How to stop the launch agent from repeatedly launching a given AppleScript I'm trying to create a launch agent, which launches an AppleScript whenever a mouse is connected. Similar to these two questions:

LaunchEvents key unrecognized in launchd plist (detecting USB device)
Execute an application on Mac OS X when a particular type of USB device is connected?

However, once I load my launch agent (via launchctl load), it keeps getting started every 5-or-so seconds. How do I ensure that the agent runs only once, when the mouse is connected?

Here is my agent (plist):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <false/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.automations.switchscrolldirection</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>osascript</string>
        <string>/Users/lirik/Documents/Automation/SwitchScrollDirectionOnMouseEvent.scpt</string>
    </array>
    <key>LaunchEvents</key>
    <dict>
        <key>com.apple.iokit.matching</key>
        <dict>
            <key>com.apple.device-attach</key>
            <dict>
                <key>idProduct</key>
                <integer>49277</integer>
                <key>idVendor</key>
                <integer>1133</integer>
                <key>IOProviderClass</key>
                <string>IOUSBDevice</string>
                <key>IOMatchStream</key>
                <true/>
                <key>IOMatchLaunchStream</key>
                <true/>
            </dict>
        </dict>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

The AppleScript in question:

on gamingMouseIsAttached()
    tell application "System Preferences"
        activate
        set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.mouse"
    end tell
    tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
        repeat until exists checkbox 1 of window "Mouse"
        end repeat
        tell checkbox 1 of window "Mouse" to if value is 1 then click
    end tell
    tell application "System Preferences" to quit
end gamingMouseIsAttached

on TrackpadIsAttached()
    tell application "System Preferences"
        activate
        set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.trackpad"
    end tell
    tell application "System Events" to tell application process "System Preferences"
        repeat until exists checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of window "Trackpad"
        end repeat
        tell checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of window 1 to if value is 0 then click
    end tell
    tell application "System Preferences" to quit
end TrackpadIsAttached

tell current application
    delay 15
    set internalTrackpad to (do shell script "system_profiler SPUSBDataType | awk '/Trackpad:/ { print \"Internal Trackpad\" }'")
    set gamingMouse to (do shell script "system_profiler SPUSBDataType | awk '/Gaming Mouse G502:/ { print \"Gaming Mouse\" }'")

    if gamingMouse is equal to "" then
        if internalTrackpad is equal to "Internal Trackpad" then
            my TrackpadIsAttached()
            return
        end if
    end if

    if gamingMouse is equal to "Gaming Mouse" then
        my gamingMouseIsAttached()
        return
    end if
end tell

The answer is usually that you need to call xpc_set_event_stream_handler.

I found this amazing utility that will call xpc_set_event_stream_handler to remove the event from the queue, and then call your desired application. It allowed me to solve the problem you are having without writing/compiling any code. Check out github.com/snosrap/xpc_set_event_stream_handler and have it then call your osascript. Should solve your problem.


Error code -36 - cp: Input/output error - mac While I'm coping the file from the External hard drive to my MacBook Pro I'm getting Error code -36. Some recommended for dot_clean option, also I've tried and facing the same issue. Even I've tried to copy through the Terminal and also getting IO error. Desperately need to copy my stuff from my external drive.

In a Terminal:

grep "I/O error" /var/log/system.log

This will output to the Terminal all lines in the system.log file that has I/O error in it. Output such as kernel[0]: disk0s2: I/O errors are indicative of a falling and or damaged HDD. Note disk0s2 is an example and depending on which disk and partition has bad sectors the disk number and slice number will be different then the example. If you have output such as this and aren't backed up then do it before doing anything else!

Note; Depending on when the last time you had an error copying something it may not be in the current system.log file and you'll ether need to check the archived system logs or grep directly after the copy error.

If the copy is failing just on a particular file, you can attempt a recovery using ddrescue on the target file to try and copy it. ddrescue is a third-party utility that will need to be installed however dd is a part of OS X and it too can be used, although ddrescue offers more control and options then dd does.


Does size of Time Machine backups increase after changing from HDD to SSD on a Macbook Pro? I upgraded to an SSD earlier this year, and the experience has been great!

I use Time Machine for backup on a weekly basis on to an external hard drive and have noticed that the size of the backups have grown ~5X. Earlier, with a hard drive, the size of the backup was ~10GB, and now, the backup size is ~50GB.

I suspect this has something to do with the way SSDs work, specifically something about SSDs having to rewrite huge sections of memory even if only a part of the section needs to be changed.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

Hardware: I am using Micron's Crucial BX100 SSD on an early 2011 MBP running OS X El Capitan (Version 10.11.6)

I suspect this has something to do with the way SSDs work, specifically something about SSDs having to rewrite huge sections of memory even if only a part of the section needs to be changed.

This happens at the storage and controller level - it is completely transparent to the operating system.

You have already found the main cause, but one thing you didn't notice was that the day after you changed your drive, Time Machine did a complete backup from the beginning. TM noticed a new device ID on the drive and made a new backup. It is possible to join backups IF you do it before the first run after the drive change, but it involves some tinkering in the Terminal.


Loading User LaunchAgent Successfully I have created a plist file to replace an xinetd process that I used successfully in Windows (Cygwin) and Linux to stream an imapd connection from a remote server via ssh on a port on the localhost.

The plutil command says my configuration is OK. launchctl load path-to-plist runs without errors.

When I run launchctl list the agent does not display.  When I try to connect to the port on the localhost, I get connection refused.

Here is my plist file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
            <string>com.my.ssh_tunnel</string>
        <key>Program</key>
            <string>/usr/bin/ssh</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
            <array>
                    <string>-F /Users/userx/.ssh/config</string>
                    <string>dname /usr/sbin/imapd</string>
            </array>
        <key>Sockets</key>
            <dict>
                <key>Listeners</key>
                <dict>
                    <key>SockServiceName</key>
                        <string>dname-imapd</string>
                    <key>SockType</key>
                        <string>stream</string>
                    <key>SockProtocol</key>
                        <string>TCP</string>
                </dict>
            </dict>
        <key>inetdCompatibility</key>
            <dict>
                <key>Disabled</key>
                <false/>
                <key>Wait</key>
                <false/>
            </dict>
        <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
            <dict>
                <key>SSH_AUTH_SOCK</key>
                    <string>/Users/userx/.ssh-agent.sock</string>
            </dict>
    </dict>
</plist>

I have added a line to /etc/services for dname-imapd and an unassigned port (49022).  Ultimately I will be using this in conjunction with ssh-agent (to make this work 'passwordless') and Thunderbird to retrieve mail from a very locked down system.

There are essentially two questions here.  One, how do I know my agent is being loaded (and how do I confirm that)?  Two, is my plist actually correct?

Here's my original xinetd config:

service imapssh
{
        disable         = no
        type            = UNLISTED
        port            = 2208
        socket_type     = stream
        protocol        = tcp
        wait            = no
        server          = /usr/bin/ssh
        server_args     = dname /usr/sbin/imapd
        user            = userx
}

Thanks for any help.  This is driving me a little crazy.

This is on an El Capitan Macbook Pro.

Also, I've tried a straight ssh tunnel but that doesn't really work (before anyone suggests it).  Unless someone knows how to make it work like inetd and spawn every time the mail client connects to the port.

OK, addressing your second question first (is my plist actually correct?), plutil (in its default invocation) "lints" (checks) plist files for correctness:

plutil ~/Library/LaunchAgents/local.brew.update.plist

Equivalent to:

plutil -lint ~/Library/LaunchAgents/local.brew.update.plist

Turning to your first question (how do I know my agent is being loaded (and how do I confirm that)?), here's a few things to help check that.

First, I'd recommend adding logging to aid debugging. I log to ~/Library/Logs, so add something like this to my plist:

<key>StandardOutPath</key>
<string>/Users/userx/Library/Logs/local.brew.update.stdout</string>
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<string>/Users/userx/Library/Logs/local.brew.update.stderr</string>

Try re-loading your plist and then check your logs:

less ~/Library/Logs/local.brew.update.stdout
less ~/Library/Logs/local.brew.update.stderr

A few additional observations:

My understanding of your inetdCompatibility is that the agent should start when it's loaded. However, you say that launchctl list doesn't show the agent. Does that change if you try launchctl start com.my.ssh_tunnel after loading the plist? Do the logs show anything new?

I don't entirely understand the relationship between Program and ProgramArguments - could just be me, but I find man launchd.plist's explanation of ProgramArguments hard-going. I'd be inclined to try adding /usr/bin/ssh as a first string in ProgramArguments, and removing the entry for Program. (Then re-load and check the logs. Re-start and check the logs if needed).

Finally, I'm pretty certain that @daniel-Azuelos is correct, and you need to specify your ProgramArguments like this (I've added usr/bin/ssh as mentioned above):

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/usr/bin/ssh</string>
    <string>-F</string>
    <string>/Users/userx/.ssh/config</string>
    <string>dname</string>
    <string>/usr/sbin/imapd</string>
</array>

My reasoning for this is, the few plists I can find on my system that use (more than one) ProgramArguments use this idiom:

<key>Label</key>
<string>com.divx.uninstall.preferences</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/bin/bash</string>
    <string>-c</string>
    <string>if [[ ! -e "/Applications/DivX/DivX Preferences.app" ]] ; then open "/Library/Application Support/DivX/Uninstall DivX for Mac.app"; fi</string>
</array>

Note how bash's -c option and the corresponding command_string are in separate arguments.


mac mail "remove attachments" moves message, but doesn't remove attachments I'm using mac mail v7.3 in mavericks on an iMac. I'm trying to trim the size of my inbox and SENT mailboxes using Message > Remove attachments.  First I sort, say, the inbox by size to identify the largest messages.  I select a message -- even a single message not in a larger thread -- and click Message > Remove attachments.  Zing!  The whole message disappears from the inbox.  Then if I search for it, I find it in "All Messages", not th e inbox, and it still has the attachments!  Same thing if the message started in SENT -- it gets moved to "All Messages".  This is a pain because my goal was to strip the attachments, then save the message to a specific mailbox quickly and efficiently; I can't seem to do either!

You have a gmail account in your Apple mail.

