Accessing an Apache server installed in VirtualBox from Mac I want to install a linux debian in virtual box and on debian an apache webserver. After this, I'd like to access it form my mac via browser like http://myvirtualbox:80/myfolder. The goal is to "dry" test the apache configuration before performing it on a live debian server... is this setting possible and if so, how?

UPDATE: After choosing "Internal" I tried to determine the IP-address...

root@straubedebian:~# ip addr eth0
Command "eth0" is unknown, try "ip addr help".
root@straubedebian:~# ip addr
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000
    link/ether 08:00:27:37:f8:b2 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet6 fe80::a00:27ff:fe37:f8b2/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: pan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN
    link/ether f2:cf:03:a1:c0:99 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
root@straubedebian:~# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  Hardware Adresse 08:00:27:37:f8:b2
          inet6-Adresse: fe80::a00:27ff:fe37:f8b2/64 Gültigkeitsbereich:Verbindung
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metrik:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:25 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          Kollisionen:0 Sendewarteschlangenlänge:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:5069 (4.9 KiB)

lo        Link encap:Lokale Schleife
          inet Adresse:127.0.0.1  Maske:255.0.0.0
          inet6-Adresse: ::1/128 Gültigkeitsbereich:Maschine
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metrik:1
          RX packets:753 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:753 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          Kollisionen:0 Sendewarteschlangenlänge:0
          RX bytes:59097 (57.7 KiB)  TX bytes:59097 (57.7 KiB)

There's no ip address I can use :-)

After that I switched to "Host-only" and again no ip-address:

root@straubedebian:~# ip addr
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000
    link/ether 08:00:27:37:f8:b2 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet6 fe80::a00:27ff:fe37:f8b2/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: pan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN
    link/ether f2:cf:03:a1:c0:99 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

Is this a debian issue or a misconfiguration in VirtualBox?

Set up Host-Only, Internal or Bridged Networking. Whenever you change the virtual machine's network configuration you need to inform the operating system within that virtual machine of that change. The easiest way is to simply reboot the virtual machine.
Look up the virtual machine's IP-Adress using ip addr eth0.
Verify basic connectivity using ping <ip-address from previous step> from your mac's terminal.
Edit your mac's /etc/hosts using sudo vim /etc/hosts (or use an editor like text mate that can elevate privileges by itself). Add a line that looks like this: <ip-address as above> myvirtualbox anothername yetanothername

A more powerful approach, albeit maybe only for a more console-savvy audience is Vagrant.


Amazon FireTV without WiFi, MacBook Pro Internet sharing I've been struggling for a while on this, strange set of circumstances.
I have a Amazon FireTV box that I cannot connect as university wireless does not support it.

I'm looking for a way to set up Internet from my MacBook pro (the uni WiFi won't allow Internet sharing however - and no Ethernet in my room!).
The only way i've found is to share my iPhone's 4G but I don't want to do that because of data usage.

Any way I can fix this?

I have an iPhone, iPad, Macbook Pro, HDMI cables, USB cables but not WiFi that I'm allowed to share!

Anything I can buy to make this work?

Short answer:  Not without getting you in hot water with your school/university.

Technically speaking, you could have a setup that consisted of:

a WiFi router with a network specifically for your dorm room
Ethernet from router to MacBook
MacBook connected to Uni WiFi
Internet sharing routed from Ethernet on MacBook to MacBook WiFi

Would that work?  Yes, your Amazon FireTV would connect to your dorm room WiFi that you create and traffic would be routed through Ethernet, through your Mac, to the Uni WiFi and out to the University's network.

Should you do this?

Absolutley not.

They can detect your WiFi network
The "enterprise grade" networking gear can detect that you are sharing the network connection
The traffic shaper firewall/appliance they are probably using will detect your (prohibited) network traffic

The key here to remember is:

Their network = their rules.

You can/will be discovered and your university "career" (IMO) isn't worth the risk.


Favorites disappears from sidebar in Finder Running Mountain Lion 10.8.3 I find that after a recent reboot my Favorites have all disappeared from the sidebar in Finder.

Finder > Preferences > Sidebar shows a number of boxes against Favorite folders, but these can not be selected

Hold together Option+Command+esc and then relaunch "Finder" that will solve your problem instantly.  If the problem persists, please try reinstall Mac OS X by Command+R after rebooting.


Can Apple update the firmware on a Made for iPod device using the iPhone? I have a Phillips alarm clock with iPod dock and an iPhone 4. When I got the iPhone 4 first, when i docked it with the alaram clock, i got an message on the screen of the iPhone saying that "This accessory is not designed to work with the iPhone and may cause interference", but after the upgrade to iOS5, this message does not occur. I did notice with iOS4 that interference would happen when playing music on the iPhone, but now it does  not seem to happen...

And it started to make me think: How did my device "learn" to play nicely with the iPhone 4? Was it the iPhone that was tweaked? and either way, can Apple push down updates to these devices? I know thats a lot of devices, but could it happen?

The accessory has to meet very strict design requirements from Apple to connect on the 30Pin connector. And the approval requires to work with the latest version of iOS. Due to this, the earlier versions of iOS may give you some error messages in some conditions.

Not having seen your accessory, I would take a guess it would be due to the resistors that are connected to the USB D+/D- lines if it is only a charge only device (or) the authentication chip would be the latest version 2C


How to block certain IP/Mac Addresses from accessing my AirPort on my 2009 iMac? I have a 2009  iMac running OS X 10.6.8. I would like to filter certain IP/MAC addresses from accessing my WiFi via "Internet Sharing". I have already set a password, but I would still like to filter specific IP/MAC addresses.

Is this possible on my iMac with 10.6.8 ?

Apparently it's possible to enable MAC filtering using the Internet Sharing feature in Snow Leopard.

Here is an extended description how to do it and at the same time overcome some flaws of the sharing implementation of SL.

Essentially you have to add an additional key/array in the /etc/bootpd.plist containing the MAC as string:

    ....
    <key>allow</key>
    <array>
            <string>0:17:43:a3:2d:45</string>
    </array>
    ...

Probably the opposite: deny/MAC-address works as well.

Please check the whole article and implement the respective modifications.


Migration Assistant Failing I'm trying to transfer my information from a mid-2012 Macbook Pro Retina running the latest version of Yosemite (10.10.3). The new machine is a 2015 Retina also running Yosemite.

The first time round I tried doing this via a Thunderbolt cable. The donor machine was booted into target mode, and on the recipient machine I started up the Migration Assistant and followed all the instructions. When the time remaining bar got down to about a minute, it started to creep back up.

It kept going and going. I left it for an hour and a half (bearing in mind the transfer up until then had taken 20 minutes). It had reached about 17 hours by the time I decided to give up.

I then formatted the drive and reinstalled Yosemite via the Internet. So starting with a clean state I tried again with method 2 which was via a Timemachine backup. This had exactly the same effect. I'm going to leave it overnight in vein hope that something might happen, however I thought that I might as well ask on here to see if there are any suggestions.

This is similar to another question, New Mac Pro: Setup/Migration Assistant never finishes, and one piece of advice from that is that I should just boot into target mode and manually copy files over. I may well end up doing that, although obviously I don't want to miss anything.

I'd have taken both machines up to 10.10.4 first using the combo updater - as it specifically includes fixes for Migration Assistant.

Then I'd have followed the instructions rather than try it in target disk mode - you need to be running Migration Assistant on both machines, as you must authorise on both.

I've successfully migrated two machines in the past month, one from 10.10.4 to 10.10.4  ...the other from Windows XP… & if it can do that, it can do anything ;-)


Compressed archive in Lion creates a root-level "Archive" folder in .zip file I'm trying to compress 5 files into an Archive.zip

Selecting the 5 files and using Finder's built in Compress feature, the resulting Archive.zip contains a root level folder name "Archive", which in turn contains those 5 files.

How do I create an Archive.zip that unzips those 5 files without any containing folder?

The resulting Archive.zip does not contain a root level folder name "Archive". It's only when you uncompress it by double-clicking that this folder is created. To confirm, try unzip -tv Archive.zip. So it's Archive Utility that is creating this folder when you uncompress.


How to uninstall Jetbrains IDE? When news version of Jetbrains IDE is installed previous version does not remove automatically. And currently there are no option (i.e. checkbox) to uninstall old version while installing.

How can one completely uninstall Jetbrains IDE (like IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, RubyMine, PhpStorm, CLion, AppCode, Rider, Data Grip etc.) in OS X?

Move the .app file to the Trash, then manually delete the support folders listed in this IntelliJ support article:

~/Library/Preferences/[PRODUCT][VERSION]
~/Library/Caches/[PRODUCT][VERSION]
~/Library/Application Support/[PRODUCT][VERSION]
~/Library/Logs/[PRODUCT][VERSION]


How do I simulate a bad Wi-Fi connection on my iPad? I'm testing an iPad application that requires an Internet connection. I'd want to simulate a situation when the connection isn't stable and can be suddenly lossed. If it's possible I'd want to control this process and "hit a button" that will abort the connection for a couple of seconds. I'd want to abort/resume connection quickly to test that app will resume it in case of connection abort.

How can I simulate non-stable Internet connection?

I know that it's possible to just turn Wi-Fi off on iPad but will it be the same for application as abortness of connection because of other reasons?

