Permanently Dismiss "New iCloud Terms and Conditions" on MacOS High Sierra I don't use and don't plan on ever using iCloud. I'm not sure I even remember the password for my account. Apple keeps popping up the "New iCloud Terms and Conditions" notification on my mac and I have been clicking it every day and the immediately quitting system preferences. There must be a better way to remove it. I can't drag it away and there is no "later" option.

It is requesting all the time as your already logged into iCloud.

If you go to:
Apple -> System Preferences -> iCloud
Then click 'sign out'

MacOS will not ask for you to agree to the iCloud T&Cs anymore.


One cinema display with two macs Is there a way to connect two macs to a single cinema display? Of course I won't use them at the same time, but I want them to be connected to the display.

At work, we refer to such devices as "switch boxes," though it appears that "video switch mini displayport" pulls up what you're looking for. The following appears to be what you're looking for:

4-port DualView Mini DisplayPort KVMP Switch with Peripheral Sharing

Of course, you're just interested in sharing the display, but it does have a built-in USB hub, in case that's needed. It has a good desktop footprint, as well.


tool to remember window positions when I plug in/unplug an external display When I have a giant Thunderbolt monitor plugged into my MacBook, I want windows arranged a certain way.  No full-screen apps, some apps are shown on my small laptop screen, other apps are shown on my Thunderbolt display.  When I unplug the Thunderbolt display, I would like programs arranged differently, e.g., the browser is a full-screen app.  Is there any program that will let me "save" my window state when I have an external monitor plugged in, and save another layout when I don't have any external display, and automatically switch between the two when it detects that external display has been plugged in or unplugged?  I'm on Mountain Lion on a MacBook Pro.

Slate allows giving windows different default positions depending on the connected displays. See the developer's configuration file for some examples.


Delete old "Faces" and other data and thumbnails in iPhoto 9.5.1 I split my iPhoto Library into two by:

Duplicating it
Deleting most old photos from the new one I will continue to use (and emptying the iPhoto trash)
Deleting the photos from the archived one that will stay in the new library

The issue is that currently, the new library still contains "Faces" and other thumbnail data from photos that have already been deleted (but preserved in the separate archived one).

These are contained in the Data, Data.noindex, Originals, Thubmnails, Masters, Modified, and other directories.

I rebuilt the library with all four methods in iPhoto 9.5.1 following Apple's instructions, but to no avail.

How can I free this new library of legacy files?

Although it seems tedious, it may be better to export all your photos out of a library and then create a new iPhoto Library and then import them to the new one. I'm also yet to discover a way to 'purge' data that is no longer relevant/needed.


How to undo "sudo rm -rf /etc/apache2/other/+php-osx.conf" After I did this:

sudo unlink /usr/local/php5
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/php5-*

To remove the supplemental configuration file that was installed with the updated PHP software, you may be able to remove the config file at /etc/apache2/other/+php-osx.conf:

sudo rm -rf /etc/apache2/other/+php-osx.conf

Then restart Apache:

sudo apachectl restart

php stopped running even when I see the version of php -- using

php -v
PHP 5.5.6 (cli) (built: Nov 14 2013 14:08:56)
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.5.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies
    with Xdebug v2.2.2, Copyright (c) 2002-2013, by Derick Rethans

Can anybody tell me why that is?

You can't undo what you did, unless you can recover the files from a Time Machine backup. PHP probably stopped running because you removed files it needs.


auto start an ios app I want an app(specifically Ip Messanger for iOs) to start on startup in my ipad ios 7.1.1. I saw this 3 years old source in github and write the following .plist file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">

<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.mac.eijimiwa.ipmessenger</string>

    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/var/mobile/Applications/268983D6-12F9-45B5-ABF4-5B5F3D1C5E90/IP\ Messenger\ for\ iOS.app/IP\ Messenger\ for\ iOS</string>

    <key>OnDemand</key>
    </false>

</dict>

</plist>

I cannot be sure if I made a mistake or the plist format is no longer supported by ios v7.1.1. Can anyone point me what I shall correct or other auto-start options?

You can't run GUI apps by running the binary like that.

Install open from Cydia, then use open bundleid:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>open</string>
    <string>com.app.bundleid</string>
</array>


Can I install Spaces and Exposé on Lion? Like many of you, I'm sure, Mission Control isn't quite cutting it for me in Lion. I much preferred Spaces and Exposé. So, naturally, I tried reinstalling them on Lion. I got Spaces.app, Expose.app, and Expose&Spaces.prefpane from a machine running Snow Leopard, and tried installing them in System Prefs and the Applications folder.

It didn't work. Every time you open up the Spaces and Exposé prefpane, it shows the Mission Control pane. Double-clicking on Spaces.app brought up Mission Control, even if you change the name.

Any idea on how to install Spaces and Exposé on Lion?

This is impossible because Mission Control / Spaces / Exposé are actually controlled by the Dock. And you'll certainly have no end of trouble if you try to transplant the Dock between OS versions.


Dashboard Widget for Outlook:Mac2011 tasks I am using Mac OS X 10.7.1 and Outlook for Mac 2011 (14.1.0); I am looking for a dashboard widget which could list all the tasks I have added in Outlook.

Is there one such dashboard widget available? From where can I download it?

I have not found one.  While I might prefer a widget, there is the "My Day" feature of Office 2011 for Mac, whose hide/show hotkey is Ctrl-M by default.  This will open an Agenda-like window for the day, with a snapshot of your calendar events for the day, as well as a short list of Outlook tasks.  What is shown is, of course, mildly configurable for both Outlook and local content.


What's causing my MacBook to freeze and reset keyboard settings when I bring it back from a long sleep? The problem:

I recently got a 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro running MacOS 10.14.2 (Mojave).  I'm running into a really long freeze when I bring it out of a long sleep (e.g. by opening the lid after keeping it in a bag overnight).  Here are the symptoms:

The computer will wake up and display the login screen.  However, the password textbox is grayed out and does not say "enter password" and the menu bar widgets (such as battery, wifi, and the clock) are not displayed.
Keyboard and trackpad are initially unresponsive for several minutes.
Usually, the touchbar is on and the fn key can change the mode, but none of the softkeys have any effect.  Though, a few times the fn key has had no effect changing the touchbar mode during some part of the freeze.
Eventually the colorful spinning beachball cursor will appear, but the computer remains unresponsive.  The beach ball will usually start frozen and not spinning, but start spinning a few minutes later.
After 5-10 total minutes of waiting, the computer becomes responsive, password textbox becomes active, menu bar widgets are shown, and I can finally unlock it.
Some of the time, the keyboard modifier keys get remapped to the defaults (I swap control and command because I also use Windows).
Once during a freeze, the system crashed and rebooted.  The crash report listed the OS as Bridge OS 3.3 (16P3133) and the panic message was userspace panic: remoted connection watchdog expired, no updates from  remoted monitoring thread in 75 seconds.

What I've tried:

Rebooting
Resetting the SMC (using both methods in the comment below)
Repeatedly hitting keys in frustration during the freezes
Resetting the PRAM
Reinstalling the OS (in a way that kept all my data and apps)
Reinstalling JAMF (apparently a newer version that's supposed to have fewer issues with Sierra)
Wiping the disk and reinstalling the OS
Getting the logic board and "touch id board" replaced at the Apple store under warranty, and reinstalled from a Time Machine backup.  However, some people in this thread said their Bridge OS crashing issues were only resolved after several replacements.

None of these things have helped with the freezing problem.

System Information:

OS:

Mac OS Mojave 10.14.2 (and 10.14.3 and 10.14.5)

Hardware:

Model: MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018, MacBookPro15,1)
Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB, as well as an AMD Radeon Pro 560X 4096MB that seems to be rarely active
Memory: 16 GB

Major Peripherals:

Kensington SD5200T Thunderbolt 3 Docking Station (archive link), connected via Thunderbolt 3
Apple wireless keyboard and trackpad, which are configured but off since I haven't switched over to using this Mac
Powered USB hub attached to the dock, with a Time Machine disk attached.

Other major software:

Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac Business Edition 14.1.0 (45387)
Jamf
Docker Desktop 2.0.0.2 (30215)
Office 2016/Office 365
FileVault encryption enabled (via Jamf policy)
Trend Micro Security 3.0.3044 (via Jamf policy)
Time Machine backup configured, using a HD connected to the docking station.

I managed to solve my issue by downgrading from Mojave to High Sierra (using this procedure).  It was very difficult to do, and I was very unsure if Apple would let me downgrade, but once I did it the freezing issue went away.

I've had coworkers inform me that they've recently upgraded to Mojave with no problems, so whatever issue I encountered may be fixed.  However, due to all the pain I've gone through with this, I'm sticking with High Sierra.


Data toll tripled from Android to IOS, no changes in usage habits. How to troubleshoot? Possibly redirect and sniff (tips on how)? So I've just bought my iPhone 5s with iOS 7.1.2, moving from Android. I've noticed that my data toll has more than tripled (from around 300MB to 1.1GB monthly) without significant changes in my usage habits.

Strange things like Calendar using 30MB (I can't imagine calendar events as being BLOBs), Safari almost 500MB (no youtube or anything over 3G) and Facebook 250MB (auto-streaming disabled), while on android those three combined wouldn't have costed me more than 200MB. Again, I haven't changed my usage habits significantly. System services alone costed me more than 100MB (yes, I live in Argentina, 500MB is one of the typical allowances, and no, moving to SF is not an option right now)

My first question would be, do you know of a way to troubleshoot this issue?

I'm a bit hackerly, so my first approach is trying to sniff on my traffic to determine what kind of data my iPhone is so eagerly exchanging. How would you go about driving all internet traffic through a proxy (not just HTTP)? All 3G traffic?

Is it reasonable to assume that my iPhone has the same internet activity over WiFi and over 3G?

Is there anything else you'd advise me about this? Anyone else with the same problem?

