Add currently playing song to Apple Music using AppleScript Editor I am trying to make an AppleScript that automatically adds the current track that I am listening to on Apple Music to my library.

What I have done so far is set the option "Add songs to Library when adding to playlist" to true and then used the following AppleScript code below:

tell application "iTunes"
    duplicate current track to playlist "New Songs"
end tell

What happens is it adds the song to the playlist and then it is automatically removed from the playlist and it is not added to my library.

When I add the song to the playlist manually, the track stays in the playlist and gets added to my Library.

How am I to get ScriptEditor to save the current track to my library?

I had the same question today. I don't know AppleScript (first time using it was to make this) so this code is probably very inefficient syntax-wise, but didn't want to risk breaking it by refactoring.

It turns out the only way to add a song to the library in every scenario using AppleScript is to force the application to go into the mini player and then use the "Add to Library" button in the menu bar. You can remove the mini player part of the script if you don't need this script to work with songs that aren't in playlists (e.g a radio).

tell application "System Events"
    set frontmostApplicationName to name of 1st process whose frontmost is true
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "iTunes"
        try
            tell menu bar 1
                tell menu bar item "View"
                    tell menu "View"
                        click menu item "Exit Full Screen"
                    end tell
                end tell
            end tell
        end try
    end tell
    tell process "iTunes"
        set frontmost to true
        try
            tell menu bar 1
                tell menu bar item "Window"
                    tell menu "Window"
                        click menu item "Switch to Mini Player"
                    end tell
                end tell
            end tell
        end try
    end tell
    tell process "iTunes"
        try
            tell menu bar 1
                tell menu bar item "Song"
                    tell menu "Song"
                        click menu item "Add to Library"
                    end tell
                end tell
            end tell
        end try
    end tell
    delay 0.5
    tell process "iTunes"
        set frontmost to true
        try
            tell menu bar 1
                tell menu bar item "Window"
                    tell menu "Window"
                        click menu item "Switch from Mini Player"
                    end tell
                end tell
            end tell
        end try
    end tell
end tell

tell application "iTunes"
    next track -- if you listen to another person's playlist and add the current playing track, sometimes apple music will completely stop playback (bug), so we have to skip song to avoid this
end tell

tell application frontmostApplicationName
    activate
end tell


Keyboard Key Mapping I run a MacBook Pro 15", Wireless Bluetooth Apple Keyboard and Magic Mouse.

Everything for the last year has been working great. Just recently I FINALLY had to change my batteries in my keyboard. Upon doing so, a bunch of my key combinations from the wireless keyboard no longer work. For example:

In IntelliJ I can press ALT + F7 to perform a certain function. This no longer works.
In PhotoShop I used to be able to press CMD + ALT + SHIFT + S to get "save for web", this no longer works.

The basic keyboard functionality (typing/etc) works fine, its just certain key combos that do not work. If I type these EXACT same combos into the built in keyboard on my MacBook Pro, everything works fine.

How do I get my key mappings/settings to match that of my MacBook Pro keyboard? What changed and why?

Ok, here's the deal: Keyboard is broken. Both ALT keys are broke.

Took the keyboard into the Genius bar and they verified that the keys were broken. Got a new one as it was still under warranty.


Is there a feature or trick to automatically substitute or expand abbreviations to full phrases? In Windows I used to have a program (or actually a background service) in which I could define shortcuts or abbreviations, which would automatically expand to full sentences or phrases wherever I type them.

For example, when I type: (in any program or context)

br`

It would automatically be replaced with:

Best regards,

Rocketnuts.

And I could define and customize tons of personal 'text shortcuts' like these. It helped me a great deal in typing texts faster and more efficient.

Note that the backtick character was to invoke the replacement (could also be customized to something else, like ~).

Question: Is there a way to pull this off in OS X? (FYI: I'm using OS X El Capitan 10.11.3)

I've heard it ought to be possible with OS X's native keyboard / text settings, by defining autocorrect entries, but could not find a way to get that to work as described above.

Note that I absolutely don't want to enable dictionary-based autocorrection (that drives me crazy, as I often type in multiple languages).

Yes, it's built into the system [& can also share with any iOS devices you may have]

System Prefs > Keyboard > Text

There are a few there to start you off - if you don't want them, select & hit the - button beneath.

Adding a new one is as simple as hitting the + button, type your trigger on the left [it wants something nice & alphanumeric as a trigger, no punctuation]
The output can be pretty much anything you can imagine, including multi-line text, however, to get multi-line into it you need to copy/paste it from somewhere else, like TextEdit.

The auto-generation of the shortcut in daily use is inter-dependant on your general spelling auto-correct settings, which will change its behaviour from only replacing on completion of the trigger then hitting Space, or offer to fill as soon as it thinks it has recognised what you are going to input.

I use it for anything from generating my signature, markup in Stack Exchange, to correcting some of my favourite typos that regular autocorrect doesn't seem to pick up.


Menu bar turns red on secondary screen I recently updated to macOS High Sierra recently and noticed that sometimes there is a red bar/background over the right side of the menu bar, near time and Siri icons. This happens only on the secondary displays and also not on all workspaces.

It goes away if I make an app full screen and back to normal. I noticed this a few times on Sierra also but that was very rare and the bar used to be white instead of red. Is this a bug in Metal/Metal 2?

PS: The secondary display is connected via VGA.

I was experiencing this behavior on a secondary display as well. Although it is merely a workaround, I can confirm that putting an app in Full Screen mode on the secondary display will force the OS to redraw the menu bar.


How to provide detailed listing of /tmp directory The standard options to ls are not working: I get the following

14:53:37/a2a $ls -l /tmp
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root  wheel  11 Jan  9 14:16 /tmp -> private/tmp

$ls -lrta /tmp
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root  wheel  11 Jan  9 14:16 /tmp -> private/tmp

The intent is to view  the contents of the directory, not the metadata info  it is a (hard?) link.

Note that ls /tmp does show the contents .. but not the detailed info like last modified

$ls /tmp
00f12e86-cfcc-4239-9dfc-006b65a319c3    com.symantec.symdaemon.launches
72f8fe65-e688-4d14-9aef-42c6abc1d4fa    exceptions.csv
835500b9-549b-435d-b444-97db8935fd88    ju.txt
 ..
com.symantec.avscandaemon.NF

As your ls -l /tmp shows /tmp is a symbolic link to private/tmp

So what you want is to replace tmp by what it is linked to e.g.

ls -l /private/tmp

or let ls do it for you using the -H option

ls -lH /tmp

man ls says

  -H      Symbolic links on the command line are followed.  This option is
               assumed if none of the -F, -d, or -l options are specified.

which explains whey ls with no options does show the contents of the directory that is linked to.


Cannot get httpd to listen on port 80 I installed httpd using brew.

I edited /usr/local/etc/httpd/httpd.conf and changed:

Listen 8080

to:

Listen 80

Restarted the service:

brew services restart httpd

But Apache's still listening on port 8080:

Benjamins-Mac-mini:~ benjamin$ sudo lsof -iTCP:80 -sTCP:LISTEN
Benjamins-Mac-mini:~ benjamin$ sudo lsof -iTCP:8080 -sTCP:LISTEN
COMMAND   PID     USER   FD   TYPE             DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
httpd   24646 benjamin    4u  IPv6 0xcc42d5b2e5fcae09      0t0  TCP *:http-alt (LISTEN)
httpd   24647 benjamin    4u  IPv6 0xcc42d5b2e5fcae09      0t0  TCP *:http-alt (LISTEN)
httpd   24648 benjamin    4u  IPv6 0xcc42d5b2e5fcae09      0t0  TCP *:http-alt (LISTEN)
httpd   24649 benjamin    4u  IPv6 0xcc42d5b2e5fcae09      0t0  TCP *:http-alt (LISTEN)
httpd   24650 benjamin    4u  IPv6 0xcc42d5b2e5fcae09      0t0  TCP *:http-alt (LISTEN)
httpd   24651 benjamin    4u  IPv6 0xcc42d5b2e5fcae09      0t0  TCP *:http-alt (LISTEN)
httpd   34288 benjamin    4u  IPv6 0xcc42d5b2e5fcae09      0t0  TCP *:http-alt (LISTEN)
httpd   34289 benjamin    4u  IPv6 0xcc42d5b2e5fcae09      0t0  TCP *:http-alt (LISTEN)
httpd   34290 benjamin    4u  IPv6 0xcc42d5b2e5fcae09      0t0  TCP *:http-alt (LISTEN)

How can I force httpd to listen to port 80?

I tried restarting the service using sudo as port 80 is a privileged port, with no success.

I figured it out.

I had started another instance of httpd by mistake earlier. I typed:

httpd --help

And while httpd doesn't recognize this command (what I was looking for was httpd -h), it did start a daemon, that was listening according to the old config file.

I'm very surprised that brew services start thought it was starting the server properly (brew services list did display it as started), even though it probably wasn't running because of the conflicting instance.

This is really confusing as start/stop did toggle between "started" and "stopped", even though it probably wasn't doing anything under the hood.


Tracking down hard shutdown cause—software? hardware? overheat? I'm running Mac OS X 10.7.4 on a 15-inch, early 2011 MacBook Pro.

I've had the Mac crash a few times in the last couple months, all attributable to letting it discharge (careless me!) except for the most recent time, today.  Today the Mac still had 12% battery or so, and it switched itself off—with the same "power down" physical switching noise that accompanies a switch off if you hold down the power button.  No warning message of any kind was displayed prior to the switchoff.

When I then moved it over to my desk and plugged in the power, I noticed that the bottom of the laptop was hot enough to actually hurt my hand, which made me wonder if the shutdown was due to overheating.  (?)

When plugged in (without me touching any buttons, the lid still open), the computer made a couple of physical "reset" noises followed by switch-off noises, then succeeded in booting itself to the grey apple logo.  On login the computer restored windows normally, except I was then prompted me to re-enter my App Store password to enable one of my apps to be run on this "new" computer.  This is the only Mac I've ever had, though.

