Text-to-speech with 2 languages I am studying French and to practice my pronunciation and to learn the words, I want to have my mac speak the words out loud. My mac should say the word in English, and after that, he should say the French translation of it. So, it should speak in 2 voices alternately. The problem is that I don't know how to get my mac speak 2 languages alternately. I know how to get my mac do text-to-speech and how to change the voices, but I don't know how to change the voice from English to French during the speech.

So in short, I want that my mac speaks the following words: first the English word (in an English voice like 'Daniel', and after that, the French translation of that word in a French voice, like 'Thomas') :

I use the [[slnc 1400]] in order to let my mac know he need to take a break for 1400 milliseconds before starting to say the next word. Otherwise, the voice doesn't take a break.

Does someone know how I can get this done?

Can this be done with AppleScript or Automator? Or maybe there is a program a could use to solve this?

check out the app "Narrator" (Mariner Software) - I've just bought the app for a different purpose (correct pronunciation) - but regarding to the description of the app it should solve you're problem too


Is there a mac utility that can magnify parts of the screen? For some teaching efforts, especially running through tutorials, I'd like to zoom in on parts of my screen to show a room-full of people small text from the projected screen. Is there an OS X utility that will magnify sections of the screen as I move my cursor over it? I know about OmniDazzle but the magnifier is somewhat clunky.

Go to System Preferences, then Accessibility. There will be a column on the left for Zoom, which you can use a keyboard shortcut to activate.

Once activated, hitting ⌥-⌘-+ will zoom the screen.


Locked Mac find my Mac Find my Mac is locked I wanted to know if there is a way to rebuild a Mac with find my Mac being locked to an Apple ID. I can't remember what I put for my 6 digit pin. Also, is there a way to just get back into it so I can back up my information.

You need to visit an Apple Store (Genius Bar appointment) to get it unlocked.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204756

How do I unlock my Mac?
Once you locate your Mac, you can unlock it by
entering your passcode on the lock screen. If you forget your
passcode, you'll need to take your Mac to an Apple Authorized Service
Provider along with your proof of purchase.


Switching between open pdfs in Preview without losing your place If I have multiple PDFs open in preview, as shown with the "table of contents" sidebar, if I click on one of the other documents and then return to the current document, it returns me to page 1 instead of the page I'm on (in this case, page 9). Is there any way to have preview return me to the page I'm on?

AFAIK only with a work-around:

add a bookmark with cmdD in your currently visible PDF
choose another PDF read a bit and add a second bookmark there
switch to bookmark view with altcmd5
choose the bookmark of your first PDF in the sidebar
You may delete the bookmark using the context menu


Can iOS NFC reader display notes? Can the native iOS NFC reader be used for simple notes?
I can program all tags with links, actions etc. As soon I store a simple text the native reader just won't read the tag.

Yes - you could embed the notes in a database and trigger display from the encoding on the tag.
If you’re writing specific content into an NFC and asking how the OS handles arbitrary items, we might need a substantial edit to the question and possibly move it to a different site, but many apps do this.
Apple has code ready to run, frameworks, WWDC videos and more on how the capabilities and hardware and software work together.

https://developer.apple.com/wwdc20/10140


Free space from Message app I have an iPhone that is running out of space. I have added the Google Photos app and sync'd all photos to it. I deleted photos from the native phone app. That freed up space but now I have an issue with my Messages app. It has several gigs of space taken according to the storage panel in settings. Message is the number #1 app using my storage, a few gigs! I went into Message and deleted all of the messages but it did not register that the space is saved, so it still lists it in the storage panel as using a lot of space. I have about 20 megabytes left on my phone.

Go to Setting>Messages>Message History> Keep Messages> Choose 30 days.  It will delete the ones taking up your storage.  You can switch it back to Forever if you don't want your new messages deleted in 30 days.


Rebooting a headless Mac Mini I have an old Mac Mini on which I installed Ubuntu to be used as a test server.
I completely formatted the hard disk before installing ubuntu, installation went fine and everything is working; so far so good.

The problem is that when I access the machine via ssh, and do a reboot, it doesn't reboot.

I get the message "going to reboot NOW" then I get a black screen as if its rebooting but then nothing happens. The machine is still running, but it is as if no restart signal has been sent to the bios.

Any ideas?

Edit1

So I found the problem. The machine simply won't start without a monitor attached to it. A keyboard is not necessary, but a monitor is a must.

I tried looking around how to access the bios in mac-mini and it looks like mac has no bios but instead has Apple Open Firmware, which can be accessed by pressing Cmd + O + A. I have a standard Windows keyboard so I tried pressing windows logo key + o + a but it doesn´t seem to work

So now I'm trying to find out how to start a Mac Mini without a monitor attached to it.

**Edit 2: SOLUTION **
Answering my own forgotten question a couple of years later, but here goes
You need to convince mac that it is attached to a monitor, this can be achieved by using a resistor on two holes in the VGA port, like  220Ω resistor. VGA voltage levels are 0.7V
Check out this solution
If by the time of reading this solution the attached link is down, then google for this "headless VGA headless vga mac"
If by the time of reading this solution there is no google anymore, then I'm dead anyway and I don't care

Older Mac Minis don't like running headless (without a monitor)

Here's one solution involving some cunning use of a display adaptor and a 100 Ohm resistor.


How to open older .imovieproject files (folders) in iMovie '09 How do I open older .imovieproject files (they're actually folders folders) in iMovie '09?
I don't want to import the assets of the old project, I want the actual project to open on iMovie '09.

You can't, actually. iMovie '08 and subsequent versions are a completely different program from iMovie HD 6 and previous versions.

However, the last released version of iMovie HD does still run on modern Macs. It used to be a free download for users of iLife '08, but Apple has since removed it (IMHO, to "encourage" power users to upgrade to Final Cut Express, since iMovie '08 was utterly useless if you happened to have been one of the few who knew what they were doing).

It is still possible to download and install iMovie HD through some avenues of questionable legality.


How do I hide an icon? I just saw this question and answer:
My Notes app accidentally got deleted from my iPhone 4s...

So apparently it's possible to erroneously hide system icons.  How can I do this?  I'm sick of the Weather and Stock icons taking up space.  My iPhone 4 with iOS 5.1 isn't jail broken.

You can't hide them except by putting them away in a folder - I keep one called "useless" just for stuff like the stock calculator, weather, stock apps - wish I could delete them without jail breaking.

A folder is easily created by tapping and holding an icon until they start to shake, then dragging one icon on top of another. The lower icon will take on a border and if the icon is released both are placed inside the newly created folder.

There is at least one icon that cannot be hidden in this way, the Newsstand icon. It can be repositioned but will not create (see above) or allow itself to be put inside a folder. It is the only icon I know of so far with this special behaviour.


Is it possible to remove an account from Mail, Contacts or Calendars of the iOS Settings app whilst keeping data synced within other categories? When navigating to the Settings app on an iOS device, there are three categories of setting that allow for an account to be added - either Mail, Contacts or Calendars (adding an account can be achieved by opening the respective category, tapping "Accounts" and then on "Add Account"). What isn't immediately obvious, however, is whether it's possible to remove an account from one of the above categories, whilst keeping the data synced from another - for example, I may wish to remove an Exchange ActiveSync mailbox from the native Mail app, but keep my contacts syncing from that same account within the iOS Contacts app. So - my question. Is it possible to either add or remove an account from the Mail, Contacts or Calendars section of the iOS Settings app - whilst keeping data from that same account synced within the other categories that it hasn't been deleted from?

In a word, yes.
Navigate to
Settings > Mail > Accounts
Select the account you want to edit/change
There will be on/off buttons allowing you to selectively sync only those parts of the account you want.
In the screen capture below I have only Mail turned on. I could just as easily turn Mail off and have any combination of contacts, calendars, reminders or notes on.


What tiny thing in Lion makes you smile or has caught you off guard? I would like to call for a place to list some little things that surprise you about Lion. There are so many articles and lists of all the new features with information overload, I would rather focus this spot of the site on tiny delights with a note why it makes a difference to you.

Please one topic per answer, this isn't a race to enumerate everything that changed. This isn't the place for massive topics like the implications of FileVault 2 on your entire workflow - just a stroll past some little gems, fun oddities or subtle changes specific to Lion.

Answers must relate to why or how you use the feature - links to official tips and tutorials are great, but the intent is to collect little gems that affect how the system gets used. Expect answers that are not specific to lion or lack a personal use case to be heavily edited or deleted.

Using the FaceTime camera to add signatures to PDFs in Preview.

Click the annotations button in the toolbar and use the drop down menu next to the signature icon to grab your signature from a piece of paper you have written it on. Then just click and drag in the document to place it. Haven't really needed it yet, but it's implemented so nicely that I did it just for fun.


Recover iPad Safari bookmarks overwritten by iCloud My wife had a lot of bookmarks on Safari for iPad. From my macbook I was using Safari, with other bookmarks and some day I tried iCloud, so my wife's iPad bookmarks were overwritten with my macbook's Safari bookmarks. I wonder whether there is some way to recover my wife's bookmarks before she kills me.

The only way is to restore from a useful backup, if you have one.

If you sync the iPad to iTunes and use Time Machine regularly, you would likely have the appropriate backup to restore from. In that case:

Restore the iPad backup set from Time Machine from a date before you overwrote the bookmarks. The location of the backup is ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ (you can get to it by pressing Cmd+Shift+G in the Finder and entering this path).
Connect the iPad, run iTunes and restore from the backup.

If you use iCloud Backup, then you can restore from iCloud and choose which date's backup you'd like to restore from. You can check if you're using iCloud Backup by opening the Settings app on the iPad, then going to the iCloud submenu and looking at the status right below "Storage & Backup", where it would say "iCloud Backup is off." (or "iCloud Backup is on.", as the case may be).

In any case, keep in mind that restoring from a backup means you lose all application data changes after the date of the backup.

Also see Restoring from a previous iCloud backup.


Is there a way to download a Skype broadcast on Mac? I was sent a link to the video recording made in Skype, and can watch it on the web-based player.

I'd like to download the broadcast to play it on a different device, process it via other tools.

