Printing source code with OS X How can I print source code in OS X (HTML/PHP) with number lines and without long line truncation? I was used to Gedit on Linux, but here it seems I can't obtain the same with applications such as TextWrangler or TextEdit.

You can print source code with line numbers and without truncation in TextWrangler, the key is Soft wrap text.

Turn on "Soft Wrap Text" under Text Options.
Open TextWrangler > Preferences
Select "Text Printing" then check the "Print line numbers" checkbox.
Print again, long lines should wrap and line numbers should be present.

Note: you may want to set up "Editor Defaults" in TextWrangler's Preferences, and have it Soft wrap text for you for each file you edit, and to a specified width too.


Which Remote Desktop works with Control Keys? I am trying to control an iTerm2 session on an iPad mini through Remote Desktop using an Apple BT keyboard (Japanese).

When I tried this out with Splashtop, the backspace key and all control keys don't work.

Which Remote Desktop works well with the Apple BT keyboard on iPad mini?

I would recommend RealVNC VNC Viewer.

It allows the capability to use all the keys on a real keyboard (command, control, option, etc.), even the function keys. Almost any remote deskop application out there uses VNC to handle the screen sharing. VNC Viewer works just fine with Apple Remote Desktop and Bonjour, Terminal, Xterm, and iTerm2 — just open port 5900.

*There's a free version, and a full version (normally $10 for iOS), although the full version is free at this very moment, so grab it while you can.


What happens to the iTunes Library on external disk after upgrading to macOS Catalina? I keep my iTunes library on an external hard drive as it is quite large.
I was able to select this library or my other library that is stored on my mac by holding the option key while opening iTunes. As in Catalina iTunes is split into multiple apps, I was wondering what will happen to my library. Particularly, as it is stored on a separate hard disk. Will it get automatically split into separate parts or do I have to do something manually? Am I going to be able to have the possibility of having multiple libraries and open them by doing the same trick (holding the option key) as before?

This is too late but it might be good to have it here as a reference in the future. The answer is yes, however, Podcasts and Books are stored locally on the system volume as suggested in a comment.


How do I keep the Recovery HD and EFI partitions from automatically mounting on my MacBook Air? I've set Finder preferences on my MacBook Air running OS X 10.9.1 to show everything on my desktop:

I've noticed that storage partitions called Recovery HD and EFI appear there:

What are they? Is there a setting I can use to hide them?

I've noticed I can eject them, but they will reappear later, such as when I wake my MacBook Air after sleeping.

Update: I'm using Mountain (which I recommend), and it turns out either the "Mount all unmounted volumes on wake from sleep" setting was on by default, or I didn't remember setting it.

Since I turned it off those partitions have stopped mounting automatically.

They are hidden partitions in OS X. Showing all partitions in Disk Utility also shows the partitions in the list:

…and diskutil list:

1:         EFI EFI          209.7 MB   disk0s1
2:   Apple_HFS Mac SSD      150.0 GB   disk0s2
3:  Apple_Boot Recovery HD  650.0 MB   disk0s3

They are usually not mounted by default and therefore not shown on the desktop regardless of your settings in Finder.

Try resetting your NVRAM (boot with ⌘⌥PR until the second boot chime).


Is there a way to reset my iphone 4 to fix this problem All of a sudden, my Voice Control on my iphone 4 keeps beeping and making noises, and it's starting songs on the music player and making the whole phone go haywire.

I turned the phone off and on again but the problem persists. Is there a way to replace the whole system or do something else that might fix it

The phone was working perfectly yesterday and every other day since last October when I bought it

It sounds like a reset is probably the most likely thing to fix this. It will reset your iPhone to factory settings, and then put back your settings and media from a backup.

You can rest your iPhone by connecting it to iTunes, selecting it in the sidebar, going to the General tab, and clicking Restore.

Take a look at the Restoring Your iPhone section of this Apple support document for more info.


Unable to view secure web pages from one particular user account My dad's computer is running OS X 10.5.8, and is almost always unable to open secure web pages from his account.  It's not that he can't log in—it's that the servers never even send a reply.  This is true from Safari 5.0.6, Firefox 12.0, SeaMonkey 2.13.1, and telnet to port 443.  All three browsers report that they are unable to establish a secure connection to the requested website.

But when I'm logged into his machine on my own account with those very same browsers, I can get to secure pages without any problem, and web browsing in general seems to be faster from my account than his.

I've reset Safari for his account, but that made no difference.  We've restarted the machine multiple times.  His account is not an administrator account and I have parental controls enabled for him to keep him from accidentally modifying his Dock.  I've checked for suspicious-looking processes but haven't seen any red flags.  If I enable the Web Console in Firefox, it posts the following and nothing else.  I have observed this behavior for multiple sites, and over a period of a month or more.

[23:51:21.335] GET https://www.bankofamerica.com/ [undefined 78ms]

I observe all of this while VNC'ed into his machine with Screen Sharing.  What could possibly explain this kind of difference in browser behavior between his account and mine?

When any User Account mysteriously acts up, the fastest, easiest thing is ofen to make a new User Account, log in to that and see if the problem reocccurs. It's also a logical troubleshooting step.


FileVault sparsefile uses double of actual allocated disk space I just noticed that for some reason disk usage (du) reports that FileVault in my home directory would use its allocated disk space twice:

[/Users]% sudo du -h -d 1 .
184G    ./.moo
170G    ./moo
204K    ./Shared
354G    .

[/Users]% df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2    233G  225G  7.7G  97% /
devfs           119K  119K     0 100% /dev
/dev/disk1s2    466G  458G  7.6G  99% /Users/moo

The encrypted home folder is listed twice as /.moo and /moo

Is this indeed the case or is something broken on my FileVault setup?

Is there any steps to further diagnose the problem and bring down FileVault disk space consumption to real level? I have shutdown my Mac many times, so the post-login sparsebundle resize should have kicked in.

As I understand it, when you login, the encrypted disk image gets automatically mounted (and a link created to it). Thus, making your home folder /Users/moo point to the sparsebundle file within /Users/.moo. If you right click (or CTRL + click) on your home folder in the Finder and select Get Info, you should see thats its a Volume of a disk image with something like /Users/.moo/moo.sparsebundle. I beleive du reports its twice as its simply traversing the same effective folder structure again.


Macbook Pro Retina running at native resolution A question I've had in my head since I first saw screenshots of the display preference pane on the new Retina MBP is this: Can it be made to run with what you could call a 1.0 UI scaling factor (same amount of pixels for the same widget as you'd get on a regular MBP or say, an iMac)?

To clarify, the preference pane appears to allow you to select between several predefined scaling factors from "Like 1920x1200" (UI scaling factor = 1.5) through "Like 1440x900" (UI scaling factor = 2.0) to "Like 1024x640" (UI scaling factor = 2.8125) and there is also a radio button for "Best for Retina display".

Does this radio button for "Best for Retina display" set the UI scaling to 1.0 or does it simply set the scaling to the "default" 2.0?

If the latter, has anyone checked if there's some defaults write com.apple.[...] 1.0 setting available which forces the scaling of the UI to 1.0?

It might not always be a useful mode to run things in but I can see several use cases where it would be very useful for me to be able to set the UI scaling to 1.0 rather than somewhere between 1.5 and 2.8125...

See http://osxdaily.com/2012/06/18/3-ways-to-run-a-retina-macbook-pro-at-2880x1800-native-resolution/

There is no bundled way to do it yet, but four apps provide this ability:

  SwitchResX:
  A reasonably simple solution, SwitchResX is a third-party preference panel that allows you to run custom resolutions on any display. Install the preference panel, select the Retina Display, and add a custom resolution setting for 2880×1800.

  SetResX:
  Probably the easiest option of them all, SetResX is a little menu-bar app that allows you to run 2880×1800 easily.

  scrutil:
  Slightly more advanced due to the nature of the command line, the free utility called screenutil gets the job done immediately with a quick entry into the Terminal.

  ChangeResolution:
  ChangeResolution is a new tiny AppleScript front end to a command line utility that changes the resolution to 2880×1800.


How to force passcode unlock on iPhone SE lock screen? I want to be able to unlock my phone when I’m wearing touch screen compatible gloves. Touch ID doesn’t work with gloves. When I tap the home button to unlock, (sometimes) the phone doesn’t do anything. Just stays on the lock screen. This behavior is inconsistent.
If I hold down the home button it activates Siri.
When this is happening, it doesn’t matter how much I mash the home button, I cannot get the phone to give me the option to use my passcode. I have to take my gloves off and use Touch ID.

On some occasions there is a tap here to use passcode link but I don’t know what the logic is to get that link to appear.

Any advice?

iPhone SE
iOS 11.2.6

Old post. I know. I was bothered with this problem for a loooong long time. Hence, I was looking for solution, while reading this topic here (thanks for that) i !accidently! found the solution:
SOLUTION on iPhone SE (iOS 14.2:

press either the home or on/off button ONCE
wait a short while (approx. 0,63468 seconds) ;-)
press the home button

TOUCH ID or Enter Passcode shows up
OMG, it is so simple. I was so frustrated. Hitting my home button so often, angry about Apple,... Now its all gone. Simple and easy solution.


Does the Macbook Pro (Late 2011) lack any air vents? First let me say this is my first Mac so i know nothing of anything as far as Macs go.

I notice that the Macbook Pro, unlike any Windows laptop I've ever had, from what I see, doesn't have any air vents. Is this possible or am I missing something?

I'm a bit tense because when I travel I put it in a tight sleeve case and I'm paranoid that it'll suffocate and burn out if it can't breathe when its on.

Does it have vents somewhere to dissipate heat? If no, can it be put in a tight pleather case and it be ok or should I still turn it completely off when in a case?

Four vents exist on the retina Macbook Pro 15".
Two vents exist on the non-retina Macbook Pro 15", 17" models.
One vent only on the Macbook Air 11" & 13" and non-retina Macbook Pro 13".

The outflow vents are located right 'between' the display and keyboard on the vertical rear face of the unibody frame. Shine a light on the display hinge from above and below and you can see the little holes best when looking down along the display from a very steep angle.

While the non-retina MBP take all of the inflowing air from the remaining space next to the outflow vents of the display hinge - the retina Macbook Pro has an additional two vents for air intake on the side where external ports are located.