In the "Console" application, I have 10 different "help_(date)_(computer).crash" reports from within the past month.  The last is from today.  I can't tell if any of the info in it is relevant to diagnosing the shutdown, but I can't find any other diagnostic data that seems relevant, except the laconic message:

2/15/16 4:52:59.000 PM kernel: Previous Shutdown Cause: -128

What I really want to know is: Why did my computer shut itself down with no warning?  Was this from overheating?  Is there a way to prevent this from happening again (or does it even matter)?

As it turned out, my battery had reached and surpassed the end of its life.  It was rated good for 1000 full charge cycles; it had gone through nearly 1200 (in roughly a five-year time span.)

I got the battery replaced and all was well.


Is it possible to run Nautilus on OS X? Is it possible to run Nautilus instead of Finder on Mac OS X Snow Leopard? How?

Looks like it's available in MacPorts, so you could install MacPorts and then install Nautilus using that:

sudo port install nautilus

You should then be able to run it using the nautilus terminal command.

You may see the following during installation:

############################################################################
# Startup items have been generated that will aid in
# starting dbus with launchd. They are disabled
# by default. Execute the following command to start them,
# and to cause them to launch at startup:
#
# sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.freedesktop.dbus-system.plist
# launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist
############################################################################

Running the commands manually should be enough to run nautilus directly after installation (without rebooting).


DNS Changer on my iPad I've jailbroken my iPad. First time I checked with dns-changer.eu it stated mine was manipulated, then I checked again it stated that mine is clean. Getting confused & curious, I checked again several times. Most of those stated mine is clean, but once manipulated again then clean while I rechecked around 1 minute later.

I've 2 laptops at home, 1 is fine & 1 is affected while the site stated that both of those are clean. The affected laptop gets limited access through wi fi. Connection is pretty normal using LAN but yahoo.com is still firewalled. I've scanned the affected use HitmanPro btw.

Please help, is there anything I can do or I just reset my ipad? Thanks a lot..

The easiest way for you to confirm whether or not you are infected if you're getting inconsistent results from tools is to manually check your DNS settings against the rogue servers.  These are the servers that were used in the attack:

85.255.112.0 through 85.255.127.255
67.210.0.0 through 67.210.15.255
93.188.160.0 through 93.188.167.255
77.67.83.0 through 77.67.83.255
213.109.64.0 through 213.109.79.255
64.28.176.0 through 64.28.191.255

To check your DNS settings on osx, follow these instructions to open your network settings, choose a connection, and then check the DNS tab.

To check your DNS settings on your iPad, follow these instructions to open Settings>General>Network>Wi-Fi and then check the DNS settings of your wifi network.


Is there a quick way to “flatten” an image in iOS I use the ‘markup’ extension in iOS Photos to ‘black out’ sensitive information in screenshots, occasionally. Unfortunately, this leaves the “revert” button, meaning that said sensitive information is sitting archived in my iCloud Photos indefinitely.

I've got the messy solution of texting myself the modified image, deleting the original, deleting it again from Recently Deleted Photos, and then re-saving it from the text-message I sent myself … but that's no fun.

What's the quickest way to turn a modified photo into a flattened copy of itself?

The best way I've found is to use Adobe Darkroom iOS app. You can view and edit photos from your regular albums, then export them to a flat file. Export to a new file, then delete the original via Darkroom. (I just checked, and realized I've been choosing the wrong option, 'modify original' - the details there say the image is still editable...damn). I just tested and in Darkroom I see markups made in the iOS photos app.

I wish apple would make a 'flatten' option! I'd love an app that flattens all edited photos before I export to windows.


iPhone XS: s/mime signature doesn't contain the issuer (intermediate) certificate in signed emails I'am using a valid s/mime certificate to sign my emails on my Mac Book Pro and my iPhone XS. When I sign the email from within the mail program on Mac Book Pro, the signature contains the certificate of the issuer (intermediate) of my certificate too. When I sign the email on the iPhone, the issuer of the certificate is not added to the signature. For that reason the email is displayed on the iPhone as not valid. The same problem in MS Outlook. The signed emails from Mac Book Pro are displayed correctly as valid. Why doesn't add the iPhone the issuer certificate to the signature?

iOS: 13.4

Signed email on MBP (intermediate certificate is included):

Signed email on iPhone (intermediate certificate isn't included):

You need to manually install the intermediate certificate itself on the iOS devices. I.e. it is not enough to just install your own S/MIME signing certificate on the device - you also need to seperate install the intermediate certificate.

A way to install the intermediate certificate is to have it as a P12 file in for example an email. Then you can tap on the P12 attachment and choose to install it.


2018 Mac Mini - Won't boot when power applied I work in an environment where power is turned off to the building nightly. On previous revisions of the Mac Mini, I was able to get them to automatically boot when power is applied (in the mornings) by doing the following:

System Preferences
Energy Saver
Schedule...
Start up or wake: 4:00 AM every day (or sometime in the middle of the night)

In that state, when power was applied at any time following 4:00 AM, the computer would boot.

The 2018 Mac Mini does not do this. I set the Schedule in the Energy Saver system preferences as above, but the computer does not turn on when power is applied. It does boot as scheduled if power is already hot, but not after.

Why would this model be different, and is there a way to restore that functionality?

Is FileVault enabled? If so, that would prevent the scheduled boot from working.

See here: FileVault and scheduled boot


Can't Control Volume on Lockscreen with Volume Buttons on iPhone I upgraded to iOS 5 and I just noticed that I can no longer control the volume level on the phone by pressing the volume buttons while the screen is locked. I recall distinctly that I was able to do this on iOS 4. Has something changed or did I miss something?

★ [Settings > Sounds > Ringer and Alerts > Change with Buttons = ON]

Tapping the home button twice should bring up the audio player/volume slider on the lock screen. While it's visible try the buttons on the side — depending on whether or not you see the volume slider move on the screen should tell you if your buttons are not actually working.

This is straight from the iOS 5 user guide:

When iPhone is locked, nothing happens if you touch the screen. iPhone can still receive calls, text messages, and other updates. You can also:

Listen to music
Adjust the volume using the buttons on the side of iPhone (or on the
iPhone earphones) while you’re on a phone call or listening to music.

Use the center button on iPhone earphones to answer or end a call, or to control audio playback.

iPhone User Guide For iOS 5.0 Software (PDF)


Does OS X's Disk Utility create hardware RAID or software RAID? I created a mirrored RAID (RAID 1) using 2 Western Digital 2TB external hard drives before, using Disk Utility on a Mac.  For this, it should be software RAID.

And then I got a WD Thunderbolt Duo 6TB, with two 3TB drives in it.

The question is, it seems that I can just create a RAID set inside of Disk Utility, as RAID 1, and then I will have a 3TB mirrored drive.  It doesn't say it is software RAID or hardware RAID, and I assumed it is software RAID.  Let's call this Process 1.

But when I go to Western Digital's website and downloaded the drive's utility and use it to erase the drive and configure it as RAID 1, close the app, and then use Disk Utility to view the drive, it appears exactly the same as before, as in Process 1 above.

So the question is, did Disk Utility create it as hardware RAID?  Can it create it as software RAID too, and how to I tell the difference?

I assume Western Digital's app should have created it as a hardware RAID, as there is no point in making it a software RAID when the RAID hardware is present inside the drive.

(I am using OS X Mavericks if that makes any difference).

According to this article the "WD Thunderbolt Duo 6TB" misses - in contrast to the Pegasus2 series - one essential thing to be able to create a hardware RAID: a hardware RAID controller(-chip).

So whether you use Disk Utility or the native Western Digital tools you will only get a software RAID.

Even with an hardware RAID controller inside an arbitrary device, Disk Utility can't create/handle hardware RAIDs because it doesn't contain the necessary drivers to do so. AFAIK the only Apple tool for hardware RAIDs is the "RAID Admin" or "RAID Utility" accompanying the Mac Pro RAID Card and Xserve RAID Card.


Restoring data deleted from Directory Utility When trying to rearrange user accounts, I deleted some data using the Directory Utility (data on a user account under "Users" in the Node "Local/Default").

I would like to restore this data.

I have a Time Machine Backup available from before the change. What file would I need to look for to restore, or what other steps must I take?

There is a xar archive of the directory dslocal made every Saturday by the launch daemon- /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.var-db-dslocal-backup.plist. You can find the archive here-

 /private/var/db/dslocal-backup.xar


How can I prevent the Photos app from launching when I connect a device? The title says it all, whenever I plug a memory card on my computer or a cable to a device with photos, the Photos app launches.

I don't like using this app, not because I don't think it's a good app or whatever, but because I usually like making sure that I transfer all the files to the destination folders, not just the picture files (so also folder structure, preview files, .THM etc).

How can I disable the auto-launching of the Photos app?

I'm not exactly certain how I managed it, but a combination of these may be at least part of the fix...

In Image Capture, set "connecting this xxx opens" to 'no application'
(If you don't see that option, click the tiny reveal button at the bottom left)

Using RCDefaultApp to set all Media options to 'Ignore'


iOS App Store chart position: Strange ups and downs I'm tracking (every hour) one of my client's apps which is listed in one of the category charts (not the overall charts). However I noticed strange ups and downs in the chart positions. Within only some hours the app hikes down (e.g. from place 60 to 150) and goes straight up to 60 again (I think when someone makes a download).

It seems like other apps surrounding the tracked one are much more constant in their positions (especially the Top 50 ones). Is there any explanation for this?

I think you answered the question yourself. It looks like positions 60-150 for the section you are interested in are very variable due to the ranking algorithm being sensitive to very low traffic in app downloads.

I'd guess that positions 1-50 have significantly more app download traffic, and thus they are much more stable.


Service only application I want to build a simple service that will allow me to keep any app window always on top or always on the same screen, when switching desktops.
Is there a way to build a global MacOS service-only application (without any windows etc.) and how is the preferred way to do this? (Automator, AppKit, SwiftUI).
The app should also be distributable via AppStore (or if not possible just GitHub).