Gmail has something called "All mail", where it automatically stores all mail.

When you enable that in the gmail Settings - Labels - Show in IMAP, it will show in your Apple Mail as "Archive" folder aka All Mail.

If you disable it it will no longer show in Apple Mail, but it will remain in Google gmail.


Can't open or quit Finder I'm trying to open Finder, but every time I try I get this error message:

I've tried restarting my Macbook Pro as well as doing a "Relaunch" from "Force Quit Applications":

However, nothing happens when I try to force-quit the application, so I'm 'stuck' with a non-responsive Finder. How can I fix this?

Try this in a terminal window:

killall Finder

or even

killall -9 Finder


Connecting iPad to a USB powered monitor? I'm thinking about buying a USB powered monitor to connect to my MacBook.

I found so many nice ones and the most suitable was Asus.

ASUS MB MB168B+ 15.6-Inch Screen LED-Lit Monitor

Now that got me wondering if I can also connect my iPad somehow to watch a movie or display something for a client that would be very useful.

I tried looking up anything remotely related to the subject but failed and thats why I'm here asking the experts.

Jailbroken iPad mini 2 and MacBook Air 11″

The iPad does not support video output over USB; it's a limitation you cannot work around with a jailbreak. Your only options are composite and VGA  video output via supported Lightening adaptors. There are jailbreaks that allow you to output the video 100% of the time though, not just from apps that support mirroring.


is everything (files, programs, internet passwords) stored on the Hard Drive? I'm looking to sell my macbook due to a corrupted hard drive. My question is, if i remove the hard drive and sell the rest of the mac will the buyer have any access to my files/programs/etc?

No, the buyer will not have access to any of your files, programs or passwords. These are all stored on the hard drive itself. The only thing that will be left behind is the firmware, but that doesn't store any personal information or any records of what programs you may have had installed. If you'd like more information on firmware, you can check the wiki here: Firmware Wiki


Need a script to connect to wifi based on user logged in I know nothing of macs, just windows, but I need a script to connect to a specific wifi ssid based on the currently logged in user. Is this possible? This is not a school project; I need this for my home which is currently running a UAP AP Pro which allows me to create multiple access points. I have created an additional AP which has assigned OpenDNS for increased security for my little ones.

I'd say there's no need of complicated solutions.
Every users you created have a completely customizable environment. So, if you go to the System Preferences, Network, choose WiFi on the left (among different types of connections) and then click on the "Advanced" button.
You'll see a list of preferred networks. The items in this list may be simply dragged. The one on the top will be the chosen one, even if there are other wifi networks you previously connected to.
Obviously, you might also decide to delete the other networks, if you are sure you won't use them with that user.


How to work around the issue that I can't access some iStore apps of a different country? My family is spread across the world and I live and work in a different country than my native one.

My iPhone and Apple ID are registered to my country of residence.

On a few occasions, recently, I tried buying apps that were available only in my home country (I don't know exactly why) - but I got an error message saying I couldn't buy apps in that country with my current Apple ID.

First, I am not entirely sure I understand the rationale for such a restriction. Is it some kind of trade embargo?

Anyway, the main question is what can I do to circumvent this pointless restriction and still buy apps that are present only in my home country?

P.S.: I saw there were a few similar questions, but I am addressing specifically the ability to buy/download the app and not just view it (I can already view it!).

You can make an separate AppleID for the other country.  You can load things from multiple AppleID accounts onto your phone at the same time, but it can be a bit of a pain as it will leave you in the account you were last in and you may inadvertently get new items into a different account than you intended.  Updating can be a pain, as it will require you to switch back and forth.

But, you will be able to get the apps (or other items) that are only available in the other country.


Will one or several shut down during filevault decryption harm things? So I have a keyboard / mouse issue; neither built-in will work..

To troubleshoot that, I'd like to make changes and restart a couple times.

One thing I tried was disable FileVault manually from system preferences and now I kind of regret it since it now tells me "more than a day" until finished. My google search shows I can't cancel and now have to wait for it to finish...

I read online that when encrypting, you can continue using your laptop like nothing is happening and this makes me wonder if the reverse is true as well.

Can I shut down my laptop without messing up the decryption process & corrupt my SSD or my data?

You can safely use, shutdown, sleep, and restart your Mac during the FileVault encryption and decryption process. The process happens in the background while your Mac is awake and plugged in.

FileVault encryption or decryption can take hours or days to complete, depending on your disk size and type. You simply have to be patient and let it finish. Portable Macs are required to be plugged in to decrypt or encrypt, so keep it plugged in and on if you want it to complete in a timely manner.

Your encryption or decryption will pause when asleep, shut down, or unplugged, and it will resume when awake and plugged in.

See the following for more information:

Apple Support: Use FileVault to encrypt the startup disk on your Mac
University of California: Use FileVault to encrypt your Mac
Backblaze: All about FileVault: Encryption for your Mac
University of Victoria: Encrypt a disk using FileVault 2: Mac

The question about your mouse and keyboard issue is, at the time of writing, very unclear and may be better suited for another separate question. It's highly unlikely that FileVault will have an impact on your built-in keyboard or trackpad.


Are OS X and PureDarwin binary-compatible Are OS X and PureDarwin binary-compatible?

Can I run simple non-GUI app compiled for OS X on PureDarwin (or vice-versa)?

(Darwin is the Open Source operating system from Apple that forms the basis for Mac OS X)

Yes - as long as you do not rely on a library or other feature that is only available in OS X.

The Pure Darwin project is a continuation of the Open Darwin project which was founded by Apple and a non-profit organization called the Internet Systems Consortium. This effort came to an end on 25 July 2006. Pure Darwin continues where this left off and promises a lot more than just binary compatibility with X11 available in the current developer preview (released in 2009).

The site says they're looking for people to join the project...


370GB unused but cannot shrink APFS container 200GB unused, but can't change APFS container size due to minimum requirement

I would like to shrink my APFS container on the macOS side to 100GB so that I can allocate more storage to Bootcamp. I have tried using the command:

sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 350g

which results in this:

Started APFS operation
Aligning shrink delta to 101,999,992,832 bytes and targeting a new physical store size of 349,999,996,928 bytes
Determined the minimum size for the targeted physical store of this APFS Container to be 86,805,315,584 bytes
Resizing APFS Container designated by APFS Container Reference disk1
The specific APFS Physical Store being resized is disk0s2
Verifying storage system
Using live mode
Performing fsck_apfs -n -x -l -S /dev/disk0s2
Checking the container superblock
Checking the EFI jumpstart record
Checking the space manager
Checking the space manager free queue trees
Checking the object map
Checking volume
Checking the APFS volume superblock
The volume Macintosh HD — Data was formatted by diskmanagementd (945.220.38) and last modified by apfs_kext (1412.0.28.171.1)
Checking the object map
Checking the snapshot metadata tree
Checking the snapshot metadata
Checking the extent ref tree
Checking the fsroot tree
Checking volume
Checking the APFS volume superblock
The volume Preboot was formatted by newfs_apfs (748.31.8) and last modified by apfs_kext (1412.0.28.171.1)
Checking the object map
Checking the snapshot metadata tree
Checking the snapshot metadata
Checking the extent ref tree
Checking the fsroot tree
Checking volume
Checking the APFS volume superblock
The volume Recovery was formatted by newfs_apfs (748.31.8) and last modified by apfs_kext (1412.0.28.171.1)
Checking the object map
Checking the snapshot metadata tree
Checking the snapshot metadata
Checking the extent ref tree
Checking the fsroot tree
Checking volume
Checking the APFS volume superblock
The volume VM was formatted by newfs_apfs (748.31.8) and last modified by apfs_kext (1412.0.28.171.1)
Checking the object map
Checking the snapshot metadata tree
Checking the snapshot metadata
Checking the extent ref tree
Checking the fsroot tree
Checking volume
Checking the APFS volume superblock
The volume Macintosh HD was formatted by diskmanagement (1409.0.0.141.4) and last modified by apfs_kext (1412.0.28.171.1)
Checking the object map
Checking the snapshot metadata tree
Checking the snapshot metadata
Checking the extent ref tree
Checking the fsroot tree
Verifying allocated space
warning: overallocation detected on Main device: (0x523df92+1) bitmap address (0x1091e)
The volume /dev/disk0s2 appears to be OK
Storage system check exit code is 0
Shrinking APFS Physical Store disk0s2 from 451,999,989,760 to 349,999,996,928 bytes
Shrinking APFS data structures
APFS Container Resize error code is 49187
Error: -69606: A problem occurred while resizing APFS Container structures

Can't resize APFS Container: Not enough free space in Container due to APFS limits or tidemarks

When I do tmutil listlocalsnapshots / the output is Snapshots for volume group containing disk /: so I assume that I have no snapshots. I have also tried $ tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 9999999999999 to no avail.

In 200GB unused, but can't change APFS container size due to minimum requirement, Geoff said

  Yes, you have deleted all your local snapshots. But you also have another backup drive. In the example you linked, there was no such drive. You need to remove all Time Machine backups stores, disable all destinations, etc. You can reassociate your backups later.

which I honestly do not understand. Am I supposed to use tmutil destinationinfo [-X], and if so, what do I put in place of the -x? Whatever I put in it just says No destinations configured.

Same thing goes for removedestination identifier, which shows tmutil: No destination matching ID: identifier.

I've been up all night trying to fix this issue, but I'm missing something here. Any help at all would be appreciated.

Unfortunately, due to the way Boot Camp (especially its partitions) works in conjunction with APFS, you cannot arbitrarily resize either the Boot Camp partition nor the APFS Container once both are present on the same device; the only viable method for reallocating capacities is destructive to the Boot camp partition.

Back up your Boot Camp Partition (use eg. WinClone or the Windows Backup tool) then use Boot Camp Assistant to remove the Boot Camp partition, reboot, then start over by using Boot Camp Assistant to create the new Boot Camp partition in the size required.


finder search window – functionality of keyboard shortcut changes I use cmd + alt + spacebar to launch a new finder window on my mac. Sometimes however, instead of launching a normal finder window complete with sidebar (something like this), it instead launches a window without a sidebar, like this . Why does this happen and how do I prevent it from happening?

