Apple's unicode keyboard layout versions location Based on the "ISO" standard, say you we're to buy a keyboard and then plug it in. Note, I have never attempted this, but am assured it will work after changing your keyboard's input source.
Is there a location on the Mac OSX Big Sur operating system where these different key mappings are stored? Where it would be easier to program based on these files? Where are these mapping located?
Keyboard
Goal: (Input) American
Translated: (Other) Language
Working Example (Referenced From Comment):
I am trying to specifically translate code made in the USA in the standard format. Then run it through an AI translator which then reformats the file encoding and also the Unicode characters exactly as they were typed on a foreign computer. So the input file becomes a new file with a new file encoding standard relative to that specific country, then the characters are also changed to a specific desired Unicode standard
Or would it be best to programmatically change this?

Computers normally use a single encoding system, ISO 10646/Unicode, that covers all languages at once.  It currently gives each of over 100,000 characters a unique idenfier.  All hardware keyboards are essentially the same as regards the codes sent to the computer, only the printing on the keys differs. Software keyboard layouts and input methods in MacOS provide mappings of the standard hardware keyboard output codes to the Unicode codepoints that reflect the requirements of any particular language, while fonts translate those codepoints into glyphs on the screen.
This page provides graphics of some of the different language mappings which you can select in MacOS via system preferences/keyboard/input sources.  These can be applied to any hardware keyboard and all use Unicode encoding.
These software mapping files are found in system/libary/keyboard layouts and system/library/input methods on a Mac.   Users can also create custom mappings with apps like Ukelele and Karabiner and other methods.
But I don’t offhand think such mapping files would play any role in a translation system of the sort you are describing.


Where are the actions stored that the Contacts.app can apply on telephone numbers? When I click on a telephone number in Contacts.app (or more precise: on the word left of it) I get to see the following menu:

Where does Contact.app store these actions? I couldn't find anything in the /Library/Scripts or ~/Library/Scripts folder.
I want to know this as I think the Send SMS with Bluetooth is not natively present and I want to copy this action over to a new install I'm going to do.

I found the install directory. Apparently it was the action posted here. The action is installed in ~/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins


How do I force iOS Reminders to sync? Reminders on iOS is often out of sync with Reminders on my other devices and iCloud. How do I force it to sync?

Opening up the calendar and allowing it (or forcing) to sync will do the trick, though oftentimes imperfectly.

To force calendar to sync, open it up and the tap "Calendars" at the bottom, then swipe down.

As far as "imperfectly" goes, I mean it doesn't seem to sync all tasks all the time. I haven't figured out what the pattern is there, but it seems that it's usually recurring tasks that have issues.


Kernel panic on a 2012 MacBook Air This is MacBook Air 2012 A1706
Now it doesn't even power on.  It just makes 3 short tones.

Where could be a problem?

The three short tones with a 5 second interval between sets is indicative of a RAM failure

From Apple's support document:  About Mac startup tones

  Three successive tones, then a five-second pause (repeating): RAM
  doesn't pass a data integrity check.

The MacBook Air doesn't have any user serviceable memory, so it's a logic board issue.  Since you cannot boot, there's really no other option but to take it in for service.

It's likely that Apple will want to replace the logic board for a large sum of money.  I suggest looking at a reputable 3rd party repair shop.  I have used Rossmann Repair Group in the past with great success (not affiliated, just a client)

He even has a YouTube video with your exact problem and how he fixes it; it's technical, but full of good info.  Caution:  he's from NYC so his language is typically colorful.


How does 'stuck' (in results of 'top') relate to 'not responding' (in Activity Monitor), 'spin' or 'hang'? In results of top commands, I sometimes see stuck.

Apple's top(1) OS X Manual Page does not explain this use of the word.

How, if it all, does stuck relate to the following?

not responding – may be seen in Activity Monitor, in the Force Quit Applications dialogue of loginwindow, and so on
.hang files – may be present at /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports
.spin files – may be present at /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports

There's an an accepted answer for the first point. Answers relating to points 2 and 3 will be appreciated.

There is usually no correlation between a stuck process of top and a non-responding application:

stuck means that the process is currently un-interruptible which usually is the case if the process is waiting for a disk or network data block to be read (or similar low-level stuff). Technically speaking the process is executing in kernel space (aka Unix kernel) and can not be interrupted (so even a kill -9 wouldn't have any impact). Usually these stuck states only last milliseconds (as you can see in top as well because the number of stuck processes changes with every display cycle).
non-responding applications can be too busy to reply to any event OS X throws at them.

I see one situation where a stuck process corresponds to a non-responding application: A process can be stuck for a very long time, perhaps stuck endlessly, without any possibility to kill it. This usually is the result of some programming error, e.g. improper disconnection from a networked device then the kernel keeps trying to read from it. In cases like this even a forced termination will not remove the process.


How can I share a Google Drive file to anyone on iOS? On iPhone/iOS, is it possible to share a Google doc (or for that matter, any file on Google Drive) with anyone who has the link provided by the "Link Sharing" feature?

I AM able to share with other people who are using my domain/are part of my G Suite.

What I do NOT see is how I can share a file with anyone who has the link.

I CAN perform this task in the web interface, under "Advanced"..

but cannot find similar functionality in the mobile app.

If you're the G Suite administrator, you can control whether users can share their Drive files outside your organization. You can also set the default sharing options for new files created by users.

To allow users to share outside your organization to anyone:

Sign in to your Google Admin console.
From the Admin console dashboard, go to Apps > G Suite > Drive and Docs.
Click Sharing settings.
Under Sharing outside of organization, select ON. Users can invite people outside the organization to view, comment on, and edit their files.
Select the options according to what you need.

You can fine tune the sharing settings. Read more at the G Suite docs.


How to stop Mission Control from rearranging screens? If I have arranged Finder to the left of the desktop and Slack to the right, and have Sketch further to the right, there's a reason for that. It's an organization strategy to make my work easier and keep track of the many windows I have open. BUT, macOS rearranges them if I click on the application icon from the Dock and rather than swiping over to the screen in the specified order, it moves it next the Desktop.

Is there a way to stop that from happening? A way to pin screens to the desired position?

Go to System Preferences -> Mission Control and uncheck: Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use.


how can i disable switch screen animation in catalina? I feel there is slight fade in animation despite clicking reduce motion.
It's so annoying, i want to remove all animation when switching between applications if one is in fullscreen mode.

yabai + BetterTouchTools
yabai is a window manager for mac. If you want to get rid off all animations completely and move very fast around your computer, then this is the way to do it. It is a command line tool so you will need to pair it with some kind of key mapping or mouse/trackpad mapping utility.
You can use BetterTouchTools to remap your trackpad motions. I used it to map three finger swipe to a yabai command that changes between spaces instantly.
Map "3 Finger Swipe Left" to "Execute Terminal Command (async)" with the command:
/usr/local/bin/yabai -m space --focus next

and "3 Finger Swipe Right" to "Execute Terminal Command (async)" with the command:
/usr/local/bin/yabai -m space --focus prev

disabling most other animations
Unfortunately I haven't found a way to change macos defaults to completely turn of this fade animation but this should speed up most other animations that may be annoying you (or you didn't notice but would be glad to have them disabled).
This link has a pretty good catalog of different options that can be disabled/enabled/changed to speed things up and remove annoyances. Some similar to what you want:
| Command | Description |
| --- | --- |
| defaults write com.apple.dock launchanim -bool false | Don’t animate opening applications from the Dock |
| defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.1 | Speed up Mission Control animations |
| defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect -string "scale" | Change minimize/maximize window effect (faster) |
| defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0 | Remove the auto-hiding Dock delay |
| defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0 | Remove the animation when hiding/showing the Dock |
| defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.001 | Increase window resize speed for Cocoa applications |
need more speed?
yabai + karabiner
I use Karabiner to configure tab to act as a window managing modifier key if I don't press it alone (i.e. if I don't want to just press tab). Doing this you can resize windows, arrange them, move them to other spaces, and change focus between spaces/windows all with the keyboard. I also have caps lock configured as a modifier key that launches/focuses applications. This way you can go directly to the application you want and use yabai to have it open instantly.
Here is my Karabiner configuration if you want to get more into window management. I mostly use Goku to do my Karabiner configuration because it makes it easy to do complicated mappings.


RAM Disk Fusion Drive? I've recently started reading up on RAM disks, and they really do sound like they could boost a computer's speed. However, I was wondering if there was a way to go even further and make a RAM disk one of the volumes in a DIY Fusion Drive. Is there a way, keeping in mind the fact that RAM loses its data upon losing power, to safely make a DIY Fusion Drive featuring a RAM disk?

Fusion Drive acts as an extension to the installed HD, it is not a cache. If you would use a RAM disk as the SSD part for your DIY Fusion Drive you would loose the data stored in the RAM part whenever the system shuts down.


How to backup live photo as 6s feature in dropbox or other I found that live photo is not backup on dropbox or google photo

can live photo (on 6s feature);only backup on icloud?

The iOS app Photo Sync can auto-upload Live Photos to your Dropbox Account and as an option delete those after successful upload.

The live photo will be – as usual with all these work-around solutions – split into two parts, a „YYYY-MM-DD hh.mm.ss.jpg“ and a „YYYY-MM-DD hh.mm.ss.mov“. (The naming scheme can be freely adjusted to your needs.)

Another seamless option is Google Photos. Works absolutely clean and straightforward. Live Photos can be viewed and played in Google Photos as used to from the Apple Photos app.


Prevent redraw of menu bar icons Yosemite When switching between two screens, all the icons in the menu bar appear to be re-drawn, causing an annoying jittery effect. This started happening after upgrading to Yosemite.

Is there any documentation available on this problem? Are others experiencing the same issue? Is there a fix available?

I currently have in my menu bar:

Twitter
Dropbox
Grabbox
F.lux
Caffeine
Time Machine
Menu Meters
WiFi
Sound
Battery (incl. percentage)
Time (digital)
Account switcher
Spotlight
Notification Center

Though I doubt any one of them is the cause.