Is that possible at all?

Sure - there are all sorts of tools to download video when you have a URL.

One that's super easy for me and should be for anyone that has spent a little time learning the bash shell / command - line in the Terminal.app is

https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

Rather than downloading that alone, I would recommend you start with Homebrew package manager:

https://brew.sh

If you are going to struggle with the command line - this makes it easier to know you've got a good setup, then install the youtube-dl tool (and it's works to download far more then just YouTube, but that's the origin / elephant in the room place where people want to get videos these days).

brew install youtube-dl

Then just copy / paste the URL to see about the Skype download. If you prefer an app you can click, I'd start with the VLC player and open the network location to see how it sees the Skype video.

https://www.videolan.org


Macbook Pro 2011 white screen - can't install MacOSX I've recently tried to update my Macbook Pro late 2011 using dosdude's Catalina patches, as it is not officially supported. It worked fine, but after using it for a few days, it suddenly froze and crashed. I tried to restart it, got at the login screen but it would just try to sign in and freeze again on a white screen. I also have red horizontal lines in my screen. I have tried going to recovery mode, doing a SMC, doing a NRAM reset, going into safe mode, but nothing seems to work. I also tried the hardware test which told me there was no trouble. The internet recovery does boot up, but after entering my WiFi password it starts loading and eventually gets stuck on a white screen again. Even trying to use an installer USB get's till the point whether I would like to start from my Macintosh HD or USB, but after loading, it just freezes again.

I went to a even worse path by resetting the SSD, because I found some posts telling that the SSD might be corrupted. This means I have no backup unfortunately.

What can I do to resolve this issue?

EDIT:

The comments suggested to record it. I have a image of the last logging (using verbose mode) that I could see before the screen went dark and started bootlooping.

Thanks to @Allan, I was able to find out how to solve my issue. I did the following:

I had another Mac's SSD be cloned using a program called carbon copy cloner to my Macbook's SSD.
I ran the High Sierra installer on that Mac, specifying the Macbook's SSD as final medium (this added a recovery HD)
Boot into single user mode to tweak the NVRAM using this guide, and this question was also very relevant.
Step 3 needs to be redone every time you update your OS. Note: your brightness function keys will also not work anymore!

Important command for temporary fix:

sudo nvram fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9:gpu-power-prefs=%01%00%00%00

Transcript of the MacRumors thread in case it get's removed:

First of all, it is possible to successfully boot a MBP to OS X while still using the failed GPU, after you remove the AMD drivers by booting in command line mode (CMD+S) and entering these commands:
1) fsck -fy (to check a disk)
2) mount -uw / (mount a root filesystem with read/write permissions)
3) sudo mkdir /AMD_Kexts/ (make a directory to store the AMD drivers in case you'll need them in future)
4) sudo mv /System/Library/Extensions/AMD*.* /AMD_Kexts/ (move the AMD drivers)
5) sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/ (remove the AMD drivers cache)
6) sudo mkdir /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/ (just in case OS X will be dumb and will not recreate this directory, I am creating it for OS X)
7) sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions/ (to update the timestamps so that new driver caches - without AMD drivers - will be definitely rebuilt)
8) sudo umount / (umount a partition to guarantee that your changes are flushed to it)
9) sudo reboot


Is there a guideline for the max number of active fonts I manage my fonts through FontExplorer X. Today I noticed that I have 770 fonts activated. All legitimately licensed, by the way. The Adobe CS family installs a bunch, I've purchased and have received many more from friends: I could easily activate a 1,000+ fonts. (I'm referring to individual font files, not 1,000 font families).

At different times I've heard that it's not a good practice to have too many fonts active at once, but I can't find any guidelines as to what constitutes too many, and I really don't understand where the overhead is spent. Is it simply the font-listing UI's in different apps, or does every active font actually bring some overhead at a general OS performance level?

Let me know if my inquiry is unclear.

I would say you are the slowest part of the equation in most cases. If you find yourself slowing down since you have too many choices, slim down your fonts. If not, don't worry until you notice a program you need to be responsive lagging.

On the CPU side, any computer will track 10,000 files as easily as it tracks 1. Unless you have software that is really poorly programmed and refuses to render a font menu until it loads a sample of each of the 1000 font faces - you'll likely not ever notice a slow down. No one cleans out their iTunes library since there are 10,000 or 40,000 music files since you never access them all at once. The smart programmer makes an ordered list to hold the playlists and only references the files when you need to play a specific song.

You can test this yourself by opening a word processor and a spreadsheet and open the font picker. Time how fast it loads and then go in and deactivate 900 of the font faces and repeat the measurement.

You'll probably have slowness the first time the program or the OS has to traverse the list of active fonts and do some caching. After that, the speed to open the UI should be basically constant whether you have 100, 1000 or 10000 items to load.


How do I search Recent Calls on iPhone? I am looking for a phone number in my history. All I know is the area code 808, which will narrow it down immensely, and its having occurred between a month and two months ago.

How can I search the call history for the area code?

iPhone 5s, iOS 7.1.2

Searching for contact numbers is possible through FaceTime. Type some digits of the that contact number into the address bar and Facetime will automatically search recent calls. You have to connect your iPhone to a Mac where your iCloud account should be logged in then FaceTime will automatically sync all your call history from your iPhone and then your are able to search a contact number through typing some digits in recent dial call's text field inside FaceTime.


Troubles with resetting PRAM I followed Apple's instruction to reset PRAM ("Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys before the gray screen appears.") and the only thing that happened was that my Mac rebooted repeatedly until I stopped holding the short-cut. After releasing the keyboard OS was loaded but without any startup sound and my original problem remained (see Original problem)

I found out that not being able to reset PRAM may be caused by the user password, so I tried to disable the password request but this did not work either. This seems to be because of FireVault which I deactivated a couple of hours ago. My system is still encoding so it might take another couple of hours until I can see whether this approach was useful.

Does anyone have another advice?

Original problem: No sound, no micro

My MacBook Pro (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G56)) was on stand-by all the night. When I opened my Mac this morning I had no sound and my micro did not work either (A call via skype failed (I could not hear anybody and they did not hear me) but the camera worked. I cannot hear music via iTunes nor any other application. Also I cannot hear the click sound when one tries to turn up volume.). Therefore I thought resetting PRAM would be the solution but I failed in doing so as described.

Based on what you said, it looks like your PRAM did reset. I usually let it go 3 times before letting my Mac restart. The problem then lays outside of the realm of PRAM.

Have you tried checking the inbuilt application "Audio MIDI Setup" to confirm what the Inputs and Outputs are? And are the Inputs and Outputs turned up?

If that doesn't work, have you tried doing a SMC reset? Those usually deal with the problems relating to system software.


macOS Mojave dual monitor seperate spaces force dock on one screen I'm relatively new to macOS. I'm using macOS Mojave and I have 2 monitors. I want the dock to stay on my right screen.
My problem is when I move the mouse to the the bottom center on my left screen the dock permanently changes it's location to the left screen until I do the same again on my right screen.

The following solutions do not work for me for reasons below:

I don't want the dock to move to right. I want it at the bottom.
I don't want to disable separate spaces because I want to use this feature.

Is there any way to do this besides these 2 options?

I use 2 external  monitors on my MacBook Pro. The dock jumping around drove me crazy.It is by far my biggest MacOS gripe.  I tried the auto-hiding dock but didn’t like it either.
So today I installed a 3rd party app ubar 4. It seems to work well and so far I’m very pleased. The status bar stays where it supposed to. It is very customizable and I am tuning it to my taste. It does cost $30, but it fixes a problem that Apple should have addressed.

The paradigm is similar in some respects to the menu system the Mac had pre-OS X. TBH I was never a fan of the Dock. I felt it was a step backward,but I got used to it.
But to-date Ubar  is the best solution I’ve found.


Remove Mac OS X from disk without erasing it I have many hard drives on my Mac. Several of them have one version or another of macOS. Most importantly:
Disk A: Sierra. I boot from this disk
Disk B: /Users directory and High Sierra. I do not boot from this disk.
I want to remove High Sierra from Disk B without touching my Users directory, any user data, or erasing the disk.
How should I proceed?

The simplest and safest method would be to make sure your backup is up-to-date, erase the disk and restore that part which you want to keep.
Other methods run the risk of deleting something you want to keep or keeping something that you want to delete.


How do I force a "Waiting" file to upload to iCloud? In this question, I learned that the "dotted-line cloud" icon in OS X's iCloud file view means "Waiting to upload". While writing a document in Byword today, I saved it and found it had been marked with this icon - there were several other documents, months old, that still had the "Waiting" icon as well.

Is there any way to, if not force, gently encourage these files to upload to iCloud?

I was concerned I'd have to save these documents to my local filesystem, delete them from iCloud, and then perhaps save them to iCloud over again, but it turned out that simply re-opening the "Waiting" documents, making a trivial change to them (such as deleting a character and then adding it in again), and then saving the file caused them to be synced successfully.


iOS Shortcuts App: How can I convert my Workflow to a service app? Back in AppleScript or Apple Automator it is possible to convert workflows to a compiled read-only application.

Is it possible to hide, compile or convert my iOS Shortcuts workflow to a self-running service, too? So far I don't see any way to lock or prevent changes to my workflow.

This isn’t possible. You would need to compile an app to import and run these “locked” scripts.

Xcode lets you install your own apps without needing a paid developer account.


Need an OSX cd to reset admin password Issue - father in-law has alzheimers (early but impacting)
Wants files from Apple laptop and can't remember password(s)
Shop who set it up for him wants $$$s to unlock and reset and I said what a lot of BS, but they didn't supply an OS disk with the machine so can I (or he if there is something he can do) get an OS disk to reset the admin password?
PS. This is a first time foray for me into the world of Apples - he wants the "family tree" files.....
Any ideas - inbetween times we are scouring bits of paper with notes and old passwords etc.....
D.

