What is wrong with my iPhone's model number? I just took a look at the reported model number on my iPhone 5c by going to Settings → General → About → Model. I am wondering, why does it says NF155LL/A instead of MF155LL/A?

NF model numbers shouldn't exist, right?

An N in place of M simply means it's a replacement unit from Apple. As per this wiki article:

The first letter in the model number represents the source of the device. Currently, there are four known possible choices:

F: refurbished unit.

M: retail unit.

N: replacement unit.

P: personalized (engraved) unit.

You can view the model number for an iOS device by going to Settings → General → About → Model on your iPhone/iPad.
The default string displays the iOS device part number. Tapping on the model cell shows the model identifier string.
To identify an iPhone by its model number, refer to the Apple support article, Identify your iPhone model


Can I restart iTunes remotely from my iPhone/iPad? I am running iTunes, 10.6.1 on my Mac mini running OS X Lion 10.7.4. This Mac mini has my entire media library including a ton of DVDs that were ripped and transcoded to work on Apple TV. I have 3 of the very latest Apple TVs that stream content from the Home Sharing library of my Mac mini. Everything works great most of the time.

I am running to an issue with increasing frequency, where the Apple TVs cannot load the library from the Mac mini (it shows the spinning gear). The only solution I have found is to quit iTunes on the Mac mini and then restart it.

What I would like to do is have something on my iPhone that will allow me to stop and then restart iTunes on the Mac mini. I run Apache on this machine and I have written a little PHP script that will stop and then start iTunes using AppleScript and osascript. It works fine from the Terminal, but not from the web server. I am sure it is a permissions problem, but I do not really want to run the web server under my user account.

Any suggestions? I can buy an app or script something using PHP or AppleScript. I do not want to use just an SSH or VNC client because I want my kids to do this easily as well.

One option would be to run sudo visudo to edit the sudoers file and add the following line:

apacheuser ALL=(youruser) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/osascript

Be sure to change apacheuser to the account that apache runs under and youruser to the account that iTunes runs under. This allows apache to run AppleScript commands as the chosen user without prompting for a password. You can find more information about this in the sudoers man page.

However, this could introduce a security hole, since the apache user would then be able to perform any action as the user that AppleScript allows. A better option would be to create an intermediary shell script that takes start and stop as an argument.

#!/bin/sh

case $1 in
    stop)  /usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application "iTunes" to quit';;
    start) /usr/bin/open /Applications/iTunes.app;;
    *)     echo 'Please use "start" or "stop" as an argument.';;
esac

Save this in a file somewhere, and make it executable with chmod +x. In this case, your line in the sudoers file would now be:

apacheuser ALL=(youruser) NOPASSWD: /Some/Directory/iTunesControl.sh

Then, from your PHP script, call the shell script with:

sudo -u youruser /Some/Directory/iTunesControl.sh stop|start


Upgrade iOS 12 to iOS 13? Seemingly I cannot update using the older IPSW files, only iOS 14.
I have an iPhone 7 test device with iOS 12, and I only want to update to iOS 13 (iOS 13.7).
Every attempt failed with basically the "not authorized" error. Tried with Finder, and iMazing.
How can I update to only iOS 13 (without jailbreaking)?

Unfortunately you cannot. iOS 14 (specifically iOS 14.1) is the current latest version of iOS available and it supports running on iPhone 7.
Apple has stopped signing iOS 13 and it’s not possible to install it over the air or via IPSW file.


What does these extended attributes mean and where are they documented? For some reason a directory I had (Vundle.vim) got randomly copied to another directory (got copied from ~/.vim to ~/dotfiles/.vim with strange permissions and what looks like no contents. Anyways, when I ran

ls -l Vundle.vim

I got

drw-r--r--@ 11 root  staff  374 Aug 14 20:22 Vundle.vim

and when I ran

xattr -l Vundle.vim/

this is what I got

xattr -l Vundle.vim/
com.apple.backupdelta.creationMarker: yes
com.apple.metadata:_kTimeMachineNewestSnapshot:
00000000  62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 33 41 BB 7E B4 DA 00 00  |bplist003A.~....|
00000010  00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000020  00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000030  00 11                                            |..|
00000032
com.apple.metadata:_kTimeMachineOldestSnapshot:
00000000  62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 33 41 BB 7E 82 12 00 00  |bplist003A.~....|
00000010  00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000020  00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000030  00 11                                            |..|
00000032
inodeForCreationOriginal: 10315546

Can anybody tell me what this output means or where I can find that information (some sort of documentation)?

All commandline apps have an associated man page, that explain input and output, invoked like this:

man [command]

Where [command] is the command you want help on. So to find info on ls:

man ls

Also Mac OS is based on BSD unix and not completely different from Linux. So googling for the man page on almost any (BSD/Linux) unix command will also lead you to (quite possibly) more info that you can possibly digest...


Why does thunderbolt to displayport cable result in video with color bleeding? I have an ASUS VE278 display, which is cable of handling VGA, DVI, DisplayPort and HDMI. I have an early 2013 model Macbook Pro, with two Thunderbolt ports, and an HDMI port. If I use the HDMI port (going through an HDMI to DVI converter cable), my ASUS display looks great, just like it did on my PC. No issues. However, if I use a "thunderbolt to displayport" adapter cable (such as this one) I get color bleeding artifacts on my screen, around contrasting colors, etc.

If I take a screen shot, everything looks fine on the screen shot (when viewed on another monitor or the Macbook's native display).

Here's a photo of the artifacting, while looking at this artifact test png image :

(it's hard to capture on camera, so forgive me):

Does driving a display via ThunderBolt always result in this color bleeding? I am ordering a thunderbolt to HDMI cable.. to see if that makes a difference. But what the heck is going on here?

Wow. So. Apparently OSX is treating my display as if it were a TV, and is only sending YCbCr color space instead of full RGB color space.

Found this article by Robert Pill that indicates the problem, and how to fix it:

How to force RGB in Mac OS X

Download the patch-edid.rb script from the forums thread above and
put it in your home directory.
Connect only the external monitor(s) in question (I closed my MacBook
lid, for example). The script will make override files for any
connected monitor. Type “ruby patch-edid.rb” in Terminal.
A new folder will be created in your home directory. Move it into the
“/System/Library/Displays/Overrides” folder. If Finder tells you that
you are overwriting an existing folder, consider backing it up first.
Restart your computer, enjoy your monitor.

To undo the changes, either delete the folder you had copied to the
Overrides folder (if it didn’t already exist) or replace it with the
folder you had backed up.

Also, one of his commenters made an improved script, available here.


Disable two week view in the Mountain Lion Calendar App In Lion I enabled the "Top sekret" debug menu and checked the box to show 14 days in the weekview. In Lion it worked quite nice.

Now I upgraded to Mountain Lion it doesn't work as nice as it was and I want to change it back to the normal 7 days in a week-view. One problem, I can't enable the debug menu anymore! So I don't know how to change it back.

I already searched the internet, looked in the App bundle etc, but I can't find where Calendar stores this setting. Do you know how to "reset" Mountain Lions calendar to the default setting for the weekview?

Just replaced my Calendar.app with the Calendar.app from another Mac, but no luck. So it seems that this preference is saved somewhere else. Hope somebody can point me in the correct direction.

Another (and more definite way) to get this fixed:

Close the Calendar app.
Edit ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iCal.plist and REMOVE the following keys:

CalUIDebugUseIPadStyleEventLayout
last calendar view description
IncludeDebugMenu
CalUIDebugDefaultDaysInWeekView

Save and restart Calendar.

You may need XCode or the PList Editor to edit the file (or use plutil to convert to text, edit with TextEdit and convert it back to binary).


How to connect notes with links in Notes.app? I have lots of notes and want to connect some of them to each other.

We can add links with CMD + K and I know we can run other apps with links like reminders://.

Is there any URL scheme to create a link to another note like note://noteTitle?

There is a workaround. You select the note, then choose the Collaboration button not the Sharing one as you might expect. Then you get a list of ways you can share the note and one of them is Copy Link. You'll have to then enter any e-mail address before the Share button becomes active.

After you click it, note will become shared. To get the link to this note, click Collaboration button again and you will see button 'Copy Link'. Click it and then you can insert copied link into another note or wherever you want to.


Connecting a Mixer to iPad Pro I would like to know if I can connect and use a Behringer Xenyx 1002FX mixer, with an C-1 (Behringer) condensor mic connected, to my iPad for recording with Garageband or Audacity.

I just googled your mixer and it appears that this device doesn't have a USB-Interface to get a digital signal of the mixer's output.

You need a digital audio interface like the Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD. You can then plug your mixer into the audio interface and connect the audio interface to the iPad Pro using a USB-Adapter.


VMware fusion 4 won't launch due to out of date, running guests When running the Upgrade Installer from VMware Fusion 3.1.3 to v4.0.1, this dialog pops up:

A virtual machine is running with an older version of VMware Fusion.
Please use the older version of VMware Fusion to suspend or power off all virtual machines.

I shut down all the guests, reran the installer, same thing. I used vmware article 1017838 to uninstall v3 manually, reboot, and then drag the Fusion 4 app to the Applications folder. Reboot and run Fusion. Same thing. Checked /var/run for vmware items. Checked Activity Monitor for vmware items. Rechecked locations specified in 1017838 and used spotlight to search around.
I moved all my guests to an extra drive and unmounted that drive, and repeated the uninstall and reinstall.  A friend recommended an app called "CleanApp" to watch what files are created and modified during the installs, which did reveal a bit more cruft. Basically, I've tried to scrub my system of all things Fusion, both versions including guests, and then done a reinstall, and that hasn't worked. My last gasp was booting into the 32 bit kernel but that didn't help.
I've filed a ticket with VMware, but it's been a slow slog.

You can try with this command from a Terminal:

VMware 3.x

/Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/vmrun list

VMware 4.x

/Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmrun list

to see if you have any VMs runnig - if you do, then run this command:

VMware 3.x

/Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/vmrun -T fusion stop "/path/to/.vmx" hard

VMware 4.x

/Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmrun -T fusion stop "/path/to/.vmx" hard

where you replace "/path/to/.vmx" with your path to the VM still running.