Apple has done an amazing job at the dB noise they make when idle (~2000rpm).

When the fans kick in because of heavy CPU/GPU usage you'll definitely hear them. They will go up to ~6000rpm. Tracking fan RPM with software will be your best method to know if the case you have is insulating the frame. Increased idle fan speed will compensate for a case that insulates the frame and traps heat from below. The unibody frame in in close thermal contact with the CPU/GPU so a good proportion of the idle heat actually escapes through the keyboard and topcase.

You might also be interested in Apple's advice for Mac care.

[picture from ifixit]


iCal DAV The Server Responded with an Error (HTTP 302) after sleeping Often when my Macbook Pro Retina has been asleep, I get the following upon waking up:

It is irritating because I get the bouncy iCal icon in my doc and have to dismiss the error message every time. Anyone know how to prevent this?

Several things could cause this, but you could eliminate or reduce the chance by doing any or all of the following:

Turn off all networking before sleeping.
Reduce the refresh time period for that calendar to avoid it refreshing while the system is waking or getting re-connected with an available network.
Quit Calendar before sleeping.
Move the calendar to another hosting site (assuming it's not really the Mac that's causing the http error.)


Mission Control not working Mission Control isn't working on my Mac. I've tried killing the Dock through Terminal and Activity Monitor multiple times, but nothing seems to be working. Even shortcuts or Hot Corners don't work anymore.

What do I do?

This was happening to me for a long time and I did some research and found out how to fix it.
Go into terminal and run the following commands.

defaults write com.apple.dock mcx-expose-disabled -bool FALSE
killall Dock

This should fix all of your problems.


Built-in iSight camera in MacBook Pro stops working in Skype I'm using macbook pro mid 2009. Everything is working good but my camera. The problem is camera stops working after 1-2 minutes in skype chat. And during the conversation I can't close my camera because camera icon is not working. Is that problem about camera or skype? And how can i fix it ?

I've seen problems like this before with Skype and I'm pretty sure there's nothing you can do about it.  Make sure you're not running any other apps that are using the camera and that you've got the latest version of Skype installed.  I've found that sometimes going into the Skype preferences and clicking on the "Audio/Video" icon can "free" it up.


Remove Caps Delay MBP15 Touchbar Late 2016 I've noticed very strange behavior of the internal keyboard's caps lock on a MBP15 Touchbar MacBookPro13,3 10.12.4 Sierra.

Ever since, I've remapped caps to ctrl. Now, with the new MBP when I press caps + a key repeatedly, or hold it, some strokes are omitted.

That results in very annoying behavior, for example in Terminal when I press caps-c, sometimes ^C and sometimes c is sent to the terminal.

I've tried the following to pin down the problem but couldn't find a solution

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false
defaults write -g InitialKeyRepeat -int 10 # normal minimum is 15 (225 ms)
defaults write -g KeyRepeat -int 1 # normal minimum is 2 (30 ms)
disabling Accessibility tools like BTT or Spectacle
no .inputrc
rebooting to login screen and pressing caps multiple times also seems to omit some key presses
remapping caps to command and trying to open multiple tabs in Chrome with caps-t results in some tabs getting creating but also ttttt being entered into the URL bar
enabling Accessibility > Keyboard > Slow Keys in Preferences and setting a short delay decreases the likelihood of the problem a bit but it is still there and the setting also makes me type much slower
external keyboard caps remapping works and is without delay, so it seems to be a MBP15 2016 keyboard firmware issue

It seems Apple previously regressed on the caps delay 'feature' in 2014. Is this another regression in 2016?

Anyone knows a solution or can reproduce?

I was able to solve the problem. It seemed that the MBP was in some kind of HID configuration state which enabled the delay. To get the MBP out of the state, I reimplemented the 2015 Linux solution under macOS / IOKit. Sending 09 00 00 00 to the Keyboard, and then going through the remapping in Preferences again, removed the delay.


Getting an unlocked iPhone 4/4S to work on T-Mobile There are several aspects I'm not clear on, and I'm wondering if what I want is even possible.

1) I want an unlocked (officially; no jail-breaking) iPhone 4/iPhone 4S. The iPhone 4 unlocked is currently $550 for 8GB at Apple. I think they'll be announcing the pricing for the iPhone 4S unlocked sometime in November.

2) I'm only interested in a month-to-month plan from T-Mobile. I see some listed here: T-Mobile Plans The one that looks best to me is the new $30 "Unlimited Web and Text with 100 Minutes Talk". I've noted that only the first 5gb of data are at up to 4G speeds, I guess the rest go back down to 2G. This will be more than enough for me.

Is this possible? Will the iPhone 4 get 4G speeds even though it is not "supposed" to be on the T-Mobile network? If this is possible, how do I go about doing it? It looks like I need a "micro-SIM"? I'm fine with giving up my old cell phone number. Are there any potential issues with trying to get this (i.e. Does t-mobile only give me a micro-SIM with a "qualifying" phone purchase or something? Or do they have to activate the phone "in-store" or something?)

Any potential issues you guys notice?

Will the iphone get 4g speeds

No it won't. iPhones, even 4 and 4S, are not 4G devices. The 4 is for the iPhone fourth generation, but they are in reality 3G devices. So you won't get better speed than 3G (for sure).

I'm not sure for the network itself since I'm in Canada and I don't look at US providers very often. From memory T-Mobile has a different (AWS) network than AT&T so that could also affect your connectivity and speed. You better check the phone versus provider specifications (or someone else doing the same as you).


How to terminate cleanly another session left running? I am the admin on a shared MacOS X: Big_server running Yosemite.
The version of MacOS isn't a key information: I had the same kind of problem on all versions of MacOS.

But today I have a practical big case and time to analyze and test solutions.
Big_server is hosting professionnal services (firewall and mail server)
and can't be rebooted to play.

I have another user bob who left his session open.
He forgot to close it and is on vacation for many weeks.
Hence the console is locked waiting for his password.
I know how to kill bob's session like a pig.

However, I noticed that this colleague has more than 50 processes running,
some of them terminating with:

...Support/photolibraryd
.../com.apple.CloudPhotosConfiguration
...

and I would like to avoid corrupting any of his libraries or files
which might have been left opened.

How may I terminate cleanly bob's session without corrupting his data?

Bob’s user can send a Kill signal to all their processes.

sudo su - bob
kill -9 -1

This leaves all non Bob processes running and sends the non maskable SIGKILL to all processes by that UID. On newer os, some processes will respawn as uses Bob, but you’ll have cleaned them up momentarily and the old session will be gone.


App no longer available in store. Transfer from old iPhone to new iPhone? I have an app on my iPhone 4S called 7 Second Diet. It is no longer available on the app store. Luckily, it is still available on my iPhone 4S.

Two days ago, I bought a iPhone 6S. The transfer process was relatively painless. Everything copied across, and all the apps started downloading, except 7 Second Diet.

I still have the app on my iPhone 4S. I am looking for a way to transfer it to my new iPhone 6S.

iTunes used to let you save your apps to your Mac, but they have removed this feature in iTunes 12.4.1.

  With iOS 9 or later, apps will not sync or transfer to iTunes via Transfer Purchases. If you would like to download your apps to your iTunes library, make sure to turn on Automatic Downloads for your iTunes purchases. You can also download past purchases. Source.

I tried a third party solution called iMazing and while this allowed me to copy the 7 Second Diet app off my iPhone 4S and onto my Mac as an .imazingapp file, it was unable to copy the app to my iPhone 6S. It gave a message saying I had to download the app from the app store to the phone before restoring it.

I also tried the download your past purchases technique in iTunes 12.4.1, but the app does not show up there either.

Does anyone have any solutions? Most solutions I can find only, including here on the Apple Stack Exchange, are out of date and not compatible with iTunes 12.4.1.

After a hideous amount of time and effort, I finally found a way to get my apps that are "no longer available on the App Store" and do not show up under "Purchased" from my old iPad to my new iPad Pro.

It requires that you have backed up your computer over the past few years, or at least one year.

Ensure that your iPad is not plugged into iTunes. Close itunes.
Find your backup.
In Finder, search ".ipa". (Note: just searching for the app name.ipa does not always work, nor will searching for the iTunes mobile applications folder always display the .ipa files within it. No idea why.)
Locate the .ipa file for your missing app or apps.
Copy them to a new and accessible folder.
Open iTunes. Click Library.
"Drag and drop" your .ipa file INTO the field of app icons. They should copy over.
Now plug iPad in to your computer.
Click on the little device icon to open up your device in iTunes.
Click Apps.
The list should now include your missing app.
Either drag it onto your Homescreen on the righthand panel, or change the app's button to "Will Install".
Click DONE.
Dialog appears: "You've changed settings... apply?" Click APPLY.
Apps should now be installed on your device!

If only a few of your apps install, and you get an "Could not sync xx number of apps" error, disconnect and do a hard reboot of your device (hold both buttons down), restart and reconnect. Check in iTunes that things have not been reordered; reposition if necessary, then click DONE-APPLY again.

Related things I have discovered, to my dismay:

Apple is culling older apps off the App Store at an alarming rate - three times as many last month than ever before. Back up your apps now, separately!
Itunes no longer saves your full app, so it is up to you to do so manually.

In Setting-About on the iPad, a list shows on the left supposedly of all the apps installed on your device. THIS IS NOT ACCURATE. I did a spotlight search and found dozens of other apps that were actually installed, but not showing in that list! Some of them had icons on the screens, too.
Further, when I did a restore from the older iPad to the newer one, the newer iPad not only did not list every app that ended up installed, but some apps that did NOT SHOW IN THE LIST AS INSTALLED on the old iPad DID install on the new one, verified by Spotlight search! The moral: do NOT rely on that list!

Some older apps that started with a symbol of digit have been renamed with it spelled out. Adjust your search to that. Example: #photos is now Hashphotos.

Some older apps were discarded and started anew by the developer, with a similar but not identical name. Find the name of the developer for your app and search as to what other apps they have made. You may find the newer version, and if it requires payment, sometimes contacting the developer and telling them you have the old one that won't work now will result in them sending you access.

Some older apps do things that Apple is not allowing anymore. In some cases, by installing the oldest .ipa version you can find in your backups restores its original functions... if you are lucky.

If you do manage to install some very old apps on your new device, they may not work well, or may just plain crash. No guarantees.

