Phantom podcasts after restore that won't stay deleted I recently lost my iPhone 5 and had to restore to an old iPhone 4S until the iPhone 6 is released.  My iCloud backup was current so I lost very little.  My podcast subscriptions were maintained through the backup/restore and were available again in the Podcasts app after they downloaded the episodes I previously had downloaded and queued.  All of this worked as expected.

A day or 2 after the restore was complete, I noticed 3 stuck downloads.  They wouldn't complete and if I cancelled them they kept coming back and failing to download.  I didn't recognize the naming scheme of the episodes so I started looking further and found 3 new podcasts were listed in the application.  These podcasts were completely new to me and nothing I would have ever subscribed to or tried to download.  They are all on topics I have never podcasted on so I have full confidence they aren't renamed versions of other podcasts I've listened to before.  My suspicion is they are the result of either data corruption in the podcasts feed configuration from my backup/restore, or from data corruption in how Apple handles the sync.  Specifically they are:

TWIMA: This Week In Martial Arts
Edward Daniel Podcast
Cape First Podcast

I've tried everything that I can think of and everything I can find online short of removing the Podcasts application.  From recollection, this is what I've tried:

Edit the podcast list, and delete the offending podcasts - when I do this they do disappear but come back after the application is closed and reopened
Edit each podcast to remove the offending episode that keeps trying to download - when I do this the episode disappears but comes back after the application is closed and reopened
Subscribe to the podcast, wait, then unsubscribe to the podcast - no effect
Mark the episode as played and allow it to be auto-deleted - no effect
Turn on podcast sync in Settings - no effect
Turn off podcast sync in Settings - no effect
View my podcasts in iTunes - these podcasts aren't listed
Turn on podcast syncing in iTunes, find the podcasts, I can only find TWIMA and Edward Daniel, subscribe to them, then unsubscribe and delete them - no effect
Turn off podcast syncing in iTunes - no effect
Download other episodes of the podcast and delete those episodes and then the offending podcast - the podcasts disappear but come back after the app is closed and reopened, and the successfully downloaded episode is not shown, only the download that fails
(I'm sure I've forgotten other options)

I don't want to delete all my podcast subscriptions and delete the application if I can avoid that.  I have a lot of played history on some very long running podcasts that would take a lot of effort to store in text and rebuild afterwards.  If I uninstall the Podcasts app, will it remember my played history?  I would be willing to try that if it should keep my play history (after I've dumped my history to text JIC).  I'm also curious if another backup/restore would have some chance of success.

FWIW: I don't have any other podcasts applications tied to my iCloud/iTunes account that would be causing this injection.

Any help or advice on how to permanently deleted these episodes and podcasts would be greatly appreciated.

I am having a similar problem: I had 18 podcast eposodes that were stuck attempting to download. I was able to get rid of 17 of them by manually downloading each one by searching the name in the podcast app. After manually downloading them, a restart of the phone would remove the stuck downloads. That might fix your issue, if you haven't solved it.
My further problem is that the 18th stuck episode is no longer available.

I am going to attempt a restore but I expect to have the same issue afterward.


Auto-updating Homebrew i'm currently using the Homebrew package manager and my question is: is possibile to write a bash's script in order to execute brew update and eventually brew upgrade whenever opening a shell for the first time? I'm using iTerm at the moment.

This is very easy to do.
For efficiency (and cool factor), I would use a tool like Lingon to launch this script periodically using launchctl/launchd instead of each time you start a shell. On my MacBook, it takes 3 seconds to update the second time (no work done, DNS cache set, etc...) and it take 10 second to run the first time (no work done) or 15+ seconds if a package needs to be downloaded or compiled.
Perhaps once a day or once an hour - running in the background would be sufficient given those times to execute?
You could make a simple script /usr/local/bin/brewup that calls brew in turn and logs the results to the system log. If you don’t like chasing logs in the centralized log store, “teeing” them to a text file works well, too.
#!/bin/bash

brew=/usr/local/bin/brew
logger=/usr/bin/logger

$brew update 2>&1  | $logger -t brewup.update
$brew upgrade 2>&1 | $logger -t brewup.upgrade
$brew cleanup 2>&1 | $logger -t brewup.cleanup

I just call the brewup when I'm about to go make tea or when I get started and let it run in the background.
brewup &


Preview Crashes Repeatedly on Yosemite 10.10.1 I installed Yosemite 10.10.1 about a week ago. Preview crashes all the time whenever I try to perform a search on certain documents. Unfortunately, I can't upload this document because of copyright infringement issues. I never experienced this before (in the many times I searched) with Mavericks but it has happened quite often with Yosemite.

Is anyone else experiencing the same problem?
What is a possible solution?

Kind regards,

polarise

I would happily securely send the actual document to an Apple employee to reproduce the fault.

I'm glad that you hesitated to reinstall the OS because of problems with one app. I saw this on 10.10.1 and actually it has gotten worse on 10.10.2. It's not search per se, but just opening certain kinds of PDFs that have been cropped using a Java-based tool called "Briss" (which converts 2-up scans to 1-up).

I think that this is a Yosemite bug that hasn't been fixed yet. PDFPen from Smile Software does not crash when viewing these PDFs.


AppleScript error with if statement I have a long script that I use for a while but just realise that I have an error.

The first parameter of the if statement don't seems to be taken in consideration

set GUID to "demo"
set FoundGUID to "Not good"
set trustitemOnMyList to "TRUST"
set trustitemOnMyList to "2step"

if GUID is equal to FoundGUID and trustitemOnMyList is equal to "TRUST" or trustitemOnMyList is equal to "2step" then
    display notification "True"
end if

In this case GUID and FoundGUID is not equal but the script seems to ignore this.

PS: to make it more clear, to be valid, I need the GUID to be the same than FoundGUID, and I need trustitemOnMyList to be either equal to "TRUST" or to "2step"

Unless indicated otherwise, the comparisons are performed in order from left to right, so you just need to group them, e.g. x and (y or z) instead of x and y or z, otherwise that last or can decide:

if GUID is equal to FoundGUID and (trustitemOnMyList is equal to "TRUST" or trustitemOnMyList is equal to "2step")
    -- or --
if GUID = FoundGUID and trustitemOnMyList is in {"TRUST", "2step"}


Terminal: Remove specific extension recursively I have a folder, containing many other folders.

Some of the folders contained therein (at arbitrary depths) have a specific extension, let's say, .ext:

TopFolder
+ Folder1
| + Folder11.ext
|   +Folder111
+ Folder2.ext

I want to use Terminal to remove that extension from all folders in any subfolder so that it looks like this:

TopFolder
+ Folder1
| + Folder11
|   +Folder111
+ Folder2

I've played around with find and xargs, but I couldn't get it to work.

Try this:

$ find TopFolder -print
Topfolder
Topfolder/Folder1
Topfolder/Folder1/Folder11.ext
Topfolder/Folder1/Folder11.ext/Folder111
Topfolder/Folder2.ext
$ find TopFolder -name '*.ext' -print | while read i; do mv -v "$i" "${i%.ext}";done
$ find TopFolder
TopFolder
TopFolder/Folder1
TopFolder/Folder1/Folder11
TopFolder/Folder1/Folder11/Folder111
TopFolder/Folder2

The first and last find are just to show the before and after hierarchy. Here's how the middle find, the one that does the actual work, works:

$ find TopFolder -name '*.ext' -print

This finds everything in TopFolder matching the pattern '*.ext', that is all files and directories ending in .ext, and prints the path to each. If you want to limit it to just directories, add -type d.

while read i; do

read i reads from standard input into the shell variable i. while loops until read i returns false, which it does on end-of-file. Being find's output is being piped to the while, read's standard input is the output of the find, so read will read a line at a time from the find output until there's none left.

mv -v "$i" "${i%.ext}"

This does the actual rename. The -v is in there just so you can see what's happening, you can leave it out if you want. "$i" is the source, quoted in case any element of the path in $i contains spaces. "${i%.ext}" is the destination, which is $i, with any trailing .ext removed.

done

This just terminates the while loop.

Note that this is in bash, it should be doable in other fairly modern shells, but the syntax may be a bit different.


Avoid 'via gmail' for messages sent from my iPhone I've set up my own domain (say owndomain.com) to forward all his e-mail to my personal Gmail account. It works great and once setup, I can send e-mails from the iPhone using that account with the coma trick, but it will also show "via gmail" after the address.

Any idea on how to avoid that?

Assume your email address is "you@gmail.com" and your other email address is "you@owndomain.com."

When you setup an email account on your iPhone, you tell it which account you want to to use to log in and send/receive email.

You can change the "From:" line to be anything you want (using the "comma trick" on iOS or other settings in other mail clients), but Google does not want you to be able to "spoof" your email address without making it clear which account it came from. The reasons for this should be obvious.

When you send email, you connect to a SMTP server and give your username and password. if that username is "you@gmail.com" and the "From:" line is "you@owndomain.com" then Gmail will automatically add the "Sender:" header which contains your actual Gmail address. (Outlook displays this as "via" I believe.)

The only way to avoid that is to have the username that you log in with be "you@owndomain.com" rather than "you@gmail.com".

The easiest way to do that is to use Google Apps for your domain which is free for up to 10 users.

You can still set that up as a "Gmail" account in iOS, but when you send email it will not have the Sender: header added because you are sending from the same account that you use to log in.

The only drawback is that you will have two accounts now in the iOS Mail app, which is (I assume) what you wanted to avoid by using the comma trick in the first place. You'll have to decide which is more important: having one email account in iOS (and having "via"/Sender: header added), or not having Sender: added and having more than one email account.)


How to repair documents that display the “The document xxx.pages could not be opened” error when opened in Pages? I recently did a clean Mountain Lion install, after which I restored some important Pages documents from a backup HD.

Now, when I try to open these documents in Pages, I get the following error:

Someone in this old thread on the Apple support forum suggested to use Disk Utility to repair disk permissions, as well as the disk itself, but that doesn’t seem to help.

The weird thing is I can still open these documents using my girlfriend’s laptop just fine. I tried opening the file on her Mac, saving it, then transferring it back to my laptop, but no luck — it still shows the error message.

Any other ideas as to how these documents can be repaired?

I ended up buying and installing Pages from the App Store; I was using an old iWork copy before. Sucks that I bought the same product twice now, but at least I could open my files after that.


My iMac boots but the screen doesn't work My iMac boots(i can hear the jingle and the CD drive) but the screen doesn't work. Is the screen working and I closed the screen from software by some means.

Model is  iMac12,1 (MC309XX/A) if I press some keys I can hear some sounds.