Should I upgrade my mbp internal hard drive (160 gb) with a 64 gb SSD? Possible Duplicates:
  Does the use of SSD give one a dramatic performance boost?
  Replace MacBook Pro hard disk with SSD

Should I upgrade my mbp internal hard drive (160 gb) with a 64 gb SSD? How much improvement will I see?

If you only use 40-50 gb on your disk, sure. The performance improvement will be very noticeable.


Extending a wireless network with an Airport Express I have a wireless network based on a Time Capsule (802.11n, first generation). As wireless connectivity is rather bad in one part of the house I wanted to use an Airport Express (802.11g) to extend the network. The end result should look somehow like

Internet Router <--LAN--> Time Capsule <--WiFi--> Airport Express

with the Time Capsule and the Airport Express both running in the same WiFi network.

Based on the documentation I found (e.g. HT4262) I assume I should create a WDS network but this somehow doesn't seem to work (the Express disappears from Airport Utility as soon as I define it as a WDS relay/remote base station).

So how do I have to configure the network in both the Time Capsule and the Airport Express to get this to work?

Have you tried the automatic configuration for the Express?

Don't do anything on the Time Capsule.

Do a cold reset of the express and bring it up on the Airport Utility.  You should have an option to join an existing Airport network. Choose the option to extend the range. That should do it.


excel files look different on OSX Desktop w/Parallels I have two Excel files on my OSX Desktop. One is an alias and it has the double red lines/logo of Parallels, the other does not.  See attached screen shot.

Can anyone tell me why this occurs? I don't think it has to do with one being an alias, as the double red lines have always been there and are visible on most MS files.

Thoughts?

Thx.

The double red lines/logo of Parallels appears when the default "Open with..." application is an application that requires Parallels in order to be opened.

Thus, in your case, it would seem that the default "Open with..." application for .alias files is probably Excel for Windows which requires Parallels in order to be opened, while your default "Open with..." application for .xlsx files is some program that works locally on Mac (maybe Excel for Mac or OpenOffice for Mac..).


Copy a file to the root directory I have a satnav device which the TomTom Home software does not recognise since it was updated. The TomTom help instructed me to download a folder and copy it to the root directory of my Mac. Using Cmd-G shows me the root directory but does not allow me to copy the folder into it.

How do I copy this folder into my root directory? (I'm running El Capitan.)

OS X prevents you from copying files and folders to the root directory or your "Macintosh HD". It prefers you write files only in your user directory to prevent accidental file deletions, overwrites, etc.

However, if you have a file or folder on your Desktop, and you are an administrator on the computer, you can copy the file using your super user privileges.

Simply open up the Terminal application. You can use Spotlight to search for it or go to your Applications folder, then Utilities folder.

Once in Terminal, you'll be faced with a prompt.

Run the command below to put the file or folder in your root directory. Put the name of the file or folder in place of "FILE".

sudo cp -p Desktop/FILE /

Press the return key. You'll be prompted for your password.

sudo is a command to provide super user privileges. cp is copy. -p means to preserve the file owner and permissions.

If you are required to change the owner or permissions of the file, you can run a command like chown change owner or chgrp change group or chmod change file permissions.


AppleScript “delay” command not working since switch to Yosemite Note: The issue with delay was fixed in OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

Ever since I upgraded to Yosemite, Applescripts that use delays have stopped working.  How can I fix this?

Here's the world's simplest Applescript, for the sake of an easy example:

set volume output volume 0
delay 5
set volume output volume 20
delay 5
set volume output volume 0
delay 5
set volume output volume 20
delay 5
set volume output volume 0
delay 5
set volume output volume 20
delay 5
set volume output volume 0

That should take 30 seconds to complete.  If I run it in Script Editor (formerly Applescript Editor) it takes 30 seconds to complete.  But if I save this script as an app, when I launch the app, the delays are ignored and the app takes a fraction of a second to complete.

How can I force Applescript to delay for a specified amount of time before moving on to the next step?  Is this a Yosemite glitch?  Is there a reliable workaround?

Note: The issue with delay was fixed in OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

@2oh1, you have the right basic idea in your answer, but here's a complete and correct answer:

The only reasonable way to work around this is to invoke "delay" within a loop that ensures the desired duration elapses before continuing. The best way to do this is to override "delay" with a custom handler:

on delay duration
  set endTime to (current date) + duration
  repeat while (current date) is less than endTime
    tell AppleScript to delay endTime - (current date)
  end repeat
end delay

This enables you to leave the rest of your script unchanged and you can use "delay" normally, e.g.,

delay 5
display alert "I like cake!"

[NOTE: Normally, the custom handler would use "continue delay duration" to invoke the built-in "delay", but I found that, although this works within Script Editor, it returns an error when used within an applet (“Can’t continue delay. (-1708)”). I worked around that issue by directly telling AppleScript to handle the delay command instead of using "continue" to get there.]

The issue is that delay processes user input while pausing the script, so you can still click on menus or windows displayed by an applet, and there is a bug (fixed in 10.11) where user input causes delay to not wait the full duration before resuming script execution. If you don't interact with the applet, delay works correctly.


Can the AirPods info be shown on the iPhone bottom more reliably? Sometimes when I opened up the AirPods case near the bottom of the iPhone 7 Plus or iPhone X, the info of the AirPods will be shown (percent of battery left for case and AirPods).

But other times no matter how many times I tried, it won't show but the AirPods can still play music through that iPhone. The only way I can get it to display again is to press that reset button on the AirPods case for 5 seconds or so and place it near the bottom of the iPhone again and press "Connect".  Is there a way to show the info without resetting the AirPods?

Open your case lid with your AirPods inside and hold your case close to your device. Wait a few seconds to see the charge status of your AirPods with a charging case. It appears as:

If you don't see info, then just take one Airpod and put back in case. Wait for a while and then it will appear again as shown in the picture. You don't need to reset to get the information back on your iPhone.


Why does my iPhone display no contacts, but display the correct name when I dial a number? I recently updated to iOS 5 (I know it took me forever), and after I did, all my contacts disappeared. However, when I would dial a number, it recognized it and would show the person's name. It stayed like that for a few hours, and then miraculously my contacts reappeared after I turned the phone off and on a few times. How did that happen?

I had the same problem. Contacts were showing up, for example, if someone called me or sent me a text and were therefore in my 'Recents', but did not show up in my contacts list either through the contacts app or through the phone contacts list itself (probably the same thing anyway!).

The solution that worked for me was to go into iCloud on my iPhone and set Contacts to 'off'.  This gave me the option to 'Keep on my iPhone' or 'Delete from My iPhone'. I chose to delete them. Once this had happened, I re-enabled Contacts and my contacts list was all synchronised back from iCloud correctly within a couple of minutes.


Adjust background color for pdf in Preview I'm reading a lot of pdf's in Preview's full screen mode. Usually this means I'm looking at a fully white screen with black characters. I'm getting mad after an hour of reading..

Is there a way of adjusting the colours/contrast in Preview temporarily? For example in TexShop the white background is automatically changed to a grey-value. For me it's probably fine if I'd able to change the white background to grey, but maybe its possible to even change it to another color like the nightmode on iOs?

Is this possible with Preview out-of-the-box? Can it be changed temporarily/only on viewing? Thank you.

I suggest to turn on the night shift function and to push it to a warmer color map: System Preferences > Displays > Night Shift.

This will protect your retina and your brain.

It might be worth trying the Invert colors mode:
System Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Invert colors.


Can't install El Capitan over beta version I saw a previous question similar to mine but no answer. I participated in the beta version of El Capitan I think last year. When the public release version came out I installed it and didn't discover that I was still using the Beta version until a month ago. I can't seem to find a way to do so. Apple tech support wants to charge me ridiculous $'s to help me with no guarantees. Can anyone send me to a site or tech paper or direct help to help get rid of the beta? I am unable to update from the app store. I am using a MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012). Thanks

GM is a Master update (the last one before the real thing).
Your literature when participating in the beta testing has a paragraf how to go from beta to the final release.


Early 2013 MacBook Pro UE Boom Bluetooth Issues I've tried lots of different solutions to get these two working nicely together.

So far I've tried:

Re-Pairing the devices
Removing and recreating all the Bluetooth plist files
Executing (defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" 53)

Nothing seems to fix the drop outs in the audio.  I was experiencing it while watching Netflix but I've just tried iTunes and that does the same thing.

Works fine when paired with my iPad Mini.

I bought the speaker shortly after getting the MacBook and it originally worked flawlessly, then an Update to OSX took out BT and WiFi, and got that fixed by deleted the plist files.

After the update to Yosemite nothing seems to fix it.  It makes listening or watching anything but a pleasure and is actually now very annoying.

What should my next attempt be at fixing this?

I've had some success by installing XCode, then installing the associated hardware IO tools, which include the bluetooth explorer.  The bluetooth explorer makes available tools..audio options, which lets you tune some settings.

The settings I found useful were to increase the bitpool (which appears directly related to audio quality), and to increase the buffer packets, which appears to make it more tolerant of temporary dropouts.  YMMV.


How do I prevent X11 opening an xterm when it starts? When I start the X11.app then it launches an xterm automatically.  I've long since switched from the "ordinary" xterm to rxvt-unicode so the initial xterm just hangs around like a wallflower never being used.  Whilst it's not particularly bad, it spoils the look of the place so I'd like to stop it launching.  How do I do it?

defaults write org.macosforge.xquartz.X11 app_to_run /usr/bin/true

in a Terminal. However, note that it normally shouldn't be necessary to ever start XQuartz.app (or X11.app; see the comments) manually. It will start automatically when you run an X11 client, and then it will not start its defaults startup application.


How to resolve the 100% disk usage on my iMac 27" (late 2013) when in Bootcamp bootup I own an iMac from the late 2013 series, it is the core i7 with 32GB RAM. I eventually established that using Bootcamp would allow for a better experience when working in Windows land (I am both an iOS developer and a C# developer).

However, on booting to Windows the hard drive in resource management (listed as an APPLE HDD WDC WD10EALX-408EA0) goes into 100% usage for around 10 minutes before the computer is responsive to use. This is without loading additional applications, just loading into windows in the first place.

After the system has loaded, it is fast and responsive (i.e. no additional paging or anything). Does anyone know what the resolution for this is?