Update 2015-03-04: According to some updated release notes from the Bartender app (v1.2.32; emphasis mine):

  Apple appear to have fixed the flickering item issue for multiple
  monitors in Yosemite with 10.10.3 Beta 2; but in doing so Bartender
  stopped working correctly. We have made changes to Bartender for
  10.10.3 Beta 2 and anticipate it to now be working smoothly; if you see any issues with Bartender please do let us know.

So there may be an end to this problem in sight.

I'm sorry to say that, according to my own email exchange with their Advisors, Apple Engineering's official response is that this is by design:

  This is normal behavior caused by transparency being turned off and on to differentiate between which display is active.

  There are a few workarounds you can try.

  — Adjust the settings in System Preferences —> Accessibility and enable reduce transparency.

  — Disable displays have separate spaces.

  — Enable Use Dark Menu Bar and Dock in System Preferences —> General.

Another Workaround with Bartender

In my experience, I also run Bartender to limit the number of active status bar icons. Since fewer icons have to redraw, it decreases the redraw delay when switching monitors. They still redraw, and it's still annoying, but the increased UI responsiveness helps me ignore it.

Troubleshooting Steps that Do Nothing

I performed the following steps with a Senior Apple Technical Advisor and Engineer during a support case for this same issue. None of these fixed the issue:

creating a new user (and thus a blank user profile)
going into safe mode (including with a new user account)
reinstalling the OS
resetting SMC and NVRAM
running Apple Hardware Test
running VGA dongle diagnostic tools

Detailed Problem Description

Videos of the behavior are posted here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsk5xxSb1

When either one or two external monitors is attached,

via HDMI, MiniDP>DP, or MiniDP>VGA

regardless of whether the lid is open or closed,
and Displays have separate Spaces is enabled,
one can click the desktop on any inactive desktop (the desktop with a grayed-out or muted menubar),
and that display's menubar's icons will begin redrawing,

which manifests as a jittering of icons (expressed as a shifting laterally and vertically),
a rearranging of icons (in the case where one has rearranged them manually by holding down the CMD key and dragging them),
and a brief de-antialiasing followed by a re-antialiasing (or dithering) of the icons.

This occurs with all icons in the right-hand side of the menubar,

but not those on the left (apple, and menu items),
and also excluding the sidebar icon.

The symptoms do not occur when transitioning from one external monitor to another.
The shifting of icons causes a functional delay between initiating the transition and using the application in the destination screen. (In my case, 3-5 seconds.)

The delay's timing appears related to the number of status bar icons you have.

Root Cause?

I expect that this is a software issue related to SystemUIServer or one of the underlying (private) UI libraries. It seems heavily related to antialiasing. Although Apple says this is expected behavior, I think many users would agree this is a bug introduced with Yosemite.


Maps : search directions with intermediate point? On MacOS as well as iOS : is it possible to search directions including an intermediate point ("via") ? Google Maps can do it.

Yes, you can do so in iOS Apple Maps, but you can only add intermediate waypoints in certain ways. Specifically, you must have already started navigation to a destination. At that point, you can add pit stops along the way. Once you've reached a pit stop — an intermediate waypoint — you can then add another. You can keep doing so until you reach the final destination.

Once you've entered the Navigation view, you can either touch/tap the screen (if you're not driving) or use Siri to add intermediate waypoints.

Via the screen: swipe up from the bottom, choose an intermediate waypoint category from the offered list (things like coffee shops, gas stations, etc.), and then tap "GO" on one of the specific locations. The location will be added as an intermediate destination on the way to your original final destination.

Alternatively, you can use Siri to add an intermediate destination. While in the navigation mode, engage Siri with "Hey Siri." Then tell Siri to "add a gas station" (or other type of location). Siri will present you with some options and allow you to choose among them with your voice. Once you've chosen location, tell Siri you want directions and Siri will add it as an intermediate destination on the way to your original final destination.

This link has some good details on the topic: https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/apple-maps-101-add-multiple-destinations-your-directions-0181465/


iMessage fails to send despite 'delivered' iMessages that claim to have been 'delivered' then fail after going into airplane mode ~30 seconds later. What does 'delivered' actually mean, if not that the message was delivered to the recipient successfully? Why does my phone's connection still need to be active after that point?

Observed behavior:

Send iMessage.
'Delivered' tag appears on the blue message almost immediately.
Put phone into airplane mode ~30 seconds later.
A few minutes later, the message shows up as a green text message instead, with a 'failed to send' error. Hitting 'try again' sends the message as a text.

Expected behavior: Step 4 above does not occur.

Blue print applies to another iPhone. Green print is a non-iPhone. The users phone connection could be down for some reason or out of range of a cell tower. You get a Delivered message but later get a message that the sent message could not be delivered. If a blue message arrives immediately is could be you've lost connection or phone is hidden from cell tower. Check your signal strength and try again.


How to reinstall php70-xdebug with the debug symbols? I'd like to reinstall php70-xdebug package with debug symbols like:

$ brew reinstall php70-xdebug --with-debug
==> Reinstalling homebrew/php/php70-xdebug
Warning: homebrew/php/php70-xdebug: this formula has no --with-debug option so it will be ignored!

however there is no --with-debug or other similar option to use (which does exist for php70).

How can I recompile this package with debug symbols via brew?

If the debugging option is not available for php70-xdebug (they aren't at the time of writing), you can add it by using one of the methods suggested below.

Manual steps

The debug options can be added manually by the following steps:

Edit formula by this shell command:

brew edit php70-xdebug

Add the following lines:

option "enable-debug", "Compile with debugging symbols"
option "disable-debug", "Compile without debugging symbols (default)"

Verify the existence of option by:

brew options php70-xdebug

Reinstall package by:

brew reinstall php70-xdebug --build-from-source --enable-debug

Pulling the changes from fork

Pull the changes from pull request #4341 from GitHub by:

cd "$(brew --prefix)/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-php"
git pull https://github.com/kenorb-contrib/homebrew-php.git task/php70-xdebug-debug-options
brew reinstall php70-xdebug --build-from-source --enable-debug

Related: Cannot load Xdebug, as PHP was built with API NTS debug.


Add more suggestions in iOS predictive when typing By default, iOS predictive provides three suggestions on iPhone: how can I increase this number?

Most keyboards only show three suggestions as you type, no matter how relevant they are to the current conversation. Quick Type, the suggestions in iOS 9, have gotten much better at providing good suggestions that are context-specific, but it can't compare to some third-party options.

Your best alternative would be to install a good, intelligent third-party keyboard for better, more relevant suggestions as you type. I would suggest the SwiftKey keyboard as your best option for both keyboard and emoji support. Another good alternative is Swype.


Hiding specific window (Enhanced Command+H) Is there a way, native or third party tool, to hide a specific window instead of all Application Windows, which is the current behavior of all macOS versions.

For example, when opening multiple Safari windows or Terminal windows, I just want to Command+H one of the windows, not all the application.

This is really helpful for multi-monitor setups.

This may not be exactly what you are looking for but it is a start.

If you want to hide your current front most (active) window simply pressing ⌘ Command M will do that.

That is the keyboard equivalent of clicking the yellow "Minimize" window button.

If you then need to "un-minimize" a window that you recently minimized that will require a trip to the mouse and the right size of the dock...


Terminal doesn't print special characters after changing to Italian keyboard layout I'm on a second-hand macbook pro from 2013, running catalina 10.15.
It has built-in British keyboard layout but since I mostly write in Italian on an external Italian keyboard, I switched the layout to Italian from Sys preferences > Keyboard > Input sources > + > Italian.
In documents and browsers I get most of the accented vowels typical of the Italian language as well as the special characters such as pound (#), tilde (~) and the different kinds of brackets but in Terminal such characters are not represented correctly (UTF-8 encoding from Terminal's preferences, as I understand).
For example, pressing AltGr key and the à key doesn't yield # (as one would expect) in Terminal but ?. As you may understand the hash (aka pound) is essential in configuration files where it can comment out lines that are not needed. So how do I get the correct encoding/representation bw Terminal, external (lenovo) keyboard and macbook pro?
Any suggestion/workaround that I may try?

EDIT1
in Terminal '~' is apparently obtained with Alt + 5. See picture for result of this key combo:

I get some "arg5" -- what's that now?

Go to Terminal > Preferences > Keyboard and uncheck the box for Use Option as Meta Key.


How do I disable the "Syncing iPod. Do not disconnect." warning in iTunes? When syncing my iPod to iTunes, I always get this message:

I've had my iPod for several years now and I'd like to disable that warning, so I can see what's copying, how long it will take, etc., since I already know that I'm not supposed to disconnect my iPad. I know that I can click the little triangle on the left side to see the progress, but I don't want to have to do that. Is there a way to disable that warning?

My experience with this issue is that that bar's display changes between "do not disconnect" message and the status of sync info. So it's not that static info saying "do not disconnect" all the time.

Anyway. There is no such tweak for disabling that message there since it's mandatory.

Cheers, C@N.


How to get the fully resolved path of a symbolic link in Terminal? I have a tangled mess of python installations on my laptop.  I was looking at the executables in /usr/local/bin and they are all symbolic links to ../../../Library......

There's some weird behavior surrounding this.  If I do ls -lhaG I see ---> and the relative path to the right of the symlinks:

lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    69B Dec  7 22:29 python3 -> ../../../Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.1/bin/python3

However, I can't seem to get any of the command line tools to resolve that path and display the actual path to python3.  I've found some tidbits here and there regarding use of pwd -P and the find utility to do this.  The problem is that these don't seem to work on OS X the way that people describe them working on linux (i.e. outputting the full path to the symbolic link).  They just print the symbolic links path for me:

FantasticMrFox:bin robert$ pwd -P python3
/usr/local/bin
FantasticMrFox:bin robert$ find `pwd -P` -name python3
/usr/local/bin/python3

Any ideas on what's going on here?