Although the bmike's answer will probably work, I suggest to try something more leightweight first. This article describes the procedure:

Boot your Mac's Recovery Partition by pressing cmd+r at startup
Go to Utilities > Terminal
Enter resetpassword
In the GUI select the disk and user and enter a new password.
Press Save. (Reset of home directory should not be necessary)


Bootcamp touchpad drivers fail to install on Windows 8 RTM I've just upgraded my bootcamp partition from Windows 7 to Windows 8 RTM on a MacBook Air (2011 Core i7) and have been utterly and entirely unable to get the touchpad to work.

Things I've tried:

Uninstalling and re-installing the Bootcamp package
Removing and adding the specific two touchpad devices in Device Manager

The touchpad worked correctly under Windows 7 and works under OSX, so this appears to be a Bootcamp/Windows8 issue, rather than a hardware problem.

Any solutions?

Go to Device Manager and uninstall (and delete drivers) for the two
  Trackpad devices then rescan for hardware. After which, then go find
  your Boot Camp drivers, and don't run the full setup, but instead
  find the folder that specifically has the driver install packages in
  them and install the ones that are along the lines of "Apple
  Multitouch Trackpad." After this, go to your Boot Camp options to make
  sure that it now sees your Trackpad.   You should have full
  functionality restored after this.

Did get the answer from this forum post: How do I get my Macbook Pro trackpad working on Windows 8


Can .mp4 files infect my Mac with malware/adware/spyware? Coming from Windows background, I'm usually very paranoid about the files I download, but one time I did something stupid - I downloaded some video files that were hosted in https://openload.co/ (not a malicious website, but it does store files that can have just about anything on them).

I realized that this might not have been a good idea a few days later, and I deleted the files from my Mac. One potential issue is that I backed up my Mac to an external hard drive as well (so that drive got the files too), but I also deleted the questionable video files from there.

My questions: could Mac malware hide itself inside a .mp4 file? Even if I open the file, wouldn't there be some window asking about installing a malicious program or could one just install & run without requiring an administrator's password? And finally, if it was malware, could it have gotten past macOS's sandboxing and infected my other files, and potentially my entire backup disk as well?

A couple of details:

Video is basic .mp4 file
When opened in a video player, it plays as expected
I have both VLC and QuickTime installed on my Mac

Exploits through any other type of file than a .dmg disk file are rare on macOS. To harm a Mac with any other file type than an application, said file (be it .mp4, .mp3, .pdf, .png, .jpg, etc.) would have to exploit a vulnerability in the operating system or media player. If you are using a standard video player (like the latest version of QuickTime) you'll be almost immune to any malware-laced .mp4 files that probably don't exist anyway.

No hacker in their right mind would lace a video file with malware: it's just too hard to get it to work across multiple video players and operating systems, and it's so much easier to get malware on a user's machine using .dmg files. So I highly doubt a .mp4 file would contain malware that would affect your Mac, which would almost certainly be immune to it anyway with the latest operating system and media player.

So without even answering your follow-up questions yet, you are safe. If you want to feel even safer (and truly ensure that your Mac is unaffected), you can download an antivirus app like Avast or BitDefender as I explain in this answer.

To answer your follow-up questions: if this "video" file was really an application file, your Mac would notify you that it's an application from an unknown developer, force you to go to System Preferences to allow installations of unknown applications, and insist that you type in an administrator's password before allowing this application to run any code.

So even if this was an application file (.dmg) masquerading as an audio or video file, you'd still be safe. Read more about how you're still safe even if you downloaded a malicious application file (so long as you don't manually install it) in this answer.

tl;dr: you're not going to get  malware from downloading a video or audio file.

Edit 1: A notable exception to this "a file can't harm your Mac unless it's an application" rule is the Word .docx macro. Word documents (and documents for Excel and the rest of Open Office, thanks WGroleau) can try to convince you to run them as a macro, essentially turning them into mini-applications. These can be malware, so never run a downloaded Word document as a macro.  Read more about Word macro malware.

Edit 2: Email attachments can look like .mp3 files or .jpg files, but actually be .dmg files disguised as such. Whereas when you download a file from the web you'll get a prompt that lets you know what file type you're about to download, you may have no such warning when opening an email attachment. Thus, don't open a suspicious email attachment even if it claims to be a .mp4/.mp3/.jpg/.png/.pdf format thinking it's necessarily safe.

Edit 3: If you don't want to install an antivirus app, you can use the website virustotal.com to upload a file and have multiple antivirus engines scan it at once, in the cloud.

Woah, so many edits here.


Outlook 2011 Keychain entry rewritten - prompting for password after 10.10.5 update - keychain issue? After applying the Yosemite 10.10.5 update and Security Update 2015-004 (1.0), my installation of Outlook 2011 prompts me for a password every time I check for mail. I have tried repairing Keychain Access a few times (on Verify, it says there is never a problem) and deleting/recreating the keychain login entries for Outlook, but I continue to be prompted to reenter my credentials:

After entering the credentials, I show as connected and can send/receive all my mail. There is also a login entry displayed in Keychain Access. But the prompt still appears on every send/receive.

I have seen this solution of adding an additional backslash to the beginning of the domain (i.e. \domain\user instead of domain\user ) but doing so returns a bad user/pass error.

The 10.10.5 update description says it "improves compatibility with certain email servers when using Mail" - thinking this might be a clue?

My coworker's mac (which hasn't been updated) does not have this issue, and my iPhone and Win7/Outlook 2007 installs are receiving mail from the same account with no login problems. Mail server settings have not changed (I manage it).

EDIT

Reviewing the keychain entry after getting the wrong credentials prompts, I see that the username has been changed from domain\username to username@example.com but the prompt keeps coming up suggesting domain\username. (Attempting username@example.com fails with bad user/pass error.) The change to the keychain entry occurs when relaunching Outlook or after a period of time.

The Exchange "autodiscover" settings changes the server URL to the WSDL resource.

So, mail.domain.com becomes: mail.domain.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx everytime you check for mail.

To fix this, you have to tell Outlook to stop asking for autodiscover settings
using AppleScript editor:

tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
set background autodiscover of exchange account "NameOfAccount" to false
end tell

credit: http://www.officeformachelp.com/2011/01/exchange-autodiscover-workaround-for-advanced-settings/


How do I get a refund on an iOS app I just bought? I just bought an iPhone app knowing that it may or may not provide the feature which was the entire reason for me buying it.  I figured I could always get a refund if it doesn't do what I want.  It doesn't.  But now I've realized I don't know how to get a refund.  Is it possible?

In iTunes, go to Store ->View My Account ->Purchase History. Select Report a Problem. Fill out the form explaining what happened, and Apple will get back to you with information about whether your refund has been approved or denied.


How can I remove this alert badge from my settings icon? I'm on the iOS 12.1.2 version.
I have no other alerts in my settings.

But this just won't go away:

I think it's related to prodding for iCloud upgrades, but I'm just not seeing anything at all. How can I get rid of this badge?

It's a bug in recent version(s?) of iOS. The fix is to log out of iCloud and log back in. I have the badge as well, but haven't tried the fix yet.
From reddit:

So on a hunch, I signed out of iCloud and back in. Badge gone!
When I signed back in, there was a prompt about not having backed up in over 7 days. So maybe there is a bug that's causing that to lurk under the hood somewhere.


Re-colorize iTunes/iPhoto sidebar icons? I simply can't abide Lion's/Apple's dedication to monochrome sidebars everywhere in Lion. The SIMBL technique still works in the Finder, but the new 10.6 version of iTunes breaks all the previous hacks I've tried. What I'd love is to be able to edit the iTunes.rsrc file (and similar) myself but I don't know of any way to do that in OS X. Is there a way to edit (copies of) .rsrc files? Failing that, is there a way to change the depressing gray sidebar icons in iTunes 10.6?

There's an app called Lion Tweaks that can do what you want (at least with the Finder icons). There's also a Mountain Lion version.


iCloud photo library on iOS 9.0.1 only uploaded when screen is on and photos app is open I recently upgraded my iCloud storage plan to 50GB to accommodate my ~20GB photo library on my iPhone 6+ running iOS 9.0.1.

I then turned on iCloud photo Library and waited for the upload to begin. It seems to only be uploading anything when the screen is lit and the photos up is open.

I am judging this by the indicator of the number of photos remaining not changing and no network activity when the photos app isn't open.

Is this whats supposed to happen? I'll attach a screen shot of what its showing in settings > iCloud > photos

In the screen shot it will stay stuck on 3607, unless i open photos app.

Any ideas?

Thanks :)

I'm having the same problem, except that no even opening the photos app makes the photos upload. They just won't. The iCloud > Photos tab on Settings just says "Low Disk Space - Uploading 20 photos" and it never shows a progress bar or anything. I have selected "Optimize iPhone Storage" because I'm obviously low on space.

My understanding is that you might need to clear some more space for the "optimization" to take place.

Open Settings App - under Storage & iCloud usage - compare the Used/Available numbers with Photos & Camera storage used currently. If you have less than 1 GB available, try clearing other data and then powering off and on the phone.

under Background App Refresh - consider turning that on before the restart above (or another restart) in case Photos respects the global refresh settings.

A more drastic measure might be clearing all photos and letting the phone try to start over with no photos, but depending on how large your library is, that might take some time and battery and network bandwidth to download.


Copying old photos from an iPhone to a PC A couple years ago, I switched from Android to iPhone 7 Plus. The person helping me at the Sprint store transferred all my photos from Android phone onto their computer, and then to my iPhone.

I need to get these photos off of my iPhone, but they don't show up in iTunes, and neither in my iCloud. What can I do other than sending myself hundreds of emails with the photos attached?

If you are able to view the photos in Photos app, an easier approach would to use a cloud storage service such as Dropbox or Google Drive.

Just create a free account with either one of them, install the iOS client app. Both the apps offer photo sync service where they upload the contents of Camera roll onto their server.

Once you have all the photos backed up, you can simply install the client app on your PC and sync off the photos to your computer.

Dropbox - iOS app
Google Drive - iOS app


Can I place a Western Digital RE3 WD1002FBYS in a MacPro1,1? I have a bare WD1002FBYS and am wondering if I can place this into a MacPro1,1 (the first Desktop MacPro).

Yes, just like any other 3.5" SATA harddrive, provided you have a spare bay to populate.


