How do I see unplayed podcasts? On Catalina, I have a station set up to show unplayed podcasts.    Right now it shows a podcast from yesterday "Science Friday Part 2", but not "Science Friday Part 1", which I had to find by looking in "episodes".

It also doesn't show several other podcasts which I found in "Recently Updated", but which I haven't listened to (I'm tracking which episodes I listen to).

I have given up trying to listen to podcasts on my phone and watch because they won't synchronize with my Mac.

I personally also gave up on podcasts on the Mac. Maybe someone has a great app, but for me using Overcast made my phone / watch always with me and “perfect for this job” so my Mac can take a rest from podcast duties and only need to work when I listen to music and find it’s better than HomePod / watch / phone / iPad.

https://overcast.fm/

I know this doesn’t directly answer your question, but really - consider not solving this at all on the Mac is my advice. That way you don’t have to learn or even launch the current podcast app on Catalina. My guess is by August, we’ll know how many developers are making an iPad/Mac size screen podcast app and have another app to add here rather than use Apple’s native app.


Dropbox private Shared Folder My wife has a Dropbox she uses to exchange files (mainly pictures) with a friend, but needs to send files to a printer who uses Dropbox.

How can she create a Folder to privately share only with the printer?

Here is how you will do it

Create two different folders ( Printer & Pictures) on your System/mobile sync with Drop box.
Go to Drop Box> Sign in>  Check the folders ( Printer & Pictures)  you just synced from desktop/mobile
Click on share link for printer folder to share it to only "printer folder"  put email of the required person and hurray !!

let me know if you get stuck.


Screen sharing fails to connect I have chronic problems connecting to my headless Mac Mini using Mac OS X's builtin screen sharing. Usually it works fine, but sometimes it will not connect.

It goes like this:

I initiate a connection (either by clicking the Mac Mini in the sidebar in a Finder window and choosing the "Share Screen..." button, or else by launching /System/Library/CoreServices/Screen Sharing.app and enter the Bonjour name "macmini.local"), the throbber appears with the word "connecting", then the throbber disappears. If it's going to connect successfully, it does so at this point. Often, however the throbber disappears and nothing replaces it. The Screen Sharing app remains active, no message appears, and nothing happens, no matter how long I leave it. No connection seems to occur.

I cannot cause the issue to occur reliably, but once it does occur, it can be observed from several different mac clients. If I reboot the remote machine (via shutdown over ssh), it goes away and I connect without problem, but I'm seeking a better solution.

Checking the processes running on the remote Mac Mini via ssh, I see two processes, /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/screensharingd.bundle/Contents/MacOS/screensharingd owned by root, and a child process /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ScreensharingAgent.bundle/Contents/MacOS/ScreensharingAgent. If I try to kill either of these processes, they change their PID but remain running, and it does not allow me to connect.

From this thread Restart Screen Sharing Service on Mac mini Server I learned how to properly restart the screen sharing daemon. Or actually two methods. Not sure which one is proper, so I do them both. Does not help, still cannot connect.

From this thread Why is Mac-to-Mac screen sharing just hanging? I learned the suggestion to connect by IP address instead of bonjour name. Upon trying this, I get the login window, instead of the "connecting" throbber. Still no connection, though. And quitting Screen Sharing on the local machine doesn't get rid of the stuck login window. The only way to rid yourself of it is to kill NetAuthAgent, as I learned in this thread: How to kill stuck Screen sharing authentication dialogue?

Both machines run Lion (10.7.4), though I've been observing this behavior since 10.6, perhaps 10.5 I can't remember. Remote machine is a 2009 Mac Mini, and the local machine is a MacBook Pro (this behavior has been duplicated on many different client machines though).

Surely there must be some process, server, daemon on the remote machine that I can bounce? Something short of rebooting?

ssh into the remote Mac and kill the screensharingd daemon.

$ ps ax | grep screen
1234   ??  Ss     0:00.02 /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/screensharingd.bundle/Contents/MacOS/screensharingd
$ sudo kill 1234

It works for me. I have Mac OS X Lion on both local and remote computers.


Add equations that flows with the text in the keynote I'd like to make some slides with equations using Keynote. The standard way is to leave some blanks for the formula among the text, and cover the blanks with the LatexIT formulas. Since the formula does not flow with the text, if I need to modify the text by adding a word in the middle, then all the blanks after the word are shifted and I need to shift all the formula one by one manually to match the blanks. This is headache when there are lots of formula.

I am asking if there is a way to let the formula flow together with the text so that I do not need to manually shift the formula one by one? Even better, whether it is possible to add equations directly in the text without leaving the blanks first?

I am using the keynote on the MacBook Pro (MacOS Mojave 10.14.6). The keynote version is 9.0.1 (6196).

One way of having equations flow with the text is to use the equation editor inside Keynote to create equations.

You can use Insert > Equation menu at the top of Keynote or press Alt ⌥+Command ⌘+E to activate the equation edtior.

The equation editor in Keynote supports both LaTeX and MathML. See this Apple Support page for more details.

Below is an example Keynote slide that includes an equation created with the equation editor:


Which temperature sensor represents the CPU on my iMac? I'm on an iMac 2019 21.5 inches and I want to monitor my computer's temperature. I have the Macs fan control app, but I don't know which sensor to use. There are CPU cores 1 - 4 (sensor reading for each), CPU Proximity, and CPU PECI. I want to make sure my computer isn't heating up when running processor intensive applications. Which sensor should I rely on?

Thanks!

They're all valid temperature. It's kind of like asking "what temperature is my car's engine?" There's the oil, water, pistons, camshaft, etc. that all have different temperates. Just monitoring the oil temp won't tell you that one of your pistons has overheated.

But here's the thing, your computer won't overheat. Most (if not all) modern CPUs "thermal throttle" when they reach a limit placed by the manufacturer or motherboard. In this case, that'd be around 100°C for most modern Intel CPUs. Thermal throttling means the CPU will run slower, therefore using less power, and thus not heating up as much. It's perfectly fine to run a CPU at it's max temp for years, it's designed to be used and won't "overheat". If you prefer, of course, you could turn the fan up higher (or reduce the workload), but that won't really have any effect on your CPU's lifespan.

To directly answer your question, I have Macs fan control, I usually just set it as the first core, but I've figured out that one of my cores is hotter than the rest, and I just use that. CPU PECI seems to be some sort of average or entire die temp, which should be fine in most cases.


Undo Archive in iPad Mail After deleting or archiving an email in Mail on iOS 7, is there anyway to undo that action?

Yes, the "shake to undo" idiom on iOS works to undelete or unarchive a message. You need to perform the shake fairly quickly after realizing the mistake, since if you switch apps or go to the home screen, the undo status goes away rapidly.

Also, you can always browse the trash|archive folder and re-move messages back, assuming you can locate that message by sight or depending on the current inbox sort (date range, etc…)


How to disable predictive text on Mac OS Catalina on iMessages How to disable predictive text on Mac OS Catalina? I don't have it on many places, but on iMessages it is always popping up and screwing with my writing. I have everything regarding autocorrect already switched off, but the predictive text interferes still with my writing. How do I disable it? I am talking about this:

Resolved. While having iMessages, opened, go to Edit -> Spelling and Grammar -> uncheck all.


Can I use MacBook Pro as a display for AppleTV? Can I use MacBook Pro as a display for AppleTV? I'm often traveling and I don't have always external monitor for testing tvOS apps on the device.

Thanks, Milos

PS. I can connect AppleTV with MBP using USB cable, open QuickTime player - movie recording and I will have MBP as a display. Problem is that AppleTV stopped working as soon as I unplugged HDMI cable from monitor or device. I tried with the turned off the monitor and it also works, so I need a way to fake it AppleTV that there is a monitor/tv.

Unfortunately you can't put a MacBook into Target Display Mode like an iMac, so short of disassembling your MacBook to wire the internal Display Port the monitor uses to one of the external ones (assuming your Mac has one) there doesn't appear to be a way.


Creating an icon for a homebrew installed software (evince) - Mac OS X I installed Evince, the famous PDF reader that comes pre-installed with several major GNU/Linux distributions, on Mac OS X using

 brew install evince

now, to open it, I have to type every single time "evince" on terminal.
Is there any way to create an icon for that program, that could be moved in my applications folder?

Simply use a wrapper like Platypus

Download and install the script wrapper Platypus.
Create a shell script /usr/local/bin/evince.sh with the content

#!/bin/bash

/usr/local/bin/evince

Open Platypus and create a new app like indicated in the screenshot below:

Choose a nice icon (1024 x 1024 px linked) like this one:

 (48 x 48 px example)

and hit the create button
Save the app to an appropriate folder (e.g. /Applications) and create a Dock item


longevity of iPad Smart Cover Since the launch of the iPad 2 I have been using a cover that I painted so I am reluctant to replace it. However the inside surface of the cover seems to be thinning or just becoming generally less fuzzy and it is doing less to clean the screen. In particular it is leaving vertical stripes that don't get cleaned. What kind of time are people getting out of their covers and is there any way to rejuvenate them or is there any material thin enough and effective at cleaning that can be bonded to the inside of the cover?
This cover dates from iPad 2 launch - have these covers changed during their lifetime or are they still the same inside and out? I know they have not changed specifically for "new iPad" but I read one forum post that claimed the inside material had changed.

Looks to me like the leather covers might be less resilient - I saw one only about six months old that looked very shiny and polished inside, like worn suede.

The smart covers, generally do leave the vertical stripes. This happens when the fold areas of the cover do not touch the screen when it is closed. If you remove the smart cover fold it up and hold it horizontaly while wiping down the screen you will remove these stripes.

I have found that after owning 2 covers, both ployuretherene, that the microfiber lininng does start to fade away, but this like most things will be determined by the amount of use, and whether you take care of the cover.

Try not to let the microfiber part touch any dirty surfaces when it is off, or you are using it as a stand.

To clean the microfiber lining you are better to use another microfiber cloth.

They have changed since first release. My first one was a lighter green on the outside and grey on the inside, the covers now all have matching inside colours and slightly more contrast in the clolour of the outside


Is it possible to use custom resolution for Macbook Pro with Intel HD 4000? I have a 13" Macbook Pro with Intel HD 4000 chipset and I am wondering, if it is possible to set it use higher resolution then 1280 x 800?