The solution to my particular problem is to be found here which suggests excluding the process MsMpEng.exe from the windows defender service. I'm running windows 8.1 so this done by searching for Windows Defender in your programs, clicking on the settings tab (far right) and then browsing to 'C:\Program Files\Windows Defender\MsMpEng.exe' and adding it to the excluded files and locations. Disk usage reduces drammatically!


iTerm text search is in reverse order I'm running iTerm2. When do a text search ⌘ F, pressing Return moves the highlighted occurrence back (the previous occurrence). Is there a way to make it move to the next (forward) occurrence?

Searching in reverse is apparently how iTerm's search works by design (see https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/issues/4491).

As a user, I also find this design decision confusing.

If you would like to make Find Next / Find Previous in iTerm behave consistently with other apps, here are the proper keybinding overrides to add in System Preferences > Keyboard.

Note that I had to restart iTerm for the keybindings to fully take effect.


Can I edit content on an FTP server through Finder? Is there any way around the read-only access that Finder strictly allows so I can get write access to a FTP server through Finder?

You can use MacFusion, which allows to connect to a FTP server through a filesystem device.
MacFusion requires MacFUSE, or OSXFUSE with the compatibility layer for MacFUSE.

  Mount files and documents as a "Volume" in the Mac OS X Finder.
  Work with your files using your favorite Mac OS X applications directly. No manual upload or download needed!
  Support for SSH (Secure Shell) and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) servers.
  Uses your machine's native configuration for SSH, including support for private keys and custom settings.
  Quickly connect to a any server using the Quick Connect dialog, accessible from Macfusion's optional menu item.


Mac Pro with fresh install of Ubuntu Server 14 will not boot I installed Ubuntu Server 14 on my Mac Pro and now after a successful installation, when I tried to reboot it, the computer chimes like a Mac always does, but does not load any further.  Normally I would see a grey screen then code as ubuntu loads and finally I would be prompted with a password.

It does non of that, any idea why this would be, I had Ubuntu 12 running great however quite a few corrupt files caused the upgrade to 14 to fail, and I erased the harddrive back to empty, and did a fresh install of 14.  Everything seemed to go just fine until now.

What can or should I do to try and fix this.

EDIT: I now see the grey screen but then nothing happens after that

I was able to solve it by wiping the drive again, and reinstalling. Must have not installed correctly


Using Magsafe 1 85w 18.5v adapter for MacBook Pro 2015 15'' I want to use a Magsafe 1 85w 18.5v adapter for MacBook Pro 2015 15", which normally requires a Magsafe 2 85w 20v adapter.

Is the voltage difference is going to be an issue?

Apple says:

  The MagSafe to MagSafe 2 Converter allows you to use the MagSafe connector on your LED Cinema Display, Thunderbolt Display, or MagSafe Power Adapter to charge your MagSafe 2-equipped Mac computer.


Wifi Diagnostics get WiFi performance Is there any way to get the wifi performance using the Wifi Diagnostics?

I have a 802.11n network running on Apple TimeMachine.

The Wifi Diagnostics created diagnostics report but I don't know which log file would have this information?

Can someone point me to the right file?

When the Wi-Fi diagnostics tool finishes, the logs get saved to your desktop.

If that didn't happen or was deleted, you will have to find them from a backup or re-run the tool.

Depending on what performance you are monitoring, I would start with the two files to get a summary of the signal and noise of your Wi-Fi recording session:

link-events.log:
link-info.log:


Why does macOS estimate battery percentage higher? Why do you think the OS estimates a battery percentage a little above the actual value? I noticed it is always between 0% and 5% more. In particular the two percentage gets closer when the remaining battery gets lower. Maybe this way the device seems to get faster to 100%, since the 95%-100% takes a lot of time...?

Some details. I can find the percentage two ways:

From the battery menu bar icon or with pmset -g batt (eg. now they say 96%)
By calculating it manually from System Information.app or with information from ioreg -l -n AppleSmartBattery -r (eg. now I get: MaxCapacity: 4181, CurrentCapacity: 3813; meaning 91.2%)

My guess is that with AppleSmartBattery, you are calculating the percentage based on the batteries brand new, fully charged state. Whereas the OS is basing the percentage on what the battery is currently capable of at full charge, which will slowly degrade over time.


Make custom keyboard layout switch by Caps Lock I created custom Cyrillic keyboard layout using Ukelele. It works fine except one problem - I can't switch to it using Caps Lock from english layout. I even don't have option "Use Caps Lock to switch to and from US" in keyboard preferences. Ctrl+space switches layouts ok. Default rus layout can be switched by Caps Lock.

How could I make my custom keyboard layout to switch by Caps Lock?

EDIT

I didn't find a way to make it work. Also there is not promising topic in ukelele group: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/ukelele-users/rRPaOXQj8Hs/discussion.

Instead I installed Karabiner-Elements, make Caps Lock map to F19 and set F19 as layout switch in keyboard shortcuts. Works fine with my custom Ukelele layout and system English layout.

Switching the keyboard layout using CapsLock is a feature added to MacOS 10.12 in 2016.  It does not seem to be very well documented by Apple–which should not come as a surprise to anyone who's been using their products for very long.  I haven't managed to find any 'developer-level' documentation of this function at all.

So, basically, to answer your question: In order to switch from one language/layout to another using CapsLock you must create a custom keyboard layout which combines both layouts.  I believe that Ukelele would be the easiest way to accomplish this.

However, be aware that this is work-around that comes close to duplicating the original feature although there are some minor discrepancies which for me personally are actually preferable to the way the original feature was designed to work–although your preferences & priorities may obviously vary.  While your work-around using Karabiner more closely emulates the original feature which makes my option somewhat redundant and potentially inferior.  But it has some advantages in my opinion so I've decided to post it.

In any case, in order to use my work-around you must create a single custom keyboard layout based on the US keyboard that also has the appropriate foreign language/writing system layout programmed directly into the CapsLock-based modifier combinations (keyboard layers or shift levels–such as Caps+Shift, Caps+Option & etc.). Mac OSX essentially treats CapsLock as a regular, but locking, modifier key without any limitations. So, with Ukelele you may create a layout which supports multiple scripts and uses CapsLock to switch between them.

The Latin-based modifier combinations can mostly (if not entirely) be created automatically in several ways (the easiest being to duplicate the US keyboard you use, or create a layout that mirrors the currently active layout).

For the secondary script layers you can open a keyboard for that language you wish to emulate (or approximate) and drag the key mappings from that keyboard to you yours (with the proper CapsLock-based modifier combination activated).

I don't think that a little bit of manual labor can be avoided, but you can accomplish your objective natively in this way. There are some potential advantages & disadvantages to this option depending on your preferences. For example, the flag will not change from US to another flag which may be seen as a disadvantage although that is irrelevant to me personally. However, you will have the CapsLock LED as an indicator which is visible on the keyboard itself which may be seen as an advantage. This also circumvents having to change the keyboard layout which is sometimes necessary when switching apps or documents, as well as the slight delay involved with that–that is of particular value to me as it drives me crazy when the keyboard layout is potentially different in each app.

Since you've already got a solution working this probably won't be of particular use, however, perhaps another user may find this solution helpful or informative.


Does a Corsair CMSO8GX3M1C1600C11 RAM works on a MBP mid 2012? Does a Corsair CMSO8GX3M1C1600C11 RAM works on a MBP mid 2012?

I know Corsair has mac compatible memory sticks but this one I mention is the only one I can get at my location.

From what I see the latency is a bit different: 11-11-11-28 instead of 11-11-11-30.

I really need to upgrade my RAM but can't get any of the "mac compatible" kits. :-/

Yes, it will work fine with Mac.

I have personal experience. I've tested out that configuration.


CalDAV only works for first synchronisation, and then stops updateing the calender forever From the same server I can successfully sync cardDAVs contacts, and IMAPs-mail, so I've ruled out network issues.

Furthermore, that same installation also syncs many other users (non-i) -Devices Contacts, Calenders, and Mails, so I've ruled out SOGOs CalDAV implementation.

This Problem is not present on the WinPhones, Androids(with DavDroid), Thunderbird/Lightning, and even Outlook 2010. I kind-of feel stupid now having recommended iDevices in the past.

I tried:

Rebooting normally
Signing out of iCloud, then rebooting
Factory-reset, then configuring the CalDAV first, then the rest.
Opened the non-SSL Port (shudder) to the outside world for testing.
Creating the Calender "twice", Once as Calender, and once as Contactlist

None of those worked, and the last one was impossible through the settings dialog

I'm not quite sure, how to proceed. In the meantime, I bought some cheap androids, so that my users at least have their calendar on the road with them.

Did you check in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > Fetch Every 15 minutes.

Maybe it is set to Manually.


Why can't my wife's iphone see my phone on Airdrop when I set it to "Contacts Only" My wife and I both have Iphone 8 running 11.4 (or at least mine is 11.4)

Very weird behavior that I noticed happened recently.  I usually set my Airdrop to "Contacts Only" and leave it as such.  I remember being able to send/receive photos or videos between our phones in the past using Airdrop.

However, yesterday, I had to set my Airdrop to "Everyone" so her phone could see my phone to send photos/videos.  Why did the behavior change?  She is a contact in my contact list.  I even tested to make sure when I called, my contact name/photo pops up and vice versa.

I just solved this problem after google brought me to this question.
This problem has been bugging me for months.

My wife and I couldnt airdrop to each other unless we set airdrop to everyone and then we could send if we showed up in the "other people" section when using airdrop.

In my case I we had been using one apple id across both our phones and after we setup an appleid for my wife there were some issues.

I'm not sure if all of this is related but it seems that AirDrop is a feature of or at least linked to contacts. So after checking that all of our iCloud details were distinct I started to look at contacts.

Not sure if this is directly related but her 'My Info' in Settings/Contacts was still set to me. So I fixed that.

Did a restart of both hers and my phones.

Then she had multiple contacts for me. I beleive this is due to her and I working at the same organisation and both our phones being managed by the corporate MDM. When trying to link the two different contacts it would show a third contact with one of her email addresses, like the second contact had some link to a third contact that I couldnt see in her contacts list. Seemed a bit like an errant record. So in the end, I deleted all  contacts entries for me from her phone and added myself back using the minimum appleid  email address and mobile phone number.