No app icon showing up on the device, yet Spotlight Search finds it? You may have all your Homescreens filled up to capacity. There is a limit (20 pages, I believe; do not quote me on that). If this is the case, apps WILL install, but the icons themselves are "hidden". Once you group apps into folders and free up spots for icons, they will one by one appear.

I hope this helps someone, and you do not have to go through what I did to learn all of this from scratch!


Mail.app on Mac corrupting PDFs A co-worker is having an issue where PDFs sent as attachments are being corrupted.  If opened through webmail, the attachment is fine.  Any ideas here?

I've rebuilt the Mailbox (using Mail.app's built in feature), but it happened after it.

Macbook Air
2012 Model
10.8.3
Google Apps IMAP
Happening to PDFs randomly and a powerpoint.

I had a similar issue at one point.

Try clicking the save button on the top-right corner of the email and designate where to save the files. Then open the file through finder (instead of just clicking on the pdf within the email). This worked for me.


My built-in audio output doesn't work I just noticed my built-in audio output doesn't work anymore (MacBook Pro, late 2008). I've tried all sorts of headphones, but none of them seemed to work. Right now I'm using an external USB soundcard, but I'd really like to figure out what happened here. I haven't installed, upgraded or updated anything at all: it just happened. Do you guys have any suggestions about this? What kind of data should I look for to help debug/diagnose?

Look if you have red glow coming of it. And if it is showing digital Out in Sound Preferences.

If it is the case take a toothpick to the rescue!


OSX version of `mount -l` On Linux mount -l nicely lists all my mount points:

mount [-l] [-t type]
    lists all mounted filesystems (of type type). The option -l
    adds the labels in this listing. See below

The same command does not seem to exist on OS X... Can someone point me to the right command?

In Terminal type, man mount and press enter.

It says:

  The system maintains a list of currently mounted file systems. If no
  arguments are given to mount, this list is printed.

So, in Terminal type, mount and press enter.


How do I make a bash script so that I can drag its input on top of the icon? I need to make a bash script to that I can drag a .rar file on top of it and then the script will receive the pathname of that file as argument 1 ($1).

I have made the bash script, but how do I make it to be an application (right now MAC OSX is treating it as a text file even though I did chmod +x) and how do I enable the drag and drop way of sending a file to my script?

You should be able to turn your script into an application with Automator - Applications -> Utilities -> Automator.app. Look for an option called "Run Shell Script" and once you're done, it should behave like other apps in that anything that is dragged and dropped on it will be run with it. Good luck!


Firefox keyboard conflict: Command key, Control key, and Contextual Menus I am using OSX 10.8, Firefox 17, and ruTorrent, a front-end webapp that displays a list of files on a server.

Clicking on files while holding down the command key only highlights the newly clicked file. Discontiguous file selection is not possible.

Clicking on files while holding down the control key results in two sets of contextual menus (shortcut menus) appearing one atop the other: Firefox's shortcut menu (in System font) and ruTorrent's shortcut menu (in smaller Web app font, beneath). One click of the mouse dismisses the Firefox menu.

I would like to know (1) how to get the command key and the control key to work normally within the ruTorrent webapp or, at the very least, (2) how to disable shortcut menus on the Firefox layer.

The contextual menu problem was resolved when I updated my version of Firefox from 17 (December 2012) to 23(!) in September 2013. The built-in update button within Firefox updated my app to 17.0.2esr (security updates) and offered no info about the later versions.

Only after searching other Firefox questions here did I notice someone mentioning version 20 and up. I do not know why Firefox 17 did not issue an alert or a chance to upgrade itself to a higher version, or if it did, why I had not noticed that as it climbed from version 17 to 23.

The noncontiguous selection problem (clicking while holding the command key) still remains, but I suspect it is a problem with PHP5.0, the language the Web app is programmed in, or a bug within the app's code.


How do I open the Xcode programming environment in Windows? I'm having trouble opening Xcode 9 beta 4 on my Windows computer. It's the first time I've tried downloading Xcode, and I think the problem may be my computer isn't able to open .xip files but I'm not confident. Any insight or advice?

Xcode can not run on Windows

You will need to install macOS/OSX in a virtual environment, like VMWare or VirtualBox in order to use Xcode on Windows.  https://blog.udemy.com/xcode-on-windows/  Alternatively you could look into other IDEs that allow cross-compiling if you want to code on windows but deploy on mac.  See this previous question:  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/693952/how-to-compile-for-os-x-in-linux-or-windows


Does my sound card support hardware volume control? I would like to check whether one of my sound cards supports hardware volume control, and whether MacOSX has detected it. Under linux I would use:

cat /proc/asound/Audio/usbmixer

And I would get a response like:

USB Mixer: usb_id=0x262a10e1, ctrlif=1, ctlerr=0
Card: HiFimeDIY Audio SA9023 USB Audio at usb-musb-hdrc.1.auto-1, full speed
  Unit: 9
    Control: name="PCM Playback Volume", index=0
    Info: id=9, control=2, cmask=0x3, channels=2, type="S16"
    Volume: min=-14080, max=0, dBmin=-5500, dBmax=0
  Unit: 9
    Control: name="PCM Playback Switch", index=0
    Info: id=9, control=1, cmask=0x0, channels=1, type="INV_BOOLEAN"
    Volume: min=0, max=1, dBmin=0, dBmax=0

That shows I do have a hardware playback volume. Is there an equivalent command in OS X? I tried using system_profiler command, but it returns more than 50,000 lines of response with tens of entries related to my sound card, and I don't exactly know what keyword I have to look for.

The system_profiler data type corresponding to audio device information is SPAudioDataType, so you can run:

system_profiler SPAudioDataType

But this won't yield much information about hardware volume control capability of your sound card.

A better way of checking for more specific hardware information is to use ioreg command. In order to check whether your sound card supports hardware volume control run the following and then check whether your sound card appears in the results:

ioreg -trc IOAudioLevelControl

My Cambridge Audio USB DAC that doesn't have support hardware volume control does not appear on this list, while my other DACs and sound cards do appear on it.

If you are using an external USB device, you can also run the following to make sure your device is recognized as an audio device:

ioreg -trc AppleUSBAudioEngine

If your device supports hardware volume control, you will see one or more IOAudioLevelControl entries under your audio device's entry.

But apart from all the command line mumbo jumbo you can as well check the OSX's volume control when using your sound card to see if it is disabled!


Pop up on Mac from AVG I installed AVG antivirus then  deleted it using the AVG website.  I keep getting popups on my iMac using Yosemite 10.10 stating Problem Report for Loader Agent. The popup persists even though the program has been deleted properly. The path to the file is: Library/Application Support/AVG/*/LoaderAgent.app./Contents/MacOS/.  AVG support has not been helpful to delete the popup.

Please advise.

After further investigations i found that LoaderAgent is part of the AVG LinkScanner installation. So download the installer and use the uninstaller in the dmg. It removes the LoaderAgent.app and supplemental files and folders.

Just for record keeping, my earlier answer:

  Which AVG Antivirus did you install? Did you get the installer package from a reliable source?

  The latest AVG Antivirus for Mac doesn't create a folder named AVG in /Library/Application Support/ - at least for me using the free installer and not subscribing to any additional services or installing AVG Cleaner or PrivacyFix. Instead the folder is named com.avg.Antivirus. Especially it doesn't contain a LoaderAgent.app in any of the subfolders. Moreover I can't uninstall it "using the AVG website".

  To get rid of the remnants of your AVG deinstallation, download and install "LaunchControl"

  Open the app and search for avg in Global Agents/Global Daemons.

  Uncheck all radio buttons to disable the jobs

  Quit LaunchControl, go to /Library/LaunchAgents and /Library/LaunchAgents, check for plists containing avg and open Terminal.app

  Enter sudo launchctl unload <-Drop the *.plist here and hit Enter to unload all related services. If the plist is a symbolic link or an alias right-click it and choose "Show Original" and use the original plist. You have to enter an admin password then.
  Repeat that for every plist containing *.avg.

  Then enter sudo rm <-Drop the *.plist here and hit Enter
  Repeat that for every plist containing *.avg.

  Navigate to /Library/Application Support/ with
  cd /Library/Application\ Support and hit Enter.

  Then enter sudo rm -dfR AVG and hit Enter.

  Restart your Mac.


Apple RAM for MacBook Pro vs other brands Possible Duplicate:
  Apple-Certified RAM?

Apple RAM for the unibody MacBook Pro's typically has a large markup to it. I am wondering if it's different than Crucial or other brands in quality..

I have also used Crucial memory in my MacBook Pros and have never had an issue with it.

Apple's support doc gives the memory specs to match against and does not require "Apple" RAM.


Can the iOS 6 setup assistant be re-run a second time without erasing my iPhone? After upgrading my 3GS to iOS 6, I had to make an urgent phone call. Thus, when the iOS 6 setup wizard showed, I just hit "skip", "continue", and "accept" whenever possible.

Now that the phone call is made and I have time to spare, I'd like to go through the setup again. Is it possible to restart the setup wizard (without having to restore my device and reinstall iOS 6)?

If this is not possible, which settings should I check and which steps should I take to make sure everything is set up correctly?

If I recall correctly - perhaps others can help flesh out any missing details - the setup wizard primarily lets you sign in with / sign up for an Apple ID to use for iCloud, it asks you to agree to the iCloud Terms of Service, and it asks about setting up Location Services.

All of these can be accessed directly through the Settings app at any time. I don't believe you will miss any important functionality by missing the wizard, especially if you were previously using your iPhone with iCloud in iOS5.


Time capsule wired backup transfer slow with fast "bursts" I have recently bought a 3TB A1470 Time capsule (the latest, 'tall' ac model) to replace a 2TB A1409 (the 'flat' one, n model).

The Airport utility was helpful in moving the network settings over from one device to the next.

I would also like to transfer the exiting backup as per these instructions, i.e. by connecting the old time capsule to the new one and connecting my macbook to the old time capsule.

Everything works but according to the estimates, copying over 1.4 TB of backup would take 2 days over what is supposedly all Gigabit Ethernet connections...

Finding this a bit ridiculous I decided to look at the troughput over my connections using Activity Monitor:

300 GB in, the results are quite odd: most of the time, throughput is quite low, hovering around 5MB/s but every few minutes or so the speed will increase dramatically (as pictured) but these higher speeds can never be maintained.