No it is not possible. The screen is what is limiting the resolution.

That does mean that you can set up and use an external monitor with higher resolution as you can read on: http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/


Where is the terminal application on the filesystem? I want to be able to launch a Terminal window using JiTouch, which allows me to make a gesture open a file, so I want to know the location of the Terminal app so that I can open it.

Is this all you want?

/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app


Make RSS screensaver show more articles? I have an RSS screensaver, but at the moment it only displays a few articles and then loops. Is there a way to make it display more articles?

Sure — the easiest way to do this is to edit the screensaver's Quartz composition file. It's located at

/System/Library/Screen Savers/RSS Visualizer.qtz

In order to edit this, you'll need Quartz Composer, which you may already have (if you installed an old version of the developer tools), or you can download it with the Graphics Tools package here.

Open the aforementioned file, click on the "RSS" macro patch, and change the News Count to your liking:

Then save the file or make a copy and put it in ~/Library/Screen Savers.

Edit: I just spent a while trying to figure out if you can expose this option via the options panel, but it seems there's some very specific interface in place for the RSS Visualizer screensaver (see /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Versions/A/Resources/.Quartz Composer.saver/Contents/Resources), so you can't do it if you also want to see the normal RSS options.


An image editor with an API (preferably python-oriented) Is there an image editor for OS X (e.g. Preview) that can be operated programmatically, preferably with python, or that has a built-in programming language, like MS Word has VBA built-in (at least on Windows systems)?

I'd like to be able to do the following with code:

Open an image in the image editor,
Use the editor to save the image to some arbitrary location in the file system.

It is essential for me to save the file via the editor, since when the editor saves a file it does more than simply save it: it also writes meta info, which I am interested in.

macOS Sierra Version 10.12.4

Preview supports AppleScript which allows you to open and save files from CLI. There are commands for open and save.

For example, to open a file with Preview:

tell application "Preview"
    open "/path/to/file.png"
end tell

You can run AppleScript as a script file, or from the command line using osascript -e "…".

osascript -e "tell application \"Preview\"" -e "open \"/path/to/file.png\"" -e "end tell"

You can find the full Preview AppleScript dictionary by opening Script Editor.app (from the Utilities folder), choosing File → Open Dictionary and selecting Preview. This will show you many of the commands that Preview supports with the syntax for how to use them.


Find Google Chrome installation directory using Terminal How do I find the Google Chrome Installation Directory/Path using the command line?
Is Google Chrome always installed to the default path, the "/Applications/" folder?

I have tried the following commands. Can anyone suggest what I am doing wrong?

locate "*Chrome.app"

When i used this command it only search the DB entries of installed software.
find / -type d -name "*Chrome.app"

Lists all the files on the system.

How can I find only Google Chrome’s path using this command, or is there another way?

You can query for this kind of information using the Launch Services database to dump a list of all registered apps, then grep for the one you want (in this case Google Chrome), for example (using Mountain Lion 10.8.4):

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -dump | grep -i "google chrome"

gives me the output:

path:          /Applications/Google Chrome.app/
executable:    Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome
path:          /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/Versions/27.0.1453.116/Google Chrome Helper.app/
executable:    Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome Helper


Mavericks based VOIP solution needed I am traveling and as usual, I brought my Vonage box. It blew. So I have a Vonage account and no means to connect to it.

Any ideas? The Vonage App - SoftPhone stopped with 10.4! Vonage Companion doesn't include the global coverage.

Skype only (iirc) handles Skype to Skype calls.

Are there generic apps that can plug into the Vonage ecosystem?

Thanks

Well, there are a lots of SIP based softphones (Vonage seams to use the SIP protocol) like

telephone
iSoftphone

And you have to setup your software to connect to Vonage - maybe the following link could help you.


How do your library folder back? Possible Duplicate:
  Where did the ~/Library folder go in Lion?

I upgraded to Lion but now under ~/User there is no library folder. What happened to it? Is there a way to get it back?

Open terminal and type:

chflags nohidden ~/Library

Look here for more information:

http://www.macgurulounge.com/library-folder-mac-os-lion/


command-delete key remapping I have remapped one of my top-left keys (`) to the backward-delete key (⌫). However the command-delete shortcut (⌘+⌫) to "move to trash" works only on the original ⌫ key but not on the remapped key. Any suggestion?

I have remapped the key using Ukelele. I entered "&#x0008"; as the identifier for ⌫.

[fyi: purpose is to symmetrize and reduce wrist pain; likewise I remapped caps-lock to enter/return; I'm a customized Dvorak keyboard user; first experience on a Mac]

Try using KeyRemap4MacBook instead. Save a file like this as ~/Library/Application Support/KeyRemap4MacBook/private.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>test</name>
    <identifier>test</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::BACKQUOTE, KeyCode::DELETE</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Then open the KeyRemap4MacBook application, press the ReloadXML button, and tick the checkbox for the setting.


Can I run my MacBook Pro on just AC power? I have a used little MacBook Pro 13 inch Late 2008 5,1 and I was told it needed a battery. It charges, then it doesn't, and it shuts off at the most random times, so the thought occurred to me to take the battery out and run it straight from AC power.

It worked without a problem for a bit, then it just shut down. It would not come back on until I plugged the battery in to it.

Do I need to keep a battery in my MacBook Pro in order to run it off A/C power?

For some operations certain models require more power than the Power Supply alone can deliver at a given time. For this incident it relies on additional power from the battery. It is to be assumed that that is your machines issue. You'll probably need to get that battery replaced. The price is usually between 120-150 at an Apple Certified Repair Center in Austria.

*My information is based on statements from AppleCare and their internal chat service for Certified Technicians.


How do I get all music off my iPhone without losing my audiobooks? I never purchased any music and am not subscribed to iTunes Match. Everything in settings is set to "no" or "off". I have unwanted, unpurchased music and want to get it off my iPhone. However, I have two audiobooks, sync'd through iTunes from my computer, that I do not want to lose. I have to ask Seri to open them, because I have no Audiobook section and can't find them otherwise.

As John Ramos said, you should sync your iPhone with iTunes on your computer, at which point you should have the option to sync audiobooks but not music.


Retina MacBook Pro (non-Force touch) trackpad can't "click" as usual I was working with my mid-2014 Retina MacBook Pro yesterday and everything was normal. Today, when I turned it on, I've noticed that trackpad is feeling a bit "weird". It's like, unless I forcefully touch the trackpad, it's not registering any click. It was much smoother and easy-to-press just yesterday, and it was just inside my hard-bag all the day, not damaged etc. It feels like it's a force-touch trackpad (while it's not), this is the closest I can describe how it feels. I can't get the regular "click" feeling and response from the trackpad.

What should I do?

Nevermind. I started to press firmly all around the trackpad, and it just went back to normal. There was probably some dust particles in, and pressing around the trackpad eliminated them.


How can I download and install macOS 10.12 SDK? I need to download the macOS 10.12 SDK to build and run ispwDownloader (because there were no built downloads).

How can I download and install the SDK? Searching the Web has not been helpful with the solution.

@Nimesh Neema, the SDKs are stored in /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/, and I got the 10.12 SDK from here.

It works.


Why is Growl showing redundant notifications for Keka? Whenever I carry out an action in Keka, such as extraction or compression, I receive three Growl notifications. All are identical, but only one has the correct icon (Keka's icon) while the other two seem to display a missing icon.

I've checked Growl and there's only one Keka entry.

I'm running Growl 1.3.3 and Keka 1.0.1 (not App Store version).

It would appear to be an issue with Keka not Growl, I've just updated Keka to 1.0.2 and the issue is resolved.

  Changes in version 1.0.2 (10/04/2012)

  Fixed and issue with password protected rar files (Thanks to Clayman feedback) [Ticket 45]
  Fixed double notification with Growl 1.3+ (Thanks to all the feedback to Chris and MacUpdate users!) [Ticket 42]
  Fixed auto-close not always working (Thanks for the feedback Chris) [Ticket 41]
  Fixed problems extracting password protected RAR files (Thanks to Clayman for the feedback) [Ticket 45]
  Added sound customization (Thanks to Frank feedback) [Ticket 49]

Keka defect 42


How to reformat the latest iMac? I need to reformat my work mac. My boss bought it about a month ago, so it's one of the newer ones that didn't come with an installation disc. It's running mountain lion and has a bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

I tried the CMD-R at startup trick, but it didn't work. Then I looked it up online and read that the new models don't have recovery partition, so you need a disc to reformat it, but I don't have disc!

I thought about downloading Mountain Lion from the app store and trying the USB drive trick, but the app store doesn't have Mountain Lion in my purchases because it came with the mac! I don't want to pay $30, just to reformat my Mac with something it already has.

Advice?

Some short tidbits, followed with analysis:

You don't need to pay for the OS on a Mac that shipped with Lion or Mountain Lion.
Recovery HD ships with all the above Macs, but it's not visible in Disk Utility and could also be deleted, corrupted, or suffer a hardware failure.
Internet Recovery will let you re-download a recovery image from Apple's servers even if there is no hard drive connected in your iMac.
Booting from an external drive with OS X or a Recovery HD or a netboot drive (of which Internet Recovery is one free option) will allow you to totally wipe the entire drive in a Mac.
Most people are fine using Recovery HD to wipe their Macs as it erases the entire Macintosh HD portion and lest you start cleanly without needing to touch the Recovery HD.

Rather than boot to Command-R, I would boot to the startup chooser (just hold the option key) which should paint a grey screen with both the Macintosh HD and the Recovery HD - letting you choose the second. From there, if you have a fast internet connection (or don't mind waiting), you can use Disk Utility to zero the drive and then reinstall the OS that shipped with your iMac.


get output volume with AppleScript I'm writing an AppleScript which should show the value for the output volume. With get volume settings I'm getting 4 values, but I need just the output volume value. The integer should be shown in a display dialog.

use this:

display alert output volume of (get volume settings)


Open terminal via Safari Is it possible to open a terminal window from a Safari webpage?
I have found a way to open a ssh terminal window, but is it possible to only open the terminal window without pre filled commands?