On my computer, ⌘⌥+T toggles the toolbars on/off.
Maybe you have this keyboard shortcut set to ⌘⌥ + M,N,B,V, or C, such that you accidentally hit both shortcuts?

You can check in your SysPrefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts pane, or just try those shortcuts that are near the space bar.

I suggest this because of your assertion that it happens "sometimes", which is pretty weird.  I did once have my toolbars always missing, which it turns out required some preference file to be deleted or something.  But I've never seen an intermittent issue like that.


Conventional zoom behaviour in OS X I would like to replicate the conventional zoom behaviour of 'ctrl +'/'ctrl -' with the mouse scroll functionality. Probably a new feature, but I preferred the original behaviour. Consequently I would prefer the zoom mechanism to only effect the active window as opposed to the entire desktop? How do achieve this?

You only have a couple of options here:

System Preferences → Mouse → Point & Click → Smart zoom. That lets you make zoom on the open window when you double-tap with one finger.
Or, System Preferences → Trackpad → Scroll & Zoom → Smart zoom. Is the same as previously mentioned, but you have to double-tap with two fingers on your trackpad.

Both aren't exactly what you mention, but you have no other choices from now on Yosemite.


How do I get storedownloadd to stop? Judging by the Rcvd Bytes column in Activity Monitor, storedownloadd has been busy downloading. It downloaded 2GBytes while my computer was on today, and earlier this evening it downloaded 424.1MBytes.

I'm assuming this is macOS Sierra, but that's not terribly important - I just want it to stop! What options do I have to set to do this?

I've played with the App Store settings a bit:

But this didn't seem to make any difference. I've rebooted, and softwaredownloadd is still downloading. 320MBytes now. Wait... how big is this thing?

(I'm reluctant to disable the automatic update check. I like to know when new updates are available. However I do insist on being allowed to schedule the download and installation myself.)

(Macbook Pro retina 13" early 2015, OS X El Capitan 10.11.6)

You could try to unload the daemon

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.storedownloadd.daemon.plist

Or the best thing to do is pause the updates in the App Store


Second monitor turns blue problem I have recently upgraded to an iMac (Retina 5k, 27-inch, 2017) that has High Sierra (OS version 10.13.3) installed. I have an Asus monitor that I used with my old iMac and had no issues. Ever since the upgrade (usually not more than once a day), the second display will suddenly turn blue:

The only cure I've found is to disconnect the screen and reconnect it. Another similar problem I have with this computer is that my headphones are not recognized all of a sudden and I have to unplug and re-plug to resolve this.

I have a feeling there is some sort of software glitch as both the monitor and headphones worked well on the old computer. I would appreciate any help resolving this.

Update:
Ever since I've reset my SMC 2 days ago, I haven't seen the "blue screen" (thank you @howdytom), but I am still not sure that this a permanent solution. As I am using a cable that was given to me by the IT department, I am not exactly what adapter it is. But here is a picture of it:

BTW, after I disconnected the cable the headphones were not recognized again and I had to plug and unplug them.

You can try to reset the SMC on your iMac

Shut Down your Mac
Unplug the iMac form the power cord.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds
Plug the power cord back in and turn on your Mac.

Also, you can try to reset the NVRAM

Shut Down your Mac
Press the power button and immediately press and hold these keys together: Option Command P and R
Keep these keys pressed down for at least 20 seconds until you can hear the startup sound again
You can release all keys after the Apple logo shows up and iMac boots normally.


iPhoto crashes at launch? Whenever I open iPhoto, I get this error :

Any idea how to fix this ?

Error log :

Process:         iPhoto [52263]
Path:            /Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/MacOS/iPhoto
Identifier:      com.apple.iPhoto
Version:         9.4.2 (9.4.2)
Build Info:      iPhotoProject-710042000000000~2
Code Type:       X86 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [240]
User ID:         501

Date/Time:       2013-02-04 17:06:44.306 +0000
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.8.2 (12C3006)
Report Version:  10

Interval Since Last Report:          2832171 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:           829
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   7

Crashed Thread:  0

Exception Type:  EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
dyld: launch, loading dependent libraries

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Python
  Referenced from: /Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/MacOS/iPhoto
  Reason: image not found

I had the same problem.  Fixed it by following the path to Python/frameworks.  The folder in Versions was named 2.7.  I changed the folder name to 2.6 and iPhoto opened right up.


Time Machine Backup Failed Ive been using my Time Machine for almost 3 years without any problems. It's a 3 TB LaCie. This week it has decided to stop backing up my work. I tried repairing the disk and unmounting and remounting the disk a number of times but it's not working. After remounting the disk, it runs for about 10 minutes and then stops. Each time I then try to manually run a backup it immediately gives me an error message. The initial message I get is "Time Machine couldn't back up to 'LaCie'". When I click on the details it tells me that an error occurred whilst creating the 'backup folder'. It has suggested that I verify and repair the disk, but I have done this to no avail.

I'm currently still running Mavericks on my Mac.

Is there a solution to this?

I had an issue with backups not completing and I solved it by deleting the partially created backup folder.

First turn time machine off (System Preferences > Time Machine > Off)

Navigate to /Volumes/VOLUMENAME/Backups.backupdb/COMPUTERNAME/, where you will see a list of folders dated by when the backup was created. If you see a folder with .inProgress in the name, move it to the trash.

Turn time machine back on and complete a backup. If it fails again, I'd recommend taking a look at the resources here: http://pondini.org/TM/C10.html


I was able to erase FileVault encrypted drive My Mac mini was running Sierra. It had FileVault enabled. I read that you shouldn't be able to erase a FileVault encrypted drive. I logged into Recovery and I was able to erase the drive.

The next step I did was "Restore" and now I see a OSX Base System partition created. So, I thought heck, macOS would be installed and I restarted but I led me to Recovery Menu again, so I went to the reinstall macOS. But, when I select the hard drive, it shows the "This disk is locked".

So, I read that if you go to file menu in Disk Utility there should be an unlock option, but I don't see any.

Further in Disk Utility, it shows that the OS X Base System has consumed all the space.

I obviously know the password, how do I recover from this?

As you discovered, you can indeed erase a FileVault-encrypted disk even without the password.

The "Unlock" option is under the File menu when booted in Recovery. Be sure to select the volume first for the option to become available.

If all else fails I use the following to erase a FileVault disk and start over:

diskutil cs list

Get the UUID of the Logical Volume Group for the next command:

diskutil cs delete <UUID of Logical Volume Group>


SSD is not recognised with the internal SATA cable (13" 2010 MBP) It's pretty weird, seeing that HDD's are recognisable, and that SSD works when in an enclosure (Crucial M500).

I've read somewhere that it could be an issue with the cable, but I bought a replacement cable, and it doesn't recognise the SSD either.

One idea that I have might be the issue is that the SSD needs 1.7 A of current, while the HDD I tested it with only 1 A.

The actual problem here was that I installed the OS while the SSD was in an external enclosure, not installed in the internal bay. When I wiped the drive, installed it in the bay and then installed the OS from the old HDD, now in an external drive, my problems were solved.

I also tried another SATA cable before switching the positions, and that didn't help.


Will apple reject app if there is trial version? Our team is working on an app where user will download and install app. He will initially have 5 days of trial period during which all of the features will be unlocked. After 5 days, some of the features will be locked and user will have to make in-app purchase (non-consumable, one time only) to unlock those features. After reading the App Store Review Guidelines, they state :

  Demos, betas, and trial versions of your app don’t belong on the App Store – use TestFlight instead.

My question is:

Is it possible that our app will get rejected?
Did you face any similar issue. Could you please give example.
What is the alternate?

If you come out with “this is a trial” you will likely be rejected. If your app is “we do this and this” and if you want extra Y - try that, too and then decide to pay or go back to just “this and this”

If the app does something significant like Microsoft Word or Omni Graffle and then allows you to buy up to subscribe monthly / indefinitely or one time purchase an unlock to added functionality like editing a document, you should be totally in the clear - especially with one time / non consumable IAP entitlements.

Basically, the app can’t be trial after the 5 days or whatever. The key for your design is that the reviewer can clearly see some functionality that will always work for free. If your app has no long term utility past the trial, you will need an alternate model or design in all likelihood.


Can't find kernel.log file on Yosemite I began kernel programming on mac.

Because I want to run my kernel extensions without code signing I had to do the following:

sudo nvram boot-args=kext-dev-mode=1

It works as it should be, but the problem is that I can't find my kernel.log file.

I opened Console app and even there under FILES there is no kernel.log, I have listed all the other files except that one.

Any suggestions where can I find my kernel.log file?

I need it for debug purposes.

On Yosemite, those kernel messages should be logged to System.log according to /etc/asl.conf, which replaced the older syslog.conf. Apple System Logger and Syslog both use /etc/asl.conf

 # Rules for /var/log/system.log
 > system.log mode=0640 format=bsd rotate=seq compress file_max=5M all_max=50M
 ? [= Sender kernel] file system.log

Kernel.log is not used by any logger since 10.8 I believe, but confirmed in 10.10.x

Note, El Capitan and SIP removed support for kext-dev-mode, so keep that in mind if you need to debug in newer OS X versions.


How do I set the creation time of a file? I have a script that converts a file to another format, and I want the resulting file to have the same timestamps as the original, including the creation time (as shown by ls -lU).

I can use touch to set the access and modification time, but I don't see a way to set the creation time.

SetFile can also be used to set the creation date before the modification date or in the future.

-d date    Sets the creation date, where date is a string of the
           form: "mm/dd/[yy]yy [hh:mm:[:ss] [AM | PM]]" Notes:
           Enclose the string in quotation marks if it contains spa-
           ces. The date must be in the Unix epoch, that is, between
           1/1/1970 and 1/18/2038. If the year is provided as a two-
           digit year, it is assumed to be in the 21st century and
           must be from 00 (2000) through 38 (2038).

This would set the creation date to the modification date:

SetFile -d "$(GetFileInfo -m test.txt)" test.txt

SetFile and GetFileInfo are part of the command line tools package, which can be downloaded from developer.apple.com/downloads or from Xcode's preferences after installing it from the App Store.


How can I trigger the creation of a .DS_Store file in a directory? How can I trigger the creation of a .DS_Store file in a directory?