You have multiple questions here, so one answer at the time:

When your iPhone is connected to a Wi-Fi network, any app that needs data from the Internet will use the Wi-Fi network instead of the cellular data network. The data usage is therefore not counted against your monthly cellular data limit. However, when not connected to a Wi-Fi network, any time an app needs data, it uses the cellular data network and is counted towards your monthly limit.

Stopping apps from using Cellular Internet data:

That can be done in your iPhone settings. Select Cellular and it will open new window showing who and how much. There is a slider to turn that app off from Internet data.

At the bottom of the list, there is an item named System Services. Selecting it will show how much cellular data is being used for things like Messaging Services, Push Notifications, Documents & Sync, iTunes Accounts, Siri, Voicemail, Software Updates, Find My iPhone, Diagnostics and Apple ID Services.

Remember those are cumulative data, so rest them once a month in date accordance to your plan.

There are few external apps for measuring and controlling internet data.

For Safari and FireFox, go to the individual settings and disable the FlashPlayer to prevent sites loading unwonted flash based advertisements. You will be asked to enable it if you do want to watch something.


Can I force finder to open without loading previous files? Finder crashed recently and I had to force quit it. Problem is that now when I open something with it, all of the files that it had open previously (including the one that caused the crash) try and open, and it crashes again. Is there a way to force Finder to open (one time only) as a clean slate?

Try deleting the savedState directory:

rm -r ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/com.apple.finder.savedState/

When I tried running killall -kill Finder, that worked, but open -Fa Finder or command-clicking Finder's Dock icon didn't.

You could also try to:

Disable ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Finder.plist by temporarily moving it somewhere else.
Cause a kernel panic with sudo dtrace -w -n 'BEGIN{panic();}'. There is normally an option to disable restoring state after kernel panics.
Temporarily unload the launchd agent with launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Finder.plist. There is normally a dialog about restoring state after crashes, but maybe it's not shown if the program is opened by launchd.


Why can't I move notes from my "On My iPhone" to iCloud? I have an iPhone SE running iOS 9.3.3.  I use the Notes app extensively to share between my iMac running Mavericks, and my phone and iPads.

Recently I accidentally moved 4 notes from iCloud, to the phone itself.  I thought this was trivial and I could just move the notes back, but I cannot.  There is no option to do so.

First, I should say that I am running the "new" Notes app (the one with doodles, photos, etc.)  Second, when I go into my local folder on the phone and hit Edit, I  get the "Move All" option, but iCloud is not presented as an option to move to, only my local phone and a New Folder option.  There is no way presented to move the notes to iCloud, either en masse or individually.

I have tried turning Notes off/on in iCloud, as well as signing out & back in to iCloud, without success.

How can I get these notes to move back to iCloud again?

Without using a Mac or iCloud.com, I think the best way is to simply copy and paste the contents of each note into a new note that is on iCloud. Thankfully, you only have four notes, so it's not too time intensive to do.


iPhone 4s problems making calls My original 4s had issues with phone calls. Half the time calls were made the person on the other end couldn't hear me. Took to Apple store and they gave me a new phone. I've had it 5 days and it has more issues then my 1st one. 50% of the time I make calls neither person can hear each other. I can't even hear it dialing the #, but I watch the call timer run as it does connect. Tried restoring the phone, but still no luck. Is it a hardware issue or AT&T issue? Anyone know?

It sounds like an issue with the hardware of the phone. I'd take it back to the Apple Store and have them swap it again. Before you leave, make a few calls on the new phone and make sure the issue is resolved. I've seen this issue pretty frequently on iPhone 4/S's


Does iCloud Drive automatically download all files? I am using OS X 10.10 with iCloud Drive. I am thinking of upgrading to a bigger storage plan (at the moment: 5GB).

I am running this Version on a MacBook Air with 128GB.

  If I buy the 500GB package, does it mean that I fill up my local hard
  drive automatically when I upload things to the iCloud Drive?

iTunes has the Option of stream the music i didn't download yet.

How does iCloud Drive behave? Is there any Online Document?

Yes, iCloud drive on Macs keeps all of the files locally on every Mac, and needs enough space to do so. There's (at present) no selective sync option to keep some folders or files off some Macs.

If you have more files in the cloud than space on your devices, you will not have all the files stored locally.

Windows is designed similarly and there isn't a specific article by Apple to document how iCloud is designed. The general page says your files exist everywhere and glosses over the reality that when you initially add files, there's a delay in uploading and checking the files in.

https://www.apple.com/icloud/icloud-drive/

On the Mac you can use brctl log -w to inspect the internal status of sync, but be aware there are lots of "errors" and "warnings" that don't impact the actual results of an account with all files synced.


Restore from backup or start anew? I have a new iPad air to replace my old iPad 2.

I'm from a PC background but love Apple phones and tablets and have always wondered, from a performance point of view, would it be better to restore the new Air from a backup of my iPad 2 or start anew? There aren't many settings I'm bothered about keeping.

There's no way I'd every backup windows and restore it onto a PC :)

Thanks,
Chris.

There different backups at play here:

iTunes backups: saved to local disks, configured in iTunes.
iCloud backups: saved to iCloud, contain more information than iTunes backups, like home screen and app organization.

Both types of backups are often blamed in troubleshooting. But the iCloud backup is especially useful because it has the home screen and app organization. If you have a lot of apps, or you are particular about the way they are laid out on the homescreen, restoring an iCloud backup to a new device is an excellent solution. (Personally, this is what I do when I get a new iOS device.)

Passwords will transfer between devices if you use iCloud Keychain.

There are numerous downsides to starting from scratch on a new device:

You'll miss out on your old settings that you won't even remember having set, or why, until you're already suffering from not having them.
You'll have to endure downloading your apps manually from the App Store, and chew on the anxiety and worry of wondering if you've forgotten to download one of your most beloved apps, like Flappy Bird.
The time you'll spend configuring your new device from scratch will never pay off, because it is categorically easier for your brain to cognitively consider changes based on your previous settings, than on arbitrary default iOS settings that you should not want to and most likely do not know off the top of your head.

The potential downsides of restoring an iCloud backup seem less:

If you had a lot of apps on your old device, it could take longer than you're willing to wait for them to all install on your new device. But this is only relevant if you would like to downsize the number of apps you use. Otherwise, this is not a downside.
There is a relatively insignificant chance of corruption during the backup/restore process and an additional relatively insignificant change that your previous device was running poorly due to some configuration that may be carried unto the new device via the restore process.

Verdict: If you aren't interested in spending a long time reconfiguring the device from scratch, perform an iCloud backup on your old device and restore unto the new one to save time. After all, time is money.


How to use plain text smileys (disable automatic emoji substitution) in Messages.app? How to use plain text smileys (disable automatic emoji substitution) in Messages.app? In OS X 10.8 there was a setting for this in the app’s Preferences pane, but in OS X 10.9 that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

Go to the Edit menu, submenu Substitutions, then uncheck Emoji.


Main monitor goes black when using external monitor on MacBook Pro This problem happens occasionally frequently with my Macbook Pro. When I plug in one or more external monitors, the main monitor goes black. When I try Detect Displays it does not register the monitor. I assume that this is something to do with a docking port or something like that, but I have no idea how to fix it.

This started occasionally, but now it is happening relatively frequently. Generally, it will either happen within 5 min. of (first) boot or it won't happen at all. Sometimes it does not recur after rebooting.

If this is an occasional event - it's often just that the signalling didn't work between the GPU detecting the monitor or the monitor reacting to the input.

Something that never ever works or that you can reproduce at will (or perhaps statistically one time in 10) makes it easier to troubleshoot. From your description, it's hard to tell if it's a normal thing where the pairing isn't always perfect or if indeed something could be made better in the software / hardware / connection.

Since its happening regularly, you will want to have a piece of paper or equivalent to log to the second when it happens and just note what you were doing when you notice the black screen. After 10 to 20 log entries, usually a pattern arises and you can also look over the diagnostic logs with the console app to see if there are messages indicating why the gpu is not working normally.

These logs will be invaluable if you want to seek support from either the monitor vendor or Apple. If the logic board or GPU are failing, this will get worse rapidly, so if it remains more or less steady, then you'll want to try isolating software if possible as a good next step to troubleshoot this.


Why can't I use cmd key to change languages for a single character? On my macbook keyboard I have two languages - Hebrew and US. On 'keyboard viewer' I see that clicking and holding the cmd should temporarly switch to the other language (instead of cmd+space and then cmd+space again to go back), but that doesn't seem to work. any idea why?

Cmd isn’t mormally used for making characters in macos -- instead it is employed for menu shortcuts and other purposes. You can use caps lock to switch to the US keyboard for character input if you set that option in system preferences/keyboard/input sources.

If you use the input source named "Hebrew" , then you should be able to get Latin characters by pressing caps lock (without actually switching to the US layout).

The input source named "Hebrew PC" will generate Latin characters when you hold down the Shift key, but only upper case.


Stop Mail Changing Port for E-Mail Account I'm having an annoying problem with Mail on Yosemite, which I didn't notice on earlier versions. Basically if I suffer a connection issue with my ISP's mail service (which does sometimes become slow to respond during peak hours) then Mail seems to try alternative ports.

This would be fine, except that it eventually settles on port 143 with SSL disabled, at which point it refuses to connect (because it can't send my password securely), but it has now changed the account's port permanently to 143, meaning I have to change it back before I can use my e-mail account again.

Is there a way to prevent Mail from doing this? I've set the correct port for the account, and know it's correct, so I don't want Mail to ever change it, but it keeps doing this any time the connection takes a bit too long to respond.

Make sure you've switched off the new 'Automatically Maintain' settings that appeared with Yosemite.

Two places, outgoing & incoming...

for each account

and for each Outgoing Server


What could happen if the iMac adhesive did not seal correctly at the top of the display? I upgraded my iMac's hdd to an ssd, but the adhesive did not reseal the top of the iMac correctly. There is a gap of approximately 1mm between the chassis and the display. (The sides are fine.)
What is the worst thing that could result from this gap? Should I open the iMac back up and repeat the process?