I have tried to search on google but i only find solutions for opening Safari from terminal.

To open terminal with ssh from Safari i put the following link on a webpage:

ssh

There are three URL types which can open Terminal from Safari:

ssh
telnet
x-man-page

Those informations can be found under CFBundleURLTypes key in: /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/Info.plist

So in order to open Terminal app, you can place link like:

telnet

ssh

man page

It does not prefill informations in Terminal for me.

Bonus:
This rule can be applied to any application that can open URLs.

Check URL types of the app with:

defaults read /absolute/path/to/Info.plist CFBundleURLTypes

for example:

defaults read /Applications/Utilities/Script\ Editor.app/Contents/Info.plist CFBundleURLTypes

This gives me applescript as URL type, so making link like:

Script Editor

Opens the Script Editor app.


How to pull Newsstand apps out of Newsstand, or else put other apps into Newsstand? I was happy to find that in iOS 7, Newsstand can finally be put into another folder. However, Newsstand, Passbook, FaceTime and the other default factory apps still cannot be removed from the phone (without jailbreaking). This is perfectly fine -- we can throw these apps on the last screen and ignore them, or at least that's the way it should be.

In fact, my New York Times app is stuck inside Newsstand and I cannot take it out. It is the only app in there. Ideally, I'd like to pull it out, throw it in my custom "News" folder, and throw Newsstand on screen infinity, never to be noticed again.

But I'd take another solution: Adding all my "news" apps to Newsstand. Unfortunately, Newsstand will not accept these apps (NPR, AP, Instapaper).

Is there a way to put all these apps in the same, single folder?

Note: with the release of iOS 9 you can now pull New York Times and other apps from Newsstand.

What you ask isn't possible on stock iOS 7. Newstand subscriptions are not treated as full fledged apps or Safari bookmarks that can be placed arbitrarily on the springboard.


How to exclude a sub folder from iCloud drive in macOS Sierra? I have my Documents folder synced with iCloud drive, I want to exclude some sub folders from the iCloud drive is there a way to achieve this?

Adding one empty file named .nosync to a folder will prevent that folder from syncing.

You can also use this as a file extension to specific files, but the folder treatment is quite useful.

Once you've had a folder sync, you can now also prevent it from syncing on some (or all endpoints) with a utility named Bailiff, if for some reason you don't want just to delete the files from iCloud entirely and instead want to prevent the next "initial" sync.

https://eclecticlight.co/downloads/


How to secure my Mac again after years of downloading pirated software? I'm trying to be more privacy aware now by using free software instead of pirating paid ones (GIMP and DaVinci Resolve instead of pirated copies of Adobe Photoshop and Premiere etc.).

For years I've been downloading pirated and cracked software and giving them permissions to do whatever they want on my MacBook Pro.

I have now uninstalled all those software, but I feel that it's not enough. I gave so many permissions that I wouldn't be surprised if some malicious files or code were still active on my MacBook.

What can I do to fix that?

A recommended course of action would be to backup your user data (data files that you have created, not the apps and their settings) onto a different (external) drive, wipe your Mac clean and start over. This could be the most sure-shot way to ensure that your computer is free of any/all malicious apps/permissions/plug-ins.
When backing up the data, make sure you backup all the crucial files as well as app and system configurations (such as browser bookmarks, info about any installed plugins, contacts etc.)  and don't miss anything. Files can be copied onto a different external volume, browser bookmarks and any similar data from apps exported (for later import), user data such as Notes, Contacts, Reminders synced via iCloud etc. However, do not backup any apps/plug-ins etc.
Another important tip is to not use any data backup service such as Apple's Time Machine or something similar from a 3rd party that backs up and restore the entire system. Doing this wouldn't serve the purpose you are looking for. It's crucial to handpick and selectively backup only the user data files. Any apps that you are using, and wish to use should be re-installed after the fresh install of macOS, from the Mac App Store or from the vendor's original distribution source.
Once all the backup is done, and you are sure you have everything that you'd be needing, you should go ahead and create a bootable macOS installer. A working Mac is required to create a bootable macOS installer. So we'd be doing this before wiping the disk clean. This would ensure that we have a bootable installer handy if needed after we have wiped the disk clean and have lost access to an installed copy of macOS.
The step by step instructions to create a bootable macOS can be found here:

How to create a bootable installer for macOS

You should also sign out of iCloud (after making sure any data that backs up to iCloud is successfully synced) and turn-off Find My Mac. Doing so would disassociate your Mac from your Apple ID. For a comprehensive list of actions to take, you can refer to the following Apple Support document:

What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac

Now the data backup is taken care of, we are ready to wipe the disk clean. Be doubly sure about backing up any necessary data as wiping the disk clean would make you lose access to the entire installation and any data on your MacBook's disk.
Proceed ahead to erase your Mac's disk to wipe it clean. You can find the step by step instructions here:

How to erase a disk for Mac

Alternatively, you can also boot your Mac using the bootable USB installer that we created earlier, access the Disk Utility and wipe the internal drive.
Once you are done erasing the disk, proceed ahead to reinstall macOS afresh. You can use the bootable installer that we created earlier on.
Alternatively, if you have a decent Internet connection, and if your Mac supports it, an Internet Recovery can be attempted too. (I would personally recommend going with the bootable USB installer.) To learn more about Internet Recovery, refer to the Apple Support document:

About macOS Recovery.

Once you are done installing macOS, signing-in with your Apple ID and setting up your Mac, you can start by installing the required apps. Two reliable sources to obtain Apps are:

Mac App Store (built into macOS).

Homebrew and Homebrew Cask (A community developed package manager for macOS, which lets you easily install and manage UNIX command-line tools, and popular 3rd-party GUI apps respectively).

You can now start restoring your data:

Once iCloud is enabled, any data that syncs to iCloud would get restored onto the system. Go to System Preferences app → Apple ID → iCloud (On macOS Catalina) or System Preferences app → iCloud (On earlier releases of macOS) and check what apps you wish to sync with iCloud. The checked apps would sync their data to the system.

Restore by importing, any app data that you previously backed up by exporting (such as browser bookmarks).

Any app and their plugins that can be obtained from the developer's website/source of distribution should be installed from the original source.

If an app that you use doesn't have a free alternative available, prefer purchasing from the vendor and installing a non-pirated version to ensure that your computer doesn't get compromised and you have a complete peace of mind.
P.S.: If you are concerned about rouge apps getting unintended access to your personal data and wish to guard your self against it, consider installing macOS Catalina, the current latest release of macOS. macOS Catalina has improved security and a permission-based system for apps to access user data and files (kinda similar to iOS).
One major downside of using macOS Catalina could be that it has completely dropped support for 32-bit apps. While a majority of supported apps are 64-bit now, you may still wish to consult with app vendors to see if they offer a 64-bit version of their app that you wish to use, and there's no alternative available for the same. If such becomes the case, you may consider sticking with the last stable release of the previous version of macOS, i.e. macOS Mojave 10.14.6 which is well supported too.
But since you are concerned about the safety of your data and rogue apps, you should give serious thought to go with macOS Catalina. This article on WIRED sheds some light:

The MacOS Catalina Privacy and Security Features You Should Know


Stuck "Enter your Apple ID password" I just changed the password of my Apple ID.

When I started using my Mac, several minutes later, the system preferences asked me to enter my password to continue using iCloud. after entering my new password, it hanged. Restarting the mac did not even work, I had to hard shut down the machine.

After the machine is rebooted, it asks me once again to enter the password of Apple ID...

Could anyone help?

Edit1:
So it is always stuck as follows:

From the screen image, I would try a couple of things since you should be able to log in to the Mac and do things other than iCloud. Press cancel in the dialog and then check the date/time on the Mac. It should be within 2 minutes of reality if possible.

Then go to Safari and check at https://icloud.com to be sure you can log in and the account isn't locked or having issues.

At that point, you might need to clean out your keychain or try again in the iCloud preference pane. Worst case, you might need to get on the phone/web chat with iCloud support if it's a problem with your account or Apple's servers.


Why does Siri not set Geofence reminders on iPhone when used in conjuction with an Exchange account? I have been trying to use Siri to set a Geofence reminder to no avail. Apparently there seems to be some type of conflict with the phones local reminders and syncing (via Active sync) with Exchange servers in general. Siri will setup a standard reminder but review of the created task none of the Geofence options are present. I have read through Apple's forums and other 3rd party forumns. I have found a thread on Apple's forum that can be found here that involves turning off reminders and the Exchange account and enabling them on your iCloud account. Upon testing, this potential work around was unsuccessful for me (Siri still refuses to utilize Geofence options). I am currently syncing to an Exchange 2010 server (mail, contacts, calendars and reminders). Can any one provide or point to:

A canonical answer as to why this occurs?
Are there any potential workarounds that will allow an Exchange account
and built in Siri Geofence functionality to work in tandem with
each other?

The information that I have been able to locate to date reflects conflicting views with some parties saying it can be done and others saying it can't be done. I have yet to find a definitive answer on Apples general site.

After further research is seems as though Siri creates "Tasks" on my Exchange server, which don't allow geofencing. What is needed is an iCloud "Reminder", which does allow for Geofence reminders. You need to set up Reminders to use iCloud by default as follows:

Make sure your iCloud account is setup online, and enable the same
iCloud account on your iPhone.
Make sure that the notifications and calendars are syncing with
iCloud on your iPhone.

Next you will need to navigate to Settings >> Reminders:

Once these steps are completed the reminders functionality (with geofencing alerts) should work properly (even with Exchange). You will obviously need to designate Geo points via a contact entry with address information on the iPhone itself for this to work (i.e. Work, Home, etc..). There is a lot of good information on this question along with a trouble shooting process in this Apple forum thread located here. Please note that this process was tested on an iPhone 5 with iOS 6 (build 10A405) on an AT&T cellular network.


Why am I getting an error "No Index" when I try to CREATE a spotlight index with mdutil? I'm trying to create a spolight index of a directory on a shared drive (a corporate Windows active directory drive) using mdutil following the simple guide here. Here's an example of my syntax:

mdutil "/Volumes/volName/Directory/Directory Containing Spaces/Another Directory" -i on

The error message I get confuses me:

  Error: invalid operation.

