Using an external merge tool does not work on SourceTree I am running OS X.10, Xcode 7 and SourceTree 2.
When I select a conflicted file and Launch an external merge tool, there is a window that appears very briefly... and then nothing happens.
I tried (see this help page) sudo ln -s /Developer/usr/bin/opendiff /usr/bin/opendiff but it did not work (I got the message ln: /usr/bin/opendiff: File exists).
What should I do?
PS:
Here is a picture of the window that briefly appears.

PPS:
Here are the SourceTree preferences:

Assuming you are on latest version of SourceTree (Version 2.0.5.5 (2.0.5.5))

Try adding the following manually to your .gitconfig (or verify that SourceTree has put these exact lines)

[mergetool "sourcetree"]
    cmd = /Applications/SourceTree.app/Contents/Resources/opendiff-w.sh \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\" -ancestor \"$BASE\" -merge \"$MERGED\"
    trustExitCode = true

Or you could just enable
"Allow  sourcetree to modify your global mercurial and git configuration files." in Preferences -> General tab

These lines will be automatically updated


Can't find MIT/GNU Scheme in Applications after install I installed program called "MIT/GNU Scheme" to /Applications. I can run it via Spotlight, but it says it's from unidentified developer. So I should find it in the folder and right click open, but it's not in the folder. Terminal autocomplete cannot find it either. If I install it again, it says it is there and asks whether to replace the old file. Read somewhere it might be 32bit version on my 64bit system, but I specifically installed 64bit version. I am running OS X 10.10.4

You can confirm where it was installed in /Applications by using Terminal.app:

cd /Applications
ls -lt | grep -i cheme

This should print the name of the directory where it was installed (which should be MIT:GNU Scheme). You can access it from the command-line by adding the following directory to your PATH: /Applications/MIT\:GNU\ Scheme.app/Contents/Resources.


How are passwords stored by Apple TV? Apple TV stores a number of passwords (or some kind of credentials) needed to access services like Vimeo and YouTube, as well as the Apple IDs needed to access the iTunes Store (and the now defunct photo galleries).

Where are these passwords stored and how secure are they? Are they stored in a keychain like the ones used by OS X and iOS? If so, what are the "settings" for the keychain (expressed in terms of the corresponding settings on OS X)? Can anyone with access to the Apple TV hardware see the passwords it stores?

The Apple TV (2nd and 3rd generations) runs iOS under the hood, so it almost certainly (hard to be 100% sure without doing some substantial hacking) uses the system keychain, just like iOS on an iPhone or iPad.

I defer to someone with a more concrete knowledge of the iOS security layers, but my understanding is that like most other things on iOS, keychain access is sandboxed, so an app can only access the data that belongs to it. There are further security mechanisms in the keychain, but I don't know enough to speak about them with confidence. Based on the answers to this StackOverflow question, I think that it is possible to gain access to keychain data if you have physical access to the Apple TV, but it's not a trivial task.


Can iBooks be synced from an iPad to a new computer to save my documents? I formated my Mac after a few years of work and forgot to do books backup because iPad was lightly used. As a result all my books stuck on the iPad and if I want to add some new from a computer it wants to erase the existing books.

With iFile, I tried to copy books, but there are only folders, not epub files.

So is there any way to get them back or somehow combine with new iTunes library? In general I don't need those books readable on mac, just to restore and the ability to add new ones to the iPad.

I would evaluate a program like PhoneView to retrieve the contents you like before setting up an iTunes or iCloud backup solution so you don't end up in this spot going forward. There are probably a hundred apps to load files from iOS to a computer, so you can search for one that matches your needs pretty easily. DiskAid also seems to be mentioned regularly even though my favorite is PhoneView.

Here are some relevant details to flesh out how this will work:

Software (not app) To Read Underlying iPhone Data
How to transfer a file from iPhone to computer when there is no Internet?
How can I back up my app data?
On iPad's iBooks, is there a way to sync and download all ebooks purchased else where?

I have also heard many people express happiness at iExplorer for doing the same sort of recovery / transfer of files from an iOS device. Perhaps it will do a better job with your device since you remarked that several of the suggested apps didn't work for you in the comments.


Airplay: stream video and audio components to different Airplay target devices I'm thinking about getting a Libratone sound system that plays music via Airplay. I would have an Apple TV connected to an LCD projector.

My question is whether I would be able to wirelessly stream a movie from my iPad with this setup, such that audio goes to the Libratone and video goes to the Apple TV...

I couldn't find any information on this kind of setup.

It just isn't feasible at this time. Video and audio need to stay perfectly in sync for your brain to not notice, and splitting up the streams of data to two different destinations creates a time lag that, at this time, is impossible to sync up.  The reason why it works at all going to one device is that the destination spools up both streams and starts them both at the same time.


How can I tell what's being backed up by Time Machine? Sometimes, when Time Machine starts a new backup, I see that it'll be several GB of data. I then wonder: What did I save that was so large? Is it perhaps backing up unnecessary data, that I should exclude in the future?

As a Mac developer, I understand that there must be some kind of database that Time Machine maintains in order to know what files need to be backed up. I like to have access to that so that I can stop a large backup process and then check the database for the pending files, and decide whether I want to take further actions.

I am so far unable to find out where the information is stored.

I checked the tmutil tool, but that doesn't seem to offer an option for listing the pending files, either.

I understand that I can use tmutil compare after a backup to see what was backed up, but I like to instead see the pending files in the queue.

The way the backup works is that it does a large base image of EVERYTHING and then each new backup just backs up changes.

However - If you perform a touch command, or you move files or interact with them in anyway, this can cause it to flag as being a change, and it will back it up again.


Screen not working on water damaged iPhone and can't disable Find My iPhone to restore I've got a got water damaged iPhone and the screen no longer allows me to see anything at all. It turns on fine and I think in some parts the touch sensors work as well. I could use Siri yesterday but now I try to use Siri, it keeps saying unavailable and connect to the internet.

I need to turn off Find My iPhone so I can restore it to its factory settings but when I go into iCloud from another device it says its offline. I've tried checking to see if calls can come in but no luck and I've tried swiping up and tapping where airplane mode would be but still no use.

Any ideas on what I can do to so I can get my phone back online again so I can at least use it to call and attempt to disable Find My iPhone? It can be seen by iTunes if that's any help?

iPhone 5, iOS 7.1.2

You can just put your device into DFU mode, which bypasses the Find My iPhone requirement. To put the device in DFU mode:

Connect the device to a computer running the most recent version of iTunes (can be downloaded at https://www.apple.com/itunes/download/)
Hold down the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button for 10 seconds
Once 10 seconds has elapsed then release the Sleep/Wake button
Keep holding the Home button until the device appears in iTunes

If you need more help getting your device into DFU mode look at http://www.iclarified.com/1034/how-to-put-an-iphone-into-dfu

From here you will be able to restore your device using iTunes.


How do I disable Cmd-D in Terminal? Cmd-D splits the terminal screen horizontally.
How do I disable this "feature"?
(Every time I accidentally this key, I have to undo it using Shift-Cmd-D and then re-maximize the window).

This answer offers a command line which does not seem to change anything on OS X 10.11.6 (15G1004). Also, I would like a "permanent solution" - do I add the command to the .bashrc? .profile?

People also recommend iTerm2 - I do not want to install anything, I am quite happy with tmux on top of the regular terminal - except for this stupid problem.

Thanks.

Assign a different key combination to Terminal’s Split Pane menu item:

Quit Terminal
Open System Preferences
Select the panel Keyboard from the second row
Select the tab Shortcuts at top center
Select App Shortcuts from the bottom of the list on the left
Click the + button, bottom center and a smaller panel appears
In the dropdown menu Application:, select Terminal

if Terminal isn’t on the list, scroll all the way to the bottom and select Other… (otherwise, skip to step 8 below)
when a dialog window appears, go to the folder Utilities and select Terminal

In the Menu Title: field, enter the text “Split Pane” without quotation marks, but with capital letters “S” and “P”
In the Keyboard Shortcut: field, enter your custom key combinationPro tips:

for a feature you hate, select a key combination you’ll never enter on accident, such as command ⌘‑control ⌃‑option ⌥‑shift ⇧‑D
select and hold down the modifier keys (that is, command ⌘, control ⌃, option ⌥, and shift ⇧) before you select the letter key (in this example, D)

Click Add
Restart your Mac and fire up Terminal
Become less unhappy


Which of the GNU coreutils applications are included in the MacPorts coreutils package? In general, I would like to know if there are any discrepancies between the MacPorts coreutils and the GNU coreutils, and how I might go about answering this question myself. In particular, I don't understand why the su command (or the gsu command, since all of the MacPorts coreutils applications also seem to come prefixed with a 'g') doesn't seem to be included by MacPorts.

First, I check that I have the coreutils package installed:

$ port installed coreutils
The following ports are currently installed:
  coreutils @8.22_0 (active)

$ port info coreutils
coreutils @8.22 (sysutils)
Variants:             universal

Description:          The GNU Core Utilities are the basic file, shell, and text manipulation utilities of the GNU operating
                      system. These are the core utilities which are expected to exist on every operating system. Previously
                      these utilities were offered as three individual sets of GNU utilities, fileutils, shellutils, and
                      textutils. Those three have been combined into a single set of utilities called the coreutils.
Homepage:             http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/

[...]

