How to fix an iPhone with half a screen showing a different color? I have an iPhone 6. It screen was changed about 10 months ago and its battery was changed about 1.5 months ago. Yesterday, I suddenly noticed that half of the screen is darkened and with yellow-ish vertical lines. As far as I can tell, there was no immediate damage that was connected to this (i.e., no drops, or water damage, etc).

This appears to be a hardware issue and I don't know if it is related to either of the fixes.

Here is an attempt at a screenshot (which is taken from my macbook):

Does anyone have an idea what this problem is and is there an easy way to fix this? Do I need to purchase another screen?

I don't live in North America, so getting a screen replaced will cost more than $200USD, so I would like to avoid that.

I would also try a full factory reset, like IconDaemon suggests. If that doesn't improve your situation, you have the following choices:

Go to an official Apple store or a premium service provider to exchange your screen (this will cost you between 100 and 300$ depending on your location)
Go to an iPhone doctor or clinic which replaces the screen with a cheap aftermarket china one (Be very careful with this, most of the screens have a very bad quality and you can't get support from Apple afterwards. To check, if a screen is genuine, there should be no yellow glare and you can press firmly on the glass without damaging the display)
Buy a broken iPhone online and change the screen yourself as this tutorial on ifixit states: iFixit - iPhone 6 Repair


External SSD drive fails to respond after some frequent writes I am using a Sandisk SSD.

It has happened a few times already in last two days. After some frequent writes, suddenly I will have trouble accessing the drive.

In the latest occurance, I did not read from or write to the disk for about 3 hours.

Output from mount

/dev/disk3s1 on /Volumes/ExtremeSSD (apfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)

More info from Disk utility

Just a FYI, here is the info of my main SSD:

What I can see in the log

default 07:18:36.860460+1000    kernel  disk3: I/O error.
default 07:18:36.860479+1000    kernel  nx_buf_bread:592: buf_biowait() failed, error = 5, b_error = 5, buf_flags_after_io = 0x101, crypto = [unencrypted  ]
default 07:18:36.860487+1000    kernel  _vnode_dev_read:811: *** got err 5 reading blknum 28635 (num read errs: 377524)
default 07:18:36.860502+1000    kernel  apfs_vnop_blockmap:10831: ### obj-id 537613/537613 err 5 offset 0 size 131072 mapflags 2 dstream 2364702/2883584 ###
default 07:18:36.880386+1000    kernel  disk3: I/O error.

If I want to eject the disk, it will take many trials to force eject it, despite I have ensured no application is using the drive.

Here is how I use the drive:

I wrote up a python script which downloads files and write to a directory which is symlinked to a folder on the SSD drive.

At the time of writing this I can see a lot of errors from python like

[Errno 2] No such file or directory: '10000_files/1vVwd9tQQw6DAaRCgtQB.data.FD2A0e73' -> '110000_files/1vVwd9tQQw6DAaRCgtQB.data'

or

[Errno 5] Input/output error

How can I improve the stability of the drive?

The usb-c cable was faulty. That's why the read/write started to fail after a certain duration of high volume data transfer.

Once I replaced the usb-c cable that connects the SSD drive to the MBP, and the SSD drive is working as expected.


What can I use for multi-person, single conversation, instant messaging in a serverless local network? We have a number of Mac's in a small, simple local network at the office (all running Snow Leopard or later) that I'd like to use for instant messaging with multiple participants.

The trouble is, at present, they are not internet connected and we have no server machines, so I'm using iChat with Bonjour networking to chat with other users. This all works fine, apart from the big problem that you can only chat with a single user at a time in the same conversation (you can talk to multiple people in separate conversations on a one-to-one basis, but this isn't ideal).

Is there any way of configuring iChat that I haven't considered? Or another instant messaging client that will allow me to chat with multiple participants, in the same conversation, in a local network without a central server?

EDIT: Further reading suggests running the iChat service on a OS X Server machine within the network. Is this the only way? I was hoping not to have to add another machine just for this.

You don't need the iChat service. Any Jabber (aka XMPP) server will do (the iChat server in OS X Server is also one, basically), and it can run on virtually any machine in your network.
I'm afraid I can't recommend one, but Google should be able to help you.


Imported 32GB of images into iPhoto, 65GB library is the result - Huh? I just imported 32GB of images (my local Images folder) from the past 10 years into iPhoto. I was honestly surprised that the result was an iPhoto library of 65GB. I have no RAW images and am surprised that the space is double what I expect. But on a SSD, this is really taking too much space.

One of the explanations though, was that the library consists of iPod/iPhone cache files, preview files and thumbnail files. Those folder minus 65GB results in still 51GB of images.

I extendedly compared the local folder with the 'show contents' folder from the iPhoto library and I couldn't really find any differences, but the file size of the folders themselves..

So who knows how to reduce those 65GB to a regular 32GB or can give a decent explanation..

First thing to know : There is no possibility to reduce the size of an iPhoto library without corrupting it.

What you can do is explore your iPhoto library in ~/Picture/iPhoto Library => right click => show package content.

In this directory you'll see multiple directories :

Masters : holds in the original of your pictures
Preview : holds in a low resolution preview of your pictures
Thumbnails : holds in thumbnails like the ones used on faces.

These 3 directories are the main reason of the weight of your library. The other files/directories are way lighter.


Opening Terminal shows a list of ttys - unable to use Having the latest Mavericks installed, I tried to update PATH using nano and creating a .bash_profile file. I'm not sure what happened, but now when trying to run Terminal all that shows is a list of ttys000 messages followed by a wtmp begins message.

And finally says:

-bash:<computername>:~: command not found

[Process completed]

I've downloaded a program to find hidden files but there's no sign of the .bash_profile file.

Any ideas how to rescue the Terminal program?

You can run Bash with all startup scripts disabled to get around problems with startup scripts: choose Shell > New Command and run bash --noprofile.

See the Bash man page for more information about the Bash command-line options and startup files: x-man-page://1/bash

Also note that you can lookup and view man pages in Terminal even when your shell isn't working, by clicking on the Help menu and entering a topic in the search field. Terminal will display matching man pages. Choose one from the Help menu to view it in a new window. You can also open an x-man-page: scheme URL from any application.


Tell application screen is not zoomed When using OS X's native zoom, is there any way (perhaps using AppleScript) to fool an application into thinking the screen is not being zoomed?

Something like

tell application "System Events" to tell application "Decoder" that screen_zoom is false

In this case I am trying to view a video application zoomed in, but if I zoom in, it stops and says "Please undo screen zoom" (probably for legal reasons or something silly)

The application's window size is also forcably limted.

The application is Decoder by Multichoice Mobile Operations (Pty) Ltd.

Technical Limits

No, it is not possible to tell one application to ignore the zoom state of the screen.

By complaining the application is taking additional steps to both detect and notify you of the zoom condition; this is not normal.

That the application complains, suggests the developers encountered problems when the screen was zoomed.

It is possible the "Decoder" application is using the screen buffer in some way intrinsic to its purpose. It may be writing directly to memory buffers or using other techniques to display video that rely on the display resolution being understood and constant.

Contacting Support

Have you tried contacting the developers of Decoder directly? Have you logged a bug with their support?

Most enterprise software is highly configurable and may include hidden options to support what you need.


Password dialog appears for password-less SSH private key I installed my SSH private key in ~/.ssh/id_rsa. There is no passphrase associated with the key, however, whenever I connect to an SSH server, a dialog pops up and asks me to enter my password to access the id_rsa file.

If I cancel the dialog or enter an empty passphrase and click OK, the Terminal prompts me for a passphrase.

I have verified that the key is valid and does not require a password by connecting with the same key via other machines.

Something odd about my particular set-up is causing the problem but I can't figure it out. I'm currently running OSX 10.7.1 but the same problem was occurring with OSX 10.6.8

I had this same problem.  However, when a generated a new password-less private key, using the following command:

ssh-keygen -b 1024 -t rsa -f id_rsa -P ""

I no longer saw the password prompt.

Additionally, ssh-add failed to add the old key, but added the new one as expected.

I generated the old key on Leopard in 2009, using what ever version of OpenSSL I had grabbed, built and installed back then (that Mac died, so I can't log in and check what I was running).  Something about that key was incompatible with Lion's native SSL libraries.

I backed up my old key, so if anyone wants to suggest some checks, to identify the key's specific properties, let me what to check and I'll report back.

Another clue - I noticed that my old id_rsa.pub file had extended attributes.  i.e. it's permissions flags looked like this r--------@ instead of r--------

xattr -l id_rsa.pub.old

returned:

com.macromates.caret: {
    column = 0;
    line = 1;
}

cruft left over from TextMate.  I don't know if removing it would have fixed the issue without my having to replace the key. I think it's unlikely.

In case you (future reader) are seeing the same thing, you can remove the extended attribute as follows:

 xattr -d com.macromates.caret id_rsa.pub.old

You can stop TextMate from adding them by first exiting TextMate and then issuing this command:

defaults write com.macromates.textmate OakDocumentDisableFSMetaData 1


How do I pair a second smartcard to my MacBook? I have a couple smartcards issued by my employer. Each is for a different account. When I plugged one in to my MacBook running Catalina (10.15.3) for the first time I was prompted to pair it. I think. I don't really recall. For all I know I might have ran a program or something. Regardless, it's been a while and I don't recall.

I now want to pair the second smartcard. When I plug it in, I'm not being prompted to pair it. Is there a program I can run manually to do this or some other way to force the pairing prompt?

Figured it out: sc_auth using various options. It also has the pairing_ui option to force the dialog box to pop up.


Is it normal to have a pair of slight bumps on the left edge of an iPad Mini screen? I got an iPad mini a few days ago. Yesterday while using an app on it I noticed that, if I moved my finger up on the left edge of the display screen, I could feel a set of two slight bumps on the screen.

However if I look at the area it does not look uneven at all. And the device seems to work fine.

So I am not sure if this sort of slight bumpiness in a particular location is as expected.