  No index.

I know there's no index, I'm running this command in order to create one.

How am I getting a "no index" error on a command that should create an index? Is there some step I'm missing?

Indexing can be enabled or disabled only on the root of the drive, so, "/Volumes/volName". You can read more about the command by typing man mdutil into the terminal. An excerpt:

  -i on | off:
  Sets the indexing status for the provided volumes to on or off.  Note that indexing may be delayed due to low disk space or other conditions.

Also, indexing won't work on a drive mounted with SMB. You will have to use AFP in order to do so.


OS X accessing external drive I noticed that when I plug in an external NTFS HDD something is reading it and it doesn't stop for a long time... I checked with fs_usage and saw this:

23:26:54.189404  read              F=5    B=0x28                                                                                0.000048 W tuxera_ntfs.242048
23:26:54.189465  writev            F=5    B=0x80                                                                                0.000007   tuxera_ntfs.242048
23:26:54.189476  getattrlist                            /Volumes/REDSTAR/Kindle/Kindle books/Dean R. Koontz/Shadowfires (880)                                                                         0.000093 W mds.242039
23:26:54.189490  getattrlist                                 /Volumes/REDSTAR/Kindle/Kindle books/Dean R. Koontz/Shadowfires (880)                                                                       0.000008   mds.242039
23:26:54.189511  read              F=5    B=0x28                                                                                0.000046 W tuxera_ntfs.242048
23:26:54.189540  writev            F=5    B=0x80                                                                                0.000006   tuxera_ntfs.242048
23:26:54.189549  getattrlist                            /Volumes/REDSTAR/Kindle                                                                                0.000054 W mds.242039
23:26:54.189579  read              F=5    B=0x28                                                                                0.000038 W tuxera_ntfs.242048
23:26:54.189616  writev            F=5    B=0x80                                                                                0.000006   tuxera_ntfs.242048
23:26:54.189626  getattrlist                            /Volumes/REDSTAR/Kindle/Kindle books                                                                                0.000066 W mds.242039
23:26:54.189656  read              F=5    B=0x28

etc.

So the Tuxera driver is scanning the drive each time. Why? Is this normal?

UPDATE: it's not Tuxera's fault... it's Spotlight indexing the drive via a Tuxera NTFS driver

Based on your screen shot it is reading/writing the same thing over and over = Kindle!

For some reason Spotlight thinks the Kindle has made changes to the drive and it is re-indexing it.

To find out if that is the problem disable Spotlight and check.

Disable Spotlight

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

and

Enable Spotlight

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

To disable the External drive indexing by Spotlight:

Connect the volume or drive you want excluded to your Mac.
Open the System Preferences application.
Click on Spotlight, then click on the Privacy tab.
Drag your volume or drive into the Privacy menu to exclude them from Spotlight's indexing.


Cannot activate iMessage/Facetime after change of phone number I had to change my phone number / service provider on my phone (iPhone 5s), and while everything else seems to be working OK, I am unable to activate iMessage or Facetime with my new number.

Whenever I go into Settings > Messages or Facetime I turn them on and it says "Waiting for activation..." then after a while (several minutes) it fails "Activation unsuccessful".  The phone number shown in Messages and Facetime is my old number (now incorrect) - in this screenshot with area code 664

The phone number in my phone, Apple account and iCloud etc. is my new (correct) number - in this screenshot with area code 661.

I have tried a number of suggestions I've found online: turning off iMessage & Facetime and restarting phone; changing phone number and changing back; signing out of AppleID throughout phone then signing back in - however I still can't activate them.

Please note that facetime and imessage are working fine using my appleID, and I'm able to send/receive SMS (including SMS from Apple).

The issue seems to be that Messages/Facetime is trying to activate on the old number but I can't change that number to the new one.

How can I change that activation phone number and activate iMessage and Facetime for my new number?

According to Apple (https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201349) you should follow these steps:

"If the phone number that you want to remove belongs to an iPhone that you can't access, change your Apple ID password. This removes all phone numbers from your iPad, iPod touch, and Mac. Calls or messages for the removed numbers won't appear on those devices anymore.?

I would sign out of everything associated with your Apple ID on all of your devices before changing your password (including iTunes Store, App Store, iCloud, Facetime, iMessage, etc).  It saves quite the headache with password prompts popping up and things just not working properly due to things like 'Find My iPhone' being so stubborn. Having a backup of your iPhone probably wouldn't hurt either.

If this does not work I would strongly advise to call Apple. It's been a few years since I've had to troubleshoot this issue but if memory serves me well I believe there is something they actually have to do from their end if a phone number is 'stuck' to an Apple ID.


Managing Photos Library I have a new-ish Macbook Air with limited HD space. I take a lot of photos as a wannabe photographer. Even if I had more HD space, eventually I'd run out of space. I have and use Photostream, but I'm curious how other people manage their disk usage without losing images all together. Here's my usual process with photos:

Take a crapton of photos w/ my DSLR.
Import those photos into iPhoto (now Photos, of course) on my computer.
Delete an embarrassingly high percentage of those photos.
Edit the rest as needed.
Organize them as desired.
Share all of them via iCloud Photo Sharing.
Share the ones I find particularly interesting or likable on Flickr.

This is all well and good, but about every 6 months or so I hit my (self-imposed) 64GB photo limit and now what? To date, my solution has been to archive that library to a MicroSD card and create a new library to start over again.

It's the last part that I just hate. I have to rebuild common folders/albums, smart albums and anything else that is not specific to any one 6 month period every time I start over.

Please tell me there's a better way.

You could upgrade your iCloud storage and utilize the iCloud Photo Library, this can be used/setup by checking the respective box in Preferences.

The other option would be to have your Photos library on an external hard drive. Then when launching Photos, hold the option key, choose other library on the bottom left, and you can point Photos to look at the external drive's Photos library. This will only display your library when your external drive is connected however.


Keynote - Random Elements and Shuffle Slides In Keynote 6, if I have a slide with 2 images, how can I randomize the position of the images every time the presentation is run?

For example: Sometimes image 1 is at the top of the slide and image 2 is at the bottom. Sometimes it is opposite; image 2 is at the top of the slide and image 1 is at the bottom. Is this possible?

In keynote there is an option called Magic move transition. So you can set image with magic transition , in each running the image position will get changed. For more reference


How to access older iPhone auto-backups / restore lost Safari cards? Recently I've lost all my open Safari cards on my iPhone. Since i want to move my data to a new model anyway, I was just disabling wifi every time I plugged it to the charger in order to not let it auto-backup. I did not turn off the backup function, because I was too scared of the iThreat, threatening they'll delete all my iCloud files, backups, photos, etc. if i cancel anything iCloud-related. So sadly, that one time I forgot to turn off the wifi, and it did back up automatically. Since I've tried doing a computer backup many times before on many different PC's and cables, changing settings, including replacing the whole charging port, I couldn't do it, so iCloud backups are the only ones I could make. Now, as you might have guessed, the latest backup doesn't contain any of those lost 48 open cards, and the latest backup i did manually is almost half-year old.
Is there any way I can get access to the older AUTOMATIC iCloud backup? If not, how do I get my cards back? They couldn't just disappear without the trace of I didn't physically press 'delete' button right??

Recently I've lost all my open Safari cards on my iPhone.

I'm assuming you're referring to your open tabs/windows. These aren't backed up.

Since i want to move my data to a new model anyway, I was just disabling wifi every time I plugged it to the charger in order to not let it auto-backup.

This, quite frankly, doesn't make sense. Auto-backups to iCloud don't interfere with manual backups to your computer. It also doesn't interfere with backups made on other devices.

I did not turn off the backup function, because I was too scared of the iThreat, threatening they'll delete all my iCloud files, backups, photos, etc. if i cancel anything iCloud-related.

It tells you that it will remove your iCloud Backup of the current device if you turn it off, because you're turning it off.

So sadly, that one time I forgot to turn off the wifi, and it did back up automatically. Since I've tried doing a computer backup many times before on many different PC's and cables, changing settings, including replacing the whole charging port, I couldn't do it, so iCloud backups are the only ones I could make.

This is a whole other issue, it seems.

Now, as you might have guessed, the latest backup doesn't contain any of those lost 48 open cards, and the latest backup i did manually is almost half-year old.

Is there any way I can get access to the older AUTOMATIC iCloud backup?

iCloud will show you a list of backups you can pick from when you restore your device. There is no guarantee any specific backup other than the latest will be available, but there usually are.

If not, how do I get my cards back? They couldn't just disappear without the trace of I didn't physically press 'delete' button right??

Again assuming you're referring to the open Safari windows, these aren't backed up. Use bookmarks if you want to save websites.


Is there a way to force a Mac laptop to stay in a specific resolution? I sometimes open up my Macbook Pro and notice that my laptop panel is an odd resolution. When I check Display settings, it shows "Best for Display", when I really want the highest setting always.

Is there a utility or command that can be used to automatically set the display resolution automatically?

This works for me on Sierra.  Just paste the following script Into script editor.app

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "displaysDisplayTab" of pane "com.apple.preference.displays"
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences" to tell window "Built-in Retina Display"
    click radio button "Scaled" of radio group 1 of tab group 1
    click radio button 5 of radio group 1 of group 1 of tab group 1
end tell
quit application "System Preferences"

Run this script in script editor.app and make sure it works for you.  If it works, just export it as an application and name it something like "Max Resolution.app" or what ever..

Now you want to enable this application to control your computer by adding it to the list of applications in System preferences/Accessibility/Security privacy. Like this..

Take it a step further by adding it to your login items if you want your computer to always start up with the max resolution.

Let me know how it works out for you.


Keyboard short cut to skip back 5-10 seconds in iTunes TV show? When I'm playing music I can hit ⌘ Command⌥ Option←  (or Right Arrow, →) to skip backward (or forward) about 5 seconds. Now I'm watching a TV show for the purpose of learning a language and I like to be able to do this, but ⌘ Command⌥ Option← doesn't do anything.