You could build such a service using any tool that results in an application bundle; this includes AppleScript/JavaScript (OSA), Objective-C, and Swift. Apple would likely prefer you used Swift.
Investigate the Accessibility APIs for interacting and manipulating windows owned by other applications.
See the Info.plist value LSUIElement for making an agent application:

LSUIElement (Boolean - macOS) specifies whether the app runs as an agent app. If this key is set to YES, Launch Services runs the app as an agent app. Agent apps do not appear in the Dock or in the Force Quit window. Although they typically run as background apps, they can come to the foreground to present a user interface if desired. A click on a window belonging to an agent app brings that app forward to handle events.
The Dock and loginwindow are two apps that run as agent apps.

To be distributed on Apple's Mac App Store, an application must have a user interface. This can be a simple window that enables your service, or handles preferences.
Search GitHub for status menu app for open source examples.


Editor or notes application with Markdown support? Are there any editors or notes applications out there that support Markdown?

I am often having to make notes or documents where markdown formatting would be ideal, and have gotten into the habit of using markdown on a daily basis.

nvALT does the trick.  I prefer the plain Notational Velocity myself, but Markdown fans seem to really like the nvALT fork.


Download all music in Apple Music library (iOS 10) I just got a new phone on iOS 10 and I have an Apple Music subscription. I have the setting turned on to automatically download music when it is added, but all the existing music in my library hasn't downloaded. Is there a way to make it download everything, or do I have to do it manually album by album?

This isn't a perfect solution but it kinda works. On the Mac make a smart playlist that matches everything in your library.

Then on the iPhone, download that playlist for offline use.


Run Script Atomically I have a launchd task that runs a bash script periodically, and this works great. However, if I change the script while the task is running, either by editing it directly, or swapping it with an updated copy, it can cause the running task to spew out a load of syntax errors or worse, have unpredictable behaviour.

The problem appears to be that instead of loading the script into memory, or holding open the file as it was at the time of execution, launchd (or probably bash itself) is loading the live file line-by-line, this means that any changes to the script appear to be reflected in real time, leading to errors.

To try to illustrate the problem, consider the following:

if [ "$foo" = '1' ]; then
    do_something_that_takes_time
fi

Now, imagine the script is running at line 2 (do_something_that_takes_time) and I swap out the script, removing the if/fi block entirely. When the script moves onto line 3, it will no longer find fi, and will continue executing expecting to find a fi but never will, resulting in an eventual error (unexpected end of file). It may also end up skipping commands (that were moved up as a result of removing lines).

Of course I can avoid this issue by unloading the launchd task, updating, then reloading it, but this isn't very convenient, especially for tasks that can take a long time to complete (as I'd prefer to let them finish, but there seems no way to do so and swap in the file at that point). Otherwise I have to add in some mechanism for prevent the task from re-launching, so I can swap in the new script at my leisure, but this seems like an unnecessary extra step when Bash should just be running the script I told it to, at the time it started.

So my question is this; is there some way that I can force launchd (or Bash) to execute the script only as it was when the task began? For example by fully loading it into memory before executing, or loading from an open file-handle that won't change?

I'm posting this here because I'm not entirely sure if this is a quirk of Bash in general, or potentially Mac specific in some way. The volume I'm executing from is using APFS, so should be copy-on-write, so I wouldn't expect this behaviour to occur (as an open file handle should continue to point to the old file, ignoring any changes that are made).

So my question is this; is there some way that I can force launchd (or bash) to execute the script only as it was when the task began?

No.  It’s not a quirk of bash or launchd.  launchd loads the job (plist) into memory, not the script.  The script gets called per it’s “start” definition like RunAtLoad or CalendarInterval.

Also, the nuance here is when the task began.  Well, that depends on when the task was configured to be started.  Just because the job definition is loaded doesn’t mean the task has started.

If you define the job within the job definition using Program and ProgramArguments it can theoretically, do what you want. However, there’s no script logic; it’s just a command and it’s arguments.

Now if your script takes time or to put it another way, it is still running, modifying it will of course cause errors.  This would be like you executing your script, then simultaneously in another bash session modifying it.  It’s going to have issues.

launchd just executes the script like you would if you typed the command manually.


How to tell whether apps are "running" on iOS Many people think (and even some websites report) that the app switcher shows "apps running", e.g. in the background but this is not so. It just shows a recently used list of apps. Apps shown in app switcher can be in different states, including "not running" which means "The app has not been launched or was running but was terminated by the system."

My question is, is there any way on iOS (i.e. by a user, not programmatically) to tell whether an app on iOS is actually running or not, and by running I mean in any state other than "not running" as defined in the following link (scroll almost to the bottom).

The App Life Cycle

No, there's no way a regular user can tell the current state of an app.

Apple can change the state of an app at any time depending on a number of circumstances.  None of those circumstances should be of any concern to a user.


How to set a default folder when opening Finder I am new on MacOS, would like to set a default folder to open Finder, instead of Recent items folder.

I tried:

defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTargetPath -string "file:///Users/path/to/folder"

But didn't worked...

Is there a way to do it?

Finder → Preferences (⌘,) → General and set ‘New Finder windows show’, either pick from the list or choose Other and specify a custom path.

You don't need to set the key manually using Terminal, but you should be able to with this:

defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTargetPath -string "file://localhost/Users/path/to/folder/"

Note the trailing slash at the end and the use of localhost, both of which are how Finder writes the key itself.


How do you establish an area in which to search (restaurants, for example) for Maps.app How do you constrain a search in Maps.app that could have hits anywhere? Like 'burger restaurant'?
I live in Chapel Hill, and I want to see all burger joints in the Triangle, so I size my Maps window to enclose Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh. Then in the search box I type 'burger restaurants'. The display drops red pins around Chapel Hill, a few around Durham, and none at all around Raleigh. To see Raleigh burgers, I have to jigger the display around so Raleigh is more centered, and Chapel Hill and Durham are out of view.
Google Maps simply assumes you're interested in all locations viewable within the current window. It's such a natural way I assumed Apple would do the same thing, but apparently not.

It’s simply a limitation of Apple Maps.
To find places around a certain area, Apple touts the “Nearby” feature supposedly which allows you to find points if interest nearby your current location.  If I search “pizza near research triangle  park, nc” it gave me pizza places near the closest city center to me - downtown Fort Lauderdale, FL.
I tend to use Bing Maps as my preferred tool followed by Google. I did the same search  in Bing and the search area was as you described - bounded by the visible area in the window. If I zoomed or panned the map, the results  adjusted accordingly.
I have found that 3rd party apps “force” Google maps regardless of what you want as your default - I suspect it’s to ensure a consistent and rich user experience.
While I’d love to recommend the native tool, I can’t.  I'd use the tool that meets your needs.


Different "free space" indications in Macintosh HD after upgrading to El Capitan I wanted to know what was the free available space in my internal HD (I actually have a SSD). In Finder, if I trust the Show Info information (right click or cmd+I on Macintosh HD icon in the Finder sidebar) I get a certain available space. Otherwise, if I just press the spacebar (quick insight), I get a different value, it seems that it's not updated. Finally, also Disk Utility reports a different value.

Why these three different values?
(this gap first appeared after upgrading to El Capitan and trash is already empty).

Available space displayed when clicking Show Info:

Available space displayed when pressing spacebar:

Available space displayed in Disk Utility:

I have a solution! You need a clean up spotlight index.
Go to Preference - Spotlight - confidentiality. Press "+" and
add whole disk to this. Check it in confidentiality list. After this - remove (by press -)

Turn off you mac. And boot with "safe mode" (by pressing shift + power button, until apple logo will be on display). Please be patient, safe mode loading not fast. And you may have some 'monitor artifacts'.

Check you disk space now. All good? If yes - just reboot again in normal mode.

p.s. this is solution, I got from Apple Care by phone.


MacBook screen turns off when setting brightness one notch below maximum When I press the lower brightness key (F1) on my MacBook the screen turns off (pitch black). When I raise the brightness back (F2) everything is fine again. This only started happening recently with this machine and I can't think of anything that I've changed that could have caused this.

macOS Sierra 10.12.4
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014)

Restarting the computer resolved this. ¯_(ツ)_/¯


How to get iMessages from phone and old Apple ID email? My 12 year old just got an iPhone. She has an old iPad that she has been using to text. She wants to be able to get texts on both the new iPhone as well as the iPad. Problem is, the iMessages she gets on the iPad are an aol account associated with an old apple ID. A couple years ago, we had to create a new Apple ID for each of our kids to be able to use family sharing. So she has 2 different Apple IDs. Is there a way for her to see texts for both on both devices?

Settings > Messages > Send & Receive...

You can add multiple email addresses there.

Also Settings > Messages > Text Message forwarding will allow you to send SMS to another device [I've not tested to an iPad but that's where I sent txts to my Mac]


Move files using mouse only? On Windows, you can drag and drop the file using right mouse button, and choose Copy or Move. Moving a file is a very basic computing need.

I cannot find any way to do that on OS X without using the keyboard. Is it possible to move files using mouse only?

Aren't you still talking about drag and drop? If you are trying to move something from one Directory in Finder to another, you can drag the file out of the current directory and into the directory on the side bar. For example, if you have text.txt in Documents, and you want to move it to the desktop, you can drag it to Desktop in the sidebar, and it will place the file on the desktop.


Will my files be deleted if I update OS X? I have version 10.6.8 now but it says that its too old when I try to buy some apps..

When updating OS X it only updates the system files, so all the files under /Users/ (which includes your home directory) are safe.

However, keeping a regular Time Machine backup is recommended, so that if something goes wrong you can restore your files and settings as needed.

You can go a step further and make a manual copy of your /Users and /Applications folders to a separate disk before installing major OS updates, so you can retrieve them without having to go through the Time Machine interface (for example, on a non-Mac computer, in case you ever need to.)


What is a good http benchmark program for Mac OS X? What is a good http benchmark program for Mac OS X?

I have Apache's 'ab' installed, but it's buggy and there doesn't seem to be a Mac OS X package for Apache as an upgrade. I don't like compiling and installing from source because it's unmanaged. I use Homebrew as well.

You could try Seige: http://freecode.com/projects/siege


What are some of the functionalities I can turn off to speed up an old Apple Watch? As watchOS is being updated, more and more features are added. And for users using previous generations of Apple Watches, the slow down is affecting essential daily tasks more severely. I am not using many apps or advanced features on the watch. Basically, I read most notifications on my iPhone, allowing only selected apps to ping my watch.

