from iOS Security Guide for iOS 12.3 released in May 2019.


Can a Mac be set up to dial arbitrary numbers by connecting to an iPhone? I normaly listen to music on my iPhone while working, and regularly I also have to be able to make calls.

What tends to happen is that I google for the contact details of the place I'm calling and then have to type the number into my phone. It stikes me that there is probably a much more effective way of doing this - is there a utility that either lets me select a number on my browser and automatically call it? Or even just a shared clipboard between my phone and my MacBook?

I use Google Voice's service to have my computer ring a third number and call my iPhone. Since I have most contacts in my Address Book and don't mind adding new ones - iCloud will get most contacts to the phone and Siri does a nice job dialing things, but there are also software packages that will literally dial your iPhone over a bluetooth connection.

Check out Dialectic for starters if you want a tool cut exactly for the job of dialing from OS X to iPhone remotely.


How to change the GPT partition type of an EFI partition? I have a perplexing problem with the EFI partition on my boot SSD. The GPT partition type is "Microsoft Basic Data". On all other drives in my system, including my Carbon Copy Cloner clone of my boot drive, the partition type is "EFI" (see below):

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *512.1 GB   disk0
   1:       Microsoft Basic Data EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Tims Boot SSD           498.7 GB   disk0s2
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *960.2 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Users                   959.9 GB   disk1s2

...

/dev/disk4
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *512.1 GB   disk4
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk4s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Tims Boot SSD Clone     511.8 GB   disk4s2

My system boots just fine, but it appears to be loading the bootloader (Clover in this case) from the /Users drive (disk1) instead of from the boot SSD (disk0), and I think the incorrect GPT partition type is to blame.

I tried to update the partition type using the "asr adjust" command as outlined at https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/58705/mac-os-x-partition-type-problem, but it doesn't work and gives me a very unhelpful error message:

$ sudo asr adjust --target /dev/disk0s1 --settype EFI
asr: Volume adjustment failed: Unknown error: -123

I have found information about other possible ways to set the GPT partition type through Google searches, but all the other methods seem risky, with warnings about erasing the partition in question, etc.

Does anyone know how I can fix this?

I recreated your problem using a 4 GB flash drive. Below is the output from the command diskutil list /dev/disk1.

/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 GB     disk1
   1:       Microsoft Basic Data EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Tims Boot SSD           3.7 GB     disk1s2

Below is the output from the command sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk1

    start     size  index  contents
        0        1         PMBR
        1        1         Pri GPT header
        2       32         Pri GPT table
       34        6
       40   409600      1  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
   409640  7220264      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  7629904   262150
  7892054       32         Sec GPT table
  7892086        1         Sec GPT header

The problem is the partition type GUID for the EFI partition is EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7 and it should be C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B.

To correct this, I entered the following commands. In your case, you would substitute disk0 for disk1. You should enter these commands from the bootable USB backup clone of your boot drive.

diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk1
sudo gpt remove -i 1 /dev/disk1
diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk1
sudo gpt add -i 1 -b 40 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B /dev/disk1

Before entering type above commands, make sure your start and size entries are 40 and 409600, respectively. If not, make the appropriate corrections to the -b and -s options.


Why can't someone import music from outside sources into apple's iPhone music app? I'm curious exactly what in the OS won't allow music to be added to the directory.

Apple calls the area in the storage of an iOS device containing media (music, video) for the built-in apps to play the iPod library.  iOS provides an interface that App Store apps can call to use the iPod library, but this is basically limited to playback and search.

Other than that, apps' access to storage is restricted by sandboxing.

From Apple's "iOS App Programming Guide":

  For security reasons, iOS places each app (including its preferences
  and data) in a sandbox at install time. A sandbox is a set of
  fine-grained controls that limit the app’s access to files,
  preferences, network resources, hardware, and so on. As part of the
  sandboxing process, the system installs each app in its own sandbox
  directory, which acts as the home for the app and its data.

This means that third party apps from the App Store can't directly access files other than their own (like the iPod library), so they can't save files that they download anywhere but their own directories.

In addition to the sandboxing, Apple also has a mandatory review and approval process for apps to go into the App Store, and so apps that don't follow the guidelines aren't available.  In a sense, that's not really a restriction "in the OS", because Apple can change their review process at any time and newly-allowed apps can be downloaded and used immediately without any change to iOS.  Also, iOS app developers can get their own apps signed to test on their own iOS devices, before the review process.  But from the point of view of the average user, what restrictions exactly are enforced by the sandboxing and what are only App Store guidelines is academic.

On jailbroken devices, applications that have not been approved by Apple can be installed, and jailbreaks generally modify iOS so that apps can operate outside of sandbox restrictions. So it's possible for an app that understands the current iPod library file formats (for instance recent versions of iFile) to add music directly to the library.


How can I make my macbook pro liquid proof? As I hang around those who are toilet training, and people who really dislike macs, I'm wondering if there is any way to make my macbook pro urine proof?

Update

What about adding a waterproof case, if any exist? I'd like to be able to use it at the same time if possible.