There are a few ways you can do this, depending on your situation:

Move further away from your router. While this may seem a bit obvious, I realize that it isn't always possible while testing/debugging (for example, if you are working on a desktop computer).
Put aluminum foil around the router and/or antenna. This will (partially) block some or all of the radio signals by creating a makeshift Faraday cage. The results you get will depend on the strength of your router signal, distance from the router, and other environmental factors.
Set your router's wireless signal power to a lower setting. The method for doing this is different for each router, so you will have to look at the user guide for instructions on how to do this.

I hope this helps solve your problems!

EDIT:

Another thing I just thought about would be to make your SSID hidden. iDevices are known to have problems reconnecting to hidden networks, and you might be able to programmatically disconnect from the network at random intervals.


Is there a forward delete on the iPad? Using the screen keyboard on iPad, is their a way to delete the character after the cursor?  That is, behavior like the Windows delete key?

I am aware that the convention is to use Fn+delete on Macs.  If there is no such convention on iPad, it might be nice to use shift+delete.

Sorry, but no.  This only works on the iPad if you are using an external Bluetooth keyboard.


How to turn off repeated prompts to sign in to itunes store from Apple ID that is not mine on iPhone I keep getting repeated prompts, everytime I switch on wifi or connect to LTE I get a message that says:

Enter the password for your Apple ID: misshammertime@yeah.net

This is not my AppleID and never was. Nobody has used my phone to sign in with that id

I cancel and I get another prompt for a different Apple ID.
Ive tried the following things, none of which worked

Signing out of iTunes on iOS
Unsyncing all music from iOS
Removing all pirated music from iTunes on Mac and resyncing to iOS.
Turning off cellular data in iTunes & App Store in iOS.

It keeps coming back and prompting nomatter what I try. What else can I do?

iOS: 12.1

iPhone: Xs

I tried several things for weeks to fix this. Sadly, the only thing that worked was restoring my phone from iCloud backup.


How can I prevent Excel from opening recovered files? I unfortunately tried to open a few Excel files that have huge amounts of data. After 20 minutes they were not opened yet, so I did a force quit.

The problem now is that when I launch Excel, the program wants to open all the files that were opening when I did the force quit, which hangs Excel and brings me back to where I was. Arghh!

I tried logging out and then in again but it didn't help. Something somewhere remembers everything.

What can I do?

You are probably dealing with an AutoRecover issue. The Office programs will try to reopen documents that are open when the programs crash (a Force Quit is essentially a crash to the programs).
This link explains what's going on and how to recover from the problem. To quote the relevant part:

AutoRecover saves files in the ~:Documents:Microsoft User Data:Office 2008 AutoRecovery folder. These files are hidden, and their file names starts with ~ar.
You can see hidden files if you navigate to the folder above in Finder, type ⌘F, and choose FIle Invisible from the Kind dropdown - if that's not an option, choose Other..., and check the  File Invisible checkbox - and set it to Invisible.

Try making the hidden files visible, then moving them to the Desktop, then start Excel. Of course, if you're using Office 2004 or Office 2011, they will have their own AutoRecovery folders.


Can Firewire 800 network interfaces be bonded? I've got a few 2009 and 2010 Mac Pros and realized that the Firewire 800 ports are just sitting there going to waste.  I currently use 2 bonded ethernet ports on an additional card to facilitate some faster speeds between two of my workstations that need faster data transfer, but 2 Firewire 800 ports bonded with networking enabled could proffer several times more performance increase.

Can FW800 with networking enabled be bonded like a standard network interface in macOS 10.13?

So decided to test this with an extra workstation. I was able to assign static IP addresses to both FireWire ports (the first port was active right off the bat, but I had to add the 2nd one).  Both ports can talk in each direction to each workstation on the local isolated subnet.  But when I go to create a bond, the interfaces are not listed when I go into "Manage Virtual Interfaces."  "New Link Aggregate" only shows ethernet devices - NO FIREWIRE devices.

One thing that I did find out was that 1 FireWire 800 network interface is slightly faster than 2 1 gigabit interfaces bonded.  I was seeing about a +15 MBps down & +3 MBps up differential pretty consistently

The next thing I need to try to figure out is whether or not there's a way to force an aggregate bond from the shell in Terminal.

UPDATE: So I think I'm close to solving this, but I'm now having a problem where my FW800 ports have stopped functioning on one system and I have a bug report in to Apple right now in hopes to resolve it.  As per my above link, I now think I can perform this on the shell (sudo networkSetup createBond bond0 interface1 interface2)... IF it allows me to, but I can't test until I resolve this other issue.


How can I make a 3G video call (not Facetime) from an iPhone 4 to another brand's 3G phone? How can I make a 3G video call (not Facetime) from an iPhone 4 to another brand's 3G phone? Is it possible by default? or any apps?

Edit 11 November:

I just found this today: No 3G video calling on iPhone 4

Yes, you can use Skype for that, if the app allows 3G video-chat. Skype is available for a lot of platforms. When you are at home, you can also use Skype on your computer so you don't have to use your (probably limited) 3G network.


Is there a way to disable update notifications in Mojave? Short of killing all notifications, is there a way to stop "Updates Available" notifications from showing up, for app and system updates?

I already have "Automatically keep my Mac up to date" unchecked in Sys Prefs > Software Update
Everything in "Advanced..." there is unchecked
App Store > Prefs > Automatic Updates is unchecked

To head off any frame challenges, yes, I do perform regular manual updates, but when it doesn't interrupt my work. No, I will not tolerate automatic updates, and it doesn't matter why.  Maybe I need a stable setup for development, video rendering, or I just don't like to be bothered with notifications about something that may require a restart, shutdown of critical apps, or any interruption to my work flow.

If you want to disable updates for specific apps, you can use softwareupdate --ignore.

Do all the following in Terminal

Start with

softwareupdate -l

to list all available updates,

defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist

to find the Identifier of the app you want to ignore, and then

softwareupdate --ignore 'Identifier'

to ignore the update. Should disappear from Software Updates in System Preferences immediately.


Disk Utility Disk Verification I ran the "Verify Disk" tool in disk utility on my main disk called Macintosh HD, and it came up with this log:

Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking storage systemChecking volume.
disk0s2: Scan for Volume Headers
disk0s2: Scan for Disk Labels
Logical Volume Group 4D3DFAA4-7124-4F3F-A19D-D06A1784AB17 spans 1 device
Logical Volume Group has a 16 MB Metadata Volume with double redundancy
Start scanning metadata for a valid checkpoint
Load and verify Segment Headers
Load and verify Checkpoint Payload
Load and verify Transaction Segment
Load and verify Transaction Segment
Incorporate 1 newer non-checkpoint transactions
Load and verify Virtual Address Table
Load and verify Segment Usage Table
Load and verify Metadata Superblock
Load and verify Logical Volumes B-Trees
Logical Volume Group contains 1 Logical Volumes
Load and verify E7324686-925A-48BF-8150-A982F1572F20
Load and verify 82E44F05-FEF5-49A9-B3C6-1911EE30BB49
Load and verify Freespace Summary
Load and verify Block Accounting
Load and verify Segment Cleaning
Newest transaction commit checkpoint is valid
The volume 4D3DFAA4-7124-4F3F-A19D-D06A1784AB17 appears to be OK.
Checking file systemPerforming live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
**Volume bitmap needs minor repair for orphaned blocks**
Checking volume information.
**Invalid volume free block count**
(It should be 85129597 instead of 81974060)
**The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD. Restart your computer,                 holding down the Command key and the R key until you see the Apple logo. When the Mac OS X Utilities window appears, choose Disk Utility.**

Do I need to follow the instructions at the bottom of the log? Is it necessary or can I forgo it? Thanks

It's not absolutely required, but I'd say it's strongly recommended.  The type of volume corruption it reported isn't as serious as most other types, but my recommendation is the same: don't mess around, fix it now.


What is Spotlight on iPad – where are Spotlight icons displayed? I'm developing a Universal iOS game with Xcode and I have to supply 3 images for icons.

An icon image for the home screen (app).
An icon image for iPad in Settings.
An icon image for iPad Spotlight.

I am wondering what "Spotlight" actually is (and where I can access Spotlight on my iPad), so I can work out where the icon will be displayed.

Spotlight is the search function in iOS.

It can be accessed from the Home screen by swiping down.

From Apple Support:

  Use Search on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
  With iOS 9, Search lets you look for content from the web, your contacts, apps, nearby places, and more. Powered by Siri, Search offers suggestions and updates results as you type.

  There are two ways to use Search on your iOS device.

  Quick Search

  Drag down from the middle of the Home screen and type what you're looking for.

  Siri Suggestions

  Drag right from the Home screen to show search and get Siri Suggestions.


Keyboard marks on MacBook Pro display This issue starts to annoy me too much, time is passing, I have been changing laptops and the problem persists (didn't have this issue with the old keyboards), therefore wondering if there are any accessories, covers that could help alleviate this problem.

For now, I am using a small piece of cloth but sometimes the lid doesn't close properly, it may not be the best solution but is by far less annoying to see keyboard marks in the display.

I am not an expert on fabrics but would like to know the names or properties to search for something thin and absorbent that could help also eventually to clean the display.

Any ideas, products, etc.?

Not an expert on fabrics either, but you can look for a thin microfibre cleaning cloth, similar to the one bundled by Apple with new Macs.

I am not sure if Apple is still bundling it with current generation of Macs.


Map gestures to mouse buttons I do like the mac mouse. touch sensitivity is nice. But the precision and number of buttons on my gaming mouse is much better. It seems to work on the mac just fine, but only left/right click and scroll works.