I also deleted the instant messaging details for each other from both of our phones contacts.

After this I got the 5 airdrop requests that I had tried to send to her contact from my phone.

This is a bit of a ramble and I'm not sure if all steps are required for others in this situation but figured more information for others struggling with this issue.


Disable Screen sharing via the command line in mountain lion I want to be able to enable and disable screen sharing from the command line rather than through System Preferences. This is on 10.8.3

To enable screen sharing, I find I only need to change a dictionary value in the following plist:

/var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd/overrides.plist

To be precise, to enable screen sharing, I do the following:

sudo defaults write /var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd/overrides.plist com.apple.screensharing -dict Disabled -bool false

And that changes:

sudo defaults read /var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd/overrides.plist com.apple.screensharing
{
    Disabled = 1;
}

To:

sudo defaults read /var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd/overrides.plist com.apple.screensharing
{
    Disabled = 0;
}

Fine. I see from this site that I need to then do this (not sure why):

sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.screensharing.plist

Now if I want to disable screen sharing I try the reverse:

sudo defaults write /var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd/overrides.plist com.apple.screensharing -dict Disabled -bool true

I get:

sudo defaults read /var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd/overrides.plist com.apple.screensharing
{
    Disabled = 1;
}

Which is good, but then I have no successful way to get launchctl, or whatever (not really sure) to re-read this plist.

I try

sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.screensharing.plist

and I get:

nothing found to load

And indeed, despite the dictionary value for this screen sharing being properly set to indicate screen sharing should be off, well, I still can screen share in just fine.

So what is the proper way to disable screen sharing from the command line on 10.8.3?

To start screensharing:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.screensharing.plist

To stop:

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

The -w flag modifies the Disabled key as appropriate. It's best to let launchctl handle this, as the location where the config files are stored has changed a bit between OS versions.


TestFlight tab doesn't load in iTunes Connect When I switch to the TestFlight tab for my app in iTunes Connect, it doesn't load. It perpetually shows the spinner.

It was doing this yesterday too. I've tried a different browser and it's the same.

Any ideas?

I'm experiencing the same, it appears to be down. Hopefully they fix it soon, as it is the only place to manage your test flight apps.


How to print a four pages on one page? I would like to print a PDF document, so that four pages of the docoument is printed on one A4 page. (It is 26 pages all in all, so I want to have 7 papers printed having four pages from the pdf on each and having two on the last one). How is it possible to set?

You can do 4-up printing from most macOS applications in the standard print dialog.

Choose File menu > Print (Command-P)
If there's a Show Details button, click it. (If there's a Hide Details button instead, you're already in the right mode.)
Find the printer options pop-up menu somewhere in the print dialog. It's not labelled, but will generally have "Layout" or the current app's name selected. From that pop-up menu, choose Layout.
Underneath that, there'll be a "Pages per Sheet" pop-up menu. Choose "4" from that. It should look something like this:

Click Print.


Quick way to "link" to location on a shared SMB server? I work at a small office where everyone uses Macs. We have a shared SMB server for storing files, which often contain spaces and other special characters.

Let's say that I have a folder containing important data for a coworker. Our current workflow is:

I take a screenshot of the folder path in Finder:
I attach this screenshot to an email and send it to my coworker.
My coworker uses the screenshot to manually navigate to the correct directory in Finder.

We do this many times each day, and it adds up. Step 3 in particular is quite annoying for the recipient.

Is there a technique we could use, or some software we could install, that would expedite this process? Ideally, I'd like the ability to email a "link" that, when clicked, would automatically open the directory in Finder.

Again, this method must be compatible with special characters, and should be easy to explain to less technically savvy users.

Right-click the file or folder in Finder > Services > Copy full path
Paste the path into the email (I used Apple Mail)
The recipient just has to choose the whole path in the email and right-click it > Reveal in Finder

You don't have to escape spaces in the path with backslashes! The share has to be mounted already.

If you don't find a service like "Copy Path" or "Copy full Path" you can simply create it yourself:

Launch Automator
Create a new service
Search for “Copy to Clipboard” and drag that into the rightside panel of the Service
Set ‘Service receives selected’ to “files or folders” and ‘in’ to “Finder” at the top of the service.
Save the service as "Copy Path"
Depending on your system you can copy the path either by right-clicking an item > Copy Path or Services > Copy Path.


Headphones unexpectedly stopped working? Recently, my Macbook Air (Mac OS Sierra) ran out of batteries. When I tried to turn it on, the screen was all black so I shut it off. When I turn it back on, the headphones don't work. I've tried to open Audio MIDI Setup, but it shows this:

As you can see, the boxes are unchecked when the volume is up, but they are checked when the volume is muted. Either way, I cannot hear anything through the headphones.

P.S.-- I've tried this before, but I don't remember what I did.

The headphones were broken; try different ones.


Yosemite focus indicator animation & highlight standard behavior I'm not exactly sure how to describe this, but in Yosemite, it seems like the indicator for the currently focused field seems weird. I'm not sure whether it's a bug or intended behavior. When switching between UI elements that allow for interaction, there is some attention grabbing animation, and after the animation, the indicator seems so large that my assumption is that this is unintended. I've included some pics below

From xCode:

from notification tray:

Is this normal behavior? If not, should I open a radar?

It looks like you have full keyboard access turned on. I've noticed this makes large borders around sometimes unintended controls. You can change the settings in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts.
The default should be "Text boxes and lists only"


How do I get calls organized by phone number? Hi I would like to organize my recent call list by number instead of the default sorting by date. Or I would like to see the list of previous calls & messages with a phone number.
Currently I am just going back in history to see if I received a call from someone in the past couple days. It will be great if order by phone number/contact option is available

I am using Iphone 5, iOS 8.4.0

Android phones are able to do this. It is quite useful

Generally speaking, please include hardware and software information, e.g. iPhone 4s, iOS 7.1.2, when asking questions as not all features are available in all models and iOS versions.

That said, I do not believe you have a choice, at least I don't on my iPhone in the Phone app, however I have an app on my MacBook Pro (also available for Windows) called iMazing that I can sort my call history by All and Contact and by Date, Contact, Duration and Number.  I can also export to Text or CSV files.

There may be a third-party iOS App that can do what you want right on the iPhone.  callLog may be a possibility.


Remove osascript starting after boot and get to know what it does I am new to Mac and I have the following problem. After I log in after boot/restart, there is always a tab saying osascript wants to make changes which wants my password. I do not want to run this and clicking Cancel or killing this process in Activity monitor helps for the session. I am also able to see the details of it in Activity monitor. But regardless of what I do, after another start, the pop up menu appears again... How can I kill this script or remove it or disable it forever?
Related to that, how do I get to know what exactly is it trying to do? I tried to hit the Sample button in the menu in Activity monitor which gave me a text file of many things starting with the dirs and identifiers of the script and continuing with a lot of information which I don't know how to read/interpret (see below). As I said, I'm new to Mac so any help including the super basics is very welcomed :).
Thank you.

EDIT:
Following the comments:
Both cd Library/LaunchAgents; grep 'osascript' *.plist and cd /Library/LaunchAgents; grep 'osascript' *.plist output nothing. When I go to the process in Activity monitor and go to the Open files and ports, I get the following:
cwd
/
txt
/usr/bin/osascript
txt
/Library/Preferences/Logging/.plist-cache.xq4DHtYC
txt
/private/var/db/analyticsd/events.whitelist
txt
/System/Library/MessageTracer/SubmitDiagInfo.default.domains.searchtree
txt
/System/Library/Components/AppleScript.component/Contents/MacOS/AppleScript
txt
/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/Versions/A/Resources/HIToolbox.rsrc
txt
/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/Versions/A/Resources/English.lproj/Localized.rsrc
txt
/private/var/db/mds/messages/502/se_SecurityMessages
txt
/usr/share/icu/icudt64l.dat
txt
/private/var/db/timezone/tz/2020a.1.0/icutz/icutz44l.dat
txt
/System/Library/Keyboard Layouts/AppleKeyboardLayouts.bundle/Contents/Resources/AppleKeyboardLayouts-L.dat
txt
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.IntlDataCache.le.kbdx
txt
/System/Library/ScriptingAdditions/StandardAdditions.osax/Contents/MacOS/StandardAdditions
txt
/usr/lib/dyld
0
/dev/null
1
/dev/null
2
/dev/null
3
/System/Library/MessageTracer/SubmitDiagInfo.default.domains.searchtree
4
/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/Versions/A/Resources/HIToolbox.rsrc
5
/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/Versions/A/Resources/English.lproj/Localized.rsrc

If needed, I also have clicked the Sample button. That gives this followed by Call graph section (not shown here):
Sampling process 680 for 3 seconds with 1 millisecond of run time between samples
Sampling completed, processing symbols...
Analysis of sampling osascript (pid 680) every 1 millisecond
Process:         osascript [680]
Path:            /usr/bin/osascript
Load Address:    0x1019b7000
Identifier:      osascript
Version:         395.1
Code Type:       X86-64
Parent Process:  bash [508]

Date/Time:       2020-10-22 10:14:04.108 +0300
Launch Time:     2020-10-22 08:27:11.218 +0300
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.15.7 (19H2)
Report Version:  7
Analysis Tool:   /usr/bin/sample

Physical footprint:         4844K
Physical footprint (peak):  5056K

The output for:
ps auxwww | grep '[o]sascript'

when the pop up window is still active (presumably what you mean by it running) is:
jan                680   0.0  0.0  5765928   9756   ??  S     8:27AM   0:00.15 osascript -e do shell script "/Library/Scripts/WIS/tmp/Scripts/startup.sh" with administrator privileges

Is this the script what it is calling? What does it do?

As the parent process of osascript is 'bash', that suggests that a command line script is calling AppleScript.
/Library/Scripts/WIS/tmp/Scripts/startup.sh

is very likely the culprit.
Have you installed anything that this might relate to?
If not, I would delete it, and download Malwarebytes to check for malware.


My external boot volume won't startup all my Macs when it should Because of the mobility of my work I decided to create a boot volume on an external USB-C SSD so that I can run my user environment on a number of Macs (on an iMac Pro (2017) while at work, on a 15" MacBook Pro (Retina, mid-2015) while on the road, and on a 27" iMac (2017) when at home). Unfortunately, while the 27" iMac and 15" MacBook Pro boot up fine from the external drive, the iMac Pro doesn’t.