I have reset the PRAM but it still does the same.

Does someone happen to know this situation?

I'd first try increasing the brightness. F2 or fn + F2 (depending on user preference settings for the function keys)is the hot key for brightness on the Apple Bluetooth Keyboard.

If that doesn't work, a trip to the genius bar or a repair center would be my next step.


How can I convert video and audio files into iPod/iPad playable formats? I am quite a non-technical guy when it comes to such stuff and hence looking for "easy" solutions.

On Windows, I had used Red Kawa Videora to convert the various audio and video formats to iPod-playable formats. I think it also has a version which works on Mac.

I would like to know if there is other (possibly better and as much or more user-friendly) software which does the above job of converting various audio and video formats into what Apple products can play. (I guess what works on iPod also works on iPad.)

HandBrake used to be my go-to app for this task but lets face it: nightmare UI. Especially if you're a professed "non-technical guy".

The new wonder-in-a-box video convert is Smart Converter. Like HandBrake, it's free. Unlike HandBrake the UI is very non-threatening. Drop file, pick output format, go. Works for video and audio.


Directions for syncing iPhone lead to a dead end A friend gave me an iPhone 4, which I'm trying to use. I was directed to this website: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201252, which tells me to sync the phone using iTunes. But (a) the File > Devices menus that this site directs me to use lead to a dead end in the form of a totally greyed-out menu; and (b) I keep getting an error message saying that the device timed out. I'm running Yosemite on a MacBook Pro.   Any help gratefully received.

Try restarting the iPhone (home button + power button 10 seconds). Plug in the
iPhone and see if iTunes recognizes it.

If that doesn't work, you should try connecting it in Recovery Mode:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201263


How do I prevent Calendar from draining my iPhone battery? Recently, Calendar on my iPhone has started to cause my battery to drain rapidly by using 20%-40% of the phone's battery with "background activity". Calendar did not to this in the past, but the problem is now pretty consistent.

How do I prevent Calendar from draining my iPhone battery?

(Note that disabling sync, or using low power mode are not answers.)

One of your Calendar\Mail\Contacts accounts is in an endless loop. Maybe a corrupted event or something of that sort.

What iOS are you using? I remember something of that sort in iOS 8, no idea if this was fixed yet.

First I would suggest removing one account at a time and check after a day of usage if Calendar is still going crazy. If it does, move on to the next account. Once you figured out which account is the problematic one, add it again and configure it as new. This should fix it.


Repair Time Machine sparsebundle that will no longer mount I messed up my Time Machine backup in some way. I'm no longer able to mount the sparsebundle file as I get an error stating that there are no mountable filesystems.

I used the hdiutil command to attach the sparsebundle file:

hdiutil attach -nomount -readwrite flattop.sparsebundle

which resulted in the following /dev/ devices:

/dev/disk2              Apple_partition_scheme
/dev/disk2s1            Apple_partition_map
/dev/disk2s2            Apple_HFSX

Afterwards I ran the fsch_hfs command to check the main volume (/dev/disk2s2):

fsck_hfs -drf /dev/disk2s2

This resulted in a notice that the Time Machine Backups volume is corrupt and needed to be repaired:

Unable to open block device /dev/disk2s2: Permission deniedjournal_replay(/dev/disk2s2) returned 13
** /dev/rdisk2s2 (NO WRITE)
    Using cacheBlockSize=32K cacheTotalBlock=32768 cacheSize=1048576K.
   Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-540.1~34).
Non-empty journal:  start = 66310144, end = 94912512
   Journal need to be replayed but volume is read-only
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Detected a case-sensitive volume.
   The volume name is Time Machine Backups
** Checking extents overflow file.
   Unused node is not erased (node = 3568)
   Unused node is not erased (node = 3574)
   Unused node is not erased (node = 3575)
** Checking catalog file.
** The volume Time Machine Backups was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
    volume type is pure HFS+
    primary MDB is at block 0 0x00
    alternate MDB is at block 0 0x00
    primary VHB is at block 2 0x02
    alternate VHB is at block 2865568974 0xaacd1cce
    sector size = 512 0x200
    VolumeObject flags = 0x07
    total sectors for volume = 2865568976 0xaacd1cd0
    total sectors for embedded volume = 0 0x00

As you can see there is also an error saying "Unable to open block device /dev/disk2s2: Permission deniedjournal_replay(/dev/disk2s2) returned 13".

I thought this might be due to not running the fsck_hfs command as a su, so I tried it with sudo but this had the same result.

My sparsebundle file is on a Synology DS408 NAS and has been running without a problem for about 2 years now :(

Anyone an idea how to take this further?

Kind regards,
Niels R.

UPDATE: As I suspected while writing this question I probably have a problem with read/write permissions. I now see the volume appearing in the Disk Utility and when I click on "Verify" I get the following output:

Verifying volume “Time Machine Backups”
Checking file systemJournal need to be replayed but volume is read-only
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Detected a case-sensitive volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Unused node is not erased (node = 3568)
Checking catalog file.
Keys out of order
The volume Time Machine Backups was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.

Can I simply chmod the sparsebundle file to set the right permissions?

I have a write up on how to try and repair NAS-based sparsebundle errors on my blog.  In summary:

hdiutil attach -nomount -noverify -noautofsck /Volumes/{name of your disk}/{name of}.sparsebundle

You will then see something like

/dev/diskx Apple_partition_scheme
/dev/diskxs1 Apple_partition_map
/dev/diskxs2 Apple_HFSX

Where x is the disk id for the external disk. x might be 2, 3, 4 or
higher. You are interested in the one labeled Apple_HFSX or Apple_HFS.
fsck_hfs -drfy /dev/diskxs2 using whatever relevant device was located in Step 1.

Hopefully, you will eventually see

  The Volume was repaired successfully

hdiutil detach /dev/diskxs2

However, since OS X 10.6.3, Time Machine will refuse to write to a destination volume that fails its verification.  Even if the process above succeeds in recovering the backup, you may still need to remove the black marks that Time Machine wrote when it failed verification.

Unlock the sparsebundle

chflags -R nouchg /Volumes/{name of your disk}/{name of}.sparsebundle

Move it back to its original location

mv /Volumes/{name of your disk}/{name of}_YYYY-MM-DD.sparsebundle /Volumes/{name of your disk}/{name of}.sparsebundle

At the top level directory of the sparsebundle, edit the file com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist.

Remove

<key>RecoveryBackupDeclinedDate</key>
<date>{whatever-the-date}</date>

Change

<key>VerificationState</key>
<integer>2</integer>

to

<key>VerificationState</key>
<integer>0</integer>


Changing Airdrop Folder I have changed the location of many other applications to save files to a custom folder instead of ~/Downloads.
Is there a way to change the default Airdrop location from the Downloads folder to something else?

I work for a school district and just had to do this.  The teacher receives student iMovie files for review, and I need to move this automatically from the Downloads folder to something else.  Create the folder you want files moved to.  I went into Automator (Applications folder) and created a new "Folder Action." At the top where it says "Folder Action receives files and folders added to" choose your Downloads folder.  In Library (far left) choose Files and Folders, then Filter Finder Items.  Drag this to the workflow area to the right.  In my case, I added two criteria.  Kind is movie, and File extension contains m4v.  Below "Filter Finder Items" drag Move Finder Items from the left side, and choose the new folder location.  That's it.  When someone airdrops a file that meets the criteria you set up, it should automatically move to the specified folder.  Hope this helps someone!


Where have the folders from public.me.com been moved to? Has the content that people made publicly accessible at http://public.me.com/ been moved somewhere, so that it can be accessed from the web?

Can the content still be accessed with WebDAV as before?

Apple has terminated all Mobile Me services in Summer 2012, data stored on Mobile Me servers has been deleted in the meantime (or at least is not accessible any more).

There was an initiative to archive public content, you may find what you are looking for there.


Can MacBook Air (2020) be charged from airplane USB? I read somewhere that the new MacBook Air computers (the ones with USB-C) can be charged slowly from any USB source using a USB-C to USB-A adapter.
I'd imagine that a plane USB port delivers 5W or 10W power. When doing light tasks on the Air, I would imagine that, even when not charging, would allow to extend the battery life significantly.
Can anyone confirm that this works? What cable do I need?

I read somewhere that the new MacBook Air computers (the ones with USB-C) can be charged slowly from any USB source using a USB-C to USB-A adapter.

Yes.  This is correct.  The Type C ports on your Mac conform to the USB-PD (Power Delivery Spec) meaning it will negotiate for the maximum charge.
The default charge that comes from a USB-PD device starts out at 5V - this, coincidentally is the same voltage that legacy USB chargers output.  If it can negotiate up (to a max of 20V) it will do so.  Otherwise, it will simply draw the maximum which is no more than 12W (5V at 2.4A)
So, if you use a 5W charger (airplane, car, etc.), it will take forever to charge that MacBook (you'll drain battery if you attempt to use it while charging), but it will charge.  It will go faster if it's a 12W or 15W port, but still be quite slow.  As for the power draw, it will draw what it can - if the airplane only supplies 5W; that's all you'll get.
Your best bet is to get a proper USB-C travel charger and hopefully the airplane will have the 12V sockets (car cigarette lighter port) rather than USB ports.
As for the cables you need, if it's a USB-A port, just the USB-C to A adapter you already referenced and a USB-C cable which you should already have.


Connecting 13 inch 2018 MacBookPro to Dell U2417h I currently have a 13 inch 2018 macbook pro (no touchbar) which is connected to a LG monitor using a HDMI to USBC charger.  This leaves one extra port for charging.

I want to connect another monitor (Dell U2417h) to my laptop. I have a 5 in 1 dongle (https://www.amazon.com/Charging-Converter-Compatible-Chromebook-Mainstream/dp/B07H4HWGWC). What cables do I need for me to connect my laptop to this dell monitor? Can I use the same cable I use to connect to my LG monitor? I also want to charge my computer at the same time.

Thanks in advance.

If you want to be able to charge your laptop at the same time, you'll can use a Thunderbolt 3 dock or hub to connect the two monitors at the same time as well as charging through a single port on your laptop - leaving one port available for charging.

A product that will allow you to do this could be the OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock:

https://www.owcdigital.com/products/thunderbolt-3-dock-14-port

You would then connect your existing monitor using your existing cable to the dock. use a mini-Displayport to DisplayPort cable to connect your U2417H monitor to the dock. The dock comes with a Thunderbolt 3 cable that connects the laptop to the dock. The dock provides charging to the laptop.

There exist similar products at various price points from several other brands.