Is there a way to map swipe gestures to different buttons on the mouse? For exampe if have a main button on either side of the mouse, that when on my pc work as back/forward in a browser. I also have a button mapped to a script that brings up a code editor. Windows+Left/Right go to the previous/next workspace (I primarily use linux actually). So I would like to be able to do similar things on the mac, but a gogole search only brought up mapping gestures to keyboard commands, not the mouse.

BetterTouchTool (free)

I don't have a multi-button mouse to test with, but it should support mapping gestures to arbitrary buttons.


Prevent app from auto-launching upon system startup I have downloaded and installed Sunflower remote control client for macOS. Every time I boot up my Mac, the software launches automatically.

I do not want the app to launch on startup. I looked up under System Preferences → Users & Groups → Login Items, but couldn't find an entry for the app.

How can I prevent the app from launching automatically upon system startup?

Many apps have a checkbox or a pulldown menu in the preferences panes where you can instruct it to launch on login.  Start your app and under the first menu item select preferences (NOT system preferences under the Apple menu item). Look thru all the preferences panels and one should have a designator switch to launch at login.


Disk Utility shows me three hard drives with the same name. How do I find the physical hard drives they refer to? I have to change out the hard drives in Raid 1 array. But all the hard drives have the same name in DiskUtility app because they are all the same type of drives from the same manufacturer.

So how can I find out which drive is failing?

I mean, how can I tell which physical drive is referred to by each DiskUtility drive name?

@Allen, thank you for your interest.
I have a Mac Pro running Mojave that has 4 drive slots. The first slot holds a 1TB Intel Server SSD with the MacOS installed. There are also three 2TB WD 3.5" SATA Drives that were originally configured in a 6TB Raid 5 array.
Disk Util list reveals that the three SATA drives are all the same WD Model number.
One of the SATA Drives in the raid array failed and I took it out of the raid array and mirrored the remaining two drives as a raid 1 array.
Recently, one of the two mirrored drives also 'failed' from the perspective of the raid array.
What I need to do is disconnect both of the 'failed' drives from the raid and copy the data on the remaining SATA drive to an external drive to preserve it and replace the data on a single new SATA Drive, then add two more SATA Drives and re-create a new Raid 5 Array.

So again, my question is: how do I distinguish which physical SATA drive is referred to by the remaining WD drives listed in disk util list is the remaining 'good' drive in the disk util listing that contains my valuable data.

Therefore I believe the question I asked is a proper explanation of the information I am seeking:

how can I tell which physical drive is referred to by each Disk Utility list drive name?

That is, I think the question does not require any information about the drives or their configuration, or their history, or the problems I am having.

Either there is a way for MacOS to tell me which physical drive bay contains which logical drive listed in disk util list, or MacOS has no way of revealing the correspondence between the Logical List of drives in Disk Util and the physical drives attached to the system.

If Mojave cannot tell me which logical drive is which physical drive, then I need to know if there is another utility which will reveal the correspondence.

Does that make sense?
Thanks,
Kimball

The method I use is to grab the serial number from the drive. This information is usually printed by the factory on a label on the physical disk so that it is easy to identify.

Start by ensuring you have HomeBrew installed. Then run the following command to install smartmontools:

brew install smartmontools

Then grab the serial number from the failing drive:

smartctl -a /dev/disk2

This assumes that the failing disk is /dev/disk2 - obviously change that to reflect the disk you have ben reported as failing.

In the output you'll find something like:

Serial Number: C8AF902EAB39

(format varies depending on manufacturer)

You should be able to match that up with the label on the drive.


How to disable auto-adjusting of mic input level in Chrome in Mac OS? Although this question has been addressed at this link, none of the solutions worked for me and they are mostly from several years ago (I tried 3 or 4 of them and left comments too).

The problem I'm having is that the mic input level (in the sound panel of system preferences) keeps decreasing automatically. Each time I reset the audio input level back to 100% my problem is solved. I want to be able to have it just stay put without readjusting.

Here's more detail: I'm using a language learning website that has an interactive feature that allows me to record myself saying a phrase so that it can then check if I've repeated the phrase correctly. But I find that as I'm using this record feature, the input mic level in the system preferences starts to decrease over time. So I end up repeatedly adjusting the mic input level back to 100% and it works well again.

I'm using the Chrome browser on Mac 10.13.6 with a MacBook Pro 2015

If you are using  Audio application (like Skype) or like yours "language learning website that has an interactive feature that allows me to record myself"

you gave them permission to use your audio, otherwise they would not work.

Most of them have audio adjustment within them self (like Skype), so first look for it in your app you are using.

Microphone is used to send something back to the app. In turn it measures the Audio level and sends increase or decrees to your Mac.

Mac is open to those requests (you gave it the permission).

The only way to stop this is revoke the permission, or check what audio setting the app it self has.

Stopping the Auto gain on your Mac would require application specific monitoring and blocking the audio gain adjustments, which could result in the app not working properly since it might not hear you well.

You also have a tool on your Mac that allows for more control and adjustments.

  Applications > Utilities > Audio Midi Setup


Do Mac apps have access to delete files I was just wondering if Mac apps can delete files in ~/documents and ~/desktop without user permission?

Technically speaking, any app running with user privileges can access/modify/delete user files.  This of course, is limited to the owner; meaning an app running as one user cannot interact with files of another user unless the app has "elevated" privileges allowing it to do so.


Airbook - is there key comand to turn my screen luminosity up I turned my luminosity all the way down using the sliding bar, now I cannot see the screen to turn it back up - I know, really dumb - so is there a keyboard way to turn the screen lumins up?

On a MacBook and MacBook Pro F2 increases the brightness of the screen. F1 decreases it.


Renaming documents from within the 'Open' and 'Save As' dialog boxes just like in Windows I'm experienced with Windows, not so much with Mac. I find myself often renaming documents from within the Open and Save As dialog box windows. I hope the description below makes sense to explain what I mean.

If you look carefully you can see the picture below is of the Open dialog box of Microsft Word in Windows.

In the example above, assume I was going to open the document called The Leadership Factor, but before I did this I realized that the filename of the document above was wrong. So I can click on this document (see how its highlighted) and if I want I can now rename it so that it ends with '2017' instead of '2013'. After renaming it, I can then click on the document called The Leadership Factor to open it up.

Can I do the same thing in macOS?

Can I do the same thing in macOS?

Yes and No. Let me explain.

Yes

You can do the same thing from within the Open dialogue window of an application, however it is not done by clicking on the filename to highlight it. Instead, you need to right-click on the filename and select Rename. This then highlights it and you can rename it as you wish.

If my explanation isn't clear, please let me know and I'll upload a couple of screenshots.

No

Unfortunately, macOS does not allow you to rename a document from within the Save As dialogue window. This may actually be a bug because right-clicking on a filename does in fact give you the Rename option, it's just that it doesn't actually allow you to rename the document.

In fact, now that I'm thinking about this, I suggest you send in some feedback to Apple. When you do select Bug Report as your feedback type, and for feedback area select the Desktop/Finder/Filesystem option. I'll do the same, because you either shouldn't be able to select Rename from within the Save As dialogue window, or it should work since you can select it.


Should I be concerned about graphics switching for battery life? I have a 15-inch MBP, Mid-2010, 2.66GHz i7, with Intel integrated graphics and a discrete NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M. Since I installed Lion, it seems my battery life has gone down to just 2 or 3 hours. After reading various things on the internet, I found out about the gfxCardStatus app which I used and noticed my machine is using the discrete graphics card. It appears the following apps are requiring discrete graphics:

the Google Talk plugin (because I keep gmail.com open, even though I'm not signed in to chat)
Twitter for Mac
both Droplr and CloudApp

Should I be concerned about these? Will it affect my battery life if my machine switches to discrete graphics even though these apps may not actively be using it?

And, as a follow-up: is resetting the SMC (another thing I read people have been trying) a good thing to try to improve my battery life?

Absolutely ! http://codekrieger.com/gfxCardStatus allows you to lock your graphics card to use only the Intel integrated graphics. It makes a big difference when you need to squeeze every last hour out your battery.

The other thing that helps if you have a ton of startup items for everyday use is to hold down shift when you log in, so there are not extraneous processed running in the background.

And also keep the screen brightness at the minimum acceptable level.

This way I can get 9 hours out of my 17 macbook.


Yosemite: Backslash key doesn't work My backslash key stopped working after upgrading to yosemite last week. Also, whenever i restart my mac system starts typing backslash on any textbox. It doesn't stop until i hit backspace.

backslash key was permanently pressed. Nothing related to yosemite. Used Karabiner to disable that key.


Another ID was used to download a game and now I want to do an in-app purchase with my ID Hi I have a problem my friend downloaded games on my iPad with his ID and now with my ID want to make an in-app purchase in that game that he downloaded.

It doesn't work and this friend doesn't remember his account. I'm really advanced on this game and DO NOT WHANT TO DELETE AND REINSTALL and potentially loose my progress.

So I'd like help thank you

This has already been answered and unfortunately you'll have to delete and reinstall, but you can backup the settings first and most likely maintain your game state:

How can I make in-app purchases with a different Apple ID than the app was purchased with?


When are per-user temp files in /var/folders/ removed? How often and under what conditions are files under var/folders/ removed?
If an application creates a file under var/folders/, is it possible for that file to be removed by the system before the application quits?

