Upgrading a boot camp machine to Lion I have a Snow Leopard MacBook Air with Boot Camp installed. I'm thinking about upgrading to Lion, but I'm worried about all the software I have installed on my Boot Camp partition. I have a lot of software, including Windows, which uses serial keys and product activation to ensure that I'm running a legal version. I'm worried that if something happens to this partition, all my keys will remain in use on an unusable drive.

If I upgrade Snow Leopard to Lion, will the Boot Camp partition remain untouched and still work properly?

I read this question which made me cautious about upgrading until I know for certain that nothing will happen to the Boot Camp partition. Are there any guides specifically meant to show you how to upgrade to Lion and still retain your boot camp partition?

Are there any other steps that need to be done once the upgrade is complete? Is the Boot Camp software from Snow Leopard compatible with Lion? Is it easily upgradable?

It should be fine. Just make sure to select the right disk (Macintosh HD) when installing Lion. A backup never hurts, either.


Set different display and format language on macOS Sierra On El Capitan and before I could set a different format language than the display language in OS X. So the UI of OS X would be English, while the date and number formatting would be Dutch. However this setting was changed when upgrading to macOS Sierra, it now uses English for both display and formatting. I would really love to revert this change to what it was on OS X El Capitan.

OS X El Capitan:

macOS Sierra:

It appears this can be done from the command line.  For example Dutch format language (the nl part) with Netherlands (the NL part) set as the Region, even with English as the UI language, should result when you execute this in Terminal:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleLocale -string nl_NL

This was found at tidbits.com.


Apache2 (Httpd) not working after update to High Sierra I have an issue where Apache will not start after updating to High Sierra 10.13.1.  There isn't anything showing in the error logs, but when I try to apachectl start nothing happens.  If I run apachectl configtest I receive "Syntax OK

I have used commands like sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist to no avail.  Apache will not start.  I can run sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/homebrew.mxcl.httpd.plist and that is not working either.

I took a look at the brew services list and httpd shows up in the list along with other process (mysql) but httpd's status is showing a yellow "started" instead of a green one.

I have tried many different things, and what I am finding is that if I look into the system.log file I find com.apple.xpc.launchctl[1] (homebrew.mxcl.httpd24[11780]): Service exited with abnormal code:1

If I run apachectl start, the command seems to work, but when I run the stop command I get "httpd (no pid file) not running.
I am also receiving the output of com.;apple.xpc.launchd[1] (org.apache.httpd): Please switch away from OnDemand to KeepAlive.

Is there something with High Sierra that is preventing Apache from running when it ran fine in Sierra?

In my opinion you hosed your various httpd launch daemons/start mechanisms by executing too many httpd related commands.

With homebrew and homebrew's apache-httpd installed and the default PATH you have six ways to start httpd.

Apple's Apache:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl start

Homebrew's Apache:

sudo apachectl start
apachectl start
sudo brew services start httpd
brew services start httpd

If you've copied the file homebrew.mxcl.httpd.plist manually to either ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ or /Library/LaunchDaemons/ you have two more options to start it by loading them with (sudo) launchctl load ....

If you didn't modify the httpd config files or the apachectl scripts heavily the Apple branch will use Apple's httpd.conf file in /var and the DocumentRoot in the /Library folder.

The homebrew branch uses subfolders in /usr/local/.

Some launch methods won't work if you've bound the httpd ports to ports lower than 1024!

If you use (sudo) brew services ... to start httpd you have to use the proper (sudo) brew services list command to check the status:

If you start it as root then list it with root privs:

sudo brew services start httpd > sudo brew services list

or with user privs:

brew services start httpd > brew services list.

To solve your problem unload Apple's httpd:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
remove any manually installed homebrew.mxcl.httpd.plist
stop any homebrew httpd service with (sudo) brew services stop httpd
stop any httpd started by apachectl:

apachectl stop
sudo apachectl stop
sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl stop

Open Activity Monitor and check that no httpd process is running.
Reboot

Now - assuming you want to use homebrew's httpd on privileged ports - enter:

sudo brew services start httpd

Check the successful start with sudo brew services list.


User folder on mac OS is empty, but still uses 60GB of hard drive space I have deleted all the files under User folder, but it still says that it uses ~60GB of space. Real usage is ~2MB. There are no more files to delete. Is there any hidden files i am not aware of. If yes, how i can delete them?

I do not want to delete the user account. I just want to get rid of information that is useless, but I don't want to mess up my Mailbox or other stuff, so I want an advice if it's safe to delete some parts of those folders.

The space is most likely being occupied by the various files and folders in ~/Library, which is hidden by default on OS X. You can show the Library folder by navigating to your home folder in Finder, pressing ⌘J and showing the Library folder.

Furthermore, you can run the following command in your home folder which will list all the files and folders in your home folder, including hidden files and folders, and display their sizes.

du -shc .??* *


Home/End keys to simulate Windows behavior in different contexts Going to Mac from Windows is mostly a nice experience for me, but one thing I struggle with massively is keyboard shortcuts. I am a programmer and I use them a lot. I have mapped most of them to my liking using Karabiner, but I can't seem to figure out how to simulate Home/End behavior.

The basic behavior, going to the beginning/end of a line is easy, I just mapped Home/End to Command+Left/Right.

However, the issue is with non-text fields. For example, if I am on a webpage and I don't have a text field focused (just clicked anywhere on the page), I would expect the Home/End keys to scroll all the way to the top/bottom of the page. The problem is that pressing those keys effectively means pressing Cmd+Left/Right and that (in the context of a browser) means "go to the previous/next page". So I need to press Cmd+Up/Down to go up and down the page.

But I want to basically have Home behave as "go to the start/top of the current element, whatever that means - if text field, to the beginning. If long page, dialog, something - to the top". Just like on Windows. How do I achieve that?

If you use Google Chrome, you can add an Extension called Shortkeys (Custom Keyboard Shortcuts) and set all the custom shortcuts you want.

PS: Just FYI you can press Space to go down one screen at a time and Shift+Space to go up from default.


Unable to open Mail in macOS Catalina On a MacBook Pro running macOS Catalina Version 10.15.5, every time I try to open Mail.app in one of our user's acounts, the application fails to open and I get this error:

  Mail quit unexpectedly.

  Click Reopen to open the application again. Click Report to see more detailed information and send a report to Apple.

Here's an excerpt from the report:

Process:               Mail [6567]
Path:                  /System/Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail
Identifier:            com.apple.mail
Version:               13.4 (3608.80.23.2.2)
Build Info:            Mail-3608080023002002~43
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           Mail [6567]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2020-06-07 14:21:25.799 -0500
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.15.5 (19F101)
Report Version:        12
Bridge OS Version:     4.5 (17P5300)
Anonymous UUID:        8BA95E6B-F4C0-FE35-590C-A4B6D79839C8

Sleep/Wake UUID:       560A8417-0826-4C98-BA6E-B997106BA321

Time Awake Since Boot: 56000 seconds
Time Since Wake:       1700 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread:        4  -[MFPersistenceVersionUpgrader run]  Dispatch queue: NSOperationQueue 0x7fe445c11cb0 (QOS: UNSPECIFIED)

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

Application Specific Information:
dyld3 mode
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'V3->V4 migrator must be run before persistence version can be migrated to V5'
terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException
abort() called

Here's what I've tried so far:

Restarted the computer… repeatedly.
Tried opening Mail.app in the affected user after a Safe Boot.
Reset the PRAM.
Freshly installed macOS.
Confirmed that Mail.app is in the Applications folder and tried to open it directly from there.
Deleted all accounts from System Preferences (can't open Mail, so can't delete from in there).

All of the above has had precisely zero change on the behavior.

I created a new user on the same machine and Mail.app opens just fine on that user, so that would seem to point to an issue specific to this user, but I'm at a loss as to what that might be.

Any idea how to resolve this?

When I was 99% drafting the question above, I came upon a solution adapted from this post on AppleToolBox.

Here are the steps:

Go to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Saved Application State and delete com.apple.mail.savedState.
Go to ~/Library/Containers and drag com.apple.mail and com.apple.MailServiceAgent to your desktop.
Go to ~/Library/Mail/ and drag everything in that folder to your desktop.
Restart.
If it's now working, trash everything on your desktop.

Because I had already tried deleting accounts before finding this solution, I had to re-add all of them to the user, but it otherwise seems to be working normally again.


Fusion drive unavailable after HD erase I wanted to erase the 3 TB Fusion HD on my iMac in order to install a clean system and start from scratch. The erase went fine except right at the end when it said something about core storage... (which I failed to capture, sorry)... and now the machine behaves as though the drive only sort of half exists.

There is no 'sub-disk' when I look with Disk Utility - i.e., there is no indented drive listed below "Macintosh HD"
The "Erase" tab is absent in Disk Utility
All partition options are greyed out in Disk Utility
I can boot in Recovery Mode, but I can't reinstall OS X because there is no drive available - it asks me to select a disk, but no disks are listed
diskutil sees the drive fine (screenshots below)

In case it's not clear from the images, distil cs list shows:

Logical Volume Group C970ADA-0D05-42AA-9E9C-403ED0E5335
Name: Macintosh HD
Status: Online
(3.1Tb)

    Physical Volume 7DAE3935-D0AD-42AE-AE2A-F6001F09187
    Index: 0
    Disk: disk0s2
    (120Gb)

    Physical Volume BA37C009-F93C-4EAF-9EF3-9C19772BD91C
    Index: 1
    Disk: disk1s2
    (3Tb)

diskutil list shows:

You probably deleted your Logical Volume and the superior  Logical Volume Family.

To create a new one boot to Recovery Mode, open Terminal and simply enter:

diskutil cs list #to get the lvgUUID (UUID of the Logical Volume Group)
diskutil cs createVolume lvgUUID type name size

or in your case:

diskutil cs createVolume C970ADA-0D05-42AA-9E9C-403ED0E5335 jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" 100%


How to scan for duplicate files / images in one direction only? I am looking for a solution to search for duplicate files / images on my mac but only in one direction: Folders A and B should be compared but I am only interested in files in folder A with duplicates in folder B. If there are any duplicates within B does not matter.

In detail:

On my Mac I have large collection of photos and images. Lets say they are all located in /User/JustMe/PhotoCollection/ or its sub folders.