If you want to use your existing dongle you can simply connect your charger to the dongle, connect the dongle to the laptop and use an HDMI-to-HDMI cable to connect the U2417H monitor. The existing monitor uses the same cable as before.

This is obviously much cheaper for you, but you'll need to plug two cables into the laptop leaving no ports free for other uses.


How to install TexMaker on Mac? I want to install TexMaker 4.5 on Mac OS X 10.9.5. On the official page, I clicked on Texmaker 4.5 for MacosxLion (64 bits) and opened the folder that is downloaded. It contains the application texmaker.

I double-clicked it and made a small MWE. If I want to compile it, it says

Could not start the command.
"pdflatex" -syntex=1 -interaction=nonstopmode %.tex

What should I do? Do I have to install LaTeX separately befor installing a compiler?

Update

I have installed LaTeX separately according to Monomeeth's answer below. Apparently, TexMaker 4.5 did not find them or it was not the correct version.

Next, I installed a version of MacTex manually according to this site, namely the 2016 version. Now TexMaker 4.5 is able to compile a file.

It's not 100% clear to me what you've actually tried, but give this a go:

Launch Terminal
Enter the following command:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" < /dev/null 2> /dev/null ; brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask 2> /dev/null

Press enter and wait while the command runs
When it's complete, enter: brew cask install texmaker

Let me know how you go.


Manually added keychain password not showing on Mac I have a website I previously logged into using iCloud Keychain that has changed its domain/URL. I can still log in by using "other passwords" and finding the old domain, however this isn't ideal. I would prefer to have the keychain working as intended.

So, I added the new domain login manually to my Keychain on my MacBook. However, this still doesn't seem to be working. When I navigate to the login page in Safari it doesn't automatically fill in the fields, and I still have to find the login details in "other passwords"

I know I got the address correct when setting up the new keychain item because I copied and pasted the full URL to the form. I also quit and restarted Safari to see if that would make a difference, but it didn't. Is there anything else I can do?

Try deleting the password. Then try loging in with your normal username and password. Safari should ask you if you want to save the password to Keychain.

In this way macOS will save the website with the correct URL and details.


iBooks Author imports ePub text very large I have an inDesign file that I'm exporting as a fixed ePub. When I import it into iBooks Author using the blank template, the text is gigantic. For instance one text box is set to 389 pt. The text is so large it exceeds the mask around it. The font selection doesn't seem to matter.

Creating outlines solves the issue but I would like to keep it as text. Is there a way to control the size of the text better?

The best way to control text size would be to convert the file to text/markdown. That way you would have total control over the sizing.

It really depends on how proficient you are in editing inDesign or simplifying the formatting there to see if you can tweak things there to isolate the part of the native -> ePub conversion that's running amok.

If you're good there, take a simpler approach to fix things. If you have no aptitude or time to learn inDesign or clean up the document's formatting (I've seen some PageMaker files that got moved to inDesign that are incredibly convoluted and needed to be thrown out and started over from text).

Sorry I can't be more specific. If you want to ask a follow on question with specific details on what item is being converted or can upload a minimal test case, someone might have a better idea on preventing the poor conversion from one format to another.


Does locking folders prevent .DS_Store being deleted in certain cases? I deleted .DS_Store from folders via terminal using defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool true as the command because the folders were the wrong font size, some size 12, some size 13 and I couldn't find a way to ensure consistent font size or viewing in list for all folders in Finder, upon updating to Big Sur, and it changed the modification dates for some directories of folders containing files that are used for reference but occasionally used.
I had to tediously use a date-changer to fix the relevant folders 'dates.
If I was to lock a folder or series of folders individually via Finder, any deletion of .DS_Store wouldn't affect the locked folders that already had a .DS_Store at the time and the settings within .DS_Store?
In theory, if there's folders you don't want modifying upon opening, locking before doing any delete .DS_Store is a good or bad idea?
As apple.stackexchange is about answering questions, I would appreciate an explanation since I've done some light Google-ing on the topic.

Yes, locking a folder prevents any files/folders immediately inside of it from being modified, as well as deleting/renaming the folder itself. Items in sub-folders can be edited though.
I should note that the command you had in your question does not delete any DS_Store files, it simply stops them from being created on network volumes.
I'll assume you want to run a find command which deletes all DS_Stores, and yes locking a folder will prevent that from modifying the files in it.


Google Hangouts on Mavericks in Safari or Chrome: how to adjust audio settings? I could have sworn that Google Hangouts used to provide a settings panel for testing and adjusting audio settings.  I know I've used it in the past: it was a facility that showed volume levels, let you play a test sound, etc.  Now I cannot find it anywhere.  After starting a video Hangout in the latest Safari or Chrome on OSX 10.9.5, clicking on the gear icon in the top portion of the screen brings up a dialog that has only the following options:

The only feature now is "Play test sound"; none of the submenus, or elsewhere in Hangouts as far as I can see, is there any ability to adjust volume, test that the microphone is working properly, etc.

I feel I'm either a complete idiot now or dreamt the whole thing. What am I missing? How do I adjust sound settings for Google Hangouts? I really believe there used to be a more extensive preferences/settings panel than the one (the only one) I can find now.

AFIK it is only possible

(Hangouts On Air only) Audio setting:

Whether you’re performing your favorite song in a Hangout On Air or just talking with a few friends, you can optimize the audio by going to your settings and choosing the sound setting that works best for you.


How to change the way to switch between apps When I double-click on the home button it shows all the opened apps. In the latest version of IOS, the apps are overlaid onto one another. Swiping left or right is so fast that it makes it hard to really stop on the right app to close it. Maybe it's just me :)

I just loved the way it was before where instead of being overlaid, the app where side by side and it was much easier. Anybody know if there is a way to change this overlay display for side by side?

You can't - but why do you feel the need to 'close' apps - i.e. Force Quit them.

The only time you ever need to do that is if they stop responding correctly, the rest off the time they will be perfectly happy to sit in the background, until memory gets short, then they are quietly dropped from active memory, leaving only a small footprint until they are needed again.

If it's to prevent them from being active whilst in the background, then it would be better to switch off Background App Refresh, in Settings > General.


MacBook stays connected to wifi but loses internet connection Every few minutes my internet connection drops on my MacBook Pro 15" Mid-2015, running macOS Catalina 10.15.5.
It stays connected to wifi, at least it indicates as such in the menu bar and System Preferences.
However, I can't use the internet again until turning off and on wifi.
Also, I can't connect to my router's webpage itself (normally http://192.168.1.1/ is my router's config pages) when this issue happens.
However, from the terminal ping continues to work, for my router's IP and for names like google.com.
This issue breaks: Safari.app, Discord.app, wget, curl, dig, Firefox Developer Edition.app, Chrome.app, Folx.app, Mail.app, .... almost everything internet-related I can think of testing except ping. ping times don't even increase while the rest of the internet "drops".
This doesn't happen on any other device in the house.
How can I stay connected to the internet all the time without having to worry about needing to reconnect like this?

My MacBook, like all other devices the problem doesn't  happen on, gets its IP address using DHCP.
While the wifi is working:

While I can't connect to the internet:

According to support.apple.com/kb/SP719, your Mac supports "802.11ac Wi‑Fi wireless networking; IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n compatible", is the wireless router configured accordingly?

I'm not sure how to check... but I found on one page of my router's settings "Generic MAC80211 802.11bgn (radio0)" this text.

A recent article on Cult of Mac entitled How to fix Wi-Fi and Bluetooth interference on a Mac may give some insight. In your screenshots, your wifi is running on 2.4GHz which is the same as Bluetooth according to the article.

If a wireless connection is a must, you may find that a change in router settings is what you need. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices use the 2.4GHz band as standard, but modern routers also support the 5GHz band.

I was about to ask about my audio skipping that is playing over Bluetooth. I noticed that my router does have 2.4GHz running. I am currently testing to see if my problems are resolved.


How to hide AppleTVs from the phone speaker options? Is there any way to remove AppleTV from the speaker list on the Phone app in iOS? I am running iOS 13.1. I tried disabling Allow calls on other devices but that did not solve the issue.

In the pic below, I want only the iPhone and Speaker as options

Turn off air play on the apple tv.

Otherwise the only way is to place the apple tv or iphone on different networks.  This can be done by creating a vlan and a new essid that tags network traffic to that vlan. Plus routing rules to give the vlan network access to things it needs (internet).

Or possibly create a new subnet and setup routing so the 2 subnets cannot communicate but still allows Internet access.


Does texting internationally use data? I have been texting a friend in Mexico for several months. One of my friends was alarmed and said I was using my data. Is that true?

you always use data to text using imessage, although if you have it set to text message. it will not
( as seen in picture )


What has been deprecated or removed in OS X 10.9, Mavericks? For the last couple of releases of OS X, there have been some parts of the OS and the utilities that have been simplified or removed compared to the previous release. Especially as seem from a power users point-of-view.

Two examples from past releases are the scaled down AirPort Utility (version 6.0) and the limitations in "Sharing" System Preference panel that used to be able to manage FTP servers - both changes have been rather annoying in my book!

So, before I "upgrade" to Mavericks, I would like to know if there are anything specific that will be "downgraded" in the same process.

As mentioned in the Apple support communities, it apparently won't be possible to synchronize calendars and contacts between the Mac and an iPhone via USB connection or local WLAN anymore. The only remaining directly supported option would be via cloud synchronization (e.g., iCloud).


Does upgrading to Mountain Lion means I have to reinstall Android SDK and Eclipse? I'm on Lion and am learning Android development. I have Eclipse Indigo Service Release 1 version and the lastest SDK installed.

If I upgrade to Mountain Lion does it mean I have reinstall the SDK?

I have folders in the root Macintosh HD such as android-sdk-macosx, are these deleted?

No, nothing is deleted when updating. A common sense would be to back-up everything as things can go wrong, but if everything go right, nothing is deleted! Even opened apps are reopened after update.

It must be noted though that the first time you launch Eclipse, OS X will tell you that it will install Java first, as Java is not installed by default anymore.


Why does "echo'' " in /etc/bashrc cause scp to hang? I am copying directories from a Snow Leopard machine to a Tiger machine using scp -r and for some reason, it appears that the final line of the target (Tiger) machine's /etc/bashrc (echo '') causes scp to hang. When commended out, it works as expected.

Why?

I've never seen this behaviour on any of my Slackware, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SuSE, Mandrake or even Apple machines. Is this part of a recent 10.6 security update? scp worked as expected with that line until recently.