Here's a related question, but it's 10 years old and refers to /tmp and not var/folders: https://superuser.com/questions/187071/in-macos-how-often-is-tmp-deleted

It depends on the type of files created:
For files that the application has created as temporary files, they're up for removal when they have not been accessed for 3 days.
For files that the application has created as cache files, they're not normally automatically removed. Instead they can be removed when performing a safe boot (hold down the shift key while booting your Mac).
And no, as long as the application keeps the create file open (i.e. it has a reference to the file descriptor), it should never be the case that the  file is removed from the file system before the application quits.
Note that application can and do work with files that are not visible for a regular user. I.e. if your application opens a file and keeps it open, the user can delete the file and it will disappear from directory listings - however the file is still there and the contents can be accessed by the application without problems. When the application closes the file (or the application is closed) - the file is permanently deleted from the file system.


Applescript click action working, but generating a System Events error I'm working with an AppleScript that turns off (but does not quit) Hazel. The script works fine but generates a syntax error.

Here's the part of the code causing the error:

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "System Preferences"
        set frontmost to true
        click radio button "Info" of radio group of window "Hazel"
    end tell
end tell

And here's the error:

  System Events got an error: radio button "Info" of radio group of window "Hazel" of
  process "System Preferences" doesn’t understand the “click” message.

I'm sure there's a simple fix, but I'm new to AppleScript and not much of a programmer. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

This code works great. Please pay attention to "radio group 1" part. Took me several hours to figure that out. :-/

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set current pane to pane id "com.noodlesoft.Hazel"
end tell
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "System Preferences"
        set frontmost to true
        click radio button "Info" of radio group 1 of window "Hazel"
        delay 1
        click button "Stop Hazel" of group 0 of group 0 of window "Hazel"
    end tell
end tell


Mysterious OS X File Extension (bug?) I know that OS X uses the Launch Services.framework to manage the file-extensions. But the icons which belong to the file-extension are part of the Info.plist in the package contents of the 'default-opening-application' of that specific file-extension.

My 'buggy' file-extension is *.cpp used by Xcode as default. Normally it should use the icon given in /applications/xcode/contens/ressources/XXX.icns.

But it doesn't! It's using another cpp icon, which i couldn't find in my whole system - in the Xcode app neither.

After I changed the XXX.icns mentioned above with a custom .icns file and cleared my Icon cache, logged out and restarted my mac:

For roundabout 2 seconds I could see my custom .icns file as the standard icon for the file-extension cpp. This is actually what I want to achieve permanently!

But after a few seconds the icon changes by magic into the other cpp icon, which I can't find on my mac. What is wrong with my Mac.

Little Conclusion:

1 icon that is not to find in any lib or app
1 icon that is default in Xcode for example
1 icon that I want to use for an extension

The (1) icon is shown. But it shouldn't. It should show the (3) if I did everything right, otherwise it needs to show (2).

(1) is the icon shown in the finder (2) is the icon shown in the inspector:

Here is the icons I want to use:

Turn off 'Show icon preview' (in german: Symbolvorschau einblenden) in the view options of the specific folder or all folders and you will probably see your custom icon.

If you want to apply this to all folders click the “Use as Defaults” button.


If an app was downloaded and later deleted would it appear on others devices with the same Apple ID? An app was previously downloaded on a phone with the same Apple ID as mine but then was later deleted. My question is, since it is already on the cloud, will it still go to other devices with that Apple ID?

Welcome to Ask Different.

Yes, any downloaded app can be run on any other Apple device as long as

The device is signed-in with the same Apple ID that originally purchased/downloaded it.
The app supports running on that device.
The app doesn't have any limitations on the number of devices it can be run (some apps limit the number of users and/or devices).

The software won't automatically be downloaded to the other devices, however.  You must download the app specifically.

Your question reads like an XY problem so if you want add the exact issue you're trying to resolve you can [edit] your question.


How to disable/always allow assistive access on Mavericks? I've been using this script (AppleScript) bound to a global hot key as an Automator Service to open new terminals using a global keyboard shortcut. After upgrade to OS X Mavericks when the corresponding service is triggered from literally any application, a new dialog box popus up saying that

  "(Application name)" would like to control this computer using accessibility features.

And of course script fails to execute triggered from any application which has not been explicitly given permission via System Preferences.

Is there some way to globally allow accessibility control to any application running on my computer in OS X Mavericks, as it used to be in previous OS X releases?

The example script above was not the only script I had on global shortcuts, and whitelisting all installed applications is extremely painful, especially considering that an app may be whitelisted only after a failed "control" attempt...

I don't know any way to always allow access for assistive devices, but you can add multiple applications to the list in System Preferences by drag and drop:


one computer, multiple iphones, multiple apple IDs We have 2 iphones and 2 ipod touches and 3 separate apple logins.  We manage all accounts on one computer by using multiple computer user logins.  Note:  this is how apple told us to set it up in the beginning when we had 2 iphones because it was over-riding one set of iphone contacts and mirroring both iphones the same.  So, we've been purchasing everything twice (or 3 times in some cases).  We want to share music, apps, etc but how?  Home sharing is turned on...I even asked an apple "genius" and he had no idea how to share content with multiple apple logins but all managed on one computer.  Any help would be appreciated!

Sharing apps is actually pretty easy.

On your iDevice, just go to Settings > Store and sign into the account you want to download purchased apps from, and then when you go to install them, it will act like it's going to purchase them again, start to download, and then pop up a dialog saying you've already purchased this app, click OK to download again for Free.

I do this on a weekly basis with 2 other accounts and have been doing it for over a year so I know it works.  Even on iOS 5.0.

Just be careful to switch to the right accounts when you make your purchases.  Since it does not necessarily say that you have already purchased the app, you could look up the wrong app (a HD universal version instead of the normal version, for instance) and end up purchasing it by mistake.

Finally, note that you could sign into your alternate Store account, then go to App Store >  Updates > Purchased and see a list of what's available for download on that account, BUT NOTICE that this will LOCK your device to THAT account's past Purchases for the next 90 days!

See: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4627

"When you turn on Automatic Downloads or download past purchases on an iOS device or computer, your device or computer will be associated with your Apple ID. Your Apple ID can have up to 10 devices and computers (combined) associated with it. Each computer must also be authorized using the same Apple ID. Once a device or computer is associated with your Apple ID, you cannot associate that device or computer with another Apple ID for 90 days."


Is there an easy way to clear/empty the clipboard? I would like to find a combination of keys to clear the contents of the clipboard or better yet an application that can configure a timer to clear it automatically one minute after last paste operation.

To set a combination of keys to clear the clipboard, you can create a Service using Automator.

Your service will have a single action, Run Shell Script

The shell script you will use is this:

 pbcopy </dev/null

Then save the service and assign it a keystroke using System Preferences » Keyboard » Keyboard Shortcuts » Services.

The challenge of an application that automatically clears the clipboard one minute after the last paste operation is that said application would have to monitor all the copy and paste events across all applications; presumably you would want the action cancelled if you pasted and then copied new text (you wouldn't want to clear the new content from the clipboard one minute after the last paste of the previous clipboard contents). Such a program could be written, but implementing it with AppleScript or Automator would be a challenge.


How to delete videos from iMovie on iPhone? I'm having an issue where I cannot delete anything from the iMovie app on my iPhone 7. How do I delete videos from the iMovie app?

On iOS - not all videos are stored in the camera roll. iMovie would also show videos which are not in the Photos app. They cannot be deleted the usual way.

There are probably several ways to get rid of them, but this one here deletes all:

Delete the entire iMovie app from you phone.
Install the app again from iTunes or from the App Store.


Can't setup reminder or calendar appointment using Siri on Mac Any idea why I can't setup a reminder or calendar appointment with Siri on the Mac? When I attempt to setup a reminder I just get her saying "One sec". When I press confirm after telling her to setup an appointment I get "Sorry Scott I can't do that".
Any ideas? Is there something I have to do to get these useful features working?

In System Settings, grant permissions to access Calendar and Location data for Siri, then disable and re-enable Siri.


Time Capsule and Network shares not showing in Finder through VPN I'm on my neighbours WiFi, and connecting to my network to my Windows 7 PC which is set up as a VPN server using the native feature. I can access my Time Capsule by going to Connect to Server and entering it's IP Address, but it does not show in Finder automatically, in the Shared section of the sidebar. Also when I'm actually connected to my home network my Raspberry Pi appears in the sidebar, but when I connect over VPN it doesn't.

Is there a way to get the network shares to appear automatically in Finder over a VPN connection?

Usually the sidebar shows Network Devices which are announcing themselves and are recognized by the 'Bonjour'-Service. For that to happen the appropiate Ports have to be used, in case of the 'Bonjour'-Service that would be Ports 1900, 5350, 5432 and 5353 (see "Well known TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products")

My first suggestion would be to check your VPN-Server if these ports are blocked, which would prohibit the Devices showing up in the sidebar.

If the Raspberry is an SMB-Share you can try the following steps:

Open System Preferences » Network
Click the network interface you use for the shares (that probably should be your WiFi Connection rather than the VPN-Connection. You have to try both eventually)
Click on the Advanced button at lower right
Click on WINS tab, and manually enter the workgroup name of the
server
Click the '+' under the WINS Servers list
Enter the IP of the server
Click OK, Apply, etc.


Can I revert Mail.app to handle notifications in the pre-10.9.2 way? After updating to the latest Mavericks version (10.9.2), the behaviour of the new mail notifications changed. Before, if I clicked on the notification, the main Mail.app window would open and show the message in the thread preview pane. After the update, the message is opened into it's own window (same as double-clicking the message in the main window), which is not what I want.

Is there a setting somewhere to restore the previous behaviour?

Unfortunately this does not work out of the box. But there is a nice and free plugin called Herald which gives you this exact feature back, and many more on top.