So far so good. Then I look for instances of su and gsu on my path:

$ which -a su gsu;
/usr/bin/su

Nothing; the GNU su isn't there. As a sanity check, I look for some other coreutils applications, e.g. rm:

which -a rm grm
/opt/local/libexec/gnubin/rm
/bin/rm
/opt/local/bin/grm

It looks like the directories to check are /opt/local/bin and /opt/local/libexec/gnubin, so I look there:

$ ls -1 /opt/local/bin /opt/local/libexec/gnubin | grep -x 'su\|gsu'

Again, nothing. Now, this is almost certainly redundant, but I also try looking with the port contents command:

$ port contents coreutils | grep -x ".*su"

Nothing. Am I certain that su is included in GNU coreutils? No, I guess not. So I check here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Core_Utilities#Programs_included_in_coreutils

It looks like it is; it's listed under the Shell Utililites header. So what gives?

su has moved from coreutils to the utils-linux project since v8.18,
since it's more aligned with the linux specific routines in PAM etc.
http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=commit;h=928dd737

For more portable and light weight switching of user credentials,
one can use gchroot --user=... /

I've amended wikipedia appropriately


Maximum drive size size (dimensions) that will fit in a Mac Mini Server 2012 I'm building up a few Mac Mini Servers (Late 2012). I will be upgrading the small internal drives (dual 500GB HDD) with either dual 4TB or 5TB Seagate Barracuda 2.5" drives, which are 2.75 x 3.95 x 0.59 in.

It appears these higher density drives are a little thicker (0.59") than common sizes sold as upgrade drives for a Mac Mini (0.276" - 0.374").

A thread on the Apple Community suggests the largest size is 9.5mm (0.374").

Does anyone know the maximum drive dimensions that will fit in a Late 2012 Mac Mini Server?

As it turns out, 9.5mm (0.374") is the maximum size that can be installed without modifications to the Mac. Bummer.


How can I abort a High Sierra installation? I am on Sierra now and I started High Sierra setup from the AppStore. I already opened the installer and passed all the steps and get "reboot to install" message.

The issue is that I realized that I cannot update just now as some of the work-related enterprise applications does not support the new version. Is there a way how can I abort installation at this step? I feel like sitting on a time bomb - once I reboot I will have all kinds of trouble with enterprise stuff.

You should be able to safely abort the install. Quit the installer without reboot. Then open Terminal.app and remove the installer folder (SIP has to be disabled to remove everything - most files and folders are deleted though, even when SIP is enabled!):

sudo rm -Rf /macOS\ Install\ Data

Then enter

sudo systemsetup -setstartupdisk /System/Library/CoreServices

A quick scan revealed that the only file/bundle installed/replaced (except some receipts) is /System/Library/CoreServices/MRT.app

Its version number is 1.23. The original file's version in macOS Sierra is 1.22. MRT is (Apple's) Malware Removal Tool.

If SIP is enabled I recommend to execute the steps above. Then immediately boot to Recovery Mode and disable SIP. Then reboot opening the Start Up Prefs and choosing your main volume. Remove the remnants of the macOS Install Data folder (which should be possible now).

Reboot again to Recovery Mode and enable SIP again. Reboot to the main volume.

Apparently Sierra's MRT.app isn't available in any Sierra Combo updater. You would have to extract and re-install it using Pacifist and the latest macOS Sierra installer.

High Sierra's MRT.app may also work in Sierra; so it's unclear whether installing the original version is really required.


How can I make sure that the title of a Terminal tab/window is identical to the command I typed I noticed that for aliases etc the title of a Terminal tab/window often isn't the same as the command I typed. This is sometimes confusing, especially for long-running processes with similar names.

So how can I configure bash/Terminal in a way which ensures that the window title always reflects the command as typed?

Examples:

When I type python -m SimpleHTTPServer and press Return in a Terminal window, the tab of that Terminal window should show "python -m SimpleHTTPServer" immediately.
When I type flushdns, which is my alias for sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder;sudo killall mDNSResponderHelper;sudo dscacheutil -flushcache and press Return in a Terminal window, the tab of that Terminal window should show "flushdns" immediately.

What I tried:

I tried modifying PS4 to run a command. This works, however it also prints a lot of other garbage, like getting the current git branch and other commands I put in my PS1. If there's a way for PS4 to only run scripts and not output anything (not even line breaks) I'm fine with that too as a solution.

I also tried the various options under Preferences > Profiles > Tab, but it does not allow showing the literal command I just entered.

macOS Catalina (10.15) now uses Zsh, which makes this really easy.

Show the currently running / last run command by disabling auto_title and adding a preexec hook:

# File: ~/.zshrc

DISABLE_AUTO_TITLE="true"

preexec() {
    printf "\e]1;${1}\a"
}


Will Apple send payment after expiration of Developer program membership The minimum payment due in my account is $150.

Currently I have $120 proceeds in my account. My Apple Developer membership will expire by the end of this month, and I don't want to renew it.

Will Apple send payments to me after the expiration?

Payments and Financial Reports section of the iTunes Connect Help FAQs should help with answer to your query:

  When will I be paid?

  Payments are made within 45 days of the last day of the month in which app purchases were made. To receive payment, you must have provided all required banking and tax information and documentation, as well as meeting the minimum payment threshold.

  If your bank and bank account currency is listed in the minimum payment threshold, you must exceed a minimum payment threshold of $10 USD. All other bank countries and bank account currencies must exceed a minimum payment threshold of $150 USD.

If you have specific concerns and queries not addresses in the help documents and FAQs, you can get in touch with the Apple Developer Support.


What is the license of the OS X SDK? The Xcode package contains files that get installed in /System and /usr. Is it possible to redistribute those files in a different package? What kind of what are the legal implications?

The license for Xcode is pretty easy to find from:

http://www.apple.com/legal/

Specifically, http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/xcode.pdf

Like the rest of Apple's licensed software, it states in part that licensees may not rent, lease, lend, sell, sublicense or otherwise redistribute the software. The only exceptions I've seen is derivative work that includes licensed components as part of the build process and not by simply repackaging parts or all of Apple's software.

The legal implications vary by your jurisdiction and whether you have signed any other agreements with Apple that would amend or override the standard license terms. Common sense says you would want to either ask Apple directly or get a lawyer to assist you before redistributing licensed and copyrighted goods.

Also, you might check at http://opensource.apple.com to see if portions of the code are open-sourced or have other licenses. Worst case, you'll need to arrange a license agreement with Apple on the use in your case if it's not per the standard license.


Is it possible to show verbose info on boot/respring? I recently jailbroke my IPad mini running 9.3.5 using the Phoenix untethered jailbreak utility. I got some things to work, but I want to have verbose boot output on the startup/respring screen.

Is there any way that this is possible?

If this is helpful,nvram -p outputs:

obliteration   handle message: Obliteration Complete

auto-boot   true

boot-args   -v <--- This is a parameter for verbose that did not work.

oblit-begins   OblitType: ObliterateDataPartition. No reason given.

backlight-level   1679

I hope I can get it to work.

EDIT: It's been days since I posted this and I really want to do this.

There are no ways to boot 9.3.5 iOS in verbose mode I did a lot of research and even pangu can't achieve this you can Google how to verbose boot an iPad but there will be simply no answer because there isn't any release by pangu. You might even see some videos in YouTube in which some people have managed to dual boot and have verbose boot in iOS 10! But the sad part is never reveal it they might have developed the code but some might even get it from unknown sources. So you have to wait until a person or a developer releases an app which can verbose boot  iOS 9.3.5.


iPhone 5 cannot see campus network I have an iPhone 5, which works great at coffee shops, home, work etc.. but when I am on campus it cannot find the wireless network. There is not even a listing for the network, or the guest network that also exists. But, anywhere else it works fine.  I tried resetting the device, but the behaviour persists.

What could be wrong? Please help me figure this out.

Is it at all possible that the campus network does not broadcast it's SSID?

Try this, go into Settings -> Wi-Fi and tap on "Other..."

Type in the name of the campus WiFi network and its password.

Will that allow you to connect?


My Developer Account cannot be activated because I used a relative's credit card So now I have an "identity cannot be verified" message whenever I activate it from the activation code Apple gave me via email.

Is there anything I can do about this or is my $99 "doomed"?

From the iOS Developer Program Support:

  If I enroll as an Individual in the Standard program can I use someone else’s credit card to purchase the Program?

  The billing information provided for
  the purchase must exactly match the
  Program enrollment information. If
  this information does not match your
  enrollment will be delayed and you
  will be asked to provide a notarized
  copy of a government issued
  identification.

I would contact support and ask them what to do next.


Does Big Sur brick a MacBook Air 2014? I want to install Big Sur on my MacBook Air 2014, but I’m concerned about reports that the installation of Big Sur did brick some older MacBook Pro. I couldn’t find any information regarding my MacBook Air 2014. Is it safe to install Big Sur on a MacBook Air 2014?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211238
Supported MacBook 2014 Airs from the Apple knowledge base article:

MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014)

MacBook Air (11-inch, Early 2014)

If the install caused issues with listed supported Macs, you'd be able to raise the issue with Apple.
Anything further would be speculation.


Is there any global Finder setting for "Keep Arranged By"? Is there any global Finder setting for "Keep Arranged By"?

I know I can set it on a per folder basis pressing Option - Right Click:

It is painful having to do this for every folder though...

Jonathan

Right-click on the background of the folder and choose "Show View Options". Set it up how you like and click on "Use as Defaults". "Show View Options" is also in the View menu in the top menubar or even available via "Command + J" on your keyboard.

That's the theory, but honestly I've had mixed results with this.


Can app creators continue to access my data after I delete their app? I know that once I have subscribed to a given app, that I have granted permissions to the author to access various bits of information.  but,my question is -  what happens when I delete the app from my phone and library?

Is the author of the app simultaneously and unilaterally denied the future ability to gather anything more from my phone?  Is it possible that while the app is deleted,  the app developer is allowed to maintain a mechanism which continues to gather information (and presumably which I was told about in the original T's and C's which I agreed to) ?

If the app is deleted, so are all connections to said developer. It wouldn't get through the approval process if it was allowed to continue farming your data, plus it'd need to stay on your phone for this to work.