I have a Macbook Pro and at some point I found that within a directory, the modified dates on some of first level subdirectories directories had changed. I looked into it and found that there were .DS_Store files in these directories or some subdirectories of them. There are some things i'm doing to try to get rid of them and restore the modified dates and then ensure it doesn't reoccur (I understand one can set finder to not produce these .DS_Store files). But, aside from that, i'm also trying to reproduce the problem and that's what i'm asking about here.

I have tried creating a directory on my mac, and looking at it in finder, adding a file to it, and viewing it from a windows machine, and copying it from mac to windows, but it's not generating that .DS_Store file

It seems like it happens in sweeps.. a bunch with this date/time, a bunch with that  date/time. But I don't know exactly what I was doing at that date/time.  So I can't really determine what sets it off. And i'm trying to determine that well enough to reproduce it , to be able to trigger it myself.

I tried copying a directory to a USB with USB formatted as exFAT.

I'm guessing to do it is something to do with copying or viewing in finder or viewing the mac folder from a windows machine and copying things from there.

I just can't seem to reproduce it myself.  My test directory is not getting a .DS_Store file in it.

I'd be interested if anybody knows how to reliably reproduce the phenomena of .DS_Store file being generated in a directory or directories.

Any ideas how I can do that?

I would suggest creating a folder from the terminal.  Inside the folder create a temporary folder and a temporary file.  From the terminal, open the directory in finder, create a new folder, and rearrange all of the items.  After messing around, check the terminal to see if .DS_Store is created.
Here are the steps:

Open Terminal
mkdir Folder
cd Folder
mkdir MyFolder
touch MyFile.txt
open .
Menu > Sort By > None
Menu > File > New Folder > "Temp"
Move all the items around
In terminal, check to see if the .DS_Store has been created.

P.S. I am running macOS 11.1


Why might my mac be running extremely slowly at times? This sounds like a pretty open, multi-possibility question, but I'm at a loss. I continually experience my mac falling behind by several words or characters. I mainly notice it in chrome and adium, but it isn't necessarily specific to those. When it happens I look at menu meters and notice the following.

4 cores at idle
The hard drive is sitting idle as well.
1,000 MB of ram free at a minimum
network usage under 10KB/s

If I look at the load averages I'm generally fairly low as well. This last time I was around .2 on all three numbers, certainly nothing close to 4.

What else could be causing extreme slowness like this? While I mentioned typing, this is not exclusive to typing, I also notice long delays on simply opening another tab in a web browser. The symptoms might last for a few minutes or more and then completely subside to the point that things feel fast again.

It might be evident based off 4 cores sitting at idle, but looking in activity monitor shows nothing taking much CPU at all, and the biggest ram usage for a single app was around 300 MB this last time a few moments ago.

There are a lot of possibilities, but worst thing first:

Run /Applications/Utilities/Console.app and check system.log.

Look especially for entries that say something like disk4s3: I/O error.
If you see that, see this: Hard Drive Recovery

Also look at Console Messages.  There are usually a lot of weird messages in there, but look for repeated things occurring at the same time as the slowdowns.

If the app is completely unresponsive for several seconds at a time, particularly if it is giving you the spinning ball cursor, then it is likely a disk I/O issue.  If the app is just slow, particularly if other apps are fine, then it may be trying to do something in the background that happens to involve a lot of time dependent operations (like network chatter) which don't show up in activity monitor because they mostly involve idle waiting.

Graphics issues can also cause weird slowdowns, but that should be something obvious like having a 3D shooter (or iTunes visualization) running in the background, a second display hooked up, or custom graphics drivers installed.

Clear all browser caches, quit all unnecessary apps.

Another possibility to consider is overheating.  Make sure all vents are clear, get a Fan or temperature utility.  But now I'm really reaching.  The answer is likely in the logs somewhere.


running XQuartz: display background is black after screen is unlocked or awakened I use XQuartz 99.9% of the time I'm on my Mac. When I lock my screen (using Lock Screen in the apple menu) -- or the screen saver kicks in -- and the screen remains locked/darkened for more than a few minutes -- not sure what the minimum amount of time is for this -- the screen background is often black when I unlock the screen or wake up the display. I am still able to see and use everything on the desktop -- mac icons, mac apps, X window apps, etc. -- but the screen background is black -- really hard on the eyes! If I exit XQuartz, my screen returns to normal but this is not a solution since I then lose all my X applications. If I lock the screen and immediately unlock it, I don't see the problem.

I'm running macOS High Sierra (10.13.6) and XQuartz 2.7.11. I have had my Mac (it's a work mac) since May, 2017. The Mac came with Sierra and I installed High Sierra early last fall but did not start having this problem until January. It mysteriously went away for a few months but has now returned.

Any ideas or suggestions? I'd be happy with a reasonable workaround that doesn't involve killing XQuartz.

Get your XQuartz showing in the menu bar. Click on XQuartz menu item and select Preferences. When the preference pane appears, click on the Output tab. One of the options is the Full-screen mode.  Make sure the box is NOT checked. See the images below.


Desktop and app in Split View In my office, I have an LG ultrawide display connected to my MBP (which is inside a Henge dock). The size of the display allows me to use multiple apps in Split View really well. I often use two Parallels VMs next to each other in this way, and that works really great.

This got me thinking, however: is there any way to use a desktop in Split View next to a VM?
I'm guessing there is no 'official' way to do so, but is there any way to get this done, or get something similar going?

To further clarify:
What I'd like to achieve is this, but with my Mac desktop in stead of one of my VMs:

I think the answer is no, as the Desktop (with multiple windows, Dock, menu bar, etc.) is not a resizable window and so can't be split in the same way as other windows.

The best you can do is show the Desktop folder as a folder which can participate in the Split View.


How do I open an EPUB from an email in iBooks on my iPad? I have my iPad now with iOS 5.1.  In the email I have a .epub but when iPad's email program download the file, there is no way to open it on iBooks?  Tapping or double tapping on the attachment downloaded will have no reaction.  Can this be solved if I don't have a PC to place that file into Dropbox to open in iBooks?

In all cases I have tested, iOS recognizes epub files and will offer to send them directly to iBooks.

I have tested this from the email all, dropbox app as well as mobile safari.

Other apps like Evernote and AirSharing also are able to receive my epub files, so if you are not able to do this, perhaps it's an encoding issue or something about how the files are being attached to the emails and not necessarily a problem with iOS.


How to create a hidden partition on a hard drive? I have created 3 partitions on a hard drive.

I've tried renaming the partition with a dot in front, however it seems that the OS doesn't allow that.

How to make one of the 3 partitions hidden to the user?

My previous answer is preserved below.

You can use the chflags command to apply the hidden attribute:

chflags hidden /Volumes/Hide_this_disk

And to unhide:

chflags nohidden /Volumes/Hide_this_disk

These commands should take effect immediately.

You need to have the Apple Developer Command Line Tools installed. You can either get them from inside of Xcode (in Preferences under Downloads) or you can download them from Apple's Developer website (free registration required).

After it's installed you'll have the SetFile command:

SetFile -a V /Volumes/Hide_this_disk

This needs to be executed as root, and it won't vanish right away. But after remounting it, it won't be displayed in the Finder any more. You'll need to use Disk Utility (or diskutil) to mount and unmount the disk afterward since it won't be visible to unmount and it will still be available under /Volumes normally.

If it's an internal disk then I believe that it will auto-mount at boot, but I don't know for certain.

To make it visible again just run the same thing, but with a small v:

SetFile -a v /Volumes/Hide_this_disk

Again, you'll need to remount it.


One mini displayport on Radeon HD5870 not working after an OS reinstall; why? (Mac Pro) I've searched in every way I can think, and read forums until my eyes bug out, and have yet to run into my situation, so here goes. I have a very nice Mac Pro that I purchased pre-owned (8 cores, 32GB of RAM, super clean, inside and out). It was loaded with OS 10.8.2, placed on a SSD system/boot drive. In order to "clean house," I did a fresh install with the disks that came with, which ran 10.5.6.

The reinstall went great, and cleared some space, but I found that my second of two mini-displayport monitors (Dell P2210s) was not working. I upgraded to Snow Leopard, and it STILL isn't showing up. I know that the monitors and cables are good, because they work when I plug them into the right-most mini-displayport output on the ATI Radeon HD 5870 video card installed in the unit.

Needless to say, both monitors worked fine when I received the unit. I can see the "Detect Display" button on my "Preferences"/"Display" menu, but that does no good. I've reset my SRAM, tried hot-swapping and cold-swapping the monitor in the left-most output, and have had no results. My next step is to try using a DVI-D cable and see if it recognizes, but has anyone out there ever heard of a displayport output just going kablooey for no other reason than having done a fresh install of the OS?

The bottom line is that the right mini-displayport output on the video card works great, and the left one does not, anymore.

I tried unplugging the power cables from the video card and re-plugging them, but, just to clarify, everything worked just fine, out of the box--both monitors were immediately recognized, and easily configured. There were no shocks, no traumas, no dropped CPU, nothing that would be an obvious cause to the problem.

Thanks in advance for any help; I'll post here if I come up with a solution...

I've not had your issue exactly, BUT I've found DVI connection to be the most reliable with external monitors and OS X.  AS you said, you intended to try DVI-D next.  I imagine that would get both monitors firing up.

Side note: OS X 10.8 seems to despise 10.5.  I've had a bunch of unrelated madness crop up due to failed mountain lion install and then recovery via  at some point using 10.5 install disc.  Disastrous results.


Should I sign open source code myself? I use macOS 10.14 and came across a problem when I tried to install an open source plugin for Vim that I found on Github. I downloaded the source code and compiled it myself, which worked well, but when I ran it, the execution was interrupted because the "Code signature [of executable] not valid for use in process".

This has given me a lot of questions that I can't wrap my head around:

I could either sign it myself, but wouldn't that kind of ruin the purpose of code signing? Is there any qualitative difference in signing code from the internet and allowing apps from unidentified developers in the "This app was downloaded from the internet" dialog box?

If I don't do it, whose "responsibility" is it to sign? The repository maintainer? The contributors? Is Apple expecting open source developers to always have an Apple Developer ID? Or have I misunderstood the purpose of code signing?