(See Version 4.0.8 (Mac OS X 10.9) by clicking on "Old Versions").

Please close your Mail.app before installing.


Can't update Developer Tools on Mojave Hello,

This question is about the Command Line Developer Tools that are usually installed with xcode-select --install and updated via a software update from the Mac App Store (at least until macOS 10.13). I use the developer toolchain on a daily basis and it has always worked and updated without issues.

Today I've updated my mac from High Sierra 10.13.6 to Mojave 10.14.1, and I've lost the ability to update the Developer Tools.

After the update I've executed a terminal command that relies on the developer tools being installed. It was a command to update Homebrew, although I don't think that the specifics matter, as I believe that any task that tried to access the developer tools would have triggered the same error message.

The error was:

xcrun: error: invalid active developer path (/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools), missing xcrun at: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/xcrun

The phrasing was new (maybe), but I thought that it was caused by the usual need to re-install the Developer Tools after some macOS updates.

Later I tried to dig a bit deeper into the failure, and found out that:

$ ls -l /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/total 0drwxr-xr-x  3 root  admin  96  4 Nov 19:32 share$ which xcrun/usr/bin/xcrun$ xcode-select -p/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools

Still, as I normally do, I entered the command to install and update the Developer Tools in the terminal:

xcode-select --install

This started the usual procedure: modal window to confirm, then request to accept the license agreement, followed by a progress bar. Except that it failed very quickly with an unexpected error:

Can’t install the software because it is not currently available from the Software Update server.

I've tried several times, to no avail. It gets always stuck.

Sometimes, however, the failure causes the System Preferences to report a pending update:

If I open that preference panel it starts searching for updates, and it always finds nothing except the first time that it happened. The first time, it found this:

It literally suggested me to install the updates for macOS 10.11 and 10.13. I have no idea why.

I closed the preference without installing, and as I said it hasn't shown them again. There is also no update available in new Mac App Store.

Is this a known issue? Is there any way to resolve the problem?

Update

Of course I can download the Dev Tools for macOS 10.14 installer from https://developer.apple.com/download/more/.

Before installing them manually, though, I'm wondering if there is anything that's broken with the system.

I faced the same problem. The way I have solve the issue is given below.

I got the new xcode 10.1 from App Store. Though the problem existed.
Then I run xcode-select --install which didn’t work.
I update my homebrew by brew update. Than I run sudo xcode-select --reset.

Now it works fine.


Mail is sending text attachments rather than including the text inline In My Mac Mail, the messages are going as text attachment, rather than just appearing inline as the mail contents.  How can I make sure that the contents of my mails are not being sent as attachments?

I was facing the same problem and figured out what was going wrong.

In mail, when you copy or drag the attachment, all text below attachment is treated as attachment hence it converts it to attachment and no text goes to the recipient.

All you need to do is in menu bar Edit > Attachment > Always insert attachment at end of message.

This will now always copy your attachments to the end and your text will remain safe in email.


macOS High Sierra Calendar notifications appear but have the wrong event time I have a (recurring) meeting notice in my calendar.  On my iPhone and on macOS I get the (half-an-hour before) alert, but they display differently!  On my iPhone it is displayed as "Meeting notice ..... in 30 min", but on macOS it appears as "Meeting notice ..... now".

It appears that the notifications on macOS tell me when the alert is raised and not when the meeting is to be.  This is extremely confusing, and I think a bug.

Subsequently, the alert on the iPhone counts down to the meeting time, but the notification on macOS says things like "Meeting notice ..... 14m ago". If I get another alert (second alert say ten minutes before) this overwrites the notification in the notifications panel and the time is reset to "now".

Is this a bug?

This issue has been driving me crazy so I called Apple. After a lengthy discussion and sharing my screen with AppleCare, support said they hadn't seen this before. They submitted a ticket to engineering and I'm waiting to hear back. I'll post an update when I do.


Upgrading My Mac Os X without losing data I currently have mac os x 10.7.3 , I did download OS X El Capitan but did not install it, I'm afraid of losing data. So will I really lose data if I install it? And if so, is there a way to upgrade my mac os without losing data?
And thank you so much.

Normally, installing an updated version of MacOS should not cause any data loss. If you launch the installer app downloaded from the Mac App Store, then the new OS is installed leaving all your existing apps and data in place.

However, you should ALWAYS have a backup to mitigate the loss of any data. Things can go wrong; disks can fail; hardware can get stolen, catch fire, drenched with water, etc, etc.

There are a large number of posts here from people who have accidentally lost their data while trying to do something. These exist as warnings.

Files without a backup are waiting to be lost.


How to install CLISP under OS X El Capitan (10.11)? I want to install CLISP to run some lisp programs. I am used to install it via

brew install clisp

But I'm getting this error message:

Error: libsigsegv 2.10 did not build

Is this due to the new System Integrity Protection? The log files are telling me this:

checking whether we are cross compiling... configure: error: in `/private/tmp/libsigsegv20150926-26734-xxczr8/libsigsegv-2.10':
configure: error: cannot run C compiled programs.
If you meant to cross compile, use `--host'.
See `config.log' for more details

And the config.log:

configure:3294: clang -o conftest    conftest.c  >&5
clang: warning: no such sysroot directory: ''
conftest.c:11:10: fatal error: 'stdio.h' file not found
#include <stdio.h>
         ^

  How can I run my LISP programs or, better, CLISP on OS X 10.11?

The problem was an outdated XCode version. I had XCode 6.4 installed, but for El Capitan, Version 7 is needed.

See here.

So, for future readers:

  Update XCode to version 7 via App Store (or Apple Developer website)
  brew install works again like charm


Mountain Lion desktop order On Mountain Lion, I have three desktops. What I find is that the sequential left to right order of these desktops keeps changing. Is it doing something based on usage ? and how can I disable this ?

You can disable it in System Preferences:


Is it possible to access a FileVault 2 encrypted volume from Boot Camp? If I switch on FileVault 2 in Lion, can I still access my OS X volume from Boot Camp (Windows 7)? Are both volumes encrypted and decrypted together, or does it only affect the OS X volume?

And the correct answer is: No.

Encryption only affects the OS X volume. Booting into Boot Camp, the necessary password prompt to allow decryption is bypassed entirely. The volume becomes an opaque blob to anything but a running OS X system.


Unicode terminal lock symbol Is there a character for the below key symbol that you can copy and paste?

Not identical to that, but emoji has several lock & key symbols

available from 'Show Emoji & Symbols' if you have System Prefs > Keyboard > Keyboard > 'Show Keyboard, Emoji & Symbol viewers in menu bar' enabled.


Remote desktop from a mac to windows machine, using direct connection eg Ethernet I work primarily off a Mac-book. I have a windows machine on which I do some .net development. I simply need to be able to use windows remote desktop on my mac to remote desktop to the windows machine, but not over internet. I want the connection to be established over local WiFi, or over direct Ethernet connection between the two machines, if that is even possible. There are many postings on this topic, but non specific to my case.

The closest answer I have come across is this here, which only mentions the possibilities, but not the implementation.

Are there any resources I could use to help me set this up, or if anyone knows how to?

In the server name merely specify the local IP address of the computer and in the username field specify the username Fully Qualified. EG COMPUTERNAME\USERNAME on the PC and then the password for that account.

That should be all you need to do: merely specify the local IP address of the target PC.


How can I create custom right-click context menu items in macOS? I've been a native windows'er up until this year and have finally made the jump to OS X. I've found my workflow (web developer) has increased substantially and I love the general performance and snappiness of my OSX.

However, I very much miss a few features of windows, one of them being how easy it was to create a new text file. Just right-click->new->text file.

I'd really like to add a "New File" option right under "New Folder" in the right click menu, and just have it make a new file in the selected folder or finder window. On top of that, it'd be really killer to have an "open terminal here" option that would open a terminal window already cd'd into the current working directory.

How can I customize the macOS Finder context menu? I want to add the menu items:

"New File"
"Open Terminal Here"
etc.

I've searched a bit for these but haven't found anything of substance; I could set up a hacky hotkey workaround but that's suboptimal, in my experience. So any recommendations are more than welcome!

This is a bit old, but nothing is drastically different in 10.8:

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20100509134904820

  This a simple Service for creating new files the currently-open folder in Finder, using AppleScript and Automator.

  Start by launching Automator, and in the chooser that appears, select Service. This will open a new Automator window, set up to create a Service. In that window, do the following:
  Set the Service to receive selected folders in Finder (the two drop-down menus at the top of the work area on the right). This makes it easier to assign a keyboard shortcut to our service, which we'll do at the end.

  Drag and drop the 'Run AppleScript' action (in the Utilities Library) into the work area on the right.

  Paste in the following AppleScript, then click the Hammer icon (to compile the code):

on run {input, parameters}
  tell application "Finder"
    set currentPath to insertion location as text
    set x to POSIX path of currentPath
  end tell
  return x
end run

  Drag and drop the 'Set value of a variable' action from the Utilities Library, and create a new variable called, for example, CurrentFolder. (Do this by clicking on the drop-down menu.)

  Drag and drop the New Text File action from the Text library into the work area. Then drag CurrentFolder from the Variable panel at the bottom of the Automator window to the Where entry of the New Text File action. Click the Options button in the action, and click the 'Show this action when the workflow runs' box. This makes it possible to change the name and extension of the new file.

  Save the service as 'Create New File,' or whatever you like. Test your new action using the Services menu in Finder, to make sure it works (select a folder, Control-click, and you should see your new Service at the bottom of the contextual menu).

