Downgrading (user homes) to macOS Sierra Because of having issues with High Sierra, I had to downgrade to Sierra. My macOS is on an internal SSD (of my Mac Pro) and my user homes are on an external SSD. When downgrading using a backup, Time Machine only replaced macOS (on the internal SSD), but not the user homes (on the external SSD).

Looks like Sierra is not happy with my High Sierra user homes:

Messages hangs
identityservicesd and callservicesd are constantly crashing
my screen turns black, sometimes every few seconds. possibly having to do with the crashes.

Essentially the same problems like in this thread (which is locked):
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8105075

The user of the post above said he could solve his issues with a reinstall of Sierra (which I cannot do and I am also not convinced this changes anything) plus “restoring files by hand from my time machine backup drive with rsync and other command-line tools”. Any idea how to do this or which files need replacement? Deleting ~/Library/Caches did not help. I also restored these with Time Machine which also did not help:

~/Library/Messages
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.identityservicesd.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TelephonyUtilities.plist

Any other idea?

Some detail on the crashes:

Process:               identityservicesd [803]
Path:                  /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IDS.framework/identityservicesd.app/Contents/MacOS/identityservicesd
Identifier:            identityservicesd
Version:               10.0 (1000)
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           identityservicesd [803]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2018-02-01 10:00:56.010 +0100
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.12.6 (16G1212)
Report Version:        12
Anonymous UUID:        F9C97F8F-70BD-CA59-5E14-105C64D05D82

Time Awake Since Boot: 57 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

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

Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[__NSCFData count]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fa61a012200'
terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException
abort() called

and

Process:               callservicesd [996]
Path:                  /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/TelephonyUtilities.framework/callservicesd
Identifier:            callservicesd
Version:               1.0 (1.0)
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           callservicesd [996]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2018-02-01 10:09:25.222 +0100
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.12.6 (16G1212)
Report Version:        12
Anonymous UUID:        F9C97F8F-70BD-CA59-5E14-105C64D05D82

Time Awake Since Boot: 560 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

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

Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[__NSCFData count]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fd24b86e800'
terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException
abort() called

Update: Trying to restore ~/Library/Preferences completely with Time Machine essentially resulted in a deletion. Now the problems are gone but my preferences are also gone. Luckily I have copied the folder before doing so. Thus if I knew which of the preferences needed replacement by the Sierra ones I could restore the rest by hand. Any idea?

It will be very difficult to isolate the issue to individual preference files, since there could be several subtle issues.

Better to take the opposite approach - start with no preferences and only copy the old preferences over one by one as you come across them. That is, as you discover that you have a preference that needs updating, find the single preference file that will give you that preference, and restore it. Re-test and only proceed if things are still stable. Will be a drawn out process, but necessarily so I think. When you can no longer add individual preferences, consider the restoration finished and many set the remaining preferences.

This complex relationship between the OS, Applications and user files is why Apple created Migration Assistant. It might not be help here but it is useful to know just how intricate the process is of "migrating" from one OS version to another.


Can I use the macOS from a late 2012 Mac mini on a 2011 Mac mini server? TL;DR: My late 2012 Mac mini died (corrupt EFI) upgrading from Mojave to Catalina, I want to use a mid 2011 Mac mini with the hard drives and RAM out of my dead mini.  Is this possible?

Drawing on this SO question.  It appears that it can.  I've also compared the two on EveryMac and it appears possible, except for the OS difference.  EDIT: I just read through the specs again, and it appears the memory may be a problem, the 2012 is 1600 MHz minimum, and the 2011 is 1333 MHz, I'll need to look into that further.

My plan is to find a used 2011 Mac Mini server and use it as a host for the two drives (1tb Crucial boot, 1tb Seagate SSHD backup) I have in my dead 2012 plus the 16gb of RAM I have in it.  I have multiple backups on the drives, both Carbon Copy Cloner & Time Machine, so I should be able to get to a bootable state.  I also have a Win10 VM on Parallels that I'd really like to be able to use again.

For some reason the 2011 servers are about half the price of a used 2012 mini and since I really only need the logic board I don't see why I should pay more than necessary for an older machine, plus with the 2011 mini, I get a faster processor, and an extra monitor.

If this isn't possible, I'm willing to purchase another used late 2012 Mini as a host for the drives & RAM, just don't want to spend more money than I have to to recover the machine.

Your Mac mini 2012 supports OS X 10.8.1 up to the current macOS (10.15.1 at the time of writing). The Mac mini 2011 officially supports OS X 10.7 up to macOS 10.13.6 (High Sierra).

After upgrading your Mac mini 2012 to 10.14 (Mojave) and further trying to upgrade to 10.15 (Catalina), the Mac mini 2011 won't boot with this system disk.

The Catalina installer can be patched to run on some officially unsupported Macs and install the latest system.

The Mac mini 2011 (Macmini5,2) is on this list of (patch-)compatible Macs (with the restriction: ...systems with AMD Radeon HD 6xxx series GPUs will be almost unusable when running Catalina.). The Mac mini 2011 Server (Macmini5,3) - also on the list - doesn't contain an AMD Radeon GPU.

I don't recommend to use such patch.


Left (or right) border in Apple's Pages I am writing a Pages (5.5.3) document for my Diploma thesis.

I want to create a paragraph style for source code that has a colored border only on one side. Unfortunately, Pages gives me a limited number of options to choose from:

Is there any solution for achieveing the following style (notice the blue and gray left borders):

(BTW, this is a slide from an Apple presentation)

Not with paragraph styles, no. You can do this with a single cell table which can be inlined and have a left border style different to the others.


Keynote - Print Slide with Notes I know there is a way in Keynote to print your slides with notes. However, on some of my slides I have notes that are VERY long (as in a couple of pages). I'd like to print these off as handouts, but after the text gets to this point (in length) the slide (when printed) will SHRINK the text to fit. I'd prefer if the overflow text would go onto a new page. So that when it prints I have one page with the slide at the top and then notes beneath and then the rest of the notes print on the additional pages.

Can this be done? If so, how?

I don't believe there is a way to overflow the text. Your easiest bet is to make do with the smaller text size. Another alternative (which may require more work but could lead to a nicer design) would be to export a PDF of just the slides, then use Pages/Acrobat/Word/etc to build a document with both the text and slides by hand.


Is there a way to interact with Siri Answers? By default, Siri often "answers" questions by producing a result from (amongst others) Wolfram Alpha. Often these results leave me wanting to drill down further to expand on parts of the answer provided, but I can find no way to use the answer to allow me to link from it to more complete information elsewhere on the web.

Is there a way to jump from such answers to additional sources of information such as Wikipedia or Google? Is there a way to link from the "Alpha" results page that I'm just not seeing?  I'm aware that I can just search Wikipedia or Google from the start; my question is whether the "Alpha" results are a dead end.

I'm afraid so, since they are just a result of your command. The outcome isn't like a webpage where you can click on and on to obtain more information.

But you can still Google or Wikipedia as library in combination with Siri. Whenever you start your command with 'Wikipedia', Siri will search your local Wikipedia for the command you've just said.

For example, if you give Siri the command Wikipedia Stack Exchange Siri will search Wikipedia with the Stack Exchange search term:

Same goes for Google. Just add Google in front of your command, and you're good to go!


Macbook Pro changing desktop picture randomly I just got back from vacation and while on vacation I turned my computer off for the 5 days I was gone. I just now turned it back on and my desktop picture was changed to the galaxy photo which I know I didn't do because it was a picture of my dog when I left. It was locked in my basement so I know that no one could be messing with me. I also have noticed that my computer is running a little slow, but I don't know if that has anything to do with it? Also I know there is a setting that you can choose to have it change your picture every 30 min. or so, but I checked and that wasn't the problem for desktop 1 or desktop 2.

How can I prevent this happening in the future? Or this an indication of a "deeper" problem?

We have seen this on occasion.  Our solution has been to:

go to Desktop & ScreenSaver (Apple>System Preferences)
Choose a different photo (or folder)
Change the "CHange Picture" time to something different.
CHange back both ("change picture" time and photo) to original settings.
close Preferences tab..

The theory we hold is that the preferences are sometimes getting corrupted, and over-writing/re-writing is fixing it....


OS X renames secondary volume on boot I have a second internal drive (in the optical bay), named "Secondary". It is mounted in /Volumes/Secondary. User directory is moved to that drive and also symlinked.

Sometimes when I reboot, and always during a crash, OS X creates an empty directory under /Volumes/Secondary and basically creates a new user profile. Then it moves the actual drive to /Volumes/Secondary 2.

I have to go in and manually delete the new dir, move the other one and reboot again.

How can I lock in that volume name permanently?

The ghost mount is probably due to an application or some aspect of the system attempting to check something after the external drive is unmounted during the shutdown process (or crash). In this case, a directory (and even subfiles) may be created.

You can get rid of this directory by simply removing it as a script. The trick is to get the script to run when the new volume is mounted. There's probably a way to do this with autofs, but I'm not so familiar with its intricacies. I would instead recommend using Lingon to automatically run the script in response to the mount request.


How can I be sure that Mac chat applications like Adium won't leak my Gmail, iCloud, AIM, or other account/password credentials? Mac chat/instant-message programs like Adium, Jabber, and AIM require you to enter your chat service account login and password information in the preferences, to enable them to function. How can I be reasonably sure that entering this information in the app(s) is secure? I am concerned that the apps may be forwarding my account credentials to unknown or malicious locations.

As a rule, unless you've reviewed the full source code of an application yourself, you have to trust the developer(s) of the application that they're not going to misuse your login credentials.

Depending on your level of concern, you might set up a separate, dedicated Gmail account / login, exclusively for use with GTalk and related services.

I'm uncertain how Adium's network protocol operates, but if it uses well-known servers and ports, you could also use LittleSnitch to inspect and approve outgoing network connections from Adium, to be sure that it is communicating only with places it's supposed to communicate with, i.e. official GTalk servers. (LittleSnitch inspection is only feasible with well-known servers, not with peer-to-peer based services.)


iPad update 5.1, different connection, different size of update When I am trying to update my iPad 2 to 5.1 using Wifi it says the update size is 206mb. But  when I am trying to do that same thing by attaching it with my PC(itunes) the update size is ~767mb.