Question:

Is it normal to have a pair of slight bumps on the left edge of an iPad Mini screen?

The bumps are in the display area marked in below photo (iPad Mini has this SUPCASE case on it so it looks a bit different). I have not put a screen protector on the device though.

Side note: the general area where the bumps are does have a persistent white dot which I suspect could be a dead pixel(?). Not sure if it is related.

The case linked to in the OP’s question has a built in screen protector.  There is dust or debris trapped between the screen and the protector membrane.

Removing the case and protector then cleaning the screen according to the installation instructions then reinstalling the case should fix the problem.

From the SUPCASE product description:

  Front cover with Built-in screen protector prevents Scratches without compromising sensitivity


How do I completely disable automatic keyboard backlighting on Macbook Pro with OSX Lion? I have the system pref "Automatically illuminate the keyboard in low light" disabled. However, when I wake the computer from sleep and the login prompt appears, the keyboard backlight turns on. Despite the fact that I didn't ask for this, it's actually somewhat useful, so I don't object to that. But, once I log in, the keyboard backlight stays on. AND, to make matters worse, the machine seems to "think" that the backlight is off, because pushing the backlight dimming button (the one shared with F5) doesn't dim the keyboard backlight. Instead, I have to first increase the backlight, then decrease it, in order to disable it.

So, I'm looking for a way either to: 1. ensure that the auto-enabled keyboard backlight self-disables upon login, or 2. completely, 100%, totally disable any auto-enabling of the keyboard backlight (an acceptable alternative to 1, since I don't really need it auto-enabling at login).

Note: an unacceptable solution is one that completely disables the keyboard backlight. I need to be able to invoke it manually when desired.

Lab Tick is a shareware menu item that gives you complete control over the keyboard backlight. You can set the level of illumination by hand, and electively disable automatic adjustments made by the OS.


Make my password protected SSH key expire or timeout after a while I have a private SSH key I use for authentication that is stored in ~/.ssh/id_rsa. When I ssh into a server, I am prompted for the password to unlock the key:

I like this. I also like that I can ssh again and again and it doesn't prompt me for my password.

What I don't like is that I am not required to enter my key password days or even weeks later. I can lock my screen or put it to sleep and I still don't have to enter my key password. The only time it seems to expire the password is when I logout (which I do rarely).

How do I get the key password to expire after a while, forcing me to enter my password again to authenticate? Making it so that perhaps after 1 hour, the key is automatically forgotten.

Note: in newer versions of OS X you must disable System Integrity Protection for this answer to work. (Thanks to @Dave Gregory and @Jaap for pointing this out.)

Open /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.openssh.ssh-agent.plist (in older versions: org.openbsd.ssh-agent.plist) in a text editor. Replace:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/usr/bin/ssh-agent</string>
    <string>-l</string>
</array>

with:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/usr/bin/ssh-agent</string>
    <string>-l</string>
    <string>-t</string>
    <string>30m</string>
</array>

This will expire the key after 30 minutes.

Reboot. Wait, reboot?!? This isn't Windows! Yes, reboot.

Well, you can try to decipher the instructions for changing the setting on the fly, but good luck.


Applescript: Open current Safari tab in Chrome (Troubleshoot of working script) So, I decided a while ago to run a Flash-free install of Safari. It's been really great, Safari seems much more stable overall and I barely miss it.

But every once in a while I stumble upon a site that requires flash (mostly YouTube videos, which I thought wouldn't be a problem given that Google was supposed to be switching everything over to HTML5), so for those cases I have an Appescript that runs when triggered through an Alfred Workflow (with a hotkey). The script is as such:

tell application "Safari"

    set theURL to URL of current tab of window 1

end tell

tell application "Google Chrome"

    if windows ≠ {} then
        make new tab at the end of window 1 with properties {URL:theURL}
    else
        make new window
        set URL of active tab to theURL
    end if
    activate

end tell

tell application "Safari"

    close current tab of window 1

end tell

This usually runs perfectly, but I run into a weird problem whenever Chrome doesn't have an open window in the background. In these cases, Chrome will open a new (blank) window, and the script will stop right there. The third Tell statement,

 tell application "Safari"

    close current tab of window 1

end tell

Will never run, leaving me with an open chrome window and an open safari window as well. It is only after I press the hotkey a second time, after the Chrome window is already open, that the Script will run it's course and open the page in chrome/close the tab in safari.

Any ideas? I'm really confused by the fact the third tell statement won't run at all. If the Chrome window opened up blank but the safari tab still closed I would guess it was a simple error in the if/else statement, but the fact that the script seems to terminate is really stumping me on this one.

Just because Safari and Chrome are running, doesn't mean that they have a window open. You can either test for open windows as Mark points out or simply issue the reopen command which opens a new window if one does not exist.

tell application "Google Chrome"
    if not (exists window 1) then reopen
    -- insert your code
end tell

tell application "Safari"
    if not (exists document 1) then reopen
    -- insert your code
end tell

EDIT

tell application "Safari"
    if not (exists document 1) then return
    set theURL to URL of current tab of window 1
    close current tab of window 1
end tell

tell application "Google Chrome"
    if not (exists window 1) then reopen
    set URL of active tab of window 1 to theURL
end tell


Install Mavericks via an HD partition I had a problem trying to clean the data from my Mac and now I can not start it.
It ran Mavericks. I tried to make a swipe date but did not work and lost the system. I have backups of my personal files more unfortunately I do not have the system.
Is there any way to install Mavericks again through a partition of an external HD?
I already have this HD two images of the maverick acquired in apple store. One is the .dmg extension and the other is in .iso extension that I converted in linux.
Is there any solution?

You're getting the error message because OS X Mavericks isn't available for download by the Recovery HD anymore, deleted in favor of Yosemite. Your best bet is to use Internet Recovery. Make sure you're on a decent Internet connection (Ethernet is best, if possible) and follow these instructions:

Immediately after hearing the Mac boot chime, hold down Command+Option+R – if you see the Apple logo you waited too long and need to reboot and try again
Eventually, you’ll see the familiar “OS X Utilities” screen, choose “Reinstall OS X” to begin the re-installation process of the Mac operating system
Select the destination and complete the re-installation (or installation) of OS X as usual

Source


Wanting to Make Linux Partition, Will I Be Able to Delete It Later? I've been trying to create some persistent USB Linux thumb drives loaded with Elementary OS and a few other Linux distros, but have had no such luck.  I don't really like the idea of partitioning my Mac and installing other OS directly on it, as I like to keep my Mac drive purely macOS, but since I'm having no luck with the persistent thumb drives, I'm considering partitioning my Mac drive and installing the distros on their own partitions.  This idea doesn't entirely bother me, but I've been reading of other user who have had issues deleting the partitions after they have been made.  I don't want to be stuck with a Linux partition on my comp if I don't care to keep using it.  Can anyone here verify if they can delete a Mac partition?

My setup is a 2015 MacBook Pro 15 inch Retina running macOS 10.12.6 (Sierra).

Thanks.

I can make some suggestions regarding creating and removing Linux related partitions on a Mac.

The disk tools provide by Apple are 100% unreliable with respect to Linux related partitions. I am not saying that occasionally a tool provided by Apple will not work as documented, but if it does, soon a update will occur causing a change in the behavior of the tool. Two of the most used Apple disk tools are the Disk Utility application and the diskutil command.
To install Linux, you usually have to shrink your Mac partitions to create free space. For this you can use the disk tools provided by Apple. However, if you need to create new partitions, then make sure the these partitions are of a type frequently encountered by Apple. Microsoft FAT32 partitions are a good choice. So for example, if you need a ext4 and swap partitions for Ubuntu, then use Apple's disk tools to shrink your macOS partitions and create two new FAT32 partitions. Later, when installing Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu partitioning tools to delete the FAT32 partitions and recreate the necessary ext4 and swap partitions.
Apple disk tools should not be used to remove Linux related partitions. Once the Linux partitions have be removed, Apple's disk tools should be used to reclaim the free space. Many of the tools, you can choose from to the remove Linux related partitions, will need to be run with System Integrity Protection (SIP) disabled or from Recovery mode. Another option would  be to boot from an external drive and then remove the partitions from the internal drive. Some popular command line tools are gpt and gdisk.
Apple started eliminating the BIOS boot option in Mac models starting with the 2015 model year. Therefore, you probably should only choose Linux versions that can 64 bit EFI boot. This means the boot code, for which ever Linux you choose, will be installed in the EFI partition. So, to boot an installed Linux may require modifying the EFI partition or installing the rEFInd Startup Manager into this EFI partition.
If you do not have a lot of experience installing Linux, you may what to first install in a virtual machine. A free virtual machine software called VirtualBox is provide by Oracle. I often try different installation configurationss, using the same Linux iso file, before installing in a actual Mac computer.


We need some help on how to utilize the Apple ID on multiple Apple computers in a network We have 8 Apple Computers on a network in a dental office where users move from machine to machine and have no need to use any Apple ID capabilities. Each machine has several users in addition to the administrator. We set up each machine without an Apple ID but are constantly reminded to set an Apple ID.

Is there any way to stop the reminders or alternatively set up one ID for use on all the machines on all user accounts that the administrator would essentially control? We would find one Apple ID useful, but we don't want to do anything that might upset the network.

We have a few Macs at work among the multitude of PCs and all I did was create one AppleID using a company email address that comes to the IT department and then log into all of the Macs with that ID.

That way when you have updates and the like you have one common AppleID that only you know the password to and the Macs stop bugging you.


Time Machine fails backup to a time capsule's attached hard disk I've been backing up my Lion OSX system using Time Machine to an second, external drive connected to a time capsule. It has worked but stopped working.