I wonder what are some of the functionalities that I can turn off, to make the watch more responsive. For example, I can unload some apps, and switch to a simpler, less computational expensive watch face. Are there more?

The older watches are constrained with RAM and CPU.

To help with RAM - be brutal and remove every app you can. Only install things you need. I still have my original Apple Watch and it is a bit painful when I swap it in instead of my Series 4 - but it’s still sentimental in a way my original iPhone is.

You can’t really change the CPU time it takes for apps and complications to run, but by removing things and not running them, the RAM can get used for the things you need.


Lost between two macOS versions after failed upgrade to macOS Mojave I have no experience whatsoever with macOS (Linux user).

I got an old mid 2012 13" MacBook Pro, which was running OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5. I tried to upgrade it to macOS Mojave, by launching Mac App Store, and searching for Mojave. After some time, the process stopped with the message "requested range not satisfiable".

Now I am lost between the Mountain Lion world and the Mojave world, because:

About this Mac says Version 10.8.5. I also can't install e.g., Xcode because the OS is too old.
The Mac App Store says that the Mojave upgrade is installed, hence the install button is disabled.

How can I properly upgrade to macOS Mojave? Restarting the device does not change anything.

I want to develop and publish iOS apps, so I require a recent version of macOS.

Progress (I)

I installed El Capitan, Sierra and then High Sierra (yes, one after the other; it takes several hours).
It was quite difficult to find these updates as the App Store-Search does not show them. I had to google it, find the Apple-page which contained a link (under 4. Download macOS XXX) which is opened in the App Store. from there on, updating worked.

El Capitan
Sierra
High Sierra

Now I have High Sierra, but I'm still not able to update to Mojave. I get the same error ("requested range not satisfiable").

Progress (II)

I think I know the problem. When I try to create a bootable installer (sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume), it says

  To use this tool, you must download the macOS installer application on a Mac with 10.12.5 or later, or El Capitan 10.11.6. [...]

Ok, I have downloaded the Mojave installer when the OS was still Mountain Lion, so I understand that message. Problem was that I could not "re-download" it. I had to delete the /Applications/Install macOS Mojave.app/ -directory by hand. Renaming or moving to a different place was not sufficient. After that, I could start the Mojave-Download in the App Store as expected. The installation was successful after all.

It appears that upgrade to macOS Mojave hasn't gone through and you are stuck in a state where you are unable to run the macOS Mojave installer via Mac App Store.

You can try locating the downloaded macOS Mojave installer locally under /Applications directory. The installer (if available) should appear by the name Install macOS Mojave.app. If you able to locate it, try running it manually.

If that too fails, you have a couple options:

Install macOS Mojave via Internet Recovery. Instructions can be found in the Apple Support article, About macOS Recovery.
Download macOS Mojave installer on a different Mac, create a USB bootable installer and install using it. Instructions can be found in the Apple Support article, How to create a bootable installer for macOS.

If you are installing using USB key, you'll need to hold down Option key while booting your Mac and choose the plugged-in USB key to run the installer. It would be advisable to erase the built-in disk and perform a fresh installation.

Once you have macOS Mojave installed successfully using either one of the above approaches, you can install Xcode normally via the Mac App Store.

As mentioned that you wish to develop and publish iOS apps. Publishing iOS apps requires current or just prior release of macOS with recommendation to use the latest iOS SDK and current version of Xcode.

As your MacBook supports running macOS Mojave, it's recommended to install it along with Xcode 10.2 (current as of this writing).


New top-of-the-line MacBook Pro suddenly starts acting old About a week ago, I got a new MacBook Pro. I work a decent bit in video editing, among other things, so I had the processor upgraded to the highest available model. The box arrives, I open it, and my word the computer is incredible. Battery life often surpasses 8 hours when running a host of programs simultaneously, everything happens instantaneously, El Capitan is spectacular, the force touch trackpad is incredibly click-like. Basically, the computer is everything I ever expected.

I install a few programs, go about my business, and about a day ago the computer suddenly starts acting weird. I'd definitely call myself a power user, so I'm not sure if it's something most people would notice, but the computer noticeably gets slower, battery life decreases to 4 hours on a charge with few programs running, the computer gets hot, internet misbehaves, and strangely enough, I think Safari acts differently, too. Until I tried Safari on the new computer, I had always been a Chrome person, so I'm not sure, but if I remember correctly a few days ago I could type a URL into the Safari address bar, click enter, and have it load. Now, I type a URL in and hit enter, and the URL gets selected, and I need to hit enter a second time to search. It's subtle, but I think it's a change. Moreover, Mail stops working properly, and now everything I send gets stuck in the outbox, I have this strange window that doesn't seem to belong to any program on screen:

I have clicked the bar and the search button, and nothing seems to happen. The App Store isn't trying to install updates, as far as I can tell, and the window doesn't change the application name in the upper left corner of the screen when I click it. I try opening Safari and get this friendly window:

So I am now typing this question in Chrome. I've downloaded Sophos to see if it can detect any malware, but the scan grinds to a near-halt about 65,000 files from the end of the drive. The hard drive has about 50GB of files in it, and I certainly don't remember putting that much stuff in there in the past week.

Basically, the computer is acting strangely, and I have no idea why. Any ideas?

Have you tried using Activity Monitor to see what fishy processes are running? Also, you can try creating a new account and use it for a while to see if it's something that only happens on your main account. I'd recommend you to use something like iStat Menus to check on what's clogging your processing power, network, etc


Without realizing the time it would take to complete, I issued the command sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb . What happens if I kill the process? Will killing the process cause problems if I shutdown and reboot immediately after doing it? I am running OS 11.2.3 (Big Sur) on Mac Mini.

No. It just runs find command in the background to collect all file names and then it creates file name database from it. In any case you can simply rebuild the database by running
sudo rm -r /var/db/locate.database

and then
sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

in order to use locate command.


Migrating Mail.app rules from 10.6 to 10.8 I want to move my Mail.app filtering rules from my old 10.6 machine to a fresh 10.8 install. I've seen people talking about moving these by copying over  MessageRules.plist, but I haven't seen anyone address whether these are compatible between 10.6 and 10.8. Thanks!

I copied all of the user-created <dict>...</dict> items from my old MessageRules.plist and added them to:

~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/UnsyncedRules.plist

When I launched Mail.app again, they were in my rules, but disabled. One click on each and they ran fine.

Note: Simply replacing the entire set of <dict>...</dict> items in UnsyncedRules.plist will not work. You must add them into the current set of items in order for it to work properly.


Is there any app to add a keyboard shortcut to a mouse click on a specific location? Basically I have a program that I use to study and I need to be able to quickly choose between a 8 choice answer button. The program does not have inbuilt keyboard shortcuts. I need to answer a question every 2 seconds so moving the mouse around gets tiring if I could just associate where the buttons are to 1-8 on the keyboard that would be great.

Try the TAB + Enter key.
The TAB key should move the cursor to next question, the enter key should answer it.

Setting it up with 1-8 requires more doing, and you need to tell us what program are you using.


How to change the default which columns are shown in Finder, but *only* when I switch to list view? I think I don't need the "Kind" column in list view in Finder.
I know I can disable that column by ctrl-clicking on the header and deselecting it.
What I would like to have is the "Kind" column disabled by default, but I don't want list view as the default view in Finder.
Is that possible? Maybe using a Terminal command?
(I have googled , but could not find a solution. Only stuff about column widths, with which I am not concerned here.)
Thanks a lot in advance.

From Finder - View Menu > Show View Options or  Cmd ⌘   J
Uncheck 'Kind' & optionally 'Always open in' then click Use as Defaults.
Note this will only affect windows that don't already have a pref set.


Desktop clean up function - Control, Command 1 – is not working after I installed Lion? Other keyboard shortcuts are working, as far as I can tell What I thought was a universal keyboard shortcut (ctrl+⌘+1) to cleanup and arrange my desktop, no longer works after I installed Lion. I can go up to the view drop down menu and click on it and it works but I like to use my commands. What can I do about this?

The keyboard command appears to be ⌘+⌥+1 to clean up by name now.


How to set up multiple phone numbers under text messages send/receive option Can I set up multiple phone numbers under text messages send/receive option? I have an iPhone 5c.

You can only assign 1 single phone number for sending SMS text messages (or iMessages), that of the SIM that is currently inserted.  You can assign any number of email address IDs that can be used for sender or recipient addresses.  You may be able to use an SMS forwarding system to allow receiving of message to multiple numbers, but you will only be able to reply from your own SIM number.

As a tangent, in the yet-to-be-released Yosemite version of OSX, it can pair to a phone and send text messages on behalf of it directly from the desktop.  Potentially it could pair to multiple phones to essentially have multiple sender IDs expressed as phone numbers, but that's not really what you are asking for and I include it only for observations sake.


Can I simulate multi-touch input on a Mac? With iOS's accessibility features, it is possible to pretend the user is using multiple fingers or making certain gestures while in reality they are only using one finger.

Is there any way I can simulate multi-touch trackpad gestures on a Mac?

(Note: While this can be used for accessibility purposes, I'm specifically thinking of using this to two-finger-scroll while using my Monoprice drawing tablet. An answer that fulfills that function without working in all circumstances will also be accepted.)

BetterTouchTool lets you create custom gestures, with custom actions. There are a variety of single-finger gestures:

Have a look at it, and see if it suits your need.


How to sign out of Gmail on iPhone X in the iPhone mail.app The iPhone mail app has changed. I cannot figure out how to sign out or switch email accounts.

Open the Settings app on your phone and scroll down to "Passwords & Accounts". Tap that, and find your Google account listed on this page. Tap the account and you'll see a button labeled "Delete Account."


How can I use a newly installed font as an input source? I just installed a new font, and I'd like to be able to type in it, system-wide, and not just within the confines of some application (e.g. MS Word.)  I already type in other languages using the Language & Text preference pane.  Is there any way to use the TTF as a keyboard?