I think that pwd -P and readlink are going to be your friends for this task.

"How can I get the behavior of GNU's readlink -f on a Mac?" is a handy resource.

pwd -P only works if you're inside the symlink directory:

14:07:13 jason@mac ~ $ cd bin
14:08:08 jason@mac bin $ pwd -P
/Users/jason/Applications

readlink works by specifying the target (thus it can be used against files):

14:09:03 jason@mac ~ $ readlink bin
Applications

14:09:34 jason@mac ~ $ readlink /var
private/var

The output of readlink appears to be relative to the parent of the specified target.

Ex: The parent of /var is /, so private/var is correct, relative to /. Per my above example of bin -> Applications, both are in my Home Directory, no matter where I run it, the output is the same.


Brother Scanner does not work with macOS Catalina I have a Brother MFC-8890 DW.

When I upgraded to macOS Catalina, my Scanner Control Center 2 software does not work. Printer works.

Brother site says go to use the iPrint&Scan software, but this model is not supported.

"The Brother ControlCenter2 is not supported by macOS v10.15.
Use the Brother iPrint&Scan as an alternative function."
Source Brother macOS Catalina Support Statement

Control Center was a 32-bit application that Catalina wont run. Update MFC-8890 DW drivers provided at Brother website for 10.15 support.


Lock keyboard from CLI I used to use kextload and kextunload to unlock/lock my keyboard. However, the actual kernel extension changes between MacBook  models, and that can have unexpected results.

For example, if the kext is AppleUSBTCKeyboard, both unloading and loading work fine. However, if the kext is AppleHIDKeyboard (e.g. MacBook Air), unloading works but loading again does not. This means kextunload -bundle-id com.apple.driver.AppleHIDKeyboard will disable the keyboard, but then it cannot be reenabled with kextload and the machine has to be rebooted.

There are some apps that are still able to do it, like KeyboardCleanTool. I’d prefer a CLI way of doing it, though. If possible (but won’t be picky) using only tools that come with macOS, or an open-source one.

Bonus points if there’s also a way to lock the trackpad, but that is less important.

One possibility could be to use ControllerMate.

You would have to create a Driver Configuration and map all of the keys to None.  Then there are multiple ways to enable/disable the custom Driver Configuration, but unfortunately CLI is currently not an option.

But CM is very customizable and I'm sure you could come up with something.  For example, using the logic blocks, you could have it disable when you have held down Z for 2 seconds, then hold down P and click the mouse.  Using a delay timer block to wait for 30 seconds but then only re-enable if holding the left shift key down and scrolling the mouse up/down.

Another similar utility that might work is Karabiner-Elements.  It is a complete rewrite of his wonderful Karabiner app which broke hard with macOS Sierra.  It is still in the early development stages but it might have the functionality you need.


My battery icon has x in it My MacBook Pro 15" battery has a black X in the battery icon and the indicator lights on the side do not light up when button is pressed. What could be the problem? It runs fine when plugged in

Most likely the battery has died or is no longer being recognized by the system. To verify it is not the latter Apple has a KB article that will help with resetting the SMC.

If it is the former it's time to replace the battery. If you are under warranty take it to a nearby Apple store. If not they can still do the repair but it will cost you. Depending on the model you have replacing the battery can be trivially easy (open the latches on the bottom and pop out the battery) to "just give up and cry yourself to sleep."

More info on your make and model would help us determine where your hardware falls in that spectrum and how many cycles you might expect on your battery before it disconnects itself like you have noticed.


Sharing Ipad between 2 Apple IDs, 2 computers My wife and I share an ipad 2, ios7. We have separate PCs. Can we have separate Apple IDs and connect the ipad to each computer under the individual ids? Example, I connect and back up etc under my Apple ID, then later she connects, backs up, purchases etc to her computer using her Apple id.

The short answer is no.

While all major desktop operating systems allow users to have multiple logins where their information is sandboxed, iOS doesn't have this concept.

It might make sense for this to be added, but I expected it years ago and it has still not arrived in the mobile market. With phones this doesn't make much sense, but with iPads it does. I've heard of people sharing iPads fairly often, but never phones.


How to create a second partition on an external disk and is it safe? I want to create a second a partition in my hard disk where one (about 900 GB) is used for Time Machine and another (100 GB) is used to store info like a thumb drive.

I don't want any existing data to be lost. I know someone who partitioned his hard drive and it is now spoiled and not repairable. I have important info in this hard drive and this is my only one.

For your info, I am using a retina MacBook Pro with Mavericks and want to repartition a WD My Passport for Mac hard disk.

Yes you can repartition without losing data. Using Disk Utility, perform a repair on your drive to make sure the drive is free of errors (even better, use Diskwarrior if you have a copy). Then unmount your drive but don't eject it. Select the drive in the left hand pane, then go to the Partition tab. On the Partition Layout section click on the "+" to create a new partition. Optionally you can specify the new partition size. When you're happy hit the Apply button and wait.

If you've absolutely critical data on the drive make sure you have a backup (which you should have anyway) but I've done this many times without an issue.


Automate mobile terminal? I have a jailbroken iPhone.
I use it to reboot my router when my wifi is going slow or messing up.
But I'm lazy and I was looking for a way to automate the process.
I use shortcuts that mobile terminal lets you create so you can just tap the command instead of having to type it.
But is there a way I can create a script or run everything with a single command to do this for me?

Commands are as follows:

su

(su password)

ssh 192.168.1.1

(router password)

reboot

Can I jam all of that into one single process?

The script you want would be the following:

#!/bin/bash
su
ssh 192.168.1.1 <<-EOF
    reboot
    exit
EOF

If you can ssh into your iPhone from a computer, do so. Once you're logged in, create a new text file using nano ~/script (install nano from cydia if it isn't already) and paste the above script. Then hit ^X (control-X) and Y to save the script. The script is in your home directory (~) for quick access. Now, set the proper permissions to be able to execute the script:

chmod 755 script

Now you can open MobileTerminal on the iPhone and type ./script, which will execute it.

If you have to do it locally, the easiest way is probably using iFile: open it and change to the home folder using the button at the bottom of the screen.

Tap on "edit" (top right) and "+" (bottom left).
Enter a name and change the type to "Regular File", then tap "Create".
Tap on the file and select "Text Viewer" in the list.
Tap on "Edit" and copy the above script
Tap "Save" and "Done" and go to MobileTerminal to execute it (no need to set permissions, iFile did it)

Final note: you might want to set up automatic login using keys: http://www.tecmint.com/ssh-passwordless-login-using-ssh-keygen-in-5-easy-steps/

That way, you only have to launch the script, no password-typing required.


How can I mount a multi-partition img file on macOS? I have an img file that has several partitions in it.

When I mount it with DiskImageMounter, I just see the first partition but I can't find a way to access the other partitions.

I don't see an option in fdisk either.

The diskutil output is:

 /dev/disk2 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        +31.9 GB    disk2
   1:             Windows_FAT_32 BOOT                    67.1 MB    disk2s1
   2:                      Linux                         2.1 GB     disk2s2
   3:                      Linux                         29.5 GB    disk2s3

It's an image for the Raspberry Pi and it is supposed to be written directly on a SD card.

macOS does not natively support or mount Linux partitions. You'll need to install some third-party utilities to be able to mount, e.g. ext2, ext3 or ext4 formatted partitions/disks.

FUSE for macOS comes to mind, along with ex4fuse.


How can I log screen sharing access on OS X? I've got my firewall on (the OS X firewall) and I've got a lot of attempts on screen sharing.

Allow AppleVNCServer connecting from 93.78.170.237:2223 uid = 0 proto=6

I want to log successful connections to make sure no one is making it through, similar to what is done with /var/log/secure.log

In fact, I'm surprised this isn't included with secure.log

What can I do?

For what its worth, I am running Mac OS X 10.5.8.

Update 1:

Daniel had a nice suggestion to use

netstat -a | grep vnc | grep ESTABLISHED

redirected to a file to log what is going on.

The problem is a connection is flagged as ESTABLISHED as soon as the vnc login screen comes up regardless of whether or not a login is ultimately successful.

In other words, all those (hopefully) failed attempts that my firewall logs will look no different than my successful logins.

You can very easily extend the script that was suggested to me in another question to solve my need for notifications when VNC connections were established.

Basically, replace the notification aspect of the script with a line that writes to a log file.


How do I mount an SSD I got from an old Macbook? I ripped a perfectly fine SSD out of a Macbook with a broken display.

So far, all my attempts to access the file system on the SSD have failed.

I've tried to put in a nearly identical Macbook. This Macbook booted into recovery mode but I was unable to access the SSD's filesystem from there. (Specifically, following this answer didn't work as the output of diskutil list does not include any lvUUID)
I've tried to boot from the SSD on the nearly identical Macbook. The SSD isn't even an option in the boot menu.
I've connected the SSD via a USB to SATA connecter to my main computer. I am still unable to mount the SSD as the option for "mount" in disk utility is greyed out.

Note: I need to access this SSD so that its files have names. While programs like photorec will recover data from the SSD, they will give the files random names i.e. f2839048.png.

How do I mount this SSD so that I can browse it normally?

Edit 1:

Here's the output of diskutil list on my new Macbook. The SSD in question is hooked up externally.

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         121.0 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +121.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            72.5 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 45.6 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                522.7 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      4.3 GB     disk1s4

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *250.1 GB   disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            249.2 GB   disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk2s3

disk2 is the SSD that I'm having trouble accessing.

Edit 2:

The SSD was indeed corrupted. I ended up using Photorec to get all relevant files and sifted through them to get what I needed.

If diskutil mount /dev/disk2s2 doesn't work, then I'd suggest the SSD is faulty, and you will need to use data recovery software, which will rarely give you the filenames and folder structures.

Backup?