This one looks like your issue:

Forum Post about the issue

You really shouldn't output stuff in your profile unless you are going in interactively.  It appears that SCP is sensitive to it (potentially, depending on a lot of factors, I'm sure).  You can test for interactivity thusly:

bashrc interactive test

Text copied out for reference:

To determine within a startup script whether Bash is running
interactively or not, examine the variable $PS1; it is unset in non-
interactive shells, and set in interactive shells. Thus:

if [ -z "$PS1" ]; then
        echo This shell is not interactive
else
        echo This shell is interactive
fi

Alternatively, startup scripts may test the value of the `-' special
parameter. It contains i when the shell is interactive. For example:

case "$-" in
*i*)    echo This shell is interactive ;;
*)  echo This shell is not interactive ;;
esac


Swap right command with right alt/option on external bluetooth keyboard I can swap/remap (only) the right command with right alt using Keyremap4macbook for the built in Macbook keyboard, but would the same be possible for the Apple's external Bluetooth keyboard?

It seems to work at least on my Apple Wireless Keyboard. KeyRemap4MacBook should work with most external keyboards that don't have their own drivers.


Is there an app or option that allows phone to ring for emergency contacts only when silent or Do not disturb? I work sometimes till 4 am and my friends and the rest of the world obviously don't know in advance that I don't want to be called at 8 am.

Is there an app or setting that can allow me to have an emergency override list of people I need to be woken up for if a possible emergency arises but ignore all other calls until I wake up?

I'm familiar with the Do Not Disturb option, but it has limitations that it blocks all calls. What if there is an emergency at night?

What if I want to allow certain callers during the Do not Disturb time? Is there a way to have an emergency list that allows calls during silent?

In Do Not Disturb there's an option to allow calls from Favorites and/or a specific group - "Allow Calls From".


Number keys on the Numeric Keypad part of the Magic Keyboard don't work with Terminal When I'm in Terminal, I've noticed that pressing the . or numbers 0 through 9 produce the error sound and don't register a value.

The same keys pressed on the "regular" keyboard work as expected.

Is this the expected behavior?

** edit **

Those keys work in other applications.

When I start a new Terminal window or tab, these keys work correctly.

However, when I start PowerShell 7 (pwsh), typing 0-9 then . produce OpOqOrOsOtOuOvOwOxOyOn.  When I exit pwsh, returning to zsh, and type those keys, the behavior reappears.

Keypad Application Mode
Terminals have a feature named Keypad Application Mode (the mnemonic for the command that enables it is DECKPAM).
When Keypad Application Mode is enabled the numeric-keypad keys send function-key escape sequences so they can be differentiated from the digit keys along the top of the main keyboard and used to perform other functions (e.g., cursor movement, scrolling, editing text).
This mode is described in the DEC VT100 terminal user guide here:
DECKPAM – Keypad Application Mode
The input sequences are described in tables 3-7 and 3-8. (The specific sequences depend on other terminal state.)
Overriding to Enter Decimal Digits
Typically, a Num Lock key can be used to override this mode to enter digit characters, and several terminal emulators have a preference to ignore this mode and always send digits.
Since not all keyboards have a Num Lock key, macOS Terminal—for example—also has a Num Lock menu item and by default it maps the keypad Clear key (which is physically located where Num Lock often is) to Num Lock. The Num Lock menu item also has the keyboard shortcut Command-Clear ⌘⌧ to make it available from the keyboard if the Terminal keyboard-map preference has been customized and Clear does not map to Num Lock.
Programs That Cause Problems
By default, Vim enables Keypad Application Mode but does not map the function-key input to anything, which means that the trailing part of the function-key escape sequences are entered as text. Similarly, the Zsh “Oh My Zsh” collection may enable this mode without mapping the keys to something useful.
In programs like these you may see text entered or the program may beep and/or enter nothing. As far as I am aware this should be considered a bug in the program that enables the mode.


Why is 64GB SD Card "unreadable"? When I insert my 64GB SanDisk Micro SDXC Card into my 2012 MacBook Pro (in a MicroSD/SDHC/SDXC Adapter that works with other Micro SD cards), a popup dialog informs me that "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer."  The card works properly in my phone; it was formatted by a Galaxy S3.

$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk4 indicates that the computer can, in fact, read the "disk"; it contains a single partition formatted to Win95 FAT32L.  Presumably the "L" indicates the LBA version of FAT32.

Is OSX not able to read large FAT32 volumes?  Is there a way to remedy this?  Or is the problem that OSX cannot properly deal with SDXC cards?

Update: The volume appears to be exFAT.  See my answer for more info.

Most Android phones format exFAT SDcards incorrectly, the BlackBerry Priv being the only one I know that does it correctly. All other Android devices create a partition of type 12 (sometimes referred as hexadecimal "c") instead of 7. The android device actually ignores the partition type, so if you set it to 7 then the sdcard will work fine everywhere.
There are many options:

You can format the sd card on your MAC, then use it on any other
device. Don't forget to copy your data somewhere else first, since
reformatting will erase the contents of the sd card.
Use the program fdisk on PC or Linux system. Use the command "mount" on the
linux system to see the name of the device corresponding to your sd
card (it looks like /dev/sdc1 ) then call fdisk on that device,
omitting the last digit (ex: fdisk /dev/sdc). Then use option "t" to
change the partition type to 7
I think there is a similar program on Windows.


Looking for a manga reader for the original iPad hardware I'm currently using the app icomic with my 1st generation iPad and have used it for probably 2 years.

It's decent, but it struggles to display very large images well. Specifically, the images become pixelated and unreadable.

I wish to read more of the very large image comics there are rendered unreadable with this app.

Is this a limitation inherent to the hardware of the iPad (e.g. not enough ram or GPU) or perhaps limited by the app's design? I can't confirm hardware being the cause, in fact I feel like it's the app rather than the device. Other apps like Safari do well with detailed large pictures given enough time to download and render them.d

Are there better manga/comic readers for viewing large images on the 1st gen iPad?

Edit: The majority of manga I'm reading works fine. I actually really like the app. But some images just don't work.

Example of an image that doesn't display correctly: please try opening this image in your recommended comic app and see if it's readable.


Restore from Backup: Apps in iTunes library were not installed on iPhone because Unknown Error occurred 0xE800002D After iPhone Restore from Backup & Sync causes iTunes Error Message:

I posted this weird copying behavior here:
Issues & Errors with Restore from ios7 Backup to ios9 on iPhone 5?

The screenshot of error message below is from this thread from Apple forums.

I get a similar looking error message, but with 200+ errors (as posted with details below):

So I split & posted this Error Message separately to solve this issue.

Some of the apps in your iTunes library were not installed on the iPhone “AS_iPhone5_711” because one or more errors occurred.
For a list of apps that could not be installed, click the + below.
..
The app “xxxx” was not installed on the iPhone “My_iPhone5_711” because an unknown error occurred (0xE800002D).  // most apps have this error
..
The app “yyyy” was not installed on the iPhone “My_iPhone5_711” because an unknown error occurred (0xE800000E).  // few apps, maybe only one or bit more

A few 'tries' of Restore from Backup & Sync, I observed some of the following behaviors:

Sync is stuck for several Apps that are in a "funky" state:

On the iPhone: "Waiting" state:
Folders & Apps all pending, semi grayed icons. Some with names visible others names 'waiting..'. If you clicked one its name would become 'waiting..'
On iTunes: Device > Apps view they were all "Will Install" state:
But every time I sync apps don't install & the same flavor of errors come up

For one app, when I upgraded the version via iTunes and it synced/ installed finally, but the rest did not work despite updates.
It does not consistently 'funk' the same Apps. Once it was Viber, next time it was WhatsApp (and a lot of other apps, but the apps kind of changed)
PS: I thought maybe it was AppSync causing it so I got rid of it last 2 'tries'.
Most of these are legit & free purchased from AppStore
Computer was also authorized via iTunes

I don't mind taking manual steps to resolve this as long as there is some way.

Found some posts that talk about this error, but they are old and not sure if connected.

Jun 06, 2013: https://discussions.apple.com/message/22259435#22259435
2011 - 2013/14: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2765754?start=0&tstart=0

Try installing those bugged apps direct from the App Store, as opposed to relying on the backup package.

Use the backup to get your own content (photos, messages, etc), and ignore the apps. Download them fresh from the app store.


Is this a dead pixel or stuck pixel? I've tried the apps and I've tried to apply pressure this hasn't worked at all, so I phoned Apple they tried helping over the phone. That didn't work. They said my warranty covers it but I want to know what it is? They said it sounds like a dead or stuck pixel.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014)

It could be dead pixels or it could be the driver 'chips' or a dead 'mux'. The hardware that control what pixels are turned on. Note the color, It looks to me like a group of pixels are 'turned on' when they shouldn't be. It is hard to tell just by looking at a picture. It could be anything in the graphics display hardware. Just let Apple replace it, no one troubleshoots to component level these days.


How to update iPhone via iTunes without getting rid of apps that I purchased? I want to update my iPhone on iTunes but it says that it will delete all of the apps and media on my iPhone that I purchased.  I synced it but I don't know what to do next. It says it will only save my content.

Make sure you have all your apps already loaded within your iTunes library. Then you can safely upgrade your iPhone via iTunes. At the end of the upgrade process iTunes will sync with your iPhone and will put back all your apps to your device.


Should PS1 be defined before exported in .bash_profile? In .bash_profile, should PS1 be defined before exporting?

As an example, the first line in my .bash_profile is currently:

export PS1="\[\033[36m\]\u\[\033[m\]@\[\033[32m\]\h:\[\033[33;1m\]\w\[\033[m\]\$ "

But instead, should it be:

PS1="\[\033[36m\]\u\[\033[m\]@\[\033[32m\]\h:\[\033[33;1m\]\w\[\033[m\]\$ "
export PS1

In korn shell and bash, you can do it in one line. The original bourne shell required your second syntax, where you set it on one line and then exported it.


Remove margin in pages? I want to have zero margin in my document, but there is no way I can't move it. Right now I can see that Document Margins have left: 0 in

However, I can see that there is some weird margin applied, but I don't know where it is set. I can not move the blue tip (see image)

Where am I supposed to move that tip to the left? Right now is 'blocked'.

Here is another picture to show what is going on...

There is an additional set of margins in a Pages document.

I exported a document to Pages '09 and opened it with the old version.  In the Layout Inspector, I found the "Layout Margins". The "Left" and "Before" margins were non-zero and the numbers matched the unwanted margins I saw in Pages 5.2.  Here's a sample:

I changed those layout margins to 0, saved the Pages '09 document, and opened it in Pages 5.2.  Hurrah!  The unwanted margins are gone!

If there's a UI control to view or change the Layout Margins in Pages 5.2, I haven't found it.