Why is this difference in size?

It sounds like you're talking about the difference between an "Over The Air" (OTA) update, also called a delta update, done by tapping a button in the device's Settings - and a normal update done by clicking "Update" in iTunes on your computer.

OTA updates are smaller because they only include the new assets (code, images, etc.) from the update, instead of replacing all the assets on the device.

This article includes an example of this difference on an iPhone 4:

  Not only are over-the-air updates simple to install, but they’re also deltas. That means that the updates contain only the minimum data needed to upgrade, instead of the complete operating system. For the 5.0.1 update for a GSM iPhone 4, the over-the-air update weighed in at 44.6MB; the full download via iTunes was 790.7MB.


Can't switch to full screen apps or evoke Mission Control after sleep Occasionally when I am working and put my MacBook to sleep, when I wake it up again, I am unable to switch to apps that I have had open in full screen. Similarly, if I open an app after sleep, switch to full screen mode and then command-tab to another application, I cannot return the full screen app.

Mission Control ceases to operate and gestures for switching (multi-finger swipes up to Exposé and to the side for screen switching) also fail.

The only fix I have found is a full restart.

My setup is as follows:

MacBook Pro 15" Retina Early 2013
2.7 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB RAM
OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 (14E17e)
Built-in screen and external monitor
Apple Magic Trackpad (issue also present with built-in trackpad)

The issue presents itself sporadically and has been present for at least the last few Yosemite releases.

Any help would be very well received :-)

I get the same symptoms/failure.  The following Terminal command fixes it for me:

killall Dock

But before you do that, run killall -s Dock to make sure it's only going to directly kill the one "Dock" process. Dock will restart and then mission control is working again - for me anyway. You can verify that the restart happened by looking at the process ID of "Dock" after the restart. Hope this helps!


How many alarms can be set on iOS? How many alarms can be set on an iPhone 5? Can you set one for every minute of the day (1440) or is there a limit on the number of alarms?

Well if we want to be 100% accurate, there is a limit. It is the storage capacity of your iPhone 5s. Somewhere that alarm is taking up space and once it runs out, so do the alarms.

I've just tapped the '+' followed by "Save" and got up to over 300 alarms before I realized how much fun I'll have going back and deleting them all. Or,  since their default value after creation is set to "on", absolutely drive people crazy at work tomorrow.

Also, since it only took 5 minutes, it is a dang good prank to play on a friend - or enemy :)

So, realistically grgarside is right. There is not limit set via programming; however, like I mentioned, the storage capacity is the true cap - eventually at least.


my iPhone 6, 16gb is almost full because of the "other" space, how can I get rid of it? Around 5gb is what my other space is taking up on my iPhone 6. I see this in iTunes when I hook my phone up to the computer. So I can't install more apps and I want to. How can I mend this, how can I delete this other space. I am sure I am not actively using 5gb of space. Most of the photos I uplpoad to facebook, and I doubt my saved games take up so much space. Which program can I use or something like that?

First of all, you should know exactly what is the "Other". Because there are just too many things that require physical storage in iPhone. That's why Apple chose to lump a lot of things into the "Other" category. If there is many "other" storage on your iPhone 6, it's seems like your phone is filled with cached files and data. That can include:

Documents & Data
Safari browsing data
Mail data
iTunes data, including files that have been streamed (which can be BIG).

Deleting data, and then restoring is a good way, but you should back up first. or it will cause data lost. So it will take a little risk. Have you updated the application on your iPhone or upgraded iOS system to the newest version available? Some similar problems have been resolved using this way. If above ways still not work, you can choose some professional tools. You can try iMyfone Umate. It claims that this tool can optimize storage space and reduce the storage space occupied by apps to free up iPhone space. Maybe it's useful.


17" Powerbook G4 must sit for hours to boot OS 10.4.11
1440x900 Resolution
1.67 GHz Power PC Processor
2x512 MB sticks of RAM = 1 GB total RAM

I have tried several troubleshooting methods including different startup key combinations to reset power management, etc.

The laptop used to only boot up if it had sat for a longtime. If you turn it off and try to restart it wouldn't chime and it would just be a black screen.

One of the troubleshooting methods I have tried is booting with just one stick of ram and also swapping the ram into different slots. Ever since I flipped the ram sticks it still has to sit for hours to have a normal boot without just a black screen, but now it chimes every time.

One of the other things I tried was checking the integrity of the hard drive and it did have an issue,but I just safe mode booted it (shift + power button) and the hard drive now passes the disk utility test.

I have also done many tests to see if the battery is at fault and its not.

Please help.

If it chimes, but then takes a long time to boot, you might be able to figure out what it's doing by booting into "verbose mode":

Hit the power button to start it
Immediately hold down Command-V

This will change the boot screen to a text scroll from the kernel putting out messages as it boots. That might show you if it's getting stuck on something.

You might have to do it a few times to be sure. If the disk drive is going south, that might show up as drivers are whatnot having a hard time loading. If it seems to be a different driver each time, or a lot of them, it's probably the drive.


Time Machine External Backup Disk Icon I bought a new external hard drive to use with Time Machine: The Western Digital "My Passport for Mac" 1TB USB 3.0 Hard Disk Drive. This is the second hard drive Time Machine uses, the first one being my previous external disk. Therefore upon mounting my new disk, I did not receive the dialog box asking if I wanted Time Machine to make backups to this external disk (I believe you only get that dialog box if you haven't set up Time Machine before).

The icon for this new drive, both on the desktop and in the finder windows and sidebar, is the generic orange USB device. How do I get it to look like the hard drives seen in Time Machine preferences? I'm talking about the greenish-blue hard drive icon with the counter-clockwise arrow on it.

I thought when you set up a disk with Time Machine, it automatically changes its icon. Am I wrong about that?

[My first backup disk didn't have a traditional icon—it was a Toshiba disk and it came with its own red-and-black design, so I thought that overrode the Time Machine icon.]

System specs:

MacBookPro6,2 (mid-2010 version)
2.4 GHz Intel Core i5 processor
OS X 10.8.2 Mountain Lion

When you buy an new hard disk, normally it's formatted with a FAT32 file system that is not compatible with TimeMachine.

In order to use the HD with TimeMachine, the file system myst be HFS+ Journaled. Use Disk Utility to format the hard disk with HFS+ file system and go to TimeMachine preferences, you should now be able to use it.


Typing too fast, strange hidden characters I have this annoying problem since long. I use to type quite fast, and it happens to me that after inserting a special character using the "alt" key I probably do not wait enough to press the space bar. I don't see the difference then, but then when the command is interpreted in the terminal, or the script I just wrote is executed, lots of errors come up because there are hidden strange characters (gremlins). Is there any way I can avoid this?

Your option + space combination defaults to a non-breaking space and several options to remove that binding exist.

https://superuser.com/questions/78245/how-to-disable-the-option-space-key-combination-for-non-breaking-spaces

Whether you choose to show invisible characters in your  editor to manually proof for these issues or use a lint type tool or change the behavior of the system depends on whether you can avoid typing that combination after knowing it exists.


Is there anything beyond NVRAM and SMC? I am working on completely resetting my macbook air. So far I did a 7x disk erase and reinstalled OS X. In addition I cleared the NVRAM and the SMC. Is there any other possible system settings I can reset besides cleaning the disk, reinstalling OS X, clearing the NVRAM, and clearing the SMC?

That's about as much as needs to be done (and indeed can be done) other than removing and destroying your old drive for security purposes.

Having said that, without specialist forensic equipment the chances of recovering data from a drive that's had a single zero-fill erase is essentially zero, and is pretty much beyond the scope of consumer-level data recovery software. The excruciatingly-long 7 and 35-pass erase routines are overkill for for most people not featuring highly on the NSA's watch list. If platters were removed from the drive and read directly by specialist equipment then limited recovery is possible, but you'd have to be a really interesting person for anyone to go to such lengths.


Can a MacBook Pro reliably wake a Cinema Display when both are sleeping? I use a MacBook Pro with a Cinema Display and every time when I wake the MacBook Pro, the cinema display wakes first and the MacBook Pro display seems to stay in a sleep mode until I press the Detect Displays button in Displays Preferences. The most annoying part is that I need to rearrange all open apps' windows every time I wake my Mac.

Does anybody have any idea how to fix this problem?

You ask for a fix where one of your screens does not wake up. I have a fix for a similar problem as my second screen on my MacMini (server 2011) does not wake up. It's not pritty but it is a fix.

I noticed that the screen wakes up after you change the screens refresh rates, so I use cscreen to do this. After my computer wakes up I run the following script. There are multiple solutions to run scripts just after waking up your machine (like Scenario and Power Manager).

#!/bin/bash
# b.nelissen

# cscreen: http://www.pyehouse.com/cscreen/

# wake up screen when one of these two displays are found
if [ "$(cscreen -l | grep '2b1052d0\|3c0c07c2')" != "" ]; then
    echo "Display found"
    # Dell screen does not wake up, switch back and forth to wake her up
    cscreen -i 2b1052d0 -d 32 -x 1280 -y 1024 -r 60 # small dell screen
    cscreen -i 2b1052d0 -d 32 -x 1280 -y 1024 -r 75 # small dell screen
    cscreen -i 3c0c07c2 -d 32 -x 1920 -y 1200 # big compaq screen
fi

# exit

What it does in short

Check if the screen is connected (I switch screens between home and work)
Refresh rate for displayID '2b1052d0' first to 60 than to 75 (to wake up the screen)
Set the second screen to her normal settings.


Location icon randomly appearing in status bar every hour Since updating to 10.12.4, an icon has started appearing in my status bar 1-3 times every hour:

It looks like something's requesting access to my MacBook's location, but there's nothing in the privacy preferences that would indicate what:

I don't know what would be requesting my location: both Weather and Siri are disabled, and I have all "fancy" features turned off. The "Setting Time Zone" part is especially confusing, because I upgraded Sierra the same night daylight savings ended.