Show telephone symbol in Calendar when using arbitrary video conferencing tools Due to the current situation I'm using a lot of video conferencing software to meet with other people.
I organise my daily schedule using Apple Calendar Version 11.0 and noticed that when I'm using a Zoom link as the location for an event, a nice telephone symbol appears. When clicking on it I get redirected to the said link and can conveniently open Zoom.

However, when I use less popular video conferencing tools (e.g. https://bigbluebutton.org/) this doesn't work.

Is there a way to achieve the same behaviour for less popular tools as for e.g. Zoom?

The only thing you can control easily is be sure the links to your meetings are attached to the event.
This very handy interface came to my attention using Fantastical and it’s super useful, and I’m also waiting for first party support of some handy conference apps.

https://flexibits.com/fantastical

I’m not smart enough (yet) to figure how to format other links that Apple doesn’t now detect, but know you could try another calendar while everyone figures out the exact mechanism to influence this if the vendor apps don’t get updated to claim their links in a manner Apple can connect the event to the helper app.
Here’s the list of what apps fantastical can detect:

https://flexibits.com/fantastical#conference-calls-section


VoiceOver not reading '-' in Xcode VoiceOver interprets a hyphen as a brief pause. That makes sense for hyphenated words, but it makes no sense for sums or for code. For example in Xcode this line

numberOfGuesses -= 1

is rendered as "number of guesses, equals one" by VoiceOver. That's terrible. How do I make VoiceOver behave sensibly for the minus sign in Xcode?

In VoiceOver Utility, you can go to the Pronunciation tab of the Speech section, and set up custom pronunciations. I've never used VoiceOver before, but I was able to get some custom pronunciations working. I set -= to be replaced by minus equals, and that seemed to work. Additionally, you can make these custom pronunciations app specific, or work in all apps, if you only want Xcode to read hyphens as minus signs. See here for more details.


Safe to delete /private/var/tmp/*? In this folder, there are 14GB of archives with names such as WiFiDiagnostics follow by a date. Is it safe to delete these archives? A reboot did not remove them.

WiFiDiagnostics* sounds like something you can delete without impact. There are other things in /private/var/tmp which probably shouldn't get deleted (e.g. filesystemui.socket) so rm * is not advisable.


BBEdit asks for Apple ID password on every launch When BBEdit came out on the App Store, I removed the app bundle that I downloaded from the website, and installed via Mac App Store. Now every time I launch the app, it asks for my Apple ID password.

Is there a way to fix it, or should I just go back to using the version that I downloaded from the website?

Try the following steps to resolve the issue:

Uninstall the Mac App Store version. (Start Launchpad, press and hold Option key, and click on the ⨂ button shown at the top left of the BBEdit app icon.)
Download and re-install BBEdit from official website.
Install AppCleaner app.
Uninstall the version of BBEdit installed in step #2 using AppCleaner.
Restart your Mac.
Now, reinstall BBEdit from the Mac App Store.

Now you should be able to get rid of the issue.


using hidutil to map two keys to a single key I've lost the functionality of my ] on my keyboard. Previously I used Karabiner to map [ + option to ], however now that I've updated to Sierra, this doesn't work.

I've seen this post: How do I remap a key in macOS Sierra, e.g., Right Alt to Right Control?

However is there a way to map 2 keys to a single key using hidutil property?

Specifically, I'd like to map [ + option to ]

I've tried a few iterations including:

hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping": [{["HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x70000002f "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x7000000e2], "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000030}]}'

and

hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping": [{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":[0x70000002f, 0x7000000e2], "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000030}]}'

Neither of these worked

There's a third-party application called BetterTouchTool that will let you do this (and a ton more) quite easily.  Unfortunately, it's no longer a free app. However, it's an amazing app that's worth far more than it costs if you ask me.

For the record, no, I'm not related to the product in any way.  To the contrary, I'm a long-time paying customer who donated long before the dev started charging for it. At this point its so critical to my daily use on a Mac I feel completely lost without it.)


How to quit without saving using just the keyboard? When I quit an application (e.g., Excel) with Command-Q, a dialog box pops up, asking me to select between don't save, cancel and save.
I can hit Enter to select save, or I can navigate the mouse to don't save, but how do I get that without the mouse?

On Linux and Windows I can use Tab to switch between the 3 buttons.

What do I do on Mac OS X?

Excel for Mac 2011 (14.3.8)

I tried:

Tab
shift-Tab
control-Tab
option-Tab

No go.

The standard shortcut for "Don't Save" in the dialog you mention is command ⌘+Delete. The old shortcut, command ⌘+D, can be restored by issuing the following command in Terminal:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSSavePanelStandardDesktopShortcutOnly -bool YES

and to revert back,

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSSavePanelStandardDesktopShortcutOnly -bool NO

In Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac, command ⌘+D seems to work by default (but the standard shortcut does not).

Basically, try either command ⌘+Delete for Apple or standard applications, and command ⌘+D if that does not work.


OS X El Capitan mail folder issue I upgraded my Macbook Pro this morning to Version 10.11, and all my personal mail folders disappeared with up to 24 months of archived and must needed emails.  They still show up on my iPhone 6...and I'm getting iCloud flow between the two.  How do I get them to reappear on my Mac?  Help?

It is a common issue, your data did not disappear. Just go to the tab "Mailbox" in Apple mail and than click "Synchronize". All your mails will be downloaded from the servers they were on.


Can I set the volume on my iPhone lower than the slider goes? I have an iPhone 4S and some V-Moda in-ear headphones. The headphones have great volume and isolation, which is good when I'm listening to something quiet. But it's a problem on my iPhone.

When I play music on my iPhone with the headphones, it is very loud. As in, painfully loud when I put the volume slider in the middle. To  lower the volume, I (of course) dragged the volume slider to the left. The problem is that even when I get all the way to the left, it is still very loud. If I move it any further, the volume abruptly mutes.

I've tried changing settings, and I've found that enabling Sound Check helps some louder songs. Unfortunately, Sound Check doesn't apply to apps like Spotify, which I use more than the Music app.

So, how can I reduce the volume on my iPhone beyond the slider?

Notes: The volume is fine with the stock Apple headphones. Reducing the volume of the music itself (modifying the files) isn't an option because I need to reduce the volume of streaming audio and files I don't have access to (Spotify).

I had the same issue. I went into settings, music, EQ and adjusted the Loudness setting. It is now softer / not as loud sounding.


Create System Preferences URL to Privacy Files and Folders in 10.15 Catalina In macOS you can create a link to the Automation section of the Privacy Pane in System Preferences by the following URL

x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Automation

Does anyone know the equivalent for the new Files and Folders section in Catalina, or a way to make macOS to print out all links?

I have tried running the apple script mentioned in a similar question about a link to Full Disk Access in Mojave, but this doesn't appear to return all sections (for example Input Monitoring and Files and Folders).

List of URLs for reference (*updated for macOS Catalina & Mojave):

Accessibility Preference Pane
Main    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.universalaccess
Display x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.universalaccess?Seeing_Display
Zoom    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.universalaccess?Seeing_Zoom
VoiceOver   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.universalaccess?Seeing_VoiceOver
Descriptions    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.universalaccess?Media_Descriptions
Captions    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.universalaccess?Captioning
Audio   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.universalaccess?Hearing
Keyboard    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.universalaccess?Keyboard
Mouse & Trackpad    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.universalaccess?Mouse
Switch Control  x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.universalaccess?Switch
Dictation   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.universalaccess?SpeakableItems

Security & Privacy Preference Pane
Main    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security
General x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?General
FileVault   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?FDE
Firewall    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Firewall
Advanced    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Advanced
Privacy x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy
Privacy-Camera x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Camera
Privacy-Microphone  x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Microphone
Privacy-Automation  x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Automation
Privacy-AllFiles    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_AllFiles
Privacy-Accessibility   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Accessibility
Privacy-Assistive   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Assistive
Privacy-Location Services   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_LocationServices
Privacy-SystemServices  x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_SystemServices
Privacy-Advertising x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Advertising
Privacy-Contacts    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Contacts
Privacy-Diagnostics & Usage x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Diagnostics
Privacy-Calendars   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Calendars
Privacy-Reminders   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Reminders
Privacy-Facebook    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Facebook
Privacy-LinkedIn    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_LinkedIn
Privacy-Twitter x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Twitter
Privacy-Weibo   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Weibo
Privacy-Tencent Weibo   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_TencentWeibo

macOS Catalina 10.15:
Privacy-ScreenCapture   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_ScreenCapture
Privacy-DevTools    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_DevTools
Privacy-InputMonitoring x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_ListenEvent
Privacy-DesktopFolder   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_DesktopFolder
Privacy-DocumentsFolder x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_DocumentsFolder
Privacy-DownloadsFolder x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_DownloadsFolder
Privacy-NetworkVolume   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_NetworkVolume
Privacy-RemovableVolume x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_RemovableVolume
Privacy-SpeechRecognition   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_SpeechRecognition

Dictation & Speech Preference Pane
Dictation   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.speech?Dictation
Text to Speech  x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.speech?TTS
Sharing Preference Pane
Main    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.sharing
Screen Sharing  x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.sharing?Services_ScreenSharing
File Sharing    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.sharing?Services_PersonalFileSharing
Printer Sharing x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.sharing?Services_PrinterSharing
Remote Login    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.sharing?Services_RemoteLogin
Remote Management   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.sharing?Services_ARDService
Remote Apple Events x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.sharing?Services_RemoteAppleEvent
Internet Sharing    x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.sharing?Internet
Bluetooth Sharing   x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.sharing?Services_BluetoothSharing

Software update x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate?client=softwareupdateapp

Ref : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6652598/cocoa-button-opens-a-system-preference-page/48139877#48139877


Why does iPhone text not suggest an American flag emoji? When typing out country names for example Canada, Russia, Mexico, Cuba, and China and all other country names I have tried using my iPhone with iOS 10 emojis are suggested with the respective flag for the country name I have just typed. When I type "America" this is not the case, why does typing the word America not suggest the use of the American flag emoji like so for all other countries?