The worst that could happen is the glass will fall out. I’ve personally seen this happen
Should you repeat the process?  In short, yes.  You want to not only be positive that you’ve got good adhesion around the entire case, but you don’t want to leave gaps where debris, or moisture could get in.   Additionally, airflow is dependent on proper seals; an air gap could cause air to “leak” resulting in inefficient air flow and higher operating temperatures.
The new adhesive and your time is cheap compared to the cost of a new LCD panel.


Why do my applications keep crashing on Lion 10.7.3? Once every couple of days an application crashes on my MacBook Pro with Lion (10.7.3).  It's also running the newer build that's supposed to have fixed these issues (11D50b).

This has been happening to me ever since I upgraded to Lion.  I brought the MacBook Pro to the Apple store and the Genius did some tests and said there are no hardware issues.  I even did a full clean OS reinstall hoping it would make the problem go away, but it still occurs.

Here's the latest example (below), I just clicked the red "close" bubble in the TextEdit title bar and this happened.  But it can be any application that crashes.  It seems random.

I've also tried creating a new account to test whether it's something unique to my profile but apps crash there too.

Why does Lion keep crashing apps on me?

Below is the head of the crash log:

Process:         TextEdit [151]
Path:            /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit
Identifier:      com.apple.TextEdit
Version:         1.7 (289.3)
Build Info:      TextEdit-289003000000000~3
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [123]

Date/Time:       2012-02-09 20:39:25.666 -0500
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.7.3 (11D50b)
Report Version:  9

Interval Since Last Report:          74970 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:           3
Per-App Interval Since Last Report:  88329 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   1
Anonymous UUID:                      20CE4128-76AD-4508-94DE-8AC8C5BB9231

Crashed Thread:  0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000010

Yep, your problem sounds just like what a ton of others were having. Re-update using the combo update from the Apple Web site, and that should cure what ails you. Do Not redo your update using your Apple's built-in Software Update.


How to use "diskutil corestorage revert lvuuid" on Yosemite if disk says it is not reversible? I would like to make a partition for Linux. Here's what diskutil coreStorage list gets me (identifiers omitted):

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         250140434432 B (250.1 GB)
    Free Space:   0 B (0 B)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     250140434432 B (250.1 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         AES-XTS
        Conversion Status:       Complete
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   Yes
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk1
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          250140434432 B (250.1 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   Complete
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

and diskutil list:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS                         250.1 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *250.1 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 Unencrypted
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *314.6 MB   disk2
   1:                  Apple_HFS YNAB 4                  314.5 MB   disk2s1

Currently FileVault is turned off.

Previously, I tried to run the command (on Revertible: yes (decryption required), with FileVault key), but I couldn't tell if it worked. Afterwards, I turned off FileVault, and it stopped being revertible.

looking at your diskutil list output, your disk0s2 partition type is not correct; it should be Apple_CoreStorage, but has remained Apple_HFS (probably due to the interruption of the conversion process). If you are able to access the data on your internal disk, I would recommend backing up your data first.
erasing your internal disk and doing a clean reinstallation of OS X, running Software Update to bring it up-to-date, and then restoring from your backup maybe the simple way.

if you want to do, you can find a way to fix that. Unfortunately I can not reproduce the problem, so I can not give exact instructions.

BTW: after making a backup, you can try disk utility app to repair disk, maybe it will solve this issue.


Apple Music - Some sounds from Album are not available to download or listen I have Apple Music 3 month free trial and I added an album to my iCloud Music Library. But one sound is "disabled" and I cannot listen or download it. What's wrong?

I'm not sure what the reason is behind this, or if it's a bug. But generally I've had this occur when I either previously owned that song or uploaded it, or if I downloaded that song as a single (I.e. Free single of the week, etc.).

Either way, removing the entire album and any duplicate versions of that song, and then re-adding the album usually fix it for me. Best of luck!


Pan/zoom camera over a bezier path on a raster map in Apple Motion I have imported a raster map into Apple Motion.
I have drawn a bezier path on top of the map and used the Write On behavior to make the path slowly reveal itself (like a travel map during any adventure movie showing the route taken).
I've added a camera so that I can zoom and pan the camera over the path as it appears.  However, as I attempt to move the camera over the route, the path itself shifts above the map surface, making the path inaccurate with relation to the underlying map.  Of course, this is because the angle of the camera is changing, which makes the path appear to shift on top of the map.

What I don't know is: how do I add camera moves over a Write On bezier path while not causing the path to appear to shift on the map? Obviously, I'm doing something wrong with the camera, but I don't know what.

After a lot of experimentation, I have figured out the answer to this question. Make sure the raster map and bezier path are in the same group, open the group's inspector, click on the Group tab, and in the Group Controls section, check the "Flatten" checkbox.  Now, the bezier path will be flattened against the raster map, and there won't be any perspective issues when the camera flies around.


What is a method for sharing an Aperture library? As a group (work, family,...), you produce an Aperture library on your computer.

Others (spouse, coworker...) in the group now want to access and edit this library from other computers.

Any solutions?

Put the library file in a folder that is accessible to other computers and set permissions so that it can be accessed/edited by other users. You also need to be certain that only one person is editing the file at any given time – the software isn't designed as a shared database and I don't know what, if any, protections it provides against this scenario.

You can also use referenced images instead of managed and put those images in a shared space. However, other users will only have access to the master images and you will want to beware of external edits that are destructive to those master files. Changes to that file hierarchy itself (file moves, renames, etc) made outside of Aperture will result in broken links and you'll have to relocate the images from inside Aperture. . I prefer the simplicity, security and beauty of a managed library.

In what way is this lock-in? It's a simple case of access to a database file. Granted the file — a sparse bundle containing images, metadata and edit instructions in which your master images are stored in their original format — is proprietary to Aperture but the master files remain available should you lose Aperture for some reason.

Accessing the files contained within the Aperture Library package using a right (control)-click

Inside the library bundle your master images are filed, hierarchically by import date, in their original format. They can be copied out as you wish.

I fail to see this as an example of Apple forcing the eco system on you. You are not forced to use Aperture if you don't like it's features and limitations and departure is a simple export (of versions and masters) or "unbundling" of the library file (masters only) away.

Beautiful indeed.


How do I change the password on an AD-bound Mac to match what's already in AD? My Mac at work is bound to our Active Directory domain. It's managed with JAMF, and I have NoMAD installed.

The last time I came due for a password change (every sixty days), an unknown issue prevented me from executing the change from my Mac. Our IT folks couldn't figure out the issue, so I was forced to do my AD password change from a Windows PC elsewhere on the network. This left my Mac's login password, as well as my Keychain and Filevault passwords, the same as before.

As I understand it, NoMAD was supposed to detect that they were out of sync and automatically fix it for me, but that hasn't happened. I have not been able to determine why.

Our IT folks are Windows guys. One of them knows the Mac reasonably well, but he's not an expert in this area and he's stumped.

This was all 56 days ago, so I'm about due to change my password again. I tried to do it in System Preferences -> Users & Groups, which is my normal method, but it fails with the same mysterious error I got last time -- it says the server is not available.

As far as I can tell, the server is available. But this isn't the point.

When that failed, I tried changing with NoMAD, but I can't. The error message is the generic "local password doesn't meet policy requirements", and I assume it's because my local password isn't the same as the one in AD, so when it tries to confirm my old password, it can only succeed for one of the two backing systems. I've tried both old passwords; same error.

So, my question: What, if anything, can I do to update my Mac's local, keychain, and Filevault passwords that will not try to update AD?

Things I've tried:

Users & Groups sysprefpane, as described above
Changing with NoMAD, as described above
Using passwd at the terminal. Same results for both old passwords:

% ~ passwd
Changing password for jrobb.
Old Password:
New Password:
Retype New Password:
passwd: general failure

Repeat #1 while disconnected from the network. Same "server is not available" message -- and this time I believe it!
Repeat #2 while disconnected from the network. Same "local password doesn't meet policy requirements" as before.

If it matters, I'm running 10.14.6.

UPDATE: After unbinding and re-binding my Mac to the AD domain, my Mac's password was sync'd up with AD. But then I encountered the same "server is not available" error when trying to change the password from Users & Groups, forcing me to use another method to update my AD password, and now they're out of sync again.

As I understand it, the correct way to change domain passwords should be kpasswd, which should update both local computer and domain passwords.
Note that I'm not in a position to test this right now, but something like:
> kpasswd myusername@FULLADDOMAIN.COM
myusername@FULLADDOMAIN.COM's Password:
New password for myusername@FULLADDOMAIN.COM:
Verify password - New password for myusername@FULLADDOMAIN.COM:
Success

I'll try and test this out and update this post.


Moving remote files without implicit local copying In Finder, if I try to move a file from two different remote SMB share that are hosted on the same machine, the file first gets downloaded to my local machine, and then uploaded to the remote target folder.

Consequently, it takes a ton of time to move remove files.

Is there a way to move the files without first them implicitly copied to my local machine? Is there something that would work better than Finder for this?

This is on OSX 10.8.2. Windows or Linux (or both, I forget which OS) moves the files remotely.

If you're moving between two different shares, even if they're on the same host, there's no way to avoid the local copy, without changing your configuration.

From the Mac's point of view, the shares are two distinct entities. Even though the hostname/IP is the same, there's no way for the OS to match up the directory tree of one share with the other, let alone a command for the SMB server to move files in that sort of instance.

From a practical standpoint, I can think of three ways to work around the local copying:

Change the server's configuration so you have one share that encompasses the source and destination.
Log in remotely to the server via SSH or some form of remote desktop and perform the move directly on the server.
Access the server via a different method, such as FTP. For this to work you of course need FTP access to both the source and destination paths in one host, otherwise you're back at square one.


Enabling Apple Wallet / Apple Pay on Non-US iPhone I have an iPhone that I own outright from Australia (Model A1586). I have recently relocated to the US and have a US Visa card that is compatible with Apple Pay.

However, I do not have any Wallet or Pay options on my iPhone at all.

Is there any way I can add this to my phone?