Edit:

To clearify, my question is how I should handle unsigned source code that I compile myself, since I don't expect contributers to always be able to, or remember to, sign their code, especially when it comes to tiny contributions to open source projects with many contributers.

Ad-Hoc Code Signing

For third party applications and binaries that you compile yourself, and that require code signing, use an ad hoc code signature.

I am assuming the application will not run without a signature;
I am assuming the application will not be distributed;
I am assuming you do not care about the identity of the signature being valid.

An ad-hoc signature does not provide reliable security benefits. It can be used to determine if the application has been changed and it can be used to apply security restrictions, such as entitlements, to an application.

An ad-hoc signature will validate against codesign but not spctl. This may or may not matter depending on the binary being signed. For applications and executables, this is unlikely to matter because spctl is not run on locally created binaries.

Why Code Sign?

Regarding the refined question:

  How I should handle unsigned source code that I compile myself, since I don't expect contributers to always be able to, or remember to, sign their code, especially when it comes to tiny contributions to open source projects with many contributers.

For most self compiled applications, there is no need for code signing. This assumes you trust the application's code. On macOS, you can open untrusted applications from the Finder, see Apple's Open an app from an unidentified developer.

If you do not trust the code or the developers, do not compile or run the application.

Your Responsibility

The provider of the source code has no responsibility or obligation to provide pre-built code signed binaries. Being self compiled, all code signing is your choice and responsibility.

Apple require submissions to their App Stores to be code signed.
Apple request developers outside their App Stores sign their code, but it is not yet required.

In both cases, only the final binaries are signed. The original source code and resources are not signed.

Source Code is Not Signed

Source code itself can not be code signed in a meaningful way for macOS. Source files and code can be digitally signed, as any other file can be, but this makes no impact on how the resulting application or binary is treated by macOS.

How to Ad-Hoc Code Sign a Mac Application

To codesign an application on macOS with an ad-hoc signature, set the identity -s flag to -:

codesign --force -s - </path/to/application>

All the other rules, requirements, and permutations of the codesign command remain the same.

The flag --force is used here to overwrite any existing signature.

You might need to add the --deep flag to the codesign command to sign sub-resources such as frameworks and embedded services.


Where can I find information on the licence(s) that govern use of the fonts that come preinstalled on Mac OS X? I've just read the licence for the Hoefler font (see their EULA).  It says explicitly:

  You may not create Embedded Documents, except as expressly provided in paragraphs 3.2 and 3.3:

and "Embedded Documents" includes "ordinary" PDFs.

Now it may be that Apple has a different licence that is in force when I "bought" this font through Mac OS X.  If so, where do I find it?  (More generally, for any font distributed with Mac OS X.)  I'd quite like to know that if I create a PDF with one of these fonts then I'm not breaking the law.

From the os license:

E. Fonts. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, you may use the fonts included with the Apple Software to display and print content while running the Apple Software; however, you may only embed fonts in content if that is permitted by the embedding restrictions accompanying the font in question. These embedding restrictions can be found in the Font Book/Preview/Show Font Info panel.

In FontBook Show Info for Hoefler Text it says "Embeddable: Yes".


How to completely delete and app from iphone (including all the data and history) So this problem particularly emerged with the Tinder app. I was using Tinder with a user account (A) and one day I logged out and created a new user account (B) which I never succeeded to activate due to sms verification problems, so I decided to login again with my old account. But even when I delete the Tinder app and reinstall it again, it still shows the B account logged in to the app. This means that IOS is somewhere storing a history for this app. Now I'm looking for a way to delete this history.

Note that this question is not necessarily about a certain app, but rather about where IOS stores historical data of apps and how to delete those histories alongside with the app.

P.S: If there are solutions like changing UUID of my i-phone that wouldn't damage my phone (I'm new to iphone so I'm not sure what I'm saying. For instance this jailbreaking thing which I keep hearing about and I'm not sure what it exactly does to my phone, doesn't sound like an I idea that I like), I'm open to them.

Try deleting the app from within Settings and see if that makes any difference?

More specifically:

Go to Settings
Tap on General
Tap on Storage & iCloud Usage
Under the Storage heading, tap on Manage Storage
Wait for your list of apps to populate
Select Tinder
Tap on the red Delete App option
At the next prompt, tap OK
Exit Settings
Reboot your iPhone (press the Power and Home buttons for about 10 secs)

Now reinstall the Tinder app and see whether this process has made any difference.


Shared library between Macbook Air, iMac, Airport Time Capsule My Early 2008 iMac alu 24" HD drive has finally died and I'm in the process of replacing it. I've also recently got a 2013 Mac Air. The MacAir SSD drive is small so I want to share the iTunes/iPhoto libraries and user files between iMac and MacAir.

It seems a 2013 Airport Time Capsule would be a good solution - I could have the libraries stored on the TimeCap 2TB drive (Mac Air will connect over 802.11ac WiFi & ethernet for iMac). I would get a SSD drive for the iMac.

Alternatively I could keep the libraries on the iMac drive and use wake for network access when the MacAir wants them (then just use TimeCap for Time Machine backups). I would get a Hybrid SSHD for the iMac.

I am trying to work out the pro's & con's of these two approaches. I obviously want to get the best read/write speeds.

Config 1: library on the TimeCap

iMac > TimeCap over Gigabit Ethernet: 40|42 MB/s (read|write)?
MacAir > TimeCap over 802.11ac Wifi: 27|23 MB/s?

Source: "Speed test on new 2013 time capsule" thread. These speeds are slow, but the iMac gets an SSD for OS & application files.

Config 2: library on the iMac

iMac Hybrid SSHD over SATA 3Gb/s: 158-190MB/s (not sure if those figures are only for SATA 6Gb/s)
MacAir > iMac SSHD over AirPort 802.11ac Wifi (wake on demand): ?

Seems like a more traditional setup. The iMac no longer gets a SSD but will have fast speeds for accessing the library files over SATA compared to Ethernet.

Are the quoted speeds accurate? Which of these approaches is best overall? The decision affects which drive I need to go and buy.

Although you have stated that you want the best read/write speeds, you should consider other factors as well.

1. Redundancy (-Time Capsule; +iMac)

With the libraries on Time Capsule, where would the backups of the libraries be? If you have not thought of that, then you must consider it. Having the libraries as well as their backups sitting on a single device, the Time Capsule, is not a good idea (even if feasible).
With the libraries on the iMac, you could dedicate the Time Capsule exclusively for backups and have better redundancy.

2. Availability (+Time Capsule; -iMac)

With the libraries on the Time Capsule, you would have them available anytime since the Time Capsule would be on all the time.
With the libraries on the iMac, wake on network access, which is sometimes not reliable and breaks (and sometimes requires a patch from Apple) would force you to use other methods to wake the iMac manually (search through the Apple Support Community forums for wake on LAN or wake on network issues that have happened even recently).

3. Speed (=Time Capsule; =iMac)

I do not have any practical numbers, and do not understand why the Time Capsule shows up so slow over Gigabit ethernet on the thread you pointed, but it may be a matter of time and a firmware update from Apple to resolve it.
Although the native speed over SATA looks nice when the libraries are on the iMac, do you really need such speeds for music, photos and videos? I think not, even if you're planning for a future when 8K UHD videos become common (with Apple supporting it) and you plan to have large video files. Even 4K UHD (and the currently common Full HD 1080p) can be easily streamed at the lower end of the speeds you have noted.

4. Cost

You would have to work this out yourself and see what you can afford and what makes sense.

Winner, in my opinion: Libraries on the Time Capsule with SSD for the iMac, plus another 2TB external drive connected for backups of the libraries on the Time Capsule. Back up the Time Capsule (entirely or just the libraries) from the iMac using a tool like Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper! or Chronosync or using the Archive function from Airport Utility and an Automator script to make it periodic.


How to zip from terminal without creating folder structure of path to folder? It is possible to zip a target folder with encryption by the terminal command

zip -er ~/Desktop/myzippedfolder.zip ~/Documents/myfolder/

However, the contents of myzippedfolder will be a folder called Users containing a folder called username containing a folder called Documents containing the folder myfolder and its contents.

Is it possible to zip the folder myfolder only such that when myzippedfolder is unzipped it contains only myfolder and its contents rather than the parent folders?

Simply…

cd to the correct directory first. For Example:

cd ~/Desktop

or alternatively, type cd [space], then drag your folder to terminal to auto-fill the path


Can't figure out what is taking up so much space When I cd /; du sudo du -h -d1 I get a total of about 160 GB (this is on a 256 GB drive). However, when I look at Disk Utility or About this Mac -> More Info -> Storage it looks like I'm using a solid 230 GB.  This is on a late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina, OS X 10.9.2.  I suspect the problem may be with mobile backups (I'm not hooked up to an external hard disk for backups).  I've tried, several times, running sudo tmutil disablelocal but that doesn't appear to fix the problem.

Here is the output of df -h after disabling local backups

/dev/disk1      233G  212G   21G  92% /

After re-enabling:

/dev/disk1                         233G  212G   21G  92% /
localhost:/ebh4eOBPvo122KL1TUyqlO  233G  233G     0 100% /Volumes/MobileBackups

Output of ls -l /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/MyComputerName

total 1
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Jul 16 17:55 2014-07-16-175518
lrwxrwxrwx 0 root wheel   0 Jul 16 17:55 Latest -> 2014-07-16-175518

Output of sudo tmutil delete 2014-07-16-175518

Deleting: /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/MyComputerName/2014-07-16-175518
Error (-36) deleting: /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/MyComputerName/2014-07-16-175518
Error (642) re-linking Latest for machine directory: /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/MyComputerName
Total deleted: 237.4K

Any ideas?  I know very little about Macs, if that's not obvious.

To try and locate which files and directories are consuming the most disk space on your Mac, I'd recommend running OmniDiskSweeper. You can run it off of the DMG just fine. Select your hard drive and let it run and it'll list in descending order where the greatest disk usage is.

OmniDiskSweeper: https://www.omnigroup.com/download/latest/OmniDiskSweeper

From there you should hopefully be able to free up some space.

Hope this helps you!


Admin vs firstname and lastname I've been using OS X since Lion. I'm a sole user of my Mac.