Within these folders there same known duplicates which where created intentionally. For example I have one folder Summer Vacationand a sub folder which holds all vacation photos which should be used for a photo book. Thus I am not interested in finding these duplicates.

When I import photos from my camera it can happen that some of them have been imported before. Thus I would like to compare the import folder to the existing photos folder and find only duplicates

within the import folder (both files are located in the import folder)
or one version within the import folder and one within the existing photos folder

I am not interested in duplicates within the existing photos.

I tried some known duplicate scanners like Gemini, Cisdem, etc. They all allow to select multiple folders to compare but they don't seem to have an oneway option.

Can this be solved with macOS features or is there any tools which offers this option?

EDIT:

As requested here is an example:

/User/JustMe/PhotoCollection/
    SubfolderA/
       Image1.jpg
    SubfolderB/
       ImageA.jpg
       ImageB.jpg
       Selection/
           ImageA.jpg
    SubfolderC/
    ...

/User/JustMe/PhotoImport/
    NewImage1.jpg
    NewImage2.jpg
    NewImage2_Copy.jpg
    ImageA.jpg

Potential duplicates:

/User/JustMe/PhotoCollection/SubfolderB/ImageA.jpg
/User/JustMe/PhotoCollection/SubfolderB/Selection/ImageA.jpg

/User/JustMe/PhotoImport/NewImage2.jpg
/User/JustMe/PhotoImport/NewImage2_Copy.jpg

/User/JustMe/PhotoImport/ImageA.jpg
/User/JustMe/PhotoCollection/SubfolderB/ImageA.jpg

The first duplicate is within the existing collection and is a known duplicates which should not be deleted / scanned for.

The second duplicate is within the import folder and should be deleted

The 3rd duplicate has one version in the import folder and one in the existing collection. The import version should be deleted.

All duplicate scanners I have tests do not only test the file name but also the capture date, other raw data etc. to make sure files are equal. Additionally they can scan for similar pictures which are not 100% identical but almost the same.

It looks like you're into photography and you haven't been keen for best practices for managing files. You have two options now.

1) You'd have to create (bash OR python script) which would look for MD5 checksum of the files and would delete only it finds duplicate with later date. Keep in mind, one careless step can delete the files you didn't want to delete.

2) (Suggested) There are several free and paid utilities that should be used to cleanup the duplicates. If it provides duplicates with date comparison. As you already mentioned (Gemini). I tested it few months ago and found it very useful.

There are several proven practices to manage the photo library. This is a good time to adapt one.

As you requested, here is a script which find duplicates in one folder.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# Syntax: duplicates.py DIRECTORY
import os, sys
top = sys.argv[1]
d = {}

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(top, topdown=False):
  for name in files:
    fn = os.path.join(root, name)
    basename, extension = os.path.splitext(name)

    basename = basename.lower() # ignore case

    if basename in d:
        print(d[basename])
        print(fn)
    else:
        d[basename] = fn

Save this file as duplicates.py and give it rights and then execute it on the folder.

./duplicates.py Images

It requires you to have an understanding for the osx terminal.


Can I use a iMac Late 2009 or Mid 2010 as a screen for regular PC Im thinking about building a custom hackintosh. I currently own a late 2009 iMac, the one which theoretically support video input from mini displayport.

The video card I am planning to buy has a displayport output, but not mini displayport. I am wondering if it is possible to use the iMac as a display when connecting the hackintosh to it using a displayport to mini displayport cable (if that even exists).

Has anyone ever tried something like that?

Yes an iMac will work as a screen for a regular PC, but only with 27" models of Late 2009, 2010 iMacs. If those conditions are met then the iMac supports what is called Target Display Mode, aka using your iMac as a display.

Also you will need a Display port to mini display port cable, they do exist as sold on Monoprice and at other fine online retail locations.

For more information on using your iMac in Target Display mode see Using a 27-inch iMac (Late 2009 or Mid 2010) as an external display

  To use an iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010) or iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) in Target Display mode with another computer as the source:

  Make sure both computers are turned on and awake.
  Connect a male-to-male Mini DisplayPort cable to the Mini DisplayPort on each computer. The 27-inch iMac will enter Target Display mode and display content from the source computer.
  Note: If you are connecting two 27-inch iMacs, connect a Mini DisplayPort cable to each computer and press Command + F2 on the 27-inch iMac keyboard that you will use as an external display.
  To leave Target Display mode, press Command + F2 on the keyboard of the 27-inch iMac that is in Target Display mode. To return to Target Display mode, press Command + F2 again.


.app extension in Spotlight or Alfred I would like to have all applications names displayed without the .app extension in Spotlight or Alfred. Reeder for example is listed as "Reeder", whereas Sparrow is listed as "Sparrow.app".

Which setting determines whether the file extension is visible or not in applications like Spotlight and Alfred?

I believe that unless you have "Show all filename extensions" checked in Finder's Preferences, the .app extension is hidden by default. If you were to look at Sparrow in Finder, do you see the .app? If so, open the Get Info window for it (Cmd+i while highlighted) and make sure "Hide extension" is checked. You would have to check each app that is showing its extension manually.

Another thing is that if you have more than one of the app, I think it will always show the extension in Spotlight.

If none of that works, you can always try rebuilding your Spotlight index: $ sudo mdutil -E /


How to find devices on my local network through their IP address I have a local network powered by a Time Capsule, and connected to 4 or 5 macs. There are other devices on the network too. (Printers, IP Cameras, etc). Is there a way to list the devices on the local network - and their IP addresses?

I've seen this Q/A How do I know the IP addresses of other computers in my network?

but the responses do not show what is what - just a list of IP addresses.

If you have Android or iOS devices running on the same network, you can install a FREE app called Fing and list all devices connected and their MAC addresses and IPs.


Some SSH commands do nothing? I've been exploring SSH on my iPod and have noticed that some commands seem to just leave the console hanging or do nothing all together. Some examples are 'simulatecrash' or when I try to launch an app. If anybody has any ideas on why these do nothing, I'd appreciate your input. Thanks in advance.

Also, if it matters, I have a 32GB iPod Touch 4g running iOS 4.3.3 and it is jailbroken.

I found a thread about the simulatecrash command. It says you need to use simulatecrash -h to make it work properly. As for the apps, I don't think you can launch apps from the command line as you would a shell command. You can try /var/Applications/Name.app/Name but I can't confirm if this works because my iPhone is not jailbroken.


Move apps from one Apple ID to another I have two Apple IDs and would like to close one and move the apps from one to the other. Is this possible and how?

Sorry, the short answer is "No".

The longer answer is "No, you cannot do this, sorry".

And last, but not least, the official answer is sadly no.

Here's the relevant text from the FAQ linked above.

I have multiple Apple IDs. Is there a way for me to merge them into a single Apple ID?

Apple IDs cannot be merged. You should use your preferred Apple ID from now on, but you can still access your purchased items such as music, movies, or software using your other Apple IDs.


Can ContainerToInvert file be safely deleted? After previously upgrading to High Sierra and converting my boot drive to APFS, I recently migrated to a new (larger) SSD boot drive. While setting that up, Disk Utility gave me an error when restoring from my old volume to the new one "APFS inverter failed to invert the volume - invalid argument".

I ended up using Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer the files which went OK, and I am now running from the new volume.

However I have a file at the root of the drive called ContainerToInvert. It is over 250GB in size, so I'd like to delete it if it isn't needed.

Can anyone confirm that deleting it won't cause any problems?

This often happens after cloning APFS drives using Disk Utility. The size of the file usually relates to the cloned partition size.

You can use the following steps to mount the ContainerToInvert file as an APFS container and access all the partitions.

Download and install FUSE
Download and install xmount1
Open Terminal (usually located within Applications/Utilities)
Type sudo mkdir /Volumes/apfs_image/ into Terminal and press Enter (when prompted, enter your password)
Type sudo mkdir /Volumes/apfs_mounted/ into Terminal and press Enter (when prompted, enter your password)
Type sudo xmount --in raw <path to ContainerToInvert file> --out dmg /Volumes/apfs_image/ into Terminal and press Enter (when prompted, enter your password)
Type hdiutil attach -nomount /Volumes/apfs_image/ContainerToInvert.dmg into Terminal and press Enter (when prompted, enter your password)
Type diskutil ap list into Terminal and press Enter (when prompted, enter your password)
Type diskutil ap unlockVolume <Disk GUID> -nomount into Terminal and press Enter (when prompted, enter your password)
Type sudo mount_apfs -o rdonly,noexec,noowners /dev/disk# /Volumes/apfs_mounted/ into Terminal and press Enter (when prompted, enter your password)
Now you'll have the original partition mounted
Browse the disk image to inspect the contents and once satisfied there's nothing there you need to transfer across you can unmount and delete the entire .dmg file

The above steps are based on the Mount All the Things! – Mounting APFS and 4k Disk Images on macOS 10.13 blog entry.

1. If you have trouble installing xmount, then run the following command in Terminal and try again:

 `mkdir -p /Library/Filesystems/osxfusefs.fs/Support/osxfusefs.kext`


How do I copy the content of a whole disk on OSX 10.3 I would like to copy the contents of a whole disk into another folder on an external drive.

it should preserve permissions and timestamps.

on linux i use cp -a but on OSX it seems to be different

cp -a is just a shortcut for cp -pPR, these options are available in the 10.3 version of cp already. So you can copy the content of your disk with

cp -pPR /old/path /Volumes/new/path

You can also avoid using Terminal altogether and just drag the top folder you want to keep onto the external drive in Finder.


Is there an app (like Spotlight) that can index external drives and return search results when the drive is not connected? I have multiple external drives, some with photo, app and video resources, some with client files and some with backup data dating back to 1988. I also have a number of BluRay backup disks with raw video footage and stock footage. Is there an existing app that can index each drive/disk when I mount it, then store a searchable index on my Mac HD? What I want is to search for, say, 'John Smith logo' and have the app give results for 'Drive G' or 'DISK 21'. I can then mount the indicated drive and retrieve the file, and not have to spend half an hour searching every time.
Spotlight, I believe, only stores the index on the drive in question, so cannot search unconnected drives.

I haven't used it in quite some time, but the go-to app for me, way back from System 9 days was CDFinder, now called NeoFinder & still maintained by its author, right up to Catalina.
I used to use it for cataloguing dozens of backup & old project CDs & DVDs. It would do exactly what you require - find a file, tell you what drive it is on, then once you insert that drive, pop open at that location.
Simple yet effective.