Is there a good keyboard shortcut for jumping back 5-10 seconds while watching a video?

iTunes 12.8.0.150, macOS 10.13.6.

I would assume that this is possible using AppleScript, and when it comes to AppleScript and iTunes, DougScripts.com is always the place that I check first, which led me to this:

Skip Back or Ahead: https://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=skipbackorahead

I don't know if his scripts control video as well as audio, but if they don't, I bet he'd know how to adapt it.


Is it possible to get macOS running in a Docker container? I know that it's possible to get macOS running in a VM under Parallels, VirtualBox and VMWare Fusion. I have containers with Windows and many distributions of Linux and BSD Unix. I'm hoping somebody has managed to get macOS running in a container.

Yes you can run macOS in a Docker Container: https://github.com/sickcodes/Docker-OSX
It has very low overheads because it's all real KVM nested virtualization.
I have stress tested it and the minimum requirements is about 2.5GB of RAM per container. The Docker container is Arch but it has very low overheads.
Make your own container:
# Catalina
docker run -it \
    --device /dev/kvm \
    -p 50922:10022 \
    -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
    -e "DISPLAY=${DISPLAY:-:0.0}" \
    sickcodes/docker-osx:latest

# Big Sur
docker run -it \
    --device /dev/kvm \
    -p 50922:10022 \
    -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
    -e "DISPLAY=${DISPLAY:-:0.0}" \
    sickcodes/docker-osx:big-sur

Or if you want to fast-track, or use CLI only, you can boot straight into a real headless MacOS command line using :auto
docker run -it \
    --device /dev/kvm \
    sickcodes/docker-osx:auto

You'll drop into the Darwin shell.
Extra options:
Visual display:
    -e "DISPLAY=${DISPLAY:-:0.0}" \
    -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \

Add SSH:
    -p 50922:10022 \

Change resolution
    -e GENERATE_UNIQUE=true \
    -e WIDTH=800 \
    -e HEIGHT=600 \


After restoring from Time Capsule, a "Reset Password" button appears on the login screen After sending my MacBook Pro out for repairs, I got it back as a factory reset, so I had to go through the process of restoring from my Time Capsule. After completing the restore, there's now a new "Reset Password" button on the login screen that I swear wasn't there before. I'm afraid to click the button and mess things up, so I just want to know: if someone were to get a hold of my laptop and click that button, would they have to enter the current password before they could reset it? It makes me nervous that that button is there. How do I get rid of it?

You should push the button and set the password to whatever you like.

Since the machine was "factory reset" (as per yours) and then you dropped the TM backup on top of the reset, she/he/it now has non-matching credentials and is asking you to set things right.

Do all this under the usual precautions: own risk, make sure your backup is good and usable in case you have to repeat the process, etc.


Identifying an accounts username upon login I am trying to run a launch agent upon a user logging in, but the script encapsulated by it requires knowing who is logging in. Previously I could identify the user logging in by checking the owner of /dev/console but this no longer works. The owner of /dev/console is root upon a user's login or more precisely when the launch agent runs as it changes to the user afterwards. Is there anywhere I can find out the username of a person logging in for the purposes of a launch agent?

CurrentUser="$(env | grep LOGNAME | awk -F = '{print $2}')" and $USER used in a script launched by a launch agent in /Library/LaunchAgents both contain the username of the user logging in.

CurrentUser="$(users)" contains all users. So the first user will be revealed but logging in with a second user at the same time  (e.g. fast user switching) will break the script.


IMac Pro won't recognize my analog audio jack headphones. Help? I have a probleme with my iMac, it won't recognise the jack headphones when I plug it in.
When plug-in, in system and preferences, I'm not able to see the jack output.

have tried the folowing method however it doesn't work.

The only technique that works for me is to reset NVRAM or PRAM on startup

However, if my iMac go in sleep mode the bug comes back.

Any one has a solution that works along time?
Commande line to reset NVRAM or PRAM? App that can correct this issue?
Manip?

Here is my iMac :

I had this bug since Mavericks, help please !!!!

DCPIManager

I have installed it however, what do i have to perform here?
Cf screens with jack headphone connected.

Thanks

Thanks a lot for your help :)

New tests after NVRAM reset -> I can here sound from my headphones

Here are new screenshots

I can't see any difference on DPCIManager when headphones works !!!

When I put the iMac on sleep and re-launch my session, headphones stop working...
I went on DPCIManager, I have exactly the same screens as above.
Let me know what I can do to give you more informations.
Thanks again for your help, very appreciate it

------------------------

NEW tests.

I have installed Clover and did exactly what you said (checked everything, EFI > EFI > CLOVER > config.plist (resetHDA was already checked))
I have restart the computer (without PRAM reset) I have sound on my headphones !!!!!
However, when I go back to sleep mode & start a new session, headphones are still not working...

I went back on CLOVER -> devices tab, here is what I can see:

Did I have missed something? Do I need to update ResetHDA?

Thanks

I noticed from the screenshots you attached that there doesn't seem to be any audio device installed, as far as macOS is concerned. This is the category I expected you to find:

You'll notice it lists ALC892 under Codec Name*. This is the codec used by the audio chip in my Mac. Knowing your codec would allow you to choose and install a 3rd party driver for your audio chip, and in my case this was enough to fix the issue of no output device appearing on one of my Macs. Upon further consideration however, this may not be the root issue.

I would recommend you do an NVRAM reset, if that will allow the output device to show up. Check the application again after doing so, and if the category is present take another screenshot, or write down the listed codec. Then put the machine to sleep, wake it, check if the output device is gone, and check DPCIManager to see if the category/entries went with it. Also repeat the process, and try rebooting the machine rather than sleep/waking it to see if that causes the output device/DPCIManager entry to disappear.

If it is not present after waking/rebooting the machine, the issue is most likely one I experienced on another one of my Macs, that being that the HDA (High Def Audio) handler is not loading when the machine boots/wakes from sleep.

If it is an HDA handler issue, which it sounds like it may be based on your description, the only option I know of is to install a 3rd party bootloader that is capable of emulating your Mac's NVRAM (like Clover UEFI), and configuring it to manually reset the HDA handler on every boot/wake.

The bootloader method is rather easy to set up, and I managed to fix the HDA handler on one of my Macs failing to load at boot that way. It is a bit of an involved process, but I can give you a step-by-step if you decide to go that route.

Please be sure to update your question with any further information you find, and I will update my answer accordingly.

UPDATE: In the first of your new post-NVRAM-reset screenshots I can see that your audio chip is registered and that the codec it uses has full macOS support. This confirms my theory that the HDA handler is failing to reset on reboot or wake. As I mentioned the only fix I am aware of for this issue is to install a 3rd party boot loader that can manually reset it on every boot/wake. I'll detail the steps to do so below.

  In this example I will be using the Clover EFI boot loader, as it is my personal choice when I need to use a 3rd party loader, and is the one with which I have the most experience.

    1.) Grab the Clover EFI installer from here.

    2.) Run the installer (Right Click>Open), go through the pages, and click Customize when you get to this window:

    3.) Check the following boxes:

      *Clover for UEFI booting only
      *Install Clover in the ESP

      Under UEFI Drivers drop-down

        *AudioDxe-64
        *DataHubDxe-64
        *FSInject-64
        *SMCHelper-64
        *VBoxHfs-64
        *ApfsDriverLoader-64
        *AptioMemoryFix-64
        *EmuVariableUefi-64
        *PartitionDxe-64
        *Ps2MouseDxe-64
        *UsbKbDxe-64
        *UsbMouseDxe-64
        *VBoxExt2-64
        *VBoxExt4-64

      Under FileVault 2 UEFI Drivers drop-down

        Everything

      *Install RC scripts on target volume
      *Install Clover Preference Pane

    4.) Double check to ensure everything listed is checked, and nothing that was not listed is checked. Once you have done so click the Install button.

    5.) Download the Clover Configurator from here.

    6.) Once it has been successfully installed, open it, and at the bottom of the screen click the path that reads EFI > EFI > CLOVER > config.plist.

    7.) Now go down to the Devices tab, and in the top right corner check the box labelled ResetHDA if it is not already. Make sure not to change any other options in any of the tabs. When you are done hit Command-S to save the config (only if you had to check the box, if it was already checked you are good to go.)

    8.) Reboot your machine. Once you have gone through Clover and booted back into macOS your audio output should be working fine, and the chip/jack should show up in DPCIManager and System Preferences>Sound>Output respectively.

I have encountered this issue on multiple Macs, both official and Hackintosh alike, and this has consistently been able to resolve the problem. If you need any extra details or if something goes wrong, just let me know.


How long before Standby/Deep sleep mode is activated? I recently learned that I can modify the time at which Standby mode is activated automatically when the laptop is sleeping. However, I would like to know the default value before changing anything. How long does the laptop stay in hibernation before it goes into deep sleep / standby mode ?

Platform : rMBP Mountain Lion OSX 10.8

You can list some power management settings with pmset -g (get). The default standbydelay was 4200 seconds (70 minutes) on my MacBook Air.

$ pmset -g
Active Profiles:
Battery Power       -1
AC Power        -1*
Currently in use:
 standbydelay         4200
 standby              1
 womp                 1
 halfdim              1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 darkwakes            1
 networkoversleep     0
 disksleep            10
 sleep                15
 hibernatemode        0
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         15
 acwake               0
 lidwake              1

According to Apple Portables: About standby mode, "the standby mode activates after just over an hour of "regular" sleep".


If my family has multiple iPhones that use the same Apple ID, is there any way to not share Apps? My sons use my Apple ID on their iPhones, but I do not want the silly apps that they download.  Is there any way to prevent installing their downloads onto my iPhone?

Also, not all of my apps go onto their iPhones. There are expensive apps that I have that have not gone onto their iPhones.  Is there a reason for this?

Thanks for your help.

From your iPhone go to Settings > Store and disable Automatic Downloads for Apps. You can elect to do the same for books or music.

Your sons can visit the App Store and download any app that you've already purchased without being charged, though they will have to know the login information for the Apple ID tied to your iTunes Store account.

The alternative is to specify that the applications be synced to their phones from within iTunes.