When I log into the Mac, I log in as Admin. Also, in System Preferences, under Users & Groups, the Current User is listed as Admin. However, in Finder, under /Users, there's a folder with a cottage icon on it, named my firstname and lastname

Also, when I run get_current_user() in PHP (inside a XAMPP installation), I get my firstname and lastname

What's the relationship between Admin and firstname and lastname ? Are they the same?
Why is it that Mac thinks the current user is Admin , but PHP thinks that the current user is my firstname and lastname?
Under System Preferences, why isn't my firstname and lastname listed anywhere?
What's the significance of Users listed in the Users folder? Are they different than users listed in System Preferences under Users & Groups?
Does the concept of a unix-like root account factor in anywhere here?

OS X uses a short user name and a long user name.

The short name is the home folder shown in /Users/xxxxx and the long name is only shown for programs and settings that know to request the long name to display. Any where you get to enter a user name, you can choose to use either the short or long name.

To see this in practice, you can either use terminal:

whoami
whoami | id

The first will print your short name and the second shows your ID and your user numbers and internal accounting.

This is covered in several Apple support articles - best being: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201548

I would recommend you make a back up and have someone to check your work if you try changing the short name. It can cause old backups to get erased (since the new folder gets backed up and doesn't "save space" like other Time Machine backups do) and can cause your account to not work where you'd need to reset the setup manually and create a third admin account to patch things up.


ouc process running at 98% CPU When I open a few different applications, the temperature quickly surpasses 200 F, however, when I'm working lightly, it is around 170 F.  It just seems like ever since I upgraded to Mavericks, it's heating up very often and fans go crazy, which is by design I guess.

I just don't know what this ouc process is and why it's using so much CPU.  I force quit it, but it comes back in a few minutes again.

Given ouc is not a process that ships with Mac OS X it appears a third party product is causing the problem.

Searching the web suggests ouc is embedded within an application called "Mobile Partner.app".

If you have this application, please report the problem to the developers.

Manual Removal

It is always better to use the removal process provided by the developer; however, if Mobile Partner does not provide a removal tool, you might like to disable the ouc process manually.

You mention force quitting results in an immediate relaunching. This suggests the ouc process is managed by a launchd job ticket. launchd is a watchdog process that will monitor processes and relaunch any that run into trouble - such as crashing or being force quit.

Take a look in the following folders for a launchd job ticket associated with ouc:

~/Library/LaunchAgents
~/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/LaunchDaemons

The files in these folders are text files and can be read using TextEdit or a dedicated text editing tool, such as TextWrangler.

If you find a file mentioning ouc, move it out of the parent folder and restart.

As @oma mentions, if you can not find a launchd job ticket, look inside /Library/StartupItems for a folder or file containing ouc. Delete the ouc folder and restart.


How can I restore iPhone from iTunes Backup BUT keep iCloud Notes? I lost my old iphone SE (gen 1) and most recent backup was 6 months ago (iTunes, no iCloud backup). I want to restore to a new iPhone SE (gen 2020) with the older iTunes backup BUT keep or somehow download all of my recent iCloud Notes (I do backup Notes and Contacts to iCloud). I do see in iCloud Account Advanced settings that I can restore to an iCloud Contact version, but how do this with notes? BTW, I'm using Windoz 2010 not a Mac.
Any suggestions are appreciated.

When you have restored the phone from the older iTunes Backup, it should automatically start downloading the newer notes and contacts from your iCloud account (requires internet connectivity ofcourse).


WhatsApp calls with background data disabled With Mobile Data and background app refresh turned off, can WhatsApp receive a call while the Wi-Fi is enabled, and the iPhone is connected to a Wi-Fi access point with active Internet connection?

If the iPhone is resting on a table, will I receive a normal WhatsApp call or not? Or will it remain closed, unless I pick the mobile in hand and turn-on the screen.

I will be using my iPhone in another country with international roaming active.

Yes, you will receive the calls on WhatsApp normally, even with the background data turned off as long as you are connected to the Internet (via Wi-Fi in your case).

WhatsApp makes use of a framework called VoIPKit available in iPhone software development kit, which enables it to receive audio/video calls even when in background/not running status or with the device in sleep mode/locked state/screen turned off.


Keychain says "Access to this item is restricted" after upgrading to Lion I recently upgraded to Lion and since then I haven't been able to use Keychain to look at my stored passwords.  When I click on the checkbox to show them it prompts me for my master password, then pops up a dialog that says "Access to this item is restricted".

Based on reading questions here and on other support sites, I've tried using the Keychain Access program's "Keychain First Aid" feature.  It reports that there are no errors.  I also used Disk Utility to Repair Disk Permissions, and this didn't fix the problem either.

I looked in ~/Library/Keychains/ and it looks like I do have owner permission to read and write the keychain file, and my main account is the owner.

Is there anything else I can try to fix this?  I'd hate to lose my keychain passwords.

Update:

I also tried dragging my login.keychain file from Finder into Keychain Access, and had no luck.  I tried some digging around in the security command line app as well, but have made no progress...

Update 2:

After trying all the suggestions I commented on here I was still getting this error, but then I did a software update, and rebooted, and now my keychain is working again.  So, I have no idea what went wrong, but it is now fixed!  I'll just pick an answer as accepted.

Does running the command-line version of Keychain:

security dump-keychain -d login.keychain

also fail, but with the weird message In dark wake, no UI possible?

Then part of Mac OS is confused about whether it is asleep or not. There’s no need to reboot. Put it to sleep, wake it up, and Keychain should be fine again. This happens on my MacBook Pro sometimes: I open it to wake it, press the power button out of habit, only to turn it off as it is trying to start up, resulting in weird Keychain behaviour.


Any way to have custom movie artwork for movies purchased on iTunes spread to iPhone and iPad via iCloud? I'm trying to have the custom artwork I apply to movies purchased on iTunes (applied through using 'Get Info' within iTunes on a Mac) spread to my iPhone or iPad. As it is, these changes appear to just be local to the machine, so I'm stuck with the default artwork for iOS devices as they appear in the TV app.

I'm looking for the artwork to sync via iCloud, but I'm not sure iCloud can do this.

Is there any way to have the custom artwork apply to iPhone or iPad via iCloud? If so, how?

iTunes movies

I have tested this with purchased movies from the iTunes Store.

It is not possible to change the artwork for purchased movies across devices using iCloud. The same is true for The movie title, summary, etc.

Changes to movie titles will be saved locally, even if you remove the download and download it at a later point in time. Other devices won't receive changed movie titles.

Movies without DRM

Movies without DRM that you have added yourself to your iTunes Library can be synced locally to your devices. Changes made to the artwork of these movie files will be updated upon the next sync (via USB/Wi-Fi).


Reinstalling Mac mini (server?) I just got a Mac mini that I will use to play FLAC-files in my stereo (DAC to be bought). I have no idea how old it is. Might be from 2010?

The serial (on a sticker on the back of the Mac mini) is:
XSVR-106-000-R-J8m-F82-PWQ-7RJ-WHJ-L-HJ-7

However, I have problems reinstalling it. There's a sticker on the back that says: MAC OS X 10.6 SRV UNLIMITED CLIENT

The install stops after a while saying:

No packages were eligible for install. contact the software manufacturer for assistance

...I'm doing a Recovery-install from some sort of Recovery-disk and using the Internet. I'm signed into App Store etc.

These are the options I have at the recovery:

It seems like this problem could have something to do with the date?

I tried setting the date to 2017 (some sources claimed that this would to the trick) by starting in Single user mode. But I get this:
Common missing Bluetooth controller transport...

And can't even type in the terminal. Any ideas on how to restore this?

From your photo, it looks like the disk has two Recovery Partitions for different updates of 10.11 (El Capitan).
It also looks to have an installer disk partition: like you would make for a USB stick in order to boot and install a version of MacOS.

I would select the first Recovery Partition (10.11.4), and from there launch Disk Utility and merge the other two partitions. Then install OS X from there.

If you've already tried installing from the Recovery Partition, and that's not working, then you could try Internet Recovery, which is what you do when the disk doesn't have a valid Recovery Partition. Option Command R.

Then try the same process from there: re-partition the disk and install the OS. It may install a different OS, but once it's done that, you can upgrade to whatever you like.


Should activity monitor be using non-trivial CPU %? I noticed my Mac Mini was thrashing the fac despite not really running much, in the process of trying to figure out why I was surprised to see Activity Monitor itself bouncing around 8-12% CPU.

Is this expected?

Yes, it is expected. It has a lot to keep track of sometimes, and in the scheme of things, 8%-12% CPU is rather trivial. I've never seen it spike the CPU all by itself in years of looking at it.


Change LG UltraFine resolution through AppleScript I would like to have an AppleScript that toggles between "Default for display" in System Preferences and "Scaled" "Larger Text".

The script should detect the current state of the display and toggle to the other state (i.e., if in Default for display, switch to scaled larger text).

I gut this far with my script (that I got from this site and this stackexchange page), but it seems that I can't get to virtually "click" left most icon out of the five available ones:

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set the current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.displays"
    reveal anchor "displaysDisplayTab" of pane id "com.apple.preference.displays"
end tell

local indexToUse

-- Now lets make the necessary changes
tell application "System Events"
    tell tab group 1 of window "LG UltraFine" of application process "System Preferences" of application "System Events"
        tell radio group 1

            if (value of radio button "Scaled") = 0 then
                -- Click the "Scaled" radio button
                click radio button "Scaled"

                tell radio group 2
                    click radio button 1 of radio group 2
                end tell

            else
                click radio button "Default for display"
            end if
        end tell

    end tell
end tell

-- Quit "System Preferences"
quit application "System Preferences"

When running the script, if System Preferences are in "Default for display", I get the following Script Error: System Events got an error: Can’t get radio group 2 of radio group 1 of tab group 1 of window "LG UltraFine" of application process "System Preferences". Invalid index.

I would like to be able to click on the button circled in red in the attached screenshot.