Apple is just being strict about America not being a country, but a continent. If you type USA or United States, predictive text will suggest the American flag:


Constantly dropping internet on El Capitan? I have a brand new 2015 mac, el capitan 10.11.4. The wifi constantly drops. I have re-installed a fresh el capitan, reset SMC, created new wifi profile/location with google dns, safeboot, updated router firmware, and update router channel. None of these things have fixed the constant dropping. The dropping mostly happens when I open multiple tabs or download multiple things at once. Any recommendations? How can I analyze the dropped connection report?

This fixed it for me:

System Preferences → Energy Saver → Battery Power: Uncheck “wake for network access”
System Preferences → Network → Advance → TCP/IP: Configure IPv6 – select “Link-Local only”

Found the above fix in the comments of this article: http://osxdaily.com/2015/10/16/fix-wi-fi-problems-mac-os-x-el-capitan/


External monitor options for MacBook Air? If I would like to attach a second monitor to my MacBook air is my only option the Thunderbolt Display?  Everything I've found online points me there, but those are a cool grand, so I'm wondering if there are other options out there that I just don't know about.

The Thunderbolt ports are also mini-Displayport compatible. So you can hook up pretty much any display (Displayport, HDMI, DVI, VGA) with the proper adapter.

For high-resolution panels (greater than 1920x1200), you should try to go with Displayport if possible, as the mini-Displaylink to dual-link DVI adapters have been problematic for many people (this isn't an issue for single-link DVI displays, which comprise all but the largest DVI displays around).


Wireless download slow on Bootcamp (Upload is fine) I have the Mid 2015 Macbook Pro Retina 15" (11,4) and originally installed Windows 10 Pro using Bootcamp assistant.

I'm having issues with downloading over wireless (no / limited issues uploading), when I try to download any file more than about 1MB it will start off fine (anywhere from 400KB-1.2MB/s) and then suddenly spike down to something ridiculous (usually 15KB/s) and then stall completely but still say it's going at 15KB/s, this is making it pretty much impossible to download any file.

I have tried resetting my routers configuration, reinstalling windows (I used the media creation tool and brigadier without any issues), reset the SMC and made sure I'm on the most clear WLAN channel and am still experiencing this issue.

I have also tested to make sure this does not happen on other wireless devices and can confirm my phone is downloading near my downlink speed (~25Mb/s) but my laptop is still spiking around that speed and going straight down.

This shows the inital spike up, spike down and halting that I described and also shows that it doesn't happen during upload.

For comparison here is a test done immediately after over Ethernet.

I also had this issue when I had a mid 2010 MacBook Pro running Windows 7.

I'll link to some more relevant information below.
Mobile speedtest: www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/2619288419
SysInfo Export: pastebin.com/9c6mHQry
Link speed: ↓ 25,4 Mbit/s // ↑8,2 Mbit/s
Wireless channels in use: imgur.com/uSzOuL4
Driver details: imgur.com/q0I8Fgy (Still happens with .49 provided by apple software update and any other versions downloaded elsewhere)

[Sorry about that mess, sadly I don't have enough reputation to post more than 2 links]
The wireless NIC is part of the Broadcom BCM43XX series.
If anyone has any idea how to fix this that'd be great, feel free to ask for more information if necessary!

It appears to be working with a different router now (I was reluctant to test this as my backup router is ISP provided) but I will revisit this if problems persist.


change the command+tab and command+` behavior in Mountain Lion When it is a switch between applications, we use Command+Tab, and when it is a switch within an application, we use Command+`.

Can I just use Command+Tab for all cases, as in Windows?

You can't do that in OS X, but you can buy and install witch for that function.


How can I connect to a local NAS whilst connected to a remote VPN? Scenario:

My work Macbook Pro uses Cisco AnyConnect to connect to my employers
VPN from home.
I am running macOS Catalina on the Macbook Pro
I have a NAS connected to my home LAN
Macbook Pro is connected through same home LAN

When I am not connected to my work VPN I can access the NAS by using the expected local IP address (using "Connect to Server..."), however when connected to the VPN this IP cannot be accessed.
I have googled around, but couldn't seem to find an explanation for this specific scenario.
AnyConnect appears to direct all connections through the VPN, although there are no options I can see in the application preferences relating to this.
How can I connect to the local NAS whilst still being connected to the remote VPN on macOS?

The short answer is that you cannot do this. Your VPN administrator has enabled a "full tunnel," such that all traffic goes over the VPN. If your VPN administrator is willing to switch to split tunnels, it will work fine.
The longer, potentially getting you fired answer: you can use openconnect (installed via homebrew) to connect to the VPN. This will still have the full tunnel issue, but it won't continue to screw with the network routes after the initial connection - so you can forcibly enable split tunnels.
To connect, something like:
# openconnect yourvpnserver.com -u username --authgroup "your group"

Then you can fix your routing table:
# sudo route change default 1.2.3.4

where 1.2.3.4 is your normal home network default route. You will not be able to access any resources over the VPN after you do this, until you add routes for them:
# sudo route -nv add 5.6.7.8 -interface utun0

where 5.6.7.8 is the IP of the VPN resource you want to access, and utun0 is the VPN interface.
But again, risk of being fired if caught, etc, etc.


Can you stream podcasts from the server to the iPad or iPhone? So we are having a problem right now regarding the Lion Server and streaming podcast.
We already did the steps on technical note TS4126 and now we can play the podcasts made from podcast producer on the server's webpage on Safari on MAC OS X. The problem we're having right now is that we can't play it on Safari on iPad, and on iPhone (via a mobile-format webpage version) the Podcast page isn't even available.

My question is that is it possible to stream podcasts from the Lion server to the iPhone or iPad, or is it even possible to view the podcasts via a different method?

We specifically asks for Lion because we don't have prior experience with the previous servers, but anything that can help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Yes - It's as simple as posting a sound file to the web server and iOS devices can stream it easily. It's more about setting the video settings for streaming hinting than a setting on server.

This is a supported function of Lion server since it provides the tools you need to create and self-publish podcasts.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/features/all.html#podcasting

As to the https errors, make sure your iPads have a profile that trust the certificate you have loaded into the web server and don't warn you when browsing the general web server using https.

Troubleshooting server is challenging in a Q&A format, but depending on your definition of "streaming" this works once Lion server and the client trust each other for normal podcast downloading.

You might try uploading an episode to the wiki and see if you can rule out the problem for your setup.


Delete swap partition I made a swap partition to install Ubuntu on my MacBook Air 2011, but now I want to clean all the partitions up. However, I can't delete the "swap partition" in Disk Utility. Can anyone help me?

You should be able to use a tool, such as a GParted Live CD, to delete the swap file partition and resize the OS X partition afterwards.

Per this Apple discussion forum that covered this topic:

  I believe that you can do it with a Live GParted CD.

  http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

  Boot with the Live CD in the drive and delete the swap partition. You
  may even be able to resize the OS X partition with GParted afterwards.

Alternately, back up all of your data and applications and wipe/repartition the main drive and install OS X from scratch. Takes a bit longer, but will give you a fresh OS X installation.


Camera filters missing in iPhone 4s I have an iPhone 4s. My camera doesn't have the live filters at the bottom right. I went to the settings, but it doesn't have anything that says "live filters".I'm very confused and want to know how to put them on my camera.

I don't want to go to my photos app and press edit. My friends has the same phone, and they have filters.

What version of iOS are you running? Live filters was added on iOS 7. If you haven't updated your iPhone to the latest (or, now, second-to-latest) major version of iOS, the "live" filters will not be available.
You can check your iOS version by going into Settings > General > Software Update. But, be wary of updating to iOS 8 (which is now the version available to be upgraded to) many (though not all) iPhone 4s users have had issues with iOS 8.


Why does Apple not recommend storing your iMovie library on an external drive? I want to try keeping my iMovie library on an external drive because I use both my Imac (at home) and my MBP (when traveling) to edit my videos.  Ideally, I would like to use a SD card so that it doesn't draw power from my MBP, but it may be too slow? It will also free up hard drive space on both computers. But when searching about this, Apple's support page says it's possible but advises against it:

"You can store your library on an external storage device such as a USB drive, FireWire drive, or Thunderbolt drive formatted as MacOS Extended (Journaled). Apple doesn’t recommend storing iMovie libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives shared on a network."

Does anyone know why this is so? I want to make sure it's not damaging in anyway.

"Apple doesn’t recommend storing iMovie libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives shared on a network."

'cause the quality of external flash cards are poor.  I have like eight flash drives bought in the last eight years and two of them have failed.  External cards use a double layer of circuits where as internal SSDs use one.

Library of Congress has a question and answer email facility.  I sent them a line about flash drives.  I found out that:

  LoC does not have data on the reliability of usb memory sticks.
  LoC recommends the use of rotating magnetic media for long term digital storage.

Here is what Library of Congress says about long term storage photos.  I assume that vids would be the same.