How can you edit the Accent Menu? The English language doesn't really include any accented words but other languages do.
Yet I like to write using accents and diacritics, as needed in each language (Romanian, French, German, etc.).

Unfortunately Mac OS X has never really made it easy to accent a letter before. Lion has simplified it, now accenting a letter is easy thanks to the Accent Menu -- example:

Still, if you take Romanian as an example, most of the specific diacritics are not reachable via the Accent Menu:

a » ă
s » ș
t » ț

Is there a way to edit the Accent Menu to add the accents that are used for a specific language?

This menu does include the Romanian diacritics when you're using the Romanian input source. I've provided a tutorial on quickly changing the input sources in:

How can you customize the keyboard layout / shortcuts?


Is it possible to right click an item in finder an "move to" to move a file / folder to another location? Is there a way to get an option when using finder to be able the right click and select "move to", in the same way you can "move to trash". I'd like to be able to move items around my finder this way.

Usually when I've got my laptop connected to a larger monitor I just pull 2 finder windows side by side and drag and drop to organise folders, but it would be really useful when on a smaller laptop screen to be able to do this.

I'm running Yosemite 10.10.5.

I have a Automator Service named Move Selected Items To....workflow and shows on the Context Menu in Finder as Move Selected Items To... when files and or folders are selected. I can then choose where to move them to and whether or not to replace existing items.

Here's a picture of the Services workflow and note the settings under Options for the Move Finder Items action.

Checking the Show this action when the workflow runs check box brings up the Move Finder Items dialog box, as shown in the image below, where you can the select where you want to move the files/folders to.

Note that you can change the default To: location from Desktop to wherever you'd like and then save the Service so it's what you chose as the starting point each time the service is triggered. While not shown in the example picture, I have it set to Macintosh HD so when the Move Finder Items dialog box appears, I can click the Macintosh HD and then Other... on the popup menu easily, to bring up the Choose dialog box to more quickly navigate to where I want to go.

You can also assign a keyboard short to the Service in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services > Files and Folders. I assigned it: ^⌥⌘M

Note: When I first saved the Automator Service it only showed two dots on the Context Menu, when I expected to see three as that is what I typed in the Save service as: sheet. Well, I had to rename it in Finder so there were four dots between Move Selected Items To and workflow, then save the file again pressing ⌘S in Automator. This enabled the three dots to show on the Context Menu in Finder. Note that if you have more then a few Services it will appear under Services on the Context Menu in Finder.

I have since found out that had I used four dots in the Save service as: sheet, e.g. Move Selected Items To...., it would have then shown as Move Selected Items To... on the Context Menu without further meddling.


Photos get stuck in iPhone email outbox Whenever I email a photo from the iPhone 4 photo app then the email gets stuck in the Outbox.  Just doing a refresh leaves it there, even when viewing the outbox.  To get them to send I manually need to open each email in the outbox and hit send again (and again specifying what size to make the image).

Is there a way to make the photos send automatically, or to at least send them all at once?  Manually sending each one at time is tedious.  The first few times I discovered this I had quite a few emails to send out (some of them more than a month old).

Update: I am sending them from the standard photo app when they get stuck. Then resending them from the standard mail app. The size doesn't seem to matter (small, medium, large or original).  Neither does WiFi or 3G.

This fixed itself when I updated to latest version of iOS.


Spotlight won't index any of the standard built-in macOS apps. It *does* index all the 3rd-party apps. Any suggestions? This is on a 2019 MBP running Catalina 10.15.7. I also have a 2012 Mac mini running the same OS, and that has no problems indexing all the apps.
I should point out that I've tried all of these:

Added the system drive to "Privacy" in Spotlight and then removed it
Revealed the hidden Spotlight folder and deleted it
Run sudo mdutil -Ea /

Nothing's worked. Where can I go from here?
To reiterate, it indexes all my third-party apps with no issues. It's only the built-in standard macOS apps that it's refusing to see.

Back in 2019 I had a client whose Spotlight wouldn't index fully. We ran Etre Check on his machine and got back some info from mds, reporting that mdimporter was crashing, and it gave us a file id.
I had him open up a terminal and put in sudo mdutil -t <number>. It came back with a path to an email. I had him open up that email (with open <path>), he reviewed the email, decided he didn't need it and deleted it.
IIRC we had to repeat the process multiple times until mdimporter stopped choking on his files. Not sure what kind of bug we tripped, but after deleting maybe file of his files, his system indexed properly.
Start here and see if this shows anything related to Spotlight, mds, or mdimport.
Etre Check


Removing Apple ID from my phone I've just upgraded my phone and am giving my son my old one how do I remove my Apple ID from the old phone and will it affect my new phone

Follow these 6 shocking steps to prepare your iPhone for another user:

- What to do before selling or giving away your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch


Apple Mail in El Capitan - where is data that used to be in Accounts.pilst? I run about six IMAP accounts on two different OS X machines and one iOS device.

Several of the mail accounts are under different domains, but all hosted on the same 3rd party mail provider so presumably running identical IMAP and SMTP servers. Also, the settings on the OS X mail clients in Mail/preferences/accounts look identical, except for the account-specific settings like name/password, etc.

Nonetheless, still I have a several undesired behaviors, different both between accounts and between clients, which I can't seem to fix.

Prior to El Capitan I would have looked for causes of these differing mail account behaviors in ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Accounts.plist. That file is still there, but it seems to be an unused, outdated leftover from an OS upgrade, as it shows no current mail account settings.

Meanwhile, looking at the several plist files in both ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail and ~/Library/Mail/V3, I find none of the mail account settings I want to see.

So in El Cap, where does one find the equivalent mail account settings data that used to be in ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Accounts.plist ?

(OSX 10.11.3, Mail 9.2)

I recently tested Mail in a new User account to find all the files that are modified after adding an account to Mail.

These following files contain account info. I can't say with certainty that you will need to reset all files in order to reset your account. Remember to log out/in and empty the trash before resetting. Make sure you have backup if needed.

~/Library/Accounts folder

Accounts3.sqlite
Accounts3.sqlite-shm
Accounts3.sqlite-wal

~/Library/Preferences/MobileMeAccounts.plist

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist


How can you make a Mac (2015 Yosemite) hibernate? (Hibernate like Windows PC, ie. save state to disk and fully power down) Please note: Whilst the older question (4 years ago) Do MacBooks have a true "Hibernate" option? has answers that show a hibernate option exists for Macs, it doesn't detail how to make your Mac hibernate. Perhaps this is because that answer was sufficient for older machines (Pre-2015 MacBookPro Retina or pre-Yosemite).

I've been a longtime Windows user and was told Apple's Macs were better. I recently bought a MacBookPro Retina 2015 15" OS X 10.10 Yosemite (SSD). I have not been able to make it hibernate.

I have already enabled the hibernate mode number 25 (as can be seen in the settings below).

I was told that the grey screen with the progress bar upon wakeup indicates the machine was hibernating. I managed to get this grey screen to show up after disabling standby.

sudo pmset -a standby 0

I was also told I could check what state the machine woke from via the following command:

pmset -g log | grep -i "wake from"

I ran the command but it still shows that I have always been waking from Standby. This is the case when waking from both AC and Battery. E.g.

  Wake from Standby [CDNVA] due to EC.PME/User: Using BATT (Charge:92%) 303 secs

I am assuming that if my machine did indeed hibernate then the grep command should show Wake from 'Hibernate' as opposed to 'Standby'.

This makes me wonder if the OS X man pmset command, which brings up the pmset commands manual which is dated 2012 is still valid today. Or perhaps I'm just too new to this.

I have also tried 2 deep sleep apps/widgets. Both end up putting the MBP to Standby instead of Hibernate.

pmset -g shows the following:

Active Profiles:
Battery Power          -1*
AC Power               -1
Currently in use:
 standbydelay         3
 standby              0
 halfdim              1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 darkwakes            0
 gpuswitch            2
 disksleep            10
 sleep                1
 autopoweroffdelay    1
 hibernatemode        25
 autopoweroff         1
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         2
 acwake               0
 lidwake              1

PS. Next to sleep it sometimes shows "(sleep prevented by AddressBookSour)"

"Sleep" and "Hibernate" on Macs aren't separately choosable. If you sleep a Mac and then leave it asleep on battery until the battery gets low, it will go into "deep sleep" (Apple's term, it's essentially Hibernate) and save battery. On older Macs that supported this, you could force hibernate by pulling the battery out, but that's not possible anymore.

Here's Apple's documentation on Mac sleep, scroll down to the section on "Special Sleep Modes". It may be that the "standby" indication you are seeing is exactly what you're looking for.


How to get Safari crash report? I have been able to reproduce a bug that makes the iOS5 browser crash and stop unexpectingly. I am unable to reproduce that bug outside of our web application so I was thinking to send a crash report of when it happens within our application as a bug report. Is it possible to get a crash report of any kind for the Safari application so that I can send it as a bug report ? If it's possible, how do I do it ?

I find it easiest to use the settings app on iOS:

General
About
Diagnostics & Usage
Diagnostics & Usage Data
scroll to the crash you care about and tap it
select all, copy the text

Now you can paste the report wherever you please. Email, Simplenote, notes, Evernote, or wherever else you like to store the text for submitting a bug with Apple. You can also get at the logs after syncing from iTunes or Xcode - but getting it when the crash happens works best for me in most cases.


iPhone App Installation I am trying to develop an enterprise environment where the specified app in the app store gets installed in all the iOS devices connected to the company infrastructure, which has a windows based AD to verify the users. I went through various materials, and I found over the air profile delivery and few other methods like MDM to push the configuration. But it seems only the configuration can be pushed using these features.

In Apple Configurator and iPhone Configuration Utility, the devices should be connected to the computer physically. I would like to install the app in all the company-owened devices (around 1000 devices) without asking any permission from the user. Is there any way to do this?

No, installing apps 'without asking any permission' is definitely impossible. Attempting to install an enterprise app over the air will prompt upon attempted installation and the first attempted launch of the app. This is un-negotiable.

You can install apps over the air using enterprise distribution. This allows you to set up a 'portal'-like page which people can download the app from. A plist is downloaded to the device informing it of the location of the app bundle and some information about the app itself. For an example of this, see the Stack Exchange iOS app beta. For more information about enterprise distribution, see the guides available in the Member Centre.