  To sync downloaded apps to iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad: Connect your
  iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad to your computer.

  In iTunes, select your device (below Devices), and then click the Apps
  button.

  Select Sync Apps, and then select the apps you want to sync.


OS X Mavericks: Disabling Smart Zoom In Safari? “Smart Zoom” is a feature of the new version of Safari in OS X Mavericks and it’s triggered with a simple double-tap on the track pad. Whilst very useful for quickly zooming in and out of websites etc, its also very easy to trigger, which is irritating.

How can one disable this in Safari ?

You can disable Smart Zoom by going to System Preferences → Trackpad → Scroll & Zoom and unchecking the Smart zoom gesture.


How to find activity log with time stamps of when applications were opened and closed on MacBook Pro Is it possible to see a log of when any given application was opened, running, and then closed on my MacBook Pro? For example something that would show the messages app was opened at 3:00 pm and then closed at 3:30 pm etc.  I've seen some stuff about maybe using Console but I don't know how to use that.  Any guidance would be helpful. Thanks!
Max

The console app is in your utilities folder which is in your Applications folder. This app is for browsing thru log files. To find when an application was started open the console app and click on Mac Analytics Data on the left side of the console app. Then you can search for the name of the app you are looking for. See the image below. I started the app Preview at around 7:16 pm

This file does not give STOP time but that may be in a different log file.


Reminder triggered when certain person calls? iPhone reminders have a nice feature where you can remind yourself to do something when arriving or leaving a certain location.

Is it possible to do something similar, but replacing the location trigger with a "person X calls trigger".  For example: "Reminder me to tell John that story when John calls."

In general, is there a way to attach additional triggers to reminders?

I don't know of a way but when I need to do this, I change the contact name temporarily. Instead of "John" it would be "Tell John story".


Manage gmail label on iPad My iPad is configured with GMail (using an Exchange account, not IMAP. But I don't think this is relevant). I would like to create and manage folders in the Mail app.
I noticed that:

it is sync to my GMail label.
this feature is not possible in the native Mail app, neither in the official GMail app
the only way to do it is to use a PC or a Mac (with the GMail desktop version)
in the GMail mobile web version, I cannot find any button to force desktop version.

What is the simplest workaround?

In native mail app, under the "mailboxes" left pane, should be two lists. Top one is "inboxes" and bottom is "accounts". Select gmail account you wish to edit in the "accounts" list (bottom).

You should now see a list of "mailboxes" (apple's wording) which are the same as your gmail labels. Tap "edit" in top right of that pane and tap " new mailbox" on bottom.

You can now type in the name of label you want to create. If you want nested labels, drill into mailboxes below.

This should do the trick.


Installing Mavericks on a brand new machine that shipped with Yosemite pre-installed? Due to battery backups not working properly in Yosemite, I need to downgrade a machine to Mavericks. Unfortunately, this is a brand new Mac Mini and it shipped with OS X 10.10.0 installed.

I read various questions here, as well as some articles from other websites, and created a Mavericks 10.9.5 installer on a USB stick. I can boot from this USB stick on an iMac we have here, but the Mac Mini will not allow me to.

Is it even possible to run Mavericks on this machine--Macmini7,1?

It's a great big "Maybe".

The installer will likely decline, but it will really depend on the hardware and drivers the hardware needs.

Here's what you do:

Get an external drive. USB > 8Gb will work. Plug this drive into a Mavericks-compatible machine and install Mavericks on the external.

Now plug it into the new Mini. Reboot holding the Option key, wait for the boot picker to appear. Choose the external with Mavericks.

If you get a kernel panic, the new Mini will not run Mavericks.

If it boots to the desktop, you're good. Get some cloning software like Carbon Copy Cloner, erase the Mini's internal drive and clone Mavericks from the external drive to the Mini.


How to focus and walk through menu bar on OS X using keyboard I'm using OS X 10.11, How can I navigate through items on menu bar using keyboard, like press Alt + letter with underscored in Windows?

The Alt + Letter is a Windows things doesn't appear in OS X. There are two native options to navigate the menu bar. First, very quick, and intuitive, is a Mac universal shortcut Command(⌘)+? (which is: ⌘+Shift+/) which will take you to the Help menu. From there you can search whatever menu bar item you wish, and get the shortcut if one exists; just start typing.

Second if you manually want to navigate the menu bar then, open System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Keyboard > Check and Set shortcut for Move focus to the menu bar. This way you can move focus and navigate using arrow keys.

If you go to the App Shortcuts category in the same pane, you can also change the Help Menu shortcut to your liking.

Tertiary option would be, investing in a third party application to help you find/remember shortcuts faster. Personally, would recommend KeyCue. There are several others, just search on Google or App Store.


What's a good iOS app for quickly posting screenshots on the web? Something analogous to photobucket for the desktop - whose iPhone app is a bit useless to me because it doesn't enable importing from the camera roll. I'm looking for something that easily allows me to share a screenshot (to embed somewhere, for example in a forum, or on a Stack Exchange question) but don't want to junk up my flickr, Instagram, etc.

There's also the official Flickr app. It supports uploading photos and videos from the Camera Roll. Flickr specifically will require that you already have an account on the service, most Twitter integrated networks (yFrog, TwitPic) will "create" an account when you use it for the first time.

Flickr the site.
Flickr.app the iOS app.

(Native to iPhone only, obviously works on the iPad using small screen emulation.)


How do I ensure computer stays awake for Back to My Mac? My laptop Mac goes to sleep even though I have Back to My Mac turned on.  What kind of thing is likely to cause this?  What kind of steps can I take to fix it?

The Mac that is going to sleep has has OS X 10.8.  It works ok if I wake it up by hand.

Edit:  Thanks for the responses.  I should have mentioned I do not have an Apple router.  Back to My Mac used to work without having to ask the computer never to sleep (in System Preferences).  Asking it to wake for network access seemed to be enough.  Unfortunately, some weeks passed after it last worked and before I tried it again, so troubleshooting is tricky.   Asking it to sleep is OK as a work-around, but I'd like to find the real problem.

The obvious solution would be to set the Mac never to sleep in Energy Saver Preference Pane. If your home router is an Apple Product, you could enable the bonjour sleep proxy setting on your Mac that's labeled "Wake for Wi-Fi network access" and even a sleeping Mac will be woken when Airport detects the remote control packets coming in for your Mac.

Alternatively, you could use a free program called Caffeine to prevent sleep. Lastly, consider Edovia's free screens connect control panel to prevent your Mac from sleeping.

http://edovia.com/en/screens.html

Scroll to the bottom of the page and download their control panel installer. You would need to make an account with them and then run that control panel - choosing the "prevent your Mac from sleeping" option.

I switch back and forth between using their location service and Apple's and have never had the Edovia software conflict with Apple's or cause any issues.


Change default app for magnet links in Safari Currently Safari opens magnet links in Bittorrent. I'm moving to Deluge and I want to change the association.

I can't find anything in the preferences of either program to change the association, but I thought that it would be somewhere in com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist. Searching that plist file, I can't find any mention of magnets or bittorrent...

Where is this association recorded and how can I change it?

I use RCDefaultApp to change things  such as this when there is not a direct preference that can be set in a given app.


Can I get HDR on the 4th gen iPod Touch by upgrading to iOS 4.1? I got to see the whole keynote at September 1st and assumed that iOS 4.1 would bring HDR to iPod Touch (4th gen) and the iPhone (3Gs and 4).

Today I got my iPod Touch and I don't get it, where's the HDR button? I get that there is no flash (was announced), but HDR Button should be there, right?

Did I wrongly assume that iPod Touch would have HDR?

HDR photo is only available on iPhone 4 with iOS 4.1. Also, the rear camera is less then 1MP where iPhone 3 is 5MP.

iPod Touch's Software Update page does not list HDR photo.


How do I enable Personal Hotspot in the OS X WiFi menu? I have two Macs: my work MacBook Pro (retina, 15-inch, mid-2014) and my personal MacBook Air (13-inch, bought July 2013). Both are running OS X 10.10.3. When I click on the WiFi menu on my Pro, I see "Personal Hotspot":

It's showing my iPhone 6, running iOS 8.3.

But I don't see that on my Air.

How do I enable Personal Hotspot on my Air?

The Mac and iPhone need to have the same iCloud account set up.

If they do, and it's still not visible remove the account from and re-configure it on the device that's behaving unexpectedly.


How to Install pdfimages in El Capitan? I am reviewing the answer here about Extracting embedded images from a PDF.
It is not in Homebrew.

How can you install pdfimages in OS X El Capitan?

You can install via Homebrew with the following command:

brew install poppler


Where is the system wide PATH shell variable set in OS X? I'd like to set the PATH shell variable for all users, but could not find where it is defined.

Having no export PATH in my .bash_profile, I have this:

/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/usr/X11/bin

Where is this the PATH shell variable defined?

On a shell level, the PATH variable is set in /etc/profile by calling /usr/libexec/path_helper. To add your own paths, you can add files with a path in it to /etc/paths.d/:

pse@Fourecks:~$ ll /etc/paths.d
total 8
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  13 Jul 22 07:02 50-X11
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  12 Aug 13 14:12 TeX
pse@Fourecks:~$ cat /etc/paths.d/TeX
/Library/TeX/texbin

That's the safer way than editing /etc/profile, /etc/paths or any other system-provided file which may get overwritten with the next OSX upgrade.


Find all the PDFs with at least three characters in their name I'd like to find the PDF files whose name (excluding the extension) is greater than three.

$ find ~  -iregex '.*/[^/]{3,}.pdf'

when test with

$ find ~ -regextype posix-extended -iregex '.*/[^/]{3,}.pdf'
find: -regextype: unknown primary or operator

How can I enable the {3,} variant?


Is it possible to see the content of the "Send to Apple" crash report after closing it? My app crashed, and I just took a screenshot before closing the window.
Instead of the screenshot, I really should have copied the whole log...
I can't reproduce the crash, and really want to see the rest of the details.

QUESTION: Can I get the full details of the Problem Report, even after I have closed it?

Or is it too late, and it is lost forever?