Both TC's are on the latest firmware, as is my macbook Air. Wireless on both TC's is disabled and the computer is not doing anything else and fully up-to-date.

Could it be that the TC's are throttling their CPU's or something?

EDIT

I also noticed that with increasing throughput, the CPU usage on the macbook goes up, but this might be normal as I am using the Thunderbolt GigE adapter.

EDIT 2

After giving rsync a try as outlined here it seems that my concept of what a .sparsebundle is, is wrong.

After running rsync, it started to secures through thousands of files... so probably, the sparse bundle is not treated as a single huge file that needs to be copied but rather like a directory of files. This might explain variations in transfer speed? (just thinking out loud here)

Time Machine runs as a low priority process by default, and this will cause it to be throttled whenever a higher priority process runs (and possibly to optimize energy usage on battery), hence the performance bursts.

You can disable throttling for Time Machine with:

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

Keep in mind this might increase power usage on battery.

This setting will be lost on reboot. To make it permanent, create a launch daemon:

sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/nothrottle.plist

Enter this text in the file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>nothrottle</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/sbin/sysctl</string>
<string>debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Save it and exit nano (Press ctrl+X, then Y when asked to save changes)

Then enable the launch daemon:

sudo chown root /Library/LaunchDaemons/nothrottle.plist

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/nothrottle.plist

Backups should now be performed at maximum performance.

In case you want to re-enable throttling, run:

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=1

If you had enabled the launch daemon, run:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/nothrottle.plist

Source


MBP 15" Retina problems: one display hinge is way too tight I'm trying to nurse my Mid-2014 Macbook Pro Retina 15" through at least another year. Unfortunately, the hinges seem to be going bad. They were getting loose, but in the last few days the right rear one has become very hard to close, such that if I push the lid closed by the front edge it pops back up about 1 1/2":

For some reason, both hinges open just fine; it's just the right hinge that refuses to close. If I push hard right next to the hinge I can get it to stay closed, but it's getting to the point where I can see the display housing bend near the hinge due to the force.

I can pop the bottom housing off and see the hinges/clutches, and they look OK, but of course I can't see the contact area between the two parts:

I'm concerned that something will snap if the friction gets any worse. I'm fine with hardware repair (I've already replaced the battery; thanks, iFixIt!), but I can't find the hinges for sale on their own; they always come with the display for $400+. I could drop some lithium grease on the hinge, but if it turns out to be a bad idea there's no way I'd get it off. And, I'd rather not hack an ugly solution if at all possible.

Any ideas how I can tame this hinge?

And the final cause: both hinges are fractured, and in the same place. Here's the right hinge, unscrewed and levered open (and after lubrication; see below):

.. and the left hinge:

Each hinge consists of a tube (anchored to the display, and with a cable down the core), plus a bracket (anchored to the main chassis). The bracket consists of two curled pieces which wrap around the tube in opposite directions. On both hinges, the inside "curl" is broken at the base of the bracket:

This explains another symptom; where the display used to open out to a certain point and then hit a stop, it now opens to almost completely parallel to the table.

Now, I'll be the first to admit I've not been gentle with this computer (they're tools, not shrines to the Great God Jobs), but it's still surprising that both fractured in the same place.

The solution: as you can tell from the pictures, I lubricated both hinges with lithium grease (being as moderate as possible). The display now swings fairly freely, so the previous tension shouldn't cause any more damage. I may have to rig up some sort of brace to keep the display from falling flat onto the desk, though...

Edit: And yes: the hinges are now too loose, and the display will fall open or shut if it's more than ten or twenty degrees from vertical. I now have to prop the display up with my knees or a book. But, this is still better; I no longer risk breaking the chassis or the display frame. I'm thinking about portable ways to hold the display at a given angle; the final solution would still be to replace the hinges (if I can get the parts).


Start AFP Sharing on server before user login? I would like to have access to AFP Share from our clients possible as soon as the server's system is started, without one of the users needing to open a local session on it (on the server) first.

I'm not sure but I think it was working this way with previous versions of OS X (10.6 or 10.7, we're running the latest 10.8) : as soon as you got the login screen on the server, AFP Share(s) were accessible on the network.

To be as clear as possible, I'm NOT trying to have the AFP Share automounted on the clients. I'm already using scripts and launchd for this, and it's working absolutely fine (with the obvious exception of the clients having to wait for a user session to be opened on the server for the Share to become available).

The server is a 2013 iMac and the disk being shared is a Promise Pegasus R6 (a Thunderbolt RAID drive).

2014-04-09 : still the same with OS X 10.9.x, neither SMB nor AFP share are accessible before a user open a local session on the Mac computer acting as the file server.

2015-09-08 : I gave up on this as it is no longer relevant for us, but ditto for OS X 10.10.x

I would set up a user to automatically log in and lock the screen immediately with a password (or as close to immediately as you care.) That will mount the external drive and start up sharin for all users.

Alternatively, you could drop the $20 on OS X server and have it mount shares at boot like you rightly expect a server to behave.


External SATA PM (Port Multiplier) Enclosure w/ Mac Mini I'd love to use one of the new Mac Mini Server models as a backup server, but need a lot more space.

Has anybody tried attaching a port multiplied eSATA enclosure to the Mini? This is the one I'd really like to work: http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-5pm/

I've read a few things that imply that the system controller in the Mac Mini supports it.

No, the SATA the Mac Mini does not support port multipliers. Technically the MCP79 in it can support port multipliers, but either the driver or the firmware does not enable it.


Can macOS (Catalina) match a Brazilian Portuguese Windows keyboard layout? The Windows Portuguese keyboard has a different layout than the Apple Portuguese keyboard:
Here's the Windows version:

Here's the Apple's version:

I don't want to buy a new keyboard or learn a new keyboard layout (right now I am forced to use Windows because I can't use my keyboard on MacOS).
Can I remap macOS software to respect the Windows keyboard layout?

A free solution you could try is Karabiner-Elements. It allows you to remap keys to other keys.

Core features

Simple Modifications: Change normal keys to other keys.
Complex Modifications: Change keys by complex rules.
Change a key to combination of modifiers. (e.g. change capslock to control+command)

Change modifiers+key to key. (e.g. change control+m to return)
Send key events if a key is pressed alone.
Send key events if keys are pressed simultaneously.
Mouse keys.
etc.

Function Keys: Change f1-f12 keys to media controls.
Devices: Apply modifications to specified keyboards only.
Profiles: Support multiple profiles.
Modifier Flag Sync: Synchronize modifier flags across all connected keyboards.
Secure Keyboard Entry Support: Work well on Secure Keyboard Entry environment such as a password prompt, terminal with Secure Keyboard Entry, etc.

I have used it to bring an old Nostromo Speedpad2 back to life. And it's FREE!!


Prettify OS X console by coloring output? OS X terminal is not using colors for highlighting output from different commands, for example ls.

When compared with other systems like Ubuntu, this is a big loss of accessibility/productivity.

What solutions do I have to improve this experience? For the moment I found only this guide for colored ls output under OS X but I am looking for a more complete solution.

you should change the Terminal.app preferences->advanced into xterm-color.
enter the following into your ~/.profile

for enable colored ls:

export CLICOLOR=1;
export LSCOLORS=exfxcxdxbxegedabagacad;

and from now, you will get colored ls output.


todotxt color not working on iTerm2 Is anyone here using todotxt and iterm2?

I'm having a weird issue. When using default terminal app in OSX, my todotxt color is working just fine.

But when I switch to iterm2, the color is not displayed correctly.

I've changed color Report terminal type to xterm-256color and maxed out minimum contrast, but it still not working. BTW, I'm using oh-my-zsh as my shell. Anybody know how to fix it?? Thanks.

Turn minimum contrast back down—that's what's washing out the colors. It's meant to increase the contrast between foreground text and background color, which is making the colors look wrong.


How to install Fontin in Mac Could anyone please let me know how to install fontin which I download from Exljbris. I am new to mac so I am not sure what to do with .sit file.

First you have to get the file out of the .sit.

Head over to the Mac App Store and download either The Unarchiver or Stuffit Expander.

When you launch The Unarchiver, you’ll be asked where to extract stuff.

Would you like The Unarchiver to extract archives to the same folder as the archive file, or would you prefer to be asked for a destination folder for every individual archive?

Go ahead and choose Extract to the Same Folder, unless you have nothing better to do than answer your Mac’s constant questioning. You can then mess about with settings, or just click on the File menu and Unarchive your file. You can also drag a .sit file right to The Unarchiver’s Dock icon, or right click on a .sit file and choose Open With, then The Unarchiver.

The same goes for Stuffit expander – download it, let it install, and then use it to unarchive your .sit files. Easy!

Read more at

Open Font Book in your Applications folder.

Under File tab select Add Fonts,.

Find your file in the search window.


How can I disable all audio output from my OSX machine when the screen is locked Essentially, I often forget to turn the sound down/off when leaving my OSX machine for the day. Since my computer is in my living room, I inevitably get a notification of some kind while watching TV, and have to laboriously get up and turn the sound off.

(Note that I basically never shut it down, I always just use a sleep corner.)

Is there a setting for disabling audio output entirely when the computer is asleep?

I figured out you can do this with the "Do not Disturb" feature in System Preferences -> Notifications. I actually had it turned on, but had the checkbox with "From XXX to YYY" time checked. I unchecked that, and made sure the "When the display is sleeping" was checked, and that seems to do it!


Why does iCal forget the calendars? Sometime ago I noticed that iCal lost all my evens and calendars. Luckily I was somehow able to "re"-synchronize it with the Outlook calendar.

Yesterday the same happened. After opening iCal all my events calendars and tasks are deleted. The funny think here is, if it comes closes to an event it still keeps me notifying that the event will happen.

Did someone experience something similar? How can I prevent iCal from forgetting the events and calendars?

I am working with Snow Leopard and iCal 4.0.4 and Office for Mac (but I do not use Outlook itself). Everything is stored locally and not synchronized with any iCloud, Google Calendar or services like that.

Make sure that in your iCal settings all of the boxes about deleting past events are unchecked.

Also, if you have numerous devices' calendars syncing to your Mac/iCloud, make sure that in each device (i.e. iPad, iPhone etc) under calendar settings the "delete events older than..." are disabled.