Protect each user account in Lion? I have enabled File Vault in Lion on a shared computer with several user accounts.  Is it possible to encrypt each user home directory such that other users cannot access their data?  As it stands, I can go on the terminal and (using sudo) access all the files in all accounts.  I'd like to be able to prevent this.

As you know - the root user can undo anything that another admin/root does, but since all calls to sudo are logged, so you could use that to deter and detect access. If you only need to discourage idle copying/browsing, the command below will restrict access to all but the root user and the owner of the directory.

sudo chmod go-rx /Users/username

Unless you are going to physically restrain the mac (to prevent access to the insides) and use a firmware password to prevent booting from an alternate OS where the "bad actor" can bypass all account restrictions and permissions, you'll need to consider installing Truecrypt or another actual encryption tool. It has a plethora of options to encrypt files, folders, entire hard drives, etc.

Also, for other hardening tips refer to this NSA document:

http://www.nsa.gov/ia/_files/factsheets/macosx_hardening_tips.pdf

The advantage of this over the legacy Filevault is it's more likely to be supported going forward and all of your encryption eggs are not stored in Apple's basket using just Filevault.


How to batch rename files via Terminal using the file's date as filename? I have a bunch of photos and videos from different sources and want to normalize the file names using Terminal. I looked at a bunch of different tools from NameChanger to Automator and Finder itself. NameChanger does not allow more than one action at a time and Finder and Automator won't allow me to set the date format with a format string.

I've been playing around with a few bash functions and found that

stat -f "%Sm" -t "%Y-%m-%d %H.%M.%S" file.ext

produces the date time format I'm after.

Yet I found that

for file in *.*
do
    mv "$file" echo stat -f "%Sm" -t "%Y-%m-%d %H.%M.%S" "$file"
done

returns

-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `done'

I'm not really proficient with bash scripting so excuse any incompetence in the examples above.

What I want to do is remove all of the base name of the file (everything before .jpg) and replace it with the date and time format I got from stat earlier.

For example:

20160708_151344000_iOS.jpg   --> 2016-07-08 15.13.44.jpg
WP_20140915_02_03_15_Raw.jpg --> 2014-09-15 02.03.15.jpg

How do I need to do this?

for f in *.*; do
    echo mv "$f" "$(stat -f '%Sm' -t '%Y-%m-%d %H.%M.%S' "$f").${f##*.}"
done

Or as a one-liner:

for f in *.*; do echo mv "$f" "$(stat -f '%Sm' -t '%Y-%m-%d %H.%M.%S' "$f").${f##*.}"; done

In either case, remove the echo command after testing.

The ${f##*.} portion of the command get the extension of $f so you can use the glob *.* vs. using an extension in the for f in, i.e. for f in *.* vs. for f in *.jpg


Locations to switch between WiFi and Ethernet I have a new MacBook Pro and would like to know how to manage my connectivity within my own home with the following scenario

I have WiFi and can connect to that no problem

I also have a TP-LINK Powerline box in my main plug socket which I connect to via a Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (setup for a desk at home)

When I plug my ethernet cable in, the TP-LINK box doesn't pick up that the MacBook is connected. It is not faulty because it worked OK with my previous Windows PC

My question is: is this a situation whereby having 2 locations/configurations (one WiFi only, 1 Ethernet) would be the solution? Or is there a setting I do not have enabled which is causing the TP-LINK box to not recognise the MacBook ethernet connection when it is plugged in?

Many thanks

The issue may be the order in which your Mac is looking to connect to a network. You network preference pane should list options like these for connecting to networks:

First check what the status is for your ethernet connection. Mine says "Cable Unplugged" because it is. If your says it is plugged in, but your connectivity is still via Wi-Fi, click the gear icon below that list and select "Set Service Order":

You'll then get a list like that allows you to reorder your network connections:

Simply drag "ethernet" to the top and that should solve your problem.


How can I correct/delete iOS holidays on iDevice I discovered a number of strange entries in iCal on my iDevices which I didn't enter, and also were just on this device and neither my Mac nor the other device.

After a little search I found that my iPhone has a calendar for German holidays and the iPad a calendar for Swiss holidays. This is rather strange as I live in Austria and haven't visited these countries since the time I got these devices (>2 years). These calendars are in the section where also birthdays are and can not be edited or deleted. They also don't show up on iCal on the mac. I also checked the timezone on the devices - but this is set to Vienna - Austria.

So how would I fix them to Austrian holidays? - or at least delete so I won't be irritated by them.

AFAIK, you cannot delete the Holiday Calender on your iOS device. However, you can hide it via Calender app. In the Calendar app, tap Calendars in the bottom center and uncheck the Holiday calendar. And, here's how you can add Austrian holidays to your iPhone and iPad calender:

Go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars
Now, tap on Add Account
Scroll down and tap on Other
Tap on “Add Subscribed Calendar”
Type in “http://laudatio.com/florian/ical/AustrianHolidays.ics” and press “Next”, and then press “Save”
Press "Done". Congrats, you've added Austrian Holidays to your calendar.

You might find this useful: http://www.igeeksblog.com/how-to-add-us-holidays-to-iphone-calendar/ Hope it helps!

FYI: My iPhone has a calender for Indian holidays.


VPN Passthrough problems with Airport Extreme Today I started trying to work from a network that uses the Airport Extreme version 7.7.1.  Typically I use a VPN client (Viscosity) which gives me access to the various servers that my company runs on.  I can connect to the open VPN without any issue but am experiencing mixed results from there forward.

Once connected to the VPN I can access a couple of the servers through a web browser and SSH from the command line but timeout while trying to connect to the rest.  If I bypass the router and plug directly into the modem via ethernet everything works perfectly.

I've tried setting up port forwarding on the Airport Extreme with no success and disabling "Back to My Mac" settings.  There are a number a threads out there where people have had issues with VPN and the Airport Extreme but nothing quite like this.

I'm baffled why I can connect to the VPN and some of the servers while others are failing.   Again, I am sure that the VPN/servers are configured properly as this problem goes away when I remove the router from the picture.

Please let me know where I'm going wrong!

The problem was that the Airport Extreme router was configured to use the same range of IP addresses as the VPN, so while I was able to connect to the VPN there was some issues when trying to SSH into some of the servers where there was an IP conflict.  It is possible to change the "IPv4 DHCP Range" in the advanced network options of the Airport Extreme which solved my issue.


How do I remove contacts on my sim card on iPhone? By accident I imported some contacts to my contacts app in my iPhone. I do not need them there. So, If I need to avoid to import them again  by accident I would like to remove them from my sim. How can I do this?

iOS can't write to your SIM card, so you won't be able to do this on an iPhone. You have two options: find a friend with a phone that can write to SIM cards, install your SIM in their phone and erase it; or, just get a new SIM card from your carrier.


Submitting to the appstore: Once an app is reviewed by Apple, does it automatically go live on the app store? I'm not a developer yet but need a quick answer to this question.
I know when submitting an iPhone App to the App Store, Apple is reviewing the App precisely.

I wonder how this works. Lets say the app is fine and Apple says it's ok, does the app go live on the app store immediately or does the developer get a OK-Message and can "publish" the app later on?

It's actually good you're not a developer since the inner workings of the review queue are generally cloaked under an NDA. Once you join, Apple has a dedicated site for you to ask questions like this and learn how the approval and sale process works. I believe it's common knowledge that you can list an "on sale" date when you submit an app for review and then change it later to move it earlier once it's approved, but I wouldn't want to be held to the details of how it works today.


How do I stop email addresses from spam autocompleting in Apple Mail? Every single time I open an email to address to my mom, I see this, and absolutely nothing I've tried will get rid of it:

This is absolutely ridiculous. I don't want to see porn spam in my auto complete addresses! There has GOT to be a way to turn this off!

I've gone so far as to search for and eliminate every trace of every email originating from that address in my inbox, junk and trash, quit and restarted Mail and it's still there.

Update: It looks like I may have finally solved this by some obscure post I found on the web. In short, I had to open the Contacts app and disable "Show contacts found in Apps". It seems there was some kind of heinous loop happening here: Contacts was automatically finding contacts based on the emails I received, and Mail was apparently using my Contacts to auto-fill that address, but there was no setting anywhere in Mail to control this!

One possible option is to delete the file that stores all that data. That file is stored on:

/Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/

There is a file called:  MailRecents-v4.abcdmr

Seems like that file stores all the autocomplete address.

If you delete that file you will lose all others previous recipents address. So I'll follow the following steps:

In Mail.app: Menu Window > Previous Recipents. There copy all address that you don't have stored in your contacts and you want to keep
Close Mail.app
Backup MailRecents-v4.abcdmr file by copying it to desktop (for example)
Delete all files called MailRecents-v4.abcdmr stored on /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/ folder. You will see another MailRecents-v4.abcdmr-* files. They store other info of the autocomplete address.
Open Mail.app and try to create an email.

PS: If something goes wrong opening the Mail.app on the step 5., restore the backup files that you copy to the desktop.


Since upgrading to version 10.0.1 of iTunes, playback is bumpy Since I upgraded to version iTunes (10.0.1), playback is bumpy and full of hiccups. Typically, for video playback the video will freeze for a second or two at random times, and then skip to the current location in time, meaning that content will be skipped over. This happens every time I play videos now, and it is seriously starting to annoy me.

For mp3 playback, sporadic hiccups seem to be happening as well, but with nowhere near the frequency of videos.

The videos I play are all content purchased from the iTunes store, typically TV shows in 'standard definition'.

I have (obviously) tried to close other resource-hungry apps etc, but that does not help. iTunes is typically at 5-15% processor usage when playing video.

I use Mac OS X 10.6.4 on a 2.53 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with 4GB RAM. Hard drive has about 10 GB of free space.

Any ideas as to what is wrong here?

This might come a little bit as an obvious question but… have you restarted your box since you installed that? A zombie process could be causing delays in other areas.

Check with /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app and sort by CPU usage to see if there’s anything “red” (zombie) or any process not behaving.

In any case, a sane box restart (if you haven’t already) is usually a good advice. Turn the box off for a few secs and then turn it on again, the VRAM might be corrupted and a simple “restart” won’t always do the right thing. (It happens to me in the Mac Pro).