Seeing this pop up while programming is starting to get really distracting. Is there a way to hide it? Preferably by fixing whatever keeps causing it to appear.

Setting Time Zone is a System Service. Press the Details button in your screenshot, then disable it.

As for why this is occurring now: 10.12.4 introduces Night Shift, which adjusts the display colours for night use. If you have the Sunset to Sunrise option selected, your location is used to determine when to adjust the display.


Canon printer always "busy" I have a Canon Pixma MX870 and I downloaded and installed drivers from Canon's site.

I've got it configured on two other macs in my house and it works fine.

When I tried to add the printer using the standard OS X on a new MBP, the preferences app doesn't automatically see the printer. I have added it via IP address and manually chosen the appropriate drivers.

So, the first question is -- why didn't the mac see it properly?

When I try to print, the job shows up in the local print queue, but then shows a message saying that "the printer is busy". I can printer from the other computers on my network without problem.

The second question is -- what can I do about the "the printer is busy" message? (I suspect if I resolve the first problem, this one will be a non-issue).

For what it's worth, I configured the printer on the other computers when they were running 10.6 (Snow Leopard), the new laptop is running 10.7 (Lion).

Since there isn't an answer, I wanted to chime in.

Thanks to the comment, I can confirm deleting and re-adding the printer did the trick.


What app can I use to create a PowerPoint on an iPhone? I'm looking for an iphone app that can CREATE powerpoints with normal functionality. There are many apps that can view powerpoints but not many that can create powerpoints. Office Mobile (Microsoft) can view and edit them, but not create powerpoints. Office2 Plus can create powerpoints but you gotta pay them to be able to save powerpoints. WPS office can create powerpoints. The problem is either you can't change the background color or I can't find it. I really thought that a basic feature of powerpoints. Does Prezi have an app for creating powerpoints? I would have thought there was one because they have cloud based office suites.

http://prezi.com/index/2/

I also saw there was slideshark but I haven't had a chance to test it out. How is keynote? The description of it makes it sound like its for creating powerpoints, but with a lot of extra features. The bad reviews make me not want to spend the money on it.

So what other apps can create powerpoints? Are there better apps for this?

I highly recommend Keynote for this. Whilst Apple haven't perfected importing all the functionality of PowerPoints yet, the exporting works flawlessly and you can create great presentations on Keynote.


Where can I get a copy of Mavericks after Yosimite has been released? I think I would like to install Mavericks over Snow Leopard on my Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro because I imagine it is more stable than Yosimite and I'm doing a lot of development on it, for which I want Port Tree (Fink in my case) packages to be available for items like Python, PostgreSQL, etc.

But Mavericks doesn't seem to be available on the App store anymore. Tried downloading from CNET, but all I seemed to be finding was an update.

I am tempted to just install Yosemite and would love to get some input.

Apple sells redeemable codes for all OS older than current release up to and including Lion from http://store.apple.com

Since the SKU change from time to time, you may need to talk or chat with a sales specialist online to get the correct item into your cart.

I've never had problems just reinstalling the original OS that came with your Mac and then using the App Store to upgrade to a now down-level version of OS X. Also, one you've "purchased" the free or paid upgrades, you can always re-download them from older clients in the purchased section.

Basically, the old OS even going back to 10.6 and earlier are all available for purchase and re-download by either contacting AppleCare or the Apple online / retail stores in your country.


How do I transfer a single app with data from one iPhone to another? I just got a new iPhone, and wanted to start "fresh", that is, only installing the app I actually use - not the full pile of junk that was lying around on my old iPhone.
Therefore, I opted not to set up the new iPhone from the old one's backup, but instead, downloaded what I wanted from the App Store.

Now I see that one of the apps on the old phone is subscription based, so that I need a password to use it. The password is stored, so I don't have to enter it on my old phone.  But I do not know that password, and for various reasons, I'm unable to use the app's forgotten password function.

So I would like to transfer that single app, including its data (password) to my new phone. How can I do that?

The best practice in storing app credentials is the Keychain. If you really need to recover the password check out this guide http://www.iphonehacks.com/2013/08/transfer-passwords-to-new-iphone-itunes-backup.html

  In iTunes, go to the “Summary” section, scroll to Backups, and enable
  the “Encrypt iPhone backup” option.

After recovery, feel free to wipe the new iPhone.

In case the app did not store in Keychain, you can use this technique to migrate app data individually http://lifehacker.com/5891964/can-i-transfer-app-data-and-game-saves-from-my-iphone-to-a-new-ipad

Before we start, we should note this works for any iOS device. So if you want to back up and transfer data for iPads, iPhones, or between the two, this works. To manually backup and transfer data, we're going to use the free Mac and Windows program iExplorer. You don't need to jailbreak your iPhone to use iExplorer and it's easy to pull data from your iPhone to transfer it to your new device. Here's how to do it.

Download the app you want to transfer data to on your new iPad.
Plug your iPhone into your computer.
Start up iExplorer and wait for your device to show up in the file
browser.
Click the arrow next to your device name.
Click the arrow next to Apps.
Find the app you want to transfer data from and click the arrow.
Inside the app's main folder is a folder called Documents. That's
where your saved data and game saves are located. Copy it to your
desktop.
Disconnect your iPhone from your computer and plug in your iPad.
In iExplorer, find the app you want to transfer data to on your iPad
using the same steps from above.
Locate the Documents folder and copy all the data you just copied
 to your desktop folder onto the iPad.

That's it, you're done. Different apps use different save files and occasionally the above process will require you to copy several files over. Other times you only have one file. This process works for most apps, but not all of them. Let's take a look at a few of the instances where data doesn't transfer over properly.

Don't forget to look at the caveats because sometimes this technique does not work.


How to disable spotlight for Alfred I use Alfred instead of spotlight but sometimes I accidentally press cmd + space( Spotlight Shortcut ) instead of double shift( Alfred Shortcut ). I want to disable Spotlight( shortcut + not run it in background as well )  so might not open it. Also, does Alfred use spotlight file indexing if yes then I might not want to disable that but if no I would like to disable that as well.

In the "System Preferences" app select "Spotlight" from the top row. Now, uncheck the box titled "Spotlight search keyboard shortcut:"

I set the Alfred keyboard shortcut to Command-Space, which works a bit like Alfred on stock Yosemite machines.

If you want to keep the ability to search Spotlight with a keyboard shortcut, you could also change the shortcut using the popup menu to the right of the checkbox.


iPhone 7 - problems with pop-up websites I’ve had a problem with websites popping up in place of websites I’m trying to access. Can you block websites with suffixes such as .top and .club? I’ve been able to block individual websites but silmilar sites keep popping up with the common denominator being those two suffixes.

Most ad blocker extensions for iOS allow you to add custom rules, which should allow you to block whole domains as well. I use 1Blocker, there are probably others with similar features.


How to spoof a USB-Ethernet adaptor's MAC address in OS X I've recently bought a usb-ethernet adapter (not apple) and I get internet connection. In my university we have to put a specific mac address but I can not change it.

I have tried with

sudo ifconfig en4 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

and with

sudo ifconfig en4 lladdr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

and with both I got the same result. The command doesn't return any error but when I run ifconfig again the mac address is still the same.

I've also tried with Ubuntu and it worked. Do you know how can I do the same in OS X?

In Ubuntu the name of the adapter is eth0 but in OS X it's en4 instead of en0.

The output of sudo ifconfig en4:

en4: flags=8863 mtu 1500
    ether 00:e0:4c:36:21:92
    inet6 fe80::2e0:4cff:fe36:2192%en4 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x9
    nd6 options=1
    media: autoselect (100baseTX )
    status: active

sudo ifconfig en4 ether 10:0B:AD:C0:FF:EE doesn't have any output.

The output of sudo ifconfig en4 again:

en4: flags=8863 mtu 1500
    ether 00:e0:4c:36:21:92
    inet6 fe80::2e0:4cff:fe36:2192%en4 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x9
    inet 192.168.1.38 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
    nd6 options=1
    media: autoselect (100baseTX )
    status: active

Answering some questions, yes I have tried with     sudo en4 down/up     and I thing it's not a limitation because I can change it in Ubuntu. If I try to change the mac address of my Wi-Fi I can do it.

I'm using OS x Mavericks and my USB-Ethernet adapter is a Chinese one, the model is AX88772A

I fixed this issue by installing my adapter's chipset driver on Mac Os X.
After rebooting, the usual command (e.g. sudo ifconfig en6 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx) works as expected.
Below the details.

I had the same problem with a Tecknet UL688G USB 3.0 to 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet adaptor.

On both Mac Os X 10.10.5 (Yosemite) and 10.11.4 (El Capitan) the command to change the MAC address was ignored, while it worked flawlessly on Ubuntu 15.10.

So no, not an hardware problem, at least in my case.
After a few failed attempts with third party software and useless drivers, I found out that my adapter had the Realtek 8153 chipset, as confirmed by the system report of Mac Os X:

I found the chipset driver on another manufacturer's website, relative to a different product that uses the same RTL8153 chipset, installed it, rebooted, and voilà.. after that it was possible to change the MAC address from command line.

PS. the Realtek's website has the driver as well; it is probably the most updated version, although it gave me some errors during the installation. However, it also works as expected.


SATA II or III for external hard drive enclosure? I want to put the hard drive (500GB) that came with my MacBook Pro (13" mid 2012) in an external (USB 3.0) hard drive enclosure. Are there any benefits to choosing one with the SATA III (6Gb/s) interface for this hard drive, or would SATA II (3Gb/s) work just as well?

SATA II enclosure will work just fine. A benefit of getting the SATA III is that it will be compatible with drives you install at a later date. So if the price difference is negligible then go for III.