Can I Recover Lost Emails on iPad After Changing Password? Short Story: I recently lost all my sent emails (POP3) on my iPad when I migrated my server and password.  The domain name and username did not change.  Is there any way to recover those sent emails?

Longer Story: My web host just migrated to a new system.  They advised me my account might not work.  When my email went down, I moved everything to my secondary server.

I didn't change my email address, but I had to change my password for email on this secondary server, because of its password rules. At this point, all my emails, inbox and sent, were still on my iPad.

When I updated the password on my iPad so it would download emails from the new server, everything else disappeared.  All my old inbox messages, and all my sent emails.

I can recover my Inbox from archives on the old server, but it doesn't have my sent emails. Support tells me those were only local.

I'm hoping there's some way to recover those.

Thanks for your advice.

Alec

After being told on the Apple Discussion boards that this can't be done, I found a solution.

I re-entered all the original log in information into the account details.  It took a bit to get them to stick, because iPad kept trying to verify the account, which it couldn't do, because the legacy server wasn't responding, but I finally got it.  Once the I had the original credentials entered, all the original Inbox and Sent emails were back.

One important key: Although I didn't change my email address, the new server did require a different username syntax.  The old username was just "name" while the new username was "name@mydomain.com".  That little change is what caused iPad to decide it was an entirely different account.


cant reset disabled iphone 6s plus my iPhone is completely disabled due to too many failed password attempts. it says in the screen "iPhone disabled connect to iTunes" but i dont have a mac-book. i also want to reset my iPhone with the buttons but when i press and hold both power and home button (how it says you reset it) it just turns back on to the same screen that says to connect to iTunes. can someone please help!!

Download iTunes for windows here and follow the recovery procedure.


How to get user GUI input from BASH scripts? From a BASH script I want to get user input and change system settings, in a loop.  I first tried cocoaDialog but that has a fatal flaw: the dialogs are always on top of other windows.

Ideally, I could throw up a dialog with "set sleep mode" and "set awake mode" (for toggling the "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" setting) buttons and the dialog/window would stay put when buttons are pressed.  In the case of cocoaDialog, I had to put up a new dialog each time a button was pressed.  It would have been fine, but aside from the above problem already mentioned, putting up a new dialog positions it in the middle of the screen and not where the old one was (and cocoaDialog doesn't have positioning arguments for dialogs).

Anyone know of a solution?  I suspect AppleScript would work, but it is so complex and I've not been able to find suitable examples I could copy/modify.

Thanks.

I've found two solutions.  The best one is second.

Solution #1: use Tcl/Tk:

#! /usr/bin/env wish8.5
# Adapted from brilliant example here:
#   http://stackoverflow.com/questions/166231/tcl-tk-examples

package require Tk

proc main {} {
if {[lsearch -exact [font names] TkDefaultFont] == -1} {
    # older versions of Tk don't define this font, so pick something
    # suitable
    font create TkDefaultFont -family Helvetica -size 12
}
# in 8.5 we can use {*} but this will work in earlier versions
eval font create TkBoldFont [font actual TkDefaultFont] -weight bold

buildUI
}

proc buildUI {} {
frame .toolbar
scrollbar .vsb -command [list .t yview]
text .t \
    -width 80 -height 10 \
    -yscrollcommand [list .vsb set] \
    -highlightthickness 0
.t tag configure command -font TkBoldFont
.t tag configure error   -font TkDefaultFont -foreground firebrick
.t tag configure output  -font TkDefaultFont -foreground black

grid .toolbar -sticky nsew
grid .t .vsb  -sticky nsew
grid rowconfigure . 1 -weight 1
grid columnconfigure . 0 -weight 1

set i 0
foreach {label command} {
    awake     {prevent_computer_sleep}
    sleep     {allow_computer_sleep}
    status    {pmset -g | grep sleep}
} {
    button .b$i -text $label -command [list runCommand $command]
    pack .b$i -in .toolbar -side left
    incr i
}
}

proc output {type text} {
.t configure -state normal
.t insert end $text $type "\n"
.t see end
.t configure -state disabled
}

proc runCommand {cmd} {
output command $cmd
set f [open "| $cmd" r]
fconfigure $f -blocking false
fileevent $f readable  [list handleFileEvent $f]
}

proc closePipe {f} {
# turn blocking on so we can catch any errors
fconfigure $f -blocking true
if {[catch {close $f} err]} {
    output error $err
}
}

proc handleFileEvent {f} {
set status [catch { gets $f line } result]
if { $status != 0 } {
    # unexpected error
    output error $result
    closePipe $f

} elseif { $result >= 0 } {
    # we got some output
    output normal $line

} elseif { [eof $f] } {
    # End of file
    closePipe $f

} elseif { [fblocked $f] } {
    # Read blocked, so do nothing
}
}

main

where prevent_computer_sleep just does sudo pmset sleep 0 and allow_computer_sleep does sudo pmset sleep 1.

Solution #2: modify KeepingYouAwake to use system sleep and not display sleep: my fork of KeepingYouAwake.


Dropbox Install in Data Partition between OS X and Windows 7 Boot Camp I have a Data partition between OS X Mavericks and Windows 7 Boot Camp. I have my Dropbox folder in the partition. I have tried using it in the past formatted as exFAT. This was unsatisfactory in that it would not stay indexed in OS X, and there were other issues.

I have now formatted the Data partition as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then on Windows 7, I have a trial version of Paragon HFS+ for Windows installed.

Here is my issue. OS X creates a bunch of files in Dropbox ending in com.dropbox.attributes. There is at least one of these almost for every file in Dropbox. From OS X these do not sync to the Dropbox server and are hidden. However, in Windows they are visible and sync to the Dropbox server.

I would like to do two things:

Hide them in Windows 7
Prevent them from syncing to the Dropbox server in Windows 7

(By the way, I have already tried running a command in Windows that hides all of these files.  It only worked temporarily. As soon as Dropbox was back up and running they re-appeared.)

Please let me know if you need any more information or clarification.

Update:
I appreciate the input, Rich. After looking here more closely, I can see how it is pretty much a lost cause without Dropbox's fix for it. By my post I was curious if hiding or making them marked as "system files" would make a difference or to see if there were other ideas. I had tested the possibility of running a bat file on startup that did the following (hide and mark them as a "system file"):
attrib +S +H *.dropbox.attributes /S
I learned quickly that the issue is that Dropbox in conjunction with Windows 7 actually creates the com.dropbox.attributes files and that it is not OS X that creates the files. The extended attributes of OS X cause Windows to create them. So, they get created anew every time Dropbox runs in Windows. I will plan to file a bug report.

It is too bad that partitions between OS X and Windows don't play nice. My Data partition at home between two Linux distros and Windows 7 works beautifully, no such issues. Between OS X and Windows the extended attributes of OS X (in conjunction with Dropbox of course) seems to be the main culprit. This was the case when I tried to use this Data partition formatted as exfat. Who knows, maybe one day all OSs will be compatible with all formatting types and work well together.

There is nothing that you do about this other than try to hide them.   It occurs because one file system doesn't support extended attributes.

There have been quite a few posts on the dropbox forum and I suggest you file a bug report with dropbox.  They'll claim it is normal behavior but they still need to find a fix.


iMessage screen sharing is greyed out Why is the iMessage screen sharing option not available?
What causes it to be greyed out?

(see screenshot, green arrow)

Make sure the person is signed into iCloud (check System Preferences>iCloud). This fixed it for me.


How To Search For Property List Files That Contain A String On Mac Is there a way to search for all property list files that contain a certain string? Spotlight doesn't search inside .plist files.  Yes, I have 'System Files Are Included'.

For example, say a plist (the name of which is unknown) contains <string>abc</string>. Is there a way to search through the entire Mac for and output the file location of said plist?

EasyFind (Freeware) will find anything.

It will be slow, because it doesn't use an index, it searches file by file - but it will find it if it's there.

[No affiliation, just a satisfied user]


iPhone 4s can deleted text in spotlight be retrieved How do I retrieve erased text messages on iPhone 4s?
When I do a spotlight search part of the message is displayed so I asume the whole message is There, I just don't know how to extract the file.

When you delete a message from, for example the messages app, they will be deleted from you iDevice. A way to retrieve the message is restoring from a backup.

Normally the message shouldn't be shown in spotlight when it is deleted, so I unfortunately do not have an answer for that.


Command Line Tools fail to install OS X Lion 10.7.3 Xcode 4.3 I'm trying to install the command line tools to get gcc, make, and other goodies after a Lion upgrade. I went to Preferences → Downloads in Xcode and attempted to install the command line tools. At the end of the installation, an error box appears with the following message:

  The package “BluetoothSDK.pkg” is untrusted.

When I open up a terminal window and try to run gcc, the command is still not found.

Does anyone know why the Apple Developer Tools installer is broken?

Just in case anybody comes here after me, I will leave an answer. I found that you can install the command line tools using a separate .dmg file at this link:

https://developer.apple.com/downloads/?=command%20line%20tools


Your iPhone could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable My iPhone 5 that has been running iOS 7 since beta 1 suddenly wants to be activated.  When locked, it shows me my wallpaper. After sliding to unlock, it asks for my passcode. When I enter it, it takes me straight to the 'Activate iPhone' page - like it wants to be set up.

The text on the page:

  This iPhone is currently linked to an Apple ID (e**@icloud.com). Sign in with the Apple ID that was used to set up this iPhone.

After I input the correct credentials and press Next in the top right corner, the title of the page changes to 'Activating...', then changes back to how it was before.

About 15 seconds later, it transitions to a 'Could not activate iPhone' page:

  Your iPhone could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. Try connecting your iPhone to iTunes to activate it, or try again in a couple of minutes.

  If this problem persists, contact Apple Support at apple.com/support

Has anyone encountered this problem before? Is there a solution to it?

The two major causes of this are:

Network related - change the network used to connect
iOS related - something is amiss with the code signing / provisioning

The most likely cause of software is a beta. Apple disables the iOS betas soon after the release happens. If you never manually installed the official release, this can happen. If not, consider backing up your device after checking a couple networks and reinstalling.

If you need to get a beta off, do the following to fix it:

Hold the Power and Home buttons until the phone reboots and you see the Apple logo.
Release the Power button but keep holding the Home button.
Release the Home button when you see the iTunes logo and the connector below it.