I think you are going about this the wrong way.  You are looking defensively when you should be on offense.

Consider getting something like a privacy shield to place around the urinator:

Another alternative might be to simply bring physical pain into the mix.  Wounding the urinator that sprays wildly towards you and the Macbook might make the urinator realize that control is important.

Again, think offense...not defense.


Time Machine stuck on "Preparing backup" whenever returning from Boot Camp to OS X I have Windows 7 installed in Boot Camp. Whenever I go into Windows 7 and then go back to OS X Lion, and then run a Time Machine backup, Time Machine is stuck on the "Preparing Backup" stage for a long time (roughly 30 minutes). It usually takes 30 seconds in this stage in most cases.

The reason it's stuck at this stage is probably because it is re-indexing everything again (per this KB article), but the question is, is there a way to make it so that it does not have to re-index everything again after restarting out of Boot Camp? I think this only started happening in the past few weeks, while I've had Boot Camp installed on this computer for a few years now.

Okay so I figured this out a while ago, but I'll post it here too. The problem was I was using MacDrive, which allows me to read and write to Mac partitions while in Windows (using Boot Camp).

MacDrive sometimes modified files on the Mac partitions even if I didn't open them; I think it sometimes perform optimization actions to speed up the reading of Mac partitions.

This means that when I return to Mac OS X, Time Machine notices that a Mac partition was changed while outside of OS X, so it reindexes everything to be sure it doesn't miss anything.


AppleScript sending Mail messages before file attachments are attached in El Capitan I have a Workflow that runs an AppleScript which attaches spam emails as file attachments and sends them to ASSP for processing.

It's been working fine, but apparently something has changed in El Capitan's Mail or one of the subsequent updates which has caused it to stop working. I just noticed that the sent mail messages do not have any attached files anymore.

tell application "Mail"
    set theNewMsg to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:theReportSubject, visible:true}
    tell theNewMsg
        make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:theAddress}
        make new attachment at after the last paragraph with properties {file name:theTempFileName}
        send
    end tell
end tell

One workaround is adding a delay prior to send — in my case a delay 1 works but .5 would not, but found elsewhere people that were able to do .2, so experiment to see what works for you:

tell application "Mail"
    set theNewMsg to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:theReportSubject, visible:true}
    tell theNewMsg
        make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:theAddress}
        make new attachment at after the last paragraph with properties {file name:theTempFileName}
        delay 1
        send
    end tell
end tell


How to keep sound from muting while using dictation? Whenever I try to use the dictation feature in OSX, it mutes my sound. I want to hear the audio I'm playing in iTunes or somewhere else while I have dictation enabled. How can I do that?

You need to set some hidden preferences to make this work (OS X 10.9 - Mavericks). Open Terminal and enter the two commands below:

defaults write com.apple.SpeechRecognitionCore AllowAudioDucking -bool NO
defaults write com.apple.speech.recognition.AppleSpeechRecognition.prefs DictationIMAllowAudioDucking -bool NO

After doing this turn off dictation in Systems Preferences, wait a few seconds and then re-enable it. You should now be able to dictate while audio is playing. I’ve only tried this while using a headset/headphones, it’s probably not advisable without. :)

To restore your system to it’s virginal state, run these commands in Terminal and then restart dictation:

defaults delete com.apple.SpeechRecognitionCore AllowAudioDucking
defaults delete com.apple.speech.recognition.AppleSpeechRecognition.prefs DictationIMAllowAudioDucking

Found via: https://gist.github.com/rmangino/8388849


iTunes: get selected mobile apps with AppleScript I fear I already know the answer to this one, but is there any way to access the locally-stored Mobile Applications in an iTunes library using AppleScript?

The selection property appears to not function with apps:

tell application "iTunes" to get selection

With, say, a podcast, I get a result like:

{file track id 656 of user playlist id 541 of source id 74 of application "iTunes"}

But with an app selected, I just get:

{}

Alternatively, is there a 'rawer' way to access the mobile applications? Merely enumerating them in the file system won't suffice, because I'm trying to change their file location in the iTunes library.

If you want raw. You could try:

activate application "iTunes"

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "iTunes"
        keystroke "i" using command down -- open the info window
        set theName to title of window 1 -- get the name
        keystroke "." using command down  --close the info window
    end tell
end tell
log theName

This will get the name of the selected app

I have 170 apps so if I selected the first one and then run

set the logList to {}
activate application "iTunes"
repeat 170 times
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "iTunes"
            keystroke "i" using command down -- open the info window
            set theName to title of window 1 -- get the name
            keystroke "." using command down --close the  info window
        end tell
        copy theName to end of logList

        --DO OTHER SOME STUFF

        key code 124
    end tell

end repeat

count of logList

I can walk through them via the script and get each name. I did not seem to need a delay in it .


Limit internet use when using mobile Internet iCloud and other background services that I use seem to assume that Internet bandwidth is unlimited. As soon as I launch my Lion MacBook, hundreds of megs of updated documents, software updates, mail, notifications etc are downloaded.