Wi-Fi voice calling methods on a jailbroken iPhone? I have a jailbroken iPhone 4S on AT&T in Cambridge, MA. My location has unreliable AT&T coverage, and I can't use Verizon or Sprint (too much coverage = pilot pollution). It's got to the point where I can't even reliably initiate a call, and if I can, it'll get dropped within 10 minutes. AT&T has been no help.

I get 2-3 bars on AT&T, so I can't use an AT&T MicroCell; those work best with no coverage, and they have handoff problems when you already have some reception.

I would prefer to stay with my iPhone if at all possible.  What are my least-painful alternatives for making and receiving voice calls? So far, I've tried:

Google Talk via Talkatone. This is a very brittle app; after a few hours of network configuration, I was able to receive and place some calls, but it often crashes back to SpringBoard and it often sends calls straight to voicemail.
Skype via the native iPhone app. Their app isn't a great replacement for Phone.app; I have to re-enter my password frequently, remember to launch Skype after a reboot, have no way to silence a call while it's ringing (even flipping the "mute" switch doesn't stop it!), have poor integration with the native phonebook, etc.
Skype + AppFront. This adds a "call with Skype" button to Phone.app, but requires extra pop-up dialogs, doesn't handle Skype being offline or needing a password, etc.

I've looked at Viber but AFAICT this only uses WiFi when both parties have Viber.

What are my other options? I'd be happy to go as far as running my own VOIP server if it'd give me reliable phone service via my iPhone.

The tweak Phone GV Extension integrates Google Voice into the normal Phone app. I haven't tried it myself, but it's pretty popular and has a free trial available. Here's a Lifehacker post that recommends it and also suggests an App Store app: GV Mobile +.


com.apple.xyz.plist - replace value - not set key - possbile? I've looked into using PlistBuddy and plutil but most examples such as:

How do I replace a value in an plist array using plutil?

seem to suggest setting the value of a key, which is not the case here.

I want to modify a value I do not know exists or not. See, I don't know what the key is. I want to automate it.

So if you can search for a value, get the value and key then I could possibly use the above to set a new value on the key.

But i have not figured out a way to do that.

Do you know? Preferably in Bash.

######################################## BASH LIB #######################################
bash.string.replace() {
        local text="$1" find="$2" replace="$3";

        echo "${text}" | while IFS= read -r line; do
                printf '%s\n' "${line//"$find"/$replace}";
        done
}
######################################## BASH LIB #######################################

######################################## APPLE LIB ######################################
apple.plist.read() {
        local filepath="${1}"

        defaults read "${filepath}"
}
apple.plist.convert.to.xml() {
        local filepath="${1}" tmp="${2}"

        # If second argument is passed, then we save the conversion to a new file rather than write over the original
        if [[ "${tmp}" == "true" ]]; then
            tmp="/tmp${filepath}"
        fi

        if [[ "${tmp}" != "" ]]; then
            bash.cp "${filepath}" "${tmp}"

            filepath="${tmp}"
        fi

        plutil -convert xml1 "${filepath}"

        # We also output the content which can be supressed if desired by caller
        cat "${filepath}"
}
apple.plist.convert.to.binary() {
        local filepath="${1}"

        plutil -convert binary1 "${filepath}"
}
apple.plist.write() {
        local filepath="$1" text="$2"

        echo "${text}" > "${filepath}"

        apple.plist.convert.to.binary "${filepath}" # Not sure if this step is neccessary, if xml representation is enough. Not verified or tested without.
}
apple.plist.read.search.replace.write() {
        local file="${1}" search="${2}" replacement="${3}"

        local updated=$(bash.string.replace "$(apple.plist.read "${file}")" "${search}" "${replacement}")

        apple.plist.write "${file}" "${updated}"
}
######################################## APPLE LIB ######################################

######################################## EXAMPLE ##################################
my.test.1() {
    apple.plist.read.search.replace.write "/tmp/com.apple.finder.plist" "/Users/" "/Home/"
}
######################################## EXAMPLE ##################################

Basically we call the function plist.read.search.replace.write with file arguments and what to replace which will read it to text, then we perform a replacement on that text, and then write that text back using plist.write which will also convert it from xml (which it will be) to binary using plutil -convert xml1 "/path/to/file".

Rather than read using defaults read "..." we could in theory instad use plutil convert to xml but likely more expensive.


How to disable Virtualbox auto-close When my computer reaches 4% battery, Virtualbox shuts off. How can I disable this or change when it happens?

The manual contains:
Battery Low The battery level reached a critical level (usually less than 5 percent charged).

This event is currently only handled on Windows hosts and Mac OS X hosts. When this event is generated, VirtualBox will save the state and terminate all VMs in preperation of a potential host power down.
The behavior can be configured. By executing the following command, no VM is saved:
 VBoxManage setextradata global "VBoxInternal2/SavestateOnBatteryLow" 0

This is a global setting as well as a per-VM setting. The per-VM value has higher precedence than the global value. The following command will save the state of all VMs but will not save the state of VM “foo”:
 VBoxManage setextradata global "VBoxInternal2/SavestateOnBatteryLow" 1
 VBoxManage setextradata "foo" "VBoxInternal2/SavestateOnBatteryLow" 0

The first line is actually not required as by default the savestate action is performed.


How do I full-screen QuickTime Player on an external monitor in Lion? I am trying to play a QuickTime video in Lion on an external monitor. How do I get it to play full screen on the external monitor, not on the laptop screen?

Install QT 7 from http://support.apple.com/kb/dl923 and open your movie with QT7. Then open Preferences and select Fullscreen tab and click on your second display.

Update:
Movist is a great player. You can get it from here: http://code.google.com/p/movist/


How do I remove ALL PHOTOS from iPhone? I have 26K photos on a 64GB iPhone 7 and running iOS 12.4

How can I delete all photos en-masse?  That is, removing all photos from the iPhone's Camera Roll.

Your question doesn't full specify what you're wanting or what you've already tried, so I'm assuming you want to do this directly from your iPhone (as opposed to doing it while your iPhone is connected to a Mac/PC).

I'm also assuming you're just wanting to free up space and you've already backed up your photos. If so, you can follow these steps:

Open the Photos app on your iPhone
Tap on the Albums icon down the bottom
Tap on the Camera Roll album at top left
Tap on Select at top right (the word Select will change to Cancel)
Tap on the status bar at top of the screen (this will take you to the oldest photos in your Camera Roll
Now tap on the first photo (at top left) without taking your finger off the screen and while keeping your finger down gently swipe across the screen and then swipe down continuously - this will select all photos up to the point at which you take your finger off the screen
Tap on the Trash can icon at bottom right to delete all selected photos

NOTE: If you're doing this to free up space, then you will also need to remove your deleted photos from the Recently Deleted album (as photos are stored there for 30 days before actually being removed from your device). You can select the Recently Deleted album from the very bottom of the Albums screen in order to remove them from there and free up space.


How to download old versions of apps to old iPad I have an iPad 2. I hadn't used it for a while, but I'm trying to use it now. I was required to start from scratch with no apps or anything but many of the apps I had on there before are no longer compatible with such an old iOS. Most of them require 10 or higher which isn't an option for me. I am okay with downloading an older compatible version of the app, but that doesn't seem to be an option. I have seen a few others asking about this a few years back, but the solutions they got are no longer possible. How could I go about doing this?

EDIT:
I tried the response given here, but the option to download from the app store on iTunes store seems to have been removed. I don't see an option to get around it.

If the app developer removed them from the App Store then you can't download them again.

It's up to the app developer to continue to offer older versions of their app, not Apple.

During the shift from 32-bit to 64-bit apps, developers had to change their old apps to comply with the architecture change in iOS.  Most did; some did not.


Understanding Activation Lock My father in law has recenly bought himself an iPad Pro and an iPhone X. He would like to give his grandsons his old iPad 3 which he hasn't used for over a year. Wanting to wipe it, I came up across the Activation Lock.

Try as we might we can't work out the username nor the password to be used. The fact that my father in law tends to create new accounts at Gmail with each new device (!) doesn't help, because we can't even work ouy which email address was used to lock the iPad. It could be any one of the following, or something completely different:

john.doe@gmail.com
jdoe@gmail.com
j.doe@gmail.com
john.doe50@gmail.com

and so-on!

The iPad is only showing that we need to use the email address 'j*****@gmail.com' to unlock it.

We have managed to log into two different AppleID accounts on the web using addresses we have managed to work out, and in both cases had to change the AppleID password in order to log in, but:

neither shows the iPad in question in the list of devices, we have found the new iPhone X and his old iPhone 6
these email addresses with the newly created passwords don't let you log in to Activation Lock on the iPad (the iPad is connected to the internet)

I therefore have four questions:

Will the iPad definitely appear in the AppleID devices section of the correct account?
Is there a way to identify the precise email address used to lock the iPad, either:

through trial and error? (perhaps different error messages indicate that it's the wrong address, while others indicate it's the right address and the wrong password) or...
via a tool that is able to extract this information over USB? (I'm not looking for tools that crack the iPad)

Is it the account's original password or is it the account's current password?
Do incorrect password attempts on the Activation Lock screen cause Activation Lock or AppleID account to be locked, either permanently or temporarily?

Sorry for what are probably stupid questions, I come from the Android side of the fence, so this is all new to me!

The easiest way to unlock your device that you’ve forgotten the Apple ID to is to take the device to an Apple Store along with proof of purchase and ID.

The iPad will definitely appear in the list of devices for the Apple ID that the iPad is asking for. If the device had been removed from the account, the iPad would no longer ask for that Apple ID as part of checking activation lock.

There is no way to identify the full email address the iPad is asking for. This would provide a means for a thief to conduct phishing for the owner's iCloud credentials.

The password asked for is the current iCloud password. You are performing the sign in over the network with Apple, requiring current credentials.

Incorrect password attempts may lock your Apple ID. The device will not become permanently locked through Apple ID login attempts.

  After multiple unsuccessful attempts to unlock your account, your Apple ID will remain locked and you can try again the next day.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204106


Connect Apple Pencil second generation to Surface Laptop? I was wondering, have anyone thought of connecting apple pencil (1st or 2nd) generation to the surface line in windows 10?