How can I back up a computer with PGP whole disk encryption enabled? My mac has PGP whole disk encryption (WDE) installed.  I would like to back up my entire drive.  However, the backup must also be encrypted (although not necessarily with PGP WDE).  I need to be able to completely restore the computer (system files, etc.) from this backup.

The only instructions I have found for backing up such a drive are for Windows: HOW TO: Create Backup Images of Whole Disk Encrypted Drives or files.

I am on Snow Leopard so an encrypted File Vault backup is not an option for me.  Is there any way to create a byte-for-byte image of my disk?

See this article in the PGP forum. It recommends to enable WDE on the target and then use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer data (or restore from Time Machine).


iPhone 4S speaks items on the screen I have an iPhone 4S and I was looking at the photos in my album when it suddenly started speaking all the commands. How do I disable this?

In your settings, check General -> Accessibility -> VoiceOver, and see if this feature is on. I suspect that it is. Turn it off, and it should stop speaking all of the commands.


How can I purchase Mountain Lion on a computer and install it on a different computer? I bought a used MacBook Pro 15″ with Lion and Windows dual boot. I accidentally dropped my Mac when it was on - everything was fine until I rebooted it and it got stuck on the grey screen, and I lost the dual boot so even Windows wouldn't start.

I've searched on the web, and it tells me to restore it via the internet with ⌘ cmd+R.

I did it, but it asked me to update to Mountain Lion, so when I hit ok it says that my Apple ID has not been used to purchase Mountain Lion.

What can I do to purchase a new copy of Mountain Lion with my Apple ID? Can I use my other PC to purchase it with my ID, and after that download it when am in recovery?

If you dropped your computer and it stopped booting right after that, you may now have a defective hard drive. I do not recommend attempting to re-install the operating system (Mountain Lion), as this may cause data loss.

My current recommendation is to confirm that you have a good backup of the data that is on your computer. If you do not have a backup, it may be necessary to attempt data recovery from the drive that is in the machine.

If you do have a current/valid backup of your data, I would recommend attempting to boot from another disk (CD/DVD, USB flash drive, etc.), and attempting to open Disk Utility to see if the software is reporting SMART failures with the drive. Alternately, very poor performance or clicking sounds while attempting to view/access the drive may be indicative of a defective drive.

Regardless, at this point, a system re-install is not likely to help with your issues (based on the problem description). If you are at all concerned about data loss, or are hesitant to attempt diagnosis/troubleshooting of your machine, I would recommend taking the machine into an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple Store for further assistance.


Omnikey for Safari 13? Omnikey is a very useful Safari extension that allows searching user-selected webpages by entering user-selectable keys preceding the search term. For example, entering "w Los Angeles" in the Safari address bar on my computer and pressing return opens a new Safari window in Wikipedia that's searching for "Los Angeles." This is both easier and faster than navigating to the page you wish to search, entering the search term, then hitting return.

Here's a screenshot of the searches I've added to Safari on my Macs:

Unfortunately, Omnikey doesn't work with Safari 13.

Omnikey is very useful. Are there any other Safari extensions that provide the same functionality?

I was totally bugged out by the lack of Omnikey after upgrading to Safari 13.
This applescript saved my life (it's not mine so I'm just posting the link):
https://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=47107

In order to activate it, open Automator, create a new Quick Action, select "Run Applescript" from the action list on the left side of the window, and copy/paste the script to the editor window. Above the editor window, change "Workflow receives" to "no input" and save.

Then go to System Preferences, keyboard, shortcuts, and assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Now, when in Safari's address bar you can just press the shortcut and the script transforms the search to the right URL, e.g. type "we apple", press the shortcut, services, and the wikipedia article about "Apple" opens in the same Safari tab.

In order to add more searches, just edit the script in the "property shortcuts" section, it looks pretty self-explanatory to me. Now searching from the address bar works almost as before, just have to get used to pressing the shortcut instead of return.


What type of database is the iOS 5 SMS db? I've literally been trying to crack this for an hour. With previous versions of iOS, the db was a simple sqlite file and could be opened with any sqlite utility. I really need access to these messages and I'm at a loss on how to open the database.

Note: I've pulled the file off of the iTunes backup.

I've pulled my sms.db file of my iPhone 4S running iOS 5.0.1 (of off live system using scp) and was able to browse the DB as normal using the sqlite client included with OSX Lion. Possibly the current format is somehow incompatible with older versions of the client. The version of the client included with Lion is 3.7.7:

$ sqlite3 sms.db
SQLite version 3.7.7 2011-06-25 16:35:41
Enter ".help" for instructions
Enter SQL statements terminated with a ";"
sqlite> .databases
seq  name             file
---  ---------------  ----------------------------------------------------------
0    main             /Users/tyr/sms.db
sqlite> .tables
_SqliteDatabaseProperties  message
drafts                     msg_group
group_member               msg_pieces
madrid_attachment          settings
madrid_chat                templates
sqlite> select * from settings ;
1|version|2.0.0
2|notificationCode|*N#
3|useNotifications|0
4|isDefault|1
5|compatibilityMode|0
6|useKeybCorr|1
7|useKeybCapi|1
8|useConfirmSend|1
9|nameorder|0
10|useShowAlerts|1
11|useStatusIcon|1
12|landscape|0
13|appSerial|0
14|lastMenu|0
sqlite>


Why were my contacts synced to my mother's iPhone? I have recently downloaded the new software on my iphone, iOS 6. My mother and my sister also use my Apple ID to download their apps too.

Today my mother downloaded iOS 6 and all of my contacts were transfered to her iPhone. I would like to know how to remove my contacts from her device. I already tried logging out of my Apple ID from her device but all my contacts are still on her device.

Sharing a single Apple Id can save you money when downloading apps or music, but can cause confusion when attempting to use other Apple services associated with your Apple Id. In this particular instance I would venture your contact showed up on your mom's phone because she signed into iCloud with your Apple Id. By default iCloud syncs a lot of information:

Contacts
Calendars
Reminders
Safari
Passbook
Photo Stream
Documents and Data
Find My iPhone

If you go to Settings > iCloud you can toggle these services to on or off. Unfortunately, what I don't know is if toggling contacts off will remove the already synced contacts.

About a year ago I asked the question: how many Apple IDs should one household have? This spawned a lot of great answers and I definitely recommend reading it. To summarize it's okay to use the one account for purchases, but I would recommend having additional accounts for iCloud, Facetime etc.


Brand New Macbook Pro (Mid 2012) already with 2 cycle counts Yesterday I unboxed a MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) and I am disappointed that the battery has less than its "manufacturer capacity" and has 2 cycles already. Is that normal?

When I bought my MacBook Pro, it also had 2 cycles used. I think it's normal and it's probably a part of the in-factory testing.

As for the manufacture capacity - it's perfectly normal for it to deteriorate, but it's going to do it gradually (and slowly if you take care of your battery)

How much capacity has it actually lost?


How do I uninstall the Apple Mail app and reinstall it? How do I uninstall Apple Mail app on a Macbook Pro and then reinstall it?

To uninstall try with AppCleaner, it's free in the AppStore.
Apple Mail is a system app so, in AppCleaner, try double click on the checkbox and then proceed to Delete the app.

For Reinstall.
Apparently you'll need to do a reinstallation of OSX.
According to this Apple page, a reinstallation wont affect your files, can't tell for myself, I've never done that.
Simply make a backup before anything and may the force be with you.

OSX Reinstallation

Reboot your Mac and hold the COMMAND + R keys while rebooting.
You will enter to Recovery environment.
Choose reinstall.


Volume and power button huge delays (iPhone 8 Plus, iOS 14.2, no jailbreak) So sometimes when I'm using my iPhone 8 Plus, there is a huuuuuge lag between the press on the volume or power key, and reaction to this press.
For volume key it's 1-3 seconds, for power key it is sometimes up to 10 seconds. And sometimes the phone just ignores it completely.
It's also nearly impossible to take a screenshot too, as home button works perfectly while power button has random delays many seconds long.
The issue appeared (or at least became MUCH worse) with iOS 14.2 update. Erasing everything did not help.
What may cause the issue and how to fix it?
EDIT: Basically, https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/e4wrbl/laggy_volume_buttons_on_ios_1323/ is exactly my issue.

iOS 14.3 update solved the issue for me.
It's still a mystery, but at least it doesn't bother me anymore.
UPD: The issue re-appeared a week later alongside with antennae losing signal (both in 3G only and 4G/3G mode). Turns out, this was a faulty hardware.


Create USB install stick from Mojave Since macOS Mojave moved the OS install to its system preferences and you can't download installers directly anymore, how would you go about creating an Mojave USB stick from Mojave onwards?

Seems they added the installer recently to the new App Store on Mojave. If you search for macos mojave the installer shows up in the results under the "Utilities" category.


How do I disable WebEx Assistant on startup for Mac? How do I disable WebEx Assistant on startup for Mac?   I dont want to remove the application completely, but I dont want it to launch automatically at startup.

Try System Prefs > User & Groups > Your name > Login Items.

Select it in the list & click the - button underneath

If it's not listed there, then check either /Library/LaunchDaemons/ or /Library/StartupItems/ to see whether it has an entry in there.
It's safe to remove items from there - though they will continue running until the next reboot.

If you want to be able to restore functionality in future, zip the file in situ then trash the original.


Can't see other Mac workstation via ethernet but OK over Wi-Fi So, I upgraded router to latest DD-WRT firmware.

Now, for some reason, can't see my Mac Desktop from my MacBook if connected to Ethernet. Macbook has DHCP, Mac Desktop has DHCP with manual IP.

I can see the Mac Desktop if I connect via Wi-Fi, but not through ethernet.

I've released / renewed DHCP a few times, rebooted, flushed dscache, power cycled router.

so it seems the problem is in the DD-WRT firmare upgrade. I downgraded to a previous DD-WRT and the issue is gone. It was a matter of lan switching not working.

Downgrading back to DD-WRT firmware SVN revision 23919 fixed it.


Net-SNMP python binding path I'm currently setting a development environment in python 3.3 and i'm trying to import the Net-SNMP python bindings but idk where the files are located.

Simple question: anyone knows where are located the Net-SNMP python binding files in MacOSX 10.8.3??