Go to Settings -> General -> Language & Region -> Region and choose United States. After that Apple Pay should appear in the main Settings menu.


localhost HTTP Audio Webstreaming Software for Mac? I would like a make some sort of Apple Protocol HTTP Audio Stream that would be available to my local network.

So if I typed in "192.168.0.2" or "192.168.0.2:8080" on Mobile Safari it would recognize it as a webcast.

What software would do this on a Mac?

VideoLAN can be used for streaming and it supports HTTP. Here is the list of supported streaming features. You may follow some guide.


Spotlight search stopped working after upgrading to iOS 13 I have an iPhone 8 Plus phone and I installed iOS 13. Ever since I am always updating to the latest version of iOS 13. Regardless, the spotlight search does not work on my phone.

This is my main way of locating apps on the phone, so this issue is particularly painful. Here is what I do:

Swipe down on the home screen.
Start typing the name of the app, for example, "App Store"
Nothing happens, the result list does not update while typing. The Siri Suggestions part of the screen just remains the same.
Hit the Search button on the keyboard
Again, nothing happens. The Siri Suggestions list is not updated.

I tried restarting the phone on several occasions but did not help. I am also installing the latest update. As of now, the version I have is 13.1.13.

I tried this with other phones with iOS 13, but they did not have this problem.

Any ideas, what I can try to fix this?

If your search is showing empty search results, try these as best and first solution:

Tap Settings > General > Language & Region > iPad Language or iPhone Language
Select a language (e.g.; Canada English) and tap Done. Then confirm your change by tapping Continue.
Now change back to your original language.

If you think that Search is still not finding items, meaning it is not working correctly, try these steps:

Go to Settings > Siri & Search
Turn off (deactivate) everything (search results) by being on each App
Now turn off your device by pressing and holding the on/off button until you see the slider. Then slide the red slider.
Turn your device on.
Now go to Settings > Siri & Search and now turn everything on.**


Macbook Lion Recovery Disk Utilities cannot detect newly installed SSD I just installed the SSD and I cannot detect the SSD in Disk Utilities of the recovery disk. Even trying to restore from time machine backup it cannot find any disk it can restore to. I am restoring Mac OS X Lion backup and using the Lion bootable USB stick.

Boot into Recovery from the USB.
Instead of opening Disk Utility, open Terminal instead.
Run the command diskutil list to see that your drive is being recognised. It should list two disks, one being your bootable drive, the other your SSD, and provide you with a disk identifier (such as disk0). If it doesn't show up, check that you have installed it properly.
If it is showing up, then type diskutil partitionDisk disk0 GPT JHFS+ MacHD to correctly set the partition map to GPT and create a HFS+ Journaled volume. Change disk0 to the appropriate identifier for your SSD. You can rename the 'MacHD' volume later in Disk Utility or Finder, if you wish.
Quit Terminal.

You should now be able to pick up the disk in Disk Utility and Time Machine to restore your backup.


Cancel iCloud subscription via browser on Windows? I recently switched back from OSX to Windows on my Notebook and from iOS to Android on my phone. I backed up all my files from iCloud via the app for Windows (which I uninstalled after) and would now like to cancel the iCloud storage service. I can't find a way to to do it via the browser. Do I really have to reinstall the iCloud app for Windows in order to do it?

You will need to install iCloud for Windows. Why you might ask... Because of Apple...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204283

Note: Be warned - it is a horrible user experience to try and downgrade your storage to the free plan and remove the credit cart, however it it possible.


Macbook Pro early 2011 Thunderbolt to USB I am looking into expanding my Macbook Pro's USB ports as I only have one USB port working and I have tried everything from resetting SMC and PRAM, firmware updates, etc.

Using a USB hub from the remaining USB port is not really an option as I use it for my Traktor Pro 2 Soundcard

I have been looking around for a Thunderbolt to USB hub/dock but they are quite expensive.

I was thinking will a Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter, Then Firewire to USB work?

If not, are there any other options in expanding the USB ports without using the last remaining USB port?

Thanks

Looking at the Traktor Pro 2 Specifications page, doesn't have any requirement that the USB port must be bus powered or host only.  In fact, they even state there is an optional Power Supply available:

So, the PS is only required if you can't get the 5V .5A from the bus (host).  In this case you have a couple of options

Use the Power Supply
Use a powered hub

As for going Thunderbolt to Firewire then to USB, I am a proponent of using the "right tool for the job."  Can you do it?  Yes.  But it's a bodge.1

Insead, go directly from TB to USB with a  [Thunderbolt to USB adapter][2]

Finally, you never did say why your USB connector doesn't work nor which one. In my experience, it could be a very inexpensive fix to repair the connector.  This is definitely something you should look into.

1 Bodge:  Verb. 1. To do a poor job or repair.
2. To cobble (something together). E.g."I bodged together that furniture out of driftwood and old egg boxes." From A Dictionary of UK slang.


I got a rock stuck in my charging port for my iPhone and my charger won’t go into the hole I need ways to get it out please? Rock stuck in charging port from park is st the end of the port and I don’t know how to get it out

If you can't get it out with fine tipped tweezers, you can try a tooth pick and super glue.  Put a tiny amount on the tip of the toothpick.  Then touch the tip of it to the stone, and hold it there until it sets.  Then pull it out.  I don't recommend this if you can't insert the toothpick without touching the inside walls of the charging port, though.


Application update, what will be the release date in appstore I recently have released a game for the iOS iPhone devices for which I saw was at the top of the "Release Date" list under the relevant category.

Unfortunately, I had to remove the game from the App Store due to some changes, so I changed the release date to somewhere in the future while I uploaded an update which is waiting for review.

When the update will be approved, Will it be considered released at the same day of the update approval or at the day when the first version was approved?

Nowadays, apps submitted to the App Store will take 6 to 8 days to be reviewed based on how many apps are queued for review.

If your application is showing the status Waiting for Review, it means your app is not yet reviewed by Apple. Once the review process has started, your app will show the status  Under Review.

Updates and new releases follow the same rules.

You can also refer here.


Outlook 2016: Add exchange account using script / automatic ( OSX > 10.12 ) Is there a way to add Exchange Account to Outlook using scripts / automatically ?
My scenario is:
  Fresh install of Volume Licence Office 2016.

  Opened Outlook

On opening Outlook, it should get configured to account automatically from a config file or account should be system login credentials ?

After using applescript and procedure mentioned here, I added Outlook account successfully using script.
https://github.com/talkingmoose/Outlook-Exchange-Setup-5


Platypus - get selected file name I am using Platypus to create an app which runs bash script on opening of a file. I need the clicked/opened file name to be passed as an args to the script. Does Platypus have any option or macro to pass file name as arg to the script?

Figured that the option Accept dropped items in the UI gives selected file array to the script which can be accessed using $1


VLC command works in Terminal but not Automator If I run this in terminal it works fine

/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -I rc http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/mediaset/http-icy-mp3-a/vpid/bbc_radio_fourfm/format/pls.pls --sout '#standard{mux=raw,access=file{overwrite},dst=/Users/person/Documents/scripts/r4.mp3,display=novideo}' --run-time=1800 --stop-time=1800

But if I run it in Automator (using Run Shell Script) I get this result and it doesn't work:

 "VLC media player 2.2.1 Terry Pratchett (Weatherwax)",
 "Command Line Interface initialized. Type `help' for help.
",
 "> Shutting down.
"

I have messed around with PATH and .bash_profile to no avail. What am I doing wrong?

It's most likely due to the VLC RC client wanting an Xterm interactive shell instead of a non-interactive shell, or some weirdness with the VLC OS X app still attempting to launch (It's bouncing in my dock while it runs).

In any case, a simple work around is to have automator launch a script to run in terminal.

The script would be simply:

#/bin/bash
/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -I rc http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/mediaset/http-icy-mp3-a/vpid/bbc_radio_fourfm/format/pls.pls --sout '#standard{mux=raw,access=file{overwrite},dst=/Users/person/Documents/scripts/r4.mp3,display=novideo}' --run-time=1800 --stop-time=1800

It should have execute permissions (chmod +x)

Then from Automator, you launch it like you normally would. In this case, I had Automator "Run Shell Script" of

open -a Terminal /path/to/script.sh

Note you may want to add the --play-and-exit option, otherwise VLC will stay open even after the 1800 seconds. By default, it will stop at the end of the playlist and wait. --play-and-exit will tell it to quit when the playlist ends (in this case a single file).

Alternatively, you can directly launch the script with a double click, skipping Automator completely, if you change the suffix to .command. That may be more direct, depending on your actual goal.


Cannot download macOS Sierra from App Store I want to download macOS Sierra from the App Store to create a bootable USB stick (according to Apples web page). However, the App Store tells me that I have installed it and only shows me an "open" button. There is no Install macOS Sierra app in the applications folder. Spotlight however finds it, but it is marked as unknown version and does not start from there. I also cannot find it in Finder. Any ideas?

I see several issues with different solutions. Let's try to fix them one at a time

Spotlight

First you should check if your Spotlight index is current. Search again for the Sierra Installation App. If it is listed, scroll down that list and click on "Show all in finder" (see Apple Support Page Description).

You get a Finder Window with all the Search results and if the Installer App is listed there you can get the Location and try to create the bootable USB Stick from there. You should also check the File Size and the Permissions of the Installer in case it is f.e. File Size 0 or you don't have permission to execute the Installer. You could also delete that Installer in order to reload it from the App Store.

If the Installer is showing in Spotlight, but is not showing up in the Finder you should rebuild your Spotlight Index (see Apple Support Page here or use a third party tool like Onyx, but be carful). Depending on your HD Size and Speed that could take some hours.

App Store

If the App store is still showing that the installer is present and won't let you download, you could try to delete (or just move it somewhere) your App Store Cache at ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.appstore. You should restart at that point and then try to Download from the App Store again.

There is a second (temporary) cache Location but only for downloads. You can get there fastest by opening the Terminal and typing in open $TMPDIR../C/. There you will find a Folder named com.apple.appstore which you could also move, restart, then try to DL again.

Try these approaches first and see if that solves your Problem.