The reason for mentioning this is that your computer is more than capable to play videos.

Do you have Perian or any other third party codecs laying around that might interfere?


Is there a Mountain Lion dashboard widget that displays notes from iCloud? I am using the notes functionality in iOS as well as MacOS. My notes sync through iCloud. Works super.

Now, I'd like to have the notes displayed in my MacOS dashboard. Is there a notes dashboard widget that connects to iCloud ?

Thanks :)

With the caveat that this is just one example of a notes widget, I've used Junecloud's Notefile app a bit, and it seems to fit your requirements of a widget that connects to iCloud. I can sync to iCloud or the app provider's JuneCloud sync. However, Notefile is not a free app (currently $4.99), so you'll need to look elsewhere if you want a freeware solution.

Junecloud also provides an iOS application for mobile devices (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch) for $2.99 at the time of this answer.


How to repair OS X Snow Leopard from USB Stick My operating system (Snow Leopard) was running quite good but I used some tools from internet to free some HDD space. Then some days later I figured out that Safary is not able to start anymore.

Now I'd like to repair the current installation or re-install the OS X.

But how can I do that?

I managed it to create a bootable USB drive from the installation image. When I boot from the USB drive, the installation asks me which drive is to be used. And when I select my laptop drive the installation program shows the message that this drive cannot be selected.

What should I do in order to force the installation to overwrite the current instance of OS X?

You must use disk utility to erase the hard drive -- the settings when you erase should default to macOS Extended Journaled (non-case sensitive) on GPT. Then close Disk Utility and open the installer (while in recovery of course).

Note: all data stored on the HDD will be erased. A full backup is strongly recommended before proceeding with the procedure listed above.


Non-smooth scrolling pdf with trackpad in Preview with 10.8 Finally upgraded to Mountain Lion and I am noticing an annoying behavior in Preview. When I two-finger scroll too quickly with my 2009 MBP trackpad, the scrolling is jerky and can skip many pages in a document. So you're scrolling a 25 page document, you are at page 2, you scroll quickly to get to page 10 and suddenly you are page 22...

I cannot replicate this with a mouse no matter how fast I scroll and I don't see a setting for trackpad scrolling speed. Slowing down the tracking speed of the trackpad seems to have no effect either... I have secrets installed but I can't find a hidden preference there either... Anyone else experiencing this? How could I fix this?

EDIT: I also had the smooth scrolling disabled (thanks John Siracusa!) via defaults write -g NSScrollAnimationEnabled -bool NO but turning this back on has no effect on this behavior.

My setup: 2009 13" MBP with 10.8.2

Try duplicating the pdf, and then testing to see if the same behavior occurs on the duplicate. For whatever reason, in some cases, the copy scrolls smoother than the original did.

This is only a workaround, but if it works, it'll address the problem if you have a doc you need to do a lot of work in.


iPhone (And iTunes) shows 1GB of photos, but I don't have any iPhone 5S, running iOS 8.0.2. For some reason, I've got 1GB of photos that show up on my iPhone and in iTunes, but I can't delete them. I used iPhoto to sync them off my phone. I also had iPhoto delete them.

When I go into photo albums, it's empty. So, how can I delete them?

Look in "Albums" as well as "Photos" and you should find your photos.


How do I set which Apache / PHP 10.6 should run? All my problems stemmed from trying to get mcrypt for PHP installed. Last night I gave in and followed a tutorial of how to do a totally fresh apache2 and php5.3.3 install. I did this using MacPorts.

Sadly, that didn't enable mcrypt for me last night, although I was pretty pleased that I got 5.3.3 running. :)

The problem is that I have woken up this morning to find that my php version is back down to 5.3.1 which can only mean that OS X has reverted to my original Apache and PHP.

How to I tell OS X to use the software I installed via MacPorts?

(And then I will as a new question of how to enable mcrypt)

It's not so much your version of Apache/PHP have been reverted - it's just the wrong version is loaded.

If you have Mac OS X's Web Sharing enabled it will auto enable the version of Apache and PHP Apple provides using the LaunchDaemon org.apache.httpd.plist in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons (this will override MacPorts version). You'll want to disable this by either turning off Web Sharing in the Sharing Preference Pane or by running sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist.

When you installed Apache for MacPorts it installed a LaunchDaemon into /Library/LaunchDaemons which if enabled will start up the MacPorts version of Apache automatically. To enable it run sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.apache2.plist and you're off to the races.

If you're running apachectl to restart - make sure you've selected the right version. You may need to alter your $PATH to have /opt/local/apache2/bim before /usr/sbin

As for what version of PHP is being used; on the command line this will depend on your $PATH while for Apache it's entirely in your configuration of where the libphp5 module is. (/etc/apache2/ for the built in version, /opt/local/apache2/conf for the version MacPorts installed)


Use middle mouse button (scroll wheel) as Force Touch? I downloaded BetterTouchTool in an attempt to configure my non-branded Bluetooth mouse so I could use the buttons on the side of it as forward and backward - OS X has no facility for this and my mouse didn't come with any configuration software.

I'm using a 2015 MacBook Pro on OS 10.11.4.

I've used USB Overdrive in the past (I uninstalled it as I found it a bit buggy) but it configured my mouse so that clicking the scroll wheel would act in exactly the same way as a Force Click on the trackpad would - I could preview files in Finder, preview web pages in Safari and I could use the dictionary Look Up feature as well. It was really superb, but I can't afford to lay down £15 to buy the full version so it won't hassle me.

Is there any way to configure my mouse to behave like this from within BetterTouchTool? I got really used to it and it was a great feature to have! I can't seem to find any options that replicate this  functionality within BTT though :(

Cheers,
Dan

I managed to work it out: if you use BTT to map clicking the scroll wheel to the shortcut  ⌘  +  ctrl  +  D , it will show the dictionary lookup box for words, but also allows you to preview files in Finder (like pressing space) or Force Clicking a web link. I had this already configured in USB Overdrive, which explains why it worked before.

Hope this helps someone :)


Little Snitch reports outgoing connections from Mach Kernel -- am I infected? I monitor all my traffic using Little Snitch.  Recently, I've noticed strange IP addresses making connections to the "mach_kernel" process.  Most of these IP addresses seem to originate from other programs (for example, I might see a Google address connected to mach_kernel when I'm browsing Gmail via my browser).

Is my Mac infected?  The main concern here is that I have a virus which is MitMing traffic of other programs on my box.  How can I tell if this is the case?

I have asked the Little Snitch development team at obdev about this issue. Here is the response:

  In fact local traffic over AFP or SMB protocol is routed by the mach_kernel process on newer OS X systems.

  It is defined as /mach_kernel on 10.10.x.
  I'm on OS X 10.11.4 here, where the process path is now /System/Library/Kernels/kernel

  Unfortunately it can not be treated the same way as other processes, but usually your local network rules should cover all relevant connections for it.

  But I have to admit that I also remember a case where external connections are associated with the mach_kernel by mistake and it seems to happen when the tables in the Little Snitch Network Monitor cache got mixed somehow.
  Do you perhaps experience such external connections associated with the mach_kernel process?
  Possibly thats an issue of memory - happening when your system (including the Little Snitch Network Monitor) is up running for quite some time… I already talked to our developers about that and we will keep an eye on that issue.

  ...

  Simon

"the tables in Little Snitch Network Monitor cache got mixed somehow"? Seriously?

It does indeed seem to happen after my machine has been running for days or weeks without reboot. And a reboot will fix it temporarily. It is possible that this is simply a bug in Little Snitch.

However, I find it dubious that traffic routed over mach_kernel "cannot be treated the same way as other processes". I am not informed about how Little Snitch is architected. It may not be able to run in kernel space (ring 0), but I find it terribly convenient in today's climate of mass government spying that the OSX kernel can simply take over and get around Little Snitch. I believe IPTables would have no such trouble in blocking traffic, but it is most certainly of a different architecture and user model altogether.

See here for additional reference: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/58815/do-firewalls-always-run-in-userspace

Switching to FOSS/Linux is looking more and more like the path to be on.


Rsync: run backups like Time Machine and prevent removing non existing remote files/dirs on local folder I have this configuration: a NAS and a local hard drive on my Mac I want to backup incrementally, like Time Machine does.

When I do this rsync command:

rsync -va --exclude=.DS_Store --delete /Volumes/Drive/Folder /Volumes/RSYNC/Test

A folder "test" on my NAS (so the remote) will be deleted if it doesn't exist on my local hard drive.
I would like to keep the possibility to add more content on the remote folder without having it on my drive (more like a shared folder, other users can add content, but I come with my possibly updated data to backup everything).

Any idea how to do incremental backups (in another folder, with file versions, etc — like Time Machine in some way), without deleting non-existing content on remote from local?

Folder selection in Time Machine
You can specify folders to be excluded from your Time Machine backup, specifically, you could specify everything BUT your specific files.
system preferences > time machine > options.


Moving an icon on the dock triggers "Keep in Dock", any way to prevent this? If you 'right click' an icon on the dock > hover 'Options' > un-check "Keep in Dock" and proceed to drag the icon to move it, what happens is the "Keep in Dock" option becomes checked once again.
This is annoying because I do not want closed applications to be on my dock, yet I want to be able to organize my dock when application are open.
The issue was briefly mentioned in the comment section of this thread with no apparent solution.
Is it possible to disable this behavior?

Why not move it first and then change the setting?
At one time, I needed to keep my dock updated with something that changed frequently.  I just used a corn job to periodically replace the dock’s plait with a saved copy.  That would presumably only help with things that stay in the dock, though.


In terminal, how to get "say" to say things "right" ? ie using custom phonetics? I'd like to use "say" in the terminal to create audio files with a custom phonetic dictionary, or at the very least, say things how I think they should sound. From my understanding, this can't be accomplished through the "Voice Over Utility" configuration screen.

So to have say "speak" things correctly, I'm willing to:

use a custom phonetic dictionary or
change my input text to some phonetic variant

For example, I'd like to be able to have the word "colossians" said as I expect it, which is phonetically something like "kuh LOSH uhnz" without the pauses that the spaces cause in the word.