The python bindings for Net-SNMP are not built by default (Net-SNMP docs) and are not part of the default install on OSX.

The can be installed from the Net-SNMP source code or via package managers such as macports.


Installing the most recent version of Ruby on Snow Leopard I downloaded and compiled the latest version of ruby 1.9.2 which was installed in /usr/local/bin/ruby, however the system officially recognizes /usr/bin/ruby which is only 1.8.7 which came installed on the machine. How can I get the new ruby into place?

In this instance I need to replace the ruby version and be able to use the updated version for command line work and rails development.

You should use RVM, the Ruby Version Manager. It allows multiple side-by-side installations of Ruby without affecting the system Ruby installation, which as another commenter pointed out can potentially be problematic (or at the very least, tiresome to maintain).

It allows you to quickly and easily install the latest patchlevel of Ruby, past Ruby versions, or even alternate implementations like JRuby, MacRuby, or Rubinius.

To install:

$ bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)

Once it's installed, setting 1.9.2 as the default is as simple as typing:

rvm default 1.9.2

And if you feel like switching back to 1.8.7 temporarily:

rvm use 1.8.7


if I restore from my cousins backup would it change my iOS? Both my cousin and I have backups on my PC and we both have the iPhone 4. However, she has Sprint and iOS 5.1.1 and I have AT&T and 6.0.1.

Could I use her backup to downgrade my iPhone to iOS 5.1.1?

No. The back up does not contain the operating system.


iMac says Storage is full but I only used 10GB out of 1TB of storage...? This is very weird. New iMac. 4 months old, brand new. 1 Terabyte of storage. The Mac keeps saying I am out of storage, but when you add up all of my word docs, downloads, applications, etc., it only totals about 10Gb. Then when I click on "manage storage" it gives me a breakdown of what my computer is using and at the bottom line it says "system: 990 GB" - Shouldn't the system be operating at about 8-9GB tops?!!? I have deleted all surplus items and literally the total of all downloads, documents, files, applications, etc. is only about 10GB but it says my storage is almost full!! Please help!

I put up a photo of the storage management screen before I deleted some more stuff.... This is nuts.

This happened to me once. I used Daisy Disk to figure out where the disk usage was coming from.

In my case, there was a problem with the coresymbolicationd cache, which was growing indefinitely (eating up hundreds of gigabytes).

After deleting /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd, everything returned to normal.


How do I install the 3.0 iPhone simulator on Xcode 4? I want to install the 3.0 iPhone simulator on my Xcode 4.0.2 installation. Is there a way to do this?

I want to test my app against 3.0 to make sure it runs correctly (due to some changes in UIScrollView mainly), but I don't have access to any device with 3.0. I know that the simulator != the device, but testing against the 3.0 simulator is better than nothing.

Xcode, the iOS SDK and the Simulator come bundled together in one installer because they share libraries and other stuff in the Developer folder.  Mismatched combinations probably won't work.  Even if you somehow manage to install the 3.0 Simulator with your current Xcode+SDK installation, it would probably crash.

So you need to find a complete installer for an old iPhone OS 3.0 SDK with Xcode 3.x, and install with that on a Mac that to get a working iPhone OS 3.0 Simulator.  You may or may not be able to get an SDK/Xcode combination that old that runs on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, so you may need to find an older Mac that can boot into OS X 10.5 Leopard as well.

Added:

Anyway, a developer should only be supporting 3.0 devices by actually having one around on which to test their app, before setting the Deployment Target that low when submitting an app for live customers use.  Customers are not supposed to be some test dummies for random developers.

Just test apps on the oldest, lowest OS version, device you can find (beg, borrow, buy used and dented, drive across town), and use that as your Deployment Target.  If you can't find a device that old, neither can the vast majority of the customers for your app.


Is it possible to always start an application fullscreen? After searching online for some time I was unable to find a real answer.

It it possible to start an application (i.e. Chrome) in a way that it always goes fullscreen?

Yes.

Just leave the app in full screen mode when you quit the application. As long as it's using Lion's full screen library (and not some hack of its own), the next time you start the app it will start back up in full screen mode.

Just tested this with Safari and Sparrow and they both restarted in full screen mode. Chrome 15.0.874.106, however, did not. I don't think Chrome's full screen support on Lion is quite right, it might not be using Lion's full screen window methods in the ways necessary to have it resume in full screen mode.


Hard disk performance drastically declined after OS X Lion upgrade After upgrading to Lion (10.7.1) a while ago I'm currently faced with a very poor performance of my system. It's a 2.2 GHz Core2Duo with 4 GB RAM and a 500GB HD.
E.g. the JBoss6 AS needs about 5 minutes to start (compared to 1 minute before facing this problems), or after starting Safari and loading a page it's freezed about 5-10 seconds until the Flash animations are available.

I tried the XBench test and wondering about the Disk Tests [4K blocks, 256K blocks]:

Sequential Write: 49  MB/s, 12 MB/s
Sequential Read:  0.8 MB/s, 10 MB/s
Random Write:  0.8 MB/s, 9 MB/s
Random Read:   0.1 MB/s, 7 MB/s

The throughput during read times seem to be extremely low. Can this be a problem with the HDD? (SMART status is verified). iDefrag show fragmentations between 0.2% to 0.4% of volume content, but about 60% (catalog) to 70% (free space) of the volume directory.

Note: The Thread Test of XBench seems never to complete, the last entry is

Computation:  187.19 4.79 Mops/sec, 4 threads

Ok, I bought a new Harddisk (Samsung 640GB) and cloned the old HD with SuperDuper. After Spotlight has re-indexed the drive I have the following benchmarks:

Sequential Write: 60  MB/s, 25 MB/s
Sequential Read:  17 MB/s, 69 MB/s
Random Write:  1.5 MB/s, 24 MB/s
Random Read:   0.5 MB/s, 19 MB/s

I don't know if the HD or it's controller is damaged, but now the performance of my system is ok again!


Dump iCloud keychain in Terminal I failed to find the path to iCloud keychain to do just security dump-keychain - the iCloud keychain isn't shown when I try security list-keychains. What is the path to that keychain (or, if it cannot be obtained, how to dump the whole iCloud keychain)?

Or, maybe, Apple Script could help to do that?

iCloud Keychain is stored on disk in a different format than a traditional keychain ref1, ref2. It's located at ~/Library/Keychains/ in a folder named as a long UUID. You can see the modified timestamp change on the contents of that folder as you change something in your iCloud keychain.

Whilst you can use AppleScript and Usable Keychain Scripting to work with the system and login keychains, there's no way to access the iCloud keychain.

So the only option you're left with is to AppleScript GUI operation of the Keychain Access app.


Is it possible to mirror emojis on an iPhone I would like to use a mirrored emoji() in an imessage  - is that possible?
(I am interested in both mirrored, flipped and rotated emojis)

I have tried to use http://fliptext.net but is does not support emojis. I have tried to take a screenshot, and crop it to only the emoji(and rotate it), but for some reason it also gets stretched. What is the resolution of original emojis? -maybe a mirrored emoji can be prepared on a computer and transferred to the phone?

Edit : I would like the new emoji-picture to look just as nice as the original(resolution, antialiasing and size) - I have had no luck achieving this.

As mirrored emoji are not actual Unicode characters, the only way to accomplish this would be to edit an image with an emoji in Preview or another editing program. The directions provided are for preview.app on any mac.

Open Preview
Open any image that is just a plain transparent background, like this
Open the markup  toolbox
Add a new text box, and insert the emoji. You can type emoji using Edit > Emoji & Symbols, or the touchbar on a new MacBook Pro.
Now, click Tools > Flip Horizontal
Save your image. Now you've made a flipped emoji that you can place anywhere you want.

Here's your reversed megaphone, too:  imgur link


Dropbox-like client for Macs to access existing FTP/WebDAV/CMIS storage We have many users on Macs that access their files on one big non-Mac server that supports FTP/WebDAV/CMIS.

PROBLEM: They can not use their files while not connected to the Internet.

QUESTION: Is there a Dropbox-like software for FTP? or WebDAV? or CMIS?

When connected, pushes local changes to the server
When connected, polls the server every n minutes to pull changes
Preferably open source
Dropbox-like UI: Tray icon, minimal configuration dialog, maybe green check in Finder to show which files are synchronized.
Starts automatically at boot or login

Just to make it clear: I am not looking for an online hosting service. I have an existing server and there are no plan to move any data to any cloud. I am looking for a client-side software that can synchronize local files with the server when connected to the network.

FTPbox is nearly perfect and open source, but it has not been ported to Mac yet.
GoodSync does not work in the background (requires user click) so it is a no-go.

I was asked to add a short section describing why DropBox is not a solution: 1) Documents are confidential, third-party is not an option 2) Dropbox is not reliable enough (better uptime/SLA is needed) 3) Dropbox becomes crazily expensive for large scale 4) The FTP/WebDAV/CMIS interface is actually provided by "Alfresco", an enterprise document management system which has many other features (not just file transfer), and is integrated with other critical enterprise systems. So my question is really about client-side only.

You may want to look into the following open source applications:

FTPSync

a Perl script to synchronize a local directory tree and a remote FTP directory tree.
ownCloud

Web services under your control.

Current features: file management, WebDAV access, share via public link, music streaming, users & groups, OpenID, LDAP
In development: sharing, encryption, calendar, contacts, etc., desktop sync client, Android & webOS apps, server-server sync

NOTE: You do not have to utilize their storage.


Mail App Showing As "talagent" in Mission Control simple one just wondering why is my Apple Mail showing as "talagent" in mission control?
Any idea how it can be fixed?

I do not realise when it switched to this name
I tried rebooting and resetting RAM but it's still showing the same

From a wild guess in comments, which seems to have worked…
talagent is the service responsible for relaunching apps after a restart etc.
Something has got confused, so try…
Quit Mail, then delete the contents of
~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.mail.savedState/
(not the folder itself as it's an alias) Then relaunch Mail.


How can I restrict Mac sharing services to a specific network/adapter? I want is to set up a Mac to connect to multiple networks. So far, so good. However, I only want to grant AFP access to users on ONE of the networks, but not the other. How can I accomplish this on (non-server) Mac OS X?

This is probably an issue that comes up quite a bit in IT - you want to use the same machine as a world-facing web server and as an internal AFP (or whatever) server, but I haven't really been able to find a way to do it.