How does Time Machine restore backups from APFS volumes? Is Time Machine aware of any of the new APFS features, e.g. sparse files, file cloning etc.? As the Time Machine volume itself is still an HFS plus volume, I would expect some difficulties in mapping these concepts to the older file system.

I'm asking because I use some of these extensively (e.g. file cloning for organising my photo library and sparse files for Docker), to the point where they would not fit onto a volume when restored as regular files.

I have done some tests with zero-copied files, and it seems that at least these seem to be represented as hard links in the Time Machine backup volume, but I wonder if they are also restored as such (which would actually break some use cases, as COW space sharing and hard links behave differently when writing to the files).

In other words:

Does Time Machine restore sparse files as such, or are the restored files non-sparse?
Does Time Machine restore cloned files (created e.g. using the finder or cp -c) as such? Or are they restored as regular duplicate files (or, potentially worse, as a single file with multiple hard links)? If so, is there a difference when only part of the file is shared, versus all blocks?

Time Machine at the moment of writing doesn't support APFS for the backup destination (see this), while it can backup FROM an APFS or HFS+ volume. That's because the AFPS filesystem doesn't support directory hardlinks, which Time Machine heavily relies on.

Probably Time Machine needs to be rewritten to take advantage of the features you mentioned, which is something that can happen in future versions of macOS.


How to record audio from an application/audio device? My nephew is gonna be on the radio tonight. I'd like to record the stream either from iTunes or from my web browser.

What are my options to accomplish that?

VLC has an option for listening to network streams, so if VLC is compatible with the stream that you want to listen to it also offers an option for saving that stream to your HD. In the dialog box that lets you enter the stream URL there is a drop down menu by the OPEN button that lets you save the stream.

Of course this does depend on if VLC will open the specific stream you want it to. Many streaming services use special players and DRM to prevent such things. Failing the VLC method Tetsujin has an excellent recommendation in Audio Hijack as it doesn't care about any of that and just records all the audio passing through your Mac.


Over 19GB RAM used by Catalina even with all GUI applications closed I have had a 2015 16GB MBPro for the past few years. It is currently on Mojave.  On it I have been running all sorts of heavy duty programs concurrently including Pycharm, Intellij, RStudio, Spark servers, productivity apps, and  multitudes of browser windows. It has been a balancing act to get them to coexist and I do need to shut down /restart chrome approximately daily to clear up its share. But the big picture is: lots of heavy apps are doing well running on the limited RAM available.

Recently I purchased a new MBPro with 64GB RAM with Catalina  I did not expect to have any issues given the 4X upgrade in RAM. To my surprise I am seeing high fifties of GB's of RAM running essentially the same programs. The only difference is that I let Chrome run maybe a couple of days between restarts. But that's only accounting for about 10GB of the total.

After killing everything - as shown below - there is still 19.5GB of RAM and 7.5GB of swap being used.  Where is that memory going?

Note we have only the minimum gui apps plus chrome that I restarted only to bring up this stackoverflow page.

Look at the memory usage by apps: nothing above even 500MB

I am not running backend stuff. No servers. No Docker: only DropBox but I'm a light user of it.

So I am at a loss where the memory is being used. This is in stark contrast to my _MBPro2015/Mojave_ which would be at around 5GB total under the same circumstances.  Any ideas?

There's a few things to note on your question.

First, similar to Linux, memory usage under Mac OS X is a nuanced and very complicated topic. "Used" memory doesn't always mean a problem, in fact it doesn't necessarily correlate directly with physical RAM usage. "Memory" is an overloaded term which can refer to "real" memory, "virtual" memory (which is not the same as it was in older versions of Mac OS Classic) or physical RAM.

At a technical level, "App Memory" within Activity Monitor is the kernel's internal page count of non-purgable pages. Mapping this value to anything you can sum up from the other columns is... difficult to impossible

For some specific answers: in Activity Monitor, you may want to add the "Real Memory" and other memory columns. These are available under View > Columns. Also, make sure you have View > All Processes enabled, not just "My Processes"

You might find that either the process using memory was not listed because it was not yours, or you might find that the process is using a lot more virtual memory than real memory (they all will be) which may account for the "App Memory" which Activity monitor shows.

Focus on the "Memory Pressure" graph in Activity Monitor rather than the "App Memory" or even "Memory Used" values. A healthy system will have a lot of memory used but without much Swap used. A general rule of thumb is: as long as your system is not using swap, performance is not impacted. (This is a gross oversimplification; lack of cache will also hurt performance)

Due to the way memory on unix-like systems work, Mac OS X will use "free" memory for various caches, either disk cache, buffers, page cache, etc. When you launch an application, for example, the code for this application is "paged" into memory. Simply quitting the application may not free the pages; they are marked as available for use and as other areas of the system need memory, inactive pages will be either discarded or paged back to disk. On your system there is no memory pressure (because there's so much free RAM) so the kernel won't remove cached pages from RAM. This way if the closed applications are relaunched, the pages the need are already in RAM.

It sounds like you've moved from a system with 16 GB RAM to 64 GB RAM, and are used to being memory constrained on the smaller system. This makes sense, and as long as your new system is not under memory pressure 9as per the graph in Activity Monitor) you should be fine. If you're having a specific issue with the applications co-existing, launch them all and update the image you posted; unless memory usage increases to the point that swap and compressed memory are being utilized, it's unlikely due to memory constraints (from what I see above)


How to disable user account creation? What is the process (if any) for disabling other users ability to create local accounts on a macOS device (including local administrators)? An alternative would be also to disable local administrators ability to create local accounts entirely which is also fine, as we use Active Directory for authentication. I know in Windows I can use local and AD group policies to manage this on Windows systems but I'm not familiar with a local group policy application in macOS.

We centrally manage full disk encryption on our mobile estate and users creating their own logons on organisational devices is something we'd like to avoid.

Many thanks in advance.

You will need to use Apple MDM software to accomplish this.

Under macOS Supervised Restrictions, you can prevent users from creating accounts:


How can I systemwide check if a keyboard shortcut is in use or has been registered? How can I query OS X to know if an application has registered a shortcut?

I could inspect every app I have or that is running at least with KeyCue and go through the Keyboard Shortcuts section of System Preferences, but there must be some other method using the shell.

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist

Will do it for you. Then you can edit the individual keys from there.

The details are extracted from:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57337941-263/tackling-keyboard-shortcut-woes-in-os-x/

You can modify the above file as per:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4850

However note the file is binary and you cannot use a text editor, you have to use the command defaults, or the command PlistBuddy.  defaults can be used if you know the individual keys you want to modify.  PlistBuddy is more user friendly.


Desktop wallpaper resets to default at every reboot in Sierra (10.12.1) Upon update to Sierra I'm finding that my wallpaper is set back to the default Sierra wallpaper at every reboot.  The correct wallpapers are selected in System Preferences, but they are not shown.  I find that I have to go into the wallpapers, select a new one and then immediately pick the desired one again.

This is annoying when you have several monitors attached and have to do this for each one at every reboot.

Any idea on how to resolve this?

You probably don't need the answer anymore, but just in case anyone stumbles across this post some day:

I had the same problem under Sierra and solved it by unchecking the 'displays have separate spaces' option in mission control settings.


Hashing algorithm used by OSX? I'm trying to get back an old password for my email. I've found the password in the keychain, but it gives me a hashed version of it, along the lines of:

1/s......  44 characters in total.

What hash is used in this case? Is there a way to find out the original password, like through rainbow tables?

The passwords you find in Keychain Access are not hashed by OS X - you can view the actual password there.

44 characters could mean a 256 bit hash. If you base64 encode that, it would be 44 characters - with the last character being the equals sign (=).

However, there's no way to conclude which hash algorithm has been used for your password with only the two first starting characters.

For finding the original password, you could try various passwords you have used before, and run them through various hashing algoritms to compare. Alternative you could Google the hash or download rainbow tables to test with.

I would suggest simply trying to use what you think is a hash as the actual password to see if that works.

You might also be able to find more information in the documentation for the email client you have used.


How to prevent the status bar from appearing in an iPad screenshot? So if I have this image:

And I don't want the status bar in the screenshot:

What should I do?
Is there an easy inbuilt way out to prevent that bar from appearing on all screenshots?
If not, then what would be the quickest way to crop it out using the iPad itself?

Unfortunately, there is not a way to remove the status bar unless you are in an app which is full-screen and chooses to hide that information. However, you can crop the image in the Photos app:

Take Screenshot
Open Photos app
Open screenshot
Press Edit in upper-right of screen
Depending on rotation of screen, look for the Crop symbol
Press Crop and drag the white boxed frame to match the image you'd like
Press Done to finish cropping

Here is a Wikihow on how to do it, with screenshots.


Why is Contacts.app's "General" tab different on two Macs with the same software? I have two macs, a 2010 MBP and a 2013 MBA. They run identical software: both use macOS 10.12.6, and Contacts.app 10.0, build 1756.20.

The "General" pane of Contacts.app's Preferences displays differently on the two machines. The MBP shows this:

while the MBA shows this:

Why are the panes different?

One Mac only has one account set up, so there is no "Default Account" option. The other Mac has multiple accounts set up, or one account and local data, thus it gives you the option of choosing a default account. What else is listed in the "Default Account" menu?


Having trouble editing Finder settings using defaults write I run the following command:

sudo defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist ShowHardDrivesOnDesktop -boolean TRUE

in hopes that this will cause system hard drives to show on the desktop, which doesn't happen.  I kill all Finder processes and restart Finder, but no dice.

I try to open com.apple.finder.plist in Xcode, but it says I do not have permissions to view the file (I was able to before).  Shortly after, I am able to open it, but the file is empty.  The attributes are slowly regenerating.

What is happening here?  I am looking for a command to toggle the option to show hard drives on the desktop, just as if I checked the box in Finder preferences.