Thanks to @wch1zpink and the suggestion to use the Watch Me Do option in Automator, here is a script that finally seems to do the job:

-- Portions of the script found on https://gist.github.com/mvaneijgen/2f48f859ca07d2e75b3a
-- Launch "System Preferences", open the "Displays" options and change to the "Display" tab
(* If error "System Events got an error: Script Editor is not allowed assistive access" appears, then System Preferences → Security & Privacy → Privacy → add Script Editor to "Allow the app to control your computer"*)
(* as per: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31019916/is-not-allowed-for-assistive-access-error-when-running-applescript-from-java) *)

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "displaysDisplayTab" of pane id "com.apple.preference.displays"
end tell

-- Now lets make the necessary changes
tell application "System Events"
    tell tab group 1 of window "LG UltraFine" of application process "System Preferences" of application "System Events"
        tell radio group 1

            if (value of radio button "Scaled") = 0 then -- Check if Scaled radio button is not selected
                click radio button "Scaled" -- Click the "Scaled" radio button

                -- and click on the icon above "Larger Text" (which is in fact a radio button)
                tell application "System Events"
                    tell tab group 1 of window "LG UltraFine" of application process "System Preferences" of application "System Events"
                        tell radio group 1 of group 2
                            click radio button 1
                        end tell
                    end tell
                end tell

                else -- Scaled radio button is already selected
                    click radio button "Default for display" -- therefore click on "Default for display"
            end if
        end tell
    end tell
end tell


Switch internal monitor off by software (script/terminal/shortcut/…) I’m using my MacBook Pro (OS X 10.6) standing in a shelf with an external screen on my desk so I don’t use and need the internal screen. But if the internal one is on it’s shown in spaces.

It is possible to use the MacBook with the internal screen switched off by putting it to sleep and wake it with an external input device while the Book is close. But this way always needs a short sleep and interrupt working. So I wonder if it’s is possible to switch off only the internal screen by software (an app, via Terminal, AppleScript, a keyboard short cut etc.) without switch off the external screen?

I know that there’s a shortcut for “sleep screen“ but this affects all screens including the external one.

To disable the internal screen for OS X Lion based laptops, launch the Terminal and enter the following command:

sudo nvram boot-args="iog=0x0"

You’ll need to reboot for changes to take effect, and the internal display will then be completely disabled regardless of whether the Mac is open or closed.

To undo this, you can go back to the Terminal and enter:

sudo nvram -d boot-args

Then reboot again, or you can just zap PRAM by holding down Command+Option+P+R during reboot, which clears out the boot-args as well. If you were to disconnect the MacBook Pro from an external video source, zapping the PRAM would be how you’d want to reenable the internal display.

This is the opposite of “clamshell mode” – where the Mac laptop is closed and the screen is still turned on. Clamshell can look nice, but without adequate air flow the Mac may overheat, thus running the computer with the display open is recommended. If you’re going to do this, be sure to set the primary display so that the menubar, Dock, and alert windows go to the proper screen.

Source: OSXDaily


Junk mail disabled but still filtering on Maverick This is a question that was asked on apple support community but did not find any answer. I am having exactly the same problem, I hope someone here can help.

In Mail -> Preferences -> Junk Mail, I have deselected "Enable junk mail filtering" ... yet the "Junk" mailbox still appears in the left column, and various emails are still being directed to "Junk." (from apple support forum)
I don't care whether or not the "Junk" mailbox is visible; I just don't want Mail to direct any emails into the "Junk" folder. And, as I noted in my original inquiry, I already DID deselect "Enable Junk mail filtering."

So, to reiterate my original question: "How do I make emails stop getting directed into the Junk mailbox?" This was never a problem prior to Mavericks.
As in the question of the op on apple support, this seems to start happening since the Maverick update and occurs only with my gmail/IMAP account.
Any idea on how to effectively disable the Junk box of Mail and not have these emails deleted from the gmail server?

One at the time.
Your web mail (the Google web site)

Use settings there to show or not the Spam folder in Google mail.
Google (gmail) said: messages that have been in Spam more than 30 days will be automatically deleted!!

Now you can show or not on your Computer (by selecting or not the SHOW in IMAP)

On your computer:
After you have disabled the show in IMAP in gmail settings, restart your computer's email (Mail.app) program, and the Spam/Junk Folder will be gone.

The next is in Disable the Junk mail filtering on your computer that is done here.

Remember the Gmail (web) will be still filtering according to your junk mail settings there.


Cannot wake Mountain Lion from safe sleep I have a late-2010 MacBook Air on which I am running OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.2 with FileVault 2 enabled.

When I try to wake it from safe sleep:

the panel is backlit but nothing is displayed;
the light on the ⇪ Caps Lock key is responsive; and
left alone, the machine eventually powers down (but it resumes in the same state when power is restored).

The only way that I have been able to use the machine again is to hard-reset it (which I never like doing); but upon rebooting, shortly after authenticating there is a kernel panic.  The machine then starts normally after the consequent soft-reboot.

Grateful for thoughts on how to identify the cause and/or resolve the problem.

Update 1

Having continuted to search around, I discovered a post in which a similar problem was resolved by:

disabling safe sleep;
rebooting;
removing the hibernatefile;
rebooting;
re-enabling safe sleep.

I performed these steps, apparently to no avail.  However, it now appears that if I enter my password whilst the screen is backlit and nothing is displayed, my wallpaper is (slowly) revealed together with the normal wake-from-sleep login box.  I can't be certain whether this was also true prior to performing the above steps, as I'm not sure that I ever tried entering my password at the blank screen.

Sadly, that's as good as it gets: neither a mouse pointer nor keyboard cursor are visible on the screen; and the keyboard is unresponsive.  The clock, battery status and WiFi icons in the top-right of the screen all remain in their pre-sleep states and do not update; if the computer is left for long enough, there is eventually a kernel panic (apparently related to the graphics drivers?).

Update 2

Following @danielAzuelos's suggestion, I ran Apple Hardware Test (from the Software Reinstall Drive) in extended mode, but no faults were identified.

Neither USB port is in use.

I discovered that the problem does not manifest when DestroyFVKeyOnStandby=0, so there is almost certainly something wrong with how my hibernating MacBook configures EFI to wake.

I have discovered that, if the machine goes into safe sleep when attached to an external display, everything works exactly as it should (even if the external display is no longer attached on wake).

I'm delighted to report that, after installing the OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.3 Update, this problem has gone away:

  About the update

  This update is recommended for all OS X Mountain Lion users and includes features and fixes that improve the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including:

  [ deletia ]

  A fix for an issue that may cause the screen to display incorrectly after waking from sleep


setup youtube-dl destination to ~/Downloads How do I setup youtube-dl to default download to ~/Downloads instead of the home folder?

youtube-dl Config File

To set a default download location, create a youtube-dl configuration file at:

~/.config/youtube-dl/config

Within this file enter the line:

-o ~/Downloads/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s

You can create this file using the following two commands:

mkdir -p ~/.config/youtube-dl/
echo "-o ~/Downloads/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" > ~/.config/youtube-dl/config

The first command mkdir, creates the folders leading to the configuration file. The second command echo writes the output option into the file.

Options set within your configuration file are applied to every call to youtube-dl. Use the --ignore-config option to disable reading of the configuration file.


Filing Sent messages in a folder other than sent messages folder Is there a way to create a rule in Apple Mail that will copy every sent message to another folder? I want to have every sent message to be copied to the G-Mail IMAP folder so that all my sent mail is on the server. It won't do it automatically because of the way I have my return address set up in the G-Mail Account
.
I can copy them individually, but I'd like it to happen automatically.

I understand that El Capitan has fixed IMAP in Apple Mail and handles it properly, but I can't upgrade to El Capitan until all my professional applications are solid. And they are not.

MacPro 3,1

OSX 10.10.5

Thanx in advance for any help you might have!

best,

Fred

I'm doing this for quite a while. Mac mail does not do it for you. However is works in this way: every sent message has an automatic copy to myself. In a rule I copy the received message with myself as the sender to a mailbox xxx.
1.Mail / Preferences / check Automatically Bcc: myself
2. Mail / Preferences / Rules / Add rule / "if any of the following conditions are met": from - contains -  Move message to Mailbox
good luck!


Local Directory empty on my FileZilla Pro Client I am using FileZilla Pro 3.44.2 on my MacOS Mojave. Support didn't help regarding my issues.

The only local directory on my FileZilla left hand panel browsable is /Users/anjanesh-mac/Downloads. /Users/anjanesh-mac/ shows no folders/files.

https://imgur.com/a/oWJUbSw

I don't see others reporting this issue. Is there something wrong with my setup and how can I fix this?

Make sure to grant permission through the directory access permissions dialog.If you are using Filezilla Pro, it is under Edit -> Directory access permissions. After you grant permission, you should be able to see the local files from the Local Directory.

Reference:
https://trac.filezilla-project.org/ticket/11575


iPhone 5s takes blurry photos only in apps that access camera My iPhone 5s takes perfectly clear photos when I access and use the stock Camera app to take a photo. However, if I try to use the camera in an app, e.g. to use the camera in my banking app to deposit a check, the photo is too blurry to use. I have found this is the case with all apps that use camera other then the Camera app.

Sometimes, even when we have tried "everything," a reset of the device can help.  This 'reboots' the phone.

Hard Reset

Hold the Home and Power buttons down at the same time until the  logo comes back to the screen. (The screen will go black, keep holding.)
Let go of BOTH buttons when the logo comes back.  (Continuing to hold the Home button will put the iOS device into Recovery Mode)

Recovery mode will re-download iOS and then give you the option of restoring from a backup.

If this doesn't work, and a restoration of the phone from scratch in Recovery Mode (which is time consuming for the download) doesn't work, if you iPhone is under warranty see if Apple will be able to help.  They want you to be happy and will do what they can within reason.

From a thread in Apple support community:

  Soft = Turn phone off and on.
  Hard = BOTH buttons held until you see Apple Logo.

  Difference: I like to explain by thinking of a laptop. On a laptop (or
  even computer) you can go to hibernation mode (memory gets written to
  disk then powers down). When turned on, it loads back up from memory
  and thus everything that was loaded in memory before shutting down is
  put back. That is what a Soft reset is (when you do the power button
  the slide to turn off). Thus if there was a memory leak for example in
  some program causing issues (sluggish, crashes, etc)....then if you
  just turn off and on, it will still have issues. A hard reset is like
  pulling the plug on your computer. It will have to turn back on and
  reboot fully. It does write an error log out to itself (nothing you
  see) but causes no harm to your phone or data. It is just a way to do
  a full clean boot up. This actually fixes about 90% of the issues most
  people have.