You can do this using the builtin ipfw firewall (it is not the default firewall in Snow Leopard, but it is still included). You can configure from the command line, the exact rule set you need depends on your other requirements, but the specific rule in question would be something like:

# allow AFP (port 548) traffic from 10net
/sbin/ipfw add allow tcp from 10.0.0/24 to any 548

# deny all other AFP traffic
ipfw add deny tcp from any to any 548

Obviously you will need to adjust that for your specific network. Also, these rules are not persistent, which means you will need to add a script to run them commands every reboot. On the other hand, that means that if you wedge your networking while trying to come up with appropriate rules you can always just reboot to reset the stack. There are plenty of ipfw tutorials on the web (most of them are aimed at FreeBSD users, but it is the same interface).


Is it normal for a new Mac to have less than 100% battery health? I bought a new Mac, a little over a month ago. It has exactly 15 battery cycles now (after my use, of course). So, definitely, a new battery.
But, my problem is that I can see, through CoconutBattery and iStats that it can only retain about 8100mAh. They state my battery is with a health of 92~93% (supposedly, this battery is rated around 8700mAh when new). I confirmed on Apple stats that it retains 8100mAh, but Apple tells me nothing about the total expected capacity.
Is there a problem with my battery, or is this just a normal manufacturing variation?
They all state the condition is normal. But I find it weird that it won't retain 100% or even close to that, like 97, 98, 99%.
I can only imagine in a year, this dropping to below 90, like around 80%. I had other Macs that retained that over the period of like 3 years or more.

This happens regularly and we don’t have issues with them at work and often see a pretty wide range of FCC numbers initially. The measurements are precise but not accurate over short time periods. I would track use every three months and if at the 11 month period get a second read by Apple. They will have service notes for the battery diagnostic when new and also at almost a year so that will tell very accurately what the overall lifespan is.
If you haven’t contacted AppleCare and had them run one remote battery diagnostic, do that late January after the rush of holiday help requests has died down. Unless it’s popping a warning or you can’t get reasonable life, there’s no rush to get the first scan done.
Here are some past posts on whether any one measurement is predictive and how to handle end of warranty situations.
I would use that battery hard for a week or two (empty to full) and you’ll know it’s performing or not without needing any special calibration steps that were used in the past.


macOS: Navigating between desktops using keyboard shortcuts I've just moved to Mac from Linux. There I used to have a fixed number of desktops running full-screen apps. I've managed to configure it on Mac, but yet can not find the way to assign shortcuts to switch between them. For ex. to use Command + 1 to go to the first full-screen desktop.

Several years ago I've been using some app to do so, but I can not find it now. Any ideas on how to do it?

Go to System Preferences app → Keyboard → Shortcuts and you can assign keyboard shortcuts to move across Spaces (desktops).

You can also use the F3 (Mission Control) key on your Mac's keyboard to get a birds eye view of all the Spaces (desktops in Mac parlance) and quickly and directly switch to the desired one. However, this will also involve using the mouse/trackpad.

If you are looking for a 3rd-party tool which lets you customize keyboard shortcuts with much fine grain control, a popular app among users of macOS is Karabiner.


How to turn on Intel VT in MacBook Pro 2011 (MC721LL/A)? I used to turn on virtualization on my PC by turning it on from BIOS. But how I do it on MacBook Pro, as I am using WinXP on VMware Fusion 4.0, but its very slow, and both Windows XP and Mac OS starts lagging.

Is there any way I can turn on virtualization for Mac so that the lagging stops? It's really driving me crazy.

[Note: it's a 2.0 GHz Intel Core i7 quad-core processor ("Sandy Bridge") with 6 MB shared L3 cache for excellent multitasking.]

It should be turned on automatically. If you go into the settings for the Windows XP virtual image, then click advanced, you'll see a field for Preferred virtualization engine. It should be set to "Automatic" by default, but if you want to force Intel VT, you can select one of those options.

If you're lagging, something else might be to blame. Does Console say anything and how much memory do you have installed?


Meaning of "FD" in /dev/cu.usbmodemFD211? Normally when I plug a CDC serial USB device, I get a device like /dev/cu.usbmodem1411. A remote user I'm supporting who's having difficulty with a serial device is reporting a device with FD in the name: /dev/cu.usbmodemFD211 (on a Macbook Air of unknown vintage running 10.13.4)?

What's the meaning of the FD? I've done a websearch but turned up nothing, though some people mention a lower-case fd instead. I know the digits just signify the controller, port, etc.

There's no technical consequences due to the device having "FD" in its name. It is "just a name", so the operating system doesn't treat it any differently because it says "FD".

The reason for the different namings is that the driver for the USB serial device decides the name of the device file. You will see different names depending on which driver the user has installed.

For these reasons, it is not possible to generally say what the "FD" stands for - as it depends entirely on which driver, the user has installed. Typically "FD" stands for "file descriptor" or "full duplex" in this context.


How to get rid of these random Norton antivirus notifications on my MacBook? To be clear I have never installed Norton Antivirus software on my MacBook and now I have received three notifications via Chrome browser that my Norton antivirus has expired.

What does this mean and how do I stop it? I looked inside of Notifications in Chrome Browser and I have nothing enabled for Norton antivirus messages. Where are these messages coming from then?

My eyes missed it. Inside of Google Chrome notification I had a www.goodbiz.com type of site where I was receiving the notifications from. I removed it.


Problem "do shell script" on curl – Works in Terminal, but not via "do shell script" I want to use "curl" with "do shell script" in an apple script. It already worked some months ago, but then the provider changed to https-only service.

So I update curl on Mac OS Terminal:

$ curl -V
curl 7.49.0 (x86_64-apple-darwin10.8.0) libcurl/7.49.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2h zlib/1.2.8
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps pop3 pop3s rtsp smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp
Features: IPv6 Largefile NTLM NTLM_WB SSL libz TLS-SRP UnixSockets

So it works in Terminal and gives back the right answer:

But when I try to call the same command via do shell script in Apple Script it responds this:

So – is the problem, that curl in the do shell script environment isn't updated - and how could I do this? Or what is the problem?

I've found the solution. The problem is, that homebrew installed an optional newer version of curl, but the command do shell script does use the old version.

After a hint from a friend I used which curl in terminal and apple script editor and get different results:

Terminal says: /opt/local/bin/curl
Apple Script do shell script says: /usr/bin/curl

So the solution for my problem is to force do shell sript to use the newer version via:

do shell script "/opt/local/bin/curl \"https://v.gd/create.php?format=simple&url=http://www.test.de\""


Do all Macs come with iLife apps? I bought a Mac that is only a few months old. My understanding was that it is supposed to come with iLife (iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand) either preinstalled or available as a "free" download in the Mac App store. However, this doesn't seem to be the case as it is is not installed and the Mac App Store requires that I pay for it before downloading it.

Do all Macs come with iLife? If so, what can I do to get it?

Any iMac or Macbook Air/Pro purchased directly from Apple - regardless of student discounts or being refurbished - is shipped with iLife pre installed.

http://www.apple.com/ilife/

Since Apple first introduced Lion and stopped shipping install DVDs for OSX and iLife I have purchased two Macs as a second user.

In both cases the iLife applications were registered to the previous owner and the Apple Care support wrote me in an email that they cannot transfer the iLife 'purchase' to me as the new owner.

Since I've failed twice to get 'Apple' to transfer the license (leaving the previous owner with two licenses on his new Mac...) I assume that this is Apple's standard procedure. So, as iLife is only part of every new Mac.

This gets displayed to the original owner, but as a second owner, the absence of this screen means that another Apple ID has claimed iLife for that Mac.


OS X Yosemite: System slow and using a lot of RAM I noticed that my OS X sometimes goes very laggy and it does everything slowly. I opened up Activity Monitor and I saw that it's using a lot of memory.

Any ideas on how to fix this (because I guess it should't be using 3.98 GB out of 4 GB + 1.75 GB of swap memory)?

I'm using mid 2012 MacBook Pro.

As noted in the comment it had probably something to do with the WindowServer.

Now regarding the other part of the question:

OS X presents memory usage in a different way when comparing to say MS Windows.
For example, if you quit an app in OS X, its memory is available to other apps, but it is not 'cleared' (so if you relaunch the app it would be quite faster in most cases).

My MBP is currently showing 7.88 GB ("Memory used" our of 8GB total), but everything runs as smooth as after restarting (Memory pressure is minimal).

I suggest you read the How to use Activity Monitor, especially the section about Memory, where you can find some additional information.

Long story short, you better check the "Memory Pressure" indication graph in order to have a more accurate idea about your system's current status.


"Last Import" in Photos shows 1,000s of photos, not just last import The "Last Import" function of Photos seems stuck.  It shows all my photos from Feb, 2012 - Feb, 2017.  Which is really strange, as I import photos from my phone about once a week.  I.e., I'm imported dozens of times since Feb, 2017.

How do I reset/fix this?

You could try rebuilding your Photos Library. However, ensure you have a backup of your Photos Library (e.g. a Time Machine backup) before rebuilding the library!

To rebuild the library, follow these steps:

Make sure that Photos is not running
While holding down the optioncommand keys, launch the Photos app
The Repair Library window should appear
Click on Repair to rebuild your photo library

Depending on the size of your library, this may take some time.


Store more apps on iPhone 5c 16gb So I recently moved from an Android phone to an iPhone 5c. One of my favorite features of Android was the ability to store apps on the SD card. It's apparent that there's no solution like this for an iPhone, as iPhones don't have an SD card slot. My question, however, is what alternatives may exist to storing extra apps on my 5c. I've come to find out that apps alone are filling my device. Using iCloud, I can sync just about everything else wirelessly, but regardless, I still could use some more breathing room just for my apps. Is there any sort of cloud based solution for this, or anything else for that matter? I've hunted around but can't seem to find any definitive answers.

About the only option is to have all the apps you want on iTunes and load them onto your iPhone as desired. Of course you can't have them all at the same time because of your memory limitations but you could change sets for vacation or work for instance.

Or you can buy an iPhone with more memory.

Those are the only options Apple leaves you.

Happy Day!


How do I stop MacAppStore from showing updates for deleted apps? I've deleted apps that were purchased through the Mac AppStore. I used "CleanApp" to delete the parts left in app support folders.