Thanks

You can not simply "type in another font" system-wide, since it is each application's responsibility to include support for fonts on its own. Installing a new font merely gives you the possibility to use it in applications, for example a plain-text application will never be able to handle fonts at all.

If what you want is to change the system font itself, then the answer is here: Can I change the font systemwide (10.8.3)


Install Mountain Lion on different Macs with different Apple accounts I'm pretty sure that the title is unclear, I'm going to explain it:

We have to update 11 Macs, so we bought 11 copies of Mountain Lion (from the online store, not the App Store) and we received the Redeem codes.

We have just a little doubt, we don't know if we can download just one installer and use it for every Mac we have or we have to download the installer (via the app store, using the code) for every Mac.

Can you let me know?

If the machines are on different iTunes accounts then it is possible to do one download and install it on all of the machines. Before you run the first installation be sure to copy the "Install Mountain OS X Lion.app" to another folder or disk.

To install on other machines you can follow the instructions provided at Ars Technica.


How to print on a Yosemite managed printer from a Panther Mac? A couple I know have two computers I'm supporting - one is a iMac which I recently upgraded from Snow Leopard (10.6) to Yosemite (10.10).  The printer is attached to this machine.  The other computer, unfortunately, is a 450MHz Power Mac G4 (AGP graphics) running the last version of Panther (10.3.9).  Surprisingly, the 14-year-old computer still works and is actively being used (primarily for AppleWorks documents, which is another "ugh").

Before the iMac was upgraded, I had done something to it which let the Power Mac see the shared printer.  I suspect it had to do with CUPS, but I could be wrong.  Ever since the upgrade to Yosemite, the Power Mac has been unable to print, and I can't seem to recreate the old setup.

My question resumed in one sentence is:

How do I share a printer from a Mac running Yosemite to one running Panther, so that the Panther one can print?

For clarity I will name your Power Mac G4 running Panther: Pant and your iMac running Yosemite: Yose.
Yosemite has problem to print in an IPv4 environment (see: How to make shared printing works on Yosemite within an IPv4 only network?.
On the other hand Panther is able to run IPv6.
Check IPv6
Hence the 1rst point to check to be able to print from Pant is that Ipv6 is up and running. If Pant and Yose are connected through Ethernet, you will check this with (this is a command to enter within Terminal):
ifconfig en0

and you should get an output containing a line starting as:
inet6 fe80::

Which prooves that Pant has an IPv6 address and is IPv6 connected.
If they are connected through AirPort, you have to check the same output with:
ifconfig en1

If Pant doesn't have an IPv6 address, you will have to modify its network configuration through:
System Preferences > Network

select Advanced...
and under the TCP/IP window, select
Configure IPv6: Automatically

Click OK, Apply.
Check that IPv6 is now up and running.
Check cupsd
If you just enabled IPv6 for the 1st time on Pant then you will have to restart cupsd so that it will be able to talk this protocol.
The easiest way is to simply restart Pant. (But if you prefer to understand what you modify clearly, to restart cupsd is sufficient).
You will now have to check that cupsd is able to talk IPv6. (If I would had a Panther running Mac at hand I would have answered directly, but I don't).
Here are the command to type within Terminal to perform this checking:
ps ax | egrep '[ /](PID|cupsd)'

will display you 2 lines as:
  PID   TT  STAT      TIME COMMAND
76864   ??  Ss     0:00.26 /usr/sbin/cupsd -l

where the number PID is the proces id of the cupsd daemon.
Use this process id (here 76864) to check if this daemon is talking IPv6 through the help of lsof as follows:
/usr/bin/sudo lsof -p 76864 | egrep '(COMMAND|IPv)'

This is a priviledged command, hence you have to use sudo which will
ask you your user password.
This command should give you an output very similar to:

COMMAND   PID USER   FD     TYPE             DEVICE  SIZE/OFF      NODE NAME
cupsd   76864 root    9u    IPv4 0x9007abdfc3bf58ad       0t0       TCP localhost:ipp (LISTEN)
cupsd   76864 root   15u    IPv6 0x9007abdfb88bf0cd       0t0       TCP localhost:ipp (LISTEN)

If you have a line where TYPE == IPv6 then the cupsd on Pant is talking IPv6.
Restart the sharing
If you just enabled IPv6 for the 1st time on Pant then you will have
to enable from fresh the sharing on Yose so that Pant will see it correctly through the IPv6 channel.
On Yose open
System Preferences > Sharing

stop Printer Sharing, wait for Printer Sharing: Off to display, and restart it.
On Pant add a new printer, and you should see a new one to add and configure on Yose.
Disclaimer
This is a blind receipe (I don't have a Panther to fully check it).
I tried to avoid at most dangerous modifications on MacOS.
Any feedback would be appreciated to improve this draft answer.


How to change Company Name in App Store? I have successfully uploaded an app to the App Store.

The app is showing like this:

I want to change the Company Name text from By eGInnovation to By eG Innovations.

What can I do?

Contact Apple. In the first question on the support page reads:

  How can I update or change my iOS Developer Program account information?
  Please contact us for assistance with:

  Address changes
  Contact information updates
  Company/Organization name updates or changes

Source: Account Managment support.


3TB Airport Time Capsule (FW 7.7.3) Incorrect DNS address delivered by DHCP 3TB Airport Time Capsule (FW 7.7.3) DHCP sends the correct DNS address to hosts for the Primary network, but sends the Gateway address for the Guest network.  If I correct the DNS manually on a host, Internet works fine.  What's the problem?

Any LAN Host:
DNS 172.16.42.1
Should be 8.8.8.8

I got this hint from https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2735366?start=0&tstart=0

Check out the last post from Paul Verity.

  I've just hit on this problem too, and also found that deleting the
  DNS entries in my TimeCapsules DNS configuration fixed the problem.


Brand new iMac, cannot login to anything I received my brand new iMac today. During installation/startup, I was surprised to find that I could not log in to iCloud. I skipped, figuring it was a minor glitch and I would do it after setting up the new computer account.

I have discovered that I cannot log on to anything on this brand new computer. I get a different error phrasing with each app, but they all basically state that "An unknown error occurred." I contacted Apple, got bumped to level 2 support, and now we are working with engineering to diagnose. I thought I would see if anyone has any other ideas or similar experiences.

Here is what I know:

This started from the moment I turned the computer on for the first time, where you initially are supposed to login to iCloud.
I cannot login to iCloud, iTunes, or the App Store from this iMac.
When I login, each app gives a slightly different error message but they are all consistent.
When I login, I get a spinning "wait" icon that lasts about 20-30 seconds, then a message comes up.

Apple app store and iTunes store says "an unknown error occurred".
iCloud says "Verification failed. An unknown error occurred."

I can login to both icloud.com and appleid.apple.com on the new iMac without a problem.
I can login to all of these apps on my Macbook Pro without a problem.
I can login to all of these apps on my iPad 2 and iPhone 6 without a problem.
My wife cannot login to her own app accounts on this new iMac computer.
I tried booting into safe mode, still could not login to anything.
Apple support had me make a secondary "test" account on the new iMac, still could not log in from there.
I have tried wired ethernet, home WiFi, and AT&T cellular WiFi via iPhone personal hotspot -- same problems.
I reset the computer, and also reset the router and modem, no dice.
We ran Disk Utility, no problems.
I tried changing the computer date to one day ahead, this did not help.
We reinstalled MacOS, that did not work.

Any help or insight would be tremendously appreciated. Fair warning, I have a duplicate post on the Apple forums just to broaden my net, sorry if that is inappropriate in any way.

I've had this a number of times after installing a new copy of OSX, sometimes I was able to link to iCloud etc subsequent to install but ALWAYS with other problems that came up later, it never cleaned everything up to be working 100%. I also spent a lot of time and effort with second level AppleCare to no avail.

The ONLY successful solution I found, unfortunately, was to clean install over and over until it went through successfully. This often had to wait a number of days.

Personally, I suspect network issues which Apple were unable to pin down.

Eventually, all the computers I had issues with (which included a brand new iMac) worked and have worked ever since - about 2 years (Plus one 6 months ago).

Good Luck!

Paul.


OCR software for handwritten notes I am looking for a way to recognize handwriting of scanned notes (in PDF format).

It doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to free, but before paying I would like to try it (even with just a single page).

It doesn't necessarily have to be a native Mac OS X application. I would be OK with an online application, or a Unix application to install or compile. In other words, anything that works somewhat decently would be OK.

I am also not necessarily looking for a perfect result. Even transforming my notes into a searchable PDF with just some of the text recognized would be better than nothing.

You could use Evernote for this (Free). Just import all of your PDF's as notes and after some time (you can speed this up by upgrading to a paid account), it will automatically process them and recognize the handwriting. You won't be able to extract the OCR text from the notes, but you can search for it.


Reset SMC without power button I have a 2012 13" MacBook Pro (non retina). The power button is not working. Other then that the system was working fine. I tried to fix the power button by opening the back cover, disconnecting the battery, followed by removing and reattaching the keyboard wire. After I connected the battery and booted the system by connecting the MagSafe connector, the system booted really slow (I have an SSD, and it usually takes ~10 seconds but it took 3 mins) and the fans were at full speed.

The system became really slow and apps launched really slowly. I check the Activity Monitor and CPU was idle. So I figured out that I need to reset the SMC. But I don't know how to do it, as the power button is not working. I tried resetting with smcflasher.efi (from the smcupdate.pkg) by booting to rEFIt. It says the reset option is unavailable and figured it out that Apple locked down resetting/modifying firmware externally.

Is there any other method to reset SMC?

If you open the system and disconnect all power, eventually the SMC has to restart, but that's not necessarily the same as a signaled clear.

We would need to have the schematics of the SMC and the firmware to know for sure, but if you don't feel you want to repair the keyboard and can't otherwise use the Mac without an SMC reset, I would disconnect the battery for maybe 24 to 48 hours. You've already done the brief disconnect of power so this likely is a situation where you need to have the boards replaced or repaired.

Assuming there's no damage due to repairs, $300 for a mail in repair was an option until the 2013/2012 models went vintage.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624

If it's purchased in Turkey or California, you still have time for the Apple repair at the approximate cost above.