Do this while connected to iTunes. Click Restore. Hopefully you have a recent back-up.

Note: It is a large update and will take a while. Apple servers are currently getting slammed.


Remote Desktop Gaming I am not sure if this is the right forum for this, but here goes.

I have a 2011 Thunderbolt iMac which I love dearly for it's beautiful display. Long story short, I know that there is no way that I can use it as a monitor for my gaming PC, but I was wondering if it would be possible for my iMac to control my gaming PC via the Remote Desktop Application or would there be too much lag? (both machines are on the same network so this would be done locally)

I cannot try this yet because I am still in the process of getting my PC back, but I am seeing this as the only viable solution at the moment other than just purchasing a monitor for it.

While this is theoretically possible, if you care about frame rates at all you would not do Remote Desktop for gaming. You would have a hard time getting frame rates above 15fps.

Remote Desktop is meant for logging into work computers from home, or controlling headless servers, not gaming.


Can I create two different Docks that I can switch back and forth between? I have two different accounts right now - one for work, one for play. It helps me stay focused, and it's quite useful.

However, sometimes I don't really love switching back and forth between user accounts sometimes. Thus, I've thought up an idea: What if I had 2 different Docks that I could switch between with a keyboard shortcut?

Thus, my question: Can I create 2 different Docks with 2 different sets of apps on each of them that I can switch between with a keyboard shortcut?

Example: Dock 1 has Finder, Mail, Safari, iTunes, Chrome, Trash on it; Dock 2 has Finder, Firefox, Trash, Opera, and Dictionary on it. I press Command-Option-0 and it switches to Dock 2. I press it again and it switches to Dock 1.

You could use an Automator service or one of the global-keybaord-trigger apps to run a script that switches between two different Dock preference plist files and then relaunches the Dock.

#!/bin/sh
#you'd have a dock-work.plist and dock-home.plist file

cd ~/Library/Preferences/

if [ -e dock-is-work.state ] ; then
    rm dock-is-work.state
    touch dock-is-home.state

    #save changes to existing Dock setup
    cp com.apple.dock.plist com.apple.dock-work.plist

    #copy home setup to main preference location
    cp com.apple.dock-home.plist com.apple.dock.plist
else
    rm dock-is-home.state
    touch dock-is-work.state

    #save changes to existing Dock setup
    cp com.apple.dock.plist com.apple.dock-home.plist

    #copy work setup to main preference location
    cp com.apple.dock-work.plist com.apple.dock.plist
fi

osascript -e "tell application \"Dock\" to quit"

(I haven't done bash if-then-else in awhile, so this might not execute as is.)


How to input accented characters to an OS running in a VM? I have a MacBook Pro with English (US) keyboard layout. I usually hold the right-alt (option) key, and press E to activate the accented vowel insertion (it shows a placeholder where the accented letter—á/Á, é/É, í/Í, ó/Ó, ú/Ú—would appear), and after pressing the corresponding vowel it will be inserted in place. Similar procedure using the N key to insert the ñ/Ñ characters.

I also have an Ubuntu Desktop computer with Latin American keyboard layout. Latin American Spanish keyboards have the acute accent character ´ right after the P key. In order to insert an accented vowel, you type first the acute accent, and then the vowel. Similarly to insert the ñ/Ñ characters, one would type the ~ character and then the n/N letter.

Everything fine until here.

The problem is when I have to run a Linux OS on a Virtual Machine (VirtualBox) on the Mac. I don't have the ´ character on the physical keyboard, and the right-alt (option) key doesn't have the same effect as in Mac OS.

The question here is, if there's a way to insert international (or at least accented vowels, which are the ones I mostly use) characters from the physical keyboard of the Mac, to the guest OS in the VirtualBox?

You can simply change the keyboard layout in Ubuntu without any changes to OS X:

Then you can type like you would do on your Latin American keyboard.


How to activate built-in PHP in macOS Server 5? On our macOS Server 5.2, I want to run a PHP site. So my idea was to use the built-in PHP in OS X Server by simply ticking the checkbox "Enable PHP" in the Server app at the Websites general configuration page.

However, when I open a page like test.php with some PHP code in it from a browser, the PHP code is not being interpreted but just delivered as is.

What am I missing?

Usually, it is not necessary to do something like this when configuring services using the Server app, but in this case I had to manually restart the web service:

sudo serveradmin stop web
sudo serveradmin start web

After that, the PHP on my page was interpreted as expected.


How to recover lost partition after diskutil erasevolume noformat I previously had 2 partitions on my 1TB hard drive...
- Partition 1 (disk0s4): Macintosh HD (which had OS-X and all my data)
- Partition 2 (disk0s2): Apple HD (which was a back-up partition)

I erased partition 2 and tried merging it with partition 1, but Disk Utility didn't allow it (the "-" button was inactive). I then used the command diskutil eraseVolume free %noformat% disk0s2, but now I've completely lost the space of partition 2.
When I type diskutil list, the following appears:

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.0 GB   disk0s4
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s7

I've tried resizing disk0s4 with the command diskutil resize volume disk0s4 R, but I get the following:

Resizing to full size (fit to fill)
Started partitioning on disk0s4 Macintosh HD
Verifying the disk
Verifying file system
Using live mode
Performing live verification
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK
File system check exit code is 0
Resizing
Error: -69742: The requested size change for the target disk or a related disk is too small; please try a different disk or partition, or make a larger change

Also, if I type diskutil cs list, I get:
No CoreStorage logical volume groups found

Is there a way to restore disk0s2? I'm afraid that if I reboot without recovering this partition, I might lose everything... Ideally, I'd prefer to recover the missing space from disk0s2 and merge it into disk0s4.

The problem has finally been resolved... I went into Internet Recovery (but normal Recovery will do as well) and "reactive" the partition with Disk Utility. The old version of Disk Utility that is used when in Recovery mode allows to do this whereas the new version in System Preferences has pretty limited functions.

Basically, the partition had just disappeared before... When using the command sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0 I had 4 partitions, but one without any identifier. As a result, I was unable to either mount or restore this lost partition with diskutil, as there was nothing to identify it. Sorry for not being any clearer, but since I restored everything, I don't have the output to demonstrate it anymore.

I still thank you for answering back!


Hiding home shares on file sharing computer Due to my email backup software, I had to create 'real' users on my 10.6.6 install rather that create 'share only' users.

Now when users connect to the shares, they see a full home folder as well as the shares I have setup.

Is there a way for me to turn off sharing home folders?

EDIT:

When a user logs onto the server, I only want them to see the assigned shares, not the automatically made 'home folder' share.  For instance, I make a user on the server called 'Bob', and three shares called "One', 'Two', 'Three'.  When Bob logs onto the server from another computer via finders 'SHARED' list, he sees four shares 'Bob', 'One', 'Two', 'Three', I do not want 'Bob' to show up on that list.

If you set up their accounts in the Accounts pref pane on the server as "sharing only" then they will only get access to shared folders set up in the Sharing pane of System Preferences.

See the Apple docs on creating a sharing only account.

Since you say the email backup software requires that the user has real folders, then you can't remove them as "shares", they have full access to these folders and the server will advertise that.

Without knowing why the email software requires the user to have folders then a workaround is difficult to find.


What is the appropriate size for album art to display correctly the iPad's retina display? What is the appropriate size for album art to display correctly on the 3rd generation iPad's retina display?

This is difficult to answer without any of us having access to an iPad with the retina display.

Therefore, I'll suggest the resolution which Apple provides when you get your covers via the option Get Album Artwork in iTunes. I hope this is fine, as long as you do not use coverflow in full screen mode.

The dimensions are:

max. vertical: 600 pixels
max. horizontal: 600 pixels

If a cover is not square, then one size dimension has less pixels.


OSx doesn't want to activate my Bluetooth dongle I recently bought an external bluetooth dongle to add BTLE support to my Macbook Pro 2011.  I'm running Yosemite 10.10.2.

I've read different blogs and posts here, indicating how to enable the external dongle, but they don't seem to work.  Following the answers to this AD question, I've tried downloading the Bluetooth Explorer found in the HardwareIOTools_Xcode_6.3.dmg package.  But when I navigate to Tools->HCI Controller Selector, and choose the Broadcomm dongle and click Activate, the built-in Apple BRCM device remains active, and doesn't activate my external dongle.

I've also tried to update the nvram settings and rebooting:

sudo nvram bluetoothHostControllerSwitchBehavior=always

but that too doesn't have any impact.

What am I missing or doing wrong?

It turns out Bluetooth Explorer has an awkward UI, whether by sloppy design, implementation, or bug.  The HCI Controller Selector does not show the active controller in the menu.  It shows you the first item of some default menu order, even after you've picked a different item and clicked Activate.  But the different controller was activated, even though it doesn't look like it—unless you pay attention to details in the drop-down menu.
It's easiest to see with pictures.  Here's what the Bluetooth Explorer HCI Controller Selector looks like when I launch it:

When I click on the menu I see this:

If I click on the "Cambridge Silicon Radio" item and then click Activate, Bluetooth connectivity is lost for a moment and from the behavior of my connected keyboard and trackpad when it comes back I am certain that the Cambridge radio was indeed made the active controller.  However, what the controller selector window looks like at this point is identical to the first image, as if the change was not made, even though it was.
However, if you look closely at that second image showing the pull-down menu opened up, you can see that it says "[ACTIVE]" next to the Cambridge item.  That's because I had previously made it active.  So there is a way to tell the activation worked; it's just not by looking at what the menu shows when it's collapsed.
So the technique you were trying to use probably worked, even though you had difficulty telling it.
I am still looking for a method to make the change permanent across reboots, but haven't found it.  The suggested nvram command doesn't work for that, at least not on my macOS Mojave 10.14.6 system.  I have it set to "always", but a reboot always goes back to the default, built-in Apple controller, which is a problem for my setup.


What does this black bar represent in my iPod's Storage Capacity Indicator? I was recently going through my (2nd Gen) iPod Touch's storage settings in the most recent version of iTunes and noticed that there is a small gray/black bar next to the "Other" storage section. I highly doubt that this is simply a drop shadow as other depictions of this graph do not feature such a bar.

What does this small bar represent?

Note: The small bar is outlined in red.