First of all you shouldn't need sudo and it may have caused the permissions issue, and no need to use the full pathname, just:

defaults write com.apple.finder ShowHardDrivesOnDesktop -boolean TRUE

The following works for me, as is, in OS X 10.8.5 and macOS 10.12.5 in both a Standard and Admin Account in Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.finder ShowHardDrivesOnDesktop -boolean TRUE; killall Finder

Using FALSE, in place of TRUE hides the e.g. Macintosh HD on the Desktop.

I'd probably opt to either restore the file from a known good backup or delete the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist file and then run killall Finder in Terminal, letting it rebuild and should resolve the permissions issue as well.


Assign shortcut to modifier key(s) only Is it possible to use modifier keys alone as shortcuts in OS X El Capitan? Coming from Windows background I would like a single press on Command button (without touching Space or anything) to show Spotlight search and Ctrl + Shift to switch keyboard language.

UPDATE: Let me clarify, a single press on Command button is press/release so the key would not be interpreted as a start of a longer shortcut sequence.

Quicksilver does it for me for years now - as it comes especially handy for multilingual use. Just select Modifier-only activation and you are good to go.

Looking for a native solution though, in fact, this is how I ran into this post.


Can I stream podcasts from my Apple TV rather than downloading them? Apple TV lets me stream Podcasts, other devices (iPad, Mac, etc.) download them. Streaming saves on storage space, and Podcasts are "throw away" videos,so why store them... So is there any way I can get my "favorites" Podcast list from he Apple TV 2 to stream on other devices?

Not really. You can, however, use an app like InstaCast or DownCast to subscribe, stream or download podcasts. I use InstaCast everyday without any complaints.


How to download an MP3 to an iPod Touch? Possible Duplicate:
  How to download free music from the internet to itunes on the iphone/ipad without using a mac/pc?

I have a new (4gen) iPod Touch.  There's an MP3 on the web that I want to download so I can listen to it when there's no wifi available.

I can figure out how to play it, but I can't figure out how to download it (i.e., save it for future listening).  It seems like iTunes is the only way to download audio or video, and it only has a preset list of things that can be downloaded (and a poor search feature!).

Do I need to download it on my Mac, and then sync, just to download an MP3?

You answered your self. You must download the file on your Mac and then you must sync it to your iPod Touch!


Is it safer to upgrade Yosemite to Big Sur by upgrading to Catalina first? My Macbook (just) qualifies as supported for Big Sur and is running Yosemite 10.10.5 (OK, I'm a little slack with upgrading). I have completed a full backup to external drive.
The doc says:

Upgrading from macOS Catalina 10.15 or Mojave 10.14?
Go to Software Update in System Preferences to find macOS Big Sur.
Click Upgrade Now and follow the onscreen instructions.
Upgrading from an older version of macOS?
If you’re running any release from macOS 10.13 to 10.9, you can upgrade to macOS Big Sur
from the App Store. If you’re running Mountain Lion 10.8, you will
need to upgrade to El Capitan 10.11 first.

Should I upgrade to Catalina (the last 10.x) first, then Big Sur (11.x) or just go straight to Big Sur?
Is there less risk of screwing up my Macbook going via Catalina, or is the risk the same?

The answer used to be to first upgrade to High Sierra. The reason was High Sierra included the firmware upgrade to allow a Mac to boot from APFS volumes. Also, if your Mac boots from a SSD, then the upgrade would convert the boot volume to APFS.
I can refer to this previous question: Updating to macOS Catalina gets stuck, when trying to update from OS X Mavericks. The jump to Catalina was to far, yet the current macOS Catalina - Technical Specifications state upgrading is possible from "OS X 10.9 or later".
You have Yosemite and want Big Sur. The jump is the same distance. Other than that, I do not know for sure. IMO, upgrading to High Sierra first, would be safer.
You ask what changed. Well Big Sur had not be released when the question I linked to was posted.


How to disable middle click paste Mavericks Terminal? I have looked all over the Net and can't find a way to disable middle-click paste in the Terminal application in Mavericks?
I want it scroll but not paste.

Anybody know how to fix this? I'd sure appreciate the tip.

You can use Karabiner (formerly known as KeyRemap4MacBook) with the following setting in private.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
    <appdef>
        <appname>Terminal</appname>
        <equal>com.apple.Terminal</equal>
    </appdef>
    <item>
        <name>Disable middle-click</name>
        <identifier>private.disablemiddleclick</identifier>
        <only>Terminal</only>
        <autogen>
            __PointingButtonToKey__ PointingButton::MIDDLE, KeyCode::VK_NONE
        </autogen>
    </item>
</root>


Can I add song to an Apple Music playlist, without adding them to 'My Music'? I like to keep my iTunes library ('My Music') clean and only add albums I really like. However, I also like to have playlists with songs I just like a bit. I do not want these songs to show up in 'My Music'.

When adding a song to a playlist in Apple Music, it's automatically added to 'My Music'. When removing it from 'My Music', it's also removed from the playlist.

Is there some way to add a song to a playlist, while not adding it to 'My Music'?

Apple has added this ability in the most recent versions of their apps:

Add a song to a playlist in Apple Music without adding it to your library

What’s New in iTunes 12.3.3


OS X is repeatedly asking for login keychain password I know this has been asked here several times, but I already checked the other discussions and tried their suggestions, but without success.
Is there anything I can do instead of re-installing the complete system?

When certain applications want to access the keychain, I am getting asked for the "login" keychain password repeatedly and never-ending, even though I type in the correct password.

I already tried the following, separate from each other:

Keychain Access > Preferences > Reset my default key chain
reset the password (new password = old password) of the login keychain
Deleting the ~/Library/Keychains/XYZ... folder (as suggested here:  https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/148437/5924)
restarted several times

Now I wanted to simply grant access to all applications to certain keychains, but when wanting to save the changes, I have the same as the original issue: I get asked for the login keychain password, which never gets accepted.
I am definitely typing the correct password, I can even lock and unlock the keychain with it without problems. Or even reset the password. It just won't help.
(And in case it matters: the "login" keychain password is the same that I use for my user account.)

Here is the screencast video: https://www.dropbox.com/home/Public?preview=video3.m4v

[]

(I'm on El Capitan, the Keychain Access is Version 9.0 (55171.20.2))

Related discussions, but none of them helped:

OSX is repeatedly asking for login keychain password
Mac asking for multiple "login" keychain app passwords but won't accept them
How to stop my machine asking for multiple passwords when I log in?

===UPDATE===

I just came across this thread: Keychain does not show passwords after El Capitan upgrade

and indeed, this is also the message I am getting in the /var/log/system.log:

SecurityAgent[877]: Ignoring user action since the dialog has received events from an untrusted source

but I am already using a real mouse (Magic Mouse) and/or the built-in touchpad of my Mac, so the proposed solution there does not help much:

  So a solution to this problem is to use a physical mouse to interact
  with the Keychain.

(By the way: I have all recent updates installed that I got auto-notified about via App Store.)

What's also interesting, looking at the system.log: it shows a lot of these lines quite frequentely, without any user interaction and every few seconds:

secd[292]:  __SOSCCProcessSyncWithAllPeers_Server_block_invoke sync with all peers failed: Error Domain=com.apple.security.sos.error Code=1032 "peer: UQl/Oz6WIs//dOl3o8fSLDAa2p not found" UserInfo={NSDescription=peer: UQl/Oz6WIs//dOl3o8fSLDAa2p not found}
Mar 21 22:40:04 mln-mbp CloudKeychainProxy[344]:  __39-[UbiqitousKVSProxy doSyncWithAllPeers]_block_invoke_2 <UB--s--C---> syncWithAllPeers (null), rescheduling timer

(Now I just removed the keychain from being stored on iCloud and the error in the log stopped.)

I had exactly the same problem with Lync messenger - request to enter a keychain password, over and over again, even though password was the correct one. Tried numerous suggestions, nothing worked. Until I found this one:

go to the folder userid/Library/Keychains
look for a key with the file name from the password request window
delete this file (only this one!)
try again your app - password is accepted now

Somehow this key was not shown in Keychain Access, like it does not exist. But actual key file was present in keychain folder.

Seems to be some bug in macOS (I am on Sierra) when it can't see key-file, and then another bug - system tries to create a new key-file, but file operation fails (file already exists there).
I would suggest to the apple devs to add a proper exception handling there, but I am satisfied for now - problem fixed.


Where can I find a map of my MBP french keyboard layout? I just moved to Mac and I need to get used to the keyboard of my Macbook Pro. I've seen images / maps of the QWERTY keyboards but could not find a proper one for French. I want to see what the modifier and options keys does etc. For example finding pipe (|)  was by luck but where the heck are the square brackets?!

Here is my layout:

To activate the Keyboard Viewer, click on the Input Menu on the right side of your menu bar, and then click on "Show Keyboard Viewer".

Simple as that! :)


When will SIP shutdown the computer to prevent overheating? I have a MacBook Pro Early 2015 running macOS High Sierra. I've managed to get it to pretty high temperatures for both the CPU and the GPU. I've managed to get them to at least 100ºC and the computer didn't shutdown.

At what temperature will SIP(System Integrity Protection) shutdown the computer to prevent thermal damage?

System Integrity Protection has nothing to do with controlling what happens if the CPU breaches it thermal limit.

  System Integrity Protection is a security technology in OS X El Capitan and later that's designed to help prevent potentially malicious software from modifying protected files and folders on your Mac. System Integrity protection restricts the root user account and limits the actions that the root user can perform on protected parts of the Mac operating system.

All the CPU's used in the Early 2015 MacBook Pro, Intel Core i5 or Core i7 (5257U, 5287U, 5557U) have a 105℃ TJUNCTION* rating.

* Junction Temperature is the maximum temperature allowed at the processor die.

While 100℃ is high and getting close to the limit, it hasn't breached the limit yet.


Is there a way to move files to multiple folders in single Folder Action? I'm trying to set a Folder Action that will move all of the files that are in my downloads folder into their appropriate folders so that I don't have to do them manually. (movies to movie folder, music to music folder etc...)

Is there a way I can do this in a Folder Action without having to create separate Folder Action script for each type of file?