If so, how was it done? any ideas?

There's no official support for connecting the Apple Pencil (1st or 2nd gen) with the Microsoft Surface line.

In addition, there's currently no unofficial projects either.

This means that your only option for connecting the two is to develop your own driver. This will require very significant amounts of skill and knowledge as an engineer. You'll need to reverse engineer the software protocols needed, and you'll most probably need to develop extra hardware in order to make the two compatible.

In short: In practice, this is not possible. It requires so significant investments in time and resources that you could just as well buy a compatible pen or a different tablet.


Why is '/opt' hidden, and what can I do to unhide it? On my ML MBP, '/opt' is somehow 'hidden'. In the finder, it shows in gray. In various applications, it's invisible from a file selection dialog box. Get Info and ls -l show now flags that corresponds to this behavior. Is there any way to turn it off?

Out of the box, there is no /opt file delivered by OS X.

This command will show the hidden status of files in root ls -lO / with O being the capital letter, not zero. The chflags command can be used to toggle the hidden flag if needed.

Depending on how you got /opt created, you may or may not have issues with the permissions changing again - most tools leave things alone with respect to filesystem flags as long as the read/write/execute permissions are not removed.


Unlock System Keychain from Time Machine Backup Somehow a block of WiFi passwords ("AirPort network password") disappeared from my System.keychain file.

I'd prefer to not replace the whole keychain with a backup, as the most recent backup is a week old and I'm not sure what might have changed since then. Instead I'd like to copy just the WiFi passwords from the backup to the default System.keychain.

I've restored a recent System.keychain to another folder, and I can add it to Keychain Access, and I can see all 90-odd WiFi passwords that I want. I just can't open any of them or drag them into the System.keychain. When I try, I'm prompted for the "keychain password" which is not my login password.

I think the password to use may be found in /var/db/SystemKey; however, I can't figure out how to use it. Thanks for insight!

I was searching for the same thing.  I haven't figured out how to do this with Keychain Access or the systemkeychain cli (ie to make migrating logins from one keychain to another easy) but if you just need to recover passwords/keys and plain-text is okay for you, this will sort you out:

How to decrypt the system keychain from another mac at the command line


How do I also sync the web calendar feeds that are in my Gmail/Google calendar into iOS 6? I have my Google calendar syncing properly, but it doesn't bring in my web calendar feeds. For example, I have Facebook events coming into my Google calendar via web calendar feed, but those same Facebook events don't come into my iOS 6 device (iPhone 5).

Edit: I found that by going to to m.google.com/sync I could enable these settings, but it is still not working.  See image: http://screencast.com/t/AaHmxCq4DOKi

How do you sync Google calendar on your iPhone? Is it a CalDav account or Exchange?

I've got several calendars on Google which sync without any problems using Google's exchange server. But I'm not sure if it also works with CalDav. See this page on how to set up Google exchange on your iPhone: http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740


Best practices to move macOS Mail.app storage to an external drive? I have a system with fairly small internal storage (500GB) so I have attached a reasonably quick external storage device (256GB) that will be constantly mounted. To free up space on the internal storage, I would like to move some data to the external can be formatted as either "MacOS Extended Journaeld"/HFS+  or APFS. The Mac itself is running macOS 10.14 "Mojave".

The simplest thing to move would be the Photos.app library as that can be done by just option-launching the program and selecting the library on the external, however the library is too large (around 300GB), and constantly growing, so that is not an option. Splitting the library into two is an option but then involves futzing with two libraries, and working with images in two libraries is not very well supported by Photos.app.

Email storage on the other hand is just the right size! However I am unsure exactly which folders are important, and the best way of providing the linkage so that everything works properly and is not frequently broken.

The following folders in the ~/Library folder seem to be Mail.app related:

~/Library/Mail
~/Library/Mail Downloads
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail

~/Library/Mail Downloads seems to be old with nothing inside it dated after 2013 - I gather that sometime in the 10.9 Mavericks era this was moved to inside ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail folder, so it can probably be ignored or even deleted after I look through it to make sure there is nothing of value inside.

So that leaves the two other folders. If I copy them to

/Volumes/external-drive/Mail-Storage/Library/Mail
/Volumes/external-drive/Mail-Storage/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail

and then make symbolic links at the expected places in the ~/Library folder will everything continue to work properly?

Would macOS aliases be preferred over Unix symbolic links? I think that if the name of the external-drive is ever changed, the symbolic links will break but macOS aliases would continue to work. The downside to an alias is that some lower-level Unix stuff does not know how to deal with the macOS alias. With that said, it looks like ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail is filled with all sorts of macOS alias files, so Mail.app does seem to be able to handle all of those.

This discussion Access to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/ denied makes me think that Mojave's "entitlements" might make it challenging to move the entire ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail folder. Perhaps I should move the ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail Downloads folder instead, since it seems to contain the majority of the data in the ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail folder.

So my inclination is to copy the two folders

~/Library/Mail
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail Downloads

over to

/Volumes/external-drive/Mail-Storage/Library/Mail
/Volumes/external-drive/Mail-Storage/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail Downloads

and replace the local folders in ~/Library with macOS aliases to the folders in /Volumes/external-drive/Mail-Storage/Library/.

One extra thing to do is to make sure that the alias at

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail

which normally points to the folder

~/Library/Mail

properly resolves to the folder

/Volumes/external-drive/Mail-Storage/Library/Mail

which it might not do if it is not corrected.

Is that the best way to do this? Have I missed any issues?

I guess I should encrypt the external-drive so the data is safe if someone walks off with the device using either the Finder to encrypt all the data currently on the device, or using Disk Utility.app to reformat the device with encryption - details on both are here among other places.

Thanks in advance for any insights you can offer.

Photos

however the library is too large, and constantly growing, so that is not an option.

I don't understand the reasoning behind this. I assume you have more storage on your external drive than your internal drive. It's the perfect thing to move.  New photos should be added to the external drive. Here is what apple is saying on the subject.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517

Mail

I'd pick ln command so macOS above the Unix layer will not know that you moved the folders.

SymbolicLinker is a tiny contextual menu plugin that, once installed, allows any user to create symbolic links to files inside the Finder.

encryption

Is up to you.  It's harder to recover data that's encrypted.  Your data is less protected.  You have to evaluate what your data is worth out in the wild.  I never take my computer outside my house, so it's as safe as all my other stuff. I have an off site backup too.

backup

Do not forget to backup all you external data.


Bypassing AMD Radeon GPU of 27" iMac (mid 2011) for Target Display Mode purposes I have the 27" mid-2011 iMac that was recalled due to an issue with its AMD 6970M card (1GB for me), but in my case it just malfunctioned after 6 years and it's out of warranty and not eligible for any free repair.

In this forum I got the details of how to connect it to a new 2017 MacBook Pro with Touchbar, using TB cable (older) and TB to USB-C adapter. That's all good.

Questions I have:

Will Target Display Mode attempt to use the GPU of the old Mac or use my MBP's GPU?
If I have to use a video card in the iMac, is there some other integrated graphics card on my iMac I can use and how do I disable the faulty AMD one? The AMD one sometimes (or rather most of the time) prevents the iMac from booting and sends it to an endless restart loop or hangs the machine in ever lasting suspension.
Assuming we get past the two above, anyone know of any easy solution so that I don't have to boot the iMac all the way and then use keyboard shortcuts to enable TDM? I actually would like to connect the keyboard and mouse of the old iMac to the new MBP permanently.

Answers to your questions as asked are:

I've seen your model iMacs used in Target Display Mode regardless of the fact the GPU is playing up, so from that perspective you'll be fine.
N/A see 1 above.
Getting past the first two is the easier part, it's getting the iMac to go into TDM that's going to be your issue as you really need to at least have it booted up to the login screen.

For more general info on TDM refer to: Use your iMac as a display with Target Display Mode.


What Is The Go To Folder Command Within Finder? I have been told that the Go To Folder option in OS X contain many crucial system files.

What exactly is the Go To Folder command within Finder and would it be therefore advantageous to disable it, to prevent access from other people (or indeed one's self).

Additionally if it was disabled, could it easily be re-enabled for technical support etc (with all crucial system files left untouched).

In the Go menu of Finder, there is an option titled Go to Folder… with the keyboard shortcut ⇧ shift+⌘ cmd+G. This will prompt the user to enter a folder path and it allows Unix conventions (like using ~ to refer to one's home directory; for example ~/Documents refers to the Documents folder under your home folder). You can also type part of the file or folder name and hit Tab for autocompletion of the name.

Note that you can go to any folder using this option (including your own folders for documents, music, downloads, movies and so on), not just system files or folders.

Although OS X, starting with OS X Lion 10.7, started hiding important folders like ~/Library (the Library folder under one's home directory), the file/folder permissions system in OS X ensures that unless a user has an administrator account name and password, they cannot damage anything beyond what's within their own home folder (and the contents within it).

Even if you disable this command, a user can still view system folders like /System, /Library, etc. (although the user won't be able to modify or delete anything there without administrator access/credentials). The user can also open up Terminal.app and navigate through directories that Finder does not show and cause damage to ~/Library.

If you still wish to disable it and remove this option in Finder:

Open Terminal.app (from /Applications/Utilities)
Type the command:

defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitGoToFolder -bool true && killall -HUP Finder

To enable it again, use the command (replacing true with false from the previous command):

defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitGoToFolder -bool false && killall -HUP Finder

In conclusion, I'd suggest not to worry too much about it.

Instead, the following may help better:

Keep the administrative account separate from normal user accounts
Ensure that user accounts are only shared with trusted people (or preferably, have one user account for each real user)
Share the administrator credentials only with trusted users

Removing the option is more like Security through obscurity, and is not really a fool proof way to protect the system.


Some videos from YouTube can neither be played on my iPhone nor on the Apple TV Some videos from YouTube can neither be played on my iPhone nor on the Apple TV

Hey Guys, not sure what is going on betwee Apple and Google....nothing wrong with both hardwares and I tried on multiple other iPhones of my friends and it just doesn't work for some videos...not sure if there is a solution.