Windows 7 on Bootcamp doesn't want to boot. Can't copy files from Bootcamp to Osx mavericks I have strange problem. A few days ago a was doing some projects on windows 7 and updates appeared , when windows was installing updates I closed it down by holding power button. After that I can't access to windows(windows loading screen appears, it loads for about 20 min and after that nothing happens). When I'm trying to repair it with windows install cd it doesn't recognize any windows partition. Anyway I've got many project files on Bootcamp with are very important to me. I tried copy them on OSx but I can't. OSx see correctly Bootcamp partition but I can copy only small files like PDF 120kb. Whem I am trying to copy bin files(my project) an error appears "finder can't complete the operation because some data in ... Can't be read or written. Error code -36". I tried installing ntfs-3G but after that it unmounts Bootcamp and when I'm trying to mount it again error appears. I tried also Ubuntu live cd, with ntfs-3G. I tried ntfsfix commands, I tried mount it on Ubuntu but still same problem. I also took off disk form Mac and installed it in case. I plug it by USB to another computer but unfortunately same problems. Bootcamp can't be mounted. Linux says that I should log into windows and try chkdsk /f but like I said I just can't boot to windows. I hope you can help me, because this projects are very important :/
Btw. OSx also running very slowly now. Something happend after that restart on updates and mavericks is booting very slowly and also running slowly...

Since the problem followed the hard drive when connected to a new computer, you have a clear case where the problem is disk based. The slowness, the error, and that it seems to be getting worse would make me think that you may only have a short amount of time to finish your recovery efforts.

Worst case, the drive itself is failing and you can only get files off while it cooperates. Best case, the file system is corrupt and once you zero the drive entirely, it will work properly. The test that determines which of the two is the case involves erasing the entire drive, so plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Consider stopping your recovery attempts if the data is of value such that you would pay a professional. If it is hardware, time may run out and running the drive could make things worse.
Prioritize and get the most important files off that drive entirely considering both the Mac side and the Windows side.
Use PC file recovery tools on the Boot Camp side, use Mac recovery tools like Data Rescue 3 on the Mac side. Also, don't overlook tools like rsync that can ignore errors and keep trying to copy other files after running into the initial error - 36.

Good luck. It seems like you have a good handle on various options for getting files off the drive so I wanted to offer some other options. Also, you made no mention of backups whatsoever - depending on how recent your last windows backup and last Mac backup are, you could reduce the scope of your efforts accordingly.


Time Capsule and Thomson modem/router Just got a new airport time capsule (2013 model). The time capsule is put in bridge mode and the modem/router from my ISP (thomson 585 v8) is doing the router stuff (dhcp, nat). Time capsule is connected to modem/router via ethernet cable (100mbit is the interface of the router).

The question is: if I put the modem/router to bridge mode (my isp's configuration gives the option to bridge the modem) and turn the routing stuff to time capsule will my network become faster? Does the 100mbit conncetion between tc and modem slow down things in the local network?

If you connect to the TC (via whatever speed you can get with wireless, or gigabit cable) then your communication to it and any other device on teh same LAN that is also connected to the local LAN is unaffected, it is only when you wish to send traffic over the 100mbit modem connection that you will be limited to it's speed, so basically your internet will be limited to 100mbit, and so long as that is faster than your ADSL/Cable connection anyway, then you will never notice it.


Where is the Launchpad database stored and is there a way to edit it directly? When exploring the new Launchpad feature, at first, it would seem as is it draws it's content primarily from the Programs folder.

It seems to be the case, however, that the Launchpad database is drawn from somewhere else.

For example, when installing a game through Steam, the game itself will not show up in the Programs folder, but will show up in Launchpad. In this particular case, I want it to be in Launchpad. The drawbacks, however, are that I am unable to remove the game from Launchpad and am unable to change the icon.

Where can I directly view and modify every Launchpad occurrence?

The Launchpad database is located at ~/Library/Application Support/Dock/*some-hex-name*.db

To edit it, you'll have to use SQLite. You can do this on the command line, or with a graphic interface.

See this Ask Different question for recommendations for a GUI app.

MacOS Sierra and newer

On macOS Sierra and newer the old launchpad database does not exists anymore. Instead every user has his personal launchpad database somewhere inside /private/var/folders (contains a lot of cryptic names).

How to find the database

The personal database is owned by you user, so you can use the following command to find out the path of the database:

 echo $(find /private/var/folders -user $(id -u) -name com.apple.dock.launchpad 2> /dev/null)/db/db

After you have the path to the new database, you can continue to edit it like before (e.g. using sqlite3 command).

Thanks to Chris Perry from Jamf Nation for sharing what he found! See his post here.


My iPhone messages changes colors at times between green and blue or other way around. How do I stop this I have an iPhone 6.  When I text another iPhone user. My messages and my friends will show up in a blue text bubble. If my friend is not using an iPhone, the messages will show in a green text bubble (i think). Sometimes the message bubbles will be one color but after a few minutes, change to the other color.  What causes this and is there a way to stop it?

If your iPhone cannot send the message as an iMessage (blue) it will fallback to SMS/MMS (green). This can happen for a bunch of reasons, which I've listed below.

Network is unavailable: iMessage uses internet access however SMS is able to work over raw cell network. This is very helpful if you're on the edge of a service area or are roaming. To fix this issue make sure you have proper network access.
iMessage services could not be reached: if you have functional internet access iMessage may still fall back to SMS if for whatever reason the iMessage service is blocked on the network or there is a problem on Apple's end
The user is no longer available on iMessage: If a user used to be registered with iMessage (and you successfully sent messages to them this way in the past) your iPhone will automatically try first to send through iMessage without first checking if that number/address still has iMessage activated on it. The number may suddenly disappear from iMessage if for example the user gets an Android phone. This should really only happen once.

This is nothing to worry about, nothing weird is going on.

Note that this is all about falling back from iMessage to SMS. I have never seen it go from SMS to iMessage (green to blue) however. I do not believe iOS ever decides to try sending as iMessage if SMS fails. iOS will however check sometimes when you send SMS if the recipient suddenly is registered with iMessage so that can be used in the future.


Why does my mac lose internet when I connect my iPhone? I'm using wifi for internet access, but when I connect my iPhone via lightning cable all my internet activity comes back as "destination unreachable" or similar errors.

How do I troubleshoot and correct this issue so the mac stays online using the wifi when I connect my iphone?

Goto Settings -> Networks and check that your connected iPhone is not first on the list.


Why is the update button in "App Store" app opening the app instead of updating it? I am experiencing a problem with updating my apps on all of my Apple devices:
iPhone 5s,
iPad Air,
iPhone 4s,
iPad 3

They are all running iOS 7.0.4 (11B55a) jailbroken using evasi0n and this problem has only recently started happening.

To update my apps I normally go into the "App Store" app down to "Updates" and then manually press the "UPDATE" button to update that app.  Since the 10th October pressing the "UPDATE" button causes the app to be loaded instead.  I went to try this on my other devices and got exactly the same result.  This is odd because some of the devices haven't had any Cydia or App Store updates for ages.

I have attached a screenshot of what my update screen looks like on my iPhone 5s:

You will notice that:

Update All is greyed out although it does start off blue for a split second before going grey.
Apps updated on the 8th October correctly show the "OPEN" button.
Apps updated on the 10th October incorrectly show the "UPDATE" button.

I have tried the following, but none of these have worked:

Turning off WIFI to use 4G instead.
Restarting the iPhone 5s.
Signing out and logging back into my Apple account on the iPhone 5s.
Syncing the iPhone 5s with iTunes on my Windows PC.

I have tried the following which does work, but doesn't make any sense:

Pressing on the app icon to expand the description and again to load up details of the app.  The "UPDATE" button on the app detail page works for some reason, but strangely keeps prompting me to put in my password for my account.
When loading up "App Store" and pressing in the top right "Update All" quickly before it is greyed out actually starts the update of all apps.

In summary there are 2 problems that are happening:

Trying to update an app from the main update screen loads the app.
Apps that have been updated show the wrong text for the button "UPDATE" instead of "OPEN".

Does anyone have any suggestions as to why this is happening now?  I have previously been updating fine before the 10th October.

Seems like I am not the only one experiencing this problem:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6591839
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6590253

Go to Settings -> iTunes & App Store -> AppleID -> Sign out.
Close the App Store app (double-click home button, swipe up on App Store), and restart the phone -- but instead of holding the power button and shutting down "cleanly", hold the power and home buttons until it powers off.  Power it back on.
Settings -> iTunes & App Store -> Sign In.
See if you get the same results.

If that doesn't do it, try deleting the affected apps, then shutting the phone off cleanly, then starting it back up and re-installing the apps.


How do I mark songs as Explicit in iTunes to make them match correctly in iTunes Match I have a few CD's that I ripped a while ago that are in my iTunes library, that have an explicit label. They play fine on my local computer.

The problem is, these ripped CDs are not marked as explicit in my iTunes library, so due to a bug in iTunes Match, when I play these songs on other devices, they play the clean versions 'Matched' from iTunes Match. Imagine my surprise when I'm listening to a song I expect to have explicit lyrics all of a sudden clean.

I know that there is a metadata 'flag' somewhere in the file that sets this, and its not available through the iTunes interface. I have seen online that there are tools to edit this flag, but then either hear that it doesn't actually do this, no real decent walk-throughs, or even discrepancies on which field to edit. What do I need, and how do I mark these songs as explicit to then get matched 'correctly' in iTunes Match?

Update: The answer from gentmatt does let me set the Explicit flag on the files as I was hoping to do. I thought this would solve the problem, but it does not. Also, I noticed that various other albums, with explicit lyrics, do actually sync correctly. The only problem albums I have are a Kanye West album, and a Jay-Z album. But with this question being related more towards how do I get them to work correctly in iTunes Match, im continuing to look for answers.

Final Update: This was an issue with  iTunes Match. After a while, I tried downloading them again, and it pulled the right ones. There were several albums that reported this way, and they are continuously working on it. So it was less of an issue with my actual files, and more of an issue of how the files were indexed on the iTunes Match server side.