I’ve tried resetting the NVRAM and even the SMC for good measure. The external boot volume contains macOS Mojave 10.14.1, and this should be fully compatible with the iMac Pro.

What am I missing here?

From what you’ve said, I agree it should work fine.

My first guess would be to check the Startup Security Utility on the iMac Pro, a feature of the iMac Pro (and other T2 Security Chip enabled Macs) that allows Admin users the ability to enable/disable Secure Boot and also the option of allowing/disallowing External Boot. It’s the External Boot configuration I think is causing your problem.

To access the Startup Security Utility, follow these steps:

Switch on the iMac Pro and as soon as the Apple logo appears, press and hold Command (⌘)+R
The iMac Pro will boot into the macOS Utilities window
Go to Utilities > Startup Security Utility from the menu bar
When prompted, click Enter macOS Password to choose an administrator account and enter its password
The Startup Security Window will appear and the bottom section provides two options in relation to External Boot. You will need to select the Allow booting from external media option
Exit the Startup Security Utility
Restart your iMac Pro and try booting up from your external boot drive

NOTE: The above steps require you to enter an Administrator password. If your workplace has not set you up with an Admin account you will need to ask them to follow the above steps.

Further reading:

Apple: About Startup Security Utility
Apple: About Secure Boot
Apple: Mac computers that have the Apple T2 Security Chip


How do I change date and time on photos on IOS? I have an iPhone 7 running iOS 13.

For some reason, many of the photos are time stamped in 2045. I've not found a single linkable article explaining how to do this.

I tried downloading Pixelgarde and the download failed.

Can I change future date / mislabeled photos from February 2045 to August 2012?

You can do this photo at a time by first downloading the Exif Metadata app. Once this app is installed, open it and allow it to access your photos. Select a photo and then near the bottom of the screen, you'll see EXIF followed by metadata. Scroll all the way to the bottom and you should see an Edit Exif button. Press this button and press on the date of the image. it should be the 1st displayed line. You'll be able to change the date.

The app is free from the app store. it has an in-app purchase for the pro version.  The pro version claims you can do multiple files at once. I haven't figured out how.

If you have a Mac computer there is a way to change the date on all at once. Just let me know, in the comments, if you need this.


Will MS Office 2010 (PC version) work via homebrew's wine on a Mac? The title says it all. I want to know whether MS Office 2010 (i.e. the Windows version) can be installed via homebrew's wine on a Mac?

I'm thinking of trying this and if I do and it works, will post method and results here.  In the meantime, any tips or warnings appreciated...

I've already used wine successfully in one instance before.

(Context, in case you wonder why I'm even attempting this: Office 2010 serves its purpose well, and legitimate licenses are available (at least in the EU according to reselling regulations) very cheaply.  Since I don't need or want the more intrusive newer versions of office, if this works, it may be a good solution. Mac office in the 2011 variant tends to behave badly in my experience - arrogant in its behaviour on the system, so if wine can offer a functional sandbox, that appeals).

Install to a clean wineprefix following the instructions in the https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=17336. After installing set riched20.dll to native to get around bug 14980. Do not install it with winetricks; Office installs its own version.

But I really recommend use CrossOver for Mac http://www.codeweavers.com/ use can try it for 14 days and if you like it. The license is $30. CrossOver takes care of all you need to install office 2010 on your Mac without problems. I must say that I am not employee of Code Weavers, I am not the developer of the application. I am just happy customer from 2006.

Regards


Would a late 2008 MacBook run with 8 GB or RAM if correctly purchased? We've got a late 2008 MacBook (already upgraded to 4GB RAM), it's fine -speed wise, but when checking the activity monitor were very close to running out of space -RAM wise.

What I would like to do is upgrade the RAM to 8GB, but checking the Crucial website, it looks like the most RAM I can get in is 4GB. Is this correct or is there a way I can upgrade to 8GB? What would be preventing you using 8GB RAM?

It is certainly possible to install 8GB of RAM on this model. You will need to check if you have the correct Boot ROM Version and install it if needed. Follow this guide.

You can learn what RAM to buy for your MacBook using System Profiler.


Going back to snow leopard. How do I delete the Lion Mac OS X Install Image? I have a one generation old MacBook Air. I upgraded to Lion when it came out. Now I wish to go back to Snow Leopard. I booted from the thumb drive installer for Snow Leopard. There is a Lion installer image that I can't delete. Disk Utility greys out for that partition. It's not the end of the world, but I would like to get that 5 gigs back.

Any help would be appreciated.

When booted from the Snow Leopard install drive, you should be able to create a new partition from the partition tab.


Can't Delete Partition I created a partition to run Snow Leopard on my computer running El Capitan and no longer need it. I allocated 20GB to that partition. Here's what I've done. I first go into Disk Utility, select my partition and click 'Erase'. It apparently erases everything but there is still 67.4 MB being used on the partition that I can't remove:

If I go into finder this is what I see on that partition:

Those are hidden files obviously and I can't delete them. I then go to the hard drive itself and click 'Partition' but when I do that and select the partition I want to remove, the minus button isn't an option:

I can't manually resize the partitions either (I want to re-allocate the disk space to my main drive).

Any ideas on why I can't remove the partition?

Another cause of the "minus" button being greyed out in Disk Utility is that it doesn't allow you to delete the first partition on the disk.


How do I run Homebrew as root? Years ago, you could get away with running brew as root just by chowning brew to root, but they removed that feature. So in Homebrew 1.1.6, I used to edit /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/brew.sh to remove the root check (the one that said it's "extremely dangerous") so I could run brew as root.

The newer version of Homebrew still works with that but keeps reverting the brew.sh file back every time after I run brew, even if I chmod 500 it. I could write a script to change it then run brew automatically, but I'm not sure if this will always work and don't want to take chances. Has anyone found a different method to run Homebrew as root?

After making your change to the script, try setting the immutable flag on brew.sh.

chflags uchg /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Homebrew/brew.sh

I have not tested. As a general rule, I do not give root to applications whose developers are begging me not to.


How to use external monitor with MacBook Air closed and on battery power? I often use my MacBook Air (running OS X 10.9.5) closed at a docking station, where it's hooked to external monitor, keyboard/trackpad, and power. All good. The only issue is that occasionally the external power will come loose or jostle*, which turns off the external monitor or causes it to flicker. I understand the system is designed to work this way -- no external monitor when closed unless the power is plugged in.

My question is: how to change this default behavior? i.e. keep the external monitor going while closed on battery power?

[*] Why you ask? My loving, atttention-seeking cats.

You can. All you need is an app such as NoSleep.


Will an iPhone XR purchased in India work with US service providers? I am planning to buy an iPhone XR in India, and take it to the US. Will it work on most GSM providers in USA? I compared the specification on Apple's iPhone webpage, and it looks like only a couple of bands are different.

Yes it would. An iPhone purchased in India has support for GSM frequency bands in USA. It would function similar to an unlocked iPhone bought in USA.


"macOS Sierra Update" could not be verified I tried updating my new MBP from macOS Sierra 10.12 to 10.12.3 using the App Store. I can see that the download of the update file finishes in App Store. I also get the prompt to restart. The machine restarts after approving it and it starts the update process. The update suddenly stops and shows an error message:

  "macOS Sierra Update" could not be verified.
  You can try updating again in the App Store after restarting.

I took a screenshot.

After pressing Restart, the machine restarts and macOS Sierra version is still 10.12. I tried several times to update again using the App Store but it gets stuck with the same issue. Any hints how to complete the update to 10.12.3?

I was able to update by using the combo updater for 10.12.3. The DMG file can be downloaded outside of the App Store and I can explicitly know that the file is good because it verifies itself.


Normal size of alias folder I just delated an alias folder and I saw that the size in the bin was around 1.3 Mbit is this normal? Shouldn't be around few Kbyte?

Looks about right to me, just tested with a random folder, made an alias, threw it in the trash...

Comparatively, I tested against a small jpg image. Image was 273KB, alias is 957KB


Is it necessary to eject external drives before logging out, restarting, or shutting down? Is it necessary or recommended practice to eject external drives before logging out, restarting, or shutting down? (The drives are not being unplugged.)

BTW, I am aware that I need to eject my external drives before unplugging them, I just don't know if it's necessary when logging out or shutting down. It seems to me this should be obvious, but I can't find an explicit answer to this question anywhere. I am interested in answers for Snow Leopard, Lion & Mountain Lion OS versions, as I have 2 machines, one with Snow Leopard, the other with Lion, & I'll soon be upgrading Lion to Mountain Lion.

No, it's only recommended when unplugging the cable.

The reason why you eject is so that any processes reading and writing from the disk will cause OS X to notify you of the disk being in use and prevent data corruption that can occur by just unplugging the disk while it's in use.

Additionally the OS might queue different write operations to a cache before actually writing them to disk, and ejecting will make sure these are flushed to the drive before it is disconnected.

Halting any processes from reading/writing to the disk and flushing the caches is implied when rebooting or shutting down the machine (unless you do a cold shutdown by pressing and holding the power button to turn it off). When logging out, the OS can flush the cache at its own discretion.


Is it possible to import iPhone photos with corresponding .AAE files to Photos on the Mac? I'm transitioning to using Photos.app on both iOS and OS X - with the intention to use iCloud Photo Library...

Before making this change I had to move a bunch of photos off an iPhone to free up space. I did so using Image Capture on the Mac - and I've ended up with .JPGs paired with .AAEs (the latter, as I understand it, containing the image edits).

(So, I moved the photos off the iPhone to a folder on a Mac, duplicated on external disk, did a back up, then deleted the images on the iPhone)

I've read this Q&A with tells of a method to use a python script to apply of the filters to the corresponding images.

What I'd like to know: is it possible to import both the .JPG files and .AAE files so that the original image is still available in Photos? E.g. so that the revert option would still be available...

best way to do this is via AirDrop, its super fast and doesn't require a internet connection (bluetooth and WIFI need to be switched on though). Works with iPhone5 or up, maybe 4S as well but i didn't try.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201463


Why are Wifi Calling and iPhone Cellular Calls Mutually Exclusive? I tried enabling "iPhone cellular calls" on my iPhone 5S, and the phone informed me that Wifi calling must be disabled to enable this feature. So it seems that the two features are not compatible with one another. Is this iPhone 5S specific? This is quite disappointing as I was hoping to have both enabled (cell service in my house isn't the best). It would be nice to know why they're mutually exclusive.