To my belief, that indeed is actually just a drop shadow. Since you're actually not on the newest version of iTunes, I can't verify that, since it looks different now, but here are a few photos:

iTunes 12 (latest version)

Version that looks the same as yours also showing shadow

Older version also displaying drop shadow

With that said, I could still be wrong. Check and make sure it isn't any of these categories:

Audio: Songs, audio podcasts, audiobooks, voice memos, and ringtones
Video: Movies, music videos, and TV shows
Photos: Camera Roll content, Photo Stream, and Photo Library
Apps: Installed apps
Books: iBooks books and PDF files
Documents & Data: Safari Offline Reading List, files created within apps, and app content like contacts, calendars, messages, and emails (and their attachments)
Other:
Settings, Siri voices, system data, and cached files


A3 printer for small office support / client visuals from CS6 (Mac) CC (Win) Looking for a 'yes this will work effectively' answer rather than opinions on brands or particular printers pros and cons. I am working in a small web dev' office currently providing the creative to a team of 6. Good hardware, server and LAN infrastructure internally which, although Win based, talks to the Mac's OK. Presentation is mostly digital although there is a requirement (at times) to paper visualise at A3, for example, to maintain a printed folio, provide client support and internal marketing. The creative output will driven from either of two i7 Quadcore Macs running OS 10.8, Adobe suite. The quality needs to be good to high although I am NOT expecting production print proofing - if I want that I will get it from my external contractors and generally on final stock.

Requirement details as follows:

General

Mac and Windows drivers
Network compatible via ethernet (WiFi fine as an extra although must be wired LAN primarily)
Postscript on board (still a feature? - please see below *)
Print server (?) included in software / drivers. We don't need to admin / manage usage, more for handling the queue if 2/3 people try to print at once - we are all in different rooms.
Ideally with reasonable processor / RAM to cope with small queues (generally not more than two of us printing at once)

Usage / Speed

Web and creative team. Relatively small outputs, we mostly use electronic delivery and are a 'green' office so paper use will be 'light'
Colour and Black / White
Inkjet is OK as long as reasonable robust (we are tired of Canon error b200 print head faults which turn out to be dried ink and cost £80 to replace!)
Speed isn't an issue for us and at the PC / Mac end, we are all high powered hardware for initial file processing.

Quality

Draft = for text documents reasonably quickly (light use again, no manuals or heavy print required)
High Quality = we need a quality output
at A3 for creative visuals - good enough to show a client / takeaway
/ produce minor marketing in the office (posters, info graphics).

(*) Note: the creative work will be coming directly from Acrobat or Indesign CS6 / Cloud on a Macintosh over ethernet. In the past I installed network printers with built in postscript like the Oki B4350n which helped with text rendering. Not sure if this is still required in 2016 or whether the Mac OS / printer driver manages it on the fly, please advise.

Level / Potential Candidates

Canon PIXMA iX6850
HP Officejet 7110 Wide Format
Epson Stylus Photo 1500W

Again, not looking to start a debate on print or build quality, rather a confirm from someone that they have / have used a particular printer in these types of circumstances and it was effective. Any flags, issues or particular models to avoid would also be appreciated.

For the benefit of others in a similar situation - I have a solution. Epson Workforce WF 7610 (Europe) A3+ colour inkjet. You can Google the specs and processor

Highlights
 - Workgroup inkjet so decent processing power / ram to queue jobs for multiple PCs at once
 - Works excellently with Mac OS 10.8 with provided support utilities
 - Ditto Windows 10 boxes and runs over a Win wired network
 - Integrates with Mac Image Capture function for scanning direct to desktop
 - Scanner / Copier bed is full A3 and 10 seconds (fast) on standard resolution
 - A3+ colour print - high quality option with Epson papers and inks (good enough for client first visuals, office print)
 - Draft (standard) A4 B/W print is fast 2 seconds to spool, 3 seconds a page
 - Fax function to print / desktop included (phone line input)
 - Easy, logical set-up with touch screen colour panel
 - Fast start from cold and relatively quite running
 - Connectivity solid with on-board net card / ethernet, direct USB to PC, WiFi including 'air print' mobile phone bridge function, USB Flash, SD card, MS Duo

Caveats?
 - inks expensive but that goes also for HP, Canon, etc (offset by relatively cheap initial purchase - sub £200 Amazon)
 - requires Epson papers / inks for best results (but will take standard copier paper and 3rd party ink)
 - trays a little flimsy (unit itself is solid, will take some knocks)
 - footprint = 55cm x 55cm with front and rear paper feeds (for A3 nothing more than expected)

Would I recommend it?

Yes. Early days for reliability / cost of running although for functions, connectivity (ethernet, USB and WiFi print), ease of set up, Mac support, A3 scanning and workgroup capability I am smiling. Scanning and print quality are subjective to some degree and you can get better / faster obviously for more bucks - both good enough for my needs and if I go beyond this I go external and charge it on to the client (e.g. bound presentation visuals for a corporate).

END


Weird text replacements on all apps on OS X I'm having a problem with the fonts on Mac OS X 10.10. I don't remember if I had this problem when I used 10.9, but I have it for more than a month now on 10.10.

So, in some applications, some groups of letters are being replaced by symbols: i.e. "fi" is replaced by a dot in Adium, and on Airmail 2 is replaced by a weirdly placed "e".

Here's a print form Adium:

The actual text is: test: FIGARO figaro

And a print from Airmail 2:

There are more combinations of letters changing to different symbols, but I can't remember them right now.

Can somebody please tell me why is this happening? Thanks in advance!

I've solved the problem myself. I've installed a lot of fonts some time ago and some of them had already been installed by default, by OS X, and this created some conflicts which, apparently, caused my problem.

Hope it helps somebody else.


Converting pitches in audio to MIDI I want to hum a tune and have the notes be converted into MIDI notes… is this possible?

It is possible. Here’s how to do it in Logic Pro X (where it’s different from earlier versions):

record an audio clip to an audio track
double-click the clip to view it in the Editor panel
click the Show/Hide Flex button near the top left of the editor window, to the right of the menus

You will be asked ‘Do you want to turn on Flex for track “Audio 1”?’. Confirm “Turn on Flex”.
change the Flex pop-up menu at the top of the Editor from “Flex Time – Automatic (Slicing)” to “Flex Pitch”
right-click the audio area and choose “Set all to Perfect Pitch”

from the Edit menu of the Editor area, choose “Create MIDI Track from Flex Pitch Data”, at the bottom

This will generate a MIDI region with the notes Logic can detect from your audio. You can delete your audio track now.

You will probably want to quantize your notes too, which makes notes start on the beat. You can do this by viewing the generated MIDI region in the Editor panel, selecting all of the notes, and choosing a beat size in Time Quantize at the left. Or you could do it earlier in the process, with the Time Quantize section next to the Flex Pitch editor.


Can't connect iPad to macOS Mojave I used to be able to recognize iPad when working with Xcode and iTunes in previous versions of macOS.

Now I can no longer connect it. System Information does contain the device in USB list and the Image Capture application shows an "iPad" in the list, but nothing else can be done to it. Even iTunes can't see it.

What could be wrong?

The first thing that could be wrong is not stepping through the guide to triage this:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204095

The once iTunes can see the device, repeat for the next app if needed.


iMac logging out whenever seemingly stressful programs are launched Recently my mac has been mysteriously logging itself out whenever I attempt to launch any resource-intensive programs, such as games (roblox) and 3D applications. I have looked at many solutions to similar problems online, such as resetting PRAM and NVRAM, and have even gone so far as to reinstall MacOS. Yet the problem persists.
When I open said applications, they work for about 2-3 minutes and then suddenly freeze before the screen goes black and a small loading icon appears and then it takes me to the login screen.

Does anyone have any idea what could be going on?

Whenever it crashes, files such as this pop up in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticsReports

Kernel_2019-10-29-124911_Username-iMac-7.gpuRestart

And the content:

That's what I get when it crashes with blender, but I'm also getting some WindowServer logs too.

The cause for your issue is most likely related to the graphics processing unit (GPU) of your iMac. This is what's commonly referred to as a graphics card.

Some games and applications will place the GPU under a much heavier load compared to others.

For example, using a word processor will not tax the GPU much at all, but using applications such as Photoshop, Maya, Render, Final Cut Pro, Motion, etc will place a much heavier burden on the GPU. I'm not familiar with Roblox, but it's likely that it's also taxing the GPU heavily.

Normally this would not be a problem, but if your Mac has a GPU that has developed a problem, it'll be enough to effectively cause it to crash in such a way that your Mac has to reboot. In this scenario it's a hardware fault that may mean repairing or replacing the GPU.

Some Mac models were more prone than others to these types of problems. For example, the 27" iMac model from mid-2011 was the subject of a graphics card replacement program for exactly this type of issue.

However, it doesn't necessarily have to be a hardware fault. Software can often cause problems. For example, it could be a conflict between software, drivers, etc or a lack of graphics memory (especially if running multiple apps simultaneously). You could try troubleshooting this further by only running one application and seeing what happens. Perhaps testing in Safe Mode may be an option as well.

Remove any CUDA and NVIDIA drivers

Since you're running macOS Mojave (or above), you should be aware that any CUDA and NVIDIA drivers you have installed aren't supported.

To remove these:

Launch Terminal (found within your Utilities folder)
Copy and paste the following commands, one by one, into Terminal followed by pressing enter on your keyboard. Each time you do this you'll also have to enter your Admin password.

sudo rm -rf /Library/Extensions/CUDA.kext
sudo rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/CUDA.framework
sudo rm -rf /Library/LaunchAgents/com.nvidia.CUDASoftwareUpdate.plist
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/StartupItems/CUDA
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/cuda

Go to Apple > System Preferences
Right-click on the CUDA preference pane
Select the Remove "CUDA" preference pane option

OPTIONAL: If you also have NVIDIA Web Drivers installed (that's a 'yes' if you have the NVIDIA icon in the menu bar), then follow these additional steps:

Still in System Preferences, click the NVIDIA Driver Manager preference pane
Select the Graphics Drivers tab
Click on the padlock and type your password
Click the Open Uninstaller button
Click Uninstall
Complete the Uninstall process and restart your iMac


Keyboard shortcut for service only works after I manually run the service After I assign a keyboard shortcut to initiate a service in System Preferences, I press the keyboard shortcut and nothing happens. I have to first click on the service title under the services menu (found if you click on the application title in the top left corner of the screen). Only then will the keyboard shortcut function correctly.