Subler
...allows to edit (almost?) any metadata to a song manually.
You can use this tool add the explicit label to a song.
I've successfully tested version 0.14 in Lion.


No feedback sound when I press the volume buttons (volume up / down) on touch bar even though the box is checked in system preferences All of a sudden, I don't have the feedback sound when I turn the volume up or down on my touch bar.
I have tried resetting NVRAM, resetting the SMC, tried the secure boot mode to see if the problem occurs here as well (the touch bar volume buttons are actually disable when I turn on the secure boot mode), and I also tried using another user account - the problem persists. I've also connected my MBP to my bluetooth speaker, and here I also do not hear the feedback sounds.

As you can see from my screenshot, the play feedback when volume is changed box is checked, as is the play user interface sounds. The interface user sounds seem to work, as I can hear sounds for incoming emails, or messages, even phone calls ring on my phone.

I went into system preferences, keyboard and customized the touch bar. I removed the volume control, restarted the computer, added it again to the touch bar and the feedback sound worked momentarily. But now it does not work again.

I also noticed that when I press the shift key on my keyboard and press the volume up or down buttons on the touch bar that the feedback sound is there again. Weirdly enough, when I do it on my MBP, the sound is quite normal but when I connect the laptop to my bluetooth speaker, so sound crackles and does not give feedback upon pressing the key each time ...

PLEASE HELP! All this started today when I wanted to watch a youtube video and notice that I didn't have any sound at all - not on youtube, not on netflix, not in itunes. I managed to fix this, though I am not sure how, either be restarting numerous times or, most probably, through resetting the NVRAM. Now, all my sounds work - no problems with playing back music, or videos.
But why does the volume up / down feedback not work? I have also noticed that the sound of the feedback when I press the shift key and the touch bar button is different from the sound it used to make.
I'm using macOS 10.14.4

Please select a sound device in the output tab.

Also, try toggling the mute icon.


Why do I keep receiving my own text messages when I text ONE of the five lines in our family plan? I received a message yesterday asking something about my Apple ID and concerning one of our other lines that used to be shared on the Apple ID with my phone. We stopped that later and used individual IDs. Since I was in a hurry I just clicked yes and went on. As soon as I did it, now my texts keep coming to myself and when I text that other line it shows in a group message it is from me instead of the other line. And the other line gained my contacts mixed in with that line. What do I do to stop it?  It is driving me crazy!

I just figured this out as I had the same issue.

What you need to do is click on your Settings app and scroll down to the green messages icon, click on that and scroll down to the Send & Receive setting. Next to this, it will have the number of addresses, that is: two addresses, click on this and untick the number and email address that are not yours. This should cure the problem for you.

If you have FaceTime active, then I’d advise checking it to make sure that only your number and your email address are filled in.


Time Machine: Mobile incremental Backup Imagine I do backups using Time Machine at home just like everybody else. But as I travel often and of course also work on the road I also need to have a mobile backup solution. I thought about the following:

One partition of my external hard drive has the same size like my internal hard drive (e.g. 500GB). I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my internal hard drive daily. The second partition of my external hard drive backups all changes starting from last cloning on; only if manually activated when I leave home for a longer time.

Is this possible?

In Mountain Lion and greater, you can create multiple separate backup disks with Time Machine. Get an USB external HD for traveling, and use that to backup your Mac whilst on the road. When at home, you can do a backup to another HD, (USB or otherwise,) which stays there permanently. I take this external HD when I travel. It is wicked fast, and demonstrably rugged, as I have dropped it several times with no ill effects. You can also use this disk to make a CCC clone, if that is your preferred backup method.

Note: It is not a wise idea to have a backup partition, (CCC, TM or otherwise,) on the same drive you're backing up. If the HD itself goes poof, you've lost the backups you need to restore your system.


Homebrew Cask and Security Somewhat new to Homebrew. As I understand it, Homebrew Cask looks for apps in its Github repository. I don't know how they get there, but I assume that the app or the link which lives at Github is not supplied by the developers of the associated app. So, then, is a download from the Cask repository an exercise of trust in the Cask maintainers?

Yes, and also trust that having the sources in the open and others using it, you don't need to be the first person to catch a bad act. The traceability of who checks in what hopefully is a deterrent to casual maliciousness.

You of course are more secure to not automate installs of unsigned software from the internet.


Adding a face in Photos I am running macOS El Capitan 10.11.5, and in Photos I am unable to add a face. When I go open the ‘Info’ window, I do not get the option to add a face.

I can only add a description or a keyword, and assign a location, but not add a face.

Some faces have been automatically detected, including objects like car wheels, but several faces have been ignored. Any help would be appreciated.

You have to blow up the photo to add Faces to them. Just double-click the photo, and ⊕ Add Faces will appear in the Info panel between Add Keyword and Assign a Location.


Repeated Oh My Zsh brew plugin warnings I keep seeing this warning every time I open an new shell on one of my machines:

 Oh My Zsh brew plugin:

  With the advent of their 1.0 release, Homebrew has decided to bundle
  the zsh completion as part of the brew installation, so we no longer
  ship it with the brew plugin; now it only has brew aliases.

  If you find that brew completion no longer works, make sure you have
  your Homebrew installation fully up to date.

  You will only see this message once.

Message keeps coming back even though it threatens that "you will only see this message once."

Thoughts on how to 'fix' this?  It appears to be triggered by mkdir being aliased?!?

zsh -x (or maybe zsh -x -l if the code comes from a rc file read only during a login session) enables tracing; this verbose output can then be used to find where exactly the message comes from.

% zsh -x 2>searchthroughthis.txt
% exit
% less -p advent searchthroughthis.txt
...


iMovie "Join Clips" option greyed out Articles, Videos and similar posts / questions all describe being able to join clips in iMovie using the Join Clips option in the Modify menu of iMovie (10.1.8) on macOS High Sierra.

Yet, iMovie is unable to join two clips!

It seems to be a common and recurring issue to which I am seeking an answer once and for all.

Background
I have split a clip into 3 pieces and deleted the middle part. Now, having used CMD to select the two remaining pieces - highlighting them in yellow borders, I go up to the Modify menu to find that the Join Clips option is unavailable (greyed out).

Question
Why am I not able to join the clips? They are adjacent to one another, have no speed alteration (e.g. slow motion) and are both highlighted. How do I join them?

Note: Join clips option in iMovie cannot be used for joining two different imported video clips. It can only be used to join clips created by splitting an imported clip in iMovie.

So, essentially if you have two clips which are to be combined, click on the Share icon in the Top right corner, then click on the option File and export all the clips as a single video file. You may then re-import it into the project if required after the share is successful.

For a quick 2 min demo, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Px_I5fvJbk


How to access/edit iPhone Contacts on computer? I run Windows 7 (no Outlook available) and don't seem to find any native Address Book application on my computer (it is a work-provided laptop). We use Lotus Notes as our mail application. Because my phone is also used for work, I can't use any iCloud services (security restrictions)

I would like to be able to easily see and edit/manage my contacts on my computer and sync them to/from my iPhone (two-way sync), as I mostly am looking up #s and addresses while at my desk, and don't want to have to manually maintain it all twice, or log onto my phone every time I need an address, and then have to manually type it on my computer. Any suggested applications that will do this? I've looked a bit in the app store, but don't find any.

Also - my apple ID is currently linked to the Sweden App Store (I live in Sweden); if there is an app available in another country, can I create an ID for that country and have apps for both IDs on my device?

For synchronization of your Lotus contacts and mail with your iPhone, you can try My Notes app: https://itunes.apple.com/app/my-notes-mobile-client-for/id726998714?mt=8


Is Grapher able to display values in the x-axis as (π/2), (π), (3π/2), (2π) rather than 1,57, 3,14, 4,71, 6,28 (and so on.. )? As title says....
Is Grapher able to display values in the x-axis as
(π/2), (π), (3π/2), (2π) rather than 1,57, 3,14, 4,71, 6,28 ?(and so on.. ) ?

Double click on the axis and choose π from Units.


For iMessage for MacOS, where do the face images come from? for years I have been using the Contacts app to track addresses. I use Gmail as my main address book so it seems to either copy the Google user avatar to the contact card, or if a matching Facebook user is found, it will sync their profile picture. What I am wondering is where does iMessage get its user avatars from? They are definitely different from what is in my contacts, especially since many of my contacts lack them but for other iMessage users out there (presumably with iPhones) a different use avatar is shown. I presume that is the avatar that they are using on their iPhone or possibly with iCloud. That's all well and good, but is there a way to get the Contacts app to use those images for syncing and to have them overrule either the Google or Facebook avatars?

What is also interesting is that Messages on my iPhone or iPad uses the avatars from Contacts, not what it gets from iMessage like the MacOS version. I would like to control the behavior- ideally by deciding which avatar to pick for a given user, but I would setting on a scheme that is used for all users. For example, unless the user has their own iMessage avatar, use their Facebook Profile, and saving that, use their Google avatar. Does anyone know if this is possible?

Thanks!

I don't know of a solution where you can prioritize where the contact information is pulled from, but I would imagine your default is your locally saved contact.

I recommend you to save all of your contacts into one place, possibly create a new gmail account, and pull all of your locally saved contacts, facebook contacts, and other gmail contacts into this new account.

After that I would remove all of your other contacts from your device by going to
Settings > Contacts > Accounts
and then removing all of the accounts.

After that I would add your new source of all of your contacts and only use one, to ensure that's where it is coming from.

Please reply to this if it is confusing.

Source: Happened to me before.


How does iMazing reboot/shutdown iPhone remotely? I was playing arround with iMazing and found out that it can reboot/shutdown my iPhone 6s without it being Jailbroken.

Does anyone know what commands it uses and how I could do this myself from my Mac?

When looking at the file contents, I found in the frameworks folder that is uses the frameworks DDNAToolKit.framework and DevMateKit.framework and in the MacOS folder, it contains an AppleScriptServer executable.

This functionality works via Wi-Fi and USB.