Update: BigCaseyDog's answer describes the Document Margins, which are available in Pages 5.2 as well as Pages '09.  In Pages '09, the Layout Margins are available in addition to the Document Margins.  The Pages 5.2 templates -- at least some of them -- are built with non-zero Layout Margins, but Pages 5.2 doesn't seem to give us a way to change the Layout Margins.


iterm + tmux isn't allowing me to scroll up with the mouse I recently rebuilt my system and everything works except I can't scroll my (iterm2) terminal window back to look at commands and output that have scrolled off the screen.

Without tmux I can scroll but with tmux I can't

When using vim this isn't an issue as I can scroll back within vim.

For basic terminal (which I don't normally use) the behavior is a little different in that the current line scrolls back to show previous commands, but just that line, not the whole window.

My terminal settings include:

I do use tmux and I have a detailed .tmux.conf  However I have removed these settings, applied with tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf,. seen the changes applied (back to default tmux setting) and still have the issue

My settings include

set -g mouse on

The recent release of tmux 2.1 changed some of the configuration options. This bit of code (taken from here) restores the previous functionality:

bind -n WheelUpPane if-shell -F -t = "#{mouse_any_flag}" "send-keys -M" "if -Ft= '#{pane_in_mode}' 'send-keys -M' 'select-pane -t=; copy-mode -e; send-keys -M'"
bind -n WheelDownPane select-pane -t= \; send-keys -M

Add/place these in the ~/.tmux.conf file

Apply with tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf


how to route traffic to other computer via firewire, everything else via wifi I have two macbook pros connected via firewire.

Both are also connected to wifi.

How can I check that traffic between the two computers is going preferentially via firewire, but everything else goes via wifi?

You will need to control this using network routing.

If you assign an IP address on a different subnet as the WiFi to both computers on the FireWire link - you will ensure that traffic between the two computers will be restricted to the wired network.

You can see the network routing tables by opening the Network Utility and you can control the IP address of both firewire interfaces using the normal network preference pane.


CPU upgrade on MacBook Pro I'm thinking about upgrading the CPU in my MacBook Pro from its current 3210M dual core processor to a 3632QM quad core processor.

Is there any reason why this wouldn't be a good idea? The socket, operating temperature, instruction set, wattage, and memory specifications match perfectly.

It's a summer 2012 production model, 13" unibody, FCPGA988 socket, 4GB DDR3 1600 MHz RAM (upgrading to 8GB shortly), with 10.8.3.

While Intel may produce versions of that processor that use an interchangeable socket, all Mac laptops (and almost all other laptops) have their CPUs soldered directly onto the logic board. This means it's effectively impossible to replace them, unless perhaps you have some high-grade industrial soldering knowledge and equipment. You can see this in iFixit's logic board replacement guide for your MacBook Pro.

In addition to that, I'm not aware of anywhere that you can buy individual Intel mobile CPUs. Because they're only used in laptops, they tend to only be sold to OEMs.


Is El Capitan preventing me from getting the Perl module DBD::Oracle working? Let me start by saying I'm not traditionally a Mac user.  I'm still trying to transition from Gentoo, where compiling everything from source was the default state, and the system wasn't actively trying to prevent me from doing "dangerous" things.

I have a new machine running 10.11.  I've gotten sqlplus 11.2.0.4 running, and am able to connect to a remote Oracle server with it.  I now want to use DBD::Oracle to connect in a Perl script.  I was able to get DBD::Oracle to compile/install by manually passing a version to Makefile.pl rather than using CPAN (or, more specifically, cpanm):

perl Makefile.pl -V 11.2
make
make install

However, when I run the script using the default Perl (5.18.2 located at /usr/bin/perl), I get an error:

ERROR OCIEnvNlsCreate. Check ORACLE_HOME (Linux) env var  or PATH (Windows) and or NLS settings, permissions, etc.

In case the issue lies with the system perl, I installed perlbrew and then installed 5.22.0 into ~/perl5.  Using the perlbrew Perl, I get a different error:

dyld: lazy symbol binding failed: Symbol not found: _OCIAttrSet
  Referenced from: /Users/jrittenh/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.22.0/lib/site_perl/5.22.0/darwin-2level/auto/DBD/Oracle/Oracle.bundle
  Expected in: dynamic lookup

dyld: Symbol not found: _OCIAttrSet
  Referenced from: /Users/jrittenh/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.22.0/lib/site_perl/5.22.0/darwin-2level/auto/DBD/Oracle/Oracle.bundle
  Expected in: dynamic lookup

Trace/BPT trap: 5

I've tried:

both 32-bit and 64-bit Oracle libraries
symlinking libraries from the specific version (libclntsh.dylib.11.1 => libclntsh.dylib)
fixing hard-coded paths to /ade
creating a 'mesg' folder and made it writeable in $ORACLE_HOME
setting ORACLE_HOME, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, and PATH to include /usr/local/oracle_client from /etc/profile, /etc/bashrc/, ~/.bashrc, and ~/.bash_profile

Is there something else I can try?  What am I missing?

I am using
  Mac OS X 10.11.3 El Capitan,
  perlbrew 1.74 installed with cpanm & App::perlbrew/0.74
  Perl revision 5 version 22 subversion 1 (installed via perlbrew)
  DBI -- 1.631
  DBD::Oracle VERSION: 1.74
  Oracle InstantClient 11.2.0.4.0 installed at /usr/local/lib/oracle/instantclient_11_2

I can confirm that the only way, so far, I have been able to get DBD::Oracle to work is by disabling SIP (http://osxdaily.com/2015/10/05/disable-rootless-system-integrity-protection-mac-os-x/). Any other way I've tried results in the error "failed: ERROR OCIEnvNlsCreate. Check ORACLE_HOME (Linux) env var ...".


What happens if I use a 60W rated USB-C cable to charge my Macbook from the 85W power brick? Will they still be able to negotiate the correct charging amount of 60W and not overload the cable?

What happens if I use a 60W rated USB-C cable to charge my MacBook
  from the 85W power brick?

Nothing.  It will work fine.

A watt is a unit of work (power) and is calculated with the formula:

Watts = Volts * Amps

A cable is rated for how much current (amps) it can handle - volts mean nothing.  For example, using the same cable and a 60W load on 22 AWG wire (22 gauge) with two different scenarios

3V at 10A would fry the cable
12V at 5A would be fine

I could put 50,000 volts so long as I didn't exceed the amperage, I'm ok.

This is why a wattage rating on a cable is incorrect.

Given that the Thunderbolt cable conforms to USB 3.1 and the power delivery spec for calls for up to 20V at 5A or 100W, your cable will handle it.


Symlink for OneDrive I did research beforehand on google How to Sync Any Folder to the Cloud With Symbolic Links and on Ask Different, but I still cannot find an answer to this specific question.

The file I want to symlink to is in the following format:
/Users/Name/OneDrive\ -\ X\ Y\ Education/Documents/Z\ Documents

Z\ Documents is the name of a subfolder of (~/Documents)

I tried rewriting it in different ways for it to be without any spaces as symlink requires there to be like that, but had no luck. I am quite inexperienced in this, but I was thinking maybe you can do something like quotation marks for Terminal to consider it one 'term'?

If something in this question is unclear, please leave a comment and I will do my best to clarify. Any possible answers are appreciated. Thank you.

IMPORTANT EDIT

Thank you for your help and effort. I made a mistake in my question with the directories, but I think it is a bit too big to correct, so I am going to rewrite it here if it's alright.

Here the directory that I want to link to:

/Users/NAME/OneDrive\ -\ PATH\ TO\ TARGET/Documents/X\ Documents

The first part is the location of the folder on my drive. The second part (after the first space) where is states 'PATH TO TARGET" is some part of the directory which is required to connect to the server or something like that. 'Documents' is a subfolder of OneDrive and 'X\ Documents' is a subfolder of 'Documents'.

I have listed the 'source' ONLY above. The target I would like to be found in folder in my defaults downloads location:

~/Downloads/X Documents

What I would like to happen, is when I open the folder X Documents, I am redirected to the source directory I described earlier (X Documents within Documents within OneDrive)

Thank you again for your time helping me out with this.

To get a file symlinked from your Documents folder to your OneDrive folder (or any folder for that matter) you need to format the command completely and properly
Creating a symlink:
ln -s SOURCE TARGET

More specifically, it must take on the form
ln -s /path/to/source /path/to/target

Let's say we are trying to create a link from a folder called "Personal" that's located on OneDrive and you want it to show up under Documents.
ln -s /Users/USERNAME/OneDrive/Personal /Users/USERNAME/Documents/Personal

Now, in your "Documents" folder, you will see a folder called "Personal."
Spaces in the path and/or filename
There are two ways to address spaces within the path or filename.  Using the example from above, if the folder was called Personal Stuff we could handle it one of two ways:

Use backslashes () to escape the space:
ln -s /Users/USERNAME/OneDrive/Personal\ Stuff /Users/USERNAME/Documents/Personal\ Stuff

Use quotes (") to encapsulate the whole string:
ln -s "/Users/USERNAME/OneDrive/Personal Stuff" "Users/USERNAME/OneDrive/Personal Stuff"

Using the tilde (~) for your home directory
The tilde (~) is just a shortcut to your home directory.  So, instead of typing out /Users/USERNAME/foo/bar/filename.ext you can simply shorten it to ~/foo/bar/filename.ext
You can use it when creating your symlinks with no problem:
ln -s "/Users/USERNAME/OneDrive/Personal Stuff" "~/OneDrive/Personal Stuff"
Keep in mind that the tilde (~) changes for each user.  This is why I have gotten in the habbit of just typing out the whole path; just to be sure I'm putting the link exactly where I want it.
Symlinking per your example
ln -s ~/OneDrive\ -\ Documents/X\ Documents ~/Downlaods/X\ Documents

This will create a link called  "X Documents" in the Downloads Folder of the  "X Documents" folder found on OneDrive.
You can find further details about the the ln command by typing man ln.


How to merge 2 partitions on macOS I have an MBP running macOS High Sierra. There are 2 partitions. How can I get rid of BC1, and merge the space into Macintosh HD? Know very little about macOS. Please help. Thanks!

I think I got the answer.

Open Disk Utility
Select the root of Internal drive on the left pane.
Click Partition button on the top pane.
Delete un-wanted partition(s).

It's easy if you know!


How to edit 'iTunes Movie' to be visible on iPhone's iMovie Videos that I've shot with my iPhone and are in my videos folder show up just fine on iMovie for iPhone as "addable media".