The menu says "Faied" and the time machine prefs says:

"The backup disk image “/Volumes/WD1-1/monster.sparsebundle” could not be created (error 22)"

As far as I can tell the external hard disk is just fine.  One really weird thing is that the external drive is called "WD1". However the Volume in the error message is specified as /Volumes/WD1-1. In fact in shall I see this:

monster:~ pitosalas$ mount
/dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
/dev/disk1s2 on /Volumes/MonsterHD (hfs, local, journaled)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
afp_0TSQUm1ubQ4400mmYF0Pyetl-1.2d000003 on /Volumes/WD1 (afpfs, nodev, nosuid, mounted by pitosalas)
afp_0TSQUm1ubQ4400mmYF0Pyetl-1.2d00005c on /Volumes/WD1-1 (afpfs, nobrowse)

and

monster:~ pitosalas$ ls /Volumes/
BootHD      MonsterHD   WD1     WD1-1

(notice that MonsterHD and BootHD are both internal drives of the OSX box called monster)

What is that second Volume WD1-1? It has different characteristics in $ mount listing none of which are meaningful to me. Could that be related to the problem?

Time Machine tries to track a UID for the volume and not a name, but it could be confused.

Have you tried setting the backup destination to none and rebooting with no drives connected and no network connection.

At that point /Volumes should be clean and you would be safe to delete any non-local drives at that point. My guess is it's perhaps a second route to the network - do you have a wired connection and WiFi to the AirPort/Time Capsule?

diskutil list will also get you more information about drives than mount in case you want to post more details and can't get Time Machine happy with these steps.


Is it possible to create files directly in Folders? I have just bought a MacBook and recently switched from Windows OS. Let's take the example of Microsoft Word documents. In Windows OS, I have a habit of making my MS Word files in the destination directory itself, so all I have to do is save my work later.

However with my limited knowledge of MacOS, I realise there seems to be no way to achieve this, I always make a new MS Word file and only at the saving stage then I require to go through the whole motion of entering my nested folders. If I have to work on multiple files that would be stored in the same destination folder, this process will become quite irritating if the destination is quite deep into other folders.

Is there a way to overcome this dilemma in MacOS in general for any application?

AFAIK, you can't do it directly through the macOS GUI like in Windows, w/o any customizations.

You can use the Terminal* app (Cmd+Space to open Spotlight, then type terminal), by typing cd, then drag and drop the folder to it to get the whole file path; finally type touch my newfile.docx.

e.g.

cd /path/to/file
touch newfile.docx

many other alternative solutions here

* coming from the Windows world, terminal it's like the cmd.exe (Command Prompt)


Weird lines and black boxes of all sizes on iMac display iMac 2 GHz 1600 Radeon card, Snow Leopard

Focusing on one area of the graphics corruption, you can see that the layering effects are being calculated improperly.

While that could be a software glitch or a failure of the GPU, my first check would be to replace the RAM.

That era of hardware started using system RAM to back the GPU and calculate the visible pixels between all the layers (each app draws as if it's the only user of the screen and then the OS composts, animates and renders all visible layers). Normally, when things work, you wouldn't know how the screen gets drawn, but here you can see a problem in one of the steps.

If you are comfortable swapping RAM - you might try removing half the ram and test, then swap the second half, but this is likely something you'll take in for a technician to look at once you have a good backup.

You could also try reinstalling the OS, but my guess is you would see graphics errors when booted to install DVD or even the built in tests which would confirm it's hardware.


install apps from app store on icloud locked iphone I'm getting started with iOS development and I need a test
device to test my apps. I thought of buying an ipod but then
I thought buying an icloud locked iphone 5s might be more
convenient (affordable) as it will basically do the same thing as the ipod.

I have a question though. Can I install apps on a device locked to a specific icloud account?

A phone that is activation locked denies you all functionality around the USB port while the iOS runs as well as all functionality of the multitouch screen other than being able to connect to a network or make an emergency phone call.

You can put the device into restore mode and re-load an iOS version on iTunes if that version is currently signed by apple, but after that, you are still denied the USB and multitouch functionality needed to complete the setup assistant screens or connect the device over USB to a computer for meaningful work.

See How can I bypass Activation Lock? for details on why Activation Lock is hard to bypass.


Can I remote install OS X via dmg? I'm having a lot of trouble finding anything that can help with my specific issue, and it really bugs me because I feel like I cannot be the first person to try and figure this out.

I have one of the new 2016 Touch Bar MacBook Pros that I need to reinstall macOS. Typically whenever I need to reinstall OS X I just use my external SSD with a preinstalled El Capitan and run the DMG after some configuring, but with the latest MBP I've realized that I have to use Sierra since El Capitan is not supported. I only have about 1gb left of free space on my external SSD so I can't just upgrade to Sierra and go from there.

Is it possible to host my Sierra DMG on my local network via something like OS X Server or DeployStudio on my other Mac?

That way I can just hold the Option key down as I boot up and connect to my Wi-Fi network and have it "see" the hosted image like a NetInstall or something similar.

What you propose works just fine on Mac OS Sierra with HFS + filesystems. Both deploy studio and server.app work fine for network installs.

Whether this continues for High Sierra and APFS remains to be seen, but OS at 10.12.5 and lower all include network install functionality in addition to network boot and the setup steps are well documented publicly for both.

The only wrinkle added for 10.12 is the touch bar and EFI component. As long as your Mac can connect to both the NetBoot server and Apple's servers you will be prompted to update the Touch Bar if needed.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207567

If you can’t do that, plain old internet recovery might be better for your situation.


Test a launcher app icon on an iPhone I need to test a launcher app icon on an iPhone. Is there any way to do that without having to install an entire app?

You could create an HTML page for this which refers to the icon.

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/custom_icon.png"/>

If you then open the web page and add the site to your home screen it will take custom_icon.png as your app icon.

For more detailed information have a look at Apple's developer page.


Issues when playing through bluetooth speaker (youtube mutes) I listen to iTunes via Archt One BT speaker
I pause iTunes, try to play youtube video and there is no sound
while youtube stil playing "muted", I then play iTunes again and both can be heard
this doesn't happen with Swinsian (alternative to iTunes)

I'm on Mac OS Mavericks.

Any solution? Is it just an iTunes/OSX bug? I think it's not related to that particular BT speaker although it's with it that I experience this for the first time.. I don't remember if I used Swinsian or already back to iTunes when testing the previous speaker.

Play both through iTunes and YouTube so you can hear both and then press the play/pause button on your keypad. this should pause the iTunes music but still play the YouTube video sound. Then you can exit the iTunes app.

Hope it Helps!


Share iPhone Personal Hotspot with Mac, then share Internet via ethernet When I'm travelling I only have Internet via my iPhone, which I can share to my Mac via Personal Hotspot just fine. However, I have a VoIP desk phone which only gets internet via ethernet cabling.  I have tried plugging the phone directly in to my Mac, and then turning on Internet Sharing to share the connection from Wi-Fi to the ethernet ports.  But the phone does not pick up any connection.  Is this possible and how can it be done?

Not a networking expert, but I tried using a switch in between the Mac and the VoIP phone, and it worked! No idea why the VoIP phone wouldn't work when plugging directly in to the Mac, but oh well - very happy!


Can only boot to Windows 7, no OS Back in late 2010, when I first got my MacBook Air, I followed the instructions at http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20020513-285/install-win-7-on-macbook-air-from-a-usb-drive/ to install Windows 7 on the metal (not virtualized).

I've been thrilled with it until recently when battery life began to flag. I reinstalled Windows today expecting to lose some cruft I've inadvertently gathered over the years, and regain some performance/battery life. I'm now no longer able to boot into Mac OS X, and did not mean to lose that functionality.

I can't use any of the methods above, because I can't boot to the point that the chime sounds. All I can do is boot straight to Windows 7. The real issue right now is that I can't get on my network using either the built in WiFi adaptor, an external USB WiFi adaptor (Alfa), or using the Apple USB to Ethernet adaptor.

Any help? I'm at your mercy. The Apple store is a good trip away for me, but if nothing else works, I'll try having a restore done there from the network. But if they can't boot to right stage either, I'm afraid I'm hosed.

It sounds like the Windows reinstall overwrote your boot sector on your mass storage device.

I'd attempt to reinstall rEFIit, under Windows, and see if you can get the option to choose your boot partition on boot up again.  If that doesn't work, there's a new tool called 'rEFInd' that is actively being developed.  There's a good article here on using the tool with an HP laptop running Windows.

If that doesn't work, a clean start is likely in order.

You'll need an OS X install DVD and an external drive (or an appropriately bootable external drive with an OS X install image) to re-install OS X.

Once your OS is reinstalled, you can re-BootCamp the MB Air.


Can I upgrade my MacBook Pro Mid 2010 to 8 or 16 GB RAM? I was told that I could only upgrade to 4 GB. I read on your site that as of 2014 it’s possible to upgrade to 8 GB or 16 GB?

Is this true and how do I do this?

Specs: MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010) 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo equipped with 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3.

You probably mean upgrading the RAM to 8 GB or 16 GB.

According to the following Apple support website, your MacBook Pro has a maximum RAM capacity of 8 GB:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201165

You would need to get two 4 GB modules with the correct specifications (PC3-8500 DDR3 1066 MHz type RAM) and replace them according to the steps described by Apple for your specific device.


Unable to communicate with secure web proxy on iOS 8 I am attempting to connect to a web proxy server using the Charles proxy application installed on Windows.

I have two iPhones - an iPhone 5 running iOS 8.0.2 and an iPhone 4 running iOS 7.1.2.

I have used both of these phones to connect to my proxy server (both HTTP and HTTPS) for a while now, but this is the first time I have tried to connect the iPhone 5 following the iOS 8 update.

I can connect to secure and insecure on my iPhone 4, but my iPhone 5 does not allow HTTPS and gives me this error:

I have tried installing the SSL certificate again on my iPhone 5, but this has had no effect.

Both phones have identical network configuration and I can communicate with the proxy on the iPhone 5 - just not over SSL.

The Charles error is:
SSLHandshake: Remote host closed connection during handshake

For me, Charles Proxy 4.1 works better across iOS devices.

https://www.charlesproxy.com

You might want to reset all network settings on any iOS device you have issues with and potentially do a clean wipe if you have pinned / trusted certificates that are conflicting with the ones you need for the man in the middle proxy to work.