The protocol used for communicating between the iOS device and the host program (such as for example iTunes) actually specifically allows for rebooting and shutting down the device.

You can find an open source and free implementation of the protocol called libimobiledevice here.

The library is a collection of many different tools. You'll need the one called idevicediagnostics so that you can run commands like:

idevicediagnostics reboot

idevicediagnostics shutdown

If you want to do this from your own program, you can find the source code for the idevicediagnostics program (that uses the library) here:

https://github.com/libimobiledevice/libimobiledevice/blob/master/tools/idevicediagnostics.c


What directory comparison tools can I use on OS X? I am looking for a tool that is able to compare directories, not only files. Also it is important to be able to call the tool from the command line.

It would be great to have a free tool, if not free please specify the price.

FileMerge (free), shipped with Xcode, offers a directory view.
A command line version is available through the Terminal application opendiff.

Here's how you can compare two directories with FileMerge:

⌘+space, type in "FileMerge" and open it.
Click the "left" button and choose the folder you would like to move items FROM. (The "old" folder)
Click the "right" button and choose the folder you would like to move items TO. ("new" folder) and click "Compare" button
In the right panel, choose to exclude: "identical" and "Changed right". This way you will only see files which are missing in the "new" folder and ignore files your may have added in the "new" folder.
Move files manually in Finder or let FileMerge do it, by choosing an option in the "Merge" dropdown in the right panel.


How do I use MacOS Terminal or other app to format an MBR FAT32 SD card as a 0x0C partition, rather that 0x0B? Apple's Disk Utility app can format an SD card as MBR FAT32; but in the Terminal, I confirmed the SD card's partition is in fact 0x0B:
> sudo gpt show /dev/disk3

 start      size  index  contents
     0         1         MBR
     1      2047
  2048  62746624      1  MBR part 11

"MBR part 11" refers to 0x0B.  I want the partition to be MBR part 12 (0x0C).
I then tried this in the Terminal:
> diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk3
Unmount of all volumes on disk3 was successful

> sudo fdisk -ia dos /dev/disk3
fdisk: could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0: No such file or directory

    -----------------------------------------------------
    ------ ATTENTION - UPDATING MASTER BOOT RECORD ------
    -----------------------------------------------------

Do you wish to write new MBR and partition table? [n] y

But if I click the "Initialize..." button, it merely opens the Disk Utility app, which I know will only format as MBR FAT32 0x0B.
How can I use MacOS Terminal or another Mac app (not Windows or Linux) to format the SD card as MBR FAT32 0x0C?

Your fdisk invocation should have already partitioned it as type 12. You can press the Ignore button and verify via Terminal that that's the case, then simply eject the disk from your computer and use it wherever you intend to use it.
If you intend to use this drive on your Mac, you will need to format and mount it after running fdisk:
sudo newfs_msdos /dev/disk3s1
sudo mkdir /Volumes/FLASH
sudo mount -t msdos /dev/disk3s1 /Volumes/FLASH

Here FLASH is an arbitrary volume name that I chose for sample purposes; feel free to choose your own.
As a clarifying point, the s1 portion of /dev/disk3s1 targets the first partition of disk3. If you were to specify just disk3 instead, the newfs_msdos command would overwrite the partition table.


How to install Cydia for iOS 11? I'm using an iPhone 7 plus device and I updated the software version of my device to the latest iOS 11 version.

Are there public jailbreak steps for iOS 11?

There is currently no jailbreak available for any build of iOS 11 on any hardware.


Long press key to reveal special characters does not work after update to High Sierra I have a similar problem as the asker in this question on Apple's forum.

After I updated from Sierra to High Sierra (v10.13.3) on a MBP retina 13" mid 2014, I noticed the character picker (special character pop-up) that appear when long pressing / holding a character, e.g. to type ë or ñ, does not appear anymore. However, when such a key is held, the character is repeatedly entered. This is not what I want, because I'm used to the character picker. I don't want to use ⌥ key with u for ¨, i for ^, e for ´ etc., which I fail to remember and is slower than simply holding to reveal any character variations. That is much more efficient in my opinions and therefore it is better UX.

I've tried the linked question's terminal command without success: defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

Also, there's a comment in the discussion suggesting rebooting in safe mode and changing some keyboard settings might do the trick. I cannot boot into safe mode, possibly (?) due to administrative restrictions (company laptop).

So, how do I do it? Is the character picker a feature at all, or am I actually experiencing a bug?

The problem has 'fixed itself'.

Today, I found out the character picker works again. I have no clue why it did not want to work. Possibly, it requires multiple reboots before the functionality is back (I already rebooted a few times in the meantime). Maybe it's because I fiddled with some keyboard settings. I've also used an external keyboard in the meantime, which could (in some strange way) influence the keyboard settings.

I will never know what has definitely solved the problem.

So, if you're having this problem too, then try setting your keyboard layout to that of your locale, but in the layout of your choosing (mine is Dutch language with US international layout). Then reboot multiple times, or maybe turn off your computer completely a few times. If that doesn't work, connect an external keyboard and try if that works.

If you happen to find a solution or even a cause, report back here in an answer or comment, as it will help others facing the same issue.


CS6 Illustrator on Mac OSX 10.15 Catalina - anyone managed to run it? I was browsing Internet for some hints, but did not find anything yet. And the communication is a bit missleading, one say it won't work, becuase of 32-bit references, another claim it should work, because CS6 Illustrator itself is 64-bit.

Ended up after install with:

and after clicking the icon:

  “Adobe Illustrator CS6” needs to be updated.

according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Illustrator

  Adobe Mercury Performance System, 64-bit memory support, new user
  interface, gradient on a stroke, pattern creator tool, ImageTrace
  (replaces Live Trace)

From the OSX system information:

Adobe Illustrator CS6:

  Version:  682
  Obtained from:    Identified Developer
  Last Modified:    19/08/2019, 14:06
  Signed by:    Developer ID Application: Adobe Systems, Inc., Developer ID Certification Authority, Apple Root CA
  Location: /Applications/Adobe Illustrator CS6/Adobe Illustrator.app
  Kind: 64-bit
  Get Info String:  16.0.0, Copyright © 1987-2012 Adobe Systems Inc.  All rights reserved.

so it is 64bit

I was able to get Photoshop CS6 to work with the following. Might work for Illustrator.

package contents > contents > MacOS and launch the executable

(to find the package contents, find the file "Adobe Photoshop CS6.app" in the Apps folder, right-click and select "Show Package Content")


Apple Safari Mac OS X 10.10.2 will not open I recently tried to download the Aldi photo upload program, although half way through the download Safari quit and now it won’t turn back on. I keep getting a error messages, but it never goes past reopening safari and back to the error messages. I have been onto Console and found the below details of the errors, can anyone help? I don't have another browser on the laptop

25/03/2015 21:33:43.335 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.ReportCrash[991]) Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.ReportCrash
25/03/2015 21:33:43.798 CoreServicesUIAgent[239]: unexpected message <OS_xpc_error: <error: 0x7fff7de6bc60> { count = 1, contents =
   "XPCErrorDescription" => <string: 0x7fff7de6bf70> { length = 18, contents = "Connection invalid" }
}>
25/03/2015 21:33:43.800 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.WebKit.WebContent.CBCE8120-BBE6-481F-9F96-7A071CADEAB0[989]) Service exited with abnormal code: 1
25/03/2015 21:33:43.800 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.WebKit.Networking.39FE4ACC-E1FF-4C76-81AE-3C1C5FC3F852[988]) Service exited with abnormal code: 1
25/03/2015 21:33:43.807 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.Safari.9404[985]) Service exited due to signal: Segmentation fault: 11
25/03/2015 21:33:43.955 ReportCrash[991]: Saved crash report for Safari[985] version 8.0.3 (10600.3.18) to /Users/andrewpope/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Safari_2015-03-25-213343_Andrews-MacBook-Pro.crash
25/03/2015 21:33:44.103 Problem Reporter[992]: Failed to connect (_imageWell) outlet from (ProblemReportWindowController) to (NSImageView): missing setter or instance variable

Make sure no parts of Safari are still running

Open Activity Monitor and use the search box in the top right corner to search for "safari". If there are any Safari processes running, select them and quit them using the left most toolbar icon. Once they are gone, try launching Safari again. If that doesn't work...

Delete Safari's Saved Application State folder

You'll find it at /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Safari.savedState and try launching Safari again. If that doesn't work...

Delete Safari's Cache folder

/Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari and try Safari again. If that doesn't work...

UP TO THIS POINT YOU DON'T REALLY LOSE ANYTHING. FROM HERE ON, YOU COULD SO...

Rename Safari's library folder

/Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Safari and try Safari again. If that doesn't work delete the new folder that Safari will likely have created and rename the original back and...

Rename Safari's preference file

/Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist and try Safari again. If that doesn't work delete the new preference file that Safari will likely have created and rename the original back.

Let us know how you get on.


iOS 9 features don't work in iPad mini I have an old iPad mini and updated it to iOS 9. However, the features don't work, such as Siri suggestions and drawing in notes app. Could somebody explain a remedy or what is up with Apple? Thanks.

I will NOT system reset as I have done so already. Maybe 9.1 beta will work.

Apple maintained support for all iOS 8 devices in iOS 9 but that meant that some devices couldn't fully support some of the new features. If it's the first generation iPad mini you have, drawing in Notes is not supported. Support starts with the iPad mini 2.

I haven't seen anything about Siri Suggestions not being supported. You could verify that your device is supported and Siri Suggestions are turned on under Settings > General > Spotlight Search. There should be a toggle for Siri Suggestions if supported.


copy 501 directory from .Trashes of external drive, but not visible I have a usb drive plugged in my Macbook. And I found I have mis-deleted several files, so I

cd /Volumes/MyUsbDrive/.Trashes

and I find a directory named 501, so I

cp -r 501 ~

from terminal, I can see the 501 directory was copied, but it is not visible from Finder. It has a long format of

drwxr-xr-x@

and even I changed the name of it, it does not display in Finder. All its contents are accessible from terminal through.