BUT I recently had a professionally designed short "intro" video for my videos that I want to use as a lead-in to my iMovie for iPhone projects. And that intro video does NOT show up my videos folder on iPhone when I transfer it into my iPhone.

Instead, that intro video seems to be somehow classified as a "movie" in iTunes on the iPhone, which can't be imported into iMovie. Any fixes here? A way to somehow get that intro video into the videos folder on the iPhone, or be able to add media from my iTunes movie folder into iMovie for iPhone?

Yes. You will need to use iTunes to sync the intro video over to your iPhone.

Connect your iPhone to iTunes and select it.
Click the "Apps" tab, and scroll down to "File Sharing".
Select iMovie from the list.
Select "Add..." from the lower right corner.
Browse your documents to find the intro video and open it.
Sync it over to your iPhone.
iMovie should recognize is as soon as the sync is completed and you should be able to use it normally.


Keynote no longer goes into Presenter Notes mode automatically My Keynote presentation setup used to work like this:

My Macbook and the the projector are set to mirror one another. When I press Play in Keynote, Keynote used to split the presentation with the presenter view on my Macbook and the audience view on the projector.

Now, however, it just stays in mirrored mode. So I have to exit the presentation and go into System Preference and make the change in Displays. It's very annoying when the presentation includes a demo and I'm constantly switching things up every time I go in and out of the presentation.

I could have sworn that Keynote used to be smart enough to do this for me... which was quite graceful! What happened? Is it a setting somewhere? Am I misremembering?

In Keynote version 6.6:

Keynote > Preferences... ⌘+,
Slideshow tab
Tick the Enable Presenter Display check box

Then go to Play > Customize Presenter Display... to be sure the output is as you expect.


Is there a technical reason not to upgrade a MacBook's RAM past its listed maximum? According to this page, Macbooks are expandable to memories larger (and, in one case, faster) than those released by Apple. Search for "expandable" in that page to see the many cases.

But Apple is keen on bleeding edge technology and specs, which suggests that Apple has a technical reason (odd crashes?) for not offering the largest/fastest memory, not even as an option.

Would you comment on the reliability of notebooks after performing these upgrades (i.e. have you experienced increased crashes / instability)?

Most new Macs have memory that’s not packaged for mechanical installation. The exceptions to this are the MacPro and 27” iMac and Mac Mini with Intel CPU.
If your machine has end user replaceable RAM, anyone that is skilled at troubleshooting bad RAM shouldn't shy away from learning what they give up when they install third party RAM in their Mac.
Basically, you give up having AppleCare or the Warranty cover that part and perhaps them diagnosing a problem they can't reproduce with factory RAM installed.
As you probably know, an intel designed (or influenced) chipset and logic board will often run with more memory than Apple will install in the factory, as an upgrade or even list as "supported" yet reputable memory vendors have been providing details on which machines will run reliably when loaded with high quality RAM that meets the technical requirements if not the marketing requirements from Apple.
I would look to sites like RamJet or Crucial or OWC/MacSales that have covered aftermarket upgrades to Macs for years and have established a reputation for having good warranties and information on determining if a specific RAM configuration is expected to be reliable on a Mac.
You of course may run into issues and bugs where certain chips fail oddly or tuning isn't ideal, but the time you gain in having more RAM often outweighs the time / expense of doing some hardware support if you run into issues and want to swap back in the Apple factory RAM to ensure you're not to blame for any oddities or failures by pushing the line on RAM.


Is it possible to set an individual sound volume for each program on a Mac? I would like to be able to lower the volume of certain software without lowering the overall volume, I know that we can do this very easily on a PC, but on my Macbook Pro (2012) (Catalina) I can't do it.

would there be a possibility to do this on Mac ?

This is not functionality built into macOS. Windows audio was miles behind Mac for many years, but they got this ability natively first. There are only two apps I know can do this, both by the same company, Rogue Amoeba.

The cheaper & simpler one is SoundSource - $35. There is a more complex/expensive one which can also record any sound source to disk as well, called Audio Hijack - $70.

SoundSource can do all you asked & more.


Need Help with an Applescript / plist This has been a learning experience for me. Everything checks out logically to me in this script/ plist but something isn't correct. Everything runs, but then the script runs every minute which is getting annoying since I'm opening a few programs in the script. If typing code it gets frustrating as it changes the active window.

Note, this is my first applescript and plist excercise so feel free to critique my code. The goal of the script is to be scheduled to run twice daily (2 plists) - in the am change my IM status to available, open some programs and enable an email account. In the evening, change status, disable email.

Since it's re running I figured it was simply the plist, but comparing it to other templates for accomplishing a task which repeats once daily it checks out to me.

<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
          <key>Label</key>
          <string>RMWEBENABLE</string>
          <key>ProgramArguments</key>
          <array>
                    <string>/disablemail.app/Contents/MacOS/applet</string>
          </array>
          <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
          <dict>
                    <key>Hour</key>
                    <integer>8</integer>
                    <key>Minute</key>
                    <integer>2</integer>
          </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

So I'm assuming in my ignorace I have something that's not sucessfully closing an if statement or somethign is just done ineffeciently. Here's the script.

set offTime to 17
set onTime to 9
set dayOfWeek to weekday of (current date)
set theHour to get the (hours of (current date))

if theHour ≥ offTime or dayOfWeek = Saturday or dayOfWeek = Sunday then

  #LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!

          tell application "Mail"
                    set enabled of account "mailbox" to false
          end tell
          tell application "Messages"
                    set status to invisible
          end tell
          tell application "Microsoft Lync"
  quit
          end tell

else if theHour ≥ onTime then

  #I'm available for contact
          tell application "Mail"
                    set enabled of account "mailbox" to true
          end tell

          tell application "Messages"
                    set status to available
          end tell

          tell application "Microsoft Lync"
  activate
          end tell

          tell application "Firefox"
  activate
          end tell

          tell application "Coda 2"
  activate
          end tell

          tell application "Google Chrome"
  activate
          end tell
end if

I guess I could do an absolute value say
else if theHour = 8 and theMinute = 2 then

but I'd prefer the way it is now since My computer may be off when this is scheduled to run, and I believe this will run on wake, or maybe it was a helpful sideeffect of the repeating... I can always change the plist to run on startup as well.

I'm not an Applescript expert, but you might consider simplifying the scripts to remove the timing aspects and use the daemon launchd for scheduling. After all, that's why Apple put it into the OS.

Though you're obviously not afraid of the command line and plist editing, Lingon is an application that provides a simple GUI interface to launchd (for the rest of us).


How do I scale everything up on my Mac Screen without decreasing resolution? Most forums I found on Google mentions that the easiest way to zoom things up on a Mac Display is to set the resolution lesser. But, that just stretches the lesser resolution screen leading to blurry visuals.

I'm in fact searching for something on Mac like this which is offered on Windows PCs

  How do I do that having the same resolution set?

PS: This question is similar to this post except that I want everything (including top bar, icons, everything literally) unlike just changing the font size

On retina Macs it is in System Preferences > Display (see this article). Switch it to "scaled" and it should show multiple choices that look like this:


Very strange green artifacts in Google Chrome? I have no idea what this is, restarting chrome and my machine doesn't fix it, it seems random and it affects things randomly, and goes away randomly.
Notice this issue comes up with I take the macOS screenshot too.  I think it must be a bug with Chrome, not sure if it's my laptop or macOS too?
Not sure how to google for this either, it's a big mystery, and makes a lot of pages unusable unless I’m fortunate enough for it to just go away

16" Macbook Pro?
It sounds similar to this (although most users report blue lines, not green).
Does it still happen if you turn off hardware acceleration in Chrome?


untrusted_cert_title error when reinstalling MacOS Sierra I've wiped out my computer and am attempting to reinstall macOS as the final step of the process to trade in my Macbook Air; however, I get the "untrusted_cert_title" error and am unable to proceed. I've tried updating the date command per instructions I've found online, but continue to receive errors. Any tips? Thank you!

You don't execute MMDDHHMMYY. You replace all those characters with the current date information.

If we were performing/entering this command in Terminal right now, since it is 16:14 for me on 05/01/18, we would enter the following command: date 0105161418 and then hit "enter/return".

01 - 05/01/18

05 - 05/01/18

16 - 16:14

14 - 16:14

18 - 2018


Remove bundleId from Personal Team on AppStore Connect I have a strange problem with Apple Developer account and I don’t know how to solve it.
Today I purchased the licence for $99/year for the first time ever ))
I was working on 2 apps and defined the bundle identifiers (com.company.appname1 and com.company.appname2) and had them registered on Personal Team (under Signing & Capabilities tab in Xcode). The problem is that I can’t re-register the same bundle identifiers under the newly created team with payed membership.
Did you encounter this issue previously and how did you solve it?
I just sent an email to Apple Support, but I’m in a rush with the launch and can’t wait 2 days to get an answer.
At least I need to know if it’s possible to remove the bundle ids from the personal team to make them available to re-register

In the end I solved the issue.
I had to go to Signing & Capabilities -> All
Make sure that on both sub-tabs, Debug and Release I had Personal Team, then type in a random BundleId
After that I switched back to my company Team (payed) and type in the desired bundle Id.
Happy ending story )))


iOS apps for viewing generic map files What are the iOS map-viewing apps that are compatible with the largest number of file formats for topographic maps and trail maps? (such as those found on the USGS website)

I'm really looking for a no-bells-and-whistles mapping "swiss army knife" app that's LOW on branding and not trying to sell me maps.

It looks like Maps n Trax could help:

  With [it] you can view your own maps on your own iPhone instead of
  just generic online maps or a limited selection of maps chosen by
  somebody else. […] for specialist maps with details that are not
  available on other mapping applications, such as highly detailed
  topographic maps […].

From the description, this looks like something you could use. An user guide can be found here. NB: im am not affiliated with them.


Embedding code snippets in iBooks Author I've been playing with iBooks Author all morning and I haven't had any luck embedding code snippets. Does anyone else have any ideas?

A few things I've tried:

A custom widget. This won't work, because widgets just have image previews and have to be tapped to be read. I'll use these for runnable examples of code (at least for CoffeeScript/JavaScript/ClojureScript), but not for formatting code within the flow of text
Text boxes - Getting these to appear similarly in portrait & landscape orientation has been painful so far.
A paragraph style. It looks like this is where I'm going to start next. With the inspector, "Text -> More" seems to hide what I want in terms of background shading and disabling hyphenation.

I'm copy-pasting syntax-highlighted code from textmate using the copy as RTF bundle, but iBooks Author isn't respecting the colors. Any ideas on syntax highlighting?