How to read currency values in Numbers? I have currency values in the following format in a CSV file.
$171.5M
$2.74B

How do I have Numbers recognize these as proper currency values for sorting?

You can't use the letters  B or M in the cell. you have to use all the digits.  Open numbers and on the right side of the window, on the top right corner be sure to click on Format. You should have 4 tabs underneath Format that read "Table, Cell, Text, Arrange. Click on the Cell tab and a new panel appears with a pulldown menu Data Format. One of the options under this menu is Currency, select that and you should be good to go.  My setting is Automatic and it usually recognizes the $ sign as currency.  See image below.


Iphone battery charging with other gear A few minutes ago I needed to charge my iphone 4. I had the apple USB cable but not my wall adapter (sorry, I'm from Portugal and I don't master all the terms!).

I found that my eGo cigarette charger had just that missing part, just on a different collor. It seemed to me that the pecs where the same, so I tried it.

A few minutes latter I hear a click and the iphone stopped charging and a slight burn sent got in the air. The e-cigarette stoped working. Probably broke!

The question is. Do you think my iphone battery  got compromised with this? I ended up charging the rest directly from the PC USB port.

PS:
Specs on e-cigarette charger
Input: 100 - 240V - 50/60 Hz 0.15A
Output: 5V ---500mA

Not clear who and what smoked in your question.

I presume the ezig charger got fried since it was overloaded.

A word to the specs:

5 volt is 5 volt,however the problem could be the current.

The iPhone will take as much as it gets up to 1 Amp.

If your ezig charger did not have a current limiter (like the USB on you Mac have) then it got overloaded.

Since you continued charging the iPhone using the Mac USB, you might be OK.


Lion orphaned installer After upgrading to Lion, and verifying/repairing my disk, I noticed a 3.5 GB file in /lost+found. Ran file on it and it reported it as an xar archive, so I ran xar -t on it to discover it is the Lion installer I downloaded from the App Store.

Just wondering if anyone else sees this and if it's safe to delete the file?

I had the same situation. I figure since the OS is installed and working fine, and /lost+found isn’t where it would look for anything anyway, it’s safe to delete that file. Fair warning, that’s an answer based on reasoning, not any official information.

For background on lost+found, I’d suggest reading "What is the purpose of the lost+found folder?" on Unix & Linux SE, rather than the TechRadar article linked in another answer on this question. The TechRadar article wanders, slowly, through several tangentially related topics, whereas the SE answer cuts straight to the point, has technical detail, and has a high vote count from the community.


Automate Fn key switch between finder and photoshop? I would like to know if there any script that i can use to switch automatically between finder and photoshop?

I can't install Palua App from my AppStore on El-capitan.

You could use Spaces.
Lock each app to its own space then use the built-in system hot keys to switch between those Spaces.

See my answer at https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/179403/85275 for some working methods.


Remove the annoying screenshot pop up? Is there any way to remove that annoying screenshot pop up after you take a screenshot?

I was trying to play a game after updating to iOS 11 and it ruined my game thanks to not being able to tap the bottom part of the screen.

While you can’t disable the screenshot overlay as if iOS 11.0 you can swipe it away.

Take a screenshot
As soon as the screenshot overlay appears swipe it to the left. You will be able to tap the area occupied by the screenshot without having to wait for the screenshot(s) to disappear.


Why are my Photos library database/metadata files being modified even when I'm not using the Photos app? OS: MacOS 10.12.3 (16D32)

  Hardware: MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)

I currently use Dropbox to sync, among other things, my Photos library on my laptop*. The Dropbox widget notifies me when files have been changed, and it is syncing those changes.

Frequently throughout the day (3-4 times, as far as I can tell), the Dropbox widget indicates that it is syncing a bunch of files that, I think, are part of the Photos library, like this:

I think they have something to do with the database that the Photos app keeps to organize the library. This occurs despite not having the Photos app open, and not intentionally doing anything related to the Photos library!

Is there some kind of background process that is accessing or modifying my Photos library? I tried shutting off iCloud on my laptop, but it had no effect on the problem.

This is irritating, because neither my computer nor my internet connection is very fast, so it slows my work down.

Thanks for your help!

*Note: I am aware of the hazards of using Dropbox to sync a Photos library. I only access it on one computer.

This is the design of iCloud based photo library storage. There are several daemons that run in the background so you'll want to store your these files in a directory where dropbox doesn't perform any syncronizioaion.

If you need backup, you can script that and store just the periodic backups in dropbox.

You likely won't be able to change this behavior as Apple is all in with cloud syncing of data and even if you neutered the processes on this version of 10.12, the next security update or patch will likely re-enable this behavior.

If you really need to track down what's happening, you can open the command line (terminal.app) and use fs_usage to see in real time which processes access the files in question. With sudden app termination and power nap, you may find that the system will start processes to run periodically even when the app itself isn't launched. Similarly, when an app is launched, the process can and will be terminated when the system knows they have no work to do.

The analogy isn't perfect, but several years back, most apps were a manual transmission. Now most Apple apps are automatic transmission - you don't control their launch or exit in many cases - just whether the icon shows in the app switcher and dock.


Can I damage an iPhone if I use a 24 watt (5volt) charger? I know that using a higher amperage charger will make a device charge faster.  But is there a limit to how high the current can be?  Could too high a current damage the battery?.  Could I use a 24watt (5v/4.1A) USB charger (intended to charge USB-C devices such as my Nexus 5x) to charge an iPhone?.  I'd use a USB-A to USB-C cable for connection.

The 6/6S can take advantage of up to 1.6 amps if the USB adapter can supply it. Using a higher capacity adapter will not hurt the phone, but won't help either. An iPad adapter is 2.2 amps, the iPhone "cube" is 1 amp. So an iPad adapter will charge an iPhone 6 or 6S series slightly faster. Not true for the 5 and earlier, which will only use 1 amp regardless of what is available.


Can't make more than two partitions I want to multiboot my MacBook Pro, I'm trying to make partitions but in Disk Utility I can't make my partitions, only can divide by 2? Why?
It's a normal SSD not a fusion drive (SSD+HD).

Now I'm fresh installing my Mac with internet recovery... (Second time) but this time in Disk Utility by internet recovery instead click on erase I clicked in partitions and make a partition named Macintosh HD.

What I'm doing wrong?

Outputs:

diskutil list:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         250.1 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *249.8 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 36635140-167F-4638-BF3C-4477ADAA6B21
                                 Unencrypted

diskutil cs list:

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group C9D6D11C-1A54-4134-9F20-0DDEF2F0FCB2
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         250140434432 B (250.1 GB)
    Free Space:   18882560 B (18.9 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume F1B297D0-081B-4E58-B1CB-7441FEF5F64D
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     250140434432 B (250.1 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 57E0CBD7-461B-4E2A-87E5-B1B3B8B1FFE5
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 36635140-167F-4638-BF3C-4477ADAA6B21
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk1
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          249769230336 B (249.8 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            Yes (no decryption required)
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0:

gpt show: disk0: mediasize=251000193024; sectorsize=512; blocks=490234752
gpt show: disk0: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 490234751
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  488555536      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  488965176    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  490234712          7
  490234719         32         Sec GPT table
  490234751          1         Sec GPT header

To be able to create a multi-boot environment you have to revert from a CoreStorage partition layout to a standard partition layout.

Start to internet recovery mode by pressing altcmdR while booting.
Open Terminal.app in the menubar Utilities → Terminal
enter diskutil cs revert LVUUID and hit the ⏎ key.
(LVUUID is the Logical Volume UUID. You get it by entering diskutil cs list in Terminal.app)
In your case it's diskutil cs revert 36635140-167F-4638-BF3C-4477ADAA6B21.
If your CoreStorage Volume is tagged as 'revertible' this command should convert your CoreStorage volume to a standard volume non-destructively.
Enter 'exit' when the conversion is finished and quit Terminal.app.
Open Disk Utility and partition your SSD as you need.


Button no longer responding I am using the Macbook Pro early 2015, Yosemite 10.10.5.
History
I was trying to fix a wireless keyboard problem with it's escape key, so I downloaded Karabiner for Mac (https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/).  I couldn't ever get the wireless keyboard to work, so I've returned it and trying to use my internal Mac keyboard again.
Issue
I am noticing that the button "3" is not doing anything.  I press it, and nothing registers.  So I uninstalled Karabiner through Karabiner's uninstall utility, thinking that it would solve the issue.  But the problem persists - the "3" button doesn't do anything.  Every other key works great, no problems.
What's even more strange is that I can press "option" + "3", and I get the £ symbol.  So clearly the button is not "broken" in terms of hardware, because I can definitely use it after pressing "option".  So what is happening when I press "3"?
I reinstalled Karabiner to see if there was a setting I could fix.  I used Karabiner's EventViewer, which shows what keyboard code is being used, etc.  When I press "3", literally nothing get's logged or trigged.  When I press "option" + "3", it shows the logs and triggers.
When I open the Mac Virtual keyboard onscreen, press the button "3" - nothing happens!
I've tried restoring Karabiner to default settings, tried uninstalling it again - no luck.
What is going on?  How come "3" does nothing by itself?  Super annoying.
UPDATE
Still having the problem, but I've noticed that in safe mode the "3" works fine and normal.  How do I debug this knowing that bit of information now?

Based on Safe Mode comment, make sure the Karabiner kext (kernel extension) is uninstalled. Look in /System/Library/Extensions.

Check both your home directory Library/Application Support folder and the System/Library/Application Support folders and make sure the Karabiner folder is deleted--which should contain the private.xml document.

Safe Mode does not load non-Apple kexts so that suggests to me that the Karabiner kext did not get uninstalled. Not sure but I think the mods you make end up in that private.xml file. Lots of other files in that folder too. The uninstall scripts look like they should work but it's important to verify this yourself manually. Trust but verify....