I use OS X 10.11.6.

Is it a bug in the OS X?

Short answer

No, this is not a bug in OS X.

Long answer

Mac OS X volumes contain quite a few files and folders that are invisible from the Finder. Usually they're hidden for a good reason and most users won't ever need to see them. Basically, because people shouldn't muck around with them unless they know what they're doing, Apple has designed the system to hide them.

501 folder

On volumes other than the boot volume, a .Trashes folder is used to store files & folders that've been moved to the trash but not yet emptied. Because every user has their own personal trash can, subfolders are created under .Trashes for each user, named according to their user ID number. For example, if user #501 throws something on a volume named "Harry" into the trash, it'd be moved to a folder named /Volumes/Harry/.Trashes/501/.


iMovie scrolling credits alignment My scrolling credits are aligned but when I play the movie everything is shifted.  I have changed the text size but that doesn't help.

You can edit the layout and other attributes such as font and color in an external editor, such as Pages, then just copy and paste the results back into iMovie.  Not an ideal solution, but you get what you pay for.

See also answer to a related question: iMovie titles line spacing


Creating a second background session with Apple Remote Desktop Is it possible to access a remote Mac using Apple Remote Desktop and run a second session? Eg. while the main user is still in there account I could either go into their account or login with another account without interfering with what they are doing.

For example I sometimes need to dip into other people's machines and update settings, but I have to work around when they are not working on their machine, if it could run a second session in the background then I could make changes, update etc. without having to kick them off.

I don't need to run complex programs or even multiple browser tabs; it's just to login and admin the computer, add printers, make sure updates are applied etc.. so it shouldn't use many resources.

Is that possible ?

Assuming you are talking about using Apple's Remote Desktop app and not just Screen Sharing (which I'm guessing you are, based on your question) then yes, it's perfectly possible, you just have to set it on a system-by-system basis. Oh, and it only works on 10.7+. Here's how:

Right-click the system you want to remote in to and choose 'Get Info'
If you haven't already, set your administrator credentials under 'Login' and 'Password' on the 'Attributes' tab. Click 'Edit' in the lower right to enable you to, well, edit. Make sure these are not the same login credentials used by the system's actual user otherwise you'll remote in as them and share the screen
Switch to the 'Control & Observe' tab
Click 'Edit' in the lower right (if you didn't do it at step 2)
Set each radio button to 'Connect to a virtual display'

Now when you choose to 'Control' that system, ARD will spawn a new window process and connect you to a virtual display, allowing you to access and configure the machine without disturbing your user. (:

Don't worry, you won't have to set these options every time you want to connect, just the first time. I wish there was a way to set that as the default behaviour but alas.

Hope this helps. (:


Open and focus file browsing dialog from command line I'd like to open the native file browsing dialog from the command line, focus the dialog, and then get the full path of the selected file.

The following works nicely, but the dialog is not focused and therefore can't be controlled via the keyboard:

osascript -l JavaScript -e "var app = Application.currentApplication();
    app.includeStandardAdditions = true;
    app.chooseFile().toString();"

Thanks for any help.,

I have some Karabiner-EventViewer experience and found out that your "currentApplication()" is not Terminal, as one would think, but actually osascript.

Therefore …

osascript -l JavaScript -e "var app = Application(\"Terminal\");
    app.includeStandardAdditions = true;
    app.chooseFile().toString();"

… will at least give you keyboard control.


Make mDNSResponder use local DNS server? I want to use dnsmasq when my Mac (Sierra) is not connected to a wifi network.

Configuring DNS servers in the Advanced Network Preferences dialogue box works fine for dig and nslookup, and I can see via tcpdump that these tools hit the local dnsmasq server.

It does not work for ping, curl and Golang binaries like the Cloud Foundry CLI. These are unable to resolve hosts, and don't attempt to communicate with the local nameserver. When I use dtruss for the cf Golang binary, I can see it opening /etc/hosts. I'm not sure how to spot it attempting to talk to name servers though.

If I stop the mDNSResponder and mDNSResponderHelper services, ping and curl take a little longer to fail with cannot resolve api.local.pcfdev.io: Unknown host, but still fail nonetheless, and without trying to hit the local name server.

Any ideas how on Earth I can get macOS to use my local name server when I'm offline?

I think mDNSResponder - with a running PCF Dev VirtualBox VM but no LAN/WLAN - is missing a default gateway or gets the wrong one. If your interfaces aren't connected or all interfaces are inactive then no default gateway exists.

You can check this with:

netstat -r -f inet
Routing tables

Internet:
Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire
127                localhost          UCS             1        0     lo0
localhost          localhost          UH              5     1380     lo0
192.168.11         link#7             UC              4        0 vboxnet
224.0.0            link#1             UmCS            2        0     lo0
224.0.0.251        link#1             UHmWI           1        0     lo0

To circumvent this you can do the following:

Requirement: a proper configuration of dnsmasq as published in your q & my a. You may have to deactivate all interfaces.

Duplicate a Location profile in System Preferences > Network and rename it to e.g. pcdev with VLAN.

Choose an interface (e.g. Wi-Fi) in the left pane and hit the gear at the bottom of the left pane > Manage Virtual Interfaces.
Hit the ⊞-button and add a "New VLAN...". Rename it to VLAN, choose 1 as tag and an interface.

Configure the interface: Manually with an arbitrary but unused IP e.g. 10.228.8.226/Mask 255.255.0.0/Router 10.228.0.1 and DNS-server 127.0.0.1. Apply the settings with the button Apply. IP (+ Mask) and Router have to be in the same network.

Check the routing table again. First it will look like this:

netstat -r -f inet
Routing tables

Internet:
Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire
10.228/16          link#8             UC              2        0   vlan0
127                localhost          UCS             1        0     lo0
localhost          localhost          UH              4     1380     lo0
192.168.11         link#7             UC              2        0 vboxnet
224.0.0            link#1             UmCS            2        0     lo0
224.0.0.251        link#1             UHmWI           1        0     lo0

but after a few seconds (up to 40 seconds in my environment) it should be populated:

netstat -r -f inet
Routing tables

Internet:
Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire
default            10.228.0.1         UGSc            3        0   vlan0
10.228/16          link#8             UCS             2        0   vlan0
10.228.0.1/32      link#8             UCS             2        0   vlan0
10.228.0.1         link#8             UHRLWIir        4        0   vlan0     18
10.228.8.226/32    link#8             UCS             2        0   vlan0
10.228.255.255     ff.ff.ff.ff.ff.ff  UHLWbI          1        3   vlan0
127                localhost          UCS             1        0     lo0
localhost          localhost          UH             26     1494     lo0
192.168.11         link#7             UC              3        0 vboxnet
192.168.11.11      8:0:27:35:78:e2    UHLWIi          2        3 vboxnet   1192
192.168.11.255     ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff  UHLWbI          1        3 vboxnet
224.0.0/4          link#8             UmCS            3        0   vlan0
224.0.0.251        1:0:5e:0:0:fb      UHmLWI          1        0   vlan0
239.255.255.250    1:0:5e:7f:ff:fa    UHmLWI          1        3   vlan0
255.255.255.255/32 link#8             UCS             1        0   vlan0

Now try again to ping api.local.pcfdev.io/tcp.local.pcfdev.io/local.pcfdev.io.

While testing I got the impression that some arbitrary IP pinging (ping 192.168.11.11, ping 127.0.0.1 accelerated the reconfiguration).

If you are within reach of a known WLAN switch back to your common Location profile.

This is tested (and working) in a VMwareFusion Sierra VM and the nested pcfdev-ubuntu VirtualBox VM. In this environment I can't really simulate a missing Wi-Fi connection, because there is no Wi-Fi interface available. Instead I deactivated all interfaces (2 x Ethernet) in the Sierra VM.


Block calls from unknown and withheld How can I block calls from the "Unknown" caller? I have iOS 7 on an iPhone 4S. Does any other version of the iPhone offer this ability?

I've checked the question Call blocking for iPhone?, but it doesn't seem to work for "Unknown" callers.

I found the following question: Cannot answer unknown calls on my new iPhone 4S.

I want to do the opposite. I want to stop unknown callers from coming up on the phone, and I would rather not know that they are calling.

Sorry, but true call blocking can be only done by a carrier. However, if you wish to allow calls only from your contact list, and exclude everyone else, you can use Do Not Disturb feature on your iPhone 4s.


Insert photo in Simplenote Can you tell me how to place a photo into a Simplenote? I am using an iPhone 6s or a MacBook with OS X El Capitan.

Simplenote doesn't support adding photos.


Is it possible to sync custom fonts between macOS and iOS devices? I am curious as to whether it is possible to synchronise custom/downloaded fonts from macOS High Sierra to an iPhone?

From what I understand, if both devices meet the requirements for Continuity they are capable of implementing the Handoff feature. This means a document (containing the custom font) started on the mac will show the same custom font on the iPhone, correct?
Is it possible then, to reverse the logic such that custom fonts are always synced between both devices, without employing the use of the Handoff feature - making the fonts available in other iOS applications?

The Handoff feature is just an example of what looks like font synchronisation but what I am really interested in is a way to copy/sync a font from the macOS device to the iOS device if it does not exist there (e.g. downloaded fonts). Making it available on a system-wide level (not per application) to each application capable of creating/displaying rich text.

I am interested in this from a security point of view to learn whether file types like fonts can be just as easily synced as Contacts and similar cloud-based content.

No, you're not exactly correct.

Most app developers will make sure that both the macOS and iOS versions of their program display the custom font. This is done using either font embedding (i.e. the font is stored inside the document), or using streaming, which is a Handoff-feature that allows for the source program to transfer larger quantities of data to the destination program.

Some app developers have not invested the time necessary to do this, or are constrained in other ways. In those cases the document will show up with a wrong font on the destination device.

As such, there's no automatic, iOS/macOS handled synchronization of fonts taking place during Handoff.