But I still see notifications of updates in the AppStore app.

I know I can hide the app name in the Purchases tab, but is there any way to remove these notifications permanently?

It is not just a cosmetic thing. If I have multiple updates and I select "Update All Apps",  the deleted apps will be reinstalled.

Please note I am asking about the Mac App Store, not the iOS Store.

Usually this is a problem with spotlight.

The simplest step is to shut down the mac, disconnect all external drives, and start up to make sure no extra volumes are mounted. The next step would be to rebuild the spotlight index.

Lastly, search in other user accounts to be sure another user didn't somehow install or copy that App into their home folder.


Shortcut to unindent in Powerpoint In many applications shift-tab will unindent: but it just indents further on powerpoint.  What is the shortcut?

⇧⇥ is the shortcut for unindent, but you need to select the paragraph to unindent. If you have no selection, or just a word, the shortcut doesn't work.


Is it possible to take the app name again after the app got deleted from iTunes-connect? Since we can have 180 days time for app binary submission, After that window expires the application will be deleted from the itunes-connect.

Then is it possible to create another application with the same name?

ie, is there any possibilities for apple to give the same name to the same user after deletion of the app?

No, once and App has been deleted, either by you or because of the expiration process, you cannot reuse your SKU or app name in the same account again. It can be used, though, by another developer.

Under the Deleting an App section of the iTunes Connect Developer Guide you'll learn more about the ramifications of an App Deletion.


Copy app URL in iPhone There is a way from App store to send an email containing the information about an app. However there is no way of just copying the app URL in case I want to send that URL on other services like Line or whatever. Or is there?

At least in the App Store app in iOS 6 you can copy the link by tapping on the Sharing icon.

If this is not available in earlier versions there is always the option of sending a mail to oneself and taking the link from there.


How can I fix my Mac-Router-Mac network? My network is amazing slow, and my question is what can I do about it.

I have done the following analysis:

Transfer from MacBookPro -> Router -> Mac Mini Intel Core 1
264,3 MB = 2114, MBit in 432 seconds. == 4,89 MBPS

Transfer from MacBookPro  -> Mac Mini Intel Core 1 (Direct network)
264,3 MB = 2114, MBit in 295 seconds. == 7,16 MBPS

Transfer from MacBookPro -> Router -> MacBook Air
90,2 MB = 721,6 MBit in 147 seconds. == 4,90 MBPS

All connections via WLAN: 54 MBit/s, WPA2, WMM, autochannel.
Router is a FRITZ!Box WLAN 3170

So, the router sucks a bit performance, thats OK. Anyway as the router shows me that all clients are connected with 54 MBit/s, shouldn't the transfer time less? What can I do/check to increase my networks speed?

Christian

Looks closer to 802.11b than 802.11g, the speed advertised for wireless networks is confusingly not equivalent to an Ethernet cable of equivalent speed.

This guide will be informative for you:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-basics/31083-smallnetbuilders-wireless-faq-the-essentials

Basically buy an Apple Airport Extreme to replace your current system, and try to use the 5Ghz frequencies instead of 2.4Ghz as you are probably suffering from a lot of interference.

Example setting up with existing router:


Filemaker server BUG: backup schedules DISAPPEAR after restart of host machine. Workarounds? Some time ago I discovered my Filemaker backup schedules mystically disappear. After some research I find out it happens right after restart of host machine.

Eventually I found this post on official filemaker forum

  There is a major Schedules bug in FMS 12.0v3 that is happening on a brand new machine with a clean install of everything. This bug is preventing my client's databases from backing up properly (which is probably the most important requirement of all -- current backups). I don't know how to solve it, and my client is out $2,000 on a brand new machine.

  My client was having this EXACT problem on an old FileMaker Server
  machine, so he decided to spend $2,000 on a brand new iMac running
  10.8.2 to replace his old machine. We thought that throwing money at the problem would solve the problems, but it didn't work because this
  is a bug in FMS 12.0v3.

  Completely brand new machine, straight from the Apple Store. We didn't
  do ANY migrations of anything… no migration of FMS settings, no OS X
  Migration Assistant, nothing. We simply installed FileMaker Server
  12.0v1, updated to FileMaker Server 12.0v3, installed the latest Java, manually dragged his FileMaker files into the Databases folder, set
  the permissions manually, and opened them in FileMaker Server.

  So far, so good.

  The problem is with the Schedules. I created 4 Schedules to backup all
  the databases on a daily basis, and I manually tested all 4 Schedules
  by right-clicking on each one and choosing "Run Schedule". All of them
  completed perfectly fine. They all backed up the databases just fine.

  However, after I Stop FileMaker Server (using the Stop button in the
  Admin Console, with a countdown time of 0 minutes) and I restart the
  machine, one or more of the schedules WILL COMPLETELY DISAPPEAR from
  FileMaker Server!! The schedules just completely delete themselves,
  never to be found again!!

  And, for the schedules that DO somehow luckily remain in FileMaker
  Server, they no longer show a "Last Completed" date anymore. They've
  completely wiped out any history of their previous successful backups.
  I don't even know if they will run again at their scheduled time. But
  after each time I stop FileMaker Server & restart the machine,
  Schedules will start deleting themselves.

  This is hugely problematic, because backups are of mission critical
  importance. This is on a brand new machine, just a few hours old, with
  ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on the machine except for FileMaker Server and
  Java. No migration of any data from anywhere… databases &
  configuration settings were manually moved over.

  This is the cleanest & purest testing environment ever, and yet this
  serious major bug is still happening.

And I just don't know what to do in this case, how should I make automatic backups?

Should I relinquish Filemaker server's scheduling completely, and start using 3rd party automatic software (say, "Time Machine" since I have Mac).

Or maybe I should make some sort of notification for system administrator? ( Startup Banner with text: "Filemaker schedule is corrupted and needs to be restored manually" )

Did anyone face this bug, too?

UPD I reapaired disk permissions, but it didn't help.

I think I found a solution for this problem. Check your settings in the "Security & Privacy" Control-Panel. If your settings are on "Anywhere" by "Allow Applications Downloaded from" put it back to "Mac App Store and idetified developers" recreate your schedules in FMS and do a restart again. My schedules then kept in place. But be carefully. Do not reimport any exported FMS schedules. They will disapear again. Only way I could reuse some exported schedules was when I imported them while the settings where on "Anywhere" and then set the settings back to "Mac App Store and...". If I did it like this they kept in place. Hope this helps you.

Update: Some further test's where bringing some further strange behavior. While I was investigate this issue I created a home directory for the fmsadmin user but cleared it out afterwards because I was thinking this is not the solution for the Issue. But after a reboot the schedules dissapeared again. I recreated then a home directory for the fmsadmin unser (did this in Workgroup Manager for 10.8 which is to seperatedly installed from Apple) and then the schedules I newly created kept in place. So you probably have to play through some different setups to get back in business.

Regards

Fix


Mac App Store Upload Fail: Validation Error (SFML) I'm working on a SFML App in Xcode 7.2, and I'm trying to upload my project build to the Mac App Store, and I'm getting the following error:

An error occurred during validation
Couldn't find platform family in Info.plist CFBundleSupportedPlatforms or Mach-O LC_VERSION_MIN for A

I've tried, among other things, adding a new entry to my Info.plist for CFBundleSupportedPlatforms with an entry for OSX. I've tried changing dylibs vs frameworks, i've tried universal vs standard architectures. All of these modifications have yeilded no success.
This question is following a previous problem with freetype that I fixed. Is it possibly still a problem with freetype? any suggestions?
UPDATE:
OK, I've gone through and reset up a whole new project following the App Distribution Guide. I Did see some issues with some of my build settings, and fixed them. But I'm Still getting the same error. Does anyone have a clue what I'm doing wrong?

I fixed it!
The problem was that I had only edited my project-info.plist. I went and added the same lines for CFBundleSupportedPlatforms to the info.plist's for each of my external frameworks.

CFBundleSupportedPlatforms => array,
item0 => MacOSX

Seems to have done the trick.


Issue with burning Linux .iso file using Disk Utility I'm trying to create a Linux installation drive. I have an empty hard drive (MS-DOS format), and I already dragged the .iso file to the sidebar in the Disk Utility app. However when I press it the "Burn" option is still greyed out. Also, when I double click the .iso file it says "no mountable file systems". Does anyone know the solution to this?

I don't think Disk Utility will let you "burn" an ISO to a hard drive. It might let you "restore" the content to the drive. Select the ISO image in the right-hand side, then drag and drop the hard drive into the "Destination" field and click "Restore". I don't have a device here to test, but that might work.

Normally people "burn" ISO images to CDs or DVDs, or write them to USB memory sticks. If you have one of them available here are the relevant instructions for Ubuntu (these instructions should work for other Linux distributions too). I've done both countless times and can confirm that they do work.

How to burn a DVD on OS X
How to create a bootable USB stick on OS X


Getting Individual Filenames in Automator The idea behind a small project I'm working on is to be able to upload a music file and have After Effects pick it up and render it within a video file template I have.

The workflow would be:

Once I upload a new music file to a folder in my iCloud Drive which would be monitored monitored by my iMac. Each new music file triggers an Adobe script which imports the new track to an Adobe After Effects project which exports it to AME and then quits. The music is then moved to another directory.

I've ran in to an issue with passing in a filename to an Adobe script, so to work around this have made a template Adobe script with a placeholder filename (the file path would always be the same) which can be duplicated, have the placeholder filename replaced (via a batch script, though there could be a simpler way of doing it I'd suspect), executed and then deleted.

As a first pass I've been trying to focus on getting the name of new files to the folder, now with mixed success. When running an AppleScript script (.scpt) file attached to the folder I'm able to get the file name displayed and passed to a batch file. The issue now is that it doesn't seem to work with the Automator equivalent.

Code below:

on adding folder items to thisFolder after receiving theseItems
repeat with i from 1 to count theseItems
    try
        set thisItem to item i in theseItems
        set thisItemsInfo to info for thisItem
        set thisItemsFileName to quoted form of name in thisItemsInfo
        display dialog thisItemsFileName buttons {"Continue"}
        do shell script "/Users/jeffolaa/ReplaceName.sh " & thisItemsFileName
    end try
end repeat
end adding folder items to

The ReplaceName batch is a single command:

#!/bin/bash
sed -i.bu 's/EDITTHIS/'$1'/' /Users/jeffolaa/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com\~apple\~CloudDocs/Documents/Adobe\ Scripts/AddMusicExport.jsx

So far my Automator workflow looks like so:

All help is very much appreciated!