In the past, the modem software for a specific carrier was responsible for that prompt as their networks weren't able to re-reount the calls on the fly. (i.e. your carrier or carrier settings needing an update was the original issue)

I believe that window of limitation is resolved for all devices and all carriers. If you get this error in 2017, I would work with Apple support to make sure your iOS is updated and then work with carrier support to make sure your phone account is set up for seamless switch between carrier and wifi calling.


CSV from Windows Server Unable to open on Linux/Mac A small CSV file that was generated on a Windows server is not opening correctly on Linux/Mac.

The only way to open this file is via MS Excel for Mac, which gives the following prompt:

The CSV file has the proper extension .csv and "get info" in Finder shows that it is in-fact a CSV file. Weird thing is that it is called "Comma Separated Spreadsheet" rather than "Comma Separated Values":

When opening the file with TextEdit, the result is an empty file:

When using the file command in Terminal, the output is not "CSV" as it should be. It says it is "Zip archive data":

Is this a common error with CSVs between OS's? Unable to find any resources online. Appreciate the help.

Since file reports that the supposed .csv file is a Zip archive, it may actually be an XLSX (Microsot Excel) file whose file extension was simply changed from .xlsx to .csv. Try changing the file extension to .xlsx to see if this is the case.


MBP Touch Bar Mirror Displays Keyboard Shorcut On the new macbooks with the Touch Bar, what keyboard shortcut can be used to mirror displays?

On Macbook Pros without the touchbar, the keyboard shortcut for mirroring displays was Command+F1. This doesn't seem to work on the new Macbook Pro with touchbar - you have to press the Fn key to show the F1, F2, etc. keys, and Fn+Command+F1 doesn't seem to do it.

Here are my current keyboard settings:

The new shortcut is Command-Dim Brightness. It even makes sense in the following way:

Assuming that you take advantage of the touch bar, and it displays the system controls instead of the function keys then the hand gesture is exactly the same as before when you would have pressed Command-F1 since the Dim Brightness button is where F1 would be:

The annoying thing is that if you have an application-aware touch bar configuration, then you have to bring up the system controls touch bar configuration first.

This is why, in some cases, the Display Menu (in the App Store) which adds a status item in your menu bar (and includes a Mirror Screen choice) is a good option.


Let me understand the Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports of the new iMac The top model of the new iMac to be launched by the end of May 2021, is said to come with 2 Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports and 2 USB 3 ports.
In my mind, Thunderbolt is a physically different connector compared to the other 2 USB 3 ports, but looking at this picture they are apparently the same port.
I have an old 2012 iMac connected to two external TVs through the thunderbolt port. Each port using a thunderbolt to HDMI dongle. I am not mirroring the main screen. I have 3 independent monitors, the iMac one and each TV.
So I thought, I could do the same to this new iMac. I disconnect the dongles I have on the old iMac and connect to this new one but apparently these "thunderbolt" ports of the new iMac are in fact USB-C ports that deliver thunderbolt. So, In fact I need USB-C to HDMI dongles, right?
So, physically speaking, this new iMac only has 4 USB-C ports, two of them being able to deliver "thunderbolt", right?
This new iMac has two of these "thunderbolt" ports but apparently if I use both, I will not get two external independent monitors right?
Why?

There's actual more than one version of Thunderbolt - this seem to be the thing that confuses you regarding the connectors.
Thunderbolt (1st generation) which you have on your old iMac uses the same connector as mini-DisplayPort.
Thunderbolt 3, which is on the new iMac, uses the USB-C connector.
Then there's the matter of signalling protocols. The same signalling protocol can potentially be used on several different connectors. This seems to be the source of your confusion on the USB connectors.
Thunderbolt 3, USB 4 and USB 3 signals can run through the same type of connector - namely the USB-C connector.
However, it is also possible to run USB 3 over other connectors, such as the most common USB-A connector that you know from your old iMac.
You're right in that you cannot reuse your old display cables. These were actually not Thunderbolt to HDMI dongles, but rather mini-DisplayPort to HDMI. The new iMac uses a different connector, so they cannot be reused.
For the new iMac you need a USB-C to HDMI cable. You can also use an adapter/dongle and reuse an existing HDMI-to-HDMI cable for the long run of the cable.
The reason you do not get to connect two external, independent monitors is simply that the graphics processing unit in the iMac does not support more than 2 displays - the internal display and a single external monitor. It is not a limitation with the Thunderbolt/USB-C connector, nor is it a limitation with Thunderbolt signalling or anything like that. It is simply the GPU that does not support more displays.


Determine com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles status using command line? Is there a way that I can grab the status of com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles in command line?

I switch between AppleShowAllFiles yes & no frequently, I want to write a .command file to check if it's yes then switch to no and vice versa. I now get stuck at query the status of AppleShowAllFiles.

Thank you for comment from @Yoric

I found the answer from stackoverflow @Carter Allen

#!/bin/bash
#toggle AppleShowAllFiles

current_value=$(defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles)
if [ "$current_value" = TRUE ]
then
  defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
else
  defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
fi

killall Finder


How do I type a Greek delta with a circumflex? I need to create a capital Greek delta with a circumflex on top of it:

How do I do that in Word or any other text editor (on a Mac)?

The file will be mailed to a publisher, so the letter should appear the same on his computer (so the method should use some standard font).

Note: I do not want to create an image!

You can use Character Viewer to add a combining circumflex (U+0302) to your delta.  You may need to experiment with fonts to see what looks best among the ones which are common to most computers.  My TextEdit version with Helvetica below:


Bluetooth keyboard stopped working after upgrading to Yosemite I've upgraded to OS X Yosemite and now my wireless bluetooth keyboard is not connecting anymore.  I have a bluetooth Belkin 10 keyboard.

I seem  to have fixed this now.

I went into Bluetooth prefs and removed the mouse and Keyboard.
I removed to batteries from both.
Rebooted.
Went to System Preferences → Mouse
Put batteries back into mouse, re-paired mouse only
Rebooted.
Went to System Preferences → Keyboard → Connect Bluetooth Keyboard.
Re-paired keyboard.


AppleScript detect key press by user alternatives I have searched and found that AppleScript is unable to detect key presses by the user. I would like to know is there any other alternatives to do this?

I am building a script for a specific tabs in all Internet browsers, IE, FF, Chrome, Safari.

The specific tab will be blur out, title tab, favicon, URL in address bar will be masked or replace.
When the user press "tab" key for example, it will temporary remove all the things that is done in step 1 and show the original content.
If the user press tab again, it will go back to the state in step 1.

I have only managed to temporary make the body blur out but not the rest of step 1 and the detecting of key press.

My code:

tell application "Google Chrome"

    set allTabs to front window's tab
    repeat with eachTabs from 1 to count of allTabs
        set eachTab to item eachTabs of allTabs
        if URL of eachTab = "http://c10h20o.com/uniqlo/2016/0923/" then
            set currentTab to eachTabs
        end if
    end repeat

    tell front window

        tell tab currentTab

            execute javascript "document.body.style.filter = 'blur(0)'" --this line is working

            execute javascript " --this javascript always returns me missing value

            $(document).keypress(function(event){

                    var keycode = (event.keyCode ? event.keyCode : event.which);
                    if(keycode == '13'){
                        alert('You pressed a enter key in somewhere');
                    }

            });
            "
        end tell

    end tell
end tell

I am completely new to this and it's my first time doing this.

I have asked on stack overflow but no one has replied. Hope you guys can help me out with this.

One way would be to use Hammerspoon to detect key presses as in this example. You could use something like this:
hs.hotkey.bind({"cmd", "alt", "ctrl"}, "I", function()
  ok,result = hs.applescript('tell Application "iTunes" to artist of the current track as string')
    hs.notify.new({title="Hammerspoon", informativeText=result}):send()
end)

Pressing ⌘+⌥+ctrl+I will give you a notification with the name of the artist, in this case.


saving password for springboard webapps I'm using an html application with form authentication. If I open this application using Safari on iOS and complete the login screen, iOS asks me if I want to save my credentials.

but it doesn't work the same way if I add this webapp as a link on the springboard. In that case, iOS doesn't ask me to save my credentials.

Why iOS handle these 2 cases in a different way ?

It is handled differently because it is two different web engines powering the two.

When you use Safari you're using the newer Nitro-accelerated Javascript engine similar to the WKWebView, you can use in your own apps.

However, when you add the app to the home screen and open it in full screen, it won't be powered by the Nitro-accelerated Javascript engine, and will run in what is essentially the same as the UIWebView, that you can also use in your own apps.

Earlier Apple only allowed third party apps to use UIWebView, and not the newer Nitro-accelerated engine. The reason for the home screen links to be subject to this restriction is probably a leftover from that policy.

However, the reasoning behind why Apple choose to do it this way is impossible to say.


I want to install Yosemite on a MacbookPro4,1 that has a broken firewire system I have been able to run snow leopard by executing

rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/*Firewire*

I think need to sneak this somewhere into the yosemite installer..

Or perhaps install yosemite with a different laptop and then swap the drive into my old firewirebroken laptop after running my above command.

The yosemite upgrade hangs around the halfway point..

I can't justify buying a new logic board for this machine since I don't have a need for firewire.  Just want to hack the OS into functionality.

I don't really see a question here.  What is it you need help with?  You should be able to get 10.10.1 either by (a) installing it on a working system and swapping the hard disk or (b) installing it on a working system, take a Time Machine backup, then restore said backup on to the broken system.


How do I increase display by 120% of normal? Using Mac Air, Yosemite OS In Windows one can right click, head over to display preferences and have the OS increase everything globally ... icons, fonts, etc ... by a certain factor.   It's really helpful for "old" eyes.   Is there an equivalent for Mac?   I have found zillions of places to tweak things piecemeal.  But am looking One place, One setting.   Am certain it exists, but as a Mac novice I have struggled.