In general, you can add fonts to the system font library using configuration profiles. This is intended for enterprise usage where iOS devices that are supervised or where it is otherwise accepted to install configuration profiles. This way they can have for example the company's own font installed. In the case of iOS devices managed by for example an MDM system, you could say that it is possible to "synchronise" fonts from a Mac.

These fonts are available to use in apps that support choosing from the system library. Not all apps do this! - However apps like Pages and Numbers do support it.

To create a correct configuration profile with a font payload, you'll need a code signing certificate - otherwise the user will get a lot of warnings when installing the configuration profile. The user must install the configuration themselves by agreeing to the installation in System Preferences (you can send them there by the way of a link or similar).

For home users the easiest way to install a font is probably using a third party app such as AnyFont! or similar.

If you're interested in specifically whether an ordinary user can select somewhere that all the fonts on their Mac must be available on their iOS device - then no, no such synchronisation method is available on standard iOS.


Could running laborious code for many hours damage my mac? I'm building a deep neural network, which will take a long time to train. It's just started training and I can see that there will be roughly 7.5 hours of run-time, and my computer is making quite some noise and is heating up.

Could this damage my computer if I leave it to run? (I'll also have Caffeine switched on to stop the laptop from going to sleep.)

Well, make sure your computer is on a solid surface with space around it to permit a good flow of air.

If you can have it in a cool room instead of a warm room would help.

A computer getting warm when working hard is not a problem, but if it gets too hot is - so you should check the temperatures if possible - a fan control program is a possibility.

One other possibility may be to pause the running program and allow the computer to cool down but this may not be possible...


Download app update once, install twice/thrice? I have a very slow internet connection and would like to be able to download app updates (iTunes, Aperture, iWork etc.) just for one machine and be able to update 3 machines offline on home network. Is this possible on Mavericks?

The "Caching Server" is one of the features of OS X Server. Whenever one of your computers (iOS or OS X) downloads an update it is cached on the server.  This link has a simple description: Caching Server

This is the official solution that Apple provide.  It does mean another level of complexity to managing your network and only you you will be able to decide whether you want to follow the OS X Server path. From my point of view, I would not unless I intended to use some of the other features of OS X Server (e.g. centralised Time Machine). The server Mac can continue to be used for desktop activity.


How can I fix the Dual Monitor Fullscreen issue without updating to Maverick Here's the problem:
When one app (for instance YoutTube or a game) goes fullscreen on monitor A, monitor B slides right, into a new gray "desktop" (like the ones one can add in the top right corner via the F3 button) that doesn't allow any apps to be in it. Because of this, one screen becomes useless when the other has a fullscreen app running.

I see many others having the same problem, but I can't seem to find a way to fix it.
I'm not interested in app specific fixes.

Thanks.

This was fixed in Mavericks as you are aware, but I don't know of any canonical way to fix this for apps in prior versions of OS X, and even app specific fixes don't work properly.

Whilst you said without updating to Mavericks, this really would be the best option since it is the 'official' fix to a core part of OS X.


Why can't I use .app bundles symlinked into /Applications as default in the 'open with' dialog? I have installed emacs with homebrew, with the --cocoa flag, which makes homebrew create an .app bundle in /usr/local/Cellar/emacs/<version>/Emacs.app. I have symlinked the .app bundle into /Applications/, to make it easy to open. The problem is that when I try setting file associations for files, I can't set Emacs.app as the default (the Add button is greyed out):

Now I could just copy or move the .app bundle into /Applications/, but that would require me to copy it over again every time emacs is updated via homebrew. Is there some other way to solve this?

I don't know why, but I have figured it out that if I make the symlink to the Contents directory, then associations work fine.

That is I do the following in a terminal window, using my personal Applications folder as an example:

% mkdir ~/Applications/Emacs.app
% ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/emacs/23.2/Emacs.app/Contents ~/Applications/Emacs.app

Something about putting the symlink inside the Emacs.app gets the bundle recognized.


Running GNU Screen with 256 colors on OS X Lion Terminal.app in Mac OS X Lion has a feature that took a long time to get implemented: 256 color support. The colors work fine. The issue I'm having is that when I run GNU Screen I do not have access to 256 colors. In screen, $TERM is set to "screen".

I've read different things in different places and am very confused. Some of these include:

GNU Screen must be compiled with color support (How can I tell if OS X's screen was compiled this way?)
A special terminfo file for screen-256color must be installed. Does OS X have this?
In .screenrc, term should be set to "screen-256color".
Certain functions in Emacs must be called for Emacs to be colorful (http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GnuScreen#toc6)

I tried variations of these procedures and have been unsuccessful and uncertain of why I have failed. What is the most direct way for me to enable 256 colors in GNU Screen?

By default, screen is not aware that it is running in a 256-color-capable xterm. To make programs in screen recognize this feature, you need to set a couple of things in your ~/.screenrc:

term "screen-256color"
# terminfo and termcap for nice 256 color terminal
# allow bold colors - necessary for some reason
attrcolor b ".I"
# tell screen how to set colors. AB = background, AF=foreground
termcapinfo xterm 'Co#256:AB=\E[48;5;%dm:AF=\E[38;5;%dm'
# erase background with current bg color
defbce "on"

If this doesn’t work for you, your version of screen probably wasn’t compiled with ./configure --enable-colors256. You can check this in the welcome screen when starting screen. The default version that comes with OS X doesn’t support 256 colors. You could check out the source and compile your own version, putting the resulting binary in your $PATH (I put it in ~/bin which I added to my $PATH):

git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/screen.git
cd screen/src
./autogen.sh
./configure --enable-colors256
make   # I got a lot of warnings here, but they don't seem to matter
sudo make install
cp screen ~/bin/screen

Sources: 1 and 2


How do we set OS X Lion sync to show warning before data on computer is changed? In the past we used to have to go to iSync preferences but iSync has been completely removed in OS X Lion. Any ideas?

I would personally prefer a warning before any data is changed on my computer, on account of issues such as Snow Leopard used to "support" Google Contacts sync but would remove all nicknames from your contacts.

If you still have your snapshot backup of your OSX Snow Leopard before you upgraded to Lion (you did backup didn't you?), then there is a solution to getting iSync back up and working under Lion :

slashusr.wordpress.com

Extract follows :

  Before installation of Lion, I had taken a full disk image of my
  previous Snow Leopard installation using the excellent SuperDuper!
  Disk cloner.

  This was more from a backup and recovery perspective, but allowed me
  an unexpected solution to the iSync quandary – on a whim, I attached
  the Snow Leopard disk to the Mac running Lion, and clicked on the
  iSync application. Voila! iSync works exactly as it should!

Hope this helps.


iPad Pro keeps repeatedly restarting My iPad Pro(9.7" cellular) keeps restarting and sometimes I won’t even get to finish entering the passcode.

Troubleshooting

I have done a hard reset
I have not installed any new apps
I have updated all my apps
I have done a factory reset
I have updated to the latest iOS 12

But the problem still persists

What could be the problem and how can I fix this?

This could be caused my hardware problem.

Like malfunctioning power Button.

Flaky contact makes it run reset and loop.

Check and replace the hardware.


Pinging Mac "computername" hits strange IP address I'm using a MacBook Pro with Mojave 10.14.6.  I had entered a computername in System Preferences, Sharing of (not really) mymacbk. I am using Frontier's FiOS service, whose router normally attaches ".home" as the top level domain.  For various reasons discussed elsewhere on the net (for example, 189350), a hyphen, digit combination is getting added to that, so I see mymacbk-3 using the hostname command from bash.

But, just for fun, I executed

ping mymacbk
ping mymacbk.home

In both cases, I got back an IP address that, according to https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx reverse lookup tool, belongs to Akamai Tech: a23-202-231-168.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com  Looking up both of my actual names (mymacbk and mymacbk.home) on their DNS Lookup returned nothing.

What is going on?  More importantly, is this possibly a symptom of having been compromised or virus/malware infected?

Akamai runs a content distributions system used by major websites to provide fast web response on a global scale. It is used by Apple, Adobe, Microsoft and many others.

Port 443 is used for HTTPS - the encrypted version of HTTP web-page access.

It is quite normal to see a lot of traffic directed through Akamai.

iCloud content is stored on Akamai servers. Assuming you are using iCloud, e.g. to store Safari bookmarks, it is normal that opening Safari triggers a connection to Akamai since the actual content (= Safari bookmarks) is physically stored on Akamai distribution servers and needs to be synced when opening the browser.

More insight on it:

  On July 21, 1999, at Macworld Expo New York, Apple and Akamai
  announced a strategic partnership to build Apple's new media network,
  QuickTime TV (QTV), based on QuickTime Streaming Server.[32] Both
  companies later announced that Apple had made a $12.5 million
  investment in the company the previous month.[33] Apple continues to
  use Akamai as their primary content delivery network[34] for a wide
  range of applications including software downloads from Apple's
  Website, QuickTime movie trailers, and the iTunes Store.[35]

So to your question "is this possibly a symptom of having been compromised or virus/malware infected?" - I don't think it is compromised or infected by virus.


Directly switching (without pressing OPTION) between AIFF and mp3 iTunes libraries I have two iTunes libraries, one for pop music in compressed and lossy formats and another for classical music (and sometimes for jazz) in AIFF. I maintain two libraries because I'm concerned about bloating my home account with uncompressed files.

I am able to choose between the two by pressing Option before clicking the iTunes icon, but choosing from the two locations gets tedious.

How can I shorten the choice, ideally by having two icons, one for each library?

Try this.

Unfortunately, there is no direct method to use AppleScript to load a library, so this method instead adjusts the the iTunes preference file via AppleScript. I just verified that the method works in 10.8.4.

You'll want to follow the procedure once for each library, then export as an application from AppleScript Editor. Once you create the applications, you can simply doubleclick on the appropriate application to load your chosen iTunes library.

I made one slight addition to the AppleScript in order to make it the frontmost application:

tell application "System Events" to set frontmost of process "iTunes" to true