This is controversial around these parts, but I recommend you get your photos out of the Apple ecosystem and store them as one photo per file on multiple external storage devices. For long term storage, don't rely on usb memory sticks nor external ssd drives.  LoC does not have data on the reliability of usb memory sticks.  Apple seems to be saying do not store photos on external ssd drives.  One device should be off site.  Using a cloud service is fine.  Remember a lot of cloud services are sync services.  That is should the file be deleted on the local device, the photo will be deleted in the cloud.  For this reason,  I never install the cloud service software on my computer.  I use only file upload.  For those who complain, my assessment is that the apple Eco-system doesn't match Library of Congress's requirements for digital archiving.

informative video:
http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/multimedia/videos/personalarchiving-photos.html

printed version
http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/photos.html

General information on digital preservation:
http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/

R


Can I pair an iPhone6 running 9.3.5 with an iMac using 10.9.5? I've been trying desperately to pair my iPhone 6 which is running iOS 9.3.5 with my 27 inch iMac (late 2009) running 10.9.5 with no success. I have tried turning Bluetooth on and off on both devices, and was able to get the pairing code to show up each time, however when I click on the computer name the iPhone message says:

"Connection Unsuccessful- Make sure the computer is turned on and in range".

or it says:

"Connection Unsuccessful- "Username iMac" is not supported"

It should be noted that on the computer the iPhone is showing up in the Bluetooth drop-down menu from the top right. Also, it shows up in the Bluetooth preferences, but goes back and forth from being paired, and not connected.

It is not supported to pair an iPhone and a Mac via Bluetooth and use the either of one as a Bluetooth speaker/receiver. Both are in simple terms in the wrong device class

But you could use a third party tool to make your Mac an Airplay receiver. The one solution I found was AirServer. Start this tool on your Mac and it should show up on your iPhone as an Airplay destination.


Why does my computer hibernate when it sleeps? I am MacBook Pro w/ Retina, Mid-2014, running macOS Sierra 10.12.1.

About 2/3 of the time my computer times out and goes to sleep, the screen goes blank as normal, but tries to wake it don't work. Can move mouse, but screen is black, can't click, can't press a key, etc. The only way to tempfix that I know is closing and reopening the screen. Then, everything returns to normal.

I noticed other topics similar to this, but I do not believe it works eventually as other topics say. Might be wrong though.

Have you tried resetting the SMC?

Here’s what you do for your particular model of MacBook Pro:

Shut down your computer
Keep the power cable plugged in.
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

You can read more info about this on Apple's article about when you might want to try an SMC reset:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295


Video Playback Freezes - Mojave 10.14 I'm using a Mac mini (late 2012) with Mojave 10.14, and I'm having issues with video playback.

After using the Mac to play back videos, whether that's online streaming/YouTube or IINA/VLC video files playback - after about 8-10 minutes of use it freezes for a few seconds, than continues without any issues for another 8-10 minutes, freezes again, and so on.

The same behavior is observed while playing videos from internal HDD or DASD.

Needless to say, it was perfectly fine under High Sierra (same apps, and content).

I use Internet cable connection (up to 150 Mbps download speed, and up to 15 Mbps upload speed) exclusively, WiFi is OFF. Hardware configuration: RAM: 2 x 8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz GPU: Intel HD Graphics 4000 - VRAM: 1536 MB Display: HP ZR30w 2560 x 1600 Resource usage while playing video: RAM: Physical memory 16.00 GB Memory used 8.71 GB Cashed files 7.28 GB Swap used 1.96 GB CPU: System: 2.27% User: 3.94% Idle: 93.99%

Please help!

Try using a different browser (Firefox) or a different media player (VLC or MPlayer X)and see if this happens. I am assuming that you are using Safari and QuickTime Player.


Launchctl:Dubious permissions on file: Problem Installing Jenkins I'm trying to install Jenkins on 10.6.8 and part of this requires that modify the plist launch daemon.  org.jenkins-ci.plist   which is owned by root.  I was using admin and I gave admin permission to write this file. I used this permission to make the admin the jenkins user and set the home directory to be the admin user directory.  However now I cannot run the launch daemon.

launchctl: Dubious permissions on file (skipping)

Now I realize this is due to a security issue with having given myself this permission.  The plist now has my admin user as the user for jenkins.  Should I now just remove the write privileges and all is good (admin can now be the jenkins user) or not?

Update: I did sudo chown root org.jenkins-ci.plist and it still feels things are dubious.

If you're in /Library/LaunchDaemons, which I assume you are for a system daemon, and want the files to go back to default:

sudo chown root:wheel org.jenkins-ci.plist
sudo chmod 644 org.jenkins-ci.plist

The plist will register on reboot, or you can load it like this:

sudo launchctl load org.jenkins-ci.plist

You can check the status like this:

sudo launchctl list <<Job Name>>

Note that jobname is not the same as file name. Inside the plist you'll see a Label. That's the name:

    <key>Label</key>
    <string>DataScrub</string>

In my example the name is DataScrub, so would be:

sudo launchctl list DataScrub


USB hub fails to power ethernet adapter This problem happens on both a 2011 Mac Air (Sierra) and a 2013 Macbook Pro Retina (El Capitan).

For a couple years, I have had a powered USB 3.0 hub with a few devices plugged in, including a KVM, and an apple usb 2.0 ethernet adapter.  I move it between the two laptops above, and everything was great.

Recently, I've been having trouble.  The Mac puts up a notification "USB Accessory Needs Power / Connect "Apple USB Ethernet Adapter" to a USB port on this Mac."  If I do that, it works, but mysteriously, if I plug an old, non-powered USB 2.0 hub into the USB 3.0 hub, and plug the ethernet device into that, that also works.

Every once in a while, the keyboard connected to the KVM stops working, too.

What's wrong here?  Is the hub defective?  The ethernet device?  Why does the second hub help?  Since it happens to two laptops, it doesn't seem likely that it's a laptop or driver issue.

I am pretty sure this is an issue with macOS Sierra. I had a similar problem with a brand new powered hub (Dyconn PowerHub SuperSpeed 12 Port (10 Data/Charging + 2 Charging Only Ports). I assumed it was a defective hub and replaced it. However, the problem persists with the new hub. I have searched around and there doesn't seem to be systemic issues with that hub, and there are lots of issues with macOS Sierra and USB power management.

Currently I have a powered hard drive and 2 printers connected to the hub, so I don't think anything is drawing power. The devices seem to work - I can print and access the drive, but about every 30-60 secs a "USB Accessory Needs Power" window opens and closes very quickly.

I am running macOS Sierra 10.12.4 on a MacBook Pro 15 mid-2015. From what I have read elsewhere, macOS Sierra has issues with USB management.


I want to save my photos from iPad OS9.3.2 to PC Windows I am planning on giving my iPad to son.  I want to reset it for him but, first, I want to offload the photos and contacts onto my PC. I have found that if I use the iCloud, as soon as I shut iCloud off, all the photos and contacts are gone from PC. This is a pain. Can anyone help?

For photos:

Connect your iPad to PC
Open Computer>Portable Devices>Internal Storage>DCIM, then drag/copy
photos to another folder on your PC

For contacts:

Log in to your iCloud account from a browser on your computer
Select one or more contacts in the contacts list.
To select several adjacent contacts, click the first one, then
Shift-click the last one. To select multiple nonadjacent contacts,
Command-click them on a Mac or Control-click them on a Windows
computer.
Click the cogwheel button on the bottom right and choose Export
vCard from the pop-up menu


How to remove a number from 'Recents' on iPhone, rather deleting all? Since many days I am trying to achieve this, but I can only delete/ clear all recent dial, received phone numbers.

Is there an option/ hack to delete only one number at a time on my iPhone ?

I have iPhone 3GS

You will have to wait for iOS 5 to be able to do what you are asking. I'm running iOS 5 and I'm able to do this without a jailbreak.


Mac had High Sierra, had to install Lion from Internet Recovery into a new hard drive, can't install High Sierra I had Mac OS High Sierra on my laptop. I have had some errors on my laptop's hard drive. I bought an SSD and had to install Mac OS Lion from Internet Recovery. I see ads for a free Mac OS High Sierra upgrade, but it says I need Mac OS 10.8 or later (I have 10.7.x installed). How can I get back to Mac OS High Sierra?

You should be able to do the following:

Launch the Mac App Store app
Select the Purchased tab
Look through your purchased items to find OS X Mountain Lion (Note: There's nothing stopping you from also selecting either OS X Mavericks or OS X El Capitan)
Now click on the Download option on the right of the listing

This will download the OS X installer allowing you to upgrade from OS X Lion. Once you're upgraded, you'll then have the option/ability to upgrade to macOS High Sierra.

NOTE: If you can't see your Purchased list, or download the item, make sure you're actually signed into your account (i.e. look under the Store menu).


MacMail Forgotten Attachents Reminder I am trying to find a solution/plugin to remind me about adding attachments to an email on MacMail (using OS X El Capitan). I tried the "just double check your email, you idiot" option to no avail.

There is a deprecated plugin and wanted to know if any alternatives have been developed, or if there's a new sneaky setting that might do this for me.

I also found this post but given that's 3+ years old I would like more up to date feedback, in the hope that Apple has opened a new door.

Anyone know of a simple solution to this?

It looks like there is a Mail plugin which does what you're looking for called Send Companion (free, with other paid features). As of the time I'm writing this, it purports to work with the latest versions of Mail.


All of my events have disappeared in the new Photos app for OSX Yosemite I have just upgraded OSX Yosemite and have been looking at the new Photos app.  It seems all of my events have disappeared.  How do I get them back?

The best option for working with events is to use the sidebar (cmd + alt + s or view → Show Sidebar). They will be listed there:

Without using the sidebar they are listed in the Albums section:


How to access local webpage from another host in the same network? I'm trying to access RSS feeds hosted on my Mac from another computer in the same network.

The IP-address of the Mac is 192.168.228.84, the port the server uses is 8080.

I can access the page locally, but the Windows PC can't access it, instead it's saying ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED.

How would I fix this?

I ended up determining that the problem was a firewall on the network, not on either device. Thank you for your help!


What is the transparencyd daemon for? transparencyd seems to be there since macOS Catalina.
I cannot find any information about it other than what the MAN pages say :
"transparencyd is a system daemon that verifies transparency information
for requesting clients. It is not intended to be invoked directly"

It occasionally tries to connect to server kt-prod.apple.com (17.56.48.13) via TCP/443
and some files in ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.transparencyd:

What is the transparencyd daemon for?