Note: This answer was written based on the original posting of the question and in particular the first three paragraphs of this answer, sans this note. Since then, the OP has been updated to address what was expressed in the first three paragraphs and they may now seem out of context. However, looking at the edit history of the OP one can see the relevance in context of the original question. They will remain for now until I have the time to make an appropriate edit.

Sorry, but your question is not that well defined and it's not totally clear what actions you added to the Automator Folder Action workflow, sans the obvious Run AppleScript action. Nor is it clear if there are any actions added before or after the Run AppleScript action. Additionally, it's not clear what code is in /Users/jeffolaa/pointer.sh or all of what it's doing. Which leads me to believe that just passing the name of the file to pointer.sh may not be enough. Although without seeing the code in pointer.sh, at this point only you know.

Also, the form of the AppleScript code you've shown in the OP is not the proper form for an Automator Folder Action workflow using a Run AppleScript action. The on adding folder items handler is of the type used in an AppleScript script (.scpt) file that is manually assigned to the target folder using the Folder Action Setup... command from the Services context menu in Finder, not Automator, where you need to use the on input handler in the Run AppleScript action.

You also have no error handling code, which is important in Folder Actions and the type and amount can depend on what you have coded in the pointer.sh. In other words, you might want to filter the items added to the folder by type, making sure it's a file not a folder, or a particular type of file with a given extension, etc. This can be done in Automator before it gets to the Run AppleScript action, or in the code of the Run AppleScript action, or in the code in pointer.sh, or a combination of any or all of them.

With that said, the following example AppleScript code is a minimal coding of what makes sense to be able to pass the quoted fully qualified pathname of the file(s) added to the target folder you set in Automator's Folder Action receives file and folders added to [folder] to pass to  pointer.sh, as that's typical of an argument passed to a shell command.

Minimal example AppleScript code for use in a Run AppleScript action in an Automator Folder Action workflow:

on run {input, parameters}
    repeat with i from 1 to count input
        try
            set thisItem to item i in input
            set thisItemsPathname to quoted form of POSIX path of thisItem
            do shell script "/Users/jeffolaa/pointer.sh " & thisItemsPathname
        end try
    end repeat
end run

Minimal example AppleScript code for use in an AppleScript script (.scpt) file manually assigned to the target folder using the Folder Action Setup... command from the Services context menu in Finder:

on adding folder items to thisFolder after receiving theseItems
    repeat with i from 1 to count theseItems
        try
            set thisItem to item i in theseItems
            set thisItemsPathname to quoted form of POSIX path of thisItem
            do shell script "/Users/jeffolaa/pointer.sh " & thisItemsPathname
        end try
    end repeat
end adding folder items to

Note: To use an AppleScript script (.scpt) file using the Folder Action Setup... command from the Services context menu in Finder, it first must be added to the ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts folder that's within your Home folder.

To test the above code, I created the /Users/jeffolaa/pointer.sh file with the following code in it:

#!/bin/bash

mv "$1" "$HOME/Test/"

Which simply moves the files back to the folder from which they were dragged from to the target folder the Folder Action is assigned to, which is a folder within the Test folder. This let me know it was working properly as coded.

Now if it's just the name of the file you want to pass to pointer.sh, you can use the following:

Minimal example AppleScript code for use in a Run AppleScript action in an Automator Folder Action workflow:

on run {input, parameters}
    repeat with i from 1 to count input
        try
            set thisItem to item i in input
            set thisItemsInfo to info for thisItem
            set thisItemsFileName to quoted form of name in thisItemsInfo
            do shell script "/Users/jeffolaa/pointer.sh " & thisItemsFileName
        end try
    end repeat
end run

Minimal example AppleScript code for use in an AppleScript script (.scpt) file manually assigned to the target folder using the Folder Action Setup... command from the Services context menu in Finder:

on adding folder items to thisFolder after receiving theseItems
    repeat with i from 1 to count theseItems
        try
            set thisItem to item i in theseItems
            set thisItemsInfo to info for thisItem
            set thisItemsFileName to quoted form of name in thisItemsInfo
            do shell script "/Users/jeffolaa/pointer.sh " & thisItemsFileName
        end try
    end repeat
end adding folder items to

Note: To use an AppleScript script (.scpt) file using the Folder Action Setup... command from the Services context menu in Finder, it first must be added to the ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts folder that's within your Home folder.

To test the above code, I edited the pointer.sh file with the following code in it:

#!/bin/bash

say "$1"

Which simply says the name of the file held in thisItemsFileName, which let me know it was working properly as coded.

Note: The example AppleScript code above is just that, and sans wrapping it in a try statement, does not include any other error handling as may be appropriate/needed/wanted, the onus is upon the user to add any appropriate error handling for any example code presented and or code written by the oneself.

That said, if you'd update your question to fill in the missing pieces as mentioned in the opening paragraphs of my answer, I'll be glad to edit these code examples to reflect what appropriate error handling should be added. There's just no sense adding it until I know the particulars.


How to adjust siri's volume so it will sound louder via earpod? This happens lately and I don't know how to fix it.

When I  listen to podcast  using the app 'cast' with my earpod, from time to time I long press the remote to ask for some information. Let's say the volume of the podcast output is at 8 (out of 10), the siri answer will out very weak and feels like it is set to 1 or 2.

I have tried increasing the volume when siri is activated but it does not have any effect.

Is there anything I can do to increase siri's volume?

EDIT Add model and version info

The iphone is 6s (NKQN2ZP/A)

OS version is 10.2.1

Siri has an independent volume. When Siri is talking, use the volume buttons on your iPhone to change the volume of Siri. This is preserved for next time Siri is used.


How to create an encrypted volume on an external drive or flash drive How do you encrypt an external hard/flash drive connected to my Mac in Lion 10.7? Preferable something with a strong encryption as FileVault.

The best way to do this is via Disk Utility in the Application/Utilities folder.
Review pictures for better understanding

Select the disk you want to encrypt

Choose the format method as in the picture, making sure you choose the option with Encryption

Next time you connect the disk, you will be asked to enter password.


How can I add static route in order to access machine that had wrong static IP configured? From time to time I end-up having to connect to a machine that was not configured to use DHCP.

Assuming that I know the static IP address of that machine and that this machine is already physically connected on my network, how do I add a custom route on MacOS in order to be able to ssh to that machine and reconfigure it?

I assume it is something like sudo route add ...

I do this all the time. There are 2 options:-

ssh user@<IP> for a known IP address

or if the machine has a hostname, the Mac should be able to discover it with
ssh user@hostname.local

Similar settings can be used from most GUI ssh clients.


Spotlight and command-B shortcut quirk When I open Spotlight and type something in, I can search that query using command-B shortcut (i.e. when I type something into Spotlight and press command-B, my search query is sent to the default search engine of the Safari). There is a small quirk however. If Safari app is opened, Spotlight window stays on and I have to close it down manually (two escape keys). However, if Safari app is completely closed, Spotlight window closes automatically.

Here's two screenshots to show visually what I mean:

Spotlight -> type "example" in -> press command-B (prior to doing this, Safari was completely closed i.e. it was quit).

Spotlight -> type "example" in -> press command-B
(prior to doing this, Safari was opened)

My question is the following - is this the standard behaviour or I have bug/misconfiguration on my Mac? My OS is 10.12.6.

I'm running 10.12.6, too, and it works the same way for me.

If I follow the exact same steps as you described, I get the same results that you get.  I'm assuming this is normal behavior.


How to disable unlock with Apple ID in Mountain Lion when FileVault is enabled? I have a Mac with FileVault 2 enabled, and recently upgraded to Mountain Lion.

Apple automatically enables the option to unlock my system account using my Apple ID in Mountain Lion, and because I have FileVault 2 enabled also hides the option to disable this feature.

If I want to disable "unlock using Apple ID" I can decrypt my drive by disabling FileVault, then the option will appear again. I can then disable the option and re-encrypt my drive by enabling FileVault.

I don't want to do this: How can I disable "unlock using Apple ID" using the command line or skipping the decrypt/encrypt step?

I haven't tried this with an Apple ID but in general you can add/remove users from the list using the fdesetup command. For example, to delete the user 'bill':

sudo fdesetup remove -user bill

You can use the following to see which users can unlock the disk:

sudo fdesetup list


Is there any way to access the Photo Stream outside of Photos.app in El Capitan This is basically a duplicate of this question, which was answered for prior versions, but whose answer is no longer applicable in El Capitan.

My question includes programmatically: if there's a programmatic / Cocoa way to access the Photo Stream contents stored (somewhere?) on your computer, then perhaps we can build a filesystem-in-userspace or similar to access them?

So, I've answered this for myself: iCloud Photo Library photos are buried in subfolders of "~/Pictures/*.photoslibrary/Masters" on El Capitan!

Using a savedSearch, the same approach as was popular under Yosemite and earlier, we can create a Finder folder that lists, chronologically, your Photo Stream. The XML version is here (you may have to modify some paths), or you can download my pre-compiled version instead:

Ta-da!


What resources are shared in iCloud Family Sharing? I have been trying to get a handle on iCloud Family sharing before I turn it on. There are two potential issues I could see having with it. First, is iCloud storage space shared amongst the accounts or is it linked a particular Apple ID. Second how does PhotoStream work with it. My wife and I currently like sharing all our photos so we can see what the kids are up to when they with one or the other of us. Will that still be the case?

iCloud storage is not shared. Of course I realized this after upping my storage. Really this is an odd solution to use as just sharing an iCloud id between devices does the same thing AND let's you share the increased iCloud storage for backups and other things. Was hoping this would help my wife out since she hates getting my notifications and warnings every time I add a device/service or two-factor authenticate. Oh well, maybe in a future version they will refine and add features.


Cancel file dragging on Mac Is it possible to cancel file dragging on a Mac? I've noticed that with the escape key, you can cancel file dragging within the Finder, but if you're dragging the file onto another application you can't cancel it (which in my opinion seems very annoying when you really just want to cancel the file dragging). Is there any way to cancel the file dragging in such circumstances?

You can drag the file to the menu bar (top bar) and release it. That will cancel the dragging in any app (afaik).