There is a way more simple way to do this... I'm using iBooks Author 2.0 it has a "Paste and Retain Styles" option that works like a charm.

I edit the code snippets in Xcode then select and copy the section I want:

Then control click where I want to paste it into my book:

Done! The snippet is included with syntax highlighting:

Pro Tip 1:
Take time to set up Xcode to use the font you want so you don't have to fiddle with it once the code is pasted into iBooks Author:

Pro Tip 2:
Here are some other useful settings for your code snippet paragraphs, keep the lines together and disable auto-hyphenation.


“jdk-14.0.1.jdk” is damaged and can’t be opened - when installing JMC / JFR afterwards I get the above message when trying to run my JDK. I installed it last week and it works fine during the day. I then Shutdown my laptop and when I re-start it the next day I get this message when I try running my Java application or when I try java -version from the Terminal window.
My macOs is, macOS 10.15.4 (19E287) - Catalina
I have other versions of the Java JDK installed on my laptop and haven't had any problems previously with those....so am a bit confused why I am getting this now.
One thing I should mention is that after I have untar'd the JDK download I then untar the JMC-7 package (Java Mission Control), jmc-7.0.1+01_osx-x64_bin/JDK Mission Control.app into the /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk-14.0.1.jdk/Contents/Home directory..... I am not sure if this maybe part of the issue ?
From exchanging some comments on a similar issue se-372017 I wonder if Apple OS notices the change to the JDK directory and thinks its maybe some malicious behaviour... how to tell macOs that its ok to ignore this check ?
Has anyone else seen this issue and has a fix for it ?
I could rm the JDK directory and re-untar the downloaded package again but I dont want to have to do this everyday !

I think the problem might be that after I've installed the JDK I then go ahead and unzip (untar) the JFR (including JMC) package into a sub-directory of the JDK. I think that macOS detects that there has been a change and tries to protect you incase its a malicious virus attack.
I tried installing the JFR in a separate directory and then initially I got the same message when trying to run it. But then I found a post which suggested going into the macOS> System Preferences - Security & Privacy screen and there was a message asking if I wanted to give permission for this application (Java Mission Control) to run. I did and its worked fine since.


MacBook Pro (15" mid-2010) crashes upon waking up from sleep sometimes I have this MacBook for quite a while now. It's been working just fine with the exception of sleep/wake-up issues. Sometimes there's no problem at all, but occasionally it does not.

For instance, I woke up the machine after it slept all night. Everything seemed to work for a while (~1m). I had an external monitor plugged in - shortly after unplugging it (but not immediately, ~30s), the main screen's video gets scrambled followed by an automatic restart.

Update: What factors might contribute to this problem? I put the computer at the capable hands of my Apple Premium Reseller and came back empty handed not once but twice thus far as they have been unable to reproduce this problem.

Now, I know I'm not dreaming this problem and have videos to show exactly what happens. What other factors might play into this problem?

Logs:

30/12/11 6:37:40.000 AM kernel: nstat_lookup_entry failed: 2
30/12/11 6:38:03.000 AM kernel: MacAuthEvent en1   Auth result for: 00:19:e3:fc:03:cf  MAC AUTH succeeded
30/12/11 6:38:03.000 AM kernel: wlEvent: en1 en1 Link UP
30/12/11 6:38:04.000 AM kernel: AirPort: RSN handshake complete on en1
30/12/11 6:38:04.000 AM kernel: en1: BSSID changed to 00:19:e3:fc:03:cf
30/12/11 6:38:05.862 AM com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
30/12/11 6:38:06.086 AM com.apple.backupd: Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target
30/12/11 6:38:06.000 AM kernel: nspace-handler-set-snapshot-time: 1325219888
30/12/11 6:38:16.098 AM com.apple.backupd: Backup failed with error: 19
30/12/11 6:38:19.000 AM kernel: 0        0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed
30/12/11 6:38:19.000 AM kernel: 0        0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed
It was booted back up here -> 30/12/11 6:39:06.000 AM bootlog: BOOT_TIME 1325219946 0

I tried using gfxCardStatus to switch to the integrated Intel and it seems to run smoothly. Conversely, I tried running it with the nvidia and looks stable right now. It's a bit difficult to reproduce this crash as it doesn't happen consistently. I already attempted to reset power management (Cmd-Opt-Shift power button).

What should I do next?

Had a similar situation with a mid-2010 MBP. Sent it to Apple who diagnosed it as a bad logic board, and replaced it.

Suggest you bring it to an Apple Store or an Apple Authorized Service Center. Good luck.


Is there a way to create APFS snapshots on external drives? There are many guides explaining how to create and manage snapshots on APFS via tmutil, but all of these seem to only work within the framework of Time Machine local snapshots.

Is there any way to create an APFS snapshot on an external drive that is neither a backup target for Time Machine, nor itself included in a backup?

My scenario is that I'm using an external, APFS-formatted drive for iOS device backups. I would like to be able to keep multiple versions of these without duplicating most files by manually copying the backup directory.

Currently I use copy-on-write duplicates as an alternative, but these take a long time to create due to the high number of files and directories; I assume snapshots would anchor the copy at a higher level of the file system and be considerably faster.)

I would like to figure out how to do this as well, but have yet to figure out how to do it either. I'm sure it has to be possible somehow because Carbon Copy Cloner can manage snapshots on external drives that you use as backup targets. If CCC can do it, then there must be a way. Until we figure out how to do it manually though, I let CCC do it.

You can't tell it to make a snapshot directly, you have to set up a backup task and let it run, but you should be able to get it to work for you. I got it to create snapshots for me by setting up a backup task with an empty folder as the source and by setting it to leave the existing contents of the target drive alone. That way it does nothing to the drive but still makes the snapshot (it makes one on the target drive before and after each backup).

Once you have a backup scheme that works for you, you can schedule tasks to run on a schedule, after certain events, or manually. You can even chain tasks together so one runs right after the last, so you don't have to guess how long one will take before the next should start (say one is set to 12:00 and the next at 1:00 - either the one will run long and two will be going at once, or it will run short and you'll have unnecessary down time). I love it.

If you haven't already, I would definitely suggest you try it out. I've been using CCC to keep backups up my computer for years now. It is an amazing backup program and they keep adding great new features and tweaking old ones to make them better. Very worth the $40 (I think $30 for students and teachers) and they have a 30-day, full feature trial. You could try it out to see it can do what you are looking for.

Bonus. Here is an article about using snapshots with CCC, and here is another about APFS and CCC.


MacBook display backlight doesn't turn on after waking from sleep I have a 2009 white MacBook that doesn't seem to be waking from sleep properly. I close the lid at night to put it in sleep mode, and when I open it the next day, the display backlight doesn't turn on – I just get a black screen.

I know the computer itself is powered on because I can hear the fans running, and I know it's not in sleep mode because the sleep indicator light turns off when I open the lid. It's exactly as if you lowered the brightness to 0.

I tried adjusting the brightness, hitting all sorts of keys, etc. and nothing gets the display to come back – so I've resorted to holding the power key to force it off, then booting it back up.

Is there anything I can do, or is this a hardware failure? Surprised as the machine is only 3 years old (though it's my employer's, not mine!).

UPDATE: I have an external monitor hooked up to the MacBook, and when the MacBook's display fails to turn back on after waking from sleep, the external monitor also doesn't display anything – just the default "no signal" message that appears when the monitor is on but not plugged into a computer.

If this were an issue with the MacBook's internal display cable (as it seemed like it was), would that also prevent the external monitor from displaying anything?

Make sure you are using the laptop with the correct model magsafe charger - if you use a different model's charger, eg a 15 inch 85 watt charger or such, it can cause this problem to occur. A reset of the PRAM would normally cure the problem temporarily.


Storage, what percentage to leave free? Flash memory and SSD controllers are reported to spend more time running wear-leveling and/or anti-fragmentation garbage collection algorithms when their storage is near full.

People have reported that clearing some free space on their near full SSD storage, and leaving their iMac or MacBook running overnight (to do something like wear-leveling or storage block garbage collection) increased storage speed/bandwidth performance significantly.  Similar things are reported to occur involving UI lag on iOS devices that have almost completely full flash storage.

So, is there a recommended percentage of free space to leave on the SSD on a Mac, or the flash storage on an iOS device, to avoid having these algorithms kick in and possibly affect storage speed or read/write performance.

I read that things slow down when it is less than 20% free on a SSD or HDD on a Mac. I noticed my read/write speed seemed to improve when I freed up some space to get near the 20%.  I don't know about IOS devices but 20% seems reasonable there as well.


How do I remove the “video” flag from a transcoded .m4a file? I transcoded a bunch of music videos downloaded for free from the iTunes Store to audio only .m4as in the Finder, following the hint at http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/16/convert-video-to-audio-mac-os-x-lion/. After adding the audio files to my iTunes library, they still show the video icon in the library list, and the media kind in the Get Info panel says “Music Video”, with no way to change it to just “Music” like other .m4a files. How can I force these files to be recognized as simple music files?

You should be able to use subler to do that. Just open the file, go to other settings and you can set the media kind to "normal".

https://subler.org/


Can I put a Time Machine backup hard drive directly into a MacBook? My original hard drive in my MacBook Pro is 250 GB. I used Time Machine to backup that original hard drive onto a 500 GB hard drive.

This might be a stupid stupid question but can I substitute the cloned 500 GB hard drive into my MacBook Pro? Will it function as the original hard drive did, that is to say will it boot up into Mac OS X Lion and be fully functional or can it only be used as a backup?

No, you cannot. Your Time Machine backup isn't a real clone of your hard drive — it's a time-based collection of all the files on your hard drive.

It's a little intensive to do this process, so proceed with caution if you follow the steps below. Read through them — if you feel uncomfortable with any of the steps, feel free to read up on anything you're not comfortable with or hire a friend or professional who is more familiar with this kind of stuff.

If you know that the 500GB hard drive will actually fit in your computer (i.e. your current internal hard drive and the one you want to replace it with are both 2.5"), then you can put it in. If you have another external hard drive you can use temporarily, you can switch them out without losing your backups; if you only have the 500GB external hard drive, you can do still do it, but you'll lose your old backups.

I would do the following steps:

Create a bootable MacOS USB drive
Shut down your computer and replace the internal hard drive with the 500GB hard drive
Wipe the 500GB hard disk and reinstall MacOS using the MacOS USB drive
On first boot during the initial setup process, select the option to restore from another computer hard drive
After that is done, you are free to wipe the 250GB hard drive and use it for your future Time Machine backups


Late 2008 Unibody Mac Book - SSD Integral SATA lll Install I am trying to install a new SSD Integral hard drive in to my late 2008 unibody MacBook  but all I get when I use the command R combination is a flashing question mark in a file.