It handles the API and SDK calls for developers to check user tracking entitlements and transparently request access to private data and set these preferences on a per-app and per-device basis.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apptrackingtransparency

Since 2010, Apple publicly has maintained that all privacy and tracking should be after we consent to what / how and when out data is accessed.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/12/18/steve-jobs-on-privacy

There’s a lot of public angst now that the code has shipped and is being enforced - not everyone is a fan of informed consent and opting in to tracking or “transparency”.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/12/18/swisher-facebook-apple
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/facebooks-laughable-campaign-against-apple-really-against-users-and-small

But to address your question, it’s the mechanism by which an application receives access to photos, contacts, files and other things by requesting that access from the operating system.


How can I hide an app from the dock while keeping it in the menu bar? There's a messaging app I often use that includes both a menu bar icon (to hide/show the window, as well as indicate how many unread messages there are) as well as the app itself which resides in the dock/launchpad.

I want to know if there's a way to hide the app from my dock when the app is running so that I can simply use the menu bar to see if I have any new messages and thus save dock space. I know that this is possible as some of my other apps already do this (e.g. LastPass for Mac), but is there a way to do this manually, e.g. through the Terminal? I am currently on MacOS Catalina Beta (although I assume the solution should also work for earlier versions too).

I want to know if there's a way to hide the app from my dock when the app is running so that I can simply use the menu bar to see if I have any new messages and thus save dock space

An app can be configured to hide it's Dock icon, and show it only in the Menu bar, only if it is designed (programmed) to provide this functionality. If the app doesn't include this feature, it's not possible for user to achieve this by any other means (OS built-in or using any 3rd party tool).


why does my print job fail? 15 page PDF, freezes on page 7 I'm trying to print a 15 page document from Lion wirelessly to my HP 1102w printer.

The first 6 pages print fine then it freezes half way through page 7, and I have to power the printer off/on for it to work again.  I tried printing just page 7 and that works so it doesn't appear to be the content of the page.

I'm wondering if maybe the printer is running out of memory or something.  Is it possible there's a setting somewhere that will cause the Mac to send the document slower or something?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

If you think its buffer issue then try to print from page 1 to 6, then 7 to 10, then 11 to 15. You should have the options.

If you do not see:

Then click the Show Details in the print Dialogue


Is there a 5-second rewind button on iTunes? Is there a button or key combination that can rewind 5 or 10 seconds when watching a movie on iTunes?

Often I pressed the left arrow button, and the whole movie is reset to 00:00:00 and I need to find where I was watching and it was quite disturbing.

For macOS users, hold down Command + Option, then press left/right arrow to skip backward/forward five seconds.

For Windows users, hold down Control + Alt, then press left/right arrow to skip backward/forward five seconds. The shortcut also works for VLC.

I also have KMPlayer and 5KPlayer installed as alternative players, and the shortcut is easy to remember:left/right arrow for 5 second rewind/forward.


Rebuild partition table on external HDD - not writable I have an external hard drive formatted with 3 HFS+ partitions. To cut a long story short I had it connected to a Windows PC and accidentally started formatting the drive to NTFS. As soon as I realised what was happening I disconnected the drive, but the partition table is corrupted. I used TestDisk to gather info about the partitions, and tried to use pDisk to rebuild the partition table, but when I try to do that, I get the message that the partition table is not writable, the device is busy. Anyone know how I can rewrite the partition table?

Update:

The TestDisk results are like this (for settings on Apple Partition Map - I don't know if this is the correct settings, but it's the only one which gives 3 distinct partitions):

Start:     262208 End:  419692607 Size: 419430400
Start:  419954752 End: 1258815551 Size: 838860800
Start: 1259077696 End: 1953525151 Size: 694447456

Does that look OK?

OS X uses three different types of valid partition tables. Only one of those is written to a particular disk:

GUID partition table
Apple Partition Table
MBR

The default partition table on OS X is the GUID partition table.

Depending on the previously used partition table on your disk you have to use different tools to create/change/write it:

gpt for GUID partition table
pdisk for Apple Partition Table
fdisk for MBR

After additional informations given by the OP (testdisk results) and checking it in a virtual machine it's highly probable that the disk was formatted with an Apple Partition Map. Consequently use pdisk to rebuild the partition map.

pdisk:

A typical disk formatted with an Apple Partition Table looks like this:

Driver Descriptor Map: Block 0              Size:      1 Block
Apple Partition Table: Block 1 - 63         Size:     63 Blocks
Apple_Free:            Block 64 - 262207    Size: 262144 Blocks
1st partition:         Block 262208 -
Apple_Free:                                 Size: 262144 Blocks
...
Apple_Free:                                 Size: 262144 Blocks
last partition
Apple_Free:                                 Size:     16 Blocks

To recreate the partition map do the following:

attach the external drive
detach any other external drive
open Terminal and enter diskutil list to get the DiskIdentifier (in the step below I assume your DiskIdentifier is disk1
enter diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
enter sudo pdisk /dev/rdisk1  You will get the following output:

  Edit /dev/rdisk1 -
  Command (? for help):

Now enter c then enter the start block, the size of the first partition and the name. You have to hit the enter key after every input. Repeat this for the next two partitions. At the end it should look like this:

  Command (? for help): c
  First block: 262208
  Length in blocks: 419430400
  Name of partition: part1
  Command (? for help): c
  First block: 419954752
  Length in blocks: 838860800
  Name of partition: part2
  Command (? for help): c
  First block: 1259077696
  Length in blocks: 694447456
  Name of partition: part3
  Command (? for help):

At the last prompt enter w then y to write the changes to disk and finally qto quit pdisk:

  Command (? for help): w
  Writing the map destroys what was there before. Is that okay? [n/y]: y
  The partition table has been altered!

  Command (? for help):

The missing volumes should mount automatically. Otherwise enter diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk1. Enter q at the last prompt to quit pdisk, then quit Terminal, open Disk Utility and check the recovered volumes for errors.

gpt:

In the example below I assume the DiskIdentifier of your external disk is disk1 (check this with diskutil list)

First you have to unmount the external disk:

diskutil umountDisk disk1

Remove the current MBR and create a GPT with gpt:

sudo gpt create -f /dev/disk1

First rebuild the EFI entry with:

sudo gpt add -b 40 -i 1 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B disk1

The EFI partition is a fixed sized partition near the beginning of every GUID partitioned disk (using OS X partitioning tools)

Then add the JHFS+ partition entries with the TestDisk findings:

sudo gpt add -b StartBlock -i IndexNumber -s SizeOfVolume -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk1

Example for the first OS X partition:

sudo gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s SizeOfHFSVolume1 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk1

After adding a partition with gpt you may have to unmount disk1 with diskutil umountDisk disk1 again if your get a "resource is busy" error adding additional partitions.

Increase the index number by 1 for every new partition.

Listed below are answers to similar questions (partly covering other file systems like ExFAT)

How to fix GUID hard drive corrupted to MBR?
HFS+ invalid number of allocation blocks
Hard drive no longer accessible

If you run into problems, leave a comment to the answer with @klanomath.


Preview refuses to open pdf file, incorrectly claiming a permission issue I had to force-quit Preview (it became unresponsive after trying to open a 200Mb animated gif), but after re-starting it, some files that were open before no longer open. Instead an error box pops up saying that

  The file “file.pdf” couldn’t be opened because you don’t have
  permission to view it.

and

  To view or change permissions, select the item in the Finder and
  choose File > Get Info.

(how can I generate an image of that error box?).

However, the file permissions are okay, finder generated the usual preview, and acroread can open the file. I suspect that Preview has generated some lock for this file somewhere, but I'm not sure where and how. OSX 10.9.5. (copying the file in a terminal to another one and trying to open that didn't help, as did changing permissions to read-write for everyone).

quitting preview was enough to fix it for me.


Where did "Find Album Artwork" go? I just upgraded iTunes to version 12.4.1.6, and now when I right click on a song the option of "Find Album Artwork" is gone.
I use that option when I add new songs that aren't imported with it. (I don't like the "find all" option because it messes up some custom artworks I've added)
Thanks in advance.

It should still be there, just with a slightly different name: Get Album Artwork.


Mountain Lion reinstall failure I am trying to fix a Macbook Pro from around 2012/2013, the hard drive failed so I replaced it with a Sandisk 120GB SSD and I am trying to reinstall OS X Mountain Lion using Internet recovery.

Here's what I've done: installed SSD, connected power, Ethernet, booted into Internet Recovery using Command+R, formatted the disk using Disk Utility (Mac os Extended - Journaled), started re-install.

I starts out just fine:

But then it gets the bar filled, stalls there for long time and the it
pops up with the message:

The error message is in Danish and translates to something like: "Can’t download the additional components needed to install Mac OS X". Does anybody know how to get fix this installation issue?

Edit: Attempted suggestion 3) by Keith

Using a Macbook Pro with OS Sierra I got an USB Boot disk created, ran disk utility and started the install, which after about half an hour stopped the installation with the message:

Which translates to something along the lines of "The installer payload failed signature check".

Edit: Hardware issue and solution

Turns out that something was wrong with the SATA/IR cable connecting the drive to the logic board. Installation succeeded when installing onto the harddrive connected via USB.

I then purchased a caddy and replaced the optical drive with the SSD inside the caddy. It now runs MacOS Sierra just fine.