If I quit that application, I have to manually click on the service title under the services menu each and every time I re-open the application. I would've thought that the fix would "last" until the computer is shut down or restarted, but nope, it lasts only until the application is quit out of.

It may sound as though I am making a mountain out of a molehill, but this extra step essentially defeats the purpose of the keyboard shortcut in the first place, especially since I usually do not know and cannot keep track of if I have already manually run the service since the last time that I opened that application.

I have to repeat these steps for every application, including stock applications like Finder. Otherwise, the shortcut will not work while I am in that application.

This happens for every service I created.

This happens regardless of the keyboard shortcut.

Is there any way to have the keyboard shortcut trigger the service without having to manually run the service first?

My computer runs OS X El Capitan, version 10.11.6. It should be noted, however, that I first observed this bug from the very first time that I assigned a keyboard shortcut to my service, which was at least a year ago. In other words, I have never experienced the keyboard shortcut function as it was designed to work.

It should be noted that this bug is not unique to my computer; reports of others experiencing this idiosyncrasy abound on the internet...

Service not running the first time it's invoked via key combination

Services shortcut not working properly

Assigning a shortcut to a service

Assign a shortcut to running a script in OS X (read the last paragraph in this answer)

Found the answer in this Apple Support Community thread:

Bug: Keyboard shortcut keys do not always activate a service (a workflow)

Keyboard shortcuts for services will only work properly if they have a ⌘ command key in them.  That is, cmd-ctrl-k works, but ctrl-k needs help.  The "help" is to go to the app's menu bar and hover over the services so it sees them. That works until you quit the app.

But, if the shortcut contains the ⌘ command key, it works as expected.


How can I assign a custom icon from a graphic file to another file in Lion? Suppose I have a graphic file (a .png, for instance), and I want to make that graphic the icon for another file or folder. Previously, I would copy the image to the clipboard (either in Preview, like in the instructions in this post or in the Get Info window in the Finder), then open the Get Info window for the target file, select the icon, and paste the image in as the new icon. In the past, this has worked for me.

When I do this in Lion, the result is that the target file now has the default .png icon (document with folded corner, blue-ish image in the middle, and the letters "PNG"), rather than the particular .png image I intended to paste. If the image I am pasting is a .pdf, I get the same results, except that the resulting target file icon has the letters "PDF".

Is there another way that I can assign a custom icon from a graphic file to another file in Lion, because I'm still unable to do it?

When Preview fails, I turn to the Web Browser, master of all filetypes.

Open the image in Safari, Chrome, or Firefox by dragging it to the app's icon or using
File-> Open.

Right click on the image and choose Copy Image (be careful not to use Copy Image URL or Copy Image Location).

From there, use the standard procedure of pasting into the Get Info window.

If the image you want to use is a PDF, you'll need to create a rasterized version that you can copy from the web browser. You can still use Preview for this: open the PDF, choose File-> Export and set the format to PNG. You can open the exported version and copy that.


Disable Inverted Scrolling using Mighty Mouse I currently use two 2011 iMac's equipped with Mighty Mouse - the round mouse with a rubber scroll ball. When I go to scroll through pages or folders though, it is inverted. By this I mean that down is up, and up is down. I have been told there is a "natural scrolling" option somewhere in the settings, but I have yet to find it, only mentions of using it with the trackpad. How can I disable the inverted scrolling using a Mighty Mouse?

I am running OS X Lion. The mouse is wired

Simon, assuming your mouse is connected, the screen should look like the one below.

Uncheck "Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating."


Securely remove files from an NTFS drive? I have an external NTFS drive, and I want to securely remove some files from it. SRM is no longer available in Sierra. I tried to install SRM with Homebrew, and did install it successfully, but when I apply the command to an external drive I get an error: "Segmentation fault: 11" What can I do?

I do not use software like Paragon NTFS to enable write on the drive. Instead I do this in Terminal:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add the following line to nano, replacing “NAME” with the label of your NTFS drive:

LABEL=NAME none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse

Ctrl+O then the Enter key, then Ctrl+X to close nano.

Use gshred. Install homebrew if not installed from www.brew.sh. Then do

brew install coreutils

to remove files, do

gshred -u <file1> <file2>


iCloud drive and git repository I have upgraded some of my Macs to Sierra. Now, I'm wondering whether I want to enable iCloud on the Document folder or not. It seems useful if it works well. I'm syncing some of the PDF files between iPad over iCloud, and my experience was "so-so" compared with Dropbox based sync (I'm using PDF expert on iPad).

I'm particularly interested in how git repository work (or not work) well on the iCloud drive -- I have multiple Macs; I know the iCloud drive is slow in sync.

Do you have any experience or recommendation on this?

I have had bad experiences with this, although specifically in the case of multiple macs syncing the same cloned repo.

I have a couple of Macs onto which I clone a fair number of git (mostly GitHub) repos. The Macs each have a number of iCloud drive synced directories (in fact I've gone all-in and am syncing Desktop and Documents).

I have tried to clone into the iCloud-synced directories. However, I have been having lots of problems with this. It seems very easy to get into a condition where iCloud (not git) gets so confused that one machine effectively stops syncing, even files that have nothing to do with the cloned directories, and even if I carefully re-sync each of the two clones to the exact same state. I don't know if the problem is files under .git/ or just something like race conditions between versions of the actual repo files.

I've tried to use Apple's various iCloud logging tools under brctl but that has generally not helped.

(Most of this has been posted as a question over on the main SO site: has anyone else seen this or anything like it?)

(This is somewhat different from this question which mostly seems to care about a single Mac with iCloud drive, and I don't think users in that situation would see the same issues that I am.)


How to set default finder window size? How do I set the default size of my finder window to a size of my choice? Currently each time I open a finder window, it opens up in a very small size and I have to adjust it before I can start looking for my files. I'm running Yosemite.

It is very easy to do this:

Open a new Finder window.
As you resize the window, hold the Command ⌘ (not Alt / Option) key. Close resized window.
Then hold the Alt / Option key as you right click on Finder in the Dock and click Relaunch.
Any Finder windows opened after this will open at that size.

Note: This does not work for windows opened from folders on the desktop.


Snow Leopard running Fusion has virtual ports invisible to wireshark Win XP SP3 in fusion can surf the net through the mac's airport in either bridged or nat mode fine. the mac has a static ip. the windows is set to dhcp.

ifconfig on the mac shows

en1: inet 192.168.1.43 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255

vmnet1: inet 172.16.193.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.193.255

vmnet8: inet 172.16.143.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.143.255

ipconfig on windows shows

Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : home

    IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.42
    Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
    Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1

when the network adapter settings in fusion are changed to NAT and the ipconfig is released and renewed, then ipconfig shows

    Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : localdomain

    IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 172.16.143.132
    Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
    Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 172.16.143.2

This shows that the virtual machine is now going through the subnet of vmnet8
Wireshark however does not reveal vmnet8, just en0 and en1-and en1 is getting all the traffic. Why no vmnet8? Why is vmnet8 getting a routable address? shouldn't it be one of those non-routeable 192.xxx.xxx.xxx or 10.xxx.xxx.xxx numbers? And even if windows is bridged and using 192.168.1.42, little snitch on the mac keeps asking if vmnet-natd can talk to the net so i know it's active.

I can see packets going to the windows ip but it's mixed in with traffic going to the mac (as I'd expect since they are both using the same airport) but it's all going over en1.

( btw, i dont understand why the gateway in windows is not 172.16.143.1 but rather .2 - after all doesnt the windows box have to talk to vmnet8?)

The same situation exists when one uses parallels instead of fusion. Except in this case 2 vNICs show up in wireshark. However, they are silent and never used either.

Well, the VMWare people said that those interfaces are invisible to wireshark and a special tool, VMWare-sniffer, can be used.

And btw, 172.xxx.xxx.xxx are non-routable addresses so clearly I had a buffer overflow in my brain.

As for the .2, that's just the way VMWare set it up.


add /home to time machine backup list I would like to backup the /home directory on a macbook pro running osx 10.8.5 using time machine, unfortunately this is directory is ignored by default. According to this post:

On OS X, what files are excluded by rule from a Time Machine backup?

the file:

/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist

stores the list of built in exclusions where the /home path is under paths that are excluded. Can I delete the line that contains the /home directory in order to add it to the list of directories that time machine will back up? What are some unintended consequences that I might run into by doing this?

You don't need to do this. OS X uses /Users/(username) instead. /home is there for compatibility.

This Apple Support Document describes how Mac OS X handles multiple users.

  Your home folder isn’t actually named “Home.” It’s named with your user name. If your Mac has several users set up, each user has a home folder.


What time stamp will show when an iMessage is received while phone has a dead batter / is turned off? An iPhone has a dead battery. While off, an iMessage was sent at 3:45pm. The phone was recharged and turned back on at 5:00pm.

Will the iMessage come through as being sent at 3:45pm or 5:00pm?

I'll will show as sent at 3:45.

Your phone only matters in terms of the message being delivered/read.


Excluding specific file names and types (not categories, not folders) from Spotlight How can I completly and permanently exclude specific files (with names like readme or general file formats like .php) from Spotlight search?

One practical example:

I have important notes saved as TXT files which I need to find in Spotlight. However, I also get an overwhelming amount of readme.txt or faq.txt or even .php files shown which makes no sense at all that they are showing up.

They are file related to plugins and programs and in differnet locations.

It is especially bad when you search for a phrase or sentence that is within a text file. Then literally everything pops up.

All of the files need to stay where they are but some should be excluded.
If it is not possible what are possible ways to do it most efficiently.

Note: I am very well aware of the Spotlight settings in System Preferences, but it's not about locations or files in general. And I'm also not looking for moving files in a folder and exclude this folder or use the generally proposed .noindex solution.

I am the developer of HoudahSpot, a file search utility that uses the Spotlight index.

I don’t know of a way to teach the Spotlight interface to skip certain files. Nor do I know a way to get the Spotlight indexer to exclude files by name.

In HoudahSpot you can add criteria to exclude files whose names contain readme or faq or have the php file extension. You can then make this search your default setup. Your HoudahSpot searches will always start with these exclusions.