You can use a shell script like this:

for f; do
  case $f in
    *.mp3|*.m4a) mv -n "$f" ~/Music;;
    *.jpg) mv -n "$f" ~/Pictures;;
    *) mv -n "$f" ~/Documents;;
  esac
done

mv -n skips a file when a file with the same name exists in the target.


Is the "Lookup in Dictionary" context menu option hardcoded in Google Chrome for Mac? I'm having a hard time removing the "Lookup in Dictionary" context menu element in Chrome for Mac (see screenshot).

I tried deactivating the Dictionary Service shortcut in Preferences / Keyboard, and I also tweaked Dictionary.app's Info.plist to remove the service. I even removed the entire Dictionary app, but the context menu item still shows. Might it be hard coded into Chrome?

What you are seeing are the OSX built in Text Services, such as Spelling and auto-correct services when dealing with anything in OSX that is text.

These services are automatic for the whole OS and cannot be turned off and are available in every application

Note: Spelling Auto-Correct can be turned off/managed in System Preferences -> Languages & Text -> Text

The "Services Manager" and the "Dictionary Service" only relate to what is shown and provided in the Services Menu within running applications.  you can turn off those within (oddly enough) System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Services


System Administrator Profile shows up after auto-lock High Sierra I have a MacBook Pro running High Sierra.
Sometimes when I let my computer auto-lock itself, (like closing the lid for a while) when I come back the user is not the profile I was using, but says System Administrator and has the default grey silhouette icon. Using my TouchID logs me in as usual, so as far as I can tell it is just an aesthetics glitch. I also can't replicate it, because it seems to happen at random.

I've seen the news about the root user security issue and I'm updated to 10.13.1 so it shouldn't be related to that. Any ideas on what is happening? I will be updating as I experiment more with the issue.

Update 3: Still occurring. The root password will not provide access when the System Administrator icon shows up. As far as I can tell it is a purely aesthetic glitch.

Update 2: Following another thread I was able to enable the root user and give it a secure password. I will give any updates if the problem persists.

Update [added picture]: I haven't changed any passwords since this is a brand new laptop (2 weeks old). I've had the issue occur again and have determined it does require the proper password or touch ID; it won't let just anybody in. Also, it goes to the correct user every time. As far as I can tell, the name and icon are just swapped with the current user for some reason. I can only hope apple fixes this in the future because it is a bit disconcerting the first time it comes up.

macOS High Sierra Version 10.13.2 which came out this weekend appears to have removed this issue.

Well something changed somewhere because I haven't had this issue come up in the last 2 weeks. It doesn't correspond to any updates or changes as far as I can tell, but I'm considering this solved because the issue has disappeared.


How to activate my iPhone with a broken home button My iPhone says "press home to restart" but my home button is broken so there is no way to press home.

I can't use the answers in How do you activate an iPhone with broken home button iOS 10 as my iPhone isn't linked to my computer, and I can't activate Assistive Touch.

How can I activate my iPhone nevertheless?


How to forcefully remove status bar icon? I had this app called Spark for working environment communication.

However, the status bar icon of this app is so ugly that I avoid look at it every time when I glimpsing over status bar.

The worst thing is there is no option for hide it in the settings. Is there anyway that I can forcefully remove it?

Try Bartender. This lets you hide (as well as re-arrange) menu bar items, as well as providing a secondary menu bar so that you can hide icons from the main bar but still have access to them on a keyboard shortcut or menu bar item.


iOS 10: Control Center for Music- Music Won't Play Before you say it, yes. I know that the control center in iOS 10 is divided into two panels. But whenever I try to play music from YouTube on Safari (being specific there), I click on the play button, but the music will not play on the control center while I'm in another app.

It seemed to be working fine yesterday! I shut off my tablet and restarted it as well. I closed the tab of YouTube and reopened it, but it's not working.

Does anyone have an answer for this?

The problem here is in YouTube itself.

One way they try to get people to join YouTube Red is that you are only able to play YouTube videos in the background if you are a paid subscriber. You may have had a free trial that expired, or YouTube updated the way they check if you're active in the browser, but the only real way to fix this is a jailbreak or a YouTube red subscription.


Stopping certain data from ever leaving your Mac? Is there any way to stop certain data (e.g., a particular string) in unencrypted, clear, plain text from ever leaving my Mac by any network protocol (including my home network) but not affecting regular backups to other drives?

I seem to remember Intego's NetBarrier had this facility, years ago at least, though I'm not sure if any of their products still do this, but I wondered if there was an alternative, simpler way of doing this?

Practically, no

Practically speaking, it is not possible to ensure a particular string never leaves your computer via a network connection.

You can however monitor and manage who your Mac communicates with, see Is there a good tool for monitoring network activity on Mac OS X?

Why?

Applications and processes running on your computer could encode or encrypt the string in a manner that can not be easily detected, and that encoded form could then be sent over the network.

Network traffic is encrypted

On a recent installation of macOS, there are vanishingly small amounts of plain network data for you to filter and monitor.

Modern network protocols encrypt the data being sent. Protocols that send data in a plain unprotected form are being actively removed or relegated to exceptions rather than common use.

Even the widely deployed Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is rapidly being superseded by the encrypted replacement HTTPS, as browser makers raise awarness with their users.

Theoretically, yes

In theory, it feels possible. A solution would have to inspect every network connection and be able to decrypt every encrypted connection. This might even be attempted in some secrecy focused organisations.

For a home or professional user, such a task unlikely to be achievable while retaining a functioning useful computer.

Man-in-the-Middle Attack

I am assuming you do not want to Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack your own computer's traffic; this itself is complex, error prone, and defeats the benefits of encryption.

I am also aware of an increasing number of services that pin their TLS certificates to thwart such attacks.


Is TrueCrypt compatible with FUSE for OS X and SSHFS? TrueCrypt 7.1a is already installed on my MacBook with OS X 10.8.4. I plan to install OPENFUSE 2.6 and SSHFS 2.4.1, are they compatible with TrueCrypt?

Yes, OS X 10.8.4-19.0.1 can use Truecrypt while osxfuse-2.6.2.dmg and SSHFS-2.4.1 are installed.
Also I did not observe any 'installation order issues'.


Base computation via Spotlight? Is there a combination of math functions I could use in spotlight to accomplish change of base ? I know I can do it on a case by case basis with normal algebra.

The algebraic way to do it is logbx=logax/logab. In spotlight, the log(x) function is log10x and the ln(x) function is logex. So taking logbx would be log(x)/log(b). However, rounding is significant enough to have the answer off even if it should be a whole number. For example, I tested log(4)/log(2) and got 1.9999999997 when it should be exactly 2.


How to change folder access if it says "You have unknown access"? I installed OSX Server and activated FTP for Downloads folder. Now folder looks like file in Finder and Downloads info looks badly. Also when i trying to delete Downloads, OSX required password and then said The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8003).

Screenshots:

Of course, first of all I disabled FTP and rebooted computer. It didn't helped.
I google the problem and found a solution, it says i would need perform couple command in terminal:

sudo chmod -R 755 /Users/evlogii/Downloads
sudo chown -R evlogii:staff /Users/evlogii/Downloads

As you understand "evlogii" is my username. It performed without any errors but didn't helped. Please help me recover normal condition of my Downloads folder.

I have encountered this problem before, on the Downloads folder, and on other folders. Removing the directory and it's contents, and recreating the directory worked for me.

The commands below are to be entered in the Terminal

Copy content before deleting:

mkdir ~/Temp
sudo cp -R  ~/Downloads ~/Temp/
sudo chmod -R 755  ~/Temp

To remove your damaged Downloads folder:

rm -rf ~/Downloads, or if that doesn't work, sudo rm -rf ~/Downloads

To recreate a new empty one after removal:

mkdir ~/Downloads; chown $USER ~/Downloads


Unusual firewire 800 port I have a new Macbook Pro 13 (I think its the 2011 issue) which has a firewire 800 port with an unusual form factor.  It's different to the FW800 port on my older macbook pro 17.

Can anyone tell me the name of that form factor so I can find a adapter or cables?

It's the exact same FW800 / 9 pin connector as most recent macs. The unibody frame has the port set a slight bit deeper on the unibody macs than was common on the non-unibody macs.

Here is the diagram from the MacBook Pro 13 inch (Mid 2010) and the only difference in the newer MacBook Pro is the substitution of an identically sized Thunderbolt port instead of the DisplayPort socket.


Screen turns off when I move my MacBook when it is on the sleeve I've noticed that when my laptop is on its sleeve and I slide my laptop on it the screen goes black. This doesn't happen when I have the laptop on my lap. Its consistently reproducible. It's somewhat annoying as sometimes when I adjust the laptop on the sleeve the screen goes black. Does anybody know why this happens?

Is some static being created when the laptop is moved when on the sleeve that causes the laptop screen to go black and back to the lock screen?

It's because the sleeve has a "Magnetic snap closure with no zippers" which actually mimics the magnetic latch that's triggered while the lid of the MacBook is closed which turns off the screen.

I've noticed this happen to me a few times in different situations when I would put my iPhone on the hand rest part of the MacBook or If i left my Adonit Jot Pro(which has a magnet to attach itself to the iPad) stylus very close to my MacBook.

You can try to reproduce the effect by taking a magnet over the marked location (at least on my non-retina MacBook Pro it happens over there, not sure if the position has been changed on Retina MBP)

EDIT - I now have a MacBook Retina, I haven't noticed this effect anymore. I'm guessing the position of the magnetic latch has been moved.


Keep the current audio output device, when attaching a new one I have my TV connected to my iMac via HDMI and speakers hooked up to the iMac via the headphone port.

Whenever I turn the TV on, the Mac starts playing audio through the TV instead of the speakers and I have to manually switch back.

Is there any way to make my Mac keep playing through the headphonejack?

I use a free app from Rogue Amoeba called SoundSource that lets you quickly pick the source for input, output and system sounds from the task bar. One of the side effects of running SoundSource is your source doesn't change when you connect something new to your Mac. You have to select the new source explicitly via SoundSource to have audio routed to or from it.