When videos are recorded/saved, or in this case, uploaded to a video playback provider (youtube, vimeo, etc) the video is compressed into a code format for the computer. That compressed video is then decompressed on playback.

There are many different video compression formats out there, which is where the issue arises. Most mobile phones support less VCFs than a computer/computer browser does, so compatibility is the problem.

Every mobile phone supports H.264 (MPEG-4) which is saved as a .M4A extension, so that's typically what you'd want to save a video edit as. There are other VCFs that will work, but MPEG-4 is the most reliable

Unfortunately, videos that aren't compressed into a format readable by a mobile OS will not be viewable. The only solution is if the video is recompressed into a new format and re-uploaded.


OS X Timer with counting money app I'm looking for timer that also count money. My work is paid hourly, so I want to see how much I get. It's give me energy to work a bit more.

It's like regular timer but with money earned number in the next line.

I've seen it in "On the job" app, but it looks abandoned and I do not need invoicing.

Like this one: http://www.online-stopwatch.com/cash-clock/

The best "free"solution I found is the Cash Clock, allowing you to set the $ amount per hour or minute or second.

I was slightly on the high earnings site just to show the effect, but if you do make $3600 per hour let me know what job is it.

You can download it from here to run it offline, or just let it run in they web site.

  www.online-stopwatch.com is letting you download our cool stopwatch
  and countdown timers for free!

  This will let you use the stopwatch when you are not on the internet.
  You may have to download a new version from time to time though, as
  updates and tweaks are made.

  These files do not need installing! They will just run from anywhere
  on your PC. AND they will all work full screen.

Requirements:

All of our stopwatches/countdowns require Adobe Flash Player to work on your desktop.

http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/15/flashplayer_15_sa.dmg

The code is:

<param name="movie" value="http://www.online-stopwatch.com/swf/cash-clock.swf"><param name="quality" value="high"><param name="menu" value="true"><embed width="400" height="220" src="http://www.online-stopwatch.com/swf/cash-clock.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed>
 Get a Stopwatch like this or make your own! At: Online Stopwatch


How can I boot in "Safe Mode" with rEFIt I would like to boot safe mode but I can't because of my rEFIt.

Holding the Shift button at startup has no effect, I just get the rEFIt menu and OSX starts to boot normally.

any ideas how to do it?

The question on this page appears to be the same issue. Someone responded with a detailed solution, which might work for you as well.


How can I get iTunes on my new MacBook to acknowledge an existing Podcasts directory? I'm setting up my new MacBook Pro and iTunes doesn't acknowledge an existing Podcasts directory that I have on a networked drive.  This directory was created by iTunes running on my Windows laptop.  (I made sure to change the iTunes Media Folder location in Preferences, and Podcasts is an existing subfolder.)

The thing that is extra-confusing for me is that, when iTunes downloaded the latest episode of a podcast (just now), it put it into that same Podcasts folder, so I'm confident that I've set up the media location properly.

How can I say to iTunes, "no, you don't need to download any of those old podcasts, they're right there"?

This can happen with any file type, not just Podcasts, and I've suffered from this a few times when I move my iTunes library about, especially with TV Shows.

The only solution I found was to move the episodes out of the iTunes Media folder, then use the Add to Library in iTunes to add them back in. This forces them to be added to the .itl even if there's already a malformed entry for that file.


iPad 1 won't boot, flashes apple logo I have recently acquired a refurbished iPad 1 WiFi + 3G. Straight out of the box it wouldn't boot up at all. No logo, or anything.

Upon plugging the device into the AC power charger, the Apple logo blinks on and off every 5-10 seconds.

When connected to a PC or Mac via USB, the Apple logo does not appear however, you can see the backlight lighting up & turning off every 2-3 seconds.

I can set it into DFU mode when connected to iTunes, and iTunes detects the device and offers Restore mode (to iOS 5 - iPad1,1_5.1.1_9B206_Restore.ipsw), which I have already downloaded from the official Apple IPSW repo.

After selecting the IPSW and initiating the restore, the following happens:

- Extracting Software -> Progress bar completes quickly
- Verifying iPad restore with apple -> Progress bar completes quickly
- Preparing iPad for restore -> Progress bar completes quickly
- Verifying iPad restore with apple -> Progress bar completes quickly

At some point in this process, I hear the "USB disconnected" sound.
It's at this point that I figure things have failed out.

- Verifying iPad restore with apple -> Progress bar sits at 0% for more than 4 minutes then shows the following error: "The iPad "iPad" could not be restored. An unknown error occured (1602)"

Things I've already tried:

Different USB cables
Disonnected all other USB cables
Tried different USB ports
Attempted restore a bunch of times
Uninstalled AV and Firewall software
Made sure no other phone software was installed

No dice.

I've also played the game where you hit the sleep and home buttons the minute the logo comes up to reboot the device every 5 seconds - for over 15 minutes, but that hasn't extended the boot cycle in the least.

Oh yeah, I've also tried freezing the wretched thing to get maximum performance out of the (presumably) completely discharged battery.

I'm out of ideas. Anyone else?

Cannot comment yet so I will use the answer box (apologies) - the battery isn't flat if the Apple logo is flashing (requires power to do this). If an iPad has a flat battery for a prolonged period, then refuses to boot when the power cable is in, leave it connected to power for 48 hours+ The batteries on early models are slow to recharge if fully flat, and this is a known recovery process.

Your actual condition and circumstances (potentially dodgy seller) sounds like they are hardware related, and it could be that someone has opened the iPad to circumvent the Apple ID or replace the battery and made a mess of it. If you are feeling brave my next steps would be to remove the screen (replace with a new one) and replace the battery then check all wiring, solder and connections. The parts are cheap on eBay and the issue might be obvious once the device is opened up.


How do I run an interactive GUI application in pre-login environment? I am interested in writing an application which runs in a pre-login environment, i.e. right after a user enters their username and password, much like how OS X does the initial account setup:

How does this work? I've used iHook to run scripts, but I'd like to use replicate the same look and feel of Apple's initial account setup.

I've been looking into this for awhile myself.  Mike Bombich been able to do it for years with his Bootpicker app.  And this developer is able to tap into running a GUI app as soon as the user clicks on a login icon: https://github.com/grahamgilbert/crypt (can't tell from his screenshot, but look up his OS X Management with Puppet presentation).


Do people who have my number see if I install WhatsApp If I install WhatsApp on my iphone, will other other people, who have my number in their address book, see that I installed it?
And if yes, is there a way to prevent that from happening?

Afaik everyone with your mobile number and WhatsApp installed can see if you are using WhatsApp, too. I don't know about a way to prevent that from happening, it's the only way to 'find' each other on WhatsApp and to start a chat.


How to empty all emails data when account deleted? My situation is quite simple and I searched the Internet without any solution to my problem. So I decided to give a try here!

I have removed all email accounts (Gmail and Outlook) from my iPhone 5S accounts.

I supposed that it will automatically delete all local emails data. But still, when I check the Mail usage (in Settings > General > Storage usage), it indicates 1GB used, so obviously data are still there and I found no way to erase it.

So my question is simple, considering my situation, how can I free this email storage?

Assuming you have deleted the Gmail and Outlook accounts, if you preform a restore using iTunes and backups, all the email data will be free and so return available.

EDIT: If you want you can also try with some specific application (e.g., PhoneClean) that help to clean the phone. Anyway, before download third part app I think the restore procedure (that is free) can work as well.


Problem while trying to export iTunes library to an xml file (on OS X 10.8, iTunes 11.1.3) Short version: When I try to export iTunes library to an xml file, iTunes creates a temporary file (called iTunes export.tmp) and it quickly disappears and I don't get any xml file...

Long version: I have partitioned my HD and made a clean Mavericks install on the second partition. In order to migrate my iTunes library, I've moved the media files to an external HD ('cause the second partition is too small to contain them) and iTunes keeps working fine on Mountain Lion. Now I'm trying to export my library from Mountain Lion and import on Mavericks. When I finish the tests with Mavericks, I'll probably keep it and drop Mountain Lion (if all the apps I use work fine on Mavericks, I'm testing now). It would be really great if I could keep all the metadata on my iTunes library after the migration...

Is there any other way to migrate my iTunes library? or maybe something I could do to fix this issue with the xml export?

I've managed to solve the main reason I was asking this question... (Although I couldn't make Export Library work from iTunes on my Mountain Lion partition)

I booted into Mavericks and then I copied the iTunes folder from Mountain Lion partition to the Mavericks one and it worked as expected... :-)

My library is migrated, including play counts, playlists, album arts, ratings... Well, it's all there.

Note: The iTunes is up to date on both partitions (version 11.1.3).

Note 2: In order to migrate my iOS devices' backups, I also copied from Mountain Lion to Mavericks the folder ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync.

I'm still curious why export library was not working, but my problem is gone.


How can I copy songs from an iPod to a Mac without using iTunes? my friend has an iPod Touch and she cannot use it with iTunes anymore.

is it possible to save those songs somehow on another computer and then reset iPod and copy songs back? or in general have a backup on a computer?

Senuti is the tool of choice in these situations:

Need to recover music, playlists, or videos from your iPod or iPhone? Look no further! With Senuti, you can recreate your iTunes music library in just one click.
Want to be more specific? Preview and select only the songs and playlists you want to transfer. Senuti has helped millions around the world recover their music, videos, and playlists since 2004.


Mouse Hover Not Working This may be a simple question, but for a long time now Safari has not registered when my mouse is hovering over something (e.g. hover over a youtube video to show the progress bar, hover over a link to highlight it, hover over the FaceBook like button to show different reactions, etc.).

Does anyone have any insight into a solution? I've restarted multiple times since this started occuring.

I restored my Logitech settings from a backup and the problem went away.

Something must have gotten corrupted.

I have an M720 Triathlon Multi-device Mouse and a K780 Multi-device keyboard.