Those informations are stored in Console application under Diagnostic and Usage Information. Here's screenshot:

You can also find them in:

~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/
/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/


Using last column in Numbers I would like to subtract the last column of a specific row. Since the number of columns is always changing, I need to get it dynamically. I figured there is a function that gives you the number of columns of a row. But I am not able to tell Numbers to use it (because I don't know the syntax).

I'm not 100% clear what you're asking to do since you haven't posted any of the contents of the sheet, but you can use the INDEX, ROWS and COLUMNS formulas to get what you want. INDEX() will return the contents of a cell within a certain range of cells, and you can use rows() to count the number of rows and columns() to count the number of columns, depending on exactly what you need. Without knowing how ranges are defined and things are labelled it's hard to be more specific, but I think that will get you started in the right direction.

If that doesn't help, maybe you could post what you've tried and give us some example data & formulas.


Outlook for Mac 2011 - How to sync with iCal (Google Calendar)? This seems to be a common problem, but I couldn't find any solutions.

  I want to sync my Google Calendar with Outlook 2011

I tried this solution:

Sync Google Calendar with iCal
Then sync iCal with Outlook

I want to get my Google events into Outlook.

But I have a Problem:

Works fine. All my Google events are in iCal
Outlook won't show my iCal events. I did it with this solution

What can I do as syncing directly from Outlook to Google isn't possible.

  Further Information:

  Add an event in iCal -> shows up in Outlook
  Add an event in Outlook -> doesn't show up in iCal

Not exactly sure what you are trying to do here, perhaps you could clarify in an edit?

I have intrepreted that you have Google cal synced with iCal, but want to sync iCal with Outlook.

You can sync iCal with Outlook. The full instructions are on microsofts Outlook for mac support page


If I get a second iPad will I have access to all my apps? Do I need to purchase them separately for every iPad I have?

As long as you log in on both iOS devices with your same login from Apple (or backup and install them with the same login on your Mac/PC with iTunes), you will be able to use the same apps and other data without the need to purchase them again.

You can still manage your apps separately for each device: For instance, iTunes will keep them apart (you get to name each device yourself), and you can install different sets of apps and photos, music and all on the devices. But anything that comes from the App Store is linked to your Apple ID login - and once you've purchase something with your ID, you can install it on all your devices.


How do I sort/recover deleted items on Mac? So I'm a DJ and I was going through my music files in Itunes when I made a bonehead mistake of deleting about half of my music library! Now I go to my Trash Bin in hopes of being able to recover those files that I deleted, however I am unable to sort through the files by "Date Added" in the trash bin. When I select "Date Added" as a column, all of the dates show "--". If I have dates, I can look at everything I deleted when I made my mistake, and simply "put back" all those items. However, my trash bin is not showing me any dates in this field! Is there any way to bring dates into the "Date Added" column, or if there is any other way to sort through my trash bin to recover those files into iTunes?

FYI: I currently use OS Mavericks

Thanks!

If you are not afraid of the Terminal.app try starting the Terminal.app and enter the following commands:

cd ~/.Trash
ls -lu

This may result in something like:

-rwxr-xr-x  1 otto  staff  700416 Jan 26 23:33 MyRemovedFile.txt

where 23:33 is the value which should show up in the 'Date Added' column in Finder.
Could not test this with iTunes, but hope it may give some clues for trying to solve your issue.


Where can I purchase repair parts for Apple products? I have an old iMac G4 that's well beyond being supported in any capacity by Apple. Two years ago, when taking it apart to upgrade the hard drive and CD drive, I accidentally severed the connector on the logic board for the display. At the time, I looked around to see if I could find somewhere I could purchase a replacement logic board, but pretty much the only place I found were some people selling them on eBay from unknown origins for wildly varying prices. I ended up dropping the matter, as I didn't have a need for the machine anymore, but it got me thinking:

Where can I purchase repair parts for Apple products? Presumably the Apple Certified Repair shops have a supplier - do their parts come directly from Apple? Can a "regular person" like me obtain parts directly from Apple as well? If not, are there any certified repair places that are willing to resell the parts they have access to? Or is eBay, with parts from who-knows-where, the only option?

iFixit has manuals online as well as the parts needed. I've bought and replaced a number of parts from them and their instructions are top notch.

eBay sometimes, but, as you know, that's your own risk.


Use another MacBook as extended display via Thunderbolt 2 cable? I am currently using a MacBook Pro 2015 with Iris Pro 2G graphic card, which supports up to 2 extended display (I tried to setup 3 extended monitor - 2x Thunderbolt 2 + 1x HDMI, it won't work, 1 screen has to go dark). On the other hand I also have a MacBook Pro 2013 with a broken screen. Both MBPs have 2x Thunderbolt port and 1x HDMI.

MBP 2015 has a 3-screen setup:

Laptop screen
Thunderbolt 2 to DVI on FHD monitor (extended)
HDMI to DVI on FHD monitor (extended)

MBP 2013 has a single screen setup:

Laptop screen - broken
Thunderbolt 2 to DVI on FHD monitor (mirror, not extended)

My question is,

Is it possible to use a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 2 cable connect these 2 MBP and make the 2013 MBP's FHD monitor as another extended display to make MBP 2015 to total of 4 screens?
If not, any suggestion to make the most of the MBP 2013?

ScreenRecycler enables you to use your MBP 2013 as an additional display for your MBP 2015 laptop. It's not very expensive (about $30).

Both computers need to be connected together through the local network (can be either Ethernet or WiFi, or maybe even a Thunderbolt Cable if you really want that).

The MBP 2013 needs to be running Mac OS X 10.8, 10.9, or 10.10 (because ScreenRecycler is not compatible with 10.11 and newer).


My network is not showing up on my list of networks I have a Mac OSX.  My network is not showing up on my list of networks. I am able to get online on this computer but not on the other computers in the house connected wirelessly.  This has been the case today but was not this way before.

You will need to figure out if it is a logical or physical issue. Protocol incompatibility is a common cause of these failures, maybe the router reset and configured itself into an incompatible protocol ("802.11 n Only" for example). Sometimes the network connections utility itself is the problem, to discard this you can type airport -s in the "Terminal" app and see if there your network appears. If not, you can run a Wireless diagnostic with the OS tool, you can open it by holding the alt key while clicking the network icon at the top bar.
The utility will guide you trough the steps and give the information that it can get about the problem.

If with the previous steps things still don't work or show the cause of the problem, maybe it is at the router side. You will have to verify protocols and configurations according to your router/Acces point model, as every manufacturer has their own configuration.

Apple has an article referring to this, you should check it out if haven't: Wi-Fi: How to troubleshoot Wi-Fi connectivity


Booting issue Please help When I select Windows to start in my start up disk and restart my computer it doesn't work. It's no bootable disk please insert bootable disk press any key to continue. I was told that I might have rebuild my BCD files on the volume. My question is do I need the installation disk to do that? I don't have the disk anymore. I have music on that side that needs to be finished and save. Please help!!

This answer addresses the situation when you can't repair or fix your Windows OS. Just login to your Mac OS X and search for your Windows OS drive. Then later on from there you can just copy paste all the files you need onto your OS X preferably your desktop. Try to remove the Windows Partition anf make a fresh installation whenever you have access your disc. Hope I helped you :-)


How to save data from a time machine backup that has gone bad My 3TB USB disk I use as my Time Machine target has gone bad.  I can mount it read only but no set of options I've tried allow me to mount it read/write.

The fsck tells me that the catalog btree is bad and I can not repair it because there is not enough space left on the disk to allocate a new btree (these are messages I get from fsck_hfs).

The Apple support article says to just open the volume in the finder and copy the Backups.backupdb to a new drive.  When I try that, the "preparing to copy" dialog comes up.  After 26 hours, it is at 3.8 million files but it has stopped moving.  My fear is the btree is in a circular loop and it got stuck -- maybe?

When I try to copy the old volume to a new volume using ditto, I get lots of errors about "Operation not permitted".  I believe the time machine disk has some fairly unique directory structures and I guess ditto doesn't know how to recreate them properly?

I thought about using ditto and create a big cpio file but then what would I do to restore it?  I assume I would get the same errors.  And, I also have the fear that if the directory structure is really goofed up, it might not ever finish.

To be honest, this is not a tragic loss.  I could just reformat the drive and start fresh with backups and give up all of the historical data which, 99.99 chances out of 100 I would never want.  So, this is a bit of an opportunity to poke at it and see if I can find a way to recover the drive without any huge heartbreak if I destroy the file system mucking with it.  Or, I could just retire the drive and if I really really really need something off of it, I could mount it and pull just that piece off.

Another possibility is to write a program to traverse the tree keeping track of the inodes.  For each unique inode of a regular file, copy that file to the new disk using an inode unique path.  For each repeat inode, don't go down into the tree.  Also, in to a separate file, record the paths to get to an inode.  The big ICK there is all the extended attributes and ACLs that Apple / HFS has.  I don't know how to get the complete set of these things.  Is there more than just ACLs and extended attributes?  Perhaps such a critter already exists.

I am simply going for an answer with this because I believe it is the only one.

First of all don't use Finder. If you do, don't copy it all because Finder does not understand what a hard link is.

If you would like to keep the data in sort of the same structure you can use rsync with a version number greater 3. Not the version supplied by Apple. With that you would be able to copy the volume including hardlinks while preserving xattrs and permissions. With one caveat. Not the ownership because that is set to nobody right now.

Tmutil keeps track of it and you can inherit them on another machine/installation. But restoring seems (as far as my research has lead me) also to be limited to tmutil. While I am sure that there are certainly commands that would do this at will they are not documented in

man tmutil

In order to get all data off you will have to run rsync as root. Which will then be the owner afterwards. Alternatively it will set them back to how they were but at nobody as the owner isn't that useful either. The rsync route would allow you to only copy the files that actually exist if you choose to preserve hardlinks. The resulting data set would be about the same size, should be identical in properties with the only difference being that the folders are now not hard-linked. Only the files are.

Personally I would be interested in trying to ask tmutil afterwards to adopt this data set. In any case you will then be able to browse the data freely.