It turns out that for some Macbook Pros, it is common for the internal SATA cable to start malfunctioning over time. The errors I experienced does not give a clear indication that this is the case but if others come across this thread and experience spurious installation errors then here are three different ways of getting a Macbook Pro running again:

Connect hard drive via USB/SATA, cost ~12$ and easy but cumbersome to
have the drive dangling around, so mostly useful for debugging and
determining that it is the internal SATA cable that is
malfunctioning.
Connect hard drive via optical drive caddy, cost ~12$, installation
guide
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Early+2011+Dual+Hard+Drive/8529
Replace the internal SATA cable, cost ~40$, installation
guide:
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+Hard+Drive+Cable+Replacement/10379


Hard Drive not showing up in Disk Utility So I arrived home from school today and wanted to use my iMac, but somehow it wouldn't react. I pressed the power button until it shut down (or crashed...) and rebooted it. After rebooting everything seemed normal, but there was this error, that the keychain login couldn't be accessed. After googling and seeing, that the login keychain was missing in "Keychain Access", I decided to restore my Time Machine Backup from the evening before. After TM failed the first attempt (Shut down at 20%) I tried again, but somehow everything got fucked up.

I don't remember 100% exactly how everything happened, but the end result now is, that I do not see the HDD of my Fusion Drive CoreStorage. The SSD is visible in Disk Utility, but not the HDD. It also is not shown in "diskutil list" and not shown in Parted Magic. I also tried booting while holding the "D" key to enter Apple Hardware Test, but the result was, that everything is okay...

I'm really desperate right now, because I didn't had a very good mood when I came home and now the day is totally trash. I really appreciate every bit of help or information, that could help me..

If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask.

EDIT:
- I tried to reset the SMC (unplug the iMac from power for 15 seconds) and it changed nothing.

The terminal outputs of diskutil list,diskutil cs list, gpt -r show disk0/disk1:

-bash-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *1.2 GB     disk1
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         30.7 KB    disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Mac OS X Base System    1.2 GB     disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            untitled               *524.3 KB   disk2
   ....

-bash-3.2# diskutil cs list
No CoreStorage logical volume groups found
-bash-3.2# gpt -r show disk0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34  236978109
  236978143         32         Sec GPT table
  236978175          1         Sec GPT header

-bash-3.2# gpt -r show disk1
    start     size  index  contents
        0  2330500

I think it's time to start thinking about data recovery at this point. Half-performing Time-Machine can mess things up pretty badly (you don't need to be being told this, you're living it).

This is most easily done (read: Unless you want to open it, which isn't terrible, but definitely not for a novice) by holding the "T" button on the keyboard while powering up. This basically is like opening up your Mac, removing the internal drive, placing it in an enclosure, and then connecting it to another Mac. But it does all of that without any disassembly.

Before entering Target Disk Mode, you’ll need a few things:

Two Macs: Target Disk Mode works with Macs, so you’ll need two Macs for this. Each Mac needs either a Thunderbolt port or a Firewire port. [You might need to borrow a friends' if you don't have one]
A Firewire or Thunderbolt Cable: You’ll need either a Firewire cable
or a Thunderbolt cable for this. You can’t do this via a USB cable.
If one Mac has a Thunderbolt port and the other Mac has a Firewire
port, you’ll need a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter cable.
FileVault Disabled: Macs now enable FileVault encryption by default,
which will prevent you from accessing FileVault-encrypted home
directories over Target Disk Mode. Before using Target Disk Mode, you
can boot the Mac normally, open the System Preferences window, select
Security & Privacy, select FileVault, and temporarily turn it off.
You can turn it on again after using Target Disk Mode. [You can't do this step, so we'll just hope it was off...]
No Firmware Password: If you’ve set a firmware password in the
recovery environment, you’ll need to disable that first. [If this makes no sense, you probably don't have one]

With Target Disk Mode, you can treat a Mac’s internal drive as an external drive and boot from it, just as you’d boot from a typical external drive. This actually lets you boot the OS X system from one Mac on another Mac.

You can also simply plug it into another Mac, and download your important files. Once this is done, we will want to reinstall Mac OSX onto the iMac.

To Re-install OSX once your files are safe and sound:

Immediately after hearing the Mac boot chime, hold down Command+Option+R – if you see the Apple logo you waited too long and need to reboot and try again*
OPTIONAL: You may or may not see an option to join a wi-fi network, this depends on whether the Mac can access any saved networks from OS X or not When you see a spinning globe icon, Internet Recovery mode has been entered with a message saying it can take a while, a progress bar appears as the recovery functions are downloaded Starting OS X Internet Recovery Mode on a Mac to reinstall system software.

When finished downloading, you’ll see the familiar “OS X Utilities” screen, choose “Reinstall OS X” to begin the re-installation process of the Mac operating system Install OS X from Internet Recovery.

Select the destination and complete the re-installation (or installation) of OS X as usual.

Sources [First Half, Second Half].


How to Turn iPad on? I was watching a video on YouTube and my iPad just blanked out. I have tried charging it for one hour (like the Apple website said to), connecting it to iTunes and held the 'off/on' and the 'home' button together for a minute (roughly).

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5894688?start=0&tstart=0

Hold the Off/On and the Home buttons simultaneously until you see the Apple logo on the screen.


How can I disable the macbook keyboard with Shift key held down on a password protected macbook? This question is a bit strange, but here's the scenario:

macbook air laptop with El Capitan Mac OS X
currently logged off any account
liquid damage on keyboard has caused shift key to be permanently pressed
password to admin account has some lowercase letters and numbers
restarting enters "safe mode"

The machine has no sensitive data, so I'm happy for a solution even if it wipes out the admin account. I'm also happy to buy a USB keyboard/plug into an external screen if that will help.

How can I disable this pesky shift key? Or disable the built in keyboard all together?

Disable keyboard:

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBTopCase.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBTCKeyboard.kext/

Enable keyboard:

sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleUSBTopCase.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBTCKeyboard.kext/

For manipulation, you can use the virtual keyboard:
System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard > Display panel "Keyboard" and "Symbols" in the menu bar


Automator service to print a relative path of selected files printing everything twice I have a service that copy the selected file's paths and put them on the clipboard.

It kinda works, except everything gets printed twice.

The service is like this:  Get selected files from Finder > run script (as arguments) > copy to clipboard.

The script is:

for f in "$@"
do
   echo $f | cut -c 34-
done

I cut some starting characters because I need the path relative to some specific folder, and the size is always the same. I need this to submit the files I changed when committing files to a svn.

Here's an example, I selected three files, ran the service and this is the output:

layouts_index/f1/cadastro/confirmar.php
layouts_index/f2/cadastro/confirmar.php
cadastro/confirmar.php
layouts_index/f1/cadastro/confirmar.php
layouts_index/f2/cadastro/confirmar.php
cadastro/confirmar.php

Is this a problem in the script? Is there a way to fix it using the script or do I need applescript?

Thanks in advance.

Okay, think I got it. This is what I initially set up:

But when I ran that service, I only got a single list of files (which is what you want, but not what you were getting).

Footnote: when you’re having problems with an Automator workflow, a screenshot is really useful.

So then I decided to modify the "Service receives selected" field:

and if you try to run that from within Automator, then you get an error message:

When I go and run that service from outside Automator, I get the duplicated paths that you’re seeing.
So I think your list of selected items is getting picked up twice: once by "Service receives selected", and again by "Get Selected Finder Items".
When Automator goes to copy to the clipboard, it gets the list twice.

If you remove one of them, then you should get what you want.


Install Bootcamp Windows7 off external USB optical drive on Lion system I got my new MBP today and I plan to use MCE's OptiBay to place a second harddisk in the drive bay and put Windows via Bootcamp on it, but I heard / read that, at least with Snow Leopard, it was not really possible to install via an external optical drive with the Windows7 DVD. Has this changed lately or anyone done this successfully? rEfit pops up as a solution, but I wanted to know whether it's possible with the stock bootmanager/bootcamp assistant in Lion?

I have a new MBP 17 with my SuperDrive replaced with a hard drive, and with the SuperDrive mounted via USB externally.  I have not been able to install via BootCamp, due to what I understand is some new issue with USB and EFI.  I haven't heard of people having success with rEFit with the latest machines.  The one solution that seems reliable is to open the machine and put the SuperDrive back into the second bay.  The secondary drive can be put into the primary bay for Windows to be installed to it, and then the SuperDrive again removed and the drive with the BootCamp partition moved back to the optical bay.  I can't verify the

Please note, I have yet to do this myself with my machine, though I plan to attempt it as soon as I get a few free hours.


Where to find missing USB Driver for Windows 7 on MacBook Air 2012? I successfully installed the latest Boot Camp for Windows 7 on the latest MacBook Air 2012.

My only problem is with one driver for USB controller, which it couldn't be found. Any attempt from device manager to find this missing driver searching automatically or inside the Boot Camp folder was not successful.

Where can I find the missing driver?

The Apple-supplied driver have been overwritten probably by a Windows update. After I reinstalled the Apple Bootcamp Drivers, the problem was solved for me.


OSX Locking then logging out Having trouble with OSX on a MacBook Pro.

My system randomly locks up, becoming completely unresponsive to mouse or keyboard, then after a few seconds shows the OSX login screen, at which point it is responding to the mouse and keyboard again. There doesn't seem to be any specific thing causing it, from what I can tell.

I was wondering if this has happened to anyone else and if so do they know how to fix the issue?

If there is any commands that I can run to give more information please let me know. If it happens again I'll be trying to record it to put up on youtube.

Bought from apple site in April 2013 so not an old one.

Spec

2.9 GHz Intel Core i7
8GB 1600MHz DDR Ram
750GB HDD
Intel HD Graphics 4000 512 MB
OSX 10.8.4 (12E55)

Edit

Log 1 on pastebin.com
Log 2 on pastebin.com

Updated with the log from is happening a few minutes ago.

I have experienced similar problems with my MacBook Pro when I drop my earphones near the left side of my keyboard. I believe the MacBook uses magnets to detect the screen lid is closed, so when the magnetic field of the earphones get near the Macbook case it thinks the screen was closed and locks the system.