Programatically modify tag visibility, order I need to programatically alter both the visibility and default sort order for tags, explicitly in Catalina: I have different categories of tags that, depending on what project I'm working on, I'd like to show and hide in the Finder sidebar en bloc (i.e. 'food: xxx' or 'font: xxx').

I'm familiar with the command-line tag utility and Leap's apps; neither seem to offer the option to modify visibility or sort order.

the dictionary in com.apple.finder.plist appears to list them in display order, and the <> attribute seems to indicate visibility, but the file warns:

//
// The pretty-printed property list below has been created
// from a binary version on disk and should not be saved as
// the ASCII format is a subset of the binary representation!
//

The target data is represented in binary form in values[:FinderTagDict][:remotevalue] - but it's unclear if that is the ultimate repository for the properties, or if that's just part of the pretty-printed attributes.

Will updating values[:FinderTagDict][:remotevalue] in com.apple.finder.plist be sufficient to update finder preferences?   Or is there another layer of abstraction that needs to be addressed?

Alternately, is there some other class tucked away that manages kMDItemUserTags attributes?

For the time being, modifying visibility and order is the primary use case.  The non-resizable, no-filter preferences pane just is not cutting it.

(fifth time I've tried to find an answer to this, if there are any resources out there I'm just not finding them.)

Here's a partial solution that might serve until I can see something more effective. Instead of trying to track down the correct place to modify the Finder settings under the hood — which is surprisingly difficult — this GUI-scripts the Finder to turn on only those tags you want to use at a given moment. The script presents you with a token field, where you enter the names of the tags you want activated (commas and returns are the separation characters), then it opens the Finder preferences window, loops through all the items in the table view, and clicks them on or off as needed so you'll only see the ones you want. It's slow and occasionally throws an error (typical of GUI scripting) but it gets the job done.

Script updated 11/29/20 with trap some GUI synchronization issues..

global click_error_depth, seek_error_depth

set {click_error_depth, seek_error_depth} to {0, 0}

set tag_string to text returned of (display dialog "Enter a list of tags" default answer "")
set tid to my text item delimiters
set my text item delimiters to {",  ", ", ", ","}
set tag_list to text items of tag_string
set my text item delimiters to tid

tell application "Finder"
    open window of Finder preferences
    tell Finder preferences
        tell its window
            set (current panel) to Label Preferences panel
        end tell
    end tell
end tell
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Finder"
        tell window "Finder Preferences"
            tell first scroll area's first table
                with timeout of 3600 seconds
                    set curretly_tagged to first checkbox of first UI element of (every row whose first UI element's first checkbox's value is 1)
                end timeout
                repeat with this_checkbox in curretly_tagged
                    my clickErrorTrap(this_checkbox)
                end repeat
                repeat with a_tag in tag_list
                    set target_checkbox to my seekErrorTrap(a_tag)
                    if class of target_checkbox is checkbox then
                        my clickErrorTrap(target_checkbox)
                    end if
                end repeat
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end tell
tell application "Finder"
    tell Finder preferences
        tell its window
            close
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

on clickErrorTrap(a_checkbox)
    try
        tell application "System Events"
            tell a_checkbox
                click
            end tell
        end tell
        return true
    on error
        if click_error_depth < 10 then
            set click_error_depth to click_error_depth + 1
            delay 0.1
            set flag to clickErrorTrap(a_checkbox)
        else
            return false
        end if
        set click_error_depth to click_error_depth - 1
        return flag
    end try
end clickErrorTrap

on seekErrorTrap(a_tag)
    try
        tell application "System Events"
            tell process "Finder"
                tell window "Finder Preferences"
                    tell first scroll area's first table
                        set target_checkbox to first checkbox of first UI element of (first row whose first UI element's name is a_tag)
                        return target_checkbox
                    end tell
                end tell
            end tell
        end tell
    on error
        if seek_error_depth < 5 then
            set seek_error_depth to seek_error_depth + 1
            delay 0.1
            set target_checkbox to seekErrorTrap(a_tag)
            set seek_error_depth to seek_error_depth - 1
            return target_checkbox
        else
            return false
        end if
    end try
end seekErrorTrap


Root access is gone on Lion Server 10.7.1 after update from 10.7 Under 10.7.0 Server I was able to activate the root user and I was able to login to my Mac Mini Server i7 as root.
Now after I did the update to 10.7.1 Server, this capability has disappeared . I'm able to du a "su root" with the coresponding password, but I'm nomore able to login through the login window.

Just as an additional information.
If I try to change the root password with the Directory Utility I get an error message in the system logfile, but not in the Directory Utility.
The error is like the following line:
changing root password failed: Error Domain=com.apple.OpenDirectory Code=5100 "This authentication method is not supported" --> This is a translation from the german output!!!

What's going wrong?

You shouldn't have to re-enable root after an upgrade, but perhaps there is a bug.

Have you tried performing the "little dance" Apple asks us to do for enabling root now that the update is over?

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1528


MacBook Pro: "Zero bytes left on iCloud" even after upgrading storage plan I am facing an issue with my iCloud Drive. My MacBook Pro does not want to sync up the files anymore which are on my machine.

My iCloud storage was full so I upgraded my storage plan.
I can see the storage available when checking iCloud in system preferences.

See screenshot below

When I open the finder and navigate to iCloud Drive. The following message appears in the bottom of the finder window.
1 of 20 selected, Zero bytes available on iCloud.

These are the things I tried.

  killall bird
  cd ~/Library/Application\ Support
  mv CloudDocs/ OldCloudDocs

I killed bird via the activity monitor.
I updated macOS currently on version: 10.15.2 (19C57).
I went to system preferences->iCloud-> iCloud Drive->options and toggled the Desktop & Document folders option.

All with no result..

After restarting for a couple of more times, the issue resolved for me.


Iphone 6 email reverts to 1970 I have an iPhone 6 on iOS 8.4.

My problem is that the emails keep getting set back to 1970 and are blank. This happens every single day and I have to wait hours for it too fully sync again.

I have tried reloading the phone, removing and re-adding the email, soft reset, hard reset.

This issue has been happening to me for the last few months and I've run out of ideas.

the resolution was to turn off the background app refresh in settings then general


How can I change the encoding of a subtitle file? I have a subtitle .srt file. Is there an app which can change the encoding of this file.
(I guess it's encoding is Arabic(windows-1256) but vlc and MXPlayer didn't open it.)
The link of subtitle is here.

I often use this online converter to get my .srt in UTF-8, give it a try !


Set iOS device into Kiosk mode and get the screen not to "sleep" I've got an iPad Mini 4 running iOS 12 in a in-wall dock that I want to leave locked to one app and always on. The wall dock provides power to the iPad.

To have the iPad locked to one app I put it into Kiosk Mode.

I have set the settings for auto-lock as per the screenshot below, but I can't seem to get it to stay constantly on i.e. not to go into sleep mode.

I've had this working fine on other iPads using the same spec wall docks in the past, but I can't get it to work the latest time I've tried to deploy this. I think its got something to do with iOS 12 as my previous installs have been running iOS 10 and 11, and because they are locked into Kiosk app mode the OS never gets updated. I have also tested on my personal iPad mini 4 (iOS12) by plugging it into the power, setting sleep settings as per the screenshot above, and putting the iPad in kiosk mode locked to one app, but after about 30 mins it locks / dims the screen, it does seem to "wake" again if I get an alert on that device, but it only lasts for another 30 or so minutes.

Any ideas how I can get this to work so that the iPad will be locked to one app and the screen will stay on constantly?

Ideally I don't want to do this, but if necessary I would be willing to lock the device down in some sort of enterprise management mode where I can have more control over the device instead of using the Kiosk mode "hack" approach above if it resolved the issue.

(People may say that iPads are not designed to be always on/always charged, but I've had a few installs like this running for 2+ years with no issues).

You can set the iPad display to never turn-off automatically. Go to Settings app → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock and select Never.


I deleted by mistake my whole hard disk and now I can't reinstall macOS using Recovery Mode In order to fix my problem I started my MacBookPro in Internet Recovery Mode, then I tried to create again the partitions/volumes using Disk Utility and I tried through the Terminal too, but so far I didn't have luck.
I'm getting this error when I try to install macOS:

I leave here the result of diskutil list. (If you need more information, please let me know to update this post.)

Thank you so much for your time <3
PS: Sorry for my English. It isn't my mother language.

Only the first disk shown in your pictures, (internal), is "real". (synthesized) is how your Mac will see the real drive once it's complete, but you can ignore this one for now. All the others (disk image) are made by Internet Recovery as temporary structures, part of your recovery install & will vanish once you are booted normally.
What looks to have happened is you have formatted your internal drive, but not added a volume, only the APFS container.
The 'quick fix' would seem to be to format it again from Disk Utility. Set the View menu to 'Show all devices' first, then select your actual physical drive, not anything within it [you will see devices & their contents as a set of hierarchical folders in this View, so choose the top level] & use the 'Erase' function.
Choose GUID/APFS.
It should then make a new EFI and a new Container Disk, containing one Volume, named as you set in the previous dialog. That should now be ready to accept your install.


Is there a reason to prefer HFS+ over APFS for disk images in High Sierra and/or Mojave? I'm creating small encrypted disk images (under 10 GB) to be used to secure and transfer data between systems running High Sierra (for now) and Mojave.  Are there any technical reasons to prefer HFS+ (Mac OS Extended, Journaled) over APFS for these images.  The images will be created as .sparsebundle files if it matters.

Edited to add:  .sparsebundle files will be stored on an APFS file system in all cases.

Whether you choose APFS or HFS+ for the sparse disk image will matter very little. They are synthetic filesystems and pass through iOPS and data to the underlying filesystem. That will have some technical details to consider and illuminate the differences how each relies on the storage to store filesystem data and work with or against the hardware that records the bits physically.

HFS+ has more third party data recovery options and is further backward compatible so those are two main technical reasons to potentially prefer HFS+ over APFS. If you’re storing the data on a spinning disk, that might be a technical advantage or might not. You’ll have to test that on your kit as benchmarks vary widely there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System

You give up the metadata protection checksums, crash protection of copy on write and encryption advances of APFS as well as the redesign of the filesystem to take advantage of flash/ssd.  You also lose snapshots, clone copy and don’t receive the more flexible space allocation features of APFS.