  On the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard System Preferences panel, select Services in the left-hand column, and your new service (it should be in the Files and Folders section) in the right-hand panel. Assign a keyboard shortcut to the new Service by double-clicking to the right of the Service's name.

  Switch back to Automator and change the leftmost drop-down menu (at the top of the work area) to No Input, then save the Service again.


How to change MacBook jack only input instead of input and output I have a lavalier microphone with 3 pins that I connected to my MacBook. When I connect the microphone to my MacBook, the MacBook thinks the microphone is "headphones with built in external mic". Does anyone know how to make the microphone only input?

Image:

I have found the answer to my question. You need to use an adapter to perform this task: Ultimate Lavalier Microphone for Bloggers and Vloggers Lapel Mic Clip-on Omnidirectional Condenser on amazon.


How does the "Copy" button work for iPad photos? When I click "Share" on an iPad photo not in Camera Roll, there's a "Copy" option. It seems to do nothing, how can I get it to work? Ideally I want to copy a photo to the Camera Roll so I can save it to my computer. It's annoying that I can't just save all the photos, Camera Roll or not, from the iPad to my computer.

The Copy function copies the photo onto the clipboard. You can then paste it into other apps, say Mail, by tapping and holding until a contextual menu appears that says "Paste". If you're on a web page, you can tap and hold an image and select "Save Image" to save it to your camera roll. But you can't use the Copy function to "paste" it into your camera roll.


Can't format samsung 128 evo micro sd card I'm having issues formatting a micro sd card a for a friend on my Mac. I've tried using Disk Utility, diskutil commands in terminal and SD Card Formatter. This is what I get when I try on terminal:

jonathandiller$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful
jonathandiller$ sudo diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 NONAME MBRFormat /dev/disk2
Started erase on disk2
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Waiting for partitions to activate
Formatting disk2s1 as MS-DOS (FAT32) with name NONAME
Error: -69830: This operation requires an unmounted disk

In the half-dozen or so instances where I've seen this specific error, the micro SD card itself had gone bad and couldn't be formatted on Mac, Windows or Android (via OTG), even with different card readers. Not only couldn't the card be formatted, but files couldn't be added or deleted nor anything else that required writing to the card. (Reading files was unaffected.) It was effectively in read-only mode like a full-size SD card with the switch flipped, but obviously the micro SD doesn't have that. Only solution is replacement.

I know this is an old post, but I thought I'd add the real cause (i.e. a defective card, not a software or format issue)  for future reference.


Can I install Snow Leopard over a network? I have a Snow Leopard DMG on one mac, and an empty MacBook I wish to install Snow Leopard onto. I have a Snow Leopard DVD that I can use to get into the installer with, but it's scratched so it won't install.

What are my options for installing Snow Leopard? Over the network? Or putting it on USB stick/HDD? I know I could burn the DMG to a DVD but I was wondering if there were quicker/easier alternatives.

You say the MacBook is empty - does this not have any Mac OS on it?

To install from a USB or HDD you will need to open disk utility and from there select the restore option of the dvd with the hard drive or USB as destination, so if it does not have disc utility then no you can't, you will need to write a CD/DVD.


Apple Watch 3 is not charging fully I have an Apple Watch 3 GPS model. Starting from this week, it is not charging fully.

After a night of charging, it is only something like 95%

Is that normal? Or is it a defect? It was always charging to 100%

I had a similar problem with my Apple Watch series 3 (I have the LTE model)
No matter how long I charged it, it capped at 94%. So I did a simple hard reset (hold down on the side button and the crown for at least 10 seconds or until the apple logo comes up) and that seemed to fix my problem. I think it is a glitch from the most recent watchOS.


MacBook that spontaneously restarts and often shuts down instead of sleeping My Macbook Pro has started shutting down rather than sleeping when I close it and it just decides to shut down in the middle of an operation and restart. When I ran Repair Disk Permissions on Disk Utility this is the result.  Any ideas?

I would go for my 'make sure it's all OK' recipe for starters...

Fix permissions [which you did already], Verify & if necessary Repair disk, using Disk Utility
Reset Home folder permissions & ACLs using OnyX  - Maintenance tab/permissions, tick the box at the top then Execute.
Update or [re-apply if already updated] to 10.10.5 using the 10.10.5 combo update, not the delta from App Store


System detects digital output when headphones plugged in, audio does not work I'm on a MacBook Pro (2013) running OS X El Capitan 10.11.6. The speakers work as usual, but when I plug in headphones, the audio stops working. When I remove the headphones, the speakers work again as before.

With headphones plugged in, the only output device available is "Digital Out - Optical digital-out port", and when I try to change the volume there is a disabled symbol (and no volume bar is displayed).

I have tried rebooting, using a different set of headphones, resetting the PRAM, and cleaning the port, all to no avail. I do not see a red light in the port as many other questions have mentioned.

Do you have a pair of OEM Apple headphones (from an iPhone or so)? There are some cases, that only the OEM headphones work, and 3rd party do not. If they do work, try the following:

Plug your headphones back in.
Play a bit of sound through them (e.g., a song), then stop the sound.
Make sure Preferences is quit.
Launch Preferences and open the Sound pane.
While the Sound pane is open and set to Headphones, pull out the headphone plug from the jack.
It will reset itself to "Internal Speakers" and you are good to go.


Code viewer with color syntax integrated to the finder preview panel On Windows there is a great extension for the preview panel.
It shows the content of the selected file as if it was opened in a code editor.
This is integrated into the preview panel (no popup window), without the need to to press a key combination and closing the preview afterward.
This allows to browse the content very fast (pressing the up/down keys).

I'm aware of the existence of Quick Look plugins, but as far as I know we still need to press command + Y to access the preview and close it after.
Not very handy to quickly go from file to file...

Does anyone know of an equivalent?

After installing QLColorCode you just have to hit the spacebar to get a similar experience.

To cycle through your files in list view use the up- or down-arrow. To open a chosen folder hit the right-arrow and continue cycling through your code files. To close a folder hit the left-arrow. The other view options work similar (e.g to open a folder in icon view you have to hit cmd + right-arrow).

Hit the spacebar once more to close the preview window.

For some source code files you might have to disable the Xcode QuickView plugin.
Check the readme file of QLColorCode to modify the theme and other aspects of syntax highlighting.


Why does the MacOS App Store ask for other users Apple ID password? We have an iMac with two users A and B who

are both logged in
are both administrators
have different Apple IDs (and are both logged in to their's)

Today A wanted to update an app using the Updates function in the app Store and was asked for B's password. As usual, the Apple ID was not to change, it just asked for the password.  It was definitely A who first installed this app because B never uses it.  In fact, it is not even on the list of "purchases" of B (it's a free app, though).

What to do about it?

Curious Addendum: A got B to log in and update the app, which worked fine without even asking for B's password or asking to close the app which was running in A's logged in account. Usually, when A updated the app in the past, it would refuse to run an update while the app was running.

Software you buy through the App Store is registered to an Apple ID, not a computer. This gets confusing when multiple people use their Apple ID to install software on the same computer.

The installers for some applications, often ones that have processes running the the background all the time, are often smart enough to quit and restart as part of the install/update process.

Hope this helps!
Ric


Browsers Power Consumption Why do the Browsers like Firefox and Chrome on OSX consume more and more power over time.

If reset and reopen same pages they power consumption is way less, but again it will grow over time.

My question is why the power consumption goes up over time, and it is back down after restarting browser while opening same pages ?

This is most likely not the Browser's fault. I guess you're on some badly implemented (bloated) pages that are packed with tons of JavaScript.

Try disabling JavaScript and compare to the full-featured version.
Also AdBlocking or plugins such as uMatrix (Chrome Add On, FireFox Add On) allow you to selectively disable features (frames, js, media) for certain vendors. Maybe you get an idea what may be going on in modern websites :)
Have a look at your Browser's Development tools. Chrome for example has some very nice features hidden behind the Performance tab. It shows you what happens on your page (rendering, parsing, cpu/gpu usage)

But this is quite a broad field you're about to enter here. Maybe have a read on web performance before you start digging into the tips above.


How can I activate a 2nd hand iPhone 3gs without a computer? I have bought iPhone 3GS. But have not got a computer. How do I activate my phone?

If it's just for activation, using any computer with iTunes installed will do.


iCloud contacts not syncing correctly I have enabled Google CardDAV contact synching some time ago and disabled iCloud (contacts).

Now I wanted to reenable iCloud synching too... I see some contacts on iCloud.com and on my Mac - probably from before I disabled this. On reenabling the option on iPhone, I still don't see some contacts on iCloud.com... when I add a new contact it does appear there but I cannot get all of them to sync.

I even tried disabled iCloud contacts on the iPhone again, went to delete all of them  from iCloud.com and reenabled the setting on iPhone. It asked me if I wanted to merge, I said yes and again I see a lot of contacts online, but not all...

Is my Google contacts sync interfering? I thought I can have both. What can I do?

Honestly, it's not advised to sync Google & iCloud this way. As you found out, two syncing services running against the same set of Contacts cause a lot of problems. Even if you get it working, over time you'll find information getting duplicated in a single contact, data that you can't remove (it keeps coming back) etc...

So don't rely on doing it the simple way (that you've already tried) cause it's unreliable at best.

Some links to other discussions with various ways of tackling this problem:

Q&A on Stack Exchange about this issue

Discussion on Google Groups


Should I use the manufacture's print driver instead of secure AirPrint? I've noticed that macOS appears to default to using secure AirPrint as it's printer driver over the manufacture's printer driver. Any reason why I should choose one over the other?