The source will switch automatically if you remove a source and that source happened to be the currently selected source for any of the channels.


What/where is the multitasking screen on an iPhone In here https://whatsappen.com/news/5465/many-complaints-whatsapp-notifications-ios-11-update-solution

It states:

  This behavior is fairly common among users because of the
  misconception that apps that appear in the multitasking screen are
  running in the background.

I know there is a multitasking screen on an iPad, however WhatsApp is not released for an iPad, it is intended for iPhone. So what do they mean by the multitasking screen on an iPhone?

It cannot be the list of running apps displayed by double clicking the home button because apps displayed there are in the background, though they may not necessarily be running.
Is this however they are actually referring to?

Yes, it is that list they're referring to. And they're right in saying that it is incorrect to assume that apps viewed there are actively running in the background.


Can I share my Google Photos to Instagram using my iPhone? I have a bunch of photos in Google Photos that I would like to share to Instagram using my iPhone. Is there a way to do to that? Or a way to move photos from Google Photos to Photos on my iPhone? Thanks very much.

From Google's support document for sharing photos and videos from Google Photos:

Open the Google Photos app.
Tap the photo, album, or movie to share.
Tap the Share button (bottom-left).

From there, to save to your device, tap Save Image on the middle row.
To upload to Instagram, tap More (bottom-right button) and Instagram should appear as an option in the second row of icons up from the bottom. (If it doesn't, scroll that row all the way to the right, then tap More, and tap the button across from Instagram to turn it on. Tap Done at the top, then tap Instagram.)


MacBook Pro never goes to sleep I got a brand new mid-2015 MacBook Pro 15", OSX 10.11.3.

Display never turns off even it is configured to turn off after 10 mins in power adapter AND in battery mode. Screen saver (aerial) stays active forever. I tried disconnecting all USB peripherals connected - it did not help.

Any ideas?

Back when the Aerial screen saver was first released there was a bug that would prevent Macs from going to sleep. The developer fixed that bug a while ago. If this is still an issue for anyone they should try download the latest version of the screen saver from the following link.

https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/releases

For those that are curious. The screen saver was originally written to use AVPlayerView which by design keeps Macs awake when its playing a video. Aerial's developer rewrote the screen saver to use AVPlayerLayer instead, which does allow Macs to sleep when they are playing video but otherwise idle.


Hard wired link between webcam and led indicator? In light of stories about stories about secret monitoring over laptop webcams (such as this one or this one), I wonder about the reliability of the green LED next to the camera that indicates that it's in use.

Is there a known hard-wired link between the camera on a MacBook Pro and the indicator that is impossible to circumvent in software?

Would such a thing be possible given the hardware of the camera?

I just read another article about that on Ars Technica

Yes the LED is hardwired
But it can still be bypassed

Only downside of this article, it was only tested on "old" (late PPC, early Intel) macs.


OSX programs crashing, 'Kernel: file: table is full' Over the last few months, I've seen increasingly erratic behaviour on OSX (10.8.5). Chrome won't load elements on a page, my dev tools crash etc.

Recently I had a look in Console and found that whenever an app crashes, the message that seems to go with it (or before it) is:

'Kernel: file: table is full'

A reset seems to help, but these are getting increasingly often. This is the first time I've been really frustrated owning a Mac, my last one was trouble free for years. This is a MBA purchased about August last year.

Any clues on what this is, how it could be sorted? Google yields very, very few results.

I solved my own problem - but figured I'd answer for anyone else searching for the same thing.

I run CodeKit to help minimise CSS and JavaScript when building websites. The program works beautifully, but I had it monitoring all the sites (25 or so) I'd built over the past year or so for changes when it was open. I figure this was causing it to open (or at least monitor) thousands of files, resulting in the file table issue.

By only selecting the site I'm working on to monitor, everything is working perfectly (again) and as a plus - the CodeKit CPU usage has dropped dramatically.


How do I pair the Apple Watch with another iPhone? I have an Apple Watch and a second iPhone. Now I need to unpair the Apple Watch from the first iPhone, and pair it with another iPhone. I want to keep all of my data though. How would I go about that? How would I continue?

Go to Watch< Apple Watch, then click Unpair Apple Watch. When you pair Apple Watch to the second device, all the data will be transferred.

You can also erase all content and settings on the watch and when it restarts it will have no apps or data and be ready to pair with another phone.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204568


What would be a good SSD drive for a MacBook Pro mid 2010? I'm thinking about updating a bit my Macbook Pro mid 2010 adding to it 8Gb of RAM and maybe a new hard drive, a solid one (SSD) of probably 240Gb.

Which SSD would you recommend me? I'm looking for one compatible with TRIM because as far as I know that's the best way to go in order to keep the performance of the SSD after some time.
I've also checked some performances reviews and it seems there's a big difference between some of them. (or there was, as the article is from 2010)

I was checking the models Apple used in its days for the firsts Macbook Pro with SSD, but I believe there are better options now in the market.

Is it relevant that my laptop is from 2010? Should I take that into account for something?

I believe I shouldn't experiment any problem with this change of hard drive and will improve the laptop performance as well as the hard drive life. Am I wrong?
I'm afraid of the possibility of having problems with it for compatibility issues or any other thing.

Thanks!

I recommend the Crucial M500 SSDs. They're solid, reliable, and fast. I've replaced the OEM HDD on both my 2008 aluminum MacBook and 2011 MacBook Pro with them and have had 0 issues so far, they work great. Below are some links for your perusal.

Buy them on Amazon

Manufacturer Information


MacBook Air, Mavericks and two USB-DisplayLink-Adapters and position of monitors I have a MBA 2013 with a Thunderbold-Display (middle) and two USB 3.0 Display-Adapters (left and right).

After the upgrade to Mavericks, I have to adjust the positioning of the monitors after every restart.

This means: After a restart the Thunderbold-Display is set to be the left monitor, while the other two monitors are set to be the middle and right one.

Any suggestions? This setup worked with 10.8

The USB-Hub is not the Problem. If you only use one Displaylink Adapter, it works fine.
I have the same on MachBook Pro Late 2008 and 2 Adapters.


How to find the process id for the app instance created by "open" command When I programmerly do open -F -W -n -g -a /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari https://kernel.org, I got back the process of open and its pid 93930.

But that's not the process (93931) of newly created Safari instance itself.

huocp 93931   0.0  1.9  6047904 160240   ??  S    11:55am   0:04.39 /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari
huocp 93930   0.0  0.1  4340272  12212 s004  S+   11:55am   0:00.07 open -F -W -n -g -a /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari https://kernel.org

Now I have no way to close the Safari process programmerly. I can close the open process programmerly by killing 93930, but it leaves 93931 running.

So the question is: is there a way to get the pid of the application instance created by open command?

93931 (safari) is not even a child process of 93930 (open), I tried with pstree command.

Similar question on StackOverflow

If you're programmatically doing this, one way to get the opened app's pid (subsequently using it to kill the process) is to get the grep the output of ps
aux passing it the application's name.

ps aux | grep -v grep | grep -I <AppName> | sort -rn | head -1 | awk '{print $2}'

Basically, pipe the output of the ps aux command through grep and sort it based on the value of the start time column.

As pointed by @user3439894 below, there's an easier way without the above rigmarole.

pgrep -nx Safari

returns the PID of the last opened instance of Safari and

pkill -nx Safari

kills the last opened instance of Safari.


iSight Camera not present on iMac I have an iMac 9,1 running Mavericks.  I recently tried to take a photo using the built in iSight camera, but it seemingly cannot initiate the device.

Using Photo Booth just presents me with a spinner icon until it shows me this eventually:

Checking in System Report shows the following information (Note the spinner again when checking the Camera section:

I last used the camera less than a week ago, and had no issues.  I don't even think it's been rebooted since I used it last (although I have rebooted to see if it makes a difference).

Lastly, I get the following lines constantly repeated in the console twice a second, which may be related:

19/03/2014 20:32:50.772 com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.apple.cmio.VDCAssistant[4913]) Job appears to have crashed: Abort trap: 6
19/03/2014 20:32:50.798 VDCAssistant[4914]: AVF warning: failed to get a service for display id: 4128828
19/03/2014 20:32:50.799 VDCAssistant[4914]: AVF warning: failed to get a service for display id: 4128829
19/03/2014 20:32:50.799 VDCAssistant[4914]: AVF warning: failed to get a service for display id: 4128830
19/03/2014 20:32:50.799 VDCAssistant[4914]: AVF warning: failed to get a service for display id: 4128831
19/03/2014 20:32:50.811 VDCAssistant[4914]: CGSDisplayID: App trying to enumerate [0 to CGSGetNumberOfDisplays()] instead of using CGSGetDisplayList().  Compensating...
19/03/2014 20:32:50.811 VDCAssistant[4914]: Client is attempting to access a display by index (4) instead of display ID.
19/03/2014 20:32:50.860 ReportCrash[4861]: Saved crash report for VDCAssistant[4913] version 4561 to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/VDCAssistant_2014-03-19-203250-1_StuffeMac.crash

How can I get to the bottom of this and fix my camera?

It seems there is either a bug with OS X 10.9.2 and a framework related to the camera or the way apps integrate with the camera. This has affected numerous people, mainly those with AirDisplay (due to the integration that AirDisplay provides — it's not really using supported APIs).

Until this problem is fixed, either by AirDisplay or OS X (for those suffering with a similar problem that seems to be caused by FaceTime), uninstalling AirDisplay and/or turning off FaceTime seems to fix it.


Email on iPad not showing after some days After a few days my older emails on iPad2 stop showing in the inbox.
Dont find any clue where they went.

Does the mail program store the older emails elsewhere? How can i show all the emails and not just the newer ones?

If you have an Exchange account or even a Gmail account configured as an Exchange account, there is an option in the email settings for Exchange to only sync up to a certain number of days worth of email. By default, it it set to 3 days. You can change this by going to Settings > Mail, Contacts & Calendars, tap on the email account in question and change the "Mail Days to Sync" option from 3 days to whatever you desire (I use No Limit).

Hope this helps.