Can I have different virtual desktops with different resolutions/scaling? I'm really frustrated by the way some applications are not HiDPI aware and resort to pixel doubling - video games, GIMP, etc.

Is it possible to have one of my virtual desktops (I think apple uses a different term? "Workspaces"?) be at the native resolution (ie "scaled" to "more space") while the other remain at "best for this display"?

I've done a tonne of searching and I can't find anything, but maybe it's just hurt by the fact I don't know the apple jargon.

I'd be happy with something like windows has that allows me to turn off DPI scaling for specific applications.

I have a 2014 Macbook Pro 15" retina with a 2880x1800 resolution.

Thank you for any help :)

No, each Desktop (Space) will have the same resolution, whatever the Display's resolution is set at.

You could use an App like Display Menu to more easily/quickly change the resolution as needed/wanted as you change between Desktops.


Apps folder: View settings are always being reset I have a small problem with my apps folder (/Applications/).

Whenever I change the view settings, for example, the size of the text, and click "Use as standard", it works fine.

But after some time, definitely after reboot or logout, those settings are not applied anymore and the old, ugly style is being used.

I heard that the file .DS_Store contains these settings. There is none in my apps folder, so I created one, but it didn't even save, no warning or error was given.

In all other folders, this works fine.

Does anybody have an idea to make my apps folder to stick to the chosen view settings permanently?

Finder view settings are stored in invisble .DS_Store files, in the parent of the folder being set. So the settings for /Applications are stored in /.DS_Store, and /Applications/.DS_Store holds the settings for subfolders of /Applications, such as /Applications/Utilities.

Normally you have write permission to these files in one of two ways:

For system folders such as /Applications, the .DS_Store files have
write access for members of the admin group, i.e. administrators.
For folders that you create, you are the owner of the .DS_Store file.

The problem is that the permissions can get screwed up. One way is via the macOS Migration Assistant: the migration changes the permissions on some .DS_Store files to be owned by root, but with no write access granted to the admin group.  This results in the symptoms you describe.

A fix is to first run this command:

 sudo find -x / -name .DS_Store -user root -exec chmod -v g+w {} \;

which will give the group write access to any .DS_Store files owned by root.

That still won't fix all of the files; there may be a few stragglers (such as, /.DS_Store) where the migration has changed the file to the wrong group, such as wheel instead of admin. You can fix that with the chgrp command, e.g.:

 sudo chgrp admin /.DS_Store


Mac OS X equivalent to Windows "Register this connection's addresses in DNS" On Windows, in the Advanced TCP/IP Properties of the TCP/IPv4 properties of the NIC there is a tickbox called "Register this connection's addresses in DNS".

Does Mac OS X have an equivalent setting?  I need to disable it, as we have a Mac OS X 10.10 Server with 3 NICs that is autoregistering in the office DNS server (which is a Windows 2012 server btw) and it is registering the same hostname on all 3 NICs, which is not what we want.

dsconfigad -restrictDDNS en0

Will only allow the address assigned to en0 to be registered via DDNS.

Best practice is to have all NICs disabled except en0 when you bind the Mac.  Then restrict DDNS updates to only en0, only after this then enabling the subsequent NICs.


Always show text cursor while moving it in Word The text cursor, or caret, is normally in the visible form in applications at the start of its display cycle. It then goes to the flashing sequence once you stop moving it with arrow keys or typing. However, in Word 2011 I'm constantly frustrated because the cursor disappears, or defaults to the invisible state of the flashing sequence, while I'm typing or moving it. This makes it painfully difficult to edit text without using the mouse. As I write this post and keep going back to word I'm noticing that it seems erratic as to what behavior it's acting. I think that it stays in whichever state it was last in, which 50% of the time is invisible.

I've since changed the blink rate to 200ms via changing the default in Word's plist file. This helps a little in my frustration, but the behavior really needs fixed.

Update 2014-09-02
It doesn't appear to be a problem on documents created locally. It seems to be an issue with documents I've got from elsewhere, quite possibly from other operating systems.

I noticed the problem when I tried working on a document I created working on a PC using Windows 8. So your theory on operating systems may be valid.

I opened a blank document and copied the content out of the dysfunctional one and voila... my cursor came back.


In OS X Lion 10.7.5 can I turn faces off in iPhoto? Is there a way to bypass the automatic updating of faces in iPhoto (OS X Lion 10.7.5.) My iPhoto is full of "faces" of people it has picked up from the backgrounds of my photos, making it so slow and having to delete so many photos afterwards that I stopped using it.

If not, can you suggest any other similar software I can use to index and sort my photos?

No. There is no way to turn off Faces in iPhoto. The best way is to use Aperture. I use Aperture, but a common alternative is Adobe Lightroom.


Screen capture software that streams to Apple TV? Is there any application that can stream content of a screen, or application window to Apple TV? I would like something that works in similar fashion as AirFoil, but for captured screen content instead of sound.

What I am looking for is a way to skip to have projector and cables in our conference room. Instead of going with a projector and having to mount it to the ceiling and have long cables, I would go with a big TV, Apple TV and than simply stream video from a Mac laptop to Apple TV.

Check out Erica Sadun's AirFlick, part of her free AirPlay utilities package. You may have to do some fooling around to get it to send the screen instead of a file, but that should actually be doable with VLC, if she hasn't already built it in.

http://ericasadun.com/ftp/AirPlay/


iPhone 5s, iOS 8.2, Fingerprint sensor is suddenly not working. I have the iPhone 5s with iOS 8.2, and the fingerprint sensor suddenly stopped working. It worked fine earlier today and before.I had the fingerprint feature on since i got the phone when it came out with no issues until now. I deleted all of the fingerprints and tried to set them up again, but now it keeps saying that my fingerprint are unreadable. But a few times it makes it through the set up, but they will not work unlocking the phone. I tried resetting it a few times with no avail. Hoping someone here could help.

The clip that holds the ribbon cable plug in
Place on the home button has come lose allowing the plug to Free float in the socket.
Open the phone being carful not to open
It too far and snap the clip back in place,
And never subject your phone to excessive
Vibration like a bike Handlebar cradle.
Close the phone and you are good to go.


Mac App Store apps damaged? Overnight, TextWrangler crashed with a message "TextWrangler" is damaged and can't be opened. I deleted "TextWrangler" and download it again from the App Store.

I couldn't update from the Mac App Store, because the latest version of TextWrangler requires 10.8.5 or later, so Snow Leopard and Lion users are out of luck.

Since the crash happened at midnight, I wagered a guess that it was date/time related.

Sure enough, changing the system date back to November 11 magically "repaired" the "damaged" app and allowed it to start; while coming back to the present (November 12) made the app refuse to start, with the same message as before.

That's not a tenable long-term solution; but, all is not lost.  (See my "fix" in the answer section.)

I'm still curious as to why the app stopped working on a particular day though; and, if there is a better solution that stays "in channel" with the App Store.

Update:

It appears that this is more widespread than just the single app..

TextWrangler is also available outside the Mac App Store, and older versions which are compatible with Snow Leopard and Lion can be downloaded from BareBones website

This standalone version launches without complaining about being damaged, regardless of the date (so far?).


For a FileVault user of Mountain Lion: can I avoid the automated login, which normally follows unlock of the encrypted startup volume? I have FileVault enabled with two users:

AdminGuy
OtherGuy.

I want AdminGuy to:

have the ability to unlock the HD, and therefore only he can enter a u/n + p/w at boot to start boot up
have the ability to log in
not be logged in automatically.

In other words: can AdminGuy just unlock the drive, but then have a login screen popup so OtherGuy could choose to login instead?

10.8.

Per @DeepanshuUtkarsh's link, this is the behavior I want to change:

  The user account that unlocked the drive will be logged into their own
  account after start up completes, without needing to log in again.

  If you want to make the Mac available to a user that does not have
  unlock capabilities, log in, then when you see your own desktop,
  choose "Log Out (user name)" from the Apple () menu. Also, you can
  unlock the disk, then choose the other user's name from the Fast User
  Switch (appears as the currently-logged in user's name) menubar item
  in the upper-right part of the screen.

Encrypt the startup volume with Core Storage without FileVault

Two days after I added this answer, Apple published a technical white paper: Best Practices for Deploying FileVault 2 – Deploying OS X Full Disk Encryption Technology (PDF). At a glance, some of what I describe below seems to be described by Apple as:

Disk Password—based DEK.

Preparation

Backup
start Recovery OS
use Disk Utility to erase the startup volume – Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)
restore
give the passphrase for the volume to AdminGuy.

Hint

At step 4 above, use a method that preserves the Apple_Boot slice (sometimes named Boot OS X, sometimes named Recovery HD) whilst restoring the JHFS+ startup volume.

To validate this answer, I used Disk Utility for that step. (I'm less familiar with restoration capabilities of Time Machine.)

The resulting EfiLoginUI:

As Disk Password has an avatar/icon, it's clear that Apple considers scenarios such as this.

Normal use thereafter

Alongside named users, EfiLoginUI presents Disk Password
AdminGuy can select Disk Password
AdminGuy can enter the passphrase to unlock the CoreStorage-protected startup volume
when loginwindow appears, select the required user.

Users may change their login passwords. The phrase for Disk Password will remain unchanged.

You need not use the FileVault areas of System Preferences but if you do, most things work as expected.

The machine pictured above is perfectly clean, restored from a Mountain Lion template that I created following installation of the OS (at the Welcome screen I shut down, then used Disk Utility to image all partitions/slices of the disk). I proceeded to create a user, then enabled that user for FileVault:

The resulting EfiLoginUI – one named user alongside the Disk Password option:

Appearance bug

System Preferences in Build 12A269 of OS X 10.8 may state that FileVault is enabled, with a recovery key set, when the key is no longer applicable. (Assume that an erased volume, with a possibly different passphrase, will not accept a recovery key that was set before erasure. A more definite opinion may be drawn from Infiltrate the Vault: Security Analysis and Decryption of Lion Full Disk Encryption (2012).) I have reported bugs to Apple.

Photographs above are of the USB flash drive that I used to validate this answer.

Photographs below are of the internal drive that I use every day.