Consider this.

In the near future, there will be a macOS update. Your printer manufacturer may or may not release a timely driver update that matches the updated OS. As a result, your system may become unstable, not be able to print or worse.

My strong suggestion is that, unless there's some mission-critical functionality you need, it's always best to go with the built-in drivers. With it, there's a much higher probability that your system will remain stable through multiple OS updates.


How to fix the error: "This disk doesn’t contain an EFI system partition"? I get the following error and cannot start Bootcamp after accidentally deleting the EFI-partition of my main drive.

  This disk doesn’t contain an EFI system partition.
  If you want to start up your computer with this disk or include it in a RAID set, back up your data and partition this disk.

Here is my diskutil list result :

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                  Apple_HFS                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         499.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macbook Pro            *498.9 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 A6AC962B-74A5-42E8-B84D-B5A7A6325432
                                 Unlocked Encrypted
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:        CD_partition_scheme                        *154.1 MB   disk3
   1:     Apple_partition_scheme                         134.2 MB   disk3s0
   2:        Apple_partition_map                         1.0 KB     disk3s0s1
   3:                  Apple_HFS BOLT! 4G E5372s         8.5 MB     disk3s0s2

And here is my sudo gpt -r show disk0 result :

start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
     409640  975093952      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  975503592    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  976773128          7
  976773135         32         Sec GPT table
  976773167          1         Sec GPT header

The currently installed OS is Yosemite.

How do I fix that error?

You can recreate the EFI System Partition (ESP) using the command-line tool gpt.
Since you have to modify your current start device you need to boot to Internet Recovery Mode or an external (thumb) drive.

Additionally you need a valid EFI-partition or an image file of it.

Here is a similar question: How to fix broken EFI partition?. I have copied some of the steps of the accepted answer. Check all the warnings there before proceeding. So please credit the OP.

Preparation:

Backup your data.
Detach any external drive (especially your external Time Machine backup drive).
Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.
The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot to a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an apple/akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (Mavericks or Yosemite) or a thumb drive containing a full system (Mavericks or Yosemite). The disk identifiers may be different then.

Rebuild the EFI-partition:

First you should get an overview of your disks and the partition layout:

Enter diskutil list
Example listing:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                  Apple_HFS                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         499.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                         *1.3 GB    disk1
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         30.7 KB    disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS OS X Base System        *1.3 GB    disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macbook Pro            *498.9 GB   disk2
                             Logical Volume on disk0s2
                             A6AC962B-74A5-42E8-B84D-B5A7A6325432
                             Unlocked Encrypted
/dev/disk3-disk12 ...belong to the OS X Base System (your recovery system you booted to previously)

Disk0 is your main internal disk device containing the EFI-partition (dis0s1), the CoreStorage partition (disk0s2) and the Recovery HD (disk0s3).

Disk1 is a logical disk created by booting to the netboot image which contains a recovery system (OS X Base System = disk1s2) similar to the Recovery HD.

Disk2 is also a logical disk residing in disk0s2 and it contains the CoreStorage stack.
Enter sudo gpt -r show disk0
Example listing:

    start       size  index  contents
        0          1         PMBR
        1          1         Pri GPT header
        2         32         Pri GPT table
       34          6
       40     409600      1  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   409640  975093952      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
975503592    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
976773128          7
976773135         32         Sec GPT table
976773167          1         Sec GPT header

The partition with the index number 1 is the wrong formatted EFI-partition, the partition with index number 2 is your CoreStorage partition and the partition with index number 3 is your Recovery HD.
The correct GUID for the EFI-partition is C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B.
To manipulate the GPT you have to unmount all mounted volumes on disk0 (first the CoreStorage volume, which has its own disk identifier disk2 but resides on disk0, then disk0):

diskutil unmountDisk disk2
diskutil unmountDisk disk0

To delete your wrong EFI-partition enter:

gpt remove -i 1 disk0

Now re-add the EFI-partition with the correct layout and type

gpt add -b 40 -i 1 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B disk0

Enter exit and quit Terminal.
Reboot to your main volume

This should sort out the partition itself, but as you've created an HFS partition in its place, you need to fix its format as well.
The format of the EFI System Partition is documented by Apple here. As you can see, they recommend you clone an existing ESP rather than recreating the file system with newfs_msdos. If you have an external drive with a GPT partition table (OSX install stick should have it), you can clone that.

Make sure you have your disk and partition numbers the right way around or you may overwrite data:

If disk1 is your external drive, and it contains an ESP as the first partition (disk1s1) and disk0 is the drive whose ESP (disk0s1) you want to fix, run this command:

sudo dd if=/dev/disk1s1 of=/dev/disk0s1

you have to enter an admin password.

This will copy every single block of disk1's ESP and overwrite the corresponding block in disk0's ESP with it.

Alternatively, take a gamble with newfs_msdos.


Facetime & Text & Email Hack Is it possible to hack facetime and text messages from a iphone you do not own.  We have the same apple id log in for both facetime and itunes.  There are records of facetime calls, text messages and emails on one of our iphone which we did not make.  How is this possible and what can be done to stop it?

The history of your calls and messages will be stored in your device but in an encrypted manner which even apple doesn't share or record them in iCloud. So FaceTime and iMessage are safe. But if you give your Apple ID and password to someone else, than can have a hand over the messages. So you can protect them by enabling Two step Verification for your device and by Creating App-Specific Passwords.

Everything about Two step verification
https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204152

Everything about App-Specific Passwords
https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT204152


What does `System Preferences.app` sync to iCloud? If we go into System Preferences → Internet Accounts → iCloud → iCloud Drive (Options…), we’ll see System Preferences.app is syncing with iCloud.

What exactly is it syncing? I’ve just performed a fresh install on my machine (El Capitan to Sierra) and none of my settings carried over. So what is this doing?

It is syncing your system preferences. The reason you did not see anything happen is that your former system was running El Capitan. The new sync feature only works with Sierra.

So if you had a Sierra Mac and then bought a new Sierra Mac and signed in on iCloud, you could sync over your system preferences from the old Mac.


How do I get iCloud Two-Factor Authentication to work? (cannot turn on to begin using) I click 'Continue', then 'Continue' for the 'Turn On' Radio button, a loading icon rotates for several seconds, then I'm back at step 1 and nothing appears to have happened.

Is bluetooth tethering 4G too slow an Internet connection for this feature to function? Is there a server connection problem so that I must use a different Internet connection? What is the problem?

Two days ago, on Wi-Fi, I tried and instead was getting a six digit code to enter, but despite entering it properly, was told to try entering it again. Both SMS and phone call six-digit code gave the same error, 'try entering it again'. Now I'm not even getting to that step. What is the problem? What is the solution?

You need to go to www.appleid.com (or www.myappleid.com) and sign in to your account. If you can get in, there you'll be able to enable or disable Two Factor Authentication. If you want it on, turn it off then enable it again (if it was on).

Make sure you delete any devices you no longer have while you are on that web site (near the bottom). It'll make things easier for you, especially with Two Factor Authentication.

If you do this and you find that you are still having issues, call Apple Support and they will investigate your account and see why you are still having issues.


What are the sector sizes on Mac OS X? I read on the HFS Plus Wikipedia page that the default sector size on a Mac is 512 b. However, I also read that Macs support 4kb sectors. How can I determine which I have, 512 b or 4 kb sectors? I think 512 is the right answer, but I would like to be sure.

In terminal, you can use diskutil to get information about the drive, including the device block size:

$ diskutil info / | grep "Block Size"
  Device Block Size:        512 Bytes


Poor battery stats on rMBP late-2013 I unpacked my new MacBook only 2 days ago and it showed 9-10 hours of battery life (as advertised). I didn't calibrate it, since it is no longer necessary (I was told).

Today I noticed that it started to show only 4 hours of battery life with 98% charge. I am a student and it shows me these stats when I run nothing - I am not editing photos, watching movies, etc. I only had I tab in a browser (Chrome) opened.

Do you know, why is that? Should I check with Apple if my battery is somehow faulty?

I am a first time MacBook owner.

Check the Energy tab of Activity Monitor and look for processes that have a high energy usage.

Screenshot Source
Leave it for a bit longer (up to a week) to see if there's any change.


USB C HUB delivery safe? so I bought a USB-C hub for my MacBook Pro 2017, specifically, this one:

http://www.qacqoc.com/product/gn30h-premium-usb-c-hub-with-power-delivery-3-superspeed-usb-3-0-for-macbook-12-inch-gray/

it has a power delivery USB-C port, and I'm wondering if it safe for my Macbook to always use that port when I have the hub plugged in (so I can use the other USB-C port on the mac for other purposes) or it is better to plug power directly into the Macbook? any technical differences?

Unless the USB-C hub is defective or not standards compliant, there should be no harm in plugging in the power supply there. It is totally safe and an intended functionality!


Is it possible to determine the model of an iOS device by its MAC address? I'm starting to work on iOS apps at work, and I'm trying to determine the minimum version of iOS I'll need to support. We have a network registration system that gathers some basic information about devices on the network, but unfortunately, it doesn't report the version of the operating system or hardware.

I do, however, have MAC addresses for every iOS device used on our network in the past 12 months.

Is there a way to determine, based on a MAC address, what generation an iOS device is? If Apple used sequential addresses (or reserved specific blocks for specific devices), this should be possible.