Does anyone know what the problem is or what that symbol means?

The Command-R reinstalls macOS from a built-in Recovery partition your new SSD does not contain.

To update over the Internet, use Option-Command-R.

More information about using the recovery system at this Apple Support Page


Can you disable toolbar by default in Finder? In Yosemite, opening folders in a new window by default is extremely difficult.
You can press CMD as you click (not optimal) or right-click/option-click the folder to open in a new window (not optimal).

The solution that seems to work best for me is to hide the toolbar whenever I open / create a new folder, because folders inside windows that do not have a toolbar will always open in a new window.

But the toolbar always reappears whenever I create a new folder.

So, ideally, I would love to have it ALWAYS hidden by default, and on rare occasions when I need it (to look at external drives, or drag an item into the application folder for example), I would shortcut-make it appear, ta-daam.

This should work:

Close all open Finder windows
Open a New Finder window and arrange it to your liking.
From the Menu select View then Show View Options ⌘+J
Click the Use as Defaults button at the bottom.

Toolbar
Also, the View Menu shows many shortcuts to toggle view options.


Cannot create new user in Single-user mode I try to create new user using the following commands:

/sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -uw /
launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist
dscl . -create /Users/username

But after the last command I get the error /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServicesLocal.plist: No such file or directory. Actually, I get it on every launch of dscl command, even without any arguments. How can I fix it?

It turned out that this error can be just ignored, because the user is properly created anyway.


weird problem : whenever I copy songs from my computer to my iphone it misses the first 30 seconds? Anyone experience this problem? It all of a sudden started happening for me.

When I download podcasts from my iphone, it seems to be fine, but when I download from my computer whether its songs or podcasts, it'll copy the song, but it'll be missing the first 30 seconds and last 10 or so seconds - sometimes it'll skip to different places during the song. Is there anything I can do about this?

I have a iphone 3gs version 4.2.1, jailbroken with greenpoison.

ZoneAlarm, and other firewalls, may occasionally interfere with the syncing process.  Turn off the firewall during sync to see if it's the problem.  If it syncs well after that, contact your firewall provider and ask for the proper setting so you don't have to disable it every time you want to sync.

Also, iOS 5.x can sync wirelessly, which may resolve the problem.


Cronjob macOS does not work if set with a bash external script I'm trying to create a new cronjob which launches a script every time at startup. If I do cronjob -e and then I insert for example @reboot bash /Users/user/script.sh and then I save everything is fine:
crontab: no crontab for user - using an empty one
crontab: installing new crontab

If I reboot my mac the script gets executed successfully. What I'm attempting to do is to create a cronjob with a bash script just like this:
var=$(crontab -l 2> /dev/null);
value=$(echo $?);
script='@reboot bash /Users/user/myscript.sh';

if [[ $value = 0 ]];
then
    printf "$var \n$script" |crontab -;
else
    printf "$script" | crontab -;
fi

It seems to work because if I do crontab -l I find my script @reboot bash /Users/user/myscript.sh but after restarting the Mac, the script does not get executed. Any ideas why it is not working, and how can I get it to run?

There is no need to check whether there currently is a crontab installed or not. Just run
(crontab -l 2>/dev/null; echo '@reboot bash /Users/user/myscript.sh') | crontab -

to add the @reboot line to your crontab (or create a new one).


How to change the color of Exchange's shared calendar in iCal in 10.10? I've been in trouble for some days with the Exchange services on our Apple ecosystem. Right now, I want to change the color of the shared exchange calendars. Changing the color of the local calendar works, same for iCloud ones, and same for my own calendar. See screenshot below. System is in french as you can see…

BUT it doesnt work the same for the shared calendar. Here is when I right clic the calendar :

FYI when I right clic the name of the person above the calendar (on the screenshot it's behind the red rectangle) it just says something like (sorry for the translation) : open the delegate in a new window.

And then, once I clicked "read the informations", this is what I get. A great greyed selector :

Of course when I click the color selector nothing happens. And when I click the "informations on the account" I get the account window, the one you get when you click in the menu on calendar > accounts.

Well, does anyone have an idea to change these damn colors ? I googled the thing but didn't find any consistent thing.

PS: there is a quite similar topic here on StackExchange but it doesn work for me since every shared calendar have the same name (and as you saw the calendar name is greyed too so it can't be changed).

THANKS !!

I too had the same problem with our Office 365 Shared Calendars, but because these aren't user accounts there was no way for the owner to change the colour as there is no owner on these kinds of calendar. I eventually figured out a way of changing the colours which I've created a tutorial for here on my blog: http://matt-stone.co.uk/change-colours-microsoft-office-365-shared-calendars-apple-calendar-os-x/


Is there a Safari Extension for adding Mail-style Data Detectors to Web Pages? I love the Data Detectors in Apple Mail. Open a message that has a date or time in the content, and creating a new Calendar event is a snap. But this feature is not in Safari, so I'm wondering if there is a way to get it in there? An extension perhaps?

There is the HTML <address>-Tag and hCard, which are supported by Safari and are used for semantic data. Unfortunately, there is no data detector in Safari for those standards.

There is a workaround, until those detectors are implemented, by using "Mail Contents of This Page" from the File menu.


How to move my iBooks library from one mac to another? I have a lot of books in my iBooks Library. They are not purchased from iBooks Store so it is impossible to do it automatically via iCloud. What should I do? Some backup? How? Maybe should I copy one file and then move it from one computer to another. Is there any way?

I couldn't figure out where exactly iBooks stores imported books but I found out something else that might help you.

Select all books you want to backup and then drag them out of iBooks onto a Finder window and they sould be copied over.

I am not sure but it seems unlikely, that your reading progress and/or bookmarks are being copied as well. If you don't mind that, than this would do the trick.

Otherwise someone else might be able to locate the folder where iBooks stores the books. I found this answer to that question but on my Mac it didn't seem to be correct: Link


Does Power Nap sync Safari bookmarks and browsing history? By what I could read in article
How Power Nap works on your Mac
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/ht204032

Power nap seems not to sync Safari bookmarks nor browsing history, at least it's not mentioned in the list of dos.  Anyone can confirm if this is the case?

I did a little test: bookmarks where synced, Safari history was not.
The test: I slept my Mac mini.  visited a couple websites in my iPhone + added two bookmarks on two other websites.  In the morning, I disconnected the Mac from the network, awoke it and saw that:  Bookmarks had been synced.  Safari history wasn't.


Parallels creates /Users/Shared/Parallels on boot, blocks ZFS /Users from mounting Does anyone know why Parallels creates /Users/Shared/parallels on boot? Or what creates it?

I have a ZFS volumes for /Users. However, since installing Parallels 7 I've found that the ZFS volume can't mount because earlier in the boot process Parallels have already put an empty Shared/Parallels/backups directory into /Users.

Any way to disable this, or delay it til after ZFS mounts would be great.

At the moment I have to log into a console, use a spare admin user to remove /Users, then zfs mount my /Users. All very irritating.

There are several system LaunchAgents for Parallels, but not very descriptive.

OS: 10.8.2
Parallels: updated Parallels 7.
ZFS: ZFS Community Edition

Updates for Graham:

alex@smiley:~|⇒  ls -lrt /Library/LaunchAgents/*ara*
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  797 Sep  3 16:12 /Library/LaunchAgents/com.parallels.vm.prl_pcproxy.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  565 Sep  3 16:13 /Library/LaunchAgents/com.parallels.desktop.launch.plist
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  721 Sep  3 16:13 /Library/LaunchAgents/com.parallels.DesktopControlAgent.plist
alex@smiley:~|⇒  sudo launchctl list | grep arallel
228 -   com.parallels.vm.prl_naptd
78  -   com.parallels.desktop.launchdaemon
alex@smiley:~|⇒  kextstat | grep arallel
  111    0 0xffffff7f8241f000 0x7000     0x7000     com.parallels.kext.prl_usb_connect (7.0 15107.796624) <39 7 5 4 3 1>
  112    1 0xffffff7f82426000 0x5c000    0x5c000    com.parallels.kext.prl_hypervisor (7.0 15107.796624) <10 9 7 5 4 3 1>
  113    0 0xffffff7f82482000 0x4000     0x4000     com.parallels.kext.prl_hid_hook (7.0 15107.796624) <7 5 4 3 1>
  114    0 0xffffff7f82486000 0xc000     0xc000     com.parallels.kext.prl_netbridge (7.0 15107.796624) <112 5 4 3 1>
  115    0 0xffffff7f82492000 0x4000     0x4000     com.parallels.kext.prl_vnic (7.0 15107.796624) <35 5 4 3 1>

Looks like DesktopControlAgent isn't loaded.

Following Graham's pointer to wait4path I updated  com.parallels.desktop.launchdaemon.plist in /Library/LaunchDaemons to:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/bin/bash</string>
    <string>-c</string>
    <string>wait4path /Users/Shared/Parallels &amp;&amp; /Library/Parallels/Parallels\ Service.app/Contents/Resources/ParallelsDispatcherService start</string>
</array>

That seems to have fixed it. At least, Parallels still runs, and the computer loads properly at start-up.

List output is this:

alex@smiley:~|⇒  sudo launchctl list com.parallels.desktop.launchdaemon
Password:
{
    "Label" = "com.parallels.desktop.launchdaemon";
    "LimitLoadToSessionType" = "System";
    "OnDemand" = true;
    "LastExitStatus" = 0;
    "PID" = 88;
    "TimeOut" = 30;
    "ProgramArguments" = (
        "/bin/bash";
        "-c";
        "wait4path /Users/Shared/Parallels && /Library/Parallels/Parallels\ Service.app/Contents/Resources/ParallelsDispatcherService start";
    );

Not sure if there's a cleaner way of doing the plist.

Two commands to discover more about the two loaded items:

sudo launchctl list com.parallels.vm.prl_naptd

sudo launchctl list com.parallels.desktop.launchdaemon

I can't guess the meaning of prl_naptd but http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22com.parallels.vm.prl_naptd%22+%22addPaths%22 suggests some relationship between com.parallels.vm.prl_naptd and addPaths so maybe focus attention on this launch agent.

An early guess: a workaround might involve wait4path

wait4path(1) OS X Manual Page


Audible alarm for iPod Touch low battery I'd like my iPod Touch to play an alarm sound whenever the battery is low (for example, 10% power remaining). Is it possible to do this?

Unfortunately not. The battery warnings are fixed system behaviour, and not configurable by the user currently.