Speed chould be a wash on flash / ssd for your use case, but I would still  benchmark your sparse images on both file systems. HFS+ might be far better tuned for a HDD still ( or possible for evermore) as APFS sacrifices HDD performance for flash and ssd performance today as implemented.


Running Say Command When Mac Is Logged Out What would happen if I (remotely) ran a say command on a Mac that's logged out? Would the command run? Or wait until the user logs in to run?

You would either have to wake the computer first, or you'd be locked out if the settings in system preferences disallowed you from such a thing.


Can I manually update my display driver? I've recently acquired a MacBook Pro. It's a 13 inch model which comes with an Intel HD Graphics 3000 display card.

I've had a few issues lately (such as flickering graphics in certain games and on youtube when hardware acceleration is used), and what I would do on a Windows machine is simply download and install the latest drivers to see if that helps.

Is this even an option when using a Mac? Or is this something I can't (and don't need to) worry about?

There are no driver updates for components found within a MacBook Pro (or any Mac for that matter) found anywhere but through Apple's own update system. And as you say, it's not something you need to worry about.

They retain tight control over their components and mainly make driver changes through OS updates rather than parse everything into individual packages. However, they may release small updates that attend to these kinds of glitches periodically or when a serious issue arises.

So long as Software Update reports no new updates, you will be running the latest drivers available for your Mac. You won't find alternate drivers elsewhere.

Additionally, what you describe is not normal and I would suggest you see a Genius at an Apple Store (not a licensed vendor). They will investigate and you may just walk out with a new machine. Apple has legendary service; make use of it.


/bin/ls is ALWAYS showing hidden files. it should not No matter how i try to make sure /bin/ls has not been aliased, executing any ls command always shows the hidden files. How can I change this?
As the # prompt shows this is being run as root.
# type ls
ls is /bin/ls
# ls ~
.CFUserTextEncoding
.mysql_history
Downloads
.bash_history
...

fd0 is correct.  I was running as root.  Though I have to say that I'm completely baffled as to why this should be the case.  Well, whatever, nobody cares about my bafflement.  Sorry for the wasted bandwidth.
i can't figure out how to give fd0 credit.


Airdrop Name is Incorrect I have both an iPhone 6 Plus and a Macbook Pro, and both have Airdrop. On my iPhone, the name of my mac is correct, but on my mac, the name is of one of my contacts. The contact only has a name and a number, and has no other settings or connections added. On my phone, I have marked my own contact as "me," but on my mac, it still shows the other contact. Only when I delete that contact does the Airdrop name change to the correct one. How do I permanently change my Airdrop name or fix this error?

Step one on the Mac might be to sign out of iCloud. AirDrop uses that.

Before doing anything, make a full backup of the Mac. Then check for other user accounts on the Mac in system preferences. Once you're sure your account is the one doing the naming for airdrop, you can see if your iCloud contact details are correct and sign out (deleting any iCloud data on the Mac when prompted since that data is in the cloud) and then sign back in to iCloud.

Worst case, once you've singed back in, check the Contacts app and check that "your card" is really your information. Search for "My Card" in contacts app help if you aren't sure how to find that menu option.


External disk is hijacked by fsck when plugged in to Macbook External disk (2 TB Seagate) is captured by fsck when plugged into a USB 3.0 port on my Macbook Pro (macOS Mojave 10.14.5). This has been discussed by @ArielAllon, and indeed, when I kill the fsck process, the disk is immediately mounted and I can see and read it. When I eject the disk and plug it in again, I always have to kill fsck. I have left fsck running for 12 hours and it never completes. When I kill it, a pop-up warns that the disk could not be repaired.

My problem now, as Ariel mentioned, is that the disk is read-only, owned by root (or wheel?). I would like to use the remaining 150 GB on the disk, (remove old backups, etc) and prevent fsck from capturing it when attached. Thanks for any help...

The two items that come to mind are getting software that can try and repair the disk structure and prevent the mounting like Disk Warrior or connecting the drive using a USB write blocker / forensic adapter so that the disk just presents as read-only so you can get any data off it.

Then, you would wipe the drive if you can’t get it sorted. The native tool will choke on fsck even if you disable the automatic check when it comes time to mount the drive normally.


'Matrix Mode' for surround sound output? I recently invested in a digital surround sound system, and have been enjoying digital surround sound through the TOSlink port of my Macbook Pro (Mid 2010 and Late 2011 models). However, I've noticed that when I'm playing two-channel sound (for instance, spotify), three of my five speakers are silent.

I used to have Logitech X-540's which have a 'matrix mode' which splits sound out over all the speakers. Is there any way to duplicate or partially duplicate this functionality with my Mac?

Unfortunately, Mac OS X has fairly limited multi-channel audio support.  It can stream already-encoded Dolby Digital or DTS audio from a DVD (and programs like VLC can do this from other file formats) but it doesn't provide a means of expanding stereo sound to more channels.  Futhermore, Toslink only has enough bandwidth for uncompressed stereo or Dolby/DTS-encoded multi-channel, so you'd need to encode the audio to one of these formats on-the-fly -- this is another feature Mac OS X lacks.

It's generally up to your audio receiver to provide a means of expanding stereo sound to utilize multiple speakers.  Does your digital surround system have an option for Dolby Pro Logic or DTS Neo?  These are other popular algorithms for expanding two-channel sound to multiple speakers.


Are there any other way to restart to recovery HD I tried to restart while keep pressing Command-R

However, my keyboard is not mac keyboard. There is windows-R. It works exactly like Command-R in all circumstances.

Well, I keep failing to get into recovery HD. I need that because I want to repair the main disk.

  Error: This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD. Restart
  your computer, holding down the Command key and the R key until you
  see the Apple logo. When the OS X Utilities window appears, choose
  Disk Utility.

What should I do?

I have a flash disk. Can I turn that into recovery HD?

Try this alternative way (explained at macworld.com):

Start you Mac while pressing the Option key (in your Windows keyboard press the Alt key) until the Startup Manager appears:

One of the volumes will be called Recovery HD.
Select Recovery HD and then click the upward-pointing arrow below it to boot from Recovery HD.
After a brief delay, you’ll see the Mac OS X Utilities screen. Select Disk Utility to repair your disk:


Will Time Machine recognize my account if I change the user name? macos allows you to change your user account name (the name of the home folder) (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201548). My question is, will this affect the Time Machine backups of this account? I don't want Time Machine to think it's a new user and start backing up from scratch.

For example, suppose the current account name is "Fred" and TM backups exist for Fred. If I then rename Fred to "Barney", will TM recognize that Barney used to be Fred, and continue making incremental backups? Or will TM think Barney is an entirely new user, and create a full back up?

No, it wont see the files as the same files.

Time Machine has no deduplication or moved file capabilities, so if you were to make a new user folder (which is what the short name is), your new user folder would double up the space on the backup destination.

Now, all is not lost, since you can use a tool like Daisy Disk or just Finder to calculate all sizes. Once you know your backup drive has room for the extra new files, just make the change you want. Over time, the older backups thin and you can also go in after a month or three or however long you want to delete all backups of the old user folder.

If you know you don’t need your backup files, you could even delete them before you change things, but you are on a trapeze without a net until the first backup completes. And you lose backup history of changed and deleted files.

Better to just double up and wait. At some point, those old backups are not needed. Or - just consider when the drive fills - duplicate files or not - just put that old drive on a shelf or in storage and buy a new drive. Start with the new backups. The time you will lose trying to micromanage backups isn't worth the cost of a TB drive for many people so even though you are well armed knowing that changing path to a file makes a new backup, it's not a large problem in practice for all but the most cost conscious people.

Buy advice is go be Barney and let Fred sit until you're sure you don't need that past data and then erase that when you need to and not when you make the initial change.


How to share Mac audio over Skype with the microphone? System:  2011 iMac, built-in microphone, Mountain Lion.

This is a two part question.  First the more basic scenario, second the more-niche scenario that I hope to ultimately solve.

I want to share my Mac audio over Skype, while still being able to simultaneously talk to the person on the other end of the call.  As of yet, every combination of options I have tried (dozens) involving Soundflower, aggregated devices, and even LineIn.app has completely failed.

So firstly, what are the precise steps needed to get my Mac audio (say, youtube videos playing in a browser...) to transmit over Skype along WITH my voice from the built-in Mic?

Now for the ultimate solution I hope to achieve.  I want to be able to collaborate musically with other parties, using a program called Reason from Propellerhead Software.  Reason has its own audio interface setting - a single setting for both input and output.  I use the Propellerhead's own audio interface called "Balance" as my audio device for the software, providing my physical I/O as well as a headphone mix.

I want to be able to merge the audio output of Reason, along with my voice via the built-in mic of the Mac, and send them together over Skype so that the other person can hear what I'm doing in reasonable fidelity (subject to Skype's limitations, of course).

Can anyone provide the exact steps to share Reason's audio along with my mic, over Skype?

If 3rd party software beyond SoundFlower/LineIn is required, I'm OK with that... though this should work with just SoundFlower even.  I even had it working a couple months ago but can't seem to replicate the result again.

Turns out I had some strange Core Audio driver issue.  Every time Skype was running, process "coreaudiod" would fire up and begin to hog CPU like crazy.  I fixed permissions on my boot volume and it fixed a bunch of stuff related to iTunes, which apparently also fixed whatever was going on.

Once the coreaudiod issue was resolved, here's the setup that is working perfectly:

Skype "microphone" (input) set to Soundflower (2ch)
Aggregate Device created, consisting of Built-In Microphone and Soundflower (2 ch.)
Reason set to use the Aggregate Device
SoundflowerBed set to output to Balance.

Now all I have to do is create an audio track and enable monitoring, and I can hear myself in the mic, while normal Reason audio flows out both to Skype and my Balance to my headphones, and all is well with the world.