The Speech Synthesis Programming Guide describes the embedded speech commands that you can use to adjust how the speech synthesis engines process your input text.

The [[inpt PHON]] command enables the use of phonemes and phoneme modifiers.

For example, the following text includes a phonemic version of your chosen word  (select the text, Control-click, and select Speech > Start Speaking to hear it directly in Safari):

If you don't like how I say "colossians",
then perhaps you will be satisfied with
"[[inpt PHON]]kUH2lAASUHnz[[inpt TEXT]]".

This syntax is accepted by the say command in the shell and AppleScript (though you will have to modify the (above) use of single- and double-quotes to suit the string literal syntax of your chosen context).


Efficiently transfer screenshots from Ipad to Windows computer? I write a Word documents on a windows 10 computer and want to include screenshots from my iPad. Idea is to make something on my iPad, take a screenshot and directly paste it in my word document. I can connect the iPad via cable to my windows computer or access the iPad on the network from my windows computer.
Is there any comfortable way to get a taken screenshot in my windows clipboard, so I can easily paste it into my Word document?

Apple solves this problem with cloud sync and so does Microsoft. That would be the easiest way to set up a group of people with this in my experience. Even for one person, it works well for me so I can avoid pairing the iOS device with windows USB for ingestion of images in bulk. Also, the Files app on iPad is very good, you can save to USB and natively connect to all manner of sync services online for file transfer and sync.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204283 (iCloud for windows FTW)
https://products.office.com/en-us/word (office suite have common code base now between Mac and iOS and windows even though not all features are enabled everywhere)

Also the iOS OneDrive and Teams apps are pretty awesome for file transfer and sync. Even with handoff, clipboard sync of images can be troublesome on macOS so I would look for a different workflow if possible.


How to make the Open... dialog default to another folder? I have a problem with the old PageSpinner 5.2.1 that has not been updated for a long time and it can no longer remember the last opened folder in Open dialogs and always default to the same ~/Documents folder. Is there a way to change the default folder for a specific application and/or for all applications Open... dialog?

The Open... Dialog defaults to the current folder for MOST applications. You chan change this by changing directory in Terminal (note that in my experience, some applications, especially Java ones do not follow this default behavior and in stead open the same directory every time, I assume this is hard-coded in the application).

Now to the meat of your question: can we change this behavior on a per-application basis, using the tools OS X has pre-installed?  My guess is yes!, though I don't have time to do the research right now. What we'd be looking for is:

# wait for application to be switched

# see if we have defined a default directory for that app

# if we have change, if not go to default

# go back to top and wait to app switching

Others should definitely feel free to flesh out my skeleton code, please don't accept this answer until it is complete. I'll look again tonight and see if I can't finish that out. Potentially helpful link


Airpods connected to iMac, but not in the audio output device menu The iMac sees airpods because I can connect/disconnect via the bluetooth menu. However, they don't appear in the list of audio output devices.

From this siteyou should do the following.

Make sure Bluetooth is on.
with both air pods in the charging case, open the lid and hold down the button on the back of the case.
The green light in the charging case turns white.
Go to the Bluetooth menu item and select air pods and hit connect.

Now air pods should show up in sound Systems Preference panel.


What is 'connectservice.app' It's in my Login Items.  Examining the package shows a reference to arcsoft.com.  But I don't have either of their Mac products (Panorama Maker or PhotoStudio) installed, and never have.

I't main purpose is to keep you using ArcSoft products.

Stop ArcSoft Connect Service:
Launch "Activity Monitor" from /Applications/Utilities, select "ConnectService" and then click Quit Process.
Delete following folders or files:

/Applications/ArcSoft Connect Suite

/Applications/[Product Name]

/Library/Application Support/ArcSoft

/Library/Receipts/*.pkg

~/Library/Preferences/com.arcsoft.*

~/Library/Preferences/Application Support/ArcSoft

~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.arcsoft.*

Notes:
[Product Name]: represents the ArcSoft product you want to uninstall (there may be some more than listed there).

You may also need to read this.


Finder and About this mac shows different free space sizes? Which one shows the correct value and how can I make room for ghost application allocated space?

TL;DR: Trust the Finder

Sometimes, about this Mac gives false info about how much space is taken up on your Mac. You can fix this by telling spotlight to reindex your hard drive. Go into system preferences, go to spotlight and under privacy, tell spotlight to not search Macintosh HD. Remove Macintosh HD from the list of exceptions, and spotlight will start reindexing your hard drive


Internet Sharing abnormal password request My Mac lost ethernet connection yesterday briefly whilst Internet Sharing was running.

I rebooted. Internet Sharing wasn't accepting connections at all.

I deleted the relevant files in: /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

I rebooted. This cleared out all the settings for Internet Sharing.

As default, there is no Internet Sharing security set.

I turned Internet Sharing back on, no security. Now any Wi-Fi client sees my network is set with no security: iPhone doesn't show padlock.
But the client asks for a password.

The way it asks for a password on the iPhone differs from how it would if it knew my Wi-Fi network is password protected.
This request for a password is abnormal.

Can someone tell me how to resolve this. There is no password set on the Wi-Fi Internet Sharing but clients ask for one?

This seemed to have fixed itself over a period of time, that or a Repair HD permissions and a reboot fixed it, however that remains untested so I can't concur that it was the repair that fixed it.


Red shield with number in Nike+ iOS app? I'm new to the Nike + run app for iPhone. On my activity list, what does the red shield with the number in it mean?

The red shield indicates that you broke your personal record for one of the half dozen or so records the app automatically keeps track of, like “Fastest 5K Run” or longest run. A number badge indicates that you broke more than one record in that run. (One often breaks longest and furthest run records at the same time, for instance.) So, nice run!


Logitech MX Keys: sleep mode keyboard shortcut I am using the Logitech MX Keys which is great.

Since there is no Eject/Power key I miss some shortcuts, specifically Option–Command–Media Eject.
Is there a way to put my Mac to Sleep mode with this keyboard?

As Sleep exists as a menu command, you could make your own…

System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts

Select All Applications, press the  +  button, type Sleep then pick a key command - I'd pick something hard to do by accident, like maybe  Cmd ⌘   Opt ⌥   Ctrl ⌃   Shift ⇧   S

 I used D in the example image, because I already have S used for Shutdown


Is there a complete list of defaults / plist settings for the dock? I know that most of the defaults settings for macOS components are probably hidden or undocumented, but I'm curious if there is someone who has compiled a complete list or if there is a way to discover what options are available?

In particular, I've become annoyed by how quickly the dock seems to follow my mouse to my 2nd monitor (but seems to delay coming back to primary), so I'm looking to see if there are any settings which could influence the behavior of this.

Each of the lists or applications below include Dock adjustments and default settings. None claim to be complete:

mathiasbynens' dotfiles
TinkerTool
defaults-write.com
Deeper / Onyx
Global defaults in macOS Mojave


SD card reader does not work after upgrading to Mountain Lion I have upgraded my Mac Book pro MB991 (13-inch, Mid 2009) to OS X Mountain Lion. After that the system does not show any reaction on inserting or ejecting an SD card.

The card itself works well with my camera.

I checked Disk Utility and About my Mac but it's not displayed there:

iStat Pro doesn't show it neither:

I have Parallels Desktop 7 and Vmware Fusion installed on my mac so may be problem is related to the drivers supplied with those software.

Does any one know how to fix this or at least how to dig deeper to get any new information?

I seemed to have the same problem with the SD card not showing up but when I opened iPhoto it just loaded my photo's off of my sd card. I have a sandisk SD card. Hope it helps :)


Automator app in notification centre I've made an Automator application that runs displays a notification and then runs a shell script. Works fine. However, the notification centre doesn't display the name of the application, but instead shows some garbled code. I'm using Mavericks. How can I fix this?

In Finder, go to ThisAutomatorThing.app

Right click. Show Package Contents.

Go to folder /Contents/, and open Info.plist file with a text editor. Find something like:

<key>CFBundleName</key>
<string>6ARbL3D-C0D4</string>

If the string is exactly the gibberish in notification, replace it with you app name.

You MIGHT need to 1) reset LaunchServices to delete the old cache and reflect the change:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

AND/OR, 2) reset LaunchPad:

rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db;killall Finder


How to share iOS Pages document that was created on Mac? I recently created a Pages document on my Mac (OS X 10.8.2). I then opened it in Pages on my iPhone (iOS 6.1) to email it to someone. iCloud downloaded the document as expected when I opened Pages, but when I tapped the Edit button, and selected the document, the "Share" icon was greyed out. The "Duplicate", and "Delete", icons work as expected. I also tried duplicating the document before sharing it, with no success.

Is it possible to share Pages documents that were created on a Mac and synced over iCloud from an iOS device?

You can share a pages document from your iPhone. Instead of clicking "Edit", then the share icon, try clicking the document itself, and opening it. Once you have opened the document on your iPhone, click the spanner icon in the top right. A list of options will appear. Click the one that says "Share and Print". Now click "Email Document". You will be given an opportunity to choose whether to email a Pages, PDF, or Word document. After selecting the appropriate option, an email window will appear, with the document as an attachment.


Mad Catz R.A.T. 3 mouse problems on MacBook Pro I am having difficult time to customize the buttons on my RAT 3 mouse. I want my side buttons to go forward and backward. Anyone know how to do that?

Also scrolling wheel is inverted and I don't know how to change that?

Every time I reconnect my mouse, it doesn't register mouse settings according to always switching my DPI when I reconnect it. I am running on OSx El Capitan 10.11

Download the R.A.T.E software from madcatz (under software), that allows you to wire up keys to forward and back, as well as setting the DPI properly.

Note, you have to allow the app in Security & Privacy after install completes

The inverted scrolling wheel is due to OSX treating all mouse as a Magic mouse. Changing the scroll direction to natural in system setting will affect both the touchpad and mouse, which is annoying because the touchpad direction is right.
I recommend Scroll Reverser which applies scroll direction separately.


How to bind specific window to a hotkey? On Windows I use a simple Autohotkey script that allows me to easily bind to and switch beetween opened windows.