EfiLoginUI – two named users enabled for FileVault, the Disk Password option, and the Guest User:

loginwindow – all named users:


How do you convert video within 10.7 without any 3rd party software Is it possible to convert video resolution within 10.7 without the use of Handbrake.app or other 3rd party software? I'm not allowed to install any apps on this machine so hence not being able to download Handbrake.app

Yes it's possible, just right click on the video file within finder and choose the encode selected video files.


Rename/delete files in Mac OS X save window Is it somehow possible to rename/delete/copy files when saving a file and the Finder window pops up? I know you can do it with Windows, is it possible with Mac OS X?

A quick test in OS X 10.10 shows that you can copy and delete, but not rename files from the save dialog box. Right(control)-clicking on a file brings up the options for Move to Trash and Duplicate. The usual behavior of changing a file name by clicking on the already-selected file does not seem to work as it does in the Finder.


Video Transitions Stopped Working in Final Cut Express 4.0.1 on OS X 10.6.8 A 40-60 hour project has hit a brick wall because FCE 4.0.1 will not create usable video transitions. (It was working a week ago & no new software or updates have been installed). Even a simple Cmnd+T generic transition doesn't work, except for one whose time code is always <00:00:00;01>. When I do the typical "tricks" to lengthen the duration of the transition (like right click, select duration, then type in a longer value), all I hear is a bump sound signifying an error of some kind. No error code is generated. The duration value remains unaltered.

I've deleted the plist. I did a complete uninstall from AppDelete; redid permissions; then reinstalled the app. Didn't change a thing.

Anybody got a clue how to restore this functionality?

2010 i7 2.66 GZ 17" w/ 8GB of RAM & an NVIDIA GeForce GE 330M.

You have to trim at least .5 seconds off the end of your clip. In other words, uncut clips = no transitions, so lengthening it as you had tried won't help.

Also, do you have handles enabled? See the referenced article below:

FCE Transitions/Troubleshooting


Mac: VRAM with multiple Monitors It seems that when multiple monitors are attached to a MacBook Pro (Retina), OSX splits up the VRAM for the monitors. Even when a screen is captured by e.g. a game, performance degrades very steep. The only thing that helps is to put the MBP in clamshell mode and remove one of the 2 attached displays to get back to reasonable performance.

The thing I don't understand is, why does the OS not allocate all resources to the captured display by default when it's captured? What's the reasoning behind this?

The rule is if a monitor is attached, GPU needs to push content to it, therefore taking out memory space.

The good thing is, that space is quite small when a game is in fullscreen since it's just a big black canvas being pushed.

The bad news is, performance isn't degraded because of the VRAM, it's rendering units.

Each GPUs is made up of different units specialized in performing different tasks. There's one kind of units that are specialized in rendering outputs.

That said, even if the retina display is blank, it still consumes a great deal of rendering unit's resources. That is what I think make the game slow.

It's like the difference between my recently purchased GTX 660 TI and 670. They are as good as each other in terms of calculation performance (texel rate, effects), but it has slower RAM and less rendering units. That makes it perform much worse in high resolution.


xpcproxy using all my bandwidth I have recently installed an SSD in my iMac and restored my backup using SuperDuper!. Since then, xpcproxy seems to randomly download stuff and uses all my bandwidth for minutes on end. What would be the reason?

I am running the latest version of El Capitan (yesterday's update).

In my case, it was nsurlsessiond (by sudo lsof | grep -i nsurl)

Fired up Charles with https MITM'ing, but didn't find anything talking to Apple (but it wasn't making any new connections to intercept).

It seemed to go away after a little while.

EDIT: After sleeping and waking it up with Charles running, xpcproxy showed it was downloading pictures from iCloud ([redacted].icloud-content.com).

(xpc services need some better monitoring tools and/or they're not well-known.)


Is it possible to hide the name of the desktop icons? I know it is possible to hide the name by renaming the file/folder to something else. The problem comes with my cloud showing in the desktop. I want it to show and I don't want to change the names of my folders.

I made a cool icon set for the few things I've got in my desktop and the names there just don't fit.

If you want to just hide one filename or folder, the answer is kludgey but it works:
Insert 58 spaces in the beginning of the filename: the filename "disappears" from the desktop.  It still exists (you can Cmd-I or Finder to see it/change it), but it's no longer visible on the Desktop.  In actuality, it's probably showing the first 58 characters of the filename (the invisible spaces) and cutting off the rest, so technically it's not hiding the name, just truncating it, but anyway...  (The 58 may not be an exact number, but that's how many it took to hide "foo.app" on my 10.11.6 Mac.)


Outlook - Smart search Say I want to quickly find all emails by one person.

In some email editors you can type "from: John" and it would understand that you are only interested in messages that John sent.

Is this possible with Outlook in OS X? What about Mail?

Outlook 2011 for Mac can do that: just skip the space. So, from:John.

It shows your smart search options as you type. Click one of these (or just type them with the colon), and it'll search only that type of thing:

Or, you can click in the quick search box, then click the "From" button in the "search" ribbon section that appears...

...then type "John" in the different box that appears.

Less typing, but one extra click.


how to contact lost phone5 if in low battery I lost my iphone5 yesterday, and I already activated lost mode from my mac. Also, I believe find My iPhone is on on my iPhone. Question is, what if the phone gets low battery, will I still be able to locate my iPhone once it is online? I called the phone just this morning, but its not ringing anymore. Thanks..

Sorry, if it is not powered (to low battery), the find my phone wont work.


Downloading previous purchases in iTunes says "Buy" I'm trying to download previous iTunes purchases to a computer.  The following warning comes up.

I know how to deal with authorizing the computer, but what I'm concerned about is the "Buy" button.  I was under the impression I could download previous purchases free of charge.  What's going to happen when I click "Buy" on a previous purchase?

If you really purchased it, it will show buy and then tell you it's free since you already bought it. As long as you didn't mistake a newer version of the song you can "buy" again for free. There is a report a problem link if you do accidentally re-buy substantially the same item and I wouldn't hesitate to ask for a refund when the storekeeper doesn't make it easier to know if it's a re-download or a buy.


Transferring files using ssh on terminal I am trying to transfer a file to Computer A (my computer) from Computer B (the remote computer). I have looked through different threads, but nothing is working. First, I log onto Computer B using ssh which works fine. My code for the file transfer is

scp userB@hostB:~/Desktop/(file_name) ~/Desktop/

when I plug this in, it asks for Computer Bs password, which I enter. Then I get the error

scp: /Users/userB/Desktop/(file_name) : No such file or directory

I know that the file is there, however. What am I doing wrong?

Have you tried, while logged on to Computer A :

scp (Computer B user)@(Computer B address):/Users/(Computer B user)/Desktop/(file_name) ~/Desktop/

It's more explicit than using ~, which may not behave as you might want it to on the remote machine - although it will be fine for local file specifications.


How can I download the source code for iOS? I read an article that said the JailBreakMe hacker reads through Apple's source code to try to find flaws.

I am curious and wondering: how do we get the source code for iOS?

iOS is a derivative of Darwin OS which is an open source OS released by Apple. You can browse Apple's open source archives and download the Darwin code from their Open Source Development site. That link contains the major release archives for all the Darwin-based operating systems Apple has produced to date.

What you don't get with those archives is the proprietary layers that Apple places on top of Darwin to build the shipped iOS and OS X operating systems you interact with. These include things like the GUI framework and some hardware drivers and what not. In a nutshell: you don't get the polish that makes it an Apple OS. But you do get the engine.

You can also gain access to the developer APIs made available by Apple by joining their iOS Developer Program. If you'd like to access the developer APIs and documentations you can enroll in the Apple Developer Program and you'll immediately be given access to beta builds of iOS as well as all the developer API docs.

I do not believe the JailBreakMe developer (at the time of writing he has accepted an intern position at Apple) had any special level of access to the proprietary and company-secret components that make up the iOS operating system. Just the Darwin source for the releases and the developer APIs.


How to change default maps to Google Maps for WhatsApp location sharing on iPhone 7? How to change default maps to Google maps on iPhone 7 while sharing location to others on WhatsApp Application ?

iOS Version : 11.1.2,
Model : iPhone 7, 128 GB

I also tried uninstalling Apple Maps, but no use !

Hold down the location and copy it to your clipboard and paste it on hangouts app chat and click on that it will redirect it to google maps if the original sender sent the location via google maps


How do you do a web search on an IPhone? My current workflow to do a web search is to:

Open the Safari app
Click on the "tabs" button
Open a new tab
Type my search query into the URL bar.

But I'm constantly frustrated by typos due to the lack of autocompletion (which I guess is turned off automatically in this field). Is there a more canonical way to do a web search? Do I have to ask Siri? Not my preference since I don't want to have to talk aloud. And I don't want to use the Chrome or Google apps since I can't live without the ad-blocker in Safari.

You can just swipe down on any home screen to reveal the search field at top of screen. Enter your search criteria and you'll see a range of results, including suggested websites.

If none of the results suit you, just swipe up and tap on the Search Web option that appears at the bottom of screen. This will do a search for you using Google (or whatever search engine you have set as your default) in a new Safari tab.

NOTES:

It may be worth you checking whether you've configured Spotlight Suggestions. You can do this via Settings > General > Spotlight Search.
You can also check your Safari Search settings within Settings > Safari.


Developing with Eclipse, Visual Studio .NET and Xcode - 13“ or 15” Macbook Pro? (Or AIR?) I have some Xcode (iPhone/iPad) development on the horizon and will also be doing a bit of Eclipse (Java) and .NET development in between. Since I'll be running a VM for the Windows stuff, I think a Macbook Pro is the way to go.

What I am wondering is, does the 13" Pro have enough screen real estate to make development at least a little enjoyable? I looked at the AIR and whilst it has better resolution than the 13" Pro, it of course lacks in terms of RAM etc. As a consultant I will probably be carrying this thing around quite a lot, so would rather not go with the 15".

I will be adding the SSD option to the Pro.

Any advice much appreciated.

Thanks.