Am using Mac Air; OS X Yosemite 10.10.2

Use:

System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Zoom

More details here


What external IR receivers are there for Mac? I have a 13" white unibody MacBook from 2010 which I'd like to use with the Apple remote, to control keynote presentations. According to this question, I need an external IR reciever for the remote to work with my MacBook. Would an IR receiver actually work, and if so, what are my options?

If you're looking to control Keynote presentations and your Mac doesn't have a built-in IR port, you could buy an external receiver, but I suggest you use either:

The Keynote Remote app for iPhone. This works over wi-fi and requires only a $0.99 purchase and no additional hardware to buy or set up.

or

A specialized slide advancer, like this Logitech one. This is designed to be comfortable to hold (the Apple Remote wasn't) and doesn't require line-of-sight to the receiver (which is a small USB dongle) to work. Some of the better ones have a slide counter and laser pointers built in.


Advanced WiFi network settings are not per-network? Like most people, I move often with my laptop, and thus I also often switch WiFis networks. There is a WiFi network I often connect to which requires the IP to be entered manually.

So I opened Network Preferences, picked WiFi, clicked Advanced..., TCP/IP, and I told it to "Configure IPv4: Manually". I entered all the info and it connected just fine.

But now I am back home, where I always get the IP using DHCP. To my surprise, the "Configure IPv4" stayed at "Manually". Why didn't it revert to DHCP?

In short, why isn't the "Configure IPv4" option per-network as it should be? What's the idea behind making it a global setting for all networks?

And finally, can I make it a per-network setting?

You can change your location in the apple button in the menubar, that way you won't have to open the system preferences, there are apps to change system preferences according to wi-fi connection: at the bottom of this post some are mentioned


How to create a bootable Mavericks dvd (double layer)? my macbook's hard-drive is dead so i bought a new one and i'm looking for a way to install os X on it.

Is it possible to download mavericks on an imac running 10.6.8 and create a bootable dvd ?

Thanks

You could use Diskmaker X obtainable from http://liondiskmaker.com to make a bootable memory key.


Can Apple Mail be optimized to perform well when I have 30k messages in my inboxes? I have about 31,300 emails in 4 different inboxes in Mail. Sadly to say, it is extremely slow.

Is there any tips or trips to optimize Mail?  And no, I don't want to delete any, I need them for work.

The easiest thing to do is clean up the index file Mail uses to track the messages:

  sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Envelope\ Index vacuum;

Thanks for this tip to the estimable Brett Terpstra. The linked article explains how to make an AppleScript file to measure things before and after to see if the operation thinned out the size of the file Mail uses to store the pointers to the messages. I would add, quit Mail and make a backup before trying to clean the file. A vacuum operation is normally harmless, but why not get a backup just in case.

Also, this thread probably goes back to @bbum and his weblog-o-mat and perhaps even deeper back...


No software update on my iPhone 4s Why doesn't my iPhone 4s have any iOS software updates available? How can I update this phone some other way?

The latest version of iOS, version 10, does not run on any iPhone earlier than the iPhone 5.

For your iPhone 4s the latest version that will run is iOS 9.3.5


How do I examine and reduce what "About This Mac" categorizes as "System" disk use? In "About This Mac" my Storage shows a System disk use of 419 GB. Since my storage is a bit tight and I'm gearing up to update to Catalina (from 10.14.6), I'd like to clear as much disk space as I can, and this huge chunk attributed to "System" seems a good place to start.

What is in System? How do I examine the details of what's there? How can I delete (safely) some of the things there consuming disk space?

FWIW, I have a lot of local Dropbox files, use Google Drive, have a disk image on my drive, and have a bunch of Homebrew installed tools (in case any of these could wind up categorized as "System").

You should get a copy of DaiseyDisk or GrandPerspective. These apps will produce a mapping of your hard drive so you can check what is taking up so much space.


Assign Application Windows to Different Spaces/Desktops I have two Spaces configured and I keep some Safari windows in one space and some in another. However, Mission Control only allows you to assign an application to a Space, but not different windows within an Application.

As a workaround I created an AppleScript shortcut that executes a new Safari instance:

  open -n /Applications/Safari.app

This successfully creates multiple Safari instances, but the instances are still somehow intertwined in Mission Control. When I select an instance from the Dock and choose Options > Assign To > This Desktop or None, that setting in the other instance is updated to be the same.

Is there any way to launch multiple instances of an Application that are each assignable to different Spaces? (Running Mountain Lion 10.8.5.)

You might make a copy of Safari's application bundle and change the bundle identifier:

cp -R /Applications/Safari.app /Applications/Safari2.app
defaults write /Applications/Safari2.app/Contents/Info.plist CFBundleIdentifier my.safari2
cp ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist ~/Library/Preferences/my.safari2.plist

Assignments to spaces are per bundle identifier:

$ defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spaces.plist app-bindings
{
    "my.safari2" = "FC886111-EE78-4844-A5E5-A11BECA713CF";
}

In this case, you might also use Webkit.app or create a site-specific browser with Fluid.


Mission Control Won't Open and How Do you set up control + up arrow to make it work Hello I'm trying to use the control + up arrow to see my desktops/apps that are open but it's not working. I am on 10.13.6 High Sierra.
I have spaces enabled and for some reason, the mission control won't work. I have tried the "killall Dock" in the terminal but that doesn't work. Please help!

Does it display the correct keyboard shortcut in Mission Control Settings? Try changing the shortcut to something else and then changing it back to your desired shortcut.


Is there a configuration for El Cap 'Find Your Cursor' to work for vertical shakes? As one of the El Cap features, Apple touts:

Find your cursor
Rapidly shake your finger on the surface of your trackpad to increase the size of the pointer so it’s easy to spot. You can also shake your mouse to enlarge the pointer.

I find that I place my right hand to the right of the trackpad and use my index finger and when I try to perform a "shake" there is a much larger vertical component to the action. I thought this new feature wasn't even turned on because my shake never made the cursor grow in size.
However, I adjusted my hand position and made the shake much more horizontal and I see the special effect. The problem is this is an unnatural position for me to use the trackpad.
Is there a way to toggle how much horizontal or vertical components are required for a shake to trigger the cursor size to grow?

The only option is to disable this feature, found in System Preferences > Accessibility > Display.

I translate "back and forth" as being horizontal movement only. There are no options for adjusting the sensitivity, or for registering vertical movement.


Enable Multilingual typing in ios10 Some days ago the "Multilingual typing" option (which enables to type in two languages at the same time without having to switch between keyboards) in my iPhone 5S (with iOS 10) automatically shut down.

I already downloaded multiple dictionaries and enabled the respective keybords under the General menu.

Does someone know how to enable it again?

Go to Settings -> General -> Dictionary.
Select the languages you wish to use with the QuickType keyboard (allow it time to download).
Return to the General -> Keyboards. Tap Keyboards again, then tap Add New Keyboard and select the languages you just downloaded.

Instructions are from this site and they also have screenshots in case you need them.

Edit: Apple's iOS10 features site lists the languages that are supported.  If it's not in this list then it's not supported (yet).


Can I receive local or push notifications to my email address? Can I receive local and/or push notifications to my email account instead of as a notification that appears on my iPhone?

I want to receive the local and push notifications for some apps but I don't want to necessarily receive them as pop-up notifications on my iPhone screen, but would rather access them in my inbox when I have time.

The short answer is No.

iOS does not have any way for you to redirect notifications.

It may be possible to change how some notifications are sent, and have them sent to you via Boxcar or something similar, but that is going to be limited to a very small subset of applications or services which are designed to offer alternatives. Twitter and Facebook come to mind.


Why does my Mac mini (2018) have no startup sound? My Mac mini (2018) has a speaker that works well for playing music and making user interface sound effects. But I do not hear a startup chime when booting the machine.

In other words, I have the exact opposite problem of this Question, Mac Mini: No sound except for startup chime

Is there a way to restore the traditional startup sound?

Apple has removed the startup chime from all the Mac models starting from Late 2016.

About Mac startup tones

  Mac models from early 2016 and earlier make a chime sound when they start up. Mac models from late 2016 and newer don't have a startup chime, with the exception of MacBook Air (13-inch, 2017).


How to determine when a Mac is in Power Nap state? I've got a mid-2011 Macbook Air running Mountain Lion.  Power Nap is enabled.  My Time Machine back up goes to a USB external hard drive.  My current workflow is to sleep my computer when not in use, and now that I'm running Mountain Lion I'll then attach the hard drive.  Overnight, the system will use Power Nap to make a backup and all the other stuff Power Nap does.

My concern is that I don't know when it's safe to unplug said hard drive.  The computer doesn't have any outward signs when it's in Power Nap vs. sleeping.  So I'm afraid of unplugging the hard drive mid-backup.  Having to wake up my laptop, eject the drive, and then re-sleep the laptop is something of a hassle, which I'd like to avoid if it's not necessary.

How can I determine when my laptop's in a Power Nap state instead of regular sleep?

There is the simple answer and the clever answer.

The simple answer is listen for the external drive spinning. If it's sleeping, you will not be interrupting data transfer (but you will be yanking an open filesystem from a sleeping computer but that's not a new issue introduced by Power Nap).

The more clever answer is to observe other things that may be happening like network traffic by sniffing the traffic and seeing if the machine is sharing files or available to ssh into if you have sharing turned on. This takes more work and an iOS device or another computer and certainly won't be faster than just opening the lid of the Mac and knowing it's not napping anymore.

In the end - it's probably worth re-training your workflow to just open the lid and eject things properly. Since Power Nap is only supported on Mac that have Apple supplied integral SSD and ridiculously fast wake times, the delay to perform the eject cleanly is less than 10 seconds excluding however long your external drive takes to wake.


Trying to download photos from iPhone 5s to Windows 10 I just got a new computer with Windows 10. I have saved my pictures from my iPhone 5s to the computer however there is a block of photos from May 1-24 that it will not detect and therefore will not download.  It will not even allow me to see these photos on the computer, so I can't manually select them for download.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

You should download "OneDrive" on your iPhone. Then on your OneDrive account you set your iPhone to upload all pictures on Photos. All your pictures will be uploaded. Then you open https://onedrive.live.com by your Windows 10. It can work with iCloud as well, but I like OneDrive more. That's how I duplicate my pictures on iPhone to Windows 10. Good luck!