Copy the first n files from one directory to another Im looking to copy the first 'n' files from one directory to another directory preferably with only cli tools (no scripts).

I've tried the following:

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f | head -5 | xargs cp -t /target/directory

  This looked promising, but failed because osx cp command doesn't appear to have the
  -t switch

exec in a few different configurations

  This probably failed for syntax problems on my end : /
  I couldn't seem to get a head type selection working

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

You need the -J option with xargs.

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f | head -n5 | xargs -J X cp X /target/directory

The J option places all the filenames into the placeholder X, which can be any character(s) and cp accepts multiple files to a target directory. It can be visualized as-

cp file1 file2 file3 file4 file5 DESTINATION

EDIT:

To handle filenames with spaces, we have tr translate the newline character to the null character after each filename and then have xargs handle the null bit as a separator for the filenames.

 find . -maxdepth 1 -type f | head -n5 | tr '\n' '\0' | xargs -0 -J X cp -- X /target/directory


Missing text editing keyboard shortcut like windows while coding I am a long-time PC user using macOS. I am missing some useful commands I used when coding. I know can add keyboard shortcuts but I would like to know is there already command equivalents for Mac:

Home Button: Go to the beginning of the line.
End Button: Go to the end of the line.
Shift + Home: Selection of the line from the cursor point to the beginning of the line (not up to the document)
Shift + End: Selection of the line from the cursor point to the end of the line.
Shift + Delete = Cut Text
Control + Insert = Copy text
Shift + Insert = Paste text

Here are some builtin shortcuts:

Home (beginning of the line)  - ⌘ cmd+← left arrow or ⌃ CTRL+A
End (end of the line) - ⌘ cmd+→ right arrow or ⌃ CTRL+E
Select to the beginnig - ⇧ Shift+⌘ cmd+← left arrow or ⇧ Shift+⌃ CTRL+A
Selet to end - ⇧ Shift+⌘ cmd+→ right arrow or ⇧ Shift+⌃ CTRL+E
Cut Text - ⌘ cmd+X
Copy Text - ⌘ cmd+C
Paste Text - ⌘ cmd+V

Note: You can also Kill ⌘ cmd+⌫ backspace (cut) and Yank ⌃ CTRL+Y (paste) text.

Here's the list on Apple Website


How to delete all my progress in Fruit Ninja? I would like to reset all my progress, achievements and objects from Fruit Ninja. I've tried deleting it and then reinstalling it again, but I still have all my stuff.

So, how could I reset the game so that it's like I've never played before?

When deleting the app, you are prompted if you want to remove the app data from Game Center.

Choosing Remove will remove this data and subsequently reinstalling the app will start a fresh container for the app data.


Both Command keys as well as zero digit not functioning on MacBook keyboard My left and right ⌘ Command  keys are being extremely unresponsive on my MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2012). They might work for hours and then stop working again. The odd thing is that when they do stop working, so does the number zero (0).

Mashing the three buttons all at once (as one does when in frustration) sometimes solves the issue temporarily. I'm using the digital keyboard viewer in the case that i need to use a "0", and the " ´ " (directly to the left of Delete) key seems to constantly be orange.

Strangely this highlight disappears when pressing either of the ⌘ Command  keys (using the mouse to press them on the keyboard viewer). Now, the thing that confuses me the most is the fact that when pressing both ⌘ Command  keys as well as 0 (physically), then pressing the highlighted "´" key, it types out "n´-" instead of just "`", which should be expected if the other keys weren't functioning.

All of this boggles my mind. Is there some simple thing I'm missing? I refuse to get my keyboard replaced as that last oddity implies there's nothing wrong with the keyboard itself...

I've just found that a more reliable temporary fix seems to be to hold down both command keys, however pressing 0 once will undo the fix.

Your keyboard is failing and should be replaced.

The keyboard is made up of "layers" with one of them being a flexible plastic "circuit board" with conductive traces.  The photo below shows a typical example of this (Disassembled keyboards from MacBooks aren't common so I used a PC keyboard - the technology is the same).

Update:  I wrote a canonical Q/A on this topic that shows much better breakdown of the keyboard assembly and goes in depth as to what the issues could be.

The keyboard recognizes a key press when a particular circuit (or circuits for multiple key presses) is/are closed.  It's a physical connection being made.

If anything gets between the contacts or if the contacts become worn, the keyboard will begin to malfunction as yours is doing now.

This will only get worse.  Keyboards don't fix themselves and software fixes only go so far.  Your best bet is to replace the keyboard - and there's good news and bad news...

The good news:  A replacement MBA keyboard is relatively cheap; less than $20.

The bad news:  Replacing the keyboard will require you (or a tech) to completely disassemble your MBA.  This involves literally taking every single component out of your MBA.  It's not a hard process, but rather a long and detailed process.  Ifixit.com has an excellent step-by-step.

If you feel comfortable around electronics and you have done this type of thing before, I recommend that you give it a go at replacing it yourself.

If this is not something you are comfortable with, I suggest hiring a tech.


Is this a scam? A web page claims my iPhone is infected Is this a scam? I do not use adult sites.

I think this is a scam because I'm using an iPod touch when it clearly states iPhone. Please answer truthfully for future experiences

Yes. This is a scam. You are 100% safe to close your safari tab to get rid of this message and absolutely nothing will happen. Many scammers provide fake instructions which will tell you what to do to give them access to your device, or make you give them money or personal details too, without you realising.

In this case, due to the web address, it appears the only intention of this fake site is to get you to install an app, probably to make the app seem more popular. The address implies this is an advertisement of an app, and the bit we can see of the instructions seems to back this up too. It is possible they are still trying to get money if the app costs money.


Is there a scale indicator bar for the Maps app on iPad? I'm using Google Maps in the Maps app on my iPad but I cannot find a scale bar.
Where is the scale bar for Google Maps in the native Maps app on an iPad?

There is no scale bar in Maps for iPad. I think it is not official (yet) because even on Android it can only be enabled from the "Labs" settings. So, it is not part of the official Google Maps images.


How can I effectively hide my macbook while traveling to prevent theft I will be taking my Macbook Pro Retina for a backpacking trip and will be working from public places (i.e. coffee shops, public squares) for a while. I am quite concerned though, that it will be stolen.

Aside from the obvious precautions for theft, like not leaving it out of eyesight, backing everything up to a second disk, encrypting stuff, firmware password, setting up prey etc. I am looking for a way to disguise the machine as something more undesirable than a macbook.

Of course there is always the Book Cover disguise or the option to cover the whole thing in conference stickers so it looks like a piece of trash, but maybe you guys know something equally suitable for this purpose?

Searching on the web for "laptop skin" or "removable laptop skin" would provide you a list of designers and sellers for laptop skins. Buy a boring laptop skin and use it on your MacBook Pro.

Some sites for laptop skins (in no particular order):

CafePress
Gelaskins
Zazzle
DecalGirl
Skinit


Cisco IPsec VPN Negotiation Fails After Network Disconnect On Mac OSX 10.11.3 (likely previous), the built-in Cisco IPsec VPN client will refuse to reconnect to the VPN server after a network failure (cable unplugged, wifi lost etc.)

After about 30 seconds of 'Connecting...' in the menu bar, an error pops up about 'Failure to negotiate'. Deleting the service and creating a new one does not fix the issue, but a reboot does.

How do I reconnect to the server without having to reboot?

The problem is that racoon, Apple's proprietary Cisco VPN client doesn't close itself gracefully on disconnect, this actually makes all Cisco VPNs stop working if one was connected when the network failure occurred.

To fix this, simply stop racoon:

Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
Type sudo killall racoon (you will be asked for your password)

You may now quit Terminal and reconnect the VPN as normal.


iCoud has divorced name - help I got a divorce, and my iCloud email has my old name. I did an alias, but I want that old name gone. Now what?

There are two options. The important part is to determine if you need to get a new @icloud or @me or @mac portion of the email. You can’t change that yourself.
You can change the AppleID (log in text) and everything else like name and address, just not the initial email Apple issued to your iCloud account. That portion isn’t editable any manner I’ve ever seen, and if you use a third party mail with your AppleID you can change that to a new value and leave the old email behind forever.
Assuming you can’t edit the fields you want, two options remain:

Make a new AppleID and have the other hang around for past purchases - you have to keep control of it, but not use it for primary. Make it part of the “family” if you want purchases to flow to the new account.
Make a new AppleID and just delete / leave it unused. Clean start.

I would call Apple Support or chat if any of this is unclear or confusing. Show them the exact parts you want to change before you do anything. They can advise you best since they manage the service and you don’t have to share personal details here publicly.


Wanted: Apple Script for copying file name and pasting it in Spotlight Comment box Mac OS X 10.8.5 Global Peace Mission Project looking for automating pre sorting movie file routines. Due to the instant impact inflow of third party YouTube contributions triggered by a blog launched March 22 after the Brussels ISIS attacks, I need an Apple Script. Can one automate the pre sorting process of copying the original file name of the footage and pasting it in the Spotlight comment box of that file? How does that Apple Script for OS X looks like?

I would need to do THIS a thousand times otherwise (and meanwhile stacking up)and I'm not the only one getting repetitive strain injuries because of that.

If you don't know the answer, please help us find the one who does. Tx.

This is how insane we do it now...

Hitting enter to select the file
Cmd C (To copy the file name)
Cmd I to open that info window
Hitting tab button twice to enter the Spotlight Comment box
Cmd v (To paste the file name in the box)
Cmd w to close that info window
Hitting enter to select the file again
Putting the cursor in front of the file name
Adding DONE_ in front of the name so I would see that one is done

The aforementioned folder contains a thousand files and even more.
So I wish the script could batch import all of them at once, one after the other.