For example, I'm about to be using a browser, two consoles and a text editor in the next hour. So I open the browser and press Ctrl+Win+1 to bind it to the 1 key. Similarly, I map consoles to 2 and 3 keys, and the editor to 4 key.

And now I can switch to the specific app just by pressing Alt+<number>. It allows me to work literally not touching a mouse for hours. I can't imagine my life without it.

The question is: How do I achieve this on El Capitan? I've tried the Automator and Karabiner apps, but did not succeed.

Try out Witch - among many other features:

Choose any of the first ten windows with a single keypress.


What's a calendar + to do list app that will work on both my MacBook Air and iPhone I've looked all over for such an app, however the ones I find are either calendar apps (e.g. Sunrise Calendar) or to do list apps (e.g. Any.do).

I was wondering if anyone knew of an app that had both these functionalities and was available both on my MacBook Air running 10.12 as well as on my iPhone running iOS 10.

Busycal is a wonderful calendar app that is a more fully featured version of iCal (predecessor to the even-less-imaginatively-named Calendar).   BusyCal does include ToDo List capability with multiple lists, which can be associated with specific calendars.  Can include tags, alarms, priority, notes, etc.
One of my favourite things about BusyCal is that it is not a slave to month boundaries, so the "month" view can include 2-12 weeks and can start whenever you want.  I find it much more useful to see the next six weeks from today, than to see the rest of this arbitrary calendar month!  Also the text color (rather than the silly dot) indicates which calendar an entry is associated with.  Weather forecasts for the next ten days are also added (optionally), which is great for planning outings! This screenshot shows those big -- they can also be just tiny.
http://www.busymac.com/busycal/

(source: dreamcss.com)


How can I listen to my mp3 audiobooks on iPhone? I have a collection of seminars recorded as mp3. In iTunes, I marked them as audiobooks.

I have an Apple music account, so I can access my music library through iCloud, including those I recorded myself or ripped from my CDs.

My audiobooks do not show up on the iCloud and I cannot access them on my iPhone (iOS 12.3.1).

I do not see them in the Music app, I do not see them in the Books app -although it has an audiobooks section.

I found some 3rd party apps on the store that play mp3 audiobooks, but I'd prefer using the Books or Music app.

Is there a way to do this? If so, how?

Note: I asked this question in Apple Communities but it did not attract much attention.

According to the support article for iTunes Match, tracks will not be uploaded to your iCloud Music Library if they:

are longer than 2 hours
are larger than 200 MB
"don't meet certain quality criteria"

The "quality criteria" include the bit rate, and I believe the same criteria apply with Apple Music.

You could try converting one of the files  to 128kb/s or higher AAC format, using the start/end time settings in the track's Get Info before converting if it's longer than two hours and/or if needed to get the resulting track under 200 MB. If that track still won't upload then something else is going wrong.

You can always sync files like this manually. On older macos and windows, add these to your iTunes library and sync via iTunes.

Use an old iPhone 6 just for audiobooks - Cannot transfer file from iTunes to iPhone

One newer macOS - add the files to music or podcasts app and sync over USB.


How to upload HD video to YouTube using unlimited 4G LTE on iPhone? I have unlimited 4G LTE with Sprint so I should be able to upload to YouTube using it, but YouTube can only allow SD (Standard Definition) upload. The HD upload says, "Requires WiFi".  (this was done by going to Photos app, and then using Share to YouTube).

But my WiFi will be slower... and sometimes I don't have WiFi if I am outside... so is there a way to upload it using the unlimited 4G LTE?

If your device is jailbroken, you can use 3G Unrestrictor, which will fake apps into thinking you are connected to a Wi-Fi network, thus enabling the higher quality upload.

http://cydia.saurik.com/package/com.kstreich-dev.3gunrestrictor5/


Where can I see the size of a video on the YouTube application? I use YouTube premium to watch videos offline on my iPad (iPadOS 13). Where can I see the size of a video on the YouTube application?
I don't see any details when going to General -> Storage -> YouTube

Joost C suggested

Enable "stats for nerds" in account (icon) > settings > toggle "stats for nerds". Then when playing a video, tap "more", select "stats for nerds".

However, stats for nerds don't show the video size:
{
    CPN = fSxRxnoQJUzknZJ7;
    date = "2021-03-21 00:03:45 +0000";
    debugParameters =     {
        ad = none;
        adcpn = "";
        audioitag = 140;
        connectiontype = 3;
        errorscreen = no;
        isdrm = no;
        ishls = no;
        islocal = yes;
        ismonetized = no;
        ismuted = no;
        mlplayer =         {
            docid = "vAC-x75akYI";
            rate = 1;
            type = "hamplayer_queue";
        };
        mobilecarrier = "";
        playertype = 15;
        qoeerrorcode = "";
        qoeerrordetails = "";
        resolution = 720p;
        state = 6;
        videoitag = 136;
        xtags = "";
    };
    videoID = "vAC-x75akYI";
}

You can find them after you've enabled "stats for nerds" in account (icon) > settings > toggle "stats for nerds".

Then when playing a video, tap "more", select "stats for nerds".

Apparently we are nerds.


Time Machine restore newer Mac to older Mac I will be replacing my current Mac with a newer model, at which point I'll restore my Time Machine backup to it, then wipe the old Mac. However, I considered that it might be a good idea to keep the old Mac in case something happens to the new Mac, but for that to be useful I would need to be able to restore the new Mac's Time Machine backup to the old Mac temporarily.

Is it possible to restore a newer model Mac's Time Machine backup to an older model Mac with the same OS version? What about different Mac OS versions?

Yes, depending on the options you select when doing the migration.

In terms of documents and other data this will usually be fine. I'll provide an example below of when documents/data may be a problem.

In terms of software, this will depend on its compatibility with the version of MacOS you're running. For example, if you're running XYZ software that is only compatible with macOS Sierra and then restore that to a Mac running El Capitan, it will be copied across but won't run. Another potential issue is that you may need to re-register some 3rd party software (but if so, this is a minor inconvenience and does not result in any increased expense).

Now for my example of when data may be an issue. Your data will be copied across fine, but if the data is from a newer version of software that has actually changed the format of its data, then accessing that data from an older version of the software may be a problem. In any case, the data will still be there and is backed up.

On a final note, you would normally ensure the other Mac has an OS already installed when you restore your applications, documents etc.


How to check if EarPods are fake or not? With iPhone, MacBook we have serial numbers etc. So it is possible to call support and to ask.

How can we check EarPods?

Apple has a page to assist in verifying authenticity for some of their products.

For EarPods, there's no easy way to check.

A few years ago, someone on LinkedIn wrote a nice article with pictures to help people identify real products vs fake.

It comes down to quality of materials and workmanship.  If you look at the pictures and explanations in that link, you can easily see the type of quality Apple puts into the design and manufacture of their products. Use this only as a guide for things to look for.  They're not the only ways to spot a fake but it's a good start.

For example:

  Check the bass holes in the EarPod (Clearest Way)

  The OEM EarPods will conduct an airflow to the bass holes at the
  bottom of it which be designed for better bass sound. If you cover
  these holes with your fingers, less bass music can be heard.

  For fake ones, the “bass holes” are just for “decorating” purposes.

As mentioned in the comments, the best way to ensure you have a genuine product is to buy directly from Apple or a licensed reseller.


Keep note sheet as black text on white background while Notes.app is in dark mode I am enjoying dark mode in macOS Mojave. This includes the list boxes and sidebar in the Notes.app. Except, the note sheet itself is awkward with white-text-on-black-blackground.

Is it possible to keep most of dark mode except the content of each note?

Yes, user preference

Yes, indeed, you can display your note sheets in Notes as black-ink-on-white.

Go to Preferences dialog box. While I did not notice it immediately, you can find a checkbox under the text-size slider. That checkbox is titled Use dark backgrounds for note content. Uncheck that box.


Group chat iMessages now being received through email I'm in a group chat with my friends and all of a sudden one of my friends text messages now go to my email (I use my iCloud email for iMessage). It's from an email address ***705@vzwpix.com and the other people in the group chat have their phone numbers as email addresses. How do I fix this? Is this a problem on my end or my friend's end?

Someone's phone decided to switch to SMS or MMS, as evidenced by the @vzwpix.com return address—this is a domain used by providers to gateway SMS/MMS to/from email.

I routinely run into a similar issue when attempting group messaging with people with phones from other manufacturers, but it's also conceivable an iPhone may choose to do this if it cannot access iMessage temporarily, e.g. if there was no data connection available.

To prevent this, it's probably best to use an entirely different chat service rather than try to match up the disparate capabilities of phones.


Sound doesn't work anymore with Yosemite Today, suddenly, my MacBook Pro is gone mute. The speaker icon on the top bar is faded gray and within the output devices there is not the option internal speaker anymore but just digital output and two Soundflower options. I've tried what was suggested in the thread
Sound not working when running OS 10 Yosemite but it didn't worked. When I restart my Mac, it makes the opening sound and it works with headphones.

What should I do to restore the sounds?

I had the same problem after upgrading to Yosemite and I've been looking for an answer on StackOverflow since. I found an answer which was not upvoted so it was harder to find unfortunately but here is a way which solved my problem:

Open your terminal on your Mac and type in:

sudo killall coreaudiod

Press enter and you're done. It should work now.

PS: I'm re-posting this from my previous and exact answer to another user's same problem.

Hope this helps


Is there any way to get a path to a file in the GUI in Yosemite? In Mavericks it was simple: click "Get Info" on any file and you could copy/paste the file path. This is no longer included in Yosemite.

I need to need to copy/paste paths frequently, like "/Users/Whoever/MyPath/File.app".

Is there any way to do this in Yosemite without resorting to the terminal?

You could drag the file into a Safari window and copy the path from the URL bar. Or drag the file into a Plain Text file in Text Edit. (As you can also do with Terminal.)
EDIT: Safari will only accept certain types. Use a Text Edit file instead.


How do I sort a playlist by filename in iTunes? I want to import an audiobook where there are 14 folders on the form "Author - CD ## - Title", and the mp3-files are on the form "### - Author - Title" (incrementally over all CDs, so the last file of 'CD 01' is named '012...", and the first file of 'CD 02' is named '013...'.