I have ever since placed my earphones somewhere else, far from the MacBook case and never had this problem again.

Check if you don't have any strong magnetic fields near your computer, even if a bit far from it.


I have Installed Windows 7 on an external drive and I want to replace this drive with a larger capacity one. What should I do? I'm using a Mac Book Pro. I boot my Windows 7 from an external drive. As this drive is getting full, I want to replace it with a bigger one. What should I do to move the  Windows 7 from the one old to the new?

Boot Camp officially only supports installation of Windows onto an internal drive, and isn't required for any installation of Windows onto a dedicated drive. BC's main function is to create a hybrid partition table that will allow both GPT (for Mac) and MBR (for Windows) to coexist on the same drive, and this is Winclone's speciality.

However, if Windows has been installed on its own dedicated drive it will most likely be formatted as NTFS on an MBR partition table. This means you're not restricted to using Winclone and you should be able to use various Windows disk cloning utilities, including Acronis True Image (shipped free with Crucial SSDs, works well). Clonezilla is another package to try, it's open source and free, OS-independent and boots from USB.


Java Plugin for Chrome on OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2 I'm trying to use webex in Chrome.  To click on webex links, I need the java plugin.  However, it appears that a recent OS X Mountain Lion update removed the java plugin from my computer.

When I try to install the java plugin in chrome, I see the following error:

Chrome does not support Java 7. Java 7 runs only on 64-bit browsers and Chrome is a 32-bit browser.

If you download Java 7, you will not be able to run Java content in Chrome and will need to use a 64-bit browser (such as Safari or Firefox) to run Java content within a browser. Additionally, installing Java 7 will disable the ability to use Apple Java 6 on your system.

Fine, so I try to download the Java 6 plugin instead, but it appears that Oracle has no Java 6 plugin.

What gives?  How do I install the java plugin for Chrome?

You are in luck, Apple released a "fix" for this issue:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5559

Basically Apple has provided some terminal commands that move the plug-in from the disabled folder to where it needs to be to work in Chrome.

However you would be better off (read: SAFER!) by using the updated Java plugin from Oracle and a browser that can use that plugin, like Firefox or Safari.


How can I log in to a Mac using an Active Directory account? I have an iMac running OS X 10.7.4. I successfully managed to get the Mac into my company's Active Directory forest using dsconfigad -add example.com -domain example.com ..

I am not, however, able to select a user from the AD to log in to the computer. I guess I missed something. Could someone please put my nose into the correct direction?

dsconfigad -preferred ads01.example.com -a COMPUTERNAME
–domain example.com -u administrator -p "password"

For more information just check the manual (Integrating Active Directory)


Access disk attached to Airport Extreme over internet? According to Apple's product page, the Airport Extreme...

  "...can turn your external USB hard drive into a secure drive you can share across your Wi‑Fi network and access securely over the Internet."

My interpretation of the "access securely over the Internet" part is that if I plug in an external hard drive to an Airport Extreme on my home network, I can get to it from anywhere via the internet... including outside of my home network.

Am I interpreting this correctly? If so, it sounds like a pretty awesome feature! I guess I'm skeptical though because when I Google around for this, I find nothing relevant... including any info from Apple. What gives?

Sometimes, the only way to get an answer is to try it for yourself! So, I went out and bought an Airport Extreme. Bottom line:

YES, YOU CAN ACCESS AN ATTACHED DISK REMOTELY FROM OVER THE INTERNET!

The magic happens with iCloud's Back to My Mac feature. Here's how you do it:

System Preferences > iCloud: Turn on Back to My Mac
Airport Utility > Select AirPort Extreme > Edit > Disks: Tick "Enable file sharing" and "Share disks over WAN"
I chose to secure the shared disks "With device password"... meaning the password that is set for the AirPort Extreme.

Now, when you're away from your local network, just click the name of your AirPort Extreme in a Finder window's sidebar (if you don't see it, make sure "Back to My Mac" is ticked in Finder > Preferences > Sidebar).

Amazingly, that's it. It blows my mind that Apple isn't promoting this more heavily or that there's little talk about it out there. To me, this is a pretty killer feature!


Do Shared Albums take up storage space on iPhone 8/iOS 12? I am running iOS 12.3.1 on an iPhone 8. Currently, the only photos I have in my Photos app are in Shared Albums, mostly created by others. I've cleared everything else, including Recently Deleted.

But, when I go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage, it indicates that the Photos app is taking up 1.3GB of storage. Is that from the Shared Albums thumbnails, or are there phantom photos taking up space in the Photos app?

For sure enabling shared albums takes up local space on both macOS and iOS.

Apple does save space and download lower resolution / lower fidelity thumb nails, and the quality is generally quite good so not everyone notices that you are saving space when you allow iOS to download and save space from iCloud pictures.

You wouldn't be able to know if you have phantom photos unless you remove the iCloud from your settings - that will sync up any data and then remove all local copies - leaving all your iCloud photos intact.

Then you can re-measure and/or restore the entire OS on the iPhone and be sure it's super clean. I've not seen the system report photos when they aren't visible in the app, but it could happen. I have seen "free space" get low when some data goes "missing" and a restore has always cleaned that up for me - as has erase all content and settings on iOS.


iTerm2: Option + Number (0..9) key not working I have a German keyboard layout and need e.g. Option+7 to write a pipe (|). Option+Letter (Letter=a..z) works fine, but Option+Number (Number=0..9) is not producing anything. However, if I press Option+n (~) and then Option+7, surprisingly I get ~|. This behavior is only in iTerm2.

The setting in Profiles >> Keys is Left option key acts as Normal and Right option key acts as Normal.

I found my solution here https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/7098
I'm using French - PC input, for that once I checked Emulate US  Keyboard, it works fine :D


Textmate: removing sidebar on the left Is there a way to remove this sidebar from Textmate?

From the View menu, select Gutter, and click to uncheck all of the selected view options there, i.e. Foldings, Bookmarks, Line Numbers, and Soft Wrap Indicators. Once all of the above are unchecked, the gutter will disappear.


How can I clean install of Sierra after trying Mojave upgrade? I upgraded a Mac to Mojave and found it did not function the same as previous OS. I get a lot of people want to move forward, but I wish to go back to how my Mac was

I now need to clean install Sierra again & try to get back to my comfort zone OS.

How do I plan and execute that?

OK - if you have a good backup of the machine from before the upgrade, this is very much not a straightforward process and at worst, you'll need a second backup drive (or space on Time Machine if you use that as your backup.) or lose your backup when it's the only copy of your data. This is one case where I would probably make a backup copy of the one backup interval until I'm sure going back to Sierra worked as well as a perfect bootable clone of Mojave if your Sierra is broken when you go back to it. Mojave may have brought to light the broken user account / data and not have been the cause of your problems with Preview, etc... Consider if this makes things even worse before you start.

Now, this isn't automatic as Tetsujin points out - data formats change permanently and irreversibly in some cases when you upgrade so you can't roll back the upgrade and have all your data roll back as well.

You lose all the work you made since upgrading unless you manually export and import that.

If you don't have a backup, the erase and reinstall is easy - but you'll have to hand migrate apps and data back and possible re-install things that broke and might even lose an app or two if you can't find a working installer to run now.

I'll assume you use Time Machine and have space for all the Sierra backups and one good Mojave backup and you don't mind losing everything if you make a mistake:

Perform one last Time Machine backup of the Mojave so you can get any files you modified in the time between before the upgrade and now. You are about to erase everything so you need this backup if the
Organize yourself - think about which data really lives on the Mac. If contacts and photos are in iCloud - consider turning that off so your backup / restore is smaller. Get the exact date of the backup you choose to restore to - verify that the things you need are there. Also - make a list of the key apps.
Make sure you have the Sierra installer - see this to get that installer. How can I download an older version of OS X/macOS?
Follow the ease install procedure - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904 - noting you have to bring the Sierra installer if Internet recovery doesn't let you select that version easily.
When Sierra boots, connect your backup you identified above as the "pre Mojave" and get all your apps and data back.
Validate that the iCloud / off computer data is syncing again (google mail and calendars, iCloud, whatever else)
Then go get any documents you added from the Mojave backup
Remember why backups are so important and why computers where you can revert things are awesome. This wouldn't be possible on iOS and other "always forward" platforms.


My Windows 7 Boot Camp partition is missing. Why doesn't Parallels recognize it? I installed Windows 7 on my (month-old) Macbook Pro using boot camp assistant. I basically used defaults throughout, so I don't think there's anything crazy about my setup.

Usually, after doing this, I would be able to see the Windows 7 partition mounted by OS X, but this time it's missing. The option to use my Boot Camp install is grayed out in Parallels, I assume because it doesn't see the Windows 7 volume (since it's missing.)

I am able to boot into both Windows 7 and OS X and use both of them fine. Windows 7 sees the OS X partition.

I can't seem to find any information about this problem, except some whisperings on some forum, which seemed to suggest that my GPT partition map was out of sync with my MBR partition map. Unfortunately, I can't find that forum post again. This might be a red herring!

I tried doing a Disk Repair in OS X disk utility, but it just tells me it couldn't repair it, and that I should backup everything and reformat (it says that something is broken.) Is there a better way? I am comfortable with commandline tools and doing insane things with partitions, especially if the alternative is to start all over again.

Here is the output of doing sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
 2: AF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 -  708837376] HFS+
*3: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 709249024 -     204800] HPFS/QNX/AUX
 4: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 709453824 -  267317248] HPFS/QNX/AUX

Man, I'm sorry I totally haven't had time to look into this and respond to the many people trying to help me. I will probably have some time over the coming holidays.

Try the fdisk option that repairs the MBR? -u I think.