In case anyone is reading this now, the 13" Retina screens can be put into a higher-resolution scaled mode 1680 x 1050 mode which is still readable. It's the same as the Macbook Pro 17" I used to use, just in a smaller space.

This is ample width for using XCode or other IDEs


Mac Internal Drive Uninitialized | Macbook Pro 13 (mid 2010) Bit of background - the whole problem began with the mac being really slow and unresponsive. I thought it might be a good idea to wipe everything clean, and reinstall a fresh copy of High Sierra. So, restarted and went into Recovery mode, and then disk utility. I could not erase my internal Macintosh HD - the error said it could not unmount it. Same error when trying First Aid too.

From here, it went really dark. Tried internet recovery but it gave an error -2002F. As I didn't have another mac at the time, read an article somewhere to download a High Sierra image from a link (not apple store) and using TransMac to create a bootable - which was a mistake, because I was able to install that OS but it started throwing random errors and was unresponsive as well. From this point onwards, Mac started to get stuck at the apple logo with progress bar at 100% and I waited 24 hours, and it still did nothing. An SMC Reset fixed that issue, and it logged me into my OS which is again the corrupted one.

So, now tried internet recovery from another Wifi, which took me further only to throw an error before install began saying Permission Denied. I also managed to find another mac and download a genuine High Sierra and make a bootable out of it, but when I went to install it, same error - Permission Denied.

Many more hours of research, and I found out by typing the command (lsof|grep 'Volumes/Macintosh HD') that there were two processes running - 169 and 197 (see image below) . Killed them both.

And then was able to force unmount the disk via terminal (diskutil unmountDisk force /dev/disk0). However when I went to erase by trying the command (diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ Mac /dev/disk0), it threw the error - 69825: Wiping volume data to prevent future accidental probing failed. (image below).

After which I ran the following command (gpt -v destrory /dev/disk0) with the intention it might clear off the partitioning, I guess I was wrong because now I do not have a Macintosh HD in Disk Utility, and the internal Disk says 'Uninitialized' (image below)

So yeah, that's where I am after 5 days of troubleshooting - pretty much nowhere! I am not a mac genius, but I know things. But this is getting too complicated now. The other weird thing I found is when I type the command (diskutil list), I get this long list going upto /dev/disk21 and all of them are disk images. (see below). Not sure if that has anything to do with it.

So assuming the next step would be to initialize the disk, ran the following commands.

diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ Mac disk0
diskutil partitiondisk disk0 JHFS+ Mac 100%

gives me the same error (image below)

So, not really sure where to go from here. I think my brain's reached the saturation level unless someone can point out something that I haven't tried that might help. Any suggestions are welcome.

Lastly, this could very well be a hardware fault which I might have caused due to my troubleshooting step - I'd never know i guess. But this is an old machine, and I'm willing to get my hands dirty here to find a way out.

Thanks for your time.

I managed to connect my HDD as an external on another mac, and was actually able to format it clean without errors. I mounted it back and began the installation, only to give me an error at the end which I don't exactly remember what it was, had lot of numbers in it - at this point I had kinda given up. So, Its either a faulty hard-disk or a faulty SATA cable, either way there's no point in trying to fix it - not worth the time. It is definitely not a software problem. Will be going for a new SSD by the looks of it.

I hope this thread can prove helpful to anyone having similar issues. Thanks for the help guys.

Solved.


How can I alter the spotlight category spreadsheets to include ODS In Lion, the "All My Files" smart folder in finder is based on spotlight search categories. While I can see how from System Preferences->Spotlight->Search Results I can alter the order of these as well as enabled/disable categories, I cannot see how to alter the file types that go into them.

I specifically want to add the Libre Office ODS file type into spreadsheets, but a generalised answer I can use for other file types is even better.

I don't fear cracking out vi and editing system files.

Install "LibreOffice", latest version. It contains the aforementioned mdiimporter plugin. Confirmed just now, to be working. LibreOffice 3.5.6 on OS X 10.7.5


Sync iOS app using Wi-Fi network in Windows 7 I am using Windows 7 and have the latest version of iTunes installed.

The USB port is disabled for security purposes but I want to sync my iOS device to my PC, so I am thinking that I can use Wi-Fi. How can I do that?

You will need to connect the device over USB the first time before you can use iTunes Wi-Fi Sync. For installing an IPA on your iOS device, iTunes manifests can be used to install IPAs directly on the iOS device. Alternatively, the developer can distribute the app to you using TestFlight.


How much does replacing the screen of iPod touch 4th gen cost in India? I have an iPod touch 4th generation, 32GB. Broke the screen and since then it doesn't even charge. I am in Hyderabad, India, and I would appreciate a locally available answer.

Try www.irepair.in also avl @ Hyderabad. Original screen replacement costs approx 5k. Apple will replace the product if it's out of warranty for 9.2k.


Upgrade to High Sierra stalls/fails at “Calculating installation time“ I am trying to upgrade my 2015 MacBook Pro from Sierra to High Sierra.

I downloaded the installer from the Mac app store and started it. The first slightly alarming sign was during a reboot about a minute or two in the process when the screen went black and then displayed white horizontal bars in places on the screen (like a display glitch) for a few seconds before then rebooting and continuing.

It then displayed the Apple logo with a progress bar which then displayed “Calculating installation time”. This remained on the screen and nothing else seemed to progress any further. I left the installer to continue running overnight, but when I woke up this morning it was still stuck in the same place, and the progress bar had not moved.

Realising that the installation had probably failed, I rebooted to try again. Now I cannot get beyond entering my password to unlock the storage drive (SSD), some console errors appear briefly on the screen, and then I get a multilingual message on a black screen to wait or press a key to reboot.

What should I do now?

Is it:

Try to launch the recovery system (if this has not already been wiped),
Reinstall the existing OS from there (or from USB stick, failing that),
Restore my files from Time Machine,
Try again?

I saw in another post that someone else had problems upgrading, apparently due to having an NTFS driver installed. I have the Paragon NTFS driver installed to allow me to use NTFS external drives. Given that High Sierra has new rules about kernel extensions, which I imagine a file system driver must use, it sounds as though I should perhaps uninstall this before trying to upgrade again?

I finally managed to resolve this problem by attempting to see if I could use MacOS Recovery to reinstall the existing OS, if this was still possible.

Recovering the existing OS seemed not to be possible, but I was able to unlock and mount the laptop's drive (which seemed to be the point where the previous OS upgrade attempt had failed) using the recovery system's Disk Utility, and then use the internet recovery option to install MacOS High Sierra via the internet.

The installation was successful this time, the drive was converted from HFS Plus to APFS successfully, and my data was preserved.


Keyboard shortcut using 'Mac Driver' in WINE I would like to map the Command key to the Control key but, have it affective only while running a WINE application using the new 'Mac Driver', not X11. I tried a registry edit but, I don't know what I'm doing and google hasn't been very helpful.

No third party software! I don't want to hear about anything like KeyRemap4MacBook.

I was looking to solve the same issue in order to use the same hotkeys inside Wine as for regular OS X applications. No information on that is available from what I can tell so the easiest solution turned out finding the source code of winemac.drv. The important function is macdrv_compute_keyboard_layout() which does lots of various computations but for the modifier keys it all essentially boils down to taking values from default_map (all modifier keys are marked as "fixed"). Unfortunately, as of Wine 1.7.10 there is no configurability here so the map values have to be changed by modifying the compiled file.

For me the compiled file was located under /Applications/Wine.app/Contents/Resources/lib/wine/winemac.drv.so. It's generally a good idea to create a copy of the original file before changing it. You need a hex editor to open it. First let's have a look at the following two lines:

{ VK_RMENU,                 0x38 | 0x100,   TRUE },     /* kVK_RightCommand */
{ VK_LMENU,                 0x38,           TRUE },     /* kVK_Command */

According to the virtual key table VK_RMENU has the value 0xA5 and VK_LMENU the value 0xA4. In other words, the binary representation of these two lines looks like this:

A5 00 38 01 01 00 00 00
A4 00 38 00 01 00 00 00

I found this byte sequence at the offset 0x62770, for your Wine build things might be slightly different. We want to map the Command key to VK_LCONTROL and VK_RCONTROL meaning that these two entries have to be changed into:

A3 00 1d 01 01 00 00 00
A2 00 1d 00 01 00 00 00

Now I would also like to map the Option key to Alt because I need a working Alt key. By default both Option keys are unmapped, meaning that they are represented by a sequence of eight zeroes in the table and need to be found by position. The left Option key is the third entry after left Command, the right Option key is the sixth entry after left Command (for me offset 0x62790 and 0x627A8 respectively). The first entry can be changed into:

A4 00 38 00 01 00 00 00

And the second into:

A5 00 38 01 01 00 00 00

Yes, these are the values originally assigned to the Command key. I actually only changed the entry for the left Option key, this way the right Option key can still be used to produce special characters.

This isn't a great solution, more of a hack that will have to be repeated each time Wine is updated. Also, remapping the Option key only works for keyboard shortcuts like Alt-F4 but not for Alt-F. Still, it does the job for now and in future Wine developers will hopefully add some configuration here. I filed the corresponding change request as bug 35351.


Is there a way to 'search' for items on the desktop by typing the first few letters of the file name? I am somewhat new to Mac. On my Windows PC if I type the first few letters of a file it will highlight on the desktop (or window). Yet on my new Mac it will only highlight old documents. This makes it quite annoying if I copy a file into a folder full of many other files and want to find it again. Its like I have to wait for the Mac to periodically 'index' its files before I can search in this manner.
Is there a way to have this work properly?
An example of what I mean:

Say I have a .jpg file on my desktop called abc.jpg. If I have no windows or programs open and type the letters 'abc' rapidly then the file abc.jpg becomes highlighted, making it easy to spot amongst the items on the desktop. No problems.
Now, say, I move a new file, xyz.jpg, from a folder on to the desktop. I then try to locate that file by typing 'xyz' only there is no response - though it is present on the desktop alongside abc.jpg the file does not get highlighted as abc.jpg did earlier. It is only after several days that the new file gets 'indexed'(?) and begins to work with this useful feature.

Just start typing the filename within the Finder window. It should select the first file that matches. If you want to try again, press Esc and start again.