This AppleScript ask you to choose some files, after that, it set the comment of each file to the file name.

set input to choose file with prompt "Select files (to put the file name into the Spotlight Comment)" with multiple selections allowed
tell application "Finder"
    repeat with i in input
        tell item i to try
            set tName to (get name)
            set comment to tName -- this set the comment to the name of the file, and delete the existing comment
            set name to "Done_" & tName
        end try
    end repeat
end tell

If you want to append the file name to the existing comments, change the sixth line in the script to set comment to (get comment) & " " & tName -- this append the name of the file to the existing comment


Boot Camp restarted back to OS X instead of Windows I just tried to install BootCamp for Windows 8.1 on my new retina MacBook Pro and it was making the USB stick for like 1 hour then it partitioned the disc and after that, when it should restart to install menu, it automatically restarted back to OS X. So now my disk is split but I can’t run the installation since it has automatically booted into OS X. Any solutions?

go into system preferences, choose startup disk and select your windows partition, then restart.


How can I access my time capsule through ssh? I am trying to reach the time capsule on a remote network. After following the advice of another question I realised the router/network doesn't support NAT-PMP/UPnP and thus I get to configure the time capsule as available through icloud, but I'm never able to reach it outside of the network.

However, I am able to ssh into an old powerpc I have port mapped on the router to a static IP. Is there any way to tunnel the time capsule backup through ssh? I've also tried sshuttle which works perfectly to forward dns/http requests. But it doesn't seem to make time capsule backups available, since the finder doesn't show any shared devices on the network.

I would gladly try a solution like FreeLan but unfortunately their support goes back to 10.7 and the old PowerPC machine inside the remote network serving as entry only has 10.5.x.

You would need to forward TCP port 548, which is AFP (Apple Filing Protocol). This is the storage protocol used by Time Machine to access content on a Time Capsule.

Note: This will not necessarily make it possible for your remote systems to auto detect the Time Capsule - as any DNS information (Bonjour) you forward would probably be incorrect as it needs to be translated (i.e. a different IP-address).

Connect to the Time Capsule directly using the IP instead. From Finder select Go => Connect to Server and then enter: afp://123.123.123.123/

Substitute your own IP ofcourse!


Does anyone know how apps are published on the same day as new iOS release? Does anyone know how apps are published on the same day as new iOS release?

Because Xcode doesn't launch until then (except for the beta version). And you cannot publish apps using the beta version.

And getting the app reviewed takes at least 7 days.

When the iOS Golden Master (GM) release is sent to developers, Apple also opens up app submissions for the new OS. They also appear to segment out releases targeted for the new OS so that apps are available, though there is no solid evidence for this.

For example, iOS 8 was released on Sept 17th, 2014. On September 9, 2014, Apple opened submissions for apps targeting iOS 8:

  Prepare your apps for the App Store by downloading the iOS 8 and Xcode
  6 GM seeds now. With these latest seeds, Swift is now final and you
  can submit your iOS apps written with Swift to the App Store. Learn
  about iOS 8 for Developers.


Mountain Lion Notification Center glitches I’m experiencing a number of issues with the Mountain Lion Notification Center and Dock. Just wanted to check whether anyone else is having similar problems.

On my 2011 iMac, the Dock doesn’t show up immediately with the rest of the desktop UI on startup. Also, the icons sometimes “fall” from where they normally sit on the dock and appear jumping out from the bottom edge of the screen.
A more serious issue: on a 2009 iMac, the Notification Center sometimes stops working completely and freezes other parts of the OS UI when called. The Dock becomes irresponsive, Mission Control cannot be called, spaces do not switch, Cmd+Tab doesn’t work. Basically, I can only interact with the windows on the current space and the menubar. To “unfreeze” everything else, I have to “Force Quit” the Dock process in the Activity Monitor (killall Dock doesn’t seem to work). Though still after that, any attempt to call the Notification Center will result in another “freeze”.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? If yes, did you manage to find any solution and/or the cause of these problems?

I'm having the same issue as Arnold. The problem might even be slighty worse for me; opun freezing, I can only use keyboard input; mouse clicks aren't registered anymore. I use QuickSilver to launch a terminal and running "killall -9 Dock" two times kills the dock and releases the mouse. After a couple of minutes the dock is relaunched. Also sending the HUP or INT to Dock will kill it. Sending the TERM signal doesn't though.

I found that the problem can be circumvented by rebooting the system and after reboot ensuring that the first thing you do is to open the notification center. I think that by sleeping your mac without having the notification center open before that is what makes it crash.

Sadly, I didn't find any way to check what's keeping the Dock process busy. It doesn't seem to be the notification centre itself that's crashing (it keeps responding to mouse clicks while nothing else does) but the Dock. So far the only thing I came up with is that this is a problem with launchd, but that doesn't help a lot because killing launchd will kill every application you have running.


How do I use multiple webcams at once on Mac OS X? I have programmed a Flash app that makes use of several webcams at the same time. The app works great on Windows. When I try to use more than one webcam on Mac OS X, I find that each webcam I plug into the computer disables the previously attached webcam.

It appears that I can only have one USB camera working at a time. Is this correct? Is there any way of bypassing this?

There are Mac applications that can do this, although I don't believe that any of them run on Flash.

Here's some that I found:

Wirecast from Telestream
BoinxTV from Boinx Software
CamCamX from Black-Op

They're all commercial, but there's a wide range of pricing between the three.


iTunes download stopped on Mac unexpectedly As you can see in the image below, the downloads are stopped. I have no trouble download music on my iPhone, but on my Mac, I have a hard time figuring out how to resume the download. Can anyone help me?

Look in the downloads sheet. At the far right is an empty circle and a little circular arrow.
Click the little circular arrow, that will resume a stopped download.
This works the same way in the Safari downloads sheet.


Alternative to Boom (volume booster) I'm disappointed to see that http://www.globaldelight.com/ are discontinuing support for Boom1 and charging users to upgrade to Boom2. In fact their smallprint suggests they intend to charge for Boom3.

As a software developer, it would be against my conscience to charge multiple times for a simple utility that the operating system should have supplied.

So, I am looking for alternatives.  Is there any other way to increase the volume on a MacBook?

PS Is it just my imagination, or has the most recent OSX (El Capitan)  increased the maximum volume level? Since Boost stopped working, I haven't really noticed a problem watching movies.

Try the open source VLC

It can boost the audio by upto 200%. The equaliser let's you boost even further.

You can boost audio in iTunes too. Select the song and press Cmd+I

You can boost audio by another 100% and use equaliser too.


iMessage stopped syncing I have an iPhone (iOS 10) and a macbook (macOS 10).
My SMS/iMessages used to be in sync between my computer and my iPhone.

At some point, not sure when, they stopped syncing.

Both devices are connected to my Apple ID.
Handoff is enabled.
iMessage is enabled.

First of all, I've had a less than prefect experience with messages being delivered to both Mac and iPhone which I largely attribute to non-Apple devices.

To your problem, have you tried un-ticking phone numbers/email accounts and signing out on both devices? Quit app then re-lauching and signing back in?


Can MacBook 2018 output to a 4k external display? I've got a few questions:

Can a MacBook Pro 2018 output 4K?
What options are there?
What kind of budget am I looking at?

I am obviously not gaming I do some media production, also looking to get some kind of docking station. A decent refresh rate would be nice!

My computer specs:

Q1: Can a MacBook Pro 2018 output 4K?
Apple has a technical specifications page for almost every product they sell burried in their knowledge base.
This is the one for your computer, it states:

Video Support
Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at millions of colors and:

Up to two displays with 5120-by-2880 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors
Up to four displays with 4096-by-2304 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors

So yes your computer can output consumer 4K (UHD/Quad HD/2160p) 3840x2160, but also  4096×2160 (DCI 4K) on up to 4 displays at once.
There will be performance limitations when running like this.
Q2: What options are there?
There are a wide range of monitors on the market it would be impossible to really answer this, sites like YouTube provide a broad range of reviews for displays, I have one in mind that I would recommend but don't feel it approriate to do so on this type of website.
Q3: What kind of budget am I looking at?
This is also hard to address as prices in your country will be different from mine, but 4K monitors are very affordable now, however stick to known brands and be careful to ensure you get ones with modern connectivity like USB-C which are going to work well with your laptop, and that possibly having charging integrated.


Why is Java consuming 100% CPU on my machine? I have an iMac (early 2010) running 10.7.2 but the problem has been seen on 10.6.x also. The symptom is simple, one of my 2 cores is sitting at 100% utilization with the Java process responsible  for the excessive usage.

What have I done to troubleshoot?

Reboot - The java process simply restarts and the same condition is seen.
Kill the Java process - As with a reboot.
Uninstall and reinstall Java - Soon after installing Java the CPU is back at 100%.
Using ps "process id" I can see that it is launchd spawning the process and that the command used to start the process is:

java -Djava.awt.headless=true -jar /tmp/ics29586

The ics29586 file is an 11mb binary file.
Deleted the ics29586 file - File is recreated at next process restart and same condition is seen
Created a new user account, rebooted and logged in as the new user - Same condition is seen.
Played with Java settings and restarted the process after each change - Same condition seen.
Complete machine rebuild - Soon after installing Java the CPU is back at 100%.

So, has anyone either got the the answer for what is causing it and how to fix it, or some advice on ways of further troubleshooting the issue?

In response to some of the comments asking for more info:

I'm not running crashplan.
I couldn't work out how to get Activity Monitor to show me open files, but googling suggested LSOF was a good match for what you wanted to know. It showed no open files:

Deep-Desk:LaunchAgents photo$ sudo lsof -c java
Deep-Desk:LaunchAgents photo$

There are 220 ports open for the Java process at present
The only file of interest in either the LaunchDaemons or LaunchAgents folders is:

-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   568B 10 Mar  2011 com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist

Everything else is either com.apple or has a date well after the problem first manifested. By way of a test I have renamed the com.microsoft file to old.com.microsoft but it made no difference. I also moved the file completely out the LaunchDaemons directory and that made no difference either, the process still respawns, hangs around not doing much for a few minutes, then goes out of control and consumes all the CPU on 1 core.

I don't know either, but here's how to find out more

In cases of entirely unknown binaries, strings(1) is often helpful in getting a hint about what the file might be

strings /tmp/ics29586 | less

Have a look through the output and see if it's anything familiar.