This is desirable when I'm on broadband, but when I'm travelling and tethered to my iPhone, it's expensive.

Is there a way I can block all programs except Safari from using bandwidth? I could dual-boot a linux distro, but that seems overkill, and I'd lose access to mac apps.

Thanks,

Bernie     :o)

The easiest way would be to use an application such as Little Snitch; that way you can define rules easily based on whatever situation you happen to be in. It's also an excellent firewall replacement for the standard Mac OS X one, as well as multiple other uses.

If you like doing things yourself, or don't want to spend the money you could manually add entries into your hosts file located in /etc/hosts/ or create your own rules using pfctl or ipfw. I wouldn't recommend messing around with either of those unless you're confident using terminal, plus it's more work.


How can i turn mobile data on without going into the settings? I have recently purchased an Iphone 5s, when i turn the mobile data on and off i have to go into the settings. Is there any way i can do it easier? I have tried flicking up from the top and bottom, however cannot find an easier way.

There is no specific way to turn off only Cellular Data without going into settings.  A (possibly) quicker work around for you would be swiping up from the bottom to get the control center, then turning on Airplane Mode (far left button) and then turning back on WiFi and/or bluetooth.

That would disable cellular data,WiFi, Bluetooth by going into Airplane Mode, and you would get data over WiFi back when you turn that back on.


Spilled acetone on my iPhone 5S I had a bit of acetone on my finger when I pressed on my phone, and now the left corner is kind of darker (like a blue-ish color) than the rest of the screen like there's a layer of water behind the screen!!!!
I have no idea what to do! I can still use my phone, but it bothers me a lot! Please help!

It sounds like you might have removed the protective coating in that corner of the screen and that now you have two options (one of which is better than the other!):

Apply acetone to the remainder of the screen - carefully, so the appearance of the screen is once more uniform in appearance. Then immediately buy a protective film for the phone's screen.
Take the phone for repair, asking for the screen to be replaced.

Option 1 involves no cost since you (obviously) already have acetone. Option 2 will be a fairly pricy repair, as it will involve replacing the entire screen, and there is literally no way you can claim that the damage was caused by anything except for your own actions. Option 2 is the 'correct' way to fix the problem.

The lesson you can take away from this is: be very careful with solvents and cleaning chemicals around sensitive equipment - especially if the equipment has a special finish.


How to connect MacBook Pro (2020) to ultra widescreen monitor? I have an ultrawide monitor that's 3840 X 1200. It works perfectly fine with my windows laptop.
I now need to connect my work MacBook Pro provided to me, but under the list of resolutions (and extended hidden resolutions) none of them come close.
Is it a matter of the cable I'm using? I'm using a HDMI cable with a usb-c adaptor on the end to connect it to the MacBook.

Besides the other answer, you might have better results with a DisplayPort cable if your monitor supports it. My 3440x1440 monitor for instance works at 100hz with DisplayPort and only 60hz with HDMI.


How to obtain a secure copy of macOS? I need to install macOS on a VM. I don't want to download a macOS from torrent or hackintosh websites. Is there a way I can verify a macOS image's signature so I know it came from apple?

The only reliable (and legal) source of macOS is the Mac App Store.

There are python scripts to download from Apple as well. Apple code signs the installers, so you are taking on risk to re-implement or bypass those checks.


Get the GPS coordinates of a photo in Mac Photos.app In Mac's Photos.app, how do I get the GPS coordinates of a photo? If I go to a photo and click on the "Get Info" button, then I can see a map with a pin indicating where the photo was taken, but I can't find out how to get the actual GPS coordinates (latitude and longitude) from this.

Also, when exporting photos from Photos.app, the GPS information is removed, so I can't even use other apps or even just Preview.app to get this info.

I just tested exporting a file from Photos and it retained GPS information. Are you using Export > Export X Photo(s), or Export > Export Unmodified Originals for X Photo(s)? I used the latter.

To find the actual GPS coordinates there are many, many solutions, but I used the most-excellent command line ExifTool when testing to ensure the GPS information was still present after export.

$ exiftool -gpslatitude -gpslongitude ~/Desktop/IMG_9337.jpg
GPS Latitude                    : 41 deg 2' 14.99" N
GPS Longitude                   : 90 deg 8' 38.55" W

There are many things you can do with this, including scanning an entire directory and outputting their GPS coords to a file, outputting into HTML format, etc. The above command will give you a basic display of it, though.


Facebook birthday sync only working for some contacts I recently noticed that only a couple of my contacts' birthdays show up on my calendar on OS X.  For instance, I have four friends with birthdays today, but only one is on my calendar.  I tried deleting and re-adding my Facebook account but notice no difference.

I'm getting the exact same behavior on my iPhone.

Maybe this isn't a Mac issue.  Did Facebook change the way its sync works?

Facebook has an option for friends to Opt OUT of their birthdays being displayed to other people. So if I had you on FaceBook and I turned the option off to display to you what my Birthday is, the it won't sync to your Calendar.