Why are my Mac and Windows machine able to share a flash drive, but they cannot share an external hard drive? I am recording Zoom meetings with my Windows machine and storing the videos on an external hard drive. I wanted to consolidate the folders by adding videos I have recorded on my Mac, but I realize I cannot just switch the external hard drive between the two machines.
Why is that possible when using a USB Flash Drive?
Should I then store the videos temporarily on a USB drive on one machine, and then use that to transfer the videos to a permanent external hard drive connected to another machine?

The issue is not the type of external drive you use e.g. Flash Drive, Hard Disk etc but how the drive is formatted.
Windows and macOS can both read and write FAT and exFAT formatted drives. A flash drive defaults to one of these depending on its size.
By default Windows drives are formatted to NTFS. macOS includes (or perhaps used to include) a driver that allows these to be mounted and read but not written to. You can buy third party programs that allow writing to an NTFS volume from macOS. (There is an open source version but I am not certain that works with later macOS)
macOS will format a drive in APFS or HFS+. Windows can only read those with the help of a third party tool.
So if you want interoperability then you need a third party program or format the drive in exFAT. The downside of the FATlike formats is that the disk cannot hold metadata, for example owner, execution information and is not journaled so that you need to explicitly unmount the drive before removing it otherwise data could be corrupted on the drive.


How can I print a booklet from a pdf file? I have a pdf document, and I want to print it as a booklet, i.e. two pages of the document on each side of a sheet of paper and so that (when printed) the entire thing can just be folded in the middle to create a small booklet.

How can I do this easily?

For a free and universal alternative you can use the pdfbook script, part of the pdfjam collection which is usually included in LaTeX distributions (notably MacTeX). It's simple to use from the command line:

pdfbook mypdf.pdf

If the above doesn't work, then /Library/TeX/texbin isn't in your PATH (or /usr/texbin for older versions of MacTeX). The best course of action is to ensure PATH is correctly set (lots of command line programs will fail if the PATH variable isn't correct and pdfbook is one of them); this isn't trivial under OS X if you want a consistent behavior between applications launched from the dock and applications run from a terminal so you definitely should search a complete solution to this specific problem. As dirty work-around, you can run export PATH="$PATH:/Library/TeX/texbin:/usr/texbin" every time before you use pdfbook (including in the service below).

If you don't want to use the command line, you can create a service easily.

Launch Automator (on Yosemite it's in Applications/Others)
Create a new document and select "Service".
On top of the right frame, for "Service receives selected" choose "PDF files".
Search "Run Shell Script" from the bar on the top of the left frame and double-click it. Select to "Pass input" as "arguments" in the newly created window.
Enter a simple script running pdfbook, for instance pdfbook "$@".
Save it as "Create booklet" (for instance).
In Finder, select a PDF file, then in the menu go to Services/Create booklet.

My complete script also creates a temporary file and opens the resulting PDF:

TMPF=`mktemp -t bookletXXXX`
mv "$TMPF" "$TMPF.pdf"
pdfbook -o "$TMPF.pdf" "$@"
open "$TMPF.pdf"

The most obvious problem is the several GB download and installation of a LaTeX distribution if all you want is the pdfbook script.


Insert photo from Camera to e-mail - show size choice on iPhone On iPhone 4S initially when I selected in 'Photos' application option 'Email photo' I was asked about suggested size of photo to be sent.

Then I selected not to ask me any more and now the photo of last selected size is inserted all the time when I want to e-mail it.

I would like to return choice of photo size for inserting to e-mail.
I would like to reset my choice of photo size.

How to do this?

Thanks.

Unfortunately, as I looked through Settings, as I thought, I couldn't find a way to change a settings like that. To be honest, I'm surprised that you had the option to remember the setting, as I have never had that (and still can't duplicate that).

I would recommend rebooting the phone to see if that, for some reason, fixes the problem. Also, as I'm sure you are well aware of, it should be mentioned that when you Message (MMS/iMessage) a picture or video it won't ask you the size, and when you email a video, it won't ask you the size.

If you really wanted to, you could reset the phone's settings (Settings > General > Reset (at the bottom of the list) > Reset All Settings). Honestly, I've only done the wipe all content and settings, so I'm not exactly sure what all it will reset, but it should take care of that problem. Don't forget to back up just in case.


Transfer reminders from iCal to Google Calendar I switched from iCloud to Google calendar. I already transferred all my calendars via export/import to Google Calendar. Now I'd like to transfer my reminders from iCal/iCloud to Google Calendar. How can I do this?

From what I understand, Reminders are not transferrable. Each service programs them differently and there is no way (other than copying/pasting text) to easily transfer them. Hope this helps.


Hidden Folder not showing in Finder with show all hidden files I have a FreeBSD server where I store my web files. One of the files I have been using for years has the naming convention ._Folder

When I try to open this file in the Finder it doesn't even show, even with the following preference activated:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

When I go to Go > Go to Folder >

Then type /Volumes/web/website/public_html/._Folder

In the background I can see that the Finder updates to show the hidden folder. If I hit cancel on this dialog without hitting enter I can see the folder.

But when I turn down the triangle, it disappears.

When I have the Go to Folder dialog open and press enter the Finder shows the contents of the folder for about 2 seconds before it dumps me into a duplicated version of the public_html parent folder with a path of /Volumes/web/website/public_html/public_html. This folder at this path does not exist, but the Finder shows it.

If I try to access the folder again, I get the following message:

I've checked the permissions on the folders to make sure that's not the issue. I can edit the files and the folder on a Windows machine as well, and on the FreeBSD machine from the command line, but would really love to use some of the apps on my Mac.

The ._ naming convention is this way to match what is on the production server on the web.

All of the hidden files and folders with a single . character in front only are working. Anything with a ._ isn't showing at all.

I'm running 10.8.5 on a 3.33gHz 6 Core Xeon.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

I think Finder is out...

    Mac OS X does not show you companion files unless you use Terminal, and sometimes not even then.  (It shows invisible files rather easily, but to Mac OS X, both "MyFile" and "._MyFile" are two parts of the same file, and it doesn't normally return two directory entries for one file.)  You only see these companion files on non-HFS disks that you move to other operating systems.

http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript-users/2006/Jun/msg00180.html

So, the only Options I see is using VCP7, or Paralles, etc., to have a pseodo way to see them in Finder, or....

Write a script to list those files in a window & maybe link them back the the real ._ files.


Why the difference in audio volume via bluetooth? I hope I'm in the right spot for this.

I have my volume on the phone set to 100%. I connect via bluetooth to my car. My car's radio volume goes from 0 to 45. Now, when I listen to music, my car's volume is set to 10-15. However, when I listen to a book from Audible, or make a phone call, the radio volume needs to get at 37+ to be able to hear it. Is there anything I can do to equalize the volume between apps?

Every output device has a maximum volume level in its settings. This is different than the current listening volume of the main volume.

For instance,  I have internal speakers, external speakers, alerts, midi Dj'ing equipment and bluetooth PA system speakers.

If I go to the sound preferences, there are different default volumes for each device. No matter the main volume those will override current main volume on plug in , activation or connection of a different device.

Individually they all have their own settings and ultimately they can be found in the sound preferences.

Then as some mentioned, the device you are connecting to, can also have its own defaults that override your connecting device.


Custom shell script can't be found I am running MacOSX Sierra and have homebrew installed. So I'm trying to create compress-slide.sh script under ~/bin. In order for me to get rid of doing symlinks I added the ~/bin in my path so my path looks like this now: /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:~/bin

I've set the path under /etc/paths and here is how it looks like:

/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/local/sbin
/usr/sbin
/sbin
~/bin

But when I try which compress-slide.sh nothing is found, it doesn't give me the path I'm expecting which is ~/bin/compress-slide.sh I just wish to use this script when I'm on different directories. Also I made sure that I'm the owner of the script and that it has executable permission.

-rwxr-xr-x  1 dummyuser  dummyuser   135B Dec 28 18:13 compress-slide.sh

Here's the content of my script, just a simple command to test it works;

#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo 'test'

Here is my homebrew config:

HOMEBREW_VERSION: 1.1.5
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: 9cd5a21b473f0271b162bbe7f77f7d1468c0cfa1
Last commit: 2 weeks ago
Core tap ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core
Core tap HEAD: 797542c1bf61c4cfc58c7a52a2534d154cc584d1
Core tap last commit: 8 days ago
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /usr/local
HOMEBREW_REPOSITORY: /usr/local/Homebrew
HOMEBREW_CELLAR: /usr/local/Cellar
HOMEBREW_BOTTLE_DOMAIN: https://homebrew.bintray.com
CPU: octa-core 64-bit ivybridge
Homebrew Ruby: 2.0.0-p648
Clang: 8.0 build 800
Git: 2.10.1 => /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/git
Perl: /usr/bin/perl
Python: /usr/bin/python
Ruby: /usr/bin/ruby => /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.0/usr/bin/ruby
Java: 1.8.0_60, 1.7.0_79
macOS: 10.12.2-x86_64
Xcode: 8.2.1
CLT: N/A
X11: N/A

Is this because of Homebrew conflicting with my setup? Has anyone encountered this as well?

I would sym link the scripts you place out of the path to /usr/local/bin so you don't need to reason with ~ expansion in .dot files for your shell.

It's possible to have a durable way to ensure your enviroment is set up to handle ~ - but I'm a fan of having absolute paths there to avoid problems when you su to other users and have environment cross contamination as well as issues like you face.

This isn't anything about homebrew - purely about bash or whatever shell you are using.


bitbucket authentication is failing I keep my code in bitbucket.  Without warning  git pull just hangs and after a long wait says to check

Deleting all my keychain entries for bitbucket.org and relogging in manually didn't help anything.
Following the instructions for caching credentials didn't help either.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucketserver/permanently-authenticating-with-git-repositories-776639846.html#PermanentlyauthenticatingwithGitrepositories-Usingcredentialcaching

I can't find a git command for checking status of my authentication.
My login for bitbucket website works fine.

I'm on mac osx  10.11.5. El Capitan.

Use git config credential.https://example.com.username myusername to update your credentials in Git and see if that helps. This is Git's documented way to avoid repeatedly being asked for your username and password.

Git's documentation for this: https://git-scm.com/docs/gitcredentials