However, the ID3 tag stupidly consist of "Title = Author", and nothing else. And when imported the files are scattered around randomly in the playlist.

How do I sort a playlist by filename?

or; How do I remove the ID3-tags of a folder of folders of mp3-files on Mac easily.

Unfortunately this is not possible. As there isn't a column available for filename, one can't sort by it.

If you're willing to take the time, you can input the metadata and sort by track number. You'd only really need to enter the track numbers incrementally (like the file names), but you might instead choose to number the tracks per disk and then input which disk they're on as well. This way would need to be sorted by Album rather than track number, as it would otherwise go 1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,3,… rather than 1,2,3,…1,2,3,…1,2,3,….

Sorry it's so inconvenient, but I hope this works for you. :)


How to know if “About This Mac” got modded and/or reset it I've seen plenty of articles about how its kinda easy to mod the "About this mac" section, however, I was wondering if I where to buy a mac from a stranger, what is a quick way to check the real specs and date of release without having to reset to factory settings.

It must be something quick so I can check it before paying for it without taking too much time.

Each Mac's serial number should be printed on the outside of the casing.

Locate the serial number. Apple provide instructions on how to locate the serial numbers on their devices here.
And then enter the serial number on Apple's Service and Support Coverage to find out the real model and age of the device.


Dual boot Mac - void warranty For work reasons I have to dual boot windows 7 in my mac. Does doing so voids my warranty?

Your warranty will not be voided, as this does not violate any Apple agreements.


Stuck in a calendar on iPhone I have an iPhone 3G. How can I get out of one of Calendars on my iPhone.  It is stuck in an empty calendar and doesn't allow me to get out of it to add any new events.  I've tried backing out of the calendar program to no avail.  And I've restarted my phone, also to no avail.  Does anyone have a suggestion?

Double tap the start button, and it will bring up a list of running programs.
Press and hold one of them, and they will start to jiggle, and show an - icon in the upper left corner.
Find the calendar program, and tap the -.
Rinse and repeat for any other apps you're having trouble with.  I like to periodically go through the list and close down apps I'm not using/won't use for a while

NOTE: Do this from the home screen. If you are in the app it won't appear in the queue of running apps.


Why does my MacBook Pro reach high temperatures when running? I have my MacBook Pro sitting on my desk and it's consistently over 160 degrees. It is almost too hot to touch in some places on the casing.

160 degrees Fahrenheit, if it is CPU temperature, is normal for MBP.

MBPs are designed to run pretty hot, with the aluminum case as the main heatsink the casing gets uncomfortably hot sometimes.

If you want to remedy the problem:

use a laptop stand (I use Belkin Cushtops, they are really comfortable),
put your laptop on steady, heat-transducing surface (human skin, blankets or soft chairs are bad — wooden/plastic/metallic tables are good),
open up the casing and clean the dust (can make it ~10 degrees Celcius cooler)
or, use less video- or CPU-intensive application =)


Installing Xcode 7.x on El Capitan 10.11 I am on an old MacBook (mid-2009) that is not supporting Sierra. When I go to the App store to install Xcode 8 (only option available) it says that it is for 10.12 (Sierra) only. That means that if someone has El Capitan only and didn't install Xcode 7 before, cannot start developing apps for macOS / iOS? That seems absurd to me, El Capitan is still a modern OS... I might understand if you are on Leopard, but El Capitan is from 2015!

Is there any way to (legally) bypass this problem?

The last Xcode version compatible with El Capitan is Xcode 8.2.1. If you can't install it from within Apple App Store, visit Apple Developer and download the app there. An Apple ID is required.

Xcode is provided as xip file (signed zip). You can simply unzip it by using Archives.app (i.e. with a double-click).


Unable to unmount disk I have received an old MacBook from my Dad and he had wiped it clean, but I don't think he's done it correctly.

I am having issues with unmounting and re-installing Lion OS X back on, which it came with.

Can anyone help me please?

Probably something went wrong wiping the disk. You can't properly erase/repartition a disk the OS X booted from. Additionally it seems that you don't have a proper Recovery HD.

I recommend either to create a bootable installer thumb drive with the Lion installer or booting to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing altcmdR while booting, formatting the internal disk and restoring OS X. Not all Macs boot to IRM though.

To create a bootable thumb drive you need the Lion installer app, a second Mac and a USB thumb drive (8 GB or more)


What is the best way to setup users in my macbook pro but still share content? I just got a macbook pro and i am trying to figure out if I should create multiple users for my family or just share one account.  I like to keep all photos organized in one library and share access to music, videos, etc.  Right now we are sharing 1 apple id (although we have different iphones)

The issue is that if i want to use messages or other apps that are particular to a specific phone number then it would be nice to have each family member use their own solution.

If i setup different accounts on my macbook can I still share all of my applications and data (like iphoto library, etc) ?

iTunes and iPhoto libraries are, unfortunately, built upon databases that are designed for only one user. Apple recommends the following workarounds, each with their own drawbacks:

iTunes music folders can be placed within a central location (such as /Users/Shared). Only the music files themselves should be moved to the new location, not the library files (the files located at /Users/yourusername/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media). You then point each library to this new location (through iTunes > Preferences > Advanced). The big caveat to this approach: when another user on the computer adds music to the library, your library won't automatically see it. You will essentially need to tell iTunes to scan the music folder manually each time for it to pickup the changes. This support article from Apple describes this entire process in great detail.

With iPhoto, Apple technically recommends placing the shared library on an external hard drive, but you should be able to use /Users/Shared as well. Once the iPhoto library has been moved, open each user's iPhoto while holding down the option key. This will cause a pop-up screen to appear where you can select your library's location. The major caveat to this solution: if you switch between user accounts and another user has iPhoto open on their account, iPhoto will prevent you from opening the library. Again, Apple has a nice support article to cover this in great detail.


How can I use one set of bluetooth devices for two Macbooks? Here is a problem I have been having for a while, and I can't imagine I am the only one. I suspect there is a fairly simple solution that I have just not yet thought of:

I have two MacBooks that I often use at home (one for private, and for business). I have one external display, which I connect to either depending on whether I am working or doing something privately. I have a single set of bluetooth periphery (Apple bluetooth keyboard and mouse). I could buy a second one, but then they are cluttering up my fairly small desk for no good reason. It's easy to pair my keyboard and mouse to both computers, but hard to find a quick way to pair it to the one I currently want to use. Basically, if I turn on the mouse or keyboard it's pretty much nondeterministic which it actually gets connected to if both laptops sit on my desk. Given that I need "wake up on bluetooth" enabled at least on the work laptop for reasons that have to do with my office setup, it also matters little if the work laptop is sleeping in it's bag. Sometimes it gets woken up and connected to anyway.

What I am looking for is a fairly simple solution to decide which laptop to connect to at any given time. The following solutions I have pretty much ruled out, especially since I sometimes want to switch fairly rapidly:

Unpairing both devices after usage. Too awkward to do all the time.
Disabling "wake on bluetooth" on both laptops and making sure that the one I am not using is sleeping. As I wrote I need it for my office setup.
A hardware KVM. The ones I found seem to be of bad quality, and if possible I would like to avoid putting another piece of hardware on my desk.
A software KVM. Again, the ones I found seem to not work very well, but if you know a really good, simple one I may give it a shot.

What would be the easiest fix for me would be if I could tell my work laptop that it should only connect to these specific bluetooth devices (not all bluetooth devices, mind you) upon demand, but I could not find a way to do this on a per-device basis. However, if somebody has a better idea I am all ears. I am fairly confident with the terminal, so a slightly hackier solution does not scare me as long as it does not interfere with how all my other bluetooth devices operate.

While this may not be quite what you're looking for, you can use a solution like Synergy to share the keyboard and mouse between both devices.

After installing the software on both computers, you could let your Bluetooth peripherals connect to either computer and the software will allow you to simply move the mouse off of one screen and onto the other.


How to reinstall Magic Trackpad foot? My toddler decided to remove this for me...

First time I've ever seen that.

Now how do I put it back?

I presume the outer ring of the rubberised cover goes underneath the white plastic rear, but does makes it difficult.

Sure, I could glue it on to the white rear, but I'd rather have it as it came.

Any ideas?

Right, all the useful info is...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4646963 (but the thread is closed)

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Magic+Trackpad+Rubber+Replacement-Reinsertion/16825

I may have just fixed this...

I gently lifted the white rear away from the metal case with a tiny flat-head screwdriver, from the side. You need to be careful not to break off the catch that hooks the white rear to the metal case at the bottom end of the device, above the hole pictured.

I put the button bit back in the rubber foot and was able to push them through the opening with the same screwdriver, back in to the hole and let the white rear go back over it.

This was without really lifting the white rear catch out of the metal case.


Create a New Space in Mavericks using Applescript In Mavericks, is it possible to use Applescript to create a new Space in Mission Control?

I also tried the following code to switch to another Space, but it does not seem to do anything...

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Finder"
        keystroke "2" using control down --switches to space 2
    end tell
end tell

delay 0.5 -- time to release command if the script is run with command-R
tell application "System Events"
    key code 126 using control down -- control-up
    delay 1
    do shell script "MouseTools -x 1900 -y 60;sleep 1;MouseTools -leftClickNoRelease;MouseTools -releaseMouse"
    key code 53 -- escape
end tell

You can download MouseTools from http://www.hamsoftengineering.com/codeSharing/MouseTools/MouseTools.html. See http://osxnotes.net/applescript.html for a list of key codes.


Can I move my Dock to the left side of my right monitor? I have set up a two-monitor display, with my laptop on the left and my main screen on the right. I like having the Dock on the left side, but it's on the left of the left monitor, and as such it's too far to the left.

In the Dock settings, I only have the choice of Left (left side of left monitor), Bottom (bottom of left monitor), or Right (right side of right monitor). Is there any way I can set it to the left side of the right monitor?

I too have tried to have this setup, looking in display settings the closest thing that worked was this. It's not perfect but it does the job! Rearrange the left screen so that the screens meet at diagonals.