Failing that, find out which launchd job it is being launched from:

launchctl list|awk '{id=$3; print "### " id; system("launchctl list " id)}'|awk '/^###/ {id=$2} /.*ics29586.*/ {print id}'

This should output one or more job tags in the form of (for example) com.apple.scrod (and a few errors, which you can ignore).

Once you have the job tag(s), get the launchd config for a job by running:

launchctl list com.apple.scrod    # insert your tag instead

This (and the tag itself, which often contains an internet domain name in reverse notation) should give you some more information about what this process is. Feel free to post it here if you need further help.

Update: Forgot to mention this, but since it's a jar file, you can copy it somewhere and unzip it (jar files are really just zip files) and have a look at what sort of Java classes are in there.


Create Custom Drop Down Menus in the Finder Toolbar Any Dropbox users out there will recognize the drop down menu that one can add to their Finder toolbar.

Upon discovering that this existed, I immediately wondered if/how I could create my own sort of drop down menu (just as Dropbox did; Finder comes with plenty of native ones as it is). You'll notice a variety of icons beside the Get Info button; these are applications. Given how much clutter they create for me (it gets somewhat annoying to have to expand the Finder window every time I create one), it would be really convenient to be able to create my own drop down menu button, which would contain any applications or files I want to store in my toolbar.

I currently don't know how to code for Mac, so any extremely involved solutions would be a bit difficult. I can work with Applescript and C#, though. Essentially what I'm looking for is an application that allows one to create these drop down menus, or some other (fairly simple) way to create plugins for Finder.

Some quick tech specs:

OS X Yosemite 10.10.1

Side note:

This might be something of interest as far as my question goes. I'm not necessarily looking to create a button (although a drop down menu is technically activated by a button), but I think this explains fairly nicely how I'd like to go about creating the drop down menu.

That button is added to Finder using the FinderSync Extension APIs:

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Conceptual/ExtensibilityPG/Finder.html

  Finder Sync supports apps that synchronize the contents of a local folder with a remote data source. It improves user experience by providing immediate visual feedback directly in the Finder. Badges display the sync state of each item, and contextual menus let users manage folder contents. Custom toolbar buttons can invoke global actions, such as opening a monitored folder or forcing a sync operation.


iMessage sent to one phone is going to another phone instead My brother in laws daughter is intercepting all his iMessages on her iPhone. Someone sends him an iMessage and instead of going to his phone, it goes to hers???? This started right after she updated his phone and used her info and wifi. Plain texts still go to him

Do they, somehow, use the same Apple ID? If so, the phone number has paired to the Apple ID, and every iMessage will notify the most active device (that is, the daughter in this case) before pinging the others.

As some would say, it's not a bug. It's a feature. I have a few solutions for your brother in law:

If the Apple ID belongs to the daughter

You said:

  she updated his phone and used her info

If the father has the daughter's Apple ID logged in on his iPhone, just go to Settings :: Messages :: Receive at on the father's iPhone and log in with the right Apple ID.

If the Apple ID is the father's one

If both the daughter and the father are logged in to the father's Apple ID, you have the following options:

Get the daughter a personal iCloud account

As the daughter already has an iPhone, I suggest your brother in law creates an account for her. If they use a version older than iOS 8, they can go to Settings :: Messages and create an Apple ID from there that will just be used for iMessage and FaceTime. She will still be able to download apps from your brother in law account. Otherwise, if they use iOS 8, they can create a new child account that will be used for all services, including the App Store, but use the same credit card (the daughter will have to send requests to buy)

Disable the feature

If they have to keep the same iTunes account, you can go to Settings :: Messages :: Receive at on the daughter's iPhone, and uncheck your brother-in-law phone number. This way, she won't receive his iMessages anymore.


I messed up my /.bash_profile and Bash will not recognize most commands I was trying to add paths to my ~/.bash_profile and accidentally screwed up the final one right when I closed it. Now, I cannot use a majority of the basic shell commands, like ls, touch, etc. I can still use echo and cd. When I echo my path, I get: “/Users/Forthman/Desktop/paml/bin:??. If I try other commands, I get: -bash: touch: command not found.

My ~/.bash_profile is invisible, and so I cannot directly open it in TextWrangler or TextEdit. How can I fix this?

Open TextWrangler. Press the command key and o key. A dialog box will open.
Press the shift key, the command key and the period key and your dot files will be visible in the dialog box.


What should I do to be able to log in to MobileMe without Unknown Validation Error? I am entering the password correctly. I am able to log in to both me.com and iCloud.com. I tried @me.com and @whatever_is_my_apple_id_domain_is - there are no problems with the password.

I tried changing my password, but this did not help (supporting that this is not a password issue). And yet, I can't login.

What should I do to be able to log in to MobileMe without Unknown Validation Error?

I was having trouble logging into my Apple account so I could send a card from the Cards app earlier today. It eventually worked, but only after a ton of tries. Since it all uses the same validation service, there is a possibility that it is currently undergoing maintenance. Try again in a few hours and see if it is still not working.

http://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/

Apple has a nice service status page you can check, but my experience is that sometimes the Authentication servers are overloaded or not working even when all the lights on the dashboard are green.


Is there a way for Spotlight or Launchbar or Quicksilver or similar to just return matching folders not files? I frequently need to just get a finder window up that's a ton of folders deep.

There's only so many favorites you can put in the finder sidebar.

I'd happily configure a dedicated launcher to just get me to folders by name and use one of the others for their normal purpose.

I just can't figure out if any of them can be made to do this.

The fastest way using spotlight is to add kind:folder to the search term in the spotlight field.

You can use booleans, metadata tags like kind:music or date:yesterday and more as described in Specifying criteria in the Spotlight search field

I always forget about these and instead use the search window to build up a boolean criteria rather than use the default spotlight menu search (where all the other data detectors compete to provide you relevant matches)

Instead of command+space try option+command+space

Then click the circle + on the right by Save and override the "Any" with "Folder"

I don't know a way to automate or save this further as the default, but it's a way that will work on all Macs.


Give iOS Developer Program membership as a gift? Is it possible to purchase a one-year iOS Developer Program membership for someone as a gift? I know the Apple ID of the desired recipient, but couldn't find how to offer the program membership.

No. Apple checks each developer's identity by checking with their credit card company, so it has to be paid with the developers credit card.

There are other ways involving faxing ID to them, but that's rather inconvenient.


Broken iPhone screen without siri My iPhone screen is completely broken and Siri is not operational.

I have not synced it to any computer before.

It switches on and I can see parts of the screen, so it is not entirely dead, but I cannot access it.

How do I retrieve my data?

Cannot use voice over and have not synced it before.

Is there software available to get my pin in without need to trust a keyboard or a Mac?

I think your question is about retrieving the data on your iPhone. This will be kind of hard if you can't access your screen.

First, you will need to connect your iPhone to your Windows or Mac computer with iTunes installed on it. You will see a prompt on your iPhone to allow the computer to access data on the iPhone. Click allow and enter your passcode. Then, you will need to take a Full Backup in the General options shown. Make sure that you encrypt the backup if you want Health and HomeKit data.

Once the backup is complete, it will be stored locally on your laptop.

If you get a new iOS device, then you can choose to transfer the data directly from the iPhone or you can restore from a backup.

You can try connecting a Bluetooth or USB keyboard to enter your Passcode if your screen will not work.

Good luck!


Need to automate copy / paste graphic selection from Preview to Google Doc I need to paste sequential rectangular selections from a PNG opened in Preview into a designated Google Doc.  I suspect AppleScript is the best candidate for this, but I'm open to using a more familiar language like Python or JS.  Here's some rough pseudocode for what I want to do.

   Define Hot Keys for CopyPaste and Done
   File Dialog to select destination Google Doc
   Open destination doc
   Set insertion point at end of destination doc
   Until Done key pressed:
       Activate Preview window
       On CopyPaste key pressed:
           Copy current selection from Preview
           Paste to destination doc
           Insert two newlines

The goal is speed up the many copy/paste operations that I'm now doing by Cmd-C, click destination window, Cmd-V, Enter, Enter, click Preview (so I can make the next selection).

The following is working for me in OS X 10.9:

In ~/bin/preview2chrome.scpt,

tell application "Preview" to activate
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Preview"
        keystroke "c" using command down
    end tell
end tell
delay 0.5

tell application "Google Chrome" to activate
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Chrome"
        keystroke "v" using command down
        keystroke return
        keystroke return
    end tell
end tell

delay 0.5
tell application "Preview" to activate

In ~/Library/Services, a Run Shell Script service named Preview2Chrome.workflow containing:

/usr/bin/osascript /Users/mellis/bin/preview2chrome.scpt

Option-V assigned as a shortcut key for Preview2Chrome.workflow .

This solution requires manually opening the destination Google Doc and making it the active tab in an active Chrome window with all other Chrome windows minimized. That's not much of a restriction for my purposes, but it would be nice to have an solution that knows how to paste to the destination doc no matter what tabs and windows are active.


Windows 8.1 poor sound quality I installed Windows 8.1 on my MacBook Pro 13 (2011 late) using Bootcamp and everything seems ok except poor sound quality. It is just so impossible to listen to music. The quality is like a radio or telephone. On the other hand on the Mac OS X the sound is pretty good.

Windows built-in tool for driver updates says that my drivers are up to date...

Is there any suggestions how to fix the sound on the Windows? I just really don't want to switch on Mac OS every time I want to listen to music.

Thank you!

The Windows 8.1 and the drivers of bootcamp may interfere with each other.

As Windows 8.1 is not yet officially released I would say that bootcamp isn't yet fully compatible with Windows 8.1

Though this link might help: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1_pr-hardware/audio-lost-after-installing-windows-81-preview-on/7033e0ac-ba83-4395-afdf-9a312dbb3d99


MacBookPro Migration - All File Corrupted and actually they are not I switched from an older MacBook Pro to a newer unit. It runs macOS High Sierra V10.13. All files were migrated using the Migration Assistance app. Within one night all files and software were transferred. Now everything is fine, except for files - every file I double-click to open states "file-abc.zip" is corrupted and can not be opened. It's recommended to put this file into trash.