I'll leave the above question (because I'm still curious if there's a way to do this), but I found another way to determine the hardware we have in use. Exchange server keeps track of devices each user syncs their email to. Assuming most iOS users sync their email accounts, I was able to use that information to determine what devices are in use. It turns out that about 20% of them are using devices that won't run iOS 5.

No - it's not a good way to get that data.

I would have a look at some of the many MDM software packages to get your population data so you can plan. JAMF has a great reputation in that space for low cost of entry and high performing software.

Also - you could make a quick little app that simply reported in some basic stats. Your users will be clamoring for potential apps and those willing to run that app will feed you with the data needed.

You will find that making the app forces you to restrict many of the new features and in reality - you'll have to actively work to get 3.x support in a project you start today using the current Xcode 4. 4.0 will be easy and only the new 5.0 features will get you into having to test the levels and have two sets of code for different generations of device.

Your development will drive what devices people use and not the other way around. It's almost always cheaper to just upgrade devices than pay developers to keep the older code tested and running.

There are lots of great charts out showing what some devs are seeing for how fast people upgrade to the latest iOS versions.


Dictionaries on iOS 8 not working I just updated from iOS 7 to iOS 8, and I noticed that the built-in dictionaries, I previously used, aren't working. I had used American English, British English, and Apple Dictionary. Now, when I try to define any word, I get a "No definition found" error. The dictionaries I previously used show a blue circle (while all the others show the cloud download icon).

I tried to download a new dictionary, and I was able to use it. However, that was in another language.

How can I enable these dictionaries again?

You can re-enable the apple dictionary by following this steps:

Tap on the word you want to define to select it and activate the popup.
Tap on Define to call up the dictionary.
Tap on Manage.
Now activate/download the Apple Dictionary or any other dictionaries you want.
Tap the X button beside any extra dictionaries you want to remove.

Now you should have your dictionary enabled again.


Can I use Apple Earphones with Mic on Mac Mini? I read on Apple website that Mac mini audio port supports the apple earphones with mic. Does it support the mic as well? Can I use the mic for Audio input on applications like Skype?

I tried plugging it in but the audio input did not work...

Update: Here's the apple website where its written that Support for Apple iPhone headset with microphone is there. Mac Mini Specs Page

Update: I think I've got what the problem is. The specs page I referred to above is about the latest Mac Mini. What I have is the Mac Mini mid 2007 model. I checked its specs and there is nothing about support of Apple earphones with mic. I think this is the reason its not working.

Regards

You cannot directly plug your headphones into the Audio Input jack and have it work, because, the microphone/button signal rides on the third ring, and the audio input jack only connects the first two. You have to have specially designed hardware to connect to that third ring. This is currently achieved via the Headphone/Audio Output ports of devices.

Only the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, 2010 MacBook Pros, and the modern body (smaller height) Mac Minis are the only pieces of hardware I am aware that do. Anything older will not support the microphone/button/volume buttons at all.


Tilde (~) File in Macintosh Directory Last night I discovered what looks like an unusual file named "~" (tilde) in the root of my "Macintosh HD" directory on my MacBook.

Finder reports the file is 2.2MB in size, of kind "TextEdit.app Document", and was created on 22nd January 2014 (so about a month ago).  I haven't noticed any operational issues with OS X or it's applications.

I haven't yet touched the file but would obviously like to remove it.  I am very conscious that '~' is a special alias to the user home directory and thus I would appreciate any recommendations in removing the file in a safe manner that isn't likely to nuke my home directory or screw up the operation of applications or OS X. I don't know whether to delete or rename and whether to use Finder or the command line.

It's entirely possible that I created the file by accident since I've recently been drafting and running various shell scripts that use the ~, user home alias.

MacBook Pro 15" (Retina, Mid 2012)
Yosemite

A ~ file is simply a broken attempt to access and write to your home directory.

This file should be safe to delete as it's not actually your home directory, but make sure you've got a backup in case you or another app needs it for any other purpose.

Also, for what it's worth, ~ is not an alias to your home directory, it's just a shell expansion to the path to the currently logged in user's home directory. It provides no actual path for the file system to follow to the directory.


What are the best practices for battery longevity? How do you maximize the cycle count of your battery?

There seems to be a debate between:

Leave plugged in 24/7 but do a full cycle once a month
Charge to ~100%, drain to ~10%, repeat.

NOTE: Taking your battery out is bad

Which method is better and why? How much of a difference does it really make?

Here are some of the better sources I've found about battery behavior so far. Even still I feel they don't conclusively answer the question above. See my elaborations below:

http://www.apple.com/batteries/
http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_polymer_battery
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1119715?start=0&tstart=0
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1519
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries

Elaborating on Option 1

Now IF Apple engineers were smart and optimized for AC draw when plugged in to not use up your charge cycles, then it seem logical to assume that you are using effectively none of your 1000 charge cycles while plugged in. If that's the case, it would seem that the LiPo drop from holding at 100% would be vastly outweighed by the fact you're not using any charge cycles.

However, this is a purely speculative assumption and I could find no evidence to either confirm or deny.

If this is NOT true, and the AC adapter only goes to charging the battery, then there would be no difference. Your battery would drain to 99%, then back up to 100%, then back down to 99%, etc. Those micro-charge cycles would add up at the same rate as 100% -> 0% -> 100%, and you would get no gain. In this case the negative effect of holding LiPo batteries at 100% would outweigh everything else.

Elaborating on Option 2

There are lots of good reasons why Option 2 is the way it is:

Because of known LiPo chemistry issues, holding a 100% charge for a long time causes the battery to degrade
Apple specifically recommends not to leave it plugged in all the time on their website
Draining a battery all the way to zero all the time is bad for the cell (Which is why ~10% is used)
Heat is a killer, and when plugged in AND charging, you get extra heat that causes damage.

There are a couple reasons why I'm challenging Option 2:

It seems silly that the most intuitive use case for thousands of people that use their macs as primary computers is wrong.
If the hypothesis in option 1 is true, you're just burning unnecessarily
through your finite charge cycles.
It's a pain to have to remember to keep plugging in and plugging out and be worried about whether or not your device is plugged in.

Final Conclusion
Given the sources and explanations below. I am officially going to do the following to optimize my battery life:

Keep my battery as cool as possible.
Don't worry about whether it's plugged in or not. When it doubt, keep it plugged in so it uses AC power instead of battery, unless getting hot.

It turns out that the two methods I originally posited are largely moot. The only thing that really matters is temperature.

  "Temperature was the most significant factor contributing to the cell degradation, with state-of-charge (SOC) and discharge pulse length of  secondary importance." (Liaw et al.2)

Furthermore, it turns out that the decay can be accurately mathematically modeled:

 (See Ramadass et al.1 for explanation of terms)

However, the dominant model is that of the Arrhenius formula, which generically predicts time-to-failure as a function of temperature.

The figure below shows the capacity at various cycle counts. Just look at the capacity on the x-axis. The top graph is at 25ºC, the bottom at 50ºC.

After 600 cycles, the cooler battery had ~2x the capacity

While I could still find no evidence on the behavior of Mac power circuitry, there was helpful information on the official Dell website. Two items specifically stood out.

  Q. When docked or AC adapter is plugged into a wall outlet, am I using my battery charge?

  A. No.

  http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/batteries_sitelet/en/batteries_faq?c=us&l=en&cs=19#faq9

  Q. Should I totally discharge, then recharge my Dell laptop battery occasionally to make it last longer?

  A. No, discharging and charging does not increase the life of a Lithium Ion technology battery.

  http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/batteries_sitelet/en/batteries_faq?c=us&l=en&cs=19#faq27

However It is important to note that Apple and Dell charging circuits may be different. Although, given that Dell does this, I assume apple does as well. On this assumption, unless someone can provide sources to claim otherwise, I will assume that the Apple charging circuitry is smart enough to know this.

I encourage anyone to continue exploring this question and challenge my assumptions. Please see the sources below if you're curious for a more detailed explanation.

Sources

1 Ramadass, P., Bala Haran, Ralph White, and Branko Popov. "Mathematical Modeling of the Capacity Fade of Li-ion Cells." Journal of Power Sources 123.2 (2003): 230-40. Web. http://www.che.sc.edu/faculty/popov/drbnp/WebSite/Publications_PDFs/Web33.pdf.

2 Liaw, B., R. Jungst, G. Nagasubramanian, H. Case, and D. Doughty. "Modeling Capacity Fade in Lithium-ion Cells." Journal of Power Sources 140.1 (2005): 157-61. Web. http://electrochem.org/dl/ma/204/pdfs/0253.PDF.

[3] Ning, G. "Capacity Fade Study of Lithium-ion Batteries Cycled at High Discharge Rates." Journal of Power Sources 117.1-2 (2003): 160-69. Web. http://www.che.sc.edu/faculty/popov/drbnp/website/Publications_PDFs/Web38.pdf.

[4] Ramadass, P., Bala Haran, Parthasarathy M. Gomadam, Ralph White, and Branko N. Popov. "Development of First Principles Capacity Fade Model for Li-Ion Cells." Journal of The Electrochemical Society 151.2 (2004): A196. Web. http://www.che.sc.edu/faculty/popov/Publications/Premanand1.pdf

[5] Zhang, D., B. S. Haran, A. Durairajan, R. W. White, Y. Podrazhansky, and B. N. Popov. "Studies on Capacity Fade of Lithium-ion Batteries." Journal of Power Sources 91 (2000): 122-29. Web. http://www.che.sc.edu/faculty/white/2000studiesoncapcaityfadeofzhangharandurairajanwhitepodrazhanshkypopov.pdf.