If you just wan't to get all the unique data that is on the time machine disk you can ask fdupes to list hard-links as duplicates (it has a switch for that) and then have them deleted. This should leave you with one unique set. There will still be loads of files that are practically identical but not actually bit for bit. So it might be still messy.

I have gone trough something similar myself. Basically Time Machine should either you once your backup has reached a certain age and tell you to start over. Because it is impossible to restore a working installation from a time machine backup that is a couple of months old (depends on usage, obviously). It simply becomes a really fragmented mess if it has to keep track of millions of files in order to create the consistent set at point X in time. The alternative would be to reconsolidate the sets permanently but that would mean that the resource usage of Time Machine would go up. For mobile computers that would also be unpractical since the disk would need to be connected for extended periods of time. If you like the idea that you can reinstall your computer to the state it was 1h ago before you installed "xy" or did some "rm"ing on something that seemed useless you better keep only 2 or 3 months worth of time machine around (again, depends on usage). Or start using rsync and multiple targets, either with a self written solution or with one of the commercial wrappers around it. Separating the Backup strategy for stored data and working data also helps.

If now someone will turn up an say that using something like ZFS Snapshots would be better then I can only recommend to test that for a couple of weeks and not just blabber on what is written on the internet. This does need considerably more resources to the time machine solution. If it is used for files that change a lot you either end up with pretty gigantic snapshots and are running out of disk space which won't be restored if you delete the snapshots in between. If you even can delete them, which is unlikely. Which only leaves you with the option to delete the oldest ones frequently but in that case Time Machine works absolutely fine as well. From my experience even better. Deduplications would need a very fine graded adjustment since so many files are altered every couple of minutes on OSX but are still kept for years.
Incremental backups over a long time seem so of alluring but in practise that might not be the best approach.


Install El Capitan with VirtualBox on OS X I am creating an El Capitan Virtual Box on my Mac. This is the process I take. I pressed some keys (it says any) as shown in second image, but I get nowhere. What should I do to move from here?

I double click the "El Capitan" option

This is the screen that opens next.

This is how I specified the elcap.dmg. This is the dmg file of  Install OS X El Capitan.app

Nothing is happening. What am I doing wrong?

The dmg file (Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg) is no bootable image.

To create a bootable file use the following script. You may have to modify some paths (i.e. the user name in the last line and the path to Install OS X El Capitan.app (and the inner InstallESD.dmg file) in the 6th line):

#!/bin/bash

# Create bootable El Capitan ISO

# Mount the installer image
hdiutil attach "/Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg" -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/esd

# Create empty cdr image
hdiutil create -o ElCapitan.cdr -size 8000m -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J

# Mount the cdr image
hdiutil attach ElCapitan.cdr.dmg -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/iso

# Restore Base System to the cdr image
asr restore -source /Volumes/esd/BaseSystem.dmg -target /Volumes/iso -noprompt -noverify -erase

# Remove Package link and replace with actual files
rm /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation/Packages

# Copy Base System
cp -rp /Volumes/esd/Packages /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation
cp -rp /Volumes/esd/BaseSystem.chunklist /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/
cp -rp /Volumes/esd/BaseSystem.dmg /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/

# Unmount the installer image
hdiutil detach /Volumes/esd

# Unmount the cdr image
hdiutil detach /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System

# Convert the cdr to ISO/CD master
hdiutil convert ElCapitan.cdr.dmg -format UDTO -o ElCapitan.iso

# Rename the ISO and move it to the desktop
mv ElCapitan.iso.cdr $HOME/Desktop/ElCapitan.iso

# Clean up temporary file
rm ElCapitan.cdr.dmg

Paste the content in a text editor to a new document as plain text and save it as prepare_elcapitan_cdr.sh on your desktop.

Open Terminal, chmod the script and execute it:

chmod +x ~/Desktop/prepare_elcapitan_cdr.sh
cd ~/Desktop
./prepare_elcapitan_cdr.sh

Detach elcap.dmg from the VM. Use the final ElCapitan.iso as installer iso and attach it to the virtual SATA Port 1. You can delete the ElCapitan.cdr.dmg file.


Imac not start, wirless keyboard reset I have a problem with an IMAC 27'

1: the osx was corupt so it wasn't boot anymore.
2: i changed the batery from the keyboard so, i canot use the keyboard for startup key combination to reinstal the operating sistem

All i want to do is to reinstal the operating sistem (i have the original cd) but i can not do anything. any command i try to do on startup, dosn't work because the keyboard was reset (i think). I put the cd in and now i can not eject because ... guess what... the keyboard not work, of course.

so, what can i do?

thank you very much

Thee is nothing you can do with wireless keyboard at this time.

Get a USB cable keyboard, from friend or from store.


OS X displays weird pattern randomly freezes and shuts off I recently upgraded an early 2011 MacBook Pro, installed 2 new Kingston SSDs and two new 4 GB RAM sticks (unsure of brand, and I think what may be causing the issues, but wanted to get a second opinion).

I installed the new drives in RAID 0 for a performance boost and the 8 GB of RAM at the same time.

The problem started about a month afterwards. It wasn't until recently that it started becoming more of an issue.
The problem is that the screen gets lines "unsampled" display (I'm unsure how else to describe it) it starts beeping and shuts down.
As such this week I backed up the computer on an external drive and reformatted the drives as two separate drives (no RAID 0 anymore) thinking this could possibly be the culprit.
A couple days go by with no issue, then bam the screen comes back and shuts down not backing up any unsaved files. This time however there are no beeps, just weird screen and shuts down.

I have tried starting the computer in safeboot and starts no problem, just is unusable for my wife as the graphics runs at a lower level and graphs and data are just too slow to load. I have also tried to clear the PRAM but the issue still occurs.

Here is a picture of what happens.

The problem you are describing is a problem I had a while ago as well. For me the screen would get all messed up and depending on whether I was playing sound at that moment or not I would hear a loud screaming-like sound. Then after a couple of seconds the computer would reboot.

Replacing the ram fixed it for me.


Remove purchased apps front Appstore I downloaded a whole bunch of apps for iPhone, and then deleted them.

But they are still associated with my account, and when I go back to the download page, I don't see the [GET] button, but the iCloud logo...

I want to get rid of that, and it seem that Apple has change the way it could be done before.

Once you've bought it [whether paid or free] it's yours forever.
You can delete purchases from all devices, but you still retain the right to download it again in future.

The cloud icon signifies that you can redownload it at any time.


AppleScript and shell script issue I used to run a shell command with AppleScript for authentication to a radius server, this was running fine as I could specify a parameter for the password.
the shell process was updated and don't accept the password parameter anymore and have to be done separately (prompted by terminal), so in terminal its look like it
~mycommand authenticate -username
~password

unless I'm wrong "do shell script"m run in different instance so it's no point doing
do shell script + auth command
do shell script + password

is they anyway I can still use AppleScript and somehow let AppleScript answer with the password?

The following example AppleScript code shows an example of how it could be coded for iTerm2.
set myPassword to text returned of ¬
    (display dialog "Enter Password:" default answer "" with hidden answer)

tell application "iTerm"
    set myWindow to (create window with default profile)
    tell myWindow to tell the current session
        write text "echo mycommand authenticate -username"
        delay 1
        write text "echo " & myPassword
        delay 1
    end tell
    close myWindow
end tell

Notes:
As coded, it uses echo just for testing purposes, obviously you'd remove echo and "echo " &  for production run.
The delay commands may need to be adjusted, or may not be necessary at all.  Test with the actual commands to see.


"No Local Dictionary Available" error from dictionary after upgrading from Sierra to Catalina I have a late 2013 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which I just upgraded from Sierra to Catalina. Overall, everything still seems to work, but the dictionary popup that shows when I triple-tap on a word is messed up. This is what it looks like:

I tried clicking the "Configure Dictionaries" button and I don't see the choices I usually see. It looks like this:

I tried restarting my Mac, and searching on Google and this site for solutions, and I couldn't find anyone who ran into quite the same problem, or any fix for this.

Does anyone here know how to make my dictionary work again?

Update: I found this thread on Apple's message board.

The Apple-recommended solution didn't work for me. I'm using an external hard drive as a Time Machine backup, and I found a backup of my /System/Library/Assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_DictionaryServices_dictionaryOSX folder that is recent but from before upgrading to Catalina. My laptop's hard drive has a /System/Library/Assets folder, but it does not have a com_apple_MobileAsset_DictionaryServices_dictionaryOSX folder within it, and Finder is not letting me create one. I don't see the "New Folder" option like I usually do. I tried dragging the folder from my backup and nothing seemed to happen. I tried using the Time Machine app to restore the folder and I got a dialog saying "“” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by macOS.".

I also tried the suggestion in the thread of restoring my /Library/Dictionaries folder, but I can't find it anywhere on my built-in hard drive or my backups.

Update 2: I disabled System Integrity Protection as described here, and looked in my /System/Library/Assets folder, and most of the stuff was missing. I hope I didn't mess up anything. I managed to copy the com_apple_MobileAsset_DictionaryServices_dictionaryOSX folder from my Time Machine backup, and it seems like it didn't fix anything. I restarted my laptop and triple-tapped on a word, and the Dictionary app came up and said it was preparing the downloadable dictionaries (or something similar; I don't remember exactly), which gave me some hope, but after that finished, the same things were happening ("No Local Dictionary Available", usual dictionaries not showing). I restored my /System/Library/Assets folder from my latest backup (from before the upgrade), re-enabled System Integrity Protection, and restarted my laptop again. My Dictionary app is still broken.

Update 3: I created a new user account and logged in with it to see if the dictionary worked. It was still broken.

I think it's worth trying a reinstallation of Catalina. I've reinstalled macOS countless times to solve odd issues like this and while it may seem extreme, it's quite safe and often the simplest and quickest option.
Make sure the machine is backed up, then restart into the Recovery partition by holding down Cmd-R at startup, then reinstall the OS. It shouldn't take very long and you can set it going overnight or another convenient time.
Your files and settings shouldn't be affected by the reinstallation, but backing up is always sensible in case of (very rare) errors.
If this doesn't work, as a last resort you can try a clean install, and then restore from Time Machine backup, being mindful of @Yoan's warning about mixing Time Machine backups.