This happens on every single file there is. All kind of formats (zip, jpeg, xlsx,....). Every time I get the same error message.

However, I can just open the files if I open the software first (let's say MS Excel) and select "Open file" from context menu and select a file. Now it will open just as it should. If I  double-click the file in Finder will result in this error message.

Whats wrong here? It seems the files are all fine, just my MBP is a bit confused? How can I get this straight?

Bonus info: If I download files from web (Firefox/Chrome) the files are corrupted as well. If I create the file myself (with a software by saving it to disk) it can be opened with double click.

/update:

Some more strange behavior I found on this macbook. In settings "security" I can change the 'allow applications downloaded from' to "verified sources" ('anywhere' is not available at all) but when I jump back to main settings and again to this security it is changed back to "App Store". It doesn't saves my setting!

I found the solution to this error (btw. the error message is "____ file is damaged and can't be opened. You should put it to trashbin."):

The gatekeeper function on Sierra is a bit altered and the last option "From any source" is not available for security settings. So I had to run this command in terminal:

sudo spctl --master-disable

Now the option "from any source" is available for gatekeeper. After I selected this option the files became available again.


Can't reinstall Mac OS X I have an old Mac and OS X won't start, it is stuck loading the OS.

I want to reinstall but it just ejects the DVD a few seconds after I put it in.

The Mac has an i5 3.1GHz CPU and 4GB 1333 MHz DDR33 RAM.

I don't know a lot about Apple computers, I mainly use Windows; any help would be appreciated.

shut down the mac, boot it up in Recovery mode, CMD + R, go to disk utility, select your main disk, and erase it, format it as Mac extended,
close that window, go to Reinstall MAC OS X, and then follow the instructions, thats the best, way to re-install, it will never go wrong.


Will Time Machine delete old backups for other computers on the same drive? I have an external 500 GB HDD that I've used for Time Machine backups for three different computers:

An old PowerBook G4
A white MacBook
My current retina MacBook Pro

I now have less than 100 GB free on the backup drive, so sooner or later it's going to fill up. I know that when the disk fills up, Time Machine will start deleting the oldest backups in order to make room for the new ones.

My question is: will it delete the oldest backups only for the machine that it's currently used with (which is the retina MBP), or will it delete the PowerBook's backups since those are technically the oldest on the disk, even though they're from a different machine?

Will (Time Machine) delete the oldest backups only from the current machine's
  backups (the retina MBP), or will it delete the PowerBook's backups
  since those are technically the oldest (even though they're from a
  different machine)?

Time Machine only deletes the oldest backup for the current machine. macOS utilizes the File System Event Store to log each UUID during the backup process. Your machine's UUID should match whatever backups have been done previously for that machine, and only that machine's events are handled. All other events are effectively ignored.

You'll need to thin them out by hand using this tmutil delete command:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/55645/5472


Homebrew not detecting latest Xcode and Command Line Tools, and not uninstalling them either I have macOS Mojave version 10.14.5 installed with Xcode version 10.2.1 and Command Line Tools installed using xcode-select --install. All problem started when I tried to install youtube-dl formula on my system by running:

brew install youtube-dl

The output I get is:

Updating Homebrew...
Error: Your Xcode (1) is too outdated.
Please update to Xcode 9.0 (or delete it).
Xcode can be updated from
  https://developer.apple.com/download/more/

Error: Your Command Line Tools are too outdated.
Update them from Software Update in the App Store.

Again, if I run xcode-select --install, I get:

xcode-select: error: command line tools are already installed, use "Software Update" to install updates

Running:

xcode-select -v

returns

xcode-select version 2354

(I do not know what this means) and running:

xcode-select -p

yields

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

Owing to these issues, I tried to uninstall Homebrew (with a plan to reinstall it afresh) by running the command:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/uninstall)"

but it gives the following error:

curl: (7) Failed to connect to raw.githubusercontent.com port 443: Operation timed out

Next, I tried to uninstall Homebrew using the unbrew.rb script available at GitHub but it seems not to remove Homebrew. I tried running it with and without sudo. Even after doing this, running brew config returns:

HOMEBREW_VERSION: 1.3.2
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: 751334a257d81851e68da7ab390982d4e9fdf909
Last commit: 1 year, 10 months ago
Core tap ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core
Core tap HEAD: 3fd7a855a1a357654a4a9a455162761841a4809d
Core tap last commit: 1 year, 10 months ago
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /usr/local
HOMEBREW_REPOSITORY: /usr/local/Homebrew
HOMEBREW_CELLAR: /usr/local/Cellar
HOMEBREW_BOTTLE_DOMAIN: https://homebrew.bintray.com
CPU: quad-core 64-bit broadwell
Homebrew Ruby: 2.3.7 => /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.3/usr/bin/ruby
Clang: N/A
Git: 2.20.1 => /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/git
Perl: /opt/local/bin/perl => /opt/local/bin/perl5.24
Python: /usr/bin/python
Ruby: /usr/bin/ruby => /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.3/usr/bin/ruby
Java: N/A
macOS: 10.14.5-x86_64
Xcode: 1 => /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer
CLT: N/A
X11: N/A
MacPorts/Fink: /opt/local/bin/port

Running brew doctor outputs the following:

Please note that these warnings are just used to help the Homebrew maintainers
with debugging if you file an issue. If everything you use Homebrew for is
working fine: please don't worry and just ignore them. Thanks!

Warning: Your Command Line Tools are too outdated.
Update them from Software Update in the App Store.

Error: Unrecognized Mach-O load command: 0x32

Is my Homebrew broken by my attempts at uninstalling it? What can I do to repair Homebrew and all these errors in pointing to the right Xcode and command line tools?

I had tried updating Homebrew by running brew update earlier without success. Running:

brew update

returns:

fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask/': Failed to connect to github.com port 443: Operation timed out
fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/': Failed to connect to github.com port 443: Operation timed out
fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/': Failed to connect to github.com port 443: Operation timed out
Error: Fetching /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-core failed!
Fetching /usr/local/Homebrew failed!
Fetching /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/caskroom/homebrew-cask failed!

As is evident from the output of brew config, your installation of Homebrew is pretty outdated. Also, as mentioned in your comment, you have a proxy active in your system. This explains why Homebrew installation is failing to connect unable to the Homebrew software's server counterpart via port 443, which  hosted on GitHub.

Follow the instructions in the following answer to update your installation of Homebrew to current version:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/232770/279727

If you run into an error similar to:

  Error: Permission denied

Run:

sudo chown -R `whoami`:admin /usr/local/share

to resolve it.

If you get the following error:

  Warning: Homebrew's sbin was not found in your PATH but you have installed
  formulae that put executables in /usr/local/sbin.
  Consider setting the PATH for example like so:
  echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/sbin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

Run the command-line mentioned in the last line.

Once you have Homebrew updated, run brew cleanup to remove any broken symlinks.

The current public version of Homebrew is 2.1.6. You can check if your installation of Homebrew is up-to-date by running brew config and matching the value with the HOMEBREW_VERSION: key in the output.


What is "photoanalysisd" and why is it using 77% of my CPU? We got a new iMac for Christmas and it has seemed really slow for the past couple of days. In desperation I checked out Activity Monitor and it shows photoanalysisd as the guilty process that is hogging my CPU. I assume this is related to the Photos app, but that's not even running!

What is "photoanalysisd", why is it using 77% of my CPU, and can I safely stop the process?

Update for 2019, 16" MacBook Pro running Catalina 10.15.2:

start Photos, let it continue past the first dialogue box;
now Preferences in the app menu is clickable (it wasn't before);
Preferences > General , and untick both check boxes in Memories;
close Photos.

This stops photoanalysisd cold, no reboot or kill required.


Recover Deleted Voice Memo I was trimming a just recorded Voice Memo and accidentally kept the part I wanted to delete instead.

Is there any way to get the original file back?

Once it's deleted, it's gone.  You can check your last iCloud backup.  If it was after the recording but before the delete, you might be able to get it back.

There's about a dozen iPhone recovery-type tools on the net.  A little searching will identify who they are and how to get them (I won't list them here because I don't have experience with them).  They claim to be able to recover voice memo's but YMMV.


Do I need to upgrade iOS before creating backup to be restored onto new iPhone? Do I need to upgrade iOS before creating backup to be restored onto a new iPhone?

I have an iPhone 7 running iOS 10 and would like to upgrade to iPhone X.

iPhone X ships with iOS 11 and I'm looking for the proper way to transfer data when the new phone arrives.

Do I need to upgrade the older iPhone first to iOS 11 before creating a backup to be restored onto iPhone X?

No - you should probably always backup before any upgrade just in case the upgrade fails. I would get a backup as soon as you can in general as well as in specific when you are about to move or upgrade.

The good thing about your situation is the iPhone X and iOS 11 setup assistant will remind you to make a backup of the old device and even let you start the setup and wait for the other backup to complete.

Getting a backup now is good since backups to iCloud and backups to iTunes tend to be incremental so they save several backups and the next backup will just need to save changed data and often completes very quickly.

The only time you might consider upgrading is if you have a really old version of iOS and skipped several major versions. I do like always updating right before a transfer since sometimes minor updates fix issues with setup so you can skip those bugs by updating everything after you have a good foundation backup.


Read Remote Changes to a Published Calendar before Publishing I have a calendar in Calendar.app which publishes to a server as an ics file. I can subscribe to this same calendar using the URL used to publish to it (both actions require authentication). However, this requires two separate calendars. What I want is to be able to publish to it and view any updates to it, as it might be changed from another client.

The current behavior is that any remote change to this ics is smothered by the next update from the local published calendar, which never checks the ics for changes before completely rewriting it.

I discovered this is "working as intended", and switched to a CalDAV implementation, as it performs the functions I'm looking for.