  Has no effect on battery outside of the fact it has to boot up thus
  processor and read writes will be happening.


How to create desktop shortcut for Chrome profile and run two or more profiles simultaneously? I am new to Mac, and I have my rough time (missing keys, wrong shortcuts and etc). But I don't give up. I am a JS developer with more than 10 years of Windows and Linux (Debian, Ubuntu) experience and I need another Chrome profile accessible on a demand. The easiest way for me is another icon in Dock (and on the desktop).
It is very easy in Windows - one just have to make shortcut and enter command line for chrome which looks like this:
google-chrome --profile-directory=Default

For OS X I found command line is

open -a "Google Chrome" --args --profile-directory=Default

How to make a shortcut in Dock and on Desktop using it?

Please mind the subject (question), it is important for me, that shortcuts has to allow running multiple profiles simultaneously. I didn't stated it first time, because it was obvious for me it will work that way (Linux and Windows just do it).

Since there are several possible answers, I will introduce a more exotic one:

Download and install Platypus
Create a file chromedefault.sh in ~/Documents/scripts/ with the content:

#!/bin/bash
open -a "Google Chrome" --args --profile-directory=Default

Open Platypus with the following settings:

and create a new "app" ChromeDefault.
For a second app with the profile Other use another script chromeother.sh with appropriate changes:

#!/bin/bash
open -a "Google Chrome" --args --profile-directory=Other

and call it ChromeOther.
Put both apps in the /Applications folder and create as many symlinks or aliases as needed.


Mac Pro 5.1 Windows 10 boot problems I'm trying to run Win 10 on a separated drive attached to sata optical drive bay. I ran into some issues about GPT partition over instalation processes which I could solve it by terminal commands. It was installed, booted up but after restarting it doesn’t boot anymore, it restarts on every attempt.
I’m running a Mac Pro 2010, Sierra OSX.
Please, would someone help me with that?

This answer is based on your comment which is repeated below.

  It was running smoothly on UEFI boot, but after a graphic card driver update it doesn't boot anymore.

Another possible solution would be to disable Windows Update from downloading and installing driver updates. This can be done using the Local Group Policy Editor (This requires Widows 10 Pro are better.) or from the control panel.

The Control Panel steps for Windows 10 (version 1803) are given below.

From the Start menu select Window System, then select Control Panel.
Select View by: Small icons.
Select System.
Select Advanced system settings.
Select Hardware tab.
Select Device Installation Settings
Select No
Select Save Changes.

This will require you to reinstall Windows. I suggest not connecting to the internet until you have disabled driver updates and installed the Window Support Software from Apple.

You may also want to try to see if you can get Windows 10 to Safe Boot. Boot from the Windows 10 installation media (DVD or USB flash drive) and at the first menu enter the shift+F10 key combination. Enter the following command in the window.

bcdedit  /set  {default}  safeboot  minimal

Close all windows to restart the Mac. If you can get Windows to boot, then maybe you could rollback the graphic device driver.


Some Force Touch gestures stop working (2016 MBP 13-inch w/ Touch Bar) Something strange sometimes happens when I'm working on my 2016 MBP 13-inch w/ Touch Bar (Mac OS 10.13.4). I don't know exactly why, but occasionally certain gestures (i.e. pinch to zoom in and zoom out, force touch over a word to open the dictionary) simply stop functioning until I lock and unlock the laptop. Other gestures (mission control, move across desktops) keep working. This happens to all the apps I try to use (Safari, Word, Pages, Ulysses, Mind Node and so on). I can still use keyboard shortcuts to perform those actions.

As I said, the only solution I could find is to lock and unlock the laptop or just reboot it, but I would like to know if there is a better, permanent fix to this issue.

Sometimes my touchpad getting mad, click force is strange, sound is also strange and force touch isn't working mostly, till until restart. It hardly seems like a software problem, so whenever you restart everything works fine.

The problem occurred much less times after i did a following things:

Clear NVRAM
Install every available Software Updates
Also make sure to clean your touch pad and it's borders, sometimes it can lead to an issue

Also, most of the time that problem occurs after sleep/hibernation, so most likely it is software problem.


Can't upgrade to 10.7.2 over a previous iCloud beta seed I never got the 10.7.2 update, as you can see here:

But my system thinks it's running 10.7.2:

Running Software Update tells me there are no available updates, but 10.7.2 clearly isn't fully installed because I have no iCloud PrefPane:

I've tried installing both the 10.7.2 client and client combo from Apple's support downloads site, but when I try to run them, I get an error saying it can't be installed:

Is there a way to force Software Update to pull down the update? Or perhaps I could download the one it already installed? I don't think it's actually running 10.7.2, as I also don't have Safari 5.1.1:

While i haven't seen this problem with Lion, it was common with previous versions of OS X. The way to fix it was to download the Combo updater from Apple, and run the update. Apple provides this for Lion at http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1459, so i'd download that first, run it, and see if it fixes your problem.


Accidently deleted a hidden file I accidentally deleted the .localized file from my mac desktop and then emptied my trash. How to I recover it?

Did it make any problems to your system?

  The ".localized" files simply contain user language dependent data.
  This allows the Finder to display localized folder and file names. A
  good example of this is the "Applications" folder, which on the file
  system is called "Applications" but magically appears to the user with
  a localized name (e.g. "Applicazioni" in Italian).

To restore it:

Open the terminal

Type defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
Type killall Finder

Open the finder and go to the Desktop folder
Start Time Machine
Use Time Machine for restoring the .localized file
Open the terminal

Type defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Type killall Finder

Skip steps 1 and 5 if you already see the hidden files in Finder and you like it.


iPhone app to follow/navigate an imported .gpx Is there an iPhone app that allows one to follow an imported .gpx track, in a car navigation-like way?

The apps I found so far, like Trails, can only display the track on a map. What I am looking for is a "download-and-forget" experience for my bike trips. I want to import a track and just look at my iPhone to tell me in which direction is the next waypoint, or how can I get back on track if I get lost.

Gaia GPS is what you're looking for. Costs $20 USD on the App Store, but the best at what it does.


Moving time machine backup sparsebundle from Time Capsule to USB exFAT disk I have a Time Machine backup on an Airport Time Capsule (name: computername.sparsebundle). Now I want to access that backup on a USB disk formatted as exFAT.
Several online resources describe the migration to a Time Capsule. My question relates to the opposite migration, away from the Time Capsule.
Is this possible? If so, how can I migrate this backup from the Airport Time Capsule (sparsebundle) to a USB disk formatted as exFAT?

As the comments say you migrating time machine backup to exFAT is a relatively long thing to do. However, if you want to just access the files from a exFAT formatted drive you can simply copy those files to that drive. Though this is not a great solution.
If it's possible try other options. Do not limit yourself to use exFAT.


Does Growl keep a history? Does Growl, either natively or with an extension, keep a history, possibly accessible through a graphic interface?

(something like Jumpcut, I mean)

I'm talking about OSX 10.6 (hence Growl 1.2.2), I dunno if the Lion version is different.

Growl 1.3 (available on the Mac App Store) supports a history of notifications, and additionally a rollup of all notifications while you are away from the computer. Unfortunately it requires Mac OS X Lion. You can get to the history right from the Growl Preferences.

Earlier versions did not have this feature.


How to turn on "Hey Siri" when plugged in, but not always on I would like to have "Hey Siri" on my iPhone 6S when plugged in, but not all the time. Is there a setting for that, or was that feature lost with iOS 9 and 6S?

"Hey Siri" is now always on, if on, because of the new M9 co-processor; the same one that records your steps. Apparently it can do this without unnecessarily flattening the battery.

See the report from Apple Insider - Apple's efficient M9 coprocessor will let your iPhone 6s track pace, make 'Hey Siri' always on

  In a first for the iPhone series, the iPhone 6s will measure a user's walking or running pace when they exercise, without the need for battery draining GPS. Previously, this functionality was limited to the S1 chip in the Apple Watch.

  The M9 also allows for Siri to be always on. That means users will be able to use the device's "Hey Siri" voice command at all times.


Trying to connect to iCloud but nothing happens I have a MacBook Pro mid-2012 13" non-retina display running macOS High Sierra. I am trying to connect to iCloud to retrieve some files saved on my iCloud
Drive.

When I try to connect to iCloud by entering my username and password, but nothing happens. I get no error message or anything. I tried using iCloud and Internet Accounts from the System Preferences panel and the only difference is that if I try to add it from Internet Accounts, it shows up for a few seconds and then disappears.

It all started because I could not select iCloud keychain under the stuff I wanted to synchronize so I signed out. When I try to sign back in this started happening.

I thought it may be due to a network issue but I have tried both wireless and wired connections but I cannot get past this step. I have checked the status of the Apple Services status page and they all show up as online for me.

I have tried the steps listed on this article but none has worked: http://osxdaily.com/2016/10/23/fix-icloud-unknown-error-cant-connect-problem-mac/

Any help will be appreciated.

I was tired of trying everything so i formatted the hard drive and re installed OSX. That fixed it.


Why does my computer seem to have a disagreement on hostnames between .home versus .local? At home, my laptop's sharing control panel tells me that it will be accessible as 'whatever.local', but the 'hostname' command reports 'whatever.home'. What's this about?

.home is a Pseudo-top-level domain. You probably have a DHCP server in your network, maybe in your router, that enables the .home TLD on your network and tells its clients about it (you may see home in the domains entry in the Network Control Panel), and that – your laptop's "static" DNS name – is what is reported by hostname.

.local is a reserved pseudo-TLD that is intended to be used with zeroconf and mDNS,
and the Sharing Control Panel tells you your laptop's mDNS name.

Since these two ways of name resolution are supposed to be orthogonal, there is nothing to worry about, your laptop just has two different names on your network.
On the contrary it can be quite useful, for example if you have a network application that only knows one way of name resolution (e.g. I have a NAS that doesn't resolve .local names), there is a way around it if you give the application the name with the right TLD.